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CEO & Founder Of Zen Rabbit: Lori Saitz AKA The Zen Boss – S3E25 (#121)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

CEO & Founder Of Zen Rabbit: Lori Saitz AKA The Zen Boss – S3E25 (#121)
There are many different modalities. Meditation is just one of them that you can use to rewire your subconscious to make that devil get smaller.
In Season 3, Episode 25 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the CEO & Founder of Zen Rabbit, Lori Saitz.
Lori Saitz is the CEO of Zen Rabbit and host of the podcast “FINE is a 4-Letter Word.” She’s an award-winning writer and broadcaster, and a nationally recognized expert in using gratitude and meditation to manifest your goals faster.
In 2003, she launched a baking company and introduced the world to The Gratitude Cookie. After 11 years of consistent failure and intermittent success, she closed that business to pursue other opportunities. (Yes, there’s more to that story, which you’ll hear in her presentation.)
Today, through her transformational Fine to Fantastic program, she leads Gen-Xers on their path of rediscovering what lights them up and gets them excited to get out of bed in the morning.
When she’s not working, you can find Lori in the weight room at the gym, because she also loves baking and eating.
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • What can Zen Rabbit do for your business
  • What is Lori’s morning routine
  • What tools is Lori using in her business
  • And So Much More!!!
Want more details on how to contact Lori? Check out the links below!
Special Offer: Download a free, 6-minute gratitude meditation at http://customizedmeditation.com/ 
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S3E25 Lori Saitz.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Three, two, one. Welcome back to Boss Uncaged Podcast. Today’s show is a special show because not every day I get to share the podcast with someone that I’m going to be sharing on stage. Right. So we both have speak engagements at the same time, at the same event, which is coming up in 71 days. And it’s going to be in Texas. So give you a little bit of background. Right. This particular group of people that are going to be speaking all of us are deemed to be badasses. And obviously the person that I’m talking to right now is obviously a hell of a badass. So I’m going to deem her the Zen boss for obvious reason. So why don’t you go ahead and tell our listeners a little bit more about who you are, Lori?

Sure. Well, let’s explain the reason for the Zen Boss part. My company is called zen rabbit ZenBoss perfectly fitting. What I do is and I create meditations that put people in a Zenful blissful state, customizing gratitude meditations and helping people just find and feel more gratitude, more joy, more contentment in their life, I don’t like to say find their purpose that seems so overwhelmingly giant and intimidating.

Interesting. Definitely interesting. So let’s just talk about the summit a little bit. I guess just back up those who have been listening to Pascals for a period of time. They’ve obviously heard me interview Donnie and Kevin Snow before. And Donnie is the founder of the Success Summit or the Badass Summit that’s coming up in Texas. So how did you even get associated with Donny to begin with?

I will answer that question. But first, I’m Super curious, what’s Donny’s nickname?

Donny’s nickname? I don’t remember. I think it’s funny because it’s like I give everyone a nickname while we’re talking. I’ll try to look it up, and then I’ll come back to the table with it. All right.

Well, Donnie and I were introduced by a mutual connection a year and a half ago, at least when he was doing his first podcast. And so she introduced me and I was a guest on Donny’s first podcast. He invited me into his Facebook group, Success Champions Facebook Group. I was in there for a while, and then it wasn’t until November of 2020 that I actually ended up joining one of the Success Champions networking groups, the Bethesda Badasses, in the Washington, DC, Metro, and working with Donny to get my podcast up and running and all that good. It just flowed from there.

Nice. So as a reminder name. I remember interviewing him and Kevin at the same time. So I deemed both of them badass bosses. So it was more of a plural thing. Right. Got you. So let’s talk about you a little bit more. Right. Obviously, you have your zen rabbit. You have a pretty cool podcast as well. Fine. Is a four letter word. So let’s talk about you as an individual. If you could define yourself in three to five words, what would those words be?

Disciplined, creative, inspirational.

Nice.So going off of inspirational, where did you find the inspiration for your podcast? And even playing with the word, playing being a four letter word, how did that come to fruition?

Yeah, well, I think a lot of people, when they’re creating their businesses, their ideal client is themselves five or ten years previous, because that’s certainly the case for me in that five years ago, I was my ideal client. I was stuck in this place where everything was fine, but it really wasn’t fine. There was this deep undercurrent of suck, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I actually did know I say I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t want to know because I didn’t want to admit what the answer was. But stuck in this place, and this is a lot of my clients are in their 40s and 50s, primarily women who are in this place going, all right, everything’s fine. Look at all of this. I have, like on paper or from the outside, looks like everything’s fine. And that’s where I was, too. And but everything was not fine. My business was not fine. My marriage was not fine. And what was I going to do about that? Because you can stay there. Fine is a perfectly comfortable place to be. It’s familiar, but your soul wants more. You need fulfillment and growth. And so that’s where I was. What actually happened was that in 2014, my mom passed away kind of suddenly after six to eight weeks after a diagnosis. And at the same time, I was shutting down my first business because I couldn’t scale it the way I wanted to. And it was really a time of reevaluation. Okay, again, do I want to live the next 20 years the same way I’ve lived the last 20? And what will I do differently? And so it took me a few years of being still stuck in that place before I said, all right, yeah, I did shut down the business, but now what am I going to do with this marriage? And I didn’t want to leave because this is somebody that I had been with. I’ve been with him more years than I hadn’t been, spent more of my life with him than without. And everything was fine. But the relationship wasn’t serving either one of us anymore. And I had to find the courage to leave for the benefit of both of us. Neither one of us wanted to be the one to make the first move because it’s scary and it’s hard. I had to do it. That’s why I had to jump.

I think obviously, anyone, whether it’s male or female, listening, right. I think many people have been down that path that you’re talking about and you’re describing so, I mean, just talk about that a little bit more. Right. Like, you have a brand that’s called “Zen Rabbit”, which is obviously like a play on multiple different things, and then you have this podcast. So bringing them together, how did that help you kind of escape, like going into the Boss Uncaged brand? How did that help you break out of the cage that you were in and evolve you to the person that you are right now?

Well, leaving my marriage gave me the I don’t want to say it gave me a freedom, I guess, to break out of that. I don’t like thinking of that marriage as a cage, but I guess in the way it was. Yeah. So it allowed me to grow into who I have become today, and I don’t want to just grow again. You outgrow a cage. So I don’t even have dogs. I don’t know why this came to mind, but when you get a puppy and your cage training, they sleep in the cage, and then they get bigger. They might need a bigger cage or they need to learn how to sleep without the cage. Whatever, you just outgrow it. And I guess that’s what happened. And now I have been able to kind of blossom into what I’m doing now. I don’t think fine is a four letter word would have come to being if I had stayed.

Wow. So let’s step into the space as an individual that you’re helping. Right. Because obviously you walk the walk, you’re talking to talk. You broke out, and now you’re living by the example that you’re preaching. So what does your company actually do? How do you actually help someone on that journey?

Yeah. So again, the Gen X women, those who are in their 40s and 50s, stuck in this place. So the way I help them is a couple of ways. One is accountability, like holding them accountable. But listening to them, first of all, listening because they have a story they want to tell it somebody. They need somebody to listen to them. And my job is not to tell them what to do. It’s to ask them questions, to help them reach their own conclusions about what to do. And it’s not always just about a marriage. It could be a job, it could be health, it could be any situation where they feel stuck, that’s fine. So helping them find gratitude. One find gratitude for everything that they do have. A lot of times it’s hard to see what you have. You only see what you don’t have or what you want. So let’s start at gratitude, because if you can’t be grateful for what you already have, how can you be grateful for more and then recognizing the connections that people have? What are the connections you have with your friends, your family, your partner, your community, and then most importantly, yourself? And that’s where the meditation part comes in that I talk about. And then the third piece is courage, helping them find the courage holding their hand as I push them off the cliff. And those three pieces are what make up the trilogy for success within my find a fantastic program, and I’ll be talking more about that at the Badass Business.

Nice. Very interesting. So I love branding, and I love the title of your company “Zen Rabbit”. So I’m going to ask you, how did you come up with that name? I mean, obviously, you’re talking about journeys. You’re talking about helping people become more who they are. You’re influencing them. And like you said, you’re pushing them off the cliff. Where does the rabbit fit in? Are you running out the hole? Are you running around the tree? Are you Alice in Wonderland? Tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, we can come up with whatever story we want for that. Actually, Zen Rabbit was the name of my first company, the one that I had to shut down. It was called Zen Rabbit Baking Company. At that point, I was manufacturing and distributing a product called the gratitude Cookie. So, see, it all ties back to the gratitude thing, but gratitude cookies were marketed as a way for business people to say thank you to their clients and to the people who sent them referrals. Zen Rabbit. I did such a great job of branding. Everybody associated the name Zen Rabbit with me. So when I started my next company, I started out with a different name, but I ended up coming back to Zen Rabbit because everyone still associated me with the name Zen Rabbit. So they didn’t maybe didn’t remember my name, but they remembered Zen Rabbit. So I jokingly call this Zen Rabbit 2.0.

Nice.

But even so, I’m still helping people find that place of Zen calm. Whatever’s going on, whatever chaos is going on around you, if you can stand in your own power and find that place of Zen.

Then, well, with the story behind something. Right. So understanding like that was within I don’t know how much time has passed since that company to. Now let’s go back even further. Right. What were you like as a kid? Were you like that kid that was always giving gratitude or that’s something that you grew into over a period of time?

Yeah, there’s a whole story there, too. So as a kid, I was super shy. I was the one who would sit unless somebody called on me. I wasn’t the one jumping out of my chair to give the answer to the teacher.So shy. All right, so since you asked, I’ll tell you that the name Zen Rabbit actually goes back to when I was baby in the crib because I had a stuffed rabbit that my mom had put in the crib when I was three months old and realized that if she took that stuffed animal, that rabbit out of the crib, I wasn’t sleeping. So she made sure the rabbit was always in the crib. And as I got older, I would rub her ears for comfort. You know, how little kids have their blankets or whatever. I would rub her ears, and that would put me in this Zen meditative state. There are pictures. So she was my Zen rabbit, even though I didn’t call her that at the time, taking it all the way back to the crib. That’s really where the Zen Rabbit started. And so in terms of feeling gratitude, no, I was not even when I first started Zen Rabbit baking company and was selling gratitude cookies. That’s the irony. I wasn’t a very grateful person. And it was a mentor who kind of gave me an exercise to do, who saw that I was not grateful and said, you need to work on this. And he gave me a 30 day exercise, and that helped me see and feel and become more grateful on a regular basis. So I alw0ays say, even if you are not naturally born a grateful person, you can become one.

Well, that’s very interesting because obviously, again, you’re walking the walk, you’re talking to talk. So now that you’re in front of people that you’re helping them, you’re probably faced with the mirror from time to time. You’re probably faced with someone that was you ten years ago. That was just 15 years ago. So what is the worst scenario you’ve been in? Being face to face with that mirror of yourself and being in front of you, and you’re encountering someone that may be a little bit more difficult, a little bit ungrateful. What is the worst example of that have you been experienced so far?

The worst example of somebody who’s been ungrateful and you’re trying to help gratitude?

Yeah. You’re looking at them feeling like, well, you remind me of me 20 years ago, ten years ago. And it kind of hits that switch for you to kind of do a flashback, but at the same time, they’re being difficult.

Yeah. Well, and again, I will challenge them the same way I was challenged, not necessarily giving them the same exercise, but there are other exercises that I’ve found work and give to them. So this is interesting that you’re asking me this question because just this past weekend, I was having a conversation with someone who was struggling with this. Well, I do a gratitude meditation every morning, and it’s still not happening for me. And this is breaking and that’s going wrong. Okay, step back. Here’s what I recommended you do. Find the gratitude, even in the things that don’t seem like there’s something that you would be grateful for, that you’re frustrated about the challenge. And the game is find the gratitude anyway. Find one shred one small little piece of gratitude or some small place where you can see gratitude.

Interesting.

I was going to say you could even take it to the crazy extreme of, well, at least this didn’t happen. All of this crazy stuff. Well, at least this didn’t happen.

Very interesting. Just listen to you speak. And I mean, obviously stemming from the topic of gratitude and going back in time, and you had gratitude cookies, and that was a business, and you kept the same brand, but you’ve rebranded the structure of the business, which is now it’s ironic because you were giving gratitude, but you really are giving gratitude now in a different format. Right. So how is your business structure? Because, I mean, obviously, I think before you were talking about solid products and now you’re talking more so about, like, Mindset services. So are you LLC,S corp C Corp? Like, what flavor are you?

I am an LLC corp.

Got it. Is there a particular reason why you set it up that way?

That’s how my accountant recommended. So I just said, okay, I trust your expertise.

Nice. Very nice. So going to just talking about just general hurdles, and I think you kind of overcame some hurdles, but let’s dive into more. So, like, how do you deal with hurdles now that you have gratitude in place? So when hurdles are presented to you and for your clients, when hurdles are presented to them, how are you teaching them to overcome these hurdles?

Meditation has been such a big key piece for me because that is what keeps me I think that, first of all, meditation rewires your brain. So that’s an actual biological thing that happens. And when you can rewire your brain, you can stay grounded and calm regardless of what’s going on around you. And it makes it easier then to find the gratitude. The two kind of go hand in hand. If you can become more grateful, you can maybe are more likely to meditate. And if you meditate, then you’re more likely to be able to find gratitude in challenging situations. So that meditation piece for me is key in helping me stay look at challenges like, okay, all right, this sucks. And I’m going to figure it out, or I’m going to find people who can help me figure it out because that’s another thing. You don’t have to know everything yourself. Do you know who can help you? Great. That’s even better. So always coming from this place of, okay, all right, this sucks. And that’s not having. So I want to make a point that does not mean that you don’t feel emotions, that you’re not sad or angry, but you feel the emotions, and then you move past it.

Wow. I’m just thinking and recapping what you said. I love when these moments happen, when I’m actually having interviews where I have to pause for a minute, stop rewinding my head and listen to what you said. So, I mean, would that leads me to another really in depth question. Right. So for an average listener listening to this and they’re saying, okay, you’re telling me that I need to meditate and I need to get into my Zen state. I need to have a powerful state of mind and have my set all these different things. And they’ve been doing it for a period of time. And for them, you’re doing it is kind of like an overnight success to them. But in reality, how long have you been on your journey to get to where you are currently?

Yeah. Okay. So I learned how to meditate when I was ten. My mom took my brother and me to a meditation course, and so I had that as a foundational piece of my background. But I did not use it. I probably used it from when I was ten to eleven, and then I forgot about it and didn’t use it. And I would go back to I know meditation is good for me, but I didn’t do it. And I might come back to it during a particularly challenging period of time or something and do it for a week, and then five years would go by and I wouldn’t do it again. And then I’d recommend it to other people. Hey, you should try meditation. And I still wouldn’t do it myself. 30 years. Wait, probably from 1035 years, maybe 30, 10 to 45. Yeah, something like that. Until around again. The same the passing of my mom and I read a couple I started reading some books, and I found a particular meditation that resonated with me that for some reason it was like the perfect storm, I guess, of finding that meditation and being ready to make this a consistent, regular practice.

Wow.

And so now it’s been I want to say probably about four years, four and a half years that I meditate every day in the morning before I get started in my day. And once you get now the point that I am at now and only like ten minutes, I’m not spending an hour, which is another misconception. People think I got to spend hours now, just ten minutes. Now if I don’t do it in the morning and as a way to set my day, it almost feels like I didn’t brush my teeth, like leaving the house without brushing your teeth. Something feels off.

Just thinking about that. Right. So meditation is part of who you are as part of your essence. Right. So let’s say if you can kind of go into, like, a state of meditation and you get so engulfed in that state of meditation, you could have out of body experience and you’re riding the silver lining. And somehow, some way through this metamorphosis, you could time travel back into a younger version of yourself just for a couple of minutes, what would you say to yourself in that time frame at any given time? For a few minutes that would change the outcome of where you are currently?

I guess if I had started practicing meditation earlier, life would have been easier. I am guessing it would have been easier because, again, I would have just been coming from a more grounded place instead of spending so much time in worry and anxiety about how life was unfolding.

I can see that. Right. It kind of goes to you’re seeing the benefits of what you’re doing now, and then you kind of want to think about what if I did it just a little bit earlier? If I did it five years before, where would my compounding effect be today? Definitely. Very interesting.

Well, and I seriously wonder where that first business would have been if I had been meditating and visualizing, because to me, those pieces go hand in hand. How much more successful could that business have been?

I think it brings up a very solid debate. Right. I think everything happens for a reason. Right.

I agree.

I definitely believe with that. So I think the work that you’re probably doing now could easily then recreate those cookies on a whole other spectrum that you never would have gotten to until you are where you are right now.

That is true. Right. We’re speculating. What would I have done? And at the same time, I completely believe that everything happens the way it happens for a reason. I would not necessarily be where I am now if things hadn’t unrolled the way they did.

Yeah. Probably wouldn’t have a podcast as well.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Think about that.

My podcast is the thing I’m most excited about right now. So, yes, that would be horrible.

I’m loving this conversation with the whole time traveling thing. So let’s just go back and think about it for a minute. So you’re talking about your parents introduce you into meditation. Right. But you obviously have entrepreneurial hustle. You have entrepreneurial insight. You understand business, you understand strategy. When did that come into play? Was that like one of your parents, an aunt and uncle? When was the first time you were introduced into that space?

This is interesting because you’re giving me a different perspective. So my mom is the one who introduced me to meditation. She also encouraged my dad to go to that course, which he did, but he did not buy into it at all. I think he was just placating her, and then they ended up getting divorced a few years later. So anyway, not because I’m sure not because of that. But my dad is the one who introduced me to entrepreneurship because he always had a side hustle, which wasn’t called that back then, but he always had something. And then for several years of my childhood, he ran his own business. He owned an independent hardware store before the days of Home Depot and Lowes. And even after he sold that business and went back to being an employee for somebody else, he still always had a side hustle. He’s 80 years old. He’s retired, but he still has this business on the side that makes a couple of extra Bucks for vacations or whatever.

Nice.

Yeah.

So obviously thinking about it in retrospect, you got your hustle from your dash. Yeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool. So you’re talking about just general hustle. And obviously you kind of had two sides of the coin growing up. How do you currently juggle your work life with your family life?

I don’t have a family life. Alright. So S.A, I don’t have any kids, so I don’t have the necessity, I guess. You know what I’m saying. I know people who have kids, they have to spend time with them. I don’t have that. So to me it’s almost all work. Okay, so let’s say I’ll reframe. It my business and personal and I don’t believe in work life balance because I think it’s a flow between all of those things. And when you’re entrepreneur, you’re always thinking about work and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just always there. You’re always looking for ideas and open to discussing it just because it’s fun. That’s fun. And so for me, it’s hanging out with friends and working in the business during the hours that I’m working and then hanging out with friends and going to do hiking or I don’t even know what else we do. We sit around a fire pit and chat and laugh.

Nice. You definitely have some balances in there. But to your point, as entrepreneurs, if we hear about some new software or a new strategy, that’s like drinking a beer and hanging out with our friends for us. So I definitely understand that firsthand. So going into I think earlier on you were talking a little bit about your routines to a certain extent. And I would think probably one of your routines or your morning habits would be meditation. So let’s talk about what is your regimen on a daily basis? What are your morning routines?

Yeah. So getting up and waking up and doing a meditation straight away before anything else can get in the way. I know plenty of people who check their phone right away as soon as they open their eyes. I don’t do that. The meditation app I use is on my phone, but I go straight to that, open it, do a meditation, and then get up. And while I’m doing my morning stuff, taking a shower, brushing my teeth, whatever, a lot of times I’ll listen to a podcast and then some days, not every day, I will also listen to Carrie Underwood’s song Champion because that gets me charged up. And then I will get into my work day, depending on what day it is. If I’m writing a meditation, which I do once a week, I don’t even open my email before I go to do that.

Interesting. Again, I think you’re walking a walk. You’re talking to walk, right? So in that I think just as we’ve known each other and we’ve had conversations here and there and being in the same networking group as well, and being able to talk on the same stage. I would definitely say that you’re an app student of whatever principle it is that you’re studying and you’re diving into much like how you’ve picked up podcasting recently. So my next question is a three part question. Right.

Okay.

On your journey before where you are right now, what books or audio books have you read to kind of help you and inspire you to get you to where you are? Part two of that question is what books are you reading right now or audio books are you listening to right now? And part three is, have you had an opportunity to author or write any books to date?

I prefer to read a book than to listen to a book. And the books that have influenced so many. I mean, I’m always reading. I’m a huge proponent for literacy. I’ve been a literacy tutor, adult literacy tutor, because reading is so important. So one couple of them that come to mind right off the top of my head. So “Infinite Possibilities” by Mike Dooley. It’s not a business book. It’s about the infinite possibilities of what you can create manifest. However you want to say it, that one’s been a big one. I’m sure plenty of people have mentioned on your podcast “The Thinking Grow Rich”. However, Napoleon Hill wrote another book that actually was not published during his lifetime called now it just skipped out of my mind. “Outwitting the devil”.

Oh, yeah. Storytelling of that one is marvelous.

I just read that one this year, and it is astounding to me how relevant it is today when it was written in 19, what a 40 something somewhere around there? 38, 40. Yeah. Like crazy. So a lot to take out of that book about letting fear rule your life or not. That one’s been tremendous. It’s just so many business, business book

it’s so funny for our listeners that are listening right now. Every time I ask this question and every time someone turns off camera so you can’t see them, that’s when I always get that smirk on my face because they’re looking at some massive library off camera somewhere.

That is right. You are so right. That’s exactly it. Yes. Robert Cialdini’s book persuasion. That one’s tough for me to get through. It’s fascinating to me because it’s about marketing and my background. Professional background is really marketing. I love talking about marketing. That one to me is fascinating. But I haven’t worked my way through the whole thing yet. It’s taken me quite a while. So that one is still on the top of the pile of something I am reading to the second part of your question. Yeah. Dan Kennedy. I’ve got like a whole bunch of Dan Kennedy books in terms of marketing. Yeah.

Let’s move to the third question. Have you had an opportunity to create any books of your own yet?

I keep getting asked that question. So I hear you, universe. I hear you. I had written an ebook on networking because that was in between that Zen Rabbit baking company and what I’m doing now. I was teaching networking strategies how to feel comfortable walking into a room full of people where you don’t know anyone, especially when you’re what I call the quiet person, somebody who is not super comfortable in those kinds of situations. So I had written an ebook on that topic. But there is a book coming. It’s like Percolating in my head that will be called “Fine as a four letter word”.

Nice. So it’s definitely interesting that you brought that up because that’s one of the things that I was coaching. Any podcast that I’m working with is kind of like if you have a podcast, you should then think about creating a book that represents that podcast to a certain extent, or at least the principles or at least mimicking some of the interviews. So what is your style of your book that you’re going to release in parallel to your podcast?

What I’ve been advised as far as the easiest way to write a book is to just take the presentation, for example, or that I’m doing at that business summit, which is also called Fine is a four letter word. Taking that presentation or taking the Fine to fantastic program that I have and creating a book out of that. Twelve weeks. The process of that. Twelve weeks. That’s great. That definitely would be an interesting and valuable book. Personally, though, I like books that are stories about people’s lives. Richard Branson’s books that I’ve read. What was his book called? I mean, he’s got a couple of them. Something about losing my virginity, it is called. And any of the business leaders who write books about their personal story that to me I want something like that. That’s interesting. And then interwoven maybe some pieces about how to me that’s more challenging, though, to write a book that is really diving into your life. It’s more vulnerable. And maybe that’s why it’s more challenging and just coming up with the memories, too.

It is more challenging. So to add a little twist to that. Right. And this is the reason why I have not released my Boss Uncaged book, because I already had the book written. We were getting ready to release it in January. And I was like, okay, let’s go on back to the drawing table and make modifications. So what I decided to do was take every single interview that I did in my first season and take those stories, optimize those stories, and then lead those stories into a self help moment or a definition of a particular word or understanding a particular philosophy, and then collaborate all those into one book for season one. And then it allows me to then create multiple books for every season using the same exact format. Love it with that. Obviously, I think you’ve been on a hell of a journey, right? You’re talking about meditation. You’re talking about your marketing background. And it’s ironic that you brought up outwitting the devil, because who hasn’t read that book yet? Let me give you a little clue to that book, right? It’s such a phenomenal storytelling book. It’s imagine you sitting down facing your worst enemy, which in this case is the devil, but it’s really yourself and you’re hearing your own overtones and you’re arguing with yourself and you’re perceiving it as the devil talking back to you, but it’s really yourself holding you back. So my next question to you is like, you’ve already kind of surpassed that to a certain extent. And that devil may come knocking from time to time, but where do you see yourself 20 years from right now?

I see myself as somebody who is I’m not going to say a household name, because that’s not what I’m looking for. Not Lebron James famous, but one of my good friends used to call Church famous. So he worked his business was in helping pastors build their communities, build their Church communities. And so there were a lot of people in that world that were famous within that world. And I mentioned Dan Kennedy earlier. So Dan Kennedy, a lot of people who aren’t in the marketing world don’t know who Dan Kennedy or Frank Kern are. So they’re Church famous because they have their famous within their own community, their own world, but they can still walk down the street and nobody knows who they are.

Very true.

So that’s what I’m looking for. Church famous.

I can see that.

Okay. But not just for the theme. It’s for the community that I want to build that will support and encourage each other.

Nice.

I want to be the conduit for that.

Well, I think you sprinkle a little badass on that. You brought up Frank. So people that don’t know Frank. I mean, Frank is the type of person that will walk across the stage amongst 5000 people with a glass of whiskey in his hand and just be like, what am I going to talk about today is probably going to offend some of you, but at the end of it, you’re going to understand how to monetize and make money. So I could definitely see that, right? I can definitely see that completely. So, I mean, just talk about your marketing side for a bit. I mean, we’re talking about the Zen, we’re talking about the Feng Shui. But I see all the things that you’ve been working on behind the scenes and moving the pieces. You’re a marketer at heart. Yes, most definitely.

For sure.

How does that work for you? As far as even branding with the Zen Rabbit, how did you take these elements behind the scenes and then bring them forward into meditation?

I don’t know that the two are necessarily related because I’m branding my brand of meditation. The podcast is one of the ways that I use it as a marketing tool. Everything’s a marketing tool. Participating, engaging, posting on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. Creating content, creating videos like this, creating written things, creating ebooks or video like everything is content. Everything is marketing. Building launch teams to help share the word about what I’m doing now or the testimonials and asking people to share and refer other people to the podcast. I don’t even know how I do this essay. Marketing. It’s not a mysterious thing, but I think some of us are just innately born with disability, just like some people are great with numbers. Okay, you do not want me doing your bookkeeping. That’s not my thing. But marketing, that’s my thing.

Nice. So just talk about what applications that you currently use that you would not be able to do what you’re doing without. Obviously, you have marketing tools, you have onboarding tools, CRMs, and so forth. Name a couple that you’re using right now that you wouldn’t be able to do what you’re doing without.

Riverside. fm is what I use to record my podcast. I love that tool Camtasia I use to edit video Canva to create graphics. What other good tools do I use? Those are the most prominent ones that come to mind.

Preety effective tools alright so, i have been keep thinking about like outwitting devil and the time traveling reference that we made earlier. So let’s say I am a 25 year old, maybe 35 year old female, right. And I have the devil on this one side, and they’re telling me to do things, and I’m arguing and debating with them. Right. And then you have the opportunity to be the words of insight, the words of wisdom. You get to be the angel on the other side, and you get to whisper in that person’s ear, what words of wisdom would you tell that person to not only ignore the devil, but to also progress them, to move them forward.

One of the things that we didn’t cover in our conversation today is getting into your subconscious. Because all of your behaviors and your actions come from what has been programmed into your subconscious mind, 95% of what drives you is in the subconscious. So if you have this devil on the one hand telling you you can’t do it, you suck. You’re never going to make it, you’re never going to be successful, you can’t make money, and you just put an angel on this side to fight it out in the conscious mind, it’s not going to work. Which is why I come back to there are many different modalities. Meditation is just one of them that you can use to rewire your subconscious to make that devil get smaller.

Nice.

That’s how I would do it.

Nice. So just talk about your target demographic, right? Obviously, I think we alluded to it a little bit, but let’s really get into, like, the psyche and the actual avatar. If I was a person who would I be to be your best client?

You would be a 45 to 55 year old woman who has kids who are graduating from high school and going away to College or graduating College. Either way, they’re moving out of the house. And this is the time of transition where you are wondering, okay, I’ve raised my children. Now what my focus? Even if they had a professional career outside of the home, so much of my time and energy has gone into being a parent, and now they don’t need me in the same way anymore. Now what what is my purpose now? How do I rediscover my purpose or recreate who I am?

Very interesting. I would think, like, obviously, we’re both marketers. So just understanding, like the six degrees of separation. I would think ideally, if you’re not targeting that individual, you’re probably talking to a lot of real estate agents that know a lot of those people.

I’m actually not talking to any real estate agents.

Think about it. From that standpoint. Right. Think about it. Real estate agents are golden nugget because you’re talking about people that are downsizing.

They may be, although I think the downsizing doesn’t come until a few years later because a lot of people don’t necessarily move out the second the child goes to College.

Yeah. I think it’s two sides of that coin because, I mean, like, in the neighborhood that we live in, the second kids graduate from high school, in this neighborhood, these houses go for sale left and right because they’re like, okay, kids are gone, they’re going to College, and now we’re going to downsize to something smaller. Are we going to go move and live on a boat or whatever it is so that they’re willing to move on the second those kids get that diploma?

Yeah. You’re giving me something to think about, though, because if they’re stuck in that place where everything’s fine in the marriage and the kids leave and now they’re like, they’re looking at each other going, I don’t need to stay with you anymore, they’re going to sell the house.

Yeah. And the real estate agents, they know this. They know these people.

They do. The challenge is that a lot of times people don’t talk about these things except to their closest friends. And even then, sometimes they don’t.

Nice.

Yeah.

So we’re talking to someone that’s 45 right now listening to this podcast. How do they get in contact with you?

They can reach me through my website is zenrabbit.com. Pretty simple. We’re broadcasting live on all the socials so Instagram zen_rabbit, LinkedIn, Lori sites, zenrabbit Facebook page. zenrabbit, again, fine as a four letter word is on all the podcast platforms. So wherever you listen to a podcast, go Find as a four letter word.

Nice. So going into bonus round. Right. I mean, you’re leaving off with that last statement about your podcast. And so my question is going to be, what is your most significant achievement to date. This is where the Jeopardy music comes in.

Yes. Let’s play that. Most significant achievement. I think it is really as crazy as it’s going to sound is that launching of the podcast because it’s something that I have actually wanted to do for years. So I mentioned I have a background in marketing. I also have a background in broadcast. And this is a combination of all the things that light me up and bring me joy, the creation of the podcast and the honor of being able to bring other people’s stories out into the world.

Nice. I kind of set you up for that one. I knew that was coming. Right?

Yes, I do.

Going into the podcast a little bit more. Right. So is your ideal customer also your ideal interviewee?

My ideal interviewee is maybe a couple of steps ahead of my ideal client because the people I’m talking to on the podcast have stepped off of fine. They may not be all the way to fantastic yet, but they have taken that leap or they’ve been pushed off of fine. And so the conversation is around, how did you get stuck at fine and then what did you do to move off of it? What were the tools that you had to find and use to not lose your mind when you did that?

Yes.

And how is that journey gone so far? So not everybody has gone. Even the people I’m talking to on the podcast, they’ve stepped off a fine. Some of them have gotten to what they would call fantastic. Some of them are still on the journey.

I have another bonus question for you.You got to man.

As a marketer again. Right. And this bonus and that bonus and you also get.But wait, there’s more.

For 25% off. Yes. So if you could spend 24 hours in one day. Right. With anyone dead or alive uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

Katie Crook.

I did not see that shit coming. I’m listening. I want to hear why on this one.

Everyone who knows me really well knows I have this thing for Katie Crook. So Katie and I share the same birthday, not the same year, but the same day. And I have just always been enamored with her, look to her as a role model, because I mentioned having a broadcast background and when she was on the Today Show was doing the thing that I wanted to be doing in large part and then the rest of her career, because she certainly had a successful career since the Today show. She’s taken chances. She had to prove herself all the way through her career. And she’s done things that probably were terrified her and she did them anyway. Stepped through the fear, did it like hosting CBS News Nightly News or whatever it’s called. People said she wasn’t going to be successful at that and she did it anyway. And she just continues to reinvent and reinvent. And I just feel like she would be a really cool person to hang out with and get to know because I admire her professional accomplishments and the fact and I don’t have any children of my own again. But the way she raised her, seemingly from what I can see from the outside, and she did it all on her own because she was a single mom.

You got to talk into her either. I mean, obviously, I could totally see her being a guest on your show sooner than later.

Could you? If anybody is listening or watching this and they have a Katy Current connection, I am open to it.

Yeah. Talking into the either people speak it up. So going into closing, man, I love when I get to a chance to interview podcasters, because this is the part of my episodes where I give you the microphone and you become the host and you get to ask me any question that may have come up during this episode.

Ask you a question about what came up during this episode. Okay, so the question that I asked my guest, tell me about the time when something in your life was fine. It was fine. It’s fine.

Oh, that’s easy. When I was in College getting my graphic design degree, things were fine, but it really wasn’t fine. I was searching for so much more and I just didn’t know how to get more at the time.

Did you not know how to get it because you were listening to outside voices that were telling you this is the path you should be on?

Well, no, I mean, coming from high school, because literally my senior in high school, I missed about like 90 days in my senior high school, I couldn’t completely hate the school, couldn’t stand school. Only reason why I even graduated from high school is because the teachers are trying to get rid of me. And they gave me opportunity to pass all my final exams. So my parents were like, you had a graffiti background with throw you in our school. And that’s when I kind of fell in love with, wow, I could actually do this for a living. But then my other side, the brain kicked in and it was like, okay, if this is here, then what else is out there Besides this? it was good to me it was great. But it was such a small aspect of the world that I knew that it was more, but I didn’t really know how to grasp more or reach for more or even what a coach was at that point in time.

Yeah. I think a lot of us are like that at that point because we just haven’t had enough life experience yet to know where to go or what to look for.

Yes. And to your point, I think your title of your podcast, it really defines that because looking back at it. I was fine, but it wasn’t fantastic, right? It was like, what else can I do to make my life greater than what it was at that point in time? And I think now what I have now is kind of fantastic in comparison to where I was before and what I’m going to be doing moving forward. Definitely.

Yeah.

Any other questions?

That’s what I got for you.

Cool. Well, I mean, with that I definitely appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be on the show. I think we definitely had a roller coaster of past and present versions of Lori. So I definitely commend you for everything that you’re doing and you’re going to continue to do as well.

Thank you for having out of the essay.

Great SA, Grant. Over and out.

CEO & Founder Of Zen Rabbit: Lori Saitz AKA The Zen Boss – S3E25 (#121)2023-01-26T16:31:24+00:00

Founder Of Webrageous: David Chapman AKA The Google Ad Boss – S3E24 (#120)

Also Available On

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Founder Of Webrageous: David Chapman AKA The Google Ad Boss – S3E24 (#120)
Definitely don’t try and do it yourself. You’re running a business, you have better things to do.
In Season 3, Episode 24 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the Founder of Webrageous, David Chapman.
David Has Been Generating A Lower Cost Per Lead For Google Advertisers for Over 18 Years!
Webrageous executes and manages Pay Per Click Advertising Campaigns for law firms & other businesses with ad spends of $5,000+ per month, who find themselves struggling to realize a proper ROI with their current agencies.
Their typical client has had a difficult time finding the right vendor to help lower their cost per lead, which is why some of our clients have tried and failed with 10 other agencies before finding us. We offer a free Google Ads account review.
Typically an account manager at competitor companies may handle up to 80 accounts and only have 1-2 years of experience. Right now Webrageous has fewer than 20 clients. Most clients work directly with David, the founder. We have an A+ BBB rating.
Think of it this way, let’s say you invest over $100,000 a year on Google ads, maybe more. That’s $1 million in 10 years. If you buy a million-dollar race car and you want to win races, do you want to hire an experienced race car driver or a 15-year-old kid?
We will come up with a new strategy for your online marketing, make suggestions for optimizing your website, and provide advanced conversion rate optimization techniques which many agencies are not able to provide. This means our clients will pay less money per lead.
Results:
● Pharmaceutical Liability Attorney Davis Ketchmark – delivered almost 500 leads for a prominent birth control lawsuit – client became lead plaintiff.
● Delivered hundreds of leads for several other pharmaceutical liability/medical device liability campaigns including hip implants, TVM, diabetes drugs, weed killers, and more.
● Texas Divorce Attorney in 2018 – delivered 294 leads at $70.77 cost per lead (CPL)
● Florida Divorce Attorney in 2018 – delivered 367 leads at $57 CPL
● Florida Bankruptcy Attorney in 2018 – delivered 1276 leads
● long term disability attorney – 49 calls and contact form submissions in 1 month at $100 CPL in 2018
● Bahama Beach Club – 4024 brides-to-be contacted client in 1 year.
● National Laser Institute – increased leads from 188/month to 729/month
● Invention company – increased leads from 431 to 1769 per month
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • What can Webrageous do for your business
  • What is David’s morning routine
  • What tools is David using in his business
  • And So Much More!!!
Want more details on how to contact David? Check out the links below!
Special Offer: Free review of your Google Ads account as long as you’re already spending at least $5,000 per month.
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S3E24 David Chapman.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Three, two, one. Welcome back to Boss Uncaged Podcast. Today’s show is a special show because it shows you the power of networking. Right? So you guys, guys, if you can kind of go back a little bit too early 2021, I had Damon on here. We’re talking about SEO. Fast forward a few months. I’m at Damon’s birthday party. We’re having a good time bringing his 40th birthday party. And then I get rolled into the person that we’re going to speak to today. He was at the party as well. We kind of hit it off, had great conversation, a lot of synergy, and he had some crazy stories to tell you, like being kicked out of Costa Rica is one of them. Just to kind of give you guys a little insight to what we’re going to get into, but I’m going to deem him the Google Ad boss. So, David, without further Ado, why don’t you give our audience a little backstory of who you are and what you do?

Sure. So I’ve been managing Google Ads for close to 20 years now, and it’s just something I have a natural talent for, natural knack for getting in data mining an account and dropping people’s costs per lead. So I can do that in really any account that has a few thousand dollars a month in ad spend. And then the clients that come to us that don’t have a current account, the ones that we will typically take on, or attorneys, which is where we have a deep, deep bench of experience bankruptcy, personal injury, divorce, criminal auto accidents. And then there’s a few other areas like credit card processing and drug and alcohol rehab and dentists, where we have some experience as well. So, yeah, that’s all I do is Google Ads management.

I want my audience to realize he’s stating the facts. Right. He’s being very linear. And you can kind of tell that he works with a lot of lawyers, but he has a little bit of an adventure side to him as well. So let’s just back it up a little bit and talk more about your average skier. You race go carts, and that’s nothing that we clicked off on was about that. You were also a sailor as well. So let’s talk about these a little bit.

Sure. Yeah. So I’ve just somehow gotten involved in all these different sports and activities, and somehow I’ve gotten pretty good at a lot of them. I’ve lived at a ski resort for about nine or ten years now, and I lived at Squaw Valley for seven years. I had a season pass at Cortina, Italy for winter, and now I’m at Snowbirds. It’s just what I do for fun. I get bored easily, so I have to entertain myself with different activities. I love sailing as well, and go cart racing. Currently, most months I’m about number three where I race. There’s two people ahead of me that are, I think I can catch them if I have another few months to train. So working on that nice.

So let’s just talk a little bit about you as an individual. Right. If you can pick three to five words to define yourself, what three to five words would that be?

I am an intelligent, resourceful and persistent marketer.

Very interesting. So let’s just go back and travel a little bit. You’re very analytical. Right. And obviously being analytical pays off when you’re analyzing Google Ads and different keywords. And you also work with a lot of lawyers as well. So you have to be dead on with your information. What were you like as a child? Were you like this analytical or did you grow into that?

It was way worse. It was the analytical without any social skills whatsoever. So it’s kind of like Rain Man. Yes. I did very well in certain subjects in engineering. I did well. I went to Brown, I studied engineering, did really well in the math and Sciences. So I’m lucky I found this because it’s right up my alley. It fits my personality. And I can just work in my little silo and figure out how to produce impressive results for a client and turn things around. And it’s just funny, the stories of the clients that everyone always thinks the grass is greener on the other side. And I get clients, they’ll get five calls a day from my competitors. Right. And they’ll turn down 1000 of them. Right. And finally the thousandth one has some really good sales pitch and like, okay, we’re going to give them a try. We’ve been with David and webrageous for five or ten years. Let’s see what happens. It takes a few months and eventually someone screws up the account and they come right back and there are clients that have left and come back three and four times and they can’t find anyone better. It’s hilarious.

That’s definitely interesting. You picking where you were as a kid that was highly analytical. Right. You’re almost saying that you were kind of like not only highly analytical, but you were kind of creative as well, in a sense, understanding the premises of Google Ads. You have to be both these things. So let’s just talk a little bit more about the duality in that. Right. Because you’re saying on one side you’re an adventure junkie and on the other side you’re saying you’re highly analytical, like the management of both of those. And I think this is a good time for you to kind of tell us a little bit more about that story about what happened in Costa Rica?

So the pairing of being creative and analytical, I can’t explain where that comes from. It’s just a gift that I have. And at times I have these visions of what to do with an account, to turn it around. And then even if it’s 03:00 A.m., I get up and I start to put it in action, and I don’t know where that comes from. Costa Rica. After College, the creative side of me had had enough, right? And I wanted to go have some fun. So I moved to a ski town and moved to Vale. And I just said, I’m going to do this for winter. I’m going to be a ski bum, and I’m going to go get a real job. Well, spring came, and I just wasn’t ready. And I had heard of raft guide school, so I became a raft guy, even though I wasn’t a good swimmer. And in training, I got thrown out of the boat and almost drowned. And I was spat out of this hole that was holding me underwater. And I’m like 50 yards downstream. I’m like, wait, why am I not going downstream? I’m going upstream. What is wrong here? And I got sucked back into the hole and down to the bottom of the river for another 30 seconds. That went on three times for 30 seconds until I finally got out of it. And I was the one guy that when I was hearing the horror stories with all of everyone else in Raft guide School, they were telling a story of this cow that got surfed in a rapid for a day. The dead cow, they named it Dead Cow Rapid. That was the only one. So what am I supposed to do if I’m stuck in a hole? They said, well, you got two options. Either you throw off your life jacket, which means you’ll get out of it, but you’ll probably drown, or you curl up in a ball so the fast water takes you down and out. And the third time I got dumped, I remembered that saved my life. So after a summer in Veil on the Colorado River of raft guiding, I still haven’t had it out of my system yet. So I wanted to go to Costa Rica because that’s where you can raft all year round and got down there, and they sent me to La Forst tuna, which is where there’s an out active volcano all year round. And I just wasn’t into it. The guys, they’re smoking pot every day. And that was in the first aid kit. They had pot in the first aid kit.

That’s funny.

Not my cup of tea. And so after a week, I felt really bad because they put me up for free in their house. I’m like, Guys, I’m sorry. I’m going back to the United States. Thank you for everything. I’m taking everyone out to dinner because I felt bad. They put me up for a week and took them out to the nicest restaurant in town. They’re like, David, you should really stick around. Why don’t we try? You should try Sarapiqui. It’s just a beautiful place, and I think you’re going to fit well. And I loved it. I went there, I tried it, and I stayed for nine months. I learned fluent Spanish and became a better raft guide. But this place I was living was in the middle of nowhere. And there was this guy that he was abusing his wife. So I volunteered to rescue her from that situation. I said, Paul, put all your stuff in your car right now. I’m going to get you out of here. I took her to the capital to live with some relatives and helped her escape. And not surprisingly, Rigo, the owner, was really pissed with me. So anyway, tried doubling my rent. That’s okay. I’ll just move out. See you. But anyway, he called immigration on me to try to get me in trouble. And they said, look, this guy’s got some problems. We really don’t want to cause any trouble for you. But why don’t you leave the country for three days, at least get your tourist visa renewed, and then you can come back and keep working. We really don’t care. So, I mean, technically, I got kicked out of Costa Rica. It just wasn’t quite the hard expulsion. And they threatened. They said, if you don’t cooperate with us, we’re going to confiscate your car, your computer, everything you own. We’re going to kick you out for ten years and good luck. But all we need you to do is sign this paper right here saying you’ve been working illegally and you agree to be deported on Monday and just trust us. And I didn’t have any choice. I had no choice but to trust them. Otherwise, they just arrest me anyway and kicked me out. So I had to sign the paper. And they were good to their word. They gave me back the paper after they showed it to the owner of the Lodge. I left the country for three days, came back, continued working there. That’s where the Boathouse was at the Lodge. This guy had to see me every day for months. So, yeah, it was quite the misadventure, but I survived.

I think it’s definitely interesting. I’m just kind of digging deeper into your backstory because again, I think that, like myself, having an analytical brain and having a creative brain and having both of them into one house is a very difficult task until you come to that Eureka moment to understand that’s what you are. So my next question is, okay, you have this adrenaline bug. You have this traveling thing, you have this analytical brain. When did you decide to kind of streamline all these different things and put it to good use into Google Ads?

Sure. So it’s just a very roundabout course, as is the case for certain people. Right. And so I was running the flying club at Brown, and one of the alumni suggested that I created a website. And that was I knew very little about it, but I put it together. And so the web fascinated me. And fast forward, a few years later, I was working in it and management consulting and not really liking it a whole lot. Something had happened to my back along the way between Raft guiding and rowing and some other things. And I was just in misery, working at a desk all day long. And now I’m fine. I’ve outgrown it. But I said, you know, what the heck is this? This is for the dogs. I’m going to go back to a ski town and I’m going to figure out some way to get by. And I just didn’t want to sit down all the time because that hurt a lot. So I caught skiing. I was a bartender. I tried raft guiding again. I was a waiter, and I started a painting business, and I made that a success. I started web break just a month before I tried all those things, but it was so slow. I was doing web design. I was terrible at it. And my first year, I made $5,000. So I had to do all these other things to make ends meet. And I just had this talent that kept growing and growing and growing. The talent was kind of there from day one. It just took a long time for me to figure out the business side of it, figure out my own marketing and get it off the ground. So it took a long time.

Nice. So now that you have your Google Ad business, right. That’s the core demographic of what you do. How is your business structure? You said you had a painting business, you were bartending, so you were juggling around a couple of different things. So now are you an LLC, an S Corp or C Corp?

Llc.

Is there a better reason why?

Actually, LLC was S Corporation taxation. So LLC, because it’s good liability protection. It’s fairly simple to set up and maintain, and then the taxation because that’s the best tax structure. So it’s a hybrid of those two entities.

Nice. So let’s talk about your systems in place. Let’s say your ideal client. Right. So let’s talk about that first. Like, what is defining your ideal client? What does that avatar look like?

Sure. So I know as soon as I get them on the phone, you can just sense it in certain people. And I mean, there’s certain things that you look for, but I just have that six sense within 5 seconds, you know, if it’s someone that might be up your alley or not. And it’s someone who’s spending at least $5,000 a month already on Google Ads and primarily lead Gen. We do ecommerce as well. Really good with lead Gen. And then, like I mentioned, those other areas where we have particular expertise, attorneys. That’s like half of our practice right there. We do really well with attorneys.

Okay. So talking about $5,000 spend, ideally lawyers. So let’s say I’m a lawyer. Let’s say I’m spending 7500 per month, and I come to you. What does your onboarding process look like?

Sure. It’s a really simple contract it’s month to month and typically no set up fees. It’s really simple. It’s a two page contract, and we send it over on DocuSign. They sign up and they’ll get access to the Google Ads account, get them set up with call Rail, if they don’t have it already, which tracks their calls, which is great, and away we go. Usually, if they have an existing account and it’s just about making some changes and dropping the cost per lead, then that could be a day or two before we launch it. And if it’s more difficult to set up something we haven’t done before, it might take a week or two, which is longer than our competition. But we spend a lot more time upfront with clients to get them off the ground and be successful.

Okay, let’s continue the storytelling. Right. So I’m a lawyer, you on board, me. We get some paperwork done. Just go into your systems a little bit and you don’t have to disclose all the details of it. But as a new client, what are you looking for in my account? My account is up and running. What can you do for my account to help my account work a little bit better?

Sure. I take a holistic view. You’re going to look at the website because the website, unless you’re doing call only, in which case the website doesn’t matter. But you look at the website and you say, okay, what is holding this person back from being successful? Because you need to beat people over the head. Convert, convert, convert. Pick up the phone, chat with me, fill out the form, and that’s what you want them to do. So you need to drive people to that end. And there’s a number of tricks of doing that that can right there. Without even touching a Google Ads account can drive up conversions. 50% in some cases. So it’s just so important to know that cold because I started in web design, it’s easy. And then looking at the account, are they targeting the right keywords? Do they have the right match types? Broad match. It’s a shotgun approach. You’re targeting all these different keywords, many of which could be a bunch of rubbish. So sometimes you have to go with phrase match or exact match, which is a lot more targeted. Sometimes broad match works. So you just have to look at it and have that fixed sense and know. But the biggest thing is clients are really good about that today of tracking conversions, so that’s when someone fills out your form or they call and you want to make sure you’re tracking that really well and it’s tracked back to the keyword. And that’s where I come in. That analytical background of saying, Where are we wasting money? How can I cut the fat? How can I turn around this account now in five minutes and get this ship rated very quickly? And so, I mean, it’s really simple. You look at the keywords for the past six months. You start by cost. You look for keywords that have no conversions or a high cost per conversion, and you either drop the cost per click or you pause them. It isn’t rocket science, but 99% of the idiots in my industry don’t know that. It’s just unbelievable. Then you try different settings. You got to look at the ads. And one thing I find so commonly, everyone says you need to try multiple ads. You need to have different variations of your ad. Okay, great. Yes, you do. From day one, you need to do that. Maybe from month one, month two, month three, you need to do that. But what no one understands is that once you have data and you can see that that ad really sucks. And the couple cost per conversion is $200, and you have another ad with a cost per conversion of $30. Why don’t we turn off the ad? That’s not working. It’s not rocket science. It’s just the simplest thing in the world. And most people don’t know it. They don’t do it, and they’re like, well, I was told to run multiple ads. So let me just let them run. No, that’s not what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to grow a brain and look at the account and see what’s working and what’s not and fix it. And then all of a sudden, I had a client. Well, it’s law. I’ve dropped their cost per lead 89% using the techniques I just told you. And that’s it. It was the easiest thing in the world. 89% drop. And I didn’t think you could pull that off in 2021. I thought that the shooting fish in the barrel game ended about 2013 or 14, but you can still do it sometimes.

