Season 2

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.

S2E43 Leah Gervais.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Three, two, one. Welcome. Welcome back to Boston Cage podcast on today’s show. I’m not going to say she’s a native New Yorker, but we just had a Sidebar conversation. And I’m like, okay, do do you live in New York for longer than six months? You are considered to be a New Yorker. It changes your DNA, it changes your chemistry of who you are and who you’re going to become. As you guys know, I always deem whoever I’m interviewing with a particular nickname. And on today’s show, I’m going to deem her the 20 something boss.

So, Leah, why don’t you tell her audience a little bit more about who you are and why am I naming you to 20 something boss?

I think this is my favorite intro ever I’ve ever had, and I completely agree. I think New York, once you’re in it and it’s your home, there’s really no no turning back. So thank you for that nickname. How fun my name is. Leah, thank you so much for having me I am in the last year of my 20s that my 20s have been such an incredible decade, because during this decade, I went from trying to find my way in New York, trying to find my way as an early College grad and trying to find her kind of niche in the work life here, which is so intense to starting my own business and to starting it as a side hustle.

And to really feeling like I was in a full on quarter life crisis for many years. But because channeling that into a business, a platform, a message. And now it has become my full time business, something that I’m blessed to be able to employ people with. And I’m really passionate about helping people that are in quarter life traps. I don’t think you have to be in your 20s. I think even in your 30, sometimes even your in your 40s, you have moments where you feel like you did everything right in life.

Maybe you went to grad school, you went to undergrad, you did what everyone kind of taught you was the right thing to do. And you realize you’re in a place that wasn’t actually by your own design. And what do you do when you’re in that moment where you want to pivot? But you might not know how that’s what happened to me. And that was the catalyst to my own business now.

Nice. So anyone that’s listening, you could obviously hear the passion. You could hear the distinction in her voice. You could hear the tonality that she knows what the hell she’s talking about because she’s been on this journey. So I’m not going to say it’s a rag to Richard. It’s more so like hustle to actual getting invoices cashed out. Right. So let’s define yourself. If you could choose three to five words, what three to five words would you choose to define who you are?

I would say that I am a mentor for entrepreneurs and a mentor for people that want to start their own business. This is way more than five words, but if I could encapsulate it, I would say that I help people understand that if you want to have your own business, you have to think differently. And I help them learn to think differently than we have learned to through nine to five jobs, through corporate America or through the College system that we’re accustomed to in this country.

Nice, nice. That’s a nice allude to the Apples predecessors, and that don’t know what thing differently came from. Essentially, it was a speech that good old Steve Jobs had pitched way back in the day, and he had made that the tagline for Apple. So that kind of brings me to another question. Obviously, you kind of have this savviness sensibility to you. What does your business really help someone with? How do you take a client and what does the objectives of helping that client get to?

Well, nowadays, what we do is we take an entrepreneur to we have a few different stages of business we can help people with. But the I think the part that will always have my heart the most is Side Hustles people that are in nine to five jobs and they know they want to do something different, but they don’t quite know what or they don’t quite know how. And we help them put a Ryman reason to that passion kind of help them put a structure behind it, because that’s what I needed.

That’s what I did when I was at my nine to five and realizing that I didn’t want to do this and going through what was at the time, one of the most turbulent times in my honestly. And we help them build a roadmap, build a strategy, and most importantly, build the way to think about how to transition from corporate life to entrepreneurship. We also help people with raising income and raising their sales goals later on that are already full time entrepreneurs that have already been doing this for years and years.

But there’s something about that initial Side Hustle phase that I think we will always have a huge that will always be a big part of our business model, because I think that it really speaks to people that have that Hustle and know they want something different but don’t quite know exactly where to start or quite know how. We help them go from passionate but overwhelmed and confused and scale and direction list to working for themselves with clarity.

Very nice. Very nice. So let’s just back it up a little bit. So you’re talking about Hustle, right? Yeah. And you’re talking about corporate America. So you’re talking about this trend. And I love that that’s like the whole definition of what Boston Cage is really all about. It’s like that transitional page. So let’s go back this time travel back. Like, what was your corporate job and what was your hustle?

So my story starts when I was in high school. Honestly, I thought that I would wanted to move to New York City, go to NYU, and be a lawyer, and I am from the middle of the country. So I think I had kind of gotten these ideas from portrayals of what it meant to be in New York and what it meant to be working in these really highly respected, allegedly highly respected corporate jobs. So that was my plan from a pretty young age, and I was able to go to NYU, which I loved.

I don’t have any regrets about that. But I went into it the whole time thinking I was going to go to law school. Now, when I graduated from NYU, I was able to make the decision, do I want to go to directly to law school or do I want to work first? And very fortunately, I decided to not go directly to law school. I had kind of been advised against that. I had heard that it’s beneficial to have some work experience. So I got a job as a paralegal at a real estate law firm on 42nd street, kind of like in the heart of New York.

And I thought, this is perfect. This is going to show me how to not only get into law school, but also to function in the legal field and to be a lawyer and to be mentored by really smart people. And really, I thought that all my dreams were coming true right in front of my eyes. I was so excited to be in New York. I’m so excited to be working at this great firm and to have this experience. Well, it didn’t take me long to realize that I wanted nothing to do with speaking a lawyer.

I could not run far away enough from the legal field. It took me a little longer than I care to admit honestly, or that I wish it would have just because I was in denial. I think about the realization that I needed to get out of that field. So I went for years working at that firm as a paralegal while simultaneously setting for the LSAT while simultaneously applying to law school and even being admitted into law schools here in New York. Forum and built things like that, I think, on the East Coast.

And so really, I was in this situation that I think so many people do find themselves in that end up becoming entrepreneurs where you feel like you did everything right. It doesn’t have to mean that you wanted to be a lawyer or that you wanted to go to law school. But it does usually come from a place where you feel like I did something society told me would be respectful, respectable. I did something my parents are approving of. I did something that the younger version of me would make me proud.

And I feel empty. I feel completely unfulfilled. And I just don’t feel excited about this path that I’m on. And that’s exactly where I was at now at the time. I was in my mid twenties, and I also have felt like everyone else in my life was on a clear path, and I wasn’t that’s not true. I don’t think anyone in their mid twenties knows exactly what they’re doing, but I felt very alone in it. So I started realizing that I wanted to do something different, but really struggled to find the courage to admit that to myself.

And I found it struggled to find the courage to do something different because I didn’t know what that difference was. I had I want to go into a different career path. That would have been one thing, or I want to start a business. And here’s the business plan. That would have been one thing. But I really felt like I felt like I was winding back time to being 18 again, where it was like, did I even care about my undergrad degree? Did I even care about all the work that I’ve done as an adult?

So far? Where the hell do I begin? So it was not until the deadline of when I had to actually let the law schools know whether or not I wanted to attend in the fall semester. And up to that point, I’ve been talking with my mom and the lawyer at my firm that I really respected, and my then boyfriend, now husband, who at the time also was a lawyer. And we had all these list going of which law school should I go to. And the morning that I had to make the decision, I ended up sort of surprising myself, telling all of them and declining all of them.

So it wasn’t a matter of which it was just a matter of no. And I remember even one of them in particular, they were like, listen, I understand that you’re not sure right now. I get it. The admission counselor, I think she was trying to look out for me. And so she said, why don’t you defer your acceptance for a year so that you don’t have to take the outside again, you don’t have to apply again, and you’ll just have a year to kind of do other things so that in case you want to do this, you already have an ending.

You don’t have to go through this whole process again. And logically, that probably would have been something smart to take her up on. But even something stronger in my intuition just said, no. It was almost as if I knew I had to completely close this door to find another one that could open, even though I didn’t know where it was opening up to. So that’s really how this all started. And then from there, I realized pretty quickly that I no longer wanted to work at this law firm.

If I needed to kind of put myself out of the legal field to discover what else could be out there for me. I needed to get out of this job. So I decided to resign from that job, even though I didn’t really have a backup job in place. And I started a blog to kind of Chronicle my journey as a 20 something in New York, trying to figure out what the hell she was going to do with her life after having a pretty well paved path set in front of her.

And that blog had no vision, had no clarity, had no intention for how it could even make money. But it is the vessel that ended up. It’s the basis for my whole platform now, and it’s the basis for my whole business, even though I didn’t have that vision at the time. So that’s how it started.

In the name of that blog is Urban 20 something com.

It was. Now it’s just leave com. We’ve rebranded it, but that is what I make in the beginning.

So definitely it’s funny how that works, right? I mean, you start something to kind of, you know, as a pastime hobby, and then it kind of grows into this monster that takes over your entire life and becomes, like your wealth management plan that you never even thought it even existed beforehand. Right. The part that you’re telling your story. Right. So we always hear about the perception of an overnight success. But in reality, how long have you been on the journey to get to where you are currently?

A little over five years. And I would say for those first two years, I didn’t really make any money at all. So I do have kind of an interesting dynamic in the sense that in the past three years, things have happened very quickly. And I do think that if you look from the outside looking in, it could look like an overnight success. But what people don’t see is that there was 2.2 years of stagnation, confusion, lack of clarity, and really no execution on my end for this to really ramp up.

And they were hard. It was very hard to not see any progress. So.

Playing off of the whole time traveling analogy, right. So if you could time travel back, right. And you could be like the good devil or to be the angel, what would you whisper in your ear to kind of change where you are to make it happen a lot faster if you can do that all over again?

I love that question. I think that the thing I like to talk to my own clients about him that I wish I would have understood is the power of truly making a decision. And I think that the reason I didn’t see success for the first year or two or really any momentum at all is because I internally hadn’t decided that I actually believed I could do this. Or that I actually wanted to see if I could have my own business or that I actually wanted to see if my blog could become a business.

So I had kind of allowed it to be this side hustle. Maybe it could work. Let’s see what happens. Hobby type thing. And it sounds so obvious. But what I didn’t understand is that if you have asked something with your efforts, you’re going to get half as results. And so if I could go back, I would tell myself, look, if you don’t want to do this, if you don’t want to do this, don’t do it. But if you’re going to do it, then do it, don’t halfway do it and expect things to magically happen for you.

You really have to go all in. And it was when I sort of made that internal commitment to myself. And at the time, what happened. As I said, I’m going to give myself a year to see if this side hustle will actually do anything. I’m going to start spending more money on it. I’m going to start spending more time on it. I’m going to start doing things that make me afraid around it, and I’m going to see what happens. And if in a year it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work.

And I’ll stop. But it did work. And I was able to quit my nine to five job, like, seven months after that.

Nice. So I think one of the things that you just brought up is very powerful is that you confronted that fear, and you became fearless in taking a hobby and passion and really making it into a business. And I think that’s where most business owners, that’s where the great areas I’ll Dibble. I’ll dabble, I’ll put my toe in the water, but they just don’t dive off the diving board in the deep end and then figure out how to swim in the process. They’re trying to walk around and kind of bullshit around the reality that this could really be a business.

So for you, I mean, I definitely commend you. First of all, the fact that you took the leap. Second of all, that not only do you take the leap, but you compound the delete and made it into more of a women empowerment kind of thing, right? You became fearless and you’re helping other people on that journey. So my next question is still traveling back deep, going deeper into your roots, right? You’re a hell of an entrepreneur. You figured out these different modules. You figured out the system in your generation, right?

Past generations. Has anyone else had the entrepreneurial bug or spirit, like a mom or a dad or uncle on, like, have you seen any representations of this when you were younger?

Yes. My dad was an entrepreneur, but he started his own accounting firm. So it was very different than what I do in the sense that he was sort of following a tried and true model. There are other accounting firms, and he just needed to create his own. And accounting itself is a very risk averse field. Where is what I do? I need to take risks basically all the time. But what I did learn from my dad, and I think kind of why I focus on it so much now is the power of how you think and the power of the way you kind of talk about yourself and the way you choose to focus on your success will very much dictate what ends up happening.

And I think that that’s why my dad was able to build a successful accounting firm, because he really focused on the power of positive thinking. He focused on the power of trusting himself, his intuitive practice, his spiritual practice. He really kind of doubled down on himself as his own best asset. And he did teach me that from a young age. She taught me the power of gratitude. He taught me the power of choosing your thoughts and things like that. And I do think that that is a big reason I was able to take risk study young age.

My dad actually passed away the moment that I decided to. I mean, he was the catalyst for my decision to double down. So after those two years of stagnation, it was actually his sudden death that made me sort of wake up and realize that while I thought this dibbling and dabbling, I love the way you phrased it, the dibbling and dabbling was keeping me responsible and keeping me safe because it was stopping me from taking huge risks. It actually was basically guaranteeing me not to succeed.

And that became far riskier when I started having a different perspective about how short life is, how precious life is, how quickly life can change. And it ended up feeling a lot scarier to not totally go for dreams and not totally go for my own potential and to just continue staying on the shallow end of the water. So he taught me a lot growing up about entrepreneurship, and he is still my angelic business partner to this day.

So with that, I mean, you’re talking about your dad was a hell of an influence, and obviously you’re living up to that legacy for what he created and what he instilled in you. So let’s jump into I mean, obviously, now you’re married. Correct me wrong. I think you’re pregnant. You recently had a baby. So how do you currently juggle your family life with your work life?

I have a lot of help. And I think that I got lucky to have really gone all in on my business at a pretty young age, because in the early years, I did not have help. I did it all by myself. I did everything by myself. I mean, I’m sure you know how that goes. You are the CEO, you’re the talent. You’re the janitor. You are everything in your own kind of production company and in your own way of making things happen. So I did that when I was younger, before I was married, before I got pregnant.

And now we have a team on my business, which helps, and I’m able to outsource some of our personal things. And I sometimes hesitate to talk about things this way because I understand how privileged I am. I know that not everyone has access to privilege and to support the way that I do, and I’m very, very grateful. And I think it’s important to normalize asking for help, no matter how small, every time I’ve outsourced something or ask for help in a new way, it’s another form of risk taking in itself.

It has always scared me a little bit. It has always made me nervous to have the responsibility of someone’s livelihood in my hands. I and I think that if we can kind of encourage, especially women, but relatively everyone, to see that as a way for you to better do whatever work that you do, then it can become something that is not reserved for a certain person or something that you feel like you can’t have. I really think that any kind of support is good and is helpful, no matter how small.

And I do think you can do it all, but I don’t think you can do it all alone.

Very well said, definitely. Well, set me do that right. So part of what you have going on, it sounds like you had a lot of systems behind the scenes, like a lot of little things that make this engine turn and burn. So let’s talk about your morning habits, your morning routine. It seems like you’re pretty established. I’m assuming here you can correct me if I’m wrong, but if I had to guess, I would say you have a pretty distinct morning ritual. What is that?

Yeah. I mean, I definitely I will say that I had a better morning routine before I got pregnant. I didn’t realize how much it would kind of shake up my hormones in sleep, but that’s okay. I think the most important things for the morning are you in whatever way that feels good to me, and it changes, and I let it change. I used to be very strict about it, but I realized that, like, I didn’t want to feel like I was in another nine to five job where I had to do certain things every day.

It’s just to get yourself into a limit lift and inspired place. So I think that that comes from first and foremost, making sure that you do not check your phone in the mornings before you do something to fill up your own mind. And most of the time these days for me, looks like journaling. I loved a Journal, right? When I get up. I’m meditating usually right when I get up. But sometimes it looks like taking my dogs on a walk through the park and listening to some sort of positive affirmation audio.

I know that that might sound corny, but I do it, and I always feel better or reading something if I’m feeling in the motor, if I’m reading a really great mindset books, and I’ll read something like that, so I don’t think it matters specifically which one you do. I don’t think you need to do all of them. I don’t think you can do all of them if you want. It just is about getting yourself to a place where you are reconnected with what you truly believe and what you truly want.

And I think for most of us, we truly believe that we can do a hell of a lot more than other people might think we can. And we just kind of have to remind ourselves of that. And I think if you can start the day from that fresh start right away, you’re kind of off to a really good start. I will also say that before I got pregnant, I made the decision to stop drinking alcohol completely, and that has made my morning a lot better. I didn’t realize how much, even just a glass of wine or two would impact my sleep or kind of not put me in the best head space when I woke up.

And so that was a huge addition to my morning routine. I’m obviously not drinking now that I’m pregnant, but I just thought it was important to say that because I didn’t do it because I got pregnant. I did it beforehand.

Nice, nice. One of the things that you alluded to, and it leads me into my next question. And it’s also a reason why I decided to create, like, the Boston Cage Book Club just for that. You led right into this question, right? So it’s a three part question just about books, and then you’re a very astute person. Obviously, you’re very big into mindset. So I want to know, like, three part question. First part is, what books did you read on your journey to get you to where you are?

The second part of the question is, what books are you actively reading right now? Like, part of your morning routine is like, what books are you reaching out to or probably listening to audio books. And the third part is like, did you have an opportunity, or are you currently writing a book that you’re authoring yourself right now?

Lot of fun questions. I love these questions. So the book that most helped me in my journey, the number one, is, without a doubt, The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D Wattles I had a little bit of skepticism about reading this book because it sounded almost too calculated to me just from the title. It sounded a little bit like it was too focused on money, and I didn’t know if I wanted that. I don’t know if you’ve read that book, but it is really not about money at all.

It’s really just about how to think about how you can make an income in a way that is not supposed to be stressful in a way that is supposed to be aligned with kind of the way that humans are designed to work together. It really focuses on the simplicity of giving and receiving. It completely changed my life, so I will never forget listening to that. I specifically listened to the audio book rather than read it in a hard copy because it is a little bit dry and abstract.

I will say it was written in the early 900, but I would at my old nine to five job before I went out on my own. I would go to we work location after and I would just work until we were closed on my side. Hustle and I would listen to that audio over and over and over walking through it. I remember walking through the snow and just hearing it, and it was so powerful that I needed to hear going from making being underpaid at a job in New York, which is such an expensive city to now being in a situation where not only did I turn my old annual corporate salary income into my monthly income, but I’m able to help my clients do that too.

I never would have believed that I could do that, ever. And I never would have believed anyone else could. This book really helped me see where I was limiting myself. So that was the best best one. And I really think that this teaching supplier so many places other than money. I would imagine if you’re single, it would apply to dating and things like that. It’s really just about how to live in alignment and really shed like me on how unnecessary stress is, how normalized it is in our society, how we’re all stressed about the same things.

Like, how does that make sense? Why are we all worried about it’s? Just we all feel like it’s normal to worry about money. And it’s like, why why do we all need to have that heaviness. That doesn’t mean life doesn’t throw curve balls at you, but it does mean you can get through those curveballs, and it does mean that you’re stronger than your obstacles. So anyway, that book was the best. I’ve probably read it upward of ten or 15 times at this point. I still read it regularly.

It’s a quick read. It’s a quick listen, and when I’m trying to get to a new income level, I will apply those teachings to wherever I’m at. It really is so powerful. That book was the best. I still read it all often. Some of the other really powerful ones on my journey were the big lead by Gay Hendrix. That helped me really find courage to leave my nine to five job, even though my dad wasn’t entrepreneur. But no one in my life really understood what I was doing, especially my friends at the time.

So I was pretty alone in that. And that book gave me a lot of courage. I loved a lot of Marian Williamson’s work. She is very spiritual. She is so much business specific, but I loved her way of thinking. I loved her way of kind of co creating with, you know, the universe or God, whatever way kind of resonates with you the most. And I love let me try to think. I love Doctor Wayne Dyer. Still love him. And really just any book I could get my hands on about how to think in a more powerful way and powerful way in the power of your thoughts.

And answer your second question. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.

No, no, you’re fine.

You answer your second question. Still reach for many of the same books. I love reading things. Now here’s something that I think is helpful to share. I don’t know how you feel about this. You might disagree with me, but I do think that there is a benefit to having awareness around the chapter that you’re in in terms of consumption. I personally don’t believe that you should consume content 365 days a year, every single day for the rest of your life. That is new. I think there is such a thing as content overload where it can almost paralyze a person because they might be getting conflicting information or they might be feeling two different things.

So I do think that there are chapters where it can be helpful to kind of go more inward and listen to your intuition a little bit more digest whatever content you’ve most recently read or consumed, and then kind of be able to move on to consume something else. So I’m a little bit in that right now. I think, especially because of pregnancy. It’s my first pregnancy, and there’s just so much information out there for your first pregnancy and planning for a baby, and it can be very overwhelming.

So I like to go back to some of the Old Mindset classics, like, I love listening to audios from Louise hey, who is the founder of Pay House. I love listening to audios from Wayne Wire, and I love listening to Old Mindset books like The Game of Life and how to Play It by Foreign Shovel. So those are probably what I would most reach for now. And then. The other thing to kind of encapsulate my book suggestions that I’ve found so much inspiration from reading biographies and autobiographies of successful people.

It’s such an untapped resource. It’s like, Why do we think success is such a mystery when there’s been lots of successful people and they write about them? So some of my favorites have been I Love Life by Keith Richards, The Guitars and the Rolling Stones. That was probably my favorite one. And recently I like Green Lights by Matthew McConaughey as well.

Nice.

What about you? What are your favorites?

I’m curious, man. To your point, I mean, I think we have similar tastes for different spectrums. So to match your original book, I would say Think and Grow Rich as a book that you read it in 1930. If you read it in 1999 and you read it in 2020, then you’re going to be reading it begin the year after that and isolating the different chapters. And like you’re saying, we read the chapters. And that’s one of the reasons why I wrote my last book with, like, a journaling book on how to Journal the content that you’re reading from other books and consolidate them.

So I think that goes through in addition to that was another book that I’ve always recently. I just I love the philosophy of it. Is the five Second Rule by Mel Robin?

No, Robin.

Yeah. And that book is so simple. She’s talking telling the story. And it’s like the second fear or a second some hurdle steps in front of you. Counter five and overcome that bastard. Counter five, push through it, run through that fence. And that’s the only thing that’s different from what she’s saying than anybody else is saying is that it only takes 5 seconds for you to really make a decision. And once you make the decision, commit to it. And then last but not least, my third one would be Traffic Secrets by Russell Bronson.

From just a marketing standpoint to do, he’s obsessed with marketing. He’s obsessed with sales funnel. And that book just kind of gives you, like a blueprint, like a clear itemized blueprint, step by step on how to scale monetize and speak the success you’re looking for through marketing.

Totally. I love all of those books, and I love what you said. I think the biggest thing I got out of thinking Grow Rich was how to make quick decisions and the importance of making quick decisions. And Mel Robbins kind of modernized the concept. But I think it’s amazing that you really highlighted that through both of those. Because when I look at the year my business took off, that was my word of the year was decisions. And it really showed me how much of my life I spent in Indecision and how much of my life I spent not trusting myself or not believing I made the right decision.

And it really revolutionized my whole life when I just started making decisions faster and letting my decision sometimes be wrong. It’s okay. You live to tell the tale, but at least you’ve made more progress than if you were just sort of still wondering what to do about it.

Yeah, totally. Totally. So going to the last question with all this information, all this content is almost hard. Not for someone like you to not write a book yet. So please tell me you’ve written your first book.

I am writing my first book. So I’m about four chapters in, and I started writing it before I got pregnant, and so pregnancy has delayed a little bit. I’m not going to lie. That’s okay. But my book is called The Shiny Object Is You. And it is all about how to avoid Shiny Object syndrome and shines so bright that you really can’t focus on anyone’s path at your own. And I think that you can shift out of comparing yourself. You can shift out of wondering what secret there is to success that you don’t have.

And if you can kind of ditch how much energy so many people waste wondering what they’re doing wrong or what they’re doing, what shortcomings they have or how someone else is doing something and focus so much on what you are doing, right? You will get a momentum, and momentum will always lead you somewhere. I really kind of this is less important about the momentum you’re in specifically, or the strategy you’re using specifically and more important about the fact they’re actually doing it and getting somewhere, learning and learning it.

So that’s what my book is called.

Nice, nice, nice. So it’s gonna be a hard question, and I’m all to myself, so I get it. Like, when are you planning on releasing this monster?

I want to do it next year with my son and have him be on my little book tour with me.

Nice, nice, nice. So you brought up your son. So, I mean, like, my next. So, like, with the book, with your business, with the kid, with the family. Where do you see yourself 20 years from now?

Definitely in New York City, and definitely having as much. I don’t love the word balance, but having as much of I never want to stop working. I never want to take my foot off the gas. I love it. I think it’s in my DNA. I think you probably know how that is. I think if you’re an entrepreneur, it’s a part of your identity. It’s not part of your job. It’s just part of who you are. And I can’t really, ever see myself shopping. That. So I don’t know if that will look like the continued growth in different kind of pillars of my own business, or if that means more than one business.

I’m really open to it in that way. And I know that motherhood, while being an entrepreneur, is going to be imperfect and Rocky and have its challenges. But I can’t imagine my life any other way. And, you know, I think the best I can ask for is to just continue to get up every day and do what I love and continue to help clients get results. And that has brought me more fulfillment than any nine to five job I ever had by far. And I hope to be able to find what works for me to be able to be both a mother and an entrepreneur at the same time.

And it is a lot on my plate at once being pregnant and having my business and everything. But that’s how life goes. You never know what life is going to throw at you. There’s always a million curve vault. And I think after my dad’s passing, I just sort of have let go of trying to find perfect balances or trying to have things lined up in a certain way or trying to have perfect plans, because it really showed me that those points are typically irrelevant anyway. And where you really can find the fullness and richness of life, it’s just in the daily in going through the days, allowing allowing things to come to you, allowing things to happen, allowing yourself to explore things and not trying to control things that don’t really help to be controlled anyway.

Very nice. I mean, just listening to you speak. I mean, obviously, you have a lot of motivational mindset to you, and I think that you bring that to the table with whoever clients that you’re working with. So let’s talk about your ideal customer avatar. Like, what does that individual person look and what are they going to bring to the table?

