Monthly Archives: February 2020

S1E1 – Serebral360 Inc. Founder: Shannol Grant aka “S. A. Grant” – powered by Happy Scribe

Life is parallel to existence, but perpendicular to time, and what that really means is that life goes on forever and there’s intersections on that road and when these intersections happen, you have to pass the torch.

Boss Uncaged is a bi weekly podcast that releases the origin stories of business owners as they become Uncaged Trailblazers, Unconventional Thinkers, Untethered Trendsetters & Unstoppable Tycoons. We always hear about overnight success stories, never knowing that it took 20 years to become a reality. Our host S. A. Grant conducts narrative accounts through the voices and stories behind Uncaged Bosses in each episode, guests from a wide range of backgrounds sharing diverse business insights. Learn how to release your primal success through words of wisdom from inspirational entrepreneurs and industry experts as they depict who they are, how they juggle their work-life with family life, their successful habits, business expertise, tools, and tips of their trade. Release the Uncaged Boss Beast in you welcome our host S. A. Grant.

Welcome to The Boss Uncaged podcast, the pilot episode on today’s show, we have none other than myself S. A. Grant. I go by many titles and many names. I’m a jack of all trades. But more importantly, I’m here to help you guys. So I look forward to kind of hearing your feedback and kind of insight to what you guys need help with and what kind of people you want me to bring on the show. Well, good take away from today’s show is essentially of a system guy, so we dompt the system a bit. In addition to that, we just talked about, you know, how life throws rocks at you and you got to figure out how to take those rocks and build a foundation and grow from there and keep on scaling and keep on going north. So I decided to do the podcast in a format, the same format that I’m going to be interviewing. I guest I decided to have someone interview me for the podcast. So on today’s show, we have Alex. Alex is one of my best friends. She’s my significant other. She’s also a copywriter by trade. She is a treasurer. She’s also up and coming influencer as well, too. So it’s just a great mix. She definitely pulls things out of me that I didn’t want to disclose right off the bat. But, you know, you got to drop them when they’re asked to, you know, hesitation. So without any other spoilers, let’s jump right into the show.

Describe S.A. Grant in three to five words,

three to five words.

Can you be that, like, short. When did

I’m not long winded. I’m just a give detailed answers. Three to five words. That’s kind of hard. I mean, I’ve asked that question, so I always expected a three words responsible for myself. I would say a forward thinker motivated and a family person.

I guess you’re going to a little bit more detail.You need you to actually work

on which one in particular

motivated.

Well, my motivation, it stands from just change. I just want more for people around me. I think I want people to kind of see that being an entrepreneur is really not as hard as it may be perceived. It just really comes down to if you dedicated it and if you want to execute the plan. So for me, it’s I’m motivated internally myself, and then I’m really into motivating other people.And I love seeing people get excited, like when I have conversations with people and I’m describing to them how things work and understanding how systems are implied and how to do this and how to do that. And then you can see the light bulb go off in their heads. I just love that fuel for me and the fuel for them.

So who are you and what do you do?

Damn, that’s

a very question

the simplest way to put who I am and what I do is that I’m an individual that is entrepreneur that believes in helping other people get to their goals. So whether that means I’m going to help you publish your book, check; whether that means you need a video check; you need a podcast check; you need the website, check. So in the media spectrum of how to do things, if I don’t know how to do it or I don’t have somebody in my circle that knows how to do it, if you give me twenty four hours, I will figure out how to do it and I’ll stay up for twenty four hours and make sure it happens and just get it done.

So would you say this kind of essentially like your full business model or just really who you are?

I think it’s just ingrained in my DNA as far as my business model, my business model, always evergrowing, ever changing and adapting is kind of one of those things. It’s you know, if you find a product or service right off the reap that’s highly successful, then you may stick with it for a period of time. But even that, you will adapt over a period of time to morph that product or service for the demand. So I’m always morphing and adapting, but I always think I’m always going to be essentially in the the media technology space

Right, right. How would you say you kind of start it for the most part. So let me say the business, Serebral 360 or Serebral media or what do we start?

So originally it was called S.G. 180, so it’s called Serebral Graphics 180. And I was coming out of college when I got my first degree and it was a graphic design degree. As soon as I graduate, I went right back in because graphic design is cool. I love it as one of my passions, but I’m equally creative as I am equally analytical. So I went searching for other things and then I went back and got programming, multimedia, video, audio and edited those things to my toolbox. So then the company became over a period of time, from 2000 to about 2010, it became more of a media because it wasn’t just graphic design anymore. It was Web solutions. It was media solutions, it was multimedia products. And then as time went on, I realized it’s obviously more to a business than just media and marketing, even though it’s a huge part of any industry. But then there’s also the numbers behind the scenes. There’s also the operations there’s also the systems in place. And once I kind of dove headfirst into the overall business structure of businesses that are successful in general, then I was like, well, the best name for the company would be suitable to succeed because we’re going to be able to help you in multiple aspects. We’re not just a media company. We’re not. Just a graphic design company, we’re here to help you go from point one to ten thousand.

All right. I mean, did you come from an entrepreneurial background or, you know, where mom and dad had businesses before? So that was kind of ingrained in you or not?