Nice. So, I mean, through a listener of this podcast listening to you, and they’re hearing your life story, they’re hearing about your adventures, and they’re also hearing about how you dropped someone’s. 89%, which is a huge number, like 10%, 20%, 89% is out of this world. Right, right. So the next question is going to be posted to you in a fashion to think about, okay. You may be perceived as an overnight success to someone. Like, okay, this guy figured it out yesterday and he’s making money because he just figured out the system. But in reality, how long have you been on your journey? How long did it take you to get to where you are?

So there’s two different ways of looking at it. The skill that I have to turn around an account that was there from literally day one. Schneider and Wallace is one of my first clients. Tremendous success story. He calls me a secret weapon. First client. It’s like I just got in there. Day one. I had read one article on paid search, and I knew what to do. And I’ve made this guy a lot of money. He’s absolutely thrilled. Lauren Thrillty, my next door neighbor. They were doing absolutely great. They’re killing it. They have at times for this tiny village, Olympic Valley, Squaw Valley, California, where the 1060 Winter Olympics, where they have 50 listings at one time in this tiny little village, it’s unbelievable. They just dominated. And then the National Laser Institute in the Bahamas Beach Club were two of my first clients. First really big clients, and I crushed it for them. We’re talking about hundreds of percent of increase in terms of lead volume and dropping the cost per lead, 70, 80%. So, I mean, that was just innate in terms of my ability to turn around an account. But then there’s a whole other layer of sales and managing the business and growing the business and getting a good volume of leads. And, you know, I’m still working on that. And to be honest, I still struggle with that, to find the right lead sources because Google Ads for me. Look, I’ll be the first to admit there’s a lot of people that come to me and I just know I can’t turn that account around for them. And I tell them that. And there’s people who give me a good Google review. They say, hey, this guy was really honest. It’s like there’s certain circumstances, certain situations where the only party that’s going to make money is Google Ads for any number of reasons. And in my case, there’s a ton of competition coast to coast. And it doesn’t work because I’m picky on who I take on because if I can’t help someone, I don’t want to have to sell them the moon and then get a bad review three months later because I couldn’t deliver the goods for them. So, you know, this is something I’m still working on of finding how to generate a high volume of leads and grow the business. So in the meantime, the 20 customers that I have, they’re killing it because I’ve got all the time in the world to optimize and improve their account.

Nice. So let’s talk about time traveling for a second here. If you can go back in time and whisper in your ears at any time in your life, one thing that can change where you are currently maybe get you to where you are a lot faster. What’s that one thing that you would whisper in your ears?

Go back home, live with your parents, stop everything you’re doing. You’re in the greatest time of change in the history of the human race and keep trying new ideas. Go to the telephone book and find every service and decide, how is the Internet going to change this? Like taxi services? Look at Uber. I mean, Uber only came around and I don’t even know, but it was pretty late for the Internet. I thought everything had already been invented. No, I would love to go back in time and say, look, just stay in your parents basement and try 20 things and fall on your face 20 times. And then if you still haven’t found something great, then go into the service business, right?

Yeah, definitely. That’s definitely interesting. You talked about going back to your parents there. Where did your entrepreneurial hustle insight come from? Where one of your parents did they have a small business or any uncle’s aunts in your family have something along those lines?

Yes. My dad ran a shipping business. So he was in this really risky business where he would charter a cargo ship the size the length of a football field and then send it all around the world trying to get cargo, hoping to make money on it. And it’s a tough business. There was someone else in the industry said, yeah, I’m just going to be a broker. Yeah. What your dad does? He’s nuts. And I worked out okay for him. He did all right and put food on the table. And he didn’t want to go to work for anyone else, which is just like me. But I saw that from a really early age. He started when I was five or six years old. And starting when I was ten, I would be running his office for him when he was off in Nigeria or Mexico or wherever. And so I come home after I go to his office after school, let myself in, read him the faxes that had come through, read them the telexes and do all sorts of things to help him keep his business running while he was running all around the world, of course, before the Internet. So it was a lot harder to operate a business when you’re remote. But that’s what I saw growing up. And so, of course, I emulated that I started mowing lawns when I was in probably 2nd, 3rd, 4th grade, something like that. Not any later than fourth grade. There are people in Westport, Connecticut, that remember me pushing the handles of a lawnmower that were above my head. Another customer remembers I had a 30 gallon garbage can and I would pack leaves in it and then put them in a plastic bag and leave them by the side of the road. I was so small, I would almost disappear into the garbage can as I was packing leaves down. And I was out there when I was in high school, when I was a freshman, I was only £110. I was tiny, but I was out there working really hard. Back in the day, I’d make at least $25 an hour back when I was 12, 13, 14 years old.

Nice.Without saying that, obviously, I think your dad has influenced you to give you that work ethic and give you that insight to understand why working for yourself is going to be paid off in the long run. So definitely, I would say, if I had to ask you the next question, do you think what you learned from your dad was proof of for you today.

Yeah. Start your own business, manage your own time. And I think it’s been a decent place for me. I look back and I said, I kicked myself. God, I could have aimed so much higher. But at the end of the day, I lay my head down at the side of a ski slope at Snowbird. It’s not a bad. It’s not a bad place to be running my own business, not having to rush to work.

It’s not a bad place to be nice to keep talking about family to a little bit. Right. So, I mean, obviously your dad was international from the sound of it. You took up some of the international bug from him. So right now and today, how do you currently juggle, like, your work life with your family life?

Sure. Well, it’s international, of course. My son is in Bogota, Colombia, with my ex girlfriend.

Nice.

So he is ten years old. He’s going to come up here for the first time to get his covid vaccine as soon as that’s approved in September or October.

Wow. So thinking about that, you live at the edge of a ski slope, and you like to travel, so you have, like, the time code differences and everything else. But you’re so analytical, I would think. Right. And you could correct me if I’m wrong. I would think that you probably have some really rigid morning habits. So my next question is like, what are your morning routines? What are your morning habits look like?

Depends. If I wake up at 06:00 A.m. Or 10:30 a.m.. If I’m up at six, I’m going to check my accounts first, see how they did the day before. I’m going to go for a hike, and then if I’m waking up late, it’s racing to get ready and start the day and see what my clients need. That day.

Got you.Cool.

So nothing really set in stone like, I’m sure a lot of your guests have. It’s not that rigid for me.

It’s so interesting because obviously it’s kind of that push and pull between the right and the left brain, right being highly creative, but also being analytical. So to find that balance and everything that you said up until this point, there’s been equilibrium, right. It’s kind of like I’m sailing, but then I’m highly analytical. I’m racing cars, but I’m looking at the information stats and I’m stacking them up to get results. So it’s definitely a push and pull. So your answer about your morning routine makes perfect sense. You have to have some of the other side with all the rigid analytical data as well, going into another question. So, I mean, you’ve been on this journey for a while. What book have you read? It’s a three part question, right. What books have you read in your earlier days to kind of help you get to where you are? What books are you reading? Right now to help you continue with education. And question three is have you had an opportunity to offer any books as of yet?

Great questions. So probably the best book I read was the 50 Laws of Power and it just teaches you a lot about how the world works, how people work, and it just demystifies a lot of things. And right now I’m not reading any books, which I know is not a great answer. But I read the Wall Street Journal in the New York Times and I love reading both of those and just reading the news. And then I’ve not written any books yet, but there is one that I want to write about helping people with hidden health problems that they just can’t get to the bottom of because I went through absolute hell. Getting to the bottom of all these hidden problems and cost quarter million dollars out of pocket really slowed me down. There was a hidden mold problem in my house. The mold test didn’t reveal it because there was an air pocket. It was behind a wall where there had been a leak. And right in that wall cavity there was an air intake for the HVAC system. So it took it and spread it around the whole house. And I had no clue what was going on because the mold test was negative. This is very normal, right? So I had that which caused chronic fatigue to where I couldn’t walk more than five minutes before I’d have to rest and then a little bit of sleep apnea with shallow breathing. I mean, it’s just like the rarest thing you look, I’m a skinny guy and the sleep test came back normal and yet I knew I had a sleep problem. And then anyway, I could go on and on and on. But another one was I had acid reflux with no symptoms and the acid was getting into my lungs, doing damage to my lungs. It’s just unbelievable to have those three or four things with the chronic fatigue altogether and to have to unravel. It was a nightmare. And the doctors, some of them were pretty good, but no one person could just nail it and put it all together. It was just me boiling the ocean to get to the bottom of it. And it was just a nightmare because I couldn’t think clearly. I could barely run the business. And to just have to figure that out was the hardest thing I ever went through. And so I want to write a book to help people understand the resources, the techniques, the tactics, what you say, what you need to do, what you need to think about to get yourself out of a situation like that. Because there are people that are just awful cases where you’re diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and that’s it. You get your 5% chance of living. But there’s a lot of people that are like walking zombies and they don’t know why, and their doctors can’t help them and they’re lost. They’re clueless. And it’s really sad.

That’s definitely interesting. And it kind of brings me to more so like a legacy question, because obviously having all these different symptoms at any turn, something could have went wrong and it could have obviously climax to the point I believe you probably wouldn’t have been here right now or you would have even worse side effects. So I’m happy that, first of all, that you figured it out. So my next question is, with that being on the table and having a ten year old son, where do you see yourself 20 years from now?

Sure. So 20 years from now, what I urgently need to do right now is find a few more lead sources. I’m doing great work, amazing work, but there’s so much competition out there, and I’m not done because you’ve got agencies that have 50 people, and they’ve got a lot more resources to throw at SEO and rank and do this and do that. And they got five sales people and et cetera, et cetera. So what I need to do is really crack the nut of how do I get more leads for myself, which is just tricky. So as long as I can do that, which I’m working very hard on right now, I spent $18,000 on a package of commercials for webrageous, which turned out amazing. You can check it out at webrageous.com. So I have to figure out how to promote those, which I will. It’s doing some new things on Facebook and maybe some other places that I don’t normally do and just tapping some new sources of leads because I’ve got the skills. I have a client just now that he sold his business for $50 million, and he said, David, I couldn’t have done it without you. And I’ve been managing his Google Ads for eight years, and he just couldn’t be happier. So as long as I can figure that out, then the Sky’s the limit. I can do really well, but I don’t know if I want to grow an agency to have five or ten or 50 employees. It’s just not me. I’m just happy. I like doing the work myself, making a huge difference. And so that’s what I want to do is have two or three times as many clients 20 years from now and still be doing the same thing.

Nice with that. Obviously, it’s one thing to say that you’re managing SEO and anyone that understands that’s a Google platform. But on the software side of things. Right. What tools do you use that you would not be able to do what you’re doing without, like, software tools?

The only tool that I have for doing what I do is right there. That’s it. And there’s a lot of people that use automation and software to manage Google Ads, and I just don’t believe in it. That’s for people who don’t really know what they’re doing, and it helps the mediocre people out there in the world. I use Google Ads Editor. It comes straight from Google. It’s free, and that helps. So I use that. I suppose that is very helpful. I mean, that is the software program that I use for what I do. Ubersuggest by Neil Patel is a good keyword research tool. And there’s some free searches you can do on there. I got the Lifetime membership. It’s only like $100 or something. So that’s really it. But mostly it just comes down to the knowledge that I have and applying that to my clients every day. Cool.

Definitely. Really interesting to me, obviously, to your point, I mean, there’s automation, there’s different strategies. Uber suggest are definitely a great tool. But this kind of say you’re going back to the rudimentary elements of just using your brain and understanding systems at hand. And that’s the only thing that you really need to really do well in Google Ads. So it’s something for anyone out there that’s thinking about getting into Google Ads or are looking for help with Google Ads. I want people to really listen to that and rewind and really get some real sense of, you know, what you’re talking about, and you don’t really need the software to back you up. You can essentially do Google Ads just by thinking about staging the right keywords and putting things in place. And like you said earlier in this conversation, if something’s not working, it’s not rocket science. If one is $300 and the other one is $50 and you’re trying to do the same thing, then you’re going to turn off the one that’s costing you 300 enroll with the one that’s $50.

So easy. It’s just mind numbingly simple. It’s crazy. And so many people just don’t get it in this industry. And there’s just these tiny little tricks, stupid tricks. And once you understand that, it just makes a huge difference.

So going into final words of wisdom, let’s say I’m a younger guy, let’s say maybe 20,30. I’m 40 years old. Right. And I have a business and I’m working on my Google Ads, and I’m trying to get things figured out. And what words of wisdom would you give to me that helped me move forward on my Google Ad journey?

Sure. So doing it yourself is really, really tough because all the Google suggestions play towards what Google wants you to do, which may not be in your best interest. You’re going to get calls from Google and they’re going to tell you to do what Google wants you to do, not necessarily what is in your best interest. It may help you, and it may not. And I get some calls from people who are unhappy with the advice they were given and everything was working great. And then Google called. Then I took their advice. So then I turn it around. So what can I say? I would say definitely don’t try and do it yourself. Once every two or three years, I run into someone that has figured it out and I can’t figure out how they actually did it and did such a good job. It does happen. It’s not impossible. But if you’re running a business, you have better things to do. So obviously my offer of doing a free account review for anyone that’s already spending at least $5,000 a month is a great one because you’re under no obligation to sign up with me and you’re going to learn a lot in that time. And then if you want to keep doing it yourself and implement that great. That’s certainly someone’s right to try that. But there’s such a wide range of skills. This is not a commodity. Managing Google ads is not like going to the grocery store and buying sugar where you can just buy the cheapest thing, cheapest pound of sugar and call it good. I would say, don’t be patient with someone doing what I’m doing. If you want to do SEO and you want to hire Damon, for example, you have to sign a one year contract. You got to be patient. You got to give the guy six to twelve months. That’s SEO. This is paid. It’s supposed to work right away, and maybe there is a little bit of experimentation you need to do. So. I mean, I wouldn’t fire someone after day one unless things are absolutely abysmal. Give someone a month or two, but that’s as long as leash as you want to give someone in my industry. If they’re not cutting it and you’re not happy and you think the grass might be greener on the other side, fire that person. Go find another agency and just keep trying every month or two until you get the results that you need. Because there’s such a wide range of abilities and it’s impossible to tell talking to the snake oil salesman in my industry, who knows what they’re doing?

Wow.

Even I can barely tell when I interview people. It is so hard to know. So it’s very tricky. And the worst thing is, if you get stuck with you get sold by someone who’s a really good salesperson, then you get stuck with someone who has two years experience and they have 80 accounts to manage. Let’s do the math. 80 accounts, 40 hours in the work week. That’s 30 minutes a week. Deduct from that bathroom breaks, breast breaks, kneel breaks, talking on the phone, online, ordering on Amazon, et cetera, et cetera, and then reporting and your requests talks with you. How much time does that person actually have to make optimizations in your account? Five minutes, two minutes. What are they going to accomplish? Not a lot.

Very true. So I’m a listener of the podcast and I’m like, okay, this guy I’m sold, I want to at least get an audit. How do they get in contact with you?

Sure. Just go to webrageous.com. Just like outrageous webrageous.com, webrageous.com and fill out the form or give us a call.

Nice. So I got a couple of bonus questions for you. Alright.

Sure.

Outside of like, your family or your son, what is your most significant achievement to date?

That’s a good question. Well, being a father, I’m going to say three things. Being a father. Second would be getting kicked off a sailing team the next summer, going and racing with the competition and beating that team, which shouldn’t have beat them, getting invited back to that original sailing team and then winning the series. We were undefeated the whole season. And then the owner of the boat, he always gets the trophy. He gave that trophy to me. It was a Crystal vase about that high and the glass on it was that thick. And so I was MVP that year after being kicked off. That was a really cool accomplishment. And the last race, our competition was right on our tails and it was handicapped. We beat them by two minutes, 90% of the race. They were right on our tails. And I stood up on the last leg of the race and started calling the wind shifts and we pulled ahead of them by two and a half minutes. I still to this day, I don’t know how we pulled ahead that far, but I was calling some good wind shifts. So that would be another one of them. And the other one was being part of a four person team that won a competition supported by United Technologies for Engineering and Sciences. That was in high school. The teachers nominated twelve of us to be on two teams. We could have two teams of eight, but I was on the B team. We beat the A team. The A team had twice as many people and they were way smarter than us. They had the valedictorian, the Salvatorian, the valedictorian of the junior class, who would be the valedictorian of the junior class. And it’s just a much more capable team. Anyone would look at them and say, oh my God, they’re going to crush us and we beat them. We won the competition out of every small, medium, large private school for the B teams in the state of Connecticut. And then we started looking at the results for the A teams. We beat every single A team in the entire state of Connecticut in this engineering and science competition. And we only had half of the people on the team that we could have. It’s a story that I cherish.

Yeah. I’m just listening to you, how passionate you are, but it still goes back to you being both creative and analytical, right? I mean, obviously sailing could be very fun. Sailing. Racing definitely has adrenaline behind it. But you had a particular job on that particular boat where you were tracking the wind, which is a highly analytical position to kind of foresee where wind is going to be before it’s even there. Would you correct me if I’m wrong? Is that not a true statement?

Yes, you’re predicting, but for me, I just saw it. I was kind of cheating. I had a pair of $400 there and Getty glasses, which allow you to see the windshift, but better than anyone else. But, yeah, I didn’t want to spend $400 on him. And this woman I knew at the Sunglass store said, David, this is what all the national team guys are doing. You have to get these. I’m like, okay, cool. Done. So I got my $400 X ray sunglasses and pulled off a big wind for him.

Nice. All right, so I got another bonus question for you. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone, dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

My granddad. He passed away when I was in fourth grade. And to know him as an adult would be really amazing. It’s very special as a kid. But to spend 24 hours with him and his great grandson Martine, that would be special.

Oh, definitely. I can definitely see that because my son, he’s 15, and his maternal grandfather that he was very close with recently died, like, in the past couple of months. So fast forward when he’s an adult, I could definitely see that visual. I can ask my son that question probably 15 years from now. He’ll probably give me the same answer that you just gave. So, yeah, I think going to closing, right. Every time I interview someone, I always give them the opportunity to give the microphone to them to ask me any questions that may have come up during the podcast. So the microphone is yours. Do you have any questions that you would like to ask me?

Yeah. How did you meet Damon? That’s how we met. How did you meet Damon?

Kind of like social media. Right? So I saw Damon, and we had some mutual connections on Facebook. And then I just looked Damon up, and I was like, okay, analytically. We’re like, on the same way level. We like the same thing. He was a Forbes writer. He had a podcast. He’s really big into SEO. And I was like, I need to interview this guy. So I just reached out to him, like, Cole would never even speaking to him once. And then shortly after that, he accepted to be on the podcast. And then after that, he invited me to be on his podcast, which Ironically just eared today. And the rest was history. And all this happened within less than six months.

Oh, wow. Okay. And you came all the way from where to go to his 40th birthday party?

Atlanta to Utah.

Oh, my God. That’s a long way to go. Just for a one night party.

Yes. But it’s kind of like that’s how you build real relationships. And Damon and I, we’d have, like, an unsung Brotherhood right off the bat we just clicked it just made sense and it’s kind of like it’s really cool to not only have someone that understands your language but also is a really good guy as well so it just worked out. Ideally you would love for that to work out with everyone but it doesn’t but with me and Damon it just did.

Yeah, Damon is a special guy. Absolutely cool.

Well, I mean going to the closing I definitely want to appreciate taking out your schedule. I know you guys about, like 2 hours behind us and I definitely appreciate all the information and insight that you delivered and obviously if anyone is looking to get better results from the Google ads, by all means necessary, please contact David. At least let them give you an audit to put you in the right perspective to let you get a peace of mind to kind of know where your results are and where your results can go.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Pleasure S.A grant over and out.

Founder Of Webrageous: David Chapman AKA The Google Ad Boss – S3E24 (#120)2023-01-24T16:11:50+00:00

Podcast Mogul Of Phil Better Inc.: Phil Lemieux AKA The Mogul Boss – S3E23 (#119)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Podcast Mogul Of Phil Better Inc.: Phil Lemieux AKA The Mogul Boss – S3E23 (#119)
If I started this five years ago, would I be still at the same point with the same connections and the same people in my life, or would I be somewhere else and I’d be not as happy right now?
In Season 3, Episode 23 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the Podcast Mogul at Phil Better Inc, Phil Lemieux
Phil’s interest in Podcasting first began when he heard one of Kevin Smith’s podcasts on the network Smodcast, back in 2014. Since then he has been listening to a varied genre of podcasts to constantly be up to date with the latest knowledge when it comes to podcasting.
In November 2017 he took the plunge and started his first podcast, The Phil Better Show.
👉After 200 plus episodes
👉6000 downloads
👉200 Facebook followers
The show went on hiatus in 2020, but at the same time, Phil’s drive to become a successful Entrepreneur kicked into high gear.
After a few failed attempts, and some inner soul searching, he decided to start Investing In Himself by doing the one thing he’s great at… Connecting with people.
Starting a new podcast called: Invest In Yourself: A Digital Entrepreneur Podcast
👉 50 interviews with successful Business Owners, Entrepreneurs, and Influencers,
👉 Invitation to Media events like Startup SuperCup in Sarlat France.
👉 Created his own Business Phil Better Inc to become a digital entrepreneur himself.
Phil signed his first Client, Lloyd Ross, and produces the Money Grows on Trees: The Podcast
👉 Sits at number 24 all-time in Australia for the How-to category after only 4 weeks!
👉 #1 ranked podcast in Iceland, Australia in the How To category.
👉 50% increase in downloads week to week
Spurred on by the success of his client, Phil launched his third Podcast, Stock Dirty To Me, along with the admins of the Facebook group “Stock Market for Beginners” This Podcast goes live every Sunday at 7:30 pm EST as well as Wednesdays to the group’s 50 thousand members, with the goal to help people increase their financial literacy so they can start making money from the stock market.
Phil’s drive to be known Globally as The Podcast Mogul means he is always looking to help out independent podcasters monetize their show by offering free 30-minute sessions which he hopes to turn into another Podcast when he has the time.
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • What topics can you find on The Phil Better Podcast
  • What is Phil’s morning routine
  • What tools is Phil using in his business
  • And So Much More!!!
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Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S3E23 Phil Bettter.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

All right, three, two, one. Welcome welcome back to Boss Uncaged Podcast. Today’s show is an interesting show, and I’m going to tell you a little story about how me and before I even get into who this guy is and his credibility behind the scenes, I’m going to deem him the mogul boss, and he’s going to be able to fill in the blanks to why I’m deeming him the mogul boss.Right. So obviously, I think this conversation, a lot of questions may come up. So at your earliest convenience, if you have any insight or takeaways or questions that you want to leave behind for us to follow back up, I want you guys to go to bossuncaged.com/fbgroup again that’s bossuncaged.com/fbgroup to get into the Facebook group and leave us some feedback about your biggest takeaway from this episode. So without further Ado, Phil, my man from Canada that I just met, literally three, four, I don’t know, some time this week, and I met him through the BCAST community. He put up a post about, hey, guys, I’m looking to start a new networking group who raises their hand first. But yours truly, right? Because obviously anytime you want to get to my heart, you say networking and I jump full fledge into it. So go ahead. The Mike is yours. Tell our audience a little bit about who you are and what you do.

I just feel so now the pressure is on. Like, Jeez. Mogul boss. Not just the podcast mogul, which I call myself now. I’m the Mogul boss. The name is Phil Better. I’ve been podcasting for the last six years, helping people create podcasts, making my own podcast and monetizing. Just bringing more eyeballs and business savvy, I guess you will, to the podcasting world. Since it started off as pirate radio with the hobbyist, no one knew the rules. It was the Wild West still is the Wild West of the media professions, if you will. And I just decided, you know what? I’ve always wanted to be in media, but I never had the opportunities because I just never went for them. And then I’m like, I’m podcasting. Let’s just jump into it. So now I produce podcast. I find monetization for podcast. I just help podcasters. That’s all I do. I love podcasting so much. And so that’s why I do it.

Cool. Just by that brief definition of who he is and what he does, obviously, we made a connection, right? The synergy was there from Jump. So I think this conversation is going to get hot and heavy. We’re going to dive into the meat and potatoes. So it’s right off rip. If you could define yourself in three to five words, what would those three to five words be?

Feel better.That’s all I need. Feel better. Some people know, some people don’t. My last name isn’t actually better, surprise the price. But in a round about way, it is. So my last name is French and I was working for major Corporation and the social media aspect of life, you have to be careful. So I changed my last name to I just Angled size my last name. I just turned it from French to English. So my last name is meilleur, which means the better, if you translate word for word from French to English. So I just dropped the waa just like Facebook and all the Facebook, all the greats drop the waa and then they become even better. So first name is Phil. Last name is better. That’s what I go for. And my sole purpose in life is just to help people feel better. Like if it’s putting a smile on someone’s face when I meet them, if it’s providing them an idea about how to monetize their podcast or how to grow their brand and it makes them money, then great. I can just say, yeah, I helped a little bit there, and that’s all I need. That’s life. As long as you find your happiness, your level of happiness, and you just work to continue to have that happiness and you’re good for life. I don’t need millions of dollars. A million dollars would be nice, but I don’t need that. And that’s I think people forget that. And through what’s happened for me the last couple of years, I finally realized simplicity is like the best thing in life. Just find the amount of money you need to live a very simple life where you get to be your own boss and then just enjoy that.

Nice. So with that, obviously that touches a little bit on branding. Right. So I think that’s one thing that podcasters, unfortunately, some totally get it and some totally missed the Mark. So for you to brand yourself as the feel better guy. Right. My next question is kind of on the opposite end of that. Right? Like the bipolar situation of feeling better is feeling worse. So what is the worst example that you have since you’ve been in podcasting that you’ve had to deal with and overcome.

Specifically for podcasting? It was trying to revamp The Phil Better Show, which was my original podcast, the one that got me started in podcasting. It was like stagnant, getting maybe a couple hundred downloads, an episode. It was stagnant. It wasn’t popping. I want to say my life is in ruins, but it wasn’t. It was just I was in a really dark place. 2019 was a horrible year for me. Amazing experiences, but horrible in life in general. Looking back, it’s like, yeah, it was touch and go there for a moment of just pure sanity, but trying to revamp it and figure out, okay, how do I take this from being a hobby to a business? It was on hiatus. I tried. I recorded a couple, but just never really got it. And so I really had to take a step back and decide how I was going to brand. Am I going to continue with this podcast. That’s been my baby, my child, for my whole career, or am I going to just let it die? So that was probably the hardest thing. And figuring out how to rebrand it, how to make it come back better, how to get more engagement with it. Because none of the things I tried has happened. And I figured it out. I just decided to follow like a lot of people do, start doing live TV, start treating it like a business, start treating it like a TV show and just keep pumping it out. And I found success and it’s grown all the time.

Nice. So we’re talking about success, right? What comes success comes organizing the noise, right? Whether you’re going to make a million dollars or whether you make $100,000 is what you do with that money and how your business is structured that makes you more profitable in the long run. So my next question is how is your business structured? I mean, you’re based out of Canada. Is it an LLC? Do you have Scorp and C Corps in Canada?

So we don’t have LLCs in Canada. That is non thing. We have a sole proprietor, a cooperative, and something else. Or you can just be a freelance. So if you make under 30K a year, you can claim it as a sole business. You don’t have to go through a Corporation and all that you’re considering freelancer, self employed, and the taxes aren’t that bad. But if you want to take benefit from all the great tax deductions and all that, you can go into business, it’s like $200. You go through the government and it structures it as its own entity. But it’s under your name. So it’s kind of cheaper. You can get a numbered company or you put it under your own name. So I put mine under my own name because it was just easier because I can do business in English and French now since my business is just my name. So that’s how I have it. And I just use a simple payment plan, processing plan, stripe, and I send the invoices that way. And my business is very simple. I just run it myself and automate as much that I don’t need to until I have to hire somebody that’s definitely interested because I mean.

I’ve interviewed people from the UK and Australia, and when I asked that question, to my surprise, UK, usually they have LLC. So for me to be in the US and for you to be in Canada so close for you not to have LLCs, it’s kind of like, how the hell did that skip over the seas and end up in UK and where Canada doesn’t have LLCs, it’s definitely crazy to think about it. And that’s why I asked that question, right?

Yeah. So I wish we had LLCs. It would make life a little easier. But I think with the sole proprietorship that we can get our protection from that. That’s kind of like our version of the LLC. But yeah, I wish we did have LLC because it would make life so much easier for just starting a business. There’s so much red tape you have to jump through. And I think because we started being a country, if you will, not a Dominion. Long after you guys decided to kick the Brits out, we took some time. We decided to take our time and ask them politely, like Canadians to leave. And then we asked again. And then finally they said, okay, we’ll leave just a Canadian way. I think that’s probably why I never really looked into it. But I always wish because when you’re searching to start a business in Canada, it’s like I search start a business. And 90% of Google is like, start an LLC, start an LLC. This is the best way to start an LLC. Ten tips to start an LLC. And it’s like, well, I’m in Canada, I’m on Google Canada, and it’s giving me only Americans. So that’s something. And now that we’ve talked about, like, that’s an awesome podcast subject to talk about and go down and teach people right now, I’m funny. Being the podcast mogul, I’m actually looking at my legal pattern. I have like three different podcast ideas that are nearly fully formed. I just need a host for them. It’s all there. And because I’ve already automated the setup and creation of a podcast, all I need is to hire someone or find someone to be a host and boom, and create the content. And then my machine just runs with it nice. And so it’s like, okay, now I have another one, because starting a business in Canada, here’s a podcast story about that. And it can be a resource for people. Instead of having I think a lot of people think having a podcast, you need to have a constantly updated new episodes, new episodes. Whereas if you’re a business owner, like, let’s say an author or you’re a publishing house, the five steps to publish your book, that doesn’t have to be a continual series. It can be a limited series. Boom, right there. And then you’re like, hey, here’s a free resource. Instead of having to read the ebook, you can listen to someone, talk to you about it. And that just adds more value to the package that you have.

That brings me to another really serious question, since you brought it up. Right. Podcasting is much like media in a sense that the more downloads and more views, the more credibility. But to your point, I think you’re making a valid point. Why not make micro podcasts like a podcast that has not episodes that live on forever? But maybe it’s just ten episodes and those ten episodes are going to cover a particular topic. And it’s evergreen, right? It’s evergreen topic that’s always going to be out there. So if someone is searching for it, they could find it and get value from it. You’re talking about making micro podcasts, so your business running on it. Is that something that you’re doing right now for clients?

So I do it for some clients, actually. I have a client in Macedonia, which is really weird to say up in Canada I’m working with. So it’s weird. My clients come from are all international. I don’t think I have one Canadian client, which is really weird being in Canada, not focusing on my own Canadians. But podcasting is larger outside of where I am. So I have clients in France, Australia, America, of course, because you guys devour podcast like it’s no one’s business. And then I just signed this guy from Macedonia. He was a guest on my podcast, actually, and that’s how I use my main podcast, Investing Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast. It’s a lead Gen podcast. I’m not concerned about the downloads I get because the purpose of this podcast really one, was for me to learn how to be an entrepreneur because I’ve come from a nine to five, never had any entrepreneurs in my life. But looking back, it’s like, oh, no, he was an entrepreneur. I just didn’t know it at the time what an entrepreneur was. I thought he was a salesman. But looking back in my life, I had a lot of friends who were entrepreneurs, run their own businesses, multi million dollar businesses, without me even knowing it until I started talking with other people. So he has three podcasts that were in the process of developing, which is really weird. Usually it’s either one or three podcasts when I get a client. And so we’re developing his personal branded podcast that helps him going to make him a thought leader in his industry. We’re doing his business podcast, where it helps grow his business’s brand, but also his clients who are part of it. They get that free promotion from his listing, and he takes care of all that. And then he’s written a book that’s in the current process of being published, and we’re going to be doing a limited series on each chapter of the book. I think there’s seven chapters. We’re doing nine episodes, an intro and an outro the trailer and the post thing, and then the episodes for the chapters. And that’s all it’s going to be. And it’s going to live on the website for the book. So if you go to the book’s website, you can listen to the before you buy the book, you can have the choice of listening to the episodes and saying, you know what? I want to learn more about this. Okay. I know I’m learning this in chapter two. So it’s kind of like that treat before you buy. And having those micro content is like having those microgreen, like you said, those green content on YouTube or on the articles on your website because they’re always going to be there. So having Evergreen like if I have that thing, I’m like, oh, you want to listen to a book about lead selling? Well, here’s a podcast. It’s actually the whole book in podcast form, but it doesn’t go into as much depth as the book. But you can see as a tease to buy the book. And we’re testing to see if that’s going to work out. But I see no reason that it wouldn’t because it’s just going to lead to sales. Yeah.

I mean, it’s an interesting topic because obviously you have audiobooks and audiobooks and podcasts. They’re very similar, but they’re different, right?

Yeah.

Talking to someone, communicating tonarally you know, eye contact, all that is a little bit different than just reading from scriptures of a book. So you’re kind of bridging the gap between the two and you’re doing a test. You say it’s not a proven concept, but you’re proving it as you create it, right?

Yeah, that’s what we’re doing. We’re running with it to see if it works. Like this is another opportunity for podcasters authors to increase their knowledge, increase their wealth. Because if you say you have three podcasts as an author, oh, that’s impressive. Now, whether or not they’re all active or whatever, it doesn’t matter. You can say, look, here they are. There’s proof of concept. You can listen to the podcast here and here. This is where I talk about being a thought leader. This is where I talk to other industry leaders and I show my authority. And then you have here’s my book, which just shows I actually know what I’m talking about. And having those three things is amazing. I’m also in the process of building two networks, two podcasting networks and kind of media networks at the same time with a company in Tampa called Next Gen Sports Network, where we’re building out. We’re starting with a bit of the USC MMA. We just signed with a local MMA company that we’re going to be handling all their media and the owner of the company, he’s going to use the brand, his ability to get sponsors because that’s what his business is. He’s a lead Gen for sponsorships and selling sponsorship. We’re on the Dabone, I think, largest radio station in Tampa, where we got the Bucks credentials. So we’re going after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. We’re doing a whole bunch of things. But also he wants to work out a podcast network so that he can sell from his Guerrilla Marketing Company, which is his primary marketing company, that he handles marketing. He’s adding like, hey, you can now be on podcasts and access to that market as well. So I’m now not only producing their podcasts that they already have in house, but also doing talent acquisition to get talent in the podcast because I want to help get podcasters paid. So I’m building that network for him. And in France, I’m building another network that’s completely different. That’s just brand building because it’s for a startup incubator. So he wants all the businesses inside the incubator to have their own podcast so that they can use it for lead generation as well as establishing their authority and having this kind of, like, historic of when it does end up being bought, blowing up, you can see, like, hey, here’s all the struggles they face. Here’s some information about them, and it just grows that way. So I’m always in the process of trying to reinvent new ways that can help podcasters, because you never know what works in one industry is going to work in another industry.

Nice. So this is rewind back. I mean, remember when we first came on this podcast and I was saying, you’re the Mogul boss? And you like, oh, no, my God, he was being all modest and shit.

I’m Canadian. I’m supposed to be modest. I’m the most narcissistic person in the world, but I come from Canada of humble beginnings. So I can’t be all that narcissistic. I have to let my work talk for myself, and then I can be narcissistic.

You just listed up this laundry list. I’m sitting here. If I’m the audience listening right now, I’m just like, didn’t this motherfucker say earlier on the show that mogul? Thank you. So, I mean, obviously you can see why I’ve named this man the Mogul boss, right? So let’s continue on and move forward a little bit, right? So all the things that you’re talking about, it has to be systematic in some sense. So what systems do you have in place to manage all these tentacles?

Paper is one. No. Most of my ideas, like, if I’m lying down, I have a pad of paper in every single room of my house because I never know. I don’t like writing it on my phone because it will just get lost into the other space. So writing it down, it’s a constant reminder. I see it. I’m like, okay, I have to come back to that. I daily Journal as well. So there’s that. But running everything, it’s one email address for all the businesses. Everything. If you want to get in contact, it’s one email address. And I send out from other emails. But if it’s like specific business, it’s always that one email so that everything is in one place. Like, even my family sometimes send me a wrong email. I’m like, no, I forward it back to the proper email address and then I call them. I’m like, no, you’re only supposed to use this email address because if not, your life starts getting panicky and everywhere. So you have to align your life to the simplest possible thing. Find one thing. But I use that peer for my handle the Podcasting stuff headliner. I hire out when I can. Because if you’re running 13 different things, if I can hire someone for the advertising or making simple templates or stuff like that, I’ll hire someone and they do it. And then it’s like, okay, I just copy paste it. Google Forms does most of my thing. Like, you use Google Forms. Google Forms is a lifesaver. I’ve done it for about made about a dozen forms for myself and other podcasters for guest intake, but also for podcast intake if they want them. Like, if you wanted to be a guest, right? You’re like, oh, they’re like, oh, I want to have the essay, grab the boss, Uncaged himself on my podcast. I send them a form and say, Here, fill out this form, fills out. It tells me how everything that’s the thing. Like, is it going to be worthwhile for me being on the podcast now, for me, myself, I love being on any podcast because I just love talking about podcasting. But if you’re my client, you may be looking for specific niched podcasts to be on. So I create a database of podcasts that I have access to. So when my client goes, I need to be on a podcast. I just go over. I’m like, okay, what kind of podcast do you want? And they’re like this. I go through my list, I’m like, okay, I have five. I reach out to them, I’m like, hey, I have this guy. This is the story. I do the branding for the one sheet and all that for my guest. Send it to them, and it’s done. So I have all these little databases everywhere for me that I’ve created using Google Forms. Or is that peer handling stuff? Or just when I started my second podcast, Investing Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast, I was still working on Nine to five. So from Nine to five, I was working luckily, like, Covet hit. So I was like, hey, I’m still at home. So it’s a little easier. But I had to figure out how I can record 21 episodes as fast as possible, get them processed while also not being completely exhausted doing a nine to five. So I couldn’t stay up until, like, 04:00 in the morning to work the next day because I would be dead. So I use canonly. And I go, okay, I’m recording as many as I can in two week period. And I would just blast out asking people, the minute all 21 were open, I closed the link going, it’s closed. And some days I did five podcasts in a row, 45 minutes, podcast episode. So it’s boom, boom, boom, nearly back to back, usually with 30 minutes in between, because I was stupid then, but I get all of them. And then the following week, when I had none, I would just edit. It would just be me sitting down in my studio, editing, editing, hating my life because it’s editing. But now it’s like, but then it’s done and it’s for nearly 21 weeks. I have no worries because my podcast go out and I’m done. I can concentrate on other aspects. Promotion, getting clients when it’s coming close, do another two week binge. Boom, done. My life is like a constant cycle of that. Luckily now no longer working the nine to five. So I now do Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and I just let that roll for forever because I usually get one to two podcasts because I’m so far ahead. I’m already scheduling season three, season five, and we’re just releasing season three. It just began. So I’m always like at least one season buffer just in case. But because as the compounding interest happens with your podcast, as you get on other podcasts or people message you because they start finding your podcast, it starts jumping on or someone’s listening to your podcast and like, oh my God, I know my brother Bill would be great for this podcast. Send it over. I’m like, you should be on this podcast. And I get those things. And I’m like, yeah, it’s going to drop when it drops. At this point. I’m like, it just drops when it drops because I’m so far advanced. But I try and work it with the guests. Like if they have a media drop or they have something big coming, I’m like, yeah, let’s ride the momentum. So tell me, when you have this new product dropping and this can be part of your promotion and that’s worked out. And I’ve rescheduled some guests and episodes, but you have to have your systems in place for each podcast. It’s unique or for each business, it’s unique. And if you don’t have something in place that can manage that at least a funnel or flow, you’re going to get overwhelmed and you’re just going to burn out and you’re going to be, fuck this. This is not for me.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s so crazy and it’s coming to the podcasting. There’s so many similarities between what you’re talking about and kind of like, we’re in BossUncaged right now. To your point. We’re so far advanced with our episode. We’re like 60, 70 episodes behind where we are right now. So we have that much content to release into the next year. So with that, right, I mean, to get to the point to where you are, somebody may be listening and be like, okay, this guy, he’s a mogul. We obviously get that right. And maybe he’s a mogul, maybe he’s an overnight success. But in reality, how long did it take you to get to where you are?

Six years. Six years to get understand the industry, understand what works, studying other podcasts, listening to other podcasts, talking with other podcasters about podcasting and looking at other industries to see how they’re growing their business and seeing if there’s something I can do, what they’re doing, how can I manipulate it or bastardize it to work for podcasting?

Nice.

So this new thing that I’m doing with the network, it’s reminiscent of what my buddy did. He made a shit ton of money. The bastard. He used to do advertising on websites for video games. Okay? So he worked with the company that made World of Warcraft. I think it’s EA. I don’t know. Like, he worked with EA, he’s worked with Warner Brother Media. He’s worked with all these major companies or Wizards of the west or Wizards of Warlords or whatever they’re called. He’s worked with all these amazing companies and he would literally go to them. He’s like, what’s your marketing budget? They’re like, we’re paying X amount per click. And he’s like, okay. And then he would go to websites that are in the nerd industry or anything like that. He’s like, hey, I want to buy up your real estate for your advertising, and I’ll pay you this amount for it, and you just show this ad. And he’s like, okay. So he was doing two sites. They would come into his business as real estate so that he could sell advertising against it, and then he would go out and buy the real estate, buy the properties that need to be sent, the ad space and all that. And he would just connect the two. It was just the connector, the middle man. And he was just taking the time away from the business execs and the media and the buyers and all that, because they don’t have time to go to these little websites, organize the contract. But if I can go to a central person who has a network of, let’s say, 100 websites, and I know they can help generate $1,000 per website, and it’s only going to cost us X amount to advertise with them. Yeah. And on the flip side, for the website owner, they don’t have to do anything. They have a check come in. They know every 30 days they’re getting paid X amount because of the pre bought ad space. So I’m thinking now that I’m building up my network of podcasts and not for advertising, I’m like, Damn, I’m becoming a middleman just like he did. And I’ve always wanted to do that easy fucking money, because it is easy money. Like, if I go to an Advertiser and be like, hey, I have 30 podcasts that generate over a million downloads per year, and monthly it’s at 500,000 or something. I don’t know. Like, math is not my strong point. I have computers for that. But I say they get this. And if they’re going rate is, let’s say $25 per $1,000 and I generate an episode and I’m generating triple that number for each episode. Then I’m getting my podcasters a certain amount of money per episode for have this ad space on it. So they’re making money. So now their hobby and is starting to generate revenue for them, and they feel better about themselves because they’re like, oh, my God, I’m getting paid. So they’re going to hopefully invest into their podcast, get it better. I’m getting paid because I’m doing this little thing. I had this great connection, and if I keep getting them more money. They’re going to pay me more money, which means I can run ads to go buy, get more property for my podcasting network, to spread more money out and make more money that way for everybody involved. That’s what I think. And funny enough, no one is doing it. And I’m like, Why not? But it’s also maybe someone didn’t have the balls to do it. Now that I said it, there could be 20 people like, I can do that and I’ll start doing it. But I’m not worried because there’s over 2 million podcasts out there. So the chances of me getting all 2 million podcasts that are launched today and I think we’re growing by at least 100,000 a day or something ridiculous. We’re growing exponential. People are jumping on starting podcasts all the time. I’m not worried. It’s an evergreen network because podcasters will always need monetization if they don’t know how to do it themselves or don’t want to have the time to do it. And businesses need to sell their products. So if they know they can come to me and I’ll solve both of those problems, they’ll come to me if they know that you can solve it or someone else who’s listening, that just steal that idea and will become the guy named because they understand it better. Or they go after local businesses and do just local instead of international. So it’s a great way of just learning, taking things from the past and bastardizing them and trying to see if they work in your industry. It’s all about test, trial, and error.

You brought a pass a couple of times and you keep your word choice. So talking about past, if you could time travel back, right, and whisper in your ear at any younger age, what words of wisdom would you give to yourself to change anything?

I don’t think I would want well, I would say, stay away from that chick in 2010. But that’s another story that’s for another reason. No. Got to throw in humor every once in a while. Actually, I wouldn’t, because without everything that’s happened, I wouldn’t be where I am today. So if I started this five years ago, would I be still at the same point with the same connections and the same people in my life, or would it be somewhere else and I’d be not as happy right now? I’m like, sure, happy. I woke up and I’m like, Hell, I’m talking to someone who’s going to Greece in like 5 hours. We finished. He’s like, okay, I’m going to Greece now. I’m like, oh, yeah, you can literally drive there. I got the opportunity in October to go to a huge media event. My first ever media event. I’m podcasting six years, never went to a media event. Had an interview in February, and he’s like, you’re coming in October? I’m like, okay. And so I’m going to France in October to a huge media event. Never going to happen. It never happened to me before, so it’s like, Holy shit. Now I’m actual media. I won a podcasting award earlier this year for best business podcast. And I was like, I’ve listened to the other podcasts. They are way better than mine. They are head and shoulders above what I do, but I won it. And then I won another award, more of a joke kind of award for a podcast that was celebrating its hundredth episode. They’re like, we’re putting on an award ceremony. Every previous guest gets an award. I think I got the best fish kisser being Canadian. And if you don’t know anything about Canada, we have a province called Newfoundland, and they have a thing called being screeched in, where you take their homemade liquor, you know, their moonshine is called screech. Everybody can make it. You take a shot of screech and you kiss a cod. Now, I’ve been in the airport. I’ve never been in Newfoundland fully. I’ve been in the airport while I was traveling, so I’ve never been screeched in. So for me, I was dying of laughter when I was called the best fish kisser or something like that, or fish, something with fish and kissing involved. And I was just dying of laughter because it reminded me of that Canadian tradition. We have some weird Canadian traditions, like up in Yellow Knife. You can pay. I think it’s $150 for a shot of alcohol with an actual mummified tow in it. But here’s the caveat. If you swallow the tow, it’s I think a $5,000 fine and a night in jail. And there’s been three times that we’ve lost the tow. I guess they just go down to the local Cemetery. Just chop off another toe replace. This is our frontier type place. This is up north where shit is boring as all hell. It’s like night for a full day. I’ve been up there. It’s gorgeous. Like, the people are awesome. And you have to have a sense of humor living up there because it’s not the city. And the people are just like simple life. They’re like, I met a Jamaican guy, was my taxi driver when I landed in Yellow, and I have to take me to the airport straight from Jamaica. Like, heavy Jamaican accent. And I’m like, obviously, I’m white as snow, and I’m in this car with him and he’s talking to me. And I can’t understand why a man who is from the Caribbean or Caribbean is in a place that actually gets colder than the North Pole sometimes. And I’m like, you went from beaches, beautiful beaches to Rocky, ice cold Arctic. Like, we’re above the Arctic line here. This is not oh, yeah, I’m just going to the summer cabin. No, the summer cabin is like two or three days. That’s it. And I’m like, I asked him and he’s like, I just came one day and I never left. And I’m like, I’m coming and I’m leaving because this is too fucking crazy. Like, I went during the 30 days of sunlight. I was up there during 30 days of sunlight. Imagine leaving your place at 03:00 A.m. Thinking it’s 03:00 P.m., because that’s all it is. That’s how the sun is.

Yeah, that’s crazy. I think you brought up another point earlier as well. You were talking about your background and obviously being that you’re a mogul and you understand business so well, not coming from entrepreneurial background. Somebody has to be there. Was it like an uncle, an aunt, somebody that you could think back that you’ve gotten some of your entrepreneurial hustle from?

