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Tim Melanson: Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. Excited for today’s episode. We have two Tims, two Timmies on, on the call today. This is gonna be really, really cool. We’re talking to the VP of growth at 247VA, and what he does is he helps businesses grow remote teams for their company.

So very excited to be rocking out today with Timmy Van Vonno. Hey, Timmy. You ready to rock?

Timmy Van Vonno: Yes, sir. Appreciate you having me. I’m, uh, really excited to tie together, you know, all my past experiences with what I’m currently doing, uh, with remote staffing

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

Timmy Van Vonno: Yeah, so I, I would say my story of success is how I’ve continually, um, you know, evolved and reinvented myself over my career. Uh, I started as a civil engineering graduate from the University of Maryland and went straight into doing foundation engineering, uh, for multiple commercial construction firms.

Um, didn’t really love the engineering side of it ’cause I was in an office all day. So I got out in the field, and [00:01:00] I moved to the residential sector, uh, where I did, you know, large scale custom home developments and construction. Um, at any given time, um, me and my partner were managing 10 or more, uh, large scale residential construction projects.

So as you can imagine, I learned a lot about financial pressure, operational pressure, um, and really everything that comes along with day-to-day construction. Um, and it’s the type of industry as, you know, many people know, where when you wake up in the morning, you don’t really know what’s gonna be coming that day.

So it’s a very unpredict-unpredictable environment. Um, you know, not great for, you know, uh, mental health and those sorts of things. But it taught me a lot, um, about, you know, business and aptitude and, you know, being able to be effective and being able to be a leader, um, on and off the field, um, per se. Um, then, uh, uh, after COVID, you know, the company I was working with went through some tribulations just, uh, based off [00:02:00] material costs skyrocketing and, you know, a lot of different issues that stemmed from not being able to get in people’s houses that stemmed from the COVID pandemic.

Uh, so I decided to, uh, part ways with them and start my own entities, uh, where I did fix and flip, um, projects all over the northern, uh, beltway portion of Maryland. Um, so I have kind of the working for other companies side of me, and also I’ve owned my own companies. So I’ve seen both sides of it, you know, where the pressures lie.

And the pressures are different, uh, you know, depending on if you’re working for someone or owning your own business. But regardless, um, through all those years of all the trials and tribulations and trying to make money in a lot of different ways, um, you know, I-I’ve really learned how to have an operational mindset, um, you know, what’s needed to have a successful business, why businesses fail.

Um, and those are the things that I really wanted to bring to the table when I got into the consulting space a couple years ago Um, uniquely, 247VA gave [00:03:00] me a really good opportunity to take my operational mindset, take all my skillsets, and, you know, background that I, you know, had accumulated over the prior decade, um, and really apply it towards their business.

Um, so what I did was I went into their company, I audited every department and found where the workflow inefficiencies really lied. Um, and there were numerous, as you can imagine, um, areas in the company where I felt, you know, the company could use some leaning and, uh, you know, certain workflows could be improved vastly using AI, um, and just a little more thought put into how they were done.

Um, so that was the first place I started with 247VA. Um, and then furthermore, a- as I’ve gotten into the company, uh, you know, now I handle all of their client consultation calls, which has been a really unique experience for me, um, because I told you about my operations background and everything I learned through my 20s.

Um, but now doing a lot of sales-heavy work and [00:04:00] consultation work and working with business owners every day, um, I’ve really evolved into someone that can now sell a company, um, which is something that, you know, I always had partners that could help me with, um, because I was always in the thick of the operations.

Um, and naturally, over all my different experiences, I’ve always been kind of a fixer, so any company I ever was a part of or my own entities, that was always kind of my role, was, you know, "Hey, Timmy, we have this big problem. Figure out how to fix it." Um, and that’s how, you know, the, the management of the companies and my executive partners, you know, really relied on me, was to come in and fix problems and make sure that, you know, the outcome of all of it, um, was the least, uh, the least chaotic for the company overall.

Um, so, you know, going back to my original point, that’s really where I feel, you know, my success story is, is continuing to build my career year on year. I wouldn’t have imagined, uh, 10 years ago I’d be sitting [00:05:00] in my own condo, um, working from home. Um, you know, I spent many years, you know, working 10 to 15 hours a day in construction, where I spent seven to eight of those in my truck going project to project and doing all the job tracking and all the client meetings, um, and all the things, you know, all the vendor coordination, all the subcontractor coordination.

Um, so, you know, and that’ll lead me into kind of my, uh, uh, my bad segment, uh, where I talk about, uh, where I talk about how, uh, I’ve always been someone who felt like I needed, needed to do everything myself, and, you know, that worked for many years for me. But when I started my own businesses, that really is what became the crux and the bottleneck, um, you know, the, as I ramped down those businesses just because- I couldn’t do it all myself and, you know, I, I scaled very quickly.

Um, I was able to lock in, you know, many millions of dollars in loans and get tons of projects started. Um, but in the end of it, um, you know, I think [00:06:00] I would’ve… It would’ve been much more effective, um, with the volume I had going on had I structured it in such a way where I had support systems built around me, um, so I could really focus on, you know, where I was most valuable.

Um, you know, ’cause there’s only 24 hours in a day. Uh, so

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, well, there you go. The f- the good note and the bad note all wrapped into one, right?

Timmy Van Vonno: Yeah, a-a-and just, you know, furthermore on the bad note, um, you know, th-that’s something that really 24/7 h- VA has really helped me evolve into someone who’s less of a sole doer and more of a team, team builder and, you know, figuring out how to delegate different processes, and that’s something that I’ve really aspired to learn with them, um, because when I first came into the company, I saw how many businesses…

Many, many businesses you don’t even really understand how they, you know, make the money they do, but were rocking and rolling using VAs with different teams, [00:07:00] and outsourcing out pods of their company like marketing or operational pods, um, you know, to VAs, and how successful they were. Um, so that really, you know, rang a bell in my ear that, you know, I really need to learn how companies are doing this, and how to effectively pitch that to them.

Um, so now two years later, um, you know, what I do, a big part of my role is getting on these consultation calls, and we have many every day with incoming leads and clients, and really spelling out to businesses how they can use VAs to delegate certain parts of their business and make sense of it to them.

Um, because, you know, virtual assistance is such a… Still even to this day, when we first started in the game, you know, 13 years ago, we were one of the dinosaurs in the space and no one was really using VAs. But now even 10 years later, even with AI and everything, it’s still a tough thing, tough bridge to gap, um, you know, to work with someone fully virtually and remotely, and learn how to rely on them, um, for different [00:08:00] aspects of your business.

So, you know, when I get on those discovery and consultation calls with clients, it’s all about learning about their business, helping spell out to them where the VA need lies. Um, because many people are like, "Oh yeah, I want a virtual assistant to run my business." Um, that’s not really the, the way it works, so you gotta get down to the micro level with the, you know, potential clients and really spell out to them, "Well, where are the time-consuming tasks happening?

Where are the, you know, operational needs of your business? Where are you spending your time as a business owner, um, doing stuff where, you know, it could be spent, you know, selling the company or going to conferences or really getting yourself out there?" Um, so a big part of my role with 24/7 now is really pitching that concept to businesses and working with them until they find the exact match they need.

Um, and then, you know, it… Furthermore, you know, which I’ll get into later on the podcast, but furthermore helping them set up the systems once they get started with the person so it’s fully [00:09:00] operational, um, and they’re seeing the value add as quickly as possible. Um, because patience is a, a virtue and most busine- busy business owners don’t wanna have patience.

When they’re bringing someone new on, they wanna see the instant impact. Um, so, so that’s somewhere really where, you know, I, I’ve been able to bring that- operational and institutional mindset into 24/7 VA and spread that through the whole company that, you know, "Hey, you know, you really need to understand that these business owners are busy and, you know, they may seem, uh, they, they may seem like they, you know, are gonna require a lot of attention or don’t have a lot of patience, but we gotta be able to work with them and really set these systems up for them with VAs that, that work and are fruitful long term

Tim Melanson: Yeah. You know, so I mean, this is… We could probably do an entire episode or two on, on just the VA strategy, right? And it’s, it’s so interesting because, uh, you know, if, out of [00:10:00] all the interviews that I’ve had, it’s, uh… I, I’ve had a lot of VAs on. I’ve had a lot of people w- who hire VAs on. I’ve had people in organizations like yours that bring VAs.

So VAs are part of a lot of the episodes. However, there’s also been a really common thread in that many people, if they were look ba- look… If they were able to look back and go, "Okay, what would I do differently?" They would say that they would hire quicker. So it’s just so interesting to me that an entrepreneur gets involved in, in a business and then doesn’t hire anybody forever, or for a long time, or, or waits too long.

I get it, though, because, you know, as an, uh… You know, w- when, when you start your business, I mean, a lot of us are sort of self-starters. We’re, um, we’re, we’re jack of all trades. We’re wearing all these different hats, you know? But then there’s the, the, the group of people that maybe are really good at one thing, and they start the business thinking, "I’m [00:11:00] just gonna cut out the middleman, and I’ll, and I’ll just do my own thing," right?

But then, then they end up getting into a situation where now they don’t wanna give that work up, because that’s what they love anyway, and now they have to go run the business. And then, you know, so it’s, it’s all… It’s, it’s so conflicting with, with, uh, with getting in and, and getting something like that started.

But I think that what you said earlier about scaling, I think that that’s kinda, like, the key to it, is if you get into your business and you just want to i- in, you know, buy a job, I guess. You, you know, you just wanna, you know, kinda coast along and, and support yourself. That’s probably fine. You could probably do that on your own, and for a very long time, right?

However, if you want to start to really grow, uh, you’re not gonna be able to do that on your own. You’re gonna run out of time, right? And that’s where you’re gonna need some help. And I think that y- what you’re doing, uh, like helping people to figure out what to do, ’cause hiring somebody… I, I know I had a couple of false starts hiring a VA, because I [00:12:00] just…

I didn’t, I didn’t know what to give them. I wasn’t getting anything out of them because I didn’t have anything systemized in my own business. It was almost like I was going, "Man, I’m, I’m running out of time. I need to hire somebody." So you hire somebody, and go, "Okay, now do something." I’m, like, poking them with a stick.

Like,

Timmy Van Vonno: Yep.

Tim Melanson: but they don’t know what to do if I don’t know what to do, right?

Timmy Van Vonno: Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, to be honest, you know, we’re a very reputable, uh, virtual assistant agency. Like I said, we have been in business for 13 years. Uh, we actually just got news we’re in the Inc. 5000 for the fifth straight year. Um, we’ve achieved Better Business Bureau T- Torch Award for Ethics, so that really shows how we treat our virtual assistants and how we treat our clients and how our, you know, culture is inside of our company.

Really, we have two sets of clients. The virtual assistants we have to keep happy, give fair wages, um, you know, make sure the process for them is as seamless as possible to get in our ecosystem. And then likewise, the clients, obviously, you know, we need to support the relationships and make sure that they’re long-term, [00:13:00] um, and that the whole structure’s there and supported, you know, by our company.

So a, a, a lot of the consultations I get on, people come to us because we are a more reputable firm, and they tell me, "Well, I went to Fiverr or freelancer.com or

Tim Melanson: Oh, yeah.

Timmy Van Vonno: uh, uh, hi- hired a VA and, you know, it sucked, so how are you different?" And I’m like, you know, that’s where I start. "Well, you know, it, it’s really about the infrastructure of the support system with- contained within the company you’re using."

So there are a few players in the space that do a really good job of that, admittedly. Um, but there now are, you know, hundreds of VA firms that claim to have that infrastructure and support the relationships in the way we do, um, but that, that just don’t. So, you know, the big- the biggest thing I’d, I’d say is if you are interested in learning more about VAs and potentially using them within your business is just really be careful where you put your time.

Because what you don’t wanna do is go out, [00:14:00] spend a month or two with some firm trying to figure out a VA, they get you set with someone, and then, you know, you never hear from them again, and then you’re two months into it. You expect, you know, two months of progress in your business that, you know, you have to go back now to the drawing board.

And those are a lot of, I’d say, you know, probably 20 to 30% of the consultations I get on are people like that, that had a bad, had a bad experience and reluctantly are like, "You know, we’re reaching out to a couple more companies to see what you can provide." And, you know, a lot of them come to us, you know, because, uh, because of our tenure.

And we’ve s- you know, the company 24/7 VA particularly has really scaled linearly. Um, and what I mean by that is year on year, you know, our head count internally grows, our VA count that’s, you know, outsourced to customers grows, and w- w- the internal head count matters so much because we’re building out these teams to support every relationship.

Um, so it… you know, if the internal head count doesn’t grow and you’re scaling, you know, [00:15:00] exponentially, that’s where I’ve seen a lot of VA companies where, like, they’ll be on the Inc. 5000 in their first year, and then, you know, their growth is like this or, you know, even going down after that because they just weren’t set up properly to support the relationships.

And And these sorts of, uh, you know, in, in our, in our particular niche, you have to support your enterprise clients exactly the same as a solopreneur, um, you know, with one 20-hour VA. And, you know, that’s the only way the model really works on both ends

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. Well, and s- so now with AI, I mean, you mentioned AI. I, I mean, it, I will admit that AI has reduced the need for any help in, in my business for, like personally. I use AI as an assistant for, in a lot of ways. Can you tell me what the difference would be between using AI heavily as an assistant versus actually hiring a person?

Timmy Van Vonno: So I, of, of course, you know, I, I have a, you know, very strong [00:16:00] background over the last couple years, you know, with AI. Uh, when I first decided to kind of make the career transition back towards the end of 2023, I started studying it, um, you know, every day and figuring out mostly, you know, related to business application, how it can help business.

Um, so, you know, what I tell people is, you know, administrative data entry, you know, type positions, um, you know, doing research, those sorts of things, a lot of times AI can help with. Um, but, uh, my pitch always is that it’s always important to have a human in the loop. So since we’re on a podcast, I can talk about, you know, one of our podcast products.

So something I’ve introduced to the company are AI plus VA training programs, and what that means is teaching a VA how to utilize certain AIs to enhance their workflow. So one of our, one of our biggest niches is podcast VAs. So we attend PodFest in Orlando every January And how I’ve [00:17:00] structured the training programs for the podcast VAs is here’s a workflow of how to use Descript, um, to take, you know, take a video and, you know, make it into, you know, what, what you want it to be.

Here’s a workflow on how to use Opus Clip to make a podcast like this into 50 different segments. So what, how I’ve, how I’ve approached the AI, you know, w- because AI has obviously taken over many portions of the market. There’s a lot of businesses, you know, not ours, but many businesses that are hurting because of it.

Um, but I’ve more gone from an approach as AI is not gonna replace virtual assistants, but they need to be further trained on how to use different AIs so that one VA, one podcast VA now can do the equivalent to what three or four could do a couple years ago, um, you know, utilizing these different VAs.

And there’s generally a lot of commonality between the AIs used in the different niches. So for podcasting, CapCut, Opus Clip, Descript, Riverside FM, um, you know, those are some of the bigger ones [00:18:00] that we train VAs on how to use. Um, and other industries that may be teaching for marketing, let’s say, really teaching the VA how to utilize ChatGPT or Claude to really build out these marketing campaigns and help accelerate that.

Um, and then there’s some clients that don’t wanna use AI at all and are completely scared of it. And, you know, I try to tell them, "You know, you should go into it with open eyes." Um, but, you know, uh, we’ve done our best as a company to pivot from AI replacing VAs because, in my opinion, having a human in the loop is always important.

Um, a lot of the AI systems I’ve built out inside our company, yeah, the AI can do all the lead enrichment going into a consultation call now, but there still needs to be someone to review that, make sure all the data’s correct, brief the salespeople based off the correct data. So it gets it to a point, um, you know, where it does the SEO research, does the, you know, uh, social media handles and those sorts of things.

It finds all the information they can on that [00:19:00] particular company, the website, LinkedIn. Um, but then it’s the responsibility of, you know, one of the sales managers to come in and really evaluate that and make sure the information’s accurate, so that way the sales team goes in with, uh, you know, a proper assessment of the client, can really custom tailor those conversations.

And that’s just one example, um, or a couple, you know, with the podcasting. But that’s been our approach as a company. Um, I think AI still has a long way to go before it’s, you know, w- running businesses for people. But the, the, the thought acceleration is really where I see the value. If I have an idea or if I’m in a meeting and I’m like, "God, I wish there was a better way to do this," you know, I go straight to Chat or Claude and, you know, work with it for 20 minutes versus 20 hours, uh, it would be five to 10 years ago, um, doing it yourself.

And- You know, I, and the more you work with these sorts of GPTs or LLMs, they learn you. So, uh, uh, after working with an LLM, uh, being, you [00:20:00] know, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, uh, Grok, you work with these for, you know, six months or more, and they really understand you. So you ask it a question, and it almost can get inside your brain and at least get you 80 to 90% there

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I, I, and I see it kind of similar to, to what you see. I, I, I don’t think it’s gonna replace people, but it… Well, sorry. It is going to replace people because it’s gonna reduce the number of people that it’s gonna take to complete a p- specific job. Like, like you said, I mean, uh, instead of having a VA, maybe, maybe you’ve got an organization where there’s a hierarchy and, you know, there’s someone that reports directly to you as, like, a executive VA.

Well, they might have had several people working underneath them to, to do some of this, this work, and now that particular executive VA can handle probably a lot of that on their own using, using, um, AI to do some of these things. And for me, I, I, you know, I feel like, I feel like it’s not going anywhere. I mean, it’s, it, it’s there, and for the people that are using it, they love it, [00:21:00] and it’s really improving the way that they do work.

So it’s not gonna go, it, you know, and we’re not gonna be able to get mad at it and it disappear. It’s, it’s

Timmy Van Vonno: Sure. Yeah. A-a-a-and, you know, there’s still some sentiment, you know, a, a lot of clients come to me asking about, like, you know, the AI voice calling, and people still know if it’s a human or, or an AI bot. I, I, I imagine over the next, you know, three to five years, that may get to the point where it’s scarily close

Tim Melanson: Yep

Timmy Van Vonno: to a normal person.

So, you know, the, the acceleration of AI was also a big thing that got me out of construction, um, because I just saw the way that was gonna take over the world, and I wanted to s- you know, start working with a company where I could apply my skillsets I was learning almost day by day, um, and, and, and really have an effect there.

Um, from a, from an executive or, you know, managerial perspective, I think the, you know, the downside of AI is there’s no one really to hold accountable. So that’s, you know, th- that’s why the human in the loop is always important. Like, hey, you know, [00:22:00] we may accelerate 70 to 80% of this workflow, but that 20% of QC’ing, you know, what’s coming out of it needs to be on you, and you’re the one responsible for it.

Um, so that’s, that, that, that’s how I think when I’m setting up a lot of the workflow automation and different new A-AI things I’m introducing into 24/7. Um, you know, I, I always view it as there’s gonna be a human in the loop at the end of it, um, to make sure the output matches, you know, what we expect

Tim Melanson: Right. And, and as the business owner, I mean, if, if I’m… Let’s just say I don’t have any VA or any type of assistant. Well, I’m still responsible for everything in the business, even though I’ve got different GPTs maybe handling different parts of things, but I’m still the, I’m still the bottleneck, right?

And as you grow your organization, y- you know, maybe, you know, in the past you could get to a certain level and then you needed to hire. Now maybe that level is a little bit more. But still, it’s the same [00:23:00] principle applies where, you know, you’ve got too much on your plate even though you’re handling a lot more, right?

Timmy Van Vonno: Yeah. Uh, uh, I mean, if I could go back to college now, and obviously that, that, that ship has sailed, uh, we, uh, you know, as, at least as far as I know. Um, but prompt engineering really is where I see, uh, uh, you know, what’s, what’s gonna take over the whole market and where the most value’s gonna be, you know, on a position basis.

‘Cause I know a lot of software engineers that were making, you know, hundreds of thousands out of college that I went to school with that, you know, are having a much harder time, um, you know, uh, you know, uh, finding, you know, those sorts of lucrative positions now. Um, because if, if you know how to prompt AI properly, that’s really the key to getting, um, you know, what you want.

And OpenAI, Claude, they have all these free resources, um, you know, uh, uh, on their websites where you can really learn about this stuff,

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

Timmy Van Vonno: um, a- and learn, and learn how to structure, you know, using the AIs properly. But yeah, I mean, [00:24:00] I, I, I think for now, uh, uh, I still see a lot of value in having humans in the loop, and there are data security issues that come with it.

Um, so, you know, those are a lot of the things, you know… But str- strategically as a business owner, I mean, you know, getting the opinions of, uh, you know, AI consultants and understanding where AI fits into your business, um, definitely, uh, is a good idea, um, depending on the size of your company

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. And, uh, you know, let’s keep in mind too that there’s, there are times when, I mean, uh, just think of, of yourself as a consumer and you’re, you know, you’re talking to a company. Well, there are times when you probably don’t care whether you’re talking to a person or not, you just got some, a couple, couple questions that you want answered, and the AI is getting pretty good at answering.

Hey, you know, 5, 10 years ago, it was impossible to get a question from one of those, right? The question answer. You’re like, "Agent, agent, agent," right? But now they’re pretty good. I mean, uh, I can contact a [00:25:00] company’s bot and get quite a bit of information, but then there’s also times when I really need to talk to a person.

And so there’s always gonna be a value to have a person attached to that entire infrastructure, even though you are utilizing AI for a, for a lot of it, and I think that’s where it comes into play, right?