That’s another loaded question. And yeah, you’re good at firing or shots. When I think about it, I think both my parents had elements of entrepreneurism in them when I really look back at my history of life with them. But I don’t think any one of them really knew what the definition of that word really was. I think my mom is used to work her nine fives and then she always had a side hustle before and it was more so a necessity for her to kind of, you know, make ends meet. And my dad was he was one of those people that he said he tried things. And unfortunately, if you understand business, if you just said you try something, you really fail because you’re

you try,

you try. You’re not really executing the full capabilities of what you can do in that business. So my dad has tried, I don’t know, countless things here and there, but in all reality, I think partially maybe. But when I really look back at it, it’s not like I came from a family that was, you know, the Rockefeller that had a blueprint that said, hey, well, we made a couple of billion dollars. This is how we did it. We’re going to leave you a fortune and you can then go out there and take this money and expand and grow in scale. So I literally had to come from zero and build up.

Is that what drives your motivation? And is it more of like the reverse psychology of entrepreneurship where you saw your parents working and like you just said, trying and not saying that they’re not successful because they are, but just never having their real entrepreneurial lifestyle? Can you say is that what motivated you?

I think it comes down to education. Is the one that lightbulb got off. It’s like, you know, you always hear a statement about being WOAK. And once you wake up and you realize that you live in a world that you could have essentially nine out of ten control on every aspect of your life. Now, your health is limitations, whether for DNA and family history. But if you work out and you eat healthy, potentially you should be OK. Financially is the same thing. So collectively for me, it was more so a view of looking at the world around me and realizing that there was so much more. And as I started to learn to educate myself, I was like, Oh, there’s more. And it became an addiction for me. Like literally some people are hooked on drugs and people hooked on sex. And for me, literally, I got hooked on pursuing information and trying to monetize it, but at the same time monetizing it not just for the money, but I wanted to get more money to be able to help more people.

Yeah, yeah. So I hear a lot of podcasts. I read a lot of blogs and books and articles and whatnot. And the question always is work life balance. How do you juggle work life balance? I call it juggling the hustle. So how would you say you kind of juggle your hustle, your entrepreneurship where you’re always on, then you have family who’s always on for the most part.

Now that up until recently would then, like I would say, the last twenty four months or so, I completely sucked at it more so in my relationships. I think I had a really good relationship with my son. It was just kind of like not a necessity, but just trying to set the bar really high as an example to show him that, you know, a single black male could definitely achieve things and raise a kid on his own. So for me, like, that was my driving factor. So it was my son and it was work and everything else, like my relationships, like they all suffered because of it.

You’re going to leave me. So I guess how would you say your balance then is now?

Yeah. Yeah. So literally back in two thousand eighteen I had a stroke and it was because I had the mindset of you work twenty three hours , sleep one hour and you know work. And then when you die you don’t have to worry about it because then you’re dead, but you want to get the things done and then the parallel construct of being and then being alive will hit me at the same time. So, you know, once I had the stroke, it was a reality that kind of hit me like, OK, the whole Superman complex. I am human. I am getting older and you do need balance. You do need rest. So for me was more so putting things into structure, not completely linear, but more so systems. That’s kind of led me to the way I run my business now as well to because back then it was like, OK, all hands on deck or if nobody reads the hands and I’ll just get it done. Or if somebody didn’t do it the way I wanted to do it, then I’ll do it myself. And and it just got to the point that I was still doing everything. And, you know, I was on the left side of the quadrant, you know, I was a slave to my own company. So Outpost stroke, it was kind of like an awakening moment for me

right now. More focused and.

Oh, yeah, I’m driven to the goal. I just want to I mean, I’m laser focused, I think in the last two years post stroke, I’ve gotten more done in the past two years and I did 10 years prior to that. And I think that goes back to, you know, the whole entrepreneur background. And that’s not apparent. But I don’t think I had the initiative or fought right to have structure on how I was doing it on my own, trying to figure things out, hopping from groups to groups, going from network to network, you know, getting mentors and trying to figure things out on my own. But the reality is, like I said before, once your eyes open up and you become Woken and you can kind of see the finish line and everything comes laser focus and 100 percent clear. And it’s just like, oh, shit, it’s about to go down.

So talk about, like, one of your kind of you say major systems that you may have recently put in place or poststroke put in place.

The first thing poststroke was I mean, I know a lot of corporate structures is about hire people, hire people that are better you. And I think that’s definitely a key factor. But I think there’s a lot of gaps in that system as well, too. I mean, outsourcing is a major thing. Freelancers are major players in our business structure as well, too. And it’s you can kind of build them into permanent, but for me, it’s more so you’re testing the waters. If you have people that are really good as working with you and obviously you have the workload to do it, by all means, hire them. But before you hire them, I think people kind of work harder up front to kind of prove themselves, especially when you’re paying them per project, not per hour. And it just gives them a different point of view. So they’re not getting billed, OK? Twenty dollars or one hundred dollars hours more. So here’s the project. There’s a start date. Here’s the end date. This is what I expect. Go.

Seems like you’ve learned delegation. Oh, yeah,

yeah, you could definitely say that. I mean, delegation on a mass scale. I mean, I’m not just going to delegate delegate within systems now. So I think it was delegations and it was systems. It was, you know, as much as I’m creative. Like I said before, I’m analytical. So bringing both worlds together and figuring out how to do things with software that exists and automating systems and I and how to find people and how to, you know, using, you know, SOW, you want to look at a statement of work is one thing, but I think you’d also do it to where you can kind of recruit people and give them opportunity to prove who they really are and execute over a period of time and let them shot.