I would have to say. So in my direct family, look, everyone has family that works for the government, family that worked for financial institutions. And I would say probably the closest entrepreneur in my family would have been my father. He worked life insurance for major financial institutions, but it was based on Commission. And he would be dealing with these multi millionaires and billionaires to protect their generational wealth, help them create generational wealth by using insurance to offset capital gains and blah, blah, blah things. So he was an entrepreneur under nine to five because he would have to work varying hours and he would have to go out and get sales and stuff like that, just like an entrepreneur. But it wasn’t true entrepreneurial ship. And I’ve read that I’ve always had that I don’t want to work for someone else. I was like, I’m going to start working, but it’s a means to the end. I’m going to have another job and I’m going to build my own company and I’ll be the next Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, whoever you want. But I never took that step. That step never came until a major life event that really kicked me in the gut. I officially burnt out at the beginning of 2020, just before we went into lockdown. So at the end of 2019, had my first break. Blew up at my family over Christmas decorations in November, deciding who because my parents downsize. So we were deciding which child my siblings would get, which Christmas tournament to keep it in the family. And I just blew up for randomly, randomly blew up. And my mom is like, Something’s fucked up, something is wrong. You need to go see the doctor. So go see the doctor. He puts me on antidepressants. Two months later, still not working. Still a miserable person. Like just hating myself. Just £300 wasn’t happy. Life was shit. But I’m like, yeah, if I continue, my job is killing me. He’s like, okay, we’re giving you two months off. Luckily, I hit therapy. Like, the first week I was off, I had therapy. I was really lucky the therapist had time. So I did weekly therapy sessions for about three months, then went to bimonthly and monthly. And then now it’s whenever I need. And therapy is the number one thing you need because we all fucked up trauma in the back. And if you don’t have someone that can lead you through the trauma and teach you how to deal with the trauma so that it doesn’t bother you, you’re only hurting yourself. I used to be like, no, I don’t need therapy. I’m too good for therapy. And it’s like, no, fuck that, I need therapy. I’m a fucked up individual. Like, everyone’s fucked up. Everybody has their trauma. So I did that. And then with my two months off, I started drop shipping. Started popping up. I’m like, what the fuck is drop shipping? So I started investing in that. I’m like, Holy shit, you actually can make money on the Internet. Started like, just deep diving affiliate marketing all this, but never really found anything that was my passion. And then I decided near the end, it was like, okay, I’m going to learn from actual entrepreneurs. So I started interviewing them, starting my company and all that. So I guess the bug was always there to make my own money. But I just never had the idea or the framework or never really sat down and talked to anybody. How do I do it? And so it was just finally I did it in the November of 2020, launched Investing Yourself, did a 30 day plan. I was like, I have 30 days to launch this podcast. So I have to record the episodes, get the website up, do all this, and then launch in the 1 December just put that deadline on me. And I just crushed it. And then in March, 1 of my guests was like, hey, can you help me get on other podcasts? I’m like, sure. I was still kind of like, Well, I guess I’ll never be the entrepreneur. And then two days later, he comes back to me because I had mentioned he should have a podcast. He’s like, hey, I want to do a podcast. How do I do it? I’m hiring you. What do we do? What’s the cost and all this? And I’m like, okay, here’s the deal. And we just did the launch. And he’s now top ten. He’s number nine in Australia all time and number eight, I believe, in New Zealand all the time, as well as, like, Sylvania and other places like that. And he’s in the top 100 there. And I was like, Holy shit, we did that in two months now. Okay, let’s wrap it up. And now it’s like, whatever. Before I get him to do something, I tried on mine, and if I get even, just a little bump of a download, it’s okay, this is what you need to do. Because he’s a millionaire investor. He has the money that I don’t. He has the capital to invest in it. And I think with the podcast, his book and his courses, he is already cleared six figures nice for his business. And it’s just growing. He has another course that he’s inlayinginto his funnel, and his podcast is just pretty much telling you how he’s doing it so that you can be like, oh, shit. And his book costs like $799. I’ve read The Rich Dad, Poor dad, and this is probably a better updated version for our generation.

Nice.One thing that you had brought up that I’m going to pull back out based on on what you just said was that you talk about your family to a certain extent, and you’re saying you blew up during Christmas over ornaments. Right. And then your mom was saying that it’s time for you to kind of get some medication or go talk to somebody, get that shit figured out. So let’s fast forward a little bit. How are you juggling your work life with your family life now?

Great. So it took a while to get that figured out. My family lives about like a 30 minutes drive north of me. That’s where my parents live. My brother and my sister with my nephew and my brother in law live. So I do about daily calls with my brother. He lives with paranoid schizophrenia. So he needs that constant just like, no, you’re alive. No, you’re alive. Know your life. So I have daily calls with him, usually bi weekly calls with my nephew. Face timing because I don’t get to see him all the time because I don’t have a car and drive it’s 30 minutes. And I’m not doing an hour worth of public transport to go see him. I love him, but I’m not dealing with the crazies on the buses. So I FaceTime them. And it’s the cutest thing. When he face time, you say, I love you. He says, I love you. I get a hug, and then I go, okay, bye. And it’s not okay, bye, bye. You get that long usually when you’re with your mom or something. No, it’s okay. By click the buttons press before I even get the word buy out. So it’s like, it’s refreshing. I got a text after from really sorry, because I didn’t even get to say goodbye to anybody else in that. Who’s there? It’s just he says, bye. It’s ending. We move on now. And so that simplicity is great. So I FaceTime with him at least, like I said, bi weekly or as often as I can. And I visit my family at least once a month or I have my brother down with me for a weekend. That’s all it is. I live by my calendar. I can’t remember one of my someone told me that, and I can’t remember who. I regret it. But it’s their calendar is their life. If it’s not in the calendar, it’s not happening in their life. I live by that now. My parents are like, okay, we’re going up north to the cottage on this day. And I’m like, okay, give me the dates. What do I have to schedule off? And then it’s in my schedule so nothing can be booked. Then you have to just plan your life out as much as possible. But don’t constrict yourself. Allow yourself to have that time to be creative, to go for a walk if you can. Like, I do daily walks when I wake up and then usually around 05:00, I start getting antsy because I’ve been editing or I’ve been emailing or I’ve been doing not fun stuff like job required. So I get up and I do a 30 minutes walk. Just walk to the local Tim Hortons, which is like a Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts or coffee shop, get myself an ice cap and walk back. And that’s a good close to 5000 steps just there. And it’s like, all right, getting my 10,000 steps in, I feel good and it gives you that energy to jump in. Plus, you’re like, you’re walking is beautiful. You see the beautiful women, the beautiful men depending, and you’re just having this great day and you look, everybody loves who they love, but yeah, so it’s the stop and smell the roses that we get. I was told my whole life, stop and smell the roses. I can’t because I have to get the job because if I’m not on time, they’re going to fire me and then I’m screwed. And then when you become your own boss, you’re like, I can do whatever I want. I was messaging with a friend and because of COVID, we’re like, we have to meet up and get backs and all that. And she’s like, I can’t wait to go on the walk with you. I’m like, I’m looking forward to it too. I just have to get the time off for my boss. And I’m like, Wait, no, I am the boss. I can get off whenever I want. You tell me when we’re going for the walk and it’s just like, wow, that just feels great. I don’t answer to anybody but myself as long as my clients work are done, that’s all.

Nice. I think you brought up a couple of different things. Let me unpack it. I mean, earlier on you were talking about you were £300, and obviously you’re not £300 now, right? You’re also talking about doing, like, daily walks, daily routines, and you’re talking about your highly scheduled. So I want to know with all these different facets to your day, right? Because obviously working out must be part of that. What does your morning routines look like?

My morning routine is my alarm goes off at 07:00 and I yell at it because no one wants to wake up at 07:00. Anybody who says, yeah, I did the business a billionaire mindset and it changed my life because waking up, 07:00 is the best. Waking up at 07:00 is the worst because it’s 07:00 in the morning. Everybody remembers. It’s like going to school. It’s like no one wanted to go to school. No one wanted to wake up to go to school at 07:00 and that’s what it is. So I get up. I usually grumble for a good 15 minutes with myself to get out of bed. My other alarm goes off, say, okay, now it’s time to get out of bed. Out of bed. I throw on pretty much shorts or pants, T shirt, go for a walk. I just like, let’s go. Obviously drinking some water. Usually I have a picture because I’ve been podcasting the night before. So there’s a picture in my studio and I tell you, just grab it, drink it and walk out the door afterwards, just least amount of resistance possible. Get your energy out first, come home. Then I have three brain acts that I do that I don’t pay for. They give you free training. So I just do that. Then I do about finish that, then do some meditation. Just like breath work. And just like either from the Iceman when Hoffman his thing or it’s just sitting down listening to meditation, YouTube video or something that I found. And then there’s the workout. And my workout before was like a three day workout, like work, work, break. Now with my trainer, it’s a seven day a week and each day is a different part of the body and he’s trying to kill me. I dropped most of my weight. I dropped about 40 to £50 by fasting and just walking, that’s a drop. And then I dropped an extra like 30 to £40 because I’m down to about 220 now with my trainer and his work workout. And all I want is like that Vin Diesel body from Fast and Furious, the first Fast and Furious, where he’s not completely like ripped to shreds. But if he forces the stomach.He’s got the ABS.

He got the bulk.

He got bulk to it for sure.He’s got the bulk and he still looks cuttable. You can still cuddle with him. A woman is not going to be like, wow, you’re a rock hard. Like if you cuddle the rock, it’s like you’re actually cutting a rock. I want to be able to be like, okay, it’s still cuddly because I’ve always been the cuddly guy. So going from cuddly to rockhard is going to be a little difficult for me because I like to cuddle. No shame in that. But my trainer, the guy who owns the company, who was my first trainer, he’s a skinny guy. He’s not shredded, but he’s toned. And that’s why I wanted to go with him, because he has the body that I’m like, okay, I’m good with that. Now I’m working with one of his colleagues, like one of his trainers. And this guy is like the rock. He is like muscle. Like, I don’t know if he can actually clasp his hands together. The guy is super great, amazing. He’s encouraging and all that. But just when you look at him, you’re like, I’ll never get like that. I have no desire to spend 3 hours a day in a gym pumping iron just to have these bulking muscles. That’s not me. I’m too lazy for that. I’ll admit it. I’m lazy. I look for the easiest solution. Like, how can I get something done the fastest, easiest way? Work harder, work smarter, not harder is my motto. And so I see him and I’m like, then I skip the workout and I’m like, he’s going to kill me. I don’t want to die. I’m too young. I do the workout and I’m dripping a sweat. Like, right now I’m dripping a sweat because I have this giant light on me and it’s humid as all Fox here in Montreal. But I’m literally like, sweat is pouring down. The shirt I’m wearing is usually like there’s a giant Oval of drench, of darkness, of just sweat and anger and everything leaking out of me that I used to finish the workout. And then afterwards I feel like I shower, do the cold shower. I do my warm shower because I’m not psychotic. People go, oh, I have a cold shower. I’m like, good on you, never trusting you alone in a room. But I do have my regular shower, warm shower, like a normal human. And in the last two minutes, it’s just like cold just slowly go into the cold and you’re like. And it refreshes you because the warm relaxes you. But the cold just like starts waking everything up because your body is like, Holy flat, this is cold. And then you just jump into the day and it’s like, okay, today is going to be editing podcasts, setting up bad automation or talking with clients, reaching out to other clients, or just, oh, I have nothing planned for the day or I’m being a guest on a podcast. Sometimes I’ll just sit down for 2 hours and watch a movie and be like, okay, this is the movie I’m reviewing for one of my other podcasts. Like, I also manage a stock market group for beginners that’s at 50K and answering their question. I know nothing about stocks. I’m really admitted I know you buy low, sell high. That’s the basic of my thing. There’s shorts and longs and a whole bunch of other things. And then you got the AMC Diamond Hams. And don’t even get me started on crypto. But I’m in this group because I’m helping with them, build their engagement in the group, build a podcast network that they’re building as well. So I’m in there looking for stocks because we do a week every Wednesday we do a stock breakdown. So we find three stocks and we go, okay, these are the three stocks we’re going to break down. So I get some animation for the show and all and we go live and I host that so that the other guys can just concentrate look like the badass knowledgeable people they are. And so each day is like, some days are really similar. Some days are completely new, but generally my mornings, like I said, I’m up at 730. I’m starting work about nine, and then nine till noon is usually a whole bunch of work, then break, and then it’s just my afternoons or whatever I want. It’s either more work or am I just sitting on my ass watching TV?

Nice.

Living the life.

So I think based on what you said, one thing that calls out to me is, like your intellectual side, you have an opportunity in the morning to launch a mind app. So my next question is a three part question based upon your intellect. Right. What book have you read on your journey to get to where you are? The second part of that question is like, are you reading any books now? Are you listening to any particular audiobooks that you want to recommend? And then the third question is, because you’ve helped authors, have you had opportunity to publish any of your own books?

All right, so this is fun. So books I’m reading right now I’m reading “Tools of the Titan” by Tim Ferriss.

Nice.

Where it’s pretty much it’s a monster of a book, right? Yeah. I have the four hour work week reading that, like currently reading. I’m rereading the “Four Hour Work Week”, rereading “Think and Grow Rich” and “48 Laws of Power”. Those are the three books I’m reading right now. I have a dozen or so business autobiographies or biographies in my library, then biographies of just random people like Kevin Smith, who’s just I think he’s a freaking God for how he turned his one movie that he was massively indebted into this mega Empire. Like, just think about a guy sold his comic books to finance a movie, and now he has his own comic book shop, his own podcast network. He has a cinematic universe, and he’s just a humble nerd.

And he also has Salon Bob as well. So don’t forget Sally.

Yeah. He also is this incredible actor who’s been in so many different silly movies, books like that. But right now I’m rereading the four hour work week reading Tools of the Titan. Like I said, Thinker Grow Rich and the 48 Loss of Power. So they’re the books I’m reading right now. And usually I try and complete a book a month, but I always have like four books you want to go at a time. So sometimes I end up finishing four in a month because I do spend like, I try and take about an hour, 30 minutes to an hour a day to read at least. And I’m a voracious reader. I usually ask my guests the same question, what book for entrepreneurs would you start? And I just add that to my list of books. I don’t have a list of movies I watch. I have a list of books I read. What I would recommend would probably “Money Grows on Trees” by my client, Lloyd Ross. The only reason I’m saying it is because he breaks it down. It’s like 20 pages, I think. But he breaks it down into a simplistic way for you to start a side hustle like he did and use that money to invest like he did. And then that investment help you reach that freedom that you’re looking for. So he uses active, passive and then another sort of money so that you can grow your own tree and live off the fruit. That’s what it is. He’s growing his own money tree because we were told that money doesn’t grow on trees. But thanks to the Internet, it actually does. If you start a business online within two to three years, you’re clear money because you have no overhead. It’s completely digital. All you have to do is you pay like $15 for the hosting for the domain name a year. So it’s incredible. And you sign one client to $1,000. That’s boom, your hosting is paid for for the year.

Yes, very true.

And have I written a book? So, yes, I currently have one book. I’ve been trying to get it out. It’s written. I just need to approve the final design for the cover and the layout and all that. But it’s just like, okay, I need to find time. I also have two other books in the process of being written, and I’m writing one on how to be a great host of a podcast because a lot of people don’t know how to like when they’re starting out. They’re not sure how to podcast. So I give just a brief. I like doing seven. Seven is best, seven tips and usually two bonus tips about something else. And then I have one on how to use the guest to grow your podcast as well. So I’ll go on podcasts and use your audience to grow my audience either for business or my podcast. So I have those two being fleshed out right now. And then there’s a monetization book that’s working, plus the courses that go along with it. I was trying to use a proper word like parallel, but I don’t know. I have a child yelling now somewhere in the apartment building. So it’s nice.

Very cool. I think one of the things that you brought up is you read four books at one time. And then it’s kind of like why I created the Boss Uncaged Book Club to kind of teach people how to read a book per week. And to your point, you said you read an hour here, 20 minutes, there 30 minutes here, and it adds up if you do it consistently enough to where you can get through a book per week pretty easily. So I definitely commend you for what you’ve done with this reading. It seems like you’re a ferocious reader for sure. So going into another question, it’s like, okay, you have all these things going on. You have all these different tentacles you’ve overcome a lot, right? From your weight loss, like, your mental stuff, to painting these empires. Where do you see yourself 20 years from today?

I actually have a goal, so I’m going to be 36 this year. My goal is to be a billionaire by 40. So that’s my next four years. I have four years to be a billionaire by 40. And it’s just strategic partnerships with people. That’s one thing I learned. Connecting to the right people who are already at that level that you need to help grow to. Before I can become a billionaire, I need to become a millionaire. Before I become a millionaire, I need to at least have a six figure business. So I’m already connected to the people in my chain that are higher up than me. So it’s just building my network like that with my client over in Europe who is amazing. He owns a rugby team as well. I don’t think I mentioned that he owns a sports team. And thinking back, and like, I always wanted to be friends with someone who owns a sports team, and then all of a sudden, he just drops into my life, and it’s like, Holy shit. So with his connections, I know I’ll be reaching out to high level investors, high level people who I just wouldn’t have the regular access to. So having access to these people and being able to ask him those questions be like, okay, this guy answered the question that I liked. I want to learn more about him and just model my life. Kind of like after him. When he got to that point, you hear about, oh, he was an investor in Twitter when it first started. It’s like, Damn, I want to be able to get that IPO. I want to be that type of person to have that in my bio. Being like, he was the early investor in this amazing startup company that ends up being the next Facebook, ends up being the next Google, and being able to add that to your repertoire.

Nice.

And your bio. And people are like, well, he must know what he’s doing. Anybody who’s anybody doesn’t know anything. They’re flying by the seat of their pants, and they’re like, you know what? It’s been working. I believe it. And then they refined it, refinance it, refine it, knows what they’re doing. But when the first initial start, no one knows anybody anything. And no one’s ever an overnight success unless you come from money, that’s the only way you’ll be an overnight success. But even the Kardashians, the most recent one that’s been named a self made billionaire, the youngest self made billionaire. No, she’s not a self made billionaire. Congratulations. She took her small little company, and it’s not worth a billion dollars. But if it goes back to Kim, it was generational. If Kim didn’t have her video and start keeping up with the Kardashians, you would never gotten to that point. Like, Mama Jenner is freaking genius with how she managed that company because it is a company. It’s no longer a family. It’s a company. They’re all employees, and they’re all pretty much all having their own little kingdoms that they’re growing themselves. So it’s like no one’s overnight success. No one is an overnight billionaire. It takes generations to grow, like years. And that and the Internet. Yes, we can do it a lot faster and we can get that recoup that wealth so much quickly, but it’s hard work. My goal is by the end of this year, well, actually by my birthday, to hit six figures. That’s my goal. Even if it’s just like $100,000, I hit 100,000 by my birthday. I’ll be happy. And then it’s like, okay, if I can do that in a year, I know I can buy my next birthday. I can hit a million or something like that and just work that way and use compounding interests and using the techniques I’ve learned from other people to help. Because having this podcast with you, someone may listen to it and be like, you know what? Phil knows what the fuck he’s talking about. I want to work with him. And so I work with this person, and this person actually introduces me. Get me to my next goal, which is I would love to have a Fortune 500 CEO President or something like that of a company on my podcast, because that’s a big fault. I already had Dom, who’s the rugby owner Incubator. Rural startup Incubator. In the world. I’ve had a millionaire on my podcast. I have had a digital marketer who’s worked with the UN on the Paris Accord, worked with the British Health Organization, as well as worked with the BBC to help promote their stuff on social media. And she’s done it all with only having a Twitter account that she barely uses. And it’s like, Holy shit, that’s an amazing win for me. So it’s now okay. What other things? I want that Fortune 500 guest. I want to have someone with a bit more name appeal, like jokingly, Kevin O’Leary, a great Canadian entrepreneur. I would love to have him on my podcast. But hey, I’ll take any entrepreneur that’s on TV that’s one of them are willing to share their knowledge, share their story with my audience. Those are somewhat like I have really focused goals, but also beside them, it’s kind of like the general niche of it. If I can get a Fortune 500, I would love to have the CEO and President of the Royal Bank of Canada, which is one of the largest banks in Canada. It’s one of the top two. You have Toronto Dominion, but it also used to be in the States under States under RBC bank and used to own the PNC arena that the Hurricanes used to play out of the hockey team, the Carolina Hurricanes. So having him on and discussing his story because it’s a super interesting story. And that would be great. That’s the person. But it’s also Fortune 500 company, Kevin O’Leary, entrepreneurial, movie, TV star, or someone. I’ve already had a couple of disruptors of the music industry on my podcast. And it was just so fascinating because I have a lot of musicians in my friends because I love the creative. I cannot be creative at all. Writing is difficult for me. I sound like I’m killing an instrument if I play it. And that’s even the simple. Like the pipe flute where you just the triangle. It sounds like murder. I’m playing the triangle. It sounds like murder. And I can’t draw to save my life. But I love creative because I think without the creative people in our world, we wouldn’t be able to have any fun. We would be very boring and probably all be like Donald Trump, to be honest. Every narcissistic, egotistical bastards. Again, not to get political. I love everybody. I’m Canadian. All that Razz and basil.

That is hilarious. So I think based on everything that we talked about so far, you talked about systems, you talk about life, you talked about moving forward. And I think you started talking a little bit about applications and software. So I just want to bring that back up. Tell us, what tools are you using as far as software and applications that you use on a day to day basis that you would not be able to do what you do without.

So biggest thing is Audacity. I wouldn’t be able to edit my podcast with Audacity. It’s a free software. It does its job. It’s simple to use. It’s not complex. So Audacity, day to day sent Fox for my email list. It’s a free thing, actually App Sumo. There’s so much free stuff from App Sumo and also follow their YouTube channel. Also, Noah Kagan, his YouTube stuff, he does a lot of great stuff for entrepreneurs. And just watching that, it’s like, Holy shit. Yeah, you’re right. Anything is possible. This guy started an $85 million company from the garage and he’s now showing you how he’s done it. But yeah, they have a full suite of stuff that Creatives can use for free, like King Sumo for contest. I’ve used that for a few of my clients. Like I said, send Fox for the email list. I host podcasts on both BCAST and podcast co. One is for my clients and one is for my personal stuff. Just my personal podcast, keeping them separate. And Zapier. Zapier is coding without coding. It just connects everything so simply. So when my podcast goes live, it automatically grabs the audio file or the image file and sends it to Instagram for me. And I don’t have to worry about it. It’s done for me. So it’s like, yes, nice.

And I think anybody that’s heard me on this podcast before, I’ve always preached about Lifetime deals. So you just lifted off like five different lifetime deals. And it’s kind of like that’s where it really is. People really need to understand that. So I’m happy that you brought that back up. So going into, like, final words of wisdom, right? Let’s say I am 35 years old, right? And I’m about to leave corporate America and I want to jump into becoming an entrepreneur and maybe I want to do it through podcasting. What words of wisdom would you give to me?

Just start. Just fucking do it. Look, life, you have 100 years. That’s how I look at life. Before our parents generation was probably 85, but our generation at 35, we’ve seen people pass 100 light. It’s not a rarity anymore. When someone says, oh, someone’s 100 years old, yeah, we know. Tell us when they’re 120. Like, that’s where we’re at. Because so many people are hitting that milestone now. So I look at life as it’s 100 years. You have 100 years. If you’re 35, you’re in the second quarter of your life, you still got two more quarters to go. You’re not at 50 yet, so you still got a few years left in you to go hustle and go hard and go lean like eat ramen noodles if you have to, downsize your apartment if you have to. Like, if you really want to end up when you’re 50, owning that fucking Nick mansion, being the boss that you always envisioned yourself, just fucking write down what it is that you want. Manifest it is pretty much the best way I can say it. The more you believe in it, the more you have it written post. Like, right, where do you want to see yourself in five years? Where you want to see yourself in 50 years? What is it that you want out of life? Be as harsh, realistic, but be a dreamer as well, but be precise as well. Like, if you say, I want to make 50 kwh a year by doing what? What is it that you want by doing my passion? What is your passion? My passion is podcasting. Like, if I could sit all day, either record episodes, either being a host or being a guest, and that’s all I do all day, every day, I’d be the happiest motherfucker alive because I love these conversations. I love sharing knowledge with people. And when I’m a host, I look at as if I’m a writer and I’m writing your story that you’re sharing with me. I’m writing maybe a chapter, but it’s a chapter in your book, but for me, it’s a full book. Nice. So that’s my passion. So I know I want to do podcasting. So write out what it is. Write out your dream day, even if you want, and come back to it and go, okay, how can I do at least one thing in my dream day today? And that one thing you keep doing. And then you’re like, Well, I can do a second thing. I got the third thing, forcing fifth thing and pillage from other systems that other people are doing. The world is free. Like anybody says, you can’t do that. That’s copying. Well, no shit. Everybody copied from everybody else. All great works of literature comes back from the Bible. The Adam and Eve story, the ultimate revenge story. The devil gets back at God. How? By poisoning his perfect beings, by having them eat from the fruit, the tree of knowledge or whatever. I’m not really good on my biblical stuff, but if you look at it, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are pretty much the exact same story. Or you look at Pirates of the Caribbean and another movie, or Armageddon and Deep Impact, same movie, two different results. Everything is a copy. All you have to do is you go, OK, that works for them. So it should work for me. And you just figure out and when you do, take your time. If you’re going to invest in a system to generate money, invest 100%. Don’t go half ass. Like if you’re paying $50 for a course, do their course and make sure that it aligns with your passion. Just fucking do it. That’s pretty much it. Just fucking do it. Go.Go.Go.

Coming from the words of the mogul boss himself. So I mean, if somebody listens to his podcast, how can they get in contact with you?

So there’s two ways I want you to get in contact with me. Either go to my unicorn, go to my unicorn, jump on and fly away. Go to my Instagram it’s podcast with Phil better Admir, send me a DM and I’ll be more than happy to talk with you. Help you out with whatever you want, free of within reason. But if you want to learn about other entrepreneurs and how other entrepreneurs have started and the struggles that they faced, go to investingyourselfpod.com. That’s my website for the podcast. Season three is coming. It just is rolling out. There’s a lot of great stuff in there. Talk with a disruptor of the music industry. I can’t pronounce his last name. It’s really annoying me, but it’s Nick Artist Republic. It’s this amazing using platform that helps manage independent artists. I have Richard Walsh, who is an investment advisor and retirement planner for over the last 30 years. And he’s built fortunes and lost fortunes in his life that I can only dream of. So it was really great talking with him. And then you have all these other guys and girls who are experts in their niche.

Nice. So with that, I’m going to go into some bonus questions. I think it’s time for some bonus round. Right. So I’m trying to think, which one should I ask you? Because I think you have so much energy and so much inspiration. Right. So if you could be a superhero who would be.

Bad as motherfucker.

Besides, he’s kind of Canadian, but I get that.

He is the Kanak because he has no give up. And if that doesn’t yell the human spirit, I don’t know what does. If you look at every inspirational movie you watch, they never give up. And like, Wolverine doesn’t give up. He can’t because he can never die. He always comes back. He always finds a new and inventive way to fight. He always willing to put himself take the brunt of it. He’s the tank of the team. He may look like this wild beast, but there’s so much intellect behind him and strategy. It’s just like he can switch and be a full on beast and take you apart. Or you can be that guy that he’s sneaking around like a Ninja that you don’t expect it from. Also because one of the greatest actors played him, Jackman, and just brought him to life. Like, I’ve always been a comic book fan. And so seeing Wolverine on the screen for the first time played by this somewhat unknown, and then just seeing his evolution from the first X Men to Logan and just seeing this story and being like, oh, my God, finally we get the Wolverine we’ve deserved for so long. Yeah, it’s just that and I’ve been always been intrigued by Wolverine and the anmaiam claws and the fact that his backstory for the longest time was never told. No one knew anything about him. I’ve always Wolverine every single. This is probably the third time I’ve been asked that question on a podcast. And before the question even finishes, it’s like Wolverine. And they’re like, okay, well, he knows most people him and Haw, because they’re like, well, I could be Superman. I could be Batman. No, Superman is like, he’s our version of Odin. He’s uncorruptible. He’s the perfect superhero. Nothing can hurt him except for this rock from his home country, his own home place. And then you have Batman, who’s just this billionaire with toys. So it’s like billionaire with toys. Yes, but he takes long to heal and he can die. Whereas Wolverine, the only way to kill him and the only way he has died is being cast in animandium. And he’s also a badass. Like, come on, who doesn’t want to be able to go into the woods and survive for years and come out and everybody’s like. Damn, you still alive. You don’t even have a shred of her. Like, how that’s really? All right, yeah, let’s see that.

All right, so the next question is right. If you could spend 24 hours in one day with anyone dead or alive uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be? And why I pumped you on that one. You didn’t have an answer for that one right away.

No, because I have two answers and I’m like debating, do I want to be like this? He’s so fucking wise. Or he’s like, oh, he’s okay. Like, the wisdom is the Dalai Lama. Imagine sitting with the Dalai Lama uninterrupted for 24 hours and just having access to that wisdom that he has just the Buddhist mentality. Buddhism always fascinates me because it’s working on yourself to find happiness instead of like, Christianity is like, I pray to God, I pray to God and then hopefully I’ll get happiness. Buddhist is like, find Iran yourself and then the rest of the world will be Nirvana. So sitting with the Dalai Lama would be amazing. And a channel that I watch is called yes Theory. One of the guys had the opportunity to actually ask the Dali Omar question. Now, these are kids who started like, I think six years ago in Montreal, ended up flying out to Venice Beach because of working with Snapchat, and recently jumped out of a plane on Will Smith’s. Sorry, Bunchie. Jumped out of a helicopter with Will Smith for charity on Will Smith’s birthday. So they’ve done these crazy things and so meeting the Dalai Lama, seeing them because, Holy shit, they met the Dalai Lama. That’s amazing. But Dalai Lama or Henry Ford?

Nice.

Just simply for like, yeah, he was probably not the greatest person human, but his technical know how and how. He revolutionized not just the automobile industry, but industries as a whole. Without him, we wouldn’t have an assembly line and we wouldn’t be where we are today. So just sitting with him, if I could have 24 hours and bring him into the present and say, okay, this is where we are, what ingenious would you do? Because it’s all simple. Back then, you had to make these things out of his own hands. Now we have so many things doing things for us, we forgot how simple things can be and bring it back to that simplicity.

Nice.So obviously you’re a fellow podcaster and it’s always intriguing for me to give the microphone and give the floor to our fellow podcaster. In our conversation, you may have come up with some questions that you may want to ask me. So the microphone is yours. What questions do you have for me?

So this is a question I usually ask my guess. So I’m going to jump into this out of your life. I would love to know your favorite failure that you’ve had, either in business or in personal and the lesson you learned from it and then flip it your favorite success that you’ve had personal or business and the lesson you learned from it.

So my favorite failure, that was my first company, which is not necessarily an epic failure, but it was more so a health failure to where I had a stroke. So I had a stroke in 2018 because much like you, I was always about so many different things I need to work on. I want to build up this billion dollar Corporation and I have all these different ideas and all these different tentacles and I’m going to work them and make that shit happen. So I did that until literally my body said, Fuck you. You can’t do all these things at the same time. So that was like my failure. When I woke up in the hospital and I’m looking around, I was like, okay, I made it past that failure, past that hurdle. I’m going to recover. I’m going to make a full recovery. And then what am I going to do next? So my next is my greatest achievement so far, which is going to be like my life legacy that I’m leaving behind, which is my podcast and my podcast ecosystem that I’m growing and building. Because my podcast is essentially on one hand, it’s a message to entrepreneurs leaving the breadcrumbs, and the other hand is a legacy of breadcrumbs from our family to see, okay, my great grandkids could one day listen to this podcast. And the content is so evergreen that they’ll be able to take little bits of what I’m saying now and who I’m talking to. People like you and grow 20,30, 40, 50 years down the road.

So I fucking love it. One of the things I love about talking with podcasters is the ones that get it using podcasting. This is the first time in history that you can have recorded evidence, if you will, that you can leave multi generations. Before it was a book. And you have to learn how to read and read the book. But everybody knows how to listen, and you now can listen doing anything. So I don’t have to be sitting at my computer listening. I could be out on my Walk, which I do. I listen to a lot of podcasts when I’m walking or audiobooks or anything like that. And now we have this full of legacy. I remember some stories from my grandfather. Both of them have passed away, but it’s not stories from them. I have a recorded episode with my dad. So I get to listen to my dad, and we have a conversation. But not only that, if my dad, like, knocking on wood, passes away before he gets to meet his grandson, my kid, I can go here. You want to listen to your dad, your grandfather, and he can listen to the wisdom that his grandfather leaves.And so hearing you say, like, leaving the legacy for me, it’s like, you fucking get it. You understand the ultimate power that a podcast has because it’s an actual recording, an actual proof, evidence that a thousand years from now, someone can listen to it and be like, oh, shit, he knows what he’s talking about. Whereas we interpret the Bibles or religious books, and it’s interpretation. We don’t have the true meaning, and we don’t know if they have actually said that you have the legacy of your podcast. So if anybody wants to hinge upon your reputation or anything like that, you go, Where did you hear that? Or he said it. And they go, let’s listen back to this episode that he had in five where he said, fuck that, motherfucker, he’s not worth it or this proves the point and I think a lot of the older generation doesn’t fail to comprehend that we are now moving into an age of accountability.

Yess.

Where if you don’t, you can’t get away with it. No, I never said that because the internet lives forever. There’s vast amounts and they’re trying to say it’s fake news or they’re trying to say that it’s a deep fake or it’s not real or I never said that. You can’t say that anymore because you’re being held accountable by your own words. Because we can go to YouTube and we can see the video of you saying it or we can listen to the audio tape of you saying it or we can read it because we have newspapers in this and it’s on the internet and you never run away from it. So I think that’s what I love about podcasting. What I love when you said you’re leaving your legacy like we’re entering this age of legacy and entering an age of accountability and it’s fucking marvelous. It is.

I think on that note, leaving off with the last word being marvelous, I just want to say it was a hell of an episode. I definitely appreciate you taking time out of your schedule and I think this is not the last time you and I are going to communicate.

Oh, hell no. You’re coming on season five already. I’ve already decided season four is unfortunately already booked solid, but season five coming out, I think it’s going to be August, September, nice when we record you’re going to be on it because it’s going to be a fucking fantastical episode because the boss on caged. Let’s go, beast mode, baby. Well, I definitely appreciate you coming out, Phil man. Thanks again.

It’s my pleasure. The pleasure is all mine. I love talking shop with fellow entrepreneurs fellow podcasters so much fun that it is S.A Grant over and out.

Podcast Mogul Of Phil Better Inc.: Phil Lemieux AKA The Mogul Boss – S3E23 (#119)2023-01-24T16:03:00+00:00

CEO Of Fangled Group: Andrew Deutsch AKA The Fangled Boss – S3E22 (#118)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

CEO Of Fangled Group: Andrew Deutsch AKA The Fangled Boss – S3E22 (#118)
The future of being a top-level marketer is really focusing on how do I become a strategist, not a tactician.
In Season 3, Episode 22 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the CEO of Fangled Group, Andrew Deutsch.
The Fangled Group is a strategy-first multilingual global marketing and sales consulting firm that has successfully driven business growth in more than 100 countries driving revenue in the 10s of billions of dollars.
Andrew is also the host of “The Fangledcast” podcast where incredible guests take deep dives into relevant topics for the business world.
How’s that for a mouthful?
He studied both International trade and psychology building his unique methodology focused on converting everyone a company touches into brand advocates as a strategic base for sustainable growth.
He has traveled the world extensively including a 10-year stint living and working in Brazil and visiting over 120 other countries where his training led to his unique skillset and bold and innovative methods.
Fangled Technologies helps your business in 5 integrated ways:
1) Strategy first strategic marketing consulting and fractional CMO programs
2) Advanced sales strategy and coaching
3) Creative design including print, digital, video, and more.
4) Global trade and development
5) Innovation and product development
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • What can Fangled Technologies do for your business
  • What is Andrew’s morning routine
  • What tools is Andrew using in his business
  • And So Much More!!!
Want more details on how to contact Andrew? Check out the links below!
Special Offer: $50 off the virtual presenter course
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S3E22 Andrew Deutsch.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Three, two, one .Welcome welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. Today’s show is going to be a very interesting show, and I can tell you that because it’s like I’m talking to myself on the other spectrum of the world. Right. This guy is not only a marketer, but he’s also a Brander. And I could just tell you by the branding of his name alone, we’re going to have some fun. So without further Ado, I’m going to introduce everyone into who I’m deeming the fangled boss. Andrew, once you give our audience a little bit more about who you are.

You promised me just yes or no questions. You don’t have to interact.

Yeah, you got to do a little seesaw, right? I got a little back and forth.

I’m going to double my fee. What’s, two times zero?

You go add another number in front of that, right?

Yeah. 0.0. There we go.

There we go.

Yeah. I’m Andrew Deutsch. Our company is fangle group. We’re a global strategy first marketing and sales consultancy. Our business is helping companies turn off all of that crazy tactical stuff that they’re spending tons of money on until they actually have a core strategy to build those tactics off of. We save companies all over the world millions of dollars in unnecessary spending trying to promote something that there’s no strategy behind.

Nice. Let’s talk about the naming. Right. So before I even dive into you just got to dive into the name. How did you come up with the fangled group?

All right, so originally the name of the company was the Deutsche crew. I had my offices, I moved overseas and worked for many years. When I came back, we had a competitor who I would have to say doesn’t have the same moral and ethics that you and I do. And because we beat him on a project, he discovered that I had never trademarked Deutsche group in the US. So he registered my name and then asked us to cease and desist using our own name. So we went the short of it is we went back and said, well, who do we really want to be? And a buddy of mine who grew up on a hog farm in the middle of nowhere jokingly said, well, you guys are doing that newfangled marketing, aren’t you? And I said, well, newfangled no, we’re in the moment and we’re using the most modern psychological profiling and all of the qualitative study work and all of it. We’re not new fangled, you’re old fangled. I said, no, we’re just fangled right in the moment. Looking forward. Kidding. It was a joke. Well, the next day someone asked me, what are you going to name your company? And I jokingly said, well, we’re thinking about calling ourselves the fangled group. And the guy said, it’s genius. I love it. And we started using it, and before long, it stuck and we trademarked it. And it’s been a huge advantage to us in terms of name recognition. I mean, so many companies get so literal in their naming or I am the AB Mechanical Group or whatever. There’s no name recognition there. Well, people years after meeting me, remember the Fangled guy? And it really does say who we are. We’re not old fangle. We’re not newfangled. We’re really in the moment doing what needs to be done to help our clients build that core strategy and grow their business.

I think in that story, it seems like you got introduced to the art of war through real world tactics, right? I mean, someone giving you just say shit and then they go behind the scenes and they get a trademark and kind of like knock you off your seat. I think that was definitely a lesson learned. Just talk about that a little bit. How did he go about doing something like that? How did you guys not get the trademark?

Well, it’s my name and it truly was dumb on my part. That when I moved the business back to the States that I didn’t immediately trademark and name the company. We were doing business as Deutsche Crew, but it was a lesson learned in me not doing my due diligence and really following up. I’ll tell you, we don’t do much naming for our clients that doesn’t start in the trademark list because of what we learned. I’m all for making mistakes if you can learn something from it and grow and do better later. But it was really, I mean, it was stupidity on my part that we didn’t do it when we came back to the States. But basically what had happened, the guy was vindictive. He was a jerk and thought that he could do some damage. And the funny part of it was we requested all of this because he set a decent assist. You can’t do business with this. And we said we were going to fight it and we made his lawyers do tons of discovery for us. And then the moment it arrived, we said, okay, well, we’re not going to pursue the lawsuit. Sorry. At least we made them spend a little bit of money in the process.

Got you and some insight from it as well.

Yeah, it was an expensive lesson, but it was well learned. And the benefit from it has benefited lots of our clients that recognize the importance of if you’re going to do a naming of a product, naming of a company to really do your due diligence, is it available? Can you trade market? Can you register it? Is there a website available that makes sense with that name and all the other pieces of that? Yeah.

Nice. So going into you a little bit, if you could define yourself in three to five words, what three to five words would you use?

Three to five? Yeah, three to five opportunities found where no one saw them. That’s who we are as an organization. And me in particular. It’s finding that uniqueness that others don’t see, seeing opportunities where others don’t recognize opportunities exist. That’s really who we are as an organization.

As you’re on the topic of organizations, let’s just talk about, like, if you’re on boarding, let’s say I’m a new client. What are you looking for? Who is your ideal customer?

If you’d ask me about ten years ago, it was always the industrial manufacturing space, but we’ve expanded quite a bit over the years into other areas. We began bringing disruptive technology to manufacturing space. The original name of the organization actually was Tangled Tech. And then we morphed into the Fangle Group later as we started to provide much more than marketing in the industrial technology space. But I would say 80% of our business is a manufacturer or distributor in the industrial space who is stuck or has spent a fortunate marketing agencies and hasn’t gotten anywhere with it. They’ve been burned, and they’re looking for someone who can be fair and intelligent in how we help them grow their business. And then the other ideal client for us is someone in the consumer space that’s got something unique and interesting that they want to bring to market. We don’t typically do work in professional services. I don’t do much marketing and sales consulting, and, for example, insurance, banks, doctors, lawyers, those kind of organizations.

So, I mean, going to the next question, obviously, I think you already told a very crazy tale about potentially not being trademarked and someone kind of pushing you out because of a trademark, which led you to where you are right now, which is essentially a better branded name. Is there any other worst case scenarios that you’ve been encountered with on your journey?

Well, we began in the global space. We weren’t here in the US growing business, so we were given lots of challenges in terms of being able to translate the value proposition of American manufacturers into, for example, Latin America. So you would show up in meetings to talk about a specific tech that never existed in this other country, and you had to deal with these responses of, oh, no, that would never work here to a product that they didn’t even understand. Or you would be talking about a product where in the United States, all of the marketing materials were based on companies who knew the tech and were going to the next level, as opposed to a place where it’s not going to the next level. It’s not an upgrade, it’s an initial purchase. So I’ll give you an example. Machines that do painting on home. So you pressurize house paint and you spray it rather than roll it. In the US, every quality house painter has this airless equipment, and they do the work with it and the sale and all the marketing materials that exist in the US, manufacturers of those products is how to get to the next level, how to get to a more powerful machine.How to get to a machine where one machine can have three guys spring instead of one and upgrades. In South America, it was a Virgin market. They were almost unheard of. So if you go with the materials out there and you start talking about how you can get up to the next, I don’t even know what the machine does. So you had to sort of go back in time and create marketing strategies as they were when it was an emerging technology in this market. So there’s a lot of mistakes that were made along the line by our clients who are trying to sell based on what an American would be doing or North American would be doing, when in fact, it was completely off base for what was needed in that market.

Wow. With that, let’s just time travel back a little bit. What were you like as a kid? Because obviously, I think that you’re very profound as far as technology goes. And then you’re bridging the gap between technology and marketing and branding in a space where usually things are kind of that level of deep diving is kind of mundane in that space. So, like, when did that start as a kid? As a teenager? In College?

Yeah. I was always industrious as a kid. I had some great role models. My grandfather was a guy who, during the Depression, was sweeping floors at a printing factory for a nickel a day or something like that and ended up owning from Zero, a major printing company of his own, before he retired. So I was always around folks that had this idea of how to make businesses run. It always fascinated me. And then I would do stuff around the neighborhood to make money. I never had the paper route, but I would just do projects, helpful things for people to make money. At one point in time when I started really getting into the music scene, I found out who the distributors were of all the T shirts that were sold at concerts. And I would buy all of the leftovers and then put them in classifieds and sell them to make money. So I always had something going on. When I was in College, my freshman year, I happened upon a list of all of the students, their birthdays, and their home addresses. And this is before the Internet existed. So once a month, I would send a letter to every parent on that list whose kids birthday was going to be the next month that I could deliver a custom birthday cake and paid my tuition for most of my freshman year by delivering birthday cakes to people whose parents decided they wanted a birthday cake delivered to their kid.They’re just little, small, clever businesses that kept me sustained as a kid. That sort of built out of the drive that I had for running little businesses and continued from there.

Yeah, definitely. It’s interesting when you said, not only did you not have the insight to realize the wealth in that list, but you see the opportunity and then you convert it. In reality, in today’s world, someone may get that list and they just kind of like they pull their pockets out and they have no. So for you to kind of be more of a tech person and then you say, okay, what can I do if I could make cakes, which has nothing to do with where you’re going, but you saw that opportunity and sees it.

The bigger opportunity was a local grocery store that I negotiated. If I buy X number of cakes a month, what kind of discount can I get? All I would have to do is pick up the phone and call them and say, I need a cake for Tuesday, and this is what it needs to say on it. I didn’t make anything.

You’re doing the affiliate affiliate kind of rotation going.

Yeah.Before affiliate marketing was called affiliate marketing, I was selling the local grocery store cakes.

Nice. So to jump back into your business a little bit, obviously you’ve had pain points. You’ve overcome a lot. You’re international, you’ve helped different sectors, and your focus is essentially industrial. What is your business structure? Is it an LLC, an S Corp or a C Corp or a combination of all three?

We’re an LLC.

Is there a reason why?

It makes financial sense for the way we do business? I think it’s odd for a consulting company to not be there’s tax advantages in the way that we have it set up. There’s a lot of little detail stuff that my financial advisory and my accountant and others who I work with recommended it, and I’ll stick with it.

Nice. So in addition to that, obviously, I think you’re a big system guys. What systems do you guys have in place to kind of maintain what you have?

What do you mean by systems or accounting system?

Not necessarily accounting. I mean, prime example, if you’re onboarding, you may have onboarding system, you may have a sales system, you may have a customer service system. So, I mean, obviously, it’s probably one system that you need to more than another. Which one is that? And then how are you using it?

Yeah. The way that we build our client base, most of the intake is with our core business. There’s four of us in the organization total, but we have 95 vetted freelancers of all different abilities and skill sets. And once the initial discovery is done with a client, we build the team from those so that we have the right team for the right project. We talk about the marketing agencies all the time. And one of the things that we’ve discovered is it’s very rare that an agency with all in house staff ever has the right staff for that next client. It’s more common that they’ve been doing work in professional services space forever. Lawyers, doctors, and otherwise. And a company that makes fasteners in the industrial space comes on board and they go, yeah, we’re experts in that. And the next day they’re bringing everybody around the table. You guys better learn about the industrial space because we just got a client. We don’t have to do that because we’ve got the right people. And if we don’t have the right people during discovery, we will let the client know that there’s going to be a bit of discovery on our side to make sure that we can put the right team together.We won’t take the client.

Got you. So you’re organic in nature as far as finding the right people to fit in the right void for that particular client, it definitely makes sense. Like you said before, head guys. But then obviously you have 100 people that you have access to the kind of mix and match to get the right chemistry going.

Yeah, we have affiliates in about 120 countries, too. So if the project is something that needs to happen, we can do that viability study to see whether or not there are foreign markets for our clients product or service and get them to the right trading partners much more rapidly than most companies can do. I think among the 90 something people here in the US that we can work with, I think we can speak 14 languages or something like that. And through the 120 countries that we know, it expands beyond that.

Nice. So let’s just talk about the perception of being an overnight success, like someone that’s outside of your core industry may hear this and be like, okay, this guy sounds great. He knows exactly what he’s talking about. But this is maybe the first time they’re hearing about you. But in your journey, how long did it take you to get from where you were to where you are currently?

30 years? There is no overnight. The challenge for me at the beginning was I went to school, studied international trade, because that was what I wanted to do. Got my bachelor’s was excited. There were no roles in the market at that time for anyone with a bachelor’s degree in the area. And I went to work for a nonprofit to have a job and figure out what I was going to do next. It was probably the worst and the best thing I ever could have done because I really didn’t enjoy the work. I didn’t enjoy the people I was working with. But what I did learn was how to sell nothing for a lot of money because I was in the business of raising money. So how do you sell an intangible where the only thing the person gets for their investment is a handshake of certificate and pride? So I really started to understand that sales process in a way that I never understood before. But then I decided I needed to go back to school, but at the same time, all the MBAs that I knew were unemployed. So I went back and studied psychology and actually worked for a couple of years as a therapist while I was building my business practice.So we were incorporating these multicultural ideas and the psychological concepts of the actual purchasing journey into how we were building marketing strategies and sales strategies for customers. And in that process was fortunate to do some volunteer work for an organization that I was an exchange student with years before and through that started making very powerful contacts in Central and South America. So I spent probably three years making almost nothing, trying to learn my trade, and was able, fortunately, to sustain myself by doing other work. I was working in psychiatric hospitals as an orderly and things like that while I was trying to get this off the ground. And then once, I guess it was 1993, I had a 90 day project that was supposed to take place in Brazil. And I went to handle and it was completely over my head. And I had said to the people, I think it’s over my head, but if you really want me on board, I’ll go do it. Well, the market had just opened for import. There had been a dictatorship, and then the import market was closed. It was very complicated. Well, the moment I was there, the currency was stabilizing.The market was opening even more. And I went from being a guy who kind of knew stuff to an expert in a place where people had never done trade in the US. So I was able to build a business in Brazil. I was there for ten years operating Deutsche Group. So there’s so many hurdles and projects and challenges and things along the way. It certainly was not an overnight success. There were times that there wasn’t any money. There were times that there was. But fortunately, I was able to really learn from all of the crazy projects and experiences and things that we worked on which built what I have now.

That leads me to another intriguing question.Right.So you had all these sea sources up and down, riding the waves and then climbing back up the ladder and riding the wave and climbing back up the ladder. If you could time travel back and whisper in your ear at any time in the last 30 years, what would you say to yourself to make some kind of change, to be where you are maybe a little bit faster?

Probably. I would have had more focus at the beginning on the types of clients, the things that I wanted to do, rather than taking it as it came, the opportunities. I wasn’t chasing shiny objects, but there were opportunities and projects and things that were offered to me that really didn’t pass the smell test. But I went ahead and did it anyhow. So I would have trusted my gut a lot more with projects. There were some times where I began working on projects with people that turned out not to be the best people to be working with and had to walk away from profit and projects until I really learned how to pick and choose properly to what works.

Interesting. So while we’re still on the time traveling journey, and I think you brought up some people that had some insight into your life earlier on, but we haven’t really talked about your family yet. So my next question is how do you currently juggle everything you’re doing? You’re enjoying the hustle, but how are you juggling the hustle with your work life?

Well, during the years that I was doing intensive travel after moving back to the States in 2003, I continued the business of the market crash. I took a position where I left my consulting business aside and became an employee of one of my clients and I ran the international division. Back in those days, I was traveling 220 days a year out of house, 300,000 air miles, 45 typically on average countries in sales and really lost that connection that I should have had. So most of the communication I had with my family was international phone calls, being able to video conference before Skype existed actually, and doing a lot of that kind of stuff. So it was difficult. Now my daughters are all adults and out of the home. I’m on the grandkids and I don’t travel nearly as much. So I pick and choose my hours and spend time doing the things that I want to do with my family and all the hobbies that I have.

Nice. So I mean, with that you’re talking about your picking and choosing your time and you’re managing your time as you see fit. It would behold me to kind of believe that you’re a pretty structured guy. And my next question is, what are your morning routines? What are your morning habits?

I get up around 4:30, sometimes 4:00, catch up on news and things like that that I don’t normally pay attention to during the day, go through my to do’s, have my breakfast around, I don’t know, 6:30 ish. I take one of my dogs for a 30 minutes walk just to get my energy going, shower, get in front of the computer, do my social media postings and things that I work on that I don’t want to be interrupted when I’m doing until the phone starts ringing around eight, and then I work straight through. I usually take about an hour, hour and a half midday. My wife works at home also. She’s a professor since she’s doing online teaching, do the lunch thing and then back to I’m usually done with my daily stuff around 4,4:30 because it’s time to relax and enjoy cooking a meal or working on one of my projects, one of my hobbies, my studio nice. And on the weekends I try to I turn off the social media and focus on this time of year, I’m usually out my kayak on at least one day on the weekend barbecuing doing stuff that way, working on the house.

