Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. Today, I am talking to the owner of Matt O’Neill Real Estate. He’s also, uh, Tide Property Management, and also he’s a happiness coach. Super excited to hear more about that. But what he does is he helps people get out of the nine to five.

So I’m super excited to be rocking out today with Matt O’Neill. Hey, Matt, are you ready to rock?

Matt O’Neill: What’s up, Tim? Ready to rock

Tim Melanson: Ready to rock. So we always start off here on a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by

Matt O’Neill: Yeah, man. I, uh, I thought I was gonna be an engineer my whole life because my dad was an engineer, my older brother was an engineer, my little brother became an engineer, and I was going to school for engineering. And, uh, I went actually on an internship to General Motors as an engineer, and I hated it. It was the w- it was like, it was like a slow death in a cubicle.

And I thought, "Man, I can’t do this." Like, I can’t, I can’t do this for the rest of my life, [00:01:00] this like stuck in a cubicle, pushing spreadsheets, trying to work up this corporate ladder And, uh, I w- I went back to s- to college that fall, and I walked into what I thought was, like, a, a fun department, the marketing department.

I’m like, "Man, this might be more fun than engineering." And this guy grabbed me at the front desk as I’m trying to talk to the girl about becoming a marketing major, and he’s like, "You know what? You should take my sales course." And I’m like, "Dude, I’m way above sales. Like, I’m an engineer, you know? This is… I, I’m not gonna be some salesperson."

And he said, "Well, you can say that, but you do need to sell your marketing ideas to the CEO, so my sales course will help you with that." He was a great salesman, by the way. His name’s Jim Eckert. He runs the sales department at Western Michigan University. I signed up for his course, and then I fricking loved it.

Like, I, I… It was just like, it was so fun because I like talking with people, and I enjoyed the psychology behind it. So bec- I switched my [00:02:00] major to sales. And then getting out of college, I took a 9:00 to 5:00 sales job because, you know, it’s kind of like the path. You, you get out of college, you take a job.

And then it was soul-crushing as well. I was selling the toner cartridges that go inside of copy machines,

Tim Melanson: Wow,

Matt O’Neill: and nobody cares, man. And it… And they weren’t even new toner cartridges. I was selling ones that were recycled. So we took old garbage out of the garbage in these recycled toner cartridges and filled them back in with toner, and then that’s what I sold through the streets of Denver, Colorado.

And the bosses were really, like, on, on us. Like, super oppressive. It was a Christmas Eve afternoon, like 4 o’clock or 3 o’clock, and we’re goofing around and laughing in the office because it’s Christmas Eve. And the boss comes out of his office and yells at us to get back to work. Like, it was total Scrooge scenario.

And I thought, "Okay, I can’t keep doing this, man." [00:03:00] So, um, I did love sales, but I just didn’t like that type of environment. So I thought, "How could I work for myself and use this skill that I enjoy?" And I decided I would get into real estate because no boss, right? And I can sell, and there’s nobody to r- you know, basically you are your own business owner.

So I got into real estate. But then what I didn’t know was that I would have 40 bosses, because every client that hired me was now my boss. And so I worked into this situation where I was really successful and learned a bunch about how to sell real estate, but my weekends weren’t actually free. It wasn’t the freedom I thought it was gonna be.

Um, people were upset, or, like, somebody was supposed to show their house and didn’t show up, and they’re calling me on a Saturday night, like, drunk and, and so upset about this thing that happened. Or somebody let the cat out. And I’m like, "Wow, how did I go from one [00:04:00] boss to 40 bosses?" And, um, then I thought, "Okay, so there’s gotta be a better way than this."

And I thought, "I will, I will teach other people how to sell the real estate, and so they can have all the bosses." And I did that, and started to just hire a bunch of people, and then let them work with the clients and train them. And that’s, that’s one of the things I do now. Um, it’s just, uh, there is a, there’s a book called The Cashflow Quadrants that was written by Robert Kiyosaki,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Matt O’Neill: and he, he talked about the first quadrant is you work for somebody, and the next quadrant is you work for yourself, and that’s what I was when I was that real estate agent.

The next quadrant is you own a business. And I really didn’t own a business because all the people that worked for me selling real estate, they, they count on me, so I have a job. Even though I can… I’m in, I’m in my home right now, and they’re out there doing their thing, I still, I still need, um, you know, [00:05:00] I still need to, to coach them and help them and train them and all that stuff.

So I thought, "What is a business that has recurring cashflow that I could, that I could own and not work in?" So three years ago, we started a property management company, and that is a true B quadrant asset where I hired somebody to, to run it. I hired people to, to sell in it. I hired people to do all of it.

And I just sit back as an owner, not a CEO, and let those people run this particular company, and it’s, and it’s becoming really successful. I’ve got a lot of experience in sales and marketing and all these things that I learned over the years running a real estate company. So I’ll guide them and give them some advice, like I’m, I’m like on their board.

But, um, that is a true work from home style business asset

Tim Melanson: Wow. Matt, that was such a great story. [00:06:00] And you know what? I, I have a similar story, too, and I hope people listening can get that. It’s like every time you get to one point, you’re like, "Okay, that’s what I thought I wanted, but now I need to refine that." You keep on refining and refining and refining until you get to the point where you’re actually free, because I think a lot of people will get there.

And w- what I want to take out of that story specifically is that y- instead of quitting, right, and going like, "Wow, obviously this is not what I thought it was gonna be," and going back to the job, you just keep on refining a little bit more and getting a little bit closer to what it is that you wanted, right?

And that, I think that’s the key, is that it’s not a matter of, like, you- you’ll never get there. It’s just a matter of, like, it takes, uh, it’s one step at a time, right? That you learn something from what you just did, and you go, "Okay, well, now I have 40 bosses. What’s the next step," right? And I love that about the story.

It was so good for that, right?

Matt O’Neill: Well, I wanna, I wanna say something to the person listening to this that is thinking about [00:07:00] this but is really scared.

Tim Melanson: 嗯。

Matt O’Neill: Every step I was terrified. So when I had the 9:00 to 5:00 job selling the toner cartridges, I was making good money. To quit that and become a real estate agent, which I knew nothing about, and there was no paycheck coming in, was a terrifying step.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Matt O’Neill: And then once I had all those clients, and though, though I didn’t like it, that paid my bills, and I’ve got four kids and a wife and a mortgage and all the other things. And I’m like, "If I stop serving these clients, that income goes away, and yeah, I’m taking a bet that I could hire people to do it, but I don’t know if that’s gonna work."

So there’s risk behind every one of th- these decisions. You know, just deciding to start a property management company, there was huge risk with that. I was paying somebody’s salary with no clients and no income. So there was, there was an, it was an investment into an idea that I thought could work but might not.

So the person that’s [00:08:00] listening to this that has this idea in their heart, my opinion is God wouldn’t give you a vision that you couldn’t accomplish. So the idea is there, but what’s standing in the way is massive fear that you could lose what you have and it might not work

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yep, uh, yeah, that. And I, I mean, ’cause when I was… I, I think my experience was that I got into the tech industry, actually I was a programmer, and it was right when the bubble was bursting. And so that safe job was not there ever, ever. I, I mean, I started working, and within a few months they started laying people off.

So I think for me, I was in that… I, I, I never felt like, oh… It was always like, "Oh, okay, I got a paycheck for another two weeks. I’m, I’m okay for now," right? So there was some fear where I currently was, right? So the fear of the next step of, like, breaking out on my own wasn’t that much different. I- it was just [00:09:00] now instead of me sitting there and going like, "I can’t do anything about it."

Like, I mean, if that, if I get laid off, I, I, I can’t… There’s nothing I can do. I can’t work harder and try to keep that job, right? So when I started my own business though, I could work harder. I could, you know, sort of like pivot and like, "Okay, well maybe I can do this. May-" Like, there was lots of other ideas that I could have that could change my outcome over the next two weeks versus sitting in that cubicle and going like, "Hope they don’t lay me off," right?

Matt O’Neill: You, you bring up a point that most people in a nine-to-five never consider. They think… Because I, I’ve, I, I hire people who have nine-to- fives all the time to become real estate agents and, and be independent business owners as a real estate agent, which you are. You, you basically are running your own business when you’re an agent.

And they’re always like, "Yeah, but I got a paycheck every two weeks." And I, and, and I say the same thing that you just brought up. It doesn’t matter how safe you think it is, someone else could [00:10:00] fire you at any moment. And if they do, yes, you can go get a new job, but that safety that you think you have is this illusion.

Once you create your own thing, no one can take it from you. It’s completely up to you, and if you bet on yourself and you know that you’re willing to put in the work, then, then you have more freedom than the person that thinks they have this security with this nine-to-five. Like, I think there’s more security being a business owner than there is working for somebody

Tim Melanson: I, I agree with that for sure. Although it’s probably harder to see until you’re there, right?

Matt O’Neill: Or until you get fired, it, you know, or whatever. Your business implodes and you didn’t see it coming, or your boss decides that he’s got an issue with you and you didn’t know that that was happening, and

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Matt O’Neill: taken from you, and you’re like, "Oh, that, this was a false sense of s- of security."

I was just on a podcast last week with somebody that was a C-level member of some international [00:11:00] corporation. The corporation merged with another corporation, and then they downsized the C-suite. And he’s like, "Man, I, I put in 20 years." And, you know, you would think you work your way up that corporate ladder and you’re at this big level, and the corporation’s doing great under your leadership, that you’re safe.

Uh, but it, you know, cor- corporations can merge, and then they can downsize people. Like, it’s, it’s just out of… It was out of his control

Tim Melanson: Wow. Well, now also with taking those risks, sometimes things don’t go as planned, and I do like to talk about the bad notes because that is another fear. People are like, "Well, what if I make a mistake," right? Uh, and, and those mistakes will happen, and I’m wondering, can you share with me something that didn’t go as planned and how you recovered from that?

Matt O’Neill: Absolutely. Yeah, so I s- uh, I started a, a home flipping business three years ago and I thought, "Oh, this’ll [00:12:00] be, this’ll be fun. This’ll be something new. Uh, I’ll have the agents that are out there f- looking at properties, and if they see one that they think would be a good property that, that we could purchase and then put some, you know, some, uh, money into and then turn around and sell it, that I’d split the profits with them."

And so we ended up with 26 in the first year, and it was, it was going what we thought really well, and I… But to get the loans for all these properties, I used hard money, and we had 4 million in, in loans out. And something that I couldn’t see coming, the government decided to double interest rates in 30 days, and we’re sitting on 13 mid-construction properties, and all of a sudden they’re worth way less than we purchased them for after we’re putting 50, 60, 100K into each of them.

And my wife is sitting there [00:13:00] with me as we’re looking at this impossible situation. We’re like, "Man, we don’t have $4 million to pay these loans off, and all these properties, I can’t just put on the market and sell. They’re all, like, studs and construction sites." And, and even when we’re finishing them, we’re, we’re having to bring 60,000 in cash or 100,000 in cash to the table just to get out of it.

And she’s like, "Man, they might take our house." And I said… I’m like, "That, this was a, this was a riskier situation than I expected." the, the, and this was, uh… It was a really tough situation for us to be in. Um, at that moment, I thought, "Man, I didn’t, I didn’t think I was betting it all." It just seemed like a good business venture, that I know real estate, I know these, I know what houses are worth.

What I couldn’t see was what I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see that the government would double interest rates and then values would plummet in 30 days. Like, I… That was, that [00:14:00] was what would seem like a black swan event that you couldn’t see coming. Um, ultimately, we ended up taking our lumps, and one at a time I sold each of the properties for losses, and we got out.

And it was July, I think. It took me, like, eight months to finish them and then just, and, and just get out of it. And then, and then that was great. We got the $4 million paid off. We lost a bunch of money. Um, but I didn’t lose it all. The 4 million in, in hard money would’ve, would’ve taken us out, but there was enough as we sold them that we got it back that we could pay the, the, the loans off and get out of that tough situation.

What I learned from that was, um, don’t risk your house.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. It’s a good lesson.

Matt O’Neill: It was a great lesson, and I, and I promised my wife I’d never do that to us again. I just read this awesome book on finances by Morgan Housel, um, called The [00:15:00] Psychology of Money, and he had a line in there that I circled and circled and then wrote down and then thought about a whole lot because of the experience I had.

And he said, "Don’t risk money you do need chasing after returns you don’t need."

Tim Melanson: Wow

Matt O’Neill: And he said, and it was exactly what I did. I, I needed money to keep my house and have a place for my kids to live, but I didn’t need the extra returns from this home flipping company. So could we have flipped maybe two or three homes at a time instead of 13 at a time?

Absolutely. I just didn’t… And this is what he said. He, um, he said, "During the course of the United States’ GDP, it’s always up and to the right," and he had, like, 200 years of up and to the right. And then he said, "During this 200 years of up and to the right, we’ve had five major world wars, four presidents have been assassinated, the market has dropped by 10% or more 100 times.

The market has dropped by 33% or [00:16:00] more, like, 30 times." He said, "So whatever bet you’re about to make with leverage and debt, can you, can you hold this thing if everything drops by 30% in value?" And he said, "If you can’t, then you shouldn’t make that bet." And that’s exactly what happened to us, is I’m holding a bag of $4 million and everything I thought w- had value had dropped by 30%.

It was just one of those black swan moments for real estate that you can’t… And this is, it’s his whole point. You can’t see coming the next president assassination or major war that, that’s gonna happen, that’s gonna disrupt everything, or COVID, the pandemic that can come and change the world. So, um, that would be the lesson there, is that if you’re gonna make a bet, make sure you can withstand a 30% drop.

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s… I can’t even add to that. That’s incredibly good, good sense, right? And, uh, and I think that that ends up being something that does happen to people who are, well, I mean, [00:17:00] a lot of us entrepreneurs are, I, I don’t know, wanna say overconfident, but maybe overconfident is the right word, right? We, we, we have this very, very positive outlook of what could happen, which is why we’re in business in the first place, right?

We, we, we didn’t let the fear stop us. And so oftentimes we can be presented with these opportunities that we’re seeing and we’re going like, "Wow, I can’t lose," right? But the thing is is that, like you just said, there are circumstances around us that do happen. Like, okay, fine, we do have the control to pivot and to move and all that stuff, but, but also there are some things that are gonna happen throughout the term of your business that you can’t see happening, and there has to be some sort of- Mitigation of that, right?

And I, I think that’s really, really good sense. If it’s 30%, that’s a really good number. It’s clear, right? If we can just sort of keep that in mind, can I lose 30% and still be okay? I don’t want [00:18:00] to, but that, that is a good place to start, and I like that. Thanks for that. That’s a really good one

Matt O’Neill: Yeah, in 2008 and 2009 I was in real estate, and, um, I- a lot of people took their life during that time because they… I mean, this is just, they weren’t able to… They were over-leveraged.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Matt O’Neill: And, um, and I saw people just filing for bankruptcy. I saw people losing their house. I saw people doing short sales. It was a very…

It was just really common. And people that were well over-leveraged were, were in big trouble. And then, and if you tie your worth to your net worth, it’s gonna be a bad situation. But we do need this money to survive, and sometimes we think, "Oh, I’m not gonna make it." Um, but I, I thought at that time, I’m like, "Okay, I’m not gonna over-leverage," and then I still did it.

And it’s exactly what you said, man. We… To be, to start your own business, you have to have a level of boldness to get u- through the [00:19:00] fear, and you have to have a level of confidence and optimism it’s gonna work. So, and this is what Sean Housel, or, I’m sorry, Morgan Housel talks about in his book too. He says, "The thing that will get you in trouble is always over-leveraging and over-optimism."

Tim Melanson: Um, yeah

Matt O’Neill: you have to have a le- he said getting rich requires boldness and optimism. He said staying wealthy requires some cynicism and skepticism

Tim Melanson: Oh, man. So good. So good. And I can, I can map all my mistakes to that, all of them, every single one of them. The big ones can all be mapped to me just being overconfident and going, "Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine."

Matt O’Neill: Yeah, so, so I, I wanna, I wanna finish this whole thought and put a bow on it. Um, the… So he’s like, "All right, you still have to take risk. You have to, because that’s what got you here." But he, he said, he said, "I want you to think of your money as a barbell, and one part of the barbell is the money [00:20:00] you need to survive.

So this is the money for your home, the money for your groceries, the money that takes care of your family. That you can never touch." And so whatever that amount is, maybe it’s six months worth of savings, or, um, maybe it’s paying off the house, which is what s- when we got, when we got out of the big mess and we paid all the loans off, the next thing we did is we said, "We’ll pay this house off."

And that was, like, our intense focus so that if the house is paid off, they could never take the place that we live, and that… And, and we were able to do that in a couple of years and, um… But then what’s crazy, man, it came, it crept back in again. Uh, a huge deal showed up. I’m like, "Oh, this is a winner." And I’m like, "We’ll just mortgage the house and get…"

And my wife is like, "No. You said, you said it’s a barbell. This is the money that makes us safe. The house we’ve paid off, so you can’t touch that." And so once you have your one piece that keeps you safe, whatever that amount is, you don’t touch it, [00:21:00] and then you risk the stuff that’s above that. Um, so that’s, so as long as I can remember that, I’m saying it out loud here on this podcast so that I stick with it.

Tim Melanson: And having a sane spouse is a good thing too, right?

Matt O’Neill: Yeah, she, and she, she is overly cautious, which totally balances out my boldness

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, my spouse is the same thing. She’s very, very cautious, and exactly what you just said, "You said that we needed this part about…" And I, I’m, I’m like, "Oh, you’re right, I did say that. Okay, fine."

Matt O’Neill: And, and you respect her, and I respect my wife. And I’m like, "Man," I’m like, "We are a really good team." I’m like, "I…" So the reason I was five minutes late jumping on is that I was looking at a triplex that hit the market this morning, and the l- the fourth quadrant of the cashflow quadrants is I, which is investor, where I don’t own a business, I own investments.

And I, I went and looked at this triplex. It just looked like a great deal, and my wife [00:22:00] is like, "Well, where is the cash from the triplex gonna come from?" And she’s all stressed about that. And I said, "Well, I own this other piece of real estate in cash, and it has a value of 400,000, so I’ll take a small note out on that, and that’ll be the down payment, and this property will cashflow."

And she’s like, "Man, I’m super… I don’t know." And I said, "Well, in some cases, your skepticism is gonna be something we shouldn’t do, and in this case, my boldness is, is telling us that this is something that’s gonna help our family in the long run." So, so both can balance each other out

Tim Melanson: Agreed. Yeah, that’s awesome. So l- let’s talk about, I mean, you mentioned earlier the sales, and I, hey, I agree. I think sales should be taught, like, at length in schools, uh, you know, as early as you can. Because really, even if you do decide to be an employee your whole life, you’re still gonna have to sell your ideas.

And, uh, but now, w- when people become self-employed or they start their own business, y- you, I, I mean, it’s even more important [00:23:00] now, and I don’t think that that’s something that people put enough emphasis on. I think that they think, oh, I’m a great whatever it is, web designer or hairdresser, whatever it happens to be.

I’ll be fine. But you learn real quick that no, no, you won’t be fine unless you get out there and do something about it. And so I’m wondering, how do you get the fans? How do you get people in the door to be, uh, you know, to like you, I, I guess and, and do business with you?

Matt O’Neill: Yeah, sales is the lifeblood of every business. And, uh, I’ve got, I’ve got friends who buy underperforming businesses and turn them around, and the biggest lever is sales and sales systems. Um, so it… And I’ve also heard the, uh, y- CEOs really only have a couple of roles, maybe three roles, and it’s building a team, and it’s being the chief sales officer, and the chief marketing mind.

Uh, and that doesn’t, you know, people are like, "Man, that doesn’t seem right. A CEO shouldn’t really [00:24:00] have to be involved in marketing and sales." Well, if you watch companies that were absolutely thriving, that then stopped thriving a- after a CEO successor takes over, a lot of times they hire the operational guy,

Tim Melanson: Oh, yeah

Matt O’Neill: the COO, the one that, that understands how to make the widgets or make the system run right or, you know, do all the operating.

And then great, the operations are efficient, but they start losing customers and the company gets into trouble,

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Matt O’Neill: and then they, they have to bring back in that creative sales forward-thinking person. So if you’re thinking about owning your own business, you have to be relentlessly focused on improving your ability in sales and marketing.

It is all about customer acquisition. You can’t be more efficient with customers that you don’t have. You can’t have better operations when there’s nothing to operate on because you didn’t make enough sales. So that’s my obsession, is how can we get [00:25:00] more clients? How can we get more ideal clients? Where do they live?

How can we find them, and how can we market to them in an effective way? If it’s an obsession, then you study everything you can study, you read every book that you can read, and then you’re thinking about it in the shower, and, like, new ideas come to you. I… Like, I’m always testing and trying. Um, I love talking with other people to see what they’re testing and trying.

Um, so I feel like you kinda have to have a test budget where you’re making small bets all the time. Like, um, I started a YouTube channel. It was a bet. You know, I didn’t know if, if, uh, having a YouTube channel was gonna be successful in real estate or not. There were some people who were doing it to a high level of success.

The cost was pretty high. It was like 50 grand for the year to do this. I, I took a risk on it, and then it paid off, and then all of a sudden we’re the number one YouTube channel, and people from all over the country are watching these videos for long periods of time, having [00:26:00] a lot of trust in me, and then, uh, coming to work with our team.

Other things I try out and I take a bet on, they don’t work, so then we cut them. I usually want to give something that we’re testing six months to 12 months. So, um, that’s the other piece of it. If you’re gonna try something out, you have to have enough patience to see it through.

Tim Melanson: I agree. Now, when we talk about, you know, m- building a band, right? I mean, finding people in your business to work for you, whether it be partners or whether it be subcontractors or employees, is there sort of a process that you go through to make sure you’re finding the right people?

Matt O’Neill: Yeah, man. It’s the most important thing. Uh, our real estate company was named the number one place to work out of 470,000 companies in the state of South Carolina.

Tim Melanson: Congratulations

Matt O’Neill: thank you, man. It’s like the one thing that I’m, like, the most excited about is that people like to work at the place that we’ve created.

But they like to work together. Like, uh, if you look at what do people [00:27:00] want in their workplace, the most important things are not compensation, but that’s one of them. So you have to, you have to pay… In my opinion, I wanna pay better than average. I don’t wanna say, "Okay, this is what, this is what everybody’s paying.

I wanna pay above that." I don’t wanna pay the most premium because then I won’t be able to afford other things. It’s like an NFL salary cap. You only have so much money. Um, but, but I’m gonna invest a little bit more in my people than some other areas, um, because the number one expense is also turnover.

But then you can’t have any turds. No turds can work for you. So just a-holes, not okay. Backstabbers, step on other people to get ahead type people, high performers with prima donna attitudes, it doesn’t go well no matter what the job is. Um, so I, I look for first when I’m hiring somebody, and this could be a partner.

I only have one partner. [00:28:00] Um, so a partnership is like a marriage. Like, you gotta be really sure because a divorce is super ugly and, and difficult. Um, but if… So if it’s a partner, man, you better know this person really well and say, "Man, can I spend my life with this person?"

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Matt O’Neill: Um, but if it’s a vendor even, they’re gonna, they’re…

The way that they behave is gonna be a reflection of you. And definitely if it’s somebody that’s gonna work for you, um, I start with core values. So in the book Good to Great, he talks about you should set five core values for your company and no more, and this is, these five words should mean exactly who you’re looking for.

You should hire people that match those, and you should fire them if they don’t match them. So I just took that to heart, and that’s what we do. Our, our first core value is that we work with integrity. That’s doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. That’s our, so that’s our one-liner definition about what that means.

So then people that we see doing the wrong thing, we’re like, [00:29:00] "Man, you’re not a fit here." like, "Hey, you s- you stole this client from somebody. That’s, that’s a, that’s a lack of integrity. It’s just not a fit with who we are." And because I take the people that do the wrong thing out, all the ones that do the right thing wanna stay because they’re like, "I don’t like working with people who do the wrong thing.

Like, I wanna be able to just trust who I work with." Our second core value is kindness, which is we’re kind to people even when they’re mad. And you work with kind people that do the right thing. Kind people that do the right thing wanna work there too. You attract who you, who… You know, like, so the whole company now has an energy field, and people that are like that are like, "Man, I’m looking for a place that’s like this."

And they come in, and now you have to protect it. As soon as someone’s unkind, and we’ve had a lot of them, um, man, they can’t stay. And e- sometimes they are super big producers, and they’re like, like we, we had a, we had a [00:30:00] girl that was running the entire operations system of, of the property management company.

She was like the go-to piece, and yet four people quit under her leadership in eight months. And I’m like, "This isn’t right." And she, she was putting on a front to us like she was doing everything right and it was always these people’s fault. But the evidence showed that it was the opposite. So we had to do the tough thing and let go of the leader, and then that means that leadership fell on me and my partner because we didn’t have a leader, and then we had to go hire and train and, like…

It, it can be difficult to make the right decision about a people problem. But ultimately, you’ll always be further ahead if you’re putting your culture before your own comfort

Tim Melanson: I agree 100%. And, uh, I mean, that’s something that’s very difficult, I imagine, for any business owner to look at somebody who’s producing extremely well. And I mean, that, that’s just, uh, you know, a lot of human nature is [00:31:00] just, uh, big head, right? You know, you’re, you’re doing really well. You’re performing really well.

You tend to, you know, some certain people will tend to start treating other people poorly because of that’s, that’s what’s going on. And from a business owner’s perspective, you’re looking at the numbers and going, "Wow, this is going really, really well." But what you’re not seeing, as you mentioned, is that everybody else, and it’s, it’s just a toxic person in that, in that group.

And unless you only need that one person, then everybody else is gonna, is gonna be tainted, and you’re, you’re better off to get rid of the person that is performing in those situations, and that could be a, a tough thing to do, right?

Matt O’Neill: It, it is. And toxic is a good word for it

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Matt O’Neill: It, and sometimes, sometimes people are driven to perform because of emotional things going on inside where they don’t, where they don’t like themselves a whole lot, and so they’re trying to perform at a high level to prove that they’re worthwhile. [00:32:00] Well, if they don’t like themselves, they will project that own self-hate onto other people, and it’ll show up as coldness and a toxic work environment.

And it, you know it, I, I’m a happiness coach. I help people with these, uh, emotions and, um, but man, they’ve gotta want to as well.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Matt O’Neill: So I, I’ve tried… You know, my first step, because I, I also value kindness, is to, is to offer some coaching and some support. Um, but we can’t, we can’t offer coaching and support forever when it’s harming other people

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and I mean, that kind of just goes to the next step, which is that person will never really look for help until there’s a problem. And if they keep on getting rewarded by, you know, we keep getting rid of the, the good people that are doing that are n- you know, underperforming, whatever it happens to be, and leaving that person in those positions, well, then they’re never gonna know that it’s a problem.

But if they keep on getting let go, [00:33:00] well, then eventually they’ll get to the point, "Well, maybe it’s me," and maybe they will go and seek that help. So in a way, you’re doing them a service by, by actually letting them go, you know, in a kind way so that they can recognize the problem and maybe go and figure out what’s driving them to act the way that they’re drive- that they’re acting, right?

Matt O’Neill: Uh, yeah. I, I agree, man. Sometimes, sometimes it is the wake-up call that they need. I can only hope that for the people that we’ve let go, that if, uh, that we’ve had those conversations with. Like, "Hey, we, we like you as a human being. Um, we think you can grow. Hopefully this is a, a opportunity for you to, to grow in these ways."

But I, y- you know, you don’t know if they will. It’s, it’s up to them

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So let’s move to your, to your solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business right now

Matt O’Neill: Man, the most exciting thing in my business is working less

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Matt O’Neill: had a, I had a mantra last [00:34:00] year, which is, uh, which is do less. Because we’ve got four kids. My oldest is 12, and she’s already, like, so… She spends so much time in her cheerleading and with her friends. Uh, I’ve heard the statistic that you spend 80% of all the time you’ll ever spend with a child up until the age of 12, and that once they hit the age of 12, you only have 20% of the time you’ll ever spend with them for the rest of their life. And I’m like, man, that’s pretty, that’s pretty tough because I got one that’s 12. My 80% is already gone. And then I’ve got another that’s 10, so I’ve got two years left of that 80%, and, uh, another one that’s eight, and then another one that’s four. And I was on the board for Make-A-Wish South Carolina, and I’m very…

I’m a big fan of that charity. And it didn’t seem like a lot. It was, uh, you know, a meeting once a [00:35:00] quarter and fundraising and things like that. But there’s… E- even though I’m passionate about helping the kids and I’m passionate about the organization, and it didn’t seem like much time, it was psychic energy that was going into it.

And then I had this podcast, and my podcast was helping people be happier, and it had nothing to do with business and success. I just was… I’m just passionate about helping people with mental health. And that didn’t seem like much time. Just, you know, it’s just an hour episode every week, but y- you know, finding great guests and preparing great questions and recording the episode and then promoting the episode and all the things that go into it.

So these were two big things that I really enjoyed, that I was passionate about, and I shut both of them down last year. And then, um, and then I let go of my office at work, and now I’m working… And, and we built this hide-a-bed in our guest bedroom, you know, [00:36:00] that is… So now I, I get to work out here. And I did all of this intentionally so that when I get done with work, I’m just here with my kids.

And, um, and that when I’m done with work, there’s not these other little obligations that are also pulling at my attention so that I can spend these last few years before the age of 12 soaking it in. And, uh, and last night… So we did, we did something else too, and this is a pretty cool tip. We decided, uh, like maybe eight months ago, we would do no screens Monday through Wednesday And that includes me.

Um, and screens, that’s my phone, right? So they’re like, "If I can’t be on my iPad and I can’t be watching TV, you can’t be checking an email on your phone." So I deleted the email app off my phone. I deleted all the social media apps off my phone so my phone would become less interesting. I could still, of course, log into my computer and check my email or log into my [00:37:00] computer and, and check the social media things.

Um, but so yesterday was Monday, and it’s a no screen day, and I’m tired as heck. You know, it’s the end of the day, and Mondays are big days for me. And my son starts crying because my wife is taking my daughter to cheerleading and sh- and he’s like, "Oh man, I wanna be with mommy." I’m like, "All right, dude, what do you wanna do?"

And he’s like, "I don’t… I just wanna be with mommy." And I said, "What if we took a ride to the big park?" like, "All right, I could be kinda into that." And, uh, I gra- and then I went to my 10-year-old and I’m like, "Hey, I’m thinking of taking Brady to this park. Do you wanna go?" She’s like, "Yeah, I could be kinda into that."

And so we get to this big park and played tag around this park for like two hours. It was a beautiful night. We’re running all through the park. [00:38:00] We get home. My daughter’s like, "Hey, do you wanna, do you wanna play a game of horse in the driveway?" And I’m like, "Sh, why not?" So I’m shooting hoops with my daughter, and this is one of my, my goals is to, is to play with my kids.

So the no screen thing Monday through Wednesday, it’s, it is more work, it is more effort, but man, I’ve got memories of chasing my kids around that park and playing horse with my daughter that I wouldn’t have had if w- they were allowed to watch TV or, or sit on an iPad and I was allowed to look at my phone

Tim Melanson: Hmm. Wow. Brilliant. That’s amazing. So, ah, wow, so much there. So now you obviously help people to get out of that nine to five. So how can people find out more about, you know, being able to create those memories like you do?

