S2E54 Mark Pooler.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Okay. Alright. Three, two, one. Welcome. Welcome back to Boston Cage podcast on Today’s show. We have a special guest way way on the other side of the world from UK coming to us live and direct Mark. So I’m going to name you Mark. I always give my guest kind of a nickname. And because of the topic we’re going to be talking about, I’m going to name you the press boss. And obviously you’re going to tell people a little bit more while I’m calling you to Press boss right now, who are you?

My name is Mark. Steven Pooler essay, and I’m known as a global profile builder. I’m really happy with the name you have given me as well as the press boss. I quite like that one. And I’m a PR expert essay, and I support high profile, high value individuals to be seen, heard and get noticed with worldwide digital media to become known globe believe.

A lot of weight on your shoulders to say the lease, right. So if you could define yourself in three to five words, what words would you choose for yourself?

Three to five words to define myself? I would say honest, trusting, loyal, resilient and hardworking.

I think the person that you may go hand in hand with PR. So let’s dive into like, er, a little bit because obviously there’s multi different levels of PR and there’s press kits and there’s e releases and you’re talking about on a global scale, not just a localized scale. So kind of just tell us a little bit more about that PR thing that you specialize in.

What I do for my clients. Say, I helped my clients to build credibility and authority really, really quickly. Just a few years ago, I had no profile. I had to make a name for myself, and I made a lot of mistakes. I spoke all over the UK for free to build my profile. And it can be a really, really hard journey. And that what gives me pleasure. Now, looking after my clients, I can help them to build their brand visibility really, really quickly. I help them with written credibility articles, expert positioned radio and Web TV interviews and also press release and major publication features.

So I help them to gain brand exposure. Brand visibility that leads to building that leads to attracting clients and also a great, great benefit to what I do as well is really helping my clients to dominate Google Page, one of Google, also Google News and also YouTube as well. What I always tell my clients as well. And a lot of clients do ask what is PR and I misunderstood in many different ways. I always say to my clients what PR will do for you. It will give you the brand visibility and exposure very, very quickly.

And it also gives you third party credibility. So rather than you singing your praises and selfpromoting, it’s a third party singing your as for you. Also, it gives you celebrity endorsement because a lot of my clients want positioning so I can position them next to brand leaders, some of the biggest names in business, personal development and celebrities as well. So you are piggybacking off news outlets that have had many years to build their reputation. So it allows you to build your reputation really, really quickly. Also, the Google footprint is really, really important.

If you’re out there and wanting to attract opportunities, anyone looking at your name or business name, you need to be searchable on Google. And when people are looking to give you a job opportunities, speaking opportunities, they will Google your name. And I always am very honest about what PR isn’t as well. If my clients are coming to me and saying, I want hundreds of people to sign up to my email list, or I want hundreds of people to join my program, I would say that is the wrong approach to look at PR.

Go down the route of Facebook ads with conversion ads. If that’s the kind of thing you’re looking to achieve, what PR does do, it gives that trust, which does over time leading to attracting clients. And it gives you that social media presence and great tools to use on social media to share with your own platforms, share with your email list, share with your network. And that is what PR is.

So we can dive into that a little bit. And I think you gave a very detailed definition of what PR is. So let’s structure it a little bit. Right. So if I’m coming to you and I’m saying, hey, I need some PR. Majority of people may think that you’re just going to pretty much write a Press kit and that press it could be for a new product or a new service, but that’s not exactly how you do it. How does your business actually take someone to say, a speaker, a motivational speaker, and give them a body of work to then imply that in an environment that PR could be useful.

So Firstly, there are a few things that I need from the client in order for them to be PR ready. So it’s important that they have professional photos so that they look professional because it’s my reputation as well. And once they have professional photos, I would also need either a short or long bio. Also, they would need some kind of website don’t overthink this part, though, because many clients hold back on having PR because they don’t think their website is ready as long as the messaging is good.

And you have a basic website that has some kind of gift or some kind of sign up page that is efficient. So don’t overthink that part of the process. Just a basic website. So they need photos, the basic website, a short and long bio. Once they have some kind of product or service or launch, that is a great time for them to come to me to get the coverage that they require. You don’t need a product or service. You may have a story or a story or something, a message that you want the world to know about.

So it’s not only for products and services, but that is mostly what clients do come because they have a product service or a launch that they want to promote. And then we can get working on building their global profile. So I would do things like interview them on radio or outsource them to radio and podcasters to get let them see, noticed and heard the way I do the radio interview. It’s really done in a way to spotlight them and their success and to really talk to their target audience.

So then the radio interview is not something they just share once it’s something that they can reshare many times on their platforms to their email list and add to their website so that it’s talking to their target audience. So it becomes a marketing piece. The radio interview then is ranked on Google, so it’s giving them that Google search ability. I would then take them and do some press or major publication features. Now I have my own publishing platform, MSP News global. Com, and that is a real great site to posit in people because I’ve got some of the biggest names in business, personal development and celebrities.

So I can then publish their articles next to these leaders and then they have got great tools again to share on all of their platforms, showing them next to those celebrities and big leaders giving them that celebrity endorsement part. Credibility articles are really effective, and it also gives them those marketing tools to share. Again, my own platform has around over 200,000 region, USA, Canada and the UK. Because of the promotions, the ads that I do to the site and also the press releases I do to the site.

I can also get them into hundreds of different publications depending on the clients budget and the clients need. So I outsource publications as well if they want more exposure. Another great tool. What I do for my clients. I’ll do the digital cover of MSP News Global, putting them on the cover of a global news outlet. So it looks really impressive as social proof, showing them on the cover of a business outlet, business magazine and then press release. They’re so effective. I will do a national press release that will then get release two places like Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, affiliates, financial feeds, industry news sites and newspapers.

What makes my press release really unique? It also gets published to independent news platforms, on top of all those other places that I mentioned giving the press release even more visibility. Again, this gives my clients the you that they want. It gives them the brand, Association and credibility of piggybacking off those big names like Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS. It gives them the marketing tools. Another big advantage of a Press release SA the clients think can take advantage of logos like as seen on Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS that they can use on their marketing branding on website.

If they require the great thing about what I do, everything is done for the client. They don’t have to worry. They fill in a questionnaire, provide the photos and give me a little bit of their time for the radio interview. I promote it everywhere. The client has marketing tools to promote it. So in answer to your question, that is how I support my clients and give them that exposure really, really quickly. They build the exposure, build the credibility, the authority that leads to building trust that leads to building attracting clients.

It gives them the Google footprint. They dominate Google, and they’ve got hundreds of tools to really take advantage of on their social platforms as well.

I mean, that’s definitely some insightful in detail that I mean, especially the one stop shop for their marketing needs to kind of get them out and also to build trust with that. You kind of talked about celebrities. Is there any way that you can kind of name drop a couple of celebrities that you’ve worked with in the past?

I would love to. So I have been fortunate to have done media coverage and interviews on most of the original cast of The Secret Movie, which is the lower of a Traffic movie, which is really, really popular. So I have interviewed and an articles for Joe Voy. Tally is a very well known name. Dr. John D. Martini is a very well known name. Marie Diamond, Dennis Watley. I was really, really fortunate recently to have been gifted the opportunity to do an article for Ronda Burn, who is actually the person behind The Secret Book and The Secret Movie.

She has a Hollywood movie out at the moment that is quite recent. Anyone wanting to check out these publications can go to www. Dot. Msp. News global. Com. I’ve also done media for Forbes Roley, who is a very well known name in the USA. I’ve done PR and supported events like Grant Cardone Jack Canfield to help them promote their events. Also, another great name is Dale God Boldo, who has a great presence in the USA. In Hollywood, he was on the OJ Simpson documentary was like a series A in the USA is also heavily involved in the Mickey Mouse Club in the USA.

There’s just a few just to name drop for us.

Yes. I mean, I think definitely this is the time travel a little bit, right. So, I mean, obviously you’re established now you have access now you have all these systems in place and you have all these brand opportunities to help your clients. But where does your story start? Like, how did you even get into PR?

So I will go from the beginning, I was always a guy at school that got bullied about the way I looked and also about my sexuality, even at first school essay before I knew my own sexuality. So every day for me was big in big years. Guy, you name it. I was called it. That led to me not taking great care at school and learning. I started to play out because of my low self esteem, my low insecurities. I left school at the age of 15 with a really bad education and I started drug taking.

It started with soft drugs to start with things like cannabis amphetamine. By the age of 21, I was addicted to crack cocaine and heroin. I went out on a part in I Take with friends, tried a new clubbing drug having the time of my life. 1 minute. The next minute I woke up in hospital, I had just collapsed and died. Bruises all at my arm where adrenaline had been pumped into me to bring me back to life. A shaven chest where shop pads had been used on me.

I was living a bad life that was going nowhere. I always was a worker throughout my addiction and I worked in top name hair. So here in the UK. So I was used to dealing with celebrities from a young age as a hair stylist because of the salons that I worked in, but my addiction was out of control. So I just like to share. That’s why I always say to my audience, fans, clients, friends, my network. It doesn’t matter where you are. It doesn’t matter if your past or present circumstances, you can create a whole new reality.

It starts with having positive empowering, belief systems, making great choices, repetition and action. Any new reality can be created so fast. Forward to my early 30s, I had had enough of working for other people, making loads of money for them and not making a lot of money for myself. And I set up as a freelance hair stylist. That was the start of my entrepreneurship journey. I then joined the network marketing company for two years. That was really the start of me working on my beliefs, working on personal development and self improvement.

I learned great skills like branding, building your network, social media entrepreneurship and I built a team of 50 recruited into six different countries. I wasn’t following my passion essay. I used to watch the motivation or inspirational speakers on stage at network marketing events and I thought that’s what I want to do. I want to share my story and inspire others. So I left network marketing around four years ago and jumped in the deep end to become a public speaker. I spoke all over the U, released my first book, Tips to Create the Life You Desire.

I then released my second book, which became a best seller in the UK, USA and Canada. And that was called Step Into Your Brilliance, which is an entrepreneurship guide for those that would like to speak, using the power of positive storytelling and social media to position themselves as an expert. I spoke on the same stage as Jack Canfield in Toronto. And then I was interviewed on a radio show in the USA, and it was to an audience of 3 million. And then they asked me to co host the show.

That was only around two and a half years ago, and that really put me into the spotlighting to what I do today with press media. And and it’s been a great journey over two years, I’ve launched an agency, Temp Agency, which is a premium media and PR agency, and launched MSP. News Global. Com. So within two years, say, I’ve really created a great, great platform for me to serve others and help them build their global profiles.

Yeah. I think it’s definitely a hell of a story and kind of like the near death experiences and anybody that I’ve interviewed and including myself, when you have a near death experience, it kind of changes you dynamically, like whatever you were doing before that near death experience and what you did afterwards, it’s kind of like that is the real start. The real you, the new you comes out of that. Once you recover from whatever it was that happened, you become a greater person. You become more insightful and you want to give back, and then you challenge yourself more and you become more streamlined.

So I definitely commend you on that journey from getting from being addicted to particular drugs and then becoming the success that you are currently. So think about it from the standpoint of somebody looking in. They’re listening to this podcast, the hearing you speak, and they’re like, wow, this guy recovered from drugs. He figured things out. He started a company and the perception is kind of like it’s an overnight success. But in the reality, how long did this journey really take you to get to currently where you are?

So the age of 21 was when I really started to use the thoughts in my mind. I read my first Law of Attraction book, but I was just working as a freelance hairdresser. I would say wasn’t until the age of 31, I really started to work on myself and my own personal development. So in answer to your question, I feel the bigger turning point in my social media entrepreneurship journey has been around the last six years. So anyone looking at me, no. Seeing all the success I’m creating, it has been a really hard journey.

For the first couple of years, I didn’t make any money. I put a smile on my face, kept showing up with determination. It’s been six years essay. But also, I still feel like this is just the start. I still feel like I’ve still got such a long way to grow myself as well. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. I think the fact that you figured it out early enough and it’s kind of like, goes back to the statement is usually made. Most millionaires are essentially made in their 40s and 50s, and you’re at that cost before that age group. Right. So you’re kind of figuring it out a lot earlier. Even though you made mistakes earlier on, you had enough time to fix those mistakes, correct things and getting alignment to that way. You’re in a Bull market and you’re running north and everything you do from this point on, it’s just essentially growth strategy at 100%.

Oh, I was just going to say I’m 40 in September this year. So what you have just said is great. And don’t tell anyone I’m 40, though. It’s a big one, which I’m dreading.

It’s not that bad, man. I just turned 41 last year, so it’s not that bad.

I’m quite looking forward to 40, actually, I think in your 30s, you’re a little bit better than your 20s, a little bit more creating success. But I feel my 40s can be one of the best decades ever. I am active. Hi, Eli. Sorry, kids in embracing the time. Just hiking.

Yeah, I can see that. I can see that definitely in you. So let’s just say, hear me for a minute. If you could time travel backwards and change one thing on that journey, what’s that one thing that you would want to change if you could do it all over again.

I would say if I could change one thing, it would be believing in myself because as a 21 year old, I didn’t have those belief systems. I didn’t have that mindset. And I was insecure about the way I looked when, in fact, I didn’t look that bad. But all those years of being bullied, it was like the scars are healed, but the wounds were very much still there. If I’ve said that correctly, and I didn’t have that belief in myself, and I didn’t feel good enough. So it would definitely be to believe I’m good enough just the way I am.

Wow.

Wow. Definitely powerful stuff. So, I mean, obviously, you have tenacity. You have the hustle of a Fortune 500 executive. Like, does this come from an entrepreneurial background? Anybody in your family kind of led you in this direction, Mo.

Close relatives. To be honest with you, I’ve always been really, really hard workers. So my mom always worked as a nurse. My dad always worked as a painter and decorator. My stepdad’s a painter and decorator as well. And I did have an uncle who was really successful, made a lot of money, very entrepreneurial. I’ve also got a cousin who’s made it chameleons, who was very entrepreneurial. But I would say no, my family really never had loads of money, but they always had really good, strong work ethics that were serving others.

So I would say no, say they’ve always a great worth ethics, but not really entrepreneurial. They’ve always been about service and working really, really hard to make ends meet.

Interesting. So let’s fast forward to today. Right now you have things rolling. Everything you’re doing is growing and is multiplying. But how do you currently juggle your work life with your family life?

This is a good question, actually. Essay. And it’s really important to get this balance correct. And I would say it’s only the last twelve months when we hit the global pandemic, I realized that I wasn’t getting the work life balance correct. So I was just building, building, doing all the work focused on business. But I wasn’t really taking time for myself. It’s really important to get that balance right. So what I do, you know, most of the time weekends, I take off Saturdays and Sundays on my free time to get that balance correct.

Spending time with family members, friends, close relatives is really, really important. You can’t create success that will be lasting. Just getting that balance wrong. You really have to do make sure you’re looking after your health. Wellbeing, family, friends, business, make sure you’ve got that balance right. And I feel the global pandemic through all the negative that it’s creative. I do feel there’ve been a lot of blessings as well to really look after our time. It’s so important. Slow down a little bit. You will get to where you want to by slowing down just that little bit and taking time for yourself as well.

Wow. Definitely. Definitely powerful, powerful, powerful insights. So let’s talk about your morning ritual, your morning habits. Do you have any in a socially like, what time do you usually start up to start those rituals?

So a sweet spot for me is around 07:30 a.m. To quarter to 08:00 a.m.. I find when I get up at that time, I get a lot of work done really early, giving me more free time in the evening. My records that are really important to me. As soon as I wake up, I put in an audio and meditate for around 20 to 30 minutes using selfhypnosis. I also use a great technology called Hemi sync, where it syncs the two parts of your mind together so that you think better.

So that’s my first ritual that if I don’t do it, I don’t get as good results. I don’t feel as good and I don’t show up as well in the world. So first is meditation on an evening gratitude. Before I’m falling to sleep, I go through all the things in the day, even the little things like the air that I breathe, the shirt on my back. I go through all of my gratitude for the day. Also, visualization. I do bits of visualization. I don’t spend too much time in the future.

I let it go because everything happens in the present moment. So gratitude, visualization, meditation. Also, I do eat well, eating lots of Greens, drinking fresh water. It’s important to think so important to put great things into the body because that is what is going to fuel you forwards and a little bit of exercise those on my things that are really important in my rituals.

Definitely. I’m just recapping what you said in my head, and it’s structured, but it’s organic in his nature, which kind of seems that fits your personality. And I can see kind of like in the morning you wake up and you do this and then after that, you’re blowing and it allows you to get through your day. And then in your evening time, that gives you enough time to kind of settle down and start over again. So I definitely like that because of this podcast, I had opportunity to create a book club.

So this is the question that I love asking because every answer will be uniquely different. And what motivated you on your journey could be something that could motivate someone else. So what books have you read that helps you get to where you are that you want to recommend. And what books are you currently reading or audio books, for that matter? So.

A book that changed my life has to be the Secret. There is a new version there, which is called The Greatest Secret. But even The Secret book is absolutely a life changer for the way you can create your own reality. It’s absolutely incredible. Another great book that has inspired me is Jack Canfield Success Principles. Very, very good book. And I’m more of an Audible audio guy. I prefer listening to books, and I haven’t read it yet, but I know it’s a fantastic one because I recently interviewed them on my television show is called Ask by Mark Victor Hanson and Crystal Dwyer Hanson.

And I am about to dig into that one very, very soon.

Nice. Nice. So where do you see yourself and your company? 20 years from now. So.

I have very, very big goal, I say. And I had dreams of being a sixfigure owner. And then as I grown, that went to being a millionaire. And then that went from being a millionaire to a multi millionaire. I have got huge, huge goals, a huge vision. And yes, they’re big. And to some people, they may not feel on, they might feel unbelievable. But I am about having huge visions and huge goals. So now my goal in 20 years, I have to look at visualizing a hundred million.

Why not? If not me, why not? Someone else got you. If not me, it could be someone else. So have big visions. And if you don’t reach it, at least you’ve had that vision and you’ll get close to even where you’ll get closer to where you want to be by having bigger visions.

Yeah, I definitely think. I mean, most people don’t realize that once you get to a certain point and you have things figured out, you have your systems in place and you’re not working harder. But things are working for you harder. Then you kind of could multiply. So like, your 100 million could easily be 2 billion. It’d just be a matter of five years from now. You may figure out some system or software that does what you do in addition to what you’re doing to where you can multiply that overnight and then you scale it and you’d be 100 millionaire in five years.

Correct. And also it does have to kind of feel believable to your own belief systems. So I’m not quite ready to visualize that millionaire billionaire status at the moment, but her 100 million, it can be achieved like you say, with the right systems, with the right team, with the right support and 20 years is a long time to get to that goal. Anything is possible.

Yeah. I like the fact that you just brother use like, it kind of goes back to the laws of attraction, the rules of attractions like you’re asking for the 100 million and you’re working towards 100 million. But you’re gonna shoot past that. But in reality, in the next 20 years, five years, that 100 million could easily scale to a billion, because then you’ll be ready to receive that billion versus now you’re not ready. So you have to put things in place to be able to receive that billion when that time comes.

So I definitely commend you for being well aware of where you are versus where you’re going to be.

Definitely.

So what schools or software do you use that you would not be able to do what you do currently without.

So I think tours are so, so important, and it takes a while to get the right systems in place. So I would say for me, things like my website is the biggest asset and tour, and it’s a great one. Msp. News global. Com. That is a great, great asset. My simple one page landing page is a brilliant tour with all my social media platforms. That’s contact Mark me. It’s got a schedule, your meeting, it’s got things like all my social media channels, my email contacts, and another great tour.

Also, my email list and a mail chimp is something that I use a lot. And that is something that I really, really couldn’t live without. Social media platforms are great, great tools. You put me on the spot here. I should have done a bit of research about all the tools I’ve used. I’ve gotten many, which I couldn’t live without, even things like Zoom five, which I really take advantage of. So to answer your question, there is a few, but there are lots more, which I just can’t think of right now.

Yeah. I think it’s funny that you brought that up because, I mean, a diversity in software in today’s world versus ten years 20 years ago is 90 day different. And there’s always, like, a lot of times I’ll think of something and I’m like, okay, let me see if this already exists before I try to create it so I can kind of get a leg up and nine out of ten times if I do the research. And if I play with the algorithms on Facebook, sure as hell there is a software to do that little thing, and there’s always that one little thing that you need, something created for that you’re not willing to put the effort to develop it for.

So I mean, to your point, there’s a million different softwares out there, and I think people need to understand the value of software could help you systematize what you’re doing to your point. To get to 100 million, I’ll get to a billion a lot faster.

Yes. And tools. I do use a lot, which I forgot to mention, and they are quite gamechanging. Some bots are incredible. Some engagement tools for social media I couldn’t live without as well. So some of these automation tools and engagement tools, they’re absolutely incredible and really help to scale and grow. Just as you mentioned, it definitely.

So let’s go into words of wisdom, right. And I think particularly for you, let’s just talk to an audience of 18 to 35 years old. They may be going through some life changing event. It may be drugs, it may be death. It may be. They hate their job, whatever it is that they’re going through, I want you to talk to them and give them some words of insights to push them from where they are to move forward and grow.

My word of wisdom would be never suffer alone, never suffer in silence. The first step is to admit yourself that you have a problem, because before you admit yourself before you admit it yourself, no one else will be able to support you. Reach out to a friend, a family member, a mentor, a teacher, someone that you can trust and confide in and never suffer alone. It doesn’t matter where you are now. It doesn’t matter where you have been in the past. Any future reality can be created with positive empowering, belief systems, making better choices, repetition, taking action, get it down on paper, write down your goals and take little steps every single day towards your end destination.

Don’t see a big mountain in front of you. Little tiny steps every day will get you to your goals.

Wow. Wow. I think you’re a living, breathing example of the laws of attraction. And it’s kind of like I think most people think in the laws of attraction, right? Is that you just have to think it and it becomes a reality. But I think they missed the one component of you have to take a lot of damn action and believe in yourself and do both of these things simultaneously to get the results that you’re looking for. So I think what you just said kind of gives a little bit insight to who you are as a person and who your company is going to represent as well.

In my next question, right?

Yes, I agree with that.

Great. So my next question is, who’s your target audience? I mean, kind of like price point wise, do you have different packages and what do those packages look like?

So my starting level that I work with clients is $500, and that would be for something like a radio interview and a Press release. My services go right up to $10,000. My medium package is around $3,000. So if there is someone out there that does want to be seen, heard and get noticed, it is around a minimum budget of $500, way up to the premium clients that I work with up to $10,000, my target audience and people that are a perfect fit for what I do would be bestselling authors or authors that want to become bestselling authors, real estate investors, real estate brokers, keynote speakers, inspirational speakers, coaches, creative entrepreneurs, but not just only those.

Because the PR I work with is business. It’s very, very broad. I have also done people in the medical industry artists. So if you have a business, I could support you. If you are in business. I do offer a free PR consultation, or people out there need to do if they’re ready and want to get seen, noticed and heard, and they have the budget of $500, they can schedule a free PR consultation at www. Contact. Mark me that’s contact Mark me and they can just schedule a meeting.

And Al most social media platforms are there as well. If people would like to connect with me on social.

Yeah, I think definitely. I mean, I’m just recapping what you said in my head. And one thing that that stood out to me because obviously we’re in the marketing space, we’re in the broadcasting and podcasting. And a lot of times people are always trying to figure out how to monetize a podcast. So one thing that you said for the $500 gives you opportunity to do some promotions, but also do live radio is that live radio considered to be like a podcast. And is that an alternative way of monetizing podcast?

The radio network that I am on is Web radio. It’s on the Business Innovators Radio Network, which is a USA based radio network, and it gets syndicated to all the hot radio block, talk radio, Spreaker, YouTube. If my clients did want a real radio on FM radio, I can outsource that and have many contacts who would happily have you on their shows as well. Also, my TV show is on the E 360 TV Network, which gets broadcast to Rocko, Apple, TV, Fire TV, Android TV, and many, many more.

It goes across all social platforms that has an estimated reach of it gets to millions of homes, up to billions of OEMs. It’s on millions and millions of devices. So if people are looking for exposure, I can support them with their needs, their requirements either on my own shows, my own platforms or other people’s platforms as well.

Wow. Wow. So I think with the TV side of things, I mean, considering that you only been in this space for, like, less than a decade, like somebody may be asking, like, how the hell did you have opportunity to create your own TV station? Like, what was the journey would that look like?

So it was me first having the radio show growing the radio show, then it was building my publishing platform, MSP. News global. Com. It’s not my television network. I have a show on there, and I will then introduce to host a show on that network in 360 TV. The show is called Brilliance Business TV. It can be viewed at MSP. News global. Com as well. Just go to the section what says TV and you’ll find all my TV interviews there as well.

Wow. Wow. Definitely. So, I mean, you kind of put a couple addresses out there. How can people find you on social media? Like, what’s your handle?

The best way for people to find me on social media is www. Contact Mark May Gotcha.

So you have essentially, it looks like it’s like a microsite landing page with all your links on there.

Yes, that’s correct.

They great. So let’s just go into some bonus questions, right. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone better alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be? And why?

That’s a big question. And there’s so many people that inspire me is the question that you think for sure it would have to be Oprah Winfrey purely because she’s a media mogul, and that’s something I’m passionate about. She’s also passionate on authors and books, which I’m passionate about. She’s a guru on television, which one day I hope to be at that level with her and just her story. She’s come from dreadful past and what she is achieved and how she serves others, it would have to be Oprah him three.

Yeah, definitely. I think anyone that’s in this space at one time or the other has to look to her as the pinnacle example of how you can go from being an underdog to being a champion, not of just yourself but champion of multiple diverse individuals. So I definitely appreciate that. So another bonus question for you, what is your most significant achievement to date?

I feel I’ve made a lot of progress just over the last six years. I’ve had lots of big achievements. I would say the biggest achievement to date is really making my business work and growing my own global platforms and creating my own global brand. The global Profile Builder with MSP. News global. Com really serving others? I really enjoy serving others. A no, I am fortunate to be doing that on bigger scale. And that was why I started this whole journey was to inspire people that you can create a future reality no matter of your past.

I’ve created that NEM and that’s my biggest achievement I can think of.

I think definitely. I mean, just having you on the show, and this is kind of one of the reasons why I have this podcast is to interview people like yourself. Kind of I have my own achievements. But then I listen to you, and I’m just like, there’s obviously more than I could be doing. So you definitely inspired me today. And I definitely appreciate you coming on the show. So in closing, I always give opportunity to whoever I’m interviewing opportunity to ask me any questions that may have come up during this particular episode.

I would say, Firstly, thank you so much for the opportunity. I’ve really enjoyed it. Your brilliant toast. You are great at asking questions. It flows so well. You have a great talent. I know you have your own amazing business supporting all your clients with your amazing systems tools, your shows. I haven’t got a question for you because you’re coming on to my radio so soon. So I’m really looking forward to having you in my hot seat as well. But I’m excited what we can achieve together. Essay because I think we’ve met for a reason, and I definitely am looking forward to future collaborations.

Yeah, definitely. I appreciate you stating that because I mean, I’m actually the more and more I listen to you, the more and more I hear your story, and that’s the beauty of the media circle that people don’t realize is that you have these opportunities to talk and conversate with someone. And then, like you said, I’ll be on your show. So there’s going to be things that we’re going to learn about each other on this journey as we cross reference and interview each other and make referrals and recommendations to each other to where it could be not only fruitful financially, but it’ll be fruitful internally as well.

So I definitely appreciate you coming on.

I really, really appreciate the opportunity. And this is just the beginning. I can definitely see lots of collaboration for the future.

Definitely. Definitely. Essay grant over and out.

S2E53 Seth Erikson – powered by Happy Scribe

Here we go. All right. Welcome. Welcome back to Boss Uncage Podcast. So this show, I almost guarantee that if you don’t laugh, then obviously our sense of humor is probably going to go a little bit above your pay grade. But I guarantee you, we’re probably going to say some smart shit during this episode. And I was thinking about, how do I name this guess, right. So his name is easy enough. I’m going to name him The Mischief Boss. I really wanted to name them something more related to Marvel, but I don’t like getting a Marvel lawsuit, but I’m thinking more like that character than anything else.

So once you go ahead and tell us a little bit more about who you are and what are we talking about today, Seth?

Yeah. So I am set. Eric, and I’m the chief mischief maker at Story by Agency. And essentially what we do is we work with startups to help them clearly communicate their value to investors and to the marketplace.

Very cool. Very cool. So with that, obviously, reading your bio, I want to start, like, the beginning, right? In your bio. You saying something about in school going head to head with a teacher. So let’s talk about that story so we can establish, like, how we’re going to enroll your story today.

Oh, man. It’s actually a story that that my mom likes to tell, which is that she pulled up to the school. This is basically like preschool. And the teacher met her at the front and she thought, oh, crap. What did my son do? I because I was always doing something. I thought I was in trouble, and she pulled my mom aside and said, Your son is doing something we’ve never seen any other children do. And she said, What’s that? And she said, Well, we kind of have this.

It’s like a little test where you put up three panels and then the kids look at it and they just want to make sure they’re comprehending and understanding what’s happening. So it’s like a rabbit. And then there’s a stick, and then the bear has the stick, and the kid goes, the rabbit gave the bear the stick or the bear picked up. Whatever me. I look at the rabbit. I give them a name. I start creating a back story for the rabbit and then give the bear name, start saying the bears backstory and then explain what they’re going to do later on in the afternoon.

So I’m going way beyond what the quote unquote test is asking for. And the teacher was like, we’ve never seen a child do that. Like they just usually answer whatever questions we ask them about it. But yeah. So I was doing that kind of stuff as a child. And part of my journey is actually realizing that I guess you would say a closet storyteller. I’m masquerading as a designer because I was really skilled at design and people paid me a lot of money to do design.

And I thought I’m a designer and I had to kind of go through this whole journey of kind of going, no, I’m a storyteller. What does that mean? How do I make money as a storyteller? Because I don’t I don’t plan on going to Hollywood and writing scripts or writing a book. Little did I know it was a long journey kind of figure out my purpose, if you will.

I mean, the reason why I wanted to start off with that. I mean, obviously that’s what you do, right? And the thing that I talk about a lot, just branding and storytelling. And these two things have to go together if they’re not working together in the chemistry is completely wrong. So again, if you could define yourself in five words, what would those three to five words be?

That’s a good question. I feel like I’m a pretty dynamic person. So trying to just describe myself in five words, I think mischief maker like, I’m a storyteller and a mischief maker. Those two kind of go hand in hand. Like you mentioned Marvel earlier, I’m probably more low key than I am Captain America or Iron Man. And the reason I say that is because Loki is quite often creating mischief to see what the response is. He’s kind of a scientist in some ways, and often he’s poking people to get them to kind of evaluate their decisions and what they’re doing.

And so I do that a lot for clients. So I don’t think I quite answered your question, but, yeah, I’m a storyteller through and through the fact that you compare yourself a local.

I mean, behind the scenes before I even got on this podcast. And I’m reading his bio, and I’m looking at his profile, and I’m like, I’m about to interview, damn, Loki.

This is.

How do you go from being such a tenacious kid storytelling kid, graphic designer? How do you kind of combine that to create the business that you have right now? Like, what did that story look like?

Well, like I said before I started as an illustrator, I sold my first design to a T shirt company. When I was 14. I thought I’m going to be rich, but that’s like nothing. It was $200. So in my mind, I was going to be rich. And so what I took away from that was like, oh, I’m a good designer. I can make money doing this. I just kind of kept doing it and doing it and doing it until I got to the point where, like, we talked about a little bit before the show, I built a company, had 22 people.

I was making really good money and was very dissatisfied in my job. And the reason I was dissatisfied was that I was not pushing the needle forward for my clients, like they would pay me for design. We won a bunch of awards, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. But I was asking them, like, Are you getting more sales or more people reaching out to you? Well, no, but we’re really happy with the design. And I was like, and fuck the design. And that’s when I kind of had this epiphany of like, okay, I need to get better at something else because this is not working or it’s not working the way I want it to work, which is to help my clients and grow their business and help them, you know, change things for the better.

And so. So a friend of mine in 2015 said, Dude, you’re a storyteller. Like, aside from that, that experience as a child and doing a bunch of crazy stuff in late class. I never thought I’m a storyteller. I just thought this is something I do. I don’t think about it. It’s like breathing. And he goes, You’re a storyteller. He gave me this book called Story Wars by Jonah Sac. I read the book was completely fascinated with it. It was like, I got hit by lightning, and I went on like an Audible binge, like a freaking addict.

Like, I was buying those three credit packs. I was like, Daddy needs another hit. We got to do this. And so I think I raised Audible stock at least 15% in that year. And I read over 50 books. And when I started reading the books, some of the books mentioned the neuroscience stuff, and I was like, Wait, there’s science around this. I mean, I was already sold, right? I was like, yeah, story. Great. And then with the neuroscience stuff, I was like, Well, if there’s neuroscience about this, there’s got to be papers.

And so I went and read another two or 300 papers. They are really fucking boring. So you don’t have to go read them. You can just read my book. I kind of distilled that information down for you. And I was like, okay, so we got the science. So we have some proof here. This isn’t just me trying to blow smoke up your ass and I’m into the storytelling thing. And like I said, the story was booked. That guy was running an agency. So I start kind of going down the marketing path and going, well, do they use storytelling in marketing?

And what I was seeing, it was more being used in the branding side of things. And like you mentioned before, I see story, like, if you’re going to build a brand, story is kind of the caramel new Getty Center that you need and everything else kind of flows out from there. Yeah. So that’s kind of how I got here. And, yeah, it was a lot of change. We had to rebrand the agency. We rebranded a Story Fi, and Story Five just means to tell or narrate and story.

So it’s a very descriptive of what we do and how we help the people we work with.

I don’t speak anything less. I mean, you’re a storyteller. So and that’s why I love the way you’re going to answer these questions. So with that, right. I think this next one is like a gateway for you to be more on the mischievious side. Right. So what is the worst example of the worst case scenario you ever dealt with in storytelling? In your business? It could be the worst client. It could be the worst experience. Like, just tell a story about, like, how did that happen? And how did you overcome that?

Well, I mean, I’ve definitely had some bad experiences with clients. I would say that at the end, I usually end up firing the client. And as entrepreneurs, like, most entrepreneurs are like, fire a client, that’s like a strange concept. Right? The mindset is more like you say, jump. I say, how high, right. But, yeah, I worked with a client one time who paid me $500 and wanted about 100 hours worth of work. And I was making about, like, $2 an hour by the time this thing is done.

And they were calling me at, like, 10:00 at night asking me to make changes and what not. And it took me actually, quite a long time to realize the reason you have bad clients is not because of the clients. It’s because of you. You’re the one who’s accepting them and taking them honest clients, even though you’re completely ignoring your gut and not able to separate, like, yes, you’re getting paid. But you’re going to go through hell, and that sucks. But, yeah, I mean, I’ve definitely had some clients that I’ve had some batter interactions with, and I’ve been mischievous with them where I just start kind of fucking with them because I’m like, I’m tired of your bullshit and they would say something to me and I would take it.

And I would agree with them. But I would blow it up into this completely bombastic, you know, response. Like, yes, I am totally going to create these five new pages that you didn’t pay for. Also, I’m going to come to your house, I’m going to clean it. I’m going to wash your car, I’m going to put your kids to bed, and then maybe later I’ll pick up some groceries for you. That’s what I’m going to do.

That’s hilarious. And I’m sure without naming names, those clients, if they do listen to this podcast, they’re probably sitting here saying, this son of a bitch, right?

They were saying that before they saw the podcast. So it’s okay.

So let’s just talk. Obviously, you’ve had a career with multiple different things. And I think that we talked off air. We talked about the commonalities between our histories. I mean, there’s so many different things that both of us have done, and you’ve kind of taken all these things and you’ve streamlined it into where you are right now. So the perception for the average listeners, like, okay, this guy, he’s telling clients F off. I wish I had a client, right? He has his system in place, and he’s a graphic designer.

He’s done this. He’s done that. He’s on all these different things. But in reality, how long has it taken taking you on your journey to get from where you were day one to where you are right now, 20 years.

Yeah. I guess this goes back to the question you asked before to branding was where I took all my design knowledge and was able to pair it with storytelling and start to create something that was like, oh, this makes sense, right? Because you need good design. But with branding, like, good design is like wearing nice clothes, like the person inside, right? What do they say? How do they act? How do they treat you? What is the experience you have with them? It doesn’t matter if you dress an asshole up a nice clothes, he’s still an asshole.

I just see the design aspect of that is just being one element. But the story is kind of like, how do you talk, right? Like what kind of, you know, like one of the things that we talk with our clients about in the concept of story is what is your brand archetype and understanding based on your brand, archetype, that’s how you need to talk to your clients, right. Like with us. Like I said, we’re kind of Loki. So the book that I wrote is throw in lots of humor, says lots of inappropriate things because that’s on brand with how we are.

But it may not be for our clients. And so we’re always talking about the communication style. Like, lots of companies do this stuff where they just talk in corporate speak or it’s very safe or very bland. And so we work with our clients to go, okay, who do you want to be? Are you the right? Are you the magician, right? Are you the muse? Like, figure that out. And then we’ll start to write the language that works with that, right. The guy just recently showed me a brand called Liquid Death, and they’re basically a water brand.

But they’re like, heavy metal water brand. And I think their tagline is Kill Thirst or something like that. And the whole branding message goes all together with who they are as a company. And I see a lot of businesses who basically don’t even have a brand because they would just vanilla and how they talk, how they communicate, the experiences they give people everything. It’s just it’s all the same. And the basically commoditizing themselves nice to interest about the brand, Archetype.

And I just finished speaking about this. And you can correct me if I’m wrong or you can kind of give me some some insight to what I’m about to say and what your thoughts are on this. And I would say, yes, we got a brand from a perspective of there’s four aspects to any universal brand. The first is the personal brand, the story of the individual or the owner or the executives. Right. And then you have the company brand, which is essentially part of the secondary story of the individual.

And then you have a service brand. And you have a product brand. And I think a lot of times people they don’t really look at their services and their products as individual brands. And I’m just like, well, why not personify them, make them real life, make them have associations, give them psychology behind them, make people attach to them. And the statement that I always say is in your brand for your product or service, stand up in a bar conversation. If somebody going to walk away from that brand because it’s so boring, or are they going to stay there and sit in that bar and have all the communications, all the talks and buy your brand more drinks.

So.

Well, I like the analogy. And I agree with you. I think there is a different story for each one of those elements and and understanding that they are. There are different elements to each one of those stories as well. So people will ask me about personal branding, for instance. And I’m like, so they’ll say, Well, this is my story. And I’ll be like, okay, but when it comes to a personal brand, you need to position yourself as basically the mentor. You have gone through this experience. You’ve learned these things and be able to talk about what have you learned through that experience?

Whereas a lot of people will just tell a story and they’re like, now I’m a CEO. What’s the takeaway? Give me something to work with here. You didn’t just keep working and then end up as a CEO. Like, you learned things along the way. You had trials and tribulations. You overcame things. You went through the freaking hero’s journey. So talk about that. So you kind of have to position it a little bit differently. Whereas the company’s brand, you tend to talk more about, like, or at least this is how we advise.

You tend to talk more about the problem, right? This is the problem that you have as the customer. And I am here to help you overcome that problem. I understand that problem at a deep level.

Right.

So it’s a slightly different story, whereas the products, I mean, services can follow the same kind of model of problem solution that that a brand can use. But products like you said, you can make them have personality. You can tell funny little stories and really interesting stories about how your product goes sky diving on the weekend. You’re just like, creating or scuba diving or whatever. You’re creating fun little quirky things that most people are like, this is my product here’s what’s in it. And it has zero personality.

They’re like, it’s 7oz. It’s made with this oil or whatever. And it’s like, there’s no story so products in particular, I like the idea of creating a personality. Like you said, what is this product to and thinking about it in that way, instead of just being listing all the facts about the product, it’s like it’s not engaging at all.

Well, I think I think it will work. Creep is like the tell tale sign of the scales. Right on one side is all the features. Right. And again, you could look at all the features. It’s a camera and it does 1080p and it does all these different things. And it’s like that’s all the features. But what the hell are the benefits of that camera? And I think if you can tell the start of the benefits, this camera will captivate you while you’re jumping off the cliff doing a back dive without making you look blurry is same as saying it has shock absorbent, whatever, whatever, whatever inside the camera.

So I think to your point, I mean, being able to tell the story and personify it and utilizing those benefits work the features is a hell of a lot more useful than itemizing out all the bells and whistles that the product they have.

Yeah. So I totally agree with how you’re kind of breaking it down and categorizing. It one of the things that I like with branding. If you go Google, what is branding? You’re going to get a hundred different explanations, and then it gets confusing, right? Because this person says this and this person says that Marty New Meyer has a great quote that I really like he said. And marketing is what you tell people about your company. But branding is what other people say about you. I may have butchered that, but, well, we’ll work through it.

And the way that I try to describe it to people is think of your brand as a person. What is the experience you want your customer to have? It’s like, you can think of a friend and is that is that friend fun? Is that friend how do they dress? How do they talk? How do they act? What is the experience you have with them? One friend, you might be like, I love hanging out with this person because they always make me laugh. And we go on these crazy adventures and another friend, you might be like, I love just chilling with this guy because it gets super philosophical or whatever.

We have these deep conversations. They’re not the same. And that’s kind of how I see. Or at least I try to explain branding to people so that they can kind of visualize what they’re looking for and how all these pieces kind of fit together.

Very cool. I obviously I think we went down a Rabbi hole that’s definitely going to e fruitful. Anybody is listening. They hear two people go back and forth like that is definitely interesting. But even more, I want to talk a little bit more about your story, right? So if you could time travel back, we’re talking about Loki, right? I obviously Loki’s all over the damn place. So if you can pop from where you are back in time to anywhere that you can recall, they you have an opportunity to speak to yourself and say a couple of words in your area to change your outcome, where you are to make it happen a lot faster.

When would you go back to? And what would you say to yourself?

Well, I think first I’d have to get over the shock of myself time traveling. I’d be like, how the hell did you do that, dude? I mean, like, what’s going on in the future, man, this. No, you’re not the science guy. I don’t know how this happened. You trip and fall into a machine you shouldn’t have been playing with. Yeah, I would actually tell myself to start investing and understanding storytelling. Like, because like I said, I took it like, a lot of people take it, which is, I just do this.

So I don’t think about it. And what I learned through the process was how to be better at the thing that I was doing. Naturally, I quit it to breathing where it’s like, everybody breathes. Well, everybody tells stories. And with breathing, like, all these really interest crazy things that started happening where people do sports and they’re learning how to breathe to improve their performance. And then we got this guy, Wim HOF, crazy son of a bitch is like sitting in zero degree temperature and keeping his body temperature up through breathing.

It’s like, Holy shit, man, there’s a lot of crazy stuff you can do with something that just seems so benign. And storytelling is kind of the same way. It’s like, now do you want to have a deeper connection with people, get better at telling stories and telling them in the right way? Do you want your customers to remember you, like, long after they saw your website or your one ad or whatever, tell a really good story that will stick with people that kind of stuff when you become really good at it not only helps them remember you in the short term, it helps them remember you in the long term and too many brands and companies.

They have to keep reminding people who they are because they just keep saying a bunch of boring crap, but the story cut through all that. So, yeah, I would I would want to I want to tell myself, like, start learning about story, not just, you know, the concept of story, but how do you tell a good story? What are the pieces that make a good story? What is the hero’s journey? How does that applied to the way that you communicate with people? Because that would have gotten me way further down the path a lot faster.