Nice.You brought up hobbies, a couple of different tabs. What’s the laundry list of hobbies that you’re actively pursuing right now?

Avid woodworker. I build all the built in and furniture in my house. I have a glass studio. I work with glass. I Cook. I knit in the wintertime, make my own sweaters, scarves stuff for my wife or my kids.

Nice. You’re a tinkerer, pretty much, right?

Yes.

That’s nice. With that level of hobbies and tinkering and just who you are and the business that you have, the next question is the three part question. Right. What books did you read on your journey? Right. What books helped you become who you are? Part two to that is what books are you reading right now? And part three to that is have you had an opportunity to write any books yet?

Yeah, I’ve got a couple of books that are in the work that I’m writing. One of them is “How We Learn from Horrible Bosses”, “How to be better bosses”, and also my strategy first concept and how to convert all touches into voracious advocates for your brand, which is one of the core of Angle. Books I read over the years. I didn’t read that many what most people would call the business books. Probably the most influential book I ever read was “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” by Goldman, which really looks into the psychology behind how somebody who’s the Hunter killer salesman needs to completely retrain because the skill set that got them where they were as the successful salesperson makes them probably the worst sales manager in the history of mankind if they can’t retrain and learn that skill set. So it was kind of a lot of the books that I read in the early days were more the psychology of sales, motivation and otherwise. The Richard Bandler and Grinder books on neurolinguistics, Milton Erickson, odd things that aren’t typically talked about in the business world. And then I’ve read the old standards, the good to great, and those books right now at the moment, I’m reading a couple of biographies that have nothing to do with business because it’s just stuff that I’m interested in.

Nice. Obviously, I think you’re a tinkerer on both sides of the coin.Right.I mean, obviously, with your expansion of knowledge, you’re dipping down with multiple different things. And I think a reoccurring thing that’s come up on this podcast is psychology. And I don’t think majority of marketers or sales reps don’t really understand the power of psychology to convert a sale or to market to the right audience. So I want to dive into that a little bit more. Like, how useful has your studies of psychology been for where you are right now?

It is the differentiator that makes Fangled unique. And we see it all the time where people don’t understand who their customer is at that core level, what matters to them, what moves the needle for them, what’s their actual internal process in the buyer’s journey? And how do you meet them at their model of the world and bring them towards yours, rather than what most companies do is just beat them over the head with what they think is important and hope it is. If you’re a manufacturer, there are certain things about your manufacturing that you’re extremely proud of and that you think are very important to your customer. In most cases, it turns out the customer couldn’t care less. That isn’t what’s in it for them. You’re not buying a brand new car because it has a different temper of steel and because it has some odd feature that doesn’t matter. People buy cars because maybe they have a safety need. I want this because it’s the safest thing for my family. They might buy it for utility. I know if I have it, I won’t have any problems. The family will be fine. They buy it because it makes them think they look cool.They buy it because they can attract the opposite gender or the same gender depending on who they are. There’s all of those psychological motivations, the benefit of owning that product. And most people are out there selling the features. You went to marketing school. You learned all about features and benefits in school, didn’t you?

I mean, I went to more so design school. But to your point, definitely it’s always going to be feature versus benefit.

Yeah, but the reality is it’s inverted. Psychology tells you that you sell the benefits and you use the features to prove you’re not lying about the benefits. If you show up with this particular brand, you’re going to have this effect on your psyche. How do we know that? Because these are the features that make that happen. So it’s always the inversion. We’ve seen companies that everything that they’re out promoting about their business is like table stakes in a poker game. In other words, we make it out of steel. We can paint it any color. We test in house. We have quality. All those things that people may or may not believe. When the reality is people do business with them because they have flexible manufacturing. They can get it to me quicker. They have zero failure rate, all the things that matter to you as a manufacturer. So if you’re buying components from a company just based on the fact that they test and they have quality or that they’ll never let me down, they’ll always be on time. I’m never going to have a warranty recall because they stand behind and can do so,those are benefits of doing business with somebody. The features are just to make sure that the benefit can be real.

Yeah. And I think that’s collective. I mean, even something as simple as a T shirt, a lot of times you’ll see a T shirt and you may see the size, the cotton blend and all these other essentially features of that product. But the real benefits of that product is essentially not the features. It’s more so the emotional reaction of that product is that product going to make you feel good? If it doesn’t make you feel good, does it make someone else around you else feel good? Does it give you bragging rights? So it’s 100% psychological aspect. So I’m happy that you brought that up. It’s the real hidden meat and potatoes behind sales and marketing that unfortunately gets lost by feature creep ups.

Yeah, I’m going to steal this from my friend Allison Ericsson, who has an industrial marketing company called Felt Marketing. But she always talks about how do you market products so that people feel as opposed to think. And it’s so important in the industrial space. When I first got involved in industrial marketing, industrial marketing was basically sell sheets and a box of Donuts and that was how you went to market. You’d show up at the buyer, you give them a box of Donuts, and you might want to bribe the guy on the Loading dock to make sure when they unload your stuff, they give you priority. He gets another box of Donuts or maybe a couple of subs from some sandwich shop. And that was marketing back in those days. Well, now how do you deal with the pains of that buyer? For example, my product is not the cheapest product on the market, but I have zero failure rate, so you’ll never have downtime. Nobody from production is going to come in here and yell at you because you bought crap. Number two is we will manage the inventory. So all you have to do is pay the bills.All you got to do is give me your production schedule. It’s all going to be there when it’s supposed to be there, accessible to your employees. You can go on to more complicated things while you’re a hero because you’ve never shut the plant down. I mean, those are the things, the psychological aspects of what’s in it for the buyer. Then you’re talking to the manufacturing team. What benefit are they looking for again? You’re never going to have that moment where you’re screaming at all your employees because they didn’t tell you you were running out of inventory and now you can’t produce and you got to shut the plant down. So all of those aspects are far more important than the actual product in terms of the manufacturing process when you’re selling, distributing components.

Nice.

Right now, the auto industry in the US is coming to a stand still. Why? Because It can’t get chips, the chips that are used for the computers on the cars. If one of those manufacturing companies out there was able to come in right now and say we just set up, we can make those chips for the future. You’re never going to be out of chips again, but you got to buy them from us. The other guys would be gone, but nobody has that capacity because right now the pain that needs to be solved is supply, not quality.

Very interesting going into obviously, I think you’re building not only a wealth of information and wealth for your clients. Correct me if I am wrong i think inside you’re also building wealth as far as leaving behind a legacy of information for your family. So my next question is where do you see yourself 20 years from now?

Oh, I love what I do. So even at the age where I would want to retire, I’ll still have my toe in the water. I really enjoy the creative process of what’s here, but my kids are all into other things. So probably there’ll be an exit within 20 years where either I’ll take on partners who buy me out or sell to someone else who I think is aligned with what Bengal does. And my hobbies are going to keep me until I build the box they’re going to bury me in. Nice. Yeah. I’ve got two friends that have done that. I always thought it was a little creepy.

But I think it was probably creepy passes. But now you probably could relate to them. Probably a little bit on a different side of the coin now.

Yeah. I actually thought it was pretty funny as a fellow I knew down in down in West Virginia who built his own coffin, but he made it look like a coffee table. So it was in his house for years and no one realized that what it was. There was a book out years ago on how to build it. I don’t know if it still exists as a woodworker’s guide to building your own coffin.

Imagine trying to market that product, right?

Yeah, but just an Apple of it. You probably could sell a lot of it.

Going to my next question, what tools do you use? Obviously, in marketing, there’s marketing software and apps, particularly software and apps. Which ones would you not be able to do what you’re doing without?

I use the core Microsoft package of what’s there the graphic artists that I use. I let them decide what they know best. Same with my video editing team. All of them are brought on because they know what they’re doing and I can trust them to get and they understand the look and feel and the strategy that we’re working from. So I don’t interfere with any of the outside folks. And then we have web development teams that depending on the client, we then choose to which team makes sense for what they’re doing. If you’re just building a website for a branding statement and basic, simple ecommerce, it could be something as simple as a WordPress site onto the other which is much more advanced with our Magento team that can do very complex websites and everything in between. But I have my own sort of system that I’ve developed for project management. That’s proprietary and most of the work that we do after that Discovery call is really managing all of the people and keeping the communication between them. Some of my freelancers love using that program, Slack. I find it annoying, but if it helps them, I’ll go with it.And of course we use like, for example, you see me on here. This is one of my communication tools. The fancy background. I’m actually using a virtual camera for this so that when I’m doing meetings, I can actually remain in the scene while I’m presenting and bring up a program behind me. I can do silly stuff, keep the audience happy, blow somebody’s mind if I need to. So there’s a lot of sort of special tech stuff that we do to be more present in the room during the era of Zoom, when we can’t be in meetings that allow us to connect better with our clients and be more effective in meetings.

Nice. So thinking about like final words of wisdom, and I think for you just to say there’s someone that’s in their mid 30s and they’re essentially one to step into this space and they’re listening to this podcast and they’re hearing your insight and they’re like, okay, I love what this guy is talking about. I would love to be him one day. What words of wisdom would you give to the individuals to grow into becoming you?

The initial years that you’re in marketing is really about learning tactical implementation of stuff. And all of the tactical things are great to get your foot in the door and get involved in projects, but you always have to have a focus on really learning how to develop a core strategy. The actual development, of course, strategy, qualitative study, and really understanding that process is something that you build on throughout your career and you don’t become an executive and a high level marketing guy within an organization on tactics, it’s on strategy. The problem with being a tactical guy is every year the tactics change and you’ve got to relearn everything. If you learned how to code in the 1990s and now it’s the 2020s, all of that knowledge is gone. If you knew how to build a website five years ago, the tech today is different. So the way we build strategy today isn’t that different than what we did all those years ago. We’ve just gotten so much better at it because we’re constantly building onto that core. So the future of being a top level marketer is really focusing on how do I become a strategist, not a tactician.

Nice. I definitely could cure with every last word that you said. It’s a hell of a philosophy. And it’s not just a philosophy, it’s a way of living. You have to kind of live by it to kind of really understand what he’s saying. They may have heard what you just said, and they want to get in contact with you. How do they get in contact with you? Online, through your website, social media.

Right here behind me, Fangledgroup.com is a great contact point. Our podcast is called The Fangled Cast, and you can find us on YouTube and all those crazy places that people have there. I think I’m on; i don’t know nine or ten different podcast sites. It gets spread out, and I’m not even sure where all it is anymore. But, yeah, I mean, find us. You can fill out contact us through thefanglegroup.com. I’m also on LinkedIn. You can find me. I’m that guy who looks like this with my name next to it. It’s pretty easy to. You can send me a Fax if you know how to do that. Maybe a telex Telegram smoke signal.

Fax will be pretty interesting for the demographic of today’s world, right?

I remember when the Fax machine first came out and everyone was there’s never going to be anything better than this. This is the most incredible thing. Oh, my goodness. Guess what? I don’t think anyone under the age of 25 ever used one.

I’ll be done. Not unless they work. It like an old sawmill somewhere in the middle.

Medical office is still using. But yeah, it’s funny. The tech. I mean, the old cell phones you carried like a bag around with a zip around it over your shoulder, and you unzip the thing and pull out a phone with a cord.

Going at the bonus round. Right. I think this will be pretty interesting. Right. I got a couple of bonus questions for you. One of them is, outside of your family, what is your most significant achievement to date?

Most significant achievement? Probably the languages that I’ve learned. Being able to communicate almost anywhere in the world.

How many languages do you speak currently?

Currently fluently English, Portuguese, Spanish. I can read and understand Italian, French, little Mandarin, little Swedish.

That’s got to be a hell of attribution to who you are. I mean, do you have, like, a photographic member, or is it just, like trial? By being in those locations and living there and being on site for so long, you just picked it up?

Yeah. I thought I had a photographic memory, but I didn’t know where to buy the film. But no, you pick it up through communication. I never studied foreign languages in school, but it comes out of necessity and practice and listening. You start making weird noises until people start responding to them and you know, you’re speaking. I know that sounds silly, but it’s really true. It’s fascinating. Over time, after you’ve learned a bit, you start recognizing what people are saying. The words aren’t as important as sort of what the underlying communication is happening. And you become even more skilled with it when you’re traveling in places that you don’t speak the language and you’ve got to communicate. So it’s an acquired skill over time. Nice.

Very nice. So going on to the next question, if you could spend 24 hours with anyone, dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

Well, that’s a good one. I probably would go the opposite of what you would think and pick one of the entertainers who fascinated me throughout life, maybe Ian Anderson, the head of Jethro Tall or dad. Maybe hang out with Frank Zappa for 24 hours and get my mind blown with different political and social ideas that are outside of my scope.

It’s not what I expected, but it’s still what I expected. I expect it to be something outside of the box, by all means.

Yes. I work so much in the business space and have met and spent time with so many people who I admire over the years. It’s kind of a tricky. They always tell you, do you never want to meet your heroes? Well, I have met some of my heroes, and I really enjoyed the experience, so I could think of others that would be interesting to hang out with.

Nice. So going into closing, I mean, you’re a fellow podcaster, and I always give opportunity to where I’m interviewing, an opportunity to interview me and ask me any questions that may have arise during this interview. So the microphone is yours. What questions do you have for me?

Well, I think you’ve got an incredible creative background based on some of the stuff that I was looking on your website. At what point in time or what was the influence that told you that you could be really good at this?

So growing up as a kid, always sketching and drawing. Then in my high school years, once I got introduced to graffiti and then I started drawing more. And then when I moved to Atlanta, my parents threw me an art school. So when I look back, historically, art has always been a part of who I am. And then I had to realize that I’m both 50% creative as I am analytical. So I spent so much time chasing after the creative. And then after in my mid 20s, that’s when I realized, okay, all this creative stuff is great. But there’s another side of me that’s been calling me, the underlying side that’s been calling me. So once I’ve kind of bridged those two together is when I had that Eureka moment to say, okay, I could be really good at art if I answer to my analytical side and bring them into one world at the same time.

Yeah. I find in my history, when I deal with artists, the ones that I connect the most with are the ones who figured out that it is a passion and a business, and it can be both without compromise. The artist I’ve dealt with over the years that the relationships don’t last long are the ones where their personal interest in what they’re doing outweighs what the client’s looking for. It fascinates me when I meet somebody who not only has that creative. I’m curious, though, is there a medium and art that you’ve always wanted to try and you’ve never stuck your toe in the water?

Out of all the ones I have tried, the one that I really haven’t really Dove into is probably sculpting.

Sculpting. What medium of sculpting do you think interests you the most?

I think, like, more metal working, like, kind of layering up, like bronze. I remember vividly, I forgot which Zoo it was, but it was a Zoo that I went to, and it was a piece of a gorilla. But the gorilla was essentially all pieces of metal layered on top of itself to create the form. And you can kind of see the negative contours in between. But when you step back and you look at it, it was a marvelous piece, and it was at scale as well. I was just like, how the hell did they weld these many pieces to create this shape.

It takes a lot of vision. That’s an area, too, for me. I’ve always wanted to take a good class in welding. That’s something that I haven’t incorporated much metal in my work. Where do you see when you’re looking for new clients for your work? Are you looking to do things for people’s private art collections and things like that to sell, or do you mostly do your work creating imagery for businesses within a strategic concept?

I would say more to the Lather over the years. I’ve sold some pieces of art here and there, and I’ve done pieces of art for family members, but it’s passion for me, but it’s not like my core passion. My core passion is I want to kind of create more of a legacy branding. So when I have the opportunity to work with someone and I can kind of sculpt their business into something that they didn’t imagine it could be and then support it with the visuals, I step back and look at that more as a visual masterpiece than just looking at a piece of painting on the wall that was created by Basquiat.

Fantastic. That’s interesting. It’s interesting. We have a lot in common in terms of concept and drive. I’m glad to have met you.

Yeah, definitely. I definitely appreciate your time on your schedule. And like I said, right off the bat, when I saw the name of your company, I was, okay, I’m definitely going to be talking to a branding guy, because most people, structurally, they don’t really understand branding. And just like you play on words, and if you look up the definition of what fangled really is designed to represent and kind of how you’re using it, it’s ingenious. Right? So, again, if you haven’t had an opportunity, I want someone to go and Google the definition of that word. And then think about everything that you probably learned from Andrew on this podcast, and you can see that the connections between the two is phenomenal.

And it’s funny because fangled really isn’t a word. There’s sort of a definition for it, but newfangled, old fangled are words, which is kind of why I think it’s interesting. There have been some interesting namings over the years, both in English and in other languages, where it just really stands out. The lack of creativity that people have in going you’re going to open up, I don’t know, a pet grooming place and call it the dog groomer. It works. No company ever failed that I’m aware of because of a bad name. But lots of companies have taken on to the next level because of the impact that they’re naming and their slogan and that have had on people to become inspired, to become advocates for that brand. At the core of Fangled, what we tell our clients is every decision that we make has to pass the test is what you’re doing, what you’re saying, what you’re acting on, is it going to create gracious advocates for your brand? Does it convert everyone you touch or does it not complete that? Because if it doesn’t, you need to really think about why you’re doing it.

Very interesting. I think you bring up a really solid point. Right. I mean, if you think about Walmart, you think about Amazon, you think about Nike, you think about all these huge household brand names and essentially the definition of each one of these words that I just listed off don’t really have anything to do with their product or their service. It’s kind of like Yahoo, for example. It’s kind of like a brand that came out of nowhere. But to your point, they went into more of the psyche of how do I corner the market? Can I get something that nobody else has access to? And then can I self define this new product and make it into whatever I want to create versus using keywords to generate the title of my company? So I definitely appreciate you bringing that up.

Yes, Yahoo is a funny one, because if you think of that word, it gets used in different ways. There’s that sort of numb minded Yahoo who does stuff. And then there’s I’m having a blast Yahoo. There’s different ways, which makes that just a fascinating from a branding conversation. But at the end of the day, everyone we touch with our business, every employee in our organization, everybody who’s related to our brand should be trying to convert everyone they touch into Voracious advocates, not just the people who do business with you.

Nice.

Think about some of these artists, the singers who have their Swift and Spears, and those people go online and say something negative about them and see whether they have Voracious advocates.

You get Mobbed, for sure.

Yeah. And because of that people will line up around the block to buy a new phone that nobody’s ever touched or felt for thousands of dollars because they just know that that brand means something to them and they want to be first. If you take that to any business that you’re in and you can achieve that level, you’re a great marketer.

I think on that note, it would be a great way to close out the podcast and I definitely appreciate everything that you’ve delivered and taking time out of your busy schedule to be on our show today.

It was absolutely my pleasure, man. Thanks so much for having me on.

Great S.A, Grant. Over and out.

CEO Of Fangled Group: Andrew Deutsch AKA The Fangled Boss – S3E22 (#118)2023-01-24T15:59:23+00:00

Certified Financial Planner at Lake Growth: Mark Willis AKA The Not Average Boss – S3E21 (#117)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Certified Financial Planner at Lake Growth: Mark Willis AKA The Not Average Boss – S3E21 (#117)
Ask yourself, what’s the one thing I can do with my money? Such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?
In Season 3, Episode 21 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the Certified Financial Planner at Lake Growth, Mark Willis.
Mark Willis is a man on a mission to help you think differently about your money, your economy, and your future.
After graduating with six figures of student loan debt and discovering a way to turn his debt into real wealth as he watched everybody lose their retirement savings and home equity in 2008, he knew that he needed to find a more predictable way to meet his financial objectives and those of his clients.
Mark is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, a two-time #1 Best Selling Author, and the Owner of Lake Growth Financial Services, a financial firm in Chicago, Illinois. Over the years, he has helped hundreds of his clients take back control of their financial future and build their businesses with proven, tax-efficient financial solutions. He specializes in building custom-tailored financial strategies that are unknown to typical stock jockeys, attorneys, or other financial gurus.
As co-host of the Not Your Average Financial Podcast™, he shares some of his strategies for investing in real estate, paying for college without going broke, and creating an income in retirement you won’t outlive. Mark works with people who want to grow their wealth in ways that are safe and predictable, to become their own source of financing, and to create tax-free income in retirement.
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • What is Lake Growth do for you
  • What is Mark’s morning routine
  • What tools is Mark using in his business
  • And So Much More!!!
Want more details on how to contact Mark? Check out the links below!
Special Offer: $50 off the virtual presenter course
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S3E21 Mark Willis.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

All right, three, two, one. Welcome back to Boss and Cage podcast. You guys know, like, when I have someone on the show that I think is unique in different ways, I always going to give them a nickname. So in today’s episode, I’m going to nickname our guest, the not average boss, and he’ll be able to tell you a little bit more about that. So before we dive into that again, I think this episode is going to give you a lot of jewels, a lot of Nuggets, a lot of takeaways. So we want to hear about it. Okay. Mark is our guest and he wants to hear some information from you guys. So again, we want you to go to bossuncaged.com/fbgroup and leave some comments, share some information. What is your greatest takeaway from this episode? So without any other distractions, Mark, the floor is yours. Tell the audience a little bit more about who you are.

Hey, I love the idea not average boss. I like it, man. And I know our podcast is not your average financial podcast. And so I guess the theme aligns well. And it’s true. I think our background, my wife and I, when we graduated from College, we woke up and found that I had accidentally married two women in College whoops one was my beautiful wife, one was Sally May, if you know who she is. We had $120,000 of student loan debt. She wasn’t leaving until we paid her every last cent. So it’s sort of my alimony to Sally May, I guess. But we had a massive amount of student loan debt. It was in the midst of 2008. No awareness of our finances, no ability to pay off the debt because we had no jobs, three private school degrees between us. None of it was really marketable in 2008. So what are you going to do? I found myself walking up and down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue trying to find a barista job or something and coming up empty. I even remember I sat down at a Chase Bank to be a teller, and I don’t think I got that job either.

Maybe it was my bald head. I don’t know what they were having a problem with, but the best thing I can say about our background and journey is that it lit a fire under our butts to, like, get really honed in and focused and for real about our money. Because those monthly payments weren’t just going to stop every month. We had to find a way to wipe out that nut there and also cover our groceries and gas and all that fun stuff. So it got us ready in a hurry to think about our money. And we had to think different because we weren’t just being handed a 401K at some job. We had to think different about how we were going to handle our money. Our own personal private economy. In the midst of the world’s economy crashing, which it seems to do now every ten years or so or more or less. But we’ve got a massive undertaking on our hands now as we’ve got a wonderful business with folks over 1000 clients all around the country, in all 50 States and a few around the world, too, which I really love. And it’s been a real privilege and honor to get to help other clients now take back control of their financial future in a way that makes sense for them, is sane, predictable, and helps them become their own source of financing.

Yeah.I think it’s definitely humorous that you kind of brought up indirectly polygamy. Right. Being married essentially to two wives, you’re mine, right. Just talk about that a little bit. I think that’s a really good analogy to think about. You’re coming out of College, you have a degree, you’re trying to figure things out, you’re getting married, but you’re already married to someone else and you’re already making payments over there. What does that look like? How do you transition from that? What does that ecosystem look like as far as the conversion factor?

Man, that is a great question. Let’s go even deeper into this thing because contracts are really the basis of everything that I can find in human civilization. Right. Whether it’s a contract between me and my bride, that’s kind of a contract. A little bit love till death view apart. It sounds kind of like a contract even signed something. I think I signed something. There was a lot of drinking going on there, chocolate milk. But we had a great time at the wedding. We did make some promises to our future. Isn’t that kind of what I do when all of us do? When we get that credit card or that car loan or that student loan, we’re making a contract with our future, and it’s partnered up with somebody who may or may not have your best interest at heart. Unlike our wonderful spouses, Sallie May and Capital One and all these bozos, they’re in the interest of making profits for their future. They’re getting ready for their retirement. They’re not exactly going to be helping you with yours. So if we have a contract with every Tom, Dick and Harry, whether it’s our business line of credit or our mortgage or our student loans, debt comes with it, some commitments, some promises.Till death?Do we part? Till debt? Do we part?

Wow. This is definitely interesting. That kind of gives the listener a little insight to who you are. So let’s dive into that a little bit more. Right. If you can define yourself in three to five words, what three to five words would you choose?

Well, the next couple of words are going to be pretty important, man. Wow. I’d say counterintuitive parodies and playful.

Nice.

Those are a couple of words we could keep going. But counterintuitive parodies and playful. I think the general notion of a tennis ball floating down the gutter of life is not a life I want to live. I want to move upstream financially, not just being counter to culture for just the sake of being different, but saying to myself, all right, if average is being in debt up to my eyeballs with a subpar 401K I can’t touch for 30 years if that’s the average. I don’t want to be average. I want to be awesome. I want to be not your average. And so yeah, counterintuitive. And maybe even by parody, I’m saying not just going different for different sake, but how do we use the mainstream concepts and play with them? Some be a little playful with it, like weird Al playful on some of these parodies. Right. So how do we use what’s coming at us and use it to our advantage, not just get away from it, but actually make us stronger as a result? Quick, case in point, if anybody has done any martial arts, sometimes the opponent coming at you, you can sometimes use their weight against them if you figure out how to leverage it.So leverage, in my opinion, is a key part of the parity in the financial life and in most of life, too. Your business. We all had to get around this word called pivot last year. In 2020, I’d say that you can pivot in your financial life to help you not only just handle that debt and take care of it and pay off your old debts. Whatever. Don’t just pay off the debt. Be the bank. If banks are the problem, then you can become the bank. You can become a bank like the ones you know about and actually profit from the debt rather than just paying it off. That’s kind of what I mean by parody and then playful. What else are we doing here but playing? I mean, all us adults, we’re really just in a sandbox together, playing with new toys, call the podcast and Zoom and all that. And I’d much rather this than punching some check at some teller spot at some Chase Bank down the street.

Nice. So I’m thinking, like, obviously being playful and this is the first time I’m thinking I’m like, maybe I should rebrand you and call you the analogy boss, because, I mean, you’re spinning off analogies left and right, and you’re playing with words. So is that something that you utilize when you’re helping educate someone about finances? Are you using analogies and you’re playing with wordplay to help them understand the theories and philosophies a lot easier?

Yeah. If you can understand something really well, you can hopefully do it in a picture. And if you don’t understand something really well, you’re going to end up getting all bogged down into the technicals. And that’s okay. Both are probably important. But yeah, if you can like this idea of pictures, if you want to talk more about the debt, most business owners are trying to fly their airplane and they’re trying to take off. And maybe your airplane can fly 100 miles an hour, let’s say. All right. And so you take your airplane, you drive it down the runway, you lift off, you’re going as hard as you can. 100 miles an hour is hard as that engine can push. Unfortunately, you got a 300 miles an hour headwind coming right at you. Now, essay, I don’t know about you, but I can do a little bit of math in my head. And 300 is more than 100 most of the time anyway. So no matter how hard I’m pushing, I’m not moving toward my destination. I’m going the opposite direction at 200 miles an hour. And that’s how most businesses live. According to the US Commerce Bureau, the average business owner spends about a third of their revenue servicing debt, a third of your revenue servicing debt.So if you’re 100 miles an hour is 100% of your revenue, but you’re getting that kind of push against you, you’re not going to be making much headway with your head wind. It’s going to be pushing you in the opposite direction. Best thing we could probably do with that airplane is just land that silly thing, wait for the wind to die down or change direction. And the powerful thing here is you can refuel your tank while you’re waiting and then wait for that wind to stop. Now, most people think that no wind is as good as it gets, as fast as I can fly this little plane is 100 miles an hour and that’s as good as it gets. Most people think paying cash is the answer. No longer just paying credit cards, finances, lines of credit, mortgages on my business properties or my personal home or my student loans. They think, hey, if I could just pay cash for everything, I’d be King. But I’m here to say no. Again, parody right. Let’s do something a little bit better than just paying cash. How can we use banking to our advantage? How can we get that tailwind behind us?

What if you had 100 miles an hour airplane and you had 300 miles pushing at your back of wind? Now you’re doing 400 miles an hour getting towards your destination. Okay, so that’s a difference of what is that 700 miles an hour or something like that between the head and the tail? That’s an incredible arbitrage if you can get that wind behind you, if you can use debt to your advantage. And I don’t just mean borrowing from somebody else’s Bank, I literally mean find a way to become your own source of financing because it will change how your airplane flies and it’ll get you to your destination with a lot more certainty and confidence. So yeah, analogies, it paints a picture more so than rates of return or we got to get technical, we got to get into the weeds at some point. But yeah, the picture of a thing, I think speaks to the heart.

So I think my next question still stemming off of that analogy about the airplane and the tailwinds. Right. So let’s say your plane is going down the runway, it’s 100 miles, and let’s say you’re going with the actual wind and you’re maximizing creeping up on 400, but the tires blow out. Right. Let’s say the landing gear falls off this plane and spark start flying. So my question is, obviously, you’ve worked with thousands of people. Has there ever been like that type of plane wreck or that train wreck on a runway that you’re helping someone, you’re pushing them, you’re motivating them. What was that experience like? And what was the example that you would like to fill in to void with that?

Well, yeah, life throws us curve balls, sometimes two or three at a time. In fact, most of the time that’s the case. So I found anecdotally anyway. And yeah. Having some repair attempts and having some spare tires and having a tool kit, you can repair that landing gear on the fly. Forgive the pun there, but you can fix that up if you packed provisions, if you’ve done the work of packing that plane, not with a bunch of junk. I don’t need a bunch of like San Pellegrino bottles and other cement and quick energy bars. What I need in that airplane are all the provisions I’m going to need to survive if something goes haywire. And it almost always does eventually. So, yeah. Great way to extend the analogy. I guess we could take any analogy to its limit, I suppose. But since you brought it up. Yeah. Most people have very little in the way of an emergency fund, have very little in the way of an opportunity fund. And I count those as two separate items. Most people might have a week or two of savings. There’s an old quote by Gloria Steinem. She says “Rich people plan for three generations and poor people plan for Saturday night”.And I found that’s the case, if all you have is enough money to make it through Saturday night and the tire blows, literally the tire on your car blows, or this airplane metaphor. If life’s tire blows or your landing gear starts sparking a fire, man, you got to have some ready to go capital. And I’d mentioned, too, not just for emergencies, but opportunities. What could you do? What could you take advantage of if you had a big pile of contingency cash for any purpose, take you in any direction? I mean, if you had half a million Bucks just sitting around waiting to be told what to do, how might that impact your business?

I think definitely as a listener. Right. And if anyone has $500,000 sitting around and they’re not actively engaging with that $500,000 or making investments or buying non liabilities, obviously they need to get some counseling. They need to get some help for sure.

Yeah. And by the way, if you guys do have $500,000, call S.A right away, he can tell you how to put that money to work.

Or obviously, I would then say recommend. You probably need to talk to Mark kind of talk strategies behind the scenes. I can help you with your marketing, your growth strategy. But obviously, if you got $500,000, how could you really leverage that? Going back to your analogy earlier about becoming a bank. So let’s dive into that. Let’s unpack that question a little bit. So someone’s hearing you saying become your own bank. And it’s an analogy, but it’s also real, right? So with banks, you have to pay back loans, you have to pay back interest. So are you talking about maybe someone having capital and they’re paying themselves back interest? Like, how would they stage that self banking?

. Let that sink in for a minute. The first 5000 years. So that’s going to be around for a while. Banks are about as old as artwork or music or cave paintings. They’re as old as it gets when it comes to human civilization. So the question really is whose side of the bankers desk are you sitting on? Because we’re already in the banking business, we’re just sitting on the wrong side of the banker’s desk.So how could we become a bank like the ones we know about? How can we become the bank again? Judo, martial arts. How can we not just avoid the banking business? But how can we actually use the banking function to become a banker for ourselves? And of all things in the financial universe? A tool that I’ve kind of stumbled across, of all things was a modernized form of whole life insurance. Strangely enough, if it’s designed properly, not for the death benefit as much as the cash value, the living benefit, the money you can spend on this side of the grass. If you built that thing correctly with an adviser who did it right for you, it does some really interesting things that really builds cash and can be used like a bank. If you want, I can do a quick tour of what that tool can do, but how it’s helped me and help some of my clients.

Well, I’m thinking about it because obviously I’ve had active insurance licenses in multiple different States and I understand the philosophy between whole life and term life. Right. So in one side of that spectrum, people always uniquely taught to buy what you need, pay the extra and invest the difference. So on the other side of the coin, you’re talking about merging those two worlds together. You’re talking about get what you need and also use that capital that’s being invested on a monthly basis as extra capital to utilize for something else. So to answer your question, I’m like, definitely just unpack that a little bit because again, there’s two sides, two different philosophies in the financial world.

As a Dave Ramsey fanboy from a long time ago, that’s what I got drilled into me every day. Primarca Al Williams, the whole bit. That’s where by term insurance and invest the rest came from. No one knows what the rest is. They just know they’re supposed to invest the rest. What ends up happening is you buy term insurance and then you use the rest at the grocery store or at the restaurants. That’s typically how that ends up, right? Most people. But what we’re doing is we’re flipping it on its head. We’re not using life insurance for the life insurance, although that’s certainly there. What we’re doing is we’re cutting the expenses of the life insurance down by about 70%, cutting the commissions down by about 70%, and we’re flooding that policy with liquid equity money, wealth, money you get to spend rather than your heirs get to spend. So it’s building up a cash value, which is cash value is sort of like equity in a house. So back to term insurance and whole life insurance. And then how does this fit into banking? Term insurance is like renting for a while and you can rent an apartment and there’s nothing wrong with renting.And everyone should probably have a season in their life where they do rent, but the landlord will start to raise the rent on you. The longer you stay there, the stuff gets less and less valuable. The water heater starts breaking, whatever, and you have no equity that you’re building up in that term insurance policy. And in fact, 99% of term insurance never pays out. It expires. So on the other side of the equation is whole life insurance, which is more like owning a house where the house payment never goes up, it stays flat, so it gets easier to pay with inflation. You’re building up wealth inside your house called equity. And unlike a house, however, whole life insurance grows guaranteed. Nothing guaranteed about a house. So I’ll say this in four quick little statements, TGIF, just to keep it real simple for folks, whole life insurance, if it’s designed the bank on yourself way, can do four things. T stands for tax free access to the cash. If we design this thing correctly, it’s going to have massive cash value and you have access to it. With no taxes due, the tax law says you can get the money out of the policy.

Both principal and gains can be accessed totally tax free. So it’s like a Roth IRA without any restrictions. Like Roth IRAs have no income, phase out, no contribution limit. You don’t have to wait until you’re 59 and a half. You could put the money in this month and have access to the cash value next month. That’s pretty cool right there. The G and TGIF stands for guarantees. It’s built on a system of guarantees. Unlike the stock market, real estate market, whatever else, it grows on a guaranteed basis every single year. The cash value is more this year than you had last year. Guaranteed. It’s not my guarantee, thank goodness. Who am I right? It’s the insurance company’s guarantee. They’ve been around for over 100 years. They’ve never missed a guarantee on their promises. That’s why they’re still in business for over a century. So I just, like, mind blown when I say that because they’ve been through multiple pandemics at this point. That’s how old these companies are. So third option or the third piece on the TGIF. I. Stands for insurance. And it’s insurance. So we’ve got access to that money for my family if I do pass away, which is awesome.And then financing guys were already in the banking business, as mentioned. But when you borrow from one of these policies, you’re able to borrow the cash against the policy. But when I do, that magically, it continues to grow and compound as if I had not borrowed the money. So let’s say I got a hundred grand in cash value, and let’s say I want to go buy a car. Well, I got a couple of options. I can use a regular banker down the street and pay him some interest don’t like that. Or I can pay cash for the car. I don’t like that either, because now I’ve lost whatever interest I would have earned on that money if I just withdraw from my savings account. It earns me nothing once I withdraw it. Or I can borrow from my policy. And again, I’ve got 100 grand in there. I borrow against that 100 grand to pay cash for the car. But my policy still continues to pay me a full guaranteed interest and dividend on the entire $100,000, as if I had not touched the money. So to me, that solves the biggest problem in our financial life, which is we keep breaking compound growth.We either pay cash, which is a big problem, because we keep breaking compound growth, or we’re paying compound growth for the bank down the street. Neither of those essay helps us grow our future. It’s helping somebody else’s bank. So again, headwind tailwind. Let’s go from the headwind coming right at us, paying interest to banks, not just wait until the wind dies down. That’s paying cash for things, but let’s get the banks function at our back. And now we can really make some real progress. We can pay ourselves the interest we would have paid the bank down the street.

Got you. So anyone that’s listening to this episode right now, I think Mark single handedly just made insurance sexy again. Right?

Sorry, I’m already married guys.

I just want to kind of like if you listen to what he was saying in comparison to term and comparison to the whole in comparison to the bank. Essentially, in the simplest way of transforming what he said is utilizing a whole policy as a banking system to leverage the capital that’s already sitting there taking that money out to make your purchases and still having that whole policy grow using compound interest. It’s like the best of both worlds. I’m surprised it’s not illegal, but by defining it that way again, I think he definitely makes it very sexy. And it’s kind of one of those things you kind of have to stop and think about it. You have to really recap and relisted to what he said. And then the next part is like, questions, take action on that. Like dive into it. Just don’t listen to this podcast and then don’t go do anything about it.

Amen, man. Yeah.

So going to the next question, obviously, you’re a wealth of knowledge. Like you have all this information and someone listening to this podcast, and it’s like, who’s this guy, Mark? Where did he come from? He’s just overnight success. But in reality, how long does it take you to get to where you are currently right now?

Well, every breath I’m taking, I guess I’m a little bit older. As they say, life is like a roll of toilet paper. The more you use it, the faster it goes. And you’re right, it’s one of those overnight success stories that happened over 30 plus years, I guess. But no, I’m still growing. We’re all still growing. You know, never feel like you’ve arrived. It’s just you find right mentors. You know this very well. You find people who can blow your mind, people who can give you a new way of thinking and a new way of living, even more importantly. And then you just keep working one step at a time. Yes.

So if you had to put, like a date on it, are you more of the 20 year conversion? Ten years. How long have you been in this space to get to where you are?

Sure. Okay. So I was definitely a Dave Ramsey fanboy when we graduated College. That was in 2008. And then I remember it was kind of an AHA moment when a mentor of mine, he’s just a College Professor. He didn’t have any skin in the game. But I think he saw that we were so stressed about our student loan debt, and he came to me and he said, well, Mark, is it possible Dave Ramsey could be wrong about something? And I never let that even cross my mind. For me, Dave Ramsey was sort of akin to writing the Fifth Gospel. It was just clear to me that everything he said was like speaking from Mount Sinai. But no, honestly, we had to come to terms with the fact that we had not thought critically, hadn’t done critical thinking with the voices on the radio and sometimes the voice on the radio doesn’t always know you personally. And I’ll mention this too, guys don’t just go start a whole life policy just because you heard it on even this episode. I would say very clearly there’s over 4000 life insurance agents in the United States. That’s one for every 800 Americans.

So not all of those insurance agents know what we’re even talking about right now by a long shot, right? Maybe 90% of them have no clue. They’re still thinking about life insurance as death insurance, as some people call it. So again, if you want to do this right, you’ve got to make sure you’re listening and acting with mentors that understand and know who you are and what your needs are, what you’re trying to accomplish. Because again, it’s not a perfect fit for everybody. Even this cool strategy is not something I just recommend everybody run out and go do. But you want to sit down, talk with the right experts and know who influences you and make sure, of course, that they’ve got your best interests at heart.

Yes, I think in addition to that, I think the numbers are probably even more extreme than that. You’re talking about 90%. But even within that margin of insurance agents, majority of them don’t even have access to whole policy. Some of them are term only. So that number even becomes even more extreme. And then it’s part of what kind of whole positive, like universal is it? So you kind of want to look at that number as even a more smaller percentage, probably like a 1% of 5% of insurance agents that even know what the hell you’re talking about right now.

Yeah, exactly. Well, and I’ll tell you, I’d be happy to chat with folks if they just want to jump to me. But if you want to do some research on this, there’s a classification and a certification known as bank on Yourself Professionals. And that’s a financial credential. There are hundreds of credentials out there. Certified Financial Planner is one that I went through. It took me a few years, but I’d say along with the CFP designation, nothing was as hard for me to attain as the bank on Yourself Professionals designation. There’s about 200 of us in the United States and Canada, and it’s sort of like the USDA organic label. You know, you may not know all of the 30 Hoops your organic food had to jump through to get that label, but you just see the label and you know, okay, that’s got all the things I want in my food, whatever. And the same is true with bank on Yourself. You may not know the 30 things that we need your policy to be engineered in what company to use, make sure it’s mutually owned, make sure there’s nondirected loans on the policy. All you might really need to look for is in their email signature to the insurance or financial adviser.Does he have the work? He or she have the words bank on yourself in their email signature. So that’s just a simple way you can look to see if this thing’s being done right for you. Wow.

So dropping even more insight and information. So let’s just go back to your analogy of flying a plane. Right. And let’s say we’re taking up the speed numbers. Right. We’re going past the speed of light, which allows us to essentially travel back in time. If you can go back and I’m not going to say you’re going to go back and change everything. But if you can go back and whisper in your ears at a younger age, what would you tell yourself to do differently?

Man, don’t listen to the man on the street arithmetic. And I’ll say person on the Street, I guess, but don’t listen to the average advice. So case in point, I really bought the fact that you could just fall off a horse and get 12% a year in the stock market. I bought that. I bought it, you know, hook, line and syncer. If I could go back and just give I’ll share this with your audience. Maybe it’ll be a kind of a wake up call to them. Let’s say, for example, that you invest $10,000 into my special magical mutual fund. $10,000. You give me $10,000 and I do a wonderful job. And here it is. The first year I make, I double your money. So your ten grand went up all the way to $20,000. Still with me on all this so far. All right, then year two, we started with 20 grand, but, Oops, I lost you half of your money. Yeah, 20 grand goes back down to ten. Now we’re two years later. Do you feel any wealthier?

Technically, you’re not.

Yes. Technically, no. You started with ten grand. You ended with ten grand. But we just gave you a 25% average rate of return. You went up 100. You came down 50. You divide that by two years. That’s 25%. Guess what? I get to advertise that. I get to tell the world that I just got you. I can’t say your name, but I can say, hey, my clients got 25% over the last two years. Mutual funds are allowed to advertise average rates of return. It’s a myth. The real return was 0%, right? So one of the things I’d go back in time and try to convince myself of is do the math. You know, don’t just take their word for it. Learn and ask yourself. And maybe this is me talking to my former self here, too. Figure out what you want your money doing for you, because where you put your money makes it act different. And if it’s in a 401K or if it’s in a hedge fund, or if it’s in a non fungible token, or if it’s in Bitcoin, or if it’s in an annuity, it’s all going to act different. And that’s okay.Real estate whatever. It’s all different. And there’s no right or wrong. Every financial vehicle has a purpose. But ask yourself, does where my money lives right now align with my values? And is it helping me accomplish my goals? If I’ve got a business I’m trying to start, I’m selling widgets or cupcakes or something, but all my money is tied up into an ETF fund over here that doesn’t mature until 2040 or something. Then I’ve got conflicting interests. I’m acting against my beliefs. I don’t really believe my business is going to thrive if all my wealth is over here in this exchange traded fund or an annuity or something else that doesn’t align with my values. So point being, figure out what you want your money doing for you, and let that money leverage that money to move closer toward your goal. Starting your business, sending your kid to College, paying off your debt, whatever your goal is. So let that money align with your values. Too many of us don’t do that, which is okay. I mean, I want a six pack, but I also really love ice cream. I work against my beliefs all the time, but realizing that and then making steps toward figuring out what you want your money doing for you might be a 25 minutes brainstorming.I’d be happy to do that with folks, but it might be 1520 minutes on a Journal and you save yourself a world of hurt. Either you’re going to tell your money what to do, or other people are going to tell you what you need to do with your money, and then that puts them in the driver’s seat, not you.

It also gives them advantage to make wealth on top of your wealth that you didn’t even know existed.

That’s it, man. Yeah.

So going on to another question. Obviously, your entrepreneurial side is very business savvy. You went through the training, but it kind of makes me want to ask you the question. Did that come from a predecessor or a family member? Are there any entrepreneurs in your family while you were growing up?

Oh, man, I love thinking back over some of this, and I think all of us can look back and figure out where the entrepreneurial bug first bit us. And yeah, I guess if we dug into other family members, there were some other family members that tried it out. Try and fail sometimes, but try again. I don’t know if this would be the case with most business owners, but one parent of mine was kind of the day job, nine to fiver. The other was the serial entrepreneur. But I remember I really remember the moment when the bug really hit me or bit me. It was walking down Michigan Avenue, debt on my back, trying to figure out how we were going to pay the bills that month. Income was dwindling after College. They weren’t exactly hiring folks with my degree or my wife’s degree at the time in 2008 and I was walking into getting denied from Chase Bank and other bank teller jobs and whatever. And I just really remember thinking do I want one boss or do I want 1000 bosses, all of which I could fire one or two of and not feel a thing.And it was my wife really that kind of pulled on my ear lobe and said let’s do this thing, we can do this. So she really gave me the nitrous oxide to let that plane start running down the runway to make that metaphor even more complete. Airplanes are not efficient in the first mile or two or even half the journey. Really. If you think about it, starting a business is one of the most risky and inefficient things you can do with your finances. And just like that, I wouldn’t recommend flying your airplane to the grocery store today. It’s just not efficient. Get in your car or take a bike or whatever, but don’t fly your airplane to the grocery store. However, if you want to go long distance, if you want to go long range, the airplane will fly in a perfect straight line directly to your destination. But a car, it’s got to go up and down and left and right and north and south and stop at this red light and pull over for this gas station. That’s a very inefficient way to get across the country. And just like that, the business and the entrepreneurial spirit takes some time to get going.But if you’ve packed your provisions, you got your back stop, you got your spare tire, etc. And you’ve got the cash on hand for any emergency that might come up. Then you start running really start becoming more and more efficient. An airplane gets more efficient every mile it flies because it’s burning fuel behind it and it’s overcoming inertia. So again, if you can find ways to become your own boss and to become your own banker and to take back the functions that have been outsourced by too many of us into your life or your business, one step at a time, you figure out, hey, I can do this thing. I can become a little bit better at this money thing or I’m not afraid of this money thing anymore and it becomes fun. And yeah, I’ll use your word, man, sexy.

Definitely. So I think that’s definitely solid information. And I think in this episode you brought up your wife a couple of times and it seems like you guys had a joint journey and you guys got graduated at the same time and she’s in your left ear saying okay, we can do it. So my next question is based upon that, how do you currently juggle like your work life with your family life?

Well, sometimes the balls fall down. I’ll just be clear about that. But I’ll say one thing that I’ve really found for me, it’s a personality thing. But this book that I use, some people might also know about it. It’s called The Full Focus Planner. It’s a really cool little Journal, a little different than your typical reflect on your feelings, although I try to write some of that down in here as well. But what I really like about this Journal is that it’s got these different domains in your life and you can set a goal. I’m kind of a goal geek, so forgive me if that’s not your cup of tea, but every domain in your life I’ve got here spiritual, parent, intellectual, social, emotional, business, physical, marital, financial. So maybe put yourself down for a goal on at least half a dozen of those every quarter, every year at least. So you’ve got a marriage goal. There’s no revenue in your marriage. Hopefully once it’s that kind of marriage, hopefully not. But put yourself in the mindset that this is a goal that you are just going to be as passionate about as you are with your business, which has very acute feedback.Your business, you know, every week, every month, every phone call if you’re winning or losing, but it’s a lot more of a slow burn with your children or your friends or your marriage. And I’m certainly not an expert on this. Still learning, failing, but find a little way for you to know the mile markers, figure out if you’re moving in the right direction or the wrong direction.

Got you definitely insightful and just playing off what you said. Obviously, if you’re giving money back to a marriage and we’re talking going back to the Sally Mane and you’re giving her alimony, you’re going to have to figure out how to make that. Cut those ties as fast as possible. You’re very structured, you’re very analytical, but you’re also very creative. So what does your morning routine, your morning regimen look like?

Well, you got to keep asking, is this still working for me? So don’t take my stuff as just some sort of cut and paste recipe. But I love my mornings right now. It’s been a lot of fun. I get a lot of joy out of the time I spend. I’m kind of an early morning dude. And so fireworks. We’re recording this right after the 4 July here, guys. So fireworks last night, I was like, okay, I’ll see you guys in the morning. So, yeah, I have a great morning routine. I get up, read some scripture, do some journaling, pour myself some coffee, try to get done more before the sun comes up. And what most people can do in a day if I can help it. And then I try to work out six days out of the week and spend some time with my daughter, my wife have a little time with them, and it works right now until it stops working, then be ready to change and pivot like most things in life.

Wow. So going into that right the next question that I have. And I’ve been looking at this bookcase. And for those that are listening, he has this bookcase behind them. And it’s showcasing books. And you guys know, as much as I love books is the reason why I created the Boss Uncaged Book Club. So this next question is a three part question, right? And you can turn around and reach to that bookshelf whenever you’re ready. First part is what books helped you on your journey to get you to where you are. The second question is what books are you actively reading right now? And the third part is, have you had an opportunity to write any books?

Okay, so the first book I’ll mention and maybe relevant to our topic today, there are tons of books that influence you over your lifetime with field quote. Creativity is just for getting your sources. So I’ll try to remember at least a few sources here. But there’s a great book out there. It’s right behind me, actually. “The Bank On Yourself Revolution”. Great book for a mindset shift on how money flows and how it really works, how the wealthy are using the banking function in their life. So check out “”The Bank On Yourself Revolution” by “Pamela Yellen”. Book I’m reading right now that’s been absolutely blown my mind is “The Road Less Stupid” by Keith Cunningham. Great book on business consulting and just not being stupid, which I have seemingly a warrant to do too often in my business. And then a book I’m really thankful I got to co author is a book called “How to Be an Amazon Legend and Fire Your Banker”. It was a book on this topic of firing your banker and becoming your own source of financing through the lens of ecommerce business owners. So a lot of folks who are just blown it up online right now in a good way.How can you run your inventory through your bank rather than somebody else’s? How could you run your taxes through your bank rather than somebody else’s? How can you set up a golden parachute out of your business someday so that you’ve got a large pool of contingency cash or when you sell your business or when it finally is time to retire the business so you don’t just have all your net worth tied up in the business? So there’s a book about that, how to Be an Amazon Legend and Fire Your Banker. I got the privilege to write that with Danny Stock about a year or two ago. And by the way, I’d be happy to give that book for free to anybody who reaches out if they’re of interest and want to learn more about that topic.

