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11 Useful Tips To Be Accountable Through Your Rise To Success With S. A. Grant Of Boss Uncaged Academy: Motivated & Focused Growth Edition – S2E31 (#59)

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11 Useful Tips To Be Accountable Through Your Rise To Success With S. A. Grant Of Boss Uncaged Academy: Motivated & Focused Growth Edition – S2E31 (#59)

In Season 2, Episode 31 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S. A. Grant picks up on the topic of accountability, and how to hold yourself accountable through your rise to success.

The etymology of accountable (adj.)
“answerable,” literally “liable to be called to account,” c. 1400 (mid-14c. in Anglo-French), from Old French acontable; see account (v.) + -able. Related: Accountably.
11 Key Tips To Hold Yourself Accountable
  1. Knowing Your Why..
  2. Create A Personal Mission Statement And Write It Down. …
  3. Set Micro-goals.
  4. Do One Task At A Time.
  5. Create A Schedule. …
  6. Use Lists Wisely.
  7. Know The Signs Of Procrastination. …
  8. Seek Feedback.
  9. Emphasize Your Strengths, Improve Your Weaknesses.
  10. Value Your Time.
  11. Celebrate Accomplishments & Milestones-reward Yourself.
Let’s take the conversation offline
Go to our Boss Uncaged Facebook group @ bossuncaged.com/fbgroup
Tell me what your biggest takeaway was?
Let me know if you enjoyed the new bonus add-on episode.
SA Grant Over and out

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#SAGrant #Quote #BossUncaged #Business #podcasting #podcasts #accounting #accountingservices #accountingsoftware #accountingfirm #entrepreneurship #podcasting #podcasthost #podcastlife #fintech #fintechstartup #financial #financialadvisor #financialservices #accountants #accountant
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Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

11 Useful Tips To Be Accountable Through Your Rise To Success With S. A. Grant Of Boss Uncaged Academy: Motivated & Focused Growth Edition – S2E31 (#59)2021-06-27T17:24:18+00:00

CEO and Co-Founder Of Fully Accountable: Vinnie Fisher AKA The Accountable Boss – S2E30 (#58)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

“I’d say that if we could spend time in a stage where whatever stage is developing, being a craftsman in something, no matter what that something is, and we can embrace learning how to be a professional as a craftsman, I think you’ll enjoy what you’re doing. Take an interest, take something that lines up with your traits and your interests and your desires, and go put work into it.”
In Season 2, Episode 30 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with CEO & Co-Founder of Fully AccountableVinnie Fisher.
Fully Accountable is an outsourced accounting and finance firm for small and medium-sized eCommerce and digitally based businesses. Their mission is to provide eCommerce and digital business owners with better data, so they are able to make better decisions.
Want more details on how to contact Vinnie? Check out the links below!

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

Just speak to your Alexa-enabled device and say, ”Alexa Open Boss Uncaged.”

Also available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon, Google podcast, and many other popular podcasts apps.

#SAGrant #Quote #BossUncaged #Business #podcasting #podcasts #accounting #accountingservices #accountingsoftware #accountingfirm #entrepreneurship #podcasting #podcasthost #podcastlife #fintech #fintechstartup #financial #financialadvisor #financialservices #accountants #accountant
Remember to hit subscribe so you will get instant updates. Leave us a review, we would love to get your input on the show.
Because we want to hear from you and would love your feedback, leave us a message 762.233.BOSS

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S2E29 – Vinnie Fischer – powered by Happy Scribe

All right, three, two, one, welcome. Welcome back to Boss Uncage podcast. On today’s show, we have someone that, you know, kind of through the grapevine. We have a lot of commonalities and come to find out, we have some similar friends. And today is the first time we mean. But I could already tell you that he’s going to have some great insight, some great information for you today. So without further ado, Vinnie, tell our audience a little bit more about yourself.

Well, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. I love I just love how we get out there and help this community, this community of, like, people who are trying to figure out how to do business and entrepreneurship and life. And so the stuff you guys are doing, I’m extremely honored and be blessed to be part of it. And so hopefully we can offer our part and give out some value, share our story. So I’m very fisher, right?

I mean, first and foremost, accomplishment and for me is that I’m a dedicated follower of Christ. I am working on that every day. I screw up a whole bunch, which is a part of like who I am as a person. Thankfully, I I’ve been working a healing in my heart and things. I’ve been able to stay together with my wife of now. Twenty five plus years of marriage and twenty nine years together. And we’ve produced four beautiful children who are all teenagers and in their versions of early adulthood.

So that’s make my life life. And then I also have this privilege to be the CEO and founder of Fully Accountable. And Dabb and I also have had some good successes where we have a family back office. Where were the investor, an active investor in two other operating companies. And so I live the life as a business leader. So in this stage of my career, I, I lead and develop leaders of our organizations.

So let’s just take it back a little bit in history. I mean, obviously, you just don’t wake up on a random Tuesday and say, I’m going to be a leader, I’m going to be an executive, I’m going to create all this different things to put back out the community. So what did your journey really begin? When when was your Eureka moment waking up to saying, hey, this is something that I want to do?

Yeah, I think, you know, there’s a song I love, it’s got a little bit of a negative context to it, but there’s a song by this band casting around Slow Fade. You kind of slowly fade into things, right? Well, I think you can slowly fade and good and bad directions. Well, I think over time, I, I, you know, I’ve always been a problem solution marketer and the companies I even have around me are problem based solution issues, even in my own life.

And so that’s just some type of business person I’ve been. So I’m a lawyer. I worked at a big fancy law firm, got trained. I’m very thankful for that. All along the way. I kind of it was a good business developer and I didn’t really want to wait that whole length of a partnership track. So I noticed my propensity to be closer to risk taking, like I’m willing to take risk because I want reward and so early on, which is unusual for a lawyer, but I kind of then jumped into a law firm with some other guys, kind of have my own thing.

Same thing in business I have. I’ve always had a propensity to the front of the room because I have a higher tolerance to taking risk, meaning I’m willing to lose in return for the opportunity for reward. And that’s kind of what early on I discovered about myself. So I’m always innovating or trying ideas. I’m an idiot, but I don’t just think about them. I try them. I so I’m always kind of doing and I strike out a bunch and every once in a while I’ve got a hold of one and hit it over the wall and and along the way I realized I don’t really, like, keep doing the same thing.

I’m not really a process driven person, so I’ve had to surround myself with people who enjoy that part of the function of our organization as well.

So, I mean, I think you bring up a very solid point. I mean, some of what you’re saying is like you’re hella fearless. Right? But a lot of people that are on this particular journey of entrepreneurism or just small business that you hit fear on a regular basis. So how did you like like be able to face that fear and overcome it? I mean, is that something that’s in your DNA, which is something that you learned over a period of time?

You know, I don’t know that we naturally have fear handling in our DNA. I think I’m afraid I’m afraid of things. I’ve learned to hand over the anxieties of fear in multiple directions. First off, I had to get right with wounds in my life, in my heart, like things that I would have made some really bad agreements and paid attention to some awful language I was using about myself. And I did kind of get right with some of that because, you know, depending on the category, we all have fears.

And so if shame or doubt or or how my an unusual measurement of how others feel about me, those are other things going on that bleed into performance. And so I did deal with some of those things, quite honestly, for me, my faith I’m so thankful for it was a gift to me. But I’ve been able to learn how to handle anxiety over that. Is it true and deal with some of those things. So it’s an everyday journey, like I was thinking this morning, like about fear and how, like under the right category, you’re going to get nailed with it.

So it’s not whether it goes away to me, it’s how I addressed it over time. And what am I doing to see the truth of it? What anxiety? Because fear can come in both in multiple directions. And I’ve learned responding to it can look like anxiety and work, look like boredom. And depending on how I respond to both of those, it’s it’s this feeling about not being valuable. And I’ve literally I try to fight that because I think our minds will drift in all of those things.

And I just learn to take those thoughts captive and find truth.

And I think at this point that we could just end the podcast. I mean, he delivered enough nuggets in like the last thirty seconds. You can walk away and take that and take that to the bank. Right. But it’s just pulling it back a little bit more. And I want to kind of talk about your platform a little bit. So fully accountable, like what is that software designed to to do and who is the target audience for it?

Yes, we’re a fintech, but we’re a fully managed service. Right. So we provide a fully outsourced, managed service of outsourced CFO and accounting for ecommerce and digital companies. But what we did along the way is we discovered for me, I built this for me, we discover that tech was missing. That was really outdated, this whole industry of accounting and finance. So we built our own tool that allows us to have a massive ability to deliver the results we needed for first one of my companies.

And then we realized this was actually working. We started offering it to friends. Next thing you know, we backed into having a fully managed service for a fintech, for accounting and finance and run by a guy who doesn’t know accounting events.

Oh, well, I mean, isn’t that concept I mean, obviously the supply and demand based upon that, you had a requirement. You fulfill the need and then taking that need and then you grew it into a platform to deliver to help other people. Right. But on that that particular topic. Right. You were able to have. Equity raises and OK, I got a million dollar equity raise so I could run this company for another 12 months and get the software off the ground to sell it, like how did you do your equity raise with a self-funded angel investment?

Like, how did you get the capital to even start that platform?

Yeah. So everything that I’ve ever built from sticks up that would people would call like a startup, everything I ever built. Thankfully, I have gone into it with a bootstrapped mentality. I build it as I go. I very much believe in the concept of a minimally viable product. And if you’ve never really understood that concept, I would read the Lean Startup and in there you’ll get a concept of MVP minimum viable product. I’ve always believed that in things I grow now.

I also love the idea of raising dollars or borrowing in the right context, but I usually look at those as going faster, not starting something early on. I think it’s for me. I’ve been more successful not using other people’s dollars because I’m just going to burn them faster, figuring out the offer conversion. And so, like, if I can limp a little and go a little slower, figuring out conversion and audience, then add, you know, gasoline on the fire when I’m ready to go faster with the use of money and I’ll decide whether it’s my capital or someone else’s.

So if I could take that and paraphrase it and correct me if I’m wrong, just to give a clear depiction. Right. If I want to get from point A to point B, I know that I have to either jump the gap or I need to cross over or build a bridge. Right now, I may not have the capital to build a concrete bridge or maybe I’ll bring ropes ropes. But you’re starting from from the from the basic necessities of getting from point A to point B and then the roots and expand out.

You make wood and then wood expands out to metal and in concrete. So you’re saying that’s pretty much what you did. You started off with the capital that you had. You started off with ropes and you scaled it to the platform that currently is right now.

Yeah, and maybe I didn’t, so to speak, have capital, but I kept it lean and mean. I learned from one of my mentors in marketing that you got to be really careful that you know exactly what the customer wants. You’re guessing. And so if you overbuild before you get into the customers hands, you were going to find yourself spending a lot of money, iterating something that otherwise you were guessing on. So get him the most minimal version.

You can get out of your hands and let the customer help you, and then you can refine audience and customer together. And that way I’ve learned to spend less money developing our version one, two and three of something.

So pretty much staying away from, like the feature creature. You know, that way you don’t put all the bells and whistles in there. You want to start off with the bare necessities and then build from there based upon your audience feedback.

Yeah. You know, in some cases, since I’m a problem solution marketer, I try to build things for me. So I always remember I’m probably one of our customers, but that only gets us so far. Right. I want to hear feedback from other ones. I’m just one of some. And so, you know, thankfully, hundreds of clients later they help validate an offer and improve it. But early on, I think I think there are too many people looking to raise money first before offer or an audience, you know.

Forty two cents of every dollar spent. The market is spending too much money acquiring a customer, either because the offers wrong or the audience is wrong.

So from start to I mean, obviously, a project is never finished. It’s always growing. How how quickly per say and obviously I know the scope of work and there’s systems in place that you have to establish. But how quickly could someone from an idea create a prototype to, say, go to market for a particular product? And we’re talking about software?

Yeah. I mean, I think if you come at it from more of a managed service or solve a problem standpoint, I think pretty quick. Right? I think the feature development is what gets in the way they all the extra things you add on. But a very lean version is a matter of fact. If you really wanted to get it from a customer standpoint, I would. I’m I believe in renting before buying. And so I like to try other people’s stuff and use it and see if a customer sets there.

So, you know, in everything like outsourcing, I just believe in the theory of rent before buying. So I think you’ll be real lean using other modalities to to to prove out your concept.

That’s really interesting. And I definitely appreciate you giving us some insight into that. So like on your experience, obviously you’ve been on the road for a period of time. You’ve had this journey, you’ve had your successes. But whatever your success, it’s always like some negative side effect. Right. So what’s the worst experience that you’ve encountered on this journey?

You know, I think some of my blind spots by the biggest blind spot was that I, I would have worked myself into the system unnecessarily because I would have I am battling always this hero complex because I’m a Quixtar and I have good ideas. I would then would conclude that I’m the best one to solve all the problems. And so I baked myself into the system. Well, I did that in such one of our large Webelos. The company with lots of people on the team making lots of revenue, when I stepped away and became the chairman of the board, no longer the CEO, it exposed how many levers I was pulling.

So I didn’t really backfill correctly in that business because my arrogance and my blind spots got in the way because I literally was solving problems instead of really investing in helping other people who really are on our team help them find their lane. I kind of put too many things in my lane.

I think that that’s a gift and a curse. I mean, not 80 personalities, but you have a vision, you have a goal, you have a product. And you know how you want all these components to work, to to happen and to come to fruition. And then you have to obviously get somebody else to help you on that journey because you can’t do it all yourself. And on that journey with somebody else is not doing exactly what you would do it.

We we kind of step in at times.

So I think I wrote a book about this at all. And so I want to give away a gift here to our people here, and they can find that gift fully accountable. Dotcom, Ford’s boss, uncaged, and they can get it in the show, notes the link. But I wrote a book called The CEO’s Mindset, and I highly encourage you to take advantage of this. Everyone watching and listening, because I spoke about this specific subject about where I can be the lightning bolt in my own company, where I come in and really disruptive.

But at the same time, I’m you know, I believe in being able to build something beyond your shadow, takes people in process and hopefully you’re making profit along the way. But without those two things, people are an organization that’s bigger than just you. And so I spoke directly about this subject, about how you got to develop about people and then ultimately give them good process and help them make process so that the organization has some consistency and excellence to it.

Well, gosh darn it. When you look at a couple of my ventures that I broke and I wrote a whole book about the breaking of that, that I would expose the lack of process and really developing out people.

Oh, so, I mean, you’re talking about processes and obviously you’re you have a legal background. So in a business structure, we always hear about LLC s corp C Korps, like, what is your business? Which one of these three or is it a combination of multiples.

Yeah. So I mean, if you look at the whole structure, Deb and I, my wife, we own a family back office, so we own a family limited partnership in there. It’s got limited partners. One of its limited partners would be. However, things are owning our assets, my all of my assets, the marshal under me, I have a holdings company that’s one of the partners. It’s an asset of the partnership. But that holding company then owns interest in the things that I actively participate.

One of those would be fully accountable itself is an LLC, but it’s a multimember LLC because I have two partners in it. Right. So it’s not a single member. It’s got multiple members in it. And it’s tactlessly it’s taxed like a partnership. Not like you can make an election to tax it another way, but it’s taxed like a partnership. And ultimately there are three separate partners in that business.

Oh, so talking about partnership right now, we’ve had solo partners, entrepreneurs. So I’m asking you the question more so about partnerships, because obviously that’s the other half of the coin. Right. Or multiple other coins and personalities and different ideas. So working on that table mindset of working at the Knights of the Round Table, how does that work? I mean, how do you kind of get to the same common accord when you’re sitting in a room with somebody that may not agree with you?

Um. That’s a great question. So for the three of us, if you kind of let me, Chris and Rachel, you know, E-, even though I am the majority owner, we actually have a one vote, one person situation where there’s three of us. And so two of the three of us are going to lead us in a direction. And so my job as the leader of our team and the leader of the three of us is to help us come to a good decision, because one of the mistakes I made on early in partnership is I wanted workers in the system and I’d give them interesting things, but not treat them like a partner so they might look like one on equity paper, but didn’t act like one because they’re never invited to act like one.

It wasn’t their fault. It was my fault. So now we try to practice active partnership. I probably have a really strong voice and I have a really strong opinion in our job as executives are to fight about that, to criticize, to come up with through that process. Of course, hopefully there’s some compassion in there, but come up with a good result together. And, you know, we don’t always 100 percent agree a lot. Most of the time we do.

But sometimes it’s two out of three. And, hey, you know, I’m sometimes the three and with great maturity, I don’t want to be completely doing everything. So I have to accept sometimes we had and directions that maybe it’s not where I want us to go, but if I really care enough, I’ll keep fighting.

So, I mean, just to talk about you a little bit more, I mean, obviously I’m looking at as a backdrop and for those that are just listeners on one half of you, you have five thousand and the other half you have kallick funnel. Plank’s right. So what you kind of tell us the story behind both these sides behind you, because obviously one is 100 percent business and the other one is hundreds and marketing.

I’m a marketer, let’s be really clear, I actually have been trained in business as a I was a corporate M&A attorney. I did tax as a specialty inside there. So I helped small and medium sized businesses run and operate and ultimately sell or liquidate. And I was a I’m a deal lawyer at my core, which means I brought a deal into everything I do. But my one of my mentors in the law was a partner of mine. I took to customer behavior very quickly.

I have creative, I think, more about the customer. I don’t like the nuts and bolts of marketing, like develop the funnel, put the big someplace. But I like coffee. I like things that involve consumer engagement and conversions. I just love that stuff. I can’t get away from it. So we win awards for doing good marketing of driving customers to our product. And so we do the right thing. We eat our own dog food.

When it comes to marketing, as it relates to the 5000. Well, you know, we’re we’re at the top of categories growing as quickly as there are. And that speaks to our irresistible offer. Right. We have a good offer in the market. And in spite of whether or not we’re good at marketing, in spite of whether or not we’re doing great things in our sales department, the market is rewarding us with excellent success and growth.

Actually, I definitely commend you and I look forward to seeing what else you have up your sleeves as this conversation continues to move forward. My next question is so we always hear about the twenty years that it takes someone to become successful, but it’s usually perceived to be an overnight success. How long have you been on your journey?

It’s been like 20 years, to be honest with you, when I look back to the start of my law practice, which would have been in the year of 1999 when I would have been a lawyer. So here I am on the other side of that 20 years. But I would tell you, if you go back two years ago, I firmly believe the things that you developed, the wisdom that comes along with experience and knowledge. I never surprised when I see the staff that the most successful entrepreneurs are between forty five and fifty five.

That doesn’t mean young people can’t be successful because I just talk about the average of a people group and I think wisdom experience kick in and I think you’re along. I think so. I would say, you know, I’m I’m probably acting in some of my best capacity as a leader right now that I’ve ever in all of my career.

Oh, well, so I think it comes with the experience of knowing when to fold, when to stand up, when to listen versus talking to your point. I think it definitely comes with experience.

Yeah, I think there’s some at bats. I think you learn to see a curveball, right? You don’t just actually hit it. And I like baseball, so I’m always going to use but I like all sports. But I’m a sports junkie, but I like baseball. And, you know, I was awful at hitting a curveball. I was a great fielder and a good arm could hit a curveball. Never learned the art of hitting a curveball.

And so that’s stopped my career in its tracks in high school. But I, I have learned to see what a curveball and a changeup and and what really bad things happen in business. And I’m thankful for a lot of that. And I’m thankful that my identity isn’t placed in the success of it. It was for a long time and I’m thankful to have realized that I was pegging my hope into the identity of success in business. And that’s another thing I’ve learned along the way.

And so I’ve learned how to enjoy the ride more and being present instead of wishing I was in the future.

Oh, definitely. So I mean, just by the first time, I mean, I kind of just, you know, you correct me if I’m wrong. I just have a gut feeling that you’re a big systems guy. Like, I think to balance out all the things that you have moving in, all the components, you have to have systems in place to get to the level of achievement that that where you are currently. So if this does stand true, what systems do you have in place to kind of help you in your day to day?

I have people in place, these people have developed wonderful systems, I am I’m about as all over the place as you can possibly get. I am aloof. I think of things. I will put people in front of process all the time. So even if I’ve got to get to something, I have to write copy for the marketing department. And there’s a relationship element that needs me to be involved in people. I have a very high emotional level that I will always dump a process for a person.

What I’m thankful for is realizing that I need to be surrounded with people who care about process and they have put great systems in place. But as it relates to me, I’ve learned to put things like routine as a system in place. So I’ve got routines that protect parts of my time so I can be a great husband, a good leader at home, be dedicated in working on my faith with fear and trembling to be dedicated and leading our leaders in our organization, as well as be there for my kids as their dad.

So I’ve come to appreciate routine, and it’s a system that allows me to perform in multiple capacities.

There’s definitely an interesting definition or an approach. I definitely appreciate that. So you seem like you’ve always had the balls, right? The hustle and at least the ingenuity to know that you wanted to kind of be in this space to a certain extent. Do you come from an entrepreneurial background or any of your parents or anybody from your history that you grew up with? Are any of them hustlers or business people?

No, I feel in that state of someone who came from the other side of the tracks want to work his way out for me, the early star was a big chip on my shoulder. And it came from like a lot of family destruction, a lot of shame, a lot of doubt, a lot of poverty mindset. We poverty and physical illness and as well as mental mindset, both of them. And so I, I wanted something different. And so I just set out to want something different.

First person in my family to graduate from college, obviously first person feel me to go to post-secondary school and and work at getting a doctorate in the law and move on from there. And so I wanted something different for my life and what the generational output was pushing. So I didn’t come from a lot of that grounding in business. It was it was it was first hustle for wanting something way different. That’s where it came from.

So on this journey. Right. Is there anything that you would want to go back and change if you could change it?

Yeah, you know, there were a lot of hits to character and integrity because I would have put success in front of certain guardrails and I wasn’t walking with the Lord at that time. And and so I would have looked back at parts of my past and see the brokenness of things I did for success. Not all of that was awful, but some of it was what brought some of those issues into my marriage. What brought those issues into my now?

I think the consequences of your decisions follow. You’ve got to deal with them. And so I’m thankful to have continually work on those and reconcile or deal with them. But the reality is early on I because I put success is the thing I wanted the most. I was willing to cave on things that maybe were other people’s non-negotiable, that weren’t mine.

Oh, so I mean, part of what you just said and what you said a few minutes ago as far as routines. Right. And you talking about family life, how do you currently juggle your family life with your work life?

I’ll steal from the office every second I can for my family. I don’t actually believe in the concept of balance. I believe in priority and perspective. I think you’ve got to put priority to the things that require perspective. And there are times where I’m hammered inside our work environment and there’s necessary things. And I would look with and use my words with my family and say, I need to be here doing this. And there are times where, like, I just won’t miss my kiddos volleyball game because I feel like I have to work.

I’ll just go to work later. And so I will work the fabric of work into my life. And my core life is my wife and kids. Now, that wasn’t always true. I have plenty of times I can look back where Dad will show me a picture or stuff’s going on. We just had one the other day where I was seeing a picture of a little Jacob, our third born, and I was like, Hey, was I there?

Now you can’t make this stuff up. So we’re watching family movies and the picture that’s the picture is now being played out in a video that we’re watching. And there I am in the background while they’re all singing birthday song to Jacob and I’m on the phone working on a business deal. And so I’ve learned through a really hard story and some other stuff where I’ve had to face that. And like I was putting my love of work and love of accomplishment ahead of my beloved and I to get right with that.

And I have and I continue to deal with it. I love businessman. He’s just built me with some traits that I love it. I love the hustle of it. I don’t love the hustle for my work as hard as you can. But I love the hustle of like accomplishing making an offer work and watching revenue come in and helping people out of a job. And I love it. I don’t ever come to work like work sucks. I’m I come to work like me and I’d rather lie in bed because I don’t feel good about myself, but I don’t really ever feel like that about work itself as a component.

But I’ve had to learn how to get in, see seasons of life through career lenses and perspective has helped me with that. And prioritizing that has been such a blessing in my life. Oh.

Oh so. What are your morning routines, your morning habits?

I block out the morning for myself, I even block it against my wife and kiddos. So morning is for me. And, you know, it’s filled with meditation, like meant for me meditating on the word. Others might meditate on something else. Exercise when I’m doing that. That’s great. Quiet time, which is like maybe go for a walk or spend some time in nature, like thinking, you know, one of my favorite mentors from past is Henry Ford, who said critical thinking is hard to do, which is why few people do it.

And so I’ve learned for me that getting rid of some noise so I can think and write and think about things. And that’s one of the things I do for my family, for myself, for my organizations. And so I do that. Those are my mornings. And I block by mornings real hard for at least three hours of that morning before I let myself get connected into the Matrix.

So what? I usually wake up pre seven o’clock and now if I had pushed, I believe, in eight hours of sleep, I would have loved to have known this sooner. My career I’ve learned eight hours earlier I was like, lucky if I got like six and whatever and going all over the place awful. Treated my body and mind like crap. Well, I believe it ain’t so bad. Is that later that evening before, because I’m watching the Cleveland Browns get mercifully killed by whatever, that I’ll just have to accept the pain and then you’ll find a way to maybe start my mourning later.

But since it’s my morning that I be I’m not crunched against the Matrix. I’m usually rarely dealing with someone else. But I’ll fight for a and so that looks like go to bed before eleven and wake up before seven.

Nice. So on this journey of this podcast, I mean I always ask that question in my morning routines and I’ve always find out that either people are reading books or they’re meditating or they’re working out. And because I realized that a lot of people that are successful like you are, they write books or they read books. So because of that, I created a book club and I wanted you to make a recommendation. I mean, obviously, you got your books.

What books helped you on your journey and what books are you currently reading right now?

Yeah, I love that. Good job. I used to have a book club and I think they’re great. Good for you for doing that. So I’m a voracious reader. I love to read now for me how to be real. You want to read the best books business book on the planet? Read The Book of Proverbs is the best business book I know now. I read the Bible every day and it helps me in business better than any book I’ve ever read.

But for me, I follow Christ. And so for me, I see and hear some of the struggles and mysteries that go along with that. They may not be someone else’s journey, but I also think of books in seasons like some of my recommended book, but it’s not a season of it. So if you’re in a season where, like, you’re developing a leadership that we should talk to you about leadership books, if you’re like early on trying to figure out marketing or trying to figure out yourself.

So I have core books and categories. So when you’re working on yourself, I think Victor Frankel’s man’s search for meaning is like one of those books that I’ve not only read once, I think I’ve read like five or six times for me. I’ve read C.S. Lewis Screwtape Letters because it helps me deal with the concept of mediocrity. I absolutely love books in those categories. Right. So, you know, breakthrough advertising. Eugene Schwartz, I think Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog speaks to later leadership, but there’s like big enterprise level.

So to me, I would encourage people to look at your book club and understand what season they’re in and try not to absorb everything, try to absorb within the season you’re in.

Yeah, I think that that’s that’s great insight. Great advice. It’s going to mean to your point, somebody could be an executive CEO that’s retiring and when to start to become an entrepreneur, which is essentially two different things, if you think about it. So on that journey, you have to present them with that material that they need, that kind of help them get to the next level. So I definitely that’s what I did.

I read this book Half Time, right, by Bob Mueller, which talked about we spend the first half of our life trying to gain success. We spend a second half our life trying to be significant. And I really woke me up to this. I’m in that stage. I’m the older guy. Right? So I’m not like I’m like the king really turning sage in most of the rooms I’m in, including the environment where I help people. So I’m really working on legacy.

So stuff I’m reading now is about like leadership development, like always be learning for me, but always be like equipping the people around me. So mine’s going to look like slow to speak, quick to listen to stuff and not necessarily tactical. I love tactical stuff, but I’ve learned to reread the books as opposed to continually finding new ones.

Oh yeah, I definitely appreciate that. So what do you see yourself in 20 years from now?

Hopefully alive now. Yeah, you know, each day I’m passing time, I’ve I’ve learned that I get paid for my mind, not my physical hands, not my looks. So I get paid for my mind. And I’m thankful I said I’d have a career. I get paid for my mind. I see us. I think Deb and I will continually actively invest in businesses. They’ll sell, some will sell sell. Some will stay within our portfolio.

I see us doing more of that. I see it to the point where I’ve built businesses that I don’t actually have to show up to work every day I want to. So I’m thankful for the young age. I have that now, so I see more of that, actually.

Oh, definitely. I’m saying it’s is a hell of inspiring as well, too, because, I mean, there’s a lot of people out there that may hear your story and you just spark that light that they needed to continue in and 20 years from now to be knocking on your door saying thank you. So, I mean, yeah, definitely. So going into, like, your final words of wisdom, right. If I am 30 years old and I’m listening to you and I’m hearing all this stuff and I see your energy level and I’m like, dude, like, I love this guy.

I want to follow his footsteps. What words of insight would you give to me, you know?

I so early on caught on to a word professional being a professional. I loved that word. I embraced it going through law school and then passing the bar. In my law practice, the concept of being a craftsman is because everything is so immediate, it’s kind of lost on people now. And I’d say that if we could spend time in a stage where whatever stage developing, being a craftsman in something, no matter what that something is, and we can embrace learning how to be a professional as a craftsman, I think you’ll enjoy what you’re doing, take an interest, take something in lines up with your traits and your interests and your desires and go put work into it.

Don’t go chase something. I think it’s a deception on the world right now about passion. You bring passion into things over time. You develop a passion to something. It doesn’t exist by itself. So we, like people, are chasing an elusive thing that doesn’t exist. That’s kind of something internal. And people like venerability, passionate guy like, yeah, I bring it into something I might over time feel more passionate about what it is we’re doing, but didn’t start out that way.

I developed the craftsmanship and I keep working at it. And over time, gosh darn it, it looks like expertize now.

Oh definitely. Definitely, definitely. Appreciate that. So, you know, another insightful thing that you can drop it off. I mean, what, what software do you currently use that you would not be able to do what you do without?

Well, for sure, our company uses, you know, general ledger software, we also built a thing called your back office. The company uses our fintech for me, I’ll be honest with you, because I I’m mobile and where I can do my work. I don’t know what I would do without the mobile device. But honestly, you’re also on one eye. You zoom our company has been using it. We we believe in a hybrid model. We have a corporate office, but we also have our homies.

Two thirds of our team live in other parts of the country. And so anything that requires video, I couldn’t imagine now wanting to do business without Google Drive or video. And those two things have are huge for the flexibility for me to be able to do work from anywhere.

Right. So how could people find you? I mean, like Facebook, Instagram, your website.

Yeah, I’m very sure anything beneficial? I come at Vinnie Fisher, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Vinnie Fisher, the Anthony Fisher, you can also find us a fully accountable dot com connect where we have the best way to do that is through the gift page we’re giving you of all the stuff. Take advantage of those resources even if you’re not wanting to outsource the function of your back office. We have a lot of resources there for you. They’re going to help you massively win at maturing your business.

And so go get that in the show notes. And that’s a great way to find us and find out more about us. Right.

Right. So going into the bonus room right here, if you could be a superhero, who would it be and why?

Spider-Man and Spidey, right. I got kind of I’m not aloof kind of character who gets caught in situations and has to kind of scramble his way out of it. I resonate with the ideas is I like the youthfulness and the kindness of his heart and how he just cares. And at the same time, he wants to fight for good, but gets himself caught a whole bunch of his own issues and has a bunch of his own character traits that lead him into situations that aren’t so good all the time and just wants to be loved.

Right. I’m Spidey and all the scenarios. And so that’s that’s my that’s my character.

Oh, nice. So if you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

You know, I I’ve been asked this question some times, hands down. No one, if I could spend time with Jesus like that would be an I do now and I believe that. But I actually the physical aspect of him sitting there where I could maybe have that, but quite honestly, I believe I do that now. So if I add a layer on top of that, quite honestly, because of innovation and changing, I would absolutely love to spend a day with Henry Ford.

I would love to see the pressure that he had because he believed in a lean organization. He believed in some of the things I inherently believe in and how to run something. So I would have loved to have seen him face the social pressures of changing stuff where people were resistant to change and how he ultimately built into the organization of people who were running stuff while still struggling with all the flaws of a husband and man that he was.

It’s definitely something to think about. I mean, it’s Henry Ford is one of those people that, you know, I think people know who he is, but they really don’t know what he really achieved when you really stop and think about his legacy. I don’t think we would be where we are with Elon Musk, for example, would probably be as far along as he is right now if it wasn’t for Ford to begin with. And if you think of those titans that he ran around with, whether in competition or at the time, the Industrial Revolution titans some of those wonderful, unique characters in the history of our American footprint, there’s a bunch there in business enterprise, you know, and then also, like I just recently started to kind of fall a little bit in love with Abraham Lincoln.

The guy was ridiculously principled, his his level for justice and his character traits. I’m just now investigating more about him, to be honest with you.

So this is coming down to like the end of the podcast when obviously we had a lot of conversation and then we talked about a lot of different topics on that journey. Maybe you had some questions that you want to ask me. So the microphone is yours.

You know, we have a unique time going on in our culture right now. Right. We’re being asked as leaders to have all the right answers. And one of the things that’s been robbed of us is routine. So how are you dealing with, like, being able to lead the people that are around you? But like, every day there’s work because we’re getting dictated to routine. We have to kind of make it up as we go. And that’s been quite hard for me.

How are you dealing with that?

I keep kind of like in a sense, I keep creating new principles, so prime example, the book club was an additional thing for me to read. I was reading already, but now with a system of me reading and I’m reading what other people. And now I’m holding myself accountable and holding other people accountable through reading 52 books in one book per week for a year. So creating things like that as podcasts is another way for me to kind of stay on a regimen.

I know every single week I have an audience that’s going to be dedicated to see an episode. So I have to make sure every week there’s a schedule to hit that deadline. So I’m taking like little pieces of the puzzle and I’m making a breadcrumb trail.

I love that. You know, I tell a story about a character in Scripture, Nehemiah, and he was he had to build the entire wall around Jerusalem and he encouraged his men just to worry about the wall that was in each of them and they built in 54 days. And so I when I love what you just said, is just worry about the bricks right in front of you. The other ones are figure themselves out. And I love that.

How do you stay focused on all that?

For me, it is the end result, it’s kind of like if I say I’m going to do something one, I’m going to commit to doing it. I want to see it get completed, much like what you said earlier, like you like to try things right. But I like to try things, but I want to you know, I just want to try and then half assed, I want to try it at least completed enough short ugly with it to kind of see what it’s going to do.

So whatever I start, I’m going to finish it and put it out into the world, see what happens. If it fails, then great. I’ve learned something from it that I would want in the next.

Awesome. So how do you how do you figure out how to break away from from the development of stuff things and investing time back in your crew?

So with me, with that one is like my crew is kind of diversified, like I got people in the US and I got people overseas as well. So a lot of times everybody is remote. Yeah. So have an opportunity to speak to everybody at the same time, but not really. What my system is about is more so giving people ownership of their task. So if I say, hey, if your task is this and this is a time frame to do it, if you need my help, contact me.

If you don’t need anything from me, do you know what you need to work on? And then at the end of the week or the end of the day, whatever the time frame was, then we’ll touch bases. But I’m not really a to back kind of leader. Yeah, I’m kind of like, you know what your task is and I expect it to get done. You expect to get done because you have ownership of it and then collectively we will grow something together if everybody does what they need to do.

My last question is, how do you have fun in it?

I love it. I mean, it’s it’s funny because like my son, he was raised in this environment, so now he’s about to be 15. And since he was like three years old, he was at meetings and conferences and seminars, always there with me. And so now he’s at the teenage age was kind of like dad, but not dad. And then recently was kind of like it made my day because he reached out to me. And I’ve been telling him for the past six years, do you like your brain in the way you’re structured like you should be in investment, you should be in stocks, just play with them.

It’s like a video game. It’s online. And finally came to me and he was like, OK, I’m ready to convert my bank account into a regular bank on I want to fund account. And I’m sitting there like I’m looking for the cameras. I thought it was a joke and it come to fruition. Now he wants to he started his little Robinhood account and he wants to fund the account and he’s going to start making investments. And I was like, holy shit, it actually happened.

I love to see that. That is thanks for sharing. I love watching the young adults around me. I start to find some identity and thrive in it.

Yeah, definitely. Well, really, I definitely appreciate your time. I think this was like a fast paced, hard hitting episode. I think you dropped a lot of nuggets, a lot of diamonds. And I definitely think our audience would definitely want to shake your hand if they ever get opportunity to meet you along with myself as well. And we look forward to to getting our hands on your books. And again, thank you very much.

You know, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Pleasure. That’s. Over and out.

CEO and Co-Founder Of Fully Accountable: Vinnie Fisher AKA The Accountable Boss – S2E30 (#58)2021-06-27T17:23:15+00:00

How To Go From Following Trends To Trendsetting Using Growth Hacking Strategies? With S.A. Grant Of Boss Uncaged Academy: Motivated & Focused Growth Edition – S2E29 (#57)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

In Season 2, Episode 29 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S. A. Grant is shaking things up a bit.
Today’s show is a bit different, please post your takeaways, ask questions and thoughts in the group about this episode at bossuncaged.com/fbgroup
“Today episode is an add on to the Boss Uncaged Podcast ecosystem; I’m calling these bonus episodes “The Boss Uncaged Academy Motivated & Focused Growth Edition”
Today’s topic is How To Go From Following Trends To Trendsetting using Growth Hacking Strategies?” – S. A. Grant
The funny thing about trends is the etymology of the word. First, the word Trend comes from the Old English word trendan, ‘revolve, or rotate. Secondly, it’s compared to the noun: trundle, which means an act of moving slowly or heavily.
The general combining of the words Revolve, rotate, and trundles become defined as “To Move slowly in development of a general rotating direction.”
Then the real meaning of Trends should be defined as a cycle. Being that Trends are based on a cycle, then they can be predictable within reason.
Let’s talk about
The rudimentary cycle of Trendsetting:
  1. Start by Giving Value: the Value is determined by what the needs of your audience are.
  2. Capture Data: The feedback and analytics, or historical data
  3. Give More Value: Refined by the information you collected
  4. Growth: Grow the audience and or client
  5. Scale: Increase monetary gains
  6. Step and repeat
Here are my top 10 tips To Go From Following trends To Trendsetting using Growth Hacking Strategies
  1. Use Direct Communication: Email, Chat Bots, Text Messaging.
  2. Leverage Referral Marketing: word-of-mouth + testimonials = referrals
  3. Affiliate Marketing: turn your lead referrals into affiliates; ads fuel the fire.
  4. Send Gifts to Your Customers: swag, books, meaningful trinkets, custom items, showcase items.
  5. Develop Partnership Marketing or influencer marketing: co-branding to co-marketing. Here are a few examples to think about.
    1. Taco Bell & Doritos
    2. Kanye and Adidas
    3. Nike & Apple
    4. Red Bull and GoPro
    5. Floyd Mayweather & Logan Paul
    6. Star Wars and lego
  6. Build a Social Media Community: Facebook Groups
  7. Attend industry events: Workshops, summits, meet-up groups
  8. Become A Guest: Podcast. blog, youtube channel
  9. Create an Aggressive Content Strategy: understanding your audience and deliver the goods
  10. Shadowbox with Competitors: Set up systems to monitor what your competitors are doing; something as simple as using IFTTT to add all your competitors’ Twitter posts to a google sheet will give you a leg up when developing your content strategy.
Apply one are all 10 of these tips over a period of time, infuse them with The rudimentary cycle of Trendsetting:
  1. Give Value, Capture Data, Give back revised Value, Grow, Scale, Step, and repeat
Let’s take the conversation offline
Go to our Boss Uncaged Facebook group @ bossuncaged.com/fbgroup
Tell me what your biggest takeaway was?
Let me know if you enjoyed the new bonus add-on episode.

SA Grant Over and out

#SAGrant #Quote #BossUncaged #Business #podcasting #podcasts #mindset #communication #visualcommunication #trendsetter #trends #trendsetters #referralmarketing #affiliatemarketing #affiliatemarketingtips #affiliatemarketingtraining #affiliatemarketingonline #influencermarketing #socialmedia #socialmediamarketing #socialmediatips #socialmediastrategy #contentstrategy #contentstrategytips #contentstrategymarketing #contentstrategyspeaker #growthhackingmarketing #growthhacking #growthhackingtips #marketingexpert #marketingtips #marketingstrategy

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

How To Go From Following Trends To Trendsetting Using Growth Hacking Strategies? With S.A. Grant Of Boss Uncaged Academy: Motivated & Focused Growth Edition – S2E29 (#57)2021-06-27T17:22:05+00:00

Entrepreneur & Executive Coach Of DTK Coaching: David Taylor-Klaus AKA The Mindset Boss – S2E28 (#56)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

I keep three words at the top of my screen. It says REAL, NOT “RIGHT.” I think to translate that for the rest of the world, that’s not inside my head. But, man, it doesn’t have to be RIGHT, and there’s a reason the word RIGHT is in quotes. It doesn’t have to be RIGHT. It just has to be real. People spend a great deal of time, effort, energy, and heart trying to do it right, trying to do what they should, living the should life sucks.

In Season 2, Episode 28 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with Entrepreneur & Executive Coach Of DTK Coaching: David Taylor-Klaus. It’s one of the most profound deep dive into the mindset, to date.

David Taylor-Klaus is a speaker, author, and leadership coach on a mission to unearth and unleash the personal mastery of entrepreneurs and senior executives. Since 2008, DTK has empowered his tribe to take an active, intentional, and dynamic role in their development and create the kind of life rhythm that enables them to build profitable businesses, raise thriving families, and live wildly fulfilling lives.

His best-selling new book “Mindset Mondays with DTK: 52 Ways to REWIRE Your Thinking and Transform Your Life” is available on Amazon worldwide.

#mindset #millionairemindset #growthmindset #successmindset #entrepreneurmindset #positivemindset #mindsetiseverything #mindsetcoach #businessmindset #mindsetmatters #mindsetshift #changeyourmindset #moneymindset #successfulmindset #bossladymindset #mindsetofgreatness #mindsetquotes #entrepreneurialmindset #billionairemindset #abundancemindset #believe #happiness #inspiration #inspirationalquotes #lifestyle #loveyourself #motivation #positivevibes #selflove

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S2E28 – David Taylor-Klaus – powered by Happy Scribe

All right, that’s recording. All right, we are live. All right. Looks like your mike is muted.

Yeah, I try to keep it muted when I’m not talking.

Perfect. Cool, right. Three, two, one. Welcome welcome back to Boss Uncage podcast. So today’s episode is kind of like like a special episode for me, because this guy that we’re about to interview. Right, I remember when I first met him and I was as green as you could possibly be coming out of college and, you know, you come out of college and you think you know everything. And then this guy walks in the room and he actually did know everything in comparison to where I was.

So without further ado, I mean, David, I’m going to deem you the mind set boss. Give our audience a little shout out of who you are.

Thank you, man. That’s that’s a great introduction. I want to know if I can get my wife to start using it as well. Mindset, boss. Yes. So back when I met you, man, when I got out of college, I thought I knew everything. And then I spent the next 20 years realizing how little I actually knew and what an ugly wake up call. It was like the world definitely wanted to make sure that I got visibly and actively humbled along the way, which is why.

I know about mindset and what I realize is, so who am I? So I’m a coach and I, I almost never say it like that because people here coach and they’re like, oh, loincloth and drum circles in the woods. Not for me. Right. And and, you know, there are people in the crystal and candle set and there are people that are, you know, lace collar, high tie or whatever. And I don’t I don’t care about that stuff.

My work, the stuff that I love to do is reintroducing successful entrepreneurs and senior executives to their families. Nice. You know, I get to work with the folks that are over calibrated, right, that are so talked up about the work they do, whether it’s because of some crazy unwritten rule that working long and working hard is what you’re supposed to do, or it’s because they love what they do so much, they get totally imbalanced when it comes to personal fulfillment and family and community and kids or like me, they’re incredibly 8D and they dove in hyper focused and forget everything else until somebody pokes at them to remind them that they’re screwing up.

Yeah, those are the cool folks get to work with and help them reconnect to what’s critically important to their heart, their world.

So, I mean, that’s a solid a step back. Right. Let’s make this a visual thing. Right. So now you’re pretty much a mindset. Coach, when I first met you, you were more into, like, the branding. Let’s step back and we a further like what did your journey begin? Like, how did you even get into, like, the creative space and into like the growth strategies and the mindset? Like, how did that even happen?

When did it start?

You got to go back a whole career. Even before I met you, I spent 12 years, 11, 12 years in hospitality. Right. I got caught up into restaurants and hotels and restaurants and worked, you know, Atlanta, Philadelphia, in D.C. I was up and down the eastern seaboard and I loved that because of the energy. And then I had this weird twist of fate where I’m sort of a tech nerd. And they said, wow, so this restaurant has a retail shop.

How do we get those systems to talk to each other? I said, Oh, I can do that. I couldn’t. But I figured it out and I got totally turned on by the systems because what I realized is everybody is trying to make the machines talk to each other. But you first had to figure out how the people that those machines were supposed to be supporting were working together and then make the system to support and accelerate and amplify that.

They were just trying to make the silicon talk and the silicon was driving the carbon, the humans. And I wanted it to be the other way. And when I got turned on by technology, I shifted gears altogether. So I started I joined a firm that was doing network spec and implementation and support for ad agencies, maqam firms and PR agencies, PR firms and commercial printers. Right. Remember when we to put stuff on paper. Yeah. And.

