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 of Salt and Light Advisors, and what she does is she works with small to mid-size businesses, to help their employees to understand their roles and expectations. So I’m excited to be rocking out today with Kerri Roberts.

Hey, Kerri, you ready to rock?

Kerri Roberts: Hey. Yeah, thanks for having me.

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

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, so I was in corporate America for about 20 years and, uh, went on my own in 2023. And not only did I go out on my own, I also sold my home and left the city, bought a 140 acre farm in the middle of the country and completely. I would say downshifted, but when you start an entrepreneurial journey, you’re kind of up shifting in some other ways too.

And so treated some stress for a little bit healthier stress, and it’s gone really, really well.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Well that’s good. It’s uh, not everybody that has some success outta the gate. Right.

Kerri Roberts: Right.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So now along with that, those successes though, [00:01:00] not everything goes as planned. There’s some bad notes and I do like to talk about those because that is usually what keeps people from starting their business in the first place, is that fear of failure.

And so can you tell me something that didn’t go as planned and how you recovered from that?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, a couple things come to mind. Um, one is from being in corporate and being in larger organizations, I did not understand the entrepreneur or solopreneur or the small business tech stacks. So as soon as I got into my business, I was like, oh, I need Microsoft Outlook and what do I need for A CRM? And just started pouring into some larger technologies and it took me almost no time to realize that’s not necessary to spend that kind of money.

When you don’t have that kind of money coming in, and so really starting over, even though I had lots of tenure in being a Chief operating officer and really felt like I understood business, but entrepreneurship is a completely different beast. And so really. Trimming down and understanding how to do things from bare bones and then building as I, as I went, um, was [00:02:00] a big learning.

And then also just understanding, even though I’ve worked in HR for 20 years, when do you actually hire employees? When you’re a tiny, tiny business, when you’re just starting out and some bumps along the road for me.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. Those are both awesome things to talk about, really. Like the first one is like the The tech stack. Yeah. Because I think a lot of people get distracted by all the things that they think they need to buy in order to be. A legitimate business. Right. And sometimes some of those things are needed, some of those things are not needed.

What did you end up settling on as your initial kind of, these are the things that I actually do need to spend money on?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. One of the biggest, um, things that I spent money on that I needed to was QuickBooks, and I’m not like. Promoting them or anything, but I needed that to do, to track my expenses and then also to invoice my clients. It’s very simple, pretty bare bones. They have a bunch of small plans for small entrepreneurs and so that was one that was a good investment.

Um, and then I’ve been able to grow with, I’ve added [00:03:00] modules and like the AI pieces in the budgeting as I’ve grown. Over the last three years. And then the other one was around email marketing, growing an email list. So that way we’re not kind of a, a slave to social media if social media goes down and that’s the only way we’re connecting with people.

And so really building an email list has been huge for me and I got a really affordable tool. I personally use flow desks and it’s very, very affordable and it sends out beautiful emails every week. It’s got kind of the bare bones analytics that I need. I think eventually I’ll ex. Expand on that tool as I get bigger, but maybe not, you know, it’s, I don’t need something that’s, I don’t need a HubSpot when I’m this small.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well that’s, that’s really cool. Those are, and those are great tools too, by the way. Uh, now, ’cause a lot of people do, do, you know, spreadsheets or whatever to manage all their finances. And I mean, that can be overwhelming even for a nerd like me. Right. So, so, uh, that’s really cool that you found those, those great tools.

Uh, what was one that [00:04:00] you absolutely didn’t need then that, that you thought you might have needed?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, so when I worked in corporate hr, we did, um, we did skills assessment on a lot of people. And so I’ve been certified in a couple of different of those tools and I thought, well, as soon as I launch my business, I’m going to need those because I’m going to be recommending those to these small clients.

And the reality of it was. That was overblown. Like I did not need that. A lot of me marketing toward micro and small and mid-size businesses, they don’t, they don’t want all of the complications. They many times don’t even see the need for HR or really understand HR at all. So for me, trying to sell like, oh, you can do predictive index with me, you can do skills survey, you know, all these things.

They’re like. Right. I don’t understand that. And also, I don’t even know if I’m paying my people correctly. You know, it was kind of, um, tone deaf and so I af year two. I did not renew a few of my technology pieces in that way, and really made sure that I focused on [00:05:00] those bare basics.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I love that. Awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about the jam room and the office and all that stuff. So tell me what, what do you see as a successful home office?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. Number one, a dedicated space. I see a lot of people who, you know, pop up on their table or in their, you know, their bar or their kitchen island, and a couple of things, like one, I’m 43 years old, so my back needs like a good functional chair. I, I can’t be sitting on a bar stool all day. And I really need to be able to have my mind recognize, like I’m walking into my productive space, my focus space when I’m out, where my dogs are at, or you know, hanging out in the kitchen, I find myself wanting to feed my sourdough starter or maybe start a little laundry.

And so having a dedicated space is big, but I’ve also found an aesthetically pleasing organized space is really helpful for me and my brain, so that way I can focus on work and I’m not like distracted by the clutter.

Tim Melanson: Well, it’s funny how, when. People think about starting a [00:06:00] business, the things that they think that they need are like complicated tech stacks and the things that they think that they don’t need is a nice chair, right? You find like, I just find that really interesting that when I speak to a lot of people on this podcast, their home office is like something inspiring to them.

They have some sort of self-care routine that that’s going on actually. Do you have a sort of self-care routine that you have?

Kerri Roberts: Yes. I actually just posted a picture of my breakfast this morning and was like, I, I don’t know if I could ever go back to work in an office because at nine 30 every morning I make myself eight fabulous breakfast, and that’s just part of my work from home routine. But when I get up in the morning, I have, I do time blocking on my calendar.

So that way it kind of free me up that guilt of sitting down at my office and needing to start cranking out emails or projects or whatever that guilt’s removed, because I know the first thing I’m gonna do is tend to myself and do a home reset. And then I’m gonna read my devotional and then I’m gonna move my body, and then I’m going to eat.

[00:07:00] Then I’m going to sit down at my desk and I don’t come into my office until 10 o’clock in the morning and I just don’t, don’t sacrifice that.

Tim Melanson: Wow. How do you handle clients that might want you outside of those times? Like how do you handle those boundaries?

Kerri Roberts: That definitely does happen. I mean, there’s certainly times where a client’s like, Hey, you know, can you hop on a call at 7:00 AM because we’re trying to terminate a person today. And usually I say like, would tomorrow work? You know, can we hop on later today? What’s the rush? If it’s an egregious issue or you know, like someone’s in danger.

That’s one thing, but so many people feel like everything is an emergency, and I understand that it’s stressful. I’m not saying that it’s not a stressful situation, but you should probably calm down and take some breaths and let’s think through this. Maybe a good night’s rest would be helpful in the process.

So I usually don’t say, I’m not available until 10:00 AM I usually ask them why. Uh, can we talk about it later? Um, but I set that expectation [00:08:00] from the very beginning of when I’m going to be available to them. One of the big things that I’ve learned is time does not equal my value. And I know that probably sounds like a little conceptual, but the amount of hours that I work for a client or when I clock in for a client and when I clock out for the day does not equal the value that I bring to them.

So if I start working for them at 10:00 AM versus 7:30 AM that doesn’t mean that I’m bringing less value.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you spend the same amount of time, but even if you don’t, right. I mean there, that’s one of the things that I think comes up a fair bit is the hourly versus package type conversation. Like do you, uh, and actually, do you tell them how many hours you spend on them or no.

Kerri Roberts: No, my first year in business I did for sure I, the way I do fractional. HR leadership. And so when I first started, I didn’t know how else to do it. And so I was like, okay, we’ll either have one call a [00:09:00] month or I will work with your business a half day a week, or I will work with your business one day a week.

And that’s really how I was marketing it. And what I saw was clients saying essentially like, what will you fill your eight hours with? I mean, they weren’t even saying exactly that, but that was the tone that I was setting, and then they were following. And so after my first year, I switched everything to project based.

So now I have a retainer and then one strategic project a month for them that I do, or one strategic project a month, plus all HR escalation, like personal. Personnel escalation. And so now those are packaged based and project based and not time based. And I feel better about that. And honestly, I think my clients do too, because they still know what to expect.

It’s just not anchored by a number of minutes.

Tim Melanson: I love that. I love that. How did you make that transition with your clients? Like what was, did you send ’em an email, like how did it work?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, I would say, you [00:10:00] know, for the clients who were getting the half day or a full day, I had to massage that a little bit because they had this expectation. But the way I did that was like, let’s set up a standing call so you feel comfortable with the progress that’s being made. And only one client kept the standing call.

Everyone else saw the progress being made. I do end of month project recap emails, and so I’m like, Hey, here’s what we accomplish. And usually we’re in communication things going back and forth, and so they see what’s happening and they were actually relieved by not having that scheduled standing meeting with me anyway.

Tim Melanson: Oh, that’s great. Yeah. Uh, the standing meetings. Yeah. I mean, everybody’s got too many meetings, so, so I mean, taking a meeting off the table isn’t necessarily gonna be a bad thing for most clients,

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, one client who was just hell bent on having the standing meeting, I said to her regularly, you’re paying me a lot for my brain, but you’re not allowing me to access it because we’re constantly on meetings. And I had that client for a little over two years, and then I, [00:11:00] um, I. Graduated her to friend because it just wasn’t a very good fit.

Tim Melanson: Oh, very good wording. You’re in hr, right?

Kerri Roberts: Yes.

Tim Melanson: Oh dear. So that’s, that’s awesome. And I think that, uh, like what I’ve noticed as well, and even from both sides of it, is that people like to know what they’re paying as well. And when you’re doing packages, it’s very like. It, it, it’s cut and dry. This is what we’re paying and this is what we’re paying for it.

Whereas this by the hour now, it’s like, okay, are you gonna charge by the hour? You know, how much, how much is this gonna cost? Is this gonna balloon up? Like, there’s a lot of like disadvantages to doing the hourly work too, right?

Kerri Roberts: There really is, and even when I was saying like, okay, I’m doing one day a week for you, it was really easy for me to creep out of that time span because I would want to work. I’d block off my calendar like Wednesday is this client’s day? But things would come up on a Monday or a Thursday, and because of what they were paying me, I felt [00:12:00] obligated to take the call.

And so even if I would try to pare down the hours on that Wednesday, let’s say, I would end up working way more. And so I was blocking on my calendar. Here’s, you know, when I would take a call with them, here’s when I would do thought work for them, answer emails, whatever. And I was usually going over, it was usually not to my benefit.

And so I just realized like. I’m an honest person. I’m not trying to cheat anybody out of anything. They’re gonna have to trust me, and if they don’t, I’m not the right fit.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think I, I think also as you get better at what you do, you take, it takes less time to do it. So then you end up reaping the rewards of that. Um, yeah. There’s so many benefits to doing it in package time, so I I love that. Uh, tell me a little bit more about how you get fans, though, like how you get people in the door.

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, so my first year I relied solely on my network. Um, I’d worked in corporate for 20 years. About every four to five years, I changed roles and I’ve been on several boards. So when I announced that I was going out on my own, I [00:13:00] know this isn’t the case for everyone and I don’t take that for granted, but I filled my pipeline.

I launched April 1st, and I was full through the end of the year, and I’m, I’m grateful for that. Um, but I saw pretty quickly that. You’re gonna exhaust your personal network, even though I’ve got a pretty, pretty good one. Um, I realized like, okay, that was really great, but I’m going to have to focus on email marketing.

Like I said, being present on social media. I wrote my first book, you know, doing some things in the thought leadership space so that way people could trust me that don’t know me personally because I have a great professional reputation, but. You don’t really have much of anything with people that you don’t know.

You know, that like no trust factor from a marketing perspective. And so I really had to get active from, um, a social media and a marketing perspective. And I’ve never done any paid ads or anything like that, but I really had to reach. And year two, I saw, you know, connections of my network. And now I’m in a place in year three where I’m working with people I’ve never heard of before.

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s awesome. Yeah, [00:14:00] and I think that because depending on who you are, some people will start out of the gate and have nothing and start from nothing and build that. And then some people do have a big boom because they’ve got a good network. But then eventually it just, it just kind of fizzles out.