Well, you got your first contestant standing up to the show right here. So obviously, I love reading books. And the list of books that you just lift off, including your book, is definitely something that I would definitely like to recommend for the book club. And having access to your book would definitely be fruitful.

Thank you. I’d be happy, too.

So with that, I mean, you’re talking about legacy, you’re talking about building wealth. You’re talking about not only building what, you’re talking about managing the wealth. So ideally, you have a strategy for yourself and for your family. So where do you see yourself 20 years from today, man?

Well, you’re right. I got to say this not your average financial planner means that because I have had the opportunity or privilege, it’s a humble honor to get to meet with people all over the world and look into their finances, to ask humbly about what concerns them, how’s their retirement account coming? I will tell you, the investment advisors, because I meet with investment advisers and financial planners to look at their stuff, too, to look at their retirement plans. And I can’t tell you, I can’t think of a single example where they were eating their own cooking, where they had their money in the same stuff that they were advising their clients to put their money into. So that’s maybe a side note or a little extra goodie here for your audience. When you’re interviewing a financial planner or investment adviser or whatever they call themselves, ask them what’s in your portfolio. Just ask them that question, see what they say. And may I see your account sheets? I’m showing you mine. You show me yours. So that’s just a side note or an extra credit to answer your question 20 years from now. Again, thank God my wife and I sat down about 1012 years ago and we said, we want to write a contract with our future.So we set up a number of these whole life policies for ourselves, on ourselves, on our other family members. We built this portfolio that grow on a guaranteed basis. And just over the weekend, I was looking at that. I don’t do it too often, maybe two or three times a year. I was looking at the portfolio, how it’s coming along? And I can see when my daughter is going to be 18 years old here’s exactly what our net worth is going to be inside those accounts, guaranteed. How cool is that? Right. And so in 20 years, we’re going to be empty nesters, likely, Lord willing. And we’ll have the chance to be doing some pretty cool stuff, hopefully for the betterment of our little circle of concern and the larger human project that we’re all on here. So it’s small or large. I think the best thing I can say is that I want to be further along on this journey of being able to communicate well with other people, to help them think different about their money, their own private personal economy and their future. I think, yes, we can vote, yes, we can influence things at that scale.But, man, the real change happens at the you and me level. And I’d love to be a part of that solution. In fact, wouldn’t it be cool? And this is written on one of my mission boards is not through my efforts alone, but what if we as a collective could change 10% of America? What if 10% of America had their own personal financial system, their own bank? What if they were doing this banking thing I’ve been describing? If just 10% of America became their own source of financing, what would happen to credit cards? What would happen to the Federal Reserve? What would happen to banks? What would happen to Sally May and her cronies? How many more marriages might we save? How many more kids could go to College if we were our own banker? The whole world would change if just 10% of America did it. So that’s me in 20 years, it’s still working on that project, still beating that drum. Yeah.

I mean, even with that, I think with that plan of strategy, I think that some of the equity that you’re saving are you going to have to buy security? Because I think the government may be looking for you at that point in time, because you’re talking about essentially upsetting the current status quo of the economy in today’s world. And that’s what bankers and the government are utilizing to self perpetuate the money that they have in the system right now. So with that, that opens a whole another Pandora’s box. Right? Is that something that you really want to go down that road and kind of see what happens, or do you have a strategy to support that fallout as well?

Well, the word that I absolutely don’t want on my gravestone is the word potential. Potential is a great word. It sounds so cool. You know, he has such potential. But a rocket on a launch pad has potential. A rocket on the launch pad has tons of rocket fuel potential take you off into space. But if 30 years later, that rocket is still just sitting there, that’s regret right there, that’s regret embodied. And so the worst word on my gravestone is the word potential. So if I can spend it, if I can spend it, I don’t mean to pick a fight with the largest military operation in human history or anything, but, hey, why not give it a shot? If nothing else, at least we fail and we get 9% of America to become their own banker. So that’s okay, too. And yes, you’re right. It’s definitely something that has unintended consequences. But better to be a part of that revolution than to be a tennis ball floating down live Scutter and ending up where somebody else wants me to be, as opposed to where I’d love to be, if possible.

Nice. So, I mean, with that, I’m still talking about legacy. And this is one of the reasons why I created my podcast was to leave behind, like, my voice and my reasoning and my thoughts for my family and for other business owners. And I wanted to commend because Breadcrumbs right. You’re doing the same thing. You just released your 200 episode. Right. Obviously, kind of like I’m in that tracking stage of my podcast and we’ve been blessed to be in the top 1.5% of podcasting. So I looked yours up and there it is. You’re right there with us as well. But you have 200 episodes. So I just want to talk about, like, why did you get into the journey of podcasting, being that you’re so influential with numbers and you understand numbers so well, what made you go into the communication space?

Yeah. How easy is it? We’ve been doing a little math on this show. How fun is it to try to do math and numbers over a podcast? It’s not exactly. Maybe it’s a secret way for me to avoid having to do a bunch of complicated spreadsheets. But if you’ll go to our show, we’ve got about two or three dozen of our episodes jam-packed full of spreadsheets in the show notes. So I actually love spreadsheets as a default. But anyway, I’d say, yeah, just commitment. I mean, you know this better than me, that it’s long persistence in the same direction, long persistence in the same direction and deciding, hey, podcasting seems like it’s a cool medium and I have a face for radio, so let’s give this thing a try. For me, it’s been a lot of fun. And as you know, it can be a great deal of fun. And unfortunately, folks are recording these on video, putting them on YouTube. So forgive me, but, yeah, it’s been a lot of fun, man. How has it been for you? I mean, you’ve made this decision podcasting as a medium and as a business model. What’s it been like for you?

It’s one of those life changing events that I wish I would have got on the bandwagon earlier, especially since I was always into media. But I was in the global media. So niching down to podcasting. It kind of it fulfilled all my requirements ten times easier, ten times faster with a lot of dedication to support it.

Yeah. Well, keep up the great work. I love what you’re doing, and I love that you’re leaving Breadcrumbs. I mean, aren’t we just living in the future where we can even have this conversation, not only with each other over the internet like this, but to be able to have this conversation with so many others listening and also for our families, posterity and more. It’s a great gift, and I hope we don’t squander it. It’s an opportunity to change our family tree for generations.

Yeah, definitely. So going into I’m just trying to think of so many different questions I could ask you. Right. And I mean, time is limited, but tools. Right. Software. What tools do you use on a day to day basis that you would not be able to do what you’re doing without?

Well, let’s just go ahead and put Excel aside, because basically that runs all the time on my computer. I’ve been really a big fan of some of these web automation tools. I’m a big fan of Zapier. You probably know Zapier. It’s a fun little tool. And I like Text Expander. That’s been a fun one, too. I read the other day. It saved me 10 hours of typing time last month. So that’s a full day and a half almost of my work. I got that time back. So Text Expander is a great tool, too. What about yourself? Tell me something. I love this stuff, too. So what do you find?

Yeah, what I’ve been really falling in love with lately is the headliner tool. And it’s a headliner, right? And in addition to the headliner is Copy Smith. And Copysmith is kind of like a new underdog on the market that uses AI to kind of artificially write content. But I love it because I could write content and I could run it through Copysmith and it could rewrite my content for me in a different parade, in a different phrasing. So I ended up with two types of copy that I could utilize two different market sectors.

Wow. Now you got my attention, man. That’s awesome.

So thinking about it, right? Let’s say I’m in my early 30s, or let’s say I’m in my late 50s and I’m listening to this podcast and I’m hearing all this insight I’m hearing about whole life. I can use my whole life as a bank. I got to figure this thing out. What words of wisdom would you give to an individual that’s eating up everything that you’re seeing on this podcast? How would you influence them to move forward to the next steps?

Well, again, ask yourself, what’s the one thing I can do with my money? Such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? I’ll say that again. What’s the one thing I can do with my money such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? Let that sink in for a minute. Where your money lives will either improve your answer to that question or will make it harder. Again, I can’t get past most people have their money tied up in their house, in their 401K. Why? Because they’ve been told to. Because that’s what they were handed when they got their day job. Here’s your 401K binder. Sign here. Sign here. Go sit in a cubicle. We’ll see in 40 years. That’s not the life I want you guys to live. What’s the one thing you can do with your money right now? Today, this moment, such that by doing it, everything else becomes either easier or unnecessary. If your money is in a whole life insurance policy designed the bank on yourself way, that’s crucial. If it’s designed the bank on yourself way, it’s unnecessary to have to worry about what the stock market is doing.I don’t even know what the stock market is doing today. Maybe it’s off today with the holiday. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. My money is locked in and guaranteed to grow for me every single year. Do I have to worry about calling up a bank and getting approved for a loan? No, I don’t. It’s unnecessary. Retirement is easier and saving or investing in the stock market is unnecessary. Do I still do it? Sure, I’ve got a little money here and there. Have a little fun. But by putting your money in something that makes the rest of your life easier, it’s just going to make for a better outcome. It makes for a more sane life. Think about it. If you’re stressing over the stock market now, what’s it going to be like when you’re 55 and you’re stressing what’s it going to be like when you’re 65? You’re no longer working and the market crashes because you still got to pull money out of that IRA for grocery using the grandkids and the markets crashing. We call that double pain, right? So if you want to think about easier or unnecessary, decide now where you want your money to live.And whether you’re 35 or 55 or any age, it’s not too late. These whole life policies are not designed with the death benefit as the primary focus, although that’s there again, you can be 70 years old and still start one of these policies. You just had someone do that last week. They’re in their mid 70s just starting a brand new policy, and they don’t have a ton of time to waste. So they just dumped it all in as one lump sum 300 boom. It’s all in the policy rate of rock and roll, and it instantly creates a legacy for their family. It instantly creates multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars that they’re going to use for real estate investing and of course, takes care of them in their older age as well. Just decide for yourself what you can do with your money so that the rest of your life is financially more solvent, easier or unnecessary.

So all that insight that you just developed and dropped on the listener, how can they get in contact with you? How do they find you on the wide web?

Well, you guys can definitely check out our podcast, Not Your Average Financial Podcast. It’s been a lot of fun and love to date you first there if you’d like. If you want to find us or meet with me. Happy to chat. I offer a 15 minutes consultation and I’d be honored to send you the book “How to Be an Amazon Legend and Fire Your Banker” as a Result of that. So you can go to bitly/quickboy, stands for bank on Yourself. So the link is bitly/ Quickboy, and that’ll get you to everything you need.

Right? So going into the bonus round, right. And I always like these questions because I know that your answers are going to be uniquely different to anyone else’s. Right. So first question is, outside of your family, outside of your direct and immediate family, what is your greatest achievement to date?

Oh, wow. The greatest achievement. I really do feel like the moments when you can say to yourself, all right, I actually had an actual thought and decided to act on that thought. That’s where I feel like achievement really happens. There’s an old quote, 20% of people think, another 20% of us think that we think, and the rest of us would rather die than think. And most of my life, I probably was in that last pool there. But it’s in those moments where I was actually thinking and crucially took action when I realized Dave Ramsey might be wrong about this whole life thing. And I took action to set up some policies and pay off my debt. That’s where I’m most proud of achievements, whatever small they might be.

Interesting. Definitely. Very interesting. So going to the next question, and again, you said Dave Ramsey a couple of times, but I have a feeling it’s not going to be him. So if you could spend 24 hours with anyone, dead or alive, uninterrupted for that 24 hours mono Amano, who would it be?

And why man Rockefeller, can I say John.D? He is still adjusted for inflation, by far the wealthiest person in America anyway, that’s ever lived by far. So what did he do? Well, he took all the sludge that the rest of the kerosene industry wasn’t able to use and coal and so forth and turn it into kerosene, which lit America before electricity. He then took the sludge from that and turned it into Vaseline and 15 other different inventions that we all take for granted today. He made the world much more efficient, whatever, beautiful, whatever, clean, whatever. And yeah, he’s got his faults. But one thing I feel like you really got right was he didn’t just do that. He lived well beneath his means. And he set up a family foundation for his whole family. And by the way, not to harp on this, but he started a whole life policy on all of his kids, grandkids, everybody. And even to this day, the Rockefellers are still some of the wealthiest in the world, and they still start policies on each one of their kids and grandkids as they’re born. But what I just would love to do is sit down with him and understand how he got that kind of mindset.He didn’t come from wealth, but he took what other people were willing to throw away and turn it into something that was extremely valuable. And that intrigues me.

Yeah, definitely. He’s one of my alltime favorites as well. So I think one of his philosophies about understanding that you can execute things by yourself or you could have your efforts executed by hundreds of people. Right. So the 1% of 100 people equals 100% of your own efforts. If you have to really rewind it and listen to it, really take that apart. And he lived by that philosophy, and hence why he is as wealthy as he is until this day, like you said, because he’s executed that philosophy.

Can you say that philosophy one more time?

So it’s essentially instead of doing 100% of the work on your own efforts, it’s to utilize 100 people’s efforts at 1%.

Yeah.

So that equals the same equal 100%. But you’re diversifying it across 100 people’s efforts.

Love that, man. Yes, I heard somebody once say, if you don’t know how to start the lawn mower, you don’t have to cut the grass. So find somebody who can do it 80% as well as you can, and then let go. Great stuff, man. I love it.

So going to the closing, man, I think this was a hell of an interview. A lot of insight, a lot of humor as well. But this is the time. You’re a fellow podcaster, so the microphone is yours, the floor is yours. Any questions that you would like to ask me?

Well, what do you see as the future of podcasting? It’s going through changes as 2021 rolls on. Where do you think we’re headed?

It’s funny that you ask that question, because I always kind of want to look at history, right? History repeats itself. So I always tell people that are listening to podcasts and they’re like, oh, this is so great. It’s so new. It really isn’t right. I mean, radio is really the granddaddy of podcasting. So look at the history of that industry and then look at XM. What happened with XM? And now podcasting is essentially taking segmentation of both these principles. And the only unique factor that’s a difference is now the general public has access to creating radio stations, creating XM radios. So the next is like, how do we scale it? Right? And I think Clubhouse attempted to do that. Now we have Facebook and we have Twitter all going backwards, considering that they all had video before they had audio. Right. So understanding how do you monetize this? And I think that’s the next phase is like looking at how was radio really monetized? And we kind of have some of that going on podcasting where we have affiliate offers and we have commercial spots. But what does that really look like at scale when you’re talking about millions of people creating all this content?How are we going to really monetize this to the bigger goal? And that’s what I’m trying to figure out. Like, what’s the next step of monetization in advertising and podcasting?

Yeah. I think money follows value. So just as you’re doing so well, just keep adding such great value to your listeners, your audience, and money follows. I heard somebody once say, if you want advice, ask for money. And if you want money, ask for advice. Keep just asking people for advice and money. I think follows you’ll give them such value, they can’t help but want to support you.

Yeah, definitely. Well, I mean, I definitely appreciate your time. I think there’s a holiday weekend technically but we both had the opportunity to have a really insightful conversation and all the Nuggets and jewels and the humor that’s you deliver is definitely well appreciated.

Let’s go for some financial independence, man. It’s Independence Day weekend. Let’s make this thing real. Let’s make it legit. Let’s make it official.

As they grant over and out.

Certified Financial Planner at Lake Growth: Mark Willis AKA The Not Average Boss – S3E21 (#117)2023-01-14T15:45:58+00:00

Executive Director Of Reconomics: Storm Cunningham AKA The Revitalization Boss – S3E20 (#116)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Executive Director Of Reconomics: Storm Cunningham AKA The Revitalization Boss – S3E20 (#116)
Generate wealth for yourself in a way that generates wealth for others and specifically generating wealth for others in a way that actually improves the place they’re living.
In Season 3, Episode 20 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the Executive Director of Reconomics, Storm Cunningham.
“Storm Cunningham is Executive Director of RECONOMICS Institute: The Society of Revitalization & Resilience Professionals, which helps ensure that communities worldwide have certified Revitalization & Resilience Facilitators (RE Facilitators). Look for the “RE” after their names.
As editor of REVITALIZATION: The Journal of Economic & Environmental Resilience, Storm tracks the latest trends and techniques in urban/rural regeneration, natural resource restoration, and resilience worldwide.
Storm is the author of 2002’s The Restoration Economy, which has been hailed by government and business leaders around the world as “Extraordinary”, “Remarkable”, “A modern classic”, “A landmark work”, “Required reading”, and “The most important and valuable business book I have read in many years.”
His second book, reWealth, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2008. George Ochs, Director of Real Asset Investment at JP Morgan calls Storm “the world’s thought leader on community revitalization and natural resource restoration” and calls reWealth: “The secret weapon…for economic recovery at both local and global scales.”
Storm’s third book, RECONOMICS: The Path to Resilient Prosperity was published in both paperback and e-book form on January 9, 2020. It’s a guide for policymakers, real estate investors, and social entrepreneurs.
From 2006 to 2009 Storm was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Seneca College (Canada’s largest college) in Toronto. From 1996 to 2002, he was Director, Strategic Initiatives at the Construction Specifications Institute, a 60+ year-old association of 14,000 architects, engineers, contractors, and manufacturers.
A former Green Beret SCUBA medic with the U.S. Army’s 7th Special Forces Group, he is an avid SCUBA diver, motorcyclist, and amateur herpetologist. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, USA.
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • What is Reconomics
  • What is Storm’s morning routine
  • What tools is Storm using in his business
  • And So Much More!!!
Want more details on how to contact Storm? Check out the links below!
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S3E18 Storm Cunningham.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Three, two, one. Welcome back to Boss Uncaged Podcast. Today’s show is going to be an interesting show, and I put this shirt on right? Because by default, you would think I’m probably talking about wealth in the sense of money and management, but we’re going to put a little spin on what wealth really is. And our guest today is a TEDx speaker that talks about understanding Rewell. And his first name is pretty cool, too. I mean, his first name is Storm. So, I mean, you kind of look at it from he’s brewing up storms in different environments to get people to really understand the world that they live in. Storm, why don’t you introduce yourself to our audience?

All right. Thanks for having me on your show S.A.

Yeah, definitely.

So I’ve been doing this focus on re for full time for about 20 years now, ever since my first book, The Respiration Economy, came out. That was the first book to document all the new industries and disciplines that are restoring our natural resources, revitalizing our communities, building resilience, all of this re stuff regeneration, revitalization, reuse, repurposing, renewal, reconnecting all the things that make places better. And so my second book came out from McGraw Hill in 2008 called Rewell. And that was more focused. The first one was more focused on the kinds of projects you can do that make a place better. Second one was my first attempt at trying to find an actual process, some way to increase the success rate of these community revitalization efforts. And that goal was finally achieved, I think, with my most recent book. Re Economics, that just came out last year nicely.

Any time I interview someone, I was getting my nickname, and I’m going to say I’m going to deem you the Rewell boss for obvious reasons. So if you could define yourself in three to five words, what three to five words would you choose?

Well, a lot of people just call me the re guy. Since everything I do starts with re, I guess I’d say if I were to write an epitaph for my tombstone, it would be what we restore, restores us.

Nice. Definitely. Very nice. So let’s talk a little bit about your history. Right. You have a military background. So how do you go from jumping out of planes and skiing? Pretty much like a special Ops, right? How do you go from being that as your predecessoing background to jumping into rewelting and that you said you’re the re guy. How did you go from that to this?

Well, I’ve always been oriented towards major transitions. I’m not an incremental kind of guy. I like to jump from one world into a totally different world. For instance, I did spend some time in Special Ops. I was a Green Beret in the army. And before that, I had spent three years as a hippie hitchhiking around the world. I graduated high school in the San Francisco Bay Area around the time where the hippie trend was at its peak and spent the next three years searching for truth, hitchhiking over to India and Nepal and all that. And within a few weeks of getting back from that, I was in the army, volunteered. So I’ve always liked big jumps. And that army experience actually prepared me for this in two ways. Number one, I was on a scuba team, and when I was down in Key West at the Special Forces Underwater Operations School, I suddenly realized I was being paid to do something most people pay to do. And that kind of spoiled me. I thought, Man, I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life being paid to do things other people pay to do. So the other thing was that because I became a diver, then I stuck with that. And about 1520 years later, a German scientist in Jamaica, working in Jamaica, was trying to invent some technologies to restore damaged coral reefs. And he needed some volunteer divers to come down to help them install these experiments on the ocean floor. So I went down and spent a week with them and actually saw places that had been totally lifeless just a few months earlier, come back to vibrant life and realized all of a sudden I’d always been a nature lover, sustainability kind of guy. And I suddenly realized, man, we don’t have to be satisfied with just sustaining this mess of a world we’ve created. We can actually restore it, we can actually make things better, we can undo the damage.

Nice. So this time travel a little bit further back, what kind of kid were you? Were you kind of like the tree loving kind of kid, or were you more so, like, just out there playing around? When did you first get this insight to realize that this may be the profession that you’re going to go into?

Yeah, actually, I was that tree hugging kid. The first obsession I remember ever having, probably when I was four or five years old, was entomology study of insects. I spent several years with that and that switched into herpetology, which stuck with me. I’ve been a rabid amateur herpetologist reptiles and amphibians my entire life. So, yeah, nature was my reason for getting involved in all of this sort of stuff. But it’s funny when you mentioned tree hugging in my early years, my parents, the storm is actually my middle name, not my first name. I stuck with it because I don’t know whether they were prescient or whether the name really kind of formed me. Because one of my earliest experiences that I remember was when a Hurricane tail end of a Hurricane came through New Jersey and my parents couldn’t find me and they were looking all over the place and they found me at the top of the Mulberry tree in the backyard, riding out this storm, waving back and forth in the breezes.

I’ve just always loved storms talk about like that. That’s some serious branding. I could visually see that. Right. So with that, how do you take what you’re doing and convert that into a business? And I think that’s like a general question. I think anyone’s listening to this is like, yes, I love nature. Yes, I want to give back. But how are you capitalizing and monetizing that?

Yeah, well, that’s actually what got me involved in this because I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart. I was involved in several nature oriented businesses back in the 80s and early 90s. And when I wrote The Restoration Economy, it was largely from a standpoint of helping entrepreneurs find a niche, find a way to actually earn a living restoring the world or revitalizing communities. So it was written very much as a business book, not as an environmental book or as an economics book. And that’s been my focus ever since. And what I’m doing now with Institute Reconomics.org is certifying people as revitalization and resilience facilitators, so they can actually either as an elected official or as a business person or as a volunteer. They can be somebody who helps facilitate revitalization, resilience restoration where they live, and they can do it as a business. Once they get certified, they’ll understand the issues well enough that they can look around and figure out where the business opportunities are. And it could be almost anywhere, depending on what their passion is. If they love heritage, they could make a living reusing renovating historic buildings. If they love nature, they could get in involved in watershed restoration for a living. Billions of dollars are being spent revitalizing watersheds and Rivers right now. That money is going into the pockets of businesses. Ecosystem restoration, fishery restoration is huge. I mean, fisheries are 10% of the entire global economy, and most of them are crashing. So there’s billions of dollars being spent reviving fisheries of infrastructure renewal. You hear that here in Washington, DC, all the time is how our infrastructure is crumbling. And we need to spend literally trillions of dollars to rebuild America’s infrastructure that we’ve allowed to deteriorate into third world conditions in many places.

It’s definitely a fascinating niche, I would think. Like, in this niche, do you deal a lot with lobbyists and politicians in that spectrum as well? Are you guiding the people that you’re teaching to communicate with these people, to kind of get them on board in their local ordinance?

Well, I do have being here in Washington, I do often get called over to Capitol Hill to work, usually with staffers who are trying to craft some bill that’s related to community revitalization or infrastructure renewal or natural resource restoration. But that’s really not how I earn my living. I really have earned my living over the last 20 years as a consultant and public speaker and workshop presenter, doing these talks and training sessions all over the world and dozens of universities all over the planet, all kinds of community planning meetings and revitalization summits and restoration conferences. And the funny thing is that for every talk I gave, I usually heard a dozen because I usually stick around for the whole event. So I’ve probably heard more stories of failure and success in trying to improve places than anybody else on the planet, just as a result of how I earn my living. And that’s what led me to write this book as I distilled everything I learned, all those commonalities, what are all the successes have in common? What are all the failures have in common? And that’s what was in the new book, Economics.

Definitely talking about, like your speaking engagements. I watched your TEDx Talk. I think anyone that’s listening to this, they may not know this perception of the other side of you, but you’re pretty humorous at times as well. Is that something that you started off right off the bat with, or is that something you grew into, into your speeches?

I grew up in England. My mother was a war bride, so she was English. And I think I kind of adopted a bit of a dry British sense of humor that comes through every once in a while. I don’t normally think of myself as a funny guy. I usually cheat and use other people’s cartoons that way. People think I’m funny, but I’m really just using other people’s skills.

I mean, even with that, at least that you have the ingenuity and the insight to realize that would be funny. And it helps break the ice to help the audience absorb your content ten times better than if you didn’t use that. So I think two to give you a patented back. I think at least at the minimum, you understand humor to a certain extent. That way you can kind of make it very translucent in your content, in your delivery, for sure.

Yeah. It makes the message more effective, but it’s also, in these times of intensifying and overlapping crises, a lot of us are losing our sense of humor, and that’s a major survival skill. I mean, if we can’t laugh at our situation, we’re probably on the way downhill.

So talking about, like, laughing at ourselves, right. Generally speaking, always make mistakes on their first bat. When they come on stage in their first early days, there’s always some historical mistake that was made. What is like the worst or the funniest or the one that is ingrained in your memory that you’ve made a mistake on stage in your early days?

Well, it actually wasn’t on stage per se. It was actually in a television interview. And my wife and I have been in natural foods and natural health. She is an acupuncturist. In fact, the name of her practice is Wellness Restoration. So there’s Wellness Restoration.com, so there’s restoration everywhere here. So one of the things we’ve done for the last 30 years is fast periodically, which we find very renewing, gives the body a chance to cleanse and repair itself, and it’s not digesting all the time. And there’s a particular fast called the lemonade fast or the Master cleanser, and it involves drinking a laxative tea at night. So you cleanse yourself very effectively in the morning, and then you drink all this salt water to really flush it out. And I had an early TV interview, and it happened to hit right in the middle of this fast. And what hit right as I was just about to start the interview, they were just about to call me on into the studio, and it hit big time. I mean, it felt like I had a Hurricane in my bowels, and it was totally taking up all of my attention.I said, Where’s the bathroom? I need the bathroom first, and ran over there, and there’s somebody in there. There was only one bathroom. And they said, you’re on. So I had to do this interview with the other end of me trying to explode. I was just in this most incredible excruciating situation. The host who was interviewing me saw the perspiration streaming down. She was trying to say, no need to be nervous. We’re just going to have a conversation here. She had no idea why I was in that situation.

That’s funny. The reality is like, your name is Storm, but she didn’t realize the storm was literally brewing inside of you, right? Yeah. Just to talk about your business a little bit. Obviously, I think you’re a very structured guy, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but from your military background and just being a Green Beret, that’s kind of like your everyday norm. So how was your business structured? Are you more an LLC, an S Corp or C Corp? And what structure do you have and why?

I’ve actually set it up originally I used the.org extension because I intended to make Economics Institute a nonprofit, but I didn’t incorporate as a non profit right away. This is about a little over a year ago. I didn’t incorporate right away because there are a lot of training organizations that are really for profits. They kind of look like nonprofits because they’re providing some educational service, but they really operate better as for profit. So I kind of left it open for a while to see how the business would evolve as to whether I wanted to stay as a for profit or switch over. And I kind of decided the only reason I would switch over to nonprofit at this point would be if I started to attract a lot of interest from donors, foundations, or private individuals said, I want to support this. I want to give you money, but you got to be nonprofit. And I really haven’t attracted any of that. It’s really been the entrepreneurs, the consultants, the people who want to build a business that improves the world in some way, who have been coming for this certification so at this point, I’ve just decided to stick with a for profit model.

Nice. So, I mean, is that something that eventually obviously, you’re talking talking to multiple people that probably want to donate millions of dollars to what you’re creating. I mean, you’re reevaluating the world at hand and you’re actually taking action towards that and you’re growing other individuals and teaching them in the same philosophy. Would you not think that switching over to a 501 C three would be probably more beneficial?

I’ve had 501 in the past, and in the absence of that kind of major funding, donation based funding, it’s more hassle than it’s worth. The accounting is more hassle. The tax situation is more hassle. It’s just so much simpler as a for profit. So, yeah, somebody calls me up tomorrow and says I’ve got $100 million that I don’t know what to do with. Could you put it to good use? Yeah, I’d be a 501 c3 in no time at all.

Nice.So, I mean, obviously, I think you’ve been on your journey for a period of time. You were talking about you started off in the military in the younger days. You were on the West Coast. You became a tree hugger per se. But in concept of someone looking at this podcast they may be seeing. Okay, well, this guy has a lot of things going on. He’s really helping the environment. Is that an overnight thing, or have you been on this journey for a period of time?

The love of nature that got me into this has been life long. I was really kind of the turning point was in the mid 90s when I realized that I really couldn’t help nature if I didn’t understand the built environment better. And I had no training in the built environment. I didn’t want to go back to school. So I figured, well, the best way to get training in the built environment would be to get a job where I learn as I go, and that way I’m getting paid to learn. And so I got a job as the director of strategic initiatives at the Construction Specifications Institute, which is a technical society of about 15,000 architects, engineers, product manufacturers, and spent five or six years there. And I decided and this is where the incremental thing comes in. I decided I needed an exit strategy because having been self employed before, I figured I could maybe last five or six years in a nine to five environment with a boss before I went totally crazy. So I needed an excess strategy and figured writing a book would be a good one, because that way you’ve got credibility.It gives you a platform to stand on, to launch into a new realm. So that’s when I started writing The Restoration Economy and the way I did that for you listeners who are interested in trying to remake themselves in some way, a book really is a great credibility builder even though publishing a book is a lot easier these days than it was in those days when you had to actually get a publisher to believe in your book so you can self publish these days. But it’s still a big credibility builder. And the way I did it while still earning a living was I’d come in at 06:00, come into the office at 06:00 every morning I’d research the book and write until 09:00, and then start my nine to five job. And that way, every day that went by, I was a step closer to my ultimate goal of freedom.

Very nice. So, I mean, part of that if you had to put a duration of time right again, the perception of being an overnight success is usually a duration of 20 years. How long have you been on this journey?

Well, I guess you could say it started that first morning when I came in at 06:00 and started writing that book. It took me five years to write the book. And when the book came out, I did exactly what I intended to. I jumped I left the nine to five job and became a full time consultant and public speaker. So you could say that five year period of writing the book was the first incremental step to transforming myself. The next was that as I did more speaking and consulting, and as I started researching and writing my second book, I started to shift my focus away from the natural side of things and more towards the community, the urban side of things. And that made sense because most of the damage to nature is being done by cities and the built environment and the infrastructure and the transportation that we use to get between cities. Really, most people these days think of me as an urban revitalization guy, but that took 20 years. Well, it took the first ten years or so for me to kind of make that shift and really get more focused on how do you revitalize a city.

Nice. And I mean, to your point about books, I’m author as well, and I had the opportunity to publish eight books. And to your point, it’s definitely ten times easier now than it’s ever been in society to create books and get books published. So I mean, to your point, I think if you have an opportunity and this is to the listener, if you have an opportunity and you want to write a book, there’s no other better time than now. Only thing you have to do is really start with a simple outline and fill in the blanks from there. So going into another question for you. Right. So obviously you had some waves in your career. You jumped around a little bit. But what you just described is how you’ve niche down like you went from this model and you thought this is going to not work, and you constantly keep reforming and niche it down till you’ve honed into your practice. Right now, if you can go back and whisper in your ears at a younger age, what’s one thing that you would ask for yourself to do differently if you can do it all over again?

I would say to build a really good network of friends and colleagues with resources so that I don’t have to do it all by myself. That’s been my biggest struggle all along, is being undercapitalized.

Got you.And I think for any entrepreneur or small business owners, I mean, I think that’s a gift and a curse, right? It’s trying to figure out what can you leverage and who can you give that to and knowing that they’re never going to be able to do it as good as you envision it. But if you get enough people on that bandwagon, the multiplication of having more than one person working on it should succeed what you’re wanting to do to begin with and in a shorter period of time. So I definitely think that that message about time traveling back and be able to give yourself that word of advice is definitely should be heed to anyone that’s listening to this episode. So just talk about your entrepreneurial insight. Obviously, now you have entrepreneurial insight. You have the entrepreneurial hustle. Does that come from someone in your family? Are you a predecessor of anyone that you were watching when you were younger and listening and seeing what they were doing? Like your dad, maybe your mom?

Yes. My father was definitely well, I could say not so much an entrepreneur at heart, but an entrepreneur by necessity. At a key point, when I was a teenager, he lost his position as director of development at a College, and he drove into looking into reading all kinds of books and newsletters on how to become an entrepreneur. He decided he’d had it with having bosses, and he ended up his books had always been his love. So he ended up starting a bookstore that was actually extremely successful. And I could see that he absolutely loved his life at that point, probably for the first time since I had known him, he felt like he was really in a comfortable place. He was earning his living just havin g fun.

So do you think that’s a factor to your current success, seeing that your dad found his eureka moment in creating a bookstore?

It was a major aspect because he was always passing on those books and those newsletters to me. So it was partly his example, and it was partly the mutual education we were getting, reading all of these things about how to be independent.

So, I mean, since we’re on the topic of books. Right. Like the Boss Uncaged has a book club, and I usually ask this question because I’m always interested in who I’m interviewing, what helps you to get to where you are. So this next question is a three part question, right. Being that your dad owned the bookstore. What book did he give you an opportunity to read in your younger days to help you get to where you are? Second part of that question is what books are you reading right now? And the third part, let’s dive into your book that you’ve written and who those books are really targeted for.

Okay. So as far as the books he read, he was a history buff. He had his Masters in American history, which I had somewhat of an interest in. But I can’t say any of the books that he was reading were books that influenced me. It really got more to that point where he decided to start a bookstore. And like I said, he shared all of these books he was reading on how to become an entrepreneur. That was the thing that really influenced me. As far as what I’m reading now, one of the good things about being I edit Revitalization@revitalization.org, which is a Journal of this whole restoration economy, all these restoration revitalization projects from around the world. It’s published on the first and the 15th of every month. And as a result of having to publish this news Journal twice a month, I have to stay on top of all of this news. And the side benefit of that is that publishers send me free books because they want me to review the books in Revitalization.

For our listeners. He’s actually not on camera right now. He’s reaching, it looks like, to the magical off camera library pulling up resources.

I do. I was going to bring out a book on blueprint for Coastal Adaptation that just came out from Island Press. Unfortunately, I left it on the dining room table because I’m reading it while I eat, so I don’t have it to actually show you. And that book really is where the big opportunities are going to be for the coming decades. Coastal Adaptation, any engineer, any entrepreneur who’s involved in some aspect of helping coastal communities and regions adapt to sea level rise and storm damage and that sort of stuff. There’s so much of this work. We need to redesign communities. We need to relocate communities. We need to strengthen communities. We need to reconnect them in ways that make them more resilient, the single largest business opportunity of the coming decades.

Well, this is definitely interesting, and I’m just recapping what you’re saying. So I guess going to the third part of that question you’ve written, at least it sounds like two or three books. Who is the target audience for the books? And if you don’t mind stating the title of those books again.

Yeah. Well, the first book was “The Restoration Economy”. And like I said, it was more for business people because it broke down all of the different disciplines and industries that are restoring our world into eight categories, four of them on the natural side, four of them on the built side. But it was very project oriented. The second book, the McGraw Hill book, came out in 2008. Rewell, is, like I said, my first attempt to try to find out what’s the process how do you actually put together all of those different projects to create that grand end result that communities are looking for, which is revitalization or resilience? And that’s the weird thing is what I discovered is that every business person on the face of the Earth knows that to produce anything on a reliable basis, you need a process. Whether you’re producing T shirts or peanut butter or cars or whatever, whether you’re a farmer or whatever, you need a process to reliably produce something that’s going to be the basis of your business. The only people who don’t seem to know that are the ones who run communities and regions and nations. Then when they say, we’re going to revitalize this place or make it more resilient, and you ask them, okay, great, what’s your process?They have none. In many cases, they don’t even have a strategy. Sometimes they’ll have a vision. But a vision without a strategy is just a Daydream. And a vision and a strategy without a process is also a daydream because you’ve got no way of actually delivering it. So that second book was an attempt to find out, is there a process that any community can apply? And I had a bunch of case studies in there of communities that had revitalized themselves in a really spectacular manner, coming back from death’s door to becoming a poster child of revitalization. But I still haven’t quite got to what’s the actual process that you absolutely have to have. And that was in my third book,” Reeconomics”, that just came out last year.

Nice. So it seems like you have a lot of systems in place, and not only do you have systems, but you’re delegating these systems on paper to make it easier for someone to replicate what you’ve learned. Right. So within your life, that sounds like a lot of work, essentially. Right. So how do you currently juggle that and your family life at the same time?

Getting up early, get up at 04:00 every morning, which I’ve been doing ever since I started writing that first book. It’s the only possible way. It’s not a matter of balancing so much as it is just making the time for what counts. You’re just not going to fit all that into sleeping late and staying up late.

Nice. So, I mean, you’re talking about your morning, you wake up at 04:00. So that goes into my next question. Like, what does your morning routines, your morning habits look like?

Well, I normally spend the first couple of hours catching up on emails and basically waiting for the caffeine to take effect. And when it’s fully effective, when I’m fully awake, then I dive into feeding that ongoing monster of revitalization that demands dozens of articles in every issue, comes out twice a month. So I get usually put out three or four articles every morning. That takes another few hours. And then I dive into the Rekonomics Institute stuff around 09:00 or so. I usually save the about the eleven to. 01:00 window for doing interviews like this one. And somewhere in there, wherever it happens to break, I go out for a run sitting in front of a computer all day long. It’s just absolutely deadly. So I’ve got to run every day to keep the physical body healthy. And then around usually about 02:00 or 03:00, my wife and I go to the gym.

Nice just to talk about like, legacy for a minute. And this particular question is all based upon currently where you are, but where do you see what you’re doing or yourself or your business or your legacy 20 years from now?

As far as the legacy, I would love to see every community on the face of the Earth have a revitalization resilience facilitator, just replicating what I’ve learned and having people on the ground to actually apply this stuff in every neighborhood and community and city and region on the planet. It’s the only way we’re going to have resilient prosperity for all.

That’s definitely a serious answer when you really think about it. To have a legacy like that, obviously it would multiply, right? It’s not just a linear thing, it’s about more so an explosive expansion over the next 20 years. Definitely. Interesting. So obviously, what tools like as far as software are you using currently right now in your business that you would not be able to do what you’re doing without?

Well, I create my own podcasts right now. I haven’t been doing interviews like you’re doing. In fact, the first 40 or 50 of podcasts are just audio versions of my books, which were never created in the past. And a lot of people would much rather listen to the books than read them. So that’s what I’m doing there. So I use Audacity to edit the audio on those. I also create videos which are part of the continuing education for the people who are enrolled in Economics Institute. And I put out a video every month. They’re usually about 30,40 minutes long. And I use “Movavi” for editing and creating my videos, which is, I think, probably the best video editing tool out there. And most of the stuff, my videos are usually PowerPoint based because that’s how I’ve been doing my talks for the last quarter of a century. So basically, I create my videos the same way I created my talks. I use the PowerPoint, and then I just do voiceover for each slide, and then I convert the PowerPoint into a video and then use “Movavi” to Polish it.

Got you. Very nice. So I’m going to like final words of wisdom, right. For you. I want you to think about the person that’s going to be on the other end of this podcast or maybe ten years from now listening to this interview, what words of insight would you give to someone to establish the definition of what Rewealth is and how they can use it to grow into their own personal successes?

Rewealth, basically, is simply generating wealth for yourself in a way that generates wealth for others and specifically generating wealth for others in a way that actually improves the place they’re living. So it’s restoring nature, revitalizing neighborhoods or whatever. But it’s all refocused. And if you’re really going to make a business out of this or a consulting career out of this or speaking career out of this, I would say the advice is to recognize that we’re in a world as is obvious if you read the newspaper headlines of overlapping and continuously intensifying crises and the demand for both revitalization and resilience is going through the roof. So find some way to address that. There are tons of different ways. It doesn’t have to be as an architect or an engineer. It could be as a lawyer, it could be as an elected official, whatever. But learn more about the underlying problems and learn, most importantly, about the solution, how to put together revitalization and resilience initiatives, which you can do from any aspect.

So how can somebody get in contact with you? Are you on social media? Do you have a website like the email address?

Yes, storm@recomics.org is my email address. If you go to Stormcunningham.com, which is my public speaking site, I’ve got links to everything I do there, revitalization@revitalization.org, reeconomicsinstitute@economics.org. I’m pretty active on Twitter and LinkedIn. I’m on Facebook, but don’t like Facebook, so I don’t use it that much.

Got you. So I got a couple of bonus questions for you. My first bonus question is, outside of your family, what is your most significant achievement to date?

Boy? Well, I guess simply finding a way to earn my living in a way that produces downright ecstasy. At times, it’s not just a matter of satisfaction. I mean, there have been moments like I was down in the beautiful island nation of Dominica, one of the most gorgeous places on the planet. And I’d rented a car, was doing work down there and driving around one morning, got to the peak of a mountain overpass and was looking down on this gorgeous Valley with the sparkling ocean in the background. I got out of the car, I was standing there and suddenly realized, man, I’m earning my living here. I’m in this absolute paradise and I’m earning my living. And this overwhelming feeling of ecstasy just washed over me and said, man, I’ve got to do more of this. I’ve got to have this experience as often as possible. So I guess that’s what I’m most happy about.

I just think, like, your illustrative narrative is so depictive. If someone cannot actually feel your passion and actually see what you’re doing, as you said, it’s very euphoric for you. So it definitely oozes out of you. So I would think that when you’re teaching someone, if they don’t feel this vibration from you, then they’re missing something in their soul. I mean, honestly, I definitely appreciate you for this. So going into my next bonus question, and I think it’ll probably be pretty interesting coming from your diverse background. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone, dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

Well, I guess I would have to say Gandhi. He’s probably the most courageous person who ever lived or certainly one of them. And he achieved a level of change that virtually nobody had ever achieved before with virtually no resources whatsoever. So that combination of effectiveness and courage was just unparalleled.

Definitely. And I think one of Gandhi’s quote that ”always resonates with me is an eye for an eye will make the world go blind”. And it’s just like when you think about how simplistic it is, but how meaningful that statement really is from that time period until today’s world and into the future as well. I could definitely see you sitting down, having a conversation with Gandhi would definitely be pretty interesting to watch that happen.

Yeah.And one of his other quotes would be the change you want to see. And that’s kind of related to a slogan I’ve been putting out in my talks and workshops for most of the last 20 years, which is what we restore, restores us, what we revitalize, revitalizes us, so we become the change that we’ve created.

Wow. So I think this was a definitely enlightening episode. And going into closing, I always get the opportunity, whoever I’m interviewing opportunity to ask me a couple of questions. So the microphone is yours. Do you have any questions for me?

I guess from the standpoint of your focus on entrepreneurs and opportunities, I would say, are you seeing any kind of increase, any trend related to social entrepreneurs and people who are in businesses that are helping to revitalize neighborhoods or create more equitable economic growth?

That’s a very interesting question, because obviously, when you think about economic growth, you kind of want to see it physically tangibly. Out of everyone that I’ve interviewed to the point I have not really seen, I think you’re probably the first person that I’ve Dove down this particular road with. Now, obviously, there’s a lot of political entrepreneurs that are out there that are striving for economic greatness, but they’re not diving into it onto the level to where you’re trying to reevaluate the world around us. So to answer your question, I have not seen that until you.

Oh, all right. Well, maybe you can change that.

Yeah. I mean, definitely. This is one of those episodes. It’s kind of I always say if I had opportunity to be a fly on the wall versus doing the interview, I would take heed to the information that you’re delivering because it’s such powerful information and it’s a legacy based information. It’s not just about making money or getting wealth. It’s about protecting the environment that we live in. And how can you do that? And you’re growing people and you’re educating people in that space. So I definitely commend you for that.

Oh, thank you.

Great. So if you have any other questions, this will be the time. If not, then we’ll go ahead and close out.

No, I think that’s it for me.

Well, I definitely appreciate you taking time. I’ll just schedule today. I think you definitely delivered a stormy hot full of information that anyone that’s listening could take pieces of this and execute them or at least reach out to you on how they can further execute and help reevaluate theirs. Neighborhoods.

Thanks, S.A. Great interview. Appreciate being on your show.

Great S.A Grant over and out.

 

Executive Director Of Reconomics: Storm Cunningham AKA The Revitalization Boss – S3E20 (#116)2023-01-14T15:23:56+00:00

Founder & CEO Of Deep Sentinel: David Selinger AKA The Founder Boss – S3E19 (#115)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Founder & CEO Of Deep Sentinel: David Selinger AKA The Founder Boss – S3E19 (#115)
 
I have no regrets looking at my life and my career because the one thing that I did that I really credit my parents with and I love having learned from them is that every one of those big decisions I made, I made with my heart.
 
In Season 3, Episode 19 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the Founder & CEO of Deep Sentinel, David Selinger.
 
David Selinger was an early employee at Amazon, working directly under Jeff Bezos. He led the R&D arm of Amazon’s data-mining and personalization team. Later in his career, he co-founded Redfin (now a multi-billion dollar company) and founded RichRelevance, a company that offers personalized shopping experiences for large retail brands, including Macy’s, Barneys New York, Office Depot, and others.
 
Now he’s beginning his new venture and inventing the next BIG thing in home security.
 
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • What is Deep Sentinel
  • What is David’s morning routine
  • What tools is David using in his business
  • And So Much More!!!
 
Want more details on how to contact David? Check out the links below! 
 
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S3E19 David Selinger.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. Today’s show is not only just a special show, it’s going to be highly interesting because I was looking doing my due diligence and I’m looking at this man’s resume and I’m looking at all the different things I had an opportunity to done in a short period of time. He’s been on this planet. And not only is it amazing, but I think the best way to summarize it would be to get him a T shirt that says, hey, Silicon Valley, I’m your wet dream. Literally. Absolutely right. So I’m going to introduce him as the founder Boss, because again, literally one out of three positions he’s held. He’s been a founder. I mean, he was the co founder of Redfin. He actually worked on some RND stuff with Amazon, like with the right hand man of Jeff Bezos. And obviously he’s now the founder of this cool but interesting software hardware platform. So I want you to kind of tell us a little bit more about who you are. We’re going to dive into where you are right now. We’re going to dive into everything. It’s going to be a pretty decent, solid episode. So without further Ado, the floor is yours. David, tell the audience a little bit more about you.

Hey, thank you for having me here. I’m excited. I feel humbled by the introduction. If anything, I think like a lot of people, you live your life not really thinking about other people. Or I guess maybe you do think about other people’s perspectives, but just 1ft after one step after the other, 1ft 1ft. And so to have somebody else kind of take a look at your career in your life and come up with their own conclusions is kind of a unique perspective. I guess I could start with the beginning, which is I grew up in a little town in Oregon. I would call it something of a redneck town in Grants Pass, Oregon. I actually grew up in a suburb of Grant Pass. If you know Grants Pass. It was a big town. It has 25, 30,000 people. And I grew up in a town 5 miles out called Merlin that had 300 people and had one stop light. It was that kind of a town and it was a great upbringing. Both my folks are physicians and I got exposed to technology really early, which became this eye opening moment. I was six years old and my mom bought our first computer. And I remember it was a big deal. She brought it home and I felt just engaged and enthralled in a way that I had never done in my life again. A young kid. But I remember this feeling of just this is what I want to be doing. And I wrote a letter at the age of six to the head of admissions at Massachusetts Institute Technology, and I said, that’s where I want to go, you guys do technology. I want to be in technology. That’s going to be the coolest stuff ever. And as you observed, I became a founder boss in my career. And that happened very markedly because of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While they did respond to me when I was six and send me a care package, they also responded to me when I was 18, letting me know that I was not admitted for admission to their school. And I had to go find somewhere else to go to school. And I ended up going to Stanford, which as a backup is, wow. I mean, who gets to say that? And I was actually really bummed at the time. That’s such a crappy thing to say. But I really was. I really wanted to go to MIT, but then Stanford became just amazing foundation for the rest of my career. It brought me down to California, which is where I live now. It brought me into this world of technology entrepreneurship. Not just technology, but technology in its ability to change the world around us. It was so eye opening. I loved everything about entrepreneurship when I went down there. In fact, I remember again, coming from a little town, I just really didn’t understand what business meant. And so in that first year, I remember there was when the.com was blowing up. And for those of your listeners who are old like me, the people that are actually watching will see I don’t have any hair as an indicator of my age here. And what I do have is all Gray. I went to Nest Gate, which was kind of the big, hot company at the time.

Jesus yeah.

And I wasn’t an employee. I just wanted to figure out what they did at Nest Gate. And so I drove there and I would park in the employee parking lot, and I would tailgate. And for those of you that have never worked at a corporate place that has key card access, tailgating is when somebody just looks like they know what they’re doing and they walk into a secure door after you. So I would literally tailgate employees into Netscape and just walk around the halls and look at what people were doing to try to figure out what was this thing. How did Netscape, as a browser and as the gateway to the Internet, become what is the people that work there do? What was their daylight? And I just roamed to the halls. I poked my head into conference rooms, looked into people’s offices, listened in on hallway conversations. And that was honestly my very first introduction to Silicon Valley Valley, as you said, since then, that’s been my career. I was at Amazon. I started the AI and research team there. We can talk about that for a bunch of time. That was an amazing experience. I started Redfin with a couple of friends as a moonlighting project that we did for almost a year and then started a company called Rich Relevance, which we just sold a while ago. And then about five years ago, I started These Sentinel, which is my current company, and as a security company that uses AI to protect people in their homes and protect people in their businesses.

