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Redwood is a state-of-the-art graphical interface that defines the look and feel of the new Oracle Cloud Redwood Applications. In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald, take a closer look at the intent behind the design and development aspects of the new Redwood experience. They also explore Redwood page templates and components. Survey: https://customersurveys.oracle.com/ords/surveys/t/oracle-university-gtm/survey?k=focus-group-2-link-share-5 Developing Redwood Applications with Visual Builder: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/learning-path/developing-redwood-applications-with-visual-builder/112791 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi everyone! Thanks for joining us for this Best of 2024 series, where we're playing for you our four most popular episodes of the year. Nikita: Today's episode is #3 of 4 and is a throwback to another conversation with Joe Greenwald, our Senior Principal OCI Instructor. We asked Joe about Oracle's Redwood design system and how it helps us create stunning, world-class enterprise applications and user experiences. 01:04 Lois: Yeah, Redwood is the basis for all the new Oracle Cloud Applications being re-designed, developed, and delivered. Joe is the best person to ask about all of this because he's been working with our Oracle software development tools since the early 90s and is responsible for OU's Visual Builder Studio and Redwood course content. So, let's dive right in! Joe: Hi Lois. Hi Niki. I am excited to join you on this episode because with the release of 24A Fusion applications, we are encouraging all our customers to adopt the new Redwood design system and components, and take advantage of the world-class look and feel of the new Redwood user experience. Redwood represents a new approach and direction for us at Oracle, and we're excited to have our customers benefit from it. 01:49 Nikita: Joe, you've been working with Oracle user interface development tools and frameworks for a long time. How and why is Redwood different? Joe: I joined Oracle in 1992, and the first Oracle user interface I experienced was Oracle Forms. And that was the character mode. I came from a background of Smalltalk and its amazing, pioneering graphical user interface (GUI) design capabilities. I worked at Apple and I developed my own GUIs for a few years on PCs and Macs. So, Character Mode Forms, what we used to call DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) screens, was a shock, to say the least. Since then, I've worked with almost every user interface and development platform Oracle has created: Character Mode Forms, GUI Forms, Power Objects, HyperCard on the Macintosh, that was pre-OS X by the way, Sedona, written in native C++ and ActiveX and OLE, which didn't make it to a product but appeared in other things later, ADF Faces, which uses Java to generate HTML pages, and APEX, which uses PL/SQL to generate HTML pages. And I've worked with and wrote training classes for Java Swing, an excellent GUI framework for event-driven desktop and enterprise applications, but it wasn't designed for the web. So, it's with pleasure that I introduce you to the Redwood design system, easily the best effort I've ever seen, from the look and feel of holistic user-goal-centered design philosophy and approach to the cutting-edge WYSIWYG design tools. 03:16 Lois: Joe, is Redwood just another set of styles, colors, and fonts, albeit very nice-looking ones? Joe: The Redwood platform is new for Oracle, and it represents a significant change, not just in the look and feel, colors, fonts, and styles, I mean that too, but it's also a fundamental change in how Oracle is creating, designing, and imagining user interfaces. As you may be aware, all Oracle Cloud Applications are being re-designed, re-engineered, and re-rebuilt from the ground up, with significant changes to both back-end and front-end architectures. The front end is being redesigned, re-developed, and re-created in pure HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript using Visual Builder Studio and its design-time browser-based Integrated Development Environment. The back end is being re-architected, re-designed, and implemented in a modern microservice architecture for Oracle Cloud using Kubernetes and other modern technologies that improve performance and work better in the cloud than our current legacy architecture. The new Oracle Cloud Applications platform uses Redwood for its design system—its tools, its patterns, its components, and page templates. Redwood is a richer and more productive platform to create solutions while still being cost-effective for Oracle. It encourages a transformation of the fundamental user experience, emphasizing identifying, meeting, and understanding end users' goals and how the applications are used. 04:39 Nikita: Joe, do you think Oracle's user interface has been improved with Redwood? In what ways has the UI changed? Joe: Yes, absolutely. Redwood has changed a lot of things. When I joined Oracle back in the '90s, there was effectively no user interface division or UI team. Everybody just did their own thing. There was no user interface lab—and that was started in the mid-‘90s—and I was asked to give product usability feedback and participate in UI tests and experiments in those labs. I also helped test the products I was teaching at the time. I actually distinctly remember having to take a week to train users on Oracle's Designer CASE tool product just to prep the participants enough to perform usability testing. I can still hear the UI lab manager shaking her head and saying any product that requires a week of training to do usability testing has usability issues! And if you're like me and you've been around Oracle long enough, you know that Oracle's not always been known for its user interfaces and been known to release products that look like they were designed by two or more different companies. All that has changed with Redwood. With Redwood, there's a new internal design group that oversees the design choices of all development teams that develop products. This includes a design system review and an ongoing audit process to ensure that all the products being released, whether Fusion apps or something else, all look and feel similar so it looks like it's designed by a single company with a single thought in mind. Which it is. There's a deeper, consistent commitment in identifying user needs, understanding how the applications are being used, and how they meet those user needs through things like telemetry: gathering metrics from the actual components and the Redwood system itself to see how the applications are being used, what's working well, and what isn't. This telemetry is available to us here at Oracle, and we use it to fine tune the applications' usability and purpose. 06:29 Lois: That's really interesting, Joe. So, it's a fundamental change in the way we're doing things. What about the GUI components themselves? Are these more sophisticated than simple GUI components like buttons and text fields? Joe: The graphical components themselves are at a much higher level, more comprehensive, and work better together. And in Redwood, everything is a component. And I'm not just talking about things like input text fields and buttons, though it applies to these more fine-grained components as well. Leveraging Oracle's deep experience in building enterprise applications, we've incorporated that knowledge into creating page templates so that the structure and look and feel of the page is fixed based on our internal design standards. The developer has control over certain portions of it, but the overall look and feel of the page is controlled by Oracle. So there is consistency of look and feel within and across applications. These page templates come with predefined functionalities: headers, titles, properties, and variables to manipulate content and settings, slots for other components to hold like search fields, collections, contextual information, badges, and images, as well as primary and secondary actions, and variables for events and event handling through Visual Builder action chains, which handle the various actions and processing of the request on the page. And all these page templates and components are responsive, meaning they respond to the change in the size of the page and the orientation. So, when you move from a desktop to a handheld mobile device or a tablet, they respond appropriately and consistently to deliver a clean, easy-to-use interface and experience. 08:03 Nikita: You mentioned WYSIWYG design tools and their integration with Visual Builder Studio's integrated development environment. How does Redwood work with Visual Builder Studio? Joe: This is easily one of my most favorite aspects about Redwood and the integration with Visual Builder Studio Designer. The components and page templates are responsive at runtime as well as responsive at design time! In over 30 years of working with Oracle software development products, this is the first development system and integrated development environment I've seen Oracle produce where what you see is what you get at design time. Now, with products such as Designer and JDeveloper ADF Faces and even APEX—all those page-generation types of products—you have to generate the page, deploy it, and only then can you view the final page to see whether it meets the needs of your user interface. For example, with Designer, there were literally hundreds of configuration parameters that you could set to control how forms and reports looked when they were generated —down to how many buttons on a row or how many rows to a page, that sort of thing, all done in text mode. Then you'd generate and run the page to see what the result was and then go back and modify things until you got what you wanted. I remember hearing the product managers for Oracle ADF Faces being asked…well, a customer asked, “What happens if I put this component here and this component here? What will the page look like?” and they'd say, “I don't know. Render the page and let's see.” That's just crazy talk. With Redwood and its integration with Visual Builder Studio Designer, what you see on the page at design time is literally what you get. And if I make the page narrower or I even convert it to a mobile display while in the Designer itself, I immediately see what the page looks like in that new mode. Everything just moves accordingly, at design time. For example, when changing to a mobile UI, everything stacks up nicely; the components adjust to the page size and change right there in the design environment. Again, I can't emphasize enough the simple luxury of being able to see exactly what the user is going to see on my page and having the ability to change the resolution, orientation, and screen size, and it changes right there immediately in my design environment. 10:06 Lois: I'm intrigued by the idea of page templates that are managed by Oracle but still leave room for the developer to customize aspects of the look and feel and functionality. How does that work? Joe: Well, the page templates themselves represent the typical pages you would most likely use in an enterprise application. Things like a welcome page, a search page, and edit and create pages, and a couple of different ways to display summary information, including foldout pages, though this is not an exhaustive list of course. Not only do they provide a logical and complete starting point for the layout of the page itself, but they also include built-in functionality. These templates include functionality for buttons, primary and secondary actions, and areas for holding contextual information, badges, avatars, and images. And this is all built right into the page, and all of them use variables to describe the contents for the various parts, so the contents can change programmatically as the variables' contents change, if necessary. 11:04 Do you have an idea for a new course or learning opportunity? We'd love to hear it! Visit the Oracle University Learning Community and share your thoughts with us on the Idea Incubator. Your suggestion could find a place in future development projects. Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 11:24 Nikita: Welcome back! So, Joe, let's say I'm a developer. How do I get started working with Redwood? Joe: One of the easiest ways to do it is to use Visual Builder Studio Designer and create a new visual application. If you're creating a standalone, bespoke custom application, you can choose a Redwood starter template, which will include all the Redwood components and page templates automatically. Or, if you're extending and customizing an Oracle Fusion application, Redwood is already included. Either way, when you create a new page, you have a choice of different page templates—welcome page templates, edit pages, search pages, etc. —and all you have to do is choose a page that you want and begin configuring it. And actually if you make a mistake, it's easy to switch page templates. All the components, page templates, and so on have documentation right there inside Visual Builder Studio Designer, and we do recommend that you read through the documentation first to get an understanding of what the use case for that template is and how to use it. And some components are more granular, like a collection container which holds a collection of rows of a list or a table and provides capabilities like toolbars and other actions that are already built and defined. You decide what actions you want and then use predefined event listeners that are triggered when an event occurs in the application—like a button being clicked or a row being selected—which kicks off a series of actions to be performed. 12:42 Lois: That sounds easy enough if you know what you're doing. Joe, what are some of the more common pages and what are they used for? Joe: Redwood page templates can be broken down into categories. There are overview templates like the welcome page template, which has a nice banner, colors, and illustrations that can be used for a welcoming page—like for entering a new application or a new logical section of the application. The dashboard landing page template displays key information values and their charts and graphs, which can come from Oracle Analytics, and automatically switches the display depending on which set of data is selected. The detail templates include a general overview, which presents read-only information related to a single record or resource. The item overview gives you a small panel to view summary information (for example, information on a customer) and in the main section, you can view details like all the orders for that customer. And you can even navigate through a set of customers, clicking arrows for next-previous navigation. And that's all built in. There's no programming required. The fold-out page template folds out horizontally to show you individual panels with more detail that can be displayed about the subject being retrieved as well as overflow and drill-down areas. And there's a collection detail template that will display a list with additional details about the selected item (for example, an order and its order line items). The smart search page does exactly what it says. It has a search component that you use to filter or search the data coming back from the REST data sources and then display the results in a list or a table. You define the filter yourself and apply it using different kinds of comparators, so you can look for strings that start with certain values or contain values, or numerical values that are equal to or less than, depending on what you're filtering for. And then there are the transactional templates, which are meant to make changes. This includes both the simple create and edit and advanced create and edit templates. The simple create and edit page template edits a single record or creates a single record. And the advanced page template works well if you're working with master-detail, parent-child type relationships. Let's say you want to view the parent and create children for it or even create a parent and the children at the same time. And there's a Gantt chart page for project management–type tracking and a guided process page for multiple-step processes and there's a data management page template specifically for viewing and editing data collections like Excel spreadsheets. 14:55 Nikita: You mentioned that there's a design system behind all this. How is this used, and how does the customer benefit from it? Joe: Redwood comprises both a design system and a development system. The design system has a series of steps that we follow here at Oracle and can suggest that you, our customers and partners, can follow as well. This includes understanding the problem, articulating the vision for the page and the application (what it should do), identifying the proper Redwood page templates to use, adding detail and refining the design and then using a number of different mechanisms, including PowerPoint or Figma design tools to specify the design for development, and then monitor engagement in the real world. These are the steps that we follow here at Oracle. The Redwood development process starts with learning how to use Redwood components and templates using the documentation and other content from redwood.oracle.com and Visual Builder Studio. Then it's about understanding the design created by the design team, learning more about components and templates for your application, specifically the ones you're going to use, how they work, and how they work together. Then developing your application using Visual Builder Studio Designer, and finally improving and refining your application. Now, right now, as I mentioned, telemetry is available to us here at Oracle so we can get a sense of the feedback on the pages of how components are being used and where time is being spent, and we use that to tune the designs and components being used. That telemetry data may be available to customers in the future. Now, when you go to redwood.oracle.com, you can access the Redwood pattern book that shows you in detail all the different page templates that are available: smart search page, data grid, welcome page, dashboard landing page, and so on, and you can select these and read more about them as well as the actual design specifications that were used to build the pages—defining what they do and what they respond to. They provide a lot of detailed information about the templates and components, how they work and how they're intended to be used. 16:50 Lois: That's a lot of great resources available. But what if I don't have access to Visual Builder Studio Designer? Can I still see how Redwood looks and behaves? Joe: Well, if you go to redwood.oracle.com, you can log in and work with the Redwood reference application, which is a live application working with live data. It was created to show off the various page templates and components, their look and feel and functionality from the Redwood design and development systems. This is an order management application, so you can do things like view filtered pending orders, create new orders, manage orders, and view information about customers and inventory. It uses the different page templates to show you how the application can perform. 17:29 Nikita: I assume there are common aspects to how these page templates are designed, built, and intended to be used. Is that a good way to begin understanding how to work with them? Becoming familiar with their common properties and functionality? Joe: Absolutely! Good point! All pages have titles, and most have primary and secondary actions that can be triggered through a variety of GUI events, like clicking a button or a link or selecting something in a list or a table. The transactional page templates include validation groups that validate whether the data is correct before it is submitted, as well as a message dialog that can pop up if there are unsaved changes and someone tries to leave the page. All the pages can use variables to display information or set properties and can easily display specific contextual information about records that have been retrieved, like adding the Order Number or Customer Name and Number to the page title or section headers. 18:18 Lois: If I were a developer, I'd be really excited to get started! So, let's say I'm a developer. What's the best way to begin learning about Redwood, Joe? Joe: A great place to start learning about the Redwood design and development system is at the redwood.oracle.com page I mentioned. We have many different pages that describe the philosophy and fundamental basis for Redwood, the ideas and intent behind it, and how we're using it here at Oracle. It also has a list of all the different page templates and components you can use and a link to the Redwood reference application where you can sign in and try it yourself. In addition, we at Oracle University offer a course called Design and Develop Redwood Applications, and in there, we have both lecture content as well as hands-on practices where you build a lightweight version of the Redwood reference application using data from the Fusion apps application, as well as the pages that I talked about: the welcome page, detail pages, transactional pages, and the dashboard landing page. And you'll see how those pages are designed and constructed while building them yourself. It's very important though to take one of the free Visual Builder Developer courses first: either Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio and/or Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio before you try to work through the practices in the Redwood course because it uses a lot of Visual Builder Designer technology. You'll get a lot more out of the Redwood practices if you understand the basics of Visual Builder Studio first. The Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio course is probably a better place to start unless you know for a fact you will be focusing on extending Oracle Fusion Applications using Visual Builder Studio. Now, a lot of the content is the same between the two courses as they share much of the same technology and architectures. 19:58 Lois: Ok, so Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio and Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio…all on mylearn.oracle.com and all free for anyone who wants to take them, right? Joe: Yes, exactly. And the free Redwood learning path leads to an Associate certification. While our courses are a great place to start in preparing for your certification exam, they are not, of course, by themselves sufficient to pass and you will want to study and be familiar with the redwood.oracle.com content as well. The learning path is free, but you do have to pay for the certification exam. Nikita: We hope you enjoyed that conversation. A quick reminder about the short survey we've created to gather your insights and suggestions for the podcast. It's really quick. Just click the link in the show notes to complete the survey. Thank you so much for helping us make the show better. Join us next week for another throwback episode. Until then, this is Nikita Abraham... Lois: And Lois Houston, signing off! 20:58 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
What do you need to start customizing the next generation of Oracle Fusion Apps? How do you create new pages for business processes? What level of expertise do you require for this? Join Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham as they get answers to all these questions and more from Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald. Survey: https://customersurveys.oracle.com/ords/surveys/t/oracle-university-gtm/survey?k=focus-group-2-link-share-5 Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/develop-fusion-applications-using-visual-builder-studio/138392/ Build Visual Applications Using Oracle Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/build-visual-applications-using-oracle-visual-builder-studio/137749/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Lois: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services. Nikita: Hi there! You're listening to our Best of 2024 series, where over the next few weeks, we'll be revisiting four of our most popular episodes of the year. Lois: Today's episode is #2 of 4, and we're throwing it back to another episode with our friend and Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald. This episode is all about extending Oracle Cloud Applications that are being built using Visual Builder for the front-end. 01:04 Nikita: Right, Lois. We began by asking Joe to explain what's happening with the redesign and re-architecture of Oracle Cloud Applications using Visual Builder Studio, or VBS. Joe: That's right, Niki. Oracle is redesigning and rebuilding its entire suite of Fusion Cloud Applications, over 330 different products, utilizing over 60,000 engineers — that is “60,” not “16”—at Oracle to develop the next generation of Oracle Fusion Applications. What's most exciting is that the same tools the engineers are using to accomplish this are available to our partners and our customers to use to extend the functionality and capabilities of Fusion Applications to meet their custom needs and processes. 01:45 Lois: That's pretty awesome! We want to use this time today to ask you about extensions, the types of extensions you can create, and how to use Visual Builder Studio to create those extensions. Nikita: Yeah, can we start with you telling us what an extension is? I've gotten the sense that Oracle uses the term extension as both a noun and a verb and that's a bit confusing to me. Joe: Yeah, good catch, Niki. Yes, Oracle does use the term extension in two ways: both as a noun and a verb. As a noun, an extension is a container for the code changes that you make to your applications. Basically, it's a Git repository that Oracle creates and manages for you. So, the extension container holds the code changes you make to your page layouts: the fields, their positioning, showing and hiding fields, that sort of thing, as well as page functionality. These code changes you make are stored in the extension and it is this extension with your code changes that is merged with the main Git branch eventually and then deployed using continuous integration/continuous deployment jobs defined in Visual Builder Studio, which manages the project and its assets. Your extension is a Git branch that is an asset of the project. Once your extension code is merged with the main branch and deployed, then the next time someone brings up the application, they'll see the changes you've made in the app. 02:59 Lois: And as a verb? Joe: As a verb, extension means to extend the functionality and the look and feel of the application, though I prefer the term customization or configuration to describe this aspect, as the documentation does, and to avoid confusion, though I'll admit I'm not always consistent about the terms I use. 03:16 Lois: What types of customizations, or extensions, and I'm using the verb now, are available for Fusion Apps in Visual Builder Studio? Joe: There are three different ways Fusion Apps can be customized effectively, configured, or extended. The first way is what we call a basic extension, where you're rearranging hiding, or showing, or moving around fields and sections on the page that have been set up to be extendable by the Fusion Application development teams. Things like hiding fields, showing fields, hiding sections, showing sections… 03:45 Nikita: So fairly basic actions… Joe: Yeah exactly and they can be done in Visual Builder Studio Designer by people with minimal VB training, Visual Builder training. And, most recently, if you have access to it, you can do it in the new Express mode, where the page shows you just those things you can work with and just the tools you need to work with the page. This is new and makes it much easier for folks who are not highly technical to make basic changes to the page layout. 04:09 Lois: People like me! That sounds easy enough. Joe: And the next type of extension is more of an intermediate change and requires some training with Visual Builder Studio because you're creating rules that govern the display of layouts based on certain conditions on the page. These are highly flexible, powerful, and useful for creating customized page layouts based on a variety of factors from page size and orientation to the role of the person using it to values in the actual fields on the page itself. These rules can be combined to create complex rule-based conditions that display exactly what the user should see, given the conditions of the page and their role. I would also include making changes to action chains, which execute sequences of behaviors and navigation, and the actual structure of the application, but this is more advanced. Lastly, is creating mashup applications, which are stand-alone Visual Builder visual applications, which use data from Fusion apps, and customer data sources, like their own database tables, and potentially third-party APIs to create brand new pages and applications with new functionality, new processes, new procedures, new displays, all of which look just like Fusion Applications and use the same data as Fusion applications. 05:18 Lois: Joe, how do I get started if I want to extend a page? Joe: The easiest way to do it is to open a page in Fusion Applications and then select Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio from the Profile menu. You're then prompted for a project to hold the Git repository for the extension container. And since there's probably already one that exists, after you select the project, an extension Git container is assigned to you. Unless this is the very first time the application has been extended in which case it creates an extension for you. When creating customizations or configurations, we recommend that each application be done in its own separate project. So, for example, if you're working on Customer Experience Sales, you might do it in Project A and if you're working on extensions with HCM, you might do it in Project B. And if you decide to create your own pages and flows in your own app, you might do that in Project C. 06:04 Nikita: But why do you need to do this? Joe: That's just to keep things nice and separate and organized. The tool, Visual Builder Studio, doesn't really care, but it makes for cleaner development and can help with the management of the development teams. 06:14 Nikita: Ok, Joe, I have a question. How do I know if the page I'm on in Fusion Apps can be edited in Visual Builder? I know there are a lot of legacy pages still out there and they can co-exist with the new VB-based pages. Joe: If the URL of the page you're on has the word /Redwood in it instead of /faces, then you know this is a page that was created using Visual Builder Studio and you'll be able to extend it and make changes to it using the Edit in Visual Builder Studio option. So, if you select Edit in Visual Builder Studio, then the page you are on opens inside Visual Builder Studio Designer and you can make changes to any part of the page that has been explicitly enabled for extension by the development team. 06:53 Lois: That's an important part, right? The application is not extendable by default. Joe: That's right, Lois. It is all locked down and you can't make any changes to it by default. The development team must specifically enable certain parts of the page: sections, fields, layouts, variables, types, action chains, etc. as extendable for you to be able to make changes to it. This ensures the changes the development team makes to the application in the future won't break your extensions. And conversely, the development team can choose to not extend portions that they do not want you to touch or mess with. Then if they do change that bit of the app in the future, it won't break the application and you won't get a big surprise. So, using the Edit page in Visual Builder Studio, you can make both basic changes, like moving, showing, and hiding fields and sections, as well as the more intermediate types of configurations, like using dynamic components to create rule-based layouts that change dynamically based on several conditions such as page size, roles of the user, and field values on the page itself. 07:51 Nikita: What happens if two developers make changes and essentially overwrite each other's customizations — say one hides a field and another later exposes it? Joe: Well, whoever commits their changes and deploys last wins. The other developer's changes get overwritten. So, this is something the team would want to consider carefully. It is possible to roll back to an earlier version if one must. And this can be done in Visual Builder Studio — the part that manages project assets like Git repositories. And there are Oracle blog posts about how to do that if you're interested in learning more. 08:20 Lois: Joe, earlier you mentioned creating new pages and flows, but so far you've only talked about modifying existing extendable pages. How do I create new pages and flows? Joe: In a Visual Builder extension, a set of pages and flows is called an App UI. When I use the terms pages and flows, what I'm talking about is a set of pages that are logically related—whatever logical means to the designer and developer—in a group called a flow that you can navigate between. But you can also navigate between flows and even between applications. So, without getting too technical, each application has a default flow, which has a default page where that flow starts when the app first comes up. So, you can think of an App UI as a collection of flows and their pages, and a URL that accesses the default flow and its default page. That's the page you would see first when accessing that URL. Of course, this can be configured and changed by the developer, as needed. Now, when Oracle creates the original application (for example, digital sales, helpdesk, or something like that), we create an App UI, which contains the pages and flows for that application and is the “entry point” into the app, accessing that App UI's default flow and its default page and then things flow on from there. Partners and customers can create their own application extensions that are dependent on an Oracle application and even create their own App UI – their own sets of pages and flows to accommodate their own processing and workflow needs. This gives them the ability to add their own processes and rules, and still leverage and navigate to the core application that Oracle built. For example, say Oracle delivered digital sales as an Oracle Cloud Application built using Visual Builder to a customer and the customer needs to add a few pages to do some validation or other type of business processing before entering the digital sales application. What the customer does, in this case, is create a new extension of the Oracle Digital Sales app and an App UI of their own, which would be the set of pages and flows that contain the processing they want to start with before then navigating into the digital sales app to use Oracle's application. 10:22 Nikita: Wait, did I hear that correctly? We're creating an extension of an extension or creating an extension on an existing extension? Joe: I know, right? I realize this can sound confusing the first time you hear it or the second time or even the third time. It took me a while to get my head around what they're talking about. Let's start with a Fusion application. In a Fusion application, everything is an extension of something. This is just how the code base and the architecture are organized and how they manage the Git repositories and the code base itself. So, Oracle created a base application called the Unified App. The Unified Application contains the basic page structure and common functionality needed for all applications. For example, it contains the header at the top that has the profile and the footer at the bottom of the page that has that little Ask Oracle icon. Within that page, between the header and the footer, are the pages that are created by the developers, whether they be Oracle engineers or partners or customers. They display the contents of the page with the data and the layouts and all of that. In a sense, you can think of the Unified App as an index page, the starting page of the web application. Though that's not completely true technically, it's good enough for illustrative purposes. So, Oracle starts with the Unified App and then a development team extends that Unified App to build their product. This is how digital sales did it. This is how customer experience did it. This is how helpdesk did it. They start with the Unified App and they extend that and create an App UI that contains the flows and pages for their specific application, and then add functionality for all the pages and flows, as needed for the design. Partners and customers can then create a new extension that extends the Oracle Application and add their own App UI and their own URL if they want their pages accessed first, before navigating to the Oracle application. For example, if the digital sales application has functionality you'd like to leverage, like it has data services or fragments or page layouts that you want to reuse or other things, you extend the digital sales application, and this extension holds your code changes. You could then create a new App UI, and once deployed, users can use that URL for the new App UI to access your new pages. And your page can then navigate to the Oracle app when it needs to. Though I will say to date, we're really not seeing much demand for this particular use case, but it is possible. 12:33 Lois: Is that the only option available to customers and partners—to extend an existing Oracle application? Joe: No, Lois. We're seeing customers and partners create brand new Fusion applications of their own, based on the Unified App Oracle created. In a sense, doing the same thing that our development teams here are doing. Remember, I said an Oracle development team starts with the Unified App, which has common functionality and look and feel for all applications, and then extends that to add business rules processing, flows, App UI, whatever they need for their specific Oracle application. We're seeing our partners and customers wanting to build their own applications. Maybe a customer or partner wants to create a Time & Expense application and leverage the Fusion application data and the APIs available, but define their own flows, their own pages, their own processing. This is very easy to do. They'd start by extending the Unified App just like the Oracle development teams do, and then build their own App UI and within that, their own flows, pages, and custom processing. The nice thing about it is that the application looks and works and feels just like a Fusion application and it appears alongside other Fusion applications, because it is a Fusion application. 13:43 Did you know that the Oracle University Learning Community regularly holds live events hosted by Oracle expert instructors. Find out how to prepare for your certification exams. Learn about the latest technology advances and features. Ask questions in real time and learn from an Oracle subject matter expert. From Ask Me Anything about certification to Ask the Instructor coaching sessions, you'll be able to achieve your learning goals for 2024 in no time. Join a live event today and witness firsthand the transformative power of the Oracle University Learning Community. Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 14:24 Nikita: Welcome back! So Joe, it sounds like there are two different paths or life cycles to create extensions for future applications in Visual Builder Studio. Is that correct? Joe: Yes, exactly. So one path to extending the functionality of Fusion apps is to edit the page in Visual Builder Studio, which opens the page in Visual Builder Designer, and you then make changes to the existing pages, depending on what the development team has made extendable. 14:49 Nikita: But you can't create new pages and flows in this scenario, right? Joe: This is strictly about modifying an existing page. The other path is creating a new application extension, which is a new application from scratch or extending an existing Oracle application or even an existing partner or customer application. Again, we're not seeing this typically being done too much. Most partners and customers create new applications or make customizations to existing pages. But the architecture does support it. So, your partner might create a new application based on the production app released by Oracle, and you could extend their application. Or a development team at your site could extend Oracle's application and you could then extend that team's application. This is mechanically possible, although I question the use case behind that. Usually, we see our apps being extended – becoming a dependency when there's code that can be leveraged or reused for a new app and its new App UI. 15:40 Lois: Joe, what did you mean when you say one extension is a dependency of another? Can you talk a bit about dependencies, what that means, how it looks to the developer? Joe: When you extend an application, it becomes a dependency to your application, and you get access to all the resources within that dependency that are marked as extendable by the developer who created that extension. Most useful are things like service connections to REST APIs from Fusion apps data sources, reusable code fragments, and layouts that you can leverage in those cases where you want to create a new App UI. When an extension is listed as a dependency, you'll see this graphically in Visual Builder Studio Designer. When you see an extension listed as a dependency, it means you can reference any of that extension's resources that have been marked extendable by the developer. Recall all resources are closed off or hidden by default, but development teams can mark resources as open to being extended and reused, and then you can see and use those resources. So, you can easily add and remove extensions as dependencies in Visual Builder Designer as needed. Now, this can be a nice way to modularize and reuse your resources and assets. To summarize: I can modify an existing page – this is most common, extend an existing application and create a new App UI, which is not common, or I can extend the unified app to create a new app and a new App UI and add other extensions as dependences, as needed, to leverage their services, fragments, and layouts when building my own pages – this is pretty common as well. 17:04 Nikita: There's one thing I'd like to come back to, Joe. You mentioned something called a mashup application earlier. Can you tell us a little more about that? Joe: To recap: I mentioned a couple of different ways that you can extend Fusion applications. One is changing layouts or creating rule-based layouts. You can also extend existing apps and create your own App UI on top of them or create your own Fusion app from scratch. But these are Fusion apps and they have restrictions. These can only run within the Fusion applications ecosystem, which means they can only be accessed by people who are registered in the Fusion application ecosystem, and there are some other restrictions (for example, in terms of the APIs you can access). And you also have no access to customer data tables. Mashup applications use the stand-alone Visual Builder Cloud Service, which enables you to create custom visual applications. These are visual applications that run outside the Fusion apps ecosystem. Users only need to be identified to the Identity Cloud Service, IDCS, and then they can get access to these mashup apps, depending on the roles and privileges given to them, of course. These mashup applications can access Fusion apps API data, as well as customer database tables, Excel spreadsheet data, CSV files, and third-party APIs. And all this data can appear on the same page, in the same app, using the same Redwood components, so they look and work just like Fusion applications. 18:22 Lois: I know in the past there's been some friction to making changes in Fusion applications. Partner and customer developers use different tools than the ones Oracle engineers use and there have been some deployment issues. To wrap up things, can you tell us why customers should use Visual Builder Studio to customize Fusion apps? Joe: Glad to, Lois. The big benefit to customers is that they are using the exact same tools, Visual Builder Designer for page design work and Visual Builder Studio for project and code management, to build the customizations and extensions that Oracle is using to create the applications and extensions that are delivered to them. I can't emphasize enough how big a deal this is and how wonderful it is for the customer. We're constantly making the Visual Builder Designer interface easier and easier to work with. We're currently releasing a new version of Visual Builder Designer—the Express mode version. This version of Designer is lightweight and has only the necessary features required to allow you to make changes to pages and layouts, and create and manage dynamic rule-based layouts. If you need more (for example, you need to create service connections, fragments, and do a lot more of that type of advanced work), then use the advanced version of the Designer. Both are available to you, assuming that your user has the appropriate permission and the Fusion app you are using has implemented Express Designer. 19:37 Lois: OK Joe, what courses does Oracle University offer for me if I wanted to learn more about developing extensions for Fusion apps and creating mashup apps using Visual Builder Studio? Joe: Oracle University has several courses. We have the Develop Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio, which focuses on creating the stand-alone custom bespoke mashup visual applications. We also have our Design and Develop Redwood Applications course, which goes into detail about working with the Redwood page templates and components. All these courses are free and available today. And all you need to do is log in to mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 20:10 Nikita: We hope you enjoyed that conversation. Just a quick reminder before we close about the short survey we've put together to get your thoughts on the podcast. It'll take just a few minutes and will help us make the podcast even better. Just click the link in the show notes to participate. Join us next week for another throwback episode. Until then, this is Nikita Abraham... Lois: And Lois Houston, signing off! 20:33 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
The next generation of front-end user interfaces for Oracle Fusion Applications is being built using Visual Builder Studio and Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit. However, many of the terms associated with these tools can be confusing. In this episode, Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham are joined by Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald. Together, they take you through the different terminologies, how they relate to each other, and how they can be used to deliver the new Oracle Fusion Applications as well as stand-alone, bespoke visual web applications. Survey: https://customersurveys.oracle.com/ords/surveys/t/oracle-university-gtm/survey?k=focus-group-2-link-share-5 Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/develop-fusion-applications-using-visual-builder-studio/138392/ Build Visual Applications Using Oracle Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/build-visual-applications-using-oracle-visual-builder-studio/137749/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi there! If you've been following along with us, you'll know that we've had some really interesting seasons this year. We covered Autonomous Database, Artificial Intelligence, Visual Builder Studio and Redwood, OCI Container Engine for Kubernetes, and Oracle Database 23ai New Features. Nikita: And we've had some pretty awesome special guests. Do go back and check out those episodes if any of those topics interest you. 01:04 Lois: As we close out the year, we thought this would be a good time to revisit some of our best episodes. Over the next few weeks, you'll be able to listen to four of our most popular episodes of the year. Nikita: Right, this is the best of the best–according to you–our listeners. Lois: Today's episode is #1 of 4 and is a throwback to a discussion with Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald on Visual Builder Studio. Nikita: We asked Joe about Visual Builder Studio and Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit, also known as JET. Together, they form the basis of the technology for the next generation of front-end user interfaces for Oracle Fusion Applications, as well as many other Oracle applications, including most Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) interfaces. 01:48 Lois: We looked at the different terminologies and technologies, how they relate to each other, and how they deliver the new Oracle Fusion Applications and stand-alone, bespoke visual web applications. So, let's dive right in. Nikita: Joe, I'm somewhat thrown by the terminology around Visual Builder, Visual Studio, and JET. Can you help streamline that for us? Lois: Yeah, things that are named the same sometimes refer to different things, and sometimes things with a different name refer to the same thing. 02:18 Joe: Yeah, I know where you're coming from. So, let's start with Visual Builder Studio. It's abbreviated as VBS and can go by a number of different names. Some of the most well-known ones are Visual Builder Studio, VBS, Visual Builder, Visual Builder Stand-Alone, and Visual Builder Cloud Service. Clearly, this can be very confusing. For the purposes of these episodes as well as the training courses I create, I use certain definitions. 02:42 Lois: Can you take us through those? Joe: Absolutely, Lois. Visual Builder Studio refers to a product that comes free with an OCI account and allows you to manage your project-related assets. This includes the project itself, which is a container for all of its assets. You can assign teams to your projects, as well as secure the project and declare roles for the different team members. You manage GIT repositories with full graphical and command-line GIT support, define package, build, and deploy jobs, and create and run continuous integration/continuous deployment graphical and code-managed pipelines for your applications. These can be visual applications, created using the Visual Builder Integrated Development Environment, the IDE, or non-visual apps, such as Java microservices, docker builds, NPM apps, and things like that. And you can define environments, which determine where your build jobs can be deployed. You can also define issues, which allow you to identify, track, and manage things like bugs, defects, and enhancements. And these can be tracked in code review merge requests and build jobs, and be mapped to agile sprints and scrum boards. There's also support for wikis for team collaboration, code snippets, and the management of the repository and the project itself. So, VBS supports code reviews before code is merged into GIT branches for package, build, and deploy jobs using merge requests. 04:00 Nikita: OK, what exactly do you mean by that? Joe: Great. So, for example, you could have developers working in one GIT branch and when they're done, they would push their private code changes into that remote branch. Then, they'd submit a merge request and their changes would be reviewed. Once the changes are approved, their code branch is merged into the main branch and then automatically runs a CI/CD package (continuous integration/continuous deployment) package, build, and deploy job on the code. Also, the CI/CD package, build, and deploy jobs can run against any branches, not just the main branch. So Visual Builder Studio is intended for managing the project and all of its assets. 04:37 Lois: So Joe, what are the different tools used in developing web applications? Joe: Well, Visual Builder, Visual Builder Studio Designer, Visual Builder Designer, Visual Builder Design-Time, Visual Builder Cloud Service, Visual Builder Stand-Alone all kind of get lumped together. You can kinda see why. What I'm referring to here are the tools that we use to build a visual web application composed of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) for metadata. I call this Visual Builder Designer. This is an Integrated Development Environment, it's the “IDE” which runs in your browser. You use a combination of drag and drop, setting properties, and writing and modifying custom and generated code to develop your web applications. You work within a workspace, which is your own private copy of a remote Git branch. When you're ready to start development work, you open an existing workspace or create a new one based on a clone of the remote branch you want to work on. Typically, a new branch would be created for the development work or you would join an existing branch. 05:38 Nikita: What's a workspace, Joe? Is it like my personal laptop and drive? Joe: A workspace is your own private code area that stores any changes you make on the Oracle servers, so your code changes are never lost—even when working in a browser-based, network-based tool. A good analogy is, say I was working at home on my own machine. And I would make a copy of a remote GIT branch and then copy that code down to my local machine, make my code changes, do my testing, etc. and then commit my work—create a logical save point periodically—and then when I'm ready, I'd push that code up into the remote branch so it can be reviewed and merged with the main branch. My local machine is my workspace. However, since this code is hosted up by Oracle on our servers, and the code and the IDE are all running in your browser, the workspace is a simulation of a local work area on your own computer. So, the workspace is a hosted allocation of resources for you that's private. Other people can't see what's going on in your workspace. Your workspace has a clone of the remote branch that you're working with and the changes you make are isolated to your cloned code in your workspace. 06:41 Lois: Ok… the code is actually hosted on the server, so each time you make a change in the browser, the change is written back to the server? Is it possible that you might lose your edits if there's a networking interruption? Joe: I want to emphasize that while I started out not personally being a fan of web-based integrated development environments, I have been using these tools for over three years and in all that time, while I have lost a connection at times—networks are still subject to interruptions—I've never lost any changes that I've made. Ever. 07:11 Nikita: Is there a way to save where you are in your work so that you could go back to it later if you need to? Joe: Yes, Niki, you're asking about commits and savepoints, like in a Git repository or a Git branch. When you reach a logical stopping or development point in your work, you would create a commit or a savepoint. And when you're ready, you would push that committed code in your workspace up to the remote branch where it can be reviewed and then eventually merged, usually with the main Git branch, and then continuous integration/continuous package and deployment build jobs are run. Now, I'm only giving you a high-level overview, but we cover all this and much more in detail with hands-on practices in our Visual Builder developer courses. Right now, I'm just trying to give you a sense of how these different tools are used. 07:52 Lois: Yeah, that makes sense, Joe. It's a lot to cover in a short amount of time. Now, we've discussed the Visual Builder Designer IDE and workspace. But can you tell us more about Visual Builder Cloud Service and stand-alone environments? What are they used for? What features do they provide? Are they the same or different things? Joe: Visual Builder Cloud Service or Visual Builder Stand-Alone, as it's sometimes called, is a service that Oracle hosts on its servers. It provides hosting for the deployed web application source code as well as database tables for business objects that we build and maintain to store your customer data. This data can come from XLS or CSV files, or even your own Oracle database customer table data. A custom REST proxy makes calls to external third-party REST services on your behalf and supports several popular authentication mechanisms. There is also integration with the Identity Cloud Service (IDCS) to manage users and their access to your web apps. Visual Builder Cloud Service is a for-fee product. You pay licensing fees for how much you use because it's a hosted service. Visual Builder Studio, the project asset management aspect I discussed earlier, is free with a standard OCI license. Now, keep in mind these are separate from something like Visual Builder Design Time and the service that's running in Fusion application environments. What I'm talking about now is creating stand-alone, bespoke, custom visual applications. These are applications that are built using industry-standard HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and JSON for metadata and are hosted on the Oracle servers. 09:30 Are you looking for practical use cases to help you plan and apply configurations that solve real-world challenges? With the new Applied Learning courses for Cloud Applications, you'll be able to practically apply the concepts learned in our implementation courses and work through case studies featuring key decisions and configurations encountered during a typical Oracle Cloud Applications implementation. Applied learning scenarios are currently available for General Ledger, Payables, Receivables, Accounting Hub, Global Human Resources, Talent Management, Inventory, and Procurement, with many more to come! Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 10:12 Nikita: Welcome back! Joe, you said Visual Builder Cloud Service or Stand-Alone is a for-fee service. Is there a way I can learn about using Visual Builder Designer to build bespoke visual applications without a fee? Joe: Yes. Actually, we've added an option where you can run the Visual Builder Designer and learn how to create web apps without using the app hosting or the business object database that stores your customer data or the REST proxy for authentication or the Identity Cloud Service. So you don't get those features, but you can still learn the fundamentals of developing with Visual Builder Designer. You can call third-party APIs, you can download the source, and run it locally, for example, in a Tomcat server. This is a great and free way to learn how to develop with the Visual Builder Designer. 10:55 Lois: Joe, I want to know more about the kinds of apps you can build in VB Designer and the capabilities that VB Cloud Service provides. Joe: Visual Builder Designer allows you to build custom, bespoke web applications made of interactive webpages; flows of pages for navigation; events that respond when things happen in the app, for example, GUI events like a button is clicked or values are entered into a text field; variables to store the state of the application and the ability to make REST calls, all from your browser. These applications have full access to the Oracle Fusion Applications APIs, given that you have the right security permissions and credentials of course. They can access your customer business data as business objects in our internally hosted database tables or your own customer database tables. They can access third-party APIs, and all these different data sources can appear in the same visual application, on the same page, at the same time. They use the Identity Cloud Service to identify which users can log in and authenticate against the application. And they all use the new Redwood graphical user interface components and page templates, so they have the same look and feel of all Oracle applications. 12:02 Nikita: But what if you're building or extending Oracle Fusion Applications? Don't things change a little bit? Joe: Good point, Niki. Yes. While you still work within Visual Builder Studio, that doesn't change, VBS maintains your project and all your project-related assets, that is still the same. However, in this case, there is no separate hosted Visual Builder Cloud Service or Stand-Alone instance. In this case, Visual Builder is hosted inside of Fusion apps itself as part of the installation. I won't go into the details of how the architecture works, but the Visual Builder instance that you're running your code against is part of Fusion applications and is included in the architecture as well as the billing. All your code changes are maintained and stored within a single container called an extension. And this extension is a Git repository that is created for you, or you can create it yourself, depending on how you choose to work within Visual Builder Studio. You create an extension to hold the source code changes that provide a customization or configuration. This means making a change to an existing page or a set of pages or even adding new pages and flows to your Oracle Fusion Applications. You use Visual Builder Studio and Visual Builder Designer in a similar way as to how you would use them for bespoke stand-alone visual applications. 13:12 Lois: I'm trying to envision how this workflow is used. How is it different from bespoke VB app development? Or is it different at all? Joe: So, recall that the Visual Builder Designer is effectively the Integrated Development Environment, the IDE, where you make your code changes by working with both the raw HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript code, if need be, or the Page Designer for drag and drop, and setting properties and then Live mode to test your work. You use a version of VB Designer to view and modify your customizations, and the code is stored in a Git repository called an extension. So, in that sense, the work of developing pages and flows and such is the same. You still start by creating or, more typically, joining a project and then either create a new extension from scratch or base it on an existing application, or go directly to the page that you want to edit and, on that page, select from your profile menu to edit in Visual Builder Studio. Now, this is a different lifecycle path from bespoke visual applications. With them, you're not extending an app or modifying individual pages in the same way. You get a choice of which project you want to add your extension to when you're working with Fusion apps and potentially which repository to store your customizations, unless one already exists and then it's assigned automatically to hold your code changes. So you make your changes and edits to the portions of the application that have been opened for extensibility by the development team. This is another difference. Once you make your code changes, the workflow is pretty much the same as for a bespoke visual application: do your development work, commit your changes, push your changes to the remote branch. And then typically, your code is reviewed and if the code passes and is approved, it's merged with the main branch. Then, the package and deploy jobs run to deploy the main code to the production environment or whatever environment you're targeting. And once the package and deploy jobs complete, the code base is updated and users who log in see the changes that you've made. 15:03 Nikita: You mentioned creating apps that combine data from Fusion cloud, applications, customer data, and third-party APIs into one page. Why is it necessary? Why can't you just do all that in one Fusion Applications extension? Joe: When you create extensions, you are working within the Oracle Fusion Applications ecosystem, that's what they actually call it, which includes a defined a set of users who have been predefined and are, therefore, known to Fusion Applications. So, if you're a user and you're not part of that Fusion Apps ecosystem, you can't access the pages. Period. That's how Fusion Apps works to maintain its security and integrity. Secondly, you're working pretty much solely with the Fusion Applications APIs data sources coming directly from Fusion Applications, which are also available to you when you're creating bespoke visual apps. When you're working with Fusion Applications in Visual Builder, you don't have access to these business objects that give you access to your own customer database data through Visual Builder-generated REST APIs. Business objects are available only to bespoke visual applications in the hosted VB Cloud Service instance. So, your data sources are restricted to the Oracle Fusion Applications APIs and some third-party APIs that work within a narrow set of authentication mechanisms currently, although there are plans to expand this in the future. A mashup app that allows you now to access all these data sources while creating apps that leverage the Redwood Component System, so they look and work like Fusion Apps. They're a highly popular option for our partners and customers. 16:28 Lois: So, to review, we have two different approaches. You can create a visual application using the for-fee, hosted Visual Builder Cloud Service/Stand-Alone or the one that comes with Oracle Integration Cloud, or you can use the extension architecture for Fusion applications, where you use the designer and create your extensions, and the code is delivered and deployed to Fusion applications code. You haven't talked about JET yet though, Joe. What is that? Joe: So, JET is an abbreviation. It stands for Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit and JET is the underlying technology that makes Visual Builder, visual applications, and Visual Builder Extensions for Fusion Applications possible. Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit provides a module-based, open-source toolkit that leverages modern JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS3, and HTML5 to deliver web applications. It's targeted at JavaScript developers working on client-side applications. It is not for backend development. It's a collection of popular, powerful JavaScript libraries and a set of Oracle-contributed JavaScript libraries that make it very simple, easy, and efficient to build front-end applications that can consume and interact with Oracle products and services, especially Oracle Cloud services, but of course it can work with any type of third-party API. 17:44 Nikita: How are JET applications architected, Joe, and how does that relate to Visual Builder pages and flows? Joe: The architecture of JET applications is what's called a single page architecture. We've all seen these. These are where you have a single webpage—think of your index page that provides the header and footer for your webpage—and then the middle portion or the middle content of the page, represented by modules, allow you to navigate from one page or module to another. It also provides the data mapping so that the data elements in the variables and the state of the application, as well as the graphical user interface elements that provide the fields and functionality for the interface for the application, these are all maintained on the client side. If you're working in pure JET, then you work with these modules at the raw JavaScript code level. And there are a lot of JavaScript developers who want to work like this and create their custom applications from the code up, so to speak. However, it also provides the basis for Visual Builder visual applications and Fusion Apps visual extensions in Visual Builder. 18:41 Lois: How does JET support VB Apps? You didn't talk much about having to write a bunch of JavaScript and HTML5, so I got the impression that this is all done for you by VB Designer? Joe: Visual Builder applications are composed of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript code that is usually generated by the developer when she drags and drops components on to the page designer canvas or sets properties or creates action chains to respond to events. But there's also a lot of JavaScript object notation (JSON) metadata created at the time that describes the pages, the flows, the navigation, the REST services, the variables, their data types, and other assets needed for the app to function. This JSON metadata is translated at runtime using a large JavaScript extension toolkit library called the Visual Builder Runtime that runs in the browser and real time translates the metadata and other assets in the Visual Builder source code into JET code and assets, which are actually executed at runtime. And it's very quick, very fast, very efficient, and provides a layer of abstraction between the raw JET code and the Visual Builder architecture of pages, flows, action chains for executing code and events to handle things that occur in the user interface, including saving the state in variables that are mapped to GUI components. For example, if you have an Input text component, you need to have a variable to store the value that was entered into that Input text component between page refreshes. The data can move from the Input text component to the variable, and from the variable to that Input text component if it's changed programmatically, for example. So, JET manages binding these data values to variables and the UI components on the page. So, a change to a variable value or a change to the contents of the component causes the others to change automatically. Now, this is only a small part of what JET and the frameworks and libraries it uses do for the applications. JET also provides more complex GUI components like lists and tables, and selection lists, and check boxes, and all the sorts of things you would expect in a modern GUI application. 20:37 Nikita: You mentioned a layer of abstraction between Visual Builder Studio Designer and JET. What's the benefit of working in Visual Builder Designer versus JET itself? Joe: The benefit of Visual Builder is that you work at a higher level of abstraction than having to get down into the more detailed levels of deep JavaScript code, working with modules, data mappings, HTML code, single page architecture navigation, and the related functionalities. You can work at a higher level, a graphical level, where you can drag and drop things onto a design canvas and set properties. The VB architecture insulates you from the more technical bits of JET. Now, this frees the developer to concentrate more on application and page design, implementing logic and business rules, and creating a pleasing workflow and look and feel for the user. This keeps them from having to get caught up in the details of getting this working at the code level. Now if needed, you can write custom JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3 code, though much less than in a JET app, and all that is part of the VB application source, which becomes part of the code used by JET to execute the application itself. And yet it all works seamlessly together. 21:38 Lois: Joe, I know we have courses in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. But does a developer getting ready to work in Visual Builder Designer have to go take those courses first or can they start working in VB Designer right away? Joe: Yeah, that question does often comes up: Do I need to learn JET to work with Visual Builder? No, you don't. That's all taken care for you in the products themselves. I don't really think it helps that much to learn JET if you are going to be a VB developer. In some ways, it could even be a bit distracting since some of things you learn to do in JET, you would have to unlearn or not do so much because of what VB does it for you. The things you would have to do manually in code in JET are done for you. This is why we call VB a low code development tool. I mean, you certainly can if you want to, but I would spend more time learning about the different GUI components, page templates, the Visual Builder architecture — events, action chains, and the data provider variables and types. Now, I know JET myself. I started with that before learning Visual Builder, but I use very little of my JET knowledge as a VB developer. Visual Builder Designer provides a nice, abstracted, clean layer of modern visual development on top of JET, while leveraging the power and flexibility of JET and keeping the lower-level details out of my way. 22:49 Nikita: Joe, where can I go to get started with Visual Builder? Joe: Well, for more information, I recommend you take a look at our Develop Fusion Applications course if you're working with Fusion Applications and Visual Builder Studio. The other course is Develop Visual Applications with Visual Builder Studio and that's if you're creating stand-alone bespoke applications. Both these courses are free. We also have a comprehensive course that covers JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, and while it's not required that you take that to be successful, it can be helpful down the road. I would also say that some basic knowledge of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript will certainly support you and serve you well when working with Visual Builder. You learn more as you go along and you find that you need to create more sophisticated applications. I would also mention that a lot of the look and feel of the applications in Visual Builder visual applications and Fusion apps extensions and customizations come through JET components, JET styles, and JET variables, and CSS variables, so that's something that you would want to pursue at some point. There's a JET cookbook out there. You can search for Oracle JET and look for the JET cookbook and that's a good introduction to all of that. 23:50 Nikita: We hope you enjoyed that conversation. To learn about some of the courses Joe mentioned, visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. Lois: Before we wrap up, we've got a favor to ask. We've created a short survey to capture your thoughts on the podcast. It'll only take a few minutes of your time. Just click the link in the show notes and share your feedback. We want to make sure we're delivering the best experience possible so don't hesitate to let us know what's on your mind! Thanks for your support. Join us next week for another throwback episode. Until then, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 24:30 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
Manager Minute-brought to you by the VR Technical Assistance Center for Quality Management
Get ready to dive deep into the future of Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) with Dr. Joe Ashley and Dr. Bob Schmidt in our latest episode! Joe, the dynamic Project Director of the VR-ROI initiative at George Washington University, teams up with Bob, one of the leading economists and the Project Research Coordinator, to bring you insider knowledge on revamping return on investment models for VR programs. They're on a mission to streamline and elevate how VR agencies operate, helping them become more efficient, effective, and impactful. Their discussion is packed with actionable insights that will empower your agency to sharpen its data collection strategies, ensuring the true value of your services shines through. Plus, learn how to better communicate the VR success story to policymakers and stakeholders! Tune in to discover how you can maximize your VR impact with the latest advancements from the VR-ROI project. Don't miss out! Listen Here Full Transcript: {Music} Joe: We're trying to make sure we have information that the director can use with policymakers, and something for clients and counselors to use to say, yes, this is the kind of services we're looking for. Bob: The model we develop is based on readily available administrative data. Joe: It's built on the individual customers and how well they do and what their outcomes are. Bob: The human capital development, that's what it's all about a lot. Some things just aren't measurable. So when you mentioned financial return on investment, that's what we're talking about. Joe: If you can't capture it, you're not able to tell the story. Carol: Yep, if it isn't documented, it didn't happen. Bob: That's right. Joe: Yeah. Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow. Carol: Well, welcome to the manager minute. Joining me in the studio today are Dr. Joe Ashley, the project director for the VR Return on Investment project based at the George Washington University, and Dr. Bob Schmidt, one of the five economists working on the project and the project research coordinator. So, Joe, how are things going for you today? Joe: Today they are doing really well. Thanks for asking, Carol. Carol: Nice to hear it, Joe. and Bob, how are you doing? Bob: I'm doing well as well, at least, as well as Joe is doing. Carol: That's awesome. Alright, glad to have it guys. Okay, so for our listeners, Joe is my colleague and we got him out of retirement to serve as the project director for this important initiative. And this project is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research, also known as NIDILRR. Now, this is the federal government's primary disability research organization and is part of the Administration for Community Living. Now, NIDILRR's mission is to generate new knowledge and to promote its effective use to improve the abilities of individuals with disabilities to perform activities of their choice in the community and to expand society's capacity to provide full opportunities and accommodations for its citizens with disabilities. NIDILRR achieves this mission by funding research, demonstration, training, technical assistance, and related activities to maximize the full inclusion and integration into society, employment, independent living, family support, and economic and social self-sufficiency of individuals with disabilities of all ages. They also promote the transfer of, and use and adoption of rehab technology for individuals with disabilities in a timely manner, and also ensure the widespread distribution and usable formats of practical, scientific and technological information. And they do address a wide range of disabilities and impairments across populations of all ages. Now, Joe, I know you have a little disclaimer you wanted to make. Joe: Yeah, I just want to be sure that people understand that what Bob and I are going to talk about today is our opinion of what return on investment should be, and is not necessarily reflect what NIDILRR is looking at. Carol: Excellent. Well thanks Joe. Let's dig in. So, Joe, why don't you kick us off and tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey in vocational rehabilitation? Joe: Carol, I've been in rehabilitation for quite a while. I worked with the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, the general agency in Virginia, for over 25-27 years, most of the time as an assistant commissioner in a variety of roles. I have a master's in rehabilitation counseling from the University of South Carolina. That sort of got me focused on vocational rehabilitation. And then later I had a Doctorate in rehabilitation from SIU at Carbondale that took me on a path of looking at program evaluation and program development. When I got to Virginia, I was working out of the Woodrow Wilson Rehab Center, now called Wilson Rehabilitation Center, and was working in a program that was collaborative across, it was one of the early transition grants, 1985,and it looked at vocational evaluation as a part of a process to help kids learn what they needed to do. And we were working with students from special education and vocational education in the schools, and vocational rehabilitation, and getting these systems to collaborate to help kids find out what they want to do and to be successful in employment and in life. And I got to where I really enjoyed that kind of collaborative work, and I ended up as an assistant commissioner in the agency, looking at developing innovative new programs as a part of my responsibilities and looking at a lot of the ancillary support services like rehabilitation, engineering and other kinds of things. Through a series of circumstances, I ended up as the director of the field services for four years, where I began to get a good sense of what disabilities needed to be in terms of supports to be successful in employment and being able to live successfully in their communities. In addition to that, what counselors and other staff needed to be able to provide those services to them. And then I got into the job that was my favorite, which was something called grants and special programs, where I did a lot of the Social Security stuff, cost reimbursement, work, incentives specialist advocates. We created a new system there to do fee for service for the work incentive services. We did a lot of work with the workforce agencies. I did all the agreements with that, and then I got to do grants and any of the grants that helped people with disabilities be able to live and work and thrive in their communities were things that we were willing to support. And I got to work with a lot of different funding systems and across a lot of different systems, you know, Special Ed workforce systems, behavioral health, a lot of different groups to help people with disabilities have opportunities. So that's what I really enjoyed. And that's where I came across the late doctor David Dean and then Bob Schmidt as a part of that package with Dean. And it was about telling the VR story. And I got real passionate about how do you tell this story in a way that is going to get people like GAO to pay attention, as well as help directors with policymakers and individuals and counselors help make decisions about what's a good choice for them. So that's really how I got to where we are today with this new grant. Carol: Very cool Joe. I know we all look to your program in Virginia for kind of the cutting edge stuff that was happening, because you all seem to always have just something cooking. Joe: Yes. Carol: It didn't matter what. And especially like the disability work incentive stuff that you were talking about and all of that. Oh gosh. I just think you've done a lot of stellar things there. Joe: Well thank you. It was fun. Carol: It's awesome. So, Bob, tell us a little bit about yourself. Bob: Sure. Happy to. Joe mentioned Doctor David Dean. He was a colleague of mine in the Department of Economics at the University of Richmond. He worked on what he called economics of disability, and he started working on that in graduate school at Rutgers with a faculty member there. And he worked on that. So that was in the 1980s. He came to the University of Richmond, and he got me interested in it because he was an outgoing, gregarious, very bright guy and made friends easily. So he got me involved in this probably early 1990s, and we started working with DARS and several other things at the time with Joe, but also Kirsten Roe. I don't know how many people remember her, but she was instrumental in all the work we did. So this is actually our third grant with NIDILRR. The first one was a demonstration grant. So it's a kind of a proof of concept. Second was implementing it. Now this one is refining it and taking it to the next step. That's what we're trying to do with that. So David got me excited about it. Joe keeps me excited and he keeps me honest. Carol: That is awesome. Well, I know just being around the director ranks for years and folks talking about return on initiative, it's been a, you know, a hot topic. People chat about it, but I don't know that everybody always really understands it. And I think sometimes people think maybe it's something that it isn't and they aren't very good at explaining it, but everybody wants to do it. So you guys are going to unpack all this for us. Joe, why don't you tell us a little bit about the project and what you're trying to accomplish? Joe: Well, with this current iteration. It's what NIDILRR calls a field initiated project on their development side, and it's got a ridiculously long title. So I'm just going to say it is about updating and simplifying our return on investment model. That's its main purpose, and it's about helping our agencies understand what they can do to be more efficient and more effective, and take a look at the mix of services that they provide, to be sure that they are getting the most out of the resources they have to help people with disabilities obtain, you know, that probability of employment and upon employment, their earnings. And we're trying to make sure we have information that the director can use with policy makers, that agencies can take a look inside their own services to say, maybe I need more of a particular type of service because I'm getting good outcomes, or maybe I need to tweak a service because it's not getting what I want it to do, and then something for clients and counselors to use to say, yes, this is the kind of services we're looking for. We got four goals, and the first one is just really to update the model. Our previous model was prior to WIOA implementation, so what we hope to be able to do is take a look at the data systems and take a look at the performance indicators that WIOA requires. And we can do a correlation, perhaps with the long term employment to see how well they're correlated. Also take a look at Covid impact. The second goal is about intensity. Our other model is you either got a service or you didn't. And if you got the service then how did it affect employment and earnings? Well, the next logical step according to The Economist and we have five on the project as you mentioned earlier, was what is the intensity of the service. Does that make a difference. So that intensity measure could be hours of work. It could be what it costs to do something. It could be units of service. And taking a look at if that is related to the propensity for employment. The other piece that goes with that is how about internals provided services, what we had before in the system, nobody had good measures of the services their own staff provided. So we're hoping with what we're seeing now and we're working with the two agencies in North Carolina, and they've been extremely helpful and collaborative with us on this process is take a look at the internally provided services and see what impact they have on the employment and earnings side of things. And then we've been told many times our third goal is simplify the model. Right now it takes economists to run it. Well that's not always a good idea for some people. So what we're trying to do is see what econometric models could we put in place to simplify this process so that it's more available to rehab agencies. But you want to make sure it's still rigorous enough to give you a reliable estimate of return on investment. So one of the things we're having with that is many of the folks on the who are listening to the podcast may be aware that we did a data analysis and management capacity survey that CSVRA sent out. Our advisory committee supported, and with that, we got 54 agencies to provide us information on what their data capacity is and what this capacity of their staff is. And then what kind of training they might be interested in. We're still looking at the data from that and we'll have some information on that later. But what we find in this may make a big difference on how simplified the model can be, or whether we need to take a different track to help people be able to implement a new model. And then finally, it's about knowledge translation. And part of that is coming to us like we did a consumer and stakeholder forum with the North Carolina State Rehab councils and some other stakeholders to get input on what they'd like to see, what kinds of information and would this information be helpful to them. And then we're going to have another consumer and stakeholder forum probably next spring to say, here's the model as we have it so far. Does this make sense to you and would this be valuable to you? So those are the big overriding goals that we have for the project. Carol: I really like that you guys are digging into the capacity that agencies have, you know, with that data analysis, because I'm just thinking definitely, as I've been out across the country that you've got to have and the have nots. I mean, there for sure. are folks, I think of our friends in Texas and they have a lovely team there. Just they have like an amazing... Joe: Oh yeah, they do. Carol: ...resource team. And then you've got other folks trying to scrape together kind of a half of a position that can maybe do a little smidge of a little something around the 911. Joe: they may have a resource like a data system, but they don't have anybody that can run it, or they may have staff with the capacity to do the data system, but they don't have the system. I mean, it's a lot of different variables there. Bob: I'd like to jump in here just on one thing, which was on the simplified VR model. So the model we've developed, thank God it was by economists, is we're trying to address the question here. The goal of the program is to get people into competitive employment or keep them in competitive employment. If they already came into the program with it, maybe build on that. So there are a lot of things that are correlated with how well you do in the labor market, gender, race, Age, education level. All things are correlated, right? And maybe service provision in the VR program. But we'd like to take it from well, it's correlated, but we don't know exactly how or why. In the same way you can say, well, provision of this specific type of service leads to improvement in the labor market, leads to a greater likelihood of obtaining competitive employment. Now that's a different issue. Now the way you normally do that, the gold standard is a randomized clinical trial, right? Where you take people and you randomly select them and it's double blind. So neither the researcher nor the individual involved in the experiment know who's receiving the treatment, or who isn't. Well, that's clearly impossible in VR. First of all, it's illegal to deny service to someone who is eligible and for whom you have the money. But secondly, it's impossible. So what you have to do is you have to impose statistical controls somehow. You have to do it through some sort of statistical model. And we've developed one which is state of the science. What state of the science inherently means that not everybody can implement it. So even at some universities, they aren't able to implement this particular model. And so we wanted to ask the question, could we come up with a simplified version of this model, a simpler model that can be used possibly in a VR agency or possibly at a local community college or university, something like that. And they could get similar results. So we wanted to see how could we do it? Is that a possible goal? What do you lose when you do it? Does it do a good enough job, or what kind of qualifiers do you have on it? Joe: Where are the tradeoffs? Bob: Yeah, what are the tradeoffs? That's a simpler model we're trying to do. Carol: Should we talk about the model you developed now? Do you want to talk about it? Bob: That'd be fine. Sure. Carol: Let's do it. Bob: Okay. One of the things is that the model we developed is based on readily available administrative data. What that means is you don't have to run a survey. You don't have to go out and do a very expensive sort of research project to find out what's going on. Instead, we use data from agency's own data system, which they collect to report to the Rehabilitation Services Administration, (RSA). they have really, really very good data. The RSA forces them to collect very good data. In fact, for some of our economists, their eyes just lit up when David told them the kind of data that he was able to access it. Whoa. That's great. So there are two levels. One is you get data from the agency itself, and then they will provide data to us that they provide through the quarterly RSA and nine over 11 report to the RSA. And more than that. So we get much greater detail than that if we know how to use it. If we can identify and know how to learn how to use it. And then secondly, all the agencies have given us access, been able to give us access to unemployment insurance sort of data. So quarterly data on that and what the RSA collects upon closure. They're mandated to follow employment and earnings for four quarters after closure, but we don't think that's long enough, especially since WIOA was passed Workforce Innovation Opportunities Act and changed the mandate to work on transition age, transitioning students with disabilities or providing those sorts of services. Well, if you're going to start working with young people who are just entering the workforce, or you're providing college level education or skilled training services to any age. You can't just follow them for four quarters. I mean, if you're just entering the workforce, you're not going to enter it at the highest levels of the workforce, right? So if you want to know what the real impact is, you have to follow them longer. So with the unemployment insurance agencies, we've been able to get quarterly employment and earnings data from 2 to 3 years before they even applied to the program. That's kind of a baseline. But what are the services do to you? How do things change? Well, that's your baseline three years before application. Then we try to follow them for at least five years after application at least. Now the current one starts in 2018. So the earliest applicants we have from 2018, and then we collect all applicants between 2018 and 2021. So already it's a stretch to get five years of data. But we had to start that recent because we all wasn't fully implemented effectively until 2017, 1819. In fact, the fellow North County says preferably 19 or 2021. But then you don't have, you know, this thing ends in 2025 and you don't have enough data, enough tracking. So that's the first thing, is readily administrative tracking earnings over a long period of time, as long as possible. Another thing is generally the way these things are done or have been looked at is you look at the VR program as a whole. You don't look at by discipline, you look at the agency. These are people who apply for services, and these are people who got to the point where they got a plan or plan for employment services. And then how do they do? We look a little differently. We look at by disability type. First of all, we look at for broad based disabilities folks with a cognitive impairment. And that could be an intellectual disability or a learning disability. Folks with a mental illness. And then also we try to find out how severe that mental illness is. Folks who have a physical impairment and folks who are blind or visually impaired or otherwise visually impaired. So we look at and we estimate those all separately because we think services are assigned differently by disability type on average. And also the disability type affects how you will do in the marketplace, for example. What we found out was for folks with physical impairment, unlike folks who have a cognitive impairment, cognitive impairment might be with you since birth, perhaps. And so therefore you kind of have a steady level of earnings at a certain level. But if you have a physical impairment that often comes on very quickly, very acutely, very quickly. So all of a sudden you see their preapplication Application for earnings pretty good. And then boom there's a big plummet, right? And so then you have to do something different with the track that the pre-application earnings. So that's the second thing. The third thing is that this idea that these folks, we look at the folks who received,, who had a plan and therefore received services, we compare those people who didn't have a plan and didn't receive services. So he received service, he didn't. Or, in economics or the social sciences, you call it a treatment group and a comparison or a control group. Well, we thought you could do a little bit better than that. What we look at is we look at anywhere from 7 to 9 to 10 to 11 different types of services things like diagnosis, medical treatments, college education, training, all those sorts of things. We say, first of all, how is the decision made that you're going to receive this type of service? And then secondly, what impact does it have? So what factors influence the decision to We see what type of services and what impact does that service have in the labor market on gaining and keeping competitive employment. So we look at that. So we look at different types of service. So you can see already it's a much richer type of analysis therefore much more complicated types of analysis. And then the last part is that we built sort of a state of the science model. And that's what makes it complicated for many people to try to implement. And by that we mean that this correlation versus causation. So instead of doing a randomized clinical trial you have to take the data as you receive it. So therefore you kind of build control by saying how do you control for different things that might affect this that you don't observe. Now one of these might be motivation, right? So if you have someone who's particularly highly motivated that will might lead them to both apply to a VR program and a plan, follow through and move on, successfully complete the program, and might also quite separately, whether or not they receive services. It helps them in the labor market, right? Because they're motivated to succeed. So how do you distinguish those things? That's tough. You do randomized clinical trial. You can't because both types people end up in both parts motivated and unmotivated. So we have to impose this controls. And that gets a little complicated. So that's basically the model is then once you're done. So then we get impacts by type of service. We also collect cost of providing those services. Cost of the program. We have those impacts. We let them spit out and say what would happen if they kept getting this benefit level for the next five to 10 to 15 years? And then you have to do some what's called discounting in technical and finance and econ. So you do that and then you say, okay, this is the total gain from that service or actually from all the services combined. And this was the cost. And the difference to that is kind of cost versus benefits, right? Hopefully the benefits exceed the costs, right? And that's how much they've gained because of the service per versus both the. That's essentially what you do. And the other thing about that is we can calculate that for each individual in the sample. So we have individual level returns on investment individual level benefits or effectiveness. And you can then aggregate that up and say okay agency wide. This is what it looks like. The agency's return on investment for a particular disability. That's what their return on investment look for males their females. Any group you want to do you can just do it because we have the individual impacts of it. So that's the model. And we want to see whether a simplified model can get us similar sort of information. Joe: One of the things, Carol, that I find compelling about the model in particular is something Bob just pointed out, and that is it's built on the individual customers and how well they do in this process and what their outcomes are, and it builds up. So it starts at that individual client level. The other thing, when the economists were developing the model and they were looking at the data of people who went through the system, they observed that there's a lot of variability in the types of services that are provided. So they built the model around that variability of services. So that individual service model, that is VR is what makes the variability work for this model. So it's very much tied to the core tenets of the VR program, that individual services model. And that's where the variability comes from. And that's why it can give us some causation. So I think it's really important to note that it is consistent with how we do services and how we provide what we do. The other thing I will say about The Economist is they have been dedicated to understanding how VR works. They often in the early days when we were going out, they would sit down with the agencies and say, does this make sense to you? And then they would look at the model to see what would make it make more sense in terms of telling how VR works or the outcomes of VR. So they've spent a lot of time trying to understand the system and get knowledgeable about how VR works and what the opportunities are, what the process is, so that what they're modeling is consistent with how we do business. So I think that's a key component. Carol: I think that's really cool that you said that, Joe, about taking it back to the individualized nature of the program because VR, you know, you think about it in an aggregate, we get this big $4 billion in a lump. And, boy, each person's experience within that is so individualized. It is, you know, whether you're getting this or that, you know, are you getting educational sorts of services and access to training and post-secondary and all kinds of different things? Or are you a person on a different trajectory, and maybe you needed some medical rehabilitation type of stuff going on? You needed something completely different. Like, people have so many ways to mix and match and use the things they specifically need to get where they need to go. You probably can't do it unless you get down to that level. So that is very interesting. Now, Joe, I know we've talked about this in our team a little bit even. And I know you said you wrestled with your group, but this whole notion of return on investment or taxpayer return on investment has been a really interesting topic and is fraught with some issues itself. And I remember coming into Minnesota and the general agency director like taxpayer return on investment, and I was brand new in the program. I'm like, I don't even know what you're talking about right now, but a lot of times you tend to hear it discussed that way. But I know, Joe, you've said there's a lot of issues around this. So what are some of those issues? Joe: It's an interesting little issue. The very first meeting we had, it was at Carver, and we had a number of people from different agencies and state rehab councils come into a meeting, and we were laying out the first model. And one of the directors at that point said, well, are you doing a taxpayer return on investment? And by that he meant returning Taxes, increase in taxes, receipts going back to the Treasury. And that was his definition of it. That was the first one. And then when we were in North Carolina at the consumer forum that we did the stakeholder and consumer forum, we got the question from some advocates and said it doesn't seem to go away. We always get that question, but the issue is what is the appropriate way to determine the return on investment for a particular type of program. And it was interesting. We got this question so often, even from some of our workforce friends that are the economists said about writing a paper to describe why taxpayer return on investment is not appropriate for a VR type of program. And they submitted it to, I think it was three, maybe four different econ journals, and some of them didn't even send it out for review. They said, this is already settled. It's not appropriate for this kind of program. So the issue is another workforce programs or human capital development. And the purpose of a human capital development type of program is to in our case, find people employment and look at that probability of employment. And then conditional on that earnings, if you've got people in your system and they're entry level, a lot of them are not going to be at the level where they pay any kind of taxes at all for several years. So you really don't have a lot to show when you do taxpayer return on investment in terms of that. Also, one of the things that we noticed when one of the studies that was done is that in some cases, and this is with a particular type of one of the particular disabilities, is the only one they looked at this with when we had some Social Security earnings available data available to us for a short while. Not only do we get people off of Social Security benefits, but we also find people that go on to Social Security benefits from being involved with VR, and that often makes them more stable. So then they can then participate in a VR type of program and be successful. But it's a long, long term process to do that. So in the short term, you're not going to show anything but about as many come on as go off. So you're really not showing that. But if you're doing what the authorizing legislation says you're supposed to do, which is get people employed, let's just take it down to a simple level and then the question becomes, are you efficient and effective in that process? And that's what this particular return on investment model is about. And that is what the economists would say is the appropriate way to look at this. Now they would call this a social welfare type of program is the category they put it in. And then human capital development. But there's other kinds of benefits that accrue to the individual. Because this model, this type of approach looks at it benefits to the individual and to the society in general, which is the individual being employed. And in this case, there are other benefits that we can't observe. Self-confidence would be a good example. Quality of life would be a good example. So in our case, what we're able to observe is how they're interacting in the workplace. And that's really the piece that we can measure. And that's where we're going with this. And the others might be important, but very few places have really figured out how to measure that. Carol: Well, Joe, I actually I was telling Bob before we hopped on, I said, you know, I threw something in ChatGPT because I was like, all right, VR return on investment. Explain it to me. And ChatGPT it spit out. It talked about financial return on investment, you know, with employment earnings, cost savings. But it was talking about social return on investment, improve quality of life, community contributions. You know people experiencing that enhanced self-esteem, independence, all those things. And then personal return on investment with skill development, career advancement, those kind of things. It was just kind of fun to run it through and go, hey, yeah, because I know you guys have wrestled with like, what are you going to call the thing? Did you come up with like the name, The Thing?? Joe: Yes, it's interesting. I think what we came down with is that we think the vocational rehabilitation return on investment is the name we're going to stick with. And then say, you know, what we have is a human capital development project, and that's how we're measuring it or return on investment. But what we're going to have to do this is so ingrained in the culture of VR that you've got to return taxpayer dollars. Well, that's really not what VR says it's supposed to do. And so how do you get people to understand that that's not the appropriate way to look at the VR program. So we're going to have to do some education. I think about what return on investment is. And I may use your ChatGPT story... Carol: Yeah. Joe: To ...tell it. Carol: Bob, I see you have something you want to jump in with. Bob: Yes, and I think well, I have several things. One is I think the reason it's so ingrained, I think I might be wrong. Joe can correct me is because agency directors have to testify before the state legislature to get the money they want from the state legislature, right? And say the legislature, at least for a while. I don't know if they're still doing it. They're saying, yeah, but what's the return to the taxpayer on this? Why are we funding this if it's a money losing proposition Well, that's the thought process. But the problem with that is the state legislatures are kind of going against the odds. The federal authorizing legislation, you know, VR dates back to again, Joe can correct me. After World War One, when veterans came back from war and they had some severe physical injuries, and the federal government said, well, let's try to get them services to help them vocationally help them get back to work, get a job, and keep it so that they're effective in the workplace. Well, that thing was incredibly successful. So over time they said, well, this works so well. Can we expand it to other disabilities? Maybe states want to get involved in this as well. So what's happened over time is every one of the 50 states has this kind of co-funded arrangement with the federal government. And the Rehabilitation Services Administration oversees it, where they jointly sponsor these things, and it now covers many disabilities. Some states have more than one agency, one for the blind and visually impaired and one for the general. Other disabilities. So it goes back that far. And the authorizing legislation says is specifically provide services to help the individual gain and maintain competitive employment. And we're back down to the individual with that. It doesn't say to pay for itself to the fed, to repay the state or federal government for those services. So that's one thing. It's not what the metric to do it by. A second thing is, I mean, I never did like the social welfare. I'm an economist who would never call this a social welfare program. First of all, welfare has a negative connotation, even if its denotation is not negative. It's social improvement or anything. But it's really less a social more. As I said, the human capital development, that's what it's all about. And he also mentioned the issue that a lot of some things just aren't measurable. So when you mentioned financial return on investment, that's what we're talking about. Is the agency doing its job of getting people back to competitive employment and leading a better life, and maybe freeing up some of their family work to do other things. There might also be a multiplier effect in the sense that they earn more money, they spend the money. Other people, as a result, earn more money. And economists call that a multiplier effect. So that dollar has more on it. But it wouldn't get measured in this taxpayer return on investment at all. Carol: Okay, cool. So I know you guys have made some interesting observations in reviewing the data and looking at some of the longitudinal data. What kind of things are you guys seeing? Joe: My observation is that it concerns me that some people we've learned recently that some of the states aren't capturing data after the fourth quarter after exit in terms of UI data. I know one state that is capturing going for that after the fourth quarter for their Social Security cases, because it helps them obtain more resources through cost reimbursement. But I think that we're underselling the value of VR when you only do the fourth quarter up to four quarters after exit. And I realize that's a lot more than we used to do. But on the other hand, it's probably not the best way to tell the VR story, because you just don't capture everything. And younger population exacerbates this. You just don't capture it with all the impact of VR can be for an individual over time. So I think that's one of the things I have seen. We had a study we did from a long time ago, from the first since I did with David, Dean and Bob, where we had a program, that transition program, and the students that participated in it were focused on post-secondary opportunities, and they were measured against the counterpart group that went in the VR system of youth. And the other kids typically went to work faster than the participants in this program. But at year six, after application, the perk students took off in terms of their employment, and the other kids just they were still employed and they were doing well. But the perk kids took off with this post-secondary approach, which is what we're being asked to do now. And you really wouldn't have told the story if you only went for five years after application. So those are the kinds of things that I'm concerned about with the longitudinal data. Carol: Joe, so what about this to with it. You know, like especially blind agencies tend to provide a lot of the services themselves. What kind of problems are there with that and not sort of capturing the data? Joe: We have seen that as an issue with the 2007 data set. We have in the 2012 data set, we had and our colleagues in the blind agencies were very clear that there were services that they were providing that were critical to successful employment and adjustment, but we didn't have any way to capture it. And so you're, again, you're undervaluing the impact of those agency provided services by not capturing them. And I think that's going to be critical. I think there's some requirements now that they have to be reporting some of this information, but it's a question of whether it's getting into that case management system and it becomes readily available administrative data that can be used to help tell the story of the impact of the great work that these counselors and other kinds of specialists are providing to help people become employed and adjust into their settings. Bob, you want to talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the data? Bob: Well, yes. And now with the new data set, RSA 911, that quarterly report that all agencies have to provide and again for four quarters after closure that thing now they've made some changes and it's now required whereby types by 32 different service types they report. Did you provide purchase services during the quarter. If so how much did you provide it in-house or was it provided through a comparable benefit, some other external agency and that might have a dollar value attached to it? So we're going to use that data and see what we have. Now of course with any data set. Now I'll tell you purchase service data that's pretty reliable because they need to get their money back, right? They need to get reimbursed. They need to pay the bills. And so they track that through their accounting system very well. But the other things are and had entered often by counselors who are harried and busy and have a lot of other things to do, rather than this bureaucratic kind of form filling out, so it's only as good as the data that are put into it, and we won't know how good that is, but we'll see how much we learn. this way, hopefully we'll learn some things we didn't know. Joe: What we have been told is that the data is not there for us to capture, and that it undervalues the kind of work that's being done. So we're hoping we can find a way to tell that story, because it sounds pretty important. And then from my personal experience in managing some of these services, I know how hard these folks work and how valuable these services are. But if you can't capture it, you're not able to tell the story. Carol: Yep. If it isn't documented, it didn't happen. Joe: Yeah. Bob: That's right. Carol: So what are the next steps on the grant and how can we get folks involved? Are you needing people to help with anything, any states or anything we've got? Joe: North Carolina is, we're working very closely with them and they've been really good to work with. We will be once we get the prototype, I don't know what to call it. The economists are putting together the data system information so that they can begin to apply the new model and that'll be happening hopefully within a couple of months. And then once we've run the model a couple of times, we'll be asking some other people to come in sort of a national audience to take a look and hear what the model is, what it offers to get their feedback on. Yes, that would be useful or that doesn't seem to work for me much. Could you do this other thing? And then we'll also be asking them about. We'll be showing them what we've come up with for the simplified model to see if that version is going to work or if we need to be developing maybe a template RFP for them to use with a local institution that they work with, then they would be able to get the data set. So we're going to be looking at that. We may be asking folks to work with us a little bit on the capacity survey, where it talks about the training that states might be wanting to say, who can provide this kind of service, and would this be valuable to do to increase people's ability capacity? Because there's a lot of data needs out there. And I think if it would help our project, it would probably help a lot of other projects as well. Carol: So, Joe, are you thinking about that for fall, possibly at CSAVR or something? Joe: That's November. That should be a time when we would have an opportunity to gather some information. Yeah, because we might be ready for it by then. Of course, that might put a little pressure on the economists, but I don't mind doing that. Carol: Yeah. Bob's looking like, oh well okay. Bob: You love doing that, Joe. I mean, one of the things my major professor in graduate school always said, I love working on a research project where I learn something and what Joe said is exactly right. So we would take and vet our results to various agents. We may make a trip to the agency before Covid. We go and we sit down. We go through everything, explain what we're trying to do when we sell. And then they would say, that looks a little wonky or something, or did you do this? And you say, no, we didn't do that. Yeah, we could do that. Let's do it. And then we would revise the model or no, unfortunately we don't have enough information to do it. Could you collect it? You know, that kind of thing. So yeah, we keep learning things and that's what these groups are intended. That's what they're for. For our selfish purposes. That's what we like about them. Carol: That's excellent, you guys. Joe: So November would be good, Bob. Bob: So you say. Carol: Well, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what comes out of all of this. And you were saying that the end of the grant then is in 2025. Joe: August 31st of 25. Bob: Right. Carol: All right. That's coming up quick you guys, really quick. Joe: Oh it is. Carol: Well, awesome I appreciate you both being on today. I cannot wait to hear more as this unfolds. So thanks for joining me. Joe: We really appreciate the opportunity. Bob: Yes we do. {Music} Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Christian Castile, a trial attorney at Reed Smith, is joined by Reed Smith's Professional Development and Continuing Legal Education Manager, Joe Maguire, and Emily Chang, a former Reed Smith summer associate, to explore the evolution of LGBTQ+ inclusive language. This episode delves into the history and reclamation of the term "queer," examining its significance and the broader impacts of language on the LGBTQ+ community. Joe and Emily share their personal stories and insights, discussing how their experiences have shaped their understanding and use of LGBTQ+ terminology. They also touch on the intersectionality of language across different marginalized groups and the importance of person-centered language. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on the power of words and the journey toward inclusivity. This episode includes a frank discussion of words used to describe the LGBTQ+ community, some of which could be triggering to some listeners. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith Podcast, Inclusivity Included: Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions, and challenges, past and present, all with the goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, inclusivity included. Christian: Hello, and welcome to this month's episode of Reed Smith's podcast, Inclusivity Included. My name is Christian Castile, and I am the guest host of this month's episode. I am here joined today by Joe Maguire and Emily Chang, and we are going to be discussing the evolution of LGBTQ+ inclusive language, focusing on the term queer as a prime and driving example, but looking sort of across the board, a different language that we use. I'll get into a little bit of the history of that term and some other terms, but as we are getting started here I'm gonna toss it over to Emily and Joe to give us a little bit of introduction. So Emily, we'll go ahead and have you start. Can you just share a little bit about your background and what it is that inspired you to pursue a career in the legal industry? Emily: Yeah, I'm Emily. I majored in undergrad in hospitality and graduated in 2020. So my job on cruise ships was no longer an option. And I took a semester off and then decided I wanted to go to law school. I had taken a hospitality law class and I had loved it. It was definitely the right move. And I am studying for the bar and joining the firm in Dallas soon. Christian: That is so exciting. Are you doing anything interesting in between your law school graduation and starting at the firm? Emily: I'm going to clerk for a bankruptcy judge in Dallas for a year. Christian: That's incredible. Congratulations. Emily: Thank you. Christian: Joe, I'll pass it over to you. Sort of the same question, if you could just share a little bit about your background and how you came to get involved with Reed Smith and the legal industry more broadly. Joe: Sure. So I was an English and philosophy major in undergrad, which was all incredibly useful if I wanted to go into publishing, which I did not. So I ended up going to law school, as many people do, as sort of a default. And I clerked for a couple of years, and then I practiced for a couple of years. And it was clear that it was just not something that I was... I love the law, and I love the learning, I love the words, but the actual practice just just didn't suit. And so I went a different path and worked in law schools and then eventually came to work at the firm. And actually, this week is my 25th anniversary at the firm on the 14th. Christian: Congratulations. What a milestone. Joe: Thank you. Yes, it's a milestone I don't think anyone ever really expects to hit. It sort of comes as a surprise. So yeah, and it's interesting because my law firm experience was very different from when I was a practitioner to when I was in a role that allowed me to work with lawyers was a different dynamic and one that suited me quite well. Christian: Well, I know I speak for many of us here at the firm to say that we're happy to have you in the role that you're in. You do some great work for us, and I know I enjoy working with you. So I'm so pleased to be sitting here with you both today for this podcast episode. And I appreciate the insights that the different perspectives that you just both shared are going to provide for the discussion that we're having. So just really quickly, I thought for anybody who is maybe less familiar with sort of the history of what we're talking about today, we are looking at the word queer as a sort of focal point for the evolution of LGBTQ+ inclusive language. And the reason that we're focusing on that word is because historically queer has seen a lot of change, a lot of development over the way that it's been used, the way it's been perceived in this particular community, most notably sort of starting out as a derogatory term, and then over time being reclaimed as different generations of the the LGBTQ community have really focused on trying to recapture some of that language. So sort of with that in mind, this is a question for both of you again, as well. And we'll go, we'll take this in reverse order. So Joe, if you could open us up here, is there anything that you are comfortable sharing about your LGBTQ experiences, your experience as a member of the LGBTQ+ community? And specifically, what is the language that you use with respect back to your own identity? Joe: So I was aware by the time I started school as a kid that I was different. And I had some awareness of what that was about. And I, as an elementary schooler, was mildly fluid from a gender perspective. And so consequently, I was effeminate enough to get the attention of my classmates. And that made me a target. There were other factors in my identity that sort of contributed to that sense of otherness that had nothing to do with sexuality or gender. Going through those experiences, I had a fair amount of confusion about exactly what was going on. And all that seemed to clarify once puberty hit. And it became very clear to me that my identity was male and gay. And that is how I identify now. And that's probably been since about sixth grade. Emily: Yeah. And I use she/her pronouns. And I think came out to myself probably in middle school as a product of, I think I grew up in Texas and I think that different sexualities are not presented as an option to you until you learn about them yourself. And I grew up in a time when the internet was very available. And I think that was very useful and educational for me as a young person. And then I came out as so many do to my parents and greater community and when I left for college and could do that and everyone was very receptive, And so it's very nice to have a community here and in the larger, in everywhere I've gone. Christian: Emily, it's interesting that you mentioned that, too. That could almost be its entire separate topic, right, of the advent of the Internet and how that has sort of impacted not only the way that, you know, our community has disseminated information and representation, but also how it's impacted the way that we use language. Language, getting sort of to the crux of this episode, I'm curious if either of you are willing to share specifically what the word queer means to you personally, and whether you've had any experiences with that term that sort of informed the way that you interact with it, the way that you perceive it, and your feelings around it. Joe: It took me a long time to decide to respond to Christian about whether to do this, because I have, I feel conflicted. As a lover of words, I think queer is a great word. And I've always felt sad that it was hijacked in the way that it has been. And I mean, I went through a period of time where I wanted to be an etymologist. It's still an interest that I have. So despite the fact that I think it's a fabulous word, it's not a word I really ever use. And I certainly don't connect with it as part of my own identity. And while I love the idea of reclaiming words, anytime I've tried to use it, like the word has come out of my mouth, I have not felt comfortable. I'm not 100% positive about what the sort of official definition is in current usage. But, you know, I've heard it used as a an alternative to the sort of alphabet soup of LGBTQIA+, which is certainly a mouthful, and a lot. So I understand the desire to find a term that sort of captures all of that without literally needing to spell it out. But I've also heard it used as a general term for sort of intersection between sort of sexual and gender identities, which that can be a lot to communicate to someone. And so I can understand the need to want to kind of find an accessible term. I think about the term gay, which is sort of used as a catch-all for many sexual orientation identities, but it's a hijacked word and it's a little artificial. So because gay is an old term and it's one that I personally have come to identify with, I sort of try and remind myself on the use of the word queer that it's a little bit like gay and it's just a word that's been selected to try and capture something. But that's the purpose of words. They exist to capture the meaning of something, and it's never going to be quite exact. Christian: Yeah, absolutely. Especially, I think, within this community where there's so much nuance and sort of differences that we can all celebrate about each other. I think precision is definitely something that's difficult. Also hearing sort of from your response there, a little bit of, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like maybe some change over time in, you know, in one direction or another. Or maybe not necessarily directional change, but just some changes in the way that you've perceived that word over time and the way that you've sort of grappled with it. I'm curious if I'm reading that correctly, sort of what stages of your life, if any, that correspond with the way that you've your changes in that perception of that word have come about. Joe: So you know obviously it was a common derogatory term in my youth so you know in that in that sense you know there's always going to be an element of trigger quick i mean it's a microsecond but it still exists that i probably you know will never fully lose and i think the evolution over time is to have it began to appear in different places from within the community. And I can't recall the precise time, but I can generally sort of recall when it started to pop up and I had a very negative reaction and I really had to sort of stop and examine that. But I think really my bigger transition was after marriage equality and sort of rights for gays and lesbians were sort of solidified in a variety of areas, legal areas, and societally. And then the sites turned to trans equality. And that just sort of opened up. Sort of before that, I didn't really know any trans people. And so being, knowing, and it's how we all learn and evolve is through our connections with other people. So by becoming connected with people who identified as trans and some of the other parts of the alphabet that I had never known before, I started to understand the challenge between precision, but also just being able to communicate in a general way. And that sort of pushed my evolution in how I see the word. Christian: And Emily, I think for you, sort of same question, what does the term queer mean to you personally? And how has your understanding of the use of that word, whether it be for yourself personally or broader from the community perspective? What has that been like for you? Emily: Yeah, I, again, did grow up kind of in this weird in-between time of very much when I learned the word as a young person, I knew it had been used in a derogatory way to large swaths of people to disenfranchise them and harm them. But that was never my personal experience. I had never heard the word used in a derogatory way to me or to any of my friends. There were certainly other words that got used, but queer was never one of them. And I do think I was growing up in a time of reclaiming the word. And I think there are lots of benefits to it. I like the idea that especially for kids, for people in middle school who are learning who they are to not have to. Niche down and label themselves when they're still learning who they are and to have this word that I perceive as an umbrella term for just the larger LGBTQ queer community to just be able to say I'm queer and I maybe don't know exactly what that means for me yet but it means that I'm something different than this societal standard I have found very helpful and I know a lot of my peers have found it very helpful and I think in a larger community sense I know several non-binary people who find it just easier than saying gay or lesbian when that doesn't quite identify with the intersection of their gender identity and their sexual identity. And so I know that the word has been harmful to people and have over time spoken to older people and have realized that and certainly don't use it to describe someone who I know is not comfortable with the word. But in my generation, I found it very helpful. And I think a lot of people my age find a comfort in it, almost a sense of security of just this big blanket term that also includes all of us and allows us to refer to the larger community as a whole, kind of as queer. And I think that's really nice. And I also grew up watching the word get used in mainstream media In 2018, when they revived Queer Eye, I know the original Queer Eye, I think, and I didn't watch it at the time, but the early 2000s one, I think that word was being used in an almost subversive way. And in 2018, when it came out, that was just what the show was called. And that's just what we all called it. And I don't know anyone who batted an eye at that, because it was just a very normal part of our vernacular. Christian: Yeah, that's a really interesting point with the differences in reaction to pop culture. You know, I didn't even think about Queer Eye, but you're absolutely right. I have a similar, I think, sort of reaction to you when I think about, you know, when we were younger and that show was coming out for the first time versus now. That's a really interesting observation. Joe, I'm curious, do you have any reaction to that as somebody who, you know, maybe was paying more attention to the environment when shows like that were coming around originally? Joe: Yeah, it's interesting. I'll just sort of move, start more current and work backwards. You know, so when they when they relaunched, you know, Queer Eye, I did not have any reaction at all to the word, I think, just because it was already like a brand in a way. But when it came out originally, I was I was suspicious of the show. It was it was a show where I avoided it, I think, in part because of the title and a lack of like, I just wasn't sure. Like i knew there were plenty of of gay people involved in the show but i just wasn't quite sure what their take was going to be was it going to be kind of a wink wink not not gay people are just so strange and funny and and so it took me a while to watch it and then i'm like okay i kind of see it so i i agree with emily that there was a lot of subversion going on in in the its original iteration that didn't really exist the second time around because it was sort of like no big deal. Christian: Yeah, I think that goes directly to sort of this development of language piece that we're talking about today. It sounds like, you know, listening to the two of you sort of describe your experiences that you, you know, sort of all of us now as we sit here today are on a similar page with the way that we interact with this sort of language. But it's interesting hearing the perspectives coming from sort of two different and distinct places with different and distinct experiences sort of driving those thoughts. I'm curious to focus on, you know, as a community, as a group of folks who do have different identities and are trying to find a way to move forward that involves language that we all feel comfortable with and that describes us all, what are our thoughts on sort of the broader impacts of language, of the word queer, and how are those intersectional identities and things that we're thinking about factoring in. So sort of with that in mind, I'm curious if either of you have encountered in your experiences any challenges or any pushback from folks within the LGBTQ community to the word queer, either because they don't feel that it represents them or because, you know, any other concerns that you've been faced with? Emily: I certainly have had interactions with people a little older than me who have a similar reaction to Joe in that the word when they grew up with it wasn't what it means to me now. And so it is a little bit more startling to them to hear on a first brush. And if the conversation continues and it's realized that that's a word that's not just a little new or startling, but is actually gently triggering in the way that it is for many people. It stops being used in that conversation and with that person if they're uncomfortable with it because as much as i like it and as much as i think it is inclusive for the whole community and even if the other person in the conversation thinks that it doesn't change the fact that they have an experience with that specific word that is harmful and and brings back negative associations And I do really like the trend toward inclusive words that don't make people pick niche labels at an early age. I do really like the freedom that broader terms give us. But I do also think there is room for growth or to find different words that across the community, across generations can be a little bit more kind to everyone that are new. We could invent a new word that is all-inclusive that no one has had bad interactions with. I don't know how we would or what that would be, but that's my ideal world for the future of language. Joe: That is also my vision, would be to come up with a word that doesn't have baggage associated with it. And I also echo Emily, is that I would love a term, which is sort of how queer is tending to be used to be broad and inclusive, as opposed to the alphabet soup. The alphabet soup also, I think forces, I mean, Emily's coming at it from a person from the perspective of someone who perhaps is still trying to figure out who they are as they're, you know, forming their identity. But I'm also thinking about it in terms of like, just how specific does a person need to be? And I appreciate that, you know, some people have pretty complicated identities around orientation and gender that require not just a word, but maybe a sentence, a few sentences, and that gets very personal very quickly. Particularly because they may be things that the person that they're interacting with may not even be that familiar. They might use the word, and the person that they're speaking with may not even understand what that means. And so the fact that a person is often in the position of having to explain their identity to someone, that's just exhausting. And does someone need that much detail? So I think having an umbrella term that people kind of generally understand that you have an identity that is not 90, what is it, 94% of the population, whatever the current stats are. Christian:Yeah, that's a very interesting piece. And I actually think it ties into something that Emily had just said specifically in that last answer that she gave about, I think you used the word freedom, Emily, when you were talking about words like queer and how they afford folks who use those identifiers a little bit more freedom. I'm curious, especially having just listened to what Joe said, if you could elaborate on that a little bit, sort of what you meant by that when you said freedom and, you know, how it ties into some of the things we're talking about today. Emily: I definitely agree with Joe in that it gives freedom to not have to disclose parts of yourself that maybe you're not comfortable. Talking to other people about queer is just a very umbrella blanket term that implies that you are not the same as 94% of the population, but you don't have to go into specifically what you feel if you don't want to. I also think it gives freedom for exploration and change. And I think because being queer is not the norm in society, especially for younger people, can be difficult to figure out what that means for you specifically and how you feel and what your identity is. And so to have this umbrella word feels free and safe to me to not have to pick something and then feel nervous later about saying that specific word I chose doesn't fit anymore. And now I need to change what I'm telling people about myself and the stigma that comes with that. And I think the worry for some young people that comes from deviating from the norm already and the deviating from the deviation you decided. And so just saying I'm queer from the jump, it provides, I think, a sense of freedom to learn and grow and a sense of safety in that. Christian: Right. And that's so important. And I think, you know, we have now nowadays we have studies suggesting, you know, having freedom as somebody who's growing up and discovering your identity, I think, is so important in, you know, long term success and happiness. I think a big piece of this too, and you both touched on this already, is whether it's queer or whether it's other language, so much of our community's success in speaking with each other is about this idea of person-centered language, which is not specific to the LGBTQ community. But when we are talking about it in that way, using the language that people are using to describe themselves and sort of being willing to go on that journey with folks to the extent that they are, you know, finding out new things about their identities, using new words, sort of being willing to take that linguistic journey with them, I suppose. Joe, earlier, you know, speaking of linguistic journeys, you mentioned that you had sort of a strong negative reaction to the word queer the first, you know, first time, first couple of times that you heard it. And you said that you had to examine that reaction. I'm curious if you'd be willing to to share for us sort of what that process was like for you and what was your impetus to maybe take a step back from the shock or the negative reaction that had you feeling like it was worth examining? Joe: Well, I think any time I have a strong negative reaction to something, I just feel like it's worth examining what's going on. Sometimes it's very obvious, but other times I'm like, hmm, I'm really surprised that I feel so strongly this way. And I think it's partly because I think I've always thought it's a cool word. I mean, just the sound and in a way that like faggot, for instance, not a cool word. It just doesn't sound cool. it doesn't have like there's it doesn't have any uniqueness to it it's very harsh and so you know as i dug deeper into it i realized this that it and i love the idea of reclaiming words but there are a couple things that that sort of went on for me one was it was a little bit shocking because it was a word that you're not supposed to say and then people are saying it and there are other or reclaimed words in other communities. I know African Americans who have a very strong negative reaction to the use of the N-word by anyone, whether they are part of the African American community or not. And then I think there's also this other piece that is a challenge in reclaimed words, which is why it would be lovely for, and I think we will eventually evolve to a term that doesn't have baggage, but the challenge is who can use the word, right? It's It's been reclaimed, but who, who's allowed to use it and when, and, um, I think anytime you have a word that people are unsure, they're unsure about what it means exactly and who is allowed to use it, that creates a barrier. It's no longer inclusive. It's really quite exclusive. And that's a danger that I, you know, that I see. And I have to kind of think about like, if I start using it, how do I feel if other people, say an ally or just a random person on the street, uses it? Yeah, I'm still not 100% sure about how I feel. Christian: It's definitely a key topic to sort of conceptualize for sure. It's interesting, right, when you think about this discussion too in terms of other communities outside of the LGBTQ+ community, right? And so I'm thinking about the way that other marginalized groups have their own language issues that come up. I'm curious if either of you have ever found yourself in an experience where you were either more comfortable or more informed about using language, that is specific to a marginalized group because of your experiences with words like queer and sort of the dynamic nature of LGBTQ+ language. I think that Joe makes a really good point about who can use words and when and how that is concerning in a lot of ways. And I think that having a lot of friends in different marginalized communities, I don't necessarily use words that maybe they have reclaimed or that they would use for themselves. Because if I'm not part of those communities, it doesn't feel like my place to use them. But to me, the queer community is broader. And again, I think as someone who hasn't experienced that word being used in a derogatory way and who has only ever encountered the word in a generally pretty positive way, it makes me feel more comfortable. If that's how I describe myself openly and my friends from other marginalized communities use that word for me, I don't mind it as much, especially, I think, because I know that they have a history with words that impact them. And so I'm more likely to understand that their intent with that word is positive and to support me and the way that I use that word. And they don't ever mean it in a derogatory way because they understand the power that words have. And I think that that kind of intersectionality is important. And I also think that the queer umbrella is so broad and encompasses so many other marginalized communities that there is a lot of interplay between different communities and the words that we use. Joe: I would say from my perspective, I'm very sensitive to words. So I try and really pay attention to the words that people are using for themselves and about their community. I just pay a lot of attention. I will occasionally do the bystander thing, not just for our people within the queer community who have an identity I don't identify with, but are perhaps a topic of conversation. But also for other communities and to just highlight, you know, in a low key way, why a particular language that's being used might be problematic. And I'm not talking about slurs. I'm thinking about having been in a conversation about for the Latin community and the use of Latinx versus Latino / Latina, and just being thoughtful about the words that are used. And the fact that communities are not monolithic, I mean, we, by definition, are very broad, but within other marginalized communities, there's a broad range of identities that people hold, and language reflects that. And one of the problems with language is it's kind of a general label that works well a lot of the time, but it's going to chafe a number of people who are part of that community and people who the label is applied to. And I use that labeling not in a negative way, but just it's a term that's used to refer to them. Christian: Yeah, and I think that's critical, right? That point about, you know, communities not being a monolith. So there's always going to be a certain amount of struggle. But I think what I'm hearing from both of you is that, you know, sort of grappling with language in the way that you have as a member of the LGBTQ community has given you sort of insights and an ability to think critically about language in other settings and as used by other groups as well. In a way that is really empathy forward, which I think is really awesome and something that is important for us as we move forward in this D&I space. I think that puts us at right about time. Emily and Joe, it has been an absolute pleasure talking with you today. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. Thank you everybody so much for listening to this month's episode of Inclusivity Included. We at Reed Smith are always happy to have you as listeners. I hope you all had a good time today and learned a lot. Thank you. Outro: Inclusivity Included is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. You can find our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, reedsmith.com and our social media accounts. Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.
Host Victoria Guido welcomes Wendell Adams, CEO of PrimeLab.io, as he talks about his lifelong passion for technology and entrepreneurship. Wendell shares his experiences, from hacking electronics as a child to studying various fields in college and eventually starting his own business. He emphasizes the importance of understanding market needs and leveraging language to make technology accessible. Wendell's drive to improve encryption and data security led to the formation of PrimeLab; a company focused on making encryption functional and accessible without compromising performance. Wendell discusses PrimeLab's strategic direction and market fit. He outlines the challenges and opportunities in the entertainment industry, emphasizing the need for innovative solutions that respect user control and privacy. Wendell also shares insights into how PrimeLab's technology can democratize data access and enhance business processes. The episode concludes with a reflection on the future of AI and encryption technologies and Wendell's advice for aspiring entrepreneurs to think critically and creatively about their ventures. PrimeLab.io (https://primelab.io/) Follow PrimeLab.io on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/primelab-io/), or X (https://x.com/PrimeLab4). Follow Wendell Adams on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendell-a-83317895/). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Transcript: AD: We're excited to announce a new workshop series for helping you get that startup idea you have out of your head and into the world. It's called Vision to Value. Over a series of 90-minute working sessions, you'll work with a thoughtbot product strategist and a handful of other founders to start testing your idea in the market and make a plan for building an MVP. Join for all seven of the weekly sessions, or pick and choose the ones that address your biggest challenge right now. Learn more and sign up at tbot.io/visionvalue. VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Wendell Adams, CEO at PrimeLab io. Wendell, thank you for joining us. WENDELL: Thanks for having me. So, question, actually, where'd you guys come up with the name? VICTORIA: You know, I have asked this before, and I think I remember the answer. I might have to go back to the 500th episode to get it, but I think it was just robots was already kind of a theme at thoughtbot. I mean, thoughtbot, obviously, has robot in the name. Joe might have the best answer. And we have our special co-host, Joe Ferris. Who better to answer? JOE: [chuckles] Yes, I'm not sure who better to answer, probably Chad. I don't remember the answer either, but happy to be here to speculate with the two of you. It comes from the blog. We named the blog Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots and then used it for our podcast. But I don't remember where the blog name came from. WENDELL: It kind of reminds me of the Robot Wars thing, like, where they would have competitors driving around the robots and then smashing into each other, trying to flip them over and disable them. JOE: That was excellent. I also watched that. WENDELL: [laughs] VICTORIA: Yeah, it's a pretty great name. I really enjoy being a host. And, you know, I go out to local San Diego events and meet people and introduce myself as a co-host of Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots. It's usually pretty funny [laughter], which is where I met you, Wendell; we met at a San Diego CTO Lunches, which was super fun. WENDELL: Yeah, I always enjoy any type of tech conversation or anything else. I thought that was a lot of fun to sit down and just talk with people and talk about what they're working on. VICTORIA: I love that, yeah. And before we dive into the tech and get to hear more about PrimeLab, I just want to start a little more socially question. What did you do last weekend, Wendell? WENDELL: It was my father-in-law's birthday party at Legoland. We took my daughters my mother-in-law, and we all went to Legoland. It was a lot of fun. Although, honestly, I prefer the San Diego Zoo over Legoland, so... VICTORIA: Can you please describe what Legoland is to people who may not know? WENDELL: Okay. Legoland is based in Carlsbad, and it's really ideal for, like, four to nine-year-olds. And they have, like, miniatures of all the different cities. Actually, the SF miniature that they have is crazy detailed with Chinatown and everything else. They did an amazing job there. They actually...I think they just redid the San Diego part of it. But the miniatures are really cool, seeing all this stuff. They have different rides performers, but it's definitely, like, one of those things that it's more for kids to go and kind of experience. If you're an adult, you're going to love a lot of the processes that go into place, like how they built things, but mostly, yeah, it's very much kid rides and stuff like that. VICTORIA: I imagined it to be, like, life-size Lego buildings, but maybe I'm...that's very interesting all those other things you could do there. WENDELL: Well, like, they have the One World Trade Center, and I think it's, like, 25 feet tall. It is, like, the replica of it. It's kind of interesting, too, because not all the Legos that they build, they're huge, are solid Legos. So, it's like, they'll do where it's like, on the outside, they'll do a base, and then they'll build it. There's a replica of a Lamborghini. That one's life-size. But it's heavy. It's, like, 2,000 pounds, something like that. VICTORIA: Is that as much as a regular Lamborghini weighs, too, 2,000 pounds? It can't be that far up. WENDELL: I don't know. No, I don't think it...no, it couldn't be. VICTORIA: I have no idea how much cars [laughs] weigh. What about you, Joe? Did you do anything fun this weekend? JOE: Not a lot. It was supposed to be my son's first soccer game ever, but it rained here in Boston, so they postponed it. Sunday he went to my parents' house for a grandma day, and so I did nothing. I ate cookies. WENDELL: [laughs] VICTORIA: Wait, what kind of cookies were they, though? JOE: They were chocolate chip cookies. VICTORIA: That's so good. JOE: They were good. They were brown butter chocolate chip cookies, I should say. VICTORIA: Were they homemade, or did you get them somewhere? JOE: They were. We made them in this home. VICTORIA: Oh, that's the best. Yeah, love that. I got some fancy cookies that someone else made, and they were also [laughs] very good. And then, yeah, I've just been having cookies pretty much every day. So, that's been my time. WENDELL: My mother-in-law recently made me peanut butter cookies, and those are my favorite kind of homemade cookies. VICTORIA: Okay. Noted. You'll get a post-podcast gift of peanut butter cookies [laughter]. I love that. It's so great to hear a little bit more about each of you as, like, in a personal way before we dive into AI. And tell me a little bit more about your background and what led you to PrimeLab. WENDELL: I've always kind of, like, been a hacker, so to speak, just from a technical standpoint. My one grandfather was an engineer. He worked for GM designing, like, assembly arms and stuff like that. And then my other grandfather was a master electrician. So, I've always been the person that, like, just worked on things, got stuff together. You know, there's a lot of stories. Like, there's the story about when I broke my grandmother's workbench, rocking bench out front, and it was all aluminum. I remember telling my grandfather, and he's like, "Oh, what are you going to do?" And I was like, "Buy a new one?" He's like, "You got money?" I said, "No." And he said, "Well, you better figure how to make it then." So, ironically, it's half aluminum, half wood. We took wood, sanded it down, and stuff. So, it's just like I've always been an entrepreneur. I've always been interested in this kind of stuff. I used to hack VCRs, and PlayStations, and all kinds of stuff. I always liked parts and components and rewiring things. And as I got older, I also really liked math and all those things. And I wanted to understand more about how the world works, so to speak, like why it works the way it does, not just from a technology standpoint. But why do people think the way that they do? Why do things behave the certain way they do? So, initially, I started going to college. I thought I might be a math professor, and then decided to get degrees in business, economics, finance, marketing, consumer product goods, and comparative religions. So, while I was in college, I started working on, like, hacking, different video games, writing JavaScript, writing Java, all kinds of stuff. And then, eventually, even writing mobile applications early on, and then just analyzing because I always liked to build phones, too. I would take apart phones. And I really was curious about, like, how to make things faster, more efficient, and better. So, now to bring it down, like, how to make things accessible, where it benefits some of the smallest people and make it where it's a greater opportunity for someone to come out ahead of something. Like, one thing that I learned from my marketing degree is language matters. So, it's like, all the marketing it's not anything special. It's just they intentionally create language barriers that cause people not to feel as accessible with it. And then, like, you hire a consultant or something to just basically teach you about those language barriers. And I think every industry has, like, SAT, or LTM, or something like these abbreviations that mean a lot of different things. And it causes bottlenecks if you don't speak the language. So, understanding the language but also learning about how was very helpful from a standpoint on the marketing side. And I always try to figure out how do I make this accessible to people who don't understand that language? VICTORIA: And what was the turning point where you decided to start PrimeLab, and what made you realize there was a company there? WENDELL: It was a project I've been working on since at least 2011, honestly. And just as a heads up, PrimeLab as a whole works with encrypted data for AI models and to speed that up and everything else. So, early on, I was very obsessed with how advertising works through, like, stealing user data, which stealing is different, here or there, the sense of privacy, the sense of, like, how things could run, and the sense of messaging. And initially, a lot of it was using encryption as an overlay in, like, the pixel application space, which is always a way to hack or get into it. And it slows everything down. So, I had always been working on trying to figure out how do you speed up and embed security so it's actually functional? And it took a while to figure out, like, give encryption functionality, like, make the encryption something that you could actually execute on. And, actually, one of the things that really helped is the blockchain space there's a lot of, like, hash trees and everything else, like, where people are innovating in that. That's really helped innovate encryption as a whole from understanding, like, Merkle trees, hash graphs, and everything else to make it more functional and faster. Because people are trying to speed up distributed networks and stuff, but the actual technology that they built, like Hedera is...What Hedera has done with Hashgraphs and everything else—really amazing. I'm glad that they open-source stuff like that. But it's also really interesting just to see how things push forward. So, like, when I first started, like, RAM was, like, 256 in a phone. So now, you know, you can get multiple gigabytes, which makes it a lot more capable to do encryption, decryption, and work more in the functional space of things. The bigger problem that you have on the data part is how an application communicates because there's so many levels of abstraction. Like, you have the Swift language that communicates into something else that then communicates into something else. Like, right now, we're talking on a system that's recording us over the internet through a browser, all those different things. And it's an approximation of what the data is and what we sound like. It's not an absolute. So, I was really interested in when you have absolutes, and you can verify those absolutes, what can you do with that? A few years ago, I felt like we got to a point where we could actually execute those things and actually deliver on that. So, therefore, I decided to start PrimeLab with my co-founder, who I really liked and enjoyed. And we've had a lot of really great advisors, where people have helped us continuously. Over, you know, the decade-plus of working on this, I've gotten a lot of input from some of the smartest people I know, from people who have designed full server racks for AWS to literally a good friend of mine that built cloud storage. His name's on the patent for it. So, that kind of stuff has really helped me understand and build this where it can communicate the lowest possible level. VICTORIA: Yeah, and to just recap and reflect that back a little bit, it sounds like you were always interested in how to make encryption faster and lighter weight, and so you could build it in and build in security without impacting the performance of the applications. And then meeting your co-founder and the advancement of technology, this time a couple of years ago, led you to think, okay, let's really go forward with this. WENDELL: Kind of rephrasing, I was always interested in control. So, like, one of the things that really interested me...so, I started a video game store buying and selling, like, video games and trading cards and stuff when I was roughly ten and a half or so, and then sold it roughly when I was 17, which is how I paid for quite a bit of college and likewise. But the things that really interested me about that is it went out of business three to four months afterwards because the person who basically bought the rest of it bought too much of Madden. And Madden, at this time, the margins were, like, a buck, as you go all the way through, and the price drops immensely. So, I wanted to really understand why that happened. What you kind of get to is, like, they didn't have control over it, just, like, the bulk orders methodology, where they would buy the whole entire supply. And what I've seen over the years, be it Apple, Google, or anything else, is, like, that was...in that example, that's a game publisher, EA, flexing control, right? But more and more companies are flexing control on a platform like now with Facebook or advertising. If you think about what Google used to do, Google used to provide a lot more insights when you had your own website. You used to know your own keywords. You used to know a lot of things about your users who come through. More and more, Facebook and Google try to stop that. And they're really the ones determining your own user personas for you. So, you become dependent upon them. So, I wanted to say, okay, from a business standpoint, how do you implement control and privacy where it's permissioned? And encryption was one of the answers that I came to. But then it was, how do you make encryption functional then to actually execute on control? Because unless the system is secure, faster, cheaper, better, it's never going to get adopted. VICTORIA: That makes sense. Thank you for sharing that. And you mentioned your founder. I'm curious, how does your founder kind of complete what you needed to be able to get the business up and running and off the ground? WENDELL: He has a robotics degree, so he had launched several products that had failed. And he wanted to learn marketing after they had failed. So, we have a similar like mindset about, like, control and functionality for how something may or may not work, and that allowed us to communicate well. So, like, I have a lot of friends and stuff. But the thing that allows me and my co-founder to work really well is that we come from things in different angles, but we have the same language that we speak. So, like, that's what I was talking about before, like, LTMs or otherwise, like, language really matters from how you can move something forward when you're talking in different industries. And just with him, there's a lot of stuff that you don't have to say. You can skip a lot of filler and then go straight to what something might be or a solution or something. Or if we have to jump to a tech abbreviation, to a market abbreviation, to a financial abbreviation, he's one that can follow along with me really quickly and then teach me a lot of things about operational execution because he's great at operations. I am not great at operations. VICTORIA: That's really interesting. And I think you're making a good point about, like, a shared language. And it reminds me of any product that you're building; if you want to sell it to a company and you want them to adopt it, you have to consider their language, their belief system, how to influence change within the organization. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that with your experience at PrimeLab. WENDELL: I'll give you an example of a market that we decided to go after. So, instead of just working at, like, healthcare markets where you have, like, GDPR...for people who don't know GDPR or HIPAA, HIPAA is for the United States. GDPR is the EU privacy requirements, right? For the right to be forgotten and everything else. So, these are vernaculars that you need to know. But the requirements of each one is very different, and these are markets that we've learned being in tech and likewise. But we wanted to change it up. So, I wanted to go after the entertainment market as a whole, namely because after meeting with some select people, including a stunt man, this is going back a few years ago, I started to realize that the entertainment market was getting kind of screwed over quite a bit from a tech standpoint. Basically, tech goes through this thing where...someone wrote a great article about this. It's called Enshittification. But, basically, where they go they try to take over a whole entire market, where first they're providing great value to your users. And then, gradually, you enshittify your product to provide greater value to your investors. And then, gradually, you suck all of the value out of the room for both. Right now, if you look at Sora, what OpenAI is trying to do in entertainment, [inaudible 16:08], you kind of can see that happening. They're going, "Hey, here's a great value for it." And they're really pushing that stuff off. But the thing about the entertainment market that I think is really interesting is it's basically thousands and thousands of small businesses that are constantly going, it's so chaotic. It's not like tech and startups. There's a lot of overlay of, like, you know, people are looking for that top quartile film that's going to make the money back, and then long-term royalties that they can earn off of it, right? Whereas in tech, they're looking for those huge markups as well. So, I was really fascinated by it, but it was something that, like, we had to learn. Like it was something that I didn't know otherwise. So, it was literally...how we learned it was we took our tech stuff, and we would walk SAG-AFTRA strike lines. We would walk strike lines. We would go to entertainment events, and we would demo what we were trying to do, and we would show them. And then, oftentimes, we got really negative feedback right off the bat. And we're like, "No, no, no, so, you know, this is for you. Like, you could control. Like, this is going to help you." And then, after doing that enough times, talking to the SAG-AFTRA lawyers, and everything else from there, and all of the creatives, the creatives were coming to us and giving us ideas how to explain it because there's, like, three different formats. You have tech, business, creatives in the entertainment industry. And it's like, we could talk to the tech people. We could talk to the business people. But you really need the creatives. And, like, the wording of each one, like, each group of those is vastly different. So, having the creatives be able to explain something in 90 seconds that used to take me a couple of hours to dive into became really valuable. And also, in tech, like, you have this thing where it's feature creep, where you're like, oh, I'll add this, this, and this. Just to hear very coldly and bluntly, like, "If it does X, I'm interested. If it does Y, I'm not interested." That was very interesting or refreshing of, like, "Yes, you're going to solve these problems. But I need sign-off for everything in there." And it's kind of weird in the entertainment part, too. Like, you want to solve a problem without being a competitor to another vendor because you need so many different sign-offs. And if you're a competitor to another vendor, to a certain point, maybe that's going to cause a hiccup with sign-offs because there's 18 different cooks in the kitchen, so to speak, just so many different people that need to say, "Yes," all the way through with it. VICTORIA: Thank you. Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm curious, Joe, if you have an answer for that question as well, like, any experiences about navigating change and putting new products in place at different clients, different industries? JOE: I don't think I've had the same kind of resistance. Like, I haven't been on the front lines the way you described, like, literally in the, you know, going and talking to people on strike. I think I have more indirect experience talking to the people who are doing that. And certainly, like, I think there's generally a resistance to bringing in new technology without eliminating the old way of doing things if that makes sense. Like, people want the old ways of backup. Like they want to be able to go back to paper, which I empathize with. But that's frequently been a challenge for the people I've worked with is that they don't fully embrace the new process, which significantly reduces the value they would get from using it. I don't know if that's something you've encountered with PrimeLab. WENDELL: So, we were building another company of mine many, many, many years ago. I was building a website for this lumber company, and I remember showing up, and the owner was there. But it was his son that had commissioned it, and the owner didn't know about the website. And I was like, "Oh yeah, we'll get the website going." He goes, "Oh, this web thing it's a fad. It's never going to happen. You don't need websites. It's faxes." That's how everything would happen. But secretly, what was happening is they would get an order. They would print it off, and then they would fax it. So [laughs], I always thought that was crazy. VICTORIA: I mean, one of my local bars still just writes the order on a ticket and sends it on a clothesline down to the grill. So [laughs], sometimes old is good. But I think that you know, I want to hear more about where you found or how you found a product-market fit for PrimeLab and where that AI really becomes useful and ethical in the industry you're focusing on WENDELL: How I look at PMF (product-market fit)...and if you hear me just say PMF, that's what that means. So, how I look at PMF is I'm a little different in the fact that when I look at a product, or a technology, I don't just look at, like, so you have foundational tech. Like, okay, this is encryption. This is control, right? Now, where's the market that has the biggest problems with it? So, I like to go out and actually talk to those people. Because, like, when you're implementing tech, or you're implementing the product itself, it's different. So, you're like, you have the underlying infrastructure, but whether that's a button or a simple API that you need to build so it works different to hit that PMF...are you familiar with the term build a better mousetrap? VICTORIA: I don't think so. JOE: I'm familiar, but I'd still love to hear you describe it. WENDELL: So, in business school, and likewise, they will tell you "If you build a better mousetrap, people will come, and they will buy your product." So, like, it's a common thing where they're like, "Build a better mousetrap. People will come. They'll be there." And the thing that you learn with consumer product goods and marketing, though, is they actually built a better mousetrap, and it failed. And the reason why it failed is you had a mousetrap that was roughly a cent versus another mousetrap that was three cents. And I think this is in the '60s or so. The other mousetrap was reusable, so it executed a lot better, and everything else is more humane. But what they didn't understand is that it was wives most of the time that would have to actually handle this. And they didn't want the mouse alive, and they didn't want to reuse the trap. They wanted them to actually be disposed of right away. So, by not understanding the market, even though they built a better mousetrap, they'd missed the point. Like, the main problem to solve wasn't killing the mouse or having it be reusable. The main problem to solve was, like, getting rid of the mouse. So like, if you have a solution for getting rid of the mouse, the next thing is your execution for it. Like, does it hit the actual market, which is the fit aspect? Like, every product is a little bit different where you look at, like, how does this fit in? So, in this case, fit is very important for, like, disposing of the mouse, which is why you also have, like, you know, mouse poisons are popular, even though they're terrible because they die somewhere and, hopefully, you don't see them. And it's like sight unseen, right? Now, I'm glad, like, that's changing and stuff. But it's understanding even if you have a solution to something, you need to understand what your market wants out of your solution, and it's not going to be an abstract. It's going to be an emotional, like, execution-based process. So, you kind of have to go, all right, this is my market. This is kind of my fit. But the actual product I'm building is going to change to make sure it works all the way through with this. I was advising a startup many, many years ago, and they were building this CRM software on Android for South America. And I think they were building it for Android 6 or 7 at the time. But the market that they were targeting, they all ran Android 4.1. So, they spent a little over a million dollars building for the wrong version of Android that wouldn't even work on that version of the system. Like, it was one of those things where they were required to build it for that. But they didn't understand the actual market, and they didn't spend enough time researching it. So, it's like you get the Bay Area groupthink. If they had actually spent the time to analyze that market and go, "Oh, they run, you know, an inexpensive phone. It's 4.1. It's low RAM," now you can design a product. If you want it to be a CRM, you're going to, like, chunk up the system more. Like, you're going to change all that instead of just wasting a million dollars building something that now you basically have to start over again from scratch. VICTORIA: That seems like he got off cheap, too. People make way bigger mistakes that cost way more money [laughs] because they [inaudible 24:13] WENDELL: Well, that wasn't me. That was an investor that -- VICTORIA: Oh no. I mean, yeah, not just them. Yeah. WENDELL: He's like, "What would you do?" And I was like, "You should sell this company or sell your stake ASAP because that's a really bad sign." JOE: I have found that the answer nobody ever wants when you're doing product validation or testing product fit is, "You should not build this product." The idea that the software just shouldn't be written is universally unpopular. WENDELL: Yes [laughs]. That's, you know, that's part of the reason why it took me so long to do PrimeLab is because, like, it took a long enough for the software to actually need to be written, if that makes sense. Mid-Roll Ad: When starting a new project, we understand that you want to make the right choices in technology, features, and investment but that you don't have all year to do extended research. In just a few weeks, thoughtbot's Discovery Sprints deliver a user-centered product journey, a clickable prototype or Proof of Concept, and key market insights from focused user research. We'll help you to identify the primary user flow, decide which framework should be used to bring it to life, and set a firm estimate on future development efforts. Maximize impact and minimize risk with a validated roadmap for your new product. Get started at: tbot.io/sprint. VICTORIA: What does success look like now versus six months or even five years from now? WENDELL: I take a different approach to this because I have so many friends that have sold their businesses. They raise and everything else. I look at success as instead of an exit or another large thing, like, literally, we turned down a billion-dollar term sheet offer. I didn't like the terms. I didn't like what it would do from the control standpoint of the technology. What I care about is go-to-market and, like, adoption and actually getting the tech out there in a way that has market penetration but, like, that adds value to every person's life. VICTORIA: Yeah, maybe say more about that. Like how do you see AI and this technology you have with PrimeLab benefiting people and benefiting the industry that you're working within? WENDELL: So, the current AI models are kind of weird. They're basically just filter systems because they communicate in pixel space and then go down to functional space. It's the GPU. GPUs are actually terrible to use for AI. This is why you have dedicated AI chips getting built. Hopefully, the RISC-V chipset does actually do something because that's a chipset that I think it's an open-source chipset, but you can actually especially build models on it. So, I think that we're going to see a lot more in the RISC-V chipset where it's like, this is just for one particular image, or this is just for explosions, or this is just for touching up all these different points in the actual individual, like, microcontroller module data that ends up compiling to move forward with it. But the AI models now it's like you took the internet, and you're trying to ask it a probability question, what I was talking about before, where it's not an absolute. So, it's like, if I want to do an OCR system or anything, I take an image. It's got to say, "This is..." letters; it's going to recognize that. So, there's, like, multiple models and algorithms that need to run on that whole entire process. You even have artificial data, but all of that information is an approximation. It's not an absolute. If you want absolute, you can get a lot of absolute data from the actual hardware devices themselves. You know, take a Sony camera. You could see the lighting. You could see the raw information, everything else there. But because of how expensive it is, people compress it. Like, take YouTube where it's compressed, and now you're training off of it. You're trying to compress it more and then run an algorithm so that you don't have to actually process those large, raw files all the way through. That's just a bad infrastructure for compute. You're trying to reduce, but you're also trying to utilize what you own for rights, same thing, contextual, or anything else there. There's no value in a model. Once a model is out there, it's just weights moving it back and forth. The value is in the data and the applications. So, the actual data itself that's going in. So, if you have just lava scenes, like, having all that data for lava, and I want to put it in a background, now I can do that, but more importantly, it's not about just adding it into the background. The thing that is often missed is contextually the output. So, like, say I want to do a financial report. Rather than having the data of all financial reports out there, what I want as the input is my financial data. And what I want as, like, a fine-tuning output is an example of the reports that were generated. And I don't want those reports as the input to inform the output because that's where you get a hallucination. Maybe it starts grabbing financial data from someone else. And I also think we're in store for a lot more hacks because with not just poisoning data, which we do in the functional space, if someone tries to access it. But, I mean, literally, there's the story...I think the guy was in Hong Kong, where they faked his board all the way through with it. Because you have agents acting and executing on people's behalf, you're going to have systems where people go onto the hardware and start generating fake financial numbers. And now that's going to get reported. Or you pay an invoice that you weren't supposed to pay because someone manipulated your AI agent. And a lot of the stuff that we're seeing now from Microsoft and everything else that's not really where the models will go. It's great to do it, but it's kind of like we're in the dial-up stage of AI. Like [chuckles], dial-up has its use cases and stuff, but it's nowhere near what the tech will look like in the future, and it's nowhere near how it will function. And one of the big pushbacks that you see, like, from Google, from all these different places, like, they want your attention. But at the end of the day, Google's an ad company. Facebook's an ad company. It's not in their best interest to have hyper-localized data that you control for your models and likewise. They want it in the cloud. They want it used there, where they can control that data, and they can monetize and advertise for you. But at the same time, like AI models work the best, and AI applications work the best when the data set is limited, so it can't hallucinate, and when the outputs are actually controlled to what it should be from an informed standpoint. So, where we're at this is just in the beginning stages of stuff. VICTORIA: That's really interesting. Thank you so much for sharing. I think if you could go back in time when you first started PrimeLab and give yourself some advice, what would you say? WENDELL: You know, I lived through the Great Recession. The Great Recession informed me a lot more. The things that I didn't understand this time...like the Great Recession, was market contributors doing stuff that impacted everyone with their spend and their adoption, and how those things were. But the Fed raising interest rates, which is, you know, Silicon Valley Bank failed and stuff like that, that dynamic of those startups and, like, how much startups power everything, like, I would have advised myself to pay more attention to the Fed and those market dynamics going forward. Because what changed is it's not just the Silicon Valley Bank failed it, you know, Rippling went down, for instance, which would pay therapists in Florida and all kinds of stuff. Like, it broke so many different things. It caused bottlenecks in business that we're still going through. Like, everyone's like, "Oh, we're getting back to normal." Really not. It's still, like, delayed all the way through it. The AI aspect is really getting back to normal, where people are really pushing AI. But if you look at SaaS and other industries, it really, really slowed down. And the reason why that matters is, like, in my field, production and timelines matter. So, when you have that plus, you know, the entertainment strike and everything else, you have things where the actual production of things starts slowing down immensely. Whereas AI is one of the few things that you still have innovations because that never really slowed down, same thing with the models. But all the rest of the industries and stuff have really slowed down. And understanding what that means from an operational execution standpoint...it's a good thing I have my co-founder [inaudible 32:24]. It matters quite a bit because it means your team sizes have to change, how you handle certain clients has to change. Because once those companies start downsizing or laying off people for whatever reason like, that's going to change how you're working with them, and their requirements are going to change as well. VICTORIA: And what do you see on the horizon as a challenge or a big hurdle that you face as a company or as an industry? WENDELL: You know, the entertainment market's really interesting from all the different sign-offs. The challenge is more execution of timeline. So, like, if you're doing something with, like, Nvidia and the healthcare thing, it could take years. If you're doing something in, like, the IoT space, you know, also years. If you do something in the entertainment space, it could take weeks to months, except the large studios. The larger studios, it could take a couple of years as well. But going to market, I think, is a very big challenge, not just for us but the whole entire industry. I mean, there's a reason why Sam Altman came down to LA to meet with studios, to try and get stuff moving forward. And I think one of the things that he's forgetting is like, you think of Netflix. Netflix is streaming. In order for that to work, they needed Roku, and they needed Kevin Spacey because [chuckles]...it's crazy to say that, but House of Cards is kind of what made it, right? And Hollywood was mostly boxing them out quite a bit. Same thing with Blockbuster otherwise. They had to drop a hundred million dollars, a large enough bankable star at the time that would really push something forward. And they had to basically really push Roku out there so that they had PMF across the board. What that means, though, is, like, Netflix is paying for content like crazy, right? So, this is kind of enshittification in a process. So, they're paying for content like crazy. So, now Hollywood's making money. They like it. At the studios, they don't love it when their stuff's going there because maybe it's less money, but now they start cutting the seasons short. They start cutting...it's a lot more algorithmic-driven. You have the ad systems that sort of come out. So, now, like, Netflix is not just doing ads where the customer experience is getting worse, but now, also, the business experience for those partners selling stuff is also getting worse, and all that value is getting driven to Netflix. Like, that's the tech system and Hollywood's learned that. But, like, when you're looking at the next adoption, like, they're hesitant for that. Just like a lot of stuff with AI, they're hesitant because they're thinking about all the power and control that they gave up. But you have to show how they're going to make money. You can't just cut costs, right? If you can't show how they're going to make money, you're not going to get adopted. That's kind of what I like there because so much of tech is about saving costs and being more efficient. In the entertainment industry, it's not just those two things. It's how can I make more money? And it's going to, like, ooh, you can monetize your content through training samples and stuff like that. So, our model goes exactly against what the large tech companies have where they want to take content, train on it, like the search engine does, suck the value off Sam Altman's Sora. Ours goes, all right, this is your content. Only you own this. You can take your own content, train it, and then perform this operation on it that is more efficient likewise. And if you choose to monetize it in any way, shape, or form, we can just take the functional space, not all the images and no one will ever see it, and take that functional space for training so that you can actually monetize from that as well. VICTORIA: I love that. Super interesting. Thank you so much for sharing. And do you have any questions for me or for Joe? WENDELL: I've noticed a lot of differences on, like, applications and how systems are built. So, I'm kind of curious about you guys' standpoint about applications, you know, the Apple Vision Pro. Facebook just said they'd start licensing out their AI system, or Meta, whatever. So, you have the comparisons to Android versus iOS that's happening, stuff like that. So, I'm really curious about, like, you guys' thoughts on the Vision Pro and that ecosystem. JOE: Well, I can't speak for all of thoughtbot, but I can say that, to me, it was interesting to see that get released. And it's been interesting to see how aggressively Meta and Apple have been pursuing the various VR markets. Like it reminds me of when television companies and studios worked really hard to get 3D movies to be a thing. WENDELL: [laughs]. JOE: Because I think they just ran out of things that people are asking for. Like, people were interested in getting better resolutions up to a point. Like, they wanted better packaging. But it got to a point where it was like, they didn't want to give anybody anything they were asking for. So, they were like, what if it's in 3D? And, like, for years, it seemed like Apple was really on top of seeing what people really wanted, and being able to present a very well-prepared version of that product before other companies were able to. And, personally, it's not what I saw with the Apple Vision Pro. Like, it wasn't the obvious missing space that was there when the iPhone or the iPad showed up. WENDELL: Yeah, I always go back to, like, the "Why?" question. You know, previously when...even just before we had talked, I was talking about comparative religions, and why that's so valuable is because it really teaches you...again, I've had this conversation before, but the comparative religions, if you think about religion as a tech company, they're always trying to solve why. Like, why did the sun come up? Why did this happen, right? And you always have to do that. So, apply that to technology, Google or Apple, why does this product exist? And when you get to, like, it just existed to make money, I think that's really the 3D thing. Whereas, like, why did the iPhone exist? It existed to solve this problem of being portable on the go and getting information in the way that we communicated, too. VICTORIA: Yeah. I think the Apple Vision Pro appeals to a very specific market segment and that that segment is not me [laughter]. I, actually, during COVID...after...it was, like...yeah, we're still in COVID. But during the pandemic, I moved from DC to California. And to connect with some old friends, I bought a VR headset and decided to go to virtual coffee with them. And it just makes me nauseous. And it actually affects...quite a lot of women get nauseous in VR. For some people, the look—the capability is really exciting. They have the extra money to spend on gadgets, and that's what they like. And it's very appealing, and the, like potential, is really interesting. I just find it for myself. Personally, I'm more drawn to tech that's not maybe cutting edge but solves problems for actual people. And kind of why I'm interested in PrimeLab, what you were mentioning is just how artists can use this technology to protect their creative work. To give that power back to people and that control over their content, I think, is really interesting rather than...I'm not really sure what I would do with the Apple Vision Pro [laughs]. Like, the early ones, I mean, it's cool. It's fun. I definitely enjoy it. Like, I sometimes like to learn about it, but it's not my passionate genre of tech that I normally go for. WENDELL: Going back to what you just said about, like, control, like, part of the thing is because of the hash IDs that we put into place, like, you don't need analytics. You don't need cookies or anything else, like the content holder. Basically, like, if you have a TV set or something and you want to stream content to it, you can actually see that information directly yourself. So, it takes the person generating it and the person viewing it. It forms...we call them function access keys. It forms a one-to-one relationship, basically, where you guys know if you want to know what you want to know, but then you choose to give access to the platform if you want to, which changes the dynamic of control quite a bit. And it's interesting because when you look at platforms like the Apple Vision Pro, and you look at Apple's whole entire system as a whole, just trying to lock in people, I think it's interesting because something like what I just described, Apple can't really stop. It's how compute works. So, if people want to use it, there's nothing they could do to stop it from being used. So, I'm really interested in the product stuff and just more about, like, how...and I'm curious what you guys think on this, too. Especially as you see phones and processors and everything else, I'm really interested in, like, how these things come about, like, how things are actually built and developed and the why for that, like, in the everyday use. So, like, the Apple Watch it started off as a fashion thing, which looked like a money grab, and then the why was, oh yeah, fitness. So, just curious if you guys have seen any other products out there that you're like, oh, this really resonates with me and the why. JOE: Yeah, I'm not really a gadget person, but I think the idea of taking some of the capabilities that we've gotten with the internet and with phones and making them hands-free was interesting. And that, to me, was what I think started pushing the development of products like the Apple Watch or Google Glass. Like, I think that hands-free capability, the trade-off became rewarding in the fitness field, but I think it's more generically applicable. I think that technology it's too obtrusive in other scenarios and too bad at its job to do some of the things it could do. And people got creeped out by Google Glass. But it doesn't really seem like the Vision Pro fits in there. Something being successful hands-free means it becomes less obtrusive, whereas the Vision Pro is like you become a cyborg. VICTORIA: Do you have anything else you would like to promote? WENDELL: I wouldn't say necessarily promote as much as like people with ideas or aspirations, like, I think it's important that you think counter to what everyone else is doing. There's that line of, like, when everyone else is running in one direction, run the other. And it's like, if you have a business or startup idea, really think about your market. Like, think about why you're doing what you're doing, and don't be afraid to just go out there and talk to people. You will get value no matter who you talk to. So, like, I'm a hugely tech-based person. My wife is a therapist, and I learn from her everyday things about emotional intelligence and all kinds of things that I would be an idiot otherwise. But also, learn, like, you can always learn something from someone. Like, take the time to listen to them. Take the time to actually, like, try and figure out what's one thing I can learn from someone, even if, you know, I learn stuff from my daughters even. Like, don't put things in boxes. Like, try to think outside of like, how can I ask a question to learn? VICTORIA: I love that advice. That's great. WENDELL: Have you guys used Suno before? VICTORIA: That's music, right? Music AI. WENDELL: All right, I got to show you guys this. We're going to create you a quick theme song. Like, this is what I mean by, like, it's an interesting solution for why. VICTORIA: That does sound fun. I like the ones...like my friend's a doctor, and she uses AI to take her conversation she's having with patients and automatically fill out her notes. And it saves her, like, 20 hours of documentation every week. Like, I like that kind of app. I'm like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. WENDELL: What's a style of music that you guys really like? JOE: Swedish pop VICTORIA: Like ABBA [laughs]? I'm down for an ABBA Giant Robots theme song. Sounds great. WENDELL: I think you're going to like this. [Music Playing] VICTORIA: These are awesome. They're super fun. Thank you so much. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, you can email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on X @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at: referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guest: Joe Ferris.