Those were all the same issue during the early 90s, which was people were focused on how do we get the mainframes, the PCs and these funny little things called Macs to all talk to each other. But the people weren’t talking to each other. They weren’t working together. So we would go in and half of it was playing therapist to get these three groups to talk to each other. And and then we could figure out what the networks had to do.

Well, all of a sudden, the ad agencies were like, our clients are asking about this weird thing called the interweb. What is it? So I said, well, I can help you figure that out. So we would teach them what this new Internet thing was. Then they say we need a website. And I said, I can do that. So I sold somebody a website. Then I spent the next three days at our digital learning how to code so I could build the website that I had just sold.

And in fourth quarter 95, that’s when my partner and I both started a Internet strategy and Web development company that we ran together for 14 years. Well, and that’s how I met you somewhere about halfway through that run. And that became a great exercise in. Getting out of the tech silo, right, that that’s what I figured out, that every time we just worked with the person driving the digital initiative. Somebody would come in at the end and say, wait, why isn’t it blue or why doesn’t it do that so well, because that’s not what you’re hired to do.

So we started working with making sure we always had time with the C Suite so that we we dropped that late stakeholder nightmare. And we got to ask we got to understand what the stuff we were being hired to do, how those digital initiatives fit into the broader corporate initiatives. And I started asking questions of man at the time. They were usually just a roomful of pudgy white guys and we’d ask them, why is this company special? And they would start pulling out the vision mission values stuff they had carved on the walls.

Like, no, not that because you’ll you’ll have to read it to tell me none of you know what it is. So why are you here? Why are you special? What’s the shift. This company is trying to create and they were saying, I know. So I would get crickets or I would get more than one answer. Both are bad. And I say they’re bad because the reason they didn’t know why the company was special or what the shift was they were here to create or why people wanted to use them.

Is because they didn’t know why they were here. Well, these leaders didn’t know what shift they were trying to create. And when you bring that to the organization. You know, I’ve worked for these companies, right, you get flat growth, flat revenue, flat culture, it’s just blah. But when they take that home, that lack of self-awareness, that lack of knowing why they’re here and what’s important, when they bring that home, it’s toxic.

And I realized that wasn’t OK. And part of the reason I realized it wasn’t OK is I was doing that at home. So that’s what shifted for me and the work that I did became for myself, became the work I’m now doing in the world, I shift shifted gears. In 2008, I went deep into coaching, coached for a year and a half while I ran this company until my partner said, I want to run this company and I want to run it without you.

And I said, awesome. And I was out in six weeks and have been full time coaching leaders since then. So, I mean, that’s the whole story in like three minutes.

Yeah, that’s an epic journey. And I mean, to your point, I mean, it’s all about going into the mindset and you were able to pinpoint exactly when there was a mindset shift in yourself and then capitalize on that and an understanding that other CEOs are doing the same thing. So let’s just go into like like into this mindset stuff a little bit like what’s the worst experience that you’ve encountered while coaching someone?

Oh, the let me see if I can make it anonymous, the worst experience. Well, you mean besides my own?

Yeah, yeah. Because I want the listeners to understand, like, you know, coaching is to find multiple different things. Right. So in that journey of coaching, you’ve hit hurdles not just with your coaching, which you could curdle hurdles with your clients. You’ve hit hurdles which strategies. So it has to be one that probably stands out that kind of makes you want to pull your hair out as you’re thinking about it.

What frazzles me the most. Well. Still.

So just to recap, what was the worst experience you’ve ever encounter as a coach?

Yeah, it. So a friend of mine who does a ton of embodiment work taught me something recently, she said that you can pay attention when the universe whispers in your ear or you can wait until it hits in the forehead with a bat. It’s your call, like, damn. And so some of it is the hard part is that. Some of those negative epiphanies, like when a client says, oh, fuck, and I saw this coming and I ignored it and I ignored it and I ignored it and.

We have a tendency in our culture to be super uncomfortable with people being sad or upset or crying and. Like we hand him a tissue box or put a hand on their shoulder or you tell your kid, oh, don’t cry, that’s the worst thing you can do, because the message it gives your kids and the message it gives adults is it’s not OK to be raw. It’s not OK to be real. It’s not OK to be emotional. Bottle it up, suck it up, man up.

Do your get your shit done. And and that kind of stuff is crushing. And we end up as coaches and therapists undoing that core damage and helping people undo that damage as adults. And so some of the hardest things are being with people when they’re feeling deep, raw emotion and when they’re feeling stuff that you’ve been through, it amplifies it. And the hardest thing is to stay with them. Over there with them 100 percent for them and not get sucked into your own emotion and not short circuit the process that they’ve got to go through, and I have so many folks who come.

I want to be careful how I say this, who come too late? Well, like one of my early clients going a family business in the U.K. that was dominating a market in, one of the guys came here to open up North America and South America. And he brought his young kids and his wife. And he busted ass for six years. Totally over, calibrated towards work, you know, slay it, kill it, get it done.

Loved it. The thrill of the hunt, the thrill of the kill began to build that professional management layer and hired the last last person at that layer who replaced him. You hired the chief sales officer. As I like. Now I can pay attention to my family. And he comes home and he tells his wife. And her response is to hand him divorce papers and take the two kids and go, Oh. And and being with him and supporting him and witnessing the crushing self-awareness of how far along he saw the signs and how much he ignored it and then started catastrophizing forward of what have I done to my kids?

What have I done to this co parenting relationship? What’s this going to be like? And part of me wants to go to the. I was an inch from that in my own world. Right, and I know how crushing that is and and I can feel how crushing it is for him, that’s the hardest part for me. Those are the most terrible moments. Now, on one hand, they’re also beautiful, is witnessing someone go deeper than they’ve ever gone before and to be able to create and become something they’ve never been before.

That’s like, you know, when their caterpillar turns into a chrysalis, what goes on inside that shell is it’s effectively turning to jelly before it becomes a butterfly. And it’s. Probably really ugly, painful process, and we do that and witnessing someone go to jelly. Spiritually and emotionally, everything but physically. That’s hard, yeah, hard for anyone on either side of it, so that’s those experiences are the hardest.

So I mean, I think I mean, you just went down a road and I could definitely see the passion. I can see the emotion and just reliving that right. How do you consistently do that? I would think that with every client that you deal with, you may be faced with some repercussions of your life or other clients. So you’re kind of like the ball of energy kind of having to hold back to a certain extent. How do you overcome that every single time you work with a client?

So here’s where we get to a really cool part, a coach approach. To leadership. That coach approach has now become a core leadership competency. But here’s the problem, those very leaders that we want to have those skills, they get neither the training nor do they get coaching. So these leaders are forced to reach outside the network of their organization to find it and often have to pay for it themselves. So we’re sort of at a golden age of coaching because so many more people want it than there are sponsors within the organization to pay for it or train certified kickass coaches to provide it.

So it’s a super sexy time to be in it and. Here’s why it’s such a core such a core competency, because what we see in leadership all the time is when an employee comes to them, someone of their direct reports comes to a leader and says, I’m having trouble with this. Natural tendency of leadership to respond through the lens of your experience. Worse, unconsciously and in in coaching this one of there are three levels of listening. One is let’s you say level one is you’re listening to you.

I mean, like, oh, it’s kind of cold in here or oh, I’m hungry. You know, those internal dialog, your awareness of oh, my God, that’s reminding me of my mom who said blah blah when I was seven and. Right. So that’s all level one. Level two is when you’re 100 percent focused over there. One hundred percent of your focus is on the other person, level three is more the global listening. You’re taking in everything, your intuition, what you’re hearing, what you’re not hearing, body language, room movement, everything.

That is a powerful shift for a leader even moving into level two, being 100 percent focused on what’s happening for the person who that leader is serving. Right. There are leaders who are only doing leadership where they’re super attached to how many people report to them, and they’re folks that are capital letters, leaders who understand how many people they serve. And that’s a massive distinction, so being able to be 100 percent focused on that person and listening deeply, let alone going to that global listening and really witnessing that person and being listened to feels so much like being loved that people can scarcely tell the difference.

Oh, and too many leaders don’t listen. Too many leaders don’t listen deeply to the other person. So what’s important is bringing those listening skills to leaders. So that people are being heard and witnessed and experienced and not directed through the lens of what that leaders experience has been, it turns them in, turns the the direct report into a cog in a machine.

So, I mean, I think the last statement was a hell of insightful and it kind of also gives credit to what kind of coach you are and what kind of leadership style that you’re influencing. Right. We always hear about overnight success stories that potentially take 20 years and the reality to some people, they may be perceived as an overnight success. That just happened two or three years. How long did it take you to get to where you are?

Oh, my God. I started this in 2008, so it took me forty three years now. And I don’t mean that facetiously. It’s when I started my coach training, one of the things I realized is, oh my God, I was so excited. There is language and structure and and a profession and a discipline around what I have been. I got air quotes going for listeners, what I’ve been doing my whole life, right? Yeah, I was a consultant, but I actually ask questions and I, I was willing to say to my clients when they said, oh, what’s this mean?

It’s like, I don’t know, but I can find out. Right. And and unlike the traditional consultant, which I did a lot of work with, where as long as you were one page ahead of the client, you were a rock star. I had a very coach approach to consulting and partnering with folk. And so when I learned about coaching, it fit beautifully. And so I think to a certain extent, my curiosity about humans and my interest in what was underneath the surface presentation, that made me an exceptional, you know.

What if Plato to be shaped into a coach? All right, so I think I have been doing this forever. I know that for the 14 years that Beth and I were running that tech company, we both arct towards that, you know, Beth went into education, you know, did did graduate graduate degree in instructional design and industrial psychology. I mean, we both moved in the direction of craving more understanding of how people worked and trying to unearth the best that humans can be.

You know, my work now is helping people human better. We go through life as human doings, but we’re actually human beings and we get so wrapped up in the doing, we forget the being part. And so if you want to get better at cycling or tennis, you while you’re a coach, you want to get better at humoring. Guess what? Hire a coach. Right. So it’s I’ve been doing this forever now. I just know what I’m doing.

So on that journey was one thing that you would want to do differently if you could do it all over again.

You just had this conversation yesterday with the coach, there’s not a thing, even the most cringe worthy, awful things that have happened to me along the way that I would do differently because I don’t know which sliding door that would change the kids that I have and the marriage that I have in the life that I have in the work that I’m doing. Anything that I did differently along the way would screw up this timeline. And this is not about time travel.

This is about, you know, everything that’s happened from the glorious to the shitty has made me who I am and allowed me to have the impact I’m having now. So, yeah, I wouldn’t do a thing differently.

That’s definitely an aspirational goal. I mean, when you when I asked that question, it can go one way or the other. Right. Some people could think back and be like, I did one thing differently. That way I could be where I’m at, maybe a little bit quicker. And to your point is kind of like, well, everything I’ve done has gotten me to where I am right now. It’s gotten me the kids that I have gotten me the wife that I have gotten me the practice that I have.

So I would I change anything? Yeah, definitely.

And it’s hard because it what it what that way of thinking invite’s going to do is to pull the gift and the wisdom and the power and the the the insight out of any experience because everything. Can provide a gift, and so it lets me reframe the way I look back at even the ugliest experiences that, yeah, on one hand I wish they had gone a different way, and yet what was the gift that came out of it?

So, I mean, obviously, you’re a huge entrepreneur. You sold companies, you built companies, and you’re helping other people grow their companies. Did that come from an entrepreneurial background? Was any one of your parents? Do they have the hustle? Because, I mean, you obviously have it right from being a northerner. You obviously have the hustle and bustle. What did it come from?

You know, it’s fascinating. Yes and no. Yeah, you know, my dad decided my mom and dad decided in 1970 they wanted a growing medical community, they wanted warm weather because they were done with three generations of freezing in Philadelphia and they want to be able to get home for a family weekend. So they were driving through Atlanta on the way to Dallas, where they were planning on being snowed in to Atlanta and stayed, but. You know, my dad started a practice that became.

The largest orthopedic practice in the entire southeast. It’s massive, he retired a number of years ago, but 12, 15 years ago. But here’s what’s interesting. I grew up at a time where doctors. They weren’t home. You may have a mom or dad who was a doctor, you just didn’t see him much. My dad was it every soccer game, every one of my sister’s recitals, whether he wanted to be or not, but he was there because he wanted to be there for us, and we had dinner together a lot.

And my friends who had dads that were doctors. It may come to the end of season something, but my dad was very different about it, he was very intentional about being there with the family and I have carried that lesson more than anything else. So I have a more of an awareness about the balance that keeps makes a life whole. Because I watched somebody do it differently now, he was smart, he partnered with a man who was totally into the medical, you know, the associations that play playing this role, the political piece of the practice.

And he did all that stuff. And my dad loved the patient stuff and our family. That never said anything. That’s the way he was doing it. Don’t know if he was even conscious of it. But the rocket fuel in their practice was. He was the he loved the people and getting the right people in, and he loved the practice. His partner loved all the. Political on the high profile stuff, so the people that you partner with make a business as well.

I think that also gave me insight into how you build an organization around the people. Well, but the hustle is more about. I get excited about it and I lean into that, and when it’s something that really resonates, I double down. And I think that’s what entrepreneurs tap into, that’s the positive side of it for a lot of folks, the hustle comes from all those unwritten rules, right. You know, which leads to some. Really crappy outcomes.

Right. My parents worked every day for 20 hours, so that’s the only way to make it work. Well, that’s an unwritten rule that you’re using that’s ruining your ruining you and giving you ulcers and stroking you out. And that’s. That’s crazy town, right? And so those are the people who wait for the baseball bat. Thank you, sir. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how some people are wired. I think the more self-aware we become, the more we can learn what’s what’s driving our behavior.

And when Hussle is driven by something that’s lighting you up well, rather than an unwritten rule that you’re not even conscious to, is a different energy that you have available for it.

Yeah, I think that definitely they were before we started a podcast, we were just talking about about that, you know, you’ve got to find it’s no different in breathing, right? And you find time to breathe. You find time to find time to live your life. And if you’re on a particular hustle or particular grind and you’re completely passionate about it, and that’s your motivation and desire to bring your family with you, you’re going to find time to do it.

You’ve got to find time to execute it. So I definitely appreciate you give us some insight to that.

And I want to play with you a little bit on there, because you’re a big fan of language and you keep saying find time. And I don’t know what cabinet or draw. You’re finding time or what you’re speaking to is where the power is, which is carving out time. Oh, right. You don’t have any extra time in your day than I have in mine, but you are carving out time for these things that are important. And when we stop trying to find time or make time and we start realizing that the one thing we have control over is how we allocate it, how we carve it out, how we divide it up, it changes the way we see it.

Time as a currency. Right? When you pay attention, you are paying in time, you’re paying in energy. Right. And so when we pay attention to how we’re expending our energy or allocating or carving out our time, it changes the way we manage our day and ourselves. So I love if you just replace that when you just replace the word find with carveout everything you just said. When we play this back and listen, that’s where the meet.

That’s where it is. That’s where the power is. Yeah. You’re carving out time for what’s important.

We coach on the show and he’s coaching me on the show. You got to love it like so I mean, I definitely appreciate that. And to your point, I’m going to replace finding woodcarving. So anybody who hears me say finding time anymore. Make sure you slap me on the back of the head to remind me to use carving moving forward. What do you like? Just talking about carving times. You did it there. How do you juggle your work life with your family life?

Well, I’d love to say brilliantly and flawlessly, I don’t what what I love is that we’ve we really taught. Our kids and our team to be vocal, right, if somebody is not getting what they need, they’re not just going to be pissy and grouse and not say anything. They’re going to say, hey, this is what I need. So so part of the way I manage it is with intention from my side and with openness to people asking for what they need, which also means empowering myself to say yes or no.

I mean, I think the answer is with two tools. Attention and intention, and that’s the way we all. Manage our day and manage our time and try to find and I’m going to use the word balance, but I’m going to say it with a nasty tone and in air quotes balance, that’s how we manage our lives. Is how we create a rhythm. In our lives between work and family and community and self and the other things that are important to us, whether that’s travel, fitness, whatever, we find a rhythm in those through attention and intention, we have to set the intention of what it is that we want and we have to pay attention to how we’re doing at navigating according to that intention and adjusting based on what’s happening real time around us, but without intention of what we want to create, what the conditions for our success look like and without attention to how we’re doing, everything else is just faffing about unconsciously.

And I promise you, it doesn’t work. Well.

So with that. You’re a very intentional person. What does your morning habits or morning routines look like?

I am not a model. No, I’m honest. I mean, I love, you know, some folks. Do you have an artist way based routine every morning and are doing morning pages and meditation and. I’m a little less rigid, I listen to what my body and my brain and. Whatever higher power it is that we attach to are giving me now in the mornings, I always have time in some capacity for me and I always feed my brain and my system.

And there are different ways that I do it. I know which three days of the week I’m going to ride and I know what I’m going to listen to or read before I ever check my email. By the way, protip for every human being out there that has any digital access to anything digital, do not check your email first thing that is absolutely, unequivocally making everybody else’s needs a higher priority than your own. Don’t do it if you stop doing that until you plan out your day and figure out with intention what your what is important to get done that day.

If you make just that one change in every second you spent on this podcast is worth gold. Stop checking your email first. Cut it out. And turn off the email alerts on your phone, those two things change your life.

So are you a big believer in. I think I forgot where I heard this before, but somebody was giving an interview and they were saying that not only do they do what you’re what you’re asking them to do, but they physically remove like they’re charging docs and they’re charging stations and their cell phones and everything and moved it into another room lobby near the coffee maker or in the bathroom. But it’s nowhere near their bed. So when they first wake up, the first thing they have to focus on is actually waking up before they actually grab their phone.

That’s something that you do as well.

I do. There’s something I do every single morning. And it’s it’s I focus energy around. I get out of my head and I do some box breathing, which is just, you know, four seconds in for a second hold four out for hold and just repeat that. And I do it. I get five or six good cycles focusing energy on my heart, getting still and centered a little more awake than I open my eyes and get out of bed.

The I love the idea of keeping the phone away. I get to sleep after I use I don’t check email until I’m done with. My morning, I’ll check my calendar so I know what my day holds, but I usually do that night as well, so I wake up knowing. But the more you can keep separate from the temptation until you’re in a better rhythm, the better. There’s a guy named Ivy League, oh, my favorite stories, this goes back to the 20s.

He’s actually from Oglethorpe, Georgia. He’s considered the father of modern public relations. But this part of the story is about when he was an efficiency expert in the 20s and Charles Schwab not related to the one we have now. I used to run U.S. Steel. And Schwabe wanted for himself and his management team to get better at time management. So he brought Ebele in for a day to shadow him, shadow him, and he wanted and he was going to pay him for the day and he wanted a proposal from him of what he could do to make Schwabe and his team better.

And and Ivy League did something pretty ballsy at the end of the day. He said, first of all, you’re not going to pay me for the day. Second of all, I’m going to give you one thing to do. You can do it every day for 30 days. And then at the end of its 30 days, you’re going to send me a check for what you think it’s worth. Oh. Now, twenty five thousand dollars check in the mid 1920s, even though he probably didn’t have it for long, given the stock market crash, but that equates to depends on whose calculations you use between three hundred and fifty and five hundred thousand in today’s dollars.

Well, the big guys check. Talking do, he said, at the end of every single day, this is when we actually left the office and didn’t think about work till the next day. So adapt it at the end of your workday, whatever that is, right down the five most important things for you to get done the next day. And in the morning. Work on those five things and those five things only until they’re either A done or B, you’ve had a logical stopping point, like you need somebody else’s involvement or there’s a next step and you do those five things in those five things only before you check your email.

Before you go on to anything else on your list that. It stretches when I’m bulletproof on that, I think my most productive by far because success breeds success. So you’ve got things that you are not showing off your list. You’ve also got the largest, most important, highest priority things before you move to the rest of your list. That one behavior pattern is made more of a change in my productivity than anything else but demetz.

There’s definitely interesting recapping it in my brain and just recapping what you were saying, so it’s definitely that’s something I definitely want to go back and look at that a couple of different times to kind of piecemeal the different information that you gave multiple different nuggets in that that statement. Moving onto the next bit of questioning. Right. So part of the morning routines and realizing that everybody that’s successful, they may or they may not read books. They may or may not read audiobooks, but if nothing else, they’re always collecting information.

So because of that, I decided to create this new Boston College book club. And do you have any books? And obviously I know you’re an author, so I want to start off first with your book and any of the books that you would want to recommend to help entrepreneurs on a journey.

I’m going to flip it, though. I want to give you some of the books first. OK, do it. I think a powerful book for any boss or leader, anybody who’s leading anybody else, frankly, for anybody, we’re all leaders because we’re all leading ourselves. First, we should be. The first one is the four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. And it’s it captures Toltec wisdom like 2500 year old concepts, and you’ll find it buried, that kind of information is laced into all three of the Abrahamic religions and many other faiths.

And this isn’t a faith thing. The four agreements plays with one of the things he talks about at the very beginning of the book. Is the idea of domestication, the idea that through our acculturation and education processes, wherever we live, we are inheriting? Or having placed upon US agreements. Values, unwritten rules and so on, that may or may not be ours, right? And it’s an opportunity for you to check in with what those agreements are that you’re living by and determine consciously and with intention.

As to whether they’re yours or not, whether they align with your values or not, and letting us be conscious stewards of ourselves, and then he goes on to unpack the four agreements, which are a powerful framework for living. It’s a it’s a short book, maybe 120 pages, six bucks on Amazon. Just go get it. Go read it. Well, it. It invites you to a powerful shift in the way you see the world. Well.

Next one is a complete departure. It’s one called Sapiens by Yuval Harari, and it’s a brilliant book. It can take a while to move through, but it really talks about how are humans and societies evolved over time and how are. Our cultures and our societies and our agreed upon fictions all came to be. It gives you another lens to see the world through to again, I guess, offset some of those unwritten rules by understanding how who we are societally came to be.

And it’s neither red nor blue. It’s just fascinating understanding of history. So as folks who move through this world, it’s a brilliant book. All right, those are the first two first now mine. Yes, I had a coach who challenged me to write the book I needed to read. So I did and this book is the book I needed to read when I was 14, when I was when I started the technology company in my thirties and when I hit my emotional spiritual bottom at 40, this is a book that I wrapped around a concept.

There’s a quote at the very beginning that says, We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are and. There’s so much power in that because. If we see it as we are, then merely by changing the lens through which we see the world. Changed the way we experience. So what’s powerful about the book for me is the the unpacking, the idea that we are in complete control of the way we experience the world because we’re in complete control of the lens through which we see it.

Well, change your lens. Change your world. And what I want for the people who read it and what I want for your listeners is to play with the idea that. You are in control. Of the world that you’re experiencing and what the book does is OK. So I did a live broadcast series every Monday morning. I’m on Facebook live on You Tube for 10 to 15 minutes, playing with a quote from anywhere for current day all the way back to the Stoics religious text, you name.

And I have quotes that I source from all over the place. And it’s a riff on leadership and mindset every Monday. It’s a great way to start a week and to give you something else to noodle on. I just hit three years last week and this book is really taking those first 52 broadcasts and taking what I’ve learned along the way about mindset and leadership and what I learned from the community of folks who showed up for these broadcasts and who have started a group together on Facebook and on LinkedIn and talking about these things, what I’ve learned from them and how the experience is deep.

And that’s what I used to create this book. And I gave it to my Laurie Shiers, the woman I worked with to create this book. We created a Rewire framework because. You know, your listeners can’t see it, you and I are on video, but you can see the books that are behind my desk, you can’t read the whole other wall of them on the other side. And I’m embarrassed by how many of the books on here I haven’t read yet.

Well, shelf self-aware. Like, there are three on here that I bought because I love and support the author and they haven’t made it to the top of the list to read yet. Right. And. Their books that. I won’t tell you how many I’ve owned for a while that I want to get to, but other things have made it the top first. But I didn’t want to book the people are going to use. So the rewire framework is a way to cure Kube Nazia.

Your whole team goes to an offsite and it’s this brilliant experience and everybody’s motivated and everybody’s got the same idea, the strategy. And they come back to the office Monday morning pumped. Then the phone starts ringing in the email, start flooding in and everybody forgets everything, nothing changes. So the rewire framework is a structure to help folk actually embed learning. It’s a structured approach to integrate and reinforce new ways of thinking, being and doing and rewires an acronym.

And by the way, I’ll make sure I give you the link. Anybody who’s listening can download the Rewire framework directly from my website and play with it. You can use it with anything that you’re working on. Yes, it’s designed for the book, but it’s adapted for you to be able to use on stuff in your world outside of this. Right. And and the piece that they’re going to download has a simple one page breakdown of how to use it.

But reflect is so rewire is reflect, experiment, write, investigate, revise and expand. So reflect is to give yourself time and space to reflect on your experience with in this in the case of the book of the mindset, we’re playing within that chapter. And then we give a prompt that gives an experiment for you to take out into your world and play with see what works, what doesn’t work, what resonates with what has dissonance, what turns you on what you’re indifferent about.

And so you’re going to apply this to your world right now. This is rewire, not retire. This is not type. This is right. Pen, paper, whatever. And by the way, I try to eliminate excuses. If you’ve got the print copy of the book, there is a page at the end of every chapter for you to journal. So all you need is a pen. I don’t send those with the book. Right and write down.

They’re props to help you. Capture it all, capture the experience, capture what’s come up for you through that experiment, investigate is then using the prompts, you’ve got to dig deeper, explore what worked and what didn’t. We revise the experiment and send you back out in the world to use it again in a different way and then expand is where it really becomes meaningful. You then adapt that learning and that experiment to a different area of your world.

You know, when we were coming up in school. The first week of math class, you learned, I say chapter one. No test, second week you learn chapter two, which presumably had you applying what you learned in chapter one. At the end of chapter two, they tested you on chapter one. So that you were tested after using what you had learned, integrated into something else, that’s what expand is based on the brain science. The more you use something more, you adapt it to more applications, the more likely the learning is to stick.

And the book builds on itself so that you’re actually making meaningful, lasting change. So if you do the work, you’ll create the shift.

Do you mind grabbing the book so we can kind of get a close up of that and cite that title?

Yeah, it’s mind set Mon’s with Detec 52 ways to rewire your thinking and transform your life.

Right, right. So it seems like you’re a big systems guy, you’re big into like rules and strategizing Step-By-Step processes, what do you use that help you in your business on a day to day that you would not be able to do what you do without.

Oh, God. Well, you remember from the early stories, I like technology as an accelerator or an amplifier, not as technology for technology sake. And I love platforms that are open and built for integration. There are very few tools that are I have been pitched. To review every bloody practice management application or platform that comes out for coaching and the reason they all suck is because they’re trying to do everything and they’re not open to other things linking in drastically over.

I mean, generalizing and oversimplifying. But the eye can do everything means you can master you can do nothing. Right. So what I love about using G suite is the applications that we use that are best in breed. We use one of our companies we use and report another one. We use active campaign because they called for different things. Right. So what I love is when the carbon is served by the silicon, when you look at what the business needs in the humans need and pick the platform to go with it.

So love active campaign, you know, after all these years of building websites and owning a company that did that, we use WordPress and Xabier to link all of these best of breed platforms together. And I got a. A company called Orange Star that I’ve been working with since nineteen ninety six, who helps us stitch all these things together without throwing custom code that will blow up as soon as there’s an upgrade. The most effective systems are the ones that get used.

Not the most powerful as an example, we were on confusion. I’m sorry, Infusionsoft for years. And sending millions of emails a year and Infusionsoft was a nightmare, we didn’t know that a year after we left, they were mothballing it and they were launching a new product behind it, a new product called KEEP. But we suffered through a platform that was designed to do everything and therefore mastered nothing because it was the most powerful system. Well, it wasn’t the easiest to use.

It wasn’t the easiest to integrate. It wasn’t the most effective. It wasn’t the most intuitive. So we retooled again and we started using those cowardly, brilliant company from here in Atlanta. There are other others like it, but scheduling tools that we can weave together and allow my clients to self serve in different areas. I look for the things that are simple and intuitive for my team to use, and that’s what we pick.

That’s. So this is the point where I think that whatever you’re about to say, I want everybody to pay very close attention, because obviously I think he’s going to drop some some serious nuggets right now. Pressure is on putting the weight on your back a little bit. Right. Final words of wisdom for an entrepreneur. Imagine yourself back when you were in your early 20s and you’re going to take over the world. What inside would you give to yourself if you could travel back in time?

I keep three words at the top of my screen. I believe the camera, it says real not right. And I think to translate that for the rest of the world, that’s not inside my head. Man, it doesn’t have to be right and there’s a reason the word right is in quotes on that little piece of paper. It doesn’t have to be right. It just has to be real. People spend a great deal of time, effort, energy and heart trying to do it right, trying to do what they should, living the good life sucks.

And yet so much of so many of us have done it, are doing it. It has to be real. It has to be what authentically comes from you. Here’s the essence of my work now. When Michelangelo talked about sculpture, he said he didn’t carve the figures, he freed them from the stone. The work that we do as coaches is helping our clients chip away everything that isn’t them, that isn’t true, that isn’t real. And getting down to the essence of who they are, who they be at their core, who they are authentically, that’s real.

When you live from there, when you love from there, when you lead from there. That’s what works. It’s not about right. It’s about real.

No, as I predicted, you definitely made it rain golden nuggets. But definitely appreciate that, and if you missed anything, I would definitely say this is one of these episodes that you kind of have to rewind parts more than once, the kind of really in take in exactly what David is delivering. So what can people find you online? I mean, obviously, you pretty much have a handle, probably every platform, which is the key platform you want to send out.

So I like to make it easy in terms of the Rewire framework in the book. If you got a mindset, Mon’s with a dotcom, you get information on the book, you’ll be able to download the Rewire framework for free. Definitely invite you. Yes, I would love you to buy the book. More importantly, I want you to download the Rewire framework and start playing with it. You can also find me if you look for Detec or coaching either one of them on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, you will find me.

I’m out there and I’m active. Same with on LinkedIn. I’m one of the things I’ve just done. Is reopened, the mind set Monday’s accelerator. I am an impatient human being. This book would be fabulous to do a year long program of every week, doing live coaching with a group of folk about, oh, week six, Chapter six, awesome, I would lose my mind. So I’ve got 52 weeks in 52 days. Dotcom or Mindset Mondays Accelerator.

It’s a live coaching program that we’re going to go through the 52 weeks of mindset shift in just 52 days. We’re going to really like through live coaching and some interaction in between. We’re going to help people power through creating that shift so they can shift their world. So that’s open right now. Mindset, Mon’s Accelerator, Dotcom, we’ll get you there. You can see the information, explore it, see if it’s right for you. Maybe you’re impatient like I am.

Yes. So going into the bonus round. All right, we could start off with something simple and we’ll warm up a little bit more difficult bonus from questions, right. What’s your most significant achievement to date?

I as of the end of this month, I have been married. Twenty nine years. I got three kids that are healthy, love each other and are still active parts of our world and are contributing to the world around them. That my most significant achievement by far.

Right. Now, the big question, right?

That wasn’t the big one.

No, that wasn’t a big one. I mean, the big question for you is kind of like, I got no, there’s going to be a story behind it. So if you could spend 24 hours in a day with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted, who would it be and why?

Some listeners I’m showing a photo of who. That’s me at age three. I need to know more of what he knows and who he was. And I want him. To know how loved he was and how loved he is. And as much as I say, I don’t want to change anything. I’d love to spend a day with him. Well.

I’m just sitting here just trying to visualize that concept. You can spend 24 hours anybody you’d want to go back in time, spent 24 hours with your younger self at age three.

Why we are. Perfect beings at that age, the essence of who we are is pure and unfettered by the world around us and we lose a lot of that. And we spent a long time as grown ups trying to get back to that purity, that essence of who we be, who we are at our core. And I want more of him in me now and I want more of that. Love and that strength, if you save energy in my world and I want.

What I want for him is to know how loved he is and was. And I want to bring that into my world. Well, and I want that for all of us, I see so much of who we are being right now is shaped by what we’ve experienced and we lose touch with that. Pureness. Well, I want it.

Well, definitely, I definitely appreciate that, I mean, it’s funny because I brought you on here because I know that you’ve had business insight and I know that you are a great strategist. I also know that you’re one hell of a mindset, coach. And, you know, I deemed you to be the mindset boss. But in all reality, after listening and replaying things that you said on this entire episode, you’re more of a like a philosopher.

And that philosophy, I can definitely see you using your philosophies and your training other people to let go of the insecurities, let let go of what they’re holding on and to become who they’re going to be versus who they think they should be. So I definitely appreciate, like what you brought to the table, because, again, I thought one thing and you’ve opened me up to an entire another state of being. So I definitely appreciate that.

That’s why I’ve got that quote behind me. And I see it every day in the back of the zoom image of me. And it says achieving more requires becoming more. And. As long as all the strategy and the growth hacks and the life hacks and the systems and structures. Are tied to who you are. And how it works in your world and how it resonates for you. Those are the ones that are real. That’s the stuff to pay attention to, as long as you’re filtering it through the lens of who you are and what’s important to you and what your world is, everything else is you shitting all over yourself.

Well. And yes, thank you, because what’s underneath all of it, all of the growth strategy, everything is getting clear on who the human is. Making decisions from there, definitely.

Well, I mean, going into closing, I always give opportunities for my guests to take the microphone and ask me any questions that may have come up during this episode. You have any questions for me? This will be a good time.

Yeah, more of an acknowledgment for you on. Your willingness to. To be raw and touch what’s real and important is why. This podcast is as powerful it is and why you have the listeners you have and why you’re making the impact you’re having. I don’t know. How aware you are that your impact is coming from who you’re being? Please, God, keep doing it. We need more of this, you’re helping people do what your logo speaks to.

It’s finding they are inside and live and love and lead from there, so. And we need a whole nother podcast to talk about what inspired you to do this and what’s going to inspire you to do the next hundred episodes and we’ll do that one over a bottle of wine or maybe and record it. But I really want to acknowledge you for doing the important work and not staying surface.

I love it, I definitely appreciate it, and I think this is a very, very powerful episode going to that again, the listeners of this, what you said affected me in a way that I didn’t think it was going to affect me. And I’m hoping that they get the same insightful feeling and the same definition and the same clarity and purpose that you deliver it. So, again, I mean, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule.

I appreciate you, you know, being more than willing to be on a guest on my show and to deliver everything that you delivered today. I definitely appreciate it, David.

Listen, it’s my pleasure. I will. I come back any time you want to play, really enjoyed the time together.

Definitely. I appreciate it as they go over now.

Entrepreneur & Executive Coach Of DTK Coaching: David Taylor-Klaus AKA The Mindset Boss – S2E28 (#56)2021-06-27T17:20:53+00:00

Host and Speaker Of Life Up Education TV: Natsune Oki AKA The Self Domination Boss – S2E27 (#55)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Host and Speaker Of Life Up Education TV: Natsune Oki AKA The Self Domination Boss – S2E27 (#55)

Don’t get intimidated by no one. Just because they make more money than you doesn’t mean that they’re happy inside and happiness is really the key.

In Season 2, Episode 27 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with Host & Speaker of Life Up Education, Natsune Oki.

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S2E27 – Natsune Oki – powered by Happy Scribe

Good over here. Everything’s good here. Yeah, all right, let’s go. Three, two, one. Welcome welcome back to Boston College. Today, we have a guest. Way, way, way on the other side of the world from Tokyo, Japan. Not today. We want to welcome you to our episode and want to give our people a little bit inside of who you are and what you do.

Yeah, sure. Thank you very much for having me. My name is not OK. I’m a managing director of Foreign Kinect, which is a business agency that I have in Tokyo that helps Japanese companies to launch and expand businesses by providing them international project management service, listening to them, developing their state projects on the lot as well. And then I also have a media call that I have education, TV and within the same domain. I also published a book called The Game of Self Domination.

So, I mean, that’s that’s a mouthful. And it’s a lot of tentacles going on. So this is kind of like like cut that up a little bit. So you’re essentially helping entrepreneurs on multiple different facets. Right. So how did you even get into that that model? Where did your journey really start?

Oh. The journey, well, in terms of helping entrepreneurs, I agree, I want to talk more about life, education, TV and just the media in general that I have this one basically talks about. How can we how can I contribute to create the maximum contribution to I’m sorry to meet them if you let me start over again? OK, OK. So in terms of helping entrepreneurs, technically, I want to talk about education theby. This is a media that talks about.

And maximizing the capability of humanity from the perspective of the arts and science, and when I say that actually it comes from my very personal journey of how I was able to make personal transformation in my mindset from kind of being scared to just like, you know, going at it, like going at my dream and just running after the inspiration. And one thing I noticed is that I’m very excited about a future. That is because I have a background in working in tech like startup environment.

I was heavily involved in involved in that kind of environment when I was working in Seattle. So I met and worked with a lot of tech entrepreneurs and investors who were changing the world that only by using technology. And I was very inspired by it. And that basically left me this imprint to be really excited about the future. Basically, when I think of a future, that is because I associate that with creation imagination, something that we haven’t seen yet.

Right. And when we look at history, the past, that is data. That is knowledge. That is where we’ve been already, something that we already know. Right. And me being like really courageous and curious person, I’m way more excited about where can we go? How can I be helpful to take the humanity to the next level? So that’s kind of macro talk. But basically the mission of my media predicates on that where I want to talk about, like, inspiration in a sense that it’s it all starts from emotion.

Right. And then also some practicality that’s tied with the science part of it. So I would talk about what is your inspiration and also how to get there, how to get to your ambition of the art, ambition of your inspiration. Does that make sense?

It definitely makes sense and it makes sense why you have so many different tentacles. So let’s let’s take it back even further. So were you born in Japan or were you born in the U.S.? Where were you born? And kind of what was your upbringing like?

Yeah, I was I was born and raised in Japan, I grew up in Japan entirely. I went to high school here in Japan, which I almost got kicked out, which I mentioned in my book. But I was definitely without trying, I, I was always, like, really different. Like, I felt like I didn’t fit in, especially in this culture. And at the time I already knew that I had to kind of get out of this community because I wasn’t succeeding in this community.

And I knew that there was something outside, but I just didn’t know at the time, like, I thought it was all here and I was a loser. But I finally gained the courage to just go abroad, like go to the United States. And at the time, I didn’t have any anything really. Like, I didn’t even speak the language. I didn’t know what what I was going to happen. But I just jumped on the plane and figured out, well, basically, I decided to study business there.

And so I did the first two years in business. And then I took some time off to actually gain some real work experience and then being surrounded by the entrepreneurial community where I truly found my passion in entrepreneurship. And then Furter because I was surrounded by so many tech entrepreneurs, something I realized was I was not logical, I was very emotional and I wanted to gain that logical thinking. I wanted to gain that specific skill because I was really I have always been interested in people more than money.

So when it comes to when it comes to my mission, I always think about people more than individual gain a monetary motivation. Right. And economy actually is a perfect study for it because it counts for a little bit of business. A little bit of education definitely counts for people, people, part of the society. Right. So that’s why I decided to pursue economics, to gain the logical thinking and also to really gain the skill, to be able to think what is needed for the humanity, for us to move forward to the next level as a macro.

And that’s why I pursued economics. And then after that, I basically started working for this business consulting company in America. And I was only Japanese there. And there was like a bunch of other people from all the all nationalities. And that experience taught me a lot. And me coming from Japan also definitely added like another dynamic into the team. So it was really interesting to see how I fit in in that kind of place. Right. And then after that, basically I came back and then I was doing what I was doing the same thing.

And then at some point I decided to fund my own fashion brand, which I kind of closed earlier this year. I’m going to open up, opening up back again. And then basically I wanted to just, like, make what I was doing as my own business. So that’s what I call for now. And yeah. And then I also wanted to start my media with a book. So that also happened around the same time.

Yes. I mean, again, that’s that’s a lot of different avenues that that you went down. And the fact that you’re juggling all these things is absolutely amazing. Right. So in that space, you’re talking about international waters, essentially like you live in Japan. But I would think that some of your clients may still be in the US and you probably have clients globally as well. So how do you like how is your business structured? I mean, like all of it is Japanese right now.

It is, yeah. And the reason I’m trying to develop the real estate project Sundanese is that is because maybe I maybe maybe this is still ideal ADFIS. I probably shouldn’t open it up. But basically what I want to do essentially is finding investors from Japan and basically connecting them with like a local government backed private companies who invest in properties of like government projects. So that’s kind of the another project that I’m developing underneath the foreign connect.

So the foreign canek essentially is going to be your bridge for a more global platform.

Yeah, yeah. For yeah, sure.

Great. Great. So, I mean, so are you doing all this by yourself? Do you have any business partners or. This is just all full partner and then you’re growing out when you’re outsourcing everything.

But yeah, I’m doing it in a consultancy way right now. I think eventually what I want to happen, what I want this to happen is like within the next five years, probably, possibly more. I definitely want to grow into like still consulting agency, but I definitely want to have more consultants underneath me. So that’s my goal.

So being that you’re the epicenter of your company, I mean, how are you overcoming hurdles right now?

I think I mean, it’s I think, to be honest with you, it’s just a lot of, like, mindset and also like how not seriously I am when it comes to life, like I feel like I feel like I have nothing to lose all the time. And I think that’s probably one of my strongest weapon, to be honest with you. I don’t have like this like texted like try this like more, Soledad, because every day is hard.

I kind of like my tool is very like basic like that. My yeah. My mental tool to fight against it is very, very basic like that.

So you’re big on mindset and you’re big on like laws of attraction. So I mean, that makes that makes perfect sense. So on your journey. Right. We always hear about someone taking what you got.

Yeah. So I’m not really a big law of attraction, but I do believe that such a thing exists. And I read something interesting actually. I read that like, for example, when we consider quantum physics, we don’t know if we consider quantum physics. We are not the tangible matters. Right. And then we are just the small like bunch of small particles moving together, like making the movie moves within our entity. That’s why we feel like it’s a tangible thing.

And actually, if you look at it even farther, closer, apparently you are stardust. And that’s interesting. Right. And when you think about it like that, like, I know that there’s something out there that we don’t understand with our capability of intellect right now that exist. And somehow that makes sense of like affirmation, like energy, like someone thinking of something definitely connects with something else because everything is basically. Particles and then everything is like moving together.

Does that make sense?

So, I mean, on that topic, I mean, you don’t think that I guess the laws of attraction is defining that without knowing what it is? Right. It’s kind of like this sixth sense that people have in connections between thinking positive and moving in that direction. And then by default, this thing kind of happens. You have to take actions to get there. But to your point, talking about particles in space does it could be a whole nother element that we don’t even know that exists and is being defined by the laws of attraction because they don’t know how to define it.

Yeah, exactly, so I think that’s a more topic of physics than like what we can see today. So that’s interesting thought I had, but yeah, definitely like you said, I think it’s a little bit of, you know, really the DNA attraction is maybe a little bit of physics, but also definitely a lot of it is psychology.

So going into the next question, right. So we always hear about someone taking 20 years to become successful, but the perception of that is always usually an overnight success. How long have you been on your journey to get to where you are currently?

Well, like I said, everything is still kind of like sort of face like it was written here. So I have basically been working like I am for two years. Three years. Yeah.

So I’ve been behind. I mean, I’m just looking at your platform. I mean, obviously you’re on Facebook, you’re on tick tock, you’re on clubhouse, you’re on YouTube, you have the foreign connection, you have life up education, TV, just to name a few of your different platforms. So you’ve been working on all these platforms for essentially the last two years.

So life started later because before that I had the clothing company clothing brand, which at the time I already had the connect to, but I was working like the same time. But life only started. You send me actually I started it like right there on Korona.

So I mean, how are you managing your scheduling? Because, I mean, I look like a YouTube channel. I like I think you just posted something a couple of hours ago, right before this year. So, I mean, like, how are you juggling that? You have, like, scheduling software, like how are you managing all the content that you’re developing?

Yeah, well, actually, yeah, I just do like scheduling platform. I think it’s called what I actually use a few of them, but it’s a social suite and leader like those are the three I use for social media YouTube. I just take a bunch of videos during the weekends and just post it. But it’s a lot of distribution, right. As you know, like media has a lot of distribution, then I, I believe that. So I just make a bunch of content, like I’m talking about 70 like 80 of them in the weekend.

So one weekend and I’m just going to distribute in all channels that I possibly could.

Yeah. I mean, in addition to your distribution strategy, I mean, you found me on matchmaker and matchmaker for Anybody Doesn’t Know is a podcast network that allows other podcasters to find podcasters. So you’re on that platform and you’re also actively searching for opportunities as well. So let’s talk about that. I mean, like, why did you pick this podcast as one of the podcasts to reach out to?

Well, I was reaching out to Pakistan can talk about mindset and I can talk about more in a casual setting, right. And that needs to like entrepreneurship and business field, because that’s often it seems that my message appeared the most to me. That’s how I found you.

Got you. I mean, I think it definitely does. I mean, one, you have the woman empowerment side. On the other side, you have the entrepreneur side. And then the third element would be like just a general mindset of how you have to push through hurdles when they present themselves. And I think that you’re definitely on that journey to kind of keep moving forward with that. What would you do differently if you could do it all over again?