Well, I would say that in terms of the stage entrepreneurship our clients are at, they’re generally two. So we either have that five hustler that we kind of talked about where they have the idea, and they have a lot of ideas, but they don’t know if they can do it. They don’t know where to start. They don’t know exactly how to monetize. They just have too many puzzle pieces all over that they don’t know how to put together, and we can help them. And then Additionally, I do help, and I help more in a personal setting through my own mentorship and mastermind entrepreneurs who are established and already have six bigger businesses, and they are wanting to gather their income pretty dramatically.

So my ideal client are sometimes at different phases of business, but the traits and the qualities that we find we’re able to most help people with are typically that somewhat similar to my story, have a kind of type a perfectionist personality, which we try to completely alleviate from them, because I find the perfectionist perfectionism is not helpful to entrepreneurship, but they sort of have this, you know, bottled up ambition where they wanted something exciting for their life. They wanted something excited for their career. They wanted to have a really fulfilling career.

Maybe they wanted they kind of had, like, my childhood dream where they wanted to live in New York or different city. They had this sort of big vision, and they thought that they knew what they needed to do to get there. But those things haven’t matched out for whatever reason. And so we find that our entrepreneurs have a lot of this hustle. They have a lot of this. They have a lot of ambition and they don’t know where to put it. And they might not realize how much they need to step away from being the A plus student or fun being the perfectionist.

They have to start being willing to be messy and to mess up and put themselves out there and potentially be humiliated. And it’s not for everyone. Entrepreneurship is scary and people will make fun of you. That is what has happened to me. But it doesn’t matter if it’s what you really want, and it doesn’t matter because those people shouldn’t be dictating your life. And I think our ideal clients come to us and make the most move and find the most success when they are ready to ignore the things that have been standing in their way for so long.

Nice. Very nice. So what you’re doing? I mean, obviously you must have a pretty expensive tool set, right? And I’m talking more so like software and applications. So what tool do you use on a daily basis that you wouldn’t be able to do what you’re doing without?

Great question. Well, definitely. Nowadays Zoom, especially given the pandemic how you feel like I’m on Zoom pretty much all the time, and I’m sure you do as well. Some of the other tools marketing tools. I want to give a shout out to a I’m a huge fan of Active campaign for a CRM for an email marketing platform. Got pretty into email marketing when I was still at my nine to five job because I saw it. I don’t know if I was right, but I thought that it would help me setup funnels that would help me make sales while I was at my nine to five job.

I thought that if I just relied on social media, I don’t know how that would work because I would be like at this job and how would I be creating content? So I don’t know if that line is thinking was totally sound, but I am glad that I started building my email is from day one because to this day my email is still the backbone of my business. It is where the majority of our sales come from. And I still think that having an email is a very, very powerful thing, even though everyone thinks social media is so powerful.

So we allow Active campaign because I think that they have very sophisticated automations and triggers and funnels, and they allow us to segment our audience in a way that allows us to stay high touch while still scaling. So I’m a big fan of Active Campaign. I do not recommend a platform like Mail chimp in the beginning. Instead would recommend something like Mail or like, it’s also free. It’s how I started. I got to my 1st 500 subscribers there. I think it’s better than MailChimp, although I’ve been looked at MailChimp in a while, so I could be wrong about a few things.

We also use WordPress for our website, and I have no clue how to build a website on WordPress, but I do think WordPress has a lot of strength over some of the more user friendly platforms, like Squarespace, for example. I do think there’s benefits to Squarespace, but for SEO purposes and for just the longevity of your site and the potential, I do think it is worth exploring a WordPress site, even if you’re new to WordPress and using that. If you are just starting a website or you want to start a blog or you want to start a platform or something like that, I don’t think we’ll ever leave WordPress.

So those are probably the biggest ones. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else that we use on a regular basis. I also am a big fan of ads. We use Facebook ads. I don’t use them as much anymore because they have gotten so complicated, but I do think it is helpful to just have some sort of platform that allows you to spread your reach, like, automatically so that you don’t have to do it all organically and you don’t have to do it all yourself. I kind of thought of ads is like my first hire because they helped me grow my audience and my email list so that I didn’t have to do it all organically.

Very nice. So let’s talk about final words of wisdom, right? So let’s just say I’m a College student or let’s say I’m a 35 year old person that’s working for corporate America and entrepreneurism keeps calling me, and I keep dipping my towing, going back to being scared, to leaping and then jumping with fat. What words of insight would you give to an individual like that to help them make that transition?

What a beautiful question. I would love to hear your answer to this so that I’m happy to answer first. I think the the message I would really want to share to them is it might sound like a cliche concept, but to honestly put yourself in a situation where you can Zoom out and look at the bigger picture that is your life day to day. It might feel scary to spend money on a business that you don’t know is going to work. Or it might feel scary to have to do this even though you have a nine to five job.

But in the big picture, what is really going to help you feel like you are living a fulfilled life? Something I think about all the time. My dad passed relatively young. He had a great life and he had three kids and everything, but he was only 58 when he passed away, and it was very sudden. And if I were to, God forbid, pass away at that age, I’d be halfway there. Like my you know, my trip, this journey that I’m on that we’re all on would be halfway over.

And I don’t mean to sound that to feel more bit, and I hope that there isn’t anything triggering about what I’m sharing, you know, but that really helps to remind me even though I still get scared, I still take risks. I still spend money that I don’t always know if it’s going to work. I still fail. I still have launches that don’t work. But it really helps to put into perspective for me that like, would I do it any other way? And the answer is no.

Whereas when I was at my nine to five job, I knew that the only reason I was doing it that way is because thought I should because I thought it was responsible and because really, I was operating under other people’s values. And when I looked at my own values, I believed in myself. And I believe that things were going to work out. And I believe that things would be hard and that I was strong enough to overcome it. And I think if you can believe that about yourself, I think that’s the key.

I think there’s too much mindset chatter about basically surpassing the challenges that come with entrepreneurship and thinking that if you just have a good mindset, things will all work out. I don’t think that that’s the point. I think the point is to know that there will be obstacles and there will be hard times and you will fail and you can do it anyway. And if you can get to that place of inner knowing, of competence, of shortness of trust, and to Mel Robbins point with the five second rule, you get more confidence, the more you do it.

But if you’re waiting for confidence, you’re not going to get it. And you’re cubicle, you’re only going to get it from proving to yourself that you do fail sometimes, and you still overcome it, that you do make a decision, and it still doesn’t work out, and you’re still going to be okay. I think so many times people know they want to do something different. They don’t think that they can. And they’re sort of waiting for assign a system, a structure, permission, assurance, and that isn’t something that is brought to you.

That’s something you create. So that would be my advice is to Zoom out, look at what you really want out of your life. And if you know that it’s somewhat different than the path you’re on right now, have the courage to know that even if you don’t feel sure now or you don’t feel confident now, you can create those feelings, but only if you actually create them, not if you wait for them. Okay.

I would say something along the lines of life is parallel to existence, but perpendicular at the time. And when you look at our glass, every single green and every single bit of information that you put out into the world, it’s slowly falling on the other side. And once that time is up and it flips over, everything restarts so you don’t restart. But time continues moving forward, so you’re going to have to build a package of information to leave behind these bread crumbs for your family and for future entrepreneurs or future whoever your target may be.

So they can utilize this content that you’ve been building for a period of time to help them grow and prosper and flip over those grains of sand over and over again.

I’m fired up. I’m going to have an inspirational day from what you just shared.

Oh, so well, I’m thinking about what you just said, so I’m just recapping in my head. I mean, it’s definitely powerful, definitely insightful. So how could people obviously you’re talking about being fired up. A listener of this podcast listening is like, oh my God, she’s in later 20s at this point time, she’s pregnant. She’s doing all these different things. She took her hobby, made it into a profession, took that profession, made it into a business. She’s scaling. She’s monetizing it. She’s making money. Oh, my God. Where do I sign up?

How do I get in contact with her? Where do I find her online? So help them find you. What can people find you online?

So my website is my first and last name, Leander Com, and you can find out more info about me there. You can also always email me or DM me on Instagram. I try to be really active there, but if you are in kind of the shoes that we just talked about, if you are on the cusp of starting or on the cusp of leaving the nine to five or on the cusp of scaling, maybe you’ve already started, and it’s just not really getting where you want it to be.

Then I encourage you to investigate our program called Scalar Side Hustle. So it is my signature coaching program. It is a four month coaching program, and it happens just a few times a year. The doors open and closed, much to the dismay of some very smart people that have told me to keep the doors open all the time. I like the cohort aspect of it. So we really have everyone go through these four months of kind of an incubator together of how to go from a Side Hustle idea or a Side Hustle that is up and running, but just not scaling, and we help you scale it.

And we do that through mindset work for marketing work. We really cover pretty much all the odds and ends of what it means to put a business out there online at this day and age and make it income limitless. That program in particular is based on the six month period I went through when I lost my dad. I decided that I did not want to do this whole half and half out life anymore and truly changed my entire value system. To give this my all. Now, I don’t think you need to go as extreme as I did, but I realized that there were so many things I was doing that were inconsistent with what I said I wanted.

For example, I always said I wanted to have a successful business and that I wanted my blog to take off. Yet I was too afraid to ever spend money on it, to spend money in the form of ads, to spend money in the form of mentorship, to spend money in the form of support anything because I didn’t have enough money. I was working at a nonprofit in New York City, and I had student loans and I didn’t have enough. And so I just never did it.

And when I made that decision, when I doubled down, I went into debt to do this. Now, I’m not giving any one financial advice that I’m not sharing or giving anyone feedback on what they should or shouldn’t do. But I want to be transparent about my journey, and I want to be clear that I had to go against what I thought was a very big value of mine. Don’t go into consumer debt that you don’t know is going to be pay back soon to make this happen, because my value of going all in ended up becoming bigger.

So sometimes you are going to have to change some of the way you’re doing things in order to make things happen. I remember being very afraid. People that I grew up with were going to laugh at me and they did, and I had to do that anyway. So there was that six month span between my dad passing, changing kind of how I was functioning and going about the world and really my ideals to starting to offer a service, starting to sell it, to being able to give my nine to five resignation and having my first five figure month.

It was a six month period, and that is what I based this program off of. So it’s really about a catalyst for you. And if you are feeling like you’re at that point where I you know, you’re ready to go all in, but you don’t know what that quote looks like for you and you don’t really know how to put it all together. This is the program for you, and at the time of this recording, it will be open for the last time this year. So there’s no time like the present to join.

Wow. I definitely appreciate that. So I think that I like to end my podcast and going into a bonus round with Cones questions. Right. So my first bonus question, and I think for you, this is going to be a very interesting answer because I don’t know how you going to swing it.

Right.

So outside of your new spouse, your husband, outside of your new baby boy, that’s going to be born pretty soon. What is your greatest achievement to date?

What a beautiful question. Thank you for asking me that. I think that when I look at the hardest thing I ever had to overcome was losing my dad but something that I also think shaped me a lot as a person that I don’t think about enough is that I had I grew up with pretty debilitating scoliosis and I wore a black rice for, like, ten years growing up. And I was on the custom surgery a lot of the time. It was just a very challenging part of my childhood, and then a very challenging part of my early adulthood.

And managing basically, chronic pain was something that I really had to figure out how to do. But I have figured out how to do it, and I was able to do it without getting surgery, even though many doctors told me I was on the path to do that. And that is something I’m very proud of. Not that there’s anything wrong with surgery, but I think anyone who lives with anything chronic, whether it’s illness or pain or condition, it can feel it can be suffocating at times.

And I know that not everyone is manageable. So I’m not trying to say that I feel like everyone should be able to manage it. But there were times where I felt very hopeless and I don’t feel like that anymore. And I feel like I can manage it. And that’s a big achievement of mine.

Very powerful, very powerful. So I got another bonus question, and I could assume, but I’m not going to allude to who I’m thinking that you’re going to answer this question with. Right. But if you could spend 24 hours with anyone uninterrupted for those 24 hours, right? Dead or alive, who would it be and why?

It would be either my dad or Jesus Christ? My dad, because he’s my hero and I miss him very much or Jesus because he’s one of the great teachers of the world and one of the wisest people that ever lived. And I don’t think that anyone would surpass time to understand his way of thinking and the things he knows definitely very interesting.

I was like, I was like, I know she’s going to have to say our dad without saying, you have to see your dad.

Right. It’s kind of like a weird time. Like my father were like, Jesus. But those are the two names that came to mind.

Well, I mean, both of them are very influential in your life. It goes hand in hand. So going into clothing again, you’re a fellow podcaster. So this is when the microphone and the show becomes yours. And you could ask me any question that you would like.

That is so fun. What would you tell yourself at the beginning of your mindset entrepreneurial journey? I love the devil as angel on your shoulder.

What would you say to yourself for me would be focused on? Your point is kind of more so. It’s a gift and a curse. It’s like I’m so diversified in my education level between the different principles that I understand and I dibbled and dabbled. It and that’s who made me who I am. And that’s why I’m a growth strategist now. But if I would go back and I would say, okay, pick one thing and do a little bit more deeper diving, and I’m getting that deeper dive over a period of time.

But what would it look like if I had went down one rabbit hole versus pretending I’m in the Matrix and spitting between three different rabbit holes at the same time?

That’s a great one. Do you have any? Is there anything you do different about your journey? Like, I know that regret, you probably don’t have any, but is there anything that you’re like? Oh, I really wish I would have done that different.

So for me, because believe it or I had a stroke back in 2018 because I was a workaholic working 20 hours every single day. I literally I was working myself to death. So if I could do anything a little bit differently in that side, I would probably say scale back on the working for hours. Now. Obviously, I made a full recovery, and I think it was more mindset than anything that I fought to recover to where I’m at right now. But again, that’s part of my journey.

But if I can go back and change anything, I would probably say focus a little bit more work a little bit less, strategize more, make more things, more of a systematic. And that’s why I’m a system guy now. Kind of figure out how can I do what I was doing so much of before with utilizing system? So I’m not the pinnacle point or the Keystone to every single thing that I’m doing.

Oh, my God, what a story. I’m so happy that you are okay. I’m so sorry that happened to you. Do you feel like it was a hard mindset shift for you to get to to believe that you could make as much money if not more by working less? No.

Because I mean, going back to my story a little bit is like I have a creative background and I have a technical background. And then I Dove into the financial sector. So I’ve had a series six insurance licenses up and down the East Coast and all that. So I understand the value of leveraging capital, but I also understand. So I always define myself as 50% created 50% analytical. But I was think about being split equally between both those platforms. Financial is like stocks and markets and bonds.

And then over here, it’s kind of like font and colors and shapes. They really don’t communicate with each other. And I was making them both work, but it took 20 hours a day for me to make that happen. So to answer your question, I think definitely. I think once you isolate on a particular thing. And that’s one of the beautiful things about this podcast. As I interview people, I’ve had people on this show that they’re specializing and coaching people how to be fearless. And you would think, like, how the hell do you make money coaching on one particular topic?

But it’s such a coordinate. And so many people are fearful of making leaps and fearful of making jumps that the reality is the only thing that they need is like a couple hundred people to buy into that system, and then they can be wealthy. So taking that aspect of it as much like my stock side well, over a period of time, if you do one thing long enough, you would reap the rewards of it. So it’s the same principles.

Yeah, that’s what an amazing story. Oh, my God.

Cool. I definitely appreciate you coming on the podcast today for those that don’t realize we just met for the first time today on this particular podcast. But I think the synergy is there. I think you give so much to the audience. You give so much details about who you are, how you’re delivering the stuff, and what your journey looks like. And definitely I commend you for being who you are and continue to keep doing what you’re doing.

Thank you so much. I very much appreciate your time and inviting me on this podcast, and thank you so much for your kind of supportive words. I so believe in what you do. I think your audience is very lucky to have you to support them through this journey.

Definitely appreciate it. Essay Grant over and out.

S2E41 Naomi.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Audience, make sure it’s recorded and that’s recording. All right, three, two, one, welcome. Welcome back to Boston Cage podcasts on today’s show. Well, I want to kind of refresh the memories of some of our viewers that probably listen to my show that I went to high school with. On today’s show. We have Naomi. So me and me went back. I think it was like ninety seven, ninety eight roughly around that time frame.

So in from 97 to now, she’s taking multiple different parts on her journey to get to where she currently is. So right now she’s an author of a book titled. Spaghetti A.M. Naomi, why don’t you go ahead, introduce yourself to our audience so we can talk about you and what you’ve been up to.

Hello, everyone. My name is Naomi Nexen Brown. I’m going to say that some of you know me as Nexen. My married name is Brehm. Been married for going on 14 years. This coming May and I now live in Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, to be exact, and. Yeah, I’m here. I’ve been here for about seven years, I have two children, two boys. I’m a mother to four, but I have two of my own.

And yeah, I’m just thankful that Schnall reached out to me and asked me to do this today. Thank you. You’re welcome.

A dove into to your journey a little bit, right. Because, I mean, the nickname that we’ve always called you was on me, which ironically enough, today you find out being grandmother because you’ve always been like the general nurturer of the group. Right. Even throughout life, this following your Facebook, just like in your you are a nurturer by by nature. So it only makes sense that you created a book that kind of nurtures kids. So let’s step back a little bit like how did you get on the path to becoming an author?

Well, honestly, I’ve always kind of written my thoughts down and I’ve always kind of written songs because I am a performer and a vocalist for years I have. Allowed my creativity to flow in one way or another, so writing I’m not afraid of I don’t always like what I write like most artists, but I’ve always written I was inspired to write this story because of my husband. He is the biggest candy monster I have ever known. It’s funny because I will go in the room and sometimes catch him with bags of candy, open up on the bed next to him and he’s just picking out whatever pieces he wants out of these multiple bags.

It was really hilarious to watch catching on camera sometimes. I haven’t posted anything yet, but I will. He is truly the candy monster that inspired me to read it. I wrote the story in actually twenty fifteen. I was sleep one evening and I jumped out of bed. It was about 3:00 in the morning. I jumped out of bed. It was on my mind. I actually wrote the book with actual Candy Mayne’s originally, but of course you can’t use the names.

So I changed it up when I decided to go ahead and release it. And of course, that was a process which we’ll talk about more. But my inspiration actually came from my husband. He he he he eats more candy than any woman I’ve ever known. And of course, I’ve I’ve always felt connected to, like you said, nurturing in children and having my own. And because of, you know, being on this life journey in life, taking you away from that prepare for I was forced to be home with my children and kind of be the house mom kind of thing.

And I won’t I shouldn’t say force. It was a choice as well, because I always kind of wanted to do that. You know, you have to have the right partners to do that. So I think thank God that I was given that opportunity to live out that dream and in my journey, because that was something that I did dream for myself. From being in high school, of having that type of lifestyle, so. So in doing that, they were also my inspiration as well, you know, and I love connecting with children, you you get so much guidance from them if you really watch them and listen to them and they also keep you full.

So I’m not being around to love bit of it.

Well, I think you made a really solid point. I mean, obviously, 20, 20 was a year of covid, and a lot of people are trying to figure out not only how to make ends meet, but what’s their next steps. So in that process, in addition to what you just said, you essentially started an entire business structure of kind of writing books and obviously selling these books and marketing these books. So just talk about a little bit.

I mean, you go from being more of a behind the scenes, you’re more of a supporter. I mean, your husband is ran for different seats and he’s a political campaign person. So just like understanding like that’s in your household and then you decide to create a book like what is that like?

Well, I a tell you and I’m going to speak from the stay at home mothers point of view. And I’m sorry if you want to hear more about I did try to put them away, but there’s still anything interesting from a mother’s point of view. I’m going to say this, and I know it’s been said over and over again, you have to make sure that you don’t lose yourself. And despite of what he was doing along the road, I always found a way to keep myself a niche of myself.

And no matter what was going on, whether we had the money, whether he didn’t have the money, I was find a way to do me. So in that process, writing it once the opportunity came for me and I said, OK, I’m going to put this little nugget of money away from myself, you know, then I could use it to flourish and say, I’m going to put this out for me, you know? But it was a choice of saying, put yourself first at that moment, because as a nurturer, you do choose to put everyone else in front, you know, help this person with the help that person with this, and you can easily lose yourself.

So my thing was to always find my niche in no matter what was going on, whether I could do it the way I wanted to do it or not, you know, because sometimes in your moments, you can’t do it the way you want to. You can’t have your vision come to fear for total variation all the way out. So I wanted to make sure that even though I was stuck in points where I could not actually do things the way I wanted, I still managed to always be mindful of not losing yourself completely and allowing whatever your creativity is, whether it’s writing, whether it’s saying whether it’s your, you know, your work life, whatever it is, that is your passion.

Don’t lose that in whatever you’re going through. So that was my thing, not losing my means, making sure that I put the money away to go ahead and make it happen when I was ready. And then just believing in it and putting your plan together, put our plan together and going after. And I’m still putting my plan to God. I’m still figuring things out as I go. I don’t have all the answers. And and I’m comfortable with that as well, because sometimes that could be a fear for people not to move forward because they don’t know everything.

I was up there sometimes like, oh, my goodness, what am I doing? Should I should I do this or that? But it was just a choice to say, I’m going for it, I’m going to do it. The time is now. Let’s go. So that’s how I went on with it.

Yeah, I think you would have a solid point is very insightful as well. It’s kind of like, you know, in a married, married household, there’s always two parties. Right. It’s a complete partnership. So understanding that, yes, you can support your partner, but you need to figure out what you want to do for yourself if what your partner is doing is not directly for you. So I definitely commend you for stepping out and saying, OK, I’m going to support my partner, but I’m going to do something for myself on the side as well, too, because, I mean, that takes a lot of guts.

It takes a lot of gusto to even step into that mind state to be able to go out there and try to achieve something on your own.

Exactly. Yes. And and it does it is a different mindset, again, because you’re always in that. Well, OK, I got to help in this way. I got to help in that way. I got to position myself to fit in this or fit in that. So it is a different mindset to say this right here is for me, I’m doing OK. What’s going on around me is just sitting at focus and saying this is the time, you know.

So I’ve read a couple of books that know help with that. There was a point in my life and and I’m usually pretty private. So I’m going to I’m going to share a little bit more of my story on this. But I was working at a restaurant. My husband and I both worked at a steak and shed here in Hoover, Alabama, and he I started working there. Money got so tight. Goodness. We came here and we came here because my husband wanted to go to law school.

OK, we moved here and you went to law school. You pay as you go. There’s no government funding. You know, it’s an adult program. So it was Birmingham School I went to before coming here. He commuted for a year and traveled back and forth from me in government three times a week for working two jobs. OK, and I’ll just give you guys a little bit more understanding. When we first got married, he was doing very well.

He had a company, mortgage company there in Atlanta. Of course, you know, the recession happened and he had to close his business. These slowly lost everything. He had to decide, OK, as a man, the leader of this household, what am I going to do to get back to that money like I was making before legally, you know? And so I decided to go to law school and we’re just getting married. So this is, you know.

A new thing for me to you know, we’re like, you know, as a woman, you say, I’m going to say I’m going to go women like security, you know what I mean? But it’s more than that. When you choose to do life with someone, you do life long period, you know, whether it’s good or bad. That’s what I’ve asked a lot of people stick to. But I did know. So I’m trying to make a long story short.

He decided to go to law school and we were down to nothing and we said, OK, let’s make this move. So we moved after a year of him doing that back and forth as I got pregnant with Jackson. Of course, pregnancy never comes. What is supposed to those OK? You’re like, oh, really? God, now? Not now. So we moved after that year. I had a three year old and a one and a half year old and we moved to a small apartment.

We were paying for the school, you know, paying for where we live. And if things were so tight and they got so tight, I remember he came in the house one day and, well, he went out, he said, I’m going to work, OK? And at that point, he was working at at a law firm here and they were playing and they weren’t paying him what it’s worth. OK, so things were, like I said, supertight and he was outside going to work.

And he comes back in and he’s like, you got a new way to go. I said, that’s enough. He said, OK, well, they took the car. Can I can I get your keys? I said, All right, here, go. They had just came right out of the car and we just kept moving. I said, hey, I’m taking all right, don’t do what you got to do because I know, you know, as a wife.

Who wants to come in, you know, I have a husband who wants come to the work that I normally wouldn’t even going on, which eBay you’ve got to do and even I didn’t even address here, but go to charity. And that’s what. Has let me here is allowed what being supportive of him has led me here as well. It’s been a journey we’ve all taken together. So I know a lot of people want to hear about the good parts, but sometimes it’s often the ugly parts that get you to the good parts.

So that’s part of mission, that story. But we both ended up working at that restaurant for a little bit of time. And the reason I brought that up is because there was a moment where I felt. Of course, like. I know I’ve had some women, it’s like I’m just here in this, I know we’re on this journey with that man. I’m tired of this part of the journey, you know, so there was a book there that someone had left, I don’t know.

It was there for a few weeks and it was called. How does that feeling like shit and excuse me for casting for all my Christian people now, because I don’t I don’t know. But that’s the title of the book by Andrea Allwyn and I. And I read that and. And let me know that even though I was OK, even though I was there in that moment, that I was OK, it was going to be OK, that this was just part, again, of the journey.

It’s part of the journey, you know, and we don’t account sometimes for those things in our journey, of course, that we don’t think we’re going to face or are we don’t want to face. But it was part of the journey and I was going to be OK, you know, so I’m glad I got a chance to read that. And of course, here I am now with my book, you know, something that I envisioned. But did I truly say when I wrote it, I’m going to put this out, make this book?

No, I did it, you know, in 2015. It was an idea, you know, but. Again, it was finding the focus and changing my own mindset that allowed me to move forward with releasing it, you know, so just so so I mean, with everything that you just said and it is kind of like, I don’t know if you realize, but I knew when you came on this show would give you an opportunity to shine and to let people into your inner who you are and again goes back to your name of being omae.