Visual Builder Studio requires its data sources to connect to the webpage it produces using REST calls. Therefore, the data source has to provide a REST interface. A simple, easy, secure, and free way to do that is with Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS). In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham chat with Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald about what ORDS can do, how to easily set it up, how to work with it, and how to use it within Visual Builder Studio. Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/develop-fusion-applications-using-visual-builder-studio/122614/ Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/build-visual-applications-using-oracle-visual-builder-studio/110035/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi there! In our last episode, we took a look at model-based development tools, their start as CASE tools, what they morphed into, and how they're currently used in Oracle software development. We're wrapping up the season with this episode today, which will be about how to access Oracle database data through a REST interface created and managed by Oracle REST Data Services, or ORDS, and how to access this data in Visual Builder Studio. 01:03 Nikita: Being able to access Oracle database data through a REST interface over the web is highly useful, but sometimes it can be complicated to create that interface in a programming language. Joe Greenwald, our Senior OCI Learning Solutions Architect and Principal Instructor is back with us one last time this season to tell us more about ORDS, and how it makes it much simpler and easier for us to REST-enable our database for use in tools like Visual Builder Studio. Hi Joe! Tell us a little about what Visual Builder Studio is and why we must REST-enable our data for VBS to be able to use it. 01:40 Joe: Hi Niki, hi Lois! Ok, so, Visual Builder Studio is Oracle's low-code software development and project asset management product for creating graphical webpage front-ends for web applications. It's the tool of choice for designing, building, and implementing all of Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications and is being used by literally tens of thousands of engineers at Oracle now to bring the next generation of Fusion Applications to our customers and the market. It's based on standards like HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. It's highly performant and combined with the Redwood graphical design system and components that we talked about previously, delivers a world-class experience for users. One thing about Visual Builder Studio though: it only works with data sources that have a REST interface. This is unusual. I like to think I've worked with every software development tool that Oracle's created since I joined Oracle in 1992, including some unreleased ones, and all of them allowed you to talk to the database directly. This is the first time that we've released a tool that I know of where we don't do that. Now at first, I was a little put off and wondered how's it going to do this and how much work I would have to do to create a REST interface for some simple tables in the Oracle database. Like, here's one more thing I must do just to create a page that displays data from the database. As it turns out, it's a wise design decision on the part of the designers. It simplifies the data access parts of Visual Builder Studio and makes the data access model common across the different data sources. And, thanks to ORDS, REST-enabling data in Oracle database couldn't be easier! 03:13 Lois: That's cool. We don't want to focus too much on Visual Builder Studio today. We have free courses that teach you how to create service connections to REST services to access the data and all of that. What we actually want to talk with you about is working with Oracle REST Data Service. How easy is it to work with Oracle REST Data Service to add REST support, what we call REST-enable your Oracle Database, and why it is important? Nikita: Yeah, I could use a bit of a refresher on REST myself. Could you describe what REST is, how it works for both the client and server, and what ORDS is doing for us? 03:50 Joe: Sure. So, REST is a way to make a request to a server for a resource using the HTTP web protocol from a client, like your browser, to a web server, which hands off the request to code that handles the request and sends the response back to your client/browser, which then uses it, displays or whatever. So, you can see we have two parts. We have the client, which makes the request, and the server, which handles the request and figures out what the response should be (static, dynamic, or a combination of both) and sends that back to the client. For example, a visual application built with Visual Builder Studio acts as a client making the request, just as your browser makes a request. It's really just a web app built with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, and the JavaScript makes a request to the server on your behalf. Let's say you wish to access your student record within Oracle University. And now, this is a contrived example and it won't actually work, but it's good for illustrative purposes. Oracle University, let's say, publishes the URL for your student data as something like https://oracle.com/oracleuniversity/student/{studentnumber} you put in some kind of number, like the number 23, and if you enter that into your browser address bar and press Enter, then your browser, on your behalf, sends a GET request—what we call an HTTP GET operation—to the web server. When the web server receives the request, it will somehow read the record for student 23, format a response, and send the response back to the client. 05:16 Joe: That's a GET or a READ request. Now, what if you are creating a new student? Well, you fill out a form on the webpage and you click the Submit button. And it sends a POST request, which tells the server to create a new record in its storage mechanism, most likely a database of some form. If you do an update, you change certain fields on the webpage and click the Submit button and this time, an update request is made. If you wanted to delete the record, you'd find the record you want to delete and press the Submit button, and this time a delete request is made. This is the general idea, though there are different ways to do creates and updates that are really irrelevant here. Those requests to the server I mentioned are called HTTP operations and there are several of them. But the four most popular are GET to retrieve data, POST to create a new record on the server, PUT to update a record, and DELETE to remove a record. On the client side, we just need to specify where the record is that we want to retrieve—that's the oracle.com/oracleuniversity/student part of the URL and an identifying value, which makes it unique. So, when I do a GET request on customer or student 23, I'm going to get back a representation of the student data that exists in the student database for a student with ID 23. There should not be more than one of these or that would indicate an error. The response typically comes back in a format of a key:value pair called JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), but it could also be in a Text format, HTML, Excel, PDF, or whatever the server implements and is requested. 06:42 Nikita: OK great! That's on the client side making the request. But what's happening on the server side? Do I need to worry about that if I'm the client? Joe: No, that's the great part. As a client, I don't know, and frankly I'd rather not know what the server's doing or how it does it. I don't want to be dependent on the server implementation at all. I simply want to make a request and the server handles the request and sends a response. Now, just a word about what's on the server. Some data on the server is static like a PDF file or an image or an audio file, for example, and sometimes you'll see that in the URL the file type as an extension, like .pdf, and you get back a PDF file that your browser displays or that you can download to your machine. But with dynamic data, like student data coming out of a database based on the student number, a query is made against a database. The database responds with the data, and that's formatted into some type of data format—typically JSON—and sent back to the client, which then does something with it, like displaying it on a webpage. So, as we can see, the client is fairly simple in the sense that it makes a request, receives the data response, and displays it or does something with it. And that's one of the reasons why the choice to use REST and only REST in Visual Builder Studio is such a wise one. 07:54 Joe: Regardless of the different data sources or the different server implementations or how the data is stored on the server, or any of that, Visual Builder Studio doesn't know and doesn't care. What it sees is the REST request it sends and the response it gets back and then it deals with the response data regardless of how it's implemented on the server. I mentioned the server sends back a representation of the resource, in this case, for example, the student record. That's really where the abbreviation REST comes from: REpresentational State Transformation, which is a long way of saying, bring me back a representation of the resource—the thing—that I'm requesting. Now, of course, the server is a little more complex. On the server side, we would need software that is going to take the request from the web server using some programming language like Java, C#, C++, Python, or maybe even JavaScript in a Node.js application. You have a program that receives a request from the web server, executes the request (typically by connecting to the database if it's a database call), makes the request, receives a data response from the database, formats that into some form, and passes it back to the web server, which then sends it back to the client that requested it. 09:01 Lois: Ok… I think I see. I'm guessing that ORDS gets involved somehow between the client and the server. Joe: Yes, exactly. We can see that the implementation on the server side is where the complexity is. For example, if I implement a student management service in Java, I have to write a bunch of Java code, a lot of which is boilerplate, housekeeping, boring code. For simple database access, it's tedious to have to do this over and over, and if the database changes, it can be even more tedious to maintain that code to handle simple to moderately complex requests. Writing and maintaining software code to just read and write data from the database to pass to a client for a web request is cool the very first time you do it and then gets boring very quickly and it's prone to errors because it's so manual. So, it would be nice if we had a piece of software that could handle the tedious, boring, manual bits of this service. It would receive the request that our client, the browser or Visual Builder Studio for example, is sending, take that request, execute the request against the database for us, receive the response from the database, and then format it for us and send it back to us, without a developer having to write custom code on the server side. And that is what Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) does. 10:13 Joe: ORDS contains a lightweight web server based on the Jetty web server that receives the request from the client, like a browser or Visual Builder Studio or whatever, in the form of a URL, parses the request, generates a query or an update, or an insert or delete, depending on the nature of the HTTP operation sent or requested, and sends it to the database on our behalf. The database executes the request from ORDS, sends back a response to ORDS, and ORDS formats the response for us in the JSON and sends it back to our client. In nutshell, that's it. 10:45 Lois: So ORDS does all that? And it's free? How does it work? Uhm, remember I'm not as technical as you are. Joe: Of course. ORDS is free. It's a lightweight, highly performant Java app that can run in many different modes, from stand-alone on a server to embedded in an application server like WebLogic, to running in the Oracle Cloud with the Oracle Autonomous Database (ADB). When you REST-enable your tables, your web requests are intercepted by ORDS running in ADB. It's optimized for the purpose of handling web requests, connecting to the Oracle database, and sending back formatted responses as JSON. It can also handle more complex requests as well in the form of queries with special parameters. So, you can see what ORDS does for us. It handles the request coming from the client, which could be a browser or Visual Builder Studio or APEX or whatever client—pretty much any client today can make an HTTP call—it handles the call, parses the request, makes the request to the server on our behalf, and of course security is built-in and all of that, and so we don't get to data we're not supposed to see. It receives a response from the database, formats it into the JSON key:value pair format, and sends it back to our client. 12:00 Are you planning to become an Oracle Certified Professional this year? Whether you're a seasoned IT pro or just starting your career, getting certified can give you a significant boost. And don't worry, we've got your back. Join us at one of our cert prep live events in the Oracle University Learning Community. You'll get insider tips from seasoned experts and learn from other professionals' experiences. Plus, once you've earned your certification, you'll become part of our exclusive forum for Oracle-certified users. So, what are you waiting for? Head over to mylearn.oracle.com and create an account to jump-start your journey towards certification today! 12:43 Nikita: Welcome back. So, Joe, then the next question is, what do we do to REST-enable our database? Does that only work for ADB? Joe: This can be done in a couple of different ways. It can be done implicitly, called AutoREST, or explicitly. AutoREST is very convenient. In the case of an ADB database, you log in as the user who owns the structures, select your tables, views, packages, procedures, or functions that you want to REST-enable. Choose REST and then Enable from the menu for the table, view, stored package, procedure, or function and a URL is generated using your POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE for the standard database create, retrieve, update, delete operations. And it's not just for ADB. You can do this in SQL Developer Desktop as well. Then, when you invoke the URL for the service, if you include just the name of the resource, like students, you get the entire collection back. If you add an ID at the end of the URL, like student/23, you get back the data for that specific student back, or whatever the structure is. You can add more complex filter parameters as well. And that's it! Very easy. And, of course, you can apply appropriate security and ORDS enforces it. But you also can create custom code to handle more complex requests. 13:53 Lois: Joe, what if there's custom logic or processing that you want to do when the REST call comes in and you need to write custom code to handle it? Joe: Remember, I said on the server side, we use custom code to retrieve data as well as apply business rules, validations, edits, whatever needs to be done to appropriately handle the REST call. So it's a great question, Lois. When using ORDS, you can write a REST service handler in PL/SQL and SQL, just like if you were writing a stored procedure or a function or a package in the database, which is exactly what you're doing. ORDS exposes your PL/SQL code wrapped in a REST interface with, of course, the necessary security. And since it's PL/SQL, it runs in the database, so it's highly performant, fast, and uses code you're likely already familiar with or maybe already have. Your REST service handler can call existing PL/SQL packages, procedures, and functions. For example, if you created packages with stored procedures and functions that wrap access to your database tables and views, you can REST-enable those stored procedures, functions, and packages, and call them over the web. And maintain the package access you already created. I do want to point out that the recommended way to access your tables and views is through packages, stored procedures, and functions. While you can expose your tables and views directly to REST, should you really do that? In practice, it's generally not a recommended way to do it. Do you want to expose your data in tables and views directly through a REST interface? Ideally, no, access should be through a PL/SQL wrapper, same as it's—hopefully—done today for your client-server applications. 15:26 Nikita: I understand it's easy to generate a simple REST interface for tables and so on to do basic create, retrieve, update, and delete operations. But what's required to create custom code to handle more complex business operations? Joe: The process to create your own custom handlers is a little bit more involved as you would expect. It uses your skills as a PL/SQL programmer, while hiding the details of the REST implementation to let you focus on the logic and processing. Mechanically, you'd begin by creating a module that has a URL associated with it. So, for example, you would create a URL like https://oracle.com/oracleuniversity/studentregistry. Then, within that module, you create a template that names the specific resource—or thing—that you want to work with. For example, student, or course, or registration. 16:15 Joe: Then you create the handler for it. You have a handler to do the read, another handler for the insert, another handler for an update, another handler for a delete, and even possibly multiple handlers for more complex APIs based on your needs and the parameters being passed in. You can create complex URLs with multiple parameters for passing needed information into the PL/SQL procedure, which is going to do the actual programming work for you. There are predefined implicit variables about the message itself that you can use, as well as all the parameters from the URL itself. Now, this is all done in a nice developer interface on the web if you're using SQL Developer Web with ADB or in SQL Developer for the desktop. Either one can do this because under the covers, ORDS is generating and executing the PL/SQL calls necessary to create and expose your web services. It's very easy to work with and test immediately. 17:06 Lois: Joe, how much REST knowledge do I need to use ORDS properly to create REST services? Joe: Well, you should have some basic knowledge of REST, HTTP operations, request and response messages, and JSON, since this is the data format ORDS produces. The developer interface is really not designed for somebody who knows nothing about REST at all; it's not designed to take them step-by-step through everything that needs to be done. It's not wizard-based. Rather, it's an efficient, minimal interface that can be used quickly and easily by someone who has at least some experience building REST services. But, if you have a little knowledge and you understand how REST works and how a REST interface is used and you understand PL/SQL and SQL, you could do quite a lot with only minimal knowledge. It's easy to get started and it's fun to see your data start appearing in webpages formatted for you, with very little or even no code at all as in the case of AutoREST enabling. And ORDS is free and comes as part of the database in ADB as SQL Developer Web and SQL Developer Desktop, both of which are free as well. And SQL Developer Web and SQL Developer Desktop both have a data modeler built into them so you can model your database tables, columns, and keys, and generate and execute the code necessary to create the structures immediately, and they can create graphical models of your database to aid in understanding and communication. Now, while this is not required, modeling your database structures before you build them is most definitely a best practice. 18:29 Nikita: Ok, so now that I have my REST-enabled database tables and all, how do I use them in VBS Designer? Joe: In Visual Builder Studio Designer, you define a service connection by its endpoint and paste the URL for the REST-enabled resource into the wizard, and it generates everything for you by introspecting the REST service. You can test it, see the data shape of the response, and see data returned. You access your REST-enabled data from your database from Visual Builder Studio Designer and use it to populate lists, tables, and forms using the quick start wizards built in. I'll also mention that ORDS provides other capabilities in addition to handling REST calls for the database tables and views. It also exposes over 500 different endpoints for managing your Oracle Database, things like Pluggable Database Management (PDBs), Data Pump, Data Dictionary, Performance, and Monitoring. It's very easy to use and get started with. A great place to start is to create a free, autonomous database in Oracle Cloud, start it up, and then access the database actions. You can start creating tables, columns, and keys, and loading data, or you can load your own scripts, if you've got them, to produce the tables and columns and load them. You can upload the script and run it and it will create your tables and other needed structures. You can then REST-enable them by selecting simple menu options. It's a lot of fun and easy to get started with. 19:47 Lois: So much good stuff today. Thank you, Joe, for being with us today and in the past few weeks and sharing your knowledge with us. Nikita: Yeah, it's been so nice to have you around. Joe: Thank you both! It's been great being here with you. 19:59 Lois: And remember, our Visual Builder courses, Develop Visual Applications with VBS and Develop Fusion Apps with VBS, both show you how to work with a third-party REST service. And our data modeling and design course teaches the fundamentals of data modeling. You can access all these of courses, for free, on mylearn.oracle.com. Join us next week for another episode of the Oracle University Podcast. Until then, I'm Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham signing off! 20:30 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools, which helped make the analysis, design, and implementation phases of software development better, faster, and cheaper, fell out of favor in the mid-'90s. Yet much of what they have to offer remains and is in active use within different Oracle tools. Listen to Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham interview Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald about the origins of CASE tools and model-based development, as well as how they evolved into their current forms. Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/develop-fusion-applications-using-visual-builder-studio/122614/ Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/build-visual-applications-using-oracle-visual-builder-studio/110035/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor with Oracle University, and joining me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi there! In our last episode, we looked at Oracle's Redwood design system and how it helps create world-class apps and user experiences. Today, Joe Greenwald, our Senior Principal OCI Instructor, is back on our podcast. We're going to focus on where model-based development tools came from: their start as CASE tools, how they morphed into today's model-based development tools, and how these tools are currently used in Oracle software development to make developers' lives better. 01:08 Nikita: That's right. It's funny how things that fell out of favor years ago come back and are used to support our app development efforts today. Hi Joe! Joe: Haha! Hi Niki. Hi Lois. 01:18 Lois: Joe, how did you get started with CASE tools? Joe: I was first introduced to computer-aided software engineering tools, called CASE tools, in the late 1980s when I began working with them at Arthur Young consulting and then Knowledgeware corporation in Atlanta, helping customers improve and even automate their software development efforts using structured analysis and design techniques, which were popular and in high use at that time. But it was a pain to have to draw diagrams by hand, redraw them as specifications changed, and then try to maintain them to represent the changes in understanding what we were getting from our analysis and design phase work. CASE tools were used to help us draw the pictures as well as enforce rules and provide a repository so we could share what we were creating with other developers. I was immediately attracted to the idea of using diagrams and graphical images to represent requirements for computer systems. 02:08 Lois: Yeah, you're like me. You're a visual person. Joe: Yes, exactly. So, the idea that I could draw a picture and a computer could turn that into executable code was fascinating to me. Pictures helped us understand what the analysts told us the users wanted, and helped us communicate amongst the teams, and they also helped us validate our understanding with our users. This was a critical aspect because there was a fundamental cognitive disconnect between what the users told the analysts they needed, what the analysts told us the users needed, and what we understood was needed, and what the user actually wanted. There's a famous cartoon, you can probably find this on the web, that shows what the users wanted, what was delivered, and then all the iterations that the different teams go through trying to represent the simple original request. I started using entity relationship diagrams, data flow diagrams, and structure charts to support the structured analysis, design, and information engineering methods that we were using at the time for our clients. Used correctly, these were powerful tools that resulted in higher quality systems because it forced us to answer questions earlier on and not wait until later in the project life cycle, when it's more expensive and difficult to make changes. 03:16 Nikita: So, the idea was to try to get it wrong sooner. Joe: That's right, Niki. We wanted to get our analysis and designs in front of the customer as soon as possible to find out what was wrong with our models and then change the code as early in the life cycle as possible where it was both easier and, more importantly, cheaper to make changes before solidifying it in code. Of course, the key words here are “used correctly,” right? I saw the tools misused many times by those who weren't trained properly or, more typically, by those whose software development methodology, if there even was one, didn't use the tools properly—and of course the tools took the blame. CASE tools at the time held a lot of promise, but one could say vendors were overpromising and under delivering, although I did have a number of clients who were successful with them and could get useful support for their software development life cycle from the use of the tools. Since then, I've been very interested in using tools to make it easier for us to build software. 04:09 Nikita: So, let me ask you Joe, what is your definition of a CASE tool? Joe: I'm glad you asked, Niki, because I think many people have many different definitions. I'm precise about it, and maybe even a bit pedantic with the definition. The definition I use for a CASE tool comprises four things. One, it uses graphics, graphical symbols, and diagrams to represent requirements and business rules for the application. Two, there is a repository, either private, or shared, or both, of models, definitions, objects, requirements, rules, diagrams, and other assets that can be shared, reused, and almost more importantly, tracked. Three, there's a rule-base that prevents you from drawing things that can't be implemented. For example, Visio was widely regarded as a CASE tool, but it really wasn't because it had no rules behind it. You could wire together anything you wanted, but that didn't mean it could be built. Fourth, it generates useful code, and it should do two-way engineering, where code, typically code changed outside the model, can be reverse engineered back into the model and apply updates to the model, and to keep the model and the source code in synchronization. 05:13 Joe: I came up with a good slogan for CASE tools years ago: a good CASE tool should automate the tedious, manual portions of software development. I'd add that one also needs to be smarter than the tools they're using. Which reminds me, interestingly enough, of clients who would pick up CASE tools, thinking that they would make their software development life cycle shorter. But if they weren't already building models for analysis or design, then automating the building of things that they weren't building already was not going to save them time and effort. And some people adopted CASE tools because they were told to or worse, forced to, or they read an article on an airplane, or had a Eureka moment, and they would try to get their entire software development staff to use this new tool, overnight literally, in some cases. Absolutely sheer madness! Tools like this need to be brought into the enterprise in a slow, measured fashion with a pilot project and build upon small successes until people start demanding to use the tools in their own projects once they see the value. And each group, each team would use the CASE tool differently and to a different degree. One size most definitely does not fit all and identifying what the teams' needs are and how the tool can automate and support those needs is an important aspect of adopting a CASE tool. It's funny, almost everyone would agree there's value in creating models and, eventually, generating code from them to get better systems and it should be faster and cheaper, etc. But CASE tools never really penetrated the market more than maybe about 18 to 25%, tops. 06:39 Lois: Huh, why? Why do you think CASE tools were not widely accepted and used? Joe: Well, I don't think it was an issue with the tools so much as it was with a company's software development life cycle, and the culture and politics in the company. And I imagine you're shocked to hear that. Ideally, switching to or adopting automated tools like CASE tools would reduce development time and costs, and improve quality. So it should increase reusability too. But increasing the reusability of code elements and software assets is difficult and requires discipline, commitment, and investment. Also, there can be a significant amount of training required to teach developers, analysts, project managers, and senior managers how to deal with these different forms of life cycles and artifacts: how they get created, how to manage them, and how to use them. When you have project managers or senior managers asking where's the code and you try telling them, “Well, it's gonna take a little while. We're building models and will press the button to generate the code.” That's tough. And that's also another myth. It was never a matter of build all the models, press the button, generate all the code, and be done. It's a very iterative process. 07:40 Joe: I've also found that developers find it very psychologically reinforcing to type code into the keyboard, see it appear on the screen, see it execute, and models were not quite as satisfying in the same way. There was kind of a disconnect. And are still not today. Coders like to code. So using CASE tools and the discipline that went along with them often created issues for customers because it could shine a bright light on the, well let's say, less positive aspects of their existing software development process. And what was seen often wasn't pretty. I had several clients who stopped using CASE tools because it made their poor development process highly visible and harder to ignore. It was actually easier for them to abandon the CASE tools and the benefits of CASE tools than to change their internal processes and culture. CASE tools require discipline, planning, preparation, and thoughtful approaches, and some places just couldn't or wouldn't do that. Now, for those who did have discipline and good software development practices, CASE tools helped them quite a bit—by creating documentation and automating the niggly little manual tasks they were spending a lot of time on. 08:43 Nikita: You've mentioned in the past that CASE tools are still around today, but we don't call them that. Have they morphed into something else? And if so, what? Joe: Ah, so the term Computer Aided Software Engineering morphed into something more acceptable in the ‘90s as vendors overpromised and under-delivered, because many people still saw value and do today see value in creating models to help with understanding, and even automating some aspects of software code development. The term model-based development arose with the idea that you could build small models of what you want to develop and then use that to guide and help with manual code development. And frankly just not using the word CASE was a benefit. “Oh we're not doing CASE tools, but we'll still build pictures and do stuff.” So, it could be automated and generate useful code as well as documentation. And this was both easy to use and easier to manage, and I think the industry and the tools themselves were maturing. 09:35 Joe: So, model-based development took off and the idea of building a model to represent your understanding of the system became popular. And it was funny because people were saying that these were not CASE tools, this was something different, oh for sure, when of course it was pretty much the same thing: rule-based graphical modeling with a repository that created and read code—just named differently. And as I go through this, it reminds me of an interesting anecdote that's given about US President Abraham Lincoln. He once asked someone, “If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” Now, while you're thinking about that, I'll go ahead and give you the correct answer. It's four. You can call a dog's tail anything you want, but it still has four legs. You can call your tools whatever you want, but you still have the idea of building graphical representations of requirements based on rules, and generating code and engineering in both directions. 10:29 Did you know that Oracle University offers free courses on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure? You'll find training on everything from cloud computing, database, and security to artificial intelligence and machine learning, all free to subscribers. So, what are you waiting for? Pick a topic, leverage the Oracle University Learning Community to ask questions, and then sit for your certification. Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 10:58 Nikita: Welcome back! Joe, how did you come to Oracle and its CASE tools? Joe: I joined Oracle in 1992 teaching the Oracle CASE tool Designer. It was focused on structured analysis and design, and could generate database Data Definition Language (DDL) for creating databases. And it was quite good at it and could reverse engineer databases as well. And it could generate Oracle Forms and Reports – character mode at first, and then GUI. But it was in the early days of the tool and there was definitely room for improvement, or as we would say opportunities for enhancement, and it could be hard to learn and work with. It didn't do round-trip engineering of reading Oracle Forms code and updating the Designer models, though some of that came later. So now you had an issue where you could generate an application as a starting point, but then you had to go in and modify the code, and the code would get updated, but the models wouldn't get updated and so little by little they'd go out of sync with the code, and it just became a big mess. But a lot of people saw that you could develop parts of the application and data definition in models and save time, and that led to what we call model-based development, where we use models for some aspects but not all. We use models where it makes sense and hand code where we need to code. 12:04 Lois: Right, so the two can coexist. Joe, how have model-based development tools been used at Oracle? Are they still in use? Joe: Absolutely! And I'll start with my favorite CASE tool at Oracle, uhm excuse me, model-based development tool. Oracle SOA Suite is my idea of a what a model-based development tool should be. We create graphical diagrams to represent the flow of messages and message processing in web services—both SOAP and REST interfaces—with logic handled by other diagrammers and models. We have models for logic, human interaction, and rules processing. All this is captured in XML metadata and displayed as nice, colored diagrams that are converted to source code once deployed to the server. The reason I like it so much is Oracle SOA Suite addressed a fundamental problem and weakness in using modeling tools that generated code. It doesn't let the developer touch the generated code. I worked with many different CASE tools over the years, and they all suffered from a fundamental flaw. Analysts and developers would create the models, generate the code, eventually put it into production, and then, if there was a bug in the code, the developer would fix the code rather than change the model. For example, if a bug was found at 10:30 at night, people would get dragged out of bed to come down and fix things. What they should have done is update the model and then generate the new code. But late at night or in a crunch, who's going to do that, right? They would fix the code and say they'd go back and update the model tomorrow. But as we know, tomorrow never comes, and so little by little, the model goes out of synchronization with the actual source code, and eventually people just stopped doing models. 13:33 Joe: And this just happened more and more until the use of CASE tools started diminishing—why would I build a model and have to maintain it to just maintain the code? Why do two separate things? Time is too valuable. So, the problem of creating models and generating code, and then maintaining the code and not the model was a problem in the industry. And I think it certainly hurt the adoption and progress of CASE tool adoption. This is one of the reasons why Oracle SOA Suite is my favorite CASE tool…because you never have access to the actual generated code. You are forced to change the model to get the new code deployed. Period. Problem solved. Well, SOA Suite does allow post- deployment changes, of course, and that can introduce consistency issues and while they're easier to handle, we still have them! So even there, there's an issue. 14:15 Nikita: How and where are modeling tools used in current Oracle software development applications? Joe: While the use of CASE tools and even the name CASE fell out of favor in the early to mid-90s, the idea of using graphical diagrams to capture requirements and generate useful code does live on through to today. If you know what to look for, you can see elements of model-based design throughout all the Oracle tools. Oracle tools successfully use diagrams, rules, and code generation, but only in certain areas where it clearly makes sense and in well-defined boundaries. Let's start with the software development environment that I work with most often, which is Visual Builder Studio. Its design environment uses a modeling tool to model relationships between Business Objects, which is customer data that can have parent-child relationships, and represent and store customer data in tables. It uses a form of entity relationship diagram with cardinality – meaning how many of these are related to how many of those – to model parent-child relationships, including processing requirements like deleting children if a parent is deleted. The Business Object diagrammer displays your business objects and their relationships, and even lets you create new relationships, modify the business objects, and even create new business objects. You can do all your work in the diagram and the correct code is generated. And you can display the diagram for the code that you created by hand. And the two stay in sync. There's also a diagramming tool to design the page and page flow navigation between the pages in the web application itself. You can work in code or you can work in the diagram (either one or both), and both are updated at the same time. Visual Builder Studio uses a lot of two-way design and engineering. 15:48 Joe: Visual Builder Studio Page Designer allows you to work in code if you want to write HTML, JavaScript, and JSON code, or work in Design mode and drag and drop components onto the page designer canvas, set properties, and both update each other. It's very well done. Very well integrated. Now, oddly enough, even though I am a model-based developer, I find I do most of my work in Visual Builder Studio Designer in the text-based interface because it's so easy to use. I use the diagrammers to document and share my work, and communicate with other team members and customers. While I think it's not being used quite so much anymore, Oracle's JDeveloper and application development framework, ADF, includes built-in tools for doing Unified Modeling Language (UML) modeling. You can create object-oriented class models, generate Java code, reverse engineer Java code, and it updates the model for you. You can also generate the code for mapping Java objects to relational tables. And this has been the heart of data access for ADF Business Components (ADFBC), which is the data layer of Oracle Fusion Apps, for 20 years, although that is being replaced these days. 16:51 Lois: So, these are application development tools for crafting web applications. But do we have any tools like this for the database? Joe: Yes, Lois. We do. Another Oracle tool that uses model-based development functionality is the OCI automated database actions. Here you can define tables, columns, and keys. You can also REST-enable your tables, procedures, and functions. Oracle SQL Developer for the web is included with OCI or Oracle SQL Developer on the desktop has a robust and comprehensive data modeler that allows you to do full blown entity relationship diagramming and generate code that can be implemented through execution in the database. Now that's actually the desktop version that has the full-blown diagrammer but you also have some of that in the OCI database actions as well. But the desktop version goes further than that. You can reverse engineer the existing database, generate models from it, modify the models, and then generate the delta, the difference code, to allow you to update an existing database structure based on the change in the model. It is very powerful and highly sophisticated, and I do strongly recommend looking at it. And Oracle's APEX (Application Express) has SQL workshop, where you can see a graphic representation of the tables and the relationships between the tables, and even build SQL statements graphically. 18:05 Nikita: It's time for us to wrap up today but I think it's safe to say that model-based development tools are still with us. Any final thoughts, Joe? Joe: Well, actually today I wonder why more people don't model. I've been on multiple projects and worked with multiple clients where there's no graphical modeling whatsoever—not even a diagram of the database design and the relationships between tables and foreign keys. And I just don't understand that. One thing I don't see very much in current CASE or model-based tools is enabling impact analysis. This is another thing I don't see a lot. I've learned, in many years of working with these tools, to appreciate performing impact analysis. Meaning if I make a change to this thing here, how many other places are going to be impacted? How many other changes am I going to have to make? Something like Visual Builder Studio Designer is very good at this. If you make a change to the spelling of a variable let's say in one place, it'll change everywhere that it is referenced and used. And you can do a Find in files to find every place something is used, but it's still not quite going the full hundred percent and allowing me to do a cross-application impact analysis. If I want to change this one thing here, how many other things will be impacted across applications? But it's a start. And I will say in talking to the Visual Builder Studio Architect, he understands the value of impact analysis. We'll see where the tool goes in the future. And this is not a commitment of future direction, of course. It would appear the next step is using AI to listen to our needs and generate the necessary code from it, maybe potentially bypassing models entirely or creating models as a by-product to aid in communication and understanding. We know a picture's worth a 1000 words and it's as true today as it's ever been, and I don't see that going away anytime soon. 19:41 Lois: Thanks a lot, Joe! It's been so nice to hear about your journey and learn about the history of CASE tools, where they started and where they are now. Joe: Thanks Lois and Niki. Nikita: Join us next week for our final episode of this series on building the next generation of Oracle Cloud Apps with Visual Builder Studio. Until then, this is Nikita Abraham… Lois: And Lois Houston, signing off! 20:03 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
Redwood is a state-of-the-art graphical interface that defines the look and feel of the new Oracle Cloud Redwood Applications. In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald, take a closer look at the intent behind the design and development aspects of the new Redwood experience. They also explore Redwood page templates and components. Developing Redwood Applications with Visual Builder: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/learning-path/developing-redwood-applications-with-visual-builder/112791 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor. Nikita: Hi everyone! Last week, we discussed how Visual Builder Studio can be used to extend Oracle Fusion Apps. Lois: That's right, Niki. In today's episode, we will focus on Oracle's Redwood design system and how it helps us create stunning, world-class enterprise applications and user experiences. 00:56 Nikita: Yeah, Redwood is the basis for all the new Oracle Cloud Applications being re-designed, developed, and delivered. To tell us more, we have Senior OCI Learning Solutions Architect and Principal Instructor Joe Greenwald, who's been working with Oracle software development tools since the early 90s and is responsible for OU's Visual Builder Studio and Redwood course content. Lois: Hi Joe! Thanks for being with us today. 01:21 Joe: Hi Lois. Hi Niki. I am excited to join you on this episode because with the release of 24A Fusion applications, we are encouraging all our customers to adopt the new Redwood design system and components, and take advantage of the world-class look and feel of the new Redwood user experience. Redwood represents a new approach and direction for us at Oracle, and we're excited to have our customers benefit from it. 01:44 Nikita: Joe, you've been working with Oracle user interface development tools and frameworks for a long time. How and why is Redwood different? Joe: I joined Oracle in 1992, and the first Oracle user interface I experienced was Oracle Forms. And that was the character mode. I came from a background of Smalltalk and its amazing, pioneering graphical user interface (GUI) design capabilities. I worked at Apple and I developed my own GUIs for a few years on PCs and Macs. So, Character Mode Forms, what we used to call DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) screens, was a shock, to say the least. Since then, I've worked with almost every user interface and development platform Oracle has created: Character Mode Forms, GUI Forms, Power Objects, HyperCard on the Macintosh, that was pre-OS X by the way, Sedona, written in native C++ and ActiveX and OLE, which didn't make it to a product but appeared in other things later, ADF Faces, which uses Java to generate HTML pages, and APEX, which uses PL/SQL to generate HTML pages. And I've worked with and wrote training classes for Java Swing, an excellent GUI framework for event-driven desktop and enterprise applications, but it wasn't designed for the web. So, it's with pleasure that I introduce you to the Redwood design system, easily the best effort I've ever seen, from the look and feel of holistic user-goal-centered design philosophy and approach to the cutting-edge WYSIWYG design tools. 03:11 Lois: Joe, is Redwood just another set of styles, colors, and fonts, albeit very nice-looking ones? Joe: The Redwood platform is new for Oracle, and it represents a significant change, not just in the look and feel, colors, fonts, and styles, I mean that too, but it's also a fundamental change in how Oracle is creating, designing, and imagining user interfaces. As you may be aware, all Oracle Cloud Applications are being re-designed, re-engineered, and re-rebuilt from the ground up, with significant changes to both back-end and front-end architectures. The front end is being redesigned, re-developed, and re-created in pure HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript using Visual Builder Studio and its design-time browser-based Integrated Development Environment. The back end is being re-architected, re-designed, and implemented in a modern microservice architecture for Oracle Cloud using Kubernetes and other modern technologies that improve performance and work better in the cloud than our current legacy architecture. The new Oracle Cloud Applications platform uses Redwood for its design system—its tools, its patterns, its components, and page templates. Redwood is a richer and more productive platform to create solutions while still being cost-effective for Oracle. It encourages a transformation of the fundamental user experience, emphasizing identifying, meeting, and understanding end users' goals and how the applications are used. 04:34 Nikita: Joe, do you think Oracle's user interface has been improved with Redwood? In what ways has the UI changed? Joe: Yes, absolutely. Redwood has changed a lot of things. When I joined Oracle back in the '90s, there was effectively no user interface division or UI team. There was no user interface lab—and that was started in the mid-‘90s—and I was asked to give product usability feedback and participate in UI tests and experiments in those labs. I also helped test the products I was teaching at the time. I actually distinctly remember having to take a week to train users on Oracle's Designer CASE tool product just to prep the participants enough to perform usability testing. I can still hear the UI lab manager shaking her head and saying any product that requires a week of training to do usability testing has usability issues! And if you're like me and you've been around Oracle long enough, you know that Oracle's not always been known for its user interfaces and been known to release products that look like they were designed by two or more different companies. All that has changed with Redwood. With Redwood, there's a new internal design group that oversees the design choices of all development teams that develop products. This includes a design system review and an ongoing audit process to ensure that all the products being released, whether Fusion apps or something else, all look and feel similar so it looks like it's designed by a single company with a single thought in mind. Which it is. 06:00 Joe: There's a deeper, consistent commitment in identifying user needs, understanding how the applications are being used, and how they meet those user needs through things like telemetry: gathering metrics from the actual components and the Redwood system itself to see how the applications are being used, what's working well, and what isn't. This telemetry is available to us here at Oracle, and we use it to fine tune the applications' usability and purpose. 06:25 Lois: That's really interesting, Joe. So, it's a fundamental change in the way we're doing things. What about the GUI components themselves? Are these more sophisticated than simple GUI components like buttons and text fields? Joe: The graphical components themselves are at a much higher level, more comprehensive, and work better together. And in Redwood, everything is a component. And I'm not just talking about things like input text fields and buttons, though it applies to these more fine-grained components as well. Leveraging Oracle's deep experience in building enterprise applications, we've incorporated that knowledge into creating page templates so that the structure and look and feel of the page is fixed based on our internal design standards. The developer has control over certain portions of it, but the overall look and feel of the page is controlled by Oracle. So there is consistency of look and feel within and across applications. These page templates come with predefined functionalities: headers, titles, properties, and variables to manipulate content and settings, slots for other components to hold like search fields, collections, contextual information, badges, and images, as well as primary and secondary actions, and variables for events and event handling through Visual Builder action chains, which handle the various actions and processing of the request on the page. And all these page templates and components are responsive, meaning they respond to the change in the size of the page and the orientation. So, when you move from a desktop to a handheld mobile device or a tablet, they respond appropriately and consistently to deliver a clean, easy-to-use interface and experience. 07:58 Nikita: You mentioned WYSIWYG design tools and their integration with Visual Builder Studio's integrated development environment. How does Redwood work with Visual Builder Studio? Joe: This is easily one of my most favorite aspects about Redwood and the integration with Visual Builder Studio Designer. The components and page templates are responsive at runtime as well as responsive at design time! In over 30 years of working with Oracle software development products, this is the first development system and integrated development environment I've seen Oracle produce where what you see is what you get at design time. Now, with products such as Designer and JDeveloper ADF Faces and even APEX—all those page-generation types of products—you have to generate the page, deploy it, and only then can you view the final page to see whether it meets the needs of your user interface. For example, with Designer, there were literally hundreds of configuration parameters that you could set to control how forms and reports looked when they were generated —down to how many buttons on a row or how many rows to a page, that sort of thing, all done in text mode. Then you'd generate and run the page to see what the result was and then go back and modify things until you got what you wanted. 09:05 Joe: I remember hearing the product managers for Oracle ADF Faces being asked…well, a customer asked, “What happens if I put this component here and this component here? What will the page look like?” and they'd say, “I don't know. Render the page and let's see.” That's just crazy talk. With Redwood and its integration with Visual Builder Studio Designer, what you see on the page at design time is literally what you get. And if I make the page narrower or I even convert it to a mobile display while in the Designer itself, I immediately see what the page looks like in that new mode. Everything just moves accordingly, at design time. For example, when changing to a mobile UI, everything stacks up nicely; the components adjust to the page size and change right there in the design environment. Again, I can't emphasize enough the simple luxury of being able to see exactly what the user is going to see on my page and having the ability to change the resolution, orientation, and screen size, and it changes right there immediately in my design environment. 10:01 Lois: I'm intrigued by the idea of page templates that are managed by Oracle but still leave room for the developer to customize aspects of the look and feel and functionality. How does that work? Joe: Well, the page templates themselves represent the typical pages you would most likely use in an enterprise application. Things like a welcome page, a search page, and edit and create pages, and a couple of different ways to display summary information, including foldout pages, though this is not an exhaustive list of course. Not only do they provide a logical and complete starting point for the layout of the page itself, but they also include built-in functionality. These templates include functionality for buttons, primary and secondary actions, and areas for holding contextual information, badges, avatars, and images. And this is all built right into the page, and all of them use variables to describe the contents for the various parts, so the contents can change programmatically as the variables' contents change, if necessary. 10:59 Do you have an idea for a new course or learning opportunity? We'd love to hear it! Visit the Oracle University Learning Community and share your thoughts with us on the Idea Incubator. Your suggestion could find a place in future development projects. Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 11:19 Nikita: Welcome back! So, Joe, let's say I'm a developer. How do I get started working with Redwood? Joe: One of the easiest ways to do it is to use Visual Builder Studio Designer and create a new visual application. If you're creating a standalone, bespoke custom application, you can choose a Redwood starter template, which will include all the Redwood components and page templates automatically. Or, if you're extending and customizing an Oracle Fusion application, Redwood is already included. Either way, when you create a new page, you have a choice of different page templates—welcome page templates, edit pages, search pages, etc. —and all you have to do is choose a page that you want and begin configuring it. And actually if you make a mistake, it's easy to switch page templates. All the components, page templates, and so on have documentation right there inside Visual Builder Studio Designer, and we do recommend that you read through the documentation first to get an understanding of what the use case for that template is and how to use it. And some components are more granular, like a collection container which holds a collection of rows of a list or a table and provides capabilities like toolbars and other actions that are already built and defined. You decide what actions you want and then use predefined event listeners that are triggered when an event occurs in the application—like a button being clicked or a row being selected—which kicks off a series of actions to be performed. 12:38 Lois: That sounds easy enough if you know what you're doing. Joe, what are some of the more common pages and what are they used for? Joe: Redwood page templates can be broken down into categories. There are overview templates like the welcome page template, which has a nice banner, colors, and illustrations that can be used for a welcoming page—like for entering a new application or a new logical section of the application. The dashboard landing page template displays key information values and their charts and graphs, which can come from Oracle Analytics, and automatically switches the display depending on which set of data is selected. The detail templates include a general overview, which presents read-only information related to a single record or resource. The item overview gives you a small panel to view summary information (for example, information on a customer) and in the main section, you can view details like all the orders for that customer. And you can even navigate through a set of customers, clicking arrows for next-previous navigation. And that's all built in. There's no programming required. The fold-out page template folds out horizontally to show you individual panels with more detail that can be displayed about the subject being retrieved as well as overflow and drill-down areas. And there's a collection detail template that will display a list with additional details about the selected item (for example, an order and its order line items). 13:52 Joe: The smart search page does exactly what it says. It has a search component that you use to filter or search the data coming back from the REST data sources and then display the results in a list or a table. You define the filter yourself and apply it using different kinds of comparators, so you can look for strings that start with certain values or contain values, or numerical values that are equal to or less than, depending on what you're filtering for. And then there are the transactional templates, which are meant to make changes. This includes both the simple create and edit and advanced create and edit templates. The simple create and edit page template edits a single record or creates a single record. And the advanced page template works well if you're working with master-detail, parent-child type relationships. Let's say you want to view the parent and create children for it or even create a parent and the children at the same time. And there's a Gantt chart page for project management–type tracking and a guided process page for multiple-step processes and there's a data management page template specifically for viewing and editing data collections like Excel spreadsheets. 14:50 Nikita: You mentioned that there's a design system behind all this. How is this used, and how does the customer benefit from it? Joe: Redwood comprises both a design system and a development system. The design system has a series of steps that we follow here at Oracle and can suggest that you, our customers and partners, can follow as well. This includes understanding the problem, articulating the vision for the page and the application (what it should do), identifying the proper Redwood page templates to use, adding detail and refining the design and then using a number of different mechanisms, including PowerPoint or Figma design tools to specify the design for development, and then monitor engagement in the real world. These are the steps that we follow here at Oracle. The Redwood development process starts with learning how to use Redwood components and templates using the documentation and other content from redwood.oracle.com and Visual Builder Studio. Then it's about understanding the design created by the design team, learning more about components and templates for your application, specifically the ones you're going to use, how they work, and how they work together. Then developing your application using Visual Builder Studio Designer, and finally improving and refining your application. Now, right now, as I mentioned, telemetry is available to us here at Oracle so we can get a sense of the feedback on the pages of how components are being used and where time is being spent, and we use that to tune the designs and components being used. That telemetry data may be available to customers in the future. Now, when you go to redwood.oracle.com, you can access the Redwood pattern book that shows you in detail all the different page templates that are available: smart search page, data grid, welcome page, dashboard landing page, and so on, and you can select these and read more about them as well as the actual design specifications that were used to build the pages—defining what they do and what they respond to. They provide a lot of detailed information about the templates and components, how they work and how they're intended to be used. 16:45 Lois: That's a lot of great resources available. But what if I don't have access to Visual Builder Studio Designer? Can I still see how Redwood looks and behaves? Joe: Well, if you go to redwood.oracle.com, you can log in and work with the Redwood reference application, which is a live application working with live data. It was created to show off the various page templates and components, their look and feel and functionality from the Redwood design and development systems. This is an order management application, so you can do things like view filtered pending orders, create new orders, manage orders, and view information about customers and inventory. It uses the different page templates to show you how the application can perform. 17:23 Nikita: I assume there are common aspects to how these page templates are designed, built, and intended to be used. Is that a good way to begin understanding how to work with them? Becoming familiar with their common properties and functionality? Joe: Absolutely! Good point! All pages have titles, and most have primary and secondary actions that can be triggered through a variety of GUI events, like clicking a button or a link or selecting something in a list or a table. The transactional page templates include validation groups that validate whether the data is correct before it is submitted, as well as a message dialog that can pop up if there are unsaved changes and someone tries to leave the page. All the pages can use variables to display information or set properties and can easily display specific contextual information about records that have been retrieved, like adding the Order Number or Customer Name and Number to the page title or section headers. 18:13 Lois: If I were a developer, I'd be really excited to get started! So, let's say I'm a developer. What's the best way to begin learning about Redwood, Joe? Joe: A great place to start learning about the Redwood design and development system is at the redwood.oracle.com page I mentioned. We have many different pages that describe the philosophy and fundamental basis for Redwood, the ideas and intent behind it, and how we're using it here at Oracle. It also has a list of all the different page templates and components you can use and a link to the Redwood reference application where you can sign in and try it yourself. In addition, we at Oracle University offer a course called Design and Develop Redwood Applications, and in there, we have both lecture content as well as hands-on practices where you build a lightweight version of the Redwood reference application using data from the Fusion apps application, as well as the pages that I talked about: the welcome page, detail pages, transactional pages, and the dashboard landing page. And you'll see how those pages are designed and constructed while building them yourself. It's very important though to take one of the free Visual Builder Developer courses first: either Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio and/or Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio before you try to work through the practices in the Redwood course because it uses a lot of Visual Builder Designer technology. You'll get a lot more out of the Redwood practices if you understand the basics of Visual Builder Studio first. The Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio course is probably a better place to start unless you know for a fact you will be focusing on extending Oracle Fusion Applications using Visual Builder Studio. Now, a lot of the content is the same between the two courses as they share much of the same technology and architectures. 19:53 Lois: Ok, so Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio and Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio…all on mylearn.oracle.com and all free for anyone who wants to take them, right? Joe: Yes, exactly. And the free Redwood learning path leads to an Associate certification. While our courses are a great place to start in preparing for your certification exam, they are not, of course, by themselves sufficient to pass and you will want to study and be familiar with the redwood.oracle.com content as well. The learning path is free, but you do have to pay for the certification exam. 20:29 Nikita: Thanks for those tips, Joe, and we appreciate you joining us today. Joe: Thanks for having me! Lois: Join us next week when we'll discuss how model-based development is still alive and well today. Until next time, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 20:45 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
What do you need to start customizing the next generation of Oracle Fusion Apps? How do you create new pages for business processes? What level of expertise do you require for this? Join Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham as they get answers to all these questions and more from Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald. Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/develop-fusion-applications-using-visual-builder-studio/122614/ Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/build-visual-applications-using-oracle-visual-builder-studio/110035/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor. Nikita: Hi everyone! Last week, we were introduced to Visual Builder Studio and the Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit, also known as JET. Lois: Our friend and Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald is back with us today to talk about how to extend Oracle Cloud Applications that are being built using Visual Builder for its front-end. Nikita: That's right. All Fusion Applications are being redesigned and rebuilt using Visual Builder. And we'll find out more about that from Joe. Hi Joe! Thanks for being with us today. Joe: Hi Lois! Hi Niki! My pleasure to be here. 01:09 Nikita: Joe, tell us a little about what's happening with the redesign and re-architecture of Oracle Cloud Applications using Visual Builder Studio, or VBS. I hear some very exciting changes are coming that are important for our customers and partners. Joe: That's right, Niki. Oracle is redesigning and rebuilding its entire suite of Fusion Cloud Applications, over 330 different products, utilizing over 60,000 engineers — that is “60,” not “16” — at Oracle to develop the next generation of Oracle Fusion Applications. What's most exciting is that the same tools the engineers are using to accomplish this are available to our partners and our customers to use to extend the functionality and capabilities of Fusion Applications to meet their custom needs and processes. 01:54 Lois: That's pretty awesome! We want to use this time today to ask you about extensions, the types of extensions you can create, and how to use Visual Builder Studio to create those extensions. Nikita: Yeah, can we start with you telling us what an extension is? I've gotten the sense that Oracle uses the term extension as both a noun and a verb and that's a bit confusing to me. 02:15 Joe: Yeah, good catch, Niki. Yes, Oracle does use the term extension in two ways: both as a noun and a verb. As a noun, an extension is a container for the code changes that you make to your applications. Basically, it's a Git repository that Oracle creates and manages for you. So, the extension container holds the code changes you make to your page layouts: the fields, their positioning, showing and hiding fields, that sort of thing, as well as page functionality. These code changes you make are stored in the extension and it is this extension with your code changes that is merged with the main Git branch eventually and then deployed using continuous integration/continuous deployment jobs defined in Visual Builder Studio, which manages the project and its assets. Your extension is a Git branch that is an asset of the project. Once your extension code is merged with the main branch and deployed, then the next time someone brings up the application, they'll see the changes you've made in the app. 03:08 Lois: And as a verb? Joe: As a verb, extension means to extend the functionality and the look and feel of the application, though I prefer the term customization or configuration to describe this aspect, as the documentation does, and to avoid confusion, though I'll admit I'm not always consistent about the terms I use. 03:26 Lois: What types of customizations, or extensions, and I'm using the verb now, are available for Fusion Apps in Visual Builder Studio? Joe: There are three different ways Fusion Apps can be customized effectively, configured, or extended. The first way is what we call a basic extension, where you're rearranging hiding, or showing, or moving around fields and sections on the page that have been set up to be extendable by the Fusion Application development teams. Things like hiding fields, showing fields, hiding sections, showing sections… Nikita: So fairly basic actions… Joe: Yeah exactly and they can be done in Visual Builder Studio Designer by people with minimal VB training, Visual Builder training. And, most recently, if you have access to it, you can do it in the new Express mode, where the page shows you just those things you can work with and just the tools you need to work with the page. This is new and makes it much easier for folks who are not highly technical to make basic changes to the page layout. 04:18 Lois: People like me! That sounds easy enough. Joe: And the next type of extension is more of an intermediate change and requires some training with Visual Builder Studio because you're creating rules that govern the display of layouts based on certain conditions on the page. These are highly flexible, powerful, and useful for creating customized page layouts based on a variety of factors from page size and orientation to the role of the person using it to values in the actual fields on the page itself. These rules can be combined to create complex rule-based conditions that display exactly what the user should see, given the conditions of the page and their role. I would also include making changes to action chains, which execute sequences of behaviors and navigation, and the actual structure of the application, but this is more advanced. Lastly, is creating mashup applications, which are stand-alone Visual Builder visual applications, which use data from Fusion apps, and customer data sources, like their own database tables, and potentially third-party APIs to create brand new pages and applications with new functionality, new processes, new procedures, new displays, all of which look just like Fusion Applications and use the same data as Fusion applications. 05:27 Lois: Joe, how do I get started if I want to extend a page? Joe: The easiest way to do it is to open a page in Fusion Applications and then select Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio from the Profile menu. You're then prompted for a project to hold the Git repository for the extension container. And since there's probably already one that exists, after you select the project, an extension Git container is assigned to you. Unless this is the very first time the application has been extended in which case it creates an extension for you. When creating customizations or configurations, we recommend that each application be done in its own separate project. So, for example, if you're working on Customer Experience Sales, you might do it in Project A and if you're working on extensions with HCM, you might do it in Project B. And if you decide to create your own pages and flows in your own app, you might do that in Project C. 06:13 Nikita: But why do you need to do this? Joe: That's just to keep things nice and separate and organized. The tool, Visual Builder Studio, doesn't really care, but it makes for cleaner development and can help with the management of the development teams. 06:23 Nikita: Ok, Joe, I have a question. How do I know if the page I'm on in Fusion Apps can be edited in Visual Builder? I know there are a lot of legacy pages still out there and they can co-exist with the new VB-based pages. Joe: If the URL of the page you're on has the word /Redwood in it instead of /faces, then you know this is a page that was created using Visual Builder Studio and you'll be able to extend it and make changes to it using the Edit in Visual Builder Studio option. So, if you select Edit in Visual Builder Studio, then the page you are on opens inside Visual Builder Studio Designer and you can make changes to any part of the page that has been explicitly enabled for extension by the development team. 07:02 Lois: That's an important part, right? The application is not extendable by default. Joe: That's right, Lois. It is all locked down and you can't make any changes to it by default. The development team must specifically enable certain parts of the page: sections, fields, layouts, variables, types, action chains, etc. as extendable for you to be able to make changes to it. This ensures the changes the development team makes to the application in the future won't break your extensions. And conversely, the development team can choose to not extend portions that they do not want you to touch or mess with. Then if they do change that bit of the app in the future, it won't break the application and you won't get a big surprise. So, using the Edit page in Visual Builder Studio, you can make both basic changes, like moving, showing, and hiding fields and sections, as well as the more intermediate types of configurations, like using dynamic components to create rule-based layouts that change dynamically based on several conditions such as page size, roles of the user, and field values on the page itself. 08:00 Nikita: What happens if two developers make changes and essentially overwrite each other's customizations — say one hides a field and another later exposes it? Joe: Well, whoever commits their changes and deploys last wins. The other developer's changes get overwritten. So, this is something the team would want to consider carefully. It is possible to roll back to an earlier version if one must. And this can be done in Visual Builder Studio — the part that manages project assets like Git repositories. And there are Oracle blog posts about how to do that if you're interested in learning more. 08:29 Lois: Joe, earlier you mentioned creating new pages and flows, but so far you've only talked about modifying existing extendable pages. How do I create new pages and flows? Joe: In a Visual Builder extension, a set of pages and flows is called an App UI. When I use the terms pages and flows, what I'm talking about is a set of pages that are logically related—whatever logical means to the designer and developer—in a group called a flow that you can navigate between. But you can also navigate between flows and even between applications. So, without getting too technical, each application has a default flow, which has a default page where that flow starts when the app first comes up. So, you can think of an App UI as a collection of flows and their pages, and a URL that accesses the default flow and its default page. That's the page you would see first when accessing that URL. Of course, this can be configured and changed by the developer, as needed. Now, when Oracle creates the original application (for example, digital sales, helpdesk, or something like that), we create an App UI, which contains the pages and flows for that application and is the “entry point” into the app, accessing that App UI's default flow and its default page and then things flow on from there. 09:40 Joe: Partners and customers can create their own application extensions that are dependent on an Oracle application and even create their own App UI – their own sets of pages and flows to accommodate their own processing and workflow needs. This gives them the ability to add their own processes and rules, and still leverage and navigate to the core application that Oracle built. For example, say Oracle delivered digital sales as an Oracle Cloud Application built using Visual Builder to a customer and the customer needs to add a few pages to do some validation or other type of business processing before entering the digital sales application. What the customer does, in this case, is create a new extension of the Oracle Digital Sales app and an App UI of their own, which would be the set of pages and flows that contain the processing they want to start with before then navigating into the digital sales app to use Oracle's application. 10:31 Nikita: Wait, did I hear that correctly? We're creating an extension of an extension or creating an extension on an existing extension? Joe: I know, right? I realize this can sound confusing the first time you hear it or the second time or even the third time. It took me a while to get my head around what they're talking about. Let's start with a Fusion application. In a Fusion application, everything is an extension of something. This is just how the code base and the architecture are organized and how they manage the Git repositories and the code base itself. So, Oracle created a base application called the Unified App. The Unified Application contains the basic page structure and common functionality needed for all applications. For example, it contains the header at the top that has the profile and the footer at the bottom of the page that has that little Ask Oracle icon. 11:16 Joe: Within that page, between the header and the footer, are the pages that are created by the developers, whether they be Oracle engineers or partners or customers. They display the contents of the page with the data and the layouts and all of that. In a sense, you can think of the Unified App as an index page, the starting page of the web application. Though that's not completely true technically, it's good enough for illustrative purposes. So, Oracle starts with the Unified App and then a development team extends that Unified App to build their product. This is how digital sales did it. This is how customer experience did it. This is how helpdesk did it. They start with the Unified App and they extend that and create an App UI that contains the flows and pages for their specific application, and then add functionality for all the pages and flows, as needed for the design. Partners and customers can then create a new extension that extends the Oracle Application and add their own App UI and their own URL if they want their pages accessed first, before navigating to the Oracle application. For example, if the digital sales application has functionality you'd like to leverage, like it has data services or fragments or page layouts that you want to reuse or other things, you extend the digital sales application, and this extension holds your code changes. You could then create a new App UI, and once deployed, users can use that URL for the new App UI to access your new pages. And your page can then navigate to the Oracle app when it needs to. Though I will say to date, we're really not seeing much demand for this particular use case, but it is possible. 12:42 Lois: Is that the only option available to customers and partners—to extend an existing Oracle application? Joe: No, Lois. We're seeing customers and partners create brand new Fusion applications of their own, based on the Unified App Oracle created. In a sense, doing the same thing that our development teams here are doing. Remember, I said an Oracle development team starts with the Unified App, which has common functionality and look and feel for all applications, and then extends that to add business rules processing, flows, App UI, whatever they need for their specific Oracle application. We're seeing our partners and customers wanting to build their own applications. Maybe a customer or partner wants to create a Time & Expense application and leverage the Fusion application data and the APIs available, but define their own flows, their own pages, their own processing. This is very easy to do. They'd start by extending the Unified App just like the Oracle development teams do, and then build their own App UI and within that, their own flows, pages, and custom processing. The nice thing about it is that the application looks and works and feels just like a Fusion application and it appears alongside other Fusion applications, because it is a Fusion application. 13:52 Did you know that the Oracle University Learning Community regularly holds live events hosted by Oracle expert instructors. Find out how to prepare for your certification exams. Learn about the latest technology advances and features. Ask questions in real time and learn from an Oracle subject matter expert. From Ask Me Anything about certification to Ask the Instructor coaching sessions, you'll be able to achieve your learning goals for 2024 in no time. Join a live event today and witness firsthand the transformative power of the Oracle University Learning Community. Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 14:33 Nikita: Welcome back! So Joe, it sounds like there are two different paths or life cycles to create extensions for future applications in Visual Builder Studio. Is that correct? Joe: Yes, exactly. So one path to extending the functionality of Fusion apps is to edit the page in Visual Builder Studio, which opens the page in Visual Builder Designer, and you then make changes to the existing pages, depending on what the development team has made extendable. 14:58 Nikita: But you can't create new pages and flows in this scenario, right? Joe: This is strictly about modifying an existing page. The other path is creating a new application extension, which is a new application from scratch or extending an existing Oracle application or even an existing partner or customer application. Again, we're not seeing this typically being done too much. Most partners and customers create new applications or make customizations to existing pages. But the architecture does support it. So, your partner might create a new application based on the production app released by Oracle, and you could extend their application. Or a development team at your site could extend Oracle's application and you could then extend that team's application. This is mechanically possible, although I question the use case behind that. Usually, we see our apps being extended – becoming a dependency when there's code that can be leveraged or reused for a new app and its new App UI. 15:49 Lois: Joe, what did you mean when you say one extension is a dependency of another? Can you talk a bit about dependencies, what that means, how it looks to the developer? Joe: When you extend an application, it becomes a dependency to your application, and you get access to all the resources within that dependency that are marked as extendable by the developer who created that extension. Most useful are things like service connections to REST APIs from Fusion apps data sources, reusable code fragments, and layouts that you can leverage in those cases where you want to create a new App UI. When an extension is listed as a dependency, you'll see this graphically in Visual Builder Studio Designer. When you see an extension listed as a dependency, it means you can reference any of that extension's resources that have been marked extendable by the developer. Recall all resources are closed off or hidden by default, but development teams can mark resources as open to being extended and reused, and then you can see and use those resources. So, you can easily add and remove extensions as dependencies in Visual Builder Designer as needed. Now, this can be a nice way to modularize and reuse your resources and assets. To summarize: I can modify an existing page – this is most common, extend an existing application and create a new App UI – which is not common, or I can extend the unified app to create a new app and a new App UI and add other extensions as dependencies, as needed, to leverage their services, fragments, and layouts when building my own pages – this is pretty common as well. 17:14 Nikita: There's one thing I'd like to come back to, Joe. You mentioned something called a mashup application earlier. Can you tell us a little more about that? Joe: To recap: I mentioned a couple of different ways that you can extend Fusion applications. One is changing layouts or creating rule-based layouts. You can also extend existing apps and create your own App UI on top of them or create your own Fusion app from scratch. But these are Fusion apps and they have restrictions. These can only run within the Fusion applications ecosystem, which means they can only be accessed by people who are registered in the Fusion application ecosystem, and there are some other restrictions (for example, in terms of the APIs you can access). And you also have no access to customer data tables. Mashup applications use the stand-alone Visual Builder Cloud Service, which enables you to create custom visual applications. These are visual applications that run outside the Fusion apps ecosystem. Users only need to be identified to the Identity Cloud Service, IDCS, and then they can get access to these mashup apps, depending on the roles and privileges given to them, of course. These mashup applications can access Fusion apps API data, as well as customer database tables, Excel spreadsheet data, CSV files, and third-party APIs. And all this data can appear on the same page, in the same app, using the same Redwood components, so they look and work just like Fusion applications. 18:32 Lois: I know in the past there's been some friction to making changes in Fusion applications. Partner and customer developers use different tools than the ones Oracle engineers use and there have been some deployment issues. To wrap up things, can you tell us why customers should use Visual Builder Studio to customize Fusion apps? Joe: Glad to, Lois. The big benefit to customers is that they are using the exact same tools, Visual Builder Designer for page design work and Visual Builder Studio for project and code management, to build the customizations and extensions that Oracle is using to create the applications and extensions that are delivered to them. I can't emphasize enough how big a deal this is and how wonderful it is for the customer. We're constantly making the Visual Builder Designer interface easier and easier to work with. We're currently releasing a new version of Visual Builder Designer—the Express mode version. This version of Designer is lightweight and has only the necessary features required to allow you to make changes to pages and layouts, and create and manage dynamic rule-based layouts. If you need more (for example, you need to create service connections, fragments, and do a lot more of that type of advanced work), then use the advanced version of the Designer. Both are available to you, assuming that your user has the appropriate permission and the Fusion app you are using has implemented Express Designer. 19:46 Lois: OK Joe, what courses does Oracle University offer for me if I wanted to learn more about developing extensions for Fusion apps and creating mashup apps using Visual Builder Studio? Joe: Oracle University has several courses. We have the Develop Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio, which focuses on creating the stand-alone custom bespoke mashup visual applications. We also have our Design and Develop Redwood Applications course, which goes into detail about working with the Redwood page templates and components. All these courses are free and available today. And all you need to do is log in to mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 20:19 Nikita: Thank you so much, Joe, for joining us today. This has been so educational. Joe: It's been lovely talking to you both. Thank you. Lois: Yeah, my brain is full. Thanks Joe. Until next week, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 20:32 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
The next generation of front-end user interfaces for Oracle Fusion Applications is being built using Visual Builder Studio and Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit. However, many of the terms associated with these tools can be confusing. In this episode, Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham are joined by Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald. Together, they take you through the different terminologies, how they relate to each other, and how they can be used to deliver the new Oracle Fusion Applications as well as stand-alone, bespoke visual web applications. Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/develop-fusion-applications-using-visual-builder-studio/122614/ Build Visual Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/build-visual-applications-using-oracle-visual-builder-studio/110035/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started. 00:26 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor. Nikita: Hi everyone! Today, we're starting a new season on building the next generation of Oracle Cloud Apps with Visual Builder Studio. 00:45 Lois: And I'm so excited that we have someone really special to take us through the next few episodes. Joe Greenwald is joining us. Joe is a Senior Principal OCI Instructor with Oracle University. He joined Oracle in 1992 with an extensive background in CASE tools. Since then, he has used and taught all of Oracle's software development tools, including Oracle Forms, APEX, JDeveloper ADF, as well as all the Fusion Middleware courses. Currently, Joe is responsible for the Visual Builder Studio and Redwood development courses, including extending Fusion Applications with Visual Builder. 01:22 Nikita: In today's episode, we're going to ask Joe about Visual Builder Studio and Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit, also known as JET. Together, they form the basis of the technology for the next generation of front-end user interfaces for Oracle Fusion Applications, as well as many other Oracle applications, including most Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) interfaces. Lois: We'll look at the different terminologies and technologies, how they relate to each other, and how they deliver the new Oracle Fusion applications and stand-alone, bespoke visual web applications. Hi Joe! Thanks for being with us today. 01:57 Joe: Hi Lois! Hi Niki! I'm glad to be here. Nikita: Joe, I'm somewhat thrown by the terminology around Visual Builder, Visual Studio, and JET. Can you help streamline that for us? Lois: Yeah, things that are named the same sometimes refer to different things, and sometimes things with a different name refer to the same thing. 02:15 Joe: Yeah, I know where you're coming from. So, let's start with Visual Builder Studio. It's abbreviated as VBS and can go by a number of different names. Some of the most well-known ones are Visual Builder Studio, VBS, Visual Builder, Visual Builder Stand-Alone, and Visual Builder Cloud Service. Clearly, this can be very confusing. For the purposes of these episodes as well as the training courses I create, I use certain definitions. 02:39 Lois: Can you take us through those? Joe: Absolutely, Lois. Visual Builder Studio refers to a product that comes free with an OCI account and allows you to manage your project-related assets. This includes the project itself, which is a container for all of its assets. You can assign teams to your projects, as well as secure the project and declare roles for the different team members. You manage GIT repositories with full graphical and command-line GIT support, define package, build, and deploy jobs, and create and run continuous integration/continuous deployment graphical and code-managed pipelines for your applications. These can be visual applications, created using the Visual Builder Integrated Development Environment, the IDE, or non-visual apps, such as Java microservices, docker builds, NPM apps, and things like that. And you can define environments, which determine where your build jobs can be deployed. You can also define issues, which allow you to identify, track, and manage things like bugs, defects, and enhancements. And these can be tracked in code review merge requests and build jobs, and be mapped to agile sprints and scrum boards. There's also support for wikis for team collaboration, code snippets, and the management of the repository and the project itself. So, VBS supports code reviews before code is merged into GIT branches for package, build, and deploy jobs using merge requests. 03:57 Nikita: OK, what exactly do you mean by that? Joe: Great. So, for example, you could have developers working in one GIT branch and when they're done, they would push their private code changes into that remote branch. Then, they'd submit a merge request and their changes would be reviewed. Once the changes are approved, their code branch is merged into the main branch and then automatically runs a CI/CD package (continuous integration/continuous deployment) package, build, and deploy job on the code. Also, the CI/CD package, build, and deploy jobs can run against any branches, not just the main branch. So Visual Builder Studio is intended for managing the project and all of its assets. 04:37 Lois: So Joe, what are the different tools used in developing web applications? Joe: Well, Visual Builder, Visual Builder Studio Designer, Visual Builder Designer, Visual Builder Design-Time, Visual Builder Cloud Service, Visual Builder Stand-Alone all kind of get lumped together. You can kinda see why. What I'm referring to here are the tools that we use to build a visual web application composed of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) for metadata. I call this Visual Builder Designer. This is an Integrated Development Environment, it's the “IDE” which runs in your browser. You use a combination of drag and drop, setting properties, and writing and modifying custom and generated code to develop your web applications. You work within a workspace, which is your own private copy of a remote Git branch. When you're ready to start development work, you open an existing workspace or create a new one based on a clone of the remote branch you want to work on. Typically, a new branch would be created for the development work or you would join an existing branch. 05:35 Nikita: What's a workspace, Joe? Is it like my personal laptop and drive? Joe: A workspace is your own private code area that stores any changes you make on the Oracle servers, so your code changes are never lost—even when working in a browser-based, network-based tool. A good analogy is, say I was working at home on my own machine. And I would make a copy of a remote GIT branch and then copy that code down to my local machine, make my code changes, do my testing, etc. and then commit my work—create a logical save point periodically—and then when I'm ready, I'd push that code up into the remote branch so it can be reviewed and merged with the main branch. My local machine is my workspace. However, since this code is hosted up by Oracle on our servers, and the code and the IDE are all running in your browser, the workspace is a simulation of a local work area on your own computer. So, the workspace is a hosted allocation of resources for you that's private. Other people can't see what's going on in your workspace. Your workspace has a clone of the remote branch that you're working with and the changes you make are isolated to your cloned code in your workspace. 06:38 Lois: Ok… the code is actually hosted on the server, so each time you make a change in the browser, the change is written back to the server? Is it possible that you might lose your edits if there's a networking interruption? Joe: I want to emphasize that while I started out not personally being a fan of web-based integrated development environments, I have been using these tools for over three years and in all that time, while I have lost a connection at times—networks are still subject to interruptions—I've never lost any changes that I've made. Ever. 07:08 Nikita: Is there a way to save where you are in your work so that you could go back to it later if you need to? Joe: Yes, Niki, you're asking about commits and savepoints, like in a Git repository or a Git branch. When you reach a logical stopping or development point in your work, you would create a commit or a savepoint. And when you're ready, you would push that committed code in your workspace up to the remote branch where it can be reviewed and then eventually merged, usually with the main Git branch, and then continuous integration/continuous package and deployment build jobs are run. Now, I'm only giving you a high-level overview, but we cover all this and much more in detail with hands-on practices in our Visual Builder developer courses. Right now, I'm just trying to give you a sense of how these different tools are used. 07:49 Lois: Yes, that makes sense, Joe. It's a lot to cover in a short amount of time. Now, we've discussed the Visual Builder Designer IDE and workspace. But can you tell us more about Visual Builder Cloud Service and stand-alone environments? What are they used for? What features do they provide? Are they the same or different things? Joe: Visual Builder Cloud Service or Visual Builder Stand-Alone, as it's sometimes called, is a service that Oracle hosts on its servers. It provides hosting for the deployed web application source code as well as database tables for business objects that we build and maintain to store your customer data. This data can come from XLS or CSV files, or even your own Oracle database customer table data. A custom REST proxy makes calls to external third-party REST services on your behalf and supports several popular authentication mechanisms. There is also integration with the Identity Cloud Service (IDCS) to manage users and their access to your web apps. 08:47 Joe: Visual Builder Cloud Service is a for-fee product. You pay licensing fees for how much you use because it's a hosted service. Visual Builder Studio, the project asset management aspect I discussed earlier, is free with a standard OCI license. Now, keep in mind these are separate from something like Visual Builder Design Time and the service that's running in Fusion application environments. What I'm talking about now is creating standalone, bespoke, custom visual applications. These are applications that are built using industry-standard HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and JSON for metadata and are hosted on the Oracle servers. 09:27 Are you looking for practical use cases to help you plan and apply configurations that solve real-world challenges? With the new Applied Learning courses for Cloud Applications, you'll be able to practically apply the concepts learned in our implementation courses and work through case studies featuring key decisions and configurations encountered during a typical Oracle Cloud Applications implementation. Applied learning scenarios are currently available for General Ledger, Payables, Receivables, Accounting Hub, Global Human Resources, Talent Management, Inventory, and Procurement, with many more to come! Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 10:09 Nikita: Welcome back! Joe, you said Visual Builder Cloud Service or Stand-Alone is a for-fee service. Is there a way I can learn about using Visual Builder Designer to build bespoke visual applications without a fee? Joe: Yes. Actually, we've added an option where you can run the Visual Builder Designer and learn how to create web apps without using the app hosting or the business object database that stores your customer data or the REST proxy for authentication or the Identity Cloud Service. So you don't get those features, but you can still learn the fundamentals of developing with Visual Builder Designer. You can call third-party APIs, you can download the source, and run it locally, for example, in a Tomcat server. This is a great and free way to learn how to develop with the Visual Builder Designer. 10:52 Lois: Joe, I want to know more about the kinds of apps you can build in VB Designer and the capabilities that VB Cloud Service provides. Joe: Visual Builder Designer allows you to build custom, bespoke web applications made of interactive webpages; flows of pages for navigation; events that respond when things happen in the app, for example, GUI events like a button is clicked or values are entered into a text field; variables to store state and the ability to make REST calls, all from your browser. These applications have full access to the Oracle Fusion Applications APIs, given that you have the right security permissions and credentials of course. They can access your customer business data as business objects in our internally hosted database tables or your own customer database tables. They can access third-party APIs, and all these different data sources can appear in the same visual application, on the same page, at the same time. They use the identity cloud service to identify which users can log in and authenticate against the application. And they all use the new Redwood graphical user interface components and page templates, so they have the same look and feel of all Oracle applications. 11:59 Nikita: But what if you're building or extending Oracle Fusion Applications? Don't things change a little bit? Joe: Good point, Niki. Yes. While you still work within Visual Builder Studio, that doesn't change, VBS maintains your project and all your project-related assets, that is still the same. However, in this case, there is no separate hosted Visual Builder Cloud Service or Stand-Alone instance. In this case, Visual Builder is hosted inside of Fusion apps itself as part of the installation. I won't go into the details of how the architecture works, but the Visual Builder instance that you're running your code against is part of Fusion applications and is included in the architecture as well as the billing. All your code changes are maintained and stored within a single container called an extension. And this extension is a Git repository that is created for you, or you can create it yourself, depending on how you choose to work within Visual Builder Studio. You create an extension to hold the source code changes that provide a customization or configuration. This means making a change to an existing page or a set of pages or even adding new pages and flows to your Oracle Fusion Applications. You use Visual Builder Studio and Visual Builder Designer in a similar way as to how you would use them for bespoke stand-alone visual applications. 13:10 Lois: I'm trying to envision how this workflow is used. How is it different from bespoke VB app development? Or is it different at all? Joe: So, recall that the Visual Builder Designer is effectively the Integrated Development Environment, the IDE, where you make your code changes by working with both the raw HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript code, if need be, or the Page Designer for drag and drop, and setting properties and then Live mode to test your work. You use a version of VB Designer to view and modify your customizations, and the code is stored in a Git repository called an extension. So, in that sense, the work of developing pages and flows and such is the same. You still start by creating or, more typically, joining a project and then either create a new extension from scratch or base it on an existing application, or go directly to the page that you want to edit and, on that page, select from your profile menu to edit in Visual Builder Studio. Now, this is a different lifecycle path from bespoke visual applications. With them, you're not extending an app or modifying individual pages in the same way. 14:11 Joe: You get a choice of which project you want to add your extension to when you're working with Fusion apps and potentially which repository to store your customizations, unless one already exists and then it's assigned automatically to hold your code changes. So you make your changes and edits to the portions of the application that have been opened for extensibility by the development team. This is another difference. Once you make your code changes, the workflow is pretty much the same as for a bespoke visual application: do your development work, commit your changes, push your changes to the remote branch. And then typically, your code is reviewed and if the code passes and is approved, it's merged with the main branch. Then, the package and deploy jobs run to deploy the main code to the production environment or whatever environment you're targeting. And once the package and deploy jobs complete, the code base is updated and users who log in see the changes that you've made. 15:00 Nikita: You mentioned creating apps that combine data from Fusion cloud, applications, customer data, and third-party APIs into one page. Why is it necessary? Why can't you just do all that in one Fusion Applications extension? Joe: When you create extensions, you are working within the Oracle Fusion Applications ecosystem, that's what they actually call it, which includes a defined a set of users who have been predefined and are, therefore, known to Fusion Applications. So, if you're a user and you're not part of that Fusion Apps ecosystem, you can't access the pages. Period. That's how Fusion Apps works to maintain its security and integrity. Secondly, you're working pretty much solely with the Fusion Applications APIs data sources coming directly from Fusion Applications, which are also available to you when you're creating bespoke visual apps. When you're working with Fusion Applications in Visual Builder, you don't have access to these business objects that give you access to your own customer database data through Visual Builder-generated REST APIs. Business objects are available only to bespoke visual applications in the hosted VB Cloud Service instance. So, your data sources are restricted to the Oracle Fusion Applications APIs and some third-party APIs that work within a narrow set of authentication mechanisms currently, although there are plans to expand this in the future. A mashup app that allows you now to access all these data sources while creating apps that leverage the Redwood Component System, so they look and work like Fusion Apps. They're a highly popular option for our partners and customers. 16:25 Lois: So, to review, we have two different approaches. You can create a visual application using the for-fee, hosted Visual Builder Cloud Service/Stand-Alone or the one that comes with Oracle Integration Cloud, or you can use the extension architecture for Fusion applications, where you use the designer and create your extensions, and the code is delivered and deployed to Fusion applications code. You haven't talked about JET yet though, Joe. What is that? Joe: So, JET is an abbreviation. It stands for Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit and JET is the underlying technology that makes Visual Builder, visual applications, and Visual Builder Extensions for Fusion Applications possible. Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit provides a module-based, open-source toolkit that leverages modern JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS3, and HTML5 to deliver web applications. It's targeted at JavaScript developers working on client-side applications. It is not for backend development. It's a collection of popular, powerful JavaScript libraries and a set of Oracle-contributed JavaScript libraries that make it very simple, easy, and efficient to build front-end applications that can consume and interact with Oracle products and services, especially Oracle Cloud services, but of course it can work with any type of third-party API. 17:42 Nikita: How are JET applications architected, Joe, and how does that relate to Visual Builder pages and flows? Joe: The architecture of JET applications is what's called a single page architecture. We've all seen these. These are where you have a single web page—think of your index page that provides the header and footer for your web page—and then the middle portion or the middle content of the page, represented by modules, allow you to navigate from one page or module to another. It also provides the data mapping so that the data elements in the variables and the state of the application, as well as the graphical user interface elements that provide the fields and functionality for the interface for the application, these are all maintained on the client side. If you're working in pure JET, then you work with these modules at the raw JavaScript code level. And there are a lot of JavaScript developers who want to work like this and create their custom applications from the code up, so to speak. However, it also provides the basis for Visual Builder visual applications and Fusion Apps visual extensions in Visual Builder. 18:38 Lois: How does JET support VB Apps? You didn't talk much about having to write a bunch of JavaScript and HTML5 so I got the impression that this is all done for you by VB Designer? Joe: Visual Builder applications are composed of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript code that is usually generated by the developer when she drags and drops components on to the page designer canvas or sets properties or creates action chains to respond to events. But there's also a lot of JavaScript object notation (JSON) metadata created at the time that describes the pages, the flows, the navigation, the REST services, the variables, their data types, and other assets needed for the app to function. This JSON metadata is translated at runtime using a large JavaScript extension toolkit library called the Visual Builder Runtime that runs in the browser and real time translates the metadata and other assets in the Visual Builder source code into JET code and assets, which are actually executed at runtime. And it's very quick, very fast, very efficient, and provides a layer of abstraction between the raw JET code and the Visual Builder architecture of pages, flows, action chains for executing code and events to handle things that occur in the user interface, including saving the state in variables that are mapped to GUI components. For example, if you have an Input text component, you need to have a variable to store the value that was entered into that Input text component between page refreshes. The data can move from the Input text component to the variable, and from the variable to that Input text component if it's changed programmatically, for example. So, JET manages binding these data values to variables and the UI components on the page. So, a change to a variable value or a change to the contents of the component causes the others to change automatically. Now, this is only a small part of what JET and the frameworks and libraries it uses do for the applications. JET also provides more complex GUI components like lists and tables, and selection lists, and check boxes, and all the sorts of things you would expect in a modern GUI application. 20:34 Nikita: You mentioned a layer of abstraction between Visual Builder Studio Designer and JET. What's the benefit of working in Visual Builder Designer versus JET itself? Joe: The benefit of Visual Builder is that you work at a higher level of abstraction than having to get down into the more detailed levels of deep JavaScript code, working with modules, data mappings, HTML code, single page architecture navigation, and the related functionalities. You can work at a higher level, a graphical level, where you can drag and drop things onto a design canvas and set properties. The VB architecture insulates you from the more technical bits of JET. Now, this frees the developer to concentrate more on application and page design, implementing logic and business rules, and creating a pleasing workflow and look and feel for the user. This keeps them from having to get caught up in the details of getting this working at the code level. Now if needed, you can write custom JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3 code, though much less than in a JET app, and all that is part of the VB application source, which becomes part of the code used by JET to execute the application itself. And yet it all works seamlessly together. 21:35 Lois: Joe, I know we have courses in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. But does a developer getting ready to work in Visual Builder Designer have to go take those courses first or can they start working in VB Designer right away? Joe: Yeah, that question does often comes up: Do I need to learn JET to work with Visual Builder? No, you don't. That's all taken care for you in the products themselves. I don't really think it helps that much to learn JET if you are going to be a VB developer. In some ways, it could even be a bit distracting since some of things you learn to do in JET, you would have to unlearn or not do so much because of what VB does it for you. The things you would have to do manually in code in JET are done for you. This is why we call VB a low code development tool. I mean, you certainly can if you want to, but I would spend more time learning about the different GUI components, page templates, the Visual Builder architecture — events, action chains, and the data provider variables and types. Now, I know JET myself. I started with that before learning Visual Builder, but I use very little of my JET knowledge as a VB developer. Visual Builder Designer provides a nice, abstracted, clean layer of modern visual development on top of JET, while leveraging the power and flexibility of JET and keeping the lower-level details out of my way. 22:46 Nikita: Joe, where can I go to get started with Visual Builder? Joe: Well, for more information, I recommend you take a look at our Develop Fusion Applications course if you're working with Fusion Applications and Visual Builder Studio. The other course is Develop Visual Applications with Visual Builder Studio and that's if you're creating stand-alone bespoke applications. Both these courses are free. We also have a comprehensive course that covers JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, and while it's not required that you take that to be successful, it can be helpful down the road. I would say that some basic knowledge of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript will certainly support you and serve you well when working with Visual Builder. You learn more as you go along and you find that you need to create more sophisticated applications. I would also mention that a lot of the look and feel of the applications in Visual Builder visual applications and Fusion apps extensions and customizations come through JET components, JET styles, and JET variables, and CSS variables, so that's something that you would want to pursue at some point. There's a JET cookbook out there. You can search for Oracle JET and look for the JET cookbook and that's a good introduction to all of that. 23:47 Lois: Joe, thank you so much for joining us today. We're really looking forward to having you back next week to discuss extending Oracle Fusion Applications with Visual Builder Studio. Joe: Thanks for having me. Nikita: And if you want to learn about some of the courses Joe mentioned, visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. Until next time, this is Nikita Abraham… Lois: And Lois Houston signing off! 24:09 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
Mike Ferguson in the Morning 03-11-24 Good Ol' Lyin' Joe as fact-checks show numerous problems with his SOTU address. Story here: https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/08/fact-checking-bidens-state-union-address/ Biden botched his comments on the death of Laken Riley and hot mic comment about Netanyahu. Story here: https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2024/03/10/house-speaker-mike-johnson-blasts-bidens-apology-over-the-word-illegal-what-an-embarrasment-n2171189 U.S. military looks at building Gaza pier. Story here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13183565/gaza-aid-port-republican-presses-biden-hamas-soldiers.html Attorney Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight and former congressional investigator, talks about defending whistleblowers, testifying before Congress, and holding the government and big business accountable for their actions. With his Senate-confirmed position on the Merit Systems Protection Board, Tristan is widely respected for his unrivaled "inside knowledge" of the federal whistleblower protection process. He has over a decade of experience investigating waste, fraud, abuse, and cronyism in the federal government. (@EMPOWR_us) (https://empowr.us/) (https://empowr.us/leadership/) Issues at the southern border. NewsTalkSTL website: https://newstalkstl.com/ Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/NewsTalkSTL Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL Livestream 24/7: http://bit.ly/newstalkstlstreamSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Joe Alvarez's incredible journey from addiction and begging for money to becoming a high-level performance coach is a testament to the power of adversity and resilience. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Joe struggled with feelings of insecurity and turned to alcohol and drugs to mask his pain. However, a pivotal moment in the hospital led him to seek a higher purpose. After leaving his successful corporate job, Joe found his passion in helping others transform their lives. He realized that addiction is just a symptom of deeper issues, and he wanted to help a wider range of people overcome their challenges. Through mindset shifts, self-reflection, and acceptance, Joe has embraced a life of growth and service. His story is a reminder that even in our darkest moments, there is always hope for change and transformation. .................................................................... Connect with Joe Alvarez: Instagram : joe_alvarez_coaching Website: Joealvarezcoaching.com .................................................................... Rising Strong Links: Get new episode notifications: bit.ly/risingstrongupdates FREE Resource: Create More ME TIME: bit.ly/metimeresource 1:1 Resilience and Wellbeing Coaching: bit.ly/risingstrongdiscoverycall Calming Journals: bit.ly/calmingjournals Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/risingstrongpodcast Facebook page - send your reviews and comments via the 'comment' button here: www.facebook.com/risingstrongpodcast WIN SWAG: Email a screenshot of your 5-star review for a chance to win some Rising Strong swag! Lisa@LisaKBoehm.com ......................................................................... TRANSCRIPT: Lisa/host: How do you go from an addict asking for money to a high level performance coach? Today's guest, Joe Alvarez, is going to share his story of adversity and resilience. Welcome to rising strong mental health and resilience. I'm Lisa, and until 2015, I had a pretty charmed life. Then everything fell apart when I lost my daughter in a car accident and found myself in the darkest spot imaginable. Rather than let grief take me down and destroy me, I seek out inspiring people like Joe to keep me going. Joe is a coach and expert in subconscious self transformation who helps people all over the world transform their lives and businesses. This fall, I saw today's guest, Joe Alvarez, speak at an event. It was the we see you mental health event in Regina. He only spoke for 15 or 20 minutes, but I was drawn to his story and I knew I wanted to share it with all of you. Welcome to the show, Joe. Joe: Thank you. Glad to be here. Lisa/host: So, people look at you now as a peak performance and mindset coach and may assume that you have never struggled, that you just had everything all figured out. But it wasn't always that way. Tell us about your life before your pivotal change. Joe: Sure. Thank you for that. Thanks for the question. And it's interesting, right? I mean, people look at me now and assume that I've never struggled. And I would just invert that, right? And saying, because I did struggle, that's why I have a pretty good life today. I mean, it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a life beyond the wildest dreams that I could ever drum up once upon a time. I grew up, born and raised in Saskatchewan to immigrant parents from the Philippines. Father's side are all spaniard descents to give all the listeners an image or a vision. I mean, I grew up with a circle of friends where know had a deeper tan than everybody else. And to keep a long story short, from a very young age, I didn't feel quite comfortable in my skin. And for me, there was being a class clown. There was being a funny guy, being the daredevil. And then ultimately, fast forward. I got introduced to alcohol, and that seemed to work for me, where the feelings of insecurity, not being good enough, not being tall enough, funny enough, good looking enough, white enough, seemed to have disappeared upon the ingestion of alcohol. And so when I got introduced to the effect of that, for me, it seemed to quote unquote, work, meaning it was a solution to the problems that ailed me. I had a really good childhood growing up my family were amazing, and I know that they did the best that they can with the resources that they had and all of their history and their baggage. I did experience abuse when I was young, sexual abuse as I was young, that had a huge impact on me as well. And I began to lead this life where I wanted to present to the world a stage character that I knew in my heart I didn't deserve. And that would call for more alcohol and eventually drugs. And in my addiction just took off to new levels and new heights. I had moved all over the country. I'd moved down to the Caribbean. I tried to change all the external environments, be it groups of friends, cities, schools, jobs, girlfriends. And I always found myself in the same place feeling lonely, despaired, riddled with fear, regret, shame, and continuous addiction. So, yeah, that's how my life was before. Towards the end, it was very bad. And for people that know me or listeners that know me, they might find it hard to believe. But at the was, I can remember very distinctly being outside a shoppers drug Mart in, know, begging for money because I didn't have any. It was a pretty low spot in my life. In the same token, Lisa, it's know, when I look back on that today, it's like, I am absolutely grateful for that. Why? Because I wouldn't know the level of freedom and happiness that I know now if it weren't for the pain and suffering that I experienced. Lisa/host: Isn't that the truth? I mirror those words exactly. So here you were outside the shoppers drug mart in Montreal asking for money. You ended up in the hospital at some point. Can you tell us about that? Joe: Yeah. So it wasn't long after that. It must have been within 24 hours after that, or 48 hours, I ended up in the hospital. October 2, 2006. Not in good shape. My lungs were collapsing. I hadn't slept in about eight days, almost as a result from substances and alcohol and whatnot. Hadn't bathed, hadn't eaten, was going into a bit of a psychosis. But I ended up in the hospital in really not good shape. Just to put it plainly, the way that I ended up there, I probably shouldn't be speaking to you now. Obviously, the universe had other plans for me, but the day that I ended up there. So I'm 170 pounds soaking wet. I'm lacking any luster in my skin. I mean, I'm pale, my eyes are just hollow. I've got tubes coming out of me, and I'm in this hospital gown because I had tried to get sober before, to no avail. But the idea came wilt, being in the hospital and on my hospital bed. There's got to be some sort of divine intervention that needs to happen with me, because the way that I was living my life was for the purposes of leaving here. And I sat up in my hospital bed and I looked at the nurse, and I said, nurse, could you tell me where the chapel is? I'm not a practicing religious person. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We all have our own subjective beliefs. I did grow up with religion, however. And that day, in that moment, I knew I just needed something greater than me. There was a level of humility that I had never touched before, meaning the way that I look at humility is just about being right sized. You're not better, you're not worse. You're just exactly where you're at. And there was another depth of honesty that happened, which was a moment of clarity, which I got to see my life for, what it really was, what it had really become. I asked the nurse where the chapel was. In the hospital. It's in the Montreal general. And she said, Mr. Alvarez, you're an intensive care unit. You should probably stay here. And I said, ma'am? And I demanded, please tell me where the Chapel is. And she pointed me in that direction, and I went into that chapel that day, Lisa. And as soon as I crossed the threshold of the doors to enter it, I buckled to my knees and I wept like I hadn't wept. Not cried. I wept like I hadn't wept before. I don't know exactly what happened. Like, I could put some language to it to try to describe it to you, but I think the experience in itself was ineffable, difficult to describe with words. What I've come to believe is spiritual in nature. And I basically said something to the effect of, like, if there is some sort of creative intelligence, God source, whatever you want to call it, if that exists, would you give me another chance at this thing called life? And I will serve you to the day I leave this body. Within less than 24 hours, a man came to see me, a man who had openly shared his journey with recovery and sobriety and whatnot. He took me by the hand, and that's where my journey began. Really? That's incredible. Lisa/host: I've got goosebumps from head to toe thinking about that ask and that delivery. Sometimes we just have to ask. Joe: Yeah, often we don't ask. Yeah, often. The problem is not that we don't receive as we don't ask. Lisa/host: So after rehab, you quickly began to thrive in roles where you served others and were climbing the corporate ladder with great success. Joe: I had gotten a job in a big tech company, telecom companies, a customer service agent. So literally, it'd be like I was, the guy was saying, hi, Lisa, thank you for calling. You know, how can I help you? I quickly progressed in that organization up to the highest position that you could have in that field. So I was making lots of money and winning presidents, clubs, trips, the accolades. I had a book of really good clients, very fortune, 501,000 clients, and I was doing very, very well. So basically what happened is I started to get this idea or this question, and the question was like, am I really happy doing this? And I would put that aside based on, I guess, the external validation that I was getting, I. E. My results, the money I was making, the accolades, the rewards, et cetera. And then six months later, down the track, I would ask it again, where it come up again. And then I would start to lose a bit of motivation, the drive that, I really wonder what that was about. And then it got to the place where I just really didn't enjoy it. And I was sitting in a boardroom meeting with a bunch of executives, and essentially what happened was I noticed all these people talking about the technology. I noticed how passionate they were. And I was like, this isn't the place for me. This is not what I want to do anymore. This is just my experience. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to anybody. But what I did is I messaged my boss, well, in that meeting, and I went to go see him, and I said, I can't do this anymore. To which he responded, that's okay. We'll take the day off. And I said, no, I don't think you understand. I cannot do this anymore. I was searching for more. I think us as human beings, Lisa, we're like onions, right? There's so many layers to us. And in my own personal experience, when I was living in this world of drug addiction, I was thinking from a consciousness of, like, me, me, very selfish. Not thinking about consequence, not thinking about the future. I want what I want when I want it now. And I started to realize my mortality. And from that, I went into rehab, which gave me structure. There was a system that was put in place in order for me to abide by. And then going into the corporate world was the same thing. Like, I learned systems. I learned how to work now to get later. I learned how to do the right thing. I put that in air quotes, the right thing. But then, as I was continually growing, because in parallel with my career in the corporate space, I had a spiritual practice by which I was intentionally practicing in terms of my own growth. And when you choose to consciously or intentionally expand, to grow, to transform, I started to question who I was and what I wanted. And so there was a little light in me about, I think you're meant to do something different. I think you're meant to do something more. So I left that job without having any plan. Lisa, where did this lead? Lisa/host: That's very brave for you to leave a job with no further plan. Joe: What's important to mention is it led me within. First of all, I had to pose the question, like, what do I want to do? And I sat with that for a couple of months. What is it that lights me up? What is it that excites me? What is it that I want to do? What kind of mark do I want to leave in this world? What am I good at? I had the opportunity to share my story about my recovery and about my addiction to thousands of people. That really lit me up. So then I was like, okay. I was like, I'm going to help people. This is what I want to do. I want to help people in the recovery world. And so I started to go into that direction. And I was sitting at home watching a tv show called intervention. I don't know if you've ever seen that before, but, yeah, okay. So I was watching one of these moments, and I just was just crying. And I was like, that's what I want to do. And I found the contact of the interventionist on the show, and I called him up, and I said, hi, my name is Joe Alvarez. You don't know me, but here's my deal. And he was so gracious to give me the time. And he said to me, joe, one of our satellite offices are in Montreal. It's one of the biggest rehab centers in Canada. And he said, go visit this woman. Talk to her about it. And I went to talk to her about it and got information, went back, went back inside. Is this what I want to do? And then I had this realization that if anybody knows anything about addiction, addiction to the substances is really just a symptom of a deeper problem. It's not really the problem per se, albeit it becomes a problem, but it's not really the problem. It's a symptom of a problem. And then I had this realization, Lisa, that. Hold on 1 second. Lots of people have these problems. The deeper problems, they just don't have the same symptomology. Right. So they don't go and use illicit drugs or drink alcohol in the ways that I did, but they procrastinate, or they hold themselves back, or they don't believe in themselves, or they just kind of pass the time by and watch life go by without actually doing something that enriches their lives or that they're passionate about. I said, oh. I said, okay, well, then I need to have a different toolkit so that I can help a wider range of people as opposed to just being in a recovery world. And the moment that I made that decision, and you can probably attest to this, but in my model of my world, when I make decisions that are congruent, that are honest, that are from the depths of my being, the universe will conspire to support that. And that's what happened. And then all of a sudden, I came out of meditation one day, having this thought, and then the phone rang. This woman who was calling me about a completely different matter, I knew she had gone to some coaching school, and I said, hey, didn't you go to this coaching school? She said, yes, I did. And that coaching school was like three blocks from my house, which I'd never been. Become aware of it before. Now. I was aware of it. I went to an introductory weekend there, and then I was off to Atlanta to share my story about recovery, telling my story about this, and someone come up to me and says, I know somebody who trains people to become coaches, et cetera. And then it's just a domino effect, and here we are. Lisa/host: Do you think that that all really began just by being open to the idea? What do you think flipped the switch with the universe? Joe: When a decision is made that is earnest and honest and from the depths of it's a heartfelt decision, our feelings are magnetic. And when we broadcast that out into the universal field, the universe will reflect that, right? The feeling of being so excited to help people transform, change, grow their lives to better, more meaningful lives, that just excited me. And so the universe reflected that. Lisa/host: Hey, rising strong listeners. If you've been enjoying the inspiring interviews on the podcast, we'd love your support. To help us reach more listeners and hopefully gain some sponsorship. To do that, please, like, follow and subscribe wherever you listen to podcast. And here's a little extra incentive. Leave us a five star review, and you'll be entered to win some cool, rising strong swag. Your support means the world to me. Now back to the show. And I think when our actions align with our purpose, things just start to happen. Joe: Yeah, it starts to happen. I believe that the things that start to happen were already available, but I became aware of it as a result of a course of action that I took. So it's like when I just gratefully became a father 19 months ago and when Lindsay was pregnant and I started to have this shift internally about becoming a father. Lisa, I could tell you every kind of stroller that was out there. Baby stroller, could tell you the ones that were for jogging, the ones with the big wheels, the smaller wheels, four wheels, three wheels, the ones that collapse with one hand. You needed two hands to collapse with a canopy? No canopy. You could add a seat. Not add a seat. Water bottle holder. No water bottle. Prior to that, I'd never noticed. Lisa/host: Right. Joe: But yet they were always there. It's about tuning into the frequency. It's about tuning into that which is already available to you. Maybe you've heard it before, maybe not. But it's just like when you're in your car, if you think about changing the radio station, the airwaves to the rock and roll radio station are there. You don't see them. They're out there, but you don't see them. The country station, the airwaves and frequency to that station is out there. Lisa/host: You tune into it. It's being aware, but it's also choosing to tune in. Joe: That's right. Lisa/host: What do you think is the most important thing when it comes to rising above our challenges, whatever they may be? Joe: I think before rising above them, transcending them, getting over them, it starts with a level of acceptance. And here's the reason why. The more we resist a challenge in our lives, whatever the challenge is, whatever the adversity is, whatever the obstacle is, the more we resist, it persists. So the more I resist an obstacle or a challenge, the more I'll suffer with that. The moment that I get to a place of acceptance. Now, when I say acceptance, it doesn't mean that you need to like what's going on. It doesn't mean that it needs to stay that way. But the moment that I accept it, then I can start employing some actions to change it. Lisa/host: I agree, and I see that in the work that I do as well. Mindset is a big part of the work that you do. What is mindset and how do you change that when you're at the lowest point in your life? Joe: Well, let's just say, let me start by saying that mindset is a buzzword, right? It really is a buzword. A lot of people talk about mindset and get your mindset right. And have a positive mindset. And I agree with all that. But sometimes when it becomes a buzword, we lose the essence of it, right. We lose the importance or the understanding of what it really is. Mindset is about how we internally experience the external world along with our own thoughts and self talk. There's a famous saying, I might botch it. I believe it's Wayne Dyer. He says, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. But the question is, how do you change the way you look at things? What is our capacity, ability, capability of being able to change the way we look at things? And so mindset is all about that. Lisa/host: I wanted to circle back, and I wanted to ask you if asking yourself some of these questions about your values and your beliefs and your mindset, et cetera, if these came into play earlier on in your journey or if these came later. Joe: Well, in my journey, let me just go from the journey of when I got sober and I began my process of recovery. That's when these things started to come in. The questions around these started to come in mastery with these things, it'll take a lifetime. I mean, I have so much knowledge and training and experience and wisdom with all of these things, and yet I know that I'll be mastering them for the rest of my life. So, again, what I said earlier is like, we're like onions, and we peel back layers, and there's so many layers to us. And as we move along and we change our lives and we grow or we expand, our mindset will change. Lisa/host: I feel like, as human beings, we are here to grow. You know, Joe, it took me a while to come to this place or this mindset of acceptance after our daughter Katie died in a car accident. But eventually, I moved into a mindset of growth, I guess you could say by asking myself, what now? How can I be a better human and honor my daughter's life? But, man, it's hard. Joe: It is uncomfortable. I mean, sometimes it's quite simple not to be confused with easy. I want to make that distinction. Right. It's simplistic in the practical sense, but it's, like, far from being easy. And I can't even imagine me becoming a father recently. Right? I cannot imagine your experience. And yet I find it so inspiring that you had brought yourself to a place of choosing to view that in the way that you just expressed. Because the way that I live my life, and this is choice. This is a choice, is that everything happens for me and in my highest good now, it is a choice that I operate from that mindset. It is probably not something that I can prove to you, like I can prove a line between a and b. And yet I have so much evidence that it has been so in my life. Lisa/host: I do agree with you, Joe. I have come to that place as well, that I feel know I'm a spirit going through this human existence and that it's my role in this lifetime grow. And unfortunately, my soul needed to learn what losing a child was like. And I have not enjoyed this class a whole lot. I wish I could get a refund on this class, but I believe that it is my soul's purpose, and it is my choice what I do with it. I do believe that my daughter in heaven deserves more than to have lived her life in vain. And it is a choice. Hard things are a choice, but it is what we do with it. For those who might be listening, and maybe they're at their lowest point, what advice do you have for them? Joe: It doesn't need to stay that way. Right. So nothing is permanent. It will pass. It will pass. And any advice that I could provide is pay attention to the stories that you're telling yourself and the questions that you're posing yourself. Right. So part of having a healthy mindset is to be able to pose better questions. If we want a better quality of life, start by posing better quality of questions. So instead of, like, why is this happening to me? Why am I here again? How come this. I have to go through this, just switch up the questions? Like, what is it that I need to learn in this? How is this making me grow? What do I need to pay attention to? Who could help me with this? When we just switch around our questions, it starts to open up a whole different world. Lisa/host: Do you ever reverse engineer things in your life? Do you ever think, I want to be at this spot, doing this thing and work backwards from there? Joe: I absolutely do. Yeah, I do that all the time. Most people work from this paradigm. If I just have XYZ, then I will be able to do XYZ, and then I will be XYZ. So if I just have a lot of money, then I could do all these things, then I'll be happy, right? But this is backwards. This is what I call living your life backwards. This is working from the outside in. And so what I like to do is, I like to work from the inside out. Let's just keep it really simple. If I wanted to have, I don't know, $100,000 in the next couple of months, I'd ask myself, if I had it already, how would I be being? Who would I be being? Right. Because it's the beingness that creates the doingness, which creates the havingness. Lisa/host: I love that. What does resilience mean to you? Joe: Resilience is not about resisting the challenges or obstacles or suffering, but rather the ability to bend to it without quote unquote, breaking. I know sometimes some people we seemingly seem broken, but we're not. It feels that way, but we're not. Lisa/host: Right? Joe: Perhaps. Maybe the strategies we've been employing are broken, but we in of ourselves are not broken. So it's this ability to have flexibility in our behavior, right. It's this ability to bend without breaking it. Lisa/host: What kind of tools and strategies have helped you become more resilient? Joe: Well, meditation has helped me. There are some different spiritual practices that have helped me. I am trained at a master level of neurolinguistic programming which know basically a manual to the mind. So how do we use the language of the mind to create the results that we want? Hypnosis has been a big help for me in not the hypnosis that most that Hollywood has done a disservice to bark like a dog or, but really the ability of learning how to work with the subconscious part of our minds, which essentially run our lives. But the ability to learn how to do that has been very helpful as well. Lisa/host: If people want to learn more about your coaching services or ask you questions, where is the best place for them to do that? Joe: They can look me up on Facebook. Joe Alvarez, or they could go to my website, joealvarescoaching.com. Lisa/host: Perfect. I'm sure lots of people will be checking you out after this. Joe, your story is a testament to the incredible strength that lies in all of us. You've shown us that regardless of the adversity we face, we all have the power to rise strong. Thank you so much for being a guest on the rising strong mental health and resilience podcast. Joe: Thank you for having me, Lisa.
Kendall Miller is the Co-Founder and COO of CTO Lunches, a network of engineering leaders to get trusted advice and connections. The first half of the conversation with host Victoria Guido and special guest host, Joe Ferris, CTO of thoughtbot revolves around the use, adoption, and growth of Kubernetes within the technology industry. The discussion explores Kubernetes' history, influence, and its comparison with other platforms like Heroku and WordPress, emphasizing its adaptability and potential. The second half focuses on more practical aspects of Kubernetes, including its adoption and scalability. It centers on the appropriateness of adopting Kubernetes for different projects and how it can future-proof infrastructure. The importance of translating technical language into business speak is emphasized to influence executives and others in the decision-making process and Kendall also discuss communication and empathy in tech, particularly the skill of framing questions and understanding others' emotional states. __ CTO Lunches (http://ctolunches.com/) Follow CTO Lunches on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/ctolunches/) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/cto_lunches). Follow Kendall Miller on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendallamiller/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Kendall Miller, Co-Founder and COO of CTO Lunches, a network of engineering leaders to get trusted advice and connections. Kendall, thank you for joining me. KENDALL: Thanks for having me. I'm excited. VICTORIA: And today, we have a special guest host, Joe Ferris, CTO of thoughtbot. Joe, thank you for joining us. JOE: Hello there. Thank you for having me. KENDALL: Hi, Joe. Thanks for being here. It's exciting. VICTORIA: Yes. It's so exciting. I think this is going to be a great episode. So, Kendall, I met you at a San Diego CTO lunch recently, and I know that's not the only thing that you do. So, you're also an advisor, a board member, and CXO. So, maybe tell us a little bit more about your background. KENDALL: Gosh, my background is complicated. I've been involved in tech for a very long time. In college, I worked for a company that started Twitter about five years too soon, and then worked in the nonprofit space in China for ten years, then came back, got back involved in tech. Today, I'm usually the business guy. So, when technical founders start technical products and want help turning them into successful technical businesses, that's when they call me. So, I have the technical background. I have never been paid to write code, which is probably a good thing. But I can hang in the technical conversations for the most part, but I'm much more interested in the business side and the people leadership side of business. So that tends to be where I play. Every organization hires me to do something different. VICTORIA: Thank you for that. And I'm just curious about the CTO Lunches. Just tell me a little bit more about that. And what's the idea behind it that led you to co-found it? KENDALL: CTO Lunches has actually been around for about eight years. And I didn't start the initial incarnation of it. It was two people that got us started, and I was trying to hire one of them; one thing led to another. Actually, originally, they did not want me to join. I think, at the time, my title was COO at a company that I was working with. About six months later, I took over engineering as VP of engineering, and then they're like, you can join the group now. We're less strict about that [laughs] now. Although it is highly focused on senior engineering leaders, it's not exclusively CTOs. But the group's been in place for a very long time, just intended as a place to network, have conversation with people who are in that senior-most technical position at technical organization. So, the CTO role is a lonely role. CTOs get fired all the time. There's not a technical person at the company that doesn't think they can do the job better than them. So, the CTO is always getting feedback. You're doing this wrong. The trade-offs you're making are wrong. This isn't going where it should be going. We should automate that. Why haven't we automated that? We should switch to this other tool. I've used it before; it's 100 times better. Joe, let me know if I'm getting any of this wrong. But that's the experience that I've had. Having a place where people can get together and, you know, half the time just complain to each other, hey, this is hard, is really why the networking group exists. So, it's a listserv. And there are local lunches that started in Boulder, Colorado. It's gotten pretty global. About a year ago, a little over a year ago, I was talking with one of the people who'd gotten it started. I've been involved in the Denver chapter for most of those eight years. And I was suggesting to him that he change a few things about it, to monetize it so that he could invest in it further. And he came back a few months later and said, "I want to take your advice and do this, but I want you to come do it with me." So, we founded the company officially...I think in December is when paperwork went into place. And we started investing in it a little bit more heavily. I was living in Europe last year, so we went and put on lunches in Paris, and Lisbon, and London, and, gosh, all over the place. I'm sure I'm missing some, Amsterdam. But there's been chapters all over the U.S. and a couple of other parts of the world for a long time. VICTORIA: That reflects my experience attending a CTO lunch. It's just very casual, like, just get together and eat food and talk about what you've worked on recently, issues you're having, just get ideas and make some friends. So, I really appreciated the group, and I'm going to personally plug the San Diego Chapter has picked up again. And we're meeting next Friday down in Del Mar. And we're going to be meeting on the last Friday of every month through October. So, I'm super excited to be a part of the group. And Joe, yeah, I'm curious about your perspective. As a CTO with thoughtbot, just what are your thoughts about that kind of thing? KENDALL: Yeah. How right am I about how lonely you are, Joe? JOE: [laughs] You know, I've been lonelier since we went remote. I used to work in the office, and I was a CTO, but also, I had lunch with people, which was nice. So, I'm lonelier. But yeah, I think everybody needs a group like that, like, senior developer therapy just to talk about your woes together, drown your sorrows. KENDALL: Well, I think years ago, I heard that CTOs are the most fired C-level executive. JOE: You're making me nervous now. KENDALL: [laughs] You've been there a long time, Joe. I know you've been there a long time. If you haven't been fired yet, you probably got a little while longer in you. This will be really awkward if it's published and you've already been fired. VICTORIA: We can always edit that out afterwards. [laughter] KENDALL: Yeah, no, I think it is a particularly lonely position. And, again, I think a lot of it is the average engineer in a technical company doesn't look at the COO or the CFO or even the CEO and think I could do that. But they're all looking at the CTO and thinking, what does that person do that I can't do? It's ridiculous because most of them would make terrible CTOs because it does require some of the business sense. Or, you know, right out of the gate, they might make terrible CTOs. It actually is quite a skill to be the most technical person and speak the business language. I mean, am I right about that, Joe? Like, was that hard for you to learn? JOE: Yeah, I definitely think...so, my background is also technical. I have a background in consulting. So, I always did a lot of metaprogramming, if you will. But making that transition to thinking about organizations that way, thinking about how all the other pieces play into it, was a pretty big step for me, even before I became a CTO as a consultant. KENDALL: Well, because you can't just chase the newest, hottest technology. You have to make business trade-offs. And not everything can be resume-driven development, right? Even if that technology over there is newer or hotter, it doesn't mean you have a business model that supports it. And it doesn't mean that migrating to it can be done, right? JOE: Yeah. I mean, even beyond choosing technologies, just choosing where to invest in your software stack, like, what needs to be reworked, what doesn't, and trying to explain those trade-offs, I think, is a rare skill. Being able to explain why something would be harder than something else when you're working with the leadership to prioritize a backlog it's a puzzle. KENDALL: Well, and I think when I'm in an executive conversation, and the CTO says, "Here's the thing that I think is the best decision technically, and I think it's the wrong decision for the business because of X, Y, or Z," I'm always super impressed, right? Like, this is the right technical solution for what we want. However, we shouldn't pursue that for business reasons right now. Maybe we can in six months, but right now, we need to prioritize this other thing. I don't know, that's always when I feel like, oh, this person knows what they're doing. JOE: There's nothing more dangerous to software than a bored developer. [laughs] One nice thing about being a consultant is that I don't have to invent problems to solve with technology at my company because sooner or later, I'll run across a company that has those problems, and I'll get to use that technology. But I think a lot of people are mostly happy...they might be happy in their role. They might be happy with our team. But they're very interested in whatever is hot right now, like machine learning, AI. And so, suddenly, that surreptitiously makes its way into the tech stack. And then, years later, it's somebody's problem to maintain. KENDALL: [laughs] Well, I have a specific memory of a firm in New York City that was, you know, this is relevant to y'all as thoughtbot is that, you know, at least historically, it was, to me, the premier Ruby on Rails consulting shop. I think that's still largely y'alls focus. Am I right about that? JOE: We still do a ton of Rails, yeah. KENDALL: Okay. Well, so this organization was all Ruby on Rails. It was a big organization. They had a very large customer base. And they hired a new CTO who came in, told everybody in the company they were stupid, laid off 70% of the engineering organization, and told the CEO he was going to completely rewrite the product from scratch in .NET, and he could do it in three weeks. And I'm pretty sure the business went under about three months later [laughs] because that was just so outrageously nuts to me. JOE: It's too bad he laid everybody off beforehand. I've been in that situation where somebody tells me, "I'm going to rewrite this. It'll be ready in three weeks." And I could fight with them and try and convince them they're wrong. But I feel like somebody who's approaching that with that attitude they're missing all of the nuance and context that would make it possible to explain to them why it's not going to work. And so, it's easier to just say, "You know, take the three weeks. I'll talk to you in three weeks." But if you've already laid off your development team, that's hard [laughs] to recover from. KENDALL: That's exactly right. VICTORIA: There's got to be a name for that kind of CTO who just wants to come in and blow everything up [laughs]. Yeah, so you spend a lot of time talking to different CTOs and doing this social networking aspect. I'm wondering if there's, like, patterns that you see. You've mentioned already one about just, like, the most often getting fired. [laughs] But what are the patterns you see, like, in challenges, and then what makes someone successful in that CTO role? KENDALL: Well, oh gosh, I have so many thoughts about this. First of all, I run into a couple of different categories of CTOs. There's a lot of people who come to CTO Lunches who are small company CTOs. I mean, it makes sense that there's a lot more small company CTOs than there are big company CTOs. But the small company CTO who maybe it's their first gig in the role or they're a serial CTO. There's the fractional CTOs that come that are doing it across several different organizations at the same time, and then there's the big company CTO who shows up. And honestly, all of their problems are very different. The thing that they have in common is even at a very large organization, in that position, they can make a decision that causes the company to go under. So, there is a significant amount of volatility in the amount of power that they wield. So, what's interesting about that is not everybody understands that. And so, first of all, there's the kind of CTO that just doesn't get that, and that doesn't matter if they're fractional, or a small company CTO, or a big company CTO. If they don't understand that, they're going to cause significant problems, right? Like the person I just mentioned who said, "I can just re-platform this in three weeks in .NET." There's that. I mean, I think, as with any senior leadership position, the comfort with volatility, the ability to know what to communicate down versus across and versus up, and then the ability to speak the business language. For everybody, the CFO's job is to communicate the financial needs alongside of the business leads, right? If the CFO's sole goal is to cut costs or make sure we're running as lean as possible, they're a bad CFO. But they're not as good of a CFO as the CFO who can say, "Hey, we're underspending right here. And I can look at the numbers and know we should invest more there. How can we invest more there and invest it well?" And it's the same thing for a technology executive to be able to look at the business context and communicate it back. And there are so many CTOs that I've worked with who they're the most technical person in the room, and they know it. And as a result, they're just a jerk to everyone around them, like, everything you did here was wrong. You know, that's where they fail. And so, if they can communicate the business needs, navigate the volatility, and support a team that's going to make decisions that aren't always the same decision they're going to make, they're going to be successful. Honestly, there's very, very few CTOs that I've met like that. People who are excited to meet you at work, excited to see you succeed, excited to see that you went and built a thing is great. I mean, the reason I was VP of engineering is the CTO that I was working with at the time...it's a terrible story. There was an engineer who had seen something that we were doing on repeat all the time and, in his spare time, spent about 40 hours outside of work, not during work hours, automating this task that we were doing regularly. And it was related to standing up a whole bunch of things in our standard infrastructure. He brings it to the CTO and says, "Look what I built." And the CTO, instead of saying, "Hey, this is incredible. Thank you. This is going to save us a bunch of time. Let's iterate on it. Here's some things I'd like to tweak. Can we bring it in this direction? Can we..." you know, whatever, said, "Why is this in Python? It should be in Ansible," something like that. I can't remember. And the engineer literally burst into tears. [laughs] JOE: Oh my God. KENDALL: [laughs] Well, I mean, yeah, it was like; literally, that's why the CTO stopped managing people that day. There's a lot of examples that I have like that. Joe, I appreciate that your response is, "Oh my God." Because I think there's a lot of people who'd be like, wait, what was wrong with that? Shouldn't it have been in Ansible? JOE: [laughs] Yeah, I've seen CTOs come into primarily two groups. One is the CTO who just tells, you know, like, they make the decisions, and they tell everybody what to do. They obviously don't have all of the information because you can't be in every room all the time. And the other is the CTO, who just wants to be one of the team members and doesn't make any decisions and tries to get people to make decisions collectively on their own without any particular guidance or structure. And finding that middle spot of, like, not just saying, "Hey, everything's in Ansible," allowing for the creativity and initiative, but also coalescing the group into a single direction, I think, is what makes a good CTO. KENDALL: Well, yeah, because the CTO does have to say no, sometimes, right? Like, the best product, people say, "No." Good CTOs say, "No." There is some amount of, hey, I need you to come to me with trade-offs about this. Why are you going to make that decision? And I'm sorry, you still didn't convince me, right? Like, I mean, those are appropriate things to say. But yeah, I'm with you on that. You said they fall into two categories. But you really mean the third and that middle ground. Is it easy for you to walk that middle ground, Joe? JOE: I wouldn't say it's easy. [laughs] KENDALL: Yeah. Well, I'm always nervous to say something. I'm doing well because I know there's a report out there that can point at every time I failed at it, right? So... MID-ROLL AD: Are you an entrepreneur or start-up founder looking to gain confidence in the way forward for your idea? At thoughtbot, we know you're tight on time and investment, which is why we've created targeted 1-hour remote workshops to help you develop a concrete plan for your product's next steps. Over four interactive sessions, we work with you on research, product design sprint, critical path, and presentation prep so that you and your team are better equipped with the skills and knowledge for success. Find out how we can help you move the needle at: tbot.io/entrepreneurs. VICTORIA: Yeah, what I'm getting from what you're saying, too, is this communication ability and not just, like, to communicate clearly but with a high level of empathy. So, if you say like, "Well, why is it in Python and not Ansible?" is different than being like, "What makes Python the best solution here?" Like, it's a different way to frame the question that could put someone on the defensive that just really requires, like, a high level of emotional intelligence. And also, if they've just worked, like, an 80-hour week, [laughs] I probably would maybe choose a different time to bring those questions up and notice that they have been burning the candle at both ends and prioritize getting them some rest. So, speaking of, like, communication and getting prioritization for [inaudible 15:34], especially on, like, infrastructure teams, maybe we could talk a little bit about Kubernetes, like, when that comes up as an appropriate solution, and how you talk about it with the business. KENDALL: My background with Kubernetes is long because a company that I still work with, Fairwinds, used to be called ReactiveOps, has been in the Kubernetes space for a very long time. I think we were one of the very first companies working with Kubernetes. It was coming up that people were running into the limits of something like Heroku, right? And I think it's Kelsey Hightower who said every company wants a PaaS. They just want the Paas that they built themselves. And that's really accurate. And I think Kubernetes isn't quite a framework for building your own PaaS or isn't quite a foundation where I think of a foundation for a house. Instead, it's more like rebar and cement and somebody saying, "Good luck, buddy." You know, you still have to know how to put the rebar and cement together to even make the foundation, but it is the building blocks that help get you to a custom-built PaaS. And it's become something that a lot of people have landed on as, you know, the broadly accepted way to build cloud-native infrastructure. The reason I've been in the Kubernetes space and the space that I see Kubernetes still filling is we need to standardize on something. We can choose a cloud provider's PaaS. We can choose a third-party PaaS, or we can standardize on something like Kubernetes. And even though we're not going to migrate from AWS to Azure, the flexibility that Kubernetes gives us as a broadly adopted pattern is going to give us some ability to be future-proofed in our infrastructure in a way that previous stacks were not, you know, it was Puppet, and it was Ansible. And it was SaltStack. And it was all Terraform all the time. I'm not saying those things don't exist anymore. I'm saying Kubernetes kind of has won that battle. Joe, since you're here and I know y'all are doing some Kubernetes work now at thoughtbot, I'm curious if you agree with that characterization. JOE: Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's the center for people to coalesce around. Like, for an effort in the industry to move forward, there needs to be some common language, some common ground. And I think Kubernetes struck the right balance of being abstract. So, you can use it in different environments but still making some decisions, so you don't have to make them all. And so, like, all of the things you had to do with containers like figuring out what your data solution is going to be, what your networking solution is going to be, Kubernetes didn't even really make those decisions. [laughs] They just made a platform where those decisions can be made in a common way. And that allowed the community and the ecosystem to grow. KENDALL: I mean, I think of it a lot like WordPress; you know, WordPress is hated by many. When WordPress came out, it was hot, right? And it was PHP, which everybody was super excited about at the time. Kubernetes is going to reach a point where it's as long in the tooth and terrible as people think WordPress is, but it has become the standard. And the advantage of the standard is you can use the not standard. You can go build a website in Jekyll instead of WordPress, and there's going to be some things that are nicer about Jekyll. But because WordPress is so broadly adopted, there's a plugin for everything. And I think that's where Kubernetes sits is because it's become so widely adopted everybody's building for it. Everybody's adapting for it. If you run into a problem, you're going to find somebody else out there who has that problem. In fact, I think of one organization that I know that was on HashiCorp's Nomad. And they said, "Actually, we think Nomad has better technology through and through. But we think we're the only company at this size and scale using Nomad. And so, when we run into a problem, we can't Google for it. There's no such thing as a plugin that exists to solve this. Nobody has ever run into this before on Nomad. But there's 100 companies dealing with the same problem in Kubernetes, and there's ten solutions." And I think that's the power that it brings. VICTORIA: So, it's not just a trend that CTOs are moving towards, you think. KENDALL: I mean, I think it's already won the battle and the hockey stick of adoption. We're still right at the very bottom of that tick-up because it takes people a long time to adapt new technology like this, especially in their infrastructure. It's a big migration, to move. So, I don't think it's the widely adopted infrastructure technology even yet. I think a lot of the biggest organizations are still running on things that predate Kubernetes. But I think it has won the battle, and it is winning the battle and is going to be the thing going forward, so yeah. JOE: I think it also has a lot of room to grow still. Like, there are other technologies that I used previously, like Docker, and they were a big step up from some of the things I was doing at the time. But you quickly hit the ceiling, or it was, like, I don't know where to go with this next. I don't know what else is going to happen. Whereas with Kubernetes, there are so many directions it can go in. Like, the serverless Kubernetes offerings that are starting to pop up are extremely interesting, where, you know, you don't actually maintain a cluster or anything. You just deploy things to this ethereal cluster that always exists. And so, that sort of combination of platform as a service, function as a service, Kubernetes, as that evolves, I think there are a lot of exciting things that have yet to come in the Kubernetes space. KENDALL: Well, so say more about that, Joe, because I've been going to KubeCon for a very long time, maybe...I don't know if it's 2016 or so when I first went. And it felt for a number of years...maybe those first four-ish years it was always the people at KubeCon were the, like, big dreamers and thinkers and, like, we're here to change the future of cloud infrastructure. And this is going places, and we're excited to be here and be a part of it. And here's what I'm going to do that changes the next thing. And I feel like now if I go to KubeCon, it's a lot of people from, you know, IBM and some big bank that are, like, deep sigh, well, I have to adopt Kubernetes. I need to know what the vendors are. What do you guys do, and how does this work? Can you please teach it to me? Because I'm being told by my boss, I have to do it. I don't see that excitement around Kubernetes anymore. The excitement I see is all around further up the stack, you know, things like Wasm, WebAssembly, or eBPF, the networking things and tracing things that are possible. Maybe that's further down the stack. I guess it depends on how you think about it, but different part of the stack. So, I'm curious, touching on the serverless components of Kubernetes; sure, I get that. And I do think, increasingly, the PaaSs of the future are all going to be Kubernetes-based, whether that's exposed or not. But where are the places that you think it's still going to go? Because I feel like it's already gotten boring, maybe in a positive way. But I don't see the excitement around it like I saw a few years back. And I'm curious what else you think is going to happen. JOE: Yeah, I mean, I don't think I disagree. I think Kubernetes itself, the core concept, is, like, it's still changing. But you're right that the excitement about Kubernetes existing has gone down because it's been there for a while. But I feel like the ecosystem is still growing pretty rapidly. Like, the things you mentioned, like Wasm and Istio, and all the tools in that ecosystem that continue to grow, is where I think the interesting things will happen. Like, it's created this new lower-level layer of abstraction that makes it possible to build concepts and technology that could not have existed before. KENDALL: Yeah, well, and I'm, you know, talking to people who are working really hard at making short-run ephemeral workloads work better on things like GPUs for the sake of AI, right? Like, I mean, there is some really interesting things happening, and people are doing this in Kubernetes. So, I get that. I agree with that. It is interesting that Kubernetes has become sort of the stable thing, and now it's about who can build the interesting add-ons. It's almost like, okay, we've built Half-Life. What is Counter-Strike going to look like? You know. That's a terrible (I'm aging myself.) example. But still. VICTORIA: I think it's interesting, I mean, to look at the size of the market for platform engineering right now. In 2022, was 4.8 billion, and it's estimated to be in 10 years $41 billion. So, there is this emerging trend of different platform engineering products, different abstractions on top of Kubernetes. And I wonder what advice you would have for a technical founder who's looking to build and solve some of these interesting issues in Kubernetes and create a business around it. KENDALL: Well, okay, let me clarify that question. Are you thinking, I'm a startup, and I need to build my infrastructure, and I'm going to choose Kubernetes. What advice do I need? Or are you thinking, I am founder, and I want to go build on the Kubernetes ecosystem. What advice do you have? VICTORIA: Now I want to know the answer to both. But my question was the second one to start. KENDALL: One of the things that is hard about the Kubernetes ecosystem is there's not a ton of companies that have made a whole bunch of money in Kubernetes because, as I said, I still think we're actually really early in the adoption curve. The kinds of companies that have adopted Kubernetes are the kinds of companies that don't spend lots and lots of money on an infrastructure. [laughs] They're the kinds of companies that are fast-moving, early adopters, or, you know, those first followers, and so they're under $100 million companies for the most part. Where the JP Morgans and Chase are running Kubernetes somewhere in their stack, but they haven't adopted it across the stack to need the biggest, best tools about it. So, the first piece of advice that I'd give is, be a little wary. It's still very early to the market. Maybe now is the time to build the thing. When ReactiveOps pivoted to Kubernetes, I think it was six months of having conversations with companies who were just, like, so excited about it, and this is definitely what we want to do. But nobody was doing it yet. You know, it was, we have, like, six solid months of just excitement and nobody actually pulling the trigger. And, you know, we were a little too early to that market. And that was just the people adopting it. So, I think there is some nervousness that cloud-native solutions the only people who are really making money in Kubernetes are named Amazon, Google, and Microsoft because it's the cloud providers that are making a ton off of it. Now, there's Rancher. There is StackPointCloud. There's a few others that have had big exits in this space. But I don't think it's actually as big of a booming economy as a lot of people think, in part because EKS is an incredibly amazing product. Like, eight years ago, the thing people paid us the most to do at ReactiveOps was just stand up Kubernetes because it was so stinking hard to just get it up and working. And now you click some buttons. Anybody can go do that. So, it's changed a lot, right? And I think be wary when you're entering that ecosystem. And then, my advice to the founder that's not building on the ecosystem but just looking to adopt a technology that's going to be a future-proofed infrastructure is just adopt one of the cloud-native platforms. And there are a whole bunch of sort of default best-in-class add-ons out there that you need to throw in. Don't adopt too many because then you have to maintain them forever. That's the easiest way to get started. You can figure out all the rest of it later. But if you go use EKS, or GKE, AKS, you can get started pretty easily and build something that is going to be future-proofed. I don't know, Joe; I'm curious if you disagree with any of that. JOE: Well, I think it's interesting to think about who's making money in Kubernetes. Like, I think there might not be as many companies who are doing only Kubernetes and Kubernetes-focused products that are massively successful. But I think because it has had a good amount of adoption and because it's easier to work with something that's standardized, it has helped companies sell things that they wanted to sell anyway. Like, all the Datadog, all the Scalas, the logging companies, they all have Kubernetes add-ons. And now everybody is paying Datadog [laughs] to have a dashboard for their Kubernetes cluster. I think they're making more money than they would have been without targeting the market. And so, I think that's really...if you want to get into the market, it's not, like, I'm going to build a Kubernetes product. It's if I'm building operations and an infrastructure product, I should definitely have it work with Kubernetes, and people will want to click and install it. KENDALL: So, to be clear, you know, one of the companies that I work with is called Axiom, and they play in the same, you know, monitoring, observability space as Datadog does. And part of what makes Kubernetes interesting in that space is in a microservice environment; there's so much happening. Where are problems being caused? We don't live in a day where I can just run my code, and it tells me that there's an unexpected semicolon on line 23, right? Like, that still happens. You're still doing those things. But this microservice talking to that microservice is where things tend to break down. Did I communicate this correctly? What was sent? What was received? Where did it break down? What was the latency? And if you were doing things in the old way back when you were standing it up with, say, Ansible, or Puppet, or something like that, and you were orchestrating all of these cloud virtual machines, you had to really work hard to instrument the tracing and logging and everything involved in order to track what was going on. Whereas that's one of the magic things about Kubernetes is with a few of the add-ons or some of the things out of the box with Kubernetes, it's a couple of clicks to get so, so much of the data and have insight into where things are going and what's going wrong. And so, I 100% agree with that. Kubernetes is generating a tremendous amount of data. And if you're a data company, it's really nice to have all that come in, and it helps them make money, helps the user of Kubernetes in that situation understand where problems are happening and breaking down. Yeah, there's definitely some network effects of what Kubernetes is doing in that. I completely agree. JOE: I think there are also some interesting companies, like, where they make...Emissary, Ambassador, and they have that sort of dual -- KENDALL: Komodor, is that -- JOE: Yeah, maybe. They have open source, but then they have a product. KENDALL: You're thinking of Ambassador Labs. JOE: Yeah. Ambassador Labs, yeah. I guess I don't really know how much money they're making. But I think that's a really interesting concept as people who make open-source things then make a well-supported product built around it. KENDALL: Sure. What's interesting is, I think in the VC world, at least right now, and it may pick up again, but post-Silicon Valley Bank nearly caving in, I think that the VC tolerance for, yeah, just go get a billion open-source adopters, and we'll figure out how to monetize later I think that the tolerance for that is a lot lower than it was even six months ago. JOE: Yeah, I think you have to have a dual model right from the beginning now. KENDALL: Yeah. Agreed. VICTORIA: You got to figure out how to make money on Kubernetes before you can. [laughs] KENDALL: You know, minor detail. That's why I think services companies in this space still have a lot going for it. Because in order to even be able to sell software to a company using Kubernetes, you half the time have to go stand up Kubernetes for them because it is still that hard for so many people to really adopt it. VICTORIA: Yeah. And maybe, like, talking more about, like, when it is the right decision to start on Kubernetes because I think the question I get sometimes is just, is it overkill? Is it too much for what we're building? Especially, like, if you're building a brand-new product, you're not even sure if it's going to get adopted that widely. KENDALL: I mean, and I'm [laughs] curious your thought on this, Joe, but there's a good argument to be made that Heroku was enough for the vast majority of founders early on. But the thing is, Kubernetes isn't as hard as it used to be. Going and clicking a couple of buttons on GKE and deploying something into Kubernetes with GKE Autopilot running it's not as easy as Heroku, but it's not wildly far off. And it does substantially future-proof you. So, when is it too early? I'm not sure it's ever too early if you have an intention of scaling if you're planning on running some kind of legacy workload, like, things that are going to be stateful. Or maybe WordPress, for example, you don't probably need to deploy your WordPress blog onto Kubernetes. You can do that in your cPanel on Bluehost. I don't actually know if Bluehost even exists anymore, but I assume it's still a thing. I don't know, what would you say, Joe? JOE: I agree with that. I think it's a hard first pill to swallow. But I think the reality is that it's very easy to underestimate the infrastructure needs of even an early product. Like, it doesn't really matter what you're building. You're still going to have things like secrets management. You're still going to have to worry about networking. They just don't go away. There's no way you have a product without them. And so, rather than slowly solving all those problems from scratch on a platform that isn't designed for it, I think it's easier to just bite the bullet and use one of the managed solutions, especially, as you said, I think it's getting easier and easier. The activation energy from going from credit card to Kubernetes cluster is just getting lower. KENDALL: And so, the role of the CTO is just getting easier and easier because they can just adopt the one technology, and it's obviously Kubernetes. And it's obviously Rust, right? [laughter] Yeah, no, I'm with you. And I think if you find somebody who knows Kubernetes inside and out, it's really not going to take them long to get started. VICTORIA: Yeah, once again, change management is the biggest challenge for any new innovation coming into adoption. So, I'm curious to talk more about the influence that you need and how you influence others to come around to these types of ideas, like, in the executive suite and with the leadership of a company, especially on these types of topics, which can feel maybe a little abstract for people. KENDALL: How you influence them specifically to use Kubernetes, or just how you talk with them about technology adoption in general? Or what are you asking? VICTORIA: Yeah, like, how do I get people to not just turn their ears off when I say the word Kubernetes? [laughs] KENDALL: Yeah, I mean, I think...so I think that's where it's the technologist's job and the role of the CTO to translate these things into business speak. And that's why I'm using words like future-proofing your infrastructure is because there are companies that...I know one company that made a conscious decision that they were going to try to re-platform every single year, and that is not a good idea or sustainable for the vast majority [laughs] of companies. In fact, I can't think of a single situation where that makes sense. But if you can say to the CFO, "Hey, it's going to cost us a little bit more right now. It's going to save us substantially in the long term because this is the thing that's winning. And if we go standardize on Heroku right now, every company does eventually have to migrate off of Heroku. They either go out of business, or they get too big for it." That's the kind of thing that needs to be communicated in order to get people to adopt it. They don't care what the word is. They don't care if you're saying Kubernetes; you know, most CFOs understand it about as well as my mom does. My mom tries to bring it up in conversation because she's heard me use it. And she thinks it makes her sound smart, which maybe it does in the right climate. VICTORIA: My partner does the same thing. He says DevOps and Kubernetes all the time. I'm like; you don't know what you're talking about. [laughter] JOE: Those words do not come up in my house. KENDALL: One of my kids asked me to explain Kubernetes. And I do a whole talk, particularly at organizations where understanding Kubernetes is essential to the salespeople's role. And I give a whole talk about the background of how we got here from deploying on some servers in our back room. And, you know, what's different about the cloud, what containerization did, et cetera. And I have this long explanation. And I remember taking a deep breath and saying to my kids, "Do you really want to hear this?" And I had one son say, "Yes, absolutely." And my wife and three of the other kids all stood up and said, "No way," and left the room. So, when somebody asks me, "What do you do?" Actually, one of the key relationships I built with some of the early people at GCP when we were partnering closely with them was a person that I met, and I asked, "What do you do for a living?" And he said, "I can tell you, but it's not going to mean anything to you." And I was like, "That's what I say to people." And it turned out he was in charge of, you know, Kubernetes partnerships for Google. I can explain to you what it means and why it's important. But you're not going to be happy that I spent that time explaining it to you. VICTORIA: [laughs] That sounds awesome, though. It sounds like you built a server rack just to demo to your children what it was. KENDALL: No, no. I just talked back through the history of...that company that I mentioned that built Twitter about five years too early; we had a, you know, we had a server rack in the...literally physically in our closet that was serving up our product at the time. VICTORIA: Probably the best demo I ever saw was at Google headquarters in Herndon, and someone had built...They had 3D-printed a little mini server rack that they had put Raspberry Pis onto, and then they had Kubernetes deployed on it. And they did an automatic failover of a node to just demo how it works and had little lights that went with it. It was pretty fun. So maybe you should get one for yourself. [laughter] It's a fun project. KENDALL: They remember the things that it enables. They don't remember what it does. And so, when I say so, and so is a client that's using this technology, then they get real excited because they're like, "My dad makes that work." And I'm like, well, okay, that's kind of a stretch, but you get the idea. VICTORIA: Yeah, you got to lean into that kind of reputation in your house. KENDALL: That's right. VICTORIA: And you're like, yes, that's correct. KENDALL: That's right. [laughs] VICTORIA: I do make Kubernetes. I make all the clouds work, yeah. KENDALL: Actually, my most common explanation is Kubernetes is the plumbing of the internet. Unless you're a plumber, you don't care about the pipes. You just want your shit to flush when you use the toilet. You want the things to load when you click your buttons. You don't actually care what's going on behind the scenes, but this is what's orchestrating it increasingly across the internet. VICTORIA: So far, we've called Kubernetes WordPress or the toilet. [laughs] KENDALL: The plumbing. [laughter] VICTORIA: You are really good at selling it. [laughter] KENDALL: Hey, if you want to build a nice, clean city, you need good plumbing. You might not care what the pipes are made of, but you need good plumbing. [laughs] VICTORIA: Works for me. On that note -- [laughs] KENDALL: Yeah. Right? Right? VICTORIA: That's [inaudible 36:41] on a high note. Is there anything else that you'd like to promote? KENDALL: With regards to CTO Lunches, we have a free listserv. There are local lunches. If there isn't a local lunch where you are, it's very lightweight to start up a chapter. We often have folks who are willing to sponsor that first lunch to get you going. We do have a paid tier of CTO Lunches. If you want a small back room Slack channel of people to discuss, I think it's $99 a month. Yeah, if you're a CTO and/or a senior engineering leader and you want a community of people to process with, be it our free tier or our paid tier, we've got something for you. We're trying to invest in this to build community around it. And it's something we enjoy doing more than almost anything. Come take part. VICTORIA: You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com. Special Guest: Kendall Miller.
Welcome to the almost 3k latent space explorers that joined us last month! We're holding our first SF listener meetup with Practical AI next Monday; join us if you want to meet past guests and put faces to voices! All events are in /community.Who among you regularly click the ubiquitous
This episode features a conversation between Joe Dulac from the class of 1990 and Ely Bueno from the class of 1998. Joe and Ely first met because they went through the New Hampshire Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency Program at Concord Hospital. They have stayed in touch since then, but reconnected in a meaningful way during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their conversation showcases how the mission of Holy Cross and the lessons learned during their time on the Hill helped to support them in living a life of meaning and purpose in service of others. Interview originally recorded in May 2022. --- Joe: We were going to just stay home during a pandemic or we were going to step up and figure out... Honestly, the choice was close down the practice and maybe we'll open up in a few months or we're going to figure out a way to reopen and serve our patients. Maura Sweeney: Welcome to Mission-Driven, where we speak with alumni who are leveraging their Holy Cross education to make a meaningful difference in the world around them. I'm your host, Maura Sweeney, from the class of 2007, Director of Alumni Career Development at Holy Cross. I'm delighted to welcome you to today's show. This episode features a conversation between Joe Dulac from the class of 1990 and Ely Bueno from the class of 1998. Joe and Ely first met because they went through the New Hampshire Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency Program at Concord Hospital. They have stayed in touch since then, but reconnected in a meaningful way during the COVID-19 pandemic. This conversation offered Ely a chance to ask Joe questions to learn more about his professional journey, which included the opportunity to open and build a practice from scratch. It also gave them a chance to reflect on their past, discover shared connections and process everything they went through over the past few years. In particular, they speak about the challenges that doctors faced during the pandemic and how they lifted each other up during difficult times. Their conversation showcases how the mission of Holy Cross and the lessons learned during their time on the Hill helped to support them in living a life of meaning and purpose in service of others. Ely: Joe, thanks so much for agreeing to do this interview in this format. It comes from a place of deep gratitude for your professional contact and your friendship over the several years that we've known each other. And so now we get to dive in. Joe: Great. This is a great opportunity to meet with you and try something new, right? Ely: Yeah, definitely. And now, did you ever go on the spiritual exercises in Holy Cross, Joe? Joe: Right. Did a lot of things at Holy Cross, and so did do the one-week silent retreat in Narragansett, Rhode Island, which... it was very powerful, of course. Ely: Yeah. Joe: Yeah. Quite an experience. Ely: Yeah. So I also attended, and I think as we start invoking that Ignatian spirit of really the deep sense of giving of ourselves for others in contemplation, in meeting God through story, this is really a great opportunity that Maura has for us as alumni to connect and tell our story. So I'm really eager to hear about yours. And so diving right in, tell me about how you got to where you are now from Holy Cross and beyond. Joe: Okay, sure. Certainly, I always talk about paths being not really straight. You think you're going to go on a straight path and then path kind of zigzags. So to get to Holy Cross, so I was Chelmsford High School and was very interested in sciences and was accepted into Holy Cross for chemistry pre-med. And obviously that was challenging and stimulating. And so I went through the process there with all the pre-meds and the basic science and chemistry. And there was a time where there was a choice between being a chem major, going to chem grad school or going to med school. And so there was a time where there was some uncertainty, the path that I might take. So a lot of the professors were very supportive, really of either path. But because I was a chem major, I think they were very supportive of the chemistry track. So I did do research in the summer with Holy Cross and with Dr. Ditzer, and enjoyed that, but still found myself interested in the pre-med track. So I applied and went through all the steps with the MCATs. Did have some struggles in my junior year, so I did have a little bit more of a crooked path after that. So I did a year of grad school. I was going to go into Georgetown, but found that Boston University had a program on medical sciences, and I got accepted from that program and into the med school there. And so my first year was doing a thesis, but I was able to take several medical school courses including gross anatomy and neurosciences and physiology. So that really helped solidify what I wanted to do in the path. And though I had a little bit of struggles in my junior year in grad school and in med school. Well, the first year of grad school, my professors had remarked that I had caught fire academically and kind of on a tear. So the path was kind of a little bit crooked there. But once I settled in at Boston University after Holy Cross, the medical sciences just kind of took over and it's kind of a labor of love, learning and staying up late and being on call and all that. So I was at the Boston Medical Center there in Boston University, which was really interesting time because they were building the new hospital. So halfway through training, they completed the hospital there and then they crushed it down to smithereens. But in one day we basically were in the old hospital and the next day we were in the new hospital. And so that was really great training through the basic sciences at Holy Cross and experiences there. And then I was looking into residencies and as would have it, I had applied to a lot in the New England area for residencies for family medicine. And I had gotten a scholarship in Lowell with the Mass Medical Society and John Janice and his family, one of the doctors in the family was starting the residency in Concord and Lebanon, New Hampshire. And he said, "Hey, I'm going to give you the scholarship, but maybe you should consider our program." And so I applied and matched. And so I ended up in Concord and mostly Concord and Lebanon for family medicine. And it was the very first year of the program, which probably better I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. The program was really good, but as a first kind of run through, what I didn't understand at the time was that though you're a resident, you're basically a faculty member because you're developing all the programs everywhere. Every program, every rotation was the first time they ever had a resident or any kind of training. So that was a different kind of experience as well. Ely: I have some questions about your residency challenges. How much did you do in the bigger hospital in Lebanon? Joe: I did several rotations up in Lebanon, which were great. So I did a lot of pediatrics there with Chad. So that was our big pediatric kind of connection. And then I actually did obstetrics in Augusta, Maine because at the time... I'm not sure if you're trained for OB as well, but they wanted us to be fully trained for OB, which I was. So I did an OB rotation. I made that happen in Augusta, Maine, which was really interesting, delivering babies out. It's the state capital, but it's still kind of rural actually. And then I did also make a OB rotation in Beverly, Mass. And that was very developmental because no one had ever been there before. And then I did sports medicine, I made some sports medicine rotations in Portland, Maine. So those were interesting. And then I did put together a holistic herbal experience with Ascutney mountain and the herbalist. So that was up near the Lebanon area, but for pediatrics, I think I did a few months at Chad. So it was great being up there at that hospital too. Yeah, the Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital is a really fantastic place to train. Ely: Yeah. I am very proud of our family medicine residency program. By the time that I had arrived in Concord, it was exclusively at Concord Hospital, so all rotations were there. And I did high risk OB rotation in Nashua, New Hampshire, and some of the main Dartmouth residents came to our program to do some rotations or came down to Nashua to do some rotations. So that kind of relationship with other hospitals in the area were nice to be able to have established from relationships that you guys forged. So that has always been a nice part about learning in community. Joe: Well, I know we had touched base about that, and I remember having mixed feelings about the training and starting a new program. I remember you mentioning to me one time how you felt that the program was really excellent and that you had gotten really well-trained there. I know the training was definitely good in terms of experiences because even though it's not necessarily big city, Concord is the state capital again of New Hampshire, but still a lot of it's rural, a lot of rural type of problems. At the time, at least, I don't know how it was by the time you got there, but still a lot of patients had hadn't had access to doctors in a long time. So most of the illness that we would see as residents were actually advanced and surprising, patients with really far along illnesses that you're kind of surprised that they could just still be walking around with that situation. Yeah. Ely: Yes, definitely. That kind of establishing disease management and identifying severe disease was really was an important part of training. And I think, yes, Concord is a catchment area for that area. And Concord Hospital's Family Health Center is a federally qualified health center, much like where you work in East Boston currently, but there were a lot of social workers that helped. So there was definitely this sense of team effort to help engage people's health and work together. So that was a really good part. That's what I really liked about the training is that I learned from our pharmacists, from our social workers and other community health workers. So that was a good part of the training there. And it sounds like that helped you establish your career with in Dracut because you started your clinic there. Joe: I think all experiences eventually helped you later on for sure. So you're right, in Concord starting the residency program, I guess to some degree I wasn't scared to start a practice. So I guess there's that component of it. But though after I finished with the residency program that you also attended, then I returned back to my hometown in Chelmsford. And so when I finished, I went and had physical make sure that I also checked on my health. And so at that time I had gotten a physical in Chelmsford, the doctor that there was working with some other doctors and offered me a job in their clinic. And I said, "well, I'm just here for a physical, I don't think I want-" Ely: You got a job. Joe: Yeah, "don't think I want a whole job, but my physical must have been good." Ely: God bless family medicine, we do it all. Joe: So I did work a couple years in my hometown in Chelmsford in Drum Hill with Dr. Gamasis. And then actually I went back into New Hampshire. So when Michelle and I were married, we moved up to New Hampshire and then I worked with Wentworth-Douglass Hospital doing family medicine. And at that time, certainly most of the career up until that point and even after was fall spectrum. So when I worked in Chelmsford, it was inpatient medicine, outpatient medicine, ICU care, the rehabs, home care. So it was a lot. And so we would admit patients to the hospital, we would follow them and also do ICU care, and that was very satisfying. But it's a different world than it certainly is now in terms of, I suppose, expectations, acuity, the length of stay. I don't think it's even possible to do both now, but we did. And so I did that up in Concord and then actually we put a hospitalist program in there, which was actually very controversial, and then we ended up just transitioning to outpatient medicine. So then in 2007, I actually came back down to the area of Merrimack Valley with Saints Medical Center. They were near and dear to my heart because I had still been on staff there and they were looking to open practices and they said, "hey, can you open one of practice for us in Dracut?" And I said, that sounds really exciting because for me as a physician, I've always enjoyed obviously seeing patients and being in different environments. But one thing that you may never have an opportunity to do is to start a practice. And as a physician, starting a practice means you can really put your own personality into it and you're not inheriting necessarily a practice that's already there, or maybe another doctor's patient with maybe their style of medicine. So that was really exciting for me to be able to do that. And so the cool part about that situation was they also wanted me to be involved in the design build of the practice, which was super exciting. I didn't know anything about architect work or designing anything. So that was really exciting. And then we opened the practice and we had no patients. Day one, no patients, which is different than a lot of scenarios. So that was exciting and scary at the same time. Ely: Well, the natural question now I have is how did you recruit patients? Joe: Gosh, that was exciting time too. So a couple things, you just never know how life's going to go. So while we were doing this project, it was supposed to start in 2007, but it was delayed. So I had left the job in New Hampshire, came down, and they said, okay, unfortunately it's going to take longer than we expected. We're going to put you at the walk-in clinic for the year that we're going to get all this project going. And that was in Lowell. So I had never done urgent care medicine, so it's a little different and exciting and somewhat scary too, actually at times. And so I did that for a year. And there was a doctor that Dr. Bousquet who was a really wonderful doctor and a friend, so he must have known his life path what it was going to be. So he basically introduced me to so many people, so many patients. Even though he was kind of retired, they would still come to the clinic and he'd do kind of a primary care situation for them and then he would introduce them to me. And so I wasn't even really kind of aware of that was what was happening. And then so when I opened the practice, I did have actually a core of patients, which was really nice. And then we just did a lot of different things. So we went to every possible event that they had. So we went to job fairs where they wanted medical people. We went to the old home day in Dracut. I went to the Dracut baseball night, the comedy night, the fundraisers, whatever just to meet people. So that summer was really interesting. So we had no patients and then we slowly developed patients. I just basically stayed on a call every day, which wasn't as bad as it sounds, but when you have a startup practice, it's kind of neat to be on call all the time because then you're connecting with the patients very, very well. And then we had excellent people. So basically, there were three of us. So the three of us basically started the start of the office. So it was kind of exciting times. Yeah. Ely: That is quite a journey and a lot of legwork goes into building a practice in terms of just building the relationships you had with Dr. Bousquet. And so I am curious though, just as much as you were really involved in the community, if you can talk about it, how did it impact the way you and your family were developing? How did that balance work with being on call all the time and having all these obligations with work? How did you- Joe: It worked out in some ways. So though at the time, and actually still now, so we live way up in almost near Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but the practice was in Dracut, but again, this is kind of how crooked lines work and nothing's ever kind of straightforward. So we're both from that area. So she's from Lowell, I'm from Chelmsford, so we have family there. So though it was challenging in some ways to be here and there, it also was doable because for instance, her mom lives there. Her mom lives right down the street. And then my parents live in Chelmsford, and then my brothers live in Nashua and Chelmsford. So I think if it was a different location, it probably wouldn't have worked, but I could check on her mom, I can check on my parents, I can see my brothers. So that was nice. And then we could stay there. We could stay there on the night or the weekend. So that worked out really well. And then starting a practice also meant that I had flexibility because I could tell patients to come at seven o'clock in the morning, they could call me. So there was a lot of flexibility and that allowed me to have time to coach baseball and soccer and flag football. And so I guess it just kind of worked out because I guess you wanted it to, if you wanted it to work out. There were times it was hard. So I coached a lot of baseball, and so I even started sometimes at 6:00 AM and then would try to complete by early afternoon and then kind of rush home and then run some baseball drills, run the practices or the games or whatever. So I guess it just eventually worked out. But I think having some creativity in it and then having it be my own entity was really exciting. You have a lot of ownership in it and you can make things work, I suppose. And I really enjoyed having a personal connection to the patients that allows them to tell me that the schedule doesn't work for them, for instance, and they need something, and I can say, well, why don't you just come in at 7:30 and I'll do your physical then, things like that, which is to me is very, very satisfying 'cause the patient obviously needs certain things and I can know what those are. And then having some flexibility allows you to meet that need and you feel like, okay, that's why I'm actually here. Ely: Yes. Joe: Yeah. Ely: Well... you did... you say... it's amaze... I love hearing about this story and it's just different than mine. I also had a zigzaggy kind of path to medicine. But what I really am getting the sense of, Joe, is that you worked really hard to create your network, your family, really, work family, and then you really worked hard with your wife to build a network and a team that supported both of you, all of you. And if we don't really have a supporting team around us, it just can't work. And that's really a wonderful thing that you had and have currently. But I can imagine the shift in the culture of medicine and the way it's been managed provides some challenges now too. How have the rules changed around you in terms of management? Joe: Those are really great questions. And I guess it's easy to just gloss over the past and think, okay, gosh, everything was just really rosy, but it's not, it's not always rosy. So currently I think I'm way more satisfied than probably I have been in maybe in a long time. And I think some of that is because, like you were mentioning about working with people or networking, I think a lot of it is because the other doctor in the practice and also another doctor that also is there, we worked together to create the systems. Again, not to maybe speak poorly about systems, but we were in systems thinking, this is not really kind of what we're thinking or this is not actually functioning how we want it to function. Oh, okay, so you're feeling the same way as me and you're feeling the same way. And then, okay, let's express that. So we actually met a lot. It's changed even over the COVID, but we met a lot as doctors to talk about what we thought about medicine, what we thought about and how things should go, and then why it was or wasn't at that point. So I think at some point we just became leaders of our own own destiny. Now that doesn't always come easy. Sometimes you got to fight for that and sometimes it just works out. Certainly to your point, and I've kind of learned this kind of the hard way over time, I think joining forces with people is way more effective than just being the only person that maybe is complaining about something or that wants something to change. If you have two or three people that you work well with and you talk about things and you actually make sense, it's going to go good places, right? Ely: Agreed. Joe: Hopefully. Ely: Yes. Joe: Hopefully. Ely: Well, collaboration always brings some good fruits. And I would have to say, I really felt like over COVID, as we progress in this age of COVID, I'll just say it's really the pandemic continues, let's remind each other, and- Joe: It is continuing. Ely: ... it continues. But I feel like throughout COVID, I would often send a little message out to you in a way that helped me process what was going on. And the confusion about how we were operating or guidelines, miscommunications or communications about certain guidelines that were changing daily and they still really are, but I felt like having someone to vent about stuff that was changing was very helpful. So I again want to thank you for that. And I think that it helped me just advocate for what was going around in my situation. So thank you for that. Joe: Yeah, I'm glad that we connected because though there were three doctors in my practice, there was a time where we were either not working in the office at all or we were all remote and not really even seeing each other. And then at some point, yeah, there was an isolation, even though the physicians and medical staff. And so I think though it feels like I helped you, you secretly helped me kind of realize that I was doing some of the right things or thinking of the right things or I wasn't kind of off base thinking about the same things that you were thinking. And I may have told you yeah, you're right. But I might have also been secretly questioning it too. So I think, like you said, kind of connecting is definitely powerful. And I can't even take credit for all of that because though I was doing the family medicine in Dracut, I was also blessed to be a part of the East Boston clinic and some of the doctors there are also very amazing and they do different things. And so one of the doctors I worked with there, he gets deployed for disasters. And so he had gotten actually deployed from our pediatric kind of practice there to the very, very first COVID response unit in California when they had the cruise ship and they had 300 patients and they had no place to put these people. Kim and his crew went out there. So he had already been in the thick of it. I think that was December maybe 2019 or something. So he had already been in the thick of it and he came back and then I just remember learning so much from him and then thinking, okay, you have to be organized, you do have to have protocols, and you do need certain things. You need PPE, you need testing, and whether you can get those things or not, or if people are going to support you, you actually do need it. So advocating for those things, super important. And maybe you couldn't get everything you wanted. We couldn't get any N95 masks, but the other doctor that was in the practice had had the forethought of buying them. So we actually bought our own. And they weren't that great really, but they worked. And then, strangely enough, we were able to repair them. So I actually did a lot of glue gunning for several months of the masks because I didn't have another one. So it's kind of exciting in some ways to make things work, right? Ely: Yes. And being in medicine during the pandemic really made us either just dig our heels in and say, we're staying, we've got this, we have to do this, we have to do something. Whether it is in actually facing COVID patients in the hospital or out in the field, so to speak, in outpatient field of we have to deliver care, whether that it was telemedicine or in office eventually, and how we're we going to be able to do that and getting those PPE, for those listening, personal protective equipment. I think now we probably know that that's probably colloquial more so than just a medical term, but yeah, we have come a long way. And then to really sit and talk with you now about, man, that was some tough times over the last couple of years specifically. I'm listening to your story. I'm really curious and very enthralled with your development of your practice, but also just knowing what we have shared together in our health system with what we went through in the last two years. That was a lot. And it's still really tough. So I'm glad we're, we're still going, but it is difficult. Are you feeling the same way about that? Joe: Well, it's very much a people profession and it's a caring profession, and I think we get energy off of each other. So your excitement, enthusiasm, and even your positive feedback helps to really motivate me and other people. And so I think that was one of the really exciting things about the pandemic. Sure, I could probably look back and have a lot of mixed feelings about different things, but I think one of the things that was really amazing was the administration kind of apparatus really froze up. And the clinical people, we basically had to rise up because it was either we were going to just stay home during the pandemic or we were going to step up and figure out... Honestly, the choice was close down the practice and maybe we'll open up in a few months or we're going to figure out a way to reopen and serve our patients. So that was the choice, and that was really the clinical leadership. A hundred percent. We even developed how we were going to screen patients and then for the limited testing initially what we were going to do. And then as testing became more available, what were we going to do, what questions we were going to ask patients, when were they going to be permitted in the office? All that stuff we had to figure out and then we just did it. So thought that was really exciting actually. So I guess to answer your question, compared to sometimes when you feel really just maybe you're not making a difference, this period has kind of felt like more like we're making a difference. So things do kind of get tiring, the electronic medical systems can get tiring and charting, and there are some mundane things. And I think also the other thing is the more that we're in charge, I think of the healthcare system, and even simple things like how we're going to do our schedule, it's really empowering. I guess that's some of the things that came out of it. Ely: Thank you for that perspective, because that learning by doing is precisely why I chose family medicine. And really the impetus for me to be just actively doing in medicine was why I then pursued a career in medicine. And so just to be reminded of that is exactly what we are doing. This is our calling to do it, and we are here to serve. And as difficult as it is, that's what we do and we do it the best. And yes, leadership comes in all form, including administration, and there's certainly guidelines and rules that we may admonish at times, but really it's an honor and our privilege to be able to help others and live out the dream we all had of becoming physicians and being able to realize that in the work that we do. So thanks. Joe: You're welcome. And it did really feel like patients really did need us. So for two years, there were times where we're running all kinds of tests for coronavirus, then helping patients with, are you going to be able to work? And for how long? And who's going to write those letters? And then when can you go back and well, maybe you're not actually doing all that well, so maybe we should run x-rays and labs and send you to the hospital and now working with some of these other therapeutics and whatnot. So yeah, I think there's a lot of components where the family medicine, you can really just jump right in. Yeah, you're right. And then you're also right too, where it's not all rosy. There are a lot of things that can get in between those things that we really want to do for patients and how we want to feel about our calling. Ely: It's not all rosy, but then again, really, I welcome the challenge. If I had to go back into where our education had formed us at Holy Cross, the challenges that we had in terms of asking the question, and this is really for me, formed from this first year program that is now the Montserrat program that I was part of. But this question of how then shall we live in this world of COVID there are constant changes and rules, how then shall we live and then dot, dot, dot as physicians, as humans, as a mother, as a father. So I think it really is a unique way of looking at where we are through the lens of having a Holy Cross Jesuit education. Joe: Absolutely. There are so many experiences during the time there that totally prepares you for a career in medicine, in family medicine, or even just caring for people. There's so many things. The list is just endless of events and experiences for sure. I had what they call a SPUD... suburban, I'm not sure of all the acronyms there. Ely: Program for Urban Development something. Joe: We had so much fun, we did so many different things. And I just remember taking him to the... I think it's the pub there where there's the bowling alley. We had a bowling alley on campus, we used to do that a lot and other fun events. But yeah, there was just a lot of good experiences. One of the things that I think was also really excellent too was I went for one of the breaks at the Appalachia Mountain. I don't know if that was going on when you were there. So I went to Kentucky Mountain Housing and that was I think about 10 days. And so that was really amazing experience. So not only were we serving others, and then we were building some houses up in Appalachia in Kentucky, but we had to work together as a team. So that was probably one of the early experiences of really team building. So we had several bands, I don't even know how many were in each band, 10 or 12 people in the band. And basically we were responsible for the budget and getting all our stuff and then getting there. So we had to meet in Virginia or something and then continue on. So I just remember we had to decide who was going to drive and when and what shifts, and then how we were going to do our meals and who was going to cook it and when and who was going to clean up, and then who was going to do what kind of jobs on the site there. So that was really amazing experience. And then of course, interacting with people in Appalachia and helping them build houses and learning about their life experiences was, I think that's obviously a really amazing experience. And it's very, very similar to being a physician, except not building a house typically, but you're interacting with people and connecting with them where they are. So that was definitely a formative experience and I'm really grateful I was able to do that. Ely: What I want to ask you, because now you're in a position of having one of your kids going to start at Holy Cross, do you have any certain expectations for her experience at Holy Cross? Joe: Yeah, no, thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, Olivia will be a freshman this fall, and she plans on the bio pre-med track or health professions track. And so yeah, super excited for her. I'm overjoyed. For both of my children, I often brought them to different Holy Cross events. And for Olivia, we did the move in together. Well, not her move in, but we helped the students move in about five years ago. And then we've done several Holy Cross cares days, and then we've gone to reunions or football games or things. So I was always hopeful that she would have an interest and since I've been there a million years ago, the campus, it changed so much. They've just added so many wonderful things and buildings and upgraded just everything. So I was more than excited for her to consider it. And I'm really hopeful that she has a lot of the experiences that I had or even more. And so what I had wanted for her is not just go someplace and just do science, just be in the lab, just doing science by yourself, with your head down. I really wanted for her to have a real well-rounded experience and really develop other parts of her person as well. And I really wanted that for her. So I'm really hopeful that she sees it that way too. And she's very interested in the science building there. So we had to go look during all of her tours, specifically at the science buildings, even though lots of campuses in the United States are nice, the science building may not be nice. It may not be where they focus. So we went there and the newly kind of renamed Fauci Center definitely looked like it had gotten a lot of attention and would be a good place to learn. So yeah, I'm just really hopeful that she may find experiences like I did, or even different ones, even different ones. I was on the campus ministry there. And I found that to be really amazing, the 10 o'clock masses. And I walked on the football team for two years and was in a great dorm and had a lot of great experiences and a lot of great memories and friendships. Yeah, so I was hoping that she would get a lot of those experiences. So can I ask you about your recent career situation? Ely: Oh, sure. Joe: Because you're making some changes. Ely: Yes. So I would have to say the challenges of COVID and the challenges of parenthood, specifically motherhood, have put my focus on how to best be at home and do the work that I do. So being in the office, in the clinic, taking care of patients is truly rewarding. And I wouldn't change the opportunity for the world. But moving forward, I think I needed to step out of that in clinic role. And so now I've chosen a path to do telemedicine, and I'm very excited about developing my role as a communicator on the phone or by video and listening to patients. And that role won't change, but how I listen and how I engage with patients will be a little bit different and I'll have to hone in those skills. So I am looking forward to it. And I have a few weeks off before then. Joe: Well, I'm excited for you. So we've almost followed the same pathway, but now you're going a different pathway, because we both went to Holy Cross and we both went to New Hampshire Dartmouth residency and we both were urgent care in Merrimack Valley and Primary Care. But now you're going a different paths. Ely: Yes. Well, the zigzags of our paths have crossed many times in one way or another, and I'm sure they'll continue to cross, and hopefully that will continue. Joe: No, I think it's good 'cause I think our energy kind of feeds off of each other and our experiences or even just sometimes questioning kind of feeds off each other. And I think it's really positive. And I find that as I'm getting older and I actually think about what makes me tick, I think interacting with doctors and nurse practitioners and physicians assistants in the course of doing your work is extremely rewarding. And I really enjoy it. And so I do a lot of work in East Boston and a lot of times in the emergency room, and there's several doctors or some doctors and nurse practitioners, and I never really can really put my finger on why I enjoyed it, but I just really enjoyed being together with four or five doctors. It's amazing. You can talk to someone who has major differences in their life experiences or the clinical experiences, and you can just talk to them like right there, hey, I'm doing this for this patient, and what do you do? It's just amazing wealth. It really can help to develop just your satisfaction. But I do want to mention something, and I don't really know how to say it, but I think you brought up and there are, I think, unique challenges to being a male physician and a female physician. And I think with COVID and the additional responsibilities, it's really complicated. You could speak to this more than I, but I think as a female physician or a female nurse, you're also expected to take care of your kids when they're sick, which they're sick a lot with the COVID or not COVID or finding out if they have COVID. So what I've also observed is that the intensity of the responsibility is huge for women in clinical positions, and COVID just has made that so much more apparent and intense. So I understand maybe why you're making some changes there, but obviously you know more than I how that all works. Ely: I really appreciate the acknowledgement of the role of mothers in medicine and fathers have equally distinct roles in managing family life. So for some reason, for me, it has fallen on me to really be at home when they are sick or in quarantine. And it's something that I don't obviously mind doing, I love my children, and I just want to be able to show up for my family, myself and my patients equally as strong. And in my most recent role, I wasn't always feeling like I could do that and for one way or another. And it's not the fault of the system or the role itself, it just happened to play out that way. However, I did find some agency in looking at other options and voila, COVID opened a lot of doors to telemedicine and other opportunities for physicians to practice. So that was a fringe benefit, if I could even say a benefit of the pandemic was some doors that opened. So I felt enough agency to be able to walk through that door, and that was not because I was suffering, that was because there was a lot of strength that came from learning from my colleagues in my previous role. So I have a lot of good feelings for where I came from and a lot of excitement for where I'm going. Joe: I know, I think it's really wonderful and fantastic, and I'm glad that you acknowledged the unique pressures or stresses that you've felt 'cause I don't think they're unique to yourself. And so I'm glad that you've articulated that. And what I always think is by the time you've become a doctor and you've done all the amazing steps to get there, and then you're connecting with patients, to feel like for some reason you can't do that work because of whatever, because of schedule, because you want to also be there for your family or whatever systems things, and to think that maybe someone might actually leave the career altogether, it's really upsetting to me because it's usually the people that are the most caring and connected because you've given out so much of your energy and you just realize it's not working out. So kudos to you to try to figure out a way to keep all that amazing energy, like caring for patients. So I'm glad that you've figured out a path. Ely: Thank you. Joe: Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah, because I know you'll be back doing family medicine at some point in person, that's why I'm saying that. Ely: Yes. Well, my roots in community are very strong. And so to really hear your story of community building, it restores my faith in the progress of medicine and in the intensity of how we serve each other. So again, I cannot say thank you enough. Joe: Well, thank you to you too. Ely: The way I would love to close the interview is to say one thing that you are really excited about the future of family medicine. And I think I'm excited about the continued relationship building and the connection with colleagues as well as patients because if we are stronger as providers, as physicians, then I think that really only encourages our patients to become stronger and to have their agency to take care of their health. And really healthy communities, healthy families are what the drive to family medicine is. And so I'm really excited about that, that relationship is going to continue and get even stronger. How about you? Joe: I think you're right about that. And in the perspective of my path is that training in Boston in the '90s, family medicine was not at all desirable. And so you had to actually leave the city at the time to even seek out the specialty. But in time now, family medicine's very important everywhere, including in the city, including at the academic centers. And with my family medicine background, working in the ER, I do work with the pediatric group in Boston. I do family medicine in the clinic. I've also done urgent care and I feel equally at home in all those settings. And that's really nice. And I think connecting with the patients, I do feel like they actually do need us to know about a lot of things there. There's so much more complexity to health, and it's good to be able to do that over a wide range of health. And the other thing I like too about family medicine is we don't always have to make health issues always necessarily bad. We can talk about them as things that are opportunities to improve and maybe even opportunities to work on holistic health maintenance. So yeah, I think there is a lot of positivity to the future. We're going through an electronic medical record transition to Epic, which was really challenging. But I've used Epic in other locations and I'm finding that it, to some level is restoring my joy of medicine because the system is very good and allows me to actually complete functions rather than having the functions kind of dictate my whole day. So I think that hopefully technology will also help, at least the technology part that should be in place to help us. So I'm optimistic hopefully. Ely: That's a wonderful place to be optimistic and also carries us into the future. Maura Sweeney: That's our show. I hope you enjoyed hearing about just one of the many ways that Holy Cross alumni have been inspired by the mission to be people for and with others. A special thanks to today's guests and everyone at Holy Cross who has contributed to making this podcast a reality. If you or someone would like to be featured on this podcast, then please send us an email at alumnicareers.holycross.edu. If you like what you hear, then please leave us a review. This podcast is brought to you by the Office of Alumni Relations at the College of the Holy Cross. You can subscribe for future episodes wherever you find your podcast. I'm your host, Maura Sweeney, and this is Mission-Driven. In the words of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, "Now go forth and set the world on fire." Theme music composed by Scott Holmes, courtesy of freemusicarchive.org.
Silver Quintette - "Sinner's Crossroads" [0:00:00] Holmes Sisters - "Lord Hear My Cry" [0:04:50] Holmes Sisters - "Safe in the Arms of Jesus" [0:06:06] Joe Well's Fantastic Bells of Zion - "Farther Along" [0:10:38] Dawsonaires - "I'll See Jesus Too" [0:15:08] Deacon Ben Oliver and the Joyland Singers - "Oh Lord Take Care of Me" [0:17:05] Bob Miller and the Little Miller's Grove Baptist Church Chorus - "I've Got a Newborn Soul" [0:19:58] Capital City Five - "Shine Shine" [0:22:48] Williams Sisters of Ft. Lauderdale, FL. - "The Holy City" [0:24:44] Thomas Singers of Bridgeton, NJ. - "Further on up the Road Jesus Has a Blessing" [0:28:02] Dynamic Travelers of Annapolis, MD - "Walk Out on the Water" [0:34:24] Famous Rocks of Harmony of New Orleans - "Jesus is Alive" [0:37:05] Union Aires Gospel Singers of Richmond, VA - "Heaven Belongs to You" [0:41:12] Sensational Travelers of New Orleans - "Where Could I Go" [0:44:10] Southern Clouds of Joy - "Something on My Mind" [0:48:19] Combined Gospel Singers - "Walk With Me Lord" [0:51:19] Echoes of Zion of Houston, Texas - "My Chance" [0:55:35] https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/125268
Silver Quintette - "Sinner's Crossroads" [0:00:00] Violinaires - "Joy in Beulah Land" [0:03:21] Chariot Wheels - "What You Gonna Do" [ELI] [0:07:10] Deacon Ben Oliver and the Joyland Singers - "You Got Your Religion and I Got Mine" [0:11:42] Joe Well's Fantastic Bells of Zion - "You Got To Move" [0:14:34] Jackson Brothers - "I'm Rolling" [0:19:45] Sons of Zion - "Everytime I Feel The Spirit" [0:23:01] Clouds of Lynn - "Crucifixion of Christ" [ELI] [0:24:31] True Heavenly Spiritual Singers - "He Took My Burdens Away" [0:27:33] Famous Johnsonettes of Montgomery, Alabama - "Blind Man" [0:32:17] True Heavenly Singers - "He's On Time" [0:35:59] The Williams Sister of Ft. Lauderdale - "The Holy City" [0:40:07] Dynamic Traveleers of Annapolis, MD - "He'll Make Me Strong" [0:42:52] Gospel Soul Revivers - "Oh, What A Savior" - Come Together Children [0:45:08] Rev. Pringle and the Meditations - "I Can Tell The World About This" [0:51:53] Seven Souls - "This Train" [0:57:04] https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/118386
After holding the first ever #VOBOSS Bilingual Audition Challenge, Anne & Pilar welcome the winners onto the show. Joe Lewis, Milena Benefiel, and Ramesh Mahtani share the process behind their winning entry, what stood out to Anne & Pilar when judging the contest as well as what it means to be a bilingual voice talent in today's industry. Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Pilar: Hola, BOSS Voces. Bienvenidos al podcast con Anne Ganguzza y Pilar Uribe. Anne: Hey, hey. Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and today we have a very, very special episode planned for you. Not only am I here with my awesome special guest co-host Pilar Uribe -- woohoo Pilar! Pilar: Hi, Anne. Anne: Thanks for being here. We are so honored to be here with our VO BOSS bilingual audition challenge winners. So a huge welcome to our English audition winner, Joe Lewis. Yay! Joe: Hello. Ramesh: Hello, Joe. Anne: And our Spanish audition winner -- Pilar: Milena Benefiel. Anne: Yay! Hey Milena. Milena: Hi. Anne: And then our best English and Spanish audition, Ramesh Mahtani. Yay! So first of all, congratulations, everybody, on your wins. Joe: Thank you. Milena: Thank you, gracias. Ramesh: Gracias. Anne: It's very exciting. For those BOSSes that are just joining us and have not joined us before now, Pilar and I ran a bilingual audition challenge contest, which featured a Toyota commercial in both English and Spanish. And this was about, I'm gonna say, three to four weeks ago, and we had a number of submissions. I think it was over what, Pilar, like 130 or something like that? Pilar: Yeah. Anne: Or close to 130. Pilar: Yeah. Anne: And so first of all, everybody did a wonderful job, but we are so, so incredibly excited to have the winners with us today to talk about being bilingual in the industry today and what it takes. So let's start with our English winner, Mr. Joe Lewis. Yay, Joe. Joe, tell us a little bit about yourself and then I wanna play your winning audition. Joe: Okay. Well thank you for having me here. First of all, it's great to be with you all. I am a bilingual voiceover and voice actor, born in the US, Spanish father, American mother. And basically I've been back and forth in the States to Spain and from Spain to the States at different points of my life. And it's been a trip or several trips. You learn to adapt where you are and you do as the Romans do. And you learn a lot of stuff because you have to leverage two cultures, two languages. It's a thing. Anne: Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, let's play your winning audition. And I wanna tell you a little bit about the specs. Our specs indicated that the voice should be confident, knowledgeable, optimistic, never take themselves too seriously, but at the same time, never come off as sarcastic either, warm human down to earth, playful spontaneous, conversational, relatable, and above all else, nothing that is typical commercial sounding, movie trailer, or announcery at all. So. Milena: All the things, all the things. Anne: All the things. Pilar: In other words, the kitchen sink. Anne: All the things. Totally. And I want to give a big shout out to the queen bee herself, Liz Atherton, and CastVoices for her sponsoring this contest and offering our winners a year pro membership to CastVoices. You guys, castvoices.com, go and get yourself an account. Liz is amazing and always has the voice talents' backs. I'll tell you what, she's amazing. So thank you Liz for that. So let's go ahead and play the warm, human, down to earth, playful, not typical commercial sounding, movie trailer or announcery English winning submission by Joe. Here we go. Joe: Beep. Beep. That is the sound of me signaling that this is a car commercial while being considerate of the fact that you may be on the road. It's exactly this kind of consideration that lets you know, you can trust Toyota and our all new 2022 Highlander SUV to get you where you need to be faster and more reliably. Beep beep beep beep beep. Oops. Sorry. I think my burrito's done. Anne: I love it. Joe: Thank you. Anne: I think that that really took every single spec into consideration. Joe, did you have any particular strategy when you were doing this audition or what is it that you do to prepare for an audition? Because we had so many submissions, but yours just kind of really stood out from the get-go. Joe: Well, thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. As far as strategy, if it's automotive, I take it extra seriously because it's a big genre. So no matter what it is, even if it's a dealership, you know, it could turn into a long-term gig. So you take it seriously. It's always a challenge, uh, to see if it's a soft sell or if it's a harder sell, more promotional. At the same time, as you say, there's lot to consider in the styles or the trends that we work with today, uh, which are very different from 10, 15, 20 years ago. And that's as far as in general or as far as English. As far as Spanish, obviously my origin is of Castilian Spanish, uh, from Spain. So knowing that this would be for the American market, I tried to modulate that and go to a more neutral read and, and taking the specs into consideration as much as I could and have fun, have fun with it. Anne: Yeah. I think that's so important that you have fun with it. Pilar, comments about why we love Joe so much. Pilar: Listening to it again, I think what, what I really liked about it, this is probably not the right word. It wasn't folksy, but I really felt like I was listening to you, and I was listening to a real person rather than somebody reading it. Anne: Yeah, I agree. Pilar: Like, and just the small pauses, the little giggle -- there were some amazing entries, but what I found so interesting about yours was that you had this attitude from the beginning. You weren't serious, and then you went to the punchline. You had this sort of upbeat throughout the entire read. That's what really stood out for me. Anne: Yeah. Really, really warm smile, I think overall. Joe: Thank you so much. Anne: I just felt like. Pilar: Yeah, yeah. Anne: I felt like we were just longtime friends, which we are, but listening to, I felt like we were, and it really, really stood out from the beginning. So congratulations, Joe, again -- Joe: Thank you so much. Anne: -- on that. Joe: I appreciate it. Anne: So onto our winner in the Spanish division, Milena. Milena: Hi. Anne: Tell us a little bit about yourself and where you're located and your VO journey so far. Milena: All right. Well Saludos, hola, hi. Milena Benefiel. I am currently located in Orlando, well, near Orlando, Florida. I am the first generation born here in the US. Both of my parents came over from Cartagena, Colombia, woohoo and they insisted that I learned Spanish as a child, and I never understood why. Why would I ever need this other language? And look at me now, right? My background was actually in television. I worked part-time as a TV host for a Telemundo affiliate in Spanish and did a lot of commercial acting while also being an ER nurse and ICU nurse. I came from entrepreneurial parents who had multiple careers, multiple jobs, 'cause they had to, right, coming from another country. So I don't know how to not have too much on my plate. So this was kind of my side hustle. And after COVID I, I took it from part-time to full-time. I, I was kind of burnt out in the hospital, and yeah, I had the ability to go from sounding very middle America English, as you can hear in my, in my accent to speaking [Spanish] speaking in Spanish that's very neutral. It kind of like people are like, are you Colombian or Cuban or from where? So I've been very fortunate in that that I've been able to provide both sides for my clients. So it's been a really fun journey. Ramesh: Super. Anne: Yeah. Let's have a listen to the winning entry. Here we go. Milena: Bip bip. Ese es el sonido que uso para señalar que este es un comercial de autos mientras que usted podría estar conduciendo en la carretera. Este tipo de servicio es lo que le permite saber que puede confiar en Toyota y en nuestra nueva SUV Highlander 2022 para que se transporte de un lugar a otro de la manera más rápida y confiable. Bip bip bip bip bip. Vaya, lo siento, creo que mi burrito está listo. Yay! Ramesh: Super. Anne: Congratulations again, such a wonderful, warm sound. That's what I really got. And I love how, when we said have fun with this or somebody that doesn't take themselves too seriously, I really felt that in the places where you could -- it opened up to have fun, the more conversational like, "oops, I think my burrito's done." I love the way that you guys brought life to that and brought fun to that that wasn't even as expected. Pilar, your thoughts, Pilar: You had me from the beginning Milena. This was to me displayed so much warmth and reassurance. I felt like when I listen to it, you're taking me by the hand, and you're reassuring me as a consumer that it's gonna be okay. And it's like, oh yeah, I'll do whatever she says. Milena: Wow. PIlar: So that's what I got from this read. It was really, yeah, it was, it was really good read. You just, you got me. Milena: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much. I am so grateful for that feedback. That's kind of my MO when it comes to anything that I do in VO. I just, I, I wanna be warm and caring and reassuring. That's kind of my, my thing. So that you heard that feels so good because it makes me feel like, wow, okay. I'm, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. So thank you so much. Anne: I wanna kind of tag on to what Pilar said. Like for me, I do not speak Spanish, but I could hear the story. If I listen, I could hear your story in there. And when we talk about trusting Toyota, I felt that, and I really felt that you took the words beyond just what was on the page, and really you were in the scene. And like I said, for me to not even speak Spanish but to listen and to be able to hear your storytelling, I thought that that was, that was just really wonderful. So yeah. Milena: Wow. Thank you so much. Such a huge compliment from two women that I admire very much. So this is a very surreal moment for me. So thank you so much. Anne: well deserved. Well deserved. Milena: Thank you. Anne: Okay. So onto our English Spanish combination winner. Ramesh Mahtani yay. Congratulations. Ramesh, tell us a little bit -- Ramesh: Well, thank you very much. Anne: Yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey. Ramesh: Yeah, well, I suppose like most of us over here, very, very varied background. I mean, I was born in Karachi, Pakistan to Indian parents who perhaps were a bit disgruntled with the way things were going out over there, and they decided to move to the Canary Islands. Why, I have no idea, but that takes me back to when I was about four. So I came over here to the islands, speaking a combination of Sindi, of Hindi, of Urdu. Of course I had to learn Spanish rather quickly. And my parents always wanted me to speak English because they knew that English is the lingua franca, and you wouldn't get anywhere in the world without it. So I grew up in an American school over here in the canaries, and I was shipped off to a horrible concentration camp sort of boarding school in England, which was a nightmare. Um, I would spend four long miserable years there, which is I suppose, where I picked up the sort of vestige of an English accent. And then I went to America to do my university degree, which was a lot of fun. And I saw what the real world was like. And I didn't, I suppose, switch on to the American accent because wherever I spoke to were like, oh my God, your accent's so cool. Where are you from? Well, I'm originally from -- Oh my God. Keep on speaking. We just love your accent. So, um, no, I didn't pick up an American accent, I suppose. I just veered towards what, what I call international or neutral. So that's my story. And in voice, I I've always played around with my voice. I love switching accents between -- I speak to my parents with a bit of an -- well, my mom. My father passed away -- with an Indian accent. So it changes depending who I talk to, if it is very strong Indian community, well, it becomes Indian, otherwise it's what I speak now. And then of course, in Spanish and English and French and all these sort of, you know, weird voices going on in my head, it was but natural that I followed a voice over career. So that's what brings me here today, basically. Anne: Wow. Well now you did something interesting with your auditions. You did two takes for both English and Spanish. And so one of the things that stood out to Pilar and I were the fact that you did two different takes for each. And so let's go ahead and play now. Um, I'm gonna click on this one. I'm not sure if this is the English or the Spanish. So hang on one second because the name is, is long. So it's kind of running off my little table here. Ramesh: Sure. Anne: It could be either one. Let's put it that way. There we go. Ramesh: Beep. Beep. That is the sound of me signaling that this is a car commercial while being considerate of the fact that you may be on the road. It's exactly this kind of consideration that lets you know, you can trust Toyota and our all new 2022 Highlander SUV to get you where you need to be faster and more reliably. Beep beep beep beep beep. Oops. Sorry. I think my burrito's done. Beep. Beep. That is the sound of me signaling that this is a car commercial while being considerate of the fact that you may be on the road. It's exactly this kind of consideration that lets you know, you can trust Toyota and our all new 2022 Highlander SUV to get you where you need to be faster and more reliably. Beep beep beep beep beep. Oops. Sorry. I think my burrito's done. Anne: I love it. I wanna just make some comments before we played your Spanish entry. I thought, first of all, you had two completely different takes, and now I understand where the accent came from because you were living in the UK. So I get that now. I was not aware of that, but I really loved it because it really wasn't something that felt to me like it was obviously forced or something that wasn't natural to you. And the fact that you did completely different reads shows just some tremendous acting ability, which I think is any good casting director that can hear that knows immediately that they would be able to direct you to do anything really. And so that was, I thought was really strong about your English entry. And I also liked you had a different reaction and a different emotion about the burrito, which stood out to me, even though it was like a nuanced change. You're like, oh I think my burrito's done. Or Ooh, I think my burrito's done. It really lent a lot to the different reads and the different aspects and the showcasing of your acting abilities. Pilar. Pilar: Yeah. I felt like you were talking to two different people in the two different reads and that was really significant. And it's funny because I didn't realize it, but they were two different accents, and I was like, they sounds so different, and it's, it's like, oh yeah, duh, because he's so versatile. But that also colored the read because one was a little bit more business-like. The other one was a little bit sort of more off the cuff, more warm. And so it was really interesting to see them together, but they are very different reads, so yeah, that's great. Ramesh: Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I suppose one of the underlying elements is that I try and make sure that I'm not trying to sell in this case, sell the car, but just say, tell the story, uh, as something that we will often talk about in voiceover direction. As soon as it sounds sort of salesy, you know, you're going the wrong direction. So spice it up, you know, conjure up some magic, just make it sound as if as Pilar said, you know, you're just basically off the cuff having a conversation with someone, without sell, buy this car sort of thing, you know, which we definitely do not want to go there. Anne: And you know, I don't know if you guys noticed, but in the middle of that script, the sentences were a little bit long. You know how we always get a script and if it's a really lovely, wonderfully written script, we're like, oh yes, it's so easy to voice. We gave you something specifically that may not have been so easy to voice in navigating a long sentence. So. Ramesh: Ah, you did it purposely. Anne: Yeah. All of you handled that so well, so kudos on that. I mean, I'm used to doing that because you do a lot of long format narration and coaching my students, there's always unwieldy sentences. And to make it sound truly conversational and you know, as if you're talking to one person or talking to us, you gotta know your rhythm, you gotta kind of know, you gotta put yourself in the scene and understand where those pauses, where the commas are, even if they don't exist. Ramesh: Yeah. I realize, I thought, my gosh, who's written this, because it is, there was a part where it got really wordy and thought, you know, you have to navigate that. Pilar: Those were the traps and none of you fell into it. Anne: Yes. You know, we are teachers . Exactly. Yes. Always a teacher, just saying so, so congratulations. All right. So let's play, uh, the Spanish entry, which again, you did two reads, which were different. So here we go. Ramesh: Soy Ramesh Mahtani. Bip bip. Ese es el sonido que uso para señalar que este es un comercial de autos mientras que usted podría estar conduciendo en la carretera. Este tipo de servicio es lo que le permite saber que puede confiar en Toyota y en nuestra nueva SUV Highlander 2022 para que se transporte de un lugar a otro de la manera más rápida y confiable. Bip bip bip bip bip. Vaya, lo siento, creo que mi burrito está listo. Bip bip. Ese es el sonido que uso para señalar que este es un comercial de autos mientras que usted podría estar conduciendo en la carretera. Este tipo de servicio es lo que le permite saber que puede confiar en Toyota y en nuestra nueva SUV Highlander 2022 para que se transporte de un lugar a otro de la manera más rápida y confiable. Bip bip bip bip bip. Vaya, lo siento, creo que mi burrito está listo. Anne: Yay. Ramesh: I suppose I'll just caveat, uh, the accent there. I mean like Joe, I live in Spain and sometimes if my client's in mainland Spain, I would do a Castilian accent, but I put on a sort of neutral and general Latin American accent for those, which is similar to the Canarian accent. Anne: Yeah. I was gonna just ask you about that. And one thing that I wanted to point out, which I thought was super strategic, because you did the two takes, you immediately went into your second take to call the attention of like -- Pilar and I listened like, oh my gosh, I think it took us a weekend, right, at least, uh, one after the other one after the other. Pilar: Several times too. Anne: Exactly. And the fact that even though, I didn't know, you were having two takes immediately going into that second take was like brilliant because I didn't stop listening. You know, I was just getting ready. Okay. He's finished -- oh no, here he comes with the next one, which I thought was really strategic. And I think if I know you, Ramesh, that was on purpose Ramesh: Would it have been the alternative to have said, take one? Pilar: No. Most people leave a space. Anne: A lot of space. Yeah. Pilar: You don't let the listener down for a second. There's no lag time. Ramesh: Right. Pilar: And that is brilliant. I mean, I'm using that in my auditions now as well. Ramesh: Okay. I've I've always done it that way. Anne: That's smart. Ramesh: I, I seldom send off an audition unless I do two. Pilar: It's wonderful. Ramesh: I usually always do two takes. Anne: Yeah. Ramesh: And I just do them back to back. So as you said, so they don't have a chance to hit the next button. Yeah. Milena: I typically call it out in my slate if I'm going, do two takes, which -- Anne: And that's good too. Milena: -- for most auditions I would do two. Yeah. But I like this. You give them no choice. Give 'em no choice. Anne: Right, right. Just go right into it. I love it. And you went right into that second character too, which I thought was great for that. Now did you have a strategy English versus Spanish? I know you just mentioned that you did more of a neutral Spanish. What was your strategy for those two different reads? Ramesh: For the two Spanish reads? Anne: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Ramesh: Um, just, just variation really. Anne: Yeah. Ramesh: I mean, I just, I would loathe for them to sound similar so the director would've said, ah, you know, this guy's obviously reading the same thing twice in the same way. I, I just do not wanna fall in that trap. So whatever I could do to spice it up or color it to just make them sound different and believable, relatable and conversational, keeping away from the salesy. Anne: Sure. So then let me ask you what's happening in your brain? What's happening? What's the process? Are you putting yourself in a different scene maybe? Ramesh: I've got a different audience and I'm somebody else. Anne: Okay. Ramesh: So either I'm a young sort of rich, youthful sort of business dude, or I'm an older person just wanting to sort of have a nice car. So I, my whole persona changes, maybe it helps being a Gemini. I could switch from one, from one personality to the other, but yeah, definitely. I've gotta change the audience and change the speaker. Both of them. Anne: Oh good. That's a really good tip. I like that. I've always changed the scene, but not necessarily who I was, because I always wanna be conversational and, and tell this story and, and not be salesy as well, but I never thought about changing, let's say I'm a younger Anne, which that would be nice. I like that. Milena: Your voice can be as young as you wanna be. Anne: That's it. There you go. Yeah. I like that. Ramesh: I guess ever since I was a young kid and, and having been moved around so many different places, I perhaps, and this is for something very personal and intimate, and I, and now that it comes up in context, I don't mind sharing it, but I've, I've often struggled to have a proper identity as an -- sometimes I don't even know who I am because I've had to switch and I do often switch, you know, when I speak, as I said, I speak to my mom, I speak to in an Indian sort of way. I speak to the local Canarian dudes out in the street and become totalmente canario; it's a totally different accent. So I'm always switching, switching, switching, switching in the end, to think, you know, oh my gosh, existential crisis, you know, who am I? Anne: That's a, that's really an interesting point. Yeah. Joe: You're a chameleon, Ramesh. Ramesh: I'm a bit of a chameleon. Anne: Absolutely. Ramesh: I'm not Spanish and I'm not English, you know? So it's really weird. Anne: That's very interesting. I always equate that, and again, I'll get maybe a little into it, but I grew up with three brothers. And so being the only girl in the family, I didn't have to share necessarily, but I also didn't have like a sister to kind of like play dolls with or whatever I was gonna be doing. Milena: Same. Anne: So I got really good at my imagination. Ramesh: Yeah. Anne: And playing with my dolls and teaching and talking to them and really putting myself in different scenes with them. And I think that carries through the adulthood. Right, Milena, you mentioned the same thing? Milena: Oh yeah, absolutely. I didn't have a sister growing up. And I also just think like with my parents having the multiple jobs, they were both performers. My whole life has been a performance, and I kind of do the same in my two takes. I go into my lower register in that warm, buttery, soft, like my first take will be -- or exactly what the specs ask for, I'll give you in the first take, and then the next one, I'll kick it up to a little bit of a higher pitch, make myself a little bit younger and I'll be a little wackier, like a little more fun, a little more conversational, and just get a little more crazy with it. Just to add some adlibs and some different things too, just for range. Anne: I think that's great. Do you have more than two personas? I always have two in my pocket, but do you spend time developing, let's say, a third read or a third persona that can give you a different read? I think that's good for the artist in us. Joe: I mean, I, what captivated me about this piece was the invitation to do effects. You don't usually see that in copy, so I thought that was like, ooh, this is gonna be fun. Anne: Yeah. Joe: And then I tried to add layers, do several takes and sort of warm up and then listen to them and see if I can be sprinkling, uh, or adding something. But I do agree that when you kick into another language, it's another dimension of tools and, and tricks that you have. I wasn't privileged to have brothers or sisters. So being lucky enough to grow up with a, a parent of either side, you know, you, you kind of take it for granted when you're a kid, and then you, you grow up and you're like, wow, this is pretty powerful to switch on and off, switch the languages, you know, with all the cultural and the contextual things that come along with each particular one. Totally there with Ramesh on the strange dichotomy that happens and not really knowing who you are or when it's the, uh, what secret service did you say you worked for again? Pilar: No, comment. Milena: I love how he's silent. He's like -- Joe: He's a pro. Milena: If I tell you I'll have to kill you. Ramesh: Well, sorry. Did I, did I talk about a secret service? Joe: I was asking you what secret service you work for, my friend. Anne: I love it. Milena: Crickets, crickets. Anne: Crickets. Secret service. Pilar: Speaking of which, that was one of the things that really struck me about Ramesh's Spanish read is that I heard someone speaking in Spanish with the Spanish language rhythms rather than a translation. And that to me was so important because that not being your first language, and I think that that's really important because like Milena, I mean, I was born in this country, but my parents spoke to me for the first five years of my life in Spanish, but it's technically not the language that, you know, I speak English all the time. So there's something, there's always that strange sort of divide. Like who are you? Are you this? Are you that? And what I really liked about your read was that it was like, I was listening to a Spanish person speaking, not a translation. And that's so important. Everyone is always so concerned with the accent. That really kind of falls by the wayside. Because if you believe in what you're saying, and it has to do with acting, if you're really acting it, how well you speak or how much of an accent you have doesn't really matter. It all falls by the wayside. So that's what to me, what made a very successful bilingual audition. And that's why we picked you, one of the reasons why we picked you as the bilingual audition winner. Ramesh: Oh, thank you. I'm privileged. Thank you very much. Anne: And again, I'll just kind of tack onto what Pilar was saying is both of the Spanish versions of your audition, I could hear the story that you were telling. And again, I listened very carefully, especially in the unwieldy sentences, because that's what I do every day with my students. I'm working on these crazy, long format narration scripts that aren't always written well. And so I would really be listening carefully throughout all the entries for that navigation. And I still felt the story. I felt the rhythm, and I felt the words that needed to come be a little more present in my ear that were important, like the brand name, the fact that you trust Toyota on all of your reads. Believe it or not, listening to all of the entries, that was kind of a key I was listening for, to trust Toyota. And I wanna feel that trust as opposed to trust Toyota. And I really wanted to feel that little nuance of emotion or trust. And I think every single one of you in every one of your English and Spanish gave me that trust feeling and that warm feeling and that kind of having fun with it, especially at the end, and the beeps too. I mean, I like the fact that we gave this script out because of the beep beep and what people did with the beep beep was really telltale, especially in the beginning, if you did something that maybe wasn't a traditional beep beep or you had fun with it, or you just kind of smiled at yourself. I think Joe, you're, right off the bat, you're kind of chuckling a little bit and it just was so warm and I fell in love with that from the beginning and all of your interpretations of the beeping at the front end of that and the back end of that, I loved it. You know, you had fun with it like we asked in the specs. Joe: Well, I was just gonna say Road Runner, you know, I mean, it was irresistible to me. It was irresistible. Ramesh: Absolutely, absolutely. Milena: Yes, that's exactly what I pictured in my head too. Ramesh: Yeah. Milena: That's funny. Ramesh: I think after doing this for, I mean, you know, you're speaking to people who are super professionals. I have great respect for Joe and Milena and Pilar and yourself, Anne, of course. I mean, when you listen to somebody who's just started off and doesn't have much training, that's when you realize, oh my gosh, this is a poorly done audition. But after a while it just becomes intuitive, I think, plus the script lend itself, the beeps, the mic proximity that you can, the burrito whole thing. I mean, what does the burrito have to do with the car sale, for God's sake? So you can do so much with that. You know, you can just, as you said, have fun and the more imagination you have, and the more years of experience you have tucked under your belt, you can do crazy things within parameters, of course. I often don't overthink it because that's usually when it doesn't usually work. It's usually my first and my third take, which are good. Uh, the first one, because I'm just off the bat, I'm fresh and I'm just being really spontaneous. The second seems to be similar to the first ,and the third, usually I've had a bit more time to imagine nuances, and those come out quite magically. So, but yeah, the script was nice. It lent itself to, to having fun and being creative. Milena: I completely agree with that, the instincts, I know Anne, you had asked earlier, you know, what was your method? How did you attack this script? How did we look at the script? And I actually will do a read prior to even reading the specs, just to get my natural inclination of like, okay, I'm looking at the script without overthinking it. Let me just do a read. And then of course looking at the specs, and then kind of picking apart, you know, I listened back to my read and picking apart, what words do we wanna highlight? Like you said, trust, right? The brand, faster and safely, getting there fast and safely. Those are important things, right? Joe: Exactly. Milena: So then I go through with it, but I completely agree with Ramesh, it typically is my first read. And then maybe my third or my fourth. The second one always sounds like the first one, or it's like, so off the wall that it's like, why did I go totally left field on that one? But yeah. I completely agree with you, when you just go with those once you've been doing it for a while, when you try to be someone you're not, it's not authentic. Ramesh: Exactly. Milena: And you can hear it in your read. Joe: Yeah. By family tradition, my parents came from the academic and the publishing world. So script analysis, I put at the top of the list, you know, the top three, because the burrito for example was what invited me not to do it in Castilian. And that was my choice. I thought it was great that you did two takes of each, Ramesh. I, I shied away from the Castilian because I just wanted to have a burrito and, and that's Mexican, and I just -- and it's international by now., yes, but it's traditionally and originally Mexican. And I wanted, I wanted to go there. If you told any person in Spain, you know, burrito just stand alone, they might not get it. If it's contextual, they'll be, oh yeah, yeah, Taco Bell, you know, whatever, but, or Mexican restaurant, but that's, that's the reason I, I shied away from Castilian and I, I made an attempt at my best neutral Spanish. Milena: I had no choice. I don't do Castilian You don't wanna hear me trying to do Castilian accent. Anne: So that brings an interesting question, which I had asked of Pilar early on in our series, about when specs come in for Spanish, is there a strategy? Are specs clear? Do you sometimes have to say, well, is there a particular dialect that you're looking for? What do you guys do? Joe: First and foremost is the market. What market is it hitting? Because if it's a state, it's gonna be 99.9% neutral Spanish. It's very exceptional to do Castilian. I've spent many years living in Spain, and sometimes they call me to do Spanish and Catalan. And for many years they wanted an American accent, even though I don't really have one when I speak normally. So I, I had to kind of impose, impose an accent like this or something like that. You know, you know what I'm saying? Milena: I love it. Being in the US, I think it's kind of less of a question for me. I know Ramesh and Joe are overseas. For me here in the US, typically my specs are always gonna say either neutral Spanish or Latam Spanish, Latin American Spanish. That's 99%. I think I have gotten a couple auditions that have asked for Catalan or Castilian Spanish. And it's very rare, but I am pretty upfront with them that I'm like, you're not gonna be happy with my read, if you want me to try to pull one of those off. But yeah, I think for me over here in the States, it's almost always, it's gonna be neutral or, or Latin American Spanish, which is what I do. And I can put a little bit more of that Paisa, you know, Colombian accent on it, if they're asking specifically for Latin American, but yeah. Ramesh: I've had a very strange situation with many of my castings in Spanish. I've booked jobs. And then they come to me and say, you're not Spanish, are you? I said, they say, you sound very Spanish, but by your name, we had doubts. And a few times they're, they're brave enough to say that. Anne: Yeah. Ramesh: They're like, your name sounds Indian or Pakistani. I'm like, well, it is. What you want do about it? Milena: What you want? Ramesh: You bookedme. You, you booked me, you liked my audition, but are you just curious? You just wanna start a conversation over here? And, and I struggle with that. And the same thing with my English, like, oh, this guy's Indian. He probably, he doesn't have a proper English accent. I'm like, well, so I stopped trying to be very British at one point, and I said, well, I'm international English. I mean, what can I say? Yes, I'm Indian. I can't, I could change my name. And at one point I tried to go as Robert Martin, but I thought it just sucks. Joe: No, you should be Pepe Mahtani. Ramesh: Pepe Mahtani de las islas canarias... so, yeah. So that's another sort of strange one, but like Joe's, But I mean, I also do a lot of times they, they ask you to do a span with the English accent. So you have to do what they, what the client wants and you hope they're happy. Joe: You have to. You have to. Ramesh: You have to. Pilar: You have to. Ramesh: Yes. Milena: Oh my goodness. Ramesh: Without a doubt. Milena: Ramesh, that did strike me. Remember, our first conversation. That's what I said. I said, I'm completely blown away. As soon as I saw your name, I was like, well, he's not Spanish or American. [indistinct] Ramesh: No, I totally understandable, yeah. It's like, where are you from? [speaking Spanish] Milena: Cómo puede ser, pero no entiendo. [banter in Spanish] Joe: For me, it's the same, Joe Lewis. Right? You know, talking in Spanish, like, come on. This is -- Pilar: You could be José Luís. Joe: Ridiculous, ain't it? Milena: José Luís. Joe: José Luís, exacto. Ramesh: Whenever I speak to Joe, whenever I, the first thing I tell him, when we get on the phone is like, hello, Mr. Joe Lew-is. . Joe: I try to do my best Southeast Asian for Ramesh because I love him so much. Ramesh: Listen, all my white friends who try and do an Indian accent are just terrible at it. You guys suck big eggs because you cannot do an Indian accent. Even Mr. Peter Sellers, who I have great respect for in the movie "The Party," he also did not pull out a decent Indian accent. I'm sorry. It's crap. Joe: A thousand apologies. But I do -- I do this with, with love. I do this with love. I promise you. Ramesh: Joke around. Anne: Oh my goodness. Ramesh: You can joke around because we are good friends, but your Indian accent, I'm sorry, is not very convincing. Joe: Totally. Totally agreed. Anne: Oh my goodness. Well, you guys -- Milena: Friends don't let friends go around with terrible accents. Anne: There you go. There you go. Joe: Precisely. Anne: So I wanna ask each of you, what would be your best tip? Like how do you market yourself as -- like people that are coming in to the industry now, if they're bilingual, what best tips can you give us to market yourself as a bilingual voice talent? Joe: I've spent many years trying to equate both. I have them at the same level, both languages. It was a thing of responsibility. That's a big R word, responsibility. And this was instilled through my parents directly and indirectly. So I was very lucky with that. It all went astray when, uh, a number of years ago, I started to get requests from clients to do accents that are not my natural accents. Oh, I wait, are you sure? I'm like, yes, no, please. And then you do it and they love it. And like, Hmm, well, maybe there's something here. Maybe, maybe it's a thing. So you can never sleep in your laurels. You can never get too comfortable. You can never get too overconfident because it's like music. I come from music. It's ultimately unattainable. You're not gonna finish it. Just keep on pumping. That's what you can do. That's my best advice. Keep on pumping. Ramesh: 100%. Milena: I guess before this interview, we talked about this a little bit. I actually shied away from doing Spanish when I first started, despite me literally being on Telemundo, right? like having my own segment in Spanish. I always was a little bit insecure about my Spanish, and I would get requests to do things both English and Spanish, and producers kept telling me like, you've got something here. You've gotta do -- when you can offer both sides, it's more efficient. It's mutually beneficial for you and the client. You've really gotta push this. And I did. So I try to -- and I'm trying to get better at it -- I try to, when I'm posting things, say to social media, or, you know, whenever I'm doing things, I'm trying to do more showing the spots that I do in English and in Spanish so that people can see both sides, especially right now. There's this huge shift in the last few years here, that is this huge push for diversity, huge push for bilingualism, especially with Spanish in the US. And I don't know if you guys are seeing things over there too, or internationally, 'cause of course I just know here in the US, but there's this really big push. So I've been very, very fortunate in that everyone that I connect with, as soon as I mention that I'm bilingual, they then mention that to somebody else. So my biggest tip would be let people know. Don't do what I did for the first, you know, five years and shy away from that. Practice it. And if you don't feel as confident in that second language, which I didn't, start reading books out loud, watching movies, speaking -- I told my parents do not speak to me in English. We're speaking in Spanish, and I would read technical things so that it would be more difficult, you know, words that I didn't use in conversation, and just let people know, but plaster it everywhere and make sure everyone knows. Anytime I send an audition on say Voice 123, 'cause I do use that as a pay to play in addition to my agents and other things, anytime, even if it's an English audition only, I always, always, always write, hey, and if you ever think about hitting the Hispanic market, I also speak neutral Spanish. Please go to my website and here's my stuff. Even if it's only an English spot, I always let people know. And you know what? 50% of the time, they come back to me and say, you know what? We posted a separate for the Spanish. We'll just go with you for both of them. So whatever language that is that you're in, use it. And even if you don't think they'll ever use you in -- let people know, 'cause they're not gonna know unless you tell them, right? So that is my biggest piece of advice is just brag on yourself, man. Let 'em know. Joe: And if I may quote Jaco Pastorias, the great late bass player, it ain't bragging if you can back it up. Milena: Heyo. Ramesh: Absolutely. Anne: Ramesh, your thoughts? Ramesh: Yeah. Well, I think in my case, I was speaking to Joe about this actually a few, a few days back, it, it's very market specific. I mean I live in Spain and I don't really market myself to Spanish clients in Spanish, I suppose because I know there's, there's a whole plethora of Spanish voice artists here. Why would they necessarily go to me? So they come to me for English and as Milena said, once they come to me for English, then I'd bring out the Spanish. I'm like, here you go. I can do it in Spanish for you. Oh great. That saves us so much trouble and hassle finding somebody who can do it in Spanish. And likewise with international clients that I book in English, you know, I tell them I, I can do the Spanish, but I think you, as Milena said, you have to let it be known that you can do both and do whatever you're good at. If you're good at corporate, well, sell yourself at corporate and be even better at corporate, and then perhaps branch out to something that you may want to aspire to. If you wanted to do some animation in Spanish, you've never done that before, get coaching, but focus on your strengths and build your strengths and be really confident that my strong piece is this. And I can promote that openly and confidently, because confidence is, is 90% of the game. If they see that you say I can do Spanish for you as well. And you know, you don't have a belief in yourself, it's gonna seep through. I mean, I do French voicing, but I tell the clients, I'm not a native French speaker. I've got a very good accent, but it's not native. And I try and pull it off because I have confidence that I can do it. Joe: I totally agree. We don't read minds. And I, I was in a corporate multinational advertising agency for a while, and bilingualism in the States is a really important thing. I mean, I don't know what you think, Ramesh, if you agree with me, but for certain reasons, I think there's more of a bilingual ambient in the States than there is in Spain. 'Cause Spain is too busy with politics and they're busy with co-official languages. They're not dialects, they're official languages like Catalan, Gallego, or Galician and, and Basque. And the, the thing is that, uh, because of the way English is taught in Spain and, and because of dubbing, this is the reason why English is not a second nature, uh, language in Spain. So you always have to have client education in mind in the good sense to try to explain to them because they may not read your mind. They may not understand to what level you are in the other language. It's not easy. I mean, it's, we live in a world that is very multiplied because of social media. And you know, I see this from the musician standpoint, again, you know, the advent of pop star. You do a 3000 line casting. You, you get in, you're on TV, it's instant stardom. I mean, there's a lot of ways to get known really quickly and dramatically in this world. And a lot of people are strutting their stuff. So it's a complicated thing to market yourself effectively. It's not just marketing, and here I would like Anne to take over on the marketing thing because you're a master at this, but it's a really important question, what you ask. How do you market yourself in English and Spanish effectively and be taken seriously? You know? Anne: Well, I mean spoken by the guy who has the bilingualvoiceover guy.com, right? I mean me@thebilingualvoice -- so that I'll tell you, right in your URL, you're advertising, and you've got multiple URLs. And I know that, you know, all of you on your websites are focusing or you have the fact that you are bilingual. And I think that's number one, I mean, in this online world and Pilar, I know does an exorbitant amount of not just bilingual voiceover, but also dubbing. So Pilar, any specific, additional tips that we haven't talked about that maybe you could offer as advice to, let's say, bilingual voiceover talent that are coming into the industry now? Pilar: Um, well a lot has been said about it. When I first started in the industry, in voiceover, I was encouraged not to do a bilingual voiceover demo for example by a very, very well known coach here that Anne and I both know who shall remain nameless who said, absolutely. You never mesh the two together. Milena: I've been told that too. Pilar: You have Spanish on one side and English on the other. So I did, not with them. And so then I, I was like, okay. So I went with somebody else. I did it, Spanish, English, fine. And then I thought, no, I'm gonna go ahead and do a bilingual voiceover demo. And I did, and that is one that's booked me so many jobs. The other one is really good. The other two that I did, the Spanish and English and it, my agents prefer me separating them. So that's fine. But the Spanglish one is what has booked me so many jobs. And so for somebody starting out, I think it's just important to keep at it, just to keep putting yourself out there. And also you never know what the client's gonna ask. I just, I find it so hysterical that I get booked for something. We'll do it in English. We'll do it in Spanish. And then they'll say, well, can you just give us a little accent? I'm like, you're kidding, right? And I don't have an accent in either. I mean, in Spanish, I always think I do, but I don't. I know I don't, it's just, it's so minuscule, but they're like, can you just make it a little bit more for us? And then in English, can you just give us a little bit more, a little thicker? I'm like, okay, fine. If that's what the client wants, that's what the client gets. So I think that the key is to be elastic and to say, yes, I can do this. I can do this. Never say no. A lot of times I've come up against artists who sit there, and they say, oh, well, I passed on that because I can't do it. And I was like, well, why can't you do it? Well, I didn't, I didn't think I could. Well, if you don't think you can, then you're not gonna be able to. Right. Exactly. So always be available and let the person who is casting see if you're right for it or not. And you know, keep putting yourself out there, no matter what. Milena: I wanted to ask, 'cause this is the question that I have and I think maybe some that are coming in would appreciate an answer to this -- in the US, the majority of my buyers are speaking English, right, whether they want Spanish or not. Now I do work with buyers that speak Spanish, but the majority of them are in English. So I've struggled with the decision to make my website, do a Spanish website, all Spanish website, or just an all English website. So I've chosen to do an all English website that says I'm bilingual and I'm gonna have an about me page that's just in Spanish, just my about me page. And I just wanted to get your feedback on that, 'cause I think that's a question that a lot of people have coming in as well. Like do I need to have these two separate entities like I have for my demos? Or like I said, for me, the majority of my buyers speak English regardless whether their client is or they -- their primary language may be Spanish, but my buyers are usually in English. Pilar: So this might sound a little radical. Milena: I like it. Anne: Already. Pilar: I'm not thinking about who my buyers are. I'm thinking about me. And if I go, and I did this, 'cause I had two separate websites 'cause I actually followed what this person said to me at first, and I had an English website and I had a Spanish website. And all that does is dilute you. That does nothing for your SEO, does nothing for the persona. And if you're talking about branding, for me, this did not work. It might work for other people, but I just park everything in one place and I have different categories. That's just me. Milena: Perfect. I like it. Pilar: And that has worked better. I think it's worked better in consolidating everything because at one time I had like three different websites. It was just crazy. And it just diluted -- Milena: It's a lot to manage. Yeah. Pilar: Exactly. Joe: I mean, Milena, you could put a tab -- you could have your website in English and then put a little tab of in Spanish and then they can click, and then they'll, they'll go to that same site, and you'll have it all translated into Spanish. What I'm not an expert is an SEO and how it behaves looking at a, at a site in one language and if it can complement SEO ratings on the same site. So just because I could, I have the Bilingual Voiceover Guy, but I have both Voces Bilingue, and right now I'm redirecting them. But the idea is to have Voces Bilingue in Spanish and then have it linked to the English one. Anne: And then Joe, you have a page on your, the Bilingual Voiceover Guy, English that also is translated in Spanish, correct? Joe: Yes, because I hadn't had this thing that I just talked about yet. That, that, that was a sort of a patch in the meantime. And funny enough, that page is what's ranking. Anne: I was just gonna say that, if you have that page, if it's all in Spanish, because if somebody doesn't speak English, and they're typing a search term in Spanish, that would match your page, your landing page. And it still comes to your central, you know, I call it the central website, but you've just got another page. Yeah, a separate tab, a landing page. And I think that's a really good strategy that you'll be able to capture the best of both SEO worlds. Yeah. Pilar: Yeah. The tab is essential. Joe: Yeah. The tab, mm-hmm. Anyway, I mean, my thing is work in progress too, but the way I choose to think is that there's 2 billion English speakers, and there's 600,000 Spanish speakers. So that's a market of 2.6 billion. Anne: Yeah. Joe: For each one of us. And sky's the limit. Pilar: Absolutely. Anne: Ramesh, how do you work your website? Do you have a special page dedicated? Ramesh: I just have it in English actually. I think that's, that's definitely something I need to work on to see how I can, but I've -- to be absolutely honest, I'm quite happy with the level of work that I've got right now. So -- Milena: If it ain't broke. Ramesh: -- smooth sailing, I don't wanna sound arrogant, but I'm comfortable. So I, I could perhaps do all these lovely suggestions that you guys have come up with, but perhaps another time. Anne: Well, I don't have another language page, but I have literally four other genre specific pages like website, because I specialize in corporate narration or I specialize in e-learning. So I have the e-learningvoice.com. I have medical-narration.com, phone voice. And so even though I may not get a ton of activity on those sites, the words on those sites get indexed, and it contributes to my SEO. And each of those sites also maps back to my core site, which I think is my core brand of AnneGanguzza.com in addition to my VO BOSS and VO Peeps brands. So I handle probably 11 sites. Pilar: That's next level marketing. Go to AnneGanguzza.com for next level marketing, that's, that's that's our next, our next job. Anne: But yeah, it just helps to be found and it kind of just works on its own. And every once in a while I do have, as a matter of fact, I'm looking to refresh those pages just to make sure they keep generating people, pointing at my website. And again, it's a wonderful position to be in. If you have a, a good amount of work, I think that's amazing. Then things are working for you. And so that's why your advice and everything we're talking about today is so valuable for people that are coming into this industry. So we thank you, guys, so much for joining us. Milena: Thank you for this contest -- Joe: Thank you for having us. Milena: -- and this swag. Hello! Ramesh: Thank you for having us. Anne: I know. So yeah, I do wanna mention the swag. So not only did you guys get, uh, thank you again to Liz Atherton, but also you guys got BOSS swag, which Pilar and Milena are wearing right now. Ramesh: Yeah. Mine's on the way. It'll be here in about next -- Anne: Which it is on the way. As a matter of fact, I will tell you because you're on that little island there, Ramesh, it might take a little longer to get you. Milena: It's gonna come by carrier pigeon. Ramesh: Keep on looking at the skies to make sure the drones are dropping in. Anne: I can't wait to see pictures of you in that t-shirt. Ramesh: Oh, I will. Anne: And Joe with your mug. That's awesome. So. Ramesh: I love it. Super. Anne: You guys, amazing job. Thank you so much. It's been, this has been so wonderful, and we thank you for sharing your wisdom with us, and yeah, I wanna do this like now every six months. Milena: Down for it. Anne: Think we should -- Joe: -- amazing. Anne: You know, right? Ramesh: It would be pleasure. Anne: So what's been going on in six months in the bilingual world? So yeah. Awesome. Well guys, I'm gonna give a great big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You guys can connect and network like we have on ipDTL. Find out more at ipdtl.com. And also I will say that this was recorded today with Riverside. So I'm extremely happy to have given this a try, and thanks for the wonderful video and audio tracks that we're going to get. And one more sponsor, 100 Voices Who Care. If you want to use your voice to make an immediate difference and give back to the communities that give to you, find out more at 100voiceswhocare.org. Thanks, guys, so much for joining us again. It's been amazing and we'll see you next week. Ramesh: Thank you very much. Joe: It was lovely. Milena: Thank you. >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voBOSS.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.
Joe Ferris is thoughtbot's CTO and Managing Director of the thoughtbot DevOps and maintenance team known as Mission Control. Mission Control is our newest team doing DevOps Support, Maintenance, and SRE (Site Reliability Engineering). The goal of Mission Control, rather than building products or pairing with team members to improve their team like the rest of thoughtbot, is to support those teams and support other client teams in deploying and scaling applications. They have an on-call team and do more complex cloud build-outs with the goal being to empower and educate the teams that we work with so that they are more capable of working in those ecosystems on their own. Follow Joe on Twitter (https://twitter.com/joeferris) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-ferris-81421a167/). thoughtbot's Mission Control team (https://thoughtbot.com/mission-control) Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Joe Ferris, thoughtbot's CTO and Managing Director of the thoughtbot DevOps and maintenance team known as Mission Control. Joe, welcome back to the show. JOE: Thanks, Chad. It's been a while. CHAD: It has been a while. I think you were the first-ever guest, if I'm not mistaken. JOE: I believe that's right. We talked about null, I think. [laughter] CHAD: Yeah. And it would have been with Ben back when I was just a listener and maybe producer. So welcome back to the show. It's been a long time, and a lot has changed at thoughtbot over the years. I've been talking to each of the managing directors of the new teams, and I wanted to be sure to have you on. Why don't we take a little bit of a step back and talk about Mission Control? When we say DevOps and maintenance, what do we mean? And what does Mission Control do? JOE: Sure. Mission Control is our newest team doing DevOps support, and maintenance, and SRE. It came out of our experiments with DevOps a while ago now, almost two years coming up. Historically, thoughtbot has shied away from getting too much into DevOps. I think a lot of us had some unpleasant experiences earlier in our career around sysadmin tasks and expectations there. Not a lot of people have wanted to be on call historically. So we've heavily leveraged services like Heroku that take a lot of that burden away from you and avoided doing things like direct to AWS deployments or getting too involved with CI/CD pipelines that were particularly complex. But we've had clients over the years that have requested more interesting or more difficult deployments. And finally, we had one a couple of years ago, where we said, "All alright, let's just handle this instead of saying no or trying to outsource it." We thought it made sense for them. And after going through it, we came to the conclusion that it was actually pretty good that the ecosystem had evolved a lot and that it was a service worth offering. That began our journey into DevOps, so to speak. So we did some smart DevOps work for a variety of clients over the next year or so before we decided to form an official team doing this new kind of work, which is how we ended up with Mission control. The goal of Mission Control, rather than building products or pairing with team members to improve their team like the rest of thoughtbot, the goal of Mission Control is to support those teams and support other client teams in deploying and scaling their applications. And we have an on-call team. We will do more complex cloud build-outs. And our goal is to empower and educate the teams that we work with so that they are more capable of working in those ecosystems on their own. CHAD: You used the acronym SRE earlier in that little spiel. I'm not sure that everyone knows what that is. [laughs] So it stands for Site Reliability Engineer, right? JOE: That's right. And that's been newer for us. So DevOps is supposed to be the fusion of development and operations. But the operations world is really big. So similar to how everybody has problems getting people to be full-stack enough given the complexity of front end and back end, we have similar problems in design. We also have that problem in DevOps where both development and operations are huge, rich ecosystems. And so, having developers that are fully experienced at both is hard. So the path of least resistance, when you say are doing DevOps, is definitely just to do operations. And it's been a struggle for us to actually break down those silos and have teams work more on the operation side on their own. So one of the things that caught our eye with SRE was some of the built-in mechanisms for engaging with the team. The one-sentence pitch for SRE is that it is operations if you approach it like a software problem. It has these concepts of SLOs, Service Level Objectives, and error budgets, which is the amount of time you spent violating your SLO. And part of the process is getting buy-in from the entire team, from the stakeholders down to the developers and the operations team. And so, it provides a natural interaction point between the operations folks and the rest of the team because nobody wants to break the error budget. Once the error budget is exhausted, everybody has to stop building new features and focus on stability until the error budget is cut up again. So rather than having this unpleasant give or take where we're more coming from the operations side, and we're always pushing for more stability, and everybody else is coming from the product side, and they're always pushing for more features, SRE gives you this useful metric to have that conversation around where we're not always just pushing for more. We're trying to hit a specific goal that we've agreed on. And when we hit the goal, we know that we can keep full throttle moving out new features. CHAD: Now, is the SRE a developer who is also working on resolving errors before the budget is hit? JOE: Yeah, a Site Reliability Engineer is a developer. But that's actually not too different from other forms of DevOps. DevOps is supposed to be developers in general. When I say we built an operations team, even if you look at the work that we're doing, a lot of it is development work. We build scripts, and automations, and so on. We don't manually set up EC2 instances, and not everything is toil, even outside of SRE. But the idea in SRE is that somebody will be more integrated with the development team and make changes to not just the operational stack but also the development stack in service of reliability. I've heard it said that SRE is a particular implementation of DevOps. That makes sense to me. CHAD: Let's start back in the beginning because you made reference to the fact that historically, a lot of what we deploy was deployed to Heroku. And we did that because, for a lot of the applications that we're building, it made sense. It minimized the operational overhead of deployments. There is a point in some systems that you cross a line. Where do we see that line typically being where you need to start looking at something else? JOE: I think there can be a few different instigating factors. One of the fastest ways for somebody to want to move to AWS is if they have significant security concerns, particularly for healthcare applications. The security model is more straightforward in AWS to have better isolation. There are options on Heroku, but it requires going to a different Heroku platform using Shield. And you just don't get the same power you get in terms of network isolation models you get on AWS with your own VPC. So if you're already at the point where you want to start out with a VPC out of the gate and do that kind of isolation, my opinion is you may as well own it and go to AWS. So that's one reason. Another is if you start hitting scaling issues, Heroku is easier for the developers because it's simple and it's very streamlined. But doing complex deployments is difficult, which eliminates some of the options available to somebody doing something like SRE. So to give one example, one mechanism people can use to make it safer to deploy without potentially introducing bugs or performance degradations is a canary release where when you release, you put the new version out as the canary build. And you route maybe 5% of traffic to that, and you actually collect metrics on performance and error rates on the canary traffic versus the regular traffic. And then you have some period where you're in experiment mode, which varies depending on the level of stability you're looking to achieve. Once you're confident that the canary release didn't introduce a regression, then it gets promoted to the stable build, and you do that every time you deploy. I have no idea how you would do that on Heroku. CHAD: I think you'd have to do it at the application level. You'd have to do it with a feature flag system. And it would only be possible to do some of the things that you would be able to do if you're able to do the whole system. JOE: Right. And I guess you could do weighted random numbers to try and decide whether to canary or not. But one of the benefits of doing it outside the application is there's no way to make a mistake. So, for example, if you introduced a bug in your canary mechanism in the application or you forget to put it behind a feature flag, then you've now deployed to production, and you have an error. Whereas if it's managed by the CI/CD pipeline, you're just deploying a new version of the application. In Heroku land, that would mean you deploy the new slug as a canary build. In most other areas, it means you're deploying a container image. That's one example of why if you get to the point that you have a lot of traffic in production and you need to manage that traffic while continuing to release features, it can be helpful to work on a platform like AWS where you have a lot more deployment options. Another one is that SRE is heavily built on observability and metrics, which can be difficult to collect on Heroku. Some of that is just a matter of lineage. Like, the SRE community was built up around tools like Prometheus that are scrape-based. That means you need to have a special metrics endpoint exposed on all of your containers. In Heroku, there isn't a way to access any of your dynos directly except through the web router, and you can't control which one you get. So using Prometheus on Heroku is not really practical, which means you need to re-implement what everybody else has built for SRE using a different observability tool. And observability out of the box on Heroku it's easy to get set up, but it's more limited. So doing something like complex SLOs and setting up error budget dashboards and alerting is going to be a significant task. Versus on a platform like Kubernetes where it doesn't sound like it'll be easier, but it is because there are open-source tools that you can just deploy. CHAD: You mentioned Kubernetes. It's probably worth calling out that that's pretty much what we are using across the board, right? JOE: For our AWS and other cloud deployments, we have standardized largely on Kubernetes. We started out using simpler containerization platforms like ECS on AWS. But what we found is that the developer tooling is generally not particularly good because there's not enough community momentum behind any of those. And the open-source is limited versus something like Kubernetes there's a massive open-source community. There is a ton of different tooling that people build that's available for developers and for DevOps. And for these things like SRE, you can use almost entirely open-source software to build out all of the interesting parts of that and deploy that. So what we've been building is basically an SRE Platform as a Service where we collect these open-source components. We deploy them to a managed Kubernetes cluster. And then, applications can immediately start exposing metrics to Prometheus and defining SLOs. CHAD: So much in the same way where we talked about some of the boundaries where it starts to make sense to not be on Heroku, what are some of the boundaries that teams hit where it makes sense to start thinking about SRE or even just having someone on the team that's focused on that kind of work? JOE: I think as soon as people start hitting their first scaling challenges. So for an MVP where you're validating a product where you don't actually have production traffic yet, I don't think it makes sense. And I also think I would avoid deploying to something like Kubernetes if you can help it for an MVP. But for anybody who has scaling concerns, SRE is a very useful mindset. And the sooner you start adopting it, the sooner you'll start to build an application that's made to scale. It can be very difficult to put out those fires while something is not on a platform where you have many options, and nobody has been thinking about observability. It means that you need to be guessing at how to put out the fire as well as simultaneously introducing metrics and potentially planning a cloud migration. So I think as soon as you start feeling nervous about deploying to production or as soon as you notice that you're spending a lot of time working on performance, it makes sense to bring in SRE. I also think anybody that needs to provide an SLA should for sure implement SRE. It can be used to measure whether or not you're on track to hit an SLA because you basically set SLOs that are stricter than your SLA, and you make sure that you meet it. CHAD: Is there a way that existing teams can layer on some of the SRE activities without having full-time SRE people? JOE: I think you can have a team member who does development that also acts as the SRE. If you have a small team, I could see the commitment to it being daunting. I think that could be one good reason to bring in outside specialists if you're not at the point where you can afford to have a full-time SRE in-house. Working with a team that can provide an SRE on-demand like Mission Control could be valuable. CHAD: I didn't realize that that was going to be a perfect segue into part of the value proposition of Mission Control [laughter] when I asked the question. But I guess that's a really good point. That is part of what we're helping people do is monthly contracts that provide this to them, even if their team can't do it 100% of the time. JOE: Right, except for pretty large teams. I don't think it makes sense for them to hire a full-time SRE. It's much easier to work with a team like ours that has the experience and has more than one person. Even if you do hire a full-time SRE, you will only have one. So if they go on vacation, or if they get sick, or if it's in the middle of the night, then do you still have an SRE? I think that's one of the benefits of working with a team. CHAD: And that's been interesting with Mission Control because we introduced Mission Control and made it a formal thing at the same time as going entirely remote. And it's interesting how doing that freed us up in terms of being able to commit to building a different kind of team. It doesn't necessarily need to be on call after hours if we're going to have an entirely remote team. We can have people on that team that span different time zones. And so, from a thoughtbot perspective, it's interesting how those things went hand in hand for us. JOE: Yes, it's been immensely helpful for Mission Control, in particular, to be fully remote. There are a lot of options that wouldn't have been available to us if we were a U.S.-centric team. It's been really interesting. I've built out development teams before that were focused on a location. And it's been really interesting to build out this team with a focus on availability and distribution. For example, one thing that has helped us is having somebody in South America because they don't celebrate U.S. holidays. So even discounting time zones, which are a challenge when you're trying to provide around-the-clock availability, just having that kind of diversity in holiday schedules really helps. So we've been able to build it totally differently than we would have if we were trying to put a bunch of people in an office. And I think it's made it possible for us to have much better coverage with a much smaller team. Mid-roll Ad I wanted to tell you all about something I've been working on quietly for the past year or so, and that's AgencyU. AgencyU is a membership-based program where I work one-on-one with a small group of agency founders and leaders toward their business goals. We do one-on-one coaching sessions and also monthly group meetings. We start with goal setting, advice, and problem-solving based on my experiences over the last 18 years of running thoughtbot. As we progress as a group, we all get to know each other more. And many of the AgencyU members are now working on client projects together and even referring work to each other. Whether you're struggling to grow an agency, taking it to the next level and having growing pains, or a solo founder who just needs someone to talk to, in my 18 years of leading and growing thoughtbot, I've seen and learned from a lot of different situations, and I'd be happy to work with you. Learn more and sign up today at thoughtbot.com/agencyu. That's A-G-E-N-C-Y, the letter U. CHAD: So Mission Control I introduced it as maintenance and DevOps. So we're also helping people with different kinds of things beyond operations, right? JOE: Yeah, particularly with SRE, there's a focus on stability and scaling. And we're also helping people with CI/CD. One of the focuses for us this quarter has been helping people develop CI/CD pipelines that provide safer deploys and providing guidance and a system for developers to implement things like feature flags and beta flags. Because one of the challenges of making performance improvements is that you don't actually know if you've solved the problem until it's deployed, and deploying something that changes performance is inherently risky. And so, in addition to helping people actually make the performance improvements, we have to demonstrate the process for deploying and testing those improvements. CHAD: I've worked on fairly big systems in the past. But there have been a couple of different instances over the last maybe year where we've approached the problem in a different way than we have in the past, which has been really interesting to me from a development standpoint. It's the idea of…if you remember, for the food delivery application, we had that conversation about the different ways to build APIs rather than versioning APIs explicitly. And that has been a different approach than the way I would have done things in the past. And it's been a really powerful approach. So, can we talk a little bit more about that approach? JOE: Sure. CHAD: Well, specifically, so we have mobile applications that use a back-end API, and not everyone updates their mobile application at the same time instantly. You have bugs basically in the wild that you are fixing or that you're changing in your API, or if you're just introducing API changes. And so the idea of instead of explicitly versioning API on the server-side and having clients write to a specific API, instead building much more flexible APIs, in particular, having the client tell you what version of the API that they're expecting but through consolidated API endpoints so that the server is much more in control of the behavior than the client being in control of the behavior. JOE: Yeah, I think the two big changes that were helpful on that project were using GraphQL for some of the APIs, which provides more flexibility generally than a typical REST API and the minimum version requirement. So the application sends the version of the application. And the API will tell the client they have to upgrade if it's a version that isn't compatible with the newer APIs. So when we do have to break backwards compatibility, we force an app upgrade. CHAD: But in general, you're taking the approach not to break backward compatibility. And you're meeting the client where it's at whenever possible and maintaining backward compatibility in the APIs. JOE: That's something that we have been teaching developers about generally is backwards and forwards compatibility. We do that with deployments as well. For some of the larger deployments we have where there might be dozens of containers running for a service, it certainly doesn't make sense to stop them all and start new ones because the app would be down for a long time. And it would take too long to catch up to the backlog of requests. But even a typical blue-green deployment is problematic. So if we have 30 containers running and we spin up 30 new containers, and they all need 15 database connections, then during the deploy, you potentially overload your database or exhaust your connection limit. Plus, you will need to allocate the compute resources for double the normal workload. So what we've been doing instead is rolling deploys almost everywhere where we spin up a few new containers using the new version and wait until they're fully online, spin down a few old ones, and then repeat that process until everything is up to date. But to do a rolling deploy like that requires backwards compatibility with the services it uses, in particular, at the database. And so, writing Rails migrations that are backwards compatible for one version has been a challenge. CHAD: And there's not really good tooling in Rails to do multiple stages of things. So if you really want to do that, you have to manage that in your source control basically and say, "Here's a new migration. We're going to merge in and deploy after this one," and that's not so great. JOE: Right. The other way to do that in the CI/CD pipeline would be to release commits one at a time and wait for them to be rolled out. But depending on how you structure your commit log, that could be pretty tedious. [laughs] CHAD: Yeah. I've seen as I've worked on this other project we're really striving to do continuous deployment. It's a high traffic, very complex deployment with lots of individual configured tenants. Separating out the concept of a deploy from a release has been very valuable for the application and for the clients. It changes the way that you need to think about how development progresses. I never before really worked in a system where you're literally sometimes duplicating and preserving old code, putting new code in place, having them both deployed, and then being able to switch between them as part of the release, and then cleaning up the old code later. At the scale that this is at, at the complexity that this is at, it makes sense for that application. It obviously doesn't make sense for everybody to be working that way. JOE: Right. Breaking up applications to be a little smaller, having components that could be experimented with individually would make some of that easier. The experimentation there separating the release from the deploy some of that is necessary because it's monolithic in so many ways. Like, it's a very big Rails application with one database with ACID compliance, which is a very powerful model. And it provides simplicity in some ways. But then it requires you to take on the complexity of making sure that you release things correctly. I do think that it would be difficult in this particular situation but for applications that reach that level of traffic and where you need to manage the risk of deploying, having smaller components, having some services broken would make that easier because you could do, for example, a canary deploy with one release rather than duplicating the code and having the old and new version. CHAD: Right. The services create boundaries with contracts about behavior and reduces things that are tightly coupled together, and their behavior is tightly coupled together. So, for example, on this application, we do have that one service that is completely managed independently from the main monolith and has its own deploy schedule. And we can, for the most part, change them independently without needing to go through all of that process that we go through to manage change. I think you're absolutely right. JOE: Another experiment we've been trying for another client is it's another Rails monolith. There are different audiences for it. So this is the food delivery application again. And there are customers who are placing orders. There are drivers who are delivering orders. There are restaurants that are fulfilling orders. And then there are admins who are managing everything in the back end. And there's some overlap in the data they use. But the actual requests, and controllers, and pieces of the Rails application they use are almost entirely isolated. So one challenge we had was being able to provide different reliability contracts for those different audiences and also scaling them and configuring them differently. So, for example, if you've done tuning for a Rails application before, you've probably tweaked things like how many threads will I have for each of my Puma workers? How many Puma workers will I have per container? How many database connections do I need in the pool? And what we were able to do for this application using Kubernetes and Isto was running the same application, the same container, so like one monolithic Rails container but running it more than once in different configurations and routing traffic to different pools of containers based on the audience. And so, for example, if the customer is making requests, those all go to the customer pool of containers, which are scaled independently and have their own configuration tweaks for the kinds of requests that customers tend to make, which are generally small, high throughput requests with lots of little rights. And then, compared to the admin panel, they typically view dashboards and big lists of records. And so, the requests tend to be larger, but the number of users is much smaller. There are way more customers than there are admins. And so, for those, we have fewer connections. We have more memory allocated for the kind of bloat that results in those types of requests. And we also have a different performance objective for admins. It's more acceptable for those pages to respond a little bit slower. And admins understand it's their job. They have to use the software. So they'll reload the page if they have to versus a customer where if they're having trouble placing an order, they might just buy somewhere else. So that's been a pretty powerful mechanism we were able to leverage CHAD: Is that switching on URL-like endpoints? JOE: Yeah, it's based on the path. But the mechanisms available to us are actually pretty powerful. At that point, we have access to the full request. So we could really route based on anything we wanted right down to the user. CHAD: I guess that's a really good example. You don't have access to that routing on Heroku. JOE: No, I think any Platform as a Service where they manage the routing if they don't provide that feature, you don't get that feature. CHAD: This is the first we're talking about this. That is a really interesting example of how to scale a monolith solves some of the problems that services often get you without having to break everything up right off the bat in order to do that. JOE: Yeah. I also think it provides kind of an inside-out approach to doing that. One of the problems with breaking out services is you have to plan what the services are going to be to a certain degree. And so, I think the best way to do it is to extract services from a monolith the same way you extract classes to break them up. And this audience-based approach is almost like a dry run. You can see if the boundaries you're drawing make sense in terms of traffic. And if those make sense, it probably makes sense to break up the front end at those boundaries eventually into different applications. And then figure out what services you need to extract to provide the common infrastructure for those front-end services. The same way test-driven development makes it much easier to find the correct tests to write, I think this approach of audience boundary discovery is an interesting approach to finding service boundaries versus trying to guess at what the services are, which very frequently leads people to wrapping services around database tables which doesn't help at all. CHAD: Yeah, that's the wrong thing to be looking at when you're looking at how to do services. JOE: Right. It's almost like deciding what your database tables would be upfront before you've seen the UI for the application. CHAD: Cool. So heading into 2022, we're looking ahead at the upcoming year. And so what's on the docket for Mission Control? JOE: We didn't start experimenting fully with SRE until the third quarter of this year. And so far, we've loved it. So I think we'll make a pretty heavy investment into our SRE offering. The goal is for us to have an open-source set of Terraform modules that effectively deploy a platform ready to go for SRE. What we want to do is maintain and curate that platform and then deploy it and maintain it for our clients. I think another big thing we'll be doing is (This might be incredibly boring.) but restructuring the way our agreements work a little bit. One of the things we wanted to test out when we built Mission Control was how much we could have built into a monthly recurring contract versus billing for time and materials like we usually do. So we tried putting a lot into that contract and really pushing the boundaries of what would be reasonable. And there was definitely a lot of pain there for us and a lot of difficult conversations with clients. So I think for 2022, we will be shifting a lot of our work back towards time and materials. So I guess that's a lesson out there for anybody else that's providing [laughs] support contracts is to make sure that the responsibilities contained in the linear amount scale linearly. CHAD: I think when we originally conceived of Mission Control, we also saw it handling a lot more things that it turns out just were not doing as part of Mission Control like regular Rails upgrades. JOE: Yeah, a lot of the things that we included in contracts originally were not particularly important to clients or at least were not outside of what they were capable of doing already. So it wasn't that much of a value-add. There are a lot of people out there that will upgrade your Rails version. And having somebody who just does it in the background but isn't aware of some of the impacts that might have in the application turned out to be not much of a value prop. Whereas stability turns out to be a big pain point for a lot of people, people don't know how to do it. And then our maintenance offering, I think what ended up providing the most value is not the keeping the code fresh parts, but it was more for the teams that don't have a large continuous development team having access to somebody who can fix quick bugs and things like that without needing to first negotiate a contract with a provider. I think that provides a lot of value. Those are pretty separate and different offerings. But those are the pieces that we found have really been valuable to clients. CHAD: Well, great. If people want to find out more about Mission Control or get in touch with you, where are the best places for them to do that? JOE: Well, we have a website thoughtbot.com/mission-control with a dash between mission and control. There are a few ways to reach out there. You can also find us on Twitter. We are @thoughtbot, and I am @joeferris. CHAD: Cool. You can subscribe to the show and find notes for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Announcer: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Joe Ferris.