I got to say, I don’t think I would change anything like let’s say that I’m 50 or 60 years old, I don’t even think that I would want to change it a bit like anything of my life. And that’s because I don’t feel like whatever is not happening to my life right now. It’s not happening like I I don’t think life is how it should be, like I think it was just how it is. And I can romanticize, like, how hard my life is.

I can understand how nice things should happen to me, like all that, but like it’s not happening. So why am I even bothering thinking about it. So if I have the time to do that, I never I much love to spend the very same time to just hustle and work to make things happen, actually, you know, so in that mindset, I think that’s where a lot of people, I think, fall into this trap of like formal.

Right. Like, they feel like they’re missing out, like they feel like they’re not doing enough. But in reality, like you can think all that. But thinking about it doesn’t make that happen. Like whatever you want happen and you’re exactly where you should be in life. That’s that’s what I think. And I don’t think you’re ready for the success even that you wish. So that’s just kind of my life be and I don’t have that. I should have done this differently because I just don’t know the alternative.

Like, what would happen if I did something different? I don’t know. I might die.

I mean, it’s funny that you brought that up and going back to, like, physics a little bit, it kind of makes me think of a like parallel universe is like if I do one thing differently versus what I’ve done, what would that life be like versus the life that I currently have? And to be able to see into these parallel universes and make the right choices would be a definitely interesting lifestyle to live. So you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a hell of an entrepreneur.

You’re like you’re hustle is real. Does that come from your family? Does anybody in your family owned a business and entrepreneurs down your bloodline?

Yeah, and if you think about it like it’s always been entrepreneurship, like it’s only the last 50 or 60 years where the concept of a company even existed. Right. But given that. Yeah, like my dad is entrepreneur, my grandparents both to be an entrepreneur before that, I have no idea of what I know so far. Yeah. Everybody’s been entrepreneur from my dad’s side especially.

So what kind of business did your dad have?

Here’s transportation business in Japan, so he transformed transport things. Yeah, I don’t know much about it, to be honest with you. My mom is very stable, like really nine to five kind of woman and I actually grew up with are way closer like a girl grow up way closer to her than my dad. Like, I didn’t even see him that much.

So going into family a little bit more. But how do you juggle your work life with your family?

Oh, for me, I don’t know, like I just like like honestly, to be honest, I feel like I’m not doing a good job on that, to be honest, especially my dad, I, I should probably make a little bit more. But, you know, at the end of the day, I do my best and that’s it. That’s what I can do. And I occasionally, definitely sometimes send the message saying like, hey, like I love you.

And, you know, the thing is like one day I remember I definitely I sent my mom message saying, like, you know, even if I’m so depressed, even if, like, she gets real, even if I’m so sad, I don’t think I can be that sad just because I’m your daughter. And I really feel like she’s so amazing. And she gave me so much like love. I can never be so cynical. I can never be so not negative because I just don’t know what it’s like to be that dark because my mom and my dad got me, you know.

Yeah. So I sometimes send them message saying stuff like that.

So I mean just, just going as I mean right now in Tokyo, it’s essentially we’re 14 hours ahead. So it’s what, ten, twenty four pm. Yeah. So I mean obviously I think your day is a long you’re out, you’re on a podcast right now. It’s eight eight twenty four a.m. my time. Ten twenty four. Your time. What is your morning routines. Look like your morning habit.

Since there’s a quarantine, I try to get out the house to walk a little bit around the house, I usually like I used to before quarantine, I actually went to the gym every day four or five times a week. So I’m pretty active and likes to move. So in this walk, I usually take an hour. I probably walk like three km. So that’s in the morning. I drink coffee, I look at my goals, I write down my goals and I break them down into tasks and I just look at them every day.

And pretty much that’s it. That’s what I do.

So talking about your goals and your tasks, I mean, what does that look like? I mean, is that effective for you right now, your goals every day and then checking them off every single day?

Yeah, it’s very effective. I think it kind of like puts me into focus again and yeah, like it’s it’s interesting, though, like when you do it, like dial dialing your priority changes, like before I was about like, you know, living this kind of lifestyle, like, you know, making this much money like Revera. But now it’s kind of like shit like I just want to be nice to people. It’s that basic. But like really like that’s the first thing I always, not always, but many times I realize myself writing is like like I just want to be happy.

I just want to make people happy like something. The gratefulness, I guess, because I’m feeling it every day, like I just feel like genuinely I want to create that feeling to other people.

So, I mean, I think that it leads us into the next thing. And because of this, this podcast is giving me opportunity to I wanted to develop a book club. So and what I found out is like not a 10 people that I interview on this podcast, they always either writing books, reading books, listening to books, or they have books to recommend. So going into that, I mean, you’re author as well. I mean, what what book did you just release and what books would you recommend to our audience?

Yeah. So the book I released just now, just now released on September, is called The Game Also Dominations. Sorry, the night is kind of right. Yeah, it’s called The Game of Self Domination, which is pretty thick book.

Yeah, it has one hundred something pages. One hundred fifty probably three hundred, three hundred pages. Just I don’t know what I was thinking but no don’t freak out because I have double space I think. But anyway, so this is a book I talk about how one can create mental transformation in three different phases. The first phase I talk about. It’s all about, it’s all about emotion. So first phase I talk about is it’s all about emotion, like fuck logic and this phase.

So what I want you to do is build up enough emotion that you just committed regardless of the risk, regardless of whatever, like regardless of the nonsense and thus the level of commitment or the emotion you need to commit to something. In order for you to do that, you need the inspiration and desperation, desperation and a sense that enough is enough like I got if I can change. Right. And then inspiration in a sense that like it is possible to achieve and your inspiration needs to exceed your desperation because all you think about is the aspiration you would never try.

So yeah. To be like, oh, this is fucking like this is shit. Yes. OK, I can make a change. I know that I can make it happen. So that’s the optimal state you want to be in in the first place. And basically in this book I would give you a different questions, different scenarios, different stories for you to think in your own term to create this kind of emotion. And the second phase, I talk about perseverance.

Now we are talking about not the positive thinking, not the emotional thinking. We’re talking about perseverance here, which is Chigas gets hard. So you need to really understand what is actually going on. And so in this phase, we we start by talking about the importance of self awareness because things get hard. You need to really understand who you are about what you want to be like, what you are about, and you need to really create alignment with who you are and the direction you’re heading to.

And then also one thing that’s very powerful is the power of self talk to. Right, because things happen. And in the end of the day, like these actions, failure, like all that happens. And then the final filter you go through is always self talk when you face that. So I basically tell people how they can fight against those voices by telling you that you don’t mean shit like that and things don’t mean anything like don’t worry. But, you know, this Zen approach, kind of like Eastern philosophy little bit.

And then because I come from this business and economics background, I basically wanted to know if there’s a way to use this business thinking and business strategy into life strategy. So I laid out this method. I called a method where it is a consist of five different concepts from different business and economics people and even company that was actually used, practically used in their business operation. And I took all of them to create this scoring system that people can use to manage their life and just add some efficiency organization in their goal setting and goals.

But this is really I am providing so that you don’t have to practice it all the time, like I’m providing you so that you can extract thinking out of it, like I want you to get out of this. Is this thinking. So I want to set your brain to think in terms of the profitability, think in terms of the long term return, like short term return, like so very much business thinking into life strategy, like what happen when you use these matrix to capture your life strategy.

So that’s what I. And then finally moving onto the third phase, I start talking about, so what is success like, what is happiness mean to you? It’s super subjective. But during this journey, we cover many topics. We cover about like, you know, like what is your ambition, what you want to achieve, like monetarily, like, materialistically like. And then all that we talk, all of that. But finally, at the end of the day, whatever you achieve, it’s not going to make you happy forever.

So that’s basically the sort of face I talk about. It’s defining happiness because there’s a lot of talk around the defining failure, but there’s not enough talk about happiness. So that’s what I talk about in the surface and pretty noticeable.

So who would you recommend should get that book?

I think everybody can benefit from it, but I don’t recommend I do have those people, too. Who I don’t recommend is people who. Wants to be just, you know, rich quick tomorrow and call it good, like, no, this is but this book is not for you. And then the second group that I don’t recommend is people who like to stay, stay like who likes to stay reasonable people who doesn’t likes to be told, like go for something unreasonable.

So these are the type of people I don’t recommend. But other than that, if you don’t fit into this category, I think this book is great for anyone.

So with that book, I mean, it seems like there’s a lot of you in that book, right? You put a lot of your philosophies, a lot of your ideologies. You put a lot of the things that you learned over the years. Are there any of the books that influenced you on that journey to create your current book?

Yeah, so there’s a lot, actually. But one book, actually, one big difference I directly made within this book is from Shawn Uecker. He is a he’s a happiness psychologist. He, um, I think he says that teaching at Harvard University and he did a bunch of study and tests around psychology specifically about happiness. And he consults company on that matter to like human resources, like he consults Samsung and Google, like companies like that, actually use his method to basically gain more productivity.

Right. For the employees. But, yeah, that was a good book that I read. I comment. It’s called Happiness Advantage.

So I think we’re sort of talking you talk about you have like a give away for that book. You want to go ahead and announce what the giveaway is at this time so people could I mean, now that it’s fresh and you described the book, this is the key time to go ahead and send out that link.

Yeah. So I will actually give you the link so people can go there to read the description of what they need to do to enter for the giveaway. But basically all I ask is your email, like your basically contact info and also your Amazon review. And we are giving away some copy of ebooks.

Nice. Nice. So I mean, you’re on a hell of a journey or a hell of a direction. You’re on a budget. Pretty much. You’re in a bull market. Right. You’re heading north. Where do you see yourself in 20 years?

20 years, 20 years from now, where do you.

Maybe I’ll be dead. I don’t know. I can predict future man, but 10 years definitely. I kind of feel like. Oh, not feel like. But definitely my gold is moving into more of like a state investment direction, you know, basically connecting the Japanese investors into the American market. American that as they drop me the market. I also want to talk at the university about psychology, though not business, to be honest. But yeah, that’s kind of a nice thing.

If I could achieve you know, nothing is definite at this time. I think it’s kind of stupid to have vision that far way out because you could die tomorrow. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, I do like you.

I got you. Yeah. So this say I’m a young person and I’m looking to you for inspiration and I’m trying to figure out my next steps, whether I’m graduating from high school, coming out of college. Maybe I’m already in the workforce, maybe I’m even older and I’m thinking about changing direction. I want to become an entrepreneur. What words of wisdom would you give to someone like that to help them continue moving forward?

I think and I know exactly what I want to say, but I don’t know how to word it out. I think it’s about insecurity, I think. Don’t get intimidated by no one. Because just because they make more money than you doesn’t mean that they’re happy inside and happiness is really the key. Like, in the end of the day, the definition of success, I think my conclusion is happiness and. You know, when you pitch to Mr. when you talk to the founders, sometimes, maybe these people seem so smart, like you get a little bit intimidated or even clients like turning it down.

Everything like that happens all the time, like ninety nine percent, especially when you’re just starting out. But don’t get discouraged or don’t get intimidated. Don’t be shy. You know, treat them like you’re the same position as you they are because in the end, like humans are human, no one’s better than no one really. I’m talking about like really no one. So just because they have this money, like I said, don’t just assume that they’re happy inside.

That’s it. And I think that that helps me a lot. Like whenever I get action, whenever I get you know, whenever I put something and someone, like, told me like, this is whatever, I just feel like whatever like it just doesn’t mean anything to me, you know?

I mean, that’s a powerful train of thought. I mean, to be able to hear someone saying that your philosophy or your ideas are shit or the hell would you I’m going to say, no, I don’t want your business structure. And I still to keep moving and to look past it. I mean, that’s you create success is to continue on that journey without letting anybody deter you from moving forward. Yeah. So looking at like all your platforms, I mean, like, how could people get in contact?

You I mean, what’s your Facebook, Instagram, Instagram, your Snapchat. I mean, I mean literally you have all the platform. So which is the predominant ones that you use and which ones do you want to go ahead and give to our audience.

Yeah, well, Dominion is a dominant one I use as Instagram and I am, like you said, also on tick, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and yeah. Instagram the name, huh.

Flophouses.

Well, yeah, in the clubhouse, the name you can find me. And there is that I have it on TV and on Dreamhouse. It’s not in it. OK. No it’s not Tony.

Great, great. So just going into the bonus rounds, right? And bonus questions, and this is the question that, like I always make the statement that I always ask this question because everyone’s answer is uniquely different and it gives a different inspiration. So if you could spend 24 hours in a day with anybody dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Right. Just one one person, just one person. I mean, obviously, this is just one person.

Honestly, I get asked this question sometimes and each time my answer is kind of different, but now I have to say Gary like me, because I just saw his video and. Like he is powerful. I think like his positivity, his perseverance, like his like entrepreneurship, like he’s just really hard, like he’s just like mentally really hard. Right. I feel like I can punch him with a rock and he will come back. And that’s really cool, except I won’t get that.

But yeah, that’s why I would choose him.

Everybody I mean, Gary is a hell of an entrepreneur. And just to think that he started out with wine and now he’s like a marketing mogul, it was a great experience to be to see it in our time frame in our lifetime. To see how he transitioned is definitely inspiring. Going into another bonus question, what is your most significant achievement to date?

Significant achievement today. Something that’s important to me, right? I would definitely say I would definitely say just moving to America by myself without knowing no one or Dunwich, I think that was just the beginning of everything for me. So I would still choose over everything. Right. So that was the beginning.

Great, great answer. So this is a time of the podcast where the person I’m interviewing, I give you the microphone and obviously we had a lot of different conversation of different topics in that journey. You may have had questions for me. So now the microphone is yours and you can ask me any questions that you may have had.

Perfect, so let’s see. What do you wish to achieve with doing everything you’re doing today?

With me essentially helping my niche market, which is business owners, entrepreneurs, startup executives, and everybody is on different journeys, and I think that this podcast can kind of bridge from people that are multimillionaires, the people that are on the verge of being billionaires to someone that’s coming out of high school and they’re starting their first clothing line on online. So my goal is essentially bridging the gap between all these different platforms. Hence why the title of the podcast is called Bosson Katch.

It’s breaking out of that shell and becoming what you want to be later on.

What do you have any Mintern, the Eurocopter?

Yeah, that I’ve had dozens of mentors over over my lifetime as of recently, have actually had opportunities to interview a couple of them. So Greg SESAR was one of my mentors, interviewed him last season. High Colon is another mentor of mine that I interviewed earlier in the season. And just seeing what they’ve achieved and their formulas and their systems and just the way they’ve nitsch down to particular markets and understanding their philosophies. I’ve took pieces of their models and I’ve infuse it in my.

That’s good. Who is doing by, like, for your dinner, like, if you could invite anyone? One person.

So it’s funny that you asked that question because people have always turned the microphone on me and asked me that question. So in the past, I’ve said Einstein for multiple different reasons. Recently I’ve said Elon Musk for obvious reasons as well. And you would think, you know what, my background, I’m a designer and I’m a creative, but I really enjoy the analytical side as well. And just seeing Einstein and seeing Elon Musk and seeing their lives and seeing what they’ve accomplished, they’ve done a lot of creative things.

But it always goes back to like the logical stuff, right? I mean, Elon is working on, like, space technology to get people to Mars once the Earth is completely destroyed or whatever you have somewhere else to move onto. But he didn’t start there and he started off like what was like PayPal. He started off with all these other different business ventures that he keeps compounding and compounding to get to that ultimate goal of kind of like saving humanity.

I look at him as kind of like the Iron Man of our times. So that just kind of gives me that insight to say right now. And today I would want to sit down with Elon Musk, maybe even be a fly on the wall and just listen to his the way he thinks, the way he idealizes different things and the way he structures his day and just understanding like how could you be like everyone else and compound as much as you’ve done in the same period of time that everybody else has.

And you’ve done 25 different things and all of them have been successful.

I see the good and so appreciate me here. I definitely appreciate you reaching out. I appreciate having you on the podcast. I think it was definitely a great episode. I think like you, woman empowerment. I mean, you entrepreneurism. And I look forward to seeing what else you’re going to accomplish and moving forward.

Thank you. Yeah, same here. Thank you so much for having me.

Appreciate it. That’s a grant over and out.

Host and Speaker Of Life Up Education TV: Natsune Oki AKA The Self Domination Boss – S2E27 (#55)2021-06-27T17:19:21+00:00

Founder & Owner Operator Of Blind Shade LLC & Observ Network: Javon Ingram AKA The Observe Boss – S2E26 (#54)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

“…know your terrain because you’re going to war. Know your terrain. We all are geniuses in areas, we all have pockets of intelligence, their overall people with high IQ and there are people that have pockets of intelligence in certain areas. I think people should always start in those areas.”
In Season 2, Episode 26 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with Founder & Owner Operator of Blind Shade LLC & Host of the Observ Network Podcast, Javon Ingram.
Similar to S.A., Javon is a graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta and equally a serial entrepreneur with two businesses under his belt along with a podcast.
“I mean, the business savvy is understanding that’s a whole outside of what you were doing and being able to add it on, because lots of people will add on additional services, but they won’t do the research or they won’t have the things to support it. And it’s not usually associated. If I’m selling cars, I’m not going to be selling snowboards. Right. If I’m selling cars, I may sell tires, I may sell window tanning because they’re all relative to the one product.”
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • Knowing your customer and knowing what they need
  • A look at a successful work/life balance & morning routine
  • How a graphic designer went into owning a blinds & shades business
  • And so much more!
Want more details on how to contact Javon? Check out the links below!

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

Just speak to your Alexa-enabled device and say, ”Alexa Open Boss Uncaged.”

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S2E27 – Javon Ingram – powered by Happy Scribe

Over here. All right, the levels of some good, your video is good. All right. All right, three, two, one, welcome. Welcome back to Boston podcast. On today’s show, I have one of my old school classmates from college that’s a solo partner entrepreneur. And the funny thing is he just had like a whole episode of his podcast talking about the differences between entrepreneur and solar panel. But without further ado, Magavern, introduce yourself to everyone.

What’s up, everybody, I’m glad to be on the show. Thanks for having me. I’m John Ingram. You know, we go way back from from college days now. You know, we’re both entrepreneurs.

I have a few businesses, which is pro commercial accessories, which is a construction accessories company, and recently followed in your footsteps a little bit and started my observe network.

So let’s go back a little bit. So, I mean, originally you were we were in college together for graphic design. So that was like your first jump off degree. So let’s talk about how did you go from being a graphic designer to doing pro installations to create the observe network?

Oh, wow. It was a crazy, crazy ride and it actually has to do a lot of when we were in college and some of the things that were promised to us that I never received when we went to when we started at school, you know, and I got in there and I spoke to a counselor and yeah, we we have a name.

Was it a ninety two percent placement rate straight out of college and me being a sucker.

I was I totally believe it, you know, and and then, you know, we were going to get out of school and they say, congratulations, Yvonne, we finally got you a job. I’m like, okay, great advertising agency.

And my starting with it said, no, it’s going to be a Kinko’s for twelve dollars an hour.

I said, Wait, wait, what now? I’m in debt to you for all this money you promised.

You said you get me a job, but I was thinking something, you know, entry level, but a little higher up there.

And they were like, no, you got to start here. So around that time, things start to dwindle off. And I had a mentor, another entrepreneur that was like, you know what? Till you find a job and what you’re doing, come work with me in the window treatment business. I was like, OK, great.

Like, well, I’ll be doing install. And I was like, well, I’ve never installed a window treatment before and it’s time to learn. At that time I was making about thirty dollars for installing an entire house. I tell I tell some of my employees that now that are starting and they crack up laughing, saying they would never work for that type of money. But the thing was the value of the information. If I didn’t take that job, then I wouldn’t have the business that I have now.

Because I didn’t know anything about the field, I was introduced to it and I was willing to extend myself a little bit and, you know, use me, but don’t abuse me. Let me make sure I get something out of the deal. So that knowledge was worth all the money in the world. So then I started doing the installations. At that time, the Web business had dwindled off for me because. And the graphic design has dwindled off for me because I wasn’t getting into the agencies in which I wanted to get into.

And as far as the business goes, I was still getting my feet wet in business and I was struggling, reaching my audience, the audience that I went to, the top dollar audience that would pay.

I was getting more clientele that was like, well, I can get it online, you know, I could drive myself or DIY and establishing the value of it and differentiating the two when so many things were coming out at the time, you know, at that time they were starting to give everything away.

Hosting companies were starting to give away websites, and a lot of people were outsourcing it and doing things and. Graphic design went. Corporate, in a sense, you get what I’m saying, you’re more than anybody else. I get it because I’m in that space stuff.

It’s funny because I remember when you were going through that like that transition and like you think it’s like all your clients, you started, like, sending them to me. It was like, OK, I’m like I’m not saying you were tired of them, but you were just like, OK, I’m not doing this anymore. Parsimonious. So glad you brought that up so well.

Go, then. Yeah, those things where. OK. It is not administrative problems, the U.S. is one of these things. Oh, yeah, and it became a point where I gave up. I gave up, I think it was.

It was really mean more than anything else, I wanted to change. I feel like I didn’t get what I want to get out of the graphic design and some of the things I was doing. It wasn’t panning out the way I wanted to. So I did an assessment. I like to assess myself every three to four years, like fully assess myself. And it wasn’t going the way I wanted to. And at first I was bummed about it. I was really bummed.

But then I learned how to fail.

With lessons, you get what I’m saying with the lessons that you get from and the business, the business acumen grew in next space because actually when things was really rough for me, I would actually my car broke down.

I would walk five miles in each direction talking to every business about graphic design and what I can do from what I can offer their business as social media was progressing at that time as well.

And it worked. It worked for quite some time. But it taught me, of course, sales. It taught me how to have my soft skills, how to eliminate objections when it comes to sales.

So it opened an entire new spectrum for me. So when I stepped into the window treatment fully for myself, I was ready to go because window treatments when I first started, I didn’t start commercially. I started residentially. That’s in home sales. So you likability has to be all the way up. People have to really like you because there’ll be somebody who can beat your price. But if they can’t match how someone feels about you when you step out of their door, that sale is yours.

Yeah, I could definitely be cynical. I remember back in college, you know. The environment that we kind of grew up in, you kind of like we tell it how it is. So imagine you’re in a classroom and you’re hearing like teachers saying certain things that I remember you to is like arguing with teachers all the time. It was it was funny that I was in a room with you and I remember was like doing portfolio you was talking about like a logo and you guys were going at it.

So to hear that you took you took like less of a defense and you went to more office and it you’ve you’ve tailored it to where now you could deliver the package and sell it without having to go head to head with somebody is definitely interesting journey.

And is a skill that I had to learn because coming from New York and I come from a West Indian background, and if anybody knows the West Indian background, everything is extremely direct.

So it’s not I can’t say I learned soft skills at home, but I got learned. I learned it from getting knocked around in business.

And like you said, and before I would go head to head and sometimes it was abrasive and unnecessary. I needed to learn how to balance what I’m saying. Do you want to be right or do you want to get the W? You know what I mean? Do you want to do you do you want a resolution or you just want to be right there?

So I had to get rid of that. I’m right to learn. Well, the customer’s right or I can see another perspective. And being in the business field and needing to get on on the same page with my customer created another mindset for me. I’m glad you brought that up because I thought about that the other day, like I had a little trouble in school, but it was like it was like jailhouse rules.

It was like you were shagging teachers. But it was it was definitely it was a hilarious time. But see, you grew out of that is definitely a blessing as well. So, I mean, just going back into that topic.

Right. So what’s the worst experience you had? You said he was beating the street, walking five miles. So, I mean, you coming in cold turkey like you’re coming into someone’s business, they’re thinking you’re probably going to buy something and then you’re like, no, I’m not buying. So I’m trying to sell you something. What’s the worst experience you’ve had knocking on doors like that? Well, it was when my car had broke down and I needed I still needed to get out there and where I was living the bus schedule, it didn’t make sense to really get on a bus.

But I have to get off every stop to stop at the next shopping center or business avenue area.

So I would get to walking.

The worst experience I had, what was the most embarrassing anyway, is I was walking down the street and, you know, it’s a busy street.

So all the business owners are driving past me as I’m walking to their establishment. And I walked into this one like it was an insurance company.

And she said, well. She was very honest. And she said, you’re sweating.

I said, yes, ma’am, I actually walked here, I actually walked here and she was like, Yeah, we saw you on the road, you know, the guy with a full with a full three piece suit on and a laptop walking this far on this road.

It was it was kind of like an industrial area. And, you know, that’s usually a little bit away from everyone. So it was a long walk. As she said to me, well, if you don’t have a vehicle, if you don’t and you have to walk here, you look a little sketchy.

I’m like, well, ma’am, my car broke down. This is one of the reasons why I’m walking here, etc..

So I went into this whole speech. She like what I had to say, but she was messing with me a little bit. So she’s like, all right, come back for the check tomorrow. But if you don’t get here by nine o’clock, the deal is off and Andrew.

I walked into the building at nine 04 and sees it now. At this time, I know I’m late. So, you know, I was running right here and I messed up my good shoes and I’m there and now I’m in, if I may.

OK, OK. I’m just gonna tell I’m sorry. I’m not a fool. I don’t think she’s gonna think it’s a big deal, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. She said, let this be a lesson to you, young man.

Deadlines, the deadlines. I’m not doing it, and I walked out of the devastated. First, how angry at her as a natural response, like, oh, it was only four minutes, but by the time that long walk home, I was like, you know what, it’s my fault. I committed long time and a schedule. No matter my personal situation, you have to honor your commitments. And what I learned that day, that kick in the pants she gave me that day, I kept to it.

And it’s helped me to become more successful in the businesses that I do.

Yeah, I mean, I love a story that’s a hell of a story. Yeah, and even in that time I got one of those other story. I discovered the power of me. And what I mean by that is I thought I could do business.

I thought I can you know, you look cocky, you coming out and thought I knew something, you know what I mean?

But life was kicking me in the pants and I didn’t come from entrepreneurs.

Everybody was saying, I mean, just go get a job with some benefits.

But I was like, no, I don’t want that. And everybody’s looking at me like, what? What’s wrong with you? And I’m like, why would you go that way?

I can do this.

And it became a struggle where even talking to some people, they look like they’re like, all right, once he once he fails, he’ll come to reality family members to like, you know, like once let’s let him drown a little bit like the water getting his nose once the water gets in his nose. He can come here. I can I can get him started the next job at the bank or wherever you get what I’m saying. So. I was defiant like you, like you said, I was under fire, like this is going to work.

Now, everything was going wrong for me. Like I told you, the car went out. I had a part time job that went away. I was doing taxes for I think it was all black and that went away. And the struggle was just it was just crazy and. I was at my last my rent was due I mean, this is this is maybe 20 years ago that my rent was due. Nothing was working for me. And I said to myself, and in three days, I’m not only Kahless, I’m homeless.

What am I going to do? I said, you know what, this has to work, I’m not coming home today without fifteen hundred dollars.

I’m not coming home if I don’t get it, and I said that to myself. So I put my laptop on my back, started walking another five miles a day. And I. Was discouraged at first, but the more I started to walk and the more I got into my this is going to work, I’m going to make this work, I’m going to make this work. I looked at a business. It was a a. A child play center with the inflatables, the slides and all that kind of stuff, I said this is perfect.

I’m not going to leave here until I get twelve hundred dollars from this person that owns this company.

No meeting. No, no. I just walked right in there, called. And I spoke to him. What I said resonated with them. I showed them what can be achieved and they went with it.

I walked out of there with exactly what I said I was going to walk out of there with. And I looked at the check and I I literally trembled a little bit.

I was like, wow. Do you mean I could speak what’s happening in my life into existence so I could do this one time I keep doing this?

Oh damn right, I can keep digging into my life and keep pushing forward and change in my reality. I think that’s when I learned there’s no fate but what we make. We have to make it for ourselves. It’s important that you bring that up because, I mean, in the past couple episodes that you’re like maybe the third or fourth person is kind of indirectly brought up, like the secret or the laws of attraction. And and I think a lot of people think it’s B.S., But the reality is that it’s real.

If you apply the actions, you apply the actions. You stepped out, you walked out, you got the nod, you came back. You walk them down five miles in that five mile journey. You were like focusing on the results, not focusing on what happened the day before. So when you got to know your confidence level through the damn roof, your delivery was probably flawless. You probably wasn’t sweating. You see them saying and then you gave them the results that they probably were looking for, but they didn’t know how to find it.

And then you walked out with the DanceSport pointed out exactly what you were going and thinking about. So, I mean, that comments to kind of where you were to where you are right now. So in in in the journey. Right. Like, what is your business structures like?

I mean, are you more of LLC s corporate sector? How is your. Because you got multiple businesses. How they structured. Correct.

Now that’s another thing that I had to learn that there’s three phases to.

To money, and that was that was a big thing for me and I got through listening to people online, there is earning money, there’s multiplying money and there’s protecting money.

So what I had to learn is your business structure is what protects your money. I was one of the biggest protectors of the money that you bring in.

So initially I was an LLC. And I was doing I was attached to my personal my personal information, and then I had to learn that’s not the best way to do it.

The business has to be independent of, you know, my business journey has been trial and error and kind of learning on the fly.

And then I started to learn about holding companies escort’s putting things together under one umbrella, especially when you have multiple businesses.

It’s the best bet. So when I started to do was develop a holding company. I put the businesses under those and keep myself as the chairman of the whole company, and I actually work in the businesses as well. So it’s basically under one umbrella that branches out into different aspects of business.

And it allows me to kind of synergize them and they can work together and make money together.

Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s insightful information. And I think a lot of people think it’s just OK to start with an LLC. And it is I must say, I’m a NOC. I rather have an LLC that have nothing at all.

The lease you get nothing, correct? Yeah, you get a little bit. But once you understand how to move money and manipulate money between EZCORP, see Korps and LLC and having umbrella companies and holding companies, the structures are completely different. And that’s why I like the billionaires, all the billionaires, because they structure it and they move money around. So they beat taxes at different times of the year and just people understanding their philosophy. Once you get on that journey, you’ve got to structure your things correctly.

So. Check and see when that journey started for me, I did I didn’t know all these things, the people, the business level, my business network level was get you an LLC. That’s where you start. And that’s what everybody was telling me.

And then I had to go ahead to file separate paperwork to get higher up ESADE doing the S corp.

Of course, when the money became enough for me to put myself on salary because at first I was just commingling funds left and right, left, right, left and right, and then having a right tax accountant tell you, hey, you’re going to have to separate these things so that you can get you can have your business more structured and then learning, of course, about business credit and personal credit and the difference between the two and how it’s not wise to exhaust your personal credit like you because you can’t use it the same way just because of utilization.

When you have business credit you’re using utilization doesn’t really matter as much. But of course, because you’re expected to use your business, expected to utilize it when it comes to personal credit, it’s the exact opposite. The more utilization, the worse the numbers become. So I think it was just a learning game for me and putting all the different pieces together.

So with all the different pieces, I mean, what systems do you have in place to manage and juggle all these different things? I have become very disciplined on. My time. Time management is pretty much everything, because when you when you don’t manage your time, so many things get left off.

And I don’t have a big staff. I have there’s a few people that work with me. I try to delegate some things, but I still like a little bit of control. And to be honest of what’s happening and the product that’s being delivered to the customer or.

So what I do is I discipline myself, I work on this for three hours, I work on this for three hours, and I work on this for two hours and juggle in between the two. Sometimes I move the schedule around. But right now I have about three businesses and I like to plan what I do in those businesses, honestly, two years in advance. Some of the things that are coming out now that I’m doing, I’ve been thinking about for quite some time and researching and formulating an idea of how to put it together.

So management of time is pretty much the most important thing that I do.

Oh, OK, so let’s define your three business structures, right? I mean, you have the installation’s, right? And that’s one. The other one now is the new observe network. And so what’s your third business model? Well, it’s actually it’s actually broken into three, so. Blind L.L.C. is a residential window treatment, commercial, residential and commercial company, so basically that was the first business that I started with, but it’s mainly for residential and it only handles window treatments.

But as I got as I advanced in the window treatment business, I noticed that there were a broad spectrum of other things that I can get into in the commercial aspect of window treatments and accessories. So what I did was I started pro commercial accessories that actually handles installation and furnishing of other items such as a.D.A grab bars for people in wheelchairs, the bathroom accessories, the bathroom partitions. We hang up huge projection screens.

So the little things that you will go into a hospital or or an office space and use, but don’t think much of it is what my company stepped into as an expansion from Blind LLC that you got your. Of course.

Yeah, because there was so much so many other things other than window treatments. So I was looking to expand the business because the window treatment lane is very competitive and we’re all getting pretty much the same price for the product.

So because we’re getting that you’re branding your sales is what sells the product, puts you ahead of everyone else, but if you can add additional pieces to that or you can handle you can become a one stop shop for a lot of other things, especially in the commercial space. It works better for you.

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. I mean, the business savvy is understanding that that’s a whole outside of what you were doing and being able to add it on, because lots of people will add on additional services, but they won’t do the research or they won’t have the things to support it. And it’s not usually associated. If I’m selling cars, I’m not going to be selling snowboards. Right. If I’m selling cars, I may sell tires, I may sell window tanning because they’re all relative to the one product.

So for you to go into an office and say, hey, I’m going to do your blinds, and while we’re really doing your blinds, I see you remodeling your bathrooms or you’re doing something else over here. We have the accessories to fill in. It’s a win win situation. So, yeah. So this is Dove a little bit more into like the observe network. So, I mean, you used you were saying that, you know, you follow in my footsteps a little bit and you kind of took the bull by the horns and you created this network.

So let’s talk about like, what’s this network really about and what platforms are you on and what kind of media are you going to be distributing? Well, yes, I definitely follow in your footsteps because you gave me the courage to do it like I already had these businesses going, but this is something that always kind of called me.

I love information.

And I felt like one of the reasons why I started the Observer Network is because I am unhappy with the information I’m seeing. And it was actually 20, 20 that snapped me into it and said, hey, you go ahead, go forward and give it. Thing a shot because Mason has disseminated on the news, people are getting bad business advice, they’re not getting appropriate data, is getting skewed data, or they’re giving you one side of the picture and not giving you the entire Martin.

You do? Yeah, so you were saying that it didn’t give you the other side of the market? Yes. Signal Shapir. They have got to love you got to love tech. Yeah, exactly. So let’s pick back up where you left off. You’re saying that the information in the market.

Yes, the information is skewed or one sided. I feel like everything is being.

Politicized and weaponized, and they’re using information as a tool to divide rather than to uplift, and I think especially with entrepeneurs, information is vital. Information is so vital, especially small business owners. Information is vital. I mean, if you look at Warren Buffett, he says he makes his money off of the information that he gets. He has better information than everybody else. He analyzes that information and makes his decision based on that.

But if we’re getting doctored information or just a piece of the puzzle, we had a tremendous disadvantage in the business market and competing with other people.

So that’s what I observe network is geared towards observe news anyway, it is giving people information and let them make their own decision. I try not to interject my opinion too much.

I kind of just give them the data. But sometimes it’s hard not to do so.

Yeah, and I think with that, I mean, I think and I was definitely happy that when you could I remember you called me a couple of times you actually some questions. And I was like, OK, I was like, he’s blind, he’s blind. And I’m like, it’s coming. It’s coming. So then when you dropped it, I was like, OK, OK, I see him. So I was like, OK, let’s let’s just talk about I.

In that model, right, like what’s the next step for this network? I mean, you just started it, but like you said, you plan two years out. You’re a big plantinga. So for right now, you’re doing informational. What’s the long term goal, a long term vision of of your network.

Well, the long term vision I am creating in my own platform and inviting others on it, I’m just the spear, the tip of the spear. I am concerned about what’s happening on platforms and people being de platform for the type of information that they’re giving and.

I’ve noticed with stepping into this space, and this is one of the things I have been covering lately, is if you are an influence or somebody who operates online and you use these free platforms, your audience is not really yours.

They’re loaning 80. So it is imperative for influence of influencers and entrepreneurs that are in the digital space to follow their their subscribers, their customers, to their actual websites and to their actual email or subscriber list, because you can build platforms really easy.

We saw it in the early 2000s when we were when everybody was doing the Google optimizations. And then Google changed the panda. And people that spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get to the front page of Google dropped off and dissipated.

The same thing is happening with a lot of these platforms. They are Chatel banning people, the platform, the monetizing people, and they have the right to do that because those platforms are free to you. And but they control how many people you reach. They control it when new notifications come up. So I think it’s imperative for people to have their own platform. So as far as I’m going with Observe Network, I want to create a platform that people can subscribe to that is free and uncensored.

So observe news is the first part of it, but there’ll be other shows as well with other personalities as well on the show, and eventually my plan is to slowly pull off of the other platforms and have one standalone platform and invite other companies and entities to come on and be on the platform and have their own voice and have their own controlled subscribers.

So you’re talking about your own platform. Obviously, we have Netflix, we have Hulu, and on Hulu, Hulu has an opportunity for you to create your own channel on Hulu. Right. So you talked about more so using something that already has a few million people, or are you talking about creating your own version of Hulu or your own version or like Forbes’? My own version, I would call it closer to. I think I would call it closer to Hulu than force to where people can sign on, they have I’ll be on the platform.

A lot of the shows that are connected to me will be on the platform. But I want to set up a system where. People can have their own on their own at it goes directly to them, their own funding, the framework itself is what they would be paying me for. But after they pay for the framework and the updates, that platform is theirs. This describers is theirs, is is do as you will with with it from there.

And I feel like these other platforms, that’s not the case. So I want to be where no one can shadowman you for something. You say the freedom of speech is there. You can say what you want when you want and let the market let the people decide if what you’re saying is true for one or or has any merit or not. Rather than Big Brother sitting in an office saying, oh, I don’t want you to hear that. No, we’re going this way.

I want you to go this way. And if you don’t go this way, we’re going to shut you down.

Well, that’s definitely interesting. So on your journey, right? I mean, we talked about college a little bit. We talked about, you know, growing up in New York, we always hear about the 20 years it takes someone to become successful, but it’s always perceived to be something that happened overnight. How long have you been on your journey to success? I have been an entrepreneur for about 20 years now, and I’ve been working and developing myself because we’re one of the main things that you have to do.

I met a entrepreneur and the first thing he told me is going to be he told me that you are going to be one of the most talented, unsuccessful people I’ve ever met. Now, I’m trying to impress this guy, right, because he has everything that I want. So he’s like the poster and he says to me, I see you do this, you do that. You do this, you do that, you do this. But you’re a jack of all trades, master of none.

You do everything OK. You kind of have to you’re going to have to focus on one thing, develop it and move to the next and let the other thing feed off. You’re going to have to develop yourself. Before you can develop a business, you have to develop your character before you can develop a business.

Yeah, you used to become an entrepreneur, before you actually have an entrepreneur. Eventually, your mind has to be in that space. I mean, unless you line everything up, it’ll start to work for you. So once I kind of soak that in, it helped me. Yeah, I mean, ever since he lost the light on. No. So what’s one thing you want?

Your finest people in my life? Definitely. Definitely. So what’s the one thing you would want to do differently if you could do it all over again?

If I could do it all over again, I would. In fact, the tour all over again, that’s that that’s an interesting thing, because if I change anything, then I’m not who I am and I like who I’m becoming. I like the trajectory I’m on, but. If I could change. Anything. Oh, you know, I wouldn’t change anything. The point is, is what may I tell you? The harsh criticism, the those people kicking me out of the office is what made me so I can’t say some of the some of the negative things that have happened.

I’ve been the best thing that ever happened to me because they shaped me. Your victories don’t really shape you. They make you feel good in the moment. But it’s your failures that shape you and shape your mentality. Like I gave you the story of when I went into that office to to do the website.

I came up with that check and I discovered the power of me. I still do that to this day. I have a client of mine that I walked into. I had no appointment.

I heard about the company, I worked right in there for the first three times I went, he didn’t see me. I just sat in his office, I sat in his waiting area and his secretary gave me an excuse until the fourth time that I went there. And he’s like, Are you the AT&T guy trying to sell me?

AT&T is like, no, I have a commercial accessories company and it’s an installation company and I want to do business with you.

He’s like, I thought you were the AT&T guy, that’s this easy gate. He brought me into the office and then I spoke to him and told him what we can do and how we can work together and how. He’s been a viable source companies, a large company to a viable source of revenue for my company for years now. So it’s a determination and some of the failures that may be kicking me out of the office be going through through that other project, it pushed me into the person that I am that they take no take no for an answer.

Don’t take no for an answer.

So which would you hustle that you’ve always had the hustle?

I mean, that’s one of the things I think that you and I, we’ve always had that commonality, and that’s why we’ve been friends as long as we have, because, you know, it’s always about who your circle and who’s pushing you, whether you talk to them every day. You don’t talk to them every day, but you see what they’re doing. And you like that. That’s that’s that’s fire, you know, say fire under me to kind of keep moving forward.

Right. So exactly.

So you come from an entrepreneurial family. I mean, that hustle has to come generically from somewhere. Man Like where did it come from? You know, I get that all the time, well, my family, my family, you know, I’m first born in America of my mother and father are Jamaican.

And I think some of that hustle comes from the island culture because, you know, they go at it. They always used to make these jokes about Jamaicans having 30 jobs.

Exactly. So I think that that I got that from from them.

And in my grandfather, my grandfather was a very disciplined man. And my early years I lived my mother lived with their parents.

And my my grandfather was a person that after six a.m., there’s no almost sleeping in his house.

That’s laziness. He would tell me school was a luxury for him when he was coming up, he had to buy time. He was old enough to pick up a plow. He needed to farm in the mornings and then walk 10 miles to school. That was that was his that was his luxury to be able to go to school.

And I’m like grandpas. I don’t even you I don’t want to go to school.

But he gave me a sense of discipline because he would make me sign my name over and over and over and over and over again. He’s like, Yvonne, I work at a bank if I see a sloppy signature.

I can tell whether this person is means what they say and if they’ll keep their word, your signature is everything. So he drilled me on certain things and he created a level of discipline and in me early on.

So you’re telling me come. I’m thinking like, so your grandfather is going to look back and be like only five miles. That’s it. You walking five miles. Why are you sweating? He’s looking at you. I walk 10 miles. That’s all was five. He would laugh at that story, he would say, that’s it, because you like you know, it’s Alex. So you say good bye bye.

Good for you. That’s funny, man.

But. Yeah, but as far as entrepreneurs know, there’s not a lot of entrepreneurs in my family, but they’re very disciplined, hardworking people, and I think that that helps me both boost my understanding of business.

And I take the same approach.

Yeah. So, I mean, it doesn’t have a commonality that you and I share. I mean, obviously my parents are from the islands as well. I’m from Trinidad. So, you know, in the island culture, its family is pretty much everything not to say in the US soil is not. But just in the small islands, it’s kind of like, you know, your aunts and uncles, everybody is all in one unit to a certain extent.

So how do you juggle your work life with your family life? Well, I think that’s the that’s the hardest part for me, because I get I don’t see you as much anymore, a lot, but it takes a lot a lot of hours and a lot of isolation to be able to to think on the level that I have to to be able to achieve what I’m trying to achieve. So I isolate myself a lot. But as soon as I can, I call everybody and try to jump back in and everybody’s like, you know what you mean, but.

Isolation has been good for me. So you’ve been isolated to to to a point to where your family is saying that, hey, they’re not seeing you anymore, right. Or you’re also you’re married as well. So what is your morning routine look like?

So you tell me you think you wake up pretty early. What’s your habits every single morning? See, the good thing about being married, my wife was very disciplined as well, so, you know, she she she she understands what I have to do and she does it as well. She’s she’s a workout queen, as I call it. She likes to work out. She works out six days a week. She wakes up at five o’clock in the morning to go work out before she goes to work.

So she lives a very disciplined life as well. So when she gets up, she inspires me to get up even when I’m tired, when I hear that door slams, she’s like, I’m going to the gym bag. I get up and start my day from there. So I usually start my day from about six o’clock in the morning. And I may work until seven or eight o’clock, sometimes even later on.

But I try to balance it, we have our date nights twice a week, and we we worked it out now with another character, a woman that didn’t understand the vision that I have.

It might have been a little bit more difficult, but like I said, she’s a very successful and driven person herself. So she likes the hustle.

I mean, it’s funny. I mean, the chemistry of your other half is a dynamic factor to your success. And I think a lot of people don’t realize a lot of times when you see somebody that’s highly successful, they’re kind of like I always compare them to their the Steve Jobs bill behind every Steve Jobs. There’s a Wasner somewhere. Right. And the wise is usually the other spouse, whether it’s male or female, whether it’s the wife or husband.

There is somebody else supporting that person that’s in front the camera. And if you don’t have that right chemistry, you have that right support like that’s going to be part of your failure in the long run, whether you like it or not. Correct, and see, my wife is a televise this type of person, so that’s always been beneficial to me as well, because I’m a person, I’m a go getter. I’ll keep going if you get what I’m saying.

Oh, yeah, and sometimes she’s like, Whoa! You need to rethink this thing. Stop beating your head against this wall. You need to go around the wall like, you know, sometimes you need to stop when there’s resistance.