Right. So I don’t know realize it yet. But I mean, your woman apartment is on ten thousand, right? I mean, the message delivered could give so much insight into current people’s positions in their current household to understand that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is more steps ahead of them. You’re not at the end of your road. Right. In addition to that, I don’t know if you realize it, but I mean, obviously, you’re a motivational speaker itself, right?

I don’t know. Thank you. So definitely. I mean, you could go up on stage and say exactly what you just said, and I guarantee you’ll get like a test of everybody in the audience is going to raise up their hands and be like, yes, reach on success.

So thank you. Thank you.

So a dove into your business a little bit. So, I mean, like you’re new into the business space, but I assume your husband has been in the business space. So, of course, being surrounded in that environment. Is your book set up kind of like an LLC? Is it more so like you just kind of playing around like, where’s your business?

I am I am going to set up as an LLC. I am playing around and and finding out which way I kind of want to go with that because I feel like this is a product. Now, you know, as I’ve done my story times, I’ve had a lot of the children to ask about where they could purchase a candy monster. And this is Candy Monster. My mother is a seamstress. She actually put him together for me. I cut out the pattern and I said, Mom, this is my vision.

I really want this. I think it’ll make things great because I believe more in him becoming a product that people can connect to. So I’m I’m putting that together. Personal business is I’ve got my website, my media is going and and that’s good. But I think it could be so much bigger. So I am in the process of building that and putting it all together and really just finding my niche and where I want to go as far as direction right now and more focus on reaching out to the schools and reaching children that way and parents that way.

But there’s a whole another avenue with just the dental industry, you know, the pediatric dental industry. So that’s a whole nother monster that I can go after. So I’m really in the in the planning stages of all of that right now. But, of course, you know, dream and vision wise, I think about like having my own app with the game candy monster game and stuff like that. So those things I know can can be in the future.

But it’s making sure, like you said, business is set up. Right. So I am in the process of working those things out right now. And of course, some with my husband’s guidance because he does have that business mind. And of course, I find a way to fit myself in with that, with everything that he has going on. But I want to make sure that I’m making the right moves with my business and then I’m not, you know, because I don’t.

Have everything structured yet that I’m not moving in the wrong direction and of course it’s OK to make mistakes because that’s what you do when you learn. But I’m still setting some of that stuff up. And I just decided not to wait because I didn’t have things figured out. I just decided not to wait. So I’m I’m I’m I’m doing it as I’m going, if that makes any sense. Don’t don’t I’m going it I mean, I think everything you said is kind of like I mean, you’re at the heart of a business, right.

It has to start and it has to start with a concept. And it’s funny because right now I’m writing a speech for an upcoming podcast, and the topic is how to use your book and scale into business. So I’m just hearing you talk. And one of the things that I’m gonna be talking about in that speech is about like triangulations and overlapping like market sectors. And what you just said was teaching, right? Education is one of them. The dental is you like your product.

It’s a book. So how do you triangulate between the three? Where is the overlap between the two? I mean, it becomes very easy to understand that now your niche market is essentially for dental to give education through the book, and that’s how the story is being told. So now you have a niche market. You could really target those people. And it makes it a lot easier to know who you’re talking to versus talking to everybody.

Exactly. Exactly. And I have focused more on those markets as of right now. So I’m just going to keep writing at time, you know, until I get more momentum in that and until more people know about it, because people are already asking me, well, what is your next book going to be about and what is the Candy Monster doing next? So my mind is on that as well, creatively, like, OK, where am I going to take this next?

And I do have some some great ideas already, but of course, we’ve got to make sure that that he gets off the ground successfully, because I would love to go ahead and create a little candy masters right now, but I want to make sure that I’m at least making more money off of the book that I invested in doing the book first before I start feeding into, you know, spending more money on K.M. So have you looked at probably targeting like dental associations and giving my keynote speeches?

Have you went down, Aspasia?

I have my going down the spaceship, but that is definitely something that is in the future thought out in the future of planning and putting into place. Yes, definitely.

So what I see with that is now it gives you opportunity to do multiple different things. Right now you can say, hey, I’m going to give a speech. You can buy these books in advance. I’m going to give a speech to a hundred people. Maybe they want to buy 200 books. And that boosted your sales. But you’re also delivering that product to those dentists in that association that they can then take to their dental office and then have that for kids to read as well, or maybe have them buy in bulk to give back to their kids as presents.

So it is a different, different strategy, but I think you’re definitely heading in the right direction.

Well, that’s also what I’ve been doing with the school so far. I’ve been rescheduling the readings so that the parents can be, you know, know, you know, let them know about the book ahead of time and where they can go ahead and purchase it for the story of time when my storytime is scheduled. So that has actually been working well with sales for the book, you know, so I will go ahead and let the school know we need the principal or administrators will go ahead and set it up and then they’re buying the books.

The day I come, the kids are excited. You know, they want to read through the book with me. They can follow along, you know, and then I go into a little deeper information about cavities and, you know, just sharing stuff, methods for them to brush well. And I have little plaques and stuff like that. So I’ve actually done very well with doing the virtual story times and exams. So I’m going to start monetizing those as well, because that’s a form of income that you can use.

There’s tons of storytellers out here that make five hundred dollars an hour, so I’m going to work on that as well. That’s a part of it, yeah. So, you know, the key is to monetize as much as you can. You know what I mean? This time is your time is money, your creativity is money. So, yeah, all of those things are like I said there, and I’m working some of them. But some of the things that I’m not working yet are in the works.

So obviously on any business journey, you’re confronted with hurdles left and right. Did you kind of tell us maybe a story about like one of the hurdles that you’ve been faced in and how you overcame it?

I would say the biggest hurdle. Like I said, is was myself the biggest hurdle was myself and and just trusting myself to do something different. This was something different for me. Like I said, I’ve I’m faced with hurdles every day. You know, just recently we had I had a performance at Disjoined actual new band here, the original point of view. And they were a wedding band. And we had a rehearsal and it was just myself and the other two vocalists.

I got a call the very next day, go get tested for it because one of the burglars had coffee and I said, OK, I’m going to get tested. But I didn’t have it. But the other vocalist and so both the other vocalists had coffee. I’m new to the meet. You don’t know all their songs. I don’t know all the songs. I know. It’s like, OK, this is going to be interesting. How long do we have to sing up there?

We’re doing almost an hour and a half to our wedding. You got to keep it going with I said I know a lot of songs, but I don’t know that made itself look to carry this wedding. So stress is the truth. I’m like, I’m just meeting this people. Not nothing. I’m a professional, you know, I’m a perfectionist to a degree. So I said, this has got to be right. They brought another singer in.

We killed. We killed it. We killed it. We killed it. But the stress level was on a thousand. Plus, I had to learn new songs. I’m being mom. Mommy still are being like still is is a short window. But when you determine when you focus and you put that cap and you hit it, that’s it, you can do it. So a lot of times for me I’m like, oh, oh, my God, can I do it?

Can I make this happen? And then at the end, I surprised myself and my my. You did that. You killed that girl. You you better try to up on the back, you know, because you didn’t know if you’re going to be and you killed you juggle all those balls and you made it work, you know. So that’s one way I will say that I killed it recently because I really was like that pressure was on. I had story turns going on, you know, I have home schooling going on.

Let me tell you, that in itself has got my I’m done. I’m a teacher, but I’m a part time teacher. Don’t do this full time teaching stuff is is a rough and then you don’t you don’t get a day off. You do not get a day optional. You do not being being a housewife or whatever you want to call homemaker, whatever people want to call it, you don’t get a day off, OK, it never stops.

So I give my myself a pat on the back for just doing something outside of my regular, you know, doing something that challenged me in a different way. And I wrote this book and I said. Here, you know, I went to the publishing company, this is my story, so we’re going to go ahead and get you illustrator to work with. And I said, OK, great. And I was thinking, you know, the illustrator is just going to draw the pictures and I’m going to approve whatever they draw.

Yes. No, no. And she said, well, well, well, what we need you to go ahead and let us know what you want on each page. My mind was like, what do you mean? I have to. Creatively come up with what I want visually on each page. I wasn’t prepared for that because I’m thinking, hey, I wrote the story, you know. My part is done, but in children’s book writing, you actually have to create visually what you want on each page.

So that is something that I had to come up with. And honestly, I’m satisfied with the way it turned out. Honestly, the cover itself actually was funny because I did not know what I kind of held off. I’ve put together a very specific PowerPoint of each page and I sent it over to the STRADER. You got started on the book? We went through a couple of processes of approving, disapproving, approving of change. This fix, this change, I call it as too big or too small, know that kind of stuff.

So we get to the end of the process and they’re like, well, what do you want the to look like? I’m doing it? I don’t know. I said, I don’t know. I gave them a deadline. I said, well, I’ll have something by this date. Schnoor, the date came and I was like, if I don’t have anything, I don’t I don’t know. I don’t know right now. And there was another man that I was singing in at that time, and I had a rehearsal that night, had to take the kids with me, which I normally didn’t have to take the kids with me.

So I had the kids with me and I brought coloring pencils and paper for my son to play with. Of course he wasn’t. He only wanted my phone. He wasn’t worried about coloring and stuff like that. So we get there and in the midst of me waiting for my time to sing, I started doodling. And immediately, this is exactly what I came up with. And I sent it over a fax it over to the guy the next day to the illustrator Damien.

And I said, this is what I want. These are the colors I want. This is what I want. But I swear, I was a week behind. I was completely behind and my timeline and I felt bad. But you have to give your your your mind. Space and time to work when it comes to your creativity and what I’m finding is having the quiet time and that space is so important and it’s so hard for me to get it.

With everything going on around me, but. You know, I’m finding that I am doing this process, even the business side, you have to give your your mind time and space to figure it out. So that has been my biggest challenge through this process is is getting that. So I’ve been challenging myself more to push myself to wake up 5:00 in the morning, get up, you know, get my workout in then. And I know people do that and I like this method, but for me, it’s something big when I’m up to 11, 12 o’clock finishing my day, you know, of dealing with kids, catching up on things that I need to catch up on, cooking and cleaning.

You know, spoke to my husband. I’m going to run here to do this thing and obey and learn the lyrics. A lot going on, you know, so and everybody expects you to hold it together when. No days off.

So I think you in what you just said, it was one key thing that I want to kind of go back to and just because I’m in publishing. Right. So on your journey of selecting a publisher. Right. Because a lot of people, they’re scared. They’re intimidated about getting the rejection letters. And you have to understand that, you know, a lot of times you have to send out one hundred to possibly get one suggestion. How many did you send out before somebody raised their hand or what’s the first time off?

I did reach out to a couple of publishers, but that wasn’t really feeling. You know, the companies this particular publisher came through, someone from from me mentioning that I wanted to do books, you know, children’s books. And they gave me their information. And, of course, I inquired and then I decided to move forward with them. So they there are a smaller company, but I felt like that was what I needed because I needed more of the one on one focus.

And I don’t want to be railroaded. So I was able to be a lot more involved than some of the other companies would have allowed me to be involved. So that’s why I chose them.

So this is like understanding like the contracts and the deals and the agreements and the royalty shares like like how was that set up? And like, what kind of deal were you able to steal with your books? With a lot of times when people write a book, they think that they have full ownership when they go to a publishing company. But the reality is that the publishing company, usually nine out of 10 times, would buy that book by the right third book and they’ll pay you royalties for it.

So how was your book staged?

I am. I do get royalties off my book. It is a small percentage. People think it’s bigger than what it is, is really it’s really a small percentage. But I was OK with that because I do own all the rights to my books. I can take my book. I can go with another company if I want. I can imagine my licensing was paid for everything. I don’t I can put his face on anything. He’s mine. I own everything.

So I was OK with taking a smaller percentage of my book because I knew it opened the door for me to do so many other things with my product.

So yeah. So I think just to kind of touch base on that, like the business savvy that you have that you didn’t realize that you have right to say, OK, I’m going to give up some percentages on my book sales, but I’m going to keep ownership of the trademark or the ownership of the title, the ownership of the image of the product. So then you can use that product to create a million other things.

Exactly.

You use the publication company essentially to jump start to get you in the industry so you can kind of get a behind the scenes holding of the hands and step up as you go. So I definitely commend you for having the foresight to understanding that and utilizing the system. As you should know, that’s exactly what I did. And it cost me a little bit more up front. But I felt like that was me paying for my schooling. To a degree.

We all pay for something to get involved in something. So I, I again, I felt like that was the best way for me to move so that I can get moving. You know, of course this was the beginning start, but he’s a product now. He’s I can put them on t shirts. I could put them up, put them on sacks. I know. And all those things are in place for me to do right now.

We’re working on all of those things right now, so. Yeah, that was that was my thought in going forward with them is OK, yeah, this is going to cost me a little bit more in the beginning, but on the back end, I can recoup so much more. So that’s how how I structured my thing, you know, to give me more flexibility and freedom on the back end. So that’s how I definitely appreciate you giving us some insight that I got.

I mean, again, I just want people to understand it like a million other ways of doing deals. And you got to structure a deal that works best for you and for you. I mean, you’re set up for the long term, not for the short term. So you just have to keep the short term gains don’t always outweigh the long term results. So that is the next question. So we always hear, like somebody may see you today and be like, oh my God, she’s overnight success.

This book came out of nowhere. It’s a top seller, you know, but the reality, it took a long time to get there. How long have you been on the journey to get to where you are currently?

My whole life, your whole life is a journey and a lesson is what it’s like to be what you would you take out of being, would you decide to use, you know, where we’re all on our journey? I mean, it’s. My whole life, my whole life, and I feel like honestly, because I was thinking about our conversation before having our conversation to be. Nothing is by mistake, OK, nothing is by mistake. But is what you do with it, and I have like I said, I envision that I would be where I am.

Where I am right now, I envision the. Of course, not knowing how I would get there, what I envision it. So right now I’m in a process of saying, OK, mate, you made it here. But where do you want to go next now? So that’s that’s the process I’m in now of putting my mind in that place, of creating my next vision, because what I’ve learned is that I was given exactly what I envisioned.

Right. So we all have that power within us to get exactly what we envision, whether we know how we’re going to get there or not. We all have the power to put that deeply rooted in ourselves and say, I’m going to get there. So that’s what I’m working on now in my own mind, creating that space within myself to say, OK, where do you want to go next? Because wherever it is, you’re going to get there.

You don’t know how you’re going to get there. And that’s OK for you not to have it all figured out. But just get that vision, put it in and set it in segment and just keep and just keep walking one foot in front of the other. Just keep moving because you’re going to get near, you know, don’t don’t worry about all the particulars because I’m Italian and, you know, I’m a spiritual person. But there there will be miracles to happen and you’ll be like they had one man.

I can’t even believe that. And it will happen. So you just have to. Have the vision of where you want to go, you can’t move my way if you don’t if you don’t have a vision of where you want to go. You got a dream that you got to feel and you’ve got a deep setting yourself. And then just keep moving and you’ll get there. You’ll get there. So I’m working on that next vision for myself right now because I’ve reached a point where I said, hey, this is where I want to be.

I’m on my first day. OK, what’s the next? What’s the next? So.

So, I mean, listen to what you said and you were saying, like, you know, essentially this forks in the road, right? Kind of like Rock Road, less traveled. If you can go back to any fork and do something differently, what would you do and why?

I would have gone to college earlier. I would have gone to college earlier. Why? Because I feel like that would have. Potentially put me in different circles and around different people, which have would have opened different doors maybe sooner. That’s the only thing I could say I might have done differently that you went. But you thinking maybe going to court. But didn’t you not have an opportunity to network and meet people outside of college that got you to where you are right now?

I did, but I feel like. I feel like some of those things might have been developed in me sooner if I had put myself around different people, your circle is very important. Your top five who you. I mean, I can say that just from us moving here, we moved here not knowing anyone, you know. So the the circles we’ve been able to get in and the people we’ve been able to surround ourselves with have been part of what has propelled us to where we are right now.

So I truly believe that. And again, it didn’t have to be school, like you said, that it came from. But for me, I feel like that that might have helped me a little bit differently, even on where I am right now. Some things I go I just don’t have this figured out. And I guess that’s true for everyone as you go to law school. My husband been in law school may ask him. So I think he still has the research.

He still has to go figure it out. We are still got to go figure it out no matter what it is. So but that’s my mom. I think that’s the one thing. Sometimes I look back and say, yeah, maybe I should have do that sooner, but yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely I definitely I see you see where you’re coming from for myself, I would think for me would be going back and doing this podcast earlier because it’s opened up like multiple circles. Right. So it’s kind of like ripple effects and multiple ripples in a lake. And it just compounded compounded because I have opportunity to meet so many different people around the world and also bring people back from my past like yourself and overlap the circles and make it make the magnification multiply even more.

So I definitely I definitely see your insight with that. So just diving into like you’re like your history a little bit more. Right. Like you come from an entrepreneurial background. Like I remember your dad, I remember him being like a hustler and could have sense that he was about music. He was doing like productions. So I think from that aspect, you got some of the entrepreneurial. And this from anybody else, your family has that edge.

Yes, both my parents both held down jobs, but they also, like you said, did things on the side. My mother has been a seamstress for years, so I would see her grind go to work and then come home and stay up all day long, all through the night, sewing, you know, doing when dresses. You know, I remember one year we were in school. My sister was graduating. I know it was prom. That’s what it was like.

Almost 30 dresses for prom fixing. And I mean, it was crazy. We flew up to New York, we picked out fabric, and that was our hustle. You know, that was our hustle. So sometimes it was her job, sometimes as what Carried does know. So, yes, I did see entrepreneurship in my family. My grandmother was had our own business for a while and wellness business. My grandfather actually had his own construction company, used to lay concrete up in Philadelphia.

There’s bridges that can go on and be like this. This is his company, you know. So, yes, I did see a lot of entrepreneurship in my family.

And yes, I think by default, you were destined to be currently where you are, whether you wanted to or not, or whether I even realized it, honestly. Yes, definitely.

So. I mean, obviously, you’re a big family person. How do you juggle your hustle with your family life?

Well, it can be a bit much sometimes. I have taken in our home that way, our household is set up, is a pretty traditional. My husband is the breadwinner and I take care of the home, I take care of the kids. And of course, I’m supportive of him or whatever he’s got going on. But again, I find I make my money when I’m doing my shows and I’m with my bands and. I haven’t had a part time job for a while, so I just mainly am home with them, but our home is set up.

I have the kids twenty four, seven all the time. They’re with me on my hip. So whatever I’m doing, it’s always where I can still maintain them. Honestly, that is my biggest and most important job out of them all because they’re two men. They’re going to be two men. So I try to instill everything I have into them and and I love it that that’s my passion, that they are my passion more than anything. And I’m OK with that.

I know sometimes people realize that that’s not enough. For me, that has been enough. Of course, we all want more. And this is my mom right now. Right now. Because it’ll be something else another day, you know what I mean? But they have been my passion. And because I do want them to be successful men, you know, they’re going to have families and children that they’re responsible for. So that’s where my passion and I juggle them the best way I can.

That’s all I can tell you is the best way I can. Scheduling, scheduling is very important, but also being able to have flexibility, you know, because you don’t want to get so stuck in a schedule to where you’re stressing yourself out because that happens. Like me, I’ve been so also learned how to have that flexibility and whatever you’ve got going on, do and and then sometimes letting things fall apart. Let’s keep it real. You can’t hold it all together.

Sometimes you’ve got to let things fall apart sometimes and know that that’s OK, you know, so. Juggling, it is juggling, it is just like a juggling a sometimes you’ve got somebody who’s involved going and they have going it got it, they got it and then Bam! Falls apart. What do you do when it falls apart? You pick it back up and you start again. And that’s all it is, picking it back up and starting again when you have to.

That’s how I do it. That’s how I keep it all together.

So I know you’re saying that, you know, obviously you have a routine. You may or may not have a particular set schedule, but what is your morning habits that you do on a routine basis?

Morning habits? I get up, of course. I go do myself a little self care on the morning that I don’t go to the gym because the last time I’m going about three times a week, I get up early five those mornings, go have my own space and time for myself. With the warnings that I’m home, I get up. The first thing I do, of course, take care of myself. But then I go and I wake my children up and I kiss them and I love on them for about a good five, ten minutes.

I know ten minutes is a long time, but some time to think about going back to bed. But in that time I give them my full attention. That is my first conscious thing that I do in the morning. I want them to know let’s start this day off in a positive mindset. Sometimes I go and put on Nina Simone and I blast it in their room. It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day and I’m feeling good. I will bless em.

I love it, you know. So I’m very conscious of doing that every morning. Let’s get our day started. We got work to do, you know, go brush your teeth, get your breakfast, let’s get to work. So that’s normally our morning routine because we got, you know, home schooling going on. And I get settled with that, you know, so that’s that’s every morning is a good choice for sure.

Yeah. That’s that’s our song.

That’s what’s on my playlist.

Yes. I’m telling you, it will keep a smile on your face when we wake up.

So I think earlier on in this particular episode, you alluded to books that you’re reading. And it’s funny because, like, I staged my questions in a particular fashion on this podcast, we’re not out of time. Somebody is going to bring up a book. And because of that, I decided to create a book club. And in this book club, it’s essentially for people much like you and myself, people that are on business journeys. So what are the books besides the book you originally spoke about that you’ve read that helped you get to where you are for one?

Right, for two that maybe you’re currently reading and for three would that you would want to recommend to our audience?

Um, well, another one is the secret to success. I really enjoy that book. The Alchemist. Of course, I know many people have read that book. But the secret to success I really enjoy. Of course, how to start feeling like shit. I mean, I could go on. I’ve read some business books around here, good to great. That’s one of the ones I kind of think of some other ones off the top of my head.

I like reading about health and wellness, actually, because, of course, you can have your mom right, but your body is just as important. So I read some of those, but the one that I feel like that is was most influential for me is the secret to success. And it has, you know, just little tidbits about, you know, how you deal with people being on a roll of kindness, how you approach life in your mines, that you know everything.

You need to instill strength within yourself, you know, to keep you in a positive frame and keep going. So that is one of the ones I would suggest to anyone to read that one, right?

Yeah, definitely. I’ll definitely add that to my book wish list. Check that once.

And it’s not too long ago. Shortly you read it in a day or so, something that you could keep with you and refresh refreshing, you know, so I do enjoy it.

So on this journey that you’re currently on, where do you see yourself in 20 years from now?

Well, 20 years is a big it’s a big shock. I told you, I’m working on that right now. So. No, no, seriously, I’m working on. Hmm. I don’t. I envision things, but I don’t have to put limitations. So I could easily say where I think I might be in 20 years, but what part? There’s there’s a thing in me right now that feels like it’s beyond what I can imagine, if that makes any sense.

So, yeah, I envision things I envision. Business, me being in a business, setting out with me being in a business like my vision, business success. But what is that capacity? I’m not sure yet if that makes any sense, but I but I envision that already. It may sound crazy, but from from the work that we’ve put in behind the scenes. Is beyond what I could imagine where we’re going to be as a couple as beyond where what I could imagine is a collective envisioning between myself and my husband because we are as one.

So it is not just my vision, it is, but it’s just my vision, you know, so it’s part of history. And part of that is. Business mogul, seriously, me and me doing my thing and him doing his thing. We’re always going to be there in the future. Because that’s what we’ve worked towards on this journey, so in 20 years, big things, bigger than what I envisioned and bigger than what he envisioned and that may and I know that doesn’t sound very clear, and that’s because.

I’m not limiting what it could be, if that makes any sense.

I missed you on your journey. You’re you’re you’re like on a essentially a new part of your journey or you’re starting out. So it definitely you don’t want to say that, hey, I’m going to be ten books. You may end up with one hundred books. You may end up on a TV show. So to your point, I don’t think it’s it’s it’s self-defined in the sense that you’re on that journey in 20 years from now is going to come to fruition when that 20 years comes.

Yes, definitely.

So, like, what software do you use currently in your business as you’re starting up that you would not be able to do what you’re doing without.

Honestly, just this, the regular computer Gukurahundi email can’t do. I cannot do what I can, but, you know, I’m serious. I can’t do without email. I can’t do without this phone in my hand. I mean, let’s keep it real. We have the ability to do a hell of a lot more than you ever could. Just having this phone in your hand. It keeps me on point. I cannot make it without my phone.

I’m talking about from scheduling. I’m talking about doing my zoom. Sometimes I’ve had problems with my laptops and whatever the case may be. And I’m like, oh, I got this phone. I can’t make it without my phone. You know, I’m serious. It keeps me organized. As far as staying up on my social media, I’m in between doing things and I’m like, OK, let me check this. Let me answer this back. OK, let me scroll it this.

Oh, let me I can’t make it without my phone. I mean, that’s just that. And I don’t know anybody who came out with it.

So are you an Apple or Samsung user or Apple?

Oh, I’m I’m an Android user for sure. Yeah, don’t don’t look don’t look like that. Don’t give me that look. Look, I don’t even do that.

There’s a place for both platforms, right? I got I got no beef. My house is doing I got a bowl platform, so I got you have a tech guy.

So I know. I know. I know. Take that. I know. I always admire that about you too. I mean, I remember when when you first got your own place, you had I never saw a setup like that in such a I mean you were you were young and you were like, may I get this screen for this look at this screen for this great. I mean, you you had a full set on your screen as you look at this guy.

I love it.

Yes. So let’s just think about. I’m a stay at home mom and let’s say I want to start a journey, I’ve been supporting my family, supporting like my kids, my husband, what words of wisdom would you give me to start my own business and to move forward?

Words of wisdom is continuously write down your thoughts, take time to write down. Even if it’s five, 10 minutes a day. Write down what you’re thinking right now, what you’re feeling. Always check in with yourself. Because you are constantly giving yourself all day long to other people, so always check in with yourself. Scheduling is important. Scheduling is very important to stay at home mother, even if you like I said, you have the flexibility in it because it allows you to find those pockets of time for yourself.