Now, did you know that that was going to happen or did it fizzle out and then you went, uh oh.

Kerri Roberts: No. So, and I should say from the very beginning when I launched my business. The way I launched it was I asked my current employer if I could go 10 99 for them, and. Here’s something that most people that don’t have HR experience wouldn’t do. But I have a lot of confidence in this because I’ve been in HR for 20 years and I know the way that I would look at employees versus contractors and the expense associated.

And so I went to my employer, it was a startup. They’d been around for three years and I said, Hey, I’m seeing some inefficiencies in my department and I personally think that I could work for you. In about half the amount of time I could bill you hourly, you could [00:15:00] remove my employee benefits and all of my perks.

Therefore, you’d be paying me probably less than half of what you’re paying me right now, and you could be my first client and I could be a contractor. And I pitched that to them. I was on vacation. I had this call scheduled and um, I was shocked. Within 24 hours, they were like, yeah, let’s do it. And this was the end of March in 2023.

I launched on April 1st while I was still on vacation. Now, unfortunately, because of what I brought to light, they fired my two counterparts because they were like, yeah, we actually don’t need it the way that it is. But somebody needed to tell the truth. And working in HR for all of these years. I hate to see inefficiencies and time and money wasted because then trust is low and um, it’s not fulfilling because people are scrutinizing on the role.

I could see all of these things happen. They had prematurely hired my department. It was an operations department, and so by me offering that, they kind of saw the light. I took them on as my first client and I had them, they filled about. 40 to 45% of all of my time in the first [00:16:00] year. And then eventually I said, Hey, I’m billing you by the hour.

This isn’t the structure that I wanna have in my business. So I either want to go project based with you or we can part ways. And I’m so grateful that you’ve been my beginning. And they essentially said, yeah, let’s phase out, which was fine with me. Um, so. I saw it coming. You know, I saw my need to go from the hourly perspective or the time-based perspective to project-based pretty quickly.

I’d say within the first six months I was like, oh, this isn’t very fun. I’ve created a job for myself. You know what I mean? Like, I’ve launched my own business, but now I’m just a kind of a slave to the time clock. And so I saw it coming and started working toward project based assignments, you know, within the first couple of months.

Tim Melanson: Okay, so that leads to another one. Now, when you switch, and I don’t know if you’re comfortable talking numbers, maybe you can talk percentages,

Kerri Roberts: I’m totally fine talking

Tim Melanson: okay.

Kerri Roberts: I think it’s helpful for people to know, you

Tim Melanson: So, so you, you’re working a job and now you basically get outta that job and do pretty [00:17:00] like similar things for them, but now you’re a contractor. What did that do to your hourly rate?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. So I was making about $300,000 a year for this. As an employee, and that’s not counting what they were putting toward my retirement and my benefits. So, you know, I was making a good clip. I, I was a VP of operations and so when I said, okay, I want to do this, I took my hourly rate and divided it in half and said, that’s what I would bill them hourly.

Shouldn’t have done that because really I’m removing benefits and everything else. But I was looking at it as, I wanna make this so easy for them to say yes. You know, like I, I want this to be a no-brainer, huge cost savings. And if, if you’re saving an organization, um, this company was like 60 million in revenue.

If you’re saving them $10,000 a year, that might not be appealing to them. But if you’re saving them a hundred thousand, 150,000. $200,000 a year, then they’re gonna recognize that and they’re gonna be able to make [00:18:00] investments in another area. And so I wanted them to be able to say yes. And so I kind of went big

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Oh, definitely.

Kerri Roberts: went from about. Um, quarter of a mill base to about $80,000. I don’t wanna say base ’cause I was billing them hourly. Could I have billed them more and fluff that? Yeah. ’cause they didn’t understand how much time the work took, but I was really trying to build other clients at the same time and so I treated them fairly.

And that was, I upped my hourly rate with them after about three months. ’cause I was like, Hey, you guys, I’m learning some things here. And they followed it. They went along with that. But, um, ultimately I wish I wouldn’t have undercut myself to that level, but I really wanted them to say yes. And the data shows that that’s exactly what women do.

I mean, men do it too. But, um, that is very, very common for a woman to say. I’m really good at this, but I’ve never done it in this exact way, so I’ll take less money and shouldn’t have done that. Lesson learned, and [00:19:00] I’ve priced myself appropriately moving forward.

Tim Melanson: Good. Well, that’s good. Well, well, because that’s what I wanted to kind of address a little bit because I think that people don’t see the things that they’re, that the company is gaining by hiring you as a contractor rather than as an employee. And I think a lot of people will go with. F probably the same amount of money, which is still bad, right?

I mean, if you’re making whatever it is, you know, 50 bucks an hour in a company doing whatever it is now you, you move to a contractor, 50 bucks an hour is not the same anymore. Now you have to pay all your overhead. Right?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, and luckily for

Tim Melanson: you be charging?

Kerri Roberts: at least your same hourly rate, I mean at least, but I would say. I was working about half the time for them as I, as I was, and that going from like a quarter of a mill base. My first year I, my top line revenue was about 190,000 in my consulting firm, and so I wasn’t [00:20:00] that far off.

I mean, I had spent some money on tech and some things like that, but I was like, okay, I had to, I took a little step back and that’s okay. The next year I closed two 40. This last year I’ve closed 2 75, so I’m moving my way back up. But, um, probably didn’t need to take that same level of step back because when you look at benefits, any benefits, whether they’re a 3% match on your retirement that you put in, or medical or any ancillary, any perks.

Like I had several perks. I was traveling all the time. They paid my flights, my hotels, you know, all of that. And then on top of that, the taxes that they have to pay on you, like it is a major cost savings to an organization to go contractor now. From a legal perspective, they can’t tell you exactly how to do your work or what time to do your work or all of that, or you’re actually being treated as an employee, and that’s an HR law thing.

I knew enough to be able to tell them how to get out of that, but you can’t just say, I’m gonna do the exact same thing and become a contractor for you. Legally, an employer should not [00:21:00] allow you to do that.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. Interesting. Well, so now talking a little bit about, you know, the financials of it, making sure that, that you’re making as much as you should be making. I’m wondering, did you have any, uh, like other than your QuickBooks, like how do you keep track of all that stuff?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, I was mainly doing it in QuickBooks. I started out in Excel for my first like two months and was like, this is gonna be a train wreck. Um, and so I immediately moved into QuickBooks and the reason for that is I saw pretty quickly that I was going to be making. Over a hundred thousand, $150,000. And so I moved from an LLC filing as an LLC to an LLC filing as an S corp because the tax advantages were better.

And again, that’s just research that I had done and I had a CPA that I had already done tax planning with before. So I asked her opinion on how I should be setting it up. So. In QuickBooks. I then was bringing bus money into the business to salt my [00:22:00] advisors and then paying myself as an employee, set up a simple IRA for myself.

So I’m doing contributions. So there’s several different things that I did, and QuickBooks makes that all automated. You know, you can set it up as reoccurring, you can pay your taxes through that, and all of that kind of stuff. And so it made it much easier than trying to manage all of that myself.

Tim Melanson: Wow. How’d you figure all that stuff out?

Kerri Roberts: Well, I’ve been in business for over 20 years before I started my own business, and so I had a, a general understanding and um, I’ve also got a real estate investment firm, but really I came from a farm, a very simple upbringing, and I’ve just studied it and learned. I’ve got a business undergrad, I’ve got an MBA, um, my husband has his MBA as well.

And so we just did the research and honestly, with AI now. I’m not saying that it’ll tell you everything perfectly, but good prompts in is good data out, and so I would learn as much as I possibly could. And then if I had to pay an attorney an hourly rate or you know, phone a [00:23:00] friend through my CPA, I would do that.

And I would say like, here’s what I think is this. Am I on the right track? You know, but I ask all the AI all the time, like, what questions should you be asking me to help make good decisions?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I, I use AI quite a bit now too, and especially like, ’cause I, I used to do, just do regular Google and, and mainly what would happen is that I would have a conversation with somebody who would say stuff like what you just said. And I’d go, oh, that sounds interesting. And then go research it and figure out what they actually meant by that.

And now it’s just so much easier with the chat. Like, you can understand all the business structures and decide where you are. And it’s, it’s great for that kind of stuff. So I think that we’re gonna see a lot more, uh, it’s, it has such a great benefit to the self-employed people who are working from home.

Now. You don’t need to have an MBA technically to, to be able to know this stuff. Right.

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, and I think, did I learn it in my MBA? Not necessarily, but I, it gave me the confidence to navigate inside of business and kind of remove that fear. [00:24:00] I have a good baseline, but so much has changed. And when I was in my MBA program, I was a chief operating Officer, so. My mindset was different. I was operating inside of a, you know, $85 million company.

Now I’m operating inside of a little micro company. And so it all applies differently and tax law looks different and everything like that. And so, um, I went from a W2 employee to a K one employee before I went to, you know, self-employed. And so that progression also helped me to see like. I can do tax planning.

You know, I can figure this out. It’s not that complicated. I’m mailing a check once a quarter. I just have to stay on top of it, whether it’s through calendar reminders in my Outlook inbox or whatever that, you know, whatever a person’s system is to make sure that you’re not falling behind on your obligations.

Tim Melanson: I’m wondering if we go back to the beginning, what, like what was the reason why you decided you wanted to leave a, you know, $300,000 a year job?

Kerri Roberts: You know, I, before I had that role, um, I was a [00:25:00] shareholder in an organization, and that’s when I was a K one employee and I realized I had never, I never had a burning desire to be an entrepreneur. My, my dad has been an entrepreneur since I was five and. My perspective of him was, you have to sacrifice family.

You work all the time. You know you’re not present. And so I had this incorrect perspective and so that told me, you know, as a mother, that’s not something I ever wanna do. I wanna, I wanna be a good wife, I wanna be a good mom. You know, I’m not going to be an entrepreneur. And what I realized was if you’re a driven person, you’ll get upside down in other people’s businesses just as easy as you will on your own.

And I did. I a hundred percent did. I, I was completely upside down working all of the time. And it took a some pain in business for me to realize like, I can either fill this pain in somebody else’s business where they bestow upon me a 4% increase every year. Or I can go out and do this on my own. And some people don’t have the guts to bet on themselves, and some people do.

You know, entrepreneurship isn’t [00:26:00] for everyone. But if you’ve even got an inkling of that, it’s worth a shot. What’s the worst case scenario? You go back. It’s not a prison sentence, you know, you can always go back.

Tim Melanson: I love that. I love that. It’s such a great perspective. And, and then back to another thing that we talked about, which is like the packaging stuff instead of the hourly rate. I mean, the really, if you’re that type of person, you want to get that job done and you want to get it done right, they don’t have enough hours in their hour block or whatever it happens to be that they can’t afford, that doesn’t look good on you because, I mean, you want to deliver exactly what you said you were gonna deliver.

You want to get a good referral because isn’t that gonna help you in the, in the long run too, right.

Kerri Roberts: Absolutely. Referrals are everything and yeah, I. I can’t imagine underdelivering for a client. That’s not something that I ever want to do. Um, but I also, I’ve got two big Labradors and all of this. I live on this 140 acres. I walk every day. I’ve got all of this time and space. I meal prep for our dinners, like I am so more well [00:27:00] balanced and calm.

My central nervous system is regulated and I don’t have to feel guilty about. Taking two hours in the middle of the day to do whatever I wanna do. I, I do that all of the time. That’s an expectation that I’ve set for myself.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I love that. For people who are very, very driven, this is definitely a great place to be because now you actually are a little bit more in control. Of, because I mean, we, we like to work. It’s not that we, because I think that that’s the difference between, you know, the employee gets, kind of told what they need to do, and if they don’t do it, they get fired.

Whereas when you’re self-employed, no one’s telling you what to do. So if you’re not the type that just loves to do it, you’re, you might have a hard time, right?

Kerri Roberts: if you’re an employee who is constantly trying to bring value or, um, you fill in the gaps or you’re looking to bring value or you see process improvement, that, those are pretty good indicators that entrepreneurship would look good on you.

Tim Melanson: Yep. When I was, uh, just quick story. When I was in the corporate, you [00:28:00] know, more than 20 years ago, the, the straw that broke the camel’s back in my situation was that I was working in this. Giant company and they had a bunch of different departments and, uh, every, all the departments were like fighting over who was gonna do this work piece and whatever it was, it was easier to get done and faster to get done.