Matt O’Neill: Well, I do, I, I do do happiness coaching, and, and if anybody’s interested in kind of my philosophies on that, I wrote a book that talks about how to get out of the eight primary negative [00:39:00] emotions that keep us from happiness, and then how to choose positive emotions. There’s two parts to the book, and the best place to find it is on Amazon.

It’s called The Good Mood Revolution. Um, and that’s a really good place to, to start to plug into the, to the way that I think

Tim Melanson: Awesome. One more question. Let’s get into music a little bit here. So tell me, who’s your favorite rock star or band?

Matt O’Neill: Man, I’ve had a lot of them over the years. When, when I was in high school I was, I was obsessed with The Beatles, and, um, and it… I think to me it’s the greatest band of all time. I just heard that what made The Beatles so extraordinary was Paul was classically trained in music, so he had all the musical training to, to keep the scales right and, and follow the patterns that good music is, and John had no training.

And so John was doing all these [00:40:00] out of the box things, and then Paul was, like, putting some structure behind John’s wild ideas, and which is what made them such an incredible music group. So, um, that’s… I, I’m just gonna stick with them

Tim Melanson: Yeah, Beatles my favorite too. I, that, I say that same story many times. It’s actually a- amazing what they were able to do because of that. And you know what? Business follows that quite a bit too, right? I mean, if you’re thinking, uh, within a box, well then you’re not gonna come up with these crazy ideas that nobody has thought of before, right?

Matt O’Neill: But if you’re all out of the box and you’re super crazy and there’s nobody keeping some structure, it can just sound messy and, and not, a- and not actually be great. So you need both pieces.

Tim Melanson: Absolutely. Right on. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Matt, for rocking out with me today. This has been an, an awesome episode

Matt O’Neill: Tim, I really appreciate it

Tim Melanson: Awesome. And to the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information, and we’ll see you next time on the Work At Home Rockstar

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. I love this next guest’s, uh, business name. This is really, really cool. He’s the president, founder, and CEO of LIWMI Logistics, and what that means is Life Is What We Make It. Love that. That’s so cool. And what he does is he, he inspires people to take control of their lives and build something meaningful.

Very excited to be rockin’ out today with Randy Vlasic. Hey, Randy, you ready to rock?

Randy Vlasic: Let’s go. Let’s rock, Tim. Thanks for having me on the show

Tim Melanson: Love it. So we always start off on a good note. So tell me a story of success so we can be inspired by.

Randy Vlasic: Oh, wow. Okay. Um, you know, when I was a kid, I, I wasn’t a great student. So just, just to give you a brief, um, uh, start of where, where I got started, I, I… When I was in school, I didn’t really do well because I didn’t love what I was doing and I didn’t apply it. So I, I, I didn’t really have that curiosity to go and learn it, right?

So as I got older, I kind of had to figure out my way and, um, and I did. So I, I started to get obsessed with trying to find, um, people [00:01:00] that were successful and try to, to copy some of their habits and learn from them so that I could do the same thing. So I went through retail and multi-level marketing, but I ended up into, in, in logistics eventually in my early 20s.

Uh, started out in sales, did really, really well, and eventually decided to start my own company. So I started my first company in 2014. Um, I, I, I, uh, was mid-20s at the time. I, I was doing sales for about four years, but I ended up building that company and, and selling it, um, two years later for, for seven figures, um, when I was 29. So it was, it was a wild ride, you know, up to that point and getting to there. It was just a, a whole, a whole, you know, river of different rapids and decisions that came about and, um, you know, I always choosed, always chose the challenging path and wanted to grow as an individual and it, it worked out. So that was probably the biggest success in my early in my, early on in my career

Tim Melanson: Wow, that’s amazing. I, uh, I went through the multi-level marketing industry as well, and, uh, you know what? You learn a lot through that, [00:02:00] don’t you?

Randy Vlasic: You know, it was probably one, I, I think one of the best experiences that I had because, you know, with the MLM model, like, it, it was about selling somebody a dream, right? And for me as a young kid who didn’t really have a college education, like, I was always looking for that. So when I found somebody who was making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that told me I could do that, I was in.

You know, like, there it wasn’t any hesitation. I was jumping, um, both feet in at the same time, right? And so I got into it and the… I learned so much from so many of those people that were successful in the MLM model. It also forced me to become really good at recruiting, right? So getting to know people, finding out what makes them tick, trying to in- to, to sell them a dream and help them understand my vision of where I was going and how they fit into that.

And so I think I took a lot away from multi-level marketing in the business

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, me too. And I don’t think a lot of people necessarily think of that getting into it. I think first of all, they’re trying to make a, a buck real quick, which is, it isn’t. [00:03:00] I mean, it’s a, it’s a course really. It takes you a little bit of time to g- to get through it. And then, and then, um, you know, just, uh, the, the number of people that I know that didn’t necessarily make a bunch of money in multi-level marketing, although some of them did, and I made some money as well, but were able to just spin off and t- and start a business out of that, that actually did do well, it’s, it’s crazy.

I mean, you’d, you know, you, you don’t hear those stories very often. You hear about the people that failed, right? You know, and, and, and are complaining about it. Mm

Randy Vlasic: Yeah, no doubt. I mean, people made it work. There were people making hundreds of thousands of dollars. I saw, you know, my wife I met in, in that multi-level marketing company. I saw her make, you know, it was insurance, mortgages, and investments, and, um, hence why I got out in 2008. But I saw a lot of people, uh, uh, you know, earn a good living there.

I mean, I was 22 at the time, 23, and I was making, you know, $90,000 in that space. And, um, so at the time I thought I was doing really [00:04:00] good and it, you know

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, you did a lot better than most do it, that’s for sure. That’s, that’s awesome. Yeah, so

Randy Vlasic: though, um, when you mentioned the guys that spun off, I think almost everybody that was on my team is now running a different company and doing really good

Tim Melanson: Yeah. It, it’s one of those things where if you do, if you do take it seriously and you do learn the things that you’re gonna learn, uh, you can’t, uh, it’s very difficult to go back to a job at that point. You know, you don’t, you’re, you, you have, like, control of your life, or you at least learn that it’s possible, right?

Randy Vlasic: Yeah, that was like the first point in my life where I was like, you know, A equals B, right? If I put in the effort, I get the result. And so when there were days where I was like, "Man, I can’t pay my, I can’t pay my car payment. I need to go sell something," like I went and sold something, you know? But that’s the first time you’re like, "Man, this really works and I can do this."

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and that feels very similar to when you do start your own y- you know, your own self-employed business as well. I mean, it’s, I, I just remember sitting in that cubicle being an employee, and I mean, if money’s tight, what do you [00:05:00] do? Nothing. You just sit there and wait, I guess, for your next paycheck.

Whereas when you’re, when you’ve got your own thing, it’s just like to your point, it’s like, "Okay, well, I need some extra money. Well, if I go and hustle today, you know, maybe I can, you know, pull in an extra sale and…" Right? I mean, it, it,

Randy Vlasic: There’s always a

Tim Melanson: of that.

Randy Vlasic: Yeah, that’s correct. There’s always a way, it’s just, it’s just finding that way, right? And then going out and being able to execute on that. And sometimes it’s really weird, right? Sometimes that, that unique scenario that you’re in, um, you know, I know we’re gonna get more into this, but, um, when I started this company, LIWMI Logistics, which we’re a third-party, you know, transportation arrangement, it was in, uh, right after COVID happened.

Well, we had this big influx of inventory that came into the market in, uh, 2022, and then in 2023 the market dropped o- dropped off. There was so much inventory, there was no trucking movement. I’d just hired a brand new employees and I, I couldn’t make payroll, and I was like, "I gotta find out, find [00:06:00] another way to make some money."

Well, I had this forum that I was running with other freight broker owners I’d put together through Facebook Marketplace, and one of them was wanting to start a, a freight brokerage in California. So I actually went, went out to California and launched her company at the same time I was building mine. So I set up a six-month consulting agreement just to pay the payroll,

Tim Melanson: Wow

Randy Vlasic: so I could get my business back to stable before I went out and, you know, was able to come back to it

Tim Melanson: Yeah. That, that’s the thing, right? I mean, it really does teach you that problem-solving mindset of like, "Hey, I’m in control. Hey, life is what you make it," right?

Randy Vlasic: Right. Well, we make it, right?

Tim Melanson: Life

Randy Vlasic: I don’t think anything in life we can do by ourselves. It always takes more than one

Tim Melanson: Oh, I love that. So now, along with the, the good note, sometimes there’s some things that don’t go as planned. So I do like to talk about the bad note because it seems as though that is the number one thing that holds people back from getting started. They think, "What could go wrong?"

Right? And I like to talk about it because, uh, uh, I- there’s probably something that went wrong, and you’re still here. [00:07:00] So can you tell us, you know, something that went wrong and, and how you recovered?

Randy Vlasic: Yeah, I think, um, there’s two really major times in my career that, that stand out to me. The first one is, is I didn’t really know myself. Like, my identity wasn’t really great when I was, uh, s- running my first company because it was all about money and profits and making money, right? And that’s all I cared about, and I built my entire life, right, my whole identity was built around this business that I created.

It didn’t have anything to do with anything outside of that. And then when I sold it, you know, I had all this money, but I didn’t have that business anymore. So it was like I lost it, and I didn’t know really who I was anymore. So for a year, I was, like, probably in the darkest place I’ve ever been. You know, I got, I got really depressed at the time, and I started to really look back at some of the things that I did as a, as a leader in that business and some of the lives that I impacted and some of the bad decisions that I made.

There was a lot of people that I reached out to, and I, I apologized You know, but I had to find my identity, and so I, I started to get back into church, and I [00:08:00] started to, to find other people in my life that could help me get out of that, that were mentors and that were in, in good places. And, um, you know, there were a couple friends that I made through that journey that really helped, helped get out of that, and helped me get started and build Life is What We Make It.

And so that’s kind of where this whole concept came from, right? Life is What We Make It. It was about people building each other up, bringing each other together. That was a really dark place in my life, and so I think finding my identity was a, was, um, one of the most important things. Because before I could build anything, I needed to know who I was first, right?

And, you know, at the end of the day, I’m, I’m, I’m a man of God, I’m a father, I’m a husband. Um, I’m a builder. And the… What my, my concept is is what Life is What We Make It is, is to deliver inspiration, inspire people to take ownership of their lives and build something meaningful. LIWMI Logistics, that freight brokerage company, that’s the tool that we use to enable everybody to do that.

You know, it’s not about just profits. It’s about using that as the tool to help people achieve the lives they want. The, the [00:09:00] second one is the one I just told you about, where, you know, the market crashed and, uh, I lost about 60% of my business. We didn’t lose customers, we just lost volume, you know? And, um, and, and I didn’t know what I was gonna do.

I didn’t know how I was gonna make payroll. And I just randomly, I’m like, "Hey, you know, maybe I’ll ask if, if I can start this other company for, for this lady I’m coaching." And she was in. And so that was it. I was running two companies at the same time. I’d have the same meeting schedule, back-to-back meetings.

You know, I’d run with, with my team, then I’d run with her team, and I was building her team at the same time I was building mine. I did that for six months, and I was traveling all over the place, and it was, it was wild. And, um, it was a cool thing, too, because, you know, you go back to the MLM model, you know, the people that I had just hired, like, I had just sold them this dream about how awesome this was gonna be and how we were making so much money and where we were going with the business, and they come on board, and then all of a sudden the business tanks.

You know? And a lot of them took a chance on me. Like, they were taking pay cuts to come here because they knew this was a good opportunity, and they, they’ve worked with me in the [00:10:00] past, and they knew what I was about. And so now I had to show up for them. I can’t just go lay these people off. You know, I could’ve, but then I went back to being a self-operator, so I had to find another way.

And that, um, was weird, right? Like, trying to come up with an alternative solution. I’ve never actually coached somebody before. I had to figure out how to coach them. At the same time, like, I’ve never ran two companies at the same time, so this is kind of scary. But you know what? I gotta do it, and this is a great opportunity.

And then, you know, I just dove in.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow, that’s amazing. Now, is there anything that you do differently coming out of those experiences like that, that you learn from?

Randy Vlasic: Yeah. You know, the, um… After selling my first company and really thinking about the relationships that I had, you know, I, I, I didn’t have a lot of relationships from that previous company. Um, I was so focused on the results that I didn’t really spend enough time on, on focusing on the individual and really getting to know them, and so I realized that [00:11:00] afterwards.

And so now, you know, if… I, I would hope that if you’d ask anybody on my team, they’d say that I am 100%… I’m, I’m really a softie at heart and I care, and I always wanna make sure that I am doing everything I possibly can to make them successful before we ever get to a place where, you know, it’s not working out right and we have to go the other way.

And so getting to know them, um, is really important to me and, and what makes them tick. You know, I like learning about their interests because let’s face it, like, their job is not what they’re passionate, uh, their most passionate thing in their life, right? There’s something else. It’s being a musician or, you know, running a podcast or having a, a Twitch channel or a stream or whatever that can be, or their kid’s in soccer.

And so if I learn about those things, then, you know, I can use LIWMI Logistics as a tool to, to help them achieve some of the things they wanna accomplish there too. You know, maybe it’s sending somebody some nice equipment so they can start their Twitch channel or, you know, giving them a, a, you know, a, a giant [00:12:00] soccer net that I had sitting around that we’re not using because I know their kid loves soccer.

And sometimes those small things just make such a big difference. So I really try to focus in on the, um, just on the person and really getting to know them. I genuinely love people

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and figuring out the why, right? Because that is, that is the reason why people get out of bed. There’s gotta be a reason, right?

Randy Vlasic: 100%, yeah. And everybody’s different. Sometimes it’s, it’s surprising

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it is. Let’s talk a little bit about practicing. So, uh, I mean, this can go anywhere, but I’m wondering what, what does practice mean to you?

Randy Vlasic: Uh, you know, I call it, um, mastery, right? It’s like I- I- for me to learn something, first I have to, I have to be interested in it. I have to generate that curiosity to really want to learn it, right? So just like as an instrument, if I wanna learn how to play the guitar, I’m doing that because I love the guitar.

I love the way it sounds. I wanna get in there, and I wanna, wanna understand it. So now I’m watching the YouTube videos. There’s passion there and excitement. So I have to have that curiosity, number one, but once I have that, it’s just em- um, embracing it, right? I think [00:13:00] mastery comes from stepping into that environment and getting to know that environment, and then putting yourself in that uncomfortable situation and getting comfortable in it, right?

It’s like getting on a podcast for the first time. You don’t really know if you’re gonna say the right things. A lot of times you probably don’t. But the more times that you’re in that environment, you know, the more comfortable you get in it, the, and the more mastery or, or, or the better you get at that craft.

I mean, I use sales as an example, too, ’cause I’ve seen so many people who’ll be like, "Well, I’m, I’m struggling in sales." Well, what do you need? Well, they’ll say, "Well, I need more training. You know, I need more training. I wish I had… There was this secret thing." And it’s, there’s no secret sauce to say, "Hey, if you said this, you’re gonna close 90% of your deals."

There isn’t. For m- most of them, I just like to say, "You know what? Practice makes perfect. You gotta be on the phone. You have to be talking to somebody. You have to be in that environment. You have to be getting hit with objections. When you get those, when you get stuck, bring that to me. Let’s work through some of those things."

But we can train on everything today, but [00:14:00] until you put it into practice, it’s really not gonna stick, right?

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, and, and I found, I found something really fascinating to me is that when you do that kind of coaching with multiple people in your team, it’s interesting that there are some objections that are the same that everybody gets, but there’s also, like, differences as well. And do you find that that’s, that that happens to you as well, that certain people get certain objections all the time?

Randy Vlasic: Yeah, I think it, um, it depends on how that individual’s delivering themselves sometimes, I think, right? The, the objections, a lot of, lot of objections are similar. Um, but sometimes it’s just that the way that the person is delivering a certain topic or, or the questions that they’re asking that they’ll get at the same objection that somebody else may not be getting.

So sometimes it is that individual

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and it may, it might have something to do with just the belief and that aspect of whatever it is that they’re offering, right?

Randy Vlasic: Yeah. I mean, belief is the biggest thing, right? It’s, if you can believe in what you’re [00:15:00] selling, you know, you’re gonna be more successful, right? I always, I always use it as this ex- use this example. Like, if you, if I came to you, Tim, and I was like, "Hey, I know you have cancer, and I have the cure for cancer, and I wanna give that to you, but it’s gonna cost you $100,000."

Now, cancer is a significant thing, right? You– if, if, if you had the funds then you, you probably would say yes. But let’s just say you’re like, "No, I don’t, I don’t really want this." My, my conviction on this, this, this cure, though. You’re like, "No one’s ever done this before." I’m like, "No, but I know this." The way that I feel about selling you this pill, the conviction is so strong that I can’t s- I can’t let you say no, Tim.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Randy Vlasic: You know, you have to say yes, and so I’ll have to find a way to do that. That’s always an example I like to use

Tim Melanson: Yep, it’s true. Yeah, and, and, and yeah, I mean, that’s the thing is that if the person doesn’t want on the other side, then it, it, it’s really just a mismatch in what they’re looking for. And then that just probably comes down to more questions. You know, you [00:16:00] didn’t ask the right questions to find out if they actually had cancer in the first place, right?

Randy Vlasic: Yep.

Tim Melanson: I mean, that’s an odd example, but yes.

Randy Vlasic: Yeah, I mean, it all comes down to, you know, to understanding the individual that we’re talking to. Like s- I don’t think sales is some… There’s definitely some technique to it, but most of it is just building a relationship and then getting to know what makes the person tick and what they’re trying to accomplish, and helping them do that.

So if we can identify that problem and give them the solution, then there’s a good chance they’re, they’re gonna take it

Tim Melanson: Yep. And I do think that o- as time goes on too, uh, I mean, the, the, you know, the, the tricks, I guess, are less effective as more time goes on, I think, because, uh, I think that, um, you know, especially with AI coming out and all that stuff, there’s lots of, of, you know, tactics and things that you can use. But really people do business with people, and so the more real you are about, you know, yourself, you know, they’re, they’re gonna be attracted to you ’cause they like you, you know, rather than the next person over there that can sell them the same thing, right?

And oftentimes that’s the [00:17:00] thing, is it’s a lot of different people offering the same solution. Why would they choose you, right?

Randy Vlasic: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, so

Randy Vlasic: I, even in, in the logistics side of things, I mean, I could give you an example. You know, we roll out LTL as a service, which is less than truckload. It was a new service offering we had, and we’ve never done it before. And I’ve, I have done it at my previous companies and managed, you know, $50 million of it.

But, you know, as a new service offering, going to a customer and being able to say, "Listen, I know you guys are doing this. I know there’s opportunity there. I know I can offer a solution, and I wanna build that for you, and I want you to be the one to help me build that. Help, help me understand what’s important so that I can build this solution to really meet your need."

And they love that stuff. You know, it’s not just like, "Hey, let me sell you LTL." It’s like, "Let me- let’s make this together." You

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Hey, your, uh, your background looks awesome. That, is it, that’s a real background, right?

Randy Vlasic: It is, it is, yeah

Tim Melanson: So let’s talk a little bit about your jam room. So what does your home [00:18:00] office look like?

Randy Vlasic: Oh, man, it is a production studio, Tim. I love my home office, um, so much, and I’ve invested a ton of money into it and, and time. And, you know, when I first started working from home in 2017, I think it was, um, you know, I had a, I had an office room, and it had this big giant desk in it, and it had another desk in it, and it had a, a file cabinet and all this stuff in there.

And, like, I had a standup desk that sat on top of that, and it was just cluttered. And it wasn’t, um, a place that I really loved because it was like the storage closet, right? My wife would, like, she needed to h- to stick something somewhere, she’d put it in the office, right?

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Randy Vlasic: So I got stuff all over the place and I’m like, "I hate this."

You know, when I walk into work every day I’m like, "Man, this environment is just not, it’s not motivating me," you know? And, uh, so I’m like, we had this, this room in the front of the house. I, I called it the museum room. It was the room where, like, we had all the nice furniture but nobody ever really sat in it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Randy Vlasic: And I’m like, "I’m taking the museum room over." So I [00:19:00] took that over. I have, um, the VariDesk, which is one of my favorite desks. They’re just super durable. They’re kind of expensive, but Vari makes them. Um, it’s a standup desk. Underneath me I have a, um, uh, a treadmill. So I typically like to walk when I’m working during the day.

I sit down when I’m doing stuff like this. But I spent a lot of time, you know, in, in getting good equipment, cameras and lights and, and making this a place that I really love to come into, and sometimes I’ll come in here for fun, you know?

Tim Melanson: That is awesome.

Randy Vlasic: yeah.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome, yeah. And, and, and that’s just it. I mean, if, if your, if your job is at home and you’re not excited to get into your office, then how are you really gonna get anything done, right?

Randy Vlasic: That’s right. So I, I definitely love this space. You know, my kids love, love this space too, and I like to keep it clean and tidy when I can, and yeah

Tim Melanson: Uh, have you, uh, do, do you have an issue with, like, people interrupting you during the day at all, or?

Randy Vlasic: Um, yeah, [00:20:00] sometimes. I mean, my kids are… You know, my son’s on this e-bike kick, right? And so it’s like every time he needs something with the e-bike, he just walks in, he’s like, "I need new tires. I need new brakes," whatever it may be. And so he’ll walk in, and sometimes it happens, but for the most part, you know, they can hear me or they see that I’m on a call, and they know that, you know, when Dad’s on a call, don’t bother him.

Um, and then they’ll come in, and they’ll sometimes they’ll just give me a wave and they’ll walk by, and I’ll know they need something, and I’ll go find them afterwards. And sometimes, you know, I just had an example where I was having a conversation with a, an employee the other day, and my son, he just made the honor roll, right?

Comes home from school super excited. He comes running into my office. I can see the excitement on his face, and I know, I’m like, "Man, this is something I probably need to listen to." And I, I asked, you know, the employee, I was like, "Hey, man, listen, can you give me a couple minutes? Can I call you right back?"

Had him sit down and tell me all about it. He was so excited. Um, so there’s times like that, too, you know, where I, I, I will, uh, uh, stop what I’m doing to give him the time, and I think that’s the benefit of working from home, right? You’d have the same interactions if you’re sitting at a desk in a cubicle.

Someone’s gonna walk up to you and bother you in the middle of the day, and you’re gonna [00:21:00] stop what you’re doing and talk to them. So rather it be my kid, you know-

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And, uh, I mean, I think that this kind of thing maybe might keep people from starting a business from home, thinking that, "Oh, I’m just gonna get interrupted all day," and I don’t know how… And, and number one, I think kids espe- especially more than adults, they get it faster, right? I mean, if you, you know, maybe, um, and I know when I first g- started working from home long before lockdowns and all that stuff, people didn’t quite understand it.

They thought I could help them move ’cause I was doing nothing.

Randy Vlasic: That’s right.

Tim Melanson: right? But

Randy Vlasic: go golfing?

Tim Melanson: go ahead

Randy Vlasic: You know, or somebody asks you to go golfing or whatever during the day, I’m like, "I’m working."

Tim Melanson: Yeah. They’re like, "Ah, I got the day off, let’s go golfing." And you’re like, "Oh, come on." But, but I, I think that for, for kids it’s like th- they don’t know any different, so it’s, it’s a matter of like, "Oh, Dad works from home, so he’s working.

Like, okay, I gotta leave him alone." So you, you do find that. But then the, the next thing you mentioned about when your kid comes in, how do you think that, like, the, the, how did the customer react when [00:22:00] you had to go for a second?

Randy Vlasic: Um, it w- it wasn’t a customer. If it was a customer, I- typically I would tell my son, "I’ll- give me a minute and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll reach out to you." Unless it’s somebody that I’m really close with and I could say, "Hey, David, you know, we’ve worked together for a long time. Can I just call you back in a minute?" I think the customer will respond, uh, well to that.

You know, I, I, most people find, like, when it’s something that’s really important to you like that, like your kids and, you know, they have kids and they can share in that too, like, they’ll, they’ll promote that. I think as somebody who’s considering to work from home, you know, man, I have kids at home, and is that an interruption?

Like, yeah, I think working from home is the absolute best because it gives us more flexibility than working in an office. First of all, I’m saving, you know, whatever it is, 13, 30 minutes, half an hour, an hour drive time each single, every single day. If I was working late, I’m working at the office, so I can’t just come out and have dinner with my family and go back in.

Here I can do that, right? I can step out, I can go ha- have a meal with my family, I can get them off to school. I can come back in, I can get back to work. And I think that’s [00:23:00] the, that’s where working from home really is super valuable, and I think that work-life balance that it provides to our employees too is the same, you know?

Like I have, we have people that their kids get off the bus at 3:00. Every day at 3:00, they’re going to get their kid from the bus. Like it- that’s great. Go get your kid from the bus. Like I don’t expect you to sit here from 8:00 to 5:00 and work nonstop and, and ignore everything that’s going around you. All what I care about is, you know, did we meet the KPIs and the expectations?

Are we getting the results that we need, you know? That’s all that matters to me. If you can– If you’re a salesperson that can deliver exceptional results better than any other salesperson and do it in four hours, nobody’s pissed off about that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Randy Vlasic: You’re leading the sales team, but you’re gonna do it in four hours.

Everybody else is doing less, and they’re doing it in eight. Like no one’s mad about that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, number one, I, I agree. I, I think that clients and, and team members actually, I think it probably benefits you to show that you’re a human and you have, you know, y- [00:24:00] you love your kids and that kind of stuff, right? Like, I think that that’s a super benefit. And then the second part that you mentioned too, like, yeah, I mean, there’s just so many people in the corporate world that are focused on how much time they’re at the office rather than what kind of productivity that they’re producing.

And I mean, that’s really what’s important. And w- as business owners, we should be more interested in what they’re producing rather than how much time they’re sitting at their desk, right?

Randy Vlasic: I mean, it all comes down to results, you know? And I definitely don’t wanna be the person that has to micromanage you. You know, I can … I don’t need a software tool that runs on everybody’s laptop that tells me, you know, what they’re doing ni- every single minute of the day. I just need to know that our business KPIs are this, you know, maybe it’s Y, and we need to hit that KPI.

And so as long as we’re hitting that metric and that metric is, is operating, great. Now, if we’re not hitting that metric, then we’re having a conversation about that. But I’m not sitting there going, "Hey, you’re, you, you turned yellow for, for 30 minutes. Like, what have you been doing?" Like, I don’t wanna be that guy.

I wanna give that to the team and let them run with it, [00:25:00] you

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So what tools do you use in your business to get you success?

Randy Vlasic: Um, well, I think my home setup is my biggest, my biggest tool. This is a command center, right? From a, from a digital standpoint, I am having so much fun with artificial intelligence.

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Randy Vlasic: So much fun with it. I am, uh, you know, I, I’m, I am not, uh, a programmer by all means. You know, I’ve launched a personal branding website.

I just launched, um, lifeiswhatwemakeit.com, which is, is about giving, giving back to, to, to drivers. And so there’s, you know, gear that we sell and stuff like that, and then we give proceeds to, to the driving community and give them healthy meals. And like, you know, I’ve built that stuff and, and by myself in a matter of hours.

You know, I remember when I first built my first website for LIWMI Logistics, it cost me $10,000 to build that. You know, when I went to go build randyvlasich.com, they wanted 4,000. Then I found AI, and I was like, "Pfft," and I built it in three hours by myself, and I never coded a [00:26:00] single thing before, right? So I’m also using AI a lot of times, like, to be my executive assistant.

It sends me an update every single morning in my email. It tells me where the numbers are at. So I’m us- loving AI in that way. It’s making me… It’s like unlocking superpowers for me. Like, it fills all the gaps that I had, and all the things that I hated doing, it does those great.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Ugh, I can’t say enough about it as well. All that left brain stuff, right? I mean, it allows you to be creative and it lets all the monotonous stuff, it does it for you, right?

Randy Vlasic: Time-consuming stuff. Like just, you know, I can come up with the, the, the content that I wanna deliver, it can help me build it, and then I can just do it, or I can have it run an analysis, and then I can just validate it for a customer. From an analog perspective, um, you know, I, I, I like to read a little bit.

Um, I’m not great at it, but I do like to read a little bit. My favorite tool, my favorite instrument though would definitely be the pen.

Tim Melanson: Hmm

Randy Vlasic: Um, I love fountain pens, and I think everything starts for me with the pen. [00:27:00] And, you know, when you th- when I- we talk about goals and things like that, like I’m, I’m a … I like to journal every single day.

I like to, to ta- to see how my day went. It forces me to slow down, to, to think intentionally, to write it down. And then when I get into the business side of thing, when it comes to planning, like I like to just un- disconnect from, from the digital world, and, and just sit there and really just write, plan, strategy, mind map.

Um, even like my business, uh, business vision, right? I mean, we all have goals in life. I think vision’s, the vision of it is the most important, and having a document to me is, is the best because if I can look out three years in my business, and I have it written down on a piece of paper, and I have that in front of me every single day, I’m always looking at it.

And if I get off track, I can very specifically see where I’m off track and what I need to fix. And so for my vision, I like to look out three years and then write it in present tense. What do I see in the, ar- around me? What are we doing as a remote company? What are we, uh, [00:28:00] philanthropic things are we doing?

What are we doing as a, as a community? How are we getting together? How are we helping other people? And I can write that in, in present tense and then have that document to do it. So for me, it’s definitely a pen and paper.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow. That’s amazing. Yeah, and so you do… It’s, it’s almost affirmations, I guess, right? Where you write it in the present tense

Randy Vlasic: Yeah. So, um, yeah, just like affirmations, right? I’m a successful person. I’m, uh, you know, I’m a CEO of a $100 million company and, uh, we have a worldwide remote team and, you know, we’re, we’re getting featured in, in a lot of different articles, and companies are coming to us and they’re, they’re asking us how we, how we run the successful remote team, and they’re learning from us and operationally how they do it.

Like, it, it puts you in that environment, right? And then you can, you can see that

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And they work. I mean, I know a lot of people think that they don’t, uh, but it is, it is sort of this magic, right?

Randy Vlasic: Yeah, I mean, otherwise, you know, the, the alternative is, and I’ve done it too, I’m like, "Hey, I got an Excel file that has what I wanna be as an individual, what I wanna be as a [00:29:00] business owner, what do I wanna be as a father and a husband," right? And I got all these, these things that I wanna accomplish. But that sits in a file in a folder that I never have opened.

So the only time that I’m seeing that is if I’m doing, you know, intentional reviews weekly, quarterly, monthly. But if I have a document that sits on my desk, I can share that document with somebody else now. So when I interview somebody for a job, I’m like, "Hey, read this first. Tell me what you think about it.

Where do you see yourself fitting into it?" Now I have something that’s tangible

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I love that. I love that. You know, the, the physical, there’s, there’s something to be said about that, and even physical books, right? Rather than, um, you know, e-books or even audiobooks. I mean, audiobooks are super helpful because you can listen to them while you’re doing something else. But the physical books, I mean, there is something to be said for it, right?

Randy Vlasic: 100%. I, uh, the books that I read, um … So I have attention deficit disorder, ADHD. So typically when I read a book by myself, I read a book or I read a whole chapter sometimes, and I get to the end and I’m like, "What did, what did I just read? I don’t even remember what happened." I have to go read it again. And so what I’ve [00:30:00] learned is, that works best for me is I’ll, I’ll, I’ll order the book as an audiobook, and I’ll listen to the book while I read it, and then I just use the book for notes, and I take notes in the book, and I highlight things as I’m listening to it, but I like to listen to it

Tim Melanson: That’s an excellent idea. I never even thought to do that. That’s a great idea because you just order it in two different formats, and now you can follow along in the book just like your parents read to you.