Oh, very interesting. So, I mean, with that, I mean, I still continuing on the path of unfolding. You know who you are, right? You talked about your mom for a bit there. So again, I mean, you’re a hell of an entrepreneur, but you’re also a hell of a storyteller. This has to formulate genetically, maybe from somebody down that bloodline. So are you coming from an entrepreneurial background? Was your mom? The storyteller was your dad, the entrepreneur. Like, where does this come from that you can kind of look back and think, think about.

Well, Interestingly enough, my father was a very talented illustrator, although he worked in construction because in in his era, it was like, you’re never going to make money doing art like, you need to get a real job. And so that’s kind of what his parents told him. But he still drew lots of stuff. I mean, the guy could, like, literally, you could say, draw me. You could point at something and say, draw me that. And he could draw it in almost realistic, you know, illustration just with a pencil.

But at the same time, he spent all day, like, doing remodel and construction land tile, like pouring concrete, building framing for houses, doing roofs, like, he was kind of an entrepreneur in that sense. But nobody in my family really did entrepreneurship. As far as storytelling, I can’t say that my dad or my mom were big storytellers. My grandfather. I remember sitting with my grandfather a lot when I was young, and he would tell me stories of living through the Great Depression and World War II. And I was always fascinated by that.

Plus, he was a big history guy, so he would always talk about, like, oh, this thing happened. He loved World War II. He was like, this thing happened in World War Two, and this battle happened in this thing, this thing and this thing. I mean, the dude was like, the History Channel junkie. He just, like, flip on. But then he would talk about all the stuff he was learning or the books he read or whatever. So maybe through my mom’s line. But my mom, she’s not wouldn’t be what I would consider a storyteller.

Just, I don’t know. I got the random gene lottery.

So, I mean, contain on the family. Right? So, like, how do you currently juggle, like, your family life with your work life?

It’s a little bit of a challenge right now. I actually got divorced last year. So I’m now doing the single dad thing. But I do have some family helping out, and it’s a little bit challenging. But yeah, as an entrepreneur, I think it’s always a struggle because I find my brain still working on work or problems or trying to solve things after work. Time is over, and it’s a conscious effort to try to be more present so that I’m not like sitting at the dinner table, just staring off into the distance while my children are talking to me.

And so I have to, like, pull myself back to that, like. But yeah, I mean, it’s definitely. And then you get sometimes you get client calls. I don’t get them late, like I used to. But every now and again, somebody is calling at, like, 530, and it’s dinner time, and it’s like, hey, I’ll call you back after I get my kids down. But I can’t talk right now. So I had to start setting some boundaries around that around those things to better manage it because I wasn’t sending any boundaries before.

And it was just the business was running my life. I wasn’t running the business.

Very nice. I mean, it’s crazy that you said that because obviously, I think there’s so many similarities between us and I had an entire decade, plus being an only household, just a son and a dad and just raising him in that environment. So I definitely know what you’re talking about, like having to be attentive having to be there in that space, but also at the same time figuring out how to turn off the other side of you, which is always constantly on, no matter what you’re doing.

And as soon as that kid goes to sleep, you have back on the grid or you’re taking those notes or recording content or whatever it is. So I definitely commend you in that journey, man. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. And I know it’s a hell of a journey, but it’s I think where you are now, it’s probably going to be so compound. It’s going to be so much larger, because now you have this responsibility on your own. It’s going to grow, you leaps and bound for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the last year, there’s just been a ton of growth in my life. And like I said, I had never planned on writing a book. And then one day I was like, I’m writing a book. And it was like, it was weird because it was almost like the book was coming out of me, like I was vomiting. It was just like and it took me two and a half weeks to write the book. It took way longer to get it actually edited. But, you know, I wrote it because it was just like, this shit is just pouring out of me.

I need to put it somewhere. And I realized later after that that I gained all this knowledge and experience, and at some point in the future, it’s going to be gone. So putting it down in a book gives it the ability to live on and potentially help somebody who never met me, never talk to me, never work with me. But I didn’t realize that at the time, I was just, like, crap. I got all these thoughts, and I got to get them out of my head because it’s driving me crazy.

So.

Yeah. But yeah. I mean, it’s just lots of changes.

I mean, with that, I mean, o, obviously your schedule has shifted and pretty much life happens in today. What is your morning routine? Your morning schedules look like.

So it varies. Like, some days I’m doing a podcast like this, at least in this current season to kind of promote the book and whatnot I’m doing client work. I share custody. So some days I’m like getting the kids going and dressed and out the door to school. Some days I’m not I try to go walking for a few miles, three days a week so that I’m staying in better shape. So it’s a mix. And then sometimes it’s just, you know, reading like I am constantly trying to learn and trying to get better.

I’ll fit in a half hour to an hour here and there reading a book. And then once the day is done, I’m back reading again. Like I said, I love Audible. So I’m reading while I’m driving. I’m reading while I’m walking. I’m just constantly trying to learn and get better and go. How do I improve the skills I have? Because if I can improve those, then I can help more people. I can push bigger lovers in their business. And that, to me, is really exciting.

So I think that’s a hell of a segue to my next question. Earlier on, you talked about reading 52 books. And just by being a podcast host, I had the opportunity to ask this question to a lot of different individuals. So because of that, I created a book club. And in that book club, I’m promoting and pushing everyone to read a book per week, much like you read 52 books in a year. So my next question is a three part question. Right? I want to know what books did you read in the first part of your journey?

What books help to get to where you currently are? Second question is, what books or audio books are you actively listening to right now? And then the third part is you alluded to writing a book and having a book. Like, what is that book? And what is that book about? And how do people get access to it? Okay.

Yeah. So like I mentioned, the first book on storytelling I read was by Jonah Sacks. And in there he talked about Joseph Campbell in The Hero’s Journey. So I read The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell. And then I read Story by Robert McKee. I read some Lisa Cron books. I can’t remember the names of all of them. But, I mean, if you look her up, you’ll find those books on storytelling. But I read a bunch of different books. Most of them weren’t about marketing. They were about either how to write a good story or, like Story by Robert McKee, is about script writing, right?

In that you still learn how to tell a good story, like what works, what doesn’t work? Why do you need this thing? Not that thing. What is the order of operations? So those are some of the books that I read at that time. What I’m reading right now is I’ve got actually, hold on, let me just look an audible because I actually have multiple books going at the same time. I’m reading hooked, how to build habit forming products, 100 million offers, and unscripted unscripted. And those are all completely different.

One is about how to make good offers. Unscripted is about living. How do you not live the basic script of life, which I think a lot of entrepreneurs already do. Naturally. Right? Like, they’re not like, oh, I need to get a College degree, then I need to get a job. Then I need to marry somebody. Then I need to have 2.5 kids. I need the wife picket fence house. It’s like the whole concept of unscripted is like, how do you create the life that you actually want that you will actually enjoy and not follow the script of what everybody else does.

So I think that’s a really interesting one. And obviously that kind of appeals to my personality. So my book is called how to Hack Humans Storytelling for Startups, and it’s actually on Amazon right now for pre order until October 15. And then the book will go full price. But if you don’t have a Kindle, you can wait till it comes out on the 15, it will be in paperback and hard cover, which I was like, hard cover. That’s a new feature. And then anybody who’s interested, they can go to story.

Fianc. Com Uncage to download the first chapter of the book for free. It focuses on the neuroscience aspect. So what does science say about this? It’s not me. Just like I said, just making up a bunch of bullshit. Like, the stuff has been researched and we’re learning new things all the freaking time about the brain. And so it’s a really a really interesting topic for anybody who’s interested. Very cool. Very cool.

So I mean, with that, I mean, obviously this is your first book. And I think obviously once you kind of crack the system of creating books, I think you have way more books inside of you. They’re just going to start spelling out like you said, you were bombing out and you were just writing content. Right? So with that, where do you see yourself 20 years from right now?

Well, so I think I can answer this by explaining what the vision of our company is. There’s an often quoted failure rate in startups. I’ve worked with over 100, and I’ve only seen two exits, and one was actually more of a hostile takeover than an actual exit. So I’ve often questioned is like, the accurate number? Or is that just us being positive about a really bad failure rate? But the goal of Storify agency is to work with startups and even small businesses and entrepreneurs to reduce that failure rate by if I look to the future, I want to be able to in 20 years, point back and say, even if we don’t hit it, like, well, we reduced it by, and that made a big fucking dent.

And that helped so many people has ripple effects on the economy.

On.

Companies being able to help their customers employment like, yeah, that’s where I hope to be in 20 years.

Nice. I think to your point, you talk about economy just more of a global economy. That effect, right? You’re trying to help startups, which is essentially the better rock to everything that we’re all working towards, kind of evolve into businesses, small businesses, and then eventually hopefully into large corporations, if that’s the direction they want to go into. So starting from the ground floor up and you’re helping them tell their stories makes them more stronger companies later on. So I definitely commend you for that, for sure. Yeah.

I mean, they got get their story straight, if you will, and build a brand from the beginning. Right? Like, a lot of startups work like they’re building an airplane while they’re flying it. And I get that. But but how you communicate, right? Like, if you take your product to the market and nobody cares and you can’t answer the question the customer has in their mind of, why the fuck should I care about your product, then your debt, you’re dead. And at the end of the day, no matter how cool your tech is, you still have to deal with humans.

And if you’re dealing with humans, you got to be able to talk to them. You got to be able to communicate with them. You can’t place your rates with them or Panama. You got to use words. And often those words are written down on paper on a website in an ad. And that’s how you communicate.

Right with that. Obviously, you’re talking about writing. You’re talking about a lot of different communication devices on the application side. Like, what software would you say that you would not be able to do what you’re doing without having access to it? I.

Guess a dirty little secret is terrible at grammar. So Grammarly is a piece of software that I think Grammarly hates me. Actually, it’s like I hit that button and it just goes here’s all the things you did wrong, you piece of shit. Are you making me work so hard? I use that. I use the Hemingway editor because the Hemingway editor is great at being like, your sentences are just too complicated. Dude, you’re trying to say too much. Get to the fucking point. So those two, I use Google Docs.

That’s how I wrote the book. I wrote it in a Google Doc and then paid a fantastic designer off a fiber of all places to format the book, do the graphics and everything. It was like $35. I was like, you should be getting paid a lot more for this. But I will take advantage of you since you are letting me.

Yeah. That’s hilarious. That’s your software side. So ideally, who’s your ideal customer avatar? I mean, you’re talking about startups, but what’s kind of tell their story a little bit like, who is that person? Is it John? Is he playing golf or is it like, Michael and he’s jumping off a boat, or is it Susan? And she’s going through the store with a kid, like, who’s the ideal avatar for what you guys do?

Yeah.

So.

We’Ve worked actually with all kinds of different startups. Like, everybody usually thinks tech when they think startups. But, I mean, we’ve worked with, you know, nonprofits we’ve worked with, like, currently we’re working with, like, an exercise company. That’s a startup. We’re working with a CBD makeup company. That’s a start up. Honestly, I’m looking for people who want to change their industry or change the world. Some people that I talk to that have startups. I know their goal is making money, right? And that’s okay. But I’m looking for something a little bit bigger.

And so yeah, like I say startups because most people understand what a start up is. But the reason I like startups is because a lot of these founders are they’re the crazy ones. They’re the rebels, the Mavericks that Apple talked about. That like, I don’t know, 1020 years ago, however long it’s been since that campaign came out, the people who want to change things, you find a lot of those people in the startup industry. And those are the people that I want to work with, because I’m I find similarity there with those people.

And so to me, it’s like, I don’t care what your startup is, as long as it’s not about money, it’s about changing things. And that, to me, is the most interesting.

Very cool. So if you had to say the final last words of wisdom to an individual that fits that category of your ideal avatar, what insight would you give to them to keep them motivated on their journey to success?

Motivated? Yeah. I mean, that’s a good question, because, obviously, you know, doing a startup, you have days that like, you’re just winning everything. And then you have days that, like, everything is going going wrong and crashing. So I would say you need a strong vision for your company, because if you don’t have that without it, you’re going to get lost. I think running a company without a vision is like driving a car without a steering wheel, you push the gas, you can hit the brakes. But if the road turns, you may be flying off the cliff.

And the vision help steer your actions, your decisions because you understand where you’re trying to go. And I ran a company without a vision. And I ran that son of a bitch right off the road. And when we rebuilt and rebranded, I came back and I said, okay, I got to figure this thing out first. I need to know what we’re doing, where we’re going. And the reason I that I say that is because, you know, having a vision, it’s a future state. This is where we want to go.

So every action that I take is focused on, how do I get to that future state? But it’s also a story. It’s a story that you can tell to your employees to anybody who may be thinking about working with you. This is where I want to go. Isn’t that great?

Right.

And the other thing is, don’t make the vision about yourself. Like, I’ve heard people be like, well, our vision is to make $2 million by next year, and it’s like, Well, nobody fucking cares, dude, because that vision is about you. I think a strong vision is like building a house that other people can see themselves living in, like, your vision should draw other people in. And when those people come in, they can go. I know how I can help push this thing forward. I know what we’re doing today because I know where we’re going without it.

You’re just getting your car on the road and who knows where you’re going to end up. Make sure you figure that out. I think that’s really important.

Very nice. So the listener does listening right now is probably thinking about, okay. I love this guy. I love his energy. I want to contact them, right? How do someone get in contact with you? Obviously, there’s social media, there’s websites, there’s podcast, funnel them. Where do you want them to go?

Yeah. The main way to get a hold of me is just to go to Story Fagen dot com. That’s just S-T-O-R-I-F-Y. Agency dot com. There’s a there’s a button on there. It just says, schedule a call or something like that. And we can definitely sit down and check. Other than that, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. That’s, like, the platform I use the most because it’s business focused. I tend to kind of like, say, random shit on Facebook and then post an image on Instagram, like, every six months.

So I’m not on those platforms as much. But on LinkedIn, you can connect with me and you can start a chat or whatever, or you just hit the website and you can schedule a call. We got, like, everybody else. We got calendars and all that fun stuff. So it’s easy to do.

Nice. So we’re going into the bonus round. I got a couple of bonus questions for you. The first and foremost, I think, going back to the commonalities that we share, I think indirectly, without you saying, you’re on an adventure, gentlean junkie of sorts. So let’s talk about some of your past times and some of your hobbies.

Sure. So I took a Brazilian jujitsu last year. A great time to take a close quarter combat sport. I have been a scuba diver since 2004, so I’ve done about 150 dives. I’ve been to seven, eight different countries, most of which are Islands. Most people wouldn’t consider countries, but I’ve been to Turks and Caicos, Aruba, Bimini, Mexico, Belize. So I Dove all over and then not necessarily an adrenaline junkie type thing. I do some artwork, and I also produce electronic music on the side, so I keep myself busy.

I think that this one statement, right? I got another one for you.

Right.

And I think it’s pretty interesting with a diverse background. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be? And why.

Who would it be? You know, this is probably going to seem like a simplistic answer, but I think Elon Musk is a total crazy ass, but I would love to hang out with him and just kind of talk about the future, because obviously he’s pushing a lot of things forward. And he also has a very unique perspective on just about everything he does, how he runs his business, where he’s going next. So I think it would be really interesting to sit down with him and just pick his brain and see what he has to say.

And like I said, it may be some crazy ass shit, but some of the things that he’s been doing is, I think, definitely pushing the needle forward for humanity, like creating Tesla, trying to move towards being more electricity focused versus, like, fossil fuels going into space. Like, I read a ton of science fiction, and I, like, in my lifetime, we’re probably going to start having round trips to the moon. And it’s because of what he’s doing and what Bezos is doing and Richard Branson are doing.

They’re pushing the envelope and saying to the point where spaceflight becomes normalized. Well, when spaceflight becomes normalized, then going to other planets becomes normalized, then colonizing other planets becomes normalized. Then people having kids on other planets and growing up becomes a normalized thing. But you got to start somewhere and we’re seeing that right now. So it’s awesome. Yeah.

Definitely. Also, we’re at the dawn of things that we’ve read about as kids through comic books or we’ve seen TV and Sci-Fi. We’re living Sci-Fi now to the point to where people are, like, non astronauts are leaving the atmosphere is kind of like, what the think about that in the 60s, they were just trying to get out outside the atmosphere. And now it’s kind of like we’re just setting up random people into space and they’re going to come back down perfectly fine, considering that NASA has blown up probably more Rockets than what they want to tell us about, right?

Yeah. Spacex the same thing. They’re blowing up rocket. It seems like once a month and it’s like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine being o in the 1960s and they’re like, yeah.

Okay.

So we got this ten. Can we’re going to pressurize it and then strap a fucking rocket to it, and then we’re going to hope you make it back. And somebody was like, I’ll do that. Sign me up, please.

Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like interstellar is like on of my favorite movies is kind of like when you just see it, sell it to. What you’re talking about is kind of like once we figure out the whole time thing and figure out how to collapse time in spaces, we’re into a whole another ball game, man, for sure.

That is a great movie. It’s actually one of my favorite of Christopher Nolan, although I really like, tenant like, man.

Cool. So going into closing, man, I like to give the boss and Cage podcast over to my guests, and the microphone is yours. I show is yours. Do you have any questions that you’d like to ask me?

Yeah. Here’s a question. How would you summarize what you’ve learned from your journey? Because you’ve had so many different kind of roles and you’ve evolved as you’ve gone through those things. Like, what? What would you say your takeaway has been through that process?

I think a way is simple, man. Break a lot of eggs a lot faster. I mean, a lot of people are scared, man. I think fear is such a huge factor to where you come out of College. You’re thinking about, okay, I have to work to provide, or I have to make money to survive or whatever it is. But in those first, I would say probably from ages 15 to 25, like, that ten year break as many eggs travel, explore Dibble dabble if you have opportunity to go somewhere and you’re like, okay, I’m short $50.

Find the damn $50 and make could happen because when you get older, that’s when the responsibility really starts to kick in. So why not live your life as an adventure from day one and take all those things that you learn in a young age and compile them and make them into an experience for someone else? That way you can kind of give back what you’ve learned to educate other people so they can have the same experiences because we travel, right? And a lot of times you’re traveling, you’re looking around and you’re like, on a cruise ship, and you’re like, Everybody on this damn cruise ship is my grandparent right on the point, right?

You go somewhere like you’re talking about Belize, and you look around and it’s like 50% of the flight to be my grandparents because they’re the ones that have lived a life long enough to have the capital, the resources to kind of pay for it. We have to figure out how to do that at a younger age, so we can be 25, 30 years old on a plane right there next to the old guys saying, hey, I’ve done what you’ve done in half the time. Maybe I can help your kids or your grandkids experience with your experience now at a younger age.

Yeah. I totally agree with that. I mean, when I was 26, I just was like, I’m going to London. I did that. Went to South Africa for World Cup, went to Hong Kong, went to Japan. Yeah. Traveling. It also opens up your eyes to see more of what’s going on in the world. Because I think in the US, we tend to be very US centric. And when you travel, you also meet random people from other countries, too. We hung out with some Lithuanians one night in London, and it was a blast.

And it was like, these are people from halfway around the world. We don’t know each other, but we’re connecting. We’re sharing stories. We’re getting to know one another and we’re having a good time. It’s like the same thing happened in Hong Kong and in Japan, like, we met people who were, like, really cool. You know, it’s like, there’s so much more outside of the US, although we have a lot, right. And so that’s why it’s like a lot of people just travel within the US, like, you want mountains, you go to the mountains, you want beach, you go to the beach.

I mean, we have all this great stuff and really great cities and whatnot. But there’s so much more outside of of our country and getting out and experiencing that and seeing how people are, how they think, how they view the world, I think expands your perspective. So I definitely agree with what you’re saying. Don’t wait to travel till you’re too old to go out all night partying in London. It’s I think it changes you when you travel.

I think it definitely does to your point that you made earlier about traveling to space Elon and all these other guys, like Jeff BaseThey Ve done the traveling, and now they’re trying to travel to other planets. So you still got people that are, like, in a state, and they’ve been in that state for their entire life. So, I mean, think about it. By the time you catch up to trying to travel the world, we’re going to Mars and then from Mars, Saturn. Right. So you can kind of have to kind of figure out, where are you on the spectrum.

But you’re so behind the curve. And to your point, like, you may meet somebody in Germany, that’s from Japan, but eventually you’re gonna meet somebody in Mars. That’s from Saturn. So you have to figure out how to kind of expand a little bit more for sure.

Oh, man, when you said Mars, all I could think was Dave Chappelle, Mars bitches. M-A-R-S. Those are one of the funniest kits.

Are a well, if you had any other questions, this is the times. Not then it may.

Yeah. Dude, I could keep going on this. So you leave it open. So tell me about your writing process, because I just was like, I need to write 100 words a day. Right. And I did that for about a week, and I burned myself out. And then I had to take two days off because I could only squeeze out, like, 50 words, and then I got back on it and was good. So what is your writing process like, how long does it take for you to write a book?

So in the beginning, it took me six to nine months. Nowadays, I could essentially write a book per week if I choose to. But obviously, I got other things going on. So I stage my books out, stretch them out a little bit. So my process is like, to your point, writing 500 words a day. I can’t do that. And again, I think physically, writing something takes away so much time. So what I’ve learned to do is capture content. So podcasting, right? Creating videos. Youtube. So part of my podcasting is I’m interviewing individual people.

We’re having this great conversation. This conversation may spark something in my mind, like talking about Mars, talking about inter seller that I may create a video on that. Right. Or I may take a topic about branding, and I may create a video on that branding. But what I’ve done is before I create this content, I go in and I just create bullet lists. Okay. What am I going to cover? I’m going to cover these three core things about branding or brand strategy or about storytelling. And then what of my quick takeaways?

That’s good takeaway? That’s a good take away. That’s a good takeaway. And then after that’s, like, what’s the call to action? What do I want the reader to do? And I’ll do that for all of these particular sections, they become my chapters. Then I record a video, launch it on YouTube.

Again.

You create three or four different videos, 5610 videos, and transcribe those videos, take my bulleted list and compile them together. And now I have my chapter outlines. And I have my core body of content from my own first voice. And then what I can do is take that. And before I clean it up, give it to a ghost writer and say, okay, look, I’ve written out about five0 words. Here’s the topics. Here’s my tonality. Here’s my voice. Here’s my key takeaways. Here’s my call of actions. I need you to fluff it up a little bit.

I need you to kind of do a little bit research. Take an article section from over here. Find me some data from some resource over here. Pull those sources together, and I want this five0 words and now become 150 words. Then I’ll take that 150 words, and I’ll give it to someone to edit. And then that’s a book.

Wow.

So.

Okay. So you’ve you simplified the process or you set up a process that you can follow. But by using the ghost rider, it’s helping you augment. Right. So you’re not spending all the time doing that stuff. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Like, I wrote out the topics I wanted to talk about in notepad kind of thing. And then I came back and I said, okay, what are the subtopics to these main topics? And I was like, I was trying to get three to five in each one of those.

And then I and then I sat down with that and looked at that and said, okay, I need to write about this today. And you need to talk about all these different things. But yeah, I mean, the 1000 a hundred words. That was like, somebody going, yeah, I think I could bench £200, 250 or whatever. And you bring it down and push it back up once and you’re like, that was really hard. And then you do it again and you’re, like, not quite getting it there.

It’s like, kind of need to work up to that. So yeah, that’s. Yeah.

So if you’re creating video content or your creating audio content, I mean, the 1500 words, you can easily do that in a few minutes. Right? You can kind of talk to the audience, talk to your clientele, testimonial whatever it is. Just talk. And then again, you’re giving value ad. Just think about the formula of the value add. The formula is my topic. My take away any action topic. Takeaway action. As long as you stick to those three. Whoever’s going to receive that content in a book format for you, they’re going to get value from it.

So that’s my current formula to where I’m writing essentially all my books moving forward. And my first books when I first started, I was kind of like, I want to talk about these 1000 topics, and I’m going to convince them into this one book. And I oh, okay. That’s not gonna happen. How do I take one book and create a series? So then I created a formula for creating series. And then I was like, okay, now I got these series of books. What’s the next step?

Then?

I had to kind of go back in and revise. It was like I had to make sure that every single chapter I have a key. Takeaway every single chapter. I need to have some kind of call of action. And then the extra cherries on top is a quote or testimonial something that visual people kind of look at it and be like, okay, Steve Jobs said that that’s cool. That’s interesting. And they can hold on to that thing. And you put those pieces of puzzles together. Then it becomes very transparent how you can step and repeat creating content or creating books forever.

Yeah. I actually structured mine a little bit differently, but I like the way you did yours because I’m a movie fanatic. I structured it in three acts, and so it’s like, the science. Right. So here’s the proof. And then from there it was like, you go through the proof.

Okay.

Here’s what’s happening. Then I go through and say, how do you tell a good story? I break it all down, give lots of examples to show how you can tell a story and a tagline. You can tell a story in an email all those different ways. And here’s the right recipe. Right here’s the components you need. You need the eggs, you need the flour, you need the butter, you need the sugar, you need the salt. And then the third act. That’s where all the actionable stuff is.

Now here’s how you apply this. And I talk about how to write an email, how to do branding, how to do all these different things. And then I actually added a bonus section, which was like, six or seven chapters that are related, but not they’re adjacent or parallel to, like, I talked about, like, mindset stuff, because if you’re running a startup, you’re going to be dealing with mindset stuff or a small business or you’re an entrepreneur. I talk about vision. I talk about all those other things that while the book is not directly about those, I thought it was important, but that’s why I called it bonus chapters and something else that I did.

I think that you’ll get a kick out of and probably the audience will, too, because I’m such a movie fanatic. I love soundtracks to movies. And being a former rave DJ, I just like music in general. So every chapter has a song that goes with it. And there’s a Spotify playlist and a YouTube playlist so you can listen to music while you read the book. And that each chapter either what they’re saying in the song relates to what I’m talking about in the chapter, or it captures the feel of that chapter.

The first chapter is called The Anti Boring ass introduction, because I hate freaking introductions where the authors are just sitting there fluffing their nuts for what seems like a thousand words. And I’m like, just get to the fucking point, dude. And so that chapter I used welcome to the Jungle by Guns and Roses, and it just kind of kicks off from there. And the music is all over the place. I mean, I got 80 shop, I got hip hop, I got French musicians, Australian musicians. I got all this music.

And so I tried to create more of an experience with it. Yeah.

I definitely love that concept. I mean, to your point, I mean, you’re not just telling the story on the literary side. You’re also communicating through the music side. So anyone that actually reads and listen to music at the same time, you’re already filling in that void for them before they even have to ask for it. So definitely it’s a good, solid concept. I mean, it’s something that if anyone’s listening, you’re writing a book right now, you probably want to start creating some play list to go along with your chapters.

It’s a great idea because I mean, I wish I could put the music in the book, but then I’d have royalty issue, but your codes in a book, right?

I mean, obviously you could say, hey, scan this to go here, and then once they get to Spotify, wherever that you send them to, then they could deal with that on that side.

Yeah. I set the links in the book so you should be able to just click on it and then have it open up. Although I don’t know. Yeah. Like, I don’t know how to or you can just search it. Right? Like, you can search how to hack humans on Spotify right now and you’ll find the playlist. So anyway, just a different, different perspective on how I put things together versus how you put things together. But I like the idea of actually putting the actionable thing in each chapter, not leaving it to the final third.

I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

And it took me a while to figure that out, because again, OK, somebody’s gonna read this book and they’re gonna read the entire book. The I started reading more and more books. I listened to or or audio books, and I started realizing that Tim, as people, we jump around. So if they jump from chapter two to chapter seven and back to chapter four, and then I have the end of the book all this Q and A stuff, and then, like, Anthill miss the items that I want them to really cover.

So splitting it up with smaller bites and giving them smaller steps on the no matter what chapter they get into, then they’ll have access to that. But to your point, what you’re talking. But with those links, I think those links are definitely cool, because in my books, what I use is QR codes. Like I’ll take QR codes and I’ll use them for everything. If I’m talking about a particular product, I’m going to have a QR code in there for you. If you have music, I would say when you get to your physical book to put those QR codes in there and make them trackable so you can kind of say, okay, I have a book.

I have ten songs, and I’m scanning it with a QR code. Then you can kind of say, okay, you know what? This one song song on chapter five. I’ve had 1010 thousand downloads more than anyone else. Then you kind of take that song and kind of utilize that song a little bit more because obviously your audience is more communicated with that one particular item versus a song.

Yeah, I didn’t. Actually, none of my songs are in the playlist because I’m still working on on my EP to get it on Spotify. It’ll be up there at the end of the year, but I don’t have any of my stuff, but but that I like that point because I’m always trying to figure out how to improve. And so that’s a great tip. I really appreciate that.

Cool. Well, I definitely appreciate. I mean, I think you and I, we could probably were much like we could probably sit here and talk for another 5 hours and end up being like a Joe Rogan episode right into it. But I definitely appreciate you coming on the show that I mean, it was definitely well worth having you. And I look forward to reading your book and seeing what else you come up with in the years to come.

Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. And I had a lot of fun, so thank you for having me.

It was great. Essay Grant Over and out.

S2E52 Michelle Thompson – powered by Happy Scribe

This is rolling. Alright. Three, two, one. Welcome. Welcome back to Boston Cage podcast. So today’s episode is kind of like I think I found my kindred spirit person to interview, right. And there’s a lot of commonalities that you guys have been hearing me preach it for the longest about getting a PA, getting a VA. And guess what we have on the show is someone that can tell you more insight and more detail than I ever possibly can about that space. In addition to it, she’s also a fellow stroke survivor as well. So without further Ado, Michelle, the floor is yours. Tell our audience a little bit more about yourself.

Hey, thank you so much for having me on Boston Cage. This is amazing. I’m super stoked to be here. My name is Michelle Thompson. And as you alluded to five years ago, I had a stroke and I like to joke and say that that was the beginning of what started an accidental business. So we’ll kind of get into that. But previously I was a project controlled engineer. I went to school, got my MBA, all that good fun stuff. But I have always had that entrepreneurial bug, and I’m sure we’ll get into a little bit of that, but just super excited to be here.

Great. So, I mean, I think you definitely kind of brought it up. I didn’t start Boston Cage until literally, I was leaving out from the hospital post stroke, so let’s just dive into that a little bit. Let’s back it up and let’s just kind of tell what led you into having a stroke. Is it more like for me, a genetic like my parents, my dad is that all of them have strokes, so genetically I was inclined for it on your end. What was your determinant factor?

Yeah. So mine was genetic too. We had an underlying hereditary blood disorder in our family that we didn’t know anybody had. And I was lucky enough that I got it from both my mom and my dad. So it was kind of a double whammy. So it’s something called factor five. And I have what’s called homozygous factor five, which means I got it from both my mom and my dad. Most people, it’s actually pretty common for people to have heterozygous factor five, which means they only got it from one parent. That doesn’t usually cause any problems. It’s when you get it from both parents in the 50s. They used to call it sticky blood syndrome. So basically, what happens is inside of my veins. It thinks that there’s constantly a cut. And so it’s trying to put a scab on the cut. So it’s constantly making blood clots. And that particular day, blood clot went up into my brain stem. And that’s what happened. But you’re right. It took three years to recover. I didn’t just leave the hospital and boom business.

So yeah. I mean, I think that’s just for the well, obviously I always give whoever I’m interviewing the nickname. So I’m going to deem you the awesome boss, right? The clear records. So, you know, from now on, your awesome boss.

Yeah, I can own that.

Yeah, definitely. Right. So being that you’re awesome in the sense that you talk about it took three years to recover. My recovery was completely different than that. I was kind of like, headstrong and determining to come out, but you don’t always have that control. So what does those three years look like? And in those three years, what made you think it was okay to start a business?

I yeah, honestly, those three years were horrible. And if I’m honest, I was not the most willing patient. When we first found out what the underlying condition was, they basically sat me down into. Michelle, you need to create a power of attorney. You need to create a will. And basically, you need to create your funeral arrangements. What do you want done? Because it’s not a matter of if you have another stroke, it’s a matter of when you have another stroke and you were Super Super lucky the first time, the next time, you’re probably not going to be so lucky. And when I heard that, I decided, you know what? There is no way that I’m going to let myself have another stroke. And potentially, it doesn’t kill me. But I’m just going to sit there like a vegetable and have to suck carrots the straw for the rest of my life. And that is what scared me the most. And to be real honest, sorry, I decided I was just going to end it all. So I was driving home from my neurologist. And let’s be honest, I wasn’t brave enough to actually kill myself. But I figured there’s this really big cliff that’s coming up. And if I just drive my car over it, I’m not going to take anybody else out with me. But chances are I’m not going to survive that’s. That’s not a bad way to go. And I was literally 10 miles from this cliff, and the Bluetooth went off in my car, and so automatically, I just hit the thing. And Ironically, it was my doctor, and she was like, hey, Michelle, I know life’s been really, really crappy the last six months, so I just wanted to check in on you and see how you’re doing. And I literally just started laughing, right? Because she had no idea. And I was like, You’re kidding, right? And she’s like, no, I’m serious. And she’s like, Why do you ask it? Because I’m literally about to drive the car off a cliff. And her reaction was amazing. Like, any other reaction? I probably it probably wouldn’t have changed anything, but she was so nonchalant about it. She was like, Well, okay, that’s no problem. But you can always drive your cliff off a car to drive your car off a cliff tomorrow. So why don’t you just come in and see me and see if we can do something to help and if not drive recall off the cliff tomorrow. No big deal. And I was like, alright, well, that’s reasonable. I know. Right? And she was actually the one that found the factor five. Like, I had literally been to ten doctors before this. And they all told me I was lying. They all told me there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re making this up. You’re totally fine. And she was the one that actually listened and found it. And so I had a very, quite a bit of respect for her. So honestly, just out of respect for her, I went and showed up and and she sat me down and she’s like, you know, Michelle, she’s like, anybody who has gone through this would want to kill themselves. This is normal. It’s okay to want to kill yourself. She’s like, but I think we can make it better. So can we try? I thought, Well, okay. Now, at this point in time, I’m still dragging my right side. I’m still slurring my speech. I still am having seizures, probably three times a day. Very painful. Not fun. Right? So I was like, alright, well, out of respect for you, I will give you two weeks. And she did something incredibly brilliant. She didn’t send me the therapy. She didn’t try to lock me up. She got a hold of my best friend, and she’s like, hey, I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on. All I can tell you is Michelle needs some help. And so my buddy Michael called me and, you know, Michael, it’s like, It’s hilarious because we’re like, Mutt and Jeff, right? He’s like, 6ft, like, 200, like, He’s huge guy. And I’m like, five one, like, I won’t out myself on my weight. He’s like, hey, he’s like, can we go to Starbucks? And I’m like, no, we cannot go to Starbucks. I have seizures. I slur. I can’t walk. We’re not going to Starbucks, right? He’s like, no, no, it’ll be okay. Just come to Starbucks. I was like, okay, fine. We got there and he sat me down and he’s like, hey, he’s like, I know that things have been tough, and I know you’re thinking about leaving. I just want you to know that I’m going to miss you. And he’s like, I don’t blame you. He’s like, if I were in your situation, I’d probably do the same thing. But until then, do you think we could just hang out? Can we just go hiking and I’ll help you hike? I know you can’t walk, but let’s just go do it. And I went, okay, but as long as nobody else is around because I don’t want to be embarrassed. Right? And so we did. And it was so funny because he took me to Rei. And I don’t know if you guys have re where you are, but it’s basically like, this huge camping store and Michael is like, the most never wants to bring attention to himself at all type person. And he got down in Rei and he started putting a tent together in the middle of the store just so that I would get interested in something. And it worked. So I decided, alright, well, I want to stick around a little longer just to hang out with Michael. And then we’ll see what happens. And in that time, my doctor got me to start doing physical therapy and not just physical therapy, but also occupational therapy. So by the time I actually got into a neurologist who listened, it had been six months. So the brain damage that I had was permanent. They couldn’t fix it at that point. And so physical therapy was all about how learning how to live with your new reality. Like, we’re never going to get back what you had. Your MBA is gone. You’re never going to be able to do math above a second grade level, but we can make life livable. And so honestly, I like, bucked against it for, like, two months. And the one day I’ll never forget, I was sitting there and I was like, the grumpiest patient in the world. I totally was. I just didn’t want to be there. I was just miserable. And she just had it. And she sat me down and she’s like, Michelle, she’s like, we can keep doing this. She’s like, Well, you’re not going to get anywhere. She’s like, do you have any idea how freaking lucky you are? And I went, what? I just had a stroke, and you’re sitting here telling me I’m lucky. She’s like, look, she’s like, if you had been born just 40 years ago, I’d never be able to do any of the things that I can do with you today. But because of all the technology that we have, I can teach you how to have a relatively normal life. If you will just shut up and listen and stop feeling so freaking sorry for yourself. And I went, okay, and it was hilarious, because it’s exactly what I needed to hear. Like, I needed to stop the pity party. Oh, my gosh, life is over, blah, blah, blah. And be thankful for what I actually had. And that was kind of the turning point was when she basically had a come to Jesus meeting with me. Right? And that was what started to change at all. We started to learn how to automate my entire daily routine. And so in the house, I live in a very, very controlled environment because I still do crazy things. Like, I think I’m making coffee and the water goes in the toaster instead of the coffee pot, which is usually a bad thing. So I have a Google home in each one of my rooms, and it actually reminds me, Michelle, it’s time to brush your teeth. Michelle, you need to drink water. Michelle, you need to check and see if the dog needs to go to the bathroom. So literally, every single part of my life is structured by a machine. And we got to the point where I could actually live almost by myself. And I could function and create things on my own. And we learned, okay, hey, when you turn the stove on, set a timer. And in ten minutes, when the timer goes off, check to see if you turn the stove off. Type of a deal. And so having the business background from prior, I started rolling this all around in my brain, and I thought, wow, if we can do this for everyday life, why can’t we do it for business, too? And that was when it really started, really started clicking. And I started thinking, I was like, you know what? Now this is three years down the road, right? Fast forward. Three years. And I started thinking, you know what? I don’t know how much time I have left. What is the legacy that I want to leave? And what do I really want to transfer to the next generation when I’m not here? And I realized that I wanted to pair my business knowledge with how I learned how to automate an outsource. And so I started recording videos on how to delegate and delegate. Well, and the way that I did it was really funny. I would a lot of people think it has to be super complicated. I made it stupid, simple, like, okay, if you know that tomorrow you’re going to get hit with a Mac truck. What is the information that you can download into a video today? All those micro decisions that you’re making in your brain so that you could then pass that video off to somebody else so they would know how to do that task. And we just started slowly creating a video for every single thing in my business.

Okay.

And it got so good that I would wake up and in my inbox would be 40 hours worth of work that I hadn’t done at all. And my friends, who are my colleagues were like, what the heck, Michelle? You can’t even function in your house. How are you doing this? And so I started to tell them, and I started to show them, and they’re like, Holy crap, this is amazing. Let’s try it with my stuff. I said, okay, but if it blows up, it’s your fault, right? And so we did. And it worked like, really, really well. And so then what happened was from there just the kind of natural progression was everybody’s like, oh, my gosh, you need to teach this to the world. You need to create a course, right? Because everybody’s making a course. And so I did. I created this course, and we put a couple of people through the beta, and it worked really well. But the feedback that we got was, you know, Michelle, this is great that this is your like, you’re really fired up and excited about this, but I don’t want to learn how to find a VA in the Philippines and train them like, can you just do it for me? And at first, I was very hesitant because I only have about two to three good hours a day. Other than that, I have to sleep. I still have to sleep a lot. And so I was afraid that I was going to take on other business owners tasks, and I wouldn’t be able to deliver. And so I had a couple who I was very unwilling. Honestly, they’re like, Michelle, just try it. And if it doesn’t work, we’re not going to hold you responsible. I said, okay, let’s try it. And so I literally took them through the exact same process that I did myself. And it worked really well. And I realized the missing piece was all I needed was a project manager. And so we hired a project manager. And now the process is duplicatable. And then accidental business was born, which is pretty awesome.

First of all, in what you just said. And this is why I said, we’re like, kindred spirits. I mean, you talked about legacy, right? It’s funny after a stroke that’s, like, the first thing that I’ve learned about myself as well. It’s kind of thinking about, what am I going to leave behind for future people, future generations. You also kind of unraveled something that’s very difficult to deal with when you have a stroke is depression. And I think most people, they may hear us having this conversation right now. I’d probably be like, there’s no way in hell these two people who’ve had strokes, there’s no way in hell these two people’s faces were drooping. There’s no way in hell that their bodies were, like, number on one side. And they’re having this conversation right now. But the reality is that you have to work your ass off to get to the point to where we are currently right now. But on that journey, you get hit with that. I was this now on this. I can never be this again. How the hell am I gonna live for myself? And not to say everyone’s gonna be suicidal. But you go into very dark places and trying to figure out what the light is. So I commend you for not only figuring out the light, but you made the light into a system and you monetized it golden. Definitely. So let’s just time travel back a little bit, like, like, I think something else that we shared as well, too. I mean, you were an insurance as well. Are you still an active life insurance agent and all that as well?

No, actually, I let them lapse, but yeah, I did. I used to. I used to have my series 663 65, and then my life and health crazy because I had my six as well.

And I let that last because I was like, I don’t feel like dealing with Sunrun. I still have my insurance because I was like, okay, that’s kind of low maintenance. I could kind of maintain that. So how did you go from kind of being in that space transitioning into the MBA? Like, how did that happen?

Yeah. When I was a financial advisor and worked for the insurance firm, I was actually hired to run the insurance Department. The goal was for me to become a partner in the firm. And so in order to become a partner in the firm, I really needed to have better credentials. I needed to get my CFP or needed to get my MBA. And we already had a CFP on staff. And so I decided that MBA would be the better route. And so honestly, that’s how it happened.

Got it. So if you could define yourself in three to five words, what three to five words would you choose for yourself?

Determined, patient, visionary. I don’t know how to say this in one word, but never give up.

Yeah, definitely. So you have a business now that’s essentially pretty much self maintained to a certain extent. I mean, I’m sure your hands are still in the business, but you have it so systematized that you’re using your own soup, right? You’re outsourcing. It like, how is your business structure? Is it an LLC? An S Corp. C Corp. Yeah.

So it’s structured as an LLC, but it’s a there’s different types of LLC. So ours is actually an LLC. So it’s actually filed when we file taxes. It’s almost like a sole proprietor, but it is its own entity. And I just didn’t want to bring on more than one partner. So that’s why I had to be enough.

Got you. So you’re a partnership as well?

No, I didn’t want to have to get aboard. I didn’t want to have a dress with that. Yeah. So I set up the LLC, and then when we file taxes, it goes through the S got you.

So listening to this podcast, someone may listen and say, okay, in three years, it took you to kind of overcome and kind of become who you are right now. But obviously, the business that you’re in has just started. But essentially, you’ve been on this journey for a long period of time. So how long have you been on your business journey?

Yeah. I started like everybody did with their little side hustle dabbling in entrepreneurship and outsourcing 15 years ago.

Got you outsourcing. So I guess we just dive into this outsourcing. And obviously, I love this topic because I always tell people that you have to understand that if you could multiply what you’re doing in multiple different time codes, then you could be working while you’re awake, you’re sleeping and things are getting done for you around the clock. So you alluded to the Philippines earlier. Is there a particular reason why you use the Philippines versus other resources yes.