If it was someone, if it was the other department that did it, I did it for the other department and I got in trouble. So I was like. This is not where I want to be. I wanted, I want the best scenario for the company, which is what I delivered, and I got in trouble because it made us look bad. It made and made them look good.

I’m like, this is just

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, once, once you get away from the politics, it’s like, oh my gosh, I can’t, for me. I’ve had a few clients say like, what would it take for you to come on board? I’m like, you’re first born. I don’t, there’s nothing I, it’s priceless. I, I don’t wanna come on board full time. That’s not a good fit for me. You wouldn’t even like me there because I would be disruptive.[00:29:00]

I mean, like, I’m unemployable. That’s just what I’ve come to learn, and I’m very comfortable with that.

Tim Melanson: Uh, I love that. So tell me it’s your time for your guest solo. What’s exciting in your business? I mean, everything right?

Kerri Roberts: Every, everything. Yes. Gosh, I’m, I’m having a blast. Um, but I would say, I’m really taking a look at my language. Um, you know, when you first start a bank, a business from a marketing perspective, you’re trying to appeal, you know, you’re trying to appeal maybe to everybody, maybe to too many people. And I’ve gotten to where.

I recognize I’ve increased my prices this year, which was exci scary, but then exciting. Nobody even balked at it. It was, I was like, oh gosh, what a blessing. You know, I’ve brought enough value that no one said I’m out. Um, everybody was like, okay, yeah, just send it to accounting or whatever. Um, so that part’s been fun to really analyze, but changing the language around.

Every, every way that I show up, whether it’s the content that I’m writing through my blog posts, my [00:30:00] email marketing, my social media, getting really clear on who I’m trying to reach, because I, I’ve recognized what happens when I draw in the wrong people. They’re either not ready to make the investment or the, uh, partnership is difficult, and so that part’s.

Really fun to, the refinement part is really, really fun because I know the next layer of clients that I bring in, they’re gonna be even more well aligned than anybody ever has.

Tim Melanson: I love the excitement that you have towards your business. It’s so infectious. I love it.

Kerri Roberts: Thank you. Yeah, it’s, it’s a good time. I mean, you know when you’re aligned, you know what I mean? Like, if you are completely drained and it takes life away, you need to reevaluate.

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

Kerri Roberts: Because this is what it should feel like. This is like using your skills, your gifts, and your abilities, and if that feels draining, like there’s something going on that you need to assess and reflect.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So how do people get in touch with you?

Kerri Roberts: Uh, I’m pretty active on the social, so, um, my Instagram handle is [00:31:00] Kerry m Roberts and Kerry’s, K-E-R-R-I and, uh, LinkedIn, Kerry m Roberts as well. And I’m accessible on both of those. And then if you, my website’s kerry m roberts.com or salt knight advisors.com, both of those have a contact page where people can reach out to me.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. And who would be the type of person that would get the most outta working with you?

Kerri Roberts: So typically I’m working with clients anywhere from, let’s say, 10 to 60 employees. Um, and usually that’s anywhere from 250,000 to 85 million in revenue.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Awesome. So now one more question. Let’s talk a little bit about music. Who’s your favorite rock star?

Kerri Roberts: Oh gosh. First of all, uh, I’m not big on, I’m not big on tv, but did you watch Post Malone cover Ozzy Osborne the other night?

Tim Melanson: no. When did that happen? Oh, the Grammys

Kerri Roberts: have to go watch it. Grant, was it the Grammys? Um, it’s all over social

Tim Melanson: of them.

Kerri Roberts: It’s, it’s all over. It’s whatever was two nights ago. Um, oh. I mean, people were crying, like, [00:32:00] of course Sharon was crying.

You know, that was pretty beautiful. Um, I love the Black Crows, um, as far as rock goes, but I am, I was born in the early eighties and so I, I’m the eighties and nineties music girl.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, me too. Right on. Well, thank you so much for rocking out with me today, Kerri. This has been a ton of fun.

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Tim Melanson: Great. 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 Podcast. I.

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 founder of Community Growth Academy, and what she does is she helps coaches, experts, and passionate hobbyists launch and grow paid communities. So I’m excited to be talking to Carol Tice.

Hey, Carol, you ready to rock?

Carol Tice: I am ready.

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

Carol Tice: Well, I am teaching the paid community model now because I built a previous paid community, two 1500 paying members, and, uh, it generated about 6 million in revenue over the decade. I ran it and then I sold it for Life-Changing Money in 2021. Now I’m teaching how I did all that to, uh.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. So this was, when did you start building that community?

Carol Tice: 2011, the Stone Age of [00:01:00] Paid community. Yeah. I say I’m a community dinosaur.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. ’cause uh, that’s pretty common now. Paid communities. I, I see them all the time.

Carol Tice: Well, there are, because there are platforms like skool, which I’m on, um, that make it easy. Back when I did it, it was not easy. It was a hand coding. You know, I paid thousands to webmasters every month to keep it all going, and it was much more technically complex. Now, super easy and cheap. The, the barrier to entry is way down.

Tim Melanson: totally, totally. Well, I mean, I would love to know about the bad note then, because I’m sure there were some things that didn’t go as planned along the way. You share one.

Carol Tice: Um, uh, in that business. Uh, well, the thing I was gonna say is over time my webmaster made more and more and more and people kept telling me she was overcharging me and stuff, and eventually she made a demand that I. That was completely unreasonable and I had to [00:02:00] fire her. And, uh, we had been together a long, long time.

I loved her like a daughter. And yeah, I paid like half as much when I got another webmaster who was better than, than they were so. It was, it was really a heartbreak. It was like losing a child or something. It was, it was like traumatic. I’d had no, I had no turnover on my team. But yeah, it was a, it was like way I, I, there wasn’t enough profit left at the end of the day, you know, at, as we went along.

The demands got higher and higher and because there was so much to do hand building WordPress things and making plugins talk to each other and updating them all the time and, you know, running campaigns, it was all so much. And I think that gave her cover to just kind of keep escalating what she was charging me.

So it was pretty, it was pretty painful,

Tim Melanson: Uh,

Carol Tice: probably to the tune of a hundred grand or so over the life of the [00:03:00] relationship.

Tim Melanson: a hundred grand, like more than what you should have been paying.

Carol Tice: Yeah. In terms of what I could have put in my pocket if I hired better help. So yeah,

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Carol Tice: did that thing where you become friends with your, with your staff, and they say not to do that.

And there’s a reason they say not to do that is that it does blind you to things. And you start to have less and less of a business head about who’s in what role and what, what their income and what you’re paying them. So yeah, I was pain. It was a lot of pain.

Tim Melanson: So I, I’m, I’m, I’m just curious because I’m sure that this probably does happen quite often, and I’m wondering like, what, how did that look like when, when you started to get word that this person was overcharging, did that conversation come up with that person? And, and then how did that person react to that?[00:04:00]

Carol Tice: Um, I felt like what she was doing was essential to the business and it was. Worth it. And I trusted her. I liked what she produced visually. She really was a designer. Um, was her strength as I learned once I got a real webmaster and, uh, they were like, Hey, all this stuff’s about to break, you know, like apparently a lot was not happening actually, even though I was paying a lot.

So, you know, I’m not a technical person. And that leaves you a little open to be exploited because you don’t really know what you don’t know. So now I pay $97 and everything on skool just works all the time and it’s amazing. I’m very happy.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it’s, uh, I, I think you hit something really good with, so the whole thing about, and by the way, I, I am a webmaster, so I guess that’s my main business is, uh, my wife and I work together. She does, [00:05:00] uh, a lot of the graphic design stuff and I do all of the, like, tech stuff, the programming stuff, and I, I’ve, I’ve had this conversation so many times before.

It’s very, very, very, very difficult to find somebody who can do both, right? Like you’re

Carol Tice: It’s like she was, yeah, she was good at the design and kind of, so she brought in someone on her team to do a lot of the tech and stuff, but

Tim Melanson: That makes

Carol Tice: I don’t know. Um. Thankfully it’s five years, six years in the past now. And, um, life has continued and I was able to say I wouldn’t have been able to successfully sell that business if I had not gotten the new webmaster who cleaned up the backend

Tim Melanson: Oh,

Carol Tice: it was,

Tim Melanson: Absolutely.

Carol Tice: a lot of cost on, on my end in the sale process, otherwise.

Tim Melanson: Well, and, and I think that, uh, I think for anybody listening, ’cause there’s two sides to this. There’s the side of her and there’s the side of you. [00:06:00] Right? So the side of her I am, I, I’m just gonna guess is, is that because I, I, I, I’ve seen stuff, stuff like this before. As soon as things get out of your realm of expertise, all of a sudden you think it’s worth more, right.

Carol Tice: Right. It’s worth a lot to me because it would take me all week to do one tiny thing. So yeah, that’s very how that high value to me.

Tim Melanson: But it’s also high value to her because let’s, let’s look at it from her perspective. So if she’s a, uh, a designer and not a, a coder, and all of a sudden she has to do all this code, imagine how much longer it would take her to figure all that stuff out versus someone who actually is a coder. So all that would be charged out to you.

So it’s possible, and I’m not saying that it is. The fact, but it’s possible that she was not purposefully overcharging. She just didn’t know what she was doing, and it was taking her twice or

Carol Tice: That’s [00:07:00] entirely possible. I don’t really know. Uh, we don’t really talk anymore, so I don’t, I don’t know. I just feel like over time I came to be seen as a real cash cow opportunity. Um, I. To, uh, work with someone in a small business setting and not have to do big corporate, but to earn really well and ’cause I paid everyone on my team really well.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Carol Tice: ’cause that was sort of part of my philosophy.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Raw. Wow. So, so I think, uh, like, uh, what people might be able to learn from that is two things on the business side, on your side, you know, if you are starting to jump out into areas that you don’t know, that doesn’t mean you charge more for it, it actually means you charge less for it, right?

Because I’m, I’m sure if

Carol Tice: That’d be

Tim Melanson: charging you pennies for it right then, you wouldn’t have never gotten rid rid of her. She would’ve, she would’ve managed to keep that position for quite a

Carol Tice: Well, and at one point I offered her equity in the business in exchange for a [00:08:00] project I wanted done, and she turned it down for the cash, which I think, uh, played out very badly for her. ’cause I did have a successful exit that, and I paid out everyone on my team. I didn’t have a, um, written. Profit sharing, you know, agreement with them or anything.

But I, I just based on time of service and what they were earning, I handed people money

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Carol Tice: when I quit

20 grand out the, to my team, just I. No obligation, but I was like, yeah, this wasn’t possible without you and, and you need to find another job now, most of them, and you know, I wanna give you some money to cover that, you know, time of hunting around.

So.

Tim Melanson: Good, good. So what did you, what did you end up learning from that experience then? I.

Carol Tice: Um, well, I feel like that experience rolled into the experience of selling it and really seeing how a [00:09:00] buyer of a digital business looks at your business versus how you look at it. So, and there’s a big difference. Um, for me, I feel like we’ve jumped to the end of my story of the, of the story, but, um, you know, this is something that.

Not many online business owners achieve, especially coaches. Coaches tend to be the business. They’re selling hours. Or small groups and they can’t, if they go on vacation, that’s a week, they don’t get paid. There is no exit, there is no retirement plan. Uh, where they get an exit with a lump of money that sets them up for not having to work.

And that kind of breaks my heart and is, was a big motivator in me starting Community Growth Academy. So what happened in the e, in the exit was that of course. The buyer’s first questions is like, why are all of these people getting paid? All of what is, what do they do? [00:10:00] You know, and who can I cut? What can I cut out?

And this business began it. It served freelance writers, which I was one of, and still am. In my free time, I ghost write books. And I came out of, you know, journalism and writing, and had ramped my freelancing business to six figures. During the 8 0 8 0 9 downturn and, ’cause I was at like 50, 60 and I was like, well I wanna go to a hundred.

And the fact that the economy is crashing and burning doesn’t is a macroeconomic thing that doesn’t matter to me. I’m just one tiny me. You know that I, these things, it’s like when your body surfing, I can just let that wave kind of go over me and Z enter and keep, keep swimming and, um. I gradually became aware that many other writers did not have the, the same attitude I did, that they were starving.