Timmy Van Vonno: uh, uh, and I feel like a lot of the voice agents are more for much bigger box companies where client sentiment really doesn’t matter for them. I mean, Go- like, like when you call Google, I mean, they don’t care if you’re pissed off, you know? I, uh, Facebook, you know, Meta, like, uh, that’s where to me, like, oh my God, it makes so much sense for them because, uh, it, it, there’s really nothing bad that’s gonna come out of it for them.

But for definitely for smaller to medium sized businesses, I, uh, I’ll always be a believer that the human connection is, you know, important, you know, which is why I’m on all of our sales calls, and I do as much client facing stuff as I can just to make sure that our clients know that there’s a, you know, th- there’s a higher up in the company that, you [00:26:00] know, you know, is supporting the relationship.

And, you know, then, you know, most of the line level staff and managers, they do a great job, at least with us, um, of handling the whole process. But having, you know, the, the human in the loop, I, I, I’m still a strong believer that that’s far from being something that’s gonna be evaporated out of society

Tim Melanson: I, I agree totally. And I mean, I keep on coming back to this on this podcast ’cause, I mean, I want to inspire more people to start their own businesses. And I, I really do think that this is giving a massive opportunity to just about anybody to start a small business and use these tools to get a leg up on some of these large, large, uh, companies.

‘Cause these large companies are also reducing their workforce in the same way that we are, right? Uh, only the, you know, the difference is that if I’m a small business and I have just a few people on staff or maybe it’s just me, well, someone can talk to me, and that’s gonna be rare, I think, in a lot of these big [00:27:00] businesses.

It’s gonna be a chatbot mostly for, for some of these companies, and it’s gonna be very difficult to talk to an actual person. So, uh, I think that that’s gonna be something that’s going to kinda like, uh, level the playing field a, a lot, right?

Timmy Van Vonno: Absolutely. Yeah, I, I, and like I said, my opinion always, you know, with, with the, with the AI is it, it’s in your best interest to learn how to use it, where it fits into your business. Um, but you know, always being careful to trust it too much and, uh, still, you know, natural thought and, you know, the origi- original ideas, I, I still feel like, you know, hu- you gotta drive that, you know.

You gotta put your expertise into the AI or, you know, what you’re doing. You can’t just rely on it to build out solutions for you or your business, um, per se. But the acceleration of thought is where I see the most value. Um, a- [00:28:00] a- and as long as you keep that organized on the back end, you know, and don’t just have a million different chats of where you were thinking one moment, and then you go on to the next thing, and it gets lost.

But if you’re able to really, like, when you have an idea, input it into chat, take the result, file that, you know, and then revisit it maybe, you know, next, next meeting or next time, you know, you’re looking at it. Um, also with AI, you know, we’re a Microsoft tenant, so Microsoft Copilot has been, you know, life-changing for us in how it summarizes meetings and is really able to follow along with the context of your company because it’s built into Microsoft.

Um, so you know, Copilot’s definitely something. Microsoft’s a more expensive tenant, um, you know, especially on the enterprise level, but Microsoft Copilot has done a lot for, for us as well, and I would recommend it, um, you know, to, to any company looking to l- looking to get… you know, maximize the value out of AI.

And Google has a similar setup, so if you’re a [00:29:00] Google tenant, you know, with Gemini, same kind of thing. Um, but the meeting transcription and everything being contained in one ecosystem versus having, like, Fireflies join your meeting and using chat for one thing and using Claude for something else. So, uh, you know, the, the organization of how you’re using AI is also something that’s pivotal

Tim Melanson: Oh, I love it, yeah. Well, it’s, it’s cool to have this conversation ’cause I mean, we’re talking about people, right, with the VAs and AI at the same time, ’cause I find that some people are… It’s like one or the other. It’s like I’m angry at the, you know, at the AI for taking these jobs away a- and I wanna hire people instead, and then other people are going, "No, no, no, no, you’re losing out on a big opportunity."

But there is a way to make it work together, right?

Timmy Van Vonno: Yes, sir. Yeah, I mean, I, and that’s why I went into the podcast VA, you know, trainings that we do now with the AI plus VA workflows, and that’s something that, you know, is, is very universal. But not only, you know, podcasting, like I said, lead generation, a lot of these other niches, um, you know, [00:30:00] where AIs make sense.

And slowly but surely, you know, AI’s finding its way into every different niche. Um, so, you know, credit repair is another industry that we know we work with heavily, and just in the last few years, you know, their CRMs have been, you know, widely, become widely AI driven. So now, you know, to, to create dispute reports, a lot of it’s just clicking a button, you know, through their CRM.

And then at the end of that all is, you know, someone needs to check it and make sure it’s accurate. Um, but, you know, the, that’s where, you know… So AI, you know, AI has products, yes, but AI’s also being integrated into pretty traditional CRMs like Dispute Fox, um, and, you know, put together in such a way where it’s automating almost everything through their CRM now.

Um, so it, uh, so, uh, that’s a big thing that I’ve really focused on, is just making sure that our VAs are AI adept and have a, you know, at least a surface level [00:31:00] knowledge of how it can be utilized, you know, in whatever certain niche or field, um, that we’re pairing them with a client in

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I, I really like… So, I, I mean, my experience, like I said earlier, especially with my first VI, the VA that I tried to hire, is that I had… Th- they didn’t have any real training on the things that I needed them to do, right? It was more or less, it was more or less, "Hey, I know how to do accounting, I know how to do, you know, customer support," but they didn’t have any ideas on what my systems were, and I, I needed to get those SOPs all sorted out.

But the second level of that is that what I’m hearing from your organization, and we can talk about this in your solo, is that you do actually provide some training on what many entrepreneurs will need so that it kinda like bridges that gap where i- in a way, sometimes many of us entrepreneurs need to know how to hire a VA because it isn’t just straightforward where you’re like, "Okay, you’re hired," and then off they go.

You, you, you can probably train [00:32:00] me on what I need to do and what I need to get ready when I’m hiring a VA. Is that what, kinda what you do?

Timmy Van Vonno: Absolutely. Yeah. And, and that was, you know, a big thing I was going back to earlier about the infrastructure of our company. So this might be a good time to explain kind of what the process looks like with us and what we can provide. So our process is, you know, a four-step process. You get on a discovery call with us.

The discovery call’s gonna have your account manager on it, a sales representative, and usually me. Um, and what we do is we try to dissect your company first. So who are you? What do you do? Where do your pain points lie? Whether they come to us with a, a- an obvious need that they spell out on their submission, or if they come to us saying, "I don’t know, you know, what we’re gonna use a VA for, but it sounds like a, you know, novel concept and we wanna explore it."

So we, we learn about their whole company on that call, and these are like 30 to 45-minute calls. Um, dissect, dissect, you know, where the needs [00:33:00] lie, build out a whole job profile. So we really ask the per- you know, the, the client, "Okay, you want lead generation, but what does that mean?" You know, lead generation has a million different avenues, you know.

Um, so, you know, a client may say to us, "Well, we want them to do, do lead research. We want them to make the outbound calls. We want them to nurture them, and eventually set, set appointments with us." You know, that’s an example of a lead generation workflow for one VA. Um, so that’s how we try to build out the positions.

Once we get off those calls, we draft that job profile, email it over to the client. Once they approve the job description over email, it goes to our internal endorsement department. Our endorsement department are the ones that evaluate the candidates applying to the position. Um, every candidate with us is gonna have gone through our seven-step vetting, so that includes two rounds of interviews, two rounds of assessments.

All of our VAs are fully remote, so we have minimum device standards, ’cause they’re working in their personal, uh, workspaces. Workspace checks, primary and [00:34:00] backup internet checks, uh, multiple rounds of interviews, like I said. One of my favorite things we do during our vetting on the initial interview is we get the VA on with our recruitment team, um, and ask them to pull up their personal social media, ’cause that’s normally the first, the first place you find a red flag if they have, you know… And, and, you know, uh, to be, not be explicit, you know, we, we’ve, we’ve seen a lot of different things on those. Um, you know, like, you know, maybe they have a gun on there. You know, s- just weird things. That’s what… That’s normally the first place we go. Um, but our vetting is one of the most extensive on the market.

It takes the VAs about three to four weeks. When they go through that, they fall into our bench pool. So, like I mentioned, when that job description’s approved and it goes to our endorsement department, that’s the first place we go to try to find the VAs. We promote it out to anyone we think would be a fit for the position.

They actually apply and give their letter of intent for the position. Um, and at that point, our endorsement team selects four, [00:35:00] the four to six best ones that they feel are really custom fit for the job profile. Um, those are sent over to the client with their resume, work experience, a big paragraph, you know, bullet list of why they were endorsed by our endorsement team member, and a video of them talking, which is probably my favorite thing.

So we actually include a video link on each of the candidate profiles that we endorse over, um, of them explaining why they’re fit for the position. Which I think is so cool, ’cause you can assess the communication and you’re not just looking at a sheet of paper or, you know, a web link and saying, "Oh, you know, this looks great," but then getting to the interviews and being like, "There’s not a personality fit."

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Timmy Van Vonno: Um, so that’s, so the, the goal out of that is out of that four to six, the person wants to move forward and interview one to three, let’s say, of the candidates. So we’ll set those up back to back to back o- on their own time Um, and the interviews, uh, uh, that’s something we’ve gone back and forth with over the years, is the [00:36:00] necessity of really pushing people to do that if they’re sure they wanna pick someone from the original endorsement.

But I’ll be the first to tell you that VA 1 may work perfectly with me, and VA 3 may work perfectly with you, Tom. Um, so, you know, th- that’s really… You know, you gotta assess the personality fit ’cause this is someone you’re bringing into your company, just as you would during a job interview. Um, the nice part about our company is that whole process is free.

Um, so we don’t sign… We don’t lock you into any contract, we don’t lock you into any, any monies that you owe to us. Um, we’ll find the people for you, present them, let you interview them, then you select someone. Um, once you s- once you select the VA, then you get your guided onboarding scheduled. So this is looping back to what you were just talking about with the training.

So we do have an internal training team in our company. One of our expert SMEs for your particular niche or type of service will be assigned to the combo. Their job is to set the VA up for success with [00:37:00] you. So you mentioned SOPs and getting them set up in a good daily workflow, all the things that business owners kind of…

Their heads kind of spin thinking about how to do this with someone virtually. Um, that’s the trainer’s job. So any SOPs that need to be created, all those initial meetings between the client and the VA, we always ask, let the trainer sit in on them to make sure that everything’s hammered home, documented correctly.

Um, so that describes the training leg. There’s also an IT representative assigned to every combo. They get the email set up, the company email, um, all their account management set up. So we use a platform called LastPass, and what that allows is the business owner or our IT team to add passwords in there, and then the VA’s access is click access, so they don’t have the, you know, the actual password.

Um, so IT gets them set up with all that, and then ongoing, you have an account manager that lives on with you through your tenure with our company should you ever need to raise or decrease [00:38:00] hours, add additional VAs, stop the service, pause the service. Your account manager’s the one, you know, your source of truth for that and the one you communicate with.

They also check in periodically with the client and the VA, so they’re a really good bridge of the communication. You know, a, a, a, a, a VA wouldn’t wanna go to his boss and say, "You know, I’m really unhappy with this," but they’ll tell the account manager that and then they can translate that in an eloquent way, you know, back to the business owner.

Um, so that really, you know, goes through our process. You know, other things about us, you know, we work on a week-to-week subscription model. So when you s- do select a VA, we collect a week deposit equivalent to their rate. So if the VA’s $10 an hour working 20 hours a week, your deposit would be 200, only ever used for the last week of service.

So that’s how we’re able to offer the seven-day window for cancellation, and then you’re billed weekly. Um, so it’s, you know, very low commitment. That’s why we’re so attractive to especially startups and smaller [00:39:00] businesses, ’cause I just tell them, you know, uh, see the candidates we’ll put in front of you.

If you do decide to go with us, it’s very low commitment, very low cost. Um, and, you know, it’s a really good starting point for this startup or sca- you know, s- scaling businesses who need support but can’t afford to bring someone in-house. Um, you know, because the in-house employee costs are i- in the US obviously very significant.

Um, so all the relationships are on an independent contractor basis, so the tax forms are simple, the accounting’s simple, and the, the monies paid out, you know, to have this resource are very minimal, um, you know, compared to an employee. And I apologize if I went on a tangent there, you know, just about the, the, the training, but I, I figured I’d, you know, tie it all together.

Um, and separately on the training aspect, we do, like I said, have internal training programs very specified to different niches. So, you know, construction training programs, real estate, [00:40:00] credit repair, advanced training programs, lead generation advanced training programs. So we do everything we can while you’re going through the sales process and after you select someone en route to them starting to really do as much training as possible, so that way on day one, they’re really locked in and ready to go.

Um, and, you know, and, and these are VAs that, like I said, have gone through our vetting. They want the positions very bad. Um, you know, they’ve applied to them, they’ve expressed, you know, considerable interest. So, you know, that’s always a hard part of VAs is since they’re all over the world, you know, really finding out what type of person they are.

Do they wanna work? Um, so that’s where the vetting and support and monitoring that we provide really comes into play. Um, you know, whether it’s the, the time tracking we do of them or the supplemental training, um, or the account management and check-ins. Um, but, you know, we support these relationships through and through and, you know, we’re an accessible, not sales-driven company.

Um, you know, [00:41:00] our focus is our VAs and our clients, and most of our, you know, o- our traffic is organic that comes to our company just because of the tenure and what the AIs say about us and what Google and our reviews do.

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

Timmy Van Vonno: Um, uh, the, our website’s, uh, 247va.com. So that’s the number 2, the number 0, F-O-U-R, the number 7, V as in virtual, A as in assistant .com. Uh, uh, as you can see, I’ve said that before on webinars and stuff, so I’m pretty well versed there.

Tim Melanson: That’s

Timmy Van Vonno: but that’s the easiest way to find more info. Um, I’ll also, you know, provide you, Tim, our, our pre-consultation link.

So if anyone, you know, listening right now is interested in VAs, there’s no pressure. Um, you know, uh, get on a call with us, and we’ll explain to you how they can fit into your business, um, you know, once we kind of get into the nitty-gritty of the conversation. And, you know, a lot of people get on a consultation with us.

We’ll figure out a [00:42:00] structure, a job description, give that over to them, and then they’ll say, you know, "We probably need two to three months while we’re refining the startup of our business or really figuring out where, how this transition’s gonna happen into the VA space." And then they come back, and they’re ready to go.

So, uh, what, what… We’re not g- we don’t get on those sales calls and say, you know, "Okay, sign the contract, give us a deposit, and, you know, we’ll start finding people." It’s very low pressure, and, you know, uh, and I really love that about, uh, about our sales process because a lot of companies will look really polished on their sales calls and have this presentation and make all these promises, whereas I’ll be the first to tell you, or any of our sales team will be the first to tell you what your expectations should be.

You know, a VA is not gonna come in and run your whole business, but they can come in and operate different siloed parts of it, um, you know, under your direction and, you know, with the help of our training and, you know, account support

Tim Melanson: So, uh, just one more question. Like, uh, when it [00:43:00] comes to, uh, the type of person that would be the best fit for working with you, like how, how do I know whether I need to hire a VA or, or when whether you’re gonna be a good fit? Like, what, what size of business do I need to be? Like, what, what would be the indicator?

Timmy Van Vonno: Well, a- any size. Um, you know, I, I… obviously, you know, I think enterprise level companies, many of them are the simplest fits because they’re bigger companies. They’ve been doing the same process that they’re looking to outsource for many years. Um, but we work with everyone from startup, solopreneur, entrepreneur, small business, medium, large, all the way to enterprise.

So the, the easiest way to tell is really just to, you know, sit down with a pen and paper and think about, you know, write down everything you’re doing on a daily or weekly basis. And then the second step is look at that paper and say, "What can be done remotely that doesn’t require

Tim Melanson: Your specific expertise, yeah,

Timmy Van Vonno: yeah, your specific expertise or you specifically to do?"

Um, and, and that… [00:44:00] and then from that, you know, that’s normally a good point. You’ll see, you know, and then you put the number of hours you’re doing each one of these things. So maybe checking emails is five hours a week for you, and, you know, managing calendars and your podcast bookings maybe is a few hours for you.

On- once you get those listed out, then that’s when the VA profiles start to make, you know, more sense. Are you spending many hours doing your editing? You know, I’m, I’m assuming you’re using a plethora of AIs, you know, to help you with your production and stuff. If you had a VA come in that could operate, you know, some of those workflows for you, would that save you 10 to 20 hours a week?

Um, and our minimums for hours is only 10 hours a week all the way up to 40 or more. So, you know, there’s a low barrier of entry. You know, my recommendation always, if it’s your first VA, get them for 10 to 20 hours a week. Fill out that block of, you know, time, which would be two to four hours a day, Monday through Friday.

Um, you know, and they work to US business hours. [00:45:00] Um, and then once those are filled out, you go to your account manager, "Hey, you know, let’s put them up to 30 hours. I have a whole new set of tasks." Trainer gets roped in, SOPs are created, they continue work.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and I think that’s a good, uh, uh, th- right there, that’s a good answer to the question ’cause, uh, once you get to 10 hours that you think you can de- you can delegate, th- there you go, right? ‘Cause,

uh… And, and then, um, and then it just grows from there because I imagine what you probably see all the time is someone starts with those 10 hours and then goes, "Oh, okay.

Well, I think I can, I can grow that up, I can grow that up. There’s more things that I can delegate." And, and I, I imagine, like, once you start to s- free up some of that brain space that you freed up with the 10 hours, now you can start to think a little bit differently, you can position yourself, you’re focusing more on the direction of the company.

You know, now some of these other tasks can get thrown into that as well, right?

Timmy Van Vonno: Yeah. A- and that’s one of the things I always pitch is, uh, you know, just the openness to getting those first 10 hours filled out, and [00:46:00] it’s not always, it’s not always a quick thing w- with VAs. Uh, you know, because we’ll match the skillsets with the people we’re endorsing damn near exactly to, um, you know, what, what, what the job description says and what you need at that juncture.

But the longer you work with someone, you learn they have additional skillsets and they’ve done different things. Um, so it’s really an evolution. So if it’s a very clear workflow driven position that’s, you know, very linear, bring them in at 20 to 40 hours a week and get them started if, you know, you know that time can be filled out.

For more variable entrepreneurs and sorts of businesses, which there are many, um, my recommendation is always, you know, grow with the person. So start them at 10, fill out that time, learn more about them, figure out more areas they can help you in your business, up them to 20 or 30 or 40. Um, but th- that natural progression is also where you feel the least amount of financial pressure.

You’re not looking at, you know, [00:47:00] 350 to $500 a week, but for a full-time VA you’re looking at, you know, 100 to 150 for, you know, a part-time person doing 10 hours a week where… You know, so the, the dollar amounts are in such a way where it’s not super high pressure. I know when you bring on an employee and you’re instantly looking at, you know, many, many thousands per week, you know, b- between them and the taxes and, you know, all the different 401s and yada, yada, um, it’s a much higher pressure to make sure, like, they’re coming in and 100% operational day one.

Uh, whereas the VAs, I’ll always say, you know, two to four weeks to really get them in a good flow is, is reasonable

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Right on. Okay, well, one more question before we go here. Let’s get into music. So tell me, who’s your favorite rock star or band?

Timmy Van Vonno: Uh, I, I just saw Kanye a couple weeks ago, but he’s definitely not my favorite. Um, but I, I, I, I’m a big ’80s band guy. Um, you know, that, that, that’s a re- reflection of my dad’s music taste growing [00:48:00] up. Um, so, you know, Billy Idol, AC/DC. I lo- I love, you know, all the rock stuff, but I also love kind of the ’80s, ’90s, uh, more pop love songs, you know, like the Toni Braxton, the Lionel Richies.

Um, so I, I, as you can imagine, I have a, I have a big mix of, uh, music I like. So I, I don’t know if I can narrow down one, one favorite, but I’d say, you know, Journey is probably one of my favorites of all time. Um, yeah, so I, I, I have a wide spectrum of music. Probably if I said some of the artists I like, you know, I already mentioned Kanye, um, reluctantly, but, uh, if I, if I, if I mentioned some of the other ones, you’d be like, "Whoa, really, Timmy?"

But, um, yeah, I, I, I’m kind of all over the place with music and I, you know, I, I enjoy that because I don’t like keeping myself secular to one genre. You know, if you’re at a, at a bar on the beach, you probably wanna be listening to like, you know, house [00:49:00] or some sort of like, you know, uh, you know, Jimmy Buffett, Margaritaville type music.

And i- if you’re, you know, if you’re in a different setting, you know, another se- you know, genre of music may work. So I, I don’t hold too much credence on the type of music, you know, but I, I’m a big music lover for sure

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s awesome. Well, this has been a really awesome episode. So much information here. It’s probably overwhelming actually for someone listening to it, so hopefully they can listen to it on slow.

Timmy Van Vonno: Yeah, and it, it, it might be. And, you know, I know I’m a talker, so, um, it might… All I would say to your audience and anyone interested in having a discussion with me, whether it’s about VAs, um, or not, if you just wanna have a, you know, more professional discussion on, you know, talking about some of the things I’ve mentioned on the podcast, I’d be more than happy to get on a call, um, with anyone and everyone, um, from your audience.