Randy Vlasic: That’s right. And then I have, again, that tangible thing that I, if I wanna m- I’m like, "Hey, there was that book that I read and I love that spot." I can just go grab it off the bookshelf, and I can open it up, and I can see it

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Love that. So I’m excited to hear your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your, in your business right now

Randy Vlasic: Oh my gosh. Um, so I just launched Life is What We Make It, like the real movement part of it, about a month ago. Um, so the cultures and the values all live in LIWMIlogistics.com, and we’re doing amazing things. The freight market is absolutely wild right now.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Randy Vlasic: Help companies understand their transportation in such a way that it becomes such a value proposition to them in the [00:31:00] market.

But Life is What We Make It, um, the whole goal of it is to inspire men and people to, to take ownerships for lives and build something meaningful. And so I’m trying to build a following and share some content that’s, that’s able to help some other folks that may be be in similar industries, and bring on maybe a couple guests that can share some of their stories.

Um, and then I’m just using LIWMI Logistics as kind of the tool to, to, to enable m- myself and my team to be able to do those things. So the movement is, is starting. It’s very new, you know, and, uh, and again, it’s one of those things just like anything else. It’s scary, man. I, I … This is my seventh podcast and I can’t

You know, every single one I get off and I’m like, "What was I thinking? Why did I say that?" And then this is the same thing. I’m like, "Why did I roll that content out? Oh my God, I, I didn’t put music on or I did something wrong." And, but it’s fun and it’s ins- it’s exciting for me. And the, um, what it’s doing for other people is the most rewarding thing.

You know, I have 20-something-thousand TikTok followers [00:32:00] on TikTok, right? And I got that through, through a weird video I posted with my daughter that we made together. But now that I’ve shifted to Life is What We Make It, and I’m sharing content that has to do with like finding your identity, building your vision, how do you master your habits, what are the people that help you get there, what does m- m- uh, um, momentum look like?

Now I’m having all these kids reach out, and I never even thought about inspiring children, but I’m having my son … You know, I’ve had kids that my sons know or these kids that are reaching out. They’re like, "Hey, I never even thought about this. This is really helping me in my life."

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow. That’s

Randy Vlasic: And so yeah, it’s been, it’s been a wonderful ride.

I’m having a lot of fun with it

Tim Melanson: So how do we find out more?

Randy Vlasic: Um, the best way to find me is just go to randyvlasic.com. Um, it links to all my social platforms there and everything that I’m doing. Um, it links to, um, our movement site as well. Um, so again, just randyvlasic.com

Tim Melanson: And so where’s the podcast available then?

Randy Vlasic: Right on randyvlasic.com. It’s hosted on, on [00:33:00] all the major podcast networks. So you can find it on Spotify and, uh, I have it on YouTube, um, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, but all of the links for everything that I do is on randyvlasic.com

Tim Melanson: Oh, love that. Right on. All right, so maybe the toughest question of all, and we’re gonna get into the music side a little bit. So who is your favorite rock star or band?

Randy Vlasic: Oh, God. I think, um, man, I love Kid Rock. I w- yeah, I think from a rock star standpoint, like definitely it’s Kid Rock, but I love all kinds of music. The only thing I don’t listen to is hard metal, but outside of that I’ll, I’ll, I’m rap, rock, and, and country all in the same car ride.

Tim Melanson: Nice. Well, I mean, those, those are kind of like getting mixed together nowadays, isn’t it?

Randy Vlasic: Yeah. Yeah, no doubt it is. It is

Tim Melanson: Have you ever seen Kid Rock in concert?

Randy Vlasic: I did. Last time I saw them was at, uh, Summerfest in, in Milwaukee. I went with my wife.

Tim Melanson: That’d be quite the show, eh?

Randy Vlasic: oh, it was a great show. Great show

Tim Melanson: that’s awesome. Well, thank [00:34:00] you so much for rocking out with me today, Randy. This has been a lot of fun

Randy Vlasic: Oh, Tim, it’s been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having on me, or having me on the show

Tim Melanson: No problem. And so we’ll see you next time on the n- on the Work At Home Rockstar podcast, and make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information

Randy Vlasic: Take care

Tim Melanson: Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. Very excited for this episode. We’re talking to the founder and president of Business Whit, and what he does is he helps business owners and work-at-home leaders to move from chaos to clarity by designing businesses that don’t depend on them for every decision.

Wouldn’t that be great? We’re talking to John Whitt. Hey, John, are you ready to rock?

John Whitt: I am, I am. Thanks so much for having me

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So we always start off on a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can all be inspired by

John Whitt: Um, so real success for me, I’ve been doing this coaching business for 16 years, and so some of my best successes are being able to take somebody from, you know, a, a business that is just consuming them to them being able to triple their revenues and move to the East Coast, semi-retire, and basically participate in the business when they chose, as opposed to having to be there all the time.

And ultimately, that sets the stage for what I [00:01:00] really want to happen with everybody

Tim Melanson: Hmm. Yeah. Wow. And i- isn’t that interesting that, uh, you know, we often get into a business because we want some sort of freedom, right? And then does that happen all the time? I’m not sure, right? We do get some flexibility, right?

John Whitt: You get some, you get some time flexibility pretty quick, right? So one of the reasons why I started my practice is that, um, in my corporate world, I was flying around, I was gone all the time. I missed a lot of my children’s events. When I started my practice, I was able to go to my son’s football games on Thursday afternoon.

Now, that meant I worked Thursday night, but, you know, I had that flexibility, whereas in the corporate world, I didn’t have that flexibility.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

John Whitt: The issue, I… You know, I’ll just explain this. When, when people start their business, they build it by default. They try a l- they get an idea, they get a service, product, they try a little of this, they try a little bit of that.

And that default process, a lot of times it’ll generate some revenue, and it takes some hustle to make that happen, right? It doesn’t [00:02:00] happen just because you didn’t work hard. You gotta get after it. But you realize over a period of time that all of those little things that you did are really inefficient.

It’s like people, they build the airplane while they’re flying, and that plane isn’t very aerodynamic, and it caps at some point. At some point, you get enough customers and there’s no more hours in the day, you can’t take on any more. And I see tons of business owners, tons is not a great word, but they- they’re doing their invoices late at night.

They’re doing their financials. They’re responding on quotes on Saturday. They’re working at night, they’re working on weekends, they’re working… And basically, the business has consumed them. That’s what happens when you build a business by default. My goal, understand how to build a business by design so that doesn’t happen

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Wow. And, you know, I think there’s a different… Uh, I, I think there’s parts of our businesses that we probably love so much. Like, I mean, if you look at music, I mean, you know, if you’re late at night, you know, [00:03:00] playing a riff and practicing or something like that, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But there are also parts of your business that are s- not super fun that you have to do as well.

Now, I’m wondering, is that kinda what you’re saying? Like, can we maybe focus more on the things that actually light us up in our businesses and less on the things that don’t?

John Whitt: Yes, absolutely. And it’s about building the design, the team, the system around you that takes care of the stuff that doesn’t light you up, so that you can focus on… And usually the things that light you up are your one-of-a-kind you things. They’re, they’re the things that only you can do. You’re the only one that can think those rhythms, that, that material, and that’s where you need to spend your time.

And so all those other things that can be done by other people, we want other people to do them. But we have to build a business that serves them, that makes enough money to pay them so that you can do your thing

Tim Melanson: That’s an excellent way to put it because it, it is true. The, the things… I, I think we, we, we, we need to feel [00:04:00] some sort of sense of purpose, and so the things that only we can do are the things that we are really excited about, and also you, you, you can’t actually delegate that to someone else, and if you do, it- we wouldn’t be happy ’cause now you’re not doing the things you love anymore

John Whitt: It is, in fact, it’s one of the frustrating things when you’re having to do those things that you don’t love. It’s not, it’s just not a pleasant, pleasant experience. You know, I, the, the tool I teach is called the Freedom Stack, and it’s delegate, automate, and elevate. Um, and it’s exactly what you said, but that elevate piece is what are you supposed to be working on?

How do we elevate that so that, that, that is where your time and energy goes, not into the delegation, because somebody else can do that, or the automation, because that’s another good concept.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I was once told, um, that if you procrastinate on something, then chances are that’s the thing that you should be delegating. Is that… Does that make sense?

John Whitt: In many ways [00:05:00] it does. Um, and as, as you’re looking at it, as you’re looking to the, like, what should I delegate? Um, we start with the tasks that you can buy somewhere else, right? You have an hourly wage that if you, if you figure out what your income, what you want your income to be, you get to decide what that is, right?

And so let’s just say you decide that you want $100 an hour. If you’re doing tasks that you could buy for $25 an hour, you’re actually costing yourself money. You need to do the work that generates $100 an hour. And that’s what happens is you look at it and say, "Well, man, my, my real purpose, my real, is up here, right?

And I’m doing this down here." And that’s where the procrastination comes from. And so yeah, move that off your plate

Tim Melanson: I wanna make a, a, a reference again to music again. So, uh, one of the toughest things about being a musician is that we love to play music, and there’s a lot of musicians that would love to do it for free, right? We love doing [00:06:00] it so much, right? And so I think that maybe that aligns a little bit to some people and how they see their business, and especially the thing that they love to do in their business, right?

And so when they say they wanna make $100 an hour, that’s like, it’s weird because they feel like they’re almost even cheating a bit because they’re getting paid all this money for something that they would do for free. Is that, uh, d- do you think that that happens in, in regular businesses as well?

John Whitt: I, I th- I think it does. Um, but a couple things you have to understand. When you do it for free, people don’t appreciate it as much. They don’t value it as much.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

John Whitt: You can’t do it for free, and you can’t do it for cheap. You wanna figure out what is that, that spot in the middle that, you know, you’re getting compensated and they’re feeling value

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

John Whitt: ‘Cause I, you know, coaching for free, and I do that.

I do some pro bono coaching, but I do, like, work with nonprofits and things like that. Um, but the reality is the, the clients that I work with that really need my services, that are gonna make a big difference to them, [00:07:00] they don’t look at it. If I was free, they’re like, "You’re not good enough."

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think there’s a, I, I think there might be some, like, sort of deprogramming that we’re taught to think that work is hard and work is not fun, right? When it is… Now, we- that’s what you’re telling me right now, is that it is possible that you can have something that you’re passionate about that you would do for free that provides enough value to someone else that you could be paid handsomely for that thing that you would do for free anyway.

And isn’t that a great place to live?

John Whitt: That is a, that is the place to live. That is not a great… That’s where you wanna be

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, okay, so there are some things that don’t go as planned on the journey, and I’m wondering, I like to get those out because people really let that hold them back on getting started in the first place, is w- worrying that they’re gonna make some mistakes. And wondering, can you share with me some, you know, mistakes that you’ve made over the years that we can learn from?

John Whitt: Oh, that’s a long list. [00:08:00] Um, well let, let me explain the mistakes curve real quickly, ’cause I think this is helpful. Whenever you’re learning something new is where you’re gonna make some mistakes, right? ‘Cause you don’t know it, you don’t know how to do it. You can think about back when you learned how to ride a bicycle or if you ever learned how to drive a manual transmission car.

It’s, there’s a lot of craziness in that early stage, right? But eventually you learn from your mistakes and you get better and better, and pretty soon you can drive the car, you can ride the bike, you can snowboard. They all play that, that place where you have to, you have to practice, and you get feedback when you do it wrong.

So if you crash the bike, you did it wrong. You gotta, you gotta get better at it. So understand that, that that’s just part of the process. So I am a guy that has always enjoyed really big projects. Really… You know, some people, you know, one project for the whole year, they’re in heaven. And other people, you know, one, that would kill them.

That would just be like give them another hole in the head. Um, some people need more variety. I’m the guy that likes the [00:09:00] deep stuff. And so, um, a lot of times that involves a lot of… And I, I have a sort of an innovation background as well, so that has, um, a lot of net new learning parts to it. And I’m currently engaged in live virtual events, and live virtual events I’ve done in person on stage events, but live virtual events includes all this technology.

And then there’s the learning to do the, the marketing and the development, everything else, um, for a new type of service delivery. And there are, like, 1,000 moving pieces, and none of them, not one of them is, like, complex or too hard. It’s just there’s so darn many of them. And so I go through and I, "Oop, I forgot to do that.

Oop, I forgot to update that text. Oop, I forgot to do that." And so it’s building for, ultimately it’s building systems that allow me to remember to take care of all of those little things, but that doesn’t happen overnight. So I’ve made many, many, many [00:10:00] mistakes

Tim Melanson: And you’re still here.

John Whitt: And I’m still here. And I keep, and I keep plugging along.

And the, the, I think the, the trick is to not get depressed about not making the progress that you want. So the, the way I teach is, you know, most of the time we’re forward thinking. We’re looking like, "This is the goal. This is where we wanna go." And you get up in the morning and it’s not any closer, or maybe you found something and made it even farther, and it- that’s like, "Ugh."

The, the thing to do is turn around and look behind you and see where you’ve come, because I guarantee you the distance that you traveled, you, you don’t, you’re not thinking about that. You’re not thinking about measuring that. But when you look back and you go like, "Well, yeah, I know I still got a way, but man, I’ve got a lot done.

I’m a lot different today than I was a year ago or six months ago or three months ago." And that’s a place where you can pick up some energy to restart the, the goal process

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I think that we, not only do we compare ourselves to who we think we wanna be in the future, but we also compare [00:11:00] ourselves to other people too, and you’re only seeing their highlight reels, right? So you’re kinda

John Whitt: They don’t tell you the things, they don’t tell you their struggles. Right now, a few, a few of the influencers out there, um, will share some of their struggles, and they teach from that, and that’s– I, I appreciate that. That’s one of the things that I try to do as well. Um, but most people are just talking about their highlights

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, wow. So let’s talk a little bit about The Jam Room. Like, I mean, you’ve been working from home for quite a while now, and so how do you, how do you stay productive in your home office when there’s so many distractions around?

John Whitt: Well, um, I learned this a while back from Dan Sullivan, who is the strategic coach. He’s been coaching longer than I have. Um, at night, uh, we’re gonna go do a quick little evaluation of what we got accomplished today, and we’re gonna identify three things. Not 10, not one, but three things that we wanna get done tomorrow, and we’re gonna put those in priority order.

And ideally, one of those is a big thing, [00:12:00] and a couple of those are some side things. And so that’s my focus for the next day. And I, I actually start that the night before. And what happens is your subconscious mind kind of kicks that around while you’re sleeping. You don’t know that, but it does, right?

And you wake up in the morning and you’re like, "Oh, okay, now I know what to do, and I’m ready to go." And I’ve already built the focus, like do the hard thing, the big thing first. Um, and so that’s, that’s kind of how I keep my focus. And I also know that I, I have to be careful because I am distracted by shiny objects at this.

And so, um, I sort of have learned in- leaned into this concept of kind of picking my head up from whatever it is that I’m doing and just evaluating, am I still doing the thing that I should be doing? Now, in addition, I think that there are some rest periods that are there. So it’s very easy to just try to work three, four, five, eight hours in a row, and frankly, for me, that doesn’t work anymore.

I was a competitive chess player in high school, and so a chess game– I played in the US Chess Championships in 1976, and a chess game would [00:13:00] be four hours. And so when I was 16 years old, I could concentrate for four hours. I gotta be honest with you, that is not in the cards for me any longer, right? I’m happy when I get 90 minutes.

And so I really sit there and say, "Look, I want, I want some 90-minute bursts. I want a 90– I want two 90s and a 60." If I get two 90s and a 60 every day, then I feel pretty good. And that gives me some time to get up or walk around and take the dog for a walk, uh, maybe check something, do a little reading, do a little…

You know, that kind of thing. And if I sit too long, my back gets sore. It’s just, this is the, the problems with age, right? I’m, I’m not talking to anybody in particular. It’s just me

Tim Melanson: Of course. Of course, yeah. Oh, geez. Well, and I, I think it works on two sides too. It also, uh, for people that have a hard time concentrating, I mean, you’re- you’ve got the opposite thing where you could concentrate for longer than, you know, m- a lot of people are kinda like 10, 15 minutes and all of a sudden you’re onto another task.

Like, having those bursts is, is really good to keep you focused for that amount of time too, ’cause you, you do [00:14:00] build a roll, right?

John Whitt: Absolutely. And I, and I, so I think I call it the sprint, right? Understand that a 15-minute sprint is really hard to get something significant done.

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

John Whitt: Just not enough time, right? So a half an hour, there’s an opportunity to get something done. An hour, there’s really a great opportunity to get something done.

90 minutes is complex. So if, if all you can do is a half an hour, try to get to a half an hour, right? Just learn to focus, sit on your hands, stay in the game until you have a half an hour. And actually, with practice, it gets easier, right? It’s, that’s just part of the, part of the process. Um, but with, when…

Even if you break your tasks down into a half an hour, half-hour batches, you’ll, you can make a lot of progress in the course of one day. And, you know, for me, that would be, what, 90, 90 and 60, so six, seven, eight half-hour sections if I could, if I could get that in. It’ll probably be a little bit longer because of the startup function, right?

So you work on something for a half an hour and you’re deep into it, [00:15:00] and then you gotta take a break. Well, it takes a little while to get back into that space the next time, right? It just, it’s just hard. That’s why interruptions are so difficult. I have said to turn off the phone. Like half an hour, everybody on this planet can probably give you a half an hour at any one particular point.

You say, "No, I’m not gonna do it now. I can’t do it now. I need a half an hour. I gotta get this done." Now, sure, are there some emergencies? Yeah. So if the house is on fire, let’s go take care of it. Or if somebody got hurt, then let’s go take care of it. But there really aren’t that many, that kind of emergencies.

Um, and so learning to not get distracted by shiny objects, right? Turn everything else off. Don’t respond. Turn your phone upside down, which I do, because otherwise it lights up when a call comes in. Um, yeah, so those are, I, you know, this is how do I, how do I stay focused working from home

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And you do have to find some tools to help you with that because especially if you work on a computer, that is where all those [00:16:00] distractions are, well, a lot of those distractions are coming from. So, you know, if you’ve got those things banging in the corner , you gotta figure out a way to, to block those, right?

John Whitt: Yes. Turn off all the notifications, all of them, for that period of time.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

John Whitt: Uh, and I, I’ve just discovered, I’ve been doing this, you know, 16 years running my own practice. I worked in hotel rooms when I was flying around when I was in corporate. Same concept. Um, I’ve just discovered that I can turn those off and then I then decide when I wanna go look at it.

It’s not like I’m ignoring everybody. I’m gonna go look at my texts when I choose. I’m gonna go look at my emails when I choose. I’m not a once a day guy either. I’m probably, you know, two or three, four times a day, um, because I don’t wanna go to the end of the day. But, you know, I get to decide when I do that

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So now, I, I think that when, um, when a lot of people get started in their business, uh, especially if it’s a very small one, they start as this solopreneur, right? So they’re, they’re wearing all the hats, they’re [00:17:00] doing all the things, right? And m- maybe they love it all, maybe they love the control of it all, maybe they- maybe things are going good.

But as you mentioned, at some point, that… I, I mean, something’s gonna happen in your life at some point that’s gonna take your time, and if you’ve scaled to a point where you’re working a lot of hours, now you’ve got a problem. I mean, what if you have to take a week off, right? And

John Whitt: Yeah, you’ve got no capacity

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So, um, getting other people to help you is, is one thing, but then there’s also the… I think there’s some real stress in doing that for a lot of people, of, you know, trusting someone else to, to do something for you. And how do you think, uh, a person who has that stress would respond? Like, what, what, what do you think that, that they should know to help them to let go of that piece?

John Whitt: So you are speaking the truth here because that’s a big problem for a lot of people. You know, the, the control, will they do it right, et cetera, et cetera. [00:18:00] So, um, in the model where you’re trying to build some additional capacity with outside resources, whether it’s 1099s or service providers or whatever, um, it’s not about whether they can do it like you.

It’s about whether they can do it well enough so that you can elevate your time to the higher value priorities. So that’s one of the first things you have to look at. They’re not… They’re– You’re not duplicating you because that’s just not possible.

Tim Melanson: Okay

John Whitt: The second thing is we wanna be very clear on what are the tasks and the duties.

So I, I look at, I look at three things that you have to evaluate when you bring in somebody on board. Do they have the knowledge to do what you’re asking them to do? Do they have the experience to do what you’re asking them to do? And do they have the behaviors to actually do it when they said they were gonna do it?

And ultimately, those behaviors, those attitudes, those are actually the most important of the bunch. So what are the attitudes that you need? And then how do I, how do I interview [00:19:00] for those attitudes? Because we interview for skills and experience all the time, but people hi- get hired for skills and experience and get fired for attitude all the time

Tim Melanson: Yeah

John Whitt: So really what we wanna do is how do we get– how do we interview effectively for that? And then now they come on board, how do we measure their performance, right? What, what kind of performance do I need so that I can check and see early whether it’s working or it’s not? No such thing as perfection.

You’re never gonna hire the right person every time the first time. That’s not the, that’s not the case. But, you know, the idea is to hire slow and, and fire fast. If they’re not, if they’re not doing it, then you gotta move them on, so you have to have a system to measure their performance. Are they on time?

Do– Are they doing what they’re new? What’s the quality of their work? Depending on what you’re trying to achieve. When you have a system and a model and a process, then that fear, trust issue, I won’t say it ever goes away, but it, it re- it gets reduced. It gets compressed [00:20:00] to something that becomes manageable

Tim Melanson: Yep, I think, I think that’s right. Yeah, c- and, and I think your f- the first part of it is probably the most important because they’re n- y- they’re not gonna do it like you do it. Or maybe they will, but that would be one in a million, right? Th- they’re… You know, everybody’s unique in the way that you do it.

And, and maybe that might be something that’s connected to the last piece that you said about the process. Because if you know how you do it, then you know how to check if they’re doing it the way that you do it. But if they’re doing it differently, then how do you check to make sure that they’re doing it right if they’re not doing it right, quote-unquote, right?

John Whitt: Well, at the end of the day, it’s the, it’s the output, right? That’s what we’re gonna measure. Does the… And again, do they do it like you? Can they do it as well as you? No. But is the output that they deliver good enough? Is it good enough that allows you to elevate? Because that’s what you’re really trying to do.

Otherwise, you get sucked into those low-value tasks, and now you’re, you’re trapped. But [00:21:00] you wanna elevate. You wanna elevate to where you get to work on your musician musical skills.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

John Whitt: Uh, in the doctor world, for example, my first client was a doctor. I had no expectation of that. But, um, the doctor is the technician, right?

If he doesn’t go into surgery, he doesn’t make any money, so he has to do that. He can’t get somebody else to do that part, right? What we wanna do is make it as easy as possible for him to get into the surgery, get into the operating room as, as often and as frequently as he wants to, because that’s where he generates the revenue.

And so the management of the office, we don’t want that on the doctor’s shoulders. If he has some ideas or concepts on how to be a better doctor, yeah, that, we want him, that on there, and we need him being the technician. So we, we want to… We need to decide what we can, um, delegate and what we can automate.

And you as a musician, you can’t, you can’t automate your musical prowess

Tim Melanson: No. Yeah. Well, um, but then I’ll just throw this out there, is that you could get [00:22:00] surprised, and the person who is not doing it your way could actually be more productive and actually doing, bringing more to the business than you would have thought that they would, right? ‘Cause you just w- they were just doing it differently, and they may, they may have something that you never thought of, right?

John Whitt: And that is high-level success, hiring people that are actually better than you,

Tim Melanson: Yeah

John Whitt: right? Hiring people that are better than you. Um, you know, you’re the leader, you’re the organizer, you’re the orchestra, um, conductor, and bringing in the right talent, you know, like, they, they might be way better at IT than you, or way better at marketing, or way better…

It’s okay. Let them be better

Tim Melanson: Yeah. What is the difference between marketing and sales in your opinion?

John Whitt: Um, well, I, I, I really see that as, like, two halves of the same whole.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

John Whitt: Um, the better your marketing, the easier your sales. But marketing in- includes… The model I always follow was the, um, [00:23:00] AIDA acronym. Um, awareness, interest, desire, and action. That’s what marketing is trying to do, and we’re trying to identify the ideal target, and we’re trying to get them interested and, and to get them to want what we have, to understand the value that we provide, and then to take action to us, towards us to, um, introduce themselves, fill out a form, whatever, something of that sort, right?

And then the sales part is just making sure that we answer all of their questions so that they are fully satisfied in making the investment with whatever your product or your service is, and at some point helping them move forward, because if you know that your product or your service is going to move them Then you kind of owe it to them to help them get to that space

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Now, like w- w- when you think about, like so the marketing is really the qualifying step. It’s, it’s, it’s bringing people in the door that already want what you want, but it’s also a [00:24:00] disqualifying step, and I think that’s uncomfortable for a lot of people too, right? They don’t want to say that they can’t help you, right?

I mean, how often do I hear people say, "Oh, I can help anybody," right? Have you heard that?

John Whitt: Yeah. Oh, w- w- many, many times. Yes. Um, and, and so yes, you can. But here’s the thing, there are people out there that benefit more from your services and products than others.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

John Whitt: Those are the people that need you the most. Those are the people that you wanna market to. And so every time you bring somebody on that isn’t that level, then somebody that is that level isn’t getting your help, isn’t getting the service that you can provide.

And when it comes to marketing, we’re gonna market to that person that gets it the most. Now, if somebody comes knocking on the door and says, "I need your help," I’m not saying turn them away. I mean, you could help them, but you’re not marketing to them, right? That’s not your ideal client. And when it comes to your capacity, who’s in charge of managing your capacity?

You [00:25:00] are, and so you gotta decide whether or not you have the capacity to handle that, or do you have somebody that you can refer them to

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, that’s just it. There’s only one you. And so really saying yes to one client is saying no to everybody else, right?

John Whitt: Well, if you s- if you think it, yes, but there are, again, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a circular pile, a group, I’m not using the right words here, um, of Customers, prospects that could benefit from your services. Um, but yes, every time you say yes, that, you know, you’re saying no somewhere else, right? There’s only so much space on your calendar.

And as you build your practice, um, there’s gonna be less and less space, and so you have to allocate your time in a tighter and more effective window as you expand

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And just like you said earlier where, um, the mistakes that you make are usually in the very beginning [00:26:00] ’cause you’re, you’re learning, right? And so if you’ve sort of figured out who it is you serve and what they have in common, and you start to get really good at, at handling that specific scenario, you make less mistakes.

You deser- you, you deliver a higher quality product, whereas if you’re constantly taking on different types of things, sure, you could do it, but you’re, like, starting over every time in a way too, aren’t you?

John Whitt: Right. It’s hard to be an expert at everything,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

John Whitt: right? If you’re gonna be an expert, you know, be that top level nine or 10 level on a scale of one to 10, 10 resource, ’cause that, that level actually commands the market. Anything under a nine or a 10, there’s some gaps and, you know, you end up responding to the market as opposed to telling the market what works.

But there’s a lot of work and energy and effort to become a nine or a 10 at something

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Now, and then just to wrap up that part, uh, like I, so I don’t like nos. I’ve, I’ve learned to accept them, right? Uh, however, I think what you’re, what you’re saying now is that if you get really [00:27:00] good at the marketing portion and you’re having sales calls with people that are most likely to be your target market, then you’re gonna have less of those nos, aren’t you?

John Whitt: Absolutely. You know, you’re, you’re, you’re pre-qualifying them. So before they jump in, they look at your material and they say, "Yeah, this guy’s talking about me. I’ve got that problem. This guy can help me with that problem. I gotta talk to this guy." That guy’s pretty ready to move in, right? And, and take you on, and your job is to serve him, as opposed to somebody that’s kicking the tires.

‘Cause who knows? I don’t wanna spend a lot of time with tire kickers. There’s a lot of them out there

Tim Melanson: Yeah, there is. There is for sure. So it’s time for your guest solo. Tell me what’s exciting in your business

John Whitt: So for me, uh, exciting is this live virtual event space. So I spent I grew up in Southern California. I just moved here to the northwest in Washington, Vancouver, Washington five years ago, and it was a tough [00:28:00] transition because in 2020, not only did we have this big pandemic thing, I also went through a divorce, and I also had heart surgery.

And so it was a tough, tough year, and I kinda took some time off and sort of restarted. And one of the things coming out of the pandemic that I realized is that, and we’re seeing it today, that this concept that it’s less risky to work for somebody else isn’t really true anymore, right? Because then they get to decide whether you get a paycheck, and they get to decide whether you get healthcare, and, you know, I just, I don’t want, I don’t think that’s the right thing.

And so I think more people need to take control and understand their business. But most people are an inch wide and a mile deep, and they don’t have the hat, the broadness of the hat, right, that you need. You don’t need to be a mile deep in every business enterprise. Like, if you don’t have… I am not a mile deep in accounting or finance.

That’s not my style, but I know enough to understand what I need and where I’m at, where I’m going. That’s the level that you have to figure out where you’re at, and then I can get a resource to come in and [00:29:00] help me with bookkeeping and accounting and finance. And so, um, I started doing these live virtual events, and what’s really cool, before the pandemic, uh, I was using Zoom, but a lot of the world really needed to be educated on how to use Zoom.

But coming out of the pandemic, everybody knows how to use Zoom. And so we realized that the, you can now deliver a virtual event that is very, very similar to a live onstage event, uh, without leaving my dining room. You see my, my living room right behind me here. Uh, dining room is my office. And I have, um, now there’s a certain bit of equip- equipment, but it’s not a lot, right?

So I’ve got two monitors, I’ve got a teleprompter, and I got a television, which is actually actioning, acting as a really big monitor, and a really nice audio microphone, right? My desk goes up and down if I wanna stand or not, and that’s it, and now I can deliver virtual events to the world, and I can help people, [00:30:00] um, understand what it takes to move from being employed to starting and running their own business, their own, their own practice.

And ultimately, um, help them understand how to move from that hustle culture, ’cause, you know, hustle culture’s absolutely necessary if you’re gonna start running a business. You don’t have a choice. You, you know, you gotta get after it, but there’s a point where it caps, and that’s where it gets really frustrating for a lot of people.

Like, "I just don’t know how to get out of…" You know? And so then it’s, then it becomes systems and processes and concepts, and that’s where I specialize and help you move into that next level space. So, um, live virtual events, I run a, a webinar once a week. Um, it’s called Build It Strong. Um, and it’s really, you know, the concept is if your business still requires you to be present- Then you built it wrong.

It’s not gonna get you where you wanna go. It’s gonna give you the results that you got right now, and you might have heard this before, what got you here is not going to get you there. It, it’ll get you what you got now, [00:31:00] but it’s not gonna get you the next, the next step. Um, so I have a webinar that kinda outlines that and why design is so important and valuable, and then what are the, uh, steps that you can take on your own, whether you do it with me or not, um, to, to start to design your business more effectively.

And then I have a three-day event that if you’re interested in some detailed implementation activity, a three-day event that I run once a quarter. The next one is April 23rd to the 25th. Um, and it’s essentially three days where we go through the whole program, but because we have three days we have a lot more time, and it has the implementation, it has a workbook, it has guest speakers and all kinds of other fun stuff.