A couple of very specific ones. So first of all, the Filipino culture is amazing. They’re very teamwork driven. They’re very family driven. And so when I wanted to build a business, I wanted to make sure that I was building a team, not just a group of people who just wanted a job. I wanted somebody who was going to take ownership and want to build the company as much as I did. And so I found that culture there another really big reason is English is their primary language. So if you go inside of a hospital or a school or a lawyer’s office, they speak English. Obviously, that’s a huge help versus somebody who maybe that’s their second or third language. The third reason is they are very immersed in our culture. So they love Korean drama. And then they love pretty much everything else American. Right. So they’re watching the NBA. They’re watching March Madness, just like we are. They’re watching the Kardashians. It’s funny because they think we all live like the Kardashians, so they understand our flying. They understand everything like that. So that was hugely helpful. But probably the biggest reason that I went to the Philippines was the US dollar to Filipino peso conversion is very, very favorable in the United States. And when I built the business, I decided it wasn’t just going to be for money. There had to be a bigger why there had to be a reason. And so my goal when I built awesome outsourcing was to actually break the cycle of poverty in the Philippines. And so by doing that, what I do is I pay them the equivalent of about $50 an hour in the United States. I pay for their health insurance, I pay for their retirement, I pay for their they have, like, a loan program. You can’t buy a car or a house without a loan program there. I pay a 13 month bonus, two weeks vacation, and then I pay all the transfer fees. And so what that does is because they’re very family oriented. Not only does that help them, but they’re multi generational. So that’s usually helping their grandparents, their parents, them, their kids. And a lot of times their nieces and nephews and cousins. So what happens is they’ll pay for their kids to go to school, and then they’ll pay for all their nieces and nephews to go to University as well. And so I realized if I can pay them enough that they can provide education for the next generation, we can break the cycle of poverty, one employee at a time, and that’s what we’re doing.

Wow. I’m just trying to listen to what you just said and just breaking it down and just kind of like to be honest, you didn’t have to do that. You chose to do that. So it also kind of gives, like, not only commendable for you, but you’re actually making a difference, which is great, in a sense, so let’s just talk about that a little bit. So you’re not essentially giving away money, but you’re having them work for for a living. You’re paying them a higher premium than just say majority. I mean, I think the Philippines, I could probably get a PA for $3 an hour, $4 an hour. So you’re going essentially 15 F ten fold above that. And you’re doing that to change an entire. So what is your long term plan for that? I mean, what do you see that structure look like 20 years from now?

So the cool part is we’re actually seeing it now. A couple of stories. I had one of my guys who’s still in College, and he was one of my video Editors, and he did such a good job that I gave him a ton of work. And for video editing, I happened to pay per minute of editing. So I paid him $8 per minute video editing. Well, we paid him so well that he was actually able to go into his class and pay for his entire class to have the Adobe suite. And so what that did was they could all then become freelancers, and each and every one of them were able to get a job. And so we get stories like that all the time when they recently just were hit with a pretty nasty typhoon, and they all bonded together and put tons of money into the community to rebuild the community. And so my goal is I hope that five years from now, we have 300 employees and we’re able to do that for 300 families because I’m able to touch each and every part of that. But in addition to that, we’re also going in and we’re putting in Wells, which sounds crazy because it’s the Philippines, and there’s water everywhere. But there’s not clean water. And there are a lot of homeless people in the Philippines. And so what we’re doing is we’re picking the outskirts of not the major but the outskirts where there are these camps of homeless people. And we’re putting in well, so that they’re able to just get clean water and be able to do simple hygiene things. And so as we build and grow, we just keep adding on more and more benefits like that.

Yeah, this is definitely beautiful. So just think about this from a science fiction point of view, if you could time travel back to, say, 1020 years, what’s one thing that you would choose to do differently if you could do it all over again? Oh.

Great question. I. Probably would have kicked myself out of the nest faster. And what I mean by that is I was so afraid to take the leap and so afraid to completely outsource because nobody could do the job as well as I could. And I didn’t really want to give it to anybody because they weren’t going to do it the way I wanted it. And then it was just going to create a bunch of rework and blah, blah, blah. Right. I had all my reasons by having a stroke. I literally couldn’t do the task myself anymore. And what I realized was if I can get somebody else to do that task of what I would have done. So it’s not big freaking deal. Who cares? I freed up my time. I don’t have to do it anymore. I freed up my brain power, and I use this example of social media posting, right? Business owners, especially entrepreneurs. We spend a ton of time learning all the things. Right. So we’re creating social media graphics and we want it to be perfect, right? Because we want our image to be perfect. And yes, that’s all important. But to a certain extent, like if I say somebody else makes the graphic and I would have maybe move the person two degrees to the right and I would have maybe done something slightly different, change the color font or whatever. Does that really matter in the grand, huge scheme of things? Not really, because it’s getting done on social media, which it probably wouldn’t have gotten done as fast anyway, because I would have still been perfecting it. Secondly, is my branding and my message still prevalent where somebody is going to look at that and be able to book an appointment and I’m able to help them then. Yeah. So what I found was the interesting part is by me doing all those tasks myself. I was actually doing a disservice to my clients because I was spending so much time doing all those little things that I should have never had my hands in in the first place that I wasn’t able to help enough people. And so in essence, I was actually doing them a disservice because I was using all my time and brain power on the stuff that I should have been getting rid of. And so if I could do it all over again, would kick myself out of the nest earlier and make myself delegate sooner is definitely very.

Very powerful, because I had to come with terms with that myself as well. Kind of building agencies and building brands and have a graphic design background. So for me to your point about design, you want it perpendicular to the square, you want it down to the Pico and you want everything exact. But the reality is how much time and effort am I going to put into that to deliver something that’s going to go across someone’s feed for 20 seconds or less. And it’s like was my 3 hours of doing that really worth the 20 seconds of time for somebody to possibly convert. So we’re going to a year like your background a little bit, right. So, I mean, obviously you have an MBA, but you say you don’t have it, but I think you’re still an NBA quality person. People that have MBAs that don’t have your tenacity or have your skill set currently. So you come from an entrepreneurial background because it seems like it’s ingraining your DNA.

I don’t at all, actually. Which is hilarious. My family, still to this day, does not understand why I do what I do. But came when I read a book. The very first book somebody handed me was Rich Dad Port At by Robert Kiyosaki. And that changed the way that I looked at the world. And I went, you mean, I don’t have to do the nine to five thing every day for the rest of my life. Somebody handed me that book when I was 22, and I was working retail hours, like, 50 hours a week dealing with customers spitting on me. And I’m like, dude, I could handle getting out of this. Right? So that kind of started a fire in me. And the very next book that I picked up was a four hour work week by Timothy Paris, and that really lit the fire. So I was like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. I have found the secret. And of course, it didn’t quite work like that. But I did what everybody did. I’m like, oh, great. Let’s outsource something to Brickworks Indy, and then I’m going to turn in a blog and it’s going to make all this. And it’s gonna be awesome. Right. Well, I’m a little older than everybody else probably listening to this. So that’s what we did in the nineties and two thousands. But anyway, so those two books really lit the fire in me. And I started a habit of every month I wanted to read one book that was going to get me better. And I’ve kept that even through it. Now I can’t read anymore. But I refuse to use that as an excuse. So what I do is I buy the book and then I also buy the audible. And so I listen to the book while I’m looking at the words and then I can comprehend. And I think that that’s been like, the difference was the education of myself.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, I’m just listening to you. And it’s like, you’re just preaching that acquire to so many similarities in our stories. And to your point, I mean, about reading books versus audio books. And because of that, I decided to kind of create a book club. And, like, right now in the book club, the goal is to read one book per week. And I’ve kind of created some videos on how is it possible to read one book per week? Which goes back to your statement that you said earlier about using devices like my house. I have Alexa glasses, Alexa to brush Alexa, everything Alexa in the car, so I can seamlessly listen to an audio book no matter where I’m going in my house, it can just transition from device device and 20 minutes here, 40 minutes there. It adds up to where you’re able to read a book per week pretty easily. So just to dive into your family life, I mean, obviously, it seems like you’re completely engaged. And even though everything is outsourced and systematized, I think that the overview arching of the management side of that maybe a little bit difficult. So how do you juggle your work life with your family life?

I am super lucky and that I have a very supportive partner, and she is because a lot of times, even still, I’ll be like, yeah, I don’t want to do this anymore. And she’s like, no, Michelle s like, you have to do this. You are so good at this. And so I have a cheerleader in the background. And so that’s a huge, huge part of it. But I’ve set up a lot of boundaries with my business. And honestly, my business coach made me do that. So I have I work four to 6 hours a day Monday through Friday. I don’t do anything on the weekends, and once a quarter, I go away for a week and a half where I never touch anything. And so the reason for that is when we go away for a week and a half, what we’re really doing is by not doing anything. Not only am I unplugging, but we’re trying to figure out what’s still broken. And so when something breaks, then I know, okay, that’s what I have to pay attention to. And systematize when I get back. What I’ve done is just one piece at a time. I’ve slowly systematized everything. So it literally runs very much without me there. So I really don’t have to do do anything in my business. It really literally runs on its own, which is amazing. And a lot of people are jealous. So I feel kind of bad saying that.

I think it’s commendable, in a sense, that to your point of recovering from a stroke, rebranding rebuilding everything essentially from scratch. It gives everybody else the opportunity to not only admire you, but to follow in your footsteps and understand if you can do it, then why the hell can anyone else do exactly what you were able to achieve? And like you say, you’re running on autopilot. At this point in time, there’s huge companies that would die to be in your shoes. And they’re still trying to figure out how to even process orders.

And I think that was because I made myself grow slow on purpose because I wanted to build the system and then let it break with three clients versus 300 clients. And so I put processes and systems above everything else. And that was more important than the dollar amount coming in, which is really nice to say, some people can’t do that. But at the same time, when you fix that, then you’re no longer fighting fires, the time that you would have been spending fighting fires. Now you can go build something else, right. And there were a couple of super important books that helped me do that. One was Work with System by Sam Carpenter. The other one was actually Profit First by Mike McCalla. Have you ever heard of that book? Okay. And so that forced me to create a business that ran lean and was profitable. And so by implementing Profit first before I did anything else, then I was able to really build the system around it and grow slowly because from day one, we were profitable. It didn’t matter because the numbers worked.

That’s so beautiful. I’m just sitting here in odds. It’s commendable to the extent of anyone that’s listening to this podcast right now, and you’re hearing what she’s saying, and you have an opportunity to stop what you’re doing and to reevaluate what you’re doing while you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Obviously, the results would be more fruitful if you were to stop long enough to realize that there are issues in your current system and there’s opportunities to make them run a lot smoother than they’re currently running right now. So diving into your morning routine, since you’re so systematized and like you said earlier, you was making coffee, but you may have put that in the toaster. What is your morning routine look like?

Yeah. When I wake up, which is 750 every morning, I have a system set up where Google turns on. And it tells me what the weather is going to be like for the day. So I know what to wear. It tells me what the first three appointments are on my schedule, and then it automatically starts a morning meditation for me. Right. And so I actually lay in bed for the first 30 minutes just listening to that to get my brain rate, because when I first wake up, my brain doesn’t automatically just jump out of bed. So I do that 30 minutes meditation to get my brain right for the day, get up, take a shower, and then I have a checklist on my mirror that says, hey, did you floss? Did you brush your teeth? Did you take your medicine? All the things? Right. So then from there, I go into the kitchen and it tells me, okay, feed the dog. So I then feed the dog and open the door where we have a little doggy door so he can go in and out whenever he wants. And then we actually moved everything in our home so that I can’t accidentally put water in the toaster because the toaster used to be right next to the coffee machine. And so now the toaster is on this side of the kitchen and the coffee pot on that side of the kitchen. So just little things like that keep me from making mistakes, because now when I put the water in and I go over, I can’t accidentally put it in the wrong machine. And what’s cool is like when you sit and you think about that, then you think about it for business. What happens if we just move the pot over there? How does that fix things? So anyway, so then make my coffee, come in, I check my email, and then usually I’m on my first appointment by 930 or ten.

Wow. So it almost seems like I’m gonna be Frank. And it’s actually the question. Do you think if it wasn’t for the stroke, you would be as effective and as efficient as you are currently because you have to be right now because of the stroke?

Absolutely not. That’s why I call the stroke my blessing in disguise. It literally is the silver lining on the cloud because I was so distracted by, you know, pushing harder to get to the next level to get the corner office to get whatever it was more clients. I just need that one more perfect client. Right. And so I was so distracted that I didn’t take the time to sit down and really tear it apart. And so had that not happened, I would probably still be spinning my wheels, to be very honest.

Yeah. I mean, it’s not every day that I have a I guess like you to where I’m kind of, like, not stop, but it’s just listening to you and just recapping and just re visualizing exactly what you just said and thinking about how would everyone’s life be uniquely different if they had to go through such a life changing event? What would they come out with at the end? And you’re like the formula for that? You took broken eggs and everything, and you baked a cake. That’s not only a cake for you, but a cake for family generations in the Philippines and for your local family as well, is definitely an amazing story. So I think earlier we kind of drove into books a little bit, right. So before we were talking, you were saying that you also wrote your first book. So I mean, this is the time, usually when I Act for recommendations. But I think you’ve made, like, six recommendations for books. So let’s dive into your book a little bit.

Okay. Sure. Yeah. I am super excited about this. And this will show you the power of outsourcing. So I wrote my first book. It’s called Running On A. It’s called Running On Autopilot, how to Find Higher Train and Remotely Manage a Virtual Assistant. And here’s the cool part about this book. It is literally the A to Z manual. Everything that I know is in this book. But I didn’t write this book. What happened was I took my course that I created, and I hired a writer, and I said, Noriel, I need you to go through all of these videos, and I need you to break them into chapters. And so he went through and he created all the chapters. And then I hired a graphic designer, and I said, okay, Lois, I need you to take the words from the chapter, and I need you to bring them life. I need pictures, I need graphics, I need examples. I need you to put it in design to create the book and all that good fun stuff. And so literally, because I am physically not able to write a book, it’s not possible. But I can talk. And so what I did was I just talked the book out into a video and then I outsourced the book. But I am Super Super proud of this book. You can find it on Amazon, and it literally will teach you from the very beginning infancy stages where to find a VA, all the cultural stuff that you need to know and then how to hire them without having to micromanage. So super proud of it.

And it’s under. I mean, do you have a pen name or it’s under your actual Michelle?

Yeah. It’s under my actual name. Wow.

Great. So I don’t think anyone out there that’s looking for opportunity to even comprehend or understand how these systems could really work for you. I haven’t even picked up the book yet, but obviously, if I wasn’t on this call right now, I’ll be downloading the book right now. Is it audio format as well?

I’m working on it. I’m interviewing somebody to read it for me at this point because I tend to stutter a lot, so it’s coming. So hopefully in the next two or three months, that part will be done. But right now it’s an e book and paper practice.

Great. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I’m giving you a copy, but I wanted to get a signed copy eventually, sooner or later in the near future, at some time or the other. So going into your journey, right. So obviously, I think you talked about legacy. Where do you see yourself and your business? 20 years from now? And I think you alluded to it a little bit, but just go into that a little bit more.

Yeah. Honestly, I hope in 20 years nobody sees me. I hope they just see the legacy that’s left. I hope that this has again. I’ll refer to another book, but Mike Malkit created a book called The Pumpkin Plan, and he talks about being the biggest pumpkin in the patch and how you are just so awesome to your clients that you are making a world of difference in their lives and your employees lives. And so I really hope that we are the biggest Punkin in the virtual assistant space so that we’re able to change that many lives because every single person that we’re freeing up their time and giving them their time back as a business owner means that somebody else has a job. And I’m now breaking the cycle of poverty in the Philippines, and that is what I hope. I hope nobody sees me. I hope everybody just sees that.

Got it. I think to my point that I made earlier, it was comical in statement, but the reality is your MBA is working live and well, you definitely understand business structures and the point of wealth management as well. Like, the further away you are from your clients is the more money and the more of an Empire you would essentially have. So you’re definitely on the right track for that.

And it’s back to that profit first. Right. Once we systematize everything, it’s just numbers. We know we’re profitable, right. The systems are already there. The more people you put into is more money than it makes. It’s a very beautiful equation.

Like I said, your MBA is live and well. Okay. Are you talking about these systems? Right. So I think for some people, they’re like, what kind of systems is she using? I understand there’s people and that’s somewhat of an organic system. But what software technologies are you using that you would not be able to do what you do on a day to day basis without.

Yeah. So there are a couple of things that I do. I automate as much as humanly possible. And so I decided to use almost like a business in a box type deal where all of my landing pages, my email, any tracking, my CRM billing. It’s all in one house. And I actually use entreport for that. And I actually hired somebody who is an automation specialist. And so the cool part is that literally, from the time that somebody clicks on a Facebook ad, it brings them into the system, they have the appointment, it sends them a thank you card. It sends them directly, like, literally the entire process from start to finish goes without me touching anything, which is amazing. And I probably did a really bad job of explaining that, but it’s like, super cool. But then on the other side, the social media side, I don’t want to spend any of my time doing that either. And my VAS are honestly too valuable to be spending their time doing that when a piece of software can do it really well. So what I do is I try to create a hybrid. I figure out what kind of software is going to get us 80% of the way. And then how can my VA come in and use their expertise to get it the last 20% of the way? So what I use is a program called Social B, and it’s just a social media scheduler. There’s nothing special about it. It’s like buffer sweet. And some people argue because they’re like, oh, it throttles your traffic. Well, yes, that’s true. It does throw out your traffic a little bit, but 70% of people seeing my stuff is a whole lot better than 0% of people seeing my stuff. So I’m okay with it. Schedule once is a tool that I use all the time, because inside of there not only does that give them access to my calendar and my sales reps calendars, but also there are forms in there, and there are lots of different ways that you can do this. But the cool part is when somebody schedules it and schedule once, I never have to prep for an appointment, because inside of there is my Zoom link, and they’ve already filled out all those questions. So all the information that I need is right there. I just click on the button, it pops the thing and I’m ready to go.

Nice. Nice. I think Social B is one of those platforms, and I found Social Be through. What was that? It was one of the not affiliate programs, but it was like when they first started out actually was a Sumo.

Sumo. Sumo Sumo.

I could sit here and talk about a Sumo day in and day out because it gives us an opportunity not only to get in on the ground level, but to actually talk to the developers and manipulate their applications for our needs and our requirements because they’re so brand new in the market space. So with social media, it’s kind of dive in that a little bit more. I mean, obviously anybody that’s familiar with, like, Hootsuite and all the other platforms. I like Social Be because it’s simple to use, and it makes it very transparent to use versus all these other, like, for example, you kind of have to drill down and you kind of have to figure out like, okay, how do I install this? How do I set this up? But social media is so kind of, like, clean and simple that you could just drop a CSV file in there and have a year’s worth of content ready to go automatically done for you. Are you using it for that same premise, or are you using any other hidden bells and whistles of social being?

Yeah, I have mine segmented by, so I don’t necessarily just drop a year’s worth of general content. I have each bucket have a specific reason, and I keep all my stuff evergreen in there so it can just keep cycling through. And so what I try to do is I try to do three value posts and two sales posts. Right. So one is just dropping value. One is a call to action, and I shouldn’t say call to action. Every post that you have should have a call to action if you’re being a smart business owner, but one is actually just delivering value. And, hey, we could help you out. The other one is, hey, I’ve got this thing. You need it here’s where you click. And then I have in addition to that, every time I use case studies and testimonials like, crazy, I’m constantly filtering those through, too. So the nice part is each bucket is I am so sorry. I thought I closed all these and it’s like, okay, I don’t know if you could hear all the dinging that’s one of the super cool parts is because as you build the system, Social Be is flexible enough that it can move with your marketing goals, and you can then set it up where it’s like evergreen. It’s literally set it and forget it. And so that’s the part that I love about it is the really simple, simple graphic user interface. It’s just drag and drop. And here you go. Have a nice day. And it’s less expensive than, like, hot, sweet, and buffer. So I don’t know if I answered your question. I feel like a time.

You definitely did. You definitely did. I mean, it’s point blank, period is a great, great, great application. And obviously, again, I’ve said it many times before. Are you not familiar with AppSumo? Just put AppSumo on your list to do before the night out, and it’ll probably change things for you drastically really quickly. So this dive into final words of wisdom. Let’s say someone 2030 years old. I had some kind of crisis in my life. Maybe I had a stroke, maybe I have cancer, but now I have an opportunity. I’m at the fork in the road. I can subside to the depression side and kind of give up and quit. Or you’re my voice of reason. What are you going to say to me to make me lean more towards the voice of reason and achieve something for my life?

Yeah. Going back and thinking at that point in my life, I was in so much pain and I was literally laying in bed all day just in so much pain. You literally just want to escape the pain. And I think if I had to tell myself, it would be, it’s okay. It’s not going to be like this forever. Just keep going. If you can just get better, all you have to do is just just brush your teeth today. That’s all you have to do. And as we slowly build on those blocks, you’ll realize that life can become better. And it doesn’t. Is it going to be the same way that it was? No, no, it never will. I’m a shell of what I used to be, to be very honest, but that doesn’t have to stop you. That if you can find the courage to dig inside of you and pick yourself up and keep going, you will find a way to make it work and just don’t give up. There’s going to be crappy days, and it’s okay to have crappy days, but just don’t give yourself the excuse every single day that today is a crappy day. I’m just not going to do it.

Definitely powerful stuff. So how could our audience find you now? I know eventually you’re planning on disappearing and letting the system run. Right? But how can they find you on social media? Like, what’s your handle website?

Yeah. So I primarily hang out on LinkedIn and Facebook so you can find me on Facebook under Diakonos 23. So that’s D-I-A-K-O-N-O-S 23. And then on LinkedIn. It’s just Michelle Thompson. Also, I think if you just type in awesome outsourcing, our business pages will come up from there. And obviously, awesome outsourcing. Com, you can send me an email there.

It doesn’t dive into your services a little bit. Who is the part question, right. Who is your ideal target audience? And what kind of price point buying from my range? Can they come in?

Yes. So we are looking for entrepreneurs who are at six figures looking to scale the seven, but they’re wearing too many hats, and they just can’t seem to grow because they can’t figure out how to get those hats off. That is where our superpower really comes in, because we can sit down and we can tear apart all those hats and figure out. Okay, this one, you have to keep this one. We can delete this one, we can get off your plate. And so we work in bucket of hours. So it’s either 20 hours a week or 40 hours a week. And we make it pretty simple. It’s 1675 an hour for the work. We also do lead generation. So if that’s where your point is, you’ve got the system set up, but you need to turn the pipeline on. We can do lead generation on LinkedIn or Facebook, and that’s 1200 a month. And if you go to awesome Outsourcing. Com services, all the pricing and all the details is is right there for you. I’m not too worried about anybody stealing my stuff and duplicating it.

Yeah, but I think you have it so honed in. It’s kind of like someone is chasing behind you and you’re well ahead of them. It may take them a longer period of time to figure out your nuts and bolts versus just hiring you to get the job done. So only makes sense. Let’s go to some bonus questions. Right. Bonus question, bonus pression. So if you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be? And why.

Henry Ford? And the reason I picked him was he was the master at hiring people who were smarter than he was and then building a system around it. And I would love to pick his brain on how he was able to take people who were so much smarter than him and fit them in the system and turn it into what he did.

And I mean, you got to think about that, too, when he did it, it was well over 100 years ago, and it was just kind of kind of I guess it was like the Industrial Revolution timeframe, but how he created a system in that time frame and knew that that system was going to last as long as I mean, we still have parts of that system now. It’s kind of ingenious in itself for him to even have that much foresight. Crazy. Yeah. Definitely crazy. Last bonus question. What’s your most significant achievement to date?

Not giving up. I know that’s kind of a cop out answer, but like, if you could have seen the three years of struggle to get to hear, it would have been really easy to just give up. And I’m sure you have the exact same story. There were days when I like, like, how I want to go to physical therapy again. And honestly, I think that being able to take such a horrible thing, like a stroke and turn it into something positive that’s actually giving back to people. I would have to say that’s probably my greatest achievement to this point.

Definitely. I mean, I think obviously in life, there’s many achievements that you could come across, but just hearing your story and being inspired by your story, I could definitely commend you and tell you that I 100% agree with you. I think that is not just an achievement, but it’s your scale, your achievement. It’s not just about you. It’s about so many other people. It’s remarkable that you have enough insight to not only do it, but you’re doing it and you’re doing it well. So I definitely appreciate that going into closing, right. As we had this conversation. I mean, maybe you’ve had some questions that came up that you may want to ask me. So this is the time that the microphone, the floor is yours. Are any questions that you’d like to ask me?

What was the first thing that you delegated that you didn’t feel like you had to micromanage first thing that I delegated it.

I didn’t feel like I had to micromanage. I think it’s three things off top my head. One was editing this podcast. I found someone that was just a great editor, and I had opportunity to kind of give him some piece mail. And, you know, at that point, it was a system. At that point, he could do the job without me having anything twice about it. In addition to that, it was another VA that I hired, and originally, he was just a regular VA. And I’m really big on accident the questions of, like, okay, you’re a VA. But what is your background? What is it that you really want to do? And in that conversation, I found out that he was more of, like, a developer, more software, more web. So I was like, okay, dude, I don’t want to waste your time giving you PA work when you are like a developer and you want to code, and that’s what you love to do. So it gave me an opportunity to pull them from that space and bring him into the development space. So, like, now he’s kind of running that behind the scenes for me.

Nice. That’s awesome. So did you feel like it was sorry. I know I’m not interviewing you, but I feel like it was easier to hand off tasks that you didn’t know anything about for stroke.

Hell, no more stroke. Everything was mine. I was walking around with these barrels of jugs, and I’m holding on to all this weight, lugging it around. Probably one of the reasons why I had a damn stroke to begin with, right. And then after that, it was just kind of like, well, how can I scale if I’m do anyone doing anything? How could I multiply if I’m doing everything kind of like where you were? I’m kind of in that space now to where I’ve opened up, to where I got an outsource. Everything I possibly can. I have to create a system for everything I possibly can. If someone sends me an email, I wanted to automatically respond back with this. I want to automatically send them this before I even had a time to even open my email to even think about giving them a response. Yup.

That’s funny. We both have the exact same story, which is kind of why I think sometimes people have such a hard time delegating, right? Because we were forced to and they’re not forced to yet. So it’s harder for them a lot of times.

Yeah. And it’s kind of like what we was talking about earlier. I think everything happens for a reason. Even you and I crossing our path. If I didn’t have a stroke, I wouldn’t be doing this podcast. Potentially, if you didn’t have a stroke, you probably wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing, and our lives probably wouldn’t have overlapped down the road. So everything happens for a reason. And it’s kind of like I said, I feel like we’re Kendra spirits because we have so many similarities in our stories. And the return of that investment is we’re helping other people, and that’s the best thing you can do to create a legend. It’s like, how can I give people something that would help them? Because I can do it. And then I could teach someone else to do it. And again, I’m teaching them how to fish. I’m not just delivering fish to them for quote of all times.

Yes, I love it.

Well, I come to clothes, and she I definitely appreciate your time. I definitely commend you for what you’re doing. You’re definitely inspiration to people that have strokes of people that don’t have strokes. You’re just inspiration in general. And I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me on. This has been a blast. I really appreciate it.

Definitely. As a grant over and out.

S2E46 Mickie Kennedy.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Here. All right. Three, two, one. Welcome welcome back to Boston Uncaged podcast. On today’s show we’re going to have an interesting conversation. We’re going to talk about eReleases and some of you may or may not know what e releases are. But after our guest kind of defines and tell you what he does and why he does it, I think it’ll be very transparent of how effective he releases can be for you or your business. So without further Ado, Micky, the floor is yours, man. Who are you?

I’m Micky Kennedy. I’m the founder and President of eReleases. I started it a little over 22 years ago. We’re based in the Baltimore area, and I started it largely to help small businesses, startups and authors get access to the media, including the news wire distribution.

Great. So I think I’m going to deem you the eReleases boss, because obviously you’ve been in the game for 20 something years. And so just to dive into that, so people that don’t really understand what an eReleases is, why don’t you kind of tell us a little bit more about that?

Okay. So about 24 years ago, I was in charge of sending releases for a telecom company, and my job was programming a Fax machine with 100 numbers, because that’s all it could hold. And I would hit send. And it would take about a day, a day and a half to send. And then I had to delete all those numbers and start over because we had about 190 some sources to send to. And so it was like two or three days wasted. And we started getting calls with journalists saying, hey, we really like the numbers and statistics that you’re publishing, and we’d like to see if you could just email it to us as Microsoft Word because we can copy and paste a lot of that data. And so I came up with the idea of email. It would completely replace this faxing service. And it’s not a news wire. So it’s a lot cheaper to disseminate through email directly to journalist. So I spent about a year contacting journalist. And I think when I launched, I had about ten0 journalists who had subscribed and signed up for the service. And it just has grown from there. Over the years. PR Newswire reached out to us and said, We’d love to work with you. And I was able to negotiate a national distribution, custom national distribution that we do for all of our customers. That goes over PR Newswire, and they charge about $1,000 to move a Press release nationally. And we’re able to include that. And our prices are $300 to $600, so substantially cheaper.

Got you. So I think you kind of dropped some terminology there. So this is to find that a little bit for our audience. What is the news wire exactly.

Okay. So News Wire is basically an electronic dissemination of news can be articles or press releases. There’s two different types of news wires. There’s the ones that publish articles that they’ve written UPI. Associated Press, Reuters. They move those types of stories along. It’s all been written by them, and then they license it to newspapers who, rather than pay someone in house to write an article, they’ll just pull it from the AP or Reuters or something like that and pay a licensing fee, rather than having to use their own staff to write every breaking news story because there’s only so many ways to tell a national story. The press release Newswires are similar and that they’re disseminated the same way directly into newsrooms and to journalists directly. But they’re sending out just press releases. So they’re not articles. They can be similar to articles, but they’re largely just objective third person stop file announcements where you’re just trying to get the meat, the who, what, when, where and how of the news that you’re wanting to send out and putting it on a piece of paper, or, in this case, electronic dissemination that goes out to all the different journalists and things like that. So the largest new news wire or press releases is pure Newswire. And in the US, there’s two other companies. There is Business Wire, and then there’s Globe News Wire, which is sort of co branded with the Entrada brand there. So I think they’re trying to decide what the direction of what you call that it’s going to be in the future. But it’s a powerful way for relatively small amount of money to get your message to as many people as possible possible. They tag it to the appropriate industries as well as tag it to your local news. So they know that if you’re a Chicago based, it’s going to be relevant for Chicago media, even though you’re sending it out nationally, and you might be predominantly music and entertainment as your industry of target, as opposed to something else, like sports or something like that. So these get tagged, they’re available. The journalists usually look at them by headlines according to the industries that they sign up for, and they can also do some editing as well. I’m not interested in anything that mentions classical. It’s music, but not classical, so they can put exclusions and inclusions to try and capture certain stuff and make it very specific for them. But they look at the headlines. If it appeals to them, they’ll click on it and drill down and the rest of the release. So that being said, your most important part of the press release is going to be that headline, because that’s where you win them or lose them. And then the next thing is the opening sentence and paragraph. Does that get them to move along in the story and read and really feel that you’ve got something there that they want to share with their readers.

So that was a very defined detail. And I think obviously, this is why I’m calling you to release, boss, because, I mean, you know, this thing hands now you don’t have to think about it twice. You can kind of spit out these answers when I was thinking about it. So let’s just do, like, a user case analysis, right. Let’s say I’m a podcaster. I’m new to podcasting, and I hear about these e releases, these news releases. What would that transition look like? I’m coming in. I’m saying I have a podcast. Like, what’s the next steps on that journey?

So if you’re looking for us to write the release, which we can do, you would just place an order. We have a little questionnaire that we asked to sort of get people started. Sometimes people are just like, here’s my website. That’s all the information that I really want to provide. So we’ll work based on how you want to work. Some people prefer a phone call with the writer. It just depends on what works for you. If you’re really busy, you may just want to send us a link and just say, write a release based off this. And then we put a release together in about three business days. We send it over to you to review, go back and forth, depending on if it needs some more information or there was something that you weren’t happy about. And then we can schedule it for distribution as early as the following business day. So the writing and distribution, I always say allow a week. It usually takes less than that. But if you have a release that’s already written, you can send it out for as early as the next business day, as long as everything’s there that’s required. And generally the news wire requires standard stuff, like a headline, a Dateline that usually as a city and state. It’s usually where you’re located. It doesn’t necessarily confine you to only that area, because some people sometimes feel like I don’t want to put a city or state down because this is national news. And I was like, but that’s true. But even Microsoft puts Seattle or Redmond Washington on theirs, because that’s where it’s originating from. It doesn’t get discounted for that. Then you usually have a few paragraphs and you can have a boiler plate, which is an about section you see usually at the end about and usually it’s a summary of your company or organization, or in this case, they have podcast about you, and that can be recycled and used again again. In all of your press releases. You can update it as you need to to include awards or anything else is worthy putting there, and then a Press contact, and the news wire requires a phone number as a Press contact. I recommend an email address as well. But one of the things that journalists don’t like is it always happens when they’re going to print. The managing editor says, I need a clarification on this. Did you mean to word it like that, and they’re like, yeah, but I’m not sure. Let me go back and contact them. So they really like that phone number, because if there’s a Press issue, they can contact you and get that resolved really quickly and it can still go to print.

So in another segment that you just kind of as a segue to with distribution. So I’ve dealt with some press releases before, and they’ll say they will guarantee 300 distribution channels, 600 distribution channels, and including in those distribution channels. Maybe it’ll include The New York Times and other well known brands. So what does your distribution channel really look like? Like what’s the span of range and what’s included in those distribution channels.

So it really depends on your industry targeting when you set up the release of how large it’s going to be. PR Newswire has in its database over 1.7 million contacts. So no one’s going to all 1.7 million because it just wouldn’t be relevant. So if you’re picking a technology and software as categories or something along those lines, it’s going to go out nationally to tagged for those people. And so if you’re sports or if you’re tagged with something else, you’re not really going to see that it’s available for you. If you if you’re a journalist and you scroll over to a different feed and pull up a different feed. But most people are looking at feeds that are relevant for them. And so it varies in size. There’s also this thing called syndication that happens with press releases. And that’s really complicated. But the PR Newswire doesn’t like it, and it’s slowly going away. And it’s basically when you issue a Press release, it gets replicated on a bunch of websites, and some of them are well known, like Yahoo Finance and maybe Market Watch and things like that. So it looks really nice if you’re a CEO or someone. You appeared on all these little Fox outlets, ABC outlet, little TV stations and stuff like that. But no one wrote an article about you. And that’s what caused the confusion that Pierre Newswire is starting to remove that. In the early 2000s, it was like the Cold War, where each news wire was trying to get more syndicated sites than the other one. And so there was a point where you could issue a release and get 300 or more links to all of these press releases that you have on all these different websites. It doesn’t really help you from an SEO standpoint because they’re all no follow tag, and Google doesn’t hate them. But Google just says we’re going to just discount duplicate content. You don’t get a penalty for it, but it doesn’t really help you. But a lot of PR professionals don’t like it because they’re having to explain to the people that are paying their bills. This isn’t the goal of a Press release. We’re actually looking for The New York Times to write an article, so we don’t want the press release on someone’s website. We want a distinct original article to appear, and that’s the ultimate goal.

So I mean, with that, I think you definitely define the differences between the standard news releases and syndication. So in that space, right. So you guys are essentially creating content that could then be picked up by an editor or editor in chief to use sections of that to then release it as a New York Times original piece. Is that kind of a goal?

Yeah they might recycle bits and pieces of the press release, but predominantly, they write the article, and it may not necessarily be what you announced. I remember where Microsoft announced they were getting rid of bulletin boards, and they said, We’re doing this because we want to provide safety on the Internet, and we find that this is a place where children can be preyed upon. And then the article that the New York Times wrote is Microsoft is getting rid of bulletin boards because they could never properly monetize them. They say that they’re interested in child protection, but they’re doing nothing with chat and all these other new tools where they’re there’s real stuff going on that’s really putting children in jeopardy. They expose the truth behind it. The press release inspired the article, but the article doesn’t really bear exactly what the press release is. That’s a wild example, because publicly traded companies are always trying to position themselves with the best foot. But for small businesses and stuff like that, a lot of times, what you issue is sort of the framework by which it gets turned into an article.

So recommendation wise. I mean, obviously, if you have a syndication, I’ve seen some of them out there to where their subscription based syndications that give you maybe three to ten articles in syndication per month versus what you guys doing, essentially creating original content. Is there a gift in using both, or would you just recommend using one versus another?

I don’t see any real benefit from the syndication side of it. You’re not getting the SEO benefit. There’s very few end users looking at the syndicated content, even though it appears on some of these websites, it’s usually a hidden section on the website. Go try to find press releases on Yahoo Finance. It’s a varied section on there. So my take is Yahoo Finance gets a lot of traffic, but very few of them are going to see your press releases. I said, if you get an original article written about you from you say The New York Times, you’re going to get a lot of traffic because that commands a lot of eyeballs, both in print as well as on the Web. And a trade publication is another example. It may not be a lot of traffic, but you might get a few hundred really targeted industry visitors going to your website. It’s very specific, and I feel like that’s probably a lot more important because those are the people that generally turn into potential customers or partners, or sometimes suppliers and vendor relationships get started that way. And it’s also a big credibility boost rather than automatically appearing on a website, actually having a journalist craft an original article about you that says something about you. And when people see that and click through to a website from an article, they’re much more likely to buy rather than open a new window and price shop. They’re like, oh, I want to do business with this company. I read about them, and now I feel excited about what I read, and I want to give them my dollars. I don’t want to open a window and go to Amazon and try to find it cheaper. So they tend to be more loyal customers that come from original articles or earned media, which is used interchangeably. And they also happen to come back again and again because they have that warm experience from the article that big credibility boost that they get that that continues with the life of the customer. So my customers have found that the people that they get visiting their website from articles are probably the most profitable customers that they get, and they work really hard to try and do that. And again and again, and it’s hit or miss with PR. It’s not unusual to do a few press releases that result in nothing and then you get a couple that just really go really well. And it’s a learning process where you’re trying to figure out what works, what doesn’t work, and if it works, can it be replicated? And that’s where strategy is probably the most important aspect of press releases, not how it’s written or how well written it is, but what’s the press release about. And strategically, did you come up with the best possible press release for your company right now?

Got it. It makes perfect sense. So let’s just time travel back. I mean, obviously you’re knee deep in this space currently right now. But in your background, I mean, how did you get into this space? I mean, were you, like a kid running around with a notebook, taking notes, journaling things? I kind of looked at your background. You’re also a poet. Like, how did you get into this space?

Right. So I pursued a Masters of fine arts and creative writing in Northern Virginia. And I’m originally from North Carolina, and that’s where I moved up to the DC area. And I realized I am not built for waiting tables. And that’s what a lot of other poets and writers were doing. And so I found a corporate job. And I liked being an editing and writing and PR because I was using my creativity and my skills. And so that’s sort of how I transitioned into PR. And it is definitely the creative part is the most important part. And it’s the one that’s taken for granted from a lot of people. So I recently put together a mastermind class of just PR strategy for my customers just because I’m really tired of customers not getting media pickup, and they’re sending a Press release on a new hire. And they don’t realize that strategically, that’s not very important. The readers of newspapers and trade publications are only about this interested in a new hire. But if you’re writing about your take on a new trend within your industry, and maybe you’re saying something different than everybody else, that’s a little bit wider. And that gives you a much better chance of getting some media pickup. And so that’s the part of the whole press release thing that I love is taking that strategy and that creativity and trying to figure out where the holes are in your industry. And can you address it with the press release? And is that an opportunity?

So I think you brought up another really solid point. Using of a Press release based upon what you just described essentially is not to say, hey, we have a new product or a new service is to talk about a particular topic that’s essentially trending. But giving a different point of view, is that correct?

It can be one of the things I talk about with strategies is there’s lots of different approaches. And if you have a new product or service that’s like a milestone topic, it’s good. It could do really well. But for a lot of people, they’re not issuing new products and services every day. So you may only be introducing a new product or service once every two or three years. So that’s where you have to make your own news. And it might be you conducting a survey or study within your industry. It could even be of your customers, your leads, and then publishing that to your industry. As long as it’s 100 a sample of 100 people or more generally, all they’re going to cover it or be interested in it, especially if you asked a lot of intriguing questions. I always say take the questions that you feel a study should have and then add two or three oddball questions, little quirky questions. And those are the ones that generally get picked up. When I see an article written, it’s generally the headline of that surprising quirky little question that gets mentioned there. And you see it in Cosmopolitan going back decades. Where on the cover, it’s like 17% of all men do this in the bedroom. Page 58. Everybody’s stumping through what the heck is on page 58. And the same thing works across lots of different industries. It doesn’t have to be as sensational as that, but it can be really intriguing or interesting. Sometimes it could be a questionnaire and you just have an open ended question with a field that says, What’s the one weirdest thing that someone left in a car when when they traded it in and someone just list a few things, and that can result in here’s a roundup of the ten craziest things left in a used car that was sold at the dealership. And people like to read those types of things because it’s like a human interest element to it.

Yeah. I think it’s definitely interesting because, I mean, anybody that understands marketing is always the psychology of the individual reader at the end. So to your point, you’re kind of peeking into their psyche, catching their attention enough, then hit them with a solid headline, a solid by line, and then hopefully by doing those two things, you get them to read the content and then convert or get to the pitch line and then move forward to the action that you want them to do, which is essentially buy a product or buyer service or at least sign up for something. So it’s definitely interesting the way you’re doing.

Yeah. Thank you.

So in addition to that, you’ve been doing this long enough to where you probably had some really out of this world kind of crazy stories. Like what’s the most interesting or crazy story in your business that you’ve ever been presented with?

Well, we did a Press release for somebody who created a foam that you drop on a Hurricane or developing storm off the coast. And supposedly it reduces the severity of the storm. And that person got the government involved and they went down to the Gulf and they tested it. And needless to say, it didn’t do what they wanted it to do, because that was as far as it went. It said that they didn’t see any measurable decrease that they wouldn’t think would otherwise be there. But I thought that was really interesting, and he got picked up by a lot of different places. He got asked to be on Good Morning America chose not to be because he said, I need to be in the Gulf with the government for the next few weeks, so I can’t go to a taping of Good Morning America. But he did get a lot of pick up, and it was kind of quirky. I also had a customer in 2006 who created Hypoallergenic Cat, and it got picked up as Time magazines, Invention of the Year and probably over a couple of hundred publications picked it up. Discover Magazine, Newsweek, The Economist, Financial Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. Everybody covered it. It wasn’t all favorable. A lot of it’s like, Should we be playing God? Should we be making animals in a laboratory? Have we gone too far? That being said, they did millions and millions of dollars of reservations where people were paying a deposit towards having a Hypoallergenic Cat created.

That’s definitely pretty bizarre and crazy at the same time. But I could definitely see it’s kind of one of those things negative versus positive with either one media media. So there’s going to be a fall out of some positivity by default, just the rule of numbers. So I think in that you named a couple of big names in researching you a little bit. You had an opportunity to work on Squatty Potty from Shark Tank as well, right?

Yeah. We work with probably about 30% is what I see. About 30% of the people who appear in Shark Tank use us. The producers of Shark Tank advised them to do a Press release before their episode errors. And afterwards. And they mentioned he releases by name. Usually I can’t say that on my website. I can say that here, but I did reach out to him, and I appreciate it. But they said that no. If you wanted to mention Shark Tank by name, you would be paying a lot of money to be able to do that. So that’s the unfortunate thing. But yeah, manscape Squatty potty. There’s just a long list of them who work with us. Squatty Potty does a lot of releases occasionally with us. They sort of go in cycles, and when they do, they do a lot of releases and they’ll take a little time off and come back. Landscape tends to be a little more strategic where they do at least two or three a year as well as everything else they do. They both do a lot of viral advertising and a lot of social media as well.