Yeah. What tools would you say you put in place as well? I know you’re a systems guy. You’re all about automation and whatnot. So without naming names overall, what tools do you like to use?

The tools list factor up and down on a regular basis. I’ll say on a mailing tool scale. I’ll see MailChimp. It’s pretty straightforward and there’s twenty five hundred other versions of MailChimp out there, like causing Hardtag in a laundry list of different mail programs. But for me, MailChimp is building themselves more into a marketing platform. And I think, you know, in the next 10, 15 years, they’ll be pretty robust, even though they’re robust now for mail . But I think they have opportunity to grow into a space to where we can kind of use this system to contact our individual people that we’re looking for, whether it’s through Facebook ads, whether it’s through Google ads, and have it systematically sent out emails and get responses pretty quickly. In addition to that spreadsheets, for the longest I’ve known dozens of accountants and chief technical officers and chief financial officers. And I don’t really see the power in the spreadsheets. I understood them, but to me it was kind of like old technology. But now I really understand the power of spreadsheets. You know, Google Docs is a really big thing that that I utilized just for scaling. You know, if I have somebody that’s working for it in California that somebody is working in China, well, there’s no limitations on on the Web. I transferring files. I don’t have to worry about downloading files on worry about shipping out hard drives. I don’t have to worry about download times. It’s all in the cloud. So it makes it really easy for anybody to be anywhere and work on anything. And the Excel side of things in the sheets, Google Sheets is really beautiful because it allows me to set up things very linear. So if I have five people working on one project and has different avenues per project, then I can bring that up into tabs, break it up into columns and give people access to find information. If I have one person working on a video and the task is once you’re done with the video, you’ll load the link through Google, drive it in an Excel spreadsheet, and then I’ll have somebody else come in and pull the video from the spreadsheet. And I could see when they logged in, I can see everything that everybody is doing from a high school.

Right. So you kind of keep like referring to a team or not team. Is your team local or international, talk a little bit about your team that you’ve created.

So at this point, I think we’re about 15. Twenty people. It’s a global team. So I got people definitely locally in Atlanta, people on the West Coast, and I have people overseas as well. And the reason why I’ve done that, because why would I be limited to just one continent when there’s many other continents? And just because I’m sleep in the U.S. sleep doesn’t mean that business should stop. So coming from the mindset of if you’re not making money while you’re sleeping, then you’re not making anything right. So to make a system that works globally, I have people in multiple time zones. So if I’m executing a podcast like this, for example, I would rather have somebody editing this podcast that lives six to 12 hour time difference. So if I’m sending them a file at five p.m., our time will by seven p.m. our time, they’ll be waking up. They’ll be able to get that information. And by the time they’re done, seven p.m. their time, guess what? It’s seven a.m. our time. And this file is completely done and is ready for review

by the time you wake up in the morning.

But I wake up in the morning, so it helped me. That’s a post stroke. It made me figure that out. It was kind of like, OK, I can’t work 21 hours a day everyday anymore. How can I still do that without

actually doing

without catching another stroke?

No more

no more stroke. So yeah. So that open-mouthed of like, whoa, why not expand out your reach. So for me, I mean this one time we got people from Pakistan, India, Africa, Philippines, I think we have one person in South America. So I mean, it’s just it’s literally all over the place. And I love it because when you find people that’s international, they have a different skill set, like the English is a second language or fifteen language, some of them. And then you find the other skill. So they have an MBA. Well, they actually studied to actually have a real education. So they not only do understand English language, but they understand the business language. So. Transitioning from an individual and not to knock the states, I mean, the states have great people and we earn our dollars by all means, but just having somebody that’s overseas that can understand what I’m saying, that’s also 12 hours different. It’s a win win situation.

I would say you are very much so a risk taker, because I know a lot of people who use those services like fiverr or was the other one that can’t remember the name of it right now, but that will look for people to help. But. I would say be a little judgmental about what they think that they’re going to get out of it, you’ve found some very talented, well educated individuals on those sites that you use for like multiple projects in this and other I mean, how did you kind of feel about that in the beginning? Or is it just always you trusted the system to work?

I mean, it was up to me. I was jumping out of a plane right now and a parachute. So so for me, just diving, you can’t hesitate either. Are you going to jump in whether the water’s hot or cold and then you figure it out. You know, if you don’t know how to swim, you figure it out. And so for me, it was like, I have opportunity. I could hire maybe two or three people or I could put the feelers out there and see what else is out there across the seas and see how fast I could build a team that could execute multiple things and multiple times and I could be more so building a system that could work 24/7 versus fighting a system, trying to get somebody. And I’m not really big on people working past 5:00 if that’s not their personality. So on stateside is really hard and difficult to get people to work past six o’clock. And why should they when all reality the world is 24 hours a day, so you shift between the shifts. That’s why there’s multiple shifts and 24 hour locations like you eat, right. There’s multiple people that work over a period of time, eight, nine hour shifts. So in all reality, that’s the entire world. And we have access to it. And the part of being scared, I think people are scared because they’ve heard the nightmare stories about people getting burned or. But is this filtering is a system within a system. So if I’m looking for somebody, I’m going to check their credits. And once you understand, for example, like Amazon and you understand how ranking works and you understand how people get reviews, so when actually somebody that has like a five star review but they’re at twelve hundred reviews, that means they’ve delivered at least 12000 of this product and they’ve gotten five stars. They must know what they’re doing. And I’m still going to test them. I’m going to put them through a test to make sure that we’re a good fit personality wise for our company and who they are. As you do that, you start to figure out who people are really quickly. I mean, I could call someone’s B.S. in the first project within the first couple hours.