Because you can do that with live virtual events. Live virtual events don’t cost the money. Like, you could do it from there. You didn’t have to make an investment. You gotta get your own snacks, that’s all you gotta do. Your own water, right? And nobody tells you what you have to wear, right? And it doesn’t matter.

And if you wanna eat while you’re on camera, it’s fine, it’s okay, and you have a front row seat, right? Everybody has a front row seat. You’re not, you know, sitting 50 rows [00:32:00] back. And there’s this opportunity for engagement and interaction and breakout rooms and all kinds of fun stuff that, that really make a difference.

And so that to me is how I can take my, um, what I call my zone of genius, and I’m not trying to brag here, but just the things that I do best, and, uh, and deliver it to the world, as opposed to the one-on-one coaching business that I had before, which is very effective, but there’s only 10 people I get to work with at a time.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh, so, uh, I know one thing is for certain is that we are not taught how to run businesses in school. Like, so the average person is

John Whitt: not certain schools, I’m not certain school’s doing the right things these days anymore anyways

Tim Melanson: No. But, but, but, uh, but I think that there’s a bit of a, of a, of a transition. I, I like where you’re going because, uh, you know, when you start off, you sort of g- are taught to be an employee, and then you decide that, okay, uh, uh, you know, I want my own thing now. I want a [00:33:00] little bit more flexibility. And so you basically transition your employee mindset into a, a business as a solopreneur, where you really just have a job, but now you’re working for yourself, so you have that flexibility.

And I think what you’re saying is that there’s another step after that where you can actually start to pull back from that as well, and now you can be a lot more free to do the things that you wanna do rather than just having a job where you’re your own boss. Is that

John Whitt: You’re absolutely right. Yeah, let’s build a business instead of build a job. Now again, I think building a job is gonna give you a lot more flexibility, but you’re, you know, you’re still tethered, so to speak. You can’t step back

Tim Melanson: Yeah, which is, I- I mean, which is fine for some people. I mean, if that’s what you want, ’cause I mean, you can obviously probably do that and, you know, invest your savings and be able to retire eventually and all that stuff, and that’s great, right? But what you’re ta- talking about is that next level where you can actually now retire, quote unquote.

I don’t know what [00:34:00] that means to some people. I mean, I, I know, I know some people that are retired, and they’re having a hard time figuring out what to do with their time. So why not do the things that you love out of your business while you’re not having to go into the office? Is that kinda what you’re wanting to

John Whitt: yeah. So let’s, let’s just get to the point where we get to choose,

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

John Whitt: right? You get to choose. You know, if you’re really good at what you do and you like it, then let- you can dip in and you can do it, and you can go deliver. Um, but you don’t have to. So if you get sick or if something happens, or a once in a lifetime travel opportunity occurs, you, you have the ability to, to, uh, lean into that as opposed to, you know, being tethered to the desk or the office or wherever that happens to be. You made a great point. Some people are very happy with just the revenue and the job and consistency. They got good clients, and they don’t wanna do the work to build a business, and that’s fine. I support those people. There’s millions of them out there on the planet, and we’re good for them. [00:35:00] Um, and so my clients, that’s not my client.

My client’s the guy that wants to build a business. He wants to do something different. And often he’s got some things that he wants to do outside of just this business. So if you have enough money, right now all of a sudden nonprofits become a target, right? You can do some special stuff. You can do some charity stuff.

You can do some serving stuff. You could– There’s a whole lot of things you can deliver to the world that the world needs because you’ve built something that allows you the freedom to do that, and you’re not constrained by money, by the cash, ’cause you’ve built a machine that takes care of that

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So if I’m that person and, and I’m looking to get to that next level and I wanna know more about you, is there a way, ways that I can find out more about you to see if you’re gonna be the guy that’s gonna help me?

John Whitt: Absolutely. Um, so I have a website, Business Whitt, right? So the word business, my last name, W-H-I-T-T.com. And on there you’ll see all the things that I have going on. Uh, there’s a contact us thing there. If you’re [00:36:00] interested in either the webinar… And the webinar’s free. This is a great way to kind of just taste, test the waters, do a little taste test.

Um, that’s businesswhitt.com and then /builditstrong. It’s just that simple. Everything is businesswhitt.com. Um, if you wanna know more about individual stuff, I have a strategic planning questionnaire. I’ve got a bunch of tools. Probably just wanna visit the website, see what it’s like, maybe have a conversation, visit the webinar.

I think that’s the right process to see if it really fits. And if it does, then you can lean in and take the next step

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Yeah. ‘Cause I think that’s important to, to have, to have a little bit of that because, I mean, I do see there’s a ton of coaches out there. It seems like that’s just blown right up, and how do you know which one’s gonna, you know, resi- uh, resonate best with you, and how do you know if it’s even real, right?

John Whitt: Well, yes. Yes. So I started coaching in 2010, and it wasn’t nearly as big as it is

Tim Melanson: No. Mm-hmm

John Whitt: Um, and in any business, you’re gonna have [00:37:00] people that perform well and perform less well. I mean, one of my favorite lines is, like, what do they call the medical student that graduates last in his class?

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

John Whitt: Doctor,

Tim Melanson: Doctor, man

John Whitt: right?

But that doctor is different than the guy that was at the top of his class. And so w- coaching is the same way. You have that everywhere. Uh, everybody says, "I can do it, I will do it," ya-ta-ta-ta-ta. The question is, you know, is that true? Is that accurate? Does it work for you? And I really think that things like webinars and whatnot are the way to kinda get to understand somebody and do they really know what they’re talking about, can they serve you.

You… I, I totally, you know, s- believe in doing your due diligence, finding, finding the right thing, um, because that, that’s the right s- that’s the discernment that you need to make good decisions

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Awesome. That’s awesome. Great. Okay, this might be the hardest question. We’re gonna talk a little bit about music here. So John, who is your favorite rock star?

John Whitt: Well, [00:38:00] um, geez. When I was growing up… So I grew up in the ’70s, ’70s and the ’80s, and so it wasn’t a rock star, it was a band. I was a Led Zeppelin guy.

Tim Melanson: Ah.

John Whitt: Um, that, and, and it’s funny because their music has stood the test of time. My kids are Led Zeppelin fans. They didn’t grow up with Led Zeppelin. When they discovered Led, Led Zeppelin, they were like, "Wow, these guys were really good."

Um, I like, uh, jazz. I’m a Miles Davis fan. I mean, there are a lot of others that are out there, too. I don’t know the artists as well, uh, but that’s kind of my style

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Y- you’re 100% right. So I, I host a jam night, uh, a couple nights a week, and, uh, one of them is at a restaurant, and so until 10 o’clock I’m allowed to have kids in there. And so, uh, I’ve had a, a few young, like, high school bands that have shown up to a jam night to play, and what are they playing?

They’re playing Led Zeppelin, they’re playing Black Sabbath. They’re playing a [00:39:00] lot of that old, like, classic, you know, heavier rock, and it’s just fascinating to me that a 17-year-old today is still aligning with that music the same as a 17-year-old back in the ’70s, right?

John Whitt: Right. Black Sabbath was, uh, my favorite before Led Zeppelin.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

John Whitt: it w- ’cause they were just a little before, but, um, yeah,

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome.

John Whitt: Yeah

Tim Melanson: Yeah, good music is good music, right? Just

John Whitt: Absolutely. Uh, and I can say these days I’m, I’m, uh, I really like a lot of jazz. Um, I d- I… And it, you know, there’s different genres of jazz, but, um, I like it kind of where it’s a little, uh, fast-paced.

Um, I love a saxophone. Um, there are just some things there that are just fun. They’re toe-tapping, and they’re, they make for great background music. Now, again, Led Zeppelin doesn’t always make great background music, right? It’s not good, not always good thinking about stuff music. Jazz is great for thinking about stuff

Tim Melanson: [00:40:00] Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. Thank you so much for rocking out with me today, John. This has been a ton of fun

John Whitt: Tim, I have enjoyed the heck out of it. I appreciate it. Thank you

Tim Melanson: Awesome. To the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information, and we see- we’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar podcast

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work-at-Home Rockstar podcast. I am excited for today’s episode. I have a, a, a, a, uh, fellow podcaster with me, actually, so this is really cool. Uh, we’ve got the founder and owner of Success at Last!, LLC, and what he does is he helps his clients with email campaigns and other things.

He’s also got three podcasts. We’ll talk about that a little bit later, but I’m super excited to be rocking out today with Tracy Brinkmann. Hey, Tracy, you ready to rock?

Tracy Brinkmann: Yes, I am totally ready to rock. You know, it’s funny you s- you, you use the, the terminology rock because I’m sitting here looking off to my right where I have pictures of myself with Kiss and Mötley Crüe, and behind me is my signed Gene Simmons Axe bass guitar. So, a- and I’m, I’m a drummer at heart, so we are gonna vibe 100% here

Tim Melanson: Awesome. All right. Yes, we’re gonna keep the rhythm.

Tracy Brinkmann: There you go.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So we always start off here on a good note. Tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by

Tracy Brinkmann: Oh, you know what? I- I’m lucky enough to [00:01:00] be married to an amazing woman. And I know this is business, but, you know, i- in the big scheme of things, uh, your life reflects your business, and your business can easily reflect your life, ’cause the two are very intertwined. And I, I found I was lucky enough to gain the winning side on both by sitting down and journaling, uh, writing out what it is I really wanted.

And, and I’m talking more than just the, "Oh, I wanna be a millionaire. Oh, I wanna be, you know, I want the sexy woman with the long hair and the curvy body," and all that stuff. I, I actually sat down and said, "Here’s what I want her to, you know, what kind of personality I want her to have." And the same thing in the business.

What kind of people do I wanna serve? So for me, the big win would be, A, having a business I’m very happy about and being able to work with people that are just completely amazing, and having a woman by my side that, uh, that loves me dearly, and every once in a while, you know, will give me [00:02:00] the kick in the pants that I need.

Tim Melanson: Um, yeah. Hey, I resonate with that 100%. I’ve definitely done e- exactly what you’re talking about as well, in journaling exactly what I wanted in a, a partner, and then, and then I had to write the, a- also the list of what I think that that person would want in a partner so that I could become that, Right.

Tracy Brinkmann: 100%. That’s how you get in rhythm, right?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So now tell me, uh, I mean, along with the good notes, there are things that don’t go as planned. I’ve been doing this for a long time. So tell me, can you share one? We can-

Tracy Brinkmann: Yeah. I, I’ll tell you, and it, it’s kind of a, it’s kind of a bad note as well as a learning lesson at the same time, which most stumbles and bumbles and fumbles, and some people will call them failures.

They, they really are if, if you let them be. So, um, my first podcast, uh, Your Success DNA, was all about personal development.

I’d gotten into the coaching field, had been coaching people, and it was my way to reach out to even more [00:03:00] people, which, you know, really brought some people in the door, and I had monetized the podcast through a, um, a pay gate, and it was doing great. And then one point in my life, I was, I was getting on the microphone and with my best amazing personal development voice, telling people how to win at life.

Meanwhile, I was going through a wicked divorce. I had just hit bankruptcy. I mean, and everything was just kind of falling apart, and that, uh, that imposter syndrome that so many of us feel at some point in our life took over, and I hung up my microphone, and I hung up my headphones while I got my, my kaka together, we might say, right? Um, so, so the failure in that to me is if I would feel that now, I would lean into it and talk about it on the mic. But I didn’t have the confidence in myself, uh, or my abilities to, to do that at the time. So, uh, learning [00:04:00] 20– you know, hindsight’s always 20/20. Again, if I would, uh, experience that today, I would just kinda lean into it and share with the audience, "Dude, I’m feeling what you feel.

Trust me, uh, I, I’m not following my own advice, ladies and gentlemen, so here’s what we’re gonna be doing," you know, and kinda sharing that with them

Tim Melanson: Wow. Yeah. Wow. And I have had some guests on the podcast as well that have really capitalized on those really negative notes, ’cause I think, I mean, that’s a good point. I mean, when we are looking for somebody to help us, we wanna see somebody that actually understands what we’re going through as well, right?

And I mean, you know, it’s one thing to be like, "Oh, well, this person, everything they touch turns to gold, and they’ve never had a thing bad happen to them. How are they gonna help me?" ‘Cause y- it’s almost like you think they don’t get it, right? I mean, maybe they have a rich father or something like that, but I mean, this is not, you know, this is not what my story is.

So, you know, hearing somebody with that [00:05:00] story can really help you get there, right?

Tracy Brinkmann: Mm-hmm. I, I actually did, uh, an episode on that very topic. I, you know, the, like, the last episode I did on that, on that same podcast, uh, just this weekend

was five reasons why you should not listen to me, and it was some of the things you just said. You know, I, I wasn’t born rich, you know, I… and I wasn’t born super poor, so I, I didn’t, you know, I don’t have this amazing rags to riches story.

You know, I was a m- middle class kinda guy in a military family, and just found something that resonated with me and resonated with other folks, and leveraged that into more opportunities. Not exactly a rags to riches story, but certainly a success story. So it’s like I gave them those five reasons, but at the same time, each one of those reasons would also be the same reason why someone might want to listen to me. Because while I don’t have the rags to riches story, I’m also not a, you know, a, a Tony Robbins preaching down from on high because, you know, [00:06:00] I coach all these amazing people, these, you know, senators and presidents and everybody. I, I, I reach out to Joe Schmo.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah. And isn’t it funny how the, this, the wording on there, reasons why you shouldn’t listen to me is probably the reason why they click on it.

Tracy Brinkmann: Exactly. Little clickbait,

right? But I delivered the clickbait.

Tim Melanson: No, I, I, I, I hear you. Like that, that mediocre kind of thing, and I… You know, we have a lot of similarities ’cause I, I’ve, you know, haven’t really had anything really that terrible happen, and also really that a- amazing.

Like, you know, so it’s been kinda like this comfortable level. And o- oftentimes that’s really, that’s really something that holds you back from really getting that success, ’cause you, you hear people on lots of podcasts or success stories, and the people that have these really, really big success stories, they talk about this really rock bottom that they had hit and then they bounced back from.

So it’s almost like there’s this [00:07:00] pendulum, right? Where if you don’t, never really had anything really, really bad happen to you, then you maybe have never really gotten that kick in the pants to go make something really, really good happen to you

Tracy Brinkmann: Sure. Yeah. I have had, you know, rock bottom moments. You know, I’ll call them three of them across the, the course of my life and, and my business career. Um, but I think everyone goes through them at some point,

and my perspective of a rock bottom moment might be different than

yours or than, you know, the, the other person who’s listening to the two of us discuss right now.

I mean, my three were overcoming an addiction, uh, to am- methamphetamines,

uh, the loss of an 18-month-old daughter, and then that moment, you know, where, where I was, like, going through the divorce and the bankruptcy and everything and hung up my microphone. That was, that was kind of a, all right, well, obviously the physical, we gotta overcome that addiction.

Uh, the relationship, the loss of the daughter. And then more of a spiritual moment, y- you know, as I [00:08:00] was, like, coming to grips with, all right, this is a big change in my life, and who do I wanna be and what direction do I wanna go? A- and y- all of those could be the make or break moment that some people are, have gone through recently or maybe they’re going through right now. And hopefully knowing that folks like you and I, who aren’t, you know, an Anthony Robbins and aren’t, you know, a president, whoever, uh, still survived and, and continued on forward and inked out a nice life for ourselves at the same time

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Right on. Yeah. And there you go. I think that that’s the thing is that you did have a few of those rock bottom moments which did catapult you into some better success, and, and, and so did I. My, my rock bottom moments might not be as severe as some other people’s rock bottom moments as well. However, I mean, y- everything’s, everything is relative, right?

I mean, I mean, if I’m having a bad day, I’m having a bad day. Is it as bad as that guy’s [00:09:00] day over there? Maybe not, but it’s still my bad day,

Tracy Brinkmann: It’s my bad day, damn it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, and I mean, it’s, it’s the same thing with a good day, too. But I mean, oftentimes really it’s a, it’s a matter of trying to, trying to find that middle ground and not getting too upset and not getting too excited.

Trying to kind of keep that, that even, that even mindset, right?

Tracy Brinkmann: 100%, 100%. And that’s a tough one. I mean, you just, you, you said that little word real fast, mindset. And I think i- in the world that we live in, in the entrepreneurial space, um, especially for folks that are trying to break out of one type of space into another, there’s a mindset shift that comes with that, right?

And I, and I know you service the folks that are trying to escape the, do the cubicle escape. I, I, I service the same folks. And one of the biggest things I think most of them struggle with is, "Well, what would I do?

Why would people pay me for X or Y or [00:10:00] Z when there’s, there’s Tim out there, and then there’s Tracy, and then there’s, you know, Tony Robbins, and whoe- whatever." Just name all the names to talk themselves out of it. And it’s that mindset shift that folks have to go through, um, a- and usually they go through it while they’re living the experience.

Does that make sense?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah. Well, a- and I think to answer that question, the way, the way that I see the world is that there’s two things. Number one is that people do business with people they th- that they know, like, and trust. And so it is very possible that everybody on listening to this has some people in their circle that they know, like, and trust or that know, like, and trust them that might actually pay for their services.

But the second thing is I think we’re seeing a bit of a revolution in terms of, like, a, I don’t know, I don’t even know what to call it, like a buy local type thing. Like, people wanting to, people wanting to support the smaller businesses or support the people in their communities rather than the big, big, big companies, right?

Now, [00:11:00] I, I know that there’s a bit of a gap in terms of what the big companies can provide in terms of pricing versus the little companies. I mean,

Tracy Brinkmann: Mm-hmm.

Tim Melanson: going to go to the store and buy something local, or are you gonna order it from Amazon? The price is way different, right?

Tracy Brinkmann: Sometimes you’re absolutely right, yeah. And, and there are times when, um, you know, I’ll use the example here. We live, um, uh, out in the middle of nowhere. Uh, not in the middle of nowhere, but I think I can see it from my front porch. Um, and there is a- an amazing Amish community around us, and this is one gentleman, uh, Hank, uh, noticed a need and started a little shop, and it has miscellaneous farm goods and foodstuffs and repair items and whatever seasonal items are relevant.

Uh, his prices are pretty comparable. They’re, uh, to your point, they’re a little higher, but the point is I can drive seven minutes, uh, have a chat with [00:12:00] Hank, pick up the things I need the same day, right away,

right? And support my local community at the same time. And I think one of the reasons, and this is my humble opinion, uh, that so many of us have started to lean into the, you know, buy local opportunities is an erosion of trust in some of those bigger corporations that are out there

for a varied, for a, a whole number of reasons, and that could be a conspiracy episode of a podcast all, all

by itself.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, I, I 100% agree with you. I th- I think that there is an, an erosion of trust, and I mean, I think it’s just gonna work out in our favor, right? ‘Cause it,

Tracy Brinkmann: In the long run, you’re absolutely right. Yeah, 100%.

Tim Melanson: it is opening up the possibility for more of these small businesses to open up. And I mean, we t- uh, in the pre-chat we talked a little bit about the, just the technology changes that have happened that is allowing more people to now access, you know, these small business [00:13:00] opportunities.

I mean, you know, you, you, you can set up a pretty comparable business nowadays from your home versus y- like, 50 years ago or 100 years ago. Uh, maybe 100 years ago, actually, everybody… Is that timing right? Maybe not 100 years, but at one point th- there was a lot of self-employment going on and, you know, it sort of went away a little bit, and now I think it’s probably gonna come back

Tracy Brinkmann: Yeah, the pendulum seems to be swinging back and forth, and it, and it’s a pattern across time.

I mean, you could go all the way back to the feudalism days where the lord of the lands rented out parcels of land and homes and equipment to the folks on his land to farm it, and he would get the crops and then sell it.

Uh, f- it, it was kind of a trade labor. Okay, well, that started switch to everyone started buying their own land and, and that’s… And then, you know, over time it just keeps swinging back and forth. And like we mentioned, like you said pre-interview, back in the ’40s, ’50s, and [00:14:00] ’60s, lot of small businesses were everywhere, and there, there were a few big companies too.

Um, and now we’re starting to swing, I think, back the other way once more. Hopefully we’ll, we’ll stay the, the, the, the, the buy local opportunity’s there.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, one of the things that I wish we learned in school was, is things like sales, marketing. So some of those… Because really, uh, I think that when, uh, someone thinks about starting a… I know, I know when I started my business in the first place, uh, luckily I did have a bit of sales training prior to that.

Um, but a lot of people think, "Okay, well, I do this thing. This thing is, I’m really good at this thing. I really like doing this thing, so I wanna do that as a business." And then you learn real quick that you’re gonna be spending a lot less time doing that thing than you are gonna be d- doing the other things that are involved in, in, in creating a business.

And one of those things that’s most important, if you don’t have anybody in, in your business, then you don’t have a [00:15:00] business. So how do you approach getting a fan?

Tracy Brinkmann: You know, uh, I think it d- it, it depends on what the business is, obviously.

But one of the ways I love to do it is to approach said business, said fan, said opportunity with my best music. I’m gonna ro- I’m gonna roll with this music

thing as much as I can. A- and here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say, uh, I do email marketing campaigns, a- as an example, like you mentioned.

Uh, and I, I prefer to work with the local business folks, so I’ll see a business opportunity m- Let’s talk about Hank. Um, Hank, because of his lifestyle choice, doesn’t have access to any technology, so I could be that intermediary for him. So I’ll… What I might do is I might walk into Hank’s shop and say, "Hey, here, I have a great idea, Hank.

You have all this great Milwaukee product sitting right here, and I’ve noticed it’s been sitting there pretty [00:16:00] quiet for the past couple of months. Let me do this quick little email campaign to all the folks in the community that are around here and see if we can move some of this stuff for you." And obviously the question’s gonna be, "Well, what’s that gonna cost?"

"I tell you what. The difference between what you’re selling right now and how much we sell because I sent out the emails, let’s split that 50/50. Does that sound fair?" And I haven’t met a person in their right mind yet that would say, "No, that doesn’t sound fair at all."

Because if all I’m asking is for 50% of the revenue I generate through my efforts through your business, well, then maybe you shouldn’t be in business.

I don’t know. I’m… You know what I’m saying? So usually for me it’s, it’s taking a, a good piece of music and walking into the person that needs that piece of music and saying, "Here. Use this to play in your business and just pay me [00:17:00] 50% royalties." There it is

Tim Melanson: Wow. Hey, that’s a, that’s a really good offer. I would probably say yes, too.

Tracy Brinkmann: You know, and, and I know you do businesses, right? Uh, you know, and I, I’ve played with websites, not because I’m a web designer, ’cause I’m not, but with some of the tools that have been developed since AI has hit the scene, I can go to a, a, a small business and, you know, who has a, especially around here, a website that looks like it’s from the ’90s

or is very MySpace-looking, and, you know, copy the s- the code, drop it into this AI, and it gives it this nice, sleek, modern look, and you can even focus it down to their niche so it focuses on what they need to focus on, because plumbers focus on different things

than restaurants do.

And then you print off a couple of sheets of that or walk in with your phone and, "Y- Mr. Business Owner, look at this website I did for you. W- do you think this would bring more customers in?" Well, well, duh. And you can almost guarantee that that [00:18:00] business owner has called somebody or emailed, exchanged with somebody, or at least, at least done some online research about, "Wow, that’s gonna cost me," I know it used to be, "thousands of dollars, and I’d have to wait days or weeks or sometimes even months to have some big agency do it.

And how much are you gonna charge me?" Uh, and then you give them a number that makes sense for the time you spent, and they’re gonna go, "Yes, please."

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I did actually just that last

Tracy Brinkmann: There It is

Tim Melanson: funny. Uh, but I mean, you know, ’cause there are a lot of businesses that you- like you say, I mean, they’re a small business. They’ve had a website forever. It’s not really doing a whole lot for them, so they don’t wanna spend a whole lot of money on it.

They don’t necessarily know what it could do for them, so there’s that. But even if, even if the business, even if the business is just using their website as a, as a, a business card, I mean, the great news about nowadays is that, you know, if you have, you know, a little bit of background skills, then you can actually generate something [00:19:00] pretty passable pretty quickly.

So really, what’s the loss that you get? Like, I mean, I know when we thought about doing it, it was like, okay, well, what am I gonna lose? I’m gonna lose time. Okay, well, how many of these do you think I’m gonna need to do in order to get one sale? And it turned out it was one. But, but I mean, I didn’t think that that was gonna be the case.

I, I thought it would be a few, and I figured, okay, well, let’s just average out the time. So I mean, yeah, I, I think that, I think that if you are only… If, if all you can lose is time, well then, you know, that’s, I think, something that we all have that we can run a business. And way back when, you know, marketing used to sp- you used to have to spend a lot more money to compete with the big guys.

But now it does seem like things are moving towards time instead of money, which r- levels things out a lot

Tracy Brinkmann: Oh, 100%. The, the tools that have hit the landscape, r- let’s just say in the past 24 months, let alone the last six,

um, have [00:20:00] really made it really easy, a- and he says easy with quotes, you know, with air quotes, for the average ma and pa, you know, Tracy and Tim,

to, uh, compete against some of those bigger agencies that are out there,

whether they’re, you know, big AI agencies or marketing agencies or website agencies

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Now, okay, so let’s, let’s just take that back a step because, I mean, it’s not easy, right? It’s, it might be

Tracy Brinkmann: Easy is a four-letter word, ladies and

Tim Melanson: y- because there is, there is a, a fair bit to it, and there are a lot of… I mean, let’s even just talk about the practices that you need to be, to have in place. Uh, let me ask you this question.

So one thing that I’ve noticed a lot, uh, I mean, is that it seems as though a lot of these self-employed entrepreneurs have some sort of, like, personal care, some self-care, or some s- sort of routines to keep, I don’t know, their mindset clear. Do you have any of [00:21:00] those?

Tracy Brinkmann: I do actually. You know, I usually spend, uh, the first part of my morning, um, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is all about, uh, the, the physical body, right? So I’m lucky enough in, like I said, we live in the middle of nowhere, a little farm, 40 acres. We have an on-site gym. A- a- and, you know, I said gym with air quotes, but it’s got some pretty decent equipment in it.

A lot of folks are gonna go, "Wow, I would pay to come to your house monthly to use that gym." And, and my, me and my wife will work out together in the mornings, and then I spend a little time, you know, writing in the journal, getting my head right, and then kind of organizing the one, two, or three things that if I got these done, I feel productive. And that’s one of the key things about any endeavor that you’re taking on. You wanna feel like you got something done today. And

even if that something is something really, really small, you could say, "I got that done," and that gives you that little hit of dopamine and gets you jacked up and [00:22:00] ready to go for the next day. So I do that, and then the end of the day, and I actually have a little ticker that comes up on my phone, uh, to remind myself to kind of review the goods and the bads of the day,

right? So before I start winding down for the evening, it’s like, "Oh, I got that done. I got that done. Oh, crap, I didn’t get this done." And just kind of… And it’s not a critique. It’s not a slap upside the head kind of moment. It’s like, "Wow, did I over, you know, did I, did I under budget the amount of time with the other two things were gonna take and that third one was never gonna get done no matter what? Or did I F off some time that I could’ve put to that?"

And it’s kind of a self-regulator. You know, you start to learn what you can get done in the, the amount of time you’ve allotted or, or not. So then you, then it’s also gives you the opportunity to take that item and move it to the next day or move it where it belongs. ‘Cause sometimes it doesn’t belong in the next day.

Sometimes it belongs in the trash can,

and other times it belongs on [00:23:00] someone else’s desk. "Oh, I shouldn’t have been doing this in the first place. I should hand this off to my AI to assistant or my VA or my wife or my daughter or whoever, uh, you know, should be doing the work."

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, wow. That’s really good. And, uh, you know, having those things to check off, too, I- and the things that don’t get done, I think a lot of it has to do, like, why don’t people do that in the first place? And I think that maybe the other part of it is that you have to forgive yourself when you do not get those things done, right?

Tracy Brinkmann: Yeah. ‘

Tim Melanson: cause I, I mean, why else wouldn’t you write your goals down, right? I, I, I think, I think I’ve heard many times, "Well, I don’t want to get my hopes up." I’ve heard that so much.

Tracy Brinkmann: Well, you should get your hopes up. Yeah

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s terrible programming, really.

Tracy Brinkmann: Yeah, it really is. And there’s so many things you hear out there that are, I’ll call it anti-programming. What

I mean by that is it’s [00:24:00] anti-positive programming.

"Okay, well, don’t get your hopes up too high because, you know, the economy’s getting ready to take a

dip, or because AI’s taking all the jobs, or becau- ba, you know, ba, ba, ba." Look, my hope’s already up. Uh, you’re in… And you’re not pulling them down, right? That’s, that’s the mentality I, I think we should have. It’s the, uh, hard charger, "I’m gonna find a way." Yeah, I’m, I’m probably gonna have to walk through some barbed wire and some mud and some poop or whatever to, to find that way, but damn it, I’ll find a way

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and, and, and that’s, that’s the journey. That’s what’s, that’s what fun is, right? I mean, if, if y- you just look at sports. I mean, we play sports for fun. Well, someone’s gonna lose, so why even bother playing? If, if, if your, if your attitude is, "I don’t wanna get my hopes up," right?

Tracy Brinkmann: It, it’s funny you say that. Uh, um, I, I’m a father of four amazing women, and one of them got into cheer at, [00:25:00] like, age 12 and stayed in… And, and I’m not talking about the standard high school collegiate rah, rah, rah kind of thing, you know, sideline cheer. I’m talking about competitive cheer, where they’re throwing themselves around a mat seven days a week to go compete for three days and come back and do it all over again, and she did that from 12 to 18. And they were gonna lose, and, and they knew that, and, but they always went in, "We’re gonna get, we’re gonna kick butt. We’re gonna do our best." And, and the mentality of these ladies and, and, and the guys that were there, of course, were if you left it all on the mat, blood, sweat, and tears, then it doesn’t matter what the score was at the end of the day.

You did your damnedest. You did your best, and all you can do is improve and come back the next weekend and try it all over again

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I do think sports are so important, uh, when, when you’re raising kids, ’cause that, [00:26:00] that las- that lesson there is, is huge. I mean, that’ll, that’ll stick with her for sure

Tracy Brinkmann: sports can teach you a lot of amazing things. I think one of the, uh, caveats I would toss in there is make sure you have a good coach.

‘Cause unfortunately, like anything else around nowadays, you know, the wrong people get in the wrong environments and start teaching the wrong angles and, ah, no. No, thanks.

Tim Melanson: Well, I mean, sports, uh, th- that’s one thing in sports. Also, it works at school too with teachers. I mean, y- I, I don’t know how many times you hear people say, "I don’t like this subject," and if you dig in far enough, you’ll find out it’s because of a teacher,

Tracy Brinkmann: Yes,

it’s usually the t-

And it may not be their personality. It may just be their teaching style

versus the student’s style, you know, ’cause we’re all, like some of us are visual and some of us are kinetic and some of us are auditory. And, and if that teacher, beyond just being boring,

uh, just teaches this one way, then guess what?

About 30% of the class is [00:27:00] going, "Ugh."