I hear people say, never quit, never give up, never give up. But sometimes you need to quit and then you need to learn when to revisit. You get what I’m saying. Sometimes you need to stop because your approach is wrong. Sometimes you need to look another way. But if you’re so busy in the fight. Mike Tyson said it. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth room. Everybody has a strategy as they’re going to rule.

Exactly.

And what makes a good fighter is the ability to think and adjust. Why are you taking those punches? You got to be under the pressure, so she helps me get the exact. So how do you take those punches and tells me you need to turn this way? So in addition to your morning routines, I’ve been on this podcast for a period of time and I’ve asked people what books they’re reading. So by doing that, I decided to create a book club.

So this year, you know, the book club is launching.

So I’m going to ask you what books have helped you get to where you are and what books would you recommend and what books are you currently reading right now?

You know what, I don’t have a whole lot of time to read, so what I do is audio books. I do a lot of audio books. I might be doing maybe eight a month with audio books.

I have the audio subscription. So when I’m driving or any downtime, I like to feed my mind with good information. I’ve had a variety of books. The richest man in Babylon was a really good one for. I know if you heard of that one. Oh yeah. All the Robert Green book.

Exactly how like Robert Greene’s books, The 48 Laws of Power is OK. But I really like the mystery book about humility and learning from other people and staying in your lane and understanding your lane and growing from there. So I like mastery. The laws of attraction. Of course I liked. The five second rule. About doing things that you don’t want to do. But in the first five seconds, when your body rejects it, if you push forward, you can get over the hump.

So those were some some pretty big bucks for me. So you brought up a couple of books that I’ve read, every one of the books that that you’re talking about. I think the 40 Lhasa’s is one of those books that’s like timeless is always synonymous with jail. Right. It’s always been some people in jail read it for that long and they take over the Damjan because they read the book. But have you read the I think it’s the nine of the 50 law that 50 Cent co-wrote with Robert.

Have you read that one? Correct, I’m on my third 50 cent book, I like his books for some reason, they’re pretty good. It definitely he’s not grimy, but he’s very studious with his definitions and it’s characterizing of what should be done in business. I definitely see your point. I love 50 books as well. And your fifth your five second rule like that book is one of the books that I’ve made recommendations for in the past, like 12 months repeatedly.

Could it just it makes sense. Like you said with your wife, she wakes up at five o’clock. You may be hesitant to get up and you count to five and you’re like, well, shit, I’ve got to get up. I got no choice but to get up. And that five seconds is only five because your waist and after that, you’re on the move. Now on the move. Exactly, Nancy. One of the things I like even bringing back the 50 Cent is there’s a level of viciousness that you have to have in business if you don’t have somewhat of a predator mindset when I mean by that is the strength and will try to capitalize on situations and push yourself forward.

If you’re passive in business, you won’t make it.

So that’s one of the reasons why I like him. But when you were saying about. The discipline, yeah, the five second rule, it has helped me a lot because sometimes I don’t want to do something you don’t feel like doing it. You might make a million excuses because your body isn’t is in self-preservation mode.

So anything that you deem taxing or or that will cause any type of pain, your body, your mind will create a scenario for you to reject it and.

Pushing past that barrier has helped me a lot. There’s helped me a lot. So I don’t start when I’m tired, I start when I’m done. As has definitely room. So what do you see yourself in 20 years now? In 20 years from now, I have a plan to retire, semi retire anyway.

I don’t see myself living in the US at that time, I think I’ll be bouncing back and forth from different countries. I’ve always wanted to live abroad and I see the business, especially the media business, growing to a point where it’s a national network and from their international. Well. So that’s my plan to to grow the observer network to the point where it’s a media conglomerate, a global media conglomerate.

I know people don’t like the word conglomerate anymore, big business, but that’s that’s one of the main things where people get in business they want to grow.

Well, yeah. I mean, how far do you want to grow? As much as possible. That should be everyone’s answer. Do you want to get in as strong as possible?

How wealthy do you want to be? As well as wealthy as I possibly can.

Yeah, well, in a time frame that you have to deliver to people say. Correct, I’m leery of people that say I just want to be comfortable. I always feel like comfort is where people go to die, that’s permanent, this kind of death bed is a death bed of your dreams and aspirations, your growth. That’s a death bed right there, because once you’re comfortable, there’s no there’s no dreams. There’s no aspirations to push you forward.

There’s no fire. You’re OK.

Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, when I fire, I mean, so so slow down. So we with ourselves moving technically, you’re still if you’re still you’re dead. So I definitely understand that.

Yeah. That’s a good way of putting it. So comfort is not something I’m looking for. I’m looking for I’m constantly putting myself and the businesses under new forms of pressure, like I said, expanding with new products, stepping into the new arenas, facing new challenges. And it helps me to continue to grow. If I am addicted to anything, I would say I’m addicted to growth. That’s very important to me more than money or that even the businesses themselves, the growth, the journey is what really makes you.

No, don’t do the journey and you get straight. Have you ever heard of the Jewish proverb about the lobster? And so it’s it’s a Jewish proverb that says lobsters only change their shells and grow into shells when they’re under pressure. So as they begin to grow and they become under pressure is when they change. So so he was like, think about growth the same way for for for people in general. If you’re not under pressure, how are you going to grow?

Much like a lobster of the lobster doesn’t feel any pressure. It will stay stagnant and it won’t continue to grow and it won’t change its shell to another shell. So it’s the same thing with humans. If you don’t feel pressure to a certain extent, if you don’t have deadlines, if you don’t have goals, you don’t have things to achieve or something else to achieve, you become still water. And, you know, stagnant water is like water.

You can’t drink, but moving water you can write. So just understand the differences between those things.

It’s something that that you just brought to to work the focal point that I think people need to listen to and hear to. Yes, because it’s very important to put yourself in difficult situations, like even in my company, we take on projects that we’ve never done before we let. Of course, we know that we’ve never done them before, but we instill confidence in our customers that we can handle the project and then we go from there and even in my personal life to put pressure on myself to do different things and try different ventures.

I hear a lot of people say to me that, hey, you know, when you walk in on certain things, keep it quiet, you know what I mean? Work, work in silence.

I like that to a point, but to be honest, I like to put it out there.

I like to put dates out there. I’m going to do this at this time and let it be known. Now, if I fail, if I take the embarrassment. But if I don’t put it out there, in my opinion, if you don’t set a goal for you to reach.

Because I’m competitive, so I got to compete with myself. All right, you said you had this on Tuesday and it needs to be done by Tuesday. If you don’t put that out there, if you’re not willing to risk failing to succeed.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

So what apps or tool do you use in your business that you would not be able to do what you do without. There is a lot of estimating software that is extremely important to the commercial accessories company, and there is like there call plants with blubbing, there’s a lot of apps that help us look at blueprints and be able to take measurements and dictate what’s happening.

On a project or a new and upcoming projects very easily, because if you’ve ever seen blueprints like 60 pages and they’re huge and you have to be able to find what you need and be able to get the correct information from it very quickly. So that’s one of the most important tools that we have, is the estimating software for the commercial accessories company and then we use other platforms to find the bids. That’s another important aspect of it, too, which would be something like Plan Hub, where you can go on there, you pay a subscription and they actually find and put together all the bids that are happening in your area in a geographical and geographical area.

So you can put in one hundred and fifty miles, two hundred miles an election on all the projects, who’s running the projects, who are bidding on the projects and what they need from you.

And it’s a great way to get your reputation out there if you’re in the commercial space for people to know that you exist. Because even if you don’t get the bids, because they’re going to they’re going to get three or four bidders on every project. But if you don’t get the bid, they know about you next time and they’ll send that information to you. So as far as the window treatment, the commercial accessories, those are the most valuable. So as far as.

So, look, I’m just thinking about something that you just said, right, so and it kind of off topic. Off topic. So kind of you like your networking, your networking group, your networking model.

I would think that you would probably talk to builders, developers, real estate agents, interior designers. Is that pretty much like your core network of people that you’re talking to to get these deals? Yes, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Interior designers, real estate, real estate people, brokers, yes, construction companies is where these deals come from because a lot of times in the commercial space.

There’s owners and there’s the general contractor, and then there is the subcontractors, which I would fall under. So you can’t really get directly to the owners, but you can get, of course, to the next person in line, which would be the architect through the architectural firms. The general contractor is the one who releases the bid because they are bidding directly to the owner. That’s who actually gets the direct bids. The sub bids where I would fall on that goes directly to the general contractor and he will make the decision of which ones he used because he’s also bidding for control of the project itself.

So your general contractor is your project manager. And I submit my bid to the project manager and the project manager puts the final number to get the whole thing together. He puts that together and then we submit it to the owner and the owner will have multiple general contractors that is trying to use. So everybody is bidding to get on this project. So. So anyway, so it’s funny that you just sit back and I’m thinking visually in my head.

So just to kind of talk in graphic design terminology. Right. Which you for a second here. So essentially the owner is the CEO, right?

The contractor is the is the creative director. You’re the art director and you’re delegating geographic design. Yeah, that’s it, that’s that’s the hierarchy right there. Exactly. And it actually applies to a lot of different types of businesses that you caught that. But that’s the that’s how it’s done. And as far as the subcontractor, I would submit my bid to every project manager gets that bidding on the project.

So when it goes to the owner, I’m included in each bid. But I’m not the only person doing that. I’m competing with everyone else in my space. But it’s a great business. And I and I appreciate the construction industry is very hardworking, very detailed, and we’re building a Latin America now, so it’s a good thing.

Got it. So if I’m coming out of high school, right.

And I’m graduating and I’m in college or I’m graduate from college or maybe I’m 45, I’m 60 years old and I’m leaving corporate America, what words of wisdom would you give to me as an entrepreneur starting out?

What things would you tell me? First thing I would say is know your terrain because you’re going to war. No, you’re Terrane. We all are geniuses in areas, we all have pockets of intelligence, their overall people with high IQ and there are people that have pockets of intelligence in certain areas.

I think people should always start in those areas. I think that you start there and you branch out. Because your business acumen has to grow. With your knowledge of your niece. So if you already have knowledge in a certain area and there’s a market for it, go that way. And I would also tell people stay away from misinformation. I think that follow your passion that everyone keeps saying is misinformation. I think you should follow your mind and bring your passion, which you bring passion to what you’re doing.

You don’t you don’t do because of your passion. And that is a recipe for failure, if you like, if you’re passionate about was it organic art, that does not mean you need to start a business in it. The market has to be there for it. I’ve heard people, you know, I’ve talked to people. Oh, yeah, I had a dream and I started this or, you know, my cousin was doing it, so I decided to do it or or, you know, I hear a lot of different reasons why people start businesses or I just really like it.

That’s not enough. There has to be a market for it and you have to be able to adapt to what’s happening. And you should start with something that you do know or you’re familiar with or have a network with and build your business acumen, because once your business acumen gets to a certain point, you can step into any other field. But if that business acumen is not where it needs to be, you don’t understand business language. You don’t have the ingredients to make a good cake.

You just make a mess.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely appreciate that. I mean, and if you really think about what you just said in comparison to any successful and I’m not talking about Millionaire, I’m talking about like billionaire daimio trillionaire success. Jeff Bezos an example of that. Right. He kind of started off selling books and now Amazon sells kitchen sinks.

Right. They sell them everything and then everyone must have the same thing.

Elon Musk started off on kind of the financials and then he kind of went this route. Then he was in cars and now he’s going to Mars. So it’s like, what’s the point? You have to understand business and how to sell this and how to raise equity and everything else. So I definitely think what you just said was hella fruitful going into to the next question. I mean, how could people find you like what’s what’s your web handles, your social media accounts, your URLs?

Well, you can find me on Facebook, Twitter. And Instagram at Observe Network. At Observe Network, the best place to find me, you’ve got mail. And a YouTube channel as well, observe network. All right, so this is going to the bonus round, right? So this is one of the questions that I was looking forward to here.

What your answer, because I was like I known you. I’ve been around you for a long period of time, but I have no clue what the hell you’re going to answer. Right.

So if you could spend twenty four hours with anybody dead or alive, uninterrupted for 24 hours, who would it be and why?

How many is a few people when you pick one man. We both love?

Oh man, that’s hard. Who would I spend time with? Malcolm X.

Malcolm X, I got to be honest, it would be Malcolm X, I still look at some of his old videos to this day and his delivery.

Of what needed to be said and the way he can answer a question and by answering the question, expose your intent for asking the question, because you have to remember what he was dealing with at the time was extreme racism and a disrespect for the the the black man’s IQ.

So he would be targeted questions, questions that people thought would stump him. And you could actually see their face change in the interview when he was able to answer the question articulately and expose the intent behind what they were saying. So as far as a prolific speaker, I would have to say Malcolm X..

Well, it’s funny that that, you know, of us are martial arts guys.

So I was going to say Bruce Lee. Oh, yeah, yeah. Bruce is another. Yeah. Bruce is the beast to.

It’s funny that you brought up Malcolm because I recently was watching Netflix a night in Miami. So, you know, as I’m watching, like, these documentary style movies that that are like really big now. Right. And I’m understanding that like this, Ali, there’s Malcolm, there’s Sam Cooke and there’s this Brown. And I’m like, OK, one. I didn’t even realize that all four of them were interlocked like that.

I’ve seen video of Sam Cooke and Ali. I’ve seen videos with Lee and Malcolm, but I didn’t know all four of them were like in a unit like that. So I started researching like I mean, just look at like what’s their networks looking like. Right. But, you know, birds of a feather flock together. Right. So I’m looking at a gym is like at 40 million right now. That’s like that’s a total net worth. Then I’m looking at Mike Lee and I think Ali was like 80 million or something like that.

And then I look at Sam Cooke and Sam Cooke is like, I have a whole newfound respect for Sam Cooke like that. Do if you don’t if you get a chance like you want to talk about something.

And if you look at Sam Cooke, what he did back then and he owned his record label, he understood the model of royalties or he had artists under his label that were complaining about they wrote a song, but they weren’t getting airplay. So he was like, OK, we know what, let’s sell it to these rock bands. Let’s sell it to these other groups, because we know that they’re going to get on the top of the charts.

But you as a writer, you’re going to get royalties. So imagine getting royalties and thousands versus 10 million. Will this group of people are going to take it to ten million versus your group is going to keep it at ten thousand.

So he facilitated hearing it into another genre to make it a top Boort top seller on the Billboard charts to eat on the royalties. So his network, when he when he passed away, was like the equivalent of a hundred million dollars from, like forever ago.

And then. Yeah, and then I look at it malkia, I’m OK. Malcolm is the anomaly in that equation. So you have three millionaires, right? About multimillionaire’s, like ten million dollars is like where you should be if you’re going to live off of that forever. Right. And then Malcolm, his network was one hundred and fifty thousand. I’m like, what the like how is that even. So the money but you see, that’s one of the things that was happening in that time, and I like that time better than what we are doing now as far as protesting and and speaking about injustices, because at this point.

Well, back then, the entertainers and the football stars and people that were making a certain amount of money would funnel money to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

That’s how like even Harry Belafonte, Harry Belafonte was beloved by everyone.

He wouldn’t speak on social issues, but he funded most of the movement to get that money and fund a lot of the different movements. And so did Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and a lot of other people as well.

What’s happening now?

I feel like a lot of misinformed entertainers are being pushed to the forefront to speak on things where we really need a Malcolm again, we really need a Martin again. You get what I’m saying, someone who is focused on these things. Yeah, yeah, definitely, I mean, I definitely agree with you with that, but it just blew my mind. It’s like, you know, the part of like wealth is to leave behind essential legacies for the next generation.

Like you’re building up wealth to continue to help next generation to take it and to inspire them to create their own next generations of wealth.

And they just kind of blew my mind at three or three or four of these guys were multimillionaires and obviously three or four of them have died. And the one that you point to when I was probably most influential for the cause or influential as far as rights was the one that had the least net worth, which was completely crazy. And see, that’s one of the things that this generation will have to change, where your speakers and your people that are front line in certain issues are not going to be going to be in positive light with the establishment.

And let’s be honest, we get our money from the establishment. You understand what I’m saying?

So if you’re bucking the system, if you having someone buck the system, you need to take care of them.

They said Martin Luther King died with five thousand dollars in his account. That’s a shame that somebody should be one hundred billion, whatever we could get. He should be getting the five thousand.

It’s crazy, man. So. Last question for you, right? What is what is your most significant achievement to date? My most significant achievement to date. To be honest, I’m very proud of myself, have been able to step into this podcasting arena.

Because I have had no experience with it at all, my other companies. Of course, I told you I worked for someone for quite a bit of time.

I developed myself in these industries and then just kind of slowly adapted small pieces, extra parts to it to build it up. This stepping into the podcasting and blogging and the media side of things I’ve never been into before. What I’m doing now is strictly me paying attention to other people and analyzing the terrain and learning what needs to be done.

So I’m a bit proud of myself for being able to stretch out outside my wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah.

I definitely commend you as well to it. I’m happy that, you know, I sent you that clubhouse invite and you signed up. So I think we should probably take this off podcast and take an old clubhouse. Whenever you get an opportunity to just kind of miss that space a little bit around. I think it’ll be interesting to kind of hear you and I kind of go back, back and forth just about business. It’s about strategies on clubhouse. So I look forward to continuing this podcast in that space in addition.

So I’m going to give you the microphone.

Right. This is what I usually do at the end of my podcasts. I give the person I’m interviewing the microphone so you can ask me any question that may have come up during the journey of this podcast.

Mike, you’re. Oh. One of the main things I want to ask you is you work as hard or even harder than I do.

How do you manage your day? Because when I speak to you, you have a lot going on.

So how do you manage your day to day? And I know you have a young son. How is that? How do you do everything?

So, I mean, first of all, like to your point, before I used to do everything and everything is not what I needed to be doing. So now when you talk about doing everything, I’m doing everything with one purpose. So right now I am 100 percent, 100 percent of my focus is all into like the Boss Cage podcast and everything that’s associated to it. So I have a lot of systems, like I’m a real big system guy.

And then also, like my wife is a real big she’s an analytical thinker. She’s a treasurer of a software company. So like like we’re always working, but we’re always having these conversations about how could we systematize things. So that’s how like in this world, how I’m juggling it, because a lot of times I’ll have something. And, you know, obviously her being the treasurer, she’s really big into Excel. So over the past year or so, I really drove into Excel and understanding the formulas, understanding the structures of what Excel could really do.

So now I’ve been putting everything in Excel in from Excel prime example. What I use Excel for which most people may not use Excel for is I’ll take and this is like a jewel that I’m going to give away right now. I take bits of content, right? Whether I’m writing a book, whether I’m skipping a podcast, whether I’m talking about Post and I’ll make columns for this content and then I’ll make columns for additional information for like my book club.

I have the books, I have quotes from the authors, I have the book description. I have the rankings of the book, the reviews of the book. I have all these columns of data.

And then what I’m doing is I’m creating tabs and I’m running formulas to do variable information of these columns, to create new content for my content looks to be very fresh, but I’m scripting out all my content and his large Excel sheet and then I’m taking it and I’m fragmented over. So for Twitter, I’m saying, hey, I want you to count the characters in the cell. If the characters in a cell is longer than 250, then it shows me that, hey, this is long enough to 50 that I can go in ensuring in the original cell.

And then I could have a Facebook, then I could have an Instagram, and then I’m associating each one of these cells to images as well. So when I export out this tab, I’m important to invest V with images, the comments, everything associated to it. So it’s like I go from having one piece of content to 300, 400 pieces of content like that. That’s awesome, because I’ve looked at a lot of your stuff and your stuff is always visually amazing and well put together, even I was looking at some of your books that you have out as an author and everything is well thought out and well put together.

And and I always say me, Schnall knows how to get it done. But like you said, it’s is segmenting and having a system in place. And you’ve always been a systems guy, as far as I understand.

My next question, the merchandise. Are you designing the merchandise yourself or do you have to put together a team? So it’s a combination of both, so I originally wrote a book that had three hundred and sixty five quotes and it was a book that was going to release like a self empowerment self-improvement book.

I was like, you know, scratch that. I sort of be releasing that book as a book, as a tabletop desktop. I took all the quotes like, for example, this one, the affirmation. I am fearless. I took all those quotes and I systematized I put them into an InDesign document and I pulled in the CSV file and populated the entire document with all these quotes. So the headlines automatically flow to great. The titles automatically flow to white Ariel and they automatically force justified.

And then I exported those out. So I had three hundred sixty five designs. Like that, like that. Wow, that’s very clever. Yeah, just like that. So to your point, I mean, now I’m excited. Like I just did a graffiti piece last night just playing around. I may make one off pieces like as I like my downtown from drawing something or whatever, but like all my pieces that I have in my storefront right now, they’re all from like different quotes, different statements that I’ve been collecting in an Excel spreadsheet.

And I was just figuring out what’s the fast? Because, I mean, obviously, if you want to create these things, if you want to create one, design may take you 15 minutes an hour. Well, I’m doing three hundred sixty five of them, which just three hundred sixty five hours that I’m not willing to sit down to create this systematize.

Exactly. Wow, that’s that really shows how systems can push and propel something forward in a in a short period of time, because when I look at your branding and your merchandise is really amazing.

It’s really amazing.

I definitely appreciate that. And to think it’s I’m not even like marketing that stuff right now. I mean, it’s kind of like it’s all part of like my focus is I want to help people and understand by giving. You’re going to get in return. So that’s already sitting up there. That’s already there. So as I post a sprinkle here and there and, you know, as I get more a place like my nexus and I’m working on it like video systems and there’s a particular plug in that I have access to that allows me to create a video.

Like I could have this video on YouTube and it’ll be a little dot right here and a little dot right here. And while this video was talking, you can click on a dot and make a purchase like. That’s the next part of life. Yeah, so like this shirt would have like a little and while you watch. What’s it look that pops up? It’ll show you the product and to show you the price and why you wanted to be hit by now.

So that’s the next thing to my point. I like to create systems that I know what the benefits are. And I’m not about a short term game. I’m not the long term game. So I’m thinking about obviously you make money now. You have to live, you have to survive. But I’m thinking about once all these connections of all these dots come together. That’s when Monopoly would then expand infinitely, so I’m creating content now that I may see benefits for three years from now, I’m getting paid in the journey with two or three years from now, I may make a million dollars off my shirts.

Exactly, exactly. So it’s the process you’re trusting and putting together and putting things together, and that’s one of the most the biggest part of business is trusting the process and putting systems in place to succeed.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely. Well, I mean, you’ve got no other questions, man. I mean this. Why you’ve got another one.

One more question for your favorite book. Wow. What’s your favorite book? Believe it or not, my favorite book of all time is Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Point blank. You know what?

I forgot all about that. That is really a good one. You know what? It’s his observations. Observations are extremely important. Paying attention to the twists and turns of life and what you can benefit from observation. Take you to the next level.

Yeah, I mean, that book is kind of like the the strategy Bible. Right. And obviously, it’s kind of like Shakespearean when you read the original version is like trying to translate Shakespeare from from like an Asian culture. But like there’s so many variables of that book and so many break that it’s kind of like the Bible. The Bible had like 35000 different versions of it, the of war to 35 different versions and rewrites and everything else to it.

But the bottom line period is it’s 13 chapters that kind of pick business strategies that are coming from war strategies. Right. Like the divide and conquer. I mean, divide and conquer is not necessarily a negative thing. It’s kind of you can look at divide and conquer as I’m dividing and conquering my time.

I don’t want to spend all this different time on one thing. So how do I divide that time up? I’m going to outsource the same principle. I’m dividing and conquering, but I’m doing it in a positive way. Correct, correct, because to be honest, that that’s the only thing that you can buy back its time, so you have to be able to rightly divide it and use it to your benefit.

Because if you’re not if you’re not, if you’re not using it for your benefit, it’ll go to your detriment.

It’s one of the other is two sides of the same coin. Yeah, it’s all energy. You’re right about that.

But I definitely appreciate you taking time out of your morning schedule, man, to get on the podcast. I mean, I’ve been wanting to get you on the show for four minutes, so I’m happy that you finally stepped up to the plate and came on the mike and burned it down.

And, you know, and I appreciate you having meetings.

That great man that’s over. And now.

Founder & Owner Operator Of Blind Shade LLC & Observ Network: Javon Ingram AKA The Observe Boss – S2E26 (#54)2021-06-27T17:18:10+00:00

Founder and CEO Of CedarTree Worldwide, LLC: Myrna Clayton AKA The Ambassador Boss – S2E25 (#53)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Founder and CEO Of CedarTree Worldwide, LLC: Myrna Clayton AKA The Ambassador Boss – S2E25 (#53)

“Embrace your gift and your uniqueness. Embrace that, and then perfect that, because that will make you your money. That will make you have freedom, that will allow you to open doors that you never could have imagined.”
In Season 2, Episode 25 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with Founder & CEO of CedarTree Worldwide, LLC, Myrna Clayton. A company that provides music cultural exchange events and programming for world peace. A creative cultural arts ambassador, Myrna is a strong advocate for multi-cultural exchange, leveraging the universal language of music to help nations’ citizens experience the value of differences — and to open up pathways to embrace similarities in a post-pandemic world, set for world peace.  Myrna Clayton is a singer, performer, bandleader, songwriter, producer, and social entrepreneur. She is also the founder and Executive Director of SHOWAbility, a nonprofit organization that supports individuals with visible and invisible disabilities, and advances disability performing arts and performing artists.
“I’ve been singing since I was five and I recognized later on that it was a gift. When you’re complimented by things and just things that come naturally, you don’t really know. But you kind of discover later on that it’s a gift.”
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • The power of finding and recognizing your gifts
  • Life as a cultural ambassador
  • And so much more!
Want more details on how to contact Myrna? Check out the links below!

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S2E25 – Myrna Clayton – powered by Happy Scribe

The report here. All right, three, two, one, welcome. Welcome back to Boss podcast on today’s show. It’s interesting because, I mean, she’s an industry legend, right? And I’m going to give you a little bit of like of who she is, and then I’ll let her fill in with all the details. So she is a cultural ambassador for one, right? She’s a singer and performer. She is a producer, a non-profit leader, a social entrepreneur, a singer, performer, producer again. And you think about that, right? I said that twice for a reason. And then she’s also known as the American song-bird. I’ve deemed her the ambassador boss for obvious reasons. So without further do, Merner, the floor is yours.

Who are you? Wow, that’s that’s pretty. That that sounds good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, I am a creative cultural arts ambassador, and right now I’m deeming myself the performing arts pacesetter for post-pandemic live performances. That’s how I’m doing myself. But in addition to that, I am also a strong advocate for cultural exchange and for performing disability performing arts performing artists.

So let’s set the stage right now. Anyone that would look up your name, they’re going to be completely flooded with, like who you are and what your legacy. So, like, just to just tell a little piece of like, who are you and what have you done for your entire life?

My entire life.

Yeah. I mean, the reality is, is that you were born to do what you’re doing. So let’s talk about that.

OK, well, I’ve been singing since I was five and I recognized later on that it was a gift. When you’re complimented by things and just things that come natural, you don’t really know. But you kind of discover later on that it’s a gift. And so I was taught to go to college and get my master’s degree. So I have an MBA and worked in corporate America in marketing and marketing research, and so went along that path and then discovered that my ladder of success was on the wrong wall. And so I had to come down and move my ladder to the right wall, which is recognizing that space that made me most happy. And performing and singing is what made me most happy. And so I shifted and went in that direction, change careers and went in that direction. And so I’ve been performing a bandleader, solo artist, traveling around the world and kind of just kind of enjoying what I do and figuring out how to do it in a better way, in a different way than many of the artists that I’ve seen perform because I started in this career later, you know, than many others.

So, I mean, I want people to understand that I mean, you hear about artists and on a local level versus like a national level versus international level where you’ve had the pleasure to, like you said before, fly around the world. You had opportunities, I think, in Russia. So I’m not going to talk about that like that journey. To a certain extent. Most musicians or artists are content being in their their their country of origin but you seem like you’re more content being more of a global image.

Well, you know what? It’s funny. I can’t say that artists are content being in their local area. I think that they just don’t know how to get out and go further. And I’m I have the attention span of a gnat and I’m curious as a bird. And so I’m like, OK, there’s something else that has to be done. And in addition to that, and I have to give props to the Lord Almighty, because I actually heard in my spirit, worldwide ministry and music and ministry was not church, ministry was nations and that was very clear. That’s all I knew at the time. And so that was, you know, next year will be 20 years and is at that point that I knew the direction was international and and worldwide. And here’s the funny thing. I began asking people in the Atlanta area, hey, who books international, you know, asking questions, curious, how do I do this? Where do I go? And and I kid you not everybody that I asked said, I don’t know. When you find out, you tell me, you know. And so at that point, I decided to leave Atlanta for a minute, however long it was going to take. And a friend of mine invited me to come to D.C. She said, you could come here, you can stay, and you have a place to stay. You got food to eat and at that point, I was like, cool, you know? So I left Atlanta and went there thinking that I was going to ultimately get to New York. And while there, I began going to all the jam sessions so nobody knew me. So I began to go to all the jam sessions that performed so that I could get to know musicians and performers and everybody I. I was asking, do you know who books and I was that’s that was my focus. Do you know who books international? And while I was there, this gentleman said to me matter of factly, the State Department don’t you know, like know who would know that only people in D.C. would know that, you know? And so that is how I ultimately became aware. The State Department books performers to travel abroad. Now, my job was performing abroad before that, and that became through relationships by my tours to Russia, actually came while I was in D.C. and it wasn’t through the State Department. But I was. But because I was asking everybody that uncle, who do you know that books international, that that’s what started coming to me, you know? And so so that’s kind of how it started and how it moved in that direction.

Hmm. That’s interesting. So, I mean, obviously, when I started off this podcast, you know, I labeled you multiple different things. Right. And this this is like the perception of the world viewing in on you. So I’m going to ask you a question based upon your personal perception. If you can pick three to five words, define who you are, which three to five words would you choose the.

Ambassador, cultural ambassador, that’s two words, advocate. For underserved and underrepresented and ambitious. Of follower of Christ.

So being being your ambition, I mean, obviously ambition comes with a heavy baggage of weight behind it, like everyone that thinks about ambition, things about climbing up a corporate ladder or buying something, selling something, monopolizing something. So in your business, like right now, like what are your current ambitions?

My current ambition in my first of all, my business is all about cultural exchange. And so in that being about cultural exchange and the exchange of music, the exchange of of of entertainment worldwide, globally and the why is really wanting to build curiosity and interest around world peace. And that sounds like you want world peace. Is this a pageant? No, it’s not a pageant. There’s so much going on that’s totally out of our control. And so when I travel abroad, I’m representing three entities. When I travel one, I’m a woman, too. I’m a black person. Three, I’m an American. Depending upon who I meet, that’s a positive or negative. And so I’m going in saying, hey, you should be able to talk about these things in a different way. And so when I went to Russia, they actually that the consulate wife came to me actually and said what you said from that stage was more impactful than what we’ve been able to do in months, because I’m not a politician. I’m not someone who is going to go in and I’m talking people to people. I don’t have a public, you know, public I’m not elected. And so it’s about that it’s about that cultural exchange and it’s a global market. And I’m using the universal language of jazz, the universal language of music and jazz is perceived because of its improvization as the freedom music, you know. And so all of these things from a marketing standpoint are buzz words that really have authentic meaning. It’s not hype when we talk about it. It feels like hype, but it really resonates with people. And so because of that, we have the opportunities to to really make make things happen in a different way for other cultures, including America. Here’s the crazy thing. When I go abroad, I represent America. So that’s why I’m called America’s songbird, because they need to know that I’m American will. Other countries and other citizens are getting cultural exchange, but we in America aren’t getting cultural exchange, we aren’t getting to see the benefit of other cultures, not mind you, people live here, but we don’t interact with them. We don’t know anything about them. And one of the things that I say, because I have a show and let me know what I’m talking too much. I have a I have an event that’s called Atlanta International Jazz Artist series. And I feature international artists that are based in Italy, a top international artist based in Atlanta. And my whole goal is to have that cultural exchange for Atlantans to experience other cultures here. And yes, I’m doing what consul generals are supposed to be doing here in Atlanta. But OK, that’s all right, because I’m a cultural ambassador. My title has been I’ve been given that title by the State Department, and so I take that seriously. But one of the things I say each time when I’m presenting an artist is, look, if you don’t like Mexicans, then stop eating Mexican food, because if they had not come to this country, we would not be experiencing Mexican food. If you don’t like Chinese people, then stop eating Chinese food, because if they weren’t coming here, we wouldn’t experience that if you don’t like black people, stop eating soul food, stop eating Southern cooking, because it wasn’t for us being in this country, you wouldn’t have those benefits. You go to any other country. It doesn’t exist. And so that’s where I am in terms of really bringing to people’s attention the value of differences. That’s important. And once we understand and value differences, then we can then embrace our similarities and come together and and kind of be OK with OK is cool, is cool, you know, but it takes that that exchanging and that curiosity to to go there as a matter of fact, passports. You know, if a person has a passport, then we know that they’re interested and curious or those people who want a passport. So that’s that’s what my business is about, cultural exchange.

So I mean, in that I mean, obviously, you give it a lot of insight into finding that answer, but it kind of brings me to kind of like social awareness. Right. To your point, you say three things, right? You’re a woman. First, you’re African-American and you’re American in general. So when you step into these spaces, you’re either viewed as a triple threat threat. Right. Or you could be viewed as the three golden nuggets. So what is probably the biggest obstacle or hurdle that you had to overcome, being that you are those three things in the face of adversity?

You know, that’s an excellent question. The hurdle to overcome is someone else’s perception. That’s the hurdle, because I’m coming in. And if you already have a negative perception of me, then one, I don’t know what that perception is. And then two, I then have to overcome that. Let me give you an example. One of my very first times with athletes as a singer, of course, as I mentioned, I started a little later than many and the publicist of one of the these well-known legendary jazz and popular culture producer, filmmaker, soundtracks for movies and just amazing legendary man musician. The publicist for him came to me and said. You got the look, how old are you? I said, I can see you now. He asked me nothing about can you say it was all about the look and the age? It’s old since I knew that I was older than many getting started that was not something I wanted to discuss. I wanted to discuss the fact that I can sing and I can sell records, you know, but you have a perception of me. And so that that part of the reason why I just kind of go out and perform. I’m a performer and I’m an entertainer. And so that’s what I do. And so once I get on the stage and then you can then see what I do is at that point that we can talk about other things, you know.

So, I mean, that brings me to another question right in the industry. And you have music people that just love music like they don’t pay any attention to, like the back office or to like the business structure behind the scenes. But it’s like you’re kind of in the middle, like you are a diehard musician, but you also have the business savvy. And so you understand both sides of the coin. So my next question is like being that you understand both sides of the coin, how is your business set up?

Is it an LLC as corporally Corp is an LLC?

That’s an S corporation. OK, OK. And so it’s funny because I do masterclasses on the business of music and in workshops, because many universities, they teach their students how to be performers, but they don’t teach them the business side of things. And it’s it’s also funny because, you know, James Brown said it’s called show business. Twenty-five percent show. Seventy-five percent business. You know, it’s about the business, you know, and we don’t we don’t think about that because we are gifted. We do have a passion. And so, you know, as Erykah Badu, I’m sensitive about my stuff, so I’m sensitive about this. And so but at the end of the day, if it’s not you’re not able to make money at it, then somebody’s making money, but not, you know, and so you’ve got to figure out how to make money. And that that’s that’s where I am now in this virtual world, just trying to figure it out because it’s very different. Music is free now. And so how is songwriters making money? How are performers making money? I have an issue and my friends know to deem musicians as non-essential and essential if it wasn’t for the music. If people want at home listening to music, they’d be jumping off of bridges right now. So we are essential and and society again. These various society needs to recognize that we’re essential. We’re not nonessential. And so our music is what gets in it penetrates is that unseen value and other people don’t recognize it. But but we artists know that if it wasn’t for us, there would we did more for integration than any politician. Well, you know, I mean, Ray Charles and Mahalia Jackson and others, Watts and Billie Holiday was saying, I’m not going to perform if you don’t have an integrated audience. Long before the civil rights movement was signed, so it was performers and entertainers out there sacrificing their lives and their dollars.

So there’s definitely, definitely something. So I mean, and what I’m getting from that is essentially like being that you’re both I will say you’re 50 50, right? Your half and a little boy, your half creative. Right. Being that you have that advantage, I would think that you would have some particular systems in place. And through your point, you’re educating people, you’re doing master classes, you’re doing workshops. So what systems are you educating other musicians on to help them to process the analytical side that they’re neglecting because they’re more on the creative side?

You know, it’s first of all, let me preface this by saying I am the artist. And so for me to take myself out of myself and talk business, you know, I say to my friends, I’m a canopy’s and this canopy’s needs a label. It needs seasoning, it needs marketing, these pricing. It needs all of these things. But I’m a canopy’s that talks, you know, so it matters to me how you’re going to do this to me and whether or not I agree with it or not and so it’s very difficult. It’s very challenging to to do the things for yourself especially. But that said, the systems that I talk about are really basic business systems. The fact that you need a contract, the fact that you need an attorney, the fact that you need an account, just basic business, business. And so it’s basic business you need to promote. So many artists don’t self-promote. They’re expecting the event to promote for them as opposed to promote themselves, you know, and so they don’t know how to they don’t know how and they don’t know the value or the need to and so it’s really talking basic business acumen for for them. And at that point, once we get there, once we have that awareness and that level of understanding, is that point that I’m able to talk about, things like right now, it’s very important to me to learn from experts like you in this, how to how to monetize this virtual world, understanding the importance of our website, our our social media. And, you know, for someone like me, social media is a hodgepodge but for you, it’s naming each one of them, you know, and you have a different strategy for each one. And so it becomes very much so strategic planning. Well, for the average person who’s never been even never even thought of music as a business, whoa, hold up. You know, and so when you talk systems, I know that the system as of March twenty twenty that brought in this virtual world is very different than the system of March twenty nineteen. Very well, and so what you’re doing to to to to get customers is very different today. You know, now in May, twenty, twenty-one, a whole year, a couple of months later, it’s totally different. And so I’m going to school, I’m going and learning, like I said, from experts and and utilizing the knowledge of experts, because, yes, I bring I bring a lot with me, but if I don’t continue to educate myself, then I’m going to be, you know, left behind and I’m not.But are there things that I have to do generationally that so I can’t be left behind? I’m a live to be 100 beyond performing. Let’s be clear

I see you doing that. I can see you see being that individual person being like one hundred eight years old, still harmonizing for sure.

Yeah, you go. There you go. I mean, I’ve got great leaders. Cicely Tyson. What I think she just kind of said, I’m tired. I’m ready to go now. You know, it’s just, you know, so so. Yeah.

So I mean, I think that definitely, definitely really, really, really intriguing and really interesting. Right. Because, again, you you’re taking all these years of experience and everybody’s listening to this podcast. If you have not Googled yet, I think you should Google her before this episode is over so you can kind of really see this legacy. Right, because so some people you may be perceived to be an overnight success. To some people, they’re like, oh, my God, it’s her.

Right. So it kind of bridged the gap between the two like. Back it up a little bit, like when when did your. What long did it take you to become who you are, like, when did it really start and when did you really realize that you’re this person? It has got to be able to influence the world.

Here’s the funny thing, Schnall, I’m still becoming I’m real clear, I’m still becoming, I am still emerging. I am still developing. I haven’t gotten there yet. Wherever there is. I haven’t gotten there yet. But it’s but the path was the first thing was acknowledging and accepting what it is that I love to do. So many people don’t take the time to really assess what they’re good at there. So we’re so busy running and doing what other people expect of us to do that we don’t stop and really assess.

You know, this doesn’t make me happy. OK, so what does not tell me? What doesn’t make you happy? Tell me what does make you happy and when you start figuring that out. And so I finally figured that out, which meant a significant career change, a significant financial change for me. But I, I was willing to take that risk. And so in that I began performing, of course, for free, because whatever you love to do, you do for free.

And then began perfecting my gift and my skill. And I used to sing down at underground Atlanta back in the early 20s for free. They didn’t pay me, however, for tips. And so I began mastering how what songs would draw people over, because only if they came over with they took me or my product, otherwise they’d be walking. So I had to figure out what’s what cover songs to sing, to get them to come over so that I could get paid.

And so I learned from there in addition. And from there, one of my very dear friends arranged me, hooked me up, I guess, if you will, with the owner of a restaurant is now closed called Machans. And I was their first weekly performer there every Friday night. And I performed there every Friday night for two and a half years. And there I learned not only one, that I’m I’m the bandleader. And so that means that I’m paying my musicians.

And so every week these musicians are getting paid. And so I’m providing a significant amount of money for them monthly. You know, that that’s coming through me. For them, it’s not pouring money into somebody else’s household. So I’m an employer, you know, and so this mindset of things. And so at Machans, I learned how to really entertain the audience because these people are eating, you know. And so here we are in front of the audience.

We’re not background music. We’re there. And so my goal became, OK, I want you, because they were known for their smoked food, the smoked meats and stuff. And so my goal every Friday night was to get someone who’s having a conversation with their friends to then be in the middle of a bite and look over at the band. And, you know, so to me, it became I’m looking to engage, I’m looking to draw you in, you know?

And so it’s that kind of me as a performer because I’m looking for entertainment. I go, I spend my money, I’m looking for entertainment. And so when I perform, I’m wanting some I assume somebody else wants that to and they want that entertainment. And so whatever productions or whatever shows I do, because now not only am I doing my own, I’m bringing other artists and doing other performers and giving them platforms to do the same. As a matter of fact, that’s what I want to do more than anything, is to not only me perform abroad, but me to facilitate others performing abroad.

And so but I’m going ahead to give them the opportunity and and to build my brand so that when people say, you know, when people know Clayton or the American songbird or my business, they see the tree worldwide is doing something. And there’s a a brand awareness of the quality and the level of entertainment that we’re going to bring.

So in that I think you talked about, there was a Segway. It was kind of a shift. So from the day to that shift, roughly, how long is that that that timeframe in.

Shift from the awareness to making it happen. Yeah, you’re starting the process for me. For me, that was at least about seven to seven to eight to nine to ten years, because, of course, I’m working in corporate. And so the the the thoughts of girl. Are you crazy personal conversations, me and the Lord, you know, conversations about. OK, wait, you want to do this, you know, and then moving and positioning myself, I literally told my mother, hey, I’m going to do this.

I may need to come home and stay with you. You know, me going because me me I was married, had a child and I my husband and I divorced. And so my child, I was I was I was at that point a single mom. And it was like, oh, wow. I never thought of myself as a single mom. I never call myself a single mom. But I had a daughter that needed to be taken care of.

And so all of these processes. So you ask the question to shift the awareness came before the shift came. And then because there was a lot of self talk, you know, how what and and in that I’m hearing the spirit. And and so at that point I’m like, OK, now I’ve got to do this. I have to do this. I can’t not do this. You know, I’m going to be miserable not. And the miserable, happy, miserable, happy.

I think I’ll choose happy and it’s OK. Let’s figure out how to earn and make a living being happy because all you going to pay me to do this. Oh, yay. You know, so then after that decision you ask but after that decision then came, OK, how do I start making money. And that’s where the business knowledge came because OK, I needed to differentiate myself from the competition. I needed to establish a brand image when I’m performing a certain look, all those things that you know about business, then at that point, you know, start going and then came looking at international, you know, that.

And so it was more it was more like that, just kind of going through those steps and the process now. And I hurt in twenty two from the Holy Spirit worldwide ministry and music. OK, and so just to give you a timeline like that happen as I was doing the transition and so that that time came. And so now it’s 20 years next to be 20 years and I’m still getting in that process if I’m not there yet. So so it’s been 20 plus years.

So take this right. I mean, obviously, when you’re singing and I’ve watched some of your performances online and it looks like like you’re there but you’re not there, it’s kind of like you’re traveling between space and time and you’re trying to connect history to the future, to the present all the same time in that moment that you’re singing. Right. So let’s take that. You’re singing, you’re harmonizing, and you can time travel back into time, right?

In the last twenty years. Thirty years, is there one thing that you would want to go back in time and do differently if you could do it all over you?

You know Schnall. I would have been obedient and to my girl to what the spirit was telling me to do, as opposed to second guessing and thinking that I knew better or because this was happening that I need to you know, it’s it’s following that inner knowing. As opposed to well, it doesn’t look now that so. So even if it was even if someone seemed to be a hindrance, ultimately I discovered they weren’t a hindrance, but I made them dead.

And so I’m really following following my good, my good, my inner, my inner. Knowing the Holy Spirit, I really want to refer to it. But it is really that I like it to be much more technical sounding. But for me, it’s that it literally is. Oh wow.

So. Let’s talk about, like, your history a little bit, right? I mean, obviously you went to school, you have the business savvy ness. You understand music to a level that most musicians would die for. Like does this combination of business and creativity and musical inclined, does that come from someone in your family? Do you come from an entrepreneurial background with like your dad, a musician or businessman? Like, what does it come from?

It’s a hodgepodge of. My father was a minister and a college professor who wasn’t an entrepreneur, if you will. He was an academician. However, he was a speaker. And so he got his side hustle speaking. My mom was a librarian archivist. She was actually the first archivist at the Martin Luther King Center for Social Change back in 69 when it first opened up right after dark. Fascinating. So my mom was in research and a librarian and she ultimately ultimately became the head of archives and special collections at the Library University.