Females In Business with Rachel Edlich In this episode, Rachel Edlich shares how she started as an entrepreneur, the influence her father had on her success today, her partnership with her sister, how she learned to be a successful product creator and marketer and so much more. Radical Skincare, the business she co-founded with her sister Liz Edlich, is a powerhouse skincare line that can be found in over 900 retail stores and in more than 17 countries. They also have a Brand Partner program that is empowering mostly women and some men, to be successful entrepreneurs in their own right. This was an enjoyable conversation with Rachel and I look forward to interviewing her again down the road at their next successful milestone. Also, check out their book "Get Radical: Secrets to Living a Life You Love": https://amzn.to/3jkyoFD As always, thanks so much for listening! Joe Rachel Edlich Co-founder - Radical Skincare Website: https://radicalskincare.com Discount Code: Costello10 Their Book "Get Radical: Secrets to Living a Life You Love" Our affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3jkyoFD Instagram: @radicalskincare Facebook: @RadicalSkincare YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/radicalskincare Twitter:@radicalskincare LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radical-skincare Email: customercare@radicalskincare.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Rachel, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you. I thought I might also see this, but I guess Liz is not going to be here with us. So you're going to have to answer all the questions that I have. Rachel: That's great. I'm ready. I'm Joe: Ok, Rachel: Ready. Joe: Ok, OK. First off, the company's name is Radical Skincare. Is that correct? Rachel: That's right. Joe: Ok, this is really cool because I don't have a lot of women on the show as much as I would like to have more women, because I think there's a big separation in the amount of exposure to women that are running, businesses that are successful. So, first of all, thank you so much for coming on the show. Rachel: It's my pleasure, thank you so much for having me here. Joe: Yeah. Awesome. OK, so I always like to get a back story from my guests because I think it's really important that a lot of times podcast will just kick off and people either know the guest that they don't and they'll do a little reading on them and not saying me as the host, but people that might listen to it don't know who someone is. But more importantly, I think how you got to where you are today stems from all that happened before at this point. And I think so much of that is missed on a lot of podcasts. People all of a sudden they just start talking about what they're doing today. And the newest book that they have out and all this other stuff. So if you don't mind, I would love for you to give a little bit of history and you can go back as far as you want. I've had people go back to kindergarten, so I don't care. And and since Liz isn't here, you can also, if you want, put in a little bit about that whole, you know, how it happened with her and you and the connection of all of it. So now I will be quiet and let you click. Rachel: Ok, no problem, while I was going to say how much time do we have? Joe: Yes. Rachel: It's like if I go back to kindergarten. Yeah. So, you know, so for for us, we were raised in Virginia on an 18 acre farm, and our father was a very well known worldwide reconstructive surgeon who specialized in wound healing and skin rejuvenation. And he started the burn unit at University of Virginia. He invented stere strips. He invented dissolvable sutures. So, you know, his commitment was really to science and changing the world like that was my dad and my mom was a bit different. She was an actress on Broadway. She was in West Side Story. But, you know, she basically was just God kissed her and said, you will sing. And so she was in West Side Story, but then decided, hey, I'm going to I'm going to have kids. And then she met my dad. So we were really bookended by two very interesting people. And it was my sister, my brother and I. And growing up on a farm surrounded by my father's brilliance. And we were pretty much we'd go to the hospital with him, work in the lab. We did research with him if there was ever a problem. My dad was like, we'll invent it. See, my brother, my brother broke his clavicle and he's like, we're inventing the shoulder of the perfect shoulder pads. We did. Rachel: I've done I don't know how many research papers on lacrosse injuries because I was a lacrosse player or whatever. So it was like, you know, we we really were raised in that environment all the time. And we got a very, very strong work ethic, because imagine we were basically the ones running a farm as well. So from that, you know, I ended up wanting to really follow being able to help other people. I thought, gosh, I think I might become a therapist, that, you know, that's what I'm going to go and I'm going to I'm good at communicating with other people. I think I read situations really well. So I went to college. My sister went to we all went to actually we all went to the same college. And I got a counseling degree. And then I was like, OK, well, you know, if I really want to sit in a room all day and go through that process. So I ended up running a Boys and girls club for like 800 children. And I love working with kids and developing programs and drug prevention programs and all the different things that the Boys and Girls Club provided. But at the same time, I love to be able to give back that way. I also wanted to make money. Joe: This is. Rachel: I'm like, OK, you know, I love working with children and, you know, especially where a lot of them were in really tough situations. But I said I could do that as my volunteer time. So my sister was living in L.A. and we were always super close. And she's like, well, just come move out here. And it's like, I can't move without a job. You know, it's like having all these reasons why I can't. And I was like, you know what? I'm doing it. I was like, Liz, I can't come without a job. And she's like, well, you know, I just raised money for a company. She was in money management and venture capital, and she was like, and they actually need someone and to run their customer service department. And I was like, I can do that. So, you know, you're young. You Joe: Right. Rachel: Can make me make these big moves. So I packed up my dog in my house and I moved out to L.A. and Liz and I started working together and deciding we were going to start a company. Really wanted to always at the core of us is like it has to be driven with purpose. We have to have like we always need that passion. We're very entrepreneurial because we just can't help ourselves. It's like that's just our nature. So we got into the skincare business and in 1999 and doing, you know, product development, a lot of research, science, of course, you know, coming from a science background with my father, that was that like completely made sense to us. So we started creating products for celebrities, for retailers or QVC, Aitchison, a lot of brand development. So that was kind of our entree into working together. And I know everyone's like the big question is, how do you work with your sister? Joe: It's right, it's tough. Rachel: Everyone's like, how do you guys do it? And we're super blessed. I know we're rare. We're like or like a rare breed, but we're both different in our strengths. So we are able to really complement. Each other and I think there's the bond of our family and that we look after each other. And I mean, that's been probably one of the most special things about our relationship and being in business together, kind of coming into how Radical happened was we were doing our business. We were like at one hundred and fifty million dollars and sales. I mean, we were doing amazing, loving what we were doing. And then I had my second child and I developed rosacea. So, you know, life throws in like little things to move things around, make you start thinking. And I was like, wow, you know, I've always had good skin and my skin was red, splotchy, irritated. I tried putting makeup on. It made it worse. It was the first time where I had actually had this level of insecurity. Like I'd walk into a room and it's like my face walked in first and people I'm like, are they looking at me? Oh, my gosh. They can tell. And, you know, it's like this weird thing that you go through when you're when you're experiencing how you look on the outside matter so much. So you have to like say, OK, it's how you feel on the inside. It's a this is an inside job. You know, work life is not perfect. We don't we're not going to always look perfect. Right. Joe: Mm hmm. Rachel: So, you know, how we feel on the inside is felt by the world. And I went to the dermatologist. They basically said, you'll be on medication for the rest of your life. I'm like, are you joking about it? This is like a little quick fix. You know, you're going to Joe: Right. Rachel: Give me some cream and it's going to be gone and then I'm done. Poof, right. And they're like, no. I was like, oh, great. So I ended up trying on everything they gave me. And my skin was always more inflamed, burning. It was on fire. My face was on fire. And my sister, she's six years older. And since she's not with us, I can always like make her the older sister. Joe: Yes. Rachel: But she Joe: Yeah. Rachel: Is. Joe: There we go, I knew this was going to start sooner Rachel: Yeah, Joe: Or later. Rachel: Exactly. That's what happens when we're not together Joe: That's right. Rachel: On the Joe: That's Rachel: Podcast. Joe: What she gets for not being here. Rachel: Right. Joe: Right. Rachel: Right. So I'll make sure she listens to this. So she's like, Rachel, I'm older than you. It's going to be happening to you, too, but I'm looking in the mirror and gravity is really, truly real. Like this stuff is happening. My skin is just now bouncing back the way I used to, that I wanted it to. And I said, OK, Liz. Well, I guess this is the perfect storm. This is like between the two of us. And I said we have to create the strongest skin care for antiaging, but design for sensitive skin. So thank goodness we had the brilliance of my father and his ability for science and research. And then we got together with a team of chemists and we basically said we are going to put the best of the best in the bottle. We had no intentions of selling it. It wasn't like, oh, we need to be in another skin care business. Not at all. We were like, put the best of the best in the bottle. We didn't care about the cost. We weren't worried about the margins. We weren't worried. We're just like, let's just fix our face. So we got with the scientist, we really started to look at some of the leading reasons for aging skin coming up with solutions for that and coming up with a technology which was our TRALA cell technology, where we're able to deliver all the powerful ingredients to the skin without irritation. Rachel: And after my skin, after just three weeks, my skin completely transformed. I was able to get off all my medication. I'm telling you, it was like adversity brought complete opportunity for us in that moment. And my sister, people were noticing her skin changing. We gave it to friends and family and like little bottles that were like serum moisturizer, you know, it's like in the back of the lab, we're like, okay, here you go. You got a tray. And and people were like calling us like, what is this stuff? So listen, I looked at each other and we said, you know, that's pretty radical. And that's kind of where Radical was born. And we said, you know, our dad always said, if you have an asset sitting on the shelf that no one else knows about, it's not OK. You have to share with the world because there's other people going through what you're going through. You're not in this little world of just Rachel and rosacea. There's millions of people out there that are struggling with rosacea or problematic skin or sensitive skin. And the more research we did, it was like 80 percent of women believe they have sensitive skin. And so they're very particular about what they're putting on their skin and the irritation. So we really took a lot of time and developing our products to make sure they were consciously clean, that we were delivering radical results. Rachel: So we had science behind it. You know, we did clinical on our products because we like to prove out whatever we're going to say. We want to be there with confidence. So we launched in 17 different countries, in over 900 stores and just two years. And Liz and I hit the road and started to work with all the prestige retailers and training. And the interesting thing that we found is this yearning and hunger from all the associates and customers that we talked to about that feeling of were inner self meets. Outer beauty, which is so important to us, is, you know, how we feel on the inside is felt by the world. And we've been really blessed with working with Bob Proctor, who was very close to us and a lot of personal development work where we knew that there was a method to really getting amazing skincare science, to getting radical results. But also there is a technology for creating a life you love. And so we ended up really looking at that closely and listening to people really wanting more there or there are hungry for more purpose and passion in their lives. So that was like our aha moment. And we said when we came back to the states, we're a global so we have a global footprint where in Australia, Switzerland, the UK, all over the place. But in the US, we decided that we were going to buy our products back off of the shelf. Rachel: We we wrote our book, which is "Get Radical: Create Secrets to Creating a Life You Love." And then we said, we're going to buy all of our products back off the retail shelves, take the profit that we normally give to the retailers. Take our science. Take all of our from clinical to all the press that we've gotten over the 11 years and the investment of 20 million dollars into our brand and give that as a turnkey opportunity for others to be able to create passion, purpose, health and wealth. And that's when our brand partner program was born. And we did that. That was kind of like born out of. Covid and a lot of it and and that's just caught on fire because we have the selfcare element, that purpose element. We're a movement that matters. And we always know that if we stay close to our purpose and our passion, Liz and I, we've had moments, we've gotten off track where you're not waking up feeling passionate or purpose driven. Then it's like, OK, OK, I'm going to go do that today. And that was important to us. We wanted to we want to touch millions of people's lives. And we know through our brand partner program, we can touch more people than through any retail store ever. So that's kind of our journey to where we are today. Joe: Well, there's a lot to unpack here, Rachel: I know. Joe: Because any time you can correct me, but I would I would say that this is going to be a unique episode, because for the listeners are out there that are women. This will speak to them more than it will. Guys, I don't even know if you have any men in the brand partner program. Rachel: We do, actually, Joe: Ok, Rachel: We Joe: So Rachel: Do. Joe: See, that's why I wanted to ask you. Rachel: But Joe: Ok. Rachel: It's the majority, a majority of them are women. Yeah. Joe: Ok. And then the products that you have, are they mostly all women? Are there some men? And that's why you have a couple of men and the brand ambassador Rachel: Our Joe: For that. Rachel: Our brand is very unisex Joe: Ok. Rachel: From our packaging all the way through, it delivers amazing results. We do a lot of coaching, even with a lot of the women that are like, oh, what do we offer to the man? And it's like these core products that men just absolutely love. Like we were in Barneys, we were in the men's department there when we launched, and because we did so well and with the men as well. Joe: Ok, so here's the part where we're going to rewind, because Rachel: Ak. Joe: This is this is how I think your story and there's this story and this product and how you did all of this will really help the listeners and especially the women listeners. So you came from a background that was science based because of your father. It sounds like a brilliant man. Is he still with us or is Rachel: No. Joe: Not OK? Rachel: Yeah, my father had multiple sclerosis on top of everything else Joe: Yeah, Rachel: And Joe: I saw that, and Rachel: Yeah. Joe: So I was I was so I didn't know if he was still around, but Rachel: Would Joe: When Rachel: You Joe: You Rachel: Have. Joe: Started this process of wanting to do this with your sister, was he around to help with the initial part of it? Rachel: Yes, Joe: Ok. Rachel: My my dad basically, when I moved to or before I moved to L.A., was saying to my sister, you two need to work together. Like he he's like family. You need to work together. Joe: Right. Well, that's awesome. Okay, cool. So I'm going to put a pin in that one piece of it because I have to come back to that again, because there's more questions than if I Rachel: Sure. Joe: Was listening. I would be like, OK, there's one thing that was a plus for the both of you. Rachel: For sure. Joe: So I'll get to it. I'll explain where I'm going. And I'm sure you Rachel: Ok. Joe: Already understand. Your sister was a stockbroker, an investment banker, a stockbroker, whatever. She she took that route. And then I noticed that there was a company called One World Live. Is that Rachel: Mm Joe: Correct? Rachel: Hmm. That's Joe: Ok, Rachel: Right. Joe: So this is the company that she ended up creating, purchasing, investing, one of those. Right. Rachel: Well, it was actually a company prior to that that she invested money in, and I came out and I worked for that particular company. Joe: Ok. Rachel: But One World Life we created together, and that was really driven from product to we had a lot of celebrities with where we would do merchandising for them with their product. Yeah. So that was where we really got into product development, like the the whole process of making products, whether it was weight loss, whether it was jewelry, whether it was skincare. And that's where we actually had our first experience with skincare at that time. Joe: Ok, so if I was sitting and listening to this, I'd be like, OK, how do two women that are not in this world make this jump into this competitive marketing product delivery business? People usually have some sort of experience that they initially get in that and then they go, hey, I can do this, and then they go out on their own and start it. So explain to me how your system leaves doing the investment banking piece of this. You leave what you're doing and you move out and all of a sudden you're this powerhouse marketing team Rachel: Right. Joe: That has this company. And there's a there's a gap there that I want you to Rachel: Got Joe: Fill Rachel: It. Joe: Forms. Rachel: Ok, so my sister raised money for a company that had a weight loss product. That was the company that I started working for. And I started to learn about infomercials, commercials, direct mail catalog. That was kind of where I first learned like, oh, who was right when infomercials hit in 94, it was like all of a sudden it's like, what's this infomercial thing? And so we. Joe: But wait, there's more. Rachel: Yes, exactly. Hey, you know exactly what I'm talking about, Joe: Yeah. Rachel: And I'm so yeah, so we. I worked for that company and unfortunately the people that were running the company were not doing the right things with the finances. So I told my sister, hey, heads up, my check is bouncing. She's she has investors in the company. So she ended up having to go in and basically take over the company. And that's called like you're just thrown into the waters. You have no idea what you're doing. And it was crazy. She had to sue the company, a lot of the players, and she won, which was unbelievable and won the company. So then we all of a sudden inherited a weight loss company that was doing really, really well. But, you know, we didn't have a lot of experience at the time. So it was something that I do primarily and anything like all my businesses. If I don't know something, I get really smart really quick. And I talk to a lot of people that know a lot more than me. And so like no one Joe: Right. Rachel: Will find someone that knows more than you. Joe: Yeah. Rachel: And so that's what we did. And we worked with different individuals and started to understand the business more and how media spin worked. And I had to manage the media spend and I had to managed print campaigns and I had to buy inventory for all these products. I was like, buy what I like. All right, let's let's break open a spreadsheet and start getting organized. That was point one. But I actually realize I have a I'm super strong at doing those type of like I can operationally managing and dealing with a lot of moving parts and seeing how all the pieces fit together. So, listen, I basically kind of divided and conquered with that particular product. And then we did another weight loss product where we had investors involved in that. And then that launched. And then Liz decided that she was going to go back more into the investment banking. So I took the weight loss product and I went to another company and brought our product with us and had their infrastructure supports our product. But also, it was a great opportunity for me to learn side by side with other people that have been doing it for a long time. So it was for me like that part where we I worked with another company necessarily wasn't necessarily like my happiest time, to be really honest, because a little more entrepreneurial and. But I did that for two years and I was like, I'm going to get so good at all of this. I'm going to be so good. Like I'm going to just be a sponge. Rachel: I'm going to learn. I'm going to learn. I'm going to learn until I feel like I got my arms around this, all these tentacles that were flying around me and feeling proficient in that. And that was a really graceful time of firsts. Sometimes you're feeling and that feeling of uncertainty. And I'm sure everyone up there is gone through that feeling like lack of confidence, whatever it might be in that certain area. But again, I felt like one of the things that Liz and I had done is we surround ourselves with people that are mentors that can help teach and guide and trust me, you're going to pay it forward because there will be a time when someone's going to work for you that you can teach and you can guide. And so from that, I was Liz was doing her thing. So she started is a big thinker, a lot of creative ideas. And she she she and this other person decided we're going to start this company. And she called me up and she's like, rich, like, I can't do it without you. Like I need you. You know how to get it all done. You know, I had to make it all. I'll put all the wheels on the bus and make it go forward. And, you know, you've been in the business. And I actually haven't been in that part of the business. But we're going to kind of do that business again in a different way. And I was like, let's do it in our. So that's how one world was actually created. And. Joe: And what year was that? Rachel: That was in 19, I think it was 1999 is when one world was was created. I Joe: And Rachel: Actually. Joe: When did you when did you move out to L.A. from Virginia? Rachel: 94. Joe: Ok, so five years later is when Rachel: Yes. Joe: This happened, OK, Rachel: Yep. Joe: So you've had all that time. Rachel: Exactly. To Joe: It. OK. Rachel: Learn fast. Joe: Yeah. Have. Rachel: It was like a fire hose experience, like, OK, open Rachel, Joe: Yeah. Rachel: Insert all information. Yeah. So from there, that's when one world leader was born. And we did that for we still have that company. We still have a product line that we have on QVC. And so we had a. And we really had it was the that company was going to we were looking at it as a public, the public traded opportunity to do an IPO. And it was when the technology just fell, fell apart. And we ended up having to really pivot fast because a lot of money was raised for the company. And at that point, we had we had probably almost a hundred employees. We had a lot of VC and investors. And Liz, that was primarily her responsibility to deal with them. But at that point, they just weren't investing. And unless you were a true technology, you know, like you're an app or you're, you know, so we ended up really bringing back through our direct marketing, our direct response. We had we did infomercials the whole time. So we had a lot of things going on. And that's really when we got into the skincare business, it was an infomercial of skincare. And then I developed the whole line, which had about say about 30 skews. So I did all the product development, all the research, creative and just learned, learned a lot about science, working with manufacturers, working with the chemists. Of course, we were fortunate enough with our dad for hours. But the chemists, we started to really learn about product development ingredients, raw materials, clean, clean beauty. And that kind of took us on our journey to Radical. Joe: Ok, so here we go Rachel: Ok. Joe: Is I have to ask because it's I know that even if I was listening to this and I just reframed it to be something that a guy would do, I have ideas all the time. But we stop ourselves because of things that we think are going to be roadblocks. So my first question is, let's talk about your father and the science and all of that without that piece. Some of the audience listeners might be saying to themselves, well, that's that's a huge chunk like that help having that experience, having your father to lean on, having that around you, to be able to start the process of creating products. Because if you start thinking about it, it's like, OK, I'm not going to go in my kitchen and start putting all sorts of things in a little bowl and seeing it smells nice and it works nice and right. So Rachel: Right. Joe: What would you say to any of the women listening? They don't have that science background. They don't have that father with that Rachel: Mm Joe: Brain Rachel: Hmm. Joe: And that intelligence Rachel: Right. Joe: And background. BILLINA. Can they still accomplish this? Rachel: Absolutely. So, yes, we were very blessed, and we we understand that so much. But we also know, like when we were developing products for One World Lives, I was in product development all the time. But I lean on my manufacturers. I wasn't calling my dad saying, hey, dad, like what do you think about this? Because it wasn't personal then. It was just like, oh, I'm creating products for a client and this is what they want. Some of the benefits to be or I look at like what the story is like, what is it that they're trying to say about, you know, themselves and their skincare brand. So it makes like it's makes sense. And then I talk to my manufacturer, who has chemists on staff, and I go and I sit with them and I talk to raw material houses. There's shows that you can go to that have all the raw material houses that go there that are talking about a unique ingredients that they're using. But I find a lot I get a lot from the chemists that are from the manufacturers about what's new, what's hot, what's working, what's an alternative to like we have right now that we just launched are an alternative to a retinol cream, which outperforms retinol without all the side effects. I went I researched, I talked to my chemist. What's what is out there right now? It took us it's not an overnight experience, like, oh, poof, we we just developed a product because then you want to prove the results, right? So you want to have some science. So you have confidence that if you're saying any kind of a claim, that you can substantiate that. So the process for Radical, it was with our dad, but that was like the beginning of the ideas and the science footprint. But I leaned heavily on all of the chemists to really help direct and come up with formulations that we know were going to give radical results. Joe: Ok, great, so I appreciate that answer. Rachel: Yeah. Joe: The next thing that I put a pin in my own mental brain was the money portion of this. Right. None of this has to be divulged. I just but let's say your father was a successful reconstructive surgeon, potentially. He made a good living doing that. At the same time, I know when I read doing my own research that when M.S. came around, that was also a financial burden. Right. So. Rachel: Big Joe: So. Rachel: Time. Joe: Right. So we can just let's say we eliminate that fact that he could have helped you at all. But then you have you have Liz being this smart financial person. So potentially she made a decent amount of money in what she was doing to then be able to back this whole thing. So my second question. Oh, yeah. Well, it's easy when you have a lot of money. You have someone who's able to bring in voices and start out with a chunk of capital and all of that. So can you address that both in either how it helped you and how you still think people can do it without having all of that? Rachel: So a couple of things, I think absolutely you can do it without having all of all of that and the that that we had pretty much for one world. I went to a lot of overhead because we had so many people, because it was such it was the One World Live Web site was really like the hub of what that company was. And so there was a lot of big talent being thrown at that because the VCs wanted to see a certain thing. Right. So in product development, if you want to launch a product, I mean, it can be in skin care, whatever it may be. I know that I can go and create a product with a chemist. I can call packaging companies and get samples of what the packaging might be. And I can come up with a marketing plan. And you you can get small business loans to support you on your initial growth. And I am really believe in a grassroots approach. So Radical has like our new business, which is that our Brand Partners program where we're treating that as a brand new business. So just because our our retail business we have from a global that took us a lot of years to put together and create success that doesn't come into my brand partner like I really keep those separated because I want to have this sitting and standing on its own. We could have gone to raise money. We could have, you know, tried to find people that would invest in it. But for us, we actually didn't want to have to deal with investors. We've done that. There's there is a side to having investors in your company that is a lot of work. So there is something really cool about owning your own company and you owning your own company and not having to answer to five other people and tell them what you're doing and why you know that it's on you. So. Joe: I second that, amen, I Rachel: Yeah, Joe: Say that. Rachel: Trust me, we've we've done it, we've had it where it's been investors and we now we have it where it's our own and we much prefer it as our own. Joe: Mm hmm. Rachel: And we're not willing to bring in money to fund our brand partners program because we want that to be it can be done organically. It might not be as fast as the guy that has five million sitting next to me, but does it have the heart and soul that I have? Does it does it have the you know, the credibility that my brand has? Like there's so many different things and who my audience is. So there's always ways of getting into a business without needing lots and lots of money to do it. You just have to take it slow and bit by bit and grow, you know, have a plan in place that you're you're following into doing your own projections, giving yourself like, OK, you can you can go and get private label products, which sometimes is an interesting way of testing a concept where you don't you can buy 100. You can test it on a Web site. I mean, Joe: Mm Rachel: There's Joe: Hmm. Rachel: So many different ways that you can go through your social media, Bienen, you know, you can be your own influencer and whatever it is that your passion and dream might be. So there's definitely ways of starting your business and not being like, oh, gosh, you need millions and millions of dollars to do it. Joe: Ok, great. I love all these answers, because to me, it's encouraging to the audience. And I was hoping that I even though I backed you into a corner on these questions, I know that reading part of your story and empowering women, this is important. And so that's why I want to talk about it as much as I want to make sure that we talk about your business. And trust me, we'll get the word out about Radical. But I think it's important that what this business means to you. I can tell is coming through this interview. And that's what I think is even more important, because that is really what people are attracted to, people who care about people. Right. And there's something that you keep saying that's a great saying that I'm going to steal from you at some point, but I forget what it is. But you'll say it again, I'm sure. And Rachel: Ranchero. Joe: I'll be like, OK, I got to remember that. So quickly, explain to me then the the science part of it, where if you end up working with the chemist, let's say someone out there has an idea and they want to do something. How painful and how long is that process of tweaking and creating the product? And then do products that you sell have to get FDA approval? Rachel: Ok, so no so in skin care, you have ones that are considered like over the counter, which would be an SPF. So those have to go through certain testing in the United States for skin care in the U.S.. It's actually it's pretty loose. It's actually not very rigorous at all. So we are global, so we're EU compliant. So we have a compliance person in the EU that goes through all of our formulations. I make sure they're checking it against the list of all the ingredients that are not allowed on the market or about to not be allowed on the market. It goes down to the like the raw materials, make sure they're paraben free, that they're not using any preservative systems that to be able to make certain claims. Like I can say, I'm paraben free in the U.S. It's not as rigorous. It has some things. And you can literally like look them up online, but they're not regulated. Like people are not regulating your formulas to say what's in it is OK. And think about how many you have a lot of people that make up their own skincare and will sell it even locally that don't have, you know, strong preservative systems in it where, you know, you don't know really how long they can last and that they're good for. But I always encourage that when you're doing development and you're talking to your chemists to make sure that you're being as clean as possible, there's a list on like even on our website that shows all the ingredients that we do not have in under our consciously clean tab. So, Joe: I saw that, which I Rachel: Yeah. Joe: Thought was brilliant, that there's Rachel: Yeah. Joe: No you're not hiding anything, it's all right. There it was. Rachel: Exactly. Joe: It Rachel: So Joe: Was Rachel: It's Joe: Very Rachel: Actually Joe: Impressive. Rachel: It's a resource for other people, honestly, Joe: Yep, Rachel: So, Joe: Yep. Rachel: Which is great. You know, just knowing what you don't want to have going into your product, and the chemist usually have a pretty good handle on that if you're working with a good, good manufacturer. What is regulated is the FTC regulates claims. So you can't make a product and go on Instagram and say, my product reduces fine lines and wrinkles, 400 percent and then show before and after. That's not necessarily the right one or whatever. Like that's where you get in trouble in the U.S. So they regulate that really, really closely. So you do have to be with your marketing. You have to be accurate in your claims and making sure that you're not misleading a customer. Joe: Ok, let's talk about. So now I understand that you still have the global retail business that's still happening in over 900 stores, and I had a note down here in 17 countries, probably Berklee. Now it's 20. So this is amazing. What is the team that you have? So you said you kept you keep the two businesses separate. So what is the team that's running Radical as opposed to the team that's running the ambassador brand program? Rachel: Right. OK, so we used to have a team in London, an office in London, office in Paris, one in Hong Kong, and Liz and I, we're looking at each other saying this does not make sense. And this was when we started Radical. We had definitely some big players involved, which were more on the state lotor level. And so us being entrepreneurial or we're not like corporate girls at all. So put us into a corporate environment or like what do we do here? We're like, we have to clock in and clock out. We're like Joe: Yeah. Rachel: We work. We work 24/7 anyway. Joe: Right. Right. Rachel: That's being an owner of your own company. They wanted to have this really broad footprint. And Liz and I, they were the experts and prestige and we really weren't. So we really follow their lead. And we noticed that like we we built it. We had all the locations. But you really have to have boots on the ground everywhere. So, listen, I ended up saying, you know what, we're going to buy our company back and we're going to do this in a smart way where we have distributors internationally. So like, for instance, in Australia, we work with Mekka, who's the largest skincare or any cosmetics retailer there. It's like the Safar of the U.S. and but they handle everything. I don't have to put freelancer's in the store. I don't have to do anything. They own it and they do an amazing job. And then in the U.K., I have a distributor there, and in Switzerland I have a distributor there. So my international business is very much distributor driven. So they manage their own markets, they invest in their own markets. They have certain things that they're supposed to do in order to maintain their exclusivity there. But that operates pretty much separately. The U.S. it's I have a core team that works just on the brand partners program. And it's a small team because like I said, we're doing this in a very organic way and obviously bringing people that have the experience and building a peer to peer business. So that's been super exciting. And that's that's what's worked by just having a core team that works for only on brand partner business. Joe: Ok, can you talk more about the the brand the ambassador program, just so that we can get an understanding if someone is listening to this and saying, I love this, I love the idea. They go to your website and they look at all of this. They get hit up all the time with all these other programs to sell cosmetics and skin care. It's sometimes it's a hard sell for them. They end up dropping off or they just they can't figure out how to get into something like this. And I'd like to know what your program is about so they know and then why it's different. And obviously that the ingredients that you use that's really coming to the forefront these days is that you're not putting ingredients in that can harm someone. So that's another really important thing. So can you talk a little bit about that program? Rachel: Yes, absolutely. So we kind of what I talked about earlier is that we just started to recognize that our brand is so much more than skin deep, and it always has been. It's just been listen, I speak from the place of possibility all the time. And we with all of our brand partners were like invested in their future. That's like we are invested in their future. That's why we call them brand partners, like you are our partner in this. And that's a big shift in how you are within a company, because we've created such a turnkey solution and support to help you get to wherever it is that you want to go. And we are building a very, very strong core community. We have a our comp plan is very, very simple. We noticed and the different types of ambassador brand partner type programs where there's this exclusion element, if you don't do certain things and you are not a part and our part is you are included. We're like, you can participate with us, however it works for you. So we have people that just are more like influencers are on there. You know, they're selling through their social channels and they're making great money. Then we have people that are like, oh, my gosh, I've got like I want to build a business. Like I want to invest Radical like my new baby. And you guys have handed over the keys with science, clinical backing, credibility. You've been in prestige. You have press for over the past ten years, you know, steeped in science about a movement that matters. And our company is always listen, I only see things like it has to be larger than us. Like everything we do has to be larger than us. Rachel: It's not money. It's not it's like it has to be bigger than us. And so like our vision is and goal will be we're going to be a billion dollar company. And that means that we are we are making millions of dreams come true. Millions. And that is our number one goal is to do that. So and within our community, we have like our deep dive, which we just did on Monday, where we open that up to customers or brand partners, where we do a chapter in our book and we like unpack it and we talk about it. And it's always amazing because it speaks to people wherever they are, whatever they're going through. We have the opportunity to interact and communicate and share ideas. It's great. And then we have a lot of other activities where, you know, we'll be traveling some to meet different people. And we have a shared pool for company sales where you can earn into the share pool. That's three percent of our company. So we're taking profit for all of our brand partners to be able to participate and based on whatever their performance is. So it's like they are profiting. And we have a founder's club, which is a group of individuals that are just working super hard and achieving different levels. So it's it's really a straightforward program. And we have one of the best ladies on our team that really focuses on helping individuals figure out how to incorporate that into their life, understanding comp plans. And she's like the best cheerleader in town, like you want her behind you. You know what I'm saying? She's like, come on, you got Joe: Right. Rachel: This. You know, I call her like Joe: That's awesome. Rachel: So. Yeah, Joe: Ok, cool. Rachel: And it's super easy. You can go on to our website and it says, just become a brand partner. You just click on it and has a lot of information there. Joe: Great. OK. I don't. We're getting close to the end, and I want to keep you longer than I promise. So talk to me about the book, "Get Radical: Secrets to Living a Life You Love." Rachel: Yeah, yes. So that was a labor of love. It was definitely time consuming for the both of us. Like what? What an experience writing a book. Never did we think I mean, my father is like such a. He's like published like 3000 peer review articles. Written books. I mean, it's like that's like no, no problem for him. And Liz and I like we really want to put this to paper, like we want to share through the mentors that we have met. And just the stories, because we really know that there is a technology to getting a life that you love, whether, you know, really getting those fundamentals of goal setting visualization and then what gets in your way. So the fear of failing, you know, people get stuck in making decisions like paralysis. So we talk about a lot of that throughout the story. And we bring in different mentors that share stories that are super relatable, that you can be like, oh, my gosh, that's happened to me. Oh, yeah, I've been through that. Oh, I love that. And at the end of every chapter is really a Radical recap where it gives you back the ideas of like, OK, these are the things that you may want to focus on, the questions you may want to ask yourself some you know, some guided ideas of how to get where you want to go to creating that passion, purpose, health and wealth, you know, whatever that is for you. Joe: Yep. OK. That's awesome. A question I wanted to ask earlier that I forgot, which I think is important in any partnership, because I grew up observing my father in a family business. And it's really tough when you have your own family in the business. It's tough when you are in a partner relationship because a lot of them don't work out as we know, as entrepreneurs. We've heard the horror stories. So with you and Liz, you talked about it earlier, how you both have your strengths and weaknesses. Right. And you use those to conduct this business. Do you recommend or do you have a line in the sand that says, OK, Liz, you are handling all of the financial part of this and anything that comes out of this financial related, that's your baby. I'm doing all the product stuff or whatever. So I'm not putting words in your mouth, Rachel: Right, Joe: But I'm just Rachel: Right, Joe: Trying Rachel: Right. Joe: To give you an example of can you explain how that division works? Rachel: Gosh, I wish it was that clear cut. Joe: Yes. Rachel: Like I'm like, here, take that hat. Oh, wait, wait, I'll Joe: Right. Rachel: Wear Joe: Right. Rachel: This one today. Joe: Exactly. Rachel: That's Joe: Well, Rachel: Kind of. Joe: I think the fear is, is that with businesses and partnerships, it's stuff sometimes somebody say, wait, I thought you were handling that. It's one of those things or you did it, but you didn't do it as well as I would have done. You know, so I'm trying to make sure we get this out to explain that you really have to be honest with yourself and say, I'm really not any good at marketing, so I'm not doing it. And if you don't want to do it as my partner, then we need to get somebody who does. Rachel: Exactly. Joe: So. Rachel: Well, first off, I would always say really, you know, know your family dynamics like how you operate with whether it's a brother or a sister or a family business. And we been fortunate because we we both see things. We both have the same goals, right, so I always say like, know that first, do you do you are you in alignment on what your goals are for your company and what purpose you both have in that? Like make sure you're on the same page? Because if one person sees the company for something else and you see it, then it's always going to be like this. Right? So you have to be on the same page, an alignment on your goals and your vision for what it is that you want. So that's like the biggest thing I can say. Everything else for us. We both have a lot of creative ideas. So I would say that we take our creative ideas and then I do more a lot more on that implement and manage. She does a lot more in the network. And, you know, big picture of whatever it is that we might be be doing. So it's very we complement one another. So I think you do. I think if you can make some more clear boundaries, I wouldn't say we were maybe the perfect example. We're kind of a weird group because we can just kind of work together. Well, I don't know. Maybe since we've been doing it since 1994, I think my sister and I have had maybe two arguments in business, and they went for a good quality like ten minutes and it was over. But yeah, I think having a making sure your visions are in alignment really takes away a lot of the issues. Joe: Ok, so the website is radicalskincare.com. Rachel: Yes. Joe: There is the whole retail side of the business that if any of those people are listening, they can contact you for distributorship wholesale or whatever that might be. And then there's the whole brand ambassador side, Rachel: Yes. Joe: Which is really to empower mostly I think it leans towards women, and I think that's great. But obviously, we talked about earlier that men can get involved because you said that the products are Rachel: Unisex, Joe: What was the word, unisex, Rachel: Unisex. Joe: Right. Is there anything else that I missed that you wanted to talk about before I let you go? Rachel: No, I mean, I guess back to I always just feel like you want to be part of a movement that matters, like really having a movement that matters. And Joe: That's it, I think that's the saying, Rachel: That was Joe: You Rachel: That. Joe: Keep saying, that's Rachel: See, Joe: It. Rachel: I told you it was going to happen. Joe: I love it. Rachel: I Joe: I'm Rachel: Was going Joe: Still Rachel: To get it in right at the end for you. Joe: I'm stealing it. I'm stealing. Rachel: Yeah. So that's like really what we we stand for and being a part of something that's bigger than yourself. And that's what really Radical is all about. It is we're in herself meets outer beauty. And, you know, your purpose is our promise. And that's that's what we want, you know, surrounding yourself in life around like minded people. That's just a beautiful thing. And I think that's what we we want to be able to help others with, to really get to, you know, living a life that they love and dream and going above and beyond. And so we really appreciate you having me on today. And Joe: Yeah, Rachel: I was Joe: Absolutely. Rachel: Really I was happy to be able to distinguish that I'm the younger sister, Joe: Well, Rachel: Older Joe: That's how she Rachel: Man. Joe: Gets that, too. That's what Liz gets. And you can tell her that even though we've never talked, I'm no longer talking to her. Rachel: Right. Yes, OK, we're on the same page. Joe: And I want the I want the audience, the listeners, and then eventually the viewers. But right now, the listeners that listen to the podcast, your message, what you are accomplishing with this is very sincere. And the integrity is there. I hear it in your voice. I see it in your face. So when the viewers go to watch this episode on YouTube, they, too, will understand that this means a lot to you. This is not about making money. This is about empowering people to live the life that they love and to just do great things and feel good about themselves. And it's both with having potentially a small business of their own or a large business through this. It's about making some extra money on the side. It's it's about feeling good, both financially, physically, inside and outside. And I think it's awesome what you're doing. And I just I could tell. Like, I interview a lot of people and the comment maybe it's an L.A. thing, but the calmness in you is not this sales motivated conversation that we're having. It's a conversation from the heart that you love what you do. This is something you wanted to do to help us. And it comes across. So I wanted you to know that that I was hoping so much that it would be this and not be this powerful woman who is just like sell, sell, sell, sell. And if you get this and you come into our program and you can drive a Mercedes in a year Rachel: No, Joe: And Rachel: No, no, Joe: All Rachel: No. Joe: Of that stuff. So this was wonderful. I loved Rachel: Yeah. Joe: It. Rachel: Yeah, well, we're not those girls, Joe: Yeah, Rachel: We're we're definitely heart centered, so. Joe: Perfect. I will put in the show notes all the ways to get in contact with you, the website and all of that, if there unless there's any special spot that you like to communicate. If there's I don't know if your Instagram fan and that's where you like to do it, or just like people to contact through the company email. But now's your chance to tell me Rachel: Yeah, Joe: Or the audience. Rachel: Either way and I was also Joe: Ok. Rachel: Going to do a code, so people Joe: Beautiful. Rachel: That are listening that Joe: Yeah, that'd Rachel: They Joe: Be great. Rachel: Can they can get a 10 percent discount on our products, but also we can send them an eBook. Joe: Beautiful. Rachel: So, yeah, we'd love Joe: Ok. Rachel: To do that so we can do Castelo 10. Joe: Beautiful, I'm going to write it down because I'm old and I'll forget Rachel: There's the old. Joe: It. All right, Castelo, 10 is the code to get 10 percent off. I love Rachel: That's Joe: It. Rachel: Right. Joe: Ok. Beautiful. Rachel, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. This was really cool. It was an honor to speak with you. I love what you're doing. And again, please tell Liz to that. I don't know. I don't ever want to talk to her. Rachel: Ok, Joe: No, it can't. Rachel: I'll call her right now. Joe: Yeah. They say you had one chance to come on Rachel: You Joe: Joe Rachel: Know, Joe: Show Rachel: You had Joe: And you Rachel: It, Joe: And you blew it. Rachel: She Joe: And Rachel: Missed Joe: We. Rachel: You missed the best podcast ever. Joe: Well, we had so much fun and Rachel: We did Joe: Ok, Rachel: The clip. Joe: Thank you so much, and I wish you all the best and I look forward to seeing your progress with everything. And it was really an honor to talk with you. Rachel: Thank you. Thank you so much.
How To Find A Business Coach Or Mentor with Jordan Montgomery. My discussion with Jordan involved learning about the various types of performance coaches, the styles, how can someone benefit from a coach and why you would need/want one. I enjoyed this honest conversation with Jordan, his ideas and how well he spoke and conveyed his ideas and message. There's a good chance a performance coach could really improve so many things in your life, that it's worth looking into for sure. Thanks for listening! Joe #thejoecostelloshow #montgomerycompanies #performancecoach Jordan Montgomery Owner - Montgomery Companies Website: https://www.montgomerycompanies.com/ Instagram: @jordanmmontgomery Facebook: @montgomerycompanies LinkedIn: @jordanmmontgomery Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Jordan: Hey, Joe, thanks for having me, man. I've been following your work, and I want to say congratulations on all that you've built and continue to build. And it's an honor to have this conversation with you. Thanks. Joe: Hey, Jordan, welcome to the podcast. Man, I'm glad you're here. I'm excited to talk with you. Jordan: Well, Joe: Thanks Jordan: I appreciate Joe: For coming. Jordan: That question and I'll try to be succinct with my answer, but I grew up in southeast Iowa and a little town called Colonia in Kelowna is the smallest Joe: Thank you, man, I appreciate Jordan: One of the smallest Joe: It. 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Jordan: So Joe: So Jordan: I live in Iowa Joe: The stage Jordan: City, Joe: Is Jordan: Iowa, Joe: Yours. Jordan: Actually just outside of Iowa City and a little small town called Tiffin with my wife Ashley and our three daughters. My wife today runs the business. I run my mouth. We have a full scale coaching and consulting firm, Montgomery Companies. We have several coaching partners, and today we serve several thousand coaching clients. Those clients range from professional athletes to entrepreneurs and salespeople. We do work with some executive leaders at some larger firms. And I just have a blast getting to do what I do. And I meet some really interesting people. We get to help people think more deeply about who they are and where they're headed. And ultimately you get to help people live into who they were created to be. And it's a tremendous blessing. So I had a career in the financial services business, allowed me to pivot into this world pretty open about my professional journey. But at the end of the day, I graduated college 2010 and University of Iowa spent the last 11 years really building a skill set that's allowed us to build a business around coaching, consulting and leading people. So that's kind of the short version of my story. Obviously, there's a lot of twists and turns and gods provide a lot of grace. Jordan: Certainly I've been thankful to be around a lot of the right people. But if you're asking me the short version on how I got to where I'm at today, that's the the short version on Jordan Montgomery. Yeah, I think my dad, at the end of the day, my dad was a family man with a business, not a business man with a family. And I wanted to model that. I wanted to be a family man with a business, not a business man with a family. And I think as a driven type, a young man living in America, I kind of fight that every day. I mean, at the other day, like my wife and my kids are my top priority. But if I say they're my top priority, then that needs to show up in my calendar and that needs to be reflected in how I spend my time. And I want to be respected the most by people who know me the best. And that means that I'm a father first. I'm a husband first. I'm leading my family well. And if I lead inside the walls of my home, then I think I can lead in other areas of my life Joe: Cool. Jordan: As well. But Joe: So Jordan: I just didn't want to be Joe: First Jordan: The guy Joe: Of Jordan: That Joe: All, I love the part Jordan: Built Joe: Where you Jordan: Something Joe: Said Jordan: Professionally Joe: That because your father Jordan: But Joe: Was Jordan: Then Joe: Able Jordan: Sacrificed Joe: To make it, Jordan: Or Joe: You Jordan: Compromised Joe: Gravitated Jordan: In really other Joe: Towards Jordan: Important Joe: That Jordan: Areas Joe: Feeling Jordan: Of life. So Joe: And knowing Jordan: I appreciate Joe: That Jordan: Your pointing Joe: He was Jordan: Back Joe: Able Jordan: To Joe: To Jordan: My Joe: Do Jordan: Father's Joe: It because Jordan: Example. Joe: He owned Jordan: I Joe: His own Jordan: Probably Joe: Business Jordan: Still Joe: So Jordan: Underestimate Joe: Early on Jordan: The impact Joe: For Jordan: That that Joe: You Jordan: Had Joe: And Jordan: On Joe: For Jordan: Me Joe: The listeners, Jordan: As Joe: That Jordan: A young Joe: Triggered Jordan: Kid, but Joe: Something Jordan: He Joe: For you Jordan: Really Joe: That Jordan: Taught Joe: You Jordan: Me Joe: Were able Jordan: What Joe: To say. Jordan: Entrepreneurship Joe: I Jordan: Was Joe: Want Jordan: All about Joe: That for Jordan: In so many Joe: My Jordan: Ways. Joe: Own family and my own kids at some point when I have kids that I have that flexibility to do this. So that was really cool. Not a lot of people have said that in the past on the show when they when they said, oh, I became an entrepreneur because and it was all of these other reasons. But to actually associate it with your father sitting on the sidelines, watching you play sports and concert or whatever it might be, that was really cool. Jordan: Well, and I'll say this to Joe, because there are some entrepreneurs listening that maybe don't have that flexibility, like maybe you're truly in a situation where you've got a team or your businesses in an industry that requires you to work certain hours or whatever. So that's not a shame or guilt. Anyone who's working really hard to provide, because at the end of the day, entrepreneurs are called to work longer hours is just part of the deal. So if you're in that grind right now, here's what I'd encourage you with, is somebody that's going to change and the reason that you're doing what you're doing right now, the reason that you're working as hard as you're working right now is to have the flexibility and the autonomy. And, you know, I also wasn't there for my dad's early years. Like, I missed you know, I was born when my dad was eight to 10 years into being an entrepreneur. So he earned that flexibility. So let's just not forget that that flexibility is earned. And that looks different for every entrepreneur based on the industry Joe: Yeah, that Jordan: That Joe: Was Jordan: You're Joe: Really Jordan: In Joe: Cool, and I Jordan: And Joe: Came Jordan: This Joe: From Jordan: Stage Joe: An entrepreneurial Jordan: Of Joe: Family as well. Jordan: The business Joe: The Jordan: That Joe: Unfortunate Jordan: You're in. Joe: Thing for Jordan: So Joe: Me is that Jordan: I think Joe: My Jordan: That's Joe: Father Jordan: Important to Joe: Could Jordan: Underscore. Joe: Not attend most of my stuff. So when you said it, it kind of hit home and I hold nothing. He's passed on at this point. But I never held a grudge because he just he worked his butt off and and just to provide and create something great. So it never struck me the other way. It wasn't Jordan: Yeah. Joe: Like I was resentful over it. But I just love the way you framed that whole thing. That was really cool. Jordan: Well, yeah, you know, I just I fell in love with sports at a really early age. I just love competition. I loved competing. I love watching other people compete. I love the atmosphere. I love the energy that goes into a sports competition. I'm still the guy, Joe. Like, I will watch one shining moment at the end of the final four for those who are familiar with that show. I cry every year when I watch that one shining, but that little three minute clip. And I think part of the reason I get emotional about that as you watch young people get emotional over competition. And I just loved the rush of competition. I loved watching people give their all to a very specific activity, blood, sweat and tears. And Joe: Yeah, absolutely, Jordan: So Joe: I totally Jordan: I just fell Joe: Agree Jordan: In love with sports Joe: And Jordan: At a young Joe: I'm Jordan: Age. Joe: Still Jordan: I played Joe: Working Jordan: Sports Joe: Like Jordan: All the way Joe: Crazy, Jordan: Through high school. Joe: But Jordan: I did Joe: It's Jordan: Not compete Joe: Just Jordan: In college. Joe: Because Jordan: And Joe: I Jordan: It's something Joe: Don't Jordan: That's Joe: Say no Jordan: Kind Joe: And Jordan: Of Joe: I Jordan: Interesting Joe: Just keep Jordan: About Joe: Adding Jordan: My story Joe: More and more Jordan: And background. Joe: To my plate. 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Joe: Or to Jordan: You Joe: Me, Jordan: Know, Joe: You looked Jordan: At the Joe: Like Jordan: End of the Joe: You Jordan: Day, Joe: Were a football Jordan: I think Joe: Player. Jordan: It athletes Joe: I was like, maybe Jordan: In a really Joe: He played Jordan: Unique Joe: For Jordan: World Joe: The Hawkeyes. Jordan: Where they Joe: I Jordan: Give Joe: Don't Jordan: So Joe: Know. Jordan: Much of their time for such a really, really small window of competition. You know, you think a lot like the average NFL athlete will compete for less than two hours, whistle to whistle over the course of a season. But they can be literally all year round and they'll get paid, graded and evaluated for what they do inside of two hours. All year long, but it's kind of a metaphor for it for all of us, right, because the reality is each one of us is practicing for little moments, for small moments. Some of them we can predict, some of them we can't. But you get paid and your best to show you get paid really, really, really well to be prepared Joe: Hmm. Jordan: In small little windows of time. And so I developed the sort of fascination or obsession with helping athletes prepare and be at their best when that small window of opportunity presents itself and, you know, your clutch, your clutch when you can show up and do normal things. In an abnormal times, so like Derek Jeter, Kobe Bryant, you know, they're considered clutch because at the end of the day, they could show up normal. They could just be who they were because they had practiced so much in the most important windows of time. And it's a really interesting metaphor that we can apply to all of life. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's it's a pursuit of excellence, right, and you know, I'm reading a book right now by Tim Grover, The Unforgiving Race to Greatness, and it's called Winning. And, Joe: Yeah, it's Jordan: You know, there's Joe: And Jordan: So much of what Tim Joe: Again, Jordan: Grover preaches Joe: People Jordan: That I Joe: That Jordan: Really love. Joe: Maybe Jordan: I'm Joe: Just Jordan: Not Joe: Watch sports casually Jordan: Maybe not aligned Joe: Don't Jordan: With one Joe: Understand Jordan: Hundred percent of it, Joe: The Jordan: But Joe: Grueling Jordan: Winning has a price, Joe: Effort Jordan: You know, in Joe: In the lifelong Jordan: Pursuing your Joe: Commitment Jordan: Calling has a price Joe: To potentially Jordan: Regardless Joe: Never, Jordan: Of what you do, Joe: Ever Jordan: You know, sports or otherwise. Joe: Getting Jordan: If you're an Joe: That Jordan: Athlete, Joe: Chance Jordan: Great. But Joe: In Jordan: If Joe: The sports Jordan: You're an entrepreneur, Joe: World and Jordan: There's going to Joe: Used Jordan: Be a cost Joe: To have some really good friends Jordan: Associated Joe: On the Buffalo Jordan: With Joe: Bills Jordan: Your calling. Joe: Football team because Jordan: And Joe: I went to college Jordan: I Joe: Out Jordan: Think Joe: There Jordan: Sports is the epitome Joe: And Jordan: Of that. Joe: I was Jordan: But certainly Joe: A musician. Jordan: Entrepreneurship Joe: I was Jordan: Is Joe: In a band. Jordan: Is Joe: They Jordan: Right Joe: Loved Jordan: There Joe: Our band and they used Jordan: With being Joe: To come Jordan: With being Joe: And Jordan: An athlete Joe: Hang Jordan: In Joe: Out. Jordan: Terms Joe: We've got Jordan: Of Joe: The dinner with Jordan: Making Joe: Them and Jordan: Sacrifice. Joe: You would hear the stories. And it's just to live on the edge of not knowing if you're playing or you're sitting each day and who's who's looking for your spot and the work so hard and give up so much from a really young age all the way through. It's unbelievable. You know, and I watch certain friends here in Arizona, believe it or not, Arizona has got a very big hockey base. You know, like fans love hockey. And there's a lot of kids that come here, play hockey, play on the farm team of the coyotes or and we've had friends that had their kids just go through all in hockey. Moms and dads have the worst it's the worst schedule I've ever seen. And to go all the way to the very end and be on the farm team and never get called up. And I can't even imagine that it's just grueling. Jordan: Yeah, well, you know, there's there's a lot that goes into speaking, right, speaking as an art form, and in today's world, attention is currency. So something we think about a lot and the keynote speaking world is you've got Joe: Mm Jordan: To Joe: Hmm. Jordan: Keep people's attention. And if you can't, you're out, you're done. You'll never be the really high demand keynote speaker if you don't know how to keep somebody's attention. So there's multiple ways that we do that. One of the ways that we keep people's attention is through story. It's a story sell facts, tell. When you get really good Joe: Yeah, Jordan: At telling stories, Joe: Yeah, I Jordan: You keep Joe: Agree. Jordan: People's attention. Joe: Ok, Jordan: In Joe: So Jordan: Fact, Joe: Enough about sports. 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Jordan: Think eye Joe: When I Jordan: Contact Joe: Watched Jordan: And tonality Joe: Even Jordan: Is Joe: The speaking Jordan: Is another Joe: Engagements Jordan: Big one, right? There's Joe: At Jordan: A difference Joe: The corporations Jordan: Between communicating Joe: That you've Jordan: And Joe: Done, Jordan: Connecting. People Joe: You Jordan: Want to feel Joe: Have a really Jordan: Like you're Joe: Good flow. Jordan: Speaking to them Joe: You don't Jordan: Like, Joe: Use Jordan: Wow, Joe: All Jordan: This guy's Joe: Of the Jordan: Speaking directly Joe: Weird words Jordan: To me. Joe: That people use Jordan: And Joe: All the time. Jordan: It sounds Joe: Tell Jordan: So Joe: Me Jordan: Simple, Joe: How you do Jordan: But what's Joe: It. Jordan: Common sense is not always kind of practice. If you watch your average keynote speaker, their eyes will kind of drift all throughout the room to look down, look sideways. I think at the speaker, you want to keep constant eye contact. And then the other thing I think about is being really you centered in the message being you centered. So I'm going to use two people's names. I'm going to pick people out in the crowd. I'm going to touch people, maybe even on the shoulder or the arm as I'm speaking. And I'm going to move through the crowd. And so much of communication is nonverbal, right? 90 percent is nonverbal. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. And it's also not what you say. It's what people hear and it's what they remember. Maya Angelou famously said it's not what you say that people remember. It's how you make them feel. And so I try to stay really in tune with how I make people feel. A lot of that is my energy, my body language. It's you focus communication, it's telling stories, and it's the difference between connecting and communicating. So if you're listening and you're thinking about your communication style or maybe you want to develop your craft as a keynote speaker, those are a few things that you could consider. Jordan: And I'll say this to Joe. I'm a long way away from where I want to be. I got a long way to go. So those are things that I think about repetitiously. And I get obsessed with the practice of my craft. And I'm evaluating and observing high level keynote speakers. You know, how do they move? What do they say? What do they not say? You know, their pace, their tonality, the way that they tell stories, their presence. Yeah, those are all things that I'm paying attention to. So I appreciate your kind words. I think communication as an art form is no different than playing an instrument or doing a dance. And for anybody that's in sales, for any entrepreneur, if you're not taking that seriously as you develop and grow your business, that's something to really consider and think about. Because whether you're speaking to an audience of one hundred or a thousand or an audience of five or ten, you're in the human connection business before you're in the construction business or before you're in the marketing business or financial planning business or real estate business. We've got to remember that the human connection is at the center of everything that we do. Well, thank you. It's kind of you to say. I did and I went to school for interdepartmental studies, which is a fancy way to cover recreational management, so I literally wanted to go to school, have a great social experience, and then start a business and the fitness world. Jordan: That was kind of my dream. And so I took some entrepreneurial courses, got a degree in recreation management, fell into finance and in two things were true. I didn't want to have a boss, so I went to work for myself and I wanted to create my own schedule that that was it. I want to call my shots, create my own schedule. But I didn't have any money and I didn't have any experience. And so I fell into financial services because it allowed me to be in business for myself, but not by myself. So I had a great support system. It was kind of like a franchise model, had a lot of success in that world at an early stage, had a big event in my life in twenty fifteen that really have me thinking about my future in a deeper way. And then I decided to pivot into sort of the consulting and coaching world making financial planning, kind of our kind of our core client. And so in a very early stage in a coaching business, financial advisers were some of our first clients by way of my background in the financial planning world. Joe: Yeah, and you do it incredibly well, my friend. So thank you. So let's just backtrack really quickly so that I can get the progression from college into starting this company. So did you go to school for finance? Jordan: I think it's so true Joe: Ok. Jordan: In life and in business, definitely in entrepreneurship, where we're leading people, that more is caught than taught. Joe: Ok. Jordan: And so nobody really taught me how to coach. But I watched other people coach and I watched other people in my industry that do what I'm doing now, do it at a really high level. And again, I paid attention to quality of life. I paid attention to the relationships. I paid attention to the way that they manage their decisions and manage their time. And I thought, you know, I want to do that. I think I can do that. And I actually did it in tandem with my own financial planning. And so I started sort of coaching on the side and I had really been coaching all the while I was in financial planning and some aspect working with clients. But I also started getting asked to speak and do workshops. And so I sort of fell in love with that work, Joe. But the reality is I had a couple of mentors. I had some key people in my life that had done that work in a really high level. One of those people is a guy by the name of Ben Newman. Another guy is John Wright Senior. And they both had Joe: How did Jordan: Big Joe: Coaching Jordan: Coaching Joe: Catch your Jordan: Practices Joe: Eye, or Jordan: Working with Joe: Was it because Jordan: Professional Joe: You were Jordan: Athletes Joe: Just taking Jordan: And Fortune Joe: From Jordan: 500 Joe: Your Jordan: Executive Joe: Love of Jordan: Leaders. Joe: Sports Jordan: And Joe: Being a coach? Right. Jordan: I just Joe: I Jordan: Admired Joe: Mean, just Jordan: The work. Joe: Taking Jordan: I thought, Joe: That, Jordan: You know, Joe: But Jordan: I think Joe: Now Jordan: I Joe: Saying, Jordan: Can Joe: Ok, Jordan: Do that. Joe: Wait, Jordan: I got a lot to learn, Joe: I want Jordan: But Joe: To do a little Jordan: I'll Joe: Bit Jordan: Learn Joe: Of that Jordan: As I Joe: With Jordan: Go. Joe: Sports Jordan: And Joe: People. 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And that's when it really starts to get financed, when you can impact the world or you can impact the world around you through the people that work with you. So virtually everybody on our team right now, with the exception of maybe two to three people there in the coaching business, so their coaching partners, so they're leading, they're doing coaching and consulting work, either individual coaching group, coaching, keynote speaking, they're all contracted out. So some of them have five clients, some of them have 30 clients. We have a couple that have just a couple of clients and they're all sort of specialized. So we have some former professional athletes. We have some people that came from the ministry world. So they're actually pastors or they have been pastors. And then we have some people in the world of sales. We have some real estate agents and financial advisers. Some of them are very technical. Somebody might say a more motivational, but all of them are for hire as coaching partners. It's my job to lead them and make sure that they're getting what they need from a content standpoint and also just keeping them connected to to a vision and and keeping them connected to our company. But we're having a ton of fun. I mean, it's it's awesome to be on a team. It's fun to be a part of something that's bigger than just me. And, you know, each one of them is unique in terms of what they bring to the table. Joe: So that's a great segue because you do have a fairly Jordan: You Joe: Sizable Jordan: Know, what's Joe: Team. Jordan: Most important Joe: So Jordan: To us, Joe, Joe: What Jordan: Is that Joe: Do those Jordan: We all Joe: Team Jordan: Have Joe: Members Jordan: Similar Joe: Do Jordan: Values, Joe: For you? Jordan: So I want to give people the freedom and flexibility to be autonomous and how they work with clients. And so I've never told somebody, hey, here's the five step plan. Here's exactly what you have to do. Now, I'll make some general suggestions about the way that we lead people and care for people. But at the end of the day, most of the people that are on our coaching platform have been wildly successful in other arenas. And so they've been leading. They've been coaching. They've been training and developing people. So I think we're aligned in terms of our values. But beyond that, I want them to really operate in their true giftedness. And for some of them, that giftedness is in listening. You know, for some of them, it's in the world of neuroscience. You know, they just really understand how the brain works for others. They're just big on accountability, the kind like the bulldog that's in your face. It's really intense and motivational. So we want people to be who they are. We want them to have strong values, which for us means their faith filled and family oriented. And if they're faith filled, family oriented, others focus. They're usually a good fit for our coaching Joe: Did Jordan: Practice. Joe: They follow Jordan: And then, of course, Joe: A Jordan: There Joe: Certain Jordan: Are some other criteria Joe: Structure Jordan: That we want to Joe: That Jordan: Vet Joe: You Jordan: Out. Joe: Have Jordan: But Joe: Set up Jordan: That's Joe: So Jordan: A that's Joe: That Jordan: A good question. Joe: When someone hires one of those people, they know that if they're getting the quality of the Montgomery companies coach and there's a certain structure formula, something like that? The. Jordan: Yeah. Yeah, I would say that's that's very true of of our team, I think we're well positioned to help just about anybody in any industry with any problem. You know, there's a few that we would say, hey, we're not not licensed to do that. We're not going to dive into that space. But for the most part, if it is in the world of performance sales and driving results, there's somebody on our team that can handle the issue of the opportunity. Yes, so there's really two components to coaching for us and our business model, one is group coaching and one individual coaching, and those are obviously very separate. If I'm working with an individual client and we're talking about the phases of coaching or how I work with a client, first is discovery. So the answers you get are only as good as the questions that you ask. And people don't care how Joe: Cool. Jordan: Much you know Joe: Well, Jordan: Until Joe: I Jordan: They Joe: Just Jordan: Know that you care. Joe: It's important Jordan: And Joe: Because Jordan: To Joe: I Jordan: Us, Joe: When Jordan: It's Joe: I Jordan: A Joe: Went Jordan: Relationship. Joe: And looked at the website, I was like, Jordan: And Joe: This Jordan: So Joe: Is this Jordan: I Joe: Is Jordan: Always Joe: Cool. 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If we need help, you track down a client or prospect, I'm going to help you with that. So it's our approach is a little bit different that way. It's it's heavily based around relationship. The relationship has to start with Joe: All right, Jordan: Discovery. Joe: Cool. So let's talk about Jordan: One of my Joe: The Jordan: Other Joe: Coaching Jordan: Beliefs, Joe, is Joe: Part Jordan: That if Joe: Of it, Jordan: I'm working Joe: And Jordan: With a client, Joe: If Jordan: It's always Joe: You can go through Jordan: 100 percent Joe: And tell Jordan: Of the time, Joe: Me the Jordan: Their time, not Joe: Different Jordan: Mine. Joe: Types Jordan: Which Joe: Of Jordan: Means Joe: Services Jordan: I've got to Joe: That Jordan: Deal Joe: You Jordan: With Joe: Have Jordan: The issues, Joe: For the coaching Jordan: The Joe: Piece Jordan: Opportunities Joe: Of. Jordan: And the challenges that are most present for them right away before I try to drive my agenda. So if I show up to the call and I say, hey, Joe, here's three things I want to talk about today. Here's the here's the new approach to closing a sale or here's the new approach to the discovery process or whatever. And I find out that your dog just died or that you just lost the key employee or that your house just burned down. But I'm using really dramatic examples. But anyway, the point, is there something else on your mind? I'm missing it. I'm not know I've failed to connect with you, and candidly, I failed to lead you. So the first question I asked to all of our coaching clients and a coaching meeting, and they would tell you, this is not to say, hey, Joe, how do we create space to discuss and talk about the things that are most pressing, interesting and relevant for you today? I want to start there and then we'll recap and we'll talk about some of the stuff that we've talked about the past. I'm always, you know, forcing accountability. So we're we're bringing things to the forefront. Did you do X, Y and Z to do that or Yapp with that? But we addressed the issues that are most present. And then I'm always trying to share ideas and concepts that I feel like are relevant to them based on the seasonal life there in industry they're in or what they've said that they needed help with. Conversations tend to be fairly organic because, again, it's it's a relationship. And, you know, people open up to us about all kinds of stuff, their marriage, their finances, their friendships, their their problems that go way beyond their professional life. Jordan: So I appreciate the question. I don't know if I if I answered it exactly. But to give you a window into our world and how we work with people, that that's sort of our our process and style. You know, right now we work with such a wide range of people, Joe, so I'm not as concerned about like industry or niche. Here's what I what I'm really concerned with this character traits. So they've got to be values oriented, right? They got to care. They're going to be a decent person. In other words, if they just want to go make all the money in the world, they don't want to leave their family. I'm probably not a good fit. I'm going to challenge them on their values and lead in their family and growing in their faith. And that's part of who I am. But that's not for everybody. But so we're probably not a good fit if that's not part of who they are. And then the second thing that I would tell you is they got to be open minded. They have to be willing to learn. They have to be somebody that enjoys new information and new ways of thinking. A new perspective, fresh perspective. Right. Doesn't mean that I'm always right or my perspective is the right perspective. It just means that they're willing to listen right there. They're willing to hear and then they're willing to be challenged. So they want somebody to ask them the tough questions and share the truth and mix even said it best. You said average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached, great players want the truth. I want people that want the truth. I want people that really want to be challenged. Joe: Great. Jordan: They've Joe: So Jordan: Got Joe: Before Jordan: An open Joe: We Jordan: Mind Joe: Move to Jordan: And they have strong Joe: A Jordan: Values. Joe: Group coaching piece Jordan: And Joe: Of it, Jordan: If they've Joe: Because Jordan: Got those Joe: We just Jordan: Three Joe: Talked Jordan: Things, Joe: About the one on Jordan: They're Joe: One. Jordan: Usually a good fit for Joe: What's Jordan: Our coaching Joe: Your sweet Jordan: Practice. Joe: Spot? Who who are the people that you feel you work best with or can can help the best. Jordan: So the group coaches typically kind of a one hour session, we try to kind of meet people where they're at. So I work with organizations, as do our partners, to figure out, hey, what really do you need? What's the right time frame? What's the right size? I'd love to tell you that we've got, like, this specific program. It's cookie cutter. It's not. But that's by design. We really want to be a partner and meet people where they're at. So sometimes it's a small as is five people. I've got one group right now, 60, which I think is a little too big. What's important to us is that that's it's intimate or as intimate as it can be where people really feel like, you know, them. And and so we call on people. I try to get to know everybody by name and remember little facts about who they are and what's important to them. It's highly interactive. So I'm calling on people throughout the session. Usually I'm delivering 30 minutes of content or 30 minutes of discussion. We challenge challenge on the spot. I have other people challenge each other. I always say this in our group coaching program that where you sit determines what you see and you see something different than everybody else's and different is valuable. And so what that means is your voice matters because whether you're the most experienced person on the call are the least experienced person on the call, you see something that nobody else in the organization sees. And so we need your voice. We need your perspective, because you've got a different perspective than everybody else. So, Johnny, that sits at the front desk, that's the director of First Impressions, has some really valuable Joe: Awesome, Jordan: Perspective Joe: I Jordan: Because Joe: Love Jordan: Johnny Joe: That. OK, cool. Jordan: Sees Joe: So Jordan: Something Joe: The group Jordan: That Sarah, Joe: Coaching, Jordan: The CEO, Joe: What does that entail? Jordan: Doesn't see. And so we really just try to foster conversation, encourage people and empower people to share and speak up and then deliver content that's inclusive and relevant to the group. Yes, so much of our business is virtual, it just kind of always has been and most a lot of our clients aren't local. So they're you know, they're kind of spread out. We have people all over the US. I'm pretty used to Zoom calls and phone calls, and I speak a lot. Right. So keynote speaking is live often, but we still do virtual keynotes as well. So it's a good mixture, I would say, in so many ways covid changed our business. I was always willing to do things virtually, but I think a lot of companies weren't until they realized like, hey, we can do it this way. And so for me, as a person with a young family, it allowed me to stay at home and I didn't have to. I wasn't on a plane twice a week sleeping in a hotel. So so covid in some ways I'd be careful how I say this, because it was a really difficult time for a lot of people for our business. It actually affected my day to day rhythm or quality of life and I think a positive way and allowed me to be more present with my family. So it's a good mix of both. But I would say the pandemic certainly forced it to be more virtual. Joe: The coaching business, covid or not covid, were you doing live coaching up until that point and now a lot of Jordan: Yeah, Joe: It has shifted Jordan: I would say Joe: Onto Jordan: A good Joe: Like Zoom Jordan: Portion Joe: Calls and things Jordan: Of Joe: Like Jordan: Our Joe: That, Jordan: Clients Joe: Or Jordan: Are either Joe: How your Jordan: In Joe: Business Jordan: Sales or entrepreneurs, Joe: Today and what's Jordan: You know, Joe: The Jordan: So Joe: Mixture Jordan: There Joe: Of live Jordan: In fact, Joe: Versus Jordan: I would say it's Joe: Online? Jordan: Probably 80 percent of our business, either business owners or they're in sales and then there's maybe 20 percent that are in the world of executive leadership or sports. So that's kind of a mix of our business. When I say executive leadership, they're a leader in some sort of a corporate setting, but it's starting to change more every day. Like we work. I work right now with a group of physicians. We've got a gal that owns a very successful cosmetology clinic. So her whole thing is cosmetology Joe: Yep. Jordan: And she's been wildly successful and real estate agents and financial advisors and and college athletes and pro athletes. And so it's a it's a it's a wide range of people. Joe: Perfect out of the clients that you have, what is the percentage of general corporations, then entrepreneurs and then sports related? OK. Awesome. OK, we're closing in on the amount of time that I have you for, which is unfortunate because I love talking with you and I love your approach. 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First of all, have 20 years of experience, a team of 20 people there doing tens of millions of dollars revenue, that they're very successful. And so they hire us. They hire me to come in and do coaching work with them. And every one of them has sort of a different set of needs. But one of the things that we always talk about, at least on some level, is our communication style. Right, because they're in sales and they're communicating all day, every day for a living. So I challenge this financial advisor. Usually within the first few meetings, I'll say, hey, I want you to send me your approach language, which is really their what they say to engage a client and conversation. So it's a first time meeting and this is the first five minutes of sort of the introductory meeting. And I can I can feel their energy when I when I challenge them and I say, I want you to send me that communication. Their energy is like at a negative to. Right, they're thinking you're going to bill me X for coaching, I've been doing this for 20 years, like what I don't need is help on the basics of what I say. And, you know, I can just feel that just not really excited about that. Jordan: But I challenge him. I say I think this is a really important part of our work together. It helps me understand who you are and how you're showing up for people. So send that over when you get some time. So they send it over and it's not going to have all the answers. But I'm willing to listen to it repeatedly. Our team listens to it repeatedly. And then we give them an analysis. We give them feedback. The energy level, when we give them feedback, goes from a negative two to a 10. Every single time. Because they do not know what they do not know. And I just had a guy the other day, I said, OK, so when the first two minutes of your communication, you said the word thirty seven times. Did you know that? You know, hey, the way that you show up, did you know that you use me focused conversation? Over and over, you are literally saying I my, me repeatedly. And you were doing it for 20 years and nobody has ever told you that you're doing it, and that's a shame because you would connect with people and a deeper and more meaningful way because you would be able to drive better results. You would have more purposeful conversation if you could just make that one small tweak. Jordan: You know, we could end the conversation at the cozy relationship right there, and the time that we had spent together would have been massively impactful. Again, not because I have all the answers, but because I'm willing to listen, give real feedback and press in on blind spots that we all have. And the last thing I'll say is people need to be encouraged. You know, people will go farther than they think they can when someone else thinks they can, period. And I don't care for the most successful person, the least successful person, the most experienced, the least experienced. I'm working with a guy the other day, Fortune 500, executive leader, big time leader of people. They had a record breaking year at the firm. Unbelievable year. This guy is in charge of literally hundreds of direct reports. And I asked him in a conversation, I just said, hey, how many people told you over this past fiscal year? So you just wrapped up the year. How many people told you? Good job. And he says, well, like, what do you mean? I said, you know what I mean? Like e-mails, texts, phone calls. Like how many people reached out to you said, hey, good job, great you. And he said, Zira. Zero people had picked up the phone and sent a text instead of an email, so the point is this job that I've worked with, this guy named John. Jordan: So the point is this, John, that you need to be encouraged. You need somebody to point out what you're doing. Well. You need somebody to touch your heart and remind you of who God made you to be and all of the natural God given giftedness that's inside of you. And I just want to share with you it's an honor to be able to do that for you and with you. But let me let me help you see what I see. Let's look back at the last 12 months. Here's what you've achieved. In that moment, I think I think when you step into somebody's life in that way, you're a lid lifter and you do it authentically and you help them see more and you help them see before. Man, I think you're in a position of strength relationally. And I think that person at that moment realizes that that relationship means more than they ever realized. So there's a lot that we can say about coaching. But I think, Joe, when you touch somebody's heart, when you appreciate people for who they are, when you point out their God given gift A. and when you deliver the truth and love and you point out the blindspots, you can be a world class coach and it has nothing to do with what you know, it's all about. Jordan: You show up and serve people. Well, that's just my answer. I don't know if it's the right answer by anybody else's standard, but in my world, it's the way that I try to live each and every day with the people that we serve. I love it. Yeah, so here's what I'd say, we do a lot of work through social media, so Instagram is probably where I'm most active. I'm Jordan and Montgomery on Instagram, so I would love it. If you want to get in touch to send a direct message, I'll communicate back with you. I would love to connect Montgomery Companies dot com is on our website. I'm also active on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and if anybody reaches out, I will gladly respond. If you got a question, if you're wrestling with an issue, an opportunity I'd love to talk to it with and be of service to anybody listening. And Joe, I want to say thank you for having me on your show. It's an honor. It's always an honor to share your great with the questions that, yes, it's very clear that you showed up prepared and you also had great energy. And so I just want to say thank you for your time and attention. Thanks for who you are and for what you're putting out into the world. It's making a difference. I. Right back at you, brother.
Dr. Shawn Dill and Dr. Lacey Book talked with me about so many things happening in their lives. Amongst the many of subjects we discussed, we talked about their book "None of Your Business: A Winning Approach to Turn Service Providers into Entrepreneurs", their organization the Black Diamond Club and their franchise business, The Specific Chiropractic Centers. It was great to talk with such a power couple as I like to call them and learn how they navigate through both their business and professional lives. The Black Diamond club is about helping service providers learn all the necessary tools to be successful while offering a community of support and like minded individuals. Their book gives you the tool in hand, to do the same. The Specific is their chiropractic franchise organization that helps chiropractic offices use a proven formula for growth is their specific realm of expertise being knee, chest, upper cervical specific clinics. I had a great with with Shawn and Lacey and I hope you get as much out of this episode as I did. Thanks for listening, Joe Dr. Shawn Dill & Dr. Lacey Book Owners - The Specific Chiropractic Centers Website: https://thespecific.com/ Founders - Black Diamond Club Website: https://blackdiamondclub.com/ Their mutual website: https://shawnandlacey.com/ Lacey's Info: Website: https://laceybook.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlaceybook/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drlaceybook/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laceybook/ Shawn's Info: Website: https://shawndill.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drshawndill/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thespecific/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dr-shawn-dill/ Emails: shawn@blackdiamondclub.com lacey@blackdiamondclub.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Sean, Lacey, thanks for joining me on the podcast. I'm super excited after I went and looked at everything that you guys are doing. It's like I probably need a week with you on air. I'm exhausted, actually, from my research, but I'm excited about this. So welcome to the show. I appreciate it. Shawn & Lacey: Thank you so much. Boy, that's that's a I never heard that before, I don't think we hear stuff similar to that. I would say, though, it takes a little while, it takes a little while for us to explain what we do. Sometimes Joe: Yeah, Shawn & Lacey: I get that. Joe: There's a lot going on, so I'm going to jump right in, I might have a different approach than some podcasters. For me, it's really about the origin of where you came from, because I think that's missed a lot of times. And I like people that are listening to the podcast as either entrepreneurs that are in the throes of it and trying to figure stuff out or they're they're on their way up or people that are on the sidelines going mad. Do I really want to do this? I hear how hard it is to be an entrepreneur and and I'm one myself, so I know what it's like. And I would love to at least get your history first. And if you want, you can obviously you probably need to both do it separately because you you didn't all of a sudden disappear together as this good looking power couple that you are. And so I'd like to hear a little bit about each of your story and then the connection and then we'll go from there. And I promise I won't miss anything. I have a ton of notes so either of you can go first, whoever wants to. Shawn & Lacey: Well, Sean is a couple of years on me, so I'll let him go first chronological order, chronological order. Well, I'll accelerate through the early stages of my entrepreneurial development. Joe: Not too Shawn & Lacey: I Joe: Much, Shawn & Lacey: Graduated. Joe: Though, not too much, because it's I like to know who you were when you grew up, like it's Shawn & Lacey: Ok. Joe: Important because I think, you know, people just think all of a sudden, hey, Sean, at least he had a lucky. They they had rich parents and they grew up in an affluent neighborhood. And Sean's trajectory was to be a chiropractor the moment he was born. And and I think it's important for people to know that it's not that easy. And not everyone most of us don't come from that sort of direction Shawn & Lacey: Mm Joe: Early Shawn & Lacey: Hmm. Joe: On. Shawn & Lacey: Ok, well, my both of my parents worked nine to five job superimportant, and I would say we were sort of just middle class, maybe just above middle class. Not definitely not upper middle class. I distinctly remember for my age, wanting designer jeans, Jordache jeans, and I was allowed a pair of Jordache jeans. But my friends, they wore Jordache jeans every day. And so unless I wore the same jeans every day, I wasn't wearing designer jeans every day, hated to wear the lead jeans. I worked one of the things that super important as I worked during high school, shining shoes at a country club in Fort Wayne, Indiana. That was sort of my first real job making money. Of course, I mowed yards, but nothing like nothing super sexy from the entrepreneurial space. I was I had a job. But what I what I noticed was that the members at the country club, they were able to play golf on Wednesdays and Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays. And there I was shining their shoes every day and something sort of sparked in me that made me wonder how they had that lifestyle. I know that you've had conversations with Steve Sims, a similar thing. I think that people people have that sort of that moment when they question what makes you so different than me. Shawn & Lacey: So that was sort of my moment. I fell in love with this idea. I was like, I think that if you truly have made it in my life, you're 16 years old. I thought, like, well, then you could have a country club membership and you can play golf on Wednesdays and Fridays. That became something that was super important to me at a very early age. Now, I didn't play golf at that time. I was shining shoes, but then I went on. My cousin was a chiropractor. This was during the 80s. And the chiropractic space, the 1980s are known as the Mercedes 80s because insurance reimbursement was high. My cousin drove three BMW, so I think he had two BMW cars and he had a BMW motorcycle and his license plate was three BMW s three BMW. And I thought, well, that's really cool. You must really do well. If you if you're a chiropractor and a chiropractic experience, then my cousin really encouraged me to go to chiropractic college, go to chiropractic college. I'm very passionate about chiropractic. But what I realize is that just like culinary art school, when you go to culinary art school, you're being taught how to be a great chef and every great chef's dream is to own their own restaurant. Joe: Yeah. Shawn & Lacey: Well, the same thing in professional trade schools. If you go to become a dentist, a chiropractor, medical doctor, lawyer, they teach you how to be a great practitioner. And of course, every practitioner's dream is to own their own place. But I didn't really have the business education that would be necessary to be successful. I graduated chiropractic college at the age of twenty four. I knew everything there was to know in the world at twenty four. I mean you just Joe: Yes, Shawn & Lacey: That said, Joe: Absolutely. Shawn & Lacey: You know everything. So I moved from the United States to Costa Rica. I didn't speak any Spanish where Costa Rica. The primary language is Spanish. But you know, you figure that out later. And my first year in business was absolutely terrible. It was just it was terrible. I ended that year wondering if I made the right decision, one to be a chiropractor, to to be in business. And I had to make a decision to either, like, bite down hard and press forward or to throw in the towel. I could probably go back to the United States and get a job working for someone else. Thankfully for it, for my sake, I decided to press forward one more time. I caught a break. I was invited to be on a television show. My Spanish was still pretty terrible, so the show was pretty terrible. Imagine you're interviewing me and my English was so broken that you were trying to piece it together right like that. That's what we did. But then slowly I began to get my bearings with the language. I got better and my business blew up. We ended up having four chiropractic offices in Costa Rica. That was sort of my first taste of that magic called scale. I was like, wow, so we could do that, end up coming back to the United States. Shawn & Lacey: I have two daughters and wanted to get them into school here and then here I really that's when I got to the states. That was kind of why would accelerate that. But it is important to know where someone came from. That's really when that sort of entrepreneurial bug started to really develop. I opened up one office and had that bug to scale. We eventually created a chiropractic franchise called the Specific Chiropractic Center. We began consulting with chiropractors and then consulting outside of the chiropractic space. We've worked with some great many. Tours like Jay Abraham and David Meltzer, who began to encourage us to look at other verticals, so we started to get into the software space, we are in the digital marketing space. We do events, but they're all interrelates. It's not like a hodgepodge of things. They they're all sort of interconnected and that sort of then that acceleration on the on the backside, you know, we've just been super blessed. I think a lot of people that really have their game together did well during the pandemic. And so we were blessed through this through this year. And then, of course, you know, looking ahead, trying to prepare the business for what's to come. Joe: So all that was amazing, and I appreciate you doing that for me, and I think the audience will really appreciate it. The only question in the whole thing that I had, and I always hate interrupting, so I just kept quiet, was why Costa Rica? It seems like such a random thing to say. And even though I want to go there and I want to possibly live there, I get it now. But at twenty four y. Shawn & Lacey: I just told the story last night, and I remember we also have a podcast and I appreciate when podcast and they say I'm actually going to tell you the answer to that. The real answer, when I was in St. Louis at Chiropractic College, my roommate, he was dating a girl and eventually became a fiance. And her grandmother was the president of Nicaragua. And my roommate was like, we should go down and visit Nicaragua. I was like, yeah, let's do that. So we stayed. We ended up staying at her grandfather on the other side of the family at the grandfather's house. And we were invited to have a couple of meetings. We were exploring. I wanted to go to Nicaragua and we sat down with a guy and very nice. And he explained he talked to me and he said, Sean, you don't want to come to Nicaragua. Not safe, not good, not stable. If you like Nicaragua, for some reason, you should go to Costa Rica. And I was like, OK, well, that guy, his name was Popl tomorrow. And there's a book written. It's called Everybody Has His Own Gringo. Pulpo was Joe: Well. Shawn & Lacey: Oliver North's contact in this whole Iran Contra affair. I was sitting in his guy's office and he told me so Jamal told me, you don't want to come to Nicaragua, go to Costa Rica. I did. A couple of months later, I went to Costa Rica. Costa Rica was just absolutely beautiful. I was honestly, too, trying to escape something that's interesting from the health care space. I was trying to escape the advent of managed care. This was nineteen ninety five. Managed care was coming on the scene. People didn't really know what that was going to mean for the providers. And so I was like, look, I mean, again, I know everything. The best thing for me is to go to Costa Rica. First it was Nicaragua and then I was convinced by some very powerful people that I should go to Costa Rica instead. Joe: That's amazing. All right, well, and did you end up buying any property there because by now everyone wants to be there and everyone wants to own property. Shawn & Lacey: I did, but I sold that property when we moved back to the United States. That was the other thing is that I worked very hard. You know, we may dive into that at some point here in our discussion as an entrepreneur. So people always ask me, like, wow, you're in Costa Rica like, what's your favorite beach? And honestly, the answer is, I don't know. I was working like a given. We have a home in Florida, but if you're working, you're not at the beach. So just because you live in Florida doesn't mean you're like out renting jet skis or doing all of these things every day. Yeah. Joe: Yeah, well, great, well, that's awesome. Well, I appreciate you doing that, Lacey, it's your turn now. I want to hear about you. Shawn & Lacey: Wonderful, and I'll fill in some of the gaps that Joe: Perfect, Shawn & Lacey: John glossed Joe: Perfect. Shawn & Lacey: Over when the two of us came together, so for me, I grew up a little bit differently. I actually grew up in Silicon Valley in Northern California. And you think Silicon Valley and you think just that the tech capital of the United States and it really was like that. I remember when I grew up, I literally grew up around the corner from Netflix when it was in one little tiny office and I could walk there from my home. But that didn't mean that I grew up with a lot of money. And so majority of my life, we actually lived off of a single family income. My mother worked. My dad, my father was a lot older and so he retired pretty early on in my childhood. And so my mom was really solely responsible for the money in our household, which especially in California, didn't go very far. Joe: The. Shawn & Lacey: And so for me, I actually started working since the day I turned 14. We got some permission from the school and I worked at a really horrible but really fun second run movie theater, probably doing things that no kids should have done. But it taught me a lot, taught me a lot about customer service and really being able to take care of people. And honestly, I can say to this point, I've never stopped working since that day. I've always been a go getter, I think for me, because we didn't have a lot. I always just had this desire for more. And on top of that, I a lot of people out there may relate to this because I wanted more. I had a rebellious side of me. I always wanted to to to break the limits, break the mold. And so I thrived in almost every job I had when I went to undergrad. Since I paid for it myself, I worked three jobs and went to school to get it done. And so I always had that spirit in me, but I never had the knowledge or the intellect or know how. Shawn & Lacey: I don't know how to put it all together. And I ended up going to chiropractic school. And along that road is when I met Sean and just I was just as passionate about chiropractic as he was and ended up we ended up working together in that office that he started in California. And then from there, that's where the two of us started our relationship and started working together as well. And I remember at that time, I we want to talk about beginnings. We tell this story a lot because that was in two thousand and eleven and we were in a six hundred and twenty five square foot apartment. I had a ton of debt coming out of school. Like carpenters come out of school with around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in debt. He had just come to the United States quite a few years before that, but was still, I mean, really starting from scratch. So we had the six hundred twenty five square foot apartment and we had the two girls that are two kids there as well. I Joe: Scott. Shawn & Lacey: Mean, it was teeny tiny. And we always tell the story of our green couch because at that time we had no money. We had to get a hand-me-down couch from another student that was at the school that moved away. And that's what our girls slept on. And so oftentimes I know and I love that you said that because people automatically think, well, maybe they maybe they had opportunity. I didn't maybe they were blessed. Maybe they grew up that way. Honestly, not only did not grow up that way, but in 2011, it was actually worse. Right. We didn't know what we were going to do with the our actually I didn't know I should say I was the one in the relationship that really struggled with a lack of mentality. Sean has always thought very abundantly. And so we really had to work that out in our relationship to make it work. But the other thing about us is not only were we passionate about chiropractic, we're passionate about helping other people. And so that's what allowed us to go on that trajectory of having our chiropractic franchise and then becoming consultants for people that are service based entrepreneurs and really growing to where we are at today. And that's how we end up sitting here before you. And so it was it was a lot of work, a lot of struggle, a lot of wrong decisions, but mostly just a desire and a tenacity to continue to reach more people and make an impact. Joe: Yeah, and it's so I understand why Sean got into it, because he saw his cousin with the three BMW, right. It made sense. What triggered you to take that path? Shawn & Lacey: You know, it's really interesting, I was actually thinking about when he was telling that story. It's funny because I've heard that story many times. But where I grew up, because because it was Silicon Valley, I was surrounded by money, surrounded by it. There was a lot of entrepreneurs. There are a lot of people in the tech world. The high school that I went to, I, I drove the Cruddas car in the whole parking lot like it was so bad that it was like of those felt ceilings. You remember Joe: Yes. Shawn & Lacey: When they had that and the glue had melted Joe: Yes, Shawn & Lacey: Off. So the Joe: The liner Shawn & Lacey: Felt Joe: The Shawn & Lacey: With Joe: Liner starts Shawn & Lacey: The liner, yeah, it would be bumping my head Joe: Right. Shawn & Lacey: And I would have to tack it up. And I think for me, I would I would boil it down to one word and it was contrast. I was able to see what those what that life could look like Joe: Mm hmm. Shawn & Lacey: In stark contrast to where I was. And so I always wanted to have the opportunity in my own life like I saw like that my that my friends had. And it wasn't that I grew up in a bad household. My parents were amazing and phenomenal. But it's just when you grow up around that, you go, how do I get that? What do I need to do? How hard do I need to work? And so I think that a lot of that came down to it for me. Joe: That's great. So, Sean, real quick, you you and I are probably close to the same age, I might even be older, but the we had parents from potentially the Depression era. Right. Or at least my mother Shawn & Lacey: Oh. Joe: Came from that. So it was always even though they were encouraging, my father was more encouraging for some reason, it was just in his DNA. My mother was like the safety thing. Like, No, you just got to get a good job, work hard, go to school, go to whatever. And every time I wanted to dip my toe in an entrepreneurial pool, she was always like, Are you sure about this? Even as I got older when I was literally being successful doing various companies that I opened. So Lacey said that her parents were very supportive. How about you and your your parents? Shawn & Lacey: You know, my parents, and it's not that her parents were not supportive, but probably my parents were more supportive of of of just sort of the idea of being an entrepreneur. However, right now, as we are speaking, my parents don't really know what we do. So I still ask all the time, what do you guys actually Joe: Hey, Shawn & Lacey: Do Joe: I Shawn & Lacey: Exactly? Joe: Can't I can't blame them, because if you look at the websites and the events that you guys are like, my head is spinning, so I get it. Shawn & Lacey: But I I also was lucky that and I just think there's about people I think if you have a conversation with somebody and you dive deep enough, superstars in life have superstar characteristics and they exhibit superstar characteristics early on, most people don't realize that they are they themselves are Joe: Yeah. Shawn & Lacey: Superstars. But if you look at people that are successful, they have sort of these sort of interesting ways that they were successful. So I suppose I excelled in academics. My mother told me as an adult that there were many times that she was like, hey, are you going to study for that test? And I was like, now? And that she she was like, it was a dilemma as a mother because she wanted me to fail so I would learn the lesson. Joe: Yeah. Shawn & Lacey: But I never did. And she's like, somehow you just kept getting through. And I got great grades and I was successful in music. And so they at least in the area of music, I when I left high school, I either wanted to be a professional soccer player or a professional musician playing the saxophone. I went to Indiana University, which has Joe: Great Shawn & Lacey: A very Joe: School, Shawn & Lacey: Good soccer Joe: Great, Shawn & Lacey: Team and a great music program, Joe: Great. Shawn & Lacey: And it took me less than a semester to figure out that I wasn't going to be able to do either one of those. And so then I had to kind of figure out. But they were always very supportive in the sense of do what you want. I think also to a contrast, I didn't have any school debt compared to Lacey's two hundred and fifty thousand. So my parents at least, you know, they were they were, though, of that mindset. Right. You know, buy a house, save money, pay for your kid's education. That was the mark of success. And I was I was the beneficiary of that. And they were also very, very supportive. I will say to I think actually I'm more like you, Joe. Yeah. Yeah, Joe: Oh, yeah. Shawn & Lacey: Actually, Joe: Ok. Shawn & Lacey: Yeah. My my father was born in nineteen twenty seven Joe: Oh, and my Shawn & Lacey: And Joe: Father Shawn & Lacey: So. Joe: Was born in nineteen twenty nine, so. Shawn & Lacey: Yeah, and so I actually grew up and my mother, my father, it was in his DNA to just to just to just love one on me and like just say you can do these things. My mother was actually the worrywart. Joe: Yeah, Shawn & Lacey: And Joe: Exactly. Shawn & Lacey: So I always say she was one of those people that could could find the worst case scenario and anything. Right. And and that and I don't know if you can relate to that, but I meet a lot of people that, yeah, I Joe: Gosh. Shawn & Lacey: Grew up that grew up with somebody. And so it would be like, OK, but if you do this, here's what could happen. Right. So it was a it was an interesting, I think, balance that the two of them played in my in my life and I was in the middle of it. And so for me, I wasn't like Sean. Like I instead I pushed back and try to do everything as independently as I could. Right. And so it was very different, I think, growing up. Joe: God, it's so nice to meet someone who had the same dichotomy of the father and the mother, and it was she was so protective and so fearful because Shawn & Lacey: Yes. Joe: She they they had an alcoholic father who left. They had just there. Shawn & Lacey: My mom, too. Joe: Yeah. They just scrounged for everything. It was just it was devastating for them when they were young. So she didn't want any of those. She didn't want me to take any chances at all. But I was the middle child. I was the one that just constantly bought the system. And she just Shawn & Lacey: Yep. Joe: My poor mother, I from God. Man, old Shawn & Lacey: I Joe: Man. Shawn & Lacey: Know I said I told my mom, too, I don't know how you how you did it with me, No. One. And then we fed into their worrying, Joe: Mm Shawn & Lacey: Right, Joe: Hmm. Shawn & Lacey: Because Joe: Yeah, Shawn & Lacey: We kept bucking back. Joe: Yeah, Shawn & Lacey: So, Joe: Yeah, well, Shawn & Lacey: You know. Joe: That's that's awesome. So, OK, so you meet and it's is it twenty eleven when you well you met before then but twenty eleven is when you kind of really started this relationship and partnership. Shawn & Lacey: Yep. Joe: Is that true Shawn & Lacey: Yeah, Joe: For Shawn & Lacey: We met in 2006, Joe: Ok. Shawn & Lacey: And then I think we started dating like end of 2010, yeah. Joe: Ok, and you had one chiropractic location out in California. Shawn & Lacey: Yes. Joe: Ok, so what is the conversation that happens that you say, OK, we can do more than this and we can open up either other offices of our own or we've created such a successful practice that we could actually duplicate this and franchise it? I don't know what came first or how, but I'm Shawn & Lacey: Let Joe: Interested Shawn & Lacey: Me give you an idea Joe: Because there's Shawn & Lacey: The Joe: Many Shawn & Lacey: Answer Joe: Business Shawn & Lacey: To Joe: Out Shawn & Lacey: That. Joe: There that, like, I have a entertainment booking agency and I have systems in place that if I got ran over by bus today, literally someone could walk in and everything goes in order Shawn & Lacey: It's Joe: And Shawn & Lacey: Great. Joe: It's all planned out and it's totally franchise able. If I ever wanted to do that, I'm probably too old to do something like that. So but how did you how did this conversation happen? Because I looked in all the locations you have in some of them, you have multiple one of the locations. You have four offices alone in it, right? Four. Shawn & Lacey: Mm hmm. Joe: So you guys really blew this up. And I'd love for the audience who has this maybe in the back of their mind. How does someone go about this conversation and then take those steps? And I know that's part of what you also do in your training. So we're going to get to all of that. But this interests Shawn & Lacey: Absolutely. Joe: Me as well. Shawn & Lacey: So I think even if someone is listening, we are two people, but anybody listening is probably had this conversation with themselves as if even if you're one person, sort of this, you know, white right shoulder, left shoulder, good angel, bad angel. However you want to configure it. I my role in that, that is that my mindset always has been one of superabundance. I'm one that is the opposite of the risk of, you know, this is all the bad things that can happen. My position is always like, yeah, but this is all the cool stuff that could happen if it went the other way. And that's sort of where my my focus goes. Lacey can share that hers is is different and how it's different. But I always thought that man, we could just figure this out and then really what that the desire was for me was to reach as many people as possible. That was one of my big lessons in Costa Rica. I remember I had four offices in Costa Rica. There's four million people in Costa Rica. And what I realized was that four million at that time. There's probably more now. But what I realized is that I wasn't even making a dent. I was like, we've got four when we were busy, like my office was seeing two hundred and fifty patient visits, patient transactions per day, Joe: Oh, my Shawn & Lacey: Five Joe: Gosh. Shawn & Lacey: And a half days a week. People were pouring in. And I'm like, and we're still not making it that we're not we're not getting close like we're not. We would need to have such an incredible infrastructure to really reach more people. And that was sort of a big transition for me. I think that people that want to scale in the sense of multiple units, franchising, etc., as you come to this realization that you're just one person, seven billion people on the planet, this podcast, the reason why we agree to come on it is because it amplifies our voice, the people that are listening to the podcast or the people that don't normally listen to us and vice versa. And so the effort is gaining leverage by being able to scale your message for me and being in the service world to reach more people. So that was always in the back of my mind. I wanted people I wanted to just reach more people. Now, then, your question. So that's the pre answer, because then your question is like, so what does the conversation look like? And that's not as easy, because if it were that easy, everybody would do it. I always say people that are in the service world that have a passion to reach a lot of people, that is the answer. Well, then why don't they do that? Because here's the scariest thing to do before he adds sort of what that transition look like is that in the service world, if we are if we really believe that we are impacting and changing people's lives fundamentally by whatever it is we do, whether you're a massage therapist or a hairstylist or whatever you do, like you feel like the person on the other side of the transaction, that their life is radically changed as a result of your doing it. Shawn & Lacey: Don't you actually have an obligation then to reach as many people as possible? And I'll add to that and scale, because this is the problem. If you were run over by a bus and you hadn't put the systems in place, then the entire thing stops with you. Even the people that you are currently serving, they just all of a sudden don't have a way to continue on. So that's always been in my mind. Now, going to lazy and saying, yeah, let's just open up a bunch of those with zero money that is not necessarily very well received. And so she can tell you. Yeah, and people ask us all the time where you guys work together, you do everything together, you live together. And so very early on, I mean, one of the reasons I fell in love with Sean is his his ability not just to be just a visionary, but his ability to be a strategic visionary, like to see so many moves ahead, because the way that I grew up, I was taught to look at the very thing in front of you. Shawn & Lacey: Right. And so it's a very different way of going about and doing business. Not to say that I'm not a risk taker, but I just do it differently. And so we were very lucky because people saw the model that Sean had created with that original office and fell in love with it. It was all cash, no insurance, a very specific type of technique that we do. And they said, I, I want in on that. I want you to teach me how to do that. But here's the problem. He was still working in the office seeing patients with me. And it doesn't matter if you're in a relationship with somebody working together or you're in a partnership with somebody working together. What we learned very quickly is that we were doing the work of one person as two people, super inefficient. And so he's like, we need to we need a scale. We need to grow. But I'm being selfish. And I wanted him to stay and work in the office with me. And so I had a life coach. She was Russian. So she was very straightforward. Joe: Yes. Shawn & Lacey: She and she said she she didn't have a filter. And she literally said to me one day, she said. I want you to know that what I'm feeling is that you're holding Sean back from being able to do the thing that he's good at. It's like so crazy. Why Joe: Not Shawn & Lacey: Would you say Joe: Me, Shawn & Lacey: Something Joe: Be Shawn & Lacey: Like that? Joe: Right. Shawn & Lacey: Come on. And luckily, I don't I'm not an individual takes things personally. And so I went home to Sean and I said, you know, Cachalia, my life coach, she said this crazy thing to me. She said, I'm holding you back. And he looked me dead in the face. And he said, You are. And so the very next day, that's when he started doing his thing. And he never came in the office again. And because I'm an executer and I'm really good at that and I'm great at systems and infrastructure, that's my superpower. And I recognize that. And I recognize that he's a strategic visionary by having that separation and allowing us to do what we were strongest at, I think, was the catapult to allow us to scale that business specifically. Joe: And that is such an important thing that you just said, and I think it's the biggest problem with partnerships and like you said, even though you're married and you're also partners in a business, I think I learned this from a couple of restaurant owners that I'm friends with that are no longer in the business together. But just because one of them retired was that they had very strategic like a line in the sand. And this is your side of the room and this is my side of the room. And one of them was all front of house and the other one was all the back and part of it. And it was they never crossed those lines. And I think that's important to maybe like you said, you make a list of your superpowers and you say, OK, here's all the things I'm good at. I'm going to take all of that on my shoulders as part of the business. And do you agree or disagree? These are all the things that you're really good at. You take all those. I think that's a recipe for success. And it's so important that you said that. I think that's missed a lot. Everyone they Shawn & Lacey: It Joe: All Shawn & Lacey: Is. Joe: It's just like this is a big pot of soup and everybody wants to stir and you Shawn & Lacey: Yeah, Joe: Can. Shawn & Lacey: Yeah, let me get some Joe: Yeah, Shawn & Lacey: Of that you don't know what you're getting, Joe: Yeah, Shawn & Lacey: Right, Joe: Yeah. Shawn & Lacey: And I'll tell you, Joe, the other thing that we did when we learned that lesson is we translated that into our are the personal side of our life. And so we created very clear lines and roles and things that we do in our household as well, because that that we want that to be just as successful as our businesses. So it's never a question of who's doing the laundry or the dishes or responsible for shopping or paying the bills. It's never like, did you do that? Why didn't you do that? We know who does what. And that helps actually in that personal side of things as well. And it was just a great lesson to adopt on both ends. Joe: See, I knew I loved you guys. This Shawn & Lacey: Gus. Joe: Is good looking power couple, just I mean, Joel and my life partner were the exact same way. We've been together for twenty two years. We we do Shawn & Lacey: All that. Joe: Stuff together and we just it's just a perfect situation. But it takes like anything. All the little stumbles along the way. But you figure it out. But it's I love that. That's awesome. And I bet you're the only person who has the run of the house is Dexter. Shawn & Lacey: Oh, Joe: You're Shawn & Lacey: My gosh, Joe: Right. Dexter Shawn & Lacey: Yes. Joe: Gets away with anything. Dexter is your Shawn & Lacey: Well, Joe: Right. Shawn & Lacey: How could you tell he's here, somebody somewhere Joe: There is. Shawn & Lacey: He was scratching at the door and I just had to tell texting our team, get the dog. Somebody needs to get the dog. Joe: That's Shawn & Lacey: Yes. Yes, he has the run of the house. I'm sure you could tell. Joe: Right. That's awesome. OK, so what's the time frame when you opened up the second office or you started the franchise, however that happened. Shawn & Lacey: I'm just going to clarify for you some of these questions, my sense of time, that is my weakness. So if if Laci said it was three years after or said it was three months after, I would agree with either answer. So I'm going to have to if you ask me, how long have you known Laci? I Joe: I Shawn & Lacey: Don't know. Joe: Am exactly the same way. When did you meet, like where? I don't remember. Sorry. Shawn & Lacey: Do you want to know how bad is actually at time that he he thought it was the most brilliant idea and somehow he talked me into it for us to get married on my birthday, which also happens to be New Year's Eve. So he will never forget the dates on any of those. Joe: That's Shawn & Lacey: Talk Joe: Not Shawn & Lacey: About a smart businessman. Joe: True and that's not fair. She gets ripped off on two other holidays. Shawn & Lacey: No, that's false, and it's the world's biggest party on her birthday Joe: Oh, Shawn & Lacey: And Joe: My Shawn & Lacey: On Joe: God. Shawn & Lacey: Our anniversary, it's the best. So Joe: Oh, God. Shawn & Lacey: So two thousand nine is when people started coming and saying, I want to get in on this model. Joe: And Shawn & Lacey: And Joe: I'm Shawn & Lacey: We had. Joe: Sorry and I hate to interrupt you, but when you say Shawn & Lacey: Yeah. Joe: People because you brought this up a couple of times Shawn & Lacey: Oh, Joe: Now, Shawn & Lacey: Yeah. Joe: I don't understand who those people would be. They wouldn't necessarily be patients. They would be people that are in the chiropractic industry. And they look at you as being, wow, you guys are killing and how do I do that? Shawn & Lacey: Yeah, and I should probably I think for context, I don't know if you said it in your in your intro, your story, but when Sean came back from Costa Rica, because literally he was starting over, the first thing he did was take a job at the chiropractic college. I don't know if we had mentioned Joe: No. Shawn & Lacey: That before. Joe: Ok, perfect. Shawn & Lacey: And so he was at the chiropractic school and he was teaching chiropractic philosophy. And then he was teaching like the one real business class that they had at the school. And so that gave him exposure to a lot of other chiropractic students, people that were graduating to see and understand the way that he viewed business and what we were trying to do with the specific chiropractic centers. So those are the individuals that said, I want to be part of this. I see the vision. I see where you're going. I love the model. And early on, we actually had it created as a licensing model. But that just gets a little bit sticky for anybody out there that's trying to scale in a licensing model. You really have to have ownership, I guess, and all of them. But a true franchise, it takes time, money, energy and a lot of good advice to to create, especially in health care. So we had about six offices that were under the licensing model and we went moved into a legitimate franchise and then grew from there in two thousand and sixteen. Joe: Ok, and so how many do you have now? Shawn & Lacey: 13. Joe: Wow, that's incredible. Shawn & Lacey: And they span from we have to in Hawaii and then they go all the way to Tennessee. So far, this Joe: That's Shawn & Lacey: One. Joe: Incredible. Shawn & Lacey: No. Joe: Yeah, you guys are killing it. I love this story, and that's why I said I was so excited to have you on and I was like, I'm going to need hours to interview these two. There's just like so many things. OK, so the most important thing, not the most important thing, but one thing I want to touch upon, because there's I'm sure the people that are listening to this and eventually watching the YouTube version of this are going to say, how do I learn more? That is not going to get covered in the short time that we have together. So you put out a book called None of Your Business in twenty nineteen. And it's a winning approach to turn service providers into entrepreneurs. And I love that because even when I listen to a little bit of your interview with Steve Sims, it Shawn & Lacey: You. Joe: Was it was like it's more than just providing a service. You are it's not transactional, right? It's more of like you're doing something you're passionate about. And the ultimate thing at the end is that, you know, you've helped somebody. It's Shawn & Lacey: Mm Joe: That Shawn & Lacey: Hmm. Joe: To me, that's what it is for me for sure. With everything that I do, it's like, how can I help did this? How can I help you, you know, those sort of things. So I feel like that's the approach that that I get from the both of you and what your book is about. So can you talk a little bit about the book? Shawn & Lacey: Yeah, the book definitely has more in depth, our story, plus the fundamentals that we teach from from marketing sales mindset, and we've had to do a ton of work together as a couple on mindset mindset. You can have all of the right instruction and do all of the right things, but your mindset could blow that. And part of that is exactly what you are talking about. Sometimes service providers shoot themselves in the foot because they want to help a lot of people. And that becomes overwhelming to the point that that desire to serve destroys the business. And so you have a business hand and a service hand. Basically, these two hands are coexisting, but they really can't meet because they they they are they are the antithesis to the business hands. Like, we have to make money. The service hands, like, well, we should just give it away for free. And so how do you reconcile that and be successful? And ultimately, you know, it all circles back to if you really do have this wonderful service that can change the world, the fuel that makes it go as a successful business in all businesses, every single business in the world, the sole reason for their existence is to make a profit, because if there is no profit in the business can exist and then people can't be serviced, can't be helped, can't be changed, can't be impacted. And so service providers really have a hard time with that. And so Joe: Oh, Shawn & Lacey: That's why Joe: Yeah. Shawn & Lacey: The book. Right. And fundamentally, before we wrote the book, the premise was, is that the world's greatest service providers in the world live in relative obscurity. We don't know, you know, and I'm not knocking him. I've had the opportunity to meet him. He's a phenomenal guy. But the world doesn't know what kind of doctor Dr. Oz is Joe: The. Shawn & Lacey: And whether he's good. But he's on TV and that makes him, in our eyes, have a degree of reverence for him or belief and credibility in him. But there are people that are phenomenal musicians and artists, practitioners, hairstyles and everything, but nobody knows who they are because they refuse to embrace the business concepts that would bring their message to more people. And so that's why we wrote the book. Joe: And you hit on another thing that even at my age, it took me forever to not feel like making money was this dirty thing. Right. And our mutual friend, David Meltzer, he talks about it in such great ways that he expresses how you've got to help yourself so you can then help others. Right. You have to make sure that you and then your family and it's just changing. That whole dynamic of making money is not an awful thing and not a dirty thing. And just it I don't know. It's it's such a it was such a struggle for so long. I just I felt like, yeah. Let's just give it away. Like, I'll do this for pennies. I just want you to be happy and I can't it's not sustainable. Shawn & Lacey: Yeah, you can't give what you don't have. Joe: Yeah. Shawn & Lacey: I mean, and that's a lesson that we've learned many times over. I mean, you can't you can't serve out of abundance if you don't have abundance. I mean, it's very difficult. And that's the best way to reach a lot of people and make a bigger impact as to be is to be financially stable or financially full because it allows you to go out there and do the things that you need to do in order to reach them. And so that's what we that's our passion is to help service entrepreneurs to really fall in love with that idea so that they can not only touch the people and help the people that they're trying to serve, but that so they can get out of it the life that they desire to Joe: Yeah, Shawn & Lacey: Write because Joe: Yeah, Shawn & Lacey: They deserve it. Joe: Yeah, Shawn & Lacey: So, Joe: Yeah, and Shawn & Lacey: Yeah. Joe: Yeah, that's it, they deserve it, it's people Shawn & Lacey: Yeah. Joe: Don't think they deserve to have this success and Shawn & Lacey: Right. Joe: Whether it's business or financial or family or whatever it might be, it's it's amazing. The specific dotcom is all about the chiropractic offices and all of this is the franchise piece of that. Is that Shawn & Lacey: The Joe: Correct? OK, great. Shawn & Lacey: Correct. Joe: So we've already talked about that. So then we have this is where it gets complicated. And this might just be because you had certain websites before the websites and then you kept so you have you have one in together, right. So you have Sean and Lacy Dotcom and Shawn & Lacey: Yeah. Joe: Then you have Sean del Dotcom. And then on top Shawn & Lacey: There's Joe: Of Shawn & Lacey: Also Joe: That. Shawn & Lacey: Makes it look like we need to Joe: Oh Shawn & Lacey: Clean all Joe: Yes. Shawn & Lacey: These up, no. Joe: So it's just so and at the end I'm going to do this and all the show notes and everybody will know where to find you everywhere. So it won't matter. But so is it important to talk about Sean and Lacey Dotcom and Sean Del Dotcom at this point, or is it better to talk about the Black Diamond Club dotcom? Shawn & Lacey: Like Diamond Club Dotcom. Joe: I mean, we could talk about it all, I just don't I Shawn & Lacey: Yeah, no. Joe: We only have a little bit more time, but I want to make sure we get through everything and I want to also make sure that we promote the August event coming up in Carmel, Indiana. So let's talk about Black Diamond Club, because that'll segway into what you're Shawn & Lacey: Hmm. Joe: Doing with that organization, the events that you have and all of that. Shawn & Lacey: Yes, a black diamond club is the place where service entrepreneurs go to receive instruction or marketing sales mindset. But I think more importantly, support and accountability. Six hundred and twenty plus service providers that are all there sharing best practices. One of the things that people always talk about that the fast food drive thru concept is not a restaurant concept. It's a banking concept. Banks really don't. Few banks have that little tube thing that goes back and forth. But they were the ones that introduced this banking from your car, the restaurant industry. It was a swipe and deploy like that's genius. Can we put it in our and McDonald's and then they don't have to get out of their car and come in. And I always say, like, think about how much you could learn if you weren't just surrounded by people in your industry like you. You found out what other industries were doing well. And then you actually thought about how can you apply that into your industry? And that's really what Black Diamond Club is about, is looking at what's working in the world. You know, e commerce. We don't sell things. Shawn & Lacey: We sell a service. But still, you know, people in e commerce, they really get social media, advertising, Legian, they get email, follow ups, they understand retention. So if you are looking at how can I improve that, maybe it would be worthwhile looking at things that they were doing. And that's what Black Diamond Club really, really is all about. It's a great place. Never will you be talked down to, never will you be looked down upon. But also, I think really important. It's a place where you can come and also say, hey, guys, I had my biggest month. I collected two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in revenue this month and everybody will celebrate you as well. That's part of that, too, is we don't know when you're saying, like, the mindset around money. Oftentimes we're afraid to tell people how well we're doing because we don't want to be shot down, especially by someone that we hold in high regard or that is close to us. So we've tried to create a community where we can foster that high energy and help service professionals to to go out and reach more people. Joe: Ok, so you have the specific and you have this chiropractic franchise and you're building this amazing business. When do you decide that? Wait a second. This is something that is goes well beyond chiropractic and chiropractic offices. You are building a model of success. So all of a sudden, one night you're sitting down at dinner and a glass of wine and you go, hey, wait a second. We're once again, we need to expand our mind and say, this is this is too narrow. Obviously, we're helping all of these chiropractors build successful businesses and being part of our franchise. But we can actually take this a step further. We can create a black diamond club that actually works with all forms of entrepreneurs. So is that sort of how this came about? Shawn & Lacey: Well, I wish it was that easy or simple, but I like the glass, I Joe: See how I put Shawn & Lacey: Use that Joe: I Shawn & Lacey: Now. Joe: Put Shawn & Lacey: Why Joe: All Shawn & Lacey: Didn't Joe: Those Shawn & Lacey: We Joe: Words Shawn & Lacey: Have wine? Joe: In? Shawn & Lacey: I think I think first and foremost, from very early on, like all of the business principles that Sean taught were not, you know, from the old ways of chiropractic thinking, it wasn't from our profession and from our industry. In fact, very early on in our relationship, when we were still struggling financially, he wanted to hire a business coach and he had been teaching out of Michael Sportsbook yourself solid book for many years to all of the chiropractic students in learning how to build community and really attract their ideal client. And so he came to me one time and again in my mentality, I was like, there's no way we're ever going to be able to afford that. We can't we can't handle that. And he said we'll figure it out. The money will come. And we figured it out. And Shawn was able to become a book yourself, solid certified coach. And that was kind of the first movement in going, man, this stuff that's outside of our profession, in our industry translates really well into what we do. But, hey, business concepts are business concepts and they actually translate into any profession. So we always had those thoughts. But really the story goes that there was another individual, another group in chiropractic that was very negative, that based on people that talked down to people that didn't support their individuals that were in the group. And one day Shawn was just like, we're just going to create the exact opposite of that, the exact opposite of that. And that's what we did. And that's how Black Diamond Club in a nutshell, got started. And we want it to be everything. That group was not so that people could have a place to go, where they could grow, reach more people, be supported and not be ashamed. Joe: That's great. When did you start, like nine o'clock? Shawn & Lacey: Twenty sixteen. Joe: Wow, so you're Shawn & Lacey: Hmm. Joe: Already busy and you just said, let's the heck with it, let's tax something else on the plate. Shawn & Lacey: It was a need and, you know, if you listen to the people, they'll tell you what they need Joe: Yeah. Shawn & Lacey: And if you have the skill set to fill that gap, then you should. And that's what we did. Joe: Perfect. How about tell us about the summercamp twenty twenty one that's coming up on the 13th and 14th of August in Carmel, Indiana. Shawn & Lacey: Well, this is edition number five of Summercamp, it was started by our good friend Tristan Qof. He had created this event separate from us that had nothing to do with us. And he wanted to create an event that brought together chiropractor's and expose them to entrepreneurs, which really fits our brand. But that was an idea that he had birthed. The very first edition was held in Las Vegas and the keynote speaker was Grant Kardon. And a Joe: Well. Shawn & Lacey: Lot of people were like, oh, wow, how did you get greencard on? The second edition had a stellar lineup. Brian Tracy was one of the keynotes, had multiple keynotes. Tom, Billu was there. I mean, it was it was an all star lineup. It was starting to grow. And Tristin at that point was a one man show. And so we saw his his his struggles in trying to run around and put on events of that caliber. And we were like, hey, Lacey really gets scale and process and organization and we could really help you. And so he was like, look, why don't you just acquire me? So we acquired the company and we kept Tristant on. And then we did audition number three in Miami with DJ Abraham. Roger Stone spoke Joe: Resum, Shawn & Lacey: At that one. Also, Roger Love, Joe: Yeah. Shawn & Lacey: Audition number four last year, right in the middle of the pandemic in person, we had Jordan Belfort and Eric Thomas headline. And then this year we're celebrating our fifth year. Carmel, Indiana's just north of Indianapolis, just just north of Indianapolis. We have David Meltzer. We have Patrick. But David, who's all over the news right now with this Trump and Obama debate, we have Steve Simms's speaking, Chris Winfield, Jen Gottlieb, John, ruling from Gift. This the super Joe: Well. Shawn & Lacey: Pac lineup. It is all about helping service providers. These are these are speakers that normally you would hear at an entrepreneurial Joe: Mm hmm. Shawn & Lacey: Conference. But it's it's helping expose service providers to these concepts and helping them understand how to apply them in their business so that they can reach even more people. Joe: That's incredible. I have no idea what the cost of this thing is, but just the fact that David Meltzer is there. Shawn & Lacey: I Joe: I Shawn & Lacey: Had. Joe: Had the opportunity to spend a full day with him in his office in California. Joellen and I went out and literally shadowed him from nine o'clock in the morning. And then later on, we had drinks that night and met his wife. And it was just the most incredible thing. And that the positivity that comes from him and Shawn & Lacey: Yes. Joe: It's just amazing. So that alone is I don't even know what what it cost, but that alone is worth the price of admission, just that alone. Shawn & Lacey: Well, I'm going to throw in there I don't I don't even have a link to this, but one of the things that we'll be putting out here in the back half of the year, so if people plug in with Laci and and social media, we are we are collaborating with David and we are putting on a two two day, three night mastermind on a private island in the Caribbean in December. So it'll be myself and Laci and David Meltzer trapped on a private island. So that's great. You'll have us locked there to be able to help you to ask any questions. I mean, probably Laci mostly just being having cocktails. I'm sure David will be happy for everybody's going to want so when he's there. But that's something we're super excited about, being able to collaborate with him. And he's just like you said, and one day imagine two days Joe: It's. Shawn & Lacey: And imagine, you know, your dinner is together. Yeah. You're doing everything together. So we're super excited about that. And we'll have information out about that very soon. Joe: That's cool, because we Joellen and I like to go away during the summer because we don't really have family here in Shawn & Lacey: Oh. Joe: Phoenix, Arizona, so, hey, Shawn & Lacey: Yeah. Joe: Maybe you'll get stuck with us for that trip. Shawn & Lacey: I would love Joe: All Shawn & Lacey: That Joe: Right, Shawn & Lacey: Would not Joe: Cool. Shawn & Lacey: Be a bad thing. Joe: No, not to be awesome. Yeah, I'm sorry. I actually missed you guys. You were here in Phoenix in March, right? Shawn & Lacey: Yep. Joe: You ran an event here. So you. Shawn & Lacey: That was our first time in Phoenix in a long time. Joe: Oh, Shawn & Lacey: Yeah, Joe: Yeah. Shawn & Lacey: We do we do three events a year. We do one on marketing, one on sales, and then one around money mindset. And we typically like to kind of move them throughout the country because we've got clients Joe: Sure. Shawn & Lacey: From coast to coast. So Phoenix, that's where we were doing our Money Mindset workshop. Joe: Now, let's Shawn & Lacey: And Joe: Call. Shawn & Lacey: We shout out to Phoenix, you guys really had it together. It wasn't super restrictive. We have been very pro keeping our events going during this time. And Phoenix was very cooperative. We had a really good time there. So Joe: Yeah, Shawn & Lacey: It really sounds like a great place to be. Joe: It is, but we they get in trouble because there they are a little overzealous when the data is said, take your mask off. And I went to the Shawn & Lacey: Well. Joe: Gym and I got a lifetime, literally. I walked in. Not one person that I'm Shawn & Lacey: Yes. Joe: Like, there's there's no on ramp, folks. What's going on? It was ridiculous. I was like, you're telling Shawn & Lacey: That's Joe: Me, Shawn & Lacey: Funny. Joe: Oh, is there anything else that I missed? What's the best place to get in touch with the both of you or the specific or Black Diamond Club? And again, I'll put it all in the show notes. But do either of you like people to reach out on Instagram, any of that stuff? What works for you? Shawn & Lacey: Social media is great, you can reach me and Sean Black Diamond Club dot com, that's my email. Yeah, basically we try to be here's one thing that I've learned is that as I've been around more successful people. You mentioned Joe: David Shawn & Lacey: David Meltzer. Joe: Is. Shawn & Lacey: I specifically asked him, I was like, you're giving your personal email out all the time, all over the place, national television. You don't care. How does that work? And I just found, like, super successful people are hyper responsive. That's why they're that's why they're successful. And so this is me getting over that. I'm giving my personal email shonen at Black Diamond Club dot com. Yeah. Hit me up. And if there's any way that I can provide value to your life, I will be more than happy to do that. I'm usually I usually like maybe once or twice a year, send out an email to just saying, you know, tell me what I can do for you if I can do it within reason and on this day I will comply. So likewise, if it's an within reason and I can get it done quickly, I can't take on a project, but if I can get it done quickly, make the ask, I'd be happy to help. And we're on all the social media platforms. Sean Delisi book. I bet you could guess my email address. COVID-19 Club dot com super easy. And if you want any more information, Black Diamond Club dot com is the best place to find about all the things we're doing. Joe: That's perfect. One question I didn't ask during the book conversation was I know authors when they write a book, they say it's a struggle like it's a hard thing to do. It's not as easy as people think. How how easy was it or hard with two of you writing the same book and and how did you figure out who's writing what? Or did you just sit down together? It's just something that came to my brain that I wanted to ask that question. Shawn & Lacey: I'm going to shameless plug, and if I can help you, although you're very well established, you don't need my help. Tucker Max from Scribe, Joe: Oh, yeah, I know, yeah. Shawn & Lacey: That's all. So that's how we do. The book is a chain of the chain of command on this was Abraham sat us down in his office and said, you need to write a book. And I was like, I was like, no, it sounds like a terrible idea. And he was like, well, there's a lot of ways to write a book. We were introduced to Tucker by Tristan Sharp, who I mentioned earlier. We hit it off. Tucker was like, let's just get this book done in the process with Scribe is painless. I mean, they really do have it down. People that read that book after knowing me, they say it's kind of you get to pick, but the book is written in my voice. And so people are like, yeah, I can hear you. It's we don't have an audio book. If we did, I would probably be the one that reads the book. But super simple. We just collaborate on our ideas. You meet with the scribe people, they get the thoughts out of your collector right out, Joe: Yeah. Shawn & Lacey: Put it on the paper and write it. I highly recommend if you have a book in, you use Scribe. Yeah, well worth the money because you'll just it just amplifies your voice again. Joe: Yeah, that's great. It's so funny, I know Tucker's program, and I actually I think I started doing it and I was like, do I really have a book? I mean, so who Shawn & Lacey: You Joe: Knows? Shawn & Lacey: Do you do an. Joe: Is there anything else that I missed that you wanted to speak about before I let you go? Shawn & Lacey: Not me, I think you did a great job, Harry. A lot Joe: All right, well, cool. Shawn & Lacey: A lot of real estate. Joe: I was it's you you are both very busy, so I was very nervous. I got so many things I want to ask and we'll probably have to do this again because there's there's Shawn & Lacey: Oh. Joe: There's more. But thank you. Thank you both so much. I really appreciate you being on the podcast. I want that event in August to have a bunch of my listeners hopefully show up. So thank you again. I really appreciate it. And I wish you both all the success in the world. Shawn & Lacey: Thank you. Thank you for having us. If your listeners show up, we promise that we will make them feel right at home. Joe: Perfect. Thank you so much.
Decluttering Tips For Hoarders with Tracy McCubbin was my guest recently on my podcast, "The Joe Costello Show". She is a decluttering expert and she shared how she got started, what her business does and some tidbits that can really help you get started. Tracy's company has so many service to help people declutter their home, office, home office, etc. She also has other services such as closet audits, garage organization, moving services, senior downsizing, estate decluttering. Please go to https://dclutterfly.com/ and check out how she might be able to help. Tracy has also written a book called "Making Space, Clutter Free: The Last Book on Decluttering You'll Ever Need" which you can buy at Amazon or support this cool book website called BookShop.org. Here's the link to the book: Making Space, Clutter Free: The Last Book on Decluttering You'll Ever Need Also check out OneKidOneWorld which Tracy plays an important role in as the Co-Executive Director Thanks for listening! Joe Tracy McCubbin CEO & Owner of dClutterfly Website: https://dClutterfly.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dclutterfly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracy_mccubbin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thisistracymccubbin Private FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2036212949941199 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-mccubbin-566829b2/ One Kid One World: https://www.onekidoneworld.org/ Email: info@dClutterfly.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Tracy, welcome. I'm glad to have you on the podcast. I've been waiting to have you because clutter is is just the worst thing in the world. So I'm excited to talk to you. So welcome to the show. Tracy: Thanks, Joe. I'm super excited to be here, and it's always interesting to meet people sort of who have different expertise and different focuses like everybody have in common everybody. Joe: Yup, Tracy: So Joe: Yup. Tracy: It it's just I love talking to different people about kind of how they can manage their clutter, get ahead of their clutter and live their best life. Joe: Well, I'm excited and I, I follow a pretty strict format in the sense that I really like to know the person and I think my audience likes to know the person. And I think that's how they connect with you. I just don't want the end of this podcast to come and say other this really great woman that was on who understands how to do clutter. I want to know how you got into this and more about you. So can you kind of give us the background leading up to when you started to clarify? Tracy: Yeah, it's a very interesting subject, I like to say that I'm one of those people who all I had a bunch of jobs that turned out to not be my passion, but everything I did along the way brought me here. So I was a personal assistant for a very long time to two different people. I was a bookkeeper for small businesses. I was an administrative assistant to lawyers. I had all these various I took care of my grandmother, helped her manage her finances. So I had all these various kind of office centric jobs. And then when I was working for one of the people I was a personal assistant for, he was a television director. So when he had downtime, friends of his or he for, say, the friends of his oh, my assistant, she can handle anything. So I started helping other people. Somebody's grandmother had passed away and they need to clean up the house. They had a big accounting mess and all of a sudden people started to tell other people and I would get phone calls. And at first I wasn't charging. And then I was charging a little bit. And a friend of mine said, I think you have a business. And I was like, no, I'm just helping people. This is. And he's like, no, that's what a business is. And so I I'm like, all right, let me just see. And I made a little website and I put the word out. And that's fourteen years later at eight employees later and thousands of jobs and everything I did in the past, from acting in commercials to doing bookkeeping to taking care of my grandmother, it all led me to creating this business. And then the big piece of the puzzle, which I didn't even realize when I first started the business and I had to have a client of mine point out I'm the child of a hoarder. Tracy: So my dad is an extreme hoarder. And I have lived my whole life watching him struggle with his relationship to his stuff. So very acutely aware of our relationship to stuff is emotional and but I'm not kidding. It was like ten years into my business when this client of mine, who is a psychiatrist was like, that's so interesting. Have you ever thought of the connection? I was like, what? No, what do you mean? And then you're like, oh. So watching what my father went through and still continues to go through gave me so much empathy to people's struggle and how for so many people there's all this shame around it. I'm messy and I'm disorganized. I'm a bad housekeeper. And my goal and what I realized through clients of my dad is that that's not the case, that there is this emotional attachment. And if you're not aware of that emotional attachment, you're going to keep repeating the same mistake. So it's getting to the root of why you're hanging on to all the stuff and changing your relationship so you can have the home you want to live. So I'm a I'm late to this business. I opened this business in my forties, so I'm also a really good poster child for like if you have something you want to do, don't get stuck in the age. Don't think like I and get this done. My success is all coming my fifty. So I'm um like if you have a passion follow. It doesn't matter where you are in your life. Joe: Yes, and that's what's great, because my audience, at least what I think is my audience is really entrepreneurs like that's most of what I like, because that's where I come from. My heart is in that. So I like that. You said all of what you just said. I encourage people out there that have an idea that having made the commitment to go forward with it. So that was awesome. And I read the part about I didn't know what family, what person it was in your family, but I read that you had a family member who was a hoarder. So I'm glad you brought that up. But I wanted to know, like, what your trajectory was when you started. Like, did you what Tracy: Oh, Joe: Did you want Tracy: This is Joe: To do? Like. Tracy: Oh, this is this is even better if you if this is your conversation, I call myself an accidental entrepreneur, right. That I, I just I had no idea what I was doing. I was like, oh, let me just start a business. That'll be fine. Oh, let me just charge X an hour. Like I just made up some number which was clearly too low. And then I think about a year into my business, I read a book called The MF. That Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Right. Am Joe: Oh, Tracy: I getting Joe: Yeah, Tracy: The name of that. Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Yeah. Joe: It's a great Tracy: And Joe: Book. Tracy: I and I did the math and I was like, wow, I'm working for four dollars an hour. When I when I realized how much time I was putting in and what I was charging and another like I like when I say I had no business, I'd always work for other people, I'd always put things together. But I didn't I didn't go in with this. I didn't have a business plan. And I learned so much along the way. And every misstep was a giant step forward. And the biggest change for me, too, was when somebody said to me, you know, you're not charging for your time, you're charging for your expertise. Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: And that just switched anything because I had a lifetime of dealing with someone and their staffs. And that just turned the light bulb on like, oh, right. It doesn't matter that this business has only been open for a year. I have 40 some years of doing this. And when I thought that and then I started to read more and realize and I hired a business coach and I started to really shift things around, that's when the business took off. That's when I was like, oh, stepped into the role of being an entrepreneur. And then I started to hire employees. And then I became a boss. Right. Which is a whole other thing. Joe: Yes, Tracy: And how Joe: It Tracy: Do Joe: Is. Tracy: You take care? How do you take care of your employees and how do you serve your clients and how do you not work twenty four hours a day. And so I love being an entrepreneur, but it was it wasn't an easy journey. It's not like, oh, just open your own business. I would do it no other way. And Joe: Mm Tracy: I Joe: Hmm. Tracy: Had to stay really clear about because I fall a bit into the imposter syndrome, like who am I to open a business and who am I to do this? And if they want to know you've worked for work since I was 13. I've had job like I know how to do it. So I had to take all my past experiences and filter them in and realize that even though the path didn't look like a linear line, I didn't get an MBA, I didn't get venture capital. I didn't I have just as much experience, maybe more. So I always tell people, you know, in some ways you're not reinventing the wheel. A lot of people have done this. So gather information, listen to podcasts, read books. I'm a business coach if you need it. Like you can do it. If you have a great idea that know what it's done, you follow it through, follow it through. So Joe: So. Tracy: I feel I feel really I love it. I love running my own business. I love it. It's hard. Joe: Yes, Tracy: It's Joe: It is, Tracy: Hard, Joe: Yeah. Tracy: You know. And some days I really I, I, I just got a text from a client. We helped them with this fundraiser that they were doing and it was a very emotional cause. And my team went and we kind of helped them organize all their stuff for it. And it was just a very grateful text. And when I get those texts, it's like, oh yeah, this is why we do this. This Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Is why we do this. So, yeah, I have a very funny like I it was not a straight line, but all roads have led me here. Joe: So I'm going to just that's where you have to bear with me for a moment, because I want to know more about Tracy, so I want to Tracy: Ok. Joe: Know, like, where you and the kid like like what Tracy: Yeah, Joe: Did you do? Like Tracy: That's Joe: Like Tracy: The Joe: So Tracy: Idea. Joe: I want you to go back a little further. So, Tracy: Ok, Joe: Like, Tracy: Yes, Joe: Go back Tracy: Absolutely. Joe: As far as you want. But I just want to know I want I think it's important because where I am today, everything. And you are saying all the right things for all of the listeners that will listen to this is that everything that you've done in the past just adds to who you've become now? Right. And it'll continue that way. And so many people lose sight of that. And at one point I did I was like, oh, I wasted so much time. And then I look back and I go, wait, that helped. And that helped. And that helped. And I learned a lesson there. And so what did you like? What was what did you want to do? Tracy: Yeah, you know, it's funny, I I was a neat child, I wasn't crazy, crazy, crazy organized, but I had a pretty between my dad being a hoarder and my parents getting divorced. I had a pretty California in the 70s. Like I had a kind of chaotic childhood. There was everywhere. Parenting was being reinvented. School was being we lived in a van for a year, traveled through Joe: If. Tracy: Europe. So I definitely like to make order out of chaos. I definitely like to know, OK, this is my space and I can live in it this way. And I also grew up very close to both of my grandmothers and my grandfather, but they came from the Midwest and Fresno and we're farm farmers. They came from and one of my grandmothers was an immigrant from Scotland and they all lived through the Depression. So my generational experience, the sort of generational trauma of living through the Depression, living through World War Two, you saved every yogurt container. You saved Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: Every rubberband, learning how my ground both my grandmothers were. You don't put it down, you put it away and you fix. And I learned how to sew and I learned how to change it. I can change the oil in my car and I can change a tire. And I had all these really practical things. And also for me, I think one of the big lessons that really served me in opening my own business when I started working, I started babysitting when I was 12, 13, and I started making my own money and I was like, oh, I can buy that blue, shiny satin hang tan jacket that I really want. No one can tell me, like I learned, especially as a young woman, that money equated freedom. Right. That this money that I made also could make mistakes with it, rack up some credit card debt, like I could do that. But if I work and money comes and I have power over this and my grandmother and I, we bought some stocks and she kind of helped me figure that out. And so it was a really that was one of those life lessons that they don't teach you in school, that this is making my own money. I want to take a trip, then I can do it. And that was and I'm a worker bee hardwired that way. I like to work. So I think it was I think a lot of my childhood was trying to make order out of chaos and having control and having power, you know, and I was very blessed. Like I got to I went to UC Santa Barbara. I went to a great college. I had a lot of opportunities. My family was very pro education. So I traveled the world. So again, it's all these things that at the time like, I don't know, I'm going to live in Italy for a year to study art. The smartest thing. Yeah, it turns out it was Joe: Oh, that's awesome. Tracy: You Joe: When Tracy: Know, Joe: Was Tracy: Turns Joe: That? Tracy: Out I did that my junior year of college, Joe: Wow, Tracy: So. Joe: That was that's awesome. And Tracy: Yeah. Joe: Was there Tracy: So. Joe: Were you was there something that you were wanting to become like? Did you aspire to be or Tracy: You know, Joe: Was? Tracy: Yeah, it was funny, I never I for a while, I thought I wanted to be an actress, and so I took acting classes and I did that. I had to moderate, moderate success, but I didn't like the business side of it. And then I was so for me, it was a lot of figuring out what I didn't want to do. Joe: Uh huh. Tracy: Like I was like, oh, you know, and because I'm a hard worker and I'm industrious, kind of whatever job I had before, like, we'll promote you to manager, we'll make it up. And it was a very much a series of like, oh, I don't want to do this. I don't want to spend the day doing this. And when this business started, it was the first thing that I was like, I want to do this every day, like the rhythm of it, the helping the clients, the feeling of satisfaction when it was done. It was the first I mean, I liked other things that I did, but Joe: Mm Tracy: It Joe: Hmm. Tracy: Wasn't I was like, oh, I want to do this all day, every day. Like, I you know, technically the joke is I would do it for free. Well, there was like a year I did do it for free. It's literally like that is a brutal I'll tell anybody, the entrepreneurs, people starting a business, track your hours, track what you're getting paid, do that math because it'll gut punch you and it'll make you rethink everything. Like Joe: Goup. Tracy: When you realize, oh, I'm working for four dollars an hour. No, no, no, no, no. That's an important lesson for everybody and it makes you really rethink things. So it really wasn't until this until this business started that I realized my purpose. Joe: Right, and if I remember reading correctly, it came out of you being this service assistant to this, right? And then. Tracy: Director Yahya. Joe: Yeah, and then everybody you were helping, everybody saw all the stuff you were doing and it just went from there and then you realized. Tracy: And I'd always been, you know, it always been of service and my grandmother was there, like my grandmother was the lady at the church who kind of did everybody's books and she was a secretary at the church. And we were forever if somebody was sick, I spent a lot of time with her, we would drive over to somebody's house and we'd take them to the post office. So for me, helping people in sort of an admin sense was just a being of service. That's just what we did. We were a nice person. You help your friends. So I never thought about monetizing it. I never thought that it was a service that people desperately needed desperately. I was like, Joe: Right. Tracy: Well, of course, you know how to move yourself. You just pack your boxes. Now, people don't know how to do that. So when I realized that there were so many people that either didn't have the time or the inclination and there was a way to offer the service, get paid, help them know that was the perfect marriage, that was like, oh, this is a something that's desperately needed. And I feel like for kind of where we are in the world, it's interesting. But I think as we get further away from making things ourselves, knowing how to sew, knowing how to cook, that there are more and more people that I mean, they can do things for themselves. They just it's I Joe: I know. Tracy: You know, it's just it's just really interesting. I'm a little worried and I have young nieces and nephews, and so I'm very worried about what they can do. And so I it's just it's interesting that this has become very desperately needed service. Joe: Yeah, OK, so the name of the business is dclutterfly, right, Tracy: Correct, yep, Joe: That Tracy: DClut Joe: It's Tracy: ter Joe: A Tracy: fly. Joe: Mouthful, the cutter Tracy: Oh, trust Joe: Fly. Tracy: Me. Oh, and trust me, here's another thing I'll say to aspiring entrepreneurs. When you name your business, say it out loud all day. So it would be easy to come off the time and then try and spell the website, because that's something else I didn't think about. So when I give people the email, they there's D.. C. There's no Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Easy people leave it up. So do a little bit of market research. Go. Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Can Joe: That Tracy: I, can Joe: It Tracy: I say this. Yeah. Joe: It's so funny, it's all those Tracy: Yeah. Joe: Little things you learn as you're doing it, you print your business cards and people, and especially you get older clients that want the help with some of these services that you have. And the prince too small and you're just like, oh, my God. Tracy: I went I went through that I rebranded the company about two, three years ago and the designers did a beautiful job and I was like, the font is too small and they're like white. And I'm like, oh, I'm like they're like we have like less tags, bigger font. Joe: Yes. Tracy: Like the bulk of my clients are over 50, like make it big. Joe: Right, right. That's awesome. Tracy: I, I just about a year ago I bought my first about a truck, a 17 foot truck because we're so busy and I got it wrapped and it's like my traveling billboard and I was like no bigger, bigger, Joe: Mm Tracy: Bigger Joe: Hmm. Tracy: Phone, no bigger. And the guy that the drug had the rapping place, like, are you sure? I'm like, bigger, bigger, Joe: That's Tracy: Bigger. Joe: Awesome. That's perfect. OK, so your your I know you have clients all over, but you're you're based out of California. Tracy: Yeah, and based in Los Angeles pre pandemic, we were I was in New York a lot traveling a lot post pandemic were starting to travel again. Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: I'll go anywhere. But right now it's been the book is Los Angeles to New York. Joe: Ok, perfect. So I want to go through the services quick, because I want everyone Tracy: Yeah. Joe: To sort of understand. And so I want to start with the home, the home de cluttering and it also on on the website, his office as well. And that's that's an important piece for me. And I think the audience, because if there are entrepreneurs out there, like my desk was clean a couple of weeks ago and now I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of videos and I have research materials and now it's starting to become something that I can't look at. So. So Tracy: Yep. Joe: Let's start with that. The home deck fluttering, plus the office stuff. And and just a brief explanation of each so that at least we can get an idea Tracy: Yes, Joe: Of what that means. Tracy: That's great. Go home and office cluttering is if your space that you live in or work in is unmanageable. I always tell people the really good litmus test is if you can't tidy up a room and make it presentable where you have somebody else walk in in 20 minutes or less, you have too much stuff. So that services we come in, we help people sort through it. We help people figure out what they need to keep, what they need to let go of, and then creating systems for where it goes. So in an office, where do you keep your printer? Is it near the printer where you keep your paper? How much paper do you need to print out? Can we move you to digital? And if we move you to digital, how do you organize it? How do you find that is a really important thing in offices, in the whole home, but really in your offices, where do you put the things you need to keep so that you can access them when you need them, that you can go and buy? And don't tell me. I know there's people out there that are saying I know where everything is in my office. There's giant piles on their desk. I'm like, that doesn't count. You Joe: Right. Tracy: Can't point to a giant pile and say, oh, I know what's in there. First of all, you don't I'm talking about you won't be able to find it like, Joe: Right. Tracy: You know, creating filing systems or digital filing systems. And it's and again, the really underlying message is this isn't about creating a home that you can put on Instagram or Pinterest. You can if you want. It's about creating a space that works for you. And now if you are working from home pandemic, from home schooling, from home, all you got to make your space work. You just have to make your space work. They've done so many studies, they scientists about the effects of clutter and stress. It just this is all about that. It raises your cortisol so puts you in a fight or flight your brain. I'm sure you've probably talked about this on here, but decision fatigue, where you make so many decisions, your brain just shuts down. Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: Will every piece of clutter in your house is a decision? Do I need it? Do I not need it? Where does it live? So the physical and mental effects of clutter are very real, very, very, very real. So my purpose isn't, again, to create I'm not saying be a minimalist. I'm not a minimalist. You know, it works for you. But is your home is your office working for you? Is it working for you? Chances are for a lot of people it's not. Joe: Right. Tracy: And that's OK. You may not we don't know what we don't know. Right. So if it's not working and if you have an issue with that or if if it's tough for you, you know, it it's like I always say, if you didn't know how to play the violin, you have beat yourself up like I wasn't born knowing how to play the violin. You might not have been born organized. You might have spatial issues. You might have added. There may be a bunch of things. So let's not beat yourself up for it. Let's educate and get it working for you. Joe: Yeah, you hit it on the head because cluttered just causes me angst, like I hate my garage, I hate walking in my garage, and so I understand it, Tracy: Can you even walk in your garage because only 20. Joe: But it's lucky I can. There's so many of our neighbors that have their cars in their driveway, in the hot sun here in Arizona because they have so much stuff in their garage. And that was like priority number one. My Tracy: Yeah. Joe: Car has to go in the garage. It's one hundred Tracy: Only, Joe: And thirteen outlets like. Tracy: Yeah, only twenty five percent of Americans can park their cars in their garage. Joe: Really? Tracy: Seventy five percent of Americans who have garages cannot park their cars Joe: That's Tracy: That. Joe: Amazing. Tracy: I know, I always say I always say we put our forty thousand fifty thousand dollar cars on the street where we fill our garage with trash. Joe: That's you know what, and you might I don't want to put you on the spot, but I can't imagine what the statistic is of people that have storage units and how many times they visit that unit a year. I just Tracy: It's Joe: I, I could Tracy: It's Joe: Never bring Tracy: A. Joe: Myself to have one. Tracy: This is where I get on my soapbox, this is the thing I get on my cell phone calls Joe: I Tracy: About Joe: Knew this was Tracy: And Joe: Going to kick Tracy: I Joe: Something Tracy: Yeah, Joe: Off here. Tracy: It's a billion dollar industry, a billion dollars. I have been in no exaggeration, hundreds of storage units, hundreds. I have had clients who because I make them do it, I've done the math of what they've spent on that storage unit. Twenty thousand thirty thousand a hundred thousand dollars. I have never once and I say it is no exaggeration, I have never once been in a storage unit or what's in there is worth more than what they paid to store it. It is a colossal waste of money. You will never go there if you have something in storage that you can't access. Why are you storing it? Joe: That's. Tracy: There is it is. I like till I'm blue in the face, I'm like, get rid of it, get rid of it, get rid. I have had clients crumble to their knees when they open it up and see what they've been saving. There's no there's like one or two slight somebody sometimes doing a remodel. There's a few Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: Where I'm like, oh no, no, maybe. Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Let's Joe: It's. Tracy: See if we can find another way. It is, it is just take money and just burn it because Joe: Correct. Tracy: It is such a waste of money. Joe: Amen. I agree with Tracy: Yeah. Joe: You. I just it's so funny, and I just figured I'd throw that out because I, Tracy: Yeah, Joe: I knew that was going to trigger. Tracy: Yeah, I know, and it's people don't go there and they don't it's just really like if I can convince anything to anybody, just don't have it, don't Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Have it, don't Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Get it. Because once you get it, you're never going to empty. Joe: Ok, real quick on the on the topic of the home and office right now in your business, how much is home and how much is it? When I say office, I'm not talking about Home Office because I'm I would think because of covid home offices are on the rise because so many. Right. So Tracy: Yeah. Joe: But but do you actually go to commercial office spaces to help CEOs Tracy: I do, Joe: And. Tracy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that in covid has just worn Joe: Hmm. Tracy: Down, Joe: Yep. Tracy: We haven't done any, but we have definitely we definitely will go in like work with big offices, like how do people use their space? How do people do that? I'm going to be really interesting to see if that. Comes back after covid, I Joe: Mm Tracy: Think Joe: Hmm. Tracy: We're going to get a lot of those calls, the way the business sort of shakes out now, I mean, right now we've just been trying to get everybody off. Does that how that was that was like how do you work from home? How do you go from home? That's been a big one, but it's probably it's probably a third of the business is senior downsizing. A third of the businesses are moving services and a third of the business is declaring Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: Home declaring and then probably 20 percent that is office. I'm excited. I also think that when we go back, how offices work are going to change because everybody's like open floor plan. And now it's like, well, maybe not so much. So I'll be curious to see how that goes. I've also interestingly, too, I've had a couple calls lately about helping already offices, office companies that are moving small, 10 people, companies that are moving and setting up the office spaces before people even get in there. So that's a that's a thing that's starting to happen. And I think it's really how to keep people safe and covid and that kind of stuff. So that's that's always interesting to me. Joe: Perfect. OK, so let's go down the list here, so the next one that I have is closet audit. And Tracy: That's a good one. Joe: I Tracy: Yep. Joe: Know. Tracy: So, yeah, I have a couple of the people who work for me are like they can make it look like the Carrie Bradshaw perfect closet. So we come in, we help you figure out what you wear, what you don't wear. Get rid of the stuff that you don't wear. We donate everything. And then it's organizing like the like color coordinated matching hangers. Like it's really. And the thing first of all, it looks beautiful, but also your clothes are an armor that you go out into the world with. And if you have if you have a business where you have to meet with clients or you have to go in and pitch your services to another company, if you start your day off digging through the laundry basket to put something on, you're starting at a deficit. You're already starting stressed. I wear the same thing to work every day. I have 10 shirts from the same company, ten different colors. I have four pairs of jeans. I have my nice Nike shoes that are comfortable, but they're fashionable. I don't want to think about it. Joe: Yeah. Tracy: I want to get dressed. I wear a nice belt, I look presentable, but I look like I can roll my sleeves up. I figured out what works and I don't think about it. Joe: Mm Tracy: I Joe: Hmm. Tracy: Just don't think about it. And I start my day ready to go. It's not my morning isn't about like, oh, what am I going to wear? What am I. So people have to understand, if your closet is disorganized, it's not serving you right. You're already starting the day. Right? Where are my keys? I packed my lunch and what happens and what people don't understand is, OK, so you're taking your clothes out a laundry basket, you can't find your keys. You're running late. Oh, you didn't make yourself breakfast. So you're going to go through the drive thru. So you're going to eat Egg McMuffin and coffee like you've already set your day up so that you're not at your peak. Joe: He. Tracy: Right. You know, if you knew if your clothes were organized, you could get dressed, then you could make yourself that delicious smoothie that's healthy. You could start your day relaxed. And that's my whole I get out into the world ready to go, not frazzled. And especially if you've got kids like Model Man, those parents with the Zoom schooling like Joe: Oh, Tracy: To Joe: I know, Tracy: Have that, you Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Know, to have that extra to anywhere we can grab time. That's what the goal is. So if your closet's organized, you've just gained yourself fifteen minutes, right? Oh, those are my jeans are those are my shirts are great. Off Joe: Yeah, Tracy: We go. Joe: Yeah. Tracy: So that's a really closet. We love deposits. We love it. We love it. We love it. And we do the really big fancy lady those. But we love closet. Joe: Let me before we get off the closet audit subject are what you do with closets, do you ever get in a situation where you go and and they not only want you to organize, but they want you to actually help design a more efficient closet, and then you Tracy: Yeah, Joe: Have to bring in Tracy: Yeah. Joe: Like a company that does all of the shelving and Tracy: Yep, Joe: Ok. Tracy: Yep, it's it's great, we've I've really started in probably about in the last three or four years of service, I'll consult on construction. So clients that I've worked with for a long time are building new homes or remodeling their homes. So I'll come in in the design phase and meet with the architect and the contractor and say, OK, look, this is how many pairs of shoes they have. This is how long this is. So I love doing Joe: Oh, Tracy: That. Joe: Cool. Tracy: It's I love it. It's a constant fight because architects do not believe people have as much stuff as they have Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: Contractors don't listen to forever, like the person that's like there's no broom closet, you know, and they're like, oh, you know, Joe: Yep, yep. Tracy: There's no broom closet. They're like, what do you need? A broom closet for it? Like, we need a broom closet. Joe: Right, Tracy: We need a real good bit. Joe: Right. Tracy: So that's been really fun. I have been pitching it. I'm working on my second book, but I have been pitching for a little while. I want to do a book, so I'll probably be down the road a bit. But I want to do a book between myself, an architect, an interior designer and a cabinet worker Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: About how to remodel or build houses in the most efficient way. So that's Joe: Oh, Tracy: Super exciting. Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Yeah, it's super exciting. Joe: All right, cool. We've already touched upon this a little bit, but garage organizations, brutal. Tracy: Our favorite is Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Brutal, it's brutal. We we do it, we got we have packages one, two, three days a team goes in there. I'm at the point now where I don't do any more garages. Joe: Mm Tracy: I Joe: Hmm. Tracy: Never need to be in a sweaty garage Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Again. Joe: Yeah. Tracy: But my team's really good at it. It's a big and post covid this this one's been really people lots of people have been called in. They're like, we have so much toilet paper, we have so much canned goods. And that was one in terms of this is actually a great entrepreneurial point. This was one of the services that I realized. So one of the things I'm constantly balancing is how do I work on my business and in my business? Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: In my business is a cult of personality. People want me. People will wait for me, people will pay for me. But I can only work so many hours so I couldn't grow the business if I'm doing it. So I had to find some of the services closets. I hired two people who are amazing at it. Garages are another way. It was a service that I could offer where people got the Tracy McCubbin experience, but I don't have to do it. So it Joe: So. Tracy: Was a way to go vertical. And that was a big learning like, oh right. This is something I can hand off, you know, get my team up to speed on it. And it's a good moneymaker for us and Joe: Yeah. Tracy: It's a really good moneymaker. So it's if you are starting a business and if you especially are sort of a consulting service, what are the services that somebody else can do? But your clients still feel like they're getting you. Joe: Yeah, man, you hit it on the head, it's so hard, they want they want you, you are the brand and it's such a hard thing to break away from and it's such a hard thing to hand over to trust other people. Tracy: Oh, yeah, Joe: Yeah, I get it. Tracy: It's Joe: I get it Tracy: You know, everybody Joe: Now. Tracy: Knows if, Joe: Yeah. Tracy: You know, you know, it's Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Really been in there and especially we were like, oh, wait, you're like it's a six week wait. And now, like, I don't care. And Joe: Yeah, Tracy: I was like, OK. Joe: Yeah, I know it's explain the moving services. Tracy: Yeah, that's been a big that's been our biggest thing during covid because we were essential workers, that we were able to do it and so I started when I started. This is another great entrepreneurial lesson. When I started, I just oversaw the move. So I would just take over, become the client, but the movers. And then we started offering de cluttering before people moved. So all the stuff you didn't want to take with you, let's get rid of it, not pack it up. Then we would unpack and organize into the new houses. So it was like, OK, we'd oversee. We get everything to the new house, we'd unpack and organize. And then I was like, wait, why? If we're doing the de cluttering and we're putting things in piles, why don't we just start doing the packing also? So it was another service that I could add that I didn't have to do. So we now did clutter pack, oversee the move and unpack into the new house. And we deal with very complicated situations like going to two houses or we do a lot after people, but people have passed away people's parents. So the grown kids have full time jobs. They can't be here for two weeks. So we'll empty the whole house, get everything shipped across the country. And so it's been a great. So that was another way to realize to go vertical. Right. Joe: Skep. Tracy: Here's another service I can offer. It doesn't take my time. It dovetails perfectly, we're declaring. So we might as well pack anyway. Know I bought a 17 foot truck. I hired a couple of expert packers and it's been a great part of the business. So I always invite people from my own experience to like, what's the what's the thing that you're outsourcing that could you move it in the house and make it part of your vertical? Joe: Yeah, yeah, it's such a great service because there's a huge gap there, there are great moving companies and they will provide Tracy: Oh. Joe: The services to pack stuff up, but it's just merely taking what's in a cabinet and putting it in a box and taping it up. There's no rhyme or reason. So when you get to the new property, you're like, where is this and where is it back? And you're moving Tracy: Yeah. Joe: A box from that landed in a bedroom that should have been in the kitchen and all. Tracy: And Joe: It's. Tracy: Look, I work with I work with moving companies all the time, I you know, they're amazing at what they do. Those teams work so hard. I have great relationship, about three or four moving local while I have about six and Joe: Mm Tracy: Everything. Joe: Hmm. Tracy: They're fantastic. But the story I always tell when people are like, well, why should I hire you as the movers? Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: We're a little more expensive them and not much. Ten dollars an hour. And I tell the story of a client of mine who was a musician when on tour movers packed all our stuff up, put it in storage. We unpacked for her. And it was it was I unpacked a box and there were literally like a year old half-Eaten Sarcone and a Starbucks coffee. Joe: Oh. Tracy: And she was like she was like, oh, that's where that where the movers just pack everything Joe: Like, Tracy: In sight. Right? That's what they do there Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Based on time, their speed, Joe: Yeah. Tracy: They're doing it. So for us, we go in, we did clutter, we pack in an organized manner so that everything goes in room. So in a way, I tell people it feels like a more expensive service, but we actually save you on Joe: Mm Tracy: The other Joe: Hmm. Tracy: End Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Because it's super organized. We love it. It's one of my favorite favorite and especially the sounds so strange to say, but helping people after a family member has passed away Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Is it is one of my favorite services. It's so hard. It's so emotional. It's heartbreaking when the liquidation company comes in as your child is not worth saving your coffee cups, are they? They are. It's heart breaking. So to be able to honor the legacy of a family, deal with the, you know, not not pretty part. It's just it's one of my favorite things that we can do for people, Joe: Yeah, that's Tracy: Really, Joe: Really cool. Tracy: Is. Joe: So we can talk about that next sense, you kind of moved into that and then we'll get to the last one. So let's talk about the state. Kicklighter because Tracy: Yeah. Joe: That to me is that along with the other one, which is the senior downsizing, to me, those are both very, very sensitive type situations. Like you said, there's emotions that are involved in and these two things. So how do you deal with that? Tracy: You know, for me, it's I view it as such an important service. I know how difficult it is. I've had to do it for both. My grandparents like to I just know that it really providing a service that not many people do. And we my company is very special. There are a lot of organizing companies out there, but there's not I have been in this business longer than anybody. I, I know what's valuable. I know what's not valuable. I have the sensitivity. Everyone who has worked for me. We're all a little we're all a little damaged. We all have a little trauma in our childhood. We all have something to draw on. We've all been caregivers to family members. So we have so much respect. I just feel so honored that a family would trust us for this. And we just did a family. There were four children. Three of the children were on board. The parents lived into their 90s and it was taught it was time Joe: No. Tracy: For them to go. And there were three of the children were on the same page and one was an outlier and that that one person was making it very difficult for everybody else. And so to be able to step in and a little bit be the bad guy like these, these books aren't worth anything. Yes, they are. It is. It was like, OK, well, let's get the appraiser in. And then the appraisers, they're not worth anything. Joe: Right, Tracy: So being Joe: Right. Tracy: Able to sort of draw from my Rolodex and and my experience, like I've donated I've donated thousands of sets of China. It's not worth anything. I'm Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Sorry. I'm so sorry. It doesn't mean that your holidays when you were growing up weren't important. It doesn't mean that you have the memories that you have. And if you love that China and it brings back those memories, keep it. But if you are keeping it because you think it's the family fortune, then we're going to have a different conversation. Joe: Yeah. Tracy: So I just feel so honored to be a part of it. I've met such interesting people and when this steps into the senior downsizing, when we move seniors from lifelong homes into smaller places, a lot of what we're facing when we declare in these phases is our own mortality, right? Oh, right. We're going to die someday. You know, did my life matter if I don't have the staff? Did I make an impact? So it's very I just feel very, very, very lucky that I get to be a part of this process with people. I hear amazing stories. I met amazing people. We always approach it with love and laughter and humor and respect. And it's just a nobody. Nobody does this. Nobody does this. Joe: Yeah, Tracy: I Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Know Joe: It's Tracy: I Joe: A Tracy: Get Joe: Great Tracy: Phone calls Joe: Service, Tracy: All the time. Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Yeah, Joe: It's Tracy: It's Joe: So Tracy: It's. Joe: It's tricky, it's emotional and elderly people become a little bit they don't trust people. They don't know you're in their house Tracy: They Joe: Or. Tracy: Shouldn't, Joe: No. No. Right. Tracy: They Joe: Yeah, Tracy: Shouldn't, Joe: Right. And so Tracy: They shouldn't. Joe: That's a tricky balance. Tracy: We are one of our favorite things. We just did it last week. We've said we're now we've been working for so long, we're now helping parents of clients. Right. So kind of my mom died. I went to Nashville to help. I went to New York and doing that. But what we've been doing, a lot of which I love, is moving someone into an assisted living or community. So we like it. Like we feel like we're on a TV show. We're like, OK, we've got 12 hours until we get the apartment all set up so that when they're making the move, the drive from the old and they get to the new, their artwork is hung up. Joe: Oh, Tracy: The TV's Joe: That's cool, Tracy: Working, their bed is made Joe: Yeah, yeah. Tracy: So that they walk into this new experience with familiarity. And we love it. We're like running around sweating like they would do it, do Joe: Yeah, Tracy: It. But Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Then they walk in and they see their stuff and it's home. They're not stepping into boxes everywhere. Joe: Yeah. Tracy: So this is this is it's my favorite part of what we I mean, I love everything that we do, but this one's really that's really important. Joe: That's very cool, just the way you describe. That was awesome. A couple of questions out of the way of the business. And then I want to get into the book and then I want to get into Tracy: If. Joe: The chair, the organization, and we're running out of time because this is I love this, but Tracy: It's great, Joe: It's Tracy: It's great. Joe: So if somebody wants to work with your company and in a sense you're based in California, let's just say somebody here in Arizona, I wanted to hire you to come in and clean out my crotch. How does somebody work with you that is in like how do you work in other states with people? Tracy: Yeah, we do it know we pay our rates, they just cover travel costs so we can make it sometimes. Sometimes if I'm in other cities, like in New York, I have two women who I can subcontract to sometimes all subcontract. I'll go myself and maybe bring one of my people and then subcontract to try and use the local companies that do that. I have I'm getting a pretty good network. I mean, I'm very I have very high standards, Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: So I'm pretty I need somebody to be tried and true. But I can I can make it work. But yeah, it's just it's the same rates. It's not more it's just the travel cost. So Joe: Perfect. Tracy: A lot of times when people they're realizing like, oh, it's actually, you know, the other thing I've started to do for clients to if they if they I got a client who had to go to Florida and they just didn't have a sister, their mom passed away. They didn't have the means to pay my travel costs. So I actually helped interview local people for him. So I'll do that for my clients. Like, let me let me make the first phone calls. Let me have the conversation. And I just because I'm I'm very mama bear about my client if I want Joe: The. Tracy: To and I want to just go to anybody. Joe: Perfect. All right. And you scared me for a moment because you almost sound like you're bleeding into my my last thing about the business, which is the virtual dcluttering. So how do you handle that? Tracy: Yeah, Joe: Is that like Tracy: You Joe: A Tracy: Know, Joe: Face time walking around with an iPad? Tracy: Yeah, Joe: Show me this Tracy: Yeah, Joe: Room. Tracy: Yeah, yeah, we do. So the virtual declaring, it's been a bit of an experiment to make it work. And what I've found is that we it's it's we have to set very specific goals. So oftentimes we break it up into half an hour sessions. One session is about right. Here's what you're going to get accomplished. Here's less paperwork. You have these four boxes of paperwork. What are you going to do with them? I don't as much sit there and sort of go through things with them. It's more about helping them come up with a work plan, what the traps are going to fall into, then a period of time, and then we come back and go over it and they ask me specific questions about what they got stuck at. So it's Joe: Got. Tracy: Really almost the virtual it almost becomes a little bit more time management focused help you come up with a work plan. How can you get it accomplished? I also have I have a private Facebook group called Concreter Clever with Tracy McCubbin. It's a free Facebook. I go live pretty much every Wednesday and people can that's a really great it's a very supportive community. Everybody's read my book. We're all so sometimes people would join their and the group will help them. So that's that's great. They're like, OK, it's Joe: Yeah. Tracy: A lot of accountability this weekend I'm going to tackle. And that's what the virtual turned out to be. Two is a lot of accountability. Joe: That's great. OK, cool. OK. The book came out in 2019 called "Making Space, Clutter Free" and you can get it on. I know you can get it on Amazon. I think I saw two other Tracy: Indie Joe: There was an Tracy: Bound. Joe: Indie Tracy: I think Joe: Band Tracy: It's indie band. Joe: Of. Tracy: Yeah, I send people to either Amazon, there's a really great website called Bookshop Dawg Joe: Ok. Tracy: And it connects all the independent booksellers. So you it's a clearinghouse. And so if you don't want to give the man who just went into space more of your money, bookshop dog is a great way. It's available on Kindle. It's available ebook. It's available as an audio book. I narrated Joe: Oh, great. Tracy: A lot of. Yeah, it was great. A lot of libraries have it. They did a really big push. So your local library has it and it's great. It's great. It's doing really well. It got to be an Amazon bestseller and it's an evergreen book. It is not going out of style, Joe: That's Tracy: So. Joe: Awesome, yeah. The reviews Tracy: Yeah, Joe: Are great. Tracy: Yeah. Joe: Yeah. Tracy: So making space clutter free. The nice thing about it is we really delve into the emotional part so very deep about the emotional part. And then there's an actual work plan, how you tackle the house room by room. So people are really it's just I'm very, very happy with that. And I'm in the process of writing the second book called Make Space for Happiness. And it's a it's about why we shop, why we overshot the holes in our lives that we're trying to fill by shopping. Joe: Mm Tracy: So Joe: Hmm, Tracy: It's a little Joe: That's called. Tracy: I love it. I love it. But it's going to be a little controversial. Joe: That's Tracy: I Joe: All right. Tracy: Feel like I feel like I feel like that man who just went into space is not going to like what I have to say. But, you know, Joe: Well, I like to think about Tracy: You. Joe: The closet that I saw one thing and one thing out, right? Tracy: Yeah, Joe: That's awesome. Tracy: It's very practical, it's very you know, there's a lot of oversimplified I think that part of the feedback I always get and I know from growing up with the parent that I did it. And also some people understand a lot of times reporting is generational. So Joe: He. Tracy: I my I had two other a great uncle. It's a genetic thing. It's a it's an anxiety disorder. I think it's a bit of an addiction. I think that people who hoard get a big dopamine hit when they find something. So there's just a lot of empathy. I'm not judging. I'm not shaming. I under I understand how hard it is. And Joe: Yet. Tracy: So people really respond to that. Joe: Yeah, OK, cool. One last question, I thought it was really cool you had the Clutter Block Quiz on your website and you talk about blocks, right? Clutter blocks. Tracy: Yep, Joe: Can you real Tracy: Yep, Joe: Quickly, can you just. Tracy: Sure, and this is the crux of the book. So basically a clutter block is an emotional story that we tell ourselves about why we can't let go of what we don't want or need. So it's so there are seven of them. And I witnessed this from working with clients for so long. I was like, this is that story again. This person is that same story. This is that. So it ranges everything from my stuff keeps me stuck in the past. Sentimental things that you can't let go of, the stuff I'm avoiding, which is your paperwork, which is me. That's my clutter block. I'm not worth my good stuff. So not using your nice things, saving Joe: Mm. Tracy: My fantasy stuff for my fantasy life. Oh, I'm going to become a rock climber. I'm going to knit, I'm going to buy all that stuff for this stuck with other people's stuff. And when in the book and in a Facebook group, I talk about it when you identify you're like, oh, this is a thing. The perfect example. Last Clutter Block No.7, the stuff I keep paying for, this is storage unit. You bought this stuff and now you're paying to store it. And when you see it that way, like, oh, I'm paying to store stuff I never use. Oh, it's like it's it's illuminated, you know, Joe: Yeah. Tracy: You're like, oh, this is why it's not I'm not a bad person. I'm not a bad person. This is just, you know, we're humans. We're meaning making machines. Right. We just rains on your wedding day that all that stuff. So we make all this meaning out of the stuff that's meaningless and it gets a hold on us. So the clutter blocks are really effective for people really, really affected, like, oh, this is real. This is you know, it's not just me. It's Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Not just me. Joe: Yeah. All right, awesome. Before we move off of your business to the organization you're part of, because I think it's really important to talk about real quick. You've made incredible headway in the press, like being on the shows that you're on. And for the entrepreneurs that are listening to this, you could have just been another de cluttering company in California, right? You've said it yourself, Tracy: Amy. Joe: But you obviously you have a unique approach with all the different services you're passionate about. It's very clear by talking with you and everyone will pick up on that. When they listen to this and when they watch the YouTube video, they're going to tell that, yeah, this is this woman is really has the integrity and really loves what she does and it speaks to her. How did you get the the press and all of the stuff that has catapulted you to be the expert in this field? I mean, it's it's amazing, Tracy: Yeah, Joe: The Tracy: Yeah, Joe: Shows Tracy: Yeah, Joe: You've been on and the podcast Tracy: It's Joe: And. Tracy: Yeah, it's great. So I think the thing the first thing that I got really clear about was a couple of things. One, people need content, TV shows need content. Morning news means content, podcasts meet. Everybody needs content. So even if you have a product or a service, you know, there's a mission statement behind it. There's a reason that you're doing it. So what's the what's the story that you can tell about why your service is going to help? Or how can you tell your mission statement and not even mention your product? If you can talk about the service or what you're offering, you know, how can you talk about it without even mentioning it, then that's the content and people need it. And I'll tell you, you say yes to everything. I have been I mean, my favorite story is like morning news show in Temecula, California, like sandwiched in between the October Fest dancers and the like kid who won the spelling bee, like I said, yes to everything. And I worked on my media training. I worked on the messaging. I really understood that you have to be able to communicate it. And so I just started saying yes. And then it I got a reputation for being good and delivering and I did. I have worked with when the book came out, I did work with a publicist. I found the best person who specializes in non-fiction authors. That's the other thing about PR. If you're going to pay for PR and you sometimes you have to and you're the two things you're paying for someone's Rolodex. So who can they call? Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: Who do they have connections to? And also you need to find the person who understands what you do. Right? So let's say you have a company where you've invented a new kind of pool cover that will save children's lives, superimportant, Joe: Mm Tracy: Needed. Joe: Hmm. Tracy: Don't hire a publicist who works with beauty products. Joe: All right. Tracy: Right. Like really honed down on what you're offering and can that person help it? And sometimes you need to sometimes you need to pay a marketing person. Sometimes you need to pay a social media manager. We can't do it all. So it's really understanding, understanding how valuable those marketing and publicity dollars are. Right. Because they can get expensive Joe: Oh, Tracy: Fast. Joe: Yeah. Mm hmm. Tracy: You can turn around. And I mean, you people are out there and starting to look at that, you know, problems and say, oh, yeah, we have a ten thousand dollar per month retainer. You're like, oh, so what are their goals? What are their goals for you? How can you help? And I always say this. You can't for those kinds of positions. It's like if you have an agent, right? I have a literary agent. Help me with my book. She takes 10 percent of my money. She does ten percent of the work. Joe: Mm Tracy: I Joe: Hmm. Tracy: Still got to do the 90 percent. So you can't dump and run against. Oh, I have a publicist. I don't have to do it. Now you are working in conjunction with them. It's your product. No one's going to care more about your business than you are. So show up. Say yes to everything. You know, like be realistic. It's like I want to be on Good Morning America. OK, well, you start following the October 1st dancers. You just say yes, you say Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Because first of all, it gives you practice, Joe: At. Tracy: It gives you practice and you hone your message. And and this is where the Internet is fantastic. Reach out to podcasts, you know, get really clear about the content you have to offer. Just cold call people, cold email people. Here's what I want to say. Like people that you listen to where the message across, it's the biggest it's the least fun. The marketing and publicity is the least one part about running a business, I think. But the most important. Joe: Yeah, well, you've done great, it's amazing Tracy: No, Joe: And Tracy: Thank you. Joe: Yeah, it's absolutely awesome. Did I miss anything about the business that you would like to talk about before we move on to the organization? Tracy: The only thing I would say is that if you're out there and if you're struggling with your relationship to your staff, don't be afraid to find help locally. Joe: Love it. Tracy: There's lots of people who are opening this business. Reach out to me. I can give you some questions to ask. So don't be afraid to ask for help. Joe: Perfect. OK, one kid, one world. Tracy: Yeah. Joe: It's super cool. I went and I looked at the website, I watched the videos and can you explain what it does? You know, what what the the mission of it is? And then Tracy: Yeah, Joe: I Tracy: Yeah, Joe: Don't want to forget Tracy: So. Joe: After you do that. I want to understand when a volunteer goes, are they just volunteering their time and you get them there and you get them back or so let's start with Tracy: Sure, Joe: The organization Tracy: Yeah, yeah, Joe: First. Tracy: Yeah, so basically, quick story, my childhood friend of mine, our dads, went to law school together. He went to Darfor and he was in the volunteering in the refugee camps and he realized that the bulk of the people in the refugee camps were women and children and that they were setting up schools and setting up little shops, like trying to get normalise as much as possible and realizing, as we all know, that education is the key. So we ate on that trip. He met a Kenyan doctor, a nurse. They told him about this girl's school in Kenya that needed a science lab. The girls couldn't take their exams because they didn't have a science lab. So he said to me, it's twenty five thousand dollars. Want to help me raise that? Let's throw a party. You know, our our peers were all starting to make money and their careers were taking off. So we threw the party, raise the money. We're like, let's just go and see. Let's just go and see what this is. And we went and it was life changing. Joe: Mm Tracy: Here Joe: Hmm. Tracy: Were these girls. And in Kenya, most of them are orphans because HIV AIDS Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: And the desire for education. And so there's a lot of organizations that are curriculum based and this and that. And what we were like were like they don't have desks to sit in. There are no there's no room. There's not. So we started focusing on capital improvements. We built buildings, we built dorms, we put desks, we put bookshelves, we pay teachers salaries. We put nurses in the school. We just do the things that they need to stay open. We never build a school from scratch ever. We know nothing about what the community needs. We get in partnership with a community where a school has already been established. We do not affect curriculum, not for us to say Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: We try and work in schools that have at least a 50 percent girl population because girls education is much underfunded. A big part of what we do is we supplied feminine hygiene products to our girls school because that keeps girls out of school. So we're we work mostly in Kenya and then we have branched out to Central America of Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala. And, you know, it's an amazing it's amazing where we started the same year I started my business. So I did both of those. I think we're up to like twenty six schools we rebuilt. And part of our fundraising model is we do volunteer trips. So we go, for instance, to Central America. We fly for a long weekend. We rebuild a suite. We don't we do the big capital improvements before we get there. And then when we're there, we demolish bathrooms and paint murals and get very, very involved. And for us, what we found is that there's sort of two types of donors. There is the vicarious donors who your friend goes and see the work that the friends do and donate that way. And then there are the people who want to see where the money goes, really make a difference. So when you go on a trip with us, you you commit to raising a certain amount of money when you come back. And we always had our goals. We never operated a deficit. We don't ever take on projects that we can't finish. We're very lucky. Both Josh and I have other businesses that we work for free. We don't Joe: Mm Tracy: Take a Joe: Hmm. Tracy: Salary. So we're like we're at like ninety percent of every dollar we raise goes back. And not that, not that. I don't think that nonprofit workers should not be paid. They absolutely should be. But we choose for us. We choose not to. And it's been it's been great. It's been one of where a couple of years ago, our first round of girls started to go to college in nursing school and technical school. And it's it's really amazing. It's a really, really, really amazing covid has been really hard. We haven't been able to go. I think next spring will be our first trip if everything goes OK. Joe: Mm hmm. Tracy: But it's been a really amazing it's been an amazing thing to be a part of. It's been an amazing thing to be a part of. Joe: Yeah, it was really cool, I watched the video and I saw where there was a person taking Polaroids and then everyone and then the Polaroid was there was a square where the Polaroid would go on the piece of paper and each student had to say, I'm going to be a doctor Tracy: Yeah. Joe: There or I'm going to be a nurse, or it was a radical. Tracy: Well, one of the funny things I get I invented invented this exercise, I was realizing, talking to the girls in Kenya, that because they didn't have parents, so many of them, they didn't they never they didn't know how to make a business phone call. They didn't know how to apply for a job because it's like the teachers are teaching them. But there's not that. So I started to do this exercise where they would be the shop owner and I'd be like another volunteer. And I like I'd be the bad like I wouldn't say, you know, I'd say my name really quiet. I wouldn't shake a hand. And you just did these roleplaying exercises of how to apply for a job. When you realize, like, you have to learn that stuff, you don't know you don't know how to call someone and say, hey, here's my name or walk into a shop or say like, I'd like a job and walk in with confidence. And so now it's like day can't wait. Every time we go, we all line Joe: And Tracy: Up Joe: That's Tracy: And they Joe: Called. Tracy: All get to pretend. And, you know, it's such a it's such an amazing just right to have the self-confidence to get go in there and do that. And so it's very practical and we love it. We love Joe: That's Tracy: It. Joe: Awesome, Tracy: We love it. We can't wait to get back. So Joe: I'm Tracy: If anybody Joe: Sure. Tracy: Out there is listening and want to come on a trip with us, one kid, one world dog, tell me you heard me on here and would love to get. Joe: Awesome. OK, I've taken your time. I've gone over, I apologized, Tracy: It's Joe: But Tracy: All right, Joe. We're Joe: This Tracy: Having Joe: Is Tracy: A great conversation. Joe: This was awesome. So let's give everyone the and I'll put it in the show notes, but the website for your business did clarify. Tracy: Yep, yep, so the website is dClutterfly.com, so a d c l u t t e r f l y dot com. See, this is why you say it Joe: Yeah. Tracy: Out before you name your business. The clutter block places on there. You can sign up for my newsletter. It's a great place to find me. I'm very active on Instagram. So Tracy_McCubbin and then if you are looking for some extra love and support, the private Facebook group, which is called "Conquer Yo
My conversation today is with Josh Carey, co-founder of PodMAX.co, an event that happens about every 6 weeks where business people and/or entrepreneurs are matched up with podcast hosts where they do 3 interviews in one day while also attending an event where there is networking, education and keynote speakers. Josh explains in this interview how this event that they hold quite frequently, is like speed dating for podcast guests and hosts alike. It's an efficient way for hosts to get 3 interviews in the can in one day and for business people and/or enterpreneurs,to get out there and promote themselves, their businesses and tell their story 3 times in one day on 3 different podcasts. This is an interesting interview with Josh as he shares his own journey to exposing himself and his talents and now helping others to do the same. As always, thanks for listening! Joe Get 30% off at The Healthy Place by using code "costello" Josh Carey Co-founder - PodMAX.co Website: https://podmax.co Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onairbrands/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onairbrandsLIVE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/onairbrands/ Email: josh@podmax.co Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Hey, Josh, welcome to the show. I'm very excited to have you. Josh: Likewise, Joe. Pleasure to be here. Thanks. Joe: Yeah, so this obviously as a podcast or this hits home for me, having someone unlike you that has this this business, if you will, called Pod Max. Right. I guess it's it's also an event. Right. So I need you're going to help me understand Josh: Yeah, Joe: It. Josh: I shall. Joe: I've watched a bunch of different videos and I watched the testimonial video, but I still want clarification. I think you hit it on the head when you said it's like speed dating for podcasters. And that was Josh: Hmm. Joe: That totally was a very clear thing for me. At least brought me to a point where I said, oh, this is really sort of different, but this is what I do with all my guests. So you'll have to you'll have to suffer through this part. Josh: I shall suffer. Joe: We because my audience is mainly entrepreneurs and it's it's me trying to help educate Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Them as much as possible. I always like them to know the back story of my guests. I want to know Josh: Hmm. Joe: Where you came from, where you came from as far back as you want to go, because it doesn't Josh: Mm Joe: It Josh: Hmm. Joe: Doesn't matter to me. It's exciting to figure out the how you develop to who you are today and how you are doing what you're doing today and what was all in between to make this happen. And then from there, we'll get into the depths of tiebacks. Josh: I love it. I shall take you down that journey, then Joe: Perfect. Josh: We'll start we'll start with Current Day. Today, I'm known as the Hidden Entrepreneur, and that's because I spent 40 plus years of my life hiding. I literally showed up in every situation, hiding all of my true talent and ability. Everything that I was really capable of doing remained hidden because I was so desperate to seek the approval of others. Now, what really sucked about this is behind closed doors. I knew darn well what I was capable of doing. So this created a lot of anger, frustration, resentment, jealousy, all that stuff. And the bigger thing is that not only did I want to seek your approval, I was scared so much by the fact that if I were to come forward with something quite good, right. Impressive, even in any regard, you might feel so insecure about your accomplishments and talent and scale, what you may or may not be doing. Right, because we're all just a mirror and a reflection of each other that what it might make you a little upset by what you're seeing and then you might retaliate against me in some form. And I knew my whole life that I just didn't feel strong enough to stick up and stand up for myself. Josh: So all of that made for this recipe of living life that way cut to today. I'm the proud father of two adoring children. I have an eight year old daughter, a six year old son who are my absolute everything. I love playing the role of father. I love being their dad. And early on in their young lives, I realize that I see what's happening here. I'm the child in this circle and I'm the one who has work to do. So I said, guys, keep doing what you're doing. I get it. I can't continue to be this miserable kind of person and have them watch me that way their whole lives. It wouldn't end well. And fast forwarding to, you know, seeing an empty nester. Now, if I was 20 years down the road and they just grew up with that type of father, they'd naturally become that type of person. And in that scenario, there'd be nothing I can do and I wouldn't be able to live with myself. So I said, that's all I need to say. Right. I'm Joe: Yeah. Josh: Going to make them prouder. I'm going to make me proud or I'm going to do what needs to happen. And I started just taking inventory, replacing some of my bad non serving habits with slightly better ones and slowly but surely seeing the positive result in effect of that. And here we are. I just keep stacking those on each other and I've come a long way and still have a long way to go. But I'm very happy and proud with where I am today. Joe: And so what did you do in your past life, let's say that you're now doing what you do. I mean, what was your what was all these things you were doing while you're hiding from the world? Josh: So I got in in eighth grade, I got bit by the acting bug, right? I found that in there was a school audition taking place and I felt like I should audition to see what this was about. And I did. And it was a a drug awareness program, whatever it was. And I got a cast as the comic relief of all things. So I was bumbling around on stage and hundreds of my right, hundreds of my classmates were laughing at me from what I was doing on stage. Now, I knew that they were in fact laughing at me. Right. They weren't laughing with me, but I was I was OK with that because I was getting the attention I was so desperately seeking. So I thought, wow, I will continue to seek out this attention, hopefully thinking this is what I need to fill this emotional void. Right. This external approval is exactly what I need now. Doesn't work that way. It took me a few decades to realize that, but I set out on a path to become an actor and said, I'm going to dedicate my life to this because if I could just get this daily, my life sucked. So I pursued that dream. I wound up spending 15 years in New York as a working actor and filmmaker. Great credits, wonderful era of my life. But again, it didn't really, you know, fill the void. You know, when the curtain comes down, I'm still miserable and alone in the corner, often crying and trying to figure out where my life went so wrong. Josh: So I did that for a while. I had some, you know, day jobs to pay the bills. I taught myself webdesign to keep myself busy when the Internet started rising up in the nineties. And slowly but surely, I just became somewhat of an entrepreneur, not realizing at the time that that's what it was. But I was just trying to make ends meet while I was pursuing my passion. And then I found myself running my own digital marketing agency where I was building websites for an industry and all this stuff. Ten years later, this industry became just like any other toxic relationship we might find ourselves in personally. But this was my business and the industry taking full responsibility. It was on me because I was showing up that way, which is why I was attracting those very people. So I knew that something needed to change. This correlated with the time where me and my children had the talk, where I was the child, and I said, I get it. I know it has to be done. This relationship with the industry and my my work here, it can't continue. It's part of the problem. Let me rip the Band-Aid off. I said I don't know what's next, but I'm going to seek something. I'm going to figure it out. And just like if you're in a bad relationship, you don't necessarily wait until you have another relationship. Josh: You get out and figure it out. And that's what I did. I got out. I said, let me take a few months. Let me take some time, figure out what I want to do, where I want to go and be true to myself for one of the first times in my life. And I said podcasting. I think I felt that I would be good at it and I would enjoy it. And it would create opportunity and I would connect with people because, God, that's all I ever wanted in my life. I said, well, if I do it honestly and authentically, I might finally attract the right kind of people instead of attracting the miserable and getting what I don't want because you focus on it. So I created a brand called The Hidden Entrepreneur and then became that became the podcast. And I started interviewing people. And slowly but surely I started feeling good about it and getting a good response. And it just kept building the confidence. And I was told I was half decent and I certainly started feeling that way, still replacing a lot of my bad habits with better ones, trying to live wonderfully for my children. It all came together. And now here we are. I'm doing some some some really interesting things in the podcast space because of those moments that that got me here. Joe: Right. And that's what's important. That's why I wanted to ask, because, you know, as much as everyone can say, their life went on a certain path and certain things did not go right Josh: Uh. Joe: Or whatever, they all build the person you are today. And so I think probably whatever you're doing with Pod Max now, you're leaning on some of your marketing and, you know, Josh: Exactly. Joe: Your and all the stuff that you did earlier in Josh: All Joe: Your entrepreneurial Josh: Of it. Joe: Life. Right. So it's like you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. That's this. This is all created to help to create who you are now, to make this next portion of your life excel even more. Josh: Sometimes in the moment, we don't and can't recognize that a lot of acts in retrospect that the game is being able in real time when there's a little bit of a glitch or a detour that you're forced to take or something that's happening that you didn't quite see coming wasn't as you planned. You have to realize, wow, this is probably going to work out for the best. And as you're seeing everything I've spelled out, even my acting and film days to this very moment, I pull a lot from those days how to how to communicate, how to perform, how to create, how to talk on the mic, how to write. All of that is acting and film. And then, like you said, the marketing from the digital marketing, knowing what you don't want on a grand scale to know exactly what you do want. It's all relevant and quite perfect. Joe: Yeah, and it's funny, and you gave it away already, but I was going to ask you where you from? And I was like, he's got to be from New York. I can recognize and I'm from New York. So he's like, he's got to be from New York. And then you said it. You're like. Josh: What did I say, oh, that I spent time there Joe: Yeah, Josh: In New York. Joe: Yeah, and so did I and I and my background is I went to school for music and I Josh: Yeah. Joe: And I landed in New York. I lived two hours north of the city where I grew up. But then I landed Josh: Mayor. Joe: In New York as to be my big time career break Josh: As Joe: In. Josh: A drummer, Joe: Yeah, Josh: Yeah. Joe: Right. And so and at the same time, we all have to go find jobs. And then and then you sort of get steered off a path because you start making money and going, OK, how much do I want to suffer living in this one bedroom apartment and eating mac and cheese every night where Josh: True. Joe: It's just whatever, whatever developed over that time. But we had the same sort of path. So it's Josh: Yeah. Joe: Interesting to hear your story. Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Ok, so you started podcasting and you have a podcast called The Hidden Entrepreneur. How did you make the jump from that to come to being the coach? When I heard you say you're actually a co-founder of God Macs. So where did this idea come from? How did we get to where we are today with that? Josh: In twenty eighteen is when I created The Hidden Entrepreneur Show, and it's still running strong today, over 200 episodes and I in the summer of 2019, I had the opportunity to record episodes of my show at an event. And one of the one of the people that I was interviewing didn't know him prior to this event was Eric Cabral, who's now my co founding partner in Pod Max. I interviewed him for my show and we hit it off and we connected. And after the interview, he said, you know, we're both from Jersey. I have. Which is where I live Joe: Mm Josh: Now. Joe: Hmm. Josh: He said, I have a I have a studio in in Jersey. Once you come out and check it out one day and, you know, we'll see we'll see what's possible. And I said, OK. And then it turns out I never left. Now, what I like to point out is that what what I did just, you know, basically, yes. By design, but subconsciously during that first interview where he was on my show when we didn't know each other prior, was I was already leaning into my full potential, which was quite different from what I did the first 40 plus years of my life, where I spoke about I showed up really small, didn't want to rock the boat, didn't want to make you feel insecure. So I just took a back seat. But then in twenty eighteen, I started figuring out how can I come to the table with the ability that again, I've always known darn well I'm more than capable of doing. And really I believe we're all in that same boat. We all know what we are capable of doing. We just adjust and alter that for so many reasons inappropriately, so more often than not. So I said, I'm going to just start coming out, you know, strongly with what I'm capable of and miraculously, quote unquote, I started attracting the very people who understood that, who liked it, who appreciated it, respected it. Ironically, all the things I wanted my whole life, Joe: Mm Josh: Just Joe: Hmm. Josh: Somebody to appreciate me. How can anybody appreciate when you're being, you know, a weak man, Joe: Yeah. Josh: Which I was. So I thought that if I were to come out powerfully doing what I'm capable of, everybody is going to retaliate against me. And oh, no, I don't even see those people. I only see people like you, like Eric, like people who are like, wow, you know, like attracts like, of Joe: Mm Josh: Course. Joe: Hmm. Josh: So that's that's the amazing thing. So all that to say, I was already able to do what I was doing to get in front of somebody like Eric, for him to recognize something within me because I had already appeared that way. So you have to sort of do the work first instead of like me hoping that somebody can see a glimmer of potential in me and then anoint me capable and relevant to the masses. You know, that doesn't happen. Joe: Right. Josh: So it only happens when you are first putting it out there to attract the good back. So Eric and I started talking and hanging out and we had a very similar vibe and connection, a lot of similar goals. He also came from the podcast space. He has and had his own show. And we just started talking about this idea Pod Max, which started in person in twenty nineteen. It started as a live in person event. We had the studio in North Jersey where we figured we do this one day kind of hybrid event where it's part conference, part workshop and part podcast recordings. So we set up makeshift like a dozen different studios like like little mini areas where hosts can record with guests. And we invited about a dozen show hosts in, sold tickets to the event to high level entrepreneurs and thought leaders who wanted to get their message out by recording on shows we would match them. Thus the speed dating for the podcast industry. And over the course of that day, each hour they would rotate into a new studio area and record as a guest on a different show. And in between those recordings, we would provide a catered lunch, we would provide networking, we would provide training and education, and we would provide a high level keynote. So we had the conference, the workshop feel the retreat and the podcast recordings. We did that a few times and then twenty twenty happened. So we're like, OK, well this is crazy because we're a live events company. What happens now? We had no idea, so he said, can this work virtually? There was only one way to find out. We took that agenda, that format. We sort of reworked what needed to be worked into a virtual format. And since May of 20, 20, which was our first pod, Max Virtual, we've never looked back. We're about to do our 14th 14th virtual event in August. And it's you know, it's one of those things that we we couldn't have seen that coming. Right. We wouldn't Joe: Yep, Josh: Have even looked virtual. Joe: Correct. Josh: So so now it's an eight hour event, which people who don't really know our style will say eight hours virtual. That's crazy. But we hear all the time that it flies by because we've sort of been able to really hone in on making all of those minutes per hour the best they can be. Joe: Right. Josh: And then the entrepreneurs get to record still on multiple shows. We have a keynote. We have training and education. So we know prior to the event we work with the thought leaders to help them further identify, practice and fine tune their message. So when they get to the recording, they feel confident and ready to go. Joe: It's so cool, so how many of these do you do? Josh: We do them about every six weeks. Joe: Wow, and how Josh: Yeah. Joe: Did you figure out the logistics, like I attended a couple virtual conferences and logistically it's very cool because you you don't really miss anything because a lot of stuff is is recorded to playback later and you're not wasting a lot of time on a showroom floor. You're going exactly what you want Josh: Exactly. Joe: Without having to walk around it. But how did you guys figure that out? Josh: Well, it came from the live, and then we we sort of transferred that virtually and we fill the eight hours, it's single track, right, to everybody's in the room going to the same places, Joe: Ok, Josh: Doing the same things. Joe: Ok, Josh: Yeah, Joe: And Josh: It. Joe: What's the number of attendees that you've gotten up to? Josh: We get about 50. Joe: That's amazing. Josh: Now. Joe: It's really cool, and I wasn't sure when so when when we talked about this being sort of like the speed dating for podcasting, there's a lot of podcasters out there who either are looking for gas or they want to be guest on podcast. And Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: I think they need to understand how iPod, Max, differs from those services that are out there, whether it's someone you get this connection with someone and they start feeding you gas or Josh: Yeah. Joe: You get this connection with someone and they keep putting you on different podcasts. Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: I think the important thing is that as a podcast for myself, I get I Josh: All Joe: Haven't Josh: The Joe: Been Josh: Time. Joe: On a podcast, which is kind of funny, but I haven't. Josh: Wow. Joe: But I get a lot of requests either from an agency that that Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Said, hey, we want to work with you with really great guests or just people that find my podcasts and reach out and say, hey, I think you would really like this person. And I have to sort of filter through Josh: Yeah. Joe: What I think fits my audience. I'm not going to accept everyone because Josh: That's right. Joe: It's not fair to the listeners. Josh: Mm Joe: It's Josh: Hmm. Joe: A selfish endeavor for me. And you kind of hit upon it yourself. It makes it allows me to connect with people like you. It allows me to learn so much. But at the same time, I need to make sure that I'm servicing my audience and educating them on what they came here in the first place to see. Josh: That's right. Joe: So when you do iPod, Max, how do you do this matchmaking? How do you figure out that this guest is going to go and sit with this person and do recording and it fits the mold of their podcast or they're the right person? How does that all happen? Josh: Well, we've been lucky enough to do it for a while, and we have a lot turned out to be a core group of show hosts, like the vast majority of the show hosts return over and over again. Joe: Ok. Josh: Why? There's a lot of winwin. There's a lot of benefit. It's really cool for them to get to record three episodes in one day Joe: Mm hmm. Josh: In three different hours, which is a great thing. They also get to network with a lot of high level entrepreneurs and the other show hosts. They get to be right in the room with. We bring three now virtually we bring three keynotes in at a very high level of keynote. So they get to leverage that relationship off. Often they'll reach out to the keynote and then welcome them on their show. So it's just a really great vibe. There's a lot of a lot of personal growth and development built in to the day that you almost don't see coming until you're on the back end of it and you're like, oh, my gosh, it's just amazing. So they keep returning and through that then they become like family, right? Joe: Mm Josh: Like Joe: Hmm. Josh: At every event, the chats, everybody's just excited to see each other again. And it's sort of like old home week. So to answer your question, we've gotten to really know a good core group of the show hosts, knowing who they are, what their businesses are, what their shows are, what their goals are. And with that, we can then do our job. That takes a lot of the matching difficulty out because we know exactly who's coming through that they'd be perfectly matched for and because of the reputation where we've done such a good job prepping the entrepreneurs and attracting the right level of entrepreneurs and training them. Well, we hear all the time from the hosts that they don't even they don't even worry who they're going to be matched with. Joe: Right. Josh: You know, the week prior, you get you know, you get all the contact and bio information, but they're like, I don't even need to worry because I know whoever comes through, whoever you match me time and time again is going to be a home run. So then we we ask the entrepreneur coming through to fill out a somewhat detailed, extensive profile so we get to know them so we can properly match them. Then we just take the two sides and we have a few team members who are specifically dedicated to the matchmaking process because it's you know, it's got to be done right, takes a little bit of time, but we do it and then everybody seems to be happy on the other side of it. Joe: That's really cool, so when I saw on the website there was a apply to be a host, Josh: Mm hmm. Mm Joe: Correct? Josh: Hmm. Mm hmm. Joe: Is that the is that where the people that are going to do these interviews go to become part of TotEx? Josh: Correct, Joe: Ok. Josh: We're always, always open to meeting new potential show hosts for our event. Basically, you fill that out and the most important thing is we have to make sure because we we can't anticipate prior who's going to come through the event. But generally, our show hosts fill a category that can be broad enough in nature where it's an entrepreneur, it's a business show, it's about success, struggles, failures, life stories, growth mindset, that whole concept. A lot of categories fit into that. So as long as you're as long as you could, as long as you welcome guests that fit that, we could most likely start the conversation. And then we have a few other criteria just to make sure that you're relevant to to our whole brand and audience. Joe: So that was you actually hit upon one of my questions, which was what is the variety of hopes that you have at Cognex? Like, I would just give you an example off the top of my head. Would you Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Ever have a. And it sounds like no, the answer is no based on what you just gave me, but that you at this moment there, it's more about entrepreneurial stuff. It's about success. It's about business. It's about things like that's not like you have one of these host who has a cooking podcast. Josh: It's so funny because Joe: Ok. Josh: To know well, yesterday, in fact, it's very strange you said cooking because yesterday a show we received an application from a potential new show host and it was, in fact, a cooking podcast. Joe: Unbelievable. Josh: That's the most yeah, it's the most amazing thing. But I think that to his credit, I think that there was an entrepreneurial spin. Like it's like he says like like I'll welcome chefs and cooks and entrepreneurs. I don't know. So Joe: Restaurant Josh: So there was Joe: Owners Josh: I mean. Joe: Were Josh: Yeah, Joe: Given Josh: Now Joe: A. Josh: Now something like that is going to be a little too niche for us because we can't fulfill. Right. Joe: Yeah. Josh: We don't get that kind of people, Joe: Now. Josh: But we are we do have the in the near future, we're going to start niching these out like pod max invest. Right. Joe: Oh, Josh: And then Joe: Cool. Josh: Every show is about investing in real estate and whatever. And then the people who come through or their pod max health and wellness. And then every show is that and then the audience supports that. But right now it's the first thing. It's entrepreneurial, it's business, it's growth, it's success. It's a life story. It's struggles, wins, failures, which we find a lot of people, even if they fit a specific niche, we help them extract. Let's get your life story out. And that's in. That's how we work with them prior to the event, to really fit a bigger a bigger audience here. Joe: Yeah, it's funny because my life partner, Joellen, and I have a YouTube channel that kind of morphed, we started it when covid hit and it sort of morphed over the year to now be really concentrated on travel. Our goal is to eventually have that the you know, Josh: A Joe: We're Josh: Travel log. Joe: Not young, so we're trying to inspire people of our age to go out and just do whatever you want to do and what's what's your excuse? Right. So we were talking about how some of these YouTube channels are lucky because they are they deal with things that are very current. So these guys that have these Krypto YouTube channels, they can't get out videos fast enough because that things Josh: Mm. Joe: Are changing so quickly. So it'd be interesting if you have a crypto pod, Max, someday and Josh: That's Joe: You could Josh: Right. Joe: Have like 12 crypto experts or I mean host Josh: Yeah. Joe: Having these people on because it's this new frontier. It's just crazy. But it's true that the things that are current, it's easy for those people. That's not so easy for people like us who are just in the trenches every day. Josh: Yes. Joe: But we're in New Jersey. Did you hold this just because. My own curiosity, because I live there as well. Josh: Trenton. Joe: Trenton OK, OK. I lived in Montclair, Upper Montclair, Josh: Oh. Joe: West Orange, even Newark, Josh: Of course, Joe: Even Newark Josh: One Joe: As Josh: Fifth Joe: It when it was starting Josh: Well. Joe: To grow. So. Yeah. Josh: 153 B, I went to Montclair State for a year. Joe: Oh, Josh: Yeah, Joe: That's so cool. Josh: You Joe: Yeah, Josh: Were by Joe: So, Josh: The campus, I imagine. Joe: Yeah, I was I was right there Josh: Yeah. Joe: Trumpet's the jazz club. You remember Josh: Yes, Joe: That? Yes. Josh: Of course, Joe: Ok, Josh: So funny Joe: I know. Josh: Jersey taqiyya. Joe: That's right. So talk to me about the people. So you have the application online for the host and you're obviously looking for those all the time to expand Josh: Mm Joe: Because Josh: Hmm. Joe: What is it? Each each host gets three interviews during that eight hour day. Josh: That's right. Joe: Ok, and then the people that want to attend Pod Max are potentially people that want to be guests be matched up with one or Josh: That's Joe: Two Josh: Right. Joe: Or any of Josh: Mm Joe: Those Josh: Hmm. Joe: Hosts. Josh: Three Joe: Three, three, three. Josh: Up to three Joe: Right, Josh: Up. Joe: Right. And then on the website I saw there was a button to buy. Is it is it to purchase a ticket for the next five max in August? Josh: That is correct. Joe: Ok. Josh: So the revenue and the and the tickets are from the entrepreneur side who want to be guests on the shows, Joe: Got Josh: They Joe: It. Josh: Come in, we train them, we work with them, we put them and match them on the show. So they record. We then, you know, they're in the room for the keynotes and the networking and everybody's happy. Joe: So explain to me, when you say we train them, what does that mean? Josh: We have so we when we first started virtual, we didn't have any sort of built in training, we just saw people coming to the event and the day the event happened and that was that. Then we had some people coming to us that said, you know what, I want to attend because they saw this as a great way to basically click a button, buy a ticket, and they'll be a guest on three shows. Right. How how else can that happen so quickly? And so guarantee that you're going to record in the course of a day and it's done now. You got three under your belt Joe: Mm hmm. Josh: More. We started getting people who in their own right were successful business people, six, seven, eight figure business people at everything from the C Suite on down. But they're coming to us saying, I've never been on a show before, but I want to or I've been on some. But I'm not that good. I need more confidence. I need more need more skill. And we thought, oh, my gosh, we're attracting a wide variety of successful business people who are now trying to break into podcasts, guesting. So we said, well, let's hold a prevent training where prior to the event, which is what we do now, we hold a 90 minute session with all the attendees prior to the event where we work with them in small groups. So they get one on one attention with Eric and me where we really get them going with their story, their message. We we listen to it, we prompt them, we give them feedback. We have them do it again. We give them notes. We say you're missing the bigger point. This is actually your sound bite. This is your message. This is what I'm hearing. And we just poke and prod until they're ready to go. And then they take the week prior to the event to get comfortable and practice and rehearse. And we do that kind of training. Joe: Well, that's very cool, and I think what I found as a as a host is I run into those people when they've written a book Josh: Mm Joe: And now Josh: Hmm. Joe: They want to promote the book. And Josh: Ok. Joe: They know that a really good way to promote the book is to get on as many podcasts as you can to get the message out Josh: Ok. Joe: That they've never been on one. So Josh: There you go. Joe: There you can see that they're a little awkward in having to talk to a camera and you know what I mean? So I find that that's that's a that's a big spot for me. When I get someone contacts me about, hey, we want to have so-and-so on. He's just written this great book and it's going to be released on Amazon in a month. And we'd like to get some sales. And Josh: Uh. Joe: And then you get that person and you can tell that they're just sort of wet behind Josh: Now. Joe: The ears in regards to being a guest. Josh: Yeah. Joe: So. Josh: Right, whether it's a host or a guest, you know, you said you have guests, but certainly, you know, as a host, it's not often as easy as it looks, right. Just because somebody is in front of a camera and has a mic, once you start doing it and then you put and then you're like, OK, this is a podcast. There's a lot of moving parts that you didn't anticipate. You have no clue what to do. And then there's so many things that you don't even know what you don't know until it's too late. And you're like, wait, what am I missing here? Same thing on the guest side. Everybody thinks like, no, I just talk to me, ask me some questions, I'll answer them. No way. Because there's two parts here. There's the technical and then the technique. Right. The technical is all this stuff, how you're framed, how you look, the lighting, the earphones, the microphone. Right. All very deliberate. And then there's the technique. What are your stories? How long are you answering? What's your energy and persona like? What are your sound bytes? Joe: Please, Josh: And we teach Joe: Please Josh: All that. Joe: Tell me that when you do some of this training with these new guests that you actually talk about equipment. Josh: Oh, my gosh, you have to, Joe: It's Josh: Of Joe: Just Josh: Course. Yeah, Joe: A. Josh: Thank you for observing that, because we don't want them showing up to the event because they're representing us and our brand. And it's all right. The next events that are better, they are they'll look good to the hosts and vice versa. Right. So we always require great professional level of host because we want a great host to represent the guests. And that's what makes it so well. So hosts nine times out of ten will already have, especially if they're working with us, they're professional. This is part of their business model and they're in it for the long run. They have a growth mindset. They get it. They're up and running guests. So you're right. Even like the ones that you would expect, like C suite level or quote unquote known famous company executives and employees, it's like they not ever you could assume, but they don't know. Joe: Yeah, Josh: A lot of them just don't know. So, Joe: That's. Josh: Yeah, we we do talk about that. Like you can't use your computer. Might stop with the window behind you, stop with that terrible green screen because half of your face is, you know, see through and it just doesn't work. Yeah. Joe: Yeah, I think the most brutal thing for me is when they have my voice coming out of their speaker and it keeps it keeps wiping out what right instead of it coming in headphones or in ears like I have, it just keeps Josh: Yeah, Joe: Hammering Josh: Uh. Joe: Over whatever when we're talking because it's the feet, it's the loop coming back through the mic. It's just Josh: Yeah, Joe: Brutal. Josh: Yeah, and even the angle, you got the perfect angle, you know, that that's, you know, are you too high, too low? It's it's all right. The technical and the technique, we cover it all. Joe: That's very cool. Well, that's that Josh: Thanks. Joe: Makes me so happy the more we can do that with guess, Josh: At. Joe: The better it will be. Josh: We're doing our part. Joe: So when is Permax? In August. Josh: August twenty seventh, we always have it on a Friday, it started that way and then we continued that way because one of the reasons it makes so much sense now to have it on a Friday, especially virtual, you spend eight hours from 9:00 to 5:00 Eastern again. Believe me, it will fly by. That's my promise. That's the way we make it happen. It's going to fly by no matter if you're a guest or a host. But you've still spent eight hours in the room absorbing everything and recording everything. So we just thought it was it was quite perfect to almost accidentally do it on a Friday, but then keep it it because let's take the weekend to sort of decompress and let it all process. Joe: Sure. Let me ask you the more of a personal question in regards to Josh: Sure. Joe: You with the hidden entrepreneur and you as a host and then as a guest, are you busy being a guest on other podcasts? And are you when you are a guest or are you talking about your show and what you've done as an entrepreneur? Are you talking more about, let's say, Pod Max and what you're doing with that? Josh: So I'm I'm a guest here and now in real time, Joe: Yeah. Josh: So you're so you're asking Joe: Do Josh: When Joe: You do a lot Josh: I'm Joe: Of these? Josh: Out. Joe: Do you do Josh: Oh yeah. Joe: You are you a guest? A lot on Josh: Yes, Joe: A lot of. Josh: Yeah, you ask a good question, though, what we what I do and really what we teach and promote is it's less about what you do and more about who you are, because that's what I think people are going to be attracted to. So I've spent time really honing in on and perfecting and continuing to perfect my story, my messaging, my communication, my positioning. A it's what I do on the business side. Right. So you sort of have to show that you can do what you're claiming to teach. Right. Which I think a lot of people Joe: Right, Josh: Don't Joe: What Josh: Do. Joe: You're asking others to do, right? Josh: Right. So if I can sort of show an example through me and be somewhat good at it, you're going to have more confidence coming along with what product or service I have. So it's in my best interest for a variety of reasons also because I still have some of that. I want the external validation right now. I don't need it, but it always feels good just as confirmation that you're doing something people value. Right. How else do you get that? But the feedback. So by doing something like this, it gives me feedback, my personal feedback and others. So I continue to hone and craft my story and message because it's what I teach and it'll help get my brand and message and story and business out there. Further, I, I talk about where I came from and my struggles, upbringing, and like we touched upon here, how I spent all the time hiding and all of those years led to creating what became the hidden entrepreneur, which then helped lead me into a career deep in the podcast space. But really it's about communication because you can apply it anywhere. You can apply it to your social media videos, to your emails, you know, to your sales calls, to all these stories and messaging still become relevant. So it's all encompassing. Joe: So for the entrepreneurs, again, that would be listening to my show, when you decided to do your podcast called The Hidden Entrepreneur. What was your main reasoning behind that? Josh: Great question, the reason out of the gate was I felt like I needed something to do right. I left that 10 year career running my own digital marketing agency, and I said, OK, what do I want to do with myself now? I didn't have all the answers. This is the important part. I didn't have all the answers. I just got the next answer, which I felt it clearly podcasting. And I said, I'm going to try it. I'm going to do it. I want to do it. I'm motivated to do it. And I think I'd be good at it. Meaning I think that I'll stick with it. And I think that this can really turn into something. I think that I can create this show and then around that show, parlay that into some sort of product or service in some regard that will put me on a path to success that I can live with and support myself with. That's really all I knew. And I knew that the show would give me confidence, right. Just by doing it and showing up each day, I knew that it would give me connection to each individual person. And lo and behold, it's it's it's literally has given me life. Joe: And the guests that you have on that show are entrepreneurs of all walks of life, but are Josh: Correct. Joe: So it's not that you are talking specifically to entrepreneurs who, like yourself, broke out of a shell and decided to do something. Josh: No, Joe: It's just Josh: No. Joe: It's just the name of it. It's something that speaks Josh: Correct? Joe: To your heart because that's Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: How you felt for a long time. And now it's just sort of like my show where we have great guests who are running their own businesses that have gone through the struggles are going through the struggles, have Josh: There Joe: Survived Josh: You go. Joe: 20, 20, all of those things. Josh: Absolutely, yes. Joe: Ok, cool, so then when let me ask you this question that when you are a guest, because I think all of this helps not only all the entrepreneurs that are listening, Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: That I don't have a podcast that don't go on podcasts that don't listen to whatever it might be, Josh: Right. Joe: Which is hard for you and I to understand, because, like, I was at the gym and I constantly having a podcast in my years. But when you are a guest, how do you figure out what your story is? Because you are this you led this life like I did, Josh: The. Joe: Right, with all of these things. And that's sort of like this is a selfish question, because I'm asking because Josh: Sure. Joe: If I was to be a guest on a podcast, Josh: Mm Joe: I'm Josh: Hmm. Joe: Not sure what Joe Costello would show up for that, because I don't there's so much that has happened. But it's not like I like I had Shaun Spawner on my show who summited all of the summits, like the they Josh: Right, Joe: Call Josh: Right, Joe: It the Josh: Right, Joe: I forget Josh: Right. Joe: What it's called anyhow. But he was amazing. He went to Everest, he went to the North Pole, South Pole, did all the summits. And so he has a story to tell and he has a short film that they did. There's people who come on and they have books. And so they've written a book on something very special. And Josh: Yeah, yeah. Joe: What's the story that you tell when you are on a show as a guest? Josh: The past forty six minutes will answer that. But in all seriousness, I I have over time you develop a library of stories that you have at the ready that encompass you and who you are, what you stand for, how you want to stand, why you want to stand for that, how you want to be perceived and positioned in your in your world. So I have a variety of stories that come about that I could explore based on the conversation I'm having. But they all wind up having an overarching theme, a core message, a core value, core stance that I deliver based on the hidden entrepeneur and where I've been and who I am and where I'm going. So you could learn about me so you can relate to me. So maybe you can like me enough to say, I want to I want to get to know this person more, see what else he does, Joe: Mm Josh: See Joe: Hmm. Josh: What he's about, and then we can explore each other's worlds together. So that takes a little bit of time to do, but that's sort of what we do. So if you're asking which I think you're asking, like, how would somebody like you who doesn't yet go on shows, where do you begin? Is that sort of what you're asking? Joe: Yeah, Josh: Like Joe: I mean, I Josh: Maybe Joe: Think. Josh: Right now? Everybody has a story where you you had a a life affirming or confirming incident that we can all write like I don't think I did necessarily, but I have enough of a story to make it interesting, relatable, compelling write. These are all things that are learnable skills, but they do start somewhere. Joe: All right. Josh: So you I read your website. So I know generally about you wanting growing up. You wanted to be a drummer, Joe: Mm hmm. Josh: Right, for the Stones or with the Stones. And so so broadly speaking, even if you started there with like a dream lost, never fulfilled yet, you know, where was the struggle there? I could spend five minutes and really dig into how painful did that get? What were some of the the turn how close did you get if if at all? What were some of those moments when you were behind closed doors in your own head? And then where are you today and how did it all go? Right. How did it all lead? OK, that could be a very compelling story that people can relate to. Of course, not everybody wanted to be a drummer for the Stones, but we all have our own version of that. So that's all you're tapping into, making it intriguing, making it compelling. And everybody has fascinating stories that they can put pieces together with and share them with the people who want to hear it. Joe: Yeah, that's great, I it's just that you think about it and you go and I think a lot of people feel this way, right? They're like, Josh: Nothing happened, right? Joe: My my story is not that interesting. Why should I tell it? And I don't necessarily feel that way. I've gone through a lot of iterations Josh: Right. Joe: And I have a lot of experience. And besides podcasting and our YouTube channel, you know, I run a seven figure booking agency here in Phoenix and Scottsdale. So I'm a successful entrepreneur. But again, this is the selfish thing for me is like I Josh: Yeah. Joe: Like meeting people like you and learning these kinds of things and sharing them before you. And I can help one entrepreneur out there with our show or what Josh: Yeah. Joe: You do with Cognex. That's a great thing, right? If it's just about and that's what I loved about this interview with you, is that you were very vulnerable and the way you spoke about yourself and it and it's refreshing to have someone to do that and not come and go. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I ran I did this and I was running these huge corporations. And then I had all this money and I figured I didn't need any more money. So I decided to start a fight or whatever. I mean, it's just it's nice to hear that you and I went sort of through the same kind of thing Josh: Mm Joe: And Josh: Hmm. Joe: It was refreshing to hear. So I appreciate you doing that. I wanted to say thank you earlier when you were doing it, but the momentum was going. But it was very, very cool that Josh: Great. Joe: You were that real about all of that stuff. So thank you. Josh: You're very welcome. Joe. Joe: So what is the cost for the August next? Josh: We have three ticket levels that you could you could explore on the site generally there between under a thousand, up to two thousand. Joe: Ok, and. Josh: Depending on how you want the experience to go. Joe: Got it and all of that up there, they click on that button and they'll have those choices there. Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Is there a deadline? Josh: Yes, one week prior to the event, tickets, clothes, whatever, whenever you're hearing this, if it's one week prior to the very next event, tickets, clothes, because that's when we have to do the match ups and get all the information out to the attendees. Joe: What's the date and August again? Josh: August 27. Joe: Twenty seven. OK, is there anything else that I missed that you wanted to touch upon? Josh: No, you've Joe: Wow, Josh: Been thoroughly thorough. Joe: That's beautiful. OK, great. So the links that you got work for you in order for people to either contact you in regards to the hidden entrepreneur, contact you in regards to Pod Max, what's the website, you URL, all of that stuff so we can make sure and then I'll have it all in the notes anyhow. But if anybody's listening, I want to I want Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Them to hear it. Josh: That's great. Well, the business side is Pod Max Dot CEO, and then on the personal side, which will lead you to all kinds of forks in the road that you could explore. It's Josh Carey Dotcom. Joe: Perfect. OK, well, this is been great, man, I really appreciate it. I was excited to hear about Max. I will also check out The Hidden Entrepreneur. I appreciate you coming on here and sharing this with the audience. And hopefully we'll get a bunch of people that will attend and maybe some new host and guest will come out of all of this. But I appreciate your time today, and it's very, very nice to meet you and very interesting to hear what's going on with Max. Josh: Likewise, I appreciate it greatly. Thanks so much. Joe: Thank you, man. I'll talk to you soon.