They were writing [00:11:00] for content mills for $5 an article, and I was very upset by that. And I basically wanted writers to stop getting ripped off and avoid scams, which there are a lot of scams to target writers. And I started a blog originally to kind of. Get out, share what I, I knew I wanted to write a book about freelancing and I thought, uh, that would sell a million copies and I’d be rich.

’cause I didn’t know anything about online business or book sales. Um, but eventually I joined a community for bloggers. To learn how to be a better blogger. ’cause I was running a blog and trying to monetize my blog and that’s where I discovered paid community. And I went, this is amazing. I love it. I’m learning so much.

This is a fantastic format and there’s nothing like this for freelance writers. And there should be. And that was sort of the beginning of the journey to starting that community. And so it was really. [00:12:00] Half business, half Hobby, gone mad, I wanna say, um, half Passion Project to, you know, I thought of myself as like a crusader against writer scams and for Fair Writer pay.

And I really wanted to elevate the whole industry. I had these lefty calls, I wanted to influence a lot of people. And that format of, it’s 25 bucks a month, no obligation leave any time allows you to do that. As opposed to selling high ticket coaching and coaching 12 people a year, that’s making no impact on the industry.

So that’s, you know, so I had a lot of that. It’s kind of a, a crusade and also a business. And when a business buyer comes along, it’s only a business, you know, they’re just like, what’s the dollars and cents here? So yeah, they were like, all of these people are too expensive. Some of them are not needed. Um, one of them actually ended up continuing on and the first thing they did was of course raise the membership rate to 40, [00:13:00] which I was always hesitant to do because to me it was against mission, which my mission was to impact as many people as possible.

So you raise the price, fewer people can afford it, and I just never wanted to do So. There were decisions I was making that were not strictly business decisions, that were more about. You know, I was ma to me, I was making enough money. You know, I had a five bedroom house on like Washington and Seattle and, you know, we went on vacations and uh, I felt like I.

I was making enough and I wanted to pay my team well and have a great lifestyle. And, you know, business people are just like, how many dollars can this throw off for me? Um, so they look at it differently. We had a job board. They got rid of it. It needed a manager to get the listings together, so they just killed it.

I thought it was really important. You know, they, they look at it differently than you do.

Tim Melanson: They do. They do.

Carol Tice: And I had some coaching [00:14:00] programs going on in there and I actually hired a business consultant, did 10 grand of business consulting ’cause we were stuck at a thousand members and I wanted to grow to 1500. I’d figured out that was where the math was gonna make sense to sell it, that I needed to grow another 50%.

And she was like, get rid of the, stop selling the coaching program. Stop selling all these other side projects. You have all roads lead to den membership because that’s the cash cow they’re buying. You know, and she was totally right. That’s, I just shut down all my other offers and all roads were join the Dent and you know, that is what worked to get us to 1500.

Tim Melanson: I like to think that, um. There’s sort of somewhere in between those two things, right? Because I mean, would the community have grown to where it was, had you, you know, not paid your team as much or had you not had this crusade, right? I mean, all these things all [00:15:00] led to the point where, you know, you probably worked tireless hours because you had a a big why.

Right, and you paid your people really well, so there was less turnover, so you were worried less about that stuff and they were probably harder working for you. But then once you get that community to a certain point, then I think you had probably, I mean, you obviously had the right idea that you started to transition into, okay, what do I need to do differently to sell it?

Right.

Carol Tice: Yeah, that’s why I built a course called Built to Sell that I have in Community Growth Academy. ’cause you could just, you could set it up better from the start than I did. And also it’s about you not being the branding or the name of it or you know, I did have kind of myself a cartoon. Me was like all around the branding and yeah, it all had to be kind of changed over and cleaned up.

So it was the kind of thing anybody could operate and wasn’t about me. But yeah, that was one of the reasons I wanted to sell. Um, I got the advice from a friend of [00:16:00] mine who also sold. A similar business and she was like, well, just take yourself outta the business, replace yourself in all the roles, and just collect whatever the net is, you know, from that.

And I kind of tried it and I couldn’t, I could not stop caring about my 1500 needy children. You know, I, I wanted them all to succeed and I’m, I’m hopefully at a little bit more of a reserve of a business-like attitude with Community Growth Academy.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Wow. Well,

Carol Tice: but I’ve, but I’m going a totally different direction with it because I don’t wanna scale it big.

I’ve decided it’s going to 97 a month and limit a hundred members,

and that’s it.

Tim Melanson: so you’ve raised a price on purpose to make sure that you’re picking the right people. Right.

Carol Tice: Well, and, and because it’s gonna be an ex, a small, exclusive community, it’s sort of a whole different vibe. And I’ve just learned that, you know. Prepping and launching and [00:17:00] running a community is complex. There is a lot to it, and I’d like to just really support my people. I don’t really need another big exit.

I did that. I’m good. Um, I, I could sell this thing, I guess, but I am not thinking along those lines. This is sort of my semi-retirement, uh, project

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

Carol Tice: that, uh, it’s in a way, it’s my give back. Um. To just try and create the kind of great life that paid community gives you for other, for other people,

Tim Melanson: well.

Carol Tice: it’s amazing.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And if we circle back to, you know, your original bad note, which was, you know, getting a little, maybe too close to some of the people in your team, uh, having that attitude of like, okay, I’m just gonna build this to sell even though I may never sell it. It. It probably would mitigate that quite a bit.

Now all of a sudden, you’re making choices. If you are gonna make choices to get close to your team or to pay them more, then these are all very conscious choices rather than just, [00:18:00] you know, oh, well they deserve that, so I’m just gonna give it to them, type thing. Right.

Carol Tice: Yeah, I’d say it’s all, it’s all easier to do the second time, you know, around, you know, I, I always, um, I always felt a little bit like, I, I used to feel it was tight walking, tight rope, walking across the Grand Canyon, you know? Um. I was, I’m not a marketer. I had not sold anything online before I started this, and I just kept.

Pushing myself out completely out of my comfort zone. I would do live one hour events that sold a class that would have, you know, I need to make 50 K off of this riding on it, and it would be so intense. And I had, you know. Three young kids at home, two of whom have special deeds and might just start wailing or anything at any time.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Carol Tice: Um, one of them used to come in and, and put [00:19:00] post-it notes in front of me. I was doing these things and I’d be like, I can’t talk to you now. You know, just, um, I don’t know. It was always just a crazy ride, but literally we never, I think we never lost money on anything we launched. Except for one thing that was towards the end, and that was what queued me in the, I we needed to look at this webmaster.

It’s like she made money and I didn’t.

Tim Melanson: yeah,

Carol Tice: That was a, a moment of insight. Yeah. On that.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Wow. Okay. Well let’s talk a little bit about your jam room. ’cause I see a nice view back there. What’s going on with this?

Carol Tice: So I live in a van. Yeah. Um, we sold our house. We bought the van in 2021. In, in 2021 when I sold the business and we did a tryout trip in it. Thought we really liked it. Um. And we were thinking about downsizing the big house when our kids graduated and the last one graduated. And then we looked at each other and said, [00:20:00] where do we wanna recharge to?

And we were like, I don’t know. Hmm. And so then we started to drive around to try and fi figure out a place that checked all our various boxes and we kind of didn’t. And eventually we came to feel that the RV is, this is the downsizing that I want. And then in 24, we kids kept coming back in, they were bouncing back, and then we hit a point where no one was there.

And literally the next morning, like after when moved out, my husband looked at me and was like, we should sell the house now, should we? And I was like, yeah, probably should. And so we did like a year ago. Summer, like a year and a half now or so. And um, yeah, so we’ve been full-time in the RV ever since.

We’re currently at the epicenter of RV existence, quart Site, Arizona, which you can see a little of back there, just, uh, here on Bureau of Land Management, cheapo land, hanging out, doing whatever [00:21:00] we want. We can bike into town and play bingo or go line dancing or.

Tim Melanson: Oh, that’s awesome, Carol. You know that that’s.

Carol Tice: but we’re, we’re basically, you know, out, uh, we’re, you have to be totally like self-contained here.

You’re not on electricity or anything. We have solar and uh, have starlink. We travel. That’s my motto,

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. That’s my, my goal. I actually, uh, it’s, it’s been in my long-term plan, like, uh, our kids are now, uh, uh, almost, almost out, I’d say in the next four or five years. Like, uh, they’re, they’re outta out of high school, but still not quite out yet. But I think it’s probably gonna be a similar situation to you.

As soon as they’re out, it’d be like, let’s sell now. Like.

Carol Tice: Well, um, I mean, I’m glad we were still there for the few years that we were, that was probably good. Um. We do have special needs ’cause and they’re sort of slower launchers maybe than, you know, they didn’t sail off to Columbia or something. Um, they continue to need our support, but I have [00:22:00] now solved their problems from the RV many times.

And, you know, we did this last winter as well. Uh, we tend to be in Seattle six months of the year and down warmer places. Uh, the other half.

Tim Melanson: That’s amazing.

Carol Tice: So we, you know, and it’s like we could always drive to Phoenix and get on a plane and go be there if we need to. Um, so yeah.

Tim Melanson: So now, you mentioned earlier that, I mean, a lot of this stuff that you’ve been doing has been fairly new. Like you’re, you’re just sort of figuring out as you go, but like you also mentioned that you hired a coach at one point too. Is this something that you’ve always done? Like have you always been hiring help to, to help you with this then?

Carol Tice: Well, I had mentors from pretty early on on the blogging side.

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Carol Tice: I got into blogging in like 2008. Blogging was really kind of just taking off and becoming a major way to create an audience and, you know, then monetize that. And [00:23:00] I always say I was like discovered on a, you know, virtual bar stool, a drafts by uh, one mentor who, uh.

Is still really a big part of my life. Um, John Morrow, he was then the editor, an editor at Copy Blogger, which was one of the biggest copywriting sites and. He then had me write some things for them and just, it sent a ton of traffic to my blog. Uh, he just, he shared a post of mine to his audience and, uh, he’s a super inspiring person who can only move his face due to spinal muscular atrophy and was supposed to die when he was three.

So, what’s your excuse for not having a successful online business, folks? Um, but what it gives him is time to think.

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Carol Tice: All he does is think about how to do this better. And um, so he’s always just this foun of, of [00:24:00] information. He knows everything about his metrics. I was never a KPIs person. And you know, he’s like, you have signed up a hundred people on your affiliate link, and that means 20 of them will buy and one will get a refund.

And I’m like, how do you know that? You know, he’s one of those people who just have his system so dialed. Uh, he’s always like, been like that. And that’s how I ended up with Community Growth Academy is really, he called me up because he was doing this new program called the Hands-Off Creator and where they do the marketing and put up your course for you and you know, do things.

And I was like, well, I can’t do anything else because I have a non-compete. You know, I sold my business and all I know is freelance writing. And he was like, and what did you learn in. A decade of running a paid community. And I was like, oh, paid community. I community. I could talk community day. I love it.

Um, you know. You [00:25:00] need mentors because you just, like, you don’t know what’s in front of your face. You don’t know what, you don’t understand. Your gifts, really, we’re all just head down, grinding it out, you know, and, and the years are going by and you’re not realizing what. Knowledge or accumulating. And as soon as he said it, it was like, I, I just was sucked back into the world of community.

Um, because I did miss it. You know, I, I was gainfully employed, I was ghost writing books and doing well with it. Um, but that’s. Only influencing one person’s business. You’re back to the sort of limited impact, um, and the power of being able to influence that. Literally like 14,000 people came through Freelance writers den in the time I owned it, you know?

That’s really so, so gratifying. This past spring we went to Europe and I got to meet like [00:26:00] four of those members in person who live in Paris and Amsterdam and in Portugal. And, and I mean, one of them was literally like, it’s just not a joke that you saved my, you’ve, you’ve changed my life. You know, it’s very, very, you, you become friends with these people and they become your raving fans on social.

They’re constantly sharing yourself, talking about your ex. Expertise to people. Um, I love this model, so I’m excited to be back, uh, in it and, and teaching it.

Tim Melanson: Well, okay. Well let’s just roll right into that then. So tell me what’s exciting in your business.