However, my mom’s side hustle was Mary Kay. She was a Mary Kay director. So she saw Mary Kay. And so they both but but that was not either of their ambition to leave there and grow that business. It was because they were where they were. However, my grandmother, my mother’s mother, she both my parents, my dad, you know, ultimately had got a Ph.D. my mother had a master’s and my grandmother who didn’t finish high school, had property.

All had people working for her, you know, and always had money and, hey, you know, she always was able to lend and people could pay her back. And so it was my grandmother who is the one that that had that business and it was causing that called entrepreneurism. She just had her own independent thing going on. And so it was her. Now, music was both my mother and my father saying my father was a trumpeter and my father when he would pull out his trumpet, SCHNALL he would go someplace heavenly.

And I knew he was like he was he was talking with the Lord because he would he would be in his office playing once he pulled that trumpet out in that office. We knew, OK, stay out of the way. Is something going on up in here? You know? And so for me, that’s what spirituality and jazz go together. And I call what I do inspirational jazz, because the hope and the desire is to inspire someone to mind you.

Old jazz is when I started saying I do inspirational jazz. Of course, old jazz is all jazz is inspired. So I get that. I get that. But from a branding standpoint, me calling it versus bebop or fusion, you know, as a vocalist, I call it inspirational jazz. Wow.

Wow. So I mean, you alluded to I mean, your family history. You also mentioned that you have a child. So like being that you’re in a world, I mean, obviously in today’s market, travel is not as common. Right. But at one time, I think you traveled a lot, know, being that you were doing performances over in Europe and you were doing performances in Russia. So let’s talk about that for a minute. Like Turley’s, how do you juggle, like, your work life with your family life?

You know, I’m so grateful to have supportive family. I became a full time caregiver, primary caregiver, a full time caregiver of my mother in nineteen ninety nine. And so it’s been 20 years and I had to move in with my mom in 2009. And when I was doing all of this traveling and things, I actually had to say to my brother, hey, I’m not an only child. I need your help. I need you to step up, you know, and I think that many people who are caring for their parent don’t ask their siblings, you know, to, hey, can you can you can you give me an hour?

Can you give me a day? Can you give me some level of support? Because I’m I’m drowning here. And so that said, thankfully, my brother and my daughter and then family members, I learned that people people will help if you ask them. They’re not going to volunteer, but they will if you ask them, can can I get an hour? Can you help me? They’ll help those that are willing. You know, they will help.

And you don’t want to take advantage of that. But how did I manage that money with support and help from family? And it was it was a set amount of time. OK, if I’m going abroad, then I’m going abroad for a month. I’m going abroad for a few weeks. And then ultimately I had another conversation with my brother and said, hey, we have to alternate here, because when I’m going abroad, I’m not on vacation.

When I’m singing, I’m working. And so I still don’t get a break. And so thankfully, my brother agreed that every three months we would alternate where my mother would go and stay with him and my mother would come when I came back so I could schedule my shows and schedule my performances around when I’m abroad and when when when she’s going to be with him. And so it’s very much so scheduling. And I use the analogy of a juggler.

You know, it’s kind of like you when you got things going on, a girl was fleeing some stuff way up there and still be doing this. And then when that was time to come back down, OK, flings mills up there, you know, so it’s very much so managing systems, as you say, in order to make it to make it work. Because at the end of the day, again, I got to do what I got to do, you know, so I’ve got to find a way to do it.

And as you know, I do what I can and what I know to do. And then God just opened those doors.

Nice. So let’s just talk about, like, your your your routines. I mean, obviously it seems like, like you’re fifty fifty, but I think sometimes you’re probably very, very structured and sometimes you want to be very free spirited and that’s just based off me outside looking in. I could be a hundred percent wrong. Right.

So absolutely right. Again hybrid you know, because in the corporate world and and I’m in the corporate world in the nineties, in the late 80s, in the 90s. And so for women is very rigid. I mean, I wore a bow tie because for women to be respected, they had to have the illusion of looking at being, you know, being in that space, looking like a guy. Like a guy. Kind of a thing, and so we had to be very, very structured, very, very rigid and and so in the business world and I’m wearing that business hat, then that’s kind of how it is.

However, in the music creative world, it’s very flow, very, very fluid. And so it took a minute to adjust to that, you know, that flow. And now Dippin, I’m still adjusting, you know, because I do show up on time and I have an issue when people don’t show up on time, you know, or I let someone know if I have a conflict and I let you know in advance I don’t let you know the day before or God forbid, the day of, you know, where a lot of people don’t do that.

And so certain things. It’s a matter of respect. It’s a matter of of training. And so I recognize if somebody doesn’t do that, then either they’re disrespectful of people or they just don’t believe in train. They’re ignorant to the fact, you know, and so so so I am very disciplined, but I’m really work when I’m on stage and you say, oh, I’m I’m kind of there, you know? And when I come off stage, it’s at that point that it’s about it’s about business because I also do workshops and stuff.

When I’m in that mode, when I’m in a business mode, you know, then I’m there. But I find myself if I’m in a business mode, I’m a little bit more relaxed. If I’m in a performance mode, that I’m a little bit more structured. So that’s where is that? I want to get to the point where I’m flowing loan because the ocean, the river, they’re structured. They’re structured, they don’t, you know, unless something is disruptive, they stay right here, OK, you know, but they’re flowing and they’re getting it done, you know, and so I want to be like that flowing river, you know, that that’s that’s that’s that’s going about its business, doing it as the do you know, and sometimes forceful and sometimes just to keep it going.

So it’s interesting that you bring that up about being 50 50. So, like, I’m really intrigued by this next question. So what is your morning rituals, your morning habits look like?

Ever changing, ever changing. I’m trying to find something good because it’s crazy because I get up, I wake up at 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning and I get up and get my mom situated and everything. And then thankfully, now we have a companion for her. Praise God for Fulton County. We have a companion for her. But I am going to bed at midnight, 1:00 AM, you know, because I’ve got stuff that has to be done and things I have to do.

And so I’m getting up in the morning. And so you ask about my my morning routine. I get up, I make sure I drink 16 ounces of water. That lemon water or something like that, I am doing my affirmations and I’m reading my devotion and getting my head right, you know, because it’s about to go, you know, and then I look over my schedule, devotion, prayer, meditate, that that’s that I take I kind of take my time doing that.

I give myself an hour to do that while I’m just kind of chillin, you know, kind of a thing. I refuse to get up at six o’clock. I refuse to get up at five o’clock because that that to me is like corporate, you know. So I was going to be getting up at 8:00 and then my spirit was like, no, get up at 7:00. You know, it’s like seven to eight is when I have my devotion, spirit and prayer, meditation, time, drink, water, self care.

And then after that, I obviously had my meetings. But you ask me about the morning routine. It’s very much so self care. It’s very much so thoughtful. The last thing that I do right is the night before and I sort of remind myself about what I have to do the next day. And so I refresh myself and say, OK, that’s what you got to do, you know? So I’ve learned through others, others teaching that the night before plan your next day, not the whole week, but plan your next day so that you know, when you get up in the morning, OK, click, click, click.

It can just go click, you know, real smooth.

Got it. So I think I think that definitely is based upon your personality, I mean, and this next question is kind of falls under that as well. Right. And I’m just thinking about, OK, like, you’re obviously highly educated, but you don’t come across as someone that particularly has the time to read what you’re getting a lot of information. So this next question is a three part question, right? Like what books have you read on your journey that that helped you get to where you are currently?

What are you reading right now? I think you alluded to reading devotions and have you had opportunity to write or authors any books as of yet?

Well, thank you for asking that about the author part. I just led what I called a paradigm success intensive during the first quarter where I invited friends of mine to go through Napoleon Hills, the law of success and its 16 lessons. And so went through that. And that was oh, you know, but but I’m one who says I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. There are people who know this stuff. And let me just follow. That’s called that’s called learned wisdom as opposed to earned wisdom.

I have to go to the steps of somebody else has done it. And so the law of success by Napoleon Hill. And I was like, OK, this guy wrote this published this book in nineteen twenty eight, one hundred years ago, basically, and. They were millionaires then when when the average income for an average person was seven, eight thousand dollars, you know, it’s so OK, wow, I need to learn from them. The other piece of that is speaking very candidly is, OK, why didn’t my dad because my dad was an avid reader.

Why did my dad tell me about that book that maybe he didn’t know about that book? And so a lot of information we didn’t know about and our parents didn’t know about to even tell us, you know, nineteen twenty eight. My dad weren’t even born yet, but but they didn’t know to even go in that direction. But anyway, that’s the whole side of the story. But that’s the book that I just finished. And I did it as an audio book because, you know, just like the downtime, I’ve got to, you know, again, I’m trying I’m in school.

But also I am in the process now of reading two books. One is called Resonate by Alex Wolff, and the other is called All About All About Love by Bell Hooks. And that speaks to that hybrid kind of kind of a thing because, you know, Alex, Wolf, as you know, is just an influencer, social media. And, you know, she wrote this book, the book is awesome. I you, me with them with the book.

Not familiar with the book, with the author.

OK, well, she’s written a book and a young girl in her 20s. And so just just really just her her angle on it. As a person who’s not trained from a textbook, you know, it’s just fascinating from a marketing standpoint and the things that she’s saying. And so I encourage you to to check out the book. But those are two you know, I’m reading both book The Softer Flow Love Side and the and wanting to understand me again.

It’s about self-awareness. How can I be better, better myself and and better. Better others.

And just think about the opposite. Have you had opportunity to write any books?

I actually am in the process of and is being illustrated now. I’ve written a book, a children’s book for, for the disability community. I, I have a nonprofit that works with performing artists with disabilities. And one of the challenges within this population is us. You know, the general population. We create barriers unintentionally, but we create barriers. And so I wanted to do a children’s book to help change the stigma narrative of the disability community, because I met people who are very, you know, skilled.

It’s just different, who are very talented. They’re just different. And so that whole valuing differences is very important to me. And so this I wrote children’s book is being illustrated right now. And I’m excited. I’m really excited about it because it’s because disability has so many diverse it’s so diverse within itself. You know, there are people that are blind, deaf. We’re familiar with them, quadriplegic, paraplegic. But there’s also persons who are just have dyslexia that’s considered a disability, post-traumatic stress disorder, military persons, all of those with disabilities.

That and disability. The word you’re disabled. You know, you can’t function, you can’t be. This is such a harsh word. And so rather than looking at the challenges, let’s look at what they can do and what their abilities are. And so that’s what this book is about. It’s called I am able to tell You.

And it is it under your name or using a pen name or are not?

It’s going to be under my name, Myrna Clayton. You know, it’s so funny because I went through I changed my name. Should I give you know, I went through all of those things and discussions and I have a hard enough time trying to keep up with with passwords and look look, can we keep it simple? It’s me. Look, give me vertically, you know, so I mean, obviously you have like you’ve been on a hell of a journey, right?

You have a legacy that’s behind you that’s kind of following in your shadow. But where do you see yourself 20 years from now? Because I know whatever you’re planning on doing, you haven’t even accomplished it yet.

Twenty years. Now I’m going to be on somebodies beach in a picture with a picturesque background and performing, performing on stage and also bringing others along with me, introducing them to the world. Because when I say somebodies beach, I’ve been on beaches all around the world and they’re beautiful. Imagine my favorite beaches, Gulf Shores, Alabama. I’ve been everywhere, Bermuda, lots of places, Nigeria, beaches there. But my favorite is Gulf Shores, Alabama, because that’s where my family’s from.

But also, it’s beautiful. The Gulf the Gulf is beautiful. But to be able to. Do my passion, do what I love and share it with others and show them to me that’s what generational wealth is. It’s not just your own own independent individual family, but to show others how to do it, too. That’s what you do, should all show others how to make it do what it do, you know. And that’s where, you know, where we talk about don’t give a person fish, teach them how to fish.

You know, it’s that kind of desire. And so I am an educator. I am a teacher, you know, counselor. I’m constantly giving people advice even if they don’t want it. So I have to check myself because I’ve gotten to a point now where because I don’t talk about my MBA, I don’t talk about that when I’m with people. And so when I’m when I’m giving advice or something, especially as relates to business, you know, someone will say, I’m so glad we chatted as a whole lot.

You didn’t say to you what I’m sharing with you, what I’m imparting to you is not something that your friend down the street would be would be sharing with you. This is a value and all by the way, when you make your million, I want one percent. I want that one percent of a million will suit me mighty fine, especially if six or seven of them. That’s the residual because that’s what, one percent of gross, not net NBA speaking right there, one percent of gross sales.

So, yeah, that’s what I want. And that’s what I want to be able to do 20 years from now. I’m wanting to choose where I want to go. I want to have five houses and yes, that passive income. But I go and go where I want to, based on the web, based on the climate, based on the atmosphere. You know, I used I tell the story when I sing what I want, when I sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which a lot of people love that song.

I talk well, you know, while the music is going, I’ll say, you know, the birds have it right. When when it gets dangerous, they fly away, they fly away. They don’t just kind of stay in it. And so is this American songbird. Let me just go someplace else where is good and chill and welcome. I want to be where I’m appreciated, not tolerated. So let me just go where I’m loved and appreciated.

You want to give me a hard time? Well, I’m not going I’m not going to put my energy into that. I’m just going to go over here because I’m a fighter. I’m a fighter, you know, and I want to choose my battles as opposed to have someone choose them for me. Because when I find I fight to win and I don’t I don’t do it this way. I’ma do it. I’m a go talk to your boss’s boss.

I’m a go talk to the decision makers. You know, because I talk and deal with with persons who are really as above their pay grade, you know, you know that I’m wasting my energy. I want to get the test done. And so I learned in corporate politics how to play those games. I don’t like playing them, which is why I’m part of partly why I’m not there anymore, but I know how to play them. I was taught well.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that that is a gift and a curse for like any entrepreneur, if you have not to work for corporate America, you kind of have to learn that. And it always the perception is that most entrepreneurs become very cutthroat very quickly. But corporate America is cutthroat. They just put sugar on top. That’s that’s the only difference is if it’s a skill to kind of articulate particular things in a particular fashion, like you said, is going to the decision maker versus actually talking to someone that’s just going to argue with no results.

So I definitely appreciate you bringing that topic up. So going into like I mean, you’re in multiple facets of multiple different industries, like what software are you using to kind of manage or orchestrate the different things that you’re doing? Oh.

Uh. OK. When I was in corporate, I had tech support. And I would just call them and say, can you come help me, please help me, because I really value persons with gifts and skills. And so I prefaced that by saying I’m having to learn love being in school. I’m having to learn about what tools to use. And so as weird as this virtual world enters, you know, me learning what’s the best platform, whether it be zoom or stream yard or other platforms to use to be able to get the message out.

What type of sound, you know, sound equipment to use. And so I’m not wanting to necessarily name because they not look, they’re not paying me to I’d much rather promote Bosson case than somebody who’s not sponsoring me. I want to be sponsored. I want to to be able to use product and and and and product placement. OK, that’s the NBA coming. I want to have product placement, but I utilize the email. I’m trying to get to the point where I utilize the email systems because I have a lot of emails, but they’re not they’re not managed.

Unfortunately, I’m a dinosaur, you know, in that respect. And I want to I know what needs to be done. I just haven’t yet learned how to do it. And so I’m going to have to utilize the expertize of of others. Yes. We’re on social media. Yes, I’m on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and I have YouTube channel and I have a website, you know, I have all of that. But it’s very different when you’re doing it for yourself versus doing it for someone else.

As I said, I’m this canopy’s, you know, and so so so those are the things those are the platforms that I use. And then when I’m performing, you know, I use because I’m operating in this virtual world. But I’m I’m also I told you, I’m part of this post pandemic live performance. I’m this pacesetter for that. And so I am really trying to see how to do live shows, you know, in in the in this in this environment.

And so I’m looking and studying how best to do that. And maybe you can help me, Schnall, because here’s the thing. We just did a an event and we charge for tickets and we utilized a ticket service, go through the names, but we utilize the ticket service and we promoted it artist again, I don’t know how to promote, but they did as best they could to promote. And people aren’t purchasing from music. They’re getting free concerts.

All day, every day, live and recorded or staged video. And so how do we have a live show that someone’s willing to pay for that? Now I’m watching the live concert on my computer. Then a fun. I’m watching the live concert on my TV, all my phone, that is fun, and I got to pay for that. How do we as entertainers get through to make it engaging, to make it entertaining and you’re willing to pay?

And so that’s that’s where I am thinking strategically as a business person who this is what I do for a living. How do I do that? When when you’ve got what is it, Verver? You know, whether know the artist you got Earth, Wind and Fire and the Isley Brothers. And I’m sorry, I don’t want to watch them play their music, the records and make fun of me and then talk about it. That’s cool. But I’m not going to sit and sit there and watch them for two hours.

I’m not. I’d rather go out and see I’ll do it live and have the experience, you know. And so I’m really looking for technology because I’m looking to create new technology that allows for us to have the experience. You know, the closest thing to that is, is a watch party. You know, but I’m not communicating, that’s through I’m not able to see you. You know, it’s all I’m wanting to get with some creative’s, you know, in this new virtual world.

How do we have that live experience? Well, you know, I don’t know.

I think I think it’s going to be kind of difficult in a sense, because what you ask for it is kind of like how do we do a Woodstock without people being in Woodstock and thinking about like the magical Woodstock was? It was not only about the music, it was also about the people being among each other. So the only way you can kind of get into that space in that mindset is being exclusive. And I think that’s where things are going to go.

Like maybe you don’t do ten thousand people. Maybe you have an exclusive event on one day where is just one hundred people that not only could they hear the live performance, but they have an opportunity to interview or conversation or mix and mingle, kind of like the VIP status with the musician live. And that kind of changes things because of the small community of people that you’re talking to and then you can take their content and regurgitated to the masses.

And well, that that’s very much so what Prince was doing, you know, a long time ago with his exclusive group, and he would connect and be giving them new product and free product and talking to them and things like that, I don’t that is a way. But I would hate is kind of like kids going to virtual school and not being able to go to the prom, you know, those of us who know what that’s like. Oh, wow, you’re missing something.

If you know, how can we give you that feeling? There’s an old school movie called Sleep Around if you ever saw a movie. But it’s it’s it’s with I don’t remember the guy’s name, but anyway, a movie called Sleeper, I think it came out in the 70s before my time. But I remember I remember watching it because folks were talking about it anyway. It’s very much so futuristic. And he was he was he was literally having sex by touching a ball.

He had the sensation of just touching a ball, you know, I mean, literally like a beach ball, you know, and and so it’s that kind of thing that, OK, how can we have the experience, you know? It’s like being able to smell through my computer. How can I smell a smell of a sizzling steak? I can see it, but I can’t. Or a beautiful aroma lavender that I don’t. I don’t know that we’re going to ever get there.

But short of that, how can I have a live experience? And yes, it’s exclusive. And yes, it’s nice. And it’s a VIP setting and it’s a VIP thing. But if I can’t if I can’t touch you, we’re already having people that can’t communicate because all they’re doing is texting their community, fixing. And I can’t talk to each other. They haven’t learned how to engage. And so we have to we who know better. To me, I think that we’re we’re the bridge.

It’s our responsibility to allow them to be able to do that. Otherwise, the movie The Matrix is for real. You know, I like to think that it’s not for real, but it’s it’s coming true and true. So God bless that system, that black girl that wrote that movie that those guys tried to steal from her. So, you know, so so it’s it’s very much so from a tech standpoint. This is where we are. And I would much rather my training in corporate was a new product and new business development.

And so I’m a. A a forward thinker, and so that’s what I’m over here because, yes, there are people like yourself and others who know how to do this because you guys were forward thinking a few years ago to where you can do this now. So I would much rather work work with barter, with pay folks to be able to support me with this while I’m working with somebody else or with with you to say, OK, how do we do this?

Because I’m asking what’s going to be happening in 20 years. You know, I may be even able to not fly somewhere, but just teleport myself, you know, to that beach and not be I mean, literally, I’m there not thinking, you know, visualize and I’m there, you know, so. Yeah. So that’s kind of how my little brain goes. It’s kind of kind of out there.

So let’s talk about, like, words of wisdom. Right. And I think that you are designed to talk to any generation. So I’m not going to say a 15 year old. I’m not going to say someone dirty and say someone 70s. If you want to give someone some insight and say I’ll deem them as musicians, what words of wisdom would you give to a musician to get them on track to be successful in their art form and successful in their business?

Two things, one, I would say. Embrace your gift. Your uniqueness. Embrace that. And then perfect that because that will make you your money, that will make you have freedom, that will allow you that will open doors that you never could have imagined. But just starting with that gift, that gift that you had nothing to do with getting you was imparted in you and you don’t know why you have it. Some of it connected with DNA, some of us just like anybody.

I don’t know why I have it, but I got it. And so you you embrace that uniqueness of yours in yourself and then work on perfecting it, because that’s the way you say to the gift, the giver of the gift, how much you appreciate the gift. He was kind of like when something when you’ve given a person a gift and they they got tossed into the set, you think I’ll give them another gift? You could be like, oh, but if they say, oh thank you and they start using it, then you want to give them some more stuff, you know.

And so that’s how I see the father in that I’ve been given a gift. And I know it’s I know now I can’t say that I always knew, but I know now that it’s a gift. And so there’s a responsibility of me to perfect it and to share it with the world. But worth as your gift to make room for you to use that to make money and to better others. And so it’s for the betterment of humanity, it sure to use your gift, and so for those people, it may not be singing, it may be speaking, it may be using your skills, it may be your thoughts.

It may be your gift of making money to give money. Who knows what your gift is, but embrace it as opposed to and say as opposed to but and defend your gift, because somebody will say, well, that’s not that’s not what you’re supposed to be doing. So did you talk to God, I know what what I heard in my ear and Abraham heard in his ear and he believed that and he went for it. So whatever you hear in your ear.

You need to go with that, and until you given differently, then go with it and perfected. That’s that’s that’s my advice. Perfected, you already know. So use that and go with what you know, because other people will tell you all kinds of things. And if it makes you uncomfortable and it makes you not happy, you can. Discomfort is all about going after your gear, because if you if you were comfortable, then you’re not stretching yourself.

And so you got to stretch yourself. So the discomfort is my side. Oh, I’m uncomfortable. I know. I’m going in the right direction. I’m stretching myself. This is not nice. I don’t like this, but I know I’m going in the right direction. But if I’m comfortable and I’m chilling and lay back and you ain’t going nowhere and you’re you’re you’re you’re complacent. You’re complacent. So that’ll be nice.

Wow. Definitely insightful. So how can people find you online? I mean, you talked about your social media profile. You talked about a website like I want you to name some of these items so we can kind of get people in contact with you.

OK, well, the best way is to go to my website. It’s just simple. Myrna Clayton, dot com, unfancy Clayton dot com, also Facebook, I, I do a lot of posts on Facebook. I love that Facebook generation. I do have a presence on Twitter. I don’t have a presence on Instagram. I do have a presence on LinkedIn. And that’s that’s what I have a presence there. But I haven’t gotten haven’t grown up yet.

So this is I’m still still developing in those spaces, but I know that I have to. And so this year is about doing that. It’s about getting those skills and building those skills to be able to do that. But the best way is I’m straight old school. Email me. You know, old school is call me. But, you know, now we check in. Know I do. I have this number in my phone, so I’m like, OK.

And so, you know, but the best way to contact me because this to my through my website, because that will send an email to me or if people want to email my company, it’s Cedar Tree worldwide at Gmail dot com. I see the tree worldwide at Gmail dot com. And so that’s my that’s my company.

So I got a bonus question for you. Right. I was a you sang a song, hundreds, probably even thousands of songs. If you had to pick one song right now, this was the last song you’re ever going to sing right now in this moment, what song would it be and why?

OK, can I can I, can I can I give you a rounded answer to get there?

By all means, because neither of these people, neither these three people are that’s the song belongs to. So my favorite singer in the whole entire world. To Minnie Ripperton and Nancy Wilson. Love, love, love them. My favorite business music business person is Bessie Smith. And she was a business mogul and an amazing singer at a time when there was not technology, yet she owned her own train. She had her own sound equipment. She had on her own marketing team.

And so she was a businesswoman at a time when. People didn’t like black people and the business being a male dominated folks don’t appreciate women being leaders, you know, so Bessie Smith, but my favorite, the song, if I had only one song to sing in this song, I’ve sung in every country where I performed. And the song is What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. And I say sing that song because we’re more alike than we’re different.

And I say to the audience, when I smile, it looks like your smile when I found it looks like your frown when you cut me, I bleed red just like you. So we’re more alike than we are. Then we’re different. So can we get along? Can we not fight? And that’s my converse every time I’ve sung that song in every country that I’ve sung. And so if there was one song, it would be What a wonderful world, because it is.

It’s a wonderful world that we’re living in. And we can either enjoy the beautiful sun or the pouring rain and have a relaxing time or just be upset because something happened.

Stephanie, I could definitely see you embracing that song, I mean, based upon who you are and just like the way you answer the questions on today’s show, I could definitely see that being a song that would be your last song if you would ever sing one. So I definitely appreciate that. I got another bonus question for you.

OK, one more or ask as many as you like. Perfect.

So if you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted, twenty four hours, who would it be and why?

Well, I’ve already kind of answered that that would be Bessie Smith. And as I indicated before, you know how she was able to to do this. I would ask her, how did she do that without. You know, Instagram without a major marketing budget. How were you able to do what you did and make millions of dollars, certainly million equivalent at that time? How do you do that with all of the negative going against you? So I would I would I would want to to talk with her because she’s like me, she’s a businesswoman, a musician, and so because of her, I want to because she learned from Morenae and yes.

To all kinds of conversations about, you know, a bunch of stuff. But I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in you entertained your audience and people came from miles around. They didn’t have cars. They came from miles around to hear a concert in a tent in the field. And so how did you do that? How did they know about you, you know, how, how? And and so I would want to apply that. Same.

Tenacity, that same knowledge.

Today, wow. I think you know that answer as well, right? So going at the closing of the park, as I mean, obviously as the interview progressed, you may have came up with questions that you may want to ask me. So this is the time of the episode where I give the microphone to you and the floor is yours, and you can ask me any question that may have come up.

Wow. Yay! OK. Hop, if for your advice to. What advice, I’ll say it this way, would you or have you given to entertainers that are shifting? From a. Shifting into subject matter, where are we coming from, shifting into a virtual world, because that’s where we are, we’re in a virtual world, we’ve gone from agriculture to industrial to technology to virtual because virtual is different than a technology world. You know, technology, as far as I’m concerned, used for person to person, still face to face technology, technology.

And that’s just my view of it. Obviously, you who are who are analytical and technical and artistic yourself probably have a very different view of that. But right now, whatever was before we virtual now we’re virtual world. And so how how would you suggest an artist? And also, as a caveat, there are no more record labels. You know, the record industry is very different. And so how would you suggest an artist not survive but thrive?

Yeah, it’s funny that you brought that up, because I think a recent episode was with Alex Johnson and Alex Johnson is a musician. Right. And, you know, he is creating content, creating videos. And we were just having, like a live Q&A style podcast where it was all about growth strategy. And to your point, in today’s world, it’s not that much different than back in the late 80s and early 90s. And we talked about this comparison about back then you would get records out of someone’s trunk, right.

There was no social media, but that person would drive around from location to location to location and broadcast about that particular record. Hey, I got CDs he heard on the car. Listen to some music and hear the sample. And I think technology is kind of stifled. Some of that to a certain extent, to where people have gotten lazy, they have lost the edge. So think about you driving from city to city, state to state, county to county, person to person.

And you’re promoting essentially one person at a time, 20 people at a time, anyone that would listen. But now you have a platform that you can do that to the masses. You don’t have to talk to one person. You can talk to thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, millions, even equivalent to billions of people. But people are not doing that in the environment. So back in the day, you would go out every single day.

Every single day you would hit the streets and you would try to promote and market your CD. And today you’ve only marketing your CD maybe once a day, maybe once every other day, maybe once a week. And then you’re scratching your head trying to figure out, like, why you’re not getting more sales. Well, there’s a bigger world with way more mass communication. So if you’re going to be heard, you’re going to have to be one more frequent and a lot louder, much like when we were selling CDs out the trunk of cars.

Wow, that’s that’s great, and that’s that’s good, and that even means even that much more why artists have to be businesspersons. Because because I do. I’m a student of masterpiece. You know, like I said, I go to school where it’s like, hey, why reinvent the wheel? There are people who done it. So let me learn from them. And so. So, yeah, that’s that that that that’s great. OK, what is up for music.

What is the best platforms. What are the best platform or what is the best platform for, for promoting. Or is there a system that you recommend for promoting music. One events to which. Which are different. Different. Two different answers. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s definitely overlap. I mean music is one of those things. It’s kind of are you trying to be mainstream and if you trying to be mainstream, then obviously going through some television outlet to kind of get to the masses and think about like MTV was like the dawn and video music box back in Brooklyn were kind of that epicenter to kind of have this content where you could sit down and watch a channel all day, all night and see this content.

So what’s the equivalent to that? In today’s world where we have VEVO, we have all these other channels that have music ongoing. But YouTube is a channel that reaches out to I think it’s like two point one billion or close to that number right there in the billions. Right. So you can put content out there not only for free, but you can utilize this platform to market that content as well. And once you get to a certain size, you could also use your own content to monetize, which means you’re you’re selling ads for other people in between, like commercial spots for your current music.

So just understanding that principle of video first. Right. And they always say, like, you know, video killed the radio star. Well, in today’s world, everything is hand-held, right? There’s billions of people with handheld devices and even on Facebook, even on Twitter, even on Instagram, ticktock, YouTube. All of these environments have video components. And that’s the first thing if you’re looking for convergence, is to look for video first. So I always say start with video, start do video music, do more video music on a regular basis, and then you would take the actual video that you created from music and convert it into audio, do the video first, do the music second.

And I’m not saying that the quality needs to be less. I’m just saying think about like if we’re talking about hip hop artist, for example, Busta Rhymes in the 90s was like the Michael Jackson of the 80s for hip hop when he did a music video. It was an epic event. It was like a movie was being released and everyone and their mom was glued to the screen to see what crazy thing he’s going to do next with his quality of music.

Never suffered, but he put so much into his visuals that to this day, Busta Rhymes is one of the musically inclined legends of our time, not only for his music, but also for his video representation. So just think about that like you can do that. You know, I think little NAS is kind of coming into that space. His videos are like, you sit there and your mouth has to floor is more shock value than anything else.

But he understands the psychology of what people are going to be clingy to and what they’re going to be like when we talk about little sex videos thirty years from now because of what he did now. And it’s kind of like there’s nothing really new, but he is targeting people based upon the psychological aspects of it. That’s what in the 90s and that’s what Michael Jackson did 80s.

Now, that’s fascinating to me now, but because you have to do music first in order to make the video for the music. Right. But you’re saying, OK, but instead of putting the music out first, put the video out first, that music alone out first, put the video out first. That has the music with it. And let that let let that video visual be what the music rides on.

Think about sharing it right. If no matter if it’s food or if it’s how to create a product, majority of the things that are being shared are videos. You may get some images here and there, but you can’t have a still image and have a music associated to it. Right. So anything that you’re going to do that has motion, whether it’s sound motion or video motion, it needs to be a video. Right. You can separate the audio and deliver the audio.

But how often like check your cell phone, how often have you gotten the link to just audio check your Facebook. When’s the last time you got a link to just audio? OK, yeah. Even the live performances are. Still in the video format like that, Facebook Live is a golden nugget because now you have the interaction with the person that created the music and it’s this guy, his name is Mark, and he’s kind of like a musician guy.

He’s on Facebook Live every Sunday. He says the most craziest things, but he makes his beats right then and there. And when you’re sitting there, you’re like, who is this guy? He just did this live on the camera in front of me. It wasn’t there’s no studio behind them is just him and his board. And he’s mixing and mastering. And he starts singing right then and there. And you just kind of like, holy hell, you’re in the moment right then.

And there is because of the impact of the video, the music supports that you feel the music, you’re listening to it. But it’s also his visuals that’s changing the environment to where you’re, like, completely glued to the screen the entire time.

Wow. Wow, yeah, that’s that’s fascinating, and that’s that’s that’s what’s that’s what’s up knuckleheads going on. Yeah, yeah. OK, well, what about events.

Yeah. So events, it’s events are so difficult right now because like in-person events versus virtual events, it’s like the sky’s the limit. Like that’s just like the new green savior. Right. Could I mean you could pop up on a new software tomorrow and combine both of them. But, you know, Eventbrite has been around forever and they kind of have like a hold on it. But then you have webinars and any webinar platform essentially allows you to do an online event.

Right. You can even do Zoome online events. So just think of it from the standpoint. Use whatever works for you, whatever you’re comfortable with, and make sure it has the features. One feature that you want is to be able to monetize. So think about it from a standpoint. If I could monetize my webinar, how would I do that? I would. On the front end. I want to put something that that has a conversion for somebody to make a purchase point.

So whatever platform that you can say, hey, sign up for this, make a purchase and then I’ll give you access, that’s that’s the simplest way of looking at it. Don’t worry about the platform. Worry about the core functionality. Can I check someone in. Cannot verify that I get paid. Do they get access and then obviously you want to then follow up with them. And that’s the series of events when it comes out to whether it’s live events or localizations.

Wow. Wow. While I’m on the because I know you’re a systems guy, so I’m on the process the steps, because that’s what systems are there, steps that can be repeated, scale scaled. And so the repetition of it. Well, then with that that process, my audience is international and so local too. I mean, that local too. I tell people that America is included in international. You know, we’re right. Yeah, right.

But every time when I say international, they think I don’t do stuff in America. It was like, no, America is included in that. But anyway, there it’s within Facebook’s algorithms, which of course, I don’t know. But within their algorithm. First of all, is faith. Let me ask it that way is Facebook. The best way, because I have I have audiences that are abroad, you know, and all of the countries where I am, I’ve got Facebook friends, whatever Facebook is available, I’ve got Facebook friends.

And so how am I able to manipulate Facebook so that my audience. Can see, you know, what I have that’s available.

So I mean, Facebook. In partnership, well, not to say in partnership with the other Big Brother devil called Google, right. When it comes down to analytical data and Big Brother, it’s kind of you know, you have Facebook, you have Google and you’ve got you have Amazon. Right. So Facebook is essentially a platform that’s designed to not manipulate, but to understand the behavioral insight of their audience. Like so Facebook allows you to say, I want to target someone based upon their behavior versus Google is saying someone is looking for something.

Someone is typing in a key word. There are some behavioral stuff on Google, but Facebook is kind of like like the big brother in that sense. So what does that mean for you? That means for you is that you can go on Facebook and say, I want to look for people that are interested in just jazz or a type of jazz or type of blues or music, or you could actually target that country. You could target that region.

So part of that audience that you’re looking for, first and foremost, if you have an email address like that’s golden because a majority of the email addresses should be associated to a Facebook account if they have a Facebook account underneath that email address, once that person logs in via that email address, then Facebook knows exactly who that person is, what they do, whether they have dogs or cat, whether they like to swim or whether they like to eat ice cream while they’re in the hot tub.

Facebook knows that. So if you have the emails, then you could easily attach these emails and create what is called a look alike audience inside a Facebook and a look alike audience is saying, hey, I have this pool of people, this one hundred people per say, two hundred people Facebook. You have billions of people based upon your algorithm. You’re looking at these two hundred people. What is the commonality of these two? What do people what do these two older people all share now from the outside?

Looking in is going to be difficult for any individual person to unless you’re a computer across, analyze 200 people and find the common denominator. Facebook does it without thinking about it twice. So then you can say, hey, I want to find ten thousand people that share the same commonalities as these two hundred people. And now you have a look alike audience that now you could target a bigger pool of people that share the same commonalities in the same behaviors as your two hundred person email is.

But I don’t have the Wile E.. While Facebook has access to their email, I don’t have access to their names. You have access to their emails, but you may now know who they are, right. Think of it from a standpoint. That’s why you have lead magnets and somebody comes in. They’ll give you their their name and they’ll give you their email address. The second that you capture that email address, the next part of that is you want to facilitate and talk and communicate and then you want a pipeline that information back into Facebook to create these look alike audiences.

So you couldn’t target people like them, not just that person, but more people that has the same personality traits as that individual person. Now, once you find the new pool of people, Facebook is not going to give you that information. Right. There’s privacy laws. Right. So what these privacy laws that are in place, what Facebook can then do is then you could pay Facebook to communicate to these pool of people that Facebook has deemed to be much like the pool of people that you do have email addresses for.

So then that’s why you will see ads if you go online and you see similar ads over and over again on Facebook and the ads are usually targeted to you and you can’t help but to stop and to look at the click or save it, because Facebook knows that you love the information that they’re putting in front of you based upon the habits that you’ve done over the years of using Facebook.

Yeah, that’s that’s a whole nother conversation.

Oh, another. Another whole nother beast. But it’s very it’s very simplistic when you think about it, really thinking about, hey, if I know John likes to jump show me 20 other jobs that like to jump. It’s just that simple. And if I like John likes the job, I like John to jump over something. I want more people that jump over something. And then you say, I want somebody to jump up and do a backflip and you just layering in the pieces that you’re looking for.

So then you’re going to fire people that just know how to jump over something and then do a backflip versus just people that know how to jump or people that just know how to jump over something. So you’re isolating and you’re getting smaller and smaller now into your niche until you find the gymnast. Right. And that’s that’s a way of looking to find a gymnast is to think about people that like to jump, move forward, run back, flip stuff like that.

And you could introduce to them about becoming a gymnastic champion or whatever it is. It’s just a psychological way of looking at it, of breaking down based upon the personality habits and traits.

Well, with that, there are you can you can do Facebook and you can do you can boost. Your stuff. What’s the difference between and what is Facebook and I obviously don’t know this, and so I’m picking your brain now when I see something that a sponsor. Is that an ad or is that a boost or whether they’re one and the same? Think about it. The Facebook psychology is beautiful, right? Like, once you understand the principal psychology, all you have to do is rename something, right?

So I can say read and read. Am I talking about the color or. I’m talking about actually reading something. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all based upon perception. So you may see sponsored and say, OK, what a sponsored mean. And Facebook understands that, hence why they would boost. Why didn’t they just call Booth’s sponsor. Right. It was the same. But they understand that from a user standpoint, you look at the word boost and be like boose means increase.

Boost means uplift. Boutte’s means something positive. I need to do that. I need to boost my post. Right. That makes logical sense when I explain it that way. But on the back end, all it is, is that you’re paying money for them to show that particular thing that you’re boosting to a multiple audience. That’s the definition of an ad you’re advertising. You’re paying for someone to take something and present it to multiple other people.

So it’s my, my, my, my, my, my post versus I guess if I do Facebook advertising, it’s creating an ad is one and the same. But obviously Facebook advertising gives you way more control over your ad and your reach of who you’re going to communicate with. And you could target and you can sit down. It’s like being an average user versus being a pro user. The pro user has way more bells and whistles and way more control to target exactly what you want to do.

When you boost the post. You’re just saying, hey, take my five, ten, twenty dollars and you’ve got a million people Facebook that instead of three million people. But we all know that a million people may not be your target audience. Maybe ten thousand people. Maybe a thousand people. Well, you’re not going to know who is going to have access to that ad because you’re only going to spend twenty bucks and twenty bucks for a million people doesn’t even add up.

So you may end up getting a couple thousand. But which one thousand are you getting from that million. You don’t have no idea or no clue reboost.

Right. Right. OK, ok. Oh wow. That’s that’s very helpful. That’s like I just got an intensive Facebook lesson courses and it’s a master class. I like those, but as a matter of fact because it condenses everything, you got to be, you know, but but it gets there and it gets it gets to to that to that that answer. Wow. Thank you.

Well, I definitely appreciate you coming on the show today, and I appreciate your question. I love your questions because, I mean, it just it just kind of gives you the insight for you to process and think about what really goes on behind the scenes versus the perception of what people are seeing on Facebook. So I definitely appreciate that. So, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for insightful questions. Oh, my gosh. And and I appreciate your listeners. I appreciate your audience being attentive and and caring enough to hang around and to the end, you know. So I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I would love to come back again and talk to you, talk to you and talk to your listeners, your viewers excuse me, your viewers again to just kind of ta ta ta ta ta ta.

Share what I’ve learned, what I’ve done as a result of all the things I just learned from it all.

Well, I definitely appreciate it. Sagarin over now.

Founder and CEO Of CedarTree Worldwide, LLC: Myrna Clayton AKA The Ambassador Boss – S2E25 (#53)2021-06-27T17:16:59+00:00

Founder & CEO Of Ringer Consulting Group: Gabriel Meacham AKA The Ringer Boss – S2E24 (#52)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Founder & CEO Of Ringer Consulting Group: Gabriel Meacham AKA The Ringer Boss – S2E24 (#52)
“My biggest tip. Know what companies are wanting to buy”
In Season 2, Episode 24 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with Founder & CEO of Ringer Consulting Group, Gabriel Meacham. A company that provides custom development solutions.
Gabriel’s specialty is building react UI component libraries and then providing the company the ability to test against those libraries.
“I am working for a company now where there are thousands of developers that are using shared components and it doesn’t take long for that to become a huge mess. And right now what I’m focused on is finding ways that, you know, to build modular components that get digested and used by the rest of the teams.”
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • Feeling a little frustrated, do a quick workout
  • The importance of knowing what companies want to buy
  • Understanding the world of custom development
  • And so much more!
Want more details on how to contact Gabriel? Check out the links below!

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S2E24 – Gabriel Meacham – powered by Happy Scribe

Oh, no. Oh, I don’t have audio. Is it me or. It was me I thought of knew a. Well, subtrend, good. I see the drone you drone in, yeah, it’s cool. Yeah, we still have the hobby as I have been coming along for you guys. Do you know me? Not so much, because I’ve I’ve got my expensive equipment, so I’m not going to build a bunch of drones. But you probably know 50 drones. Easy. He’s he’s, he goes out like we just did. So what they do is they’re like they’re like a chase car. Right. So they just film the competition. Nice. And so right now or next weekend, he’s going up north. And the you remember the one thing we did with the bars and all that was so he’s starting to get some traction, you know, and we’re getting a lot of YouTube and stuff like that. So he’s building some crazy birds and oh, my God, you should see this guy fly now. I mean, he can hit a one with what’s an eight-inch bird? You can hit a nine-inch window, easy

Flying to tone it. So,

yeah. So you just throw the ball, too.

So, I mean, you listen to any episodes before,

I’ll be honest. No.

OK, so. Yeah, so. Yeah, yeah. So just to give you a quick run now, I mean it’s pretty much as a business podcast. One hundred percent designed towards business owners and entrepreneurs startups. So it’s just kind of getting to know who you are, what’s your business. And in your case, I mean I think we could kind of reference more so like rare. And it’s, you know, kind of how did you get into that business? You can even tell if you want to. You talk about, like the rise and fall and you can talk about things you would do differently. You would think so. So, yeah, it really gets into I mean, I have some people on here that we talked about the successes, the failures, and then he like your morning habits, your morning routines, things that words of wisdom that you leave behind for another entrepreneur and then a couple of random bonus questions.

Where there’s also, I was thinking kind of bowstring. It’s like for me personally. Yeah. Was I came to the realization that my first job that like I was I was good, honestly, for what I wanted to be a good five years long. So it’s kind of like, what do you do when you find yourself in that position where you’ve been so hands down what you’re doing? But at some point you have to come up and when you do, you realize, oh, crap, my personal development is, you know, so I have some good advice on that.

Cool.

So that’s been my focus for like the last four years. But yeah, we can get in.

Yeah, it’s just a conversation, so it’s just flow with it man. So how it’s going to be more funnier and then that’s the whole point. I mean it’s business strategy, it’s, it’s ingenuity, it’s people and it’s, it’s funny. It’s not funny. It’s just, you know, always I think I’ve gotten the podcast. The way it is right now is because everyone is just genuine when they come in. It’s not it’s unscripted. Everybody’s just being themselves.

Right now, let me go ahead hit record on this other device, and you had the honors of this free flow.

So the video part, I’m still working on how to edit the videos, but I have Ed that and it’s all my content for the podcast. So I edit in commercial spots. I edit an intro reel. So it’s it’s intro outro all that’s edited post. OK. So welcome back to Boss uncage podcast. On today’s show, we have gained the founder and CEO of Ringa. How are you doing?

I’m amazing how you know.

I’m doing well. I’m doing well. So I guess I’ll give people a little bit of who you are.

I’m just a goofball that wanted to have a good time figured out that I felt early on I worked on for other companies. I couldn’t enjoy myself nearly as much as I could be in my own remounting. So I’ve always tried to figure out the strategy that affords me freedom, you know. So at first that was we really broke for a long time and learned to live on nothing. And so we you do it.

So if you could define yourself in three to five words, what would those three to five words be?

Oh, boy. Creative is kind of a big one that probably gets overused, but I kind of notch that down to clever in in the creative space. It seemed always that we could be little ideas. So there’s that patient, I would say is focused. I’m kind of and maybe schizophrenic. Is that one in there?