So scheduling and structure, you clean your space. OK, I’ll say that again. Clean your space. When your space is clean, your mind is free. You’re OK, because when you’re in a dirty place, as far as you could think of, is what you’ve got to straighten up, what you got to clean up, what your mind can’t be free to be anywhere else because you feel locked into that space. So clean your space. I know.

That is the scene at the sound, so my new but it is such a big thing, you know, you you will feel smothered by your environment if you do not have cleanliness, clean your space. And I know those seem so easy, but they’re not they’re not they’re not when they’re not when you’re juggling everything, they’re not. And you get overwhelmed sometimes because you feel like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to pick up another toy.

I don’t want to watch another load of laundry. I don’t want to wash another dish. I don’t want to tell the kids to be quiet anymore. I you know, I just want to escape. Go sit in your car, take you ten minutes, take your five minutes. You know, put on some music. Light a candle. Take a bath, take care of yourself. That’s the most important thing I could tell you, is to be conscious enough to take time for yourself and keep your space clean and keep a certain level of structure and schedule.

And that will keep you on track to finding yourself and keeping yourself through the chaos.

Going back to you being a motivational speaker. I mean, I just want to hear my testimony. Everybody is the testimony.

I can imagine that you are hilarious, but I’m telling you, it’s true. I moved here not knowing anybody, not knowing anybody. I shared a car with my husband. Hey, come on now. You’re stuck in a house. In an apartment. Come on out, you know, and. In that time, I was like, what are we doing? You know what I mean? But but but putting that work in, making the sacrifices that we made.

When I tried it, no. No one, I’ve tried those heart wrenching times and feelings, no. Because the the rainbow and the glory on the other side is so beautiful, you know what I mean? So all I can say is just don’t give up when you want to give up. Dig in deeper. Fight harder. Challenge yourself more. You know, don’t be afraid to. To do something different. One thing that I do at night as well is I listen to affirmations on YouTube as I sleep.

I may not have time during the day to sit down and meditate or have my own space, but who said I can have it when I sleep? So I’m constantly conscious of trying to filter good to the spirit so that it flows out good everywhere else, and that I can continuously draw what I want to myself, whether I know how it’s going to come or not. But that I’m constantly, unconsciously in that mindspace space 24/7, you know what I mean?

So that is following the waves, first of all.

So I think by the end of this this particular episode, everybody is going to want to essentially get in contact with you. So how do they find you on online Internet websites, social media platforms? Where can they buy your book?

You can buy the book on Barnes Noble’s Books-A-Million Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target. It is available everywhere for anyone to buy again. It is The Candy Monster by Naomi Brown, illustrated by Dame Alomari. I can be reached on Instagram by and Brown one. One is my sign on the Candy Monster book. Arsenal also has its own page so you can go to the Candy Monster book. He is on Facebook and on Instagram as well. Those are only two platforms that I’m using now, just for time reasons.

This I’m juggling, I’m juggling. That’s about all I can keep up with right now. I will be able to do more, of course, when they get back in school. I’m looking forward to that next year. You can also go to the website, the Candy Master Book, PACOM. Is also up and running. So those are the platforms that you can find myself in Candy Monster on, I will be doing Life Story Time starting next month.

We will also be doing some things through Instagram where kids can stay connected. Where will we just simply be brushing teeth? Because that’s what the story is about. We want to encourage good hygiene for the kids and make it fun. My children will be involved in that as well because I want them to see Mommy doing her thing. So as they get older and they want to do little even now, if they want to start something now, you know, let them know that they can do that.

So I’m going to involve them and incorporate them into that as well. So Facebook, Instagram, again, all media platforms. If you just type in my name and Google right now, the candy master will come up. So, um, so that’s, you know, a way you can find it as well.

So going into the bonus round. Right. And so this particular question. Well, I mean, this is a question I’ve asked all my guests because I always say this is that everyone’s answer is going to be uniquely different for different reasons. So, OK, spend twenty four hours with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted for twenty four hours.

And why. Oh, my goodness. Wow. I would like to bring my grandmother back home and speak to her and spend twenty four hours with her because she had a way of connecting with spirit. More than anyone I know. As a child, she was able to tap into that and for me, as I’m moving forward in my life and my career in motherhood and in being a wife, which is are the things that she experienced as well. I would like to know more how to connect with spirit like she did.

Because we’re beyond this earth, you know. So being that she’s already in spirit out, grandma, what are we doing to make sure I’m ready for the next level, you know, so and so what do I need to be doing here? You know, I want to be living my purpose. I want to be fulfilling that. We all came here to fulfill a purpose. So I want to make sure, grandma, I’m on the right track, you know?

Yeah, definitely, I’d love to spend 24 hours with her and go deeper.

Interesting answer, definitely interesting, and it’s some kind of it shows a little bit of who you are, right? I mean, out of anybody you could pick, you pick your grandmother, someone that you really spend time with. But to be able to spend more time with, somebody that you love and care, it definitely shows to why we call Yomi, right? So, yes, definitely. So next bonus question. And I’ll tell you the answer you can’t use, because every time I ask a parent this question, the answer is always going to be the children.

So like from now on moving forward, I always say your children can’t be part of this answer. So outside of your OK, your most significant achievement to date. So I think a little bit of it does make me think, because I think is more than one thing. I think it’s more than one thing. I think it’s. Being a wife, I think it’s being an artist. I think it’s finding myself. I think it’s living my life, I think.

I think it’s I think it’s more than one thing. I don’t think it’s just one thing. My biggest achievement. Yeah, I can’t say it’s one particular thing, but what if if you if you want me to choose, if you want me to choose, my biggest achievement is achieving exactly what I thought I would I would have and and I have it. So my biggest achievement is living out my dream. That’s my biggest achievement as living out my dream and actually getting my dream.

You know, my biggest achievement is, is, is when I get up on stage and I sing and I’m sharing that joy for the gift that I have and I’m giving it to everyone else. That’s my biggest achievement. My biggest achievement is when I wake up to next to my husband every morning and we talk and we and we share and and we grow and we fly and we make up and we keep going. I mean, that is my biggest achievement.

I don’t I don’t feel like it’s just one particular thing. We can all mark things off of our boxes and say, I did this and I did that. But I think it’s a collective thing for me. You know, my biggest achievement is my life and me living that living that dream. That’s who is this? This is someone I told you one of my kids was going to make it into this fact that that’s, you know, from the beginning, the mommy’s on a call.

So I told you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So go in the room. I’ll be done soon. Come on. I told you I knew that was going to happen.

So going into closing, anytime I have an interview, always give whoever I’m interviewing an opportunity to ask me any questions that may have come up during the podcast. So the microphone is yours. The floor is yours.

Oh, my goodness. The questions I should ask themselves, what encouraged you to write your book? Now, I’ll say the title because I know the first book. Yeah, yeah, that refers to one person. And I actually love what you did when you had the woman. The cover right. For you. You know how she narrated it. And I thought that was great. That was great. Oh, also, before I say that I am putting the book on Kindle.

I already have my everything recorded and this is what I’m working on that this week. So that will be on Kindle. But what what inspired you to write your first book?

My first book, which is kind of before I knew anything about publications, before I knew anything about the space that I’m currently in, I just wanted to kind of essentially leave behind a legacy and to give back. And that was my first inspiration to kind of what can I give back and what kind of content can I deliver? So the first book was essentially me on that journey, not meddling. And everything else was part of my personality, part of me pushing buttons, part of me messing with people.

So people you, isn’t it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is me. So I mean people that don’t realize. I think I took that book down. The audio books are available, but that title fuck failure to do success.

Yes. Yes it was. And I was like, if that is national great. I don’t know what is that is that was totally you.

It was me. But at the same time, like thinking about marketing and understanding algorithms, everything else that I know now was kind of like I would say it was destined to fail. But what I wanted to put into it, to get to the level that I wanted to, I was like, OK, it was a good start. I got I essentially broke my egg, scrambled it up, and it gave me a understanding of publication that gave me understanding of processes.

So now the other five books since then or six books since then are completely different in nature. But I could market the living hell out of those books so much.

Good, good. And what would you say about your family life right now? I have watched you with your son and you are have such a beautiful relationship. And I’m I’m so proud of you for being a dad that you’ve been I mean, I wouldn’t expect anything less, but I just see your heart. I see your heart when you post things about him. And it’s beautiful to watch. So how would you how would you say that? That has changed to or grown through the years.

I think anything that you essentially have to fight for is you have a more respect and caring nature for. So the journey of me becoming a father was not necessarily on Rocky one, right. It was kind of a journey. And that was marriage and divorce and custody battles. And the song goes on and on and on. But I had to fight and literally fight to be able to have my son to the capacity to have them right now. So when you see me post something is me not necessarily always admiring him as an individual, but it’s also part of me documenting.

So when he has kids, he has a legacy to kind of look back to, to kind of see the things that we’ve done. And he’s a teenager now. So, like taking pictures of him is 10 times harder than when he was three years old, when I was taking pictures every five minutes. So now every time I get an opportunity to get a picture, you know, I still definitely post it. But it’s essentially documenting his journey and also the legacy that I’m leaving and the legacy that he’s going to be to leave behind.

And what is the most important thing that you have wanted to instill in him, in you and you in your fatherhood? Would you say that is?

I think it’s three parts like his in his younger days, he was kind of like, you know, for obvious reasons, he was kinda like a really bad ass. And this is kind of genetic tests or some more is that he’s your child.

And it just kind of. And it’s funny because now he brings those things up like he recently brought up a conversation in the car when I was talking about something that I had had with somebody and that was like, I curse all. And I went in and he was like, what? You always told me to, like, ignore people and move forward. You do it. So I was and I was like, well, when you were three years old, if I had told you to do exactly what I would do in that instance, you would go in there like a and be like my dad said, kiss his mother.

Right. So so I had to kind of ease you into that. I have to kind of you going to have to find the control first. Once you have the control, then you can make the the educational or the objection to something that you don’t like and then you know how to handle it. But the three, four years old, I don’t think you know the emotion and that’s only thing you’re going to show. So even now, to this day, I’m still trying to explain to him, like, obviously, you don’t want to be a pushover.

You don’t want anybody to run over you. You want to be in a situation where you have control of the situation, or at least you’re working with somebody that has control and you guys are partnering together. But what you don’t want to do is lose your cool, which obviously I grew up losing my cool and it’s never learned how to control it. So I’m trying to get him understand self-control first and then move from there.

And how did you learn self-control, Mr. Shannon, very interested to know, because you know what I’m saying, say this. I think that because I have somewhat of a wild child right now, my oldest is considered. Sometimes he could be wild, but I think there’s beauty in that. And I think it’s how you direct that energy because you to be who you were if you didn’t have a society like. You sound like you needed that. You know what I mean?

Like there’s a genius in the wildness. It’s just being able to take me in and direct it in the right in the right way. So how would you say you’ve learned how to control that wild man?

And you I guess I can attest it to one hundred percent being focused, because when I was younger, there was no I didn’t really have focus. It was just an abundance of energy, abundance of creativity. And I didn’t have a funnel or an outlet. You know, I drew pictures. I had a marker in my hand. Yes. You know, like sexuality was a big thing for me back then as well, too. So we just kind of all these different things that I put my energy into.

But it didn’t fulfill me or say so now finding lying like creating a podcast, creating content, delivering books, helping other people, helping other business owners on a journey, inspiring my kids by them seeing what I’m doing. So when I’m dead and gone, they have the inspiration of what I’ve created. That’s where all that craziness and time and effort are all funneled into this one thing. So I don’t have to worry about, even though I still think about them like the kid on Ritalin, I’m still thinking about jumping off things and doing while riding on the roof of a car half naked, screaming Kumbaya going to my mind on a regular basis.

Like I’m like, OK, I’m taking like my mental Ritalin and I’m going to focus I’m going to read a book club. Now, that’s where my energy is going to go to. OK, I’m going to create this app club now. That’s what they’re going to do. And I’m still looking at a set of my like I’m about to jump off of this mother and I’m doing it every day.

But, you know, when I heard harpists, I heard that you stop focusing so much on self. Yeah. And like you went, OK, there you go. There you go. I don’t know if you heard what I said, but what I must say that again, I’m gonna say it again. I heard instead of focusing on self, I heard purpose. I heard that now you’re giving it out, know you’re doing your part. You’re helping the next man.

You’re leaving something behind. I heard purpose in that. So that’s a good thing. And that’s that’s part of what this is for me to its purpose. Because at the end of the day, when you when you because I had a lot of fathers actually send me pictures reading to their children and that it was like, wow, now you are a part of something that is beautiful, that mothers and fathers take their time to read your book to their children at the end of the night.

They could be doing anything else. They could be watching. T need to be wasting time. They took time to take your story. Well. Well, I think we’re losing each other, but it’s purpose, you know, and I and I agree, man, I used to swing from the chandelier, you know what I mean? And so now like to have a certain level of focus. It’s a beautiful thing because you’re able to put that energy into purpose, you know, direct it somewhere else.

So. Our purpose. I don’t know about you, but that’s what I heard coming from you.

I definitely appreciate that and I totally agree. And I think that that’s a positive note to probably close out this podcast on finding your general purpose. And I definitely appreciate you pointing that out. And also that you’re taking the time, such a busy schedule, I know you guys about an hour behind, so you had an opportunity to kind of get on here. And again, the beginning of this package, you kind of nervous, had the butterflies, and obviously now you’re done and you’re glowing.

I don’t know who’s not nervous when I do this thing. Spotlight is on you. Like, wait a minute. Now, I don’t know if I’m ready for it, but I. I really appreciate you reaching out to me and and and just saying, hey, man, you know, I see you. I appreciate that, you know, because it definitely gives me more confidence to go out there and tackle more. So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And the candidates, of course, want us to say thank you. It’s been fun to go ahead and be creative with him and try to put things on the zone the other day. The kids have so many questions that I was not prepared for, but it just allowed the creativity to go even more. So I’m loving the journey. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for reaching out. I so appreciate it.

Any time. I appreciate you accepted as a grant over in EL.

S2E42 Kayley Lauren.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

All right, three, two, one, welcome. Welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. Today’s episode should be pretty interesting. So we have an individual that’s kind of like a hybrid. She’s kind of fashioned. She does a lot of social media stuff, but she also has a company that backs it behind the scenes. So why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself, Kayley?

So my name is Kayley. I’m twenty two years old. I’m from Toronto, Ontario. I founded Lauren Design, which is a social media agency. I did that. I founded that about a year ago. We now have about six employees now. We currently service about over seventy five clients worldwide. We currently manage about twenty three accounts per day, Instagram accounts. And yeah, we also do website design, graphic design and I also model part time and I also am a promoter or partner for a hair and wellness skin company as well.

So yeah, I think that’s pretty cool because I mean, obviously, you know, I’m in that same space to a certain extent. So I think a lot of times people are always trying to figure out like, how the hell do you connect the dots between prime example, Instagram and and what do I use Instagram for? What kind of products should I put on Instagram? So I think you figured it out pretty early on in your career, is that correct?

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, originally I was trying to be a YouTube creator. I was trying to well, actually, I was trying to be a rapper at one point in my life. Yeah. So that’s how I kind of got into social media because I realized I need videos to get big. So that’s why I ended up figuring out the algorithm for Instagram so that I could get more views on YouTube and that kind of just spiraled into my business.

OK, yeah, I think that’s a good thing. I think a lot of people don’t realize that even though Instagram is owned by Facebook and YouTube is owned by Google, they kind of work and feed off each other much like Tic-Tac. Isn’t that gameplay now? Right. So you could feed it. Tick tock, tick tock. Feeds on Instagram, Instagram feeds into YouTube. So I want you to talk about that a little bit more in detail about the algorithm a little bit.

Well, ultimately, I find like like you said, and everything’s connected. So for example, if you find somebody that you resonate with an influencer, you’re going to follow them on all social platforms. So it’s really important that you figure out the algorithm for any type of social platform. If you make it tick tock famous, you’re most likely going to grow on your social your other social platforms. Right. So the Instagram algorithms a little funny because it switches all the time. There’s always rumors about like like right now, I think saves apparently are the new likes, but Instagram doesn’t ever confirm that. So it’s honestly just about creating good content that people resonate with making sure that your content is not always about you making content that people can either learn from or relate to, share, et cetera.

Yeah, yeah. I think I think you definitely did a good job. I mean, obviously I looked and looked at some of your stuff before we got on here. And what I’m realize is that obviously you’re in the the space of modeling and that modeling could then go into like pharmaceuticals or makeup. And then you also have like the behind the scenes look, if you want to be on Instagram like I am, here’s the steps to do it. So, I mean, when did you figure out, like, these these three and I call them Triangulations, like it’s trying to figure out the three components that overlap to talk the talk to that one particular audience. So how did you get on that journey to figure that out?

I’m sorry, so you mean so?

Yeah Yeah So how did you figure out because I mean, triangulation that I’m talking about and describing is something that prime example, if I’m in insurance and I’m talking to real estate agents and I’m selling life insurance, not just home insurance. Right. It’s the three different components that come together to make my target audience so far, your target audience, you potentially have like the modeling, you have the skin care, and then you also have how could someone learn to do what you’re doing? So that’s like your target audience. You’re talking to millennials that want to be like you in front of the camera. They want to figure it out. And they also want to figure out how can they put their products in front of the camera or put their particular services in front of the camera, much like you’re doing so on your journey to that road. How did you get that? How did you figure that out?

I think honestly, when it comes to growing your followers and all that, it’s about making sure that you’re not just soliciting people all the time. Nobody wants to follow somebody that is always trying to sell them things. It’s about being genuine, creating genuine conversations, making genuine relationships with people. So just because you’re running a business doesn’t mean that every conversation you have should be, you know, you trying to sell your business. You know, sometimes it’s all about creating content that people want to ask you questions like, hey, how did you how did you make this or how did you come up with this? It’s it’s not always about selling what your business is. And I think that’s what helps grow your following people who want to follow your life, people who want to be essentially like you, I guess. But, you know, it’s really about making sure that you’re being genuine and not soliciting people all the time, because then that kind of comes off as in genuine. Right.

So let’s just stepping back a little bit. I mean, are you originally from Canada? And if you are like, how did you even get into the space of, you said you originally become a rapper, so you wanted to become a rapper? And how did you go from being a rapper to jumping into YouTube?

So I guess well, so, yes, I’m from Canada, I guess. Well, I’ve had I’ve always loved music. I grew up doing musical theater, dance competitions, all that stuff. And I also just really love, like listening to artists music. And I like I love music that makes you feel something. So I want to be the type of person that could do that. Obviously, I didn’t end up being successful in that. But I guess that’s because personally, I found that I care too much what people think, I guess. And so when you and also I feel like as a rapper, I was trying to have this type of persona that I really don’t have. So I guess that just caused me to translate that into modeling and into, you know, creating social media, like learning about social media marketing and helping other businesses grow, because I was able to grow my personal profile. But obviously I feel like people weren’t really resonating with the music as much as they were with just me as a person. I think people like my personality. They like how genuine I am, how real I am. I’ll be down to talk to literally anyone in my dreams about anything, about life, about whatever. And I think that obviously helps the following and stuff. So, yeah.

So I think I think that’s a really solid segment. And I was hoping that you will go down that road because I mean, part of the example that you just illustrated is like you figured out how to pivot like one thing wasn’t working, but then you saw that something else was working, even though the original plan didn’t come to fruition. So you kind of shifted it in. So I definitely commend you for being a savvy, as you are in that space to recognize when something wasn’t working and paving it to the next thing.

So my next question, like on the journey of like finding like business success currently where you are, you always hit hurdles. Right. So what was like the worst experience that you’ve experienced in your current journey?

Well, I guess, you know, like any business, there’s always going to be people like clients or customers who give you a hard time and sometimes that can definitely affect your self-esteem, I find. Well, I am a lot younger than a lot of the clients I work with. So sometimes I feel like I struggle with clients. Like I don’t I wouldn’t say disrespect, but I feel like they kind of talk down to me sometimes as if I don’t know what I’m doing. So that definitely was a hurdle. I feel like in the beginning, trying to find a way to, like, prove that I like to trust me, basically, because a lot of customers, especially when you’re dealing with something with their business, social media and everything, they a lot of people like to micromanage you. Right. But at the end of the day, you have to realize you’re putting your money into me for a reason. You’re buying my services for a reason. So it’s important to realize, like, you know, I like you picked me for a reason to see that I can help you grow your profile. So I guess that was something that I had to deal with to kind of show that I’m capable of running your profile, like ultimately social media management. The whole goal is so that you don’t have to really worry about your your social right. So I definitely struggle with, like, a lot of clients who micromanage you and then. Yeah, but eventually I guess they just have to get comfortable with who you are. And that comes with being genuine as well. Right. Telling them the flat out like what it is like why you’re doing things, explaining things to them as much as you can. And I guess that’s helped a lot of the time zones really because we do worldwide. So that that’s also a hurdle. Like I feel like my phone’s never not buzzing because I have clients from the U.K., I have clients from.. At one point I had a client from Africa. So like there’s time zones all over the place. So it’s like at one point I was getting really stressed out because it’s like, oh my God, no one respects my time. But at the end of the day, their business hours are different from my business hours. So I had to kind of adapt to that as well.

So, I mean, you’re talking about a world wide platform. And I mean, I kind of love world wide because it gives me opportunity to I could have employees that are overseas, so then they could shift in when I shift down. So how did you even get into the space? I mean, you currently you’re in Canada, so you’re more on the western side of things, right? So how did you get into the market of the eastern side of the world?

Ultimately, it’s my mom. My mom, actually. That’s how I started this, all because she runs a permanent makeup business downtown in Yorkville. And so she actually travels the world, works with different types of brow artists. And so basically, she recommended me to some of her girlfriends. And that’s just kind of how the ball got rolling. So a lot of my clients are actually US based majority. I like ninety nine percent of them are US based and then. Yeah, and then I guess from there, once the word starts coming out on Instagram, when you type in Instagram management, I think my account comes up. So that’s just how we got the ball rolling. People started resonating with my page and that’s how we got to the UK side of the world as well.

So how is your business structured or are you LLC, S-CORP, C-Corp.

I don’t think I’m any of those at the moment, we just, I guess, got the business license, but I don’t think I’m either either one of those guys.

So, I mean, that’s pretty interesting. I mean, it’s just it kind of I think you’re at that point to where you’re shifting from solopreneur into entrepreneur. Right. So you’re kind of going into the space, but it seems like you got dropped in the heat of the fire and you have clients around the world. So it’s kind of like not necessarily an overnight success, but you’ve kind of just built it up to the point to where you are currently. So my next question is, is we always hear about the 20 years it takes someone to become successful and obviously you’re in your 20s. So it didn’t take you 20 years to get to where you are. So how long have you been on your journey?

I started learning design about a year ago. From today? Well, not from today, but February 1st was like when I started this all. So it’s been exactly a year now. But that’s not to say that I haven’t been on Instagram trying to work the algorithm for my own personal profile, probably for about three years now. So but obviously I’m not even where I would like to be because like you said, It take 30 years to be successful. I wouldn’t consider myself technically successful yet. I would say we’re growing and I’m happy with where we are. But definitely we could grow more and I would like to see us expanded.

So if you could go back in time and do anything all over again, what would it be and why?

That’s a great question. I guess it would be. Ultimately, I guess it would be just the hiring process. I think that’s that’s also another hurdle that I struggled with at first. I was kind of just hiring. I feel like my business grew exponentially fast. And it was it wasn’t I wasn’t able to handle it. It just kind of happened. All these clients came out of nowhere and I was getting so stressed out. So I just kind of hired whoever was available and ready. I didn’t really do a whole screening process, interviews, nothing. I was just like, OK, you can do this great. And they’ll pay you and I’ll pay you. And that kind of obviously created lots of problems. I had clients who were used to my work as well. And once you kind of switch over, you delegate different tasks. Definitely people start to notice like, hey, this is a little different than normal. Right? But at the end of the day, like, I couldn’t do it all by myself. So definitely, I guess the hiring process, I would have liked to take more time. But obviously now as we were growing, I am like filtering out things and making sure that people are doing what I want. And also, I guess I’m also taking back a lot of the tasks that people are having issues with. So I feel like I put a lot on myself. But at the end of the day, it’s what you need to do to be successful, I guess, right?

Yeah, definitely. So. I mean, what did you do? Did go to college. I mean, how did you get into, like, I guess more so the design side of things, the design house.

Honestly, I’m self-taught. I didn’t go to college, didn’t graduate high school, but that was really in high school. I found that a lot of the projects I did, I was super creative with like we would just be instructed to, for example, show the class a career that you were interested in. A lot of people would do PowerPoint reports. I was always like doing a music video. I was always doing something fun. So I always found that I had a really creative vibe to myself. And so high school helped with that. And I guess, yeah. So I was self-taught. And YouTube helps a lot.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So I mean, I think you alluded to a question that I used to access. Like, do you come from an entrepreneurial family? I mean, that goes without saying so. Besides, your mom was anybody else and like your bloodline entrepreneurs. And where did you get the hustle from? Was it just your mom?

I think both my parents are extreme hustlers. They came from nothing, literally nothing. And now they both have huge houses. Like I look up to both of them so much. I know my dad is an entrepreneur, but I don’t really understand what he does. He does something with stocks and I know he has an office, but I could not tell you the rest. But I respect their hustle so much living with. But I’ve lived with both of them and I could totally I think I definitely get my drive from both of them. All they do is work, work, work, work. So I definitely get that from them. All I do is work as well.

Nice! so i mean, coming from like that kind of hustle mentality background and you’re pretty young right now, but like, how do you currently juggle, like, your family life or your life with your friends and your work hustle at the same time?