Carol Tice: Well seeing people launch, we actually had an early member who was a longtime financial advisor. He’s like 80 now, literally, and had never sold anything online. It was very word of mouth investment manager, and he was in a couple of free Facebook groups talking about investing. Had a book of past clients and he just told them he got in the community.

At first I [00:27:00] told him, you should, you should set up a community. I met him ’cause I ghost wrote his book. So he had a great calling card for setting up a community and I was like, you should totally do this. I think it would be a great way for you to operate. ’cause he sells various things and he could just stick them all in the community and just say, join the community.

Um. He was, at first he was like, uh, no, I don’t really learn anything new. And he ended up hiring a marketer to do his whole launch. He ended up seeing that he was having to spend a lot of time on the Facebook group saying, buy my investment universes of the months, you know, buy my consulting, blah, blah, blah.

And now he doesn’t have to. Now he, he has a 150 KA year income, 600 paying members. It, it really ramped in like just a few months. So that’s what I’m here for is if you are, if you’re a coach or an expert, you have an audience from what you’ve been doing and [00:28:00] you’re tired of one-on-one consulting, selling hours, or you can’t find clients and you’re wondering how to market, your marketing isn’t working.

Um, I actually just did a strategy that I said I’d never do. Um, I opened up a free level. So you can now join Community Growth Academy for free and get started. You can talk in the forums and you can do the first two modules of finding your best opportunity and doing the competitive research to kind of see how to position yourself to be something different in the marketplace.

And, um. It’s just, it, it’s like 25 people joined in the few days that I’ve added at a free level and some of them have already upgraded. So just I, I thought I’d never go there. But there are very high earning people on school with free community pools and they just upsell them. And I [00:29:00] was always a hater of free.

I was taught don’t make your book free. Don’t make your bait piece free. Don’t you know. Don’t sell for free on a, a free book on Amazon, because those people are looky losing and they’re never gonna buy from you. You haven’t made them open their wallet. You know, this is a, a conventional wisdom that’s been around for a long time and in the den.

In my first community, we sold one day, free passes, one week free passes, one month free passes, one year free passes, and tracked them all and they all converted zero. But something has changed in the world of community where this is really working and it’s particularly working as a way to get an audience when you don’t have one.

So it quickly. Because it’s free. There’s no barrier to entry. You know, they get in and they get a chance to meet you and get to know you very intimately. You’re in there every day talking and. They come to trust [00:30:00] you. So I think the reason free is, is on the rise as a viable thing, is because of the trust crisis that you may know we are currently in.

We all know that like half of what’s online is lies. It’s an ai, it’s not even a real person. They’re secretly in the Philippines. You know, you don’t know what’s going on. And it’s a big problem that a lot of us are struggling to overcome. You know, so I think the, the free, you’re in the club, uh, and you get some love and you just get a chance to see what’s going on.

You see the successes firsthand. I already had a couple of people upgrade to paid. So that’s, I guess that’s what I’m excited about is I, I just thought this might be a complete waste of my time and a lot of, you know, people asking questions that aren’t ever gonna buy from me, but that doesn’t seem to be the way it’s working.

So, know, you have to keep [00:31:00] an open mind because things evolve.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, I, I’ve seen that change even just in my interviews with, with, uh, with people because, uh, it, it’s, it has been over the last, I’d say probably year and a half to two years. Ironically, since chat PT was launched that, uh, coincidentally maybe, I guess, uh, that a lot of people, uh, will talk about how number one, that’s how they’re getting clients is by some sort of free community that allows people to get to know them a little bit because that know, like, and trust is very important.

And then on the other end of the spectrum as well, when I ask people about, well, how do you find good talent? And it’s very similarly the same thing. They’ll say, well, I’ll, I’ll look them up, I’ll go join their free community, find out a little bit more about them, and then end up hiring them. So it’s, it’s going on both sides now.

And I, I think that makes sense because people really, like you, say, there [00:32:00] is a trust issue. There’s just so much fake stuff out there that you have to see if this is real. And I mean, so anybody can now, I mean, uh, imagine even now with ai, uh, you know, videos and all this stuff that you could. Literally create a fake video of you flying around the world, right?

And with all these riches and whatever, and, and make it seem like you’re rich.

Carol Tice: in a free community I’m in that I’m kind of spying on, it’s a very large free community that they just upsell into it. Um. They just had a joint venture, you know, training that was like, make an AI of yourself, make it, make a bunch of ads and you don’t have to do anything. And they played some of them and I was just like so revolted.

And I’m, and I’m like, is no one in this 800,000 woman audience thinking, um, AI. Engages [00:33:00] in theft of inter of intellectual property are thinking that, um, because it does and thinking about the incredible energy use, uh, it is consuming and what that’s doing to the planet. Am I the only one disturbed by this?

And because everyone else would seem to be like, what? And, and I thought it, I don’t know. It’s, it’s not for me. Let me say that I’m gonna not be creating an AI video, me to go make videos and oh my God, I don’t know. I, I guess, I think that there are niches maybe where that will work for physical products where you’re showing the physical product and you just put it in an AI wrapper, maybe who cares?

But when you’re selling your knowledge, your expertise. To someone. I, I don’t think so. You know, I don’t think that’s [00:34:00] a way to go, but, you know, I’m a person who paid all Americans and I, I am just not the Tim Ferriss outsource it all to people who work for $5 and then you’re rich.

Tim Melanson: Well.

Carol Tice: you can be rich and still create living wage jobs.

I’m here, I’m living proof and you should do it.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yep. I,

Carol Tice: don’t think in, yeah, don’t think in terms of, oh, how can I rip everyone else off in my work ecosystem? Think what do I need to charge to run this like an ethical business? And that was really important to me. You know, I had been a business reporter, I talked to a lot of CEOs, seeing a lot of businesses run well and badly.

And I, how I operated was important to me and still is.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, and I, I think, uh, so there, there are a lot of people that have been on the show that hire people from, you know, Philippines and all that stuff as well. And now the, the [00:35:00] benefit there is that you can pay them much less and it’s still a very comfortable living wage for them. Right? So you’re still paying a, a living wage by doing that.

Carol Tice: I get it,

But

Tim Melanson: like, uh, I, I think it’s one of those, yeah, it’s one of those values things. I mean, if you want to, you know, give back to your community, then why not hire somebody in your community for that living wage? You know, really what it comes down to is, is whether you can set your business up.

To give that money internally or, or externally. I, I know that I’ve been in kind of in a situation where I wanted to hire, but I don’t really want to hire anybody in the Philippines or in India or anything like that. And so what?

Carol Tice: when they don’t do the gig and you’ve sent them a check, you, there’s no recourse

on that. You know? Um, you’re out the bunny and there’s so much, so many stories of flaky situations like that all over the world of Upwork, you know, [00:36:00] uh, heard this guy. I mean, like, never did it or what they turned.

Ghastly bad. You know, you have to go through, kiss a lot of frogs if you wanna pay little to get to someone who’s maybe good and pays little. I didn’t wanna go through that. Yeah. I wanted to hire my people. I had like zero turn turnover

Tim Melanson: yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, and I, I think that that’s, uh, like I’m.

Carol Tice: and I could, I could rely on them to do things, you know.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I think that when you’re starting to deal with out of the, out of the country, then I, I think probably gets a little bit more com well, probably a lot more complicated. Did any do any type of lawsuit? If anything? If something happens, right. And you know.

Carol Tice: Forget it. Yeah. You have no, it’s not happening.

Tim Melanson: Also, depending on your AR area of work, I mean, now actually there’s potentially some privacy issues as well with things going over overseas.

I mean, there’s, there’s lots of, but now on the AI front though, uh, the AI front is one of those things where if. If that’s what you’re looking for. If you need to hire [00:37:00] somebody that’s gonna be less than, you know, you just, your business just isn’t a place where you can actually hire another, uh, local person, then there are a lot of things that AI can help with that it will speed up your workflow quite a bit.

Um, but like you say, I, I, I don’t because I, I actually did, uh, I’m a tech person, so I, I embrace AI big time and I’ve been using chat g PT quite a while for quite a while now. And I just started looking into some of those, uh, AI clones and all that stuff and the video stuff, and I, I don’t think it’s quite there yet.

It, it’s

Carol Tice: For sure not.

Tim Melanson: Still too noticeable. Um, but I can see where it’s going and I, I, I do think that unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how we wanna look at it, that is where the world’s going. We’re not gonna be able to stop that now.

Carol Tice: as a, as a creator of a lot of ip, more than a dozen books of my own, more than a dozen ghostwritten books, um, thousands and thousands of articles. Um. [00:38:00] You know, we need to get out of the Napster phase where I AI’s just ripping everybody off and into the phase where creators are compensated for this before.

I’m going to get real excited about doing something like that. Um, but yeah, I guess. This is, these are all decisions about how you run your business and how you wanna show up. You know, if you wanna use chat GPT to help outline your article or your book you’re writing, you know, that’s behind the scenes and doesn’t hit your credibility, I think.

I think you need to really watch out when it’s things that hit your credibility and your authenticity and showing up in the world, you know? That to me is, uh, you should probably think pretty hard on that.

Tim Melanson: I also have a feeling, well, I mean, I, I, I can typically tell what is written by AI versus what is written by a person. And, uh, I [00:39:00] think that, um, and, and like you say there, there are plenty of things that AI is. Better for you probably should use it for, you know, creating, you know, maybe some summaries things based on an original work.

I mean, it’s gonna just do it so much faster than you’re gonna be, be able to do it, but

Carol Tice: Well, I mean, we’re, we’re all, we’re all interacting with it. Chat bots are asking you questions and we’re, and answering questions for you. It’s like there’s probably no. No person with the internet who is not interacting with it, whether they like it or not,

but I think you have to think about it as it gets closer to your brand identity.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and I think the more people that use it responsibly and also, uh, because I, I. What I fear is that people are going to sort of reject and then if the more people that reject it that have good morals, right, then the less likely it’s going to actually change. It’ll probably just go down that [00:40:00] direction.

But if a lot of good people start using it and start noticing, I mean, one of the things that we’ve noticed is that when chat PD was launched originally it was like this beta thing. It was just, let’s just throw it on the public and see what happens and like they’ll give us feedback. And so the more good people that are using it, the more good feedback they’ll get the, probably the better direction that it’ll go in.

That’s my fingers crossed, so we’ll, we’ll see how that goes, but uh,

Carol Tice: know. We shall see. But yeah, for now, I mean community is sort of the antithesis of using AI though though I gather you can train, you can train an AI to leave your comments in the community and I was just like, that is the last thing I’m doing. You know, just this is, to me, community is about authentic human connection across.

Geography. Uh, bringing people together have a common interest, a common desire need a common [00:41:00] transformation in their lives. And the magic of bringing them together and letting them become friends with each other and help each other from all over the world, and having a robot inserting a robot of answers into that or something, just, I don’t know,

it’s not for me.

Tim Melanson: sit well.

Carol Tice: Let’s just say

Tim Melanson: So, Carol,

Carol Tice: for other people who don’t care as much about the experience they’re giving people in their community, but it’s not for me.

Tim Melanson: yeah. So how do we find out more about you and your community?

Carol Tice: I’m at Community Growth Academy on school, and I usually give, it’s like school. I have to look up to, like the best link for this is to go to, uh. school.com, and that’s spelled S-K-O-O-L. For anyone who doesn’t know school.com/community growth dash academy slash about. That is where the page where you will see testimonials and see [00:42:00] my, me and my video about what’s going on in the community and test and all kinds of things.

Um. See me on other podcasts and talking about community and why it matters. And um, there’s a free case study you can grab on there. There’s a link in the community box that says free case study. And that is the end way too much depth story of, um, exactly how I built and sold freelance writer stand. So if you’d like the full blood blood blow on that, you can grab that.

Tim Melanson: Love that. Right on. Well that’s excellent. So this is gonna be probably, might be the hardest question of the day. Carol, who’s your favorite rock star?

Carol Tice: Ooh,

Tim Melanson: I.

Carol Tice: only one.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, no. You can mention a couple.

Carol Tice: I don’t know, um, bono, um.