I mean, sounds balanced.

Yeah, it’s unbalanced. That’s a good one to know. For me personally. I’ve always kind of not been both the left brain, right brain. And that’s always been my battle is the focus when I’m trying to be creative and vice versa. And the whole game has been figuring out what that balance is and how you can set your life up in a way that really. What’s that showing rather than less than you’re right.

Got you, got you. Yeah, I think that’s one of the reasons why I think you and I just clicked on the same page above both 50 percent analytical or 50 percent creative, which is kind of a hard comedy, either one extreme to the other, but right down the middle.

So it can be frustrating to people around us, too, because, you know, one day we’re one way and the next day we’re like hyper focused and don’t mess with me, you know what I mean? And I can be the nicest guy in the world on Monday and on Tuesday, I could be like, I don’t like people leave me alone because I’m doing this and the next day.

So it’s funny that as crazy as we could, we could use it as an excuse. But in the real world, they would call that bipolar.

There’s got to be a job for every personality right now to find out.

This is true, this is true. So define I mean, what is your business? I mean, what is it that you actually do?

Oh, you know. We have gone through a lot of stages and I’ll say as far as rare and the encapsulation of what it is, what it it was, you know, basically we were a front end design shop, but we always tried to say bleeding edge with what was going on in terms of new types of design. We partnered with a lot of companies and we would be their kind of creative branch with the technical twist. And we kind of knew how to do what we were trying to do and then we bring partners in to augment and stuff like that. But, you know, that grew and over time it became half marketing because that’s what our clients relied on us for as well. So we always considered ourselves a an outsourced digital department. All right. But we had the freedom to work within businesses, make suggestions, and we saw a lot of businesses do a lot of successful things and. That was lab stuff mixed up pretty on the Web. And then what kind of took off in the last five years is really the front end. Back end has been established in all kinds of techniques and stuff like that. But front end was really seen, a lot of revolutions, single-page applications, which basically make everything work more like an out and Web site. So, you know, there’s a lot of demand for that. And that’s kind of reversing the direction I was running.

Got You. So you’re more on the front-end user development.

Yeah, yeah, I’m what they call me in the real world is the front end you guidance. And so I work with I still work with companies. So my clients and contractor for Cox right now. But basically I go in and they have a huge and usually it’s like a combination of like 20 different applications that end up coming into one. And there’s no constant updates throughout it. There’s no constant UI components to it. So I kind of get involved and build libraries. My specialty is building react UI component libraries and then providing the company the ability to test against those libraries. And it gives them so, you know, a modern company. Now that’s a bigger company. I mean, I’ve been to departments where there’s thousands of. I am working for a company now where there’s thousands of developers that are using shared components and it doesn’t take long for that becomes a huge mess. And right now what I’m focused on is finding ways that, you know, in to build modular components that get digested and used by the rest of the games.

Got you. Got you. So, I mean, you always was a still a Frankenstein, right? I mean, it’s patching pieces together and making things worse. I mean, is that would you say that’s like your core passion right now is more kind of making things work on the front end and designing them into applications or.

Yeah, like fixing problems. The last two big jobs that I took on where you come in and they were like, we don’t we’re not sure how to do this type of things like this one that I did is they wanted to animate SMGs to make different gauges and and different like level tank levels and stuff like that. And, you know, there’s no there’s stuff like high charts as the one little goofy gage and stuff like that. There’s no components out there. So I wrote a series of components for that company, which was different level gauges, different, so different, different kind of instruments and visualizations that they can plug into their app. That gives the user instant reference to what’s going on with that device right now.

Got you.

So really, that comes down in a technical term of either using something like reacting with you, creating animated as museums and libraries, and then figuring out how to make a standardized component with the rest of the team and then send data to an asynchronously updates.

Cool. Cool. So, I mean, you definitely through out a lot of jargon that some people are whistling. So we were like,

well, sorry.

No, no, no. So does this take it back a little bit, though? Usually you started your business. First-generation was North Georgia, correct?

Yeah, yeah. I it’s interesting. The first time I got Froggies that I’m not working for the man anymore. It was a week prior to 9/11. So you can imagine that that was not a very good launch. In fact, I started the business. I struggled with it for about three or four months and I was stupid and young. And I went back to my boss and gave me a job that so, you know, took a while and run some tests again to go out and do it again. But then when I really did, I started out coming out of the security industry, keeping some of those clients and slowly move towards, you know, initially all I did was branding, you know, and then those clients started asking for, hey, can you do some Web work? And I kind of scratch my head and I was like, well, you know, let’s do it. And then that turned into, as you know, you know, doing a lot of I was getting pretty good so I could do and databases. So I was writing a lot of little custom content management systems and stuff like that. And then we started growing the team and that was yeah, that was up in Dawsonville. We were up there for about what, fives? I want to call it five or six years before eventually we moved, we moved everything down to be a little bit closer to the action, really to a lot of my clients were down in Alpharetta Rosewell and they were having to drive up to Dawsonville, their sit downs and back and forth and stuff and a while and it just became like personal reasons. Also, I moved around arousable, so. All right, guys, who’s picking it up? So we move it down. Rosewarne got a building down there and you’re the team.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So I got the next question is, is you always hear about the 20 years it takes for someone to become a success story, and it always seems like it happened overnight. How long did it take you to get to where you are, to where you’re comfortable and you’re following your passions and following your dreams?

Oh, man. It took me a good 10 years just to figure out what I was good at. I tried all kinds of different things and what I was good at just I was reading stuff and I love using jazz. And it was really and I love playing with things that are what I consider are like next level. There’s always a market for that, though. So what I had to do is either wait for the market to mature and hone my skills or find something that the market would tolerate. Let me do the right.

So that’s one side effects, right. Side effects of being a left brain right brain thinker. One side always wants to think ahead and the other side always wants to be in the moment. And it’s a constant push and pull that.

Yeah and, you know, I’m that at heart, I think I know I’ve got the heart of an artist because I have all the downfalls too. So, yeah, it’s.

So what was one thing you would do differently if you could do it all over again.

So try to grow slower and try to, you know, not be so hungry for next level. You know, the web was really blooming at that level. And I had a group of peers that their companies were going from like five people to one hundred people overnight. And so you kind of caught up in that kind of thinking, like we need to figure. The other thing is everybody at the time was like push for a bigger contract, push for getting contract and we did, man. We went from our average closed contract being around five to seven grand to in a matter of three years. I think, you know, our close rate went down, but at the same time, we were close in twenty forty thousand dollar projects without blinking. And for a small webshop, that’s pretty good. But what happened and kind of the big underlying thing is our our clothes, our times, I’m going to do an image and then I’m actually signing off on the dotted line and us having to foster that sale and provide content with the sale and value to that so we get that. So and I went from like usually around fifteen days to six months we’re dealing and the sales guys can get well, you know, we were dealing with departments that had to get funding that then had to get this and that and the other. And it was just hard being a little guy trying to be a big guy. Right. You know, you can go in with the representation on website look like we were huge. Our contracts with like we had a lawyer on staff. And, you know, we we did I mean, we had all the right set up. But at the same time, we were always pushing for bigger, faster, more. And I really think if I had any advice to give anybody, like especially right now in this marketplace is in today’s marketplace knows pre covered marketplace, you know, the biggest thing would be I want to say stay in your lane, but I will say, like, really focus and get paid for what you’re really comfortable doing and find a way to learn new techniques and stuff with nothing work. You know what I’m saying? Don’t. Laughter I personally went after all the jobs that I thought were going to be a challenge. You know what they were? They always took twice as long as I thought they were going to take and they were twice as complicated and stuff like that. It’s always that way. So my biggest advice would be like, really try to sell what? No, you can deliver on your worst day.

Got you, got you.

And then also, when it comes time to grow, and if you’re hiring more than one person every six months, I think you need to pump the brakes, especially when you’re going from four people to 16 people. You know, you can find yourself just that. That would be my biggest regret, looking back, is I wish we would have been more focused on our core team developing our core team and figuring out giving time to let all the personalities come out and figure out how to best use them rather than, you know, having everything and saying, we got the right people, let’s do this. You know, and I think that was really. It ended up hurting us quite a bit.

Got you. Well, I mean, everything is a learning experience. So coming to I mean, do you come from an entrepreneurial background or all this you just kind of learned on your own is like your dad, uncle, your mom, and you have them entrepreneurs

know everything. Everything. But that’s like coming out of high school and whatnot. I worked for some interesting people. All right, so. I always kind of learn from them. They were hyperaggressive, knew how to make the sale. I was drawn to that kind of business. And so the first real business that I was a real big part of was a business that sourced and sold obsolete computer components or computer chips. So widely considered, it was kind of a gray market, but it was it was kind of like high sales, high turnover kind of shop and high adrenaline and that one it taught me really like how to really get out there. There’s money out there. There’s plenty of money for anybody that wants to go out there and find it. You can walk down. You can go out to your go to your closest Wendy’s or McDonald’s walk in either direction. You’re going to find at least 20 businesses that will give you money to do something. You just have to figure out like how do I force myself to go out there and get in front of those people? How do I play that game? And if you can figure out those kind of games in those kind of little routines that catch people’s attention and. Then then then that’s the first thing. So learning the hustle was really the first first thing, and then I got involved in a security, a security business. And you know that I’ll say the owners of that business, probably in terms of business, like how business works and all that, they were my my my business college. I learned that, you know, like four years. And while they were kind of like old school, you know, they’re there. Yeah. They were kind of old. They were very successful. So I got to learn a lot of things like how to structure deals, how to structure contracts, how to how to position yourself to be the top of the nopal, you know what I mean? So and really the importance of bringing and that’s where it really instilled in me the importance of, you know, this was like I said, right after 9/11, I got involved in that business and business went from zero to 50 million in revenue in less than a year. And it was just rapid growth. So I saw those things. And then I kind of said, wait, that’s much started my first business. But yeah, I would say learning from the people around you is probably absolutely key and taking a keen interest in not only what is my job, but let me watch them do their job and try to learn something, you know, good or bad. I learned I learned a lot of like what not to do and both those.

Got you. Got you. So how do you juggle your work life with your family life?

Oh, boy, I used to not do a good job. And then I saw myself in a hospital bed and I realized it’s time to do a better job, you know? And so, you know, I got three kids, I, I get involved in what they’re doing and in turn they get involved in what I’m doing. So a lot of our time is doing stuff like that. And, you know, it’s just that’s kind of one of those things is like you look at successful people. And to be honest with you, I look at your posts, what you’re doing with the boy, and it’s just like, man, you know, that’s that’s what I that’s as far as being a good dad, that’s that’s the most important thing. Right. And I think that’s the job is just keeping away from being able to turn off how I make money and not how do I love my kids and that’s what I believe is probably the number one having the right mindset and attitude. That’s got it.

Got it. So what’s your your morning habits, morning routines? You know, everybody that I usually speak to on this podcast, they usually have some kind of particular routine that they do every single morning. What’s yours?

When I get up, I take the kids to school, cook them breakfast, take the kids to school, and then I come down to the basement, my office here. And, you know, initially I have a bunch of morning meetings that I usually have know you’re probably like talking about before that. But what I do is I make stuff up. Like I come down here right away. I get my initial fifteen minutes of workout and I’ve got a little gym off to the side. I go and what I do is like, I’m not I’m not I’m not in a position to give anybody any kind of like exercise advice or anything. But what I do is when I get frustrated with what’s going on on the screen, I take ten minutes and I you know, I go do my thing for a little bit, work up a sweat, come back, sit down. All right. Now, cool. Turn off and start working again. So that’s really kind of that’s my first part of the morning and then, you know, I still I spend about two hours a day focused on work. So, you know, usually around lunch while I’m eating or something, I’m watching a video about something I’m interested in, whether it’s like a new reality component, state management library or podcasts. So I lot of for a while I was really into anything recently, like massive masterclasses of emails. Yeah. Like watching stuff like that. Really just. Allows me to exit this mind space and go into more of a learning mode, and then I feel like I’m done with that good start work and focus, hunker down, if you will, and try to obtain silence long enough to get something significant done.

What do you see yourself in 20 years ago?

Twenty years. Yeah, 20 years. Oh, man. If I’m not sitting on a beach somewhere now, you know, there’s a little there’s don’t steal this from me. There’s a there’s a there’s there’s like a large lake in the middle of Guatemala that actually has a wide channel that goes out to the Gulf. Right. So I see myself on the northern edge of that lake, sitting with a little canoe, fishing and living the nomadic lifestyle people.

Got it, got it. Yeah, I remember you was looking at sailing at one time, too, aren’t you?

Yeah, that’s a dream. That’s a dream. But when you got you know, when I had one kid, when he turns 18, I’m going to go sailing. Now that I’ve got three, it’s like got one in 20 years. I’m going to want to graduate, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sailing is definitely one of those things. I mean, I actually to that point actually went ahead and bought a sailboat.

I saw that you scooped it from the ground.

No, not that one I got.

No, no, no, no, no. But I am jealous when, you know,

whatever. I mean, it’s still taking sailing courses and classes right now. But I took it out last week with the original owner and kind of just went sailing to kind of get the ropes off, you know, every boat. It’s uniquely different to its to its owner. So there’s little nuances. But yeah, I mean, like, powerboats are cool, but sailboats are just it’s a whole nother thing. It’s a monster, man. I love it.

That’s awesome.

Whenever you want man. It’s it’s there.

So we’re doing this.

We should we should have done this on on a sailboat.

So we’re going to go.

We could do a follow-up on the boat. Yeah, definitely do a follow up on the boat.

Oh that is awesome. I love that idea. Especially getting out there with kids and just enjoying the day.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So as far as what you see yourself in 20 years, do you potentially see your will you see your company in twenty years?

Oh. I don’t know that all circles around the technology and what’s going on, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll bloom back again or just not, you know, I really just it’s hard because I don’t I don’t stay in the past. I don’t see in the future. I really focus on the here and now is doing what I can do for this situation right now. That’s a good question. I should have been more studying. I see myself being prepared for this kind of thing more in the future.

OK, well, what tools you use that you wouldn’t be able to do what you do without?

Man. JavaScript, I mean, it’s technically a computer without the computer. I’m utterly worthless, so that that’s pretty much my name to the fingers. I protect these puppies this morning. Money, man. Specifically, if you want to get into the specifics of it, then I’m a react guy. I’ve chosen that course. So react redux. One of the big tools the Airbnb put out that I use is storybooks. Storybook allows me to develop components outside of the actual application, and I can share that with the team and the rest of the design team. Exactly how does this component work and then figure out like outside of that, how does it work inside of the application? So it makes testing a lot easier, just is another tool that we do a lot of testing with, but it makes all that kind of work easier, if you will, and it gives me a platform that I can share with the applliance and the other departments to get approvals. That way I can deliver a chunk of code that I know works 100 percent to the application. They can use it.

So for our listeners, you got to say when I first met this guy, the only thing that he would ever talk about was Joomla.

OK,

so to hear him say everything but Joomla, it’s kind of like I want to check his temperature. I want to make sure he’s feeling OK, like

we’re going to like this. Like this. I just finished up with a website where for a buddy of mine, he just called me up and said, hey, I need a favor. So it’s a shot out creative. So anyway, just I just finished and dude, I use WordPress.

Where are we?

I know it’s horrible to know for a regular website like the average business out there, man. You know, I’m not going to say I ditched Joomla because me personally, the websites that I married, I prefer them enjoyable because again, I’ve got 15 years experience in journalism with Joomla, whatever. I don’t know. It’s just not I don’t know anyway. I still prefer making my custom designs and putting them in Joomla. And the custom design is one thing and was a. WordPress, if I’ve got a buddy that says, hey, I need a website, I say, cool, there’s this templates out for you over here. Let’s go look, let’s find something that’s really close because most of the websites now are like rich photography, right? So, yeah, really, the template is just giving you your building blocks for how things move around, whereas the menu was about and 90 percent there. And again, it’s different if somebody is paying for something to try to do a custom job. But again, if I’m just doing quick work or I mean something, you know, to put out there and also if I know that the guy is going to be self managing the site, then the WordPress sorry, Sergel.

I mean, if it works, it works. Right now,

Joomla has got Joomla for about to drop and I don’t know, dude, since I’ve since I’ve gone more enterprise application and stuff, I very rarely so much anymore. The only time I do it is like an old client is going to call me or most of our focus is is enterprise-level component.

I mean, that’s what everybody is claiming to be right. I mean, the whole app enterprise is this where everything is and the subscription model is where the money’s at so

yeah. But even with that, there’s so many good tools out there that unless you’re truly an enterprise, like if you’re, you know, if you’re AutoTrader, got it. You’ve got to bake your own pies.

You can’t lose stuff that’s just out there. So that’s where people like, you know, I’m just one of so many contractors that are there just to support the team.

OK, so what words of wisdom do you have for any up and coming entrepreneur or developer or web developer for that matter?

OK, say to them, what do you know what companies are wanting to buy? My biggest tip, and this is kind of the personal journey that I went through and I don’t know, you know, I just this is what made sense to me, is I went on like monster.com and LinkedIn and I saw all the job postings. What were the commonalities? Right. I literally went through there and poppy stuff from the requirement first overview. What does that mean right then over to you to watch videos about it. And then once I got in the vernacular. Right. And I think that was the correct vernacular is because even in job postings, they don’t usually do it. Then I take that and I would go back and I would search for people’s resumes on those that included that. Now, if they’re using the correct vernacular, then they’re likely going to use the reference throughout their resume. And I’d go through and pick through the resume and go, these are the key technologies that somebody is legit is learning right now. Also, make sure these guys have a job at a legit company. They’re not just like you out there searching for money. Right. So these are the key components. And then I just kept on for me, man. I just clicked for me was first it was angular and I ran after Angular for a while and then kind of a pump the brakes because all of a sudden all of like the Fortune 500 were suddenly developing react departments. And I’m like, that means they’re planning on using more more. So I found that and then I started getting content around it. But, you know, you update your resume, update this kind of thing, you update your website that includes segments. But then the here’s the advice part is pay money to learn those concepts and any for the last four years, two hours a day, I’m watching on like you, damn me. I’m buying courses that are usually like what? Thirteen nineteen dollars.

Yeah

I know it says two hundred. But if you wait thirty days, trust me I’ll be 90 million people and now they don’t even bother advertising.

You know, it’s just all just kind of.

Yeah right. So I find things that I’m interested in and I watch those and you go your report, you just constantly learn and there’s there’s no excuse. I think right now the way the Internet is all the information you ever need. I mean, I can take any normal programmer, sit down for six months and say, OK, here’s the course outline. Here’s the things you’re going to learn. You know, you’re going to be taking lots, two hours a day minimally. You’re going to be learning these concepts. You’re going to be put into action. And, you know, the truth is you can you can you can tackle and you stick to your salary at the end of the year by learning these things in six months. Easy, because the companies out there paying for modern web development and understanding how and modern web development works.

Yeah, I think he brought some really solid, solid, solid points. I think the only thing is to step back a minute. And it’s kind of like some some of these viewers may understand. You talk about some of them may not. But I mean, it’s obviously a diverse. Right. So what is UX?

Start with that user. UX is user experience. It’s basically, you know, just kind of like a branding is you take a simple idea of the logo and you stare at it long enough. You develop all these ideas around how logo should be. There’s truth in all of those things. UX Thing is like, are you knowing who your user is and having tools that like, I’m not shaking my desk, get a little bit sorry,

the coffee shakes, man.

But knowing exactly who your user is, developing a system to profile your user. So when you’re dealing with decision-makers, you’re not dealing you just kind of the art of taking the power of how things should be away from the owners and away from the stakeholders and putting them into shape. Can we at this hour get the answers? Hello, how’s it going? Am I going to? Alison. I’m so sorry, dude. Oh, no problem. They’re calling right now. Why? I don’t have anything on, like. That’s the nature of the beast, man. We’re. That’s the weird. OK, so not a problem, and it will likely persist the songs. So anyway,

so you covered it UX, so I guess the next sentence is what’s react?

OK, so react as a JavaScript library that basically allows for you to create I don’t know if I should do the technical version and want to

make it as lame as possible.

Oh, man. It makes. Web experience is more interactive, like an actual in fact, most or a lot of apps that you see out there are probably written in react and then loaded up to be you know, they have react native that it’s made of components for native applications. So so did the library.

So what are your thoughts on no code-based apps?

Code base apps like Lix or not,

I mean, Wex is more so like a Web design platform, what full integration of a mobile app that was designed on a platform that’s essentially tablets and goolies. You put the pieces in functionality together and then you submit to Apple.

Yeah, no, I’ve seen a lot of those. If they do what you’re wanting them to do, if you have an idea that fits within their capabilities and you happen to have enough experience with that one thing, then that would be great. The moment you get a requirement that great for right now, eventually you will likely have to refactor into something else or hope that the the foundry, if you will, or the people that created the app creator, keep expanding and whatnot. So there is definitely a place in the market for that. There are a lot of people that, you know, there Apple want is I want to see all of the churches within a 10 mile radius of whatever, something like that. Yeah, you can do those kind of things all day long. The higher you go up the scale with your app, like the moment your app starts to become a brand name, if you will.

Yep,

it’s not likely I mean, you know, you start hiring on people that demand that you’re a different kind of analytics in the background and security in the background. So we’re kind of off log. So where you don’t even have to log into the app and it’s and then it has to try the different databases and data stores and stuff like that. It just becomes very prohibitive because by the time you find somebody that can do all of those things. Yeah, it’s it’s. You’re paying as much to get somebody to develop a scratch, right?

Got You. Yeah, let’s look at it as Marshall prototyping. If you have, like a low level prototype that you want to get to market the test market at a cheap cost, test a market, and then you hire the developers once you raise equity to to build it from scratch, that you could own the code.

Right. Right. Right. And find somebody that’s good at doing that. Find a specialist that knows me when there’s thousands of people, they can put together a WordPress site a million times better than me. Right. That’s not my thing. That’s never good, I think. And I have struggled so much putting this site together, something I literally could have done, you know, just using regular e-mail and doing things I hadn’t called you. Yeah, I could handle that in a day and because I’m having to navigate WordPress and something I don’t do every day. Yeah. I couldn’t charge for it. I would be making three dollars an hour. There’s just no way. All right. So find somebody that is really good with the tool that that. Now I will say the advice for the business owners out there is this is on you. If you go to any dev shop, they need the money and they’re going to say, do you get in this? And they’re going to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s do this. Right. That’s just the honest truth. So it’s only owner to know first what their true requirement is, right? They can’t just say, hey, I need an app or a I need a site that does blah blah, blah, blah, blah, and not understand any of the technology that goes into it because this is like kind of like buying a car at the end of the day, you’re buying better be sure you understand one, what kind of maintenance costs you’re going to have with it, what it’s going to look like when it’s outdated, you know, all these kind of things. Right.

So now I got a bonus question for you, and this is like one of my favorite bonus questions, because it always kind of tells me, like, you know, how people perceive themselves, but at the same time, it kind of defines who you are. Right. So if you could be a superhero, who would it be and why

superhero?

Yeah. And don’t try to cheat and think about what the kids, what the kids say,

and you remember the tick.

Yeah, yeah, right. He’s still on his Amazon Prime right now.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think that. Yeah, just somebody that looks like a superhero, huge and and is pretty much ineffective as a.

I mean, think it’s funny, though.

I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, you know, my brain wants me to save watch. My brain wants me to say quick, it’s all about speed. It’s about this idea. It’s about speed of communication. I want to say flash, but physically I’m not flash. So I got to think of a superhero. It’s like a turtle, Mr.. Ninja Turtle,

OK? Now, if you could spend 24 hours a day with anybody dead or alive, uninterrupted, who would it be and why?

Elon Musk, yeah,

Mr. Ahriman himself,

huh? Yeah, you know. I think that just to point out, is the real you know, I’ve got this like a cyborg dono or he might have like a million people, like the security that is behind them producing Garatti very much. It seems to be like alien is him. It you know what I mean? It’s like people can’t what I whatever you think,

everything he did to get to where he is, I mean that people don’t realize like his his daun was essentially in a totally different market than what he’s in right now. Yeah. Totally different market. Yeah. L.A. definitely. I think to his his nickname, The Iron Man of today is definitely he definitely represents Iron Man. I mean, that’s who he is. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next ten years he ends up in Iron Man suit for real flying to space.

I just got to talk him out of going to Mars. I just think it’s a bad idea altogether. I mean, let’s just sit them down and say, look, there’s there’s no

total recall madness water, there’s water in the hills,

total recall in the Gulf or anybody.

They had oxygen at the end.

I want to leave somewhere I can breathe, somewhere I can,

just as true. This is true. All right. So close things out, man. What’s your most significant achievement today?

Oh, man. You know, when I think back and get nostalgic about things, I think there was a pinnacle moment at Ringer. Where? I remember thinking to myself. This is everything that I’ve ever wanted right now, right, and I think when we reached that point where, man, you know. The team was gelling, we were all being very creative, we were all just fireworks were happening every day. Right. And. I think achieving that level of. Personal satisfaction with my work. Felt like we were producing. Top level product. That was true, and then we were we’re taking cues that we’re documenting stuff along the way. I think that that that was my my peak moment that, you know, if if I had it to do over again, I would have. I figured out how to live there and not. I didn’t recognize it for being a trip and by keeping on climbing a mountain that wasn’t there, you know what I mean? That that really is something you’ve got to learn when things are good, how to maintain good. And that’s it.

Yeah, nice. So is it a part of the show where I usually flip the script and pass you the microphone and what questions you got from me

and how do you do it. Do you like you’ve got. OK, so I’ve had all these great ideas and it’s like you just got. I don’t know, man, I sit back everything you’ve ever talked about, everything you’re like somebody, this somebody, this somebody, this is somebody this it’s like you done it, you know what I mean? Everything from you know, I remember you first saying I’m going to start writing books. I was like, all right, go in the first one to four forever, right, but but once you figured out the combination, then it was like you just took off with it, like a machine and and I guess that’s the biggest. Like, how do you keep your mind focused that want to work even for success rather than just go for it?

So I think part of that goes into like what your morning routine is always learning. So every single time I learn something new. The first question I ask myself is I have to make a decision in that moment. Am I going to dedicate all my time to this new thing if it’s completely against what I’ve been doing? Or is it partnered with what I’m doing? So to your books, for example, write the books were more so I have all the information. How do I get the information out there? I was already marketing. I was really designing and developing and doing business. So I needed to kind of figure out a way. So the books was an add on and then everything else I’ve done from that point on or add on. So like course development, this podcast, they’re all essentially add ons to take what I’ve learned to delegate, educate other people and monetize them across the board. So anything you seem to do moving forward, it’s all for me. It’s all the big vision, right. It’s all about some people could compartmentalize and think about I’m just gonna write books, but I’m like, well, books go hand-in-hand with education. Education goes hand in hand with reach, which goes hand-in-hand with marketing. Put them all together. Sounds like course development strategy. Me.

Yeah,

build those phases out, so that’s just kind of how I do it every morning when I wake up. I have a vision of, OK, what’s on my agenda today? I have my clients stuff. Then I have my S.A Grant stuff and then I kind of split in the middle. OK, who do I need to hire to execute my client? Stuff like like legit. Like who can I hire to do this? Because my passion is I want to build my brand and to the point to where kind of like Gary V, right. Gary VS at the point where he has a company that does all the work and he has a brand that somebody else does all the work, he’s the figure in the middle, then, you know,

that would be pretty boy in the middle,

that big pretty boy in the middle. And that’s not necessarily where I want to be. But seeing Gary ve seen Tony Robbins, seeing all these different people over the past 10, 15 years, that’s the formula. Sure. Formula is being consistent, building great content and and not doing it all by yourself. And that’s the biggest thing I had to learn, is I can’t do this all by myself. How can I outsource whatever I need, outsource or hire whoever I need to hire and stay on my path to my path is I need to get all my content in front of as many people as humanly possible. And that’s what I wake up to every single day. What content or what am I going to build and develop today that can get my books or get my courses or get the brand or get the podcast one step further?

Yeah, I have another question for it, because this is something that I sell and and I’d like to think we’ll see what you think. But, you know, I feel bad for, like, a lot of people right there just completely out of work. Not but it’s very interesting that. To me, this whole slowdown and everything that’s going on is it’s kind of like a tree. all the players out of the game and I’m finding so many more opportunities just coming my way that are solid opportunities. And it’s kind of like it feels surreal. It feels like this isn’t how it should work. But I feel like it’s the fact that we’ve been, you know, nose to the grindstone honing our crown for so long that by the time all that the tree shake happens and all the money and the money just kind of has to be spent wisely, it goes towards people that actually can produce results and and I don’t know, I’m having a hard time being depressed. And everybody’s supposed to be depressed because. I’m kind of an introvert to begin with, you know. So to me, this was like, wow, everybody else is on the page now. So, you know, zombies are awesome. Let’s not get personal. I don’t know, you know, but what do you think I mean, and how has it affected you and your psyche?

Which is weird because from a wealth standpoint and all the studying and understanding of wealth management, I understand that this is the time to where wealth is created. Right. So just understanding that principle, that opportunity, there’s going to be more opportunities when things are worse than when things are good, when things are good, everybody is surfing and everybody’s happy. But the market, for example, right. If you know how to short the market, you’ll potentially become a millionaire overnight versus dealing with a bull market and you’re waiting for money to climb. It’s going to climb, but it’s going to drop way faster. And you could make way more money a lot faster that way. So it’s the same thing that the real estate market pops the same damn thing. If you’re sitting on two million dollars, you can go buy as much as you want because it’s 100 times cheaper than it usually is. Yes, but our space in digital is the same thing. It’s like you’re saying you shake the trees, players are falling out and there’s not enough people that they’re looking at, oh, my God, nobody’s hiring anymore but know that they are. But you just have to do a little bit more to get those jobs and once you get those jobs, you just have to kind of execute the jobs. And the biggest thing for me is keeping people on scope of work because like to your point earlier, if you have a job that’s going to be X amount and you’re burning 300 hours on it and it’ll be in three dollars an hour, well, that’s not the way to wealth. You’re working on an hourly basis. You have to have it set to where I’m I notice my margins are this is what I’m going to make and how am I going to get this job done on time and keep the client satisfied in scale step and repeat.

So for me, I mean, honestly, knock on wood covid. I have not been affected. I mean, business has increased, right. Since Colvard has happened.

And I think we’re unique in just our space. I mean, it does make sense. I mean, in a lot of ways what we do is facilitate the nonaction of people by, you know, as people can do it on the computer versus going going outside and doing so. You know, that’s what we’ve been doing. So it totally makes sense that, you know, the people that create the interface between the machine and the man, we’re going to do well.

But, yeah, it’s just very interesting. Different people. You talk to you and it’s and then the whole learning code thing is just. You know, it’s like. Look, I will not be good enough to do my job if I just started it two years ago. The only reason I’m good enough to do what I do now is because I started it 20 years ago and I haven’t had to think about anything else. So it’s just it’s kind of it’s a little bit daunting thinking about other people, especially while it feels like I’m getting job offers constantly.

Yeah, I think it’s a business model. Right? It’s a business model. I mean, like you’re like when your friends he owns a a smoothie shop or a Jewish shop.

Right. And so it’s kind of like for him, it could be a gift and a curse right at me. As long as he keeps it up being clean and he has everything set up and this is the property keep in climbing. But, you know, if it was more so like the the jumping playgrounds where you send 50 kids in. It’s kind of like now by default, they’re not going to have access to anybody because nobody wants their kids to get infected so much to maintain the business.

Rothbaum those guys are going to unfortunately, you know, it’s just kind of one of those things.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I think in the gym arena, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for digital gyms now. I mean, every time I go on Facebook now, I see these digital TV mounts or these vertical screens that are essentially 30 and screens turned sideways and they have software running on them, which is essentially like an Amazon fire stick. It’s a subscription for fifty dollars a month to the gym membership. Yeah, yeah.

So it’s like you just spent four thousand dollars for TV and you also spend fifty dollars a month for gym membership.

That’s online when a regular gym membership is 10, 20 bucks. Yeah. So the increase is. Opportunity knocked and somebody seized on the day, so, yeah, yeah, it’s some of those things you can do, I try to do like an online yoga thing and maybe would help some of these guys kind of stuff, like sounds like you was doing advanced hot yoga mat.

I don’t know. The first thing I could find, the heaviest advertisers got my business. So nice. So nice. I don’t know.

It’s confusing world. I just I’m just trying to stay positive more than anything else, you know? I think that’s probably one of the biggest things is is being able to wake up and to have the motivation and have the dedication to get things done to a day to day basis. Because to your point, I think society wise, we’re designed to be around people and the screen contact is OK, but it’s not the same as sitting down having a beer or coffee with somebody facing somebody and giving them a hug.

I mean, these are the things that struck me the most honestly, is the fact that I have to think twice before going up to a buddy I had seen in a while.

It’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Elbo that the new album, Handshake’s is interesting. It’s like, you know, the fist bump pneumonitis, elbow to elbow. Built for hugs and hugs, a grizzly man, the grizzly bear.

Well, I definitely appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to come on the show.

I think we’re definitely a well, knowledgeable episode.

And it’s not that I know it’s probably a little off base and let’s rehearse them. But, you know, that’s just not true. So, yeah, I mean, that’s the goal of this this podcast.

I don’t want it to be scripted. I mean, the questions are kind of formulated in similar fashions, but I know every answer from everybody I interview is going to be uniquely different. So.

Yeah, yeah. And you played a little trick on me. Left out some of is always.

Keep your toes depressed. Yeah, well, have you breath and take me sailing, Captain.

OK, well. Well, yeah, that sounds I mean, nothing else to come out, check out the boat, maybe like next week to be available, so.

Well, I’m actually I’m here in Seattle for a week tomorrow. Cool. And so that’s fine of up there saying family and all that. So. We’ll lock in the time and is there so I appreciate it. Thanks again. All right. Thank you. Later.

Founder & CEO Of Ringer Consulting Group: Gabriel Meacham AKA The Ringer Boss – S2E24 (#52)2021-06-27T17:15:37+00:00

Influencer, Life Coach, Musician Of Ben Jenkins Media: Benjamin Jenkins AKA The Positive Boss – S2E23 (#51)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Influencer, Life Coach, Musician Of Ben Jenkins Media: Benjamin Jenkins AKA The Positive Boss – S2E23 (#51)
“Pay attention to your environment. And pay attention to, within that, what you’re feeding your mind; everyone has the power to do that.”
In Season 2, Episode 23 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with influencer, life coach, and musician Benjamin Jenkins of Ben Jenkins Media.
A life-long musician, music has always been a medium of expression for Benjamin, who defines himself as a communicator. The irony in the above statement lies in the fact that he also acknowledges himself as an introvert and kind of quiet. WHAT?!? But you’re a Life Coach!
“… you’re not going to see me just going around introducing myself to random strangers a lot. But I learned the value of communication through music first. I can take something that’s inside of me like a feeling and experience, maybe even a memory, and I can with the piano, which is what I play, take and express that to someone I don’t even know. To someone I’ve never met before and probably will never see again in a way that connects with them.”
Don’t miss a minute of this Positive episode covering topics on:
  • The power of using music as a form of communication
  • Morning routines for non-morning people
  • The importance of observing those who have done things before you
  • And so much more!
Want more details on how to contact Benjamin? Check out the links below!

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S2E23 – Benjamin Jenkins – powered by Happy Scribe

All right. We should be rolling and you go by Benjamin, is that correct?

Yeah, Ben is fine or Benjamin not OK.

Are you all right? Three, two, one. Welcome. Welcome back to Boss uncaged podcast. On today’s show, we have someone that I consider to be an action taker, right? He found me through a Facebook group. He sent me a message and he was like, hey, man, I want to be on your show. OK, so we had a little casual conversation off air and he kind of told me his story. And I was like, you know what, this show is designed exactly for people like you. So without further do, Benjamin, who are you?

Hey, I appreciate that, you know, I I appreciate your sharing that because I was always curious what makes you pick different guests? You know, and I do consider myself to be someone who’s looking for more attracted to the title of this podcast, Being Uncaged Boss, because I believe that that unengaging happens in the mind and that’s how it started for me. Like, I didn’t grow up in an affluent family. I didn’t grow up in a family of entrepreneurs. I grew up with people who, as well-meaning, as they are, really had limited ideas of what was possible in life. And I never even considered the possibility of being an entrepreneur until probably about two or three years ago. I it’s a new idea. So for me, I’m someone who is constantly in search of growth, in search of asking the question why and asking the question how can I do this better? And looking for that freedom, which is so well symbolized by the term uncaged.

Nice, nice. So I mean in our conversation off the air and we’re going to we’re going to bleed that conversation into air. Right. So, I mean, you kind of telling me your influence or you’re a life coach, you’re a musician like I mean, define yourself in three to five words.

I would say, first and foremost, I’m a communicator. And that might be a bit broad-sounding at first, but as you talked about, I started my journey as a musician. I’ve been a musician ever since I can remember. I never honestly remember a time where I didn’t go over to the piano and. Try to express myself through there, most of my life, I have been kind of a quiet, introverted person. I haven’t spent a lot of time going. New connections, people starting new conversations about a group full of one hundred people, you’re not going to see me just going around introducing myself to random strangers a lot. But I learned the value of communication through music first, which was I can take something that’s inside of me like a feeling and experience, maybe even a memory. And I can with the piano, which is what I play, I can take and express that to someone I don’t even know, to someone I’ve never met before and probably will never see again in a way that connects with them. They get that. And I started doing that, of course, at home first, and then opportunities started rising for me. I grew up in a very religious family, so I started going playing at church and I didn’t even read music. And in fact, I still don’t read music very well. And so it was like, how do I do this in a way that other people can follow in a way that there was congregational singing, there was structure there. And and the journey of saying not only how can I express myself, but how can I express myself in a way that’s relevant in this context and to this message that bled over into. The desire to not only express myself, but to have something positive, to express, to enjoy my life, because for a lot of years I wouldn’t say I was depressed, but I certainly wasn’t happy. I as a result of misinterpretation, misguided use of religion. I had a lot of guilt, a lot of just a lot of anxiety and uncertainty about where my life was going, how worthy I was of success as a person. All of that because. We know that culturally we live in a very limiting. People’s mindsets are limited, and that especially goes to a lot of times, sadly, people who are very religious, it’s all about we’ve got to keep things the way they are. We need to stay the traditions. You know, you’re in our club, you act this way. And I was kept I was with someone asking why? Because I realized partially through my interest in music that. The possibilities are limitless, art loves diversity, and in music, you don’t have beauty if you just have one note, you don’t have beauty. If you just have one rhythm, you have different things that are inherently. As opposed to each other, inherently different from each other, working together to create a common good, a common blessing. And that was something that intrigued me because I didn’t see that in my church. I didn’t see that in the people. I saw everyone trying to be the same. And so. I started asking those questions of. How can I improve my life, how can I attract these different energies that are not like me and then are new that I can learn from, that will ultimately elevate that experience?

So, I mean, what you just said and I want people to kind of like recap again. Right. Go back to three minutes and the beginning of this episode, I said that he was an influencer, he’s a life coach and he’s a musician. And that his answer, he just defined why he’s a life coach. He kind of just gave you a pure example of what life coaching is really all about. Right. Is about taking your condition, understanding your journey and understanding multiple people’s journey and helping them get from point A to point B. And he’s on that journey himself. So it makes sense that you want it to be a life coach. So just dove into that a little bit more like why did you want to become a life coach and what did that journey look like?

So about probably about five years ago now, I was riding in the back of my brother in law’s car. He lives over in Norway and. He put on a recording of a motivational speaker, Ziggler, after that point, yeah, after this point, I never listen to motivational speakers. To be honest, I thought it was kind of a pump up. You go here, someone tells you to feel good, you feel good for a little while, and then you go back to life the way it is. And so I wasn’t really into it. I didn’t check it out, but it wasn’t my car. So he put on this recording and I’m like, OK, what is this? And I was attracted to it, not because it made me feel good. You know, he tells lots of stories and and he was he was a very engaging he was funny. He was entertaining. Which entertainment is what I did as a musician. You know what I especially I’ve always been a student of music way more than a producer and a producer as a result of the things I learned. So the same thing when it came to this motivational speech. Entertaining, but it wasn’t just entertainment, it was. The message of empowerment that you can improve your life, which rumor, that’s the thing I was looking for how can I not just consume content, but how can I learn in a way that will elevate my experience? And so I started listening to other speakers. I started getting interested in the personal development world because. I. Recognized in that a message that I had been searching for, which was of empowerment, of engaging the mind precisely what it was all about. And so I I put money into it. I bought programs. I went to conferences and, you know, it grew over time, but remember, this is why I’m a part time musician, part time I’m working at Kroger. I worked at Starbucks for a while. I wasn’t swimming in cash. But my my desire, because of the unpleasant experiences, because of the anxiety and and all of that and then watching my siblings, I have three siblings watching them grow up, watching the life of my parents had and realizing I’m not really happy with the results. They’re getting nothing against them. And maybe that was their vision, but it wasn’t mine. And so I’m like in order for me to get a different life. I’m going to need other role models. I’m going to need. Advice and mentors that have achieved the experience I want, so I eventually did hire a life coach and. It was a good experience, it wasn’t perfect. I had, you know, pros and cons, but I saw the power in it. And if I got nothing else out of that experience of hiring a life coach, it was, I can do this. I can take this vision. And help other people apply it, because it’s not just I’m successful. Watch me and you can maybe become successful. It’s these are the things I’ve learned. Here’s how you apply it in a specific way. Do this and this and this. Check back the next time. Did you do what worked, what didn’t? It’s very practical, very pragmatic. And so that was attractive to me. Honestly, I’ve not been to college and I don’t say that to not college. But I just didn’t know what I wanted to study and I wasn’t interested in investing a lot of money if I didn’t have a clear direction, home life coaching from me gave me that clear direction because. The course was tailored to my life. It wasn’t about you can learn this career that a lot of people do and maybe find your pocket in that, but it’s what is it that you can do better than anyone else? What is your unique gift? And tailoring that career, that life mission to just me as an individual.

So, I mean, based upon that last response, it kind of leads me to another in-depth question, right? I can hear some similarities to you, to Tony Robbins, right. And and anybody that knows Tony Robbins, I’ve been to several Tony Robbins events. It’s kind of like it’s like going to a music concert, which goes back to your music background. It also goes it almost sounds like a spiritual uplifting feel to it, which kind of goes back to your spirituality a little bit. And then obviously, it’s life coaching, business development. Right. It’s it’s gathering those three things and putting it into an event, put it into an environment, and that makes his events so sticky so people get attached to it. It becomes addictive. Are you following that model to a certain extent? Do you see yourself potentially growing into like a Tony Robbins?

Absolutely. He’s definitely one of the mentors that I latched on to pretty early on. That being said. I try very hard. Not to follow one person exclusively and not just that, but not to model one person exclusively because. As much as I would love to be the next Tony Robbins in the scale of what he does, I don’t want to be the next Tony Robbins in the entirety of who he is because no one’s ever going to do that as successfully as he does it. No one’s ever going to be. The next uncage boss like you, it. Our goal in life where I believe we are created as individuals on purpose, so. The best thing that we can do is develop our individually, our individuality to its fullest potential, which is always going to take us. And if that means said. About. These ideas that Tony has, he didn’t originate this issue. OK, he’s applied things, he had flush them out. But of course, he listened to people like Les Brown, like Ziggler, of course, Jim Brown. And those people listen to other people. And so I’m going to take ideas that he has used and I’ll develop them in my way. And I have I also take ideas from different things, but I’ll draw from my musical experience. I’ll draw from my spiritual experience. I’ll draw from my entrepreneurial journey. And my goal is to. Deliver a package that works. It’s not going to work for everyone, but works for people who are seeking their own individuality, and that’s what I empower.

Mm hmm. So you’re saying stay on that path, right. I remember I went to a Tony Robbins event probably in the last 24 months. And in that event, he was on stage. He was still being Tony, but he was also suffering from mercury poisoning because on his trip, either he was coming back from Hawaii before he came to Atlanta to do that particular show. He ate a bunch of mercury. He was sick as hell on stage, but he was still Tony, jumping around. Right. So this question is, what’s the worst experience I have had, Tony, what his worst experience to date was? It would probably have been the mercury poisoning. Right. So what’s your worst experience you’ve ever had in your business that you’ve had to overcome?