Tim O'Brien along with his wife Becki, have created a unique vitamin, supplement and nutrition store that is more about helping people than it is about margins and commissions. As Tim says" Souls before sales!" It was a pleasure sitting down with Tim to learn more about The Healthy Place and what products and services they have to offer. After Tim educated me, I'm definitely going to lean on him and his team in the future, to help me make better and more educated decisions when it comes to my health. I hope you enjoy this episode and you walk away with at least one snippet that either helps you in your entrepreneurial journey or with you health in general. For 30% off, please use our affiliate link as it helps us to generate a little income to produce this podcast...thx so much! https://findyourhealthyplace.com/?rfsn=5901087.08b0f6 Thanks for listening! Joe Tim O'Brien Founder - The Healthy Place Website: https://findyourhealthyplace.com/ Website: https://livelyvitaminco.com/ Website: https://wildtheory.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/applewellness/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehealthyplaceTHP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYQVVKB58mGd_YgxAL0LMGA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/apple-wellness-the-healthy-place/about/ Email: tim@findyourhealthyplace.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Tim: My guest today is Tim O'Brien, the founder of The Healthy Place, an e-commerce store for healthy products. They also have for brick and mortar locations, one in Madison, Wisconsin, one in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, one in Middleton, Wisconsin, and one in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Tim's passion is health and wellness, and he has spent the last decade sharing his passion with the world on a personal side. He is married to Becky and together they have three children. In this conversation with Tim, I expressed how much health and wellness is important to myself and how convoluted the marketplace is and very difficult to trust who you buy from and which products you buy. I was excited to have Tim on the show so that I could learn more about the difference in what the healthy place offers over buying products at other places like GNC, Walgreens, the vitamin shop and obviously Amazon.com. So sit back and listen to the education that we get from Tim on how to buy better and healthier products in the health and wellness space. Joe: Hey, Tim, welcome to the show. Tim: Hey, hey, how you doing, buddy? Joe: I'm doing great, man, happy, what is it? Wednesday, I lost track, I just got Tim: Yeah, Joe: Back into Tim: It's Joe: Town. Tim: Hump hump day of the week, man, and Joe: Beautiful. Tim: I'm doing this to say thank you for giving me a chance to be on your show. Man, this is cool. Joe: Yeah, no, that's my pleasure, as as I mentioned before, we actually started this that I have, you know, I know that literally health is everything. Like you can have everything in the world that you ever, ever wanted. And without your health, it's just, you know, it's it's unfortunate because I know people go through things that had nothing to do with them not being healthy. They just got delivered a bad hand, Tim: Yahav. Joe: You know, so that's a different story. But those of us Tim: Jerome. Joe: That can make sure we stay healthy, there are things that we can do. But before we get into all of that, and as a lot of my listeners for the podcast and the viewers of a YouTube channel, now, I'd like to get the back story because a lot of the people who listen to the show are my hope is that these entrepreneurial spirits that are trying to figure out what they want to do are there in the midst of doing it. And they they need ideas from people that are being successful doing it. So I would like to go back as far as you're willing to go back to allow myself and the viewers to understand how you got into what you're doing today. What Tim: I love Joe: For? Tim: To share that. Yeah. Joe: Yeah, like what triggered the fact that you're now in this world of, you know, Tim: Supplements, Joe: The health world Tim: Natural Joe: And. Tim: Alternatives, Joe: Yeah, Tim: Yeah. Joe: Yeah, yeah. So I'd love to hear that and then we'll get in, Tim: I'd love to. It's Joe: Ok. Tim: A cool story, I kind of like telling it because it's just cool to see how things can work together to sort of bring you to the place that you're at. And it's sort of confirmation in some different ways. So I love to share it, man. I'd be happy to do so when my when I was like five or six years old, my mom fought through thyroid cancer. And I remember her like going through the chemo radiation and losing the hair, like seeing her at the hospital. I have four siblings, so just a lot of fear in the home, worried about mom. And then I remember this time where she came home and she was sort of like excited and sort of like filled with a little bit of hope because she had gone into this health food store in a little town called Muskego, Wisconsin, just this tiny little town that had a health food store. And she talked to this guy named John for like an hour and a half. And John shared with her all these natural alternatives that had some good science and some good reason to believe that it could help her in her process recovery, treatment of the thyroid cancer. And so she would like go in there like once a week, whether it was a refill for some supplements or whether it was some more education, because there was a lot of literature that this guy handed out as well, like books that he gave her. Tim: And I would go with her. And through this whole process, she she was benefited quite a bit from these natural alternatives that helped her and her recovery process. So I remember hearing about that as a little guy. And through that process, she got a job as a manager at this health food store. And she was there all the time, 40, 50 hours a week kind of thing. And us kids were home schooled. So we would go with mom often sitting in this back room of this health food store, doing our math problems, doing our schoolwork. And I watched over the years these testimonies produced of people coming in with chronic pain, depression, sleep issues, other folks that battled cancer, that my mom held their hand through the process, educating them. And so that was like my whole upbringing. And it really got into my DNA that there is natural alternatives out there that work and the general population just doesn't know about them, because the way our medical system set up pharmaceutical medications, you know, we have some of the best doctors in the world. And, you know, you go to them, you get a prescription, you don't Joe: Mm Tim: Necessarily Joe: Hmm. Tim: Get a natural alternative recommendation. So I got a bit passionate about that in my late teen years. So I got a job at a GNC franchise and worked for the owner who invited me to move out to Madison, Wisconsin, to manage some of his GNC stores after a little while. So I was like, man, OK, my boss thinks I'm good at this. I really enjoy helping people, encouraging people. I just happen to like like people in general. So it was it was sort of a fit. Like I got this passion for this natural alternative thing. I feel like I'm helping people. I'm impacting the world. I want to make a difference. And I was managing these GNC franchises in Madison, Wisconsin. Well, there was a corporate takeover, dude, in twenty seven where everybody lost their jobs, like corporate took over these six franchises that my boss owned. And it was like, OMG, like, what am I going to do now? And so I determined, you know, hey, I want to do something. And that's natural alternative space. I have always been sort of passionate about business in general. I had like three paper routes when I was 11 and I hired my sisters for a quarter a day. I was making bank Joe: Right. Tim: And I was so I tried a network marketing business for a little while that was suppliments and that was brutal. Multi-level marketing can be really hard. And I was like, OK, I don't want to go that route. Maybe I should open my own health food store. And at that time I had just met dating, married Becky, my wife. So we're prayerfully like thinking through this. Should we do this, put the house on the line, open up our own health food store and risk everything. And we decided to take the plunge. So our first brick and mortar store, 2010, was in a town called Fitchburg, Wisconsin, which is right outside of Madison, Wisconsin. And then twenty fifteen, it was store number two in the Madison area and then twenty nineteen with stores three and four. So that was going well. We then moved towards ecommerce where like, hey, if we're making an impact and a difference here locally, which is really exciting, we really enjoy it together. We work as a team like let's let's hit the nation. That sounds fun. And so we started to see a little bit of success there, especially ones covid hit of last year because our in-store traffic took a hit. So our pivot as a company, like a lot of smart companies, was, let's focus on e-commerce. And so that really helped us talk about a blessing in disguise, really helped Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Us figure out the e-commerce space a little bit. So really exciting. In December, January of this last year, we got our little warehouse. So now we have a warehouse in Madison and we're shipping packages out all over the United States. And that's the story. And the mission is about impacting, empowering and educating as many people as we can to just like, learn, grow and create a lifelong foundation of health and wellness. It's like a fanning a flame. You know, somebody already just has a little spark. You know, they're putting the cigarette out outside my store, throwing the McDonald's bag in the trash and like, I need something for my chronic pain all the way up to the health enthusiasts. And no matter what, to me, it's so encouraging to just fan the flame of someone's health and wellness. Because you said it earlier, life is a gift and people need to remember that. Joe: Yeah, and so have you always, based on the background of sitting in that store with your mother and seeing what the proper nutrition and supplements and things like that did for her? Did you always pretty much lead a healthy lifestyle? Tim: Funny is Joe: Don't Tim: No. Joe: Tell me you're a fast food junkie. Tim: No, I wasn't. Yeah, I was, and I always felt very bad if I was going through that fast food line, but my diet really didn't really take a huge impact until I married Becky. So for whatever reason, I would I knew a lot about supplements, really passionate about natural alternatives. But I was I was not the guy who is eating ultra clean, raw, organic, clean. I was like, OK, I'm going to eat a basic diet cleaner than most know what kind of excuses that. And then I'd lean on supplements for nutrition. And so when I met Vecchi, this is two thousand eight, she's like, wow, this doesn't even make sense. Like you can't go eat at pizza, frozen pizza, you know, and then go take your supplements. And so she really convicted me. And it's been a pretty cool team because that's always been her passion is very clean eating. And she didn't understand or know about the supplement natural alternative thing. And my passion has always been for my mom's story of natural alternatives and supplements can change a life. And so then getting married and working together as a team to educate Madison and our social media platforms and on YouTube, it's like there has to be a marriage between nutritional deficiencies, making sure we don't have them eating well, eating clean exercise. So we should work together. And I've improved since meeting, Becky. Joe: Wow, so are you actually telling me that she was already before you guys even met, she was interested in this sort of thing or she was she was Tim: Yeah. Joe: A healthy, clean eating person. Tim: Yes, she was Joe: Wow. Tim: A health enthusiast, yeah, I mean, just health, and that's part of what drew me to her is like, man, this girl's got discipline, like extreme self-control. For me, that's been an area of struggle, just like in general, like discipline waking up early. I'm the guy that would, before I met Becky, like stay up till one and then sleep till nine till I had to quit, get to work. And, you know, he's like, man, we got some work to do. But, yeah, she sure inspired me and a few of those areas. Joe: Ok, so without prying too deeply then, because now you're really piqued, my interest is the fact that you guys are lying so well. How did you meet? Tim: Yeah, so we there was like a young adults meeting through it, through church called Metro Believers Church in Madison, Wisconsin, you know, I'm a Christian, she's a Christian, and in my early twenties, it was like, hey, I really enjoyed finding people like minded. And I think in the back of my mind, I'm like, I'm searching for a life, you know? So I would go to a couple of these different churches, young adult ministry meetings, whatever, 20 something groups. And we just started hanging out. So it was like a group of like six or seven of us. And I was about six months in. I pulled her aside one day after church and said, I still laugh at what I said. I said, Hey, Becky, I've taken a shining to you and I'd like to continue on to marriage. And she's like, oh my gosh. Like, OK, I'm kind of like you, too. It was weird way to ask, but OK. Joe: It's also that's Tim: Yeah, Joe: Old school, Tim: I don't do it right. Oh, yeah. Joe: But also Tim: Oh. Joe: All right, cool, well, that's that's great. So how did you change or why did you change the name from Apple Wellness to the healthy place? Tim: Yeah, really good question, you know, Apple Wellness was a good name, you know, in the sense of like Apple a day keeps the doctor away and we just had too many people thinking we are the Mac Apple store. So I literally get calls, at least weekly, Joe: Wow, Tim: And Joe: That's so subtle. Tim: At least I know, and then I'd see my employee across the way and he'd be talking to somebody and he'd be like, well, try turning the phone off and then turn it back on, you know? Joe: Oh, my Tim: So Joe: God. Tim: Especially after he got the e commerce thing going, I started, Becky, as the graphic designer and kind of branding expert within our company for a long time. She's like the Apple word's taken. That's just gone. And I should have consulted with her a little bit more before we chose the name. Joe: Uh huh. Tim: And so she's always kind of wanted it changed. But then I found out that Apple, the company, has an Apple wellness program Joe: Oh, Tim: For employees Joe: Of. Tim: Like it's trademarked. I mean, so I figured it was just a matter of time before I end up getting some sort of litigation letter from Joe: Yeah, Tim: Apple. Joe: Yeah, well, OK, that's interesting. Tim: Yeah. Joe: So you stole one of my questions, but it was perfect because it was actually in line with what you were talking about. But I want to go back to it because Tim: Sure. Joe: It's important, again, for like the entrepreneurs that are listening to this and what we just went through with covid, you talked about shifting. They're not shifting, but literally adding to what you've already established. Right. So you were Tim: You. Joe: You were a retail store, people walking in foot traffic. That's what you counted on to make a living. Right. So when covid hit, obviously, everyone stayed home. So there goes all the foot traffic. So did you already have the e commerce portion of this set up before this happened when you said it was a blessing in disguise? Were you already ready to go the moment like that? Tim: Really Joe: The Tim: Good. Joe: You know, Tim: Yes, Joe: The doors. Tim: Yes and no, I Joe: Ok. Tim: Mean, it's like we had the website, we had the ability to set up ship products out. We had maybe three hundred out of the four thousand products that we have in our stores on the site. So we were ready in certain ways and then not ready for a lot of things. And we had no idea on the digital side of marketing, Google ads, Facebook ads, SEO optimization, email marketing. We hadn't done text messaging. We hadn't done very much of that, very basic and each one of those areas. So it was all of a sudden like pedal to the metal once March hit, where it was like, OK, we have some of these basic fundamentals. And I always tell a business owner like you, if you don't already, you have to have a website like I mean, covid showed us all that pretty quick, like Joe: Yeah. Tim: Have to have a website and you can get free ones are very inexpensive. Wick's dotcom. I'll tell business owners, like even if you're not a photographer, don't don't try to be don't don't get some real basic a white posterboard. Put the product right over it. Just take a picture by a window. Don't don't try to get real clever with it because Vecchi tells me that it can end up looking really bad if Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: You're trying to do so. Basic things like get a website, get a social media, you know, ask your grandkid if you don't know how to set one up sort of thing. So we had all the basics, but then for us it was like, OK. Let's get live chat on our website, because we are one of our difference makers, is consultations Joe: Huh? Tim: With we change lives because we ask questions and we figure out the best products and forms and brands for their specific issues, problems. So let's get a live chat on our website so we can have those conversations. Let's get free shipping. Let's make it really easy. Even if we lose money on maybe one out of five orders, let's just like make it easy, reduce friction in any way that we can. Let's get on Google ads and Facebook ads. So we hired a digital agency for that and it's pretty cool. A year later, we had 30 percent overnight of our foot traffic was just gone once we were able to stay open, thankfully. But that 30 percent in one year's time, we were able to build that on our e-commerce platforms. We were able to replace what was lost. So I'm still head spinning, so thankful for my team able to bring that together because it's quite the operation and it takes a lot of work. Joe: Yeah, did you did you keep the stores open themselves or did you? Tim: We did Joe: You did OK. Tim: Not. Joe: Ok, Tim: We Joe: And Tim: Were Joe: Was it. Tim: Scrambling in the beginning of if we could be classified as essential or not, and my belief is that the immune system is something that can really be strengthened. I'm more passionate about terrain versus the germs so we can strengthen our terrain, strengthen our immune systems, both defense and offense. I mean, there's incredible science behind simple nutrients like sand, mucus from elderberry. The University of Sydney showing the prevention which with elderberry prevention of viruses entering the cell. I mean, it's some pretty cool science. So at the beginning of the covid thing, it was like, OK, I'm not going to tell anybody I can cure or prevent Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Whatever, but I'm sure as heck going to yell it from the rooftop that you can strengthen your immune system and a strong immune system. Strong health is the best defense against any disease, virus, sickness anywhere. So I got pretty passionate about that a year ago. Joe: Cool. Yeah, that's great. So I'm normally pretty good at not bouncing around, but in this case, I want to go back to when you decided to do this. You know, obviously when when someone gets released from a corporate environment and they're like, oh, my gosh, I don't have control over my own destiny because these people Tim: The. Joe: Just literally rip the rug out from underneath me, which is another thing that a lot of entrepreneurs know because this is how they got to where they are there that happen to them. Like I'm not letting someone else dictate how my life is going to turn out. Right. So Tim: Yeah. Joe: But what's really crazy is I don't know if it if in Wisconsin or the places where you have these stores, obviously we know that you already brought it up at GNC is a big brand around the country. There's also where we are. There's the vitamin store. Right. Are the stuff that one of those Tim: Yeah, Joe: Is a vitamin Tim: Yeah, Joe: Shopper. Tim: Yeah. Joe: So there's a lot of these places. So it's almost like you saying you and Becky going, oh, yeah, we're going to create the next pizza delivery like pizza Tim: Now, Joe: Delivery Tim: There's already Joe: Franchise. Tim: 10 right around Joe: Yeah, Tim: The corner, Joe: Right. Tim: So let's see number 11, yeah. Joe: Right. It's we're going to be the next Pizza Hut or Papa John's or whatever. It's just like that that industry Tim: Yes, Joe: That's it takes a lot Tim: It's Joe: Of guts. Tim: So competitive. Joe: Yeah. So when you thought about it, as all entrepreneurs, do, we always come up with these ideas and then we sometimes will kill our own ideas without our spouse or partner or someone will say they'll be the sensible one and say Tim: Right, Joe: That's Tim: Right, Joe: Never Tim: Yeah. Joe: Right. But then you have all these outside influences of of friends and things. And, you know, at any moment, if you would have said, hey, we're thinking of opening up a vitamin supplement, healthy sort of Tim: John. Joe: That people would look at you. But what about all of these major brands? So tell me about how you got over the hump to make to pull the trigger. Tim: Yeah, do that's such a good question and, you know, to identify and I had some friends who opened a coffee shop, you know, and a year later, you know, the coffee shops not doing so well is unfortunate with covid timing and everything. And it's like the supplement thing where you, like, hear this and you're like, oh, I don't know, you know, I wish him well, but I don't know if that's going to work because it's just like there's a hundred of them, you know. Joe: Right. Tim: So I think for me what happened was I worked for GNC for, I don't know, five years. And you start to see good stuff. You start to see bad stuff, you start to see their model. They were purchased by China a while back. So, OK, it's all sourced from China. Forms of nutrients are in their synthetic forms or not so absorbable forms. And you start to learn like, OK, a better product would help this person more than this form of curcumin that's not absorbing into their system from China or wherever, you know, so you start to see where you could make a difference and you sort of start to see your difference makers. So in the supplement world, there's two veins of supplement stores. There's the type of stores that are all about muscle gain and weight loss, you know, weight loss, thermogenic high caffeine, ephedra, and then trim and tracks Hydroxycut. And a lot of that isn't super healthy for Joe: Hmm. Tim: People to be taking steroids or pro hormones, you know, not super healthy. So that's like one vein of supplement stores. And then there's another vein of supplement stores that just they sourced from China. They use synthetic nutrients. It's a little bit more about margin and profit than it is about quality and making a difference. And so that is something I realized pretty early on. And there's not too many supplement health food stores that have a lot of knowledge where you walk in. And there's not just like a high schooler selling the huge jug of protein because it gets a two dollar commission on it, you know. Joe: Yes, I do know. Tim: Yeah, yeah. And there's just not a lot of those out there. So then all of a sudden starting to dream about, you know, originating from my mom's story where somebody really helped her out, where I can really make a difference, because if I open my own stores or store at the time, I can bring in some of the best brands in the world. And pretty quick, in any industry, you find out, good, better, best. And I want to be in that best category. And all of a sudden you're working with some of the best brands in the world and you have the knowledge to be a to guide somebody with Crohn's disease. Let's just Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Talk over asthma on natural alternatives that really work. And if you impact them, if you help them, if you change their life a little bit for the better, now they're going to keep coming back forever. And they tell everybody they know because there's such a vacuum, such a desperate need in this day and age for knowledgeable resources in the natural alternative space. We have a ton of medical, we have a ton of pharmaceutical drugs. We just don't have information coming to the general public on natural alternatives that work. And I get to be that resource in Madison, Wisconsin. So I think that's why we have done well in our brick and mortar stores. And I think that's probably why our attention is higher for our e-commerce is because of that customer service, that knowledgeable resource, that going the extra mile to impact their lives. And I'll give you an example. A lady might hit our live chat from California and say, hey, I'm looking for a V12. Can you give me a recommendation? And then we might ask the question like, absolutely. Here's a couple of options. Do you mind if I ask while you're while you're taking V12? Oh, my doctor said because I have really low energy, I have nerve pain and my mental clarity and focus, I get like foggy brain all the time. So then all of a sudden we say, awesome, OK, I'm actually going to encourage the method in form of V12 because it absorbs much better than this sign form that I first sent you, because I really want you to feel the difference. And since you're feeling fatigued, a little brain fog, I'd love for you to consider this adrenal boost product that has adapted genic herbs in there, like Atul Gawande wrote Rodeo Mocca because ninety two percent of fatigue is related to your adrenal glands. So then you recommend that product. They get it. And this lady two months later goes, Oh my gosh, my energy is a little better, my focus is better, my stress is reduced, which I didn't even bring up. But that adrenal product helps with stress, too, I guess. Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Then all of a sudden they're leaving a review like, wow, that wellness consultant, Ryan, he's one of our our wellness consultants. He really helped me out. And so it's a very different sort of dynamic than a typical GNC store, health food store, vitamin shop type experience. They're Joe: Huh? Tim: All great stores. I mean, I love Natural. Anywhere you can get them. So that was like our difference maker and that's why I thought I could make a go out of it. Joe: Ok, cool. I have so much to ask you now, because you keep opening up like Kansas. So. So before again, I, I want this stuff to be helpful for the entrepreneur. And then then we're going to help the consumers that listen to this. So how when you decided on doing this and said, OK, and let's pull the trigger, how did you figure out the place where you're going to open up store number one, that you do all that extensive, Tim: Oh, Joe: You know, Tim: Good question, yes. Joe: Traffic, you know, what's going to pop up around us? What Tim: You know, Joe: Is, you Tim: Find Joe: Know? Tim: Find a good broker, a real estate broker that can find you spaces. So I had a guy named Kent in Madison, Wisconsin, and he you don't have to pay these guys. You know, it's the landlord that pays them. Joe: Right. Tim: And so as a young entrepreneur about to, like, risk everything you had, that was really important for me to know. Like, I I still am shocked by that. Like, you can just call one of these guys, try to find a reputable one, find somebody that trusts that can make a good referral. And they do all this scouting for you. They send you all the reports and you don't pay a penny. You know, I am a bottom line at the end or something, but you don't pay a penny for this. They get paid from the landlord. So he was bringing me idea after idea after idea. And he had been in the industry for a long time. So he knew the city really, really well. And he was able to guide me through, hey, this has a really strong anchor. The anchor in Fitchburg was Joe: Yeah, Tim: Target. Joe: Yeah. Tim: It was a super, super target. So I was like, oh, learning about anchors are important, Joe: Yeah. Tim: Really important. So I tell you, if you're listening, like, look for some strong anchors, because that's really going to help you for traffic. Joe: And just for the listeners and the people that don't like it, like when they talk about like a small strip mall or a plaza or something like that or even in a in a mall small, an anchor is an anchor store. That is when they go in, there's a really good chance they're not going away like they are a big thing like Target or Wal-Mart Tim: Exactly. Joe: Or Nordstrom or whatever. So I just wanted to clear that up because I didn't know at one point. But I know when you're looking at retail space like that, you want to be surrounded by an anchor store that has been around forever and is not going away. Tim: Yes, and just to further drive that point home, we have for brick and mortar stores and the one that's doing like the worst is the one that doesn't have a strong anchor by it. So just get one with a strong anchor and then look at price points and definitely negotiate. So we had that broker that was able to help us out. He was able to negotiate tenant improvement. Our big deal when you're opening a store, because you you could use money towards the build out and you can ask landlords for that. So if, again, if you have a good broker and you tell them your story, what you're trying to build out, a lot of times you can get a number of things paid for by the landlord because they're about to ask you to sign a five year lease. Joe: Mm hmm. OK. So at this point, the four locations that you have, you are in a lease situation Tim: Yes, all for you Joe: At Tim: And I've Joe: Any Tim: Looked into purchasing. Joe: Ok, so there is yeah, that's my question. It's like when do you pull the trigger on saying, OK, I want to actually start to own some of these buildings are these spaces. And that's a huge job. That's that's really put your Tim: Yeah, Joe: Neck out. Right. Tim: So in all four, I looked at them and each one has a different story, the first one I looked into though, at the Fitchburg location, the buildings were not for sale. So I was like, all this is so cool. So I looked into it and it was seven million dollars for these two buildings because it's in a strong anchor, high traffic area. So it is difficult to buy the spot by the strong anchor Joe: Maha. Tim: Because it really it would have been risking I couldn't I couldn't do it. But then the idea next idea is like, well, maybe I should move locations now that my name is established, if I can buy a strip mall down the way or something like that. So that Joe: Te. Tim: Idea is in the back of my head. But then you move away from the strong anchors. That's Joe: Right. Tim: Been called me back. Joe: Right, cool. See, that was perfect because that was like all of the things that you have to consider and Tim: Right. Joe: It's yeah, that's a tough decision, man. That's a lot of money. Tim: It is, Joe: Yeah. Tim: Dude, I Joe: Yeah. Tim: Know and I have a buddy who owns a dentistry office and he Joe: We. Tim: Was able to purchase his location and it's awesome. He's about to pay it off after ten years. And I'm super excited. So Joe: Yeah. Tim: It is depends on the situation. Joe: Yeah, OK, so now let's get into what I consider in the world that you're in and I'm a huge fan of natural like I is, it's a there's a difference between naturopathic or is. Right. Is that pronounced correctly? Is that they say it Tim: Yeah, Joe: Now Tim: Naturopathic Joe: Or Tim: Medicine Joe: Or homoeopathic. Tim: Homoeopathy yupp homoeopathy Joe: Right. OK. Tim: And integrative medicine is kind of like medical and naturopathy together. Joe: Yep, yep, so Joel and my life partner went through a battle of breast cancer where she had some lymph nodes and luckily, you know, Tim: Giese. Joe: Through through chemo and radiation, she came out on the other side and everything's great. But Tim: Good. Joe: The big thing that she also had was she had a naturopathic doctor Tim: Hmm. Joe: That went that came from the cancer world. So the advantages is that he understood the treatment that was happening with the normal medicine and he knew what to give her to not take away from what she was doing with the chemo and radiation, but at the same time helped to keep her system built up and not offset any of that. So there was a perfect marriage between the two. And Tim: That's. Joe: I swear to this day, I feel like that was the reason that she was Tim: Wow. Joe: Fairly, fairly normal through the process, like we were doing 90 X and she was in the middle Tim: That's Joe: Of chemo Tim: All Joe: And radiation. Tim: Right. Joe: Yeah, it was ridiculous. So Tim: Dude, that's Joe: So Tim: Awesome. Joe: I'm a big fan of the naturopathic side of things and natural remedies and all of that. So Tim: Not the. Joe: So that's why this was a cool episode for me, because it's hard to talk with somebody that is in this niche that you're in without it being the big stores. And so my first question, because I got so many of them Tim: I Joe: First question and the first Tim: Love Joe: Question Tim: It. Joe: Is how do you become with all of the misinformation that's out Tim: The. Joe: In the world? Right. And this is what confuses all of us as consumers. You go to Amazon and you say, I need a B vitamin of Tim: Right Joe: Some B supplement. Tim: Now. Joe: And the habit is you you click on the five star rating, things that you want. You think that's going to be the best because people are taking their time to read it, which Tim: Yeah. Joe: I think there's enough Tim: What Joe: Conversation Tim: Did he. Joe: In the world that says that's not necessarily true. Tim: Right. Joe: And then you literally are just like throwing darts at a dartboard with Tim: I Joe: A blindfold Tim: Know that, Joe: On. So. Tim: I know. Joe: So how do you get through all the misinformation that you feel so confident enough that when you when you suggest something to a client that you haven't been taken advantage of by the misinformation, like Tim: Yeah, Joe: How do you get through Tim: Because. Joe: All of that stuff? Tim: A great question and even the reviews, if a company markets really well and they're incredible at marketing, they can get a billion, five star reviews and they can be like synthetic sourced from China, not NSF certification. So over the years, you start to be able to read between the lines and you start to be able to say, hey, this is B.S. over here. This is marketing. Only not met with quality. And like any industry, you start to learn the good, better and best. So there's a few things. So first and foremost, I think everybody needs somebody on their team. Like your wife has that naturopathic doctor now as a resource that she can probably shoot an email to or make an appointment with and ask these questions. I think everybody needs somebody on their team because most people have a medical doctor and beyond that and they might have a pharmacist. Right. And they're good to have on your team, but we need somebody with. Expertise, knowledge, history in the supplement space, because even a naturopathic doctor, they know way more than I do about the human body, about maybe. Yeah, just just how to treat maybe disease. Tim: Right. When you're in the supplement space, there is you get to deal with hundreds and hundreds of brands. And over the decades, which I think 18 years now, you start to find out what brands are good and trustworthy and which ones aren't because the FDA doesn't regulate all the supplements. So you can say whatever you want on the label about me, your romantic drink here, but you can say whatever you want and. FDA isn't going to necessarily nail you if you're lying, if your label is making false label claims and this happens, there was a clinic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where not real clinical, but where they took products from a number of stores, GNC, Walgreens, Wal-Mart and Target. They took supplements from those four stores and then they had them tested at Chavannes and it was Chavannes Labs. And all four of them had discrepancies with what the label said and what was actually in the capsule. And one product was an Asia product, which is good for the immune system. And it had zero percent echinacea in there and a little bit of garlic like Joe: Oh, Tim: What Joe: My Tim: The H Joe: Gosh. Tim: Now? Yeah. So that exactly what you said. It's shooting in the dark. Is it marketing that's producing these reviews? Is it quality? Is it going to help me? Is it a waste of my money? Am I being sold. Right. So there's all those questions and the privilege that I'm so thankful for is just being submersed in the supplement world long enough. You learn a couple of things. So sourcing is vital. Where is it coming from? There is vitamin C that you can get our China, that there's some concerns there with chemicals, heavy metals, arsenic, or you can get vitamin C from Scallan, which happens to have a really rich ascorbic acid form of vitamin C clean, great place to source it from. So where a product is sourced from is really important. Number two is does the brand have NSF certification? So NZDF C, GMP grade facilities that they work with, which they're paying money to NSF to a third party test and ensure that they're having all of these practices that are healthy for supplements, they're sourcing their cleanliness. Has it been tested? Is it clean? Those questions? And NSF doesn't care about the company. They care about the reputation. So there sure as heck going to just that's a good certification is trusted in the supplement world to ensure that what's on the label is actually in the product. Tim: So sourcing No. One, NSF, GMP certification, number two and number three, which all of these take some sort of expertise or having somebody on your your team. You know, that's why I say to have somebody on your team first. But number three is the forms of nutrients. So E 12, which I gave the example earlier, Psion Kabalan and B 12 is synthetic. So your body has to convert it and you lose a lot of the content in that conversion versus a methyl form B 12, which is the natural form that your body absorbs really, really well. So four items, number one and two, saucing and NSF, you can have a very clean form of sign Kabalan and B 12 source, very clean. You could have NSF facility ensuring that you have that 50 micrograms of cyanide Kabalan B 12 in the B complex. But then it would take some expertise to know, like, OK, that's fine, that's good. But we would prefer a methyl form would be 12 because it absorbs so much better Joe: Mr.. Tim: And every single nutrient. This blows my mind because every single nutrient has good, better, best. You know, whether you're talking about vitamin C, ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbic calcium ascorbic B 12, which I'm talking about the six paroxetine hydrochloride versus toxified phosphate turmeric. You can get the the turmeric that colors your Indian curry orange and you can take that capsule and it's good for you. It just doesn't do very much for inflammation unless you extract the curcumin out and then even that doesn't have a good absorption rate. So blending it with the turmeric, essential oils and the sunflower lecithin launch the absorption where it's literally absorbing two hundred to five hundred times better than the turmeric Indian spice that you started with. And that's the form of ninety five. That's the form that Baylor University of Texas is using to literally treat cancer and chronic pain with incredible results. I mean, the cancer story is very cool. Inflammation is the root of the root system of cancer. Joe: Mm, huh. Tim: So that's an example where it's like oh man form so saucing, NZDF, GMP, great facility forms of nutrients. Those are the big three that you want to look at to know quality. Right. So that's what I always tell somebody, find somebody that you can trust. So for you guys, it might be your your doctor that your wife worked with for in Madison, Wisconsin. A lot of people trust the healthy place to help guide them, know we don't do commission so that we can just recommend what's best so Joe: Right. Tim: People can use that live chat feature on our website to just ask those questions. But find a health food store maybe that is trustworthy in your home town, that you do meet a job like my mom met John Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Or find a store like mine that you can connect with and you can go to when health strikes, health problems strike because everybody has some conditions, some problem, something, even if it's something as simple as fatigue, you know. Ninety two percent of fatigue is related to your adrenal glands. You can strengthen your adrenal glands and you can have more vibrant energy every day. And people just don't know that. So they keep reaching for the coffee or the soda or the caffeine pills, what have you. So get somebody on your team that you can trust. Joe: So go. So you said at one point in this conversation that do you have over 4000 Tim: Products, yeah. Joe: Excuse now, right? OK, so let's just take that as an example. It's a full time job for someone like you to be the Tim: Yes. Joe: Gatekeeper Tim: Yeah. Joe: Of your of the healthy place. You have to be the gatekeeper to say, yes, this comes into our door and gets put on ourselves or in our e-commerce store or Tim: The. Joe: No, this doesn't meet the criteria. So to me, it feels like it's continuing education and literally a full time job for whoever that person. Let's just say it's you at the moment that Tim: Yeah. Joe: Is the person that says yay or nay on these products. So it's just mind boggling what is out there and what you have to do to sort of educate yourself to to say, yes, this makes the cut, not only doesn't make the cut, but it's in a product. It's not a product and not a C product, you Tim: Yeah, Joe: Know what I mean? Tim: You're Joe: So. Tim: Absolutely right. And it's like reading a book, though, you don't want to minimize what I do, it's like it's not hard for you to read English, you know, after you've learned it. But if you're learning a new language, it looks like totally confusing. Overwhelming can take me forever to learn this language. And it might take some years to learn it. Once you have that language mastered, it's just like reading a book, you know, Joe: Yeah. Tim: You just check the boxes, right. OK, where is the source from NSF? GMP, what's the forms of these nutrients? Because you start to learn and then you have experts that you follow. A lot of people smarter than me that I follow. Dr. X, Dr. While, Dr. Whitaker, Dr. Northrup. And you start Terry Lambrew and you start to follow these gurus in the southern industry that have been there for 40 years, that know so much more than you. And you're reading their literature, listening to their podcasts. They're the symposiums around the planet that are going on for this breakthrough, that breakthrough. You get the subscriptions right to the. So I just tell everyone, get plugged in at least where you're getting encouraged on a regular basis to own your health, build your terrane strength in your health and all the ways that you can inspire yourself on a regular basis and then get somebody on your team that you can trust to help guide you in the space, because it is a new language, right? Joe: It's nuts, it's just it's so frustrating. Did a three month vegan plan Tim: Nice. Joe: Because Tim: Yeah. Joe: I'm not vegan, but I loved it like it was good for me. But I Tim: Yeah. Joe: Actually I actually, in the process, lost a lot of muscle mass because I was also going always going to the gym. But all of a sudden I started to shrink both, Tim: Right, Joe: You Tim: Like, Joe: Know. Tim: No. Joe: So, yes, I'm like, I'm doing all this hard work. And it's just I needed to get on a B 12 vitamin of something. And it's funny because I don't even know what I'm taking, but it's something that I got from Amazon and Tim: Your Joe: I Tim: I can do it. I've been assigned to general Joe: I'm sure. Tim: Check that Joe: So Tim: After Joe: I'm going Tim: The program. Joe: To look when yeah. When we're done, I'm going to look and then I'm going to and then I'm going to say I need a direct line to Tim in Tim: There Joe: The Tim: We Joe: Chat Tim: Go. Joe: Room. Tim: Yeah. Joe: So have you ever thought of franchises? Tim: I have, I Joe: And Tim: Have. Joe: And I'm Tim: You Joe: Just interested you don't have to you don't have to Tim: Know, Joe: Say to. Tim: I'm so I am very interested and I have been kicking that ball around in my head for a long time because we are we specialize in education, right. So you got to find ways to duplicate yourself in a franchise. And so we created a three month curriculum that our wellness consultants have to go through. They have to pass quizzes and tests and they have to get certifications from this company, this company and MKB certification, all the enzyme certifications to understand the industry, know what questions to ask customers and how to make recommendations. So that's one of the hardest things that we've done that would make it more easy to duplicate the knowledge side of our company and our brand. And as I've talked to people who have created franchises, the the legal side to it is one hurdle and then enforcing them to actually maintain your model as representing the healthy place. What we have created is the two big unknowns for me as far as difficulty. So then the choice came, should we just keep adding brick and mortars in our own territory? Right, right. In the Madison area and then put all of our energy and focus into our brands that we've created and our website because there's infinite you can do in the business world and you kind Joe: Mm Tim: Of Joe: Hmm. Tim: Have to choose. Joe: Yeah. Tim: So we decided to park the franchise idea for now and really go after lively vitamin CO. This is one of the brands that have been borne out of our brick and mortar stores. So now we're selling that to other health food stores around the country. And the number two is build find your healthy place dotcom, because just like Amazon is a freakin mammoth, there's so much opportunity to impact and power and educate everything that I'm passionate about on that website. So currently with four kids, we are chilling on the franchise idea. But I think it's brilliant because there's not there's not the option out there, which is why it keeps coming back to me Joe: Yeah, Tim: Like Joe: Yeah. Tim: There's not that many health food stores out there that really care. Soulsby for sales. You know, as one of my Joe: Mm Tim: Saying Joe: Hmm. Tim: That, Joe: I Tim: I really Joe: Love that, by the way, I love that. Tim: Thank you. Thank you. There is a time I was praying and it was like not I it going to make my friggin mortgage. When I first opened the store, I was praying to God for sales and I was like, God to declare bankruptcy here is brutal. And it was like an arrow is like, do you care about their soul as much as you care about the sales? Joe: Yeah. Tim: And it was kind of striking. So, yeah, there's not that many stores out there that really care about the human that have knowledge to help guide them and a model that works to help people, you know. So it's still an idea that keeps coming back to me. So Joe: Right. Tim: We'll see. Joe: Yeah, well, good luck if it happens, I'm sure it'll be great. Tim: Thank you. You see one popping up next door, you'll know where to get your V12. Joe: There you go. So you hit upon this a moment ago with the whole franchising thing of how to actually create this template and create a strict thing where where the people that are talking to your customers are very educated and they're giving the right information and asking the right questions. So how have you done that with the people that are at your current stores and how have you done that with the people that are on the other end of the chat? When somebody files in to ask these questions, Tim: Yeah, so. Joe: How do you get something like when is somebody OK? You're ready to take a call, you're ready to be on the chat, you're ready to to advise a customer in the store, like, what's that process? Tim: Yeah, Joe: And you don't Tim: So. Joe: Have to go too deep. I just Tim: No, Joe: I Tim: No, Joe: But Tim: That. Joe: I'm sure somebody is going to say, like, hey, Tim, super educated on this. So every time I talk, like I just said, you know what I call him on the chat, I want him, you Tim: Right. Joe: Know. So Tim: Right. Joe: How to how do you duplicate Tim so that everyone that's coming in on the chat or walking in the store says this is just a clone of Tim like he may. He's already run them through the ringer, you know? Tim: Yeah, that's so the three month curriculum that we created is our pride and joy. I'm so thankful for that. It was brutal to create. So I created one hundred videos, having a five minute conversation where I'm explaining different parts of the world and explaining brands and what to look for and how to explain it. And then we'll go through they'll have to pass quizzes and tests based on each module. So there's nine different modules to this curriculum. They have to go through trainings with specific companies. They have to do a number of roleplaying activities with our managers where they pretend to be the customer Joe: Mm Tim: And Joe: Hmm. Tim: Coming in, hey, I'm looking for some CBDs. What do you got? And so they get tested there and they have to get these certifications from each of these brands, so they have to pass it. So there's one guy who got to the end and he is like, OK, dude, we got to rewind because you're not retaining this stuff. So either you did the last minute cramming for this quiz the night before. And like I didn't I did that in high school. Joe: Ok. Tim: And then you don't retain it, right. Joe: Yeah. Tim: So do you really care about this or not? So he had to start over. He had to go through it again. So it's a team. We have a leadership team of five. And so we have these nine modules, the quizzes, the tests. They have to pass them. They have to do the role playing. And then the leadership team of five will say, OK, this person's ready or they're really not ready. And there's still a couple of parts of our team where we're like, OK, where they can be a wellness consultant in the store, but we don't think they're ready to be on live chat. So then we'll wait maybe six months until they have a little bit more experience, because where our team learns the most is from the customers coming in asking the questions and they don't know the answers of how to treat colitis Joe: Mm Tim: With Joe: Hmm. Tim: Whatever. So then they have to go find out to get back to that customer and then they learn something. So right now, I'm proud to say our live chat feature on our website, if you go to find your other place, dotcom lower, right. You get that little live chat bubble, the seven different consultants that you might run into over there are, I wouldn't say clones of Tim because I think they're smarter than me, but they are really well equipped and able to match, kind of hit the mark of where they need to be. And they all know and are passionate enough about helping people to not. One of the first things that I'll tell them is, dude, never bullshit. Joe: Yeah, yeah. Tim: That's a real thing. And I came from a I won't say anything negative where it's just more about getting the sale, about getting that commission. And and that's part of why we don't do commissions. So it's a fun process for intense. Joe: Well, that's great, man. Yeah, so I want to respect your time. We're down to the wire. I want to make sure I didn't miss anything that you want to talk about. So you have four stores in Wisconsin. Tim: Madison, Joe: Correct. Tim: Wisconsin, the. Joe: Ok, and you have the website Tim: Find your healthy place, Dotcom. Joe: Buying your healthy place, Dotcom. Anything else that I missed that is important that we talk about? Tim: You know, dude, I mean, as I was thinking about this program and your followers, like what your mission is, you're trying to encourage entrepreneurs, trying to encourage people to be thankful for life. You don't Joe: Mm Tim: Take Joe: Hmm. Tim: To treat life like the gift it is, you Joe: Yep. Tim: Know? So I did want to offer your followers a coupon code. If they don't have you know, if you have a health food store in your own home town, that's great sport. Those guys, if you have somebody on your team, that's awesome. That's my main passion. And if you need a resource that you can trust, if you go to find your healthy place dotcom and you get something type in coupon code, Castelo, and that'll give 30 percent off the full price on anything on our whole website, we have thousands of products. So anything from V12 to something more intense. And regardless if you buy something or not, use that live chat feature to ask questions. You know, I've had people call my cell phone bill. Hey, Jim, you know, I'm in Wholefoods right now and I'm looking at three different multivitamins. Like which one do you think I should get? You know, and I get to tell them and it's fun and you can share the love. And so use that live chat feature as a resource, because more than ever, dude, we need natural alternatives. We need some education we at least need to know about, like Joel and your Joe: Yeah, Tim: Life partner. Dude, Joe: Yeah. Tim: What if she didn't have that naturopathic doctor that gave her some natural supplements through one of the most intensive crisis's that she ever faced in her life? Like, you know, in your gut that that helped her in a dramatic way because you watched her do P ninety three, the cancer experience. Joe: Yeah. Tim: I mean, that's a miracle, dude. And it took somebody reaching out and it took a resource being willing to respond to create that miracle, you know. And so that's what I want for people. Joe: Yeah, it's I can't stress it enough that Tim: Right. Joe: What I saw before my very eyes every single Tim: Right. Joe: Day and it would and then I see people that are going through cancer of some type and they're only being treated, Tim: As Joe: You know, Tim: A medical doctor, yeah. Joe: And they're their body is just being crushed. Tim: Yes. Joe: And there's and there's nothing, no nothing helping to offset the chemicals and all of the harshness Tim: Know. Joe: Of that treatment. And so. Tim: Right, and let me say, you know, you saw it with somebody you loved very much, I saw it with my mom when I was five or six. And since then, I'm getting goosebumps. I have seen it for thousands of people through the last 11 years that the healthy place has been a company, thousands of people, not always cancer, but but we're talking depression, chronic pain, Crohn's disease, asthma, like people suffering like megacorp. There's so much suffering going on Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: In the world and there is natural alternatives that people literally don't know about. They have nobody in their world telling them. So they just listen to whatever mainstream media or their medical doctor Joe: Yeah. Tim: Or their pharmacist. And there's a lot of good people with good intent in those areas. It's just there's not the voice of natural alternatives. So we need to know about this stuff. We've got to get the word out. Joe: Yeah, it's great, man, I love what you're doing, and this Tim: Think. Joe: Was exciting for me and and I think I actually have your personal email, so I'm just going Tim: That's Joe: To I'm Tim: Awesome. Joe: Going to go I'm going to go ten. I need Tim: You Joe: More Tim: Should. Joe: Energy, Tim. I think I think I have inflammation. And I'm going Tim: Yeah, Joe: To be like. Tim: I know you should, and if anyone's listening to and they because sometimes, you know, they just have a trust factor or whatever, Tim at Find Your Healthy Place Dotcom. I am happy to take emails. This what I get to do all day, dude, and it's just fun. It's so rewarding. You just get to point people in the right direction and help them out. So I love it. Joe: I wish you all the luck in the world, this is a Tim: Thank you. Joe: This is a great thing that you're doing. It's nice to have somebody who is, like you said, it's it's Soulsby before sales. It's a great it's a great way to do it. And I think Tim: Thank Joe: You'll be Tim: You. Joe: Rewarded continually be rewarded for doing Tim: Thank Joe: It that Tim: You. Joe: Way. I'll put everything in the show notes. Thank you for the coupon for the listeners Tim: Now. Joe: And I'll make sure I have all the correct links. So find your healthy place. Dotcom is the website. The company's name is the Healthy Place for locations in Madison, Wisconsin. You eventually might franchise someday, Tim: Yes, Joe: But Tim: And people on Facebook, you know, Joe: Yeah. Tim: The healthy people on Facebook, my wife's a genius as far as really caring for our community there. So you'll find a lot of good content and Instagram as well. So thank you, dear. This Joe: Yeah, Tim: Is. Joe: Tim, thanks so much, man, I really appreciate your time today and thanks for all the insight and I really do wish you the best of luck. Tim: Any time, brother, and wish the same to you. Joe: Thank you, Matt. Tim: I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I want to thank you for listening to my podcast. I know you have many options to listen to various podcasts, and I'm honored that you chose to listen to mine. I would love it if you were to rate my podcast Five Stars and write a nice review. It really helps to bring up the rankings of the podcast. Other listeners, once again, thank you so much for listening to the Joe Costello show. I appreciate you very much.
Mike C-Roc Ciorrocco is the CEO of People Building, Inc., and the powerhouse behind the "What Are You Made Of?" movement. He is a performance coach, author, dynamic public speaker, visionary, and thought leader. He has been featured by Yahoo! Finance as one of the Top Business Leaders to Follow in 2020 and is on a mission to build people. He is driven to inspire others and he measures his success on how he is able to help others achieve greatness. C-Roc had a fire lit in him at an early age. That fire has ignited him with a fierce desire to compel people to see the greatness inside themselves using past life events to fuel their fire. Past hardships can be a powerful gravitational force that keeps you down and forces you to think small. To get out of orbit you need Rocket Fuel. Mike "C-Roc" Ciorrocco shows you how to convert past adversity into ROCKET FUEL to break free from the negative pull of pain and despair. In his new book, C-Roc offers life-changing lessons in personal transformation by asking yourself What Are You Made Of? This powerful question will ignite within you a thrust to greatness! Learn how to overcome painful past obstacles and achieve a fulfilling life where you're in command of your future. If you're ready to shoot for the stars, C-Roc says, "Thrust is a must!" Strap in and get ready for the ride of your life. Mike's latest book: https://amzn.to/3wwkTX5 CEO - People Building, Inc. C-Roc's Website: https://www.mikecroc.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikeycroc/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikeciorrocco YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGWHuKojqZfcXmvGCAi_t1Q LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-ciorrocco/ Email: info@peoplebuildinginc.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Ok, welcome, everybody. Today, my guest is Mike "C-Roc" Ciorrocco. I'm really excited to have this talk with him and I know you're going to enjoy this. Mike, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Mike: Thank you, Joe. I'd like to start every interview that I go on with gratitude and just really express that to you for allowing me to come on and share with you. And thank you to your audience for listening and showing up. Joe: Absolutely, man, I love that gratitudes a huge thing in my life, so I'm right there with you. I appreciate it. I think it's important that everyone has their back story makes up sort of what they've become in life. You know, it doesn't define who they become. But there is something about what has happened throughout your life leading up to where you are now that has molded this person that you've become. And I Mike: Right. Joe: Am interested in that. And and I always start with this, just like you always start. What is it? What are you made of? Right. That's what you Mike: They Joe: Start Mike: Had to turn your head sideways, I love Joe: perfect! Mike: It, you know, now, you know, I came from a broken home. I don't remember my parents together, Joe. I grew up around a lot of broken people, alcoholics, drug addicts, people suffering from anxiety, depression. My grandmother committed suicide after taking too much anti anxiety or depression medication. You know, a lot of things I went through as a kid just watching just destruction. And, you know, I think that decisions we make and Focus's that we have either go towards living and surviving or destruction. And I was seeing the destruction part and I wasn't OK with that. And I didn't want to accept that. So I would always try to help people switch around even from a young age. I was just not OK with what I was seeing. And, you know, my mom when I was three or four years old, I just remember her always telling me that I inspired her and I was going to be a leader. And I think subconsciously, subconsciously, she was doing that because she knew what was going on in the family and knew that I was gonna have to deal with some things. And so I had that programmed into me. So I was always just looking for people to help, looking for people to show them a better way and not buying into what they were telling themselves. And so, you know, that's just something I experienced at a young age. And really when it came down, what lit my fire and what I made of, I would say, is rocket fuel. Because when I was eight, my mom was moving on to her third marriage and I wasn't really up for going into another man's house and learned another man's rules Joe: Hmm. Mike: And but decided to give my dad a try who was moving on to his second marriage. And at that time, you know. I broke my mom's heart by doing that. I didn't know that at the time, but she told me later on that, you know, she cried herself to sleep at night when I left and I was our first child, you know, and when I moved to my dad's, everything seemed fine at first. But after three years, you know, during that three years, there was a lot of conflict. You know, there's a when you had step parents into the mix, any time that stuff happens. The kid is the only link between the past relationship and so a lot gets taken out on the children and anybody that's been in a broken home that dealt with child support, custody battles every other weekend, things that parents jealous, things like just everybody that's been through that knows what I'm talking about. And so a lot of that time they're in from eight to 11 hours, experience a lot of emotional, psychological abuse threats, things like that that were really probably not directed towards me, but came my way. And at nine years old, I would sleep with my baseball bat a lot of nights Joe: Wow. Mike: Because I was scared. And no kid should have to go through that, through that, of course. But that's what went into making me look. I went through these things. I went through court, child psychologists, to see if I was mature enough that at a young age to figure out who I wanted to live with, like all that kind of stuff Joe: Make Mike: And. Joe: Your own decisions, all of that, that crazy. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, yeah, Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, Mike: And seeing parents fight Joe: Yeah. Mike: And, you know, just just not not happy environment, and so that's what went into me. But the thing is, is that I was always on the right side of the track. Thank God. I was always looking at how can I be better not being accepting of it. Let me look at the bright side of things. Let me look at, OK, what is this doing and how can I take advantage of using this to a better life? So one weekend I was coming home from my mom's house Joe: And Mike: And Joe: So Mike: I Joe: I don't mean to interrupt. Was this Mike: Noticed Joe: All Mike: For. Joe: In Maryland or all back on the East Coast or. Mike: This is in Pennsylvania, outside of Philly. Joe: Ok, cool. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Ok. Mike: So so my mom was living in Maryland, and you know what, I got to about 10, some 10 years old, give or take. I was coming home from my mom's house one day, one weekend after being there and my stomach was in knots. I was anxious. I don't want to go back. And my mom was saying something was wrong. She questioned me and I told her, you know, when you go through abuse, anybody that's been through abuse, you can probably relate to this. That one you don't just like to share because you're afraid that people won't believe you, too. You kind of you're so accustomed to going through it, you're not sure how bad it really is. Somebody on the outside would be like, holy cow, you're dealing with that really. Joe: Yeah. Mike: But as you're going through it, you just think it's ordinary. Another thing, maybe you're embarrassed that you let it go on for that long. And then the weirdest thing is that you're actually concerned with your abuser. You're like, what will happen if I share this to them? Joe: At. Mike: You know, just a weird thing. So I finally came came to the realization that I need to share that my mom said, you know, I'm going to get you out of there. I'm going to file court papers. You don't need to be going through that. That's not ordinary. You need to, you know, in a better situation, she said. But if you do if I do this, you need to stick to your guns. You've got to be like really, really firm because they're going to try to talk you out of it. And in life, when you believe in something, you've got to stick to your guns, man, because people will have agendas and they're going to try to talk you out of it, move one way or the other. And at the end of the day. If you do that, you're not going to live the life you want to live, so she reminded me that, you know, 10 years old, you know, filling my head with great stuff, you know, and I went back home that day and waited and waited weeks went by and waited for those court papers to be delivered. You know, I just knew it was going to happen. And I didn't tell my dad about it, of course. And then finally, one day I come home from school and the tension in the house, you could feel it like it was something was up. And I knew what the deal Joe: Mm Mike: Was. Joe: Hmm. Mike: I had to feel the first. I thought I did something wrong. You know, I'm looking around like, what did I do today? He had his papers in his hand. My dad did. And I knew, like, oh, here we go. And he told me to go to my room. Now, my dad was my hero. He had a successful masonry business, very hard worker, big forearms, rough hands. Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, you tell he's a hard worker and he always cared a wad of hundred dollar bills in his pocket. And I thought that was the coolest thing and had a rubber band around Joe: So Mike: It Joe: Did Mike: And. Joe: My partner, it's so buddy. Mike: Yeah, yeah, it must be the last thing Joe: Yeah, and. Mike: He would always show me the money, and I thought it was a cool hundred dollar bills, Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, so he came back in front of me and I didn't get into the discussion with him because my mom said, stick to your guns. So he proceeded to tell me how my mom would have guys coming in and out. Why would you want to go there? You have it made here. You have everything you need. They're poor. They don't have anything. You know, my mom was I mean, we look at the houses. Twenty five, thirty thousand. Our house broken down cars in the driveway. You know, we went on vacation to the Jersey Shore. Joe: Yeah. Mike: But we stayed in a rundown motel, one room for kids, two adults, and we were I just remember just the other day, we were actually able to bring some friends with us sometimes, which just makes it like just I don't even remember how that worked. And we would take black trash bags as a suitcase. So, you know, share my story. By the way, back in the day, I was kind of embarrassed by that. I just didn't like to share that, you know. Joe: Yep. Mike: But I started to realize that the more you share your story, the more impact you can have and the more people that can relate to it and maybe change your life for two Joe: Yep, Mike: Or millions, Joe: Yep. Mike: You know. So I started sharing that. But just to wrap it up real quick, so when I did confirm that my dad took that wad of hundred dollar bills out of his pocket, peeled one off, crumpled it up and threw it at me and said, if that's the case and you want to move there, you're going to need this when you're living on the street with your mother one day. And I remember that 30 some years I lived off that spark that was lit right there because I'm stubborn, my shirt that I think is, say, Joe: And. Mike: Stubborn, perversely unyielding, it's a good thing when it's on the right thing. But, you know, I was like, I'm not going to let that happen. And so 30 some years, I was driving off that spark until two years ago. I really subconsciously I was doing that. I really realized two years ago, wait a minute here, there's something magical that's going on. My life keeps going on its upward trajectory. No matter what happens, no matter screw ups, let downs, disappointments, what is happening here and what I found, which I wrote in my book that's coming out Monday, May 3rd on Amazon Rocket Fuel, I was taken everything that would stop normal human beings or slow them down, store it in my fuel tank instead of my truck, would weigh you down and converted it into rocket fuel for my future to become unstoppable. And I found that and I realized, wait a minute, this is not just a concept. This is an this is a law. If you do this, you really are unstoppable to live in the life of your dreams until you're plucked from this planet. So that's why I decided to write this book that Grant Carter wrote the foreword because it was so powerful. I got to get this message out to people. So that's a little bit about the story. There's you know, that's the short version, actually. Joe: No, that's all good. That's exactly what I wanted, the only piece that I still need to figure out is what did you do? How did you figure out what you wanted to do in life in that middle section of where people go to college or they get a job? Or what Mike: Yeah. Joe: Did you do during that time? Mike: Well, I played football and I didn't drink any alcohol or party all through high school, I played football, baseball wrestled, but football was my love Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: And I just I always thought about I want to go to Ohio State, play football, because I just love their team. I watched them play Michigan all the time growing up. And I never grew tall enough, never grew fast enough Joe: I feel your pain. Mike: That. Yeah. So five, six and three quarters, you got to be really, really fast if you're five, six Joe: Yeah. Mike: And three quarters. So I decided to go to Division three. I played football in college study business. But when I got to college, Joe, I lost my focus and I started chasing girls and party in which I never did before. And it was like Disney World first, you Joe: Yeah, Mike: Know what I mean? Joe: Yeah. Mike: And I just lost, man, I four, five, six, seven years in that range. I was just it's all I cared about was parties where the girls at and I need to be around people. And so that's that's the lead up to that. And then eventually I met my wife, who just the commitment to my wife straighten me up. And I was off to the races. I think that my thing with my wife right now, I joke with her all the time, is I have to outsource. I have to earn her spending on Amazon and deliveries to the house. So it's constantly like this. The other day she's like, I look I go up in the kitchen and there's a piece of decking, like the composite decking. Joe: Oh, you know Mike: We Joe: That Mike: Have Joe: That's Mike: A wood Joe: Going Mike: Deck. Joe: To be redone. Mike: And I'm like, I already told you, oh, not right now. It seems like I already had somebody come over measured Joe: Oh, Mike: On my car and drive back down into the cave. Joe: That's Mike: I call this my studio, my cave. I got to go make some money now. Joe: That's so Mike: A Joe: Funny. Mike: Great motivator. Joe: That is awesome. All right. Well, that's where and was college. Mike: Salisbury University in Maryland. Joe: Ok, and then ever since you've stayed in Maryland, Mike: Yeah, Joe: But Mike: I Joe: Now Mike: Moved Joe: You're Mike: To Joe: In Mike: Connecticut Joe: Ocean City, Mike: For a period of time, Joe: Yep, Mike: But we moved to Ocean City Joe: Yep. Mike: Now. Yep. Joe: Which is beautiful. I love it there. OK, cool. Yeah. And I'm Mike: Thank Joe: On the East Mike: You. Joe: Coast. I'm originally from New Mike: A Joe: York. Mike: Cool, Joe: So. Mike: Cool. Joe: So this leads right into the question that since you're going to do the decking, are you still doing. Are you still in the mortgage business because that's your. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, Mike: Yeah, Joe: Ok. OK. Mike: Yeah, we have a have a division that I run with three best friends, they take care of the day to day operations Joe: Yep. Mike: And it's a large division under our nation's lending. And we run it like our own business. And it's great people, great culture. It's just phenomenal. Joe: And Mike: So. Joe: You've been doing that quite a long time, right? I've saw Mike: Yet. Joe: You've gotten rated as number number one in Yahoo! Finance are right. I mean, you have. Mike: Yeah, so 2006, I got into it and started as a loan officer and just went from two employees and started a branch and vision and two employees up to 40. Joe: Wow, that's incredible. OK, cool. So when did you make this shift of and you talk about this in one of your videos about sharing your story and you share. You also mentioned it when you were giving your story, how important that is. And when did you make this when did you allow yourself to say, OK, I have this business and I have great partners and people to run this business? When did you decide to at least start your company now with what you're doing with your podcast, in your book and everything? What was the trigger for that? Mike: Yes, so early, twenty, nineteen, my stepfather, George, she took over from my dad when I was 11. He was a great guy and he passed away in twenty eighteen and a heart attack suddenly. And I wrote about this in the book, the story about how he found out and everything. It's it's you know, but but at the end of the day, he had a passion when he was passionate about something like football, baseball, hunting, fishing. He would get up and just go nuts, like deep voice, like everybody couldn't, like, really understand him. He was like so passionate, like they would be taken aback by him. And when he passed away, you know, a couple of weeks after he passed away, I had this passion or energy, something spirit come inside of me. Like, I just felt different. And I realized that I wasn't playing a big enough game in life. You know, I was doing well in the business and the mortgages and all that. But it just that's not the game that I was designed for. I was playing small and I started to realize, wait a minute, I need to open myself up to other opportunities, because if I just focus here, this is where I'm going to stay. And I was having truths that I was telling myself and beliefs that I was telling myself is that this is it for me. This is I'm stuck, you know, Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: I don't necessarily love the mortgage business. It's great and all that. But the end of the day, I just had a bigger, bigger calling. And so I started trying to figure out, OK, how can I get known in this calling of building people? Because that's what I actually do at the mortgage business. It wasn't the mortgage business. It was I was building people. I was helping develop people. And so I said, how can I get known more in a bigger, bigger scale mystate instead of just my town? Then I was like, that's not big enough. I'll come up short. How about the country and then the globe? And then I was like, you know, what? If I start really expanding my mind, I'm like, if there's aliens, which I've never seen one, but if there is, let me see if I can get aliens to know who I am and really go for that and then come up a little short and I'll be all right. And that's the way I started thinking about things and started trying to impact and share my story with tens of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people. How can I do that? And I started to obsess about that. And that's when the podcast came. The book idea came and and I just started networking like an animal and going on. You know, I've done three hundred interviews in the last year. Joe: Oh, that's crazy. Mike: So just really lean into it and that's how it all started, and then now I'm into tech, into the tech world where I'm developing a tech product. I co-founded the company. And also we have other we're creating a tech portfolio of other co-founders, non tech entrepreneurs that have ideas that think that they can never do it. They usually go to the grave with those Joe: Mm Mike: Things. Joe: Hmm. Mike: We're bringing them into the world and giving them the resources they need to actually co-found their companies and creating unstoppable people. Because my mission, Joe, is all people are unstoppable to live in the life of their dreams. And so everything I do, I filter through that mission. Joe: It's so cool, man, and it's so funny because you hit it right on the head with with the same thing with me, it's like you don't have a successful business. But I know it's not my calling. It's not what I was put here to do. And and everything that I do should be so much more impactful and so much bigger. And I've had this I had the conversation with David Meltzer. And at the same Mike: Yeah. Joe: Time, he brings you back in focus and he's like, yeah, but you should know that you you have everything you need. You just got to get out of your own way. It's not a matter that you should focus on wanting more. You have it all. You're just Mike: Yep. Joe: You're literally getting in your own way of getting it done. Mike: Yeah, and that's the thing, it's the truths that we tell ourselves we're living an illusion, we let the illusions that we have based on our beliefs and past experiences, and we let that affect us and limit us and block us. And really, at the end of the day, you know, we'd rather explain our life instead of actually intervening in it. We'd like to explain with excuses, you know, and justify things and, you know, at the end of the day, man, we just tell ourselves what we can tell ourselves that helps us survive. And to me, that's not good enough, because you're going to always come up a little short, so why not thrive and really go after it? And, you know, there's not everybody that's going to be able to do what we do. So why don't we take it up a notch and get get really abundance, like go after abundance so that we can help other people and distribute this information to other people. So that's the kind of things that I started thinking. I started hanging around people that coach and mentor me the right way, thinking big, you know, also, you know, still like Dave Meltzer talks about, you've got to be happy now. It's not like later, Joe: Yeah, Mike: So. Joe: Yeah, so I don't want to go down the current path, I follow him, I love the stuff that he does. I know that it fits the mold for a lot of people that are in the real estate world. And but Mike: Yeah. Joe: I also know that he's doing a lot of other things. But how he wrote the foreword to your book, which is amazing, how how much did he influence you making this jump to doing what you're doing now? Mike: So when George died, my stepfather, my brother was read in the next room and he said, Mike, you've got to read this book, this guy sounds just like you. I'll take a look at it. I started I saw Grant before and like pictures, but I thought he was like a real estate. Joe: Yep, Mike: I thought he trained realtors, Joe: Yep, Mike: I wasn't even sure, Joe: Yep. Mike: Right, so I read the book and I'm like, holy cow, this guy speaking to me, he's going through similar situations that I've been Joe: Yeah. Mike: Through. Like, I can totally relate. And I but but the big thing was about it was I've always had this big think, but I got cocooned for a while by people that I surround myself with that were broken thinkers, broken mindset, people, people that didn't fit my culture, but they produce. So I kept them around and people that quit on me. And I let that affect me personally. And I got into this situation where I was invalidated, me myself. I felt invalidated on being the animal that I actually am. And so when I was reading that book, I'm like, wait a minute, this this shows me something. I'm not the crazy one. Those people are the crazy ones. I have an animal. So I did unleash it. So I was able to unleash the beast and that's what it did for me. And then I just immersed myself in this content, hung around with all these people, build relationships inside his company, because I just want to be around those types of people. Joe: Yep. Mike: Great, great friendships. Like I said, Jerry Glantz, a friend of mine, I just you know, I'm proud to have them in my in my circle. And so when when I wrote the book, the book actually came from an idea that I got while I was interviewing grad on my podcast about I asked him the question, what would it take to get into outer space? Not like literally, but figuratively speaking, getting away from all the gravity and negative suppressors of people and things that can mess with you. When can you get that amount of money or that amount of whatever it is? And he said people aren't ready for that discussion. He said that's just something the answer doesn't people don't like the answer to that question and I'm like, well, what would it take? You know? And I started thinking about rocket fuel. Rocket fuel is what it would take. Take it all that stuff, converting it and fuel your way up there. And then once you do that, you remove all that stuff out of your way. There's nothing to stop you and you become unstoppable and indestructible. And that's the thought that started going through my head and I started obsessing about it. I'm like, I got to write this. So when I did that, I'm like the only person that would make sense to be writing the forward for this book is Grant. I don't know if he does afterwards. I don't know if he charged me. I don't know anything. I'm going to make it happen, though. And that's what I started thinking all the time. I just dwelled on it, wrote it down and. Book is almost done, and I made a phone call and there are some details that went into doing that and I just got done and his name is on the cover of the book is for Written Joe: Yeah, Mike: By Grant. Joe: Yeah. Mike: So that adds to credibility that I may not have had before, but the content in the book is just so powerful, man. It's just I actually can be honest with you about something like like I'm always honest, but like just totally transparent. I read that book over and over again during the editing process. Right. And I got so sick of it and because I've read it so much, but then I haven't read it in a while and I went back and my team, we go through in the morning and we'll pick a passage to read out of it just to see what what we come upon. And I don't even remember writing some of the stuff. I'm just like, wow, this is like this is really good stuff. Joe: That's cool, Mike: So it's a weird Joe: Yeah. Mike: It's a weird mind game when you're writing a book and then to see the actual finished product. It's a good time. Joe: That's really cool, yeah, I look forward to reading it, I it's, you know, just talking with you, I can tell we're in sync on a lot of this stuff. You're ahead of me because you wrote a book and I haven't done it yet, but I know that it's a good process to go through. Where did you figure out where you wanted to start in the book in regards to your life? Mike: So, you know, I started share my story that I share with you and I have other parts of my life in there, too, that are just crazy, blew people's minds. But I really what I did was I started writing in my phone while I was on airplanes and I would just write ideas in my phone and and I would write stories that happen in my life. And then my podcast, we transcribe the podcast episodes, the first few that were a monologue style, and we just created a framework. And then it doesn't look anything like it started. That's how I got started with it and just started, you know, what kind of what went into me, what am I made of? And I just went into that and started sharing it. And then the lessons that broke off from each of those things, because, you know, a lot of people have been through there's people that have been through a lot more than I have. But my story is pretty crazy. Like there's some stuff that happened to me that nobody could imagine going through. But I'm still here, brother, and I'm still going hard. Joe: I hear you. I see that and you brought up a good point and one of the videos that I watch where you said people discount their story, right? They don't think, why would anybody care? It's not that Mike: Yeah. Joe: Special. Well, when were you able to actually take your own thoughts as part of your own story and make that switch where you said, wait a second, you know, what I've gone through is important. If it can help one person in the world, that's value enough. I mean, when did you or did you not ever doubt that your story was powerful? Mike: No, so I would I never shared it and I saw Pete Vargas share his story on the 10x growth conference stage in twenty nineteen, I'm sitting there watching and this is the first big stage, I think, that Pete was on. He was nervous and scared and his face, you could tell, is sweating and he would tell you this. I'm friends with Joe: Mm Mike: Him, so Joe: Hmm. Mike: It's not something I'm talking about. Joe: Yeah, no, no. Mike: But I thought to myself, I'm watching that. I don't know who he was at that time, but he was telling a story about his father and he was like really connecting with me and the relationship and how he grew up in a rough spot. And then they came back together and how it all worked out. And I'm like, wow, this is just like powerful. I felt like everybody else disappeared in the place and it was just him talking to me. And I'm like, I need to learn how to do that. And if he can do it, I know I could do it. That's what went through my head. And I told the guys I was with when we got in the car afterwards, I'm like, I'm going to be on that stage. I'm going to share my story one day and I know I can do it. And so then I started sharing the story of one person, two people, five people. And they were like, that's all. I really can relate to that. Then I said, Well, shit, I need to go to ten million people Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: If I could do it and how can I do that? And that's when I started obsessing about getting known and sharing that story. And, you know, I was able to talk to Pete after that and actually learn from him how to share your story. And but I shared that that that story about seeing him in the audience and how everybody just disappeared and how he connected with me. And so it's pretty powerful stuff, Joe: Yeah, Mike: Man. Joe: That's really powerful, but that's got to be a little eerie to just be sitting there Mike: The. Joe: And all of a sudden it's just like a movie where everything around you blurs out and it's just Mike: Yeah. Joe: The two of you. Yeah, Mike: Yeah. Joe: That's incredible. Something real light like question I have for you. The logo is it is a logo. And I'm going to take a guess and I'm probably going to be wrong. And you're going to say, well, nice try, Joe, but does it have anything to do with the Lynch? Mike: So the sirocco, the blue. Joe: Yeah. Mike: Yeah, so it's just upside down, see, and in two hours that are, you know, for Cerak and then it just has a little dude in there holding up the world, if you can see him. That's what it has now. It doesn't. I Joe: Ok, Mike: Didn't see that. So linchpin, Joe: Only because Mike: Huh? Joe: When I read some stuff from you talking about, you know, in some of the verbiage that I read about you and on your website, you mention Mike: Yeah. Joe: The word linchpin. I can't remember the context, but it was. Mike: Yeah, no, you know what, I. Joe: And then when I looked at a picture of a lynchpin, I was like, wait, it is Mike: I Joe: Round. Mike: Got to Joe: And Mike: See what a picture of a linchpin Joe: You Mike: Looks like Joe: See Mike: Because Joe: Now Mike: Because, Joe: I have Mike: You know, Joe: You thinking. Mike: Like that's. Yeah, I got to look at this because maybe maybe, yeah, maybe it does, Joe: The. Mike: So I didn't design the logo myself I had professionally done, and maybe he had that in mind as well. Joe: Only because it's mean you could kind of say it a little bit. I don't know. Mike: Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying, Joe: Right, Mike: Yeah, Joe: It's Mike: No, Joe: Round Mike: I didn't Joe: With Mike: Have Joe: The Mike: That. Joe: With the thing through it, and I'm thinking, OK, well, maybe it's kind Mike: Yeah. Joe: Of hinting towards it and and I Mike: Now, Joe: Said, Mike: It was really just the sea Joe: Yeah. Mike: And the two hour and holding up the world and helping lift up the Joe: That's Mike: World, Joe: Cool, Mike: That's what Joe: That's even cooler, so you can Mike: The. Joe: Throw my idea right out the window, Mike: Now, Joe: But Mike: I Joe: I Mike: Like that, I like that. Joe: Do I do some upfront investigation of the person I'm talking to in the life and all of that stuff. And I saw that, you know, because you're doing your mortgages. And I saw that Jennifer is in real estate and I don't Mike: Yeah. Joe: Know if she still is, but. Mike: Yes, yes. Joe: So that's a really cool synergy between the two of you, first of all, I think that probably works really well. But just for the people in the audience who had a great relationship with their significant other, how important has that been in the balance of your life, especially what you went through as a young, you know, a young man being able to have that support in and you found the love of your life and it's you know, there's that whole synergy there between you. Mike: Yeah, I mean, it's it's everything, I mean, like I said, I made a joke about trying to earn her spending with that, but then on the day she does a great job, she did she was a stay at home mom for a while until our youngest was in school. And then I said, you know what? I'm going to try to you know, we've got to figure out something because I'm giving deals away Joe: Uh huh, Mike: To people. Joe: Yep. Mike: And, you know, it would be great if you get a license and she ended up doing it. And she's just the type that if she gets into something, she goes hard with it. And she did great the first two years, just fantastic. I didn't even realize how much money she made last year until I saw ten ninety nine. I'm like, wow, you did great. But she's just phenomenal and aligns well with our business. Obviously I don't do mortgages much anymore. Joe: Yeah. Mike: I don't do it all. I just I work on the business maybe an hour a day. My team runs the day to day. They do a fantastic job. And so but it aligns well, obviously in a lot of our people, their spouse got their real estate license, too, because it aligns so well. Joe: Mm hmm. Yeah. Mike: So, yeah, but but at the end of the day, we are you know, I'm very clear with what I'm trying to do, my dreams. And she is clear on the fact of her dreams and the fact that she's willing to support me and run through fire for me. And Joe: Yeah. Mike: It's just a great feeling because I can't do it without her, obviously. Joe: Yep, yep, I just wanted to sort of bring that up, because I think it's important I have the same sort of relationship with Joel Mike: And Joe: And Mike: It's Joe: My significant Mike: Awesome. Joe: Other. So it's Mike: Yeah. Joe: To me, it's super important. And with what happened with covid, you know, a lot of things just stopped. Right. And Mike: Mm hmm. Joe: Changes were made. And so she got furloughed from doing her day to day job and has not been brought back. But she's always had this dream of doing photography. And so now I basically have said to her, you are not going back and you are going to from this point forward until whenever the world ends for you, you're going to follow your dream. So I Mike: Awesome. Joe: Think it's important. Right. And to Mike: Yeah. Joe: Support each other and it's nice to see that you have that same relationship. Mike: Yeah, so, so, so important that it aligns I mean, so much conflict comes from just not being aligned with the mission, Joe: Yep, Mike: You know, Joe: Yep. Mike: And I think that people need to realize that their personal dream, their mission, I call it their purpose, their mission. It's it's more important than anything when it comes down to it really is. Joe: Yeah. Mike: And that's why it's so important to share that with your partner, to make sure that they're on the same page with you. Joe: So let's talk about that. I'm sure I'm probably older than you at this point, but we're Mike: Yeah, Joe: At Mike: Definitely, definitely. Now Joe: The. Mike: I'm 40, I'm 40 for some, I'm Joe: Oh, Mike: A Joe: My gosh, I'm so Mike: Young Joe: Old, Mike: Pup, Joe: I can't. Mike: But I am going on 18 years of marriage. This May so. Joe: Congratulations, that's awesome, yeah, Mike: Thank Joe: Joel Mike: You. Joe: And Mike: Thank Joe: I Mike: You. Joe: Are 20, I think, at this point. Mike: Ok, cool, congrats. Joe: Yeah, I turned fifty nine this past February, so, Mike: Oh, man, I Joe: You know. Mike: Can't tell. I really can't Joe: Yeah, Mike: Tell. Joe: Well thank Mike: Maybe Joe: You. Mike: That's why that's why you shave your head, because that way you can't see any Joe: That's Mike: Gray hairs. Joe: Exactly, exactly right. They got my eyebrows Mike: Hey, Joe: Are still dark, Mike: Look, I'm with you the way the. Joe: So do you ever look at where you are now and you look back and go? I mean, and I think we've talked about this with some of the great people, like, you know, we can bring up David Meltzer again because he's just he's like one of my mentors. I love the guy at the Mike: Is Joe: Death. Mike: Awesome. Joe: You know, what is what's the saying? Something like the the teacher. The teacher appears when the student is ready, Mike: Yeah. Joe: Right? Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah, teachers. Joe: Yep. Mike: Yep, exactly. Joe: And it's the same thing with life. Like things come when the time is right. And some people would argue against that. Some people would say whatever. But you just started on this path now, right. Something flipped when you're 40, when your stepfather passed away, it said there's you know, and you might have felt that your whole life because you people like you and I always were pulled towards something. Right. We're entrepreneurs. We've always worked towards a greater goal of whatever. Do you ever look back and go, God, I wish I had started this sooner? Or is it like, no, it's this is the time. This is the right time. It's happening now. You know, I'm interested in what your thought process is on that. Mike: Well, I'm curious, asking the question, you must have felt some kind of feeling about that in the past, maybe. Joe: I constantly go like I had, I chased another dream up until this point, and that Mike: Yeah. Joe: Dream didn't happen for me and I openly admit all the time that I didn't put in the work to make that dream happen. I'm Mike: The. Joe: I'm a trained you know, I went to college for music. So my whole life has been surrounded by music. And one day I was going to tour the world and be this famous drummer for and I always use the example because I love his music. John Mayer. Mike: Yeah. Joe: That never happened for me because I know now I can look myself in the mirror and go, You didn't put in the work. You didn't put in the Mike: Yeah, Joe: Tent. Mike: The commitment, Joe: Yeah. You Mike: Yeah. Joe: Didn't do the ten thousand hours. You Mike: Yeah. Joe: You would rather had gone down to the college campus bar and had a bunch of beers and chicken wings with your buddies Mike: Yep. Joe: Instead of going back into the practice room and spending another four hours at night. So I am fine with I get it now, but now Mike: Yeah. Joe: I'm trying to take like the rest of my life and make it amazing and live much Mike: Yeah. Joe: Bigger. And so I am at the stage right now doing that change, shifting Mike: Mm hmm. Joe: My my frame of mind. I know the world is abundant. I know that everything you know, I just have to look towards the good of everything. And the more I focus on the good and the abundance and the gratitude, more of it just keeps coming in. In the last two months, it's been incredible for me. And so and it's I always was the oh, woe is me. Like I work my ass off. Why am I not getting that? Why am I not Mike: Yep, Joe: Doing that? So Mike: Yeah. Joe: That's why I asked you this question Mike: Yeah, Joe: When that, Mike: Yeah. Joe: You know, was the shift with your with Mike: Yeah. Joe: Your father, your stepfather passing away and you just saying when you said you felt it in your heart, you were like, I need to do something bigger. Was that the pivotal point for this? Mike: Yes, it was, and I did look back and be like, man, I cannot believe when I started finding out things and becoming aware of things, I cannot believe I didn't start this sooner. I didn't know that. Like, I just felt like I had wasted I went through a period of time where I felt like I wasted time and time is so valuable. And I said, you know what? I don't know how much longer I have on this planet, but you know what, at this point, the window keeps shrinking. I got to pick up my urgency. I got to move faster. I got to demand more and be louder and be more impactful and be just more intense than I would have had to if I started a long time ago, that's all. And so at first I did look back and with some regret. But then I quickly got out of that and said, OK, what have we got to do to get this done in the window that I do have left? So, yeah, I definitely and that was the pivotal, pivotal point, of course, working towards it my whole life, not knowing it. Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, there's a story in the Bible and they made a movie about it with Steve Carell about Noah's Ark. You know, it was told over some years he took to build this big arc and he didn't really know why he was doing it, he was just being told to do it by God. If you believe in God, Joe: Hmm. Mike: Which I do, or if it's intuition or whatever. And he got these animals and people were laughing at him and discouraging them and he just kept doing it anyway and building a ship in a place where there's never rain. Joe: All right. Mike: And did it make sense, it didn't seem to make sense at the moment, but he kept doing it and he kept being committed and doing it and doing it and doing it before you know it. The rain came, washed everybody away, and he survived with all the animals that he had and his family. And so I look at that lesson and I started to see this now. I started to see that the things when I'm committed and obeyed to my purpose, my mission, and I filter things through that, whether it's the people I hang out with, my actions, my words, my thoughts, my environment, when I start to filter through that mission. I'm obeying what I'm supposed to be doing and things just magically work out and I start to see opportunities everywhere, but when I don't do that, they're missing. And so you don't need to know what the end game is necessarily. You should be shooting for something, but just be looking for the opportunities. As long as you're obeying your mission and filtering everything through your purpose or mission or whatever you want to call it. Joe: Yeah. All right, well, that makes me feel good that I'm not the only one that had some regrets, so thank Mike: The. Joe: You for being vulnerable and saying that because I definitely have gone through it and I have like I said, I'm older than you. So I think, you know, think, Mike: None of us are alone, Joe. None of us are, you Joe: Ok. Mike: Know, I've anything that you go through, there's somebody else out there experiencing it for sure. Joe: Right, and I think that's what you're a lot of what you talk about is it's so important to share your story because it literally could help one person, which would be a huge help. You never know where they are in their state of mind. And if it lifts them, that's awesome. But imagine being able to help tens of thousands of millions of billions of people. Right. So I understand that's what the goal is for people like us who want to do that. So I I wish you the best of luck in doing that. And and same Mike: Thanks. Joe: With myself. Mike: Yeah, Joe: They've Mike: You, Joe: Got Mike: Too. Joe: To get it done. Mike: That's right, Joe: Ok, Mike: That's right. Joe: So you said something earlier about the book, which is the name of the book is Rocket Fuel. And you said it's May, May 3rd. Mike: Yeah, May 3rd, Monday, May 3rd, it's coming out on Amazon, and, you know, it should be a best seller based on we have we presold it. So I'm thinking that it's not going to have a problem being a best seller, number one best seller. Joe: Yep. Mike: What we shall see. But I'm going to do a bunch of lives that day, Instagram and Facebook lives, and just have some fun with it Joe: Cool. Mike: And celebrate. Joe: Ok, cool, so let's talk about it a little bit. Mike: Sure. Joe: You said something earlier that I thought was really cool, which was taking you said something about taking whatever comes in and not putting in it in the trunk, but putting it in the fuel tank and making rocket fuel. So explain Mike: Yep, Joe: That again Mike: Very Joe: To me, because Mike: Good. Joe: I I loved Mike: Yeah. Joe: It when you said I was like and I didn't even write it down. Mike: Yeah. Joe: I was like, no, that's got to go up here in my brain. So I would love to Mike: Well, Joe: Hear that again. Mike: Well, when you want something in life and things come your way to stop it or slow you down, if you remove a one thing, obviously that's going to help. But removing is not good enough for me. So I take all that stuff. Haters, people that discourage me laughed at me. What I'm trying to do, screw ups of my own people trying to screw me, all that stuff I just stored in my fuel tank. And usually people put it in their trunk and that weighs them down. You know, most people quit on their dreams because other people are talking Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: About them and saying, no, you're not the same. Why are you doing that? In all kinds of different things? I take all that and say, you know what, like here's an example, by the way, I stored in my tank, my fuel tank, to convert it into rocket fuel rather than my trunk, where it weighs me down. And some of the people closest to me, you know, like some of my business partners and friends and they know who they are. I talk to them about it. And I said, you know what? You keep saying the stuff like, hey, why don't you go do your podcast? Hey, you know, just this stupid digs like that, right? At the end of the day, they're trying to get at me, but they're really just talking about themselves, reflecting upon themselves and the fact that they should be doing that and they're not. And so I know that. And I tell people, you know, you want to say that, great, you're not going to achieve what you think you're going to achieve because all you're doing is giving me more fuel and I'm going to push it even harder. So when somebody says that to me, I'll do it on purpose, where I'll push harder and then I'll show it up in their face a little bit more to about. They're seeing so many posts on Instagram, I'll make sure I send it to them in a direct message, because that way it shuts them Joe: Yeah, Mike: Up Joe: Yeah, Mike: For Joe: It's weird, I don't Mike: Not Joe: Understand, Mike: Being. Joe: I don't understand, like people want to bring you down to their level, right? We deal with that all the time. And and social media has done so much to expose those people. And I just don't understand why they can't be happy for you. But they. Mike: Well, they can't because so I've already realized this in my mind now I know this, it's not them personally, it's their mind. And what it's happening is they just the subconscious mind just justifies where you are. It's trying to justify the truths that you told yourself and when something comes in to threaten that. You have to basically there there things fire off to protect their subconscious beliefs, and so it's not really them personally that's doing it and that's why you can't take it personal. You need to understand it. And then when they're doing it, you need to lay it out to them and let them know, hey, listen, I know what's going on here. I get it. You're where you are and you're trying to justify where you are. And you're saying this stuff to me. I don't take it personal, by the way. I use it as fuel. So thank you. And if you want to say more, continue to give me fuel. Great. But I would rather be able to help you. On break the like, just open up your truths and change them, change your beliefs. And expand your mind and see what you can achieve instead of worrying about what I'm doing and that's the way I handle it, I don't really get fired up or angry or take it personal. It's just a situation where they're going through it. And I think we've all been through it Zoom. I think I'm more understanding of it, Joe: Yeah. Mike: But I will not. But if they don't listen to me when I talk about that, I will not spend time with them because I'm not going to spend time with people that don't align with the mission. Joe: Totally agree. So the book Rocket Fuel coming out May 3rd on Amazon, who is this book for? Mike: Specifically, this is for people that have gone through things in life. And they feel like they keep getting held back or slowed down by things are stopped and they're just they're just done with it. They're they're at the point right now where they've had enough. They're getting sick of where they are and they want to do something about it. And they are looking for that breakthrough that that that superpower, because really it is it's like John Maxwell, House leadership, because this thing is so powerful. And I validated it so, so thoroughly that it's a law, it's the Rockefeller law. And so it's for people that are just sick and tired of being where they are. And they want to advance. They want to have a better life, life of their dreams. And I believe, like I said, my mission is all people are unstoppable to live in a life of their dreams. And so that's what's for. Joe: Yeah, and I saw that it seems like part of the focus is about past pains and obstacles and how you you basically help with the book to to change, take people and turn it around and say, you know, like you're saying, use those things as rocket fuel to get you to the next level. So don't lean on them. Don't have them in the trunk, don't have them as baggage, but instead take what you've learned, take what has happened and convert it to rocket fuel by doing whatever you talk about in the book. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Right. Mike: Yeah, the magic, the magic, here's the magic, right? The magic is when you have something happen and you get that feeling in your chest, that's where it hits me, by the way, like something Joe: Hmm. Mike: Bad happens and like this speed to which you can recognize that and convert it and look for opportunity. That's when you master the Rockefeller law. That's what it's all about, the longer time it takes, the more doubt creeps in, Joe: Yeah. Mike: A more negative energy creeps in, the more victimhood creeps in. And the missed opportunities happened during that period. So you want to shrink that window to as little as short as possible because we all feel it. We're all going to still feel it when something bad happens at first, but recognize it as fast as possible and start to look for the opportunity, not play the victim role, take responsibility for everything. Joe: Yeah, that's great. OK, I want to honor the time we have that we so we're going to do an hour or so. I want to just go through this real quick. So you have your own podcast, which is what are you made of? Which is on the wall behind you, where you interview. I assume, you know, other entrepreneurs and people that have amazing stories to tell and share. You release one week, twice a week with a human. Mike: Well, it started out once a week and then I had so many that I was doing, I had to do two weeks. Right now we're on a two week schedule. Joe: Ok. Mike: So, yeah, I just load up. I go hard, man. Like, if I see somebody I want to show, I go after him like an animal. I get them on the show and I don't care how many I've already had in the can. I just still just keep loading them up Joe: That's awesome. Mike: And uh. Yeah. So. Joe: Ok, cool. Besides that, you are you do some performance coaching, correct? You do some coaching in general, you Mike: Yeah. Joe: Are doing some speaking. You're going to continue to to build that Mike: Yeah. Joe: That part of your career. You're going to be on stage with Grant one of these days. Mike: Well, yeah, but so the coaching part, I want to do, the coaching part of switching that into, you know, I still have a couple of clients, but really focusing on the tech side of things and developing these entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs into this tech world and using my specialty performance and business coaching and what have you into that, not getting paid directly for it. But but from the companies that I'm developing, Joe: Yeah. Mike: I'm really focused on that. And then I was on a 10x growth stage this past March. Joe: Oh, congratulations. Mike: Let me tell you, it took me two years to step on that stage. Joe: Hey, Mike: Thank you. Joe: That's awesome. The tech thing is it is there more that you can tell us about it or a way that people can find out about it or a. Mike: Yes, so the best thing to do, really, I mean, if you if you message me and follow me on Instagram, you're going to see all kinds of stuff coming out here very shortly on it. But I have a tech product called Blueprinted. It's being printed. This is my the one I co-founded. And this product basically, I looked at digital training and video training and I saw, like, how ineffective Joe: Mm Mike: It was Joe: Hmm. Mike: And the fact that only 20 percent of people actually complete the courses. So that means the people that are marketing these courses that are good at marketing are making money without concern for the Joe: Correct, Mike: Success Joe: Yeah. Mike: Of their student, their clients. And I thought that was an ethical problem. And I looked at why people get bored. They don't finish it, they get distracted, they don't retain the information. Or when they get done, they're like, what's the next step? Like, what am I supposed to do? Where do I put that Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: Where where do I take that and how long do I do that? And so I thought to myself, what if there's a way to have a project management based software technology that has a marketplace where people that have had success can come in and algorithmically step by step, put the success steps to what they've done, whatever vertical, Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: Build that blueprint in our platform and then sell it on the marketplace to to people that want to know how to be successful in that area. So it could be anything from a business to a podcast to digital marketing agency, whatever it is. Because if you look if you're going to build a house, you wouldn't want to watch a YouTube video. And on building that house, Joe: All Mike: You'd want the blueprints. Joe: Right. Mike: So this is a market disrupter, industry disrupter. And I can also see another industry being created from this, like there's web designers when websites came out. Well, there's going to be a lot of people that don't want to build their own blueprints. They want to take the content and give it to somebody and have them do the blueprint for Joe: Mm Mike: Them. Joe: Hmm. Mike: So there's going to be a whole industry just on blueprints. And so, yeah, this is a phenomenal thing. And it's coming out hopefully in the next 60 days, give or take. And I'm just fired up to get it in people's hands, man. Joe: That's great, man. You got a lot of irons in the fire. I like Mike: Yeah, Joe: It. Mike: But Joe: That's Mike: Thank Joe: Awesome. Mike: You. Joe: All right. So I want everybody to go and check out your podcast. The book is released on May 3rd called Rocket Fuel. Get in touch with you on on any of the social media. What's the best way to get in touch with you Mike: Instagram, Joe: On. Mike: Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, either one, but Instagram, it's Michy Cerak. Joe: Like you see rock on Instagram. Mike: Yep. Joe: Perfect. All right, man, this is a pleasure for me. I love talking Mike: Metohija. Joe: To another person Mike: Yeah, buddy. Joe: And it was great. And I really wish you a ton of luck with the book. I'll make sure when this episode gets released, I'll have a cover of the book. This will also go like you do on your podcast, will go to the YouTube channel so people will Mike: Thank you Joe: Be able to Mike: To. Joe: See it. I'll put the link to the Amazon in there. Anything else I can do to help? Let me know. But it was a real pleasure to speak with you. I appreciate Mike: Well, Joe: Your time Mike: Thank Joe: And. Mike: You. Thank you, Joe, I appreciate it was a great interview. Great questions and I really enjoyed it. Joe: Thank you, ma'am. You take care. Good luck with the book. Good luck with the podcast. Good luck with the tech software and Mike: Thank Joe: Everything Mike: You. Joe: Else. And just have an amazing year. Mike: Thank you, you, too, bye. Joe: Thank you.
JM Ryerson is a Mindset & Performance Coach that provides top level virtual and in person Coaching on Mindset, Performance, Leadership, Business, Team Building & Career Development. He believes in a work life balance, providing athletes, teams, sales executives and individuals the tools that lead to success at work, at home and in life! You and your team will gain skills, tools, strategies, and practices that can be used for many years to come. Let's Go Win together!! I hope you enjoy this conversation with JM Ryerson and as always, thanks so much for listening! Sincerely, Joe JM Ryerson Top Level Coach and Keynote Speaker for Athletes & Executives Website: https://letsgowin.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letsgowin365/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/letsgowin365 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/letsgowin365/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jm_ryerson Email: lisa@letsgowin.com JM's Books: Let's Go Win: The Keys to Living Your Best Life - https://amzn.to/3eX0N2s Champion's Daily Playbook: https://amzn.to/3bDzwQv Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Everybody, thanks so much for joining me once again. I'm so honored that you're listening to the podcast today. I have a special guest. His name is J.M. Ryerson, and I'm very excited to speak with him about all that he does in the field of mindset and coaching and various other things and his books. We're going to get to it also. J.M., welcome. JM: Hey, thanks for having me, Joe, appreciate it. How are you doing, brother? Joe: I'm doing great, man. I'm excited to talk with you, I have a bunch of sort of casual questions to ask up front. You have your own podcast. And I was able to listen to a couple episodes in preparation of this. And the intro to your podcast was awesome. Is that you in your in your radio voice? JM: No, I wish I could do that. No, Joe: That was. JM: It's not me that is a gentleman with a very deep voice and he I don't know where they found him, but I thought he did a pretty nice job. Joe: That is it is so cool, when I heard that, I was like, wow, that's amazing, he can actually change his voice that much to do those intros. It's like I'm jealous about it. It was really cool. And it was funny because I happened to listen to the one where it's you and your wife. And she actually said, you have a really great radio voice which what you do. But she didn't say too much about you being on TV, so I'm not JM: You know, I think that the same way you did, I'm Joe: Ok. JM: Like, I'll take that as a compliment, I guess. Joe: Right. OK, good. I was wondering I just want to make sure it's even another sort of personal casual question. How tall are you? JM: I'm six five. Joe: Man, in the pictures, you're obviously, you know, your kids are in it and then your wife, but it feels like you're towering two feet over everybody. JM: Well, being that my wife is five, too, and maybe it's Joe: Ok. JM: Not even use five three when I married her, but regardless, you know, do smaller Asian gal and I'm a tall white dude. So it just kind of Joe: Yeah. JM: She always jokes, if you see the family photo of her side, one of these doesn't belong to the other because I do stand out pretty Joe: Yes, JM: Significantly. Joe: Yes, absolutely. I was like, oh, my gosh, how tall is this guy? OK, I would like to go back to the beginning as far back as you want to go, because I like setting the stage for people that might not know you yet. I like to give them a foundation of who we're speaking to and how you got to do what you're doing today. And I think it's important because even the work that you do, it's helped those people to say, OK, what was the transformation from whatever he started doing to where he landed today? Because I think that's helpful for the listeners. Most of my listeners, I think, are really startups, entrepreneurs, people that are there trying to figure out what their passion, their bliss, their purpose on the earth is. And so it's nice to hear how people land, where they are and what took place before that. JM: Sure, I mean, if we're talking professionally, I once I graduated college, I moved right to California, which is I'm a kid from Montana that I never thought I would leave Montana. I love Montana. But somehow I landed in California, went to work and went to work for a great company. But it wasn't corporate America wasn't my gig. And I kind of knew that. I guess it took me three and a half years, but I got a lot of great experience. And so I was looking to do something else and I was very fortunate. I met who ended up being my business partner for many years, almost 15 years, and I didn't know it at the time, but just I jumped into financial services and I, after one year, decided to start a company with the gentleman that had hired me. And we had an amazing run. We built three companies together and I just kind of became entrepreneurs. What I enjoyed well, along the way, I made a ton of mistakes and I made all the mistakes that I didn't want my kids to make. And so I finally decided, you know, there's something here that I should probably I want to write a book about. And it's not about me. It was more about the authors I had read, my parents, my grandparents, the mentors I had had. And so I literally decided, you know what, let's write this book. JM: And so I went through this process of writing in the galley, working with me at the time said I didn't think of you as a selfish person. I said I didn't think I was selfish either. What are you talking about? She said, if you share this book with only two human beings. So my two boys, Trystan and Tradin if you share it with only these two human beings, you're selfish. OK, lesson learned. Won't do that. So it just kind of started on the path of, you know, let's let's talk about what let's go win is all about. And that went into the company, which went into a podcast which dove into more coaching. And so I don't know that I planned it all out this way. It just kind of happened. And I'm so blessed that it did because I get fulfilled every single day. And I guess the last thing I'd say to her is, let's go win. The whole idea is not wins and losses. It's quite literally setting you up to win. But that doesn't guarantee success means that, look, we're going to do our very best to put our best foot forward. But that doesn't mean we're going to win. That means we could fail on. I fail every single day. I'm great at it. I'm a great failure. I fail all the time. Joe: So am I, so my. JM: There you go, so and so that's but the whole idea is to set people up for the greatest, you know, so that they can succeed. And so that was the whole idea of the book. And it's just been kind of a whirlwind, but it's been beautiful. I've met so many amazing people. I work with so many great people. So it's just been awesome. And I've loved the journey. Joe: So I want to go back even further because I feel that, again, I'm going to I'm going to reference your size that I have a feeling you are in sports. And I also read a small clip somewhere about how you were and like I am. And like many entrepreneurs and people that have that a type personality or whatever, that were really hard on ourselves. So I have a feeling that you were really good in sports. You were super competitive and you were super hard on yourself at an early age. And so the piece that I read was you sort of giving yourself grace as you got older saying, I need to I need to lighten up on myself. I need to lighten up on my family. I need to lighten up on the people around me. And and so I want to hear more about what that was like. Again, I'm making this assumption, I assume that you were athletic at a young age. So can you tell me more about that and how that had that transformed to where you are today? JM: Yeah, it's a fair assumption, and if you were to ask my parents, neither of which were super athletic, I my mom, she doesn't have a competitive bone in her body. My dad did play some athletics, but kind of threw his shoulder out early. So they were never pushing myself or my brother or my sister. And all of us were very, very athletic, very competitive. My sister swam in college. I played basketball. So that was something that we always did. But growing up, we played every sport. Joe: Mm JM: I mean, Joe: Hmm. JM: I played basketball, football, baseball, swimming, soccer. I mean, you name a sport. If it had a ball, I probably was chasing it or something. But to your point, I'm being hard on myself. There was a moment I was 10 or 12, I can't remember. And I was going for the state record for swimming and not one state record. I was going for eight, which I think at the time no one had ever broken more than five. And for whatever reason, I just got it my head. I'm going to break eight state records. I can do it. I see the races. I can do this so much so that at the point that I was getting out after the sixth record I broke, I couldn't move. And and imagine my dad is watching this kid get out of the pool. He can't walk because he is so physically exhausted and dehydrated. And my dad said, why are you doing this? Please stop. And I told my dad I I'm doing it because I can. And so it was always interesting. My folks never pushed me that way. They've just loved they they they just, you know, supported as best they could and said, you know, whatever you're going to do, you're going to do. But I was I was always hard on myself. I always wanted to perform at my very best, whether I did or I didn't. JM: And so the greatest part of that, I don't think the competitive drive has gone away. What I've what I've really learned is I guess it would be a growth mindset versus fixed. It's like, look, I I'm going to compete. I'm going to give my very best. But that's where it ends. That's you know, I'm not going to judge myself harshly. The only way I would judge myself harshly is if I didn't put my best foot forward, if I didn't play completely full out. And I will say, looking back, I always did. I always gave 100 percent effort, but I was hard on myself if I didn't succeed. Now, if I give 100 percent, even win, lose or draw, it doesn't matter to me. I can rest on my laurels, knowing I gave everything that I had to give in that moment and it's OK. And so I guess that has been the progression or maturity or whatever you want to call it, because it has shifted. But yes, athletics has been it's still an integral part of of my my life because both my boys are very competitive in what they do and I love it. But I'm kind of taking the role like my parents. I just want them to try their very best. I want to support them. I want to love them, and I'm not going to put additional pressure on them. Joe: The cool thing is, is that you have this knowledge now to share, like each generation, they used to be like old school, right? It's like, you know, you felt a lot of pressure to do to do well. And I think the cool thing about how things are shifting is parents and people in general are becoming more loving and caring and they're not putting that pressure on their kids. At least I hope, you know, the people I talked to seem to be going in that direction. I'm sure there's still that that little league that out there JM: But Joe: Just. JM: There's a lot of them, and typically what I found, Joe and I am totally generalizing, but my wife and I talk about those that are really pushing their kids hard, typically are they're living their sports dreams through their child. Joe: Yeah, yeah. JM: And I think it's awful. It's look, if you played any such level, whether it's college or even some pros, you notice they're pretty laid back. You know, they're like, whatever, man, give your best. And one of the things that has been interesting, I will say being a mindset coach and I work with athletes professionally, there are times with my son who plays very competitive tennis and I am his mindset coach. But there are times where I have to remind myself I'm just dad. I just want to give him a hug and tell him I love him. And that's all that's all that needs to be said. I don't need to talk to him about his mindset. That's been an interesting thing to learn for myself even recently, because, again, yes, I'm a mindset coach. Yes, that's what I do for a living. But in his eyes, I am dad first and foremost the way it should be. And so sometimes I have to do remind myself to just love them. And it doesn't matter that they didn't perform their best, even if they didn't give their 100 percent effort. They want to be accepted and loved. And so that has been kind of an interesting journey. Joe: And I wonder if just your behavior there's a an unspoken thing that you do that's just helping them, but you're not having to work at it as a mindset coach. It's just them observing you in life and hearing things that you talk about. And they just absorb that because. Right. Kids, their minds at this age are super absorbent. So they're probably getting a lot just from being around you and you're not having to be that person forcing ideas and things on them. So it's interesting that just letting them watch you and see what happens. So, JM: Yeah, it's one heck of a social experiment, isn't it, being Joe: Yeah. JM: Trying to give your very best. But, you know, I had my my son's baseball coach say he is an absolute pleasure to coach. He's a good human being. And that at the end of the day, that's what I care about the most. If he ends up playing to whatever level, I don't really care. But if he's a good human in this world, that's what we're looking for. Joe: Yep, yep, so can we while we're on the subject of sports, can we talk a little bit about and you don't have to name names, you can name names. I don't care. It's up to you. But I want to know the progression of you. Are you out of financial services altogether at this point? Is this your main being a mindset coach and an author and a speaker? Is that your main focus at this point? JM: I am juggling both balls in the air right Joe: Ok. JM: Now, so it's interesting because the mindset coach I've done for so long, I just didn't have a label on it. And just because I was in financial services, Joe, you probably know a heck of a lot more. You know what, 90 percent of your listeners know more about financial services than I do Joe: Yes. JM: In 18 years of in the industry. It's just it was never my focus. So to answer your question directly, I do both, Joe: Yep. JM: Really. I'm doing what I've always done and that's build teams and work with them on performance, whether it's in sales or leadership. Joe: Ok, now you mentioned you hinted at the fact that you've worked with some athletes, so can you talk a little bit about that and how you you've worked with them in the past, the ones you might be working with now and anything that you can tell us about that? Because it's interesting to me. JM: I can't tell you names specifically just because a lot of Joe: Yep. JM: It's just confidentiality, but what I can tell you is golfers, for whatever reason I've been thrust into that world, maybe it's because I'm passionate about golf. I truly love golf. I love to watch it. I love to play it. I love the whole idea of you're out there on your own. And and truly, it is a test of the mind Joe: Mrs.. JM: As much as any sport out there. Tennis. My wife played in college. Like I told you, my boy plays competitively. So so far it's been more on the individual sports that people have been referred to me, and that's the ones that I've taken on. But you know, which is interesting because, yes, I grew up playing both, you know, individual and team sports, but I'm more attracted to team sports than I am individuals. And here's the crazy part. There is not a sport out there that truly is individual. What I mean by that, yes, when a tennis player goes out there, typically, unless he's playing doubles, he is all by himself Joe: Uh. JM: Or golfers, certainly by himself. But the team that surrounds them is why it's so intriguing to me. They have a golf swing coach, they have a dietician, they have a mental coach mindset coach. They have a physician. Maybe they have a chiropractor and they have all of this is a team that is helping put their best effort out onto that field or golf course. And so that's been kind of an interesting thing to realize is, yes, it's an individual sport, but there's a whole team of people behind them. Joe: Yeah, it was funny because I was sitting in a buddy of mine, I just went skiing in Utah this past weekend, spring skiing. I have been skiing in twenty five plus years. And I went with my oldest, oldest friend from elementary school, junior high, high school. And we ski start skiing together at seven. And he was going out alone. He's like, come come on out with me as I called. And I was literally nervous all three days because, you know, I'm getting up there and the last thing I want to do is break something. And it's a pretty steep mountain. We went to Snowbird in Utah. I did great. I'm still alive. I have all my limbs, everything's working. But we were just talking about all of that sort of stuff and oh, F1 team sports. So he's looking so he doesn't know anything about F1 and I know very little about F1. But I was like, I think, Larry, they're like 80 people behind that driver JM: The. Joe: And it's just like all of his own stuff. Like you talked about his own physical things and all the things and then diet and then all of the engineers and then all of the pit crew. And it's just like this monstrous team of the most expensive sport in the world. And he's like, do they make any money? And I'm like, it's all bragging rights. I don't think anybody makes any money in that sport. But that's an example is a super extreme example. I wanted to ask you about how things have changed now with the fact that I grew up as an entrepreneur, my father owned businesses, and then I got into the corporate world a little bit after college and the whole world was essentially going to these office spaces. Right. We were all working in these corporate buildings as teams that you could see touch here at any moment, jump up from your desk and go and do whatever. So when you're working with companies now, there's a huge shift that people are working remotely. So how has that changed your business and your style of of coaching these, let's say when we go to the team part of this, you know, in a corporation says, hey, Jim, come in, we want you to work with the sales team. We want them to be more cohesive. How have you been affected by cope with the remote people working? JM: I mean, everybody is lacking in the same thing, and that's connection, I don't care, it's just the world needs that. We need it badly. We need to get it back. And so, yes, the world has shifted in terms of people are working from home. Far more good news. You're spending less on overhead, which means you can reinvest in your business. Your top line, you know, looks even better because now you're not spending maybe so much. But I will tell you this, having that cohesive unit, having that culture that has not gone away. And so what I think people have really had to get more clear on is how are we going to provide that same environment, that same feel, the same clarity that we had, but working remotely. And that has been an interesting challenge because, again, you and I are sitting here on a Zoom beautiful thing about it. We probably weren't doing it this way. I wasn't going to see Joe's face prior to it. But most Joe: Ok. JM: Of the time, right before you're in Arizona, I'm in Florida and we can do it. So that is a form of connection. However, the real piece of people being able to connect, because every time there's a layer in front of us, a computer screen, something in the way we lose that heart to heart connection. So I don't have a great answer for that specifically because you can't really replicate being in the same room. If you and I were sitting together, it would be a different conversation to a degree. We'd be having a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or whatever we were doing celebrating this moment where now, yes, we get to celebrate. And yes, it is a form, but it's just different. So I think everybody is adjusting to that. And that's been something I get to facilitate a live event on Thursday and Friday of this week. And I can't wait because it's walking through the door. It's actually getting the the ability to hug someone and say, you know what, I deeply care about you. That physical connection piece, I don't think that's ever going to stop. So I think what companies are starting to do as the world opens up, as more vaccines happen, as people are more comfortable, they're starting to adjust and say, look, you can work on your own, but we're going to have gatherings. And you know what? We are going to value those gatherings far more than we did before. It's not just another quarterly meeting. It's not just some boardroom meeting. This is a form of connection. This is our bond. This is our tribe. And let's respect that time. So I think there is some beauty in what's happening in that regard. It's taken what we took for granted. And we're Joe: Yeah. JM: Starting to say, wow, that was really unique. That was special. And, you know, unfortunately, as human beings, we have to have that perspective. Sometimes we have to have something, you know, happen to us for us to realize that was really cool when all of us were able to celebrate together, come up with these incredible ideas together before it was like, oh, I got to go to that quarterly meeting again. Well, at least will have a couple of free drinks Joe: That's JM: At the happy hour. Joe: Right. JM: I mean, I've heard people say this now people are clamoring to get together again. Joe: Yeah, and I think it's because, like you said, as humans, we we have to have that physical connection, right. It's important to us. And then the other thing is we give off this energy that it can't be translated through a screen. And so, like, you talking to going to do these live events, I don't know if you're a keynote speaker or you're giving you know, it's a meeting or whatever it is, but you're going to walk into the room and there's going to be an energy. Right, that you don't get now. And that's what's missing. And I think people are so over it and they so want to be out. It's like I have an entertainment booking agency here in Phoenix and I book all the entertainment for all the high end resorts and then all the big corporate events that come. And all the hotels are at 100 percent capacity. It's just because people want to get out and socialize with other people. So they're either coming into town, just stay, or they're doing suffocations, but they they just cannot stand it any longer. It's incredible. JM: Yeah, it's it's been an interesting ride, I mean, this this group that got together at the end of January, we actually were in Scottsdale and six people, including myself, went home and had covered Joe: Oh. JM: It. Now, here's what's interesting. And thank goodness everybody was healthy, everybody was fine. And this is not to get on that whole. You know, I respect where everybody feels on this. I do. But all six human beings that got it, they're all they can't wait to get back together again. Now, many people have been vaccinated and the world has shifted that much in literally, what, three, almost four months that now we can do this a little bit better. But to your point, Joe, people need this connection, man. People they we as human beings, the energy that is such a real thing. I wish I could know your energy that much better than just over a screen. You can feel it a little bit, but it is tangible. You don't have to say a word. If Joe walked through the door, I could feel, oh, that's really good energy. I'm not so sure. But there's always an energy. And that is something that you cannot replicate over these, you know, you know, doing it virtually. Joe: Yeah, so I want to talk about the books in order of how they release before we do that, how has this changed the way you do your work with these individuals, these corporations? I mean, you you know, we've all had, like, people come to me and say, hey, I want to do a virtual event and can I get and I really didn't jump on board to the virtual stuff because for me, entertainment has to be life. I can watch a magic show on TV and say, oh, that's cool. But there's nothing, nothing, nothing like being in an audience in a life situation. So I just I used my energy in other ways, you know, started a YouTube channel podcast of the things that filled my soul. So how have you had to shift your coaching business to deal with those questions that come up, for example? You know, maybe they need to help people stay more positive not being around people, you know, so they come to you and say, hey, Jim, you know, we want you to work with our team. And we think the biggest thing that's lacking is just it's just like motivation or their mindset because they've been alone for almost a year. JM: Yeah, this one was actually pretty easy, unfortunately, because so much of the content shifted and maybe it should have always been there. But the truth is what was happening is there was so much negativity. If you woke up and you turned on your TV, boom, it's right there. If you picked up your phone and social media boom, it was right there. So there was so much negativity being fed into most people's brain. So they weren't actually running their own agenda. It may have been CNBC, Fox or Facebook, Instagram, whatever platform. And again, this is not I don't care which one you watch or listen to. That's not the point. The point was people started losing who's running their agenda. And so that really was the focal point of what I worked on is, hey, you used to get up and you had a routine and you were whether you were meditating or working out or just hopping in the shower, brushing your teeth, it didn't matter. But it wasn't so in your face. His death and there's death everywhere that you're listening about, this amount of cases followed shortly by death. And so what was happening is so many people, whether they realize they're not their lens became extremely negative. JM: And so a big part of what I did is, hey, don't forget your routine. Let's make sure you run your agenda first. That doesn't mean barrier head in the sand. Absolutely not. Not be informed. You need to be you need to know what's going on in the world. I'm cool with that. However, let's not make it the first thing that you do in the morning. Let's not make it that you just haphazardly are just scrolling on your phone or watching TV for hours on end, because what was coming out is really cynical human beings seeing the world in such a negative way. And there was so much going on in the last year, not just covered other things that were creating some of this tension. And so a lot of my coaching just went to that. Who's running your agenda? And I probably should have been asking this question earlier than that, but it became so prevalent. And so in my face, I was like, who's running your agenda? And that's been the majority of my coaching with individual clients, with with teams, with companies. Who's running your agenda and is it serving you? Joe: Yeah, and it's like so many people that are in the same arena that you and I are in with being an entrepreneur and trying to help people just guide them on the knowledge that we've gained over our years and things that we've read and just trying to be helpful that we've heard so many times when the morning you win the day. Right. So it's that I don't know if people understand how important that is. And you can see so many people just will turn on the news while they're making their coffee and just it just like this downward spiral. And the funny thing is, I used to live in New Jersey, commuted on the bus through the Lincoln Tunnel because I had an office on 30th Street and Broadway. And that's when I own my own company. And all the people on the bus would get in, settle down and then open up their newspaper and just sit there. And so I get it, like a lot of these people were financial people down on Wall Street. So they they had to get caught up with the day. But I used to get to the office and feel so I felt like, OK, I have to do this to like all these smart business people and I have to, you know, get to the office and go, oh, God, that was the most depressing hour I just spent. And from that day forward, I never do. I don't watch the news. I don't read the newspaper. I do like I do me. I do what I can do in the world. And I don't know. Yeah, you have to stay somewhat informed, I guess. But I stay away from that like the plague, not just. JM: Well, as long as you're monitoring it, as long as you're making sure it's not running your agenda and you can do that with filters, one of the beautiful things about these devices, you can filter pretty much everything to just get, you know, the important news of the day and not have to scroll through everything. So there are ways to set it up. But to your point, when the morning when the day it's so true, that's never been more true than it is today. Joe: Yeah. JM: Absolutely. As a leader, in order for you to lead anyone else, you have to lead yourself first and take care of yourself. It is probably the biggest thing. And I'm going to generalize, especially with my female clients. I am like, you are not being selfish by taking care of yourself. You're being selfish. If you don't, you're being selfless by working out, taking care of your mind, your body and your soul every day, because then you can take care of your kids the way you want to show up as the mom, the sister, you know, all the hats that that they're wearing. I'm like, you have to take care of yourself first in order to serve all these people. Joe: Yeah, and it's so funny because I think the same thing I grew up with a feeling that wanting money, right. Was this greed thing and wanting to to maybe become wealthy. And it's the same thing with money as it is with health is like in order to take care of you, you have to make sure that you make the money. You need to take care of you and then your immediate family and then down on from there and then do whatever you can. So it's the same thing with health. Those two things are and I always put health first. I don't. For me, it's always been the main thing. I thank my lucky stars every day that I don't deal with any health issues or take any medication. But I worked at it. You know, I go to the gym pretty much every day and it's the only way for me to survive it. Actually, mentally, my mind shifts. If I don't on a day that I don't go, it's not only do I have this mental thing happening where I just it's like I'll you know, but I also think there's a little bit of guilt I put back on myself. Going I had to do is just plan it and do it. No one's running your own your life except for you. I don't you know, you have this feeling like someone still telling you where you need to be or you feel guilty about not doing something. And it's like you said, you have to plan this stuff out. So can you tell me what your routine looks like? JM: Absolutely, I wake up, the first thing I do is I say my daily affirmation, I say that in the evenings with my boys and I say it every morning. Then I set my intention for the day. What do I want to do today? I want to bring great energy. I want to be super productive. Whatever my intention is for that moment, then I will typically get into breath work about five to ten minutes. Depends on how long the exercise takes. Then I'm into meditation, then I'm doing my brain games. Then let me see here. Sorry, I usually have it all. Then I'm doing my exercise at some point. I'm reading my book journaling and then I'm off into the day. Now, what's been interesting with covid is it hasn't necessarily been as structured as it used to be. I used to wake up super early, get it all out of the way, then take the kids to school. Now, it's just been kind of haphazard in terms of I get them all done, but I might get two of them done. Then I'm dealing with kids, then I'm doing that, then I'm dealing with work. JM: So it's just been a little different, which has been interesting because I love my routine, but those are the basic things I take. I tell everybody to simplify it. If you take care of your mind, your body and your soul, it's the three things you have to do. Because you said something about about health. Health is wealth. I don't care how much money you have. If you don't have your health, you have nothing. And so you do need to plan that. And so those will be the three things I tell people, look, take care of your mind. What are you doing for your mind? Are you reading, doing the brain games? What are you doing for your health? Most people have that part down. I'm going to go workout, lift, run, whatever you do, it's it's up to you. And then ultimately, what do you do for your soul? For me, it's meditation. For some people it's reading the Bible. For some people it's taken on nature walk. Some people it's like, I don't care, but take care of those three things, fulfill those buckets and then go about your day. Joe: Yeah, and you know, what I think often happens is people feel they something happens maybe in the morning that that sets the morning off in the wrong way. And whether it's like you go out to your car and you want your tires is flat. And what they do is then they throw the baby out with the bathwater and they don't do anything they don't. So if you have those three buckets, you're supposed to take care of your health or meditation your mind or whatever. And you don't you can't get to one thing. They throw everything out. And so I have learned on days where I'm really tight on time, OK, I'm still going to go to the gym and I'm just going to jump on the treadmill. Normally it's cardio abs. I mean, it's it's weight lifting abs cardio. If I but I don't sit there and go, OK, I don't have time to do all three, so I'm not going to go do any I go and I jump on on a stair stepper and I still get the work done. So I think it's important to make set yourself up for success that you can get at least something done. Don't make it so hard that if you don't do all of it, you feel guilty. You know, it just ruins your day. And I think that's important to. JM: So that's a great point, Joe, because, look, I grew up an athlete, like you said, I played basketball in college. I was working out two hours a day in college, literally just lifting and playing ball and I mean, at least two hours every single day. Well, that's not how my world works today. So should I just do nothing? No, of course not. I changed my goals completely. I want to sweat once a day. That's literally my my workout goals this year. Sweat once a day. Sometimes that means lifting. Sometimes it means lifting and cardio. Sometimes it means playing. Pick a ball. That's actually the one I really prefer to do. But it it doesn't look the same as it did when I was 18, 28 or 38. It changes, but as long as you're taking care of that body one way or the other. And to your point, if it's not perfect, so what? Do something so. Joe: Yep, I agree. OK, keep promising about the book, but I still have one more question to ask you and it's probably going to tie into the book and it's probably going to tie even better into the new book. But I want to ask you about journalling. I want to know. I heard you on your podcast talk about I think you said or your wife said it's the cheapest form of therapy JM: It Joe: And JM: Is. Joe: It doesn't talk back to you and it doesn't judge you. JM: Right. Joe: But I have never journaled. And so many successful people that either know or talked to her had have on my I've had on the podcast like journaling such a big thing. And I'm like, well, why are you doing it? And what is it going to how many times are you going to hear it from somebody and not do it? So I would like to hear your perspective on it. JM: Well, you gave my my opinion is it is the cheapest form of therapy available to us all, whatever it costs for a couple cents and paper, let's say a dollar or so. But why is it beautiful as we have around 50000 thoughts go through our head a day? Some of those are crazy. They are nuts. Some are very negative. Some are very positive. The point is, is they're swirling around. And the reason I think journaling is so important, I'll give you I'll give you a story. So let's go win specific to the company. Back when I was 21 or 20, I don't know the exact time frame I had written about. Let's Go Win and had three circles, very similar to what my logo looks today. Now, I lost that journal. It got put in my memento box. I didn't think anything about it. And I was cleaning out the garage because we recently moved to Florida and I'm looking in and there's this journal. I'm flipping through it. Holy cow. There's let's go in. It's sitting right there. I had marinated on this idea for over twenty years now. The reason this is important, had I gone back through that journal, maybe I get to let's go in that much earlier. JM: Maybe maybe I don't. Regardless, it was a thought that I planted now or thought that was planted in my head that I then put on the paper. When you do that, there's something that happens. It allows you to get clarity. It allows you focus. It allows you to just have a brain dump. And so I don't know why people resist it, because to me, I love writing probably as much as, gosh, writing or reading. I'm not sure which one I love more, but they just fill my soul. And so I just like to write. I enjoyed the blogging part of it. I enjoy writing the books because it allows me to put all this stuff onto paper and some of it's crazy. I guess what the paper doesn't say, Jim, that's crazy. It just doesn't say anything. It's just literally captured what I've written. So anyway, if you haven't done it, it doesn't there's no judgment. Just try it and see how you feel. That's what I always tell all my clients. I'm like, just try it and then let me know how you feel. I've never had a client come back and say, that was terrible. Every time they're like, wow, that was kind of cool. Joe: Yeah. JM: Oh, you know what? I started I just was going to write like half a page and I wrote ten pages. And that's not uncommon because you have a lot going on up there and it's nice to get that stuff out. And again, no judgment. Maybe you don't even look at it again, but at least put it out there. Joe: So do you journal both in the morning and in the evening are only in the evening. JM: That's a good question. The specific journalling that that we're talking about just in the evening, but I write so much now from my occupation that I learned a lot in the mornings as well. So I don't know. I do my best writing times are about four a.m. I don't know why. Just as quiet as can be my brain. Actually, I do know 11:00 a.m. and four a.m. are the two times they say were the most creative. Not sure why that is, but I guess it's quiet. I guess our brains have officially, you know, opened up to that to that space. But to answer your question directly, typically I'm journaling in the Evening Times, unless I'm writing for work. Joe: So without giving anything personal, can you explain what it would look like if you sat down in journals tonight? Like what would somebody write? Like if I sat down, you sat down. How do you even start? How do you even know that you're journaling and not complaining or you're not starting a small book or your whatever? I don't know. Like, what do you what do you. Oh, I, I loved my lunch today. I don't know. What do you write. JM: Why not? That sounds great. So there's two main staples, I will tell you, I journal on two things frequently. I believe we are in complete charge and no one can affect these two things, our activity and our attitude. Now, I do write about that. It's in Champions Daily Playbook. That's why I ask people to do that, because I like to journal on how is my attitude. Today was an awesome did I show up and was I really someone bringing positivity to the world or did I suck today? And by the way, it happens both ways. Like I could have been better today and I just I'd write it down because what I'm really looking for is my patterns, my habits and what's really happening because of, let's say, seven days in a row, I had really crappy attitude. What's really going on? There's more to the story than just I had a flat tire. My girlfriend broke up with me. My dog ran away. You know, all the country song lyrics, something more is going on. And I don't like that. Nobody wants to show up and be miserable. People want to be happy. So to answer your question, I would write about whatever. But if you're looking for a guide, write about the two things you're in complete control of. How is my attitude? How is my activity? Because for my job, did I do a great job for my kids? Was I an active parent or was I slug on the couch watching, you know, looking at my phone? And by the way, we all do some of that at some point. There's no judgment. It's just talking to yourself to say, you know what, I showed up great today. Pat on the back. Great job, man. I up so good today. What can I do differently tomorrow? And that'll show you and really create some answers that can help you show up is the best version of yourself. Joe: How long have you been doing it? JM: Oh, man, I started after high school for some reason, I don't know why in college I studied abroad. So I remember I journaled a lot when I was in the Netherlands and on trains, I would read and learn reading journal. And then I did it all through my 20s and 30s. I just I've always written things down. Joe: Well. JM: I think mainly, though, is because I'm seeking answers just like anybody I want to show up. And in sometimes you don't have somebody that you can't talk to everyone about things without having some form of judgment. So instead, why don't you go to that piece of paper, just get it out there. I remember being really frustrated with a business partner had I set the vile things that came through my mind. Before I wrote it down and actually was smart about it, that would have probably cost a relationship, cost a business partnership, Joe: All right. JM: Instead I wrote it down and then I was like, whoa, that is crazy. But it was in my mind my mind had created something that wasn't even true. So anyway, to answer your question, I've been doing it since probably 18 or 19. Joe: North Korea, so, see, you're lucky because that's that's you know, you can see the value of it now and to be able to have started that long ago. So I'm jealous, but I'm going to take your I'm going to heed your words of advice and I'm going to do it. It might look really dumb at first, but I'll figure it out over time. And like you said, you hit it on the head. It was the perfect answer. Literally. You can't talk to anyone without some small amount of judgment. So to be able to just have you in that piece of paper has to be super helpful. So I'm definitely going to give it a try. JM: I've Joe: It's perfect. JM: Yet to hear how it goes, Joe. I'm excited. Joe: Yeah, absolutely. OK, so let's go in. That was your first book. When did that come out? JM: That came out. Oh, that's a good question, I should know that two years ago, I think Joe: Ok, JM: I really. Joe: I thought that's what it was, too, but I am fearful of always assuming what I read because I looked at so many pieces of data and I'm like, I don't want to say it. And I'd rather have you make the mistake then. JM: I think they did, but I think it was in the last two years, you know, it's almost like we lost a year with covid. So Joe: I know, JM: Was that five years ago or is that Joe: I know. JM: Last week? So I believe it's two years ago that that came out. Joe: Ok, so give us the overview of the you started to you hinted at early in this conversation about it, was you putting down your experiences in your knowledge and things that you thought were what you've read, things you've read, things you've studied just to share. Like, you know, we're hoping that everyone just shares what they can with the world to make it a better place. So give us an idea what that the initial idea behind that was. JM: Now, the idea was for my two boys, I wanted them to not skin their knees as much as their dad did growing up. And so the lessons I also wanted, the documented lessons that I learned from my parents and my grandparents so often get lost where they're no longer here. So these are I had the opportunity to ask the questions and my mentors and authors. And so imagine if you read, I don't know, 17 of 30 books a year and you can take some of that knowledge and hopefully make it really tangible, because for me to ask my kids to read that many books per year, that's probably impractical. But there's some really good nuggets that you can pull from some of these authors. And so the whole idea was to take all of that and put it into a very usable form. So where you could fly from L.A. to New York and by the time you land, you finish the book. I didn't want it to be overwhelming. I wanted it to be an easy read with tangible advice in each chapter. And so I broke it down that way. I just said, look, what are the 12 most important areas that I think people can really effectuate change? And that's how I started. And so it was the best six months of journaling I've ever done in my life was that process. Joe: And that was completely separate, that was you creating the the the outline of not the outline, but the the book coming to life you that was a separate journaling process that you did to create the book. JM: And Joe: Yeah. JM: I have somebody I worked with, and so when I would say an idea and talk about it, then we would talk back and forth and she would interview me. And it just became such a beautiful piece. I'm not saying it's the greatest thing written ever. I'm not saying that. But the way it reads, I want them to hear my voice. And I hope that it comes through that way, that it's it's not a judgment or anything. It's rather here's what I found. And I want my kids to know, like, hey, if dad got hit by a bus tomorrow, here's something that he can leave behind that hopefully, you know, helps them again, not not make as many errors, because just like any parent, I want my kids to to have the best opportunity. And so that was the whole idea. Joe: And I also think that it's the conduit, it's who's delivering the message sometimes that actually makes a difference to the person on the other end. So you could have written the same line in your book that was written in five previous books, and then those people actually read all of those five books. But the way in the context of the way you expressed it in your book with the surrounding text around it, all of a sudden it's an aha moment for someone. So I think it's it's that's why it's so important to share, because it might not make sense coming from the previous five people that they read it from. But somehow you've set them up for success in your book where all of a sudden they get to that one line that they know they've seen. They've heard it, they've read it five other times, never made sense. Now it makes sense. And so I think that's what's really cool about this sort of thing, is that, yeah, we you know, there's a lot of things that came before us. We're not inventing the wheel every day, but we are taking our experiences and our knowledge, putting them into a form that could actually help someone that they never got that help from earlier because it didn't make any sense to the. JM: And that's beautifully said, because there's a saying when when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And so that could be the case, right? Maybe my I don't know that my 11 year old has actually finished the entire book. And that's at some point he will and that'll be cool. And hopefully he will hear it and maybe he'll read it 20 years down the line and maybe he'll say, oh, yeah, I remember that. Joe: Yeah, OK, so then all of a sudden you just wrote the Champions League playbook, so I don't I haven't had the honor to to read these books yet. But I'm going to hear this is when I when I say I don't want to make assumptions about things, but but the gist by the title and where it's coming from, from the first book, it almost seems like it's more of an actionable book from what you originally did. So now you're given the overview and let's go win and you're giving all of the the different steps. But now it's kind of like you're holding people's feet to the fire and the second book and saying, if you follow through, here's all the things you need to do to really make all of this stuff happen. JM: Yeah, so I read a study that said less than 40 percent of the people you ever hand a book to will read Chapter one, and that was a pretty sobering statistic. So I thought, all right, why don't we create something that's one chapter long and the rest is literally a playbook. And I called it a playbook and not a workbook because I didn't want it to feel like work. For those of you that are feeling just like Joe, where you're like, how do I journal? I explain it, make it really easy. And the playbook, it's like ten bucks on Amazon. You know what? You've never journal before. Here you go. This is literally the the how to or you know, and it's not a journal necessarily, but it is it allows you that freedom to just say, OK, this this helps. I can do this. And it takes no more than like maybe five minutes in the morning. And usually it's far less than that and maybe five minutes a night. But again, if you go longer, cool. And so the whole idea is to literally something that you can do every single day to set yourself up to win, because I wish I had started doing this stuff earlier. I mean, I wish I had known this when I was my son's age, when I was 14 and 11. I wish I was doing these things, but I didn't know about all that. So my hope is that people can take it and apply it and say, wow, that was really helpful. Thank you. And when I get those, Joe, I'll man, it just makes you feel fantastic because you're able to help someone get that much further in life. And what what a unique feeling and so fulfilling because it's great if we do something cool ourselves. But how great of a gift. If you can have somebody else say, you know what, I did that, and it really worked. And you're like, that's amazing. I'm so glad. Thank you. Joe: So give us can you give us an an overview of of the latest book and what people will find in other you mentioned journalling. I would think there's a, you know, a bunch of things in there that are going to be super helpful. So can you give us an idea? JM: Sure. So I start the book off very simply with, you know, the basic setting goals because most people don't even write those down. Now you are 60 percent more likely to achieve a New Year's resolution a year later by simply writing it down. You're another 20 percent more likely to achieve it if you actually look at it every single day. So I said, well, I know the stats. Let's go ahead and put that in there. Then I put in four daily affirmations. Most people have never heard of a daily affirmation because they weren't taught to do that. And so my kids, since ev every day of their lives, they've said or heard the same thing. And that is. Are you a leader? Yes. How come? I'm confident, strong, intelligent, athletic, good looking, dynamic, popular talent and independent boy with a growth mindset. They have said that since they were 10 months old. Now, if I could go back in hindsight, I would have said Jamaica. I'm confident, strong and intelligent and leave it at that. But I didn't. And I created this long thing. But they love it. They won't go to bed without saying it to me. And, you know, he's 15 guys. He just turned 15. That's crazy. But anyway, they do that every single night. So that's the second thing is just doing a daily affirmation because the world's going to tell you you're not confident, you're not strong, you're not intelligent, you're not these things. JM: I want you to rewire your brain to say, yes, I am. Who gives a care what anybody else thinks? Yes, you are and you are. Whether you believe you are. You're not. You're right. So that's the second thing you're right is doing that setting that daily affirmation and then it's just a check in. Did you take care of the mind, the body and soul? Yes. OK, yes. No, whatever the answer is, then you have how's your attitude? How is your activity? Rank it, then you have a journaling section and that's pretty much the gist of it. But it's just laid out. And so for ninety days, if you can do this, because it takes the new study says sixty six days to create a habit. Well, if that's true, then let's let's say we miss a couple of days, we screw up. We forgot to let's try for those 90 days and let's just see what happens. What if we created for 90 days we followed this plan. How does my life look differently? Do I feel better? Am I showing up better? Is my business improved as my health improved? All these things should take place by just simply following that exercise. So that was my hope. I've had some amazing people say thank you, God, I'd never journal before. That was amazing. I'd never thought to do this. And that's what I'm hopeful for. Joe: That's great. So one last question, because I want to respect your time, and I know we're close, we have a choice every day when we wake up. Right. And the choice is that you can say to yourself and say out loud and whatever state of the world that I am thankful, I'm grateful, I'm happy, healthy. You know, even if you're not healthy, those words can almost change how you are. And so why is it and I listen, I am just as guilty or more than anybody on this Earth that for the longest time was like, woe is me. Like I bust my ass and I'm not getting the things that I expect to get. And things don't go my way and and always, always looking for the you know, I know I'm going to get there and there's going to be a long line at the store or I'm going to get to this place that I can't find a parking spot if that was me. And it's only shifted recently. And it's a completely different world. And it's it's like, why do we always choose the worst thing? Like we have literally have an equal down the middle. You can choose left, which is crap, or you can choose. Right, which is great. And we just seem to to always choose. And again, I'm not generalizing like the world. I'm just saying that when I see it now from being this other person that I've created over the past couple of months ago, we literally can wake up and just choose to have the most amazing, happy day. And we don't do that. And I it's just mind boggling. JM: Yeah, I don't know the answer why just you're right that many people do. There's an exercise everyone can do, take a piece of paper and draw a line right down the middle on one side, right victim, and then write out all the attributes associated with it on the other side. Write responsible, write all the attributes that go along with it. Now, we don't have time to do that today, but when you do this, you're going to find a couple of things. The reason people choose to be a victim is because you get empathy, you get sympathy. However, what else goes along with that is some really negative stuff. When you choose to be responsible, it's powerful, it's strong, it's in control. And there's a couple of negative, like you could be overwhelmed. You could be this. But the majority is it's very positive on one side and it's very negative on the other. The reason I have people do this exercise is for what you said and you said a beautiful word. I hope people heard it. You choose you get to choose to show up and have an incredible day. You get to choose to have, you know, the most beautiful sunrise. You get to choose that no one else gets to choose that. The moment you figured that out, Joe, now you're free. Joe: Mm hmm. JM: Because it is your choice, no one can make you feel any other way, only you get to choose that. I don't know how long or why or what it's going to take for people to understand that. But it is your choice. And when you do that, you have so much power and you start to create most people here manifest destination. You don't have to believe in it. I've witnessed it. You can read it and it is your choice. So I don't know, brother, I'm happy for you. That's amazing because you're right, you get to choose even having a mate. And I'm sure you have an incredible life before on top of that. But how much more beautiful is it now? Joe: It's it's insane and like you said, you know, I think the universe I literally do. I mean, it's like people might around me that know me now I have to hang with me, might get tired of me saying, yeah, the universe delivered again, but it did. And that's what I'm going to say. And that's just what it is. So sorry. It just it's. JM: The word energy early, rather, and that's I don't that is not where people look, the universe is full of energy. And so what you put out, it will it will reciprocate. If you're putting out nothing but negative, I promise you Joe: Yeah, JM: It is going to come back Joe: Yeah. JM: Because you're attracting that. You put out positive. You're going to recognize the positive. There's a crazy study in the UK where they had people walk down the street. Now, prior to that, they asked there was five and five. Five people said they're lucky. Five people said they were not. Four out of the five that said they were lucky saw the 20. It was 20 pound, not twenty pound note on the sidewalk, four out of the five that said they were lucky. One missed it. All five human beings that said they were unlucky did not see the 20 pound note on the cement. And they did this study again and again and again and kept coming back with the same statistics, so you don't have to believe it. But it is true. It is what's happening and you are creating that. So congrats show. That's amazing. Joe: Yeah, I'm right with you, I believe it. So, J.M., thank you so much, man. Did we miss anything? So the book. Both books I know are on Amazon. Is is there any particular way you would like people to connect with you? JM: Sure, they can go to letsgowin.com, I put out a blog that, you know, that's some of my journalling. Those are thoughts that you get you get to be a part of. There's a free work life balance on there that I take every month. So that's on the website letsgowin.com and then let's go in 365. Brother, any social media outlet, let's go in 365. I'd love for people to follow and check it out and I'd love to hear from them. Joe: And you have your podcast as well, right? JM: Do let's go. When is the podcast? It's so much fun, you guys, I think the the guests make the show. I love to hear their amazing stories, just like Joe did. And I think you did an incredible job. You'd listen. Well, you ask really awesome questions. I hope to do the same. But every time we're going to give it our all and we're going to have a great time. Joe: That's awesome. It was an honor. I love meeting people like you and I. I'm going to make this public promise to you that I'm going to start journaling because I betcha there's yet another step of magic there that I've been missing all this time. So I'm going to add it to my already awesome life to step it up another notch and and get all that stuff out of my head. JM: I love it, brother, I can't wait to hear about it. Thank Joe: All JM: You Joe: Right, man, JM: For having me. Joe: That. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. And I look forward to doing more with you down the road. JM: You too, brother. Thank you. Joe: Thank you.
Sean Swarner Interesting Facts - Learn how Sean not only beat cancer twice but went on to summit Mt. Everest and the remaining 6 summits and the north and south poles. He now brings hope to all who have cancer and those who have survived cancer with his organization CancerClimber.org. I loved, loved, loved this conversation with Sean and my hope is next July 2022, I will join him to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and add the names of my own loved ones, who have had to deal with cancer and either survived or lost their battle with this awful disease. Thanks so much for listening! Joe Sean Swarner Speaker | Author | Performance Coach Adventurer | World Record Holder Author of: Keep Climbing: How I Beat Cancer and Reached the Top of the World Website: https://www.seanswarner.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanswarner/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sean.swarner LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanswarner/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/seanswarner Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Ok, today, my guest is Shawn Swarner. Sean is an incredible human being, you're not going to believe the things that he has done already in his life. And I am so excited for this interview. As I was talking to Sean offline, I was explaining how the whole thought of summiting Everest is just in itself amazing. And then the way that it's been accomplished by Shaun and the adversity that he had to deal with growing up and just to to be this person that he is. So this is exciting, not just at a sports level or at a level of just doing all these amazing feats, but just just the human drive that this person has. So, Shawn, welcome to the show. Man, I am so excited to have. Sean: I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to do the. Joe: So I like to start and people that listen to my podcast hear me say this one hundred times that I like to start from the beginning. And I know you probably told the story a million times already, but I like to set a foundation of pollution is where you came from, how you grew up, the main health factors that happen early on, how you got over that and then become who you are today. So if you don't mind, if you could at least give us as much of the back on the floor is yours so as much of the back story that you want to give? I welcome it all. Sean: I appreciate that and I'm going through my mind, and one of the things that got me through was a sense of humor, which we'll get to, but I'm assuming you probably don't want to go back. Forty six years with my mom and dad got together, then nine months later. Joe: Yeah, that's got no so that we could start right there. That's what. Sean: So I came into the world crying and screaming and kicking. And Joe: There we go, Sean: I remember it like it was yesterday. Joe: Right. Sean: No, I. Well, I guess my I was born and raised in Ohio, just a normal Midwest kid. I remember back in the day before toilet paper was hard to find. We would TPE the coach's house and across country in the house. And then he installed a motion sensor lights. So we had to be a little bit more careful. And I just I learned to. Do things I wasn't supposed to, but I never got caught because I learned how to not get caught. So I was a kind of a studious growing up. But everything was it was completely normal until I was in eighth grade. And I was actually I was going up for a layup and basketball things and I came down and something snapped my neck and it sounded like like, say, for Thanksgiving, you grab the chicken bone and you're pulling on the leg like the ripping the tendons in the ligaments and everything. That's that's kind of what my knee sounded like when I was hobbling over to the stage that to sit down my whole body the next day swallowed up so much. My my mom and dad couldn't even recognize their own son. So they stuck in the local hospital. Willard, Ohio, population was five thousand, I think is maybe five thousand three now. So it's not much just change. Maybe eight stoplights or something like that, but they stuck in the hospital, they started treating me for pneumonia and it's very it's very difficult to cure cancer by sucking on a nebulizer. So I wasn't getting any better. But at 13, I was thinking, well, you know, I'm going to soak up all this attention. I got the cheerleaders coming in. I got my friends coming out of balloons all over my room. Joe: The. Sean: It was fantastic. But I didn't know what was going on in my body, which was advanced stage four Hodgkin's lymphoma. And I remember my parents didn't tell me that I had cancer. They told me that I had Hodgkin's. And I can only imagine what they were going through when the doctor told them that I had three months to live. The doctors approach to my my parents said your first born son now has an expiration date. And no one wants to hear that, and I've heard that one of the greatest pains, pains that you can have is outliving your your son or your daughter. So I didn't want that to ever happen to my mom and dad. And I remember very vividly where I was on the bottom of the on my hands and knees in the shower three or four months into treatment. And because of the treatment, I was bald from head to toe. I was on my hands and knees sobbing, just absolutely weeping, pulling chunks of hair out of the drain so the water could go down. And I was also thinking because I was getting ready for school that day, and that's when my hair came up all in that one time in the shower. And I was thinking about what my friends may have been doing at the same time, getting ready for school the same time I was. Sean: And they were probably worried about the latest hairstyles being popular. If things that in my mind, looking back at it now, were trivial, it meant nothing because there were nights I went to bed not knowing if I was going to wake up the next morning. I mean, can you imagine what it feels like being terrified to close your eyes and fall asleep because you don't know if you're going to wake up. And that's that's what I had to deal with as the 13 year old. So I grew up with a completely different perspective. And thanks to the miracle of modern medicine, family support, prayer just in a will to move forward. I guess if I walked out of the hospital, a hairless, happy, bloated young man and I, I went back into being a quote unquote normal teenager, I guess if there is anything that's that you can say normal for a teenager. But the remission was short lived because I was going in for a checkup for the first cancer when they found a second cancer completely unrelated to the first one. And in fact, on the apparently I'm the only person to ever had Hodgkin's and ask start. And the chances of surviving both of those illnesses is roughly the same as winning the lottery four times in a row with the same numbers. Joe: Radical Krutch. Sean: So I think I'm a living, breathing, walking miracle, without a doubt, and. I remember going in for a check for that first cancer in one day, they found a tumor on an X-ray. They did a needle biopsy. They removed a lymph node, put in a hip and catheter. They cracked open my ribs, took out the tumor, are put in danger and started chemotherapy less and less than one day. And they diagnosed me with a type of cancer called ASCAN sarcoma. And that's basically they gave me 14 days to live. Joe: And this is at age 60. Sean: 16, so 13, the first cancer, 60 Joe: Yeah. Sean: Percent cancer, cancer, my my whole teenage years were just they were taken from me, from the cancer. Joe: He's trying to just picture this in my brain of what happens during those years of like those prom, there's sports and it sound like you were active before 13 when you were first diagnosed. So you are definitely you look like someone that would be athletic. So you're missing all of that. Sean: It's a green, it just makes me look like I'm. Joe: No, Sean: I Joe: But. Sean: Was I was I was incredibly athletic, and I, I think I because I was a swimmer, I started competitive swimming at maybe five or six years old. And I think I still have some records from the 11, 12 age group. Joe: Still hold it. Sean: Still Joe: Wow, that is so cool. Sean: Undefeated in the summer league, went to Nationals numerous times. I loved it, but I also think that's one of the reasons why I'm still alive, is because I looked at things differently from a competitive angle, and I pushed myself not to be the best, but I always pushed myself to be my best. And that's what I did, was going through the treatments, I I knew that when I was going through the cancer that I was going to have bad days. And I also knew I was going to have good days. So if today was a bad day, then I just I focused on tomorrow or the next day when I was going to have a good day. And I when I had those good days, I was I was truly living and learning how to be in the present moment. Joe: Yeah, that's definitely one of the gifts that would come out of what you went through, which people struggle their whole life to eliminate the noise around them and to be present. Right. Because you literally only have this moment right now. So many people worry about what's on the schedule for tomorrow or the future or all of that. And some people even and I'm totally guilty dwell on the past. So I should have done that different. Where would I be today if I had gone left instead of right? So it's it's really hard to bring that in to be present and figure out how to do that. And I would assume that's a that's at least a good outcome of what you went through, is that it forced you to live every day the most that you could, knowing that this just this who knows what tomorrow will bring, if anything. Right. Sean: Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that I do every morning before I even get out of bed, the instant I open my eyes in the morning, I don't I don't I never hit the snooze, because if you constantly hit the snooze over and over and over again, you're telling yourself subconsciously, I'm excited about the day. The day can wait. But if you turn it off and I actually have a smartwatch and just vibrate so it doesn't wake up my wife. So I turn I turn the alarm off and I lay there and I tell myself the past is done. There's nothing I can do about it. Tomorrow may never come, so no matter what happens today, today is the best day ever. And I have a choice, we all have a choice to make that day turn out however we want it to, and it starts with that morning intention. Joe: Also, I don't want to get too far because I had so many questions. This is exciting. Like I said, I'm not going to let you go. So 16. So you're you were diagnosed and you're going through all of these treatments. When do you become and for lack of a better term, quote, normal where they say, OK, we've we've clobbered this thing, you're you're in remission and your hair is growing back. You're starting to feel like average every day. 16 year old, our seventh year, however long it took for you to become being normal. Sean: That's a great question, and I was I was thinking, while you're talking and I honestly want to say that the answer is never. Joe: Ok. Sean: Because no one's ever had these cancers before. No one no one knows what's going to happen to me. Joe: Yeah. Sean: I go in once a year for a checkup and they obviously for the past 20, 30 years now, it's come back clean. So I literally see every time I go into to get my blood work done at my annual checkup, I see it as I have another year left. And I try to accomplish as much as I can in that year, so I don't think because of the way I'm looking at it, I don't think I'll ever have a normal life. Joe: Yeah. Sean: This is my new normal. And I've just adapted to I think because of everything I've been through, I'm comfortable with being uncomfortable. So when when things are going well for me, I'm like, oh, something's going to happen. Joe: Yeah, so that was I was going to ask you that I just turned fifty nine and I don't envy having that fact for lack of a better term, that cloud hanging over my head, knowing that I went through something, I beat it. Sean: The. Joe: But there's always the chance that it'll rear its ugly head. And so people that have to live with that Sean: And. Joe: Sort of pressure on them, that has to take its toll. I would I would assume it has to take its toll depending on how you deal with it. Right. And with everything. When you wake up, you have the choice of saying this is going to be a great day. It's going to be a bad day. And for some reason and you can help me with this and hopefully the listeners will really heed your advice on this is why do we always choose the negative part? Like everyone, people just love to complain about how their job sucks so they don't have enough money or whatever the case might be. And if they and I listen, I've gone through my whole life having sort of this always this negative thing, like, why didn't I ever reach this goal or that goal or this accomplishment? And I'm hard on myself about it. And I also know I didn't do the work to potentially get to some of those goals. So I'm starting at this ripe old age admitting to myself, OK, you just didn't put in the time. But now I'm only in the past few months I've really shifted my frame of mind to say I literally have everything that I need know. I love my life. I I love the person that I live with. Joellen, my life partner I love. I have everything that I need. And why would I just complain all the time of all the things that I don't have? And our mutual friend David Meltzer says you literally have to get out of your own way and let the universe deliver to you the abundance that's there. And we actually get in the way of making that happen. So why don't people choose the negative? That's what I want to know. Sean: Absolutely, and I honestly, I was thinking of a couple of things, one. We do have we have we do have a choice, and when people start to get anxious, when people start to worry about things, it's because of of two words. What if. What if this happens, what if that happens? What if this happens? What if I get cancer again? But you learn to to realize that for me, it was a it was a house of letters. It was a six letter word that that I was allowed to have power over me. So. And recently, it's funny you mention that recently you were thinking of this, that with because I'm doing the same thing recently, I'm realizing that this word cancer. Had so much control and power over me because I allowed that to happen. And then I realized, why am I freaking out over a word? I mean, don't get me wrong, I completely respect cancer and it can be deadly and it oftentimes is. But it's the word that's making me freak out when I go in for my annual checkups. It used to be smelling sailin that would make me think of all these traumatic things that happened in my past. But it doesn't mean it's going to happen again. So when I realize I'm asking myself, what if. I'm projecting into the future and I'm giving my brain permission to go crazy, to come up with any any cockamamie imaginary thing that I can come up with. So when I when I think of my my treatments or what I think of my annual checkup and I constantly, constantly ask myself, what if I realized, well, what if I get cancer, but what if I don't? Joe: Yeah. Sean: Perfect example. Joe: Yep. Sean: So I realized that the word itself means nothing. It's what I'm actually placing on that word and how I react to it. So when people hear cancer, they're like, oh, wow. But if this is what I did, I spared myself in the mirror and I said cancer about 50 times over and over and over again. And slowly it lost its power over me. And around thirty five or forty times I looked at myself laughing, what the hell this is? This is crazy. But it's lessened its power over and over and over. You just can't cancel. The more you hear about it, the more you get rid of it, you know, the less power it has over you. Joe: Yeah. Sean: And then why people are focused on on the negative so much. I think it's because unconsciously, people are allowing their brains to be programmed by outside sources. If you look at it, most people probably I would say 80 to 90 percent of the world, the first thing they do when they wake up, they grab their phone, they check their emails, they go on social media, whatever it might be. Either they do it before they go to the bathroom or while they're going to the bathroom. It's one of the. And what happens is if you're not paying attention to what you're consuming, because there's that old saying of you are what you eat, but in all honesty, it is you are what you consume. Joe: Yeah. Sean: So if people are constantly consuming this, this this false information from the media and with the media, let me turn on the news. You don't have to watch it for more than 30 seconds to realize it's going to be depressing Joe: Yeah. Sean: Because it's the same stuff all over and over and over again. You have to wait through, what, 60 different stories to see one positive story that takes a point zero five percent of the hour long program. So what people are doing is they're allowing their brains to be programmed by outsiders, outside sources. That outside source is just constantly bombarding their brain with negativity. However you can you have a choice to, like, wake up in the morning and have a positive affirmation, today is the best day ever. I write down my, my, my daily affirmation and I write down three things that I'm going to do and three things I'm going to try to do or and then at the end of the day, as opposed to turning on the news, I get my journal and write down five things I'm grateful for. So I'm essentially bookending my day on a positive note as opposed to, I would say, most of the world they book in their day on the negative note. Joe: Yep. Sean: So if you're constantly being bombarded in allowing negative thoughts into your brain, how do you think it's even possible to be positive? Joe: Yeah, it's I don't know if you hit it on the head and it's just it's it's letting all of that stuff come in from the outside. You have a different perspective for what you went through. And and I think people just take for granted that they're alive and healthy and have a roof over their head and all of the simple things that we just don't we don't think about. And it's important to take a step back and look at that. And instead you take what if and you say, what if all of this stuff went away? Sean: Now. Joe: Where would I be right? Or what if all of this stuff tripled and double that? I had even more abundance because of this, this and this. But it seems like what you wish for, what you think about when people concentrate on the negative things, more of that stuff, it's just Sean: Mike. Joe: It's just naturally happens. And I was doing it for so long. And now that I've shifted, it's just completely changed. And it's I don't know if it's because it's so hard to understand that you can do that with your own brain and your own inner power to shift your mindset. And people, though, that's all that fufu stuff. And it's not. It's and I think that's why it's so hard to explain. It's so hard to get people to just give it a try. Just 30 days. Just think towards the most positive thing you can think of. And every day just try to eliminate as much negativity in your life will change. And Sean: Right. Joe: It's just really hard for people to understand, I think. Sean: And I think that I mean, there are some there are a large percent of the population who think they're still positive when they're actually being negative to the brain and they don't even realize it. So a perfect example. You're walking down the street and you're telling yourself, don't trip, don't trip. You're going to fall on your face, but if you turn it around it from a different perspective and you tell yourself, stand tall, stand tall, walk strong. When entrepreneurs when people go into the stock market, whatever it might be, I guarantee you they don't think, oh, I don't want to lose money. No, that's state. That's that. People are thinking, I'm being positive. No, they want to make money to focus on what they want. And that's exactly what happened when I was in the hospital. The story of that 13 year old who was 60 pounds overweight in the bottom of the shower floor. Like I mentioned before, I didn't I didn't focus on not dying. I focused on living. I mean, can you imagine how it would have turned out if I kept telling myself, oh, don't die, don't die, don't die or climbing Everest. Hey, don't fall, don't fall, don't fall, don't don't stop. And same thing for runners and people doing anything athletic. I guarantee you people who are so don't stop, don't stop as opposed to make it to that spot. And then when you make it there, make it to the next spot. Same thing in life. People are saying never quit, don't quit your brain, just quit Joe: Yeah. Sean: As opposed to make it to that milestone, make it to the next milestone, make it to the next day. Make it to the next day. Keep pushing forward. Joe: Yeah, that's a great point, and that's what I think really people should take away from this section of what we're talking about is that even when they talk about visualization, right, it's like you're you your body, your brain does not know whether or not you've accomplished something or not. Right. So why not tell it the best story you can write? Why not say that? I, I, I'm like, visualize you're on top of Everest. Like just visualize it until it happens. Right. It's just so you have to tell your own, your own body the best story possible. And I think that's this portion of what we're talking about should be a lesson to say your your body, your brain and your body is listening. So make sure you tell the right story. So can you take us back to your 16? You're going through all this. What's the next phase in your life? Sean: A wild and crazy college life Joe: Ok, where was that? Sean: That was in Westminster College, and I think looking back at it, because my my teen years and my high school years were taken from me, have Joe: You're going Sean: You Joe: To make up for Sean: Have you ever seen a movie Animal Joe: The Sean: House? Joe: Absolute. Sean: There you go. And I was Bellucci. I had a wonderful time Joe: Nice. Sean: And I wouldn't change a thing. And I started off molecular bio thinking I was going to cure cancer by splicing genes. And I took organic chemistry and immunology. And it's it's pretty difficult to pass those classes when you don't open a book and study. So. So I actually switched to psychology because I was taking a an introductory psych course while I was going through the immunology class. And I really found it fascinating. And I started thinking, oh, well, maybe there's something here where I can help cancer patients and cancer survivors move on with their lives because it's not an individual disease. It affects everybody in the family thinking, OK, well, I have this great insight. Took the GRE, went to Jacksonville, Florida, to go to work on my master's and my doctorate. And then some things happen. I was working for different jobs, trying to go through my doctorate, which is just ridiculous. I mean, just to focus on education. Wow. So at some point I decided that I hadn't dealt with my own issues. Because of what I went through, I never even considered what cancer did to me and how I wanted to quit on the other end, because in college I just I left it behind. I didn't even bring it up. I mean, there I dated some girls and I was thinking, OK, well, how do I bring up that? I'm a survivor. It's not like, you know, dinner conversation. Oh, you know, how how how's your wife and how is your dinner? Oh, I had cancer. You know, he just Joe: Yeah, Sean: Can't do that. Joe: Yeah. Sean: So I was so worried about I didn't know what to do. I just I just I forgot about it. So then in grad school is thousands of miles away from Ohio. And it was the first time I actually stopped and looked myself in the mirror and ask myself those deep questions, you know, who are you? What do you want from life? What's your purpose? So I just did some deep, deep understanding of who I was, and then I realized, OK, I had been given a tremendous gift of the mind body connection, and I wanted to help and give back to cancer patients in the cancer world. And that's what I did, more research and more research and kept getting bigger and bigger and thinking higher and higher and like, OK, well, how about we use the biggest platform of the highest platform in the world to scream? Hope the guy. Great. Let's let's go climb Everest. Moved to Colorado just because, like the highest point in Florida is the top of the for the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami. Joe: And Sean: So I moved to Colorado, Rocky Mountains Joe: I love. Sean: Because I know I don't know too many mountaineers who live in Florida. Joe: No, no, but it's also. Sean: So I moved to Colorado and I trained in and literally nine months later flew over to Kathmandu, Nepal, and headed up Everest as the first cancer survivor to some of the highest mountain in the world. Joe: So what year was this and how old were you? Sean: Well, that was that was 2002, I actually submitted May 16th at nine thirty two in the morning. So night again almost 20 years ago, 19 years ago. I was twenty seven at the time. That's right. Joe: And Sean: Twenty Joe: You Sean: Seven. Joe: Did this with nine months of training. Sean: Nine months of training and when I first. Well, when I first moved to Colorado, I didn't even have any support. My brother came with me. We lived out the back of my Honda Civic and we camped in Estes Park for two months before we even got a sponsorship. Joe: Oh, my gosh. Sean: So we were I remember one morning we woke up, we were going to go climb, I think it's one of the Twin Peaks in Estes Park and we got about two feet of snow in August. And I was thinking to myself, because we're living in the car, that camping, it's like, the hell am I doing here? Joe: Josh. Sean: What did I get myself into? My my office was the library and a pay phone bank. So I was calling corporations like Ghatak and Karvelas in the Northeast saying, hey, I'm a two time cancer survivor with one lung and I'm going to go climb Mount Everest in 10 months and I need your help. Ninety nine doors closed in my face. Joe: Really, that's Sean: At. Joe: So surprising that your story is so unique that that one that triggered people to say yes more often. Sean: But they didn't think it was even possible. Joe: I guess, Sean: They thought Joe: Wow. Sean: It was physiologically impossible to do that with half your lung capacity, so they like, like I said, nine out of 10 people. I mean, hey, you know, this is my story. Click And I thought it was a joke. So Joe: What? Sean: I. I actually have both lungs, but there's so much scar tissue from the radiation treatment, there's really no oxygen transfer. Yeah. So Joe: So Sean: It's Joe: There wasn't removed, it was just Sean: Like. Joe: It's just collapsed or Sean: Now. Joe: If that's the right term, but Sean: That's Joe: The scar tissue, Sean: A perfect term, Joe: Ok. Sean: Yeah. Joe: Ok, and this that was from the age 16 to one. A lot of the chemo and radiation was done. That's when it happened. Sean: Exactly. Joe: Did you have it? Did you also have chemo and radiation at 13? Sean: I had chemo the first time and chemo radiation the second time. Joe: Ok, and so it just affected the one long in the sense that it just created just the scar tissue over Sean: Correct, Joe: It where it wasn't. So Sean: Correct. Joe: It doesn't really work at all. Sean: Not not really. In fact, in January, I had a little scare, they think it's a long term side effect from the radiation where I had some spots in my back removed and now I have another another starless by about six inches long where they had to go remove that. But if that's all I have to do, the first cancer, the second cancer is 16, 17, and the now 46 year old. Cut it out. I'm good. Joe: Yeah, Sean: Yeah. Joe: Ok, so we are. You said what was the date again, Sean: May 16th. Joe: May 16th of two thousand and two, Sean: Yeah. Joe: And you were twenty seven years old, OK? And so you trained nine months before you decided you said, I'm going to go do this. So you you set aside nine months to get ready for this. Sean: Correct. Joe: Ok, so does the training. Is the training the stuff that I saw in some of the videos where you're you're pulling a sheet behind you and and whatever, your pull tire's up a hill and like, how did you figure out how to train for such as that? Sean: So that was actually when I when I went to the North Pole a couple of years ago, but for training going up to up Everest, there's lungs Long's peak, which is 18 miles round trip, and it's it's fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty six feet. And I eventually worked my way up to climbing that peak once a week with 100 pounds of rocks in my backpack. So I would train myself and I'll go up onto that peak and into the Rocky Mountain National Park in a bad day, thinking that a bad day on Long's peak was probably better than a good day on Everest. And what I do a training for, for anything like the North Pole, the Hawaii Ironman, I did that. I train harder than I think the event actually event is going to be for two reasons. I get my body in shape, my mind in shape, but also I'm thankful I don't have to train more and I'm more excited about the actual event. Joe: Right. That's crazy. So what is a normal when you're when you're training for something like that? What what would be a normal day in Sean's life? What time do you get up? What kind of stuff do you like? I can't even fathom something like this. I just Sean: Well. Joe: Got done skiing and snowboarding in Utah. I got home last night. I went with the old my oldest friend. We went from elementary and junior high and high school. And Sean: Now. Joe: Our families were friends and his father was my dentist. And so he said, I'm going to snowboard spring skiing. I haven't been skiing in twenty five plus years. Sean: Now. Joe: Like, come on, let's go. And I was a good skier a long time ago and yeah, I just can't imagine what it would take. My legs were shot. So what does it take. What's Seans the day in the life of of what you do. Sean: Well, I'm going to challenge you again, then, what are you doing July twenty, Fourth to August seven? Joe: I saw that and I was like, God, I want to do that. So Sean: So. Joe: Explain. So since you're talking about. Explain what that is before we talk about your daily routine. So Sean: Well, Joe: Explain. Sean: Yeah, that would lead into it, because I everybody every year I take a group of Kilimanjaro as Joe: That's. Sean: A fundraiser for cancer charity, and what we do is we actually we pay for a survivors trip. And then it's the responsibility of that survivor to raise funds for next year's survivor, kind Joe: Oh, Sean: Of Joe: Wow. Sean: Paying it forward. Anyone can go. We just fund the survivors trip. And this year we actually have enough funds to send to survivors. So I'm hoping with those two survivors, there isn't. They raise enough funds to take three and twenty twenty two and then maybe five and twenty, twenty three and so forth up to. I'd love to take 15 people, 15 survivors for free every year at Joe: Wow, that's Sean: All Joe: Incredible. Sean: Costs. But for Kilimanjaro, let's say I would, I would wake up and about four miles from here we have a set of stairs that are pretty steep and there are two hundred and I live at I want to say sixty, sixty four, sixty five hundred feet. So I'm already an altitude which helps a lot. Joe: Is Sean: I Joe: It? Sean: Wake up in the morning before sunrise and eventually I will do that. That set of stairs 10 to 15 times with about 70 or 80 pounds of rocks in my backpack. So you're talking what, two thousand, maybe, maybe three, four thousand steps up and down in how many stairs are there? The Empire State Building. I think there's one thousand something so Joe: Yeah, Sean: Less than I did. Joe: Right. Wow. Sean: Then come back, wake my wife up, will do some yoga, eat breakfast, come here to do some work on my laptop, and then I'll probably either do it depending on the day, either rowing, lifting or running, and then on the weekends go out and do a 14 or something like that and a 14 year, a fourteen thousand foot peak. But I also have a sponsorship through a company called Hypoxic Go Joe: Check. Sean: Where there's this machine. I call it Arcudi to like R-2 because it's tiny and it actually filters out oxygen to simulate altitude. So I'll I'll do the yoga, I'll do the rowing machine or and I'm doing this because it's a mask of Joe: For those of you who are listening, he's putting his hand over his face. Sean: Just randomly. That's that's what I do. And I work out, I, Joe: That's right. Sean: I, I'll do those workouts at home on a mask that's connected to this machine and I'll end up doing these workouts at nineteen thousand feet. So what I'm doing is I'm pretty acclimatizing my body because I have to make up for the lack of my right lung because when you get into altitude there's less oxygen, you know, it's spread out, spread out further. And when you get to like if we left, if we went from here to the top of Everest, we'd be dead in five minutes just because of the lack of oxygen. So I treat it and I try to pre acclimatize myself. And when we go to Kilimanjaro, I tell people my training schedule and like, I could never do that. Well, remember, you're training for yourself. I'm training for me and ten other people. Joe: Right. Sean: So Joe: Right. Sean: This if you're interested, this would be my 21st summit of Kilimanjaro. Joe: That's incredible in regards to what you eat, are you like a very strict like is everything that you do? Very strict and regimented. Sean: Not not everything, I mean, I give myself some leniency sugar during the week, I don't do on the weekends Joe: Ok. Sean: On Easter. Yeah, I have those little malt balls, you know, the Easter Mother's Day. But for the most part, I mean, no sugar. See, what did I have just for lunch? My wife made a salad. We had some chick like a chicken, homemade chicken salad. We're very conscious of what we eat. We stay away from the sugars. No. And that means no white pasta, no white bread. I love I've always loved broccoli. I just eat healthy. Joe: Right. Sean: Every once in a while I'll have a burger or steak, but, you know, maybe once a month. Joe: Beer, a glass of wine, no. Sean: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I Joe: Ok, Sean: Like I actually I brew beer at home too. Joe: Ok, OK, Sean: Yeah. Joe: Ok. Sean: It's great because when I travel you know, I make the beer, I come back two weeks later I'm like, oh beer. Joe: There you go. OK, cool. Sean: Oh. Joe: So were you afraid going Tavaris like, I can't I can't even imagine I'm telling you to sit here and talk with you about this. I I've watched like we've talked about before, we actually started recording, watched the shows, the different movies or documentaries about it and the getting frostbite and people getting pneumonia and their sister, their body shutting down. And they're having to have the tip of like my nose is red right now from being sunburned and windburn from Snover. And I'm like, I don't I can't even fathom all the things that must go through your brain. And then watching where you cross over on that, I don't even know what it's called. You think I know after Sean: Remasters Joe: Watching. Sean: Have. Joe: Yeah. The with the ones with the ladders. Right. I don't know how many of those you have to cross and I just I don't know. And then the spots where I don't even know if this is something people point out on the way up or on the way down. But that's where we had to leave so and so like at the all those things go into your brain and you don't want to be the weak link in the chain. Something happens to you and then all of a sudden other people have to descend, like, I don't even know how that works. So, I mean, arriving at base camp must have been just like incredible and scary as hell. I've been like, oh, my gosh, there's no turning back here. It is base camp. And I'm and I said, I'm going to do this. Sean: I think for me, I obviously was focused on the summit, I wanted to get to the top like everybody else who goes over there, but I think I was more focused on enjoying the whole process because literally when I got to base camp, every step outside of base camp was my personal record for altitude. I had never been any higher than base camp. But so every step was higher than I'd ever been, so Joe: What Sean: I Joe: Is Sean: Am. Joe: What is base camp at? Sean: Seventeen thousand six hundred feet. Joe: Ok, and you and you're saying this machine you use change you at nineteen thousand. Sean: But I didn't I didn't have that machine before Joe: Oh, Sean: I. Joe: Wow. Sean: So the highest I have ever been was just around just below fourteen thousand five hundred feet, which is the highest mountain here in Colorado. Joe: That's correct. Sean: Albert. Joe: Wow. Sean: And when I got to the summit of Everest, I mean, it was double the whatever, the highest point I'd ever been. But I knew that I was so focused on, you know, you asked me about being afraid, there were times that those little. Negative seeds got planted in my brain, but I didn't want them. I didn't let them grow and I was very mindful and very aware of when those thoughts came in my brain, because looking back at the same analogy of that young boy on the shower floor, I focused on living as opposed to not dying. And when I when I was crossing the ladders on on the glass across the crevasses, I wasn't focused on, hey, don't fall in the crevasse. I was focused on making it to the next side. And when we passed the dead bodies, I stepped over a number of dead bodies. I just I tried to not ask myself the question, I did this when I got back down. Why did he die? Why would nine? And what's the difference, like, why would I why would I be worthy and he wouldn't be. But it's it's like anything in life where you just don't know sometimes. Why did I get cancer? I don't know. It's a whole question. Why me? Why me? Well, the fact of the matter is, it was me. So deal with it. Why not me? Joe: Yeah, I've had this conversation with other people on the podcast who have gone through some adversity. I you know, I feel like that adversity has been given, fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, because the outcomes of things that you've learned through what you've gone through have created this person, this mental strength, and someone who is very happy day to day or other people, just no matter, they could be having the most amazing life and they still complain. But I feel like, you know, the adversity has been given to people with strength, and I'm not sure if that's true. It's something I made up of my own brain because I think I'm such a wimp that I cut my finger. I start like I don't know how I would deal with what you've gone through, what other people around me have gone through. So that's what's my own little story, I tell myself. So you just didn't choose me because he knew I couldn't handle it, so. Sean: But but you never know what you can handle until you're put in that situation. Joe: Right. Sean: And people always say say things like that all the time, I don't. My God, I have no idea what I would do if I was ever in your situation. You don't know. Joe: Yeah. Sean: And you'd be amazed at how much you can actually handle when you are in that situation. Joe: Yeah, that's incredible. OK, so you're at base camp and how many are you in? I don't know how you travel if there's 12 or 15 or whatever the number is. How many are there with you going up? Sean: So, as you probably know, a normal Everest expedition could I mean, it could be 20, 30 people. Joe: Ok. Sean: A number of sardars Sherpas, you name it, and clients. I had my brother at base camp, a cook at base camp, two Sherpas and me, and that was it. We were I say I was we were on a shoestring budget, but we didn't even have shoelaces. So we. Joe: Did Sean: It Joe: You end Sean: Was. Joe: Up ever getting sponsorship before you left? Sean: I did in Joe: Ok, Sean: One of Joe: Good. Sean: Them was Ghatak, one was Capello's, and Joe: Ok. Sean: Believe it or not, I didn't even have a summit suit a week before I was supposed to go up for the top. And just my crazy luck. And I know it's not like it was by the big guy upstairs, but the north face came in with my my summit suit and it actually said Shantz Warner Everest base camp on the box. And it got to. Joe: Wow, that's crazy. Sean: It's like two or three days before I was supposed to go up in the sun at my summit suit came in. Joe: That is nuts. Wow. All right, so when you start out, how long does it. How long should it take you or how long is like the most that you can spend up that high? Like, is there a period of time that you have the summit? And I know it's due to weather, too, right. You have to sometimes Sean: At. Joe: Just go. We can't make the attempt today. The weather is just not good enough. So what did it end up taking you from base camp to summoning Everest? Sean: So a lot of people don't understand that when you get there, you don't go from base camp and go up to Camp One, spend a couple of days there, go up to camp to spend a couple of days there, three, four. Same thing from the south side. We actually there are four camps and then with base camp there. Joe: Ok. Sean: So we arrived at base camp April 8th and I summited May 16. So almost a month and a half. The whole time we're going from base camp up higher, establishing different camps and then coming back down so that that does two things, we go up with a full back, a pack drop off stuff and then go back with an empty backpack, go back up with a full pack your stuff and go back down. So, like I said, does two things. It actually transports the gear and material that we need to each camp, food, gear, whatever. But it also is getting our body adjusted to the altitude. Joe: Ok. Sean: So then we would go up and down, up and down, up and down after we established three and then four when when you get to camp for your before you get to Camp four, you pay attention to the weather. And there's a weather window because everybody has seen that that quintessential picture of Everest with the snow plume Joe: Yep, Sean: Blowing off the top. Joe: Yep. Sean: That's because that's because the sun is puncturing the jetstream, the just Joe: Uh. Sean: Tunnels, the summit, two Joe: Huh? Sean: Hundred three hundred miles an hour. So it's impossible to climb on that. So what happens is pre monsoon season, there's a high pressure system that pushes the jet stream north. And that's when people sneak up on top of Everest and come back down. So you see on I guess you don't look on a map, but meteorologists know and they give you a weather window like it's usually mid-May. For us, it was supposed to be May 15th where the weather window was good. But for whatever reason, that may on May 14th, we were supposed to move to May 15th and go up for the summit. I was at camp three and I was suffering a mild form of cerebral edema, which is altitude induced swelling of the brain. And I couldn't move. So every single other expedition who was on the same schedules, us went from Camp three, moved to Camp four and went to the summit that night. The next morning, the winds were howling. They came down the aisle retreat, and they lost their opportunity to climb. I slept on an oxygen that day. The next morning we went up to camp for summited on May 16th, a day later, and there was just a slight breeze in the top. We spent about 30 minutes up there to forty five minutes, which is unheard of. Joe: Who's medically trained to tell you what's wrong with you or do you just have to know, like there's no one is like in your own little group, it's you just have to know what's right or wrong with you and how to fix it. Sean: In my group, yeah, I mean, in other expeditions are expedition doctors, you know, everybody there were we made friends with some people from Brown University who were doing a study up there. And it was it's actually really funny. They're doing a study on how the altitude affects the brain. And they gave me this book and I became a volunteer to help with the study. And I was at Camp three when I was acclimatizing and not going up for the summit, but just sleeping at Camp three is going to come back down the mountain like a little Rolodex thing. It's like the size of an index card and you flip it back and on the front of it, you're supposed to pick out which object was was different, which which one didn't belong. And it was like a small triangle, a large triangle, a medium sized triangle and a Pentagon or something like that. Right. Joe: So. Sean: And so and each each are different. So big, medium, small square in a circle you pick out the circle. But it was funny. So I get up to camp three and I'm radioing down to them. All right. You guys ready to go? Yeah, we're good. So I flip it over and I'm thinking I'm going to have some fun with this. Joe: All right. Sean: So I go page one, the Penguin Page to the House, page three, the dog. And keep in mind, they're all geometric shapes. So Joe: All Sean: I think. Joe: Right, to the naming of animals, as they say, oh, for. Sean: It's like I take my thumb off the microphone and there's a long silence. Joe: It's not. Sean: And all of a sudden, Sean, are you feeling OK? Joe: Right. Sean: Like, yeah, why, what's going on? There are no animals. Joe: That is so funny. Oh, my gosh, they were probably like, oh, we got to get a helicopter up there. Sean: They were thinking, we need to get emergency up there and get him down off the mountain. Joe: That is so funny. Oh, my gosh. So is it true that it gets backed up up there when people are trying to summit during a certain season? Sean: It is now when I was there, it wasn't as bad Joe: Check. Sean: And also. A few years ago, there was a big earthquake and there used to be a section called the Hillary Step, Joe: Yep, I Sean: And Joe: Remember hearing. Sean: So it used to be a chunk of rock that used to hang out. And literally, if you took six inches off to your left side, you would plummet a mile and a half straight down. And there was that section where only one person could go up or one person could go down at a time, and that's where the bottleneck usually was. So with the earthquake, what I've heard is that there's no longer a Hillary step. It's more like a Hillary slope now because that giant rock has been dislodged. But from the obviously you saw a picture from a couple of years ago that just that long queue of people, apparently it's getting a little out of control. Joe: And that's crazy. Would you ever do it again? Do you ever care about doing it again? Sean: Well, as is my family or my wife going to hear this this time, I don't know if it calms down and it becomes less popular, I honestly would I would like to attempt it again without oxygen to see if it's possible to climb Everest with one lung and no no supplemental oxygen. Joe: Who was the guy that did it with no, nothing. Sean: Reinhold Messner, he's climbed, yeah, and then there's also a guy named Viscose who climbed the 8000 meter peaks. So it's been it's been done numerous times, but the first person who did it was Mesner. I believe. Joe: No oxygen, it just all right. Yeah, I don't want to get you in trouble with your wife, so we'll just, well, not talk about it anymore, OK? I'm telling you, I can sit here and talk to you forever, and I want to respect your time. I don't want to run too far over. So besides everything you've done every day, the tallest peak on every continent at this point, is that true? Sean: Correct. Still the seven summits, Joe: Yeah, Sean: Yep. Joe: Ok, and then along with that, you have this series of books that you're doing. Can you explain what that's about, what people find when they give each one of those books? Sean: Oh, sure, yeah, it's actually it's in the infant stages right now, but it's called the Seven Summits to Success. And I just signed an agreement with a publishing company. We're producing we're publishing the first one which is conquering your Everest, where it helps people bring them kind of into my life and understand how I've done what I've done, not just what I've done, what I've done, not what I've done I've done, not what I've done, but how I've done what I've done. Joe: Yeah. Sean: And it's also it's very similar to what I just I put together called the Summit Challenge, which is an online series of individual modules, seven different modules walking people through. Utilizing their own personal core values to accomplish things like self actualization, and at the end they essentially find their purpose and it came from the concept and the idea where after a keynote presentation, so many people would come up and say, that's a great story, but a handful would say, that's a great story. And then followed up with a question, but how did you do it? And then looking at Kilimanjaro again, the average success rate on the mountain is roughly forty eight percent, meaning fifty two people out of 100 don't even make it to the top. And like I said, this this July with my twenty first summit with groups and our groups are at 98 percent success rate, double that of the average. So I was thinking, OK, well what's what's the difference? And the difference is I've been subconsciously imparting what I've learned going through the cancer because my first goal was to crawl eight feet from a hospital bed to the bathroom, and then I ended up climbing twenty nine thousand feet to the top of the world. So all those little things, those little insights that I've learned, I've been imparting on people in my groups. So we do something every day that's different to help people get up there. In the main, the main understanding that they get is understanding what their personal core values are. Because once you hold fast to your personal core values and you have an understanding of a deeper purpose, nothing is going to get in your way. Joe: So in that kind of brings us back to when you left college and you decided that you're you're camping with your brother and then you decide you're going to do this thing to Everest. Right. Was that the beginning of this this portion of Shawn's life where you're going to do these things? But now there's an underlying what's the word I'm looking for this an underlying mission, which is you're you're doing this, I guess, because you like to challenge yourself. Obviously, you just want to you're so happy with the fact that you have been given this chats with Sean: Right. Joe: With what happened to you. You're going to make the most of it. So here I am, Sean Zwirner. I am so grateful that I went through two different types of cancer that easily either one of them could have killed me. One of them ruined one of my lungs. I'm still living. Not only that, but I'm going to make the most of every day. So you go to Everest, you do this, you accomplish that, and then you say, OK, that that's that's it. You went for the biggest thing on your first run. You would start out small. You just like, screw it, I'm going to Everest. And then after that, all these other things would be cakewalks, and I'm sure they're not. But then you did all seven summits. And now, though, is it the underlying mission is that you are you are the voice of cancer survivors and and what you do and I don't want to put any words in your mouth, so stop me at any moment. But is it like you're doing this to to to provide hope for them to say, listen, I not only did it twice, but I am living at the highest level of accomplishment and and I don't know what there's so many words I can think of that you just you want them to all think the same way, just keep pushing forward, get the most out of life. And I'm here to support you. And look at me. I've done it. I'm not just spewing words from a stage. I've literally gone out and done this. So I want you to be on this journey with me, both mentally, physically, if you can. Does that make sense or that I just destroy it? Sean: No, absolutely, I I wouldn't I wouldn't personally profess that I am the voice of survivors if others want to think that that that's great. But I wouldn't I wouldn't declare myself that. But I have found a deeper purpose. And it did start with Everest, because when I made it to the summit, I had a flag that had names that people touched by cancer on it. Joe: Yeah, I saw that, yep. Sean: And that was always folded up in my chest pocket, close to my heart as a constant reminder of my goals in my inspiration, and I planted a flag on the top of Everest. I planted a flag on the seven summits, the highest on every continent. And I also planted a flag at the South Pole and most recently at the North Pole. And I think it initially started. With the concept of I don't want to say infiltrating the cancer community, but getting there and showing them exactly what you said, you know, being up on stage and saying, hey, I'm not just talking the talk, I'm walking it as well. I know what it's like being in your situation. I know what it's like to have no hope. But I also know what it's like on the other side. And I also know what it's like to scream from the rooftops that there's there's a tremendous life after after cancer and it can be a beautiful life. So a lot of people who and like I said, it started off with cancer, but now it's it's reached out to anybody who's going through anything traumatic, which is with the state of the world, is it's everybody now. So with with any uncertainty, you can use that, especially with my cancer. It wasn't the end. It was the beginning. So what the world is going through right now, it's not necessarily the end. It's not uncertainty. How we come out of this on the other side is entirely up to us. And it's our choice. And we can use all the trials and tribulations and turn that into triumph of success if we want. It is all based on our own perspectives. Joe: So you come off of Everest and then there's your life now become this person who is going to continue to push themselves for because you obviously want to live this amazing life and you don't you just do love the adventure. You love the thrill of the accomplishment. I'm sure all of that stuff that any of us would love, like I went skiing for three days of twenty five years. I'm glad I'm still alive. Sit and talk Sean: They. Joe: Because trust me, I wasn't the guy you were talking about walking down the sidewalk and say, don't trip down. I was like, you're fifty nine. You break a bone now you're screwed, you're breakable. And I'm going over. These moguls go, oh my gosh, why am I here? How did you survive? How does someone like that survive financially? How do you survive financially that you now did that? Does that start to bring in sponsorships and endorsements and book deals and speaking deals, or is it just the snowball that happens? And how do you decide that this is the path your life is going to take? Sean: You would think so, and I've been approached by numerous corporations where the conversation went, something like me telling them, well, I really can't use your product up in the mountains and doing what I do. They say, OK, we'll just take the money we're going to give you by which you really use but endorse our product. So if I went if I went down that path, absolutely, I would be living the high life. Joe: Right. Sean: But because I'm a moral and ethical person, I think. Joe: So. Sean: It's not nearly what you probably think it is, I don't have people banging down my door for a movie. I don't have people banging down my door for a book. And I think it's because most of the media that we see on television is is paid for media. And every time I reach out to a production company or a marketing company or a PR company, they're usually the first question is what? What's your budget? OK, well, how about the story? How about helping people? Because like I said, every morning I write an affirmation down, in fact, or was it just yesterday was I will give more than I receive. I will create more than I consume. And I think most people who don't understand that think that you're living in a state of lack. And maybe I am. But I'm also incredibly grateful for everything we have. And do I want my story out there? Absolutely. But I don't need to make millions and millions of dollars on it. And what I what I want to do is take those millions and millions of dollars and take cancer survivors up Kilimanjaro every year. I'd love to do that three or four times a year. So I'm always looking for people who can who can jump in here and help me out and share my story with others to give back to help people and help them believe in themselves and help them find their purpose, their their inner drive, their inner. Joe: Is this is going to sound so stupid, so forgive me, so when you do this, this trek up Kilimanjaro, you do it in July, right? Sean: Yeah, yeah, Joe: It. Sean: People should arrive at Kilimanjaro International Airport July 20 for. Joe: Ok, is it cold up there? Sean: It depends. That's a it's not a stupid question, Joe: Really, Sean: But Joe: I Sean: That's Joe: Thought Sean: Like Joe: You were going to Sean: Asking. Joe: Be like, yeah, it's it's it's however many thousand Sean: Oh. Joe: Feet. What do you think, Joe? Sean: But that would be like me asking you, hey, what's it like in snowboarding? What's it going to be like in snowboarding? July? Twenty Fourth. Twenty twenty three. I mean, you have a rough estimate. Joe: I. Sean: So in going up Kilimanjaro, it's one of the most beautiful mountains I've been on because you go through so many different climactic zones getting up that you start off in an African rainforest where it can be a torrential downpour. It's always green, but it could be a torrential downpour or it can be sunny and the sun kind of filters through the canopy and you'll see these little streams of light coming to the camp, which is beautiful. And then the next day, it's it could be sunny or rainy, but it goes through so many different zones. You just have to be prepared for each one summit night. However, yes, it's tremendously cold. It can be zero degrees or maybe even minus 10. But with the right gear, you're going to be fine. I mean, there's there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad year. Joe: Well, here's a good question, and if someone was to go on this is how do they get that gear that they have to buy all that stuff? Sean: You can you can purchase it or you can rent it over there. I've used the same group of people for the past 18 months, and if you're if you're never going to use a zero degree sleeping bag again in your life, just rent it for 30 bucks. You don't spend three hundred four hundred dollars to buy one. Or if you do buy one and you're never going to use again, give it to my friends, the Sherpas of who use it all the time. Joe: Right, so basically somebody's going on this could, when they arrive there, get everything they need to make it happen. Sean: Well, except for your boots and your underwear, you probably don't want to rent me underwear. Joe: The point well taken. OK, go. So I want to ask you about the Big Hill challenge. Sean: So great, the big Hill challenge is actually an abridged version of the summit challenge, so some challenges this really in-depth twenty one week program where you take micro challenges and utilize something that you learn and just incorporate into your daily life. The Big Hill challenge is going to be a three week challenge where I take a group of one hundred people at a time and work them through three weeks of little micro challenges to help them along. Joe: Ok. Sean: And they're both based on understanding and utilizing your personal core values. Joe: Perfect. And these can be found on your website. Sean: Yeah, you can go to the summit challenge dotcom event eventually, you can go to the Big Hill challenge dotcom, Joe: Ok, Sean: But every Joe: Ok, Sean: One or dotcom. Joe: Ok, great, because I'll put all of this in the show, notes and everything else, I wrote this question down because I wanted to make it clear that besides your website, Shawn Sean: Like. Joe: Swane or Dotcom, you have the cancer Climategate. Sean: Correct. Joe: Can you explain can you explain that site to me and what the goal of that site is? Sean: So cancer climber, cancer climate Doug is actually the organization my brother and I founded that funds trips for cancer survivors to kill javu. Joe: Ok. Sean: And actually, if we raise, my goal is to raise about two million dollars to have a mobile camp for kids with cancer. Joe: Wow. That's Sean: Because Joe: Incredible. Sean: You there are camps all over the country, all over the world, but oftentimes you can't get the survive or you can't get the patient to the camp because of the compromised immune system. So I thought, well, what if there's a semi truck that brings the camp to the kids? Joe: Hmm, that's interesting. That's a really cool. And the reason I ask about coming on being cold is because Joel in my my better half of 20 some years survived breast cancer. It was lymph node sort of stuff. So taken out and be like God. But she hates the cold like she I would be so cold to do something like this with her. She just literally I mean, I don't know if she would go the last section to the summit because her cold do not mix. She's so happy here in Arizona and she never complains about the heat. So Sean: My. Joe: That's the only reason I ask that. So. Sean: My wife was born and raised in Puerto Rico, Joe: Ok. Sean: Forty forty years of her life, and she went with me. Joe: She. Sean: She did. She hated the last night, but she's so happy she didn't. Joe: So it's really just the one night that's the Sean: Yeah. Joe: Coldest. So it's one night out. How long does it take to get from where you started out in the rainforest to the. Sean: So the whole trip itself is a seven day trip up and down the mountain summit on the morning of the 6th, we leave the evening of the 6th, and then after we come off the mountain, we actually go we fly into the Serengeti and do a four day safari to the Serengeti. Joe: And when you're staying on the way up to the summit, or is it just like caps right Sean: But Joe: There? Oh, so that's it. There it is. Sean: The. Joe: That's right. So the people that are listening to this on the podcast, you'll have to look at the YouTube video later. But he's showing me the actual Sean: The. Joe: Tents and. And is everybody carrying their own tent? Sean: No, I actually, because I've been there so many times, we pay two porters per person to haul your gear up and all you have to worry about is your day pack some water, snacks, showers, your camera, sunscreen, hat, stuff like that. I don't want anybody carrying anything more than, say, twenty five thirty pounds up the mountain, but the sort of porters will actually give them the leave. After we leave camp, they'll pass us on the way.