I’m listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin lately. They’ve aged really well. You know, [00:43:00] I don’t feel, remember that I was that into them when I was back on my Diandra lawn with my yellow tuta loop radio getting suntan growing up in the San Fernando Valley of LA listening to 93 KHJ. Uh, but, but like over time they, uh.

I don’t know. They’ve worn really well, they’ve worn really well. Uh, the, you know, Roger Alt tree, uh, I’d say

Tim Melanson: right on.

Carol Tice: just to name a couple

Tim Melanson: You are into the classic rock. Of course they don’t make music like they used to.

Carol Tice: They do not, but they make it the way they make it now. And just think 20 years from now, those people who, who are listening to that will be listening to that on the oldie station.

Tim Melanson: Oh, that’s

Carol Tice: And that’ll be the old rock. And we’ll be dinosaurs.

Tim Melanson: Well, do you know what’s interesting? So I, I, um, I know I don’t have a whole lot of time, but I host, uh, jam Nights regularly and I’ve been bringing in younger bands to, to come play [00:44:00] and it is great. They are playing the classic rock. They’re playing the Led Zeppelin, and it’s so cool to see, you know, the 20 somethings and even the, even the, the high school kids playing Led Zeppelin.

That’s so

Carol Tice: They all, they all know the classic rock from Guitar Hero and cartoon, uh, at the end of animated cartoons. know, like the Shrek cartoons use a lot of classic rock. Um, so it’s like it all gets rediscovered that that’s how my kids know a lot of it, or from us inflicting it on them.

Tim Melanson: It’s probably us.

Carol Tice: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Carol, for rocking out with me today. This has been a lot of fun. Awesome. To the listeners, make sure you, 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. I’m talking to another work at Home Rockstar that’s been working from home for more than 20 years. That is super cool. He’s got me beat. Uh, so he is the founder of Uplift 360, and what he does is he helps you turn your online presence into a growth engine using AI powered trust driven marketing systems.

Super excited to be rocking out today with Wes Towers. Hey, Wes, you ready to rock?

Wes Towers: Absolutely, Tim, that’s good to be with you.

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

Wes Towers: Sure. Well, I suppose success has changed. What I’ve, uh, thought success was, has changed over the years as I, I guess I’ve matured, but. The, the biggest success story, uh, right now, this year, uh, is, uh, bringing my son on board as part of the team. So, um,

as you, as your children grow up, you, you feel as though you might lose them and not see them ever again.

You know, being, being 20 and with a girlfriend and everything, and, uh, living with his [00:01:00] girlfriend and so on. Uh, there’s always the, the, the risk that you won’t see them again and that you’ll lose, you’ll lose them. But, um, to have him on board one day a week, um, and he’s helping with wealth, with, uh, social media and, and so on, and, um, create, creating some graphics and, and, and, and that type of thing.

He’s really creative, so to have him under my wing as well to help mentor him a little bit as well because he is got our visions of having his own business, uh, in the, in the future as well.

Tim Melanson: Wow, that is so awesome. Family business. I love it. That’s so cool. Yeah, I, I, I hope at some point my son ends up working with me as well. He’s off, off to university now. Take. In a me mechanical engineering degree, but, uh, but, uh, so it’s unlikely, but you never know. Right?

Wes Towers: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Wes Towers: Yeah, so they, and yeah, my other kids are not in similar paths to what I did as a career, but certainly I hope to be able to support them in, in their journeys. They’re a little, little younger, so, yeah.

Tim Melanson: My other kids [00:02:00] are, are, uh, one, one of them’s a server. I doubt she’ll ever work for me, but I have a feeling that she’ll be an entrepreneur at some point. She’ll start her own business and I’m, I’m actually hoping all three of them do.

Wes Towers: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Wes Towers: Well, I think that, I think ’cause you are modeling to them what life might look like and so many people are just not aware of what an entrepreneurial business could look like in a home-based business. And a, a business built around your lifestyle effectively is what you ideally want to want to create.

It can take some time to get there because it’s just so, it’s, it can be difficult, particularly at the start, but once you build something around your life, it’s, it’s powerful and, and a wonderful life.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I totally, I totally agree. It’s, and it’s, uh. It, it’s, uh, it’s not normal. Like, I mean, it’s starting to get a lot more normal now, but, uh, but I mean, I, I, I think that they would kind of look around at their other friends and go like, oh my goodness, like this is weird. You know? ’cause I, I know like my wife and I [00:03:00] actually work together in our business and we’re both working from home and we both got this massive flexibility.

But on the other hand. It also kind of seems like we’re working all the time too, in a way. So it’s like this weird kind of like, are you free? Are you not free? Right.

Wes Towers: Yeah.

Yeah, I’ve heard it said that works. Being self-employed, you’re free to work any 80 hours a week you want to, so.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Now, on the other hand, I mean the flexibility. I mean, that was the reason why, I don’t know what your reason was, but that was my reason for, for doing this. I wanted to have that flexibility of being able to work later or, uh, you know, be able to go to those parent-teacher things during the day.

Like there was a lot of. Things that I was able to do that would’ve been a lot more challenging had I had to ask someone’s permission to do those things, right?

Wes Towers: Yeah, a hundred percent that, that was the beauty of and for me too. So I was able to do just same. Many more dad things, um, as the kids were growing up and you know, kids, [00:04:00] you know, have the activities, the sports, and even just school drop off and pick up and all that kind of stuff. You can do, you can fit that into your day so

much more easily than having to ask a boss, Hey, I need to run out for, for an hour to do whatever it is.

Um, so it was, it was magnificent. Um, over the, over the years.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Now, on the other hand, I mean, there’s some things that don’t go super well, you know, on the path as well. I’m not sure if yours was, but I know mine, I, I, I didn’t make all the right decisions. And I’m wondering, uh, I like to normalize that a bit because as people are potentially thinking about starting a, a business or doing something like this.

Uh, a lot of people are a little bit worried about, oh, well what if I, what if I fail? Or what if I make a mistake or what’s gonna happen? And I like to make sure that people understand that, Hey, you know what, that’s part of the process and, you know, you can get, get through it. And so I’m wondering, can you share, you know, a big one that we can, we can learn

Wes Towers: Oh man, I’ve got, I’ve got so many stories that fit into that, uh, line of thinking and it feels as [00:05:00] though I’ve just stumbled and bumbled my way forward. Uh, through, through the business journey. I started completely naively so I had a skillset and similar to yours. Um, I was a graphic designer, web designer.

Um, always had a vision of starting my own business. And I suppose like most of us, we see what our, uh, employers charge us out at. And, uh, you see, oh wow, that’s a pretty enticing, they’re only paying me a, a small fraction of what that is. And so it’s, it’s, it’s pretty, uh, seducing, uh, I suppose just to see what the income might be.

But, so to start out in business. I had the skillset to, to do the work, but I’d never been. I’d been to a couple of client meetings but said nothing. Um, just attended with the salespeople, uh, didn’t know how to do, you know, the bookkeeping and the proposals and any of that stuff,

and all the, all the legal stuff you gotta get, uh, sorted out to, and the tax and.

Just so much. I had no idea, no concept. Um, I was pretty shy to, to show up at, [00:06:00] you know, I remember sweating, sweating so much, just going to the first couple of potential client meetings

and, and so on. And, but bumbled and stumbled my way through and, um, you know, just learned the hard way. That’s just the, that’s just the start.

It just feels as though. There’s always a lesson to be learned. Um, there’s always a challenge. There’s always an obstacle, but that’s human, human growth. Um, I enjoy it. I enjoy the, uh, the challenges that it presents.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, I mean, you learn really quickly why there’s a discrepancy from what they pay you and what they get paid for your per hour. They bill when they bill you out. Right.

Wes Towers: Yeah, a hundred percent. It’s, uh, you know, as a young guy, you could, you could, you know, I was pretty low income as a, as a, uh, as a junior. Um, and you see they’re charging a phenomenal fee for the hours you put in. But you, you, you not quite aware that how much it takes just to run the business side of things. Not [00:07:00] doing the, the, the billable work, but just the other stuff. It’s, it’s amazing.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, well that, and that’s just it, right? I mean, you, you, uh, like, I I keep saying that you, when you start your business, you, you usually, like, you say, you had this skill. And oftentimes it is very similar to what you just said. I, I, I think it’s like you, you re, you recognize or you see how much they’re billing you out at, and you’re like, come on, they’re taking so much money from me, you know, and, uh, whatever it is.

And then you start your business and you realize that you’re doing like. 80% of what you do has nothing to do with that billable thing that you’re doing. It’s all this other stuff. So it’s like, oh, okay, now I get it. Why? Why I have to charge out so high? Right? And, and I mean, and then like. Even, uh, I found another, another interesting challenge to get around was even when you’re sort of like telling your clients what you charge out at, you know, sometimes it gets a little bit awkward ’cause [00:08:00] you know, you, you see the look on their face going like, really?

You charge that per hour? Like, that seems like a rip off. Right? And, and it’s like. It’s, it’s awkward, right? Like, ’cause you feel like, oh, well maybe I’ll give them a little bit of a break. But that, you know, that other time has to be spent. Some like, you do have to do those things, right? Or you have to hire somebody to do it.

Wes Towers: Yeah. And that’s, that’s why it can be incredibly difficult if your target market, I, I, I, it’s great to work with solo. Uh, it, it’s great to be a solo business or work from home and to have a small team and run a small, uh, small business, but it can be difficult to work with solo. Um, businesses, solo operator businesses as a, as a client, just because of those sort of mindset things they’re not kind of used to spending, spending money to, to get things done, or they can’t because they’re really starting out lean and mean.

We all start like that. So, um, I can, I can appreciate and understand where they’re coming from when they haven’t got a budget to do something properly, but you’ve just gotta start [00:09:00] where you’re at and, and grow.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Uh, I, that’s an interesting topic too, because I mean, when you’re speaking to like, uh, when you’re running your business and your, your clients are solopreneurs, like you say, or, or people that are just starting their business, they’ve got a job, they’re working on the side, they don’t really understand that.

The same way that you didn’t when you first got started, right? However, when you start to work with bigger size businesses, it seems like they don’t even blink an eye at, at some of the prices, but it’s because they, they get it right. They, they understand why the, why the hourly rate is so high. It’s not because.

The, you know, that that particular, like they, they could get a junior for sure. They could hire a junior to do that and hire them on as an employee, but now they have to pay their taxes. There’s a whole bunch of other things that come into play that a big business will understand, but the small businesses don’t necessarily understand that.

Right.

Wes Towers: Yeah. And the bigger guys, they just want a, a, a specialist who does the work really well and they, they want to be hands off and, and know that it’s just done. You know, they don’t wanna have to handhold a, a junior in the office. [00:10:00] Um, and I think that’s kind of the way work is going to have. Specialized freelancers in niched fields, I think is the way of the future, especially the, with the technology these days.

I mean, things have transformed

phenomenally over the years, but over the last few years it’s been crazy, uh, crazy exciting and and terrifying sometimes. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I remember, uh, when I was still working in the cubicle over 20 years ago, uh, the company that I was working for was a high tech company. It was during the, the, the burst of the bubble. And, uh, that company was already. Sort of transitioning out of hiring employees and trying to hire contractors instead.

And I remember that sort of trend that was happening and nowadays as being, it’s, it’s, it’s even easier to hire, to hire, uh, like a contractor instead of employee. Like, and I’m wondering, like for you, you know, either in your business or in some of your client’s businesses, do you see a benefit to hiring an employee versus a, a contractor?

[00:11:00] What, what do you do?

Wes Towers: Yeah, so I have, um, a team in India and Philippines, so they’re obviously remote to me.

And so, and it’s ’cause I’m a home-based business. I can’t have people here all the time. I mean, my son comes in to work here and that’s. That’s just so I can spend time with him. He could do it at home,

Tim Melanson: Absolutely.

Wes Towers: but I, I, uh, trick him into coming to the office and we have lunch once a week and all that kind of fun stuff.

So, um, yeah, but the, uh, everything’s digitalized. And, and I suppose that was the for, for what? For what I do. I mean, we’re making websites. We are doing SEO search engine optimization.