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Tracy Brinkmann: It’s about, uh, it’s like anything else. It’s like being a good entrepreneur. You want to engage your clients because that’s how you’re gonna find those little nuances about their business that you can use to make their business better through whatever, uh, skill set you have that you’re helping them with

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Do you know what I’m thinking is, I mean, maybe this is a, well, this probably is a huge rabbit hole. But I

Tracy Brinkmann: Yeah, let’s go

Tim Melanson: for me, uh, I’ve been using AI a lot for even just training me, and just, uh, like, it, it is my accountability partner in a lot of ways. And it, it’s different than a, than a piece of paper, ’cause I, I mean, I’ve been doing goal setting and journaling for a long time, and, and that’s one thing.

But putting it onto the AI thing and having it talk back to you is really r- cool. Um, now I’m wondering if this is gonna start to translate into teaching styles for even children, because now with these tools, a teacher could [00:28:00] theoretically set up multiple meal plan, or sorry, meal plans, learning plans,

Tracy Brinkmann: Mm-hmm.

Tim Melanson: lesson plans for all these different children with the specific learning style of each child in mind.

Tracy Brinkmann: Yeah.

It, it’s

Tim Melanson: they could do that pretty quickly,

Tracy Brinkmann: Yeah, uh, and, um, uh, uh, oh gosh, it was like two or three months ago, I heard about a school system, it was out west somewhere, I don’t think it was California, but I know it was out west, who was testing AI with human teacher intervention that the AI would lean into your, the, a student’s preferences and st- and stylistic mannerisms to get them to learn, which also allowed them to learn at different times.

So the same teacher that would normally teach this class from 8:00 AM to, you know, 9:30 could give that same lesson, but then that student, maybe their best learning time [00:29:00] is after lunch. Well, then they can take that same lesson and learn it when they’re at their peak. So there’s a whole realm of win-wins in that opportunity.

It’s, uh, i- it’s another one of those cautionary tales. I think it’s an amazing opportunity. It’s just let’s make sure we have someone in there making sure that our kids are being taken care of the way we want them to

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and you know what? I think, I mean, this, I guess maybe just my thought is that I think parents would probably be best served to have a lot more of that input on that as well.

Tracy Brinkmann: Yeah. I’m a big proponent of, like, homeschooling. So for me, taking an AI opportunity or an idea like that and applying it in a homeschooling environment, ooh, now you’re really just– you’re, you’ve pulled down all the guardrails because in a homeschooling world, the, the biggest [00:30:00] struggle, the biggest barrier is the parent’s knowledge, not the student’s knowledge.

‘Cause here I am, I gotta teach you something that I’ve totally forgotten 12 years ago because I don’t use it on a daily basis, but I have to make sure you know it so that you can pass some, you know, state te- standardized test. It, it, it’s really– it, it’s a cool opportunity because AI could take it over, and it also pulls everything back into the home like we were talking about earlier.

I think there’s a win-win inside of that

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. And, I mean, also you can even just at the very minimum allow AI to kind of sit in on your child’s… Like, even if the, even if the schools still are playing a part of it, yeah, you could have note takers sitting in on your child’s, uh, you know, lessons and actually reporting back to you on what they learned.

Like, there’s a lot of things

Tracy Brinkmann: Another great

Tim Melanson: do big broder- br- big brothery [00:31:00] you know? Uh, why don’t we use those things to our own advantage rather than letting someone else, you know, do it, right? Yeah.

Tracy Brinkmann: Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Melanson: So I, I think, you know, I, like I say, I’m a, I’m a, I’m an optimist, so I think the future is bright with all these tools.

I do agree with you that we need to keep an eye on it. I don’t think we just let them do whatever they want and do whatever experiment that they wanna do, which is what kind of happens, right? We, we wanna have a little bit more of a, of an active role in this. And the good news though is that we have all these great tools that can help us to do that, right?

We can actually… I mean, technically we could send AIs into even school board meetings and even city council meetings, and we could all be updated on all this stuff. Man, these are all great ideas I’m just com- go- coming up with right now. But, but, but I mean, imagine that. I mean, I, I, ’cause I do know that that’s why we have these, these boards, is they’re supposed to be making decisions for us ’cause we’re too busy to make them ourselves.

And now we might [00:32:00] have a way to actually have a lot more input into our local communities.

Tracy Brinkmann: 100%. 100%. And I, I think that’s one of the big things, um, about being involved is, uh, you can’t be everywhere at

once. And when you start– And when you just start getting involved, you don’t know what you don’t know, so you have to go through that learning curve, and you could even use AI to help you. What is he talking about here?

While you’re sitting in a board meeting or reviewing the minutes. What does that mean? You know, without having to ask anybody in case you’re embarrassed about that. Anyway

Tim Melanson: Yeah, that’s true. So let’s get into your solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business right now

Tracy Brinkmann: You know what? I think one of the things I, I’m really enjoying is the, uh, the email marketing thing that you mentioned earlier is, ’cause I think there’s, there’s a lot of folks that will say email marketing is dead. Uh, I, I think we’re a long way away from email marketing being dead.

Um, I, I think it went through, uh, a peak period and then kind of dropped off as [00:33:00] other things, uh, entered in, but it’s still this amazing, uh, tool in the background of things. And for me, what I really enjoy about it is so many local businesses, they might be smart enough to be collecting emails, but most of them are either are just too busy or just not in-depthly knowledgeable enough to leverage that pot of gold of email lists, um, e- effectively, let alone at all. You know, some of them might, you know, occasionally send something out and, uh, which is good, right?

It’s better than not doing anything with it. But the effective marketing tool that an email list is, is we as standard entrepreneurs are like, "Well, duh." But imagine the pizzeria down the road down there, and, and they’re collecting emails, but they’re still doing good business. If you walk into their store and tell them, "Look, let’s go ahead and tap into that list, and I bet you we [00:34:00] could probably get you a month’s worth of revenue in a couple weeks."

But first off, they’re gonna, they’re gonna scoff at you potentially, which is fine. Go ahead and let them. Say, "Hey, let’s just give it a shot. You know, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll even do it for free." Again, the, the opportunity becomes, "However, whatever I generate, you just share 50% of that with me. If I don’t generate anything, well, then guess what?

You don’t give me anything, and we can go our separate ways and ev- there, you know, no harm, no foul."

Tim Melanson: I love that. That’s an, such a great idea. So how, imagine someone’s listening to this and they actually do have that pizzeria, how do they get in co- in touch with you to, to take advantage of this offer?

Tracy Brinkmann: Well, they can, uh, obviously they can just stop off at, uh, darkhorseentrepreneur.com and just, you know, there’s a contact form up there. Go ahead and reach out for me directly with that. I don’t put this one out publicly, um, because of the fact that there are a number of local businesses that will just scr- [00:35:00] "Ah, let me, let me find out, let me find out."

And then as you af- you- they don’t really have the interest in it.

So I find that if they’re willing to take a minute to fill out, um, a contact form and have me reach out to them, then everything works out a whole lot better. So yeah, darkhorseentrepreneur.com, fill out that contact form, and I’ll reach back out to you, and we can, we can discuss things

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I love that. Small price to pay, right?

Tracy Brinkmann: E- exactly.

I- it’s like anything else. It’s like some folks are saying, "Hey, I wanna see the band." Well, pay the ticket price.

Well, pay the ticket price?

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, it, yeah, exactly. So, um, that was awesome. I got one more question for you. So we talked about literal music earlier. This might be the hardest one, though. Who’s your favorite rock star?

Tracy Brinkmann: Oh my God, that is a hard one

because, uh, I’m… My music likings are very eclectic, right? Now, obviously I mentioned a couple of the rock bands here, uh, Kiss and Mötley Crüe, but I’m also a big Michael Jackson and Prince fan. So, uh, [00:36:00] wherever, uh, my mood sways, my music goes with. I will have to say probably one of the most instrumental bands has been Kiss in my life as a whole, which, and inside of that, um, Gene Simmons. Um, but more because of his entrepreneurial side of things than his, you know, demon tongue, blood-spitting fire guy. Because I, I’ve, I’ve been lucky enough to, uh, meet him on a couple of occasions and chat with him briefly. Uh, we actually, my wife and I, that I was bragging about, got married at the Kiss Chapel in Vegas, and Eric Singer, the, the drummer, uh, was our ring bearer there.

But anyway, sidebar. Um, he is, he just has this mind for business that just, I think, operates at a different level, not because he’s this rock star, but because he built himself up [00:37:00] through an entrepreneurial mindset. How do I, how do I leverage this as a revenue-generating opportunity? Which in the early days of the band, you know, was about makeup and theatrics to get people to come in and, you know, doing some shenanigans to offset the fact that they were the opening band and the, the main band would come on, like, how do we play after that,

you know? And then, you know, you toss in the merchandising that no one was doing back then. It, it… Right? And now merchandising is everywhere. And then you go back behind the scenes and all the different things he has stepped out into from football to Indy race car to, you know, uh, chateaus in, in Aspen and the whole nine yards.

He’s just, he’s got this mind that if I could, if I ever had a star on my podcast, that’s the guy I would want.

A- and not because, again, [00:38:00] because he’s this amazing rock star. I thought he was an amazing rock star. But because of that entrepreneurial spirit, uh, I think that is what fueled the band more than anything else.

Because let’s be honest, musically, they weren’t breaking any records

musically. You know? They did some amazing things, had some really cool songs, but they didn’t have a lot of intricacies that, you know, a Pink Floyd or a Led Zeppelin or any of those old bands from the same time frame. Does that make sense?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it does make sense. Yeah, it, I mean, really he’s a masterclass in learning how to make your passion into something that generates income, right?

Tracy Brinkmann: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Which, I mean, that, that’s the thing. I mean, it, it turns the whole starving musician thing upside down. I mean, he’s definitely figured out ways to, to make that happen, right?

Tracy Brinkmann: Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

to- totally did. And I mean, I think, I think he was one point early in their, when they were first starting the band, he was teaching, uh, English to non-English speaking folks in the New York, Brooklyn kind of area. [00:39:00] So he was working, trying to start the band, and then also doing other side hustles.

And I, I, and my mind is skipping on what they were like, you know, uh, uh, getting com- comic books and then reselling them kind of thing. So he had his fingers in all these pies, and I think he just kept up that pace his entire life. It’s just that the, the bank account’s got bigger.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Well, thank you so much for rocking out with me today, Tracy. This has been a lot of fun

Tracy Brinkmann: Uh, no, it’s my pleasure to have been here. Thank you so much

Tim Melanson: Awesome. And to the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information. We’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar podcast

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast. I’m talking to the founder and CEO of Perform and Function and what he does, he’s an executive coach, he’s a leadership team, organization development consultant. He’s an author, a speaker. And what he’s doing is he’s helping people to increase their self-awareness, empathy, uh, emotional intelligence, interpersonal dynamics, and to discover their purpose and passion and achieve their business and life goals.

So I’m excited to be rocking out today with Karl Hebenstreit right. Hey, Karl, you ready to rock?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: I am totally ready to rock. Tim. Let’s jam.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. We always start off here in a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: So I think, uh, probably the success story for me is leaving corporate America as an internal employee and deciding to take the plunge and become a solopreneur, an entrepreneur in a solo entrepreneurship, and actually being able to live my life. With the purpose that I want to support the clients who want to [00:01:00] be supported and do the work and see the change that I’m trying to invoke in people that actually want to change.

So that’s the, that was the biggest, the plunge that I took four years ago, a little over four years ago, and it’s been a wonderful experience ever since. I can’t see myself going back.

Tim Melanson: That’s amazing. Yes. Once you go this way, you’re not gonna go back. Right. There’s too many advantages and, uh, and a lot of the things that you were afraid about. I mean, hey, was there. Things that you were afraid, you know, that was kind of holding you back.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Of course, of course. So,

Tim Melanson: and how did they transpire?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: so I think one of the biggest things that was. Something that I was not looking forward to and, and actually COVID helped with this, was not having a support network. I’m a very social person and wanting to be around people and going into the office and being around people was always something very important to me, and having those relationships and connections, so going solo would prevent me from having that.

However, being. In shutdown for [00:02:00] during COVID showed me that I could still have those relationships and connections. They are virtual and then at times they can become phy in person, right? You can actually physically be in person with someone at some point, and that has to happen at some point as well.

But those virtual connections can be just as strong as some of the ones that you have to physically be in a a site or location for some other challenges that I was concerned about, were. How would I be? Make sure that I would continue to get some steady revenue stream that would be predictable, uh, and pay for during vacations.

How would I continue to be paid for? Well, you’re not, but that’s a different story. You have to change your mindset a little bit around that, and you just have to be. Ready for the unpredictability and the ebbs and flows and you get to predict them. Once you’ve been in business for a couple years, you can see like when are gonna be my busy times and are gonna be my slower times, when can I take a vacation and not worry about not being able to support my clients or missing out on business or anything [00:03:00] like that.

But again, it just takes a mindset shift and really the faith that the business will come. Especially when you’re solid in your career and you have worked in many different companies and you have wonderful connections and networking contacts from all these different companies in the past, and even currently, the business will come based on that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. If you’ve been a good employee, then chances are you’ll be okay. At least right when you,

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Yeah, your reputation, right? When people know your reputation, they’ve worked with you, they’ve seen the results. They know how collaborative you can be. They know how. They know your skills and your expertise, and they know that you can be, you’re dependable. They will remember you and they will come back to you and they can say that, you know, I may not be in the same company that I was in with you.

I’m now in a different company. Can you come in and help us with this? Something similar to what you helped in the past, or we need to expand on something. Can you help with that? That’s what happens, and your [00:04:00] network is huge. Your network is really how things happen. It’s, and I know lots of people go out there and do cold calling and, and participate in all sorts of different vendors that help them with sending out emails or, or doing sales navigator stuff.

That’s not how you’re gonna get your business. You’re gonna get your business from the people that know you, that have worked with you, that can vouch for you, that can give you references, they can refer you to other people. That’s how your business is gonna come around and that’s going to continue growing.

Tim Melanson: That’s how it worked out for me too.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Mm-hmm.

Tim Melanson: You know, and, and it, it is true. ’cause I think that a lot of people will, uh, I don’t know, just be afraid to contact their, their local network, maybe thinking that they’re gonna be bugging them or whatever it is. But I mean, you know, if you do good work and you know, whatever it is that you do is something that other people are gonna need, well then why not let people know what you’re doing?

Right?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: There are some personalities that are better at it than others. There are some [00:05:00] that are more assertive and more open and comfortable with reaching out to people and saying, this is what I’m doing. Do you need help? Or do you know anyone that needs help? And other people are more, let let my work speak for itself.

They’ll find me. Right. Who is more likely to get the business or. The, the reach out, right? So, and, and it could be a little bit of both, right? So you do have to step into your, out of comfort spot, your discomfort, and really go and, and market yourself and let people know that you are available, that you can help them.

And it would be great to work with them again. So that’s really the message. And you can show them the successes. You can have case studies, you can have all sorts of different things and how you can help them improve the situation that they’re in, and make a stronger business, make better interpersonal relationships with their teams, with their organizations, which again, always leads to, to better business outcomes and more [00:06:00] revenue.

So it’s, it’s great. It’s, it’s really, it’s really stepping outta that. That comfort zone, getting into the discomfort, letting people know, putting it on LinkedIn, putting it on Facebook. If they don’t wanna see it, they’ll scroll past, but they’ll still keep you in the back of their minds.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, and uh, I know I’ve had a bit of a, a wake up when I will see like a peer that is nowhere near as good as I am going out there getting a bunch of success because they just have the ability to get out there and tell people what’s going on. Right. Like, it’s, it’s, it’s frustrating in a way ’cause you’re thinking, oh geez, you know, I’m, I’ve got so much more experience, I’ve been doing this for so much longer.

How are they getting so much success so quickly? But you know, on the, on the, on the flip side of that, I mean, you know, if you do really, really good job, even if it is just for a few people, eventually those referrals come back to you, don’t they?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Exactly. Exactly. And the other thing I want to go back to just what you said is how are they getting this business? And I’m [00:07:00] not, how are they getting these successes? And I’m not, we all have that capability to sell ourselves to. Toot our horn to, you know, tout our accomplishments, whatever it is that you want to talk about.

That way, it’s just that it’s uncomfortable for some of us and more comfortable for others. However, we still have that ability and we can reach out into it and say, you know, I’m worth it. It’s, you know, the self-esteem needs to increase that self-esteem and put it out there because people can’t read your mind that you’re there and you’re available and you can do this for them.

They have to be told, right? They, there are creatures that need to hear the, the message and the communication be reminded of it. So that’s really what needs to happen.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and you know, it’s, it’s actually interesting because the, the customers themselves, you know, everybody kind of has these same personalities, right? Some people are very e easy, they can talk to people, very easy. And some people have a hard time talking to people even when they need something. So it’s actually possible that there could be somebody in your network that wants your services and [00:08:00] is afraid to ask you.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Exactly, exactly. You have hit the right note there with that, uh,

Tim Melanson: Assessment.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Absolutely. Yes.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. So now along with the good notes, sometimes things don’t go as planned. There’s some mistakes that you can make along the way, and I’m wondering, can you share with me something that didn’t go as planned and, and how you recovered from that?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: I think early on in my career. Was the biggest mistake that I made that helped put me on a more positive trajectory to realize that this is the journey I need to be on. So, earlier on in my career, I thought I knew intuitively what other people needed. And I think it’s the same issue that most of us have.

It’s, it’s, we think that other people think that the way we do or have the same values or, or preferences as as we do because we can’t read their minds and know. What they want, what their values are, what their challenges are, what their needs are. So early on in my career, when I was in my twenties, I was [00:09:00] tasked with going and presenting at a conference, and I presented as if the people that were in the audience were gonna want my product.

They, they, they could see the value immediately and they, why wouldn’t they wanna buy that or buy into this, this program? And the reality was, I wasn’t speaking their language, I wasn’t. Talking about their pain points. I wasn’t asking them what they were looking for in the presentation, and I had people walk out on me, and this was very embarrassing and very hurtful, and it was a great lesson for me to learn that I don’t know what they want unless I ask them for it.

So luckily I had a, a second session right after that and I pivoted and I asked the people what they wanted, what they were looking for, told them what I was looking to do, how I could change the presentation or the message or the communication to fit their needs. And that’s my biggest realization that.

Yeah, we need to figure out what other people want, what they’re looking for, and what they need so that we can explain it in the terms that they want to hear, so that [00:10:00] they’re not gonna reject something or don’t see the value in it because it’s not being spoken in the language or in the way that they want to receive it.

So that was my biggest lesson of let go of the golden rule of treating others the way that I want to be treated, and instead find out how they want to be treated to go to the platinum rule and treat them, communicate with them, approach them in a way that they want to be treated. In the way that is gonna be most responsive for them and learn from that.

Then go into the platinum rule and say, okay, how can I integrate this new perspective with this new knowledge that they don’t, they’re not gonna look at it the way that I do. Let me take the value from their perspective, integrate it into mine, and now I have a much more expansive worldview and I can be even more inclusive in future interactions.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Right. Um, you know, I had a, a similar experience early on. I, uh, I was referred to a, to a business coach who needed some tech support and now was doing some tech support stuff. And I remember, I, I, I helped, helped her out with her problem, fixed it, everything [00:11:00] was great. And then because she’s a business coach, she’s like, okay, well.

Because I’m a business coach and you helped me out. I just can’t not ask you some questions. So, so she asks me about my website and she says, okay, just bring it up. So she looks at my website and it is technical jargon everywhere, right? Like, and she looks at that and she goes, oh. She’s like, Tim, if I had seen this website before I hired you, I wouldn’t have hired you.

And I was like, oh dang. She’s like, I don’t understand a word. This is, and I am your, your target client. So it’s, it’s very similar, right? People, people just don’t, you can be all super technical and write all this crazy stuff, but people don’t understand any of that stuff. They just want to know how you’re gonna fix a problem, right? Yep.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Reach them in the language in which they speak. Yeah. How they wanna receive the message.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Right on. So, let’s talk a little bit about getting fans. ’cause you know, in today’s world, there’s lots of people out there, lots of [00:12:00] ways that you could reach out. What’s the way that you found, you know, especially in, I mean, you’ve been, it is the last four years, so it’s fairly recent here.

How are you getting success in, in creating that audience? Actually no, in converting that audience to fans.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Yeah, so I’m gonna go back to what you, the story that you just talked about, website. You have to have a website, and that website has to be easy to navigate and have all the information in the language that your target audience is gonna want to read it and receive it. So definitely have that, that clean website.

And I, mine was just totally revamped. I’d had a website that I, I created, so you, you can imagine how good that was. It was not, uh, back in. Started in 2001 and just kept adding to it. So I can’t even tell you how many different pages, landing pages there were. I think there it was probably at least a dozen little tabs to go all the way across.

It was, yeah, it was a little cumbersome and had all the information that you needed. Absolutely had great resources, great information, but probably. Uh, not as, [00:13:00] yeah, it was overwhelming and not as friendly to people to come to visit it. So definitely have a great branded representation of yourself in a way that your target audience can go and read it and access it and know that this is.

Like your, your client that was receiving your technical services would say, yes, this is the person I wanna hire. Right? Have all the information and just enough to say, yeah, I wanna reach out and ask more questions. So, and definitely have wonderful content there that is relevant to people, and people can definitely go to my website and get some wonderful downloads that are free.

That can definitely help ’em in all aspects of their lives. It’s www.perperformandfunction.com. It’s a play on word form and function per perform and function.com. And check out the different tabs and look at the downloads there. You can get some great, uh. Resources, like there’s the Explicit Expectations Alignment Guide, which can help you in your, your relationships and your communication with people and, and really understanding how to work better with people.[00:14:00]

But anyway, so Mark Market, that website that you have, get it out there. Definitely also take advantage of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is great for all those professional re relationships and resources and network contacts that you have. Keep building that LinkedIn network from all of your clients, your past coworkers and colleagues, your bosses, your customers.

Just add them all in there because it’s a great way for you to post and let them know what’s going on, what you’re doing, and it’ll be a great reminder for them. It’s not like you’re hitting them over the head with, here’s another email, here’s another newsletter, here’s another whatever. It’s they, they have to go to LinkedIn to see this, so when they’re, when it’s on their turn, their time to go and look at LinkedIn, you’ll, you’re.

Updates will pop up in, in your, if you’ve written an article, if you’re on a podcast, if you’re, whatever it is, it’ll pop up there and keep you top of mind to them to see what you’re doing, what you’re talking about. That’s on brand, [00:15:00] that’s referencing what could be important to them and their challenges and their needs, so you’re always gonna be in the back of their minds that way.

Mention podcast. Definitely look into podcasts that are gonna highlight your expertise to get it out into the world. So not only your, uh, network will see it when you post it on LinkedIn or Facebook or, or, or Twitter or X or Blue Sky or wherever it is or Instagram, but the world will see it too, and someone else may tap into that.

My very first podcast that I did, this was. Oh, many, many years ago, I’d probably say about 10, 15 years ago, that netted ultimately a client that I still have for the past. Four to five years I’ve been working with that company, and that was, that wasn’t even my intention. Someone asked me to be on their podcast.

I said, okay, sure. I’ve never been on a podcast before. And that has come out. That relationship has come out of that. [00:16:00] So you’d never know where a podcast will lead, who will hear the podcast and say, yes, this is exactly who I need, or, I need to talk to this person. This person needs to talk to my business partner, or whatever it is that can happen from those.

Write articles, write blogs, uh, get interviewed for different media that, that reach out and are looking for expertise people to talk about expertise in your area. There are wonderful resources, free resources out there that you can tap into for finding out what podcasts are looking for guests, what, what websites are looking for people to write blogs or people to interview for articles or series or whatever.

Check all those different things out and get your name out there. So that’s, uh, a great way to, to make sure that you’re keeping in touch with your network as well as reaching out even more broadly to tap into other people that may not even know you yet.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. There’s so many options out there nowadays. That’s what’s [00:17:00] so good, but also so cumbersome too, right? Because where do you start? I mean, you only have so many hours in the day, right?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Mm-hmm. Well, your first stop should be Tim.

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: out to Tim.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Absolutely. So, let’s talk a little bit about practicing Now. Nobody really likes to practice, I don’t think, but it, it’s, it’s important. And I’m wondering what, what is it that you do for practice? Mm-hmm.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: So practice. Luckily I get to integrate it into other aspects of the performance too. So my practice can be from reading books that are new on the subject matter, for example, the Enneagram of other colleagues or or other practitioners or writing books on the topic. And I. I need to stay on top of what’s going on with Enneagram or coaching or, so definitely reading books and attending conferences is, I think the, the one that combines multiple forms of practice as well as performance.

Because [00:18:00] when I go to a conference, I will usually be a speaker at the conference, but then I can also get to attend all of the other speakers and the events that are going on there too. So it’s a performance, but it’s also networking and it’s also practice. Because I’m practicing, I’m learning from other people at the same time.

So conferences are huge, especially if you’re fortunate enough to be a speaker at it, because then you get more exposure. Other people learn about what you’re doing. They can develop in the moment and take practices home to continue their development. But you’re also learning and developing yourself, like listening and attending and participating in other of the speakers events as well.

So I think those are huge.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, that’s a great idea. If you can figure out a way to make the performance and the practice kind of work together, then that’s like a win-win everywhere. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I know that, uh, for, for me, in, in with my music, I actually host jam nights, you know, once a week. And so it’s twice a week actually now.

So it’s, it’s it’s practice and it’s performance at the same [00:19:00] time. Right. And I mean, what a win you can get there, right. When you can create an environment where whatever you’re doing is, you know, less pressure than an actual performance, but also, but, but also you, you have some way to. Move the needle forward in your business through your practice, right?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Right. And conferences can also be, yes, they can be pressure filled, but they can also be, you’re among your peers, you’re among your, among your colleagues. They wanna see you succeed. They wanna learn from you, and you wanna learn from them so that the, that pressure is. I would say mitigated a little bit.

So I think conferences are

Tim Melanson: I love it. ’cause it’s it, like you say, it’s performance, it’s practice, and it’s team building and

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. It’s all, everything together.

Tim Melanson: I love that. So let’s talk a little bit about the instruments and the tools that we use to get success in our businesses. And I mean, nowadays there’s lots of technology. Uh, what, what, what is, what is it that you use in your business to get success?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: So. [00:20:00] We already spoke about LinkedIn and maybe you can include Facebook in there and social media platforms as well. Calendly has been wonderful, especially I’m a solopreneur in my business, so it’s a free calendar system that can help your clients schedule meetings with you. You don’t have to the back and forth and all the administrivia of going and communicating and say, are you available then no.

This is the wrong time zone or, or whatever it is. It does it all for you. So I, I’m a big fan of Calendly. It’s fantastic. You just have to make sure that you’re keeping it up to date. If you travel and you go somewhere, change your time zone. Because it’s still going to, it doesn’t know that you’re traveling, so make sure that you update your time zone so that they, you know, what times you’re really available for, on specific dates.

So that’s, uh, that’s a, a great lesson learned there. Also, I’m gonna throw in. Other tools being resources. So you have to have a really good accountant, a really good tax accountant to help you with what you need to do, [00:21:00] keep you on track with, okay, here’s deadlines that you need to submit for taxes for whatever it is.

Uh. Have a great accountant and at some points you may also need other resources, a great printing resource, a great print shop or anything like that. If you need to print a, do print, um, someone great to help you with your website if you don’t wanna do it yourself or if you don’t have time to do it yourself or you don’t wanna learn how to do it yourself.

I also use ai, so I partnered with an AI vendor to help create a clone of myself to do coaching and also delivering of e-learning. So there is an AI version of me, so it’s a IR Karl who’s a clone and delivers some of the workshops electronically virtually, and I don’t need to be there. And also the coaching.

Tim Melanson: That’s crazy. Yeah, there’s a lot of that going on. I actually took a, a, uh, a seminar with Tony Roberts, with Tony Robinson. That’s exactly what he was teaching is the AI clones. Uh, I mean, it’s crazy what they can do. [00:22:00] Um, it’s overwhelming in a lot of ways as well. Uh, but I can just imagine where things are gonna be in a few years, right?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Yes, absolutely. So, wait, am I am, am I speaking to your clone right now or is this the real Tim?

Tim Melanson: This is the real Tim, believe it or

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Okay, good. Good. Yeah, that’s just, just what a clone

Tim Melanson: though. Yeah. What about you? Are you the real Karl?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Who can say

Tim Melanson: Who can say, isn’t that

R. Karl Hebenstreit: what does real really mean?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think at this point we probably would be able to tell. Uh, but I don’t know if that’s gonna be the case in a few years.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: I’m not glitching out yet.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, actually that’s the real you, the clone wouldn’t glitch like that.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: that’s right.

Tim Melanson: Right on. Well, it is time for your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business right now.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: So I am really excited This past end of November and through the beginning of December, I was actually on a cruise ship and I got to [00:23:00] speak five times on the cruise ship. So I’m really focusing more on doing more speaking, keynote speaking engagements, and this was a great launch into that. So I’m really focusing on that in my business.

Obviously I can’t do that from home, but all the pre-work and all of the marketing and all of the logistics and getting ready for it is all done at home. And so the majority of my time, of course, I am working from home. Um, especially I, I do my executive coaching from home. It’s all done virtually via Zoom and I can deliver workshops.

Virtually as well, which I do from home and on the occasions that I do need to physically travel, for example, the end this month, I am going to, if it’s good enough for Celine, it’s good enough for me. I’m going to Caesar’s Palace and I will be doing a gig, uh, not a singing gig like Celine did, but I will be doing a, a workshop for about 200 people there for a couple hours, and I’m really excited about doing.

Those types of speaking engagements where it’s a large number of people that are getting the message at the same time, and I can make the most impact with that large number of people. So that’s, uh, that’s what [00:24:00] I’m really excited about.

Tim Melanson: That’s amazing. So who would be the person that would get the most outta working with you?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Anyone could get the most outta working with me. I work from individual contributors all the way up to this, uh, teams and this C-suite. So. Anyone who wants to bring me into an organization to show them, I, I specifically work with the Enneagram, which is an amazing tool. You asked about other tools. I mean, we, we are talking about more actual tools of, of business tools, but this is the, the, the tool for the transformation that I would use with a coaching client or even in a workshop or in a speaking engagement.

In a keynote where I can help people get from that golden rule to the platinum and rhodium rules, and really start understanding what motivates themselves and what motivates others. So if that’s a need in your life to try to understand yourself and others better, and everyone has that need. Then I am happy to work with you and your organization.

I’ve actually written a children’s book called Nina and the really, really tough [00:25:00] decision, which translated into five languages to help children learn about this earlier on in their lives. So it’s not as difficult for them to have these, these learnings and experiences later on in life, and they have to change their mindsets.

Then they can start off with the right mindset and really see how to integrate everyone else’s perspectives along with their own to have a broader worldview and a better understanding of themselves than others. Grow that empathy and emotional intelligence. Yeah,

Tim Melanson: That’s amazing. You mentioned your website earlier and I’m wondering like, what’s the process of someone you know, if they did wanna work with you? Like how, how do they go about doing that? Is there forms they have to fill out or what, what, what happens?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: not really. My contact information is right on the website. They can send me an email at Karl with A-K-K-A-R l@performancefunction.com. People have gotten in touch with me through LinkedIn and sent me, um, that they, they want something or they’re interested in getting more information or they have a, a conference coming up or a meeting coming up and they have a workshop or they need a keynote speaker.

So LinkedIn works great. There [00:26:00] is definitely through the website you can see all the different services that are being offered and there’s a way to get in touch with me on the website as well by filling out a form there. But there’s so many different ways and my phone number’s even on there. So it’s, yeah, there are so many different ways and you can obviously just schedule a meeting on Calendly too.