Right. So going back into systems and tools and programs, talk about a few things, maybe one two they can help you automate your life. What systems are you running that are essentially outside of people outside of your teams to using to maybe do automatic postings or to, like you said, MailChimp is doing? Maybe your email pushes. I’m not a tech person, so why recommend me.

Like I said before, I’m really big into systems within systems and systems. So considering that the economy today, when it comes out, the software is nine out of 10 software companies are subscription based. Right. So when you look at a company’s bottom line, well, if 25 percent of your active budget is going to subscriptions on a monthly basis to maintain things like quick books, MailChimp, it keeps adding up. So for me, I’m really thinking about the margins and how much profit can we make? Execute the job, keep everybody happy, including the clients, keep the people of working happy with the money that they’re making. So I started looking into subsystems of lifetime deals, lifetime deals. People don’t understand what they are. I mean, it’s like this not to say this is new. It’s always been around, but a lot of people just don’t think that they even exist. So I could find a deal for automation if I want to post files to Facebook, Instagram and setting up multiple things. There’s dozens upon dozens of software that does that out there right now. And majority of these software costs anywhere from twenty bucks a month to two thousand bucks a month. You know, you got HubSpot that can do full automation and you’re looking at probably, you know, twenty to thirty thousand dollars to get that up and running. And you have other lower end stuff like I have, which is free but is limited to how you can customize it. So for me, I do a lot of research and I find things that are lifetime deals. I haven’t gotten to the point to where I’ve used Chrome plug ins, call Facebook ads. So when I go to Facebook, instead of me seeing a feed of my friends or my personal feeds, a hundred percent of my feed is ads. And if you know anything about Facebook, it’s an algorithm based upon the ads I like, based upon the ads I click on, it’ll show me more of the same ads. So when I log into my Facebook, the first thing I see is exactly the software that I’m looking for right now. So give you an example. Recently I needed video software, but I wanted to do video not on the scale of like final cut or avid on particularly not to say it’s not high end, but I needed to be systematic to where I can contact somebody and say, hey, I need you to produce 300 short video clips. Thirty seconds apiece. Here’s the script. Here’s the copy, all in Excel. Log into this. I may give you access as the editor and I want you to step and repeat, step and repeat, step and repeat. And the only way to really do that, you need to have software to do that. So for me, I found software through Facebook ads. By using this chrome plug in that’s called Facebook ads, and I clicked on it and sure as hell it was there and it was like a lifetime deal that I think it was like ninety five percent off.

Wow, wow, wow.

Yeah, yeah. So imagine the overall lifetime of a budget. If I’m spending sixty dollars a month over the period of ten years versus I spend at one time upfront and then I’m good for all the updates and everything for life of this product.

I know one of the components of kind of being successful is developing habits. So what’s that morning having? I’m going to be extremely transparent user, not a morning person.So

no, no, I’m for that. Don’t get me wrong. Like it goes 100 percent goes back to me creating systems to just give me. The funny thing is I interviewed Richard and Richard was a good friend of mine. And I always know when Richard was very rigid with his regiment. But for him to say that he wakes up every single day at five 30 on Q he does one thing for 30 minutes. Timer goes off, he does nothing for 30 minutes. I wish I could be like that, but I can’t. So for me, it’s more so I know that I have to get up and get my son to school at a certain time. And he’s far from a morning person. So that’s the first part of the morning routine is like, oh, shit, is he awake? Let me go check on them. Let me wake him up. And that’s going to take 20 minutes just to get in the room and wake him up.So that’s the first part of my day. After that, it’s kind of me recapping the day before and using, believe it or not, Alexa, when I wake up and I’m telling Alexa, let’s go, she’ll recite a motivational quote that I wrote. She will have a lion roar at me and then she’ll play Kanye West. Good morning. The beauty of that again is a system and it gets me in a state of mind like it’s about to go down no matter if I’m tired or not. humps me up and again, because I can’t drink coffee as much stroke. So and I used to, you know, try to not to drink as much coffee, but when I did drink coffee, it made me feel like I was high and flying on kite. It was like coffee affects me like it’s adrenaline for me. So without coffee, those are my morning routines. I wake up, get the kid ready, listen to something, I’ll go in the bathroom and then right away within my first forty five minutes, I’m listening to a podcast or I’m watching some motivational video or I’m listening to audio book. For me it’s all about information. I’m addicted to it, I’m addicted to content. So I’m always constantly pulling that information in and then I’m hitting the road, taking the kid to school. And by the time I get him there, it gives me opportunity between seven thirty to eight o’clock to get in the gym workout and get done before nine o’clock. And then that’s when I start getting on my conference calls and getting more meetings and talking to everybody and kind of seeing what happened the night before with people will project they working on what was completed and then just following up.