I had the opportunity to sit down with celebrity cosmetic dentist, Dr. Bill Dorfman. We chatted about how he came up in the world from childhood to creating one of the most famous dentist practices in Studio City, CA. On top of the practice he created, he also started Discus Dental with a dear friend of his, which was a global leader in professional tooth whitening products with brands such as Zoom®!, BriteSmile®, and NiteWhite® and they eventually sold the company to Royal Philips Electronics for millions. Dr. Bill has appeared on Larry King Live, Oprah, The Doctors and was the only dentist to appear on ABC's Extreme Makeover. Now with his extremely successful career, he has turned some of his focus towards philanthropy and the LEAP Foundation for high school and college students. You're going to see this side of Dr. Bill and his passion towards entrepreneurship, success, giving back and his foundation. As always, thanks so much for listening to the podcast and I would so appreciate a rating of 5 starts and a review. It would really mean the world to me. Much love, Joe Dr. Bill Dorfman Celebrity Cosmetic Dentist, Partner of Discus Dental, Inventor of Zoom! and Founder of the LEAP Foundation Author of: Billion Dollar Smile: A Complete Guide to Your Extreme Smile Makeover Website: https://www.billdorfmandds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbilldorfman/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrBillDorfman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbilldorfman/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrBillDorfman Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Ok, my guest today is Dr. Bill Dorfman. Dr. Bill, welcome. Dr. Bill: Thank you. How are you? Joe: Great. So it's a pleasure to have you here with a lot of the guests that I have on, I really like to give the audience an idea of who you are and not just jump in to where we are today. So if can you give us some background of your time line, how you decided to get into dentistry where you grew up, just kind of bring us up to today is is slow, slower, as fast as you want to. Dr. Bill: Sure, I am a native of California, I grew up in Granada Hills as a little kid, I happen to have an accident where I knocked out my baby teeth. We had a great family dentist. And at some point I just thought this would be a cool thing to do and help people the way he helped me. And so at the age of about three, I said, I'm going to be a dentist. And it just never wavered. I was a weird kid. I mean, how many kids want to be a dentist? Right. But I've always been weird and I've always kind of marched to the beat of a different drum. I never felt like I fit into any, like, group or peg. I just kind of always did my own thing. I was like the Switzerland of a kid. I was friends with everybody, but not really part of anything, you know, like I swam. But I wasn't always with the swimmers and I played football, but I wasn't with the football players and student government. But, like, I just was kind of a free spirited kid that didn't really I didn't really, like, do what most normal kids do. I don't know. It was funny. I had this conversation with my parents recently and I said, you know. Dr. Bill: How was I as a kid, like was I easy to raise, hard to raise, and they're like, you are perfect like you. And, you know, and I honestly don't ever remember I never argued with my parents. I never got into trouble. I was a weird kid. I just I always just kind of did what I was supposed to do. I guess it was in my mind, like the path of least resistance. I didn't smoke. I didn't drink. I didn't do drugs. Like I mean, I always kind of just did what I was supposed to do and I was happy go lucky guy. And, you know, I went to school and it's funny because I was always voted most likely to succeed in kindergarten, in grade school and junior high and high. And I was like, why do people always say that? I don't know. It was just a weird thing, even in dental school and. You know, we grew up really poor. I mean, I was one of five kids, I started working when I was five years old. I had a job. I worked in in the in the yard for neighbors. I would go pick weeds. And then when I was old enough to push a lawnmower, I would pull weeds and do the lawn mower. Dr. Bill: And then when I got a little bit older, I got a job working at Ralph's, which is a grocery store. And then I worked as a janitor. My mother was a nursery school teacher. And so I would go to school and I would work as a janitor and clean the schools. And, you know, my parents, I would say we were rich, rich, rich in love, poor monetary things. And maybe that was good, you know? I mean, I literally supported myself. I mean, outside of buying food, all my clothes, everything I wanted, I just I bought you know, it's funny because I have three daughters and I almost feel like when they got into college, I got into college, too, because I was so active in helping them write their entrance stuff and did it. But my parents had no idea. You know, one day I got a letter, I'm like, Hey, Mom, Dad, I'm going to UCLA. They're like, Oh, that's great, sweetie. Then they'll clue, you know? I mean, it was just that's just how it was. I was the independent kid. I just did my own thing. I remember. Graduating UCLA, I got a call from the dean's office and I was awarded the outstanding senior award, which is kind of a big deal, right? Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: So I call my folks and my mom, dad, I get on the phone, they're both on the phone. I'm like, you won't believe this. I said, well, I just got a call from the dean's office and I'm going to be the outstanding senior at UCLA graduating class. My mother says, What's not to believe? A lot. They picked me, there's ten thousand students, Joe: Right. Dr. Bill: She goes, darling, do you really think there's somebody better? Joe: That's awesome. Dr. Bill: I'm like, Mom, you're like totally missing. My parents had no idea. And it was actually kind of funny, you know, and, you know, so, you know, I kind of went through and I graduate UCLA. I finished that, you know, going to UCLA. And then I got in a dental school. My first choice is dental, which was a great school. It was a three year program. And as I was entering my senior year, I realized, you know, I've never seen the world or anything. Actually, I had never even really been on an airplane. And it's like I need to open up this practice and be tethered to a specific area. Like I didn't want to do that. So I did some research and I found a program in Switzerland that was the only clinic literally in the world that wasn't a third world country where an American dentist could work legally. Problem is, there were four hundred applicants and only one position, and I was bound and determined to get that. So I had every professor in my dental school write me a letter of recommendation. And they were amazing letters, you know. I know. I wrote them all I Joe: That's Dr. Bill: Mean, Joe: Right. Dr. Bill: Basically, I would say, can you write me a letter and they do I know I have to Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: Write another letter and then say I'll write it if your personal lives. So I did that and I soon realized that was getting me nowhere. So then I started calling the director of the clinic back in nineteen eighty three. This was not easy. We didn't have cell phones. You know, I, you know, I couldn't make long distance phone calls from my dental school, you know, what am I getting like keep putting quarters like a lot of your millennialist. Don't you know that you actually used to have to put money in a pay Joe: Exactly, Dr. Bill: Phone. Right. Joe: I was there. Dr. Bill: Right. So there is and you can use a credit card and none of this. So I would have to time it at home. And and even then, it wasn't easy. A lot of times you couldn't get through. It didn't work at the bank. I start calling him and calling him and I tell kids and we'll talk about my leave program a little later on, there will be life defining moments in your life. Sometimes you plan on, sometimes you don't. Sometimes they just happen. And this was one that I really didn't plan, but it was so fortuitous that it happened. And I'm on the phone with the director. His name was Mr. Schreyer. And I said as I realized I was getting nowhere with these phone calls. Can I take you to lunch? Because I had heard somewhere that, like, you should take people to lunch Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: And the crazy thing is and he said it, he goes, But you're in San Francisco and I'm in Switzerland, I'm like, no problem, I'll fly there. Which is even crazier because I was broke like I had no money. I couldn't even afford, like the 30 cents to go on the bus every day of school. That's how broke I was. I would walk like two miles. And so he said yes. And I figured out a way to borrow money. And I went to Switzerland Joe: Wait, but don't Dr. Bill: And Joe: Go past Dr. Bill: I. Joe: This point. Wait, I want to know what you told your parents when you said I'm going to Switzerland to take the head of the department at the dental school. Out to lunch. I want to know what your parents said to that. Dr. Bill: They thought it was a great idea. Joe: That's incredible. Dr. Bill: Good luck. You know, Joe: That's Dr. Bill: I mean, Joe: Awesome. Dr. Bill: They had no clue. So anyhow, I did it. There was a girl that I had been friends with my whole life that, you know, I had kind of hoped that I would marry one day. That never happened. But we're still best friends. But I took her with me and I figured if I got stuck on words, she was very talkative and she could help me out. But the two of us took him to lunch and he hired me. Joe: That's Dr. Bill: And Joe: Incredible. Dr. Bill: It literally changed my life. I mean, I got an opportunity to live in Europe. For two years, I learned how to ski trip about salesmanship of the scandal to I'm completely fluent in French. I Joe: Wow. Dr. Bill: And I was really not gifted in languages in school. I mean, and I still I have a godson in Switzerland. I mean and I still have very close friends there. So it was a great, great, great experience for me. And it really gave me an opportunity to see the world. I came back to L.A. I really became enamored with cosmetic dentistry as opposed to just general dentistry. And so I did something that we also teach Italy. It's called Kopi Genius. I realized that the last thing Beverly Hills needed was another cosmetic dentist. So I found the five most successful cosmetic dentists and I called all of them and I said, Can I come in Chattanooga? Shadowing wasn't even a thing back then like they were what do what Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: I'm like now coming to watch you. And I did. And, you know, there weren't a lot of students at the time doing this, but they all five of them said the same thing to me. You're really different. I think what they were saying in a nice way is you're weird, but they're really different, you know, because students would come in and watch me do dentistry. And that's not what I did. What I did was I went in, I wanted to see how they brought the patients in the intake forms, what they said to the patients, how they brought them back to the treatment rooms, how they presented the treatment, and then how they performed the treatment, and then how they took the patient out of the room, how they collected money. I wanted to get paid and I didn't know how to collect money from people working in dental school. They teach you how to drill teeth. And in the clinic in Switzerland, I didn't have to deal with money. I just did the work. So I wanted to learn how a business ran and all that. And I sat there like a sponge in these offices. And my goal was to make an office better than theirs, to take the best of the best from all of these these guys and make a better dental office. Dr. Bill: And within two years I did it. You know, I had the busiest and probably still have the busiest dental office in all of Beverly Hills because I copy Genius and that's what I did on Instagram and Instagram became popular. I didn't just do it. I hired a whole team. I'm only going to in the world with a million followers on Instagram. You know, I didn't just do it. One of the things I teach, at least when you go go big and that's what I do, if I'm going to do something, I commit and I do it. So, you know, I started this dental practice soon after that, I started a company called Discus Dental where I invented Zoom. And we grew that company from zero to one point three dollars billion in sales. And I did it by hiring a great team. My best friend, Robert Heyman, was my business partner and he was a genius. And his father was Fred Hammond, who created Beverly Hills Giorgio Cosmetics, two seven, three of all Fred. Joe: Well. Dr. Bill: So Robert grew up in that industry. So he knew marketing and manufacturing and advertising. I knew dentistry and advertising. And together we built the largest tooth whitening company in the world. Zoom became Q to became the number one to fly new product in the world. And then we sold that company to Phillips back in 2010. And since then, I've been the featured dentist on ABC's Extreme Makeover, CBS of Doctors New York Times, best selling author, 20 Lifetime Achievement Award. Three Children, two ex-wives. This Thrill Ride. Joe: Incredible. So I have to ask you, and this is for the entrepreneurs in the audience, because the question that would come to my mind is you're fresh back in the states from Switzerland and you decide that you're going to plant roots and probably one of the most expensive real estate areas in the world. How do you start up a dental office in the heart of Beverly Hills? Dr. Bill: So I basically didn't put all my eggs in one basket, I grew up in Granada Hills, the difference between Granada Hills and Beverly Hills is astronomical. The only commonality is the word Ilze. Right. But I didn't know where I would usually drive more. I had the advantage holes of all the people I grew up with living there and coming to me. But I loved the allure of Beverly Hills. So I worked as an associate in two different dental offices. So it didn't cost me anything. I was a hired gun. I would go in and work and bring in patients. And I soon realized that I loved cosmetic dentistry. I love the mentality of people in a business area like centricity and, you know, and not so much kind of like family dentistry. And so I pretty much closed down the office and Granada Hills worked in in Century City. And the plan was I was working with an older fellow to buy him out. Well, as soon as we started getting closer and closer to the buyout date, I think my enthusiasm became infectious. And he decided he didn't want to quit anymore. Joe: Oh. Dr. Bill: And he was very sweet. And he said, you know, Bill, he said, you can do this by yourself. He said, you don't need to buy my practice. I'm going to stay here, open up your own practice. You have enough pay. I had more patients than he did Joe: Oh, Dr. Bill: After Joe: Wow. Dr. Bill: Just two years. And so I did. It was really fortuitous that the dentist right next door to us moved out of the building. And so there was a completely furnished dental suite. I didn't have to do any build out at all. All of the plumbing, the gas, the soft, everything was there. So I was really lucky. I moved into that suite is on the 11th floor, my building, and the only thing I needed was all the dental equipment, the chairs and the Joe: Mm Dr. Bill: Lights Joe: Hmm. Dr. Bill: And this and then another stroke of luck. There was a dentist in our building who was four or five flights above me who passed away. And there was a fully furnished dental office up there of all this equipment. And the building didn't know what to do with it. And it was a mess. It was a mess. So I went up there and and I had it evaluated and assessed. I was going to try and take out a loan or something. And the appraisal came in at close to seventy five thousand dollars for all that. I had three thousand dollars in the bank at the time. I mean, that's it. And so I, I went and I spoke to the owner of our building and I said, listen, I've been up on in that suite and it's it's a mess. I mean, and it was it was really disgusting and dirty. And I said, I will empty the suite. I will take all of the equipment, I will clean everything up and get it ready for you to read. And I'll give you three thousand dollars cash. And he said, fine. Joe: Wow, that's Dr. Bill: And Joe: Chris. Dr. Bill: I still I still have a lot of those instruments, and I this is 40 years I've been practicing. I have all the surgical like four extractions and I have all that stuff still in my office with that doctor's name engraved in it. But that was how I really opened up my office. I had no budget. I had no ad budget. Like, I couldn't advertise, but I realized something. And as an entrepreneur, I would say you need to sit back, look at your situation and really think outside the box. And this is what I did. I thought, OK, I'm in Century City. There is a five block radius of buildings around my office with 20000 thousand people coming to work every day. Right. Joe: Hmm. Dr. Bill: We know on average that 50 percent of those people don't have a regular dentist. OK, so that's you know, what was I'm sorry. It was fifty thousand people in that area. So that's twenty five thousand people don't have a regular dentist that work for me. Of those, twenty five thousand eighty percent of them work in companies with dental insurance so they don't even have to pay anything. They just need to come in and because I'm so close, they can walk over, they wouldn't have to drive. So what I did is I hired five kids from Beverly Hills High School, which is right next door to my dental office. And I made up these flyers for I think I paid three hundred bucks and I had them put a flyer in every single office in Century City. Now, this was way before 9/11, so there was no restrictions Joe: Right. Dr. Bill: You could go. And so basically by doing that, the flyer gave people a great first time offering to my office. If they had dental insurance, it was free. And I got something like 80 patients the very first month. And if we continue to do that and so we were basically getting patients in two ways, internal and external. Internal was taking the patients that came in, giving them the greatest dental experience we could and asking them to refer friends and then externally going out and putting out more and more and more flyers and bringing in patients. The next month I got something like one hundred new patients. And honestly, since then I have probably had no less than 90 new patients a month my entire career. And there were I mean, and the average dentist gets like 20. But I have never not been busy even during the pandemic. We've been busy. I'm busier now than I've been in years because I always say I invented Zoom when people think I the video conference, what it was. But people are sitting on Zoom looking at their smile, Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: Going, I'm not really happy with that. I'm doing more cosmetic dentistry right now than I've ever done in my life. It's it's a Joe: That's Dr. Bill: Boom. Joe: Crazy. And when you said when you started your practice you were going to concentrate on cosmetic surgery, so were all of these new patients coming in just for cosmetic stuff, not for cleanings, or were you doing Dr. Bill: Well, Joe: That also? Dr. Bill: First of all, it wasn't cosmetic surgery, it was cosmetic dentistry, Joe: Ok. Dr. Bill: But as a cosmetic dentist, yeah, we do regular dentistry too and do Joe: At. Dr. Bill: Fillings and crowns and cleanings and everything else that you need to do to maintain your oral care. But the focus of my of my practice, the thing that really differentiates me from most dentists is the fact that I do, you know, cosmetic dentistry. And I have a very high profile clientele for that. Joe: Yep, so that's my next question, you get right into it perfectly. How did you get Dr. Bill: Ok. Joe: Like with any entrepreneur? Obviously, if you provide a really great service, you're going to get talked about right. And automatically you're going to get known. And like for my business, I have an entertainment booking agency here in Scottsdale and Phoenix. Somebody writes to me, calls me. They have an answer. Within an hour or so, I'm known for my response time. And then the product I deliver is a very high product with you. How did you get that first step into a clientele that you now have? Dr. Bill: So there's a few things. First of all, you said something, you said you automatically get no wrong. You don't automatically Joe: No, Dr. Bill: Get Joe: You Dr. Bill: No. Joe: Do it yourself, you write. Dr. Bill: You know, it takes work, Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: You know, I was really fortunate early on in my career, there's a woman that I went to high school with as very close. But if you came in and needed a lot of dental work and said, hey, do you want to barter what I got, even though the barter was Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: I was so naive when it came to business. And then I said, well, what do you do? She goes, I'm a publicist. I'm like, I don't need one of those. She goes, Yeah, you do. I'm like, I don't even know what one was. So I don't leap of faith. I thought, OK, fine, we'll barter and we'll do it. She was genius. I mean, she got me in magazines, journals. She got me listed as the best dentist in L.A. in L.A. magazine, which was huge that, you know, she she was friends with the editor. She got the whole editorial staff to come in and be my patient. They loved their experience. And so they ranted and raved about my practice. And those things started building up my practice. And, you know, I can get more into the whole PR thing, but that was really a big mindshift for me. I never thought as a dentist I would have like a publicist. I mean, and the crazy thing is today I'm probably the best known dentist in the world. Go figure. Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: Right. But a lot of things happen. And, you know, I always tell kids when they come to leak, if there's only two concepts that you walk away from from this whole program, these are the two that I think are most important. Number one, don't wait for opportunities in life. Make them, you know, I mean, if I meet another millennial who's sitting there waiting for the universe to do something, I want to scream and pull my hair out. Like the universe doesn't care about you at all. You need to care about you. And number two, when you get an opportunity in life, don't take it. M. it. There's a big difference Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: When ABC put me on Extreme Makeover dentistry, great TV, not so good. You know, if I watch the first two episodes of that show, I literally stunk like they should have fired me. But at least I was smart enough to know how bad I was. So instead of waiting to get fired, I was proactive. I took acting classes, hosting classes, teleprompter in class. I hired the woman who worked with all the kids on American Idol to sit down with me and teach me how to do what we're doing right now. To interview, to talk. I mean, this was not natural for me. It wasn't at all. But, you know, if you practice and you practice and you practice, you get better at things. And there's a big misconception. We always think practice makes what? Joe: Perfect. Dr. Bill: Ron. Joe: Right. Dr. Bill: Practice makes permanent. Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: So with your practicing in, you're not getting the results you want, don't keep doing that, get a mentor, get a coach, hire somebody and learn how to do it right, because you need to practice it the right way. Right. To make it perfect. And Joe: So. Dr. Bill: So there was a lot of learning for me. But, you know, at the end of the day, it paid off. Joe: Then would your grandmother say you look thin? Is that what she said? She looks. Dr. Bill: The first time I was on TV, I said, Grandpa, this is a woman who never said anything bad to anybody. I said, Gramps, did you see me on TV? She goes, Of course I did. I said, What do you think? She says? You look very Joe: If Dr. Bill: Skinny. Joe: It's. Dr. Bill: I'm like, But what do you think about what I did? She goes, I'm telling you, you were skinny. Joe: I want to talk a lot about Lee, because even though you said, like, the universe doesn't care, I I also believe and I'm a big Dave Meltzer fan and he's sort of my mentor at this point that we get in our own way. And so there is abundance out there. And if we get out of the way and we just know what we want and we ask for it and we act accordingly, things come. So this connection with you means a lot to me because of Lee. Before we get to that, do you want to talk a little bit about your own podcast? Just because the lead part of it for me is huge and I really want to concentrate on that until our time runs out, so. Dr. Bill: Well, I mean, the know the way that my podcast ties in the league is, Leape is a motivational leadership program for high school and college students that we do every summer. And it's always been at UCLA Live. Obviously, last year it was virtual. This year, I think we'll have probably one hundred students live and maybe ten thousand virtual. Joe: Oh, Dr. Bill: But Joe: My gosh. Dr. Bill: It's been amazing. And if any of your listeners have kids or no kids, fifteen to twenty five will be July 18th to the twenty fourth. They could get more information at w w w dot leap foundation dot com. We've had amazing speakers Paula Abdul, Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Kathy Bates, Michael Strahan, Usher, Apollo Ohno, Jason Alexander. I mean, I could go on and on and on. And these people come, they speak to these kids and they they give them their pearls. They give them their words of wisdom to help these kids become successful. And it's it's an amazing program. And, you know, I was always fearful that people would look at is like one and done like we have them for a week. But by putting out content continuously, we're able to stay in touch with the kids and we have the students stay in touch with each other. And so because I've been able to interview all these amazing people, I started this podcast. It's called Meet the Mentor. And every week I. I interview another person. A big part of Leape is mentorship. The program culminates on Friday with a mentor workshop where I bring in doctors and lawyers and firefighters and writers and actors and actresses, you name it, and the kids get an opportunity to sit and talk to these people one on one and ask them about their careers. And it's so valuable. And it's it's literally the highlight of the week for these students. So I continue that throughout the year by doing this. Meet the Mentor podcast. How is it done? Crazy. I mean, we're number one in Yemen. We're number two in Iceland, number three in Finland. And I think I'm ninety fourth in the category of forty seven thousand of these podcast in the US. And it's it's it's been phenomenal. And the purpose is twofold. One, to keep students engaged and keep, you know, exposing them to different mentors and to to expose parents and friends and family to lead. And hopefully they'll send their kids to the program. Joe: So how did this come about? What was the light bulb that went off for you to say? This really speaks to me. I mean, I can imagine you are with all the things that you've done, your super busy, and then then all of a sudden have this light bulb go off and say, this is how this is. I want to give back and this is how I want to do it. Dr. Bill: You know, I've always been very philanthropic and it's funny because I had this common theme in my life where every time I've committed to do something purely for philanthropy, it's ended up becoming incredibly successful for me on a monetary basis with literally no hidden agenda. And I can give you an example after example after example. The first one being discussed, you know, I was working at at the sports club L.A., which is now an equinox. And a woman came up to me named Cynthia Hearn, who I didn't know and said, would you like to help raise money for children's cancer research? Well, I wasn't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but how can you say no to that? Right. Joe: Absolutely. Dr. Bill: So I said, sure. You know, she said, you are a dentist. I said, yes. And she goes, and you're single, right? I'm like, Yeah, but this is weird. She goes, Well, we're doing a bachelor auction and Joe: Oh, Dr. Bill: We need 10 bachelors that we can auction off to a thousand women for this charity, Joe: Oh. Dr. Bill: To be honest with you. That was stupid and humiliating. But out of that, I met Robert Hamit Robert Heyman with the other bats are standing in line beside me. By the way, Robert was over last night. We had dinner. We became instant. Best friends were brothers. Joe: A Dr. Bill: And Joe: Simple. Dr. Bill: Robert and I started discus dental and we literally brewed that company zero to one point three billion dollars. And along the way we've raised over forty five million dollars for children's charities. I mean, a lot of really cool things. But I was exposed to lead through another program that was very much like it was a precursor to lead. And that program was a program for students where they brought mentors in and they asked me to come as a mentor. And unfortunately, the founder of that program passed away. And when you did, I thought, you know, I can make this a nonprofit and keep it going so that that's how I actually got introduced to Lee. Joe: Wow, that's really interesting. So when did this start? By the way? Dr. Bill: So LEEP has been going this summer would have been our 13th, so the fourth theme fleet will come up this summer, but I've been doing the program prior to leave for probably 10 to 15 years before I started. Joe: That's incredible. And when they go out to you said it's on the UCLA campus and where are they staying in dorms, if they. Dr. Bill: Right, so students come from all over the world. We get kids from Australia, from New Zealand, from Europe and Asia and Africa, you name it, it's like a mini UN. It's really fun. And we get about five hundred kids. They all live in the dorms and we put on, you know, I think the best program of its type in the world. And a lot of the success of the program is the community. I mean, I get amazing speakers and they don't charge us. I mean, you couldn't afford to pay, you know, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Wahlberg. I think we'll get Katy Perry this year. I mean, I we couldn't pay, but when I when I talk to him about the program and they see how much passion we put into this, they say, I'll do it, doc, I'll do it. And now with Zoom, it makes everything so much easier because they don't even have to show up prior to the pandemic. If I had told kids. Oh yeah. Mark Wahlberg told Zoom in maybe like and Joe: Yeah. Dr. Bill: Now it's like it doesn't it's like live or Zoom. They're happy to see him. Joe: That's incredible. It's just really the reason this speaks to me is because I feel like in the world that we're in and I'm I just turned fifty nine in February. So next year is a big year for me. And I think about all the time and I don't want to say it was wasted or regret or anything, but I think about that we end up trying to repair ourselves as adults on things that might not have happened. You had your life a little different. You knew exactly what you wanted to do. You followed your path that you're wired differently, your DNA, and you were able to just literally do all of these things. And I'm sure you've had your struggles. So I'm not I'm not painting this picture of, you know, none of that. But it would be so nice to get to these young minds early and explain that the world literally is your oyster. And you need to follow your. And sometimes I don't know. Right. So you say follow your heart. Sometimes they're confused about it. But I love the fact that you're getting to these young minds earlier and you're helping them to understand things sooner. And that's why this program speaks to me so much. I think it's incredible. Dr. Bill: Well, I'll tell you what I have found empirically to be one of the most important factors in all of this. When I sit back and I say, you know, what am I most thankful for, you know, from my parents now, they never bought me a car. They never gave me money. But you know what? They did give me confidence. And confidence is currency, if you are a parent, the greatest, greatest gift that you can give your kids is confidence. And the very first thing we do, at least when a kid walks in that door and I open the program, I say to them, hey, when you woke up this morning, whether you think you did this or not, you put a number on your forehead once the lowest 10, Zayat said. How many of you did not put a 10 on your head? They raised their hand. I said, Who picked the number? You did have to take a test. No, did have to do anything. No, I said wipe it off and put a 10 on that. I said, from now on, I want you to walk like a ten top like a 10, act like a ten. But most importantly, surround yourself with other kids who are tense because you're trying to be a 10 and everybody around you use it to guess what, you become a two. So we give the kids these pop soccer Joe: It's also. Dr. Bill: Support on their phone ten. And you might hear something super crazy. Joe, we sold discus dental on ten, ten, Joe: Oh, Dr. Bill: Ten Joe: Well. Dr. Bill: At 10 a.m. to Philipps. Joe: That's crazy. Dr. Bill: I think about October 10th, 2010, at nine a.m., the merger documents came on like this is you can't write this stuff. I'm waiting till exactly ten o'clock so that when I go to sleep in 2011, I could tell the kids what a perfect ten day looks like. And we I signed that paper and, you know. It was an emotional moment for me. I always knew as against. I'd be comfortable, I had no idea. That I had the ability. To make the kind of money I made when we sold my company, that was like funny money to me, I didn't even think something like that could happen. I didn't grow up that way, you know? And, you know, and I thank my lucky stars every day for for meeting Robert Haymond, for participating in that charity auction, for, I mean, all the things that led up to that. Because I wouldn't I mean, you should see where I'm sitting right now. I'm I'm on the 30th floor of this beautiful condominium in in Century City. I wake up every morning the happiest guy I know. And so, so grateful for everything. It's it's really it's really been amazing. Joe: Well, you know what? Good for you. Well deserved. I can just tell by I do a little bit of research up front for these. I want them to be somewhat spontaneous. But I when I went and looked at what I felt, I wanted to figure out more about who you are. I can tell I can tell from just how you look at the kids that are part of the program. I watched one of your talks to them, and I can tell it really it's super important to you and and your generous and loving and giving back. And it just it's very, very cool. And I appreciate you. Dr. Bill: Well, I think my my my mantra is. Learn so you can earn and then return. And I feel if you can really accomplish those three things, you'll have a lot of happiness and and self satisfaction in life. So that's really what I focus on. Joe: I agree. Well, I literally could talk with you forever. This is amazing. I'm honored that you came on my podcast. What is the best way for someone to get my guests in touch with you in regards to what do you prefer? And also, the lead program has Dr. Bill: Yeah, Joe: The best. Dr. Bill: I mean, believe it or not, I'm the only person I know with probably a million followers who actually answered all of their demands. So Instagram, I don't do tick tock or even Facebook, but if you really want to reach me, it's super easy. It's Dr. Bill Dorfman, D.R Bilel Dorfmann on Instagram. I promise. I answer one hundred percent of my DBMS. If if you're interested in the program, please go to Sleep Foundation dot com. You can sign your kids up right now. And yeah, I think that's. Joe: Well, thank you so much, I appreciate it. I look forward to to seeing more about what happens with LEEP, and I definitely want to stay in contact with you. And I wish you all the best. Dr. Bill: Well, thank you.
I had a conversation with speaker, life coach and author Rocky Garza on life, the choices we make, our happiness and our individual pursuit our time well spent here on earth. We use me as the guinea pig and Rocky and I walk through my scenario, my situation, my thoughts and actions. It was enlightened and he brings up there really cool thought process about our choices and how there is always two truths and a lie and it's up to accept the two truths and how we take action with those truths. Once again, thank you very much for listening. I am humbled and grateful to be in your ears. Much love, Joe Rocky Garza Speaker - Coach - Author Author of: Kill Doubt Build Conviction Website: https://rockygarza.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rockygarza/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rockygarza LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rockygarza/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7ID8k8gJC9rR3_1ZuCGWEA Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Hey, everybody, thanks so much for joining the podcast and I appreciate you listening and I have an exciting guest today. Rocky and I only met recently on clubhouse. We don't know each other that well, but for me, this is going to be an exciting episode. What he does speaks to my heart. We're going to use me as an example today. He's going to work with me during this conversation. And I'm going to ask him questions that any of you might be able to ask him if you'd hired him to coach you and to help you through whatever it is that you're working on. And so I'm very excited to have. Rocky Garza, thank you for coming on, Rocky. It's a pleasure to have you. Rocky: Yeah, thank you so much, Joe. It is an honor to be here. It was fun being in in the room, a clubhouse together. And looking back now, I was trying to think about it this morning. Like, what room? What are we and where we even landed here. And I don't exactly remember even what the room was, but I know at some point you had mentioned and said something that I thought, you know what? I'm going to I'm going to reach out. I know I shot at the end and we went from there. But I was thinking this morning, how do we even land here? But you know what? I'm I'm the kind of person that. All I know is I was supposed to be here and something you said resonated enough to be able to say, I'm going to reach out and it's been less than 10 days and here we are. So I'm really glad to be here. Joe: Yeah, that's perfect. It's the way it should happen, it should be that people resonate with each other. There's something that that they can mutually benefit from and then also help the rest of the world by serving in some way. So I'm excited about this. So I like to always start these off to give as much time as you need. But I like to do a back story. I like to know where you are, who you Rocky: Yeah. Joe: Are, where you came from, where you are today. How did you get there from where you were. Rocky: Yeah, Joe: So if you don't Rocky: Yeah, Joe: Mind doing that, it would be Rocky: Yeah, Joe: Awesome. Rocky: Yeah. Yeah, I would love that, I love that. I think so much, yeah. So I'm going to go all the way back to the beginning because I think there is value for all of us as we begin to begin or continue to kind of unpack who we are and what that means for kind of the steps and the actions we will take moving forward from our present day. I think I think we kind of have to go back to the beginning. And I'm sure we've all heard phrase like our origin story or in childhood as like. And so I think there's there's an immense value in our ability to do that. And so I was born in Kansas, but I only lived there for like two weeks. And then I moved back to Dallas. And so I don't claim Kansas other than it's on my birth certificate. But Dallas, Texas, has always been home for me. My parents got divorced when I was two and so my dad got remarried when I was seven. He's still married, has two boys, so I have two half brothers, but I never live with my dad. Growing up after my parents got divorced, I moved a ton growing up like like 13 times before I graduated high school just from either my mom's house, my grandparents back to my mom's to a different house, to back to my grandparents and so on. And really, a lot of that was like pre seventh grade. My mom's been married and divorced a few times, slash jobs, slash just life change. Rocky: And so we moved. We moved around a bunch. I'm an only child, my mom's only child. So it's kind of just me and her slash me and my grandma immigrant, my grandfather. That's kind of how my life was growing up. And I went to junior high. I went to high school, graduated high school, went to junior college for a couple of years, mostly because I didn't know what I wanted to do and I thought I was going to go play football. And then at the last point, I was like, I don't even really like football that much. Like, why would I go do that for four years? That doesn't seem like a good idea. Anyway, I went to junior college for a couple of years, transferred to A&M here in Texas is where I went to college for my junior and senior year. Where I graduated from went there on a Fulbright scholarship. I'm not an academic and I barely graduated college. But somehow, via my survival tactics of charisma and words and being in the right place at the right time, I found my way into a full ride scholarship to college. After my first semester in college, I lost my scholarship because I didn't make grades. I didn't fail out of college, but I just didn't keep that GPA that you're supposed to have to keep or someone pays for you to go to school. And I look back and I kind of use that and there's probably, you know, a hundred pivotal moments prior to that. Rocky: But but I always kind of lead up to that moment because I think for me, that was probably the first time as a as a semi adult, I guess I really wasn't adult. Yeah. But a semi adult to realize that was kind of the first pivotal thing in my life that kind of put me in a position to look back and recognize what decisions I had been making up into that point. You know, I think for all of us, I'm a pretty firm believer that whatever happens to us between the ages of six and 12 that we do to survive. And when I say survive, I don't necessarily mean life or death, but I do mean what we do to get by right now. Some of us, that is our story. But for many of us, it's not to say life and death, but survival is how did we form what we knew to be true about the world, test those theories and then find out they were, in fact, true. That's kind of the progression of our childhood. And so to me, that that that a six to twelve age is really foundational in that it's where we are abstracting things to see how they work. I learned between ages of six and 12, if I could out. Thank you. Outtalk talk you out with you out, shmooze you out, connect. You get to know you what I would call it invulnerability now is more a mature adult. Rocky: I actually look back and say, call disclosure. I was actually not being about anything. I was just disclosing the same information to you. I was told everybody else, but I learned that if I could do that in such a way, it would allow me and in but also keep me safe enough that if you left or I left, you couldn't hurt me like the people in my past had right there. Like this fear of being left is fear of being abandoned, this fear of not being loved. I had found a way to navigate myself in such a way that I could keep myself away from you, but also convinced you we were close enough. Right. And I think this moment when I look at college and losing my scholarship was this moment of going. I'm finding myself. I'm twenty years old. I'm in college. I now have no money for school. I haven't talked to my dad in three years. I haven't seen my mom in a year and a half. I don't really have any really good friends because I've isolated myself in this weird dynamic of him. I close. Am I not close? What does it actually mean? And everyone thinks that I'm awesome and that they love me. And simultaneously I've never felt more alone in my life. And I think if I look at my life, this is not Saddam seven. And a lot of counseling, I feel pretty good about where I'm at today, OK, but I think as I look at that point in my life and go. Rocky: All the things that I was doing, all the activity that I was that I was involved in, all the pieces that I was attempting to put together have led me to a place where I am the most alone, the most isolated and recognizing, the most unfulfilled that I have ever been. And yet. There has to be something else, there has to be something different than what I have been doing over and over and over and over, and so I don't know what the answer was. I just knew whatever I'd been doing, it ain't working. And we've got to try something else. And so, thankfully, I ended up finding a way to get my grandparents kind of stepped in and help me pay for college. And really from that point on, that was back in 2000, 1990. Sorry, sorry. That's not true. I was back in 2003, really from then until now. So the last 17, 18 years has really been for me, I think as I look back has been this journey of discovery, this this space of going how do I, one, discover and uncover who I am to find a way to believe that is good. So clarity is one thing, but confidence in that clarity is something totally different. And then once I believe it's good, how do I like actively and then actually do something about it? How do I use that in my life? And I end up going to a place called Sky Ranch here in Texas. Rocky: It's a summer camp for kids. And I worked there full time for a few years right out of college. I was actually on pastoral staff at a church for about three and a half years. After that, I, I met my wife. We started a photography business back in 2010, and we did that full time together for about five years. And then I started the company I have now about six years ago. And so and that's that's a fast track of 15 years there. But in all of that, it was this discovery. Identify. Look to see if it actually is good, if I believe it's good, how do I uncover the wounds? You know, there's there's a kind of cheesy phrase I say often, but it's like in order to dress your wounds, you have to address your wounds. And I think for me, in that period of time, it was like me addressing my wounds, like, hey, how many times did somebody to say, Hey, bro, you're bleeding? Before I was like, look at look at that. That is what that is like. And I think the last 15 years has been this these continual perpetual moments. And it sounds a little bit like sad and hurtful. And this definitely moments of sad and hurtful. But how beautiful does it feel the moment we recognize we have a wound and we address it and then we address it? How much better is that? Right. Rocky: That's the only way healing can happen. And so for me, that career, such job I have now, for me as a marriage of my life experience, how do I take everything that I've seen and known growing up? How do I marry that with eight years of full time ministry, which I just defined as deeply caring for people with a fundamental belief that I think people are good and then marry that with eight to 10 years of entrepreneurship and go, how do we take what we have experienced in our life with a fundamental belief that we are good and put that together to go, what do I get to experience? What is the freedom that could come from the reality of allowing myself to fully be known? What is involved in that freedom, is it is it that I get to make more money if that's my desire? Probably is that I get to have deeper relationships, because that's something that I'm pursuing. Probably this that I have find a freedom to sit in isolation. I don't feel fear that everyone's going to judge me or not like me. And I consistently say I'm a people pleaser when in fact I'm just a relationship seeker, probably. But I think it comes back to we have to start in a space to go. Am I known? I mean, do I know myself? Do I have a language for that? Am I clear about that? Do I have confidence that it's good to have the courage to live it out? And then finally, do I have the conviction that says this is a deep sea to believe I am no longer willing to jeopardize? And that is that is that is a huge and mixed with millions of, you know, variables. Rocky: They go into all that. But for where I am today, you know, why why do I wake up every day today? I would say that I wake up every day because I want to be able to challenge others to live vulnerably so that you can experience the freedom that comes with being fully known. And in that freedom, as I think where we landed this place to go, financial freedom, relational freedom, confidence in ourselves, trust that we are good. But I think it begins by beginning to live vulnerable because I define vulnerability as creating the opportunity to see and be seen by others. If we can't start there, then we don't actually know what we're looking at. So there is no clarity. And if there's no clarity, then the other things don't happen either. And so it's not always that linear and that simple. But at the same time, I kind of think sometimes it is that linear and it is that simple. We've got to be able to go back, though, to a place to where we can begin to uproot and uncover what those fear, doubts, obstacles, insecurities are so that we can begin to make a path for. Joe: Wow, that's powerful. That's a you sure went through a lot in the short amount of time, but I appreciate you laying all that out. Do you feel like you're in the best place you've ever been at this point in your life? Rocky: I simultaneously feel like I am actively moving in the clearest I have ever felt about me, what I do and what I can do for someone and question almost every day, is this exactly what I'm supposed to be doing? And if I could really hone in to what I really think I should be doing and I say doing, I mean, for me to get really specific business, product, service price, like if I could if I could, you know, move ourself in, do I think in my life, is this the most clear and free I've ever felt? 100 percent. I was looking back and Instagram on my 30th birthday. I'm thirty seven now. I'll be 38 this year. So almost eight years ago I was in Marfa, Texas with two friends. We had no kids yet and I put an Instagram post. It was like me standing back when I used to have hair shout out to people like you and me and I used to have hair. If you don't know that John are both bald and I would sit in front of this bus and Marfa and I had a I was like 11:00 a.m. with a margarita taco on my hand. And my my my caption was like, I'm 30 years old today. It is the best I have felt physically, mentally, spiritually, like emotionally like man. Great. And I look back at that and I'm like, what a joke. Because today I'm like, I feel the muscle, you know. Joe: Right. Rocky: But but I think. What does that mean? It's been a constant upward trajectory. No, it's been I mean, it's been it's looked about ninety seven bell curves between that moment in this moment. Right. But I think in that to go why I think I come back to to answer your question. Why come back to go like like with like service, product and price. I guess that they're right because I think I feel so passionately about who I am and the belief that it's good and what I can do with that, that it's it's a whole other conversation and podcast episode to go. How do we take that and then find a way to meet a need in the market, find a way to communicate it effectively at a price point that is doable, that is actually sustainable, that it's not in exchange for time for money and really build a business out of that. That's the million dollar, no pun intended question for me. I think a lot of the time, and it's do I believe in myself what I'm doing? And I'm confident in my ability to affect change in someone's life. One hundred percent do I always feel confident, know how to sell that know. And I'm learning more and more that that's OK. And I need to go to people for help, because if I go back and say, what am I good at, it's not any of those things. And so that's OK. But I have to be able to be also confident if I need people in my life to help me, because I'm not sure I can get there. And I should say that I am 100 percent positive I cannot get there by myself. Joe: Right. So you, from my understanding now, you are a coach as one of the things that you do. You're an author, Rocky: Yeah. Joe: You're a coach. We're going to talk about your book later on in the podcast. Rocky: Yeah. Joe: The book that's coming out. But from my own research, I saw certain podcast episodes you were on, either the ones that you've done yourself with guest videos. And I saw a piece about identity mapping that Rocky: Yeah. Joe: You talk about. And I Rocky: No. Joe: Also saw another thing about self-love and but it was self-love focused towards men. Right. Because it is a different thing for sure, Rocky: 100 Joe: Because Rocky: Percent. Joe: Guys just don't think that way. Right. And so that was interesting Rocky: Yep, Joe: As well. Rocky: Yeah. Joe: But so let's use me as an example. OK, I am not allowed to tell you my Rocky: Great. Joe: Age because I've been telling my age too much and my girlfriend Joan thinks that I'm going to it's going to cause Rocky: Gary. Joe: Me harm if I keep saying the age that I am. And so I'm not going to tell you my age, but I'm all of that. So I've gone through my whole life, my and my ultimate focus when I first started was to eventually tour the world as a as a musician and be this this famous drummer and tour with John Mayer, let's say, as an example. So I went to college for music, but then when I got out, Rocky: Ok. Joe: I became an entrepreneur living down in New York City. I still played I was like a weekend warrior and would go play gigs Thursday through Sunday. But my focus was building a business because I took the mind frame of, hey, instead of me acting as, you know, like being a musician and struggling to make it, how about I do something that I know I'm really good at right now, which is being creating a business, being an entrepreneur, having that business be successful so that I didn't have to worry about the financial piece any longer. Rocky: Right. Joe: And then having the money I could go then now pursue a music career and buy my own tour bus and pay really great musicians to be part of my band. And so this was the frame of mind that I had a Rocky: Mm hmm. Joe: Bad, bad move. I would never tell any person in any career of anything, not just music, but anything that you got to go full steam ahead towards the thing that you want. And you can't have there. There's people that have different theories on burning the boats and not having a Plan B.. I'm all in on just have that plan and go for it. Burn the boats, do not Rocky: Yeah. Joe: Have a plan B and it'll happen if you put in the work. I didn't put in the work musically, so I am where I am today. I take on all the responsibility that I didn't do what I needed to the 10000 hours to be John Mayer Strummer. Rocky: Ok. Joe: Now fast forward, I am successful as a entertainment booking agent. I own my own company and Phoenix started Rocky: And. Joe: It in 2011 was when it first started and it became more official around 2013. Successful Management Entertainment Booking Agency does it. I like it. I'm good at it. I like doing it. Does it does it make my soul sing now? Probably not. Have I found what I should be doing in this world? I don't think so. Rocky: Hmm. Joe: Am I? Am I servicing? Am I, am I giving to the world something that leaves a legacy that I feel really good about? Yeah, I put hundreds of musicians to work every year, but is that how I want to be remembered? I don't think so. Rocky: Hmm. Joe: So this Rocky: Yeah, Joe: Is where Rocky: Yeah, Joe: You come in. So Rocky: Yeah. Joe: I sit every day now and I struggle going, OK, I like doing my podcast. I love meeting people like you. I love surrounding myself by humble, kind, successful entrepreneurs, not the ones who are constantly boasting on clubhouse that they're multibillionaires and this and that and taking pictures in front of Lamborghinis and jets. So I'm going through the struggle of identity purpose. Rocky: Yeah. Joe: How how do I service Rocky: Yeah. Joe: The world? Rocky: Yeah, so my first question almost always, and not because I expect you to be and if you rattle off an answer, we're going to get to work. If you don't, then you're in the 99 percent of us who don't always have an answer. So I'm going to give that give you that freedom, but. What do you want? Joe: So this is the part that's that's tough because we talk about I want financial freedom where I never have to think about money Rocky: Ok, Joe: And Rocky: Ok, so Joe: I Rocky: Let's Joe: Want Rocky: Let's Joe: It and Rocky: Yeah, Joe: I want Rocky: Let's. Joe: It also because I want it to be able to help my family first, which is what's in my brother. I don't have my my parents are no longer alive, but my brother and my sister, obviously my immediate family, Joel and my girlfriend of 20 some years, Rocky: Mm Joe: You Rocky: Hmm. Joe: Know, her daughter, my two kids and my immediate family. And then from there, I would love to be able to give four hundred thousand dollars a year to that charity and give a million dollars Rocky: Mm hmm. Joe: A year to that charity Rocky: Mm hmm. Joe: And go over and build schools and whatever. Just I didn't Rocky: Great. Joe: Have to think about that piece of it. Rocky: Yeah, OK, so tell me what you feel like, what is accomplished if and when you are able to achieve. If I say what do you want and your your guttural response is financial freedom. OK, then you broke down for me what financial freedom looks like the practical side of where the money would go and that what do you feel like is going to happen? What what what changes for you if you don't have to think about money anymore? Joe: That any action that I take that I feel is the right action. I don't have to think whether or not money plays a part in that because Rocky: Ok. Joe: That has been removed, that's been taken off the table. So Rocky: Ok, Joe: If Rocky: So right Joe: I Rocky: Now, Joe: Want Rocky: Right Joe: To. Rocky: Now, the biggest yeah, right now the biggest inhibitor to you really pursuing what you believe at any moment is that the first question that always comes to mind is what is the financial implication of this decision? And do I have the capacity to make this decision based on my other responsibilities? I have other places with money. If I choose this question number one always is, what is the financial implication of this? Joe: Correct, especially Rocky: Ok. Joe: At an older age, you're like, OK, Rocky: Yeah. Joe: I've been busting my hump, by no means am I in any financial distress, but Rocky: Sure. Joe: To just never Rocky: To not Joe: Have Rocky: Think Joe: To Rocky: About Joe: Think Rocky: It. Joe: About saying, hey, I'm going to go and spend a month helping someone to build schools because it's something that's good and it gives back that would be cool to do. Rocky: Ok, OK, so let's use that, let's use that, why can you not go to Guatemala in May for a month this year to go help build a school? Why can't you go do that? Joe: Because if my focus is on doing something like that, then I can't focus on at this point running the business that I have because I had four employees before covid hit. Now it's me. So I'm literally running this entire business alone Rocky: Ok, Joe: Again. Rocky: Ok, Joe: So Rocky: So Joe: Then Rocky: So Joe: The money Rocky: What? Joe: Dries up if I'm Rocky: Yeah, Joe: Not doing it right. Rocky: Yeah, right, OK, so what I want to say, so it's beautiful. Thank you. What I just heard you say is right now, the problem is not money right now, the problem is, is that given a million external circumstances that we couldn't control. I mean, I'm with I'm in the same boat as you right now. The problem is not money. Right now. The tension we are feeling is that we are in a position that our work requires us and therefore our work. We are questioning whether or not that work that we are doing is the thing we actually want to be doing. Joe: Mm hmm. Rocky: Because I think if you love your your work that you were doing. Again, we're not saying you don't like it. Everybody who's listening to shut out your client or work with him, he loves it. OK, just take that note. Joe Joe: I Rocky: Loves a job. Joe: Like that good. Rocky: What we're saying is it's not that you don't like your work. We're saying is you feel a longing to pursue and do something different with your time. Maybe we're not sure what that is, but it feels like the contingency point to give you the freedom to go do that is the fear that if I did that, will there be money? And by money we mean will there be safety? And by safety we mean will we be OK and be OK? Meaning will I have to rely on someone again? Because where I've relied on people in the past, they have let me down and I am unwilling to commit myself to something or someone where that you have the opportunity to walk and it is fundamentally destructive to me. You will not do that to me again, Joe: Yeah, Rocky: I Joe: It's Rocky: Fear. Joe: Yeah, and it's it's wanting to do something so much bigger. Rocky: And I would say I want to challenge you because it's part of my my role and who I am as a person. I want you to do an exercise whenever we're done here, just we'll chat about it again offline is I want you to really look at it and define what it is that you see and believe that impact is directly a result and equal to size as opposed it is to depth. I hear you saying I want to have a broad impact. I want to do something that is seen in big and broad. And I'm saying just as a challenge, not because I'm right. What about depth, though? What about the artist who you work with who couldn't pay their rent or buy groceries for their child if you weren't helping them get gigs? And their life is fundamentally different because you've taken a risk to be the person that allows them to pursue something they love that you are unwilling to do, that they are willing to do. And you are actually a proponent for hundreds of musicians to fulfill their dreams and feed their families. And without you as an integral piece in their life, they would not be able to fulfill something significant in who they believe that they are. And so because of that, your impact is so deep and with one hundred artists is in fact broad and wide that your breadth and depth actually are simultaneously changing the lives of every person that hires you and works with you because they could not pursue their dream in the way you wish someone would have stood in the gap for you. Rocky: Twenty five, thirty five years ago. You are consistently standing in the gap and providing that opportunity for somebody else. And so sure, it's not sexy like a school in Guatemala. Sure. It's not as elaborate as writing a massive check that we get to go to the gala for when covid is over and drink champagne and someone gives us a little plaque that we're going to throw away so we don't care about anyone. That's not why we gave the money. It's not the freedom. I wish I could just choose whatever I want. No, you don't. You are choosing what you want. If you didn't if you weren't choosing what you wanted, you wouldn't be doing it. Every human being. This is not just for Joan was for you as a listener. You say I'm doing something I don't really want to. Yes, you do. If you didn't want to, you wouldn't do it, period. Well, I can't do that because if I don't do this, I won't have enough money. Rocky: So go to an apartment, sell your house, get rid of your car, ride the train. You don't you don't want to do that. You want to do that. You do what you want. Generally speaking, outside of external circumstances were always out of our control, so I don't don't hear me say that if you're like no, you don't understand where I'm at, you're correct. I don't understand where you're at. And if you're in a position, you absolutely have to do what you're doing and you hate it. Hey, we've all been there to some degree. So, I mean, I'm not making a statement about your abilities any anybody who's listening, but here specifically for most of us. I think you are doing what you want. I think that we lose sight at times, that it is, in fact what we want. I think we lose sight at times about the impact we are really making. And so sure, maybe, maybe, Joe, maybe 40 years ago, you didn't actually make the step that you wanted to take. But there's hundreds of people a year that you are affecting change and given the opportunity to take that step and you and only you are the one who has the capacity to stand in the gap and help them do and see that. Joe: Yeah, I mean, you're right, I've gotten phone calls and texts and emails saying, dude, you saved my life this year, like you doubled my salary. You brought more opportunity to me than I have ever had before. But again, while I I do like getting those calls and emails and texts and I feel good about that, I feel like someone of my I don't know who Rocky: Say Joe: I am. Rocky: It, own it, own it, Joe: Yeah, Rocky: Own Joe: I Rocky: It, Joe: Know. Rocky: Say it. Joe: It's just like I feel like there's I could do so much more I, I feel like I'm not living big enough. Rocky: Ok, so Joe: That's Rocky: Now Joe: It. Rocky: So great, great. That is totally different and has nothing to do with financial freedom, it has nothing to do with depth or breadth. It is you feel in your soul there is something else before you die that there is you want to do and pursue. And so I'm going to challenge you to say, stop saying that it's financial freedom that's keeping you back. That is untrue. You have there has never been a moment you and I have known each other now for thirty five minutes. Exactly. OK, I know by just talking to you for thirty five minutes, there has never been a moment in Joe Costello's life where he did not do and have the capacity to make sure that he had the ability to care for himself and those around him, no matter how hard it was he was one to do, was required to make it work. Right. OK, so nothing is different today than it was five years, 10 years or twenty five years ago. So if there's something big and audacious, if there's something you're saying, this is this is it for me, if you're saying I want to get to the root of this, other thing that I can talk about is like money and freedom and donations and but all those things fall into a philanthropic legacy, giving of self to other space that we could pick a million things that fall in that category. Great, then let's do let's figure out what do you want, what do you where do you really want to have an impact the day you're gone? They say, man, that guy Joe. And I bet I bet if we went to your clients, you've had the longest that we pick 10 clients, you've had the longest and gave them a worksheet to fill out and say, could you give me the attributes about Joe? You appreciate what you like he has done for you, the impact he has had in your life. Rocky: I bet every single one of them would say something very synonymous to each other. And then if we could take that and say, where do you want to point that energy? That is, Joe, the music, the the gigs, the entertainment that just happened to be the cat catnap, the tunnel, the vessel, the we knew it and we liked it and we found it out. And then, you know, fast forward 20 years. We wake up and here we are. I think you're just saying I want to change the vessel, the work you're doing. We've already agreed as impactful that people texting you saying you are changing my life, saving my life. That's like shit that people send like a paramedic or their brain surgeon or like they don't send that to their music manager like that. What is it? What does that even mean? OK, so we're identifying the beauty. We are identifying the uniqueness. We are identifying the very specific impact that you have had, you currently have and you future have to continue to make. We are saying we got to do the work to identify where do I want to point that and where do I want to spend the next 15, 20, 30, 40 years? Pointing that energy, because I know that I have it and I know that I can now have a proven track record to say that it's there. So where do I want to point it? I don't want to think about what is inhibiting me from changing the direction. I want to identify the component that's going to allow me to push it in that direction, moving forward. Joe: So I've had other people on the podcast that in one of them happens to be a gentleman named Patrick Combs and Patrick and his partner Eric run a company called BLIS Champions. And the whole Rocky: Ok. Joe: Purpose of it is finding your bliss, right, Rocky: Mm Joe: Finding your Rocky: Hmm. Joe: Purpose. It's it's this and this has been the theme this whole past year. OK, what is it like? What covid hit the world shut down. Right. And so the entertainment business got hit really hard. So I basically had a list of things I wanted to do. Pot Rocky: And. Joe: Starting the podcast was one of them starting a YouTube channel, which alone was another thing we did. But when I sit here and I and I went through an exercise the other day where you make two columns and you make I forget what it was, if it was like all the things you're good at and all the things you're interested in or something like that, and you draw you draw an arrow from the left column to the right column to the thing that sort of matches that to narrow down what it is that you think you're here to do. That's the part. And I look at it like, oh, got at my age, why would I still be struggling to find that thing? And that's the frustrating part. It's like, how do people and this is for my audience to is anybody who's listening. I am so jealous of anybody that has found their purpose. Their bliss wakes up every day. And this is what I was put here to do. This is what I love to do. And not only does this all work for me, but it actually creates this world that I like to live in. And I Rocky: Mm Joe: Can Rocky: Hmm. Joe: And I and I don't think about money like the combination Rocky: Mm hmm. Joe: Of having doing having your bliss, your purpose in your bliss and at the same time not thinking about anything financial. To me, that's like the match made in heaven. Rocky: I mean, my answer to that is, yeah, if you can if you find that course, hey, I'll pay for both of us to go. And I say that and I say that, like 50 percent joking, also 50 percent serious. But I say that because I want to humanize for you and mostly for you and me, because we're the ones talking. But for all for all the listeners as well. I want to humanize the reality. I want to humanize the statement of what you are saying and feeling that even as me someone that I want to make a few assumptions and then you correct me if I'm wrong, but like, you go and you're like, OK, I look at this guy Rocky, and I look at this brand. And sure, he had a few broken links on his website, but that's OK because I helped him with that. But he has a brand and he's on point and his colors and his photos and he seems clear about what he's doing. I heard him on clubhouse and I said yes on a podcast. And like he seems to be speaking true that he seems to be genuine and all the words you would use that you hope you could say about yourself. Right. Joe: Mm Rocky: Like Joe: Hmm. Rocky: He has this and isn't it so? And I say, all right, because I want to humanize the reality of I'm sure that is true. I feel pretty good, like I have to be able to stand Konovalenko. I don't have to caveat that. Like, I feel like I have a good marriage and I work really hard at it and I'm trying to be the best father that I can that with limited knowledge and experience of not really having one growing up. And I feel like I'm I'm crushing it like I love my kids and they love me and and both, not one or the other like. And so I have this idea that's another a book that I want to write. So I'm going to pitch it here and we'll see if it resonates. It resonates. We'll write it if it doesn't and scrap it, it's terrible. So but I think we all live me too in this space. And there's an old game we used to play when we were young called Two Truths in a Lie. Right. And you say two things are true. One's a line. You got to guess which one. OK, I think we all collectively every day we have been lied to and conditioned that we forget that there are two truth in a lie and every statement that we make and then we go, I'm either going to have this or this, I'm either going to be the full expression of everything that I am and financial freedom. And it's this or. Life's really pretty hard. It's kind of dull and it doesn't make sense. And here's the here's the premise. There's always two truth in a lie. And the two truths always exist together. And the only thing that makes life real and worth living is that both truths have to be true simultaneously. The lie is, is that we think we only have to believe one. The lie is we think only one is actually true, so you know what 20, 20 was like for you and me, I'm going to chalk it up. It was actually. Man, it was good, like we Joe: Mm Rocky: Did Joe: Hmm. Rocky: Good work. Joe: Yeah. Rocky: And it was really is costing a lot on your podcast I don't get to listen Joe: Yeah, Rocky: To, Joe: Absolutely, Rocky: Ok, Joe: Yeah, Rocky: It was good and it was really fucking hard. Joe: Yeah. Rocky: Both. So the two truths in the lie are that it was really good and really hard, and the lie says it's either one or the other. And so for this scenario, for you guys, there's got to be more I got there's got to be something out there that I could just get this then this thing would happen. But instead I'm going to have this, which means Branfman, I guess it'll just be it is what it is and everything is fine, but like, it wasn't great. It was just like it worked. But no, what if what if what you're doing now is working and the fact that it's still working, it's just you and yes. Sad for employees are gone. So you're still kind of you're back in the weeds again. But what you're doing you can do in your sleep. You've got a podcast. You got this guy who's bald with big eyebrows on your podcast right now we're talking about. So you've got at least a little bit of autonomy to do what you want. Right. So Joe: Yeah. Rocky: Both can be true. Continue with what you're doing and streamline, streamline, put it down, the process is squeeze it, systematize it as more than you already. I'm sure it already has, but make it even more so that we only need one employee to make up for the three we had last time to give by your time a little bit for you to have a little bit of breathing room to go. Both. I think I can have this and I think I can create the the depth of impact in every arena of my life. And I'm looking for. Because I think if we could you and me are our listeners, but you and me. If we could find the places where we recognize the depth of our impact was not only significant, but but it scratch the itch we had in ourselves and our own soul. We would think less about money. And listen, I'm a proponent for money, I'm trying to make money, I got a business, I want money and I got a business. Got what? I want some asking me how much I could make. I want to try to find it, make as much as I can. I'm all about money. I'm not. Let me be very clear about that. But when I go to my son's room. He says, hey, dad, can you play with me? I say, sure, what you want to do. He says, I want to wrestle. Rocky: So Carlos Resum. And I am experiencing a moment in my own life that I. Hardly ever experienced. As the son in that engagement. I'm not thinking about how much money that I made. I'm not thinking about who did or didn't pay their invoice. I'm not thinking about it. I can I if I get enough money, you know what, I could wrestle as much as I wanted to if I made more money. Now, you know what? I can wrestle as much as I want to. That's the end of the statement. I want to challenge somebody asked me I did a bunch of along along here on Instagram with stories yesterday and a good friend of mine messaged me this morning, he was like, hey, this is awesome. Also, why does this matter? And he wasn't being a smart aleck. He was like, hey, I'm trying to help you to the expression to be fully known. He was like, what happens when you're fully known? Why is that good? Why does it matter? What do I get? Why don't I like hey, you're a really good friend because I don't want to talk about that much. I appreciate that. But I think our conversation today is kind of leading to that place to go. So. So. So then what, Rocky? You're just telling me to just do what I want. No, I'm telling you, friend, you're already doing what you want, but I feel like you don't want to do it. Rocky: So I'm asking you to ask yourself the question. What do you want? Do you want to know the language that you need to have for yourself so you can find the freedom to be able to pursue what you want? OK, then let's do that. Let's figure it out. Why do you do what you do? How do you do what you do? What do you do? That's what identity mapping is. Identity mapping is a four hour process that you and me walk through one on one or me meeting a group of your team or organization walking around eight hours and you will leave, I can guarantee you 100 percent you will leave with a clearest language you have ever had about how you operate as a human being, not in professional, as a human. You will create 13 words in a piece of paper that are make impossible, it is mathematically impossible for anyone in the world who has ever been alive or currently alive. To choose the same 13 words as you know, put them in the same order, it's impossible. And we're not even talking about you, is it what you're doing? We're talking like 13 arbitrary words on a piece of paper. Some of us need language. That's step one. We need language because we we're not clear. We would call step one clarity. But clarity only comes when you can see something. Rocky: If you don't have a language, you can't see it. So everything is a reaction. It is not as being proactive, as us being reactive. Right. So why aren't some of us need language, I just don't know I know what I'm good at, but I don't really know how to. OK, you need words. Some of us have words. And that's where we get calls. Like we have the words. I know why and how and what I know I've been doing a long time, but I just doesn't feel like it's good, you know, like I feel like I'm missing something. Well, that's that's comforting. Confidence is simply the ability to believe that it's good. You referenced earlier and we talked about self-love and self care and how much specifically for men. You know, I think men most men lack confidence. We make up for the fact that we lack confidence by trying to conquer something as opposed to cultivating something. We think if we could conquer it, then we win as opposed to cultivating in the last forever. Nobody nobody who conquered something has a good legacy there, Nazel. But every person you know, has a great legacy, cultivated something beautiful because it's still growing. That's what a legacy is. A legacy is not a marker of what you did. A legacy is the fact that what you did continues to thrive. Right, and Joe: Yeah, Rocky: So Joe: It's powerful. Yeah. Rocky: Some of us, some of us need clarity, some of us need language, we get the language, then we need clarity. Can we see it right can as it makes sense to us? Yeah, OK. Do we have confidence? Can we look at that and believe it's good self-confidence, the ability to look at yourself and say that is good. OK, got it cleared, economists break what's next? Do you have the courage? Courage is the ability to move forward at any pace, even in the midst of fear and unknown, are you willing to every day move towards the thing that you really believe? Yes, I am. Great. And you did yesterday? Yep. Today, yes. Great lasta conviction. Do you believe that thing in your soul enough? That it is a deep seated belief you are unwilling to waver from or jeopardize. No matter what comes your way. Motivation is still your mind, you can do it. Inspiration is telling your heart, you can do it. Conviction is telling your soul. You must do it. That's why Solasta takes a lot of work. And so some of us, we need language, some of us get the language and identity mapping, then we need clarity. That means you need help, you need a coach, you need somebody like that. Rocky: And me, it could be anybody you want, but we need somebody in our life to go, hey, help me see what I can't see and help me have the confidence to believe that it's good. And then at some point, people are in my space, I would say at that point, hey, we did our thing, we got the words, we got the clarity, we got the confidence. We're ready. We're doing it. I need a plan. Great. I have a good idea. Ideas. You probably know somebody other than me to execute the plan, though, because I'm still trying figure out my own plan. I'm problematic, I should say, about your plan. Right. Like I know where my but where the stops and I'm ready to pass you on to the next man or woman who can really help you. And so I think for all of us, we find ourselves in any variable of any one of those places at any point in time. I think it begins by us acknowledging that what is that place and where am I at and. Am going to do with that. Joe: Yeah, I feel like going through this process and and not only telling you this story on this episode, but having this conversation with myself, having this conversation with Joel and having it with other friends, that to me, it's the more and more I can talk about it. My hope is that the clarity will come because I have to like you said, it's super important. It's the language, right? It's how you you talk about it and it's saying more of what you want as opposed to more what you don't want. Right. Because what you think about and what you talk about is what ends up becoming more true. So you have to be careful about the words you use and the thoughts you think. That's why it's fun to talk about this with you, because the more and more I talk about it, I feel like it helps to my hope is that it helps to bring clarity at some point and say this is what you were here to do. And the cool thing is that you hit upon us. Don't throw away the baby with the bathwater, like you've already done a lot of cool things and you've helped people. But, you know, I think I'm in a different stage now. So what do I do with the remaining 40 years of my life if I if I actually reach that so. Rocky: And I think and I think I think that's a great question to ask, and I think there's great opportunity for all of us to think about, to consider, regardless of our age and where we are in our career, our job, whatever language we want to use, there is great opportunity for us to be able to say today, I'm not going to talk about what I don't want. I'm going to talk about what I do want. And then I'm going to I'm going to look and say, do I think I have the words to identify that I don't ask for help? I don't either. My whole business is how many people have identity, purpose, understanding who you are, what that means and why that matters to be fully known. And you know what I did last week and I'm doing this week, I got three different people coming to my office to help me work through a process to really hone in my why what it is because I can't do it by myself. Doesn't work that way, humans, we're not we're not designed that way. Right, Joe: Yeah. Rocky: We have only we only have eyes in the front of our head for a reason. So we were made to have somebody behind this or maybe have somebody with us. Joe: Yeah. Rocky: And so I hope if you're listening today and you're joining us wherever you are in the car at home, and I hope you if I could leave you with anything, it would be that don't let fear of school and security. They all exist. They're all human. We all have them to say, you don't. You're lying. Yes, you do. Showing the crowd coming to the party. But don't let those things be the lie that we continue to believe that inhibit us from really pursuing the things that we love, the people we love, the relationships that we love. Daouda, sneaky man. It doesn't it's it's sneaky. It doesn't care about us. It is. It will wait. It is patient. And just the moment you think you have the guts to do it, it's going to remind you of some B.S. story that somebody told you at some point in your life. Don't don't let it win. It's work, it's work, digging, uprooting, cultivating, unearthing, it ain't easy. I can tell you that right now. Not easy, but it can be not easy and good. Both things can be true. Is it's only going to be one or the other. That's just not how it works. Joe: Yeah, that's a powerful statement you brought up in this this episode. It's really cool that know the one line, the two truths, right? It's it's a cool thing to remember to keep that in your mind. And I. I like that a lot. It was really cool. Rocky: Yeah, yeah, thank you. Joe: So do me a favor. Let's talk about the book Rocky: Yeah, yeah, so Joe: Well. Rocky: The book is called Kill Doubt, Build Conviction, and kind of under the premise of really what I talked about here just in this last part. So I'm kind of at a place where in my experience in working with individuals in my own life, I believe there are two stories that are at play in our life at all times. The stories that are told to us about us and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Those two stories hold an immense amount of weight. They become wildly impactful when they intersect. So I grew up people telling my whole life stories told to me about me. Rocky, too intense. You're too emotional. You're too this year, too. Right. And so when that story, I can't control that. Now, be very clear that if the story told to me about me, I can control that. But when the story I tell myself about myself is rockier, too intense, and you see their face, you see his face when you were talking to him, calm down. It's not too much. Now, what happens is those two stories collide. And upon that intersection, I believe, is where doubt, fear an obstacle is born. It's birthed in that moment. And every time those intersect again, it grows legs and grows feet and grows arms and becomes more active in her life. The book is a half one part workbook, one part my story, one part encouragement to you to go. Hey, how do we begin to unpack that? We lay out the concept of the two truths. We lay out each story and have you walk through that of your own life. Rocky: We have you get to a place, you go now look for ones that are complementary. That doesn't mean they're good. It just means they match. Right. Rocky, you're too intense. Rocky tells himself, Rocky, you're too intense. That's a complementary story at that intersection. I need to identify my doubt, that is. I'm too much for people, the lie people will not love me if that's who I am, the truth, I am intense and it is good, right? And so the book is out as I process about seven or eight chapters where we walk through that that process. He let me lay out the concept. Here's what it looks like and then get to work. Start making your chart, fill out your story, find that out, finally find the truth. And then we kind of walk you with that through either email or text options we have that we ask you then of a chapter and they text me right now. Tell me what you just found out and then we're to make sure we follow with you to make sure that we can do that. And so the book killed out. Build conviction. You can get a copy. You can order one today. Rocky Garcia dot com. There's a link there or Iraqi Gaza dot com sketchbook and it should take you right to it. Order copy. And we'll we'll ship it out. There it is in editing slash printing right now. So they should ship sometime end of April. Joe: Cool. OK, so are you only going to have it on your side or do you think it will eventually be up on Amazon or somewhere else like that? Rocky: Yeah, yeah, so we'll see for now, it'll just be on our site, Joe: Ok. Rocky: One for it in full transparency, just for a traffic and final just to drive people to our site. I Joe: Mm hmm. Rocky: Go to a conference, they speak, hey, go get it. Go to our website and read everything else while you're there. And I think also just this is my first experience and writing a book I would have if you'd have told me I was going to write a book a year ago, I would have laughed at you. I'm a talker, not a writer. Come to find out, you can write books by talking. You just use dictation and talk and that pops up into a word. Documents. Beautiful. And so so we'll see, I think, as as more things come, you know, for those for those folks who have written books before I thought about it, you know, it's a very interesting process to publish self publish, go to the publisher and so on and so forth. And Joe: Yeah. Rocky: Right right now, Rakhi Gaza is not a name that any publishers like, hey, do we want you to write a book? So if that happens, I'm sure we'd go the Amazon route and put in there at some point. But for now, I just I want to help some folks and I think the best way to do that is to go to go get it at that place. So. Joe: Perfect. What's the best way for the audience to get in contact with you, what's your preferred method of communication? So you have Rocky Gaza dotcom, correct, Rocky: Yep, yep, Joe: As your Rocky: Yep, Joe: Website Rocky: So you could Joe: And Rocky: Yeah, Joe: Then. Rocky: You could check out Rajab's dot com for speaking, so I spent about a third of my time keynote speaking in workshops both for what I call external conferences meeting and individuals going to put on a conference for a group of people they can buy a ticket to and then internal conferences. So business and organizations hire me to come and speak to their staff. A third of my time is kind of spent in the team space working directly with teams and organizations in a smaller format, more intensive identity mapping for teams, basically, and then about a third of my time with individuals. So doing one on one coaching, we've got a 12 week program that folks can jump into. It includes a four hour identity mapping session. And then we meet once a week every week for 12 weeks to really help people get to that stage lifecycle. Hey, you're clear and ready to be handed off to kind of jump into that next arena. So, yeah, hit me up on Instagram, clubhouse, Facebook. There's not a lot of rocky ghazi's out there. And so I try to be the first to grab those names. So it's just at Rockie, Gaza, on every platform that you could want to find me on or that I would want to be on. I'm there not a tick talker, but Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and website, also clubhouse. You can catch me on any of those. Joe: Right. All right, man, well, I appreciate your time today, I appreciate going through this this exercise with you. I hope it was helpful to the audience and I love the work that you're doing. It speaks to me, as you can tell. I'm going through the process myself. And it was really it was an honor to have you here and to talk this through with you. I really appreciate your time. Rocky: Yeah, thank you so much, Jim, I appreciate it was great to connect on clubhouse. Thanks for having me on the show and I look forward to talking to you again. Joe: Yeah, my pleasure, man, you take care. OK. Rocky: Thank you so much.
I had an amazing discussion with Tony Whatley about working twice as hard as the next person, never giving up, building a business from scratch, selling his business for millions, working for a corporation and now his new life of helping entrepreneurs. Check out his book "Sidehustle Millionaire": https://amzn.to/3fXEwmd Also check out his Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/365driven and his website at https://365driven.com/. This was a fascinating chat with someone who has really done it...created a business and sold it for millions. So many people act as if they've done it but rarely do you find someone who has and is willing to share their knowledge to help lift others up. Enjoy and thanks so much for listening!! Joe Tony Whatley CEO - 365Driven.com Author of: Sidehustle Millionaire Website: https://365driven.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/365driven/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/365driven 365Driven Faceook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/365driven/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonywhatley/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrETiHfxlI0Igei04hd1KVQ Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: All right, my guest is Tony Whatley. Tony, welcome to the podcast. Tony: Joe, good to connect and thank you for having me on the show, brother. Joe: Yeah, man, so you and I connected on Clubhouse and there is a tremendous amount of noise on the Clubhouse, as with any platform, once it takes off and you stuck out to me because you're not one of those people that are leaning against a rented Lamborghini or sitting in a hollow like a fuselage. So and when I listen to you talk in certain rooms on clubhouse, just something attracted me to wanting to connect more with you and learn about your story. So what I like to do with all my guests, as I like to go back, I think it's important for people that become successful like you, that the people that are listening to this and who will eventually watch the YouTube video of this a few days after I release this on the platform that they understand where you came from, because I think that's always really important to know that you just weren't handed all of these things. And this just with any anybody becoming an entrepreneur, it's not an easy journey. So can you kind of bring us forward to today, but tell us where you started? I know that you got into oil and you had a regular career, quote, regular giving air quotes for the podcast listeners. So if you could take us from the beginning, it would be awesome. Tony: Hey, thank you for the opportunity. So my life grew up lower middle class to hard, hardworking parents, blue collar careers. My mom was a cafeteria worker in the public schools for over 30 years, serving kids meals. She had a really strong heart. She loved everybody, didn't and didn't dislike anybody. Even some of the people I disliked, she was like she could find the love in everybody. Right. And my dad, Vietnam veteran U.S. Marines, and after the military, he worked in chemical refineries here in the UAE, an area the rest of his career. They're both retired now, doing well. And I just learned the value of hard work and having to learn to be grateful for what I had in the houses that I grew up in. Three houses specifically in Friendswood, Texas, is really the lowest income neighborhood in the entire city, which had affluence and also had lower middle class, lot more of the affluence. But, you know, fewer of us. And we would basically buy the crappiest house and the smallest house in the neighborhood and live in it while we flipped it for a few years, while we were restoring it, making it nicer. And eventually those small houses would become one of the nicer houses on the street. And then they would go by a little bit nicer, bigger house, because me and my sister, which we're growing just like the house sizes. And so I just thought that was a normal life. I saw that there was a affluence nearby. I could get on my bicycle and my skateboard and run around and look at these big houses that had a lot of windows on the front. Tony: I remember being a kid and I only had one window on the front of my first house. I grew up and it was the one that was a bay window on the living room. And I would watch my sister, who was a year and a half older, get on the bus every day, and I would wave to her just like my mom would be standing in the window. And that was always my view of the house, the first house I grew up in. And I just thought that every house just had one view. So I just thought that was normal. And I remember when I became old enough to go right around and leave the neighborhood and go see what was outside, I saw all these big houses with multiple windows. And I remember thinking to myself, I wonder what the view at that window looks like. I wonder what the view at that window looks like. And I could just envision myself running through this house and like looking through the windows and seeing if was a different view. And each one, as funny as thing is, as my wife is a realtor and sometimes I'll go do some showings with her and I'll we'll be at these large houses and I'll still look out every window. Even to this day. I'll still look out every window just to see what the view is. Joe: That's Tony: And Joe: Right. Tony: So I started to catch myself doing this. Like, why am I so fascinated by what's outside? Each one is like, oh, now I remember. Now I remember. Joe: Yeah. Tony: So yeah, a little bit about me Joe: Yeah, Tony: And. Joe: Yeah, so how did you get into so what did you did you go to college for some particular subject or degree or. Tony: I went to college for the pursuit of the six figure paycheck. That Joe: Let's Tony: Was that was the only reason Joe: Get. Tony: Because because I turned well, my first job was McDonald's at age 15. I worked there through high school. Then I was a busser at Olive Garden. And then I became a waiter there because I was good busser. And then I went to work at a steakhouse where I was another waiter. And then I became a manager of this brewery steakhouse and Clear Lake, Texas, and. I turned 18 and it really wasn't enough money to live on just just working at the restaurant, so I actually started working in construction just like my dad and and working in Texas and fire retardant clothing with a hard hat and 95 degree temperatures. It only took me a few summers of realizing that that's not where I wanted to be. I saw these these men with collared shirts walking into air conditioned rooms on the same facility. I was like, well, what do they do? All their engineers like? Well, man, I need to figure out how to work in the air conditioning. Yes. So I just said, hey, if you've got to go get a six figure career, that's what we tell you. You could be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Well, I happen to love cars. So I said, well, maybe there's something in engineering that I can learn about cars and I can maybe go get that six figure paychecks. I became a mechanical engineer and I worked full time during that whole ordeal. I paid for school myself and actually the first person and both sides of my family to go to a university. My dad was the first one in his family to to move to a house that didn't have wheels attached to it. And so it was the first one to go to university. So I really applaud him for not going back to his hometown after he got out of the military and just decided, like, I don't want to grow up there. I don't want my kids Joe: At. Tony: To grow up there. We're moving somewhere else. So he went where the work was and he facilitated that change. And I felt like it was my obligation to do, you know, a little bit better for him, for the work that they put in. Isn't that what we all should be striving to is trying to do a little bit more than our parents Joe: Yeah, Tony: Who struggled Joe: Absolutely. Tony: To put us in that situation? And so, you know, me getting that degree took me seven years. I was I was going to school at night time, usually between six and 10 p.m. and sleep deprived and broke and stressed out and actually had more gray hair in college than I do now. Is is strange and really a sleep and stress. You know, it really does has a lot of physiological, you know, turmoil on us. And my relationship struggled back things I just didn't have any time to dedicate to those kind of things. But, you know, I never changed majors. I never quit. I did drop some classes along the way because I struggled and my grades were suffering at the point said I didn't quit. And that was a testament to me is like, I'm going to see this through because I actually had friends that joined mechanical engineering program. Honestly, even when they tell you that when you start freshman year of school, they said only 20 percent of you are going to graduate. And then they said, OK, well, how many of you have a girlfriend or boyfriend or you're married and raise your hand? Remember that orientation freshman year? And I said, OK, well, only 10 percent of you will graduate. And they said, how many of you are working full time job to do this? And I raise my hand again, I said, well, only 10 percent of you will graduate. So I was like out of a 20 percent pool, 10 percent of that and 10 percent had really bad odds. But you Joe: At. Tony: Know what? I'm pretty defiant. And I said, you know, I'm going to prove them wrong. I'm going to be the one that defeats the odds. And upon graduating, it was only 12 people in my class that had graduated that that semester. Joe: Wow, that's Tony: And Joe: Crazy. Tony: I was the only one that was working full time. So I really did defeat the odds. And I thought that I wanted to go into automotive career. But automotive in Detroit just didn't pay nearly as much as oil and gas in my hometown of Houston. So I decided to just take the paychecks in Houston. And that's why I started businesses in the automotive performance arena, because I still wanted to satisfy that itch. Joe: Right. So you ended up taking a full time job in the oil and gas world. What was that job? Tony: Earliest was a project engineer role working for a manufacturing facility, we built subsea equipment and pay pay back then was probably 45000 base salary, you know, entry level at that time. So for context, this was around 1997, 1998, and I was getting home at four thirty in the afternoon, like most people with a 40 hour job. We started really early in the morning, but I get home at four thirty and I felt like. After going through seven years of hustle and grind and working three jobs, I was still a waiter working construction as a mechanic and said this feels like a part time job. So here I am with my big boy salary and my big boy degree feeling like, OK, I guess I'm on my journey. I'm on my early journey to go chase the American dream. And I've done it. And and I was just bored. I was Joe: Yeah. Tony: Bored and I would be really honest with myself. I'd look at my small apartment and, you know, I bought myself a nicer car, bought a Pontiac Trans Am when I graduated. So that that was like my reward to myself. Joe: Uh. Tony: And I felt like this is this isn't enough. This is not enough. And I got a lot of energy. I got a lot of time. So I actually went back and waited tables at the restaurant that I was a manager of because I had promoted one of my friends to be the manager when I left. And I called him up and say, hey, man, do you think I could just come pick up shifts and bartending and waiting? He's like, hell, yeah, dude, you're awesome. Like, come back any time. I don't even need to put you on the schedule to come pick up one. And so for me that meant seven nights a week. I just I put the apron on and people lot of the people that were still working there knew who I was. And I graduated and that's why I left. And to go, why are you back? And it's like because I'm not where I want to be. Like, I can sit home and sit on the couch and watch TV or I can come back and make an extra 150 bucks a night. Tony: So I chose to go suck up my pride and go do that. You know, his thing is I've never I've never felt shame for doing what was necessary to get what I needed to do. And I think a lot of times people put ego or self-importance above what they need to do. And, you know, I was fine if I was cleaning the bathrooms at McDonalds, I did it the best I could find, mopping floors. That is the best I could. And even as a kid, I go back and some of my long term friends like you just never complained. You just did what was required. Like football coaches would tell you something. You just do it. I've never been the complainer because I watched my parents work so hard and we literally were living inside of a flip house the entire time, and I just know that blood, sweat and tears is not just some a cliche phrase. And I learned from my dad like, hey, you know, he's a combat vet. Like, you should see what I had to do when I was 18, son, Joe: Right. Tony: You know, like like suck it up, Joe: Yep. Tony: Go do the work. Don't complain. You have it better than a lot of people in this world. And that's the mentality I adopted as a kid. And I grew into a young adult and I still carry that with me today. Joe: So you're at this job, you're doing part time at the restaurant. And when do you decide and is the first side hustle that you start? Is it is it less one tech? Is that what it was? Tony: Now, actually, my first side hustle. It's going to get really nerdy, but I learned how to build electronic circuits with resistors, a little bread boards and soldering, and I was kind of geeking out on this and I learned how to design a device that you could plug into an engine harness on a on a Camaro or a Corvette or a TransAm that would fool the NOx sensors and give you about 10 horsepower. So it basically would give it a little bit more ignition time. And it was a plug and play thing. And I knew how to design it and I built it. And so I would go to RadioShack back when those were everywhere, Joe: Yeah. Tony: Buy all the resistors and I would buy these little circuit boards and little boxes and the wiring and I would buy the GM harnesses from the parts counter at the local Chevy dealership. And I get home and I would bust out my little kit and I would solder things and it would take me about take me about an hour to build each one of these units. And I had about thirty dollars in parts. I can sell over 75 bucks. And so it didn't scale very well, obviously, because there was only a limited market, you know, I mean, hundreds of people that maybe wanted to buy that. And I can only build two or three a night without running at a time. And so that was my first online business. I actually built a little one page landing page is Joe: Mm Tony: What we Joe: Hmm. Tony: Call it now. But it was actually that's all my capability was back then. Joe: Yeah. Tony: And I sold I mean, I could sell six or seven a week and it was like good beer, money or aside, money was better than waiting tables, to be honest, because I could still make the same amount of time, but I could be at home. So that allowed me to leave the restaurants. And then I started building Web pages. I taught myself how to code HTML about really simple Web pages and do graphic design with Photoshop and take some good photos and build Web pages. Because I started that. A lot of people out there, a lot of automotive performance shops and manufacturers didn't have Internet presence at that time because they didn't have a website. So it's like, well, shit, I could trade my skills for car parts. So it's like a barter system is like Joe: Right, Tony: I can get free car parts Joe: Right. Tony: Of a website. And that funded my car and my racing hobby. Right. And so I got known for building these little simple one to three page websites, which I would have to basically layout on Photoshop visually first and then slice them and make the little buttons and like re rebuild those slices into like what looked like a Web page on the. There is a whole lot harder than it is nowadays and I probably got 100 of those websites over a period of two years. And so I got known as the guy that could build car stuff websites and I would get paid or I would trade car parts. And I was hanging out on other communities at the time and they weren't being managed very well. You know, they were they're not paying their server bills. Things were getting crashed. And sometimes all the content we create would be gone. You know, after you built all this, how to articles and you're writing all the stuff that's free of user generated content. And and finally we approached the owner of that Web site and we said, hey, we see you've got advertisers. We know how much you charge because some of my friends, advertisers have built their websites like, why aren't you paying your server bill? It's like it's like three hundred dollars a month, like what's going on. And rather than take that as constructive feedback from some of his best supporters, like a group of us, he said, well, if you guys think you can do a better job, go start your own. Joe: Mm hmm. Tony: And it never even was a thought in my mind until he said that he challenged me again, like you don't challenge me. I'm the kind of person if you challenge me, I'm going to go do it. I'm going to prove you wrong. And so I said, well, man, I could build websites and I don't know much about servers, but I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to load some software on there into a server. That's pretty easy. If I could read a how to. And so that's what we did is like, you know, two of us started a website that was at least one tech. That was November 2001. So 20 years from now and this year. And we just started as a hobby. Dude, it's like, you know, the Set-aside Kim, it's not reliable. Let's just go start our own place to hang out. And my partner, John and I, we just thought, you know, if we can make 500 dollars a month, which is the Karno to the Trans Am I had and the Karno to the Camaro SS that he had. So that would be pretty cool to be like we would have a free car just to hang out and a place to talk about cars. And I've got a big boy job and a salary and you've got your own too. And we don't need this and it's just something we want to have fun with. And I like to illustrate that because, you know, you know, shocker. Tony: Yeah. That thing went on to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in profit. And we sold it for millions in 2007, but was never intended to make millions of dollars. You know, a lot of people are like, oh, did you were you a visionary? And could you stop this? And it's like, no, we just wanted to make five hundred dollars a month. But the main difference, why we became the number one in the category and why we really dominated that entire automotive form seemy we we set so many bars and taught those other forums and the BMW sectors and the the Porsche sectors, we taught them how to monetize the audience. We, we taught them how to build a strong community and attract advertising revenue. So I had clients like Chevrolet and Cadillac and Goodyear and big name brands that were paying me to advertise on my website. So the main difference is that we treated it like a business. What started as a hobby, we started seeing real dollars come in and within within six months we're making 10000 dollars profit a month and we're like, whoa, I think we need to go get one of those. What are they called an LLC or I think we need to go do that. And I think we may need to create a separate bank account instead of just paying ourselves Joe: Mm Tony: Like in Joe: Hmm. Tony: Our personal account, like. So I love to share that because I want people understand that you don't have to have all the answers. You don't have to be the best entrepreneur ever. You don't have to overdose on YouTube and podcasts and reading books and attending seminars. You've got to just start you just Joe: Yeah. Tony: Got to start and you're going to improve with time. Joe: Yeah, so the important things I want to touch upon about this before we leave the subject about Ellis one tech is how did you get the advertisers? Did you actually one of you go out as a salesperson, whether it was phone calls or in person, or did they actually care about you and come to you and say, hey, we heard about your site, we want to advertise. Tony: And this is a little bit going back to we hear about personal branding all the time, right? Nowadays, it's Joe: You Tony: Like Joe: Know. Tony: The buzz, personal branding. You've got to build a personal brand. Well, I was already doing that, and so was he, because we were active contributors to an existing community. So to put that in today's context, we have Facebook groups, you've got online communities. Go join those communities and actually be a contributing, valuable member. That's always helping people by answering their questions and giving encouragement and giving advice and sharing your resources and sharing your network. And then you start to build that personal brand of being someone that creates value rather than asking for all the stuff. And whenever it comes time for you to go launch your own community or write a book or launch a podcast or whatever, that's your side of the fence. Guess what? You're going to have a really strong group of supporters of, you know what, this person I like them because they're always helping and they've always never asked me for anything. So here's the thing they're finally asking me for. I'm going to go support that. And that's the way it worked. And I didn't understand that. It's just my nature to be that person. I'm the person that I follow on social media or a forum or anything that I'm spending time on. If I see somebody ask a question that I know the answer to, I'm not going to be. The person goes, well, you know what? Somebody else can answer that because I don't have time or I'm just super important. And Joe: Mm hmm. Tony: Oh, that's too trivial of a question for me to answer. I'll let some beginner answer that one for them. Know, guys, if I'm scrolling and I actually see someone that needs help, I respond. If I have the time, I respond and and it takes me a few seconds. But those few seconds of me investing into that pay dividends. If there's a few seconds here, a few seconds or a few seconds there, and people start to see because what you don't understand is on a social community, especially on the Internet, is that thousand people will see that response over a period of time. Let's say you're in a Facebook group and somebody asks a really good question and you happen to have the answer, even if you think it's trivial or a beginner. But you answer it, thousands of people will see that exchange of information. They will see who asked the question, they will see who answered the question. And if they start to see this pattern showing up over and over, hey, Tony is always helping people. He's always answering questions. You don't think that's a building you some kind of a personal brand capital that you'll be able to use later on if needed, because you may never deploy that, but if needed, it's going to be there for you. So, you know, that was how we built the advertisers because we were helping the manufacturers on other sites by answering some of the technical questions. Tony: I would buy those parts. I would install those parts. I knew how to. I would give the good and the bad of it and do a little review of those things. And we just answered questions on Web sites. And when it came time to go launch our own website, we were such contributors that they're like, you know, we're going to go see what they're doing, what's what's that's about. And we'd already established relationships with people who are willing to advertise that we actually had ten advertisers in the first week. And I was not the cold caller. My partner, John, he owned a recruiting, a technical recruiting agency, and he loved to call people on the phone. I was like, that is not me. I will build the websites. I will create the graphics, I will set up the servers. I will run things at a technical level like an engineer. And I'm a project manager by trade. By that point is like, oh, I'll plan things out and execute. And he was the one I was going to make the calls. I was OK emailing, but I still even to this day, I don't like making cold calls. And I don't I just don't. Joe: All right, so the timeline now is you're doing your day job project, managing in the oil and gas arena, and you have this website with your friend and you are selling advertising, you're building. And it's basically if it if it looked the way it did, then that it does now. It's literally a forum that you guys built. But Tony: Yes. Joe: Now it's it's probably expanded. Where I see it has the marketplace and it has all these other pieces of it that's helping to build that whole infrastructure on that site. Tony: Yeah, definitely, we we had access to all the activity logs of the forms that we created so we could see the response of the individual categories that we put in the community and the classified section. We were actually one of the first ones to do a class of five sections in a forum and an automotive forum, especially because we realized that hotrods have used parts to sell and they always want to upgrade or they're looking for a better this and that. So we put this classified in there so people can list their used parts, not new parts, because if they want to sell new parts, they need to be an advertiser. But the used parts, we're fine. And we saw that that really increased the the longevity of their visits by about 40 percent. And just give you guys a context of how busy this site was. On average, we had about 100000 unique visitors per day. Joe: Same. Tony: So. So if you're thinking about a speed shop or a car dealership or anything like that, imagine with a hundred thousand people walking through your front door every single day and spending an average of about 20 minutes, looks like that's how we were able to generate the advertising revenue because we had the data logs, we had the Google analytics and we said, hey, what are you guys spending on magazines and television ads? And they go, We're spending 5000 for a half page ad. And this automotive magazine, OK, cool that the automotive magazine has a circulation of about 250 copp, 250000 copies per month. We see that in two and a half days. And we're going to charge you 10 percent of what they charge. And they were like, whoa, like this is a no brainer. And said, even better, you don't have to give us content 30 days in advance ahead of publication because there's that waiting period for publishers to print magazines Joe: Yeah. Tony: And they have to have the content editors and make it all look pretty and put it all in the pages and number of the pages. And I said, so if you wanted to do and unveil of a product, you could actually show up that day and your representatives could log in with their account and post a video or something that they've created that day. And you could get real time feedback from the people who see it and give you questions and maybe even pull out their credit card. So, you know, forums and things like the things I created, you know, we were really were the the commercial demise of magazines in that regard. And we've seen the magazines, the publications struggle. But here's the thing. As much as I love magazines and I was a contributing editor for most of the automotive magazines for over a decade, what they failed to do was adapt. They had the brand name, they had the readership, but they were like, you know, we are super important and we're the media and we are magazines and nobody's ever going to replace magazines. And we're just super awesome in that forum stuff. That's just a waste of time Internet fad. And really, this is the kind of conversations that we would have with these publishers, say, hey, we're trying to partner up with you. How about we build out your forum and you've got the audience base? You could start mentioning it in your magazines and, you know, get them to drive to the forum and we can help you monetize that. And they're like, oh, no, we're not interested in that. Our business model is public catering and our ad rates are much higher than yours. So we make a lot more revenue than you and guys like me put them out of business. Guys like me sold my brands for millions of dollars when they went bankrupt. So that's a good lesson and adaptability and understand that you have to go where technology's telling you to go. Joe: And same with the newspapers, right? They didn't move Tony: Oh, Joe: Quick Tony: Yeah. Joe: Enough. Same thing. Yeah, Tony: They have the audience Joe: I Tony: And Joe: Know. Tony: They don't use it. Joe: It's crazy. Tony: The Joe: Ok, Tony: Men had it. Joe: So I don't want to harp on this subject too long, but I want to make sure that the audience understands the the exit route and how that happened out of this. And so still, at this point, you still have a dual career, right? You're still working and you still have this website. It wasn't like this Web site took off so much that you decided that, OK, I'm not doing the day job anymore. Tony: Now, that's one of the things people ask me is why didn't you quit your job? You know, when we were really the last two years that we're on this website, we're making about hundred thousand a year profit and. People are like, well, why don't you quit because at that point, my job was probably making 150, 175 range and I said, well, I also work offshore. I did a lot of offshore construction. So sometimes I was gone 28 days, sometimes with Internet, sometimes without. And so me being a project manager and engineer, I was very well adept at writing processes and procedures and systems that other people could follow. That's what I did for a career. And I said, I don't need to fire myself. So how can I create processes and systems to be able to hand these to other people that can do these in my absence? Because I don't can't guarantee if I'm going to be there or not. And so that's what I did, is we started to build a team at about 75 people on the team and we paid them in perks and free car parts and sponsorships and sometimes, you know, ten, ninety nine dollars just to do certain tasks. And that's what I did, is I fired myself. And what that did is allowed me to use my website as a consumer now. So I get to be at the same ground level and see what the problems were and what we could improve on and how we can add more features to attract more eyeballs and more time on screen. Tony: And a lot of the things that Facebook and Instagram do nowadays, we were doing a long time ago. We just had to do it manually versus, you know, with A.I. So that's what we do, is we try to stay focused on how can we increase engagement, how to increase eyeballs, how to increase time on screen, and what was the hot topics and what are the things that we can do to create content that was going to keep them coming back as the value proposition that needed exist for them to be entertained or get some information. And there's a reason my website is still existing and I sold it. And still it is still the number one General Motors website to this day. It's been 20 years. But the thing is that I didn't quit the job because I didn't need to. And it goes back to that scarcity mindset that I grew up with, that if I can work the career and make, you know, 150000 plus like, why would I quit that? Because, one, we were the top of the market share. We're number one. And they're always trying to people trying to take us down or literally hundreds of copies of our website, always trying to take us down. But we are way ahead of these people. Right. And so I had the market share me working one hour a day versus eight hours. There was not going to ATX my revenue. It wasn't going to increase revenue at all. I had the market share. Joe: Mm hmm. Tony: So the hours versus multiplication just wasn't there. Right. I was realistic about that. I could have been lazy and played PlayStation at that time or Xbox 360 and built cars and done nothing but. But why would I do that? Is like in I wasn't where I wanted to be at the time, so I was OK stacking money, working to career that also I had to struggle to get that engineering degree. And for a long time I felt like I didn't want to waste that effort. You know, I built it. I spent this time and investment and the hardship I explained earlier and I said, you know what? I don't want to waste my degree. I was pursuing the corporate executive path in oil and gas eventually. So I was very good at my career and I was very good at entrepreneurship at the same time. And I always find that was fascinating because I I saw my entrepreneur friends on one side of the fence and I saw my employee friends on the other side of the fence. And the mindsets are completely different between the two. And I would try to cross over. So I was what you would call an intrapreneur, someone who's an entrepreneur that works within a corporation to try to always enhance, improve, evolve. And I was always met with resistance, especially the larger the company names game. I was working for major oil companies in my later career. I mean, I left in 2015 and it was always like, hey, if it isn't broke, don't fix it. You know, this is the way we've always done it. Like all these things that Joe: Mm Tony: Make Joe: Hmm. Tony: Corporations collapse. Joe: Same old thing, yeah. Tony: Same thing over and over and over. And it drove me nuts. And but yeah, that's that's why I never quit, man. I was good at doing both. Joe: Ok, so how did you how did the approach happen to buy the website? Tony: And that's a funny one, because at the time, very few people understood the amount of volume and dollars that was coming through a business model like that, because they just thought, oh, it's a cool car side. People are hanging around and making, you know, talking about cars. They're probably making, you know, 50000 a year doing this. You know that that's probably what they're thinking. Joe: And Tony: Nobody Joe: I have Tony: Knew. Joe: To I have to make the point that when you did this, it was hard to do what you did. It was not the drag and drop and all of Tony: Uh. Joe: That stuff. It was not easy because I grew up I was telling a story the other day. I used to teach companies how to use an Internet browser like Tony: Oh, yeah, Joe: I Tony: You Joe: If Tony: Know Joe: I'm old Tony: You Joe: Enough Tony: Know, Joe: That Tony: We're from Joe: The Tony: The same era. Joe: Well, I'm probably older than you. But anyhow, you you did this at a really hard time. And when you're talking about the you know, the construction of the site and then on top of it being smart enough to keep all of the logs and Google analytics, I mean, it's hard to use today. I can't even imagine what it was like when you were trying to pull the data out when you did it. So I just wanted to make that point. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I think people need to understand Tony: Now. Joe: That this you have to put it into the context of when it happened. And it was not easy at the time that you did it. Tony: Yeah, yeah. For context, I sold the website in 2007 and I was 34 and multimillionaire and Facebook and Instagram came out two years later. Joe: There you go. Tony: See, so everything that you see now, easy, like I could just do a video and Joe: The. Tony: I could do targeted ads and I can find all these people like we didn't have that we had we had to rely on joint ventures with media and racing events and person type events to be able to to really build the snowball of momentum. Joe: Mm hmm. Tony: There was no like buying targeted ads. And it's super easy nowadays. Like, really, there's the excuses nowadays for entrepreneurs to not have success is like it just makes me laugh. It's like, come on, it's never been easier. The information has never been easier to find. All the stuff is being shared nowadays, which we had to go learn ourselves the hard way. And, you know, so the approach going back to the question of the approach. So it wasn't uncommon for people to casually email us saying, hey, you think about selling your website and. We never really thought about it, to be honest, because we're doing pretty well. We didn't need to sell it and we were really taking a lot of the profits, rolling it back in the company to make it grow because we had careers. And so they would always just just out of curiosity, once someone was, hey, would you like to sell your website? We always would entertain the question. We would say, well, what do you think it's worth? Because we're curious ourselves. Like we Joe: All Tony: Didn't know anything about Joe: Right. Tony: Valuation. Joe: All right. Tony: Like, what do you think it's worth? Like what's your offer? And most of it would be like, you know, I was thinking like Dr. Evil. We know when he talked about the one million dollars like this and it was like it. Going to go watch that movie if you haven't. You know what I'm talking about, but they'll be like, how about a hundred thousand dollars? Joe: Right. Tony: Thinking like, man, we sold advertising packages for bigger than that, you know, like, do you want to buy an ad package or do you want to buy the website? Joe: Right. Tony: You know, and and it just shows you that they had no clue. And that probably happened a dozen times over a period of quarters. And we just kind of laughed about it like they don't know. And we're not going to tell them what we're making because it's just they just have no clue. And and this is one company came in and they their eventual buyers were a little bit different in their approach. And they said, hey, we're looking at acquiring the top level forums and each brand marquee. We've already bought this one, this one, this one and this one. And all of those brands we were well recognized with, like it was the best BMW side, the best Volkswagen site, like top level names on par with the one I'd built for General Motors. I was like, whoa, if those people sold, then maybe there's some there's something to this one. Right. Joe: Mm hmm. Tony: I remember having this conversation with John. And as a man, we're kind of getting long in the tooth on this. I want to go build on some different projects. I want to do something different. And, you know, what do you think? And he's like, we're both on board. Like, you know, if they make us this offer and we came up with a number. Right. And I said, if they come up to this and we can negotiate it, I think we both agree that will sell as I call. So we responded back and said we'd entertain this offer. You know, what kind of questions would you like answered? And they actually asked if they could put their Google Analytics pixel into our website so they could see for themselves if we're full of shit or not. I said, OK, no problems. I'll put it in there to help them put it in there. And then about two weeks later, they called back and they said, we're at it, have a discussion with you guys about the moving forward. And I said, OK, cool. And so their initial offer was double our number that we had come up with in our mind. Joe: Oh, my gosh. Tony: And we're like, oh. So we had to contain our excitement, first of all. And act like, oh, OK, well, we'll consider Joe: Right. Tony: That we're going to have a talk about that and we'll get back to you. And the first thing I said is like, John, we need a lawyer, we need it. We need to get an attorney. That's a good with M&A and we need to have some conversations with him on these early contracts, negotiation things. And of course, luckily, he had a good friend of his that specialize that in Chicago. And we got on the phone we talked a couple of times, went through some details of the preliminary offer. And he's like, so you're going to counter right? Or like, well, should we? And he's like, yeah, there are first offers, always the lowest Joe: Mm Tony: Offer, Joe: Hmm. Tony: Like, what do you want to make? And so we said, well, what about this? No, it's like worst they can say is no. And so we put that back out to them and they said, sounds good to us. And Joe: Wow. Tony: We're like, damn it, maybe we should ask Joe: All Tony: For some Joe: Right. Tony: More. So of course, we're not going to be greedy because it was already double our number in our mind. And we sold them and then they said yes, and we're so cool. We went down that road and it was about a better one year due diligence phase of going through all the accounting and understanding, all the systems and processes in place and negotiating the contract and the details. And that was a really, I would say, a semi stressful situation, Joe: Yeah, Tony: Because Joe: I can imagine. Tony: Even though that the millions of dollars is looking in your mind, you don't really think it's real. Actually, because I actually interviewed somebody on my show yesterday. It sold a nine figure exit and he and I had very similar, even though he was a whole different range of the money. I made very similar psychological things going through your mind because it seems fake until you see it in your actual bank account. Joe: Yep. Tony: And even when you initially see it in your bank account, it still feels a little fake until you, like, spend it a little bit, you're like it's real, OK, they're not going to call me back and say, oh, we made a mistake. We need to have our money back. Right. Joe: All right. Tony: So does these weird things that we go through the exit companies and only one percent of businesses actually sell. And to hear this kind of experience is very rare. But I wanted to be really transparent and show people that because it's a it's very intrusive to go through that your books better be damn right. If you think you can lie about things that your company is doing or not doing, you're going to get discovered during that because lawyers get involved and they're digging through all kinds of stuff. I mean, they're literally looking for ways to devalue your company and you're looking for ways to add value to your company during that one year process. So you just got to be transparent about things and keep your books in order. That's the main thing. And learn how to build valuation in your companies. And it just turns out we were just doing everything right. We had the recurring revenue business model. We had presold ads. We were cash flow positive. We had proven database of, you know, information of users and their emails and our names, which increased valuation based on customer acquisition cost. It would cost them to go find those people in the same market. So we had a lot of things that were checking the boxes. And it was also a tech platform with a really strong brand, which also increased valuation. So we just did everything the right way. And the reason we did that is because we just did things like business. Again, it wasn't a hobby to us. Joe: Yep, so you get to the final stage, it gets sold, they buy it, you sell it, you're still working. How long did you stay at your job once you exited this company? Tony: Another eight more. Joe: Eight more years. Tony: Eight more years. Joe: Wow, Tony: Yeah, Joe: That was Tony: I Joe: Not the Tony: Actually Joe: Answer Tony: Had Joe: I expected. Tony: I had spin offs, I had verticals that I created from that acquisition, I had a retail company selling wheels for cars because, one, we didn't have an advertiser that was selling wheels. And I was referring a lot of business out the door. And I said, you meant I could just do the buying and get another LLC and create my own wheel company and sell the wheels. And, you know, that became a seven figure business on its own. And when the website came up for sale, I said, do you guys want the retail side? Or like, oh, now we just want the data. We want the assets. We don't want anything to do with retail. They're a marketing house. Joe: Yes. Tony: I was like, so I could just create another LLC and keep this business to myself. And that's and so I did. So I still had a seven figure business even after that. That was part time that I enjoyed that kept me in the industry, kept me relevant, kept me engaged in cars. And so but I was also in that pursuit of becoming an executive with an oil and gas. That was my my goal. And I was really good at navigating that. And I made it towards making about 250000 a year in salary. And and near the end of that, I started to realize that the oil industry just doesn't treat people as good as they should. And I started to have to be that person that had to make tough decisions on employing certain people. And even though they were high performers and I got to see a lot of shady things in H.R., the things that are unwritten that we always hear about, like ageism and like cutting people before their pension fully Joe: Oh, Tony: Hits Joe: Man. Tony: Because, you know, it's a it's a it's a it's a financial decision. It's not personal. And I get to see this multiple times. And it started to impact me. And it's like, you know, I don't want to support another industry that does not support people, that we're we're basically disposable. And when I was young and disposable and making less money, it was very easy to find me a replacement job because I was it was inexpensive and unexperienced as I started to make, you know, multiple six figures. And in my 40s, if I were getting laid off, it was typically a six to eight month sitting on the bench waiting for the next bus to come around type scenario. And a lot of times I was having to fire myself and put people in my my desk that was ten years younger than me and 100000. I was less income than made just to keep the bench warm. For me to return at the market turned around. I was like, I don't like being in this situation. And so, you know, I took a near-death experience for me, racing cars to finally realize, like, I don't want to go back to that and I need to go create more impact in the world. And that's what I did, is I decided I need to go teach people what I have passions for. And one was cars, which I built a lot of success in cars. The other thing has always been entrepreneurship. And so I said, OK, that's how I'm going to best impact this world, is teach people business and confidence around being an entrepreneur. And that's what I've been doing since 2017. It took me two years, even after leaving my job, to think about what I really wanted to do. You know, was it was it a nonprofit, wasn't a philanthropy? What is it that I wanted to do? And for me, I just love to be a teacher, so that's why I do what I do now. Joe: So do you. I've thought about this question a lot in regards to you, if this if the site didn't do what it did and you didn't sell it and make that kind of money. Have you ever thought about where you would be today? Tony: Yeah, I would still be working in the oil and gas industry for sure. Joe: So Tony: For sure. Joe: With viewers, listeners and viewers that will hear this. What would you say to them if they were to say, well, he I mean, you did the work, it wasn't like you got lucky, but you got lucky in the sense that someone wanted to buy it. Right. I mean, and and Tony: Yeah, it wasn't for sale, Joe: Right. Tony: So you're right. Joe: So someone saying, well, what's the chances of that happening to me? Or how do I if that doesn't happen, then I do have to just continue on the path that I'm on. So what would you say to them about not getting a lucky break like that? How do you create that break for yourself to to then become this entrepreneur and service the world and do good things? Tony: I mean, honestly. My book, Side Hustle Millionaire, teaches people how to take the ideas for businesses and create reality out of those, because I was always ask, hey, what do you think about this business idea and what do you think about this? And the thing is that too many people take pride in having ideas. They think that there's their super smart. They think they're genius because they have this idea. And, you know, you and I both know that thousands of people die every single day with brilliant ideas and take them to the grave that were never materialized. And so ideas really aren't worth anything until you take any actions and see some results from those. So don't give yourself too much credit if you're listening to this or watching this, if you've got an idea, unless you try it and it's OK to fail, sometimes failing is actually the best lessons. But for people who are employed when you're all your bills are paid, you need to start thinking about what the number is and the number is what is the bare necessities. You need to be able to sustain your lifestyle or even downgrade your lifestyle. Tony: Let's be honest, because a lot of times people live above their means. What is the number? And I'm thinking a dollar number. What is the actual number like? Take your rent or your mortgage, your car, note your insurance, your food, your utilities, and put them on a spreadsheet and go, this is the number. And if it's 2000 or 3000 or 10000, whatever that number is, you need to have that number in your mind. Because once you start to make a profit in your side business that meets or exceeds that number, you need to really force yourself into a decision moment. Like you need to know that number is so important to know that number, because a lot of times we find that side hustlers and people that do things on the side will exceed that number, but never force themselves into decision mode. Because the question that you have to have in this decision is, should I just drop my career and go full time with this? And I have two reasons to do that. Right. Like you heard me give examples of why I didn't leave because it wouldn't have increased my income Joe: At. Tony: Like I was the number one in the category. I had all the market share. The extra hours would not have translated to extra dollars. It made no sense for me to leave. Now, if you do have a company and you realize that, hey, if I can contribute eight extra hours, maybe nine hours, if you have a commute to go to work, if I can commit nine extra hours a day to this business, what are the numbers look like? Does it scale? Does it make a higher profit? Because I'm already at the number I could actually leave right now. I actually have a parachute on my back that I could deploy that it's going to replace my salary already. So why am I staying here? And if the answer is like, yeah, extra hours will increase the business, it will also increase your freedom and your confidence. And most people really don't understand the confidence that entrepreneurship brings because I've never experienced that. There's something beautiful about commuting to your coffeemaker and walking to your office and you're in your own house, in your pajamas Joe: Aymen. Tony: And and waking up like you fire up the email, you go, Oh, I made three thousand dollars last night while I was asleep. I mean, it just sounds so unrealistic. But the reality is, is realistic realistically, when you start to surround yourself with people who are doing it and who could teach you how to do that, your eyes just start to open up and you go, wow, I remember thinking, eighty five dollars an hour at work was like a lot of money because that's close to two hundred thousand dollars salary. You know, I remember negotiating like they wanted to give me eighty, eighty dollars an hour and I was like, I want nineteen. OK, how about we meet in the middle eighty five. I mean I was at 180, 200 range. If you do the if you do the math. And the thing is, is there's this perception that multiple six figures is a lot of money and corporate and it is because I get it, the average income in the United States is 67000 a year. Some people will never make 100000 hours. It's sad to me because I can make that in a weekend now. Tony: And had you asked me twenty years ago if that was possible with a laugh, it's like there's no way you can make a hundred thousand dollars in a week. And that just sounds stupid, like you're dreaming. You get rich quick, you join some kind of network marketing or whatever, like it's bullcrap, Tony. But now I've done it a couple of times, like why did I ever have these limitations on income and why did that exist? And you start to think about where that comes from. It's because of your supervisors, from your parents is from your teacher, your professors. They're telling you what you they think you're worth based on what the market will bear. Oh, you're a mechanical engineer. Well, you can make one hundred fifty thousand dollars if you work twenty years. So, OK, so your self-worth becomes well, I can make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars by the time I'm sixty, and maybe they'll give a bonus to me and my last five years as an attaboy and I'll get a Rolex. And Joe: Right. Tony: Why the hell we give Rolex is to people that are retiring. Like what do they need to be on time anymore. Joe: Exactly. Tony: Like thank you. What, why don't you give me the Rolex when I'm twenty, so I'm always on time. Right. So a lot of weird things. They were created in these boundaries and and so people tend to define their self-worth based on a limitation of their salary. Their profession, which is really sad, is really sad. Joe: Yeah. Tony: And none of these limitations exist in reality. It's that there's no such thing as a limitation. And when you start to hang around people that think like I do, you're going to challenge everything you believe. And it's going to be really hard to to unwind a lot of the things that were were screwed up with. But it's crazy. The reality of. It really exists. Joe: Yeah, and this is why I do my podcast and I openly admit it to people, is it's because it's a selfish endeavor for me to be able to hang out with people like you and just virtually rub elbows. And at some point, hopefully we meet in person. But that's the goal, is to change the mindset. I watched my father just work himself to death. He literally was. I forget if it was two weeks away from retiring and had a stroke Tony: Oh, Joe: And Tony: Man. Joe: Was paralyzed on his right side. I watched him work harder than any man I ever watched. And I just I don't want to see that. I don't want to experience that. So I appreciate that. So you jumped ahead on me, which is great, because I want to know. So here's twenty seventeen. Your you decide that you're going to do you know, you're Tony: The Joe: Going Tony: Coaching Joe: To do Tony: And the Joe: The Tony: The Joe: Coaching. Tony: Community building, yeah. Joe: So when did you decide to write Side Hustle a Millionaire. When did you decide that. Well I have to write a book on this because that's a big endeavor. I everybody I hear that has written a book says it's probably one of the hardest things I ever had to do. Tony: You know, the funny thing about writing the book. Side Hustle Millionaire was a idea in my mind five years before I actually wrote it. Five years, because I knew even because I was around 40 at that time and I was like, you know, I need to do something that helps more people, you know, before the Internet flex on Instagram, I was the one that would post driveway photos with 10 cars and things like that, because, one, I had some insecurity issues and self validation things that I had to work through. And I didn't ever feel like I belong with the rich people. And I had to prove that I belong with them and a whole lot of weird things that we grow up through. But besides, the point is that as I wanted to start teaching people how I got those cars, because the only people that were benefiting from that knowledge were my friends and like people I worked with people within my close proximity because one, I didn't like being on camera. I didn't like being on stage. I didn't like my recorded voice. And I had a lot of insecurities around that, too. And I became a highly successful kind of in the background, and I was fine with that. So anytime people were like, oh, you should go write a book and you could teach all the stuff, I'd be like, Oh man, but I'm so busy. You know, I've got a kid and a wife and I've got a career and I've got this retail company. And I would just make a a list of bullshit excuses of things why I wasn't really serving the purpose that I am on today. Tony: And it was all stem based on the fear of criticism. Right. And so even when I go through this near-death experience, racing cars and deciding that I need to impact the world, I was still approaching it from a I need to make impact. But I was still being cowardly about my way of doing that, my method. And so I said, you know what, I could write a book. And that doesn't mean I have to be on a stage or a camera or radio or TV and I can just write this book and it'll be a good way that's affordable. It's portable, and I can get what's in my mind out to thousands of people. And so I decided in really November of 2017 I'm going to write a book and I validated the idea and use my social media to ask what they would want from me. And I asked them what questions they would want answered. I was really good at using my entrepreneurship, evaluating a product before I spend time on it. I did that. I applied the same principles to a book which is another product. And while I was writing the book, my editor, Mike, I was giving him a chapter at a time to review and he was like, Man, this is going to be a good book. I cannot tell because he's helped a lot of people become bestsellers and and one day he's like, they're going to want to interview. Joe: You're like, oh, no. Tony: Yeah, he's like because you might be on TV, radio, podcasts, and I felt that Stagefright, again, coming up was like, I'm in. But I'm kind of a daredevil anyways, and I said, you know what, this is a sign. This is this is a sign I need to go take care of this fear. So just like any other normal human with a fear or something or challenge like so just like most people with a fear of public speaking or any other challenge, they basically get on Google or they get on Syria, they ask, you know, how do we overcome this? And for the results, I said, join a Toastmasters or join a Rotary Club and hire a speaking coach. I said, OK, this is something I have to do. And and obviously, it was really, really avoiding this kind of scenario. So I joined Toastmasters. It's a it's a nonprofit that teaches public speaking and leadership. And there's local clubs all over the world and is really inexpensive. I think it was like 45 dollars for our whole six months. And I said this is like a no brainer. So I'll I'll try that. And so I said, if I'm going to go, I'm going. I'm not going to be a spectator. I'm going to make myself really uncomfortable. I want to sit in the front row and I'm going to raise my hand every meeting with, like once a week and just volunteer to do something in the front of the room and just make myself uncomfortable. And because I knew that the book was about five months out and I needed to get ahead of this. Right. So Joe: Yeah. Tony: So that's what I did is so I would learn a new tactic of public speaking at a meeting. And then for the next seven days, I would do videos. I would I would go on Instagram or Facebook and just practice what I was learning on public speaking to my phone and is really uncomfortable. And I did not. All those videos exist or like in May, June of 2017. And I basically just I just did them every day. And that's how I improved. And I used to be so afraid of just doing videos, I would do them in my truck. Somebody walked by in the park in like an aisle away, I would put the camera down and act like I wasn't doing any videos because I was so weird to go through that. And I would record myself like ten takes and I would finally get one. That was the best I could do at that given moment. And I would share that one. And and that's how I did better. And I did that for over a year. And now within six months of me joining Toastmasters and doing those reps and making myself uncomfortable and doing about a speech per month, I actually started competing and representing that club and the Toastmasters competitions. And I actually won and went three rounds like Joe: Wow. Tony: I went I was like fourth place in all of Houston, you know, after doing the club level than the area level that I went to district. And it was it was crazy. So even after winning a couple of competitions, I, I finally started realizing there might actually be something to this. Like I actually might be OK at doing this. Joe: Mm hmm. Tony: So it's me winning competitions to finally realized that. And like anything else that I get into, I just go all in. And to me, public speaking was the thing I needed to go get good at. And I focused on it. I studied who I thought were the best speakers. I learned from people to hire a speaking coach. And I did reps and and I actually became the president of that Toastmasters club. And I grew it to one of the largest clubs in Houston and had about 50 active members at the time. I was president for a year or so. I got to go from being transformed to transforming hundreds of people that came in and out those doors for a period of over four years of being in that organization. And and I just I've seen so many changes that most people really underestimate the the quickness you can change. And I would say for most Toastmasters, you can come in definitely afraid. And if you participate within three to six months, you'll be a completely different person. So it happens that fast. And I've seen it too many times to to argue the results. So if you're out there and you're worried about public speaking or doing videos like this or you have a fear of that, like go join, make yourself uncomfortable, do the reps and it is a skill is not a talent. When you hear someone speaking like I do now, it's not a talent. It's not something I was born with. It wasn't even a thought in my mind to be a public speaker. But I learned the tactics and the strategies of effective communication and how to use my vocal inflections and speed and volume control presence, hands. All the things that you never even think about are part of communication. You learn when you actually get coached and you actually it's a skill. It's just like learning a new language. Joe: Yeah, and it was a real surprise to me, because I actually heard you say that you had a real fear of public speaking in it. I think it was a clubhouse room because you were giving advice to someone. And when you said that, I was like, I can't be the same person. I just, you know, I didn't understand it. And I personally think, you know, I come from the entertainment side of things. I own an entertainment booking agency here in Phoenix, probably one of the biggest ones here. So I was a performer my whole life. So it's not hard for me to necessarily do this, even though, yeah, a lot of people don't like how they look. They don't like how they're their own voice, all these things. But Tony: Yeah. Joe: I think you have a great voice. It's it's incredibly soothing the way that's what I liked about how you presented yourself in those rooms. It wasn't like I'm great and it wasn't like there's a lot of people that just sort of yell and they're like, you know, that's how they Tony: I'm Joe: Get there Tony: Super awesome, Joe: Exist. Tony: And for nine hundred ninety seven dollars, Joe: But Tony: You can get the course that will make you a millionaire Joe: That Tony: And one Joe: Is
We are taught how to defend ourselves from a very young age. But few of us are taught the pragmatic power of love. We build a series of walls we can put up whenever someone makes us uncomfortable. What if those very walls create a drag-on life that slows down our dreams? What if love is an easy-to-use tool that turns all that friction into forward momentum?"Love can't really exist without empowerment. You can be fond of. You can be scared of losing, but to actually love in a way that is beyond you, that is a deep welcoming, the only way you can deeply welcome, is to feel deeply empowered to not be worried of the result."We are taught how to defend ourselves from a very young age, but few of us are taught the pragmatic power of love. We build a series of walls we can put up whenever someone makes us uncomfortable. What if those very walls create a drag on life that slows down our dreams? What if love is an easy-to-use tool that turns all that friction into forward momentum?Today's topic is Love Over Defense. Joe, we've all heard, "All you need is love. Love will tear us apart. Love is the answer." We get hit with these phrases all the time, but it's hard to tell what anybody really means by love. What do you mean by love?Joe: That's a good question. That's a big one. Before I say what I mean by love, let me say what is often considered when people are thinking about the definition of love. One of the things that I see is, that people think about it, they dissect it the way the Greeks did, which was there's the love of friendship, like the love you'd have with a friend, the love you'd have that's romantic, the love that you would have with God, the love that would be very much dissected by who you were loving and how they had different visceral experiences in the body.For me, I think about love slightly differently. I think about love as in, there's a love that feels a lot like peace and there's a love that feels a lot like enjoyment and there's a love that feels a lot like care and there's a love that feels a lot like a deep welcoming. When I'm speaking about love, I would say that it's closest to a deep welcoming. They're all components of love. It's not like one of these is a better love than the other or one of these is a separate love than the other, but that deep welcoming seems to be the biggest leverage point. It's what seems to activate everything else the most.Brett: What makes that the deepest leverage point?Joe: I'm not sure if I have a great answer for that outside of experience. It's a dance, for sure, meaning that, when I really put myself out there and deeply care for myself or care for others, then that absolutely helps me have a deeper welcoming of all life, all people, all parts of myself. What I notice is the focus on that deep welcoming towards self, towards others, towards life, that seems to have a very big influence on my sense of peace, my sense of enjoyment and my sense of care.It just seems like it has the biggest turbo booster. In my life, what I've noticed is different ones at different times have bigger turbo-boosting potential, so to speak, but that deep welcoming seems to be the center of gravity for all of it.Brett: It sounds like what you're saying is that the deep welcoming is letting information, letting the world be seen by you and be felt by you and letting it impact you.Joe: As it is, yes. Exactly. It's allowing myself to be touched.Brett: What would be the next most important leverage point?Joe: For me, I think it's care. It's self-care and care of others. If you look at different religious traditions, you'll see that they fall into these different categories. They're focused on these categories, more or less. The Buddhist piece has a big emphasis. Daoist enjoyment has a deep emphasis and the Christianity care has a deep emphasis.For me, the care one seems to have a big impact. There's something about being generous and being giving that also dissolves the self in such a way that it creates a lot of peace and a deep welcoming. It's another really influential one.The dilemma with the care one is that all of these ways of loving, they have a dark shadow on the other side. The peace side of things, for instance, can become disassociation. The enjoyment side of things can be hedonism. The care can be codependency. A deep welcoming can become an apathy of sorts and it can become a giving up of responsibility. All of them have a way to have a shadow take over them.Brett: It sounds like, that the deep welcoming and the dark shadow, that the apathy, a lot of that seems to relate to surrender and the way that people talk about surrender. How does this relate to surrender for you? Many traditions have surrender as an important part of the journey to love.Joe: Yes, that's exactly right. Surrender, it's a path to love and it's also the result of love. Or the other way to say that is, surrender is a path to a deep welcoming, but it's also the result of a deep welcoming. So many traditions have surrender being the first step. The first step is to surrender to Jesus, or in Buddhist monasteries, for instance, in China in particular, the first Buddha that you see is this happy, fat Buddha who's plenty and that gets you into the temple.Once you're into the temple, then it's surrender. Then once you've surrendered and it's surrender to the teacher, to Buddha, or to the teachings, or to the Dharma and then beyond that is compassion, is a deep care of self and others. They have different Buddhas or different archetypes in the different stages of the temple, depending on how far in you are allowed to be. It is a great description of how that journey works, generally.In the Western world, however, surrender has some connotations and some issues that I don't know whether it's just people thought of surrendering differently then as they do now. The dilemma, generally, with surrender is that it's been used to subjugate people. It's been used to have people follow without their full authenticity involved. I stray away from the word for that reason.The real key is, what are you surrendering to? If you surrender to Jesus, you're not just surrendering to Jesus, you're surrendering to the concept of Jesus in your head, or what you think the scripture says. Surrender is so incredibly powerful and it's very, very much a deep welcoming, when you're surrendering to that very quiet call inside of you, to that impulse, to that thing that is always there and always knows the right direction.Brett: That we always have a voice in our head that shoots it down, perhaps surrendering to that. What do we lose by not emphasizing surrender, given that it's been so useful in so many traditions, but also there's this problematic aspect and particularly, in the way that it's conceptualized in the west? What do we lose by you not emphasizing it in your conception of love here?Joe: What we lose in not emphasizing it, is another way to lose our identity. In general, all of these methods, the deep care, the surrender, the silence of meditation, all of them are just ways to get past the illusion of self. It is to evaporate the identity, to see yourself beyond the small me that you think you are, to see yourself outside of your everyday cares and worries. It is to not be able to identify with the voice in your head anymore. That's generally what all these paths are pointing to.There's other less known traditions, too. There's a way of losing your identity in a group that's healthy, unlike most of the ways people will lose identities in groups. The Quakers had some great work on that as well. There's lots of ways to do it, but these are the big ones and love itself is that same thing. It's an expression. That's why, in some of the writings, you'll see people talk about love as your inherent state, because love, as you walk down that path of love, the identity evaporates as well and you see that your identity is love. You are love and love is what you are, just as you are nothing and nothing is what you are. It is when the sense of self dissolves into the whole, if you will, then love is the result, not emptiness is the result.Brett: It seems like a lot of people are onto this love being so healing, but there are just so many ways that you can get caught in an eddy or a backwater or in a shadow. What are some of the main misconceptions about love that we hold?Joe: Everybody's a little bit different here and people's misconceptions of love are based on their childhood. If the thing that you looked for to be your role model of love beat you, then love is painful. If the role model that you looked to was critical, then love is critical. If love meant being nice, then love is nice, or if love meant not holding boundaries, then love is not holding boundaries. Whatever you experienced love to be when you were young, those are usually exactly the misconceptions you hold about love.Societally, however, there's some pretty big normal ones. There's nice. Nice is a big one. If I'm nice to you, then I'm loving you, which is horribly inaccurate. That being compassionate is often a very sharp sword. Being compassionate is often saying a hard truth in a loving way with an open heart.I remember when I was a kid, I lied all the time. I was compulsively lying. I was a freshman in high school and it was to make people like me. This guy, his name, I remember it was Alex Bellini, this was like a week before the end of school and he said, "Hey, Joe, we all know that you're lying all the time and we would all like you so much more if you didn't." It was the most profound act of love that I had experienced to that date. I'm sure it was scary as shit for him to say and nobody else had said it. Nobody else had given me that information and my lying just stopped. Nothing else needed to happen. My lying just stopped at that point or reduced by 97% or something like that.That's an act of love, but that sure as fuck wasn't nice. I think a lot of times people mistake being nice-- because they think that if they love somebody, there's not going to be conflict or something like that. That's just not how love works.The other thing that's often the case is a lot of people are scared to be in love, because they have a conception that love doesn't hold boundaries, as if Gandhi didn't hold boundaries, as if Mother Teresa didn't hold boundaries. Love is holding boundaries. Great mothers-- the thing that we think as loving as mothers, they hold boundaries all the time. That's another one I think that people really have a problem seeing, that love is holding boundaries.I think that the other one that's most commonly not seen, is that love can't really exist without empowerment. You can't really love if you're not empowered. You can be fond of, you can be scared of losing, you can really, really, really want, you can desire, but to actually love in a way that is beyond you, that is a deep welcoming. The only way you can deeply welcome all the good and the bad and the dangerous and the unknown and the mystery is to feel deeply empowered, to not be worried of the results. Brett: What are some other examples of how this has shown up in your life, or just shows up in people's lives day to day?Joe: Wow so many-- you see lovers, husbands, wives say that they deeply love each other, but they're constantly trying to change each other or they're scared of losing one another. That's not love. That's a habit. I don't think it's really possible to love somebody fully and want them to change. Then you're loving them if they show up a certain way, or loving yourself that way is another example of it. Being in a job and being scared to get fired is another example of what isn't love. There's a famous coach who used to say, “Lead with love.” and if you're scared of getting fired, you can't lead with love. Then you're leading from fear. There's a lot of things like that.The thing I think that people don't really understand is, people say, “Love is the answer”, or “Love will find a way”, all those things about love, but nobody really talks about the mechanism of what makes love so powerful. What makes it, that if I love a part of myself, or if I love a part of you, I have more power over that part of you than if I don't. What makes that happen is the question that I think a lot of people don't fully understand. The best way to look at it is internally, which is, if I love an aspect of myself that, so far, I haven't been able to love, it gets to move, it gets to express and it gets to evolve.If I'm saying that that part is bad, I'm containing it, I'm holding it, so it can't move and so it can't evolve. That's how the mechanism works. It's like, if I love you unconditionally, then you don't have to be constantly managing yourself and then evolution can double-time it. That's how it works, is that, that loving of ourselves and others or a situation is one of the best change agents for it. The only difference is it's not changing in the way that you want it to. It might change in the way that you want it to, but it's going to change in a way that's best for it and you, but that doesn't always correspond with what you want.The mechanism of love is that you allow for something to be able to move and therefore, it can evolve instead of holding it in place. It's just like if you have a kid and you want them to evolve, don't stick them in a room with no lights on. You let them play and explore and learn and grow.Brett: So, this allowing something to move, allowing things to move feels a lot like undefendedness, which brings us to the second half of this topic of Love Over Defense. What do you mean by defense and how does that relate to this?Joe: On the mind side, defense is any way that you've decided that there's separation. "They don't understand. I'm better than them. This course moves too slow for me." Any way that you're creating separation between you and other people, that they come from an inferior race. They are better than me. They come from a better race. All of it, all of that is separation and that's the mental place.Somatically, it's literally like a wall, typically, in front of you, typically, somewhere from the perineum up into the top of your head and it's stronger for different people in different places, but it's literally, you can just feel like the “crr--” shutting down. And on a gut-level it's a subtle fear. That's what defense is.Brett: Clearly, there are times in life when you need to defend yourself and we've talked a lot about how boundaries are a part of love and that can feel like defense.Joe: Yes. The thing is, we mistake that defending ourselves can't be welcoming. That's the way that I would say it. Just because I have to draw a boundary or I want to draw a boundary, doesn't mean that I can't love you. Just because I am in a fight with you, if I'm literally going to say, "Okay, I can't allow this person to throw trash all over my front lawn," so I'm in a fight with you, it doesn't mean that I can't welcome you. I think that this is best in any religious book I've ever seen is, I think it's the Bhagadavida and-- Oh, I'm so bad with names.Brett: Bhagavad Gita.Joe: Yes. It starts off with a man who's about to get into a war with his brothers, with people that he loves and he prays to, I think it's Krishna, who has the conversation with him, which is what most of the book is about. He says, "Hey, you got to fight." He doesn't say, "No, don't fight." He says, "You got to fight.” It doesn't mean you have to give up loving to fight. Life is tension, generally, call it a fight, call it tension. Life is tension. If I took all the tension out of your cell, it would die. If I took all the tension out of your body, you would die. Tension and life require one another, or at least life requires tension. If you give it up, then you're dead. The only thing left then is how you hold it. How do you hold the fight? That's what this book really talks about really well. It's like, "Okay, this is the fight, but how do you hold the fight?" That's the same thing here. Like, just because you've engaged in the war doesn't mean that you have to stop loving people. That's the confusion that I think most people feel, is, that if I am going to be in tension with you, then I have to give up my love for you, which is not at all true. Brett: Right. I can think of any circumstance where I feel like I have a conflict with somebody, it's so easy to drop their humanness. To make them an other, to make them wrong, to make them an obstacle and that never helps the conflict.Joe: Right. You can still love them and still overcome the obstacles, so to speak. They don't have to become the obstacle.Brett: How do we start cultivating that love, that allows us to experience the fight in a different way?Joe: This is why I think I call it a deep welcoming more than any other reason is, because there's a visceral experience of that. It's like, if you close your eyes right now and you deeply welcome yourself here and love yourself just as you are right now, that's it, that's all there is to it.We can make it more complex and I'm sure we will in this podcast, but that's all there is to it. How do you deeply welcome yourself in this moment and in the next moment and the moment after that? It's a very somatic experience to be loved.Brett: Yes. I just did that and the first thing was I noticed tension in my body and then it just immediately relaxed.Joe: Right. It's literally like you have a feeling of love for something. Maybe it's for your dog, or maybe it's for your child, or maybe it's for your mother, maybe it's for a friend. How do you give yourself that same feeling that you have, that you give to them? How do you feel the same thing you feel for them for yourself?That's the best way to cultivate love, because our capacity to love all the bits of ourselves is directly correlated to our capacity to love everybody on the planet. The more that you learn to love all the parts of yourself, the more you're capable of loving everybody on the planet.Brett: What else can we do?Joe: Well, one thing for sure is if you can't love yourself, then love your resistance. It doesn't really matter in the moment what it is you're capable of loving. There's no time when we're incapable of love for anything. If you find yourself, like, "I just can't love myself right now," then love the fact that you can't love yourself.Also, the other thing you can do is, again, we've talked about this a little bit, but don't mistake love for caretaking. Loving yourself, loving somebody else isn't caretaking them. It's not saying yes, even if you want to say no, it's not going against your truth. It's not trying to make them happier. It's just having a deep welcoming for who they are.Brett: What if you identify ways that you're caretaking and you're afraid to stop doing them and then you realize, that you're not loving and then you get hard on yourself about that?Joe: Oh, you've got lots of choices there. You can love the fact that you're a caretaker. You can love the part that is so scared that it thinks that it needs to be a caretaker. You can love the part of yourself that thinks, that getting angry at yourself will actually change anything. You can love the part of yourself that is really wanting what's best for them and yourself and doesn't know how to get there. All sorts of parts to yourself to love in that circumstance.Brett: Anything else that we can do to cultivate this love?Joe: Yes, drawing boundaries is really good. That's a great way to really cultivate love in yourself and in others.Brett: Describe a boundary that you might set with yourself.Joe: Oh, that's a good one. First, the thing is people think about boundaries as a form of separation and I just said like, mentally, defense is separation. I think it's important to talk about that paradox first, which is when you draw a boundary, you're doing something that's good both for you and for the other person and that's really the opposite of separation. It's the same, actually, with being compassionate. There is nothing that you can do that's truly compassionate for you that's also not compassionate for those around you in that circumstance. It's the same with a boundary and that's the important part of a boundary. The important parts of boundaries are, that, when you draw the boundary, it increases your love for the person, no matter what they're going to say to the boundary.I know that I'm drawing a great boundary when I'm doing that. When it opens up my heart to the person that I'm drawing the boundary with. If I'm drawing a boundary to myself, I use that same thing. It's like, what's the thing that actually opens my heart to myself when I'm setting a boundary?Brett: What's an example of a boundary you might set with yourself? Joe: Let's say a boundary that I might set with myself is, if I am noticing myself getting angry, I am going to separate myself from other people, so that I don't get angry at them. That would be a boundary that I would set with myself.Brett: Elaborate a little bit more on how that helps you love yourself.Joe: If I'm angry at people, then I have shame, then I have blame, then I have a whole big mess, usually, that I have to clean up. None of that stuff is really loving and it's also making my anger wrong and making parts of myself wrong. In that boundary, I stop making myself wrong. The trick is when I'm literally thinking about drawing it, it doesn't feel like an oppression. It feels like a gift.Brett: That makes sense. The part of us that we are drawing a boundary against might otherwise feel defensive against us making it wrong.Joe: I would say with, drawing a boundary with, not against.Brett: With. Right.Joe: That's the subtle thing about boundaries that people think. The subtle thing about boundaries is that it's against, because we value this idea of freedom so greatly in ourselves. That's the other part of drawing a boundary that's so important. The other part of drawing a boundary that is so important is, that you're not asking them to be any different. You're saying, "I'm going to be different."If I'm drawing a boundary with-- this is different with children, obviously, but if I'm drawing a boundary with a friend and that person, to use the same example, has a tendency to get angry, I would say, "My boundary with you is when you get angry, I'm going to walk away and happy to re-engage with you whenever you're not yelling at me. Or if you're yelling at me, then I'm going to walk away and I'm happy to re-engage with you." I'm not asking them to stop yelling at me. I'm not asking for them to stop drinking. I'm not asking for them to stop. I'm saying what I'm going to do in these circumstances.Brett: Like creating a background of safety in connection, regardless of how they act so that they don't have to be a certain way.Joe: That's exactly right. It's the fully empowered move. It's taking full responsibility for yourself. If you start trying to love yourself to change yourself, it won't work, because trying to change yourself isn't loving yourself. What happens for a lot of people is they start to feel the power of love and they start to feel how loving unconditionally starts transforming the world, they start wanting more of it and so then they start loving to transform the world and then it stops working. Because if you're trying to love to transform the world, you're not loving anymore. It's a really important thing to see that the love, if it gets tainted, it just stops working.Brett: As we were cultivating this love and the defenses that creep in taint that love, at the same time as we're working to cultivate love, how do we work on lowering our defenses as well?Joe: Yes. There's a feeling when we lower our defenses, what we're actually doing is allowing a whole bunch of emotions we don't want to feel to be felt. Those emotions purify us. They start to dismantle that sense of self and it literally feels sometimes like it's burning away or that it's melting or something to that effect and so, there's an intensity to that.Every time we lower our defense, there's this little thing inside of us, is like, "Oh, we're going to be fucking destroyed. We're going to be destroyed. Don't do that. If I lower my defense, I'll be destroyed. Don't do that." There's an intensity with doing it.Brett: Well, there's a truth to that too, like a part of ourselves does get destroyed.Joe: Exactly. There's a great saying by Pema Chödrön, I'm going to paraphrase, it says, "Open yourself up for annihilation, because that way, you can find out what part of yourself can't be annihilated." That's what you're doing. You're just allowing that purification to happen and you know it, because there's an intensity to it of, oftentimes, a fear as well and to feel into that, to step into that deeply is the move to make around the defenses.Surrender is another really good move in these moments, it's, you're not surrendering to the circumstances. You're surrendering to not defending yourself. What do I mean by that? I had a great experience with this. There was a man and I was on the Board of Directors with this person and he was bad for the company. He also had this tendency to whatever I said, he would do the exact opposite thing. What I did was I told him, "Hey, I'm going to try to remove you from the board, I will stop trying to remove you from the board at any time that we can actually work together well and that you're in your thought processes aren't just against mine.We love contrarian thinking in boards typically any board I've been a part of, but this was just contrary for the sake of contrarian, it wasn't contrary because it was independent thinking.Anyway, so every time, for like six weeks or six months, I would call him up and I would say, "This is what I'm going to do and this is what I suggest you do." He would do the exact opposite of that the entire time. By doing exactly the opposite of what he said is how he got himself removed from the board. If at any time he would have said, "Oh, I see." And called me up and talked to me and said, "Oh, wow, you're really giving me the advice." I was constantly able to give him the advice that was actually the best for him. I was constantly able to say, "This is what I think is best for you and for it to be accurate." It is also the fact that he couldn't do it that led to his removal from the board, which was best for the company if he couldn't learn to work with people and be collaborative.Brett: That's fascinating. I'm curious, how you differentiate in that story love over defense versus knowing what's best for him and versus controlling him through suggestions.Joe: The main difference is what you're feeling internally. I am welcoming him as he is and at the same time, I am making the call, that says this company is better without you. That's my call to make, just like it's his call to make and he was making the call that the company would be better without me, or that whatever, China should win the war, or Korea should win the war. Those are calls that people are going to make. That's the war. You have to call what you think is best, but that doesn't mean I ever had to close my heart to him.The way that I could act to not close my heart to him is to constantly tell him, "This is actually what I think is the best thing to do," and to tell him, "I'm going to keep on telling you to do this stuff and as long as you keep on-- I gave him the whole map. I told him the key, I gave him everything to get out of it and he chose not to do that. It was literally me at the time, it was the first time that I was like, "Oh, I am in a war, how do I maintain an open heart?" The way I could do it was to give him every opportunity I could possibly think of. That's the only difference.I think the thing is from the outside it might not look different at all. From the inside, it's a far more effective way to fight a war. You hear this from people who are fighters all the time, try to get your opponent angry, because if they get angry, they'll be less effective. What happens if the person you're fighting has a big open heart for you and they're still determined to win?Brett: How angry did this board member get?Joe: He got pretty angry and there's definitely multiple occasions where he called up yelling. Then, for me, that was the practice. He would call up yelling and I would just keep on opening my heart and keep on feeling the discomfort and keep on feeling my emotions and lots of heartache for me. There was a lot of heartbreak in it and that was my purification was that heartbreak.Brett: Tell me more about that heartbreak.Joe: I have this saying, that every time my heart breaks, it increases my capacity to love. Heartbreak is like the feeling of it breaking open to expand or the feeling of expansion of the heart. That's the feeling. It's interesting. I've obviously never given birth, but when my wife talks about birth, she goes, "I don't know why they call them contractions when they're really expansions," but there's a feeling that it's a contraction as well as an expansion. In heartbreak, that's the visceral feeling of it, for me, anyway. There's this feeling of heartbreak that just totally increases my capacity to love.Another great example of this was, I don't know if I've shared the story, but there was a time when I was just totally bothered by all inane conversation. Just two people talking about going 65 miles an hour on the way to Santa Barbara, whatever it was, would just drive me nuts. There's this day where I recognized that I shut down when this was happening and so I was like, "I'm not going to shut down, I'm going to sit there. I'm going to feel whatever there is underneath this."I would hang out with people, having inane conversations and I would just weep. I would just cry. Probably at times, I had some idea of why I was crying. I think at the crux of it, I was crying because I had just shut this entire part of life off. It's like I'd cut off a part of myself and as I opened it up, there was just this pain of like, "Oh, wow, I've lost this for so long."Brett: What was it that you had lost?Joe: The ability to connect in this fashion, that I had judged this way of connecting. One more way of connecting with people that I had separated myself from, because of my own self-definition. I just weeped. It was very awkward. Sitting there crying, they'd be like--Brett: You did this with them in their presence?Joe: In their presence, yes. It was awkward at times and they'd be like, "What's wrong." I'm like, "Yes, it's nothing. Don't worry about it." I'd just keep on and then they keep on. They're used to having those levels of conversations, so asking me about this twice wasn't really going to happen.Then all of a sudden, I was just completely able to enjoy the more superficial way of connecting and even found out that there's some of that super "superficial" way of connecting that's not superficial at all. That connecting over flowers or connecting over food, there's a very sensual, non-heady level of connection, that is quite sweet and has a depth that deep conversations don't have.Brett: Something juicy in that story for me is, that you started weeping in front of people and then they asked you what was going on with you, inviting depth and then you were like, "Oh, it's nothing."Joe: Yes. That's exactly it, because I wanted to feel the heartbreak. I didn't want to disturb the thing that was breaking my heart. Once you realize that heartbreak increases your capacity to love, then it's like, "Man, I want it. I want that heartbreak," because I know that at the backside of it, there's so much more love available to me.Yes, if I could shut it down, I'd shut it down, because I'd want to just keep on feeling the pain of a superficial conversation, so that I could feel that heartbreak. It was the same with this guy. It's like, just to feel the heartbreak of the fact that here's two people who want something great to happen in the world, who want this company to be successful and this is the only outcome that I know how to create. I didn't have the capacity to really get them on board or bring them along or whatever. I don't know if I could have ever, but that heartbreak and that incapacity to feel into that totally increased my capacity to love.Brett: How is it that experiencing that heartbreak can be experienced as not discouraging, but as empowering?Joe: I think you have to live through it a couple times. I don't know if there's another way to do it, but to just live through it a couple of times. I think that once you live through heartbreak and you realize how much it increases the love in your life, then it's just like going into a hot sauna. If you go into the hot sauna the first time, you're like, "What the f-- are you guys doing? I'm out of here. My skin's burning, what the hell?" I'm talking about like a real sauna, not an American sauna. There's nothing logical about doing it, but then you do it a couple of times and you're like, "Oh man, I can't wait to get back to the sauna." The same goes to the cold plunge, the exact same thing. The payoff is so great that you're like, "Let's do it."Brett: It really seems that this love thing seems to be the crux of all of this teaching.Joe: Yes, absolutely it is. The first real week was VIEW, which is vulnerability, impartiality, empathy and wonder. That's really unconditional love. If you put all those three things together, that's another great pointer to unconditional love. You feel vulnerable, because you're open and welcoming. You're impartial, because you're welcoming as is, not telling them how to be. Empathy means you're open and feeling them. You're allowing yourself to be touched and wonder is this basic nod that the universe knows more than you do, that it's still a mystery and will always be a mystery. That really prevents you from wanting to try to change stuff, change things. We start off with VIEW and we end with love and they're very much the same thing. They're the whole thing. Everything we've done in this course has been to move us towards a greater state of love for ourselves and others. I think the thing about it is that it can't be done out of order. A lot of people will move straight to love, they'll say, "Okay, I'm just going to love everything all the time." I think that's great. Don't get me wrong, but it just doesn't seem to work as well to love everything as an escape, or to love everything as a bypass, or to love everything so that you don't have to feel it. To love everything means that you're really happy to feel everything, that you're happy to express everything, that you're happy to be wrong about everything, that you're happy to be empowered and you're happy to feel helpless. It's a deep welcoming of life and a lot of times people will use love as a way to cut off a certain portion of it.Brett: The question I was about to ask, but you've just explained it, was what makes it that you didn't call this work the art of unconditional love?Joe: Oh, I don't want to answer that question. [laughs] There's a part of me that says you answer as a business guy, but also as a coach. You meet people where they are. You meet people with the problems they think they have and most people aren't walking around going, "I just don't know how to love enough."The biggest problem I have is that my heart isn't broken enough. I don't get enough heartbreak. Most people aren't walking around saying that, so you meet them where they are. Luckily, the unconditional love piece and especially with the emotional fluidity, the empowerment and seeing yourself as inherently good, which is the crux of the fulcrum that the love uses to create its leverage. Brett: It reminds me of where I first met you, which was a consciousness hacking talk entitled, "How to Make Better Business Decisions". I was, "That's what I need to do."Joe: Exactly. Check it out, though. Have you been making better business decisions?Brett: Absolutely.Joe: Yes, see. That's the cool thing, you can actually deliver on the promise, but you can deliver on it so effectively, only because you're speaking to the deeper truth. I think the other reason, just to say it, is that semantically everybody thinks about love very differently. If you say you've got 20 different viewpoints immediately, it just makes it harder to really go through the process.Brett: I think one of the main resistances to doing some kind of group work around unconditional love is, that it'll trip people's cult triggers. Maybe another question is, what is the difference between doing this kind of work in a group and finding unconditional love together and a cult?Joe: Well, this is the surrender piece. This is why I don't use surrender. That little thing about surrender that's in there, it's basically I'm going to ask you to give up responsibility for yourself. Whereas everything that we do is very much pointing directly at, “Take responsibility for yourself. The wisdom is inside you.” If you look at how I interact with students, I'm mostly asking questions and I'm also saying, “Tell me what your instinct says, tell me what's moving you”, because I trust that more than I trust me. I might know the terrain. I might know the map. I might know the six most likely places that you want to end up, but only you know where you are at this moment and know what the next move is and that's the big difference.That's why I don't emphasize surrender because as soon as you emphasize surrender, people think, "Surrender to what?" If I do say something like, "Hey, surrender to the ineffable part of yourself," then all of a sudden, there's a definition, "What is that? How do I do that?" and then that definition becomes what you surrender to instead of the thing itself.Brett: I think a lot of that, what you're speaking to comes from when people get into a teacher role, they end up subtly asking for people to surrender to them, because it sounds like that comes from a lack of trust in people's internal work. What is it that makes you feel so trusting, when you are working with somebody on one of our Q&A calls, somebody who's miles and miles away and could have just freak out and close the laptop and then go do something insane? What makes you feel so much trust for their internal compass, that you feel safe doing this work with them, without the sense of control that would lead to them surrendering to you?Joe: That's a great question. I've never been asked that question before. It's funny what happens in my system when you ask it, is just like this deep sense of humility. The intellectual answer I want to give you is, because that thing in them is the same thing that guided me. I just wasn't lucky enough or I wasn't ripe enough to be able to be given someone to guide me in this way. I had to trust my own, so I just trusted in that way.I think that's part of it, but there's another part of it too, which is, it's experience. It's just so many times, I'm like this, "I can see where the path leads," and I can watch the person just instinctually make the next right move over and over and over again. Not just that person, almost everybody, that I--. Whenever I question it, I'm like, "Oh, that's going to be like a backpedal." It turns out it's the perfect backpedal for them.I don't mean that in a hippy way of everything's perfect, just the way it's supposed to be. I mean just like roses know how to grow. They just know how to do it. Grass just knows what to do. Birds just know what to do. They just know it. I don't have to trust them. I don't have to trust the trees and people. There is a center of gravity just asking. All they have to really do is, just get out of the way. All my questions are literally just questions to help them see themselves. There's no question I'm asking that's underlying point isn't just to have them see themselves.Brett: Wow. Thanks, Joe. This has been another amazing episode.Joe: Yes, what a pleasure. I'm sad that they're done. I'm glad that they're done because I could use a little more free time, but I'm sad that they're done, because I'm not going to get to play with you for a couple. Brett: I'm excited to see what kind of playing happens again in the future.Joe: Yes, it will for sure. What a pleasure, Brett. Thank you.Brett: Thank you.Joe: All right. Bye. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe. We would love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions and comments. To reach us, join our newsletter, learn more about VIEW, or to take a course, visit: artofaccomplishment.comResources: Pema Chödrön: https://pemachodronfoundation.org/
A conversation with the principal of Jotham S. Stein P.C. about his recent book called "Even CEOs Get Fired". This is an easy read for any entrepreneur, C-Suite executive or investor on the tips and tricks in today's high stakes business world. It's probably safe to say that most people who want to make sure they are protected in their work environment whether you're the CEO or you work for a company, should definitely read this book! Enjoy this very educational conversation with Jotham Stein. Thank you for listening! Enjoy, Joe Jotham S. Stein Principal - Law Offices of Jotham Stein P.C. Website: https://jotham.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jothamstein/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jotham.stein LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jotham-s-stein-7b92474/ Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Jotham Stein, welcome so much, I'm glad you join me on the podcast. I'm looking forward to this. I don't do a lot of things that dig deep into legal conversation. So this is going to be very educational for me and I know for my audience as well. So thank you so much for joining me. Jotham: Thanks for having me on your show, Joe. Joe: Yeah, absolutely, so we're going to definitely talk about your new book, which is ""Even CEOs Get Fired"", which is very interesting because I've been a CEO my whole life. So it's kind of scary to think about that I would get fired from my own company first, get a little back story about you from the interviews that I heard. I know that you and I are both New Yorkers. So I grew up a couple hours north of New York City. And you grew up on Long Island. If I if I remember correctly. Jotham: That's true. I'm proud graduate of high school, Syosset, Long Island, New York City, Nassau County, sort of almost all the way to something closer to north and south shore, but pretty much in the middle. Joe: And do you still get back there or you're not there, right? Do you live in California now? Jotham: Yes, I live in Half Moon Bay, California, three blocks from the beach, so when I was growing up in high school, I used to love to go to the beach. That's where you go, you know, all the time in Jones Beach Those Joe: Yes. Jotham: Beaches, even Robert Moses State Park on Fire Island, you go there, too. Now, I live three blocks from the Pacific Ocean and Joe: That's Jotham: Happened back. Joe: That's awesome. I saw a kiss at Jones Beach. Of all Kiss and Aerosmith all in one night. Jotham: In one night, wow, Joe: One. Jotham: I think you have the theater there, like in the bay. Oh, Joe: Yeah, Jotham: That's cool. Joe: And I where I went to college, I went to New York State University and pretty much the entire university was Long Island resident. So I have a bunch of friends that live out a lot. So it's near and dear to my heart. Can you give me a little back story about you, like how you decided to get into law? You know, just I like my audience to know who you are, and we just don't launch into, like, who you are. Now, it's interesting to know the person and then we get into what's going on today. Jotham: So after high school, I went to college at Princeton in New Jersey, and I was actually interested in public policy. So one of the things people are interested in public policy do is they go to law school. So I wound up I never really been to California only one time in my life. So I was fortunate enough. I applied to California schools, got into Stanford and and went to law school at Stanford, which is right in Silicon Valley, as it turns out. So I got out of Stanford and I went to work for the big Silicon Valley law firm for two years. You know, the firm that probably I think started Apple are famous in this area. Not that I have anything to do with Apple, but but I went to work for that law firm for a couple of years and then left and traveled the world. I hitchhiked around quite a bit. I've been in quite a few countries and that I eventually hung out my own shingle in Silicon Valley and people knew that I was. I started out in litigation, meaning when people are individuals or companies to each other. But after a while, a lot of the local lawyers figured out that that I could probably write a contract to protect people as best you can from getting into lawsuits. Jotham: So that's how it started. And eventually, I'm an entrepreneur myself, so I like meeting a lot of entrepreneurs and executives of people. So I'm a lawyer that has a lot of people as clients, real people that have different issues. And so I like meeting them at all that show. When you start doing a good job with one entrepreneur, they refer you to other entrepreneurs. Lawyers refer you to other entrepreneurs. I ran an advertisement I talk about in my book, "Even CEOs Get Fired", which is sort of named after an advertisement ran 20 odd years ago and no longer existent magazine called Red Herring, which in those days was the hot Silicon Valley magazine. And it was titled "Even CEOs Get Fired". And you would not believe who called me off this advertisement because people have all sorts of problems at employment at every level. My book is for everybody from the entry level individual to the mid-level manager to the CEO. And all those people called me off that Ed. And and one thing led to another. And here I am. Now, I, I know a lot about protecting executives, entrepreneurs, mid-level employees, starting out employees, somebody with a new business and so forth. So that's that's the background. Joe: Perfect. And so I notice that you have not one, but three officers Jotham: I Joe: Said true. Jotham: Do. That is true. Joe: How? Jotham: How do you get to ask me how I wind up having three offices? So. Joe: Well, because it's like I know even when you were with David Meltzer on that interview, it's like, why? What was the first thing that came to your mind when you said, hey, I'm going to break out on my own, get out of the safety net of working at a firm? Right. You don't have to think about much of anything but what you're responsible to do. But then you break out you open up not only one office, but you have three offices. So I was looking going, OK, man, he really went for. Jotham: So that's the story of those offices, of course, that my longtime office has always been in Silicon Valley, in Palo Alto, although these days with covid you can work anywhere, we could work anywhere anyway when you represent as entrepreneurs do not care where you are in the world, as long as you're giving them excellent advice. And many of them won't even come to visit me in my Palo Alto office because time is money. They'd rather be doing whatever they're good at with the mobile games, whether it's by a pharmacy, but it's a Wi-Fi, whether it's security, whatever they're great at, they don't want to come visit their lawyer maybe once. So I could really work anywhere. But I had an office and I now have an office in Chicago land outside the Chicago suburbs, in part because I live there. And I can say that living near Lake Michigan in that area and those lakes out there is not the same as living by the ocean. We grow up along Long Island by the ocean, and it has to smell like salt. So I now moved back to California and I have an office in New York on Long Island as well. And that's actually because you're supposed to have an office in New York if your practice law in New York, and I'm licensed in New York, in Illinois and in California, Colorado and the District of Columbia. So that's Joe: Perfect. Jotham: How got. Joe: All right, well, good. Can I can I break down what your firm and what you do, like what's the specialty before we get into talking more about the book? Jotham: Look, the thing is, it's going to really help you, you know, the CEO, but it's also a breezy read. This is easy to read in the story. In the book, about 40 percent of the book is there. Fifty nine stories there that are fictional. They're the repetitive stories of genres of stories that happen, but they're not any specific story that made them up actually to Peet's Coffee in Half Moon Bay here. I wrote the I wrote all of those there. And so you might find out, hey, that happened to me or or it happened to somebody. I know. But it's because it's a kind of repetitive story that happened. So it'll be a really easy read for you. You can read it on a plane, you can read it on a train, you can read it at your house, you can read it on the beach or wherever, or you can read it, you know, looking for very straightforward advice about how to negotiate a contract and how to protect yourself. Joe: I think it gets confusing with people who don't understand the law and don't understand when they might need an attorney and when they don't. What would you say if you had to put down the bullet points of what your firm does? What do you specialize in? So if somebody said, hey, they hear this and then they eventually see this YouTube video, they say that's one of those is exactly what I need. And they reach out to your firm. So it'd be nice if we knew exactly what you could help a CEO with or someone who is working for a company at a high level, at sea level position, any of that. Jotham: So the first thing I have to do is be technical here and say that in California, you can't say you specialize in something, you have to say focus on it. That's some ethical obligation. So I don't want to mess it up for anybody who's from California listening to this. So what we focus on, I guess, is I've got I've got to turn that question around on you just to say that sorry about that, Joe: No, Jotham: Because, Joe: That's perfect. Jotham: You know, every every state has their own bloody rules. And so I pay attention to them 100 percent. And so I want to make sure it's focused. So what we do is what if you want one word is we help individual, whether they're the whoever they are, to protect themselves in the employment and personal relationships. So it could be a relationship with your boss, could be a relationship with your company, could be a relationship with your investors. That's typically what we do. So and we represent actually in their individual world, we even represent investors, professional investors like private equity partners, a private equity companies. Those are the venture capital or venture capitalists. We represent venture capitalists typically in their own deals. So when they're protecting themselves, when they're doing deals with other venture capitalists, for example, so with a CEO, for example, we would give us their contracts and they say, well, we should should we sign this? And I said, well, are you protected? Are you protected in your severance? Do you have a profession, what we call a professional prenuptial agreement, which is nothing more than a severance agreement negotiated on day one. So for the executive, that may be, you know, severance and equity protection may be protection for COBRA payments down the road for an individual like an engineer just starting out if they have any leverage at all. And honestly, many don't. But if they do a one line sentence, if you fire me without cause you've asked me six months of stock and and you pay me three months of pay, for example. And so that's what we do. Those kinds of contracts can be not just employment like you're thinking about, but they could be equity contracts. Jotham: So how not to for an entrepreneur, how not to get screwed by your own investors for yourself. It's your own company. Let's say let's just say you taken capital invested. You have an investor, right? So they invest in your company. Suddenly they have 20 percent of the company, suddenly have 30 percent of your company. How do you, Joe, as a CEO, protect yourself vis a vis those investors? Now, like I said, sometimes those investors, the professional investors come to us because they want to be protected against their own investors when they do a deal. So with their own investors. So what they are doing is becoming limited. They're becoming general partners or having some sort of arrangement. So we review contracts and give straightforward advice about how to protect yourself and honestly what the risks are if you don't, because people and businesses take risks all the time. You as a CEO have to be taking risks in your business. So you need to be fully informed about that. And so that's what we do on the individual level. We do represent companies as well. And we are some of our CEO clients have have us, for example, representing their company because they thought we did a good job for them individually. So we do a lot of that also on the separation side, too, and I've described the employment side, protecting, protecting the CEO, like your question was on the front end. But the back end is we helped negotiate separation agreements all the time so that somebody has sort of a smooth landing and can then professional reincarnate themselves. Joe: So I used to share office space with a what are called a placement agency. They were finding jobs for people Jotham: Brian. Joe: And some of these jobs would be at a high level and Jotham: Right. Joe: Really look fairly large salaries if the negotiation of that employment is is carried through the placement agency with the people at the company that are hiring and all of that stuff gets done. How can someone fit in, someone like you or your firm in the middle of that negotiation and make sure before anything gets signed and they get employed that they've been taking care of? Jotham: So Joe: That's Jotham: If Joe: Kind of tricky, right? It's it's. Jotham: It's very tricky because the employment agency is working for the company and the employment agency typically gets paid only when the person is place, so the employment agency has a very that's not always true. Some employment agencies get paid straight salary or commission or something. That's not per person. They're just given a job or a project. But often they only they only succeed if they place the person. All right. So if you're talking on a lower level of employee going into the company, they often don't want to take the risk of going to get a lawyer because I could create a real problem, frankly, in getting their job. If you're talking about a senior executive being placed by an agency that is there, the really best placement agencies that really care about their clients that they're placing, even though they represent the company, will say go get a lawyer, but almost all of them do not even at the highest level. So it's incumbent on the on the on the executive, whoever they are, or entrepreneur. But in this case, employment agency is going to be executive to go and to say get get their lawyer. So once they get a lawyer involved, then the employment agency sort of out on the outside and some liaison between the executive and the company and using us often as shadow counsel. So we don't even appear until the end to work on the contract. But, you know, if you're going into if you're a senior senior level person, you want to know what your downside risks are, what your recommendations are from from somebody who's seen it hundreds and hundreds of times, maybe a thousand times before. So. Joe: For someone who's listening to this, that is at that level that hasn't thought about that, step back for a moment. Take what you've been offered. Find someone like your law firm and say, I need you to review this contract to make sure it's in my best interests so that once I sign, I'm being taken care of all in there. And I have some sort of exit strategy that makes sense. That's fair on the way out. Jotham: Absolutely, 100 percent, I couldn't have said it better myself, Joe: Well, Jotham: So, Joe: I'm learning already. Jotham: Yeah, it's great you're learning and it's just to maximize the return, the person Joe: Right. Jotham: That's listening to the podcast. So they want to maximize their return. Why in the world would they sign a contract without being fully informed? And the only way to be fully informed is to come to someone like myself who's done it hundreds of times. I can tell you we've had the most shrewd executives, some that have been so successful in their lives, and they come to us after they get screwed and they say, well, what happened? And I say, well, if you talk with me before you sign the contract, either you wouldn't have negotiated this and you would have protected yourself or you would have said, you know, Jotham, thank you very much for that great advice. I'm going to take the risk. I hope I don't call you to tell me to tell me meaning, Jotham, Joe: All Jotham: The person Joe: Right, I told, Jotham: That you told me so. Joe: Right, exactly. Let's take me, for example, as a CEO of a company and like I had mentioned, I have I have had three or four companies up till now. Do you if what I ever come to you and say, I need help protecting my personal assets, I need some way for you to look at my business and look at my personal assets to make sure that as as an LLC, which I am an LLC with an escort on the tax side in my protecting myself, is that another thing that you would help someone do or that's just different? That's a different. Jotham: That's actually a complicated question, so I certainly read the operating agreement because many, many people start it depends on how you're asking the question of it's called context dependent. If you're asking me how can I set up a corporate formation that I'll best protect myself with trusts and estates, I'm not the person to do trust estates. Right. We send that out to lawyers we know all the time. That's a special area if you want to set up. Like I said, I trust the estate and lawyers in the legal world. They call that trust the state's law. If you come to me and say, how best can I protect myself in the corporate world by setting up an LLC, we certainly could set up an LLC have done that. We also work with other firms or give advice all the time to our entrepreneurial clients. I mean, I'm like a secretary or just just have been secretaries of companies before for our clients. But we might work with with another law firm if, for example, they had doing a sophisticated security transaction by selling stock or something. But so we could we give advice on that. And at some point we'll stop and say, no, you need somebody else. Jotham: If you're if you're talking about how you Joe, who has an LLC, can protect yourself vis a vis other investors or vis a vis partners, you might have strategic strategic partners or even vendors or contractors. Yes, we do that all the time. Then you would come to me. So basically we have client exactly like you're describing somebody who just starts a business. There's a bit of serial entrepreneur and they get most of their advice from us and we say, no, we're not giving you advice. For example, tax law. I never give advice on tax write. I know the lawyers who give the advice, but and I recommend our clients that to that. But I have I have clients who want me to give them advice on tax law. And I'm like, absolutely not. Let me let me let me tell you where to go. And, you know, most most people who are in business and and are will say, OK, well, my lawyer's telling me he's not the right person. We find them the right person. That's just an example. So your question sort of involved a number of possibilities. And Joe: Sure. Jotham: Without knowing the facts, I can't really answer 100 percent, but. Joe: Yeah, and I'm just trying to drive to the fact that if I was listening, like I listen to a podcast of the chat and things will pop out during an episode where I'll say, oh, that is something I've been thinking about or something I to get an answer for. So I'm trying to make sure that everyone knows who's listening to this and eventually will watch it, know the things that you can do for them in case something pops up. I'm trying to ask the questions that if I was listening to this, I wonder if he can do this for me. It's that kind of thing. I'm just trying to make sure that if there's something you can do, I want people to know you can do it for them. Jotham: Oh, yeah, I mean, you want to start a business, we knew that you want to get investment, we protect you, you want to do employment, work on any level, we could help you protect yourself. You got a strange sort of possibility for your next job, for your next business deal. You come to us, we give you straightforward advice, and that's really the key. And we give great business advice as well as great legal advice. And you'll see if when you read the book, "Even CEOs Get Fired" half of our work. Is that so? In other words, since we've seen so many different possibilities, people in the gym don't not going to see that the hair on my head on your YouTube channel. But but I've seen all these all so many different possibilities that go right in that go wrong. And sometimes they go right. The person's thirty third business, they say, oh, business one, that business do they reincarnate and they and they maximize their returns and they make it on the third go. But we have lots of people sitting there doing that on the bikes or in the gym and maybe on the rowing machine. Jotham: A row or so do rowing machines, you know, just because it's they've succeeded twice before and they're going to their third job doesn't mean that they don't have tremendous pitfalls in their deal, whether it's their equity deal or whether it's their employment deal, whatever the deal is, whether it's a deal to to have your perks, for example, cars, for example, to drive around, it doesn't mean that because you've been OK the first two times, there isn't some gigantic problem that might rear its ugly head the third time around. So if you're going in as an entrepreneur to a company or starting a company or as your executive or anybody with leverage in employment, it's always a question. Do you spend money on a lawyer? But if you want to protect yourself or want to see what your downside risks are, want to be fully informed. I want to have either the opportunity to maximise your personal returns, whatever they are, or know that you're taking risks in that attempt to maximize them. You would come to me or my law firm or or a lawyer who does similar type work wherever that person lives. Joe: Great. OK, so to lighten things up a little bit, Jotham: Ok, it's. Joe: So I thought about this when I heard you talk about there's fifty nine fictional stories there, actually there are real circumstances, but you've you've obviously protected the people by not naming names and naming companies or whatever. Right. So is that what you mean by those fifty nine. These are actual things that occurred, but you just created them to not name companies or names or anything specific. Jotham: More like they're not they're not individual to any individual story, I've had it just happen so many times over and over again. And so it's like, OK, I get something that happens. An entrepreneur walks in and I'm like, OK, this is like 16 other times it's happened. It's new to the entrepreneur, but to me it's happened a lot of times before. So that's what I mean by it's fictional, but it's based on my experience. So I literally wrote them at a Peet's Coffee. Right. And so, I mean, let me take one, for example. Joe: I was going to ask I said I was going to put you on the spot, say I love story, so I need you to tell us why. Jotham: Ok, so there's one in my book, I actually spoke just briefly about it with David Meltzer. It's one I like. OK, here's a perfect example. There's a very successful woman as a number two at the company. Essentially, she is also a biathlete. So I like athletics. I never did biathlon, but it's people who do cross-country skiing and shoot at targets. Right. OK, she's very successful. She has a doctor. She is a doctor. But like some doctors that you never think about, they go into business. Right? All these biopharma companies, a lot of these are ends. They never actually practiced. But I got clients who I have clients who are MDs at practice and those that never practice. They get their degree and they go right into business. So this this character goes into business. And her CEO, she's doing really well after four years of this company and her CEO gets changed out the prior CEOs to lead. This happens all the time. New CEO comes in and this character is as good, as honest as the day is long. And the new CEO wants a yes person. Jotham: So, you know, yes man, a yes woman. And she is not a woman at all. And so he decides he's going to push her out. OK, this happens all the time. So he makes her life miserable. But being a biathlete who's well trained, she's she's able to stays there and continues to work like we see so many of our executives and entrepreneurs, they think because they work harder and they do a better job, that the board and the CEO are going to somehow like them more. And that's not the way it works. If somebody who wants a yes person wants to get rid of you so or in a different world, very similar corollary genre. A new CEO comes in, wants to bring in their old team. They're going to fire people below them. And the literature is actually you should do it within 60 or 90 days. So it doesn't matter how good those people are. Anyway, she's a straight shooter. That's what I say in the story, right? She's a straight shooter at two hundred yard Joe: Right. Jotham: Shooting a rifle and she's a straight shooter. The CEO and the CEO finally can't take it anymore. And he fires her. He gets the board to approve the board votes. Five, nothing to fire after nine months. Maybe it's maybe I don't even my story. Right. Maybe it's ten months. Maybe it's seven months. But it's something like that. Joe: Ok. Jotham: This happens all the time. I've never had a biathlete as a client. I've always admired biathletes when I watch them on TV. I did spend time in Lake Placid while I was doing Lugt, a different sport Joe: Oh, nice. Jotham: So I could talk about that anyway. So what's the story? So this thing's all made up, but what happens after she's now out? She gets a severance agreement, she leaves, she's at the firing range, practicing at two hundred yards and she gets a text. Who's getting a text from she's getting a text from the investor of that company who sat on the board who voted to fire her was five nothing, remember? OK, the investor says, as so often happens in Silicon Valley entrepreneurial world, the investor says essentially this is all by text now. So I'm paraphrasing my own writing. So now north of our paraphrasing what I wrote and the investor says, well, why don't you look at two of my other portfolio companies? And she text back the character, text back to the investor and says, well, I don't understand. I got a great severance agreement. You fired me. Vote was five nothing. Why are you contacting me? And he says, well, it didn't work out so well at the other company, but one of my portfolio companies here might be a better fit. OK, that's a story that's happened multiple times in Silicon Valley, multiple times in the entrepreneurial world. I have no, that's what I mean. I created them. That's a genre of a story. So I could have a client come in today after our podcast, they could tell me a similar story and I'd say, don't burn the bridges with those people sitting on the board that you all those board members almost always invest in startup, not always, but almost always back the CEO until the day they fire the CEO. But you've just been fired. You're the EVP or the SVP or the VP, whoever you are, that board member sitting there who's a shrewd investor, the only thing they care about really is all of their other portfolio companies they're taking care of. Right. And so they may call you to offer you a job. So you don't know that. So what in this story comes in in a part of the book, which I guess I should show again, Joe: Absolutely. Jotham: "Even CEOs Get Fired". There's a chapter on professional reincarnation. So and this happens all the time to somebody just like this character gets fired. And so they reincarnate themselves in the next job. That's a very, very, very common circumstance. I often have clients. It's a terrible separation. They're having like this particular executive I described in my story, nine months of being beaten. I mean, it's a miserable place to work. But a lot of these a lot of these people soldier on. They've always been they think that they work harder. It's going to get better and often it doesn't. And but I often tell people six months later, you're going to call me and tell me it's the best thing that ever happened to you got fired. Joe: All Jotham: And Joe: Right. Jotham: Many of them, if they have protection, you know, they. They call me six months later, they say, hey, it's the best thing that ever happened to me, I got fired to have a better job. I have a better life at home. Whatever it is, I'm doing sports more often. I'm getting paid more. I get better equity, whatever. Joe: Right, so there was two takeaways from that story for me. One was that potentially that smart woman had you look at their contract. And so when they did finally get removed from the CEO position, they walked away with a nice severance package. It didn't have to fight to get anything. And the second thing that you mentioned was that they left in good terms, at least with the board, which showed that they could then potentially get more opportunities down the road by not having this giant blow off at the end of it. Jotham: So the I should say with what you just said, the second one is absolutely true and there's a part in my story where I talk about burning bridges and you should and I say, listen, sometimes it's the best thing personally, mentally to burn the bridge, to strike back. OK, Joe: Right. Jotham: I got that. But I what I talk about in the book and what I try to tell all my clients and the people on the podcast that are listening to everything in business coldly and calculatingly, if you're going to lose your crap in somebody and you're going to start yelling at them because they fire you and you're never going to talk to them again, that's fine. And but what I say is do it coldly and calculatingly, at least understand what you're doing. So in this in this case, and what I often talk about in the book is the character did not burn their bridges. It's true. They left the first part of your what you took away was that they had come to us for a employment agreement. Actually, in this case, two things. One is they got a great separation agreement even with the person who didn't like them and forced them out. They got a good separation agreement. So they negotiated that on the back end. And the other thing I should say is, as I say in the book, I am not into stories. It's modeled after the advice I would give. But I'm not in the story because the story is totally fictional. But it's as important to get a good separation agreement and be professional on the back end as it is to get an employment agreement on the front end. Joe: So this has been bothering me, like, why did you stop? Fifty nine and I go to sixth. Why did you go past fifty five to fifty nine? Jotham: The truthful answer is I didn't count them up until the end, so I didn't know how many I wrote, Joe: Ok. Jotham: But there is there is a story there's two stories in my acknowledgments, one with a colleague who's worked with my law firm a long time. I thank her for reading many versions of the book. And I tell a story there. And once for the four people I dedicated the book to, I tell the last story in the book and that actually involves for four Long Island guy going to the beach, Jones Beach. And so it could be 60 one by. Joe: Perfect. OK, I just it was something that I wanted to ask, Jotham: The. Joe: So just so with the way the world has changed it actually let me let me back up in the dotcom era. Right. But like when everything was all about equity, how Jotham: Right. Joe: Much has that changed now? Because I remember when that was going on, like, I literally this is going to be funny. You're going to. But when I was working for a software company before I opened my first company and I was working in New York, we were actually teaching corporations how to use a Web browser. I was literally at the beginning of the Internet. So I remember just companies starting and going come in and work with us. The pay is going to be low to nothing, but we're going to give you equity in the company. And it was just all over the place. Every company was giving shares away. Right. That's the that was that whole era of the dotcom portion of the world. How has that changed now? Jotham: It's exactly back to the way it was Joe: Really? Jotham: And absolutely there are hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people running around in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Remember, I've license a license to practice multiple states. So we have clients all over the country. They want equity. It's all about an equity play. Now, having said that, there are many, many companies who don't really give equity to anybody but their senior officers. And there's many places in our country, in America, where you only get a salary. And there are many, many kinds of many salespeople who care about equity, but mostly what they want is commissions. And, for example, an uncapped commission plan would be there, their their golden golden goose. They don't want to have equity. But if you're talking about the old dotcom days, because I was there then, too. And now if there are many people whose deals is all about an equity play, they get less pay than they could on the market for whatever they're doing. They take the risks and and often, especially for those starting out, coming out of college, they may go to two or three startups which will fail. And then the fourth or fifth one is the one that gives them, you know, a tremendous upside so they can go buy their next their house or whether the house, multiple houses, whatever it is. So it's really the same as it was when you were doing that in the dotcom era. Joe: Was was there a lull at one point after the dotcom where everyone felt so burned about equity and all of that, that for a while it wasn't even on the table or. Jotham: I think there was a guy there was like it never went away for everybody, but yes, there was definitely a period of time when I remember the stock market was in, that was way down and there weren't so many IPOs and people wanted that was all about salary even before the start ups or upside bonus upsides. If you did a good job after a year, even though you got a lower salary. And so it did it did desire for equity and equity plays slackened? I would absolutely say that there was like a trough like this, but now it's back to the way it was in my view. And it's that way not just for the entry level person coming out of college, wants to get some equity in the company and not just for the mid-level individual who's moving from one company to another, but also all the way up to the CEOs who want more equity and and give up salary or bonuses. Now, at the largest companies that you hear about the fortune, one hundred companies, those executives are getting equity and very high. So and bonuses and what's called long term incentive plans. So it depends on where you're what you're talking about, what company context you're talking about, what region of the country. But in terms of the startups of the world, the smaller companies in the world, the equity play for everybody from from the person who takes out the garbage all the way to the CEO, it's it's it's the way it was. Joe: That's incredible, and you would see a lot of that where you are in Palo Alto, where you're know Silicon Valley right here. Jotham: All the time, Joe: All Jotham: And when Joe: The Jotham: You Joe: Time. Jotham: Think all the time and when you talk about that, if you're getting stock in a company and it means a lot to you, you better figure out or you should figure out how to protect yourself with that stock. So, for example, many times companies give out shares over four years, let's say, or five years, they vest over time. And in the first year they have what's called a cliff. So you got no stock, you don't get any stock, you know, right. To stock until the end of a year. What happens if you're fired at 11 months and 30 days just before the year the contract says you get nothing. So do you want to protect yourself against that possibility? Because that happens a lot. Right. Joe: That's crazy. Wow. All right, so I grew up in a large Italian family that owned a restaurant business Jotham: Ok. Joe: And I literally I partnerships for me make me cringe. Just just the word makes me cringe. Jotham: Right. Joe: And and I saw my own internal family fight and I saw my my father, who has since passed by his brother, is still living. But I saw that literally just separate and not talk to each other for years and the rest of the family hating each other. So that's just the lead in to the question of partnerships. Is there a part in the book? Again, the book is "Even CEOs Get Fired". Is there a part in that book that talks about partnerships and talks about what to look for, red flags, things that that seem to always go wrong in partnerships, any of that sort of advice? Jotham: So there is a little bit, but it does not heavily focused on partnerships because but but the teachings in the book on how to protect yourself, maximize your returns, put everything in a clear contract. That's very clear. There's two sort of parts of the Italian family having the restaurant business and then a fight among family members. OK, and and that is discussed in the book in a different way, which is, you know, make sure, you know, you're going into business with. But part of the problem is I can't protect you from a fight among man family members who are fighting for many other reasons and historical reasons. Right. I mean, they just weren't family members in the business. They had had a family history. Right. They grew up together. They had uncles and aunts and grandparents. And so that's that's a personal sort of a personal concern. Those people that's that that a lawyer can help you with, although we turn out being a psychologist all the time. So we might have been able to help. For example, somebody comes to us and this happens all the time to partners in fighting and we say, well, why are you fighting? You know, maybe it's better you break up. And before you have a fight about this, do you really want to sue each other? Because you wouldn't believe some of the lawsuits that are fought between family members of former friends. It's terrible. Joe: Well, yeah, and I was going to say this was a push out, my father got pushed out, so this was a thing where he worked there all the help build this business his entire life. And in the end, this could happen and he got pushed out. Jotham: So the worst part of those kinds of push ups that happens, and I'll tell you another one of my stories that repeats itself all the time, the worst problem of those stories that I hear about you're telling me about is the personal the personal suffering. Right, with getting getting kicked out of your own family business, getting stabbed in the back by your own brother or uncle. That worst part of that isn't the financial loss, although that can be terrible. The worst part is the personal loss and the personal relationships that are lost and the suffering that happens on a personal level, that sometimes people need psychologists for that to help them there rather than a lawyer. The second part of that is the financial potential loss that we could have helped to protect himself. Because if you have a contract and we've had some of these where nobody can fire the other person, contractually, you can't fire them. So they have to do a deal. Or in a typical family situation, somebody passes, you have a buy sell agreement. But imagine having a contract that we've had these with really sophisticated investors. So imagine like your manager, whoever pushed out your dad, not having the legal right to do that contract says the business is 50 50. And one or even the contract could say uncle gets 70 percent of the business. I get 30 percent of the business. But you can't fire me and you've got to keep paying me or well, if you fire me, at least you got to you've got to continue to pay me my exact same salary with a cola cost of living increase. You know, there are ways to help to make sure that it's negotiated out as opposed to a coup. Now, the story. You want to hear this story from the book. Joe: A Jotham: That's Joe: Totally. Jotham: All right there. The repetitive story that happens a lot. And again, the worst is just like your dad. The worst is the personal cost is the person who gets the entrepreneur who gets stabbed in the back and is forced out of their own business. The palace coup, the leader or not necessarily always the leader, but the person who following along, enjoying in that palace coup is a person who stood up at their wedding. And the wrongdoer is the person who stood up in the wedding. And so when the client comes to me with the story and it's happened many times, multiple times over the years, and the worst thing you feel both terrible about is the client here is now telling this story. They made a lifetime of decisions to have the wrongdoer stand up at their wedding and they believe that that person was their loyal friend. And the destruction of that friendship and and the and the new clients recognition that they got it wrong on a personal level, that's even worse than the the financial costs and the financial cost can be great. Being stabbed in the back by the person who stood up at your wedding stories only happened when money becomes involved. And the startup world, that's usually when equity suddenly becomes it goes from a penny a share and suddenly it's worth fifty dollars a share, twenty dollars a share. And by the way, unfortunately, I have to report that the wrongdoer can be a bridesmaid just as much as it can be a groomsman. Joe: Wow. OK, so here's the question I have based on the circumstance we just talked about with my father having that business and it goes for any any business. If you start to think something's going bad, is it too late then to try to figure out a way to protect yourself? Jotham: Maybe, but the first thing you should do if you get if you get concerned that something is going wrong is not wait around, it's go find a lawyer who knows what to do and might be able to help you. So this is something I do talk about in the book. If you get a lawyer while the things are going wrong and he or she acts as your shadow counsel, they can often help you, first of all, react in an appropriate way, in a way that protects yourself, maximize your protection while things are going downhill. But for example, in the email wars that might happen where somebody else is trying to paper file and and, you know, something's wrong, but you don't know what they're doing, you can paper that file to protect yourself. And so that's really important since actually what you just described. I've had that on my website. My my professional website, which is not the book's website, is "Even CEOs Get Fired" dotcom. So Joe: Perfect. Jotham: If you want to learn Joe: I was Jotham: More Joe: Hoping Jotham: About Joe: You Jotham: It. Joe: Would say that. Jotham: Yeah. Even see, it's one word, "Even CEOs Get Fired" dotcom. Joe: Our. Jotham: But even before that, I had a professional website being a Silicon Valley very early on and it talked about exactly what you just described as something you feel something's going wrong in business, in your job, in a relationship with an investor, whatever it is, call an experienced lawyer, not necessarily the your friend, the lawyer, not necessarily the person who did your your will or your trust, somebody who does entrepreneurial and executive law. And they've seen it before. And they can give you really good advice and you can really keep yourself from being really financially harmed if you do that. Joe: And when something like that happens, like my my brain initially went to, OK, if I felt something was going wrong and I was in a partnership or some sort of partnership, but any circumstance where there are other people involved, because I'm lucky in my case, it's just. I don't have to deal with anything. But if I was in that circumstance, do you have to get the other party to sign? Like, if I came to you and said, listen, something's going wrong, I need to start protecting myself. We need to write up some documents. Are they not official until the other party has seen them or sign the. Jotham: Now, you've asked me a complex question, Joe: Good. Now, here we go. Jotham: You could have an oral contract, right? Many Joe: Ok. Jotham: People have law contracts. You could have an oral contract evidence by a course of business doing business. So I really have to know more. That's something the first thing we ever do when somebody comes with a sort of a fact pattern, you just ask me is we want a full chronology of events. So if you come to a lawyer who's seen a lot of it before, they'll be able to figure out where you might have protection because you have an oral contract, for example, as one example, because the other side has it doesn't have anything in writing, even though they're trying to force you out. But I don't want to go back, if I can, to your father getting pushed out, Joe: Mm Jotham: If that's Joe: Hmm. Jotham: All right. Like, Joe: Yeah. Jotham: I don't know what happened. I never heard about it. So you just told me. Tell me now. But it's likely that your father groused a lot and was worried about it with his own family and didn't do what I just described, which is go find a lawyer who's shrewd and maybe unable, able to help him protect himself from the Paluska that that happened. And so it happens even in a small family business, you know, and now it's I'm going to a lawyer. You go to a lawyer and and you and you tell them the fact pattern. If they're good, they'll give you advice. And some of the advice might be, don't tell me I'm have a lawyer. Right. Just go along. You know when to disclose. You have a lawyer is it's a business decision and you want to maximize your return when you do that. So now that I went back to your father, I might have forgot what you just asked me. So Joe: No, Jotham: I have a question. Joe: No, that's OK, I just I didn't you you alluded to the fact that it could be an oral contract. I didn't even know there was such a thing. I thought that in the eyes of the law, everything had to be written and signed. So I don't know what you mean by an oral agreement. Jotham: So so OK, because you have listeners, I assume, across the country, I have to say, I'm not giving specific legal advice just so they understand Joe: Yep. Jotham: In every jurisdiction is different. And if you happen to live in Alaska or Louisiana, particularly Louisiana, it's really different. So, you know, if you're in North Dakota listening to this or you're in Illinois or wherever you're listening, you have to go see somebody in your own. And wherever you are, your own fancy word is jurisdiction, state, whatever. But in most places, they're an oral contract is equally as enforceable as a written contract. If two people come to a meeting of the minds literally about a contract and there's consideration and it's oral, depending on what the form of the contract is, you can have an enforceable contract. Now, they're in every state. There are certain contracts that can't be formed orally. A classic example in many places is you can't have a contract for land that's oral, but in most other places in all contract is enforceable. Is a written contract actually now a written contract is easier to sort of prove in some ways because you have it in writing. And if you ever have to go to a judge or a jury, you put that thing up on the screen and it says, look, you signed it and there it is. Joe: Right. Jotham: But it's equally enforceable, dependent, you know, there are always limitations on oral contracts that every state might be a little different, but absolutely. And so then there are other fancy things in the law, oral contract evidence by writing. So, you know, if you can prove it, you have an oral contract and you sent an email and that's your writing. So that might be a little different. An oral contract evidenced by a course of dealing. We always did this for the last 10 years. So that shows that we had an oral contract to always do this in the future. That's a possibility, too. So now I recommend in the in my book, even the CEOs get fired. You sign clear written agreements because that reduces your chances of getting into a fight. Right. If it's in writing and it's clear, even if the other side's a wrongdoer, you know, it's clear they're realize they're going to try to work around the clear language and and or what happens off to the business. If you have a really clear contract and they don't want you, they buy you out. The classic example being a separation agreement, they fire you, but they give you a good, good exit package. Joe: So I had no idea so that it's a huge light bulb went off that I thought if it wasn't written and it wasn't signed, if both parties didn't sign it. Both attorneys didn't review it. It doesn't if it's not done in writing and signed, it doesn't exist. So this is. Jotham: If you've had a meeting of the minds so so typically the kind of contract you're talking about in writing where it goes back and forth, back and forth to the lawyers and everybody, there is no meeting of the minds until the contract is signed. But, you know, now you're going to think about this. Well, have I ever had an oral contract with somebody else who might have something against me? So but yeah, sure, it could happen. So perfect. I'll give you an example. In your business, you're a CEO of your own companies. Imagine you. I don't know you. You met a successful person and you said, hey, I'll give you twenty five percent of my business if if you tell me how to increase my market share, using that as an example by by one hundred and fifty percent in the next two months. And that person then connects you that connect you with, I don't know, the great guru of market share. And suddenly in a month you've you've increased your market share by one and a half times. You might owe them 20 percent of your business as an example, Joe: Yeah. Jotham: Keep you from going out, making those promises. Joe: Plower. Jotham: So think of it this way. If you make an oral promise, you promise somebody something and they're giving you something back. I'm not talking about, you know, a family member or something, although it could be a family member. Lots of crazy disputes that way. But you promise somebody something in business and it's something to do with your business. And you say, for example, I'll give you twenty percent of my business if you do X, Y and Z. And the other person says, I agree, if I do it in the next two months, you might have an oral contract depending on what state you're in and depending on what it is you promised. Again, if you promise to to sell your property, not likely in most states, but Joe: Right. Jotham: If you're selling your securities 20 percent of your LLC, you might. Joe: It's crazy, I literally it's an eye opener for me. I had no idea. So I'm glad we talked about OK, real quick, because I know I have to let you go. I wanted to ask how covid has has either as it happened with all the things that were going on and what you expect to happen once we reopen up, because, you know, there are these circumstances where people are furloughed. But what does that even mean? Like some of these people are furloughed. They're not getting paid. They have no insurance. It's just like, yeah, we might bring you back. I don't know. Legally, it doesn't seem to mean anything. What happens with people that are taking home equipment from the companies to use it to work from home? The the security of that data, it's no longer within the premises of the company, through their secured network. I mean, all of these crazy things that are going to going to open up as time goes on is is are you starting to see some of those effects or work on those types of cases or any of that sort of stuff? Jotham: Sure, I mean, your question, we could spend another hour Joe: I know, I know. Jotham: Because it involved so many different things, right? I.P individuals coming back from furlough and so forth. So just as a general matter, covid obviously a lot of people working at home. And so there all those things that you just talked about are we get calls about both from the individual side and from the company side as well, because the IP sitting at home or on somebody's computer and not in the location because they're working at home, all of these things are really critical and they've happened since covid shutdown. And now what I think about coming back is some of those businesses wanting everybody back and people don't want to come back yet. So that's a big problem. On the other hand, some of the business want to keep people at home. They're like, OK, it worked really well, let's keep it at home. They don't need to be in an office lower overhead. And actually, sometimes they realize there's more efficiency at work because there aren't anybody to talk to when you're at the house. So it goes both ways. And then there are issues about how to come back from covid and what to do. So we've literally had calls and given advice on many of the things that you just discussed. And they're completely different, right? They're just issues that came up that nobody ever thought about before. I mean, they always thought about what they thought about them, but it didn't happen. Didn't happen. Like a whole country got stuck at home. And now there are all these issues. So happy to talk to you, Morna, in another podcast and we're coming to the end about it. But Joe: Yeah. Jotham: You just raise like so many issues. And one question. Joe: Yeah, I know it's a it's and I was just and for the listeners, it means intellectual property says I want to make sure they understand what we're talking about, what we're talking about that. But, yeah, I'm sure it could be an hour long. Just talking about it real quick for any new laws created because of covid-19 and all of that. Have you dealt with new laws? Jotham: Oh, yeah, there's a huge number, I mean, for example, the stimulus package that happened because of new laws, right? So there are other other laws associated with that. There's been a whole bunch. The legislatures, you know, have done done various things, but there's been three stimulus packages. That's just a one example. Joe: Yeah, yeah, OK, perfect. Can you do me a favor and show the book again, "Even CEOs Get Fired". Jotham: Even Joe: It's a. Jotham: Ceos get fired, you can get it on Amazon, so if you if you type in, "Even CEOs Get Fired", separate words like you're targeting in the words of a book, then you can get, you know, come up on Amazon right away. If you type in my name in the book, you know, do a Google search, it'll come up. The website is "Even CEOs Get Fired" dotcom. But it's one word. You have to type it all together. There's no spaces. So, yeah, like I said, I it's a really breezy read, so I recommend it to you whether you're at the beach, whether you're whether you're in the gym, like doing a bike and you want to, you know, wanted something to read while you're or something. And one of the other things at the gym or Joe: Hmm. Jotham: Whether you're on holiday, it will not bother you at all. Like those 59 stories. If you add the two at the end 60, what I think you really enjoy the read. Joe: Perfect, Jotham, I really appreciate you coming on. It was a pleasure to meet you. It was a pleasure to talk about this is a subject that I have very little knowledge of. And every time I get to meet someone like you and talk about something this in depth, it makes me feel like a better CEO, even though I probably should know more about this than I do. But I appreciate it very much. I wish you all the success with the book. I really look forward to reading it. Jotham: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on your show, Joe. Joe: You're welcome. Thank you.