Tim Melanson: All right, Karl, this is probably the hardest question all day. So who is your favorite rock star?

R. Karl Hebenstreit: My favorite rock’s pink. I’m gonna go with pink. She’s the, you said rock, so I’m gonna go with pink because she’s kind of, I mean, she is rock.

Tim Melanson: she’s

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Yeah, she is awesome. What a performer. What a multifaceted and talented performer. Powerhouse, not only with vocals, but with meaningful. She has the right message.

She has the right values. She’s like flying through the air. She’s just incredible.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I saw the, uh, there was a documentary about her a

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Yes. I saw that too.

Tim Melanson: And yeah, I mean, she’s more like a, like an acrobat than a,

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Yes.

Tim Melanson: than a, uh, dancer for sure.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Yeah. [00:27:00] We’ve seen her in concerts several times and I’m, I’m happy to see her anytime she’s, she’s around. She’s just an incredible human being.

Tim Melanson: I’m right on, right on. Love it. Favorite song.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Ooh, from pink or just overall?

Tim Melanson: From Pink.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Oh boy. Oh, oh my God. So many. Um, oh, perfect. Let’s go with perfect. I won’t use the, uh, I won’t, I won’t use the one that goes before it.

Tim Melanson: This is the G version of it.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: That’s the, that’s the, yes. The, the podcast appropriate and a prude version of that song.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So much fun rocking out with you today, Karl, this has been great.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: It was wonderful hanging out, rocking out, and jamming out with you two, Tim.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Thank you so much. And to the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information and to follow the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast.

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. Excited for today’s episode. We’re talking to the owner of j Levin Communications, and what she does is she’s a strategic communications consultant that helps businesses with their internal and external communications. She’ll find out a lot more about that.

Little bit later, uh, we’re talking to Jamie Levin. Hey, Jamie, you ready to rock?

Jamie Levin: I am so ready to rock.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. We always start off on a good note, so tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Jamie Levin: I always wanted to be the head honcho, right? I just, whether it was on the sports field or in the classroom, I, it was just what I always had to be at the top. So I worked my way up to the top and I ran, um, communications, internal and external communications, corporal and corporate events, um, and travel for. A multi-billion dollar company and it was wonderful. And I did it with two children, which is even more wonderful and also speaks to my support [00:01:00] system, um, and the team of friends and family that I have around me. And so, yeah, that’s my good note. I made it to where I had always aspired to be.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Well, what next?

Jamie Levin: What next? Then I went the completely opposite realm and you know, was like, I don’t wanna do this team thing anymore. It was great while it lasted for about six and a half years, and I was truly blessed, had an awesome team, but I was just burnt out.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Jamie Levin: I was burnt out.

Tim Melanson: Isn’t that funny? Hey, once you get to the top of the mountain, you’re like, uh, what do I do now?

Jamie Levin: Yeah, I see it. I feel it. I get it now and. It was great and it was amazing, and I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. Um, and it’s allowed me to get to where I am today, but I don’t think I ever have to go back there.

Tim Melanson: No. Okay. Well I’m wondering, so sometimes the good notes, uh, and the bad notes come together, there’s some things that don’t go as planned, and I like to talk about that because as we all know, I mean, there are gonna be things that aren’t gonna go as planned and. [00:02:00] That’s oftentimes what keeps people from starting in the first place.

And I wanna make sure that people understand that, hey, you know, you can have some success and have some failures and you’ll get through it. And maybe you can give us an example of something that,

Jamie Levin: For sure, and I think the, the failures are what make the successes that much more rewarding. Um, so I started my career in New York City at a very large, um, public relations agency, and then I relocated to Florida to be with my now husband. Um, and I started working for a smaller public relations agency in Miami.

Right. This is what I know. I’ll be fine. Okay, great. Um, worked there for a bit. Not long into my tenure there, I was given a promotion and I was like, oh, wow. It’s so nice that they recognized hard work. About two weeks later, I was fired. I was like, okay, this makes no sense to me. In [00:03:00] hindsight, it was a blessing.

I was not happy. I would eat lunch in my car. Um, there were no windows there and I was just, well, at least where I was sitting and I need sunlight and daylight. And then it just afforded me the opportunity to recalibrate and say, okay, now it’s time for me to make my life here. I can’t work for a really small organization.

I need to meet people. I’m a people person, and what am I gonna do next? And thankfully. It kind of, you know, it catapulted my career in the right direction from there. So, you know, blessing and a curse and a learning opportunity and all the things.

Tim Melanson: Hmm. Well, how did you handle it then? Was it like super depressing or did you just like roll to the next thing? Or,

Jamie Levin: I think I was relieved in a way ’cause I’m not one to quit. It’s just, I don’t have it in me. Like I will just, it is what it is. I’ll keep grinding until I, you know, find the next thing. [00:04:00] Um, but you know, it forced me to move on instead of just hang on to something that was never gonna be, which is fine.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. ’cause uh, oftentimes, you know, those pushes, uh, you know, the universe has given you a sign. I, I mean that’s what I believe anyway. I dunno if

Jamie Levin: Right, right. Right.

Tim Melanson: you know, it seems as though, ’cause like you said, you weren’t happy anyway, so you might not have actually, and, and that’s similar to a lot of people’s with our personality, is that we’re not quitters.

So we’ll stick around someplace where we shouldn’t be for a lot longer than we probably should. Right?

Jamie Levin: Right. Like we’re trying to prove something to ourselves, but I’m not sure what, um, so it was a blessing learning experience onto the next one.

Tim Melanson: So now when you’re working from home, uh, the, the home office is an important aspect of it. And hey, I mean, sometimes you don’t even have the opportunity to have a good home office. I know I started at a kitchen table, but, but I’m wondering, like, actually that’s a good [00:05:00] question. Where did you start?

Did you have a home office to start off or did you build one as time went on?

Jamie Levin: So I’m very lucky. I did have a home office, but the irony of it is, oops. I would say 85% of the time, including this time right now, I’m not in my office, which is also one of the amazing things about working from home, right? So my home office is excellent. It’s MySpace. No, nothing else is in there. But at the same time, sometimes I just need like a change of scenery or sometimes I feel too lonely in there.

And so it’s like I wanna be around my favorite coworker who’s my dog, um, because it’s just her and I. Sometimes I just think, and again, it’s, I’m very lucky with what I do also contributes to my ability to be flexible. Yeah. Do I have multiple screens in that office and the standup desk and the treadmill underneath?

I, I do. And so am I in there often? Yeah. But could I also be working for my kitchen table? Because at that given moment, [00:06:00] all I need is my laptop and my phone and my mouse. And a pen and paper. Yes. I still use a pen and paper 100%. So do I think it’s a, you know, nice thing to have? Of course. Do I think it’s absolutely necessary?

Absolutely not. I don’t,

Tim Melanson: Yeah, you gotta start somewhere. It, it starts really with the desire, right?

Jamie Levin: yeah, you don’t wanna let it be an obstacle, right? Don’t let it stop you from, or prevent you from doing what you wanna do. That would just be an excuse. It’s okay if you pack up your backpack every day. I do it often. I mean, I admittedly. I work from my car, sometimes work from the coffee shop. Sometimes it just, sometimes in order to get things done in a timely fashion, it has to fit in other things,

Tim Melanson: and it probably does depend on what you do as you’re, as you work too. I mean, if you’re on the phone a lot, you know, it’s

Jamie Levin: right.

Tim Melanson: Um.

Jamie Levin: year complete. And look, there are days and times where [00:07:00] I’m like, Nope, I have to be right here in front of the computer. Right. And also, it’s what works for my clients. Some of my clients prefer the phone call over the video call, and I’m like, great, let’s do the phone call. I can do laps around the house if I want or walk the, and I’m completely honest with them, that’s what I’m doing.

And they’re taking a hike also. So it depends on the nature of the conversation. What do you need to speak about? What are you trying to accomplish? Um, if I’m writing a column, can I be out and about? No, I mean, I guess I could dictate, but no, I’m sitting at my desk, you know, laser focused and efficient.

Tim Melanson: So now is there other family members that are working from home too?

Jamie Levin: Thank goodness. No. I love my husband very much, um, but it would not work out well if we both left from here. So, no, I’m very fortunate. I, I, I know my personality and I know his and well, again, I love him very, very much. I need my space. [00:08:00] He doesn’t want to hear my voice all day and I don’t blame him ’cause I don’t even wanna hear my voice all day.

Just my dog.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, so you may be using that office a little bit more if he was home.

Jamie Levin: Exactly. Oh yeah. When he, in the rare instance that he is home, um, or takes a call from here or whatever the case is, and then is running back to his office, yes, I’m definitely in there. Or if it’s a day off from school for my kids, um, you know, there’s, there’s separation. It’s, it’s definitely very necessary.

So again, am I spoiled to have it as an option? 100%.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And when, when the kids are home or anything like that from school, is there, like how do you work it so that you’re not getting interrupted all the time?

Jamie Levin: We’re, I pray that I’m a good communicator being that that’s what I do for a living. So I’m very honest with them. And we go through the day, just like any other day, we would go through the day, like what they have after school, how they’re getting to their travel soccer practice. Like we talk about the things, [00:09:00] right?

So I’ll sit them down and, uh. My older son just turned 12 and my younger son is about to be nine next month. So that definitely helps, right? Like they can occupy themselves, they can play together, they can get on their, ride, their bikes. Um, but we talk about the day and I’m like, okay, I have calls at, I’m just throwing out share.

Right? 10 30, 11, 12 30 in one. I’m available to you. Other, you know, other than those times if we need to have a conversation. But mom needs this chunk of time to get stuff done, and then I’m all yours, because again, I do have to be flexible on the days that they’re off of school. And thankfully my clients understand that as well.

Tim Melanson: Um, so now one thing that kind of caught me by surprise, I think a little bit when I first. Started my business is how important or how much you have to be a salesperson. Right? And you have to get out there and, and, and generate those, those sales yourself. And I mean, there’s lots of ways to do it. And I mean, I think now [00:10:00] things are very different than they were 20 years ago.

Uh, but I, I, I feel like it’s still pretty complicated in a lot of ways, and a lot of people do struggle with that. So I’m wondering, like, first of all, you are a very out outgoing person, so I imagine this might come naturally for you or, or not,

Jamie Levin: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: but how would you, how would you explain it to somebody who might be a little bit more introverted?

How, how would they go out there and build their business?

Jamie Levin: Yeah, so I think there are a few things, right? One, consider your network. I am super blessed that the majority of the people who I work with today, I’ve worked with in the past life,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Jamie Levin: So, you know, I worked with them because we worked for the same company. Or they were a client of mine in a past life when I worked for another agency.

Um, or they heard about me from someone I’ve worked with in a past life. So I, I think word of mouth when it comes to service [00:11:00] based companies and people focused organizations still hold strong. Right. I understand there’s SEO, there’s SEM that. Yeah, and I do think there’s value. It also depends how large you want to get and what your geographic footprint can be and a number of other things to think about.

So one, I think word of mouth is still very strong. Um, I do have a website, right? I think that helps from a credibility perspective when you’re ready to go there. Um, could I be doing more SEO and SEM 1000%? But I also have to remember that I am one person and I want to, you know, do great work for all of my clients, and I only have the same 24 hours in a day that everybody else has.

So being mindful of growing too quickly or taking on too much and then stressing yourself out to the point where you’re not doing good work for anyone. Um, [00:12:00] you know, then there’s LinkedIn and networking platforms and writing a blog to reinforce your subject matter expertise. There’s networking organizations.

There’s nonprofit organizations in terms of like, oh, I’ll be on a board because this is something that I’m really passionate about. But it’s also okay if business opportunities come from there. It’s not, you know, like that’s not a dirty word. Like it’s okay. Um. So I think putting yourself out there, making sure you’re clear about who you are and what you do.

Um, having that strong elevator pitch, because even today, sometimes some people will ask my mom like, oh, what does Jamie do? And she’s like, well, and I’m like, come on mom. I’ve been doing this now for like 25 plus years. You should know, right? But I think. Being able to share with people how you can help them and, and what you do and, and being very aware of who you are, um, is also extremely important.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, [00:13:00] I agree. I think word of mouth is huge. I, I mean, referrals is how my business has been running, and I mean, I, I sort of have the same ideas as you. I’m like, should I be doing more about my SEO and. But the business still keeps coming in from the referrals. So, and, and they’re just so much easier when you’ve got this warm introduction than when you have to like talk to somebody cold and convince them that you’re the right person for them.

Right.

Jamie Levin: Right. And it’s a blessing to be able to say, be a little, you know, you can choose a little. I always say, and I’m not gonna say the word, but I get the same amount of money working for a nice person as I do for a, you know what? So why would I want, like, I wanna work with nice people, so. Because that makes my day, like, it makes my job that much more rewarding.

It makes my day that much more pleasant. So again, this idea of word of mouth, normally if you’re getting a referral from someone who either you already do work with and you like them and they like [00:14:00] you, and it’s a positive relationship, people normally surround themselves with other positive people. Um, you know, so you can trust that referral a little bit rather than just like.

Here’s someone who just came in through my website because they saw the services I offer, which don’t get me wrong, they can also be great. I’m not saying they can’t, but it’s like going on. You know, like if you were going on a date, if a person recommended someone because they’ve had interactions with her mentor versus like a total blind date, of course the interactions is gonna be a little easier, right?

Like, you know what you’re walking into.

Tim Melanson: Now, is there something that you do regularly to get your referrals? To give you referrals, like, or do they just come.

Jamie Levin: I probably should, so thank you for the idea. But no, I, I don’t, I am very, very, very blessed, but I should probably build that into my process. It would be a good idea.

Tim Melanson: Well, it’s a good problem to have when you don’t [00:15:00] have to actually ask. And, and I, I am same, similar. I don’t deal anything. I, I, I tried to like, play with these like, referral programs and like try to give referral bonuses and all that stuff and I, I found that that was like e even a step backwards. ’cause now it’s like.

Uh, they can’t just say, I’m referring you to this person. ’cause they’re good, not because I’m making money off of it. Right. You know, and I, I thought that that was just a little bit more authentic. Right?

Jamie Levin: I mean, look, a great testimonial is super helpful, right? So, um, but no, I haven’t, but I should, I should think about it,

Tim Melanson: Now what about the, the cashflow side of it? And this is something that. Uh, way too many businesses, I think don’t, don’t take seriously about whether they’re actually making money, you know, or whether they’re actually losing money. ’cause revenue and profit are very different things. Right. I’m wondering what are some of your either tips or some of the things that you do to make sure that you’re ahead of the game?

Jamie Levin: [00:16:00] Yeah. So I think one, again, it depends on the industry, right? Like what tools do you really need to be successful? Thankfully, I am super blessed and everyone’s like, what do you mean you need a computer, a phone, some headphones, a pen paper? And I’m like, mm-hmm. And there are some platforms that I use for, you know, tools and resources.

But like, I still do my invoices in Excel and I’ve been doing this for three years. You know, like the, could I, could I be doing it another way? Yeah. Might it be more efficient? Maybe, but like, it doesn’t take me that long. So I think you, one, you don’t, you know, crawl before you walk. Right. Do you need the necessary tools to get you off the ground?

Yes. It’s very important. need, are there some tools that could make you more efficient that you have to say, okay, sometimes it has to be, it has to be worth my time and my [00:17:00] time is worth my money. 1000%. Um, I think also I’m very, I’m lucky to have great clients, right? And so they appreciate what I do and one of the ways that they show me they appreciate me is.

If it’s a 30 or 45 day, you know, turnaround, then it’s there within 30 or 45 days. Um, I’m still one of those odd people who, um, I bill people hourly,

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Jamie Levin: which I know is strange these days. I’ve always said I won’t put anybody on a retainer because I can’t prioritize one business over the other. They’re all important to me.

So if I put one person on a retainer. Other people, I don’t. Then are they expecting some other, you know, that wouldn’t be right in my, in my mind in how I do business. And I consider myself to be pretty efficient as a working mother of two. So it normally works out in other people’s favor. Um, [00:18:00] but I think, you know, it’s okay to follow up on invoices also.

Like, there’s no harm in that. I did it this morning and it’s just a friendly nudge and it wasn’t a big deal. They were like, oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. Like it happens. Um, but I think just, you know, checking in every once in a while, making sure that, you know, you’re tracking everything very well and. Do you have to do that when you work for a large organization?

If you’re in communications, no. But that comes with the territory of being a business owner. So carve out that time. Don’t get behind on things is the other thing I would say, like when it comes to invoicing, like I, I won’t let it go five days into the month without invoicing a client, just because I want it off my plate and onto their.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well that’s, and, and that’s the thing is that when you do give those nudges and you send those invoices, I think some people have this like fear of, of like, okay, what are they gonna say? But I mean, in my experience is similar to yours, that it’s [00:19:00] just, oh, I forgot. Sorry, sorry about that. And, and off it comes.

Right? Or if there is an issue and they are struggling or something, you’ll get an email back saying that like, but either way you’ll get some clarity on what’s going on. Right.

Jamie Levin: 100%.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Uh, I’m wondering, so now in your business, do you do everything yourself? I think you mentioned earlier that you have a few people that you, uh, contract out to.

What, what are those, what are those people that, that help you in your business?

Jamie Levin: Yeah, so I, you know, I try to be mindful of what am I spending my time on and where could I even send, you know, save my clients a little bit of money. So if I’m able to have somebody else do some work that. In the PR world, an account executive, if you would, would be the level can handle then, like I’m not billing that out at the same rate that I’m billing my time out.

I’d like to save, I like to save money, so I like to save people money. Um, you know, so whether it’s. [00:20:00] Research that somebody can help me with. Or am I a graphic? Can I be dangerous? Yeah. But am I a graphic designer? Absolutely not. Right? So there are a reason that there are graphic designers in this world, and I have an amazing one, right?

And so he does some work and it’s a value add for the clients. So they’re thrilled, right? Because it can be more of a one-stop shop. Um, and I can be the middleman between people and I have the vision and it’s still saving them time. Um, I also have a great person that I work with on video, so, you know, I think it’s just, again, this idea of efficiency and being mindful of where you’re spending your time and at the end of the day where you’re, when you’re, where you’re spending your clients’ money, right?

Like, if you care about the people that you work with, you don’t wanna spend their money unnecessarily. It’s irresponsible and it’s just, it’s icky, for lack of a better word.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So for the most part, the people in your business are, uh, subcontractors that do the work for the client, [00:21:00] but you don’t necessarily have people that like, do your books for you or, or like any of that stuff. You do all your own stuff.

Jamie Levin: Yep. I do all my own back office, if you will, which is probably why I’m unable to print at the moment. But like, you know, it’s what, it’s, I can print from my phone just fine. So there you go. But it depends on the day where I’m. If I’m the IT person, the bookkeeper, the CFO,

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

Jamie Levin: so yeah.

Tim Melanson: well you might need an IT person. Hint. Hint. That’s what I do. Yeah. So it’s time for your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business.

Jamie Levin: I think what’s exciting to me is that I get to dabble in so many different industries, right? So there are many times in my career, like at one point I was in automotive and it was, I loved it. There was one point when I was in automotive aftermarket and I loved it. There was one point when I was in [00:22:00] construction and I loved.

How cool is it that I can be in commercial cleaning energy, nonprofit sports? Um, I don’t wanna leave people out interior design. Like I just hard washes. Like I just get to apply my skillset in so many different places and I get to speak different languages and different things are exciting. And so when anybody’s like, what’s your, like, what’s your day like?

I’m like. I know that at six 30 or seven in the morning, I, it just, and so for me, that’s what drives me because I’m not like a going through the motions person. I don’t do well like that. Like it’s just not how my personality is, and it’s not what drives me or fuels me. So it’s not even. meant mo all my clients are ongoing, so it’s not like, Ooh, this is a fun project.

It’s a fun project with an ongoing client. Um, but then I’m juggling, right? And getting to talk to [00:23:00] different reporters in different industries so it doesn’t get stale. Um, and it also pro provides me with like some amazing business development opportunities with regards to reach, right? Because I don’t.

While I have niche areas that I’ve worked in before, and so yeah, I’m, I’m more of an expertise quote unquote, and have relationships as people love to say with reporters in those areas. My skillset can be applied to any industry, so like, wow, I’m blessed, especially in this world of AI and all this craziness that’s going on.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm. Well, and, and that’s, that’s really cool to talk about too because there’s different types of personalities and some personalities like to have that very structured. I know exactly what I’m doing every single day and some people like to have a little bit more changing. Right. And you know, it sounds to me like you’ve found something that’s really awesome that you’re able to kind of like just jump into all these different things and keep things exciting for yourself.

Right.

Jamie Levin: Yeah. Yeah. Plus you never know what the media is gonna say on [00:24:00] any given day. So, you know, like what’s timely at this moment. Like one of the things right now of course is the flu, right? Unfortunately everybody’s sick.

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Jamie Levin: commercial cleaning company has like some pretty cool things they do when it comes to that and like how does that contribute to, you know. Productivity in the workforce and people being able to go and schools not being impacted. And so how do you make, so whatever’s going on in the world can also contribute to what you’re able to share and how a client of yours, you know, can support people in the world that day. Like that’s pretty cool.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. And that’s, uh, so yeah, I mean, I’d like to know more about, about that because the thing about that is that you have to really have a pulse on what’s going on in the world and for. The people that are running the businesses that you work for, do they really have time to do all that stuff?

Like they’re busy breathing their business, right?

Jamie Levin: Yeah, that’s what [00:25:00] I always say. PR is extra credit. Um, you know, it’s also a challenge ’cause it’s hard to. To say like, Hey, here’s your ROI on the article I

secured for you last week, but how amazing was it when my energy clients sent me through like, Hey, just so you know, this CPA lead came in through the column that we wrote for this publication.

I was like, oh my gosh, you’re amazing. You just made my day. Thank you for letting me know, right? Because all I can tell you is, hey, if you were gonna buy an ad in this publication, it would cost you X, Y, Z, and we got the same space and it just cost you my time.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Jamie Levin: like your brain power to bring it to life and your time to do an interview.

So, um, so yeah, that part’s fun also.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, you know, media and, and that kind of stuff is so much more accessible now than it was 20 years ago too, right. So just about any company can jump into it as long as they have someone that knows what they’re doing, right.

Jamie Levin: Right? Yeah. Yeah.

And there’s so many different channels too, [00:26:00] which is, you know, is a lot to keep up with. Um. But are people really reading the newspaper anymore?

Tim Melanson: No, no, they’re not.

Jamie Levin: I mean, they may be reading it online, right?

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Jamie Levin: But I’m a little old school. I still like a book other rather than a Kindle. So I don’t know. Maybe there are still some, I’m not sure.

Tim Melanson: oh, sure. There’s a few here and there. Right.

Jamie Levin: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: But definitely not the masses. So, so tell me, like, how would somebody, what’s the process of, of someone getting in touch with you? What, what do they do?

Jamie Levin: Yeah, I like to consider myself pretty accessible. Um, you know, they can go to my website, which is just j 11 communications.com, and there’s a way to get in touch with me there. Um, that’s easy because life shouldn’t be hard for certain things, um, or LinkedIn or. Send smoke signals, I don’t know. But, um, yeah, I, six degrees of separation.

Shoot me an email. Send me, [00:27:00] um, my clients love to text me and that’s cool too, right? Because it works. So, uh, any which way works for me?

Tim Melanson: So what’s the type of client that would get the most outta working out, working with you?

Jamie Levin: I would say someone who’s. You know, is interested in getting out there from a, again, this is, if we’re just talking like the external side, right? Because there’s internal also, but from an external perspective, it’s somebody who understands that they’re competing with every other person in their industry for news coverage.

So let’s be mindful, you know, on the first day you’re not gonna get the Today Show. Like it’s just, it’s not gonna happen. I will, I will level set with you right there. But I think it’s someone who’s willing to get a little creative. Wants to get some exposure and some, you know, recognize themselves as a subject matter expertise and knows what their target is.

Like, there is nothing more attractive to me than someone who’s [00:28:00] like, this is who I need to talk to. And I’m like, great, if that’s who you need to talk to, this is where we’re going. Um, because then I can be more effective rather than, you know, casting the wide net. And is that necessary? Sometimes a hundred percent.

Also side note, that helps with SEO and SEM, right? So. If you have a good marketing person or a good agency, then we work together, we partner, and then things get really exciting and sexy. But, um, I would say someone who’s just interested in getting themselves out there and is willing to give a little bit of time.

Right. Because if you’re not willing to give me a little bit of time, I’m not gonna be helpful to you. And I’ll tell you that from the very beginning. I’m very, very honest.

Tim Melanson: great. So probably the hardest question. Tell me who’s your favorite rockstar?

Jamie Levin: Oh gosh. My husband would want me to say my favorite band is Phish, and I think my nephew would do,

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Jamie Levin: um, jam band. Um, [00:29:00] that’s a tough one

for me. I, because you know why? Because just like, I like all different industries. I like all different kinds of music. I like can go country, I can go rap, I can go r and b, I can go rock.

Um, I just love music. I just love music, but I don’t have, like, I don’t know, I don’t have a favorite,

Tim Melanson: Have you been to a

Jamie Levin: so I’m not sure what that says about me, but I’m a chameleon.

Tim Melanson: Yes. Oh me. Well, me too. I, I love all music. I do love

Jamie Levin: What’s your favorite, though? Like if, if I ask you the same question, what’s

Tim Melanson: I love The Beatles. The Beatles are my favorite band. Yeah. Um, but I mean, that’s just, it’s just the answer that I give. ’cause I do enjoy all types of music and, uh, so similar to you and Phish is awesome. I, I’ve been to a few of the phish uh, festivals back in the nineties and they were, they were crazy.

Jamie Levin: Still going strong.

Tim Melanson: Still going strong. That’s awesome. [00:30:00] Well, thank you so much for rocking on me today, Jamie. This has been a lot of fun.

Jamie Levin: Thank you. I appreciate it. Normally my clients are in front of it, so in front of the camera, so I, I took my turn today and I appreciate the opportunity.

Tim Melanson: Well, you did an excellent job.

Jamie Levin: Thank.

Tim Melanson: Thank you. And thank you to the listeners as well. Make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information and we’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast.

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. Today’s episode, we are talking to a speaker, an author, a podcaster, an insurance agent, and what he does is he helps people to navigate working from home. So I’m super excited to be rocking out today with Chris Castanes. Hey Chris, you ready to rock?

Chris Castanes: I am Tim. I am. All ready to go, man. You got me all juiced up here now. Ready and excited.

Tim Melanson: Nice. Right on. Well, we always start off in a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Chris Castanes: Oh, great. Uh, one of, one of the, one of the stories of success is, um, honestly, I just, I wanna, I like bragging about my books. I, I’ve written a couple of books. Um, one of them, the first one I self-published, it was just a learning curve that was took forever and it, when I published it. I felt like I had really accomplished something.

It took me about six months to figure out how to do it, edit photos and all that stuff. And it was just fun [00:01:00] to do, you know, it was just like a good project and the book was, did exactly what I wanted it to do, which was just be a good marketing tool and get my, my name out there and let people know this is what I do.

And it, it was just, you know, it was like a little win for me. It was, it was a good one.

Tim Melanson: Nice. Yeah. Writing a book is kind of a big deal, isn’t it?

Chris Castanes: Yeah, I mean, it was fun. I, it was really a lark at the time. I was wanting to just write a book on something that I wish somebody had told me before I got into the business of sales. So the book is called, you’re Gonna Be Great at This, and. And, um, and the reason I call it that was because anytime, I don’t know if you’ve ever been on any, uh, interviews for sales jobs, but especially a, a position that’s a hundred percent.

Uh, commission, you know, where they don’t, you don’t have a salary and they can’t find people. They, they’re always looking for people for these positions. So they, they just tell you [00:02:00] stuff, you know, oh, it’s the best product ever, and we’re the greatest company ever. And, and, you know, we’ve got the best products and you’re, and people are gonna love it, and you don’t even have to sell it.

They’re gonna come to you and ask for it, which is all, you know, not

true. And then of course they always throw in that, you know, we’ve, even though we’ve only known you for eight seconds and you’ve got a great personality, we know you’re gonna be great at this. And I always, I always tell people, when you hear that run, you know, that’s so people think when I say, yeah, it’s called, you’re gonna be great at this.

They think it’s like motivational, but I’m like, no, it’s not, not, that’s not what it’s.

Tim Melanson: It’s a bit sarcastic, I guess.

Chris Castanes: Yeah, it’s a little backhanded, you know? Here you go. So, but that’s what the, that’s the whole tone of that book is, is just, here’s stuff that’s out there, the landmines and what to look out for if you’re going into a sales position and it’s, and it’s all, or, or if you’re self-employed.

’cause if you’re self-employed, you’re in sales. And that’s the whole point of the book. But yeah, that was my, that’s [00:03:00] my, my win, I guess.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Right on. Well, along with the good notes, sometimes things don’t go as planned, and I do like to talk about the bad notes as well. So can you tell me something that didn’t go as planned and how you recovered?

Chris Castanes: Uh, well, that’s every day. You know, it’s, uh, being, being a business owner, you always have those, those down notes. And, um, I, I, a great one was just yesterday, as a matter of fact. It was just, you know, coming out of the new year, you’ve got your, you. New motivation, you know, I’m gonna go out there and knock it outta the park.

And my resolutions and what I’ve been doing recently is just sending people emails and notes on LinkedIn and saying, Hey, here’s my calendar. Book a time and I’ll come to you and we’ll meet. And um, sure enough, I got my first, uh, stood up for my first appointment of the year yesterday after driving 20, about 20 miles to this coffee shop and.

Nobody showed up and I’m calling ’em, and they didn’t even return the phone call. So that’s my [00:04:00] one, one of those little failures that it just, you know, there again. It’s, it’s, it’s just those things that happened, but it’s, you know, and it’s, it was a little extra punch in the gut because this person booked the appointment on, on to, on their time.

So it wasn’t, like I said, I’m gonna see you, you know, at this point and this time they did it, and it still didn’t, they still didn’t show up. So, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s par for the course when you’re in business though.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, uh, I mean, nowadays, like thank goodness for Zoom, uh, like I moved everything pretty much to zoom now. I barely ever go and meet anybody in person anymore. And you know, so this sting is much less when they don’t show up to a Zoom call as opposed to driving across the city just for a meeting, uh, you

Chris Castanes: I know it is, it is painful and, and Zoom is, is great. I’ve actually done a few more Zoom calls, especially since COVID of course, but you know, [00:05:00] I’m still old school, you know, let’s go meet for some coffee, I’ll buy you some coffee, and I give ’em some brochures and you know, that kind of thing. And it’s hard to do that when you’re over a computer, but at the same time, you know, I’m not wasting, you know, a gallon of gasoline.

Whatever else, you know. Uh, hour of my time, hour and a half driving all over the place for nothing. So there’s good and bad, but yeah, I, I get it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it does happen, eh, uh, and, you know, ’cause, uh. Mean, you had mentioned that you’ve been self-employed for a long time now, 25 years, right? Isn’t it? Something like that or

Chris Castanes: yeah, I mean, I’ve been, I’ve been in sales since I got outta college back in 1985, but I went, I went. Back to the corporate world for a little bit, um, and gotten back in back, gotten back into sales in 2000

and, um, and I’ve been self-employed ever since. And it’s, you know, it’s got a lot of ups [00:06:00] and downs.