So I guess this is a two part question then. So does that make you more of a nighttime person and if so, should nighttime routine?

Oh, man. So I would think definitely I used to be a night owl. I think it’s ingrained in me just to stay up all night long, like I was able to work all night. And then when the sun would peak through, when I’m like, oh yeah, I guess so. I got to get up in like an hour and thirty minutes to get my kids. Yeah, yeah. I mean I just work through it. So I mean recently I did a three o’clock, I worked at three o’clock, but usually now I kind of shut down at my timer again systems. I got a timer on my phone that goes off and says, hey dude if you, if you want to get those six hours of sleep, it’s about time. And it’s funny you to give me two is and I’m like, well I got thirty minute grace period. If I could just do this really really quick on that night.

Oh great little snooze button Zangas. Thirty minutes.

But that’s how it works for me. So it’s like it’s a snooze button for me to go to bed and then when it goes off the last time it’s like, oh and you know, they always talk about the blue light. And for me I’m a little bit different. It’s like my brain is always on, so I’ve just learned to embrace it. It’s like I’m not trying to shut down. I don’t want to shut down a lot of time. But when I go to bed, I keep everything nearby. So whether it’s a lesson I can say take a note or whether it’s my phone or whatever I like writing down was cool, but took off my glasses. I can’t see. No way. So for me to be able to like the lights out, nobody’s not listening. Alexa, make a note and tell her exactly what it is or set a reminder. And I wake up in the middle of night sometimes and that’s what happened. So for me, is this a win win situation? So once I crash and fall asleep, then I just start the day all over again. And when I go to bed, the same thing. I’ll tell Alexa goodnight and then she’ll start with the

the end of the day yeah

end of the day motivation. And then she turns off all the lights automatically. And I know if I sound like a like a robotic crackhead, but it’s all about systems man.

Yeah.

Hey, guys, let’s take a quick break. And here from today’s sponsor,

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back to the show

after all of this work in 20 years. What do you see? I would say first your business and then maybe yourself or those one in the same

see the one in the same. And it took me a while to realize that because for the longest I never wanted to be in the limelight. I always wanted to be in the shadows. And, you know, I would have friends that were in my circles and they will call me on a regular basis to ask me questions. And I started realizing that, OK, people have noticed that I’ve put the time in to get the information, but what am I really doing with it? So for me, 20 years from now, I want to have a platform that’s large enough that it could reach on a global scale to help people get the education they need from a business standpoint, because, I mean, you can pretty much sell water to a well, anything that you have passionate about, you could pretty much turn into a business. And I know it sounds asinine, but in all reality, if there’s a market and there’s supply, do you just feel the demand? And just by doing that and if you love what you’re doing, then you can pretty much sell it to anybody. So 20 years from now, I would like to have I’m not going to say I want to be on a Fortune 500 list. I’m not going to say that I want a company to be on the stock market. For me, that’s not my end goal. I mean, obviously, having wealth and having money coming in passively is 100 percent on the agenda and we’re well on the way in that direction. But for me is more so. How do I give back? How do I help people? And because of you know, I’ve had the stroke, it kind of opened up my eyes to realize that, you know, you tell somebody you have a stroke, they kind of look at you like

they’re waiting for something to be wrong.

I mean, yeah,

I move in with hand

and they look at you like what? And the way I’m speaking right now, I will say I’m at ninety nine point ninety nine percent back to 100 percent who I was before stroke. And I think for me to get back to that, I had to realize what happened to me. So, you know, you tell someone you have a stroke, they’ll say, oh, is your heart OK?

All right.

And look, what the hell is a stroke? I do my heart. You know, I get the whole blood pressure and those factors. But stroke is a mind thing. And it was just ironic that in my company, Serebral. Right. So and then I had a stroke. So for me, it was like, well, how do I prove that it’s a mental disease? I had to push through it mentally. So, I mean, even coming out the hospital was it was kind of like an awakening moment for me, was like, OK, I got five days to get my hands back because I lost my my I couldn’t even move my right hand lost the right side of my face. And it was like, the hell with that. And if I could walk good, can I talk good. But then everything else is just systematic at this point in time. I have to just believe it to achieve it. And I know that sounds crazy, but in all reality, that’s what happened.

Right. Right. So when you say you want to give back, are those the type of organizations you want to focus on that are geared towards like stroke rehabilitation? Or we say like the after effects, like I’ve heard from just kind of being previously in the medical field and whatnot, that stroke recovery is, I guess you could say, do experience depression and the like. No longer walking and talking to you should be good. I mean, is your give back more towards that because you don’t realize how depression affects you, or would you say that it affected you in any gun away or kind of unpack that element?

So believe it or not, I think a solid vision for me would be I’m not going to say knock on wood, but possibly being a spokesperson for stroke victims and being able to let them know that is still because of depression part. I don’t think anybody, unless you’re a person is depressed. I don’t think you understand what the Depression really is until that happens, like you understand the definition of it, you could read it. And I’ve been with multiple people in my lifetime that have suffered from depression, that I’ve known from depression. And you always pat them on the back and you try to push them in the right direction, but you don’t really know what depression is. It’ll hit you. So once I had the stroke, that’s when I got hit with that. Oh, this is real.