So I- I’ll make sure all that information’s shared with you, Tim, so you can have it, you know, in the, in the bio of the video I’m, I’m [00:50:00] assuming is what you do or, you know, what- whatever you, whatever you tell me to do.

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

Timmy Van Vonno: Yes, sir. Yeah, Tim, thank you very much

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

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rock Star podcast. We’re gonna be talking about something pretty important today. We’re gonna be talking about some security stuff. But before we do that, we are talking to the owner of Protect Now LLC, and what he does is he helps people to prevent data breaches, phishing, identity theft, all that kind of stuff.

Very excited to be talking today to Robert Siciliano. Hey, Robert, you ready to rock?

Robert Siciliano: I am. Thank you, Tim

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

Robert Siciliano: Well, I have been, um, a solopreneur, uh, since probably, uh, early 2001. And here I am, uh, three kids later, uh, two mortgages, a, uh, work-at-home or I guess, um, full-time mom, wife. And, um, you know, I’ve managed to, uh, put one through college right now, and the other one’s on the way. [00:01:00] Private school for all these years.

Primarily, you know, uh, based on me working from home, and then getting on the road and doing my thing. Uh, it’s been a lifetime of, you know, for me, um, not necessarily knowing when the next paycheck’s gonna come in based on the nature of my business, and finding a cer- certain degree of security in insecurity.

You know? Not knowing where the next paycheck’s coming from. But I’ve managed to keep the lights on and, um, we’ve got a bit of a retirement account, and we should probably do good

Tim Melanson: Great stuff. Yeah, you got me beat, 2001. I started in 2008 working from home, so you know, it’s been a long time, and things have changed quite a bit in that amount of time, right? I mean, now people kind of get a little bit about working from home and you know, that. But back then, it was odd, wasn’t it?

Robert Siciliano: You know, I, um, have always found a certain level of pleasure in working [00:02:00] from my house. Uh, being able to pick up the phone and make sales calls, and use the internet to manage communications and to create. Um, and I’ve been doing that, you know, since the di- the days of dial-up AOL, right?

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Robert Siciliano: And, um, when I first started working from home full-time, it did feel kinda weird, you know, due to the fact that I’d been, like, working at a job eight to 10 hours a day for the previous 13 years.

And I kinda felt like, at the beginning, like I should be doing more, or I should have more of a routine, or I should be reporting somewhere. And I, I had to work on creating a certain level of internal discipline, and creating that structure and routine for myself early on. And then once I did, I fell right into it, and, um, you know, at this point I would consider myself unemployable.

Uh, I could never work for anybody at this point, you know? I could never be told what [00:03:00] to do, so to speak. That, um, you know, I, uh, I wake up to my body clock at this point, I go to bed at my body clock, and the only time I ever wake up to an alarm is if I got a flight the next morning

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Wow. Well, that’s awesome. Congratulations. That’s really, that’s really what this show is all about. But now, on that note, I mean, there are some things that don’t go as planned, and I’m sure in all those years there have been something that kind of caught you off guard. And I’m wondering, I’d like to talk about that bad note because it does kind of hold people back from getting started, and I’m wondering, what was the biggest mistake that you made on this journey?

Robert Siciliano: Um, biggest mistake I’ve made. You know, when you do work from home, or at least from my perspective, for the nature of my business, we tend to, um, reach out to others that might have a bit more expertise than we do, and, um, on topics that we could learn to do it ourselves, but we reach out to others that, um, [00:04:00] seem to have more of a handle on it.

And, uh, and then we invest in them, and we invest in their expertise. And we soon find out, often too late, that, um, you know, like they’re not really as good at what they do as their marketing materials say that they are as good as, and that I probably could have saved myself two, three, four, five, $6,000 and not invested them, in them, and maybe learned what it is that I should be doing for myself, uh, to build my brand based on, you know, what I know about me and brand building, and then learn more.

So I think it’s like hiring experts to do work for us that when we don’t quite understand what that work is or should be. And I think that we really need to invest in ourselves and our own education on the various aspects of building a business before [00:05:00] we invest in others to do that for us

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Yeah, th- this topic has come up quite a few times and, you know, of course, you know, at some point there are things that you shouldn’t be doing in your business that you could have somebody that knows more than you do about it. Th- that makes sense, right? But on the other hand, I, I love your point because how do you know whether they’re doing a good job if you don’t even know what a good job looks like, right?

Robert Siciliano: We don’t

Tim Melanson: E- exactly, and so it ends up being one of those situations where you find out way too late after you spend way too much money and whether you’ve… whe- when you’ve lost all this time. So, you know, if you were to do it over again, then what… how would you have done that differently?

Robert Siciliano: Well, I tell you, um, I’m 57, and, uh, to do it over, if, like, right now, like literally today, um, is probably the best time to do it over, so to speak, because we have AI. [00:06:00] And AI provides you all the answers to all the questions that you’ll ever need to ask, and it gives you that blueprint and that layout for pretty much anything and everything that you could ever possibly screw up.

And, and, and, like, just, like, increase that learning curve, like, instantly based on doing the right search, asking the right questions. Like, there’s never been a better time to make really good decisions from the beginning. I mean, it’s just phenomenal. Like, it– I’ve been saying for, you know, what is it? Uh, 25 years, I, I, I need two of me.

I need four of me. But I need two of me. Well, AI at this point is, like, three of me. You know? It’s not f- I’m not fully automated with AI as some people are, but I’m asking all the right questions, and it’s doing a lot of the research and the work for me to cut the learning curve. And, um, it’s just… You know, it truly is [00:07:00] a resource for us independents that, uh, we just didn’t have before, you know?

And it’s great

Tim Melanson: I agree with you. Yeah, I mean, uh, o- one of the things that good business people do well is research, right? Is, is finding out what questions to ask. And I mean, it’s just at the drop of a at the click of a finger that you can all of a sudden get all the questions that you’re supposed to ask. Not even necessarily the answers, but the questions that you’re supposed to ask to the person that you’re about to hire.

Uh, I mean, and I, I bought a, a car recently, and it, I mean, it, it was amazing just going in with, with all this data and, and the salesman going like, "Oh, man." And, and you know, the, the, the chat questions, I mean, I even told them that I’ve, I’ve got this from chat. "Here, I’ve got all the questions from chat. This is what he tells me, what it tells me to ask you."

And I asked the guy, and he’s like, "Oh, okay, well, I guess I have to be honest right now because it’s gonna find these answers way faster than I can." Uh, but that would work really well with hiring any type [00:08:00] of subcontractor, right?

Robert Siciliano: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, w- w- this is a really good time to, to, to get out on your own, uh, due to the fact that, you know, all the technology at our fingertips is right there.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Robert Siciliano: I would say for most of us that, um, are functioning in an older technology environment, like when I say older technology, if you’re like on a laptop or a desktop that’s like four or five years old, you need to upgrade, because all the resources that we have in front of us right now of, are, are, are, are, are, are, uh, uh, RAM or data intensive, you know, processor intensive, and they require newer hardware to facilitate newer, uh, software

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think, I think you’re, you’re right. I think there’s a lot of people that are scared of, of this new AI thing, right? And it’s, it’s unfortunate because you know, it’s not gonna go anywhere, I don’t think. I mean, it’s so useful for those of us who have embraced it that it’s just, it’s just not gonna [00:09:00] go anywhere.

So the people that are kinda going, "Well, you know, I’m not gonna do that yet," they probably gonna get left behind. But then on the other side of that coin, it can’t do everything perfectly. And like you said, it’s not, you’re not completely automated. I’m not sure if you’d really want to be completely automated.

I mean, you wanna have some, uh, you know, part in that business, don’t you?

Robert Siciliano: Absolutely, yeah. But for those who are just starting off, you know, even the simple task of, of writing an email, and writing the actual email, and having the, the, the, the tool built into the email clean up your words, that in and of itself is actually a really great way to begin. And not that, like, every single email should be written, you know, from the, from, from the get-go by, um, the AI tool.

Again, like, you write the email and have the email clean you up. For me and my character and the way that I write, I’ve had, um, email remind [00:10:00] me that my tone is too aggressive,

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah.

Robert Siciliano: and that’s my nature.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Robert Siciliano: My nature is being aggressive. Um, not because, like in a mean way, but just like, you know, like a get to the point way.

And, um, email has kind of softened my delivery, which, uh, well, AI has softened my delivery. And for somebody like me, you know, it’s been, uh, a game changer for me

Tim Melanson: M- me too. I’m actually the same way in my emails. My emails can be a little bit direct. And, uh, I, I noticed pretty quickly when I started to put things into, uh, chat to rewrite it, and it would rewrite things back, and it, it kind of, like, gives you a little bit of self-awareness. I’m like, "Oh, yeah, that does sound a lot, a lot better than what I just wrote," you know?

Yeah. Right on. So let’s talk a little bit about practicing, and I mean, this can go in so many different directions for practice. It could be personal practices, it could be business practices. Uh, but I, I think we could probably take it into the security aspect for you because, I [00:11:00] mean, w- we… many people are just going into this blind with, you know, all these scams and all these phishing and all this stuff going on right around us.

And I mean, bring up AI. I, I’m sure that these hackers are using AI to, to get around certain things. What can we do? What kind of practices can we put into place to protect us?

Robert Siciliano: Yeah, so AI, um, is, you know, amazing, and criminals look at it that way too. And it’s allowing them to scale their businesses in, in ways in which, um, you know, have never really been possible. Uh, one criminal hacker could, you know, facilitate hundreds if not thousands of what we call neural puppets, and essentially, uh, use one tool to reach out to thousands of people at the same time and communicate with them, and to groom those people in such a way where the criminal is getting them to believe his or her ruse, you know?[00:12:00]

And today, um, organized crime is engaged in cybercrime. You know, it’s looking like a multi-trillion dollar business by, you know, the early 2030s. Uh, it’s already eclipsed the, um, illicit drug trade at this point. And so if, if, if we as consumers aren’t doing the absolute basics, as we- if we as small businesses aren’t doing the absolute basics, then it’s just a matter of time until you’ve got egg in your face, or worse, your email is compromised, which ultimately n- means your bank account gets compromised or your crypto gets compromised.

So there’s, there’s some basic, basic things that we all should be doing right now that many of us don’t. And I know that many of us aren’t, because I get in front of live audiences for a living, whether it’s virtually like this or more mostly in person, and I ask a series of questions to kinda get, like, the pulse of those who I’m speaking to and [00:13:00] where they’re at in what they’re doing and what they’re not doing more than anything.

And so one of the questions I ask my audiences is, like, "Okay, so show of hands, how many of you can honestly say that you are using a different passcode across all your critical accounts?" And different means like you’re not using the same passcode twice. And different also means that, you know, you’re using long, strong passwords, like uppercase, lowercase, numbers and characters and so forth, and never using the same passcode twice.

When I ask that question, if I get 10, 15% of the room to raise their hand, "Oh yeah, I’m using a different long, strong passcode across multiple accounts," 10 to 15% for a room is a lot, which means like 80 to 90% of the room is using the same passcode, easy to guess, easy to hack, easy to crack, across multiple accounts.

And that just sounds so rudimentary, but it’s a big deal [00:14:00] because it doesn’t take much research to determine that right now as many as 15 to as much as 20 billion passwords are on the dark web. Think about that for a second. Like over the past two decades, there’s about 300 billion of our records on the dark web.

300 billion. And 15 to 20 billion of those records are actual passwords. You, you could do a search on various tools that will expose, you know, multi-billions worth of, of credentials. Um, like I know like from one of these tools, you can see like 200 something million people are using one, two, three, four, five, six as a passcode still today, you know?

And so that’s problematic. And then on top of that, we’re, we’re, we’re talking access control right now. You know, less than 10% of consumers are using a password manager, and a password manager is the tool that you [00:15:00] would use to facilitate having a different long, strong passcode across multiple accounts.

So, you know, the numbers make sense that, you know, less than 10% of the public is using a password manager and 10-ish percent are changing up their passcodes and using long, strong. And then on top of that, I- the next question is like how many of you are using two-factor authentication for all your critical accounts, including email, you know?

And two-factor authentication, of course, is when like you enter your credentials, username and passcode, and then get a one-time text message. Sometimes you might get like a special code to an app, whatever the case is. If I get 15 to 20% of the room to raise their hand, it’s u- usually a little bit more ’cause it’s required more often, 15 to 20% is a lot, which means 80-plus percent are not even using two-factor authentication.

It is 2020, you know, six-ish at this point, and when [00:16:00] we’re no further along today than many of us were 10, 15, 20 years ago, you know. Bad actors know this, and they’re using that against us

Tim Melanson: Agreed. I, so I’ve been using a password manager for quite a while now, and it, it, it definitely is a, a game changer in, um, in being able to manage all these different passwords because as you said, I try to have a different password for every, for every account that I log into. And how do you, how are you supposed to manage all that stuff in your head or even on a piece of paper?

It’s just, it’s not, it’s not ple- uh, feasible, right? So but then when I tell people about this, m- uh, the, you know, these password managers, the most common result that I get o- other than, "Okay, let me use that," like, ’cause some of them do, uh, is, "Well, how do I trust that? How do I trust the password manager?"

That, that’s a question for you

Robert Siciliano: So, okay, so there’s a couple things going on there, right? A, they don’t understand the [00:17:00] technology. B, um, they might have heard that, you know, in the past some password managers have been hacked. Sure. Uh, password managers are security companies, and like most security companies at some level have been hacked.

Most banks at some level have been hacked. Like Microsoft’s been hacked, Apple’s been hacked. Like, you know, Bank of America’s been hacked. Like- Most organizations have been hacked at some level. What does that mean? Does that mean that all systems down? No, not at all. It means that some level s- at some point in their network was penetrated, and generally they only got so far.

In some cases, like they’d shut the company down, but I’m not aware of any password manager or bank for that matter, that was infiltrated to such a degree where they were shut down for good. I’ve seen it happen to small businesses, but I’ve never seen it happen to a major institution or a password manager for that matter.

Tim Melanson: Yep

Robert Siciliano: I [00:18:00] think that like people just don’t understand what that hack means or what that looks like. And the majority of the time, if and when a password manager was compromised, you know, they got access to a certain part of the network, but not to the client’s encrypted data, you know? And even if they got an access to the encrypted information, it was encrypted, which means it wasn’t in plain text.

So I think that the majority of the time we bui- when people ask those questions, it’s because they just truly don’t understand. But the other part of it is, which is the most unfortunate part, is people kind of like throw their hands up in the air and say, "Well, why would I use a password manager if a password manager could, can just get hacked?"

So what, what they’re really doing is they’re engaging in fatalism. So when it comes to security, lots of people engage in fatalistic views of security. Why bother? Which is kind of human nature, and that, that… There’s something to that. And I’ve been doing what I do now for like 30, 40 years. 30 years professionally, 40 years in my life, okay?

[00:19:00] And so in this dialogue, when I’m engaged in an audience, you know, talking about security, what it is, what it isn’t, I, I ask a number of qualifying questions essentially to challenge their belief systems to find out, you know, why they do or don’t do what they do. And one of the questions I ask them is like, "How many of you have a home security system?"

Which is a pretty basic question, and depending on if you’re urban versus suburban or rural, you know, the, the answers are different, right? But truly, like if I get 15% of the room to say, "Oh yeah, we got a home security system," that’s a lot. Which means 85% of the general public does not have a home security system.

And so I ask, you know, "Why don’t you have that home security system?" And there’s like three common answers that I get, and one of them is, "Well, we don’t have a home security system because we have insurance." As if insurance is gonna protect you and your physical being at 3:00 AM, you know? Or, "We don’t have a home security system because [00:20:00] my husband says, ‘If they’re gonna break in, they’re gonna break in.

What are we gonna do?’" Well, I would divorce his ass, frankly, okay? Because, like, I’m gonna do what I gotta do to protect my girls while they’re sleeping, my honey, myself at 3:00 a.m., to be frank, you know? And I don’t, I don’t engage in fatalistic attitudes when it comes to security. I put systems in place. I don’t…

I, like, I would never tell a, a law enforcement officer, "W- why bother putting a bulletproof vest on? Like, what are you, what are you, an idiot? Why would you bother? I mean, if you can get… You, you could just get shot in the head." I mean, is that common sense? No. I mean, he’s protecting his upper torso. He can’t protect everything.

Security is never gonna be 100%, but it’s a process. It’s a journey. Like, you engage in these best practices to reduce risk. But the most common answer that I get as to why people don’t install the home security system, and this is the most unfortunate part, is they say, "Well, we don’t have a home security system because I don’t [00:21:00] wanna live like that.

Tim Melanson: Hmm

Robert Siciliano: don’t wanna have to worry. I don’t wanna live in fear. I don’t wanna be paranoid," is what they most often say. And that is all because we, mostly as Americans, ’cause I speak all over the world, truly as Americans, we generally live safely. We generally live comfortably. "I live in a safe neighborhood," 98% of my audiences say, ’cause we want to believe that we do.

And generally, most live in a safer neighborhood, let’s say, okay? But it’s that fatalistic, "It can’t or won’t happen to me," or, "I don’t wanna live like that. I don’t wanna be paranoid," that prevents us from truly recognizing risk. Because most people have an unhealthy relationship w- with security. They look at it as a bad thing, as if installing a home security system is gonna make you worry.

It’s gonna make you live in [00:22:00] fear. It’s gonna make you paranoid. And paranoia is a mental health diagnosable dis-ease, truly. But we as a culture have viewed it and looked at it for decades as truly a bad thing,

Tim Melanson: Hmm

Robert Siciliano: and that’s why most people don’t engage in the basics. That’s why they don’t install a password manager.

"Well, if it can get hacked, why bother?" You know? And really, what it boils down to is, one of the most common questions I get in a live audience is, "Well, how do I know what links are okay to click when I do a Google search?" And that answer or that question g- that question truly shows that people just really aren’t invested in learning about technology or digital literacy for that matter, or learning about security of that technology.

They’re, they’re just not interested. They don’t spend the time. They don’t engage in the process, you know? Like, [00:23:00] w- when I, when I do a presentation, I ask a, a room full of people, you know, or I tell a room full of people, "Listen, if you don’t understand this stuff, just find yourself a 14-year-old and they’ll do it for you."

You know? And, and, and the r- the audience laughs because it’s such a true thing. And then I say to them, "You know, that is kinda funny, but I don’t know that we should any longer consider that acceptable," especially with what’s going on with AI and, and, and how criminal hackers have ramped up. And that if you look at your 14-year-old as like, "They know more about technology than I do," we’ve basically just thrown our hands up in the air and given up.

I don’t know that that’s truly okay or acceptable at this point, and that fatalism and misunderstanding what security is, which is about, you know, gaining control, versus what it isn’t, which is worry and fear and paranoia. I think that, like, that dichotomy prevents us from managing risk. And going forward, I think that, like, [00:24:00] everybody here today, you need to download a password manager.

You need to set up two-factor authentication. Like, you can’t look at your 14-year-old as, "They know more than I do about technology," and we can’t continue to engage in fatalistic views of what security is versus what it isn’t. And that, you know, it’s about time now because of what’s going on with AI, and especially if you’re considering working at home, um, no longer under, under the corporate umbrella, and many of us are getting those, those, those scammy emails from people that we know now whose email was compromised.

We get those emails to e- our inbox because it’s coming from their actual email, and it, it’s people that we know, like, and trust that says, "Hey, here’s the latest proposal. Click on the DocuSign link." And what you know is that they got hacked.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Robert Siciliano: And once that happens to you, your credibility’s out the window at this point

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it’s very difficult to recover from [00:25:00] something like that. Now, and, and, you know, one last thing on the password manager thing is that for me, it simplified my life pretty drastically. Like, I mean, some of these password managers just hook, hook right into your browser. Uh, I use LastPass, so hopefully that’s a good one.

But, but, uh, but it allows you to just… It just, it autofills your passwords. Like, why would you not do that? That’s so much faster.

Robert Siciliano: I’ve been using a password manager for 20 plus years, and it is the best use of my time, my money for my security and my privacy. It’s $17, $18 a year. Are you kidding me? And the beauty of it, just like you said, it saves time. The other thing is like, like I said, I’m 57. Like I’m still relatively young, but I could go any day now.

I mean, that’s the reality of it. None of us are guaranteed, you know, existence to our 80s, right? Car accident, heart attack, you name it, right? And I’ve had conversations with my girls and my wife. Like if and when I go, my password manager is, is, is my digital [00:26:00] life. You have access to every single investment account, every financial.

It is my continuity when I’m gone. And I’ve told them over and over again, "Pay for my mobile phone for at least a year after I’m gone," ’cause this is where the two-factor authentication is too. It’s continuity in our afterlife

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Uh, and actually these password managers will actually even, you can delegate someone to be your person once you go to. It, I mean, uh, yeah, I mean, I can’t say enough about it too. Password managers have been super, super helpful. And I, I like, I, I just think, you know, if you’re going to, um, say, "Well, I don’t know if I can trust the password manager," you can likely trust the password manager better than your one, two, three, four, five, six password, right?

So, you know, and, and for you to be able to remember all of these crazy passwords, it’s just, it, it’s just too much. Like, you’re not, you’re not gonna be able to do that. So it’s either you’re gonna be setting an easy password or setting a very difficult one and forgetting it [00:27:00] all the time. Why not use a password manager?