There’s several different ways I can go with that. There’s, of course, experiences that affected me personally, which probably the worst one of that was I got a music job, which a couple of years ago. This is about three years ago now. That was my dream come true. It was a full time paid benefits, insurance, touring around the country. And I landed that and I moved up here, the Nashville area, which is where I’m still living now to do that. Did it for nine months and I got fired without any warning on the spot. I got fired. I wasn’t given a reason like, oh, you did this badly, so we’re letting you go. It was, frankly, because I stood up for something I really believed in. There was racial tension within the group, within the workplace. And one of my co-workers who was African-American wasn’t being treated well. And I stood up and said, this isn’t right. And we’re both let go like that. You know, it’s not a corporate environment. Musical culture is different. These bands are our run. Things are internal. In that time, there were only three people in a room. There was not that accountability. So that was the death of a dream for me. But not only was it the death of a dream, because obviously I could go out there and find another music job and do stuff and living in Nashville. But it was really a time where I questioned. Am I? In the right place, am I achieving that goal that I set out, which is to improve my life, like where am I headed? Because it wasn’t looking too good. Not only was I kicked out, but I had other people from the company, like in the board and everything calling me and say, hey, you messed up, you disrupted the cart. You know, we were doing things that we got to look for new people. And and it was really a thing where I was accused of being the problem. And I’m not saying all of this to to draw aside, you know, and be like I’m the same to here. Everyone is not about what I chose to do or didn’t choose to do. The point I’m making is. Those decisions we have to we have to live with our decisions and only we can tell ourselves if we made the right one or not, there’s always gonna be people around us saying that was the wrong decision. And I have plenty of people telling me that, in fact, most people were telling me that. And so that self doubt, I’m going to be honest, I existed in this apartment without really looking for a new job. Yeah, I left and did food shopping and all that, but I didn’t really find a new direction for several months because it was just. Such a an upheaval. And so ultimately. The gifts that I got from that. Was realizing that that moment that had felt like a weakness of me being cast aside and the group went on, they got new people and they’re still out touring now. But that moment was. I my first biggest victory because I had made a decision without ensuring that it would work in my favor, I didn’t do it for anyone else, I didn’t do it because it was beneficial for where I thought my life was going, because things change. They happen all the time. We we only have a limited perspective. But I made the decision because I believed it was right. And in hindsight, I’ve looked back at that and. Been proud of it. And yeah, things have been difficult that it’s been a journey from there, I did after that decided to go more into personal development. I as a career, I do still do music. But I realized. For me, the journey, the message about life, about how it affects. How I live my life and how I want to empower the people is ultimately more important to me. I want that to be at the forefront and then share the music because the music is more subject to context. Anyone can impose their meaning on my songs, and they do. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that but I realize I have a message that’s even more specific that I have to get out to people.

So, I mean, would any business write this all you brought up a solid topic about like not only the morale of the employees, but the responsibility to do what’s right. Right. And you hear about all these big companies all the time, whether it’s Wal-Mart, whether it’s Amazon. And you always hear that something went wrong in the company structure, something went wrong in the business. And the leader of that company is always in the news or trying to protect what their choices were. So if you you made what you thought was a positive decision and you look back at it as a turning point in your life, right. To move forward. And again, I think those philosophies are part of the reasons why you’re on the journey to become a life coach in that right. We always hear about the 20 years it takes someone to become successful, someone that’s on a journey, but it always is perceived as an overnight success. So in your journey, how long did it take you to get to where you are, including that landmark moment of you making a positive decision that had negative results?

I guess it depends on where you mean what you mean by to get where you are, because obviously I started getting where I am 20 years ago, but that’s not my ultimate success. But it is alike I believe every day. Is an opportunity to take it a step further, to realize that vision more, to clarify that, to refine the message, to gain that confidence. And so I guess I have a hard time. I don’t really view myself as being at a particular milestone right now, except in the sense that I feel like I’m more alive and more sure of what I’m doing today than I was yesterday. So I don’t know, maybe does that

make we’ll think about it if you’re a life coach, right? I mean, everything that you’re breathing and saying on this particular podcast, I know why you’re a life coach, because you’re the embodiment of being a life coach. You’re living it. You’re walking it. So on that journey. Right. So when did your journey start? Like, how many years ago did you journey start? And obviously we know that your journey is not ended, but you’re at the level of assurity knowing what you want to do. And in America, a lot of people in worldwide, most people are still trying to figure out what am I going to do? I hate my job. What’s your next job going to be OK? I hate my career. What’s my next career? You really kind of transition from that to knowing what your focus is, where you’re going and what your goals are going to be. So on that journey, how long did it take you to get there?

I as I told you before, I didn’t have any thought about being an entrepreneur growing up and graduating from high school when there was a lot of pressure to go into college that year. People are telling me if you don’t do it now, you’re never going to do it, and I still didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted to do. I didn’t really come to a conclusion like a solid conclusion that I wanted to be a life coach until a couple of years ago. But I was on that journey, as I told you, through my music, through the experiences that I had in life, through religion, all of that has combined because I was on this journey of I want to have choices, I want to have freedom, and it’s kind of a broad thing to say, but when you’re growing up in a church that’s very rigid, very conservative. You don’t have a lot of choices, the choices that you aren’t, if you still have heaven on this side and hell on this side. No one is going to intentionally choose to go to hell, or at least I haven’t met them yet. So in that case, it’s sort of a it’s sort of. Yeah, I have two choices, but this one sucks, so it’s not really a choice. And I say that because the same thing, you know, growing up, I grew up with with parents who of course, wanted me to learn right from wrong, wanted me to keep me safe. And so they had rules and. You know, there’s that time where when you’re smaller, you don’t have a lot of choices about that, either you’re going to eat at this certain time, you get to go to bed at this certain time you’re going to do this. And that didn’t bother me. From a very young age, but what bothered me, I remember being five years old and thinking. I noticed some adults in my life that were living without choices, even my own parents. And that bothered me at in this crazy young age. And I don’t most people, I don’t think think that way. But for me, I remember noticing at that age, like people being a victim, whether it was a finance, whether it was a certain practices in relationships, whether it was of the way that they approached the religion, those those kind of thoughts started in me back then. And so as I grew older and especially my experience with religion, I got to be honest. It wasn’t a positive one because I started realizing that the more I grew older and the more I started to sort of push the envelope of wanting to make those choices, I want to start wearing different things. I want to start talking a different way. I want to start drinking certain things. The more tight the restriction became, know that this is the path, this is the way that we do things here. And yet it wasn’t teaching me to. To form a certain type of character, at least that’s not the way I perceived it, it wasn’t teach me empower me to make those decisions. It was just do this because. This is the proven this is the path that we take, this is the path that this church takes and whatnot, and so I met a family friend probably I’m trying to think probably about 15 years ago now came into our lives. And this guy was very much his own person. He was spiritual and all that, but he he carried this air about him where? No one tells me what to do if I’m going to be spiritual because I chose to do this. I’m going to study this out for myself. I learn these things. I’m going to choose what what I do. And yet he had flaws and he made those mistakes. But that principle, one, that principle was powerful to me because while he was confident in his decisions, he never tried imposing them upon other people that I saw, particularly me like he valued my voice and he empowered me to think for myself. And that was really the turning point for me. One of the turning points where I saw, like, it’s possible to be strong and not be dominating, not be overbearing. And to your point of of this idea of a boss, like a lot of people, for a lot of people, boss isn’t a great word because they think of, like, my boss is my slave master. My boss is my my like, he controls my life. This is when you’re going to do this. This what? You’re going to do this and. My thing is a boss should be a leader. That has this vision. Their job is to be visionary and to kind of chart out the future what we want to happen, but then to attract other people to them who have a similar vision so that when you’re organizing, you’re just giving them a structure where they can do the work. Maybe they’re not really interested in running a company or or charting out the next five or 10 years. But they love doing the task of this industry, of this this job. That’s what I’ve been chasing. That’s this goal. And so it gravitated into me. Taking more of that leadership position and saying, I want to help empower others, not just. I saw.

So, I mean, you alluded to to your family a little bit here and there throughout these questions, so are any of your family members like your mom, your dad, aunts, uncles, anybody throughout your life or any of them entrepreneurs?

No, I wouldn’t say so. Uh. There are some of them who are becoming entrepreneurs and some of them who have kind of gone with me on this journey, so maybe that’s a bit unfair to say, but. They’re not. I think my my brother in law is the one who sort of started it all when he met my sister, married him, and then he was already listening to Tony and zig into Jim Brown and all of that. And so I think that that’s sort of where that started and has infiltrated my family. But like my parents have always. Benmore. Where they’re following someone else’s vision, whether that’s the religion or whether that’s their company, they work for or for various things.

Hmm. So. Which your family so it seems like you know your big family guy, right? How do you juggle your work life with your family life?

That, for me, is a hugely important part, as you have noticed, I I recently got engaged about a year ago, got engaged and. My biggest question in approaching that journey is how do I do both I want to have my cake and eat it too. I don’t want to be someone who either can be successful and provide for a family that I am removed from by the work that fuels that success or just be a family man and. You kind of get by and so I guess what ultimately. It’s hard because I’m still in the process of that journey. I’m still in the process of of I’m sorry. Sorry about that. My phone is connected to my computer. I guess it made a call, so not a problem. I’ll turn this up anyway. Here we go. So, yeah, I’m still in the process of forming that, but I can say that family is always a priority in how I manage my time. So I set aside time every day to connect with my fiance. I make sure and have time multiple times a week to connect with other family members. My mother especially, I’m close to her. And I think that that’s kind of where it comes down to, we know that a career. Requires time. Mm hmm. You know, I’m going to work, whether you’re working for yourself or whether you’re working for someone else, you have to devote time for that. And so it’s a matter of saying, how much is that time worth? We can usually tell how much our time in our company, in our career is worth. We can put a dollar value on that. How much is your time with your family worth? And that’s something. That kind of goes it crosses the barrier between my success professionally and my success emotionally and spiritually, and because that’s something else that comes into that, I devote time to my spirituality, time to my health, time to my family, time to my career. And so I just make sure the family has a place at that table and always, you know, instead of putting your money where your mouth is like, put your time where your mouth is like, have that. That budget, that time budget where you’re showing the value by what you how you prioritize that.

So, I mean, you’re just like you’re scheduling blocks of time. And this is the question that I always like to hear a response because everybody has a unique way of waking up every single morning. So in order to have a new routine or unique habits, what are your morning routines? Your morning habits?

My morning routine. Honestly, I’m not a morning person, and I think I think that’s something that has been a little bit of a frustration, but I’m learning to embrace it because a lot of people in the personal development industry and a lot of people in the entrepreneurial industry and in space, they’re like, yeah, I get up at five o’clock in the morning and I do my shakes and do my workout and I do this and this. And then by seven a.m., I’ve already set my idea for success. And I’m like by seven a.m. I’m trying to get my ass out of bed. And so how how to do that? I discovered that it’s not as important about when you do it as to what you do when you get up. And there may be some limit to that. But my thing is. So I just wanted to put that out there for the people who are listening, who are also not mourning people just because you don’t do it at five or four or whatever, does it mean that you can’t still set your. For me, I still am. A spiritual person, and that’s been a whole journey getting back to that point, because a lot of negative experiences with church and with Christianity. But I did come back to that point. And so I prioritized that. I get up. I took this from from Tony. He has a thing called Hour of Power. And I modified it some, but it starts with a breathing exercise. And I do that because, again, I’m trying to wake up. I’m trying to activate to if I just go right into, like meditation or prayer, I’m the fall guy back asleep. So I do a breathing exercise for at least like five minutes. And I’m walking. I’m moving during that time. Then I do for me, I do a prayer. The main thing is I start with gratitude, I’ve heard, like everyone in this space say, gratitude is so important and. I realized. The reason why that gratitude is so important is because obviously it gets our state going, but also it reminds us of success and things that have gone right in the past, because I need to have faith. I need to have assurance that I can do this. I can conquer this day. And if I start with gratitude, I’m. Feeding my mind with the successes of my past or with things that have gone right for me, that God has helped me, that has done through me or things that I’m confident will go right in the future. So that’s the next thing. And that time has been increasing lately. Right now, it’s probably up to around 20 or 30 minutes that I spend just on gratitude. I write down a list of about 10 things really take time to feel those things that I’m thankful for. But I also write down because of my faith, like I write down Bible promises and not necessarily word for word, it’s not a it’s not a anything it’s graded or anything. But just to remind myself of why I believe in this book, because my whole formula for freedom, for success in the way I want to do things is, again, I want to be a leader, not necessarily a follower. So even when it comes to the Bible, I’m asking myself, why do I read this? Why do I need it? Because, let’s face it, there are plenty of people out there who believe in different books or they they would rather just follow a more. Mysterious higher power or the universe or whatnot, and I don’t judge anyone for that, I’m not here trying to convert everyone, but I am saying whatever you follow, you need to know why you need to have a foundation behind that. So I think that in the morning, by familiarizing myself with. Passages in the Bible that speak to me that I believe give me. And ability to win the day and after that, I. I pray about different things, about things I want to happen today for family, all that kind of stuff, and it’s a bit more fluid time frame there. After that, I usually eat and. Then after that, it’s just dependent on what I want to do for that day, like this morning, I was preparing for this interview, making sure that when I showed up here, my mind was right, that I had an idea of of what I wanted to accomplish, what I wanted to share, what message, because it’s not a matter of like preparing a sermon, but it’s a matter of what I believe about myself. What do I believe about. Like, what reality am I living so that when you ask me these questions, I have something to answer from because none of us has a clean slate. We have negative interactions and positive interactions from the past. We have things that we may see on the news. We have things that we feel based on. I love listening to music so that influences. And so I try to choose what am I going to be influenced by before I go to give something out, because that’s going to show up in that message.

So, I mean, I would think sooner or later in your lifetime, potentially, you’re going to be writing books, books yourself could I mean, you’re you’re in that space, you’re in that state of mind. You’re a big listener of Tony. You’re a big listener of Les Brown. What books are you reading right now that’s influencing you currently today?

I’m reading Limitless by Jim Quick, OK. He’s a coach, he focuses on developing your mind, developing. I’m reading the Bible in various parts of several books that I really enjoyed, I have read the book called Going to Crime by Trevor Noah. Studying other cultures and studying the experiences of other people is super important to me. And that is basically what grew out of that incident. I told you about getting fired because I started to realize that racism is alive and well today. I got to be honest, I grew up well-meaning people, but I didn’t have to learn that stuff to survive. And so I did. And I learned the basic principle of equality and of respecting and of loving others. But I didn’t learn how to. Apply that in a relevant way in my world, until I was confronted face on with the fact that it’s happening and it’s affecting the people around me. So I do study a good bit about that. I’m reading a book about the history of black gospel music called People Get Ready by Robert Darden. And so just things to learn about history and learn about other people’s experiences, things to learn about my spirituality and about how to improve my life. That’s probably the the the biggest things, but also music. I’m a huge student of music. I listen to jazz, I listen to Coldplay, I listen to Michael Bublé. I listen to Bobby McFerrin, who kind of does his own thing. I don’t know how you classify that, but I, I pride myself in listening to a lot of different music, again, because I’m trying to track that diversity. Jacob Cure is a huge fan of mine. I’m sorry. I’m a huge fan of his and snarky puppy. So just a lot of different things. I mentioned these because that’s to me is as important as the reading is. I listen to music to learn not to turn off my brain and just absorb it. Like, how can I do that? I’m not into what I do musically and what I say and how I live my life.

I mean, yeah, I can definitely attest to that because I think when we first met, you know, I pay attention to detail. I mean, it’s just something that I do. And if I remember, I’m trying to visualize it in my mind. I think you had a T-shirt on that said something about black Wall Street. I forgot the punch line above it. And I found that very interesting, considering that, you know, you’re Caucasian and you’re wearing a black Wall Street. And I just kind of like, what’s the story behind that? Like like how did you even one where did you get the shirt? Right. And why did you wear that shirt that particular day?

Yeah. So I got that shirt from a friend on Facebook. I’ve never actually met him in person but around. I don’t know, somewhat after the events of, of course, the murder of George Floyd, you started selling these shirts. By that point where this news came out about George Floyd, I’d already been studying social justice informally for probably a couple of years. And so I was ready like I. I to be honest, I never watched the video, not because I don’t care, but because I didn’t need it, I was already upset enough. Like I’m not needed to get nightmares because the purpose of to me what that video did is it will people up whether or not they were. They will come up to different ideas, but it woke everyone up, it got everyone thinking, and so I say that because that journey started, I watched like the Netflix series when they see us. I watched the movie The Hate You Give. I watched Selma, you know, historical things as well. But I started immersing myself because I’m like. I need to know if I’m going to. Interact in a positive way, and let’s face it, I’m a white man living in the South, so I’m one of the things like how can I have an opportunity to interact in a positive way with the people of color around me? Because everyone looking at me, I was a barista at Starbucks a little while and I noticed that people of color coming in, especially as I was new, would relate to me in very different ways. A lot of them were very conscious and informal or formal and like just standoffish. And some people would get offended and be like, why are you treating me like I’m a racist, I’m not a racist. And I’m like, I’m wearing the uniform in this by my face and my skin of someone that these people have to be cautious around. But at the same time, there were some people that were super friendly and super open right off the bat. So I started being interested in that idea, and the main thing is I started wearing the shirts like that because I’m like, this is something I can do to let people know whether they’re passing me on the street. I don’t have to say where they know I’m an ally and I can be one less white man in the south that can stress out someone’s day, that can make someone feel uncomfortable. And that’s that’s why I wear them.

Hmm. So you have a conscious awareness. And so with that. Right. And bringing it back to business like that’s always a subject when it comes down to business is like race. And there’s always a comment about, well, you know, by from your own or shop with your own. But, you know, we all are in the same economic system. So understanding both sides. And it seems like you’re very aware of both sides of the coin. How are you using that to fulfill? What you’re doing business wise, how do you see that growing your business and giving opportunities to other people?

I can definitely tell you how I see it in my vision of the future, because. This this whole white savior narrative, of course, is something that happens, you have people, other well-meaning, but they’re just like I have all this power over celebrities, so I’m going to hire people of color in my company. I’m going to donate money to feeding the homeless. I’m going to do, you know, send money to other countries. And this idea that. Because of my privilege, I can benefit the lives of others by. Sending money or sending resources to them? My vision is, and I know I’m not the only one to think this way, but what I’ve really been impressed with the people that make the most difference. Are the people who elevate the voices and the experiences of other people pass the mic on to those people who otherwise wouldn’t be given that platform and the words as I move forward, of course, I see myself not just being a coach, but sort of like Tony having a company that I do speaking events. I do mastermind’s, I hire coaches. I have a network that can benefit a lot of people. But in that I see myself like being involved with a podcast like yourself where I can bring. I can bring, like black CEOs and people who who want to be black entrepreneurs and whatever and say like. Tell us your experience. Because I have an audience who will listen to me, who will relate to me. Who won’t relate to you the same, and I don’t say that at all to be condescending, but it’s just the reality of the culture we live in. So I’m going to take and bring to that audience examples saying. This is something that I support, this is something that I believe is important and it has shaped me to become who I am and Tony has done that. He’s done a couple episodes of his podcast where he interviews leaders in the current civil rights movement. And that’s something that’s really been inspiring to me. But it goes so much beyond interviewing, but it comes into empowering. People to be leaders in their community. Going into education in the inner cities, again, busy building businesses, helping people of color, build businesses, all of that stuff, I want to be someone who empowers not just individuals, but who empowers leaders. Because representation is everything and have that representation among success and just a little plug for that as well. I found this I don’t know if you’re familiar with Ebon Carmichael.

Of course, the airplane I was always calling the airplane guy the guy that can reach the sky, right?

Yeah, I highly recommend and this isn’t a pay promotion or anything, but I highly recommend every white person, especially who’s listening to this, every black person. But but I’ll probably explain why to go to he offers these programs where he will send you a short YouTube video every day for two hundred and fifty four days. There’s one in there called Black Excellence. I highly recommend everyone subscribe to that. It’s completely free. And the reason is this, as I said before, we’re not a clean slate. I don’t have ultimate control over what’s coming into my senses every day, I have some control, but not not totally. So every day I see people of color who are. In the service positions, be working at a gas station, maybe working on the side of the highway, maybe not working at all to be home, very. I see those images of people of color who are. In more poverty, in the less influential careers, things like that, and because I’m taking that in and it’s beyond my control, my mind is going to start forming these beliefs as to why that is. And. People say, well, I’m not racist, I’m a racist consciously, but you have prejudices. Prejudice based on the things that you see, the things that you experience around you, that program black excellence, every day you see a person of color. Sorry, I keep interchanging those two terms. I’m hoping I’m making sense here, but you see that. But someone who’s successful, who’s doing what they do at the highest level, there are actors, there are athletes, there are business people, there are musicians, different walks of life, giving advice about how to succeed and I think it’s so important because it reconditioned our mind to say black people are successful. They learn this stuff. They’re on this equal playing. It may not be in the same numbers, but it has nothing to do with the fact that they’re black. Why why not that them being black doesn’t inhibit their growth and so that things like that, resources like that are just to help retrain the mind and to help educate me and people like me to view everyone on a way of like I want to help you succeed because I have full faith that you can succeed to my level and beyond, regardless of your background, regardless of your skin color, regardless of how I perceive like, it just kind of levels that. So hopefully that makes sense.

It does. I mean, to your point of bringing up that particular YouTube hoax, right. Karmichael is I remember when he first came out and I was following him and I was like, who’s this guy on YouTube? And I remember his first videos were like, he will refer to them as like garbage. Right. Because now his videos are like, well, branded. I call them the airplane guy because he has a paper. Airplane is yellow and black. He has branding down to a science. But he was the first YouTube channel of its time, to your point, that was giving equality to everyone. He may have Jay-Z, he may have Sean Puffy Combs, he may have Tony Robbins. And he goes through every single person’s life journey and how they got to success. One of his biggest series that I enjoyed was his ten key tips to success from every single person. And to your point, I mean, diversity is what his platform grew from. It was he didn’t discriminate against any individual race, creed or sex, for that matter. He had everybody and everybody had success stories that were were open your mind to be like like I know they’re successful, but I didn’t know how they became successful. And his show kind of gave you the opportunity to kind of see that on that journey. So on his journey. Right. It took him a period of time. Right. On your journey, where do you see yourself 20 years from now?

I see myself as being a global influencer, as having a movement, and not because I have anything so much new in the sense of my life coach or personal development, as I said, those ideas, I didn’t create them. Tony didn’t create them. I honestly believe. That my message, the message that I want to share. In my brand and I will spend the most time and resources doing is that. Diversity is beauty. And. That spirituality is also beauty, those two things, because they both elevate us in different ways. I was seeing that diversity and appreciating that that elevates us because it gives us resources of everyone from every walk of life. I’ve heard other people in your podcast in Times saying, like, the most valuable thing we have about relationships with relationships are valuable. How much more value do I have by approaching relationships from everyone, not just people that I perceive will benefit me? So that’s something, a message. I’m so glad that Evan is doing that. I think we need our voices in that space. I think Brendan Borchardt is another person in this space who’s consciously doing that, bringing diversity into the front. And so that’s definitely a crowd I plan to join and hopefully long before 20 years. But that’s that’s a goal. And then the other thing is spirituality, because. Let’s face it. Talking about the topic and it’s something that a lot of people, especially like in the professional business sense, are going to shy away from it because there’s a lot of negative connotations with that. And like, well, you know, it’s controversial. It’s like politics. I’m going to get involved in religion and all that. And so my burden with that is. Not to an. Not to persuade people to believe like me, but to relieve people of the reasons not to believe like me, to give them that true freedom of choice. So, for instance, I’m a Christian. People have beliefs about Christians while they’re judgmental or whether they are particular about working certain days or not working certain days, or they are never going to invest in a bar or they’re never going to it’s it’s perceived as a limitation. My perception of the Bible, for instance, everything I have learned from Tony, everything I have learned from Les Brown from Ziggler, those concepts are in the Bible like these, the concepts to grow your wealth, to manage your relationships, to improve your mind, like all of that’s in the Bible. And I say that because. I’m. If that resource has been there for thousands of years. Is it not worth exploring on a personal level, just like we do these influencers? But not only that. I believe the Bible is first and foremost. A love letter, an invitation to get to know a personal god and so many times like relationships are both our greatest ally and our greatest downfall, because if you look in politics, if you look in business. The scandals, almost always our relationships, we have good intentions, but, you know, the stereotype of men is that we want to just accomplish the next thing and we’re more and more career driven. I don’t believe that’s really the case. I believe that men are conditioned, are taught that we’re not really good at relationships and so let’s focus on something we’re good at because it’s kind of depressing to to just go around saying, well, you know, I’m not good at relationships, but I’m going to keep trying. If you keep trying with the same tools, you have to keep getting the same results. We know. I believe personally that developing a relationship with my higher, higher power, which is God gives me a blueprint, a foundation for my other relationships, which benefits my career benefits, my happiness benefits, my health, my family, all of that holistically improves my life, and some people might say, well, that’s easier said than done because people like to say you should have a relationship with God is not. There are so many different ways of of doing that. And I guess my response to that, without getting theological and all that is where focus goes, energy flows. It’s something that Tony says. If I’m telling myself this is complicated, it’s fraught with controversy, it’s something I can’t understand, I never will. But if I tell myself. I can form. Quality relationships, and I’m determined to do that, and if you believe that your. Due to your higher power is a force that you can personally interact with, some people do that through meditation and different ways. If you believe it’s possible you will put the energy into and the focus into improving and doing that and again. My thing is give people. That option to say. I don’t hate this religion, I’m not afraid of this religion, I’m not you know, I’m working through it. If they’ve had negative interactions, I’ve had negative interactions. One of the things I do is I’m a spiritual abuse recovery coach because I I’ve been there. I spent most of my life trying to run away from religion, to be honest. And so, again, it’s exploring like how do I? Overcome these obstacles and choose whether I want to go in this direction spiritually or this direction, and to me, I do that through looking at the positive. Does the Bible thing say things that can help my life? Are there things there that can benefit or is it all bad if it’s not all bad? It’s worth trying to discern the bad from the good. The same could be said for any other religion. And so I don’t know if that answers, I’m rambling a lot with these questions, but that’s that’s where I see myself as is really putting do my best to promote those two ideas side by side.

So would that what words of wisdom would you have for somebody coming from a life coach mentality if I’m somebody that’s maybe 10 years younger to you, 15 years younger than you, and I’m coming up in the system, I’m coming out of high school in my early 20s, per say, and I want to establish myself into becoming a life coach. What words of wisdom would you give to.

Pay attention to your environment. And pay attention to. Within that, what you’re feeding your mind, everyone has the power to do that. We teach kids from a young age to read. Everyone can go on YouTube and and find motivational content like it, like everyone has. Because our minds. They put out what we put into them. So to me, that’s the most important thing is really. Take the time to encourage yourself to listen to people who have done things, who are accomplishing things with their lives so that you have you train yourself to always say, I can do this, I can learn to do this, I can do this better. I can succeed because there’s me, plenty of people around you telling you that you can’t.

Yeah, definitely great, great insight. So where can people find you online social media website? How could I get in contact with you?

So the main thing is I’m on social media right now. I have Facebook and Instagram. I’ll be expanding that later on. But Ben Jenkins, twenty twenty-two is my username there. And it’s that because that’s the year of my wedding. So that’s the way to remember that. And I do have a website, Ben Jenkins media.Com and it’s a bit of a bit of a generic term, but that’s because I do plan as I expand that not just I have music on there, but I have courses for personal development on there and have books on there and have like. I’m a media guy. That’s that’s how you communicate, and so that’s the two places I would recommend that you.

So this next question, I’m very intrigued to see what your response would be, because I kind of it’s in my mind I have like a toss-up between who could possibly be. So I just accidentally fall into alignment. If you could spend twenty-four hours in a day with anybody dead or alive, who would it be and why?

And probably, I have to say, Bobby McFerrin. And and honestly, because I believe he is someone who you could probably gain about the most from in twenty-four hours, because he’s funny, he’s honest, he’s expressive, he’s musical, he’s philosophical, he’s spiritual. Like, I could spend a week with that guy and just just to ask and pick his brain and sing with him and maybe a very life-enriching spiritual experience.

That was that on my radar whatsoever.

I mean the people that I admire, I would love to spend twenty-four hours with Tony and I’d love to spend. But just if you say pick one person, that’s the guy that has the diversity to offer.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean he does. I mean, Bobby is is to your point, you don’t know what classification to put him in musically because he’s kind of like his, all his music is coming from him, is not instrumental, is not necessarily singing, but he’s taking all this kind of like beboping drumming all into one person’s vocal chords coming out from. So to your point, I mean, you Bobby’s definitely influenced in his own space and he’s a legend as well, too. I definitely see that now that you said it

that but like I’ve listened to it, watched documentaries where he’s speaking and profound, like he’s he’s someone who has studied. He’s someone who says and he’s a classic example of living his life through his music. Not he’s not separated from his art. He’s not hiding behind his art. It’s not a performance and. I have aimed to be like I, I walk around the house humming and singing and making all this noise to myself because I listen to Bobby like I have people when I was at Starbucks, people like I am singing all the time. And I realized I was doing it. Like, I just make your art yourself and make yourself out through what you express, like be authentic. That’s what people are looking at these days, because let’s be honest, there are so many people out here on social media who are trying to give us a curated. Message, a curated impression of themselves and people see through it and people are out here like on twenty twenty. Everyone’s online, but we’re also at home. And the two worlds have collided in a way that, like never before, where the barrier is growing thin between our anxiety and our our stress and our relationships at home and all that and our image that we’re putting out there. And so people are hungry for just that genuine connection with people. And that’s something, again, that Bobby does better than anyone else I know.

Oh, that’s a great answer. So in closing, obviously, I always give the microphone to my guests and give you opportunity. I mean, we talked about several different topics. And in those conversations, you may have questions for me. So the microphone is yours. What questions do you have for me?

One that I think kind of goes back to this idea of diversity and of race like. I have a lot of people of color in my life. In fact, you know, there’s this the stereotype oh, I have this one black friend. I was telling someone I think I have fewer white friends at this point just because because I have been attracted to the cultural experience and the the the depth of. A perception that people of color tend to have in this country and so my question for you, as a black man in America. What is something that you. Would want me to understand. To see in your experience that you feel like people who look like me are having have a difficult time grasping.

That is probably one of the the most intellectual questions I’ve ever had on this, I’ve had some intellectual questions, so and I have to kind of think about it because obviously there’s always more than one side to the coin. Right on one side of the coin, you have people that are essentially looking at the system of being. Undermined it and depressed and on the other hand, you have people that look at the system as saying, to hell with the system, I can make my life whatever I want it to be. Right. So understanding that, I think it’s going to be kind of hard to assess you as an individual person to anybody that presents themselves to you until they raise their hands and they let you know which side of the coin that they’re on. Right. And what that really means that on one side of the coin, they may look at you like you said before, before you started wearing the shirts of Starbucks, they would look at you as supposedly the man that the oppressor, because they have been raised that way. They’ve seen hardship. They have been kind of. Under the influence that the national Kwoh or the worldwide status of the war that we live in is. As a black person where cards are stacked against us and in some rights they are, but to your point, when you talk about Carmichael, he shows people that have overcome those things. Right. So from Oprah Winfrey to Jay-Z, Sean Puffy Combs, and obviously they’re part of the one percent. Right. So for you as an individual, you can’t really be judgmental when somebody presents themselves, you’re going to have to let them show you who they really are. And the way I’ve learned to do that is essentially I give people opportunities and whether they take the opportunities or not. That’s kind of like my first qualifications. If I say I have opportunely, I’m not saying you need to sign up or buy anything. It may be as simple as this podcast. For example, it’s an opportunity for you to learn from everybody else’s experience, to learn from my circle of people that I’ve had an opportunity like you. I’ve just met you, and I already know that you know that you can give information, you can give insight, you can give inspiration as well. Take hold of this podcast and utilize it. And in that journey of people to potentially be on this podcast in the early stages, a lot of people were kind of like, I don’t know right now, even though they know my track history, they know who I am they know what I’m capable of doing. And now a year into it, people are now coming around to be like, oh, not only is he achieved the podcast, not only has he had particular people of particular high wealth or particular influencers on this podcast, now they’re starting to take, take, listen. It’s like that no matter if you’re black or white, you kind of have to prove yourself. And so what I’m saying is that I would not look at anybody as black, white, Asian or anything else. I would look at them as are they seizing the opportunities? Do they understand the opportunities in front of them and are they taking advantage of it? And if they’re not, can I guide them in the right direction? And on that journey of guiding them in the right direction, are they listening to those steps? Are they taking action? And if they don’t fit those particular two things, to me, it doesn’t matter what color or race they are. If you’re not seizing the opportunity, you’re not taking actions and the opportunity and you’re stuck where you are, you’re not willing to transition forward. Unfortunately, at that point in time, you can’t save everybody, keep doing what you’re doing. And hopefully in your journey they would realize that, man, I should have got on that bandwagon six months ago. I should have got on that bandwagon 12 months ago. And then at that then they’ll represent themselves to you in a different light. Does that?

Yeah, so when I heard you say is like, give me a chance to prove myself beyond my skin color, like look at me and and because let’s be honest. We made a lot of people and through social media, it might be a comment, it might be a like like we have brief interactions and so it’s easy to pass by some profiles or to pay attention to some profiles. And that gets into the importance of branding and everything. But as individuals to take the time to say, OK, I see you, we all look different. There are millionaires who don’t come their hair in the morning and there are people who are Instagram models who can’t pay their rent. So as individuals, they look beyond the surface of skin color, of, you know, the way I present myself. And just give me a moment to peak your interest.

I mean, just really what it comes down to and to your point with social media, that’s the world that we live in, right? I would say that there is the online persona. Then there’s the real persona. And then it’s kind of like the gray area that somebody could potentially bleed into both sides. But the reality is, is that all three is a uniquely different and I don’t think there’s anybody including like Tony, including like Jim, all of them have multiple different levels of personas. But at some time or the other, that online persona has to pretty much be turned off, even though it bleeds into the normal everyday life. But you have to be that persona to attract more people to influence them. And get them on a journey. Go ahead.

Yeah, especially if you’re in a business space where you’re trying to get people to give you money, you have to have sort of a genuineness about you, because if you’re just keeping up a Prasanna, people say, why would I trust you with my money when you don’t even trust me with yourself, lik`4ce with your picture? Can I ask you one more question?

Yeah, go for it.

So as I said, I’m passionate about two things. Diversity is one. Spirituality is another. How do you see? Do you see that spirituality? Do you believe that it has a relevant place to entrepreneurs to. Business people and professionals like and if so? How do you like how do you believe people can access that?

So with that question? I think that not everybody is spiritual in the sense of religion, but I think that they’re spiritual on their own accord. Right. Some people may find that through yoga. Right. Some people may find that through meditation. Some people may find that on just closing their eyes and taking three minutes to become one with themselves. People that are successful have mastered everything that I’ve just listed. Some of them may attribute it to God. Some of them may attribute it to the old world greek mythology. Right. Some people may attribute it to taking that five minutes of breathing relaxation every single day as part of why they’re successful and not only successful, but they can maintain their success based upon that inner inner spirituality. So understanding that it doesn’t have to be religious, it doesn’t have to be meditation, but you have to find it whatever it is to you. Yeah, be authentic, choose it, yeah, and stick to it, I mean, and be be OK with adaptation, right. I mean, obviously you could wake up one day and be Muslim the next day. You could wake up and be Catholic. There’s no really reason why you couldn’t be incensed that you’re finding your purest moments while you are in that space of mind. And in addition to that, look for opportunities outside of religion. Right? I mean, think about it from a standpoint. I think Russell Simmons is a good person. As an example. He finds his inner spirituality every single day. He wakes up and he does. He has a meditation room in his house. He has like a yoga yoga center in his house. So he wakes up and he does this on a routine basis is almost like like praying to Allah, for Muslims for sense. They do it so routinely, so effortlessly that he’s done it to where it’s keeping him motivated. And it keeps him in alignment to juggle his work life balance on a day to day basis. You have to figure that out for you. So some people it may be rock-climbing, some people maybe kickboxing, whatever it is that makes you go from being frustrated or overuse and under appreciate and after you do that one thing, if you come out positive, taking the positive energy and converting negative into positive, that’s it. Whatever that is, figure it out. And the faster you figure it out, the more inclined you’re going to be successful in, the longer.

So what I’m understanding your answer then, is like. Show to your spirituality at your authentic self, just like we talked about showing up on your online interactions and in your view is with your authentic self, like use that as a modality, as a way to find that higher self, to improve, to center so that you have the presence and you have the the energy to take that onto your professional life, to your interactions with people the foundation.

Definitely. Definitely. Well, I mean, hopefully I answered your question. I mean, like I said, also some really like it kind of got into like a whole nother spectrum of interviewing. But I definitely appreciate to your point, I’m your life coach. I mean, that that’s part of who you are and you definitely delivered on that. So I definitely appreciate you taking time out of your schedule today. I think that my listeners would definitely get a unique spectrum on what life coaching is and that business structure and just the way you’re processing and you’re thinking it’s not just business, it’s about helping people, motivating people while also helping and motivate yourself on your journey.

Yeah, and that the core there is whatever I do. However you do anything is how you do everything. Whatever I do in my mind, whatever I believe in my spirit, how I treat my body, how I treat my future wife, all of that. It’s going to spill over into my business somehow, so I don’t have conversations about two business people to about spirituality, and some of these things make people a little bit squirmy. But it’s not, as I said, is not very persuasive. But it’s like you’ve got to get unified. You’ve got to get authentic, because the more you are any of these people, the Richard Branson’s of the world, the Tony Robbins of the world, Barack Obama’s in the world, they spend time there because otherwise that inner conflict and I’m not saying everyone’s, you know, a monk or they got to sort it out, but they’ve at least spent time because the more inner conflict you have, that’s going to slow you down everywhere. So that’s why I do that.

Great. Great. Well, again, I mean, I definitely appreciate you having you on the podcast. And I mean, I’m looking forward to see, you know, what you’re going to do in the next five, 10, 20 years. I’m just going to follow you. S.A Grant.

Influencer, Life Coach, Musician Of Ben Jenkins Media: Benjamin Jenkins AKA The Positive Boss – S2E23 (#51)2021-06-27T17:13:58+00:00

Owner Of Overnight Success Studio: Miroslav Beck AKA The Overnight Boss – S2E22 (#50)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Owner Of Overnight Success Studio: Miroslav Beck AKA The Overnight Boss – S2E22 (#50)
“Get your values straight and schedule your life around what’s most important to you and then fill in the rest of it with work”
In Season 2, Episode 22 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant catches up with VidFest Speaker/Sponsor Mira Beck. Mira is the Owner of Overnight Success Studios a full-scale marketing and video production studio based out of Lutz, Florida.
Mira’s story is a story of a true risk-taker. He came to the USA in 1997 for a 6-month work opportunity. After realizing that it was just a big scam, he decided to stay and make the most out of this opportunity. Left with $200 in his pocket and only a few words of English, he ‘invested’ $140 in a bus ticket to Tampa. And this is where his road to success begins…
Don’t miss a minute of this Risk-Taking episode covering topics on:
  • Why entrepreneurs need to read & re-read Think & Grow Rich
  • Fail forward as a way to find your niche
  • The importance of the 80/20 Rule
  • And so much more!
Want more details on how to contact Mira? Check out the links below!

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S2E22 – Miroslav Beck – powered by Happy Scribe

All right. Hey, how are you doing, a little fact I can hear now, can you hear me OK?

Loud and clear. Perfect. OK, hold on. Let me just. Connects you to it?

Uh. Want to make sure that I’m looking at you, I’m actually looking into the camera.

One of the golden rules of video podcasting, right?

I have the lens right over the webcam because I have just a lot of camera. I just don’t like the way the webcam handles the lights and all that.

So, yeah, that’s what I was working on. I got a can of 60s that was laying around. So I’m working on setting it up because right now I’m using like onboard cameras and I just quality the depth field just sucks even with all the lighting. I got like six lights going right now.It’s still not so cool.

Plus, I wasn’t sure if I’m in the right room because it never asked me for a password or anything else. I just clicked on and I was in here. I was like, OK, I guess maybe. Yeah. Do you have it set up? I guess you just let people in without going through all the hoops

we had put the password in the euro. So like it’s.

Oh I see. I got it. OK, so it’s not required now then. Yeah. All right. Mirror we put my phone off cuz

I was bedfast for you.

It was great. Yeah. Yeah. I had fun doing the presentation. I have no idea how many people actually were on it, but I was cool and I was fine. How about your presentation.

It could have been better man. Like I made the mistake of trying to pre-record videos because I didn’t want to have the lagging issues. So I did. I spoke for some but then I did some videos like tutorials, hands on and understanding that Bedfast is more of a people thing. You know, I’m saying it’s not really just girls is more so, but, you know, information got across. So nothing else that was done as lesson learned.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we had I mean the twenty five minutes just flies by like crazy. So that was one thing that you know, I have to do it all over again. A couple more times I would have been better. But we did have some questions at the end. Like some people are watching, I got a ton of people opting in for the three drawing in my sponsor booth and stuff. So it looks like somebody was watching. I just wish that I knew how many. And for the future ones, I really wish it was a meeting. It was a meeting, not a webinar. Because with my setup I could have if there were fifty people, I could have seen all of them on the big screens in front of me. And I would have been really cool interacting with them instead of staring at myself, you know, talking.

Oh, that was definitely the weird part of it. But, you know, I think it’s all a learning experience. I mean, every year I just get better and better. So cool with it.

So do you want to give me a little bit of a kind of a background on where you want me to go with this or about your options? Yeah, just about and things like that so we can have a good interview.

Yeah. So like my questions are usually more conversational questions are going to kind of spark you to kind of think about where you are and how did you get there. So the first question I’m going to do a brief introduction is to be like, hey, hey, I met this guy at Bedfast this year. He had a great presentation. I love the fact that he kind of had no studio is not his first studio. It’s like number twenty studio form. Right. But so mirro take over is up to you, man. Tell people who you are. So that’s how we going to start off. And then from there you’re going to kind of tell a little bit about your back story. You know, does it have to be overextended? I’m going to ask you more questions as we progress after you kind of tell people who you are, Daniel. So like, what is your business exactly? Did you going to talk about your business from that black wall? Why did you get into that? Like, you know, what was your background? What did you come from? How did you even get into video development? Why did you even come up with a studio? How does that business model really work? Then from there, we’re going to kind of just kind of you know, it’s going be based upon your answers. I’m going to bounce back some questions here and there. Then from there, we’re going to go into, I think, at that point, twenty years. Right. So we always hear it takes twenty years for somebody to be a success story. How long was your journey to become successful? You know, it always perceived to be a success story overnight, but obviously that’s bullshit. So how did you really how long did it take you to get to where you are?

Yeah, I started writing a book called Overnight Success and the Seventeen Years Leading Up to the night. And then I changed the title to Overnight Success Wake Up and be successful, defining overnight success more as a decision that you have to make before you can even take the first step towards success. And most people never take the first step and never make the decision that early. So that’s where you know. But anyway, so I can definitely have a story behind it, especially with the title of the book matching the question. And I was about 17 years or something leading up to tonight. Yeah.

So, I mean, this is pretty much as it’s going to be. And the way you’re reacting is exactly what it is. And near the end, I’m going to ask you a couple bonus questions, kind of like, you know, if you could be a superhero, who would you be and why? Things along that line. And then once you get to the end and then I would give you opportunity to ask me a couple of questions live on the air and then I’ll thank you and then we’ll close out. So we’re looking at somewhere between 30 to 60 Minutes, give or take, where we go with the conversation. So

absolutely. I mean, I’m sure it’s going to. Straight into conversation as we go, so that’s good.

All right, so let me go ahead and hit record and send Kastor and hit record here once.

And I go by Mira Número also just in case you

Mira, you said mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror, Mirabeau. All right. I started running back. This is already running. All right. Three, two, one. Welcome welcome back to Boss Uncage podcast. On today’s show, we kind of look at him kind of like this, this mystery guy that’s behind the scenes. It’s like the man behind the curtain. And I met him at the office and through meeting him, he had a great presentation and come to find that he also is the owner of the studio that’s behind the scenes that’s actually broadcasting live. So without further ado, Mira Beck, who are you?