It was a pleasure to sit down with Marty Ray from The Marty Ray Project. He shared a wealth of knowledge on how he used social media to go viral with his videos and how he continues to put in the time and effort to share his talents. You will also learn how authentic, transparent and caring he is and the love he has for his family, friends and fans. This was a blast for me and I hope you enjoy it as well. As always, that you for listening: Enjoy! Joe Marty Ray - The Marty Ray Project The Marty Ray Project: Chats Connect with Marty on all social media platforms: @martyrayproject Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: All right, I want to welcome my friend Marty Ray of the Marty Ray project, and he is a Nashville country artist. And I get to pick his brain not only on his entertainment and musical artistry, but I get to pick his brain about his own podcast and I get to pick his brain, even more importantly, to some of the audience members about his marketing skills because he has amassed a huge following. So, Marty, welcome. Man, I'm so glad you could do this. Marty Ray: And I'm honored that you would have me on your show, brother. Joe: Now, this is exciting, man, so Marty Ray: Don't take my brain. Don't pick my brain to order. You might get down. Joe: So I want to do a little I want to start with sort of the back story, if you can give us just, you know, how you got started. Was it the music part first? You know, whatever. You can just give us the whole thing. And then from there, I'm going to I'm going to dig in on some of these subjects so that we can really bring some some real knowledge to the audience when when they get to listen to this. Marty Ray: Well, I always tell people I came out of the womb singing and that's the truth, I just know just always could do it if if I can do it now, I could always do it. I never learned how I mean, Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: So I don't even know if I do it right. But it seems like a lot of people seem to like it. So that's good. It's good for me and they say it's good for them. So it makes me happy. As far as what came first podcast or music, you could say music came first. I started writing songs when I was 12, but as far as professionally. I did. I had a podcast back in like two thousand seven hundred three either. Joe: Yeah, no worries, Marty Ray: But that cut off didn't Joe: Just Marty Ray: Just Joe: Just Marty Ray: Cut Joe: For a second, Marty Ray: You off. Joe: Yeah, just for a second, it's all good. Marty Ray: The alarms man. Those alarms, I wish you could put the phone in airplane mode while you're doing things like this, but I don't think that works like it shuts the Internet off. But anyway, so I actually was doing a podcast in 2007 when nobody knew what podcasts were. They got no respect. It was so hard to get actual guests to come on the show back then because. If it wasn't radio, they didn't want no part of it. So I actually named my podcast back then, Memcache Radio, so it would fool them into thinking it was your radio station. Joe: Wow. Marty Ray: And I was I was actually successful at getting some pretty high. How to, you know, high falutin client client clients and our clients have fluting guest on. I got a very Rucker. He was one of the moment Joe: Wow. Marty Ray: And I was at that time, I had no fans, don't know nobody. He just he was on there, gave us some of the greatest, greatest advice I've ever gotten at the end of that podcast. And I said, what advice would you give? An artist trying to be where you're at and apply this to everything in my life and I think everybody else should do, you should just play. Don't just look at every opportunity as if it's. So it could be something big. It could be something that could change your life, you could change your career. And so that's what I do. I look at every situation and I go, even though they might be this person, that person, they might not be big yet or but who knows what tomorrow holds, you know? And I think that's how we're supposed to live, especially like me, because I'm a Christian. So I live, breathe, breathing for others. That's that's my goal in life. I try my best to not be selfish and I try to breathe for people that that are all around me, you know, like like you, Joe, I'm trying to breathe for you. So instead of because that's what Jesus told us to do. So that's kind of where my life started with a podcast and. I ended up doing a video to learn how to make music videos, so I did a music video, went and rented a camera, and the camera was a black magic cinema camera. They just they just released these cameras. And I wanted to learn how to do a professional style music video. So I wrote disparity to all about that bass, and it was all about that beard. Believe it or not, I don't know. I don't know where that came from. That's weird. Joe: You're right. Marty Ray: Yeah. I'm still trying to remember how I came up with the beard thing, but we'll figure it out someday. Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: I don't Joe: Exactly. Marty Ray: Know why the beard came and now the. So then I did this video had no clue really what I was doing too much. And you could tell in the video. But I posted that video and it got two million views overnight and. Joe: Wow. Marty Ray: I was like, man, I got to really be consistent now because I told, you know, for years I kept saying I thought I could sing, but I was mimicking other artists. And I would I would try my best to sound just like them boys demand. Because you said a country singer. I'm really not a country singer. I know I look country, but I don't really do a whole lot of country anymore. I used to for my first album, I only did country because people told me that's what I better do because I look like a country Joe: Mm Marty Ray: Artist. Joe: Hmm. Marty Ray: So I said I will call it country. But when the blues radio stations said my album was to country and the country radio station said it was too bluesy, then I wrote a song for my next album called Too Bluesy for Country to Country for Blues. And then I just said, forget it. I'm going to do what I want to do and I'm going to release everything on the album at one time. And that's what I've been doing ever since. So I got on my last album, Mixed Emotions. I got EDM songs on there like like club club music. Joe: Oh, wow. So it Marty Ray: I Joe: Must be Marty Ray: Can see, Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: You know. Joe: Yeah, it must be just the first couple of videos that I clicked on, I just happened to click in the wrong spot or just, you know, I just. Marty Ray: Well, you probably think, you know, I understand how mad nobody you probably clicked on a couple of songs and thought, here you see the acoustic guitar, you see a big bearded cornbread fed fellow from the south, and you go, this must be country because you might not listen to country. Right. So a lot of these people, they don't listen to country music, but they see somebody like me and they go, I guess this is country. I kind of like this man. I know. I like country. I get that a lot. I get that comment a lot, though. So I didn't know. I like country and I'm like, you still don't know if you like country, to be honest, because this ain't really country. I got nothing against country. Right. When I was growing up, I hated country when I was a boy because my parents love country. So I listen to RB and I grew up listening to the gospel like Shirley Caesar, Mahalia Jackson, Rance Allen, people like that. And then that turned into listening to RB. Still isn't the gospel today though, RB? Then it got into soul music and I got into blues music, and then at 12 years old, my mama took me to a Garth Brooks concert and I saw him live at the Pyramid Memphis, Tennessee. And I said, maybe I should give this a look. And I did. And I gave it a look. And I liked what I see, what I found. And he was because that was the that was the first time that I heard music. That was it was really telling stories like actually telling. If you listen to thunder rolls. Have you ever heard Garth Brooks? Joe: Yeah, but I don't know well enough if you mentioned a song, I'd be like, I don't. Marty Ray: Have you what would you listen to, what's your genre? Joe: I listen to everything I you know, because I own a booking agency in Phoenix here, so I have to book everything across the board, so I listen to everything. Marty Ray: Listen to everything but Garth Brooks, I got it. Joe: No, no, no, I just want no one saw you named. I think he's amazing. I think if that's your first exposure to country music, that was a hell of a way to see it, because he's I mean, everyone Marty Ray: It wasn't Joe: Loves Marty Ray: My first Joe: Him. Marty Ray: Exposure. It was the first time because, like I said, my parents, all my mom and my dad, but my mom, my dad was born to like Chicago and stuff, which I actually Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: Love that Joe: I Marty Ray: Back Joe: Love Marty Ray: In Joe: That. Marty Ray: The day. I still love Chicago. My daughter, who was 15, is a massive Chicago fan of your favorite band. Believe Joe: That's Marty Ray: It or not. Joe: Crazy. That's amazing. Marty Ray: And I actually did a show with Bill Champlin, who Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: Was a member of Chicago, and he's the one that wrote Hofmeyr saying, I'm sorry, I just want to stay. I'm a right directly to you. That's weird. And Joe: No, Marty Ray: That feel weird, Joe: No, not at all. Marty Ray: Even though even though when you look, I hope this power doesn't go out from his eyes. You see that. You see his lights blinking. Joe: Oh. Marty Ray: Anyway, I'll try to sum the story up. This has been going on for too. I'm a long winded. I'm like I'm like, oh, Pentecostal preacher. You get your rain, you got to start Joe: Yes, Marty Ray: Yawning or something. You Joe: It's Marty Ray: Got start Joe: All Marty Ray: Yawning Joe: Good. Marty Ray: And let me know. It's like I if I don't hear any Armand's, Joe: No, Marty Ray: I might Joe: This Marty Ray: Go Joe: Is Marty Ray: On forever. Joe: This is perfect. That's what I like, real people, real conversation. Marty Ray: That's all I know how to do, I call myself a conversations, I Joe: I Marty Ray: Don't Joe: Love Marty Ray: Know if Joe: It, Marty Ray: That's a real word, but Joe: That's Marty Ray: I called I Joe: Perfect. Marty Ray: Call myself the anyway, the question was how to get started in music. That's how it all started making videos. I made that video and. After that, I said, OK, I'm going to. I'm going to keep on, I must stay consistent because I told God, look, this is what you want me to do. I'm going to I'm going to start singing, look, putting videos out and you honor and because he honors the effort, if you if he gave you a gift, you don't bury. So I'm just going to keep on doing the same thing I've been doing, putting out videos. And he seems to keep on honoring it. So that's kind of how it's going. Joe: That's cool, and how do you so if you're performing down in a is nationally, so I'm not even going to say I've already stepped on my toes a couple of times in this conversation of saying things that aren't necessarily true. So what's the environment in Nashville musically? Is it still very heavy country or is is there a lot of different varieties? Marty Ray: You know what's weird is I don't play in Nashville, I'm trying to I play the people don't realize it. I'm not really a I'm not saying you, but people don't realize that I'm not a bar band. I'm not against bar band, but I could never do what they do. My hat's off to my golf buddies. That's exactly what they they've done for years. And they play those people play for four hours and go to another gig playing for hours. I can't do that. My voice wouldn't hold up to that. I sang. I only know one way to sing. Like I said, I probably don't do it right. I'm just saying from the heart. And I push notes out really hard so I can give you two hours, maybe three, if you. That's what we mainly do. Private show. So the main thing we do is private gigs and I love doing props. Doesn't have to worry about getting people to buy tickets. So Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: It's really nice. Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: But I do. I have done festivals and the festivals are really cool because it's a bunch of people gathering tickets. So it's just a very scary thing to. To not know what your fan base is in a collective area, Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: If I always tell people, I say if all my fans, I got like one point three million fans across the board, if every one of my fans were local and national, I would probably never leave Nashville because I would not would actually book a show throughout the year. Once a month, it would sell out. And I would then by the end of the year, I could start over again and service the same people that were serving at the beginning of the year, Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: You said. Joe: Yep. Marty Ray: But unfortunately, fortunately, I always say unfortunately, fortunately, these fans are all across the world like I got people to say, and when you come to Scotland, when you come to Ireland, when you come to Europe, when you come to Australia, you've got a big fan base here. And I don't know. I don't I think it's scary to try to book something in another country and then think so. The only way we can do it is if people pay us up front, we say it's up to you. I don't know what my fan base is, but it's up to you like I am now, though, kind of branching out. It's the first time I've ever done this in a while. Where I got to show in Tampa in March, March 11th, and it's the first time that I've ever first time I've ever seen the first time in a long time that I've actually sold tickets to a show. So I'm terrified that this time will show up and there's going to be five people there. You don't know me. And Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: This place Joe: No, Marty Ray: Only Joe: I know. Marty Ray: Holds it only holds 250 people. So, you know, you just never Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: Know. You Joe: All right. Marty Ray: Don't you don't you don't know what's going to happen. But which we're going at it, like I said. Got it. Got honors effort. And I'm to put forth the effort even if it's failing. You know, Timberline is. Joe: Demeanor, boots. Marty Ray: No, Timberland, the the producer. Joe: I don't think so. Marty Ray: Joe, I don't think you listen to everything, I think I think I think you think. You think historically I think I say what you. Let me pick out what you actually do on a daily basis right now. But look at you. Let me say I'm getting I'm definitely getting. I know you like Chicago. I know. Joe: Yes. Marty Ray: I know. That's probably on a regular. So I'm thinking like soft rock. Salved, rah, rah, rah, rah. Joe: I do, I listen to everything, I mean, when I put on Aleksa, I say, but I mean, I don't all day I'm working, so I'm not listening to stuff and I'm not staying up with everything. I force Alexa to say, hey, play me. What's the latest play the latest pop station and she'll just play all these things are or whatever. But I mean, I'm I've played everything as a drummer. I've played everything I've played for Jewish weddings and bat mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs to playing a rock show at the Whiskey A go go in L.A. to playing jazz and then all the rest of the stuff. So. Marty Ray: What do they miss? They play at a juice bar mitzvah. Joe: Oh, man, it's just that same that same beats just like that, it's just like they're dancing. I mean, I played that beat for forty five minutes straight with a tux on and I had to peel the coat off me. It was just crazy. Marty Ray: Wow. So Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: It's like so they don't. They don't have, like, different varieties of music at this stage. It's just that it's almost like I don't know what it is, but it reminds me, when you were doing that, it reminded me of a like a Joe: It's like a poker groove, kind Marty Ray: Yeah, Joe: Of. Marty Ray: Like a polka sound Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: Like a trumpet Joe: Yep, yep, yep. Marty Ray: And people dancing and holding and holding their arms and dancing. Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: Is that kind of what it's like? Joe: That's so during so the one I haven't done a bunch of them, but the one that I did was forty five minutes of that and it was all of the different relatives dancing. And then they lift them up on the chair and they do so literally for forty five minutes to turned around to me and said, just play this groove and do not stop till I tell you. Marty Ray: Kylie, I hope you got paid well. Joe: It was a struggle, just speak, but it was Marty Ray: Man. Joe: Called was fine, so. Marty Ray: The funny part about bringing a Polke is my that when I. Interviewed Darius Rucker, we just talked about that one of the things we ended with, I said, so we need to write what song? Because I was right when he had ship, when he had went from Hootie Joe: So country, Marty Ray: And the Blowfish Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: To going into country Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: Music. And I said, what other one of the genres are trying to write? He said, Man, I'll do anything, man. I said, I mean, you polka we're doing a polka song together. And he laughed and said, Let's do it, man. Never did it. Matter of fact. I had Dariusz number on my phone for four years and. I tried to call it the other day out of the blue to try to get him on this new podcast Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: In the number of change. So I was like, oh, crap. Joe: Well, Marty Ray: So, Joe: That's good. Marty Ray: Yeah. Joe: So let's go. So twenty seven year podcast pioneer, right, you come out with one. And what was the the theme behind it? Was it it was just all musical artist. Marty Ray: No, it was actually the same exact setup as I have now, because I love I love having interesting people on, but the interesting people usually are in time, not always, but they're usually entertainment, meaning. Any realm of entertainment that Joe: Mm Marty Ray: Could Joe: Hmm. Marty Ray: Be boxing, that could be in a that could be sports, could be wrestling, it could be comedy, it could be music, it could be active. We've got all of it on this show now that we've that we that we started work. We just had Bert Krischer on last episode. And before that it was before that it was a food review episode. We did we just me, Chris Wallace and Jared Callinan, my buddies, we love food and if you can tell or not, but I kind of like food a little bit. I know. I know I don't look like it, but I do like food. And before that it was. I don't remember who paid for that, but it's like Darryl early, so country artists that you probably know the country. Joe: Right, so Marty Ray: No, Joe: So. Marty Ray: We actually actually also have Vanilla Ice on. Joe: Oh, I saw that now I saw that picture of you and him. Yeah, so that was cool. How was Marty Ray: It Joe: That Marty Ray: Was Joe: Interview? Marty Ray: Very. I was great, we were already buddies, though, Joe: Ok. Marty Ray: Before then, so that's usually how I try to make it, even if I don't know the parts. Like if you go listen to me and Burt talk, you will think that we have known each other for a lifetime, but we really haven't. And I didn't know him other than just being a fan. And I just sent him a message. He hears where he made his mistake and I told him this a comment. I was always commenting funny things on his own, his Instagram post, and he one of them he liked and laughter and he followed me and said, That's where you made your mistake, because you followed me Joe: Right. Marty Ray: As when you followed me. I was already following you. So as soon as you followed me, I said, well, now he's going to see these messages. I'm partisan. Joe: Ok. Marty Ray: So I sent a message. I said, hey, big fan, yada, yada, yada. And it's true. And I said, I'd love to have you on my podcast because, you know, he's a he's actual podcast. That dude that do makes more money podcasting than he does doing a TV show. Joe: Crazy. Marty Ray: So you're talking about a pioneer and he's an actual pioneer in podcast. But anyway, so I'm sending his message. He sent the message. He goes, yeah, I'd love to. And I said, All right, well, how about this such day goes on. We're going make it happen. That's right. So we get closer to that day. And I say, how bout it? No, no response. No response, not cinema next. And then the next week I said I said, how about it? We're coming up on it. And then this just went on and it would be times when it would be a long gap of me. Every month I would Joe: Hmm. Marty Ray: Send him a message. I would say, hey, you should be all I love you. Let's do it. Let's make it happen. So and I and then I started getting I started going like, this is a game at this point now. And I told him, I said, this is because this went on for a year. Now, keep in mind, this went on for a whole year, Joe: Wow. Marty Ray: Maybe sending a message, these dams. And I started saying, this is not going to stop. Until you either say yes or no or block me or you're on my show one or the other, and I said, that's it, I'm going. I still love you regardless. But they're saying I'll stop within the next month. I was like, here's your monthly Maadi message. And every now and then he would put LML every now and then. And so eventually we finally got to he finally sent me his phone number. But what I had to do though, at the very last, I actually sent him a list of people we had had on Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: To kind of show him NYSUT. I've had famous people on my show, like, in case you're wondering, I've had famous people, we we didn't just start we've been doing this for a while. We know what we're doing. You know, I don't think you're going to waste your time, if nothing else, to have a good time. And so that's what he sent me, his phone number. And I said I said, what's different now? Because I got a phone number. And and so it happened and it was great. But if you listen to it, anybody else, it's on the Marty Ray project charts. I should say that probably that's the name of the podcast, the motorway project. Yes. Joe: Ok. Marty Ray: If you listen to that, you're going to think and it's funny because he read I told him, I said read some of those messages that I sent you and he read some on the show and he read most of it. We're just busting out laughing because it was so funny thing ever, because he said most people will say, be on my show. And I say, yeah, I'd love to. And he and he I think he really would love to be able to do everybody show, but. He knows realistically that he can't there's no way he could do everything and he said that and he said, but most people, by the time he don't answer back after the first time or the second time, they start getting very, very hateful and mean. Joe: Oh, wow. Marty Ray: And he said he said you never did. He said after a year, he said you never got eight boys. That was always respectful and nice. And it was like still love. He said it was almost like falling in love with your neighbor. So I guess he said, I feel like I know you Joe: That's Marty Ray: Said to Joe: Awesome. Marty Ray: Me, too. It's really cool. Anyway. Joe: Yeah, all Marty Ray: I don't Joe: Right. Marty Ray: Know if I answered your question Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: Or not. Joe: And also so what happened with the first podcast, when did that actually end to go away? At some point? Marty Ray: Yeah, because. The podcast, I don't want to do a podcast by myself, meaning what we're doing here, Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: It's OK, it's OK for me to be a guest, but me personally, for instance, if there comes a time. I just enjoyed bantering with a friend Joe: Sure. Marty Ray: And not having the full load on me of the podcast of getting the guest book in Joe: The. Marty Ray: The guest and doing this and that. So back then, that was kind of the same way I had I went through I went through three co-host on that show, and I was the one putting up all the money. I'm the one putting up all the I'm the one actually getting the guest and they're not really helping. But I'm thinking if we can get a little bit of momentum going, they'll they'll start to see this is a very viable thing to do and they'll start picking up some of the load. Never happened. They they all kept quitting or not showing up. And I was actually for four for coast. And after the fourth one by the fourth one, I already did that all about the beard video. Joe: Mm Marty Ray: And Joe: Hmm. Marty Ray: I started progressing. And music stars like forget them, like I was trying to help them out, not just myself, but trying to help them out, to bring them up with me. We could have made something great, I believe, if we would if I would have kept doing that podcast, I'd be one of the biggest podcast in the world today. I do believe that. Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: No question about Joe: I mean, Marty Ray: It. Joe: Based on when you started, if you mean it's all about consistency, right? If you Marty Ray: A. Joe: Had kept that going, you totally would have been. Marty Ray: I have no doubt in my mind, but, you know, God had other plans because had I had that podcast blew up. That's all I would have done, I would not have probably never would have pushed music too hard, to be honest, Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: Because my dream, even from childhood, my dream has always been. To have my own talk show. You know, maybe like a radio, like Howard Stern type Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: Talk show, Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: And so I said, if I know for a fact, I said because God knows better than we do. He knew that if if I if that would have blew up, I would have just said, forget music. That's too hard. That's just too hard. Joe: That's interesting, Marty Ray: That's a. Joe: I hear you. Marty Ray: Yeah. Joe: Yeah, well, so OK, so when did that podcast end about Marty Ray: I said, I'm horrible at times Joe: Was Marty Ray: And Joe: It right when Marty Ray: Tamla. Joe: That video hit? Marty Ray: No, I think we still went. Maybe a couple of months after that, but at that point, I was I was literally trying to carry the load of the podcast and be consistent in making music videos. So I just said. Nobody, because nobody cared like me, nobody had the same drive or passion about the podcast that I did, so I was like, man, this is just crazy. I'm trying I can't do all this by myself. And so I believe it's about a couple of months after my like. I don't know the exact dates. Might not have to be honest, we I'm so bad with dates. Joe: Ok. Marty Ray: I know that. It might not even have been I might not even had the two million video yet, but I might have had because it all started on Facebook, not YouTube, like you can't even go back in the timeline of Facebook, YouTube and go, Joe: A. Marty Ray: Ok, look at this date and figure it out. Because if you look at the date when Ice Ice Baby was posted on YouTube, it was actually posted to my actual Facebook profile, my personal profile, because that's all I had at the time Joe: All right. Marty Ray: When I was making these videos because they were getting so they were having success on my personal not not a page, not anything else. And so that's where it actually first went viral, that both both videos went viral. Their first. Did I lose you? Joe: Yes, for a second target. Marty Ray: Did you still have audio? Joe: Yep. Marty Ray: Ok. Anyway, so, yeah, but a. So I was actually pushing everything from my personal Facebook profile, so I don't know the exact date, but I think the show actually ran for about a year and a half, I believe. And then and then I called it quits, so. Joe: Ok, so then so you have this video and this video you say got over two million views. Marty Ray: In a day, yeah, we Joe: In Marty Ray: Posted Joe: A day. Marty Ray: It, I posted it. That morning, just just a random post like any other thank you, don't you don't think about what's the best time to post, Joe: Mm Marty Ray: What's Joe: Hmm. Marty Ray: The best strategy here? You don't think about any of that back when you first start and you just like, hey, I got this simple post you don't understand. Algorithm's probably never heard the word of the enemy. So you just post a video like I did and I posted it and it's like a set it and forget it like an infomercial right now, just opposing it. And my buddy went to Nashville because at the time I didn't live in Nashville. I lived in Memphis and we drove to Nashville. He was doing an acting audition and. We got all the way down to Nashville. He did his audition. We're headed back. He starts getting all these text and people are saying, and I've seen you in that video, it's crazy, that video. He goes, oh, OK, cool. You know, thinking Joe: Right. Marty Ray: That Joe: Sure. Marty Ray: Thinking that is because those are those are people that know him. And he was like, when I talk to them a long time ago, that type of thing. And that's where he should. And so eventually after a few texts, he he went Facebook, a lot of the videos, brochures, videos that this video is over a million views there. And I said to what? Joe: It's Marty Ray: A Joe: Crazy. Marty Ray: Million views and then I pulled it up. I pulled it up and I said, oh, wow, this is crazy. So then I text my buddy Jared who? Who does filming with me? He didn't do that video. I don't want to put that evil on him because he was definitely. Way more prolific at it than me at that time, way before me, and while now I can do a pretty good video by myself, like I just released a music video for my new single that I released in the last year for the new album called Picture. And I did that whole thing, directed it, wrote it and did the whole thing myself. It might not be the best in the world, but it's better than the most, you know. Joe: Yeah, no cold. Marty Ray: So anyway, I called Jared, I said, hey, man, you look at the video. I said, you need to check it out, I said it's over a million views. He goes, he goes really? And he went and looked and he couldn't find it. And I sent him a link. He goes, Wow. That's incredible. That is nuts, and I said I said, well, we made it. We made it, and at that point, you don't you have no clue what's coming from a viral video, you Joe: Mm Marty Ray: Don't know. Joe: Hmm. Right. Marty Ray: And I didn't really make it from that video, but that was a star. Joe: Sure. Marty Ray: You can have a viral video right now and not. Never, never yield any kind of profit from it or anything like that, you know, but it's what you do after that viral video that makes you profit Bishop Marketing. Well, that's that's a marketing tip for anybody listening. Don't don't focus on your own. Your first viral video focus on the plan after that first viral video, because that viral video, if you stay consistent and you're getting better and better, it will come no matter what it will come. I've had it happen many, many times and it's just from me being consistent. It's not because anything that any song that I put out or any video that I put out is any better. It's just because it hit at the right time, in the right way. And it was what did I do that every time a video goes viral, you have to have a plan to capitalize on that wave because that wave is going to be like here and it's going to come down. Joe: Mm Marty Ray: It Joe: Hmm. Marty Ray: Happens Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: All the time. So anyway, so that was kind of where it all began. Right, there was that video and then I was trying to be consistent, so I'm sure you want to talk about the anelli sort of kind of some of what how that happened. So then I was posting videos, try to be consistent. And then I missed two weeks of posting on. This was still on my list, was still on my original Facebook profile. Joe: Not even Marty Ray: Now, Joe: On YouTube Marty Ray: This time Joe: Yet. Marty Ray: I. Not even. I mean, I Joe: That's Marty Ray: Don't even remember Joe: Crazy, Marty Ray: If I had the YouTube set up yet, Joe: That's Marty Ray: I Joe: Even. Marty Ray: Don't know if I had it set up yet, Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: But. Joe: That's. Marty Ray: I think I might have set the channel up after the all about that beard. I really do. I think I might have done it, but I didn't post anything there besides some old concert videos originally. I believe that's what happened. And that was that was a little while after because I didn't even think about it. I don't know why, but I thought, well. And I'm I'm I'm trying to do this on Facebook, this is where it's at right now. That's Joe: Hmm. Marty Ray: Where I was like I was under the nails. I was like Facebook personal profile. These are all hit. They all had every video I posted seemed to have had tens of thousands of views, which was crazy to me at the time. And I was like, this is great. I got I got a two man view video, two million plus video, and I got some one hundred thousand somewhere. Two hundred. Some ten, some twenty. It was it was a good it was a good time. And then I didn't even realize Joe: You. Marty Ray: I had set up a Facebook page Martinrea project and I didn't have to check it, though. I never checked it, didn't realize that because like I said, everything was happening on the personal. Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: And when I posted that it was three o'clock in the morning and I hadn't been consistent and I made a post with the Vanilla Ice Accoustic. And I said in that post, I said. Listen, I'm sorry I missed a couple of weeks. I don't know if anybody Zoom care about this or not, but here's the way I've been doing. Ice, ice, baby. I'll be all like it if you do. Great, if you know there'll be another one soon. There's kind of like that. And it was kind of a throwaway video. And that's another that's another testament to just put every idea out there, because you never know which one is going to be the one that put you on stage with Vanilla Ice. Right. Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: That's what's great. You Joe: Right. Marty Ray: Never know. And Vanilla Ice can be anything for anybody. I don't have to be literally Vanilla Ice, but opposed to that. And that video went bananas when it went next level. So then after that video posted, were people going and subscribing to my YouTube channel, like in my Facebook page by the masses because they took that. And so then after a while after Bam Margera, he posted it, world star, hip hop posted it. It got posted all over, all over the Internet, all over social media and moderate project for a while was everywhere. I was trending on on iTunes, like number two on iTunes, trending right below some. This has happened twice, actually trending right below as independent artists. Nobody, nobody behind you, nobody helping you besides God and your fans trending number two on our terms. And I screenshot of that because while for them it might be that it happens every now and then when they when that label gives a good push, got nobody pushing me but myself and Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: Like I said, and got in my face. So that's it. So it was like, any time that happens for me, it's a real treasure. So it's a real treasure. It's almost like winning a Grammy for me Joe: Yes, Marty Ray: Because Joe: Sure. Marty Ray: I look at that. But anyway, so that got that video has hundred. Well over one hundred plus million views on Facebook. Yeah, if you Joe: Is. Marty Ray: Add every every video together, everyone, if you can find them, all people are still still in that video opposing it and going viral and building their own channels when their own page is off of that video Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: And some of them don't even tag me. Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: So Joe: That's Marty Ray: And I hate that crap. Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: Yeah, someone don't tag me. Joe: Yeah, that's not right, Marty Ray: I dropped Joe: So Marty Ray: My ears out. Joe: It's all right, so I have a question to sort out, just the sort of create the foundation of who is Martinrea today. What does Martinrea doing day in and day out? What is you what is your main focus? You know, because then I still want to talk about the marketing stuff. And then I want to also let you talk a little bit more about the podcast if you want. But I also, you know, so it's it's it's still those three things. But I want to know, like, who are you today? What is your main focus? And then we can branch off to talk about what you're doing on that podcast and then what you're still doing marketing wise with, you know, whatever you're posting and then what you're musically trying to do. What are your goals for that? Marty Ray: Well, today, I do the same thing that I've always done at any any opportunity that comes along. Entertaining and I'm will tell you a lot of times this actually happened recently. A lot of times they pay off and it's there's a scripture that lives that used to live on my phone, my, my, my, my wallpaper or whatever, lock screen wallpaper, whatever it's called. And it was it says a man's gift making room for him and bring it to him before. Great man. That's literally my life. I promise you that there's no secret that I have other than putting forth the effort and continually making sure that even if I get behind a little that I'm going to steal, I'm not going to give up. I'm never going to quit. Because I think the only difference I think if you anybody can see this, if you read the biographies and you watch biopics, you're going to see that every success story, the only difference that separates the successful people from the unsuccessful people are the successful people never stopped. They never gave up. So when they were digging in that for that diamond, they didn't stop digging until they found the diamond. Marty Ray: So that's kind of where I'm at now, where I want to be. My goal is has been for a while, has been to get to get to where I'll have a million fans on one platform or another. And I don't really care too much which one that is. But I think that's a big milestone to say there's a million people in one place. Are saying, I like what he does so much that I want to I want to see everything he does. So that's that's kind of and it's not just numbers for me. It's not just the people aren't just numbers to me. Everybody that like or commented or has ever watched any of my videos, every view that's a human that's a soul to me. And I love those people when they know that if anybody is a fan of mine, they've for any time, any, any, any, any span of time at all, they've probably had a reaction or a comment that they've left because I answer in the beginning, I was answering every single comment. I was just days and days I would spend Joe: I Marty Ray: Going Joe: Know it's. Marty Ray: Through answering comments. And now I can't do that. Now I can't answer every single one. But I still get a lot of when as long as it notifies me, I still get all those comments. And and even though now a lot of people that's like a strategy that people use in social media. And I hate that it's a strategy. I hate that it even is part of because I didn't I never knew that until recently that it was years before I knew that actually by me commenting on people, by commenting everybody as everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I love you. I thank you so much for listening. I didn't know that that was helping me on the algorithm. I didn't know that. I was just genuinely so thankful that these people were listening to my music because I had people when I was growing up tell me this would never happen, that I would never that I would never have an effect. Some people told me I couldn't sing at all. And I believe that for a long time. And some people said, you can sing, but it's a pipe dream to think that you can do music professionally. That's never going to happen. That's crazy. That's a very visceral world out there. And only few make it so. To see all these people when they start commenting, it just warms my heart even to this day. If I could answer everyone, even today, I would. But I got a family, so I got to I got to spend some time with my family, too, you know. Marty Ray: But as far as where I want to be, I want this podcast. Ideally, my ideal situation would be for this podcast to be earning enough money to where I can not only make a living myself doing that alone, but my co-host, Chris Wallum and the producer and anybody else that we bring in with the team for everybody to be making a great living doing that, because it's a blast. It's a blast doing that and it's fun. And then also with my music, my goal is to now that I started to see that there's people that are independent and they. Have won Grammys independently, that would just be crazy, man, for me, for my fans. To catapult me up to a place that's what's a project, you know, it's not it's not moderate's margrave project because we're all part of the project. So as a project, we all are lifting this project up to where an independent guy with nobody behind him truly, truly independent in the truest sense of the word. Wins a Grammy like that would be nuts, right, and I know that could happen, but. And I know that I see that happening at some point if the world goes on and they don't get crazy or even crazier. I could see that happening for sure at some some some time down the future. The last thing I would say in my head is not that I'm not thankful for all the success that. These covers have done for me, like there's several videos on YouTube that are that are way shoot at the sound and get out, Joe: No. Marty Ray: My battery is low and it keeps it keeps popping up that low battery. Joe: Oh, Marty Ray: Anyway, Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: There's several people I mean, there's several covers that are on YouTube and performed have outperformed Ice Ice Baby at this point. And my my real dream and goal is to have one of my originals be what I'm known for Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: More than any cover, Joe: Sure. Marty Ray: You see. And the real fans, the real true Martinrea projectors, the projectors, as I call them, and myself, even we're all projectors is they they actually prefer the originals, you know, and that's that's how you know, that they're that they're because most people don't listen to the originals. They don't even. And that's OK. That's fine. I need those people too, Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: Because and I'm thankful. And I've had people say that certain songs have saved their lives that aren't my original. So I have no animosity towards the covers. I'm just saying my goal was to be known by my own music at some Joe: Right, Marty Ray: Point. And Joe: Right. Marty Ray: If that never happens, it never happens. It was still a good life and it was a good career. Joe: That's cool, Marty Ray: So Joe: So Marty Ray: That's about it. Joe: So that's cool. So your your your main focuses are on the podcast, the new podcast, which what is the name of the podcast? Marty Ray: The Marty Ray Project Chat's Joe: Perfect. OK, Marty Ray: At. Joe: And then writing music and performing is the other piece of what you're doing. Marty Ray: Right, Joe: Ok, and Marty Ray: Yeah. Joe: When you perform, it's mostly for private events or corporate events, you're not doing this out in Nashville at the bar scene or things like that. Marty Ray: No, and but I do respect those guys, I don't know. But listen and thank Marty's bad talking people that go to the bars because I stopped playing the bars. That's not me. I'm not some of my closest friends do that. Matter of fact, the guy that plays with most of the time, C.J. Wylder, that's that's what his whole career is, man. Joe: Mm Marty Ray: And. Joe: Hmm. Marty Ray: But I'm not a guess that I just can't do it. My Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: Hat's off to them, though. I Joe: You Marty Ray: Just Joe: Know, Marty Ray: Cannot do that. Joe: I've I've seen it where I was in Austin visiting and I spent a week there with just being able to go see music all the time, and I would literally see the same guy three times in one day. I'd see him like at 11 o'clock, set somewhere, and then later on at a dinner time and then later on that night at like one of the other clubs. It was insane. Marty Ray: Really, especially if you're a singer, like if you're if you're playing, it's not as bad, but if you're singing and you're singing eight hours Joe: Yep. Marty Ray: And you're really giving it all you got. But most of them, I'll be honest, most of them aren't giving it all they got every time. Joe: Right. Marty Ray: Because when you look into a bar, nothing I hate about bars and I'm not saying I haven't played a bar have and I will play a bar if they pay me to play that bar, Joe: Right. Marty Ray: I got to play anywhere I play anywhere in the world. If somebody somebody will pay me to play, I'll play. I don't care where it is. That's what it is. Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: But they got they got they're going to pay for me to come out there and play. I'm not going to come out there and hope that I get money. I'm not going to come out there and play for two hundred fifty bucks or 300 bucks. Not going to happen because the difference is I'm not knocking people to do that either. I'm just saying the difference is I'll be better off posting a YouTube video because I might. That video might go viral. I'll make way more than that. I'm just doing a YouTube video, Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: So or pushing a podcast or or doing a private show or you know, it's just there's a myriad of things that I could do rather than play a show for three dollars. And and I think I think everybody only has so much life in their vocals if their singer. I don't think that lasts forever. If you if you really sing with heart and soul, I don't believe it goes forever. I believe that because, I mean, you get old, people get old. So I don't want to waste I don't want to waste my time. I hate to say it this way, but I don't want to waste my money, the life of my vocals on shows. That are. People in a bar that are not even listening to me and I'm saying Joe: I Marty Ray: Like these, Joe: Totally get it. Marty Ray: Like they're not even listening most of the time they're in there, they're drinking and they're partying and they're looking at each other. They didn't come there for me. They're just at the bar. Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: It's different, though, when they come for you. I did a show in Nashville at Kimbro and we actually sold tickets to the show. You know, that was a bar. But all these people came to see me. So we were all in this room, just packed in his room. And but there wasn't anybody blabbering back and forth and and they were drinking, but they weren't talking because they were there to see me because they were fans. But if you go into a random place and you start singing, they don't care where you are, you know, and that's the kind of bothers me. And I don't know how I don't know how people do it. I really don't I don't know how my buddy like Chris Schrader, he does it all the time and you just get. No. You just get no feedback. Joe: Yes. Marty Ray: Yeah, it's almost like you're playing for nothing. It's like you're they might as well be playing music on the jukebox. Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: And I don't like that Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: I'm sorry, I just don't like. Joe: I get it. So let's talk real quick, I don't want to hold you, you know, Marty Ray: Oh, Joe: We're Marty Ray: You're good. Joe: We're close, but I don't want to hold out. I want your phone to run out. I want your electric to go so Marty Ray: Yeah, Joe: Soon. Marty Ray: I know. Joe: So here's the question. So we got the podcast where you originated from with that and then the new one. And then we have the music stuff that you're writing and performing covers and doing your original stuff. Talk to me about the marketing. What all of that is that you doing whatever marketing that takes place currently. Marty Ray: That's all me, unfortunately, Joe: Ok, Marty Ray: That's Joe: So it's Marty Ray: All Joe: All Marty Ray: Me. Joe: Social media, all the stuff that you're doing on YouTube, Facebook, are you doing Instagram and Twitter and are you doing any funny Tic-Tac videos or any sort of stuff on Tic-Tac? Marty Ray: I'm everywhere. Anywhere there's a there's an eyeball Joe: Ok. Marty Ray: Or an ear, Marty, right projects there and it's always the same at moderate project everywhere. Joe: Awesome. Marty Ray: But yeah, I'm I'm always at this point in my career, I know the game. So I have to as far as what I say, I know the game. I know that I have to be consistent on every platform. Now, I also know. That you never want to post the same content the same day to every platform across the board, and I also know you don't want to use a posting service to post across the board either because their algorithms don't like that. So I kind of know a few things at this point about the algorithms. I do know now that by answering your comments, it helps your algorithm. It calls you a conversation starter and now keep keeping people on the platform. I don't encourage people to answer comments because of that reason. I encourage people to answer comments because they should be answering these people that care about them. Joe: I love Marty Ray: They Joe: That Marty Ray: Have, Joe: Man, Marty Ray: Yeah. Joe: I love that that's the authenticity that is winning you over, because you can just tell that's what it's about for you. If you love the people following you, you're authentic about it. And even like when you talk about that night that where you just threw up that video, it's like I'm not sure if you guys are going to like this, but I had fun do it. And here it is that's Marty Ray: You Joe: Being Marty Ray: Have a. Joe: Authentic. Marty Ray: It's all it's really the only way I know to be, and I think I think people know that I got nothing to hide, that I'm. I'm pretty transparent, you know, a lot of people, when they get into music, they won't talk about Jesus. For instance, you never go catch me, not that about Jesus, because that's who I serve. Right. Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: So a lot of people won't mention his name and all these things ain't going to happen. Not with me. And I got people I got fans that are atheists. I got fans that are agnostic. I got fans all across the board. I don't judge them, but they know what I am. There's just like I know what they are. Joe: Mm hmm. Marty Ray: There's nothing wrong with me knowing. But the minute that somebody goes, I'm going to I'm going to bend my morals or bend to let people know who I really am because I'm scared they might not like me. That's definitely not authentic. If you're if you're somebody in your house and into your fans or somebody else because you're online, that's not authentic. That's that's a lie, man. I'm not living that lie, so I won't do it. And again, if anybody, because this is taught in every in every workshop, it's social media workshop now. Now, back in the day, there wasn't I don't know if there was a workshop when I was when I first started, I was after this comment. Now, that will tell you, be sure your action, your comics take time out of the day. Answer your comments. That's going to boost your boost for an hour. And I'm sitting here thinking, how dare any of these people? How dare any of these people answer a comment because it's boosting their algorithm. Right, because. I wish that anybody that was doing that had that mindset, I wish. OK, you're not getting no more comments until you learn to appreciate that. Are people are taking the time to actually comment on your video because they like it? And I actually comment to the people that don't like it. I say, hey, God bless you. I still love you. Thanks for listening. Maybe we can get you on the next one and that's the truth. Joe: That's awesome. Marty Ray: And then most of the time they go, oh, man, I never thought you'd see that. I'm sorry, man. I really do like it. I'm like, you know, and you're like, why are you why are you bashing it then hours. Then Joe: Right. Marty Ray: It's OK if you don't like it. I'm not trying to make you like it if you don't. But if you really do like it. But you said you didn't. What the heck are you doing. What's the point? Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: Because there's times when. There's many, many times where, especially on YouTube. YouTube is a violent place and the comments sometimes now, not necessarily in my comments, like I've been blessed with mainly 90 percent positive comments. But there's a few times when people say things like how many just horrible things. And I will come back and I say, hey, man, I appreciate you stopping by. I love you. And I don't know what you're dealing with right now. You're probably dealing with something, but you're not going to hurt my feelings. God bless you. And I pray that your life gets better. But I will say at the end of that, I say, listen, I want to I want to just post something to you. Somebody like me. I got the thickest skin you could ever have. I said, but there's a lot of young people on this and on this on this website on YouTube that are really putting themselves out there. And if you go to their page or their channel and you leave a comment like that, you very well could be the final straw that pushes them to a place they shouldn't go. I said be mindful that life and death is in your tone. Not just not just words that people aren't reading, life and death is in it. So I have told people that many times Joe: And Marty Ray: And. Joe: That's powerful, that's that's really cool. Marty Ray: That scripture, that's where they make the credit, as the Bible says, life and death is in the song and you see it, we live that man. We see that people say sticks and stones, never sticks and stones may break my bones, but words never hurt me. That's not true. Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: You'd rather be hit by a stick than these words, man, because this Joe: Oh, Marty Ray: Up here, Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: This right here is forever, though sticks that you might break a bone and it heals. This right here can never heal it if somebody don't let it, you know what I mean? So anyway, I ain't trying to preach. Don't give me. I told you I'm like a preacher. You got you've got yourself Joe: So Marty Ray: Something. Joe: It's all good, but I'm loving this, so this is something that I don't want to I don't want to. It's important for me to get this aspect of what you think about this. But I started a new since I'm a booking agent and I'm a musician myself, I used to play seven days a week in doubles on the weekends. I've seen it. All right. So Marty Ray: Hmm, Joe: But now I'm in a Marty Ray: That's Joe: Position Marty Ray: All. Joe: Where I can employ a bunch of musicians to play at various venues and resorts here in Phoenix and Scottsdale. And with what happened with this pandemic, I've seen just like lives being crushed. Right, because they there's nothing happening. So I just started this new venture called Making Money, Making Music. And the whole goal behind it is just to educate anybody. And it's not just musicians. It could be a sound engineer, a producer, songwriter, a lyricist. I don't care anybody that's in this entertainment realm that we're in to learn to diversify what they offer, that they have more than one talent and that talent could be used to generate revenue. And whether they're on YouTube teaching someone else how they book their band or how they write a song or how they figure out what a lyric would go well with. I don't care what it is or how you mix this particular album. Show me what you know, how you got those sounds, what Mike do you use on the kick drum or whatever? But my goal behind it was to try to educate as many people that are willing to watch and listen to either the webinars or the master classes or the video or whatever. It doesn't matter. What have you been doing to to sustain yourself during this time with the pandemic being around? Marty Ray: Well, fortunately for me, and I know there's a lot of people it's sad to see. These musicians that a lot of them have just given up. Fortunately for me, my whole career is only a career because of online. So since I was blessed on line first and not offline first. I was already geared toward that and I was already making money in that realm, so where it did, it did. I'm not saying I didn't suffer, but it was very, very minuscule, what I saw, the financial things that I suffered, because, as I said, I only I've only ever really done private shows. And and the majority the bulk of my money came from and still does come from music sales streams and YouTube and now Facebook. So I'm going to change this, Mike, because my phone's about to die. Going to say might not sound as good, but I don't want it in the interview, just abruptly saying, Joe: Yeah, no worries, Marty Ray: Can you still hear me? Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: Ok, let me turn this let me turn this up. I'm so sorry about all these technical difficulties. Joe: It's all good, man. Marty Ray: They do their. Joe: I'm here. Marty Ray: You're very low, but I'm going to go that you can not not can you hear me? Good. Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: It's just amazing. Anyway, I can I can I can make I can finish the interview, though. So the only thing that I did differently was. US instead of doing it, because I'm never have done like a live concert full on concert online, so the real thing where this is a word, if you're are you in a clubhouse? Joe: I am. Marty Ray: Yeah, we need to follow General Caldwell. But this is a word they throw around so often. But it's a good word, but it's so overused on there. I would never say it on clubhouse, but I must say it here. I pivoted. Right. Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: Heard you heard Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: That clubhouse, right, Kivett? Joe: I'm guilty of saying it, I sometimes it's the only word I can think of, Marty Ray: It's Joe: So I Marty Ray: Every Joe: Took. Marty Ray: Time I hear it, I go. Oh, Coble's, but outside of clubhouse, it sounds better, but it's like everybody a clubhouse is trying to they're saying that because everybody's saying so it's weird. I never say Tacloban's, but it's a real word. And it's a really it's a really good thing that people need to learn to do is they need to learn how to adjust. So I just did. Slightly my strategy to wear when I wasn't able to do private shows and things like that, I started doing a full on of concerts and getting donations. So then could my Venmo and my PayPal and cash. You have stuff like that and. To be honest. Some of those shows, some of those shows just killed it, man, I mean, really killed as far as financially. And so. I still want to do that very same thing that we were doing one a month every month, but I haven't done one in three months now, I'm really due for one, but. Probably won't have one. I'm going to I'm trying to get the show at Tampa, trying to figure out how to make that one as well so I can kind of double dip Joe: Yeah. Marty Ray: And. Do a show for my online fans and for people in person, I think that'd be really cool if I could figure that out, but if not, it is what it is. But that's that's kind of the only that was the biggest drastic change that I made was actually doing full on live shows, even some with live bands online. And I would I would encourage everybody that's in music, in any part of music to embrace social media with everything. We don't matter which one. Start with just one. But be everywhere, be available everywhere, but start with just one where you're putting time and effort into it weekly. And I would say everybody should start with tick tock if you want to. My suggestion, because tick tock is anybody and everybody can go viral on tick tock. You don't have to have followers you have that can go viral from a video and have no followers. So I would suggest everybody utilize that while you can. So and clubhouse, if you're able to get on clubhouse. I've made some phenomenal connections on clubhouse. Joe: Me, too. It's Marty Ray: You Joe: Amazing. Marty Ray: Wouldn't believe. I mean, just I just did a room. We did a room welcoming of I brought up Vanilla Ice onto the app and I did a welcome Vanilla Ice to Clubhouse Room. And it got like almost three thousand people in that room Joe: Wow. Marty Ray: Because of him, not because of me. But it was just crazy how many people were sitting there listening to us, our conversation just like this one. So that's really the only thing I can think of. That really changed for me. Joe: Ok, cool, so so you did have the advantage because you were hip to the whole online thing and that's how you had started, that's where you found a lot of success. And when this happened, you didn't have to change much about what you were doing. But that's what I'm trying. You know, like if you have the advice you just gave is exactly what I was hoping you would do, is say this is what you need to do if because I see a lot of musicians that all they did was depend on gigging. And now, you know, I hear the horror stories from them and I can't there's nothing I can do until them till the work comes back, you know. So luckily, I'm lucky five of my resorts have come back. So I'm now giving a lot of workout. But I, I have more musicians that I have work for. So, like, everyone gets Marty Ray: Nicole. Joe: Like one or two dates a month where before I had all the corporate stuff and I had so much work, I was looking for people. So I'm glad I'm glad you brought that up about, you know, getting active on Social and I club clubhouse. I've heard it more times than I can even count that every expert on there kept saying tick tock is the place to start. Marty Ray: It is I'm up to almost 300000 followers there. And I haven't I don't know how long I've been on there, but I have been on there too terribly long, maybe it has been a while. Like I said, I'm over timelines, but just being can see if you just if you just post consistently on their hash tags, no hash tags, trans, no trans, you just never know. You never know what could anything could really go viral. And it's it's a it's kind of like the Wild West out there. Just start Joe: Yeah, Marty Ray: Shooting, Joe: Get. Marty Ray: Start shooting and see what happens. Joe: Yep, all right, Marty Ray: Now Joe: We'll Marty Ray: You Joe: Call. Marty Ray: Say you're there. How did you how did you how did you pivot? Joe: Well, I just I was lucky that I had such a great year in twenty nineteen that I had a bunch of money put away that I could just sustain myself off of what I saved. And then for me is where does this might sound when the pandemic hit? I needed the break. I had been going so hard. So I always wanted to start a podcast and literally I started it like the moment the the world went silent. I was like, OK, now I have a chance. So I'm going to start my podcast. And then my partner, Joel and I, we've been together for twenty years. We started a YouTube channel and we just did whatever we felt like doing. And all our recent episodes was a 28 day trip that we took from here, going to Hilton Head and then running a car in
My conversation with Steve Sims is a testament of what someone can do if they put their mind to it. He has created an incredible company, TheBluefish.com by literally making what would appear to most as impossible, a reality, hence the title of his book - "Bluefishing: The Art Of Making Things Happen" He ever says during our conversation that he hopes the fact that a brick layer from London could accomplish all of this, that you too can accomplish whatever you set out to do. You're going to love his sincerity and how "real" of a person he is. Literally what you hear and what you get and no bullshit! Enjoy!!! Joe Steve Sims: Founder and CEO Bluefish The Man Behind All Things Steve Sims Website: https://www.stevedsims.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevedsims/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stevedsims/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevedsims LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sdsims/ Email: ask@stevedsims.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Today, my guest is Steve Sims. Steve, welcome to the show. Steve: Now, thanks for having me. Joe: Very excited man, I I've been following you for quite some time now. Do you like the title, The Real Life Wizard of Oz? This do you like that? I just want to know because I don't. Steve: Now, when it came out, when when folks wrote a big article on me and they named like Elon Musk and Richard Branson, the article was fantastic. You know, the article I couldn't have done a better puff piece in a show of piece if I had done it myself. But then then they came up with the idea of Titli Me as Steve Sims, the real life Wizard of Oz. Now, this got a lot of people's attention, but at the end of the day, he was some dodgy pervert that didn't do anything to hide it behind a curtain. So I thought to myself, I'm not quite sure I like that. But, you know, people people I'm proud to say see to the essence of the imagination and the creativity and not the fact that he was a big forward. Joe: Right. I want to go back a little bit, if you don't mind, I know there's so much I have to ask you, but I also wanted to lay the groundwork. So when anyone listens to this, they understand who you are and what you're about, where you came from. So it can you give how you became who you are today and what you do. Steve: Yeah, very simply, I'm the same as everyone else, every entrepreneur in the planet started off by being pissed off about something, whether it be their finances, their life or something, the way it was being done. But I believe the entrepreneurs were kind of aggravation and it's aggravated oysters to make pose with. First of all, got to be pissed off about something. I was kicked out of school at 15 straight onto the building site in London, and that was my life. And I thought, really, you know, this is my dad, my uncle, my cousins, even my granddad in his 80s was on this building site. And I thought, this is my life now. Of course, I didn't have Instagram to tell me how inadequate my life was at the time, so I had nothing to gauge myself by. But, you know, I just thought there's got to be something else. And so, like every entrepreneur, we jump out of the frying pan into the volcano, you know, we just like, well, let's try it. And then we fail. And then we try something else and we fail at that. We gain all this education. I realized one thing that was my my my true north is a site. I was in the wrong room now as a as a bold bloke, British biker, all those bees. I was in a room with all of those people. You know, I remember going into into the pub at night and throwing the money on the table, knowing exactly how many babies you could afford to. Steve: And maybe if you scratch get hold, you got two pennies, get one more on each hand out between everyone else. And I said to myself, is this it? And so I had to change the way I had to go into a room where people would demand themselves demanding more impact, demanding more income. And so I didn't know how to do it, but I ended up building up this Trojan horse. I ended up as a doorman of the nightclub, knowing where all the nightclubs were. Then I started to own my own parties. Then I started throwing parties for other people. Then I started managing other people's parties. And I went from closing down clubs in Hong Kong to working with someone on his Oscar party, the Kentucky Derby, the New York Fashion Week, the Palm Beach Polo. I ended up working for the biggest events in the planet, and one single film I always had was I would only ever invite rich people to these events. Why? Because I knew what people were like, because I was broke and broke. People can't afford shit. So I only I would only invite millionaires and billionaires. So I changed the room I was in. And the only reason I did it was because I wanted to walk up to someone rich and go, Hey, how come your filthy rich and I'm not. So I created my own firm in order to be able to ask that question. Joe: It's so cold, before we go any further, I have to tell you, now that I'm sitting here across from you even virtually, that I love the way you express yourself and I love dealing with people who are down to earth and honest and say what's on their mind. And as you know, and you even have some of this on your website, there's so much fluff in the world today and there's so much of the facade of I am this person and I do all of this and I do all of that. And it's just nice to sit with a successful real person. And I really mean that. It just it's it's truly an honor to be sitting here talking with you. Steve: Isn't that a shame, isn't Joe: It Steve: It? Joe: Is, Steve: Now, Joe: It is. Steve: Really, isn't it a shame that if you if you if you rewind and listen to it, don't thank me for being real? And therefore, all you're doing is validating that the rest of the planet is not. So it should be it should be something we take for granted, we should make someone go. Well, I know what that is all about, but we don't because people spend so much energy trying to be someone that not you never get to meet them. You go of these shields and as you say, there's these facades to navigate through all of these Almaz. And you're like, well, what's really about I made it. I made a decision very early on and I will get experience three seconds after we needed it. But I remember there was one point in my life that I woke up and like all entrepreneurs, we had that little nagging doubt, oh, should I really be doing this? Should I really look like this? Should I really sound like this and like a moron? I listen to it. And so I changed my persona and she tried to use big words. You know, I, I wore suits. I took my earrings out. I covered my tattoos. I became someone that I thought would be easier for you. What I ended up doing was I made it harder for you to understand me. But he was the weird thing. I had an expensive watch. And if anyone knows me, I'm in a black T-shirt and jeans. Every single time in my life, I ride motorcycles. I do not own a car. I collect motorcycles. I bought a collar this time, I bought a car, I bought made suits, I bought an expensive watch, and then I realized these will for you, I was trying to impress you and all of those trappings and trinkets of, wow, look at me, I've got money gained me. Steve: And this is the doll thing. A lot of clients. And I was making more money with a lot of people I didn't like, I didn't like and I couldn't connect with. So I realized very early on that and this put me actually on a serious note, put me into a mass depression. Thankfully, I came out of the other side so to watch, got rid of the suit, got rid of the car on motorbikes ever since. I want to make it impossible for me to be misunderstood by you. OK, I want you to never be able to sit on a fence and go, well, what's this Steve Sims about? I want to make it so simple that you can go like some people. I would imagine some people on this podcast have gone down on that guy. I'm gone. And that's fine with billions of people in the planet. If a few bugger off after 30 seconds, Mumolo, could you still. Fine, but I want to make it very easy for you to know what side of the fence you want to jump on my side, be part of family and community and grow and get uncomfortable or go go about your way. Either way, fine. But there's nothing in the planet today where some fence sitters and I decided I'm going to make it very easy for you to make sure you know which side of the fence to be on. Joe: Yeah, and it's true, I know where I stand with you, I can make a comment on your social media that you always write back. You always say thank you. You always say whatever you whatever. It's just it feels like a real relationship and it's and it's awesome. And that's the way it should be, Steve: It Joe: I Steve: Should Joe: Think Steve: Be, yes, Joe: Should be. Steve: And go good, so everyone out that all you can with your people is you are you connecting with people as the person you think they want to see? It's a deep question, but stop spending any effort on trying to be someone you know. Joe: I love it. Perfect. OK, so I know this is going to sound like rush to the audience, but I have you for such a little bit of time and I have a huge sheet of notes and things, and I have to ask you. So the book deal, so blue fishing, the art of making things happen. How did that deal come about? Like you said, and I think 20, 16 is when that book deal happened. How did they come to you and say, hey, why don't you take all your experiences and what you do and write a book? Is that what they basically said? Steve: No, Joe: Ok. Steve: When when you actually start hanging around with people, different people that do things differently and opportunities come at you, OK? And I was at a party up in New York and I'm at the bar doing what I do, drink in old fashions and telling stories. And this this woman was introduced to me and it was a case of Steve telling the story about you. But you and Alan Jonel when you did this with the pope. So I just told a few stories and she came back to me and she said, you know, you should buy a book. Now, we've all heard that before. And I'm like a few days later, she actually contacted me. She was part of Simon and Schuster, one of the largest publishing houses in the planet. And she said, no, Susie, we want you to buy a book. We want you to buy a book on all the rich and powerful people all over the planet you deal with and what you do. And I said, do you mind if I did that? I'd be dead by cocktail hour. So I can't do that. So then we got chatting and I did I did a speech for a friend of mine called Joe Polish at the Genius Network event, and it was like, hey, I got kicked out of school. But this is how I did this with the pope and Elon Musk. And they got wind of this this talk that I gave and came back to me about a week, like went, oh, hang on a minute. Steve: We don't want you naming people. We want to know how a bricklayer from East London managed to do this, you know, and so was OK. That makes sense. So I did the book for a variety of reasons. One of them. Actually, both of them were completely selfish. Now that I think about it. Your kids are never impressed with you. It doesn't matter who you are. Your kids are never impressed with me being able to write a book. I'll be like, hey, kid, your dad's an author now, you know? And I just wanted to warn to book. So one of them was personal satisfaction to imitate the crap out of my three kids. The other selfish reason was to get people to stop thinking. Now, that seems the opposite of what everyone's trying to do. But haven't you noticed when someone said, hey, we should do this and they go, yeah, that's brilliant, let's build a business plan, let's do a vivid vision and let's do a forecast. Let's get an analytical survey. Let's do a crowdsourced. Shut up. Try it, see if you like it, see if someone wants to buy it. See if someone's got a problem that your mouth to try something. So I've always said, forget about you. I can't focus on you. Steve: I can. And I thought to myself, if I can demonstrate in this book that a great line from London is doing this, then you're already out of excuses. So selfishly, I wanted to create a world that there were more doers than who is in the planet. There's a lot of who is out there. There's no substance. So selfishly, I wanted to piss the kids off on. I wanted to create more people to be aggravated enough to go. Well, I have it's dark. I can do it. And it came out, as you say, I got the deal in twenty sixteen book, came out in seventeen and I thought to myself, well and I got paid nicely so I thought, I don't know if anyone's going to believe it, I got to buy it. Because when you look at the industry of books, there's thousands of books coming out every week. And I thought and I know this is really going to appeal to anyone so suddenly. Schuster, they send me, which was weird because I'd always wired me my Bothaina, but they posted me a two and a half gram check and they said, we want you to go to Barnes and Noble and we want you to sit there with a pile of books and a couple of bottles of champagne and signed books. Now, is this is this a video podcast was just an audio podcast about. Joe: It's both. Steve: Ok, so for those people that don't have the pleasure of seeing me. Let's let's be honest, a Saturday afternoon when you're walking around with your kids, there is no way in God's green earth you're going to go, well, he looks nice and friendly. Let's go and find out while you're Joe: The. Steve: Going to avoid me like the plague. So I thought, I can't do that. I'm going to end up drinking. Champagne is all going to go well. So I thought to myself, no, not doing that. So I went down to a local whiskey bar and that that I happened to have frequented a couple of times. And I said, look, here you go. I'm going to sign this, check over to you and turn the lights on when we run out of money. And they went and saw I invited a bunch of my friends again, if you demand of you and your circle, you end up with pretty good friends so that everyone from like Jim Quico had a son and had a great, great and all. But Jesse and I had a whole bunch of really cool people that were in there that also have big followings and pretty well not invited to Lewis House, a whole bunch of people from there. And we literally just stuck a pile of books at the end of the bar because we were told we had to be a book launch and just basically go home for the night. And here's the funny thing. I never even had a website announced in this book, you know, because I've never done a book but called Insomnia Hotta, Sneaky Little Buggers that they are. They did a secret video of the night, which I was told was to get Bilo footage for a new video for Kolhatkar. They did this incredible, unbelievable video of my book launch and put into the music of Dreman by Eversmann is one of the best tunes in the planet and gave it to me. And it was tremendous. And what they did was they went around all of these people going, hey, what do you think of Steve doing this book? Now, if you go to Steve de Sims, don't come, you know, not trying to sell you anything. Steve: But if you go to our website, we put the video on the front page of the website because Simon Schuster said you're not even not even promoting the book. You have to promote the book. So I went, oh, I'll stick this video up. Now, the video at the beginning, everyone's like, oh, it's such an honor to be here. Steve's done really well. He's what? It's all bullshit. It's all kind of like I'm sober and I'm on film, so I'm going to say something nice about him. And then as the video gets old, obviously the night gets old on the old fashions get going on and like with that bleep bleep bleep. Oh, bleep. And he's just to use it. And I just tell myself that's real. That's that's low people about a couple of drinks in him. And now that just kind of like screaming at me and swearing and I just thought, that's Leo. So I put that up. And the funny thing is that video. Launched it, people suddenly saw I wasn't trying to hide behind any kind of misconception of perfection, that this was as good as it gets. And now the book's been released and translated into Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Mandarin, Chinese, Korean. It's now Polish and it's now being translated into Russian. And it's called World Wide as a best seller. It's in credible how this is taken off and what it's done for me and for those people that I'm now able to communicate with, shake him up a little bit, get them uncomfortable, and then spit them out into the world to be more impactful. Joe: Yeah, it's it's great and it's truly a Steve Sims book launch, like people should take note that that's why it's so cool to meet you and to be talking with you. It's like this real, real, real thing. And that's what I love. It's just it's completely refreshing. So ask why three times what does that mean? Steve: We're in a world today where we're very scared of telling you what we want, you know, if you say to someone, hey, you win a million dollars this weekend, what are you going to do? They're going to go, oh, I'm going to get a Ferrari and I'm going to get a hot tub. And all of the Hawaiian Tropic goes are going to come and sit in the hot tub with me. And you gotta scrape. But three months down the line, what are you going to do? And then it's going to be things like, well, you know, my school, my kids school does no basketball court. I'd really like to help them. You see, people have a knee jerk answer and then they have the real core and people don't want to tell you what the core is. So this is what I do. People will say to me, and he's a chip on a trick for everyone out there, basic communication and in fact, is heavily used by the FBI. I know it sounds funny, but it is just the basics of communication. And when anyone ever says to you what they want, respond in the same right and tonality and speed that they've said. Now, let me give you an example. I really want to do this. And you go, oh, that's really fantastic. And then you drop it. You go, Oh, that's really fantastic. But why? And when you drop that tone. Steve: They in their head, they go, oh, they recently bodily wise, if I sat in front of you, you know, the body language, you can see them like sink down a little bit more because the gods know up when the chest is out and it's all raw. But then they sink back and they go, oh, that's a good question. And they they then go, well, actually this happened. And in fact, probably rather than going on about that, I'll give you a story as an example, if I might. So I was working with John for about eight years, and we had an office at the time in Palm Beach and I wasn't in the office and I get this call come through to me from one of the team and they said, hey, Steve, we've got a guy on the phone from New York and he wants to meet some Elton John. You know, you need to speak to him because you're the one that's going over to be without one on that time. And I just found out what he wants. Right. So I answer the phone and I said, hey, hey, hey, hey. I want to get a picture out of John. Match the technology. Oh, that's fantastic, that's great. Why? So then he comes back with well, he's you know, he's one of the last living legends, he's an icon, he's brilliant. I want to get a photograph with him off my desk. Steve: He's going to die soon. And, yeah, that's two things. One, there was no direct response to my question of why. And secondly, if, you know, if he never matched my knowledge, well, he carried on with his excitement. So I said to him, oh, that's fantastic. I'll come back to you. Let me see what I could do. And I hung up, never got his email, never got his phone number. There was no real driving call. It was all very superficial. OK, so then about a month later and we're about a month and a half away from the party now, one of the girls at the office contacted me. She said, hey, we got this guy from New York on the phone, wants to meet Elton John. I don't think it's the same guy as the other one because I already contacted him and said, we don't touch this guy. But I'm wondering if this is might this charter can I do it because you wouldn't respond to it? So in my head, I'm like, oh, well, I've got to get rid of this guy as well when I put me through New York and comes on the phone. Hey, how are you doing? I said, all right. You know, I hear you want to meet sound, John. He went, Yeah. What mean? So I want to have a chat with him. So I said, Oh, that's fantastic. Steve: Brilliant. I said, Why? And he went, oh, and he had to think about it, but still had a bit of bravado about it, is that all? Well, he's a he's an iconic he's a legend. I want to meet him and have a chat. Going to get a picture with him. There's things. Now, I could see he was stumbling. So I said to him very quietly, and as Chris Voss says, you've midnight boys, I said to him. What things? And just shut up. And a different man came back on the phone. And this is all he said. So when I was a kid, my dad used to take me to school and he used to bring me back from school whenever my mom, it was always my dad, he'd take me to bring me back. Now, the car, we had a cassette player in it and the cassette was jammed and it was Elton John's greatest could play, but it couldn't eject. So all the way to school. We would be singing our lungs out to Elton John on the way back from school, we'd be singing our lungs out of Elton John now. Then he got a new column. This car had this CD player in it. So he bought Elton John's greatest hits. And again, we would sing our lungs out all the way to school and sing our lungs out on the way back. And then I started to get into high school for the first couple of years, he still had to take me and pick me up. Steve: And I used to jump into that car so fast because he would have one job blaming before it even got in the car and I would stare out the window with mass embarrassment as my dad some his lungs out all the way home. And I would say to my mom, can you make you stop singing anyone jump a Clydeside just like she's thing and all the way to high school and all the way back, you will be like by sunlight, slam the door quickly so no one else can hear Elton John coming out of the door. He said that my dad died about twenty five years ago. I've got kids, I'm married, and I'll be traveling to work where we're going on a vacation, going down to take my wife out for dinner one night. He said the radio will be on, he said, and Elton John to come on the radio. You sit in for the next three and a half minutes, my dad is sat in the seat next to me blaring his lungs out to John. I want to thank him for bringing my dad back to me every now and then for three minutes at a time. That was it, there was the why, there was the call, he was too embarrassed to tell me that story at the beginning, so he hid behind the always great bring in all the bravado. Steve: But you'd have never got to it if you hadn't have used you in a Sherlock and gone. Why what why is also the most aggressive, combative word out there? For some reason it pisses people off. I get people text me and DM me and Facebook message me and they go Sim's. I see you in L.A. I'm going to be in L.A. next week. We should get together for a beer. I want to buy you a steak and all I will respond with is why. And the amount of people get, well, I heard you acculturate the dick, you know, and they will get offensive and right. And then I'll get other people going. Good question. I wanted to discuss it. I want to talk about this. I wanted to bring this. I wanted to say thanks. And that is my wife. The older you get, the more you need the why. This guy was a perfect example without a job of what he's true. Why? What is true call was now with that. I was able to go to Elton John telling the story and got them to meet, and it was a very Tavey wonderful moment, this very powerful moment. But that was that was a perfect example of how the wide drives to the core. Without the coal, you haven't got a connection. It's all superficial. Joe: Yeah, that's a great story. Gosh, the next one never be the first call. Steve: Yeah, I'm really crappy introducing myself, and I also think it's pointless, so what I'll do is if I need to get in touch with you and I come in and I say, hey, you know, hey, how are you? My name's my name's Steve Sims. You know, we got a chat. I know the Pope and Elon Musk. Richard Branson. I'm a big deal. Can I be on your podcast? You're going to be like, this guy's a dick, you know, I want nothing to do with this guy, you're going to go straight past any of the information I've given you and just come to the assumption of a self promoting full of himself. Egotistical prick. Now, let's change it, let's say like next week, you're talking with one of your buddies and your buddy says, oh, have you heard about this guy called Steve Sims? He's worked with John Elon Musk. And the guy is a big deal. He says word for word what I said. But all of a sudden, you're now interested, you're kind of like, oh, you know, can you make an intro? And then when you do get to speak with me, I've already got all this credibility. So I haven't got to so much so I can be humble and sit and go, yeah, what do you want? Oh, I've got to focus. Well, let me see if I can do all of that shit, because I've already got the credibility. So I noticed years ago there is much more powerful and it's much more brief of a conversation if you're riding on someone else's credibility and connection and introduction. Steve: So if I want to meet someone, I'll look at whoever else is in that circle, who do they respect and get them to make the introduction and then they will contact me. Oh, yeah. You know, Jimmy, tell me to call. You got you've done some weird things, though. Yeah, I have. But I want to do my next weird thing with you. I tell you what, so you can have that kind of conversation. If I'm at a party and someone stood next to me and they say, hey, what are you doing? Based on that body language, based on how they're asking the question will be based on how I respond. So I've said to people before, I own the valet company in this park and all the cars here, oh, I to work for the security. I'm undercover. I own a petrol station just down the road. I'll come up with all of those kind of things to find out. So did I want to stay there and still have a conversation? If they do, great. You know, but then is it something that I think I want to do business? I want to say actually, do you know the best thing? You know what? You over there. I'll get you a drink, you go nostalgia what I did. And then I'll get a job and of course, I want to be like, oh my God. And then of course, they'll be back down. Oh, yeah. And you'll have that kind of thing that I'm always very careful to be very calculated on how I get introduced and who introduces me. Joe: Yeah, it's that theory of the circle of influence type thing, right, that for four, then three, then two, then one. And so the more you can have those people talk about you. By the time you reach the person in the middle that you eventually wanted to be, maybe introduced to or do business with you, you've been built up so big you don't have to say a word. Steve: You have to say nothing. I've had people literally phone me going, Oh, Billy, Billy told me to give you a call and I'll be honest. How can I help you? And I haven't had to sell myself. I haven't had to talk about. I've had to do none of that. So if you become the solution to someone else's problem, you ain't got to worry about any of the shine. Joe: Yeah, all right, so this is the last one of those three bullet points that I when I they caught my eye, I wanted to make sure I asked and you already alluded to this one, but you said, don't be easy to understand. Be impossible to misunderstand. Steve: There's a confused client will never give you his checkbook, and so I noticed years ago that anyone that's ever heard the term, the big C. knows it stands for cancer. OK, the big C in business is confusion. So you say I alluded to earlier, you alluded it to even earlier than that. Joe: Ok. Steve: When you actually remove all the confusion with what it is you do and who you are. You make it very easy for the other person to now make an educated decision on whether or not you're the person they want to do business with, hang out with whatever. OK, so stop trying to confuse your clients. Here's the classic mistake. Hey, I've got a new business. Let me get a website. Let me get a guy to buy all the copy for the website with words that I could not even spell. I could not even say. But hey, they make me look smart and the person who reads it goes OK with this person's obviously ex a dictionary or, you know, was was was an English major in Oxford. And then they get you on the phone. You're like, Hello, Bob, how can I help you? And they go, well, hang on. I mean, there's a disconnect. And that's the problem. You want to make sure that you have full transparency, who you are, what do you stand for? What do you do? What is the solution that you provide to whose problem? So if you've got all of that transparency, you are impossible to misunderstand. But people try to be something they lean against cos they don't own. They take photographs on jets that have not left the runway. They talk a good talk of bullshit and bollocks and a distortion. And people look at you and here's the thing. You're never, never going to get someone phone you up. Hey, Steve, I was looking at your website. I'm really confused what it is you do. What is it you do? You're never going to get that. Steve: People are going to they've got a problem. They need a solution. That's what being an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur. It's for people to outsource their problems to. And you then send them an invoice to do so. It's complicated, but that's the world of an entrepreneur. So if you make it very confusing as to who you are, what problems you solve, then you're not in business. And so that's why I'm a great believer that you've really got to focus on the clouting. I'll give you a classic one. People, if you if you open up your social pages, link to Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, whatever, and you look on there, you look on LinkedIn and you've got to you're going to sue on and you're all looking smart and debonair. And then you go over to Facebook and it's Girls Gone Wild, just sitting there with a mix on the edge of the beach. And, you know, your confusion people. And you never want to confuse people. And there's a lot of people out there I like to call them idiots. They look at LinkedIn and they go, well, you have to do that LinkedIn because it's more professional than Facebook. Facebook is the largest business advertising platform in the planet. So why is linked in the business, want to not know Facebook, that's the first thing. Secondly, because you are a genius and you think you have to be buttoned up on LinkedIn, but you can be in real bad Bahama shorts on Facebook. Why is it that Apple is not why is it that Nike is not, why is it the Samsung Chevrolet? Any brand out there is the exact same on thing as they are on Facebook as they are on Snapchat, as they are on Twitter? Why? Because you are who you are, why start confusing your clients by being two different people if you love wearing suits? I wear suits on all platforms. Steve: If you love when Bahama shorts web Howard Schultz on a new platform, but don't be two different people. It breeds confusion and understand the social is nothing more than a platform of consumption. If I don't want to get too deep into it. But if you got 10 people together and you said, hey, what's the news tonight? And then we're going to talk about nine o'clock tomorrow. And nine o'clock tomorrow, you would still be talking about coronaviruses, potential riots. New laws coming in, you know, stimulus packages, the news would be exactly the same. But then if you ask those 10 people what news station did you look at that would go well, KTLA, ABC, CNN, BBC, these are all points of consumption for the same news as for social platforms or whatever you post on Facebook, post on LinkedIn, whatever is posted on LinkedIn, post on Twitter. This is nothing more than points of consumption. I know people that go, I don't want to watch Facebook, OK, whatever I'm posting on Facebook, I'm going to post on Twitter, so I'm still going to get you so. Don't change to be anybody, they're not the big brands don't do it, so why did your smart arse tell you that it's a good idea to do it makes Joe: Right, Steve: Them say. Joe: And for everybody that's listening to this or eventually watching the YouTube video, the prime example is just go to your website, go to go to Steve's website, and you'll see that exactly the person you're seeing hearing here is exactly who's on that website. The tone of the copy that's on the website is you throughout the entire Web site. Steve: And that's that's there's a lot of people that go and get copyright is OK. They miss the point and again, I don't want to get too deep into this, but they miss the point of what social and websites are for. That's a generally and ignite a conversation. So I thought I'd come to you and I start speaking Japanese to you, and you don't speak Japanese. End of conversation, if I get somebody to put together a copy onto my website that makes me sound articulate and overly smart and overly iino on everything, you may go or don't like the sound of this guy or worse, you might go. I like the sound of this guy. And then you reach out to me and you suddenly find that I am nothing like that person. So what you should do is download a copy, and I love copy, copyright is a great we going to copyright is not the time. I think everyone should look at copyrights in the future. But when you're doing basic critical copy for, like, your website. Puke, count your thoughts and then get somebody to tweak your thoughts, don't impose it, just correct the grammar, correct terminology, maybe reframing a bit, but that's what I did. I call it verbal puke. I will literally I'm one of the ways that I do it is I've got this thing like a smart phone, like everyone in the planet has one foot away from them. I record, I push the cord and I go, hey, welcome to the world of Steve Sims. I'm here to tell you about this. And I will talk it through and then I will send it over to one of my assistants to get it translated and then to adjust it for grammar and correction and flow that you should always leave your website, your most important initial point of conversation with words that came from your head, not somebody else. Joe: Yeah, and your website is exactly the perfect example of that, so everyone has to go look at your website because I think it's refreshing. Again, everything about you is refreshing. So I have less than 15 minutes with you. So I want to just talk about a few things on your Web site so that the audience understands. So Sims distillery is the first thing, which is your online community, right? Steve: It's my community, I wanted to build a community for people that wanted to ask me questions, ask a private community questions, we do live Facebook Amma's where people come in to answer that question. So if you're a member of seems to still be and you go, hey, I'm having a problem with problem of finding a good copywriter or what's been a tick tock of Instagram, or should I be doing more videos or should I be doing more static postings? I will literally bring one of my friends in and will do a forty five minute live AMA where you and the other seems to still be members can physically ask these people questions and get results out of your answers. Joe: Awesome. OK, we don't have to go into this, but I know that you're a keynote speaker. I've seen different things for you, but I just want the audience to know everything about you. You also offer private coaching, OK? And then you also offer this private 30 minute phone call that you'll do with people. Right? OK, and then you have the same speakeasy, which is the thing that I think is really interesting, which to me it's like a two day roundtable mastermind. Is that a good description of it? Steve: Now, how much do you know about it? Joe: Well, I just I you know, from when I was going to maybe a 10 to one here in Scottsdale, that happened not too long ago, sort of looking at it, it was me. It felt like a master mastermind, like you were going to go around and everyone Steve: But Joe: Was Steve: What Joe: Going to Steve: Information Joe: Sort of. Steve: Did you actually know about Scotsdale? And Joe: Oh, Steve: I'm putting you on the spot here, so Joe: God, Steve: Get Joe: I. Steve: All of the information and you knew for a fact about Scotsdale. Joe: I think the only time when I looked at it, I just potentially knew the dates and the cost and that it was going to be capped, that I don't know if it was at the time that one might have been capped at like twenty five people or something like that. I don't think it was 40, but I don't remember. Steve: So the point is that we actually we run these speakeasies as a reverse mastermind, so what we do is we tell you the city, as we did Scotsdale, we didn't tell you where it was going to be. We tell you it's two thousand dollars and we give you the dates. Joe: Right. OK, Steve: Then Joe: Good. Steve: We'll Joe: So Steve: Give Joe: I passed because Steve: You Joe: That's Steve: Pass. Joe: All I knew. OK. Steve: Yeah. And but we don't tell you who's going to turn out. We don't tell you what you're going to learn. We don't tell you any of those things. And the reason is because everyone signs up, we reach out to them and we would go, hey, thanks for joining up. Thanks for with the speakeasy. What's your problem? And we want to know what our problem is and if they come back and they go, well, I'm having a problem gaining credibility or I want to get more viewers or I want to, can I go into coach? You know, I want to do more speaking gigs. I want to when we can find out what our problem is, then I know who to bring in to actually teach and train Joe in that two day event to physically answer the problems they have. So I work in reverse. There's no point in me saying, hey, come to my event. I've got this person, this person, this person, because you may go, well, I like those too, but I have no idea who those three. I want to know your problem and then I'm going to bring people in. And by not telling anybody what who's going to be there, even the attendees. The whole speakeasy mentality is that you don't know what's going on, you just know that the people in there both teach in training and attend these. I've got to be creative disruptors of rock stars because it takes that mentality to come along to one of my events and we cap them all at 40. We capture one in Scottsdale at 40, although we only had thirty six turn up because there was some flight issues, because I think we had that big Texas storm coming through at the time. So sadly we lost about four people, but we capable of 40 next ones in San Diego, the 19th and the 20th of July. And that's all, you know. You know, that's that is literally a. Joe: All right, cool, the deep dive is when you would come to somebody's organization and do a full day of onsite consulted, Steve: Yeah, Joe: Correct? Steve: That's that's that's the that's the call where we actually go in and find out what's going on, it's very shaky, you know, it's very disruptive. It gets a lot of people uncomfortable because we really go in there and try and tear down, you know, why people are doing things, what they're looking for as an outcome and usually to see where the disconnect is on those. Joe: Great, and then you also have your own podcast, which is the art of making things happen. And do you is most of the people, from what I can see in the sort of entrepreneurial space. Steve: Yes, but not somehow you think you see, I've had priests, I've had gang members, I've had lifers, I've had prostitutes, I've had Fortune 500, I've had rocket scientists. I have many, many different range of people on there. But as I said at the beginning of the show, at one point or time, they were pissed off and they were aggravated and that's what caused them to then go into a different world. So, you know, we're all entrepreneurial, but I'm not running Fortune 500 companies or CEOs. They come from very, very wide and almost ran on. Something will happen to me. I saw that Megan Merkl interview recently a while ago, and I did a deconstructs on the power of branding that could have been done if we'd have had and still in the royal family and how brand wise it was a for and again with her leave in the royal family. So I'll often just go in there and spout about things that I'm up to that have come to my mind, of course, to piss me off. And I need to vent. Joe: And then on top of everything else is if you didn't have enough to do you have Sim's media, which to me looks like you're basically helping anybody, any entrepreneur or any person with their branding, the PR, their marketing podcast book launches product launches. Right. So you because you've done all of this stuff, you're like, hey, I can help. So you have Sim's Steve: Yeah, Joe: Media as well. Steve: I've done it for everyone from Piaget to Ferrari to major events to major influences, and I find the way people work media quite often is wrong. They have a Field of Dreams moment. Hey, I'm going to pay for an article in Forbes. They get the article in Forbes and then they sit there by the phone thinking, OK, Reinier, bugger. And it doesn't work like that. So I'm a great believe. Again, media is one thing, but what you do with it is everything. So the way I work kind of works. So now what we did was about three years ago, we started allowing clients to actually operate under the way that we worked. And then it was about six months ago that we physically launched Tim's media and able to get you to where you wanted to be given the message you want to be given. Joe: Awesome. I love it. OK, Henry, your son, does he work with. Is he part of your team? Steve: Yes, and he's branching out to a new thing, and I laugh because, again, your kids grow up going, Oh, Dad, you don't know day, you don't know I want to follow you. Yeah. And they love you. And then they go to school where for eight hours the school teaches them. There's only one answer. And if you don't get this answer and you don't take the white box, you failed. And then they come home to an entrepreneur who doesn't even know where the box is. And there's 20 different answers and each one of them is making them half a million dollars, you know, so it's a real disconnect. And he had trouble with that. And he was studying engineering, which was a very analytical profession. And then he would come on to his dad, who Cyprien old fashioned talking to someone in Korea and suddenly getting wired one point to be able to do something. He's like, how can this be? You know? So eventually he actually said he wanted to just flow around to a couple of the events that I was speaking at. And then he suddenly sort to see the world of entrepreneurial being a lot more challenging to him. And now he's actually gone out. And it's it's beautiful to see how he's come from the analytical world. And he's now taking what he knows about that. And he's very driven, focused on results. And he works in Sim's media and he's launching his own group. So I'm very proud of it. Joe: Ok, so he's actually doing some of his own things. He's not just Steve: He is, he Joe: Got Steve: Is Joe: It, OK, Steve: You Joe: Call. Steve: Want to you want to you want to basically build people up to be good enough that they can leave but treat them so well they don't want to. So it's good to see him out on his own. I'm Joe: Perfect. Steve: Happy with that. Joe: Awesome. OK, so we're out of time. One quick question. If you only had one motorcycle, which brand would you choose? Steve: Oh, that's the nastiest question Joe: I Steve: In. Joe: Know, I knew I knew it was going to Steve: Oh. Joe: Because I see all your bikes lined up, I see because I see your Harley Norton, I'm like, Oh man, what's your what's his favorite? Steve: Oh, this is kind of weird because if anything, it's probably the least exclusive exclusive of my bikes, but I bought a Harley Street glide about a year ago and it's the only comfortable to up bike. I've got Zoom. My others are single seat is all that will Elbaum comfortable. So this is the only one that my wife can come on. So I would probably say that one because it's the only one that me and her can actually get out and do. Our tacker runs up to Santa Barbara or. Joe: Perfect. OK. Steve: Tough question, tough Joe: Hey, Steve: Olival question. Joe: I will I would have had another eight of those like I already you've already explained your favorite drink. It sounds like it's an old fashioned but Steve: Yeah, it is. Joe: But I would have a ton of I wish I had more time with you. I so enjoy this. I'm going to put all your links in the show notes so that anyone listening to the podcast will see them in the show notes and on YouTube. And I will make sure they know where to find you. This has been a complete honor for me. I again, to meet you even virtually, and to have a real person who's doing real things at a real honest level and not leaning against a Lamborghini that you don't own are sitting in a shell of a fuselage of a plane that doesn't even fly for photos. It just means a lot to me. There's something about it. And I hope to meet you in person sooner than later. I hope to attend one of your events, and I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for being here. Steve: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
I had the honor to interview Brian Bogert who for me, is a real life superhero in a sense. He has dealt with his share of adversity and he continues to brush himself off while continuing to bust through barriers to create his best self. I admire all that he has accomplished in his life and he's here to help other accomplish the same and more. He goal to impact over a billion people is lofty yet if there is anyone who can do, I'm putting my money on Brian. This was a special episode as Brian was so gracious and share so much and sometimes the conversation gave me a lump in my throat as we went deep. I sure hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did creating it with Brian. Thanks for listening! Much love, Joe Brian Bogert: Human Behavior and Performance Coach, Keynote Speaker, YouTuber, Podcaster and Course Creator Founder - Brian Bogert Companies Website: https://brianbogert.com/ No Limits: https://brianbogert.com/no-limits/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bogertbrian/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bogertbrian YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmhaMgY8q-tMMCj0rpGg7iw LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-brian-bogert-companies/ Email: info@brianbogert.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Ok, today, I want to welcome my guests, Mr. Brian Boger. Brian, welcome. Brian: What's up, Joe, I love I love that shirt you're rockin no limits, soldier, right there. I Joe: Hey, Brian: Love it. Joe: There you go. You know what? So since we're talking about the shirt, we've brought it up. Explain to me the purpose behind this shirt. I know that you give all the money away to Brian: One hundred Joe: Charity. Brian: Percent of the proceeds, huh? Yeah, so I'll first describe kind of what no limits is just high level and then we'll talk about kind of where this is. No limits is is part of our branding. And it's this belief that I genuinely feel like we all can live with no limits. It's not that we're unlimited and we can do anything we want. It's that we can live significantly beyond the limits we place on ourselves and certainly be on the way the world has placed limits on us. And so that infinity sign, there's a lot of intentionality around it, which is really about awareness and intentionality and how those weave together to help us find who we are so we can live with no limits with our life in alignment. And so as we've been building this brand, there's always been this altruistic philanthropic side of me. Everything I do and desire for me to be financially successful is also for my ability to distribute that wealth back out into the community. So when we had an opportunity that people started to really attach to the brand and what they were doing were like, you know what, let's make some apparel. And we've got, I think, five different t shirt designs, both in men and women. We actually also have a dog design, too. I'll explain that in a second. Brian: But the reason we did it is one hundred percent just to allow people to attach to it. You see, there's not Brian Bogot companies and stuff written all over it. Right? It's really the infinity in no limits and embedding people in that. And one hundred percent of the proceeds are going to nonprofits that we're going to rotate on a quarterly basis. And so, you know, it's just another cool way. You know, I'm not gonna make a bunch of money off t shirts. That wasn't something that needed to move the needle. But, you know, people can attach to the brand and feel like they're doing something better. Their investments also helping more lives. And a big part of who I am, I'm on a mission to impact a billion lives by twenty, forty five. This is just another way to perpetuate that. The dog shirts are that we're an animal family and my wife is like obsessed with them. And she's like, we can't have apparel without matching dog apparel, which just saw me die laughing because I still think it's so ridiculous. But I love my wife to death and every time my animals wear clothing, it just makes me laugh. But it's been cool because, yeah, those are those who go to support our local Humane Society and ASPCA as well. So some of the proceeds. Joe: That's great. Yeah, and it's a beautiful shirt. I'm always nervous about when you can't you can't feel it first, but when I took it out, I was like, I don't know. I've been in the gym a lot lately. I might be a little a little too big for him. It's like fit perfect. It makes me actually look better than I should look. So I Brian: Well, Joe: Appreciate Brian: You know, Joe: It. Brian: I'm super anal about t shirts as well, so I'm actually happy that he said that because I before we ever posted them, before we started selling them, we actually tested a bunch of shirts. And I wanted to make sure that they fit and they felt like I like shirts to fit. Not that that means everybody else needs to like what I like. But I've had so many other t shirts and different apparel that they just don't fit right in. You never wear it. And I'm like, if I if I'm going to buy something for my own brand or have something for somebody else, I want something that people feel comfortable in. Joe: Yeah, Brian: So Joe: Yeah, Brian: I'm Joe: So Brian: Happy that you feel that way. Joe: Yeah, and besides wearing it out like normal, like this with her jeans and whatever, I definitely am going to get some more because I think it's cool and it'll be a gym shirt for me. And then I think people will come to me and go, that's cool, what is that? And then send more people your way. So that's my goal. Brian: I'm so grateful, yeah, for the gym one, you're going to get one of those embrace pain to avoid suffering shirts. That's Joe: There you go. That's Brian: That's Joe: Right, Brian: That's that's the motto in the gym that's Joe: That's Brian: Going to help push you, man. Joe: Right. All right, deal. So I always I know you've told your story a zillion times, I'm sure. And I want you to tell as much or as little as you want to bring us up to today. So however, you can kind of let the audience Brian: All Joe: Know. Yeah. Brian: Hold it a million times, so I feel like I know the points I want to hit, so I'll just I'll just run with it. I'm going to ask you and anybody who's listening, unless they're driving to just close your eyes for just one second. And I want you to imagine going to a store, having a successful shopping trip, heading back out to your car. And it's a beautiful day. And you think you're just going on with the rest of your life like it was just any other normal shopping trip. And then you get to your car and you turn your head and you see a truck barreling 40 miles an hour right at you with no time to react. Go and open your eyes. That's where this portion of my story begins. My mom, my brother and I went to our local Wal-Mart to get a one inch paint brush. And anybody who's known me followed me or even in the few minutes we've been talking can probably tell. I've always had a lot of energy. It's the first one of the car and not a surprise to my mom because I want to get home and put that paint brush to use. You know, this is back in the days, though, before they had key fobs. So I had to literally wait for my mom and brother to close the gap of those four or five feet, catch up, stick the key in the door and unlock it to get on the other way. Brian: And as it happened, the truck pulls up in front of the store and a driver, a middle passenger, get out. And the passenger all the way to the right felt the truck moving backwards. So he did what any one of us would do, Joe, and he screwed up and put his foot on the brake instead of the gas combination of shock and forced Zoom up onto the steering wheel, up onto the dashboard. And before you know it, he's catapulting across the parking lot 40 miles an hour right at us with no time to react. Now, we were in that spot, so we went up into the median, went up to the car in the median, ultimately knocked me to the ground, ran over me diagonally, tore my spleen, left the tire tracks, scar on my stomach and continued on to completely sever my left arm from my body. So there I am laying on the parking lot on one hundred and fifty three day in Phoenix, Arizona, my mom and brother just watched the whole thing happen and they look up and they see my arm 10 feet away. Fortunately for me, so did my guardian angel. She saw the whole thing take place, she was a nurse that walked out of the store right when this happened. Brian: She saw the literal life and limb scenario in front of her and she rushed immediately into action. She focused on life. First, she came over and stopped the bleeding and she saved my life. And then she instructed some innocent bystanders to run inside, grab a cooler filled with ice and get my detached limb on ice within minutes. Had she not done one or both of those things, I either wouldn't be here with you today or I'd be here with you today with the cleaned up stop. That's just the facts, right? So I will expedite a whole lot of the rest of that particular story. We can dig deeper if you want to. But as you can imagine, there was years of recovery that came from this. Twenty four surgeries and a whole lot of lessons and observations. What I've definitely learned is that I have an extremely unique story. I'm sure that your listeners weren't expecting it to go there today. But what I've also realized is that we actually all have unique stories. And what's important is that we pause and become aware of the lessons we can extract from those stories and then become intentional. How do we apply to our lives? And we all have the ability to do that. We also all have the ability to tap into the collective wisdom of other people's stories, to shorten our own curve, to learn something to share with you two primary ones. Brian: And then we'll just see where the conversation goes. The first is I learned not to get stuck by what has happened to me, but instead get moved by what I can do with it, and the second I didn't realize until far later. I was a kid. I was seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 years old when I was going through the meat of all of this. Yes, I was the one doing the the therapy. Yes, I was the one having the surgeries done to me. But I was also being guided through the process. So I was a little bit in a fog. My parents, however, were not they were intimately aware of the unceasing medical treatments, years of therapy and the idea of seeing their son grow up without the use of his left arm was a source of great potential suffering for them. So they willed themselves day in and day out to do what was necessary. It was tough to embrace the pains required to ultimately strengthen and heal me. So whether it was intentional or not, what they did was they ingrained in me a philosophy and a way of living which I embody and everything I do now, which was to embrace pain, to avoid suffering. And I believe when that's done right, that's also where we gain freedom. Brian: So it's these concepts that I use to not only become this unique injury, but how my business partners and I scaled our last business to 15 million with the span of a decade. And now how is a human behavior performance coach and entrepreneur? I flip that on its head. You will have individuals and organizations just like you, just like the people listening, become more aware, more intentional, and who they already are, their most authentic selves. You see, I believe that's when magic starts to happen and the door starts to crack to perspective, motivation and direction. And that's when people have the opportunity to have joy, freedom and fulfillment and to back into their lives. And those are the reasons I'm spending the next twenty five years of my life committed to trying to impact a billion lives on this planet. Because if we can reduce the level of suffering that people experience, which there's a lot, and we give them the chance to experience joy, freedom and resentment, we give them the permission to be exactly who they are and know the world will embrace them and love them for exactly who they are. And we can bring vulnerability and authenticity into everything we do, which are the glue that binds human connection. Then we can come together and leave this world a lot more. Beautiful place for my kids, my grandkids. Joe: Well, let me start here first. Do you still are you still in contact with that nurse? Brian: You know, I am actually on a mission to find her right now. I've never spoken with her. And so part of the reason I also talk about that role in that process on so many platforms is I want there to be a lot of exposure and hopefully the world is going to help me track her down because I just want to say thank you. Joe: Sure, that time that I've heard the story, it was like, I need to ask him that question, I'm just wondering if they're in connection with each other. Brian: We're not I'm actively looking for her right now. Joe: Got it during the time you were going to school. How did you handle I would assume you were treated differently, right, Brian: Of Joe: By Brian: Course. Joe: Your by your friends and teachers and they always whatever the case might be. How did you handle that? Brian: Yes, so I think I handled it from a place to survive and protect myself, although I didn't realize that's what I was doing until far later. I didn't I didn't like being the center of attention and I didn't like. Being defined. By boundaries that were placed upon other people's view of what they'd be capable of in my scenario, and so I got this really adamant approach to I'm not going to be defined by those boundaries and I'm going to break beyond boundaries for my entire life, because why not? If I want to do something, the limitation is inside. Right. I need it. And there may be a physical limitation in some ways, but like I can always overcome the physical limitation. If I have a will and desire, that's great enough. But what happened right to protect myself is I created this intellectual narrative, which was I'm good, I'm strong, I'm capable. I don't need anybody's help. And it served me really well for a long time during that period of time, I was able to really hone my emotional intelligence because I got so good at wanting to divert attention from me that I got very strong in my ability to read people, read environments, read situations so that I could almost ensure that that attention wasn't on me. And so it honed those skill sets. And it also honed my mental toughness, which, again, I'm a huge believer is a big part of the equation to be kind of successful. That intellectual narrative ended up biting me later in life. And when I was 20 years old, I broke my arm in a snowboarding injury. Brian: Compound fracture almost lost it again. And that was the moment that I realized the power of our narratives because the world bought into mine. I had I had sung that preached that narrative so strong. I never even said those words right. That's just the message that I was sending with my energy and how I showed up and how I interacted. And now all of a sudden, I'm in my most vulnerable period ever as an adult, not having the same infrastructure and support system that I had at home that I probably took for granted up until that point, how much support I had. Now, sitting in this vulnerable position, I didn't have the courage to ask for help. So I had a lot of friends, a lot of family. Nobody showed up and they didn't show because they didn't love me or didn't care about me. And they showed up because they just believe Brian's goody strong is capable. He doesn't need anybody else. And so that's kind of the during that whole school adolescent period. Right. It was really about me proving that I could overcome the physical limitations, that I could protect myself, that I could get myself there. But what I really downplayed the importance of was the importance of human connection. So that whole next year of my life, I shifted to vulnerability and authenticity and how do I hone the relationships that I was developing so strongly through emotional intelligence to be able to focus on a true connection. Joe: So it sounds like your parents were super special. Did they go out of their way and whatever normal way for them to handle it, to not limit you from doing anything like when somebody knocked on your door and said, hey, can Brian come out and play and we're going to play football? Did they say, Brian, go have fun? Like, is Brian: Yeah. Joe: That the approach they took? Brian: You know, nobody's ever asked me that question, you just gave me chills when you asked that. I think it's a blend, honestly. They did. They never wanted to be the reason that I didn't do something. But as you would expect, all parents have a protection mechanism that kicks in. So immediately after the accident, I was I was in slings and during surgeries for a few years. And so that first year after the accident, no, I wasn't going out and playing at the level that I would have right between seven and eight. But it wasn't long after that that it was it opened up. We started having good friends in the neighborhood. We played football in the street. We played basketball on the street. We rode bikes nonstop. And so they were never going to tell me that I couldn't do those things. Now, what they didn't want me to do, they didn't want me to join a football team where we were playing tackle because for obvious reasons, I get hit really hard on that arm. Even though the doctor said the bone wasn't strong, we don't know. Right. So so they would limit it in terms of like, exactly the application. But at the same time, they got so used to me doing what I was doing that whenever the phone rang and it was somebody a number that my mom didn't know back then, she was expecting insert branded something again because I needed I think they appreciated the fact that that's who I was when I was born. Brian: I mean, I was always the guy that was pushing the limits even before this. This gave me perspective in humility that I wouldn't have had otherwise. And so they at least were aware enough to recognize, like Brian's got a higher risk threshold and probably has an even higher one after the accident than he would have had anyway. And they they knew that they needed to give me those outlets to be able to spread my wings and be free. So they always encouraged. Right. Like, if I wanted to go mountain bike and do jumps, they'd be like, OK, you're going to get hurt. And then if I got hurt, we'd figure it out. Right? I mean, within reason, they gave me the freedom. I think they made the right decision to not let me play tackle football. Who knows what could have happened, but did I play on other sports teams? Absolutely. So, yeah, I think my parents really did encourage and they still do to this day, despite the fact that they know you know, I think my mom has just gotten used to constantly being on edge, like expecting that Brian is going to do something crazy and get hurt. That's how we find our limits in this world, is we've got to push them. Joe: Well, tell her to not follow your Instagram account so she doesn't have to see you squatting. Four hundred pounds. I saw that. I saw the photo of you sitting there. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can't watch this. This is killing me. Brian: Well, I mean, and that's one of those things I had to learn, right? I mean, my biggest limitation for some of those things is my hand strength. And so I have to get creative and I figure out how to do things. And when I first started deadlifting, I mean, I knew I couldn't deadlift with a normal bar because of the imbalance in my body already, but I could deadlift with a bar and protect myself for the most part. Well, that worked really well until the one time that my strap broke Joe: Oh. Brian: While I was lifting. And this was like early on. So I had to, like, learn these things. Well, my instinct wasn't to just let go of the bar on the other side. And I think so what you saw the other day, I wasn't 400 pounds. I think it was two hundred and Joe: Yeah, Brian: Forty. Joe: I know, I just I couldn't remember, Brian: But Joe: But. Brian: But I but I have I have reps significantly above 300 pounds. I don't say that to impress. I rest to the point I was doing that in this one scenario when the strap broke and I didn't let go on my right hand because it wasn't instinct, because I wasn't expecting the strap to break. And this was a learning experience because it tweaked me really bad. And I mean, I didn't deadlift for a few months after that. I had to recover. But once I started getting back into it, it changed my form. It changed my focus, it changed my attention. And now I'm like intimately aware of, like every movement on the strap. And I'm like ready at any moment to just drop so that I don't tweak my back. But my core strength is a big part of my ability to not be in debilitating pain every single day. Those deadlifts keeping my upper thoracic, keeping my shoulders, keeping my back because I don't have a lot on the left side of my back, keeping them strong is essential for me to not be literally in debilitating pain every day. Brian: And so those are the those are the pains I have to embrace. I've got to embrace the pain of figuring out how do I lift in a way that pushes my body, gets the hip hinge in there, gets the movement, my back and my core strength and all that stuff engaged in a way that's going to allow me to maintain a livable amount of pain in my back because the imbalance versus debilitating suffering. So it's funny that you mention that. But yeah, I think my mom is just used to it. My wife is too. I mean, my wife is incredible. She literally is like I know that if you set your mind to something, you're just going to go do it. And there's a high degree. At some point you going to get hurt. She's like, but what am I going to, like, box you in and continue? Like, you're just going to go do it anyway. I was like, yeah, see, like, I love that, right? It's like just let people let people spread their wings. Joe: That's right. Well, that's great before we get off of this subject and move on. I know that you and Blake do mountain biking, Brian: Yeah, we do, Joe: Right? Brian: Yeah. Joe: And that's like a big thing he loves to do with you and you with him. And so that's got to be at least I mean, I've done it and that's a lot on the arms. Brian: Yes, so what's funny is I have no other perspective because I didn't learn how to mountain bike until after my injury, I didn't I didn't learn how to mountain bike when my when my son did at five and six and seven. So, yeah. It isn't in balance. Yeah, it is difficult. And I did it for almost. Let's see, I did it for probably 20 years before I actually started adapting my bike. And so there's no tricep, so Tricep and Laerte are the two muscles that you absorb, all of it, all of the impact with when you're mountain biking outside of the suspension. So I don't have a lot of tricep. So there's an automatic imbalance in my body, but I've learned how to balance it because I didn't know any other way and I was motivated and wanted to do it. Mountain biking is one of the few places that I'm absolutely free. And the reason I'm absolutely free there is I don't have the ability to think about anything else. Almost any other workout I do, almost anything I do like there's time to think. Mountain biking, you've done it right. You know, like you've got to be on your game. Brian: One hundred percent focused on what's ahead of you. And so because of that, I've learned how to how to modify my body, my weight distribution, the way that I actually handle the handlebars. But two years ago about I started researching modifications for people with upper extremity injuries. And I landed with this company in the UK that they're actually right now building a product for me that I think is going to take my mountain biking to the next level, which is cool. But what I did is I got a steering stabilizer almost like the ones they have on their bikes. There's a company in the US called Hoby and they make these steering stabilizers for for mountain bikes. So I ended up getting that which what it essentially does is it's a spring unit which snaps the bars back to being straight. I thought it was going to help me more going downhill than uphill. What's crazy is it's actually helped my climbing more than anything because I can pick a line and put all the power I need to in the pedals and not worry about the imbalance in the handles, because it'll it'll keep my lane pure Joe: Yeah. Brian: And with slight, rigid and then downhill. It just gives me more confidence as well, because if I were to hit a bump and it goes on the left side, your weight goes forward, the handlebars collapse. Right. And just like twist the bars, this steering stabilizer stabilizer allows me to balance it with the muscle structure having the right arm and how I can balance my body on the left and then hope, hope he breaks is also another brand that I actually found out they just released this last year, a brake unit that has two master cylinders in one unit so you can have your front and your rear brake both on the same side. I've always never used the front brake in mountain biking Joe: Sure, Brian: Because my right Joe: All that Brian: Side Joe: Pressure. Brian: Is always Joe: Yes. Brian: What you want to be able to use primarily anyway, right? Whereas road biking, which I do a lot of the front brake is more important. Mountain biking, the rear one's more important. So I was always able to get around the corners, but I never had the confidence that I could actually stop and modulate my brakes effectively. So I would take things a little more cautiously now that I have these brakes on both sides and I can truly modulate, like just with, like little twitches in my fingers and the steering stabilizer and it's changed my mountain biking game. I can go out there and rip at a level that I've never been able to with confidence. And then there's like I said, these are these two other products that I'm really excited about. But, you know, one of the things I never knew any different, I wanted to do it and I figured it out. And I think that, again, that's one of those things that I could have just told myself, like, nope, you can't do it. You don't have tricep, you don't have a lot. But I genuinely believe if you want something badly enough and you take the time to think, plan and put things into trial and error, you start to realize you can do a lot more than what the world conditions us to believe we're capable of. Mountain biking is just another example for me on many things that I've been able to break those boundaries and expectations. I see I go mountain biking. People are like, how do you do it? I'm like, how do you do it? I mean, you could you could explain to me with a fully abled body how you do it, but I wouldn't understand because that's not my experience. Joe: Yeah, that's crazy. So, Blake, is your son Addisons, your beautiful redheaded little daughter? With what happened to you, do you believe that certain people on this earth are have the power to get through some of these things where I just think about what you've gone through? I think about even my own brother, who, when he was young, why they were there at my parents house, they were splitting wood with one of those hydraulic splitters. That goes really slow. Right. But the Brian: Oh, Joe: Log Brian: Yeah. Joe: Slipped and he had like these two fingers crushed Brian: Yeah, Joe: And Brian: Yeah. Joe: Then, you know, reconstructed but not usable in a sense. Then he lost his son at 21 years old in a car accident. And I think about this and I go, God, I. I am not I don't have the capacity to handle something like that. And I guess when it happens, it's different. Right? You figure it out. But I almost feel like certain people I don't know if they just they're born to be able to handle these things. And if this is more for the audience Brian: Yeah. Joe: That might hear this and go, oh, God, there's all of these things that come into people's lives that they're they're given to deal with whatever that might be. And is it just the chosen ones that can handle it? That's why they've it just doesn't make any sense to me. So that's. Brian: Yeah, so. I really appreciate the direction your questions are going. By the way, I just have to compliment you on that. You're asking a depth of questions that don't often get contemplated. And I think that there's a lot of truth behind even what you said. You know, it's interesting if you even think about what you just said when you were talking about your brother, you say, I look at him and I'm not sure that I could have handled it. And the reason I pay attention to that is because that is what I truly believe in, how the world has viewed me, they have viewed my limits through their own lens of what they believe they're capable of. I don't think that people truly know what they're capable of until they're tested. And that can be done either intentionally or externally, right? Sometimes we get tested not by our choice. Clearly getting run over by a truck was not by my choice, but it was a test. And I could show my strength to myself into the world by how I stood back up and what I've now done with it. Why I say I have a unique story is it doesn't matter the trauma that I experienced because it's unique solely to me. The trauma that your brother experienced, the trauma that other people experience with divorce or loss of a loved one or financial despair or like you name it, we all have our own unique challenges that we face. And I don't care who you are, if you're still on this planet and you're still standing. You are a survivor. None of us get through this world unscathed. Brian: None of us. Perspective allows us to really pay attention to what other people are going through, but what perspective is really doing is allowing us the opportunity to get in someone else's world to gain perspective, to apply to our own. So it's not necessarily about what each one of us are inherently able to handle. It's that I think we're all dealt a unique set of cards and it's how we play those cards that matter. So the thing about pain, and I'm just going to speak to that, because my experience was pain, your brother's experience was pain. He had physical pain, probably emotional and spiritual pain with the loss of two fingers and a deep emotional, mental, spiritual, and probably manifested as physical pain with the loss of his son. Pain, that's what it is. Now, pain can't be measured independent of the person experiencing it. But the one thing we know is that it's a universal human experience, we all experience pain. And so what's important is not to question can I or could I have handled that? But just to say I've handled everything that's ever been thrown my way and I'm still standing here today. So what that tells me is you're probably capable of handling a lot more than you thought you were capable of at a prior period in your life. And if something were to happen that's devastating, right in that moment, you have to choose, is this going to define me and keep me stuck or am I going to use this as fuel to who I'm capable of becoming because of what I've gone through? That's why I said earlier I learned not to get stuck by what's happened to me, but I get moved by what I can do with it. Brian: I realize I have a gift not just in my own natural abilities and gifts and intuition and emotional intelligence and all the things. But this has given me perspective that I couldn't I couldn't have gained any other way. I can put myself in other people's shoes and know what it feels like to not be seen, to know what it feels like, to feel like nobody understands me, to know what it feels like, to have people question everything I'm capable of for my entire life, even if it has nothing to do with my physical ability, even if it's one hundred percent mental, one hundred percent job and application, they view me. As not capable of doing I know what that feels like and I've had to battle that my whole life, I don't know a single person on this planet who has never felt that way. We all feel that we all experience and it's real to each one of us uniquely so I know it's probably a lot longer of an answer than you were hoping for, but the depth of the question, I think, required that approach because it's not about what you believe you could handle based on other people's circumstances. It's about what you already have handled and what you're very capable of handling if you change the way you think and feel about what you're capable of, which, again, is typically limiting in our own belief system. Joe: So because we're doing this recording and you and I have not talked about what we could talk about or what we couldn't talk about, I want to ask this and obviously I can always edit it out. And you Brian: Free Joe: Know Brian: Game, buddy, go ahead, go ahead. Joe: What? So when does someone say, like, did you ever have these dark moments? And this is not the part of the question that I'm going to ask. This is just in front of it. And you ever have a moment that you said, why me? Like, did you ever Brian: Absolutely. Joe: Ok? Brian: Absolutely, and I have those moments still today when I get when I get hit with certain things. The reason I was able to shift out of that so quickly, I remember being seven years old and that was the first thing I remember when I woke up, one feeling like it was a dream. And then I was like in this hazy state of like what this altered reality felt like, it didn't feel real. And then it was probably a day or two before I really came to and was like awake, awake, not just like in that dazed awake. At least this is from memory, I don't know the exact timeline. This is just how I feel it. And I literally remember. That question. Weiming. What is the rest of my life going to look like, like this sucks. I felt sorry for myself. I was given the opportunity to snap out of that quickly because the uniqueness of my story drew a lot of attention to it and there was a lot of families in the ICU with us who were coming up to us saying, we're so sorry for what happened to you. This is so horrible. We can't believe how hard this must be for you as a family. Let us know whatever we can do to help. Just getting wrapped with love and support from strangers to strangers saved my life. Right. That's crazy to think about. A stranger went into action and saved my life. Had she not chosen to do that, I wouldn't be here. Brian: So I don't take that lightly, but what's happening in the ICU with these families is we start to realize that these families that are giving us just unfiltered support. Are also questioning whether or not their kid is going to survive another 30 days from the terminal illness that they're in the ICU with. Only immediate threat to my life and not at that moment knowing whether or not I'd be able to use my arm. I knew I'd be alive and over the course of the next ten years, being with those kids and all of us who wanted to rally around this cause to help more people, to bring perspective, motivation, direction to an organization that helped us so holistically in a healing process, either physically, emotionally, spiritually, whatever. Right. I lost multiple of them to their terminal illnesses over the course of the next ten years. And so although I don't think about them every day, when I'm asked questions like that, it really centers me on grounds me because I'm here happy, healthy and productive, living a life that many would dream of. And those kids didn't have the opportunity to do so. And so I have to just know and honor that it was me for a lot of reasons, I might not know all those reasons in this lifetime, I believe I know a lot of them at this point, but I still ask that question. I mean, last week was an unbelievably challenging week for me. Joe: I saw the story and, yeah, that's part of where, Brian: Yeah, Joe: You know, this Brian: I mean, Joe: Is Brian: Last Joe: Going. Brian: Week Joe: Yeah. Brian: Was an unbelievably challenging week for me, for a variety of reasons. One was around this fabricated reality, around a date that in some ways is very significant, in other ways is not significant. But coincidentally or coincidentally, I got kicked in the stomach multiple times last week. And yet it didn't really totally faze me in a way that brought me down to the deepest, darkest moments, because every time I face those things, every time I start to ask the question, why me? It starts to reveal itself faster and faster the more I go through the pain. And and and so I now have this element of trust in surrender where the literally last week I was like, why do I always have this stuff happening? Why am I the one that has to deal with this? Literally? I mean, I said to my wife last week and then in the same breath, I'm like, I know why. And so for those that did ask that question still. I would just encourage you to recognize that there absolutely is a resum. Nothing happens by accident. You could call this my accident, but this was for a purpose, it wasn't on purpose, but it was for a purpose. And I realize that now more holistically than I have in my entire life, but it's the same thing for everybody else. I mean, I guarantee that your brother has learned from his experiences and having to adapt and do things with the loss of two fingers. He's had to learn and adapt. What does it mean to be a parent? And there's so many are out there who live on their lives without their child. Still a part of it. Parents aren't meant to outlive their kids. Joe: Correct. What's Brian: Right, Joe: The what Brian: And. Joe: The worst car I could think of? Brian: And by the way, there was this pending doom around this date last week that was connected to that for me, as well as from a parent's lens now. And the data is reference to a couple times I didn't I didn't say specifically on the show, but this last Saturday, March 6th, was the day that my son, who's my little clone, my little mini me, my my only boy and my oldest. Was the exact same age to the day that I was on the day of my injury. Twenty nine years separated. And. There was a lot to that most of what happened in the 10 days leading up to it had nothing to do with my son. But they were absolutely clarifying moments that needed to take place in that window. And Saturday was kind of a new start for me and a whole variety of ways, which was just unbelievably cleansing and freeing and purifying. And so even the questions last week, why me? Why does this always happen to me? Why do I have to be the one to do this? We're very clear. I know, and I think all of us do we just fight and we resist because it's not in alignment with what the world tells us. It's not in alignment with what the narrative is externally. Right. But it's not about being the victim. It's about recognizing that if we have ownership and accountability with everything we do, we recognize that there's always a reason, there's always a cause, and there's always a way through it if we desire it enough. That's when we start to become free. Joe: Ok, so here's the the part where I want to talk about Blake and Addison really quickly, I don't want to stay because, you know, I know you're super productive, positive guy. And I don't want this episode to be like the Debbie Downer episode. But you went through a lot in your life up to this Brian: Yeah, Joe: Point. Right. Brian: Yeah, Joe: And Brian: A lot. Joe: Then, Blake, I remember you talking about this, so I'm only bringing this up because I think you've talked about Brian: Yeah, Joe: It and. Brian: I've shared publicly on stuff, I'm sure I know where you're going, Joe: Yeah, Brian: But go ahead. Joe: So so you said it is is on the spectrum, right, and so you there's an extra amount of attention that has to happen Brian: Of course, Joe: There. Right. Brian: Of course. Joe: So then you deal with that another moment where you said, why me? Like, I haven't I haven't. I gone through enough. Why me? Right. And then now you have yet a third time now with with Adderson with her here. Right. And I could be another time we go. What is it going to stop. Like why me. Right. I'm sure there's people out there that do not handle this anywhere near as well as you do. And I'm hoping your words of wisdom, if they run across this episode, that it will help them understand how you I mean, you can look at their beautiful faces and go, oh, it doesn't matter. You know, they're amazing. It just it's a it's a small little blip on the radar. But it's still some people can't even handle the bullet. So Brian: They Joe: That's, Brian: Can't. Joe: You Brian: They Joe: Know. Brian: Can't. And by the way, there's a lot more depth and truth to that statement than than you probably even realized, I mean, to the point that when we found out about our daughter's hearing loss. The audiologist actually said to us she does have loss and she could benefit from hearing devices. And I paused and I said. She could benefit, like are you saying she needs hearing aids, like is her hearing profound enough that it's not like she would benefit? She she needs it to restore it to what we would expect are going to be? And she said, yeah. I said, why didn't you just say that? And she said, because most parents don't want to hear it. And she said that even when they do want to hear it, she said, because of the reports that we get when we plug in hearing aids, even if they go through the process of getting hearing aids, even if they go through the process of doing these things, she said. Most kids, the hearing aids live in a drawer. Because of some reason, right, that either the parents don't think it's important they're embarrassed by their kid or whatever, like there's a whole slew of things. You're exactly right. And in both those moments, by the way, when we found out about our son's diagnosis on the autism spectrum and we found out about our daughter. Brian: It was it was challenging, right? It was absolutely challenging for both my wife and I and we both we both grieved in different ways. And why I choose the word grieve is any time we have a vision for our lives. And that reality that we've created gets stolen from us, we experience loss. We literally go through the grieving process, the multiple steps of grieving, sometimes it's anger that manifest first, sometimes it's just like absolute depression. But but recognize it for what it is like having something happen to your kid and realizing that they might have an altered future from what you always desired and hoped for them. You have to process that, but then once you process that and you start to realize like this doesn't define the kid, just like a mine accident didn't define me right. What this really does is it's a gift because what getting both of their diagnosis is as early as we did, what allows us to do is wrap them with services, wrap them with all the support they need to close the gap between whatever their diagnosis limits them from doing to what a typical kid might be capable of doing. It shortens that gap early in those foundational early development years so that it won't really ever hurt them. Brian: Plus, the more that we talk about it not as an ailment, but just a part of who they are, right. It's no longer a label. It becomes a term of empowerment because they recognize that like they have superpowers as a result of what their diagnoses are. So the answer is yes. There's there was absolute grieving for both my wife and I, for both children. We're well beyond that at this point. But it hung with us for a while. And and there are still moments where the difficulty and complexity of our household that most people will never understand and ours is light compared to what some other people's situations are. Right. So we keep that in perspective, too. Is it harder than most parents and most households might have to be? We believe so, but it's not about like we have got it more difficult than what they have. It's just this is the cards were dealt, so we're going to play them as best we can for both of our kids. We know how lucky they are to have us. My wife is brilliant. My wife is brilliant and what she has done to allow our kids to feel authentically who they are in safe, despite all of these things, despite the fact that they know they're different in certain ways and honoring and cherishing, encouraging them to just make do the things that make their hearts happy and stand up for what is right and know that they're worthy of receiving love like exponentially. Brian: And all these things, like my wife and I were partners, but our kids are lucky to have us at the counter to that is we also feel extremely privileged to have our kids because they have challenged me to go to depths of myself, my soul, my emotions that allow me to be more effective in the world. That had I not recognized those scenarios for what they were, which is we can handle them and let's figure out the plan forward. It probably would have made me feel stuck longer than it did. And so for those parents that are listening out there that might have kids like this or even if there's not a diagnosis, but you just have a challenging time or there's an injury or there's something like, again, nothing happens by accident. And so the only way through it is through it, and if you if you desire something on the other side, then you've got to go through and that's really what it comes down to. Joe: Really powerful and I appreciate you sharing leading up to this interview, I wanted to talk about those things and I was just like, I know he's talked about it, but I I didn't know how to actually go after it and Brian: You did it beautifully, my friend, it was Joe: Think Brian: Great. Joe: I'm grateful that you shared. And so, OK, so now you and I know this is a big jump, but I just want to I know we Brian: Yeah, Joe: Have limited Brian: No, let's go. We got it, yeah. Joe: We have limited time and I don't and I want to get to where you are today. So then you get into the insurance business. Correct. So you're in that for you grew a company. I think it was from like. Brian: Quarter million to 15 million over the span of a decade. Joe: You just picked that that was just a career that you pick at one point and. Brian: Yeah, you know what's funny, I saw depicted it sort of picked me up, I was my junior year in college, was deciding that I needed to go get an internship. And so I started looking at a whole bunch different places. And I actually ended up getting into insurance because my one of my childhood friends and my childhood girlfriend, in fact, that we grew up together. And a lot of ways I always had her parents were like second parents to me for a lot of years. And I always had a great lot of respect. But I always viewed her dad as this very successful man. But I knew nothing about what he did. And I reached out to him as a mentor, frankly, and just said, hey, I'm going out. I'm doing these interviews and I have these things. And I talked to my own parents and they're successful. They've done these things as well. But I wanted extra perspectives. And he ultimately was like, I'm going to pass on your resume to so-and-so. And if you don't get a call in three days, call me. I was like, OK, not a clue what it was. It was the only one that was in insurance. Right. Very, very amazing opportunity. And it just took off from there. And nobody grows up wanting to be an insurance, right? I mean, and if they do and if you're listening to this, I apologize if you always had a desire to be an insurance. I know there's some people who love it. I never loved it. It was a great vehicle for me. And it was a great testing ground for me to grow and develop who I was as a professional, who I was as a man. I kind of grew up in it, but yeah, no, I didn't seek out insurance. I kind of fell into it and it just it fit. Joe: Right. So while you were there with your inner voice saying there's more out there for me, I want to do more, whatever it might be. I mean, how did you make the jump then when you left Brian: Yeah. Joe: There to now what you're doing, which is the coaching and the speaking and and the podcast. And I mean, I, I look at your website and I get tired just looking at all the all the different menus that I could take a look at stuff. And then I went into the podcast when I was like, wait, is he doing actually three podcasts? Like, how is he doing all this? So how did you decide how did you decide you were going to leave insurance and then pursue the Brian Bogot we know today? Brian: Yes, so I'm going to start with the first question you asked, which was, did I always know? I knew for a long time I've always had this gut feeling that like there was something meaningful that I was meant to do. No idea what that meant. OK. And then I conditioned that out of myself, and when I first got out of college, it was like bright eyed and bushy tailed, I was going to go take over the world and make a ton of money. Right. I'm going I'm literally going to be running the company. I'm going to climb the corporate ladder. I mean, it was all external. And, you know, this is one of the things I talk about now is I chased the what like so many of us did. Right? I chased what house, what car, what amount of money, what amount of success, what image do I want to portray? What, what, what, what, what. And I lost the who along the way. And I woke up one day after having accomplished all the words that I ever desired, way earlier than I thought I would have, in a way bigger level than I ever thought I would. And I realized, like, what have I been doing all this for? The more money I made, the less I cared about money, the more I got into a successful career, the more I was like, why am I doing to myself? And then I'm running in circles with people making six, seven, eight figures who all were having high of success and they were all miserable to. Brian: And so those were the turning turning point moments over the probably the last seven to eight years, maybe six, seven years, if I'm being real honest, because when I first started coaching, it was because I had my son and I always said that I'm going to do everything for the benefit of my family always. And I did. But then six months went by when my son like that and I realized I missed all of it except the first week because I was burning the candle at both ends, I was still living the life that I was to create this abundant amount of external success and validation that I needed to prove to myself I could do it and I never recalibrated my life. So part of providing everything for my family is with finances and security and opportunity and safety and all those things. But but but it's also love and leadership and presence and connection. And I don't want to be that guy that did everything for his family, then woke up twenty five years later and never had a relationship with any of them. Brian: They decided that I didn't serve a role for them outside of money. It's not all about money. It never was all about money. And so it was the first in my life. I didn't have the people in my life, the mentors, the experience or the intellect myself to figure out how to fix it. So I hired my first coach. And he said to me, a month of working together, because you're going to be doing this, like, what are you talking about? He said you need to be coaching and speaking. So you've been on stages since you were seven because you've got a unique ability or a unique story and you have an ability that you're not afraid in front of groups. And he's like, you're all about building people and building businesses. Like you're always helping. You're always finding ways to level people up. You're always helping them connect dots. And I was like, yeah, whatever. I was like, I'm paying you a lot of money. Not that's how great I have to figure out this stuff. And I completely threw it out the window. And then it just kept trickling. It kept trickling in every single month for about nine months. Brian: And then this crazy experience happened, which again, nothing happens by accident. But the universe gave me the sign that I needed, which was he told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. And that's when I started to desire a little bit more and started to feel like maybe I wasn't in alignment. But I had to ask the question if I'm going to jump in being in coaching, is this complementary or conflicting to everything else I had because I was so significantly invested mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually and monetarily. Right. In this other business that we built, that was the fruits of its labor were just starting to pay off. And it's like, let's let's make sure that we forge ahead on what we're doing here. So I started coaching and speaking and I did it alongside for about five years and then summer of twenty nineteen comes around. And again, I told you, I'm running in circles with people that are miserable. And I realized my relationship with my clients started shifting to more coaching relationships. We were placing multi million, hundreds of millions, tens of millions of dollars of insurance for people. And my conversations had nothing to do with insurance with the people that I was actually interacting Joe: Right. Brian: With at the C Suite. Joe: Yeah. Brian: Right. I was coaching them on how to be better people, how to be better leaders, how to change the culture of their business, think through and problem solve on things that really had nothing to do with insurance. But the insurance was how we were in the door. And so the more that started to migrate, we have this connection moment summer twenty nineteen with my wife and I. We go away for a weekend and it was one of those that like mentally, spiritually, physically and emotionally, like brother, like our souls were bonded like we were one and we're driving back to pick up our kids and she looks, everybody goes, how would you feel if you did have to go to the office on Monday morning? And I was like, that's a pretty loaded question. Joe: No. Brian: Why don't you tell me more? Well, I had some other I had some other health stuff that impacted me pretty significantly a few years back. I'm good now. It's all all squared away. But she said, I think you let some of this stuff allow fear to enter into your world in a way I've never seen you operate. She said, I feel like you've convinced yourself that we need the money, the status, the prestige, the security, the all of the above, what's been built. She said, I'm here to tell you we don't I don't care if we live in a cardboard box. What we need is one hundred percent of you. And she said, I don't know if you see it or not, but I see you dying a little bit inside every single day. You live in insurance. And and so she said, I think you're barely scraping the surface of your potential, nor do I think you have any impact on the world that you want. And then she said, you know, there's nobody on this planet I'd rather take a bet on than you. We took a big bet on you once and it paid off. Why don't we double down on that bet and see what you can do? And so, you know, this was one of those moments where I was flooded with fear, flooded with a whole bunch of emotions. And I had to spend three months really unpacking it with complete awareness, complete intentionality, understanding where my blocks were and ultimately came to the decision that I needed to embrace the pain of walking away from the easy button, from the sure thing, to avoid the suffering of not ever knowing what I could become or what I'd be capable of doing from an impact perspective. Brian: So you fast forward to today and you know, I spent 10 months unpacking that business left at the time, the best year ever in that industry, the year I left and was simultaneously building the foundation for where we could go. And, you know, I'm not sure if I said it or not yet on this show. I think I did. Yeah, but but that's that's now where I'm so clear and convicted on this billion lives. I genuinely believe, like we've got an opportunity to to change the world and make people feel at a level that they've never felt and feel free. And so I know what that miserable, dark place looks like. I've spent a lot of my life in moments like that. No one deserves to feel that way, but a lot of people do. And right now, I feel more free, more fulfilled, happier and more like myself than I have in my entire life. Everybody deserves to feel how I'm feeling right now. And so when I started to get the curiosity, I didn't even lean into it. My wife pushed me. And she, along with my other coach, told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear, and it's not lost on me, the courage it took in my wife to take that leap of faith with me and give me the push knowing it could upset her entire lifestyle. And so that's what I had to honor because my kids are watching, I don't want my kids to see me do what I want my kids to see me do what's right. Joe: Incredible. I love it, so your podcast, what are there, is there are there three, is that Brian: You Joe: Right Brian: Know what, I actually Joe: Or. Brian: Don't even have my own yet, Joe: Ok. Brian: I I'm in the process of developing a few. What you've probably seen as I have Bogarts Bullets, which is a regular consistent thing, but and it's going to be repurposed into a podcast. But right now it's just on YouTube and it goes on all my social channels. We have a marriage hack's string that we've started that my wife and I, we've now done we've only done one episode, but we repurpose it into three. And then my content team and strategist's decided that there are a whole lot of thought leaders, influencers, speakers in the world that create intellectual content similar to what I have for years, Bogarts, bullets putting things out, podcasts, other pieces of content to get distributed. And then there's bloggers that are much more niche, but there's nobody that's doing both. And so he's like. If you talk about how you live, you talk about these philosophies, you talk about these guiding principles, these lessons, these things that you do. Why don't we pull the curtain back and show people behind the scenes that that's actually how you operate. And so those are the three things that you've probably found is bogus bullets, the marriage tax and then the No Limits blog. And all three of those, although they're not currently set up as podcasts, one of them will be repurposed that way. And then I'm actually in the process right now. I'll be a co-host on at least two podcasts. We're going to be launching here soon, likely three if this other concept takes off. The podcasting world has kind of changed my world in a lot of ways, in a way I never saw coming. And I've been on over one hundred and fifty other people shows in the last seven, eight months, and it's allowed me to have opportunities to meet people like you. Right. And the connection with Ken Joslyn and Steve Sams. Right. Which both were people that I was on their platforms, on their shows. Like it's allowed me to align myself with incredible individuals on this planet so that we can truly have collective impact. So those are the three shows that currently exist. But they're not podcast currently. Joe: Got it. OK, so you have things coming up, I know that you're doing the Ken Joslin's Brian: Yep, Joe: Boot camp, right? Brian: Yep, yep, I'm doing his boot camp in April, I've done two of his I've got some other speaking events coming up. And then we've also got a few things launching that I'm really excited about. So we're still doing all of our work with no limits university, which is really like the concepts and the philosophies to help people understand who they are, leading them on intrinsic journey. But we also have another entity in a movement that's called Who before what that's launching as we speak, which is really an attempt to help us change the language and narrative in society about putting more emphasis on what we do versus who we are. And it's not that one or both don't matter. It's that they both matter. But one needs to lead, which is who. And so we're going to change the narrative because it's this whole idea that you go to a networking event. And the first question everybody asks is, what do you do? And even if you asked who you are, like, tell me who you are. Ninety eight percent of people answer with what they do, not who they are. Joe: So Brian: Part of the Joe: True. Brian: Pain and suffering that exists on this planet, as so many people don't know who they are. And so a lot of the core of the work with everything we do with our coaching and the No Limits university and those things are all about that. But we're actually creating a specific movement to bring into conscious awareness this idea of who needs to be before what. Joe: I love that is the university and the who before. What are they separate from your actual coaching piece Brian: They're Joe: That you Brian: All Joe: Do Brian: There, it's all kind of integrated, Joe: Ok? Brian: So, yeah, my my I would say my one to one coaching is the only thing that's kind of outside of that umbrella. It all fits on the same coaching philosophies. But just with the people I work with one to one, it's it's just inherently different than the other structure that we have. But it's the same philosophies, what you'll know about me and a lot of what we do with the no limits you and everything is this idea that we truly have the ability, if we are aware enough and influential enough to build a life of alignment that can become self-regulating. So for me, I'm very clear on who I am. I'm very clear on where I'm headed. I'm very clear on the impact I want to have, as well as the hierarchy of importance in my life. Family being first. Right. After that, because I'm so clear, everything I do is in alignment with where I'm headed. So when you ask the question, are they all, yeah, they're integrated because they're all holistically apart and in alignment of where we're going to impact a billion lives. How those are translated look a little bit different. But they are all towards the same intent, which is to impact a billion lives. Joe: So it's the YouTube channel, it's eventually some podcasts on their way. It's but no limits university. There's the Who before what portion of that? There's the coaching, which is one on one with you. Correct. Speaking engagements. When when? I mean, obviously, you still do it virtually, but you're actually going to be live at that bootcamp coming Brian: Yep, Joe: Up in Brian: Yep. Joe: April. So as that opens up again, I mean, when I watched you on the Growth Now summit, which I attended, your portion of, it was brilliant. I Brian: Oh, Joe: You Brian: Thank Joe: Know, I Brian: You. Joe: Just said, I mean, you're an amazing speaker. Brian: Thank you. Joe: You're just not talking to us. But you bring people in to the story. Brian: Thank Joe: And Brian: You. Joe: I just Brian: Thank Joe: Sat Brian: You. Joe: There and I was like, oh, this is unbelievable. Like, I would have paid thousands of dollars to Brian: Thank Joe: Watch. Brian: You. Joe: So it Brian: Thank Joe: Was amazing. Brian: You. Joe: Did I miss somewhere on your website? Because it's just so much on there. I can't figure out. Brian: No, Joe: But Brian: You Joe: Is Brian: Didn't miss you didn't Joe: It. Brian: Miss anything. There's going to be new sections actually built on the website, Zoom. Let's put it this way. You listed a lo
If you look at all the bad habits that you've been trying to stop for a decade they all have one thing in common: They are all things you're telling yourself you SHOULD stop doing. What if thinking you “should” is what keeps you stuck? And what if getting in touch with your wants, in a deep way, is the quickest way to get you unstuck?"The want is that very simple impulse that is moving us, that moves us to have a closer relationship with our loved ones. It is a constant pull that leads us all the way down the developmental line. If we allow it, it will take us all the way to freedom."If you look at all of the bad habits you have been trying to stop for a decade, you will find they all have one thing in common. They are all things you are telling yourself you should stop doing. The same is likely true for the things you tell yourself you should be doing more of, finishing a project, going to the gym, calling your mom. What if thinking you should is what keeps you stuck? What if getting in touch with your wants in a deep way is the quickest way to get unstuck? Let's get to the bottom of this. Brett: Joe, I would think this is pretty obvious, but you usually have a unique definition of things. What exactly do you mean by should?Joe: Should is really a mechanism of shame. It is. There's a saying that says that shame is the locks that keep the chains of bad habits in place. Should is like a really bad management technique. Energetically, it's oppressive. Intellectually, it's control-based. Emotionally, it's rigidity and neurologically, it's a threat. If you say to somebody, "You should really do that," there is a threat in that. What's interesting is, that same energy really doesn't happen in certain cultures. When you see, particularly, more indigenous cultures that I've been a part of and seeing that whole should telling people thing just doesn't happen, at least energetically, it doesn't happen. When I mean energetically, I don't mean energetically in a spiritual new age way. I just literally mean the energy in which you are talking to the person. That's what I think it is. You're right. They are the things that keep your bad habits in place. Shoulds are just really ineffective. I'll tell you the story where I learned this. I was like 26 years old and I decided I was going to be brutally honest with myself. I wrote down a list of everything about myself that I didn't want to admit to myself. Then I folded it away and I put it away and I found it like six months, maybe a year later. I went through the list and I was like, "How many of these things have changed?" Remarkably, most of them had. I was like, "Wow, that's amazing. I did nothing and they just changed," just the recognition of them changed, awareness changed them.Then I looked through all the ones that hadn't changed and to a tee, each single one of them had a very heavy should attached to it. That's when I started to realize that this way of managing ourselves by telling ourselves we should do things is just really ineffective.Brett: To keep it simple around the definition of should, we're talking about the moment that we tell ourselves that we should do something.Joe: Well-- the voice in the head will tell you that you should do something and that's the most obvious thing, but there's also an energetic should that happens. It's almost a muscular response or a neurological response to something and it doesn't always have to have the verbal, "You should do this." You could just reach for the double flourless chocolate cake and you'll just feel that "er" inside of you and that is just a nonverbal should. I think it's really important to see it as both.Brett: What's wrong with controlling ourselves in this way? If these shoulds are pointing us towards the things that we want or don't want to be doing, what's causing that to get in the way?Joe: It's because you've put an extra layer on it. If you're just in the wants, it's an amazing fluid thing. Then when it gets into the shoulds, it creates the threat, like I said and a rigidity. As an example, if I try to control a two-year-old and I have that energy of like "rah", “You will do this, you should do this”. There's one of two responses that happen in any human. If I did it to you right now, "Hey, you should speak differently on this podcast." It immediately creates one of two things in you. Let's do it for the audience here. "You should be listening to this podcast better. You are not paying close enough attention."If I'm treating you like that, there's one of two responses. One of those responses is going to be rebellion. There's just something innate that's like "er". No response. That's not a really effective way to create anything. It's just creating no's. The other thing that it does is you're like, "Oh, you're right, I should." It's this submission. It's not surrender. It's submission. It's like, "I am weak and I will just do what you say." Then you've got a whole bunch of disempowered people and that doesn't really help much either. Especially if you're in a company, you want a company full of empowered people or you want a community full of empowered people, or you want yourself to feel empowered. Every time you're using the should, what's happening is that you are either creating your own internal rebellion, which is why you haven't done the things you've been telling yourself you should do for decades, because you're rebelling against it. Or you're creating a disempowered situation inside yourself. You're creating more of a victim mentality to this voice in your head that's being abusive.Brett: Interesting. What I notice about myself is, that when I think about not telling myself what I should do or shouldn't do anymore, there becomes this fear that I'll just become lazy or some couch potato and I just won't do the things that I should do as I use that word.Joe: [chuckles] Totally, exactly.Brett: What's your response to that? What happens if we stop doing the should, if we stop setting out a path for what we want from ourselves from a perspective of being conscious of the risks and the threats?Joe: Great questions. This is that inherent goodness thing that we've spoken about before, which is basically-- the idea is that you are a lazy slob, piece of shit, just going to pick your ass and live off of other people unless you tell yourself you should do something. You know what I mean? Could you imagine if you thought about somebody else that way? Unless I tell Joe that he should do a podcast, he's just never going to fricking do it. I got to tell him he should do it. It's a nonsensical thing to really think like, "Here I am doing this podcast. Nobody told me I should do it. I wanted to do it." If you think about kids from zero to eight years old, there's no internal should. They're doing all sorts, they're developing crazy amounts compared to any other time in life. They're learning all sorts of things. It's all just because they're following their wants. On one level, that's a really important thing to note. On the other hand, you actually may become a couch potato for a while, which sounds a little weird. The thing is, if you have been under threat for an extended period of time, there's going to be a need to relax. There's going to be a need to recover. If you're going cold turkey on your shoulds, you might actually just need to slow down for a bit. It's not going to be a couch potato. The couch potato thing happens when you burn out and then you tell yourself you shouldn't be burning out. You should stop playing video games. You should stop laying on the couch. You should stop. You should stop. You should stop. Then you really will go into full couch potato mode. If the natural burnout happens with the should, then it looks like depression. There might be a time where you need some more rest, where you need to recover. You see this happen in schools all the time, when there's this thing called unlearning or un-schooling or something like that, where kids are taken out of the school that have burnt out. They take like five or six months and do very little. Then all of a sudden, they learn three or four times as quickly as they were in school. There's lots of studies on this. You're basically saying, "If I don't put myself under threat of a should, if I don't tell myself that I'm bad if I don't, then I won't." It's just not my experience at all. My experience is that the people who are most generative in their life are people who want to do shit, not who feel like they should do.Brett: It sounds like it takes time to shift paradigms of thinking. This reminds me a little bit of a thought experiment--Joe: Hold on a second. That may be true. That may not be true. Don't assume that one though, at least for people listening. For me, turning off the shoulds in the voice in my head was very quick. It didn't take a tremendous amount of time. Once I really just understood, "Oh, this shit doesn't work." If you know that you have a screw gun and every time you use the screw gun it strips screws, you're pretty much not going to use that screw gun. It's not going to take a lot of time to figure that out. If you start telling yourself you should stop using shoulds, it could take years.Brett: That makes sense. This reminds me of the thought experiment of having the voice in your head be a roommate. If you were to go to talk to somebody like a roommate or a friend and they were the person that's just going to tell you what you should do, versus the kind of person that helps you find what you want, then you might either stop going to that person, because it doesn't feel like you're really getting helped, or you might become dependent on them telling what you should do.Joe: Most humans would just move out. Some of us are engineered or programmed to give up our own empowerment for a person like that. That's right. Most of us who had a boss who spoke to us like that should voice in our head, we would quit or we would be miserable. If that “should voice” in your head is really strong and really loud, there is a strong case that you're miserable, whether you see it or not.Brett: As we release ourselves from the oppression of these shoulds and we start listening to what we want and trusting that our wants are inherently good and healthy for us-- let's get into the wants side of this then. How would you define wants?Joe: The want is just that impulse that moves through you, that animates your actions. That is what the want is. The should is just this egoic layer on top of it that slows the whole thing down. Let me explain. You're sitting and you think to yourself, "I should exercise." What's actually happening is there's an impulse and a want to exercise and it shows up. Instead of just like, "Oh, cool," and doing 10 jumping jacks, you say to yourself, "I should go to the gym." Then that just destroys your chances of actually working out or at least very much lowers your chances of working out.The want is just that very simple impulse that's moving us, that moves that eight-year-old, that five-year-old, that three-year-old. It moves the toddler to walk better. It moves the crawler to toddle. It moves us to speak. It moves us to have a closer relationship with our loved ones. It is a constant pull that leads us all the way down the developmental line. If we allow it, it'll take us all the way to awakenings and freedom.Brett: What if I'm listening to my want and my want is to have a big piece of chocolate cake?Joe: That's a really good question. There's one other piece that I think is really important to explain. The thing is that wants are somatically expansive. They're intellectually empowering. The want is very different, if you attach to it or if you don't attach to it. If you attach to, let's say, having that girlfriend Jennifer, then you're in craving, which is different than want. The want is just that impulse. It's just that empowering expansive impulse. If you look at the cake and you're in that empowering expansive place, that's very different, than the way most people want a cake, what they think is wanting a cake, which either this struggle, "I want it, but I don't want it. I want it. I don't want it. I want it. I don't want it." That's not a clean want. There's still some refinement that needs to go there or there's just that unconscious shoving the cake in their mouth and calling it a want. The want is something that feels very expansive. If you look at something like a chocolate cake and it feels very expansive to sit and eat that thing, then yes, follow the want. Because the thing about the wants in general is that you have to follow them to deepen into them. What that means is you want to follow the chocolate cake because you want to have this sense of pleasure. Great, have the sense of pleasure. Then you start finding out what the deeper sense pleasures are.You follow that want home and you find out it has seven more beautiful siblings. If the want is clean, it doesn't matter if it's a short-term or a long-term-- healthy in your mind and your superego, it's far more about allowing that movement, so you can find the next step. You can't want to run unless you've wanted to learn how to walk. You have to actually get to the walking point to have an effective next level of want. That's how it works is that the wants move us. A toddler, they just want to walk and walk well. Maybe as a toddler, you want to run, but then you can want to play baseball and then you can want to play basketball and then you can want to play basketball really, really well.It's the same thing with our wants. When we start really getting in touch with our wants, then they really transform. For example, the want is, “I want a million dollars” and there's some shame with that and so it's not a clear impulse. Then we're like, "What is that clear impulse?" It's like, "Oh, I want to be empowered."Brett: That sounds very relevant to a career path as well. I heard a story recently from a friend who's a lawyer. Halfway through their first semester, they were like, "Okay, I'm not going to do this. I don't want to be a lawyer. This sucks." The experience was they were like, "These are all the things that I have to do to get to where this path is supposed to put me and it doesn't look fun at all." This person described that they simply stopped caring about what they were supposed to be doing and they started paying attention to what they actually wanted. They were like, "Actually, there's all things that I want to be doing that I could do if I was enabled with this law degree."They started just making it theirs. They took all the classes they wanted, that nobody else was taking and ended up on some trends that they were ahead of their game on or ahead of the trend on as a result of following the way they wanted to be a lawyer and they ended up really loving their career. Joe: That's exactly right. If you're doing your shoulds and you're basically following rigidity, you're following a tightness and you're going to have that kind of tight life. You're going to have a very rigid life. If you're following your wants, your life becomes much more expansive.Brett: I liked what you had been saying about craving as well. It sounds like craving is distinct from wants. Craving is a want that you don't want. It feels like a want, but you really don't want it.Joe: [laughs] Yes, there's a thing about the want. If you just take the want viscerally and you don't try to get there, you don't try to get to the end, if you just take the want viscerally, you can feel it. Let's do this for a second. If you close your eyes and you feel a really deep want inside of you, you have a deep one, not a superficial one, but a very deep one, maybe a want for a deeper form of intimacy or a want for a more expansive consciousness, or a want for more love in your life. You feel that want and you take it in and you don't worry about whether you can get it or not. You don't even think about how to get it. You just feel what it is to want.Wanting is just a feeling like anger or sadness. Just allow that feeling in your system without trying to get to the goal. That experience is really pleasant. It's really quite lovely. To me, the way it works in my system is, it is one of the closest feelings to love, to allow a desire deeply inside of you. I think it's why so many of the the Sufi poets, they talk about desire in this way that they just love desire. This longing-- because that longing is so close to love. It's so close to that expansive acceptance of everything. That's what wanting is. “Now I got to get it. How do I get it? Why can't I get it?” That's craving and that's painful as shit.Brett: This reminds me of a lot of different spiritual traditions that tell us, that craving is a hindrance to freedom. For example, Buddhism's principle of non-attachment or Christianity's warnings about the desires of the flesh. Is that what they mean?Joe: There's those spiritual traditions and then there's the tantric spiritual traditions. People think that they're at odds, but they're really not at odds at all. What's happening there is that people have been beaten out of their wants and so they start turning cravings into an excuse not to want to not allow themselves to want anymore. If you're really deeply closely looking into your own personal experience, the craving is the thing that they're talking about and the wanting, the desire that the Sufis are talking about, the tantric people are talking about, is, there are two different things that are happening inside of your system.Brett: It's interesting. The exercise that we just did about the wanting-- for myself, I was thinking about having a healthy body and being fit and having strength. In feeling the wanting, I was imagining moving my body and having range of motion, flexibility and strength. The moment I started trying to figure out how I was going to get there, then all of a sudden it turned into "Oh, but I'd have to work out." Suddenly, the working out feels like a chore. The actual wanting of being healthy, the way that I was imagining that was actually working out, was the equivalent of moving and using my body.Joe: Exactly. If you just stick with that as a daily practice, how do I want to be in my body right now? Thirty minutes of how do I want to be in my body right now would get you exactly where you want to be in your body. How much more appealing is that? I have to work out today or, “How do I want to be in my body for 30 minutes?” It seems like it's almost no different and it's like worlds and worlds apart.Brett: Let's get this into the context of business and achievement. A tremendous amount of successful executives are deeply attached to winning and succeeding and it seems to be working well for them in many regards. How would you factor that into this?Joe: There's people who tell themselves they should do stuff. Apparently they're pretty successful at it or they're deeply attached. They have a deep craving and they're successful at getting their cravings met. For me, it's pretty simple. There is the intention which is critical. I'm not suggesting to drop all intention in life. We have our intention, we have that want, we have the impulse and that's a really, really important thing. It gives us a north star. It gives us a heading that we move down. To hold that intention is absolutely completely important to getting stuff done in the world of accomplishing stuff in the world. Being attached to succeeding is absolutely a fine way to succeed. It's not the most efficient way to succeed. It is not the most enjoyable way to succeed, but it is absolutely a fine way to succeed. You can really, really get attached to something. You can work at it and you can get there. In fact, it's really important to have some of that if you're going to get anywhere in life and that's the intention. You can have that intention without that craving, without that deep attachment. If you don't have it, you're lucky to get anywhere. That intention is really quite important. If you're going to put attachment on top of that intention, on top of that want, then you are dragging. Then you are like throwing an anchor out and sailing across the ocean with your anchor out. It is not going to be the most effective. The real thing is that intention, like, "What is the context of it? What's the way that you make it most enjoyable? Let me give you an example. If I look at every single CEO that I know who has been very, very successful, their intention wasn't to make money. They weren't attached to making money. What they were attached to was being the best or beating their competition, or reducing carbon in the world, or being the best at customer service. They had some intention, that was past this intention of just succeeding. Their attachment was beyond succeeding. Because if you're just attached to the succeeding part, it's a lot more difficult. If succeeding is something that you have to do to get to the part that you're attached to, then it's easier. The attachment isn't the most efficient way to get to where you want to go, to have that strong attachment. It's definitely not the most enjoyable way to get to where you want to go, but the intention, absolutely critical. Does that make sense?Brett: Yes, totally. It seems like having the intention versus having the attachment to success, the intention makes it easier to pivot. If your intention is to build a company or build a product that reduces carbon in the world, there are many ways to do that. You could start out with one idea of doing it and discover that there's different ways of doing it. One of them just isn't working in the market. It seems like it would be easier to get out of the local optimum or maybe you just have to let go of what you are doing and start something new, which is just really common in any any business endeavor, this idea of pivoting and flowing with reality. If you're really attached to the particular success, then you might be more resistant to make changes, that seem in the short-term to lead away from your goal of success.Joe: That's right. You have your intention out there. That's where you know which way you're going. We'll call that like the goal or the want. That intention is what's moving you in the direction. Then you can have different attitudes towards that goal, towards that want. The attitude could become a should, the attitude could be, "I'm scared of getting to the goal. I'm angry that I don't haven't gotten to the goal. I have absolute faith that I will be there." All of those ways are different attitudes towards having that goal. You're not going to get there without the goal. The most efficient attitude to get to the goal is to be in the want of it, not the should of it. It is to be in the enjoyment of it, not the rigidity of it. That's the more efficient way to get there and to be beyond the goal itself. It's that the goal of succeeding is really just a necessary step to get to your deeper goal.Brett: Give me some more examples of holding an intention without the should.Joe: You're running a company and you have a revenue goal of $100 million. You can hold that as, "I should get to $100 million". You can hold that goal as, "I want to get to $100 million." You can hold that goal as, "I will get to $100 million." You can hold that goal as, "I can't wait until I get to $100 million." The way you hold that goal is going to affect how much energy you have. It's going to affect how rigid you are in it. It's going to affect your ability to be flexible. Then the second level of it is choosing that goal as far as whether you're going to make that the easy goal or the long-term goal. Are you saying, "I want to get a $100 million, just to get a $100 million?" Are you saying, "I want to get a $100 million, so that I can build a spaceship to get to Mars"? Are you saying, "I want to get a $100 million, so I can beat the competition"? All of those things are important. It's not the intention or the goal. It is how you approach the goal, how you attach to the goal, the relationship you have with the goal. That's the important piece for efficiency and enjoyment.Brett: Feeling like you should be doing this prescriptive path towards the goal is controlling yourself with threat, essentially.Joe: Correct, that's right. It could work short-term, but it's definitely not going to work long-term.Brett: What makes it that we don't see the inefficiency of our shoulds when we're in them? If it is the case that everything that we don't do in life that we want to do and everything that we do do that we want to stop doing is all locked in place by these shoulds, what makes it so opaque to us?Joe: It's a shame situation. The way that you can look at it is even if you take it up a level for a second, what's the important thing about having the intention? What's the important thing about having the goal? It tells you what questions to ask. If I say to you, "You need to start a company and that company needs to sell widgets to 10 people," then you're going to ask questions to get to that goal. But if I say, "You need to sell widgets to a hundred million people, you're going to ask different questions." You're going to say, "Maybe I have to think about venture capital. Maybe I have to think about private equity. Maybe I have to think about distribution at that scale," that you're not going to have to think about it if you're selling 10 widgets.The goal is important, because it very, very much helps us determine what questions to ask. That's why goals are so important, but what most people do is they put some shame into those goals, tell them they should reach the goals, not that they want to, not that they can, but that they should reach the goals and then all of a sudden those goals become a burden. They become like, "Oh, if I don't do that, I'm bad." That's what makes it hard for us to see the shoulds is, that it makes us think that we're bad. The should makes us think that we're bad and if we think that we're bad, it's very hard to see what actually motivates us. It's the same thing like in wars. If two countries are warring with each other and that whole war has to depend on people thinking the other side is bad. If people look up and say, "You know what, they're just people. We're just people. We're just both trying to get along," the war's going to stop. To have that internal war of should means that you have to think you're bad and that's what makes it so hard to see through the should, to see through the war. What's really strange about it is, that you can see it from a manager 10 miles away. You're sitting there and you see a manager like "You should, you should, you should." You're like, "Oh my God, that's not going to work." That's horribly ineffective. There's been hundreds of management books saying, "Don't do that because it doesn't fricking work," and psychological studies, but we'll do it to ourselves all fricking day long. We will recognize it outside, but we won't recognize it inside.Brett: It's as if the moment we say we should be doing something, the structure of that should is to flatten all of our wants to go do that one thing, because we've prioritized it. If we are routinely doing that thing where we're suppressing our wants to do the thing we should do, then we can't hear or feel our wants anymore.Joe: That's right. The wants, for many of us, are very scary. It's a very scary thing to have a want, because we were taught at a young age not to have wants. We don't have that want because mom won't be happy. You don't have that want because you won't be codependent with that. You don't have that want because blah, blah, blah. A lot of people are told to disassociate from their wants. They're not taught that their wants are amazingly beautiful things, that can guide them in their entire life.Brett: Let's talk more about that. What makes wanting so vilified in our society?Joe: My experience is, that there's a pain that we feel from being rejected in our wants. It's like a deep level of rejection. We're all kind of school kids that got deeply rejected when we asked someone out on a date and so we're hesitant to do it again. Because our wants are this deeply intimate thing, this very vulnerable thing. They are at the core of us. If they've been rejected, we don't want to feel that rejection again. I think that's the internal process. Externally, if you have a whole bunch of people who are codependent or a whole bunch of people, who were told that they were selfish as kids, which really, if you're told that you were selfish as a kid, that really just means that you weren't doing what your mom and dad wanted you to do. If you were told that, then having somebody own their wants is very uncomfortable for you. There's this external world that is uncomfortable with people owning their wants. There's also this external world of people who just can't wait for that person to be owning their wants some more. It's like rock and roll. Back in the day, rock and roll was there. There's these people who shut up and they're like, "I'm going to get whatever I want. I want to do this and do that." There was this group of people were like, "Yes." There was a group of people like, "Devil." That's how it works when you're really owning your wants, especially the earlier wants. The later wants start to refine and start to become more and more beautiful. Then it's a little bit less likely to happen. We all start with the early wants and to own them gets a certain level of rejection, because other people would have to feel their own wants. The thing about wants in general is that it's our human nature to want. You can play this game with friends and after every sentence, just say what it is that you wanted to get out of that sentence. You will find a want in every single sentence that you speak. Right now, I want to have you guys understand what I'm saying. Right now, I want you to taste the deep pleasure of wanting. There's always this conscious want behind almost every sentence we have, it's such a part of our human nature. We cannot get away from it. All we can do is own it or we can sublimate it. Should is just a way of sublimating it, which is why it doesn't work as effectively.Brett: I'm going to say something right now because I want to participate in this podcast and feel relevant.Joe: [laughs] I want to respond so that you know that I love you and I care for you.Brett: I want to end the pregnant pause. [both laugh] A lot of what you were saying about the societal aspect is that it's uncomfortable for people to feel their wants. Part of what it is, is people have a problem seeing other people want what they want, because that makes them feel the pain of their own wants. The pain of our own wants seems to be linked to something we've discussed on some other episodes, the consequences of wanting, the potential consequence. If I want something, I might not get it, I might have to feel disappointment. I might be judged. I might break this cozy structure of this job that I'm in or this relationship that I'm in, because my wants feel incongruent with that.Joe: The interesting thing about that in general is, that not getting our wants met is not actually as scary as we want or pop psychology would say that it is, because we all have a dozen wants that we haven't had met. It doesn't devastate us all the time. How many people listening to this podcast want to have $10 million more in the bank? it hasn't happened. Didn't devastate any of us. I think it's the exposure, the vulnerability of showing your want and having it rejected. That's the deeper scare.Brett: Admitting that you want $10 million in the bank and people judging you for that, greedy.Joe: Exactly. The amazing thing is when you totally own a want, oftentimes the want goes away almost immediately. I really want $10 million in the bank. If you fully feel that all the way and you're just like, "Oh, yes, $10 million," just feel that want. Oftentimes, it just starts shifting. It's just like, "Oh, what I want is security." Then it's like, "Oh, what I really want is to feel empowered in every situation." If you don't allow yourself to have the want, it can't move through you. It's just like, if you don't allow yourself to get angry, it can't move through you. If you don't allow yourself to get sad, it can't move through you. It's just another emotion that needs to move through you and is so pleasant when it does.Brett: It sounds like on one level, you're saying that it is an impulse and on another level, you're saying it's an emotion. Can you get into that distinction a little bit more?Joe: That's a great question. Let me feel inside for a moment and really see what the distinction is there. It seems like there's this impulse that moves. The way it's working in my system is, there's this impulse to move, to say these words, to be in front of my computer right now, to answer your question. There's this natural impulse. If that impulse meets any friction, then this emotional experience of wanting starts to occur. As this emotional experience of wanting starts to occur, that becomes the feeling. That's the feeling that's there.If I fully feel the feeling, the friction starts to fade. There's the impulse side of the wanting and then there's also the emotional side of the wanting. It's what distinguishes, “I'm just going to walk to the bathroom right now” and there's no experience of wanting in that process, because there's no friction met. As soon as that impulse meets any level of friction, then there's this experience of wanting. If you fully feel that experience, it turns deeply into a loving expansive experience and then that friction starts to go away.Brett: I want to hear one more story from you, a personal story relevant to how you arrived at all of this.Joe: I'd be happy to share a story, Brett. It's a story of shoulds and wants. When I was earlier in my venture capital career, I had this idea that I really should be making money. It was foreign to me because it wasn't something that was really ever important to me before. It was a combination of a feeling of indebtedness to the investors and also doing a good job and being valuable, but the shoulds started appearing in my life at that point. Then I was sitting in a hammock and I read this news at some point. I remember the time specifically. I read this news, that this company that was formed with almost no money sold for multi billions of dollars and it felt like just an absolute kick in my stomach, just like a whack in my stomach. I stopped and I went, "Oh, where did I feel that for the first time?" I traced it back, not intellectually, but like my entire body traced back that feeling to the first time I felt it. The first time I felt it was trying to please my father as a kid and it was like, "Oh," and it was not pleasable at that time. To please him, at least from my point of view, wasn't possible. I saw that this whole money making activity had nothing to do with actually making money and the should behind it had nothing to do with it. It was this very early should that I had of I should be pleasing my father. That was a very ingrained should. It was at that moment that I was like, "Okay, hold on a second. This doesn't have anything to do with money and it's a should. What do I want? What I really want to do here?" What I realized is, I just wanted to create great cultures for people. I want it to be a part of creating great cultures for people to work in. That changed everything. It changed my approach. It changed my ability to be effective. It just changed everything as soon as I just moved from the should that was driven by an early feeling to a want, which was very present and it was just very immediate. All of a sudden, everything started to open up and flourish in my life in a new way.Brett: Wow, thank you. How do you want to end this?Joe: I want to express a deep gratitude for everybody who's listening, who's dedicated to understanding themselves, who honors me by choosing to be here as part of this experience. My deepest want is a very deep bow to everybody who's listening and to say that I wouldn't be here without people who were bowing to me. I am grateful to be bowing to you. My deep hope is, that you will bow to the people who appear before you.Brett: Joe, thank you for taking the time to help all of us build our culture internally and in our companies.Joe: Thanks for doing the work, man. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe. We would love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions and comments. To reach us, join our newsletter, learn more about VIEW, or to take a course, visit: artofaccomplishment.com
David Meltzer Interview - Be Kind To Your Future Self I was a true honor and thrill to have David Meltzer on my show. He inspires me and I love his approach to life. I look forward to creating a genuine relationship with him in the years to come and being mentored by him as well. David Meltzer is the Co-Founder of Sports 1 Marketing and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh (“Lee”) Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. His life's mission is to empower OVER 1 BILLION people to be happy! This simple yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing…VALUE. In all his content, and communication that's exactly what you'll receive. As part of that mission, for the past 20 years, he's been providing free weekly trainings to empower others to empower others to be happy (held each week at 11AM Pacific Time). Link to Register: https://dmeltzer.com/training David Meltzer Co-Founder of Sports 1 Marketing formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh (“Lee”) Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire Website: https://dmeltzer.com/ Weekly Free Trainings - Fridays 11am PST https://dmeltzer.com/training/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidmeltzer/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidmeltzer11 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmeltzer2/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmeltzer YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCflt1OopRWIApMOjVgZyJ6Q David's Podcast - The Playbook: https://www.entrepreneur.com/listen/playbook Text Community: (949) 298-2905 Email: david@dmeltzer.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: So my guest today is David Meltzer. I've been very excited to have this interview and I can't wait. So, David, welcome so much and I appreciate you coming on my show. David: Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate any opportunity to share a message on your platform to help other people make money, help people have fun, be happy. Joe: I appreciate it. So is it really weird if I tell you that I love you? I mean, I love if I start the interview off that way, that I love everything about you. I'm so glad I found you. For me, you are the the full package of someone that I look up to all that you do, your humble, your kind. When I see you on your live videos and you're talking with people, you can see the emotion that's there. It's just hard to find the whole package like that. David: Well, it takes years of work, internal work to allow yourself to love yourself, and they told me that if I could ever learn to love myself and I'm still on the journey, that more people would love me. So it's not weird to say that it's we're connected. We're connected in those people that feel me that here and listen to me. And it moves them just there's a clear connection between us. The tree has no branches. So I am well adjusted in the fact that I take it as a huge compliment. If anyone says that to me that I'm doing the right work internally so that other people feel the same way. Joe: I actually wrote down different notes, one of them is kind of your future self, I'd like you to explain that. David: My favorite could ever be kind of your future self is a perspective of finding the light, the love and the lessons, the super power and everything, so many people, they look for what they don't want. They look for what's missing in their lives. They look for what other people want for them, and they're not being kind to their future selves by doing so. When you look for the superpowers and others in yourself, when you look for the light, the love and the lessons, your being kind to your future selves. And people ask me, well, how how do I do that? Pragmatically, David and I have a simple, pragmatic methodology, which is do good deeds, smiley people wave out that my wife still thinks I'm a complete kook? We go walking, hopefully every day we go walking together. It's one of the things that I do is an adaptable routine to make sure I spend a minimum of time with my wife, but I'll wave and everyone. And so, you know, that person know she looks at me like I'm absolutely insane. But to me, that's being kind to my future self. And you never know. I'm telling you, so many people have told me that I've impacted their lives because I've had that perspective one word at the right time or one action of letting someone in front of you at the grocery store. There's a woman that sit there and go, she had babies and she had items. And I just, you know, I'm on a coaching call. What's the difference about doing it in my car or in line at the grocery store? I let the lady before me. She turns around in tears. I was like, Are you OK? She's like, No. She goes, We moved here and we thought we had to move back. And I told myself, if I don't find somebody, you know, to show me that kindness that I was going to think about moving back. And there you were. And I was like, that's what we do. That's being kind to your future self. And all that impact aggregates together to change the world. Joe: One of the other things that I wanted to ask along the same lines is, are you a believer of we are where we are supposed to be? You know, the thing that people say, you know, the universe delivers when you're ready. And I just thank God, doesn't the universe have more for me? I want to live a much bigger life. That's why I completely look up to you. And I aspire to what you do. And I just feel like I just turned fifty nine in February and I'm like, God, there's got to be something more. I want more. I want to live a bigger life and I can't believe this is all the universe thinks I deserve. David: Yeah, so the paradigm that needs to be shifted is, yes, I believe that we are at the right place at the perfect time, that we have everything we need or we wouldn't be here. But I also believe that we need to live in the Law of GooYa and the Law of GooYa. Get off your ass. John Assaraf taught me that and he was explaining first time I met him, you know, he I started to read the law of Attraction, thinking he would dive deep. And he said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I really don't believe in the law of attraction. I believe a lot of Coya, which creates a frequency that will allow things to happen. And it really changed my perspective, because what I want you to think about and everybody out there is what if you already have everything? Meaning what if you already are connected to the health that you want, the great wealth that you want, and the great happiness that is yours? You talk about the minute we say that there's more for me, we actually are thinking about what's missing in our lives instead of shifting the paradigm and saying, I already have it, what am I doing to interfere with it? I stem from a belief above exactly where I'm supposed to be. I'm going to do everything I can, the law of GooYa, to angle to what I want, to clear the interference from me to what I want to come through me for others, because I'm going to give it away anyway. David: But there's much more for me because I live in a world of more than enough. More than enough of everything for everyone. It's my job not to go get it, not to think that there's something missing, but to figure out what's interfering with me and everything that is already mine. The greatest source of power, light love lessons, the greatest source of abundance of everything that is beyond our fathomable dreams and imaginations called infinity. And if I can, just for an instant every day, touch limitlessness an infinity, if I can do that through my perspective of gratitude, forgiveness, accountability and inspiration, just an instant that allows me to hopefully tomorrow have two instances where I've cleared everything out of the way and I feel that way of abundance, truly unconditional love. And so I want everyone out there to think about what is already theirs to remind themselves. Remember all these words, recollect again, knowledge, the fact that we already have it, and when we don't feel as if we have it, that it's an illusion created by an interference, usually the ego is creating that interference. And so what do we do to clear that out of the way so that all of the things that are already ours, the material wealth, the extraordinary health, the extraordinary happiness that they actually come to us more rapidly and accurately. They come through us for others in the same way. Joe: So you're saying that I by doing that, I will be able to identify what the resistance's. David: Correct. You already have everything you dream of, you're just resisting it and you're creating void shortages and obstacles between you and what you already have. Joe: I just I'm getting in my own way, is what you're trying to say in a nice way. David: So, no, I think that is a nice thing to say, I'm in my own way all the time, I'm just limited by what what I'm doing in comparison is an extraordinary way of stealing your joy. So I'm consistently trying to expand my own pipe to what I already am. And as much as I can see where you have that perspective of, there's so much more. Why don't I have it? That's the world of not enough. And I live there for a while. I know what that's like where you become a victim, where there's not enough of anything and you should have more. And why do they have this? And I don't have this. And then even the world of for me, you know, everything's for me. And I lived in this abundant or supposedly abundant world where I bought things I didn't need to impress people I didn't like creating more resistance in my life to teach me even more valuable lessons. But I try to spend only minutes in moments and interference instead of days, weeks, months and years. And I live as much as I can in the pursuit of a world of more than enough of abundance, where I truly believe that infinity is my possibility. Joe: So I read about in your book, so I love this book, and I bought 10 copies because I want to share this with people I care about. And I read in there about how you talk about meditation and manifestation. And the really cool thing was the point where you say you get up and you meditate at and you said in the two a.m. and four a.m. time period is when there's less vibration around. And so the four a.m. time slot for you is really important. So if meditation was taken away from you for some reason, just hypothetically, what would that do to you or what would you think that the importance of meditation in your life is? David: Yeah, it would it would diminish my capacity to plateau and grow, it would diminish my capacity to have a baseline in which I can recognize, recollect, remember my highest frequency so that I know when the ego based consciousness is that I have are interfering with me and what I want or what is already mine. And so I think without the practice of being quiet, it would be more difficult to expand, grow and accelerate at the pace that I do to spend minutes and moments and ego based consciousness instead of days, weeks, months and years. It's a very essential time. Is important is meditation is to me, so is the shift in the paradigm that I've utilized for my time in all of the things that is not in to goodness, that has evolved from connected to goodness. The book that you have is that I have a philosophy about my days. My tomorrows starts today. So where everyone gets excited about tomorrow, that means 9:00 PM to me. So I've shifted the man made construct of time. I know it screws up my wife in the calendaring because I'll say, Oh, I can't wait for tomorrow. And then my tomorrow starts at 9:00 p.m.. And the reason it does is that it shifts my entire perspective of life, that I have an unwinding routine to start my day, that my day starts at its highest frequency at nine p.m. David: I then put my mind, body and soul in the right position to recover at the beginning of the day, to recover physically, then to allow the greatest flow of connection with the least amount of resistance to start my day, which is sleep. Sleep is the physical, natural realm of being able to get out of your own way. And so to utilize nine p.m. is the beginning of my day to set me up for what most people call tomorrow. But now I call it tomorrow. Today is extraordinary because then leading into four a.m., I'm now at my physical recovery of the highest vibration. But I also have elevated my awareness through less interference between subconscious and unconscious connectivity to the greatest source of light, love and lessons, which leads to what I call the plateau and growth methodology of life. So you're not living and can move the stranger's myth of Sisyphus pushing a boulder, which I live many years of my life feeling this way, pushing a boulder to the top of the hill just to start over in the morning. My tomorrow starts today. I think the nine p.m. and routine is equal to, if not greater than importance to the practice of being quiet. My for a meditation for twenty minutes. Joe: And what does that 9:00 p.m. unwinding look like? David: So for me, it's understanding negative energy, so temperature wise, for me, it's sixty seven degrees so that I'm in a state of temperature that allows for the most physical recovery dark, no negative conversation, no negative content, disturbing content. Everything to me is to whine down, no eating, no drinking, no drugs or alcohol, obviously, which I laugh at. But there's plenty of times, believe me, after nine o'clock, that I was partaking in things that were interfering with what was the most essential time for me to connect to the greatest source that has helped me to elevate my life and other people's lives. So, you know, the unwinding routine is a discipline of making sure no emails, no dams, no communication outside other than the intimate conversation with me in my family and I regulate. If someone brings up, you know, I want to quit college, that conversation is not going to be had at nine o'clock. I do have an adaptable routine. You know, I have my priorities. I take inventory of my values. So if there was an emergency, you know, somebody either my my health or my family's well-being, then that would take priority over the unwinding routine. So I do have an adaptable routine. So I'm not like some strict robot. You know, my daughter is like, oh, well, I need you. Nope. Sorry, it's nine or five. I'm not here. I can know I'm a human being. I prioritize my family. But I will tell you that I feel differently in the morning when I allow interference to the beginning of my day. And I can definitely feel the difference. And once again, I'm blessed because minutes in moments is all I'm spending there lately and very few days. Do I have to even implement my adaptable routine? Joe: So if someone comes in contact with you via, let's say, social media and I don't even know how you keep up the pace that you do with the live videos on Instagram and Facebook. And I have a question about Miles that I want to ask you before we finish up. Are you getting to bed at 11 like it mentions that in the book? Are you actually only sleeping five hours? You're getting about 11, getting up at four for meditation. David: So this is the great Dave Meltzer lie that I wrote and connected to goodness that Joe: Ok. David: Pissed my wife off because my wife has rolled her eyes at this question more than not, because she's been the victim of me passing out at nine or five, nine thirty, ten o'clock. I mean, if I was more honest when I wrote that book, I would have said I have unwinding routines starting at nine. I must be passed out by 11 and there are many road trips to hundred of them. A year before covid where I was pushing myself because I didn't have the family aspect of being on the road. So I pushed myself and make sure I was passed out by 11 p.m. Pacific Time. But most of the time I've passed out before 11, so somewhere between five, five and seven hours a night. So I would say I averaged six. But there's many times I've gone months and months and five hours. I prefer it's it's interesting because physically I'm getting in better shape. So I was just talking about Mondays. I take my day off of physical, hard, physical exercise and I do yoga stretching balance. And so I've been finding that I wake up at two thirty to three if if I fall asleep too early just because I'm pushing myself, I pass out at nine thirty. Now I only go to thirty. So I just need the five hours. Today was one of those days like driving everyone in my business crazy because they woke up with one hundred emails. Joe: So I want to know if I can steal your bunch or make a lot of money, help a lot of people and have a lot of fun. I love that. Is that OK to steal? David: Absolutely Joe: It's totally. David: Share Joe: I love it. David: Share my concern and do good deeds. Please tell everyone to make money, help people have fun as part of my mission to empower over a billion people. And the more you tell people, hey, this comes from my mentor, David Meltzer. Join him for his free trainings, books, exercises, guys, whatever I can do, please share that message, because that's the definition to of happiness. If you make a lot of money and you help a lot of people and you have a lot of fun, I promise you you'll be one of the happiest people you've ever met. Joe: I love it. OK, I know our time is limited, I could sit and talk with you all day. I have a question about Miles is David: My son. Joe: Is yes. Is he going to be it seems extremely knowledgeable about sports. When I spoke with one of the Instagram where you and he was sitting on your lap and you were doing a Sunday morning and people were rattling questions off in the comments and he seems to be a sports fanatic, what's he going to what's he going to be when he grows up? Does he know yet? David: Whatever he wants, he knows that three things he knows that I tell him every day. Number one, I'm proud of him to that I love him. And three, I always have his back. I tell him I need four things from him. I need one him to be happy, too. I need him to be healthy. Three, I want him to love me. And four, I want him to appreciate me, meaning that allow me to bring value to his life. So those are the three in the fours. And then whenever we do activities, I always tell them we have three objectives. When we do activities together, whatever they may be, he has to do his best. He has to have fun and he has to learn at least one lesson. So if he does his best, has fun and learn the lesson following all the other constructs or whatever it is he is in, what he loves to do, it will find and it's already there. And he is extraordinary by all my four kids. I'm blessed to become even a better father now than it was. But I'm blessed. They have good genetics, which helps. But they also have really good mindsets and hard assets to follow the quantum genetics that they've been gifted with. Joe: Well, they are lucky to have you, David. This has been such an honor for me, I can't even begin to tell you. Thank you so much for your time. And I hope our paths cross someday. I would love to meet you in person. And thank you so much for doing this. David: Come visit me. You're welcome every Friday for my free trainings, we have a studio where covid safe if you want to wait till after. You're always welcome to come visit me on a Friday Joe: Thank you so much, David.