Y- it’s one crazy

Robert Siciliano: I’m not Rain Man. You know? I, I’m not Rain Man. I’m no savant. And, um, you know, at 57 I’m at capacity over here, you know? So, uh, it’s the best use of your time, your money, and your privacy. It… There’s really no reason not to at this point

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And then, uh, so then, uh, about your, you know, your home office and all that stuff, now we’ve talked about, you know, having, uh, a personal security system, right, at, at your house, and also now a, a password system. So now that’s protecting your computers, protecting your, your home itself. What, what else, what other practices can we have?

Robert Siciliano: So I mentioned two-factor authentication, and while that just sounds so remedial, um, look it, with pretty much everything that I explain to a live audience, I go to Google, right? And I’ll search password manager, and right there on the s- on the first page, uh, either AI Overview explains it to me and/or there’s a half a dozen articles on the first page of search from, like, PC Magazine that recommends, like, the top [00:28:00] 10 best password managers out there.

I’ll do the same thing for, um, what is a VPN or, or find me a VPN or VPN software. And the same thing, there’s five articles on the first page of search, you know, from Wired Magazine, from PC Magazine. They talk about the best VPNs out there. What’s a VPN? It’s a virtual private network software program that you download on your mobile phone or your laptop, so when you’re at the airport, the hotel, the resort, when you’re out and about using free Wi-Fi, it encrypts your data when you’re on that free Wi-Fi.

‘Cause generally, people that are working from home are, you know, working from, uh, uh, you know, in- Internet

Tim Melanson: shop. Yep

Robert Siciliano: Uh, you know, we, we, we, we’re out in public here and there. You know, we’re on the road. You know, there’s a reason for that, you know? And, um, you know, we’ve gotta protect our data for our clients when we’re out and about.

Like, that’s so important, you know? It… Not to is kinda criminal, you know? And, and in some cases, um, it [00:29:00] leads to class action lawsuits, you know, depending on the size and scope of your organization, and it can be detrimental to the, to the, to the survival of your business. So, uh, just, I just do a quick search for all of these different tools and tasks that are available to me, uh, and show them how that works, you know, for them.

And anything you want or need in regards to your information security or personal protection, search it quickly and right there it’s, it’s, uh, available to you online

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

Robert Siciliano: Well, I’ll tell you, uh, we’ve already discussed it. It’s

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it is

Robert Siciliano: look it, I’ve been doing what I do for, like I said, 30 years professionally and 40 years, like, been speaking on personal protection. And, you know, there was a time when… I mean, I’ve done, like, 500 TV shows. I’ve done Howard Stern twice. Like, I’ve done every major media that you can think of.

I’ve done China television, Russian television, you [00:30:00] know, uh, all the morning shows, Good Morning America, Today Show, like, all of them. W- ABC World News Tonight, Nightline, you name it, okay? Only thing I haven’t done is Oprah, right? That said, right, for years and years and years, what I would do is get called by the media to talk about, you know, the latest data breach, the latest vulnerability, okay?

I don’t get those calls anymore, um, because no one really cares at this point. Uh, I don’t get calls on data breaches any longer. Data breaches used to be, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of records. Now they’re tens of millions of records, and the media doesn’t even pick up on that stuff any longer.

Tim Melanson: No

Robert Siciliano: But now with AI, and AI-driven fraud, and deep fakes, and voice cloning, and organized crime basically fully involved using victims of human trafficking to perpetrate these crimes now, that awfulness, um, has [00:31:00] reinvigorated what it is that I do and what I speak to. So what I’m excited about is AI and how it’s being used, and how it can be used to protect us, too.

And that’s truly invigorated the topic of cybersecurity. It’s made what I do, like, Hollywood-level, James Bond 007, Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise, Minority Report stuff. It’s, it’s infused my topic with a tremendous amount of vigor. And, um, you know, that’s both good and bad. It’s a double-edged sword. Uh, but for, you know, those who are paying attention, the clock is ticking.

And if you wanna protect yourself and your family and your business, it’s so 101 at this point, the tools that are available to you, and all you gotta do is care about security. Put these systems in place and you’re gonna be good

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and, and a lot of them are free tools too. Like, a [00:32:00] lot of these password managers are free for the, the, you know, the basic level, right?

Robert Siciliano: Yeah. And if two-factor authentication is absolutely

Tim Melanson: Free.

Robert Siciliano: and yeah, and, and the, and what’s happening now is a lot of the big companies, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and so forth, Facebook, they’re all incorporating passkeys. And passkeys are the next level of password management. And the beauty of a password manager is a password manager will manage the keys for all your passkeys.

So even as password managers go out the way of the wooden nickel, or I’m sorry, passwords themselves go out the way of the wooden nickel, uh, password managers will not because they’ll be the primary, uh, tool that you’ll use to manage your passkeys. So get familiar with password managers now because as we phase out passwords themselves, passkeys are the next [00:33:00] step which the password managers will help you manage

Tim Melanson: Well, so, um, I, I’m just, what’s the difference between a passkey and a password then?

Robert Siciliano: A passkey is basically technology that’s going on in the background that recognizes your hardware, it recognizes your MAC address, it recognizes a number of factors about you, including existing passcodes. It recognizes biometrics. It recognizes a whole host of numerical identifiers, ultimately encrypting all of that into a crypto key of sorts, and it’s shared through various platforms.

And ultimately, it requires a number of different levels of authentication based on your hardware and your software and all those various data points in order t- for you to get access. And as we go, and as we continue to get improvement [00:34:00] on and ubiquitous of passkeys, um, we will begin to phase out passwords pretty quickly.

Because passwords themselves are basically, at this point, a single, like, nine, 10, 12, 24-character phrase or, you know, numerics, uppercase, lowercase, and so forth, that it’s gonna be gone. The passkey is that plus a half a dozen other, um, forms of authentication,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm. Okay

Robert Siciliano: uh, that really can’t be cracked

Tim Melanson: Okay. So tell me, how do people work with you? Like, what, what is it that you do for a, for a client, and what kind of person would make a good client for you?

Robert Siciliano: So for me, um, I work with meeting planners, uh, VPs of security awareness training. I work with small businesses that truly recognize risk, and they wanna put systems in place, uh, to make their [00:35:00] employees that much more aware of risk. So I primarily provide security awareness training, is what we do. Um, that said, uh, I’m available at protectnowllc.com, protectnowllc.com.

Tim Melanson: Okay, awesome. And so this would be for mainly businesses that would want to train their workforce then

Robert Siciliano: Yeah, or those of you who just wanna connect, who wanna learn more, just Google me, you know, Robert Siciliano, S-I-C-I-L-I-A-N-O. Hook up with me on LinkedIn and just follow my blog, and my blog is really there to keep you up to speed and in tune with managing risk. Like, it’s nothing complicated. It’s all easy stuff.

Uh, what I write and what I put out there is generally for everyday people just to make sure that when the bad guys choose you, that they quickly move on to somebody else because you are already a tougher target

Tim Melanson: And, and that’s a good point there, right? And isn’t that kinda true? Like, if, if, if you’ve got, uh, someone who’s looking to break into your house, if you’ve got the door locked, and by the way, the, uh, it, it [00:36:00] reminded me of that when you were talking about the security system. Would you just go out and leave the door unlocked?

Like, I don’t know. Is that paranoid if you’re locking the door, right?

Robert Siciliano: of people do leave the door unlocked because they literally say, "I don’t wanna live like that. I just wanna be free. I don’t wanna have to worry. I trust people." And you know what? 97% of all the people that you will ever meet in the course of your life are truly worthy of your trust, 97%. But guess what?

And you can do your own research, people. Between three, they say about 3% of women and as many as 6% of men are basically, as the medical community would diagnose them, as sociopaths and psychopaths. About 3 to 6% sociopaths and psychopaths. These are people that truly have or experience no shame, no empathy, no sympathy, no guilt, no remorse.

They look at you and I as their natural prey. They are the lions and the wolves. We are the gazelles and the rabbits, and they look at [00:37:00] us as truly their victims. And there are a lot of people out there, 3 to 6%, making a lot of noise, doing a lot of harm.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Robert Siciliano: And I don’t say that to put the fear in anybody. I put that i- in you to say, "Yeah, I should know how to manage risk," because why wouldn’t you wanna know how to do that?

To adopt the, "It can’t happen to me. I don’t wanna live like that. Why bother? I just trust people," you’re just simply functioning in denial, denial is wonderful. Denial is just like this psychological thing that we all possess. Everybody possesses denial, and everybody, to a certain degree, lives to a certain degree in denial, right?

‘Cause denial allows us to not have to worry and, and, and experience anxiety and live in fear. So denial has its value. It’s great. But I don’t know that it’s really effective at all when it comes to managing [00:38:00] risk. I think we’ve gone… The, the pendulum has swung too far towards denial

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Robert Siciliano: and, um, you know, it’s causing a lot of people to lose it, l- to lose their access to their accounts, to lose money, to lose their businesses because they’ve allowed denial to take over their existence when it comes to security

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And,

uh, I mean, some of this stuff might be harder than others, but for the most part, the things we’ve talked about today, I mean, the, the basics, a password manager, it, it’s, it’s not gonna affect your life a whole lot. Uh, I mean, in fact, actually, password managers are probably gonna make your life a little bit simpler, ’cause now all of a sudden, you know, your passwords will, will be auto-filled for the most part.

Putting a security system in your house or locking the door, is it inconvenient sometimes? Well, I suppose, right? But you could put some s- s- some systems in place, and I’m sure that we could probably learn a little bit more about that on your blog then, right?

Robert Siciliano: Yeah, and I talk about like, you know, in this podcast, those basic, basic things because most [00:39:00] people don’t do those basic, basic

Tim Melanson: right. That’s

Robert Siciliano: And so what I teach is a ph- a philosophy, a methodology that I call the strategic human firewall. And the strategic human firewall is I, I, I, I move from I trust by default to I verify everything.

And most people just trust by default. Most people, like receiving phone calls and emails and text messages, they’re clicking links, they’re reacting, they’re responding. Like, they’re not a strategic human firewall at all. Like, they’re not seeing the motivation of that inbound, incoming communication.

Whereas like people like you and I, like we’re seeing, "Okay, what’s the motivation of this text? Is this really my state’s, you know, registry of motor vehicles sending me a fine because I didn’t pay a ticket or I didn’t pay my toll? So am I really gonna click the link to pay my toll or am I just gonna ignore it because it’s probably BS?"

You know? [00:40:00] Most people aren’t even doing that. So the idea is to become a strategic human firewall so you recognize risk as it’s coming down the pike, so to speak. And that’s a relatively easy thing to do. Like I tell my audiences all the time, I can make pretty much all of you the top 10% of secure Americans because the top 10% aren’t engaging in password managers, changing up their passcodes or using two-factor authentication, never mind locking their doors or installing a home security system.

You do those things, you’re in the top 10% right there, you know? ‘Cause 90% are soft, easy targets, whereas us 10% are strategic human firewalls, we’re hard targets

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, I think, and, uh, just as a general kind of like mindset too, anybody who’s, like, putting fear into you and saying, "You need to click on this right now, otherwise something’s gonna happen," uh, you [00:41:00] know, the, the, the thought I always have is like, "Okay, well, I’m reading this email right now. What if I had read it tomorrow or the next day?

Why is it so important within the next 48 hours?" It just seems obvious to me that, that, that this is a scam. But that’s how they operate, right? They try to catch you when you’re, when you’re, when you’re panicking.

Robert Siciliano: So you being a strategic human firewall innately already understand manufactured urgency.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm

Robert Siciliano: That’s what that is. Manufactured urgency is designed specifically to get our heart racing, to get our blood pumping, to get us to react and respond emotionally, right? And so we have this, this human blind spot that I call, that I talk about, and the human blind spot is, like, that we trust by default, that we want to and need to trust each other.

And that trust is, like, every person we meet, every phone call and email and text message we receive, we want to trust that the person on the other end [00:42:00] has our best interest in mind, that they don’t want or mean to hurt us. And so we, we wake up every day th- with that as being our baseline. And so when we get that phone call, when we get that email, when we get that text message with that manufactured urgency going into it that I want to and need to trust people, and that ruse has that urgency to it, but it could be probable.

I mean, it’s, it’s likely that that could be real, right? Or there’s a possibility it could be real. We don’t wanna think that evil, the sociopaths and the psychopaths, have targeted us. And our denial, and it can’t happen to me, and security is a bad thing, prevents us from recognizing risk.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Robert Siciliano: The physics of this makes so much sense to me, and they should to your audience at this point, ’cause probably nobody’s ever actually explained it like that.

But once you become that strategic human firewall, all of a sudden you’re like, "Yeah, I, I, I see what’s happening. I [00:43:00] see that and understand that manufactured urgency now. Oh, as my heart begins to pump, stop. Like, stop what I’m doing. Recognize, okay, so what’s really happening here? What are they trying to actually do?

Is this really true or is it fake?" And chances are 100% of the time it’s gonna be fake, especially with manufactured urgency. 100% of the time. I’m not gonna say 99.9, I’m gonna say 100.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yep, I agree. Right. Okay, so let’s talk about music for a second. Who is your favorite rock star or band?

Robert Siciliano: So you see what’s going on behind me? That, that’s, that’s Led Zeppelin’s song Remains the Same

Tim Melanson: Oh my. Okay. Well, of course.

Robert Siciliano: Yeah. So, uh, I am a big Led Zeppelin fan. Um, I actually owned ledzeppelin.com from, like, 1995 to 2001. Uh, it didn’t end so well. Uh, but, uh, yeah, I’m, I’m a big Zep head. My license plate on my car is Led Zep. [00:44:00] License plate on my bike is, um, Z-E-P-L-N. License plate on my wife’s car, because it used to be my plate, is Z-E-P-L-N 2, which is the best album.

And, um, yeah, I mean, I’m a big Zeppelin fan

Tim Melanson: Did you, do you play guitar at all? Ah.

Robert Siciliano: Oh, I am not a musician. My girls are musicians. Uh, they’ve been playing ever since they were three. So, um, but, uh, I don’t have the ability, no

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well, that’s awesome. It’s so awesome talking to you, Robert. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks so much.

Robert Siciliano: My pleasure. Thank you

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

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. I’m excited for today’s episode. We’re talking to the owner of For Your Eyes Only LLC, and we can see how he helps people. He’s the love doctor, so he’s a relationship expert. I’m really excited to be talking a little bit more about that.

Uh, but we are welcoming Anil Gupta to the show today. Anil, are you ready to rock?

Anil Gupta: I am.

I’m … We’re gonna band together,

Tim Melanson: We are Band together.

I like

Anil Gupta: we’re gonna, we’re gonna, gonna create a, an amazing tune that you can all listen to that I promise you will provide massive value for you today

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

Anil Gupta: So, you know, I was suicidal in 2008, and they said no. Uh, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because from there I started speaking on stages, five, 10, 15, 20, 100, 500, eventually 10,000 people. Wrote a [00:01:00] book… Wrote three bestseller books, actually. TEDx, Fox News, Sky TV, ABC, NBC, iHeartRadio, Harvard. You know, who would think a guy like me would end up at Harvard?

And it, it’s all because of that time, 2008 November, that I thought my life wasn’t worth it. So whatever you’re going through, know that this too shall pass, and it’s not what happens in life, it’s who you become. I– On that day, I changed my identity from money to love, and then when I changed it to love, I became a billionaire because I stopped using the currency of the United States of America and changed it to love, camaraderie, friendship, giving, generosity, playfulness, fun, gratitude, growth.

The simple things in life became the big things in life

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow, that’s amazing. Yeah, uh, this, this too shall pass, right? And, I [00:02:00] mean, you know, you, you think about that when the bad things are happening, but also the good things pass too, unfortunately. Uh, but I guess you have to have a bit of a, I don’t know, a, a level playing field here ’cause, I mean, if you get too excited about the good things, then it kinda drops you into a bit of a depression when they do pass, right?

Anil Gupta: Well, that’s, that’s what happened to the astronauts. You know, they, they’d go to the moon, they’d come back, they’d have this ticker tape, and then no one thought about them again, so they would go into these deep depressions. So the secret is, really it’s, it’s the happiness formula. Uh, you know, I’ve developed a formula for happiness, which is G times G times G.

Y- The first G, you have to give your time, your energy, your love, your commitment, your joy, your gift. And that’s what I started to do. I gave my stuff away. And then when you give, you feel good, and when you feel good, all the pain and suffering disappears.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Anil Gupta: And when you give, you feel good. The person receiving the gift receives endorphins.

They feel good. [00:03:00] The person observing the gift feels good. The person sharing the giving feels good. The person receiving the sharing feels good. The person observing the giving of the sharing feels good. So it has a huge effect. We never know what other people are going through. So if you play the right tune, if you can say the right words, someone’s life will change

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and isn’t it interesting that it seems as though the people who are the most quiet, the ones that don’t really say anything, sometimes are going through some pretty crazy things, right? And I, I mean, it’s, it’s just sad when you see somebody that you think was doing great, right? And then you find out that something happens to them, and it’s, it’s very, it’s very difficult to really know whether someone is going through something or not.

So you might as well just give anyway, right?

Anil Gupta: Yeah. And giving is just a smile, a thank you, helping them with something, you know, commenting [00:04:00] something, edifying them, m- making them laugh,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Anil Gupta: and you never know the impact we have on people. You see, people will always remember how you made them feel. One of my favorite stories is a young man, he’s at univer- he’s at school, and then he packs up his bags, and he’s going home and some kids were messing with him.

He th- his books fell on the floor, and then someone came and helped him put all his books back in his bag. And then seven, eight years later, he was valedictorian. He was doing a speech, and he said, "You know, eight years ago, you may not know, although I’m, you know, the head boy, the, you know, the valedictorian, I was on the verge of suicide, but my friend saved me by just befriending me in that moment, because I cleaned out my desk, I was going to end it that night, but I didn’t."

So whatever you’re going through, there’s someone there for you, and this too shall pass. [00:05:00] By you performing an act of kindness, we have no idea the difference we’re making to someone’s life

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. Wow. Well, okay, so now, I mean, there’s a bit of bad notes in th- in these stories as well. It seems like the good notes and the bad notes kinda intermingle a little bit, don’t they? But I, uh, I, I do wanna give you another opportunity to talk about these bad notes because I think a lot of people are held back by, by making a mistake.

You know, they’re worried that something’s not gonna work out well. And so I like to make sure that people know that, hey, you know what? You can still get success even though you’re gonna make some mistakes. So can you share with me another, some mistake that happened to you?

Anil Gupta: Well, obviously I’d lost all that money. There, there were many mistakes there. But I remember a friend of mine said, "Anil, you’ve helped me, you’ve helped my wife in, in our relationship. Why don’t you do an event?"

Tim Melanson: Hmm

Anil Gupta: And I sort of, I looked at him and said, "Well…" And he said, "What’s wrong?" I said, "I’m scared." And he said, "What are you scared about?"

I said, "What if no one turns up?" So I was so concerned what other people thought. [00:06:00] Then he said this to me, and it changed my life. "Anil, if no one turns up, no one will know." And I thought, "Ah, I love that."

Tim Melanson: Wow

Anil Gupta: that’s how it started. So always s- you know, the one thing I learned from Richard Branson was always say yes and work it out afterwards.

Tim Melanson: Yep

Anil Gupta: uh, someone asked me to speak in Medellin, Colombia, in a bullring, and he said, "Oh, there’s gonna be over 10,000 people there." I said, "Yeah, I’ll do it." When I got there, I thought, "What am I doing here? I can’t do this. I’m not good enough." And then I got out of my head. I,

Tim Melanson: Sorry, my

dog’s barking.

Anil Gupta: That’s okay. I disappeared, and my greatness appeared.

So when you disappear, let your greatness come out. You know, we- we- we’re very musically based today, and this is what happens when a musician plays. They [00:07:00] disappear, their greatness appears, and that’s what we need to do in life. Let go of the ego, let go of the fear, and just step into courage. When you do that, it’ll add more years to your life and more life to your years

Tim Melanson: That’s amazing. Amazing. If no one shows up, no one will know. I love that. That is so good. And, uh, you know, the other thing that you said that I really wanna touch on, too, is say yes and then figure it out. Ugh, so many times people will say no to an opportunity ’cause they don’t have it completely all figured out in their heads.

And I think, I think there is a little bit of, like, well, you gotta be prepared enough, I guess, to say… Like, I mean, don’t, you know, go off the deep end on this thing. But on the other hand, I mean, what better motivation than you have a gig booked? Like, I know in music when, when, uh, when I’m trying to, [00:08:00] uh, help new musicians get started, they’re like, "Oh, you know, I’m having a hard time, you know, putting a band together.

I’m having a hard time this." I always say to them the same thing. This is what I did. I booked the gig three months out, and then lo and behold, the band f- showed up ’cause, I mean, as, uh, a musician, you know, if someone comes to you and says, "I have a gig booked. It pays, and it’s on this date. Do you wanna do it?"

I’m in. But if it’s like, "Oh, I’ve got some things that we maybe might eventually start a band," well, it’s gonna be a little bit harder for you to find the people that are gonna join you if you don’t have anything solid. So it’s the same thing here, right? If you say yes to an opportunity, you got a gig booked.

Now it’s time to put things together, and you will be able to find people to help you, too, won’t you?

Anil Gupta: Yeah. And you know what happens? You start asking better quality questions. You ask yourself, "How can I get this done? What else can I do? Who can I ask?" Whereas if you don’t say yes, there’s, there’s no impetus. [00:09:00] There, there’s no compelling reason to do anything. You can just be comfortable about being comfortable.