I think the pandemic is really nice to me, so I technically don’t really balance it, all I do is work, but obviously doesn’t make me feel that bad because thanks to the pandemic, I don’t really have to do a lot. But I mean, Zoom is great. You know, you can always work while you catch up with people. I see my family when I can. I live with my boyfriend. So whenever I have spare time, I hang out with him as well. And of course, if my friends ever need me, they can come over and I’ll drop whatever. But yeah, I definitely haven’t figured out the balance part as well as I should yet.

Yeah, I think you just brought up Jay and you guys did some YouTube stuff and you got like the YouTube channel going like how difficult is that working with your significant other on like you know, you’re like your marketing strategy and your campaigns. How does that work?

Honestly, he’s actually works for me, for my lawn design as well. So that’s a great question, I think. Well, it’s there has it’s good and bad, right. Because for one, like, it’s nice to have somebody that I can fully trust with my business. Sometimes you’re always afraid of like you don’t know who is going to, like, leave and take your your tactics with them and then start their own business. But obviously with your boyfriend, you can fully trust him. I give him all my secrets and I trust him completely. And but yes, there are times where let’s just say if there’s an issue, he just gets really awkward. I don’t want to tell my boyfriend like you did something wrong. Right. So that you definitely run into issues there. But for the most part, I do like working with him. And he’s also into film and like technology and all that stuff. So when it comes to YouTube, we really do like it. It’s more of a hobby for us now. We love to travel and create videos, so I really like working with him.

Yeah, I mean, I can definitely tell from you guys video one, you guys like creating videos, you put a little extra in there, a lot of sound effects and some animation clips in between. And it seems like he share some of your personality, like you guys have similar personality traits. So, yeah, chemistry definitely works.

Yes, absolutely. Were super fun and quirky. And yeah, we’re always bouncing ideas off of each other. He’s very entrepreneurial as well. He loves stuff like right now he’s currently in a flipping business, buying and selling. He loves to do that. He also has his own business doing magic. So I learn a lot from him as well. He’s done he has he has run his own magic business since he was like, I think like eight years old. So he definitely has a lot more experience with entrepreneurship and all that. So that’s really nice as well.

Oh, so what are your morning habits? Your morning routines?

My morning routine is so funny, I literally wake I roll over and start working because my work is my phone, it’s pathetic. My boyfriend’s like, you need to wake up and spend some time to yourself. But it’s like I wake up, I check my phone. It’s like 50 people like, hello. i need this and i need this. So I literally like half my eyes half open. I’m like working. But on a day that I’m not working, Sundays are only day off. I guess my morning routine would be like just getting breakfast. And honestly, I still work. yeah.

I know it’s pretty interesting. I mean, it’s kind of the work life balance thing it comes with. Pulling out systems and creating systems, and I think like you’re at that dawn of, OK, I don’t want to do this every day, all day, forever, what systems I want to put in place. So that way when they call, they’re not giving me is getting routed to someone else. You have to deal with that both continuously. Eventually, by the time you hit your 30s, you’re going to be like completely stressed the hell out.

honestly, I’m already there, like sometimes like I probably have a mental breakdown, like once a week, like, I can’t do this, but then I just do it. But I totally know what you mean. I do need everyone tells me that. I guess I just it’s all about figuring it out.

Yeah. Yeah. If you get a chance, you might want to go back and listen. I think it was episode three of Season two and it was Damon and Damon said like he was talking about, he’s much like us and says work, work, work, work. And then one day he said, to hell with it. And for like six months he sat down and he wrote out every single thing that he does for all his clients, documented all of it. And then he was able to delegate it because he didn’t have to worry about it. All the details were there is a now you can kind of delegated to his ideas and his VAs and PAs he has VAs and PAs worldwide. So it makes it to where now his business could scale, but he doesn’t have to deal with all the phone calls and all the stress on the first hand basis.

I love that my mom tells me that she’s like, sit down and I cry to her all the time. I’m like, Mom, I can’t do this. I should, like, sit down, write what you like, write what you don’t like about like write what you like about your job, write what you don’t like about your job, fix it. And I’m like, OK, I will never do it.

Sooner or later it will get to you. So Move on to the next question, I mean obviously that is the business podcast. I’ve always asked a question about, you know, like, are you an avid reader or are you an avid more so like audio book person? And if you are either one of those, what books helped you to get to currently where you are and what books are you reading right now?

Not a book person, but I do watch shows, I listen to podcasts, I like my favorite shows, Dragon’s Den like I absolutely love it. Manjit is my absolute favorite. She’s amazing. That gives me lots of motivation. And I like seeing other people’s ideas and how different entrepreneurs like make things of themselves. So that definitely inspires me podcasts. I don’t have specific ones that I like, but I do have a clubhouse, the app, and I just listen to whatever is out and whatever sounds interesting. I also work with Monat, which is like hair, skin brand. So all the girls in there are always sending personal development podcasts. They’re just recommending things. So I’m constantly listening to those guys.

It’s funny that you brought up Dragon’s Den. So for all the US don’t know what Dragons Den, it is the predecessor to Shark Tank and came out well before it was like probably eight, nine seasons before Shark Tank even came to existence. So I think it’s still it’s still running right now. Live in Canada, correct?

They’re doing zoom call, they’re doing zoom virtual meetings now.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s if you haven’t had opportunity to kind of just go to YouTube and look up Dragon’s Den, I would definitely I mean, back in the day I think there was in a brick warehouse on the first season. There was definitely a cool show. So I definitely commend you for watching that. I mean, it makes the original shows. You kind of see where Shark Tank kind of bit off. Yeah, absolutely. Atum show.

Yeah.

So what do you see yourself 20 years from now?

Twenty years from now, I hope to just be like a travel consultant, I would love to like travel and show other businesses how to rebrand different ways that they can grow. But obviously, I feel like I would have to build a much bigger name for myself to be able to do that. But, yeah, 20 years from now, I just want to be traveling, living life, helping other businesses, doing what I do at a much bigger scale.

Nice, nice. So, I mean, obviously you’re into technology even though you’re not into technology. So what software do you use behind the scenes that you will not be able to do what you do without.

Definitely, I use Canva, which is probably so basic for people, but it works Canva, what else? Google Docs, Google Sheets, all of those couldn’t live without those Google forms. Wix for website creation Pic Monkey, like the basics, but I guess I’ve learned how to use them to the best of their abilities because a lot of people are like what program do you use? And I go Canva there like this isn’t Canva work. And so I guess it’s it’s honestly just using the programs that are popular, but learning how to work them to your advantage.

Yeah, it’s pretty, pretty interesting. And it’s like. On one hand, like I’ve had conversations with people that are in his 60s, they have confidence in people in their 40s, 30s and conversations with millennials as well. And there’s a clear divide between the software platform, which I like. I mean, obviously, you’re savvy. Are you going to use whatever is low key that you can use on your mobile device that’s cost effective versus someone that’s a little bit older may say they’re going to spend 55 dollars a month and get Photoshop and Illustrator when technically you can kind of do a lot of those things on other platforms.

So that’s actually a really good point. My mom says that she’s like, if you’re going to be a real graphic designer, you should be you should be doing Adobe. And it’s like everything on Adobe I can do on my sites for free and not for free. Actually, you have to buy the pro and premium, but they’re like fourteen dollars a month as opposed to what you said, like fifty five dollars a month.

Yes. Ludacris schools of thought. I mean obviously you get a lot of work done through Canva and Photoshop is more so traditional to where you want to do really great details and manipulation. But in today’s world you really don’t really need that level of manipulation unless you’re going to be dealing with like magazines and stuff like that. But for social media, by all means, Canva gets the job done.

But then there’s also you’re right, for a it like for Adobe and stuff. I use like the pic monkey, which is also amazing. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s really great for vectorizing images as well. It’s just honestly how you figure out how to use the programs. But yeah, I find that pic monkey is a great way. Like I don’t see much on Adobe that I can’t do on like my sites, but obviously I have to use a bunch of them to get like one Adobe can do, but, you know, whatever works.

Yeah. But I think that that is a testament to like the millennial generation and understanding that everything in today’s world is about like compiling different pieces of components and Frankenstein. I always make the comment about Frankenstein, something that’s not a negative term. It’s kind of like if you could figure out how to do twenty five different things and by using three different software and that software combined is like ten dollars a month versus fifty five dollars a month, that’s automatic win.

Absolutely, 100 percent, I agree.

What are you using for, like your analytic data, like I mean, obviously you’re figuring out algorithms, so behind the scenes you’ve got to look at kind of like, well, where is people coming from and who is the target audience and and how many people like this? Like what are you using for that?

Instagram Insight’s they’re the best. Yeah, we we have people who I have people who track everyday activities, so we make sure we make sure that you check the insides, log it, and then we kind of just see how it goes from there, which hash tags that we use today. How did that breach affect? How did that reach affect their profile, stuff like that, and we kind of just base our statistics and content based on whatever the reports come out to be, right. I find Instagram Insight’s is the way to go. They help a lot and they tell you exactly what time you should be posting, what time your followers are most active. I mean, I’ve used other apps as well, but I find that Instagram Insight’s works the best and it’s also free.

So you come at it from kind of like a day trader mentality to kind of like you see what the shifts are in the market and you’re shifting automatically versus I mean, I’ve heard and I’ve dealt with people that they may pick a hashtag campaign and they run that campaign for seven to 14 days and kind of read analytics over that period of time. But you’re saying your shift within twenty four hours and have you seen that there’s been enough time to kind of get the data that you need to make that shift?

I mean, we track it every day. I wouldn’t say I change the hashtags every day. We talk about like five to six hash tag groups, probably weekly. And then like, you know, if we noticed, like on Monday, the hash tag group that I used wasn’t doing so well. We’ll take that out, switch that up with something else and see how that works and go from there. Same with what time you’re posting at and captions and stuff. Caption Actually, nowadays, Instagram algorithm, it’s not just about tags anymore. They when you search things in the search bar, it’s all about the keywords that you’re using in the captions as well. And so just making sure that you’re optimizing your captions as best as you can to get your audience. So it’s not good to just write like one sentence nowadays in your captions. You have to make sure you’re providing some good information.

So define that further. Because some people I mean, I mean obviously i get it but some people they may not understand the difference between, like hash tags and captions and descriptions. So I want you to break that down a little bit.

So Captions is obviously like the what you’re writing under the photo to kind of explain what it is by optimizing I say like things like making sure you’re kind of creating things to help people engage with. So asking a question in your caption is super, super helpful. Makes me actually gives people incentive to want to comment. But obviously not being like, hey, how’s your day? You want to say something like, for example, if it’s a brow post, you say, how long does it take you to fill your browser every day people want to comment, right. It gives people incentive to comment. Also, using emojis really is super friendly. It kind of creates a personality to your brand and it’s enticing to the eye. What else? Drawing a blank here. I’m so sorry, but yeah.

I think I think you definitely nailed it. And I was actually doing detailed questions because I want our audience to really understand, like the way you think may not be the same way someone 50 years old think, but finding the commonality between the way millennial things and the way someone else older thinks, it’s not as hard as you may think is just a matter of stepping out and looking at it from an outside point of view versus putting yourself in that space. And for you, you do it every single day and you’re doing it for clients. So you’re writing all things really quickly because you’re living their life. But again, for this particular pocket, I just want our viewers to understand, like you could be in her spot if you step out and stop thinking directly about you, think about the masses versus the individual. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t target, but just understanding that would definitely help.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

So final words of wisdom like, say, I’m a high school. Right to say I’m 16, 17 years old. I’m listening to this podcast and I’m like, dude, she’s only like a few years older than me. She really has a business. She has YouTube going on. She has Instagram going on. Like what words of insight would you give to me to help me move forward in my journey to be an entrepreneur?

Stay true to yourself and do what you want, because like I said, like if you wanted to do music, stick to it, follow other artists or follow people similar to your niche, see how they’re doing it, follow people that are successful that you look up to and kind of like mimic your social platforms off of what they’re doing. Don’t copy them, but see what’s working for them and make sure that you can kind of translate it to work for you. You know, track a journal, make sure that like you’re journaling what’s working for you, what’s not expenses. Always write down your expenses, especially as a young person. I feel like we just waste our money on crap. So saving money is so important, especially the younger you are, the better. And I guess just like like we’re young, you should, like, go for it. Right. Like, that’s I, I talked to so many people my age were like, I want to do this, but like I’m just going to I’m waiting for the right time. I’m waiting till I have ten thousand followers. I’m waiting till this is not just start. And, you know, you’ll eventually get to where you want to be, but you’re never going to get somewhere if you don’t start So yeah.

Yeah definitely. Definitely right. Man, it was like a book that I read when I first started. My podcast was going to start ugly and it really just tells a story about just get out there and do it and you’ll figure things out, like where my podcast is today is nowhere near where it was a year ago. And it’s so just get out there and do it.

Uhm, yeah, definitely. I see my work from last year too, and I’m like, oh, this is awful. But you got to start somewhere, right? So now we’re going to be perfect. Just do it.

Definitely. So I mean, what’s your Instagram, your social media, your Facebook handles like how could people find you online?

kayley.Lauren, K A Y L E Y. L A U R E N, you can find my business. Lauren Design co so laurenDesign.co and yeah. YouTube Kayley Lauren Everything’s Kayley Lauren.

Nice So just going into the bonus round a little bit. Right. So if you could spend twenty four hours with anyone dead or alive uninterrupted for those twenty four hours, who would it be and why.

Mac Miller, I love him. Yes, well, he was honestly like when I was doing my shopping, that’s what everyone said, like, who would you clap with? It would be Mac Miller. And I was so sad with what happened to him. But I just love the way he was able to translate music and like his personal feelings. And you could tell he dealt with a lot of demons. I would just love to, like, pick his brain and talk to him. But I love also how he’s probably like also Drake, but he’s like it’s not very common for rappers to sing and rap. And he’s probably one of the only ones that I love listening to. I mean, there’s bone thugs, too. They do that. They do that well. But yeah, I would say Mac Miller.

Yeah, I think Mike Miller definitely is up there. And to your point, I mean, Drake is well, I mean, I think Drake is more so an actor. So no matter what you put them in, he pretty much is going to figure it out.

Oh yeah, totally.

Yeah. He got the drop of a dime. He could turn it on and off. So I think that that was kind of like the height of his career was coming from acting to becoming a rapper It already made sense. So if you could be a superhero, who would it be and why?

Oh, God, that’s that’s a hard question. I don’t even know my superheroes. Um, do you know Teen Titans?

Yeah, we do.

Raven. Raven, I love Raven. You so dark, though, but I love. She definitely found her her chakras and her spirit, so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see Raven. I can definitely see Raven there. So going into like the last bonus question, like being that you are as young as you are, what is your most significant achievement to date.

I guess it was moving out at 15, like most people are like what? So I just thought and just being able to survive from that and going from I worked so many minimum wage jobs possible. So going from that to being able to be my own boss, I think that’s definitely a huge accomplishment for me. Like, my bosses were really mean to me. So to be able to hate hate waking up and going to my job every day to waking up and loving my job, I guess that’s why I’m such a workaholic, because I just I love my job. Right. So that’s definitely a huge accomplishment.

Well, yeah. I mean, that’s definitely interesting, like being that you’re in your early 20s and you moved out when you was 15. So I mean, that that is a hell of a journey, a hell of a ride. So, I mean, going into the closing out the podcast, I always give whoever I’m interviewing opportunity that on this journey you may have had some questions you want to ask me. So the floor is yours. The microphone is yours. Any questions you would like to ask me?

I would. I was actually very curious to know who what superhero you would want to be. That’s a great question.

You’re the first person to ever ask me that question, and it’s kind of like I would be Mr. Manhattan and Manhattan is from DC Comics and I love Marvel, but I would be Mr. Manhattan Just because he has the opportunity to be an all times all space, everything all at the same time.

I love that. I love that. And also, I guess what would you say your biggest accomplishment is?

I think my biggest accomplishment to date, I mean, I’ve had lots of accounts when I’ve published books, I’ve started up businesses and I’ve done a lot of things. But I think my biggest accomplishment early to date is right now will be my podcast, because my podcasts for me is leaving behind a legacy for my family and my kids and having opportunity to interview people like you and other successful people. So people that I’ve known for ever, some people I just met like you literally today for the first time. But then my kids and my grandkids have opportunity to see this conversation and learn from myself and learn from you. So once I’m dead and gone, this will always be here.

That’s beautiful. I love that so much. I want to thank you so much also for having me on your show. This is amazing and such an awesome opportunity. So thank you.

Yeah. I definitely appreciate you reaching you. And i just want people to understand. Like, I mean, you reached out on a platform. We didn’t know each other. You know, you kind of told me a little bit about your background. I looked into it and I was like, you know what? This is a perfect platform to kind of hear your story. And I think most of the time on my show, we have people that that are older, that are successful on another level. But I was like, this is a good opportunity for you in your current success coming in from brand new millennial standpoint to give a different point of view. And I definitely appreciate you coming on the show and giving our listeners that opportunity to hear you speak.

Yeah, thank you. I love that.

Great! S.A Grant over and out.

• The importance of vision boards
• Balancing work life and kids
• What a positive morning routine looks like + the 1-minute plank
• And So Much More!!!

S2E40 Kristen Becker.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Everything is good, your audio sounds good. My audio clear, yep, perfect. All right, let’s roll three to one. Welcome welcome back to Boston podcast. Today’s episode is going to be a pretty interesting one, and I think it is probably going to take some twists and turns. But in the end, all it all makes sense. Our guest today is Kristen, and I’m going to deem her the revolutionary boss. How are you doing today?

Hey, I’m wonderful. Thank you for having me.

Great. Great. So I just want to kind of just break out the cage right away and kind of just tell people a little bit about like who you are and what business do you have.

OK, well, hey, I’m Kristen Becker, as we’ve already covered and I have a company called Brillane, I have a signature program called Your Revolution. And basically what that’s all about really at the heart of things is people living their best lives, like coming really alive and how they show up in life, doing things that they’re passionate about and giving them the support structure and the framework to help make that happen in little bite sized chunks.

Great! So, I mean, even even with that, I think that you have some different programing, dealing a lot with vision you want to kind of talk about, like seems like vision is like a big factor to what you do.

It’s huge because the life that we’re living at any day of the week is the result of our current vision. Right. What we think is possible. And you’re never going to achieve your vision. A magic fairy isn’t going up here and, you know, bestow upon you this life that is not aligned with what your vision is. And personally, I think that 80 to 90 percent of people really sell themselves short in the vision category and in their hearts, they know that they want to do those things and live that kind of life, whether it be like body, career or relationship, whatever. But they just don’t take ownership and give themselves permission to to really see what’s possible and then take steps towards living that.

So, I mean, the reason why I brought a vision, because obviously, like I’m a big believer, a vision as well. I wrote a book about the having vision. And I’ve also noticed that you’re really big into like vision boards. And I had this whole conversation with my wife recently about like the real definition of a vision board and how to really use it and how to really maximize it. And I’m sure that you can to give our audience a little bit more insight into vision boards a little bit.

Yes, I love vision boards, like probably everyone who’s use them. My first experience was kind of going to a party, hope in envision and putting stuff on my vision board, kind of coming at it from a not very informed perspective, which is fine. But the vision board that I like to teach people how to make is based on symbols. It’s based on, first, knowing what your vision is. How does that feel? What are the whys behind it? Because here’s the critical I see as the error that people make. They look at as a vision board as something. If I put this on here and then it comes to be, I will then be happier. I will then feel worthy or valued or significant or whatever when the perspective that I look at vision boards is seeing that already within yourself and how to bring that out. So it’s not a big change, you know, that happens to you. But really, it’s just recognizing something within yourself and then bringing it out. And I recommend symbols on the vision board, which I gather a whole process of how to determine what these symbols are. But then they do all sorts of things to serve as triggers and that sort of thing. And you find yourself during the day because you looked at your vision board and reminded yourself of your vision of your true self and making different choices in life and just kind of steering towards opportunities and away from things that are going to distract you from what it is that you really want.

That’s definitely an interesting philosophy. So do you think vision boards are kind of like more so an action item checklist that way people can kind of strive to their achievements? Or are you more so on the side of reaching for goals that may seem to be out of reach currently?

Absolutely out of reach, because that’s the one that really inspires you. You know, I think we get our goals from two places. One is paradigms and conditioning and peers and society. You know, I call those box checking goals and having checked a bunch of boxes and then sitting around going to this kind of sucks, you know, but everybody says this is what I should do. But when your goal is something that’s really come from inside, it’s really inspiring. Then you’re growing as you achieve that goal. As I mentioned before, bringing out more of your true ideal self.

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

Well, freedom always I love to feel free, and that’s really just awareness being in the moment and able to take advantage of whatever pops up and having great but but not super specific expectations. Resilient. You know, I think that’s a wonderful quality. I’ve learned to look at challenges as opportunities and see how I’ve grown to them, and that helps me to be more resilient. That’s two words and I think graceful, actually. And a lot of people who know me will be like she’s not graceful at all, but it’s a matter of kind of letting your wisdom come to the surface and being accepting and compassionate like embodies so much that I just love the idea of grace and continuously striving to be more filled with grace and living with grace.

So let’s step back a little bit. I mean, like like this is the first time we’re meeting, right? I can tell that you’re warm, you’re inviting like you’re knowledgeable, you’re a ball of energy. But were you always like that? I mean, like did you grow up like this? Like when when did you find, like, your core niche to where you are currently right now?

Well, I thought a lot about that, because part of what I do is help to other people to achieve not to be, quote, like me, but their own version of their best self. I definitely think that I was blessed in that when I was really young. My dad taught me a lot about meditation. And so there is a lot of people who were getting caught up in like if you look at conditioning when you’re little and you’re in the spring mystate, that you’re just like a sponge. I think that probably had a lot to do with it. And then I mentioned the box checking. I kind of went off the rails in my 20s because I wanted to be the successful adult and I just jumped in like what everybody else was doing. Honestly, I stopped meditating. I mean, my life was OK, you know, but there was this internal thing and I wasn’t being my truest, best happy self. And to be honest, it was like my late 30s, early 40s when I got back into that. And I’m constantly looking for ways to evolve and improve myself and not looking at my life as a series of circumstances and reactions, but just, you know, opportunities and. I don’t know, I guess what I’m saying is it’s a little bit, I think, inherent, but also it’s an awful lot of continuously going back to the drawing board and looking, what do I have going on here? What can I do now? What can I do next to evolve?

So it seems like I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, it seems like you’re kind of alluding to maybe like where you are currently in your business right now is now where you were before. Did you kind of shift industries a little bi?

Well, and something I kind of want to hit on today was giving yourself permission to be successful because I for many years was teaching college and creating these personal development courses. And I have well over 7000. Honestly, I haven’t looked in a long time in those courses. Right. Four and five star reviews. So this tells me these are appreciate it. Valuable. Right. But it wasn’t making a lot of money, but also I hadn’t really started thinking of myself as that being who I am and what I bring to the world. It was really a side hustle, you know. And then when I started taking ownership of it and just being like, I can’t not do this, you know, it fills me with passion. It makes me so happy. I love helping people and people, the kind of people who resonate with me enjoy it. And so when I really started giving myself ownership is kind of like when everything switched over, pivoted, you know, so on this journey.

Right. And it seems like it’s a seesaw. There’s ways and there’s pivot’s what’s like the worst, like out of the ordinary experience if you’ve had so far on this journey.

Well, you know, I’ve had two people that I love very dearly pass away in the course of two years and one of them being my son. And so that’s like a huge a pattern interrupt. OK, and so for me, again, looking at what can I learn from this, what can I take away from this positive not to be stifled and completely thrown off of track by it, but to look for how it more empowers me? It’s not like I am doing this because I’m passionate. Right. So how can that experience help me to get even more grounded, dig in even a little deeper and to learn from it? But when you’re bee bopping along and something like that happens, it’s definitely cause for the reevaluating what you’re doing and why, you know.

Yeah, I’m definitely sorry. Sorry to hear it. I mean, I didn’t think you would even go there. And the fact that you went there and you’re still kind of oozing like this glowing sensation of your inner self is definitely a powerful testament to who you are and what you’re going to achieve and what you’re currently achieving. So I definitely commend you to continue on that path.

Well, thanks. And on the one hand, you know, it’s you have to draw the line of something. My story is it. Keeping me in a place where is it empowering me and like with the issue with my son, I just was talking to my girlfriend about this day because her mom is a widow and and she was trying to encourage your mom to come out of her shell a little and stop living the widow story and live life, you know, and I always say, Cody, my son, I know he’s standing behind me and he’s like, oh, you know, it’s so good. Keep going. You could do it. You can do it. So instead of just being sad about it or whatever I think of him, what would he want me to do? You know, like how excited would he be for me right now if he was standing here so excited? Oh, wow.

Yeah, definitely a powerful it’s kind of funny because, I mean, coming into into this podcast, I had no idea. And then I you know, I made that statement that this episode is going to be a pretty interesting episode. And obviously, I think you’ve more than lived up to it. And we’ve only been talking for about maybe ten minutes so far. So, I mean, like, go to your business, like, how was your business structured? Is it more like an LLC and S-CORP, a C-CORP?

Well, administratively, in that way, it’s just an LLC, I admittedly did minimal research on that and just kind of took the easiest route and for protection purposes, not to have what’s what’s the one sole proprietorship. You don’t want to have that. But I did recently rebrand as a company instead of using my own name because I’m already thinking exit strategy. I want to grow this to a scale that other people can step in and provide the same value that I’m providing. And eventually, you know, sell it, offer or hand over leadership to someone else and to continue to evolve and grow and move on as as I do. My career evolve and. So that’s my story on the company where it is right now.

OK, so let’s talk about the company as far as like the services. Right. So let’s say this is the first time I’m hearing about your company and I’m asking you, OK, like, what do you guys do?