Yeah, it’s it’s feeling like,

yeah, it’s a genuine it’s an emotional state that changes who you are. And I can see how people stay in the bed and start putting weight on. I can see how people start hurting themselves and seeing how people just kind of like check out because post stroke it changes the chemical formula of who you are. You start to see things differently. You speak differently, you move differently. It took me like, what, maybe four months to be able to speak at the speed. And I’m speaking now.

Yeah,

I went from speaking like this to more so like not Forrest Gump, but I was like

having to think about everyone because they didn’t come as fast as they used to.

That blew my mind because I’m so used to being thinking twenty five steps ahead. And in my mind I was twenty five steps ahead of my mouth, going to catch up to what I was thinking. I was like, so this is what stuttering is like. OK, so I started all these different diseases, started kind of clicked like damn that sucks. To live your entire life into the bubble of your mind is faster than your body or faster in the way you could relate content. From a communication standpoint, that’s a damn nightmare. So again, I. I’m thinking going into a space to where obviously giving financial raising awareness and making people believe in themselves more than anything else, that, yeah, you may have lost your rights, that you may not be able to speak, but as long as you could blink, talk and your mind is work and you could still achieve things more than you could imagine,

You’re changing subjects a little bit. If you had the opportunity to sit down with anyone who ever existed alive or dead, would that be ?

I’ve been thinking about this question for about 20 years.

Why?

I mean, this this question has been a question that, you know, like trivial style question, but more so it kind of tells you who a person really is. And, you know, post recorded maybe seven, seven or eight podcasts at this point in time. And I’ve asked that question twice. And one person has said, Steve Jobs, which is one of the people that I thought about, another person had said MLK. And I was like, you know, that was really interesting. But he’s a tech guy. So he said, MLK kind of blew my mind. So but for me personally, one person keeps popping in my mind over and over again as Einstein

Who was that?

Because he’s a blend at feel kind of a connection to him. He’s half creative as he is analytical. And if he wasn’t creative, he wasn’t going to be able to create the theories that he created. And then he was technical enough to prove these theories or make other people believe these theories as well, too. Plus, he was underdog as a kid.

Yeah.

You know, he was pretty much looked at as like, you know,

He wasn’t necessarily crazy.

And it is the story was stupid. They thought he was just, you know, like essentially dumb, deaf and blind, even though he wasn’t and they treated them like crap. So and in the same time, he grew up during World War So. And he was Jewish.

Right.

So think about that. You know, you’re in school when they call you dumb and then as you grow up, then you get hit with it. And it was just like and he still came out to be one of the greatest minds we’ve ever to this day is kind of hard to disprove his theories and as only a matter of time before, they’re 100 percent proven or not. Right. But he’s one of those kind of like a waterlily. What really grows from under the water right across from a bottle. And most plants, they go from dirt and they need light. And this is grown under water and it’s growing up and is growing up and is growing in water until it reaches the peak of the actual top and it breaks the plane and then opens up and it becomes a water level. And it’s kind of like being under all this wheat for all this time. And until you make that achievement and then you blossom when I see him, that’s what I think about, is like, you know, the things that he has done and achieved in his lifetime is just simply amazing. And it doesn’t matter how old you are for me is more so. I just turned 40 last year and I’ve had dozens of achievements in my life, but I don’t think my real achievements are not going to happen until the next five or ten years.

Where I was going to ask, how does that kind of correlate to your background? Are you at a waterlily phase? Are you still not too much?

So the beauty of that is like, you know, which I, I can’t go scuba diving anymore. Right? So when you scuba dive, the farther down you go and you passed turbulence is the darker things get because the you start to lose the light the light can’t reach. So think about it from like that, the whole end of the tunnel thing. But for me I think about if I’m scuba diving and I’m in the water and as you come up, come up, you start to see this twinkle of light above you. Right. This luminescence is growing and you’re swimming and swimming is swimming. And then you break the water just like the leaf and then you’re free. So I don’t get the bends. I’m alive. Who wouldn’t get bite by a shark? I’m good.

Right?

So for me, I’m at the point where I’m thinking I’m like less than 50 metres from the top.

It’s really close.

It’s really close. But it’s still a fight. It’s not. And you still die in 50 metres.

Yeah, fair point. Yes,

you can still drown and 50 metres, you can still get the bends in 50 metres. All these different things could happen still. But the fact is, I see the end of the tunnel. And so once I break out, there’s going to be you know, I think it’s no static, no stopping me now at this point in time. But once I get past these 50 metres, then it’s I want to say smooth sailing. But it’s definitely going to be something else

that is very poetic, I guess, let’s go a lead into what are your final thoughts or your final words of wisdom,

final words of wisdom for any entrepreneur or any business person is mainly for people that think that they’re stuck where they are currently, people that are in jobs that don’t want to be in jobs because they need to have revenue to put food on the table. People that are looking for opportunities but can’t find them, people that want to make more money but don’t know how. It doesn’t matter if you’re fifteen years old in high school or you’re sixty five years old and you just retired from your job, there’s always a will in a way for you to do it. Only thing you have to do is use that to keep on swimming. You got to keep on staying in the fight and the believing of using your mind. There’s no reason why you can use your mind to your last breath. As long as you have that opportunity, then you can make that happen for. The statement I always say is life is parallel to existence, but perpendicular to time, and what that really means is that life goes on forever and there’s intersections on that road and these intersections happen. You have to pass the torch. So if you’re at a perpendicular point to where your road is going to end, the only way you could pass your torch is to be passing information on to the next generation, passing information to the next person to raise their hand hands. The actual question on how to do this, how to do work for you, answer these questions, help somebody push them forward. That’s the only way that essentially as a people, you can live forever.