And as human beings, we only make progress when we’re uncomfortable about anything. See, as human beings, we get comfortable about being comfortable, and what we need to do is become uncomfortable about being comfortable and get comfortable about being uncomfortable, and that’s when our greatness appears.

We make the biggest impact

Tim Melanson: Yeah, like what is it they say something about idle hands or something like that? Like, it, it’s just if you’ve got nothing going on, it, you get bored, you get in your head. If you’re way too busy, it, you, you get more done. I mean, they, they always say that is that whatever you have to get done, you know, sort of shrinks or grows to the amount of time you have to get it done, right?

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

And you know, there’s so much capacity within us that has not been tapped

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, so let’s talk a little bit about practicing, and this [00:10:00] can mean a lot of different things. I mean, in the, i- i- it, it can mean, you know, a, a personal care routine. It can also mean getting good and being good at what you do in your business. Uh, how do you, you know, approach practicing? Like, what do you do?

Anil Gupta: So, um, I go out and speak. I’m not a trained speaker, uh, but you have to start. So I started with me in the mirror, one person, five people, and you just have to practice, practice, practice. And as you get more comfortable, you, you get a download of so much energy, so much joy, so much content, so much clarity that it’s just like driving a car.

When you’re first driving, you’re very nervous, but eventually you become unconsciously competent. Meaning you’ll drive for an hour and think, "Oh, I can’t remember where I went," because you’re so good at it. [00:11:00] That’s the place you wanna get to, and the only way to do that is to, to do, to be, and to get into that state where you’re doing things repetitively.

You know, people say, uh, you know, they ask a question, "How many hours does it take to g- get good at something?" You’ll be shocked. You know what the answer is? Twenty hours. If you did something for twenty hours… Now, the secret is you have to do it in immersion, an hour a day, two hours a day. If you– Like I l- I tried to learn French at school, we would do an hour a week.

I didn’t learn very much until I went to France. That’s where I learnt everything. So you have to immerse yourself. Think about it. If you wanna be a better tennis player, twenty hours. If you want to be a better chess player, twenty hours. If you want a better musician, twenty hours. It’s less than a day. In just one day, your life can change

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s, uh, I didn’t know [00:12:00] that statistic, but I mean, 20 hours is, uh, is doable, and it’s one of those things that y- I imagine you, like you say, immersion, you have to get right into it because you are gonna learn more by being around musicians, for example, than trying to figure it out on your own.

Uh, although nowadays, in every area, including, uh, music, we’ve got YouTube. Like, there are ways that you can actually immerse yourself into something, you know, by actually seeing somebody, you know, and even better would be probably to get a person to teach you, right?

Anil Gupta: You know, the fastest way is through a mentor, a coach. So I’ve, I’ve coached Wimbledon, US Open champions, French Open, Italian Open champions, and each of them has a coach. And the coach will give you that 1% difference, and that’s the difference between number one and number three. And every day, the definition of success is make progress every day.

If you’re making progress, you’re being– you’re gonna get very [00:13:00] successful. You just have to get better and better, and the fastest way to do that is with a coach or a mentor. Someone who’s been there, done it before, can guide you and has the expertise and the results

Tim Melanson: Wow. How do you know whether the coach that you’ve got… ‘Cause I mean, there’s a lot of people that are calling themselves coaches nowadays, right? But how do you know whether you got a good one or not?

Anil Gupta: You ask them for credentials. Where have they spoken? Do you have any video testimonials? Never accept a written testimonial. Show me 50 video testimonials. "Well, I, I don’t have 50." Show me what stages you’ve spoken on. Let me hear you speak. Give me one tip right now that would change my life.

And if they can’t do it… Uh, so Tim, let me, uh, give you a recent example. I was coaching a client, and I asked her, "How long have you been using this therapist?" She said, "Three years." [00:14:00] And I said, "You’ve been using this person for three years, and you’re in this predicament, and you called me, and in 20 days we’ve done this.

I’ve saved your marriage. We’ve saved your marriage. We’ve resolved some issues. We’ve handled this. We’ve handled that, and we’ve handled this." And she wrote me a note yesterday, "Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for giving me my, back my marriage." That’s what you want. You want someone who’s got credibility.

Don’t look for initials after their name. I don’t care what initials you have after your name. Can you do what I want you to do? Can you do it quickly? Can you prove that you can do it? Do people believe you can do it? Do you have expertise?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah. And so now if we, if we flip that to the other side, let’s just say that someone is looking to get into the coaching industry. So then how would they start to get these testimonials if they don’t have the credentials yet or the testimonials yet?

Anil Gupta: I didn’t have them, so [00:15:00] I, I would coach for free. I would say to people, "Hey, can I coach you, guide you, nurture you, mentor you? And if you like what I say, would you give me a, a testimonial?" You, you have to get started. If you wanna climb a mountain, you’ve got to take the first step, and, uh, it’s painful because you’re giving away things, but you feel good.

But also, you’re getting ready to be the best version of you. You’re, you’re, you’re tweaking, defining, cleaning up, learning, growing, becoming even more successful, and making an even better quality deliverable

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, that goes back to your first point about just getting out there and doing it and speaking. Like, I mean, y- you’re 100% right. You don’t really know… Like, in, in music, I mean, I can sit in my basement and practice all I want, and I might even get it perfect in the basement, right? But then as soon as you get on a stage, everything’s different.

Like, it’s, it’s very, very different, and all of a sudden you can’t even do the things that you could do in your basement, right? Uh, so, [00:16:00] uh, it’s, I imagine, well, it, it is the same with any business too. Like, you can practice all you want alone, and that’s great. You know, you will get to a certain point. But really, the real learning comes from getting out there and actually doing it with live scenarios.

And, uh, I know that, uh, one of the things that I do notice, and maybe you’ve got a comment on this, is, uh, you know, when I’m hosting open mics and open jams and stuff like that, sometimes you’ll have people that are a little bit scared. They’re, they’re like, "Okay, I don’t know if I wanna go on stage." It’s their first time, right?

They get up on stage, and then, uh, you know, the s- the song goes okay, right? We’ll say that, that it’s, it’s good, but it could h- it could improve, right? There are certain people that come off the stage and they are addicted. They wanna get right back up on stage. And then there’s other people that are like, "I’m never doing that again."

What do you think would be the difference between those two people?

Anil Gupta: See, uh, everything that we do, we do for one reason only, [00:17:00] and that’s for the feeling it gives us. We have a nice meal, a great relationship, a nice car, a nice house, money in the bank for the feeling it gives us. So if you go on stage and you feel great, you can lap up the energy. You f- you feel, you know, important, you feel heard, you feel listened to, you feel you’re making a difference, that’s gonna energize you.

But if you’re feeling, "Oh, this– they’re judging me. I’m, I’m not a good speaker. I don’t feel comfortable," that’s okay. Maybe that’s not your, your gig, so to speak, but it’s, it’s around the feeling. I remember when I started, uh, speaking, I, I, I was very uncomfortable. It, it was actually at university. I thought, "Why am I doing this?"

It was part of the course. But then as I started to, to go on stage, I felt good because I disappeared. I started helping people. When you help someone, that’s when you, when you feel good. And you know, if you’re a musician, there’s someone out there that, that is [00:18:00] resonating with you, and you’re changing their lives.

So the more you speak, the more you play your notes, the, the more you’re out there, the more difference you’re gonna make

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, and, and I think, like, one thing that we don’t, I don’t think enough about, I think, is that everybody’s at a different stage in their journey, right? Some people are v- just getting started. Some people might be, like, well on their way. And for somebody who is getting on stage for that first time and doing their thing, well, there’s somebody in the audience that hasn’t done that yet.

And they’re actually starting to feel a little bit inspired by you going out there and getting on that stage and trying something out for the first time. And so you never know who you’re inspiring by getting up there, even if you’re very, very new in your journey, ’cause there’s somebody who’s fur- who’s n- not quite as far as you are, right?

Anil Gupta: Yeah, always. And you know, there are only two types of people on the planet, ones that make you happy when you enter a room, ones [00:19:00] that make you happy when you leave a room. Ones that, ones that make you happy when they get on stage, ones that make you happy when they get off the stage. And, and it’s okay.

It’s okay. We, w- you know, sometimes I look at people say, "Ah, if he can do it, I can do it. If she can do it, I can do it." So we never know who we’re inspiring. We never know the difference we’re making

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yeah, it, yeah, because that’s exactly it. Sometimes people might be looking at you and going like, "Wow, if that person can do it, I can do it." They’re inspired. And then the other side of it is, "Wow, that person’s really good. I just learned so much from them." S- you know, two different people on the stage, two different, uh, journeys, and you’re still inspiring people, right?

Anil Gupta: Yeah, it’s, it’s, you know, to be able to change someone’s life, to me

is the greatest thing you can do

Tim Melanson: Right on. Let’s talk about the tools that we use for success. What are the, what are some of the

things that you do to achieve the success in your career?

Anil Gupta: Yeah. So o-one of the tools I have is this one [00:20:00] sentence: Be so amazing that you cannot be ignored, and if you’re ignored, it doesn’t matter because you’re showing up the best version of you. See, a lot of us are playing small. We’re comfortable about being comfortable But there’s so much greatness inside of us.

We need to disappear, let our greatness appear. Be so amazing. So today I was playing pickleball, and I spilled some coffee on the floor. I could have left it there, but I thought, "Anil, you have to be so amazing." So I, I used my foot to try and clean it, but it was still slippery. "Anil, could you be more amazing?"

I said, "I suppose I could." So I got some tissues, and I cleaned it right up. So that creates, uh, a pathway for me to be the best version of me by being able to focus on other people

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And it’s the little wins too, right? People, you know, if, if you leave those little things, like a spot on the [00:21:00] floor or maybe your desk uncleaned, that sort of spirals into other things. Whereas, on the other hand, if you could make a check mark next to that and say, "Yeah, I did that well," it just inspires you to do more, doesn’t it?

Anil Gupta: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, again, on the pickleball court, there’s a friend of mine who, who has a problem with his hamstring, and I said, "You should get a, a thigh support. You should get a thigh support." He hasn’t done it I have one here. I’ve, I brought in one. I’m gonna give it to him tomorrow. He, he … I care for him.

I didn’t have to do it. Why should I do it? It’s his life. But no, that’s been so amazing you cannot be ignored

Tim Melanson: Wow, that’s amazing too. Oh, okay, so it’s time for your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business right now

Anil Gupta: So I’m really excited about a program I’m releasing. Um, it’s helping singles find their ideal partner without [00:22:00] dating. It’s called the Smart Select System. You see, people say yes to a relationship until it becomes a no, and that’s not the way to do it. It’s a– it, it’s no until a yes. You’ve got to collect the data.

You’ve got to make an informed choice. You’ve got to know how to talk to people, how to c-collect the data, interpret the data, and look for people who are not telling you the truth, and then analyzing and making a decision. M-my daughter used this process. First boyfriend she married, he’s a twelve out of ten.

I use this process. I’ve been married, you know, thirty-seven years, seven months and nine days, not that I’m counting. But if you use the formula, everything works. It’s called the Smart Select System. What if your next partner was the right one? What if your next partner gave you [00:23:00] total certainty because you made the right choice?

It’s all about choices, my friends.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow. Why do you think people s- have so much trouble with relationships?

Anil Gupta: Well, imagine, you know, you, you’ve got a child and your friend’s got, you know, you meet some, uh, other kids. What, what do parents say to their children? "Oh, is that your boyfriend? Is that your girlfriend?" At the age of two, three, four. It’s ridiculous. You know? You, you’re not ready for a relationship until at least 19, 20, 21.

Uh, my daughter was telling me her friends have relationships at the age of 13. They break up, they, they’re fighting, then they have another one, then another one. And each time they think this is the one, this is … Well, no. They have no idea. Focus on being a child. Focus on having fun. Focus on the most important things at the time.

You have [00:24:00] plenty of time. You have 80 years of relationship ahead of you. There’s no rush. But we’re indoctrinated through media, through television, uh, this romance. You think, "Oh, this is so romantic." No. It … You’re making one of the biggest decisions of your life. You can’t just base it on the feeling of, "I think this is right.

I feel good." No. You’ve got to collect the data, and it’ll stop a lot of pain and suffering

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I, I couldn’t agree more with that. That’s a… Yeah, and, uh, w- we also have this sort of, like, negative stigma towards being single as well, and, "Oh, you don’t have a relationship? Like, what, what’s wrong with you?" Right? And I mean, meanwhile, you know, you have so many people that are staying in relationships that are even abusive.

Like, I, I mean, I mean, it, it, it blows my mind that not only can it not be the right person, but it actually can hurt you, and they’re staying in because it’s better than being sing- single, I guess[00:25:00]

Anil Gupta: Well, a-again, it’s what other people think of them. They, they, they, they … The feeling that they get from having a relationship is far greater than the feeling of not being in a relationship. They don’t wanna be judged. They don’t wanna be criticized. They don’t wanna be complained to. And it’s sad that, you know, people would choose that.

And it’s okay not to have a relationship. You’re not gonna … You’re not alone. You’re not lonely. You just haven’t found the right person, and there’s no rush. If, you know, if, if you … You know, the most important part of a race is not the start, it’s the finish. So if you’re 30 or 35 and then you find the right partner, you have 65 years of a beautiful relationship.

But if you make it the wrong decision and you start having kids, it, it’s the most painful, painful situation you could ever imagine. See, emotional pain is far more painful than [00:26:00] physical pain. So there’s no rush, but we’re indoctrinated in having to do that. So if you put five crabs in a bucket and one tries to leave, the other four will pull it down.

We’re made to feel so guilty. What’s wrong with you? You know, if you have four couples and a single, he, he feels guilty. He feels different. He thinks, "Oh, I wanna fit in. I, I wanna belong." And that’s one of the issues that people have nowadays

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And meanwhile, you know, chances are the, many of those couples, probably not all of them, but, but many of them are not actually happy with what they’re doing, and the single might actually be happy. And the only thing that they’re not happy about is the stigma that they have, that they carry about being single, right?

Anil Gupta: Absolutely. It, it, it’s a, it’s a terrible state to be in, but it’s human nature

Tim Melanson: It is. It is. So tell me a little bit more about,

like, what, what is it like to work with you? Like, what, how does that work?

Anil Gupta: So, um, the, my promise is this. [00:27:00] If, if you work with me, w- you have a session with me, I promise you, you, you will learn something that will enhance your life. Guaranteed. And if, if it doesn’t, next call is free. So my, my, my gift is this. I can remove the obstacles that are preventing you from leading a richer, fuller, happier life.

When we do work together, it’ll add more years to your life and more life to your, your years. You’ll get clarity. You will never make the wrong choice in a partner. And how much joy would that bring you? How much suffering would that save you? And that’s my gift. Uh, uh, I’m able to do that

Tim Melanson: So do you work with, with singles looking for a relationship or people already in a relationship? What’s, h- which one

Anil Gupta: So I, I, I help singles find their ideal partner through the smart select system, but I also help couples and families get clarity, learn a [00:28:00] language, communicate, overcome the obstacles so that there’s more harmony and unity in the family. So any obstacle that’s preventing you from having a richer love life or a richer feeling of love, I’m the guy

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. And if you’re working with a couple, do both partners have to be kind of buying in on this, or would you work with one part of the couple to help them?

Anil Gupta: So, um, it can b- work both ways. Normally, I would work with one person, and then as I work with that person and as they implement my techniques, the other person notices, "Hey, my husband’s being very more attentive. He’s listening to me more. He’s, he’s understanding me more. He’s doing more." So then she’s thinking, "What’s going on?"

And then I would invite her onto a call with the husband, and then h- that’s how it all starts. But there [00:29:00] has to be a change the other person sees. Once they see the change, it’s a no-brainer because the c- compounding effect of that over many years is enormous

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, and doesn’t that seem to be the case, well, with just about anything, even just business, is that you can’t change anybody else. The only thing you can do is change yourself, right? And I think that’s uncomfortable for a lot of people, thinking that, "Well, I’m the problem," so they’re not… They’re trying to avoid being the problem, I guess would probably be why they decide to not make the change on their side.

Um, but I don’t think it’s, I don’t think that’s the way you’d put it. What is it?

Anil Gupta: No, and you know, it’s easy

to say, "Oh, can you fix my wife?"

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Anil Gupta: And w- "I don’t wanna do the work, but can you fix her?" You know, it’s all about her, and honestly, it’s not. You know, for example, I would l- always leave the toilet seat up, and then she, my wife would complain. But I, I said, "I’m not gonna change. I’m not gonna change."

Then one day she said this to me, "Honey, every time you do [00:30:00] that, I can’t love you as much." And I thought, "Oh, that’s a bit steep." Then I thought, "No, she’s right," and then I changed, and when I changed, she changed. If, if you want your partner to change, you have to change. Once you change, they will change. It’s so easy

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And o- on the other side, maybe if you put the s- the seat down, she can, she can definitely love you enough. Maybe, maybe the positive, uh, reinforcement, right?

Anil Gupta: Uh, it, it, I, I would remind her. Um, yeah, the other thing, I recently fractured my, my wrist and I couldn’t put the toothpaste tube, toothpaste on my, uh, toothbrush, and she would do it for me.

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Anil Gupta: You know? It’s the simple thing. It’s the small things that are the big things

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yeah, it is. And I mean, we see that on the opposite side too, right? ‘Cause I mean, isn’t it kind of the small things that really make people blow up in- into something? Like, it’s not … The, the big things, I think people can kind of like grasp [00:31:00] that this is a crisis and they have to deal with it, and they’re a little bit more patient, I guess.

But the little things are the ones that really just kinda grind on you, right?

Anil Gupta: Yeah, the, the really the breaking point, you know, it, it just builds and builds and builds and human beings, we’re really good at stacking, so we can stack all the negative stuff, but we’re not good at stacking the positive stuff, so we focus on the negative. And if, if, for example, if you have a good wolf on your right shoulder and a bad wolf on your left shoulder, which one will win?

Tim Melanson: The one you feed.

Anil Gupta: The one you feed. So start feeding the good wolf. Start feeding the good habits. Start feeding the giving, the gratitude, the growing, and your life will change

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Uh, I agree with that for sure. Awesome. So now, uh, how, how do people get to work with you? Is it like a group program? Is it one-on-one coaching? Like, h- how does this work?

Anil Gupta: The, the, the, the best and fastest way is one-on-one coaching with me. And if you need to, [00:32:00] uh, have a conversation with me, you can book a time with me, chatwithaneil.com. It’ll s- book you a time with me. We’ll have a conversation. I’ll show exactly what I can do. And in that call, you will experience a positive shift towards leading a richer, fuller, happier life.

Because I have to prove to you that it’s worth working with me. I have to, and I will

Tim Melanson: Awesome. All right, chatwithaneel.com. That’s awesome. All right, we’re gonna shift gears a little bit and get into music for just a few minutes. So tell me, who is your favorite rock star or band?

Anil Gupta: Uh, I like Queen, I like The Beatles,

I like Simon & Garfunkel, The Carpenters They’re probably my top, top ones

Tim Melanson: Wow. Have you seen any of them live in concert before?

Anil Gupta: I’ve seen The Beatles here in Orlando. Oh my goodness me.

Tim Melanson: Oh.

Anil Gupta: had a wonderful experience. And I tell you what happened, I [00:33:00] was in the nosebleeds, and I, uh, then I went down to, um, to get some food and I saw some people leaving the two and a half thousand dollar ticket, uh, area. And I said, "Hey, are you leaving?"

And they said, "Yes." I said, "What are you doing with your ticket?" They said, "Here you go." So they gave us their tickets. They left early, you know, maybe half an hour early. So we got to be front row and it was magical. It was magical experience. This was maybe about five, 10 years ago. It was, um Yeah, uh, I can’t believe how old that man is, and he’s still rocking and rolling

Tim Melanson: Oh, right on. So you saw Paul McCartney then?

Anil Gupta: No, no, no. Hold, hold on, hold on. It wasn’t The Beatles

Ah.

Oh my

Tim Melanson: Stones?

Anil Gupta: Rolling Stones.

Tim Melanson: Yes.

Anil Gupta: Rolling Stones. [00:34:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah

Tim Melanson: Yes, they are still touring. Yeah, I was like, "Oh, could’ve

Anil Gupta: I was amazed. I was amazed. Yeah

Tim Melanson: Y- yeah, I’ve seen the Rolling Stones as well, and what a show they put on. That was incredible. And like you say, I think it was probably about 10 years ago. Uh, no, uh, maybe, maybe 15 now that I think about it.

But I mean, uh, still I mean, they’re such… Still rocking. It’s so cool

Anil Gupta: Yeah, great value. You know, so much energy. It’s not like they were, they were jumping up and down and being, you know, so extroverts. Unbelievable experience

Tim Melanson: Right on. Wow, that’s amazing. Well, thank you so much for rocking out with me today, Anil. This has been a lot of fun

Anil Gupta: No, thank you. Thank you. I enjoyed it very much

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Randy Vlasic: There’s always a

Tim Melanson: of that.

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Wow

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then, you know, I just dove in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So sometimes it is that individual

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

Randy Vlasic: Yep.

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

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

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

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

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

Randy Vlasic: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, so

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

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

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

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

Randy Vlasic: It is, it is, yeah

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

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

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

Tim Melanson: That is awesome.

Randy Vlasic: yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Randy Vlasic: That’s right.

Tim Melanson: right? But

Randy Vlasic: go golfing?