So with your particular service, I’m thinking that if you have clients on this magnitude and they’re reoccurring clients, that there should be a peak result after you do what you do. And is that something that you have enough case studies to back up?

Right? Yeah. We actually have a higher end program where we handle the strategy, and we developed the stuff for the customer. And everyone that enters the program gets a level of media success by usually month six and always within a year, we had a client come in that does carpet in New Jersey, local carpet company. I told them point blank. I don’t think this is going to work for. But they said we’ve got the budget and I’ve been told to do it. So they did it. And on month five, we were touching base. We had done five releases, nothing. And I just asked him. I said, Who’s your real enemy expecting it to be? Another local carpet company. And it was Home Depot and Lowes. And they said the big box home improvement stores are kicking our butt. They say they put mediocre carpet in. They put terrible padding in, and they use pickup contractors, and it’s never the same person. It’s whoever is the cheapest at the moment who just shows up at your house and installs it. And so we did a Press release about them as a local carpet company competing against the big box home improvement stores. We didn’t mention them by name, but we talked about the difficulties of that, sort of like a David and Goliath approach, and they got phenomenal pickup floor and trading publications. I didn’t know existed, came out of the woodwork and covered them. And one of them said that they got more positive feedback from readers on that article. Then they’d gotten over the past year on everything. And so it turns out that marketing was a vacuum in their industry. Nobody was really talking about marketing, and nobody was talking about marketing against these big guys and how difficult it is because they win so many of the bids. And so they got local media pickup. They got some national media pickup, and they got a lot of floor trade publication pickup, which they continue to do so. And after a while they would go into a job and say, here’s a book of all our press clippings, and they would just have the person thumb through it. And they’d say just to let you know, we’re not going to come in as the cheapest, but we use quality padding. Our people are career people that work here. The same person who puts down your flooring is going to be putting down floor, probably in five years, unlike the other guys. And we pay health insurance and retirement benefits. And we stand behind our product. And we recognized nationally. And nobody else around here can say that they used to try to come in under Home Depot and lows. They used to try to come in as the lowest, and they started winning more bids being 20% higher. And that was like a huge burst for them. And a real positive way to use those media clippings, because appearing in a floor in trade publication doesn’t help you with your customers because your customers aren’t there. But you can package that and share that with the customers the way they do. And they call it brag book, where they just sit and go through page after page of all these media mentions that they have.

It seems like that’s a whole another business like sub unit itself. I mean, you guys can essentially say, take all these clippings, all the articles that you ever been publicized in, and you can kind of create a brag book for them. It’s kind of going to be like a line add on item to kind of sell and promote as Ironically.

If we try to do that, we get in trouble with Copyright. But if the end user himself does it or we help them by pointing out where the links are and have them correct it. It sort of more falls and fair use for you to grab it for yourself. But that is something that we’ve learned over the years where we’ve been contacted by some people about clippings that we have and things like that.

So that’s weird. I mean, it comes into the copyrighting segment of it once it’s the least of the public and all you’re doing is resourcing the service. How does that Copyright infringement?

Because they believe that they control the Copyright and you should only be able to view it on their website. You shouldn’t be able to take a picture of it and share it with someone that now they don’t get the benefit of the ad they don’t get and stuff like that. So it’s not too bad in in the UK, it’s horrific. Everybody who shares Clippings and if they put them on their own website have to to pay a licensing fee to an organization that is in charge of just licensing for every media outlet. So if you got picked up in a UK publication and you put a screenshot on your website, you will just get a letter in the mail saying you now £1500. And here’s how you can license it in the future and only pay £400 a year for as long as you keep it up or something like that.

That’s definitely crazy. I mean, just going inside the legalities a little bit. I mean, like, what kind of business structure do you have? Are you an S Corp. C Corp. Llc.

And I’m an LLC, but I elected S Corp. For tax purposes. That was something that I was advised over the years to do. So I think this is predominantly like an S Corp from a tax standpoint.

So with that, I mean, obviously there’s many tentacles to just publication in general, and you’re in a particular niche publication. So what systems do you have in place to help manage your clients and manage the distribution of the channels that you’re working with?

So we use Help Scout as sort of a ticketless system working with the customers to the customers. It looks like we’re just responding through email, but on our end, it’s all through a ticket system where each editor gets assigned a customer and they’ll only see that person going back and forth. So it allows them to have an individual experience where they’re working with one person during the duration of an order. And then we send everything over electronically through PR Newswire through our special channels that we have and APIs that we have with them, and then they do their distribution. And then we also do our email sends online through a portal. And we have someone who just specializes in doing that.

Nice. So I think you alluded to this earlier and we always hear about someone being perceived to be an overnight success. Somebody may hear this episode and like, Where’s this guy been? Like, did he just pop up on the map? And it sounds highly successful, but in reality, it probably took 20 years to get there. How long did it take you to get to currently where you are?

It took me probably. Well, right now I’m on track to do 6 million a year in revenue. Last year was about 5.7 million in revenue. The first five years of my business, I didn’t make enough to live off of it. So I was working another full time job, the telecom company for a couple of years and then I had another business that I had started that was an email delivery. So he releases was part of that. But I did email delivery of email newsletters on all different types of content. I had Poma day, I had horoscopes, I had all this stuff, and then the dot com crash happened and that business was doing about 500 $1,000 a month in advertising revenue, and it went to zero. And at that point, I had e releases, which was doing about 3000 a month in revenue, and it continued. So the consumer side of the newsletters dried up completely. But e releases had some life to it. So I just focused all my energy on it for the first time. And I took almost every dollar that came in and reinvested in advertising, promoting, doing blogs just hustling. And it grew. And at a certain point, I knew I needed an employee, but I was afraid to hire an employee business go down and then I have to lay them off because it was like it didn’t seem very fair. So when I finally did hire an employee, I really should have already had hired them six months before, but I was slow to it. And then we started adding more staff as we continue to grow. It was very with most years, we only grew about anywhere from ten to 17%. There was one year that we grew like 25%, but it’s mostly been incremental and small like that. And we’re still growing at that clip about 10%, I think right now. So it comes with a headache for someone who started a business because they wanted to have some independence. You lose that as you start adding staff and employees and procedures and things like that. But it’s your creation and you’re drawn to it. And I love it. I love the excitement of it like something I’ve created has a life of its own, and it has to be managed a little bit. And I feel like I’m up to the challenge of doing it and getting in there. I love the marketing of it. That’s my real thing, the marketing of it and the strategy of trying to make my customers do better. And that’s why the PR strategy that I’ve been working on lately. I’m really excited about because I really feel like it solves a problem with my customers who don’t see positive results because they’re not really doing the strategic stuff that they need to do and analyze their market and find the real opportunities that are just sitting there.

I mean, that brings me the two additional questions. I mean, one of them, you were saying that you got to 5 million and you jumped to 6 million, and anybody that gets to the 5 million point is kind of like one of those kind of with hangers, right. You kind of get stuck at 5 million. And then once you break past the 5 million and 10 million, 20 million and so forth.

For me, it was 2 million. I got stuck at I got stuck at 2 million, and I think I went from 2 million to 1.9 to 2.3, and it just seemed like I was just treading water there for a little bit, and it took a while to get to 5 million. But I feel like things have been progressing. I definitely I felt like I was turning at 2 million, and that was really difficult. And actually, I think I was considering even selling the company then because it just seemed like I couldn’t find the answers to get me to grow out of that space. But eventually I did. And some of the things that I did was try to examine. I’m a new customer of releases. How do I convince you to do a PR campaign and not just one press release? Because at one point of my new customers only did one press release, and that was it. And we talked to them and they say, yeah, I gave it a try. You seemed like a good company, but nothing happened. And I’m just like, yeah, but that’s not a PR campaign. So we send suggestions to customers on what their next press role should be. That was one of the things that we do for all new customers. We say here are some ideas that we came up with analyzing you and your industry a little bit. And so we give them that that idea for what might be a compelling idea for a Press release and something that’s a little more strategic. And then we give them some advice on how to better write and just make ourselves available to them. And we’ve increased it before. I think around 20. Some percent of customers will use us repeatedly. And that’s what moved us out of the $2 million range. It doesn’t seem like a lot. That’s still a lot of people that are not using us more than once. But I just come to recognize that when it comes to marketing, there are a lot of people that are looking for the one hit wonders. And they’ll go and they’ll say, I’m going to learn Penter today. I’m going to give it a try for a couple of weeks, and then if it doesn’t do what I wanted it to do, I’m just going to move on to the next shiny object. And so that’s where press releases for a lot of people fail because they don’t commit to a PR campaign. They just try one single release, and it’s quite possible that they could get some real meaningful media coverage and have a meaningful outcome. But they just got to put that strategy in there and try a few different approaches.

Very, very, very interesting. So in what you just said, right, if you can travel back in time and change one thing on this journey, obviously, you had the 2 million struggle, then you got to the 5 million, and now you’re on upward climb. What’s one thing that you would change in that formula to do everything all over again?

I think trust my employees sooner. I spent four years, and I really felt like I came close to having a heart attack with hiring employees, trying to have the best employee micromanaging every phone call and saying, this isn’t how I would have handled it. And I had an HR professional in the UK who specializes in hiring, who is in a mastermind of mine. And she spent some time with me and analyzed everything. And she says, Mickey, I’ve interviewed all these people. They’re very competent, they’re very smart. And she says, but they’re afraid of you. They’re not happy here. So they’re not going to be around very long. We had a very quick turn over. Most people stayed one to two years, and she said, you need to just trust that they’re going to get the job done, and they’re not going to handle every conversation the way you would handle it as the boss. But they’re not going to handle in a way that you’re going to lose business. And so I I just got up one day and told the staff I wasn’t coming into the work anymore and that if they needed me, I would be available at home. And that was in 2015, and it was the best thing I ever did. The business just grew really strong after that. And the same staff that were there when I left are still there. And so some are going on eight years, and they’re happy and they’re able to do their job without me breathing down their neck, saying, That’s not the way to handle it. You should have used this closing statement. You should have done this, that and the other. So it’s just real people doing real experiences. And I found that, you know, I’m not surprised that I’m a bad boss because I went in business because I didn’t like being told what to do by other people. But I do feel very fortunate that I finally woke up and realized that I don’t need to be in the day to day operations of that business. I put someone in management who’s a warm mother like figure who gives encouragement and somehow finds a positive way to make corrections and get stuff on track completely different from my style. My style is to be a little bit more critical and just upfront. And so that’s the big thing I would have done is save myself a lot of grief, save my staff. A lot of grief. I think of all the people I lost over the years, the were probably great employees, and I just sort of rushed him out the door. That’s a big acknowledgement for me that as great as a businessman as I am, I wasn’t a good employer. And so that’s something I wished I had learned, because I definitely feel that you’re only as valuable as your staff because they keep the lights on. They keep things running. They save you from a lot of the headaches. They allow me to focus on marketing. They allow me to build out the master classes for strategy. They allow me the ability to focus on what I want to in my business, and they’re handling the day to day stuff.

I mean, some of the elements of what you just sounded like you was kind of describing Steve Jobs to a certain extent, right? Trying to find that balance and equilibrium between being an overhanging boss and being more of a subjective boss. So my next question is kind of like, obviously, like you said, you’re a great business person like you’re, very business savvy. You’re very well aware of your business. Did that come from an entrepreneurial background? Any family members in your history? You’re an entrepreneur?

Yeah. My grandfather was always running businesses, and he would get tired of them and move on to something else. He had a restaurant. He owned an ice house where he sold ice to grocery stores. He had a clam house where he bought and sold clams. He’d get a little bit of everything and he would do it for a few years. He’d lose interest, he’d sell it and move on to something else. He had a Marina and a motel. This was a guy who I just was enamored with because it just seemed like he was always doing cool stuff. And as soon as it got tiring, he would just move on to something else. I guess I’m a little bit different because I like the challenge of growing the business and I want to keep seeing it succeed. And I’ve had ebbs and flows over the years, one point where I considered selling the business, but for the most part, I feel energized by it, and I keep wanting to get in there and make things a little bit better and improve the bottom line and just grow.

It’s very interesting. How do you currently juggle your work life with your family life? Your work life balance?

Well, I generally try to give myself off on the weekends and make myself available for family there. And the same thing with evenings, usually at 07:00 or sooner, depending on how tiring I am, I will just take a break and go watch TV and hang out with family and stuff like that. It’s hard because I am a 60 hours a week kind of guy, so I am up and working usually from six or seven in the morning until around 07:00 at night, at least Monday through Friday. And occasionally I’ll have a project that I’ll work on on the weekend, but it’s one of those things that I have to fight and carve out time for. I’m a poet, so I still tried to write of four or five times a week. I like to meditate. I use an app called 10% Happier I tried meditation over the years. It never worked. And then I tried this one and it gives you these introductions and they walk you through it. And they basically explain, you’re never going to have that calm place in your head where you’re just going to an out for ten minutes. You’re always going to have bots that invade you. But the thing is you just have to channel back to the breath and get back on focus, and it’s like a muscle. The more you, the better you get. And so those are the types of things that I do. I need to exercise more. And that’s one of the things I keep saying I’m going to work on. But every time I get started, it’s always a back injury or knee or something like that that prevents me.

it’s funny that you broke up because just just hearing you speak and just getting to know you a little bit better. It just seems like we share the same commonality. It’s kind of like going to sleep is only something that we do because we have to do, not because we want to do it. So to kind of turn off your brain, I would think would be really difficult for you to do that at any given time in that what is your morning habits? Your morning routine look like?

So I get up and I start brushing my teeth and running a bath. I love a hot, warm bath. In the morning. I put all the soaps and good Smellies in there and then I make a cup of coffee and I take it in and I just sit in the bathtub and just then out a little bit. It’s not really meditation, but it’s pretty close to it. I just feel like I I’m settling into being awake and also in a way, just blending in with the heat. There’s just something magical that happens there. After that I get up and I usually either meditate or write, depending on how I feel. Some mornings where I’m feeling really good, I’ll meditate and then all right. And then after that, I’ll go in and check my Google ads, and then the next thing I chose, 5 hours have passed.

I was say, after you take a hot bath early in the morning, not at night. I mean, how could you even continue your day after that? Like you just don’t want to use one lounge at that point.

It’s not me. I feel like I’m ready for the day. I feel like I will wake up and I feel refreshed. But I don’t feel really relaxed. And so the bath really just anchors me for the day.

That’s definitely the person I’ve heard. It is definitely interesting thing that I’m about to try.

That being said, I am known for also taking an evening bath on occasion. So I love taking a bath or something about water that I just love nice.

So you’re into publications you’re into literature, poetry without assuming anything. I would then say that you’re a pretty average reader as well. Is that good assessment?

It is. I don’t read books as much as I should, but I do read a lot of stuff. I subscribe to the Apple News app and signed up with all the publications I want, and I follow Inc magazine and Fast Company and also stuff. I have some interest in science. So I’ll follow some science publications and things like that. I’m not really interested in current events because I kind of feel like the stuff that you read that stays with you and is timeless is not the stuff that’s generally part of current events, and people get drawn into that, and they agonize over politics and stuff like that. I just try to try to stay away from some of that got you.

So with that question on this podcast is giving the opportunity to kind of create a book club. And I’ve always asked this question. It’s kind of like, well, on your journey, there must have been some book that inspired you, and it must be some book that you may want to recommend for entrepreneurs following in your footsteps. So I’m gonna actually the same thing. I mean, what books have you read on your journey to help you get to where you are and what books would you want to recommend now that you are where you are?

Well, one of the books that everybody recommended a long time ago was Dell Carnegies How to Make Friends and Influence People. Something along those lines. I read that I really liked it and that sort of led into Napoleon Hills Think and Grow Rich. And I thought it was a little it didn’t resonate with me, but I felt like over the years I appreciated it more after the fact. Maybe it was the style of the writing, but I just didn’t connect with it. But I found myself keep going back to it over the years saying, oh, yeah, that reminds me of that. And so I do think it was a little bit more influential than I gave it credit for initially. And there’s been a lot of stories in Inc magazine, especially, I thought does a really good job of describing the startup experience. I found myself reading stories about people working out of the garage and stuff like that for me. When I started my business, I didn’t have any real money. And so I paid $120 for a domain name for two years through Network Solutions. I paid for a web host that was $6 a month, and I pay $29 to something called multi cards that would do credit card processing for you and that was it. And the rest was just me, my database of journalist and me going on to bulletin boards and talking about my products and services. And then I started advertising. Pay per click became a thing. And I think at the time, it was go to dot com or Overture and that opened a new Avenue for reaching people. But it doesn’t take a lot of money to start a business. Sometimes we’ll get a phone call from someone and they’re like, I got a small business administration loan for $25,000 to create a gift basket company. And I just gave $5,000 to a merchant company to do credit card processing. And I’m just like, you don’t have to do that. And they’re like, and I’ve got these lawyers set up to turn me into an S Corp. Or an LLC Corporation. And I’m like, you really don’t have to spend that kind of money. I didn’t bother incorporating until my business was, like, five to seven years old because I didn’t have anything before that. I was broke, and it’s like someone sues me. I’m just closing down the business and filing bankruptcy. It wasn’t much I could do. And it was only about five to seven years were in where I felt like this is something that I should start protecting myself. It’s beginning to generate some real money. And I always advise people don’t get seduced into feeling that you have to do all these crazy things to start a business. You can just sort of just go out there and put your shingle out there and get started without spending a lot of money.

Yeah, definitely. I definitely agree with that. I mean, at this point, I mean, obviously you have a lot of systems in place, right? So what software are you currently using in your company that you would not be able to do what you do without?

Well, it’s a custom program back in that we have we have our ordering system, that’s all custom program and allows our Editors to log in, pull releases all the materials together. And so it’s a custom solution. I wish something off the shelf would have worked, but we looked at some shopping cart solutions, and it just didn’t do what we needed to, because there’s some complicated stuff that has to go on. We have to do a word count when you upload a word document to determine because the news wire charges based on words and stuff like that. It’s a little complex, but it works. I mentioned before Help Scout, which is a great ticket list system. I recommend that really strongly for anybody who wants the appearance of just responding email, personalized email back and forth without having a ticket number at the top. It’s really cool to have this ticket list system, and it just everything is handled in a platform that’s scalable. So as you add additional people, you just add them to it and they become part of the process.

That definitely sounds like a very solid system, but it seems like you have a kind of duality system, like you have some custom software, and then you have some off the shelf stuff working together. So I take it. You have a lot of API integrations going on as well.

There is a bit yes.

Nice. So final words of wisdom. Let say I’m an entrepreneur and I hear this story and maybe I like writing poetry. Maybe I just want to get into some kind of form of writing. And I’m hearing what you’re saying. I want to follow in your footsteps and they say I’m 20 years old. What words of insight would you give to me to influence me to continue on this journey?

Well, I would say learn a skill and back it up with writing. I think that I’ve recommended some people in the past. Search engine optimization is an opportunity where you can learn, use your writing as well as adding some strategy behind it so that you’re helping people develop content, that it should be relevant to the search engines. And you’re looking at things like keyword density and you’re wanting to appear natural. But you’re not necessarily trying to game the system. And also there’s the opportunity for getting links on other people’s websites by providing them an article or something like that. I think that just writing as a writer, it’s really difficult to make a living because you run the risk of being a commodity. We have press release riders that we use, and we pay about 50% of what we used to pay. And the reason for that is over the years, the market has said that people are willing to write press releases for less money. And so we were constantly being introduced to writers saying, I’ll write a Press release for you for $125. And I’m just like, wow, we’re paying someone $200 to write a release, and they’re not as good of a writer as you, and it’s come down even a little bit more than that. You do run the risk of the commodity if you’re just a straight writer. So I would say, add something to it. What makes you a little bit different? You might be a funnel writer. You help write content for funnels, pick a niche and pick something that fits with your personality and be the writer in that space because I think that those are the people that people aren’t going to go for. The lowest price person. They’re going to say this person are really funny. Nominal traffic funnel content writer. And as long as it seems reasonable, you’re going to use them, you’re not going to say, Well, I’m going to try and find someone who can do it for, like, 20% to 30% less. The same thing with a really competent SEO guy. If you have a really good track record for helping improve someone’s SEO, then you’re going to get business and you’re going to continue to get business.

Nice. So I’m going to pull one of your pre generated questions. And I’m picking this question because I think my audience would get a lot of value from it. And it was number four on your question sheet about how to get regular local media coverage without spending a dime.

Right. So we get inquiries all the time saying, I have a release or I want to get a release out locally, and we always tell them as much as we love money, we don’t want to take your money. In this case, in a local media market, there’s probably less than ten people who would write about you. And I’m, including TV and radio as well. So figure out who they are. It’s probably a local newspaper might be a minor newspaper, maybe one or two business, public locations or business magazines. And then there might be a couple of radio or TV programs that occasionally interview or profile or spotlight a local business and then figure out how to reach them. And for a radio and TV, it’s a Booker or a producer. And for the journalist, it’s usually the writer themselves. And you can just call the newspaper and say, I’d like so. And so’s email address 90% of the time. They’re going to give it to you. If you feel a little shot or you don’t want to do that, there’s sites out there that you can go to. That if you have the person’s name and the organization, they’ll tell you the email address, and they’ll usually give, like, ten or 20 emails free a month or something like that for doing something like that. And like I said, once you have those ten contacts, you don’t even have to write a Press release. You can just reach out to them and just say, hey, my name is so. And so I’m with this local company. I’m doing something that I feel is really relevant to your readers because and then just share it with them. And in addition to that, if you see a trend in your industry or you follow a competitor in a different city and you see a story about something that’s a cool angle. You can then circle back to them and say, hey, I’ve been seeing a lot more activity about this subject in my industry. I thought you may want to cover it. Whether it’s you that gets covered or not, you can be valued as an asset to them, so that when you do next have a newsworthy event, they’re much more likely to cover it. And we’re talking about sending four to maybe eight emails a year to these people. So it’s not a lot of work. And I always say for local media, you’re going to do the best job because you’re a human being, and it’s easy to form a personal relationship with someone who’s local, you know, the same sports teams. You know, what’s really going on in your city, and you can actually read their stuff and say, hey, I really like that article I saw that you you did about X, Y and Z.

Nice. I think that’s definitely an elegant way of just reaching out and making it more of a person to person versus a B to B situation. Yeah, an online, obviously, you’re a big marketer and you have multiple different platforms. How can our audience find you on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so forth? Yeah.

Just look for e releases as Twitter releases. I think if you do a search for e releases on Facebook will come up same thing with LinkedIn, our websites, releases. Com and I have that free mastermind class, the video training on PR strategy at Releases. Com plan that’s P-L-A-N and again, if you have any problems or questions or you want to talk to someone, just give us a call. We have no sales people. It’s all Editors, and they don’t get a Commission for trying to upsell you. So if they feel like press releases aren’t going to work for you, they’re completely empowered to say so. We only want to work with people that we feel we’re going to be able to do some real success with with that last statement that you made.

I mean, if you had to paint a picture of your ideal customer, what would that demographic or that individual look like?

Startups? I think that’s why so many Shark Tank people work well with us because they understand they have a really good understanding of what’s compelling and interesting. A lot of startups are generally doing something a little bit different than everybody else. That’s why they’re on Shark Tank. They’re not like the same sort of cookie cutter business. They’re doing something a little bit different and startups because they’re having to differentiate themselves. They understand how to get that across to the media. And they also understand that one press releases in a PR campaign. So they’re more committed to doing a series of releases, understanding that some are going to work and some aren’t going to work.

So you’re talking about just general PR campaign. What consistency of releases? I mean, are you talking about every 24 hours, every 72 hours every week?

No I think for small businesses, if you can afford it, try to do one release a month, and if you can afford that, it’s not in your budget. I would say, at a minimum, try to do one a quarter. And I have some people that loosely follow that the average three or four releases a year, and they do see results as a result of it. The more you get out there and the more industry trade publications see your name in a headline when they’re looking, they’re more likely to say, oh, yeah, I remember them. I saw them a few months ago, but this one looks a little more interesting. I’ll finally click through and learn a little bit more and then hopefully that could result in an article.

Nice. So going into, like, a bonus question, right. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why? Well, with one of those questions that you kind of like all the other questions, you just you just know the answer and this one, you just kind of have to think about it a little bit.

I would have to say, I’m going to be honest here. And it’s like I would like to spend 24 hours with my father. He died when I was young, and I have a lot of good memories, but I would love to talk to him as an adult and just have a natural conversation and talk with him. I would be curious what he thinks, how my life turned out and how things are going. And I was leaning towards a celebrity. But I was like, personally, that was who I was drawn to when you first asked.

Nice. So going into closing, I mean, on this journey, this conversation questions may have come up on your side that you may want to ask me. So I always give whoever I’m interviewing opportunity to interview me is any questions that you would like to ask?

Well, marketing, what do you feel is the future or trending right now in the marketing area, I’ve been told by a lot of people that I need to get into video and YouTube and stuff like that.

Yeah. I mean, to answer that, I think video is not new, right? It’s been around television and advertising has been around post radio, so that’s always going to be here. But it’s figuring out new alternatives to video secondary to that, something else that I’ve been looking into, and I kind of I thought it would have been a little bit further along by now, but it hasn’t really peak, because I think people haven’t learned how to really utilize it. And that’s kind of voice like talking about Amazon devices, Google Devices, Siri. And having these devices kind of market for you based upon what users are using them for. An example of that would be if I’m constantly asking Siri or Alexa to do something in particular by default. The algorithm then should present an Advertisement. Who me based upon what I do now, what I have heard on these devices lately is, hey, your printer is running low on ink. That’s kind of like the ongoing marketing. We realize through our network that your printer has been running prints for a certain period of time, and they’re low on ink and time for you to buy a replacement. But how can we take that and expanded more into what you’re doing? How could you and say, hey, here’s a general update of your reach this week or the day the last 24 hours we put this newspaper article out. This is your reach. This is your staff. This is your analytics that should be delivered verbally instantly just by talking to a device. And I’m thinking that’s the next generation we just got to get people used to talking to a device talking to an artificially intelligent individual.

Very cool.

Well, I definitely appreciate your time. I think you definitely delivered a lot of Nuggets and a lot of insight for somebody to kind of really think about, like, not necessarily the cons, but all the value add that delivery and e newsletters and giving people a definition of what you do and how it can be fruitful into your credit. I mean, you’ve been working with people with Shark Tank, so it’s definitely proof in your pudding, and I definitely commend you and thank you for coming on the show today.

You’re welcome. Thanks.

Great essay. Grant. Over and out.

S2E50 SA Grant – powered by Happy Scribe

Welcome. Welcome back to Boss on Cage podcast. So today’s show is a bonus episode. I like to do these bonus episodes. It just kind of give you guys some insight, like, behind the scenes what’s going on?

Not only with Boss on Cage, but just kind of like tips and tricks of the trade and to kind of help entrepreneurs and bosses like, you get ahead. So first and foremost, I just want to go ahead and make a quick announcement. Earlier this year, I had reached out and I would just say, okay, guys, we want to hit ten0 downloads. And it was just kind of like the dawn of the compounding effect of when you reach out to your community and you talk to individuals and you started marketing.

So I just want to kind of give you the side effect of that.

Right. So I think it was like, maybe April. I don’t remember the exact date. So maybe March, maybe April. Earlier this year, we hit that 10,000 so fast forward a couple of months.

And I think back then I was being a smart ass and I had made this comment about, yeah, next time I’ll do this, we’ll be at 50,000. So that kind of came and went, and I kind of forgot about it and just kind of moved on with the other things. So today I’ll just check, like, our download stats. And from then until now, we just hit 60,000 downloads. And I’m just kind of like, well, you get to 10,000 to me was like a major milestone to get to 20,000 was interesting.

But the fact that we’re going into the final part of 2021 and we’re scheduled to essentially, we potentially could hit 100,000 downloads before the years out is definitely a mind blowing compounding effect. So I just want you to kind of take that heel. When you start something in the beginning, you will start rolling slow, much like a snowball effect. It’ll start slow. But as it bills and bills and bills and you get more of an audience and you start communicating to your people, you start delivering more value, the compounding effect will start to happen.

And obviously, Boston Cage as a brand is demonstrating that live and direct. So today’s episode we’re going to talk about, well, not necessarily how nine effective interviewee tips on how to be a great podcast guests, not a host, but a guess. So the reason why I’m doing this, because earlier this week or last week, I did kind of like a workshop, and we were talking about this topic, and I think I spent maybe five to ten minutes on the topic to kind of go over these quick tips.

So obviously, on my podcast, I will get to dive a little bit deeper and give you a little bit more insights of why I’m asking for you to do these particular things as you become a guess, not just a guess. On Boston Cage but a guess on any podcast.

These are just the rules of the trade, but they should help you on that journey. Right. So first tip number one. Right. And I’ve titled this one like the pre show checklist.

First and foremost, I know there’s a lot of a type personalities type personalities out there, and we like to control things, and we like to have things done the way we want them to be done. But we have to be mindful there. We’re going as a guest on someone else’s show. And when you do that, you have to understand that it is not your show. It is the hosts show or the co host show.

So first and foremost, you have to follow the leadership of that host cannot take all over that show or take over their systems because again, they have tweaked it and modified the system not only to work for them, but to work for their larger audience. They’re more than just one guest for multiple different guests, and they’re fine too. And they’re making these tweaks. Right. So you want to follow the steps that are provided to you.

Some people may give you a form if a form is given to you, fill out the form, right. Because that form is going to give that host information that’s going to allow them to market you, market and promote your promotions is going to help them to talk to you about what you’re doing right now is also going to help them communicate with their audience to say, okay, this is why I have this person on the show. Not only do they have a product or a promotion, but they are great at what they’re here are some examples of what they’re doing, right.

In addition to that, social media is a big thing nowadays as well. So for me, I always ask any one of my guests that come on my show to fill out this form so I can get all their social media profiles.

So as I then start to market that particular episode, then I could link them back to the show. It’s great marketing for Boston. Cage is also a great marketing for that guest. So if you’re going to be a guest and someone is asking you for your social media profiles, you want to list them all out. Because again, podcast is nine out of ten times.

We usually have more than one social media platform. We may have Facebook, we may have Instagram, we may have YouTube, we may have LinkedIn, we may have ticktock, we may have Twitter, we may have all of them. Why not leverage that again, that’s why you’re coming on podcasts, right. So that’s number one. Remember that it’s not your show and you want to follow the leadership of that particular host.

Number two, you want to use a booking method right now, some of you may have booking methods like you may use calendar for Boss, in case we use book like a boss. But again, following the leadership of that host, what you want to do now, keep in mind if that host does not have a booking mechanism or a booking system by all means, then integrate yours into the play. But you have to be mindful that if you’re going on someone else to show that you want to use whatever booking system that they have.

Okay, so if a book like a boss, what I’ve done with that is that it automatically sends out reminders. It sends out, I think, four to five reminders over the span of the time.

So you may be able to book out six months from now. It’s going to send you a confirmation reminder. Right? The day of is going to send you a day of reminder five days before is going to send you. Hey, don’t forget, you have a podcast in five days a month out.

It may say, hey, you have a podcast episode with say, granted, Boston Cage in 30 days. Now, you may think this is overly redundant, overly done. But I’ve been doing this podcasting for a minute now, and I’ve seen that where some people, even though you send out five or ten or 20 or even three or even one email, they may not show up to the podcast, right? They may. Oh, my God, I didn’t get it.

Oh, my God, it went to my spam. Oh, my God, something came up. Life happens. But again, you want to send out reminding emails not only to yourself but also to your guests. So as a guest, you want to at least check your junk folder to make sure that there was a confirmation when you booked an appointment.

Number three is completing the preshow question question. And that’s why I was talking about the steps of filling out a form a questionnaire because you can get so much information in the questionnaire to help that host know who you are. Like, on my questionnaire, I ask for a bio, I ask for a picture, I ask for social media profiles, I ask for titles, ask for company, ask for all these general information, because again, in the early days, what I used to do is have some book an appointment to become a guest on the show.

And then I would have to kind of go back in, like maybe an hour before the show to find them on social media, find all their profiles and keep in mind, like with Instagram, it doesn’t have to be that person’s name. It could be any variation of the name.

So trying to find that personal Instagram could take 1520 minutes sometimes, then to find them on Facebook. It’s the same problem. The only platform you can usually find someone by their first name and their last name is LinkedIn. Right. But then YouTube and all these other channels, so it becomes a task.

So filling out this questionnaire makes things a lot easier and simpler, not only for you, but for the host and for marketing your particular episode. Right. Alright. So number four, read all the provided information that might be provided to you. Some hosts may provide you additional information, a different additional FAQs.

All of these things are structured again for systems being in place to make that episode way more easier for you and for the host. So that way you’re not thinking about anything. The host is not thinking about thing. The only thing you should be focusing on on that particular episode is your marketing, communicating and branding who you are in reference to the questions that are being asked from the host. So if you have an opportunity to read the information beforehand, a lot of times, the host will tell you exactly what to expect.

So on my forms, it redirects you to a welcome video with me telling you exactly what to expect, my style of questioning. But below this video, there’ll be some sample interviews. There’ll also be FAQs it’s all this information. Again, if I’m putting that information there because you’re probably not the first person to ask these questions, you’re probably not the first person to hit this hurdle. So again, any host that takes the time to create this content, then you want to kind of go through it because the more you go through it, that information is going to be way more beneficial for you.

Once you’re sitting in front of the camera and you’re being interviewed by that host, not only that, but you get to see who this person is. A lot of times you may not even have listened to their podcast. We’re going to talk about that as we move through these checklist items. But ideally you want to kind of read the communication in that communication is tell you step by step on how to do everything. And again, if they don’t have that, then you just want to follow their leadership.

And eventually they probably will have something like that. Then going into after reviewing all the provided materials, then follow up with any questions that you may have missed. So before you ask a thousand questions up front, go through the content, that’s what FAQs are for. Frequently asked questions. That’s what.

Hey, check out this video. My welcome video. Again, questions will be answered in this content and anything that’s not answered then hey, if you had ten questions, maybe eight guys answered, then you have two questions left. It makes it a lot easier for someone to kind of respond and say, hey, yeah, we do this. No, we don’t do that.

Hey, you can do this so you can do that. Whatever those questions are, become very transparent, a lot easier and simpler. Then number six and seven is just relax and get excited. Because again, if you’re going on a podcast nine out of ten times, you’re marketing something. If you’re not marketing yourself, you’re not marketing your company.

You’re not marketing your service, you’re not marketing your product. You’re probably marketing one of these things, something, something that you’re going on this podcast, you’re going on to market. So keep that in mind. You just want to relax, be yourself, be 100% natural and kick ass. Right.

So that’s the general preshow checklist. I know that sounds long, but it’s a preshow checklist. These are things that you need to have in order before you even decide to get on the show. Right. So let’s go into tip number two.

Tip number two, I think, is very, very valuable in the sense that you need to listen to at least one to two episodes. So that way you can know the style of the interview and the interviewers and what’s going on. And how does the chemistry work? Did that host get sidetracked with something? How did that host recover?

It has that host interview, someone similar to you before? How do they deal with that person? So you just want to at least listen to one or two, not just one, because one could have been a bad day. And if it was a bad episode, then you probably want to check another episode out to see if that’s the reoccurring fee. Right.

So that’s the first thing, right. Number two, is that, if possible, reference a keynote from an episode during your interview, because that’s going to show the host that not only did you do your diligence and do some research on your end, but you at least know what the show is about. The last thing you want to do is pick an episode or pick a podcast to be on. And you’re not 100% familiar with what’s talking about hard to communicating, or can you curse on that show, for example, every time I get that question at last because I’m like, hey, it’s it’s my face.

You can definitely curse on the Boston Case podcast.

I mean, I don’t really care about your language. I care more about your story. Two different things. Right. Then going into number three would be read the reviews on the podcast, much like if I go to Amazon and I want to buy something, the first thing I’m going to do is look for the SARS, right?

I’m going to look for the reviews. Same thing with cars. People do reviews for everything. So if you’re going to put your brand on a particular show and you’re going to present your product and your service to a community of individuals, then you probably want to do some research, see what kind of reviews they had. Obviously, five stars is the criminal Crim.

Four stars is great. But if you’re going on a podcast that has one star and all the reviews are saying that, hey, the host didn’t show up. The host didn’t know anything, and it’s like, all negative stuff. It’s probably not a show that you want to be on to be associated with your brand. Just keep that in mind.

All right. So let’s go into tip number three, do a little research about the host. So you do a little bit of research about the show. You watch the episode of two. Right.

But I’m not saying to stalk them. I’m saying to get to know them a little bit better, learn how to pronounce their name correctly. Right. That I can go up and down and sideways about S stands for Shanal. And how many times I’ve heard that name completely jacked up.

Hence why I branded myself essay. It just makes it so much simpler. But again, anyone that if you listen to my show, you may have some people say essay, and every once in a while you have somebody that says China, right. And they pronounce it nine out of ten times they pronounce it. Right.

Because usually someone that I’ve known for a period of time, someone that that’s known me throughout life. Right. And again, that’s appreciated to pronounce the host name correctly, much as the host needs to practice the guest name as well. Number three would be use the host name. So once you figure out how to pronounce the name, then use the name as you’re talking again, as you’re being interviewed, you want it to be like a conversation.

If I’m sitting down talking with Oprah, I’m going to be like, Oprah, let me tell you something. And I’m going to say her name, because again, that’s more of the psychological aspect of interviews is like the communication there. The bond starts to build when you talk to someone and you’re mentioning that them by first name and then follow up the show and the host on social media. So if there is a Facebook page, if there is an Instagram page for the host, click Join share like subscribe to all of them.

Right.

Why would you not? Because again, as that host then creates your particular episode and the episode goes live, it only makes sense that you have opportunity to know when it goes live. Now, some host may send you email. Some hosts may share your content on social media and then share it to you. That way, there’s different ways of doing it.

But why would you not become friends or like or subscribe to the Hostess platforms or the podcast platforms? That way, you can kind of see what’s going on. Then you could also figure out when your episode is going to be released, and then you could look to see what else is being released before your episode as well. It’s a win win situation. So just to recap that you want to learn their name, right?

You want to use their name and then you want to kind of connect to them on their platforms. Right. All right. Let’s go into number four. Better promote your product or services to better promote them.

The first thing you need to do is create an affiliate offer or a referral program. Now, some people may say I don’t have time for this, but look at it this way. If I’m going on to a podcast and that podcast that has 3000 or 10,000 or million downloads per month, it would probably be very valuable for that host to not only market your service, but to then market your service and get kicked back. And then they can keep on marketing your service for a period of time.

Right.

That’s one of my questionnaire that I ask everyone that’s on my show. Hey, do you have any affiliate offers? Because again, you’re putting out that content out there. You’re leveraging your community. And as a guest, you want to utilize that community that it only makes sense that you share in some of the profits.

This is more of like a pro tip behind the scenes. But as a guest, you want to have that value add for any host that’s looking to interview you as well. Right. Number two, you want to create a call of action to the listeners. All right.

So if you’re promoting a particular product, and again, this goes back to the questionnaire. This goes back to the FAQs. You want to make sure you have an opportunity to promote whatever product or service that you’re going to promote on that particular podcast. So part of that is that you want to make sure that you have a very clear call of action. You want to tell them exactly where to go, what to do, and what will they get?

That’s the three things. It’s like a lot of times you may hear a podcast in La. Yeah. They could just search for my name and find me anywhere. No.

Because again, that leaves room for mistakes. That leaves room for this spelling of your name. That leaves room for them to add Lib. You want to have a distinct URL and a good way of making URLs would be a URL that has the podcast name in it. Right.

So, for example, if I was on another podcast and let’s say that podcast was like Boss in Prod, whatever it was, then I would probably make a look link that says Boston Cage. Com Boss Enterprise. So that way, the people that are listening to that particular episode, as I’m a guest on it, then they understand it. Okay. It’s Boston Cage. That’s what we’re talking to you right now. And we’re on Boss Enterprise, right. It’s easy for them. Now. They can put the parts together and just type it in completely. mAnd then you can give that link to that host for that episode to put in the show notes as well. And if you’re doing anything on the technical side, you want to track that URL to see how much traffic is coming from that episode, how many conversions have happened from you being on that particular podcast and the more podcasts you’re on, then you can stack them up and see, you know what here’s 20 podcasts have been on, but these particular two, I’ve gotten conversions, I’ve gotten leads, I’ve gotten callbacks, I’ve gotten emails on these particular two.

Then you may want to contact that host and be like, hey, I would love to come back on your show right again. It’s all in the data. Alright, so let’s go down to number five is a one sheet of requirement. I would say to be honest with you, no, but you should have a bio. Okay. One of the questions that I ask all my guesses. Your bio. I don’t care if the bio is 115 words or 1500 words.

I just need a bio again so I could do my due diligence to know who I’m working with, who I’m going to be interviewing. And then I can take tips and bits of that and create part of my show notes as well. So that’s the opportunity for you to kind of lay out your best foot forward. So you don’t necessarily need a one sheet. But if you don’t have one, then at the bare minimum, you have to have a bio.

Right? And in that bio, a strategy behind that bio was that you want to tell a story you don’t want to sell like you’re not selling yourself. You’re telling your story like I did this and this happened to me and I overcame that. And then that made me jump forward and hot. And I had the awakening moment. You want to talk to the community of people that you’re gonna be talking to because you’re not gonna be able to necessarily see them live and communicate your pros and cons and what you’ve over came because for them they may be listening to you as inspiration. Then you want to inspire them by telling them your story, from how you not necessarily going from rags to riches, but how you went from hitting hurdles to overcoming those hurdles and to where you are right now, how did you get to where you are? That’s part of telling your story through a bio. In addition to that, you want to make sure it’s in the digital format, right? This is not old school.

We’re not faxing emails are cool as well. But again, if I’m submitting a form, you should be able to go to a copy and paste it in that form. Hit submit done. If you don’t have access that quickly, maybe a link. So there’s Google drive, there’s landing pages, there’s PDFs.

You want to make this content and the PDF kind of refers back to a one sheet. Right. So you want to make this content as easy and simple as possible at that way, somebody asks for it, then you can reach for it really quickly and submit it in a form or through social media, through link in messenger or through an email. Whatever it is, you usually want to have access to this file to make it easy to deliver. Right.

So tip number six, half professional headshot ready to go now, this one is like a must, right? You could have the best bio. You could have the best product, the best story, and then people see, and then it’s kind of like, right. You kind of go from high to low really quick. So obviously, on the podcast, you can dress to impress, or you can kind of just be yourself. Whoever you are is what you want to be. But at least with your pictures, you want to have clarity. You don’t want to have pixelated pictures. You don’t want to have blurry pictures. You want to be as Crystal clear with those pictures.

So first and foremost, you want to have a professional headshot. Tip of the trade is go outside high noon. Use your cell phone and do a selfie. The natural light will probably work wonders, and the picture will be Crystal clear. Just think of it from that standpoint. The more light that you have without blowing out the image is the cleaner the image is going to be. Right. So think about that. If you don’t want to spend the money for professional, then at least take your pictures outside versus inside. Then in addition to that, you want to make sure these pictures are much like your bio. They’re easily accessible. So whether that’s Google Drive Dropbox, I use Brand Doc. So Brand Doc is a program that allows me to upload multiple different images, logos, colors, everything. It’s kind of like a brand guide, an online brand guide toolbox. So I could submit the link.