Again, I think you’re so modest in what you’re saying. This man, he said he moonlighted and created Redford. Now, anyone that has a real estate listener, and we had a whole real estate month last year on this particular podcast. Every real estate person essentially knows what Redfin is, but he moonlighted and created it. Right. Not only did you moonlight and create that, but you were essentially doing ads. And I just want to talk about the ads for a little bit as well, too, as with this story. But going back to what you said earlier on about you gave up MIT and you went to Stanford.

I didn’t give up. They gave up on me.

Yeah, right. But you’re major, you studied robotics, like all the damn things on the damn planet. Again, you’re in the middle of nowhere. Why did you get into robotics? How did you even know robotics was a thing for you to even dive into?

Yeah. As a kid, I grew up on five acres of land in Oregon. And so I would run around and I had a BB gun and a dog and just did a bunch of mechanical stuff, meaning I would build stuff in a tree for it. I would build a conveyor that would move things. My sister and I would kind of build the tree for it. We’d want to have some conveyor that would move things from one place to the other or a pulley system. So I was really into mechanical stuff as a kid, and robotics combined my passion for computers and mechanical stuff together. And then as I learned when I got into studying it at Stanford, I learned that that also added in artificial intelligence and data, which ultimately actually became the platform of my career, which is data and AI machine learning. Robotics is one of these things. And it was in the early 2000, which is when I was studying there. It was really in its infancy. t was not really known. What could it do? The way that we all understood robotics at that time was an arm, right? So like a mechanical arm that could pick things up and move them. And my uncle had bought me one of those when I was a little kid, and all it did was just pick something up and move it. I can play with that for hours and hours and hours. I remember the remote controls. You’d have two joysticks. And the thing that took me forever to figure out was how to open and close the hand, and you would twist one of the joysticks and it would open and close the hands. I thought that combination of movements. And if you control that with a computer, think of all the things you could do. And again, at the time, the number one thing that people were doing was manufacturing cars. It was on manufacturing lines. And now, fast forward, here we have robotics in our computers. We have robotics in the computer that are sitting in front of us. If you use VR, that’s using robotic sensors to be able to detect your orientation and where you’re looking in real time in order to present the VR world to you in Pleasanton right now, which is the town that I live in, there’s a company that’s doing a beta test that will deliver your groceries. This little, like, cooler on wheels will drive to your house, and then it’ll play a little musical tune and send you a text message and let you know that your groceries are sitting at the door. It’s so amazing where it’s gotten to. But that vision of watching Star Trek and Star Wars as a kid was really what inspired me to study robotics.

Yeah, I’m just hearing you. I mean, you could still see that twinkle in your eye like a seven year old kid, just happy as hell talking about robotics. So that’s one of the things that probably led you to get stumbled across your next career step, which was essentially Amazon. So I want you to talk about the research and development Department, because that’s what you’re talking about. Are you talking about machine, machine learning, talking about AI, artificial intelligence, but all these different things? And then you’re presented with this opportunity at Amazon.

Yeah. So I was working at the time, I had just started a division of a company called Dutch Bros. Which is a coffee company based in Grants Pass. They’re now public. It’s an awesome company. So I had partnered with the founders there, and I was doing some tests on their website. I was running their website and ecommerce and technology, and we had found these ads on the Internet that Google allowed you to advertise. This is just, like, super obvious now, but go back if you can, especially for your younger listeners. I’m going to ask you to put on your dinosaur glasses. Right. So pretend you’re a dinosaur and you’re seeing the world through my eyes. And it turns out very few people were advertising on Google was not even public yet. They had just launched a search engine. And their advertising products, nobody was using them. They weren’t this massive BM us that they are today. So there’s your dinosaur goggles perspective. And I started selling coffee makers on Google Super high end ones that again with the dinosaur lines. It was really hard to find them back then. Right. So if you were a coffee aficionado and you did not live in Los Angeles, Chicago or New York, you could not buy a high end car. You have to fly somewhere or drive somewhere to get these high end coffee makers. So I put them on Google and Holy crap, within moments, I’m selling dozens of them a day. Here I am, this kid. I happen to have access to supply of these things. I’m buying ads for $0.50 on Google. People are paying $0.25 to $0.50. I have to pay them for every click. And people are buying one out of every two times they click on that ad. So I’m paying a total of $1 to sell someone a $500 coffee machine change. I’m making $$150 to $250 every time. And that was fine. So I was making enough money that I was driving around in my little BMW all around Palo Alto, hanging out with my girlfriend, not doing anything. And Amazon was doing interviews, and I was bored. And so I went and I interviewed with Amazon, and I was like, hey, I’m Dave. I basically put my feet up on the table in the interview, like. And they’re like, Whoa, that’s a pretty aggressive attitude for a lot of the kids at these College interviews. They’re showing up in a suit. They’re like, nervous in their chair. And here’s this jerk who shows up with his feet on the table, tell me what you got. And they were kind of taking aback. I, of course, did okay on the technical part of the interview. And then I was interviewing with this guy named Neil Roseman, who was the head of consumer at the time at Amazon. And I said, yeah. So I don’t really think I’m not interested in coming to Amazon because here’s what I’m doing every day. And I buy these clips for $0.50. I sell them a coffee maker. I make a couple of $100, and I just make dough every day, and I don’t have to do anything. It’s sweet. And Neil leans across the table and he goes, Wait, walk me through that one more time. You pay $0.50 for a click and you sell them at $250 to $500 coffee maker. Half the time I was like, yeah, all day, all day. His eyes lit up. And that became the origins of a project at Amazon called Ribbonba that became the first hundred million dollar a year run rate customer of Google. We taught at Amazon. We taught Google how to do what’s called programmatic, which is computers bidding, advertising. And I ended up falling in love with the opportunity to take these things that I had learned at my little kind of scale and blow them up and turn them into a real platform at Amazon. And they moved me and convinced me that I would be able to have a major impact on the world, and it would have a major impact on me. And frankly, they were right. I really look at my career as that decision being the foundation of everything I’ve done since then. And I feel very blessed to make that decision because I was pretty cocky, as you can tell at the time, and I almost didn’t do it.

Well, I mean, just telling your story, you would think someone would hit that level at Amazon and they’ll be done right. But we’re talking about, like, that’s the dawn of your career. And in that dawn of your career, where we are right now, as far as your story goes, you got kind of bored or you wanted to have, like, a side hustle interjecting Redfin. How the hell do you work at that level? Amazon is not to say like a mom and pop around the corner. You’re working at the height of most people’s careers. And then you said, I’m going to start something completely different, completely new, completely out of the box. I want you to kind of talk about that story. Why the hell did you jump into the real estate software platform?

Yeah, I used the term egotistical already and cocky and that those would be the two words I would use to describe the answer to your question. And I had made enough money that I was thinking about buying a house in Seattle. And I had this experience where I just realized, Holy smokes. This is a smoke and mirrors game where the real estate agents are tricking people into buying houses that they probably shouldn’t buy because there’s a disparity of information. There’s an inequality of the amount of information the real estate agent has versus the customers. And that information is supposed to be public record. What houses are for sale in what area, how much did these sell for? What’s the liquidity of the area. All that information is registered with your County Registrar, but it’s just really hard to get. And so I actually went to the county, and I said, I want to get access to this data. And they gave me after I think it took a week, they gave me a CD Rom, and again, dinosaur goggles, here CDROM is a little laser disk that had all of the sales data. And you had to know then how to load it up on your computer. You then had to read it in very cryptic format, and then you could get access to this information. And I realized, Holy Moly, if everybody had access to this, I could understand it. Can you imagine how that would change, how people would buy real estate? And I met these guys that had the same idea, and they were doing it on they built a Windows app, which you’d have to download, and it didn’t have any distribution, but they had this really neat idea to take that information and put it on the map so you could see all this information on a map. And we fell in love with each other. And within a couple of weeks, we decided to build this as an Internet website. And this is at the beginning of Web 2.O, and this is interactive websites. No one had really built functional interactive websites. Maps that you used back then. You’d click and you’d wait 20 seconds and a new map would appear. So there wasn’t this kind of concept of click and drag that just didn’t exist at the time. Again, massive dinosaur goggles. We spent the next eight months building the first interactive map for the internet and we put all the real estate listings for Seattle on there, all of the historical sales for Seattle on there. And we would even draw the outline of the lots on this map and it blew people’s mind. When we launched. We launched, I want to say fall of 2004. And just to kind of give you a sense of how novel this idea was, we launched and we’re like, sweet, here we go. We had 4000 unique visitors on that website the day we launched. Literally zero visitors beside us and our family the day before. 400,000 people came to the website the very first day. I was up till 03:00 in the morning, of course, and I work late and we push go and I go to bed and I get up in the morning at 630 or seven, I’ve got 3 hours groggy beyond all. I go to my coffee shop, I get my coffee and I look around and I’m like, Whoa, everybody’s got their laptop. Whatever. Let me drink my coffee. I drink my coffee, I walk over behind some people and Holy crap, everyone in the coffee shop, they’ve got Redfin.com open on their browser showing everybody. Look at this. This is Bill Gates house. Holy smoke, did you see how much he paid for this? Let me see how much my neighbor’s house and so forth. And it was just all people spying on their neighbors. By the way, nobody bought any houses for the first period of time. They were all just spying on their neighbors. But it opened my eye to this incredible experience of data need to be in the hands of people. And when people are empowered, it creates all this opportunity. I mean, think about now, you can go on to Zillow or Redfin now and you can see what they think your house is worth and they’re smarter than most of the real estate agents out there and they have a really informed perspective of that’s all based on data. They analyze what all the sales are in your neighborhood and they present that to you. That wasn’t even an idea 20 years ago. And so that to me again, kind of looking at it from a career perspective, that was one of the most magical moments for me because no one had ever seen anything like this before. In fact, the headlines of a lot of the newspapers that wrote articles about this, have you ever seen this kind of fly by real estate experience? Nobody’s ever seen anything like this before. And that actually became the inspiration for Google Maps and Apple Maps that we all now use. Every single day.

It’s crazy. I’m hearing you tell this story, and it’s so profound for the listener. I really want you to kind of. And I’m going to do a quick recap. Right. He started off with robotics, and then he got into research and development at Amazon. And then from there he was on board. I’m just going to go ahead and create some real estate thing. He’s just out of nowhere. And then the story progresses. And then people that know about online, like online shopping, they may be familiar with Overstock. So that’s like the next part of your adventure. How the Hell’s you go from selling coffee to being Amazon, being so profound, jumping into real estate. And then now you’re at a retailer, online retailer, which essentially could be viewed as a competitor to Amazon.

Yeah. So I only spent about a year in Overstock. I went there as a favor to a friend to help out with a project that turned into, like I said, a whole year. And it was a really unique experience. Overstock is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. And I’m not a member of the LDS Church. I’m not Mormon. And so it was a really weird experience for me socially. Salt Lake City, for those of you that haven’t spent much time there, has the opposite distribution of political views of every other city in America. Most cities in America have something like a Bell curve, right. Whether you’re Democratic or Republican, you’re probably actually really close to your neighbors. Maybe you vote this way and this way, but you’re generally kind of pretty close to each other. And Salt Lake City is what we call in statistics, a bathtub distribution, meaning that the middle is actually almost vacuous, it’s empty. And you have all these people that are very far. Right. That a lot of people know about. This is the folks that are in the Church and they follow the guidance of the Church. And the interesting thing about Salt Lake City specifically, though not the rest of Utah, Salt Lake City also has this incredibly Liberal chunk, but they’re not near to each other. They’re very disparate. And I had my very first experience there. I went to go again. I drove there with my, I think, at a Nissan Pathfinder at the time. I drove there with my Pathfinder, and I parked it in this garage across from the Church. And I went into a coffee shop at Coffee came back, the garage was closed. It was 06:00 on a Saturday. And they closed for Sunday services early, which is understandable now that I understand kind of the dynamics of the Church a little bit better. I did not understand them at this time. There wasn’t a phone number to call. There was no way to get my car back. So I go to the guy next door who runs a tattoo shop. I walk in and I’ve got earrings. And so he could immediately identify on this path of distribution that I didn’t know existed in Salt Lake City. I am over here on the left side, like, this guy’s not a member of the Church. He’s this guy. And I go, hey, my car got stuck in the garage here. Do you know how to help me get out? And he goes, Those effing churchgoers, they shut the garage down. And I was like, oh, no, I’m not mad at anybody. I just want to get my car back. And I remember for the ensuing kind of nine months to a year I spent there, that was a pretty defining characteristic of the experience was there are people way over here and there are people way over here. And I’ve always kind of prided myself on being somebody that can bring people together of differing views and can listen to all perspectives. And that was a really neat experience for me in the sense there was some career things that happened there. But I think the number one thing that happened for me personally at that moment in my career was really challenging my belief that I could listen to people who disagreed because I had never been exposed to people that really disagreed so fundamentally. And I still think about that to this day. The number one thing that I take from that is the ability to listen to someone with whom you vehemently agree is really unique and really difficult and really precious.

I think that’s a solid segue because we’ve been talking about all your successes and we’re talking about these household names and these pedigrees. Right. So my next question is going into what you ended on that last note with. It was like, in this journey so far and we’re only still in the beginning of your journey. Right. What hurdle did you really have to overcome? When was that moment of, okay, I want to give up or this sucks. Did that ever happen in those first couple of years?

All the time. That’s the story. I’m sure you know that’s the answer, right? I mean, there are people where they glide through, right. And things are awesome pretty much the whole way. And I definitely was not one of those people, I can tell you that for sure. I’m very self-critical. And so that I’m sure doesn’t help with that in terms of that perspective. One of the stories I like to tell about failure and turning failure into what I think failure is intended to be, which is a lesson to learn from, is the invention of Amazon advertising. And so Amazon advertising is a 31 and a half billion dollar business unit at Amazon framing that 31 and a half billion dollars a year Amazon makes from Amazon advertising. And this is Amazon selling ads on the Amazon website. In 2002 or 2003, I was running an experiment which used algorithms and data to determine what would be placed on the Amazon homepage. And there have been a bunch of different experiments like this. Jeff Bezos was a huge believer in using algorithms to make these types of decisions and personalizing it. So every person got something unique on it. Again, we’re at the very beginning of this trend of the use of artificial intelligence for this at Amazon. And so I was doing some pretty fundamental research. We were testing what was called a Bayesian network to predict what people would want to buy. That was kind of the state of the art at the time. I was collaborating with a bunch of professors. One of them was down at Oregon State University and he was kind of seen as the pinnacle in this area of Bayes nets. That’s just an esoteric term to mean you use probabilities and you chain probabilities together to try to figure out what someone wants to buy. And so we built this thing that we actually patented it. It was an amazing engine that could do this type of math in real time every time you loaded the Amazon page fast and it would predict what is it that you want to do? You just watch TVs or look at TVs. Let me show you the best TV that you can buy for your money. You just looked at Harry Potter books. Let me show you the most recent release for Harry Potter books. And we spent probably six months building this thing and we had sold it up the chain. I was going to stake my career on it because my team was an RND team. We hadn’t really shown any value yet. And I was going to show the executive staff, look, here’s this thing that we built, we had a whole bunch of ideas. We built all this infrastructure, we built all these algorithms. Now we’re making money for you. This wasn’t a low stakes project. This was the entire budget of my multimillion dollar a year cost team to the executive staff. This is how we’re going to make money. And Bezos had bought into it. And my entire kind of command chain was waiting. We launched it. We looked at the first week of results, and my team came into my office and I still remember the team lead, this guy named Pat. And Pat was kind of ringing his hands. He goes, Mr. Sally, I’m really sorry. I have really bad news. And as a boss, right stomach, but steel face. Cool. Tell me what the bad news is. Let’s deal with it. This is going to be something we can handle. The system doesn’t work. It sucks. All of our results are horrible. Not even down a little bit. We were down astronomical amounts. It was like 30% loss in revenue from the home. It sucked. Everything about it sucked. And again, I kind of staked my career on this thing. And so I said, okay, well, can we take a little look at the results? And sure enough, everything sucked. So I said, okay, let’s do this. Let’s absorb this piece of information. Let’s all go home early today. We work super hard on this. We work for six months late nights. I said I had stand up meetings, meaning the entire staff meeting at 06:00 P.m. Every day because half the staff would work until midnight every day. And then we would have a staff meeting at 09:00 A.m. To kick off the next day. That’s how late we were working on this project for six months. It was a marathon effort to have that kind of effort tank this hard. It needed to step back. And obviously, I’m telling the story to you guys already know this is like a Disney story. You already know the end of the story is okay. The characters will end up okay. I get kissed and I wake up and I turn into a Princess. So sure enough, I wake up the next morning and I still don’t know what I’m going to do. This is one of those moments. I think this may be the moment that you’re looking for here. I promised my team we are all going to go home and we’re going to come back the next day with fresh minds. And I am expected to show up with some better answer. And I don’t have it. So again, I do my routine. I get up, I go get my coffee. I was walking to the office at this time, which was awesome, by the way. Walking time, amazing. Just cleared my head every day. And Seattle has six months out of the year that are the best weather of any city in the world, six months out of the year, where their suicide rate is higher than a lot of other cities, which is not so positive. And I’m affected by seasonal affective disorder, which is why I don’t live up there anymore. But it was one of those OK time. So it was good. I’m walking. It’s beautiful. I’m clear in my head. And so I at least come in, not down. I come in with a plan. And my plan was let’s look at this. Let’s look at the data and let’s take our time. Let’s not jump to the conclusion. Let’s look through this. Every line, every line, every line. And let’s try to figure out if there’s any insights, any light at the end of the tunnel. And so I sit down with the team after an hour of just I think I brought food into by the way, food helps brought Donuts, actually, if I recall correctly. And so not a good suggestion, but I brought doughnuts and we sat down, we spent an hour, we worked our way through it. And what we found was in all of this pile of trash, it was a golden nugget. And the golden nugget was that one of the pieces of content that we showed to a tiny fraction of the customers were these ads and Amazon had this rogue Amazon team that would show Amazon credit card ads to a lot of Amazon customers or not to a lot, actually, to a very, very small few, because they did not have the support of the executive staff at the time. And that piece of content blew it out of the water. That piece of content had profitability. That was, I want to say, like ten to 20 times higher than any other piece of content. So if you just looked at a TV and I could sell you a $2,000 TV pretty confidently, it was still better and more profitable for me to show you in that. And so we ran another experiment and we tested that just to see if that hypothesis was right. And Holy smokes, it was super right for certain chunks of customers that we could identify. Using this Beijing network approach, we could find content that was way more profitable. It just wasn’t doing what we thought it was going to be. It wasn’t selling you a TV. It wasn’t selling you Harry Potter. It wasn’t telling you about Amazon’s new clothing line. It wasn’t selling you DVDs and CDs and music and stuff like that. It was showing you an ad. And so I presented that to Jeff Bezos, and he hated it. He thought it was the worst idea ever. But when I showed him the data and I told him the story of how this was entirely based on experiments and the data supported it, he said, run with it. And now fast forward almost 20 years. It’s $31.5 billion of revenue for them.

Just hearing you tell that story, I hope mailing you a Christmas card every single year. Just saying thank you. Because obviously you’re talking about a third of the revenue share coming in from just like the ads, man, which is utterly damn remarkable, right?

It’s huge.

It’s massive. It’s massive. So going into, like, I’m listening to your story and I want to kind of continue adding these puzzle pieces together, and I want to jump back into the beginning, right? So as a kid, you kind of grew up in the middle of nowhere, but you understand technology, but you have a hell of an entrepreneurial insight and hustle. Does that come from any parent or Guardian that you could remember growing up as a child?

Absolutely not. This is one of the things I talked to my folks about. I love being an adult, able to have conversations with my parents because the ability to ask that type of a question, like, where did this come from? What happened? How did you feed this? I have kids now. How should I help feed my kids passions that are different than my own. How do I do that in a way that I can still inspire them by what I do, but not stifle them? Every parent sucks at something, right? We all know that. But they did some stuff that was really remarkable given their background. They come from a hyper career, conservative backdrop. My dad’s family had emigrated from Austria during World War II just in time. My dad’s family and my family were Jewish. So leaving Austria just at the beginning of World War II was a life saving decision for them. And they became doctors. And that was kind of the traditional immigration get an education, become a doctor or a lawyer, save your money, don’t get credit cards, and then buy a house. There you go. There was a cookie cutter blueprint. You followed that. You gave that to your kids, and then your kids would be happy. My mom’s family very similar Chinese immigrants. They were landowners and nobles in China, but then very poor when they came to America. I’m going to tell you, they had a laundromat and you’re going to say, okay, right? They did. They had a restaurant. Yeah. We had a store in Chinatown in Philadelphia. My great grandmother ran that store until she was 98 years old and until, like three months before she died. That is my family. That is what I grew up in the opposite of like, take big risks and be an entrepreneur. But there was an element of entrepreneurial support from the Chinese side. And so I think that’s where it came from, was that my parents were very conservative. They never took any risks with their money, but I wanted to. I grew up being a risk taker and being excited about doing stuff that broke the rules. The first thing I just talked to my parents about this, like two weeks ago, that really showed how much I broke the rules. I stopped going to school in high school before noon my sophomore year, as soon as I could drive. I just stopped going to school in the mornings. And I would skip my first three periods pretty much every day. And I asked my parents, like, you are such bad parents, how did you let me do this? And they said, well, your teachers seem to be okay with it because I talked to my teachers and I made sure I did all my homework and I made sure they understood the concepts that they were teaching. I just didn’t want to be at school. And my teachers were really amazingly supportive of this, too. This is one of those things where growing up in a small town, I think, really played into my favor because they cared about me. They knew me by name. They knew that whatever they saw something in me that I didn’t see at the time. And they let me get away with this stuff that I don’t know that I would say it was good, but it fueled my passion for breaking rules and doing good stuff by breaking rules. Because, for example, one of my first periods was physics. And I would skip physics every day. But then I would read about advanced physics and I would come back to the physics teacher after school and talk to him about the theory of relativity and theory of quantum theory and try to understand the actual underlying concepts. And so his name was Todd Roy was the teacher. I still remember his name and he was baffled by me. He didn’t get it, but he supported it. And he said, as long as you show up and talk about stuff and you’re really learning, I guess it’s okay that you skip and I won’t Mark you absent anymore. But please don’t tell anyone that I’m doing this. And I just made that deal with all of my teachers. And I got away with, again, breaking the rules and achieving a new plane of performance by breaking the rules, which as a parent, my gosh, I don’t know that I want to encourage anybody to tell their kids to do that necessarily. But somehow my parents were okay with that and they learned to live with this crazy risk taking son that was fundamentally different than them.

Wow. So, I mean, on the flip side of that, you alluded to obviously you’re a parent now, right? So how are you managing and juggling all the things that you I mean, obviously with your career?

Poorly.

Well, let’s talk about that then. You’re saying poorly. How do you view it as being poor?

Dude, I try so hard. I don’t know. I don’t know. If you ask them on Sundays, I’m sure they’d say I’m a good dad. And on Sundays I’d say I’m the worst. I will tell you this, though. I make time for being a parent, and I think that’s one of the most important things. And I prioritize being a parent and I listen. Those are probably the three things that I think I do well. Now, if the output of that is good or bad, my God, any parent would tell you, I don’t know if I’m doing a good job or not, but those three things, time, priority and listening. And so, for example, my older daughter, she’s a drama kid. Again, as 180 for me as you could be. She sits in her room and she draws. I suck at drawing in every possible way. And she draws for hours every single day. She’s so creative. She’s had the ability to draw and think of designs and think outside the box and present characters that you would never imagine at a level of depth that has always been incredible. She’s a performer. She dances, she sings, and all those things I suck at. And so again, time, priority and listening. I try to listen to what’s important to her. I try to understand the things she likes Sims, and I could listen to her describe those characters. She listens to audiobooks. She has probably 30 books that she listens to. She has eye problems, and so she can’t actually read very well. But she listens to an entire novel every three days. And she consumes, on average, three to five new novels every single month and loves the characters. She could tell you back stories that she’s made up for all of the different characters that she listens to. So I listen to that. Then I prioritize. I make sure that when we do our budget every month, we have enough budget. I would not doubt if at the age of 13, she is Audible’s number one customer in the history. I’m not even kidding. It is astronomical how much money she spends on Audible. And I prioritize it. And that’s okay because that is the thing that drives her brain. So I listen to what’s important to her. I prioritize it as it relates to time and as it relates to money and as it relates to listening and as it relates to supporting her and letting her room look like crazy, crazy, crazy. And then I spend time with her. I sitting on her bed where she feels comfortable to listen to her. So I don’t know if I’m a great parent, but I think those are the three things I think about. The other one that I think about, too, which you alluded to, is I work. I’m very fortunate in my career that I’ve made enough money that I could kind of bounce around. And probably not in California because gas is almost $40 a gallon here. I literally can’t fill up my truck, by the way, just for the record, you know, like credit card companies, stop your gas fill up at $150. I have an F 350 and it cost $250 to fill up my truck now anyway. So I couldn’t live here without working. I could live almost anywhere else in the United States without working for the rest of my life. But teaching your kids the importance of work, I wake up every morning at 06:00. I’m working when they wake up. I’m working when they get home from school. I’m working when they get home. But I also make time. I have dinner with them every single night. I’ve done that for the last ten years.

Wow.

And finding that kind of rigorous definition of priority and the importance of work, I think that’s also another important thing that I try to model for them.

Wow. You’re talking about your daughter being a voracious reader. Right. And I don’t know what your answer is going to be as far as, like, your reading regimen, but I mean, obviously, you’ve dibbled and dabbled in so many different spectrums of expertise to where are you getting information through reading or are you getting information through Osmosis? Let’s talk about that for a minute here. What books are you reading?

Wow. So I’ll tell you again, another unique moment in my career. My freshman year at Stanford, again, I came from a small place. I thought I was pretty smart. I had one regional math number one in the entire Pacific Northwest. Oregon, Washington, Idaho, numerous years in a row. So I was pretty full on myself when I got to Stanford. And I got humbled Quicklike. And there were kids that had already taken three years of calculus. And so I was really good at the basics, but I hadn’t had the exposure that a lot of the kids that went to Palo Alto High School had had three years of calculus. My high school only offered one. You couldn’t have three years if you were the smartest person in the world and you went to that high school. It wasn’t there. And so one of the classes I took my very first year at Stanford was speed reading. And if there’s one class at school that I could point to and say that just fundamentally changed the shape of my arc, it was speed reading. It wasn’t my calculus class. It wasn’t my physics class. It wasn’t my computer science class. I had already taken three years of Stanford computer science by the time I got into school. So my computer science classes were fun, but I’d already done most of that coursework. The theoretical side, at least. And that was another thing my parents did awesome because they supported me doing that. They sent me off to College level courses starting in high school and the end of middle school. And so I was really lucky with that. But I took speed reading. And what speed reading taught me was that consuming information is not about consuming all of it. It’s about finding information in the data. I mean, if you look at a news article, how much of that information is really important? And the teacher I remember this the very first day the teacher crushed us. Okay, here I am. I’m your professor today. I actually got a degree from a Liberal arts school out in the Midwest. You’re probably smarter than I am because you all got in Stanford. I didn’t get to Stanford, and we all laughed, but we all thought, yes, we’re smarter than you. And this guy’s like, okay, here’s a newspaper article. Read it and then answer questions for me. And we all did that. And we all got them right. We’re so smart. I didn’t remember this. He then says, okay, here’s a longer article. You have 30 seconds. Everyone read it. We all failed. I haven’t read this article either. Ask me any question from the article. Every single one write on a full page article. Why? Because he knew where to look for the information. He had read the entire article in 30 seconds because he read in depth the first paragraph. He then read in depth the last. That was the next thing he read. He went straight from the first paragraph to the last paragraph. So he knew the preamble and the argument, and then he knew the conclusion, and then he read the first line of every paragraph of the story. So then he knew the arc of the trajectory. That’s pretty much all the information. If you have 30 seconds to read something, that’s a pretty darn good way to do it. And so you’ll see, behind me, I have a stack of books and stuff like that. I read every single one of these books, but a lot of them I’ve only read for five minutes. I’ve read the entire book in five minutes by using that methodology that he taught me, which is you have to relax your brain for just a moment and convince yourself that if I read differently, I can actually consume almost all of this information, but not ever absorb all of the data. And the difference between information and data is really fundamental. Again, a lot of these books I have only read for five minutes, but I’ve read them cover to cover. I read the first paragraph or a couple of paragraphs of the first chapter. I’ve read the entire introduction. Most likely I have read the first sentence of every chapter. I’ve probably read the first paragraph of every chapter. I’ve probably read the last paragraph of every chapter. And I’ve probably read point sentences that align with the arguments that were introduced in the first paragraph of the last paragraph of every chapter. Again, as ridiculous as that may seem, it’s less about what one book or one thing have you read that really changed you? For me, it’s the way I read that I find is really unique. And I tell people that sometimes my employees are people that I’m mentoring and they’re always blown away because the question is like, what should I read? And my answer is, I think that’s a very hard question and everyone’s going to give you a different answer. What you need to be able to do is to read everything quickly.

Damn, that’s like a mic drop moment. Like, we get into podcast, right? Move on. That’s it. That was the final take away everyone. But in reality, just hearing that information is phenomenal, right? I mean, you pretty much have seamlessly told us a systematical way to read data really quickly to get an overview and take away the key takeaways without having to read all the insight information between the lines, which is fucking phenomenal. I’m sitting here, like, trying to pick up my jaw off the damn floor.

Well, I appreciate it, man. I can remember. I’ll give another just a visual example for people. One of the other things this teacher did, and I should remember his name. I feel horrible for not remembering his name because I remember the way he looks and everything he did.This one day he had us come in and he had us bring a piece of construction people like, you’re such an idiot. We’re in College, we don’t have construction paper. Construction. So we brought in a piece of construction paper, and he had us cut out a hole that was half an inch by half an inch. And he said, I want you to be able to read an article. This is probably like the third week or fourth week. We were already kind of impressed by the guy. He’d already proven that he was smarter than us in this realm. And he had us read an entire article through this entire half inch by half inch hole. And again, once again, we the smart Stanford kids thought we were going to be able to do this. He had already taught us a couple of his tricks, and he was able to do it very differently again, because it was so precise about the way that you move it. How do your eyes move across an article? Do they move side to side? Do they move top to bottom? And what he taught us to do is also to control the way our eyes move. When we read, he taught us that on average, the average person does this. Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce. I’m sure if you think about the way you read, there’s something about that. You bounce from one word to the next and you hesitate. So the first thing you taught us was how to move left or right without hesitating. And he just made us move this paper left. Don’t move. Don’t slow it down. You can’t stop it. You just need to keep going. Never stop. Never stop. Never stop. And after about two weeks, three weeks of doing that, forcing yourself not to let your eyes stop, you’re able to do it. Holy crap. Holy crap. I’m reading three times faster. Word for word. I’m reading three times faster. I haven’t even changed my consumption. The next thing he taught us was he took that same piece of paper, and we’re not allowed to move side to side at all. Top to bottom, you can’t move side. No side to side movement, top to bottom. And we did that for weeks. You can imagine these kids are taking super esoteric classes on hypothetical theoretical physics. And then you have a guy move your paper to the bottom of every day for three weeks. But, man, it is life changing. The way you consume information crazy.

That leads me into your current path of where you are right now with deep Sentinel. Right. I’m going to do a hypothesis is right. And I want you to kind of take this at face value. Just me outside looking in. Right. You’re into home security, right. And again, you started off you had a real estate side real estate aspect. So through that data, obviously, you can kind of see where you can plug in security. Then we fast forward to about roughly 2016, when you started the founding of that company, and shortly thereafter, two years. Then Amazon buys out Ring, right. Which is essentially in the same spectrum as space. So I want you to talk about that journey collectively. You’ve collected all this data. You’ve created systems to collect data. So you can kind of see data. And obviously you’re reading ten times faster than the average human being can. How did you kind of, like, finalize to where you are right now with such a dynamic hardware that is essentially attached to a system to where people are watching live? And then they’re saying, hey, leave my box, stop stealing my shit. Stop where you are right now. I want you to kind of, like, depict that because, again, for the average person, like, hearing this is like, what the hell? How the hell I can’t keep up. But you’re there.

Yeah. So deep Sentinel. I’ll just do the 30 seconds on Deep Sentinel. What Deep Sentinel is, is if you imagine your Nest or your ring cams, your Arlos attached to a super hyper intelligent computer that has an AI that can tell when there’s a problem, that AI then tells a guard in real time within seconds that they need to be intervening and talking over your two way audio. And the guards do it. So everything that you kind of envisioned you would be doing when you bought your Nest or your ring, and you realize, until you realize that you’re just overwhelmed by the alerts and you turn them off, everything that you initially imagine, we make that happen. We have built the entire system end to end so that our guards are able to prevent crimes. And the reason I did this is one it uses AI right at the heart of how we do this, as we built a really unique machine learning artificial intelligence that in real time looks at every single video feed and is able to analyze within microseconds whether you are doing something suspicious or not. And that’s number one. And that makes it so that we can do this in a cost affordable way. Because as you would probably guess, having guards watch your property, whether it’s your business or your home, is astronomically expensive. It starts at like $10,000 a month. That’s the starting point, right? That’s like if you walked into a car dealership and they’re like, yeah, so our cheapest one is $120,000, but that’s just for the first year, right? I mean, just, Bam, the cost of an average house within two years. So that’s number one is it uses this AI to make it accessible. Now, it’s not cheap, right? Deep Sentinel is more expensive than a ring or a Nest, but it is way less expensive than having a guard watch your property all the time. Number two, and this is really kind of the process of how I got here is that it’s important for your listeners that are watching the video feed here. You’ll see that I’ve got a bunch of books behind me. About a quarter of these are on parenting. And while I say I’m failing miserably, I try really hard. I read a lot about parenting, and one of the most important things I’ve learned about parenting is that creating a sense of safety is game changing long term. I’ve seen that in the positive sense, and I’ve seen that in a negative sense. My wife and I work with two foster kids, and we have for the last 15 years, 20 years. And we see what the lack of safety that they felt in their childhood, how that affects them even to this day and doesn’t let them go. It doesn’t allow them to feel safe and experiment. It doesn’t allow them to love in the way that a lot of the rest of us are able to feel love. And it changes that. And as much love and as much support as I provide them, he can never make up for that missing moment, those traumatic moments for them early in their lives. And then with my kids, I see and hopefully in a positive sense that when I do create safety for them, they are able to branch out. They’re able to take risks. They’re able to learn on their own in a way that lessons that I couldn’t teach them, lessons that they can only learn from their own failures and their own expressions. Safety is a fundamental building block to me, not only of a family, but then of a society, of a city, of a community, of a country. And it’s, I think, one of the key missing ingredients, I think in America right now that we are as a culture not sure what the role is of our law enforcement. We as a culture individuals, I’m sure, are very confident in your view of what law enforcement is. But we disagree like we as a country don’t have a common understanding of that. We don’t have a common understanding of how we talk about politics. We don’t have a common understanding of how we talk about money. And having a place of safety allows us to have some of those dialogues that are important, some of those dialogues that are uncomfortable. And the more safe someone is, the better able they are to engage in the ideas of someone else with whom they vehemently disagree. And again, kind of going back to the Salt Lake City experience, I was only able to listen to people on both sides because I felt safe in myself. I didn’t feel threatened by people that presented it, a very conservative agenda presented by the LDS Church. I accepted it, and I believe it, and I support it. And I believe that they believe it. And I believe that they’re good people. And I wasn’t threatened by the people that had tattoos and smoked cigarettes and drank coffee at 9th and 9th in Salt Lake City, in the district where all the Liberal people live. And that safety, to me is so fundamental, so deep-set. And we believe that everyone deserves to be safe. And we found a way to give that to people that they’ve never seen before. So we have customers every single day at Deep Central. And this is why I do it. They email me and say, I slept last night for the first time, feeling safe. Can you understand how important that is to me? How important it is to my wife, how important it is to my family? And even if that’s because I’ve made their business more safe, that trickles into your family because you’re staying up all night worried about are people stealing the electrical cable out of my trucks? That’s my livelihood. That’s how I paid for my kids to go to school. That’s how I pay for our food. Are people stealing the catalytic converters out of all my cars? Are people stealing the RVs off my RV law? Are people stealing my employees? Cars are homeless people vandalizing my storefront, breaking in my front door. Are they just terrorizing my employees? So my employees are all quitting, and then I have to hire new employees, or I have to show up and open every day and close every day. Those are all things that create stresses for people that we don’t need, and they’re all preventable. But what we realized at Deep Sentinel was that no one else was providing that safety. We were preventing maybe a false sense of security because I have cameras. Oh, look, there’s a video of somebody stealing my catalytic converter. What are you going to do with that? You’re going to feel bad for yourself. Maybe you’re proud you have this video for a second, but then you still don’t have a catalytic converter, and they still come back and steal it again next week and changing that equation. That’s why we do what we do. And again, it builds off the technology background that I have. But I decided when I started this company, my wife and I sat down with the kids, and we decided that whatever I did next, we wanted it to be our legacy as a family. We wanted it to be our contribution that had a bigger impact on society. As proud as I am of everything else I’ve done, I wanted to do something that I felt really good about modeling for my kids. Not just hard work, but that if you do hard work, you can really influence the lives of people around you.

Yeah, I think that’s phenomenal to back that up, too. I mean, doing my due diligence, I watched some of the YouTube videos, and it was one video that stood out to me that was, like, really cool and really awesome. Was like, a lady got out of her car, and the security people were like, hey, can we help you with something? And she was like, hey, I just want to read you a thank you card for Christmas. And she’s up in the camera, and she’s like, security guard, could you read it to me? And she’s like, thank you for protecting me. And it goes back to what you’re saying. So, I mean, obviously, not only are you doing it, but you’re spreading that information through a hardware device, which is kind of phenomenal. You’re building a whole community of safety through hardware, which is something that people don’t resonate with. And I think it kind of goes back to you having such a profound connection with robotics in the early days to where you bring it forward. Now you put in the human condition on top of it, which, again, most people, there’s a disconnect between both sides of the coin. And you have that synergy.

Which you are in our office. Five years ago, when we were building that first version of the software, we talk about how can we create an emotional connection to a piece of hardware? And it’s really hard to do that. It’s really hard to do that. People say, I love this thing for a little while, but then it becomes very transactional. And we wanted it to not be transactional. We wanted it to be truly an emotional connection to something that meant this is a part of my life, it’s a part of my livelihood. And so when we designed our hardware, one of the things that we put on it, I’ll hold it up for people that are watching, but we had this red ring at the top of our camera. So our camera has two rings on it, which kind of signifies it’s got two things going on. It has audio and video, and it talks to you. And so we made this to look kind of like an eye, and it has a red ring that spins around it to tell you that there’s someone watching. And that’s exactly what we do. So when you have in hardware world, we have this thing called an out of box experience where what is your first five minutes left? Because that’s going to set the platform for what are your expectations for this thing for the rest of its life? And so part of our out of box experience is that you put the battery into our camera, you hang it up on your door, and then the red ring comes on, and then you wave to it. And when you wave to it, it says, Hi, this is Victoria at Deep Sentinel. I just wanted to say thank you for being our customer and trusting us with your safety. Is there something I can do to help you right now? And that for everyone else. When every other device you’ve ever installed, you get on your phone and you’re kind of looking at your phone, and that’s your out of box experience. Ours. The key thing was I want you to look up. I want you to look up from your phone, and that physical motion, and then that interaction is what differentiates the whole experiences. Instead of it being year crunched over looking at your phone, I want you to open up. I want you to look up. Maybe this like an over exaggeration, but kind of like the voice of God kind of coming down just a different thing. And for the religious listeners, please, like, I don’t mean that in a dispassionate, but that kind of like out of body experience where you’re reaching out beyond your home. That was what we wanted to create. And every one of our customers has that experience that you’re saying that this is different. There’s something about this that is not like anything else that I’ve ever interacted with.

Well, with that, let’s talk about final words of wisdom. Right. So I think your journey kind of talks to multiple different people. You’re talking to potential customers that are looking for that level of security. You’re talking to that young kid in the Midwest that’s into robotics and trying to figure things out. And you’re also talking to that highly effective, highly motivated VP or executive team leader right now. What words of insight would you give to them when they’re hitting these hurdles, how to push forward and continue on their journeys?

Yeah. So, man, if there’s one thing that I like to do when you got to boil the whole set of a career into one thing, one of the things we didn’t talk about where all my missed opportunities, I had an opportunity to join Sean Parker as the first Vp/president of Facebook, period, full stop, Bam, talking billions of dollars I left on the table. And so there’s a way to look back on your life and on your career that’s full of regret. And the reason I look at those moments and I have very little, if no regret looking at my life and my career is because the one thing that I did that I really credit my parents with and I love having learned from them is that every one of those big decisions I made, I made with my heart, and I made a couple where I didn’t I made a couple where I tried to follow money or I tried to follow career. And those are the ones that I regret. And now having the benefit of years between me and those decisions, I don’t regret them in the grand sense because I learned the lesson that you shouldn’t follow path for title, you shouldn’t follow path for money. I don’t think now if you can’t eat, one of the things about the Jewish religion they taught us very early on was if you can’t eat, you can’t sleep, you can’t breathe, you always listen to those. And so I know there’s people in that situation. But speaking once you’re past that, once you’re at the point where you have this flexibility to make decisions and listen to your heart, and you can choose between making $300,000 a year and doing something you hate and making 200 or making 200 and doing something that you love and making a million dollars a year, because those opportunities are out there. Right. Those are out there every single time that I listened to my heart and I did what was important to me, important to my family. I don’t want to live every day like I’m dying. I don’t think that’s a healthy perspective. But if I live every day and I ask myself if I were to die tomorrow, would this be the decision that I wanted to make? That I think is a healthy perspective and that is a perspective that I have very few regrets. And even with X amount of money or Y amount of money, I love every moment of my life and I love every decision that I’ve made. And I feel like I’ve learned and I’ve grown and I’ve grown closer with my wife. I’ve grown closer with my family. I have connection with all of my staff and my company. We have very low employee churn because we aspire to connect with each other at the level of the things that matter to us because we are all doing something that matters to us. And I think that if you can stay true to that from beginning to end of your career as much as possible, whether you end up here or here, I think you’re going to end up at the right place.

That’s a profound statement. And it kind of makes me like I’m just going to jump the gun with my next question is usually as a bonus question, but with you ending with that such a profound statement. My next question is if you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be? And why?

My grandma? The reason I say that is because I missed a couple of opportunities. I was really career focused when she passed away and I missed a couple of opportunities to go hang out with her a couple more times. And so by the time I told her about my wife and that we were going to get married, she was in a coma. Gosh, that’s such a personal answer, though. But it is true. She’s the one person that I could have gone to visit one more time and I didn’t. And she’s so different from me. I had a lot to learn from her. She’s all artsy and flowers and she wore a bonnet to Church every day. And this is my mom’s mother and she would call us and tell us how the pastor said how pretty she looked and that was her life. She loved that. And again, it’s the opposite of me. I’ve got Star Wars stuff on the wall behind me in computer science and AI books, but I loved it and I wish I would have gotten 24 more hours with her. The last time I spent real time with her, I took her out on the Rogue River in Grants Pass, Oregon, and we went on the jet boats there and she had such a blast. And we took a couple of pictures together. And she’s the one person that I have other relatives, too. But she’s the one that I was kind of the closest to that I didn’t get that last day with.

I think based upon the stories you was telling and earlier on, you was talking about your daughter and her creativity, it sounds like you have somewhat of a reincarnation of your grandmother living with you growing up.

You know what? That’s a neat perspective. I never thought of that. I will think about it that way. I think going forward. Yeah. She’s awesome. She challenges me every single day when I wake up. That was a little bit I don’t think you’re probably looking for more of a career answer, but that’s my honest answer.

I think your transparency is a breath of fresh air. So I think your answer was the answer that we needed here. Definitely. And I think you brought up Star Wars kind of this closing out with, like, a more bonus, funny side of things. It’s if you could decide who would win in a chess match between Yoda, Professor X, and Tony Starks, who do you think will win and why?

Yeah, I’m tempted to say Yoda right, because I think he’s got everything it takes. But I actually think Yoda would actually play the chess match as a larger strategy to create trust with the people he would lose intentionally, not in a way that was obvious to anybody else, so that other people would give him information that’s his entire kind of Feng Shui with the universe is that he’s very comfortable. He was very comfortable dying because his death was a part of a bigger journey. That would be the most direct response there. And then the person that I would want to win would be Tony, because I think of Deep Sentinel. Tony is the model of Deep Sentinel. Deep Sentinel. We have a statue of Iron Man in our office. We have a six foot tall statue of Ironman. When you walk in, the first thing you see is the hand like jewel pointed at you. Because Tony Stark embodies who we want to be. We want to be funny and personable and approachable and human, and at the same time, we want to be intelligent and driven by technology. And then the third thing is that we’re the best of both of those worlds. And that’s what Iron Man really was right to me. I think that combination of computer and human, Jarvis and Tony together, that’s who I would aspire to be. That’s who I think would win the match.

Wow. It’s phenomenal. I definitely appreciate everything that you brought to the table today. It’s one of those things that eye opening is refreshing, is insightful. So going into closing, I think we’re overtime. But if you want to, we can kind of just push it a little bit longer. I’m giving you the microphone. You’re the host of Boss Uncage. In this journey. In this conversation, are there any questions that you would like to ask me?

Oh, man. Well, I mean, look, I opened up a lot in terms of my life. I gave a lot of perspective there to benchmark me against your other guests. Tell me the things that you thought I did incredibly well and the things you think I did incredibly poorly or things that you think I would benefit from, given the experience of all the thousands of other people you’ve interviewed, what’s something I could learn about.

Man, it’s just so interesting hearing you speak and obviously listening to your career path. And to your point, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people at this point in time. So it’s kind of hard for me to kind of put a direct comparison between you and anyone else. I mean, I’ve dealt with multi millionaires and I’ve seen the great opportunities. But I think as of right now in this podcast, I would think your delivery and your profound history is kind of unmatched at this point, to be honest with you.

What can I learn, though? Tell me, what is the topic that you’ve talked about with another boss that you think gosh, this sounds like something that Sally would find super interesting and exciting and an opportunity to grow.

I think off your conversation beforehand was just talking about like NFPs to a certain extent. So I think with your knowledge and your know how have you touched into that space? I mean, obviously, understanding analytical data, understanding AI, understanding robotics, going into NFT is a whole another platform, a whole another world. The meta verse is uniquely different. So have you jumped into that space? I know you understand it, but are you eventually planning on diving into that space?

I am learning about it right now. I have one investment in this space and I have a friend who’s a developer for NFTs and I am literally like wrapping my brain about around it right now. I had dinner with some friends two nights ago, one of whom invested really heavily in NFTs and the other one is a complete disbeliever. And we had a long two hour conversation about this. I think I’ll tell you my view on NFPs and what I’m trying to figure out, which is how do we make this a non luxury thing? How do we make this something where it’s not Gwyneth Paltrow buying it, but it’s you and me trading baseball cards on the street corner or on the bus? I guess I don’t even know kids ride busses to school anymore, but on the bus on the way to school, right again, I don’t know how old you are exactly. For me, it was garbage bail kids and then magic cards in high school. And how do we make it more like that? Where there are ten cent cards and there are five cent cards and then there’s trash cards and right now NFCs are all 5000, 10,000, $50,000. Who really wants to spend $5,000 on a digital thing? That could go away tomorrow and has no tangible value. Who has that liquid cash to do that? It’s truly a luxury couture product. And is there a way to make that something you and I can just hang out and riff on?

I definitely agree with you in that space, that spectrum. But I think your background and having that analytical data like that insight, like you said earlier on, you figured out 90% of what you was doing essentially with Amazon in the beginning, completely failed. But you found that one little puzzle piece and that one piece grew and it grew into a $31 billion industry. Right. So what in the NFT. Space based upon what you know, and I think that’s the next adventure. Right. How do you bridge these two things together? You have the insight, you have the data, you have to know how, but to the general public, they still even know what the hell NFT is or even how to download NFT or how to purchase NFT. What could you do in that space to kind of help that transition?

I will think on that question. It’s been awesome getting to know you and answer all your questions. Man, I’ve enjoyed this a lot.

Yeah, likewise. For sure, man. And again, I don’t want to suck up any more of your time. Like I said earlier on, I think you and I could probably talk on and off for two, 3 hours end up being like a Joe Rogan experiment. It’s a good way to segue out at this point. Again, I appreciate your time. You’re busy schedule everything that you’re doing, and again, you’re not just developing and creating. You’re also giving back to humanity to another level, to where I think once people realize that and they start to come to fruition with it, by all means, they’ll be thanking you for sure.

Man, I would love that. That’s what we’re trying to do and it’s what drives us. The woman that you mentioned that holds up the Christmas card. That’s what I think about all the time. We have customers that do that every couple of days, and it’s what drives me. It’s a huge motivator.

Wow. Well, this is final note, Dave also known as the founder boss. I appreciate everything you brought to the table today, man.

Thank you so much.

It’s been awesome estate S.A, grant over and out.