OK, well, at this point, the only product that I am personally offering is a membership product, because I think there has to be a threat of consistency. People buy programs and then never even use them. Right. Then don’t even ask for a refund or anything that the statistics are huge on that. And I’m not doing this to just make money. I’m doing it to help people. Right. And I want people to be engaged and I want to be able to interact with them and have an ongoing thread of me understanding what’s going on with them and helping them in modifying what I do based on what I see the needs being. So creating this long term relationship, that’s where I am right now. My own personal goal is I really want to get more into media and casting a wider net, so to speak, but that’s something I call edutainment. You know, I think it should be fun. It should be engaging, but inspiring or educational in some way. So that’s like a future future leg of my and I’ve already kind of built it in with my YouTube channel. Just get my toe in the water with that one.

Got you So let’s talk a little bit. I think currently right now you have a three day vision challenge, is that correct?

Right, I’m not currently offering the challenge, I’m getting ready to re-offer that both as a live event, which I’ve done in the past, and then eventually an on demand event. And but basically, when someone comes into my program, that’s the first thing that they do. I have a twenty three page thing called the Vision Blueprint, which your watchers and listeners can have for free, because if you don’t have a vision, what do you do and where are you going? What are you committed to, what choices do you make and why write? You have to have a vision and in my opinion, a vision that was not created by this outside paradigm and conditioning one. And it’s going to be scary and it’s going to maybe seem like, oh, can I really do that? Of course you can do it. You know, if somebody else did it, you can do it.

Wow Wow! so I mean, obviously, you’ve been on a journey and there’s been some ups and downs and the perception of success is always perceived to be something that happened overnight. How long have you been on your journey?

Well, well, I guess in this business format, about maybe eight years, I’d say seven or eight years, and and I like something you said about the success and the perception of success. You know, there’s the whole iceberg thing, like people see the tip of the iceberg and think, oh, you just popped out of nowhere when really there’s this all this stuff underneath that supports it. However, another element of success is not necessarily things other people can see, like I mentioned, taking commitment, giving yourself permission. To me, that was a huge win. You know, it’s just like I’m almost like it doesn’t even matter what happens now because I’ve said, hey, it’s super OK for me to prioritize this in life. It’s super OK for me to believe in myself, you know, and that’s a huge success that other people can’t really see, but changes the flavor of every single day when I wake up.

That’s definitely interesting. So, I mean, that is and I like talking about this topic. So I just want to just dove in a little bit more about like like your target audience. Like who who’s the the ideal persona for your programs?

I think people who are no longer willing to settle, no longer willing to just exist you. And that’s because that’s me 10 years ago. You get a sense inside of you that I still got a lot of living to do. And this, you know, stuff doesn’t really quite seem to be addressing what I feel like I need. And for me, I could not initially articulate it. I just was kind of like I used to it. The gap like something’s missing. I don’t know what it is. Oh, my goodness. And I think that gap is just not seeing your true self that you’re capable of being that you were put here to be able to be. And so I like people who have at least determine within themselves, dammit, I’m going to do it. You know, I’m committed. I don’t know how and maybe I don’t know what that stuff doesn’t really matter. But what matters is that personal commitment.

I’m very, very nice. So if you could time travel backwards, try and do one thing over again, what would it be?

Oh, man, because, you know, I’m like, I don’t have regrets, I see things as learning, you know, sure, I learn a lot of things along the way that I would do differently. But to actually have the opportunity to go back. Oh, my goodness. Well, I mean, I just mentioned about my son. And I think if I could go back to when I was in my 20s and he was really little and changed the way I parented, like with my two younger boys who are teenagers now, I’m a whole different parent, you know, because I’m all about empowering them to take chances and speak for themselves and explore and experiment with life and then evaluate and readjust accordingly. And so with my older son, though, I was like everything I saw on TV, the helicopter, mom, step aside. I’m going to solve all your problems. Mommy’s here. You know, how can I wrap you in bubble wrap before you go out kind of thing? So I think I would do that differently and I’m not so sure it would have a different end result. You know, just as a parent, if I were advising other parents who are new parents, that would be my advice.

Interesting. So talking about, like, your entrepreneurial background, I mean, are you related to anyone that was an entrepreneur or your family members, your mom, your dad, like were you getting your entrepreneurial hustle from?

Well, that’s really a fascinating topic because a lot of what I help people with during their process is identifying and overcoming limiting beliefs and things of that nature, because our belief models dictate how far we’re going to go. They really, really do. And yes, I did have a lot of entrepreneurs, but the funny thing is, quote, they weren’t successful. So the story in my family was most businesses fail. It’s very hard. You know, why would you do that? Why would you subject yourself to that? Inevitable failure basically was the end story that I got. So I had to get over that. And that was actually what held me back a lot and realizing, oh, sorry, like kids there are different. I write my own story, you know, and and if you hang out with people who are persevering and being successful, you see all different possibilities. It would never occur to you that that you might fail. It’s like, well, I didn’t fail. I learned a bunch of lessons and now I’m applying them in this way, you know? So it’s just. Perception, so I did have entrepreneurs and they helped me in a weird way.

That’s a good, good angle to me. Like the statement always goes, you know, you’re a byproduct of your circles, right? In today’s world, obviously with multiple different circles and you kind of have to find like your niche of a circle that’s going to not only help carry you there, but hold you accountable to get to where you’re trying to get to as well. So I think that you definitely depicted that very clearly. So I’m just thinking about you got two kids, right? How do you currently juggle your your work life with your family?

Well, I like to use it as a teachable moment too, you know. They know exactly what I do, Hiero, where I’m coming from, and I’ll share a lot of ideas with them, like, hey you guys, I’m talking about this. What are your thoughts on that? And and, you know, there’s times when I’m doing something like this, they are not home right now that they they are sometimes on like nobody move, going be quiet, you know, and they’re cool with that. It’s it’s never been a problem for me. But that’s another mindset thing. I remember a long time ago thinking it’s so scary. Oh, my goodness. What is this and what is that and how am I going to make it work? And but once you roll up your sleeves and jump in and do it, all that fear goes away. Stuff gets taken care of. You know, you find your your sweet spot kind of thing.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think fear is one of those hindrances that hold people back and they don’t realize how far back they are from there, where they could be if they would just move past the fear level. Just a little bit.

absolutely. Firstly, oh i just want to say it’s like, oh, I just wanna say i love here because I used to get for me, I get the feeling in my tummy all knotted up and and I used to get that in kind of like like, oh my God, what am I doing now? I get that and I get really excited because I realize like, oh, I’m stretching myself, you know, I’m moving into new territory. So I come to get excited about the fear.

Yeah, it’s pretty it’s pretty cool. I mean, I think mostly if you look at it from like the like major league athletes, I think all of them have that fear factor. But to your point, I think that fear factor is what pushes them to become great, like they enjoy being scared just for that moment and then they take advantage of it. So go to the next question. So like what? What are your morning routines? Your morning habits?

Love morning intention, basically, before I even get out of bed, the first thing I wake up and I’m literally like, oh my God, this is amazing, I’m alive, have a whole another day to do all the stuff with. And I think about what do I want to accomplish today? What are my primary objectives? And then I think about how they feel. I’m just huge on that, like embodying the feeling, like pre feeling great feeling, you know, like if I have a bunch of stuff I want to get done, I might think, oh man, I’m going to be feel so productive and I’m going to look back and be like, I dropped that. I crushed that. Wow, that went really fast. Or like yesterday, my boys is here. And I woke up and I was like, you know, I really want to be engaged with them and have meaningful conversations and experiences before I even got out of bed. I decide this stuff for myself for the day. And, you know, you could talk about, well, you’re connecting all these neural networks and you’re setting an intention. You’re keeping it in the forefront of your mind. It’s going to happen. And one more thing I do every morning before I leave the bedroom, I do a one minute plank and it seems like a little thing. You know, it gets my body going a little bit already. And it’s a trigger. It’s a commitment that I made to myself. I care about my physical quality of life. And to remind myself of that, in the morning, I do the plank and therefore I make better choices during the day that are aligned with that as well.

So this is this is the time because I usually like literally nine out of ten people that I interview. They also include like they read books or they listen to audio books and planking is considered yoga. So it all falls into that. So I’m excited to you this next question, because I think that you may be able to shine some light on some pretty interesting books that our viewers may not have heard of before. So what books did you read to kind of get you currently where you are? And what books are you reading right now and what books do you want to generally recommend?

I love books and I have gotten huge into audio books lately because I could be driving or go for a walk and listen to them, you could bookmark your favorite parts and go back. And I’ve gotten really broad when I first started out. Definitely. I read all the the most kind of popular books on, say, like mindset and that sort of thing. And then I was like, oh, I want to understand the science more and getting more into technical stuff and then I went off in another direction of the more spiritual and esoteric. Like right now I’m listening to a lot of Neville Goddard and he’s I want to say, like the early 19th, some things I like his flavor and his style. And that in and of itself is like a pattern of not just kind of trying to keep up with them, like how he’s looking at the world and things that go on and consciousness and our conscious intention. And then I have books on psychology, influence, self-image, self concept. Maxwell Maltz, Psycho Cybernetics is a great book for for that kind of thing because it’s running your show right. To not understand. It is just like walking around with a bag on your head in their all of life in my opinion. And then marketing, you know, I need not need, but I want to really have a full breadth of understanding and then, you know, bring all this stuff in and then see how it all fits together and see what falls out as not important and what stays and what you use again. I did want to mention I’m reading a hard copy right now of atomic habits. Yes. Have you read it?

Yeah, because it’s part of our book club.

Oh, wonderful. It’s a fabulous book.

Yeah, it is. It definitely it goes well with deep work. Are you familiar with deep work as well?

I haven’t read it,

yeah. So its name is Cal Newport. I think it’s his a name. Deep works and atomic habits go together hand in hand, systematically

Taking note.

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

OK, well. Part of what I’ve come to see as my vision for myself and my life is continuously walking the walk right, and I have plenty of room to grow, plenty of ways to evolve, and no intention whatsoever of backing off or slowing down in. And I really also like changing people’s ideas about what is possible at different stages of life because I’m fifty one. Last year I got my motorcycle license and my dad’s he said you’re I think you’re too old for that. I was like a god damn life. But when you buy into that stuff, you live it, right? Yeah. And all it takes doing the planks, you know, driving the motorcycle, whatever. Just do it and then that becomes OK, becomes who you are. So talking about 20 years from now, I definitely see myself continuing to change what people think is possible at different phases of life.

It’s pretty cool as well. I’m happy you got on a motorcycle how much almost out of time have you got in so far.

Well, I don’t keep track. I literally started up yesterday because we had a nice day here. and now that it’s become become muscle memory that I don’t worry while I’m driving, you know, I can actually look at the scenery or, you know, enjoy like the wind or some vibration or something. And so I’ve noticed that as a marker. Do you ride?

I used to ride pretty often, I mean not as of lately. But yeah, I mean it was more dirt bikes and used to ride my son. Yeah.

Yeah. That’s my next thing actually because my two boys are 15 and 17.

Oh yeah. It’s Goldie.

I want to get dirt bikes and get them out there on the dirt bikes.

So what kind of bike do you have right now?

Well, I have a kawasaki, which I’m riding, which is just like really low you know, and then I have a Harley, which I inherited. And to be honest, it’s huge. So will I be able to ride it? I don’t know. But that was the whole catalyst, you know, despite the fact that I’ve been wanting to do this since my 20s and, you know, oh, no, that’s not a good idea. I kept buying into that. I was like, screw it.

Yes, I see that you got the best. You got kind of a tourky bike and you have like a cruiser. So you got the best of both worlds, a kind of mix and match between us. That’s pretty cool. I mean, I’m definitely I think your kids will definitely have a ball for sure.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m excited about that. And I have a good friend up in Pennsylvania who’s kind of like me, similar age, and just was like, screw it, I’m getting a dirt bike and I see her stuff on Facebook and I’m like, dude, I love it.

Yeah, yeah, definitely so. Thinking about like, what software do you currently use that you would not be able to do what you do without

All of Adobe? Oh my gosh, I just love it. I make a lot of videos, obviously, for my membership site and training in that sort of thing. And a podcast myself. I just adore all things to be creative sweet. Right.

Nice. Nice. Yeah. I mean, Adobe is one of those things. I mean, my first degree was graphic design. So I mean, it’s one of those things that no matter what secondary software that comes up that can make things a lot easier and systematically done. I still kind of at times revert back to my Photoshop illustrator and in design and so forth. So pretty cool platform. So going to your last words of wisdom, let’s say I’m 40 years old, I’m in corporate America and I’m thinking about stepping out on feet and going after what my original vision was, which was to become an entrepreneur. What words of insight would you give to me to help me continue on that path?

Well, you know, there’s a lot of people I call like the two beer entrepreneur dreamers, like they have two beers, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they never falter because it’s just easier you take the comfortable route. Right. A safe, comfortable route. But the question is, what’s that really costing you and and why is so important? Like why would you do this entrepreneurial dream. What how does it benefit you? How does it benefit other people? What could you bring in to your own quality of life? And how could you impact other people’s. Because no matter what business you’re in, a product, a service, whatever, you’re ultimately doing good work. You know, you’re benefiting someone. Some people will look at business as just to make money to benefit themselves. And I’m not judging them. But every business has the potential and should, I think, benefit the people who exchange their money for the service.

And so just when you get focused on that, it’s like, well, how can I not, you know, so focus on your why focus on all the great things you bring into the world. How I improve your quality of life. You’re like as parents role models to your kids and stuff. Yes, I don’t really want to teach my kids how to hate your job and sit in a cubicle and have, you know, this three hours between when you get home from work and when you go to bed to be yourself. No, you know.

That’s definitely interesting. I mean, based upon what you just said, if money wasn’t a factor, would you still be doing exactly what you’re doing right now?

100%, yes. Yeah and, you know, I have people, especially some students, who we’ll get into like long ongoing, really personal relationships, email or something. And when I see the stuff that’s going on in their lives and they share that with me, you know, I’m just like, wow, this whole person’s life is different, OK? Because I touched it. And I’m not saying that to to brag or whatever, but it truly makes me just so happy. And don’t we all want to have purpose? Definitely. And feel that our time in this world is meaningful and has value outside of ourselves? , I think yeah.

I think it’s funny. And I think of us as podcasters. I think we fall into that category by default. If you want to target a particular user audience, podcasters are probably the most willing to fulfill their purpose because that’s what we do all day long. We’re recording these episodes to either help someone, motivate someone, inspire someone to take a leap of faith and to learn from our example. So I definitely agree with you on that, right? .

How can people find you online. I mean, what’s your Facebook, your Instagram, your Website?

Oh, I love social media. Everything is pretty much under Brillane, B.R.I.L.L.A.N.E Brillane.com. Brillane on Facebook, Instagram. So, yeah, just find me there, go to the website, sign up for the newsletter, because I’m not one of those people that uses newsletters to sell people. I try to always provide useful, cool, inspiring things.

Nice. So this is talk about branding a little bit. I mean, like, why did you name it Brillane?

Well, when I was thinking about it, I was like, OK. And I mean, just a lot of. Popular, typical kind of words are cliche, but also taken and so I knew that I wanted to have a new word that wasn’t didn’t already have meaning prescribed to it. And Brillane is actually kind of a combination of bright and lane. That’s the bright lane, the bright path where it came from. And so and what I envision is and when I did my whole branding strategy, is it becoming like a verb or an adverb to think outside the box, to live outside the box like that was a very brilliant approach or that was a very brilliant way of handling that situation, you know? So I see it eventually kind of like how we talk about grabbing a Kleenex or cocreate that like Brillane being a way of looking at life, a way of existing and being in that sort of thing.

it’s definitely a pretty pretty cool. Pretty cool. So going into the bonus round. Right. And I think you’re going to have a very original answer. I just go with my gut here. Right. OK, if you could spend twenty four hours with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted for 24 hours, who would it be and why?

Already talking about this? OK, Jason Silva, do you know who he is?

Who is it?

OK, well, he has shows on some different like cable networks. I don’t have cable. don’t know what they are YouTube and that’s sort of thing. But he’s all about “Aw” like just focusing on the “aw” that is inherent in every potential experience in life. And I found that to be so incredibly true. Like, you know, you’re having a peek into my living room. Me and my kids just will be in tears, like laughing over the silliest little thing, like the most beautiful moment that you didn’t see coming. And and that’s his thing. And he does a great job of articulating it. And I actually have in my signature block of my email, like, if you know anybody who knows anybody knows Jason Silva, you know, connect me because I want to actually go camping with him, because I think that that’s a great way to get to know people and to really connect and be out in nature and kind of have your basic survival things there.

That’s pretty cool. Have you done a lot of camping?

Yes, I love camping.

Oh, well, camping is it’s one of those things where it’s like I used to go camping, at least probably quarterly and like I haven’t been camping, says this whole covid thing here. So thanks for reminding me.

it’s probably the best time to go camping and think about it. Like, did you know, in Scotland they can prescribe nature, doctors can prescribe nature to their patients. I really think it’s so good for us. It’s not a would be nice luxury. It actually, if you’re looking for inspiration, if you’re looking for clarity and you remove the clutter from your brain, go out in nature.

Yeah, well, you better believe it’s going to be on my to do list. So look out to see me go camping pretty soon. So I’ve always asked this question to parents and I always say, OK, as I’m asking a parent, the answer cannot be your kids. So outside of your kids, what is your most significant achievement to date?

Hmm. Honestly, my most significant achievement, and this is one of those successes that nobody can really see or would know if they didn’t ask me, is putting aside what everybody else thinks and what everybody else thinks is possible. And it wasn’t always pretty. Sometimes it was like me having a temper tantrum and stuff, you know, but but then then in came the grace I was talking about, you know, when I was able to more be like, no, you know, this is like being me is my most significant success and my most significant achievement

Nice Nice! Well, I definitely appreciate your insights and this is a time, but a podcast like, you know, the people that I’m interviewing, I give you an opportunity that asks me any questions that you may have come up with while we’ve been talking. So the floor is yours.

Well, since you do get to meet so many people and see so many perspectives around the same general niche that you do, what has been most unusual or most impactful or like have you taken and used again and again and again?

I think I take a I make sure that every single episode that I listen to, I take away something so like example, this episode from you is about one being a bright and being a visionary. And that’s my takeaway from this is like being like that, not the epicenter of the world outside, but being your epicenter and using that to fulfill your vision forward. That’s what I got from this episode. So every episode I take away a little piece of that and I keep layering it on, Layering it on, layering it on, because my goal of my podcast is to essentially create a legacy of information for other entrepreneurs, other podcasters and also for my kids and my grandkids. So once I’m dead and gone, to have opportunity to see, like you’re seeing all these different personalities, all these different visionaries, entrepreneurs, business owners, and have the same common collective of growth, that’s really what we’re talking about, is how someone started at Point A and went to point B.

Nice.

Yeah, so, I mean, if you have any other questions for the time of night, then I think I mean, you definitely answered the questions that I had for you. I think lovely. I think anybody that is looking to expand on their vision and expand it with someone that’s bright and glowing. I would definitely point them in your direction.

Well, thank you so much. And I would love to just connect with anybody on any level, like whether somebody just wants to touch base, become connected on social media, get answers to questions or whatever. We’re all here to like, support and connect with and uplift each other, I think.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I’m really connected to, I think most of your platforms. And I just kind of wanted like to dove into to kind of see the other stuff that you have going on. Like, I’m very big on vision. So I definitely I think after this call, this is not the last time you and I are probably going to have to talk. Definitely. I appreciate it S.A Grant over and out.

9 Tips To Learn How To Communicate With An Entrepreneur Effectively

In Season 2, Episode 39  of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. & Alex share nine tips on how to communicate with entrepreneurs effectively. The goal is to motivate and focus on growth. They discuss the following:

Listening
Verbal
Respect Time:
Empathy
Presentation
Value your viewpoint
Transparency & Clarity
Consider this a long-haul joint venture
Learn to speak the lingo

This is a new bonus episode you don’t want to miss.

• The importance of starting with a video and breaking it down
• Why do businesses need a podcast
• How podcasting can build your network and add value to your business
• And So Much More!!!

S2E38 – Phil Pelucha.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

That’s Rollin. All right, three, two, one, welcome. Welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. On today’s show, well, I’d like to say he’s right across the pond, but he is coming way of Liverpool, UK. Phil, Phil is the founder of Billionaires and Boxes. Boxers, actually. And I just want him to kind of tell you a little bit more about who he is and what he does. So without further ado, Bill, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much. I mean, it’s awesome to be here. Yeah. And so the first question everyone always wants to know, and so I’ll answer it because the listeners will be thinking straightaways. Where did the name Billionaires in boxes come from? It’s literally the first thing everybody wants to ask me. And the problem with being a podcast, as you well know, is once you put something out there, it’s out there forever. So I can’t lie and make the story as sexy now because I’ve already been honest about it so many times. The reality is we had a podcast for our business and I’m sure we’ll go into this later. But we had a podcast for our business that was working really well, essentially fueling our growth internationally. And then I got picked up by an international radio station, but the radio station already had its own name. So after a couple of years of doing that, we got our first TV series, which was awesome, but we didn’t have a name. And every name I suggested they hated and I don’t mean like they disliked it. I mean, like they beamingly hated it. Like they would kybosh every suggestion I would make. So I got to the point where I just started to get silly with it, but I just started sending joke names and I said billionaires in boxes because we’re growing global empires from home and I really put on pounds and it was like, boom, that’s the name and I was like, I was joking man like, no, no, that’s really the name. So anyway, fast forward the first season ads across southern Africa, like 30 million homes. It was really exciting. But everybody started to then recognize me as the billionaires in boxes that nobody knew my name. So at this point, we did a total rebranding of the whole business. So it was now all under the title of billionaires and boxers, because prior to that we had like an ad agency of one name in the business of another name. So now we brought it all under because it was a brand that everyone resonates with and I love that because it’s a name that everybody has an opinion about, like it means something different to each of them. But for me, it’s still like it’s my sense of humor really kind of getting out there and it’s it kind of shows who we are, what we do. I guess so.

I think I mean, do you guys have opportunity to like a photo op in your boxers yet? Has that happen yet?

Oh so we had to do it for the TV show and it was freezing as well. Like you’d think you’d think doing a TV show in Africa would be great, but they made us the winter. So I was not at all impressed, especially and I don’t want to go into detail, but especially because the guy they stood next to was a black South African guy. And I’m like this. If I’m gonna have to wear my boxers next to this guy anyway, at least I’ll make it cold. You know, like this is, that guy just bullying me here. You know, like this is this is this is totally unfair. Someone give me a banana or something.

So so so if you have to define yourself in three to five words, what words would those be?

Oh, what three words would they be? Clothes, I definitely going to have crazy in there. Crazy is definitely one of the first words that comes to mind, I think most people find it pretty crazy. I’m very energetic. Spiritual, very spiritual. It’s a big part of who I am and everything. I’m a people pleaser. That’s what I am, I’m a people pleaser. I am a connector. I’m a people pleaser and that’s what I like to do.

It’s funny that you brought that up. I mean, as podcasters, as we well know. I mean, we’re always constantly developing content to give back to our audience. So the fact that you’re a people pleaser makes perfect sense that you went the route of creating so much content to digitally create and influence people remotely and hands on.

So you know what? I have to I have to confess that wasn’t why I started podcasting. So that ended up being a really awesome product. But even today, I wouldn’t say it’s still like a major focus of us. So for me, the power of podcasting, I’m sure you’ve got this as well as I was listening to some of your episodes from season to earlier today. So you’ve obviously been doing this for a while now and you’re reaping the rewards. So you and I both know the secret of this, which is that it’s essentially like a backstage pass to your industry. The guy that won’t give you five minutes on the phone to pitch your services will give you 60 Minutes on a podcast to build a relationship. if we do something called level up networking, like if you want to level up and then you want to be you want to be seen at the table, you know think about high school. You want to be the cool kids table, right. You want to be with the keynote speakers and the authors and the guys are always on TV talking about your industry. Now, how do they get there? Well, the reality is they get that one of two ways they know somebody or they were pitched that they’re the only two ways that you, though, and the joy of this is that you can now do both using podcasting so you can build the relationship to the people so that now you are one of those people who know somebody and you can also use the content to say, hey, Mr. Editor of this newspaper for my industry, I recently did an interview of one of your journalists it was awesome. Take a listen and see what you think.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I always call the cross multiplication between the multiply the multiple media outlets, all from the source of having a podcast. So let’s take it back. Right. This is go back like further way, way, way, way, way back. Like, how the hell did you even get into this this space of media or get into this space of branding and content development?