And then when somebody gets the link, as I’m becoming a guest on the show, they have access to ten to 15 different images of me with transparency backgrounds with different headshots, so forth and so forth. And that leads me to number two. You want to have multiple versions, because again, you may not know how that image may be used. Some podcasters they create blog post, and in that block post, they may put multiple images of you, right. Some people may just create it, use it for the cover art for an album. And that album is for the podcast. Some of them may need transparency background for that. So for Boston Cage, you’ll always know when I do an interview episode there’s say ground on the left, and it’s whoever I’m interviewing on the right. Well, all the images on the right, nine or ten, I say probably eight out of ten of them don’t have transparency. So that’s part of my system that we have in place.

It will go in delete the background, clean up the edges to put that image in the cover art. But imagine that every single person that would submit an image already had the background remove it cuts down on time. Right. And then part of that is that you want to have a headshot. You want to have a full body shot.

You want to have a three quarter shot, you want to have a white background and without background, you just want to have a few options. You don’t have to have 100 images. Maybe three to five images would do what you needed to do really going into number seven. Right. And this one is going to be a longer version because I’m really going to break down some things for you guys. So number seven, the ultimate podcast, Showtime, checklist. Right. First and foremost, show up early to your interview. It’s not like you’re getting interviewed for a job. But again, if any questions that you may have that you have not had answered before or you have not had any additional communications because a lot of times Pas are communicating with PA, VA may talk to a PA and the VA may talk to another PA, and they may never even talked to the host.

They may never even talk to the guests. So this may be the first time that you, as a guess is that actually in front of the host and having one on one communication. Again, schedule time. You may have a time set from 10:00 to 1030 or from 10:00 to 11:00 to record the episode. You should show up about ten minutes earlier.

Right. And the reason why I’m saying five to ten minutes early because a lot of times the podcasters are doing sound checks, they’re checking out their systems, they’re restarting the computer is checking out their cameras, checking out all the different applications, checking out their soundboard, they’re video switcher all these different things is pretty much the production. Right. So if you show up early and the podcaster is there, then you have opportunity to not only see the podcaster live, communicate, acts in the additional questions, start to build a little family enterprise situation to where you can kind of communicate with somebody off air before you’re on air.

Alright. Number two, hydrate drinking fluids, more so water drinking water would definitely help your vocal course, because again, you may be talking for 30 minutes, 45 minutes. If you’re on Joe Rogan, you may be talking for hours. So the more water you have access to, the better you’re going to be able to manifest what you’re talking about without getting dry out. Number three, use the bathroom before your interview, because again, the worst thing that you want to happen while you’re on air is having to go to the bathroom.

Right.

And I’ll be Frank where this number one or number two, either one of them will make you highly twitchy in front of that host. You’ll be moving around like I move around a lot because I’m an animated speaker. But again, if I’m seeing somebody that’s like this and I see them rocking and they’re holding and they’re doing this and I’m just like, man, I will surely wish the would have went to the bathroom before they got on the show, because again, now the host is probably going to start to read your body language and try to speed up. And an interview is not going to be as good as it could have been. Test your video, right?

If you’re doing a video podcast like Boston Cage, definitely want to test the video out before you get on it, right? You want to test your microphone, even though you just did an interview the day before 3 hours before you still have to do another check another test right then and there. Because again, these are computers. Anything can go wrong. So like, literally.

I think last week I had an instant to where I had four, three episodes back to back on one day. And between every single episode, I’ve always done a sound test and restarted and come to find out, by the time I I got to my third interview, my laptop started overheating and I’m sitting here like, what the Hell’s going on? And I’m checking all these different things, but every time I would launch Zoom, it would freeze up. I mind you, I did two interviews perfectly fine. But it got to the point to where my laptop was overheating all the content information that I’m pushing through it all at once. And I would just like, Jesus, what’s going on? So I come to find out that I had to get a cooling pad to keep my laptop cool on days like today. For example, I’m doing two or three different episodes, right? So you have to understand your computer and your hardware may were perfectly fine on and the next day won’t. So you want to kind of test things out.

You want to turn your phone this bad boy right here on airplane mode, that’s self explanatory. But sometimes you may forget you want to close the door to the room that you’re going to be doing the podcast in. Because again, even when the door being opened, the sound could resonate from other parts of the house and bleed into the room that you’re in. In addition to that, you want a place to do not disturb sign on the door. You want to let people know that.

Okay, well, you’re in an interview. You’re doing something that the noise needs to be pretty quiet because again, you’re on a microphone and pretty much anything that happens outside of the room could essentially be picked up on the microphone, which makes the job for the host or the host team for editing that particular episode a little bit or technical a little more difficult, and it could delay your episode as well. In addition to that, you want to get all your pets out the room. And, you know, I’ve been on episodes before where pets are part of people’s lives and whether you love them or you hate them, it doesn’t really matter. Again.

If you’re going to be interviewed on a podcast, you just want to be mindful that sometimes the frequency of animals without shine the frequency of your vocals. Right? Like a cat. For example, a cat could be two rooms over if the doors are open and the cat is going off and talking to itself and it’s making all these different noises, that noise would resonate way louder on a microphone. Then your voice would or it’ll compete with your voice and the microphone would definitely pick it up. So you just want to be mindful of that. And I know this is going to sound funny, but I always say give the cats and the dog some catnip or some animal marijuana to kind of have them just smooth and just chill out while you’re on episode. Because again, the last thing you want to happen is kind of like a cat scratches on your door or comes in the room and you’re trying to shoot them away while you’re live on a camera or doing like a Facebook live or doing a YouTube live with a particular host.

Right. It’s the same thing for your kids.

I’m not saying to give you kids marijuana, but I’m saying if you have another adult in the house, you probably want to let them know that, hey, I’m going to do an interview for an hour. Do you mind watching the kids for me? Do you mind holding the kids back and let the kids know for the next hour? I’m off limits. Alright. Number 13 is as the host if you can also record the episode. So this is like a little secret tip. Right. So if you’re using Zoom, I can record Zoom as the host. But you as the guests could also record as well.

And the reason why I’m bringing this to your attention and making this a checklist item is, well, think about it if you’re on the Boston Cage podcast and I’m saying, okay, guys, we would not be able to air the show until third quarter of 2022, and we’re going into the last quarter of 2021. So essentially roughly nine months to a year from now is when your episode is going to air, there’s opportunities for you to kind of make some things happen to make this episode are life faster, or you could just act to record the Zoom on your end, and then you could release the episode as part of your YouTube channel.

You could release the episode as part of your blog or on your particular podcast. Again, this is just content, right? So when the host releases your episode later on the year and just do a marketing, you release the six months before the whole release six months later.

The content, hopefully is evergreen content. And again, if you’re marketing a product now, that product should still have value six months from now, it doesn’t really matter. The only difference is that comes out to price. And that’s why you want to talk evergreen. You don’t want to necessarily disclose pricing on an episode, especially when you’re thinking about changing the price down the road. You just want to tell them to go to this particular address, like I said earlier, to give them the information where to go, what to do and what they’re going to get. But leave out the details about this offer expires in May 15, 2020. That episode is void at this point. Right? So keep that in mind again. And I just did the next one that I’m going to tell you guys not to do. I have to say you want to replace these particular words with let’s move on to another important conversation. Is it’s one of those things, right, everyone, that’s been on a podcast. Usually I’ve heard at least one or two from pretty much everyone I’ve interviewed. But as the conversation starts to flow and you start to build the communication between the interviewee and interviewer, the s become a lot less.

So keep that in mind. This is one of the things that you just want to keep mindful of. And sometimes some people, they use them for everything. And some people are very mindful of the us. So you just want to be mindful of it generally to not utilize them as much as you may do on a regular basis.

1516 and 17. Right. So I’ll start backwards. Right. So 17 be confident. 16 be passionate and 15 relaxed. Look at this as a communication between you and a new friend. This is not necessarily an enemy. This is someone that’s going to help you market your new product or your new service. So just like your friends communicate with them like that, have a general conversation.

Be relaxed. Be passionate about your content that you’re delivering. And believe it or not, that host is going to be able to feel the energy from you and they’re going to give it back to you as well. Okay. It’s like being in front of a mirror. You just want to bounce it back and forth. I said 17 was less one. Actually, we got two more. Right. Show excitement and smile with your teeth.

Right. This is funny because I just had an episode. We’re talking about fake smiles versus real smiles and talking to my wife about this guy that lives in our neighborhood. And every time we drive by, no matter what time of day, whatever is going on, he always just goes from like this to, hey, Cheese is really hard, like on command, like hits the switch and it’s kind of creepy, but it’s cool at the same time. So again, I’m not going to say go in front of a mirror and practice your smiles because you know that that sounds kind of crazy.

But the more you kind of get into smiling and showing your teeth a little bit is the more inviting you’re going to be on the other side, especially on the other side of the camera. So just keep that in mind and you want to be excited. I mean, again, you’re having an opportunity to sell and market your product and your service on an environment that may talk to thousands, tens of thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of people. As long as that episode is going to be live because it’s going to be a searchable content that will be on the Internet essentially forever. So always keep that in mind.

Smile, showcase. Be excited. Number eight, keep your answers concise. Now, this is a big one for me, right? Because if I have a particular outline script of communication and I’m going to pull out things from my guest and I wanted to go through the roller coaster.

I want to remember when they were a kid. I want them to remember when they made their 1st 10,000 or the first $100 or the first million dollars. These all questions are like Legos. They’re going to stack up and they’re going to build up until you essentially you climax into the end of the episode. Again, we’re telling a story. So if we have a 45 minutes room to tell this story and I’ve only asked one question and that one question that took 20 minutes to answer is not doing you as to guess any justice, because again, you have no clue if you didn’t do the research to realize that this particular host may have other questions or will communicate other factors of your life that you may not even be thinking about. So you have to let them do that. Short answers, precise answers, detailed, but quick and to the point, not extremely long.

Winded is the way you want to go about answering these questions. Right.

And then number two is a podcast. Interview should be a conversation. Right? So if you’re talking to someone and you’re the only one talking right. Like right now, this episode, I’m a Bobblehead. I’m talking talking, talking, talking doctor. That’s why I like to interview format because communication two people. But I like to do the episode because again, I’m informing you. But again, if you’re on a talk show, it’s a talk show. So there need to be two people communicating back and forth.

Imagine me sitting on Oprah’s couch over, ask me a question, and then I answer that one question and then the end credits come up. Well, Oprah and everything. You can get to know who I was. She really didn’t get to communicate and pull out my story. So keep that in mind.

And you want to do some research about that, go onto YouTube and just search episodes of TV talk shows, search episodes of Oprah Late Night With David Letterman, Howard Stern, and kind of see how the banter goes, kind of see how Howard Stern kind of says something smart and witty. And then his guests will interact and say something back. And then somebody else in the background will make like a smart remark and how it will interject, like two or three word comment, and then the guests would respond.

But again, it’s moving around. Right. And if you look at his live stuff, right? His videos versus his audio, the cameras jump between the different facets of the different conversation, which makes it more exciting. All right. So going to number nine after the show follow up checklist. Right.

And keep in mind, I know all these laundries and stuff. And then the show notes in this particular video and on the podcast, all this will be listed out for you guys, so you can literally go through them and checking again. I’m not saying you need to do all of them. I’m just advising you that if you were to maximize and utilize as much as these as humanly possible, you would get a greater outcome of being a guest on a podcast. So number nine after the show follow up checklist.

Right. First and foremost, you you want to send a thank you note or testimonial whether it’s written, whether it’s audio or whether it’s video, because again, much like selling books, much like selling any product, a podcast is the same thing. If you have done a written review of the podcast, then post it on Apple podcast, right. If you’ve done an audio review, then send that via LinkedIn or email back to the host to say, hey, I love your episode. Thanks.

It was special in this way. I really appreciate what you’ve done. I’m looking forward to it going live, right. Or you can create a video testimony and say, hey, look, dude, your episode was crazy. I love being on your podcast.You gave me so much insight, and I feel like I’ve given so much back to your audience. I can’t wait to be on your show again. I’m just a living here. But again, communication is King. Right?So if you send a thank you note or testimonial to a host without a host asking you for it, trust me, that host will then reciprocate some information, whether it’s thank you for communicating to me. I can’t wait to get your information on my website. I can’t wait to put this testimonial on your show notes page, whatever it is, but it gives you more credibility, and it gives you more being a realistic person. That podcast is not just another number, the number two you want to recommend guests.

Right.

So for me, if I want to show, I always look to see if that person that interview me. Ask me the question at the end of her. Is there anyone else that you know that you could recommend or refer to my particular show that you think will be a good fit? That’s something that acts on my show as well. Because if I have a really good interview with someone you know, like minds tend to hang together. So if I had a really good interview with Bobby with Bobby may know Sarah and Sarah, maybe in like minded individual in a completely different field. And I maybe have not interviewed anyone like that yet. If you don’t ask, then you won’t know close out would not get that. And then number three is share and promote your episode. So finding out the link, finding out the cover art, getting all that information.

Again, sometimes it’s automated. You may automatically get an email from that host, or you may have to go to the host website once it’s aired or go to the social media platforms, whatever it is. But once you get access to your content about your episode and your show art, then you want to share that information. You want to kind of move it through the internet. Then after that is then you want to kind of as I’ve given you a referral.

I’ve given you testimonials, and I’m not saying it is a ta. But then wouldn’t you ask for, like, a referral? Are there any other podcast that you would recommend that I should be on right to a street? Number five would be book a virtual coffee. You want to stay connected, because again, if you had a really good interview with that person and that conversation was well done, then potentially, you could probably build a friendship, business, relationship, business partnerships, whatever it is. So you want to continuously communicate with them not every single day, per se, but communicate with them past the show. A good example of that is like me and Damon Burton. I interviewed him earlier this year. We communicated. I went to his 40 birthday party, but we communicate on a regular basis behind the scenes, we crack jokes on Facebook, send instant messages, and we just talk and communicate about different things. If I get a referral, I’ll send them a referral. If he gets to leave something that sends me a lead, begin. We’re communicating. We know we’re busy people, but there’s some commonalities and some brotherhoods in that conversation that we had earlier this year that has built into a relationship today. So going into number ten, right.

So number ten is like the bonus. I know I said nine plus, but number ten is like the bonus. We’re to find podcast, right? Podcasting is one of those things. You can go to Google, and you could type in podcast, right. You can go to Apple and you can type in particular shows. But right now, the best platforms are platforms that are pulling all the podcasts in, and they’re using algorithms to say, hey, you’re a good guess for this show. And again, you’re going to fill out information to say why you’re a good guess and what shows you’re looking for. So the first one on my list, again, maybe of the people that I interview today have come from matchmaker. Com.

I filled out my guest profile, I filled out my host profile, and then I let the algorithm go. They send out emails every single day to new people to say, hey, you know what? I think you’d be a good guess for Boston Gauge podcast. And here’s why here’s the show information. And then I get an email about here’s their information, and then they decide to communicate with me. It all goes through that one app, so it allows me to say, okay, look here’s John, here’s his background, his one sheet or his bio. Here’s what he’s achieved, what he has done. Great. I can’t wait to have them on the show. Connect, right.

Pod matches another version of that. Gusto is another version of that as well. And it’s like, paid and free. There’s also interview Ballet, which is 100 paid. And then the Facebook groups. You can easily go to Facebook groups and think about hosting if I’m hosting a podcast on like, Be Cast, for example, or Anchor FM. Well, all of these platforms have Facebook groups, and these Facebook groups tend to be driven towards podcasters. So if I’m a guest and I want to be on a podcast, I would probably go to these Facebook groups and raise my hand, hey, guys, I’m new to the room. I’m looking to be on a podcast. I’m looking for business podcast.

I want to talk about success, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anybody interested? It’s as easy as that. So again, more you speak up, the more opportunities you would have. So hopefully, I know this was a lot of information and kind of streamlined it to a certain extent, but generally, I’m just going to do a quick overview.

Number one is a preshow checklist on that one. I’m really just talking about let the show host be the show host and you kind of follow their lead. Tip number two, you want to at least listen to one or two of their episodes. Tip number three do a little research about the host. It tip number four better promote your product or services.

And again, that’s mainly towards your call of action. Tip number five, you could do a one sheet or a bio. Tip number six have professional headshot ready to go and make sure that they’re digitally ready to go. Tip number seven, the ultimate podcast show time checklist. And I think that the key takeaway from that one is hydrate.

Make sure you’re in a quiet room, make sure that your kids and your animals are out the way and be passionate. Number eight, keep your answers concise short. And to the point, you don’t want 30 minutes answers for every single question. It’ll make the show long and drawn out. Right.

Number nine, after the show follow up, send a link, send a testimonial, send a review, send a video review, stay in communication, book a virtual coffee. Last, but not least is number ten is where to find a podcast. And we talked about, I think, on this particular list. I mean, there’s a million opportunities, but I would say Matchmaker FM would be a really good platform for any beginning person that wants to become a guest, to get on and start utilizing those systems. And it’ll compound much like anything else.

The longer you do it, the better you get at it and the better it will work for you, say grant over and out.

S2E51 Rich Perry.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Alright. Three, two, one. Welcome welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. On Today’s show, I have a fellow. How should I say it soon to be a recipient of a World record holder maybe? That’s what we’re working on right here. So I had an opportunity to meet Rich at Podfest Global, and we’re actually working on our stuff right now. He gave his speech last week. My speech is this week. So, I mean, we kind of gotten to know each other over the past month or so. So without further Ado, Rich man tell our audience a little bit more about yourself.

Hey, brother, what’s going on? Thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast. We got a chance to connect to the podfest fan page on Facebook. And then we did the club house thing together. Like, you know, I’m a coach. I’m an author, speaker, podcaster live streamer and just do what I can to make a difference out in the world, you know?

Yeah. Definitely. I mean, it’s funny that you said it. He’s being modest. Like, if you guys think I post a lot, this guy, I post three times more time than I do per day. Right. I post about 100. He posts about 300. So if you could define yourself in three to five words, what three to five words would you choose for yourself?

I would go with my motto, my personal motto, which is lead by example through excellence. It’s what I try and do with everything in life. Lead by example through excellence.

Nice. Nice. So let’s dive into that. I mean, like you were saying, I mean, you’re multiple different things. So, like, what is your business? I mean, kind of just defining it because obviously there’s marketers, there’s coaches and you’re kind of a combination of both things, I would think.

Yeah. So I’m a communication strategist. So I do a lot of coaching, a lot of training, helping entrepreneurs and coaches and people with a message, helping them to craft that message and deliver it to their audience. Whether we’re talking blogging, Vlogging podcasting or just getting out in front of that audience in real life and just sharing that message and connecting with the people that need to hear it.

So I mean, I would think that because I’m in a parallel space and for me, it’s very fulfilling. Is it very fulfilling for you to be in that space to help other entrepreneurs move forward and their progress?

Absolutely. I mean, I love empowering people. I love helping people to find it within themselves and sharing their gifts with the world. So it’s a great opportunity to give them the tools they need to get that message out there and be heard.

So, Just travel a little bit, just go to a parallel universe, maybe go back 2015 years. Like, how did you get on this journey? When did it start?

And I’ve said this multiple times. I’ve always been someone who was helping other people you know what I’m saying? I mean, professionally speaking, I would say it was within the last ten years or so. But if I really give an honest answer, I’ve always been helping people. I was a Boy Scout, I’m an Eagle Scout, and always being out in the community, doing good deeds, helping other people. And I think it just grew. It’s doing little stuff when you’re a little kid. It’s doing bigger stuff when you’re a teenager. It’s doing more community stuff when you’re in College and you’re like, oh, crap. Like, I can do this in real life, you know, as I look at it like just building, building, building and just doing bigger things as I get older.

Nice. So I mean Where you from Originally?

I was born in New York City, but I grew up in the Poconos, which is 2 hours away from New York City. It’s a lot of Woods and stuff like that. Pennsylvania, you know, grew up in the Woods, but, you know, just that’s that man. Yeah.

It’s funny that you brought that up. I always say it’s like a New York chemistry because I grew up in Brooklyn, and in school years, we usually have trips to the Pocono Mountains all the time. So it’s kind of funny. This is the first time I even realize you from New York. So the commonalities are already there. It’s kind of like the magnetic New York polarities that happened. Right. So in your business, right. So you kind of were saying you were Boy Scout, you kind of always been kind of being able to help people. But when in your career did that helping people turn into going more into digital content, digital space, digital marketing aspect.

So I went to school for psychology. So right out of College, I was doing marketing. But then I also was a therapist. And and I’ll be honest, it was after an emotional breakdown because it was one of those moments where I’m like, what and I’m not going to say it on the interview. But I had that emotional breakdown. Like, what am I doing with my life and then a friend of mine? Actually, she and I spoke, and she recommended that I go through these personal development training and just doing a lot of soul searching and bettering myself. So that was when I kind of transitioned into where I am now.

That’s a pretty interesting. Well, it makes sense. I mean, jumping from more of the psyche side to marketing and marketing is based upon psyche. So, I mean, you were building up the Dominos right in this journey to currently where you are right there’s always pros and it’s always cons. And everybody always has their great stories of successes, but in the failures or in the worst case scenarios. So in your case, what’s the worst thing that’s happened to you on this journey?

The worst thing battling those inner demons, man, battling those inner demons of self doubts and here’s something else is that the area that I grew up in in northeastern Pennsylvania in 2014. It was actually there was a University study that named it as the unhappiest region in America. And that was done by two major universities. It was the unhappiest region in America. So dealing with the people that I dealt with, growing up of a lot of limiting beliefs and you can’t do this. You come from a small town. You know what I’m saying? Like, that was breaking out of those breaking the mold and just breaking through those barriers. That was tough.

That’s pretty interesting. So you don’t with, like, a region of the world that was pretty highly. I would correct me wrong and depressed to a certain extent.

Yeah. I mean, when I read that study, I couldn’t believe it. But I was like, no, you know what? I definitely believe that because I remember the people that I grew up with. Yeah. 2014. There you go.

So I guess part of that, how did you break out of it that you see the statement about being a product of your environment, nature versus nurture or you’re a byproduct of your inner circle. But essentially, you’re saying that you were surrounded in the depressional state of region, right. And you always wanted to help somebody. So it’s kind of that sounds like a push and pull. You’re kind of fighting yourself. You’re dealing with depression on one side, but you’re dealing with help, you on the other side. How did that chemistry kind of evolved to where you are?

So, like, for me, it was a lot of soul searching and also, like, I need to remove all the toxicity in my life. And if I was hanging out with these people over here doing these activities over here, I was like, well, you know, I can’t have the example I give is I was putting all this clean water. I was like, purifying the inside, but I was surrounding myself in a dirty glass. You know what I’m saying? Like with these social circles, and you can have all that good water, that Crystal clear water. If it’s in a yucky glass, then what do you have? So I just had to remove myself from those social situations. I’m not going to do these activities anymore. I’m not going to hang out with these people anymore. But these people over here, this is a good positive influence. And these activities over here, good, positive influence. I’m going to spend my time over here, not over here. I broke some hearts and lost some friends and things like that. But that’s what I encourage people to do. Like, hey, what is it about you? And if that’s something you want, if you want to live bigger, you may need to leave those situations. You may need to walk away from those relationships.

solid insight. So getting back into your, like, your business is your business. I mean, you have multiple levels to your business. You have coaching, which essentially is one spectrum, and you probably have additional services. You probably have workshops and all this other stuff. Like, how is your business structured? Is it an LLC? An S Corp. C Corp.

So I have an LLC with the guy that I wrote the book with. I don’t know if you can see it. It’s right there. So we have an LLC together, and then with my solo stuff, it’s a sole proprietorship got you.

So obviously in writing books, I think both of us, we’ve written books. We’re both authors, and we’re both in that space. And I’m finally diving into the space where I’m co authoring one of my books with my wife. So understanding that you co authored the book before, right? Was that a difficult task, kind of taking two separate minds and combining them into one system?

It was an experience, but it was an enriching experience. Okay. So Lawrence Pip and the guy that I wrote the book with like, we have different backgrounds, but we really mesh well together when we’re speaking, when we’re doing seminars together, like, we have that kind of relationship where a lot of times we will finish each other sentences, like, we’re just thinking on the same wavelength when it came to writing. That was its own process. But once we really got into the flow of it, it was a lot easier. And there’s a lot of times and we’ve heard this before from people that have read the book and that know us personally that they couldn’t differentiate who was actually speaking. And that’s the way we wanted to write the book. We wanted to have one voice. Now the only time that you know who the actual author is. Like, who’s speaking is if it’s a personal story, which we did put personal stories in the book, and we would always at the bottom, we would scribe it with either an RP or an LP. So you knew, hey, this is rich as personal story, but for the rest of the book, when it’s actual of content, we wanted one voice, and we managed to do that. I wrote my stuff. He wrote his and then we swapped back and forth, and then I would to his and he would add to mine. So a lot of it just got fused together, which we found to be very beneficial.

Yeah. That’s a solid strategy of swapping the stories and then letting the other author read it and then add on. And it’s kind of like artists, right. If you kind of think about going back into the 70s and you have Basquiat and Basquiat Wild paint something, and then you would have Andy Wall all coming and they would mix and match until they came up with the masterpiece together. So I think that’s definitely a solid philosophy. So on your journey. I mean, obviously you’ve been on this journey for a period of time. You’ve done a lot of different things on this path. We always receive that someone’s successes overnight thing that somebody may hear you talk today and then maybe the first time they earn you. And they were like, Where did this guy pop up from? He’s like an overnight success. But in reality, it probably took 20 years. How long have you been on your journey?

Honestly, I would say since I was a kid, man, I say that I got my start in College doing promotions and marketing and working for my College radio station. And it was like one thing that led to another that led to this job opportunity that led to this thing. So I would definitely say, like College getting my feet wet in marketing and working for the College radio station, putting myself out there and meeting people, learning how to host events, which then it went from music events and cultural events to personal development seminars. But it’s all the same thing. You know what I’m saying?

Yeah. That’s pretty cool. Looking at this general journey that maybe took 20 years to 15 years. If you could time travel back and change one thing, what would it be and why?

I would definitely teach myself better money management skills, better money habits, especially in the high school College years. I mean, we were going out all the time just wasting money. And I built a habit of that. And then when I got older, it was like that. I wish I learned that skill when I was younger.

Nice. So you got a pretty savvy entrepreneurial mindset. Does that come from anyone, a predecessor in your family that had a business growing up? Like, where is your entrepreneur hustle coming from?

Being an early musician and promoter and learning? Hey, if we don’t get the the fans in here to hear this musician, we’re paying out of our own pockets. But, no, I don’t have any business owners in the family.

Okay, so now that you’re obviously older, you’re a little bit more successful. Like, how do you currently juggle your work life with your family life?

So I’m single. I don’t have a wife or significant other. I don’t have kids or anything like that. So it is a little bit easier for me not to say that’s not something that I don’t want. You know what I’m saying? It just hasn’t happened yet. So the juggling is pretty much just what is rich you want to do today and what’s going to make Richie happy and successful and accomplishing things that he wants? I don’t have to check in with anybody. I don’t have to put kids to bed or anything like that. There’s not that aspect of juggling yet.

That’s pretty interesting, because for me, obviously, I’m married and have kids. So my sense of definition of purpose is one part to help somebody. But the other part also to create a legacy. So being that you come from the single side of things. You have one aspect of helping people. Do you have any additional purposes in addition to that?

Yeah i mean. I certainly want to leave a legacy. And I would love to have a family. And I do a lot of community service. I’m active in different groups within a community. So that’s certainly outside of coat I’m talking about. So that keeps me out and doing things and fulfilling my sense of really making a difference at different levels within the community professionally.

So, yeah, it seems like, I think because you’re an Eagle Scout, I was assistant Dean leader for Forever. And my son, he was a Cub Scout, didn’t make it. The Boy Scout kind of gave it up. So I definitely to hear that you’re an Eagle Scout. Most people don’t understand what it takes to become an Eagle Scout. So once you make it to that level, it’s ingrained on. You’re not going to be able to get rid of that spirit.

And the amazing thing is like, I’ve met people, like on LinkedIn or just at professional seminars and things like that. And you have that kinship with other Eagle Scouts because it’s just like, anything, whether it’s a fraternity thing or whatever. You have that bond, you knew what you had to do to get that award. You had to do that big service project, and you’re only 16 years old doing this big project. And so it is that bonding experience. And I’m 39, and I still say I’m an Eagle Scout. No, I was an Eagle Scout. I am an Eagle, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Definitely. I mean, being that I know what goes into it to your point. Anytime I hear that, it’s kind of like, okay, I know who I’m talking to by default. You know who you’re talking to. I mean, just going through that passage. Next question would be like, you seem to be a pretty systematic guy, right? So what are your morning habits? Your morning routine look like.

So do a little morning workout, a little meditation. I got to have my coffee. And I do listen to a lot of audio books or podcasts right now. The audio book that I’ve been listening to is words that work, which I read it. I listen to it, and I’m listening to it again. And each time I’m still getting those Nuggets, I mean, it’s a phenomenal book, and I recommended it a bunch of times. I need to get my own affiliate link with Frank Lynch so I can start making some money off it. But it’s a great book. That’s what I’m reading right now or listening to. But you know what I mean?

It’s funny that you brought that up. It’s like that particular question. It was like, every time people ask me about the podcast, it was like, Well, how do I come with my questions? It’s like studying people studying their responses. So that question is always a predecessor to my next question. And the reason why I started a book club is that nine out of ten people are going to do what you just did. They do X, Y and Z in the morning and they listen to all your books. They read books. So going a little bit deeper into that road about recommending books. I mean, you have your own book. Obviously, I want you to kind of pitch that book, kind of understand what that book is about and how that book and help someone and what other books have helped you on your journey to get you to currently where you are.

Okay. I don’t know if you can see it. And I got my headphones in. But the one book that I wrote is called Bankroll Your Mind, and that’s the one that I wrote with Lawrence Pipkin. It was a best seller. It is a best seller. Bankroll Your Mind is our sexy way of saying Reprogram your mind for success. There’s a lot of mindset, tips and hacks and strategies in there, a lot of personal development, a lot of leadership development really helping you to reprogram what’s going on in here for optimal performance. Back to your next question, which is what book can I recommend? That was the next question, right. How to win Friends and influence people, how to win friends and influence people. Go and read it. You know what I’m saying? I mean, it’s one of those books having everybody, especially right now with the current state of what’s going on. Go read this book, folks and learn how to relate to people, how to communicate to people, learn how to treat each other as human beings. I mean, the book was written in what, like, 39, and it’s still as meaningful and relevant today as it was when Carnegie wrote it back in, like, 39. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Love it.

So point that you brought that up because in the book club in week three, that’s the book of recommendation. I mean, literally, what you’re saying is literally some of the recaps that I talked about. The six core principles, like remembering someone’s names. You have to remember someone’s name, right? Be interested in what that person is talking about. Just don’t bullshit them. Be interested in that conversation. Is it general principles that are kind of common? But people don’t really understand those six principles and use them on a day to day basis, right?

It’s saying someone’s name, like he says in the book is the sweetest song to the person who hears it. Like you say, someone seems like he’s talking about. He’s talking to me. Absolutely.

Definitely. That’s pretty cool. So, I mean, what do you see yourself 20 years from now?

Hopefully with a family traveling the world, making a difference, training people working, certainly have a few more books under my belt. And obviously I would like to have that family life and stuff like that and just really enjoying, you know, just making the most out of life.

So let’s talk about your services for a minute. Right. So who is your ideal target audience and what service do you have for them?

I really enjoy working with newer entrepreneurs, especially like service based entrepreneurs, coaches, speakers, the people that have a meaningful and impactful message that they want to share, but maybe necessarily don’t know how. Or maybe they’re too timid. Or maybe they don’t have the tools. Maybe the person doesn’t know how to blog or how to like you and I were talking about in the beginning, sharing your message on social media, like I’m supposed to post at least once a day, not just once a week. Those things matter. So working with those people that really warms my heart to see the a difference that they’re making and being able to then make a difference and knowing that I had a hand in that.

Yeah. I definitely agree with you because I mean, when you’re working with that particular audience, the exponential room for growth and that equity to say someone starting maybe they’re at, like, $50,000 annually. Or maybe they’re at $10,000 annually. And then over the next course of two to three years, you could see their growth ten fold, 100 fold, literally, once they understand the principles that you’re putting in front of them. So I take it that you have an online coaching. Or do you have courses online as well?

Yeah.

Great. So in your day to day, what software do you use that you would not be able to do what you do without?

iPhone. Old school and new school schedules. I carry multiple books around with me schedules. And then I also load everything into my phone, too, because you never know if you’re not going to be next to the physical book, the physical schedule. I love scheduling apps like Social Oom for Twitter. I use Hootsuite for LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. Yeah. And again, iphone.

iPhone is key. So let’s say I am 20 years old. I listen to this podcast. I’ve gotten inspired by you, motivated by you, and I want to continue an entrepreneurial journey. What words of wisdom would you give to me to help me continue to move forward?

Use every situation, every situation as a learning experience, transfer those skills into those new situations, new opportunities, and take clear, focused action towards achieving your goals.

Yeah, definitely insightful. So how can people find you online? I mean, obviously you’re a big social media guide. Like what’s your handles, what’s your website?

The website is RichPerry.com. So if you know my name Rich Perry, just .com. Social media. I couldn’t secure Rich Perry. So it’s “Coach Rich Perry’ so on across all social media platforms, it’s “Coach Rich Perry” nd the website is just RichPerry.com.

nice nice. So going into the bonus round, right. If you could be a superhero, who would it be and why?

I’m going with The Flash because he’s just a good dude. You know what I’m saying? Like, really just he’s super smart. He loves the science and he’s got a moral Compass, and he’s got a code that it has to be the right. He has a lot of integrity.

Yeah. I can definitely see that. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that he could travel in between multi dimensions as well.

It doesn’t hurt.

So what is your most significant achievement to date outside of your being an Eagle Scout, right.

Okay. I’m an adult, and I still I credit the fact that being an Eagle Scout and learning and also being a black belt. Those two things martial arts and Boy Scouts really made me the person that I am today. And I credit both of them with really instilling good habits, good character traits. If I can’t say either of those, then I would say being a best song author.

Nice.

I’m proud of that, because I know all the work that we put into writing that book.

Yeah. Definitely. So, I mean, you’re a black belt and what style you get to? Nice, good old grappling. Good stuff. Another commonality man. It’s like me and my son. We just take mixed martial arts for, like, the longest on and off. So I train in jujitsu and everything else under the sun. So definitely.

Right on.

So going to my last bonus question, if you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

This is going to be a non business answer. I’m a huge, huge, huge Star Wars nerd. I would love to sit down with the man himself, George Lucas, and just speak to him about, like, I mean, he created this fantastic world, this Galaxy far and away, far, far away. Like it wasn’t just like a movie, like a one shot deal or. Yeah, he made a couple movies, like he made an entire universe. I would love to just sit down and chat with him about how he created it. And just like, the guys still, like, inspiring Dave Filoni and all of them. Like, now, you know how many years later that’s amazing to me.

Another thing amazing about that is that he is still alive and well and probably attainable. You could probably work through the ranks to get in front of him for at least an hour on a podcast,

right.

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Sign me up for that one. You get him on your show, just definitely let me hear about that one for sure.

Right right.

Yeah so I mean, this is the time in the podcast. I think you’ve given a lot of Golden Nuggets, a lot of information that’s not only informative, but it’s also kind of motivating in the sense to kind of see you’ve been on this journey since essentially you’re being a kid. So it tells people that you don’t have to start when you’re 50, you can kind of find your way when you’re younger and you just do a little bit every single day to get to that end result. So I definitely appreciate that. So on this journey on this podcast, did you have any questions that you want to ask me? And this is the time that I’ll give you a microphone. The floor is yours.

I do, actually, as a podcaster, what do you love most about being able to sit down and interview people and hear their stories? Like, what is it about it that attracted you to podcasting and just being on the receiving end of hearing people’s stories? I mean, I would love to know.

Yeah yeah. So it’s multifaceted in the sense that you have a Rolodex of people that are all business people in the circles. So I kind of know some of their stories, but when I interview them, I get more pieces of it, and we kind of recap things and commonalities of our path together in business. And then I have someone like you that I’ve just recently met. And then I find out that you’re from New York. I find out that martial arts. I find out that you love Star Wars, and we have these commonalities. But we found each other through podcasting. So it gives me an opportunity to magnify my roller decks, but also magnify my education in life. I’m learning things just by hearing you speak, and I’m like, eager every single day. I’m like, do I have at least one podcast I need to record today? If I don’t, I feel kind of down. I’m like, Damn, I didn’t get to talk to someone new today. I didn’t get to talk to someone old today. I didn’t get to help somebody motivate somebody else or inspire somebody else. So that’s, like, my routine. Every single day, I want to speak to somebody to help somebody else, and also helping myself by learning something new about somebody.

That’s awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Well, I definitely appreciate your time. I think that you definitely, like, developed a situation on this podcast that again, going back to I want people to really think about what you said and rewind and listen to it again. You could start at a young age. It doesn’t mean that you need to be successful right away. You just have to kind of build up and keep growing and moving forward. So I think you definitely delivered that message. And again, I appreciate you coming on the show today.

Well I appreciate you inviting me. So thank you so much.

Great. S.A Grant. Over and out.

S2E49 Bharat Kanodia.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Alright. Everything is good. Your audio is good. 3 , 2, 1. Welcome. Welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. On Today’s show. It’s going to be an interesting particular episode. Our guest today is Bharat, and he has a YouTube channel called “what it’s worth?” And I want you to really think about the definition of that. It’s not necessarily like the value of a car or the value of an individual person. It’s like, what does your business really worth? So I’m not going to take away too much of his Thunder. I’m gonna let him kind of do more of the introduction to kind of tell you more about that YouTube channel. So, Right? Go ahead, man. Floor is yours.

Shannol Thank you for having me, man. I appreciate it. Yeah. I mean, I’m an evaluation expert, and I’ve been fortunate or unfortunate to have valued some of the most interesting or unique assets in the world. And I created my YouTube channel because I want to lift the veil, if you will, and explain to people that they can just personally value anything and everything by themselves, if they just know what to do and what to look for. My channel is, I guess, allergic to geek talk. People in my world love geek talk, and I can go toe to toe with anybody on geek talk, but I feel that does not help people. So my videos are very simple, concise and hopefully entertaining.

I mean, it’s funny. Like before I usually do podcast, I try to do a little bit of an evaluation of who I’m going to interview and just to be kind of transparent with my listeners, I’m coming into that space of podcasting to where people are falling into my lap. Like, prime example. You reached out to me. This is the first time where we’re meeting, but I think this is going to be a very interesting conversation. And so I’m looking at one of his videos, and he’s talking about economic benefits and the V minus B over C. And I’m sure he could dive into the talk shortly. But to find out, you did an evaluation on the Brooklyn Bridge is where I’m originally from. And you did an evaluation on the Atlanta airport where I currently live. So let’s just talk about that journey a little bit, right. Like, how did you even get into the opportunity to doing an evaluation on two epic pieces of land?

You know, it was very serendipitous. I was a young kid working for a company called American Appraisal. It was the largest and the oldest valuation firm in the world. In fact, they founded the evaluation business in America in 1895, and my boss one day comes up to me and says, Brat, we got this contract to value the Brooklyn Bridge. And I was like, okay, fantastic. Who’s doing it? He’s like, you are. I’m like, okay, I’m like, you know, I’ve never appraised a bridge in my life, and you want me to start with the Brooklyn Bridge of all things. And he’s like, Yep, that’s what we’re going to do. And then he also says, oh, by the way, I’m going to give you three guys when you get a train on the job like, okay, alright. So what are you going to do? You sort of just keep working and figure it out along the way. So I did. And it wasn’t as I look through the proposal, it just wasn’t the Brooklyn Bridge. And I can talk to you about this because you are from New York. So you know all the details. So it included the George Washington Bridge, the Tappan Zee Bridge, the Triborough Bridge, the Battery Tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel, Grand Central Station, 42nd Street, Time Square Station. Basically all the infrastructure owned by the New York City MTA. So you know men in black. When you are walking through that exhaust Chamber with the fans rolling in, the guy sitting here, I was just bored out of his mind. Now the Battery Tunnel entrance. I have appraised a battery tunnel entrance. So I’ve been fortunate, as I said, or are unfortunate to be thrown in deep end and to have value such assets.

So I mean, at first when I heard the Brooklyn version, I’m sitting here you know 50% creative, 50% analytical, and I’m sitting like, there’s no toll plazas on the Brooklyn Bridge. So like what’s that is it like more of a historical value. Is it more like a landmark value? Like, how the hell do you get an evaluation if there’s no costs associated or no revenue stream associated to it? I mean, you just alluded to it. Obviously, the tunnels, there’s lots of value with the reoccurring revenue stream. So just go into that a little bit more like what does the evaluation process look like? What are you seeing has value versus what doesn’t have value.

That’s a great question. So first question I always ask as evaluation expert is, what do you need evaluation for? Nobody wakes up one morning and says, hey, Chanel, I’m going to get my house value today, or I’m going to have my business value today. There’s a need or there’s a purpose for it. So the purpose for why I was valuing all the assets for the MTA was insurance. So imagine you are some big shot partner at Lloyds of London in London, sitting there smoking a cigar and watching the Twin Towers come down and you’re going, Holy shit. I might actually have to pay out these premiums someday because they were more than happy to collect these premiums. But when it came down to assessing the risk and understanding it, they were scared because they were like, wait a second. These infrastructure assets are underwritten by us. So they had hired my firm to ensure that the appraisals that they had on the books is the most up to date. So that’s why I was the one put in charge to go around the country and to value all these large infrastructure assets which were underwritten by Lloyds of London, many of them in New York City. So that was really the purpose. So in this case, it was insurance. So, yeah, some of the assets had told Plazas, like Verizon has told Plaza, Brooklyn does not. Right. So when you’re looking at valuation for insurance purposes, I need to consider the income from the asset, but at the same time, I don’t have to consider it because it’s not relevant. If the bridge were to come down today, they’re going to have to rebuild it. And that really they’re looking for replacement cost of the bridge. That a similar bridge. Similar functionality, similar capacity. What might it cost to the under a writer to rebuild that bridge?

That makes perfect sense. We’re new to each other. So I hold insurance license as well in multiple States. So I’m more so on the life insurance side. So I understand the value add that you’re describing and a lot of people always kind of explain to them understanding that with car insurance, you’re paying a premium. If that car was ever to get into accident, they’ll replace that car life insurance. You’re not going to replace a life. What you’re going to replace is the income. So what you’re talking about is kind of like that Gray area with a property. We’re not going to essentially replace the income of the bridge. We’re going to replace the cost of what it’s going to cost us to rebuild the bridge. Is that correct?

Precisely and when I say rebuild, that does not necessarily mean they need to put in the exact same Brooklyn Bridge. Again, it could be a different design, but comparable functionality, comparable capacity. Right. I mean, you know has to go from the same from, say, Manhattan to Queens. If it goes right? Manhattan to what’s the site?

You talking about the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s Manhattan. Brooklyn.

Yeah. Manhattan to Brooklyn. Sorry. Yes. So it needs to sub the similar.. exact same purpose. It can’t be different. You can’t be putting in a Basque bridge there. It has to have similar functionality.

I mean, that’s definitely interesting, because, I mean, obviously, the Brooklyn Bridge to your point, it’s a hell of a landmark. Right. When you’re talking about bridges, I mean, you can put a picture up of San Francisco, you know that bridge, right. Brooklyn Bridge. You can see it in any picture and identify does that whole value as well? Is that the tangible value to that bridge?