Tim Melanson: go ahead

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow. That’s

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

I’m having a lot of fun with it

Tim Melanson: So how do we find out more?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Randy Vlasic: Take care

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. Today, I’m speaking with the owner of Plug Technologies, and what he does is he connects L- Latin American talent with US companies. So I’m excited to be rocking out today with Brian Samson. Hey, Brian. You ready to rock?

BrianSamson: Tim, I am ready to rock

Tim Melanson: Awesome. We always start off on a good note.

Tell me a story of success that we can all be inspired by

BrianSamson: Yeah, I, um, uh, have grown three different companies from zero to $4 million in revenue. Um, so, uh, that’s something I, I f- I feel pretty good about hanging my hat on

Tim Melanson: That’s a, that’s a pretty good one. Yeah, absolutely. Did you, did you see that? Like, was that like a goal that you had, or h- how did that all come about?

BrianSamson: Yeah, I mean, I think I love the ethos of your show because I did not grow up in an entrepreneur family. I, I waited a long time to become an entrepreneur. I was, um, [00:01:00] I’ve been one going on 11 years, but that meant, like, my mid-30s is when I finally, you know, had the courage, gumption, whatever, and sanity to, you know, go out on my own.

Um, uh, and, you know, I, I kinda did it in a weird way where, um, my Well, I, I should say I, I, I actually did, like, a kind of a first-level entrepreneurship, you know, way back in 2012 where … I think this is where most people start, and if they’ve ever read, like, the Robert Kiyosaki books, you know, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Cashflow Quadrant, you know, there’s, like, the four quadrants of, you know, employee, self-employed, uh, business owner, and then investor.

So I’ve kinda been, like, moving my way, you know, through the Kiyosaki quadrants. But the first step people tend to make is the, um, [00:02:00] you know, like, solopreneur. So, um, the ones we’re most common with are, um, you know, lawyers and doctors. You know, they open their own practice, um, and they just charge a high hourly rate , you know, but it’s, you know, still their time.

So, uh, my background came up through recruiting and talent acquisition, so that’s what I charge. You know, I would, um, you know, find, uh … I decided to go independent. I just had a couple of handful of clients and charged for my own time. And, um, what I, you know … And I did it entirely from home. I was in San Francisco.

Every once in a while I’d post up at a hotel lobby, you know, and work, or a coffee shop. Um, but, um, you know, I didn’t have, like, a big war chest of funds or anything. I just, you know, hustled and kinda beat the street. [00:03:00] You know, got, got a few clients. And that all … And then I think I’ve kinda learned that entrepreneurship is just, just a whole bunch of levels, you know.

Um, I haven’t played video games in a long time, but when I did, you know, it was like, you know, you gotta get to the next level of, you know, Super Mario Brothers or something. So, uh, you know, now I think I’ve kinda made my way, you know, all the way through the different quadrants and mostly just invest money in other operators and

Um, but it took a long time to get there, and, uh, you know, it all started with selling your time for money, but doing it for multiple clients.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Yeah. And that is, uh… Like, so now why did you decide to have the gumption to, to go and do that in the first place? Was there a, a big why there?

BrianSamson: Yeah, my story was I, I, I guess kind of funny in that, um, uh, I really wanted [00:04:00] to do human resources for tech startups. So I, I took this test called an SPHR, which stands for Senior Professional Human Resources. Very few people know about it. It’s not that, uh, it’s not that special. Um, but it’s ki- it’s kinda like a CPA for HR is a way to…

And the pass rate’s, um, kinda rough. It’s like less than half the people pass, and you’ve gotta be in the industry for so long to take the test. So I, I kind of decided to be an entrepreneur, studied for this test, passed the test, um, with the whole idea to sell, like, all the non-recruiting stuff to tech startups.

So like I could help design your benefits and your comp plans and then everything. And no one wanted to buy that, but they’re like, "Hey, could you, could you recruit for us?" Yeah, I do have recruiting experience. I could do that. [00:05:00] So, um, so like my initial, my initial thesis was way off in terms of like product market fit, like what I, what I w- what I wanted to offer and what I wanted people to buy versus what they wanted to buy.

Um, but I still had something of value that they wanted to buy, and then we, we kinda dug, dug deeper in there and, and then I would lead with recruiting and then maybe try to, you know, sell some of the other stuff later

Tim Melanson: Okay. Okay, cool. So really, you, you, uh, y- you sort of grew into the role that you’re in right now. You found something that people were looking for, and you wanted to offer that. W- had you been in a cubicle before that? Like, what, what, where did you come

BrianSamson: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, so I started my career in Chicago, um, in like a real traditional bullpen environment. So staffing agency. And, uh, so it was like kind of cubicles, but really tables. You know? You’re just, you’re just kinda like crammed in. There’s like a bunch of tables, and it’s [00:06:00] kinda like a boil- a little boiler room.

You know? Like crammed in with tables, um, phones, computers. And, um, and I loved it because you could learn through osmosis, you know, and like hear all these conversations. The people that do agency type work, like staffing agency type work, they’re a little more like aggressive, assertive. There’s a lot of banter.

You know? A lot of like poking fun, you know, stuff like that. So it was really, really lively. Um, so I wouldn’t trade that for the world. Like I’m really glad that I got to spend my 20s in these bullpen environments. Um, but then like once you learn it, you just kinda want some quiet to work . You know?

Tim Melanson: yeah

BrianSamson: So, uh, so I, I don’t need that anymore.

Um, and, uh, um, you know, and then it was like work from home after that. But, but I started in the, you know, [00:07:00] pseudo cubicle. Really more of just like a, you know, a table and, and, uh, and, and a lot of loud noise in the a- in the area

Tim Melanson: Wow. So, w- uh, now a lot of people are just afraid to fail, and they think that they’re gonna make some big mistakes and it’s gonna, you know, ruin everything, right? Especially when they’ve got their so-called safe job, right? Uh, n- not necessarily anymore, but whatever. I mean, still, it, it is a steady paycheck for, for, for whatever it is.

But now when you get out into your, on your, on your own and you start doing this on your own, there are some things that don’t go as planned. And I’m wondering, can you share with me one of those big mistakes that you made along the path and how you recovered from that?

BrianSamson: Yeah. Um, so when I, when I first got my, like, I’d say, like, more l- like, the second level of entrepreneurship, um, I was building a, um, a Latin America software business. And, [00:08:00] um, so our team was in Latin America. Um, the… You know, I, I came out of recruiting, not sales, so, um, I always felt like sales was something somebody else could do, you know?

Um, and you could just, like, hire some superstar. They’d, they’d be a rainmaker and bring in all this money. But, um, that didn’t go… So it was really more of, like, a business owner fail, you know, where I hired, uh, two pretty expensive salespeople from the industry, and, um, just month after month, like, how come we’re not getting any revenue?

Isn’t that what, what, you know,

Tim Melanson: hired you for?

BrianSamson: Yeah, we hired you guys for. Um, and then, you know, had to eventually move on from them. But I think I was just, like, really intimidated, and I, I, and I, I, I bet a lot of people might identify with this, you know, where they’ve got the [00:09:00] skill with marketing or finance or accounting or back office operations or something, and just not sales, right?

Like, sales was always what, like, wild, extroverted person would do. And, um, um, and that’s, that’s how I thought. But I, think I underestimated, um, my, like, the grace people would give me because I was the founder of the business. So I could say the wrong things, um, not run a real proper sales call or discovery or ask the right questions, but because I was the founder, people wanted to talk to me, and they, and they could see, you know, I cared about their business and them as a client, and that, that really mattered.

So I’d say, um, the biggest mistake was just trying to, like, buy my way into revenue,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

BrianSamson: and, um, not [00:10:00] recognizing, like, it’s… You just have to do it. Like, everyone’s gotta sell, no matter how introverted or reserved you might be or how your superpower might be something else. Um, being a founder, uh, it’s something that you should do.

You should do the sales, but also recognize that it’s compounding. Like, it’s another skill set that you get to have for yourself

Tim Melanson: Yeah. That’s, that is really accessible, I think, for everybody. And, and I mean, I, I think that’s true that sales, uh, I mean, this comes up all the time, but, like, uh, people are … I think people have a negative view of what they think sales is based on probably some negative experiences where they got sold, right?

Something that they didn’t actually want. But really, what sales is supposed to be, I think w- what you just said, I mean, y- you’re really just showing somebody how you can fix a problem, aren’t you?

BrianSamson: Right. [00:11:00] Yeah

Tim Melanson: and, and isn’t that what you do? Don’t you fix problems? That’s what, that’s what entrepreneurship is

BrianSamson: that’s exactly it. Yeah, it doesn’t matter if you’re selling, you know, IT support or marketing services. You’re, you’re trying to make somebody else’s business better

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, you’re trying to help them. And, and like you just said, I mean, I think that, uh, you know, as a founder or, or, or even as a salesman, I mean, the … I, I would argue that the best salesman, and I’m not talking about maybe some p- salesman might be able to rack up some big sales, but then you get some returns and some buyer’s remorse that comes back from that if you don’t do it right.

But if you do it right, then you just, you’re really good at, at caring, at, at asking good questions, and at showing people that you’re a real person that they want to do business with, right? And like you said, I mean, they’re, you know, the, you’re the founder of the company. People are like, "Okay, well, what’s this thing all about?

I wanna know how you can fix my problem." And if you’re real about that, [00:12:00] and I mean, you can say some things that aren’t by the book, but, but, but as long as that person on the other line goes, "Okay, well, yeah, it seems like he’s being honest," that’s, that’s what they want, right?

BrianSamson: Oh, man, yeah. I mean, people are, I think, tired. You know, I, I, I overestimated the, like, the extroversion, you know, the, the… I- and I’m not that, I’m not, I’m really not that extroverted as a person. Um, uh, much more reserved. So I think I, like, overvalued that people just wanna do business with extroverted people, but really they just want their problem solved, you know?

It doesn’t matter how, how, how you go about doing it. So, you know, I encourage people that are listening that are maybe, like, a little more reserved or they’ve never sold, they’ve never thought they’ve sold anything before, you’ve been selling your whole life, you know, you just, you’re j- you’re just doing it in your own way

Tim Melanson: Yep. I, I, and I think also [00:13:00] probably if you don’t know you’re selling, then it probably just means that you really believe in what you’re selling

BrianSamson: Yeah. Yeah ‘

Tim Melanson: Cause it’s really, really connected. You’re just going like, "I’ve got a good idea and I really think it’s a good idea." You’re technically selling that, but I think, like I said, I mean, I think a lot of people have this negative view of what sales is and they think that sales is actually convincing somebody of something, and it’s not necessarily that.

It’s, it’s showing them that you can help them with that problem. It’s, it’s more of a communication style, right?

BrianSamson: Right. Right. Totally. Totally

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So I, I mean, I wish that sales was like a critical part of, like, school or the regular cur- curriculum, ’cause people really should be learning that. Because even if you don’t ever decide to be in a business, you’re still sitting in meetings at work, and if you don’t know how to, how to express your opinions, then, uh, like how, how do you even [00:14:00] do that?

Like, how do you be successful in a, in a regular job if you can’t sell your ideas or you can’t even convince them that you want a raise, right? I mean, all that is sales, right?

BrianSamson: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s right. That’s exactly right

Tim Melanson: So it’s definitely worthwhile learning, I think, right?

BrianSamson: Mm-hmm. That’s exactly right

Tim Melanson: so let’s talk a little bit about the, the cashflow aspect of business, and I mean, that’s another thing that trips people up. I think that number one, people think they need to set, spend a certain amount of money on certain things. You know, it’s a business expense, it’s a write-off or whatever, anything like that.

But then it ends up that that kind of like runs away. Like, how do you, especially when you’re first getting started, make sure that you’re gonna make the money back that you’re investing, and is it normal for you to run at a loss for a little while?

BrianSamson: Yeah, good question. Um, I think a services business is different from a tech business or a product business. I think tech and product, you’re, you’re funding losses [00:15:00] to get to market quickly. But if you’re running a services business, you should really be making money pretty quickly, right? Um, uh, you know, otherwise, I think you’re…

there’s something kind of missing there. Um, but I will say that I’ve, I’ve made errors on both sides, you know, where I’ve over-invested or I’ve under-invested. Um, you know, this is probably a little bit more, like, further down the road, but sometimes it’s good for people to see, you know, what, what could be next.

Um, right out of COVID, um, I was in, like, the biggest bull market I think I’ve ever seen in the recruiting world. Um, but I was fearful because, you know, I just had, like, all my revenue taken away during COVID, right? So I was very fearful as the market started to pick up fast, like [00:16:00] fast. And, you know, I had, like, uh, somebody on my team who was helping me with delivery and, you know, I, I wouldn’t even, like, spring for her own Gmail, like business Gmail address, you know, like $7 a month.

I’m like, you know, just running so tight. And I look back like, "What was I thinking?" You know? Um, but on the… And then, um, when the market, you know, was at the top of the bubble, you know, nobody knows

Tim Melanson: When you’re at the top, yeah. Yeah

BrianSamson: So, um, uh, you know, I hired a whole bunch of expensive people, you know, and had no idea, right?

And that… So I waited way too long to invest and, you know, I was, I was way too tight when I should’ve been. But, you know, wisdom comes from experience of making the wrong decisions, so I’ll hopefully know next time

Tim Melanson: Oh man, that, that is a, that is a great story. Happened to [00:17:00] me too. It, it is funny how that happens, like when you’re w- when things are, are going rough, like you’re just really scared to put any money into it, and then when it starts to go up, then you start to put too much money into it, and yeah, that does cause some major problems ’cause now y- you’re kinda like, it’s like, what, what did I say before?

It, it, it takes like three months to build momentum, and then it also takes three months for that momentum to disappear as well. So it’s like the things you do today are gonna be affecting you in three months’ time, whether that’s good decisions or bad decisions. So there’s always this lag, and that’s very difficult to get a hold of as a business owner.

Like, so what did you learn from that experience so that, you know, you, you’re ready for that next time?

BrianSamson: Yeah. I mean, I think, um, I’d much rather be lean than overdoing it, you know? Um, so I think I, I’d much rather be lean. But, um, you wanna [00:18:00] build an optionality and flexibility in all your spend, right? So, um, like I don’t think I’d ever sign a year-long contract with anything anymore, you know? know, and even like software, you know, like, uh, um, unless I have like no other choice, like I’ll almost…

Like I’d rather pay more and, and, and even have it like quarterly renewal than get stuck in like a really long-term contract. ‘Cause I’ve, you know, I saw that happen, you know, where, uh, like, oh, you know, go… Let, let, let’s go crazy. Let’s, let’s really try to grow this thing. Get, you know, and then you get crushed for, for a little while.

You’re like, "We’re not… We’re barely even using this software that we spent all this money on." Um, you know, so anyway, I, I would much rather be conservative and then just find ways to, um… [00:19:00] You know, may- maybe you spend more in the, in the middle of it, like, you know, the equivalent of, uh, buying your groceries at 7-Eleven, you know, for a month, right, you know, as you get settled.

Sure, it’s a little more expensive. It’s not sustainable for the long run, but it’s, it’s a finite period, just, you know, overspend because the revenue is, is, is gonna make up for it. But, um, uh, you know, the alternative of, uh, the long-term getting locked in, you know, it’s, it’s something that I would avoid going forward

Tim Melanson: Uh, right on. Yeah, I tend to agree with you on that, and sometimes I think, I think I’m making a stupid move because I’m paying, you know, 20% more by paying for things monthly. But I hear what you’re saying because soft- especially with software, new tools come out all the time. What if there’s a better tool that pops up and you’re on a year-long contract?

I [00:20:00] mean, there, it, it allows you to pivot a little bit more too to a better tool if you’re doing things monthly. Sure, you’re not saving the money, but, but I mean, there are very few tools probably in your stack that, um, that you absolutely are never gonna switch away from. Now, there are a few I’m sure, right?

BrianSamson: Yeah. Yeah, totally

Tim Melanson: but I, and l- I mean, that goes right into the next topic, so let’s talk a little bit about the tools. So what are the tools that are really useful in your business?

BrianSamson: Yeah, um, you know, QuickBooks I’ve used forever. Uh, QuickBooks Online, use it across all the different companies that I work with, invest in. Um, and then I like monday.com a lot, you know. Uh, I use it so much that I even use it to run my household,

you know? Like, uh, like,

Tim Melanson: Yeah

BrianSamson: you know, uploading docs, like, you know, my birth cer- my kids’ birth certificates are uploaded on monday.com, and I can, like, grab it whenever I need it or, you know.

Or, like, uh, we just [00:21:00] took a, a spring break trip, and all the flight bookings and everything was in there. Uh, yeah, so we, we use it all the time, and of course, you know, uh, all across the businesses. So, um, that’s, that’s probably my, my one go-to tool

Tim Melanson: Okay. Do you pay yearly or monthly?

BrianSamson: Um, you know what’s funny is, uh, I don’t think I had a choice with Monday. I think, but, but by then I’ve been like, because I use it for my household too. I’m like, ah, no. Like, there’s no, there’s no getting out of this thing.

Tim Melanson: That’s so awesome. Yeah, no, there, there’s a couple tools that you can pay by, by year, but, but most of them, yeah. No, I, I also use Monday too, and I love it. I love it, and I’ve gotten a few other c- of, uh, my clients that have gotten on Monday as well. It’s such a great tool. It’s kinda like a combination of like, you know, something like Trello and maybe something like Asana, and then you’ve got a CRM in there too.

Like, it’s just, it’s… I, I, I like it. May- I wonder if there’s a referral [00:22:00] thing. We should probably be affiliates, right?

BrianSamson: I think so

Tim Melanson: Right on. So now let’s talk a little bit about learning. So, uh, I mean, you, uh, uh, as you mentioned earlier, I mean, you didn’t come from an entrepreneurial family, but you somehow had to learn all this stuff.

Like, did you have mentors or did you, you know, take part in coaching program? What, what did you do?

BrianSamson: Yeah, I’ve been, um, really ever since I could, I’ve been, um, paying for peer groups. Um, but, um, I’ve been in multiple different ones. Um, and I think that’s important too. Um, so I’ve been in, uh, something called Vistage, which is like a, you know, um… I think it’s like the oldest, largest CEO peer group. Um, uh, so they m- they meet in person, you know, once a month, and there’s usually, uh, some executive coaching.

There’s, um, you know, speakers that come once a month, like, you [00:23:00] know, all about finance for your business or optimizing marketing for your business. You know, they’ll come in, and it’s good. It’s good stuff. Um, and then I did my– I did business school at UCLA, and there’s like a UCLA CEO founder peer group. I was a member of that.

And then, um, and then I’ve been a member of more of like a marketing, um, or it’s, it’s probably more like agency owner. You know, so a lot of people are marketing agency owners, but, um, I happen to run a recruiting agency.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

BrianSamson: Um, but anyway, um, the one, the one thing I think I’ve recognized though is it’s really important to learn from others.

Um, you’re rarely going through a problem that nobody else has gone through. It gives you a better– When people bring their problems, you’re like, it gives you kind of this fun business school environment of, you know, you can try to understand their situation. Does it apply to me? Give, give your [00:24:00] advice. Um, but I’ll, I’ll caution, at least for me, I didn’t wanna be with the same group for the rest of my life, um, because it gets a little stale.

You kind of already know what somebody’s advice is gonna be for you if you’ve been with, with them in the same group for five years. So, um, that might be the one thing that I would advise, just based on my own personal experiences. I try to do a group for a couple years, um, give value, get value, and then find another group of peers.

Um, I think otherwise you start to stagnate and get stale.

Tim Melanson: I like that. I like that. And so do you find, y- so you find the peer situation is better than h- hiring, like, an actual coach that just works with you one-on-one?

BrianSamson: I do. Um, generally in those peer groups, there is a facilitator that’s probably a little bit more senior, so they can, they can help you get that anyway. But I think with the peer group, you get seven or eight other people that are kind of in a similar [00:25:00] boat, um, to different companies and, you know, that founder… The founder problems are unique, you know? Um, because you can’t really tell your team about what you’re going through. So you need to be able to talk to people that are, like, vested, but not all the way vested, you know? And, and, um, there’s no politics when they give you advice, you know? They’re not trying to protect your, you know, ego or anything.

They’re just like, "Dude, that was a really dumb decision you made, you know? But let me give you some advice on how to get out of it."

Tim Melanson: Oh, that’s great. I, and I agree. Uh, I think when… Th- like, that, that’s a really good way to frame it. With peers, like you say, they’re b- gonna be more frank and more upfront about how they react to you, whereas if you hire a coach, well, there’s some power dynamics going on there, right? And so, uh, and, and then also you also get the benefit of [00:26:00] being the mentor and the mentee, I imagine, at, at certain times, which gives you just a better feel.

You, you learn through teaching as well, right?

BrianSamson: That’s exactly right. Yeah, good, good call out

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

BrianSamson: Yeah, I, I think we’re, um, we’re in a good spot where, like, the wind is in our sails. Um, and I’ve been, I’ve been there a few times, you know, where you just happen to sell the right thing at the right time. Um, um, and I’ve also been in the opposite boat too, you know, where, where you sold the wrong thing at the wrong time.

But, uh, there’s a lot of fatigue right now with labor from Asia. You know, the time zone just becomes grueling. Um, the hierarchy, the culture, whatever. You know, if you’ve ever been, uh, on a customer service call with someone in India or the Philippines, you just know, [00:27:00] and it doesn’t always come out, you know, the way, the way you were hoping.