Entirely, accidentally. So I am a surveyor by trade, so I work in real estate and construction and when I did my chartered surveyors qualification here in the U.K., and that was for me already at such a young age, that was already my second career, because prior to that, I’d wanted to be a football player. So for you a soccer player and I had a really good shot, like I was, I was at all the academies and then when I didn’t get my professional contract at 16, I moved and started played in Central Europe. So my dream of playing Liverpool was kind of gone but I can still pay play professional football. So I was doing that. And then I got injured and I basically my my shinbone basically has the consistency of dried spaghetti and man it sucks. So that was the end of it. And I tried coaching, but I just didn’t get the same buzz from that at all. So I had to go into the world of business. If you could see how shallow my thinking was, because I only did real estate because I wanted to work on football stadiums. Like it’s like, OK, if I can’t be on the pitch, then I’ll be building the pitch. You know, I just wanted to be involved. So I went to the sports qualification. And now whilst this is happening, I wasn’t ready to leave the world of sport entirely. You know, it’s been my whole life since like six and seven years of age. So I wasn’t ready to leave. And what was just happening was fan content was just starting to become a thing. So fans were getting on podcast, usually using something as primitive as like Skype to record like a one audio track, like six people talking all at the same time. One of you breathing like Darth Vader, you know, back in the days when podcasting was like old school. So it’s like sitting in a tin shack with a microphone and it sounds like it was recorded on like a 2002 BlackBerry or something it’s awful, awful stuff man. But the point was like I was somewhere in between fans and the players because I knew some of the players, I knew the story. I’d been through the setup. you know, so but I had a bit of inside knowledge. And you got to remember, this is before the time the fan stations and channels are really doing all the behind the scenes footage on the website. Like this was still a mystery. Like if you wanted to know what went on behind the scenes at Liverpool, you’d have to stand on a bin and look over the wall at that training ground and see what you could see like it was still those days. So got into podcasting. But what I didn’t understand was why we weren’t making any money from this. I was like, we’ve got X amount of listeners. We’re doing live stuff, majesté stuff. You know, why can’t we get a sponsor for this? There must be people that will be interested in talking to a demographic of mainly men, middle class, working income. They like sports, particularly like Liverpool, between the ages of 18 and 45. Like if this was any other world of business, I’d be selling that data. So, yeah, definitely, let’s sell it. So we started making money from it and I grew and sold those two sports broadcasting networks, which I love, that they basically ran like radio shows. They had regular shows, regular host guests and. By this point, we now had press passes for pretty much national and international and club level events because we were now being seen as one of the media, which is just hilarious. But I guess that’s where it came from, if I’m completely honest, was I’ve I’m now having to go head to head with these journalists, like I might as well and try and understand better what they do. And then I kind of got into content production and TV shows and all this kind of stuff. But once I left the corporate world to go and set up on my own and many business owners would be able to relate to this, I’m sure I was very naive. I kind of thought I got to board level in my early 20s. The phone’s just going to ring. Customers are going to find me and it sucks. That is not what happened. I had two clients. I had one who’d been a competitor of mine. And I think they only worked because they were sick of being on the losing end.

And the other one had been my former employer. So that just felt like I was working from home now. But that didn’t feel any different if I did anything. They now give me more stuff to do. So I didn’t know how to win new clients. I didn’t want to cold call. I hated it when people cold called me, so I didn’t want to I don’t want to do telemarketing and stuff, but I didn’t understand enough about social media marketing to do it that way. What I did know was podcasting and I knew that with podcasting. If I could talk to managers of Premier League football clubs midseason on a fan base podcast, I can talk to CEOs of companies I want to talk to on a business base podcast. So I made a list of the top one hundred companies I wanted to work with and invited each of their CEOs onto a podcast. Fast forward three months. We now have twenty one people working for me full time globally to deliver these contracts because I now have more work than I know what to do with and in fact, at this point I genuinely have the opposite problem. I’m now worried that I’ve bitten off more than I could chew.

Does a hell of a journey, right? I mean, you’re talking about kind of how you fell into it. Oh, I like soccer and I’m going to do this. And then. Now. Yeah, like. you have 21 staff, it’s crazy, so it’s I think that’s a hell of a story to tell because I think a lot of people kind of I always get the question like, how do you monetize a podcast? And I’m like, there’s a million different ways you can monetize this. You just got to kind of stick to it and at least do it and do it routinely. And for you, your niche was you found the core one hundred and you target them. And I mean, even if you got 10 percent of that one hundred that’s ten contracts that you would have, that could easily be six or seven figures annually over and over again. So I want people to understand, you just pretty much gave them the damn blueprint. They got to rewind this video and watch it again.

Do that, honestly. And it still works so well to this day. I mean, it’s and that’s just your podcast that’s not even looking at the guest strategy, which is like there are people who are paying money to do courses to learn how to buy sorry, how to build email marketing list, I build a list of one hundred thousand of your ideal clients that you get two percent open rate from when you must mail them. Or you could go appear on two podcasts that already have an active organic audience of fifty thousand of your ideal listeners get introduced to them add value. Show them what you can do and inspire that reaction. So someone’s going, this is the stuff that this guy gives me for free. What do I get when I pay him? Right. That’s that’s the feeling you want to give out on a podcast. It’s an authentic look. I’m going to give it you. hear it is, it’s the same with our start the back. So we have this, i mean i am not pitching , but we have to this start to back 11:00. It’s heavily discounted. Eleven hundred US. It’s two strategy sessions with me, plus a recorded blueprint podcast that I do afterwards. Not with that we’re working out. Who are you trying to talk to? Let’s do the guest strategy. Let’s really get down into where are this audience and then we map out. Are you talking to them directly? Are they going to be the audience of the podcast? Do you need to influence their influences? Like which way are we going to take this in terms of your strategy, fleshing and repurposing all that beautiful stuff. But then we get you on three podcasts as well. One of them’s ours, and that’s like three hundred fifty thousand listeners, plus the two global radio stations that we repurpose our content. Then we actually get our booking team my podcast publishing team, The book you wanted to podcast right within your industry. Now, I always say the same thing about this package, right? It’s heavily discounted. Shows you what we do. That strategy I’m giving you. It’s like the Richard Branson mindset, the whole train you well enough that you could work anywhere but treat you so well you don’t want to. It’s the same kind of principle with what we do with our starting back. I know that I’m giving people the roadmap that if they wanted to go into it for themselves for the next 12 months, they can. But I also know how highly it converts because people see my team, see what they’re doing and go. I just leave it to you guys. Like you guys know what you’re doing. It’s working. I’m making money. I’m growing. I’m getting speaking gigs. I’ve got a TV deal. It’s a real game changer.

So I think you’ve kind of slid right into like the predecessor to my next question. Like, I mean, obviously you have this this huge online presence. You have the Billionaire in Boxers Network, I would call it so like the services. Right. So I think you just listed off one of the core services. And that’s one thing underneath your influencer packages. Yeah. What are the services? Do you have that partner with all these different things that you’re doing in that one pack?

So it kind of grew again, it kind of grew organically. So when people first started coming to us, it was, hey, Phil, could you teach me how to do that? So our coaching side of our business was a bit that came first because it was to show people how to do it. But the people are lazy. So you teach them and they go, oh, this is great. But it’s also a lot of work and you just do it for me. Like if I pay you every month and your team just do it for me and that’s where I’ve done for you service came. But for some people having their own podcast is actually even necessary to their success, like if if you don’t want to. So think of it this way. Your podcast is about networking and about leveling up. Other people’s podcast is about sales and lead generation. So if you don’t feel like it’s necessary for you right now to be leveling up, you’ve got your online courses, you’ve got your products, you’ve got whatever it is you’re selling, you just need more people to know, like and trust you, then I guess booking strategy is probably all you need. And that’s where our podcast publicity side of things comes in, which is let’s work out. We need to speak to where they are, how do we position? And then obviously we work with partners in terms of a lot of PR agencies, as you can imagine, and a lot of marketing agencies we work with as well, mainly because they then repurpose the content so each podcast can be repurposed. I mean, an hour long podcast can be repurposed in ten minute clips, ten static images, a couple of blogs, post a couple of audiogram videos and a few teasers. I mean, you’ve got twenty, twenty five thirty pieces of content from one show. And the great thing is it doesn’t even have to be your show. You could repurpose a guest appearance.

yeah. Yeah. I think people you just get another golden jewel in a nugget in itself is like I always preach about. Start with video first and then break that video down, you can transcribe that video to blog articles, you can strip out the audio. And to your point, each one of these elements, you could take tidbits and snippets and times them on top of themselves and you’ll go from nine pieces to eighty one pieces just like that. So diving down a little bit deeper into, like, your business model. Right. So are you more so SCORP, a C Corp, LLC like how is that business structured.

So we’re a limited business registered in Uk but we also have two of those businesses that are kind of parent company they’re part of the network. But head office is still here in the U.K. One of those is in South Africa and one of them is in North America. I just want to be perfectly honest with tax reasons. It makes it easier when you’re trying to do. The vast majority of our business still comes via Referral Network and our affiliate network. It’s still the number one thing that we do. I mean, think about podcasting even. It’s just like the base level. It’s it’s pretty easy to say to a podcaster, listen, I’m going to be talking about this thing at the end that we’re offering to customers. It’s really great. And I’d loads of value and it cost X. We’re doing an affiliate where you get 10 percent of anybody who buys using this Link to your podcast. So I’ll give you a link for the show notes and just just push it out there like there’s nothing wrong with that. If it’s really going to add value to your audience and it’s going to help, of course, you should share in the reward of that. But if you’re busy, you know, I said your vibe attract your tribe, right? So if you’re busy networking on podcasts with people that you vibe with and then get to the end of a podcast and say, listen, I’ll check you my affiliate link. So anybody who buys you can get a slice of the pie. By the way, is there anybody else that you think I should be talking to either as a guest or to appear on their podcast? As you well know, all podcast know, other podcast is like them. And and it’s not an industry like other people where we would see each other as competitors. Because the thing is, when people listen to podcast, the way our audience engage, they’re not loyal to just one brand. They don’t just listen to one podcast, ever listen to anything else. So you’ve got to rethink your strategy. If your idea would be I wouldn’t want to do an event with the CEO of my competitor because I’d be giving him secrets, I’m going to call giant B.S. on that one. Because let me tell you something. He has people in his audience that don’t want to buy from him because they like what he says, but they don’t resonate with him as a person, just like you do. So you two doing an event together is adding massive value. It’s showing solidarity with the industry. It’s sharing best practice. But there may be people in his audience that go, I like Phil. I’m going to go work with Phil and there’ll be people in my audience that go, that’s the guy I want to work with. And they’re going to go that way. So both of our businesses benefit from this. And that collaboration piece is what makes podcasting so powerful.

You’re making it rain listening to you is like I feel like I’m in a strip club right now and I’m just seeing, like, the money is just…. I’m just like, drop it all. So obviously, you’ve been on a journey for for for a long time. And some people have not even heard of you. Right. And when they don like they, they’re like, oh, my God, he’s like an overnight success. But the reality it probably took 20 years to get there. How long on your journey have you been on this road to get to where you’re currently?

So I’ve been I started sports podcast and 12 years ago, I’m now into over well over ten thousand hours of podcasting. We’re now at the stage where we manage 50 different business podcasts, numerous radio stations, again, about double that number in terms of podcast publicity. And then we have 10 satellite television networks that we supply their business content for globally as well. So none of that stuff happened overnight. I’d say realistically, billions in boxers to where it is today it’s probably been about the last five or six years. But what’s been quite interesting was I had another business on the side that, if I’m honest, was still my cash cow. Like billionaires in boxes is my passion business. It was the business that I did because it was the one that spun. We’re making good money. Yes. But I never kind of wanted to scale it to this massive hype because it was it was my passion project. But my main business there was making the money was the talent business like my headhunting book. So I kept doing it and kept doing it and then covid happened. Now my headhunting firm specialized in cross-border surveying opportunities. So you can imagine how many of those were happening during a global pandemic. So my business not only went from 30 to 60 K a month quite consistently, it dropped off completely. And now I was always about forty thousand and invoices from companies that were saying we can’t afford to pay you the project ground to a halt. I was like, OK, so billionaires in boxes suddenly wasn’t just my passion project on the side, it now became the only project that was actually doing it, doing well and making any money because my other main business was now gone. So at that point, it was a case of, well, OK, how can we plug into this? And what I found, I mean, even just in television, for example, what I found is that. Television people don’t trust mere mortals to create content for them. They feel like there’s a massive divide that scares that they wouldn’t go to YouTube and say create content for me, that terrifies the life of them. They want somebody who understands television to bridge that network. So having worked in television and have my series done some production before, I approach a number of networks that I knew and said is becoming more and more expensive to buy reruns of series, you can’t get into the studio to create new content right now. What are you showing on those times? I was being told, Phil, I’ve got like one hundred and fifty hours of satellite this month, so I need to feel like I’m in so much trouble. Like we’re going to start losing sponsors. We could lose our license. We could lose the hook up to the big network. Like people were panicking and they were coming to me saying, can you create content? now I could create my show, but it’s going to be like, I don’t know, I’m going on every day like six o’clock news that’d be ridiculous. So I started saying, well, actually, I know a lot of great business owners Who have great podcasts, have great connections. We could turn that into video and we could now it’s almost like a like a panel of stuff, especially by them interviewing that way. That’s exactly what we did. And we have that like of 15 plus networks. But again, it’s it’s solving the problem. Right, because people people like to see problems and nobody ever likes to think of the solution. And that really bothers me. They always want somebody else to think of the solution for them. So a great example would be because it’s one that anybody can can relate to. Right. If you are seen as a keynote speaker, paid or not, doesn’t matter whether you paid at this point, if you are seen as a keynote speaker at your major industry events, especially if you have not paid to be there, that helps you with your sales and it helps you with your credibility because you are on the stage. If everybody else in your industry, let’s be honest at your level, has paid a couple of thousand bucks to be at an event and you’re the dude on the stage, you win, right? It’s that simple. So people go, oh, how am I going to get how am I going to get to that keynote speaking thing? How am I going to get this? Maybe I could get a publicist and they could put then it’s like, don’t be so lazy. You Know the answer is out there straight away. So here’s a great one. Reverse engineer it. Stop thinking about what you want and start thinking about what the person wants that you want something from.

Right. So great example of that is on the podcast. This is a strategy we use all the time because it worked a treat talked about before. But I hope to God some of your listeners embrace this because it will change everything. I promise, work out what your top industry events are. The big exhibitions, the ones that are going to put you on the stage. Right. And six to eight months before the event, contact the main event organizer and invite them onto a podcast to come and talk about the event and give them an opportunity to sell tickets. You already are in the good books, OK? You get to build a relationship with this person. One of three things is going to happen at the end of that podcast. Number one, worst case scenario, you’re going to get free VIP tickets. That’s the worst case. Next one is, can you do a masterclass for me? Can you come in and do a workshop for me? Could you come and do something for me? We’ll give you a free exhibition stand. Come and do some stuff. Great also win. Third one and there is a jackpot is, I want you to come and to speak for us. We’re still booking speakers. Come and do that. here’s the next bit you do because you do because you’re such a great guy and it’s purely out of the goodness of your heart. You say to them, this event, I don’t know if you do, by the way, don’t lie, but i think this event could really help people. I really do. So what I want to do is help to publicize this. So could you put me in touch with the other keynote speakers and main sponsors of the event? And I’ll talk to them about why they got involved in the event and really kind of helped publicize it. Well, the event’s organizer loves you at this point because you’re doing a massive chunk of their job for them. But what’s actually happening here is that any time anybody searches any of those keynote speakers, names, the sponsors of the event, your podcasts are being found because of the way you Keyword them up at the release time. You don’t even need to attend that event. And you look like the expert for an exhibition you didn’t even go to because of the people that you’ve interviewed. But what happens? You’ve now leveled up, haven’t you? The people that you’re now networking with or speaking with are keynote speakers. They’re leaders in your industry that people who you want you to be working with, your vibe attracts your tribe. If you talk to enough of these people and you get on well with them and ask that question I gave you before, who else do you know that I should be speaking to this in a matter of weeks, sometimes months, usually weeks. You have now been introduced to a whole new group in your industry that are few levels of further up than you on that ladder. But they resonate with you and you resonate with them. And you can add value to them and they can add value to you, because I’m telling you and nobody gets this until they really experience it. This is this has been such a game changer for so many businesses. Business is a team sport, OK? It’s business. Your success comes down to your ability to recruit the best people for your business, both internally and externally. So as a striker, I don’t want to teach you to defend. That’s pointless. I want you scoring the goals. I want you at the other end of the pitch so you’d be a striker and go and partner with some really great defensive people. You’re a content producer, you know about sharing it. She could go and partner with someone who’s all about sharing, reaching new networks and reaching people, but want somebody to be fueling them with the content to make that work. That’s a partnership made in heaven. And that’s just one little simple thing. And it’s so easy to do with this. And this is what I really want people to take away, is if you if you get yourself out that these things happen. It’s not magic. It’s not luck. It’s it’s reality strategy.

I mean, I think you just you just drop a 15 minute on a podcast. And I don’t think people I think some people would again, I always say this I want people to to really stop. You don’t have to listen to this entire podcast, its entirety. I want you to take what he just said and section it off and listen to it and then take actions on what he’s saying and what he’s saying is 100 percent legit. Right? I mean, if you want to be part of the big boys club, then you find the big boys or you find the people associated to the big boys and you try to befriend and work with them. Bottom line, period is the rule of numbers. If there’s three hundred people, you contact three hundred people and then you get a small percentage of those three hundred people. And by getting that small percentage, it will multiply and you will get more people because all you have to do is get three of them out of the three hundred and then those three will give you three more. That’s not plus three, that’s twelve. So forth and so forth. It’s like Compound interest or when it comes down to network.

That’s exactly, that’s exactly what it is. That’s a that’s a great way of using the analogy. And actually in terms of the content as well, I mean, I made a sale last week from a guy who contacted me on LinkedIn. I’m paraphrasing his message now, but it essentially said, I’ve just listen to a podcast that you did in twenty seventeen with this guy. And I was like, OK. And he was like, everything that you said was going to happen with marketing in the podcast industry happened. I think I should work with you. He literally turned into a client because he’d heard a podcast I’d done years ago, realized that what I said came true because I know my industry just like you know, your industry. That’s is the thing. You don’t need to know everything about everything. You didn’t know about one bit. Just go and give that one golden nugget, because the way that I see it, I’m sure you do. Every time I have a conversation like this, if I can take a golden nugget and give a golden nugget, how much have we grown by the end of that year? You know, network is solid based on people who are going, that guy’s awesome. He taught me this and it helped me. You know, my attitude towards giving stuff away is like it’s like an iceberg, right? You give away a bit and then you’ve got the rest of it. That’s kind of some people. But my attitude is that there will be a lot of business owners that listen to this. The. I don’t mean that disrespectfully right now, they couldn’t afford my services, they couldn’t afford a few thousand dollars a month on a retainer to get this done or implementing the stuff that I’m telling them. It’s going to take their business to the point that now they can and now they can imagine where I could think of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I definitely I mean, I definitely appreciate the insights that you’re dropping. So this this hold this part a little bit more. Right. If you had an opportunity to go back at any time in the last 20 years or so, what’s one thing you would’ve done differently if you could do it all over again?

It’s a good question. I’m kind of superstitious, so I don’t think I’d change anything, actually. I mean, there’s some things that obviously come to mind. I mean, losses of money and trusting the wrong people and stuff like that. But I think all of it is has led to a lesson or relationship. I mean, if you look at something in isolation and say it sucked when I lost 60 grand on that contract, it did. But actually, I built a relationship with somebody that I’m still working with to this day as a result of the fact that that happened. So it was a former investor to one of these guys, companies that screwed them over, too. So we actually end up funding of screwed over by the same person and we’re now far surpassed our losses and then some. So I don’t think I would I really like where we are right now. I think we’re on a really exciting journey and I’m still like, I’m enjoying it, but like I’m so far off where I want to take this. It’s unbelievable. Like other people look at it and they go, it looks awesome. It looks so great. And it’s like it’s a mere shadow of what it’s going to be. You know, my aim is to empower a billion entrepreneurs. I’ve made no secret of that. And the way I’m going to do that is through that empowering content that I want to introduce the best of the world to the new emerging markets and help them to develop their businesses with the mentorship and the right skills and the right credibility. Now, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m going to take billionaires in boxers to being the world’s number one most recognized business broadcast network. I’m loving every minute of it. So I wouldn’t change a thing because it might I might be in a different place and I really like where I am.

Yeah, I mean, I love that answer. I mean, it definitely it oozes with confidence, but it also with the fact that, you know, that you’re on the right journey, you know you’re on the right path. There’s no hesitation in anything that you’re saying. So I mean, you’re 100 percent focus. And that’s like the key to real success is being 100 percent focused on a particular journey. Like, I just finished reading deep work and it kind of talks about that, you know, isolating into one thing and being able to be productive for a period of time over a long period of time is where you’re going to get the real results. So I definitely commend you on that journey and I look forward to seeing that achievement happen man.

I’m so thank you, man. I you know, I really I love it. Like, I genuinely, genuinely love what we do. And what you just said there about the past is and being on the right path, this path is way too random for it not to be the right path, you know what I mean? It’s like I worked in sports and I did a surveying qualification. If I was working in one of those two fields, nobody would bat an eyelid. Nobody would question it, because it makes perfect sense, because that’s where I came from. But to have taken bits out of both of those careers and learned something from it and then build an entirely different business is now all about broadcasting and business publishing. I mean, for me, it’s about I work with atoms, particularly with small and medium sized businesses. I’ve worked with some of the biggest business in the world. I worked with massive sports clubs, rugby federations, cricket federations. I mean, we’re talking international sports sightseer and I much prefer the smaller guy, and I’ll tell you why it’s. What we can teach people in what we can do for your business can take people to the next level and it does take people on a regular basis to the next level. I much prefer that to be someone who I can physically see the difference. I could see the relief of stress. I can see that they now have a smile on their face far more times than they used to. They’ve got a bit of a tan because they went and played golf over the weekend instead of stressing about work like these are all beautiful things to me. Phil, I’m not going to be around for the next two weeks because I’m taking my family on vacations like that. That pleases me more than you will ever know, because I remember when we first started working together and you almost sacrificing sleep for work, let alone talking about a vacation. So I love that. Rather than being one percent difference in a night or four or just something really minuscule that is reflected on a spreadsheet somewhere. I’d rather be the guy that takes a business from being the best kept secret in their industry. Help give them a stage and a platform to share their experience and share their voice. And then their organic customers find them and they end up finding themselves working with the people who are right for them. They appreciate the services they pay on time. These are good customers because you found your tribe of people and there will be lots of ways of doing this. There’ll be loads of ways of doing this. I’m just teaching people the way that I used to work in the works, my customers. But there will be other ways of doing this, you know.

So it seems like it’s ingrained in you. I mean, it almost seems like it’s part of your DNA, like the hustle mentality, the business savvy-ness. Does that come from anybody predecessor before you? Like a family member? I mean, where are you getting your hustle from? is it’s genetic?

We were broke, broke, broke. So for the vast majority of my life, I was born I was raised in a single parent family on benefits in a government house with a disabled mother. So like we were like. And from a very young age, I had to start working now. For me, it was always I was always trying to think next level up because the only thing I had to do with them was my hands or my time. That was it. It was all I could give. So you could get a job stacking crates or something. That’s not much fun. So I was always trying to think of ways of turning one deal into three or four deals. So a great example of that would be one of the first jobs I ever had was strawberry picking. I was I grew up in a rural area, so I went to a farm and then a strawberry picking thing. And the job was to sit in this little wooden hut for about two dollars an hour, or the equivalent of after school for several hours in the evening whilst people would drive past. They’d come and pick up these little plastic cups. They’d go strawberry pick. But what I realized was that people like my mom couldn’t go into the field of strawberry picking because they couldn’t get the wheelchair in and they were disabled, so it wasn’t level enough for them to be able to go in with a stick or on crutches or anything. So I started to say, well, what if instead of just sitting here, I collect strawberries as well and we sell full crates of strawberries? Could I get a slice of it? If it’s three dollars to sell it, can I get a dollar for I haven’t picked them. And it was like, OK, so I said, they’re not. But then I started to get my friends involved. So I started to say, hey, guys, listen, if you come down and just pick some strawberries for me, I’ll do a wicked deal. You can eat as many of them as you want while you’re in the field, like, go nuts. But like, you pay for this and I’ll give you like 50 cents for every one that you do. So by this point, I’m making 50 cents. They’re making 50 cents. And I’ve got all my mates just found strawberries. And then it was like, OK, well, I have to cycle home from this place and it’s about a mile and a half. And I passed loads of people on that road on the ride home. And I know there’s loads of elderly people who live there that don’t have a car. What if I knock on the door and ask them what they like me to deliver some strawberries to them? It’s six dollars a crate and I’ll give it back up so I can pay the three dollars to the farmer. He give me a dollar bag, 50 cents for me and 50 cents for the guy who picked it. I then drop it off with the little old lady on the way past and she’d give me another three dollars. This is just on the way home. Yes, but it’s you have to start trying to think outside the box, like when I went to university again, I went in on a scholarship, but the scholarship covid like a little college tuition and a little bit of living costs, like not enough to survive by any stretch imagination. So I was thinking, I don’t want to live in one of these crappy state houses. That sounds awful, but I was like, you know, I’ve just come from a world of football where even at the age of 15, they had me in a five star hotel. You think I live in some student bedsit, things like this, like I don’t want to do this. So I went to a relatively nice area and I basically struck up a relationship with a letting agent who been struggling to let out quite a large house. And it was a seven bedroom house and it was like fifteen hundred bucks a month rent. Now, that’s a lot of money. Even back then, that was a lot of money. So I said, OK, well, what if I sublet it like you would never have to be responsible for the money. All the money will come through me. I’ll make sure that everyone pays. If anyone ever late, I’ll cover that bit until they pay, which they happen on a few occasions. But I want to make sure that you are always paid as the landlord is the owner of the property and I’ll take care of the rest. I could do this. I could do so. I went back to my friends, many of whom I knew had had sort of, I want to say, quite wealthy parents.

So there they were. They were they could afford to live somewhere other than the student halls kind of thing. And I said, listen, I’ve got this house. Why don’t we split the rent, the rent two thousand a month, not fifteen hundred two thousand a month. Let’s split the equally each is no. Also that plus we’ll take 20 percent extra for bills. No, all in our I live rent free and made a profit off where I was living in this gorgeous, massive big house where of course I had the biggest room on the street. I live completely rent free. I live with my mates. We basically had a great time. All the bills are paid and I made a profit. So I was making a profit. Living had everything paid for. And then I went and got a job. So everything I earn could go straight back into other things.