Unfortunately, no. And there are two reasons for this. If the bridge were to come down and they were to replace it, they can’t use the poll design, because, frankly, nobody’s going to build it using the old design. You can’t find construction workers or designers to build it like that. And Secondly, I am not smart or qualified enough to value the historic value of the Brooklyn Bridge, right? Yeah. It’s a beautiful bridge. If I were to start looking at valuation from a historic perspective. Then it becomes a piece of art. Right? Then it’s almost like trying to appraise Picasso. I mean, I’m an appraiser, but I don’t know shit about Picasso or appraising art, right? So that is really out of my school of understanding.

Okay. So let’s just time travel back, right? I mean, you’re in a hell of a niche. It’s not like a niche that you just wake up on a random Tuesday at age seven and say, hey, I want to value landmark properties. Like, how did you even get on this journey to become what you are currently?

It was serendipitous, if you will. I graduated from College with an engineering degree and didn’t want anything to do with engineering. But who’s going to give a 21 year old kid who has an engineering degree a job in finance, which is what I really wanted. But I found this one company who was looking for engineers, but to work on finance projects. So somebody who can understand bridges, even though I’m not a civil engineer, I’m a mechanical engineer, but I understand science. I understand trusses. I understand loads. So they hired me, and then they trained me to use my engineering background, but apply it to evaluation. And that was just serendipitous and turned out I was half good at it. So I stuck with it.

I think that’s really interesting. I mean, the formula is very transparent, and I always kind of preach this as far as like being a podcast or being a media person and finding your niche. Right. So I’m a podcaster that also deals with publication. So if I was to cross reference my niches, it’ll be books and people that are creating books and authors. And it’s also people that are creating podcasts and creating content. That’s my cross niche. So you did the same thing. You have an engineering background and you want to get into finance. So you found a tunnel to figure out how do I I put both these digits together. So you became more finance. But you specialize in engineering, essentially, very much.

So. Say, for example, if somebody wants to become a news anchor in Tampa, right, you catch go and become a news anchor in Tampa. You either first go to Tampa and find a job in broadcasting or some kind of media and then move your way up to news anchor, or you become a news anchor or find your way up to broadcasting in Charleston, South Carolina, and then find a position in Tampa. So there’s always got to be an intermediary step steps to get to where you want to be. So, for example, I created my YouTube channel because I really want to have a show on Netflix. Nice for educating people about valuations, about businesses, about houses, about cars, about investments. So YouTube, for me, is an intermediary step because nobody knows who the hell I am. And nobody, frankly, would give a shit. I mean, there’s so many schmucks like me who want to be on Netflix, but what are they doing about it?

Exactly.

So I decided that. All right. Well, I want to be on Netflix. Well, people need to see me and, like, my work and see what I can create. So I created the YouTube channel. So if you see my YouTube channel, I’m not a regular YouTuber. I’m not going like this going like, hey, guys, how are you doing? I don’t do that yet. If you see my episodes, the production value is pretty high. It’s all scripted at this time, but the production value is high, and my director works very hard to make sure that the field that we’re giving, even though my episodes are short, he ensures that the field that we’re giving is almost like this is broadcast or streaming show. It’s not a YouTube show, and people respond to that.

Yeah. I mean, to your credit, I’ve went through your YouTube channel and looked at it, and I think one of the episodes that resonate the most with me. I think it’s one of your highlighted episodes about the grocery store. And to your point, like the visual of you coming out the car with your kid and you’re kind of depicting the story which you’re talking to the camera. So you’re kind of doing, like a narrative is definitely an influential factor for that target audience, which essentially, I would think of business owners. I can see myself walking into this environment, and I was thinking about buying a grocery store. What’s the evaluation of a grocery store and you kind of take their hands and you walk them through it while you’re walking in there with your kids. So to your point, I think definitely you’re taking action to get that perceived value to then have a pitch for Netflix. So I definitely commend you for that. I think it’s a hell of a journey, and I would like to see where it ends up.

Yeah. Thank you. No, it’s been fun. And that’s where I want to be. I want to be on Netflix or broadcast TV because I think this can really help people. People want to know what things are worth. And, you know, back in the day, people wouldn’t know. Over the last 15 to 20 years, Shannol, evaluations have become a very important part of our lives. The stocks we buy or the houses we buy or sell or the cars we buy or sell or whatever we do, the College we go to, everything has a value in a perceived value. But once you understand what valuation is and what increases value and what decreases value, it can really help your life. No different than understanding how to deal with credit card debt or dealing with a bank or dealing with a mortgage, you should know how to value things.

That’s very true. Very true. So on this journey right now, you’re doing evaluation. You’re not just doing a house appraisal. You’re doing multi billion dollars evaluations. Like, what’s the worst experience you’ve encountered on this journey of evaluating such high ticket items?

It is scary. Many of times nobody trains you for doing these kinds of evaluations. There’s no go to guru. You are the guru. You have to declare yourself as the guru because you are committing to learning everything that needs to be learned to do the evaluation correctly. So that is a scary part. And it is also probably the most exciting part that there ain’t no book. Nobody has a YouTube channel saying that how to appraise a Brooklyn Bridge. Nobody’s written the book on this. There’s no cliff notes, whatever you uncover, whatever you discover and learn and you apply. That the go to standard. So it is scary and exciting. Nobody’s done this.

Got it. So in your business structure, right? Obviously, you have a financing, a completely different understanding and more in depth understanding of most people. How is your business structured? Are you, like, a C Corp. S Corp. LLC?

We’re an LLC, and we used to be a C Corp and we switched to an LLC just because my CPA told me to. So I said, Fine, I don’t care. It’s just schematics as far as I’m concerned. So we’re an LLC.

So we always hear about the 20 years, right? That’s perceived to be like an overnight success. Somebody pops up like, prime example. When you get your Netflix TV show, they’re going to be like, oh, my God. Who’s this guy? He came out of nowhere. But in reality, this journey has took a period of time. How long have you been on your journey to your current success?

My YouTube channel launched in August, so technically, my sort of media journey has been since August, so it’s been less than six months. But it took me time and a lot of learning a lot of mistakes to decide to create a YouTube channel. You’re a marketing person, so you’ll appreciate it. I had spent about $150,000 over the last three years in marketing in SEO and conference sponsorships and gifts and PR. I mean, you name it. I did it. I threw money at everything. Results marginal. Every time I hire an SEO team or a PR person after they would take my retainer for the first three months. And after the first three months, when I expect results, they would come and say, oh, you need to give us content. And I was like, Well, you should have told me that three months ago, but Nevertheless, I’ll start giving you content and the more content I gave them, the more content they wanted. And then they said, oh, you got to give me this type of content, that type of content. And this is what you’re not doing, right? So, like, wait a second timeout timeout. I hired different people and they all had the same issues at some point I felt like I was being taken advantage of. So I figured out that marketing or all this SEO, PR, all this bullshit, what really is what really works is content and original content and video content is the King of Kings. So I just invested in video content after losing sleep for three years over stupid things and stupid investments I made. And ever since I’ve done this investment, I’ve been happier. I have been more connected to people now. When people approach me, they have seen me. They have seen my videos, right? So they have seen me walk and talk and describe things and be authentic on TV because I do my own writing. So it comes off as authentic. So when they come to me, they already feel like they know me. I mean, what else could you ask for?

It’s true. Very true. So with that, right. And I think that’s a good segue to my next question. If you can go back and do everything all over again, what would you do differently?

I would have started my YouTube channel, like, ten years ago, you know, just let people see me and talk to me and just keep educating people in sort of writing blogs or spending money on SEO or hiring PR people. I would have just created a YouTube channel. Nobody in my business has a YouTube channel. Nobody has put this kind of effort into marketing, into education. People are writing blogs. But let’s face it, how many people really read anymore? If I want to learn anything, I just go to YouTube and type whatever I want to learn about, and it pops up. The only thing that doesn’t pop up is if I want to learn anything about evaluation. So if I want to learn something about, hey, what is a podcast worth? No, there’s no video. If I want to learn something about what is a hotel worth, there’s no video. If I want to learn something about what’s an e commerce company worth, there’s no video except for mine. Okay.

So have you dealt with any like, I guess, franchise in the sense. I mean, you’re talking about podcasting. And that made me think about, like, a conversation with somebody that kind of offered to essentially franchise the Boss Uncaged podcast. So diving into that, like, where would you start in evaluating a podcast in that market?

See, at the end of the day, it really depends on the the quality of the content and the recurring audience. If you have set audience that are your fans and they listen to you day in, day out. That’s what’s valuable. If you have one show that all of a sudden you have a million downloads and the next show, you have a thousand downloads again, that’s not valuable. So, Seth Rogan, that’s what Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan. He just sold his podcast to Spotify for 100 million because he’s got avid listeners, people who listen to him every day. That’s really the quality. That’s really what attracts people. So my whole goal is to build an audience using YouTube channel so that people can see me and see my work and see my creativity and using that as a launching pad to get into broadcast or streaming media.

So it seems like you have a very big handle on general business, and you have, like, a hustle mentality. Is that something that was ingrained in you as a child, that you grew up in an entrepreneurial family?

Oh, very much so. Very much so. You know, my father was an entrepreneur. He was a businessman. My grandfather, everybody in my family is an entrepreneur. And they’ve been like this for a long time. Except my brother and I, we are not. Well, I am. But back in the day, I wasn’t. I started my career as a regular nine to five, and my brother did, too. And that was totally cool because you got to make your mistakes somewhere. First learn from good bosses and then go out on your own people who just go out in entrepreneurship right off the bat. I don’t know if that’s the smartest thing to do.

Okay, so on this journey of your current entrepreneurial endeavors, right? Life happens. So how do you juggle your current hustle and your work life with your family life?

carefully, You know, I’ve had to force myself to become a person of a routine because unless you have a routine, you can’t do anything. I have to write. I have to respond to clients. I have to lead my team. I have to talk to my editing team. I have to talk to my producer and my director. I have to deal with my clients. I have to attend client meetings. I have to attend networking events, have to spend time with my kids. So everything takes time. I have time slots every day, hour by hour. Okay. This is my time slot for this is my time for that. Back in the day, I would be sitting on my email and wasting my all day. And it’d be like, wait a second. I’m working, but I don’t really do anything today. And then this happens with most of us. And it still happens with me sometimes. But now what I’ve done is I stick with these time slots. I don’t spend too much time on LinkedIn or Facebook or just responding to emails. Nowadays, I respond to emails in the morning. Once I’m there because you have emails from overnight, so I respond to them and then I switch off my email. I’ll respond to them in the afternoon and in the afternoon I have, say, 50 emails. I just go from bottom up, I respond to all of them, and then I’m done. And if somebody doesn’t like it, sometimes nowadays people get pissed off when you don’t respond to their email within an hour or 2 hours. I’m like, Well, I guess we’re not going to be doing business together, are we?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think I just finished reading Deep Work, and they were talking about that particular element about if you’re receiving an email for somebody, they should make that email congruent and easy enough for you to respond. Back example of that would be, hey, do you have time for a meeting today? Well, I don’t know. Why don’t you give me some time options so I could set of me doing the work looking for the time slot, say, hey, do you have an availability between three and 04:00? That slim it down for me to say yes or no, and I can easily respond versus me having to stop, leave my email, look at my calendar and then try to figure out times for you. So to your point, it’s kind of getting into the deep work mentality. You have to kind of turn things off so you can get to the work and then turn them on afterwards. So diving into that a little bit more, right? You’re saying you have routines? What does your morning routine look like?

Most days my call start at 04:30 a.m. So I live in the West Coast West Coast. People usually start early because East Coast people are already 3 hours ahead. I wake up at 04:00, I shower, shave and I am on my phone or on Zoom by 4:30. I have back to back calls from 4:30 till 09:00. I take a break at 09:00 and from nine to 11:30 is my creative time. So I sit down and I write or think about topics for new shows. And then I have a call with my production team around 11:30 and then I have from 12 to 3 is my time for meetings. And the reason I set up 12 to 3 time for meetings is because I always used to feel so sleepy and lethargic after lunch I said, you know what? Fuck it. I’m just going to set that time for meetings, so I got nowhere to hide. So. I just sort of bullied myself into doing meetings from twelve to three. So even if I’m sleepy, I got to pretend to be active to podcasting. I do during my creative time. So this is my creative time. So I get to spend that time with you right now.

I definitely appreciate that. So in that journey, right? I always ask this question because part of your creative time and on your journey, you’ve had opportunities to learn multiple different things. And I would assume because you’re well spoken. I would think that you’ve read many books on that journey and you probably have many books that you’re probably reading currently right now. And because of that, I’ve created a book club for listeners of this podcast. So my question is, what books did you read to help you get to where you are? What books are you currently reading? And what books do you want to recommend.

So to be very honest, I am not an avid reader, and it sucks to be saying this because it’s not sexy, right? Everybody says, oh, I read so many books, and the successful people read books. I read books like the last book I read was this one. And I thought this was excruciatingly boring. The New Great Depression by Jim Ricard. Good book. But frankly, I think the authors make it very, very boring nowadays. They don’t know how to write. They good at their subject, but they’re terrible writers. They really need to work on their writing craft. So if I frankly want to learn anything, Shannol, I go to YouTube. I really do. I would rather watch something on YouTube than read about it because I feel YouTube is visual. I always learn more when it’s visual, and that’s why I created a channel. I had an option to write a book. I could have written a book. I can write a book right now. I already have the material. All I got to do is compile it, you know, a week or two work. But I’m not going to do that because I think it’s boring. Who the hell wants to read a book? It’s boring. I’d rather just watch a YouTube channel and I encourage everybody to do the same thing. But coming back to your question, the books that have inspired me have been actually this one . I am a Cook. This is one of my favorite books, Sacred Geometry and Deciphering the Code by Stephen Skinner. And this one they talk about the sun and the moon and the stars and the Earth and how animals living things in geometry is all connected and how it is all sort of God’s secret plan or Mother Nature’s secret plan. Fabulous book, if you ever get a chance.

Yeah, definitely. Take a look at that. I think it’s definitely just going back to what you said. And to your point. For the longest, I hated reading books. And then I got to the point to where I started listening to more audio books and watching videos. It’s kind of like that point now to where how could make the content, make the content a little more richer. And if I want the multitask or if I just want to kind of lay back and listen to something. So I definitely think that you’re in the right direction, in the right space. As far as how could we make that content a little bit richer?

For example, you’re podcasting. You think the work, your body of work is anything less than a book?

Hell, no, no, no. But I dibble in both. Right. So for me, I’ve published seven books and I also have a podcast. And I’m working on the integration between because some people. But I’ve just learned and being in the marketing, you can’t appease everyone what you could segment ate. So I have some people that are avid readers that want a physical book. They want to crack the spine, smell the glue. Some people they don’t have time for that. They want to listen to audio, and some people just want to. They are traveling or whatever. They want to visually see what you look like here. You see your body action, see your language, see the way you say particular things, much like your videos.

One thing I would have to say that writing a book gives you instant credibility. So many people I know who are speakers or who are authors or who are business coaches. They just end up writing a book because they say people respect you more. People think that you know what the hell you’re talking about. If you’ve written a book, even though it might have sold like four copies on Amazon, now you still get the a published author title, which frankly, I couldn’t care for. I don’t know. I’m saying that right now, but maybe six months from now you’ll be seeing me promoting a book but right now that’s not what i am looking to do.

Alright, that may come with Netflix contract.

they might make it prerequisite that. Hey, just write a damn book before you get on our show. Fine. I already have the material.

Very interesting. So where do you see yourself in 20 years from now?

20 years from now, I want to be running a school after my Netflix deal. I want to be running a school because I think I’m an educator at heart and I think the education system has left a lot to be desired. I would like to change that. And instead of just bitching about it, I’m going to do something about it. I.

Can definitely see you is by watching your YouTube videos. You have a certain style of elegance to the way your delivering that content. So I think that’s what’s going to take you a lot farther than I think that you could even imagine, right? I mean, you’re giving content which are giving such a value ad and you’re holding the hands of your listeners step by step by step, which is a great foundation for teaching.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, definitely. So what tools do you use in your industry that you would not be able to do without software, for example?

Oh, I’ve tried to use minimum software. Personally, my team uses different software, but I’m more of a people person, so I sort of engage with my team one on one. The software, so to speak, that works for me is my routine and consistency. So I speak to my team every day. We have daily scrum calls. We see exactly what’s happening because people can make mistake once they might miss something once or twice, or they might not get it once or twice. But if you’re talking to them every day and you’re being polite and you’re being kind and you’re generous, they see that they recognize that and they respond to it. I’ve made this mistake in the past where I will talk to my team once a week, and I think that’s bullshit. I think you got to talk to them every day. Now, you don’t have to grill them every day. It doesn’t have to be a two hour long meeting where everybody’s going, like, Holy Jesus Christ. I got to spend 2 hours with this guy again. No, it can be anywhere from ten minutes, 15 minutes to a half hour depending on whatever needs to be talked about. But you got to touch on it every day, every day. That’s my software.

Interesting. Definitely. Interesting. So let’s say I’m 36 years old. I’m working for some equity firm, and I’m deciding I want to kind of step out on my own. I’m looking for something. What words of wisdom would you give me? It influenced me to continue on my entrepreneurial journey.

Whatever time you think it’s going to take you to break even or how much ever money you think you need to break even, estimate the maximum you can, right. So if you think it’s going to take you six months to break even, are you really sure six months is the maximum time you can think of? Yeah, it probably is going to be nine to ten months. If you say it’s nine to ten months, it’s not going to be nine to ten months. Just double that. It’s going to take you 20, 22 months. So whatever is the highest number you can come up with to estimate your time to break even. Double it because it always does. I have thought it’s going to take me a year to break even. My company broke even on the month. Usually companies. I knew this going in that usually it takes 24 to 30 months for companies to break even. But I was young and stupid and ambitious. I said, oh, I can make it happen in twelve months. No way took me 24 months.

Okay, okay. So how can people find you online? Obviously. I think right now your funnel starts with your YouTube channel. So what’s your YouTube channel? Your website, your Facebook account, so forth and so forth.

Best way to reach to me is through my YouTube channel. My YouTube channel has my email. And if you reach out to me, if you have a question, I’d be happy to answer it for you. I enjoy educating people about valuations.

and the YouTube channel is What’s it Worth?

What’s it worth? Just so just go to YouTube put what’s it worth, bharat it’ll pop up. There aren’t too any Bharat on YouTube.

This is funny that you brought up that name, right? And it’s going back to the episode that I had with Damon. And before the show he was talking about, like, how our names kind of throw people off. So like Damon, people ever thought of his name, and I was like, Shannol to Shannol. And I get Shantel Shinobi and everything else. So a couple of times on this show, you said my name, like, shannal. And I was just kind of like, I’m smiling entirely. But I want you to get that thought across. But I was just like, what is a good opportunity to tell you that it’s Shannol.

Sorry!

No, no, it’s funny because it’s one of the those things, like, when you hear someone’s name, it takes a while for you to kind of understand the syllables of a name like your name. I literally was like, how do I say your name and trying to figure out how do you say your name? So this is a good example of when you meet someone for the first time, you kind of have to kind of go through these things to kind of figure out. So moving forward, I think both of us going to understand each other’s name, right? I know how to say your name, you know, to say my name and then moving forward, we have an opportunity to if I decide to send somebody to your direction, I’m not going to mess up your name in that instance. Right.

You got my name right off the bat.

Yeah, but it’s part of podcasting, right? It’s part of interviewing people because a lot of times people will be like, wonder why I don’t say someone’s last name? Because I’ve learned that a lot of times last names are harder than first name. So I always use everyone by first name. Just because even though, after they told me their last name, I still probably would Butcher the last name. It Is one of those tricks of the trade. So, I mean, throw it to the bonus round, right. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive, who would it be? And why?

No question in my mind has to be Teddy Roosevelt. He was one of the greatest presidents we ever had. He gave us the national parks. He gave us a Panama Canal. He ended the war between Russia and Japan. We owe him a lot of debt. And he was a man’s man. He was a Hunter. He was a rancher. I would like to spend just 24 hours with him just listening to stories.

I think that’s a testament to your legacy, right? You’re in engineering, so you could see the value. And most people may see Teddy and may see them for totally different things. But the fact that you went into the infrastructure that he’s developed from the architectural standpoint is a hell of an insightful thing that I think the average person would have just blown pass them. They wouldn’t realize it. So definitely. I think that’s an insightful answer. I definitely appreciate that answer.

Thank you.

Going into my last question. If you could be a superhero, who would you be in? Why?

You know, I’ve recently seen this movie Antman. You’ve seen it?

Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. It’s actually pretty cool production. When I was a kid, I used to dream about having you know i used to play with those hot wheel cars. I would always dream about being able to get inside that car, but still go 80 miles an hour and zip through everywhere and nobody be able to see you. And for me, Antman was; Holy crap that’s the guy want to be. So yeah, and man would be cool, even though it’s a terrible name. But I like the premise of it.

And I think you’re also like, I wouldn’t say tech guy, but you understand the science of things. You probably like the science part of it as well, too. It’s definitely good. I mean, obviously, at the end of the podcast, I always give the opportunity whoever I’m interviewing, opportunity to interview me. I mean, during this journey of this conversation, and this is the first time we’re meeting. You may or may not have questions that have come up. So the microphone is yours. Feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

You know, when I reached to you, I was most intrigued by the name of your podcast, Boss Uncaged, tell me the story behind it.

So Boston Uncaged is one of things like my other company that i own is called Cerebral 360, and there’s a whole story behind that in cerebral intellect, mind, blah, blah, blah, blah. But nobody knows how to spell that. Right. Kind of going back to the name, trying to spell cerebral. It’s kind of like phonetically becomes difficult. And I was like, Who’s my real audience? Who am I really talking to? When I’m talking to the easiest four little word, I can think about bosses, right? Boss symbolizes entrepreneurs, startups, small business owners. All of those multiple levels of letters are all condensed into four letters. Boss. That’s the first part. The second part is being Uncaged. Part of my audience is people that are wanting to leave corporate America, people that are wanting to make the leap. So they are behind bars currently, right now. So in becoming a boss, they have to become uncaged, they have to break out the everyday nine to five situation. Take a leap of faith, so that’s the combination of the two being a boss and being uncaged. So that’s why I named it. Both of these words are very simple words, and they have a lot of meaning, and they could define a lot of content. Bind.

It’s pretty bad ass. I like it. And I’m most surprised the domain name was available because I don’t think that’s a domain name that could be so easily available unless you bought it a long time ago.

Within two to three years.

Yeah, I’m surprised you found it, but no, it’s a great name. It’s cool. It’s different yet at the same time, it points in the right direction, same way with my name. What’s it worth? Like. Okay, what? What’s it worth? Okay, once people start getting is like, oh, yeah. Okay, that makes sense.

It’s self defined. I mean, I think your brand is definitely a self defined name because, I mean, your episode start off right away. It’s kind of like you want to know the evaluation of Airport. Here it is. You want to know the evaluation of supermarket and you’re going right into the definition of your title right into your topic.

I am no bullshit kind of person, and nobody wants to hear me up on the phone or listen on YouTube. I’m cool and all, but I’m no Dolly Parton, and I know that. So I just get right to it.

Yeah, well, I mean, if you have any other questions, this will be the time. If not, then I definitely appreciate your time coming on the show today.

It was great talking to you, shannol. I really appreciate you having me.

Yeah, I definitely appreciate. I think you given our listeners some insight, and it’s always opportunity for me to understand that there’s a million different ways to make money, and it’s a different opportunity. Always right around the corner. And until someone kind of hear what you do, they may not realize that that’s an opportunity for them to become uncaged boss themselves into your space.

Pretty much,

S.A Grant, over and out.

S2E47 William Harris(bill).m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

You got like two different aliases. Let me get this.

Yeah, I feel bad. You got that bad job popping. I’m like, man, I got to get one of those.

Yeah, next time around, man, I know you’re still building your podcast. So I mean, it comes with time, really and truly, as you see things and get your hands on it. Get it and ride with it, man. We recording. So are you ready?

Yes, sir.

Alright. Three, two, one. Welcome. Welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcasts on today’s show. We have well, let me back it up before I tell you who we have on the show. Kind of like figuring out through the great Vin. And this is the beautiful part of having podcasts. You meet one person that lives in Nevada. Edgar right. And I had a podcast with him. And then he was just like, Yo, I got my buddy. He lives in Atlanta, same time you live. And I’m like, oh, really? Hook me up. Then we get on the phone and we have some commonalities. We have some synergy going out to his podcast. So without further Ado, man, bill, how are you doing today?

I’m great, brother. Thanks for having me.

Great. Great. So I mean, give our audience a little bit more insight about who you are and what you do?

Okay. I’m a full time real estate broker and I’ve been fully licensed since 2005. I got the real estate because I was in it and I got laid off in 2005. So when I got my real estate license because I had investment properties, I was thinking I’m in the game. So let me go ahead and go for a time. And and it was good. But then, like what the crash happened? went and got my MBA. So by the time I finished my MBA, real estate was back. So never even went on one interview. Just went full time back in the real estate. Yeah.

So earlier this year we had like, a whole real estate month thing. So we had like, whole sellers, we had funding, we had real estate agents. We also had a guy that kind of buys and flips, but you’re on a different spectrum. I mean, all of those are completely separate from what you do. So kind of break down the differences of the others versus yourself.

So I deal in those rooms too. So I kind of out the box. So I’m not your traditional real estate broker where I just try to go and buy, sell a house. Some people say I wear a lot of hats. Alright. For example, I have one client who came to me. I said, okay, I’m a doctor. I have X amount of dollars in the bank and I want to make a nice return.

Okay.

So I give you the number. I think it was a couple hundred thousand. So it came and said, okay, well, the type of return you want you won’t be able to get with a flip. We have to do several flips and they can just get too messy in not for your first rodeo. So how do you feel about no construction? He said, cool. Let’s go. I said I agree. I found him alive in Sandy Springs, but 300,000 now he’s all in. Let’s say he’s all in at 700,000. I’m going to list the property for 2 million. So after everything, let’s say taxes and fees and we don’t get 2 million. Let’s say we get 1.8. Let’s say Commission taxes is 100. He walked away with $700,000. So unless you know about game stop unless you can day tray. Yeah. 700,000 hell of return.

So I mean, why did you decide? I mean, obviously you could have just stayed as a real estate agent. So kind of define the difference between the standard real estate agent and a broker.

Alright. So standard real estate agent. They kind of start out with their family and friends. And most agents in Atlanta got a hundred different hustles. So whenever someone interviews me, I always say I’m not saying do business with me, but make sure you do business with someone that’s full time, because when you go to a dentist, you don’t go to a dentist that doesn’t do it full time. You can go to a dentist that create LLCs web site. You go to a dentist, the dentistry all day, every day. That’s all they do. So that’s the one thing I tell everyone is that when you’re dealing with an agent because generally agents or someone, they might work a nine to five. And they just say real estate when they get off work on the weekend. And real estate has a lot of moving parts. And unfortunately to test to pass to get your real estate, don’t talk about on moving parts. It just talk about he’s got a couple of surface and you know, I get people come to me all the time like, yeah, Ma was trying dealing with song so I could never reach them. They probably had a job and he’s a broker. We much more hands on. And we generally have some people under us. And to become a broker, you have to be in the field for X amount of time. It’s like medicine school. You know, I have residency. So it’s real estate agent. That’s their residency then as a broker. You now doctor.

So it’s talking about more. So about the brokers, right? I mean, obviously a real estate agent will get paid a Commission for selling a deal. But as a broker, you pretty much have real estate agents under you and you get pieces of their pie as well per their sales. Is that correct?

I do

got you.

I’m not greedy though. I don’t take a lot because most of my agents now and it’s crazy. I got like seven. They were all friends or highly referred and I’m just starting out. So I’ll be the first to tell you, I know real estate, but I don’t have my team down to a science, so they’re almost like guinea pig. I’m like you testing me out. I’m testing you up. So I don’t charge them a lot because I don’t have my systems in place yet. I’m still trying to see what works, what doesn’t work. So I was transparent with me. I’m not charging you a lot because I can’t afford it. I can’t charge you a lot because I’m not. I don’t feel I’m in a position to charge them a lot because I’m not as professional as I need to be. But I told them as we get there. And if you haven’t, once we get there, all prices is going up.

So you’re talking about professionalism. And I think on your journey, you had a lot of successes here and there as well. I mean, you had opportunity to be on, like, a TV show recently. I think it was like 2021. You talk about that show a little bit.

So the show, they reached out to me, 2019. I I thought it was like fraud because and it’s funny too. So they were reaching out to me and Mary, the first light reaching out to me. I never heard of either one of them. So I was just sending a bolster voicemail, not return the calls. So I did some research was like, oh, both of these are real. So of course, I chose the real estate one, and I just can’t see me doing Married first site. I mean, they kept reaching out to me and they won’t stop. So I finally said, okay, I make X amount a month. So unless you’re gonna charge me or give me X amount, stop calling me and they stop coming.

So i mean how do those deals work? I had some other podcast recently where a guy he’s working on his YouTube channel, and he’s trying to work that into, like, a Netflix deal. So how did that business side of television workout for you?

It’s cool. It’s still going. They came to me because they don’t really have that many people in Atlanta. So it was almost. I think at first I wasn’t the first one in Atlanta, but I know I was one of the first ones in Atlanta. So to them, they just approached me and said, hey, we like, your work ethic. We like what you’re doing. And we would like to have it on our show. So as I looked and did some research on and said, okay, it can be a win win for me. I was doing it to try to get on another show, but another show reached out to me, but I could never get what they wanted. So the other show, they specifically want you to have two listing side by side. You know how hard that is.

Does a duplex count?

nah duplex don’t count. They want you to have two houses side by side in the same neighborhood. I like, man, you know how hard it is. So I never got on the second show because I could never get two houses side by side and say, neighborhood. So they wanted to have a show and showing how the two family stays the house or they want to make. I can’t really remember the concept, but I just know that that was the main ingredient, but I never got on the show. And that one the first show that I’m on, it’s Internet show, Apple TV, Amazon. But the other one was going to be like a major network. But I could never get it.

So let’s step back, time travel a little bit like, where are you from originally Just to start with that

North Carolina.

So how did you grow up in North Carolina and decide that you wanted to get into real estate? Because I wouldn’t think that was probably your first choice. But how did you get into it?

Actually, I’m third generation. So my grandfather was in it. My father was in it. My uncle was in it. But I was really my eyes really open to it, because in the eight I saw, my uncle had a house in Durant, Carlina War, and he had a house in Florida, and they both had pools. And I know a lot of people young. They probably don’t think that much of that. But when I was coming up, the black dude with two houses, both of them had a pool and he had multiple porches. There wasn’t settling drugs or wasn’t any field entertainment. I was like, a long hook. I ain’t. You know what real estate was? I like, do real estate? I’m doing real estate.

Nice on this real estate journey. I mean, obviously you became a real estate agent. You became a broker and anybody that’s on an entrepreneurial journey, like you’ve been, there’s always some kind of crazy hurdle or crazy story. What’s the most crazy or interesting thing that’s ever happened to you while on this journey?

I’m dealing with it right now. Yeah, I’m dealing with it right now. You live in Car, right? Yeah. You know what paper mill is?

Yeah, I do.

Okay. You got your phone in front of you?

Phone In front of me

Alright Google 43 41 paper Mill roll.

43

41.

41

Paper Mill Road.

Paper Mill Road, northeast Southeast.

It should just come up.

Yeah. Oka i got it.

alright what do you see?

Well, trying to give me directions.

Go to the house or a rendering, its the rendering.

Is it a new lot or old?

Actually, it’s a house that needs to be torn down. But when you Google, the rendering should come up. Did the rendering come up?

It’s taking me to Google Maps and showing me like, the lot. It’s not showing me anything related to the house.

If you go to Google and just type it in, it should bring it up and not the Li. It should bring up the rendering of the project that I’m currently involved in.

So tell me, tell me more about this project. While i look it up.

So this is a project where the owner has the home on paper mill. I don’t know if you see it.

Yeah, I see the six 0s.

Alright, there we go.

Yeah.

Okay, So long story short, the owner came to me and said I want 1.2 for my land, for my lot. I said, Sir, I can’t get you 1.2, but if you allow me to build on it, I can get you 1.2. So he said, okay, let’s go. Now where it gets tricky. I had a builder who I brought to the table. We tried to go around me, so now I got to start all over and I just acquired a new building. So that’s the most interesting and hurdle I have now because one I start all over to when a lot of money involved people start at the real weird and funny.

Yeah, I’m looking at this property. So just for the viewers that haven’t had opportunity to pull it up. First of all, this damn place have like four garages or eight garages? Like how many garages does this thing have?

You can have six to eight.

Okay. And it’s not like a golf course on the roof.

Yes, that’s play on the roof and what it didn’t have. It has a Cabana in the back. So that’s the one thing it doesn’t have that rendering doesn’t show.

Yeah. Yes, I’m just looking at the rendering. So this thing is going for like $4 million. Yeah, it’s definitely a car resident 100% through and through. So like dealing with properties of that scale. I mean, obviously the commissions could be great, but I would think deals like that probably take a lot longer to close than a standard regular 300,000 $200,000 deal. Is that correct?

Yeah, definitely because it’s so many moving parts. The only well, the main blessing in it is that the owner owns it free and clear. So being that he owns it friend clear, it opens up the possibility. Now it’s still difficult because it’s only a small pool of people that combine that. But you’ll be surprised I’m getting a lot of activity on it and to backtrack a little bit. But we spoke about earlier. The reason it’s been such so difficult is because the first project I was telling you about where the dot is looking at walking away with 700,000. That’s going to be the model house and it’s being completed now and hopefully be done in a month. Hopefully be done. So the problem is whenever someone is buying a house to that magnitude, the first thing they say is okay, well, let me see your work. Well, I haven’t even shown my work because the other house hasn’t been done yet. So that’s why I’m saying it’s so difficult because if so many things out of my control. Your term, like hurting cats. Cats hurting cats.

Yeah.

That’s what is almost like, like hurting cats.

I mean, obviously, there’s different style of brokers, right? There’s one broker that may say, you know, we want a neighborhood full of HUD homes, right. And then you have the other side and you have the middle grade. So you’re obviously on more of the upper echelon. I mean, this one property essentially is $4 million. And I know part of your answer is going to be the commissions are great, but do you have anything else, like a lower grade home in, like, your portfolio or you strictly are on the luxury side of things?

Oh, no, I do flips, too. Like small scale flips.

Okay.

Yeah, I do small scale flips. And actually, I didn’t even do that for the Commission, the one I’m working on for the model house. I just did that because he wanted a higher ROI, so higher risk, higher reward. That’s how they came about. So it’s not. I just set out to be like, okay, I’m the luxury. He just came to me and said he want a certain dollar amount. I said, okay, well, this way, you need to go. And then the $4,000,000.01. I mean, I got it.

He won’t 1.2 just for the land. So for him to get 1.2 for the land, I got to build something that makes sense. That’s how I ended up in a luxury. But no, I’m working on the house now in Atlanta, when the owner bought it for, like, 126. Actually, I’m working out a minority on hedge phone out of California, so they end it for 126, probably going to put 120 into. So let’s say we all in 250, but it just say no problem for 400 got you got you and the scope of things be a hedge fund.

I mean, obviously, that’s not the only deal that they’re probably doing. So that’s still big money collectively based upon how many deals they’re doing. At the same time, I dive into you like a business model a little bit more. Is your system set up like I thought, the other Realtors, and they’re usually underneath a branch, or they’re usually under another realtor or a Realty firm. Is your company set up that way? And if it is, do you have an LLC or S Corp. Or C Corp?

I have an S quote. And I am under PalmerHouse. I’m on the farm house, and I have LLC, too. But I haven’t even used my LLC because I’ve been doing so many other projects for people that have started my own projects. So generally I want to get to my own projects just because I’m tired of making other people rich. I mean, when we close the transaction, it always say cash to sell it. Man. Numbers, numbers beginning crazy. I’m like, man, I’m playing myself.

So we always hear about the 20 years it takes someone to become successful. And the outside, somebody may be listening to this and saying, this guy is selling $4 million houses. He has another deal in Atlanta. That’s, like, 1.5 million. And they never heard of you. Right? So it’s kind of like an overnight success. How long did it take you to get to currently where you are 20 years?

Well, almost. I started O five. So almost.

Okay.

Almost.

If you go backwards in time, what’s one thing that if you could do it all over again.

You would change that’s a lot. But the main thing, not to anybody, go with your gut. As I had so many gut feelings about things, he didn’t do it. I look back and be like, oh, God. And one of them not in real estate. One of them outside the box. It’s in Ethereum. I heard about thereum when it was pennies coin base.

Yeah.

Didn’t get it. I mean, somebody came to me like, the. Yeah, it was crazy. I was, like, didn’t pour pour the trick on something else in that slot. So I would say, go with your gut because my gut said went with Ethereum. But the other one was much more well known. Just be honest with it was trucking should have never got into it, lost a lot of money. And I would say the one thing I learned is stick with what you’re good at. And I’m good at real estate.

So I wasn’t good at tracking. It’s just I just wanted to get another revenue stream, trying to make trying to make money losing moment. I would definitely say someone on the journey make up, go in to good man. Another good I had with the belt line. But at that time, I was doing the recession. I just know how the funds, but I still think I could have made it happen if I just whatever, pump it down and be serious about it because the built line, they were the Bell line by sled digging before the bill line started.

Like before they made the introduction, Mandam, houses going for $10,000. The mile is now selling for 400. Half a million was going for $10,000.

Crazy man.

Yeah.

I mean, the Belt line project has been on the floor for, like, decades. So it’s kind of one of those things. You could have sat and held it. But, you know, your payday. You didn’t know when the payday was going to come.

I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. But you’re right. You didn’t know when. But here’s the thing. Renting Atlanta has always been strong. If something called $10,000, you can rent it. You got your money back the first year.

Yeah, you’re right about that. Definitely right about that.

So that would be the major one, like, the whole belt line, man, I miss like, I miss. I was thinking my stomach about that.

So, I mean, you’re talking about your growing your practice and you’re trying to formulate your team. What kind of systems do you have in place? I mean, how are you finding your leads? How are you managing your team? What you got going on right now?

So my lead, there’s no rhyme or reason with my leads. My leads is calling and trying to stay close with my sphere as well as just trying to take care of people that I’ve done business with. And no, just try to do the small thing. Like, for example, now I got a client that he’s the first time home buyer, and he’s like, hey, man, I need a garage, though. I was like, I cool. I buy garage something for your house. Home in prison. I’m thinking it’s a small gesture floor by.

So.

People remember stuff like that and also, too, in my business, you got to remember people not dumb. So a lot of people in real estate, they think people dumb, like, they really, really, really think people dumb, like, people know when you rushing them. People know when you got other stuff going on, people can sense that and they remember that. So they like, I just felt like I was a number or I was a check. They’re not going to finish with you. So for me, it’s just try not to stay in contact.

In general. I meet somebody we cool. Like, I went to Columbia for new years. I went to Columbia, and this is my second time got one of my clients. So I try to it doesn’t always get there cool. But I try to go with the house afterwards. I just try to stay in contact with them and just let them know. Like, I’m not looking at you like, a check. I’m looking at you because I’m grateful that you gave me an opportunity because you can go in your backyard and pick up a rock and throw and had a real estate agent is that many real estate agents?

So when you do business with me, I’m grateful that you gave me the opportunity because you had to give me an opportunity. And I tried it such.

Yeah, I could definitely. I definitely commend you for that because, I mean, being in the space, I can kind of see that some people kind of look at. Okay. And a lot of times when I talk to somebody, like, if I’m trying to work on land or I’m looking for a land opportunity and I get on the phone with somebody, I’m not going to allude to them about how much I want to spend or really want to spend. I just want to kind of hear what they have to offer based upon something small.

And I may say, hey, I’m looking for, like, 20 $30,000 acre of land South Georgia, and based upon that response. And, you know, it’s going to be something like that. It’s kind of like, answer drop in a bucket, right. But they don’t know that may be a bigger part of a bigger portfolio. And we’re just looking for an add on. So a lot of times people just push that to the side, but it seems like you’re more like. Okay, well, let me work with this person, because this may be the tip of the iceberg also, too.

You never know who know who true. I mean, you never know who know who nothing, right. And you can’t, especially in my book, you can’t judge a book by code. Somebody might pull up in $100,000 car. I got a $100,000 injury and close, and the credit is 400, and they got no money to bank. So you cannot judge a book by its cover. That’s what I would definitely tell anybody on the journey, because most people with money don’t look like it, right? Most people that look like they got money.

I don’t have it. But in society, especially, unfortunately, in our community, they all go to Asian.

Yeah, it’s all about perception, man. Definitely about perception. I think earlier you alluded to you have an entrepreneurial background. As far as, like, you had family members. Like, was that, like, just one particular business? Everybody in the bloodline was more so real estate. Or did you have any other Hustlers in your family?

I would say I have more Hustlers. Unfortunately, one wasn’t legal. I would definitely say I come from a family and husband. All of a legal. It wasn’t that bad. It was just weird. And it’s crazy.

Legal someplace.

Yeah, it’s legal. Now. You know what I’m saying? It’s crazy. So I just think, like, man, are they gonna let other people out that’s on we charges they ain’t gonna have. So, yeah, I come from a family of Hustlers because both of my grandfathers had jobs and have tiles.

Nice. So, I mean, how do you juggle your work life with your family life?

I’m single with no kids, no family.

Well, I mean, you may have aunts, uncles, dad, mom?

Yeah, definitely. So my father see, my mom and I are real close. Actually, my mom doing things like, my mom got a boyfriend. And like, man, they traveled the world like they bought got wife they bought to go to Hawaii. My mom, if he wants for cover, she probably be in Vegas right now. Yeah, she went not disable. She went to the laser world. So my mom got more socialistic. Me? No.

Interesting. What’s your morning routine? Your morning habits.

So I have it. Hold on, hold on. I can show you better. I can tell you people be like, what’s that? So this is a book. I’m not co signing it. They did not ask me to co sign it. But you asked me what’s my morning ritual in this book talk about more than rituals. And it’s also challenging, too. So it also says you should find somebody to think every day now. Struggling. In that part, it says, Get up and meditate. I’m good on that part. I’m good on the meditation.

I’m good on the starting your day. Positive, but it says every day you should just reach out to someone and and say thank you for songs. I’m like, Damn, that’s. That that’s the hardest part. So this book talks about that. You know, it just talks about using your time wisely. And it also piggybacks off. Richest man in Babylon.

Nice. So at the time you said Flight Edge.

Yeah, that’s like, what was the author? That’s my edge.

I can’t say the office name.

Yeah, Jeff. So yeah, it’s funny.

Funny that I was like, Is he going to a book? A like, what is he going? I mean exactly what you just did. I mean literally like eight out of ten people that I interviewed all pretty much read books or audio books, or they work out when they do yoga, they do meditation. But it seems like book is a common denominator. So because of that, I decided to create a book club. So my next question was, do you have any books that you’re currently reading? Which obviously you are.

But what books help you on your your journey? What books would you want to recommend for the book club members to see? Kind of what were you reading as you were progressing.

Man, let me look at my library. So hold on.

It’s so funny when I always see somebody looking at their library, they always look up, look down, look around. It’s like like a six foot tall bookcase.

Yeah, man. Alright. So here’s I don’t bad and look at it. I would say one if you start now and this will help me to the main one. I would say it’s the energy bus for an entrepreneur if you try to get your team together. But if you just start out, I would say the richest man in Babylon because the richest man in Babylon talks about principles for Jesus was born that are still today. They’re still prevalent today. I I just wish, especially in our community. Some of these principles were talk were in school and it’s a short read too.

I mean, the book is like less than 100 pages so you can read the book in one day.