I think that’s a great way to end, how do we find you, Mr. Social Media Guy? Is it going to be some automated version of you?

You I just found the software that does automatic.

OK, we need you to really reply not some automated version of you. How can we find the room?

So there’s obviously different versions. And I’ve changed my business structure to where S.A Grant as a brand, much like Steve job as a brand. So you could find me S.A Grant on pretty much all the platforms. So that’s on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the list goes on, but you just find any one of those or, you know,

to kids with Snapchat, you know, the kids

Will actually tik tok.

Tik Tok Is the new kids platform

Tik tok makes you just want to do a backflip manage just Tik Tok is what’s it sagrantl Anyone those platforms will S.A Grant.Com. As far as my business unit, Serebral 360, the Serebral with an S so that’s Serebral360.Com and the same handle for Instagram, Twitter bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.

Surprise bonus question.

Oh shit.

What is the current. I guess social media site or format that you are totally in love with or headed in the direction of or. That you talk about the most and the Instagram, say Facebook to YouTube, say Snapchat, Tik-Tok, another one, that is a very hard question.

This is technically hard because for me right now in the space that I’m in, between my own personal work, my own personal brand, and for clients, I’m in a lot of a woman like a dozen of them on a regular basis. But I would think if you’re talking about today, 100 percent today, I would have to say is a time

or where’s the future of social media then going?

Well, it’s funny, though, because the future is the past, right? If you think about it, first, there was radio.

Yes.

Which is podcasting. Right before that it was publication, which is like Kindle. Yeah. So TV

came off the radio.

Yep. That’s YouTube. So the cycle continues, right. I think in the mixed media of the three, Tik-Tok is really big because it does what it mixes music with. Video.

Video. Yeah,

YouTube is massive right now because it’s like I think it’s a second or the third largest search engine. Like I think it even outweighs probably being. It’s not. And it’s owned by Google. So if you combine Google and YouTube,

oh my gosh,

the math is phenomenal

people are getting degrees from watching videos on YouTube.

So I think YouTube is definitely a big one but I think you have to have a supporting channels for YouTube. The primary supporting channel for YouTube for me and my demographic would be Facebook, because Facebook has one of the largest reaches that we’ve ever known to have a reach for, which is a couple billion people. And you have to really understand the magnitude of what a billion is versus a million. So you can’t discredit Facebook whether you like them or you don’t like it. But I would definitely say it would be Facebook and YouTube. But don’t sleep on Tik-Tok.

It’s hard to because it’s like, what is the purpose? But I get the business model, I guess.

Yeah. I mean, Tik-Tok is a little bit more difficult because you’re talking about not even 15 year old. You’re talking about seven year olds.

Yes. Like seven to 13 year old, I think. What’s the demographic for Tik-Tok yeah, yeah.

But it is a long term plan, is a long term plan. So if you get them hooked on your how to, videos like how to make something look magical on Tik-Tok, I could jump in a picture and jump in a box and you get them hooked at seven or no reality. In ten years they’ll be going seventeen, eighteen and now they’re consumers. So it’s a long term plan if you play with Tik-Tok now and then, I think I left out one. I’m sorry, I got to go back. The biggest one for me right now for the future would be voice commands, Alexa, Google. I think that is really the next generation of the because nobody’s really delving into that market. One hundred percent at this point in time. Everybody see. There she is.

See see Alexa. She was ready. She just did it right. Is it more like, let’s see, reality show right now, the circle. You can just speak your social media content and it just is there.

I think that was more so the niche for the show, but I think that’s the opening for tomorrow. I mean, you have to understand, if I want I look at her as like a personal assistant on one hand, a calculator on the other hand, and I could order of one fly. Right. There’s so many things I could do and multiply my day by working with her or him or, you know, whatever. I think the Googles. What John Legend, the change, his voice, the John Legend. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I mean,

it’s had me away. Yeah.

So tying all these different things and I think about it on your phone now some cars will have them and then you add in the GPS and you and all the other futures, the automation side of things become very systematic to where if you pull in your driveway, your driveway, your garage, open up, you can do that now, right? Your lights are going now. You leave your house, the alarm goes off. Right now. You can get analytics of your home right now. So it’s being able to talk things into existence without having to use your hands is hands free.

And I think I saw a little commercial where Alexa and Bose have partnered. And they have you have her on the go with you now, and it’s incorporated into your life so much that you could be in the car or you could be walking down the street and you think of something that normally you would yell out, hey, I’m not going to say your name because you’ll start talking again. And right now you can’t do that. And now, like I said, I think it’s both has that now. So you have your headphones on and you have that random thought like you do, like, hey, what’s the temperature?And I’ll tell you right there,

I mean, it’s going to go away. But I mean, you able to be like, oh, hey, my meaning is going to end at ten o’clock. I need you to order me your Uber, make sure the pizza’s here fit before. Oh yeah. By the way, my kids need something. Ba ba ba ba. Have that waiting for me. Odda my prescription. Yeah. Yeah. And then you leave your house and it’s like ding ding ding ding ding. And they’re just all going off and all this information is being transferred via your commands from two. Three hours before, to me, that’s like the best system you could possibly have today.