I mean, you. Yeah, I think you definitely have a philosophy I always kind of refer back to. Like the founding fathers of Apple, right, Steve Jobs had an opportunity working with Atari to create that particular game and then he kind of outsourced it, right? He outsourced it to was and he told was it was X amount, but he made like 10 times the amount and was just completely happy with making like a couple hundred bucks when Steve like ten, ten fold of that. So, I mean, outsourcing it and using a creative way of not the niggling but moving the money around is definitely thinking out of the box for sure.

Well, I think a lot of people were outsourcing. Sometimes people think about like lesser quality and things. But I think one of the big problems that most people have with outsourcing is think about like or not working. The reason so many of those relationships go sour is nothing to do with the skill of the person delivering whatever it is that delivering it was the spec and your ability to project management as a business. And if you don’t, you don’t know what you don’t know. So if you haven’t found the solution is working yet, you know, think of these people as. Sounds awful, but if you think of them as a computer, it will do exactly what you put in and command it to do to the letter, will you have to know what you’re doing to be able to instruct that if you don’t, you’re just going to teach the way it’s not going to work and then shock, horror, it’s not going to work. So actually, there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing. I mean, take my editing team, for example. I have a great editing team. The vast majority of them are in India, but they’re all very highly qualified audio engineers. You’ve got people with masters in audio engineering on my team. I couldn’t do that in the UK or the US. That cost me a fortune, but I could do it there. And I am the bridge. I am that gap. I am the person that sets the high standards, shows them exactly how this is going to be worked out, and then they go away and do that work to the lesser. They do a phenomenal job of it. As far as the customer is concerned, they got exactly what they asked for, exactly what they asked for. The reality is our services would cost a lot more if these people were in the UK or the US because I’d have to cover that cost.

Yeah, yeah. I think that’s definitely I mean, again, there’s another golden nugget that you dropped. And I’m recapping in my mind what you said and I’m like is 100 percent true. So uppity like your family. A little bit. Right. So you’re talking about that you came from a single family household. Now you have older. Right. So how do you currently juggle your work life with your family life?

So I work from home, so that makes a big difference. I have two small children and my wife met my wife when I was living over in South Africa. So we lived all over the world together. And she homeschools our kids because we travel and we like to travel. So we are together as a unit for them, my my quality team, if you will. And, you know, I think one of the best things I ever did was setting. Time like in my calendar, before anything else is in my family, time gets put in the dinner with my family, gets put into my yoga time with my girls, gets put in helping them with school and gets put in doing something creative, gets put in the having set days off with them that they know. OK, that is definitely going to be off on Sunday because he’s always with us on Sunday and being strict with it and not actually doing any work at those times like that made a big difference, because prior to that, I think like many people, I gave them the time that I had left or in between work, and it was always clashing like I want to come downstairs and play with my daughters because I have an hour free and my wife will have just started something with the preschool and be like, you can’t just come in and distract them and play with them. They’ll be finished in an hour. And I’m like, well, I’m gonna get in. And then I’m gone back upstairs into the office for another three hours. So yeah, I said that was a big one, was setting that time and making sure you set those boundaries because you’ve got to remember why we do this stuff. Right. We do this to provide for our family. So you don’t get so swept up in doing the providing that you forget the family.

yeah, definitely. So just diving a little bit more into your personal side, like what are your morning routines, your morning habits look like?

So it’s an interesting one, because I had to find out exactly kind of what works well for me. Now, the reality is I work internationally, so my clients are all over the world. But I have my team all over the world. And you have the team in US, Brazil Island, India, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK and i am sure there’s one more. I feel like I’ve missed one, but this load, we’re all over the place, so time zones for me aren’t really a thing. OK, what I did notice is, though, whenever I set an alarm in the morning, I don’t sleep very well. I’m one of these people who wakes up to see, like, how long do I go until the alarm goes off and I track my deep sleep when I realize that I don’t get a lot of sleep when I have an alarm set. So instead, I don’t officially start work until midday U.K. time. So it doesn’t make any difference to me whether I wake up at seven, at 10 or 11 and make no difference. I give my body as much sleep as it needs. I do not set an alarm. I will wake up naturally. That’s a that’s a big one. Then I’ll start with Tony Robbins priming exercise, which is all about setting my intention for the day, thinking about what I’m grateful for. You can find all of that stuff on YouTube. Just go and search for it. Tony Robbins, morning ritual, always priming exercise. It’s all about connecting to that feeling, that winning feeling when you’re smashing it and you’re grateful and everyone’s flying and build from there. And if I ever need to stop during the day and say, I, I will, I’ll do that. So that’s a big one for me.

Oh, yeah. So I think you just gave like a solid Segway and it’s kind of like a little twist because usually what I always hear is that someone would say potentially they would work out. So you said yoga, right? I would usually hear someone say they will read an audio book. But what you’re saying is that you would listen to Tony. Right. And obviously, anyone that knows Tony knows that Tony could drastically change your day if you just listen. It takes actions for five to ten minutes. So we call for these little nuances. I decided to create like a Boss Uncaged book club. So what books have you read to help you on your journey and what books are you currently reading and what books would you want to recommend that I could offer to that audience as well?

That’s a great question. There’s a lot isn’t so. OK, rattle off a few books where The Wolf by Jordan Belfort, good sales book talks about a straight line persuasion technique. I like that. Now you could take he says it very clearly in the book. You could take those skills and use them for negative as well. But actually, if you use them in the right way, which I hope people will, it could be a very powerful way of helping your customers to see the potential of what you do compared to their problems. So stop pitching. Here’s the technical aspect of what it does. and it almost you pitch the transformational aspect of is the problem you’re having. This is the solution you want. I’ll sell it to you. And I think that’s a good one. There’s a guy called Daniel Priestley. He’s an Australian guy who now lives in London and he runs Dent Global, very talented business acceleration business. Done a number of occasions now actually make some very similar circles. But actually what was fun was I got to meet him after I was a fan of his books. I’d already read all of his work and then got to meeting, which is pretty awesome. So it’s been like a fan girl, when i met him but he’s a nice guy. I really like. he’s got a lot of time for him. And he knew about my podcast, which I just thought was awesome. Like, I’ve read your stuff and he’s like, I like your podcast. I was like, yeah, see? Winning. But yeah. So , it’s like a sequence and it’s like you go through the net business books. But the first one that I would highly recommend is called Entrepreneur Revolution, and it’s essentially about how we’re moving away from the industrial mindset of go to school, go to college, get your degree, move to the city, get a job, work that 34 years, get your pension. It’s much more about it’s going to be our ability to be flexible. Work with your market starts going bad in the US, don’t work with the US. You’ve now got the ability to work wherever you’re a boutique agency that does three or four of you at your core, but you can scale to a team of 20 when you need two big projects because you’ve got that network that so I’m a big fan of Dan’s work. So that’s that’s a very good one. The other one, which is it’s a bit odd, but it’s the it’s called the Book of Joy and it’s by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, Bishop Desmond Tutu. And it’s basically an interview between Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and the Dalai Lama. Two people, two very different religions, obviously spiritual figures in their own right. And it’s them is old men talking about that life and what they’ve learned and what they’ve seen and the people who they like. And they get on to things like Nelson Mandela as a character behind the scenes. And it’s just it’s a fascinating book. But what it does do is, you know, that stuff when people say, you know, I enjoy every moment, enjoy every sandwich, it’s not just a sandwich. It’s the room, it’s the people, it’s the connection. It’s the fact that you’re here right now. It’s a great book for helping you to kind of. Take stock and look at what you’ve got until actually, you know what? Not only is what I’m living right now somebody else’s dream. It was also my dream once upon a time. And I think it’s nice to be able to stop and remember.

Yeah, I mean, that’s I’m definitely pulling out of my wish list. I mean, I’d like the the fact that you’re saying it’s like the Dalai Lama, but he’s talking about like the global influencers. It’s kind of an interesting definitely twist. So, yeah, I’m definitely going to check that one out. So in addition to that, I mean, what tools are you using right now in your business that you would not be able to do your business without as far as software goes?

First, software that I couldn’t do without, I don’t think I need because I deliberately have two back up everything that we use in case anything ever changes, it I’ll go down. So I don’t think we’d ever be in that position. But there’s a tool that I want to share that that I use. And most people don’t use it and they certainly don’t use it for the stuff that I use it for. And it’s a website. Anyone can access it.

It’s called alsoasked.Com. Now, that’s my accent. ALSO A S K E D.COM and it’s a reverse search engineer tool that if you put keywords in and your location, it will tell you the most commonly Googled questions to do with that search term. It is a godsend for content creation because you can you’ve got a guest coming on who specializes in automation for business, don’t search automation for business in the US and see what comes up for the questions. You’ve already got a handful of questions you want to use. You know what stuff you’re going to write in the description. You know roughly what you get to title this thing so that he searches that well on keywords mean this thing is it’s an absolute goldmine. But it’s also been very useful when it comes to things like designing strategies, like when we’re doing podcast publicity, when we’re trying to work out with a client, OK, who is it you want to speak to? How is it you’re going to speak to the once we figure out who these people are, the next thing is to understand what are they asking, where are they looking, what problems do they need solving? And this tool is phenomenal for that. So we’re doing that. If you’re let’s say you own a boutique marketing agency, a great way to do that is just to search for boutique marketing agencies or for small marketing and then let them also populate the beginning of the question, what’s the best lead generation tool for small business for a small ages? And they’re like, oh, they’re all asking about Ledgen. Great. So guess what conversation I’m going to go and having people.

It’s sound something like I saw it too it kind of reminds me of, are you familiar with answering the public?

I am, yeah.

It’s kind of like there are some similarities between a like yours is more niche down to give you a direct response on a particular niche market and the answer to public is more global. So I think in a combination between those two monsters.

I see I think you could do a strategy between those two. If I hit podcasting, it’s all you could do. You could do two things with those questions that don’t involve any podcasting, interviewing or blogging. Right. No. One, you could create short videos for your website answering the questions. They’re going to rank really high on Google. You can get loads of traffic to your website. Also, that’s one job done right. Next one is you can take those questions and you can turn them into post because, you know, the people in your industry are talking about it. So you use them on your social media, you know, or go into to Quora. And answer them, answer the questions, yeah, you know that your industry is asking for these questions, so go and do the guy thing where you try and give the most valuable answer and be the most interesting person in the comments. Do that on Quora and on Reddit and on all these places. And any time your ideal customer starts to search for you, they’re now going to find your podcasts, your videos, your website, your answers. I mean, it’s it’s taking care of business.

It is. And to your point, I mean, you have to add a little sprinkle of some cuss words in there to give a little characteristic of your personality in the digital age.

Yes, of course. You have to show you right. You have this. But this is the point. It’s like if you know that these people are answering this, like these are the questions of your industry. And this is something I should really stress. These are the questions from your ideal customers. You should have a burning desire to want to answer these questions that truly your ideal customer you should be going. I know the answer to that so badly. No, when you’re in school and you’d like to use your other arm to push you up even higher so the teacher would see you trying to get your attention. I think you should be doing that. You know, like that should be what you do with your customers, like they’re asking these questions on or Reddit or podcasts or on YouTube or on LinkedIn. You should be wherever they are answering the questions, showing your personality, your character, your flavor and adding value. And the people who think you’re a Muppet will avoid you. And you know what’s great about that? You shouldn’t have been working with them anyway because they’re not on your path. The people who resonate with you and go, it’s cool. I’m going to check them out because they know what they’re talking about. That is your ideal customer right there.

Yeah, I think it’s funny that you brought that up because part of creating that book club, I was realizing that I was trying to push people to read one book per week because. No. Did you ever see your read 60 books? So that’s about 52 books is in that ballpark. But I got the pushback of, like, why are we not doing a book per month? And I’m like, well, the reality is you could easily segment your day to get an hour of reading time, whether it’s 30 minutes for breakfast, 20 minutes for lunch and another 40 minutes for dinner, you’re well over an hour. You times that by seven days, that’s well over seven hours of content that you consume. The average business book is about seven, eight hours long. That’s how you read a book per week. So to your point, me is definitely kind of understanding what people are asking questions about and in creating that content to facilitate that is definitely golden.

What I used to love about all the authors in particular was I read that book and having a podcast network, the very next thing I could do is contact them and say, Hey, I’d love to talk to you about your book. I’ve just finished reading it. You want to come on? And then I get to ask them the questions that I want to ask, as well as combining it with the questions that other people are asking. But now it’s a really massive value add interview. But I’ve got to ask this person first hand why? OK, you know, when you were talking about this bit, that’s the stage where I am right now. So this is what’s going on in my business now. What would you do, given the opportunity again, what kind of things that you do that actually really took you from this level to the next level? And I guess I get to learn first hand. It’s like a private mentorship session I get to share with the world.

It really is. It really is. And I think for me, it becomes like a drug. It’s like everything like, oh, my God, I got filled today. And I look at your background. I’m like, dude, I can’t wait to get on this damn podcast. And it’s like I’m sitting from a computer twitching, dying for the opportunity to have this conversation. And it never fails. It’s like every single time you get a request or you get the right and you look at their background and you know, they know what they’re talking about. To your point, I’m going to be able to drop something. But I know you’re going to drop so much more and we’re going to have that synergy to where the audience listening and hearing our conversation is like, oh, my God, take notes, stop, rewind. So definitely

you’re so right dude you’re so right.

So what final words of wisdom? Let’s say I’m a twenty year. A matter of fact, I’m gonna change that question. Let’s say I’m 45 or 50 years old. I’m stuck in corporate America. I’m ready to make a change. What words of wisdom would you give me to jump out of corporate America and continue my entrepreneurial journey?

Oh, that’s easy, brother. That’s that’s so easy. People particularly of that demographic. And I’ll talk to them directly. You remember the days where a handshake was more solid than any contract you seeing the white is somebody’s eyes. It wasn’t what you knew. It was who you knew. And business hasn’t felt the same since. It’s all gone, all automated and online, and it’s all about retargeting campaigns and it’s lost its personal appeal. If you’re nodding away today, that market hasn’t gone. It’s now just on a podcast. You can still have those relationships. You can still have those connections and build back that community around you. It’s now just online. The great thing with that is you get to repurpose all of that content and all that great stuff. But the thing is, if you don’t even know what you want to do as a business owner right now, you should still be doing a podcast. And this applies to anybody. If you’re a 20 year old kid who’s just left college and you’re like, oh, I do, I’m going to do the world’s in a crisis. There’s no jobs. Like, I don’t know what I’m going to do. OK, you know what you’re passionate about and you know what you’re interested in. So just like guest appearing on podcasts, that listening to podcast in the industry, you will very soon learn what problems are being experienced by the industry. What solutions they need and the ones that you can solve and resolve there is your answer that’s that’s your starting place. It’s about how can I add value to that audience of people that I want to work with ? And it will all grow from that.

Great, great, like i said, you never fail me. The thing is, I want the audience to understand, right? Like this conversation seems like we’ve known each other, but today is the first day that we just met literally before we got on air to make this podcast. What once you’re in like minded groups like this and like minded people, the shit just makes perfect sense.

well it was like it was like the green room beforehand and the virtual green rooms, because we literally had five minutes because it was like, listen, we both have been doing this for a long time. We don’t need a big preamble. Let’s just get it. So people are listening to our first conversation for the very first time. We haven’t even had a prequel with this.

Nope, nope. I prefer it that way. I mean, a lot of times you get people to say, hey, just give him a call before. And I’m like, we got to get the edgy rawness. let’s just get on the damn podcast, do it live and figure it out as we go. We may have some stumbles, but in reality we’re going to figure out who we are and that’s going to build that friendship moving forward. So people find you online. I mean, obviously, you have like a network and an expansive international network. So like, what’s your website? What’s your Facebook profile, Instagram, so forth and so forth.

I’m sure man. You can find us all the shows below, but you can find us all on billionairesinboxers.com. In fact, if you just search billionaires in boxers, you’ll find most of our stuff. I also have a very, very unusual surname, which is just Pelucha, P.E.L.U.C.H.A. So if you just Google Phil Pelucha, you’ll find all of my social media feeds come say, hey, however you see fit, I’m most active on LinkedIn, but you can pretty much catch me everywhere.

Oh, cool. Do you have any, like, particular offers that you want to put on air ?

You know what? I would honestly tell people I would start with the starter pack and we’re only in February and i don’t now when this is going to be released, but we’re only in kind of mid February right now and I’m already having to consider taking the starter pack down. And we only started it just before Christmas because it’s a heavily discounted pack that shows people exactly what they can do. It’s been great, as I said earlier in the show, the kind of that lead conversion and people kind of coming in and sticking around, which I think is really powerful. I love that. But at the same time, we are getting so many requests for it. I mean, I literally just before I got off the phone with you, I got a call from the PR partner who said that they sent an email around the customers and got ten inquiries back from a bookstore with me for this week that’s one of our partners. So look I love it. It’s great, but it’s not going to be around forever. Eleven hundred bucks will give you the strategy, get you introduce the VIP Network, which usually gets you some customers on its own and then get you booked on two hot podcast. And as you well know, whether it’s never just two like each person that you meet will know other people like the. So it’s it’s the start of a very exciting journey for you and one that can create a lot of content, a lot of relationships and a lot of success.

Definitely. Definitely. So going into the bonus round, right. I got like a jumbly of different bonus questions. The one question that you probably heard me here, heard me asked before is one that I’m always going to ask, because I know that your answer is going to be a hundred percent original and it tells about who you are. If you spend twenty four hours with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted, who would it be and why?

SEE. I have a very personal interest in it, and it is a very honest answer. I was raised by my grandmother rather than by my my my parents for the first 10 years of my life, mostly because of my mom’s disability. And then my grandmother sadly passed away when I was a pre-teen. It would definitely be her, this is not a if I had the option to talk to anybody dead or alive for 20 minutes, 24 hours, 12 seconds, it would always be her.

Yeah, yeah. It’s definitely it’s kind of weird when I ask that question, because some people may say. Malcolm X, some people may say Einstein, some people may say my wife, some people may say someone who has passed away. And it’s a very eclectic and I think it’s one of my favorite questions because it kind of gives me a little bit more insight to who I’m interviewing and what is valuable to them.

For Sure, I mean, she she was the person who introduced me to meditation. She was the person who introduced me to spirituality. She was a very spiritual woman. I think a lot of my ethics and morals that run through the heart of my life and my business all came from her so that without without a doubt that I can spend time with them.

So going to the next question, right. What is the most significant achievement that you’ve was able to complete to date? And I always say for all parents, we all know our kids are our greatest achievements so outside of your kids, outside of your kids. What’s your greatest achievement today?

I think this achievement today. I don’t think It’s my greatest, but there’s certainly one that I’m most proud of business wise. I got approached by a company four years ago, and they’re a marketing agency based in the north of the U.K., small agency, and they said we’re desperate to move into the emerging technology field. We want to start working with VR ,mix reality, AR, AI the whole the whole shebang right. But they knew nothing about it, nothing. So they said, but we know that you’re connector, you’ve got this thing, why don’t you come and help us? So I partnered with them and set about interviewing all the top VR people that I could find. And I basically found out in the space of about four weeks. What’s wrong with the industry, where the problems are, what the industry is pushing towards, what they’re waiting for and what nobody likes? So from that point, you’ve pretty much got everything you need for compensation next person you speak to you go listen, I know most people are sick of this stuff, but what do you think of the HoloLens is coming out later this year with the Efrem stuff? And they are like blah bah blah, and it’s like great, awesome. I’m getting all these answers. But what I was getting was a load of information. So the thing I’m most proud of is the fact that six weeks after having started working in VR, having never worked in it before, not only had I not been flown to China by the British government, I was being paid by the Mobile World Congress to speak as a keynote speaker on their main stage. This is sandwiched in between Microsoft and Sony. The year before Zuckerberg had been on this stage. It’s an event. It’s the biggest tech event in Asia that attracts over two hundred thousand visitors over the space of two days. And everybody in that room listening to me had paid two thousand dollars to be their executive level of the tech company, six weeks after working in VR. Right. I went on stage and I pretty much told them what I’ve been told by the industry. This is what the people are saying. This is what you consumers say, and this is where the gap is. This is why I think you should do about it is which essentially what I did. We won a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of business in that room just immediately after the talk. And I’m sure people can find this story online if they really want to. But immediately, as I was coming off the stage, this giant guy just was marching towards me. All joking aside, I thought I was getting chucked out. I thought my presentation was so bad that security to come to remove me and this huge guys still marching toward me, shakes my hand, puts a business card in my hand, shake my hand and says, I have to go now. I like you and we should work together and he left. I sat down and checked the business card. He was the senior vice president from Microsoft Asia. He was the person responsible for their HoloLens project that VR project. And that was how we started working with Microsoft, all from this room that I was paid to be there, paid by my British government to fly over, provided as i just said thank you the British government for sending me, which, by the way, just gave me even more credibility. I was essentially speaking on behalf of my government, on behalf of the people of Great Britain. Here I am kowing nothing about this industry to tell you all what to do.

Crazy It’s humbling hearing that story, because I think. The point is that you have to start somewhere, right? And I’m hearing your stories and I’m like, this dude has like legendary epic stories. And there’s Probably, somebody listening right now is kind of like I’m about to start my podcast. But the reality is, is that one podcast could compound into a world journey. You just have to kind of stay on that path. I mean, I started my podcast originally I think it’s about a year ago this month. So from a year ago right now. Right. It’s kind of like night and day difference, but where am I going to be two years from now? Three years from now, four years from now? You just got to be consistent and stay on that path. And I’m happy I’ve crossed paths with you. Right. I would not have met you otherwise.

Oh, it’s so true, isn’t it? But look it’s the I think podcasting strategy is so different to business strategy because the business strategy have to stay focused. Right. You have to have your goal. You get on with it. But if you during a podcast strategy, you miss so many golden opportunities. Like I, I didn’t know the doing of doing a partnership with a company in the north of England who only have UK and European plans would lead to Shanghai, which would lead to me working with Microsoft Asia in China and all these businesses in Singapore. And I still do loads in that region even to this day. I have I have a really good relationship with the emerging fintech market in Singapore who are competing with the established financial market in Hong Kong. I’ve so many contacts in this place. It’s unbelievable, all because of podcasting. So I am so with you. I just I wish I wish that people would embrace this because the reality is it’s not going to be like this forever. I mean, it’s kind of where Facebook was ten years ago where you can make a lot of money organically and really build that crowd. But just like Facebook and everything else, pretty soon Spotify and iTunes are going to start showing this to 10 percent, 20 percent of your audience. And you’re going to have the boost post to be able to speak to the rest of your followers, which again, is why my focus is not on grow the audience and sell to them. It’s make money through the relationships and through the leveling up and through the networking with the people and the business, the relationships and the partnerships rather than the audience, because at some point, Facebook, Spotify, whoever, they’re going to take that audience of you and charge you to talk to them. But if your power is still in that networking, in that conversation, you’ll still winning.

So, I mean, we are going into a conclusion of this particular episode and, you know, obviously your fellow podcasters, so I’m going to give the microphone to you and give you an opportunity to ask me any questions that may have arise while we were talking. So the floor is yours.

I love it, man. So where are most of your listeners at the moment. Let’s do a mini session. Where and who we are you talking to?

So looking at my analytical data, I’m talking to essentially similar audience to you. I’m talking to middle aged men currently right now, and I’m trying to breach more into middle age females.

Yeah. All right. OK, so let’s do it. Let’s reverse engineer that then. So let’s do it on the podcast. I think it will be useful, I have an affiliate program, a partnership program. We pay 10 percent for the lifetime of a customer for as long as they remember with us essentially so there with us for three years. You get paid every month for three years we give 10 percent. It works really nice. And it’s a good way of referring business. I imagine there will people, you know, who could really vibe with this. And it worked well for, in return I have a number of people, including that run women only professional services bodies, good friend of mine who I actually met again through podcasting. Marie Diamond of the secret movie obviously Reach like 500 million people, Marie is awesome. Marie runs global events such as the Global Women’s Conscious Movement, which is all about female empowerment and rising business and in life. And it’s been as successful as possible. So I can plug you in with a lot of those people straight away. You want to speak to more of these people? Best way to do that is to get you as a guest on their shows to talk about what they’re doing and indeed bring some key figures, maybe even like Marie onto the show to talk about what they’re doing, because they will have guest and actually, sorry, they will have audience that naturally follow them and will stick around and enjoy your stuff. So if you are keen on that man that’s what we do after this pod, we exchange those details. And I’m happy to make those introductions.

I mean yeah, I’m a big opportunity person. If opportunity knocks, I’m going to kick open the fucking door and be like, come on in. I’m not going to hesitate i’m not going to look to the people. So by all means, definitely. Let’s let’s just get it done.

Let’s do it man. Let’s do it. there you see that right there is a real life work example. So all we’ve done right there for anybody listening to this is this would have been the end of the discussion once we finished recording. This is the conversation that we would have had. But we wanted you to hear this so that you can hear for yourself that this is the cycle. This is what happens. It’s that amazing ultimate speed dating in the green room where it’s like, here’s some key facts about me. You give me some key facts about you. You have a conversation with them for 30 to 60 Minutes and you vibe together. After the end of that call, you go I vibe with you. If you vibe with me, then let’s figure out how we should do some business together.

Sounds like a win win. So, I mean, I definitely appreciate you reaching out. having taken the time out of your busy schedule to get on the show. I think you definitely gave a lot of damn insight. like I said, I felt like I was in a strip club who’s making it rain literally every single time you spoke. So I definitely appreciate that.

Well, thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure to be here. Be happy to come back out. Your audience really have taken a lot of value from this and take it seriously. Many people will only get this when they first start doing it. They go. Ah! That’s what they were talking about. But anybody who is not sure or wants a couple of pointers either come talk to me about my starter pack. or just come ask me a couple of questions that are burning and I’ll be happy to help.

Perfect man. Thanks again S.A Grant over and out.