Founder & CEO Of Deep Sentinel: David Selinger AKA The Founder Boss – S3E19 (#115)2023-01-12T03:06:42+00:00

Founder and CEO Of VacMobile: Jennifer Sparks AKA The Vaccination Boss – S3E18 (#114)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Founder and CEO Of Vacmobile: Jennifer Sparks AKA The Vaccination Boss – S3E18 (#114)
Do not give up. If you have a dream and you have a vision and you know that the world is going to be served by what you’re doing.
In Season 3, Episode 18 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the Founder and CEO of Vacmobile, Jennifer Sparks.
Jennifer Sparks is the Founder and CEO of Vacmobile Corporation.  She has been successful as a marketing and communications professional with agency, corporate, government, and non-profit organizations.
Sparks graduated Cum Laude from the University of Chicago with a degree in European History. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Paris, France. She earned her master’s degree from Northwestern University.  Sparks began her professional career working at Young and Rubicam advertising agency in Chicago.
Sparks later served as New Mexico Governor Richardson’s Public Information Officer for the 89 school districts managed by the New Mexico Public Education Department.  Sparks was the creator and producer of a popular family travel and recreational segment for New Mexico’s NBC affiliate show, “Good Day New Mexico.”
From 2012 to 2017 Sparks continued her career as a public relations and marketing consultant and legislative advocate doing work for Habitat for Humanity International, the Pew Center for the States, Save the Children, and the USDA.  After moving to Georgia in 2017, Sparks served as Director of Marketing and Communications for a Georgia-based healthcare IT company, Clearwave Corporation.
After moving across the country, as a parent of three children and stepmother to another son, the paper management of vaccination records was remarkably challenging.  Sparks vowed to bring vaccination records into the 21st century.  In April of 2020, she formed Vacmobile Corporation, a Delaware Corporation, and filed multiple patents for her innovative suite of vaccination records solutions. Vacmobile is a developer of globally scalable solutions to securely manage digital immunization and testing records.
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • How did Jennifer come up with the idea for Vacmobile
  • What is Jennifer’s morning routine
  • What tools is Jennifer using in her business
  • And So Much More!!!
Want more details on how to contact Jennifer? Check out the links below!
Mention the podcast to receive your first month’s licenses free!

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

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Welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. So this episode, I think, is going to be a very fruitful episode for business owners in the sense that the person that I’m interviewing right now, I would make it easy for me to give them a particular nickname. So I’m sitting here and I’m looking at her bio, and I’m looking at the history, and I was like, what the hell am I going to name this woman? So I thought maybe I could call it a multilingual boss because she speaks four languages. I was okay, maybe I can call it a historian boss, because that’s what she went to school for. Then I was okay, marketing boss, PR boss, producer boss, the political boss, right, the health care boss. And then finally I decided I’m going to call her the vaccination boss. And by all those bosses, I’m sure the listener is kind of like, what the hell are we about to listen to? So Jennifer right. I want everyone who’s listening. If her last name does not spark something in you to be motivated and do more with your life. Jennifer, the floor is yours. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what we’re talking about today?

Well, thank you so much. I am so honored to be here today with all of you. I am Jennifer Sparks. I am the CEO of Vac Mobile Corporation. And it’s true the road to get here has been a little circuitous. But you know what? I think that is actually what makes a great leader is people who’ve had a lot of different experiences. So I’m happy about where my journey has taken me. But what I’m doing right now is actually transforming Vaccination records digitally. Vaccination records are really stuck in the 19th century, and I say the 19th century because they’re still accessed predominantly on paper and in person. And you really can’t say that about very many things in our lives anymore. We live in a digital world. So it really is surprising when you think about the fact that when you get a vaccination record, often you are getting it from a doctor and they give you a piece of paper. And then even if you upload that through a portal, like, say, for a school or something, both you started with a paper record, and the person on the other end is printing it out, and then they’re looking at it.But there’s nothing really digital in terms of the whole process. And that struck me as really needing a change. So that’s what I’m working on. The digital transformation of Vaccination records. All Vaccination records, not just covert records, but the pandemic came along, and suddenly we had to focus specifically on the COVID Vaccination record, because that particular record, we handled differently in this country than other records for the past several decades. Since we’ve been giving shots routinely, since the late 60s, early 70s, we’ve been giving like 1617 shots routinely for zero to 18. And then all of a sudden they did it differently with this Vaccination record. So we had to come up with some special technology just for that card, that handwritten paper card that everybody’s been getting if you got the COVID vaccination.

So I think for the listener is listening. She talks so profoundly about Vaccinations because that’s like the space that she’s in. But on this show, I like the time travel back. I want to be able to tell your story, tell your journey. I want the listener to be able to be like, I can do what she’s done if I just do a little bit more. So just take it back. How did you even figure out or decide to become I think it was European history. How did that even come to fruition?

Well, I’ve always been passionate about history. I’ve always loved history. I don’t know how or why, but as a small child, I stumbled into the library and found that to be one of my most favorite places to be. And I have always loved history. So that was actually just a no brainer when you would go on those field trips and everybody else would be goofing off and playing around and everything. And I was always the one that was like a couple of rooms behind because I was actually reading something and didn’t stay with the group, you know what I mean? What happened? So I always loved history. I loved just digging into what drives people, what motivates people. And I think that’s actually been really relevant in terms of understanding how to create products. Right. Because it’s the same thing. Right. We just keep repeating, we go through cycles. Right. And history repeats itself. And so I think it’s important, honestly, to look forward, you got to be able to look backward.

Wow. That’s definitely insightful to even hearing you speak about it. It seems like if you were time traveling, you were able to talk to yourself in the past and say, okay, everything that you’re doing right now is going to come 20 years, 30 years, 40 years down the road. You’re going to be able to use it. So. Soak it all in. So let’s go back a little bit further. Like, we know that that was more like your College days. So what kind of kid were you? Were you the kid that was walking around picking up rocks in your pocket? Were you the kid that was more TV? What kind of child were you?

I was definitely the kid that was the class clown. I was a kid actor. So I was doing performances. And that continued all the way through childhood, high school, College at the University of Chicago, was performing in the Chicago professional theater scene. So I want my Fulbright for my movement and creativity. So I definitely have been a very creative person and a person that was into performance so I’ve been communication has been my thing. Storytelling, that’s my thing. I always had one.

So I guess that’s pretty much how you got into production to a certain extent and becoming a producer and TV as well.

Yes, absolutely. I had a lot of fun creating producing pieces called The Family Travel Minute, which was all about family travel and recreation, which was what actually brought me to Taekwondo, a family Taekwondo class that I was covering. I was doing a segment about it, a family Taekwondo class. And my son really loved it because the kids used to come with me when we would shoot some of these episodes, and the kids came with me. So we ended up enrolling all of them into Taekwondo. And then one day it was my birthday, and he was having a competition, and I said, his name is Benji. I said, Benji, go get a goal. Go get Mama goal. And the Taekwondo master turned to me and he said, you don’t tell him to go get a goal. You go get your own goal. Matter of fact, you go get your own black belt. I’m like, oh, I feel so bad, so embarrassed, ashamed. So then I did I did go get my own black belt. And that was another really important part of my journey that I want listeners to know, like, if you want to dig deep, do some martial arts and go all the way to the end, because a lot of people quit, and a lot of people quit.I learned either at the Orange belt, which is pretty early in the cycle where they quit at the red belt, which is the belt right before the black belt. And I was like, what the heck? Why would you go that far and not finish? But apparently a lot of people do. So I do encourage people who are thinking about being an entrepreneur to think about doing martial arts because it’s a very good analogy for what it takes to you have to have resilience. You have to be okay, getting smacked down, getting a little hurt along the way. You have to be able to take criticism. You have to be able to take some blows, get back up, get back on the mat, keep going, keep going, keep fighting, keep moving forward, and keep that end goal in mind. And that’s something that I would definitely recommend to any entrepreneur. And plus, oh, by the way, it really feels good to break a couple of boards when you have a bad day.

So for the listening, obviously, I think she’s living up to her last name. And again, if you’re not getting that spark, if you’re not getting that motivation, you must not have a heartbeat at this point in time. Right? So let’s dive into this some more. So with that, I mean, obviously, you’re telling us all these different facets, but again, your story kind of ends with all of these things coming together. So if you can define yourself in just three to five words, which for you is going to be extremely difficult, but three to five words, what would you select?

I would say passionate, I would say driven, and I would say resilient.

I could definitely see that. So let’s just take that. Right? So you’re talking about resilience, right? And any business owner understands, like there’s going to be highs and lows and there’s going to be heart aches and pains and drama and things that you have to find solutions for that may not even exist. And prime example is a product that you’re talking about right now. So I want to talk about on that journey, what hurdles did you have to overcome in this phase of your career?

A lot of them. Among other things. I’m sure that you are well aware that the statistics around female entrepreneurs and VC funding is very small, very tiny, tiny amount of money gets given to female entrepreneurs. So when I learned about those stats early on, I was like, oh, I can take them on. And then you’re out there and you’re doing meeting after meeting after meeting, and you see it, you feel it. It’s like, wow, it’s like squeezing blood from lemons. It is really, truly not an exaggeration. And it actually went down the percentage of money, it was like 2% out of all the VC money goes to female entrepreneurs, only 2%. And that went down. It was up a little bit higher than that in 2020. It went down in 2021. That has been an obstacle, right. Having to keep going. You do pitch after pitch after pitch. And when you’re pre revenue, everybody wants revenue, right? All the funders they want to give people. But when you’re building something that is actually technology that is responsive to a pandemic that you’re in the middle of, you’re building a plane while you’re going through it.Right. It was like, okay, well, I know you want traction, but there’s a certain amount of time it takes to birth a baby. Right. And so there’s only so fast that you can make something go, something that’s quality. And the reason I say that is we have multiple patents pending, but we had started work in 2020 on a particular technology, which is the basis of our first patent, which we actually put to the side because the government came out with the CDC white card. And when the government came out with the CDC white card and they announced they were going to have these mass vaccination sites rolling out all across the country, we realized that the first patent, because the first patent allowed a person to go in inquiry multiple different Immunization registries, different jurisdictions that they’ve lived in, have all that information sucked into their account and then spat out in the right form for the jurisdiction they were currently living in. Which was my problem when we moved from New Mexico to Georgia. And my kids shot records from New Mexico weren’t a valid proof of immunization to register them for school in Georgia.So I set about fixing that problem. But when the government came out with this white card that was handwritten, I was like, oh, no, this is going to be a disaster because I knew that if everything was handwritten. Right. That means somebody else has to fat finger that information somewhere along the way to get it into the registry where it’s supposed to end up. Because when you get a shot within 24 to 72 hours of when you get a shot, that information is supposed to go into the jurisdiction wherever you’re at that registry. Okay. And there’s 64 registries in the United States, not 50. So it’s like you’re in New York City, they have their own registries. Big enough jurisdictions have their own registries. So if you get my drift. I knew that when you start talking about people writing things down and it’s not your regular doctor that’s giving you the shot. Right. It’s a mass vaccine. I just knew we had to come up with something else because the idea that you could use the traditional infrastructure, I knew it was going to be challenged. And I was right. We’re a member of the American Immunization Registry Association, AIRA throughout the Pandemic, the sheer volume these registries were built in the mid 1990s and the sheer volume of records being uploaded in the course of one year for registries that were built for predominantly pediatric use.A lot of these registries actually crashed during the pandemic, and the infrastructure itself wasn’t there. And then obviously, they’ve gotten more funding and they’re continuing to fix them. They’re working, they’re operational. But it means that the data is not perfect. Right. So you might try to go to a registry and maybe one of your shots got in there, but not the other one. Or maybe there’s no record at all, because in some instances, at these mass facts sites, when you got handed that card and you walked out the door, that was it. You are the sole holder of that record. People don’t realize that we’re talking about human systems. Right. And whenever somebody has to keep track of things, that’s all on paper, things can get lost in the shuffle.

Wow. So I’m just going to take one thing that you had said, and it was talking about patents. Obviously, patents are difficult things for people to kind of grasp versus trademarks and copyrights. So do you have, like, a utility patent? Is it a procedural patent? What is the actual patent? And then how does that process go?

Right? Well, both of them are patent pending. It won’t come as a shock to you that among everything else with the government, they’re behind, too. So we’re still in the queue to have our examination with somebody from the office. But the process is basically taking known technologies and stringing them together in a completely new way. Basically, that’s how we did it. That’s what we’ve done. In the case of the one patent, in the second one, it actually is a completely, entirely unique invention. It’s an algorithm. So it’s what we’re commercializing right this minute. And it’s an algorithm that allows us to score a CDC card looking for evidence of fraud. So basically, when somebody self reports and shows you their CDC card and says, I’ve been Vaccinated, how do you the person who needs to verify this information. If you cannot locate that record in a registry, then what do you do? So we’re the then what do you do? Right. Because I told you things got a little messed up during the pandemic. We think this is incredibly important because right now you have certain professions out. There actually 17 million employees across the country that are basically covered by the recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the CMS rule from November 4.So the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rule that any entity receiving Medicaid or Medicare funding, any of those employees have to be Vaccinated. That had to happen by the 15 March. And those organizations, hospitals, health systems, behavioral health places, fusion centers, just any place that you can think of clinics, rural health clinics, any type of location that’s receiving Medicaid or Medicare dollars. Those particular institutions have to have a system in place for tracking the Vaccination records for their employees. I’m talking about COVID Vaccination records. And so that’s 17 million employees. That’s a lot of people in this country. So it’s definitely important to us that if, for some reason, one of those employees had a record that couldn’t be located in a registry, that we would be able to supply another way for there to be some validation of that record, because that’s important. Right. People jobs depend on it.

Yeah, I’m just listening and listening to that. I mean, you’re spinning off this data, and I just want to kind of help listen to comprehend to what she’s saying. So in one aspect of it, you have a new business venture, and this new business venture is an app. But this app is essentially at the point to where, when that bubble explodes, you’re talking about a global platform to essentially integrate all Vaccinations. Right. And then. So that’s why you have your patent pending, because once that thing hits international, you got to have protection, because again, everybody, their mom is going to want to get piece of that pie.

Absolutely. It being globally scalable was something that we’ve been focusing on since the beginning. And it’s something that I frequently tell investors. And in interviews, I try to make sure that everybody understands that the world we live in, a global economy, the world cannot wait for there to be an API into every known Vaccination repository on the planet. We’re not even going to get that by fourth quarter of this year here in the country, in the United States, far less the whole world. But we need a way for someone to tell you if they’re an international student, for example, or you’re traveling internationally or somebody’s coming into this country internationally. We need a way to be able to assess if somebody provides you a Vaccination record. Is that a valid Vaccination record? What we’re seeing right now is it’s either one end of the extreme or the other people are either just not even really looking when somebody shows them a card, like, oh, yeah. Okay, good. And then there’s actually no checking whatsoever going on, or they’re requiring it that it must be third party validated through some kind of a government entity. If it’s either one or the other.And you have all this Gray area in between, that’s where Back Mobile says, let’s try to bring some sanity to this. Let’s try to fill in the gaps and try to have a way, because AI and machine learning is really smart. And so the more data that we have, the better the algorithm is going to get at spotting outliers. So what I’m trying to tell you is there’s an algorithmic way that we don’t have to necessarily get it validated through a registry to figure out if it looks and smells like a good Vaccination record. There are ways we can do that with an algorithm. And similarly, there’s ways that we can out and out to see some things that we know are fraud and say, you got a bad one for sure. So we definitely fail them in addition to scoring them. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes total sense. And I mean, I download the app, and I was just processing some of your InPoint data points. Right. So I think some of it. Right. Obviously, there’s the algorithm behind the scenes that’s doing the verification. But on the front side, you’re front Loading and allowing the individual to do some of the data input. So you’re going to have to put in a passport or you’re going to have to put in a driver’s license. You’re going to have to verify your face is also doing facial recognition to scan the card and match the card with the person that’s actually putting the data in there. So my next question is about your systems behind the scenes with the security. Again, for the average person, they’re getting a brain freeze right now, literally thinking about all the different information that we’re talking about. But I want you to kind of break it down to as lean and as humanly possible to kind of talk about these verification points in the system.

Yeah. Well, you know how when you go to a doctor’s office, you walk in and the first thing they do is ask you to produce your driver’s license and your insurance card, right? That’s the first thing that happens. Well, this is just like that. This is the digital version of that. We’re having the person, not the insurance card part. We’re having them produce their driver’s license so that we can know or passport some kind of government issued ID so that we can basically know that the person who’s in there creating the profile is the same person that’s on a valid government issued ID. And when I tell people that part of our process at Vac Mobile is about detecting fraud, it starts with that moment where you upload the government issued ID. Our partner in that is Jumio. And if Julio does the scan and it tells us that you just uploaded a fake ID, but that’s the end of your relationship with Mac Mobile all over from there. So that’s the first step. Then after that, then we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to do the biometric scan and we measure the facial geometry.We look to make sure that the space between your eyes and ears and things like that measure up in the exact same as that picture that’s on that government issued ID. So we know, okay, it’s the same person and it’s really sensitive software. So it knows like you have glasses on in this interview, but if you, for some reason maybe in your ID picture didn’t wear your glasses, it would still be able to do it. Or you had a beard in one picture, but you didn’t when you shaved your beer that day, when you’re doing yourself in the app, it can see through all that stuff. So that’s really important, right? Because we got to make sure in this day and age that we got the right person when we’re going to go and we’re going to be retrieving Vaccination records. This is really HIPA protected information Health Information Portability Act. So we got to make sure that we are safeguarding this highly protected information carefully and that you are in the driver’s seat. This is your account, this is your data, it’s your Privacy. You consent to use the Vac Mobile app. When somebody wants to verify that information, you consent for that mobile to share your health status with that person.So these are the things that we’re doing is we’re passing back and forth a token with an entity that wants to understand, does SA Grant meet our criteria for doing this particular activity? It could be getting on an airplane or it could be going to College or going to a school or going to work, right. Whatever the job is. But in each use case, there will be specific criteria. Maybe you have to have had a covered negative test result within 48 hours. That’s often very common for flying right on the Airlines throughout the Pandemic, people had to do that. And in some instances, maybe you have to nowadays, maybe they’re going to start saying that you need a booster just getting one shot of a J&J or two shots of a fizer or Moderna sequent, you now need a booster, depending on what your role is, depending on what the vertical is. So what we do is we say, okay, what are the criteria? And does this individual match what those criteria are? If they match, we pass the token, they get the green, or if they don’t match, then it’s a fail.But even before all the matching happens, like I said, we got to make sure that we think that the credential is good, that somebody is offering up.

Yeah. I just want to listen to her to realize, like the technology that she’s talking about. Prime example, like with my iPhone, if I take off my glasses, my phone is not going to recognize me, plain blank, period. And I wear hats so much, it’s like literally I have to put my glasses and my hat on from my phone to recognize me. So what she’s saying is that particularly her particular software is going to go down to whether I have a beard, what I have glasses on. Again, I did the verification earlier today, so it may bounce back, right? Because again, I always have a hat and everything, but I think I may or may not have a hat on my driver’s license. So it’s even going to verify that data, which is phenomenal. And obviously that’s why you have a patent pending on it. So like moving this down the road a little bit right here and you speak I mean, everyone can kind of say, okay, obviously you’re successful of where you are, and we kind of alluded to kind of like your history earlier on. But how long did it take you to kind of get the app and get this concept off the ground to where you’re actually doing equity raises?

Obviously, we founded this company in 2020, but we’ve been working on it since well before that. The very beginning of the idea of Vac Mobile started in 2017. And in 2018, I got a lot more serious about starting to really research and look into this whole issue of Vaccinations and what was going on with that. Sadly, I lost both my parents in 2018 and 2019. And so that was kind of a big pause because as you know, if you’ve lost any relatives, close parents in particular, if you’ve lost a family member, like a parent, that will just put a big pause on everything in your life. And so Ironically, it was actually their passing that made me decide definitively that I needed to do something really important for the planet, that both of my parents were people who made a massive difference in their lifetimes. And so it was kind of a real up close and personal check with myself about what had I done to make the world a better place. So that was when I said, okay, we’re going to do this because the big companies hadn’t solved the problem and they still haven’t solved the problem.So I said, okay, I guess it’s me. I guess I’m going to do it. So that’s when I really got serious. And that was in January of 2020. So again, we’re not a copy company. So that was when I was really getting serious about it. Now, fast forward to tape to now. That’s what it’s taken that long. So basically 2017, 2018 to now for five years.

Yeah. I would take anyone that understands business would by default know that you’re not a corporate company just because the fact that your patent is pending and it’s like a trademark. Trademarks take anywhere from like six months to two years. Patents take longer than that. So just keep that in perspective.

Yeah. And we actually trademarked the name of the algorithm. It’s called Vasar, and it’s an acronym, and it’s like FICO scoring, but it’s Bazar scoring, and it stands for Vaccination Authenticated Self Reporting Bazar scoring. And I had to make it an acronym. My mother was Assistant Secretary of the army for Manpower and Reserves, and so everything is acronyms in the military. I also thought it was kind of catchy based on scoring. So we trademarked that and we did get them. Basically. We’re very proud. We got the Mark for back mobile. And we’re clear eyed about the fact that we’re living in a world now where we need different health security protocols moving forward. And in terms of trying to help your listeners really understand, I still don’t get what Jennifer’s company does think of it like this. When there was a certain point in the evolution of this country when automobiles were happening, where we decided at some point that we needed to install traffic lights at intersections because we couldn’t keep driving into each other and crashing. Right. And that’s really what this software does for businesses. It allows businesses to better manage their ecosystems, to avoid spread of infection, to avoid somebody walking into your ecosystem that is a vector of disease and is going to get everybody sick.That’s really what it comes down to. What health safety protocols are you going to have in place to keep your employees, your customers, your visitors, and your vendors safe? Because we cannot have happy ears and happy eyes and Whoopi everything is over. We can’t just keep living this way because we just keep turning around and it’s just whacka mole. We’re just playing the same old trying to pretend there’s no virus. When the virus doesn’t care, the virus is going to keep mutating. That’s what viruses do. We’re of the opinion that just the same way after 911, physical security was forever changed, right? Those magnetometers came into airports. They didn’t tell us at the time, like, hey, we’re just going to put these magnetometers in for the next couple of years. And then after that, don’t worry, you’ll be able to watch your loved one to the gate. No, security was forever changed after 911. And that’s what we think about health security protocols, that they will be forever changed. And the vision of the world that we see is a world where everybody has their smartphone with them all the time. And everybody just scans.Just scanned to go into work, scan to go in the grocery store, scan to go in the movie theater, scan to go to the plane, scan to go to wherever your Church, wherever you can scan, scan. Because it’s just that simple. If you start actually keeping track of the data and be accountable, decide what the criteria are. You the entity, not the government. Right. Because the government actually already made it pretty clear that you really with this virus, you can’t come up with a one size fits all plan, right? New York City at the height of the pandemic, right. Early on, if you were in Idaho, it was a completely different story. But then as the months went by, then New York was much better. And you remember when South Dakota was in a world of hurt. Do you remember that? So it just moves around, right? The virus just moves around. So you can’t come up with a one size fits all and you can’t come up with a one size fits all because you also have to look at what is the business? What type of business is it? Is it a baseball Stadium or is it a cancer research and treatment center?Is it a school? Who’s there? Can you even get vaccinations for zero to five yet? You can’t, right? So if you are a technology company and you have a bunch of people in their late 20s, early 30s, they have little teeny, tiny babies and toddlers, right. With a great designation, right? A lot of people said, hey, I’m out of here, man. I’m not doing this. So we’re trying to be clear that what’s needed is a digital platform that people can just decide. These are going to be our rules. This is how we’re going to work it’s. And then they can just monitor the success of their own protocols. And if they need to tweak things, maybe if it’s an ICU nurse, maybe they need to be tested, Cobid tested every 48 hours, on top of being vaccinated and boosted because of the risk factors for that particular environment in an ICU. Does that make sense?

Makes perfect sense. So to translate some of that, and I want it to be like a visual thing. So right now, what you’re talking about, like when we walk into the airport, we have a Delta app. Delta app has a QR code, and that allows us to not only board, but to get past security. So imagine taking that. I would probably think down the road, you probably have some API integration to where the Delta app then merges with your app. And then you’ll get two codes in one, and you’ll scan, say, this is this person’s flight and also, this person is vaccinated, and they’re clear to get on board that plane. Take that at scale. You put that on boats, you can put that in churches, put that on stores anywhere. It’s a fascinating concept. Okay. Just play Devil’s advocate with that. So obviously, the pros are definitely there. But on the negative side, you have some people in society that’s kind of like hell bent on not getting vaccination. Right. So how is that going to work if a grocery store has it and you can’t get in the grocery store?

Because again, remember, we don’t take a position. Some people might use the app only for testing, right? So our position is, hey, you don’t want to get vaccinated, don’t get vaccinated, but get tested. Right? Get tested. Because I wish that they had never come up with the word asymptomatic. Right. I wish they would have just called it the invisible invisible, then people would understand it a little better. Because when you say something is asymptomatic, its like, I don’t know what is that when you say it’s invisible, it’s an invisible virus. It’s out there, it’s a sniper. It’s just waiting to be going to get you. That’s a different story. That’s a different image. That’s a different idea for people to wrap their minds around that somebody can look okay, they can seem fine, but they cannot be fine, and they can get somebody else incredibly ill. And what I think is going to be the big story, by the way, of 2022 is not going to be Covid. It’s going to be Long covid. Long covid. One in three cases of Covet is turning into Long Covid. And you might be saying, well, what does your app have to do with long covid?My app is going to become incredibly important. It’s not just the app, it’s the app. It’s the platform, the back end platform that has all the dashboard reporting for an employer or a business of any type and a scanner app. So we either have a standalone technology that the scanner app lives on an Android phone, or we can integrate. We have an API. We can integrate, like you said, into anybody else’s app. We’re designed to white label into other platforms, like a physical security thing, like people badging into work type of situation or like an HR platform. But in our world, it’s just incredibly important because of Long Covid and the devastating impact that that’s going to have on employers ability for staffing shortages, for think about situations where the supply chain gets interrupted like it did earlier in the pandemic. But it’s going to get a lot worse if one in three of these covid cases, because we had so many cases of AMacron in January and February. But the World Health Organization says it takes about three to four months before the symptoms appear of long covid. So you have lots of people who may have gotten a very mild case or even an asymptomatic case an invisible case of covid, in January and February that three or four months later suddenly may be having some serious problems.And the top three symptoms of long covid the ones that the World Health Organization is paying the most attention to right now. The first one is blood clots that are leading to heart attacks and strokes. The second one is what they’re calling brain fog, which is very similar to early onset dementias type symptoms. And the third one is extreme fatigue, where you just get winded, just emptying the dishwasher. You could barely get out of the bed. These are things that are going to absolutely degrade work performance and result in shortages for employers trying to stop shifts. So I just want to be clear that those three things that I just mentioned, I wouldn’t wish that I’m a worst enemy. Right. Any one of those that’s awful. And we don’t know how many folks are going to end up with that. There was a story that appeared last week, a CNN aired it, and the stats are pretty scary. The numbers are talking something. I’m going to pull it up here. It’s like $563,000,000,000, and it’s really a big number. This is real. Yeah, sorry. It’s 386,000,000,000. That’s the number. 386,000,000,380. billion in lost wages having savings and medical expenses in the US alone as of January.

That’s crazy. I’m just listening to like, I mean, obviously you’re a profound entrepreneur in many different ways and just hearing your passion on this particular topic. And I think earlier on you was mentioning about the loss of your parents, and I want to kind of dive into that a little bit. Right. So you’re an entrepreneur, you’re on this path, you’ve always been on a particular projection. Right. Is that coming from one of your parents? Like, was one of them entrepreneurs in any shape or form?

Neither one was an entrepreneur. Like I said, my mom had a very long career working on the civilian side of the military. She started working as an assistant Secretary and then moved her way over to general counsel of the army. And then finally her highest boast was assistant Secretary of the army for Manpower and Reserves under Clinton. So she was a lawyer before she had these posts within the army. My dad was also a lawyer, but he clerked for the Supreme Court. He was a road scholar. He had grown up in pretty impoverished circumstances in Miami and ended up winning a scholarship to Harvard and took the bus up to Harvard. But he always was doing pro Bono work throughout his career and cared profoundly about making sure that he was helping people along the way. I just was hugely influenced by it. And my mother also served on many nonprofit boards and was always helping people. And that was a big part of the culture of my household was, are you a person who’s making a difference in this world? And that came through loud and clear for me.

Wow. So, I mean, finishing on that last note about making a difference in the world. I mean, obviously you’re married and you have a pretty decent sized blended family. So let’s talk about that for a minute. With all the things that you’ve done, you figured out some way to create a family, get married. How do you currently juggle and manage both sides of your brain? Because obviously you have to turn that switch on and off to be able to juggle these things.

Well, I think I have a teenage son who’s about to turn 20. My stepson, actually, he’s grown up. He’s out of the house. He’s working, actually. He’s chill. He’s good. I have twin daughters and they’re 15, about to turn 16. So teenagers, I will say this, if you’re going to be an entrepreneur, having teenagers, that is such a bad thing because they tend to do their own thing. So it’s not as bad as it could be. I think as far as they’re not, I don’t know how entrepreneurs who have little toddlers do it because I just know what it was like when my kids were smaller and don’t know how my respect to those people all the respect. But for me, I don’t have any particular magic words of wisdom other than my kids are watching me work incredibly hard. Like I will sometimes work until 10:00 at night and have gotten up at like 4 or 5:00 in the morning. Okay, that’s not unusual for me. But this is not unusual for entrepreneurs. Right. People work hard. In the first few years of a company, launching a company, you have to work hard, especially when you’re building a plane in the middle of while it’s flying, which is what we were doing, trying to create solutions that were applicable for the moment we’re living and meeting the moment.But what I do know is this when you stop, really stop and be present. And one of the things that I’ve done in the last couple of months with my kids is we’ll do a game night, we’ll play games with each other. And it sounds kind of hokey because I’m talking about board games and card games. But to me it’s the best thing ever when we just stop and we play, I think play creative, play being present in the moment for each other and just laughing and joking and goofing off and how it is when you’re with your family and you’re ribbing each other and you’re choosing the other person of cheating and all that kind of stuff. That’s the stuff that really those are the moments that you cherish. Those are the moments that just make the time and take trips. Take short trips. Take a day trip. Take a day trip with your kids on a Sunday, drive somewhere. Go somewhere. If you break the routine. I think those things are incredibly important. Play with your family and take a trip every now and then, take a break. Really break. Because little bitty breaks.But you’re still kind of looking at your phone. For me, that doesn’t work.

So you’re talking about board games like Monopoly, monopoly has to be like

They love Monopoly.Monopoly and Clue and all the old school. Sorry, I’m showing my age right now. But all the old school games that we grew up with. Right. And Uno and those kinds of things.

Nice. So with your wake up Regiment, you’re talking about four, five in the morning. So obviously you’re well versed in what you’re talking about and obviously everything else you’ve done in your career. So my next question is essentially what books have you read to kind of help you get to, like, each section of your journey? Like if you could recommend one primary book that stands out that is timeless for you to kind of help an entrepreneur, which book would you recommend?

Well, a timeless book that I think is just such a great read as this one. Pour your heart into it. Howard Schultz Starbucks story. I mean, this is a classic. This is a classic. I go back, I’ll reread sections of this all the time because if you haven’t read it, then you’ll find out when you read it that this is a miracle that we have Starbucks. Because this guy had the door slammed in his face so many times, hundreds and hundreds of times, he had the door slammed his face. People thought he was a nut job. So to me, it’s always so refreshing to read these stories of people who experienced. So you got to be resilient, man. And he just believed and believed and believed and persevered and where we are now. I love this book. And plus, it’s just really well written. It’s really fun. So I love that one. But if you’re a female entrepreneur, I would recommend Shelley R. Chambos Unapologetically Ambitious and Carl Goldens Undaunted. Both of these are really good, pretty current books published in the last couple of years. Both of them, I think they’re great because for female entrepreneurs, you definitely need to the world just going to give you a little bit harder time.I hate to say it and you just have to be ready to just stand up tall and like Shelley Archambo says, be unapologetically ambitious. But there’s another book that I really like and it’s Built on values. And this is by Anne Rose, and she was the chief people officer for Southwest Airlines for many years and founder of JetBlue, one of the original founders of JetBlue. And her book is all about how you create a culture that outperforms the competition, but it’s all about your values. And she has a whole system for how you hire people and how you’re able to identify have them identify for you what their values are. So you can really understand, hey, this person share my values because once we’re all United on values, then the skill set skills can be taught. But values, that’s got to be in, right? That’s in the person.

Yeah, definitely going on that topic of values.Right.I mean, obviously you’re establishing a company now that I think with it being fully built out, maybe ten years out, five years out is going to stand the test of time. And you’re talking about probably having this product hundred years down the road. But in scope of work, where do you see the company or the platform 20 years from now? Ideally.

I see it in use. I see it as really ubiquitous. I see it like think about like Visa. Right. Think about like the product Vera Foam, where every single time you go to a grocery store and you stick your credit card in and does the processing and everything. I think I see it as ubiquitous as VeriFone. I see it as something that’s just everywhere, that people just are very much in the habit of doing a scan to go someplace. And I’m not talking just about Colbert. Right. I’m talking about digital transformation and vaccination registers, where we started this whole conversation. I’m talking about when you are doing anything. There’s all kinds of use cases right now where they do ask for vaccination records. Right. Whether it’s for sports for your kid, going to sleep away, camp for obviously going to school K through twelve and Matriculating for higher Ed. There’s all kinds of places where we need vaccination records or if you’re going to travel internationally and there’s places right now that we need them. But I envision a world where we have really, really easy access to our records. We know exactly what we have, what we don’t have, what our minor kids have, don’t have.And it’s very easy to pull up. It’s very easy to use QR codes to transmit this information. And it’s like second nature. But in doing so, it allows us in the future, if there’s a future pathogen that we have a system, we have a platform in place to be able to very quickly while a vaccine would be developed. Obviously, you’ve got to have extra precautions. But as soon as the vaccination is in place, you just don’t lose the beat. You just keep on going. Right. And that’s to me, what we cannot do, we cannot let what happened during this pandemic happened in the future. And by that I mean of the million lives that were lost here in the US, fully 200,000 of them were in assisted livings or skilled nursing facilities. We’re talking about our elders. To me, this is just unacceptable. We cannot do this to our elders. Right. They just would shut down and then you couldn’t go see your loved ones in a nursing home or in an assisted living. And having just lost my parents, I know what it’s like. And I can’t imagine a really close family friend of ours, she lost her husband.She’s 94 years old. She lost her husband to cope with a few months into the pandemic, and then she lost her daughter to breast cancer. She’s all alone in there, and I couldn’t go see her for many, many months. And it just broke my heart. And I just think we have to leverage technology to prevent that and back mobile. Absolutely would prevent that. In the future. You would be able to have anybody going in and out, whether they were an employee, a family member, or some sort of vendor in the facility. You could be able to scan and make sure that they weren’t a vector of disease. I mean, obviously there’s going to be a few little things here that might get through. But if everybody’s using the system, it’s going to definitely increase safety dramatically. So does that kind of makes sense in terms of what I see in the future as a world where we work smarter, not harder? We can be smart about this?

Yeah, I think definitely. So that leads me to the good gateway to this next question. Right. So with that in mind, that future tense that you’re talking about, ideally, if you could leave like this, 30 seconds to 60 seconds worth of inside words of wisdom, you’re talking to your ideal avatar here, right. And you’re letting them know that this project is in existence. And whatever hurdles that they’re dealing with right now, that potentially you’re going to be able to take them forward. So what words of insight would you give to that individual?

I would tell them that, do not give up. If you have a dream, if you have a vision, if you know that the world is going to be served by what you’re doing. Because I think that’s really what’s at the core of things. Right. It’s helping people. It’s actually doing something that is going to meaningfully impact people’s lives and make them better. If you know that, then stay rooted, stay calm, because it’s all going to come, it’s all going to come together, and those obstacles can be overcome. And there are people out there that get inspired, get motivated, and want to see change happen, and they will help you. I know it’s happening for us, in fact, mobile. But I would encourage any entrepreneur who’s listening to just keep going, because everybody has tough days. Everybody has moments where they think, what did I do? Why did I do this? But just take a deep breath, take a walk, smell the flowers, get out there, take a break and come back, come right back to it. Keep going.

Solid words of advice for sure. So with that being said, how do people get in contact you? Where do they download the app? How do they find you?

So if they are trying to get the Apple version, the iOS native version, they can go into the App Store and download it, put in Vac Mobile V-A-C-M-O-B-I-L-E Vac Mobile, all one word. They can get it that way. The Android version, they can go out to the Vac Mobile website, which is www.vacmobile.app, and they can download the Android version. The latest release is there at the website right now. And that’s the same place where anybody can contact us to get a demo. If they’re interested in getting a demo of this platform, we can set that up. They can submit a query through the website. And I’m also on LinkedIn. So find me on LinkedIn. Jennifer Sparks vacmobile you’ll find me. I’ll pop right up and be delighted to reach out to folks and talk to them on LinkedIn as well. So I pretty much always accept connections. So I appreciate anybody reaching out because I truly believe that we can be safer as we continue to move forward in this pandemic. And not only can we be safer, we have to be safer. We just have to. What is that, Einstein?The definition of insanity? Keep doing the same thing and expect different results. We got to do something different. Right. As we head into year three of this world we’re living in with this virus.

That’s a bona fide fact for sure. So going into the bonus route, I got a bonus question for you. I’m thinking for you again, it kind of blows my mind because your background is so diverse. I have no idea what you’re going to say. So if you could spend 24 hours with anyone, dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

It would be Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln. And it would be Abraham Lincoln, because 16 times he tried before he finally got elected. And I love these stories of the underdog that pulled through. But then not only did he get elected, but he worked so hard to get elected. But then the worst. Can you imagine what he overcame and what problems that came, the obstacles that he overcame? Pretty inspiring, right. And I think particularly now because you’ve done a really great job of being very politically correct during this interview in terms of my particular product that I’m dealing with. Vaccinations is very charged. Right. People get very emotional, and our country is very fractured right now. And so I would love to talk to him because if you go back again on the history buff, things were very fractured in his time as well. Right. So I think he would be an incredible person to talk to. And he was a lawyer. Right. He wasn’t trained to become a commander in chief in a war. He had to go into the Library of Congress and start looking at books and try to understand how to command Union forces.He had no idea. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. He had no idea. He was reading about Greek battles and different. He was doing anything he could to try to figure out how am I going to fix it was no small thing what he managed to do. So I think I would want to talk to him because sometimes I get down on the fact that I wish I understood technology better. It’s taken me a couple of years to figure things out and to understand things, and I’m still learning every day. But I think he’s inspirational because he just looked at these things head on and just kept marching. And even in the face of personal tragedy, he kept marching forward every day. He is the model of resilience and grit, and he had a really good sense of humor, too. So I would like to talk to you presently.

You answered that like a true historian, hands down, period, literally. So going into closing, I mean, I think I always like to give the microphone and give the show to whoever I’m interviewing. So now you’re the host of Boston Cage. Are there any questions that you would like to ask me?

Of course. So my question to you is you’ve been doing a lot of interviews. So who is the most famous person that when you interviewed them, they really were unknown. Nobody had heard of them. But you knew you were like, this person is going to go somewhere. I know they are. Who is that person and which company? And what was it that really took off from the time you interviewed them to where they are now?

I think it’s difficult because I have three different classifications of interviews. Right. So I have people that are budding and they’re up and coming, and then I have the successful people in the middle, and then I have the ultra successful people, the founder of Redfin a couple of days ago. So just hearing his story and who he worked with, and obviously he was like the right hand man to Jeff Bezos kind of just blows my damn mind. But then I have the middle classification of people that are like multimillionaires, that are like walking amongst us, but people don’t really know who they are unless they’re in that area of expertise. And you know that’s like Damon Burton, Ty Cohen, they’re just like industry Legends in the marketing side, but the average person doesn’t know who they are.

Right. So for you, though, of the interviews, like, of all your interviews, were there any that really stood out to you, where you were like, wow, this is supremely interesting. Something that you just didn’t see coming, something where you interviewed somebody and they opened up some topic, some way of looking at the world that you hadn’t really thought about before you interviewed them?

Yes. I think this is probably why I nickname everyone, because it’s just easier for me to kind of remember who they are based upon that nickname. And I would say the fearless boss. She was a force to be reckoned with. I mean, she was older but just her telling her story, growing up in Europe and putting her kids on a bus. Imagine putting your kid on a bus at age six. That was the equivalent of what she was doing overseas and to see her kids came out stronger, better, more motivated and eager to take over the world than a kid that’s being over sheltered. So she just gave me that insight to being completely fearless removing fear from the equation and to just step forward and do whatever you need to do to move forward.

I love it because that’s it, right? Just move forward, keep moving, keep your head up.

Well, I definitely appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be on the show today. I think that again, if she did not spark you into being motivated again I think that you probably need to get your heart rate check just a little bit because you did a phenomenal job of just motivating and just defining what you’re doing and being so passionate where you are in a space to where the technology could be used for years, decades, centuries down the road is a phenomenal thing to be on the front end of that.

Thank you so much and thank you for taking some time to be part of this mobile story as well.

Pleasures all mine S.A Grant over and out.

Founder and CEO Of VacMobile: Jennifer Sparks AKA The Vaccination Boss – S3E18 (#114)2023-01-14T15:33:30+00:00

Founder Of Present Influence: Johnny Ball AKA The Influence Boss – S3E17 (#113)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Founder Of Present Influence: Johnny Ball AKA The Influence Boss – S3E17 (#113)
Get to know yourself in terms of finding out what’s really important for you and what are your core values.
In Season 3, Episode 17 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the Founder of Present Influence, Johnny Ball.
Johnny has been helping professionals around the world grow and develop as public speakers, coaches, and trainers for over 12 years and is highly respected by his clients and peers. Now, he’s also helping purpose-driven coaches and speakers leverage the power of podcasting.
An Englishman based in Spain and living his best life.
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • What can Johnny do for you
  • What is Johnny’s morning routine
  • What tools is Johnny using in his business
  • And So Much More!!!
Want more details on how to contact Johnny? Check out the links below!

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S3E17 Johnny Ball.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Three, two, one. Welcome back to Boss Uncaged Podcast. Today’s show is going to be an interesting show and because almost guaranteed because we’ve had some offline conversations with our current guests before. So again, I think whatever you’re going to learn from this episode, you’re going to want to comment about, you’re going to want to share about it. We want to hear some insight. What’s your key takeaway? So after the show, I want you guys to go to bossuncaged.com/fbgroup. Again. That’s bossuncaged.com/fbgroup. So today we’re talking to I’m going to deem him the influence boss. So without further Ado, the floor is yours. Johnny, who are you?

Very great introduction. Thank you for that. My name is Johnny Ball, and I am a persuasive presentation skills coach. So I am helping people to be more influential and persuasive within an ethical framework, within their professional lives, because ultimately the skills of leadership communication are critical now just as much as they ever have been, but perhaps more on display for the whole world. Now, that is an expectation for anyone in a business owner or executive position to be able to communicate at the top of their game and to be able to be influential with their status and also persuasive with the words that they speak.

I want everybody to listen to what he said. I don’t want his modesty to fool you, right? I mean, obviously, this man also has multiple podcasts. He’s also like a speaker as well. So I just want to kind of dive into that space a little bit more. Like, how did you become as evolved as a speaker that you are today?

A number of different things. So my first introduction to public speaking was professional public speaking training, where it was essentially being taught leadership skills with a view to becoming a trainer in your linguistic programming, which I did for a while. And so that was where I first started getting up onto the platform and speaking to people. Some of my earliest presentations in front of groups were in front of rooms of 2000, 3000 people. So I Dove in at the deep end because most people never really get to speaking to that sort of size of room. Now, I do tend to speak to rooms more, from 30 to 50 people, up to several hundred. Not so many of the two to 3000 people events anymore. But those were my inductions. What has really progressed me the most, though, has been being an active member of the Toastmasters Organization.

Nice. Very nice. And so, I mean, with that, then you roll into becoming a podcaster. And being that I’m a fellow podcast, I understand what goes on behind the scenes and what develops and how you can find people and stage questions and lead people down the right path. But you have two podcasts. So why don’t you go ahead and talk about these two podcasts a little bit?

Sure. Well, the show that has been running the longest of mine is called Speaking Influence. And that is really about everything that I’ve been talking about. It’s about persuasive public speaking. It’s about leadership, communication, and it’s about the tools or sometimes known as weapons of influence and persuasion. And so I have a wide variety of guests, from professional speakers to professional comedians to experts in rhetoric and political discourse and speech writers. And I’ve had people who’ve escaped from religious cults and really all sorts of aspects on psychology and understanding communication number of communication experts. I have a very wide range of guests, but the themes of the show are always very much around speaking and presenting. And that’s my baby. That’s my big passion in life. And I get super pumped and hyped about talking about that all the time. And then this year I decided to start up another show which is called Points of Change. And that really is about those moments in life, those points in which we find ourselves transforming from one place in our lives to something very different. And so generally, I’m talking to people there who are themselves coaches or have had big transformational experiences and are often out there helping other people to have similar kinds of transformations as well so that you can understand what it takes. What are those trigger points, the flash points, the realizations that got them to have those realizations and what their journeys have been so that anyone looking to have similar kinds of transformations can learn from them and hopefully follow somewhat in their footsteps?

Definitely inspirational stuff. And obviously, I think that you’re leading the pack well. So if you could define yourself in three to five words, what would those three to five words be?

Oh, man, that’s a tough question. Three to five words. Just to pick individual words, I would say I’m very calm and well spoken, happy and enthusiastic. Doesn’t go with calm, perhaps, but I am calm and enthusiastic and friendly. There you go. There’s my five words.

Nice. I think the collective of those words, I would say. And you correct me wrong. I would think that you’re very persuasive as well. In addition to those.

Oh, yeah, I would hope so.

Great.

I perhaps see that more as a skill that I’ve acquired rather than a trait that I own. But yeah, maybe there’s some truth in that now.

Nice. So let’s just talk about your business a little bit. So obviously, you’re helping coaches, you’re teaching on speaking. You’re also formulating these ideas and sharing common ideas on your podcast. What is your business? What are you really doing behind the scenes right now?

I am working on a book, and that is going to be all about influence and persuasion in presentations. And I have a working title for it. I’m not going to show just because it might be the end title that I end up with, but that’s still about third written still being researched, hoping to have it done in about the next six months. And so it’s really going to be about effective leadership communication from live platforms, live stages to virtual platforms like this, whether it’s being on podcasts or running virtual events and those kinds of things, to be as influential and persuasive as you can be in those environments to help people really step up their presentation skills in those things as well. Because we’ve all been in countless Zoom meetings or whatever else for the last year or so, probably more so than ever. My work was already along that line anyway. But so many people still don’t really know how to handle themselves or come off well in those kinds of situations and can be very hard to listen to for a long time and a bit boring. And I want to help people step out of that and stop trying, spending so much time worrying about what other people are thinking of them or whether they’re presenting themselves well and to know what they want other people to think of them, to actually project the image they want rather than hope that it lands somewhere in the region of where they want it to.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. From being a podcaster, it’s always you have to kind of heighten your voice and then tone your voice down. Heighten your voice and tone your voice down. So for you, I think because you have a well established European accent, does that help you with that tonality that you’re talking about?

I think it helps with some of their clarity in speaking, for example. And I know that I have a tendency to be a very fast speaker in normal life. I do like to speak fast, and with a lot of work, I’ve slowed that down to be clearer, because a lot of the work I do is group coaching work. And I have international clients from just about everywhere, but all in English. But of course, when English isn’t your first language, you need somebody to be speaking slowly and clearly so that you can understand hopefully most of at least of what’s being said. So I have had to learn from experience and practice to slow myself down and improve my clarity, hopefully without it becoming boring, without it becoming monotonous or too slow. Because some people, especially if you’re a native speaker, you can keep up with the speed and you can listen faster. But if you’re not, you really need somebody who cares enough to want you to understand what they’re saying. And I do always think the responsibility of communication is with the person communicating. So it’s your responsibility to be as understood as you possibly can be. Whatever gets understood is whatever gets understood. That’s not necessarily down to how you communicate. But if you want to, if you want people to understand you well, you have to be as clear as you can be.

Got. You very nice. So let’s just talk about Johnny Ball as the kid, right? So, I mean, right now you live in Spain, but you grew up in UK. So let’s talk about your early days. Did you know early on that you would be possibly stepping into this? Were you the guy that was always running for President of class? Were you always raising your hands? Like, what were you as a kid?

Well, I don’t know if they really have that stuff in the UK, in schools with class presidents, maybe they do now, but not so much. When I was a kid, but I was pretty quiet as a kid. I was very introverted and reflective and I was the kind of kid who would spend my break time playing music in the classroom. So I preferred to be doing creative stuff. But I was always into the arts, always doing drama and performing. And I realized quite early that those are my passions. I went to a music school and learned several instruments, but I also was in the drama group there. I did lots of drama productions and ended up carrying that through to my University degree as well. I did law English and drama. I started off doing law English and music and switch to drama because I wanted to do more practical stuff. So the speaking side of me now, I feel, comes from the frustrated actor of me.

Nice. So, I mean, talking about being an actor and being in front of thousands of people on stage, everyone that has a speaking journey always has, like the one most memorable hiccup or mistake they’ve made that they have deemed that they never want to make again. So what was your biggest mistake on stage that you ever committed to?

I think one of my biggest mistakes on stage was I don’t even really remember it, but it was one of my earliest speeches where I hadn’t got into this habit of throwing myself down and I was teaching an element on a stage in front of several thousand people. And I just raced through the whole thing so fast that it wasn’t very well understood. And before I knew it was over, I was so nervous at the time that I honestly don’t remember a single thing about it other than people coming up to me afterwards and saying that I was speaking way too fast. That was the most embarrassing thing because it was such a big audience and I really wanted to do well. And whilst I said everything right, I wanted to say I said it too quick and I was racing away and a lot of people were a bit lost. Even native English speakers were struggling to keep up with what I was saying. So, yeah, that was a bit embarrassing, but I have had those things of forgetting what I actually wanted to be saying. Usually I managed to save myself with that, though. I’m quite a good improviser. So I’ll go somewhere else and I’ll come back when I get what I was supposed to be saying.

So that leads me to another in depth question, right. So if you’re on stage and you’re saying that sometimes you may lose your footing, are you more of a slide presenter or you memorize and kind of have key points and you just kind of go off top of your head with those topics.