Um, so all the wind is in the sails right now for Latin America. Um, it’s same time zone. Um, there’s cost savings, creative thinkers, good problem solvers. Um, it’s all, it’s all right there. So the 2020s to me are the decade for Latin America, and, um, I’m really excited to be an ambassador for the region

Tim Melanson: Wow. So tell me a little bit more about what you do then. Like, how, how does that work?

BrianSamson: Yeah, we, um, uh, so I’ve been in the space now for 11 years. Um, and we connect all this great talent in Latin America. So Mexico has been a big, um, you know, manufacturing supply chain factory for the world, especially for America. Um, but Mexico and all these other countries provide great, um, like white-collar talent.

So software [00:28:00] developers, uh, marketing, accounting, bookkeepers, call center, operations, that all exists in spades down there. And there’s no sacrificing time zone. Um, you know, if you wanna get on a call with somebody, the sun’s up at the same time that you’re up as, you know, they’re up, and it’s really easy to work that way

Tim Melanson: Hmm. You know what’s funny is that I, I, I’ve never had anybody on the podcast that has talked about Latin America as a, as a place for outsourcing, which is, seems bizarre to me. You hear about the Philippines a lot, and India, and China, as you mentioned already. You don’t really hear a whole lot about Latin America, but that certainly does make a lot more sense that, that they would be e- you know, a lot closer to us, right?

So I wonder why it’s, hasn’t really been on the radar for most outsourcers.

BrianSamson: Yeah, I think, uh, you know, India has existed, you know, since the dot com boom. [00:29:00] The Philippines were, were really good at the call center, back office, virtual assistant world. Um, and then China’s kind of been the factory for the world, you know, forever. That’s always been the big three, and, um, price has been, I think, in the forefront of people’s minds, um, ’cause you’ll never beat Asia on price.

You know, Asia’s always gonna win there.

Tim Melanson: Right

BrianSamson: I think what people are recognizing, especially CFOs, are there is a cost that they didn’t factor in way back, you know, a few decades ago, and there’s a cost of customer frustration and churn.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

BrianSamson: stuff just, like, breaking. There’s a cost of rework. Um, an India software team is gonna be a lot cheaper than a team in Argentina or Brazil.

Um, but if, uh, the software has to be continually reworked, you know, the, the cost per [00:30:00] labor is much cheaper, but if it takes you an extra four months to get it done, you gotta add the, those extra four months in your overall cost and amortize it. So finally all that stuff is being factored into it, and, and Latin America is more cost-effective overall even if the labor is marginally more expensive than Asia

Tim Melanson: Interesting. Very interesting. So why, so is the education system different and better in

BrianSamson: Uh, I think education is, you know, pretty abundant nowadays, um, you know, with, especially with everything online. Um, but I will say it’s probably more cultural, um, that I think really connects because, you know, in the States we’re a lot more comfortable with horizontal organizations, um, sharing feedback upwards, you know.

Um, I don’t, I don’t agree with [00:31:00] this. Here’s why. Here’s a different idea. Um, you’ll hardly ever see that in Asia, you know, there’s lots of layer hierarchy, but Latin America is much more o- organized towards horizontal work culture. Um, there’s a lot of passion explaining, you know, uh, what they agree with or what they don’t agree with, and here’s why.

And obviously, you know, when you make a decision, everyone will, will rally around that. But until that decision’s made, you know, they’ll, they’ll share their opinion. Um, and I think that’s really important, you know, when you wanna have a collaborative work team

Tim Melanson: I agree. That’s, that’s amazing. So then, are, is there a lot of competition in your area as well for-

BrianSamson: Yeah. Um, I think we’re positioned pretty nicely in that we’re a US company with Latin America infrastructure and team members. And, um, you know, I was an expat in Argentina. Uh, my partner was an expat in Mexico. So we’ve got a lot of first-hand experience [00:32:00] with this. Um, and I think it’s hard to, to match those three things.

You know, we can do US contracts. There’s no crazy international wires, but we’ve got long-term credibility and big candidate databases from our team in Latin America, you know, and we can talk about it first-hand, um, and then handle all the hardware and all the complexities. Uh, very few companies can do all of that, but some do one particular thing pretty well

Tim Melanson: Okay. So then what kind of company or what kind of person would get the most out of working with you then?

BrianSamson: Yeah. Um, I think, uh, small businesses that are maybe just a little bit further along, like, um, I really encourage if you’re going to hire, um, and, and maybe this will even cost me a little bit of money here, but I think it’s important that founders and small business owners try DIY hiring, do-it-yourself hiring [00:33:00] for the first couple.

You kind of understand, you know, more about your own process, what you’re looking for, um, how to manage people, you know, all that. A- and then when you’re ready to scale a little bit, um, that’s where, you know, we come in. Um, because, you know, you won’t, um, you’re gonna get probably better efficiencies, access to a much larger labor pool, shortlisted candidates, don’t worry about compliance or anything like that

Tim Melanson: Okay, that’s awesome. So yeah, you’re kind of like the, the next level. And I think you’re right ’cause, I mean, uh, when you’re first hiring you’re gonna find a lo- you’re gonna find out first of all that you probably don’t have the s- standard operating procedures that you should right? And you’re, you’re like, you know, trying to figure out how to actually even do that.

And so that might be wasted time if you’re going to, if you’re going to a bigger company, right? So when you figure all that stuff out and then you make a couple mistakes, then it might be the right time to go and work with you, right?[00:34:00]

BrianSamson: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Once they’re ready to, you know, scale a little bit or they’re a little bit more, um, buttoned up on their process, we’re, we’re ready. Yeah

Tim Melanson: So what’s the process of working with you then? Like, do they- w- what do they do? Do they go to your website? Do they fill out forms? Do they talk to you? Like, how does that work?

BrianSamson: yeah, yeah. Um, uh, so the important thing is, uh, although it’s, it’s like, um, contract labor, you know, meaning, um, just like, you know, you and I talked about, like the monthly, you know, month-to-month, uh, that’s the same thing that we do. Um, so once they’re, once they’re ready to do that, we don’t charge until we’ve, um, not only found you the candidate that you like and you wanna hire, but they’ve started the work, and then we, then we just send invoices for every hour that they bill, right?

And you’ll just get that on a monthly basis. So it’s really low risk, and we do, um, a lot of intro calls, uh, explain how [00:35:00] Latin America works. Uh, there’s a lot of people I would call nearshore curious or kind of interested in what’s going on in Latin America, but they wanna learn more. Um, that’s where, that’s where we, we do a lot of educational calls.

So yeah, just go to the website, uh, plug, P-L-U-G-G.tech and fill out a Contact Us form

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Okay, so there really is not a whole lot of risk. I mean, if you’re at the point where you’re ready to hire and you’ve got your procedures in place, then it’s just a, a quick call, right?

BrianSamson: Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: to get, things started.

BrianSamson: That’s right. That’s right

Tim Melanson: Right on. Well, that’s awesome. Okay, so before we go, o- one more question.

It’s probably gonna be the hardest one, and, uh, we’re gonna talk a little bit about music. So who is your favorite rockstar or band?

BrianSamson: Uh, I’m, I, I guess I’m a little older school. Um, I could do U2 any day

Tim Melanson: Mm. Right on. Have you ever seen him in concert?

BrianSamson: Yeah, I saw them in San Francisco once. It was a great show

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it, I’ve seen them at least once [00:36:00] now that I think about it. And what a great show. They had such a great stage setup too. Like, it kinda went right out in the audience and stuff. It was so cool.

BrianSamson: It was great. It was really fun

Tim Melanson: Right on. Do you play any music at all?

BrianSamson: I dabbled with guitar, uh, before I had kids, you know, and like every once in a while, but it’s been a while since I really picked it up now

Tim Melanson: Oh, yes. Well, every once in a while it’s nice to pick it up and strum a few chords, right?

BrianSamson: That’s exactly right. Exactly

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for rocking out with me today, Brian. This has been a lot of fun.

BrianSamson: Uh, thank you. Thank you, uh, so much

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

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. I’m excited for today’s episode. We’re talking to the CEO and a clinical hypnotherapist for Bespoke Human Potential Coaching. Very excited to hear about this. This is gonna be really cool. What Curtis does is he helps high-achieving CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs identify and release subconscious blind spots that quietly limit performance, income, and clarity.

Super excited to be rocking out today with Curtis McCullom. Hey, Curtis, are you ready to rock?

Curtis McCullom: Hey, Tim, let’s go for it, man. I’m really excited about the fact that, you know, um, you invited me to your show and allowed me to share some things with your audience to make sure that they, on this journey that they’re on, you know. This is a journey, a lifelong journey, and being an entrepreneur, as you well know, it is a journey.

So yeah, I’m, I’m ready to rock with it, man

Tim Melanson: Right on. Well, let’s inspire some people then today, right?

Curtis McCullom: Yeah, let’s go for it. I love it.

Tim Melanson: So we always start off here on a good note, so tell me a story that can inspire us

Curtis McCullom: Well, o- one thing that, that really, what I’ve learned over the years is, Tim, is that, is [00:01:00] that this life is a journey, and if we can ever just harness the power of knowing that that’s what it is. And I think that’s why I created what this framework I call the LEGIT mindset, which is learning, growing, expanding, and transforming.

And so when I, I was asking the universe and like, "Wow, God, what is it that this thing is all about?" Because this is a journey. And the thing that really popped up to me after I read this book called Many Lives, Many Masters by, I think, Dr. Bruce Weiss, i- it was like, it’s all about learning. And if we can ever harness the fact that whatever we’re going through, whatever we’ve been through, it’s just an opportunity for us to learn and to grow and expand and transform

Tim Melanson: Hmm. Yeah, isn’t that interesting that I, I think I heard someone say that the, the, the, the most dangerous words you can say is, "I know."

Curtis McCullom: Became– I like that. I, I might use that. So I, I might s- I, I might, Tim, I might give you, uh, you know, I might say, "Hey, I got this from Tim on, [00:02:00] on, on, on the Rockstar podcast," but then I forget. After a while, I’m gonna forget your name, you know?

Tim Melanson: That’s fine. That’s fine.

Curtis McCullom: And just use it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, but it is a journey of learning, right? And, uh, yeah, I think you’re right. I think as soon as you get yourself into that perspective instead of, like, just reacting to things that are going on, yeah, I think you can be just be a little bit more proactive in the life that you’re trying to build, right?

Curtis McCullom: Oh, absolutely. That’s the whole idea is that we have to understand if we know that going into it, right? It’s like, so I think Zig Ziglar, we can either react or we can respond. Reaction is more negative. Responding is, look at this, this is it. You have the power to respond. You have the responsibility to actually control your own thoughts and your emotions.

So if we can ever just harness that, says, "Okay, what am I going through?" Get- but this is the thing that people have to understand. It doesn’t mean it’s gonna feel good,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Curtis McCullom: it doesn’t mean that it’s not gonna be difficult, but it means that, but I can go through it. That’s the [00:03:00] key

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. And, and you know what, though? Like, we always look back on those situations, right, that were very difficult, and y- y- you look back at them differently than when you were going through them. Sometimes you’re laughing at them. Sometimes, sometimes you’re just, you’re proud of what you were able to accomplish, right?

But a- at the time, it just feels terrible. But, but you know

Curtis McCullom: I mean, and you know, I, um, you know, I tell… One of the things, one of the things I tell my clients all the time is that back in the day when I first got started, uh, motivational speakers used to say, "Hey, um, uh, if it’s, if it’s raining outside, just think sunshine, sunshine." I’m like, "Come on, forget that.

No. If it’s raining outside, it’s raining. Acknowledge the fact that it is raining, and it’s okay." And this is one of my thing. It’s okay not to be okay, but it’s not okay to pretend that you’re okay and you’re not. So if it’s raining, it’s raining. Acknowledge it and says, "Okay, now what do I wanna do about the fact that it is raining?

Do I wanna be whimsical and go out and just have fun in the [00:04:00] rain and just kind of dance with the rain? Or do I need to put on my rain gear, my, my galoshes, my rain cap, and my umbrella ’cause I need to go in the rain? Or do I decide to just stay home and be productive even though it’s raining outside?"

Guess what? I have the power to respond. I don’t have to get all upset about it in the moment. You know, I can just really walk through it with ease.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, right. And, and I mean, I think that the thing is, is that, you know, problems are gonna happen, and the sooner you acknowledge those problems and deal with those problems, the better, because eventually don’t they always just come back and bite us later on anyway? But-

Curtis McCullom: Oh, oh, oh. This is one thing about unlearning is this, is that one thing about how the subconscious mind works is that it loves to learn. That means that if you don’t get the learning from whatever you’re going through, you have a greater propensity to go through it again, and again, and again until you get the learning.

Like, okay, uh, uh, like it’s, you know, that’s, [00:05:00] that’s kind of the, what the thing of insanity. You keep doing the same thing over, thinking you’re gonna get something different. But the subconscious mind is the same way. It wants to give y- i- if, if you’re not … If you’re feeling sad, it’s just kind of communicating with you, "I’m feeling sad right now," which is okay.

So you can ask yourself, "What is it that, what I need right now in order for me to move forward?" And it’ll give you something, and you can let it go. It’s like a feeling is an emotion that wants to communicate with us and leave, but if we suppress it and not get the learning from it, wow, it, it’s gonna come back.

And it c- my head, my stomach, my back, it’s like it’s gonna get your attention some way, form, or fashion

Tim Melanson: Uh, I love the angle that you’re coming at this with, like, the subconscious mind because I, you know, I’ve, I’ve heard this so many times on a spiritual level. Like, people will talk about you keep getting the lessons over and over again, and it’s the universe trying to teach you something. But, but now you’re coming at it from a different perspective of this is just how our brains work, right?

Our brains are trying to learn a lesson, and so we’re just gonna keep on [00:06:00] subconsciously putting us into situations that repeat the lesson over and over again until we get it, right?

Curtis McCullom: Do we get it? And that’s the whole idea. This is the thing, is like people don’t understand how this thing works. Like, okay, 5% of our being is conscious. That’s our, our willpower analysis, you know, s- I wanna set this goal. That’s the, that’s the part that we know, right? We see that. The 95% is our subconscious.

That’s controls all our behavior, and it on- this is the c- crazy thing about it, Tim, is that it’s controlled by the things that we’ve learned in the past. And every time we have a new experience, it goes out to search down in the past of what it, what, what it knows. So it needs a lesson in order for you to let that new lesson kinda take hold.

It needs to, it needs something to replace it. And so mo- most people do, they try to suppress it, they try to push it down, they try to push it out, and the subconscious mind says, "I need a lesson." And, uh, you know, uh, [00:07:00] third, we’re gonna talk about the next one, is like, uh, is like if you don’t get the learning, the subconscious mind will still get your attention one way form or fashion.

Headaches, stomach aches, whatever other type of ache, anxiety. You’re like, "What the heck is going on?" It’s because you, you have not learned yet. You just need to stop and ask yourself the question: what is it I need to learn from this? How can I now grow from this? This is the thing I wanna share with your audience what not to do.

Do not ask yourself why. Because of the fact that your subconscious mind will give you every reason in the book on why you are failing, why you are feeling, why you’re doing what you’re doing, and you don’t need any whys. You need whats, and you need to know how. You need to know, "What do I need to do?" So ask yourself what questions and how questions, and then what it does is searches your subconscious.

It searches the universe to [00:08:00] now give you the things that you need to kinda continue to move forward.

Tim Melanson: I love that. That’s really cool. Yeah, ’cause the why questions are more or less, uh, what, what are they? They’re sort of finding blame, right?

Curtis McCullom: Oh, uh, and it will find it. It’ll find it. It’s, it’s the, "Tim, you remember when you were a little

Tim Melanson: said this. Yeah.

Curtis McCullom: you were on the playground and that kid said you were not … you can’t play a g- you can’t play an instrument. You remember that, right?" And then they’ll keep bringing up those failures. You don’t need any failures.

You just need to know the le- the lessons from it. So basically, no why questions, what questions, and how questions to kind of keep you moving forward, and it’ll come with some great stuff, what I call inspired, inspired actions. It’ll, it’ll, it’ll give you some ins- something inspirational that can kind of move you forward

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm. Now, so for, uh, some people, I mean, I think a lot of entrepreneurs, uh, especially who already have that sort of mindset, I mean, we’re okay with failure. We’re okay with, with falling. I mean,

Curtis McCullom: Right

Tim Melanson: w- m- maybe it’s because we’ve had lots of them in the past, and we’ve, we’ve made it through, and [00:09:00] now we know that, hey, I’m gonna fall.

I’m gonna get back up, and everything’s gonna be good. But there’s a lot of people that, that don’t, that, that sort of are very, you know, risk-averse we’ll say, right? And they, they don’t wanna get into business because they’re, they’re, they’re afraid of failing. And I, I like to talk about the failures, the big ones that, that, uh, we do because I’m hoping that what’ll happen is that someone will listen to this and go, "You know what? What, what’s, what’s the worst that can happen? If this if this guy can get, can make it, then I can too, so can you tell me something that didn’t work out for you?"

Curtis McCullom: Yes, yes, yes, yes. When I first got started in sales, I was working as a retail manager. I was getting a salary, and I decided to go into sales. I read every book. I listened to every tape. I thought I was ready for this, right? I’m ready to do this. I’m like, you know, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins went and got all these certifications in sales and stuff.

In my first sales job, I remember so clearly, I failed miserably. I mean, [00:10:00] all the money that I had saved, I lost in like three to four, five months. And like, "What the heck is going on?" Until, until I found a mentor that, that, that kinda helped me and like he, he said, he go- he says, "Hey, Curtis, if you do X, Y, and Z, you’ll make this."

I’m like, "What? You mean to tell me if I can just do this type of activity consistently, I’ma make this?" Story changed, meaning like it went from this utter failure. I remember my mom told me when I first quit my job, she’s like, "What in the world are you doing? Are you crazy?" You know, like, and then after I quit and I lost, I’m like, "Well, maybe I was."

But no, that was the beginning of the journey. I needed to understand that lesson that regardless of what I’m going through, I can make it through. And I, I met my mentor. He taught me how to sell. He, he called me in his office every day. And so I made a goal. When I was going through training and [00:11:00] for this company, I stood up in front of my company, in front of the cohort that I was, that I was, uh, going with and told them I was gonna be the number one person in the, in the company.

I gave them my number one speech, and 18 months later, I was the number one, m- number one person in the company. I broke records. I was the youngest person to ever do it. So things can happen when we go through these setbacks. Utter failures that feel like utter failures, but sometimes my wife call it, sometimes we need setbacks to get set up.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Curtis McCullom: So that’s, that’s kinda what my, my biggest, I would m- my biggest failure when I first got started in this business

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and I mean, it was fortunate that you were able to not only find a mentor, but also be willing to ask for help, ’cause isn’t that a problem? Don’t… A lot of us don’t ask for help, right?

Curtis McCullom: Ah, ah, yeah, and that’s one of the biggest challenges with entrepreneurs or, or CEOs, and we don’t wanna feel weak.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Curtis McCullom: We don’t wanna feel like we’re vulnerable. And even as a professional, I’ve [00:12:00] been doing this now for 40 years, and I still ask for help. When I need help, I ask for help because of the fact that I think we talked about I don’t know it all.

I will never know it all. I will never be– I never operate at 100% because that’s unpossible. So, you know, I tell people, "If we can get you to operating at 80% or more in your business consistently, you’re gonna be a rockstar." You know, think about a baseball player is a rockstar when he’s batting 300 plus.

That means out of 10 times he get at bat, he’s gonna hit the ball only three times. He get paid millions, millions of dollars. So as entrepreneurs, if we could start thinking like that, meaning like, "Yeah, I don’t need to hit 100%. I need to get up consistently hit 80%," and now we’ll b- then we’ll become rockstars

Tim Melanson: Well, and, and I mean, that’s, that’s the issue, right? Because I [00:13:00] mean, if th- that means that 7 out of those 10 times that you’re, that you’re up there, you’re, you’re, you’re failing. And, you know, similarly in business, right? People, people have a hard time with failing 70% of the time. But isn’t that what’s necessary for all of us, really?

Curtis McCullom: Well, basically, one, one of the things I teach people when, especially in sales, is understand your numbers Meaning, like I understand, I understand the numbers. The numbers part of it is … A- and I used to play this game with myself when I was in sales, just purely sales. I was a, I was a certified, certified financial planner and, um, and a, and a chartered financial consultant, and I sold insurance and financial services products.

But w- the thing about in that, you have to understand the game. I th- I call it a game. It’s a game for me. I look at it as a game. And I knew that espe- back in the day, we used to do cold calling, and I knew that if I dialed 25 people, that I was gonna talk to four and I was gonna close two. That’s [00:14:00] my numbers.

I knew that. I, and, and when you know the numbers going in, the beauty part about it, you know what to expect. You know it’s not failure. It’s part of the game. So when I got a no, instead of saying, "Oh, shoot, I got a no," I’m like, "Yes, that’s one out of the way. Give me the next one. Give me the next one. Give me the next one."

‘Cause I knew, I knew my numbers. I understood that it’s just a game. And so when we’re starting as an entrepreneur, when we go into it, when you first start, you won’t know your numbers. You won’t know what it takes. You won’t know all that data. But the more you consistently do it, you’ll find yourself saying, "Okay, now, so it, now I know that if I talking to 10 people, I’m gonna close three."