Easy. Definitely. But yeah, I definitely work out too. I mean, you right. Most entrepreneurs that are in this space that are successful. Actually, I don’t think I’m successful with the world would sound successful, but the units I sell and my income, well, I hold myself to a high stand, especially you being the game so long. Like, I don’t think else is sales and you got to stay hungry and motivated.

And I think that’s most people that are not entrepreneurs, they don’t understand it. They think that nine to five, they get paid six figures and they’re okay. But as an entrepreneur, we get paid six figures and we’re like, what the hell? We had a bad year. You’re like, how the hell did one year you get half a mill the next year, let’s say 325 or even 125. You’re like, Jesus, how the hell did I go backwards? And then the next year you triple it up and you continue to grow.

Actually, I’ve been in the same for the past three years. And this jump crazy.

Yeah. That’s the point of, like, this Jewish proverb that talks about lobster and a lobster has to become uncomfortable in order for it to break out of its shell. So you’re at that point, you got to get uncomfortable, man, in order for you to grow, you’re going to have to feel something that’s making you more so uncomfortable. And maybe it’s not the numbers. Maybe it’s something else.

And it’s crazy that you said that because. And I want to say, in seven, I took a box. And the reason I took out boxing is just what you said. You got to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And I can’t think of anything else. Will you force to be comfortable and it’s uncomfortable? You will cross the mole fo the want to whip you away every time.

Yes. Every time. As far as you said, I remember Mike Tyson was saying all that training goes out the door once you get punched in the face.

Yeah, man, it literally does. It literally does. It literally does it’s like, damn. And I ain’t never realized his box was because you look at on TV. So I mean, with that, it just taught me a lot because I Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay a year before was horrible. Brady come and went to Bow, but it’s a whole bunch. But still, it’s a whole bunch of people. You’re still a whole bunch of people boxing. It’s just you and that’s the other opponents. They can put you and I on Tampa Bay next year, they go to Soup Bowl and win it.

But if you are ready and you get in the boxing ring, it’s going to be real short. It’s going to be a rep, and you might wake up with a body part not working the next day.

Yeah. I took mix martial arts for a period of time there, and it was just kind of interesting that you say that because you could break an arm. You could get an arm bar and break arm. You could get choked out. You could get kicked in the head and be knocked out for 30 seconds. That is definitely real, even when you’re just sparring for fun.

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s crazy, too, because I don’t spoil or many times and do catch fellas. Nothing. I know. We fight like I thought this was you can’t quit, like, for really. This dude had a fight coming up, and it was like, right, a we’re gonna throw you in the ring with this dude. You got a fight coming up and he’s not going to swing at you. He just want to practice defense. I’m like, I hate that. Let’s go. May I called to clean a couple of times that last round.

It was a real fight, and I ain’t gonna lie. He was a heavy weight. I’m a buck 65. I was doing a lot of running. I ain’t even allowed to a lot to running.

A lot of cardio training.

So I was doing a lot of running because obviously I touched above, and I didn’t mean to do that.

Great. What do you see yourself in 20 years from now.

Man on the beach on where? Retired. I.

Managed. That’s a straight up answer. So currently, right now in your business, you’re working on your system, you’re working on your structure. I mean, what software do you use on a daily basis?

You would not be able to do your business without made real simple in this simple. And I think it’s free Google account. I mean, I have some fancy ones, but I can’t say I can’t live without them. But the Google calendar because I speak to so many people, I’m not ready calling me back in two months. What calendar? Oh, you really call back? Oh, you really remember Google Calen calendar for it like, my business, so I might catch somebody. Hey, I just pull it up. Gotta take the grocery in.

Call me back next week. Same day, same time Google calendar. My Google calendar. Sometimes it’s like blank, and then sometimes it’s even even.

Okay, okay. So going to the final words of wisdom. Let’s say I’m young, 20 year old, maybe 30, and I’m trying to maybe I want to get into real estate. What words of advice would you give to me to keep me to move forward on that journey?

I would definitely say. And I’ll show you and most people, unless you get on the rock, I would say, Man, listen to a because Gary V talk about how he sacrificed his 20. And now he’s reaping rewards from sacrificing his 20. And that’s the best way I can put it.

That’s definitely real. I mean, I would think anybody listens to the show has heard of Gary V. If you haven’t heard of Gary V, then I’m not sure what rock you slipping under, but in the first 30 seconds, he probably curse you out. So just FY search them out and be alarmed and not be alarmed at the same time. But what he says is definitely real. So, I mean, how can people find you? What’s? Your website, your social media profiles, your Yahoo account, your Twitter account, your everything YouTube account, what you got.

And you know what? It’s a shame. But I gotta look it up because my operations manager Hammers all that. So I got to look at my hammer. I got to look at it. So everything is the Haitian at that’s what everything is. I Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat comes, private club house coming.

So you need to hurry up and get on club house as well.

I just hired somebody to do my social media. I know we talked about it, but this person is substantially less. I hope that doesn’t mean that they work is less. But yes, fair enough.

As long as you get it rolling. That’s the most important thing, man is getting some of that contact. I mean, you got content for days and the houses you working on. I’ve seen some of the house that you worked on, and they’re phenomenal cribs. You could do MTV cribs just on the house that you’re working on. So you got to put them out there definitely going into the bones round, right. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why.

Uninterrupted uninterrupted.

24 hours, dead or alive?

Me. I’m gonna have to go Martin Luther King, cause I don’t think most people understand. Man, dude was educated. Dude had this doctorate, like, 20. It could have been a lawyer. It could have been paid, like, due was smart. Like, I don’t think people realize how smart he was. He died at 39. You know, how much work he had to put in the diet? 39. Most people think he like, little, like, 60, 70. Like, no, he died at 39. So I’d be like, man, I how could you sacrifice that much of your life?

And another thing people don’t realize because he had so many streets named after him and he loved. The man was hated. He was hated by black air white when he was killed. They love them now.

Yeah.

I would definitely say Martin Luther King. And then that’s probably Ali, because, you know, they they sacrifice so much. And now people look at them with such respect. But when they were, but when they were living in, I mean, it was they went to.

Yeah, I don’t think anybody in that generation, right. Are you talking about, like, Malcolm X was another one in that generation.

Yeah.

Sam Cook. Like, the more and more I look into Sam Cooks history, and his life is the more and more my mouth hits the floor every time it they came out with movies. Poro, man, there’s a bunch of them out at this point in time.

They ought to come out with a sale. Cook.

Malcolm X. Oh, you talk about the Miami is already out. Yeah, that was that was the first time, you know who sang Cook is, you know who these people are. But then I was like, just for shits and giggles. Let me look up what the networks were. So I look up Ali and Ali is close to, like, 100. Malcolm was like, it almost hurt me to say that Malcolm was like, 100,000, right. And then I’m looking at, like, the actor and he was like, 40. And then I look at San Cook.

San Cook was were like, 300 miles, like, 300 mill in that timeframe versus everyone else. You got to think about the work that he put in and he died before he was like, 42. So it was like it was crazy.

It was crazy. But I’m going to tell you it was real crazy. And I ain’t trying to take this left. But a lot of research shows that men, we go figure this thing out, call life till we get 40. I’m not saying Jack or who we did it on purpose. Well, it’s odd that Ali may not. I leave Marla the King and Michael Max were both killed when they were 39. So just think if all that before me and General figure out, like, 40, it’s crazy to see what they would have done at the 40 because both of them was like, you know what, man?

We’ve been going about this thing kind of wrong. Like me literally Cook. It was like, but they never got a chance. They met at the white. They bump teach other the White House. They spoke briefly. They was supposed to meet. And that thing, you know, a.

Crazy man. I like to your point, it has been interesting to see. I mean, it’s interesting to see anybody that would have made it past their original legacy because see your point? It’s like a turning point, right? Midlife crisis happened to everyone, and they didn’t have opportunity to even hit that mid life situation. So I definitely think that’s something interesting. Answers this is funny because you and I had a whole conversation about this next question, right. And I was telling you to go ahead and ask your team this question.

Do you remember that question?

No, I don’t remember.

If you could be a super hero, who would it be and why?

Oh, man, I forgot what I said. I forgot what I said the last time I told you about.

You said you’re going to go back and you had a meeting that day. You suposed to ask your team. That means at the meeting asking that question.

I don’t know what I said, but I’m gonna go at Black Hat is black. So I’m gonna go. A Black Panther is black history. We go black. And what Congress men like is coolest hair. Like, I love to go to Wisconsin.

Typically living in walkon to Atlanta. I mean, most of it shot hairs off.

Yeah. And that’s the sad part about it. And I wish that I wish that there was a way that we could show people how much opportunity like, I wish we’d be taking the spot light Wisconsin or Spots legacy where no brothers and sisters really getting to money or take the part of to cut you where the average is not black person. The average minority don’t have the opportunities they have here. Like, Atlanta got a lot of opportunities. Like, you can see it’s not because I know a lot of people come here and they shot, like, when they come here and got to go to, like, the courthouse or go to a bank and see you personally charge.

They so surprised that when it’s a minority, because in other parts of the country, still, you still gonna be dealing with someone white. You got to do anything. And I say the black. I’m just talking about so many minorities as black. And that’s why you see so many cultures here.

It’s becoming like New York. I mean, I grew up in Brooklyn. So, I mean, to your point, like that’s, New York, New York is epicenter for the multicultural. And to your point, I’ve been in land long enough to kind of see that shift for the longest. It was, you know, African American and Caucasian. And now it’s kind of like everyone else and everything in between.

No, I study trends, the highest ownership and the highest income earners are not black white. At their agent, I trans. I study finance. Oh, they get to it. And it’s crazy because they so silent about it. Yes, they make substantially higher than all other races, including what I can definitely see.

We went to Shanghai. I think it was like, two years ago and just to see Shanghai now and to see Shanghai 20 years ago, 20 years ago was farmland. And today it makes New York look like the hood. I it makes time square. Looks like they’re outdated. It’s completely night and day difference in 20 years. But then again, it’s a financial capital of Asia, too. So it’s definitely to your point. Once you get a system figured out and you know how to work that system.

Then you’re going to work it and pass it on to the next generation and pass it to the system because they’re rising and Latins arising and generally what it is. It’s just families because, unfortunately, people that Americanized, we don’t really cherish family or we don’t really have that family structure or family dynamics. And Latins agents tend still to have that infrastructure in place.

Got you. So this is the time of the podcast, man, when we talked about several different topics, talked about your business strategy, talked about where you are. So I always give whoever I’m interviewing opportunity to interview me if you have any questions, this is the time.

Oh, I told you, man, I’m loving that backdrop. So I need to get in contact with you for that bad drop, because that’s awesome, because my bad job sucks. I will be the first to admit it. I mean, when you came on, I was just like, man, I don’t need anyone to turn my camera on. Look at this back drop. Look at my bad drop. So that’s what I need. Like the bad drop, man, this phenomenal. That’s what I need. But, you know, as you stated, I’m new on my podcast journey, but still, I need that.

I need that.

Gotcha we definitely got you. It’s funny, man. When he interviewed me, on his podcast. Your camera wasn’t working and you try to pull that same thing coming on this podcast. And I was like, come on, man. People want to see a people want to see you, they can hear you. But eventually, this video is going to be published, too. So I definitely appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule, man, restarting the computer, getting the camera running and getting on the podcast today, brother.

Definitely, man. Definitely, definitely. Like I said, a serious bro. Let’s talk. I’m gonna email you probably tonight to remind you they see me where I can go for that.

Yeah, definitely. That goes without saying man again, man, I appreciate you coming out, man. And again, I look forward to seeing some other properties, and I’ve been following kind of what you’ve been doing. I’ve been watching your videos, and I think we have some commonalities with construction people as well, too. I think the with OT was it.

Yeah.

So it’s definitely some common footwork. But again, I think your crib should be on crypt. So I’m gonna keep on watching and keep on seeing you build the Empire that you’re building, brother.

I’m trying to try trying to appreciate it. Like I said, I just thank you for having me all and Amen. Like I said, I need that bad job, brother.

Got you. No problem, man. Over out.

Have a good thank you, too.

S2E45 DB Marshall.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Three to one. Welcome welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. On today’s show, we have well, I look at this guest as someone that has jumped into the authorship side of the world, goes by the name of DB. So we want you to give our viewers a little insight to who you are.

Well, honestly, I don’t even know where to begin. I’m a man of many facets. So when people ask me, you know, who are you and what path you want, I always tell them a universal servant. So I’ve just serve the people and a lot of people in the world will understand that. And I know a lot of people about say off me, me, me, but along my journey, I learned that I benefit more when I serve others. So with that said, I am a recently. Well, I just became author on March 17th, which I have a book that is number one bestseller internationally. In addition to that, I’m a doctoral student writing my dissertation. Hopefully I’ll be done by the end of the year. That’s to go. I’m also a kidney patient and a kidney ambassador. So I go out into the community and I talk to a lot of faith based institutions and partner with a lot of faith based institutions just to bring awareness around kidney disease, because for the most part, roughly about 74 percent of individuals walking around with stage four stage kidney disease, they don’t even know it. And with that said, most of the individuals who are walking around with kidney disease and diagnosed are minorities, predominantly African-Americans. In addition to that, I’m a social worker. I provide therapeutic services for , geriatric population, and just making sure I just give my due diligence and do my part is making sure that I’m just making the world a better place to live.

Hmm.

That’s nice. So, I mean, it sounds like you’re definitely devoted to giving back and helping not only people, but just community in general. So let’s just take this back, those time travel back a little bit like,

OK,

you just don’t wake up on a random Tuesday, right. And say, hey, this is what I want to do. All right. So let’s start from the beginning. Like like when how old were you and when did you first start realizing that, you know, this could potentially become your path?

Literally about six years ago? Yeah. So I’m 47 years old, but I usually don’t tell people my age. I usually say like 27. I’ve been 27 later, like 19 plus years. My nephew always laugh at me, but with that said, I had a job and I still work at the job that I’m at now. But this particular job. In my head, right, this is actually talking about so we are raised, at least within my community, the African-American media, which I grew up in. You go to school, you go to work, you stay on your job. That job becomes your career. And that’s pretty much there wasn’t a whole lot of room for exploration. My mom supported it if we initiated as kids. But for the most part, I was pretty much mimicking what what I saw within my family dynamic. So that’s what I did. So the job that I am at currently, I always saw that as this is the place where I’m going to retire. So what end up happening is I experience racism. And I was demoted due to some allegations that were kind of brought up. I still, like I said, still work for the organization, but I’m no longer a director. And so with that same experience, the racism for the first time like blew my mind. In addition to that, I was dealing with grief and loss with three loved ones, in addition to going through a divorce at the time, having my car ran off the road. And so all of that just really brought me into a place of depression. Most of it really stemmed from the divorce because I don’t particularly believe in divorce. I feel like if you have an iota of love, you have an opportunity to plant that seed or replant their seed and nurture and allow it to grow. But again, that was what I wanted, apparently is not what God wanted. And I had to come to grips with that. And so that for the most part, I was led into the Depression. And so I was going through all of this. I started birthing all of this great stuff. Right. Who birthed stuff out of depression. Usually when people are depressed, literally, they don’t create anything. But for whatever reason, it was the thing that created a whole lot and allowed me to reconnect to myself and to nurture myself. And so this is how all of this pretty much started.

So it sounds like I mean, obviously you work for somebody, but you’ve always had the entrepreneurial spirit inside to kind of want to do something. And then like most entrepreneurs, like you, believe it or not, like you cross over the tracks now, right? Most of us, you put us in a damn cage, we’re going to break out that cage and we’re going to run free and we’re going to create we’re going to develop as much as we possibly can to the last 80 we die. So, first of all, I want to welcome you to the club. Thank you. Next to that is like I think you two out a little tidbit right there that I have to kind of like. Slow down. Ruwan, recap what you said. You said something about getting ran off the road or your car run off the road.

Like, yes. Like literally I was on my way to work driving in. A gentleman didn’t see me come in and he was trying to actually come in the middle of the street to kind of, I guess, yield over until my lane. And he did not see me. And so usually the way I was going to hit him head on or I needed to kind of get off the road. And so all I thought about is what would be the safest thing that is going to keep my car intact because it was almost paid for. And because I believe it. Grado So it was almost paid for and how I’m going to save my life. And so I end up, you know, pretty much ran off the road and they had to call a tow truck and just put me and my car out of a ditch.

Crazy. Crazy. So, I mean, you sound like you got a little adrenaline and got your blood pumped up. So let’s dove into like, if you could define yourself in three to five words, what, three to five? Would you choose to do that?

Love is me.

Yeah, just loves me, loves me.

What if that’s the case, then? You know, I always kind of dream everybody that I’m talking to, I usually give them a nickname. So I’m going to deem you the love boss. As simple as that. That’s what you are for now are. I love it. Right. So let’s just talk about, like, your business. So obviously, you know, you’re doing the kind of we call it like the jumping off the gap. Right. You kind of still got your steady paycheck, but now you’re dribbling into the solo partner side of things. So, I mean, what kind of business do you have? Like, you have your book, but what are you doing in addition to the book to monetize?

So I do wellness coaching.

Huh? Mm hmm. And that pretty was like

OK, so that pretty much is assessing individuals to see where they are in life and what are some of the things that they are struggling with. And so I’m also a interanring clinician. And so the difference between being a therapist and being a wellness coach is that I don’t as a wellness coach, I don’t start diving into your past like that. You know, what I’m saying is like, what’s going on now? What are you struggling with and what is it that you need to help you move past your hand? Really? Because a lot of times we can’t see past our hand when we’re dealing with a lot of different challenges in our life, a lot of different storms. So my goal is to put your thoughts, depending on where they are. Oftentimes they all over the place and write them down and organize those thoughts and start peeling that onion back. What is priority? What do we need to address first until we get to the core issue?

So it sounds like you’re a good handshake before someone even dives into their vision board. I mean, you kind of get them in alignment to actually expand what they’re thinking about and what their goals and achievements could possibly be down the road. Is that a correct assumption?

Yep.

Yep. And making sure that they are realistic. Right. Because I want to be a millionaire. Right. I want to be a millionaire like yesterday. That’s not realistic. And so we have to come up with a plan of action to determine a realistic plan of action, to make sure we can mobilize whatever it is that we are listed on that that that you have listed on that paper.

So it seems like I can tell you right now, once you start getting into entrepreneurs, right, we’re going to tell you that we could be millionaires yesterday. It’s just a matter of time. Right. So, I mean, it’s that is your point, right? Obviously, there’s a difference between people that work for somebody and the people that are entrepreneurs. So right now, your business, would you say you’re more dealing with solar business entrepreneur, business owners? We are deadling withdealing more with people that work for a corporation.

For the most part, I’m dealing with other small business and other entrepreneurs, like, for instance, in my book initially my book started as a collaborative book project with an individual, one of my friends. And as we were building out the book and creating a blueprint, he decided that it would not be a good fit and he didn’t like the direction in which it was going. I didn’t take it personally because I understand we all have our journey, we all have our path. But what I did was because I believe in helping others, I contacted a total of six other individuals. I like to call them entrepreneurial souls. And I contacted them and say, hey, do you want to be on this project? I’m paying for everything. You have to do a show up, share your journey to wellness, the things that you want went through and what got you here and give the audience some tips or some of the things that you did to bring you from a negative mindset to a positive mindset. And so those individuals did just that. Most of them are based in Atlanta, five a.m. in Atlanta. One is in Gary, Indiana. But with that said there, I am uplifting these African-Americans so they can have that exposure just from me, just doing some work, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it does.

So are you based out of Atlanta?

I am.

How ironic. That’s where I’m based out of.

Oh, awesome. Yeah. So I mean, obviously past covid I have to catch up in person and kind of just do some live conversation. So let’s just dove into it like your business structure a little bit. So you worked for corporate America and now you have your own business on the side. It’s structured as an LLC and EZCORP Corporate Core

LLC.

OK, OK, so do you have any current partnerships or is it just you.

It’s just me literally running the whole ship. And let me say this. I attempted to create a team. And so one of the things that I have learned because I started my business in 2018 and all of this is very new, even technology is new. I just got on Facebook literally because my church was like, I don’t know if you remember this, but you remember when you go to church. And they used to give you, you know, the programs of everything that they was doing and the announcements within the program. You remember that,

Yeah

OK, they don’t do that anymore. So I went to my pastor and I was like, well, what is the program like? You know, I want to know what’s going on in church. And it was like, son, you have to get on social media. So that was my first exposure to Facebook and all that good stuff. And so with that said, everything is kind of new. And so when I tried to be on my team, I was run into so many different issues and people were not delivering the way that I needed things to be delivered. And no matter if I had a very intentional, concise conversation that listed every single thing with due dates and it just wasn’t happening. So I had to just really pull back and literally do everything the way that I needed it to be done. Is it a lot of work? Absolutely. But is it getting done the way that I think that it needs to get done? Absolutely. Does it take more time? Absolutely. But the plus or the pros that is that I’m learning a whole lot.

So I think you’re at that point to where eventually you’re going to have to outgrow that. Right. And if you don’t mind if you don’t mind, I’m going to give you a little bit of direction, right?

Oh, yeah.

Every single entrepreneur hits that hurdle sooner or later to where you can do it better than anyone else. Right. But you have to look at it as if I can get two people to get to 50 to 70 percent of what I can do.

The combination between these two people will be more than what I can ever do because my time is going to be limited. So to your point, you said you was making a list and you segmented out this list and they weren’t getting it right. Didn’t take that one step further. Don’t deliver less, deliver videos, give them step by step videos, record your processes and show them step by step, like when I worked my Vespas. If I have something quick that I want to show, I think about how long it will take me to write this and make it correct because I’m an author as well. Right. Or how do I need to get on the phone with them and talk to them? But in five minutes in that conversation, they’re probably going to forget it. So the best thing I could possibly do is record my screen, record the problem and talk about the solution and then tell them to watch that video until they get it right. That’s frees up all my time. They don’t have to call me for anything. Take a look at the video and figure it out and then send me back the results.

Yeah, I listen. I love it. I love it. It is important because what happened is it stifles my creativity. Right? So I’m no longer in the creative space and now I’m in ministry administrative space when I could be spinning or invest in that, create a few in my art in that craft. So I love it.

Right. Right. So let’s let’s talk about some hurdles. Right. So obviously, like you’re in that transitional period and you’re going to get to the point to where you’re going to look at the security of your current job and you gonna be like, the hell with that. You want to want to put more full time effort into raising and growing your seats. So what hurdles have you have to over? So far on this journey.

The only hurdle thus far that I had to overcome is just really myself, and when I say to myself, because I run into different things that I didn’t realize that that lies dormant within me that I have to face and address. So one example is when I started doing social media things nobody wasn’t engaging or liking. And so I would say to myself, like, why are they not like on the page? Why they’re not engaging? Then I remember Buddy of mine came to me and said, hey, look, and even though they’re not engaging and show enough like a year or two or people will send me messages, hey, this blessed me. Hey, this I don’t know how many people does that I stopped from committing suicide or attempting suicide. I get messages like that all the time. And so when I get those type of I like to call them validations. Right. We affirm people validate what you’re affirming. And so when I get those validations, I’m like, OK, I’m a stay in the game a little bit longer. Now I’ll be completely honest with you and transparent. I’m still having a difficult time getting people to engage on my social media. And if I pull sexy back up there, they’re like, oh, I mean, they go all crazy for that. But when I put content out there, education and materials awareness materials, they don’t respond to that, but I continue to do it.

Yeah, I think I mean, I love these type of conversations because it’s kind of like you’re at the dawn, right? Like you’re like you’re not at sunset, you’re not at high noon, you’re at the dawn. So the sky is your horizon. So any piece of information and anybody that you can surround yourself with and absorb that content and repurpose it, then obviously you’re going to succeed and keep moving forward. So one of the things with social media. ,Right. And, you know, obviously everybody comes on my show. I go and I look to their social media profiles. And the one thing about your Instagram account that stood out to me was your celebration of you becoming a published author. And you did you little I called Ogie Boogie Dance and you at the grill, right?

Yeah.

OK, so things like that by default, you get attraction of people to be like, OK, he’s celebrating. He’s a cool person. But what are you celebrating? Right. You celebrate. OK, so your book is your plug, but you’re not necessarily selling the book. You’re just talking about, you know, I’m dancing, I’m happy and I’m grilling. But here’s my book. Right? So if you kind of just stay in that space and, you know, it kind of I had another guy on my show recently and he does the same thing. Right. And he’s like international multimillionaire. And what he does, he pulled random guy. He owns a farm. So he’ll be on his farm working with goats and he’ll just post a random picture with him. He’s going to be like this one morning, it looks like. What is your morning look like? And that’s social media post. But by default, people are looking and they want to live their life. They want to have a farm. So they’re going to keep following him. And every once in a while he’ll throw in the plug in there with the plug is not a blunt plug. It’s kind of an indirect plug. This is what I hope to do. This is what I’m helping them do. This is this is how I helped this person do that. I’m not selling it to them. But I’m talking to you about how I helped someone else. And that message could resonate with that person. So just think about adding that into the mix. What you’re doing,

OK?

OK,

let’s dove into you like your OK, you’ve been on this journey, you said about like six years and the perception, right, for somebody to your point, looking on social media made see that your overnight success. You have a book you’re posting, you have more. Everything’s going on. You’re helping clients. But how long did it really take you? I mean, six years is your current journey, but how long have you really been on this journey to get you to where you are currently?

I mean, the journey started at birth, you know, so the important piece of it is just understanding who you are and who you becoming. And when you understand that, I think you are able to come up and understand what you are doing in your purpose. And this, just in my opinion, a lot of people that come in contact with when I asked them, what’s your name or what’s your purpose is they look at you like they like a deer stuck in headlights. Right. Like they can’t articulate that. And I share with them, if you don’t know the meaning of your name, then that’s the problem that I mean, we need to go back to the basics, name you that name, whoever, name you. But if you don’t define your name and I kind of touch on this in a book, if you don’t define your name, somebody is going to define it for you. So know the essence of your name, whether you want to just give it a unique definition. If you want to Google it and, you know, put all of their heads together and figure out what these letters mean and what does it symbolize, know and be able to ask you to articulate the meaning of your name. So when you meet somebody like, hey, my name, you know, is D.B., you know, what’s your name or my name stands for this, this, this, this. You have already started laying a foundation for them to embrace who you are because you can articulate exactly who you are.

Well, that’s definitely very, very powerful, very insightful. And actually, I mean, I totally agree with that. It’s it’s kind of one of those things. If you’re having a conversation with someone and you start to write about what the definition of your name is, first of all, they probably will remember your name, right? Yes. Second of all, they’ll probably be more inclined to talk to you again. So definitely, definitely inspirational. So if you could go back in time, what’s one thing that you would want to do differently if you could do it all over again?

Nothing.

I want to do anything. And the reason for that, because I really love and appreciate who I am now. So, you know, we have strength and we have weaknesses. And a lot of times people look at downfalls. They call them failures. I don’t call I don’t call them either those things. I call them opportunities. You know, I didn’t pass this exam, but that’s an opportunity to learn and to grow. As long as I have breath. I mean, in my right mind, I have an opportunity to do better the next time. And when you do better and you learn from that mistake, you have to learn from it. Now, you can’t go up there, don’t learn and keep repeating the same business mistake and be a part of that vicious cycle. You have to learn from it. And once you learn from it, you start to grow, you start to develop. And that’s what I like to call your soul journey. Right, because I think we all on Earth have a soul and it’s constantly traveling. But in my opinion, I don’t always think our mind and our body is traveling along with our soul. So to me, spirit is perfect, right? So we use the spirit to help guide where we’re going to guide. I passed a guy steps and your experiences is what helped develop your soul, your character and all those other traits that you may have.

Oh, definitely. So. I mean, if you have an added motivational speaking to your agenda, obviously, I think that that should be an itemized item that you need to start working on for sure.

I have. I do. Is on air.

Definitely. Definitely. So like what? Your entrepreneurial hustle, right? I mean, you have you have it I mean, to your past, you work for something, but right now you’re in that zone, right? I could hear it. I could see it. Yes. So does that come from ancestors? Come from parents. Grandparents like where’s an entrepreneur hustle come from?

Oh, my God, I love you, man. Thank you for bringing that up and I’m just getting chills right now and I’m actually getting a little emotional because, again, this is something I touched on in a book and so reflecting so. Wow. So doing my depression, I came up with a four hour model that I literally worked through is it hasn’t been scientifically proved anything. This is my personal model that I developed. And while I was developing this model, one of the phases is to remember and to reflect is the third stage. But I’m saying that to say that I start with reflecting on my history and I don’t know a whole lot. You know, most African-Americans don’t kind of go sometimes to generational if you really lucky three generations. But I learned that my grandfather was an entrepreneur and I’ve always knew he was an entrepreneur. And he passed away when I was one years old. So I didn’t get a chance to really, really meet him. But I always hear these wonderful things about him. But he had his own truck. And so he was a truck driver and he was the breadwinner in my back then. My family was considered middle class, which was kind of huge in the black community back then. And so then that was passed down to my uncles and they had their own trucks and my dad has his own truck. So I had this whole trucking thing, but I looked at them as truck drivers, not entrepreneurs. Right. So, you know, depending on how you perceive things, can determine your outcome and determine your behaviors when we approach life in itself. And so when I was writing a book and I did this whole dear dad thing, dear black man, actually, dear black man. And I was just speaking to us, you know, honoring black men as a whole, especially with everything that’s going on. And I pay tribute to my uncle and my dad and just start remembering like this is always being a part of my generational bloodline. How like, you know, how did I miss and how did I not connect to it? But I also believe that we connect to everything when we supposed to. So someone may look at this particular lesson, look or hear this particular podcast. And when you hear it, you hear it when you supposed to hear, not necessarily when you need to hear it. And so it started with my grandfather and my great grandfather. I mean, we own land. We were land owners here in a state of Georgia and and Hawkinsville, Georgia. And, you know, I used to pay to help my grandmother pay taxes on the land, but I didn’t know what that meant. Right. She would just say, baby, I need some help with the taxes this year. Yes, ma’am. How much you need? It’s, I would say the money. And, you know, I would get the Taxes pay every year. I always would put money aside because I knew there was a possibility she was going to need help. And so just thinking about I had a family that owned land. I had family members that owned their own business. businessesNow I understand where this comes from. It’s in my blood.

Oh, yes. I think definitely with that, I mean, not only do you have not to say a price to pay, but you have a legacy to live up to. So I mean, by default, you have no choice. This is this is not a not a negotiation. Right. You have to make this work. And I think you definitely will. I mean, to the point where you’re saying three generations back, they owned trucks, they weren’t just truck drivers to have that insight back then to be on the road driving their trucks, but they’re earning all their keep at the same time.

Yeah,

it’s a hell of inspirational. Even though, Dad, you didn’t even realize it back then.

Yeah.

Yeah. And my grandfather purchased my uncle like they he purchased these trucks. You know, that’s milblog. If you have to put it in context and realize what area it was, how much money they made. And it was like, do it’s just kind of it’s just mind blowing. I’m so proud of my grandfather, my great grandfather in all that they did because they sold those seeds, even though I’m not really, you know, about forty years old. But they sold those seats.

Nice. Nice. So, I mean, that kind of brings me up to the family to the point of where now you’re on the grind, you’re still working, but obviously your your business is probably going too far away and everything else you’re doing. How are you currently juggling your work life with your family life?

Yeah, everything is scheduled, everything is if it’s not on the calendar, then it’s not happening and I don’t do anything. Last minute in my family, they picket me and I hope I don’t offend anyone when I say this, but all of my work when I was 14 and so I’ve always had more than one job. So my nickname in my family dynamic is Haymon. So haymon basically me, I’m a Jamaican. I got 20 jobs and holler at you whenever I get an opportunity. So when I walk into family reunions and everything. Haymon there you go. You got to go to work, got to go to work. So that’s the running joke in my family as it relates.

So to me. Like what did you brought that up. I mean obviously what the TV show was the dame in living color, right?

Yeah.

So are you actually Jamaican?

No,

Got yaa

. So I’m actually from Ireland. From Trinidad. So, I mean, you’re kind of like everybody from the islands always get thrown into that category under the hats of wearing multiple different jobs and being called a Jamaican. So it’s just funny that you brought that up.

Yeah.

So let me just talk about, like, your morning habits. So you talk about everything needs to be scheduled with morning routines look like.

The morning routines. I start every morning affirming who I am, but actually I start off with Pray and it took me a while to understand what prayer was for me because I was accustomed to the Baptist tradition around you. Get on your knees and yellowwood. And, you know, it took me a minute to build my relationship. I don’t know any of that. I lay in my bed, you know, my eyes are still closed and I just pray it becomes very, very, very intimate. And oftentimes if I’m working on a particular area, I’ll put my hand on that area because I do believe that I am a healing property. And the body has itself, in your mind, can heal a lot of things that’s going on in the elements in your body. And so if I’m working on my heart space, I’ll put my hand over my heart and I just pray over my heart. So I just connect to whatever part I have kidney disease, which I’m a kidney patient. So I put my hand sometimes on my kidneys and just kind of pray over. And from that then I go to affirming what I have to do. And from now then I would just go off to, you know, brush my teeth and do whatever. But first thing in the morning, I spinellis anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes just meditating and praying and chanting, affirming and just connecting with myself in the spirit.

Hmm.

So I think you brought it up a couple of times like kidney disease. Let’s go ahead and find that. So, I mean, obviously, somebody may hear kidney disease and that could be multiple different things that have the side effects and what caused it. So let’s just talk about your journey with kidney disease. Like, is that something that’s genetic? It’s something that happened. Like how did you get get into that situation?

I got in that situation, I was I just I got accepted at Virginia Commonwealth for my doctoral program. It was 2012. I was actually accepted in 2010. So I was finishing up my coursework. I am a health nut unless I work out. So I was on my way to the gym one Sunday morning and I’m walking, listening to music. And I just collapsed. I just fell on the concrete floor. And so when I came to the first thing, I was like, Oh my God, what happened? I feel embarrassed. I looked around to see if anybody saw me. There was no one around. Then once I realized that, OK, kind of like pretty much kind of started to wipe the shame off, I guess I could say, what do the average man do? He goes to the gym, they go to every emergency room. But I already got my workout in. And with that said, eventually I went to the doctor, the E.R. doctors, they overlooked it. I went about three times. Every doctor overlooked it. And I went to see a PCP and they was like, oh, what’s going on with your okay? And I was like, what? Creatine? Yeah, I take creative. And I was like, no, not creatine supplements, creatine level. And I was like, no, what is that? So they start to explain it to me. And it was like, well, so do I need to stop, take it for granted. Like, no, no, no. I’m not saying that we just going to run some lab work to try to figure out what’s kind of going on. And so at the time I was married and I got this whole speech, oh, you never know. Wanted to do anything for you. Please come home and let me take care of you. So I withdraw from school and I went home. So we figure out what was going on. And that’s when I had the kidney biopsy at Grady Hospital and they came back with a rare form of kidney disease called FSD. So to answer your question, my family does not have any history of kidney disease that I know of on my mom’s side, my dad’s side, he was a little closed off, so he really didn’t see a whole lot. And I don’t even really think he was really connected to his family members like that because his grandmother raised him. But it was all new for me. And it was chaos. It was pandemonium. Pandemonium. I was upset. I was frustrated because my nephrologist called me and God went at it for a few years because I was like, I eat, right? I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I exercise like. What is this thing that I have to deal with now, here it is, I grew up ho not poor because there’s a difference between PO and poor, you know, is when you just your family have to depend on the welfare system, government cheese, powdered milk, I mean, food stamps, you know, I mean, so here it is that I’m working to change the trajectory of what I was raised and to become a better man and I had to battle this particular issue.So that’s how it came about. It was just really rough, man. It is just it was a rough journey.

So I think when that happens, right, like everyone’s going to go through a life death experience sooner or later, whether it’s someone external, like like a family member or internally. So for myself, it happened when I had a stroke back in twenty eighteen. Almost died. Right. Pulled out of it. But that is what inspired me to create this podcast and to create a legacy. So in your near death experience, is that probably some of the things that kind of behind the scenes that kind of stemmed in the direction you’re going right now to kind of fulfill some legacy items?

Partially so most of the things that really steered me into this item is how I was treated at work. I mean, blood, sweat and tears. I will work anywhere from 60 to 80 hours a week, sometimes at work and to be treated the way that I was treated and realized that at any point your job just can pull a plug and say, screw you. And I was like, oh, no, I’m taking control of my life. I mean, like I was treated on the flip side with the kidney diagnosis. So I did not speak publicly about it for seven years. And so I was diagnosed at stage three that. So for those who don’t know, when you have kidney disease, there’s five stages, one through five. When you end up in five, eventually you go into renal failure. So I was at diagnosed stage three, a stage three have staged a stage B is the only stage to have A and B, and so right now I’m stage three B saying all that to say that when I found all of this out and dealt with it for seven years, I stabilized my condition. So I was like, you know what? You need to start teaching people what you’re doing. If you can say someone kidney, then you are. I mean, you just continue to one hundred and one million dollars to their life because it’s very expensive to be on dialysis. And once once the kidneys are damaged, you can’t reverse them like you can’t they they just don’t heal. And so if I can prevent someone from oh, I slow down a process of kidney disease once they find out or just put it out there to get African-Americans and particularly to get renal exams to know what’s the status of your kidney, I’m going to do that. And so I share a lot of my nutritional habits, some of my exercise habits, just my day to day life in the battle with kidney disease, because you have to manage your lifestyle because it’s a lifestyle change. Hm.

So, I mean, obviously, we talked about different things and we talked about business. We talked about history. We talked about the kidney. So, I mean, all of these things, it seems like every single point is conversation. You kind of talked about the book. So let’s just talk about your book a little bit. And part of this is kind of like let’s save your book for the third part of this question. The first part being what book helped you on your journey?

Write that you would want to recommend. What books are you currently reading right now to help you grow? And then the last question, to dove into your book and talk about what could someone get out of reading your book?

I’m not a huge book reader, but one book that stood out for me that I read from, you know, from the beginning to the end was Star Jones. She came out this book a long time ago when she was very popular IV. And you may have to have me on. If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. And so that was something that stood out with me and also another one that still resonate with me. I picked up in an airport years ago was don’t sweat the small stuff. And that book changed my life because I think a lot of things, you know, we just harp on when it’s really not that serious, but we hop on it so much. So we make it serious. But I don’t sweat small stuff. I don’t internalize because internalizing things just turns into a form of cancer to me. Once it’s up here and you keep playing it over and over and over and over again, it just change everything. Change your demeanor, changes your attitude before you know it, you just become this really nasty, unhappy, jaded individual. So that way, answer that particular question. What am I’m reading now? I’m reading now really my dissertation, I don’t have a whole lot of time for. I would call it. I guess just. Just free, alcohol free. I don’t have a whole lot of time for free reading because I’m in the process of trying to take my license board and writing his dissertation. So a lot of things that I’m reading is very technical type stuff. But believe it or not, it still pours into me because my dissertation is based on kidney disease. For the most part, seeing how African-Americans incorporate positive psychology to help them in their treatment process. And positive psychology is just, you know, self affirmations, journaling, you know, it can be meditation, yoga. How are we incorporate in those things in our lives so we can manage our emotions a little bit more and have a better outlook on life? Because a lot of people that deal with kidney disease, they run into this place of hopelessness and helplessness. And so my goal is to teach them or bring or introduce positive psychology and say, hey, you know, you can incorporate this. It’ll get you over this little hump.

Oh, yes, very nice. So let’s just talk about your current masterpiece, because I have a feeling and anybody that writes books will realize that you don’t just write one book. Right? So this is your first of many to come, hopefully. So let’s talk about your first book and kind of dive into it.

Mm hmm.

Yeah. So the first book is it was just written for readers, you know, and when I say for readers, the goal is to engage your emotion in your thought process and challenge every reader to think differently about a situation that they may be going through. So the premise is really based on I take cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychology and I kind of infuse it because I also want to bring awareness to the black community, not just black, all communities about military health. Like it’s real, you know. And I know sometimes there’s a stigma about seeing a therapist. So I kind of break all of that stuff down, what it is, what you can do in layman’s terms. So hopefully it would be embraced a little bit more. And so what I do throughout the book, there are what I like to call practice tools in which I challenge your cognitive thinking, I challenge your emotions, and I also challenge your behaviors, old behaviors versus new behaviors. So like I said, there are a total of six other individuals and they talk about their journey to wellness story. We have one lady that talk about her divorce. We have one lady to talk about how she was molested and raped as a child by her brother’s best friend. One lady talk about racism. Someone talks about how someone broke into their home and held them at gunpoint as a little girl. One gentleman was I think he was 10 at Fort Valley University. He was wrestling with a buddy of his landed on his neck. Wrong. And he ended up being a quadriplegic to this day. And how he dealt with by the images and shame in losing weight and bet that he didn’t have control over certain parts of his body. Then we talk about church hard. We talk about it. We just talk about so much always to make sure you have a box of tissues. One of these stories are going to resonate with you. We have relationship trauma. Someone was physically abused and but we just don’t talk about the negative experience that we had. They literally lay out what were the things that they did that helped them to become successful business owners to this day. So is to encourage people that, look, I know we’re dealing with mental issues, we have emotional issues, we deal with occupational issues, and we’re talk about how he went from, you know, a college baby to a hospital bed because he experienced renal failure. Now he’s running an organization for our kids. It’s it’s called Why Not? But he his organization, for the most part, based on organ donation for these little small kids here in Atlanta. So, I mean, they just really just took that negative experience, changed it around and did something positive with everything that happened in their life.

That’s nice. So, I mean, I’m just I’m just thinking about everything that you just said, and I’m going to internalize it and I’m recapping it and I’m just trying to segment it because. That seems to be a lot of information into one book, so the title of your book like what is the title of the book and how did you come up with that title?

So Last Pursuit, Journey to Wellness, which is lust pursued in the name of my company as well. So I decided to title my company because every last one of us on Earth, we are constantly on this pursuit of love, whether it is loving ourselves, loving our spouses, loving our kids, you know, when they are acting up with loving God, just loving whatever it is that you want to do is a constant journey to trying to figure out what that is. In a book that talks about there’s a total of 21 definitions of what love is, you know, so you have to define it. You don’t need to necessarily go off the Webster dictionary like somebody have defined that. But what is your definition of love and how does that resonate with you? I think sometimes we get so caught up in the formality of certain things that when it doesn’t fit our narrative, we think something is wrong with us. You have to create your narrative customers who you are. I know it’s good to have role models. Listen, I have role models, but I also understand and I am you uniquely made there’s something extremely special about me in my story. And I want to put that out there in the universe and out there to the world. So remember, what you bring to the table is unique and special. And it took me almost 40 years to realize I am unique and I am special. There’s never be another Beyonce there never be another me. But you know, but Beyonce doesn’t supersede who I am as an individual. But I think a lot of times we put people above us and not see other human beings is equally to us, if that makes sense.

Yeah. So it’s definitely very, very powerful stuff. So I’ll put you on the spot, right. Yeah. Like you produce this book and it’s so much wealth of information in this book. Like, like when is the next book coming out and what is that book going to be about.