My conversation with Brad R Lambert was a complete joy. To see someone so successful living in a town where egos can definitely get in the way of being human, Brad is a shining star. We had a real life conversation involving real life circumstances and in the end, empathy, love, comparison and the want to help others, trumps all. Success has not ruined this young man and he is an example of what is very right with the world and how he plans to love his life and leave his legacy. Enjoy, Joe Brad R Lambert: Producer, Talent Manager, International Speaker & Author Website: https://www.bradrlambert.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradrlambert/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebradrlambert LinkedIn: https:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradrlambert YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BradRLambert/ Email: brad@bradrlambert.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Brad, thanks so much for joining me on the show. I really appreciate it. I'm so looking forward to this conversation with you, Matt. Brad: It's great to be here, thanks for having. Joe: So I want to start I always like to get the back story, because I really think it helps people know the person and become more familiar with where you came from and where you are today. And so if you don't mind doing that, that would be awesome. Brad: Oh, of course, I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so I'm actually from the East Coast, was born and raised in the Steel City, spent some time in North Carolina as well in Charlotte. I went to college at NC State, but I started really working, working when I was like 16, 17, 18 years old. You know, I had the traditional jobs of, you know, working at a sandwich shop or a movie theater. Like I worked at a movie theater all through high school and college for side income. And that's why I really fell in love with movies. So we'll get to that. But working working wise, I really found my entrepreneurial self at that age. I was very passionate about sports, so I wanted to be a part of the sports industry in any way, shape or form. Specifically, I wanted to work directly with my athletes, the guys that I cheered on Sundays and Mondays, now Thursdays, you know. So I wanted to provide whatever value I could for those guys. So I was able to get connected to a few of the Pittsburgh Steelers. And at that age, I was, like I said, still in high school so that the age gap between me and a lot of these athletes was pretty significant. So the disconnect was there, but I had to prove myself and build that trust and credibility through my actions. So I learned very quickly how to connect with high level people at a young age, and that was by building genuine relationships and adding whatever value I could to benefit them both personally and professionally. So, you know, simple things like, you know, later on down the road, it would be like, hey, man, I'm in Arizona training. Can you swing by my house and move my car for me? Yeah, dude, I'm around whatever Joe: Right. Brad: You need, you know, or, hey, help me with this massive campaign endorsement deal, whatever. So I had a range of things that I did for these guys. But at the start of it, it was at the the initial beginnings of Facebook and social media. So these guys didn't understand how to utilize social media to benefit themselves. And I had been playing around with it for a while. So I saw the opportunity. So I was able to then bring that knowledge and expertise to the table to help establish these guys on social media, help with content creation strategy, etc.. So through high school, I worked with these athletes and some agencies just do my own thing. Then all through college, I actually worked with a marketing agency while I was at NC State. So I was basically full time with the agency and doing school at the same time. So it was such a great experience because I had, you know, got in at the right time with this agency, proved myself and that I was going to New York City almost twice a month, sitting down with Fortune 500 brands in these, you know, Penthouse suites in New York City. And it was my job to sit there and be quiet, that that's what I was told. And that at the time made a lot of sense. So I would just sit there and soak up the room, all the knowledge, all the exchanges, everything. And a funny nickname I had was these guys were just so used to me sitting there very stoically and just listening. Now they're like, who's this silent assassin? Like, who is this? You know? But I was just following directions, you know. But now, obviously. Joe: And what what year was this? Sorry to interrupt, I just want Brad: No, Joe: To get the timeline. Brad: Not a problem, I mean, freshman sophomore year of college, I was working with this agency, maybe even through junior year, I'm not sure, Joe: Like Brad: But I was young. Joe: What year, what year, like. Brad: Oh, I. She's 20, 21. Joe: That's how old you are. Brad: Yeah, so I was 2009, 2010, maybe, so I was I was young and it was started college for me, so I was, you know, doing school work and then doing work, work and then traveling and doing both. And it was just such a great experience for me because it got me ahead. It put my feet to the fire and challenged me at early age, which I love. Like I'm fearless in that regard. I'll try anything. I'm not afraid to fail. At worst case, I learn one. I'm not good at it, or I learned how to do it a different way. So, you know, I'm not really caught up in those elements of what if I fail or, you know, I'm like, screw it. I'm just going to try. And if I fail, so be it. I'll learn and move on, you know, and be better because of it. So, you know, with that experience, man, like, fast forward to, you know, after school and I moved back to Pittsburgh to work with a sports agency. And then eight months later, I was out in L.A. working with Robert Downey Jr. and his team. So those elements of that experience from high school to college, where I was working with high level celebrities and professionals and entrepreneurs and things like that, it didn't bother me. Brad: So, you know, being in the same room with professional athletes or celebrities or talent like Robert Downey Junior, it doesn't bother me like they're just like us. They're just normal people. They just have high profile jobs and lives in general. So I'm able to build that trust and that credibility because, one, I'm not a fan girling, you know, in front of these guys and to it's it's all business. I want to have a genuine relationship with these people. So it's not about, you know, hey, what can you do for me? It's about what I can do for you. And my scale of giving and receiving is so far skewed and giving. And I'm not complaining. I'm just stating a fact. That's how I live my life. And I'm so happy because of it. The relationships I have are just mind blowing. I mean, just from status and success and, you know, credible people as well, as well as just good people. At the end of the day, that's all that really matters to me, is like you could be the most famous successful person in the world. But if you're not nice or kind to other people, I don't really care to associate with you. And I've had to cut off some big fish, but I don't care. Brad: Like, I really don't want to surround myself with that negativity, that ego or that hate. So my circle is very specific about who I associate with and who I call a friend and family and so on and so forth. So. You know, I moved out to L.A. and got my feet wet in the entertainment industry and going back to what I said earlier about working on a movie theater, I was the guy rep and tickets and cleaning up popcorn and stuff in high school. And I fell in love with that, just going to the movies. And, boy, I can't wait to go back when it's safe to do so. But, you know, that's where I fell in love with all the different genre of film, because before I worked at the movies, I was like, oh, just action, you know? But then that opened up my palate, rom coms and dramas and the horrors and literally everything, thrillers like thrillers. So now I have an appreciation for all different genres of film and that whole process. So coming out to Los Angeles, I wanted to pursue film, TV and entertainment as a whole. I never wanted to be the the actor, you know, BSR. That was not my my goal. I always wanted to be involved at whatever capacity. Brad: So I brought my marketing, my business background out here and that's what got my start. And I really started to find myself out here. After working with Downey, I went to Warner Brothers and I was managing the marketing campaigns for TV, film and catalog titles. So that experience really helped me find the producer in me because I was given task with large budgets. I had to collaborate with different agencies and teams and then flex my creative and business muscles to get stuff done. And that was me managing those very high level campaigns for Warner Brothers. So for me, that was like as a producer, you have to have a good balance of business and creative. And that that was me and I really was like, wow, I can do this. So I actually went on to executive produce my first film, which was a horror film I helped raise. I think it was between three to five million dollars, which I'd never done before. So that was just I was grateful to be a part of that project. And just once again, someone threw me an opportunity instead of being afraid of failing or oh, I don't know how to do this. I was like, give me a few days and let me see what I can muster up. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. Brad: I'll figure it out. And I ended up making a bunch of calls and connecting dots, and we were filming a few months later. So it was just to be a small part of that project and kind of have that experience now moving forward with the other stuff that I'm doing from music videos to commercials to I have a full slate of films right now that I'm working on getting funding for because they're all independent. I'm taking calls with voices and, you know, investors and things of that nature. So once again, that early experience. Pays dividends, you know, so waiting for the perfect time to to try things is not always the best route to take. You know, if you can start early while your competition is not, I think you'll really get an edge for yourself. And I am by no means you know, where I want to be yet. But the progress I've been able to make, and I'm only thirty two. So I'm I'm I feel the momentum. I feel myself coming together and who I am and what I'm about and the people I surround myself with and I'm just grateful for. And they inspire me and they need to be better each and every day. And I couldn't ask for anything more. Joe: That's incredible. So you're going to have to forgive me, because I know the part about this that means a lot to me is helping to educate the audience on how you become the type of person that you are that a lot of people want to be where they have to put one foot in front of the other and actually go through the stuff and not overthink it, not over planet. So I'm going to pull you all the way back to high school because I know what I was like in high school and I just I played soccer. I was interested in girls. I, you know, whatever. I never had the focus that it sounded like you had. So my first question is, did this come from your parents? Was there something that they instilled in you to say, hey, Brad, you can go out and do anything you want, just go and you just going to ask, how Brad: Yeah, Joe: Did that happen for you? Brad: Well, it's funny to ask that is so spot on, you'll laugh, but my mom always said if you don't ask, you don't get. And that has stuck with me from day one. She she's always been my biggest supporter. I love her to death. Obviously, you were a part of the Growth Now summit, but she was there. So Joe: Yeah, that's right, it's. Brad: In one of my she's my biggest supporter and I love her to death. So she's inspired me in so many ways. And, you know, so, yeah, she definitely pushed me. But I would say, you know, I was wired differently, you know, just in a sense of I was a dreamer man. Like, I, I always swung for the fence, whether it was asking out the the hottest girl or, you know, trying to get the biggest opportunity or whatever, you know, I didn't care. I was like, you know, my standards for what I wanted. You know, I didn't want to talk down to myself or limit myself of, oh, I could never accomplish that. Like, what kind of mindset is that? You know, I would say if you're not challenging yourself, you're never going to know what you're truly capable of. And each and every day I'm constantly stepping into something that I never thought was possible. Like I just got approached with an opportunity that wasn't even on my radar, not even remotely maybe down the line, but it was thrown in my face three weeks ago. And I've had to be scrappy and jump on the opportunity. But I wasn't planning on it. But I also was not going to be like, I'm not ready for this or now talk to somebody else. I'm like, I'm going to give it my all and it's either going to happen or it's not, you know, and that's how I look at things. So, you know, I'm fairly confident in that. And that project I was just mentioning, it's come along nicely. But what's cool about that project? I'm not going to dive into details, but I was approached for me. Brad: Get this done, but instead of looking at it like me, me, me, lalala, I was like, you know what, I'm going to bring in some heavy hitters and we are going to win together because including then we'll take away some stuff for me, but everyone will benefit and the project will be that much better because of it. And I want I want that to be very clear, I could have done this by myself as I. I could have done a good job, but it wouldn't be what it is right now if I didn't include these other heavy hitters, so it's having that selflessness to step aside, right. And say, you know what, this is what it is, I'm going to I'm going to bring in people I care about, people who I have a lot of respect for, who are so talented in their own right that are going to really complement what we're doing or what we're trying to do. And man, the the the masterpiece that we've kind of put together for this project, I'm so excited about it. But once again, I could have taken the ego approach to made it all about me. And I was like, no, I'm going to bring in the squad and we're all going to benefit and when because of it. So it's just that kind of approach where it's like, you know. Am I trying to just get it done or am I trying to go overboard and do the best job possible? And a lot of people want one hundred percent of the credit, whereas not many people are OK with 12 percent. Joe: Something great, as opposed to one hundred percent or something semi, you Brad: That's Joe: Know, Brad: Nothing Joe: I mean, right, Brad: Once one hundred percent of nothing. Joe: Right. Brad: I mean, that's that's the reality of it. So a lot of people only want to think of themselves or they want all the limelight and they want all the shine and credit. And it's like, look, at the end of the day, nobody gets anywhere by themselves. And people who say otherwise are either insane or they're egomaniacs to the point where it's like there's no talking to them. They just they are who they are. So for me, it's like I never want to be put in that category. I think ego is one of the biggest turnoffs up in general and to it's one of the biggest inhibitors to success, growth, relationships, period. And being in Hollywood, I'm sure you can imagine the egos that exist here. And it's funny from people who have no right to have egos here have egos. So it is it's fascinating to me where, you know, I'm from Pittsburgh. It's a blue collar town. It's a hardworking town. It's a good town. The people are kind. They're giving, they're generous. And, you know, so coming out here, I was very much an alien in a way because I didn't subscribe to the norms of L.A. and the behavior and the competition and the wild, wild West nonsense. And, you know, I didn't get along with people who who played that game because I'm not going to play that game. I'm not going to cut somebody's legs off to to win. That's just not who I am. So that's what allowed me to kind of separate myself and find myself and find my lane. Brad: And, you know, there are consequences to your actions and how you treat people. And in this business, they always come back around the person you screw over. Now, I guarantee you you'll see them in five years. That's just how the business is. Unless you leave the business because it's not for you and you fail, you're going to see him again. So you need to treat everyone with respect and kindness. You may not like them, but that's not a requirement, right? Like there are a lot of people I don't like in this business, but I still will treat them with respect and kindness. I don't have to like them. You know, I wouldn't have to be friends. We can be acquaintances, professional. Relationship, but aside from that, like we're not going to be grabbing a beer, watching football, like that's just, you know, that's not. But everybody, once again, they're still like this with so many aspects of their life, just like this, where you need to widen. That view and why, in your mind and your horizon to the possibilities of not just what you're capable of, but looking at situations differently, like I try to plan five to 10 moves ahead if I do or say this, this, this and this is going to happen, you know? So it's it's it's mental chess in a way of understanding how, you know, things move, how things operate, how people move and how people operate and everybody's different. Brad: But if you can understand, you know, interpersonal communication and kind of get a good read on somebody, you can understand the ebb and flow of conversation and their actions. People are very stuck to patterns. They behave a certain way and they rarely change. So if you can identify that pattern and how they move and how they speak and things like that, you're able to kind of ride the wave in a way of like, this is how this person is. I got to kind of change chameleon wise to to be able to deal with it and make it successful because we can't just stay the same core values. Yes, stay the same. But in regards to, like, how you communicate with certain people, some people, you got to have the most amount of patience in the history of time. Other people, it's like it's so chill, like it's a chill work environment. Whatever other people you have to really kind of be on them to to make sure they're getting whatever tasks done. And so everybody's different. But you have to you can't just stay the same person with everybody. You have to understand that each each everybody's different and you have to kind of change to best suit that like a puzzle piece, because if you don't. That's where the issues happen. You know, you're not the way I want you to be, Joe. So we're going to have problems Joe: Ok. Brad: Like that. That's not how it works. But put a lot of leaders are like that where it's like you don't fit what I want. You're out of here. You're not a brainwashed zombie. You're out of here. And trust me, I've had so many experiences like that where it's like if you have an opinion, if you're your own person and it's the way the business is, it's the wild, wild West. And I will say this, those people make it far very quickly, but long term, you know, fall on their face. Joe: So and that's what attracted me to you in that that Growth Now summit. I heard you talk and then I started looking at all that you've accomplished at the ripe old age of 30 to Brad: Thank Joe: Like Brad: You. Joe: I was like this. He is the most humble person that I've seen with the accolades that you have. And I just was like, got to have to talk to this guy because I just turned fifty nine. And there's many things I want to do with my life. I didn't do all of the things the way. I mean, I don't like I don't want to say regret, but I definitely feel like I have some regret because I just didn't if I don't know, I've always had really high goals. Did I work as hard as I should have on all those things? Probably not. So I take all of the blame. But I just think that I want to surround myself with people that even now, like, I could just say, well, you know, it didn't work out. I'm just going to just going to do it constantly. I think a big motivator for me with this podcast when I started it almost a year ago was I want to be around people that are successful, people that through me and these conversations can spread the word of what they did to make things like this happen. And so, yeah, you you definitely had to be wired different. The fact that a in high school, you were doing all that you were doing and then again in college, college is like, wow, I'm finally out of the house and I'm just going to I'm going to do as little work as I can and I'm going to have a great time. Brad: Look, Joe: It's just Brad: I Joe: It's. Brad: Don't think I went to one party in college, I'm Joe: I Brad: Not Joe: Know Brad: Getting. Joe: It doesn't surprise me. It sounds Brad: I Joe: Like. Brad: Just I had no interest like the the one to one exchanges and the nonsense now I had fun in my own way, but like I just that college, like it just didn't it didn't appeal to me. But I was also so busy on the other things that I was trying to do. And I saw the potential and the benefits of the things that I was doing. I actually stepped away from school for a year because that marketing agency opportunity was thriving so much. Where I'm in these boardrooms at Fortune 500 companies, I'm like, why am I still in school? You know, like and so I took a year off and I went all in on this marketing agency and the experience I got out was crazy. And I ended up finishing school online. But it was like that's the kind of real world experience that, you know, I had a conversation with the young lady the other day in Canada. And she's like, how do I how do I get to where you are? And I was like, what are you doing right now? You took the time and the effort to to follow up with me on LinkedIn. And we finally found a time to talk. And I'm giving you 15, 20 minutes to talk. And however I can help you, I'm going to do it. And she was just very laser focused, right, on what she wanted to get out of this conversation. And I was like, your hustle, your focus. Like, that's going to get you really far. Brad: And now you just have to act on it. You can't worry like it's like sales. You're going to knock on two hundred doors and you might get one or two answers. But the second you're about to quit that next door might be the one that changes your whole life. So that's why it's like you just got to keep going. You've got to ignore like there are things where I have an opportunity, biggest opportunity ever and I'll just like I'll do what I need to do. But then I move on. Like, I'm not waiting or dwelling, I'm just like next, you know, that's not something that I, you know, I don't want to waste time because it's out of my hands. Once I do what I need to do, I hand it off and then what will be will be right. So I'm not going to sit here and and be kind of bent out of shape of, oh, my gosh, I haven't got one. Yes. Like I've got so knows I've lost count. But that is what we need to do. Like we have to persist, we have to keep going. And that's something that a lot of people aren't like. Some people can't handle failure and I get it. But at the same time, like you're capable of more than you think, you just have to rewire how you look at things. Once again, it's not you're a loser, Joe. You failed. It's that opportunity wasn't meant for you. And what did you learn out of it? Well, that changes the whole game like that, I don't feel like a loser, right, because I did it when, you know, when I win, I learn. Brad: When I lose, I learn. But I don't look at it is like, wow, I failed, you know, just like look. And if anything, it's another chip on my shoulder, right. Somebody passed on me. The opportunity didn't work out, whatever. But like a great example is what's right behind me right here. This this poster of Avenger's, a game that's signed by the entire cast. OK, I'm a huge nerd. I love pop culture. I love film. I love TV. I love comics. I grew up with these characters. So to be able to work with a guy like Downey, you can imagine how awesome that was. So I wanted to work for Marvel after Downey. I went to Warner Brothers and at Warner Brothers, I was working on all these IPS and campaigns and titles that I loved. And I was like, this is so much fun. I would die to, like, go to Disney and do this for Marvel. I have to do this for Marvel. So I tried. I tried it, tried even it down. I tried to get a job at Marvel and I came second place. And then when I was a WB, I had, I think, two tries where I came second place. And I was just like, oh, it's not it's not working, you know? And a lot of people would have just given up on that dream. It's never going to happen. Brad: I'm never going to work for Marvel, never going to work for Disney. It's just not meant to be. All right, fine. So I'm going to create my own path. That's why I did I was doing my own thing. I was producing, managing, consulting, and I brought value. To Marvel and Disney put this collaboration together with one of the biggest artists on social media, and he designed this incredible artist, so freakin talented, but the goal of working with Marvel and Disney right there. So I went from failing multiple times, not giving up and then working on the biggest movie of all time, being a very small piece to that campaign. And that's something like like I said, it's signed by the entire cast. And that's a living reminder every single day where it's like. You know, I got this tattooed on my arm, if you say a tattoo right here says whatever it takes and that's a line from Avengers and game, whatever it takes to get it done, whatever it takes, make it happen. And that's that's right there, Sam, with this one, like it's like I, I don't set limitations for myself and I will fail constantly, but it's, you know, getting hit, getting back up and keep going and trying again. And what's the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Right. So when something's not working, you got to create a new path or try something else. And that's what they did. So to fail as much as I did trying to get that job with Marvel and Disney, those opportunities didn't work out. Brad: I went out, did my own thing, created my own path and ended up working on Avengers and being part of that marketing campaign. And then I followed that up with working on Spider-Man Far From Home with Sony Pictures. And I grew up with Spider-Man. So that was an unbelievable experience for me. So once again, like chasing your passions, adding whatever value you can around those passions and staying consistent and persistent with that approach. And that was my goal, like Disney, Sony, Universal. What value can I bring to your campaign to make it the best campaign ever? Like and that's how I looked at things. I look at things from a broad standpoint of, OK, there's an opportunity here. I'm going to try to fill that hole with Zouliou. You know, but a lot of people are like, I need you to tell me. What you need to do, as I know you've got to be scrappy and self starting in that regard where it's like. I followed this artist for so long, I know I knew what he was capable of, I knew he had a huge following. So working with WB, I knew I paid creative agencies a lot of money to create assets for campaigns and then they would deliver the assets and that would be it. So I was like, why not pay an artist who has almost a million followers? To do art with a demographic that's your target market, right, so the value there was way more than what it would be with a creative agency. Brad: The value was the creative agency doesn't have a million followers that they'll post and push it out. So not that Disney needs the extra million followers, but if you're going to pay for it either way, why not be smart about it and get the most bang for your buck? And that was the approach I brought creatives influencers talent to the table who could add a unique twist to these campaigns where, you know, working on them as much as I did for two years would be a lot of the content looks the same, the same countdown images, Meems, quote, images, static images, trailers, same thing. So what can we do to make it different? That's how you make it different. So it's finding those opportunities and trying to be self starting in a way of I recognize talent. I'm going to go out and get that talent and do whatever I can to help that person. So win win. Right. And that's, you know, I'm going to bring value, you're going to bring your talents and we're going to win together, that's it. You know, and that. It's that simple, but a lot of people once again, they want all the light, they want all the credit, and those are people that are really shooting themselves in the foot because at the end of the day, that's where ego comes in. And once you get sucked into that big fat ego, you're done. Joe: Yeah, again, on that that call that we did or that video that you were on, I was like, how is this guy so humble and down to earth? And it was a total attraction to me because I mean it from my heart. I grew up just a couple hours north of New York City, and I spent a good 12 years there as a musician. And I've been to L.A. doing auditions where I was the guy from out of town. And I've seen the egos on both sides of the coast and I get it. And for you to to be the way you are and be in this business for as long as you have been and still you are who you are, that's that's a you know, you should pat yourself on the back for that because that's a big thing. So. Brad: Well, I a big thing is, you know, your reputation is everything. So when you let ego come into play. You're really once again shooting yourself in the foot and your reputation will take a massive hit because of it, because at the end of the day, man like especially in a business like this, like nobody cares, like they want whatever it is done, they don't care how it gets done, just get it done. You're not as important as you think you are. That's just the way it is. So, like, why have an ego? And plus, I'm not where I want to be. You know, there's a million people better than me. Like, that's just around. I'm 32 years old. You know, how can I possibly have an ego when there's a guy like Elon Musk walking around? Right now, I'm serious, Joe: I know. Brad: I'm serious. It's like, you know, how can I have an ego when you know a guy like Gary Vaynerchuk taken over the world? You know, like but Gary is a friend, you know, so like, where's the ego come into play? To me, it's like I have so much more room for growth and learning and just continuing to grow in that regard where it's like, how could I possibly have an ego? But I also don't want the people who I'm friends with in sixth grade to be like, wow, you really turned into a jackass. I don't want that, you know? But, you know, the guy who is on the growth now said the call was my best friend in elementary school and middle school. He was in that room. And I hit him up afterwards and thanked him for I didn't know he's going to be there, but he was there and he he thanked me profusely for acknowledging his existence in the room. And he was like, you're a good dude. My best friend from elementary school and middle school Joe: It's crazy. Brad: Just said I was a good dude after all the time had passed all the experiences I've had, but I'm not perfect. You know, I make mistakes, but it's never done in a I'm better than you, you know, way. I just I don't believe in that. We may have a bad exchange. You may catch me on a rough day. We're human, but there's a difference between. A mistake and an exchange and just being a pompous ass, right? Huge difference. And there's if you look hard enough, you'll see the difference. But I try so hard to make sure every interaction that I have is a good one. And it's not just about. I got to make myself look so cool in this chat. It's like I want Joe to really enjoy this conversation and have good things to say about me, hopefully on the end. That's my goal. But if I'm here like Joe, you are a worthless dude. Like, I mean, come on. Like, it's just like Joe, you wouldn't understand. I'm in the big leagues, Joe: Right, Brad: Bro. Joe: You're right. Brad: It's just I don't it drives me crazy because I've experienced it so much with with egos on the people that I've interacted with. And it's such a turnoff where you're just like you won't even look at me in the face or you won't talk to me enough to talk to me through somebody else. I just like I don't care. I don't care who you are. I don't want to deal with that. I'm a human just like you. You're in a high profile position. That's the only difference. That's it. So, yeah, I mean, there's nothing to have an ego about. Like I'm nowhere where I want to be. Yet I've done a lot of great things I'm grateful for and and I'm continuing to build in that regard. But yeah, there's there's absolutely if you're making others feel little. Unless then you're a pretty shitty person and I don't ever want to be a person that makes somebody else feel less than ever. Joe: Well, like I said, I could tell it's just so natural for you and I'm thrilled to be here with you. So I again, I'm going to drag you back to my school. So forgive me, but I want to understand what the pivot was from you starting out with sports, which seemed like a natural thing for you to do because it's such a heavy sports town. But you so you did this, but you also mentioned that you've worked in a movie theater. So was your first love, the whole movie thing. But sports, how did you transition and are you still involved in sports? Brad: Yes, I'm so very involved with with my guys specifically on the Steelers and the Penguins, I want to I want to be a person of value to those guys, whether it's personally, professionally, whatever they need. Like I said, hey, move my car. Hey, you know, how do I get this done? Help with an endorsement deal, whatever it is. So I I'm very much still involved with sports. I love sports, but I'm a two sided coin, right. When one side sports, you have those entertainment. So I dabbled in sports initially. That was my my first thing. And I got to the point where I was like, man, I'm like 24, 25 if I don't pursue this other thing. I might miss my window, and that's when I. Had the opportunity to move out here and work with Downey and his team, and that's where I went heavy into entertainment. So but what's great about entertainment is like you could very well pull sports into it, like sports is under the entertainment umbrella. So I don't really look at them separate. Obviously, I started in sports initially, but, you know, once you're in entertainment, fashion, gaming, TV, film, music, sports, I mean, my goodness, you could everything falls under that. Brad: So it's that's what's exciting to me is when I was, you know, in a smaller town like Charlotte, I knew a lot of people. And then when I went to Pittsburgh, I really. Built a lot of crazy relationships, and once again, this is not networking, I want to be very clear, it's actually building genuine relationships with people, whether they're not famous or famous, like it's it's the same. It's consistent, but it was more of like, how can I build how quickly can I build in a bigger city like Pittsburgh? Right. And eight months I i from the top of the Steelers organization to the to heavy hitters and the Penguins organization to, you know, Lynn Swann like huge, huge names. And we're talking like personal relationships with these people. And that showed me, like, if I ever go to a big city and live in New York or L.A., I could really get stuff done. So when I came out to L.A., that was that was my goal. What can I accomplish in L.A.? Who can I get connected to and build relationships with and what could we accomplish together? Right. And I moved out to L.A. and started with Robert Downey Jr. and Joe: So, Brad: Then from there. Joe: Yeah, so before we go there, because I want to ask how that happened, and I think it's it's driving my mind crazy because I want to know how someone gets their first gig out there in a sense. And I'm not sure if that's true, but if that is true, then I really that's incredible. But with the sports figures in Pittsburgh, when somebody hears you tell this story, it's like, well, what does that mean? Ditcher, did someone in your family know somebody and allowed you to stand on the sideline what they were like? How do you get in front of these people? What's what's the connection that you used to kind of stack on all these people Brad: Yeah, Joe: That you would meet? I mean. Brad: Well, stacking on is a good way to put it, because at the end of the day, we are our own brand right now from me, starting at 16, 17, 18 years old and working with professional athletes and the Steelers. I've been around that organization since like 2005, 2006. Consistently, it's twenty twenty one, so that's a long time being around the team, the players, the ownership, the coach like. Joe: But how how did you do that, like what Brad: Well, it Joe: Does that mean, because I am Brad: Once Joe: In Brad: Yeah, Joe: Love, I have never seen it. So I go to the Cardinals games, Brad: Once Joe: But. Brad: You get once you get connected to one and back when I got connected, it was I literally was able to connect through the phone book like it was that kind of scrappy thinking that I was able to at the time. Phone books were still a thing and one thing led to another, got connected to somebody else and that was it. But, you know, now it's Deanne's or introductions through contacts, but you have to be able to introduce yourself and a wow manner. Right. So I've been building my brand since 16, 17, 18 years old. So when I run into someone or I'm at an event or I'm at training camp and I have the opportunity to say hello, I'm not saying, hey, can I have your autograph Joe: Right. Brad: Or hey, can I have a picture I can't write? Brad Lambert, you know, I've been around the team since 2005. I would love to connect any way I can help. Let me know. I mean, what more could you ask for that? That's an elevator pitch. Home, right? Right. So that was how I handled it, and it was like, yeah, I'm friends with Willie Parker, I know Hines and all the guys, you know, and, oh, OK. You know, once you have that credibility where you can attach your name to somebody else in a way that I'm friends with so-and-so, that wall of defense goes down. Goes away. Immediate because a lot of people are like, who are you and why are you talking to me when you say something like that? That wall comes down now like, oh, what's up? You're just a normal person. You're not a crazy fan. Right. And that is how you separate yourself by not acting like crazy fan. And the best example I could give is I went to training camp a lot back in the day and I used to bring a bunch of my friends. We would go and we would be on the field because of my relationships, be on the field during practice, which is amazing. And then after practice, everyone would scatter and get as many photos and as many autographs and we'd all come back like half hour later when everybody left. And would you get what you get? How'd you get that? And everyone would be like, Oh, I got so-and-so this, not this and that. And then Bobby Brown, would you get I was like at zero. No, like you had 30 to 40 minutes to get as many photos and autographs as possible on the field with all these guys. And you got zero. I was like, yeah, but I got seven phone numbers. And they're like, oh, Joe: Yeah. Brad: That's how different we were wired, right priorities, man, like I'll get autographs and photos later when I'm hanging out with them at their house. I don't care about that. Like, I want to build a genuine relationship. And you're not going to do that when you start by asking for photos or autographs. It's just not going to happen. So like Downey, for instance, I've known him for six years. But I didn't get my first picture with Downey until like 20, 19 Christmas right before the pandemic, I was at his Christmas party and it was like a five year. Window was like, it's been five years, like, can I get a photo? I would love to just close that Joe: Right. Brad: That loop. And and he was like, get over here, man. Of course, like that. Don't be ridiculous, you know? But once again, if I the first time I saw him, I ran up and was like, can we get a selfie like that? That's so annoying. The first time I saw him, I walked up to him and I introduced myself and I said, thank you for the opportunity. I look forward to working with you. You know, but Joe: Yeah, Brad: That's Joe: Yea. Brad: That's the difference. Joe: And you're very wise for your years of being, because I I was that person because I was so starstruck as like I wanted to be this touring drummer, that was my goal. I went to music school, which that's another question I'd have to ask, but I can't forget that. I have to make sure we talk about that quickly. But so anytime I went to see someone, I don't think I was obnoxious, but I was definitely starstruck. And it was it wasn't I never was thinking of, hey, I know you're in town. If there's anything I can do for you while here, let me know. Like, if I just said that whatever and walked away, that would have been. But instead, I know that I gushed and Brad: It's Joe: So Brad: Normal. Joe: And so I wasn't wired like you. But my it's changed for me a lot. So even where I am now, now it's just like, listen, I'm just trying to do good in the world and the people that can see that through me. Great. And so things have really changed in the last, I would say, a couple of months for me just because I changed my mindset. And it's a shame it took me this long to figure it out, but at least I figured it out before it's too late. So. Brad: Everybody has their own their Joe: Yeah, Brad: Own time and Joe: Yeah. Brad: Their own their own path, their own way of living. I mean, it's not a competition. I mean, I you know, my way of thinking wasn't always right, you know? I mean, it's just the reality of it. I missed out on a lot because of the way I was. I've been wired and I wouldn't change it. But it's not all rainbows and unicorns, you know what I mean? It's it's just it's tough, you know? So it's I don't want you to or anybody, for that matter to think, oh, I don't think like Brad, I failed, you know, or I waited till I was fifty nine years old to get this. It's like it's not a competition like, you know, so I don't I don't subscribe to that kind of stuff. But yeah, I mean it was the relationships are what matter. And when you deal with high level people, they don't really have genuine relationships. Because they're high level people, a lot of people want stuff, so when you come at it almost obnoxiously like, what can I do for you? How can I help? They're like, wow, this is refreshing. You know, how are you? Like, how are you? Like, who's asking then that, you know? But that's the difference, you know? And that's at the end of the day, these are normal people and they just want to feel normal sometimes. Brad: And that's what I try to give. You know, it's like let's go back to the house and play that. And till our eyes bleed, like, that's that's the kind of like normalcy I want. These guys, most of them are young man, like twenty, twenty one years old. I'm the old man now at thirty two when I was 17, 18 when I first met these guys. Now I'm the old guy so like you know, but that, that trust that I have and you know, just try to help and give them opportunities and keep them away from certain things early in their career. You know, some of them don't want to hear it. And I've lost relationships because I've been brutally honest from a professional standpoint of like, yo, this is not this is not a good move for your brand and your business moving forward. And some of them like see you later. OK, but at the end of the day, it was all love. You know, I didn't get anything out of it. So it's it's been honest and transparent and truly having their best interests in mind. And just anybody I work with, I try to have really, you know, care and show that I care. Brad: But the one thing, too is, is empathy is so important. A lot of people aren't empathetic enough. They don't look at people and read that they're sad or they're stressed or they're anxious or whatever and then react accordingly. They only care about themselves and what they want out of a situation, and that's it. But you have to acknowledge these things and you have to care about how other people are feeling, because if you can identify. Oh, wow, look at look at, you know, Joe, he looks like a little down today. I'm going to hit him up, you know, makes a difference. I've had people on Twitter just. Oh, my life sucks, I'm having a horrible day, getting out of bed is hard. I call him. How are you? Talk to me. I'm here. I send my message, hey, sound good vibes. I'm here if you need to talk. You're not alone, your loved. Whatever everybody's going through, man. But if you just say about yourself, you know, and one person that I did do that to recently hit me up like that meant a lot to me. Because I was struggling. And that little text that you sent me a text, Joe, you know how long it took me? Joe: Right, right. I Brad: But Joe: Think Brad: Once Joe: You Brad: Again. Joe: Brought that up on the call on Brad: Yeah, Joe: The summit. Yeah. Brad: But that's that's a difference, it's like a lot of people think they're too important or too busy, too arrogant, too ignorant to do these little simple things, or in reality, if everyone did a little extra, the simple things that we overlook or don't want to take the time to do the world would be a much kinder, happier place. But that's the issue. And that's like, you know, naive of me to think. But I'm trying to make that the norm. I'm trying to show people that those little things that you do mean something and and it matters, especially when everyone's dealing with a global pandemic. So, you know, I think hearing that someone appreciates you or like you reaching out to me after the event like that was awesome. That made my day. Like anybody who wants to hear me speak, I'm like, wow, OK, cool, thanks. You know, so it's but that's it's the little things, you know. And a lot of people don't care to acknowledge those things or give those little things that you do. And I think that's where the problem lies. Joe: Yeah, I agree with you so much. OK, so you get on with college, you what is the catalyst in the plan like what groundwork was laid so that you literally could move to L.A. and hit the ground running? And not only that, but work with somebody like Robert. Brad: From a very young age, I was trying to surround myself with people who I admire and who inspire me. That's like just not because I wanted anything other just to be a part of their lives, like and that's what I constantly did since I was young. And I build genuine relationships because of that. Like, I it's not I need something better. And when I don't get what I need, I'm now like, that's not what we're talking about. People like we're talking like. And her relationship, genuinely, you're not expecting anything if you get something great, hallelujah, good for you. But if you don't get something that doesn't mean you're bailing and you're out of there and you never talk to that person again, that that's not a genuine relationship, that that's what you're doing. Period. So I've constantly tried to surround myself with people who I admire, they could be massive celebrities, they could be professional athletes, it could be someone who works at the grocery store down the street. They're a good person. Or they could be an artist who's just so ridiculously talented. It blows my mind like I don't have ulterior motives. I just want to surround myself with amazing good people, period. So with that mindset, my network is pretty robust and I have some pretty incredible people in my life. And I got connected to someone and he opened the door for me and that that was it. That's how I got to Downey at. Joe: When did you move? What year was that? Brad: A 15, I think, yeah, because I've been in L.A. six years, so it was February Joe: So Brad: 2015. Joe: And when you moved out there, you literally had this gig ready, you hit, you just landed, got an apartment or whatever, and you started working with Robert. Brad: Right away, hyp. Joe: That's incredible. Brad: But that's but that's that's an example of some of the amazing things that can happen when you lead with kindness, you add value, you build genuine relationships, and when all those things add up and it gets to a point where people are like, all right, you've done so much for me, what can I do for you? You know, like it. Unless they're the worst type of person, they're probably going to say that to some extent. Like I said it last night to somebody, somebody has helped me out with a project like what can I do for you? How can I help you? Any phone calls, emails, whatever. I'll do what I can. No promises, but I'll try to help you. It's just human nature, like we all have the ability to help someone, but if you don't ask, right, going Joe: And. Brad: Back to the start of this conversation, you don't ask, you don't get. So that's that's the whole thing where it's like, you know, some people are too afraid to ask. Some people are too in their head about asking. But it's like if you ask them, then they feel more comfortable to be like, you know what, they're really struggling with X, Y, Z. Like that young lady who reached out to me on LinkedIn. Can I talk to you for 15 minutes, please? Who the hell am I? Yeah, of course we did it, you know, and she emailed me in the next morning. It was like I'm so driven and motivated from our conversation of email. Two hundred people today. The good. You've get it. You know, but that's the. I want to have an impact. I want to be a source of positivity and kindness and, you know, people are going to talk crap about you one way or another, but make them look really stupid to talk crap about someone who's doing that kind of stuff. Right. Like, are you seriously having this conversation about that person right now? All the all that they're doing? Really. OK. Good for you, but that's that's the thing, it's everybody's going to have their opinions, they're going to hate, you know, the peanut gallery is very large, but that's the thing. It's like those people are unhappy with themselves, their lives, and they feel better about themselves by talking crap about other people. That's not my thing. I don't do that. I don't care to do that. But those people are broken and hurting in their own rights and they'll do what they do. But you can't let it get to you. You got to keep just doing your thing. But once again, if you're meeting with kindness and value and you're trying to make the world a better place and make somebody's life better, you know, I've got messages like you saved my life. Joe: You just need one of those and then you go. All right. I know what I'm doing. Brad: But that's Joe: I'm doing. Brad: That's my that's like some bigger people would look at this podcast, be like, this isn't Joe Rogan, why am I going to waste my time? It's like if I impact one person, even if it's you, Joe, with this conversation, it was worth my time. Joe: Well, it's so funny because you're probably going to be the only guest in this whole year that I've done this, that I was going to ask, what made you say? Brad: That's it, like I look at this, I try to do as many of these as I can and yeah, I'm busy, whatever, but like once again, what's 15, 30 an hour to to do a podcast that will live forever on the Internet. So I could impact someone ten years from now or I can impact someone today like, like that. That's the once again broader. Mindset, looking at the big picture, because I have people from different continents, like places I've never even heard of who found me on social media, who follow me, and then literally what one guy in particular is his name's Yassir and he listens and watches all my stuff. And then he sends me these beautifully written messages of his thoughts and all of these, like what he got out of it. And I'm just I just sit back every time, like, wow. Like this guy who I've never met before and I'm in a place I've never been to like. We're not connected other than social media. He found me and he's a he appreciates my stuff so much that he takes the time every single time to listen and watch my stuff when it comes out. So he watches and he'll he'll hear me talking about him and stuff. But Joe: It's Brad: That's Joe: Called. Brad: But that's like that's why I do this man. It's just like he's so impacted by what I have to say. And that's a mind blowing thing to say. Like for me, like I'm just trying to be honest and tell my story and hopefully it helps impact somebody else in a positive way. But but when you really get in that group of hearing from people and and you motivated them or you inspired them, like I spoke at Columbia College, Hollywood about a month ago and some of the responses afterwards from the students were like, you gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams. Joe: That's powerful, Brad: Are you kidding Joe: Yeah. Brad: Me? Like like how selfish would I have to be as a human being to not do what I do? If that's the response I'm getting, even if it's one person. Joe: Yeah, it's Brad: How Joe: Incredible. Brad: Idiotically selfish is that, but once again, I'm not here saying, Joe, if you do, you'll be a billionaire. Like I'm not that person and I'm not trying to hawk a class at you or get you to pay like I'm trying to. I'm trying to teach foundational skills that have been completely lost in this generation, completely lost and GenZE. They're even worse, like they have it off worse. So I'm trying to fix this and also instill this into the up and coming generation. I'm even writing a children's book right now to instill these core values at a very young age. So it's I'm trying to trying to get this back into where the world was. You know, it's not such a hateful and nasty place. Like I had someone said to my dad the other day and just say the nastiest shit to me. And I was just like I was like, how am I going to respond to this? And I responded with thank you so much. I appreciate the love and with like a flex emoji. Right. And that person laughed with a bunch of emojis and I haven't heard from them again. So I gave them the attention they were looking for. And I also probably shook them to their core because they wanted a shouting match. And instead I like self-destruct in their brain because I hit them with that. OK, you know, I've had people do that where I hit him with kindness, kill with kindness, kindness to do that, and you do that and they're like, oh my gosh, I love your content. I'm like, well, what happened to Joe: Yeah, Brad: The Joe: Right, Brad: You know, or they follow me right after. Joe: Right. Brad: They follow me right after, like, oh, my gosh, you know, but that's that's like once again, these people are just broken, you know, and they they're hurting. And I feel for them and I hope they can find their happiness in their path. And but it's not by being hateful and nasty to other people. If if you're actively going out of your way to sabotage and bring other people down or make other people feel less than you are broken. And you need to do a lot of soul searching because whatever you're doing is not working, and I promise you, you're not going to get to where you want to go by going down this path, you may feel really powerful and cool about yourself, but at the end of the day, nobody else thinks you're cool and nobody else likes you. That's the reality of Joe: Yeah, Brad: It. Joe: It's just so I want to respect your time, because we're getting close and I literally could go on and I have so much that we never got to, but I want to thank God so much. We didn't get to I want to talk about your book because you mentioned it on the summit. And so is that something different than the children's book or. That is the book. Brad: Now, that's that's the book I'm starting with a children's series partnered with a phenomenal artist in Sweden that I found years ago on social media. Once again, I try to surround myself with people who I admire and who inspire me. I found her work two years ago, and I knew from the onset of finding her, I was like, there's there's something there and I'm going to figure it out. She's just phenomenal. And here we are right now, and she's doing all the illustrations for the book. So it's just one of those things where it's, you know, she'll love, support other people and good things happen. And if they if something doesn't happen, you're still OK because you're connected with that person and you have those conversations and the happiness exchanges, that that's what makes life worth living, you know, and that's a lot of people want the transactional stuff. And yeah, it's great. But at the same time, it's not everything. You know, so many people have the transactions, but they have no soul. So what's what's the point of that? Joe: How much can you share about the book, like whatever Brad: Yeah, Joe: You want? Brad: It's pretty straightforward, I mean, it's a picture book for kids, so it's a very entry level in that regard. I want to kind of put it in the same category as like, you know, a Dr. Seuss reading level. Like, it's very basic. It's not a crime book, but it is very basic in that sense. You know, I'm not a professional writer or anything. So for me to put my words on paper and do this is once again, I'm stepping out of my comfort zone to do this because I feel like I could hopefully potentially impact someone in a positive way. So I've created this little universe with, you know, my my dog is the main character champ, and he's a boxer and he's my my child. I love him to death. So he's he and his friends are going to be teaching is valuable lessons to whoever reads the book and the first books about kindness. So it's going to be champ giving examples of how to be kind. And we're talking basic stuff like helping someone in need, you know, complimenting someone, defending someone in front of a bully. Very basic stuff. No one's asking you to move mountains. Basic stuff. Give someone a gift. Like it's just basic stuff. And that's, I think from that digestible level of those basic tasks at a young age, people will get that compliment. Someone I like your shirt. Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. You know, or. Oh, my my kite is stuck in a tree. I wish someone would help me. Oh, got you on there. You know, but that's the thing man. A lot of people look the other way and that's that's the problem. So if I can you know, the artwork she's doing is so incredible. It's like I compare it to like the likes of Pixar and Disney. Like, she's just so amazing. So the illustrations are going to be out of this world. So as long as I don't screw up the basic story, I think we'll be OK. Joe: And when's it due out? Brad: Man, I'm juggling so many different projects. I'm trying to get it done as soon as possible. You know, she has a lot going on, so we're all kind of just doing the best we can with the time. I'd love to get it out in the next three to six months, but once again, I'm hoping for a series where you'll see all these different characters and multiple books. And it's been cool because I've incorporated my previous pets into dogs that are no longer with us. For me, I have pets of dear friends of mine that are basically family that passed away, that I put in the book out of love and respect for them so they can live forever. So it's just really cool to to have that control, to tell my own story. And everybody plays a role. There's a significance to every character in the book. And I think it'll be fun for people to to enjoy these unique characters and illustrations and really bring them to life. And that's I can't credit her enough for names in the arts on Instagram. She's phenomenal. Brad: Her real name is Hedvig and she's in Sweden and she's amazing. So any updates I get from her always puts a smile on my face because she's just talented. And that that's one thing. As a manager, as a producer, I'd like to think I have a good eye for talent, whether it be for sports or music or anything. I just have a good grasp on that because I look at the big picture, whether it's from your brand or your talent in general or in a potential, you're being underutilized or whatever. And she's definitely one that is just so gifted and talented in any way. I can help her grow and win like we're winning together on this book. So it's it's a cool project. I'm excited. And like I said, if one kid reads it. And get something out of it, I've done my job, but it's also cool to to do it for my dog champ and to see him as a cartoon character is is pretty cool. So I'll send you some images offline and you can get a first look. Joe: I would love it. I would love it. All right, cool. So, again, we're right Brad: You Joe: At Brad: Had Joe: The. Brad: You had one question, you said, I can't forget. Joe: I know, but I don't want to keep you because Brad: I'm Joe: It's Brad: Good at Joe: Ok, Brad: It. Joe: So OK, you promise? Brad: Yeah, yeah, I'm good till one Joe: Ok, Brad: One 30. So. Joe: Ok, so I wanted to get to the school thing about you went to college and took the year off, you finish on line. I love Gary Vaynerchuk. I spoke to him once on the phone for like maybe two minutes tops. It was it's a story I'll tell you at another time. But he talks about you have to make that decision. And and if people are listening to this that are younger in high school or college right now, what is your opinion, if you don't mind, on doing what you love and just getting out there and doing it as opposed to going to college? And I know it varies on the circumstance, right. You can't you can't go out and walk into a surgery room and say, OK, I'm here to learn. And certain things have to happen that way. But certain things which I'd like to know what you think about that. Brad: For the parents out there, I would always say, you know, academics are important, I would I would go to college if you can. But I would also say on the flip side, if you're in a situation where you're getting good experience. In the streets and on the ground and real world experience, in my opinion, that's something that is far beyond anything you'll ever learn in school. And I can say that wholeheartedly. My on the ground in the street work that I've done since 16, 17, 18 years old, that's what made me who I am. School had a part of that, obviously. But it's you know, you can't adapt to to situations in a classroom, whereas in the real world, like, things come at you quick and you've got to be able to adapt and react accordingly. And that experience that you challenge yourself at an early age, I mean, there are high school kids where I'm like, get out there. Like, what are you waiting for? Start like now has never been a better time to do your own thing because you have Google, we have YouTube, we have all of social media, you have master class, you have all these tools that you can leverage to do your own thing, whether you're consulting, whether you want to be a music artist. Like there are so many tools that like with our iPhones now shooting for K, you don't even need a crew anymore like it. It literally is so easy to do your own thing. Brad: So now I would say if it makes sense for you and you have support around you financially and good people who are going to help you when you fall, give it a shot. But if you don't. Go to college, do what you need to do, get your degree and move forward, but like some people truly are wired for entrepreneurship. And I was that person and when I put myself in nine to five,
A discussion with international speaker, author, comedic entertainer, partner of Bliss Champions and co-author of "Unlocking Your Purpose" found on Purpose Code.com. Patrick has become one of my all-time favorite people because he lives in a state of bliss. He has found his purpose and he's filled with unlimited peace, joy and love. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. This one is definitely a highlight for me and hits home as I continue my own journey to find my ultimate bliss. Enjoy! Joe Patrick Combs: Connection with Patrick: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.combs "Unlocking You Purpose": purposecode.com Bliss Champions: blisschampions.com Patrick's website: patrickcombs.com/ Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: All right. Hey, Patrick Combs, welcome to the podcast. So glad to have you here. Man, I've been waiting for this, as you know, for quite a long time, a few few months now. I think. So I'm Patrick: Yeah, Joe: Really excited Patrick: Thanks, Joe: To do Patrick: Joe. Joe: This. Yeah. Patrick: As as I have been too excited to be here with you. Joe: Well, thank you, I appreciate it and I do appreciate your time. I know you're busy, guy. So so what I like to do is, you know, I was very intrigued by us meeting, even though it was all, you know, via the Web. But, you know, I had this opportunity to see you talk to the group that I was in and, you know, learn a little bit more about you. But what's amazing, and you already know this about yourself is your storytelling and all of that. But before we get into all that, I want to kind of give the audience the back story of who you are and where you know your progression, where you came from. And then we're going to talk about all the cool things that are happening today, because I know you have, like me, a lot of irons in the fire, but you have some really unique things. You're working on things that actually, you know, that resonate deeply with me. And that's the connection I have with you. And so I'd like for you to kind of explain, you know, who where you came from, who you are. And then we'll get into the nitty gritty of everything. Patrick: Ok, that's nice, Joe. Well, I am, I am I was raised by a single mother. In Bend, Oregon, which a lot of people are familiar with these days, because I guess been super big and super nice, but when I was in Bend, it was super nice, but not super big was sixteen thousand people. And I was my mother, a licensed practical nurse, raised my brother and I on a very small salary in high school. We were living in a trailer house, which was no problem. But, you know, let me just sort of sketch and nobody from our family had ever gone to college. But my mom was a pioneer. She was the one from our family tree that was reaching for Moore, and her primary way of doing that was to encourage my brother and I with phrases like Do what you love. Learn to work with your mind. Don't worry about your mistakes, look it up for yourself in the encyclopedias. That's what I bought those damn things for. And so I was the first person from my family to go to college and. In college, it's first at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and then at San Francisco State, I began to really realize that my purpose had something to do with uplifting and performing. Patrick: And today, I know I'm fifty four and I know my purpose very clearly, it is through performance and story to uplift. And so but but, you know, you're in your 20s, you're trying to figure out what to do with your life. I felt all the calls, all the tugs in the direction of my purpose. And I could not be more grateful that just by by God's grace, I feel so I don't feel very responsible. The older I get, the less responsible I feel for my choices. I just feel grateful for them. But the greatest choice I ever made in my life and I think the first greatest choice I ever made in my life was that I was going to be an inspirational speaker. Come hell or high water is starting at twenty six years old and an author. And so without any connections, without, quote, the appropriate background or credentials or accomplishments, I did that. I became a paid professional, inspirational speaker, and it's twenty five years later and I've spoken all over the place, but there's been a million people that have that have been in front of me and my audience is listening to me waxen. And then along the way, I expect, you know, I took that purpose and and I expanded into other joyful callings, this the the second that I'm the second sort of biggest imprint that I'm known for, I think, is that I created a comedic. Patrick: Solo comedy show for and I performed it all around the world in theaters. So if you look in broad strokes at me, if you go Patrick Combs, who is this guy and you read my bio and stuff, you you read Hall of Fame, inspirational speaker. You read comedic performer with the smash hit show and an author of five or six time author. So that's what I look like on paper. And behind the scenes, you know, I have just I have I just live doing what I love. That's been the great game of my life to live doing what I love. To place my joy. Even above my my above money, because somehow I knew early on that if I placed money above Joy, I would not end up joyful and probably not even end up healthy. So so today I have a third company and it's called Bliss Champions, and I and my business partner and I help people really lock into that great truth, unlock their purpose and maximize their joy. Joe: So I have so many questions. OK, first question this is going to speak to well, no, actually, I want to go back to the early part of this, which is you were lucky enough to have a mother that instilled what she did in you with, you know, that positive reinforcement. I think if when I listen to other people talk who had struggles creating the life that they would ultimately wanted, it seems that we trace a lot of that. Back to how you were brought up and what was said to you by your parents. That's the ultimate it seems to be the ultimate catalyst of what you end up becoming. And the people that had an incredible reinforcement and, you know, go ahead, make mistakes, whatever. Follow your dream, follow what you love. All of that stuff. They end up becoming these incredible people and the ones that didn't have that struggle through ridding that from their brains and flushing all of that garbage out and then having to kind of rebuild themselves at a at a, you know, somewhere in the middle, at an older age. And then eventually the hope is that that that Patrick: Yes, Joe: Leaves them so Patrick: Yes and no, Joe: Ok. Patrick: Right? So for me, one hundred percent, yes. My mother my mother gave me the foundation. The schemata and the foundation, both the both the sort of the loving, the loving, positive self reinforcement of positive self-esteem. Combined with really great directives, I mean, she was my first Joseph Campbell, right? He Joe: Hmm Patrick: Said, follow your Joe: Hmm, Patrick: Bliss. And Joe: Yeah. Patrick: She said, do what you love. But when you when you counter correctly and you don't want to add something to it, when you say, well, and then what if you got negative messages from your parents? Well, you know, that's Howard Stern and that's Bono and that's Oprah. So what I know is the difference between, though, is that because I'm really fascinated with how Howard, this conversation Howard Stern and Bono had once both sharing that. So it seems like if you if you got no love speaking for men specifically, you got no love from your if you're trying to somehow live up to a father that beat you down, seems like tremendous successes often created. But then you have to reckon with why you created it, what foundation it was created upon emotional, psychological foundation. It was created on some point. I think there's a reckoning for all of us in our childhood, you know, to say, hey, no one gets out of their childhood unscathed by the by the inadvertent or accidental mistakes of their parenting or perceived mistakes. No one gets out of that. You know, I came out of my childhood heavily damaged by my mother's suicidal nature. You know, so. I just wanted to sort of add that footnote, Joe. Joe: Yeah, no, I and I and I look at this sometimes through my own lens, that my mother struggled, you know, her family struggled financially. Her father was an alcoholic, left them her mother had to, you know, take care of them all. And so when she when she was raising us, it was always a very cautious sort of raising. It's like, you know, do something that that makes a living. You know, you get health insurance like a very sort of secure, protective sort of thing. And I think that in my own brain caused me to not necessarily do all that I thought I could do, because I just always felt this this limitation of, you know, you shouldn't do that, you know? And I was pursuing a music career. So I you know, that's very, very hard career path like acting and other things like that. Right. And so so when I when I think about this and we have this conversation, my father was very much would push me to say, go, do you know, do that. But it would be more quiet like my mother took care of us. Right. He was working. So she got the say. And it was like, you can't you just can't go do something like that. You have to take the safer route. Patrick: Now, Joe: Right. Patrick: That's Joe: So. Patrick: That's impactful, right, Joe: Right. Patrick: That that's your first introduction to the rule book for how to proceed Joe: Yep. Patrick: In your life, and you were given the one that said proceed with caution. Joe: Correct. Patrick: Boy, that I mean, yeah, I was given the opposite rule book. Joe: Yeah. Patrick: I really was I was given a very different rulebook, and it that matters, doesn't it? Joe: Yeah, totally, Patrick: It matters Joe: Yeah. Patrick: Until it doesn't matter, as Secretary says, about suffering. Suffering matters and is helpful until it doesn't matter and it's no longer helpful, Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: Right? So as soon as we wake up to oh shit, that's the rule book I had. Now we're free to grab a different one off the Joe: Yeah, Patrick: Shelf. Joe: Yeah, and it's just whatever that triggers that, you know, and whether that's, you know, reading different things and being around people that, you know, like yourself, that create this this aura of like, no, this there's another way. You know, it's just it's this is one life. Go do it. Patrick: Right. Joe: You know, one's around anymore to tell you what to do, especially people that are older. Right. Is just Patrick: Yeah, Joe: Go. Patrick: And there's no safety in playing it safe. Joe: Right. Patrick: It would be the rulebook, no safety in playing Joe: That's Patrick: It safe. That's Joe: Hey, Patrick: The greatest Joe: That's Patrick: Risk of all. Joe: That could be the next title of your next book. Patrick: Yeah. Joe: All right, before we get to all that other stuff, so then the next thing that you talked about was the speaking part of it. And I know there's so many people out there and and, you know, they'll definitely be people in my audience that listen to this and and eventually watch the YouTube version of this that look there. They would love to do that sort of thing. And and it's hard to get someone that has had such great success at it like you to where I have you one on one at this moment, say, well, how did you do that? What was the first step? And then what was the part that finally went to something much bigger? And then where you are now, where, you know, the audiences are huge, you're speaking fees. You know, they could be I don't know Patrick: They're Joe: What they Patrick: Big, Joe: Are, but they're big, Patrick: They're Joe: So. Patrick: Big, Joe: Right. So Patrick: Joyfully big. Joe: Good. So what was the first how did you get into it? Patrick: So let's I'm going to go fast and I'm going to speak to two different directions, because I heard you very specifically. First, I'm going to go fast on how I got into it. But Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: Second, I'm going to couple that, if you don't mind, with what I would do today if I was starving, Joe: Perfect. Patrick: Because there are different worlds. Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: But what they both have in common is the psychology that's necessary. OK, so let me address the psychology last year, OK? What I did is it twenty six years old, I naively said naively and powerfully, impotently said I want to be a speaker, so I want to be paid at it. So how do I get a paid speaking engagement? And it didn't take much looking to say I have to tell people I'm a paid speaker. So I made I bought a mailing list of every college in the United States, half of half of all colleges in the United States of America, those that were part of an association looking for all kinds of talent. And and then I made an ugly ass flyer and I licked and stamped one thousand two hundred and fifty envelopes and I put them all in the mailbox. And and then I and then I waited for the incoming interest, interested prospects, and I cold called and and failed 40 incoming prospective cold calls, a failed 40 out of 40 of them. And then the universe's magic that is always present will always show up, kicked in. And another lead came in and I followed it up. And after four months of failed, failed calls, I got a yes from black out Black Hawk. Technical college in Wausau, Wisconsin, for one thousand two hundred dollars, total airfare included, Joe: Wow. Patrick: And I was off and running. Joe: Yeah. Patrick: You know, so you can hear both, but you can hear them, you know, the challenge of it and the mechanics of how simple. I somehow intuited. The path to be and I see people overcomplicate marketing all the time, especially in today's world where marketing super sophisticated and you know your call, it looks like you have to be you have a billion followers and all this stuff and none of it's it's rarely ever true. Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: So anyhow, if but but I was launching myself as a speaker in 1992 when if you wanted to have a voice in the world and you wanted to be paid for it, there was, you know, a keynote speaking. Was it? You know, I was looking up to the Tom Peters of the world Joe: Yeah. Patrick: Who are being paid 50000 dollars in and they were like, oh, Jesus, Tom Peters has a job where he gets up in front of people. They pay him to give his opinion and his advice. Jesus, I wanted that so badly. I wanted that so freaking bad. So I went after very directly who would pay me to speak to them and give them advice? Who could I command their attention of and be 100 percent confident? I can tell you something that's beneficial. Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: In Wisconsin, as I said, oh, I know what to say to college students because I was there just three years ago and they're not getting the truth about what it takes to to to grab that job you're passionate about and go for it. So and therein lies the the deep psychology of what it takes. It's it's answering a tug on your sleeve from your soul that says you have something to say, you want this and you've and you've got something to say. But the hardest choice. The first three steps are the hardest one is to recognize you got a tug on your sleeve. Your soul is saying, that would be incredible and something is there for us. I believe in that more than I believe in anything in the world. Something in Steven Jobs said it's something inside you intuitively knows what you already want to be. Something inside me intuitively knew I wanted to be on stages, inspiring people, uplifting people to answer that call is difficult. It's hard as hell, only the most courageous. No, only those who find them. Their moment of courage will do it. So you don't there's no such thing as being courageous, there's just being courageous in the right moments. So once you answer that, then the second giant hurdle you got to get over, even in today's world, is what's my message? Because the number one thing, the Powers's speaking career is confidence. Patrick: That you deserve to be on that stage. And it's hard it's hard to find if you don't know where to look. And so that confidence has to be built on who can I confidently be certain I could make a difference with because of what I know and I've experienced and I've overcome. Twenty six years old, I could not have built a successful speaking career speaking to corporate audiences. Why? I had fantasies about it because Tom Peters was the guy I was looking up to, but I could not find. A firm grant firm ground to stand on, say, I can walk into a corporate audience and tell them what's up. At twenty six now, I haven't worked at a corporation. So so the deepest the second deepest question, the answer for yourself is who come on, just tell me who in front of you. Who do I put in front of you that you go, Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I can do this. And when you nail that boy, you're like nuclear powered. Now all you've got to do is say, great, how do I tell them I'm available for hire? How do I tell the right people I'm available for hire? But so far in today's world, though, so here's the nuance in today's world, though, Joe, I wouldn't start a keynote speaking career in today's world if I was if I was saying I want to be a speaker, Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: Because now social media exists because a messenger, I'm a messenger and a messenger. And that just means you got the messages you want to share. So so the messenger and me saw. Oh, well, in 1992, that was stages. If you were the keynote speaker in 2000 and 2001, it's every day on social media. Joe: Right. Patrick: And that's where so anybody that, quote, wanted to be a speaker said, no, no, you don't want to be a speaker, you want to be a messenger, constantly sharing your messages and often getting invited to stages in stages. Now look like Zoom's. They look like webinars. They look like 20 minute Ted Ted talks. Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: They look like anywhere where you are the authority getting to share your message. Joe: So let me ask you this, I don't mean to interrupt, but I want to know why, when you first did that speaking when you started on this path, what made you think only three years out of college that you had something to then go back and teach the college kids? What light bulb went off and said, I can go back and explain to them that I'm doing what I love? Patrick: None of none of my peers, I looked around and none of my peers, all of them that were smarter than me, all of them had better grades than me, even my peers that went to better schools than me, UC Berkeley and Stanford, they all seemed to lack a fundamental understanding that I was benefiting from, which is you should do what you love. Isn't that wild? Joe: Yeah, it's it's I mean, you're lucky Patrick: Yeah, Joe: It's. Patrick: They they they all seem to have bought into the giant myth or lie or distortion that says you should do what's hot. You should do what you can get. You should do what pays you good money, Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: All of which to Joe: Mm Patrick: Me Joe: Hmm. Patrick: Look like I'm in a casino. Astonishing bullshit. Like, I think one of the greatest blessings God ever gave me was a radar that said, that's inferior bullshit. Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: That's not what a great, meaningful life of purpose is built on, it's not built on what's hot on what makes money, you know, on what other people will think is cool. It's built on what your soul thirst to do. Joe: Yeah, it's it's powerful, it's just, you know, and I just had this conversation with our our friend Chris hey, where I feel like there's I don't I don't know how to even say this, but it feels like we're fixing ourselves later in life. And I wish what you did on that first stage for that, those college kids, we could even go a little earlier in life and and, you know, talk to kids that are I don't know what the age, what the mentality is and what the age group and what they can absorb at a certain age. I don't know that scientific research that's been done, but it would be nice, you know, how sometimes a young kid will see something they'll see Patrick: It's Joe: On Michael Patrick: Happening. Joe: Jordan? Patrick: It's Joe: Yeah, Patrick: Happening, Joe: I Patrick: You Joe: Just Patrick: Know. Joe: Wish we could move it. I feel like we're all trying to fix it now Patrick: Right, Joe: In Patrick: But. Joe: Midlife where I wish we could move it earlier. Patrick: What you know, I mean, the role models for today's kids that that are young, that are below 10, they're tremendous Joe: Yeah. Patrick: Because I have a 12 year old son. And if you've never seen Mr. Beast in, my son loves Joe: Oh, Patrick: Mr. Joe: Yeah, I Patrick: Beast Joe: Have Patrick: And I love Mr. Beast. That's an that's a messenger. That's Joe: A. Patrick: An inspirational messenger. Who is role modeling. Hey, you can not only do what's wildly joyful and fun, but you can give your that guy understands giving it a level Joe: Yeah, Patrick: That I dream of learning that Joe: Yeah. Patrick: I dream of embodying. So, you know, every jet I view this next generation as Savea as more enlightened and it's so awesome to see. Joe: Yeah, I. Patrick: But Mr. Resum role modeling for my son, you know, I thought I think I'm a role model for my son, that you can do what you love and have an abundant life. And Mr. Beest is better role model. You know, Mr. B gets it earlier and at a level that's in almost incomprehensible, Joe: Yeah. Patrick: You know. Joe: Yeah, well, OK, so you've talked about the speaking part of it, and then how about a little bit about the one man show, because that was a really interesting story to me about Patrick: Ask me Joe: How Patrick: A question, Joe: That came about. Patrick: Would you benefit me with a question? Joe: Well, I want to know, like what I remember the story, how you saw it on TV and a trigger, you were like, I want to do that. Like when you said, I want to create this show. And just that one night in that hotel room that triggered it all for you, just like that, you're still on stage, but it's a step in a completely different direction. Patrick: Yeah, thank you, Joe. OK, so then let me think about. Making the super relevant for anybody listening. OK, so what's really remarkable to me is that we can be successful. So maybe someone's listening to say, I love my life. I like my life. I'm Ahmad, I'm successful, and you're just clapping along and you're saying, oh, yeah, I got this. I couldn't be happier for you, but I want to I want to tell you a true story from my life about when I felt that way, but I wasn't. But I wasn't. But there was something much bigger that was tugging at my sleeve that was very hard to acknowledge. So I was this quote, by my standards, very successful speaker all over the country, whatever. And then but. There was this secret unrealized ambition, Joe, and you haven't you haven't heard this sort thing, and the secret unrealized ambition was to be a story teller in the theater, just the only guy on stage, enthralling and entertaining an audience and making them laugh with just a personal story from my life. This and this was a dream that came to me that was inspired. It's not a dream. It's this was a. A soul calling. That I felt when I was about, oh, twenty two or twenty three years old, because it even before I became a speaker, my girlfriend took me to a theater, not a movie theater. And we watched Spalding Gray, a legendary theater performer, just tell us a story for an hour and a half from behind his desk. And I walked out of that theater, Joe, and I turned to my girlfriend in her old 1964 Rambler. And I said, thank you for bringing to me that that was amazing. And she said, Oh, yeah, he's so great, isn't he? I said, I looked her in the eyes. I said. Now, that was unbelievable, Joe: Ok. Patrick: I said what I would give to do that. Because I thought I just seen the best thing a human being could ever do with their life and, you know, and this woman who loved me very much and meant nothing harmful by it responded. Yeah, but you'd have to be funny. Bakersfield was super funny, and what she didn't know is, is that was like shooting an arrow accidentally right through the chink in my armor because I heard it and said, oh, yeah, what was I thinking? I just sat in there with a master. And I'm not funny and I'm not even good storyteller, so I'm just sitting here in this 1964 Rambler having myself a pipe dream. I can't do that what he just did, he made it look effortless because he's a master and so I built a speaking career, which I very, very, very much love, but I still had this secret, unrealized ambition in it. 30, what you were referring to is at 33 years old. Well, another theatre performer had come on the scene, a named John Leguizamo. And John Leguizamo was in my book was Spalding Gray Times 10. And no disrespect to Spalding Gray, the creator of the medium. But but where Spalding Gray sat behind a desk, John Leguizamo tore up use the entire stage became 18 different characters, male, female, young or old, and was 10 times funnier in my book. So he came on. Patrick: I was there in a hotel room and he has his HBO special came on. And I've never felt worse about my. In some way about my sort of career self and, well, this really I got this horrible, horrible ache pain in my solar plexus, and it was the pain of fear, of paralysis, of envy, of self-loathing. Because what? Because it was this swirling ball of hell in my stomach that said, I love what this man is doing and I want it so bad for myself, but it's impossible for me to get to because it's it's. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough to ever do what I dream of doing. And and that was that was the that was my fear of not doing it. You know, built up for 10 years is, as we like to say in my business, Bliss Champions. Your purpose left on, attended to becomes a purpose, curse becomes a curse. And so on that hotel room bed, I felt the curse and the pain. And fortunately, I grabbed for a pad of paper and I wrote at the top, what are you so afraid of? And I started freeriding. And I wrote all these fears, you'd expect them looking bad, looking stupid, being awful, wasting my time, you know, wasting money, taking away from my really good speaking career. And then in the end, I wrote something that really surprised me. I'm afraid I won't be as great as John Leguizamo or Spalding Gray. Patrick: And when I wrote that sentence. It like took the lid off of something super dark and evil in me, because when I saw that sentence in the light of day, I never realized that was one of my fears. It looked absurd. I laughed out loud at the absurdity of I have never told and I've never even attempted what they've done and yet. And yet the reason why I'm not going for it is because I not I might I'm comparing myself to the greatest human beings on planet Earth at this craft. And it just struck me as ridiculous, and then a voice came into my mind, a thought that I never had before, couldn't you just do it for fun? And the weight of the world was lifted off that secret, unrealized ambition, me, who's so success minded, had never thought of just doing it for the sake of fun, the pleasure of I should try that. Who cares if I fail? And that was my ginormous breakthrough on my greatest bliss ever. And so I so I started doing it for fun shortly after that. And to make a long story short, for 15 years, I toured with my one person solo show. I and this is a metric I care about, but is not why I did the show. I did the show for the love of doing the show, for Joe: Hmm. Patrick: The love of learning to do the show, for the love of hearing audiences laugh. But in the end, what blows my mind is a hundred thousand people bought tickets to see my show. Hundred thousand people sat in my audience for 15 years. I had a red carpet tour of the theater world and today it's being made into a Hollywood movie. Joe: It's amazing. Patrick: Right. Joe: And it's incredible. Patrick: So. Joe: So what you said or you said, why not just do it for fun if someone's in the same spot that you are in that hotel room, when you were watching him perform on that HBO special, would you say that that's a good starting point for some people who just can't seem to to to do that thing that they so want to do as it just. Is that a good trigger? I don't know if that's the right thing, Patrick: It Joe: But Patrick: Is. Joe: Is that OK? Patrick: In Bliss Champions, we've learned we've got a real extraordinary map for for these for these kind of we call them bliss journeys, going into speaking was a blitz journey for me. A journey to follow my bliss. Going into the theater was a journey to follow my bliss. Writing a book was a journey to follow my bliss. So we've got a really detailed map. And what's surprising is the biggest pitfall we know of on the map is the desire to monetize what's possible to use to Zoom to early. So Joe: Interesting. Patrick: You think of your bliss, right, and then immediately society is trained us to think, but how will you make money at that? Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: And that kills more bliss journeys. The two biggest killers of all blessed journeys is not getting started and trying to monetize to even think about monetizing too soon. So they're the antidote to monetizing too soon is forget about monetizing. Do it for fun. Do it for fun. The benefit is Joy. Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: The benefit is fun fund, the benefit is aliveness, then the benefit is ball in motion, and momentum has to be included in anybody's realistic formula of great success. Momentum is one of the major ingredients of great success. So as long as you're sitting around not doing something, trying to figure out how you how you can guarantee success on it, you got no momentum. You got nothing. Joe: Yeah, yeah, that's Patrick: So, yeah, just do it for fun. Joe: I love it, Patrick: That's my mantra now, Joe, is Joe: I love it. Patrick: Is I don't wake up my career and figure out how to do things for money, I wake up and I figure out how to do things for joy and the money. I mean, you know, I care about money. I make good money. But the money is and is a secondary thought. It is the longest money has that rightful positioning in my life, it's secondary, Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: Like once I once I figured out what's joyful to me and I've got emotion in it, we can figure out how to monetize it. No problem. You know what we teach English champions. If you can't monetize your your most blissful activity, don't blame it on your bliss. Blame it on your on your business skills. And you don't have to blame it on your business skills, you just have to know it's not my bliss that I can't monetize. I don't have to change my bliss or forgo my bliss. I have to learn to monetize. Joe: Yeah, it's you hit it on the head and it's a it's amazing how many people have such great talents, great ideas, great aspirations, and it's just that putting that one foot in front of the next one. And the one thing I think you hit it right on the head is just how I can make a living at that. How can I do that? And it's it's it would be so cool if people just did it for the fun of it and then the joy and what they bring to other people, all of that other stuff the universe delivers because it just realizes that's what you were meant to do. Right. It's just. Patrick: Yeah. Joe: Well, so you mentioned Bliss Champions, you know, throughout this conversation. And I think this is the appropriate time now to sort of clue in because, again, we're we're limited on time and I have a million things. So let's talk about this champions. So I would like to know I ran across it just because once we got off that call where you were teaching us how to tell the story, you know, tell our story and a very creative way, I then was doing all my own research and I said, who is this guy? Man, I love the way he talks. And I can tell that there's just something about him in his soul that's on fire. And I want to know more about it. And then it took me to Blessed Champion. So I'd like for you to explain to the audience what this champion is, what it does, what you know, how, and then we'll put in the show links all of the other stuff to get in touch with you. But I you know, to explain what it what its purpose is would be awesome. Patrick: Ok, well, I'll give you I'll give you us a scoop, Joe Torre, I don't know when you're going to publish this. I actually should ask you, when are you going to publish this? Probably. Joe: I can do it whenever. Patrick: Ok, well, you Joe: I do Patrick: Know. Joe: What a week, normally I can postpone this, I can I can Patrick: Ok, well, look, in Joe: Do Patrick: About Joe: It tomorrow. Patrick: In about one in about one week, two weeks tops, we're going to announce our brand new book Joe: Ok. Patrick: And I'm so excited about it. It is the conversation we're having. So I'm going to tell you the first person I'm going to tell, it's called "Purpose Code", How to "Unlock Your Purpose", maximize your joy, astound yourself and if someone says, oh, jeez, I am interested in this free report we made about it, which is the 10 reasons why people don't unlock their purpose and go to purposecode.com. So no one knows that website exists yet. So. Joe: Ok. Patrick: So but they're going to find out first through going to purposecode.com. Joe: I love Patrick: So Joe: It. Patrick: Bliss Champions. Bliss Champions, so the surprising thing, Joe, is in, you tell me how much you've seen as I can't believe how much I've seen, it's shocking to me is how many successful business owners there are. Who are lacking joy. These are people I'm telling you, like Mega Millions dream home, not one dream car in the driveway, as many as they desire looked up to by all their peers and all their employees. Happy that they built the business, happy they overcame all this stuff and made it to the top, but their deepest secret. Is something's missing. And so my business partner was one of those guys, you know, he cashed out for 50 million bucks. And still, something was missing. So his story is quite remarkable. He's not here, so we won't tell it, but but. As you saw, so he both knew it through personal experience and sitting in on groups like on the IS. Know, as the entrepreneurs organization, you got to be a successful entrepreneur to qualify to get in. Well, one of the first things that my business partner saw up close and personal through that organizations, wow, so many people here have secret unrealized ambitions that they're not going for because somehow they're successful business. Patrick: Has it been a little bit of a bind? And somehow along the way, while they were flexing their entrepreneurial muscles. They their their muscles for joy and bliss atrophied or were never developed, and so we both inherently understood how much impact if you can shift a person at the top of an organization to be joyful, they will spread. They will spread that message through the entire organization. Leaders that lead from Joy and that follow their bliss want everybody to follow their bliss and maximize their joy. That is the you can't be living joyfully and blissfully, truly without wanting to spread joy and bliss. It's impossible. Love, it's impossible for love to not desire to spread love. So. So. Bliss Champions is our remedy, it's we're four years into into seeking out and accepting individuals who who are successful but know something is missing. They don't know how to figure out what what is missing in what would be in their lexicon, a smart move, because they're used to everything being, quote, smart, right. What would be a good, smart, legitimate move that would bring them more joy? And we're experts at that. We help them unlock their purpose, because once you know exactly what your purpose is and you can put it in words, you have a true north and you not now you don't make missteps. Patrick: And then but once you unlock your purpose, then then the great opportunity is to feel great, you know what your purpose is, what bliss journey should you take up? And there's a lot of choices. So you have to have good decision making structure. So we call ourselves Bliss Sherpa's because we've been up and down the on our own bliss journeys through our whole lives. That's that's been the blessing of our lives. We know the territory. We know the mistakes. We know the pitfalls. We know where where people quit and why they quit. So we Sherpa people up on blissful journeys and all of our secrets to doing that, that we've you know, I've been on I've been Sherpa and I've been a Sherpa for people following their passion and living their dreams and following their bliss for twenty five years. And Eric has been doing it for an equal amount of time as a CEO of large organizations. So this is why I'm so thrilled that we wrote a book together on it and the book's called "Purpose Code". And all of our secrets are in that book. Joe: That's great, it is was there some momentous occasion that how are you and Eric connected? Patrick: Yeah, Eric cashed out for millions of dollars, and he and the day after he cashed out and he went to lay in by his pool, just view overlooking his wine estate. He was rushed to the hospital and almost died from Joe: Uh. Patrick: Poor health while he was laying in that hospital bed contemplating his mortality. He realized I didn't finish the job of my purpose. And he knew that Eric's always known I've known Eric twenty five years, Eric has always known his purpose is to help other people, is to help is to inspire himself to live joyfully and to take that inspiration and spread it to other people. This is the thing about purpose. Here's a lesson and purpose. Your purpose is, first and foremost, what selfishly brings you joy. And you can't support your purpose if you're looking for if you're looking outside of yourself for where to save the world, you will you'll you won't see it when you say, look, it's just selfish. Something inside me always, you know, is always finds joy when I'm in this direction, when I'm doing this kind of activity, I'm my best self. Once you identify where your best self, what you'll see is then that when you give yourself that gift, you automatically give it to others and desire to give it to others. And that's where your purpose becomes a service to the world. So so, Eric, figure it out, man, you know, I I've always been living my purpose, but I slipped off track. While I was going on flexing his entrepreneurial muscles and going on this incredible monetary tear. Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: And so he got out of the hospital, began working on his health and called me up and said, let's start list champions. There's a there's a he said there's you know, the one thing you and I have always been united on is wanting to help people follow their bliss. Joe: Now, that's really crazy. That's. Patrick: And the reason why I said yes is because I had hidden from my bliss for 10 years in in fear, right, my secret ambition seemed Joe: Yeah. Patrick: Impossible. And so I knew the cost of doing that. I knew the falsehood of doing that. And I and I knew that I knew the tremendous pressures that await anybody on the other side of finally finding the wherewithal to Joe: But. Patrick: Do it. And so, as I said, once you've experienced that kind of joy and bliss and truth, you want to share it with others. You want to say, like, I'll show you where your greatest life is and society just doesn't it just doesn't have enough messages. You know, it's societies has too many messages about smart, about practical, about money, about status. And all that stuff comes with following your bliss. But it can't be it can't be the deciding factors or you won't know where your bliss is calling you to. Joe: Yeah, it's like we have it backwards, it's like the cart before the horse, right. And if we can just flip it, it's everything just sort of opens up and through Bliss Champions, you help people to work through this. And then ultimately the goal would be is is it a week long? Patrick: It's a six it's a six month program. Joe: Six month program, so. Patrick: Yes, it's a month program, people apply to get in. Joe: A. Patrick: We we we work with seven people at a time, cohorts of super small seven. So it's super individual. And and then it culminates after six months of coaching and masterminding, it culminates in our super, super specialty. We take you to Bliss Island, which is in Hawaii where we own the property and we run an extraordinary five day retreat to try to really launch our our participants and into their bliss. Joe: Yeah, it's incredible. I Patrick: It's Joe: Love Patrick: Fun, Joe: It. Patrick: It's Joe: You Patrick: Super Joe: Know you Patrick: Fun. Joe: Know that I love it. I just Patrick: Yeah. Joe: One of these days I'm going to be a blessed champion and I'll have to figure that out. But sooner than later, Patrick: Now, we've Joe: I'm Patrick: Launched Joe: Not. Patrick: We launched Authors', we've launched we've taken people that that thought this isn't a this isn't worth a book. And now they're published on the best publishers on Earth and they've got a multi thing deal with one guy has only he said his bliss was motorcycle's writing Harlesden. He thought, what can I do with that, that you can't monetize that? And and now he has one of the only dealership licenses in the country to rent Harley's and take people on Harley tours, Harley Bike Tours. Joe: Mm Patrick: He Joe: Hmm. Patrick: Has his own Harley bike tour dealership. We've taken CEOs who had giant companies but weren't happy and now they're super joyful, super happy. Their marriages are better. And they're and in addition to running their company, they're joyfully doing this thing they always dreamed of doing. They're they're more amplified, express self. So our stories sound like that, you know. Joe: Yeah, that's great. So how can someone find out about this champions and how do they go about doing what they need to to become a part of that program? Patrick: Well, let's I'm going to answer that really quickly and then let's go to a different territory, if Joe: Ok. Patrick: You don't mind, OK, because I don't want someone listening to this. I'm looking at the clock here and I think that we have about 12 minutes. And I Joe: I Patrick: Like Joe: Just Patrick: To maximum Joe: Want to I think Patrick: My. Joe: It's amazing. I wanted to Patrick: Thanks. Joe: Give it its time because I Patrick: Well, Joe: Think Patrick: Everybody Joe: It's, you know. Patrick: Everybody should start "Purpose Code", because the biggest value that they can get right away is truly to read this report that I wrote. And it's called "The Ten Things That Stop People From Unlocking Their Purpose". You got to know, how come I don't know my purpose? What am I missing here? So go to purposecode.com and just grab that free report. Joe: Perfect. Patrick: And then and then it'll it'll lead you to learning about Bliss Champions. It's an application process. I would love people to apply. It's free to apply, you know, and then we individually interview you get to know you and and we have all kinds of ways to serve. And Joe: Perfect. Patrick: You can get the book in your hands. Joe: Ok, Patrick: But Joe: Cool. Patrick: But let's let's let's see how many more how much more insider. Something super helpful we can pack into the last ten minutes here. Joe: Perfect. So I have something that I totally wanted to ask you that if you can put it in an understandable layman's terms where it doesn't come across as being overly spiritual and fufu. But you talk about being present in so many people these days are talking about that. But I love watching your talks. When you you know, you're out doors taking a walk and you have your phone and you talk about it. But how do you put it in and like everyday Patrick: Layman's Joe: Terms Patrick: Terms, Joe: For it? Yeah, Patrick: Yeah, Joe: Because, you Patrick: Yeah. Joe: Know, everybody looks at and go, wait a second, you want me to sit in silence for ten minutes, meditate, or you want me Patrick: I Joe: To Patrick: Don't write. Joe: All of those things to pull yourself back in, to be centered, to have, you know, hold space for yourself, all these things. And it's just so hard these days. We're getting bombarded from all sides. So because of you and how you can communicate these things, I want to know from you what being president means and how someone could practice it on a daily basis Patrick: Ok. Joe: Where it's not this. Patrick: You're Joe: This. Patrick: Making me. You're making me super happy because now you're bringing up my next favorite subject. Joe: Perfect. Patrick: So Joe: Awesome. Patrick: So I. I am both deeply spiritual about this, but but there's no need to talk about it in that way because I didn't approach it that way. I just approached it from man, I need I need a different way to do my life. And I found that different way to do my life. And it was the most revolutionary, impactful, beneficial thing I've ever learned or done in my life. And so you'll see me spend the majority of the rest of my life has boiled down to two two things. Two things on one hand, follow your bliss. And we've been talking about why, why, because it's your bliss, it will bring you bliss and, you know, as we say in Bliss Champions sometimes. Is there something better than BLIS because BLIS means perfect happiness? So what are you looking for if you're not looking for perfect happiness? So but in follow your bliss, there's a doing this to it, right? It's it's OK. We don't similar, but there is another path to bliss. And so I have a right hand and a left hand strategy to life in my right hand because I love having a career. I love to have something to do every day. I love making, you know, while having a career. I follow my bliss and in my left hand, I, I. Nowhere Bliss's without doing anything, I know how to find BLIS every single day of my life, no matter. Patrick: What happens, no matter the circumstances, no matter the hardships, no matter the challenges, I know where bliss is, even in storms. So my career could not be going well, but in my left hand, I still know where Joy is every single day and how to get there in a concrete fashion. So that to me, my this left hand strategy I'm talking about that you brought up that I call a presence practice. That's where it sits in my life. So. Let's see, it's a good window into this. I'm taking a little quiet space for it to find me. Why would someone want to practice presence? Because what I didn't know I was well into my 40s, Joe, and I had never once wielded the word ego. And and up until the point when I got a new definition and it became very meaningful to me, Igoe to me meant don't be egotistical. It meant, oh, or you have a healthy ego. It takes a healthy ego. That's all I thought of ego when I was in. And then, to be honest with you, I hit a rock bottom in my life sometime in my 40s, my ego, the my shadow self, my bad behavior, the worst of me. The worst of me put me in a position where I were where I was at my rock bottom, and I thought to myself, there's got to be a better way. Patrick: And I reached for there had been a book sitting on my cell for a long time that I had no interest in. It was called. "The Power of Now", Eckard Tolle. And I grabbed this book and it re educated me and it re informed me and it completely transformed my life. The book didn't transform my life as much as my adherence to what the book said for the next seven years on a daily basis transformed my life. It did it very quickly, but I was so in love with what I was discovering that that I just kept being a diligent student of what Eckhart Tolle calls presence. OK, so in a very short amount of time, here's what I would love somebody to experiment with on this call that is non-spiritual. The only thing that is ever causing you a bad feeling. Is your thoughts? Now, so I had to wrap my mind around that first experiment with that, because I used to believe, no, I'm having a bad feeling because this shitty thing happened. And I was positive that was true. Until I wasn't until I began to say, wait a minute, is there a buffer in me that's causing the pain, not the situation, this is easily answered, but you should but everybody should try it on. That's life changing, because what if situations and bad circumstances are not causing you bad feelings? What if it's what you think about those bad circumstances, how often you think about those bad circumstances that are causing you a bad feeling? OK, for instance. Patrick: I want to talk about the pandemic and then I'll talk about the pandemic, for instance, the day that it's announced that we're going to be in quarantine for however long, an indeterminate amount and 20, 20 people in the world had multiple possibilities for a thought about it. Somebody sitting in their home could have taken that news and began thinking all kinds of really bad thoughts that, hey, are well justified. I'm not here to argue with the with the with whether that thought is justified. But somebody could have been sitting there thinking, this is awful. I might lose my job. I like going outside now. I can't going outside. What are the implications of not going outside? What if I'm in my house forever? What if I get covid-19? What if my friends get covered and I die? What if they never leave? The governor is terrible. The president is terrible. The vaccine is terrible. Was it made in the lab? Those thoughts are causing in a bad and negative emotions in the body. And what if and some people thought those every hour of every day. Not not by choice, but by by habituated pattern of their mind, getting to think without ever being safety, without ever any but any other force saying hold on. Joe: Mm hmm. Patrick: Do we want to think like this 24/7? Is it serving us? OK, but equally to lots of people did that. So lots of people had horrible emotions. And I'm not saying don't do that, I'm just saying be aware that's why you had horrible emotions. What didn't happen is the pandemic is the the announcement the pandemic did not reach into anybody's body invisibly and say you now feel bad. Outside circumstances cannot reach in your body and and flip switches and say you feel bad. They cannot be the cause. If only a fox can be the cause, equally so and wildly true, unbeknownst to me just six years ago, but now perfectly known to me and the most exciting thing I've ever learned is some people heard the news of the pandemic. And fought and fought like this. Oh. We're going to go into quarantine. Now with to wash the dishes. And didn't have further thoughts about it until there was more news or until those thoughts were necessary. And didn't feel negative emotions, or if they did feel the negative emotions, only felt them for as long as that emotion lasted, while it wasn't being sustained by unchecked, unreasonable, insane, incessant thinking. So a president's practice is simply, well, on one hand, a presence practices the deep recognition that circum negative circumstance circumstances don't cause you upset your thoughts about them do and your ego. Ego should be defined as when when you're not thinking your thoughts, they're thinking you. And you don't even know it. So I learned to not be the crazy guy, the insane guy who is washing dishes, who is physically washing dishes, but who mentally in my mind for 15, 20, 30 minutes is having an imaginary argument that I'm winning with somebody else. Patrick: I learned to not be that guy, I learned that I that I was concerned that we're all constantly that guy. And that you don't have to be that you can wash dishes while you wash dishes. And that if you do so, here's what I promise you, because I know from experience, if you learn to quiet, to say presence means I'm not going to be in the future, I'm not going to be in hallucinatory future scenarios. I'm not going to let my mind run off to hallucinatory past scenarios. I'm not going to hallucinate about the future. I'm not going to hallucinate about the past because those can only be hallucinations or call them imaginations. You cannot make the future real. You cannot make the past real. The only real is ever. But you can find through your five senses. So presidents practice means live in the real more often. Want to think about something, think about what you're doing. Be what you're doing. Washing dishes, wash the dishes. If you're working on your book, work on your book, if you're talking to another person, talk to another person. If you're watching the birds in your yard, watch the birds in your yard. So here's the let me give this for me, the big wild finish, first of all, if that's all I ever knew and I figured out how to do that six years ago without any other further teachings, I would be right where I am today. Patrick: I and these are not light sentences to me, these are the greatest revelations of my life piece. A profound sense of constant peace, a profound sense of joy for no reason and a loving feeling. You know, that filled what I used to have this black hole of, gee, I wish I could get more love. And now I have a fountain of love that just comes from inside me for no reason, peace, love and joy for no reason are what automatically and guaranteed come from being present doesn't require meditation. It requires noticing that your thoughts are running rampantly out of your control and you can distance yourself from them. And then once you distance yourself from them, you can I I like to call them the roommate, you can notice your thoughts are not you? They are a crazy roommate that's always stirring up shit in your head and never stops talking. And you are not that roommate. And you can move that roommate to the garage in the day you move. And it doesn't happen in a day the more you put that roommate in the garage. One hundred percent, peace, joy, love, for no reason other than you moved your roommate to the garage and. Miracles will begin manifesting in your life. For some reason, the entire universe is more capable then of coming to support your happiness. Joe: It's incredible. I just I can sit and talk with you all day, and we've already gone over our man. I could just I literally could sit here and then do this. So before we leave this one subject, I think it's important. Is there is there any sort of when you talk about the practice, is there any little tidbit of how someone can do that in the simplest way? Because I think everyone gets bogged down with all of the things that are just, you know, for example, we talk about meditation. Is this hard? I mean, I used to get up every day that I made it a promise that I wouldn't do anything until I just put my headphones on, put the app on on my iPhone, turn. Everything else also wouldn't be interrupted and just did it. And I felt like that was my most productive. Let's say it was a year that I did it straight. I haven't done it in so long. I feel like I got to get back to it. I can do it like I don't mind meditating. But first there are people that will never do that. So what is of super Patrick: I'm Joe: Super Patrick: One of those Joe: Simple. Patrick: People that doesn't matter to me. Joe: Ok, Patrick: I was one of those people that will never meditate, Joe: Ok. Patrick: And I'm really happy to say that that both are fantastic choices, whichever you feel called to clearly. And they both lead to the same way. But if someone if if in some crazy really hypothetical, I can tell when I'm saying something stupid, I'm saying something stupid. But in some crazy, stupid hypothetical situation, it's a pattern. You have to choose one for the world meditation or presence practice. I would say we got to go with presence practice. It's easier. OK, so, yes, I have two things that are really simple and super practical and bless you for asking Joe the number one thing and and wildly enough this what I'm about to say is the prescription and the advice of seemingly every great. Teacher, you know, on the planet, that's that is spiritual and it's it's to be conscious of of one single breath. So at any point in time you go, Oh, I want to do it. I want to try this president's practice. You would simply take a one breath and be aware of that of your breathing for one breath. And your awareness, you can shift around, you just say, look, my job is to be aware that I'm having this breath so that for you that might mean, oh, I'm going to focus on the feeling of the air. Coming into my body and exhaling from my body. Or you might say, I'm going to become aware of the feeling of my body expanding and contracting, or you might you're awareness might say I'm going to be aware of the sound of my breath. Doesn't matter one conscious breath because it is impossible to be conscious of your breathing and think a thought at the same time. But conscious breath is both a great it's a great present to practice because it will be difficult for most people at the beginning of their journey to complete one conscious breath without becoming aware. Fuck, I Joe: No, Patrick: Started Joe: That's right. Patrick: Thinking. I started thinking during I, my mind got off the leash and started thinking something halfway into that breath. And so that's the great teacher one because that's OK. That's a president's practice of presidents. Practice isn't isn't stopping all thoughts. It's becoming aware. Are of the thoughts of the roommate. It's becoming you're you're you're winning when you go to the roommate came in and started talking shit while I was trying to take a breath. So that's called a wake, that's a state of a weakness that in as long as you're awake to your thoughts, peace, love, joy and miracles will begin pouring into your life. Mark my words. So but as you will practice that, too, you can take a conscious breath without thinking on most given days. Wonderful. OK, the second practice, right, is that built my life on this. Is. Step number one, notice when you're feeling anything that's bad. The only thing this doesn't apply to is physical pain. OK, so I want disabled people to eliminate physical pain. It can be applied to physical plant pain, but let's just say that's an advanced course. OK, but the step number one, the most important step is to notice, oh, I'm feeling upset in any way. And there should only be one word. It would be helpful if if people change and said there's only one word now we're going to throw out all these different various words hate, depression, loneliness, sadness, grief, worry, overwhelm, stress, anxiety, who cares? Fear. Patrick: They all deserve really one word. Suffering. They're all a form of suffering, so notice the next time that you're suffering a negative emotion. Boom. Now there's a great opportunity for step number two, OK? And usually when you notice this, what's fascinating is you'll have been feeling it for a long time. That's how long it takes for awareness to come in and say, well, I'm feeling something bad here, but I did this very for at least a year and I got to choose my life. So first, I know I have a bad feeling. Step number two is built on the awareness we already learned. Every bad feeling began with a thought that was against something happening. Every bad feeling is caused by a thought that always follows the same structure. This shouldn't be happening to me. This shouldn't be happening. OK, so when you have a bad feeling, like you're like a person trying to defuse a bomb before it really blows up, and so you trace the wires knowing at the other end of the wire there will be a fire. You had a thought at the other end of those wires that was something about you thought it shouldn't be happening. Let me give you some examples. He or she should have spoken to me like that. I should have gotten that job. I shouldn't have gotten that. There should be more money in my bank account. There should be a different president there. There. That guy shouldn't be president. Patrick: That shouldn't have happened through my television screen. I shouldn't be in this condition. I shouldn't have that ailment. I shouldn't have this pressure. I shouldn't have been raised that way. I shouldn't. So all you're doing is tracing those wires to what did I think shouldn't be? As it is. That was the source of your pain. Now, once you have that, the third step is to take that shouldn't it shouldn't have. And. See if you can find any part of yourself and you always can. It's harder at first that says. I can allow that it. That it is that way and you're why your justification, why can you allow that it is that way can always be. Sanity because. It is. That way. And as soon as you accomplish any ability to allow that, what you are against, to just allow that, it is it's even if it's temporary allowance, it's not saying I'm OK with that person being president forever. It's not an allowance of forever. It's I'm OK. I can allow that. That person is president. Currently, because they are. So you just looking for this momentary allowance of what all spiritual teachers say of what is to be against and I love it when they point out to be against what is is insanity. Because. I'm against that this can exist really, because it exists. Could you allow that it exists? I can allow that exist, why? Because it does exist, right? Joe: So, so far Patrick: Right Joe: Of. Patrick: Now, it's not a total acceptance of and I and I can I'm and I'm allowing that these cans will exist for forever. It's not saying that. Can you allow that exist right now? At first, you'll hear your ego go, no, I hate that can. But can you allow that it exists right now is anything. Yeah, why does it exist right now? And Joe: The. Patrick: And all all the it shouldn't exist or they shouldn't exist. It shouldn't exist. You can do that for 12 years. Twenty four, seven years can will still exist. Joe: It's just. Patrick: So if you can allow that, it exists. You have accomplished. A presence practice, because presence will what will happen next will always happen, you will feel better and you'll notice how I feel. I'm returning to peace. And once you accomplish returning to peace, you'll notice or I just feel in general more love, and then after a while you'll notice, someday you'll take a measure of your life, you'll say, is my lecture. If I say my life's joyful all the time everywhere. Why? Because you moved your roommate, your ego to the ground. Joe: Oh, it's awesome. Patrick: Now, there's a fourth final step to that, and I think of it as advanced, but so sometimes it's hard and sometimes it's easy, but it's super fun. The fourth step, the third step was, can you allow that? Something is what it is. And the fourth possibility is can you embrace. That it is what it is. Is there anything in you that could embrace that could say not only can I allow the can is there, but I can embrace that the can is there and you can see why that's a harder step because something you were previously just totally against, could you embrace it? Now, it's a that's a different sort of class, it's not complicated, but it takes more words, my journey towards learning to embrace things I was previously against. But I'll tell you, like some of the greatest revelations of your life come when you learn to embrace everything. Everything's. Joe: It's really powerful, man
The problem with getting good at managing your life is that you end up with a life that has to be managed. What would happen if you found out that focusing on enjoying your life could make you more productive and happier than managing your life? We know most of the greats enjoyed what they did. What if enjoyment is an essential part of what makes us great?"Imagine that you are on a boat and you are going down a river. Management is when you are fighting against the river, but when you are in that effortless flow of the river, there's an enjoyment to it. What you have to do is, you have to be listening to that river deeply. You have to be listening to that impulse."We're told all of our lives that if we want results, we have to manage ourselves and the world around us in order to get what we want. What if that isn't true? What if intention and determination are critical, but managing life gets in the way? What if the way to get the life we want is to focus on enjoying our life, not only by doing what we enjoy, but also by learning to enjoy whatever is happening? This is what Joe and I will be getting into today.Brett: Joe, what makes this an important topic for you?Joe: There's a personal story behind it. When I was really young in my career, I did international stock lending for a while. I was still sorting through so much of my personal issues at the time. I decided in my head what I really wanted was to have a creative career. That was something that I decided, which was far out there that I had to attain, instead of realizing that it was really available, if I had the right perspective. I quit this great job as far as money goes and as far as career path goes. I went for seven years trying to have a creative career. There was this place where I had basically reached it. I was working on this TV show and I had written something. I was being brought in to train, to direct the show. I did this two-week stint on the show and I realized it was the same thing that international stock lending was, meaning that everything that I had run away from in international stock lending, I was running to in this creative career. One person had all the power. Everybody was working long, hard hours. They were unhappy. I remember the actor of the TV show saying to me, "Every time I come into work, it's like having a piece of my soul ripped out." Everybody wanted to be doing something else and not the thing that they were doing. They had some dream of the next level of their career. Most people weren't leaving because of the money. I said, wow, that's exactly the thing I was running away from and running to. I had spent all these years of my life trying to manage this outcome. I had finally achieved it, but I didn't have any idea that it wasn't the thing that I wanted. At that moment, the revelation came on me and I said, "Wow, you know what I'm going to do instead, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to say yes to whatever shows up. If I enjoy it, I'll keep on saying yes. If I don't enjoy it, I'll say no."Then all of a sudden, there was more and more stuff to say yes to and so I got to keep on picking the things that were more enjoyable. As that happened, everything took off; my money, my happiness, my career, everything in ways that I couldn't even have expected. It was like I had surrendered and I allowed that surrender into my own enjoyment to lead my life. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by a life that I enjoyed.I neither enjoyed stock lending, nor did I enjoy trying to become an artist nor did I enjoy being the artist, but I ended up enjoying my life, not by managing it, but by focusing on the enjoyment. That's why it's important to me. I think why it's important to talk about in general is, because it's the biggest misconception that a lot of people have is they think that if they're going to manage their life, they're going to end up with a life that makes them happy. In actuality, if you learn to manage your life, you end up with a life that you need to manage and that is not happiness.Brett: What does it mean to manage your life in the way that you're describing?Joe: One way to think about it is, intellectually, you're trying to assure an outcome. When I was directing films, one of the things that I really realized in that process was that, if I had a very specific outcome in mind of how the actors were going to do their thing, it was horrible. The result was horrible. Everything was horrible. The process was horrible. If instead, I gave the actor's direction and then I just waited until it felt right and I just allowed that impulse to carry us and go, "That's it. That's going to work," without the idea specifically of how it was going to be, the results were far better.That's one way to think about the difference between management and non-management is that you're not holding really specific future outcomes. You're holding the intention of the scene is going to be great and it's going to be emotional. You're holding the intention. The actors are holding the intention of whatever it is for them, getting the person to say they love them and getting out of the room, whatever their intentions are. Everybody's holding their intentions, but the outcome is something that you are recognizing when it's right. It's not something that you're being specific and controlling about.There's this implicit feeling of trying that happens when you are doing management and trying is very different than doing. Doing is just the action. It's like in mental waves, you think about doing as alpha. There's this flow state that happens and it's just everything's happening and there's not a lot of tension in it. Managing life is when you feel like you have to bring tension into the process to get it your way.Another great example of this, I think, that's really palpable is I see this with clients all the time is they're thinking about a big conversation they have to have. Maybe it's with their husband, maybe it's with their boss, maybe it's with a good friend. They're trying to figure out how they're going to say it in such a way that they're going to get the outcome that they want, instead of thinking about, what's the authentic way for them to say, what's their deepest truth that they're trying to share and let the chips fall where they may. If they're in the first, then they're in management and if they're in the second, then they are not in management.Brett: I think that film example is actually a great one, because in filmmaking, in production, you often have an art department that's trying to make exactly the igloo that's in the treatment for the director, when maybe they could make any number of igloos that fit the theme and that would work great in the scene. Many other parts of the scene are likely to drift through the course of production from the treatment. There are ways to flow with that and there are ways to try to manage every single detail, which you just ended up having the entire crew fighting reality for a while.Joe: It's something that I've realized. When I'm running businesses and I want something a specific way where it's creative or someone's doing something creative, like copy editing or some visual aspect or building slides, I've realized that if I just give them three adjectives, just I want it to be reliable, grounded and empowering, then the results are far better than if I start thinking I know how to design something. I'm like, well, it should be a little more blue and turn this a little bit this way. That broad stroke thing. We know that people in general, in the management of people, respond a lot better and are a lot more motivated, if they feel like they have autonomy. That doesn't mean that they don't want direction. It means they don't want management in the way that I'm talking about management.Brett: Right. I see that a lot in design as well. Micromanagement of design is a great way to get terrible work from a good artist.Joe: Exactly. That's everything. There's a way of looking at every person's role as an artistry. You're going to get bad work out of everybody's artistry in that. The other way to look at it is to imagine that you're on a boat and you are going down a river. Management is when you're fighting against the river. When you are in the flow of the river, even if your paddle's in the water every once in a while and you're doing that stuff, but when you're in that effortless flow of the river, there's an enjoyment to it and there's a non-management. When you're fighting against the river, then you're in the management.For that to happen, you have to not be managing a river, which obviously never really works. What you have to do is, you have to be listening to that river deeply. You have to be listening to that impulse. When people are in management mode, they usually are not listening to their internal impulse, or the impulse of the people around them.Brett: It sounds like a distinction to be made here is, management is to try to fight reality to conform to your results and enjoyment in this concept is more combining your intention with the randomness of reality and seeing what happens.Joe: Yes, that's right. I work with a lot of executives and this is one of the hardest things for the executives to really catch on to because they have all made a living in being able to have this determination and drive to get the results. Many of them have used management to get there. That determination and drive, that utter unacceptance of a result that's different than the one that you want, is really critical, but you need to be very general about the result that you want. It can be general like I want a company that's super successful. I want a product that sells better than all the competition. That's great.When you start managing that process and want it to be this specific way. You want it to have this kind of sales technique. You want to have, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then that's when it goes south. You have to keep all that determination. You have to keep all that fortitude. You have to keep all that utter unacceptance of a reality that you don't envision and there is also reading the river and letting the river flow and paying attention to that river and following it to get there.Brett: A lot of this seems to happen by buying in the moment like, "Oh, no, this has to happen because if this doesn't happen this particular way, then the entire plan is ruined." Without this 30,000-foot view that we're discussing right now, how would you know in the moment, if you are managing rather than following your intention? What are some ways to mindfully recognize this in the process?Joe: One of the things that I see managers do, since we're on management, specifically, one of the things that I see managers do is they don't ask this question. They don't say, "What speaks against that?" Let's say I come into a room and I say I want to sell in question-based selling and then we're talking to the sales team. I'm like, "Let's do question-based selling." I might try to convince everybody and push everybody into it, motivate everybody and give a good speech. Everybody's like, "Yes, let's do question-based selling."What is usually far more effective and that tells you that you're not in the management of that experience is to say, "Let me give a good case for question-based selling. Here it is. Now, tell me what speaks against it?" People will tell you, "Here are the things that we don't think will work about it." That tells you the things that you have to address. Then you address them and then you're in the flow of the situation. Then you're like, "Okay." Most likely, you're going to get a much better solution because the things that they want you to address are important to address. If you can't address them, then you don't have real buy-in. Without real buy-in, they're not going to do as good of work. Without real buy-in, it probably means that there's a better solution out there. That's one of the ways to know is, if you're trying to push people into a result instead of being eager to find out what speaks against it. When you're listening to what speaks against it, your results are going to be far better. That's one way to know it.Brett: There's a delicious irony there, the idea of trying to sell a sales team on a sales process about question-based selling without asking any questions.Joe: I hadn't thought of that in my example. Yes, exactly. That would be incredibly ironic. Yes, exactly. It's why question-based selling works is, because you're not managing the customer. You're actually empathizing with, following the customer. You're following the river instead of trying to manage the river. That's one way to know it.Other ways are, when you're more listening to the outcome than you are to the impulse. Right now if you listen for the impulse, as to what to say next, that's a very particular somatic experience. You can still have determination in this experience. You can still be feeling like, "Oh, we're going to get to a resolution and I can be listening," and waiting for the impulse to speak. That's all a very possible situation. But when I want your next sentence to be something or I want my sentence to do something to you, to get to a particular place, then I'm in management.Brett: That adds another filter in the process of what you're going to say when you have to think about how you think it's going to be received.Joe: Exactly.Brett: Which then builds in all of your projections into the conversation.Joe: Yes, totally. It also builds a tremendous amount of inefficiency. When you're managing stuff, what you are always doing is not looking at the root cause. As an example, which is a more enjoyable car to own? Is it an MG or is it a Lexus? Most people who don't like fixing cars would say a Lexus is a far more enjoyable car to own than an MG, because you know with an MG, every 500 miles, you have the thing up on blocks and you have to do something.When you are in management, you're just constantly trying to figure out how to fix the MG with the least amount of money and as quickly as possible. When you're in enjoyment, you're looking at the core issue. If you are looking at the core issue, everything becomes far more efficient. You're not trying to patch the boat as it's sinking. Instead, you're thinking, "What's the right boat to build?"Brett: Getting out of context to the bigger question.Joe: Exactly.Brett: We have learned to manage things for a reason, many would propose. Don't you have to manage some level of things for anything to get done? If so, where is that line?Joe: It's not where you think it is, that's for sure. What I mean to say is, if you ask the people at Hyatt, "Hey, man, do you have to manage your properties?" They'd say, absolutely. If you ask the people at Airbnb, "Do you have to manage your properties?" They'd say no. If you ask SK Telecom and all those telecom companies that tried apps before Apple, "Did you have to manage your apps, the building of the apps?" They'd say, "Yes, absolutely. We need to manage it," but Apple said, "No, we don't. As long as they hit a minimum requirement, they can be on the App Store." If you think about all your great employees, how much management do they actually require? It's the people that you're managing that are not usually your great employees.Brett: Maybe because you're managing them so hard.Joe: Indeed. Do you have to manage and what's the boundary? The answer is that the better your system is in place, the better you have the mechanism working, the less management is necessary. Every place that you are managing is basically a way to look at an inefficiency that you have. If you build a really good machine, say like an iPhone, you don't have to manage the iPhone. You and I have never said the word, "Well, I really had to manage my iPhone yesterday." It's because it works.Brett: We might have to manage our iPhone use and that arises from inefficiencies in our attention.Joe: Exactly. That's right. Even that, that's the self-management part, which is you can say, "I need to manage my cell phone use," or you can turn off all your notifications. You can turn your phone into black and white and don't allow for color usage on your phone. Or you can turn on the sleep mode. There's all things that you can do, so that you don't actually even have to manage your cell phone usage, so that it's all done systematically.Brett: Or I can find out what it is in my emotions that makes me want to go to Instagram and start scrolling.Joe: Yes, exactly. All different levels of it. Even managing your own state is ineffective. In fact, that's the thing about meditation generally, is that most people call sitting still and trying to manage your state of mind meditation. It's not meditation. It's torture. Enjoyment of sitting there is meditation. Yes, management is going to happen. This isn't something that you get upset about. Is it something that you're going to never have to do in your whole life? No, but every time you're managing something, you can absolutely see it as a chance to become more efficient and the way that you find that efficiency is through enjoyment.Brett: That's great.Joe: The other thing that happens here, oftentimes when people are talking about they're like, "Yes, but I got to manage my company. I got to tell people what to do." Then you look at other companies. There's this company called Valve. There's this Valve Handbook, which is just amazing. The way they manage what they do, is they figured out how to choose really good people. They have a whole thing about that and then when you get to Valve, you have a desk that's on wheels. Where you push your desk is what projects they do. There's not even somebody saying, "Okay, these are the projects we're going to do. Here's our big initiatives." They literally just have people roll their desks to what they want to do and those are the initiatives that get done in the company.If you look at our entire economy. We have four tools to manage our economy and we don't do it very well. There's just interest rates and how constraining the laws are for businesses, et cetera. Our whole economy doesn't have a manager and yet, we're the biggest economy in the world. So far, we have been the most resilient economy in the world. Is there really a need for management? Is there really a need for that level of centralization? There may be in certain circumstances but guaranteed there is a more efficient system out there and when somebody finds it, they will be the winner of that business and their life will be more enjoyable.Brett: It sounds like, if somebody wants to start experimenting with loosening management and finding more enjoyment, there seems to be a requirement for a certain amount of slack in the system. If you're running a company that's just barely making payroll month after month after month and you imagine that if you just stopped managing people in the way that you're currently managing them and you even have one or two hiccups then everything is all over. Or imagine in a life, where somebody's like, "Well, I'm working three jobs right now to make ends meet. If I just started focusing on enjoyments, then if I left one of those jobs, then I'm not going to feed my family." How would you respond to there being a feeling for a need for slack or people's fear that they don't have enough slack to try an experiment in this way?Joe: I would say that they're looking at enjoyment in a backwards way, meaning there's one way to look at enjoyment, which is, "Here are the things that my head says that I will enjoy when I do it, like me having a creative career." Your head doesn't really know what you're going to enjoy. You can try to organize a life where everything you do is enjoyable, meaning that you've chosen things to do that you enjoy, that you think you enjoy, or you can learn to enjoy the things that you're doing.I'll give you an example of this. When I was 27 years old or something like that, I did this experiment where I said, "I'm not going to do anything I don't enjoy for a month and see how that goes." After the first three or four days, it was everything that I enjoyed. I took a nap when I wanted to take a nap, I did everything I wanted, then the trash started smelling. I was like, "Well, I'm not enjoying living with no trash and I don't enjoy taking out the trash. What the hell am I going to do?" I learned, "Wow, how do I take out the trash and enjoy myself? How do I write emails and enjoy myself? How do I pay bills and enjoy myself." I don't enjoy not having bills unpaid or having a bad credit rating. That's not enjoyable for me.The only way to really get to a life that you enjoy is to not avoid the intensity. It's not to run away from difficult things. It's finding the pleasure in whatever you're doing. It has to be a major part of the equation. If you have three jobs and you need the three jobs to get by, then learn to enjoy the jobs that you have. Learn how to do them with more enjoyment and watch, when you do your job with more enjoyment, your job changes pretty darn quickly. People want to be around people who are enjoying themselves. People want to work with people who are enjoying themselves and people will be attracted to you, people will give you more opportunities.It's the same thing in your business. Maybe you don't have the ability to reinvent your organization, where the management is so low that people are deciding their own payroll and people on the bottom line of a company like the manufacturing line of a company are deciding what $3 million pieces of equipment to buy. Those are companies that are run like that and maybe you can't get there tomorrow. Maybe it's not even smart for your company to get there, but the question that you can always ask is, "What's making this so unenjoyable and how do I enjoy this process?" That is going to build efficiency in your company.The thing is that there's somebody in mind right now when they're listening to me and they're saying, "This isn't necessary. I can be successful without enjoying myself." That is so true. You can be successful financially. You can accumulate a lot of power. You can have a good looking mate on your side. You can have all the toys that you want and not enjoy yourself. That's absolutely 100% the case. They're not actually being correlated-- that success and enjoyment. There's a lot of people that are successful who don't enjoy themselves and there's a lot of people that are successful who do enjoy themselves. What I am saying is that you can have both. If you are having both, you're finding efficiencies.Brett: Yes. Let's define enjoyment then. A lot of people think of enjoyment as there is a sense of control. People have the freedom to do what they want to do, but a lot of what it seems like you're describing with enjoyment is that it doesn't really require freedom. For example, you could be working three jobs and be micromanaged and potentially find enjoyment in what you're doing. Can you talk a little bit more about that?Joe: Yes, absolutely I can. There are people in jail right now enjoying themselves. There are people on this earth right now, who are sitting in three by three cells who haven't lied down in two years, two months and a day who are doing it to learn how to enjoy themselves. That's part of the Lama tradition. The enjoyment is available to you right now. Right now I can say to everybody who's listening to this, "Hey, enjoy yourself just a little bit more right now. Just a little. Just allow a little more enjoyment in this moment."Brett: My entire body just relaxed a little bit.Joe: Right. Exactly. What did that take? Your conditions did not change at all. You're in the same space. You have the same bank account. You have the same girlfriend. Nothing has changed and you just enjoyed yourself a little bit more. Enjoyment doesn't cost anything. Enjoyment is just a perspective. It's just an allowing. It's just a receiving. It's visceral. It requires us to be a little more present. That's it. It requires us, maybe to be a little bit more in our body, but it's not something that is ever inaccessible to us.Brett: It sounds like this is definitely an internal thing as well. We've been talking a lot about enjoyment in our environment, in our circumstances, in our businesses, in our organizations. How does this management and enjoyment dynamic work internally in the way that we just experienced?Joe: Yes, it's a bit of a mystery exactly how it works. What I've seen is that, internally, there is a capacity to feel pleasure that is almost like a muscle. It's a nervous system thing, but it feels like it's a muscle in the fact that you can build it. You can build the capacity for this feeling of enjoyment in your life and this feeling of pleasure. There's a certain amount of overwhelm that happens when you feel too much of it. Your level of too much is going to be different than my level of too much, which is going to be different than person C's level of too much.Brett: What makes it be too much?Joe: I'll tell you what I think it is. If you put your hands together, put your hands like your thumb and your fingers all together and then intertwine your fingers. Now, intertwine your fingers in the opposite way so that your hand looks the same but your pinkies have switched positions. You'll notice that one of those ways is comfortable. The first way is comfortable and the second way is uncomfortable.Brett: Yes, interesting.Joe: Pleasure being too much is very much like that. It's just what you're used to. It's very much a level of comfort based on what you're used to and based on what your nervous system feels safe handling. If your nervous system had to be on high alert to feel safe as a child, then there's a low level of pleasure that you are going to allow yourself an enjoyment that you're going to allow yourself because you're going to feel unsafe. If you were deeply nurtured as a child, then that level of pleasure and enjoyment is going to be much higher. We can train our nervous systems to start accepting higher and higher levels of pleasure.Brett: It seems like there's an inverse relationship between enjoyment and letting our guard down. The more enjoyment we're experiencing, the more down our guard must be and there's some baseline level of guard that we must viscerally believe is required to be safe. Does that make sense?Joe: Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. What you're basically saying there is, that you have to believe that a certain level of defense is necessary, to be able to protect yourself, which also means that you don't believe that you can respond in the moment, that you have to be prepared. That is one of the main things that creates us not listening to our impulse, not watching the river, is that idea that we have to be prepared so we're not in the present moment handling the thing that's in front of us. Or that we're in the future in a way that's very hard. We're not in the future in a soft way.You can be in the future and be like, "I'm dreaming the future and have intentions in the future," but most of the time when we're in the future, we're trying to control the future. That's like the perfect example of management. We do this internally all the time. We're literally having conversations in our heads to control the future. Have you noticed that the conversations that you've had about how you want the future to go, they have never worked out specifically as you planned? You think about how you're going to have the conversation 10 different ways and it never happens that way. It always happens differently.We're thinking about our thoughts. We're trying to manage our future. It never works out and it's definitely not enjoyable. That's called spin. We're just spinning. Now, I imagine that you're in that conversation with that person and you're just listening to the impulse and focused on enjoying the conversation.Brett: Which results in a lot more listening to what they're saying as well.Joe: Exactly and it helps them feel connected with you. You feel more heard and they feel more heard. The conversation goes better. It's the same thing internally. Internally, we're trying to manage ourselves all the time. "Hey, lose weight. Hey, get more in shape. Hey, you should listen more. Hey, you should stop managing." Whatever it is that your brain is constantly telling yourself you should manage and it doesn't work very well. It's not the most efficient way by any stretch.We do this in meditation and we do this in yoga. Now, what is it like to meditate and focus on enjoyment? Not just doing something that you enjoy, but also enjoying what you're doing. Now, what is it like to do yoga and focus on enjoyment or crossfit for that matter? What's the internal thing that you do when you're managing and how effective is it compared to enjoyment?The amazing thing is, I could say to somebody, "Hey, look, whatever internal exercise you do, just focus on enjoyment. Just enjoy that exercise. That's your number one thing to do." Most people won't, because they're like, "Enjoyment is scary," subconsciously, but if they do it, what they notice is that they do it a lot more, because it's more enjoyable. If meditation isn't enjoyable, you don't keep on meditating. If working out isn't enjoyable, you don't keep on working out.The enjoyment propels the practice. Telling yourself you should do it and you really have to do it and you have to do better and stronger da-da-da, it's not very enjoyable and so you stop doing it. The other thing that's important here to say is, that the reason you think you have to manage yourself is, because you don't see that you're inherently good. You don't believe in your inherent goodness. You believe that you're like some lazy gluttonous asshole, if you were left to your own devices and that you need to be whipped into shape.If you believe that about yourself, then that's who you're going to end up being. If you believe that you are inherently good, you want what's best for you and for the people around you and that you want to have an active, enjoyable, fulfilling life, then why on earth would you need to be managed for? If you want that stuff, what would make it, that you wouldn't just naturally do it?Brett: It seems that that would also show up in the way that you manage or treat your employees or expect to be managed or treated by a boss.Joe: Yes. Any boss you've ever had who is a micromanager, I guarantee you they micromanage themselves horribly. If they're not depressed now, they will be. If they don't have major anger issues, they will have. Any boss that you have, that is constantly in fear of how you are behaving is constantly in fear about how they're behaving. It's just the nature of it. The self-development-work works so well in companies, is because you are projecting your internal relationship externally.Brett: Yes, let's dig into more about how this management enjoyment dynamic shows up in relationships.Joe: Yes. Here's the story that I think freaks everybody out and it's very apropos. I have two girls. I don't think there's any time I punish them and I don't think my wife ever punished them. We got angry from time to time. That absolutely happened. I'm sure they felt ashamed from time to time, though we did our very best not to ever shame them. The thought process then is that, well, your kids must be spoiled and that your kids must not do what they're told and your kids must not behave well.If you get into my home, what you find out is that my kids are amazing kids. It's so palpable that when people come they're like, "Wow, you have amazing children. How did you raise them?" That question gets asked all the time. Even after they see our kids, most people are dumbfounded that that's how we did it. We trusted that they wanted to be connected with us. We trusted that they wanted to be connected with themselves. When they were connected with themselves, they would show up thoughtfully and lovingly and with care. That's what they did. That's how it worked out. We never said to them, "Hey you're a bad person. Hey, you're naughty and we need to control that naughtiness." That never happened. They never believed that they were naughty. They just saw that we saw them as good and they ended up as good.Obviously, some adults, that would take years and years and years of treating them that way for them to act that way. I'm not suggesting that you go around and go into a maximum security prison and treat all of them like they're amazing people who are inherently good, because unless they believe that, there's going to be friction to get to that point. In general, that's the way that you walk around in a relationship. The way you walk around is that you find out what's motivating them, find out what's moving them, find out what they want to do and follow that flow instead of saying, "This is what I want you to do and do that."You see this happen all the time. One person convinces another person to join a project. If I'm hiring somebody for a project, I basically say, "What's your dream job?" If they're not really close to the job that I have in mind, it's not a good fit. I'd rather have somebody whose dream job it is, to do the job that I have in mind than to convince someone to do something because, eventually, I'm going to have to manage them. It's something that I learned in making investments. What I realized was that the amount of management that it took to make a deal happen was the same amount of management that I would have to consistently provide to make the deal work. Then that's really inefficient investing. I've learned that if I had to manage to get a deal done, I just would not do the deal. It was the deals that happened with a certain amount of flow and ease that then continued with that same amount of flow and ease. Obviously, there's ups and downs with everything, but generally, that flow and ease was far more likely.Brett: There's also that disempowering factor of managing. If you invest in somebody's company and then you manage them, you're really saying that you don't trust their idea, unless it's done the way you think it should be done.Joe: Yes, that's right.Brett: That brings me back to that prison example, as well. You could go to a maximum-security prison and yes, on one hand, you can't just relax all the restrictions and behave as though everybody knows their inherent goodness, but we could actually stop doing a lot of the things that we do that reinforce the, "I am bad belief." There's a lot of talk about how the system reinforces itself.Joe: Absolutely. You can go in and treat every single person in a maximum-security prison like they are good people. That absolutely will help them. There's a great video documentary called Being Human. If you look it up online, Leonard, Being Human, you will see an example of somebody who has killed a woman and her child. The grandmother of that woman and the child showed him a certain amount of love that changed his life and you can see it. It's absolutely doable and that's how it works in relationships.The other thing is when you're trying to be managing a relationship, you don't want to be in the damn relationship. There's some part of you, whether it is you are getting sold a car and the person is trying to manage you into buying the car, you don't want to be in the relationship. That salesperson isn't as successful. They know that the best car salesmen are the ones who focus on having a good relationship and that don't try to sell the car and they outperform the ones trying to sell the car, usually, four or five to one.It's the same thing we see in our love life; our husbands, our wives, our girlfriends/boyfriends, that when we are trying to manage the other person's mood, there is less love. When we are trying to manage the other person's reaction, there is less love, there's less enjoyment in the relationship. If you are enjoying the person, there's a lot less management. If you're enjoying the moment, there's a lot less management.Brett: In the prison example, you can have boundaries.Joe: You can have boundaries without having to manage anything. A boundary is following an impulse. That's a great point. Having a boundary is basically the deepest act of non management on some level. The reason it is is because what you're saying is, "Here's what I'm going to do," and then you allow the other person to do what they are going to do, which is like, "Hey, what I know is that interacting in this kind of relationship isn't working for me. If I'm going to continue to act in this relationship, then what I want is to not have a lot of yelling and I want it to be respectful and kind." Now, that person can leave and they might leave you. It's really non management. It's just saying, "This is what I'm game for, this is what I'm willing to do in this world." That's what non management is to a large degree. That's what creates an enjoyable life even if it's scary to get there.Brett: It sounds like what you've been saying would be also if a partner is going to leave you and then you're going to have a lot of uncomfortable feelings, because of that and sadness, then that is also something to be enjoyed.Joe: Absolutely.Brett: Or we're going to be trapped by it.Joe: Right, that's another way. Most of what we are trying to manage in our life is an emotional reality. We're trying to manage emotions, trying to not feel heartbreak when our lover leaves us, trying to not feel like a failure if our boss gets angry at us. The non management of those emotional states and when I say non management, I don't mean that now you're like a puddle on the floor throwing temper tantrums and throwing tennis rackets around your house.I'm not saying non management in that way. I'm saying allowing yourself to feel the emotions fully, not act out on them, but allowing the non management of emotions so that you can actually feel them fully and you're not trying to push them down and repress them and hold your muscles to not feel them or judge other people not to feel them. That is a far more productive way of changing patterns in your life, than all the management of telling yourself you should do this or do that. You even mentioned it at the beginning of the podcast. You talked about, “...or I could just look at emotionally what's happening when I scroll on Instagram and what I'm trying to avoid.”Brett: How can we cultivate the enjoyment of those feelings that we are trying to avoid by managing?Joe: Well, stop resisting them. Half of the lack of enjoyment is the management itself. Stop trying to manage them and they'll all of a sudden become a lot more enjoyable. Stop resisting them.A lot of the things about emotional states that we find out is that it is the resistance to them that's painful, not the actual emotion itself. It's the fear of them that's painful, not the actual emotion itself. All of it is a physical sensation in your body. It has different intensities, but once it's unresisted they change rapidly, the sensation of them changes rapidly. No one's ever really been killed by an emotion or maimed by an emotion internally. Maybe an angry person maimed somebody else, but if you internally are feeling your emotions, you're not going to be wounded.Brett: Through the process of managing and suppressing our emotions, we can slowly kill ourselves with stress. That's true and depression.Joe: Yes, that's exactly it. Generally, that's the thing about management, we think we need it. What it actually is, is just a constant signal that we can find a more efficient way and a more enjoyable way. Just dropping the management itself can be enjoyment. Just to say, it's just about taking your hand of control away from it slowly.Some people, after listening to this, are like, "Okay, I'm just not going to manage any of my employees ever again." Then everything goes to shit and then they'll be like, "Yes that's right. I needed to manage it and I've proven that. I do need to manage it." What I'm saying is, see what the next level of enjoyment is, see what the next level is, because you have to find the new ways of being without management.An example that's really critical is, you're sitting with a bunch of employees or people that you work with and you need a job done. Let's say you need the car cleaned. One way to do it is to say, "I need the car cleaned." That would be maybe the least amount of management. The least amount of management is to see if anybody cleans the car, which may happen. If they have the right to defined roles and everything like that, reinventing organization style, somebody might just come and clean the car because they see it needs to get done.There's, "Hey, I need the car cleaned". Then there's like, "I need to get the car cleaned in this way, this way, this way and then make sure you detail this and do this and dah, dah, dah." Then there's car cleans just like, "Hey, I need the car cleaned and I need it to look like it looks when you get off of a new car lot. I need it to be done for less than $150 and I need you to enjoy yourself doing it." Where you give people the parameters of what a good job is but you don't tell them how to do it. You just tell them how to win.You don't see a lot of people doing it that way. You don't see that interim step, the interim step of letting people discover how to do it in a way that lets them win. Most people want to know how to win. If you keep determination and you keep intention and you keep boundaries and you keep maintaining and mandating the results that you want, then how necessary is management? The management is just the fear, that you're not going to get there. The management is just the fear, that people are going to hurt you, that people aren't going to show up.Brett: What you have been saying then in this entire episode is that in order to stop managing, we need to be willing to feel and enjoy feeling these emotions that we're trying to avoid like fear. That sounds like a really interesting topic to get into on another episode.Joe: Yes, indeed. That is a great way to think about that which is, we often try to figure stuff out before we actually allow the feeling of stuff. If we really let that feeling happen and learn how to enjoy that feeling, then most of what we're trying to figure out doesn't need to be figured out anymore.Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe. We would love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions and comments. To reach us, join our newsletter, learn more about VIEW, or to take a course, visit: artofaccomplishment.comResources:Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations, https://www.reinventingorganizations.com/Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Human, http://www.human-themovie.org/
I sat down with Chris Hay of LoveWorkRevolution.co to talk about his journey through his 30's and how he plans on changing as many lives as possible with his new mastermind. Enjoy! Joe Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: My guest this week is Chris Hay, you can find Chris's website at LoveWorkRevolution.co. Chris did some exploration during his 30s right after selling his company. He now just turned 40 in November of 2020 and he's working on a new project, a new mastermind, if you will. He has an acronym for the project he's working on and the mastermind he's building. Joe: And it's H.E.A.R.T. H is heal and hear your heroic heart. E Explore your genius. A accept your mission R rebirth yourself T take action and trust. I would encourage you to check out his website at LoveWorkRevolution.co and also get in touch with him at Chris@LoveWorkRevolution.co. Please sit back and enjoy my conversation with Chris Hay. Joe: My guest today is Chris Hay, Chris and I hit it off really well on a completely unrelated conversation to what we're going to talk about today. And during that conversation, we realized that we both are really excited about the same thing. And so I wanted him to come on and talk to us about that. He's originally from New Zealand. He's coming to us now from Barcelona, Spain, where he currently lives. Chris, welcome to the podcast. Chris: Thank you so much. It's a great pleasure and honor to be here. And yeah, as I mentioned to you, I'm deeply grateful, particularly because this my first guest appearance. So I'm a little bit nervous, but I'm sure you'll go easy on. You know, I've got a lot of learnings that I've taken and been working on condensing down and really excited to share with your audience and and beyond. So thanks so much for having me. Joe: Yeah, absolutely my pleasure. So if most of the people who have listened to any of my past podcasts know that for me, it's important to have the guest give their back story so that we understand who you are, where you came from, and it sort of lays the foundation for the conversation that we're going to dig in deeper about all that you're doing now and it new, exciting project that you're working on. So if you can't and this is great for me to because you and I have only chatted a few times, but it would be really cool to understand where Chris Hay came from and and where Chris Hay is going. Chris: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much. So, yeah, an interesting thing happened to me when I was 31 years old in 2011, and I kind of feel like this is the beginning of the modern day part of my life with you. Life, like everything that happened up until the end was kind of a dry run or whatever. And then this one moment kind of feels like where I was sort of born again, if you like, what would become the, I guess, the middle part of my life or something like that. So basically, yeah, 2011. And I'm 31 years old and I'm sitting on the beach in Bali on my head, looking out on the most spectacular sunset. And I've come here to celebrate selling my business, which I've been working on all throughout my 20s, kind of leading up to this moment with this great anticipation that when I saw my business, you know, I'm going to have cash and in cash flow looks like the happiness. And as I'm sitting there looking out on the sunset, I just feel dreadfully lost and empty and just completely bamboozled, I guess for lack of a better word, that everything I've invested all of my hopes and dreams that I'm building up to this this milestone and then cashing out is going to bring all this happiness. And of course, it just doesn't. So that's right. Chris: As I sat there and over the next three days while I'm on this vacation, I really was reflecting on my the paradigm change that had happened to my brain because I realized that concurrently I'd lost my purpose and my reason for getting out of bed in the morning, because previously I've had this business. Now I'm like, how am I going to do with the rest of the life? I'd also lost my identity to a large degree because I had been quite ripped off and invested in the identity of being like this 20 something year old, pretty successful entrepreneur. And now I'm kind of like shit. I just I don't even know what I'm going to do next and I'm going to go about figuring that out. But perhaps more than anything, I realized that I've really lost my art on how to find happiness. And and I really believe that this maybe not lasting forever, but like at least, you know, the golden boy that could last more than like five minutes or something like that. So as I reflect of all of that, I was talking about like, OK, where do I go from here? And I knew that it had to be something entrepreneurial because I don't want to go back and get a job like looking for the man. But I knew that I had to be about much more than just making money. Chris: I had something much more impactful and meaningful and genuinely like helping people because my previous business, to be totally honest, like when I thought it, I really was pretty much just thinking about the money. That was my main motivation. So I reflected on all of this and, you know, and kind of sat there for the rest of this vacation moping around, kind of feeling sorry for myself. I really had no idea where to start and try to figure out how to rebuild my life. And and so it began, as I call it, has other people refer to it as the dark night of the soul. You know what? Tend to lock it up for me to be quite a long and painful, drawn out process that really, to be honest with you, lasted pretty much all of my thirties. Thirty one when I sold that business, I turned 40 in November, just gone. And so really throughout my thirties was this really intense and difficult period of introspection and and figuring out all the elements that I don't like about myself and other. I do like to myself initially, you know, and really learning deeply, but not just about myself, but about how I could show up and and and do work that I would love and have a positive impact in the world. Joe: Can I ask you one quick question? Chris: Yeah. Yeah, of course Joe: So we hear this so often when someone that's successful. Right. And we always we hear from the wisdom of those who have accomplished something and they've reached some sort of financial stability and then they get to that point or they get to that moment of what they call success. Right. What they originally were striving for, which was the money and creating this entity. And then potentially, right? if you have a business, the goal is eventually to sell it in cash out on that and then maybe go to the next thing. Right? Joe: But we hear so often that people get to that spot, they sell, they have the financial freedom, and then it doesn't it's not what they thought it was going to be. And I think that the hard thing for people that maybe haven't gotten to that point yet and the only reason I want to stop you here is because these things also get into my own brand, like what was more painful, struggling financially or getting to the point where you had the money and then it wasn't all that it meant to be like if you had the choice. Chris: A great question. So it's a really good question. Chris: So I guess I would like to reframe that question. What I'm hearing is like what was the greatest challenge was that the struggle for money or wasn't the struggle for meaning which came afterwards? Well, until I cashed out of that business, the money was the biggest struggle I'd ever had. Like struggling to build that business was the greatest challenge in my life that I've had. And until that time. But it was superseded by what came next, which was the struggle for meaning. And I think I don't know, I'm in for some lucky people, this might come a lot more naturally than it did for me young people or more successful than you. And whatever metric you might consider their success, whether it's financially or or perhaps a more holistic measure of success, is how well they've found their passion or the purpose or and ideally the combination of those good things that they sound like they're they're passionate about and are doing well financially out of it. I mean, that's the gold standard. I think that's what we're all aiming for. So for me, making money, making money was was hard making making money or like making it even just an income or a comfortable income that's good enough to live off and whatnot. Doing what you truly feel like you want to do is, I would say in some ways more challenging because it requires that you know yourself at a much deeper level, which can only happen with great introspection and then over time. Chris: But in some ways it's easier when you find it because, you know, you might have people say that if you you find the kind of work that you're supposed to do on work that you love and you'll never feel like you work another day in your life. Right. So as you I think as you get closer to finding as you sniff it out and you're on the trail and you're kind of getting closer and closer and closer with the various projects you might be engaged in and then honing in on the work that you truly want to do that feels like play for you and makes you come alive. Then then I guess that part of it gets easier. And then you try to, like, build your skill level to a standard where the world will reflect the value back to you in the form of financial renumeration. That makes sense. That's a very long way of asking your questions. I would get into that, I guess, easier in some ways and more challenging in other ways. But certainly it requires a much deeper level of self-awareness, I think, which takes longer to get to just how do we get a product designed in China and sell it on Amazon, for example? I suspect that people are doing that. Joe: But I mean, some people possibly will struggle their whole life. And it's unfortunate. And and I meant that like financially or also that they're not doing what they were meant to do on this earth. Right. So the choice is if you gave someone the choice of saying, OK, you can have you can. And the struggles usually are the financial part of it, the your health. And then it's whether or not you enjoy your life. And that means you're doing some. That resonates with your soul, right? Maybe those are the you know, there's probably more I mean, a million books and but if I think about myself, it's like, OK, I have my health. I love a lot of the things that I'm doing. And I might not be at the financial level that I want but I think if I if I have the choice, I'd rather be where I am and and and do this than to be financially free. But hate what I have to wake up and do every day. Right. So and I think the problem is, is until you get to the point where maybe you got to where you sold a company and you had some financial freedom, when people hear someone like you say, hey, you know, I sold my company, not just you, I mean anybody. I sold my company and I I made a lot of money and I got to the end goal of what I set out to do. And at the end, I wasn't happy. And if someone hasn't done that, they have a hard time relating to resonate with that. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, another way to put it is like at the end of last year, the year before last, now coming into 2020, let me sort of Zoom out again for a second that like this wasn't a one and done for me, you know, like after I sold the business and had this experience of kind of like reaching an extrinsic goal and, and finding that this feeling of emptiness on the other side of it, like you would think that that would be enough to kind of knock, knock, knock that paradigm completely out of my head and replace it with the new paradigm. Chris: Only do things that are intrinsically rewarding. Which, by the way, science has found that intrinsically rewarding tasks, things that you would do even know that are rewarding in their own right for richer or rewarding motivation that leads to greater happiness. So if you can find if you can if you can pursue that, then you will be happier, even if you don't have to get to the high paying job in order to realize that it's simply just research around. Like, for example, is a Daniel Pink's Motivation 3.0, where he talks about intrinsic extrinsic motivation. So if you understand that, you will have a richer, better life experience by being driven by things like purpose and mastery and autonomy, then you can you can build that into your job, crafting if you're employed or into your business, if you're an entrepreneur. So you don't necessarily have to get to that milestone and realize that's what I started out by talking about how you think that having this experience once at such a deep level would be enough to kind of totally rewire your brain that you wouldn't make the same mistake again. But for me at least, and I think that it's common a lot in our culture, we're so hard wired to be motivated by extrinsic motivators, money, the trappings of success that add up that it's very that I didn't just learn at once like this has been. Chris: I don't like the volition of my lifetime. After I sold that business and I vowed to myself that whatever the next had to be about more than just the money had to be more meaningful. I would still, for the several years that came up, that still pantelides that be like and tempted by lucrative opportunities. And I spent countless lost months and cumulatively is kind of going down the rabbit hole just like, oh, this looks like a, you know, an interesting business idea, which is just financially motivated and whatnot. Chris: So I got to the point anyway, where I get before the last bout, or at least my New Year's resolution was to remove all extrinsic goals and replace them with one goal, which was in a piece, because I think that we oftentimes put in a piece or happiness on the other side of extrinsic goals, like when I achieved this milestone, then I'll feel happy. And when we do that, we you know, we pride ourselves on happiness here and now and then. Chris: So that's the trap that I found myself falling into time and time again. And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. And so. Now and when we have these big, lofty goals, it creates a friction as well, like where where the goal is and where we are now and then at least all of these feelings of inadequacy and lack of self-worth, because I'm not, quote unquote there yet, you know what I mean? So I'm still kind of trying to get my head up, to be honest, at the deepest level. Chris: But I think that it's about kind of holding holding space for ideas and visions that you might have that you want to achieve, but also kind of being less attached to them, I guess, you know, so that they don't rob you of your happiness here and now and above all else, being present and being grateful for the moment. And and I've found as well and spoke at a lot of other people who kind of have the shared experience as well as like the more we do that and remove ourselves from this relentless rushing towards the goal that may or may not ever eventuate and leaning into the future and at the cost of sacrificing our happiness here and now, that the the the more we stay present, the more kind of, you know, without getting to work with, the more kind of magic shows up in our lives. But first of all, we just appreciate the moment more. So maybe, I don't know, you take time to go for a walk in the morning and smell the fresh air and admire your your neighbor's flower garden or whatever it might be. So you notice those things. But also and this is this is kind of borderline a move by magic can sometimes show up like synchronicities and whatnot. And so that's the one grand synchronicity that kind of unfolded in my life, which led to a deeper understanding of my work and my my, my my greatest gift that I feel that I've received and that I can kind of share with others. So I'm curious if you want to go there and share that story with you as well. Joe: Yeah. So because I kind of interrupted you, because I wanted to clarify that, you know, if you've seen both sides, not everybody, I guess that was my point. Not everybody sees gets to both sections. Right? They either. And if they do that, like you said, they're they're either really happy doing what they're doing. And I think it comes when you're you're serving others where it's in alignment with yourself. Right. So if you if you have figured it out, which is really hard to do, but once you do and you can stick with it and not have it be like the way our world runs right now to be present and all the things you're talking about to be still and to leave space supercop. Right. We have so many things coming at us and and we're told to that you have to be really active out in the world of social media. And I'm just as guilty as the next person. But so it's really hard to wake up and take that one and walk past the flower and actually smell it. And it's just it it doesn't exist. It's really hard. Right. So I interrupted you when you were talking about how once you sold your company, there was through your 30s, you just felt like you were still trying to figure out how to find this this spark, this bliss, this inner peace. Right. So I guess that's where we're at now because I so rudely interrupted you. Joe: But I want to. That's that's cool. Chris: That's cool. Let me come back because I'd like one of the thought that kind of might help put a bow on this. Chris: You know, this concept of what if you if you haven't kind of if you haven't if you've got to like you've made it financially yet, how does that reconcile with the experience about sharing? One way to look at it, I guess, is like Maslow's hierarchy. Right. Which at the base of the hierarchy are like food, clothing, shelter, all of those things. And then at the top is self actualization. Chris: And in fact, about that and self transcendence, which is another category that I added to the to the in the twilight years, which is kind of little known and underreported then management textbooks. But it's an interesting concept that maybe will come later. Chris: And and so there's no doubt that if you haven't made enough financial needs yet, then you're not going. The crisis of meaning is going to mean much less to you because you've got to cover those basic needs first. And so in some ways, it's like a physical problem, I guess, to a degree, like a crisis of meaning. But I still believe as did Maslow that if you are lucky enough to supersede the baseline financial needs and then if you don't feel like you've made it there yet, I would encourage you to reflect on if you if you really do need all of the things that you currently pay money for because you never get caught up in wrapping. Chris: And spent a lot of money on unnecessary things. Maybe you can live on much less and then spend time instead of working to obscure things that are truly, deeply meaningful to you. And as you said, like figuring out how you can be of service to others while serving yourself as well, rather than sacrificing yourself to save others. Chris: But at the top of Maslow's hierarchy, which is the apex of the human experience, is the self transcendence for giving yourself to. As Becca Franklin said, you've got a great quote where he says specialization is possible only as a side effect of self transcendence. So you can only become your best self by losing yourself in service to a cause greater than yourself, essentially. Joe: Perfect. OK, so you're now when did you restore it back to the story? Joe: So when did you get over that hump? Let's call it. Chris: Yeah, so to be honest, like I'm still getting over, I feel like, you know, it's not going to take me. But there was one moment of kind of like a pivotal kind of, I guess, turning moment where I was at a personal development event in Hawaii. And we were asked actually Patrick Combs, I was attending one of his retreats in Hawaii and he was leading an exercise where he had us write our eulogy from the perspective of living essentially our best life from from this point forward. And it's been a really busy day. And it was the last thing at night like this. It was dark, dark outside and then back inside of us as we lay there on the on the ground and this little torch can light and to whatever would come to us in terms of how we're going to be remembered from from that point at our eulogy, having looked at our life from that point forward. And so I tried to empty my mind out. And really the only thing that I really like, I really believe that love is the universal connect, the one thing that we all share in common. And so I just wrote, Chris, touched a hundred million and I thought, I'll dream big ya know a hundred million people with love in this lifetime. And then I thought, this is my one chance to dream really big. So I added, an extra zero or zeros. So I made it like Chris touched one billion people with love in this lifetime. And then and I didn't really know exactly what they meant. I still don't really. But like, as I read it out and it will give me the opportunity to share with the rest of the group. Chris: And as I read it out, I felt this wave of embarrassment like rush over and be like, oh my God, I made a fool of myself. Like we had a dream so big that I could possibly impact a billion people. Oh, my God. Fortunately, it was the last was the last exercise of the day. And I started back to my room and kind of like it under my pillow pretty much. And and then I woke up the next morning and I was still really grappling with the sense of shame and embarrassment of having this out. And I think it's big. And so I went for a run down to the beach and did a meditation on the beach. And then on the way back, I had to stop for a public restroom. And and I'm standing at the urinal, of all places. And I looked up on the wall and someone had drawn a love heart with wings. And it's like, oh, that's kind of weird. And then I like that. I look around the bathroom and actually someone had drawn love all over the wall so they hadn't noticed coming in. So they were expecting is like, what the hell? You know, like what what does this mean? And, you know, I grew up in like a very scientifically minded family. And so I try not to believe in woo woo stuff or synchronicities and that kind of thing in my life has been a screaming pattern recognition bias. You know, like humans, the brain is programmed to recognize things like that. And then as I reflected on it, but maybe the recognition from my brain or maybe just my desire to kind of leave or make sense of things, but I guess I chose to adopt that event as some kind of affirmation, a potential affirmation from the universe, that go all in ya know life like it was. Chris: I let my mind go empty the night before when I had like to think about what I wanted to be remembered. And it felt like it was the source or the universe kind of speaking to me and wanting this. But I think this idea of this really is the most important thing. And I think that it's you know, I'm not sure if it's like I meditate a lot. Right. And and when I meditate, I feel what can only be described as love. And people will get that through prayer and maybe being in nature, watching a sunset, that kind of thing. But when you stop thinking in your mind goes empty, your serene, blissful, it's beautiful. And it feels to me like I can't think of a better word other than love. And so I don't know what love is, the fabric of the cosmos or the some underlying kind of fabric of human consciousness or both of those things, I'm not really sure. But there's something mystical about it. And and so I chose to adopt this as part of my story. And as I reflected on it more, I kind of thought, well, not only does I take this as an affirmation that the that I should pursue love and trying to make the world more love place. But I thought this this love with wings is an interesting motif because it love heart with wings. It's the same somewhere. It invites following. Chris: And as I reflected on it, I thought of this Steve Jobs quote. That was one of the first videos that I developed, my kind of videos that I watched after I came home from from vacation in Bali. So my business always. Had earlier, and he has this great commencement speech at Stanford, I think, where he says this above all else, follow your heart and intuition that somehow already know who you truly want to become. And and as I reflected on that, that's like that, you know, through all of these trials and tribulations of my theories, trying to figure out who I am, how I can show up, how I can help other people, if there's one thing I can put my hand on my heart and say is that I really did follow my heart. And so and then I was on a flight. And you know how you get those quiet times on flights where you might be doing some journaling or whatever, and you just kind of get these flashes of inspiration. And and so I started to etch out what would become this framework around, like how to follow your heart and everything I learned about that. So, I mean, I did around an acronym for H.E A.R.T. H is heal and hear your hero heart and E is explore your genius, A is accept your mission, R is rebirth yourself and T is take action and trust. And so yeah, like five modules and I really just the greatest joy of my life to try to condense down everything that I've learned over the last decade and, and try to make something beautiful out of it, out of all of that struggle. And I guess I kind of relate back to your initial question. You know, is it easier to make money or to make meaning? And then I guess of that is like, you know, what's what's more gratifying? And in my experience, you know, like this is this is brand new. And I'm actually looking for beta test people to kind of come and be guinea pigs with me. But this has been the most meaningful and interesting and validating experience of my life. Like it's the gift of stuff to everything I've learnt, really, to teach. Joe: Yeah, that's awesome. So ultimately, you're going to I know where you're going to think of a name for for all of this or you have ideas, but we're not we're, like you said, is being transparent. This is new. And we didn't want to like for some sort of title to this, but you you had it. Chris: Maybe it's like maybe it's like your back to your greatest destiny or I'm playing with, like, discover your destiny or something like that. Chris: Now, one of the things that I left out is like this thing about the love and making the world more complex and following your heart is that I think like love is the language of the heart. And I think that when you follow your heart. When you follow your heart and you find the work that you feel called to do. That can be your greatest conduit, one of your greatest conduits for love, I think you create that work with the motivation of love and you serve. I think you end up serving people who who who resonate with your story and to appreciate what you've gone through and probably going for something similar. And so you have empathy for them and in their case and you want to help them. And so that feels like love to me. And so I really like your vocation can become like one of your greatest battles that you have for manifesting love. And so if you believe that, as I do, that that love is the solution for most of the world's problems, then I believe that by following your heart to find your ultimate vocation that brings you to life the most can be your your heart. Your heart knows the way to those people who you truly want to become, but also how we can create a more loving world in the process. Joe: Yeah, and it's really interesting that I know as young adults and I've I've put up a post about this on certain Facebook groups that I'm in and I've reflected on this a lot, which is in the day and age that we're in now, there seems like we are. We're constantly trying to fix something that's broken, right, and it's usually and I'm talking individuals, right. Saying that we we get to a certain point and we realize, like you, when you sold your company, like many of us, when we hit certain points in our life that this isn't right. This doesn't feel right. It's not making me happy. All of the things that go through your head and I keep thinking, gosh, I wish we could just get to. The young adults earlier, like just this whole thing shifts from where it is here all the way, like they just take anything that any of the people that you and I know are doing or the people like Tony Robbins, the work that he does, Dean Graziosi, you know, good work Patrick's doing with Eric. If we could take all of that and just slide it earlier and just and I know that at a certain point, the young minds are not they don't have the attention span for there they are don't have the interest in it. They're not mature enough to understand it yet. Joe: But there's got to be a point where if we took all of this and just brought it way earlier in the life span of a human and just got to young people early and said, listen, before you get to where all of the rest is, not everybody's like that. Some people just find what they were meant to do and a really young age and are happy and life is grand. I would say the majority don't. They wander around really lost for a really long time. And the only thing that they always seem to gravitate to is making money. It's all financial and just and so they go down this path and then they come to realize later in life that that didn't work. But then now we're in like repair mode, right? Instead, it's like, God, if we could just figure out a way to guide young people to saying, listen, we can tell you now that money is not the answer. It's following your heart. It's being nice to people and loving and caring and empathetic and transparent and having integrity and all of those things that that if you could learn those and navigate that, all the rest will come to you because you're deserving of it, you know. But it's just it's such a frustrating thing for me. Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it reminds me of a story I wanted my friend Raj. He has a similar kind of story, wildly successful coffee company and business empire, really at the stage. But he was looking for an oil company when he graduated college. And one of his mentors within the company was a guy who was 60 or something like that and really didn't have a huge passion for the work. But he had another interest outside of work, which was now. But it was maybe it was, I don't know, like wood work or something more textile that he wanted to do with his hands. And he was always talking to to do this when I retire. Yeah. And then and then he passed away like that at age 60 or whatever and never reached retirement. You know, for my friend Raj, that was it. Chris: That was like that was that was all he needed to kind of be like, I'm not falling into that trap. You know, life is for the living. So. Yeah. Chris: And then they kind of back on what started out by saying where you we could only get this information at the end to people to get younger. Chris: If you're younger and you're listening to that's the one thing that I guess would encourage you to do as well as following your heart or maybe even kind of in tandem with that or another way to frame it or it even comes before following your, following your heart is kind of a, you know, a slightly amorphous kind of thing to say I'm cognizant of that. But I think following your curiosity is a great, great place to start. And so, like for me, having sold my real estate business and then I had no idea that I was going to end up essentially in the personal development space, you know, like where I come from in New Zealand. I've never met a life coach in my life, know what I mean? Chris: I didn't even really register for me that that was a viable option. So for me, it took me a long time to put the two together and go, oh, my God, like, what if I could teach everybody? But what if I could teach people, for example, in a word or, you know, some light on a dark night of the soul or some of the challenges, everything I've learned how gratifying that would be for a long time to get to that place. And I would but I wouldn't have got there had I not followed my curiosity and my curiosity in the first place was for personal development content. And so I sold that business and that that watched that Steve Jobs video. Chris: And and that was the aspect that the next several years were just a whole kind of personal development books and YouTube videos and everything I could get my hands on to try to figure out myself and and and and so following my curiosity, whatever your curiosity is, I'm read a... Chris: I look, I had an awesome video interview with Common, the rap artist Common A...just a couple of days ago Chris: But I was out walking my baby and he was talking about the same concepts of essentially service as being of service and finding your greatest gifts and getting them to give service to others. And he would say, you know, he started out in music because he enjoyed it. Chris: It was for him it was therapeutic and it's cathartic. It was fun, playful. And I guess he was following his own curiosity. And the people say, follow your passion. I don't. What are you curious about? What are the books you read? What are the experiences you'd love to have? Where might you love to travel? How would you like to speak to if you have the opportunity? Follow your curiosity and so Common followed his passion for music, curiosity and music and then realize how it could benefit other people, you know, how their audience are reacting to it was obviously resonating with them and giving them an emotive experience and and giving giving the audience joy. And then ultimately the cash comes as a result of that. So that's like one of the really interesting models that I discovered along the way as well. And you can look back up that it from what I saw this one talking like I was talking about basically the the default model that we have in society for happiness essentially is wrong. Chris: You know, it's based around Do Have Be like you think of that and like you do whatever it takes to have the stuff that you think you need houses, cars, material possessions in order to be happy. Right. But but if you flip that around a there's another interesting models, which I would advocate for, which is Be Do Have and I'll explain that essentially and be happy now and the research cutting edge cognitive psychology research actually shows that when we are happy, here are now, happiness and optimism fueled performance and achievement. So if you're interested in that, you can look up a book called The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor where he really dives deeply into that and finds that when get when you show up in it and a happy, optimistic state where we're trying to perform, you know, we're more open minded, we're more creative, all that stuff. So be happy now and don't put happiness or a piece on the other side of extrinsic goals. Extract the self evidence now and then find. And so then. So that's Be and then the next step is to Do so, do what you love. And if you don't know what it is you love to do yet, I would say follow that curiosity. Chris: And when you do what you love, ultimately your as Steve Jobs says as with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has a wonderful called Flow where he talks about the flow of state that that athletes get in when they're playing, that painters are in when they're painting, musicians are in when when they're making music. But also, you know, in other professional fields that are kind of elite that everyone could find themselves doing, can be employed when they're cooking or a coder is in flow when they're not coding and a designer is and flow when they're designing and people who have podcasts are probably in flow when they're in conversation. And so for that flow state is where we create point. So if you can find work that you if you can find work that brings you into flow in that flow, stay with time disappears and then you kind of lose focus or lose touch with the outside world and you're just lost in the work like that is that's when you know, you're you're on the right path and that's that work that will never feel like work. It really feels like play. And so then the final stage of this model, be happy now through the work that you love, will do the work that brings you to the flow. Chris: And then Have and so the keeping with the Have and this model, that is the first one where you're doing whatever is necessary in order to have now you're happy and you're doing what you love and Have part kind of like follows you, magnifiers into you because you're doing your best work, which is in flow. And then eventually, sooner or later, when you can have certain degree of competence at that, what the world will reward you people will take notice. And I'll be like, holy crap like Joe's podcast is amazing and this other work that Joe does, he obviously loves doing and shows up with this immense passion. It's like so inspiring. I want to be a part of that. Like tell me how I can be one of Joe's clients, you know, and the money kind of gets magnetized to you. Becomes a by product rather than if you're going out to get the money, you're going on to do what you love and be of service and and yeah, yeah, Joe: It's very interesting because I'm doing some work now in my own career. And part of it is the piece with Russell Bronson and and he just talks like he literally today's live webinar that we did. He literally got on there and right out of the gate, he was like, if you are here to make money, you're in the wrong place. It was like, I am here to get you to shift your mindset and to figure out what it is that you are here to do and how you are here to serve others. He goes, and when you figure that piece out, all of the rest falls into place. And it's in it's kind of like the whole thing where the universe gives you more of what you what you think about and what you are attracted to. And so if you are attracted to complaining and feeling like he woe is me and all of those things, that's what it delivers more of. Right. So if you shift it and say, listen, the more and more people I can help, the more and more love I can spread, the more and more whatever all of that goodness just it just naturally happens. Right. And then all the other things fall into place. But it's just it's really hard for us where we are in our lives again. God, if I only knew that 20 years ago or 30 or whatever, I just if that's what's really frustrating. So yeah. And I want to get back to what so what you're doing this work that you're doing and what you're about to offer to the world and present. Right? What in what form is this going to be and is it is it going to be a when you said you want beta testers, is this a course that you're going to run people through? Is, is...explain that piece of it to me. Chris: Yeah. For sure. So I'm thinking of a 90 day program, OK, 90 days. And like the small group, you know, maybe in four or five or ten people and and basically just a donation, more or less, if you like. You know, it's not about the money, but I think if somebody pays some money, at least, you know, they'll show up in a more committed way. So whatever, whatever potentially whatever people are can afford or are comfortable with, you know, I think it's such an important material that and my passion is to get it out to whoever and not let people be hamstrung if they think they have limited financial means. Chris: So, you know, some some very big price point. And and, yeah, I think I think a 90 day program to start with is enough to really get people pretty deeply set and the concepts and really understand all the stuff at the same level. And and then you want to go take a longer than the one year thing or even a month or whatever. Joe: And what's the product going to look like? Is it going to be like in a Facebook group? Is it on your website? Is it some piece of software developed or basically the kind of like a mastermind where in a training environment where we'll have a small group and then just meet every week, once a week or 90 days, and then we'll have like a Facebook group? Yeah. So there are these five modules where we'll be stepping away, moving through these for scale. And er and so just real quickly, like what I mean by something which like you're familiar with The Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. Yes, so like Star Wars and every major blockbuster movie is basically written according to this format where there's a hero in there, you know, they're at home, they're in their safe, nice, warm bed, more or less like the hobbits in the shire and then some there's some catalyst and that call to adventure and they go out where they need allies and enemies and face obstacles and overcome these. And in the process, they gain the kind of awareness of self and and ultimately face their biggest fears and then come back, return home, essentially with the power to bestow upon their common man, as Joseph Campbell would put it and so it comes from all of humanity, oldest mythology and whatnot. Chris: So Joseph Campbell wrote a book called "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" where he kind of discovered all of this and then Lucas was it, Lucas who did it wasn't Star Wars was one of the first to really adopt it into a major motion picture. But it's a really interesting frame sort of to do your life for. Chris: And I guess I argue that it's not just for the movies, but I mean, there's a reason why we kind of resonate with the parents and movies that we admire their courage and and their following of their heart, really, to face their demons and ultimately return home and take a bit of vision of themselves and able to help their fellow people. Chris: And so part of the way that a lot of work around the growth mindset and process is fixed mindset and how if you think you can if you think you can, can. And the difference between fixed and a growth mindset. And I would argue that this is, you know, viewing yourself, doing your, um as Joseph Campbell puts it, that you are the hero of your own life story. And so I believe that viewing yourself in the spy or even just playing with this concept of like viewing yourself as the hero of your own journey and that you have to face titanic challenges and surmount them, and then how can you grow and what you learn as a result of that? And how can you benefit benefit other people with what you learn as you go through this personal growth, like viewing your life through the ______ lens? I would say the ultimate growth mindset and then the H is the Hear and heal your heroic heart. And hear is what I heal is, you know, they say we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. So this is like developing self-love and really becoming more compassionate with yourself and improving your internal narrative and and and being more loving for yourself so that then when you find when you move through the process in the program and you figure out the work that you do, you'll be showing up from a place of love and then to hear your heart, you know, this is around like tapping into your inner wisdom for journaling and meditation and stuff like that, and then explore your genius and some of the stuff that really cool down a little bit around discovering your superpowers or your own zone of genius, as Gary Hendricks put it, as opposed to your zone of excellence and sense of competence and so on, which is so like separating out like what you're truly genius, that which is others activities that bring you into flow most often and do everything you can to structure your your work life around those tasks and get rid of everything that drags you out of that. Chris: And then accepting your mission is built around something that's a rarity and a little bit around like Maslow's hierarchy and how we can only self actualization as possible, only as a side effect of self transcendence. So so to serve and truly contribute to others is how we how we could be the best selves. And we see this in our political leaders and so on. If you think of like Nelson Mandela or Gandhi, Mother Teresa or some of these people, these icons that we really admire, what do we admire about them? We admire and how much they've been of service to other people and the effect that they've had. Chris: But it's not only political leaders, also business leaders and business leaders, for example Elon Musk said that coming from PayPal, he thought to himself , what are some of the other problems that are most likely to impact the future of humanity, not thinking what's the best way to make money? Interesting. I read an article a couple of days ago where he's just surpassed Jeff Bezos as the world's most wealthy individual you know obviously on the rise of the electric car and stuff, but everything's happening with the climate. But so, yeah, accepting your mention is about like figuring out how can you how can you tell what, A, that you might give you a life for? Ultimately, what do you care about more than you care about. What would you do even if you knew you would fail the kind of thing in a mission that is so big that you could spend the rest of your life pursuing it and still be satisfied, even if you didn't fully realize it, but contributed what's towards it and then R stands for rebirth is really just like stepping into that new identity because there's a lot, you know, people will know you as they've always known you and expect you to be, and they always thought you were kind of thing, but when you step into your life, it's great. It's worth a lot of that has to change. And so dealing with the fallout of some of those relationships that need to change and and also how to pursue the new relationships that will move forward and surround yourself with, you know, people who won't let you fail and then finally take action and trust. Chris: So that's kind of what it sounds like to get your thesis around. Like holding each other accountable and having a part of this program will obviously have accountability groups and have a positive peer pressure that would show up. And and if you want to do not do the thing that last week you said you were going to do, that was going to move the needle for them on your most of most important projects. Chris: And then. And then Trust and you're finally, just trusting. And I guess that's the slightly mystical thing, you know. And when I talk about the trust, I talk about that event that happened to me in Hawaii and how that invited me to trust to put aside my rational left brain scientific thinking mind and believe that just maybe, you know, the universe might be conspiring to bring great things about for people who have other intentions. Chris: So, yes, that's it. Joe: That's awesome. And I guess it's safe to say you're in rebirth mode, right? Chris: Yeah, exactly. You got that? Yes. Joe: Well, awesome. OK, so what is the website URL? I'm going to put it all on the notes, but I just want to make sure. Chris: Yeah, yeah. Chris: It's love work revolution so loveworkrevolution.co. Chris: And so the word revolution is an interesting one to talk about how I think by following your heart you can find the work that you love and that will bring more love into the world. And then the revolution piece is Gallup, which is a research institute there in the States that are really a massive survey where they interviewed hundreds of thousands of people and found that I think it was. Eighty seven percent could be slightly wrong. And that's in the 80s, 80 something percent of people are either disengaged or actively disengaged in their work. So there's so many that's a disaster not only for the personal suffering of all those people who have to show up for work that they hate every day. But the the untapped human potential, that's just going to waste because people are sitting there, like, not really giving a crap about what they do. And and and at the same time, you know, humanity faces all these immense difficulties and challenges that we face globally around like climate change and poverty and all these really meaningful causes that people could engage with. And that's what we're languishing doing so we don't care about. And Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Tipping Point", found that there's a there's a kind of a magic number around like 20 percent. Like when 20 percent of people latch onto an idea, then there is a tipping point it can spread for the rest of the community. Chris: So, I mean, the margin of people who are disengaged in their work in the high 80s and the number of people who need to be defined to do what they love in order to create a revolution or a tipping point, and where we can see a sea change, where it's written for the rest of the population is around 20 percent. Chris: So there's only about six percent of people that we have to move to find work that they love, an create a more loving world. So that's why I loveworkrevolution.co. So co Joe: Ok, cool. So I'll put that in the show notes if someone wants to become a part of this, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you Chris: Yeah just shoot me an email, it's Chris, C H R I S at loveworkrevolution.co Joe: Perfect, awesome! Ok, and then I'll get all of this in the show notes. And I wish you luck with this. I know this this is it for me. I can tell how it comes out of you. I see your eyes light up and you just you just know. Right, that this is what you've wanted to do. And this is this, this speaks to you, so and I think it's going to be amazing. I'm glad that you've decided to do this. And I look forward to seeing this blossom and help a lot of people out there. Chris: Thank you Joe like so much today. Today's been a big deal for me, as mentioned, this is my first podcast interview talking about this stuff. So I just really appreciate you giving me space and letting me connect with the audience. And as you mentioned, you know, you can tell what this is it for me. And it really is. You know, this is the last 10 years of my life kind of accumulating and coming full circle and to, you know, in my way of making meaning and purpose and sense out of all of the struggle of the last 10 years. So needless to say, I am deeply passionate about this and intend to do this for a very long time. And so I look forward to several years from now when, you know, you and I can catch up and have a beer together and say, hey, remember that time I was, I was on my first ever podcast with you. So I really appreciate you having me, man. Thank you. Joe: Yeah, it's absolutely my pleasure. Glad to be here in the beginning of all this will actually get to see it, turn into something great. And I'm looking forward to it. So, Chris, thank you so much for taking the time. I know it's late there in Barcelona. It's probably been a long day for you. And it was really nice to talk with you. And I was super, super excited about this for you. And again, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. Chris: Thank you. Peace and love Joe and to your audience, thanks for listening. Joe: Yeah, OK. We'll talk soon. Thank you. Chris: All right. Bye for now...