Two things has to happen in order for you to increase your income. You have to either talk to more people or get better at what you do, and that’s the key to it

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and the, and the, the easiest thing to do is talk to more people, right? Getting better at what you do is gonna take a lot longer, right?

Curtis McCullom: Right. Uh, well, well, you, right, and then over time you get better what you do, [00:15:00] right? Because the more you do it, you say, "Oh, okay, if I said it like this instead of that, I noticed that most people, more people respond to it." Right? And so it’s like, it’s, it, it’s like this balancing act, but understanding when you’re going into this new venture that, you know, I’m gonna have some setbacks, but those setbacks are sometimes the setup.

I understand the fact that everybody’s not gonna like what I’m doing. Everybody’s not gonna like my product or service or what am I doing, and that’s okay. One of my, one of my things is that I’m looking for individuals that are looking for me. That’s one of my affirmations I almost say every day. I’m looking for individuals that are looking for me, and being Curtis, being authentically myself, is more than enough

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Um, now, uh, I mean, that, that’s another comment really because, I mean, if, if you look at it from music, I mean, if you’re a country band and, you know, you’re talking to people that love metal, you’re probably not gonna have a whole lot of success. [00:16:00] So f- so finding the people that are looking for you, h- how do you do that then?

Curtis McCullom: But basically, and that’s where it is- that’s where the magic actually has started to happen. Because when I first started this coaching business that I’m in now, I started about six years ago, didn’t know what the heck I was getting into. I was getting out of financial services. I retired from financial services, now I’m going on a totally different visual.

Now I understand sales, I understand all of this, but this is something totally new. And so I had to start to find my voice, right? And this is the challenge sometimes with finding your voice, is that everybody be, what they call, shitting on you. You should do this, you should do that, you should do this, you should do this, right?

And so you have to figure out what you need to do, what makes it right for you. And what I found for me was it takes a little trial and error. So basically, you try something, oh, that didn’t work, that didn’t feel right, and try something new. But don’t, don’t… Get the baseline first down, right? And, you know, I think in [00:17:00] music you have to get the, the melody down, and then you can always start to riff and start to do other things.

But if you start changing the whole thing all at one time, you’re gonna mess up the song, right? So the thing about it is like, get the baseline down. Um, um, um, um. You got the baseline down, right? Now, you said, "Oh, this is not working. Let me change it just a little." Don’t change everything, just change one part and see will that make a difference.

So the baseline first and then build on it. And then, you know, once you get it, then you can start to riff. You know, you can start to do what you wanna do with it

Tim Melanson: Yeah, well, I mean, that, that, that’s the thing too is if you’re trying to figure out what made the difference, how would you know if you changed everything at once? You have to change one thing and see what makes the difference, right?

Curtis McCullom: Right. Change the one thing. So first of all, get a baseline. Okay, this is what I’m gonna do. This is what feels right for me, for me. Uh, uh, ’cause everybody else gonna have… This is the thing, too, and that’s why my company’s called Bespoke Human Potential [00:18:00] Coaching, because I understand that everyone is different.

Now, I have a framework in which I work from, however, my approach with you might be totally different than my approach with someone else. Why? Because you’re more auditory. You are more musically inclined. So when I’m talking to you, I’m gonna talk with language that’s based on what you already know and understand.

Your world. Your world is music. Why will I talk about, why will I talk about farming with you? You have no idea. Maybe you do, but, but farming is not your thing, but music is. So I can communicate with you because I can talk about music, the rhythm, the baseline, and you be like, "Oh, yeah, this dude got me," because that’s what it’s all about.

So it’s, it’s really those little fine things like that

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, I mean, that’s really good advice for, for anybody ’cause, I mean, whatever business you’re in, um, finding people that have side hobbies that are similar to yours is a really good place to start because, I mean, if you’re, you know, providing [00:19:00] insurance to people who like farming and you like farming, you know, that, that’s a, that’s a niche, right?

I- it’s, it’s something that you can focus on, right?

Curtis McCullom: Right, that’s something that already… So like, like f- with you doing what you do, like you told me w- before the show is like, "Hey, I’ve been doing this like jam session thing like for years." That’s your thing, right? You know, so, so it’s like why would you do something different? You’re already doing something that you love to do, and now you’re attracting to people…

Now you are attracting people who already love what you do. It’s like, that’s, that’s the thing. That’s the sweet spot, and that’s one of the challenges that most of us have is that we try to sometimes go outside of what we know. If we can just, if we can just figure out what we know, that we’re passionate about.

Now take that and utilize it in our business and market to individuals that, that have the same interest, that have the same mindset, that have the same… So that it’s not very, it’s not as hard. It’s not as difficult[00:20:00]

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, well yeah, ’cause, uh, I mean, i- if, if, uh, I, I think a lot of people sort of have this, especially when they’re first getting started, they need clients. So it’s like, "I’m just gonna say yes to everybody," right? But then you realize real quick that, you know, some clients are just a lot easier to work with than other clients because you just get along with them, right?

And

Curtis McCullom: absolutely.

Tim Melanson: why not? Why not focus on them?

Curtis McCullom: yeah, right. Absolutely. Yeah, trust me. I kn- I’ve, as we used to call it in, in insurance, we kissed a lot of frogs, you know? And, and when you first starting, I mean, I’m not saying that that’s not a bad thing, because you don’t even know, sometimes you don’t even know what you don’t know, right?

So sometimes in order to figure out what you know or what you don’t like, you know, you gotta, you got, "Oh, I tasted that. Nah, that doesn’t, nah, that’s not the one. That is not the one." Or, or, or like coming to music and says, okay, somebody’s playing this, this rhythm and you’re like, "Ah, no, that’s not it. That’s, I don’t feel that," right?

[00:21:00] And so sometimes we have to test out things to figure out what it is right for us. And once we figure that out, then we can really run with it. But some- it’s a little trial and error. You have to kind of s- be willing to go through that process, and that’s the key to it, understanding that it is a process.

It’s not, it’s not gonna be instant. And if it is, if it is instant, watch out, because that could be a big set, setback because of the fact that you didn’t go through a process yet. You don’t know what it feels like to have some failures. ‘Cause you said like, "Man, I started this business and I instantly started to make da, da, da, da," and all of a sudden you hit a brick wall, you don’t know what the heck to do.

So sometimes in the beginning it’s really nice to go through some, some little heartbreaks and some setbacks because that builds that, that muscle, that builds that strength

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I don’t think everybody would agree with us on that, but, uh, but yeah, having those initial difficulties growing is better than coming out of the gate [00:22:00] real strong,

Curtis McCullom: uh, man, I’ve I’ve had both. I had both. And, and what I’ve learned is that, is that… ‘Cause I’m still gotta get the le- lessons,

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Curtis McCullom: and sometimes it’s more difficult because I’ve had so many wins. I don’t know what… I don’t even know how to, how to, how to go back to kind of reprogram it. I don’t know what…

I don’t know how to troubleshoot that. But trust me, either one, just be prepared, right? Just be prepared. It’s a, this is, this is a journey. It’s a lifelong journey, and it’s all about learning, it’s all about growing, expanding, and transforming. So yeah, just understand that, and that’s all

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Now, I’ve been working from home for a long time, and, and I mean, a lot of f- a lot of people learned how to do it in the last five years, right? Uh, b- you know, because of what, what ended up happening. But I’m wondering, like, uh, setting up a good home office and, and having a good space to work, it’s pretty important stuff.

I’m wondering, what’s your approach to it? Like, how does your, how does your office work for you?

Curtis McCullom: Ah, man, my office is everything. I mean, you know, I talk to people all over the [00:23:00] world right from this space right? Most of my coaching, 99% of all of my coaching, one-on-one coaching comes from here. And having a home office that’s right for you is so important. That’s your environment. Basically, think about your environment is this conducive area where now I can flourish.

And so even if it’s just a corner in your house, make it feel like it is an office. Make it feel like you are going somewhere to do something. Because now you’re separate… Because you’re accustomed to doing that, especially if you had a, a job job, you’re accustomed to getting up and going somewhere. Now, and this is one thing that I would suggest that people do, is that don’t put it in an area, a living space.

What I mean, like, if it’s in your bedroom, make one corner of your bedroom your office and not your whole bedroom, because you need some separation. You need a place that you now, "I’m in this area, this is for sleeping. I’m going to this corner, that’s [00:24:00] for working." So now, because one of the things that people fail to do is look at it, at it like it is a job.

And it is, and it is a job, so you have to still have a conducive environment to, to do the work that you need to do. So I always say create this space. This is your space. Knowing when you go into that space, "I’m going to get something done. I’m going to work."

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I’ve even heard people say that they’ll put on a shirt and tie even though they’re working from home, right? Why not?

Curtis McCullom: Um, r- right now. A- and that’s one thing about it. Now, what- do that work for everybody? Maybe not, you know? B- but you have to test it out and find out what works for you that’s gonna put you into that mindset of, "Now I’m at work." Because if not, you’ll get… It’ll, it’ll, it’ll get to the point where, you know, sometimes I do work inside in my house.

I have a big kitchen counter. But most of the time, I, I come out to my office, because here’s why: it’s quiet, it’s more conducive for [00:25:00] me, I can just really focus on what I’m doing, and it’s a much better environment to get things done

Tim Melanson: Okay. Are there other people in your house? Like, is it difficult to get them to understand that you’re working and, and, uh, to give you that time?

Curtis McCullom: One, that’s one of the things, you know, I, um, um, m- it’s just me and my wife. Uh, all of my kids are grown, and so it’s just me and my wife here. And so the way my house is designed, I’m fortunate, and the way my house is designed is that I have to go, literally go outside my front door and walk another 10 to 15, 20 feet to this space, right?

This space that you everybody see. So, so basically it’s private. Nobody’s here but me, and that makes it very easy for me to do. Now, back when I was first starting many, many years ago, I just had a corner. I just had one space. But being an- b- being an s- entrepreneur or this, this home business type thing practically all my life, my wife know and understand what it takes for [00:26:00] me to actually succeed, and she’s always giving me that space.

So when other people are in your space, you need to have that conversation with them to let them know when you are working so that they, they understand that, so that they’re not actually impeding your progress. If not, uh, ju- just same thing, though. Think about it. When you go into a office office, people will come to your desk.

People… When I was in the office, I didn’t get much work done because everybody keeps coming into my office, you know, bugging me and, and same thing can happen at home. You gotta set boundaries. That’s the, that’s the word I’m looking for. Have to set really clear boundaries where if you do have kids, if you do have a dog, if you do have a, a wife or a spouse or whatever it is that you have, just make sure you have clear boundaries to let them know, right this time I’m at work

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. And, uh, sometimes it can be difficult to get kids to understand, but, but they learn quickly though. C- i- you know, especially if they’re very young, they, they, they get it, [00:27:00] right? They probably learn better than some adults do, ’cause adults just don’t understand what you’re talking about. What do you mean you’re working from home?

Can’t you help me? Like, know? Right on. So, like, let’s talk a little bit about the tools that you’re using to get success in your business. I mean, hey, there’s tons of them nowadays. Like, how do you, how do you, you know, keep the shiny objects away and just use the things that you need?

Curtis McCullom: And that’s one of the thi- that’s, but that’s one of my weaknesses, uh, Jim, is like I, I, Tim, I, I love, I, I love shiny stuff. You know? So like I was telling you before, you know, like you don’t need, you don’t need… I mean, I was telling you about the camera setup I have right now, right? You know, I have two lights.

I have a light here coming down. As you can see, the background lights. What you see behind me, that is actually my office. That’s not a filtered background. That’s my office. That was a TV. So basically, do you need… For my business, part of it is being an authority, right? And so I want to make people feel when they come into my office like, hey, Curtis [00:28:00] has a feeling, or he has, uh, that his office feels like he knows what he’s talking about, ’cause I do.

But I want them to feel that. So I think whatever, if, if you’re doing something like this, you need something that’s conducive that you don’t want it… I, I’ve seen it where I’m, I’m going into other people’s rooms, and they’re in their bedroom, and the bed is not made up, and there’s clothes all over. That’s not cool.

You wanna make sure that you’re in a conducive area. So for me, I like equipment. I like toys. So y- you talking about me, like I said, I got a, what, a $3,000 camera body, a 2,000, $3,000 lens there, and all this kind of… I love that kind of stuff. I love sound. I love… So, you know, I have Adam Studio. What is that? Yeah, yeah, the, the Adam Auto, uh, audio monitors and a- all this stuff.

So y- do you need that? No. But you need something that it is that’s gonna give you what you want to make sure that you are successful

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And then you can, yeah, I mean, [00:29:00] you can upgrade that stuff as time goes on,

Curtis McCullom: Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, if– I didn’t start here now. Trust me, I didn’t start here . I didn’t start here. That’s where I am now. When I started, you know, whatever I could do. I could use the, the, the camera on the computer. That’s all I had. But wherever you are, don’t let that prevent you from starting.

Because at the end of the day, people don’t buy that stuff. They don’t. They don’t care. They don’t ca- They want– Th- they don’t care what type of camera I’m using. Only thing they care about, can I solve a problem? And that’s what people really want. They want somebody that’s authentic. So work on you being the authentic being that you can be.

Work on yourself becoming the best version of yourself, and all the other stuff will come. So you’re talking about what’s really important. What’s really important is your mindset and who you are, being authentic, a being, being an authentic being. That’s what’s the most important thing

Tim Melanson: So this is probably a per- [00:30:00] perfect time to give you the solo then. So tell me what’s exciting in your business

Curtis McCullom: Basically, look guys, this is the deal. You know, I can help you, and the best way to get in touch with me is come and visit my website. It’s at, at Bespoke Human Potential Coaching. That’s one, the long way to get there, or you can come there from curtismccullum.com. Either one. And when you get there, you’re gonna have an opportunity to either do a free 15-minute, uh, uh, clarity call with me, and then I also have a couple of things on that site that kind of…

some tools that you can utilize to see where, where you are on your journey so I can actually help you best. Maybe I can or not. It– This is the thing about it, though. If I can’t help you, I’m gonna let you know, and I’m gonna point you into the right direction. And this is the thing. I don’t work with people who are not ready to work.

You know? So it’s like one of the things I, I tell people all the time, "On a scale from one to 10, how bad you wanna change this?" And you tell me a four, [00:31:00] I’m like, say, "You know what? You’re in a great place right now. I don’t work with fours." The reason I don’t work with fours is because of the fact that I don’t wanna mess my track record up.

When I come– when you come to me, you gotta come ready to get results. And if you’re ready to get results, come and visit me, get the free consultation, and let’s get– let’s do some work together

Tim Melanson: That’s great. Well, and, and that’s it, right? It’s the win-win. If you’re both winning, then

Curtis McCullom: Oh, yeah. I mean, a- and that’s the whole idea is that because it, it’s like change and wanting to have, wanting to become the best, wanting to increase your income, wanting to figure out what is it that’s stopping me, because we have a lot of talented people out there, but then there’s this fear, this something that’s driving their behavior that’s preventing them from actually breaking through.

What I do, I help you figure that out so that you don’t have that problem anymore. And this is the c- crazy thing about it, Tim, is that most of the time it’s not something that you think it is. You know, uh, sometimes people think, "Oh [00:32:00] yeah, I had a bad breakup six months ago, and I’m still suffering from the bad breakup."

Usually that’s– the subconscious mind stores information based on what we call a gestalt, feelings that are similar. So that’s not the root cause. And most coaches and most therapists, they basically go with that one incident. I don’t do that. Basically, I go back to figure out what is the root cause of this feeling or emotion, and let’s pull up the root so that we can get rid of the thing for, for good.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I, I don’t know if, if this is something you would answer, but what, what is the most common issue that you, that you come across?

Curtis McCullom: I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Curtis McCullom: That’s the biggest lies that, that, that, that people have to overcome. I mean, because that’s a big one because of the fact that… A- a- and this is the thing, because subtle things that we experienced when we were, when we were small [00:33:00] children, and, uh, it could have been an offhanded remark that a parent, a sibling, or, you know, y- your brother, sister, nephew, somebody said to you, but you took it as being true,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Curtis McCullom: and you continue to replay that.

So when, when, when you, when you come up against things, that’s still feeling I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy, and that kinda drives fear. ‘Cause I’m… The reason I’m fear because I’m feel like I’m not good enough. The reason I’m fearful because I feel like I’m not worthy. So basically those are, to me, that’s the overarching thing of most of the challenges that we have, is that, that, that feeling of, of I’m not good enough

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s crazy. Uh, you know what’s funny is that, uh, when I was first starting to play music, I learned late. I was 22 when I first started playing guitar. Yep. And, uh, about 24, so two years later, was my first gig. And, uh, if, if you can imagine that, [00:34:00] how good could I have been two years later than that? Not super good.

But I was having fun, and someone asked me to play, and so I went out and played. And then people just kept on hiring me. And I remember thinking, "I’m definitely not good enough." But, but I also remember thinking, "People keep hiring me, so I’m just gonna keep on doing it,"

Curtis McCullom: There you go. I love that. I love

Tim Melanson: you just keep on doing it.

But, but I mean, imagine if, like, uh, I, I imagine there’s a lot of people that have that thought, but they don’t get that, that opportunity of someone saying, "Well, I’m gonna pay you for that," right? And, and if they don’t, well then you’ll never know. Like it’s just luck of the draw for me for that one

Curtis McCullom: Well, it’s not, basically you still had a positive mindset. I mean, you still had something in you. That’s, that’s rare that regardless of what’s coming up. Because think about it like this. W- you, as you well know this being in the business, the best singers are not the m- [00:35:00] s- are not sometime the most successful people in the business.

Tim Melanson: I agree with that.

Curtis McCullom: I’m, I’m right. I mean, the, the best players are not the most successful. But they have a mindset of regardless of what, I’m gonna do this, hell or high water. I’m gonna invest all of my time, energy, and effort, and I see myself as being successful. And the most talented sometimes can’t see themself being successful.

They have that mindset of, "I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy." And it’s, you know, I, I’m looking, I’m like, what? You hear those people on, on, on recordings and stuff like, what the heck? Who’s paying them? How do they get a following? Because

Tim Melanson: I

Curtis McCullom: gonna like you. You just got to put yourself out there, man

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. That’s, uh, that’s amazing. All right, well, so how do we, uh, w- how do we find out more? You s- you mentioned your website earlier. C- tell me again what that was

Curtis McCullom: Basically, it’s at Bespoke Human Potential Coaching,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Curtis McCullom: or you can go, uh, [00:36:00] .com and- or you can go to curtismccullum.com. You can also reach me on, on, I’m on all the m- um, major platforms. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on, um, I have a podcast on Spotify, I have YouTube channel, Curtis McCullom, I have Instagram. So you can reach me on any of those platforms.

I got a lot of content out there that people can kinda listen to, to kinda get to know me a little bit. And, um, yeah, so they can find me out there for sure

Tim Melanson: Right on. Okay, before we go, let’s talk a little bit about music. So tell me, who’s your favorite rock star or band?

Curtis McCullom: Uh, I, I’m a old school boy, and m- my favorite probably, Earth, Wind & Fire would be p- one of my favorite kind of bands, right? I mean, because of the sound and the, the instruments and the… Oh my God, it’s just like, I like musicality, right? I like to hear every sound. And so when I, when I buy, uh, a headsets or something, I wanna hear, [00:37:00] I w- I, I wanna hear the distance between the music.

I wanna hear the symbols make the sounds and all this kind of stuff. So Earth, Wind & Fire was big with music, meaning like they had a band. They had a true band with instruments and stuff, and most of these bands these days don’t do that. Um, as far as the greatest, the best singer, um, I love ballads, and so Luther Vandross was probably one of my favorite, you know, of all time.

I went to, every time he came to Southern California, I went to his concerts. And man, man, you’re talking about, uh, music too because he had, I mean, the, the instruments and the things that he had. Live music was something powerful and the separation of the sounds and stuff. So that would be my, my two

Tim Melanson: Yeah, isn’t that amazing? So w- what do you like better, live or on, on your headphones?

Curtis McCullom: Hmm, that’s a good one. If it’s, if, if it’s, if it’s a good live show, because I did go to a live, I think, um, I went to a live show and I was in a, the, the, the, the [00:38:00] vibe wasn’t there because the crowd wasn’t there. So you know, it’s like even on, he was, it was, uh, John, John Legend. I went to a John Legend concert when he came to Ca- when he came to California, and he sang great and everything was good, but the people around me was like, "Ah."

They were just there. They were not true fans, and so you really couldn’t really get into it. So it’s a cardi, man. I mean, I like to crank up, crank up the music and just like listen to it with the headset or live, either one. I mean, I, I like both, but if it’s, like I said, when I went to Luther Vandross concert it was great.

Uh, and so yeah, I like both though

Tim Melanson: Amazing. Thank you so much, Curtis. This has been a lot of fun

Curtis McCullom: Yeah. Yeah, man, I, I, I appreciate the opportunity to come to speak to your audience. And if they need some help and support, hey, I’m here for them. Uh, and if I, if I don’t have the answer, I’ll definitely point you into the right direction. Um, that’s what it’s all about, ’cause I’m looking for… Like I told you before, I’m looking for people who are [00:39:00] looking for me.

Tim Melanson: We’re all looking

Curtis McCullom: and being authentic, right, being authentically me is more than enough. And if I’m not your guy, that’s okay. I want you to help- I wanna help you find your guy or your gal, whoever, who you ever need to actually help you move forward

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well, thank you again. This has been a lot of fun. 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