It’s fun. You know, you have to, you have to learn how to navigate ma, manage your time wisely, um, market yourself, all those things that are. You know, customer service, once you get the sale, you still have to service the customer and you know, it,

Tim Melanson: Yeah, there’s a lot of juggling. Mm-hmm.

Chris Castanes: yeah. You gotta wear a lot of hats and, you know, I, I ha luckily I haven’t had many HR complaints on myself, so, but, but if I don’t start behaving, I, I might turn myself in for something.

Tim Melanson: Jeez, you’re, you’re lucky. You’ve got a good boss.

Chris Castanes: I know.

Tim Melanson: Well, uh, I, I do think so. I mean, talking about sales, I, you know, I, I did spend some time in, uh, in commission sales as well, mostly in the network marketing industry actually. And, uh, I, I think it’s, it’s, it’s interesting because it’s one of those things that, [00:07:00] um, when you start a business. You know, you think, oh, you know, I’m, I’m a great, you know, whatever it is, you know, a mechanic or hairdresser or web developer, whatever it happens to be, and you think I’m just gonna start my own business and cut out the middleman.

And you really realize really quickly that sales is like a lot of it, like a lot of it. And, uh, I don’t think, I don’t think a lot of people are really prepared for that. Uh, we don’t, we don’t learn sales in school, do we?

Chris Castanes: No, we don’t and, and I wish they. Hal it, uh, uh, honestly, I do, and, and I talk about that in my first book about how there you get people who get caught up in network, network, uh, sales and, and affiliate sales and things like that, and, and they’ve bought a franchise into some multi-level marketing. And, um, you know, okay, it’s just a side hustle.

You don’t have to, and they don’t realize it’s, it’s sales, you know, and, and you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta go out there and, and, and do the stuff. You gotta [00:08:00] network. You know, you can’t, what, what do we say? You can’t just put your lamp. I think it says it in the Bible somewhere. Like you can’t just put your lamp under the, the table, you gotta put it on top of the table for everybody to see it.

So you can’t just sit at home and, and hope that, you know, invite your 37 Facebook friends to your new business page and expect them to buy things. You gotta go out there and hustle and, and go to networking events and online things and LinkedIn and everything. It’s, it’s, you gotta, especially now with.

Social media, you’ve gotta really do a whole holistic approach to your, your marketing. And if you do the marketing. Efficiently and effectively that takes more of that sales workload off of your plate. The, the, the sales is a whole lot easier if the marketing is done right. So that’s always been the, you know, the thrust is like, let’s, let’s figure out how to market first, then we can set the [00:09:00] table for the sale.

Otherwise, you’re just going in and. To cold call people, and it’s brutal, you

know? So,

Tim Melanson: Yep. Oh yeah. And I’ve been there too. The cold calling and all that stuff. ’cause I, I, you know, I, I, it’s, it’s funny ’cause I mean, you know, a lot of people have a really negative opinion of, you know, multilevel marketing and all that stuff. And yeah, there’s a ton of scams and a ton of scammers, that’s for sure.

However. Uh, the, the, the other side of it is that if you were to get into it, not thinking that you’re gonna be a millionaire, ’cause come on, you’re, you’re probably not, uh, especially if you have no experience, uh, but you will learn, you will learn a lot about people, about, about communication and about sales.

And I think what the, the kind of like a bit of a distinguisher between what you just said there about the marketing and the sales, you know, part of it is you gotta figure out a way to get people to come to you in the first place. And then once they come to you, you gotta figure out a way to talk to them to try to connect you what you do to [00:10:00] what they do.

And that would be more like the sales side of it? Is that how, how you see it too?

Chris Castanes: Oh yeah, I mean, exactly. I mean, I mean take, take for something for instance, like, um, you know, hamburgers, you know McDonald’s. Does all the marketing upfront. They don’t have a sales guy just walking around town going, Hey, who wants a double cheeseburger?

You know? And, and so you walk into their business and then they still upsell you, you know, Hey, did you want fries with that or do you wanna supersize that, or whatever.

So. Even though every industry’s not the same, you know, nobody, people enjoy hamburgers, people don’t enjoy buying life insurance. And so you really have to make the marketing even better or more effective on that, in that industry. Um, because people are going, gosh, you know, if I got a choice between, I’ve got 10 bucks in my hand and I’ve got a choice between having a happy meal or having, you know, covering my family if I die. [00:11:00] They’re gonna take the.

Tim Melanson: They are gonna take the hamburger. We know that. Yeah. Well, yeah. ’cause uh, I mean, now, you know, the, the world is so different, like, because there’s, I mean, there’s two types of businesses that you might be running. You might be running a business where nobody knows what you do and nobody understands what you do, and you have to spend some time educating them on why they even need you in the first place.

But then there’s the other side of it of. Everybody knows what you do. You know, it’s something that everybody needs. But now you gotta figure out how to, how to distinguish yourself against everybody else who’s selling the same thing, right? And both of those are very challenging,

Chris Castanes: Yeah, I mean, especially if you’re, uh, you know, if you create your, uh, something totally new. If you’ve come up with some totally new product or new market that nobody even knew, knew was needed, the education part, like you said, that could, that could cost you. Thousands of of dollars just to, just to [00:12:00] get people to wrap their head around what you’re trying to explain to ’em.

Um, you know, compared to, you know, well, we sell screwdrivers. Everybody, everybody’s, everybody that’s ever had a toolbox has a screwdriver in there, but nobody’s gonna know about some new. App that measures houses or something, you know, whatever. So there’s always the education part that kind of ties in with the marketing, but it’s, it’s such a, a bear sometimes if you’re doing something that’s just people don’t understand, or, you know, what, what I tell people a lot of times is there’s, I, I’ll give them the fill in the blank, uh, scenario.

I’ll say, okay, I am saving up for blank. Just think in your head, what do people save up for? You know, they save up for a down payment on a car or a home. Uh, nobody saves up for. Long-term care insurance.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Chris Castanes: you know, so, so if, if your industry doesn’t fit in that, [00:13:00] that little blank very well, then you’re gonna have a much harder time selling that product.

And so, and that means you’re gonna have to figure out how to market it. And if you’re not good at marketing, you might want to spend the money to hire a marketing firm. You might want to go and learn how to be a marketer, but. If you’re that poor guy that went out and joined, you know, you’ve been working in the engineering field all your life and now you’ve decided that you wanna sell protein shakes on the side as part of a multi-level marketing, just as a side hustle, and you don’t know anything about sales or marketing or anything like that.

It, it can be a bear. And I, I go to networking events all the time and I see people and they’ve come from these, you know, well, by the way, I’ve also got this other product and they just look sad, you know, they just, they look like somebody just punched them in the gut. Like, nobody told me I was gonna have to come to do all this stuff.

You know, they told me people would just come to me and, and get it, you know, so it, it’s. It I, it’s one of those things where you just wish people would [00:14:00] be honest and upfront when they say, Hey, we’ve got some idea for you, a business idea or sales product. We want you to sell and tell you, here’s the batting average and here’s how many people have come through the door in the last week that didn’t do well at this.

And here’s, you know, they always wanna show you the leaderboard. You know, here’s all man. Look at these top producers. Well, those are three guys out of 10,000 that have come through in the last six months. Where are the other ones? You know, so it’s, that’s one of my big gripes has always been, just be honest with people.

If what you’re selling is difficult, let ’em know that because turnover costs money too. And when you’re hiring salespeople or you’re hiring people to come onto your on board and sell your products, that costs you a lot of money as well. Uh, time and effort and get materials and training, training and all that stuff can cost a lot of money.

So you could really nip that in the bud. By just telling people upfront, here’s the real deal. I’m not gonna give you the rose colored glasses. [00:15:00] I’m gonna let you, you know, do you think you’re up for this? That’s, that’s the way I, I position it because I also hire, I don’t wanna say hire, but I have a little downline of insurance agents and, um, and I don’t take ’em unless they’ve been in the industry at least two years.

I, I don’t want the rookies, I don’t have time for it. Um, let, there’s a whole other. 10,000 other insurance companies out there that will hire the rookies and they’ll weed ’em out. And then I’ll take those that are sticking around and I’ll say, okay, come and work with me for a little bit also. So it’s, we’ve kind of gone off topic here a little bit, but the marketing and the is just, is such a.

Big, you know, part of it and, and making sure that you know how to position your products and, and if you don’t know how to position your business, especially if it’s a, a service industry, you know, something like that, real estate or something, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta really learn that part of the business as well.

Tim Melanson: Well, I mean, yes, but also [00:16:00] there’s another thing that I noticed too, is that there. Uh, I, there are some people that tend to, it doesn’t matter what they’re selling, they’re good at it.

Chris Castanes: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: You know, like it’s just, you, you know, you have, you have some people that just, you know, especially in those, in those companies that will jump around from like protein shakes and now they’re selling insurance, and now they’re selling and they’re, they’re making boatloads of money and no matter what they sell.

So there is some sort of like, like com, like there is sort of some sort of base skill, right. Involved. Right.

Chris Castanes: There’s, there’s a mentality there, and you’re right. You know, you can get that person and they’ll say, dude, I’ve been selling cars and I’ve been really good at it, and I’m just tired of it. I want to go sell. Refrigerators

Tim Melanson: Right.

Chris Castanes: whatever. And there are, those people are always gonna be out there, but they’re the, they’re far and few between really.

Um, and, and usually when you see those veterans at some, whatever business it is, say, say it is a, a big life insurance company, that guy [00:17:00] that’s been there for. 25, 30 years, he’s that person. He or she’s that girl that can go out and go wherever she wants to go. And if you’re good at sales, that sales set, that skillset is transferrable,

Tim Melanson: Yes. Yeah.

Chris Castanes: you know, and, and, and they can sell Yellow Pages ads.

They can sell ice to the Eskimos. But the question is. There, you know, how much ice did that Eskimo really need? And are you really doing that? Uh, that person, the service that you, you say that you are, are you, you know, are your values, uh, being translated through that transaction? So it’s really a matter of making sure that you know.

You know what you’re doing, how to do it right, and, and you can learn it. You know, there’s always positive. We’ve gotta have a positive mindset and all this stuff. I know some people that have really bad mindsets and they still sell, you know,

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Chris Castanes: you know, so I, it, I’ve never, I’m not a psychologist. [00:18:00] I’m, I don’t even play one on tv, but I can tell you that I’ve worked with all sorts of people and, and the ones that usually are successful, the ones that are just.

Let me, let me talk to you like we’re just friends and have a good conversation, and I’ll tell you the, the ups and downs, I’ll give you the positives and the negatives of this product or service. And those people gain trust, they gain credibility, and they’re gonna get the referrals and they don’t have to do all that.

Stressed out. High pressure selling. You know, I, I always say don’t do high pressure selling. Do good pressure selling. Um, you know, don’t tell people you have to have this life insurance product. Just go, look, Tim, you know, you’re married, you’ve got a, a family, you’ve got a mortgage. This is something you need.

If you or my brother or sister right now, I would highly recommend this. And that’s, that’s just good pressure. You know, I’m not, I’m not gonna beat you up if you don’t buy it. We’re still friends, whatever.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Chris Castanes: And just [00:19:00] take it down a notch.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yeah. So what about, uh, what about mentorship? Like, do you, do you have mentors in your life that have gotten you to this point?

Chris Castanes: I’ve had a few mentors and, um, you know, my, my big thing on that has always been just. You’re always gonna have like a manager or a sales manager or somebody, don’t regard that as a mentor. Regard them for what they are. A good mentor won’t have any kind of financial stake in your success. And if you can find that person who, like for me, I had a older gentleman years ago who took me under his wing and he was retired and he just said, you know, I’ll just check in with you every once in a while and if you’ve got a a problem.

Call me and he showed me the ropes and, and really taught me a lot. And when I was doing well, he. He was happy, but he wasn’t making any money off of me. You know, he wasn’t going, Hey, [00:20:00] yeah, I finally got that guy making me an override commission, whatever. So, you know, and then when I was doing bad, I could pick up the phone and, you know, cry my blues to him and he would say, you know, well, let’s, let’s figure out what you’re doing wrong.

You know, so that’s, that’s a great mentor there. But a sales manager. No, not really. They’re just, they’re just trying to get you to stay in line and make sure that you’re doing, you know, they’ll, I mean, they, sometimes their intentions are good, but you have to understand that their intentions are also to keep their job and your job is to help them, you know, so.

Tim Melanson: There’s a bit of a conflict of interest. So I mean, it, it can, it can go in your favor because I mean, the conflict of interest is on a positive side. They win by you winning, so that’s good. But on the negative side, they might talk, not give you those like tough to hear truths, right?

Chris Castanes: Well, and they will, but they’ll, but then they’ll say, you know, well you need to get out there. And

you know, when somebody says, well, if you [00:21:00] just change your attitude, well, you know. Or, or like my, like my old man used to say, you know, all you need to do is go out there and get 10 pounds of confidence, you know?

And I’m like, well, you get confidence from getting little successes. And that’s, that’s how you build that confidence up. You don’t just go like, alright, I’m confident now. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a progress. So, yeah. You know, it, it, it’s good and bad both. But I just always try to find somebody that’s a little bit more detached from the situation and it can be a little bit more objective and, um, you know, they’ll, they’ll help you out.

You can always find somebody.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think that’s important too. Like, I think, I think that having a, you know, a rich circle of influence, you know, in and outta your business. I mean, because I mean, if. Is it, it’s blind spots, right? I mean, you know, if, if you’re talking to somebody who’s in the same business as you all the time, then they might not be able to see what somebody who has no idea.[00:22:00]

Like I, I remember when I, even when I was in university, um, when I was struggling with a tough. Problem. It was more helpful for me to talk to somebody who had no idea what I was doing than it was for some, for me to talk to one of my, to one of my, my classmates, because you have to explain it to them in a way that they would understand.

And then they go, oh, well I see your problem. Or they don’t even, sometimes they don’t even say anything. It’s just you work through your own problem by going, oh, that’s what I’m doing wrong, just by explaining it to somebody.

Chris Castanes: by explaining it and breaking it down into very basic pieces, you’re, you’re explaining it to yourself. You know, and, and that’s a great con. That’s a great idea. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, and I mean, hey, nowadays we can talk to chat, chat bots and stuff like that and probably flesh through some of these things without even taking someone’s time. But on the other hand, having a person is, is, is, is better, I think.

Chris Castanes: Yeah. [00:23:00] Or cat, you know, I just get my cat and talk to my cat.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, so now you mentioned like, uh, you know, confidence comes from getting little wins.

Like, do you have any practices that, you know help you to get that those little wins or

Chris Castanes: Uh, well, one of the things I do is I just keep my calendar, uh, booked. You know, I try not to have a whole lot of downtime, uh, between, we always used to say, uh, between 10 and four you should be either seeing clients or fighting to see clients and. So between 10 and four, it’s either seeing a client or I’m got it written in the calendar, you know, I’m going to do some marketing, or I’m gonna do some, make some phone calls, or I’m gonna be sending out emails or whatever I gotta do.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Chris Castanes: And just keep that, keep that everything’s got plugged in on that calendar. Uh, otherwise I’m sitting around playing, you know, candy Crush or watching TV or [00:24:00] whatever, hearing, you know, being self-employed and working from home. You can’t see it, but right over there’s a TV and you know, and then right back of me below this futon is my, my base.

And so, you know, there’s always that, you know, I just wanna like get up and go, man, I really would like to learn that, that new baseline that I didn’t learn, you know, whatever. So it, it’s fun. To be self-employed, but you have to have that discipline to go, I’ve got to stay narrowly focused, just if nothing else, between 10 and four.

And then, you know, from nine to 10 I’m still waking up, brushing my teeth and getting my head together and doing those things. And from four to five, I’m wrapping up the end of the day and getting ready for the next day. So if you just plug in that calendar, make sure everything’s. Good and make sure that you’re not wasting time.

Like when I get done with this podcast, I’ve probably got about 20 minutes and then I’ve gotta drive half hour up the road to a networking event and, [00:25:00] um, where I will be, you know, handing out brochures and trying to talk to people and doing all those things that are fighting to see clients, as we say, and fighting for referrals as much as you can.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, and, and, and that’s, that’s just it, right? I mean, when you’re self-employed, you don’t have a, a boss that’s telling you what to do. You don’t have that same sort of like pressure, but it’s like, um, if you don’t work, then you don’t eat. And it might take a few weeks for that to start to happen, right?

Chris Castanes: Right. I mean, you gotta get out there and just plant those seeds and, and, or it’s funny, a friend of mine, he always refers to planting seeds that will blossom down the road. And I go and, and my analogy is always I’m planting landmines and I’m waiting for somebody to step on ’em. You know? So you.

Either way, you know, you’re, when you’re in sales or self-employed or whatever you’re doing, you’ve gotta play the, play the long game as well. And you gotta really be understanding that if [00:26:00] you’re not gonna just, you know, turn on the computer today and money’s gonna come in, I’ve gotta go out there and do the work, set the set the landmines, and keep setting those landmines.

And sooner or later, the ones I, the 10 I drop today, one of ’em is gonna explode next week. And you know, that’s a violent kind of analogy, but it’s one I like.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, well there’s, there’s so much faith involved too in business. ’cause you, you, you, um. You know, it’s just, it’s different when you have that two week paycheck coming every time and you’re like, okay, well I know it’s coming. Whereas this right here, it’s like you plant all these seeds or you drop all these landmines and, and are they gonna, are they gonna pay off?

I don’t, like, you don’t really have that, uh, that shore thing, right. But I mean, on the other hand, you know, I, I mean, you’ve been self-employed for how long? I’ve been self-employed for 20. It always comes back. It does, right?

Chris Castanes: Yeah, I mean, it’s [00:27:00] it having a little faith in yourself. Goes a long way. And, and, and there again, it’s all about how, you know, those are, that’s marketing. That’s if, if it’s not working and your land minds are just duds and nobody’s stepping on ’em, then maybe you need to adjust your marketing a little bit and you have to be a little bit more self-aware of what’s working and, and just being honest and saying, and, and, and the, and the other trap is when you, when you set one landmine and somebody steps on it.

Then you think, oh, that’s always gonna work. And then you find out that that was just a fluke and that was, you know, not, it wasn’t the case. So sometimes we have that one little quick success that, and then we think, well, that’s a good pattern to get into and realize that it’s not. So it more of a trends kind of guy sometimes, and I say, let’s, let’s see what’s happening over the long term. And look at some numbers. Let’s see where the numbers are going. You just had that one one little pop, but you didn’t have another pop for a [00:28:00] month. Maybe there’s something wrong there and that’s why you’re eating mayonnaise, sandwiches for lunch instead of a, a real hamburger or something.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Right on. So let’s get into your solo. Tell me what’s exciting your business right now.

Chris Castanes: Uh, the most exciting thing right now is, is probably my podcast. I’ve, um, as, as I was telling you earlier, I, I do insurance, but I’ve branched that over into this other field. ’cause my, what I’ve done with my insurance agency, mostly since COVID, is I’ve just put it online and it’s, a lot of it is self service.

People can go on there and get their own. You know, dental and vision insurance and things like that. But what we’ve done, uh, also is with the two books and I’ve done some speaking engagements and, um, things like that. And so we’re, we’ve opened up this podcast. Arm of the business about six months ago, and I’ve just had a blast.

It’s, it is just fun. I’ve enjoyed it. I, um, I’m [00:29:00] comfortable in front of the computer talking to the camera and talking to people about, you know, fun subjects like sales and marketing and things like that. And, and I have my own podcast. I’m marketing that and it’s just fun. I mean, it, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s just something I enjoy doing and talking to other podcasters and being on a guest on other people’s shows.

It is just been, it is just been a hoot and, um, you know, and people are, are most, haven’t had any bad experiences. Everybody’s been very nice and I’ve only cried twice and so, you know, I’m very sensitive.

Tim Melanson: So what is it that you guys talk about then?

Chris Castanes: We, well, it’s very similar to your podcast here. We talk about, uh, things that can help, um, small business owners, solopreneurs, uh, anybody that’s self-employed. You know, ten nine, what we call 10 99 salespeople here in, in the states. Um, you know, we don’t have benefits, so we have to get our own [00:30:00] ’cause everybody else has employee benefits and we don’t.

So we have to do our own, uh, thing when it comes to that. But we do our own marketing and so I’m very active in, in like the local Chamber of commerce.

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Chris Castanes: you know, and I, and networking events and those, and what you find is that’s, that’s that world, more of those people, uh, and we’re all in the same boat.

And even though we’re not, I, a lot of times I’ll go to a networking event or, and there’ll be, uh. Competitors of mine there, and we network. And just because somebody’s your competitor doesn’t mean you can’t get along with ’em and talk to ’em. And, and I’ve actually gotten more business referrals from my competitors who don’t like doing some of the things I do.

And I don’t like doing some of the things that they’re doing. So we’re swapping referrals amongst ourselves and that’s the kind of thing we talk about on the podcast, uh, mindset, uh, skill sets. Just tips and tricks, uh, you know, [00:31:00] things that can help people. You know, one of my, one of my favorite little pieces of advice, you know, sometimes it’s like if you got a sign magnet on your car, where are you gonna park your car at the grocery store?

You know? And I always tell people are like, huh? I don’t, I’ve never even considered that. Park it next to where you, everybody pushes their shopping carts, right?

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Chris Castanes: Because that’s gonna be the highest visibility. And, and, and I’ve had people, I’ve never even thought that that would be a thing. But you know, I don’t know if that’s gonna help, but it’s not gonna do you any good to park your car in the back of the parking lot ’cause you’re afraid another car might hit you if you’ve got a sign magnet.

What was the point of getting the sign magnet? Nobody’s gonna put it, come out there and see it, you know? So you might as well make it in braille if you’re gonna do that. So I don’t know. So that’s the kind of thing we put on our show. It’s just, uh. You know, tips and tricks and helpful advice and marketing and networking and things like that.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So how do we find out more then?

Chris Castanes: Uh, well the show is called, um, you’re gonna be great at this. It’s on [00:32:00] Spotify, YouTube, apple, all those. And, um, it’s just there. You just tune in. I’d love to have. Some more listeners. Uh, we’re very, uh, as I say all the time, I have dozens of fans all over the world. So, so it’s a new podcast and I, and I’m learning it and I’m not, I’m not, you know, upset.

You know, people are like, how do I want to have 10,000 subscribers? And I’m like, dude, I’d be happy if I have like a half dozen at this point. I’m keep the bar low.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Awesome. So then, uh, this might be the hardest question. So who is your favorite rockstar?

Chris Castanes: Well, let’s see. Um, that’s a good question. I mean, I’ve always been a, a fan of, uh, Elvis just because he was just such a pioneer. But, um, my, my new favorite genre of music, let, let’s do it this way. My new favorite genre of music has been punk covers of old classic rock songs.

Tim Melanson: Wow.[00:33:00]

Chris Castanes: So, so there’s a, there’s a, uh, several bands out there that do, uh, you know, a lot of punk bands that will do covers of classic rock songs.

And then there’s some that, that’s all they exclusively do. And I really like that kind of stuff. So like, there’s a band called Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of

Tim Melanson: heard them. Yeah, I’ve heard of them.

Chris Castanes: yeah. They’ve been around for years and years. I, I mean, I love listening to that. Uh, that’s what I like playing on musically and, um.

So, yeah, that’s a, you know, it’s one of those things where it’s just fun to hear it and listen to it and, and it’s, you know, fun to play. Uh, um, you know, when you’re, when you’re in a, you know how this is when you’re in a band and somebody’s like, well, let’s play this song and it okay. But it’s really slow and. People might want to hear it, but it’s not fun to play. You know, and then there’s things that you just want to play, and it’s loud and it’s, you know, keeping you busy and making your brain go a hundred miles an hour. That’s, that’s the kind of stuff I like. So, and, and I, especially when you’re a little a [00:34:00] DD like I am, and, you know, so.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for rocking out today with me today, Chris. This has been a lot of fun.

Chris Castanes: Well, thank you Tim, and you’re doing a great service out there too. I, I appreciate your podcast, you, you share a lot of great guests and have lots of good information to share with people, so thank thanks to you as well. I.

Tim Melanson: Oh, thank you so much. Right on. And to the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information. We’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast.

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast. Today I’m talking to the CEO of Catalyst Growth Advisors, and what he does is he helps leaders take the guesswork outta growth. Excited to hear more about that. So we are rocking out today with Bill Flynn. Hey, Bill, you ready to rock?

Bill Flynn: Ready to rock.

Tim Melanson: Love it. We always start off on a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Bill Flynn: Yeah, well, um, we do good and, and actually your good and your bad note are in the same story. So can I, can I do that?

Tim Melanson: they often are.

Bill Flynn: Okay. So, um, the reason I do what I do today is because of this story. I, uh, so I did, uh, I’ve, I’ve done 10 startups here in the Boston area over about 25 years, all in high tech and, um. Between start of five and six, I was asked by my then wife and daughter, do I need to do another one right away? ’cause they, you know, they take a lot of time and energy and, and things and, and I had done pretty well. I was, I [00:01:00] was, uh, I think four for five at that time. Uh, and. Uh, so I said, no, I don’t. I, so I, I took time off.

I spent a lot more time with my daughter. She was, um, like seven or eight, something like that. And, um, one I, but I was still known in the area and people heard that I was now free. And so I would get calls and can you come help me and do this and do that? So one of the calls was from an old, um, um, CFO friend of mine, and he was doing a fractional gig with a, with an email hosting company.

And he said, you really gotta help this guy. You know, he’s really struggling and whatever. So I met with him. I said, uh, yeah, I’m happy to help. Uh Uh I’m expensive and I only work Monday through Thursday between 10 and two. I said,

can you do that while I’m sort of off off? Right.

Uh. Because, you know, I wanna drop my daughter off at school, then I go work out, then I go pick her up and we do stuff and whatever.

So, so, uh, that was great. I did that. Um, he [00:02:00] eventually, he said, look, I wanna sell the company. I’ve been doing this for a whole bunch of years. I’m tired. Uh, I just wanna, can you help me? Make me look as big as you possibly can so I can get as much money outta this as I possibly can. So I’m like, great. So we. You know, hired a bunch of people, put together some, some strategy and, and some frameworks and stuff. And about a year later he got bought for a good amount of money, enough for him to never have to work again. Uh, and then I was asked to take over, uh, so this was 2008 and, uh, my first official day as what would be general manager, uh, was, uh, January 4th, 2009. And I like to describe it as the best and the worst day of my professional life, which is sort of the good, the good and the bad note

together. Uh, we didn’t deliver email to anyone for about two and a half days because the entire technical infrastructure that he had built, and I had been working with him and collapsed on itself due to the volume that it wasn’t ready to handle. [00:03:00] So the company that bought us knew that the system needed to be upgraded, et cetera, but you know, they didn’t realize it needed to be done that quickly. And so they were sort of taking care of that. But I had 60 people working for me, thousands of customers. Uh, so I’m like, you know, what do I need to do? I need to fix this and sort of help all these people. And, um, I, I had a bunch of good CEOs that I had worked with in the previous years. I’ve been a big fan of business anyway, I’ve been reading. For years, decades. And so I had all sort of these ideas, so I’m like, all right, well let’s give ’em a go. And so I basically cobbled together a system. And for those of you, and you may know this, Tim, uh, there’s a system out there called EOS. And, um, I basically made my own EOS because I wasn’t smart enough to know that it was already out there. So I made my own and it worked fabulously, uh. You, you can look at, you can look at my LinkedIn and see all the wonderful stats that I have up there. You know, we doubled the size of the business in about two years and I didn’t lose any of those [00:04:00] 60 people. Um, we increased the average order size. You know, we had customer stats scores that, you know, were, started off lousy of course, and then really good. But the best part was this, I sort of, um. I had a team and then I inherited a bunch of people and you know, none of us had been through this sort of disaster before, and some of them hadn’t really been leaders of anything before. Uh, so I said to them, look, uh, we need to figure this out. We have all these people relying on us. I said, look, I don’t, I’m technically adept, but I don’t know how to run a network infrastructure. I’ve never run customer support before. I’m not a finance guy said, but. You know, so I, you know, I need you guys and I can’t really tell you what to do ’cause I don’t know what to do.

But I can tell you sort of what I would like it to look like when we’re done and would love to discuss debate and decide that with you. And then I need each of you to then say, okay, if that’s sort of our ultimate goal, what’s your piece of it? And I need you to sort of draw me the map from where we are. To where, what you need to get to, where you [00:05:00] want to be, and then we’re gonna work together to, to do that. Um, and you know, as I said, it worked fabulously well. Uh, and so about 18 months later, I left to go do the next startup, which would’ve been startup six, I guess. And two of the guys came up to me and they kind of said the same thing to me when I was always leaving was, I just want you to know, bill, that thing you made me do that roadmap, you made me create, hated it.

It was really, really hard, but I’m so glad you made me do it because now I know how to do this right? It’s sort of like sort of a teach ’em to fish kind of thing. Um, so that really sprung me into what I do now, which is I, I now do that with other leaders. I teach them. How the best businesses in the world work, because by the way, they all work kind of the same way at a certain level. And so that’s sort of what I do and I love what I do. It’s a calling. I wish I, I wish I had been doing it longer. I’ve been doing about 10 years. It’s just a blast. Um, time flies when I work with my clients, you know, I, [00:06:00] it’s, uh, it pays really well. So it’s, uh, so that’s my good note and my bad note.

Tim Melanson: So what did you learn from the bad note, I guess?

Bill Flynn: Uh, uh, what I learned is that most leaders, uh, don’t know what they’re doing. It’s not their fault. Uh, they’re being taught the wrong things.

There’s a huge gap between what science knows and what business does. Um, we make lots of mistakes. We don’t make big, huge mistakes very often, but we make. Little ones that just add

up and it makes our lives so much harder than they really need to be.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, the compound effect, right?

Bill Flynn: Yeah, exactly.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. If it was a big mistake, you’d notice it right away.

Bill Flynn: Yeah.

Yeah. You know, you, you hire that one person that, you know, they looked good and then all of a sudden, you know, nobody likes ’em and they don’t work and then, and then you don’t do anything about it. And then they start hiring people. It’s like, it just becomes an issue. That’s just one [00:07:00] of many things that we do. Uh, and because, you know, we were taught to, you know, to hire for skill and knowledge, and that’s not the way you should hire a loan, right? You said yes, that’s important, but to be honest with you, it’s less important than hiring them for belief and, and fit,

uh, values. Uh, you can teach ’em skills and knowledge, but you can’t teach ’em how to be, how out of integrity or honesty or whatever.

Tim Melanson: I can’t agree more than that. That’s, that’s actually something that has come up many times on the, on the show where people will make hires based on the, you know, picking the best of the best and it just ends up not being a very good fit. Um, but like, what about friends? Should you hire friends?

Bill Flynn: Uh, you can, but you know, it’s gonna test your friendship. Especially if they work for you. Um, so what happens is I hire people and then, then they become friends,

and then I hire ’em again. Right. But, but we know, like the dynamic, right? We know that, you know, I [00:08:00] have certain style, I do certain things and you know, my style is basically to, to set direction and then. To say, Hey, great. Do, do what you do and then tell me if you need me.