We call it Search Everywhere optimization. But that’s another story. Everything we do is behind a computer, so it makes practical sense that that people can work from anywhere really.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, uh, and so I, I mean, how do you, how do you run that? Like, I mean, there’s no water cooler anymore. Like, do, do you have regular meetings? Are they over zoom? Uh, how, how do, how do you keep everybody, you know, in line? I guess I.[00:12:00]

Wes Towers: Yeah, well, absolutely. It’s, it’s worthwhile in my view to have a, a weekly face-to-face zoom meeting that’s just booked in. Um. Even if you’ve got not much to talk about, it’s just business as usual because everything we, we, um, run all our projects in Clickup. There’s lots of different project management systems and so on, but find a little system that works for your entity and, and that everyone can collaborate on.

’cause it’s all about collaboration. Um, but I think it’s really worthwhile just to have that once a week call, even if. It’s just to see the person and, and just to remember they’re a real human, that it’s just not a, um, digitalization of everything. So, um, I mean, those meetings are very rarely anything much that we need to talk about at all because everything’s in, in the platforms that we’re using, so day to day.

So, um, but it, it is good to stay connected because people have issues as well. You know, you, you wanna know if someone’s got a ma massive. [00:13:00] Um, life circumstance that really might be affecting everything. You know, you, they should become your friends. You, you want people, you know, you wanna build that relationship.

So the downside of being remote to everybody is the relationships can be lost. So you’ve just gotta work a little harder, um, to maintain that.

Tim Melanson: You know, there was a guest a few episodes back that was talking about that, uh, that, you know, comment that people say, you know, you shouldn’t go into business with your friends and how maybe that might not be necessarily. Right. Or, or there. There, there could be a way around that. I’m wondering, ’cause you, you just mentioned you want them to be your friends.

Isn’t that sort of a contradiction, I guess?

Wes Towers: Yeah. Yeah. Well that’s an interesting, I I did hire a friend in the early days and that went horribly wrong. So,

um, I.

I, hired a graphic designer and yeah, so that. That. Yeah. So, um, a long story. [00:14:00] Um, but when I had my fir we had our first child and I was taking some time off and she was the only worker with me. Um, and at that time she chose to leave and take a suite of clients with her

Tim Melanson: Oh dear.

Wes Towers: was trying to have a couple of weeks off. So that was, uh, a lesson, another lesson learned the hard way and, and lose a friend over it as well, so that there’s. Yeah.

Think li life is, life is complicated and messy at times.

Um, but you just do the best to get through.

Tim Melanson: Well, I mean in, in that particular instance, was that really a friend? I mean,

Wes Towers: Yeah, I know, I know.

Tim Melanson: really treat each other that way? Right. I, I, I think.

Wes Towers: true, true.

Tim Melanson: think because I’d been thinking about that since that episode and, uh, ’cause some of the comments that, that, that the, the guest made, and I can’t remember, I can’t remember which one it was.

Uh, but it was sort of like, you know, around the lines of like, you, if, if you, you subscribe to the adage of like, you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with, like your, your [00:15:00] friends should be. High integrity, you know, high functioning sort of people. And I, I, I do get that.

However, on the other hand, I don’t know if that’s where everybody starts, especially long-term friends. I mean, you, your friends tend to be the people that are around you, like, and, and chosen by somebody else. And you know, it’s just a matter of like, you’ve spent a lot of time with them, not necessarily that they align completely with your values.

And I think that’s probably a different scenario. Than maybe the later in life friends that you choose, uh, because they have the same values, you know?

Wes Towers: Yeah. Yeah. So if I think about my, I’m really fortunate to have a close friendship group, you know, well, there’s, I’ve got lots of friends. On the, like most of us do, but the at close core set of friends who are all, we’re all kind of similar

in that we run businesses and, um, we have the same [00:16:00] challenges.

So it’s kind of, it’s, it’s a, it’s a different. Path, the, the way we work and, you know, running businesses and small businesses and working from home and all that sort of stuff. And it presents different challenges and, uh, we’ve, we’ve all got our little quirks. Um, and it’s good to have a, a friendship group that can support you, um, through those, those journeys.

And even I feel as though my friends are smarter than me in, in, in their fields. Uh, you know, they’re running. Great businesses, so it’s always good to have them as almost like mentors as well as friends.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, totally. Oh, totally. Absolutely. And I, you know, I have definitely done a lot of business with my friends over the years. Uh, and, and you know, I, I think maybe the, I, I think probably the. The one thing that I would say that does happen is that I think sometimes your friends or you might take advantage of your friends or of the relationship, and you might actually make choices that are [00:17:00] low integrity because you’re thinking, well, my friend knows that I’m going through this right now and I need it type thing, which.

In my opinion, it’s still not a good excuse, but, but I, I could see how that might end up being something that would come, would come by. They’d, they’d be like, ah, they’ll bounce back type

Wes Towers: Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: But, uh, I, I think, I think that that, you know, kind of swings back to what you just said a few minutes ago, that if you are, you know, catching up with them quite often and you know what’s going on in their lives, well, then maybe you might be able to have that conversation instead of being blindsided by something that happens because they didn’t really tell you and you didn’t, you weren’t aware of what was going on in their personal life, right.

Wes Towers: Yeah, absolutely. And particularly with remote teams that I have, so I have people in the Philippines and India, Philippines. Um, they, they, they have the typhoon season and so it seems like nearly every year someone will be impacted to some [00:18:00] degree with that, you know, whether it be their extended family or whatnot.

But there’ll be, there’ll. Challenges that I, I’m just sort of aware that whe when that season comes and what that might mean for various team members and just, uh, to be aware of that. And that’s partially why I’ve got two te, like two locations of teams so that, um, because there can be some downtime obviously in those, in those seasons, uh, in the Philippines as well.

So some team members won’t, won’t be available.

Um. But the, the Indian, um, people will be able to take o over some of that workload as well. So building, building around, um, those sorts of challenges to, to make sure that, uh, things are stable, um, that you can continue to deliver what you need to do.

Tim Melanson: That’s smart. So let’s talk a little bit about, uh, getting fans. Hey, you’ve been doing this for 20 plus years. The world has changed drastically. Like,

Wes Towers: Yeah, man.

Tim Melanson: wondering actually if you can tell me [00:19:00] how have things. How are things different? Like how did you go out there and get your first few, uh, fans we’ll say, uh, in the very beginning versus what do you do now?

Wes Towers: Well, yes. As I said, starting the business, I was completely naive and I started way earlier than I thought I would, simply because an opportunity came up. There was another guy who, who I knew, I didn’t know him very well, but I knew him enough that he was running a, he was trying to run a a, a business similar, similar service.

To what I now do.

He said, he, he, he was just saying, I’ve had enough. I’m not making enough income. I’m throwing, throwing this in. I’m going to go get a real job. So just go work for somebody again. And I said, well, what are you gonna do with a few clients? You’ve still got left? And he said, we can have them. I thought, okay, well I will have them. And uh, so he handed them over to me. There wasn’t much. There was a little bit. And so it was a, a way to start with something. And so I didn’t start full-time in my own business. I just did his few clients in the [00:20:00] evenings, um, for a little while until I could drop my day job back, um, to a couple of days a week, and then eventually drop it completely and then go full-time and then. Get team, get team to support me as well. So, um, that’s the, that’s the, uh, transition, um, of how, how it all kind of transpired. So it’s probably different to some people. I had a little opportunity, but I think that’s true in a, in a, a way. For every business you’ll see an opportunity. But there’ll be reluctance to start because you’ll never feel quite ready.

Um, but I, I, I feel as though the things that we fear the most are the things we need to do the most. So whilst it might be fear, there might be some level of fear to step out and start your own business. I think figuring out ways where you can dip your toes into the water and just get started with some basic practical step first steps. I think that really worked for me, and I think that’s, uh, true of every, every business. [00:21:00] If you can start, start as small as you can, as, uh, as quickly as you can and build some form of momentum, um, to take you forward to the next level, I think that’s the way to do it. So, growing the business in the early days, I mean, a, to answer your question more clearly, like. So that was kind of the starting point, just taking on whatever I could get. Um, but as you grow, I sort of niched into the business, um, with, without the clients we wanted to target a bit better. So trades and construction businesses were, um, clearly our best clients for the most part. So there was other clients outside of that field, but started to niche in because I realized they were the ones that were the happiest, getting the best outcomes for.

So you kind of learn as you go and you evolve. I, I think that’s the way of, of doing it. Um, but yeah, business has changed. People expectations have changed as well. Obviously COVID disrupted everything, but the

beauty of it in the end was. People know about [00:22:00] Zoom, you know,

I mean, man, the amount of hours I used to spend driving around, all over the place, um, for a client meeting.

And so you, you factor that into your day. You, you just lose a whole heap of your day. Um, but now you just jump on a call and you’re in and out and you, um, can deal with things really quickly and it, uh, that’s the expectation. Everyone knows how to do that now, so it’s pretty cool.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree with that. The, the, I remember when I started my podcast, I started this podcast in, uh, what was it, 2015, so about 10. Years ago. And, uh, and, uh, the reason why I started in the first place actually, was because I wanted to, uh, have a, a, a basically teach people the things that I didn’t know when I first got started.

I wanted to be the resource that I would’ve been looking for. Right. And a lot of it kind of like stemmed around that 80% thing of like, man, there was a lot of stuff I didn’t know. Right. And, uh. But I just remember, uh, the, the, to me it seemed [00:23:00] logical that people would work from home. And I thought that it would grow over time.

I was like, you know what I mean? Give it a few years. I bet you, I bet you most people will be working from home if they can. And I did not expect something like lockdowns to start happening, and then all of a sudden people are forced to do it right. Uh. So it happened a lot more sudden than I had expected.

I thought it’d be a lot more gradual. But, but I mean, like you say, the, the, the silver lining of that is that. It has now afforded a lot of people that didn’t have that opportunity to, to do this. Right. And even in, in companies, I, I know that it, it just baffled me that so many companies were just anti working from home.

Like, they would not let their workforce work from home. It was just this, this, this, this very, very bizarre, uh, idea that they weren’t gonna be productive at all. And. I do kind of see that there are personalities that [00:24:00] some personalities work better in an office and some personalities work better at home.

I know for me, I work better at home. I don’t know about you, but I mean, you put me in any company, I will be far more productive at home than I will be sitting at in the office and getting interrupted by everybody every few minutes, right? So I think that there are some personality differences, right?

Wes Towers: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, for me there’s a bit of a balance. I mean, I, I love to work at home because I, when I’m working, I’m really working and

focused and don’t talk to me, don’t, like, don’t disrupt my

thinking at the time because, you know, I’m dial in. Um, so that’s the beauty of being at home and just focusing. Um, but I also. Chose to live in a, a spot, which is, we’re right in, in town, um, in kind of the business district. So if I go downstairs, we’re in an apartment, um. If I go downstairs, it’s the business world and community. So I still feel connected to people as well. Um, so for me that’s a great balance. I know not [00:25:00] everyone can just move, but it, uh, it’s about creating a balance that works for you.

And so, and there’s other ways to connect if you, if you have that craving for people and connection, I mean, there’s networking groups you can go to and there’s a whole bunch of other things you can do to have people. If you’re a people person and you, I am a people person, I like to connect, but I’m, when I’m focused, I work.

When I’m talking to people, I do that. I, uh, um, so yeah, just getting that balance right for the individual I think is important.

Tim Melanson: Um, I like to talk about practicing because I, I, I, I, I say this sometimes, you know, especially in music. Every great guitar player was once a very bad guitar player. Right. You know, it, it’s just there. You have to get to that point. And in every industry and every business, you know, you’re going to improve over time, uh, as long as you have some sort of practice.

And I’m wondering, do you have any practices or what practices do you have?

Wes Towers: Yeah, well, the, uh, it feels as though there’s always something new to learn, and so I, I feel like. It’s, it’s [00:26:00] kind of an industry as, you know, it’s kind of an industry where you never feel like you’ve arrived because something is new on the

horizon. And that’s, you know, increased with AI and transformation of how we, how we do things and, and get work done and, and all that.

So it’s just a matter of. Staying, uh, educated. And I, I watch a lot of YouTube. I listen to a lot of podcasts about the new, new and the latest tools. So I’m being educated, um, and even sort of dive a little bit divergent type of scenarios. I, I guess if you were to liken it to music, I don’t stick to just listening to my own.