Yeah. So what I’m hoping is that this book, this Journey to Wellness book is the goal is to turn it into somewhat like a series or a franchise. Right. And so the goal is really just to kind of just take this on on the road show, go to a whole nother city and just kind of figure out, you know, hey, you want to offer your journey to wellness story and how can I help you as well? Again, is about expanding not just me, but others. I really, truly believe in a collaborative project. So that’s to go. However, I do have probably four other books in the pipeline. Doesn’t necessarily attach directly to those the WHO journey to wellness. But my goal for love, for wellness is to really, really travel and to start normalizing some of the things that we as African-Americans have not talked about. Their shame this year around a lot of the things that we do and that and then it goes back to you, you know, on occasion. Right. So once we are able to open up and tell that story, we not only help ourselves, but there’s liberation for others in our community, but we have to start somewhere. So this is my dedication. This is my work to the community to say, look, this is where I am. This is what I’m going through. Look, you can be successful well, as well as I was.

Yeah, I think it’s definitely a journey we’re taking. I’m just wondering, like, have you thought about maybe possibly becoming like a podcast host yourself?

Yeah. So my podcast is the same project. So and so basically it’s actually of saying so saying stands for our support, awareness, normalize and educate. So it’s a platform that’s geared to bring it on all different races, ethnicities. I don’t care what your your sex, your gender, your sexuality. I don’t care about any of that right now. We are living in a world that’s completely divided. And so my platform offer people to come on and to also share their stories, to hopefully remind people that even though we may be a different gender, a different race, we have different religious beliefs, spiritual beliefs. We kind of go through a lot of the similar things. I’ve been talking to people all across the world and I’ve been interviewing them for the podcast show and realize like, oh, my God, that’s that happened to me, too. But you all the way over there in Australia and you were white. Yeah, so we’re really not that different, but I learned it in social work that genetically we really not that different is just the external that is completely different. They call it the phenotype that’s different. But when we really break ourselves down, we’re really not that different. We are more alike than we are different.

Wow.

So what do you see yourself in 20 years from now?

Where do I see myself 20 years from now? I see myself just freely walking in my purpose without any unnecessary stress, having that freedom to decide what it is that I want to do and making sure whatever it is that I do is blessing other people. So definitely not working a nine to five job. But yeah, I think for the most part, if I had to say that is just traveling around the world giving motivational speaking engagements, educating individuals, partnering up with different communities, faith based organizations, and bringing all this wealth and knowledge into that space so we can save a life, we can save a kidney. And that’s really it. Save a mine. Save a heart. All right.

So. You’ve got two obviously different facets going on right now, multiple different things of your business moving around. So what software softwares are you currently using to help manage? And in addition to that, like what software you not see your company running without?

Hmm, so there is one particular software, and I want to make sure I say the name correctly called Content Studio, so it’s more like a HootSuite and that particular platform allow me to sit down because I sit down every month and I schedule everything and put it into the scheduler and it kind of sends everything out. But not only does it send out the information, but if you have articles that you’re interested in or a particular topic, you can kind of pull from different platforms and you can kind of post it and send it out on your platform that may be on CNN or, you know, Men’s Health magazine, that type of information. So right now, I’m married to that and I kind of like it.

That’s nice. Yeah. So they’re going to like final words of wisdom. So let’s say, you know, I’m a 40 year old person. I’m listening to this podcast like, you know, your of inspirational. You’re motivating me. And if you could tell me a few words, something to help me make the leap of faith and jump into my entrepreneu40-year-oldrial endeavors and move forward, what would those words be?

I would say make sure you understand the difference between passion and purpose. So throughout this journey, I’ve been very passionate about it. Right. I’ve been passionate about everything in my life. I’ve always given one hundred and fifty percent. A passion doesn’t always lead you to an emotional, a healthy, emotional state of my passion can run you ragged. Right. Because sometimes people don’t appreciate your worth. They don’t appreciate your passion. They don’t appreciate your work ethic. And when someone doesn’t appreciate you, it shows right. And it doesn’t feel good. And so but when you understand that regardless of passion, when you walk in and purpose, you don’t question it because you know exactly what it is that you’re supposed to be doing. You don’t need to be validated because you is your purpose for me have already been confirmed by your God or your spiritual being. So, again, I look at I affirm people validate God, confirm. So once you get that confirmation in your purpose, you just keep on going. Everything else will attract or will show up when it’s supposed to show up, you just keep doing what you supposed to do. But when we are driven by passion, which is also emotion, oftentimes that emotion would just have us all over the place on different paths. And we’re seeking validation from someone who doesn’t even appreciate the hard work and dedication that we put an insight into something. So understand that there’s a complete difference between passionate passion and purpose. Passion is really fueled by your emotions and your talent, but purpose, even when you don’t want to be faithful to a purpose, I don’t want to walk in your purpose. Its purpose will find you whether you like it or not. That’s why I’m here. I’m an introvert. I am an introvert. I like to go home, closed my door. It gets stuck in my shell. But because of purpose, I’m walking on down that world. I’m walking down that path.

I feel like like literally like I just want to jump up and say testimonial, like literally I felt like they were the first women right there. It was like it was definitely some solid words of wisdom for sure. So talk about like, how could people get in contact with you? I mean, like, what’s your social media handled? Like what website do you have any promotional stuff that you want to give out to our listeners?

Absolutely. So you can find me at lovespursuitatl.net/ not .com and that spells l o v e s p u r s u i t atl . Net. I am on all social media platforms including LinkedIn. My website is https://lovespursuitatl.net/ And I do have a promotion for anyone who purchases a book here in the U.S. because I’m not across seas, but in the U.S., you make that purchase, there be a discount and I’m giving away a free gift for all of the viewers and listeners. And if you want to purchase a book and you overseas, you can just go to Amazon.com, lovespursuitat pull it up. Yes. Into right to you.

Right. So this we’re going to bonus questions. Yes. Right. So if you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

I would probably spend that time with Tisha Campbell. So I love TESHA Campbell, I have always loved her since I was a little boy. She has inspired me. I got in my feelings when she got married to Duane Martin. I mean, yeah, I didn’t like that at all, that she had the audacity to, you know, eventually go to another Martin. And I’m like Martin and Martin of them worked out. They were all temporary. Why? She just they come to a Marshall, a DB Marshall. So if I give my time with T.C., Campbell is just going to be me and her. We’re going to listen to some good music and we just going to go over all of the stuff that I follow her on. And it just really just show my appreciation and my gratitude because she impacted my life, like as a little boy. You know, back then you saw one token black. She was the black one of the blacks on the shows that will watch.

Wow.

Yeah, I’ve got a whole house party T-shirt.

Yeah. Yeah.

And Blew that away.

Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. She’s done a few dozen of them. Yes, sure. Definitely. I mean it was like I guess Ninety’s was her reign of fire man. Yes. Yes. So if what’s your most significant achievement to date?

My most significant achievement is so because people get on me, because I never talk about, like a lot of different accomplishments and accomplishments and degrees and I don’t really hang them on a wall in a file cabinet. But the most significant accomplishment is raising my nephew. And so when I went through the divorce, I was going to move my own apartment. And my family is extremely close. My my siblings are extremely close. And it was like, no, we don’t trust you. We know you’re going to take it. You know, you moving in with us. I’m like, I’m a grown man. I’m moving in with you. But I did. And man, my nephew was a huge part of me coming out of the Depression, sitting down watching cartoons, or he just want to have, like, sleepovers, you know, right there in the middle of living room floor, eating popcorn, just looking at different things. So I still call parent. I still am raising him, helping my sister raise him. But he I mean, he has been a huge accomplishment. And he also reminds me to just don’t take stuff seriously, really like it is. It’s just not that serious. Yes. And he also teaches me how to laugh because I’m analytical. What I can be serious a lot. So he teaches me how to have fun.

How old is he?

He’s now nine now.

Oh yeah. Time flies by pretty quickly, man. I was just watching a video earlier today when my son was like four and now, you know, he’s well into the teenage ages. So it’s just kind of like crazy night and day difference and how I remember it vividly from yesterday. But I’ll see today he told it to me. He has a mustache and it’s crazy. So it’s not actually a question. When did he stop or I won’t say stop. When did he stop putting boundaries on what type of affection can that you are able to display to him? Like my never I’ll never forget. I want to say he was like five. He just went to kindergarten and I went to just hug and kiss him on the forehead. And he was like, No, uncle, no, you can’t do that anymore. How are you doing? And I was like, oh, I was devastated.

I’m so honestly. I mean, I went through a divorce as well, and I had primary custody since he was about four years old. So we’re still passionate huggers and I still give him a kiss. And, you know, believe it or not, every once in a while, I still go in his room and give him a kiss goodnight and tuck him in. So it’s beautiful. It’s one of those things that, you know, going back to the whole African-American dad side of things, it was kind of like for me, like my dad was, you know, in my life, like my entire life.

But it gave me an opportunity for me to evolve that, to kind of give my son back a life that that and that’s what I wish I had. But a life that I can deliver to him now. And I’m hoping that he will take that and deliver it to his kids and grandkids.

That’s beautiful, man. That’s so awesome. I appreciate you sharing.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it’s funny that you brought that up. I mean, this is the time. But a podcast usually whoever I’m interviewing the microphone I give to you and you can actually any questions that you would like. So I’m giving you the questions. Feel free to do it.

Oh no. Actually I think you really just you poured into me. I’ve never been on a podcast when, you know, I had someone to say, give me give me suggestions on how to move forward. The only thing that I will probably say, man, I have enjoyed it. I would love for you to keep pouring into me. You know what? That’s not true. I do have a question. I’ve been having a very difficult time finding a PR person.

And so if you had to recommend what I would need to do in reference to I may not need a PR person. Right. But marketing is just heart like. It’s very time consuming. What would you suggest or who would you recommend moving for? You just make sure that I keep this momentum going and get into and book different, you know, where this radio shows, TV shows, whatever.

So the PR, it’s one of those things, it’s kind of like PR and Eskow, somebody may hear me answer this question like what the hell does CEO have to do with PR? But they’re both kind of similar in the sense that neither one of them are going to deliver overnight success. Both of them are going to have to be set up and you’re going to have to magnify them over a period of time and you have to maintain them. So when PR this PR people that essentially will inform people that this in my circles that I give you access to, that can kind of help you do shows, radio shows, podcasts, talk shows and so forth and so forth.

But then on the other side, this technology PR, this PR syndications and this PR services out there that can give you some of that PR by getting you plugged in to their network of media outlets, not necessarily just taking the article and syndicating it, but taking you as a person and saying, hey, we have access to 100 podcasters. Right. Put you on a schedule to get on one of these shows or at least 20 percent of the shows that follow under your criteria.

Right. In addition to that, they may have media outlets like TV. We’ll hear three to four TV shows that we can get you on because you have the topic that they’re looking for. So there’s two different schools of thought. Both of them can work in conjunction with each other or they can work independently. It really comes down to like the costs and the return. So to start off first, I would say start creating your own PR, do your own press press releases, start there.

Things that way when you get with someone that has PR or you get with a PR syndication, at least you have some content to say, hey, I have my headshots. That’s the first thing. Then your articles, then your bio have the basic stuff ready to go. So then you could have content to deliver.

Yep. Which I have all of that. So yeah that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s real good. I appreciate that. Other than that man, you know, just keep me in your prayers and keep pouring into me. Like I said, you know, when we have an opportunity to meet up in Atlanta, let’s let’s make it happen is I just love what you’re doing. And you just started a book club. I was reading it, too, and I actually downloaded all your books.

I’m not stalking you or anything, but I read all of your books as well. And I just appreciate what you doing, where you going and have you how you are giving back, you know, to this big world. So I really appreciate that.

Yeah, I definitely appreciate I mean, one I appreciate you. One reaching out to for you to even take the time out of your schedule to be on the show. This show is for people like you and me, whether we’re at ten thousand or whether we’re at ten million. It’s all about the entrepreneurs. And if we all work together in synchronicity like this, the opportunities for me to give you an information is information that I’ve grown to use myself.

Oh, I’ve heard of the people on my show delegate. So it gives me opportunity to pour back into you. That’s what this show is not for me. It’s about creating a legacy of entrepreneurs to have information that’s useful evergreen information so they can continue to grow and grow and grow.

I have a growing information. I like that. I’m going to use that. I like that.

Well, I mean, I definitely appreciate you taking time out to schedule and coming on the show, man. It was definitely a blessing.

My pleasure.

That’s a grant over and out.

S2E44 James Bilderback.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

That’s recording. All right, you ready? Yeah. All right, three, two, one, welcome. Welcome back to another episode of Boss Uncaged. Today, we have James. So James and I, we’ve been working together for about maybe probably about 18 months, about two years. James is currently one on one of my clients, but I definitely want to get him on the show because he has a unique business and it’s also a family business. So, James, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself of who you are?

James, James Bilderback, husband and married 20 years, three daughters and Me and Shanull met met through our first company, I believe, which was rental relocation, and we own and operate a number of businesses that are basically around the real estate world and the relocation world, you know, interlink relocation, which does full management, rental relocation, which does corporate apartments, relocation reality, which is real estate and property management. We do some commercial. We do as we do a number of things in real estate and so that’s kind of our background as far as work goes.

Got it, so, I mean, even with that, I mean, the first time I sat down with a meeting with James and he was depicting these things and I’m thinking in my head like I’m juggling all these different ideas, trying to formulate it. So he said to so nonchalantly because he’s been ingrained in it. So let’s like take it back a little bit. Like, how did you get into that industry?

But you know, I think like any industry, anything that you do there, there’s so many different little fragments of other of other pieces that are related to it. So now when we first started business, it was back in actually the 80s, and that’s really before Internet took off. That’s when things had to be more manual and we had an apartment locating business. And that was our first piece of business. So our first company here in Atlanta and and it basically worked where somebody was moving to the Atlanta area. They couldn’t go online and look for apartments. So my mom had created a whole database of all the apartment communities in the Atlanta area. We had these big dot matrix books that we could scroll through it and get the information and help people find apartments when they came to the Atlanta area. And that was the first one, which is funny because we don’t even do that business anymore. You know, you always are looking to evolve. I feel like if you’re not going forward, you’re kind of going backwards, you know, and in a lot of people go to their apartments, you know, somewhere online to find an apartment. And now they typically are going to someone for help, like I was our first piece of business in the Atlanta area.

So this is like your mom’s story a little bit. And, you know, I had the opportunity of sitting down and speaking to your mom when we first started working together. And I mean, she’s definitely a firecracker and she still has so much punch left in her as far as that a real estate. So can I just talk about that story? I mean, you were in the business as a kid, kind of shadowing your mom to a certain extent. So let’s just talk about that a little bit and how that inspired you to eventually becoming the owner of the company?

Yeah, I mean, I think it even started with my grandmother because my grandmother is in real estate. She was a real estate agent. So, you know, I remember her driving me around in the car, you know, and station wagon and had that five inch thick ASML last book that had all the houses that were sale for because, again, there was no Internet back then and then. You know, my mom raised us as a single mom, so, you know, one of the things that she looked to got into was real estate.

She first got into century 21 working with different builders and, you know, and it was ingrained. And she had her real estate license, her broker’s license and following her mom’s footsteps. But then there was a time when she was like, you know, I don’t want to work for anybody anymore because I’m not I’m not getting where I need to get to right now. This is only getting me so far. And, you know, I hadn’t really found a company that she could grow with the opportunity.

They offered some kind of opportunity of growth rate or just that lower level. So that’s when she started. Now, working in in, you know, creating her own business in her own apartment, finding service, you know, for something a little bit different than what she had been doing and felt like there was a little niche there. She had been doing rentals and doing sales and working in the real estate world and around a lot of other businesses that have been doing and successful themselves.

So we would take that step and we didn’t, you know, like a lot of companies, like, well, how do you get started? I mean, you basically take a leap of faith, right? You know, we didn’t have funding. We didn’t have this big joint venture behind us or anything like that. It was through people with the cheap office space and, you know, going around and trying to get your name out and what you do and build on opportunities.

So, I mean, that’s definitely interesting. So obviously in real estate and on the show, we interviewed several different aspects of real estate. You know, we’ve interviewed someone that’s a wholesaler. We’ve sued the the typical real estate agent model. We’ve also done we like the funding behind the scenes. But you guys have like a very rare niche. So just talk about that niche a little bit. Right. So what is it exactly that rental relocation does?

And who is that target audience?

That’s a rental relocation, was basically our first company after the apartment finding service, and as we were doing an apartment finding, we were noticing that a lot of people were asking for a furnished apartment. You know, they needed a temporary place to stay. And I was telling my mom, I was like, we’re referring this business out to another company and there’s not that many people there. Do it. The next one that comes in. And why don’t we just do it ourselves?

You know, why don’t we just just we you know, we know they’re part of the communities. We know the furniture companies. We know how much utilities cost or just furnish it ourselves and get our feet wet and try it out. And that’s what we basically did. So as the calls came in earlier, we were sending them to somebody else, an apartment community, and we just decided to go ahead and start taking those ourselves. So it’s always kind of look in whatever business that you have, how you can have those branches can grow.

Right. You know, we had things right in our sights that were, you know, an easy, fruitful thing that we could grab. We just had to develop something that fit that. So that’s one way we made rental relocation, which was started out just doing furnished apartments in the Atlanta area. And then, like 1992, the Olympics got announced for for Atlanta. And really so from 1990 to 1992, we started growing pretty rapidly. There was a big, you know, big, big development here in the Atlanta area to get ready for the Olympics.

So that was that was our first into getting into furnished apartments.

That’s pretty interesting, though, and that that’s one half of the coin, right, so that’s the rent to relocate. So on the other hand, you have interlinks. So what’s the difference between and what does it do versus rent relocation?

Well, even before that and I’ll change that subject button, it transitioned more next to relocation reality. So as we were doing apartment finding and we were doing furnished apartments, we were referring our real estate business to other real estate companies that were opportunities for us if we’re an actual realtor. So we decided, OK, you know, let’s go ahead and start. My mom already had a real estate background. Let’s go ahead and become a real estate agency.

You know, let’s let’s do property management unfurnished. We’re doing it furnished for the corporate apartments to do it unfurnished for the regular homeowners. Let’s do our own home finding where we help people find unfurnished homes on top of apartments and let’s be a real estate agency. So we tried to tie up all of that real estate first. But by the time we got to, you know, the middle to the end of the 90s, that was that was our next growth spurt right there.

So relocation realty, you can buy real estate with sell real estate with those have your house managed. We manage our ways. We do a commercial real estate. We just do all kinds of real estate related. And that was my mom’s earlier experience was real estate. And we went in apartments and folded really back into our own agency. And she is a broker. And then as that transition where. You know, through the 90s, we were more like a service provider, if you will, to most companies because we didn’t have the full.

Umbrella services. OK, so if a corporation here we are doing corporate type work, furnished apartments, real estate, home rentals, can we go call on a corporation and say we’d like to do it, come to us directly? Right. And, you know, what we were told is you don’t have the whole bundle of everything that we’re looking for. OK? And that’s when we created and are like, OK, to have that whole bundle of umbrella of relocation managed services.

Right. You know, that manages all the service providers below the corporate apartments, the van lines, the realtors, all the other things. But they also do the counseling. So we have the consultants, the counsel, the families all the way through the move. We have, you know, the expensive management system. We have the Grossmont Taxation System, we have the global comp system. You know, we put all the technical pieces behind the services, if you will, you know, and really we manage the service providers, small or large, you know, supply chain, you know, because we have suppliers all around the world.

So it was it was a much, much bigger leap for us to to get to that next step. You know, we’ve had that for the last 20 years and that was, you know, a big, big push for us. You know, as for us to so then we can have that account directly because there’s not one service that an account could want that we don’t offer. And so whenever they might need, they might need a little bit or they might handle everything domestic and international and just hand it off to us.

That’s really what it does.

I mean, that’s a that’s a hell of an umbrella. So just looking at, like business structuring. Right. And you have MLC Joe Escorpion Korps. I would think that you guys have multiple factors of those combined. Like I mean, how is that company structured?

Yeah, we have we have all three EZCORP Corp. in the Netherlands, so we have all three of them. And it was depending on how when we did it, some of our companies are working on the cash basis, some of our company accrual basis. So there are differences and it depends on who’s involved, how many people are ownership of it, you know, who has the ownership of it? There’s there’s definitely that technical piece behind it. I mean, I joke sometimes I find myself doing more business work than actual work that I supply to my customers, if you will.

You know what I mean? You know, I’m doing more day to day dealing with things that don’t even necessarily always happen to do with relocation or corporate housing and real estate. You know, it’s gorgeous moving your business along, you know, like me. I mean, you’re dealing together. You know, we deal about marketing. It’s nothing to do with relocation. Right? Are spending hours a week, know, talking all the time and trying to develop different tools in that that doesn’t even have anything to do with what my business is.

So.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So just to thinking about the experience, I mean, you guys have dealt with real estate for a long period of time on that journey. You have to have like one of these tell tale stories. That’s either a comedic or tragic in a sense. Right. So like, what’s the worst of the funniest story that you’ve ever had experience working in this business?

Maintenant. There’s all kinds I mean, we definitely. We we have a lot going on, you know, and we see a lot of personal things because we have people ran from us and it’s actually their home. You know, we have rappers. Stay with us. We have artists stay with us. We have sports people. You know, we have government, we have military. So, I mean, you can imagine anything that you can imagine.

We’ve really seen, you know, I think some of the some of the the things that stick out or, you know, are like 20, 20. That’s been like a real hard year for, I think a lot of people. You know, we had some Navy projects that were going on on the West Coast and, you know, where we’re actually moving military and or Ariete, you know, and during wildfires, during, you know, you know, protest on the streets and during covid when everything is shut down, I mean, I think that’s that’s probably been some of our craziest stories, if you will, you know, to late.

I mean, that’s something new that I had never experienced and experienced a lot of different things. Right, in L.A. but never when you move when you go to a city like Portland and the whole city’s boarded up and there’s just so many homeless out there, you know, better, you know, and that’s a whole tragic situation by itself. And then the city burning, you know, because it’s a wildfires are going everywhere and and covid and everything is shut down.

I mean, it seems like, you know, the end of the world type scene, you know, and that’s probably one of our more dramatic, you know, situations. But we had two group moves with the Navy where they had two ships that they were working on. So they have the three hundred soldiers that they’ll bring in, take them off the ship and then houses and apartments while they’re retrofitting these ships. You know, real proud that we’re able to work on that project.

Yeah, definitely interesting. I mean, think about it in retrospect. You know you know, I was working with you during that time, so I kind of had some pieces of remember, Peter, those elements as we was having our marketing conversation. So definitely I think it commends the a lot of business that you’re in. You guys are still effective even during the craziest times that we could remember in the past 20 years. So so speaking about like the 20 year timeframe.

Right. We always hear about someone’s success to be perceived as an overnight thing, like they just popped up yesterday. But in reality, there was a legacy behind it and it’s usually surrounded by a 20 year journey. How long did it take you to get to where you are currently?

Defined or I mean, where I’m like I mean, you know, one is just age, you know, I mean, you would your level of success in your business, I mean, obviously, you have to corporations, you have staff. You’ve been around for a long period of time and the doors have not closed and you’ve been maintaining it and has been growing. So how long did it take you to get currently where you are and your level of success?

Well, we’ve been bigger than we are right now. We’ve been smaller than we are right now. The one thing I can tell you is, you know, for most businesses, it’s it’s a constant. It’s a constant effort, if you will. You know, it’s never OK, and I want to start today and this thing will just go by itself for a year, even if you got 20 or 30 or 40 people, you know, it’s a constant effort.

People had always said, well, you know, it comes from the top and it’s kind of hard to decipher what that really means. But somebody’s got to tell which direction everything is going to go in. You know, what the direction, what the clients, what the process is with the technology, with the marketing, with the sales, with employees. That’s what they mean. You know that all of those things need some kind of guidance on where we’re going to go with.

I would think that we never lost money, you know, I mean, we’ve we’ve some of our tougher years and covid years or when the housing bubble bust, those were tougher years than the first year that we were in business. And we’ve we’ve continued to grow and we’ve been continued to be more profitable. I would say that, you know. It doesn’t seem like it seems like this big, you know, stack of gold at the end because you’re constantly reinvesting in yourself, if you will, you know, you might make a good amount of money, but then you’re going to hire some more people and then you’re going to do some things with marketing and you’re going to you’re going to do some things with with technology and you’re going to spend that money so you can get to the next level that you know, and the next level and the next level.

So that’s why sometimes it doesn’t seem as as big as it is, you know, but it is definitely a constant effort. I will tell anybody that it starts a business one. You know, business is rapidly changing. You know, even in what you do, you know, you see things change all the time. So you’ve got to have that flexibility to be able to spur off into other ventures. You know, and most most industries have a lot of different a lot of different fingers and a lot of different directions that you can go at the same time with two different products.

So trying to expand your products because you never know which one gets outdated. Right? Know, we just know some of the tougher things we’re seeing. I you know, we move people and we do travel and we just got shut down all travel and people moving, you know what I mean? What if that industry just went away for some reason, you know, so it’s like always trying to look for other opportunities. And that’s why we do things with real estate, other kinds of investments.

It’s really not just about what it’s being about being as diverse as you can, because it seems like one nowadays is always going to get hit somehow. The market has definitely gotten more turbulent where you used to see a crisis every 20 years and now you’re seeing it every four years. Right now, since 2008, the housing bubble and covid have been, you know, a pretty big, pretty big task for companies to get through. The effort is one, but I mean, we’ve grown since day one when we had and we know.

I don’t think it was just growth from one Servicios, growth from adding other other opportunities to what we were doing.

So on that journey, right. What’s one thing if you can do it all over again that you would do differently?

And, you know, I think that, you know, I think that education is important, you know, that, you know, if I would go back and, you know, I think a lot of people downplay school and college because they think, oh, I might not I might not be in that field or I might not do that, you know, or I don’t know if that’s going to make me money. But for me, you know, I started right after high school and the beginning of college, that’s when I started work.

And then I just rolled right into full time work and finished all my development. Education and education doesn’t just teach you how to do something else and develop you as a person. You know, some of the things I had to figure out on my own, which are good and bad. Don’t get me wrong, but I try to tell people, you know, stay educated, you know, and things that you never think that you do is, you know, just like me and you.

And I’m writing and doing other kinds of, you know, English type papers and all kinds of stuff that I was like, I’m never going to use this right know. And now I’m trying to develop content and I’m trying to do videos and I’m trying to do other things that I had never been involved with. And when you’re in college and graduate school, you get to look at a lot of different things. And so I’ll probably be the biggest thing, you know, and I don’t feel like our path is wrong or right or wrong.

I think we did. You know, I think we did a good job with it.

So it’s I think it’s funny that you brought up education and it’s kind of I’ve talked to all entrepreneurs on the show. So the balance between the two is always the question of do you believe that formal education versus like courses, workshops, continuing education? And where do you lie on that? Do you think that they’re equally balanced or one is superior to the other?

I think all education is important, you know, because I think anywhere that you can learn something in 20 years, go back to it and think about how you had some kind of touch on it without you having to learn it from scratch, you know, so if you take a marketing class, if you take an English class, if you take a paper writing class, and if you take a woodshop class, you know, all of those you go back to at some point in time, whether you’re working around the house or working on a project or something, you’re like, oh, I remember some kind of basics of where to go from A to B, right.

And so now I do think that some people gravitate towards certain industries or working outside or working inside, and I do. But I also believe that it depends on the opportunities that you’ve been given. A lot of people can make either one of them work depending on how that opportunity came to them. You know, for me, I wanted to race motorcycles. That was my goal. And I was racing motorcycles and crashed and broke my collarbone. And that’s when I my mom was like, why don’t you come up to the office?

Because you can’t do nothing right now and help me answer the phones. So that’s how that opportunity fell, where, you know, now I’m at, where I’m at, you know, but it wasn’t what I was thinking at the time. So keep your eyes open. You know, I think that’s definitely. Not to say it’s funny, but it’s funny how things work out in the sense that, you know, you were doing motocross rider, you you’re riding around and you’re covered in mud and covered in dirt and you broke your collarbone and your mom’s like, come to the office and now you’re you own the company, which is it wasn’t in your plans.

So, I mean, just going back to it. I mean, obviously what I even asked you, you come from an entrepreneurial background. Your mom is an entrepreneur. Do you think that was a factor to your current success?

The factor on success is like, you know, some people think, well. Not being able to sit still or always having ambition is, you know, I always wanted to do something different is wrong, you know, and that’s how I’m built. Like, I get tired of certain things, you know, after a while, you know, it gets old, you know, you want to do something new. And and I had. You know, that opportunity with my mom, where I always I could convince her into something I wanted to be and, you know, I’m like, we need to do these furnished apartments, OK, let’s try.

You know, we need to do real estate. Let’s try that. We need to do this. Let’s try. You know, so it was able to have that creativity to say, OK, you know, it gave me an outlet to keep trying to do something different, you know? And I think that that’s important for people. I try to teach that to my people because. I literally I sat in the same seat as everybody in my office.

I’ve done all those jobs, you know, and they’re like, well, how’d you get up there? And I was like, well, this is what I’m trying to tell you. You’ve got to look for opportunities. You’re at the front line right now, you know, so you speak to all the customers. You speak to other people, you develop relationships and you start to build your business, you know, just like I did. You know, we we didn’t have any corporate customers.

But as the phone rang and we talked to people, we tried to build a relationship and develop and none of it happened overnight. But it’s kind of fun, you know, just keep looking for opportunities. Well, got it.

So. You’re a family man, right? You’re married, you have some kids, I mean, and also you’re running a full time business. So how do you juggle your work life with your family life?

You know, that’s tough and it’s it’s when it’s sad, it’s had its ups and downs, you know, because. My job is change. Sometimes it demands me to be at the office more, sometimes I’m going through cycles where I can be at home or. And that depends on the kids, too. Now we’ve got climate out of college, one in college and one in high school. So they’re doing different things. You know, every night we’ve got different events.

I just. I know I’m busy. I mean, we’re just busy. I mean, I think a lot of people are thinking it’s an easy task or something like that, but it’s just busy. You know, we’re busy at the office. We’re busy at home. We’ve got a lot of moving parts. You know, I don’t anticipate I’ll be this busy forever, you know? You know, but I had figured I had a window of time, you know, just like most people, your you’re you’re an earner from, you know, pretty much 30 to 60 is your your your main time that you’re going to put your head down and try to knock it out, you know, and now that I’m in my 50s, you know, you have to have certain goals and certain things and I’m trying to achieve.

But there are a lot of things going on which is which is good, you know, which is really good. But sometimes you have to draw the line. I think it’s hard it’s easy to draw the line physically, but it’s harder to draw the line mentally, if you will. You know, I go to sleep thinking about work. You know, you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about working out. So mentally, it’s harder to do it than it is physically, physically.

So it’s going into you like your routine, the bits. I mean, what are your morning habits, your morning rituals that you do every single day?

Yeah. You would have been trying to do, especially lately, because I’ve been working on my surfing, if you believe it or not. So I get up in the morning, do push ups and squats. I’ve got a little yoga mat and I kind of portray it as I’ve got some lines on it to kind of look like a surfboard. So I practice kind of getting up on the surfboard, on the yoga mat, you know, the little stance with it.

So, you know, I’ve got a little thing that maybe takes 20, 30 minutes with that, you know, and we’ve got the kid, Ava, that’s in high school. Obviously, we got to get her to school, you know. My wife, you know, the dog feed, the dog, the regular stuff, you know, nothing, nothing too spectacular right now, you know, just having a little a little workout, some coffee.

Yeah.

It’s funny that you brought up surfing. I mean, I think did you recently have opportunity to go surfing somewhere?

A couple times. I mean, we’ve been trying to go five or six times a year, if we can right now.

So we’re the last location you was at.

I was in Costa Rica just a couple of weeks ago. Nice. When I was in Costa Rica over Christmas, know December for two or three weeks. So that’s a good spot because it’s warm water. So, you know, you have to wear a wetsuit. Waves are always coming. So I’m enjoying it. Kind of getting too old to ride motorcycles and dirt bikes. And I’ve been mountain biking, but, you know, I’m. In the cold, I’ve always loved snowboarding, but I’m a cold.

It seems to be hard on me as I get older. I’m not sure about that.

So like you made another pivot, you went for a motocross to surfing. Yeah, it’s not a bad pivot.

Now we’ll see. It’s super hard that I’m beat up right now. My wrist, my elbow. I’m beat up.

So this is going into like the next question being that I’ve been on this podcast for a period of time and like I’m literally talking to entrepreneurs and business owners on a regular basis and come to find out that nine out of ten of them are always reading something or listening to some kind of audio book, or they would recommend a book that got them to where they are currently. Are there any books that you want to recommend or any book that you’re currently reading right now?

Yeah, I mean, it sounds funny, but, you know, I’ve been working on reading the Bible this year, and that’s that was kind of my my goal, you know, for last year, we had more time on it. And I never really took the time to to read the Bible. My wife is Catholic and. Probably more focused on religion than I am or I should be. I mean, our daughter goes to Catholic school and, you know, I think I’ve been just taking time to try to go through that and learn that a little bit more.

Help me kind of stay grounded. You know, I think that right now there’s just so much dialog going. You know, everywhere you turn around, everybody’s got an opinion, everybody’s got something to say, and you can’t tell what’s right and what’s wrong. I’ve just been trying to stay grounded, really, and get over myself and try to think too far ahead and try to deal with anything that’s happened in the past. Let that go, because I think everybody’s had a pretty tough year with coach.

It’s pretty interesting that as a business individual individual, you went back to the roots to kind of surround yourself, you get back to like one of the first books, right? So, yeah, it’s definitely interesting. What do you see yourself in 20 years now?

Well, 20 years and I’ll be old, I’ll be in my 70s, you know.

Well, sir, you can still serve.

I’m hoping I will be. I’m hoping I will be. I mean, you know, I just think at that time, you know, I’ll be retired playing with grandkids, you know, kind of kind of doing my own thing. You know, one thing for sure, when you’re a business owner and family, you know, your day gets eaten up. You know, there’s only so many hours in the day. And, you know you know, I look I look forward to the time of when, you know, I get those free hours back, you know, and just kind of be lazy and watch TV.

So what to do, you use your business, you would not be able to do your business without. What to yes, as far as software. Let’s just talk about like software was like, what software is are you using currently right now that you wouldn’t be able to do what you do without it?

Well, we have some industry software for reservations. We have an accounting software for, you know, for all the accounting functions. And I guess one of the biggest ones that we’ve switched over to a number of years ago was the Microsoft three. Sixty five. So we don’t have any servers anymore. We we host everything with Microsoft or SharePoint. You know, we use Microsoft online, Microsoft for emails. We don’t we don’t store any data anymore. So that was that was the biggest thing I think that we’ve done as a smaller company is just getting away from from hardware ownership of that hardware and trying to maintain that hardware cloud based and be able to report perfect.

Right. Because our goal was to be able to work from anywhere, you know, and we start we put that in place five years ago. That way, you know, we have people moving all the time. We might need to speak to them any time at night. So people need to be able to access our system and work from anywhere. And now, obviously, with code that worked out well because we are already set up.

So this is going to like let’s say I’m 20 years old stepping out of college, or maybe I’m in my senior year in college and I’m thinking about getting into real estate now, just different flavors of real estate. But you’re in a particular niche. What words of wisdom would you give to someone like myself, stepping into your shoes, going back in time?

Well, as you said, I mean, there’s there’s so many different aspects of real estate, whether you’re on the legal side, whether you’re on the selling side, the administrative side, the maintenance side, you know, I think tried to get an idea of of of your personality or you outgoing. You meet people, you want to generate new relationships daily or you’re more of an organized person and a process person. You know, I think there’s two different kinds of people.

I think that, you know, some people don’t necessarily want to try to put themselves out every day and meet someone and be always on point, you know, and that’s what you have to be if you’re going to be some kind of development salesperson. You know, if you want to be more that organized person or run a team or manage things, you know. So trying to just figure out your personality helps you a little bit, you know, or sometimes you might have both.

And then maybe going to work for one of those companies, you know, and just kind of learning the insides and out and learn about what people are doing and trying to see all the different fingers that they get involved with and seeing which one interest you and learn about that one, the master, that one, develop your own program. You know, that’s that’s where you will go with you know, you find something you say. I mean, there’s nothing there’s hardly anything new out there right now.

Right. Everybody’s just regurgitating something, you know, and. You know, you could be a business that just started, and I know the company’s been doing it 10 years and you could be more successful than I am. And five, you know, just depending on how you roll it out and what your ideas are and how you have your spin on. So, I mean, you don’t have to recreate the world. You just have to recreate it in your own way and that people are interested in engaging with you.

Yeah, there’s definitely some insightful words of wisdom. So I think I’m going to I usually, like, give everybody I’m interviewing a nickname. And as you’re talking, I’m just talking like, what nickname can I give to James? And I would just like, you know what, I’m going to call him the relocation boss, because to me, that’s just that’s just a space that you’re in. It just it just makes sense. Right. So how could people find you a line like what’s your Facebook or your website or your phone number?

Email address?

Yeah, it’s you know, we have so many different channels right now, so we have Facebook friend Link at Facebook for rental relocation linked in for both of them on Unlink and James, build her back YouTube channel. You can go and see a bunch of videos for education that we did. Of course, you know, you can post on my email and it’s a long one. I don’t know if anybody’s going to remember it. The nice thing about us is, I mean, truly, that, you know, even though I might own the company, there’s not one customer that doesn’t know me, you know, and there’s not one client that doesn’t know me.

That’s the better part of what I do. Right. So I’m always accessible. I think you go to some companies and you try to find out who the boss is and they like it. You know, you don’t want people to call you, doesn’t want to know, you know, he’s not that type of person. But for me, my door is always open to everybody, you know, whether you work for me or want to talk to me or tell me about something.

And, you know, we really don’t have that many problems, so I’m not trying to hide from any, that’s the one great thing about my team as we put out such good work, you know, and that really makes me look at all the time. So I’m lucky, you know.

So going into the bonus round. Right. I’m going to start out with the question of tax, everybody, because, again, I think everybody’s answer’s going to be uniquely different. If you had an opportunity to spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive, who would it be and why?

And I know you’re going to ask that question. I mean. I was trying to think of, you know, somebody somebody different, but I mean, I really I’m around the people that I want to be around, you know, I don’t I don’t think there’s somebody. Dead or alive, that, you know, that I have and I don’t I don’t have any heroes or anything other than my mom, my wife, my mom, you know, those the two that really keep me going.

You know, without those two trying to keep me in mind, I’d be. I’d be. Sideways, for sure. So those are the two people, you know, if I had a choice in life, you know, and spend 20 minutes with somebody. Twenty four hours.

It’s funny because, like more and more exact that question, it seems to be like anybody that’s married, like that’s kind of the answer that they lead to. And I always make the smart remark that this way you never end up sleeping on the couch. That’s not guaranteed. Right. So, I mean, just to pull into that a little bit, I mean, that’s something I forgot to ask earlier on by your wife works in the business, which you on a day to day basis now.

So, like, what does that mean? How does that partnership work? I mean, to your point is hard for you to turn it off. Is your wife able to turn it off once she gets home where you both very much the same in that aspect?

Well, we you know, she’s a project leader and she’s a manager. So, I mean, I’ll have to manage her. You know, sometimes your paths crossed, you know, where you might not see eye to eye on something or, you know, you might have a difference of opinion. But the great thing about work and. I guess. You know why there’s those few cases there’s I never have to worry about, you know, being lied to or cheat or, you know, or that she’s not putting in one hundred and ten percent or all her thoughts have been behind, you know, doing the best she can.

You know what I mean? So, like, you know, it’s not always that case, you know, but, you know, there’s difficulties working with family. But most of the time, family is like, you know, do you wrong. So that’s the good side about it. So there’s pluses and minuses. She does a great job of what she does, you know, and manages large and large accounts and. You know, that hurt her abilities are way different than my abilities.

She’s such a personable person, you know, and you know way more than me. You know, people just gravitate to her. So.

Well, this is the time of the episode that while we were talking, you may have had some questions that may have come up that you may want to ask me. So I’m giving you the microphone. The floor was yours. Any questions asked me.

And I appreciate that. What I want to know, what is your angle? What are the what are you trying to achieve? Because I know you got a lot of different things going on when I talked earlier about different figures on how and trying to find, you know, your way and your path. And sometimes those go a long way. And sometimes you go down a road and you turn around, you’ve got, you know, all your different businesses and your marketing.

And so what is your goal? What are you trying to do?

I think my end result is essentially in the space of helping business owners and entrepreneurs get to the next level and even niching down more is individuals that want to have their voices heard. And through that model, I’m living that representation through podcast development, through book and publications. So it gives me opportunity that I’m drinking the Kool-Aid. I’m living living it. So when I’m talking to you about the Start your podcast, you know I’m not full of shit. I have my own podcast.

I have I’m talking to you about publishing a book. I’ve published seven of my own books, so I know the journey and I can actually help you on that. So the goal is first and foremost is to help business owners understand that, yes, your business is your business, but the best way to mobilize and to monetize your business is to get your voice out there. And the best way to do that is to control your media and to create your own content.

And it’s nice and and I’ve thought about doing things like that, too. I thought about it more with businesses. I thought about it more with kids, you know, because I think a lot of high school kids and a lot of college kids like. I just can’t see point A to point B, I don’t see that direction, and I was in there, I was like, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I know I like my dirt bike, you know?

And you know how how can I how can I do that? And there’s a lot there’s a lot going on with that, you know, and there’s a lot that people just it’s so frustrating sometimes and it’s so overwhelming and it seems like there’s just no way to do it. And that’s that’s kind of like some of the things I told you. I was reading the Bible and I just kind of slow it down and not getting too far out in front of myself and just create worry all the time.

But worrying about this one task right here and knocking that out and then go to the next task. And and it’s not as it’s not as hard, you know, you just look up and all of a sudden you’ve done a whole list of things throughout your day. You know, it’s right now it’s a grind. And I think it’s going to get more challenging for business. It’s not going to get any easier any time soon. And I just and I don’t know.

I mean, you’re seeing a lot a lot of change over the last couple of years, you know, and. And that’s a shame because I think small businesses are what drive, drive the world, you know, it’s not like you want to go visit a town and you want to go see, you know, Microsoft or Google. And no, you want to see the little shops and restaurants. You want to see all the small businesses that are out there and the clothing stores, all the little things that make up that community.

You know, that’s what businesses are know. You want to go watch a little video or a podcast that’s in the glass window, somebody in an interview. You know, we’re just got to really keep our head down and try to keep that fight going and fight going in and being able to to pivot to your point, you know, pivot when when things happen and to stay in the fight. I think a lot of people, they hit that first hurdle and they get discouraged.

And I just want everybody to know any business, any entrepreneur, you hit hurdles on a regular basis. I mean, everybody I always say like being entrepreneurs, like going through depression a certain extent, and everybody hits it sooner or later, whether you have a high or low, but is getting back up and continuing to move forward is where you get the real level of success that comes out from pushing forward when you have sports people to talk about and to to you know, you’re like you hear Tom Brady talk about how to ride these highs too high.

I don’t let myself get too high. I don’t want to get too low. I want to go even. And what that means is even throughout the day, you get good or bad, right. You know, and if your shoe fluctuates so much throughout the day, your brain just gets scrambled. You know, I get good news and then I hang up and then I get bad news and then I’ll hang up. Then I’ll get some more good news, you know?

So it’s like just trying to digest it, you know, and look at it a little different. Like everything’s not good, everything’s not bad. It’s just information, you know, it’s just a process and it’s just something that we’re working on now and try not to look at anything like it’s bad.

I definitely appreciate that. It’s definitely insightful as well. Well, I definitely appreciate you carving out time, such a busy schedule to come on the podcast and lay down some golden nuggets for for our listeners. And I appreciate it.

And I appreciate it, too. And if there’s anything I can help with education or collaborating to help other people, help them get to where they want to go, I’m with you.

I definitely appreciate it, James. Thanks again as a grant over and out.