Owner Of Rental Relocation: James Bilderback AKA The Relocation Boss – S2E44 (#72)

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.