Hey, and thank you for having me on the show. And here we are. We just becoming fast friends since we only met a few days ago. But after our conversation we had the other day, I just felt like we definitely clicked. And I appreciate the invite for your podcast. I’m super excited about sharing some of my story with your with your listeners and viewers. So my backstory is you can tell from my accent, I’m not from southern the United States or from I live in Tampa and Florida, as we like to call the south of the south. But I came here from the Czech Republic. So that’s why I’m originally from that’s where this accent is from. And and I originally came to the United States in nineteen ninety seven for a job opportunity for six months to work in Texas, disassembling some old oil towers. And it was basically an opportunity that I found in the newspaper back in the Czech Republic. And I had to pretty much, you know, get my plane ticket and three thousand dollars cash to pay for the work permit and my visa, which at that time it was not that difficult to get. After that, it became something that was much more difficult. But during that time but then 48 hours, I went from not thinking about coming to the United States, to being on the plane from Prague, Desertec and from Zurich to JFK and backpack, no English and three thousand two hundred dollars in my pocket because I needed, like I said, the three thousand dollars for the work permit. But the caveat to that is, as a manager at McDonald’s, which was my job at a time, I used to make twenty-five hundred dollars per year. So three thousand dollars maybe doesn’t sound like much here in this conversation, but it was over a year of my gross salary as a manager at McDonald’s and the only money we ever had was basically a car that my dad just got almost brandnew, worth about five thousand dollars at the time, and he had to sell it overnight to get me to three thousand dollars. So I was I was able to take care of this opportunity and the funny story to do it. But then the story is that my plan was to come here for six months and make enough money to go back to the Czech Republic, which is the land of the best beer in the world, and buy a pub. That was my favorite pub that I used to hang out with my friends, and the owner was putting it up for sale. So I told him, hang on for six months, I’m going to come back and I’m going to buy cash from you. So that was the dream. Then I landed in New York the day before Thanksgiving on ninety nine to seven and got picked up by a driver from the company that took us to a hotel and gave us ten dollars to get our first dinner, which for me was the first time ever having any food buffet at a convenience store next to the hotel. So I still remember loading up that Styrofoam box and getting a large bottle of Heineken, getting to the hotel with seven other people. It was eight of us total and watching some American football again for the first time in my life and waiting for the next morning. The next morning, which was Thanksgiving. They got we got picked up from the hotel taken to the Empire State Building, which made it look really legit and taken to some fortieth for the seventh floor. And the Empire State Building got into an office with this secretary looking, you know, dude at the front desk welcoming us in. And then another guy that basically was supposed to do the interviews with us for the work permit that sounded more like a Russian mob than an interview person from immigration or whatever thing. And then we handed over to three thousand dollars to this girl in a broom closet. And as some of the you know, the defense I’m dropping, some may sound like or it may be already to kind of a dead giveaway that this whole thing ended up being a scam. So the secretary welcoming us saying was there to make sure that we don’t leave for the money, not to really be welcoming the girl in the broom closet with the tattoos on her knuckles and sweatpants. You was definitely a dead giveaway of somebody that’s shady. And yeah, so we I handed over the three thousand dollars along with everybody else, got the back of the hotel, another 10 bucks, another round of Chinese food. And then the next day was supposed to be the first day of training and as I just mentioned, big scam. Nobody showed up and we were basically stuck at a hotel with no English, no money at two hundred dollars left in my pocket. And the choices were a couple. I could have just got back on my plane and then spend the next ten years paying my dad back for the car and probably getting made fun of by my friends for another twenty five years, calling me the American, because I spent 48 hours in the United States and got robbed and came home with a tail between my legs. Or I could have just burned the bridges and stayed home. So I obviously took the second that since I’m still here, I invested quote-unquote, invested one hundred and forty dollars out of the two hundred into a Greyhound bus ticket of knowing that there were some job opportunities in Florida and on Thanksgiving, I mean, if you’re going to sleep under a tree, you’d better be a palm tree, not something up north in the middle of winter in New York. So I spent a couple of days on a Greyhound bus heading down to Tampa and actually got off in Orlando, found somebody had one of the hotels that spoke. Jack connected me with somebody who was providing jobs of the local hotels and got me to where I am for twenty three years in Tampa, Florida, of course, didn’t make my money and didn’t go back in six months. Now going on twenty three years, you know, going through a lot of ups and downs and just being where I am today as a result of that and just the last thing I want to say about a story here as a caveat is, you know, we’re always told to be grateful for a lot of things on Thanksgiving. And since this is really my first Thanksgiving story, I always tell people that instead of just being thankful for the normal things, the family and health and, you know, jobs and whatever they have going on in their life, one of the things I always am thankful for on Thanksgiving are these bastards that took all the money from me and got me into this, because if it wasn’t for them, I would have never been where I am now. I would have never had my beautiful two kids. I would have never been sitting here talking to you from my awesome studio and all the friends and people I’ve met over the last twenty- three years. None of that would probably have been part of my life if it wasn’t for these guys. And it end up being it was one hundred and twenty of us total and groups of eight. So those guys definitely cashed out with three hundred sixty grand before they skipped town. But, but it’s, it’s, you know, everybody always was going through struggles and and pivot points in life that may not feel too great. And you can kind of question why is it happening? But typically when you look in the rearview mirror after certain time passes, you can kind of tell why whatever happened back then was happening and how that affected, you know, where you are today. And typically, you know, it’s positive. So that’s how I got here, man.

Yeah. This is a the point where you just take the microphone, you just drop the mic. I mean, interview’s over. You you drop the mic. I mean, that’s a hell of an origin story. I mean, coming from kind of like rags to riches, but more so overcoming hurdles. Right. So in that journey that people took your money, you got on a bus, which took a lot of kahunas just to say the hell with it, I’m just going to go somewhere that I’ve never been before. After you just came to somewhere that you haven’t been before, like how would you define yourself in three to five words if you could pick three to five words to define yourself, what would those words be?

Oh, that’s a good question. Well, back in the day, a young, restless and willing to take risks and I had to do all over the same thing all over today at forty five. I don’t know that I would drop everything and stayed. I would have probably gone back. But, you know, it’s 22 years old. You have a totally different mindset than you are willing to take a lot more risks. And you know, you have a free life, no family to depend on you and things like that. So I would definitely say definitely courageous. And in that case and and a lot of ways probably just willing to take the risk taker.

So, I mean, obviously, we’re taking that risk that comes with great rewards. Right? Not only did you have a great journey to success, but the title of your company’s overnight success studios, which is ingenious in itself. So talk about I mean, this is not your first studio, right? You’ve got other studios to get to where you are. Tell us that story a little bit.

Yeah. Over the years, you know, after I ended up at the hotel working, washing dishes, working in a kitchen, getting a second job at another hotel in case I couldn’t work 18 hours that day, I was able to work 12 and then put out another six, a different place. So, you know, at the time I was working hard, obviously not making six to eight thousand a month like I was promised through that ad. I was making five fifty an hour. So it took 16 or 18 hours to make a hundred bucks at that time. And so I was just working for a few months and then decided I want to go to school to learn English in case I go back, I can get a better job and stuff like that. So it was kind of the normal, you know, I guess the American dream prerequisites, washing dishes, delivering pizza, you know, working, driving a forklift at Valpak, the factory for the coupons that we get the blue envelope in the mail now. But I kind of went through that. I was like an entrepreneur from day one by any means. So my whole goal initially was to just learn the language, experience this and then possibly go back. Now, in the meantime, found a girl, fell in love, was married for 13 years and had I have two beautiful kids from that. So at that point my mindset shifted. Obviously, family and getting some getting some security. But I was still at school. I was going to school so I can stay as my student visa status and still keep everything on the up and up and be here legally. And then eventually back in the Czech Republic for three years, I was trying to get to a film school as a producer and check. Unfortunately, there was only one school that accepted ten people per year and there were about four hundred people applying. So it doesn’t matter if you were number 11, not like one year. I end up being like the third or fourth on the list, but it didn’t make any difference. I never got into that school and here I obviously had an opportunity when I was in college when they opened a digital media degree with videography track to just basically join that program. And I had to do is pay. I didn’t have to qualify. I didn’t have to compete with four hundred people for ten spots. And so I just signed up. I started doing video production and instead of a producer, which would have been more like the money guy, I just started learning about geography and storytelling and just really fell in love with this video art instead of being on the production side as a producer. So I quickly graduated from from that college, even though I was there for almost seven years on and off, changing my major seven times over those years because I was afraid to take a public speaking class. So I started whatever international business and I switched to graphic design, so to accounting switch to programing, like I was making these switches every single time I was up to take public speaking class. And then and then I finally fell in love with the video. I wanted to finish the digital media degree. I took the class first time ever online, so I was able to do my public speaking class using my webcam, which I thought was my way out. And then as soon as we started the syllabus said, you need to go and join Toastmasters and deliver presentations live. You need to find your own audience and deliver your presentations and have it recorded and ship it over to the teacher. And I was like, oh, like if I just took that class in person the very first time, I would have been done with it five years ago. So something that I thought I was getting the easy way out became even harder because we had to do all that stuff. But needless to say, I graduated. I got my public speaking class and everything I just described all these different, you know, one hundred and twenty credit hours just to get my two year degree really turned out to be all blessing. In disguise, when I started my own business, because the last semester of school, they were molding us to become news videographers and news photographers, as they called them, and I didn’t want to work at a news station all these deadlines and not caring about the quality and not be able to really be as artistic as you want to be. I just didn’t want to do it. So I started my own business right out of school. I was one of the two students in the class that when somebody called a school to find a cheaper videographer for their wedding or their project, they would basically give it to me or the other person. And I was able to start doing some paid gigs while I was still at school. And I absolutely fell in love with the idea of having my own business. And at that time, besides going to school, I was working two jobs and it was really a hustle at its best. I mean, I was sleeping four hours a day and either working or going to school for the rest of the time. But what what got me into having my own business was the fact that I came from you get four to six weeks of vacation every single year, mandatory vacation here. I started at a normal job doing two weeks and after five years, that would give me a third week and I five years, I maybe get four weeks. And that drove me crazy. So I figured if I can have my own business, I can take as much vacation time as I want. I can go home for the summer, visit my family and just go maybe twice a year and do all that. And then the funny thing is that as soon as I started my own business, I didn’t take one day off for like two years. So the very reason that got me in to start my own business really didn’t happen. I took me like three years or two and a half years before I went back to see my family again, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s been a ride and I’ve been basically now my own boss for 16 years. I’m officially declaring myself unemployable because I if I got hired by anybody, I swear to God I would walk in and I would try to fix everything that’s wrong with that company. I would be like the worst employee ever. So I think I’m going to own my own business and live this lifestyle with all the good and bad for the rest of my life. So that’s kind of the backstory on that. But if I fast forward by and kind of look back to your question about overnight success and growth came from, I started writing a book called Overnight Success and the 17 years leading up to the night. And that’s really the story of all of us. I believe there’s no such a thing as the overnight success in that cliche form, because that’s kind of the tip of the iceberg. There’s always a lot of years and a lot of hustle, a lot of struggle typically leading up to the point where you look like, you know, you got this overnight, but it really didn’t happen overnight and in my mind, however. So just to clarify what overnight success in my definition is, is the decision you make to become successful? Because most people never get to the point where they get introduced to a seminar, a coach or a mentor that can guide them on the path where they actually see that they could be successful. Most people just go through the life making money, paying bills, you know, doing whatever they’re doing. But making the decision to become successful is an event like you really need to decide. And then after you make the decision, you need to take the first step toward success and success. Honestly, it can be anything like everybody’s. The definition of success is going to be different, but the principle is the same. It starts with a decision. And I believe personally that as soon as you make the decision, you already are an overnight success and all the steps and all the actions you have to take after that to make your million dollars and get your vacation times and your financial freedom and health freedom, whatever your goal is, that all comes as a result of steps. You take an action, you take on the journey to success. So hopefully that makes sense. And of course, I named my studio overnight Success Studios for the same reason to stay on the brand. And in a sense, we also developed a process where we help people that have suffered some sort of knowledge and expertize to turn it into a course in one day. So they literally come in and we shoot and edit at the same time. And basically by the time they leave, they have their product and if they put all the other bits and pieces in place, they can click a button and launch their course and make some sales the next day. And that really turns it back to the overnight success studios and making it so it’s not just a cliche, but there is actually a thought behind it.

Got you. So, I mean, you’re definitely an analytical thinker. And I could just tell. Your logo as well, too, I mean, there’s a lot of symbolism inside that logo and a lot of most people may just see this, but obviously it’s an oh, it’s an s, it’s a cube. It’s all these different things. Did you create that logo yourself?

No, I will not take credit for this. I work with a phenomenal graphic designer on several logos, on my book design and everything else. And that guy just was full of talent and he designed this. And the funny thing is that at that time. You know how I mean, you know a lot about graphic design as well, and you have your agency and stuff, but I used to like actually sitting down with the person and I know normal graphic designer, and it would drive them nuts because that’s typically not how they like to work. But I would pay this guy a dealer and he would come over and I would sit with him and he would do a little bit of work. And I kind of was working on my things on the side. And I would look up and I’m like, I love that. I don’t like this and can we move this around? Whatever. But I was giving him a real time feed bag, which again, some people would take the hard way. In my opinion, it was better than him designing five concepts, sending it to me, me having to give them feedback and he wasting a ton of time. So I loved his real time back and forth design. And that’s how this logo was designed, along with several other pieces that he did for me. But I love the logo and I totally I’m glad that you picked up on the O and yes, the different color in between. But thank you for the compliment on the logo. But it was so it was a guy that absolutely loves everything he’s designed ever so great.

Great. So I mean, being that you work in a studio. Right. And I’ve had people on the show that were photographers and they work in studios as well. There’s always one crazy story, something that has happened that, you know, somebody running through the studio but naked, some something crazy, some explosion or whatever. What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened while you’ve been recording in studio?

Oh, man, that’s a phenomenal question. And I don’t know if I’m going to do something that’s awesome to laugh at for you because. Huh? I don’t think I can think of anything really in that realm, I you know, I remember I do live events do on location and stuff. So we would have a speaker getting on the stage and running back and puking the bucket and then running back on the stage because there are so nervous, things like that. But in the actual studio, I can tell you there was never a fire. We didn’t have any crazy animals running through anybody collapse know, I had a client one time, which was really I mean, think of that. Maybe that would be a fun environment. But he was working, working. And after lunch, he is know doing his modules, his lessons, and suddenly he’s like stops and he’s like, I need a nap. So he runs over to my conference room, lays on a conference table for 20 minutes, takes a 20 minute nap, and then goes back to in front of the camera and continues on. So I never seen I know people like to take naps sometimes to recharge, but I’ve never seen anybody doing it in a way like go, go, go, stop. You’ll come back and do it on the conference table. But yeah, I just wish I had better stories for you because I know a lot of stories out there that may be more funny and more interesting.

So no, I mean, it’s definitely good. I mean, even to the point, I mean, we’re in a space where we’re dealing with speaking on a regular basis and it’s always a learning curve. As you know, I was just talking about like my speaking engagement and bedfast and like the mistakes that I made. So I know that the my next speaking engagement won’t make those. So to your point, you could be 20 years in the game and still turn around and throw up in a bucket because you never know. You get butterflies every single time you speak. So moved on to the next question, right? If you could do everything all over again, what would you do differently?

Oh, that’s a phenomenal question. So. If I had to do it all over again, I would. Like, if I have the knowledge that I have and I lose everything today, I have to go back, I would definitely focus on one thing until I get it to completion because I am a serial entrepreneur, shiny object syndrome, the whole nine yards and every idea is good and I’m just spreading myself too thin. So if I have to do it all, but I pick one thing and just focus all my effort on marketing and implementing that one thing, which in this case, you know, it would be most likely the study and of course, creation. But in the past I’ve done that. I’ve done lie, baby. I was teaching marketing. I was just doing so many different things that were just taking my focus away. And the reality of what I’m describing is implementation of the 80-20 rule. You know, like you get 80 percent of your income coming from 20 percent of your efforts. And this 80, 20 rule applies totally in every aspect of your life. And I guarantee you somebody that’s listening is in their business and they really sit down and break down. Their income is coming from. And where their efforts are going, they will probably find out an 80 percent effort of their efforts only produces 20 percent of their income, and then the other 20 percent of their effort produces 80 percent of the income. So that’s what I would focus on mainly. Yeah,

this is very, very interesting answer. So, I mean, what’s your background? It seems that you’re very business savvy, right? You have business acumen. Obviously, you’re in your mid 40s, so you’ve had time to grow and adapt this, but usually people would not use. My main question in this sense is, do you come from an entrepreneurial background, be outside of the fact that you’ve you’ve earned a lot of the things that you’ve got is your dad is your mom and entrepreneur, like, where’s the savageness come from?

I’m getting chills on my bag, just thinking about the answer right now. I the answer is no, not at all. So both my mom and my dad went to vocational high school, ended up working in a factory, my dad in the music instrument factory for the entire time, all the way from high school to his retirement a couple of years ago, worked in the same place. My mom worked in a factory actually actually passed away the year I came here. So a few months before I decided to come here, she passed away to cancer and just horrible battle with cancer. And that’s basically what she did her whole life. So now when I and that’s why I’m laughing when you were asking the question, because when I call my dad, every time I tell him about this new idea, new adventure is something I I to invest into or I’m buying, it’s always the same thing. Oh my God, don’t spend any money, put everything in the mattress, don’t take any risks or this, you know, go get a job for a company so you can have a retirement and all that, that mindset basically from the generation before us, which I don’t blame him for it like that. They grew up and that’s how they were brought up. And having Social Security and retirement and all that stuff was fine. I’m afraid in our day and age we’ll be lucky to even see Social Security when we retire. I really feel that we need to be responsible for our own retirement and do whatever it takes to either save up or make some investments or build your business and prep it for sale or do whatever it takes, but not relying on the government to take care of us when we decide to retire. So, yeah, so definitely no influence on entrepreneurship. Not even mentioning that my first 14 years of my life, I was living in the communist Czechoslovakia. It only became the Czech Republic in nineteen eighty-nine and or the communism dropped in 1989 and became Czech Republic in nineteen ninety ninety nine. They want something but I didn’t know anything about entrepreneurship because there was no entrepreneurship in the communist countries. It’s everybody gets the same, everybody works, everybody and everything is controlled by the government. There is no entrepreneurs during those times. Now of course, when the borders opened up, I started seeing companies coming in and as I mentioned, you know, I worked at McDonald’s. There was no McDonald’s during communism. So that came in after nineteen eighty nine. But over here, my first taste of having my own business while I was still working was to start my own custom furniture company, which I built five pieces in my garage and couldn’t even get a loan from Home Depot to buy supplies. So I stopped doing that after after I built five pieces and pretty much zero money. And then I started billiard company called Olympic Billiards, and I was going to sell pool supplies, delivered supplies. But before I even launched, I got a call from the United States Olympic Committee telling me that nice effort and nice looking website. But they have a copyright on the name Olympic and I can use it. And, you know, at that point, I just got discouraged enough that instead of changing the name, I just shut down that project as well. And then finally, I started the video production company shooting weddings, initially about 100 weddings deep before I found this world of seminars and self-development and all of that stuff. And I never look back. And now, five hundred, seven hours later, I’ve seen thousands of speaker and tons of seminars and stuff. But it all started, you know, just kind of a little stepping step in blocks. Like I didn’t fall into this. Even with the seminar business. You know, I heard of Dan Kennedy had the first seminar I ever did and marketing and sales and all of that stuff. And, you know, I subscribe to his newsletter and got some books that I never end up reading. Like a year went by before I got hired again to do the same exact seminar the next year. And that’s when finally it clicked. So none of it happened for me, like, you know, from day to from one day to another. That was a process. It took me years to even get on the path to my own success, even though I was making some steps, I guess inevitably at that time.

Yeah, it’s funny that you said that. I mean, I think that’s why you and I kind of connected like we just met literally a couple of days ago. And to your point about the furniture thing, I got into like a building and I was shouting sell lamps into cigar bars. And I’ve accomplished some of that. But to your point, I’ve jumped around in multiple different facets. And I think it’s just kind of it’s not necessarily ego, but it’s more hunger is more of a desire to find something to hold on to to find your level of success and to be an entrepreneur and be successful in it. So you’re willing to take the risk and pour your heart into it, see what’s going to work in development of a. Then you kind of set you back, but then you restart and do it again, so I definitely commend you for finding your niche, right? I mean, that’s really what it is in finding success. You have to find your niche. You have to find your target audience and run with it. So for you,

I mean, doing is always also not looking at things as a setbacks either, because my seven majors that I switch at school, it all came handy when I needed to build my own website, when I did my own accounting and everything that I started when I started my own video production company. All of that. I think all of those things came and came in handy. And even building the Olympic billiards website, I mean, I just got a test run on using HTML and learning a lot of the things in practice. So, you know, I have no regrets at all. Looking back, you know, there was a reason for all of those things that happen in my life. So failing forward, failing fast and and brushing it off and just taking the next step. I think that’s another big key to a lot of people’s success. So when you fail one time, you don’t fold and go cry in the corner. You just kind of learn from it, move on to the next thing and also

shake it off and keep running. Man. So obviously, you’re a big family man as well. So how do you juggle your family life with your work life?

Well, that’s a great question. And, you know, that would be another one of those things. If I had to go back, I would have done some things differently, because in the beginning I was just focusing on working, working, working, traveling and just hustling and then not much time for the family. And that’s when I mention I was married for 13 years. I just suggest that now I’m not and end up losing that relationship and end up in divorce and I, of course, love my kids and I see them as much as I can. But now what I’m doing and what I would have if I could go back and do something differently would be scheduling my personal time and my family time first on my on my calendar and then filling the gaps with work rather than scheduling work and then try to squeeze in the family time and the personal time in it. And that’s why I was going through ups and downs as far as the relationship goes, my health, my weight, like there was so many different things that I was doing. And typically when I was doing the best financially, everything else in my in my life was out of whack and having being healthy and having a routine know, doing some meditation and just taking care of yourself. And then, you know, taking care of your family and then, you know, putting the business kind of the business is supposed to be like most of us start our business to support our lifestyle and then it turns out that lifestyle is supporting the business. And then you are in the drought for a decade and then you finally realize what’s happening and then you learn from that. Then you go back to refocus. But if I had a mentor, somebody could tell me early on to really focus on me and then put the business as a second as a secondary thing or third thing, whatever, after your family, that would have been a big, big deal for me. I wouldn’t have to go through some of those earlier stages where I would just be really bad healthwise and my back and weight gain and all that stuff and then go back to normal again and get a health coach and workout and, you know, those were my best times of my entire business career. It’s always been those times where I had to, you know, structure in place. And I was scheduling the time for me and the time with my family and then do the business as a secondary thing.

Yeah, I mean, that’s a very powerful answer. And I think most entrepreneurs, including myself, fall victim to exactly what you just described, trying to find a balance, trying to juggle things. So, I mean, I think you definitely alluded to something that we all should practice. So what are your morning routines? I mean, coming from that mindstate states now that you have more of a grass and hold on what your goals and what you should be doing? What are your morning routines? What time do you wake up? What do you do every morning?

Yeah, so now I’m back on track. But before I move to the studio, I definitely fell into this culvert thing a little bit and I wish I took advantage of being at home a little bit more. But the last two months or so, I ended up moving out of my rental that I was living in while I was waiting for this new house with the studio being built. And then I got kicked out of that because my lease was up. My studio got closed because my lease was up a couple of weeks before I got this one. So I was in a state where I have to say with everything I know and everything I know I should be doing, I was not. I got a few weeks of time where I would be just watching Netflix and eating ice cream. And I’m just going to you know, it is what it is. Looking back. I’m proud of it. No, but now that I finally got back on track, my morning routine is I get up at 5:00 in the morning, which was always my dream. But during the time I was kind of getting up at seven or eight and just I just hate getting up late because. At the end of the day, I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything, I feel this sluggish feeling, but I get out of bed at five. By noon, I feel like I’ve conquered the world and I’m so accomplished now, do I am I am owning a person? No, not by not by choice, but maybe by choice. Yes, but not by nature. So I get up at 5:00 in the morning. My key to be able to actually get out of bed at 5:00 in the morning is a going to bed by 10 o’clock the night before. So if I stay up until midnight, there’s no way I’m getting up at 5:00. So the morning routine starts the night before for me then. I like to write down the night before, but my big thing to accomplish is for the next day. So, you know, I don’t like long to do lists, but, you know, if I accomplish these two things that day or this one big thing, it’s going to be mission accomplished and then anything else will be a bonus. So now in the morning, for me to actually physically get out of bed, I need to put my phone with my alarm in my bathroom. That takes me at least ten steps to get to it. Now, if I put it on my nightstand, I’m I’m the king of snoozing. I can literally have multiple alarms running every 10 minutes. So like, let’s say every two to three minutes, I get the alarm and I keep hitting the snooze button, sometimes for hours. So I literally would go for two hours snoozing every two minutes. It’s ridiculous because when I finally get up, I’m like, what the heck did I just do? Like, this is crazy. But during that time, you’re, like trying to get back to the dream you’ve had and, you know, whatever. I’m sure there’s a lot of people know exactly what I’m talking about. So get out of bed, hit the ground running at five, get my alarm away from me so I can hit and kill it and not go back to bed. Now, with my back, I have this massage chair, the full body massage chair, so my first thing really when I crawled out of bed is sit in the chair for eight minutes to get my back going and the blood flowing. And I just love that as a part of my routine can start thinking a little bit. Can the brain up? I love to read for at least 30 minutes something inspirational and Tony Robbins books or just anything that I can do to stop feeding my brain. And then I just got the peloton thread, which is, oh, my God, the best treadmill I’ve ever seen in my life and experience in my life. So I, I don’t roll around because of my bag, but I do speed walking. So I go for 30 minutes, speed walk on the treadmill. And again, most of the time I don’t do the classes. I just watch like Russell Branson videos or some sort of video that I can again continue to develop myself and my skills and then I would have my bulletproof coffee. So instead of breakfast, I’m kind of been for the last year and a half hooked on the, you know, bulletproof coffee is with butter. And this Brannock coconut oil nice mix it all together in a blender so it doesn’t have all that grease swimming on the top of it, but it’s basically becomes nice, white, foamy coffee, whatever. But I just love that. And I can run on that thing till noon, one o’clock before I get some lunch. But that would be, you know, the morning routine. And ideally, I still fall into the trap of looking at my phone too early and looking at my emails. And as soon as I see something come through that immediately gets my brain into that mode and it’s game over. I’ve done this in the past and I really am working toward doing it again is simply not even open my email till 8:00 or 9:00 and just focus on the planning and myself and the first few hours of the day, because I know once I open up the demo, there’s going to be a fire I need to put out. There’s going to be clients asking for stuff is going to be something that’s going to throw me off the schedule. So taking care of myself first in the morning instead of leaving it for the evening typically works out because there’s no variables in the morning unless you feel really bad, have a headache or something. You know, typically you can commit to that routine. But I try to go to the gym in the afternoon and stuff. It’s almost never happens because there’s always something going on.

I mean, yeah, I mean, that’s a hell of a morning routine. I mean, you’ve got to down to a science. It’s it’s crazy. But I mean, the majority of people that I talk to. Right, they have regiments like that very strict and they try to stick to that script. And also part of that it was a good Segway for you was you talk about like learning. Right? So what books are you reading right now or audio books? Are you listening to Garlett?

Yeah. So right now I’m actually deep into chorus because, you know, I help lots of people create courses and I buy a lot of courses or invest and a lot, of course, I should say. And so right now I’m going through Brunson’s Dynex training, which is all about webinar creation and specifically webinar process. So I’m pretty deep into that. And I have Letting Go is a book that I’m about halfway through and then I usually read more than one book, but right now on my nightstand is I think and grow rich, ready to go again. I’ve read that book five times already and I feel like I need to read it like once a year every year, because every single time I read it, I find some totally different message come out of it. So that is one that I keep reading over and over. And then I do. I have probably close to nine books in my audible account and I like to listen to podcasts of And I’m Driving or an audio book if it’s a longer drive. But again, it’s my one of the podcasts I would listen to and his podcast for hours long sometimes. So it lasts me for a few days to listen to one of the episodes, but I have several other podcasts that I would load up and and listen to in the car, because even though I work from home now, I don’t travel as much and I don’t have to commute every now and then when I have to get out, I know a listen to something and be very appreciative of the fact that I don’t have to drive anywhere every single day and commute. But I very much appreciate what I have going on now, basically working from my home again and not have to be on the road with all the crazy people out there.

Got you. Got you. It’s funny that you brought up thinking grew rich. I mean, literally on this podcast as I started in February this year, like your number six to seven, probably No. Eight person, including myself, that has brought up think and grow rich and has made this almost the same exact comment that you’ve made, like you should really at least once a year. You should read it every time you really are you going to get something else out of it. And it’s one of those books that’s been around since like nineteen thirty two. It’s a timeless book. So again, if you have not read this book, this is not the first person. Is that. A second person is now the third person on this, Pocker says, pick up this book and take a listen to it, read it in all format.

So, yeah, I can tell you, I know several very successful people. And one common denominator between all of those is that they read thinking road rage either as the first book of the year, starting on January 1st every year, or they start on their birthday. So but pretty much the common denominator is they all read it some 20 times, some even more. And everybody really defers back to the book. And if you look at it, some of those principles for those of listeners that haven’t heard of it or read it, that, you know, you look at Tony Robbins and Jim Brown and all these people that are now like the big motivational speakers and and these gurus, most of those principles come back from that thinking wrote a book like that is kind of the business Bible of, you know, every other principle that you hear today. You know, people put their own spin on things, but the principles that the 13 principles or 16 principles, whatever, and that book, pretty much everything you hear around from all these experts and gurus goes right back to that book. So it’s an awesome book to read. Definitely.

Definitely. So what tools to use in your business that you wouldn’t be able to do what you do without?

So the last few months definitely zoom and a lot of zoom calls this technology for the daily stuff. We have our CRM, I’m using QI, which used to be Infusionsoft to around my database and my CRM. I use click funnels for all my funnels. And I have another platform called Experience Wi-Fi that I use for my membership platforms. And those are really kind of the software stuff. And of course, you know, other tools would be for me, video equipment, camera slides, things like that in my in my studio. Plus the giant video wall that we you saw first on the first day that we use a lot for our virtual summits and virtual meetings from here. So but that’s kind of what I probably do on a daily basis for sure. And Cholmondeley for scheduling. I mean, I love that that fact because I’m horrible with calendar and keep in it up. But having automation plugged in to scheduling, which so always been my dream and really it’s only been the last six months where I was able to finally implemented. But it’s reliable and, you know, it’s very kind of predictable and it’s working for me. So me setting out a link and somebody clicking the link, choosing their time slot to chat with me, and then currently talking to Zoom and setting up the meeting automatically and then slapping into my calendar. So when I wake up, I just see new stuff on my calendar and I go and at the time I click a button and it’s working. That to me was critical because otherwise I would be missing appointments. I would have to be doing things by going back and forth via email with people or text messages or whatever, but having some sort of automation when it comes to scheduling, it’s definitely a life changer for me. Solid stuff.

So if I’m a new entrepreneur and I’m stepping on the scene to say I’m 27 years old and just like you, I’m on that journey, I’m trying to figure things out, I’m jumping around. What words of wisdom would you have me?

As an entrepreneur, well, I’m going to go back to the you know, get your values straight and, you know, are you single or running wild? You can do pretty much whatever you want and go hustle and work around the clock if you want and find some time to take care of yourself and your health, because eventually that is going to be the only thing you got left. And if your you don’t take care of your health, none of it, none of nothing else really matters. Now, if you were to have a family, you have other obligations, things like that, I would say, again, get your values straight and schedule your life around what’s most important to you and then fill in the rest of it with work. And then, you know, the other thing would be just fine. What you’re passionate about. Right, right. In the beginning, because in those days, Whitney is one of my clients and and pretty popular guy out there. But I’ve learned this from him. So there’s like four stages of life. And the second and third stage is what I like to refer to is you from your 20s to your maybe late 30s, you’re in the warrior stage and most of us use that stage to hustle, make money and typically end up with some health issues and relationship problems and all of that stuff, because all we were doing was hustling and focusing on being the warrior. Now, after the warrior stage in the early 40s, for most people, you move into the statesmen stage where you start looking for the higher purpose, like what else is to life besides work and what is my higher purpose? How how can I help other people? How can I pass down what I’ve learned from my mentors and throughout this journey? And I would say if you can get to that point faster and move from the warrior stage to the statement stage in your late 20s instead of early 40s, that would be a life changer. That would probably help you retire by the time you’re 40 and live life, that’s way more valuable and way more fun. And you’re going to figure out your your big why and your life purpose and what you want to do much sooner in life than when you’re at your retirement age. So, you know, that would be that and definitely, most definitely get a mentor, get somebody once you figure out what you want to do in life, find somebody who’s done it already and most people that I know are the real successful people, not just the flashy sports cars, mansions, and being one payment away from losing it all because it’s on credit and literally they’re broke, like find somebody, you know, those people typically will be the ones that would not be willing to share their wisdom with you. Now, the ones that are the quiet multimillionaires that are really successful deep down, but they don’t flash around with all the other fancy stuff. Those I found are typically the ones that will be happy to share with you a lot of their wisdom and mentor you a little bit and you do things that would help you fast track your success. So definitely find a mentor that’s been where you want to be and find a good one. That’s actually what I really want to be helpful and and pay it forward as they typically like to do. And once you get to that point, make sure you pay it forward to somebody that’s younger than you and need some guidance. You know that if we continue that cycle of helping the younger generations to achieve success faster, you know, I think over time the world is going to be a better place for sure.

I mean, as I say, definitely a powerful and insightful answer to and I think it’s also one of those answers that. It’s building blocks, it’s not just a generic answer, it’s giving people exactly what to do and how to do it. So I definitely appreciate and commend you for giving that that level of detail and insight into that answer. So moving into how could people get in contact with you? I mean, websites, social media accounts.

I mean, for me, if somebody really needs, you know, to chat with me and have a conversation about their business or their journey, that somebody needs some help, the easiest way to reach out to me is just shoot me an email. Mirah MHRA at back A TV.com. That’s B, e, c, k, a v dot com. And we obviously I can help people with putting on live events, I can help people with creating courses or running virtual events from our from our place. But I’m also always very happy to help to just get on the phone with somebody on a zoom call and just have a conversation about their next project and whether we work together or not. You know, it doesn’t really make any difference to me because I know statistically a lot of people do become my clients and I’m totally happy to talk to everybody, even if we don’t do business together. So I’m here. I’m open book. If any part of my story inspired you, if I have something that you may find useful, just reach out to me. Shoot me an email mention that you heard me on the show and so I know where you came from and I’ll be happy to help you on social media. It’s under Miroslav bag, so I don’t know if you have a show notes, you can just spell it out. But am I r osl a V, which is the full name. Miro’s just a short version of that. So Miroslav, last name back. I’m on Facebook practice so you can be up on Facebook and we can connect through their.

I mean I could definitely attest to a man I’ve reached out to him and that’s how we even got on this call right now. I reached out to him a thirty minute call, probably turned out to be like an hour. We just kind of bouncing ideas and having the conversation was definitely not only insightful, but I think it was more so stepping stones and building blocks to to get to the next level. So I definitely appreciate you. And then anybody that’s out there listening, I would definitely take them up on that offer and give them a phone call sooner than later. So going into the bonus round, right. If you could spend twenty four hours in a day with anybody dead or alive, who would it be and why?

That’s a good one. So my son, somewhat funny answer, would probably be Donald Trump, because they just get half of the people stop listening. But I’m not talking about a president, Donald Trump. I’m definitely talking about the business that is able to build the empire that he’s at. And I always used to love watching The Apprentice and doing that. But to bring it back to actual person, you know, I love Gene Simmons, not from the band Kiss. I don’t know if you ever seen him, dog, but, you know, a lot of people may not know how much of a great businessman he is and never drank, never did any drugs. I mean, he literally was one of the rock stars that was always clean and always focused on building his business, making a ton of money. I think last time and I saw Gene speak was. Pumping out about three thousand promotional products, he always says, we have a case logo and everything from condoms to casket’s, so they go from birth to death and everything in between. And I feel like that guy, if I could spend 24 hours with him and shadow him and pick his brain on some of his philosophies and some of his business strategies would have been really, really awesome. And I even back anybody actually was watching the initial episodes of The Apprentice. He was, I think in the second season or whatever, ended up leaving early, early. But I think he would have wanted by by a landslide if he stayed. But after talking to some of his people at one of the seminars I was at, they did say that he had a prior engagement. He already knew he was going to leave after a couple episodes. But just those two episodes that he actually did some of the tasks and stuff, you could just tell how smart that guy is and how he thinks. But then there was the reality show today that Gene Simmons family jewels as well. I love watching that one. So a lot of nuggets with that guy. And I would definitely love to spend a day with him. I think it would be pretty awesome. And another guy that people may or may not know about is Nido Qubein. Qubein is used to be a president of the National Speakers Association. A lot of other, you know, lazy boy. He’s on the board of a lot of companies like Lazy Boy and the some great harvest company, bread company, whatever. But most importantly, certainly, after all his successes and all the money he’s made in that world, he took over a high point university and I believe it’s in North Carolina and took that school from his worn down college to university. I don’t know if it was five hundred seven hundred million dollars through different fundraisers and donations and stuff like that and turn it into school that I’ve heard several of my friends that have kids exploring colleges that are actually taking them to tour that college. But there are so many things he’s done to that place and listening to him speak is so inspiring that, again, the guy is two or maybe still does give his time in units. So if you make a million dollar donation to the college, he’ll give you two units of his time, which is usually five minute one unit. But I think that spending a day with that guy would be pretty awesome. But the I look him up. Nido Qubein is another awesome, awesome, awesome. Yeah,

definitely, definitely well, I definitely appreciate the detail inside that you gave and again, I had the same experience with the call on you, and I knew that you were going to come on this podcast and deliver a lot of damn value. And I think you went above and beyond. This is the time when I usually give the microphone to to my guests, because in these conversations, you never know what’s in your mind. Right. So is opportunity for you to ask me any questions that you may have had.

Great. Yes, so let’s go back to some of the stuff that I actually share, but while I would love to ask you about your origin story, but I’m assuming that you may have shared that with your listeners already. So if you don’t repeat that, let’s talk about your keys to success. So what what have you learned already by kind of trial and error? What were some of the failures you learn from and you use it as a stepping block to the next thing that you could share with the listeners that you might have not heard yet the last episodes that you’ve produced?

I think one big thing that I’ve learned is to be fearless and not fearless and being reckless, but being fearless in somebody is going to tell, you know, that you would fail, something will go wrong and you’re still going to do it. And just in that space of understanding that no matter what’s thrown at you, if you’re going to overcome it right and you’re deciding to overcome it, no matter what happens, you will overcome it. So being fearless is one thing that I live by like I teach that to my kids is just kind of like fear is not really an option as a choice. Right. So don’t make that choice. Think about the outcomes and focus your mind on the positive outcomes.

That’s awesome. And a second question I would hope for you after our initial conversation, you’ve mentioned all the different pieces of all the different businesses and facet to your business. So share with us all the different components that you have currently that you are running from your books to your digital agency to everything in between. And how do you juggle all of that, like what kind of systems you have in place or what is your schedule look like? So you’re able to actually pay attention to all of those things and, you know, get all those books that you keep writing and have everything else going on. Like my head was spinning. You just telling me all the stuff you do, even though I’ve been through a lot of it. But I’m still like, how is this guy doing that? So there is an opportunity for me to finally get the answer. Maybe.

I mean, yes. So for me, it was creating microcystin. So there’s big systems in their systems, within systems. So when I look at my books, I’m like, OK, here’s a system for book development and it’s a scalable and I’ll test that theory. OK, what part of this book do I need to kind of develop and then who can I pass this book off to to kind of complete it to whether that’s copying, editing, designing, even possibly ghostwriting. Right. So that’s that’s one system as far as my publication, because we’re also helping other people write their books. It’s the same philosophy. Whatever I’m doing from my system, from my books, that I’m taking that and I’m perfecting it and then I’m reselling it and helping other people go through that journey through the system that I created for myself. So that’s how I’m doing the books as far as like the Web design, graphic design and agency. Same thing there, right? So it’s a system within a system. To your point, we have CRM set up. You know, we use everything from HubSpot, for example, to kind of have things organized. And then I’m always constantly online at like Atsumi and I’m always looking for deals that are lifetime deals, that are systematic deals. So what does that look like for me? Prime example, my podcast. Right. I need transcriptions. So I got a software that was a lifetime deal that has transcriptions that also allows me to send this particular transcription to an editor and give them access to my files. So to me, that’s a gold mine. It means I don’t have to sit there and read to my transcriptions. I can say, hey, go edit these five podcasts. Here’s the link, step and repeat. So again, I’m taking multiple systems and I’m bringing them all into my ecosystem and I’m like the octopus in the middle. OK, this system needs to be adjusted. The system needs to be tweak. The system is not working. I need to replace it. The system is still up and running, so I could pay some attention to this one. And so it’s always a constant juggling act. And I’m still on the journey to figure out the equilibrium between the systems. And I think I’m really close to having all of them running effectively. But some of them need a little fine tuning here and there.

That’s cool how many people do actually have either on full or virtual staff

comment about 22 right now. So so between the designing the development, the copyediting, the podcast and now with VID fast moving into like YouTube because Frevo was known, YouTube’s value would have been preaching to all my clients, get videos, shooting videos, everybody. But it’s like now like finally I have to be the bearer of bad news to myself and be like I have to step into the video space and I have a video editing background and all that. And that’s kind of why I kind of stayed out of it. But understanding the value of it, I had no choice but to create a system in video now.

So I know how many question I have, but I have at least one more. If you go for if somebody that’s listening to the show now is a one man show and that plays where like, I need a help, but I cannot really afford it, but if I could afford it, I would. It’s kind of the juggling act before hiring the first person and taking that leap of faith, knowing that you can pay them and you can you know, you have enough work typically. But what is the mindset type advice you would give to somebody that is on the edge to take the step? You know, who should they hire first or what would be kind of like the best use of their of their money to pay somebody else for what kind of work? Like you’ve done this obviously by multiple times now. So what would you tell somebody that’s that’s beating themselves up over this situation where they need help? But I don’t think they can afford it yet.

I think the answer is probably more simple than we realize. Right. So find the thing that you do the best. Like so like for me, I’m a designer by trade. That was my first degree. So I know I could design my ass off. And then I have all of the things that I’m kind of learning and growing. And it may sound kind of polar opposite. They would usually tell you to find somebody to do something that you suck at. But I’m saying find somebody to do something that you’re great at because now you can systematize it. You know exactly what you’re looking for. You know, all the steps record, the steps make. And so you make a statement of work and then have everything listed out and then have a checklist and then take that checklist and provide it to somebody. So now when they’re doing this work, you can kind of just refer back to a checklist. You can know where their mistakes are because you’re so great at doing that one thing and now you have somebody else. And once they get to the point to where they’re at by 70 percent of where you are, then you can kind of take it out of the system and apply it to something else and apply it to something else. So find the thing that you’re great at, whatever that is. If you’re a great writer, find another great writer. If you’re a great designer, find another great designer, find another great developer, whatever it is, put checks and balances in place and it let somebody else lead off with that, because now you understand when they go wrong how to pick apart and help them succeed.

Yeah, that’s a good answer. And as far as the money mindset where people don’t think they can afford to help at all, do you get do you go and get somebody, you know, ten hours a week and then ease them into something more or just do stuff like, you know, because I’m assuming that one of the keys in this thing is going to be, you know, do have enough work. And are any of the parts of that work totally not worth your time? Or you should be doing some more high dollar activities versus doing some of the low ones that you can outsource. But you know, what would be the structure in that? Like, am I on the right track, like saying it this way? Or is there another another key or another helpful to that? You would have, you know, outsourcing some of the stuff and knowing that you can actually pay for it.

Yeah. So paying for it. I mean, obviously there’s different ways of of getting things paid for, right? I mean, through podcasting, you could possibly get affiliates or you can kind of get people to kind of support and make donations. Right. And then you want to find somebody. But when I find people, I’m not just looking for someone like Magadha edits my podcast. He’s a podcast editor on the system that I found them in. But by trade, he’s a video producer and a scriptwriter. So for me, I’m thinking in my head, OK, this guy is a good long term person. He’s not in a bubble. He understands where he can make money now. But he also understands this other opportunity for him to write scripts, to produce content. So for me, I’m thinking, OK, long term, for years now, they want to do a TV show. Hmm. He’s been working on my podcast. So he understands my system. He understands the conversations I’m having. So then I can say, hey, what would what do we look like? We took our season one from two years ago and convert that into a script. But he’s already on my team and he really understands. So I look for people that have dualities, people that have dual services. When I interview people, I’m saying, OK, this is what you’re doing now. This is what your trade is. But what is it that you really want to do? Where does your passion really lie? You’re doing this for money, but where do you want to go and usually want to ask that question. The answers I get is one or the other. Either one is, oh, I’ll do whatever you say to me is kind of like that person’s not going to last long. And then the other person is kind of like, well, I enjoyed this, but I really and I found one of I like that he was a P.A. and he was helping me do stuff and then come to find out he’s like an application developer. I’m like, what the hell are you put the hell, what the hell are you? If you want to write code. So I migrated from being a personal assistant into web development because that’s where he wants to be and since I’ve done that, I mean, he turns and burns 10 more items or tenfold versus doing tbsp stuff. Because I asked a question, he told me the answer and I fulfilled that requirement.

It sounds like you actually are definitely a leader and a people person because with one or two people to work, I mean, you know, I never had a dream of having that many people under my management and stuff because I just don’t really enjoy that part. But you sound like you’ve cracked the code on these standard operating procedures and actually asking the right questions and helping people grow. And so if anybody is listening to this and that stage, those, I think are the most important traits of someone who wants to have staff or people working for them. You really need to become a leader and get some education and some of the social development, maybe read some books on that topic. Otherwise you’d be by churning and burning through people that, you know are never going to want to stay and probably not do a great job either. So. Yeah, but no good answers. So, yeah. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to ask some questions.

Well, I definitely appreciate your time and I think this was definitely a hell of a podcast and a hell of a two way conversation. It wasn’t lopsided by any means. So I definitely appreciate your time. I definitely appreciate the information that you gave to my community. And I look forward to keep following you and to see what other things you’re going to come up with in the years to come.

Same here. I really appreciate it. And I can’t wait to see how you implement some of the things that you and I chatted about before. And, yeah, good luck with all your ventures. You’re doing awesome.

I appreciate it.

Owner Of Overnight Success Studio: Miroslav Beck AKA The Overnight Boss – S2E22 (#50)2021-06-27T16:06:05+00:00
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