How does empathy affect our decision making? We often think we are making decisions based on intellect but in reality we make many, if not all, decisions based on trying to feel or trying not to feel certain emotions. If you look forward to all of your emotions what will that do to your decision making? "When you have empathy with someone, they are more likely to be open because they feel that you are with them, and you can't do anything to show it to them. You are just empathetic, and it just occurs."Welcome to the Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease.My name is Brett Kistler. I am an adventurer, entrepreneur and a self exploration enthusiast. I am here with my co-host, Joe Hudson. Joe is a business coach who has spent decades working with some of the world´s top executives and teams developing a unique model of human patterns that underpin how we operate with ourselves, each other and the world. A good entry point into this model is a mindset called VIEW, vulnerability, impartiality, empathy and wonder. Through understanding and cultivation we learn to easefully drop into the VIEW state of mind, deepening self awareness and increasing our connection with the world around us. To learn more about this podcast or courses, visit artofaccomplishment.comBrett: When we imagine a professional environment, we often see a world where emotions are held inside and remain unseen by others, filtered out as distractions. We might focus on the business stuff, that is the logistics and agreements that seem more relevant than the feelings behind them. Even in our personal lives, intense reactions from others can feel like a distraction from the connection that we want. What if learning to be acutely aware of others' internal experiences, can give us more useful information than the words they speak? How can our personal and professional relationships change as we learn to notice and address the hurt behind an angry attack or the fear behind a hasty agreement? This is the practice of empathy, the E in VIEW. Joe, how do you define empathy?Joe: It's so hard. Empathy is so much of a feeling, more than it is an intellectual understanding, but I would say it's being with somebody's experience without losing yourself in it. That's what I would say empathy is. It's not watching somebody's experience and it's not wanting to change somebody's experience. It's being with them in the experience without losing yourself in it.Brett: Give me an example.Joe: Oftentimes when I'm working with clients, for instance, they'll be all agitated around something, and I'll just ask a simple question like, "Is this yours?" Recently there's some COVID anxiety that one of my clients is feeling and I was like, "Is this yours?" They just immediately dropped. They're like, "No, it's not mine." That's one way. That's why, kind of when you're in it. The other way to define kind of what it isn't so to speak is, you see this all the time with babies crying. Baby starts crying and some people get instantly annoyed and some people can be with that crying, and that's really a deep expression of their capacity to have empathy in that moment. There's actually something biologically that happens too after a baby cries for an extended period of time. For a man, their testosterone increases. In those first couple of minutes of crying, our capacity to empathize with that child or be agitated by that child is really kind of that linchpin.Brett: Okay. You said earlier this question, is it yours? What do you mean by that?Joe: Yes. Oftentimes, highly empathetic people go beyond empathy, the way I would define empathy. They would go beyond it and then they're not being able to tell what's their emotional state and what's another person's emotional state. This really happens to people who were children of alcoholics or children of abuse, people who had to survive by knowing the emotional state of somebody when they walk into the room. They can very much get lost in the other person's emotions and think that they're theirs.We have these things called mirror neurons in our brain, and they basically allow us to feel the state of other people on some level. Sometimes when we're feeling somebody else, we forget that we're feeling them, that it's not us that's feeling that way. In a weird way, we start feeling that way, so then it's really even more confusing because then you're like, I'm feeling it. If you ask yourself the question, is this mine, and then that can clarify a lot.Brett: Yes. That makes a lot of sense. The idea of mirror neurons is a little bit interesting. The way I see it is, that basically our entire system, all of our consciousness is mirroring our reality in some way, mirroring and correlating perfectly with it and then losing ourselves or are we correlating with it and being with it and experiencing it and learning from it?Joe: Yes. Mirror neurons in neurology is such a mystery still. What is it that allows-- Is it some form of mirror neuron that allows a whole bunch of birds to know how to turn at the exact same moment? There's something particularly around mammals, where most mammals communicate without any words, and so they're really relying on their ability to sense the experience of the other animals.Brett: Yes, social nervous system. Tell me how practicing empathy will benefit us. What does this do for us?Joe: Well, one of the great benefits is, that if anything that you have a hard time empathizing with, means that you have a hard time with that emotional state for yourself. That's fantastic because our decision making process is really based on emotions. If I take the emotional center of your brain away, you cease to make decisions, it would take you half an hour to decide what color pen-- We're really making decisions based on trying to feel or trying not to feel certain emotions, whether we like it or not, whether we think we're being logical or not. If that emotional center of your brain gets taken away, you still have all the intellect, you still have all the rationale, but you still can't make the decisions.It really helps us clarify our decision making, it really allows us to help us be with our own emotional-- and to discover where we're having a hard time being with our own emotions. If you think about your life in this way, if you think about how much of your life has been decided by, "I don't want to feel like a failure," or "I want to feel like a success," or "I don't want to feel unhappy," how many decisions have you made based on that criteria and to be able to be with all of your emotions, what will that do? If you look forward to all of your emotions, what will that do to your decision making and how does it change your emotional state? If I have sadness and I don't want to feel it, it feels very different, than if I have sadness and I want to feel it. Those are a lot of the things that'll benefit us on an inward perspective. Externally, obviously, people like it when other people are with them. If you think about your friends and the people you feel closest to in the world, you can find that they're more able to be with you than people who you don't particularly like. If you look at your friends and you say, what is it about your friends that you want to have changed, oftentimes, it fits into the category of their inability to be with you or see you for who you are. There's that whole thing, too, where it's just, we want to be empathized with, most of us want to be empathized with. It just creates a deeper connection, more loving, more capacity to love.Brett: Yes, it seems like the first half of what you described as feeling into our emotions to find out where our thoughts and rationale are coming from, and then in others being able to see behind that, too. If somebody is presenting you with a solution or an idea, whether it's a business context or in a relationship, to be able to see behind that, what the feeling is that that's coming from can allow you to address a deeper root cause or need.Joe: Yes, at least it gives you the capacity to do it. Sometimes people get upset if you do that. [chuckles] It's like, "Wow, it really doesn't seem like you're angry, it seems like you are hurt." "No, I'm not." You know that kind of-- but generally, it goes pretty well and people want to deal with the underlying thing. So many logical arguments are really not at all about the logic. It's not really about the tactics or the facts. I mean just look at most public discourse. It's not really about the facts. It's about the emotional state of people and their fear, and what they need and what they want and what they are angry about. Yes, to be able to connect with people on that level and to not tell them that they need to be different, but to actually be with them, it's a huge capacity. It really allows you to have a much deeper authentic relationship or communication with people.Brett: I think the public discourse is a great example, because a lot of people get so triggered around other people believing different facts than them. I think that that's really just coming from a lack of feeling seen, a lot of that.Joe: Yes, or feeling that they are out of control in their world, or they are helpless or that there's forces beyond them that are controlling them or so many emotions are happening there.Brett: Earlier you said this a couple of times, "To be with somebody in their experience without losing yourself." How do you prevent that?Joe: The easiest way to do it, I mean it's just a really simple way. Just put some attention in your own body while you're with somebody. If you happen to be that type that has that deep empathy and you lose yourself in the person, the traditional way people do it is, they become defensive, just whole level of defense, and they are like "No." That works, but it doesn't allow you to be empathetic. It just prevents you from getting lost in them. To be empathetic in a successful way is to maintain a certain amount of your awareness in your own body. Like right now when you're listening to me, you could also be paying attention to the bottom of your feet or you could also be paying attention to how the sound of this podcast feels in your inner ear. Then that allows you to be with yourself while listening to me and being with me and my experience. It's about as easy as that, just putting some attention in your own body.The other more intellectual way is to just be aware of when it's happening. I think that's the biggest challenge for most people is that they just don't know when it's happening. A great sign that it's happening is, if you buy into the story of whatever anybody is saying. Let's say you have a friend and they are like,"Oh, my boyfriend, and dah, dah, dah, dah, and the world and my boss and dah, dah." If you're like, "Yes, you've been victimized and we need to do something about it." Pretty much you're in them now or just the opposite. "These people are bad and dah, dah, dah," yes, then you are in them if you buy into the story.If you are with them emotionally, but you know that the story that they are telling is true within their context, but not true within everybody's context, then you're pretty much not lost in them.Brett: Yes, this sounds very non-intellectual and a lot of people are going to want to try to understand this more. What would you say to folks who want to understand or analyze emotions or just have that tendency or just want to analyze this process?Joe: [laughs] Yes, you are screwed is what I would say. [laughs] I mean we can tell you a good story. We're doing it right now. We are telling you good stories about it, but it's not going to really help. Empathy is a felt sense. It's like, say, you close your eyes and you know where your left foot is. That's called proprioception. It's knowing where your body is in space. How do you describe that logically? You can describe what it is logically potentially, but you can't really describe how to do it logically. Similar with going to the bathroom. How do you know when you are done going to the bathroom? Where is the logic? Are you measuring something? Are you timing it? There's just a felt sense, "Oh, that's done." It's the same thing. Empathy is a felt sense and felt sense can't really be described by the intellect with any kind of accuracy. It's like looking at color. How do you describe seeing green? It requires a label that is arbitrary. Logic isn't really going to do any good here for that, and it's why it's so easy to dismiss things like empathy and energy or whatever words people are using. There's a felt sense to it, and I think you find this in a lot of things, prayer, or meditation. It's really easy to dismiss those things even if you hear the logic behind them, until you feel them. Then once you have a felt sense of what prayer can do, whether you believe in a God or not, or what the felt sense of believing in a God is like, and what the felt sense of not believing in a God is like.All those things, they are a very felt sense. You can argue it night and day, but it's why nobody changes their mind on this stuff until they have a change of felt sense. If you want a logical conversation about empathy, go and feel people. Go and be empathetic and stay in yourself while you do it. That's a far better way, just experiment.Brett: That is true across all of these VIEW podcasts. These are all pointers, intellectual pointers to something that you ultimately need to feel into and experience.Joe: It's why oftentimes in these conversations they could be logically contradictory. It's because we're just creating frameworks that make it easier to feel into or realize something. It's not about telling it like a truth. [chuckles] It's not like there's one way, or there's something that's right here. There's just, “How do you want to be?'', is the question and that question isn't answered with logic.Brett: Just feeling our way beneath any fear response we have, which brings me to another question. We have been talking about losing yourself in the other person, not being empathy as you are defining it. Losing yourself in another person sounds a lot like the flight-fear response that we've discussed before, like fleeing from your experience into theirs to try to fix it. Then you'll dive into a story about why they have that experience. Then you'll create some idea of who's the abuser of the tyranny or the victim. I imagine there's something equivalent that we do in the fight-- in the freeze responses as well. How do these other forms of fear impact our ability to be present with others in their emotions?Joe: Yes, if you think about it from an evolutionary sense, we have fear. If you are really scared, it's really not time to empathize. That part of your brain goes offline and your fear response comes online. If you are in flight, like you said, you're looking at the world around you, the environment, and the actors in that environment, and you're trying to figure out how to manage those. If you are in fight, then immediately that emotion that you're starting to feel in your system is going to make you angry and you are going to try to stop it, like the angry person on a plane when the kid starts crying, and the freeze response is the disassociation. It's like a checking out. You can just watch the eyes kind of haze over. It makes sense when we are in fear, it's really hard to have any empathy at all.Brett: How do you prevent this fear response, or let it pass through you? What do you do with this, when you know a deep bodily patterning to fear in a particular business context or a relationship context?Joe: Yes, you feel it. That's the trick to all of this stuff. It's like, how do you feel the emotion? When I say feel it, I don't mean be taken away by it. You know there's just some saying that I heard the other day, it was beautiful. I think it's from some supreme court judge. I don't know, but it said, "I wouldn't give you a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I'll give you my whole world for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." What it's speaking to, is that before we start our learning process, things are pretty simple, then we start learning processes that get really complex and somewhere along the line, it gets very simple again. With emotions, it's very simple for a two-year-old, "I feel angry, and so I'm going to yell at you or punch you." Then there's the complexity of actually learning what those emotions are, what's happening, identifying them in your body, feeling them, expressing them in a way that doesn't hurt people, letting them move without resistance, finding out that they're very similar to one another, finding out that you can love all of them. Getting to the other side is, "Wow, you just have emotions again," and they're just fluid, except for, you're not run by them. You're not controlled by them. You're not hurting other people with them.The only way to do that is to actually learn how to feel the fear. If you have a fear response, feel it and invite it in. Don't put it at anybody. Most fear is not wanting to feel something, which is pretty cool when you think about it, like "I'm scared that I'm going to get fired," but if I told you, "Hey, if you get fired, you're going to feel awesome," would you be scared of [chuckles] being fired anymore? It's really us not wanting to have emotions that we're at the core very scared of. When I say feel the fear, I mean welcome it. I really mean like invite it in, breathe it in.Brett: What's a good way to tell in the moment, if we're working on empathy and how do we tell if what we're feeling in the moment is true empathy and not one of these coping mechanisms or distortions? Another one that comes up is sympathy. There's a lot about how sympathy and empathy are different and often confused.Joe: It's a wonderful question. The main thing is, are you putting yourself outside-- It's not quite outside, I guess it's above the other person. The differences in, when you're putting yourself above the other person, like subtle ways. Like you want to fix them, but for you to fix them, you have to be less broken, or you want to help them not feel it, which is assuming that you're not feeling it is the better solution.Brett: That means buying into another story and being that story like, "Oh, yes, fuck that guy."Joe: Exactly. It's just you're with them. When you're with somebody the way that we all want to be with, it's like we're supporting. We are with, but we are not saving. There's this great phrase that, I think it was from an Aboriginal community or a native community in South America, and says, "Hey, if you're here to help me, no, thank you, but if you're here to work together on our mutual freedom, let's get to work." That's really the essence of it.Brett: Another thing that happens a lot is that being empathic is often associated with being manipulable or easily taken for an emotional ride. How could it be that deepening our empathy in the ways that we've been talking about makes us less likely to fall into a fear response and abandon our needs or our boundaries?Joe: You get that fear a lot from people, they're like, "Oh, if I empathize, then I'm going to fall for them." I think that what they're thinking about that person who's fully into the other person's reality and they've lost themselves in it. If you do that, you're more likely to be taken advantage of. If that's what the person wants to do on the other side or is capable of doing, but in all cases, we don't want to feel something, if we're allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of, "I'm going to sell you this magic pill and it's going to make you skinny in two days." If you buy that, it's because you don't want to feel something anymore or you definitely want to feel something.There's something that you want to feel or scared of feeling to allow yourself to be taken advantage of. To have empathy, it really requires you to be willing to feel whatever is arising for yourself and that other person. It actually prevents you from getting taken advantage of, because you're welcoming of everything and you're not trying to get rid of it. It doesn't matter whether you're non-empathetic or like, "I'm not going to feel that person." That means you don't want to feel shit. It means that you can be taken advantage of pretty easily. Just look at the most non-empathetic people on our planet. They are the most likely to be manipulated by politicians or authorities or advertising.Then the other side of that is someone who's totally like in that other person's world. Then they're going to sacrifice themselves for it, but if you're actually like, "Oh, I can feel you, I can be with you, and whatever you throw at me, I can feel I can be with." What makes you need to do anything that is contrary to your truth?Brett: It seems another example of that is in a business relationship where somebody is coming at you with a bunch of emotion and making you responsible for something that you're not responsible for. If you're with them in that emotion, but you're like buying into their full story, then you're going to think that they're entirely right. You're going to lose your boundaries and be taken for a ride.Joe: Absolutely. If somebody thinks that you're bad and you get locked into their emotion, then you start thinking you're bad, that's exactly a great place where you're going to be taken advantage of by somebody who doesn't think they're taking advantage of you. It's by somebody who feels like they're a victim in that moment typically.Brett: Back to what you were saying about the people who are the least empathic are the ones that are most likely to be taken for a ride. Many of us simply don't seem to feel emotions in others as much as we'd like. When we start doing this kind of work is when we start to notice this. When I started to work with you, I experienced certain emotions and others when we were doing exercises. I was watching them as an ant colony. I could see and recognize the patterns, but I wasn't in it with them. Like, "Oh, I didn't have an alcoholic father. That's not my problem." I can see what that does in you, and now I can see your problem. I think I can try to analyze how to fix you. How can we tell the difference between observing someone's experience in a non-empathic way and genuinely being with them?Joe: The body is the telltale sign here. I think I remember that when we were working together and you're doing that, and I believe I came up and shook you a couple of times. Then you could feel a different way. There's a rigidity that happens in the body when you are trying not to feel, no matter how you're trying not to feel, whether it's by creating distance or disassociation, which is somewhat of what you were doing, being the watcher or wanting it to stop, any one of them. It just creates rigidity in the system. This often happens in the belly, shoulders, jaw is locked oftentimes when I do a workshop, like this one. I'll walk around and I'll hit people's jaws, so that like tap their jaws to remind them they're holding all this tight, or their belly is really tight.That's the main way, is to keep your body loose and you'll have to feel it. Our feelings are a muscular thing. Our feelings live in our muscles. If you're the person who was told you can't get angry and you are not angry, all the time now, and anytime anger comes up, you either give it to yourself or suppress it really badly, your muscles have to contract in such a way and become distorted in such a way. It's why there's a whole science behind just watching how somebody walks into a room, you can tell a tremendous amount of their upbringing.Once you know what you're looking for and you've experienced it yourself, the way a person's face is, you can tell what emotions they want to feel, or they don't want to feel. By the way they hunch their shoulders, by the way they tuck their butt, by the way that they hold their lips, how they purse them when certain things come up. It is why we have body language and it's why we have micro-expressions.Brett: Something I've noticed over doing this work is, that I've started to detect when somebody is disconnecting from me in a conversation. I can roll back a little bit and recognize that I had actually disconnected from them, then they're responding to that. It's as though the feeling for them is the difference between being with a good friend who's there with them and their experience, and being with a shrink who's psychoanalyzing them. I think that happens a lot for people who want to be there to help others. A lot of it comes from wanting to deal with their own pain, their own history. I think this happens a lot in therapeutic communities where people take the therapeutic role, but they're really analyzing and they're not being empathic.Joe: It happens definitely in some places there. It happens just with a lot of people who find themselves like the savior or helper of their group of friends. You'll see a lot of that happen. The truth is what-- Sometimes what that is, is they're trying to manage their life by managing other people's emotional states. [chuckles] If you feel happy, I'll be happy. If you're not angry, I'll be happy. If you're in a good mood, I'm in a good mood, and A, it doesn't work and B, you can't change people's emotional states and C it's just far more enjoyable to be with them in the emotional state.Brett: Which comes back to that self empathy thing we're talking about, like, as I've experienced my ability to actually have empathy with others has directly grown from my ability to actually feel that equivalent feeling in myself.Joe: That's right, that's exactly how it works, is our capacity to love the parts of ourselves is directly correlated to our capacity to love the parts of other people and other people in general.Brett: Sometimes being empathic with somebody and holding a highly charged emotion can leave us with a sort of static residue in our system. It can linger or put us on tilt. It takes time for integration, or just leaves us feeling that thing for days. For some people, this is really strong, the empaths. The self-identified empaths will just avoid certain situations, because they are like, “I just can't handle that energy.” How can we navigate this and be deepening our empathy without closing ourselves off or avoiding situations, especially if we are frequently going from one high energy interaction to another in business or something else?Joe: Yeah, I had to learn that really the hard way. For me, when I started coaching people and you know the depth in which the coaching can happen. I would go from that to a conversation with negotiating lawyers over points on a contract, and then back into a coaching session. I had to go into these big, highly charged things, one right after the other, and similarly when I do the seven day really deep retreats, it is like one emotional baseball bat after another in the best possible way. Brett: With real baseball bats sometimes. Joe: Right, but obviously not hurting anyway. It is something I really had to learn. The main thing is avoid it, and the way you avoid it isn't by not feeling the emotion. It is by being in your body. It's just putting some of your attention in your body while you are with other people and their emotions so you're not losing yourself. That's a huge thing. If you do that, as you get better at that, that takes care of about 70% or 80% of the problem. Then the other stuff, it is really about grounding. It's about staying grounded, realizing what's yours and not yours. Your body and your breath is the best way to do this. Releasing whatever emotion residue you have, letting the tears flow, shaking it off, grounding yourself in the different ways people can ground themselves. There are some tai chi moves that can do that, yoga moves that ground you. Brett: Just asking, “Is this mine?”, that was a really good one from earlier. Joe: Yeah, is this mine? There are some things to calm the nervous system down, different breaths. There are all sorts of things you can look into. If you go into any kind of system that says how I ground, no matter what kind of system from functional medicine to this, you can find those things and they work really well. My personal favorites are deep breath, walking barefoot, sitting in silence, meditation. Those things, I feel very grounded in those things. Massage will help me feel grounded probably quicker than anything else. Brett: If you are going straight from a sprint planning meeting where everybody got in an argument, started yelling at each other, and you are carrying that energy straight into a performance review. You really want not to take that out on the person you are reviewing. You have got like five minutes between them. Joe: First, I wouldn't buy into the story you have to. I would say I am not prepared for this meeting right now emotionally, and I would rather give you the actual emotional attention you deserve. Let's postpone it. That's one thing, obviously. For instance, if there's a big fight in the sprint meeting, I would probably enjoy it, because I could be with the anger and energy, and I would say look at all these people who really give a shit. They really care. They really want it done right, or they wouldn't be fighting. Brett: Way better than a bunch of apathetic checked out people. Joe: Exactly, and because I would be enjoying the tension, it would also change the dynamic in the room, the anger, because so much of the fighting that happens is based on a level of resistance, because unresisted fighting feels very much like clarity and decisiveness and a deep care. Again, staying in your own physical sensation is a huge part to prevent it, but I mean literally just shake your body for two or three minutes between the meetings can work. Taking deep breaths can work. Getting in touch with what's aware of your emotional state instead of your emotional state can work. Yawning 10, 20 times in a row can work. Having a quick cry. Crying doesn't take very long. It can be a minute or two. All of those things can work. Brett: Can you tell me a couple of stories about how empathy transformed a situation for you in a business context, something like this or different?Joe: I remember a time when I was fundraising. I can't remember, somewhere in like the $10 million range of fundraising. I just noticed that I was with the person who I was talking to and I noticed that they were getting distant. I just said, “Wow, I notice you are getting distant. I notice something turned you off. What happened?” That is what allowed for a far deeper conversation about what they were looking for, what about my attitude had scared them. We could address it directly. I got to learn that I was objectifying the person probably a little bit more than I would want to. They could learn that they were in a past deal, not in the current deal in front of us. That's a good example of one. Same thing, raising money, I have been able to empathize with the people on the other side of the table to realize they have objectified me or they see me as an employee rather than a partner. I don't want that. I think investors who see their investees as employees, they are dangerous. You can sense it by the way that they keep a distance from you or how they hold themselves emotionally with you instead of the way somebody who holds you as a partner. That has prevented me from having some really bad investors that way. Another example is selling. Oftentimes you see in a sales process a customer goes into resistance, and the salesperson tries to convince them, which puts them into more resistance instead of saying be like, “I notice something is not working for you. What's going on? If this isn't working for you, I don't want you to do it. If it's not working for you, there's a potential there's a misunderstanding so I would like to clarify it. But I don't want you doing something you don't want to do, because then I just have an unhappy customer, and that's not good for business.” You can't really do that unless you can feel the person. Brett: What are some other examples, like working with peers, for example, or within a team?Joe: For instance, I hear something from managers all the time. They are like, “We all had alignment, and then nobody did it. We all agreed. We all sat in the meeting. We all agreed and nobody did it.” I always say, “In that meeting did you feel like they were excited?” “No.” I am like, “Okay, what stopped you from saying I don't feel the excitement in the room. What's preventing the excitement?” You can't do that with anything beside empathy. If you are addressing the emotional reality instead of just the intellectual reality, because people, like I said, make decisions based on emotions. That's why people can all agree to something in a meeting, but if they are emotionally resistant, they are not going to go and do it. You can feel into that resistance, feel into where the excitement is, feel into what's being held, where the rigidity is in the room and clarify it. That makes things far more-- It's the same with product development. Kind of a famous thing where people spend a lot of money on a focus group, and then the focus group goes, “This is great!” Then the product fails, or vice versa has happened too. It is because they are asking them about emotional decisions through the intellect. Sometimes it works, but it's not a perfect translator. It's really feeling your customer. It's really feeling, what makes it important for them to buy it. Henry Ford said, if I gave my customers what they wanted, I would have given them a faster horse, but you put a person behind the car, and you see them drive it and what happens to their face, and you see the way people look at them and what happens in their faces. It's pretty clear who is going to buy what. Brett: I've always thought that one was interesting, the faster horse thing, because it's not really what they wanted. If you asked them what they wanted, if you asked them the solution that would have solved their problem, they might have bought a faster horse, but really what they wanted was better transportation. Joe: Exactly. That's the exact point. The intellect is limited in its capacity to see what the emotions want. Transportation was horse and feet at that time, so that was the limitation of the intellectual part of it. But if you looked at the emotional experience, then you know there are other solutions. Brett: I think this happens in product research all of the time. The research will be conducted in some way where it is like, what do you like better, the red plastic or the blue plastic, and you will get an answer. You will have a meeting where there's a graph that shows how much of the market wants this versus the other thing, but you missed the deeper question and the deeper emotional connection to the product. Joe: That's exactly right. It's why there's a felt sense to great design. You see something designed with beauty and you feel it. You go, “That's beautiful!”, not just beautiful as in looking, but the design is elegant, and there's a felt sense to that. It makes it appealing to us. There's no way you are going to use the intellect to describe that, unless you have been trained in design for years. Brett: How will we see our lives and our work change as we deepen our ability to feel our emotions and empathize with others? Some of these good examples are good examples, but what are some other things that would happen in our lives?Joe: Decisions become more clear, because we are more likely to feel emotions and be happy to feel emotions. We start caring for people instead of care taking them, meaning we are not trying to make them feel better. We are just being in support of them and therefore we get that in return as well. You get more people who are happy to be with you. You also see the people around yourself, and you become more and more empowered. As you stop fearing all of these emotional states, then you just stand in your truth more and more and more. There's just a deeper level of empowerment that happens, for you and for the people around you. One of these things, I was working with a CEO of one of the companies, and he tended towards care taking. Obviously, because he is care taking, there are a lot of people that fall into that victim thing in this company, and there was this victim mentality in the company because he felt responsible for them. As that changed for him, as he could be with people instead of taking care of people, all of a sudden the decisions that could empower them could start to be seen. Instead of coming in and saying, “Here's how we are going to fix the world.”, he would say, “How do you want to fix the world? Clearly, you are unhappy. How are you going to fix it?” He would empower people to fix their own problems, and it changed everything for his company. Brett: You can just use my name when you are talking about me. Joe: That wasn't you. You were not the person in my mind when I was saying that. Brett: I know, but I just felt it as like yeap, that's exactly been my journey. What else happens? A lot of times when we do these kinds of practices, there are shifts in our lives that are short-term uncomfortable or destabilizing. Is there anything like that that would happen with practicing deeper empathy?Joe: As the emotions start to get felt and the resistance isn't worked through, it can be a bit turbulent. It's not the emotions that are uncomfortable. It's the resistance to them. There can be a little bit of turbulence. There can be moments of tears where you would prefer there weren't tears. They don't happen very often. They are pretty rare. People are like I am going to be crying all over the place. It is like I cried at this one place, and actually somebody came up to me and said something sweet. Yeah, it can be a little bit turbulent. There's also this idea that if I allow my emotions, then they are going to take over me and control me. It's the projection you have been controlling your emotions, so you think they are going to control you. It doesn't happen like that. I have seen anybody at all of the thousands of people I've seen go through this process, I've never seen any of them who are like, “I am controlled by emotions now.” Brett: Damn you, Joe. Joe: Exactly. It has never happened. I would say that. The biggest thing is what we have really harped on, on this talk-- If you empathize with losing yourself, that can be really damaging. Learning how to be in your own body while you are empathetic is so critical. I just even recommend for the rest of the week, put some of your attention into your physical body during every conversation. See what that does to your world. It will rock your world, if you do that for every conversation for a week. It will just rock your world.I just say it's important to take it slow. I would say if the emotional tube is kinked, just be gentle with the unkinking. Take it slow. Brett: There's the wisdom in taking it slow, and there's also another side of that, that I can see. A lot of times these emotions are stacked on each other. You get beneath one of them, and you let yourself feel it. You might get yourself to feel the anger, but then if you don't feel the hurt underneath the anger, then a completely different thing starts controlling you. You get the disruptive thing going on in your life, and you are entering another pattern. There's like being gentle with yourself and taking it slow, and then there's being curious about how far down it goes and what's beneath this one I am not feeling. Joe: I would definitely agree with that. To think there's an end is no good. It's not going to be servicing your journey at all, so seeing it as endless, being curious about it, being vulnerable with yourself about your emotional state, being impartial with how you feel. You can use all of those tools, and use it for this empathy. It might upheave and you might find yourself bawling, crying and shaking. All of that can happen while being gentle with yourself. Brett: What are some ways empathy can go wrong? What does it look like if we are trying to be empathic, we aren't quite there so it is shallow or it is false? How could it be used directly as a weapon if somebody starts using these practices and they are like, “I could actually use this to manipulate people? What happens then? How does that look?”Joe: Creepy, you can see it. The difference between a good interviewer and a bad interviewer is one is using real empathy and one is faking it, and you can tell. It makes your skin crawl on some level. It might work for some people, but it is only going to work on a small percentage of them where empathy creates connection consistently. You can use empathy as a tool. They do all these skills that are based on that, mimic their body language, nod yes when people speak, and blah, blah, blah. Brett: Mirror the last three words of the thing they said. Joe: Use their name in the front of sentences, and blah, blah, blah. You can do all of that stuff, but if you are not in empathy, it comes off as false, fake, and gross. We have all been with that person, but if-- you could do all of that stuff with deep empathy and then it's actually quite appealing. It is really the empathy that is appealing.I think the reason those tools work when they do work, sometimes is, because they actually hack the mind into empathy. Brett: They are disarming, and if the intent is to disarm, then it can get you closer to it, to disarm yourself that is, not to disarm the other person as a trick. So what are a couple of summary bullet points on how all of what we have discussed would apply to a VIEW conversation and practice with the rest of this course?Joe: One of the things is you can ask questions. You can ask how, what questions that are based on nonverbal cues, on empathy. “Wow, it feels like you distanced yourself right there. What happened?”You can say, “It looks like you don't agree with that. What's going on? What's happening with you right now? How did that feel?” You can ask questions like that, and people generally stay up on the intellectual and won't ask questions on the moetional. Brett: And in a curious way. “I saw you disconnect there. I saw you disconnect there. I know it. Tell me.”Joe: Empathy as an attack. That's right. Also, basically, you'll notice that, when you have empathy with someone, they are more likely to be open, because they feel that you are with them. You can't do anything to show it to them. You are just empathetic and it just occurs. Like I said earlier, there's this creepy thing where people know you are managing them, and when they do, they back off. You don't have as much data. You don't get as much truth. You don't get to see the problem as it is. You don't get their ideas for solutions. With empathy, you get all that stuff. You get more data, and more ideas for solutions. Brett: Or the solutions you get from them are actually their solutions to get you to stop managing them. Joe: Exactly. Also, if you are in empathy, you can catch yourself being partial. If you are using empathy and you see somebody have an issue with you, you can be like, “I was being partial. I will catch my own partiality from being empathetic to their response to me.” Brett: Like the way I was describing earlier, when I catch somebody rolling back, you are like, “Wait a minute, I see what I did there.” Joe: Exactly. Brett: As you close, I would love for you to tell us about an impactful experience you have had, that caused the deepest increase in your empathy for others in the shortest amount of time. Joe: I want to give you two. The first one was, I was having this experience where I realized where I really just did not want to be with people who were having meaningless conversations. It was so annoying. “I was driving 65 miles an hour.” “Really, 65?” “Yeah, 65 miles an hour down to Santa Barbara.” Uh, it was so frustrating for me. I was like “What is it that I don't want to feel? What is it that's happening for them, for me that I don't want to feel?” I just opened myself up to it. It was awkward. I would be weeping in these conversations that were seemingly benign. After two or three weeks of that, maybe a month of that, the personal recognition that came through it was so critical to my sense of self, that I had to be valuable. The idea that I might be spending time where I wasn't valuable, it was so hard on my system I didn't want to feel that kind of sense of worthlessness. That was an internal thing. Then to have the freedom to be worthless. “Oh yeah, I am happy to be worthless, and I am happy to be of value.” Having that freedom was tremendous. Then my capacity to immediately be with people who were having that level of conversation happened, and what I realized is, even in that level of conversation, there are different forms of connection going on. There are different ways people are connecting that aren't verbal, that aren't about the immediate intellectual thing that's up front. This one wasn't as quick, but it was bigger for me, which was getting in touch with Hand in Hand Parenting, which is really one of the main tools I learned empathy from. One of the tools in that is, it is called Parenting by Connection, and it allows parents to be deeply connected with kids, kids to feel deeply connected. The thought process is when kids feel connected, they naturally want to behave in a way that´s enriching for themselves and the family. All of the tribulations that we feel from children is just them being out of connection, and so how do you get them back into connection?One of the tools, they have five very simple tools. One of the tools is, stay listening. It's like allowing the kids to have temper tantrums, and being with them in that temper tantrum and even encouraging it to move through and making sure it doesn't get stuck. I was not good with a lot of my emotions when I started doing Hand in Hand parenting. I got good with them really quick. All of a sudden, I have a tremendous amount of emotional freedom I didn't have before. All of a sudden, my decision making got so clear, because I couldn't be with my child's temper tantrum until I could be with my own. I couldn't be with my child's anger until I could be with my own or their tears until I could be with my own. That process of empathizing and being with my children gave me so much more freedom. Brett: How did these two stories impact your ability to have value for people? Joe: I don't care. I mean if I were to look at it, seemingly I am more able to be more valuable to them, because I can be with them in a deeper way now, and I am not judging them or myself. That seems like that's probably more valuable. The bigger answer is it doesn't matter to me anymore. Brett: I love that paradox, the driving wound of your first story to just not caring anymore, actually having that impact. Joe: It was a great conversation. Thanks so much, Brett. Brett: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe & rate us in your podcast app. We would love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions and comments. To reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com.Links/notes: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." ― Henry Ford“For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.” ― Oliver Wendell Holmeshttps://www.handinhandparenting.org/ - a nonprofit that provides parents with the tools and support they need to listen and connect with their children.
On today's episode of Quiet Light, Dan Ashburn joins us to discuss negotiating terms with your suppliers. Dan is the co-founder of Titan Network, the Mastermind for Amazon sellers, the China Magic, the immersive Mastermind discussed in another episode. Tune in to pick up some awesome tips about how to save cash and boost the overall value of your business. Topics: How he came up with this concept. Why face-to-face interaction is important. Forecasting sales, inventory requirements, and pay-out per unit. Using market data to help with forecasting. The formula/numbers Dan uses. Making sure your offer is win-win. Timing your requests. Having perseverance when it comes to your requests. Traveling to China. Transcription: Mark: Shortly after you buy a business, you're obviously looking for any opportunities to increase your return on investment. Sometimes that's through growth, sometimes that's through different ways of cutting expenses. But oftentimes looking at your suppliers and the terms that you have with your suppliers can be an easy way to free up free cash flow or get better terms or be able to even get different rates. But how do you go about actually negotiating those terms? How do you approach the suppliers, especially when the relationship is new? If you're on the sell side, the same sort of questions applies; how do you approach suppliers in a way where you can increase your return on investment by negotiating better terms? Joe, I know you talked to someone about this and have some good tips here. Joe: Yeah, Dan Ashburn from Titan Network. You know what? Just in the podcast, I'll just tell you right now, Dan goes through a step by step process to basically walk people through what to do, how to do it and get better terms with your supplier. And the ultimate result, whether you've got a straight-up e-commerce business, a Shopify store, or an Amazon business, or whatever it might be, even retailers that are out there importing from overseas. I hear it over and over again that when you make the right connection in the right way with your supplier, you can get better terms. The end result is more cash flow. More cash flow means you've got the ability to buy more inventory as you try to keep up with growth, which is often a good problem to have. But Dan talks about it quite a bit in there. And the piece that is forgotten and not all that talked about is people are always trying to drive top-line revenue. But if you can negotiate better terms with your supplier and then get a better reduction in the cost of goods sold, it's going to boost your overall value as well. Joe: Hey, folks, Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage, and today, I've got Dan Ashburn on the line with me. Dan is the co-founder of Titan Network and I think China Magic as well amongst another a number of other pretty fancy titles and credits to your LinkedIn profile here that I'm looking at, Dan, but that's as far as I get with fancy introductions so why don't you tell the folks that are listening about yourself and about your background and what you do? Dan: Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me, Joe. So, yeah, I'm the co-founder of Titan Network Mastermind for Amazon Sellers, co-founder, and co-organizer of China Magic, which is a trip where we take 100 people twice a year to source products over in China. We've taken over 500 people now and the co-creator more recently of Amazing Selling Machine. And then my team and I are responsible for delivering eight figures in sales on Amazon per year through my brand management agency. Joe: That's an awful lot. How do you do all that and not lose all your hair? You got a nice head of hair there. So this is a prod for people to go to the YouTube channel as well. Dan: Yeah, for sure. So I have a good team around me. I've got a good management team. I've got an executive assistant who makes me look really good. And then, yeah, I just got good people around me so it's pretty cool. Joe: Okay. There are not a whole lot of Amazon sellers that we have on the podcast and that I deal with on a regular basis; I've been doing this for eight years that have a beautiful British accent. So tell me about that aspect of it. You've got; I don't know how many you said in terms of Amazon sellers, 1,600 that you work with or something like that. How many are typically US-based versus Europe based? Dan: Yeah, it's a great question. I'd still say the majority of the market is in the US. I'd probably say it's a 70/30 split right now. However, Europe is growing and it's growing fast as markets like Germany, etcetera pick up. And if you combine the combined sales volume of Europe to the US, then it's a good opportunity. And Europe is definitely picking up. A lot of the Europeans are obviously using US as their main channel as the US seller are then coming out over into the European market to diversify. Joe: Okay. So a quick side note before we get into the meat of this discussion is that Amazon has just made it a whole lot easier to transfer a European seller account. So that's real positive news. It doesn't necessarily have to be a stock sale anymore. It can be an asset sale and it's easy to transfer so positive stuff there. But today we're talking about a little bit of your China Magic experience and your China experience in general and negotiating terms with your suppliers to improve cash flow and to improve your bottom line and boost valuations, which is a breath of fresh air because you can't; you wrote that line when we talked about it because most people don't think about valuations when they're working with suppliers and things of that nature but you do. Dan: Yes. So you've had Scott Dietz on a number of times now. Scott was very much a mentor of mine over the last few years and something Scott really instilled in me is what's good for selling your business is good for building and running your business. So installing that, combined with the challenges that I come across so many sellers have; there's one thing in this business that stops growth and that's cash flow, its cash on hand. We all know there are only three ways really to grow the business, sell more of the same products, sell additional products, or sell the same products in new marketplaces are really only the three ways. All three of those ways take cash and they take cash flow. So we very quickly; my team and I launched this, my team and I really set our minds over the last couple of years to how do we solve this problem for the accounts that we're involved in, the brands that we have stakes in, and the people that we're working with across Titan Network, China Magic, etcetera to really solve this problem. And that's where this working with a supplier to fund that growth, that whole concept really came from. And I'm really proud to say that the last year or so, the last 18 months, we've been getting some pretty impressive results where suppliers are letting us go north percent down, 10% on shipment, 90% two or three months thereafter so it's really positive. Joe: One of the things I hear often is, yeah, I just got back from a trip from China. I was able to do this. I'm getting better terms here. I reduced my cost of goods sold here. I ate way too much and drank way too much and I feel like I'm a member of their family now. Is that what everybody has to do? Do they have to get on a plane and go to China to meet the manufacturer and supplier or is it just something that helps but there are other ways to do it? Dan: Look, there are other ways; there are always other ways to do it. You can get this done over a Skype call or a Zoom chat like we're having now but if you're serious about growing the business and you want to go in and get the times that you want, then every time in every case, physically being there in China in the room, staring the person in the face, building a real relationship with that person gets the better result every time. And where we've had a good result virtually, it's always been as a result of following up physically with someone. So we've already been earlier in the year or we may be met them at the last Canton Fair but there's always been that physical interaction. And I think what people underestimate about China is the business culture out there is relationship-driven. It's all about building that relationship. It's all about going and having that male drink and some of the alcohol stuff that they put in front of you to really build up that relationship. And there's so many benefits to that relationship much further beyond payment terms and cost of goods sold even down to stuff like it's coming up to Chinese New Year that productions run is full. And because you have that relationship, they bump you to the front of the production line, which keeps you in stock. Joe: So let's get to specifics for the audience then. For people that are; and talk to them as if maybe they're your clients, they may be somebody that just bought an Amazon business from Quiet Light Brokerage or they're somebody that listens and is getting expert advice from folks like you. What are the first few steps that somebody should take? And I know this is general information for general people, specific would be if you were talking to one. What do you advise somebody to do? Dan: Okay, cool. So first off, we need to understand what terms do we need to achieve and what are we aiming for? What's our goal? So the first steps or so of executing this process before you got to China or before you attempt to do this virtually is we need to put together a sales forecast. We need to understand what am I expecting to sell over the next 12 months and include uplift for Q4 based on historical dates or if you're selling seasonal products, make sure you're including all of that uptick and then break down what you plan to order. So once you forecasted those sales, understand what inventory requirements you have and what your current order rate would look like with your supplier over the course of that year. Then figure out with that information what is the payout per unit on your sales? So you need to calculate the Amazon payout per unit after all fees and marketing costs. So within our brands, we work to operating 10% advertising contribution or true A-costs whatever you want to call it. And we factor all of that in and we figure out after storage fees and etcetera, what is our P&L per unit? Joe: Did you say 10% advertising; is that what that was? Dan: Yeah. So as a PPC contribution, margin, or a true A-cost; whatever you want to call it. Once we're out of the launch phase and we're in some maintenance we factor in a 10% margin for advertising. Joe: It's great, we do key financial metrics anytime we list a business for sale and typically see the ad cost somewhere in that 8 to 12, 8 to 15% range so 10% is a good number. Before you go on too far, so you've talked about doing a sales forecast and of course, that leads into inventory need forecast. The question often comes up, what's the best software if there is such software for inventory management and sales forecasts? Do you use some or do you create it with Excel spreadsheets? Dan: So we keep it simple. We do all of this in Google Sheets. We have adopted a new inventory management system and I'm pretty impressed with it if you wanted to talk about that. But we do all of this in a basic Google Sheet template. And if you want, Joe, I can have that template sent out to your subscribers. But yeah, we just use a Google template, we use a Google sheet and we just manually plotting in numbers, manually forecasting out. It's nothing fancy. If we want to work with someone at more advanced than we'll offset pull in an accountant or a bookkeeper; someone that's more savvy with the numbers. But we're just using historical data to forecast the future 12 months. Joe: And you're pulling that data from Amazon or from QuickBooks; where are you pulling it from? Dan: Yeah. Typically, depending on the account that we're working with or depending on whether it's an in-house brand or a joint venture type relationship, we will take the initial data from Amazon. So we'll take your initial sales data. And then if we can sanitize that data with actual validated bookkeeping records, then obviously we will do that. But for the sake of this exercise, it doesn't need to be 100% accurate. This is a forecast and everyone knows; I think what everyone gets is they get that analysis paralysis on forecasts. Because I think what if I don't meet the forecast or how do I know what it's going to sell? You've got to take the best guess and if you haven't got 12 months of trailing data, go use tools like Keeper to look at your number one like for like competitors trailing 12 months of data. Just use data in the market to be able to inform your own self forecast. Joe: So doing a cash flow forecast or I'm sorry sales forecast leads into what your inventory needs are. You're doing that in Google Sheets and what's next from there? Dan: So before we can move onto the next stage, we then have to figure out what our payout per unit is, because these three pieces of data, the sales forecast, and the inventory need forecast as you call it, and then the payout per unit factoring in a rough 10% advertising contribution. That gives us all the information that we need to be able to produce an accurate cash flow forecast. So what sellers I find out doing most that aren't taking on external cash or external funding, they're kind of running on this system of hope. They kind of think or hope they'll have the cash in the bank for the next inventory order, but they're not really forecasting enough ahead to say, will I have enough cash on hand to be able to fund my next inventory order to meet demand of growth and not run out our stock at the same time? But without those three data points, without knowing how many you're going to sell, what inventory you need to meet that demand, and what your cash payout per unit is, you can't put together a cash flow forecast. So once you've got those three data points, we then put together our cash flow forecast. So to give you sort of a demonstration of this, we base it on our current term. So let's say typical terms, 30% deposit, and 70% before shipping. That's pretty much most the market. Joe: Pretty standard. Dan: Yeah. So we will forecast our cash flow based on those terms for the products that we want to negotiate. So you might have one product with a supplier or you might have 10 but you just do it for the group of products that you're talking about with the supplier. So we'll have the sales forecast at the top of that cash flow forecast. Then we'll have a payout forecast which is based on sales. It's just that payout per unit multiplied by the number of units we expect to sell in that month. That gives us our total cash pile for that given month. We then factor in some fixed costs. So things like employees, software, training, salaries, costs that we know we're always going to have. And then we might factor in some ad-hoc costs like travel conferences, going to China Magic twice a year. God, I'm plugging that. So we factor in those hard costs and then that gives us a forecast month by month, January through December. If we go for the annual calendar year of what our cash on hand looks like. Then we just have to plugin based on what we know we have to order what cash output; what cash outlay do we need to factor in based on 30/70 payment terms. That then gives us an accurate view of where we're going to have a deficit on cash, where we're going to be up on cash, and what that looks like for the next twelve months. Does that make sense? Joe: It does. You sound like a grown-up here, running a business with real numbers and doing some analysis. Dan: I'm trying to. Joe: Congratulations. And that's what you teach the folks at Titan Network as well. You're going through this with them Dan: Yeah. Joe: And do you produce video walkthroughs on how to do this with examples? Dan: Yeah. So we've got like the whole step by step. Within Titan, we have something called masterclasses and we've got an entire master class on supply payment negotiation with all the templates, negotiation, soft scripts, ways of approaching; I'll give you some secret sauce in a minute but even like a presentation that we use to present this information to the supplier, all of that is all inside of Titan. And our Titan members; I mean, the results that we're getting, someone got a 50 grand credit line off the back of this. Joe: Wow. Dan: I can't count how many now; it's got to be 20, 30 members in the last few months alone that are getting terms, even just improved terms like 20% down because the raw material costs are quite high, but then they're not paying 40% until 30 days after shipping and the remaining 40% until 60 days after shipping, which means they've been selling the product likely for 30 days before that balance is due, which just opens up so much opportunity because you can afford to sell more product cause you can order more inventory. You can afford to expand into new markets because you can afford more inventories. Or you can afford to launch new products. And for anyone that's doing some serious money in this business, they know launching products is the fastest way to grow it. So, yeah, I mean, the results are quite stellar and we're doing some good things in time for sure. Joe: It's all good stuff. Everybody listening certainly needs to do it if they're not doing it now. So once you've got all this information, the forecast and estimates and things of that nature what do you do with it? Dan: So once we've created that cash flow forecast based on our current terms, so 30/70 we then produce a second forecast and we play around with those terms. So the example of I'm looking as a reference in front of me here is 20% deposit, 35% 60 days after shipping, 45% 90 days after shipping. And this is actually a live case study on one of the ASINs that we run. So we will adjust the cash flow to the new terms to then demonstrate what that does for our cash flow. And at this point, this is all internal. This is all internal reporting, preparation to support and enable the negotiation. So I know here, just look, I'll read us some numbers because obviously, I can't cast the screen. On our 30/70 our cash on hand column across the bottom January was in this example 5,000, February is 3,000, March goes into a 2,000 deficit, April goes into a 4,000 deficit because we've paid out that 30% deposit on this inventory order. Joe: Can you just with those numbers do you have a ballpark total revenue figure as well? I'm just curious. Dan: Yeah, we do. So down here we've got a total payout figure in this example because we haven't got the retail cost in here. We just track basically what cash flow we receive from Amazon so it's on the end of the column. But if it scales up; this was an example of a new product launch achieving 300 in the first month to a thousand units in the 12 months; very, very conservative forecast. Joe: Okay, so what happens when you flip this to the new terms that you're trying to achieve? Dan: So interestingly, the cash outcome; so at this point, we're not forecasting what additional inventory we can get so the cash outcome at the end is the same. So December, for instance, in the 30/70 on this example, the cash outcome for December, cash on hand sorry is 79,000. It started at 4,000. In the after states 20/35/45 again it's 79,000 at the end of the year in terms of cash on hand. But the difference is I don't have a single deficit in my 12-month run because I've been able to achieve better payment terms. So that's sort of step one of this process, cash flow forecasting existing terms and saying where your deficits are and then making sure that you can negotiate payment terms that mean you never run out of cash. You never need to go into any credit line, credit cards, any sort of equity or debt financing, because you're always going to have positive cash on hand to fund the growth of your business. Joe: So what do you have to say to those people that are listening saying, okay, I got this, I'm just going to ask for these better terms and they don't do this work and they don't do a presentation the way that you want, what it is their supply going to say? Dan: It's funny, actually, because one of the things we normally go to; this is a typical role play and if I ever talk about this on a stage and you lied and or anything like that, this is how it typically goes. You send an email that goes, hey, I need some better terms. Can I pay you the balance after shipping? The supplier email backs no. You sit there drinking FML like, what am I going to do? Yeah, most people just go give me better terms, a supplier goes no. And if you think about it, these factories; these suppliers, how many brands are asking them daily? How many of their customers because they're supplying hundreds if not thousands of customers. Joe: Yeah. Dan: I'm just saying give me better terms. I hope you sat there as a factory owner going well what's in it for me? Joe: Right. Dan: You have to answer that question of what's in it for me. It's got to be a win-win relationship. Joe: Let's get to it then. The next stage is I mean, obviously, you're seeing so no deficits, which is great. The entrepreneur is sleeping better at night. They've got a little more cash for themselves, but also cash to probably buy more inventories which is what's in it for the vendor, right? Dan: Absolutely. So with everything we do, we have to approach these relationships as a win-win deal. Having been to China more than a dozen times now, I've taken over 500 people. I have been involved in a number of these negotiations at lower levels and much higher levels. It is all about the relationship. It's all about the win-win. And you have to present what's in it for them. Why should they risk that workflow, their cash flow? Because I sense you're asking them to fund your business. Why should they risk that inaudible[00:20:16.2]. So the outcome for everyone has to be a benefit. So the way we do that is there's a five-step process to presenting a win-win. And this is what we break down into a presentation and we've got templates for etcetera. So Step 1 is the opportunity and the conversation that you're trying to get across is there's a big opportunity to make more sales. That's kind of the message you're trying to get across. And the reason it's better to do this in person as well is you can take; if you've got like a logistics manager or sourcing agent on the ground. All of our Titan members benefit from Titan sourcing, so we provide this to them on the fly. But yeah, if you've got that on the ground, you can then have that person translate but also be like an internal ambassador for this process. So step 1, the opportunity. There's a big opportunity to make more sales. Step 2, the challenge. The challenge is I can't order enough inventories to fund and meet the demand of my growth because of cash flow. And that's the challenge that you need to communicate. You can't fund your growth because of cash flow, and that's limiting your ability to grow because your sale is outgrowing your cash impact. I lose sales and as a result, the supplier, the factory that you're dealing with is going to get smaller orders. The solution is better terms so we can order more inventories. The whole objective here is better payment terms, more cash on hand, and allowing you to order more inventory just to grow faster; to compound that growth faster, the benefit, larger orders for the supplier, more sales for us. So that's kind of the five-step story that your supplier, your factory really needs to understand from this process. I'll read… Joe: Read them off. Yeah, you were just going to do it. Yeah, read them off real quick one more time. Dan: Opportunity, challenge, impact, solution, benefits. So they really need to understand each one of those points and then we're going to break down exactly how we do that. Joe: Okay. So look, I haven't been to China before and I want to ask you about that a little bit, but I know that there are benefits for the manufacturer because you're going to be placing more orders. What's their recourse if you don't pay on those notes or is the risk so low because you've been there, you've met with them, didn't rush on building a relationship. Dan: So you're not going to get this sort of payment terms on your first order. We have, however, had a number of success stories on their first order, even just slight movements like 20/80 on the payment terms or a slight reduction in COGS because we're guaranteeing more orders. We are getting some traction on first orders. This is more for sellers who are probably more your audience, Joe, who are sort of gearing towards exit. I've got an established relationship inaudible[00:22:54.8] the second to third order is kind of the sweet spot that you can start bringing this up. And if you bring it on early in the relationship, every time you place a bigger order, you can revisit these terms, you can revisit the relationship. So for the factory, yes, of course, there is risk involved, but they're weighing up the relationship with you and there are other insurances and stuff that you can bring up without getting too technical. You kept their eyes on ways of ensuring the order and stuff which can give a lot more confidence to the supplier but we don't do that most of the time. It's just purely based on the relationship and your order history. Joe: Okay, so any more steps after the 5 that you talked about there? Dan: Yeah there is. So that's the story we've got to present but when it comes to actually presenting that you've got to back that story with data. So they have to believe you and they need to see the numbers for themselves to tick that logical box. You've ticked the emotional box, you've got the relationship. They believed your story. Now you've got to present the data to back your story. So the six-step process to presenting the win-win, one is the growth potential, two is a product by product sales forecast. So that forecast to we produced in the beginning, we're just going to take the sales aspects of it and present that in a nice presentation. We're going to then present the order values to meet that demand and we're going to show them the before and after. We don't get into showing them the internal cash flow or the profit or anything like that. We just show them on the current payment terms this is what we can afford to order, on the new payment terms this is what we can afford to order. And what they're going to say is an order of say, 5,000, 10,000 units but with the new payment terms, I might be able to order 20,000, 25,000 units. So they're going to see a drastic change in the volume of units that you're able to order if they just work with you on the payment terms. Now, once we've done that, there's two other points. We always present what out of stock means. So most factories and suppliers don't really understand what it means when you're out stuck financially from a sales perspective. Sure they're being hammered; you're sort of getting on email, you're getting on Skype, you're doing you thing saying well I need this order, can you push it? Can you put it to the front of your production line and you're sort of pressuring them. But because you're pressuring them so much they're not really thinking about the impact on sales. So you can show the cost of being out of stock from a point of re-launching, lost sales velocity, lost growth. So maybe you've lost a couple of places in rank which has actually brought your growth percentage down, the momentum of growth. And for them, they're not going to be getting as frequent orders because that volume is down, meaning you're not placing as bigger orders. So you can still present the loss to them as well, which is a nice sort of stick to underpin the whole thing. And then finally you go right to solve this problem; this challenge, to order more from you and to recover was it, defend against that potential loss of being out of stock. These are the payment terms I need. And you just present the data to back the story. And it's quite easy, there's a whole template towards it in terms of how we do that. You can use screenshots out of your Amazon seller central accounts to back the data; you can use Keeper screenshots within the presentation as well as just sort of showing screenshots of that spreadsheet you really want to be showing the analytical graphs to back that data because it really gives that visual representation. Joe: I'm sorry so let's just put in the; so for every 10 people that go through this process and try to renegotiate terms to go through the full process, they do it right. They do the projections. They do everything that you've talked about so far, which I think is eleven steps after they're doing the sales forecast, do 9 out of 10 of them get better terms or 10 out of 10 or 2 out of 10; what are the odds? Just put it into a realistic perspective for the audience. Dan: So if you are already working with the supplier, you're already in communication. You're not just… Joe: Yeah, let's assume that somebody has been placing two, three, four, five orders. A lot of people if they hadn't done this, they'd been placing the order for two or three years. Dan: Yeah, so that person I would be as confident to say that eight in 10 people. I am yet to come across a relationship of that stature that's established with good communication where you won't end up better off. Now, you might not get the terms that you want straight out the gate, but I guarantee if they value your business, which they should do by that point you've got a relationship, you will end up off in a better place. So 90 to 100% of people will end up better off. 80% of people will execute to a point where it impacts customer for sure. Joe: And this includes a trip to China because you're presenting it in person? Dan: Yeah, this is like optimum. You've gone to China. Think about how many requests these factories and suppliers get from brands in the west as they say it asking. And then think about the percentage of people that actually get on a flight, fly to China, sit in the office, drink sake and do all that good stuff. That is going to be like 98 and 2%. So who are they going to prioritize? They're going to prioritize those showing real commitment. Business is about commitment. Business is about doing what you said you would do. And I think that's all this is. It's as simple as that. Joe: Yeah, the 80% of people that have established brands can certainly get better terms with these vendors. Are you seeing; obviously they're ordering more and with higher volume orders comes lower cost of goods sold. How do you negotiate a lower cost of goods sold? Is it strictly volume based or do you make that part of this overall presentation that you're looking for terms and lower COGS at certain levels? Dan: Yes. So what we do is we hold that conversation. So in any negotiation, you need the person you're negotiating with to say yes a few times. You need to get them to agree and we need to chip away at the yeses. So what we do is we hold that COGS conversation right until the end. So once we've gone through showing the growth potential, the product by product sales forecasts, showing the order values to meet the demand before and after if they give us these terms, the impacts of being out of stock, and then say this is the payment terms we want and always start higher, by the way. Always start higher than you actually need because there will always be a piece of negotiation. They will turn around and say, yes, hopefully. That's the goal. That's our amount in agreement. It might not be what you want, but they might say, well, on this one, we'll give you this and if you meet the demand, then on the next one we'll give you this. We might be a bit of an up curve. We then turn around and just say so now I'm placing a bigger order, I get a better price, right? And you'll find about half the time they'll smile and laugh at you and say, yes, the other half the time they'll say, let's talk about that in the next order. But yeah, you have to put a bit tongue-in-cheek in whether you have to build the relationship, play on the relationship. Joe: Is this done over dinner or is it done over a desk; how do you see it most often done? Dan: Typically, it would be done; in most cases, it's going to be over some sort of food environment, some suppliers and factories would like to get the business done and then go for dinner. Most likes to get the relationship piece in first. They want to sort of learn about you, your family. They want to give you some food, take you to lunch. And then during that process, we'll then bring it down to the conversation. Now, it's important to say it won't always happen there and then in the room. A lot of the time you'll present this, you'll throw in that thing at the end that says, so now I'm placing a bigger order do I get a better price and be a bit cheeky with it. And a lot of the time they're going to turn around and say well, look, we need to run our raw material costs. We need to look our production workflow. We need to speak to our internal production manager. We'll get back to you within a few days. So depending on how long you're in China, it could be back when you were in America or back in Europe. You'll jump on Skype and they'll go, okay, cool we've run the numbers. It makes sense. Yes, we can do that. So it kind of happens like a bit of a fluid conversation during the social aspects. Sometimes you'll sit in an office and just get it done. But most of the time it would be over some sort of lunch or something like that. Joe: I got you. Okay, any other steps that you want to review? Dan: No, we're good. So really just remember, it's a win-win. Do your internal prep; what they say is the success is in the preparation, success in the planning. Do your planning, and then make sure you're presenting it in a way that presents it as a win to them. And yes, you can achieve this virtually over the internet, but you're going to have 100% better results. And if it's okay, Joe, I've got some examples here, actually. Joe: Yeah. Dan: So Case Study 1, 30% deposit, 70% before shipping, after 0% deposit, 100% percent 60 days after shipping. Joe: That's a beautiful outcome. I can't imagine anybody would be upset about that. Dan: No, it's cool. That was actually inaudible[00:31:13.0] and my business partner and Sarah, who's head of Titan Sourcing that negotiated that one. The next one was 30% deposit, 70% before shipping after we got a 30% deposit because the raw material costs were quite high on this product, which you have to still work with them on, and then it was 20% percent before shipping. So we pay sort of 50% and then we got 50% percent 30 days after arrival at Amazon FBA, which meant we had 30 days of sales before having to pay the remaining 50%. Case Study 30% deposit, 70% on the approved inspection report. That was a bit of a quality assurance thing there. After we got a 20% deposit, 35% 60 days after shipping, 45% 90 days after shipping so that was a nice one. And then finally, the fourth one and I've got some bonus tips at the end if you want them, Joe, 20% deposit, 80% before shipping. That was the terms we had so it was a bit nicer on the frontend. After we got a 10% deposit, 40% on landing in the USA, and 50% 60 days after landing. Joe: Wow. Dan: And these are typical; I can stand there and say now these are just four cases that we've done we've got a whole Titan network full of members that are doing the same. Joe: Yeah. No, I want to hear about the bonus tips. Also want to hear briefly about China Magic and maybe we can have Athena on to talk about it. Just let me ask; go ahead into the bonus tips and then then I want to talk briefly about China Magic. Dan: Yeah, sure. Because there's loads of benefits above and beyond obviously COGS and terms. Joe: Yeah. Dan: Okay, so tips to success face to face always will produce a better result. They often pay for the trip and that's what you got. Think if you're looking at a cost offset, you'll often get to pay for the trip in the renegotiation. Always ask for more than you need; really important. You probably won't shake hands there and then as I said. Make sure if you come to see the boss, you don't want to be waiting on a middle person or a middle man so they then you have to go and sort of do the translation. You want to be in front doing the deal with the boss. Before you go into that environment, before you even head out to China, if you've got a representative from that factory or you've got a sourcing agent that handles that relationship for you, then get them onside. So run through the presentation with them first so that when they're in the room, they've already done the thinking, they're already standing there, and they can get the buy-in of the boss in the room. Consider consolidating your orders to one supplier. It gives you more buying power. And one thing we're a big fan of in Titan and in China Magic is leveraging an outside adviser. Because then you can play the whole good cop bad cop. If you want to maintain a good relationship you can bring in someone that's like an external advisor to crack the weight a little bit and you can call them your finance person. You can call them whatever you want to. That allows you to do that. And remember, every relationship and supplier cash flow is different so you have to really; don't just tell them what you want, understand what they need, and bring the two together. And this is counter-intuitive but it's often being willing to pay more to achieve the terms especially in the beginning. So one thing you can do is if they're not budging, you can afford to give them a dollar bum pull over here now on a product to get them to nudge on the payment terms which is still going to give you more cash on hand and then come back to renegotiating the COGS once you're up at the higher volume because you've been off to some of the growth. Joe: I like it. Dan: And also take gifts as well; take presents. It works. It depends; there are controversial views on this. So Kian Golzari for instance who is a sort of an expert on China Magic everything; he's doing sourcing and product development. Kian loves; he's from Scotland, he's from Edinburgh, he loves taking some Scotch whiskey with him. Other people take chocolate. There's the whole red envelope with some cash in it for the children but that one's a bit more controversial. But yeah, just my advice would be take something that's important; not important but personal to you, and then that creates a talking point and it creates more of a relationship and a bond. Joe: Okay, that sounds great. I think one of the most important things I see people that are running great businesses and eventually sell them, they're great businesses, do great for buyers. They really have been to China and they always wind up with either better terms or better COGS. It sounds like a scary place to me, though. I've never been so is China a scary place? Dan: It really isn't. So when I first got involved in the early days with China Magic I went out there as a guest speaker and then ended up becoming a co-organizer with Athena. I thought the same but when you land; if you think like Guangzhou where the Canton Fair is. That's where we go. It's the biggest product sourcing Fair in the world. I think they start setting up 5 million products on display during the Canton Fair. They're used to receiving hundreds of thousands, if not millions of westerners through that fair over the course of 12 months. The airlines are efficient. The flights are cheap. I mean from the US, the flights are $500 on a good day it's $400. Joe: Wow. Dan: Yes. I mean, it's really cheap. That's for obviously economy. I got a first-class ticket; I mean first-class pod for two grand. Joe: Wow. Dan: So yeah I mean it's cheap. We head out there and we're picked up by a nice comfortable bus and we stay in the Four Seasons Hotel which was rated Forbes Best Business Hotel in the world 2019; the one where we go. So they look after us. We've got five staff service and food, good internet. We then head over to the fair. This isn't a market; there are other markets like Ebru and stuff which are a bit more like rack markets, Canton Fair is a professional establishment. All of the suppliers there are paying serious money to have a booth at this fair. So if they don't speak English themselves, they'll employ English speaking representatives. So you can have a really good conversation there. Sometimes you have to work with a bit of culture and there are definitely cultural barriers that you have to learn, like receiving a business card with two hands and showing that respect. It goes much further and Ken covers all this in China Magic. We go into depth like we spend some of that four hours just going into how to have a conversation with a supplier so that they know you are educated. But yeah I mean, to cut a long story short, it really isn't. Like I walk around in my shorts and my t-shirt, I go down and they've got little smoothie bars now I'm on the streets by the hotel. It's quite a pleasant place. Joe: Fantastic. How do people learn more about Titan Network and then China Magic and again I think we ought to probably have somebody on for China Magic and what that event is all about because it's; I don't know, it's the next step. I don't know if I would want to go on my own and I assume that you would not recommend that. You go with a group that does this on a regular basis. So tell us about how more people learn about Titan Network and in particular this cash flow management renegotiation, all of the different steps that you've talked about. Dan: Yeah, sure. So if you want to know more about Titan Network, we're an invite-only membership organization for Amazon sellers. We're going from strength to strength. And the thing about Titan Network is it's created by sellers for sellers. So it's not about any one person's success. It's not like a guru led thing. You can learn it at TitanNetwork.com. That's where you go and learn about Titan Network. And if you feel like you want to find your tribe and your family, then take a look there and you can apply for Titan Network. If you want to learn more about China Magic go to ChinaMagicTrip.com. It's got the full trip details on it. I'm going to give you access to a little special link. If you go to ChinaMagicTrip.com/masterclass we go into a bit more depth on these payment terms upon negotiation stuff. And it's got off-screen shares. You can actually see some of the slides. And that's all out there free of charge so you can go and take a look at that. Yeah, I'd love to do a follow up about China Magic. I'll bring Kian on, I'll bring Athena on and go into the depths of like not just payment terms and cash flow, but how do you build these relationships and how do you find these factories that you're not going to find in Ali Baba, how do you improve the quality, how do you differentiate products in 2020; yeah, we could talk about a lot. Joe: Well, I think it's a great service to the people that are Amazon sellers or even just not Amazon sellers, other people that sell-off of Amazon need better terms as well. Dan: Yeah. We're seeing Shopify sellers. We're seeing a lot of these influencers on Instagram that are realizing they've got an audience. If they apply a physical product to that audience, they're going to make money. We're seeing all these guys come along now because it doesn't matter whether you're selling on Amazon or Shopify, physical products are physical products. And to your point about going alone, there are seasoned travelers out there that will have no issue in visiting China themselves. But for me, it's about return on my time, a return on investment on my time so if I can go with 75 like-minded sellers at a similar point the journey led by multiple seven and eight-figure sellers, get shown 30 years' worth of sourcing experience across Marcy, Kian, myself and the team in a couple of days; so condense that learning period, get the COGS on payment terms on it and every single evening mastermind for four hours a night on every single area of the business, that to me is a bigger return on my time than just going over to China myself. So that's kind of my view on it. Joe: Yeah, if I was in the e-commerce world myself, I'd be in. I'd want to bring my son though so he enjoys the world travel. Maybe in another life, I'm out of the e-commerce business myself. I'm an entrepreneur at Quiet Light Brokerage only. So listen Dan, I appreciate all the time you spent here. I think its great advice and I know from experience that people that exit their business for the maximum value end up doing a lot of the things you've talked about so thank you. I appreciate it. Dan: Yeah, no there's just a final closing point now. We should tie this back to valuation. So you'd go how does this make my business worth more? Well, I think I'll just spin-off three raises in my head to maybe cut this in. One is it's going to make you more attractive as you've got solid foundation relationships with your supply chain and you're not relying on Alibaba or some sourcing agent. Buyers want to know you've got the full foundation. Two if you've got more margin, you've got more profit, more profit, bigger valuation. And three, if you've got better cash flow and more cash flow on hand, you can compound that freight faster which means you achieve your valuation faster. So that's how they tie it back to valuation. Joe: And again, I say it and I'll stop saying because Mark keeps correcting me there's no fifth pillar. All of the things that you're talking about make you a better business person; somebody that others will trust because you're instilling confidence in them that will bring you better value as well. People if they trust you they're willing to pay more for your business. So Dan, great stuff, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Dan: I appreciate it, Joe. Thanks for the time. Resources: Titan Network China Magic Masterclass China Magic Trip Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com
On this episode of Quiet Light, we discuss Athena Severi's immersive Mastermind group, China Magic, and her work as an entrepreneur. Episode Highlights: Being a "connector of people". The roots of China Magic. Why it's important to trust the wisdom of others. The China Magic schedule. Splitting the China Magic Mastermind into smaller groups. The Canton Fair. The percentage of women at Mastermind events. Transcription: Mark: I think one of the interesting things about the online world and online businesses is that online business owners tend to be more inclined to be a part of mastermind groups and to gather together and share information with each other. And these groups tend to range from small and informal; I know I'm part of a small mastermind group that would get together like once every few months for lunch to really evolve even to a point; Joe, I know you talked to Athena Severi is that right? Joe: Yeah. Mark: She takes people to China for 12 days as part of her mastermind group to educate and teach people and have people get comfortable with working in China, direct with Chinese manufacturers and teach them how to go about doing that. How did that conversation go? Joe: Yeah, well, great. Look, two things here, number one, it's so good to have a female entrepreneur on the podcast. There's just not enough in the e-commerce space and Athena is one of them. She's a terrific entrepreneur that connected with Kevin King, who we know, the Titan Network and her group, China Magic. At one point, she had an Amazon business and went over to China through a group thing and found it to be not very helpful, essentially abrasive and going about negotiating in a sort of Wall Street manner; the way that it really doesn't work. So she brought in some experts. She comes from the event planning world and she created China Magic and takes, I think its 50 people over to China for the Canton Fair for a 12-day event. Every night they have a mastermind group where they're talking about selling on Amazon. They have people go into the fair and walk around with you and help you find products, negotiate and talk with people in a way that builds lasting relationships. They travel to different cities. They do so many things and they brought in some amazing people that are mentors that go on the trip as well. And they also build lifelong relationships with the people that go. To top it off they stay at the Ritz-Carlton at like the 90th floor; it's pretty amazing. Mark: That sounds fun. Joe: And it's not unreasonably priced for a trip to China and all you get. I think she should be charging more. But one of the key things that I hear over and over and over again is that for an entrepreneur who has made the trip, made the effort to go to China and meet with their manufacturer, they come out with a better relationship with their manufacturer, better terms that improve cash flow, that allows them to invest more in more SKUs or more marketing. And what Athena does is she takes all the risk and mystery out of booking that trip to China. Personally, I would never want to do it on my own. She takes it all out. I would definitely go if I was an e-commerce entrepreneur through China Magic; I'll definitely do. Mark: Sounds great. Joe: Let's go through it. Joe: Hey, folks. Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I have Athena Severi with me. She is the founder of China Magic. But I'm not going to say much more than that. Athena, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Athena: Joe, it's an honor to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Joe: I didn't want to say much more because I want you to tell us who the heck you are. That's what we do here. I don't want to read a script. I want you to tell us what your background is, who you are, and then we'll go from there. Athena: Okay, cool. So I am naturally a connector of people. I build communities. And I've always created very unique event experiences where I connect people with people who are very brilliant, intelligent, and successful in their world. And because of that, I created some pretty interesting and unique experiences, including this will be called China Magic. Joe: Yeah, I think Kevin King introduced us for the very first time and he said, Joe, this lady collects people, which is an interesting thing to say. But then we talked about China Magic and you've talked about it and look, I've not run my own e-commerce site since 2010 when I sold. Now it's conflict, in my opinion, to online because I'm a broker, I'm between, in the middle. Even if I had my own e-commerce site I don't know if I'd want to get on a plane and go to China because it's just so overwhelming. But you kind of run this show and help people get over that overwhelming aspect of it. Can you talk about how China Magic started and what you do for people on the way there? Athena: Yeah. Joe: Because the audience is they're SaaS and they're content owners as well but for the e-commerce owners that think and know; we've talked about it, how to get better deals is to get on a plane and go to China and negotiate with the manufacturer, meet with them, becomes friends with them, become part of the family. But nobody really wants to do that. It's a big undertaking. So you help people with that. So tell us about China Magic a little bit. Athena: Sure. So just to kind of backtrack a little bit, I worked for a consulting firm in corporate America for some time and then I got introduced to the Amazon world. And I actually released a couple of products that went well. I actually quit my six-figure job selling on Amazon. So I would struggle quite a bit because I was actually in; I still am in the yoga accessory world and I dealt with fabrics and colors and sizes and different things that communication with China would always just take a long time. I get a sample sent to me if it was a bit off it would take a couple more weeks before they could actually remake it, send it back to me. And I was struggling with my own growth as a business because of that. And also, I always wanted to kind of design things a bit and not be the same as everybody else. So I think because of that, I was actually at a conference and someone mentioned going to China. And I never even thought of going to China before but I realized that's a big part of being in e-com is the quality of your products, the price point that you can get your products, like your supply chain and the suppliers that you deal with is such a huge factor when it comes to your business. And I noticed that there was a lot of Amazon sellers who were like very successfully and done millions of dollars on Amazon, but they weren't experts at sourcing and they had never been to China themselves. So I was actually quite intrigued by the idea of going on my own. Joe: How did you pull it off for the first time if you've never been, did you go with others or did you go by yourself? Athena: I did actually go with others. So the gentleman who is kind of pitching the idea of China, he really sold me on the fact that in order to really grow my brand, it's good to go directly and to meet suppliers. So I signed up for this trip and spent quite a bit of money. It was a three-day trip and we went to a place called Ebru. And even before we got there, I noticed there was a lot missing. Like no one told us what to pack, how to prepare for visa, how to connect with the fellow members; like there was missing a lot of pizzazz and being that I actually have a background in events and then networking and then taking care of people; I worked with celebrities, I've built huge conferences and events like my whole life; that's my background. Joe: Are you counting Kevin King as a celebrity right now? That's obviously… Athena: No. Joe: No? Okay, just checking. Athena: He's his own world but yeah, yeah, yeah. Joe: Okay. Athena: No, I mean like I worked with artists at a place that's called celebrities in revert for years so, like, I know how to red carpet people, how to take care of people, I know the power of connection and community so I was really expecting more of that. I was expecting to be mentored. And what I found when I got there is that they had a different point of view on how to deal with China. The person who was leading was talking about how you present yourself, this is big business and you really talk down the price and you go in there very hardcore, very aggressively, very western and… Joe: The opposite of everything I've ever heard. Athena: Exactly. So I was sitting there and I was not an expert in China whatsoever but I do know human beings and I thought this is very strange. So I actually wanted to do a test and one of the mentors that were on the trip was supposed to go to and source a few products using that method, going in and being the big dog and talking big things and I was like, you know, I'm going to go the other direction, I'm going to go very human being. So I went in, oh, my gosh, is that your daughter? Oh, how lovely. How are you today? Like actually building rapport and then talking about products, talking about the future, building a real relationship. And then towards the end, when things are already being sort of like that connection is there and the creativity and the future is there then I start talking about how can we do this and how could that work and what price point can we get this at? Do you see what I mean? Like a completely different way. They're going in and being like, how much is this and what can you do for me? And I was getting much better pricing. I was getting much better inputs and creativity and they were showing me things that they weren't showing everyone else. They weren't on the shelves and I was like, this is very interesting. So I noticed that also there wasn't much mentoring. They sent us out with these guys who were sort of high school students to translate for us and they didn't have a background in negotiating. They didn't actually understand sourcing so it's like I was brand new to the subject of China, these guys were brand new to the subject of negotiating and the blind is leading the blind. And so that was the trip I went on. And so I thought, you know what, this could be so much better. This could be amazing. And I went to the organizers and said, hey this is my background. And as it was, I was already bringing in the groups with me. I was like mentoring them I was keeping them upbeat, I was creating the networking, I was just that's who I am. So anyway, the point is that I offered to partner with them. I was like let's get together, let's make this beautiful. And they're like, you know what we're happy with the way this trip is. And I'm like, okay, cool. And I was like I'm going to just do my own. I'm going to bring in some friends and they're like yeah, yeah, cool. And so my first China Magic I brought 50 people to China and we extended it to a 12-day experience. Joe: Wow. let's talk about the benefit of going to China for an e-commerce entrepreneur and first, let's define who they are. Is it somebody that already has an e-commerce business that is going to meet with their manufacturer and work on new terms and so, so forth and find new products or is it, somebody that's just beginning, doesn't even have a website yet or a product and they're sourcing it for the first time. Who's the ideal candidate to join and go to China on China Magic's trips? Athena: Sure. So to me, if you want to be professional as an Amazon seller and you want to be able to have that sort of relationship and that creativity, it doesn't matter if you're brand new to Amazon or if you have scaled up to doing seven figures, eight-figures. Because what we've done in China and I can kind of tell you more about that in a bit is we actually cater to every sort of stage that people are in in their journey because you're going to be looking at sourcing in a completely different way. So, I mean, China Magic has progressed tremendously. We've already done six trips at this point. But to kind of backtrack a little bit and to kind of answer that question a little better I brought in people who were doing millions of dollars on Amazon and because they had never met with their manufacturer, they were actually able to get such a reduction on the cost of their products, such better terms, like these are people who've been working with the same supplier for two years, three years, and they would meet with them and by the end, like they were doing, 30% down 70% on shipping and they were able to get that down to like 10%, 20% down and then 30 days after landing, paying another 35% and then the rest 60 days or 90 days after. And what that does for someone's cash flow is amazing, especially when you're doing bigger numbers. And obviously coming from your perspective as a broker, that really helps with cash flow and it really helps growth. Joe: Yeah and it allows them to grow the business for sure. I think it's critically important. I've heard so many times how people go to China and really connect with their manufacturer and come up with better terms and better pricing. And even if it's just a dollar off cost of goods sold that you sell, 2,000 a month of that particular unit, that's $24,000 a year in savings. And then eventually when you do sell the business if it's at a three-time multiple, that's adding nearly $75,000 on the list price of the business. And you can put as many zeros before or after that as you want, it's important to do. All right so let's talk about the logistics of 50 people going to China but it's your first trip? Athena: Yeah, it was my first trip. And because I'm crazy, I booked every single person's flight myself. Joe: Oh my. Athena: Yeah, like I'm just a wild girl. Joe: You don't do that now, though, right? Athena: No, no, no. I don't do that now. Joe: Okay. Athena: Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that was most magic about China Magic is I connected with a gentleman named Marty Sherman who's been going to China for over 20 years. And this guy understands China on a level I'd never even come across before. And he really believes in developing relationships. And so the very first thing that we do in China Magic is we talk about the culture. We talk about how to really navigate the waters and how to actually approach people. And it's amazing, again, like these guys are professional entrepreneurs, they're professional business owners, they think they understand their suppliers, they think they understand how to do business. But then when you actually talk to someone who's been on the ground in China for over 20 years, the lessons he's learned and the things that he's been able to develop is so incredible. So that's really the power of finding amazing mentors and leaders when it comes to their field because they understand it better than any of us do, just the same way that you understand what you do so much better. Like maybe some guy sold his business or a couple of businesses or whatever versus someone who's actually seen the sale of hundreds, do you know what I mean? Like their professionalism that you gain from having done something over and over and over again. So what I was looking for when I started China Magic were people who were just absolute geniuses when it came to sourcing. So I actually met a guy; this is a crazy story but have you heard of Kian Golzari, Joe? Joe: No, I don't think I have. So does that make me uninformed; should I know about this? Athena: No, no, no. You're wonderful. You know, a lot of people. Okay, so one of the mentors that I had on China Magic asked if this guy could come visit and I was like, yeah sure. And he kind of hung out in China Magic and towards the end of our trip, he's like, do you mind if I put a little presentation together for everybody? I'm like yeah sure. So on this presentation, he starts talking; the guy's sources for the NFL, the NBA, Google… Joe: Wow. Athena: Inaudible[00:15:58.3] his own family's company that has at least 2,500 SKUs, I mean, he's literally a sourcing guide, right? And he became one of my closest friends and now he's my other main guys. I have got Marty, the one that's been going for over 20 years. And I've got Kian Golzari because the formula that I always used is like, if you want to fast forward your business a few years then you want to be around people who are extremely knowledgeable and successful because you can't even put a dollar amount on the value of having gone through so many mistakes, made so many bad choices, learn from all those mistakes; the network of these guys had like it's just crazy. So when people come to China Magic, a big part of the magic is connecting with people like Kian and like Marty and I think that makes a massive difference. Joe: Well, I just wrote down networking then you said there was connecting because we've talked about this before. There's a lot of time that 50 or 75 or 100 people that are going on a trip like this spend together. And the connecting of those relationships goes beyond just renegotiating or getting better terms and more SKUs with your manufacturers. A lot of people are making lifelong connections on these trips as well with fellow e-commerce entrepreneurs, right? Athena: Oh, gosh, completely. Like we've got people who met three and a half years ago at my first trip, they're still connected to this day. There's still some of them that have developed partnerships. And one thing that's very interesting is when you connect at that level Joe when you travel to a foreign country when you're with each other for that long, a lot of the social veneer comes off. You cannot get that relationship at like a conference in the hallway having lunch here and there. So because of that, people really start to open up and they start to share and that abundance mindset really clicks and that trust really clicks. And so I've traveled the world for five and a half years to build up this network. When you walk into China Magic like people come in as strangers and they literally leave as family and it's just like that gave me goosebumps. It is literally; you couldn't even; like you have to experience it to see the level of connection people have. And then those relationships are so valuable later on. Like you just see them helping each other and giving each other resources all the time; yeah, so it's a beautiful thing to see. Joe: So someone doesn't have to know anything about China; how to get in and out, you help them with that entire process from the visa to the booking of the hotel. So you may not do that yourself for their airline. Athena: Yeah. Joe: Is it you show up, you give them some guidance and they're off and on their own or is it pretty much they're told where to go and what to do all along the way? Athena: Okay, so we have kind of perfected this world. It's almost an art. We've got several group flights that we organize. We've got one from the UK, we've got one from the US, and we've got one from Australia. And it just depends on where our members are coming from. And so we organize our group flights. Everyone's on the same flight and then we have everyone get picked up in beautiful bus freight and then we get to the Four Seasons who love us to death and we are like their favorite humans. And they're waiting for us with Pellegrino and cappuccinos; they know how to take care of us. And so what we do on our very first day is we go and get everyone to the Canton Fair. We go to the Canton Fair by the way, and we go in there with mentors. I bring a ton of these mentors. And these are multi seven, eight-figure, we even have a nine-figure seller coming on our next China Magic. And so we walk in there with them, show them around; get them what it's like to see what it looks like. And then on the first night, we orient them to China, to negotiation, and then the next day, we actually go into the fair with them. So we are mentoring small groups of them throughout the trip. And then when they kind of graduate out and they feel confident, they kind of go on their own. But I have my guys on the ground constantly; we have a sourcing team of about 100 people. We've got connections to factories that are not on the grid; about 4,000 factories you can't even find in Alibaba or even at Canton. So if people are having trouble finding something, we actually utilize the vast network that we've built. So we really are very present for them the entire time. And a part of China that I didn't even mention is it's not just about China like we actually do content every single night about Amazon; so from A to Z, everything from branding to PPC to marketing to every single topic in Amazon is all covered within those 12 days. And we split everybody up into these itty bitty groups, and this is why we cater to everyone. We actually work with like if you're a top seller, you're going to want to talk to other top sellers about pain points that you're struggling with at that level. If you're new to your journey, you need a lot of hand-holding, you need a lot of help, and also, it's not going to mix them so we never do that. We have different content for different levels. And so you literally go in there and you're just going to be with a group of people that are in a similar part of their journey, being literally walked through the journey with some of the top brains in the entire industry throughout the entire 12 days. Joe: And is it always the Canton Fair? Athena: Yeah, so we always go to the Canton Fair. We go to Phase 2 Canton, which is amazing because you go and you're literally walking through booths and booths and booths of product, you're connecting with factories. Joe: What does Phase 2 mean versus I suppose Phase 1? Athena: Phase 2 is where you find like a lot of beauty products, a lot of kitchen products, a lot of household products, baby products. Phase 3 is more about travel, about sports, about different; so each phase of the Canton Fair has its own products and you can go to CantonFair.net and actually take a look at which phase is most appropriate. Joe: Okay. Athena: So what happens is like let's say most of your products are from Phase 2, you would utilize Phase 3 to go do factory visits which is another thing that we talk a lot about. It's like actually going and visiting with your factory, visiting with your suppliers, and we walk you through an exact way to negotiate and to project the future and create these amazing partnerships. Joe: So Phase 3 is a different China Magic trip where they're going to visit the manufacturers or was that a part of Phase 2? I was confused there. Athena: Oh no, no, I'm sorry. So Canton Fair is the largest fair in the world when it comes to sourcing and it goes through three phases. There's Phase 1, 2 and 3. We go to Phase 2 and then we go to Hong Kong for a few days and we go see global sources and do more sourcing there and we do more content there. Then we come back for Phase 3 of Canton. And so that's just a whole; like basically, they set up, they take away their products, and then a whole new world gets created in that next phase because they just got too many products to be able to do it all at one time. Joe: I got you. What about going out and visiting your manufacturers if they were off the grid or if they're not at the Canton Fair or are they all there? Athena: Oh, well, it just depends. Some people are there, some people aren't. But we highly recommend to go visit your factory and then we do a factory visit for those who don't have a supplier yet. And we actually went to a packaging factory that does packaging for like Adidas, Nike, Nescafe, or they got connections, this amazing world of like factories that we can take people to that we really recommend for people. We actually show them the exact step by step on how to go and visit with your manufacturer, how to go and like see the people that are building your products, how to actually build your products with them so that they can see you on the floors, you get an idea, and then Kian goes into like understanding how to like; let's say you're building a backpack, there's all these components, right? So how to look at each component over the world and there's ways to increase quality, to get innovative, to save money. So we teach people really that understanding of sourcing at a level to where you become an expert even within the first few days of China Magic. And this is stuff that like a lot of people are missing, like really, they're missing this within their business and they're missing a ton of product; I'm sorry, a ton of profit because there might be ways to save a lot of money on their products or there might be ways to innovate them and charge a higher premium for them or because they're not in there on the floor dealing with their products, understanding their supplier, it really might be leaving a lot on the table. Joe: How much time in advance do they have to plan a trip like this? Athena: I've had people sign up as quick as two weeks before but we get sold out so fast; like we're actually already sold out for our next trip months, months in advance. And the amazing thing about it is it's mainly word of mouth. We didn't even do any sort of advertising campaign or anything like that. We literally did a couple of Facebook Lives from China and we got like 90% sold out just from that. Because what we're doing in China Magic it is magic and I think people want to be a part of that. Joe: Are there any resources I assume on your website; what is the URL for China Magic that might be… Athena: They can go to ChinaMagicTrip.com. Joe: Okay, there's a trip in there. Athena: We have a waiting list, you can get on that waiting list. Joe: Do you have resources on the website for people that still are too scared to go to China or not ready or can't afford it yet or just starting out; any information that helps them with negotiation tips and things of that nature and dealing with a manufacturer from afar? Athena: Absolutely. So we do have a webinar series that we put together. So if they go to ChinaMagicTrip.com they can get on our list. And then also if they want to reach out to me, they can just go ahead and AthenaSeveri@gmail.com that's my personal e-mail if they want to. Joe: Oh you did it; you just gave out your personal e-mail address. Athena: I did. I don't mind. I have tons of people reach out to me all the time. They can find me on Facebook; they can find me on Instagram. I make myself very available. I actually talk to almost every single person that's ever been on China Magic. I've had a personal conversation with them before they even get going on our trip because I want to make sure that they're inaudible[00:25:48.6] abundance mindset so yeah. Joe: I don't doubt that for a moment. I can see it happening. Athena: Yeah. Joe: Every single person; just out of curiosity it's a woman, female-run operation, which is wonderful in this e-commerce male-dominated world that we live in. Athena: Yeah. Joe: But when it comes to ratios in terms of male versus female in terms of people that go on the trip, is it still heavily male-oriented or are there plenty of women entrepreneurs that go as well? Athena: I'm so proud of this, the trip I was on out of 60 people, three of them are women; the women that went on that wasn't my own. Joe: Okay. Athena: Today more than 50% of our trip is women. Joe: Beautiful. Athena: Because I take perfect care of them; I princess out the trip for them and they feel confident because they know me. They know I'll take care of them and I do. So, yeah, we've got amazing women on our trip. Joe: Excellent, and you've connected with Titan Network as well, right? And China Magic has kind of flowed into Titan. I had Dan on a podcast a couple of weeks ago talking about negotiating terms with manufacturers. Athena: That's right. Joe: So this is kind of a good evolution too. So what's the connection between Titan and China Magic? Athena: Yeah. Dan Ashburn is my partner with both China and Titan. So what happened was people would go for those 12 days and they would get so spoiled by the mentoring that we do because we do a lot of hands-on mentoring that the quality of our mentors are amazing. And so the only issue we were having with China Magic is that it would end after 12 days and we would see the amount of progress that was made. It's not just the sourcing, but like people that understand the rest of it and how to build a multimillion-dollar business; like you get to spend an hour with them talking about your business, the progress you make in that hour is just amazing. So what we did with Titan Network is we actually created sort of that mentoring and the magic of China but we did it all year long. So we added events and masterminds and weekly coaching and a lot of hands-on mentoring and Dan is just a freaking genius; I could not have built this without him. And we've basically recruited all of our top mentors from over the years and they're now part of Titan as well. Joe: Excellent. Let's answer the question a lot of people are asking; a ballpark, you can't give an exact figure because it's changing all the time but how much is it going to cost somebody to go on a China Magic trip, ballpark range? I'm putting you on the spot here I know. Athena: Yeah, because our pricing is changing. Honestly, we've been under-pricing for way too long. So I'd say a ballpark is around 8, we've done it as low as 6 for our… Joe: I was just going to say, even if it's 10, it seems like an incredible investment for people to make in their business because they're going to make that back in better terms, better cash flow, great knowledge, great friendships. And people go to mastermind events and spend an awful lot of money, here it seems like a 12-day mastermind event where you're really experiencing a completely different part of the world. Athena: 100%. And we also; I didn't even mention this but even before we get to China, we're doing training with them or mentoring them. We've got a Facebook group for connecting everybody so they actually get to know each other before they even head to China. So that's all included as well. So, yeah, I really I believe in what we do 100%, the lives we've changed; I mean, I have people who came on my original trip and they found a product that has been profiting them $30,000 $40,000 a month since inaudible[00:29:19.1] like it's just ridiculous that… Joe: I get the feeling, Athena, that you actually get more joy out of helping people than counting dollars, is that…? Athena: Oh, I'm terrible like Dan has to like keep me on track because I just have like a big heart and I'm always like, oh you want to come okay well let's work it out just because yeah it really is my happiest place. I think my happiest thing ever is seeing these amazing people that are like our mentors leaders, because a lot of them came from my attendees. A lot of these guys were attendees on my trip. They just happened to be more helpful, had bigger hearts, and had amazing success stories. So then I graduate them into being mentors and it's sort of the circle of life that's so pretty. And then they go and help other people and like, oh, man, it's like a dream come true to be in this industry, honestly. Joe: Oh that's fantastic. I'm going to wrap it up here. I'm glad we finally got you on the podcast. We were introduced I want to say three or four years ago and we keep bumping into each other. Athena: I know. Joe: So thank you for coming on. I'm excited here. Tell me again how people find out about China Magic; ChinaMagicTrip.com or net? Athena: Yeah so it's ChinaMagicTrip.com if they want to learn about Titan, if they're too scared to go to China, they can always go to TitanNetwork.com to connect with me there as well. My phone number is out there, like really, I give my heart and soul to my people and make sure that they're super taken care of. So I'm here for you guys and like I mentioned earlier, if you're beginning your journey, we can take care of you, if you're sort of in that intermediate zone looking to scale or even if you're very, very successful, even if you're looking to sell your business in six months you're like coming to China will benefit you in so many ways. Joe: I couldn't agree more. And for those that are wondering, yes, it is an add-back. If you don't know what an add-back is, reach out to us, we can help. You should know in an add-back is at this stage of listening. Athena: Joe, I just want to mention thank you so much for all that you do for the industry. You put your heart out there. I see how much value you add. It's like you could just do the thing that you're there to do but I see how much you help people grow and expand and it's just wonderful. So thanks for all that you do for community as well. Joe: Thank you for saying that. I very much appreciate it. Thanks, Athena. Talk to you soon. Athena: Yeah, thanks for having me. Resources: China Magic AthenaSeveri@gmail.com Titan Network Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com
One of the biggest challenges we face as business brokers is getting sellers to understand that we too are entrepreneurs. Getting people to do a valuation is one of the biggest hurdles because many think that just staying afloat is the goal, and the rest will come later. Sometimes later is too late. Today Joe and Mark are back sharing how to get valuation right. At Quiet Light we work hard to educate and help people find the growth paths that will get them the most value for their business in the event of a sale. We have a ton of experience in giving valuations and can guide current and future sellers to profit. When you build a great business with buyers in mind it will make the transfer so much easier. Episode Highlights: Why a business owner should plan an exit strategy early in the business building process. The benefits and tradeoffs of entrepreneurship. How long in advance someone should plan their valuation. How much it costs to do a valuation. The threefold beneficiaries of the valuation. The importance of the end goal while building. How the valuation process benefits the potential buyer. Ways selling a cohesively built business creates valuable relationships. The level of detail that is essential to a full valuation. Accounting tips for a better valuation as you go. How the valuation process gives owners paths hidden profits. The other three of a successful business How the invisible fifth pillar makes a difference in the overall value of your business. Mark's quick wrap-up of the importance of a valuation. Transcription: Joe: Mark, one of the biggest challenges that we have as business brokers is conveying to people that we're entrepreneurs first. We've all been in their shoes. We're technically still entrepreneurs, right? We run Quiet Light Brokerage. And getting people to get beyond the mindset of running their business and saying I'm not ready to sell I don't to have a conversation about exiting to actually thinking well in advance of an exit is one of the biggest challenges and honestly, it's frustrating. It's frustrating for me and that's why we work so hard to educate and help and we do this podcast so we can get more people thinking well in advance of their exit. But I want to ask you as the original founder of Quiet Light Brokerage, the man with so many stories to tell, why in your opinion should somebody even plan their exit and give it thought well in advance of selling their business; what are the benefits? Mark: Boy that's a big question and I could actually give you a number of benefits and since you put me on the spot I don't have them in order in terms of what I would think would be the most important. But I'll start with this one which I think might not be the most important reason but I think it might be the most applicable for most people. It will resonate with most people and that's this, having a business that is valuable in an exit usually means you have a very valuable business to own. That's the number one reason in my opinion. So let me explain that and flesh that out a little bit. Obviously, if somebody is willing to buy your business for quite a bit of money; let's say they're willing to pay a four-time or five-time multiple, what they're seeing there as a business that is desirable to own, it is going to grow, and it's going to kick off a lot of cash in the future which obviously if you come to me or come to any entrepreneur and say do you want to own a business that doesn't require a ton of work has a lot of upsides and is consistently throwing off money most people would say yes, right? If we talk about the four pillars which we do so often here, do you want to own a business that has a low-risk profile and good growth prospects as the two first pillars? Yes, most of us want to. So the first reason I would say is when you go through the process of planning to sell even if you decide not to sell your business the result of it is that you have a business which is more stable, you know the growth paths available to your business, and you have great documentation in place for the business. So that'll be my number one reason right out the gate. And I don't know if you want to discuss that or I can give you a couple of others if you want. Joe: Yeah well let's first tell the folks listening that there is no special guest today it's you and me and we're going to talk through… Mark: I'm special Joe. You're special. I am special. Joe: Actually, I just gave you hosting privileges on this. Mark: So we're special. Joe: Technically I'm the guest and then I'm not special. Hey, we're not having anybody on today because Mark and I have a ton of experience at this. We do valuations every day so we want to talk about the reason to have one done and then what we do. We'll talk about what goes into it, and what we discovered, and what we learned along the way. So yes Mark if you want to talk first about that first example that you gave an elaborate on it a little bit we can do that and then go into some details on what it's like to get a valuation and what we do here at Quiet Light Brokerage when we put someone through the process. Mark: Oh sure. Actually, I do want to get to the other reason because these are the two that were kind of vying for my attention when you first asked that question. The second reason is that you just really don't know what the future holds. In the 14 years of doing this; at the time of this podcast almost 14 and a half years that I'm doing this, the number of clients that I've run into that are unprepared for the sale is exceedingly high and the number of clients that are unprepared who wish they had planned in advance is almost universal. So if you find that you're unprepared to sell you you've reached that point where you want to and you realize you aren't there yet there's often some sort of regret. It's kind of like thinking about the person who goes into the dentist for a root canal wishing that they had visited the dentist more frequently before. That inconvenience at the time would have paid off. Or for the person reaching retirement age wishing they had done more to plan their retirement. There are so many of these examples where especially entrepreneurs would get focused on the here and now today which is important. Obviously, we need to take care of that without the eye towards tomorrow that when tomorrow comes it often takes you by surprise. For entrepreneurs, we're in such a really cool spot. We have an opportunity to generate income that frankly people in the regular business world or regular careers don't have the opportunity to make. The tradeoff is some of that stability that you would get in the corporate office world and maybe some of the benefits and everything else that goes along with that. But for us, the benefit; the gain is the income potential but also what most people fail to see is the value of the asset that they are building in and of its own right and that alone can lead to early retirement, that can lead to being able to invest in much larger projects, that can be catapulted into something significantly bigger. But it does not happen if you build an asset which can't be sold. And so not only is it good to own a business like this because it follows basic business principles of having a low-risk profile and high growth opportunities and is usually very well documented which is a good thing; it ties into those two elements but it also gives you financial flexibility for the future and also career flexibility for the future as well. And if you don't do it the flip side is you can build yourself a prison which I'm sure you've seen a few people build prisons for themselves and their businesses. Joe: That's very, very hard. You want the independence and life of an entrepreneur and you've built yourself a business prison that you can't get out of and you just can't get ahead. But let's ask this; people ask me these questions all the time, we have a conversation about exits and valuations all the time so I mean I'd just grow you with a few here. Number one how long in advance should somebody do evaluation and plan their exit? We always hear I'm not ready to sell, why should I talk to you now? Mark: At least 12 months, right? I'm working with a client right now and they wanted to do evaluations, see where they're at financially and I said that's great send me your P&Ls and your balance sheets and they did which is awesome. I had a chance to review them and I had some further questions for them. Nothing came back so I bugged them about it and nothing came back. I finally bugged them again and they said well you know what we're doing is we're actually going through and we're eliminating some of these discretionary expenses, we're going to be doing this, that, the other thing and alarms are going off of my head because I see them taking some tax that they probably shouldn't be, right? Okay, I understand where you're going. For example one of the things that they're doing is they're cutting back on advertising spending in order to grow their bottom-line earnings. Well, let me ask you, Joe, what happens when you cut back on advertising? Joe: That's a big no-no. It's convergent graph lines, right? Discretionary earnings go up and your total revenue goes down. Mark: Right. Yeah. Nobody likes that alligator going to the left. Because if you see a graph where the revenue is going down or earning is going up we know that earning is going to go down in the future or to regain the momentum you have to outspend on advertising in most cases. To make it a more efficient one thing but that's on another. So how long; sorry, you asked me a question and you know me, I won't shut up. 12 months at a minimum? I would recommend 24, even 36 if you can just because if there's big changes that you want to make; let's say that you really want to explore that new product line, give yourself some runway to be able to plan that out. Joe: Okay, how much does it cost to do a valuation? Mark: Well it doesn't cost anything. Joe: Why? If it's free what's it worth. I don't understand. What's the business model? You're doing valuations for nothing. Mark: Oh you convinced me. If somebody wants to do a valuation of myself you're going to be paying a lot of money. So for us, it makes sense, right? I mean the number of times when I've started Quiet Light and was working with clients in the early days so many clients were being turned away because; not in saying I won't work with you but I would do the valuation. They say I'm ready to sell my business and I take a look at it and Joe you know the conversation. You and I had this conversation. And I looked at your business and I said okay right now it's worth X but Joe if you wait a little bit time, do some of the things that you're doing right now, actually, you're doing a lot of good things, just wait a little bit you're going to add this much value to your business. Other people it's a little bit different, right? It's hey you know what you have your name, you are a doctor and you are selling an information guide about how to take care of athlete's foot. And your name is plastered all over this. Well, guess what? That's not a transferable business because everyone's buying it based on your name. So I'm going to have trouble selling your business and if we do sell it it's going to come at a discount. But Mr. Doctor athlete's foot if you take your name off of this and show us that it can run for 12 months just as well if not better than it is right now without your name plastered all over it instead of getting maybe a 1½ multiple you're going to get like a 3.2 or 3.3. Joe: And who does that benefit? Mark: That benefits the client. Joe: There are three parties that it benefits. Mark: I'm being quizzed here. Joe: You are being quizzed. So it benefits the guy who's running the business, it benefits Quiet Light Brokerage which is a weird model, right? We do it for free folks but in the long run, it benefits us because you're going to have a more valuable business. But there's this third party that benefits as well and that third party… Mark: Is the buyer. Joe: Right. They might eventually become our clients as well too. So it's an odd model. As my mentor said, Joe, it seems like you guys are giving things away for free on a hope and a prayer that they'll come back to you someday. And I said exactly Walter that's what we're doing and it works very well. We're building relationships and building trust and we're helping first. And strangely the more people we help the more our business grows and the more valuable their businesses become and the more buyers buy great businesses. And it's an endless positive cycle and works very well. With that said I remember being at eCommerceFuel a few years ago and I came back; I sat at the bar with one of the presenters, I cannot pronounce his name. All I know is he swore a lot on stage but he was really good. He was really good and I had a beer with him afterwards and he said something like well I'd have a valuation done but honestly it's free I'd feel like I'm committed to you. I'm obligated to you because I didn't pay you. If I pay you I can just walk away. And it's an interesting viewpoint but we are all about relationships and we want to help. We want to get it done. And the more conversations we can have well in advance of a sale selfishly it makes it a lot easier for us when it comes to the time to list your business. I'm in the middle of a valuation right now where there are two brands in one seller account and there's a royalty arrangement and they have a coaching business and different LLCs. It's just a mess and the add-back schedule is getting deep and long. It's almost as long as the P&L itself which raises the antenna of the buyers. We don't want that. We want to have this clean business presentation as possible. So I'm with you 12, 24, 36 months in advance. Have the conversation. Get an education on the value and the process of maximizing the value of what is likely your most valuable asset. I was having a conversation with Mike Jackness a few weeks ago and we're doing a presentation it was actually at eCommerceFuel and he said the problem is you can't talk too much about exits and planning with these guys. They're doing all they can just to keep the wheels on the bus, to keep revenue going, and not run out of inventory, and do all these different things. I'm like yes, yes, yes, but when they have a clear vision of the value of the business and the view of an eventual exit when the wheel falls off and they've got to put it back on it's a lot easier because they still know where they're going. Otherwise, they're just wandering aimlessly trying not to run out of inventory; solving problems without an end goal in mind which is it's exhausting sometimes. Mark: Yeah and I want to comment on one aspect here about the idea of benefiting the buyer because if you're a business owner you might be thinking well I don't really care about the buyer at the end of the day. I mean I care but when you talk to entrepreneurs and sellers sometimes the approach they take is yeah I hope that the buyer does well with it but that's definitely a footnote compared to what they get out of the sale and understandably so. I'm not criticizing anyone who has that sort of attitude. But in your opinion, Joe why should the seller care about whether or not the buyer gets a good deal? Not a good deal as far as discounted but a good business that they can make a good return on investment on. Joe: Yeah that's actually not very complicated. It's when you do the right thing you will be rewarded. If you build a great business that checks all of the four pillar boxes, that really highlights all of the financial key metrics in a very, very positive way; and these are things that we do in the valuation folks when all of those things are you know 8s, 9s, 10s or a really solid green light guess what? That buyer is going to pay you more for the business. They're going to pay a higher multiple with better terms and it's going to be an easier transaction for you. Most people that are selling their businesses sometimes it comes down to okay like Quiet Light Brokerage we had 2½ offers for every listing that we put out there in 2019. So buyers are liking our listings, they're liking the way the packages are put together because we work with our clients for a long time and sellers sometimes have a choice. And sometimes they want to choose who is going to be easier in the transition afterwards. When you build a great business and you think of your eventual buyer in mind that transition is going to be easy because you've got SOPs in place, you've got a long communication with your broker advisor here at Quiet Light that's going to talk to you about all of those different things and making that transition easier because that's one of the four pillars; the transferability of the business and all the things that generate revenue for it. So now you're asking a short question and I'm giving you a long answer, it's the buyer will pay you more, as simple as that. Mark: The buyer will pay you more. I would also add on there that I think we are quick to dismiss the power of relationships and the people that you're going to meet when you go to sell your business. These are really important things. I had a situation; as you know I have another business besides Quiet Light Brokerage that doesn't take up a lot of my time but I ran into an issue the other day. It was a really complex difficult issue but the seller and I are friends at this point. We know each other pretty well and I hadn't run into this before. So I sent him an e-mail and said hey how have we dealt with this before he came back with a nice long response and insightful and everything else. It was a really good resource for me to have and he and I are on good terms because he's treated me fairly all along and built a business that was worth buying, to begin with. He's a valuable asset and if I ever want to do new things in this space he would be somebody that I would look to partner with because he's already skilled in this area. And when you're selling your business you're typically selling to somebody who is highly skilled and a successful entrepreneur in their own right. Isn't that a good person to have you in your Rolodex? I don't want to overemphasize this point and say this is the only reason you want to do it. I think what you listed Joe what you explained I think that is really where you want to put the focus and emphasis. But there's a whole host of ancillary benefits to creating a transaction that benefits yourself first, the broker who is going to be working with you and your team your partner with you, and also that buyer making sure that they have a business that they're going to be able to succeed with. Joe: Let's talk about what we actually do in evaluation. Mark: Sure. Joe: I'm going to kick this off. One of the first things that; I've got a call this afternoon at 4:00 today I'm doing an initial valuation call with a couple of very experienced entrepreneurs. The first thing we need are financials. So as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, if you're not able to run a profit loss statement with a monthly view going back more than 12 months we're not going to be able to do a full valuation because the full valuation does a year over year comparison. I'm going to look at January of 2020 versus January of 2019 and hopefully '18 and so on. And that's part of the financial key metrics in terms of where the top-line growth trends are, where the advertising cost as a percentage of revenue is, and where it's trending. Is it seasonal? We're going to talk about the timing of listing a business sale. Even if you're looking three or four years out we're going to talk about some of those things and we're going to see all of that with the detailed financials. Now today Walker wrapped up a long email chain between all of us where he had a client trying to do a valuation and get his business listed for sale and all he had were quarterly P&Ls. What's the problem in your view Mark with quarterly P&Ls versus monthly P&Ls? Mark: It's just the level of detail, right? I mean I can go backwards. I can take monthly P&Ls and go over to quarterly and I didn't comment; we had a discussion about this within the company and I didn't comment on it before everything resolved themselves. There are some businesses frankly that I think quarterlies worked really well for and probably better for; businesses with lumpy income benefit from having a little bit larger of a lens that we're looking through to even that out so we can see what the real trends are. But it's good to have that option to be able to go to monthly because you have more detail. What you pointed out Joe and I think it's a very good point is that when you get into the transaction and let's say a buyer places an offer we get past a quarter and let's say that we're month one into the quarter, most buyers before they close on a transaction want to know what the business has done over the past month and that time that they're doing their due diligence. Did it completely blow up while they were doing that final piece of due diligence? So they're going to ask for these updated numbers along the way as they're going through the process. Well if you have to wait two more months in order to close to be able to get reliable updated numbers that's just going to extend your timeline, introduce further risk that something happens and the buyer has to pull out and will disadvantage you in that way. And again the lack of detail when I'm doing analysis on a business for a valuation I love looking at the trends I like looking at year over year trends and really I start to look at the different months. And it's surprising the number of businesses that obviously November December get a spike are pretty high but let's say like home and garden stores often get a bump right around April or May so that'll be a second quarter. Maybe it spans two different quarters and you really get a sense for how does this business breathe over the course of a year. Right? Joe: So we're going to look in great detail at the financials. So we want you to run a profit and loss statement for me to Quick Books or Xero with a monthly view going back as far as you can up through the most recently reconciled month. If it's an e-commerce business we definitely want to get those P&Ls on an accrual basis. If we can't get them on accrual basis because you do cash accounting at some point we're going to have to find a way to flip the land cost of goods sold to accrual. Why? Because if a business is growing like crazy you're taking a lot of cash flow from the business and putting it right back into more and more inventory and that's going to depress your seller's discretionary earnings. And your business is a multiple of seller's discretionary earnings which is net income plus add-backs equals SDE. Mark: Yeah I want to talk about this accrual basis because I'm seeing this more and more. People are hearing us, they're hearing this message, and I'm seeing more and more books delivered to us on a false accrual basis is what I would call it. So here's the problem, bookkeepers don't like to do accrual basis accounting because it's hard. It takes more work. It takes more reporting on a monthly basis. They need to dig in, see what you sold, tie that back to the cost of goods sold, and record that. What I'm seeing pretty commonly here is accountants who make a year-end adjustments for the cost of goods sold. And so what you end up seeing is cost of goods sold seems kind of flat or kind of lumpy all throughout the year and then in December all of a sudden everythings out of whack. It doesn't match up. Speaking about the monthly one of the elements that a buyer is going to evaluate when looking at your business if you're selling physical products business or even if you're selling; you can do this if you're SaaS business as well it's just a cost of sales numbers out of the cost of goods sold. One of the key metrics we want to look at is your business getting more expensive to run; in other words, if you're consistently bringing in 5 million dollars of revenue what does it cost to generate that 5 million dollars of revenue? Are your products getting more expensive? Have you had a discount on those products over time? Are there periods during the year where you have to do one or the other? If you are in SaaS business are the cost of sales going up; your commissions that you're paying out the salespeople if you're on a commission sales basis. You can't get these numbers unless you're on accrual basis accounting. And a buyer, a smart buyer, if you want to sell to a smart buyer will want to see this information to see is this trending in the right direction and if not then we need to work this into the valuation; so monthly accrual. Joe: When this false accrual practice is done it's generally done by a CPA not a bookkeeper because they're doing some adjustments for the end of the year. Although just to be clear everyone if you've got an e-commerce business with physical products you are going to file your taxes on a cash basis. But when you're looking at the value of your business we need it on an accrual basis. You should have a CPA for your taxes. You should have an e-commerce bookkeeper for your daily, monthly, quarterly profit and loss statements. You should not in my opinion or view do that work yourself anymore if it takes you three or four hours a month you're worth more than the $400, $500, or $600 a month that a really highly qualified e-commerce bookkeeper is going to charge you. Mark: Yeah and we've made this point before but I'll make it again. It all depends on how you enter the information or your bookkeeper how they enter the information into whatever accounting software you're using. If you enter the information as an accrual basis you can flip to cash with a click of a button. It's very easy to do. Joe: Very easy, yeah. Mark: If you enter your information into your books on a cash basis you can't flip it to accrual. I mean you can, you're just going to get the wrong numbers, right? The software is stupid in that way. It's going to try and it's going to calculate it but you've entered the data wrong. So if you entered it in as accrual you can file in cash, that's totally fine. But for the sake of accuracy, you should be entering it or having your bookkeeper enter it in as accrual. And ask your bookkeeper this too, when I hired our bookkeeper I asked them; I sent them an interview, a written interview and I asked them to explain what accrual accounting was. I know what it is but I wanted to see could they explain it. And I was shocked at the number of foot keepers that couldn't explain it in a clear, concise way. Joe: It's not hard guys. Just we'll move beyond this make your eye bleed accounting part of the conversation. Look up cost of goods sold accrual formula. That's all it is. It's beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory on a monthly basis. That's ideal. But the point; one last point is that if you spend a million bucks a year on inventory and you're just doing adjustment or a guess we have to flip things sometimes to accrual. If you're off by 1½%, that's $15,000. If you're spending a million bucks on inventory, you're spending a lot of money; you may be doing 4 million 5 million dollars a year in revenue which probably means you're doing $750,000 in discretionary earnings. You might be at a four-time multiple at that point; four times the $15,000 that you got wrong on the inventory is $60,000 that you're not putting in your pocket in the sale of your business because you wouldn't spend $500 a month on an e-commerce bookkeeper. Or you're overcharging your buyer by that 15,000 times four because you guessed on the wrong side and things are going to fall apart or go off the rails in due diligence. So get it right, build trust, and move on. Okay, so first thing we need is a clean professionally done profit and loss statement with a monthly view. We're going to import that into the Quiet Light Brokerage import system. We're going to normalize the P&L. If you've ever looked at our listings folks you can see they look pretty much the same; our profit and loss statements. We do that because we see them in every shape, size, quantity, format, PDF, Excel. I mean it's crazy I'm surprised somebody hasn't mailed in a napkin at one point or another to Quiet Light. Mark: I had a notepad document once on a 20 million-plus business. Joe: We don't want our buyers to see that so we import it. We have an importing process where we're going to pull it in and we're going to analyze the key metrics; the financial key metrics that buyers over the last 14 years have told us this is what we look at. They're looking at top-line revenue trends. They're looking at gross profit, trends, shrinking or growing, and then they're looking at advertising cost as a percentage of total revenue and how it's trending. As Mark said earlier you could be spending a lot of money on advertising in the last six months to drive top-line revenue or the reverse and it all weaves together in a web, right? I've had a listing for sale last year and the seller said I handed my advertising off to a VA in late spring last year and I let him run it and five months in I realize things got out of hand and I pulled it back and took it over myself. We do a recorded interview just like we're doing right now on Zoom. We do it on video, we do it on audio, that's part of the package when a business is for sale. And that question may come up then it also may come up in the written client interview and then guess what it all weaves into the profit and loss statements and the financial key metrics when then you can go and look at the advertising trends going yeah look at that Joe was right in July, and August and September the numbers were up and advertising was 17% instead of the normalized 12% that it's been for the last three years. So you can see those different types of things. I had a situation just last week where I was looking at a profit loss statement where the ad spend went through the roof in December but revenue went down. That tells a story that he's struggling against competition and it's not really working out. He's spending a lot more money but sales are going down and lo and behold January and February are down as well. The numbers tell a story so the first thing we've got to get are the numbers, right Mark? Mark: Yeah. And I'm going to share something here Joe that I think was last week or maybe the week before, you actually did a valuation on Quiet Light brokerage. Joe: I did. Mark: Which was done not because we're looking for a buyer although if somebody wants to offer us 30 million dollars let's have a conversation. More importantly you wanted to look for areas of wasteful spending on our part and also key trends for the business as well. So let's think about this in terms of not selling our business, let's think about this in terms of business owners who want to run their business efficiently. Let's say you take the last three years' worth of your P&Ls and they're done on a true accrual basis and you take a look and you see that your gross profit margins have gone from 60% and they're dropping down to 52%. Now you might know why that's happening, you might know what's going on there but you can also identify that as a trend that if you were to correct that trend it's going to help the business. I worked with a client; I'm actually in the middle of doing a valuation for them and they keyed in on this on their own. They were very proud of this. They said look our gross profit margins are 42% right now but what we did over the course of the past year our revenue is down because of a very explainable reason but what we did is we found a product line. We found a method here to increase our gross margins from 42% upwards to 54%, 55%. We were able to test this on a singular product and it worked well and we plan to expand this. Well look what happened by looking at their margins and understanding the margins and understanding that's an area of opportunity they've uncovered a huge avenue to growth which is replicable and from a valuation standpoint it's great but from a business ownership standpoint, it's even better for them because now they can charge a charge more, pay less. Who doesn't want that, right? So let's exercise; again you asked why should we do a valuation beyond being prepared to sell should that they arise? It's a valuable exercise to do as business owners. Joe: I got an email the other day and it was from somebody named Anthony; let's leave it at that. And he wrote Joe this is really, really insightful. I had certain financial goals in the business and now I realize I'm that much closer to them than I ever was. This is making it so much more exciting to run my business every day which is exactly what it truly is. In that situation we determined, he determined; he came to the table with they've decided to charge shipping on items over a certain dollar value and that was going to add their estimate was $180,000 in additional discretionary earnings over a 12 month period. And then they had renegotiated cost of goods sold, they were going to save about $2 a unit and that was going to add $200,000 in total discretionary earnings over the next 12 months. That's $380,000 right there and with another $400,000 now they're at $680,000 they expect to be adding 2020. It's getting that much closer to their exit goal and it just defogs their window put your high beams on you can really see that much better when you're running your business it makes it that much more exciting. A lot of the things that we do talk about beyond the financials, Mark; it's not just about the numbers folks, it really starts with them. It's funny that it starts with them but that's pillar number four, documentation. Let's talk about the other three pillars briefly, Mark. Go ahead and tell me what the other three are. Mark: Risk, growth, transferability. Joe: It took me a while to remember what all four those are and I'm going to hold this up everybody; anybody that's on YouTube. I still have this on my desk after eight years. It says what they all are right there. Mark: I didn't make it memorable enough. Joe: Risk, growth, transferability, and documentation. Mark: How are you as a student in school? I'm just curious. Joe: Oh I fell asleep in accounting class I tell that story all the time. And the bottom part of that; oh look at that I forgot to turn my phone off you're hearing my Twitter. Mark: I heard a bird. Joe: The bottom part of that note there was that our business is relational, not transactional. I need reminders every day. Anyway, risk, growth, transferability, and documentation; we've talked about number four, risk. I've got a business that should be closing in the next few days and 70% of their revenue is from one SKU. What is that called? Mark: That's product concentration or a single point of failure. Joe: Or a hero SKU or a bad idea or a unicorn; all sorts of trouble. I had a conversation with somebody; a couple three years ago… Mark: Bad idea. Joe: Actually it's a bad idea. Mark: It's not a bad idea if it's sustainable just to be clear but yeah I get where you're going. Joe: Well here's the sustainable part, so there was a gentleman that I was working on a valuation for and he had one SKU that generated 90% of his revenue. And I'm like this is a bad idea. He's like well it's a lot less work Joe, it's very defensible, look at our reviews. I mean he had me convinced that it was actually a good idea. And then guess what happened? Facebook changed an algorithm and they're their ads that were working with no longer allowed and they never recovered. Their business was worth two million dollars one month and the next month it was worth like one maybe; two million, 50% cut just like that and I haven't heard from him so I'm sure it's gotten worse and worse and worse. It's a single point of failure. It's a hero SKU. It's a risk. So, therefore, buyers are going to decrease the value when it comes to the valuation. We're going to do it for you and we're going to tell you what buyers think but it's a decimal point or two or three. So instead of at a 3.2 multiple; I'm going to do some math for everybody, simple numbers at 3.2 if you've got $100,000 in discretionary earning you're at 320,000 in terms of list price. Two-tenths of a decimal point off because of a risk point you go from 320 down to 300 or 300 down to 280. It changes that quickly because of a single point of failure or because of risk in disregard. So that's part of the risk, it's the hero SKU; things of that nature. But there's also age, there are trends, right? So generally we want to have a business that's about 24 months old at a minimum. We sold them for less. There are exceptions to every single rule we talked about here. But 24 months is when buyers start to have confidence and they don't discount the value of the business because of age. The other thing to talk about is the trends, Mark, right? I just had a valuation call last night with somebody I've been talking to for six months. And I can't seem to get updated financials on a monthly basis. That's the challenge. And finally, I get them and we have a conversation. We're recording this on March 3rd. I don't have January and February's numbers. I finally have Q4 and top-line revenues down 25%, bottom line discretionary earnings down 30%. So the value of that business just went from three-point something based upon the numbers down to easily 2.5 on the top side. So it's risk because it's trending down and somebody has to jump in and fix that downward trend, right? Mark: Mm-hmm that's right; yeah, absolutely. And one thing with these downward trends you talked about how quickly the discount, just an observation multiples go down much more easily than they go up. It's hard to prop the value and that multiple upwards but people would discount much more aggressively when they start to see problems such as the concentration or as you said the bad idea. Joe: So it is a bad idea when somebody calls and says hey I'd like to sell, I'd say hey you really can't nobody else will buy it. Bad idea. So we touch risk, we touched on growth; these are the first two, let's talk about the transferability of the business. What are the key components to this pillar? Mark: Yeah, the transferability; the easiest way in my world to think about this is just can somebody step into your shoes today and run the business without having a significant decline. Or maybe another way to think about it would be what's the learning curve of the business, or do you have documentation in place that will allow people to be replaced if needed? The transferability is just that and it can encompass a number of things first of all that affects all businesses would be procedures. The procedures that you have within your company to run it on a day to day basis; how do you handle returns if you have that sort of business, what are some common customer complaints or concerns or questions and how do you handle those; do you have a process set up for that. If you're an inventory-based business what is your inventory ordering process and your forecasting process? That's something that should be in a standard operating procedure. So there's all sorts of SOPs. Outside of those elements, transferability can come into your customer acquisition process and I brought this example up before during this call. If you're a doctor and your name is all over the website for your great athlete's foot cure now you've set up a barrier to transferability because you're selling off your own personal reputation. And unless you're willing to give your name and reputation to somebody else which most people aren't and understandably so you need to get that off there and no longer be the key method for customer acquisition. And the last thing would be licensing issues or other requirements to run your business. We've seen this before. Joe you had a valuation I remember this clear as day at Rhodium Weekend when they were doing live valuations up onstage and somebody came with a business we were supposed to be working quiet with other advisors, everyone was going to do valuations so we could see what it looked like live on stage and what was the result; it was an e-commerce business, what was the result of that valuation? Joe: It wasn't transferrable because they were sourcing product from the old; it was the old school, they were required to have a retail space so the business was going to be very, very hard to transfer. And I want to comment on that. Mark: It used to very common where wholesalers would require that you have a brick and mortar store because a lot of the legacy brick and mortar stores were telling their suppliers don't let these internet people come in and just start selling this and so they would require that storefront but it still exists out there. The other issues that I've seen with these licensing issues would be not only the storefront issue but maybe if you actually have to have a license to run the business. And you see this like; we had this with somebody that was selling high-end hair products. And you think well, what's the problem there? Well in order to sell these hair products you need to have a cosmetology license. And so that's a transferability issue. It cuts both ways though. Transferability when it comes to licensing and then these hurdles does set you up with some defense ability that can actually help your risk profile be lowered; anytime that there's a hurdle to jump over a business if you jump over it you're leaving some of your competitors on the other side of that hurdle, so that's a good thing. But the element that we started off with the SOPs and the documentation of your procedures, it's something that everybody should be able to do and should have in place. What are your common procedures, how do you do it, let's make it easy? I know you have something to say here on this, the last thing that I would recommend people do and I actually just did this with Quiet Light Brokerage for your sake and for other people within the company, diagram your business. Write out everybody who works for your business. Write it out; you can draw it if you like to draw, you can use a graphing software. I used Lucid Chart; very easy to use Lucid Chart for this or just write it out and see who has what roles within your business and how does that look. I'll tell you what it's an eye-opening experience because what you find especially in small businesses is you have people who wear multiple hats. You might find some crossover there as well. So that's where I would put transferability. Joe: Too many people are focused on the top line and very proud of the total revenues that they're doing. But ultimately we're running these businesses to make money and to be profitable and we can help you hone in on that profitability and what your business is truly worth. So we've touched on what we do when we import and normalize a P&L and look at financial key metrics. We've touched on the four pillars which are risk, growth, transferability, and documentation. Within each pillar, there's five to six different points that we touched on in a valuation process and we really get to know this invisible; I call it a fifth pillar. Mark corrects me every time. You don't need to Mark, people know this. The person behind the business; the trust and credibility that they have is that invisible fifth pillar. It's the mortar holding it all together. Are you a good human? Do people trust you? Do people like you? Believe it or not, if you are people are going to pay more for your business. You do make a difference in the overall value of your business. So we do all of these things and then we create a profit and loss statement with a detailed add-backs schedule. We go through that with you and we firm up your seller's discretionary earnings and apply a multiple range to it. This is where it gets into the weeds and we won't do it today on this podcast. I'm actually going to go ahead and record a podcast following this one on the three levels of add-backs. There are six different points to each level and it's very eye-opening. A lot of people don't understand the importance of detailing the add-backs. A few folks are like why do I need a broker for I'm just going to sell to this consumer group that's buying up FBA businesses. You need to understand the add-back schedules so that if you choose to sell directly to them you're getting maximum value for your business or even better the real value for your business; not maximum, the real value. It's okay, you can choose to sell to whomever you want however you want but make sure you're getting your own numbers right and that's what I'm going to share on the next podcast. Mark: Fantastic. Joe: Okay, one more final thing. Mark: I was going to say we're getting close to time here. People are like my drive is done. I'm at the office. Joe: We are. You're so eloquent Mark with your words and your e-mails and all this. I say this all the time and people hear you speak. You speak very, very well so why don't you do one final wrap up on why you think someone should have a business evaluation done through Quiet Light Brokerage and how it's going to help them in the future and then I'll give my two cents as well. Mark: Flattery is not going to get you anywhere Joe. Joe: Tell them what I want you to tell them. Mark: Well that I don't exactly know, I'll tell them what I think. So the question is why should people get a valuation done to kind of wrap this up. Your business is most likely your most valuable asset and if it isn't yet hopefully it will be someday and you should know what the value of it is. More importantly, you should understand what drives the value of your business and also what's holding it back. My favorite part of evaluation when I'm doing one; and actually I've got a call here in seven minutes to do a valuation, it's going to be coming up soon, somebody is taking us up on this. My favorite part of a valuation isn't telling somebody what their business is worth right now because that's usually somewhat predictable. It's being able to tell them what I love about this business and what buyers are going to salivate over is fill in the blank, and this part you've done a great job here, the areas where you're going to have some friction in your sale and it's going to cause a discount on the business are these elements. Now what I'm doing there is I'm really giving some insight into where the business is today but I'm also laying out a roadmap for everybody that I'm doing that for to say if you want to grow the value of this asset work on these elements and you know what if there's an element of your business that's really good double down on it. One of the areas that we've talked about in the past is this pillar of growth, we want them to have lots of growth potential for the business; lots of growth prospects for that business and they need to be real. However, if you have easy obvious growth within your business take advantage of it because I would rather multiply a larger earnings number and get that going up because it's a lot easier to grow your value that way. Doing a valuation will help identify those aspects of your business; where is it valuable right now, what's holding it back, and what's the plan to be able to make it more valuable. You don't have to sell the business. If you do these things you will have a business that is more valuable and you're going to gain insights that you never really thought about. I will challenge everybody if you don't do anything else on this call we've talked a lot about finances so I'm going to change it up. Diagram your business and then feel free to email me if you thought it was a complete waste of time. Joe: Or you can go at Mark@QuietLightBrokerage.com. Mark: Tell me it's a complete waste of time. Joe: Mark with a K. Mark: Mark with a K. The only way it would be a complete waste of time is if you have like two people in your company. But then you know what? Joe: Send him an email. Mark: Yeah, right. But then if you're going to do that diagram out the other people that are supporting you. Your contractors, the vendors, the people that are key for your business to run and take a look at that and you might not gain a whole lot of new insights but you're going to see your business in a way that you've never seen it before. Joe: What you're hearing here from Mark is that we're here to help. We're sharing information with you and giving you tools to make a better decision for your business and for the future when you are ready. If you are ever ready to sell. In no way shape or form are we ever here to talk you into anything. We're going to share the information with you. And that was the reason I chose Quiet Light Brokerage back in 2010 to sell my own business. I talked to three different firms. Two were trying to get me to sign a contract. The third was giving me helpful information to build a more valuable business to sell when I was ready to sell. And that conversation was with Mark. Lastly, don't be embarrassed by the size of your business. Sometimes we'll go to Mastermind groups and someone will; I can tell they're uncomfortable talking to us because they're only doing $100,000 in profit. Are you kidding me? You're an entrepreneur, you've built your own business, you're doing $100,000 in profit which is 40% higher than the national average; I don't know the numbers, I'm going to get a correction on that Joe@QuietLightBrokerage.com. It's huge compared to the national average. Don't ever be embarrassed by the size of your business. The smallest one we sold in 2019 was $28,000. Yes, it was a pocket deal because Brad had a larger listing and the gentleman had two smaller sites he wanted to sell off. They're all shapes and sizes. Our average transaction size in 2019 was 1.1 million. It grows every single year but we go through all different sizes. We want to help you get from that hundred thousand dollar valuation to a million-dollar valuation. We've had clients where they first sold their business at 7,000 then 20,000 then 220,000 and now nine million and the next exit that that particular individual has set is 100 million. We want you guys to achieve your goals and we're going to help you along the way. But we're not going to talk you into a single thing. So reach out go to the website. It's the valuation form or sell form I think it is or it shoot us an email at inquiries@QuietLightBrokerage.com and we'll hook you up with one of the qualified advisors here who are all entrepreneurs themselves. Links and Resources: Quiet Light Brokerage
Twenty years ago David Wood was ahead of the curve in the coaching space thanks to a workshop that led him to delve into the emotional aspects of business leadership. He is here today to discuss ways owners can use emotional intelligence to overcome the hurdles and valleys of growing a business. David is a high performance life and business coach, working solely with established entrepreneurs. He got his start on Park Avenue at the age of 23 and thought he had it made as a consulting actuary. A mandatory personal growth workshop made him realize that he was clueless about anything emotional in business. Today he uses his knowledge in his own business, Play for Real, to help entrepreneurs and business leaders push through tough scenarios with themselves and others and help them to do great things. David also is a coach trainer, mentor, author, and host of the Tough Conversations podcast. Episode Highlights: Reasons why David is speaking with us today. How he takes surface level goals and delves deeper into them. What questions entrepreneurs should ask themselves in order to get through any growth challenges in their business. David's focus on goal setting. The difference between a coach and a therapist. Why people seem so eager to move to the next thing when a sale is over. Quick coaching tips for business owners. The 4-step approach David suggests for sellers and buyers. How David's techniques can help your business and improve your life. Transcription: Mark: So a few years ago Joe I wrote a blog post on the Quiet Light blog and you can actually look this up and it's called I made a bad website acquisition. It was about a business that I bought and made some mistakes with and subsequently sold later on. At the end of that little ownership period that I had with that; it was a really small acquisition, we're talking a very small five figure level here but at the end of that period I hated that business. I hated it so much because it wasn't making any money. It was taking a bunch of my time. The logistics were a bit of a pain. And I got to the point where frankly I was willing to get rid of it for just about anything. And when we talk about the soft side of a transaction a lot of times people want to talk about the financial side and the metrics and the numbers and the financials; how do you actually juice that multiple, how do you get the value as high as you can? But so much of what we do is on that other side and that is the soft side of the transaction and understanding the arc of an entrepreneur's ownership of the business and how are you going to feel when you sold that business as well. And look before you turn it off and think this is all soft gooey stuff; this has a real impact on valuations. And I know you talked to David Wood about this, he was a business coach, because he really kind of keyed in on that as well. Joe: Yeah I know it has a tremendous impact. I like to say don't let the business outgrow you. That's generally why people sell because they've got a certain capacity and the business outgrows them; they get sick of it, they get frustrated, trends change, and they sell which is exactly what not to do. So working with a business coach like David who spends a lot of time with people in the e-commerce world helps you understand what your own personal goals are in business and in life. They're combined when you're an entrepreneur. And helps you get through those valleys and over those hurdles as you need to. David is a good friend of Ezra Firestone. I met him at Blue Ribbon Mastermind. Brad and I and Chris were there so I heard him do a fantastic presentation and I just had to connect with him afterwards and have him on the podcast. I think he can and will and has through the podcast I listened to he imparted some great wisdom when it comes to operating a business within your own capacity. Mark: Let's hear it. Let's get to it. Joe: Hey folks Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got David Wood from Play for Real with us. David is actually a high performance life and business coach. I met him at Ezra Firestone's Blue Ribbon Mastermind event in; where were we David? St. Petersburg, Florida. David: Yeah. Joe: In January of 2019. I'm sorry 2020. David is a good friend of Ezra's and he did such an amazing presentation I wanted to have him on the podcast. Welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast David. David: Hey thank you. I'm happy to be here. Joe: Well, I'm glad you're here. We don't do fancy introductions so why don't you go ahead and give the people listening a little bit of background on yourself and what you do. David: Sure. Well I thought I was successful and I was at the age of say 23 because I was working on Park Avenue. I grew up in our country town in Australia. And here I am on Park Avenue consulting with Sony Music for the next song and I thought I pretty much got it made. I was a consulting actuary and for people who don't know what that is, we deal with financial projections going say 50 to 100 years into the future. Joe: Wow. David: And so my job was risk assessment but then I lucked into doing a personal growth program and I nearly didn't do it because they were all smiling way too much and they all wore nametags. I'm like this is very cult-y. I don't know about this but I didn't let that stop me and they cracked me open. They had me realize that I'd gotten great at systems and logic and results but I didn't know anything about vulnerability. I knew nothing about deep connection with other people and how to really influence people. Emotional Intelligence was something I hadn't even heard of. So the first half of my life was about business and results and success in that line of work and then the last half of my life has been about researching the more I still call it hippie woo-woo stuff like the touchy feely stuff. How do I make eye contact with someone? How do I be vulnerable? How do I deeply connect? So the people who come to me don't just want their business to be better. You can get a lot of business coaches for that. And they don't just want a part of their life to be better. They want everything to be to be better than it was before. So that's the short version of; oh I didn't say to in that course I got to coach somebody. Someone was really stuck about something that was destroying her marriage and I was able to hold space for her and her life changed and I got hooked. I was like this is amazing. I just spot the patterns and see what's missing and make a suggestion and she ran with it, totally revamped her marriage and her life, and I was like I can do this more than as a hobby? And this is back in '97 and it turned out yes you can. People were just starting to consider coaching as a career. So now I've been doing it for 20 years and I don't see any sign of stopping. Joe: You were ahead of the curve then and you're doing pretty amazing stuff now. You didn't mention that you wrote a book, that you're on stage quite often, you're on 70 podcasts last year, then Loosening Jack Canfield or John Gray did the inside cover of your book or things of that nature. You're pretty well connected with high level people but you deal with a lot of entrepreneurs as well in your coaching business, is that right? David: Yeah I'd coach entrepreneurs mainly for the last 20 years. Now I'm doing more corporate stuff, some vice presidents and also some prison work and working with prison inmates so I'm expanding but I'm an entrepreneur at heart. So I love working with entrepreneurs who are already doing great things. I don't work with just startup. You have to have a track record of success and then let's; how do you go further? Joe: The people listening are probably saying well why are we on the podcast together; why are you here? David: Yes. Joe: And when we list a business for sale oftentimes someone will say; a buyer, well if it's so great why are they selling? Or we always ask the question why they're selling. And more and more often what happens, people, is that a business outgrows the individual. And what we want people to do is understand first and foremost who they are, what they're capable, what their likes are, what their dislikes are, what drives them, what fills the cup and makes them happy. And that's a lot of what you do in your day to day work, David, is that correct? David: Yeah. Joe: Okay. David: Yeah I get people who have got surface level goals. They come to me like they want to be a better leader. They want to learn how to manage their team or something like that. And that's fine. Let's start there. But then I want to know what's really going to have you be happy. And some people know and they just don't think it's possible or they haven't put time and attention on making it happen. Some people haven't really asked themselves the question; how could my life be better? And that's the sum total of my initial sessions with a client; how can your life be better? Sometimes it's a business goal. If my business increased by 30%, that would do a lot for me financially and my family and then my life would be better. Okay maybe I'll buy that. But normally there are other things like what if my relationship with my partner was deeper? What if my kids opened up to me and talked to me about their life? What if I had the health that I wanted? So yeah I like digging into those questions like how could it be better? Joe: How can the people listening today sort of figure out what questions to ask themselves? Imagine we've got an audience that it's got a healthy mix of entrepreneurs that someday may sell their business. They're learning about buying and selling and preparing the business for sale. And then the other half of the audience might be those that are thinking you know what I'm going to buy one of these someday because they're unhappy in the corporate world or they've sold one and they don't want to take the risk of building another so they're choosing to buy. But let's focus first on those people that are struggling with the business that they have; they've grown it, they bootstrapped it, it's growing like crazy, and they're just trying to keep up. How does one identify what their own comfort level is with the size of the business or the staff or the growth? Because a lot of what we deal with are people that wait too long that things get pretty miserable because it's grown to the point where it's beyond their comfort level. They don't want to manage people. Mark and I had this conversation this morning and he's like we're doing an organizational chart here at Quiet Light Brokerage and I'm in a particular place mark and we're all in different places. The key center of our organization is the advisors; our team of advisers. And I'm straddling a couple of areas, Mark is straddling a couple of areas and we said to each other we have the right as entrepreneurs to do what makes us happy. We want to choose that path. How does one identify what it is that makes them happy? Is there a is there a process that that they would go through in terms of goal setting or asking questions of themselves and I will just stop rambling now answer that question help me out. David: So the question is how can people identify how they can be happy; what are the right questions they can ask themselves? And I love this, on 75 interviews last year no one's really asked me this question. So what I did is I went straight to my website and I'll read out some of the questions. I have a life assessment that anyone can take. And if you like we can give it to people at the end of the show. They can go and fill it in but I'll read out some of the questions. I have people in this assessment rate your life areas out of 10; business career fulfillment, wealth and money, your key relationship, health and peace. I even include relationship with yourself; like how much do you like yourself. So these are a few of the areas, there are a few more which I don't want to steal all the thunder. I'll leave some for people to find when they go and fill it in. And I have people rate them out of ten and that helps them look at oh wow this area is really a three; like my health and peace is a three, what's going on there? Or my relationship with my partner is like a six. Is that really okay with me? Like am I really going to leave the rest of my life at a six? So that's the first point and then I have people rate coaching areas; how about how are you doing with real goals? I'd like to talk about; and you heard this in my presentation at Ezra's Blue Ribbon, GPA, goals planning and action. So out of ten how are you doing with setting real goals, having a real plan, and taking real action? A lot of people would like to be more focused. We're kind of like a monkey on crack when it comes to getting work done. How about your daring, your caring, your decisiveness? So you rate these out of 10 and by the way this form doubles as prep if anyone wants to do a session with me. I use this as an intake because I want to go straight to wow you're doing great here, here, here, here, and here are three areas that look like they could be doing better. Which of these do you want to focus on? Joe: I think the real goals thing is amazing and critical and so obvious that everybody should be doing it but I don't think they do. I read decades ago; right David, we both got some gray on the chin that Harvard; I took a little class at Harvard, half the kids wrote down their goals and half didn't. Those that wrote down their goals were something like ten times as wealthy or successful and happy as those that didn't. One of the things that we're trying to do here and having you on is part of that mind shift. I want people to stop asking the question how much is my business worth, how much can I sell my business for, I'm ready to some business how much can I, how much can I? Instead set goals and say in three years I want to sell my business for X and then reverse engineer the pathway to that and understanding, gaining the knowledge on valuations and setting goals to that pathway exit. Are you working with people in terms of that goal section of their life whether it's personal, with their partner, with their business, with whatever it is that is weak on that scale and helping them with goals or do you just sort of act in a way almost, and what's the difference between a therapist and a life coach and a business coach in this situation? David: All right we've got three areas I want to address here. We'll see if I can track and remember all of them. The first one… Joe: I won't remember them all so don't worry about it. David: The first one is for me I like your process in this many years I want to sell my business for X. I think that's missing a key step. I would say firstly how do you want to feel in three years? It's incredible; and you can do this when you're doing a New Year's visioning session if you ever do that kind of thing. Like don't set goals first, set feeling goals. I want to feel this. And then you can set some goals that will help you feel that. I want to feel at peace. I want to feel deeply in love with my partner. I want to feel joy as I walk down the street and look at strangers. Those aren't some bad goals; actually this came off the top of my head. And then all right to feel like that what would I need to be doing? And I looked at well I love coaching. I've wrote this down; it was three or four years ago, I need to be more coaching and training because I'm inspired when that happens and I want to feel inspired. It's like oh wow I didn't know that. So it is a goal. So first step, how do I want to feel, secondly what do you need in your life to feel that and there might be a financial component to that. All right I need at minimum this amount of money to support these goals that are going to have me feel good. And you probably found this when you coach your clients, it might be less money than you thought the minimum. They have done some studies that show that first; I don't know how much it is 50 or 60 grand can really do a lot to provide happiness in the year and after that it drops way off because you need your own food and you want shelter and you want some basic peace. But after that that poor show that extra trip or vacation isn't going to do that much at all. So that's the first thing. And then there was a second component. I know I remember the therapy component but what was the other component to your question? Joe: I told you I wouldn't remember David. Come on, I'm serious. I meant it. David: Oh that's right. I wanted to say some people come to me ready with goals. They're like I know what I want I'm just not getting there fast enough. So we might do brainstorming or we might have to strategize a plan and they might just need some accountability to put attention on it. All right every week I'm going to do it. Other people it might take three to six sessions to peel the onion and to just uncover. They may not know yet. Like people would come to me with I want this this and this, six months later we've uncovered that; I'm working with an executive right now who finally has seen that he's really arrogant and he thinks he's smarter than everybody else which may be true but it's not serving him. He didn't come to me with that but it's a merge and it's impacting all of his relationships not just at work. Joe: Did he come to that realization and share it with you or did you go you know you think you're; how do you come about that realization? David: Well, sometimes I might gently point it out and I have that privilege because they're paying me. So I can say you know I think I have some feedback that might not be easy to hear but it might be very valuable, would you like to hear it? You're never going to get a no from someone who's paying you to hear your idea. But he came to me. He said you know what I think I can be a bit of a jerk and we; actually this was really fun. Sometimes you get to have fun in coaching. I said to him there's a chance. I know this is hippie woo-woo but I think you could really make a big difference for you if you're willing. It comes from the Himalayas and you're willing to trust me on this. He said all right. So I took him through this Himalayan chant. It starts with; maybe you've heard it, it starts with Owa Tajer Kiam and we did this and we kept on going and he got faster and faster saying it with me until he realized he was saying oh what a jerk I am, oh what a jerk I am, oh what a jerk I am. And when he finally got it he laughed so hard and that's part of my style is let's bring some humor to it. Yeah, you can be a jerk, so can I. When I'm frustrated I'll use my intelligence to belittle the waiter and they may not even know. And then I'll feel bad about it. But we're getting off track. So some people have a sense of what they want, other people it's going to take some time to uncover and I find that really fun and fascinating. And then you said how is coaching different from therapy. It's very contentious. A therapist will argue about this but once I heard this metaphor a therapist will help a man with a broken leg to walk again and a coach will help that man to run the four minute mile. Joe: Okay. That's not mental therapy though that's physical therapy. How do you differ from somebody sitting down and saying I'm unhappy with my life? David: Well the metaphor is more about someone who's really, really struggling to go from bad to okay versus helping someone to go from okay to good or from good to great. Joe: Okay. And you're the okay to good or good to great. David: Yeah, that's my target market. Now there are coaches who might be willing to work with someone who's really struggling financially. For example if someone's got a lot of historical stuff trauma and baggage from that; and I'm one of them, I have no judgment about that. That's not me. I would say a therapist could spend time with you to help you unpack and bring up all those feelings from the past and like that. I'm more interested in what do you want and what are you going to do about it and there is some overlap because sometimes people have limiting beliefs. And I've got one vice president who said I think I've got some limiting beliefs that are holding me back, can you help me with those? I'm like yeah we can bust those open. But I'm not going to do a lot of how was it when your father treated you this way and whatever; that's not my style. I'll refer someone to a therapist if it looks like there's some old stuff that's really holding them back. And a disclaimer and a plug for therapists there are some therapists who will work with people who are doing just fine and help them go to great. So it's a broad brush painting with right now. Joe: But I got to tell you in the future audience you may hear me say how do you want to feel in three years when you sell your business instead of what's your financial goal. What do you want to exit for? Inaudible[00:21:40.0] a combination of both. Because I've got to tell you people are this is their baby they've built it up and sometimes they're sad to sell it. But I'm interviewing people right now for the purposes of writing a book. Yes this is the second time I've mentioned this on the podcast and I will not be obnoxious and plug it all the time but it's fascinating. The idea is when that wire hits your account and you can do it with your phone now and you see all of those zeros in your bank account for the first time, what was that feeling like is the question that I asked. And the feeling was okay, that's good. Now I've got to get to work and helping with the transition of the business and keep going. It wasn't champagne popping and jubilation and things of that nature. And do you think that's because; and I heard this literally at three out of the five interviews that I've done so far. Do you think that is just because they're caught up in time focused on the work at hand versus setting a financial and feeling goal when someone exits their business? David: I think the question is why are people so quick to move on to the next thing and they're not celebrating and enjoying? Joe: Yeah I guess so. Thank you. You do a better job of reframing my questions than I do. Thank you. David: My pleasure. Firstly tell me do you have a working title for your book? Joe: I do. We talked about it. That's right. David: I think there was one line you said and like oh you got to hold on to that line. I can't remember what it was. Joe: We did. I've settled on; and this is the part where I'm either an idiot or brilliant. I sent out two title options; I already said it to everybody here, one was Incredible Exits which is a series we use here on the podcast for people who have sold their businesses. And the other was Exitpreneur. David: That's the one I remember, yeah. Joe: That's the one that stuck. Right. So I think probably 24 out of 25 people said Incredible Exits, go with it, it's just that. David: Do you remember the book title that I suggested? Joe: Yes Making Exit Sexy Again or something along that lines. David: No, that might be the subtitle but you said to me something like the real money is in the something. Joe: It's when you exit the business. Yeah the real money is when you exit. And then yes… David: It was nothing like where the real money is. I forgot what it was but I was very excited about it at the time. I really am. Joe: We're Making Financial Sexy Again that was the subtitle that you suggested. David: Your financials; because you said the real money is in the financials and people might get that and so you can make it sexy. Joe: Or eyes bleed. Well I ended up settling on The Exitpreneurs Playbook with the whole goal of setting a goal and reverse engineering your pathway to that. But we might add some feelings in that goal. David: Yeah. So speaking about reverse engineering I'll comment on why I think we're so quick to skip over the celebration but firstly I want to tweak or reframe something you said. I agree with you it would be good to ask them how do you want to feel when you sell the business. So that's great. I think that would be a good move. And what I'm talking about that I want to clarify it is much broader than that. I'm saying how do you want to feel in your life generally. Joe: Yeah. David: And so just for listeners to make sure that that's clear; how do you want to feel generally when you wake up, as you go about the day, when you go to bed. How do you want to feel and what kind of activities and things actually have you feel that and then reverse engineer the life of that. And you may find that money would be a component and that's where Joe can come in and help you maximize what you get for your business to support what you've already created in terms of your life goals. Now why I think we're so quick to skip and I'm one of them once a while this is I say why we are quick to skip the celebration and I got this from Dan Sullivan I think; a Strategic Coach. So we're looking forward, that's how we're oriented. We're looking forward and we constantly see the gap between where we are and where we want to be. And that's great that's the ego's job because it wants to put food on the table. But when we do that all we're going to see constantly are gaps. We're constantly going to see what there is to do and it can be overwhelming and we miss the celebration. If we want to feel good and acknowledge ourselves for how far we've come we have to turn around. Metaphorically look backwards and see how far we've come and that's the gain. So he talks about Gain and Gap and I'm always like all right that was good. Now what's next? And I have to slow down and even say to people we're celebrating or I'm going to pop some champagne or we're going to dinner or dinner's on me because I want to really acknowledge this win in my life that for example my health has been pretty rough for quite a while and I went out three times last week to go and be with people and get limbic connection and that's a win. So we can slow down and celebrate that and say wow look how great that is instead of looking forward to go there's still so much to do health wise to heal. So does that answer your question? Joe: It does. Thank you. Have you got any quick tips for those that are too afraid to hire a personal and business and life coach; have you got any quick tips in terms of somebody that's caught up in that grind every single day just trying to keep the wheels on the bus and not run out of inventory and deal with the coronavirus now and tariffs and so on and so forth? How do they kind of slow down and focus and appreciate what it is that they've got so that they can look forward with a clear vision? David: Yeah well I would recommend filling in the life assessment at PlayforReal.life. It'd take you five or 10 minutes and it's great information to have about your life. And then you can see oh maybe I want to work on the real goals, I'm going to sit down and do an hour session with myself and set some specific measurable targets that will have me feel great. So that's one thing. I like to talk about truth and daring in particular. Joe: I played that as a kid. David: Yeah well that's Truth or Dare. Joe: I know, I know. David: I like truth and dare. I don't know if those are quick tips but I think the more we speak out truth the better life gets the more attractive we get. We might rock the boat a few times and have some teething pains but I think… Joe: So speaking the truth to those around you, to yourself, is a daring thing to do? David: Most of us have grown up learning to hide things. We learn it covertly and subconsciously. We're like I'm just going to keep all this stuff in here and I'll show the world what's safe. And I get that and sometimes that's appropriate. But nine out of 10 times I think it separates us and a great leadership move and personal growth move is to share the things that are a little edgy. Hey when you said that I felt disappointed or I notice I want us to feel better working together and it feels strange and I don't know what it is to talk about it. Joe: It's hard to initiate that. David: Yeah. Joe: How do you initiate that? I remember I was a kid; I was in my 20s and I was volunteering at this theater in Portland, Maine and doing a massive renovation. It was going to end up being a concert venue and I volunteered to work my tail off so that I could become an employee of the company when it finally opened. And I got that opportunity and it really pissed off somebody else and we weren't done yet. We still had another three or four weeks and that person he could have been bumping into me with his shoulder because he was so upset he would have. It was that kind of you know mental stare and whatnot and finally I just said hey what have I done to upset and offend you? And it was hard for me to figure out what to say but it worked and we became friends afterwards oddly enough. And so I did; I was truthful and confronted him I dared to and it worked out very well but it's very hard to do. David: Yeah. Joe: How do you bridge that gap and say it? David: Well the biggest obstacle is most people aren't even aware of those troops that are swimming around in their subconscious. They're just like that guy's a dick. Or that I don't like her or I'm just not going to work with him again. He's unreliable, right? We don't even see that I could speak up and possibly change this. So that's the first thing is become aware of it. And I'm working on an app called it; that will help you do a true thought to try and work out oh what are the truths that I could say if I felt courageous? Secondly once you work it out say it's like that guy and you're feeling like things are strained and you want to bring up the conversation, the thing that gets in the way is lack of clarity. You're not aware yet what your hope or intention is like what's the good that could come out of it? You haven't generated that yet. So it's a bit murky. You're not totally clear what you're afraid of. It's probably something like he might get defensive or it might be really awkward and might make things worse. But that's not clear in the mind. So I have a free download on the on the website. It's called A Four Step Tough Conversations Blueprint and the worksheet will help you get clear, it'll even ask you is there a request you could make; something they could do that would improve the situation? so you get clarity then you're going to be much more likely to have the conversation because like oh now I know what's going on. Before I was just this jumble of I just didn't like what was happening. Then once you got the clarity you can follow the four steps which give you to them in a nutshell. You asked permission, don't just dump the conversation; can I talk to you about something for a few minutes? You share one hope and one fear. My hope is that we'll feel more connected after it because I'm feeling like things are a little strange now my hesitation is I might make it worse. But are you willing; can I share the issue? And then three you share the issue and make your request. My request would be just that you let me know what's going on or if there's any way I can improve the situation. Joe: You make it sound very easy. David: Well I've had a lot of practice doing them and talking about it and the worksheet really does make it a lot easier. I'm not saying you're not going to feel uncomfortable and I'm not saying there isn't risk. That's what makes it a little bit exciting but your chances of it going better are much clearer because you'll have the steps. You can even take a printout with you and say I wrote down some talking points because I wanted to do a good job at this. And then the step four; super important, is get curious and listen. How is this from your side? What are you experiencing? Do you have a better idea than what I do? And then you shut up and you listen and then you'll work it out together. Joe: I love it. Can you summarize for us as we're wrapping up and running out of time how is it David that this is helpful for people in business; the entrepreneurs that are here in the audience? David: Oh my God. It's helpful for everyone but specifically in business you want your staff to be motivated and empowered. I had my assistant quit out of nowhere. She did only three things that weren't working for her and she didn't have the training as most people don't know how to speak up. She didn't even consider a conversation was possible. So by you learning these techniques and practicing it you can model it for others so that you can have more communication among your team. You become more attractive as a leader. You're going to build more loyalty that people want to work with you. They will have a sense that they can trust you. You'll have more customers because your energy is going to shift. And they'll be like oh wow; like Ezra, right? I say one of the reasons that people go and pay and be part of Blue Ribbon Mastermind is because of who Ezra is and how he shows up. And he's learned how to have these conversations and speak truth. So if we had more time I could probably go into 10 more benefits but here's one final benefit. You will feel better and you will like yourself more if you're speaking truth. Joe: Yeah that's a pretty huge benefit, that's called being happy. So I'm going to go ahead and download it myself. I know you and I are going to chat personally next week and I'm very confident that I will actually become one of your clients and maybe we'll have you back on and talk about my personal experience and how we went through that process and what it's made; a difference for me, in my life here at Quiet Light Brokerage. All right. Any last minute thoughts and then of course again the URL at how people reach you if they want to touch base and possibly have a coaching session or just learn more from what you do on the website. David: Yeah. Thank you. So my last thoughts are you're doing great; wherever you are, whatever you're doing, life is incredibly complex. I'm going to do a rant sometime on this. Things are designed to break down. That's how it's going to work. And you made it this far. You're doing great. You don't need anything else. That's the number one thing. Secondly there's always room for more; for things to be better. That's the game I'm playing. How I do better and get the most out of this this life. And so if you want to practice speaking a truth more maybe having a few tough conversations I think that'll help. Setting goals and really we didn't talk about laser focused action but those are some things that can help. My invitation, if people want to find out more or get in touch with me PlayforReal.life is my website and there are three cool things you can do at that site all at the same link. One you can download this blueprint if you want to have a blueprint; a roadmap for your tough conversations. Secondly I have my own podcast if you want to listen to me as well as Joe. I've got Tough Conversations with David Wood, you can subscribe at the website. And the third thing if something resonated for you on this call and you'll like I want life to be better. I want business to be better and if you think you might be coachable like you're open to input see if you qualify for a discovery session. If you qualify I don't charge for that one because it's fun and too because it's how I find the right people to work with long term. We'll actually dive into your life and business and create a plan. And if you want to implement it on your own, keep me posted. Let me know how it goes and if we both believe that coaching can have a big impact we'll talk about setting up coaching and that's all at PlayforReal.life. Joe: All right. Well I'm looking forward to it myself David. Thanks for coming on the show I appreciate it. And I hope you can help a lot of people in the audience just be happier in life and happier and more successful in business. Thank you very much. David: My pleasure Joe. Thank you. Links and Resources: Play For Real David's Podcast
There is always a recession coming, we just don't know when. The US is in one of the longest expansion periods ever known but many predict a recession in the next twelve to twenty-four months. Business owners can make money in a growing economy and they can make also money in an economy that is pulling back. Today we are talking to Jonathan Slain, founder of Recession.com – a company he started in 2008 when he lost his fitness-based business. He saw an opening and borrowed the money to launch his successful recession-proof consulting business. In his new book, Rock the Recession, Jonathan and his co-author highlight ways savvy entrepreneurs can bounce back from internal recession and make plans to be buyers when opportunity knocks. Episode Highlights: Jonathan's recommendations for owners of online businesses to start assessing themselves as recession ready. How to benchmark a small online business with smaller revenues. Importance of board of advisors and mentors and how to find them. The cost and time involved in choosing advisors and mentors. Other actionable advice for someone running an online business to prepare for economic downturn. The importance of having access to capital and credit now rather than waiting for the pull back. Why Jonathan wrote his book. Internal recessions and how to avoid or rectify them. How to research whether what you're selling will survive or thrive. Advice for the business hunter in pre-recession times. Some final tips in Jonathan's own words. Hint; plan now. Transcription: Mark: Joe there's a recession coming. Joe: Is it? I'm not sure I thought it was here 18 months ago or was coming 18 months ago and now it's going to be fall of 2020. What's the story? How do you know this? Mark: Well there's always a recession coming, right? Joe: Oh, yeah. Mark: I mean we know we just don't know when but if you look at; I would encourage people listening; when you're in your car don't pick up your phone but when you get back to your office or get back to in front of a computer do a search for a graph of recession gaps and you'll get to see from 1900 until present when the recessionary periods were and when the non-recessionary periods were. And we are in a period of time right now, one of the longest expansion periods in our economy and so it's not really soot saying or you know looking in a crystal ball to see that there's a recession coming. We know it's going to happen, we don't know how bad, we don't know when exactly but we do know it is. And I had an investment professor in college who would say all the time bears get rich, bulls get rich, pigs get slaughtered and I always thought well bears get rich too but you need to actually plan for; I screwed that up, it's bulls and bears and pigs but whatever you need to plan for this… Joe: I'm just trying to think through what you just said so thank you I thought I was not keeping up with you. Mark: Well you know what I failed that class so maybe that's why I don't know the right answer. But bulls get rich, bears get rich, pigs get slaughtered. And the point was you can make money in a growing economy, you can make money in a declining economy don't get greedy; that's the lesson but there is an in lesson in there, you can make money in a down economy but how many of those listening right now are just looking at their last year being like that was awesome without any idea of what they're going to do when; not if but when the economy pulls back or they haven't pull backed within their own company. And I know you talked to somebody who specializes in this; he owns recession.com for goodness sake. Joe: I know what a great URL, Recession.com, it's Jonathan Slain and he's been through this. He started his own company in 2008 and just had to fight through meeting payroll and all these different things and learned so much in terms of being ready for the next recession and preparing for the next recession. And he's expanded beyond the actual economic recessions that we're talking about and focuses a little bit in helping companies with internal recessions so that if they had a client that had a subscription or SaaS business but only had 10 major clients and they lost two or three within a month or two that's an internal recession. If you've got a hero SKU that you're selling and 70% of your revenue is from that hero SKU you are setting yourself up for an internal financial recession with your business if competition comes in and hurts that. So he has a readiness assessment test; a recession readiness assessment test on his website and it goes through and compares how you are prepared compared to others and helps people take advantage of upcoming recessions and avoid the major pitfalls in being one of those pigs that get slaughtered. Mark: Well let's get right to it because I think this is an important topic for anyone. Anyone out there that has an online business, don't get too fat on your current earnings. Understand that businesses go through cycles, economies go through cycles, let's all survive this next cycle and thrive in the next cycle and it sounds like that's what we're going to learn here. Joe: Hey folks Joe here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got Jonathan Slain with us. Jonathan is the author of Rock the Recession and is an expert in preparing for an economic downturn either in a worldwide situation or a nationwide situation or possibly in your own business. Jonathan welcome to the podcast. Jonathan: Let's rock. Good to be here. Joe: Can you expand on that background a little bit? We don't do any fancy introductions here. Can you tell the audience who you are what you're all about and where you come from? Jonathan: Yeah, so I come to you today from my home in Cleveland, Ohio but I really started my career; I have to disclose that I'm a recovering investment banker. And so that's where I started. From there I went on to own my own business which was five gyms all located in Cleveland. I think you mentioned earlier that I borrowed some money from my mother in law in the Great Recession so we can talk about that. And since then now I am full time doing consulting for large companies looking to grow revenue in or profit and that is what brought me to writing the book. And then when we were talking before we started the show getting me on Fox News lately. So we can talk about any or all of that but that's my story. Joe: Well congratulations on stepping up to the Quiet Light Brokerage podcast from Fox, it's a big show you're on now. Jonathan: Understood. Joe: Are you nervous? Jonathan: A little bit. Joe: We've got some pretty impressive people in the audience believe it or not; they're both buyers and sellers of online businesses, entrepreneurs that are building businesses that they're solopreneurs in some case sometimes they have remote VAs working for them sometimes they have staff. But what would your recommendations be for those that are; first we'll talk about the owners of online businesses and how they prepare for a potential economic recession. Jonathan: Yes. So the first thing that I would do is to assess where you are. So as a business owner it's really to benchmark how you're doing compared to where everybody else is in the market. So if you don't know where you stand then you can't figure out what you should do first to start to get better and improve. When it comes to benchmarking that was where my business partner and the co-author of the book; that's where we started. And so we put up a free tool. It's on our website so if the audience wants to go to recession.com they can go there. It's 20 questions. It only takes about 5 to 10 minutes Joe and you'll get a score from 0 to 100. If you're a zero then it's likely that you're going to go bankrupt in the next recession, if you're a hundred then you're licking your chops; can't wait to pounce when we hit the next downturn. So that's where I'd start. Joe: How do you benchmark in an industry like the online business with a lot of smaller businesses doing less than 10 million in revenue when none of the information is public? Jonathan: Yeah. So what I can tell you is that from all of the responses we've received to the recession readiness assessment, the average score right now is a 37. So I think for people looking to benchmark themselves with other private companies 37 is where we're seeing the mark. If you're above that score that relative to we've got a thousand plus responses you're probably doing better than the average and below that can be nervous. So I think that's one piece but it brings up a good point and I think part of what I was listening to on some of your other episodes is that private businesses, small businesses need to have their own board of advisors. And so that's one of the questions actually on our assessment is do you have a board of advisors? And I'm not talking about your lawyer, I'm not talking about your accountant, I'm talking about people that have a proven track record of making money in business preferably in a similar business to what you're doing to your online business and that will just give you straight feedback. Again I know that some people bristle when I say don't have your accountant or lawyer on the team. My issue is that your paid professionals may not want to tell you what you need to hear all the time for fear of losing your business. Joe: And I think that's a great idea. I call them mentors or board advisers whatever it might be. The question is I saw something on the hustle the other day, we focus on or I watched that and I know Sam and that was a question that someone came up with so like look I'm trying to find a local mentor or board of advisors; how do you find them? A lot of people gave a lot of different responses but what would your advice be in terms of trying to find the right type of mentor or board of advisor and is there a cost associated with it? Jonathan: So I always have a list. I call it the list. I keep it with me at all times. It's the 10 people I'd love to have on my board of advisors; the people I'd love to have as a mentor or a coach. And the issue is that most of them are not going to work with me right now. These are all folks that are super busy; they're overcommitted, and so they're on my list because once a quarter I bug them. I send them an email, I text them, I give them a phone call, I just drip on them and I try to wear them down until they finally get to the point where they're like fine I'll coach you; I'll mentor you. And that's literally I think how I've gotten a lot of my mentors because the people that I'm chasing don't have discretionary time. And so I don't think it's as simple as we listen to the podcast and we decide I'm going to do this thing and you just all of a sudden have a board. It's going to be a process that takes some time. In terms of the cost associated with it, I do think it depends on who you're working with. But I would think an honorarium of 500 to $1,000 per board member per quarter is fair. And I'll tell you that they shouldn't need the money. If the reason they're doing this is turning a little bit extra money I don't think you have the right person on your board. I think that in most cases they should be donating whatever you are giving them to their favorite nonprofit. And I think they should want you to pay them the 500 just to keep you honest and actually listening to their counsel and to keep them honest so that they feel like they have some skin in the game that they need to do some research; they need to read your financials before they get to the meeting. Joe: And how much time a quarter do you take up with someone like that? Jonathan: Yes. So my thought would be a four-hour meeting once a quarter and that they should do anywhere between two and four hours of prep of reading whatever packet that you send to them before the meeting. Joe: Okay, not too bad. What actionable advice can you give people that are running online businesses now in addition to the board members what could someone do now thinking okay, if there is an economic recession I want to do everything I can to prepare over the next 6 to 12 months. What can they do now? Jonathan: Yes. So the second step in the whole process would be to tune yourself and your business up. And by tune up I mean you're going to be doing things like looking at your line of credit. So do you have the right line of credit to be able to grow in a recession? Joe: Why do they need a line of credit? Jonathan: So by that, I simply mean capital access to cash if we get into a downturn and you see an awesome opportunity to buy assets to buy inventory for cheap, to be able to afford talent that you couldn't get access to during the recession or maybe they find a bolt-on opportunity for their business to purchase another business then you're going to need access to capital in order to make all those things happen. Joe: And what forms of credit would you advise someone seek? Jonathan: Yes. So I think that the best would probably be a line of credit that isn't secured by personal assets. If you can't get that done then look at a home equity line of credit and if you can't get that done then look at credit cards. The thing is to have access to capital; you don't have to use it. But here's the deal like right now when the economy is good this is the best possible time to go to your bank and ask for credits. When we're in a recession, when we're in a downturn the banks are not going to loan you money. They're going to laugh at you if you come and you try to borrow from them. I mean one of my favorite sayings is that you can go to a bank; it's like asking for an umbrella except when it's raining. So banks operate in the same way. They want to extend credit now because all the banks are competing for your business. When we're in a recession, when we're in a downturn they're going to start to contract their portfolios. They're going to start to mitigate risk. They're not going to want to open up new lines of credit especially for online businesses; especially for newer online businesses that they see as riskier and not asset-backed. Joe: I'm going to back that up, folks. I sold my business as you all know in November of 2010. I bought a house in June of 2010. I paid mostly cash for it. I sold my business in November and then got busy got delayed and didn't apply for that home equity line of credit until sometime in May the following year. Well, guess what? I had filed my tax returns. I didn't have employment. I had a ridiculous amount of equity in my home and I got declined for a home equity line of credit because of timing. It was ridiculous. It was 2011 at that point as well. So the economy was just coming back and I had a ridiculous amount of credit but because I didn't have a quote-unquote job or income at the time I got turned out for hillock. And I had been given previous advice exactly like this and this is from my mentor; a business person, a business advisor, always have some sort of line of credit available to you. Jonathan is right. Make sure if you can it's not tied to personal assets but the reality in this solopreneur world that we live in for the most part that's really hard to do. If you can't get that non-secured get secured and get it backed up as a credit line with your investment advisors or on your home equity line of credit or any other way that you can. What about credit cards and revolving credit cards; do you advise people to mess around with that at all or is that something that they should avoid? Jonathan: Well I would as a last resort. Again for me, you don't have to use them. But I'm a business owner too; I'm an entrepreneur I always want to have a backup in case things don't go as planned and so part of this is that I want everyone to look forward to the next recession. I know that's weird but that was the idea behind why we wrote the book. I mean the traditional plan for a recession is fire people and cut overhead and just survive and that book's already been written many times over. The idea here was what if we studied people that leverage recessions and use them as a way to hack the system to escape the usual need to hustle and grind to be able to grow your business and then sell it for a dream outcome. And so I'm always thinking of how can we use credit in downtimes to be able to buy assets to buy businesses from other people that weren't smart enough to listen to our podcast; from everybody that didn't prepare. And at the same time if all the stuff we're talking about isn't working; Joe, if people are listening and they're like look my business isn't growing and I'm in a recession myself then you need access to that capital just to survive. I mean at the end of the day we all need to protect the beehive as entrepreneurs because if the business doesn't survive then none of the rest of this matters. Joe: And that's almost moving into the second type of recession and that's just an internal business recession when someone has key employees that leave or hero SKUs where competition comes in. How do you help people in that regard or what actionable steps can you recommend to them that they take to avoid a situation like that or rectify it if it happens? Jonathan: Perfect. I mean I know a lot of people don't always agree with my predictions. I do think that we're going to have some sort of a downturn in the US economy towards the end of 2020. I don't think it'll be a full-blown recession but I do think as we get closer to the election that consumers and businesses will hold up in terms of spending and that will slow our economy down. But if you're rolling your eyes right now, if you're saying I don't agree with this guy I don't think the next recession still 2021 or 2022 and you're about to tune us out then just wait one sec. The idea here is that you brought up non-economic recessions so if your biggest customer leaves that would usually put most businesses into a recession. It could apply to a hero SKU in our case. If you have a competitor come in and attack your hero SKU; same difference, you're in a recession. If your best one or two employees leave and they go start a competing business, you are in a recession. The other one that has recently come up is what about government and regulatory changes? I mean I know the audience understands that vaping is a huge new business and everybody wants to get into marijuana, get into vaping well in New England they recently passed a law putting a moratorium on vaping while they studied the after-effects of it after there were several deaths. All of a sudden all those online businesses that were selling vaping cartridges were vaporized. And that happened overnight. It happened very quickly. So I want everybody listening to have a plan for how they can leverage those opportunities. Joe: Well the tariffs I guess could be considered a recession for some businesses. I've got a client who's tariffs are 42.6% on top of his cost of goods sold; a pretty big impact. Jonathan: They sell online? Joe: No, they don't. Jonathan: Okay. Well so it's thinking through if you're in one of those businesses what can you do? So the question then becomes you want to start to think about how you can diversify. And I know that the more practical tips for this are that I like to use online research. There's a site called Ibis World and it's a paid site. Joe: Is that I-B-I-S? Jonathan: I-B-I-S. Ibis World. You would have to make an investment but they provide industry reports on where they believe the future of different industries are going. So if you're selling line online they've got a report for that. If you're selling widgets online they've got a report for that. And the idea there is that you want to think about industries that will do better in the downturn and industries that will do worse. So in the book, we write about some of our favorite; some of the ones that got pummeled in the last recession, in the Great Recession and the ones that did well. The ones that got pummeled think like jewelry stores not good in a recession. If you're selling high-end jewelry online or in a store; not good, same thing with things like travel and tourism, discretionary goods. That's why I was selling personal training services in the Great Recession; not good. We all know that insurance and finance got hit especially hard in the Great Recession. Not good. So the ones that did well would be things like consumer staples; so if you're selling consumer staples like toothpaste, people are still going to need to brush their teeth in a downturn. If you start to get more exotic with your thinking; think about like veterinary clinics and veterinary supplies, people still spend money and take care of their pets in a downturn. And people don't care; if their dog is sick they'll put it on a credit card, if their dog likes Eukanuba and that's one of the most expensive brands, people will not change their dog food brand if we're in a recession. So if you're an online seller of those high-end pet products; I actually like that market. I think it will continue moving forward. My point just to answer your question though is that if you slow down, if you do some of the deep work of thinking instead of just being busy then I think all the answers are actually out there for how I will position myself, how I would start to diversify if I am in that hero SKU situation. Joe: In other words I had a neighbor tell me once; I was asking him, he was a bit of a mentor as well, he said Joe, you know exactly what to do. You just need somebody else to tell you to reinforce it. Same thing here folks; you've heard Mark and I say it and almost every guest that's ever been on the podcast, focus on the business. It's not about driving top-line revenue only, focus on the nuts and bolts of the bottom line part of the business and that's going to bring value; improve transferability, the documentation, the growth trends, the data behind the business and that's going to bring you more value in the short run and in the long run if you eventually do sell your business. And that leads Jonathan to talking about the other half of the audience; the people that are buying online businesses, those people that tune in week after week as they're on the hunt for that next business that they want to buy and they listen to us. What advice can you give to someone if they're out there hunting for a business in terms of looking for that business with a potential forthcoming recession? Jonathan: Yeah. So I want to start with the story and that's that Paul Belair who I wrote the book with; right before the Great Recession started Paul bought a business. He invested a million dollars with his management team to purchase the business and they grew it during the Great Recession. It was an HVAC business, so a business that helped out with heating, ventilation, and air conditioning; not a sexy business. And they sold it 63 months later. They sold it for over 70 million. Joe: He bought it for a million and sold it for over 70. Jonathan: So the purchase price was higher than a million but they put in a million in cash. Joe: I got you. Jonathan: And then they had some debt to fund the rest of it. Joe: Fair enough. That still sounds like a hell of a return on investment. Jonathan: Yeah well it's 70X on your cash plus; I can't tell you the exact number. He's under an NDA but in any case, it's even over 70 million. So that's why Paul writes the book with me but in terms of being on podcasts, you would prefer to be off playing pick-up ball in Florida. Joe: So hopefully he's using Amazing Aces. We've got a client that bought that business and it's a great brand. Jonathan: Really? Joe: Yeah. Joe: Jonathan: I love it. Well, it's Amazing Aces? Joe: Absolutely. Jonathan: All right I'm making; you know what? I'm still Christmas shopping for him. Joe: There you go. Jonathan: So I tell you that story because part of the way that they did that huge one million to 70 million dollar exit is that they picked a business and then they moved it such that it would have a tailwind in a downturn. And so if you're a buyer right now it's thinking about what kinds of businesses would get an economic tailwind if we were in a downturn and then like my mom says you've got to put yourself in the middle of the street if you want to get run over. So Paul… Joe: Very bad parenting; I don't know what the deal is with your mom but I got to say that's not very good advice. Alright. Jonathan: Paul put himself in the middle of the street because what he did was when he bought that HVAC business they moved it from doing mostly construction; so by construction I just mean when you buy a new HVAC system and they install it on the roof of your building that's a construction project. Joe: Yeah. Jonathan: Those units cost 5 to 20,000; that's a big project, a big investment. They moved it to doing service. So how could they take the equipment that was existing for a business owner and repair it because in a downturn; in a recession, people would rather repair their equipment than replace it. And so Paul saw that trend coming with his management team and totally changed the business to really capitalize on that. And that's how they were able to grow it into this recurring revenue business which again is another big thing I'd be looking out for your buyers. Joe: Yeah. Jonathan: Yeah. How do we get into a business that has recurring revenue? How can we be selling the razor cartridges instead of that one-time transaction? Joe: So find a business in a niche that's not going to be impacted by a downturn whether it's a critical service business or something like the pet space where people will spend money on their pets no matter what and adding some sort of recurring revenue aspect to it. Beyond that any thoughts in terms of their own personal financials and how to prepare for it in terms of buying; is it the same thing lining up as much line of credit and purchasing power as possible? Jonathan: Yeah well actually my favorite tip there is on the personal guarantee side. So I know right now with the economy booming; I mean consumer confidence is at record highs, unemployment is at record lows, the economy is still booming so banks are still willing to do more than they will at any other point in our economic cycle. I love the idea of capping, reducing, or eliminating personal guarantees especially for your buyers. So what does that look like to go to the bank and ask them to do the deal but to do it without a personal guarantee or to put a cap on that personal guarantee? Right now I think bankers are willing to have that conversation. You don't have to give up a blanket personal guarantee on all of your stuff. So this isn't possible generally with an SBA loan so don't worry about writing to me about that because I get it. But if you can do a conventional loan product can you get it so that you can cap those personal guarantees or reduce them? And it may mean that you have to shop banks, maybe you have to go to four or five banks, maybe you have to talk to your local credit union to make that possible. I just think it's worth having that conversation so that if we get into a downturn; if your business does go sideways that you've mitigated some of the risks that you would otherwise have. And it's free to ask. Joe: And on that aspect folks we've had Shakil Prasla on the podcast and Shakil has bought half a dozen businesses and he's done it mostly with non-SBA money and building up credit with banks and probably is avoiding that personal guarantee as well. So Google Shakil Prasla and Quiet Light Podcast and you'll find that episode. In fact, I think if you Google Shakil he's got a new course on how to purchase an online business as well so check that out. Jonathan before we go any last-minute thoughts or advice for anybody listening in terms of rocking the recession that may be coming in like 2020 in your words? Jonathan: Yes. The main thing is to put together the recession plan in the cool rational light of day as opposed to the emotional heat of the night. I want the audience to be thinking about putting together a plan now and then putting it under glass and then if you do have a recession in your business or you see on Fox or CNN that they're announcing that the economy's in a recession you can go over the glass break the glass take out your plan and start to execute it. The issue most of the time is that we don't have a plan and so when we get into a recession whether it's personal or affecting the entire country you're huddled in the fetal position in the corner of your office like I was when the Great Recession hit. I didn't have a plan. I had people knocking on my office door asking me what was going to happen with the business. And I just spent months trying to figure out what the plan was while all my competitors were executing and taking the best opportunities off the shelf. Well if you're still graciously listening to us that's what I really want for you is to be one of the people that can actually be looking forward to the recession and that can just move into execution mode when the next recession is announced. Joe: That's great advice. Thank you, Jonathan. How do the audience find out about more about what you do online and helping them rocking the recession? How can they find you? Jonathan: Sure. Recession.com is the website and yes we really do own recession.com. All my contact information is on there. They can get me at Jonathan@Recession.com or all the infos are on the site if they want to go do that. Recession Readiness Assessment. They'll see all my contact info right at the site. Joe: Excellent. Thanks for your time today Jonathan. I appreciate it. Jonathan: Alright. Rock on. Links and Resources: Recession.com Free Assessment Tool Rock the Recession Ibis World
Cash-flow forecasting can be the key to running, building, and eventually selling your e-commerce business. Today's guest is an accountant and successful business builder who helps owners run their businesses with successful financial results. Aside from traditional accounting, his firm offers fractional CFO services to his clients. As we have said many times here on the podcast, bookkeeping is not something business owners should do without an expert. Today we are talking to accounting expert Tyler Jeffcoat. Tyler built and sold a healthcare company and has experienced the acquisition process firsthand. In building his current business, Seller Accountant, he made sure that his focus was razor sharp on what he could offer to clients in order to deliver top results. Episode Highlights: How Tyler's fractional services work for the clients. How his service cost is offset by the value why it's less expensive than inhouse. Cash-flow forecasting and how it helps owners with profitability Ways operation data plays into the full forecast. The impact of not forecasting. Refinancing and SBA lending as an option in a moment of need. The importance of SKU grading to keep on top of product performance. The difference between cash and accrual accounting Tools that can help the layman forecast on his own. Why you need to track your numbers on an inventory value. The benefit of outsourcing while focusing on core expertise. Transcription: Mark: So Joe I'm normally not a big advocate of business but I'm becoming more and more of one and in the entrepreneurial community people always ask what book are you reading now and I'm usually thinking well it was actually on World War II or some other kind of obscure topic. Because when I'm off of work I like to be off of work. But this past year I picked up a few different business books based on some recommendations. And one that I read that I would recommend to anybody is Shoe Dog by Phil Knight; the founder of Nike. And I don't want to give away a lot of secrets with this book because honestly, it's a great read; it reads more of like just a novel or story of how he started Nike but one of the things that really resonated with me specifically because we deal with so many people that have Amazon businesses was how long Nike had problems with cash flow and how long that they were living on the float. And they were living on a very large float where they were writing checks that weren't in the bank account yet and they were counting on that money being in there. It's the nature of any growing business especially a physical product business is that the cash flow comes in, you reinvest in the product, you keep growing at a rapid rate. It can be really hard to manage that cash flow. And I know that we talked to Scott Dietz a few weeks ago on forecasting but forecasting doesn't really matter if you don't have any cash in the bank and you're closing the loop on this or kind of continuing this conversation today with Tyler Jefcoat about cash flow forecasting. Joe: Yeah Tyler and I have been working together off and on with a variety of different clients. Tyler owns Seller Accountant and he's just a smart guy. He's built his own company, sold it, and then started any commerce bookkeeping company specifically focused for the most part on his own businesses. Mark: Is that a phone I hear in the background? Joe: No, that was not a phone at all. No. Mark: I figured that you're so busy people are calling you all the time. Joe: No, that's my wife actually. Sorry folks. Sorry. Tyler, yes but the really cool thing about what Tyler does is cash flow forecasting, right? So he does fractional CFO services on top of is bookkeeping services and only for his own clients. And he does in the different levels. He does monthly reviews with some, quarterly reviews of some, and then gets into deeper reviews with others. But the cash flow forecasting model that he went over and shared with me I saw it on another video in a webinar that he did and then I had him show it to me and then he's sharing it in the show notes of this podcast. It's a cash flow model along with the video that talks about it and I know going back to my e-commerce days before I sold I did that; I did the float just like Phil Knight, a little smaller level of course. Mark: But just like Phil Knight. Joe: Just like Phil Knight, but it was the same thing. You are paying for that inventory with a credit card or you're just playing the flow and it's ridiculous. Fortunately for me, I didn't have a big staff but those that are growing beyond that solopreneur aspect and they have to worry about payroll and things of that nature I think it's really, really important to focus on cash flow. So Tyler goes over that quite a bit here and the links in the show notes will help anybody that's having issues in that area. Mark: These are fantastic tools to put in our war chest of things that we can use as business owners to be able to plan the growth of our businesses. So forecasting is something I've been skeptical in the past. Again the conversation with Scott Dietz and my experience with forecasting through his company has really turned me around to this and now I'm super excited to see this because again cash flow forecasting might be one of the most important things in a business as it's growing. Joe: It's important but what else is important? I've got to call my wife back so let's go to the podcast. Joe: Hey folks Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today well I ranted in the intro with Mark about bookkeeping. I've talked to at least 5,000 entrepreneurs over the last seven years and the vast majority of those when it comes to bookkeeping they say I got this and the reality is they don't. So we've got an expert on the podcast here, Tyler Jefcoat from the Seller Accountant. Tyler, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Tyler: Thanks, Joe. Thanks for having me. Joe: I could rant and rave for hours on time about this because it's the number one reason people don't sell their businesses or sell them for a heck of a lot less. Somebody said to me the other day Tyler that when they think about their P&Ls they bleed from their eyeballs and I think that sums it up for how a lot of people feel. Alright so as you know on this podcast we don't do fancy intros, we want to hear from you so tell us about yourself and your business. Tyler: Yeah, well thanks again for having me. My company is Seller Accountant. I'm coming at this as a guy who sold a health care company about two years ago. We had a good run; zero to a hundred employees in about four years and I was a minority guy and I went through the M&A process and it was interesting. So as we built this accounting firm; I'm an accountant, we really built it around two ideas, Joe. One was we wanted to have a very vertical focus so we only do e-commerce and the second thing is that we want to focus on not just the price of admission of just having clean books but having the ability to use data to drive profitability. So I think that's why you and I have resonated with each other so well was I want to partner with brokers that really have the best interest of clients at heart and your clients all have the same issues which is we got to have investor great books so we can go to market and so yeah man it's great to be here. Joe: Cool. Everybody that's listening knows how I do feel about the books but I want to go beyond what you do at Seller Accountant. You manage people's books, you do an incredible job with that, do you streamline it? It's not expensive. It's much better for their bottom line than if they had an in-house bookkeeper. There's no question that that math works but let's talk about some of the additional services you do. I saw a video where you talked about your fractional CFO services, where you talked about cash flow analysis, Cost of Goods Sold analysis and some of those things. What are the top two or three things that you focus on with clients on I guess is your fractional CFO services that you do that for? Tyler: It is and is still part of Seller Accountant but in addition to just doing the bookkeeping each month for a bunch of Amazon and other e-commerce sellers we provide a fractional CFO service. And so I think what makes it powerful Joe is that we're just crazy focused; again we're crazy focused, my eyes don't blink when I look at a P&L for e-commerce but I do it all day long. And so our ability to step into somebody's business and see things differently because we look at it kind of like you do Joe honestly; you're looking at P&Ls constantly also but then focus on kind of the big things on a macro level. How does a seller really understand how their sales channels are performing over time? So that kind of goes back to the visibility of the book but it's more important than that, it's understanding okay, is Amazon the right channel for me to focus on versus Shopify? That's kind of one of the big discussions. And then we tend to the other kind of macro discussion as you allude to is around cash flow. This is a cash hungry business that we run; this e-commerce retail and a lot of the sellers tend to be undercapitalized meaning they're not coming to the table with 2 million dollars in free cash to just dump in inventory. And so our ability to understand not just what we think our sales are going to be next year but what we think our actual cost are going to be related to inventory when we're going to have to spend that money, that's critical. And so that's a discussion we have with our clients and then honestly just understand the profitability of our different product lines and SKUs. Those are areas where we can really help our clients not just know what the bottom line is for a given month but help them get the data they need to make better decisions as a CEO. Joe: And you do this as part of the fractional CFO services. You meet with these clients once a month after you review their P&Ls and you do a deeper dive. Are there other different levels of fractional CFO services where you're spending more time with some than others; how does it work? Tyler: Yeah there are and at this point, most of our CFO clients are bookkeeping clients that have chosen to layer on the CFO service. The reason for that is it is very challenging for me to add a lot of value efficiently for you if I don't understand your books and you just have a really nice way of doing the books. So yes they can choose to have quarterly calls. We have some that will meet even less frequently but it's basically normally quarterly or monthly. And we have some things in the pipeline that may allow us to just generate some value and it'd be a little bit less can you get on Tyler's calendar because I think that can be something that can be prohibitive. But at this point, we've got a great monthly service, a great quarterly service, and I think maybe it'll be somewhere around the neighborhood of 70 million dollars in e-commerce sales that I'm responsible for; me and my team for just the CFO side of it this year. And so it gives us an update that we can speak intelligently about what's happening in the business. Joe: You must be very expensive then, yes? Tyler: Oh man we're so expensive, yeah. No, you know what I mean. I would say we provide extreme value to our clients. And I would just say this we're not cheap; I don't want to be cheap, you want the provider that you can partner with us providing superior value. But I will say this we are way less expensive than actually trying to hire somebody. And if we can generate the kind of value that makes your business grow or allows you to get maybe a better multiple when you go to market in a year I don't think we're charging nearly enough for that to be honest with you and I love it, man. This is the fun part of the business; it's really understanding how to help business owners make money. How do we actually turn this pile of work into a profitable business? And so for me, this is kind of what gets me out of bed. So it's really I'm an accountant, of course, it's about money; we want to make a living but this is a part of the business I'm passionate about. Joe: Well let's talk about some of those individual things you do as the fractional CFO provider. I saw a cash flow forecasting video that you did. This is an enormous problem for e-commerce business owners and a lot of will just go the way of an Amazon loan at 14, 15%. I guess it's lower when you do the math. But talk to us about the cash flow forecasting that you do for these clients and how that helps them in terms of profitability. Tyler: Yeah. So when it comes to cash flow forecasting I think where most entrepreneurs stop is they take the time to open a spreadsheet and say what do I think my sales are going to be in the next six months? By the way, I would caution you there, if you ever run a forecast in the future of your business and every month in the future is way more profitable than your last six months of them, there's a good chance that you are kind of suffering from optimism that happens. All of us entrepreneurs we love running our businesses and we're like just tomorrow we're going to make money, now next month that's going to be wildly profitable. Joe: You're delusional. We know that after doing this for so long that there is great years and bad years. Tyler: You may run into a P&L and somebody hasn't made money in a year and they're like but guess what Joe tomorrow we're going to make money. And so my encouragement is to go ahead and be honest with yourself about how your business is performing and take a minute to say okay based on our seasonality, based on the products we're going to launch; as the actual owner of these e-commerce businesses you guys are in the best position to guess what your sales are going to be next year and put them in a spreadsheet Expected Sales, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And then if you look at your historical data you can say okay our cost of goods sold, our margins have tended to be at a certain level. And so most entrepreneurs are pretty good at building a forecast around what their operation is going to generate. We kind of know what our overhead is. We kind of know what our advertising budget is going to be. We know if our rent's going to go up next year. And so you got to do that work but a lot of entrepreneurs stop there and you can't stop there. Because of the impact of debt and the impact of inventory and the impact frankly of taxes you need to take that operational data and then work it into a full cash flow forecast for maybe the next year or the next six months. And so the way we do it is we take that baseline info that I just mentioned; how much profit are you expecting your operation to generate each month over the next six months or a year. Okay, great, now tell us what your loan payments are going to be, what's the cash coming out of your business for; for that Amazon loan or for your SBA loan or for your line of credit. Okay great, let's take that into account each month and then inventory forecasting can be kind of tricky. The more I thought about this I think it just needs to be simple. You have an average amount of days that it takes you to; you're going to issue a PO and you're going to get your container sent from China or wherever you're getting your goods. And so if I have forecasted that in April I'm going to have $30,000 in cost of goods sold then I'm going to have to pay for that $30,000 in inventory probably about 90 days before that. And so if you know what the waiting times are in your inventory you can use your forecast that you just did for your quote-unquote P&L; your profit and loss to basically guess okay I'm going to need to have that 30 grand in the bank in January so that it's ready to sell in April. And I mean they're going to have to fund that inventory purchase with some kind of great terms with the supplier or I'm going to have to have a loan, I'm going to have cash in the bank. And so what I advise the clients to do is to kind of what are my inventory purchases going to be? This is not a surprise. It's going to take a few months to fulfill it. Let's get that on this cash flow picture and then the other thing that you might consider is if there's going to be any owner distributions including your CPA may have you take a tax distribution once a quarter to keep Uncle Sam happy. And so this all goes together; your operations, your financing activities, your inventory, and then lastly the investing kind of from your owners and it's going to give you; it's not uncommon to have a picture where you expected to make money in the month of January, on paper you have profit but because of your debt payments or because of your purchases of future inventory your cash flow is actually negative for that same month. And so we just blew a spreadsheet; in fact, I'm glad to share it with you. I just have it in a Google Sheet here where we try to understand the impact of all of those factors on cash flow. So if there's going to be a negative on the sheet I knew it now instead of it being an emergency. Joe: We'll link that up so people can use it and try it themselves and then reach out to you for help if they need it. But what's the impact? You talked about good money at good rates versus bad money at bad rates. So what's the negative impact if they didn't do the forecasts and they come up against the month of January and they need to get a loan somewhere; what do you see people do and what's the drawback of having little to no notice of it? Tyler: Yeah. So there's two major impacts. One is if I know that I'm going to run out of cash in six months I can make two important adjustments that I don't have the luxury of making if I'm right on top of that shortfall. So if I've got six months I can cut expenses. If I need to actually lower some overhead if I need to renegotiate my rent if I need to do anything if I need to slow down if I need to go to my suppliers and renegotiate those payment terms. I've got some internal leverage. In other words, I know how important it is to me because I know I'm out of money say in April if I don't figure this out now. The second thing is if I know I'm going to run out of cash in four to six months I've bought myself a bunch of time to go find the right kind of loan if I have to pick up some debt on the balance sheet. And just as you alluded to I've got six months and have a pretty good business I might be able to get through SBA underwriting, I might be able to get all sorts of favorable lending options but if I wake up and realize oh crud tomorrow I'm out of money I don't have a lot of options. I'm going to take whatever money is going to fund me in the next week. And I would say that's where a lot of sellers get in trouble. They haven't forecasted effectively and so now they're out of money. They've got to fulfill that PO tomorrow and so now they're in a bind where how are they going to get stuff on the shelves to be able to sell it. And so yeah that's what I would say to that. Joe: So on the SBA underwriting, if somebody owns an e-commerce business and they've got good financials, they've owned it for a while and they use services like yours you're seeing them able to go out and get SBA financing to help with cash flow of their current business. Tyler: Yeah I think there's; I don't know that I've seen; I've seen more SBA lending when the deals come together for an actual exit but I will say this if you have a couple of years of good financials and you're carrying some debt I've definitely seen some of our clients refinance other lines of credit using SBA lending once they have a couple of years of good financial history. Joe: That makes sense. Tyler: You can go through the underwriting and what ends up happening is the bank has a much lower risk profile because the SBA; the government is going to back a certain percentage of that loan. And so it's always going to be your best terms, your best interest rate; the underwriting is a bit of a pain but again if you have six months you can get through that process and explore that as an option instead of having to take whatever emergency lending process. Joe: Yeah for those that don't understand the terms on the SBA lending it's generally 10 years and the interest rate is somewhere between 5 ½ to 8 ½%. Compare that to an Amazon loan where the term is somewhere between 14 and 15%; I'm sorry the interest rate and the term is generally 12 months. They take it out of your account as they make deposits. Tyler: And I've seen Amazon be as high as 19, 20 percent and they will underwrite it down to 11 but it never gets anywhere close to touching the SBA. Joe: Yeah, it's incredibly convenient. There's no question about it but there's a pretty steep cost that comes along with it. Tyler: The only one that steeper is when you have to get more of what's called like a payday funding option maybe like a Payability; nothing wrong. It's a good service in the right context but those cost capital numbers end up getting up in the 25, 30% range if you're not careful and that can really crush your business. Joe: Okay, cash flow taking, money off the table, these things are what keep entrepreneurs up at night so I love the fact that you help them with that and we'll share that in the show notes. Let's jump on to something that I think is incredibly important when we talk to people about selling their business. Well ultimately we're going to help them when they're ready but we'd prefer to talk to them 12 to 18 months in advance so that they're working with someone like you in order to prepare the best exit possible. And we often talk to them about renegotiating their cost of goods sold, focusing in on those inventories that are hero SKUs and those that are just okay. We always say you can break even doing nothing so why bother but often when it looks like they're breaking even they lose money. You help them focus in through your fractional CFO services on hero SKUs, cost of goods sold, things of that nature; yes? Tyler: Yeah I think something that's really important whether you have a fractional CFO or you do it yourself, it's extremely important to do a SKU grading. So I don't even care if you have a thousand skews you have to have some kind of a system for understanding which product lines are successful and which ones are losers. Which ones are the heroes like you said Joe, which ones are duds? And I have been shocked; I've been continually shocked as we do these analyses for clients to see that a guy's favorite SKU is taking them like an 80% advertising budget to move the SKU. Joe: That doesn't sound profitable. Yeah. Tyler: No, that's bad. Yeah. And just in case you're wondering, an 80% advertising budget is terrible. But they didn't know that because it's buried in this entire pile of SKUs and so it's extremely important to understand at least occasionally how each of your products is performing so that you can support the good ones, renegotiate the bad ones, or kill them. Joe: Yeah. So revenue insanity profit; no revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. So it gets down to understanding your profit and loss statements, digging into revenue by SKU, profit by SKU. I get most people don't get this. A lot of people that I work with that come across like I did early on I tell people openly I fell asleep in accounting class in college. I've since had to adapt and learn and now I understand it very, very well. But most people don't understand the simple difference between cash and accrual accounting and that when you're selling a business the books need to be presented on an accrual basis. Can you describe the difference between the two in layman's terms? That's the challenge; layman's terms. Tyler: Sure. So simply put if you have cash going out of your business, say you're buying inventory to actually stroke the check and you have a deposit coming into your business say the deposit from Amazon and you book that sale when the cash hits your account and you book that expense when you pay the money that's called cash basis accounting. And from a compliance tax standpoint, for most small businesses that is acceptable. But here's the problem and you got anyone who's looked at their P&L and saw a negative gross profit for a month. When you look at there and say why did I sell $100,00 this month but all of a sudden had $200,000 of inventory expenses? That doesn't make any rational sense. The reason is that you book the entire inventory the day you stroke the check instead of having the inventory asset and expensing it slowly as you sell the goods. And so in an accrual accounting method, you are on a quest to attach the sales dollar to the expenses that are associated with that dollar. So if I sold; let's just use that same number, if I sold $100,000 on Amazon in November I want to know how much it actually cost me; what the actual inventory expense for those units were that I sold in that month. And so you can kind of tell me and hear me say it's a little more difficult. Getting good accrual books takes a little bit more work. You have to deal with receivables. You've got to book things a little bit more sophisticatedly but it's the only way to be able to answer the question Joe did I make money last month? Because if you're doing it on a cash basis you really have no idea. You know when you've made your investments but you don't actually know whether your business is profitable unless you have an accrual system. Joe: And is that something that; I know it's hard to set up in Quick Books online but what do people have to have? Their landed cost of goods sold or their cost of goods sold the freight might be separate in your P&Ls; is it something that a layman could set up and figure out and flip to or does it really take a tremendous amount of experience like you have? Tyler: Well it could. I mean I don't want to; let me just say it's worth the effort. I will say this for everyone who's listening to this to this podcast if you haven't explored a tool called A2A accounting; literally the letter A, the number 2, the letter A. So A2A Accounting, I think it's A2Aaccounting.com that is a tool that lets you kind of pre map Amazon journal entries and it makes doing the accruals a lot easier. Well, what makes e-commerce so challenging is that Amazon pays us every 14 days normally and some of those sales might have happened in one month but I'm getting the entire paycheck from Amazon in the next month. And so I would say Joe yes normally having somebody that really understands e-commerce accounting is very helpful but for smaller sellers or sellers who don't have the budget to hire a team like mine it's worth learning how to do it and it's worth trying to understand; you mentioned the term landed cost of goods sold if I spend $100,000 on inventory, I've stroke the check, I've sent the wire, I have that inventory now, it's really important that I try to understand what that fully landed value is per unit. So let's say I bought a thousand of a particular SKU I can't just say I spent $100,000 divided by 1,000 so I've got basically was that a dollar SKU, right? It doesn't work that way. Joe: Because you pay the extra 10 cents to ship each individual unit; yeah. Tyler: Yeah you got shipping, tariffs, duties, everything else you need to just do the math. Make sure you have a spreadsheet; call it kind of a Master SKU Spreadsheet and understand what it really costs you per unit to get your product to the customer. And that's probably one of the biggest keys to understand. Joe: And let me just put some reality to this in terms of the why. Look anybody out there listening is like why the hell do I need to do that? The reason is because eventually, you're going to sell your business. You're going to get bought out. You're going to sell it to a partner. You and your partner are going to get in a fight and you're going to want to move in different directions. Or you own it with your wife or husband and you're going to get a divorce or at least half of you are. Or you're going to die. It's all going to happen eventually so you need to have your numbers on an accrual basis because when you sell your physical products e-commerce business you're going to get paid a multiple of your seller's discretionary earnings plus the landed cost of good sellable inventory on hand at the time of closing. Landed. If you're not tracking that landed figure and you're paying an extra 50 cents per unit you could be losing tens of thousands of dollars in inventory value at the sale. The other thing in terms of cash versus accrual and doing it yourself versus hiring somebody like Tyler is that if you're off by a couple of percentage points; let's just say that you're spending a million dollars a year in revenue. It's not a small business, it's a sizable one. And I've talked to these people that do this and have in-house bookkeepers and I'll give you some math on why you shouldn't admit it but if you're off by 2% on a million bucks that's $2,000 right? That's not right; that's $20,000 that you're off by. Your business is probably sizable selling it 4, 4 ½ times that would mean that your numbers; your profit, your discretionary earnings are off by $20,000. The value of your business is $80,000 off if you're a four-time multiple. So you're either overpricing the business by 80,000 because you overestimated or underestimated your cost of goods sold or worse yet you're undervaluing your business because you're off by 2% and your business is worth $80,000 more than you've got it listed for. These things matter. You worked so damn hard on driving more revenue and looking at your bottom line. But if you don't get the details right like this you're just wasting a whole bunch of money. Okay, that's my momentary rant now I'm going to go into another one. The services that you provide Tyler and there are others out there like you that's just like there's other brokers out there besides Quiet Light; it is what it is but I talked to somebody last week, they spent $24,000 a year on an in-house bookkeeper just out of college that does everything the CPA tells her to do. The numbers are all wrong. They're recording deposits; it was on a cash basis, it was completely and utterly incorrect. And this person thought they were doing something like 1.2 million in discretionary earnings, it really was about 800,000. If they fired the bookkeeper; we'll do the quick math for everybody, fire your bookkeeper is my message, $24,000 a year, hire somebody that does the e-commerce bookkeeping like Tyler and Seller Accountant, even if it's let's call it 600 bucks a month and you're doing an all-encompassing service it's only $7,200 a year, right? So 24,000 minus the 7,200, it's $16,800 in annual savings to the bottom line numbers of your business. If your business is worth four times that adds $67,000 to the list price of your business when you eventually sell it. It's simple and logical math and you don't have an HR problem anymore; you don't have that bookkeeper in-house, you've got somebody like Tyler helping you who's a Bulldogs fan by the way. For those watching the video, stand up just a little bit; what's that logo on your shirt say? Tyler: Man I'm a University of Georgia guy. I'm across the street from the campus here in Athens and Double Dog. I have my MBA and accounting degree here. Joe, I will say this it really is it's not even so much what you could pay per hour because, to be honest with you the client that's doing a million in discretionary earnings is unlikely to be 600 bucks a month for any service even me if we're getting it done right. But the reality is that if you're paying someone your full-time salary; I know this when I had a company with 100 employees. We always had somebody sitting around. If you're going to carry someone you're always having to get them at a rate where you can't use their full capacity or frankly if you're using your full capacity you got to hire somebody else. And so it's inefficient because; and there are some businesses that need to have a full-time controller. I think if you're doing 15 million a year in revenue you probably need to have a high-end controller on your staff. At that point, that's a six-figure job you're looking to hire for. I think the issue that the seller may be that you're describing would come across is not only are they spending the 24,000; even if they paid me the same amount to do it it's actually going to be done correct and when I go to market those books are going to be stated in accrual basis and they're going to have everything the way they want it. And we can scale with them without them having to hire an entire new employee. So I think that really is a big benefit unless you are; this is what I've learned in general. And this is every business I've worked in or own, I want to make sure that I inhouse my core competency; whatever my competitive advantage is I'm going to make sure that I have teammates that allow me to perpetuate that competitive advantage. Anything that isn't my strength I want to find someone that that is their strength; someone that can do it more efficiently and can do it better than I can. I'm not a broker if I need a broker I want to go to someone like Joe that gets the broker business and can do it more efficiently I'm going to pay Joe but I'm going to make a lot of mistakes and lose a lot more money if I try to do it myself. It's really the same with accounting or PPC or anything else. I'm a big believer. That's what my dad always told me. It's just spend your time where you're making your money. I want to get so focused that I can be the best in the world at something and then I want to outsource as much as I can so that I can be better at my core rather than trying to fix my errors all the time and fix my screw-ups and that kind of thing. Joe: I think that's incredibly well said. I don't have a whole lot to add to that. I think it's just brilliant. I think it's a great business methodology and mindset and it's what everybody should be adopting. Tyler, how do the audience members learn more about your services? Tyler: Yeah so thanks again for having me, Joe. So SellerAccountant.com is our website. You can learn more about our services there. Feel free to reach out to us. We'd love to have a discussion with you. And yes it's been a pleasure to being on the show. Joe: And you're going to share that cash flow forecasting spreadsheet. We'll put that in the show notes so everybody can do their own numbers and if it's confusing reach out to Tyler he'd be there to help you. Thanks for the honor man, I appreciate it. Tyler: You got it. Links and Resources: Tyler's Wedsite A2X Accounting Cash flow forecasting spreadsheet
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