When I’m on a live stage in front of people, I do not generally use Slideshows. I want people to be looking at me and paying attention to me. And that’s not an ego thing that’s I see the slides in those situations as often a distraction. People have a tendency to put lots of writing on the slides, and if I use slides at all, they will only ever be images and they will be as limited as possible because I feel they can very easily be a distraction to any kind of presentation that you’re doing. Whereas when I’m doing a lot of webinar work or online events, I’m more likely to have slides accompanying me. And again, it will generally just be visual illustrations because I don’t want them to be a distraction and I don’t want people do this thing about putting all their points on a slide and reading them off. It doesn’t help anyone if you’re reading off the same thing that they can see on your screen, definitely.

So you’re talking about your highs and lows. You’re talking about things that you’ve overcome. You’re talking about some strategies we always hear about someone being overnight success, and that’s the perception on the front end as a viewer looking in from the outside. But the reality that’s usually supported by a 20 year thing to get you to that point. Right. So how long have you been on your journey to get to where you are currently?

Oh, boy. But you know what? I used to be a flight attendant for an airline, which is a very different job, and so it was really about the age of 30, and I’m coming up to 50 soon. So it was about the age of 30 that I realized I wanted to do something more with my life and started training up to be a coach. And it was on the journey of training up to be a life coach and business coach that I discovered the public speaking side of things. I would say probably about 16, 17 years that I’ve been on that journey, and that’s been a massive evolution for me. What I thought I wanted early on has changed and developed, and where I am right now is just so exciting and so fantastic. I have coached both in business and life, hundreds and thousands of people from around the world in groups, and one to one been privileged enough to work for a large personal development company in the US, which I still do some work with as well. And so I’ve been trained up by some of the very best people when it comes to online presenting and delivering, coaching and training online as well. And so I’ve been very lucky, very blessed in my work. And so, yeah, as a Speaker, I would say certainly for the last 15 years I’ve been honing my talents as a speaker to a point where I do very well. I’ve won some awards and competitions, some humorous speaking competitions. I like to think I’m a funny guy sometimes, and I’m actually working on some stand up comedy at the moment as well. That’s just for me, for fun.

I think that’s definitely cool because I’ve talked to several different podcasters and public speakers and a commonality. But I’ve figured out pattern behind the scenes. Like a lot of them are taking up comedy classes, and I guess that’s kind of like figuring out how to move an audience and how to invoke that emotional reaction versus just like the linear reaction. Is that part of the reason why you use comedy and you’re speaking?

You know what? I’ve always used it a bit anyway. I always tended to be a bit of a Joker, although when I was living and working in the UK, I could fall back on a lot of pop culture humor because it’s very shared. Working more internationally now, you can’t fall back on that stuff because it’s not shared, and so you have to be able to share that. But humor is, I think, more international than we tend to think. There’s just a lot of pop humor that is not so commonly known. But one of the reasons why it’s so important to me and I mentioned earlier that I’ve had professional comedians on my podcast is because I see comedy and humor as being a very critical skill of influence and persuasion. The ability to be able to make people laugh is highly influential and incredibly persuasive. And that’s a lot of what I’ve talked to some of the professional comedians have had on my show around. And I still want to have many more conversations around this because I feel like in the academic studies on influence and persuasion, which I read all the time, this does not get studied anything like as much as all the other areas that more people are perhaps more familiar with.

Definitely understand. I think it’s probably under used to a certain extent, and I think it’s one of those things, to your point. It’s highly influential. And we can kind of see that in the comedians of today’s world, like they’re going from being backstage comedians to multi millionaires with multi different businesses running industry standard corporations now, versus if you go back 20,30 years ago, they were literally just trying to figure out when the next show was. So I definitely think that’s an interesting time. I think we probably talk about that all day. But this progressed right? So if you could time travel back because you’re saying that you didn’t start this journey until your 30s. Right. So obviously between your early days until you’re 30 years old, is there one thing that if you can go back in time and change or do all over again or leave a little whisper in your ear and say, hey, do this versus do that? What would that one thing be?

If I could go back to myself, as I would probably try and go back to when I was at University doing my performance arts and the likes and give a little whisper in my ear about having a try at public speaking because I would have always enjoyed it. I guess I had done aspects of that. I grew up in a Church environment, so regularly you get pulled up onto the stage to do readings and things like that. I was already somewhat used to speaking in front of people from that. But doing it in a way where you’re actually up on the stage not playing a part so much as being yourself, that was exhilarating for me. It was very different and a very different kind of performance. But I wish I discovered that early on.

So I think you just brought up about being younger and talking about Church. Do you come from an entrepreneurial family? Like, obviously you’re very savvy in your entrepreneurial endeavors. Where did that hustle mentality come from?

Oh, man. I don’t know if it did. I have one entrepreneur in my family, my uncle, who was a chemical engineer and started up his own detergent business. But that’s about it. So maybe from that side of the family, the hustle mentality is something that I’ve developed and really had to push myself with because it doesn’t come naturally for me. I’ve had to work really hard at it.

Nice. So you’re talking about, like, hustling and juggling things to a certain extent, right. So how do you currently juggle, like, your work life with your family life?

Well, that’s not too much of a struggle. I keep some sacred time for family life, and I keep the two things very separate. So I will work hard in the week, and I’d usually work Saturday mornings with some of my private clients. But Saturday afternoon to Sunday night is sacred. It’s family time is off limits to clients and the lights. I’m a believer that is the quality of time that you spend with people that is far more important than the quantity of time that you spend with them. So when I’m with my family, I’m not on my phone, I’m not checking my messages or think about what else is going on, what’s coming up on Monday when I’m back in the office, I’m with them, and I do my best to be fully present with the people that I’m with in my life. And so when I’m at work, I don’t feel bad about being fully present with that. And we can’t do everything or be everything to everyone all the time, but they understand what I’m working to. I’m very lucky to be really well supported. And so people understand sometimes if I can’t do the things that everyone else wants to do or if I’m working late and those sorts of things, they get it. And sometimes I do have to do interviews at weird times because of time changes, or I’m doing presentations or online events at weird times because they’re for other countries. And that’s just part of the life.

Very interesting. And I think you alluded to your scheduling to a bit. So in that scheduling, what is your morning routines? What is your morning habits look like?

My morning routine always starts off with gratitude. I know this is probably one that a lot of people say, but it’s the first thought I have every day. One of my favorite talks that I give is about how gratitude saved my life. And I believe that it did and turned me around from when I was at a time when I didn’t really care if I woke up the next day or not to turn around. I love my life and I’m excited and happy every day. And I put that down to a continued practice of daily gratitude. So that’s always my first thought when I wake up. It’s trained into my head now and then. Second to that, I set contention for myself, for the day, for how I want to show up in my life. And then that gets followed up by some journaling. And at the moment, I’m also spending about 20 to 30 minutes doing some comedy writing, working through a comedy program. And then I usually get things moving a bit. Things moving. So I’m not a breakfast person, but I like my bulletproof coffee and a glass of water, and then I’m ready to go get it.

Yeah, I can definitely see that just by talking to you. And we talked before. I can see definitely journaling and writing that I didn’t realize that you were doing comedy to this extent, but I could definitely see that. And part of that is also like books. I would think that I think you mentioned your book earlier on. So this next question I’m going to ask you is a three part question. Right. What books did you read on your journey? I mean, particularly from your 30 to 50 age range, what books helped you go from where you were to where you are? Two is what book are you reading right now to help yourself evolve? And three, let’s dive into a little bit more about the book that you are writing.

Okay. So I would start with saying the books that probably have been most transformative for me in my journey, one of them because I talk about influencer proposal a lot. What woke me up to that, what got me onto it. I don’t know if you’ve heard of a guy called Mark Joyner. He is the guy who had simply and it’s the whole sort of scheme to help you get things done and become more productive. And he’s had some books in that as well. And one of the books he had was this book called “Mind Control Marketing”, which I think was only available through his site. And that was where I first became aware of all these hidden influence and persuasion things going on, particularly in the world of marketing. And that fascinated me. It triggered that’s where the whole journey into influence and persuasion started for me. And I would say from that, that led me to Charlie Needs book on influence and Psychology of Persuasion, which I still read regularly. In fact, I’ve just downloaded the new revised and expanded edition of that. So I want to see what’s new, what they’ve added to it. And I’d say, other than that, probably one of the other most influential books have had on me just in terms of life philosophy was “Four Agreements”, Don Miguel Ruiz book “Four Agreements”. And those four principles for me are things to live your life by.

Nice. And again, what books are you reading now?

Right now, I always have a number of books on the go. So I’ve just finished an audiobook of the great courses in psychology. That was about 36 hours of audio, I think. So it was quite a mission to get through it. It was enlightening. I just finished reading yesterday a book on influence that I got from my Kindle Unlimited account, which was a pretty short book. It was okay, but it was nothing special. But I’m also reading a book by a Mentalist at the moment as well, which is part of my research. And I’ve got another research book on the go, which I’m rereading for notes for my book, which is from a political speech writer who I’ve had on my show before, a really good book called Winning Minds by Simon Lancaster. And that has a lot of very powerful speech writing tips and tricks in there. And so I’m trying to capture a few elements of that. A lot of the books I’m reading at the moment are about the art of rhetoric and a lot of influence and persuasion stuff as part of the research for my book. And so I haven’t got a lot of time for personal or fiction at the moment.

I definitely lean towards a nonfiction myself. So I want some more insight to like your book. I know you don’t want to allude to the title, but kind of like walk us through. If I’m a reader, what am I going to be able to get by reading your new book?

The goal for the book is that people who read it are going to be able to have a basic understanding about how influence works, the relationship between influence and persuasion, because they’re not the same thing, although they’re very tied together. And so influence is more things like your status and your perception, your confidence, the things that people look to, your humor, like being able to make people laugh. Those are things that give you influence with people. So influence is more something you have. Persuasion tends to be more something that you do. And so we persuade people that’s much more active thing. But often you need both. You need the influence and the persuasion for the persuasion to work. So that’s really a lot of what this is about. One of my biggest goals from the book is to teach influence and persuasion within an ethical framework. That’s always my goal with teaching these things anyway, because they’re all things that can be used unethically. So I hope, at least by teaching it within an ethical framework, that people will resonate with that. And people who perhaps don’t want it in that sort of way won’t feel like they can connect with the book. That’s my goal. But I see one of the reasons why the whole influence and persuasion stuff really struck a lot with me was seeing all this hidden stuff going on, everything going on beneath the surface that we don’t notice, and we often don’t notice unless it gets overused. And then we do start to notice it and become aware. But when these things get overused, they also become ineffective. So people move on to other things. But I don’t know. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of having someone Con you, like a professional Con artist Con you in your life. I have a couple of times, and they’re very good. And part of me wanted to understand how that works as well. And so that’s an interesting something I’ve been studying as well. It ties in with a lot of the studies that I do. And so often we don’t know exactly how people are using psychology against us to get what they want. And if you understand more of how that works, you’re at least more likely to recognize when it’s being used against you and be able to say, oh, hang on a minute. I know what you’re doing, and so you could do something about it. So I do see it as an empowerment tool, teaching this stuff as well. And I hope that teaching more of this to people who want to be leaders, who really want to be leaders in their life, in the world, because often these skills only really get taught in the top schools, the ones that people are paying millions to send their kids to, churning out tomorrow’s leaders, the politicians and lawyers of the future are the ones who tend to get taught all this stuff. And it doesn’t often come into general schooling for people. And it’s a real shame. So much of this stuff people have never heard of or have no understanding about, and it’s being used on them all the time. And so I see it also as a way of leveling the playing field and creating more future leaders who will have the same skills.

Yeah. I would definitely think, like everyone that’s a marketer is probably going to be biting at the chops to get their hands on that book, because from a marketing standpoint, that’s what we do as marketers. We understand to a certain extent, more psychology than the normal person and what works and what doesn’t work. So we’re testing these things out on a regular basis. So I definitely look forward to you got to put me on your mailing list. I want to get access to the book one. Sure so.

Yeah, absolutely.

Cool. So with that, I think that’s more like a legacy thing, right? I mean, you’re creating this book and you’re putting your last 20 years of influence into this book and to help people become more persuasive. Where do you see yourself 20 years from now?

I see myself hopefully still talking about all this stuff and writing even more about it into the future. There’s a lot that I want to get out there in terms of information, and I hope I never get bored or tired of speaking about this stuff. I don’t think I ever will. It’s too much of a deep passion. Sometimes you find those things you’re like, oh, yeah, that feels like what I was put here for to do, and that’s what I’ve connected with. I found my purpose. I chose that as my purpose. That’s my whole mission in life is one of education and empowerment, but also of entertainment as well, because I think it should be fun. The journey for this stuff should be fun. And so that’s why I’m hopefully bringing in a lot more of the humor side of things as well to things to make the educational journey more lighthearted and fun for people because we remember more when we’re having fun.

Very, very true. True. So let’s just talk about the tech side of things. Right. Obviously, in your business, you have to have some kind of systems in place, some kind of technology to essentially manage some things. So what tools, software wise, do you use on a day to day basis that you would not be able to do what you do with your clients without it?

Well, definitely my Google Calendar and Calendly, the app I use that for managing my calendar, are critical for me. So a lot of what I do wouldn’t happen without those things. And outside of that, I don’t have too many systems. I am not deeply into tech or anything, but I do have a new website, which is still I’m still working on setting up with lovely people from SuperPass, and that is going to enable me to do a lot more things. So I’m Loading up online courses onto there, and people will be able to access my podcast directly from there as well. And that’s definitely a tool that is going to allow me to do more than my WordPress site that I had before ever could. So those are the things I’m pretty excited about, but I use a lot of write. I like to write stuff down. I’m a bit old school. I have several journals. I have my gratitude Journal, I have my productivity Journal. I have my daily Journal, my comedy Journal. So I like to write stuff down into those by hand.

Very nice. I think we share that same record. I just released my eight book, and my new book is essentially for book readers. It’s for book clubs. So the goal of this book is a Journal to Journal about the top 90 books that you’ve read and have the takeaways in the palm of your hand so you could walk away with it. This is just kind of like not necessarily a global pitch, but you’ve brought up Journaling at least five to six times on this episode. And I want people to really understand the impact of journaling. It kind of gives you an opportunity to get information from your head onto pages so you can recap them again and correct me if I’m wrong. I’m thinking that’s what you’re using it for to a certain extent. You’re getting all these ideas out of your head and put it into one place to be able to hold onto it and recap later. Is that correct?

Yeah. Otherwise the thoughts just drift away with the ether. They’re gone. But having the stuff written down is solidify stuff, and it reminds you of where you were at yesterday and the day before. And you can check back on things like especially with my productivity Journal, I find that that’s just a great way of helping me see am I achieving what I want to be achieving where there’s room for improvement and sometimes realizing I’ve done more than I thought I had because very often we feel like we haven’t done so much. Actually, I’ve done quite a lot, but my personal journey, that’s very much about getting stuff out of my head. A lot of comedy journaling is as well. So, yeah, it’s important to get stuff written down for me, but often I don’t know what I think about things until I write them down. And I hear this from a lot of writers as well. It’s a great way of formulating your thoughts. People think, I don’t really have that many opinions or I don’t know what I really think about things. If you want to know, start writing stuff down and you will find out what you think about things. It’s a great way to discover yourself. But I love what you’re saying about book club. I’ve done something I’m going to come back to when I have a bit more time. But I used to do these 92nd book reviews, and I want to come back to doing them for all the books that I love and try and not narrow down. I don’t want to give people the content of the book because I want them to read them, but I want them to know why I loved it and why they should read it, too. And that’s what the general intention I have with those 92nd reviews is not to give them the summary of the book, but to give them here’s the juicy bits for me. Here is the meat of this book, and here’s why I think you should read it. I will come back to doing those.

Yeah, definitely. I like that. I mean, you’re not telling them the key takeaways per se, but you’re giving them enough juiciness for them to bite into it. And it would be nice to hear them rebuttal. Right. Like, this was your takeaway. But what is your serious takeaway? What was your juicy bit? And you can kind of collect that data and kind of present that, whether it’s a YouTube channel or something along those lines will be definitely interesting.

Yeah. Those go up on my YouTube channel. I say I will be coming back to doing them. I have a lot of fun doing them. They don’t take too much time to put together. And I know that they’ve been well received in the past, but, yeah, it’s just been a time thing recently got you so going to the words of wisdom, right.

And I’m going to go back to the 30 year old age group to where you were so thinking about yourself, maybe 32, 33 years old, and I’m coming to you and saying, look, like I’m hearing your story. I think you have a phenomenal story. I want to follow in your footsteps. What words of wisdom would you give to me as I’m a 30 year old individual working to become who I’m going to be sure.

One of the things that has probably made the biggest difference to me is surrounding yourself with the right people. And that has been transformative for me. My first, earliest journey into personal development. Whilst I met some amazing people, a lot of the people I was working around I didn’t feel were quite as ethical or on track as I would have liked them to be. And then when I made a shift, I got asked to go and work for someone else who I know is incredibly ethical and got to meet him and got to know him. If anyone ever knows Harv Eker, he’s a super unique guy and very in his integrity and does what he says. And he is the same person on stage as you see on stage, people who do what they say when they do it, people who really do live and honor their integrity, who have a life philosophy and they live by it and they care about their mission and empowering other people and making a positive difference in the world. Spending time around people who are like that will transform you. And it did me. And it helped me to ignite even more the fire that was in me to do what I do now by being around people who were passionate about the things that they cared about and their own mission. Because a lot of people, I think, have the sense of those sorts of things, but they don’t have enough of a desire or drive, and they’re not necessarily surrounded by people who are encouraging that or lifting them up. It might be all fine and calm, but if you haven’t got people who are actually helping to lift you up and fire you up, then you want to find some of those people in your life. So some of that has come through the network that I’ve built, and some of that has come from the people that I’ve chosen to be in environments with and learn from and work from. And that has been super empowering for me and transformed who I am as a person. So I’m not honestly grateful. I owe all of who I am now to those people who have helped me step up along the way.

Wow. With that, obviously, anyone listening, they probably want to contact you, right? So what’s your social media profiles, your website? How can they get in contact with you?

One of the best places to contact me is LinkedIn. I hang out there a lot. So you can find John Alexander Ball or look up Present Influence, which is my company on LinkedIn. And I hang out on Twitter a bit as well. So you’ll see Speaking Influence Podcast or Johnaball @Johnaball on Twitter. Those are the places I spend the most time online. But if anyone wants to get in touch with me directly, they can go to Presentinfluence.com or email me. John@presentinfluence.com and I’m more than happy to hear from people. Wow.

So we’re going to go into the bonus route. A couple of bonus questions for you. So what is your most significant achievement to date? Outside of family?

Outside of family, there are a lot of them, to be honest. I would say probably one that’s most significant for me was turning my life on its head by moving to Spain and making my life here and not knowing if any of that was going to work out, just taking a huge chance in life and saying, well, we’ll see what happens. So that was a pretty big achievement.

Yeah. Another bonus question for you. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

I’d probably choose someone alive, but who would it be? Gosh. There’s so many people I’d love to learn from. One of the people I’ve really enjoyed this is actually someone who died years ago. But if he could come forward in time or I could go back in time, spend 24 hours around Leonardo DA Vinci, I think that would be amazing. Just probably the most genius man who’s ever lived. I think from recently reading a full biography about his life and looking at the amazing works of art he created, I think just being in the presence of that kind of greatness would be amazingly rewarding. Wow.

Yeah, definitely. I’m just thinking about all his achievements and all the things that he has done. I mean, definitely. I would definitely add him to my to do list for sure. Definitely. So, I mean, I was your fellow podcaster, and anytime I close out my shows, I always get whoever I’m interviewing the opportunity to interview me. So for you, this should be 100% natural. Microphone is yours. What questions do you have for me?

I would like to know what inspired you to start podcasting.

So the way the story goes is that literally I had a business, I worked the business literally almost to death. I had a stroke in 2018. And I was always the guy behind the curtain, always the guy influencing people to grow their businesses. And finally after that stroke, I was like, okay, I’m doing all this for everyone else, but what’s my legacy? What am I leaving behind? And my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, was saying, It’s time for you to step in front of the camera. Time for you to step in front of the limelight. So then I kind of came up with the name Boston Cage, did a whole new rebrand, and I started podcasting. And honestly, I’ve never looked back. I was like, why the hell did I not do this earlier on to your purpose that you said earlier? I think podcasting has become my purpose because now it leaves me with energy to leave behind a legacy, breadcrumbs for my family and also helping other entrepreneurs on their journey to follow the steps and other entrepreneurs footsteps.

Cool. What have been the most impactful lessons that you’ve learned on your journey?

One of them, I would think, systems, man. Just having systems in place make podcasting so much easier. So that way I could focus on the communication, the conversation that you and I are having. Like, we’re actually getting into depth, like, going into your past, talking to you about a child versus scrambling, thinking about, okay, I need to get this transcribed, I need to get this file edited. What’s on my schedule. Like, all those things should be kind of second nature, and then you should be able to put all your energy into the interview. Like, actually, that’s where the meat and potatoes are sitting on the table is when you’re having the conversation with the person in front of you.

After anybody in the world of life and business again, maybe living or dead. But who would you think or describe as being the most influential or persuasive people that you’ve ever come across?

I would say Tony Robbins. And the reason why I say Tony Robbins, because I think Tony Robbins has a huge following of people that are influenced by him. And then he has a huge following of people that’s kind of like, there’s no way in hell this guy is really that good. And then they’ll pay and they’ll show up and they’ll even pay for VIP, and they’ll show up and they’ll sit with their arms crossed and they’re looking and they’re like, yeah, okay. And then literally about 45 minutes to an hour into it, they’re high fiving, giving back massages and hugging everyone around them. So to see someone go from being a non believer, it’s almost like being in a Church experience, someone going from a non believer to a believer. And Tony does that every day, all day, over and over and over again.

Yeah. He’s certainly someone who’s mastered those sorts of skills, especially from the stage. And there’s a reason why he’s a big name in personal development. If you could go back in time and ask yourself the same question, you’d ask me, what advice would you give your younger self and at what point would you give it?

I would go back right at my journey when I first got my first degree as a graphic designer, when I was searching, when I was on that graphic design is great, but how do I monetize it? Then I became a web developer. I got a web development degree. That’s great. How do I monetize it? I would have gone back in time and would have told him, go bigger. Stop thinking about how to execute and think about the vision, and stop holding yourself back, making sure you want to know how to do something and just do it.

Cool. What do you think makes what do you think makes for influential or persuasive communication?

I think it’s something that I have learned to do through this podcast is becoming a very good listener, listening to what the other person is saying, picking up on the key tip, because a lot of podcasters are certainly saying not to knock podcasters, but they have a list of questions, and usually they’re trying to knock out the questions, but they’re not listening to the answers and they’re not willing to move away from their structured questions. But it’s easy to organize that. If you just listen to what someone is saying and then you could kind of respond on that, you don’t want to leave something so juicy on the table just to jump to another question. So for me, I do a lot of listening, and I just kind of flow it into the next question whenever that question comes up. But I’m going to talk about that one thing that you just delivered. That was a golden nugget. First.

To me, that’s one of the most critical skills of speaking and presenting. And I say podcasting as well. Some shows have those set questions, and that’s great. I’m very much like you. I like to be fully present with my guests. One of the reasons why I call my business present influence is it’s also present. It’s not just presenting, it’s all about being present as well. And that’s a big theme in my book that will be coming out as well. This whole thing of actually being tuned into what’s going on, tuned into what people are saying to you and responding to that rather than thinking about what you’re going to say next, how you are going to respond instead of what’s actually being said because you may be leaving some really interesting diversions in the conversation on the table otherwise. And I take a similar philosophy to you. Is that enough questions?

We’re scheduled to interview me or your podcast? We’re warming up.

Yes, I will have some great questions for you there as well. Cool.

Well, that’s enclosing. And I definitely appreciate you taking the time and efforts from your busy day and being able to deliver as much information and insight that you did on our podcast today. Thank you.

It’s been a real pleasure. I’ve had a great time.

Great S.A, Grant. Over and out.

Founder Of Present Influence: Johnny Ball AKA The Influence Boss – S3E17 (#113)2023-01-03T16:54:37+00:00

Owner Of InterPersonal Development: Thomas Gelmi AKA The Interpersonal Boss – S3E16 (#112)

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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

Owner Of InterPersonal Development: Thomas Gelmi AKA The Interpersonal Boss – S3E16 (#112)
Get to know yourself in terms of finding out what’s really important for you and what are your core values.
In Season 3, Episode 16 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the Owner of InterPersonal Development, Thomas Gelmi.
For almost two decades, Thomas Gelmi has been an executive coach, facilitator, and sparring partner supporting leaders and teams in their development at various levels and in numerous industries. He focuses on developing personal and interpersonal competence in leadership, teamwork, and customer contact.
For his practice, he draws on an extraordinary biography with exciting milestones, including seven-year employment at the former Swissair. In the worldwide leadership and training of cabin crew, and in contact with international customers at 30,000 feet, he experienced first-hand how important a high level of personal and interpersonal competence is for effective human interaction. Additionally, he has many years of professional experience in various
management positions and as a team leader and trained caregiver in accidents and other extreme situations.
Based in Switzerland, with a home near Zurich, Thomas works with people all across Europe and regularly in North America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. His clients include global corporations as well as SMEs and private individuals.
Don’t miss a minute of this episode covering topics on:
  • What can Thomas do for you
  • What is Thomas’s morning routine
  • What tools is Thomas using in his business
  • And So Much More!!!
Want more details on how to contact Thomas? Check out the links below!

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S3E16 Thomas Gelmi.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

All right, 3, 2, 1one. Welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. Today’s show, we have a special guest that I think is going to be very intriguing to you, the center, right. First of all, I want you guys, when you get an opportunity to take notes on this episode, and I want that feedback to be formatted in comments on our Facebook group. So at your earliest convenience, I want you to go to bossuncaged.com/fbgroup. Again, that’s bossuncaged.com/fbgroup. So today’s show, we have an individual that’s coming from Switzerland. I’ve deemed him the interpersonal boss. So without further Ado, Thomas, tell us a little bit more about who you are.

Well, first of all, let me thank you S.A for having me on your show. It’s a pleasure to be here. Yeah. Let me give you a brief introduction. I am 53 years old. I refer to it as level 53, which means I made it through all the previous levels, and here I am. And what I do is I get up in the morning and help leaders and organizations get better at what they do on an interpersonal and on a personal level, meaning be more effective with yourself and with others. I’ve been doing this for around about 20 years now. Before that, I used to fly around the world as a Metro de cabin, which means inflight manager, leading cabin crew. That was a very interesting time, very adventurous, but also learned a lot about human beings and what works and what doesn’t work. And before that, some colorful period of my career, some job hopping, and I earned my first money cutting people’s hair.

Nice. So you have a diverse plethora of different things. You’ve Dibble and dabbled. And I like the way you said it’s, 53. It’s almost like a video game. You’re on level 53, and you’re moving forward. So another thing that I thought I was really cool, like you’re watching one of your YouTube videos. You were talking about what gives you goosebumps. So do you want to talk about that for a little bit? How do you get goosebumps when you’re dealing with your particular customers?

Well, goosebumps is what I get when I’m, you know, with someone in a conversation, maybe already quite a bit into a process, like a one to one coaching process, for example. And then suddenly it clicks and somebody has a revelation and something becomes really clear from one moment to the other. And that opens doors into different behavior, into different approaches, into doing something differently that really makes a difference in somebody’s life. And very often we start from a business context with some leadership topics, communication, conflict management topics, et cetera. And then the benefit radiates way into private life. And families are affected by managers who improve their communication skills. And I’ve had wives of clients sending me emails and saying, I don’t know what you really did to my husband, but keep going. Things like that I even get goosebumps? Not what I’m talking about.

Nice. While you’re in that state of mind, you’re getting the goosebumps. Right. How would you define yourself if you could only use three to five words?

You mean describing me as a person?

Yeah, just three to five words. What would you use?

Empathetic, good listener, authentic and sensitive.

Interesting. So let’s talk about your journey a little bit. Right. Are you originally from Switzerland? Where were you born and raised?

I was born and raised here in Switzerland, but I’m the son of an Italian father and an Austrian mother. So I grew up between my father speaking Italian with me, my mother speaking German with me, and both of them in the background speaking English because they otherwise wouldn’t understand each other. So I grew up in this multi language context. That’s why I also work in four languages German, English, French, Italian. So, yeah, I always been here in Switzerland. That was always my hub from which I flew out into the world, working globally, with people, across industries, across cultures. It’s a good place to be based in. A bit expensive, but otherwise very good.

So on this journey, when did you realize obviously you talked about a couple of different career paths, that you’ve had Forks in the road? So when did you kind of realize that you were going to be in the space that you’re in currently?

Actually, I never realized this beforehand that I am going to be somewhere. It’s like Steve Jobs once said in one of his commencement speeches, you can only connect the dots in retrospect by looking back, understanding the connections and why things happened and what something was good for and beneficial for. But you have to live life forward into the unknown, into the dense fog, not seeing. So that’s also why I in retrospect, realize what the rep threat in my biography is, which looks like a little bit of zigzagging. But the rep threat is very clear. Even at the time where I cut people’s hair as a hairdresser for three years, what I was really doing was listening. I was listening to people’s stories and having deep conversations. And believe me, as a hairdresser, you get to know stories. Nobody else does. And so that was a red threat. It was always about people. It was always about having meaningful conversations with people that have an impact. So that would be my answer to your question. So it was always only in retrospect, very nice.

So with those experiences, right. I think you’ve had positive and probably negative experiences, and it seems kind of like you’re not a life coach, but you’re helping people with their lives to a certain extent. So what’s the worst experience you’ve had to deal with with a client that was probably maybe not where they wanted to be and you was helping them get to where they’re going to be.

The worst? You mean the worst? Well, there were many challenging situations I couldn’t really think of the worst one, but in many cases, it was like really being stuck in what looked like a dead end and then finding your way out of that. So I have people being close to resigning and saying, I’m done, I’m done with this, I can’t take it anymore and then ending up staying with the organization. I’m thinking of one particular case and then really thriving, but not because they changed position, they changed the company, they changed something in their environment, but because they changed something inside mindset, attitude, how you look at things, how you think about things, how you think about yourself, things like that. These are levers you can work with, you can adjust, you can regulate. So that by changing how you look at things, your reality changes. It doesn’t matter what you see. What matters is how you look at it. And that’s the personal competence part. When you go to my website, you see a circle chart that says that everywhere where people want to achieve something together, leadership, teamwork, customer relations. This interpersonal competence is, of course, a key, the ability to connect, to build rapport, relationship, trust, and also maintain them under difficult conditions. And the basis for this interpersonal competence is a well developed, solid personal competence, meaning being in a good relationship with yourself first and foremost. Wow.

So let’s say just listening to you and I can tell that you’re very passionate about this subject matter and you’re very engulfed and you’re really astute in that let’s say I came to you. Right. And what’s the first thing that you’re going to do? What’s your steps and procedures on boarding a new client like myself?

Well, first of all, I would ask you, what is it about what brings you to me? And then after I got to basic understanding of your situation and what brought me to have a conversation with me, my next question is what would you like to achieve? So what is your goal in the topic or the situation that you just described? Then I would explore with you this ideal future, this goal, what would it look like when you got there? How would you recognize that you achieved your goal? And we would explore this very vividly. And then only then we would start talking about okay, now that is clear where you want to end up. What would be the first step you could take in that direction? And much of this process is also about awareness. Creating awareness is the first step into any change. You need to know, you need to recognize, because only what we’re aware of, we can change, we can control. What we’re not aware of often controls us, influences us unknowingly, unconsciously. So that will be an initial thing to do.

I guess you’re pulling back from me, from your listening ability. So as a kid, were you always as Stute at listening as you are today?

Yeah, I would say I was more on the listening end than on the talkative end, more on the quiet, more on the reserved observing end rather than on the initiating stuff end and the Proactive extrovert end. Also, even if it might not come across as such, I’m quite an introvert person, quite a reserved person. And one definition of extraversion versus introversion is where you charge your batteries. And as a rather intrate person, I charge my batteries by having a loan time going out for long walks in the woods. That’s how I recharge. Or after a full day like today, I had a full day communication workshop with a leadership team of twelve people. Very extrovert behavior for my side, which is a part of me, but not my main tendency. But after a day like this, I need to rest. And I certainly don’t invite guests coming over for dinner or something like that. And somebody who was more on the extrovert side of the spectrum would charge their batteries by going out, by having parties, by inviting people over. So that’s one indication or criteria.

I think that’s one hell of an analogy to compare about the way you recharge your batteries is by taking that alone time. So in that space. Right. You’re saying that you have to kind of hit the switch. Right. So when you hit the switch, you’re using up the battery to exert that information and exert that to your listening audience. And then to recharge, you kind of go into a quiet place. That’s definitely interesting. So my next question is we always hear about the 20 years that it takes someone to become a success story, but the perception is usually an overnight success. How long did it take you to get to where you are currently?

Well, 53 years. All the 53 years, because everything that happened in my life, everything I did, everything I didn’t do, how I responded to what was happening, all my decisions, every single decision, end of the day, let up to where I am today. So a few things went south from that perspective. In the moment, for example, that turned out to be jumping boards that brought me forward. And we’re actually lucky strikes in retrospect, probably the most impressive example was when I used to work for Swiss Air, the former Swiss National airline. I was really happy. I found like, wow, this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. And then in 2001, about a month after 911, the whole fleet was grounded because the company went out of money, bankrupt, no more liquidity. And it was like a punch in the face. It’s almost like when you’re so identified with your job, with what you’re doing, it’s not a job, it’s a purpose. It’s a way of living. Right. And then from one day to another, it’s over. It’s like losing a loved one. It’s like a relationship breaking up. So really tough. It was a national disaster. It was in all the newspapers, people were crying, really bad situation. But in retrospect I must say if it wasn’t for the grounding of Swiss there I don’t know if I would be where I am today. I might even be a flight attendant or a Metro. The cabin. In an industry that has massively changed ever since and not necessarily for the better, you never know what something is good for. It may look like it’s very negative and it’s a misfortune or even a failure only to find out one year later, two years, few years later maybe wow, that was exactly the right thing to happen because it got me where I am now. So a little bit of trust helps, a little bit of trust and things will turn out well. Look at us. Everybody who’s here, everybody who’s listening. Everybody’s. Life is a success story. We’ve all made it this far. We’ve all made it up to this point. We made it ups and downs of course, but we made it so there is a likelihood that we will also be able to make it in the future no matter what we will be presented with.

On the topic of retrospect, right. If you could time travel back in time, is there one thing that you would want to do differently if you could do it all over again?

Not a single thing. If I may rephrase the question slightly, what would be the advice I would give to my 20 year old? If I would be able to meet my 20 year old myself, the one advice I would give him would be relax and enjoy. It’s all going to turn out well. Relax.

I think that will definitely help with discharging the batteries, right?

Oh yeah, a lot. Because that’s where I am today. One of the major internal shifts I had in my life was the moment I decided to experiment with completely letting go of any attempt to control life, control life and direct my own life and to let go and say okay, life, let’s see what happens if I let you let you do and I go with the flow rather than going against it. This doesn’t mean I completely resign. I give up, but it means that I don’t resist. For example, things that I cannot change or control because often we’re stuck in resistance against things that if we just think about it for 1 minute we realize that it’s nothing I can change, it’s nothing I can control. It is what it is. So being in resistance against something like that, it’s raining outside for example of course a very simple example now but there’s no use. It’s a waste of time and energy in resisting or being frustrated or angry about something that is not changeable and to completely let go of that and focusing only on what you can directly influence and control. Very.

Interesting. I would think if anyone would take heed to what you’re saying. I mean, time traveling and being able to tell yourself to relax would definitely be more beneficial in the long run. By far, I think we don’t learn that until much later in our natural lives, Unfortunately, yes. Question for you. You obviously have an entrepreneurial side to you. You have entrepreneurial vision and insight. Does that come from an entrepreneurial background, like a family member or aunt or an uncle?

Not at all. Not at all. Contra, I can’t think of anyone in my family that ran their own business. Okay. My grandparents had a hotel. Yes. Okay. But I rather got the message when I was younger. When I was brought up, I rather got the message, find a safe job. Best find a job in a bank because we’re here in Switzerland. It’s a financial center. Right. So go to banking and finance, and you’re good. And I would probably never have started my own business had I not been laid off. At some point after the grounding of Swiss Air, I joined a consulting company because I wanted to do something completely different. And I started as the assistant to the CEO. And then during the following eight years, I developed into more or less what I’m doing today. Did some further education, training, et cetera, et cetera. Then after eight years, they decided that they want to end the collaboration, which again, it felt like a failure. But again, in retrospect, this was the entry door into my independence into starting my own business. So I was, like, pushed out of my comfort zone, and then I had to, which was again the best thing that could happen to me. Now I see things differently when it comes to being a business owner, running your own business. I personally think that I’m in a much safer position today of running my own company as opposed to being employed, because if you’re employed, you’re either on or off. You’re on the payroll or you’re off. I have a portfolio of clients. If one client decides to work with someone else, fine. I have many other clients. So my risk, so to speak. My entrepreneurial risk is much more diversified. It stands on various pillars. So that’s why I don’t see it as such a risky thing to be an entrepreneur. As, for example, my father would see it, who always wanted to see me in the bank. Yeah.

Now that you brought up your dad. Right. Family, to a certain extent, as entrepreneur, that’s always, like, a difficult task to juggle. So how are you currently managing your work life with your family life?

Oh, well, it takes a conscious decision to invest in enough time and take enough time and also presence, for example, with your children. Worst case that can happen is that you’re not able to be present in the moment with your full attention, but rather, like spread all over the place. Meaning, for example, you’re on the weekend with your kids, but you’re just physically present in your mind in last week’s meetings or you’re already mentally in Monday’s meeting that you, by the way, still have to prepare. So you’re not really there. And the key is to really make this conscious decision to be in your role as an entrepreneur or as a manager or whatever. Your role is to be fully in the role, but then also be fully out of the role. Jobs where you wear a uniform have an advantage in this regard. So you put on your own uniform and now you’re the policeman or now you’re the nurse or the doctor or whatever it is. This helps for this mental step into the role, but then also for the mental step out of the role. You take off your form, you put it in your locker, you close it, and then you’re a private person. This helps if you’re not wearing a uniform for work. It takes a mental step to do it. And it’s also a matter of mindfulness, mindfulness describing this ability to be present fully in the here and now and only in the here and now with what’s right in front of you. And if it’s your child in front of you, then you’re with your child and being present. I think this is crucial.

Wow. So correct me if I’m wrong, but just hearing you speak and I think you’re a really big believer of state of mind mindset, personal inner philosophies. So with that, I would think that you pretty much have a pretty astute Regiment to your daily routine. What is your morning routine? Your morning habits look like?

I love the question. Well, I get up usually somewhere between five and 06:00 A.m., so I’m an early bird and I usually make myself a cup of coffee and then drink the coffee and look out the window. And I try to really just look out the window. I have a very nice. Yeah, have your coffee. It’s a bit late for me here. I’ll probably take a beer. Have a beer after our conversation. And so I just look out the window and just get a feeling for the day, the weather. What atmosphere do we have today? And then when I’m done with my coffee, I sit, meaning I sit down, have a meditation bench. So it’s like a kneeling position, not the Lotus. I would break my bones still looking out the window. And I sit for 15 to 20 minutes. Some would say I meditate, but today I only sit. And let me explain to you why I say this. I began looking into mindfulness, meditation practice, et cetera, in my early 20. So that was 30 years ago. And over the last 30 years, I experimented with many different techniques, methods. I was always interested in this. And it was also, to some extent, an on off relationship. Sometimes I spent half a year not doing anything. And then I took it on again and got into it again. Even though I always thought I’m quite good in meditation, it works. Well, it was only just a few years ago where I experienced another shift forward in the depth and quality of my meditation. And it’s a bit similar. Like what I mentioned earlier, the shift was caused by my decision to even let go of the intention to meditate. That’s why I say I don’t even meditate. I even let go of this intention to meditate. I just sit, which deepens the meditation, the quality of being in the here and now with whatever is whatever may come up in your mind, whatever emotional movement you experience, you just sit and be right. And then I get up, take a shower and start my day. And it puts me in a state of inner calmness, no matter what the day will be, the day when I’m going to be served by the day and by my daily business and by life and whatever is going to be what is going to be. But how I respond to it is different if I take this time in the morning and start the day in a more conscious way, rather than having a cold start and maybe already being late and being stressed out already at a. M. So that’s my morning routine.

Well, with that, it just sounds like on your life journey you’ve had a lot of opportunities to either absorb from coaches or absorb from books. So my next question is a three part question. What book did you read to help you get to where you are? What books are you reading right now? And they can be audio books. And have you had an opportunity to write any books as of yet?

Okay, good. So first question, books that help me great deal along the way. Number one, probably “The Power of now” by Eckhart Tolle. Do you know him?

I know of him, yes.

So he’s a German author that now lives in Vancouver, Canada, and The Power of now is the world best seller. In this book, he basically talks about what I just described, disability to be mindfully present. He calls it presence. Great book. Highly recommend it if you want to dig into mindfulness, that’s certainly one. And another key book for me was by Jack Kornfield. And the title of the book is “The Wise Heart”, which to some extent is about the same thing about living a mindful life. He just takes it from a slightly different perspective. Cornfield is American. He’s a psychologist, and he spent ten years in a Thailand forest Buddhist forest monastery and was one of the people, one of the Westerners who brought Buddhist philosophy into the Western world. And he’s running the Spirit Rock Center in California. So I would say these two books are really two heavyweights. That helped me a great deal. And then I have also read multiple times. Currently, I’m not reading that much currently because I am currently, especially since the pandemic hit us in a very, very strong delivery mode and more in the output mode than the input mode. Right. And I have written a book and coauthored another one. So the book I wrote has the title “Breakthrough What You Can Learn about Teamwork, Leadership and Customer Interaction from Cabin Crew.”

Wow.

And I used the analogy or the metaphor of cabin crew working in a plane as a red threat throughout the book to convey some of the key methods, mindsets, approaches that I have learned to be effective in leadership, in teamwork, in customer relationships came out in 2017 in German, and then in 2019, the English version came out and it’s available on Amazon and all the common book stores.

Yeah. I look forward to adding those to our Boss Uncaged Book club. And that’s the reason why I always ask that question, because everyone’s background are so uniquely different. For you to kind of go for mindfulness, I would think that it goes to show kind of like where you’re astute and what you’re utilizing in your business today. So I think those books are definitely fruitful books to add to that book club. So I think you brought up something about Buddhism and one of those books, philosophy. So time framing. Right. Thinking about today versus 20 years from now, where do you see yourself in the next 20 years?

That’s a great question. I don’t necessarily see myself in terms of a concrete goal that I want to achieve. Never been like that. I was never someone who set a goal and said, okay, this is my goal. Now I’m here. This is the straight line that will get me there never worked for me. I was rather always the one step after the other, and then we’ll see where we end up person. Right. More of a trial and error approach. And I’m still in this mode. Even though I can say I’m very successful in what I do, I’m enjoying it a lot. I make a good living with what I do, but I never planned to get here. I got here by always making the next step and then take it from there. And this is also how I will continue. I am not going about neither my life nor my professional journey in a very strategic or target oriented way. What I do is I try to be the best possible version of myself any given day and do the next step and see how things shift and change and evolve, and then take the next step from there and then take the next step from there. Because I think that’s the only thing you can do anyway. Right. I’m not really a religious person, but there’s a great joke, I think, that says, how do you make God laugh? Tell them about your plans. Him or her. Yeah. Tell them about your plans. Because make plans if you like sure. Go ahead and make plans. It’s okay. It’s not wrong. But be prepared that things may turn out differently. So that’s what I meant earlier when I said, yeah, I go with the flow. I tried to go with the flow. It’s a bit like the quality of water, if you like. Water flows very consistently, always towards the same outcome. Right. It ends up in some ocean at some point. Right. But how to get there today, we would say very agile. It’s very agile. Okay. There’s a tree in the middle. No worries. I flow around it. I don’t say get out of my way. So that’s the kind of nature of my approach and how I go about that’s. Why to come back to your answer, where do I see myself in 20 years from now? I hope I will be in an even more relaxed and calm state, enjoying every day of my life as long as I can and ideally contributing to other people’s lives. That’s, of course, if we can use the term goal, that’s my goal. To express who I am with my essence, be as authentic as I can, and by doing so, contribute to something bigger.

I think you brought up a very key term, and then you use agile. Right. So being in the agile state of mind or being lean, you must have systems in place and part of those systems. My next question is what software are you using to manage or to remain lean and to stay agile within your workflow?

You literally mean software.

Yeah, literally means software.

Apps. okay, well, I just use the regular email clients. I’m not going to mention any brands here. I’m using a Web based accounting platform for all my bookkeeping and numbers and invoices, etc. It’s like almost fully outsourced and automatic, which helps me to really focus on my core business. I have outsourced even the appointments making with my clients to my clients. So they all have a link where they can access my calendar and they can book slots directly in my calendar. So this is also something where I use technology to make life easier for me. Yeah, that’s about it. That’s about it.

So going into final words of wisdom, and I think obviously you dropped a lot of different insightful information in this particular conversation. But going back to your time travel reference of going back to your 20 year old self and giving that individual person words of advice. So let’s say I’m a 20 year old person, I’m listening to this podcast and you’re talking to me. What words of wisdom would you give to me for me to continue on my entrepreneurial journey?

I would say get to know yourself really well. Get to know yourself in terms of find out what’s really important for you, what are your core values? What do you think the world is lacking? That’s a pointer that can be a very important pointer towards your core values. And also your talents. Right. Because our wishes and our intentions and visions are forerunners or pointers towards our talents. What we’re good at that’s, by the way, a quote by Good poet. Good. So get to know yourself. Get to know what makes you unique. When it comes to personality traits, there’s various personality profiles you can take online, take a few different ones. What does that tell me? Do I recognize myself in what I read here? Okay. Now, if I have this personality trait or characteristics, what does that mean for me in dealing with others? What are my talents, what I’m really good at and better than others, maybe. And what am I really passionate about? And then what might be good ways of living these talents and contributing to something with these talents? Many. They just look for job opportunities out there so they’re outward focused. Where can I find a job? Where do they have an opening, an open position? And then, okay, there is one I’m going to apply. I hope they will take me and then you end up in a position. And maybe it’s not really the real thing, but okay, now I got here and now this is what I do. And I often get people in their mid 30s, 40s coming to me saying, hey, I need to talk. I don’t know if what I’m doing is really the right thing. So to avoid this, go inwards first. Don’t necessarily go looking what is possible, but what do I need? What do I want? And how do I see myself in 20 years? But not in terms of precise position or function or activity, but rather who do I want to be as a person? What quality do I want in my life? Wow.

So being that I’ve deemed you the interpersonal boss, how can someone find you? What is your social media profiles, your website address? How can they get in contact with you?

Yeah, well, first of all, use my name Thomas Gelmi, by the way. It’s Gelmy. Like gelato because it’s Italian, as I mentioned, right? Yeah. You find me on LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn. You’ll find a very recurrently, regularly updated LinkedIn feed with a lot of leadership topics from various third party sources. Visit my website. It’s thomasgelmi.com one word. You’ll find more information there. I’m on Instagram, I’m on Facebook. Yeah. If you want to find me, you’ll find me and just reach out.

I got a couple of bonus questions for you. What is your most significant achievement to date outside of your family?

Well, that I was able to build this business and find a way to contribute to other people’s lives and professional lives and organizations. That was certainly my biggest achievements outside the family.

Another one for you. This is like one of my favorite questions that I like to ask. And I know that the answer from everyone that I ask is going to be uniquely different because your stories are uniquely different. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone, dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

It would probably be? I have three people in mind. Can I also say three?

No, just start with the primary and then we’ll go to the second.

, with Jack Kornfield and Barack Obama.

And what’s your why?

Well, the why for the first two, you know, mentioned the books and how they had an influence and impact in my life. And Barack Obama, because I just think he’s a very impressive personality. I love listening to him and I would really love to get to know him. On a more personal note, I think he did a lot of great things. He changed a lot, had a lot of influence. Of course, he’s a controversial person, like any person in this position. Of course you like him or you don’t like him, but that would definitely be someone I would love to spend 24 hours with.

Going into closing of the podcast, obviously, we had a lot of different topics. We had conversations that went into different areas. And on the journey, maybe you’ve had some questions you want to ask me. So I always give whoever I’m interviewing the opportunity to grab the microphone and to ask the host any questions that may have arrived.

My question to you would be what is your best hope for the coming years for you personally, but maybe also in general.

So for me, my journey obviously started back in early 2000, kind of becoming who I am right now, but I really didn’t come to the dawn of who I am today until I had a stroke in 2018. And that kind of was my awakening moment to create the platform that you and I have in the conversation on right now. So my goal for the future is to grow this platform as large as I possibly can on an international level, which I’m very thankful that you’re all the way in Switzerland and we had an opportunity in two separate sides of the world to collaborate. Right. So part of that is me leaving breadcrumbs for entrepreneurs to find their way and also leaving breadcrumbs for my family members to have opportunity to hear my voice once I’m dead and gone.

Wonderful. Yeah. That’s really beautiful and wonderful purpose you’re following there. So good luck with that. And you’re well on your way. It’s obvious.

Well, I definitely appreciate you taking time out to busy schedule and I think overseas is like probably 8 hours ahead from where we are right now on the East Coast. Yeah. You’re definitely going into the night hours at this point. So I definitely appreciate you coming on the show. I think you gave a lot of value. I want my listeners to kind of definitely. This is an episode that you should rewind and take these pieces of these Golden Nuggets that Thomas has delivered and hold heed to them. And take actions on them.

Thank you very much for having me. It’s been a great pleasure having this inspiring conversation with you. Thanks for all the good questions.

Great S.A, Grant over and out.

Owner Of InterPersonal Development: Thomas Gelmi AKA The Interpersonal Boss – S3E16 (#112)2022-12-28T17:23:36+00:00
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