Um. Style of music. I’m listening to other broader influences to keep me sharp and keep me. Unique in thinking about the world and what people might need, because we’re, at the end of the day, we’re producing marketing outcomes, so we need to understand the world in which we’re working and, and what, uh, might be influencing people, so [00:27:00] to stay connected.

Um, and, uh, to, that’s the beauty of things like, uh, YouTube and, and not the, I mean, just the mainstream media we used to live upon, uh, years ago, but now we can. Listen to really niched and specific, uh, things that we need to learn about. It might be software, um, different opportunities, you know, podcasting. I was, I plan to start my own podcast, uh, next year.

I’m just guesting on a lot at the moment. Um, and so just to be able to, uh, watch a whole bunch of different YouTubers on different podcasting platforms and the pros and cons and the um, and then just to try them, um, that’s kind of how I do life and do business.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it’s, uh, the, the information is a lot more on demand rather than just kind like broadcast it out to us nowadays. Right.

Wes Towers: Yeah, you

can find what you want when you want it right away. Uh, you can talk to your chat JBT and uh, use it as almost like a personal psychologist half the time,[00:28:00]

Tim Melanson: You,

Wes Towers: um, but a brainstorming tool. Yeah,

it’s, it’s it’s so powerful. Like, I’m driving around in a car oftentimes, um, when I have my ideas and so I don’t wanna lose those ideas.

So I, um, get the, get the chat GBT on, obviously hands free and have the conversation so I can at least brain dump some of the thoughts, um, that I have right then and, uh, have a conversation with, with the, um, with the ai. And by the time I get to wherever I’ve got, I’ve distilled down my thoughts into something.

It’s helped me distill my thoughts down into something that’s tangible that I can action. It might be a blog post, for example, or it might be, um, it’s something new that I need to integrate into the business to adjust things.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think the, the voice activated part of chatt PT is a, one of the biggest game changers of the whole thing. Because I don’t know about you. I’m a, I’m more of a, of an extrovert. Uh, which as I understand it, means that I, I think out loud, I, I need to speak it. Right. [00:29:00] Whereas, you know, a lot of introverts are the opposite.

They think it and then they say it. Right. So for me, uh, talking things out is how I get to a point. And. If I’m alone, it’s weird just, you know, speaking to myself. And so here I am, I’m speaking to my wife and she doesn’t quite understand what I’m trying to say. And so it’s confusing and then, and, but, but with this whole, you know, this machine that I could speak to and it speaks back to me and like you can get quite a bit of work done.

You can flesh those ideas out. I mean, sometimes they’re just terrible and, and it comes out pretty quickly. And you didn’t have to take anybody’s time in order to do that, right? It was, it was an actual machine that did it for you, right.

Wes Towers: It’s so powerful. It’s just, I think for those that are reluctant to start with AI and just not, not even started, it’s just overwhelming. I think just. Download chat, chip D on your phone, pay, pay the $20, whatever it is to get the better version. Um, and just [00:30:00] having start having a conversation with it, you’ll soon realize it’s pretty easy to use.

And the, the, the power of it is really, um, it could be a huge advantage to your business.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think so too. And I, you know, I’m, I’m starting to, uh. So I, I think chat GPT came out what, in 2023? Uh, you know, I adopted it pretty quickly, uh, as soon as it was available in Canada. And so I’ve been playing around with it quite a bit and it’s, it’s evolved quite a bit over time. It’s quite good right now.

It’s not where I, I think it will be, I mean, it’s gonna evolve a lot more. However, for the people that are afraid of. Of chat, uh, um, or of AI in general. I think the issue here is that it’s going to go no matter what we do. Like, it, it, it just, it is so, there are people that are pushing this forward and I think it’s actually more dangerous to not get informed on what it is because now, you know, [00:31:00] we’re basically just gonna be doing whatever the.

Six people and who are, you know, running the show are gonna be pushing us towards. And we won’t really have a whole lot of input because we won’t really have a whole lot of knowledge of what’s going on. But the more people that are. Understanding AI and understanding what it can do, what it can’t do, where it’s dangerous, where it’s super helpful.

I think that we’ll have more of an interesting conversation on where we want this to go, right? Because, uh, I think a lot of people look at the Terminator movies and think, oh my God. And, and you know what? That is totally possible. If, if we’re not careful, uh, however. You know, the Jetsons is also possible too, you know,

Wes Towers: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: so it’s

Wes Towers: Yeah. We still want our flying cars. When we getting those flying cars, we to have.

Tim Melanson: I know we’re supposed to have flying cars and we’re supposed to have robot butler and all those things, but, and, and I, I [00:32:00] do think that that stuff is also possible. However, we, I think we do need to get into this conversation. We need to understand what it’s doing, what it’s not doing. I mean, it, it doesn’t take you very long of using chat GBT to realize that it is.

Cool. But it’s also very dumb in a lot of ways too. I mean, it, it’ll, it’ll tell you the weirdest things like you, you really do have to direct it. It, it’s, it’s, it’s not just magic, right? So

Wes Towers: A hundred percent. You still need expertise in whatever it is you’re doing, but it can just help get you there faster. I mean, there’s trouble, it’s probably similar for what you are doing sometimes you, you get a, you’re building a website and, and the um, there’s some sort of bug in there and it

used to be like a needle in the haystack.

So we do WordPress websites. I’m not sure what your software

you use, but Yeah, So you use a, a set of plugins, so effectively different, um, pieces of software that do different things in the website and sometimes they don’t necessarily play [00:33:00] nicely together or something’s not supported or something breaks.

And so it can be like a needle in the haystack to figure out what. What’s causing this issue. But now you can troubleshoot and find that needle in a haystack super fast

just because you can run the, run the code through, um, AI and it’ll find it, uh, it’s just phenomenal. But you still need the skillset in which you need to understand what, you know, the plugins and the WordPress and, and all that kind of stuff.

Um,

it’s just that you find the, find the issue quicker because it’s helping you, um, do that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I found the same thing. I found that I could find issues really quickly, but then I try to get the AI to fix it and it will not. I get into so such big arguments with it. ’cause it keeps on, like keeps on reverting back and doing stupid things and I’m like, ah, I thought you were just gonna do this for me.

And the it does

Wes Towers: yeah,

Tim Melanson: it for you.

Wes Towers: yeah. It’s, it’s true. Sometimes it, and it will tell you lies if it doesn’t know. It just makes something up, which is really annoying.

Tim Melanson: I know. And you, you have to go find that needle in a haystack too, of the, [00:34:00] the, the thing that it just made up, it just fills in blanks. Oh, well you didn’t tell me, so I just filled it in. I’m like, oh,

Wes Towers: just made it up. But it’s, yeah, so, so you still need to be an expert in the field that you work in, but the, um, when you can use it to an advantage and, and even with the systems and processes, we’ve adapted a fair bit too, uh, and some great ones for when you’re working at home. Particularly, particularly if you’re working by yourself. I mean, we’re, we’ve got, uh, AI receptionist now answering the phone, which is really cool. Um, there was, I had a little bit of a mixed feeling about it, so I just thought, we’ll, we’ll try it and quickly turn it off if it doesn’t work for us. But it’s, it’s been magic in that it just deals with the, the phone calls.

We were getting a lot of telemarketing calls, so it just filters out all that rubbish. Um, but it gets meetings booked into our calendar right away if that’s what people are. It’ll just have a really basic conversation with the person ringing, um, and figure out if they wanna book a meeting and it’ll [00:35:00] do that.

Um, or if they need to speak to someone, it’ll, it’ll, um, put them through directly to me as quickly

as, as, as I can. So if I, if I’m available, um, I’ll answer that right away and deal with it just like I ordinarily would.

So it’s just, yeah,

Tim Melanson: platform do you use for that then?

Wes Towers: that’s in go high level.

Um. Yeah. Yeah. So there’s, there’s, there’s more sophisticated ones out there.

I just went with the one because we’re already using go high level as a CRM and a whole bunch of other things in there. So do, do you have, do you have go high level or something similar?

Tim Melanson: Uh, I use, uh, HubSpot for the most part, for, for my CRM. Um,

Wes Towers: yeah.

Tim Melanson: I’ve used go high level several times with different clients and I, you know, so far I. Uh, I haven’t really liked it a whole lot, however, I think it’s improving quite drastically, especially with the white label type stuff, right?

Wes Towers: Yeah, so.

Tim Melanson: Hmm.[00:36:00]

Wes Towers: The problem with it is it’s just overwhelming and sometimes I feel as though they’re just adding more, more capabilities, but not really refining and polishing it as best as it could.

So I think that would be better served if they stopped adding new stuff and just got the stuff that they have

got working a bit better.

It’s a little bit clunky at times.

Tim Melanson: that frustrates me.

Wes Towers: yeah. Yeah. So. But yeah, it’s working, it’s working well for us. And

because we’re a bit techie as well, you know, we can, we can figure it out,

you know, we can figure out what the clunks are and work around them. So, but it might not be a great fit for, uh, other businesses who are, who are less tech savvy.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So tell me, uh, it is time for your guest solo. What’s exciting in your business right now?

Wes Towers: Yeah, so the, um, well launching a podcast next year that’s super exciting

for us. But, um, just the changes that of the industry are really exciting. So, as I said, we’re, we’re calling it, we’re doing Search Everywhere optimization. We’ve done SEO Do you do SEO [00:37:00] as well as part of your service

Tim Melanson: I, I, I do some basic stuff, but I’m not an SEO expert.

Wes Towers: Yeah, so we’ve done that for many, many years. Um, and uh, so it’s kind of been a challenge in some ways recently because obviously SEO for people listening who might not know, understand search engine optimization,

it’s attempt to show up as highly as it can for as many keywords as you can. So keywords being something that people might search in Google and historically it might be service and location, so plumber, Melbourne, um, and people would search that hopefully. Show up number one or close to that, get traffic to the website, get a, get some business as a result of that. That was nice and simple and easy, and we would work on a number of keywords for clients and grow their traffic. And, um, get them more business. And it was super, super easy to demonstrate the value of it.

But then ai, uh, AI overviews comes on board and, and less traffic was coming to websites. And so all of a sudden clients were saying, Hey, you’ve worked with us so long [00:38:00] and you’ve always increased our traffic. Why is it going the opposite? Why are we getting less traffic now? So that was a difficult challenge to discuss with them, but to. To show them they were still getting the same return, same quality of leads coming through. It was just that less research based, um, traffic was getting to their website. So to adapt our service offering to facilitate the new, um. Search everywhere. Optimization’s not just about Google anymore, it’s about showing up in large language models.

So helping our clients show up in chat, GPT when people are searching for a service or a, a product that they offer. And, and particularly in the local region. I mean, we had a great story of a client just gave me a call and said, Hey, thanks so much for the work you’ve done. Um, we’ve just won $140,000 client as a, as a result of showing up on chat GBT.

So,

um. Yeah, that’s, that’s the beauty of what, that’s exciting. It keeps me on my toes because it’s obviously changing super fast. But the benefits of being [00:39:00] able to get those really solid successes for clients, uh, it keeps me, keeps me excited, um, uh, you know, day to day. So that’s what it is.

Tim Melanson: Amazing. So how do we find out more?

Wes Towers: Well, uh, yeah. Uplift three sixty.com au is is the business website, and you can book, book a strategy call with me there. And, uh, happy to, happy to discuss, um, how it might work for any individual.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Love that. So, hardest question of the day here. Who is your favorite rockstar?

Wes Towers: Oh, favorite rockstar. Wow. Yeah, that’s, uh, pretty cool. Um. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go on a slightly different, um, I’m gonna choose a local, uh, I, I think a rock star. He, he sings at the, um, at the bar just near here. Um, so, uh, yeah, Luke Biskin is his name,

and so you will find he’s on Spotify and so on.

Um, but he’s my favorite, so I, I know him reasonably [00:40:00] well now. Um, just a local, local, um, muso.

Tim Melanson: Nice. It’s nice when you walk into a place and they know your name. Right.

Wes Towers: Yeah, that’s it. That’s it.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Uh, right on. Well, thank you so much for rocking out with me today, Wes. This has been a lot of fun.

Wes Towers: Yeah. Great. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thanks, Tim.

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