I like it. I love it. I kind of kicked your format in the face by asking that bonus question, but

no, no, no. I mean, it’s because I think that question is a great question, because it made me think about today versus tomorrow out originally answer and for today. Today is YouTube, blah, blah, blah. But all reality, all these things are going to feed into tomorrow. I mean, like the show Echo Show. Yes, I love that thing. It’s like having a tablet connected to her name and they’re all integrated and you could watch things and do things and touch. I’m just like, just love it. Right. And we got and also got on the waiting list too for the the glasses.

Yes. There. Now her name. I’m going to say glasses. Is that it. Where is it like Google Glasses where it was in your face or

known as limited google glasses. More so on screen display with verbal commands, which is obviously they were ahead of their time. But this one is essentially an earpiece that you can get prescription glasses and you could do everything and walk around. And the beauty of that, it’s on your body without you having to use a device. Yeah. So it’s taking her from your desk and putting it on a mobile, a mobility aspect to it, to where it changes everything is like having the watch I watch is kind of similar. But the whole Dick Tracy thing talking to you watch it was cool for comics, but you kind of look like a little bit of

I think night rider, too.

I mean, all the things are cool, but having it on your visual to where you don’t have to touch it, you don’t have to breeze your risk. You could drive, swim, whatever you want to do. You still have this thing like maybe that waterproof, almost waterproof, but it should be waterproof, which is where it should be.

I’m sure it is. I mean, it’s just naturally, like you say, it is naturally in the direction it is going. She is so much a part of everyone’s life. Like when you think of a question, your immediate thought is, let me ask her. And so now was only naturally that they figure out a way to take it out of your home, put it in your car, put it right in your ear, put it on your face as far as your glasses. And you said it’s only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Yeah, yeah. I just feel like talking to them right now.

OK, don’t say that because then she’ll start talking. Oh. Would you like her to give you your motivational quote for the day.

I think I got separated between rooms, but I can say this if she does it. Hey Alexa. Good night. You’re probably standing on the other one.

She’s well, saying it on the one. Yeah.

I mean, that’s the beauty. You can control it per room. I just love that.

Well, is it fun? A lot of questions. So.

All right. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to give people a taste of the random thoughts in my head and given the opportunity to get a taste of what the podcast is going to be like

. Yeah, I’m excited, excited to hear all the interviews and here we go.

Yeah, yeah. I’m definitely excited. I mean, when I look at the diversity of people that we have access to, it’s a diverse plethora of individuals.

So so maybe that is a good question that you can kind of edit in later, maybe for the most part what should be expected.From the podcast Boss Uncaged

Boss Uncaged is a podcast , Kelly Stevens. Voice over man a got killed it what should be expected from the podcast? I mean, literally what I’ve done is I tapped into the first generation to say season one, right? Season one is two thousand twenty. My Rolodex of people that I’ve either worked with, that I’ve known since high school and worked with, or people that I’ve seen that started something and created something and then developed into an actual success story and just giving them interviews, talking to them about how did you do it, why did you do it, what’s your background like? What did you come from? So it gives you opportunity. Again, if you’re sixty five years old and you just retired, that you’re never too old to start something new. If you’re fifteen years old and you’re trying to figure out, well, I want to be a radio announcer. We haven’t a radio announcer. If you’re more of a IT guy and you want to figure out how to code and how to work for like four to five hundred corporations, we got that guy. So it’s mainly to give you an opportunity to see a diverse history of individuals tell their stories in their firsthand accounts.

Sounds like it’s going to be very fun.

Yeah, there are some some characters.So I was lik,

this is like fifty percent of people in your world. The ones are like, OK, they’re really cool. And the ones you’re like, oh my God, did they just say,

yeah, no, no. That’s the beauty of it, man. You’ve got to be I enjoy having a multiple personality disorder and it just makes me to me is like, what can I say that makes him a superhero? Yeah. So for me it’s like being able to tap into different people’s intellects and understanding them on their level would not be that person and be able to switch into that character to relate to them. Love it

all your personality.

Yes, we’re all here.

So then.

All right, guys. So you guys too many remember you got anything? Drop us a line, let us know if you have any questions. Hit the subscribe hit download. Send me an instant message. Let me know if you have any other questions. Do you like my next guest on the show on future shows coming up. And again, we’re all like about episode seven. So ideally, these podcasts are not going to be in any particular order. They’re designed for you to go to Episode seven, Episode five, Episode 100. Whenever it happens, it happens. Just jump around, find a person that relates to you most, listen to them. And then the biggest thing out of that is take action. Have a good one.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Boss Uncaged. I hope you got some helpful insight and clarity to the diverse approach on your journey to becoming Uncaged Trailblazer. Is this podcast helped you? Please email me about it. Submit additional questions. You would love to hear me ask our guests and or drop me your thoughts at ask sagrant.com; post comments, share, subscribe and remember! To become a Boss Uncaged, you have to release you in a piece. S.A Grant signing off.

Listeners of Boss Uncaged are invited to download a free copy of our host S.A Grant’s insightful book, Become an Uncaged Trailblazer. Learn how to release your primal success in 15 minutes a day. Download now at : www.sagrant.com /boss uncaged.