Right? I’m gonna check on you every now and again. I, you know, I’ve been calling it eyes on, hands off leadership, right? Is, is, you know, I’m gonna keep an eye on things, making sure things are going well, but I’m gonna keep my hands out of it unless something happens and I need to, but, you know, uh, so so that works. But if you don’t set that up ahead of time, you know, there’s gonna be, it could be difficult.

Tim Melanson: So then what are some of the, I guess, processes that you put in place to avoid some of those mistakes that you know led to your bad note?

Bill Flynn: Yeah. Well, how long is your show?

Tim Melanson: So that’s a

whole course then.

Bill Flynn: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So at, but at a high level, uh, the thing that I’ve learned over 30 years of, of, of research and business and really intensely in the last 10, you know, I, I might be the world expert in what I do. I don’t know, [00:09:00] uh, ’cause I’ve been studying business from multiple perspectives for about 10 years and. Uh, not only just, you know, business itself, but you know, neuroscience and behavioral and social psychology and all of these things that go along with running a great business because I found that there are three things that seem to be the, the biggest factors in whether you have not a business that survives, but a business that thrives. Uh, and there are few of them. There aren’t that many. Uh, there are outliers, but it’s doable. Uh, and it’s, and it’s been proven over and over again. So it’s, it’s not like we can’t do it, but as I said earlier, we just don’t. Um, and that is, uh, so, so there’s a, there’s a methodology called scaling Up. That I use as a foundation.

Some of your listeners may know what it is, and, and there are four decisions that they talk about, which are people, strategy, execution, and cash. And so people is the most important, but people is three different things. It’s the individual, it’s the team, and it’s the culture of those three [00:10:00] team is far more important than either of the other two

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Bill Flynn: because most people are on a team. And most people will stay in a horrible culture if they’re on a great team and actually will leave a great culture if they’re on a bad team. So the team is really the core of what you do and, and we never teach people how to be great team leaders. We put ’em in charge. But we don’t teach them how, you know, what it worked, how, how do you attract and, and dev and craft and then develop and exit people from a team. We don’t teach any of that. And that’s sort of what I do as well. So that’s one big factor is this team factor is huge. Then you have to have some sort of system, right. Um, running a business. Uh, so a business is a system, but it’s not just any kind of system. It’s what’s called a complex adaptive system like the human body or a city, uh, et cetera.

These are complex. There are so many factors that are involved that affect the system, and [00:11:00] there’s no way to just sort of say, this is it, and we’re done, because then something changes and then, you know, the system is affected. So you have to understand that, that this, you have to sort of run it like that, but you should have one. Right. You should run your business in a systematic way, which most people don’t. Um, they do the, they make the same decision over and over again. You know, they, they, they solve the problem and never say, well, what caused that problem? And we

should solve that so it

doesn’t happen. And go back to the root.

You know, there’s just so many things that we don’t do ’cause we’re busy and whatever. Um, so, so you have to have some sort of system. Uh, I, I teach a system. I call it the performance operating system. It’s to me, for me, the, I cobbled together the best parts of all the things that I’ve learned. Uh, and it seems relatively unique, but it’s really based on Drucker Deming, sche McGregor, Bennis, Porter Edmondson.

It’s, you know, all these management science people that have been around for a hundred years, really. Um, and then the last thing is, if you wanna measure how well you’re doing. [00:12:00] Revenue and profit are not your measurement. Cash is your measurement. If you wanna grow a business, cash is your primary financial metric. Why? Because it’s the only thing that won’t lie to you on your p and l or your balance sheet. You can, you know, certainly have revenue that is, you know, vanity, right? But it doesn’t mean you’re running a great business. Profit is great, but you can fool yourself on profit. You can move money around and seem profitable and whatever.

Or you can actually grow. In such a way that you grow broke, right? You’re growing and the profit’s there, but the profit, the cash is too far behind the growth. So you grow broke, uh, because you’ve grown so fast, you actually put yourself out of business, right? So those are the three things you need, team, some sort of system, and then cash.

If you focus on those three things and optimize those three things, you’re in the best possible position to have a thriving company.

Tim Melanson: Wow, that’s amazing. Wow. So much gold. So quickly. Well done. Uh, I have a question though about, ’cause you mentioned so many startups that you [00:13:00] started up and uh, you know, I know a lot of entrepreneurs kind of do a bunch of different things, but I think. Probably it’s more normal that they do a bunch of things because the fir, the, the first thing failed and then they go to something else and they go to something else.

Um, but I talk to more people more often that have that one business that they’ve been doing forever because now it works. Right. W when you go into those businesses, did you go into them initially with the intent that you were gonna be leaving at some point or. Did it just, you created these systems and then it was just easy to leave.

Like what? What was the mindset going into them?

Bill Flynn: Yeah, so, um. You know, you hear, uh, these things like what’s your superpower or your zone of genius or whatever, right? And we have all these wonderful little phrases for stuff. Um, but to me it’s really the thing that lights you up or turns you on or whatever, you know, gets your juices, whatever that thing is.

Right? And for me it’s puzzles.

I just love [00:14:00] puzzles. Uh, I have a brain that just loves puzzles, right? And, and so I do puzzles all over. I mean, I, I have the New York Times. You know, crossword and, and app and I do all, all those things. You know, a startup is just a big puzzle. You know, I love Mensa questions and stuff like that really challenged me.

I love watching detective shows and trying to figure out, you know, as I go, like, what’s, what’s gonna happen? And I love it when I don’t, right? It’s even, uh, because it’s fun. It’s like, ah, I never, that’s a cool way to do it. Um, so, so that’s what got me into it. Um. And so what happens when you’re good at puzzles and you, and you’re good at startups, uh, the people who know that want you to do the another one.

Tim Melanson: Uh,

Bill Flynn: So like, so you like, you know, you get an

IPO or you get an acquisition and they’re like, you know, great. Now do this one, right? And, and can you make us some more money? And all that kind of stuff. So that’s sort of what happens is you get sort of into this thing. I don’t necessarily go into a thing, I’m gonna leave at any particular time, but. You know, when it becomes routine, it is, it’s, there’s less puzzle there, right? It’s

your, you know, there is some puzzle, there’s always a puzzle, you know, [00:15:00] people are puzzles. I mean, we’re crazy by default and, you know, and sort of all that. And I find that fascinating. Um, but I do like the figuring out parts.

So, um, now I get to do it. I’m not doing startups, but I’m, I’m sort of going into a company and I’m helping them figure it out,

right? So it’s a new thing every time with them. Uh, so that’s sort of. That’s sort of the, the, the, the way I’ve approached it so far.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I really like that. And you know, I think, oh, oh, well that’s the thing. Once you solve a puzzle, it’s solved. It’s not fun anymore. Right. Like quote unquote. And you know, I don’t know if this is too deep or not, but maybe what you said earlier about how most entrepreneurs or most business people don’t.

Look at why the problem happened. They just keep on solving the problem as they happen. Maybe that’s why maybe they don’t wanna solve the puzzle. Maybe they don’t wanna leave. Right? They want it. They want it to keep on living in that chaos,

Bill Flynn: Could be. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you

Tim Melanson: least subconsciously.

Bill Flynn: chaos. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, there are some, they love the drama, right. And, and whatever they feed off of that. Um, most [00:16:00] entrepreneurs I know don’t,

Tim Melanson: No. No.

Bill Flynn: they would, they would rather it be, you know, a, a little less hard

because, you know, it makes your life more difficult.

And, you know, you don’t, you don’t, you don’t want to have your, your work. Be your whole life, right? Is, is, you know, we talk about work-life balance and I don’t think that’s a thing at all. There’s no balance in work and life, right? It’s, it’s, you know, sometimes one pull thing pulls you in the other and you have to integrate them, right?

So the integration is important, um, but you’ll never have balance. Uh, and, but especially if you are, if you are sucked into what I call the, sort of the tyranny of the moment, right? This is a problem that most leaders have is they get sucked into the tyranny of the moment and there are lots of them, and they feed off of that, right?

Is is that actually they like being the solver and the decider and

whatever. But then they don’t create, you know, they don’t, I have this concept, uh, that, that’s in my next book, which is [00:17:00] sort of the, the, the hero trap, right? We have this trap that we like to be the hero. And, and by the way, you know, especially in western culture, individualism and all that is, it’s part of our thing, right?

Is the hero is, is all lauded. Um. But in a business it doesn’t work. ’cause, ’cause the hero doesn’t scale. At some point you run out of hours in a day or brain cells or whatever. Right? So, uh, this concept I’ve come up with is, you know, you have to sort of, sometimes it’s good to be a hero. You have to be the hero. You have a particular skill or there’s the house is on fire or whatever. You gotta go in and just do. Right? Um, but it, but if you just do and then go onto the next thing, then. The house will catch fire a different way, and then you’ll have to go do it again. So, you know, it’s like once you do that, you should then teach and say, okay, here are the people that need to know, here’s what I did, here’s how I fixed it, you know?

And so now they’re learning at least how you do it, right? So there’s this controller, which is the hero, then there’s builder, right? So the controller is [00:18:00] iol. The builder is I teach, and then the architect, which is really what you want to scale because that is infinite in scale, is, is I build systems that make me unnecessary for the running of the business. Uh, and that is what you drive towards. So this is Reed Hastings at Netflix. Um, uh, uh, this is um, Jeff Bezos at Amazon. You know, pick your. You know, company that has grown crazy in the last 10, 15, 20 years. These are architects. They’ve built systems that don’t need them for the day to day ’cause they’re looking out into the future.

And that’s what you should be doing.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and that is a superpower and that is something that I think is missing. Misunderstood by the majority of the population. You know, thinking that these guys make way too much money or whatever it is, and maybe they do, right? Uh,

do they need that many billions? I don’t know. But on the other hand, that is a superpower.

I mean, [00:19:00] they have been able to do something that very few people are able to do. Otherwise, everybody be doing it right.

Bill Flynn: Yeah. Yeah. And so very few people are architects, right. And, and you’re not, so it’s, it’s not like you’re one or the other. Some you have to don the, the identity, depending on what you need. Right? Sometimes Jeff Bezos had to go in and. Do something right. But, but he never stopped at that. He said, okay, you know what happened here?

And, and eventually, ’cause those of you know, like there’s 14 principles in the Amazon system. And now Jassy, who’s the new CEO, he runs like six Fortune 500 companies

on his own. How can you do that? I mean, they’re all worth billions and billions of dollars each, but he runs them as he’s the, he’s the CEO of all of them,

uh, because Bezos and the team and et cetera put all that in place over, you know, years and decades.

So he can, I.

Tim Melanson: It’s fascinating to think about it that way. Really. I mean, you, you’d almost think that in a way, these people are lazy [00:20:00] because they’re trying to figure out ways to make their company work without them. If they get pulled into something, they’re like, I need to figure out a way to not be pulled into this again.

And, and, uh, it’s

just, it’s just, interesting how that works. ’cause I mean, that’s probably why he’s able to run so many different companies because he doesn’t need to be pulled in very often. He is figured out how to, how, how to replace himself, right?

Bill Flynn: Exactly. Yeah. There’s, there’s a, there’s a Prussian General, and I can’t remember his name, Vaughn something or other, and he said, you know, what kind of offices do you look for? He says, I want lazy and clever officers. Right? ’cause I want them to, to be smart enough to know, you know, that, that their job is to not. Do a lot of stuff. Right. Uh, and that’s what you’re kinda looking for, right? That’s what a, a lazy and clever leader is probably the best kind of leader you want. ’cause they’re constantly, I, I was, it’s funny I did that with, I, I said that to once to a VC person and she said, you know, tell me about, you know, what you do.

And I said, well, I’m basically lazy. And she like, she looked at me and it’s like, you know, that’s a bad thing. And it’s like, no, no. I said, here’s why I’m late. I said, I don’t, you know, my job is to create an environment where I’m not necessary.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.[00:21:00]

Bill Flynn: Because if I’m a leader of the company, my job is not the running of the company.

It is at the beginning, but it’s to figure out, like whenever I started as a VP of sales, I would, I would be the sales guy, right? And I would do, but I’m learning, right? And I’m learning, you know, how does this work? And, and so what kind of salesperson do I need to hire to replace me? Uh, and then I can teach them like how I do sales and how I think, and all the, you know, ’cause I generally had an unusual way of doing sales, um, which really worked really well. Um, that’s why I would teach them when I do that, but then I’m like, you know, go, you know, let me know if you need me.

Tim Melanson: Love

Bill Flynn: Um, and, and they were all different. Like one was really relationship oriented. One was a, technically was a perfect technical salesperson, you know, I’m like, I don’t care how you do it. I have two rules.

Be honest and responsible. As long as you follow those rules, do it any way you want, you know? So

Tim Melanson: The world is changing really quickly right

now, and especially with something like AI coming in and, uh, that comes up quite often on the [00:22:00] show. Uh, I’m wondering, you know, how do you think that changes the role of the CEO or the business owner?

Bill Flynn: Yeah. So, uh, you bring this up. It’s interesting. So, um, there’s this term, uh, that we used to be in, which was called vuca, a VUCA environment. Are you familiar with this?

Tim Melanson: Nope.

Bill Flynn: Volatile, uncertain complex, and I forget what the A is. Um, and this was sort of like, hey, this was, came outta the war college here in the United States, you know, this is how leaders had to be thinking about this.

You know, the, the rules of war have changed.

You have to understand it, be adaptive and you know, et cetera. Um, and we’re no longer in that. And actually we’re moving from that to what’s called banney, which is a brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible.

And the, the poster child example of this is Silicon Valley Bank. I dunno if you’re familiar with what happened with Silicon Valley Bank, but, but $425 [00:23:00] billion was withdrawn in 24 hours

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Bill Flynn: because the leader did what he always did. Like he, he shared with his, um, team and with the world, Hey, something’s happening. We’re fixing it. And he’d let everyone know. And then Peter Thiel didn’t like it. And so he said, I’m taking my money out and so should all of you. And because you could just get on your phone and just withdraw billions of dollars. They, you know, just, and he didn’t do anything differently than he hadn’t done for the previous 40 years. But all of a sudden, you know, people were anxious.

You know, he thought he had a system that worked, but it was brittle. And then the incomprehensible happened. You know, this one little thing, which could have been fixed in a basically two months, they would’ve fixed it sunk the bank.

Now they’re owned by some retail bank in North Carolina.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Bill Flynn: Yeah,

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Bill Flynn: crazy. And, and [00:24:00] actually, um, my partner works for Silicon Valley Bank and while we were in Mexico, all this was happening. So I got a first row seat to everything that was going on that first week. It was crazy.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Yeah, so this is probably a little alarming to to many people

that,

Bill Flynn: AI is just exacerbating it, right? AI is another factor in this. You know, like how, how can this, you know, all these things that it now can do, um, you know, how well or not is a whole other thing, but, you know, how do I incorporate it? You know, it’s just another factor. It’s just an accelerant. And so that’s why you have to build your systems and it’s not, you can’t really plan.

You can certainly plan. And have a plan, but know that your plan could change at any moment. So what you need to do is not rely on the plan, but rely on your ability to adapt quickly.

Those people will be the ones who survive, not the ones who are like, we got a plan, it’s five years, you know where we’re going and we’re just charging ahead and we’re just gonna put our blinders on, [00:25:00] and whatever. You know, that’s Blockbuster and Nokia and Kodak and you know, the dust, dust, spin of technology.

Tim Melanson: Well, and, and I, I see a lot of that right now because, I mean, as AI is making its way in, I, I don’t know what it’s gonna look like in a few years. I’m a tech guy and so I do follow this stuff, and who knows? I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of a alarming stuff. There’s a lot of exciting stuff, but whatever it is.

E Either way, it’s going to change how we do life in the next little while, just as drastically as how the internet has changed how we did life from then to, to when the internet came. Uh, however, the speed at which things change is going much, much quicker. And so I think that what I am seeing is I’m seeing this divide of people that are embracing.

And, you know, going full steam, maybe even too fast. [00:26:00] And then there is a group of people resisting. And I, I think probably the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. If, if you totally dug, dug your head in the sand, you might end up being a blockbuster. That just didn’t

see that things were changing. Right.

Uh, however, if you, if you go too quickly, you, you might end up failing for the opposite reason. Now you’re actually letting AI run your business for you, which may not do a very good job. Right. Is that how you see it too, or?

Bill Flynn: Yeah, so I would say it is sort of like, like you’re crossing the street and you see that the signs is, is. Says go. And it’s like, oh, I trust that it’s always been right, et cetera. But you know what, sometimes someone doesn’t see the light and while you’re focused on the thing, you get run over.

Right. So, you know, I think putting your head in the sand is, is dumb.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Bill Flynn: Right? It’s, you know, and, and you sort of catastrophize like it’s gonna take over and Terminator and all this kind of

stuff and, you know, is that a possibility? I guess so. [00:27:00] You know, but it’s, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s something, it’s not the reason to not do it. Right, because we, we have been in fear of so many things in the past that yes, they caused problems, you know, but we’ve, we found ways around them and we figured it out as a human, as a human being, you know, will we exterminate ourselves?

I don’t know. Right? But we haven’t so far, and so we know it, it has so many more useful ways of, of making our lives better and easier. And, you know, I gotta tell you, uh, I don’t like writing and I’m an, I’m a writer. And now I can write much better. ’cause I, I love editing.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, me

Bill Flynn: So I say, you know, here’s all my writing that I’ve done for 10 years now I wanna write a book about this, this, and whatever.

So gimme some words and then I’ll change ’em, you know, make sure they look like me. And I’ve written six books in like six months. Uh, and I get the first one’s gonna get the, the next one is gonna get published in October. Right. And I, I, I never would’ve written a book ever again. If I didn’t have Claude or chat GPT or [00:28:00] whatever, you helping me. So it has so many wonderful things. It just makes, it just takes a lot of the, the, the the harder stuff that’s unnecessary, uh, and automates it. But it also augments, right? I mean, I have great debates with, and ai, you know, I’m talking about politics and religion and, you know, and I learned something about the brain.

I’m like, Hey, doesn’t this work? I just, today I’m on the way to a client. And I’m learning about how, uh, epigenetics causes our systems to, uh, for trauma to be, um, adopted by the next generation. And it’s physically a, a change in the genome of the genes, how they’re expressed in the next generation. So. You know, maybe that’s why they’re more anxious or have these other issues. And I’m like, well, how does that work with DNA and, and you know, and, and Darwinian Rev evolution and, you know, and, and you know, it’s, I get to like just ask a quick question and it’s like, and I learned all about, oh, it’s really not the same. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s similar but it generally dies out. You know, it’s certainly an issue, but [00:29:00] it’s, it doesn’t change your code. You know, I never would’ve been able to do that before. I did it in five minutes while I’m driving.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Bill Flynn: I mean, that’s cool.

Tim Melanson: It is very cool. I, and I think that that part there, the voice activated stuff is the coolest of it all. ’cause I mean, I’m a, I’m a great researcher. I love using the internet. Uh, however. Can’t do that when you’re driving or when you’re taking on on a walk. You can’t bring your laptop with you everywhere you go.

But I mean, just to have a headset in or have it on your, on your car and just be driving around and having these conversations as though you have access to all the information ever is mind blowing to me. And

it definitely allows us to grow much, much quicker. Right.

Bill Flynn: It does, it does, you know,

but you gotta be careful, right? As I just say, I say, so I’ve got four tools that I use. I use Grok Chat, PT, uh, Claude, and, um, Gemini. And I actually use ’em against each other, right? I’m like, I heard this over here. I’m like, you know, tell me why this is wrong and uh, et cetera, you know?

Uh, but I describe it, it’s, you remember, it’s a [00:30:00] 14-year-old precocious boy who’s on drugs and hallucinates and lies on a regular basis.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Bill Flynn: You have to know that, and don’t just accept its first answer,

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Bill Flynn: but if you do challenge it, et cetera, it’s, you know, it, it, it has no, it has no emotion. Right? So you’re just like, you know, that’s not right.

You know? Or where did you come up with that? I’ve told that all I, I, I, I joke right regularly with it. I’m like, I, I’m, I say I’m writing a nonfiction series of books. Stop making things up, right? Because I’ll say, where’d you get that stat from? What do you mean? Like, can you, can you gimme the source? Oh, there’s no source.

I made it up. Like, no, that’s not how it works. But,

you know, this is honest. Right? It’s like I made it up. Like I said, stop doing that. Gimme, gimme some content that is not a lie. And we’ll, we’ll throw that in.

Tim Melanson: and we can’t hurt

his feelings, even though we’d like to sometimes

Bill Flynn: Oh, I’ve

sworn at it a couple times. Oh. One time I remember a clot, I was just getting totally frustrated ’cause it was coming up with the same thing.

I’m like, and it would say, I, [00:31:00] I would ask it, tell me what I need to tell you so I can get what I need and then I’ll tell it and it doesn’t do it anyway.

And then I had sworn enough times into it, it came up with a thing. Uh, it maybe we should take a break this box. I’m like, oh, hilarious. It’s like, there must be some code in there that says, okay, if they swear you three times in a row. Tell him to go get a sip cup of water and hang out for a minute.

Tim Melanson: That’s brilliant. Oh, I love it. So let’s talk a little bit about, uh, about getting fans. ’cause I mean, another part of the world has changed. I mean, social media’s taken over everything. I mean, everything is different now, and I’m, I’m actually wondering even just from your experience, how is it different getting fans now as opposed to maybe 10, 20 years ago?

Bill Flynn: So mechanically it’s different, but fundamentally it is not.

Tim Melanson: Perfect.

Bill Flynn: It’s exactly the same. So, um, [00:32:00] there’s a, uh, theory called Jobs to Be Done. Are you familiar with this?

Tim Melanson: Uh, no.

Bill Flynn: Okay. So it’s been around about 30, 35 years. You are familiar with it because you’ve seen it in action. Uh, have you seen the Snickers commercials?

Tim Melanson: I have.

Bill Flynn: That is a jobs to be done model. So, uh, one of the gentlemen who was the progenitor of jobs to be done was hired by the company who, who makes Snickers. And they said, look, you know, we’re, we’re just trying to grow the business, et cetera. And he said, okay, great, I’ll do some research. And he said, look, the, your, the people who buy Snickers the most don’t see Snickers the same as they see Milky Way. Milky Way is an indulgence to them. It’s like cups, cookies, and cupcakes and whatever. Snickers is a food substitute. That is why they buy it, for whatever reason. Right? Some irrational reason of all this. Sugar and candy, whatever is a food substitute,

but that’s how they see it. So that’s why they changed it [00:33:00] to satisfaction. Right. And they have tripled the sales of Snickers. Because they understand why someone buys the thing. Right? Um, and there’s another, there’s, uh, even more famous, uh, example. Uh, Clayton Christensen, who was a Harvard Business professor and is one of the, he’s the, the, the creator of the theory. He took the work and made it a theory.

So a theory is something that you can apply to anything

and it works, right? The Pareto principle is a theory, right? 80 20 rule, right? And you apply it to your closet, to your friends, to your food. It’s pretty much true, right? 80%. If you have a hundred friends, you see 20 of them, way more than you see the other 80.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Bill Flynn: All the things you eat, the clothes you wear in your closet, you wear the same clothes most often,

right? So, uh, so this theory, uh, was applied to McDonald’s, right? So McDonald’s was, hi hired Clayton Christensen’s, um, consulting firm and said, look, we wanna sell more milkshakes, [00:34:00] you know, can you help us? We here, you might be able to help us.

He said, sure. What? Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna observe for a day. And so they, they, they observed the whole whatever, 20 hours that this thing was open, and they said, here’s what we found out, that 80% of your milkshakes are purchased before 8:00 AM and between three and 5:00 PM. And they’re like, really?

Like, yeah. So they went the next morning and, and asked a bunch of people, what did you hire this milkshake to do for you? Right? Because that’s what we do. We hire products. And services to fulfill a job for us. And when they fulfill a job, we keep hiring them. And when they don’t, we fire ’em and hire something else.

So they found out that the ones in the morning said, I have a really long commute. It’s super boring and I’m not hungry when I wake up, but I know I’m gonna be hungry before I get to work. So I stop off, I get a milkshake and it, it’s super thick. It takes me like 20 minutes to [00:35:00] drink the whole thing. And I, by the time I get to work, I, you know, I can make it through to lunch.

Tim Melanson: Huh.

Bill Flynn: and they said, well, what else have you hired in the past to do this? They’re like, oh, you know, I hired a banana, but you know, the peel gets all over my hands and it gets, sticks on the wheel and tired. A bagel with cream cheese, but you know, it’s dangerous. And you know, the thing, crumbs go everywhere and I’m getting cream cheese in my pants, you know, and, and you know, some say like, hired a Snickers bar, you know, but I felt guilty. Because I was eating candy, you know, and I’m, and I’m thinking, you know, well, you’re eating milkshake. It’s the same thing.

Tim Melanson: Milkshake is candy too.

Bill Flynn: But, you know, again, we’re, we’re irrational as

human beings. So they said, great. Um, so they went back to this, this franchise owner and said, look, you know, when, when, when they first, they said, when you first tried to increase your sales, what did you do?

And they said, well, we talked to our clients and we asked ’em what they want. And they said they wanted a chunkier, you know, more chocolatey, you know, whatever. Um. Thicker, you know, whatever. And, and they, they made all the changes and the sales didn’t change at [00:36:00] all. So they didn’t really want that, and they didn’t value that.

What they valued was this thing. So they said, okay, so here’s what we’re gonna do. And this was a long time ago. Before, you know, um, apple Pay and all this kind of stuff. So what they did is they made a whole bunch of milkshakes in the morning and they put them out on the counter. ’cause one of the other complaints they had was they go through the drive-through, but it’s, everyone’s getting a milkshake and it’s long.

The line is really long. They said, look, you don’t have to sit in the line. We’re gonna put ’em on the counter. You don’t even have to talk to us. Just come grab your milkshake, swipe your credit card and go. And sales went up. Yeah. Now same product, three to five in the afternoon. This is now dad with his progeny, right?

And he wants to be the cool dad. And the kid says, can I get a milkshake and whatever? And they say, well, all right, what do we do? But don’t tell mom, you know? But you know, the milkshakes were in these horrible cups that, you know, kids who didn’t have motor skills yet with crushing this milkshake would go everywhere. You [00:37:00] know, it was, you know, there were all these other issues. The straw was too small, their muscles in their mouth weren’t good, so they changed how they delivered it. They made it smaller, so dad felt less guilty. They put it in a sippy cup basically with a big fat straw, and sales went up. Again.

They didn’t change the product at all.

They changed how they delivered it and how they packaged it. So that’s how people buy. We’ve been buying that way forever. But we don’t do it as, we don’t, we, we think we know what’s best, but we don’t ever really figure out what they want or what they value, really more than they want. So that’s the fundamental thing.

Now how we do it is, you know, we have social media, we have, we have, you know, events. All the things that we do have changed, but the fundamental reason why people buy is still the same.

Tim Melanson: Oh, I love that. Bill. It’s time for your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business.

Bill Flynn: Yeah, so for me it’s, you know, it’s this stuff, you know, so [00:38:00] I, I, I love, so I, I’ve been studying this for, for so many years, and I just think it’s a shame that really good ideas, really good people, and really good businesses fail or struggle for completely preventable reasons. And now that I, I can sort of write about it and, and doesn’t. You know, just to stress me that I, it would take me forever to write a

book. Now I can write them really fast. I can now put them down and, and share them because I think, you know what, uh, we’re gonna see in the next five or 10 years if I’m, if I’m right. But I think even the, the management science that we have today is still not correct for the banning environment that we’re in. Right. So, like Michael Porter is seen as the father of strategy. Um, and he’s an HB HBS professor and he’s, you got the five forces and he said that operations shouldn’t be part of your strategy. And I think he’s wrong, and we’ve proven it because when you, you can, you can operate in a unique way that actually augments your strategy.

So I’m extending his thinking [00:39:00] there,

you know, so I’m, I’m, I think I’m extending thinking in a bunch of different areas and hopefully what I’m writing will help people. So that’s what excites me.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well then how do we find out more then?

Bill Flynn: My website is catalyst growth advisors.com. Um, my current book, I dunno if this, this is video, but my current book is on there. You can actually download it for free if you want, if you wanna read a PDF or you can go to Amazon or, or um, audible or whatever to buy it. And

then my next book will be out, uh, hopefully in October. I’m actually, that was self-published. My other one, I actually have a real publisher now and I don’t know how it works. And so it’ll be, I’ll be in like airports and bookstores and whatever. Um, but mostly, uh, you can, you can find me there at Catalyst Growth Advisors, I write an article twice a month. I have a 50% plus open rate on my articles, so people seem to really like it. Um, all my stuff is there

Tim Melanson: That’s amazing. Well, right on. We’re gonna have to check that out. That book was called Further Faster, right?

Is that what

Bill Flynn: further, faster.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Right on. [00:40:00] So maybe the hardest question of the whole day, but who’s your favorite rockstar?

Bill Flynn: So it’s interesting, um, it used to be James Taylor,

but I, I’ve, and I still am because we talked about music. I play, I played acoustic guitar. I kind of sound a little like him as well. Uh, when I sing. Um, and I just love his, his fingering. I love his lyrics. I love his approach to things, but I’ve really gotten into Billy Joel these days ’cause

I watched his biopic and I just so much more appreciate his music and, and where he know, just like James Taylor.

James Taylor doesn’t read music and he, he actually, you know, learned incorrect how to. Play a guitar, but the way he plays it obviously works for him. And Billy Joel’s the same way. He’s a little tiny guy. He’s got tiny little hands, but man, he, he, he knows how to write a song. He knows how to, everything comes together.

His melody’s great. So he’s probably, right now, he’s currently my favorite. I, I listen to him, I listen to him on the way here from my, from my client thing [00:41:00] ’cause, and I’m just like screaming in the car because he’s got some great, great lyrics and

Tim Melanson: Oh, yeah. He’s such a great songwriter. I’ve got quite a few of his songs in my repertoire. Uh, but I, I did read once about him. He said he didn’t. He didn’t really wanna be a singer. He was trying to write these songs for other people, and he just kind of got thrust into it, and I find that amazing. Really.

Bill Flynn: Yeah. So yeah, if you, so have you seen the documentary?

Tim Melanson: I saw parts of it. I don’t think I saw the

Bill Flynn: Oh, I would see the whole, it, it is fascinating.

It, it. is really good. It’s, it’s like five or six hours long, but it’s so good and it goes through his whole life and. You can see how he transformed from what he was doing. So he really learned how to be a great songwriter.

You know, he, some of his early songs were okay, but he really got into it and, and he has synesthesia, so he is got an advantage over most creatives, you know, so he is, you know, my daughter is synesthesia, so that has helped him. But still, I mean, he, and he’s like, he just has a great work ethic and he, you know, he just went at it.

[00:42:00] And so, um, I would highly recommend, it’s just fascinating how he. He should have been so much better. But you know, he drank way too much and ruined all

these lives in his life. And my guess is he would still be married to Kristi Brinkley if he didn’t drink.

And who wouldn’t wanna be married to Kristi, Frank and Brinkley, even if she’s 60 years old or 70 years old, she’s still gorgeous.

Right. Um, anyway, so it’s, it’s, it’s just a fascinating human story as well, so.

Tim Melanson: Absolutely. Well, I’m gonna check that out for sure then. Thank you so much for rocking out with me today, bill. This has been a lot of fun.

Bill Flynn: Good. Yeah, me too.

Tim Melanson: Right on to the listeners. Make sure you, you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information and we’ll see you next time with the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast.