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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: and how did they transpire?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Mm-hmm.

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

Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Assessment.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Absolutely. Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

R. Karl Hebenstreit: out to Tim.

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

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

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

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

So I think those are huge.

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

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

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

So I think conferences are

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Who can say

Tim Melanson: Who can say, isn’t that

R. Karl Hebenstreit: what does real really mean?

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

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

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

R. Karl Hebenstreit: that’s right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: she’s

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

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

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

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

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

R. Karl Hebenstreit: Yes.

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: From Pink.

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

Tim Melanson: This is the G version of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jamie Levin: I am so ready to rock.

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

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

Tim Melanson: Wow. Well, what next?

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Jamie Levin: I was burnt out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jamie Levin: Right, right. Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Absolutely not. I don’t,

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

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

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

Jamie Levin: right.

Tim Melanson: Um.

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

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

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

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

Just my dog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jamie Levin: Yeah.

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right.

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

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

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

Like, you know what you’re walking into.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jamie Levin: 100%.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

Jamie Levin: so yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right.

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Jamie Levin: commercial cleaning company has like some pretty cool things they do when it comes to that and like how does that contribute to, you know. Productivity in the workforce and people being able to go and schools not being impacted. And so how do you make, so whatever’s going on in the world can also contribute to what you’re able to share and how a client of yours, you know, can support people in the world that day. Like that’s pretty cool.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. And that’s, uh, so yeah, I mean, I’d like to know more about, about that because the thing about that is that you have to really have a pulse on what’s going on in the world and for. The people that are running the businesses that you work for, do they really have time to do all that stuff?

Like they’re busy breathing their business, right?

Jamie Levin: Yeah, that’s what [00:25:00] I always say. PR is extra credit. Um, you know, it’s also a challenge ’cause it’s hard to. To say like, Hey, here’s your ROI on the article I

secured for you last week, but how amazing was it when my energy clients sent me through like, Hey, just so you know, this CPA lead came in through the column that we wrote for this publication.

I was like, oh my gosh, you’re amazing. You just made my day. Thank you for letting me know, right? Because all I can tell you is, hey, if you were gonna buy an ad in this publication, it would cost you X, Y, Z, and we got the same space and it just cost you my time.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Jamie Levin: like your brain power to bring it to life and your time to do an interview.

So, um, so yeah, that part’s fun also.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, you know, media and, and that kind of stuff is so much more accessible now than it was 20 years ago too, right. So just about any company can jump into it as long as they have someone that knows what they’re doing, right.

Jamie Levin: Right? Yeah. Yeah.

And there’s so many different channels too, [00:26:00] which is, you know, is a lot to keep up with. Um. But are people really reading the newspaper anymore?

Tim Melanson: No, no, they’re not.

Jamie Levin: I mean, they may be reading it online, right?

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Jamie Levin: But I’m a little old school. I still like a book other rather than a Kindle. So I don’t know. Maybe there are still some, I’m not sure.

Tim Melanson: oh, sure. There’s a few here and there. Right.

Jamie Levin: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: But definitely not the masses. So, so tell me, like, how would somebody, what’s the process of, of someone getting in touch with you? What, what do they do?

Jamie Levin: Yeah, I like to consider myself pretty accessible. Um, you know, they can go to my website, which is just j 11 communications.com, and there’s a way to get in touch with me there. Um, that’s easy because life shouldn’t be hard for certain things, um, or LinkedIn or. Send smoke signals, I don’t know. But, um, yeah, I, six degrees of separation.

Shoot me an email. Send me, [00:27:00] um, my clients love to text me and that’s cool too, right? Because it works. So, uh, any which way works for me?

Tim Melanson: So what’s the type of client that would get the most outta working out, working with you?

Jamie Levin: I would say someone who’s. You know, is interested in getting out there from a, again, this is, if we’re just talking like the external side, right? Because there’s internal also, but from an external perspective, it’s somebody who understands that they’re competing with every other person in their industry for news coverage.

So let’s be mindful, you know, on the first day you’re not gonna get the Today Show. Like it’s just, it’s not gonna happen. I will, I will level set with you right there. But I think it’s someone who’s willing to get a little creative. Wants to get some exposure and some, you know, recognize themselves as a subject matter expertise and knows what their target is.

Like, there is nothing more attractive to me than someone who’s [00:28:00] like, this is who I need to talk to. And I’m like, great, if that’s who you need to talk to, this is where we’re going. Um, because then I can be more effective rather than, you know, casting the wide net. And is that necessary? Sometimes a hundred percent.

Also side note, that helps with SEO and SEM, right? So. If you have a good marketing person or a good agency, then we work together, we partner, and then things get really exciting and sexy. But, um, I would say someone who’s just interested in getting themselves out there and is willing to give a little bit of time.

Right. Because if you’re not willing to give me a little bit of time, I’m not gonna be helpful to you. And I’ll tell you that from the very beginning. I’m very, very honest.

Tim Melanson: great. So probably the hardest question. Tell me who’s your favorite rockstar?

Jamie Levin: Oh gosh. My husband would want me to say my favorite band is Phish, and I think my nephew would do,

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Jamie Levin: um, jam band. Um, [00:29:00] that’s a tough one

for me. I, because you know why? Because just like, I like all different industries. I like all different kinds of music. I like can go country, I can go rap, I can go r and b, I can go rock.

Um, I just love music. I just love music, but I don’t have, like, I don’t know, I don’t have a favorite,

Tim Melanson: Have you been to a

Jamie Levin: so I’m not sure what that says about me, but I’m a chameleon.

Tim Melanson: Yes. Oh me. Well, me too. I, I love all music. I do love

Jamie Levin: What’s your favorite, though? Like if, if I ask you the same question, what’s

Tim Melanson: I love The Beatles. The Beatles are my favorite band. Yeah. Um, but I mean, that’s just, it’s just the answer that I give. ’cause I do enjoy all types of music and, uh, so similar to you and Phish is awesome. I, I’ve been to a few of the phish uh, festivals back in the nineties and they were, they were crazy.

Jamie Levin: Still going strong.

Tim Melanson: Still going strong. That’s awesome. [00:30:00] Well, thank you so much for rocking on me today, Jamie. This has been a lot of fun.

Jamie Levin: Thank you. I appreciate it. Normally my clients are in front of it, so in front of the camera, so I, I took my turn today and I appreciate the opportunity.

Tim Melanson: Well, you did an excellent job.

Jamie Levin: Thank.

Tim Melanson: Thank you. And thank you to the listeners as well. Make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information and we’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast.

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. Today’s episode, we are talking to a speaker, an author, a podcaster, an insurance agent, and what he does is he helps people to navigate working from home. So I’m super excited to be rocking out today with Chris Castanes. Hey Chris, you ready to rock?

Chris Castanes: I am Tim. I am. All ready to go, man. You got me all juiced up here now. Ready and excited.

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

Chris Castanes: Oh, great. Uh, one of, one of the, one of the stories of success is, um, honestly, I just, I wanna, I like bragging about my books. I, I’ve written a couple of books. Um, one of them, the first one I self-published, it was just a learning curve that was took forever and it, when I published it. I felt like I had really accomplished something.

It took me about six months to figure out how to do it, edit photos and all that stuff. And it was just fun [00:01:00] to do, you know, it was just like a good project and the book was, did exactly what I wanted it to do, which was just be a good marketing tool and get my, my name out there and let people know this is what I do.

And it, it was just, you know, it was like a little win for me. It was, it was a good one.

Tim Melanson: Nice. Yeah. Writing a book is kind of a big deal, isn’t it?

Chris Castanes: Yeah, I mean, it was fun. I, it was really a lark at the time. I was wanting to just write a book on something that I wish somebody had told me before I got into the business of sales. So the book is called, you’re Gonna Be Great at This, and. And, um, and the reason I call it that was because anytime, I don’t know if you’ve ever been on any, uh, interviews for sales jobs, but especially a, a position that’s a hundred percent.

Uh, commission, you know, where they don’t, you don’t have a salary and they can’t find people. They, they’re always looking for people for these positions. So they, they just tell you [00:02:00] stuff, you know, oh, it’s the best product ever, and we’re the greatest company ever. And, and, you know, we’ve got the best products and you’re, and people are gonna love it, and you don’t even have to sell it.

They’re gonna come to you and ask for it, which is all, you know, not

true. And then of course they always throw in that, you know, we’ve, even though we’ve only known you for eight seconds and you’ve got a great personality, we know you’re gonna be great at this. And I always, I always tell people, when you hear that run, you know, that’s so people think when I say, yeah, it’s called, you’re gonna be great at this.

They think it’s like motivational, but I’m like, no, it’s not, not, that’s not what it’s.

Tim Melanson: It’s a bit sarcastic, I guess.

Chris Castanes: Yeah, it’s a little backhanded, you know? Here you go. So, but that’s what the, that’s the whole tone of that book is, is just, here’s stuff that’s out there, the landmines and what to look out for if you’re going into a sales position and it’s, and it’s all, or, or if you’re self-employed.

’cause if you’re self-employed, you’re in sales. And that’s the whole point of the book. But yeah, that was my, that’s [00:03:00] my, my win, I guess.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Right on. Well, along with the good notes, sometimes things don’t go as planned, and I do like to talk about the bad notes as well. So can you tell me something that didn’t go as planned and how you recovered?

Chris Castanes: Uh, well, that’s every day. You know, it’s, uh, being, being a business owner, you always have those, those down notes. And, um, I, I, a great one was just yesterday, as a matter of fact. It was just, you know, coming out of the new year, you’ve got your, you. New motivation, you know, I’m gonna go out there and knock it outta the park.

And my resolutions and what I’ve been doing recently is just sending people emails and notes on LinkedIn and saying, Hey, here’s my calendar. Book a time and I’ll come to you and we’ll meet. And um, sure enough, I got my first, uh, stood up for my first appointment of the year yesterday after driving 20, about 20 miles to this coffee shop and.

Nobody showed up and I’m calling ’em, and they didn’t even return the phone call. So that’s my [00:04:00] one, one of those little failures that it just, you know, there again. It’s, it’s, it’s just those things that happened, but it’s, you know, and it’s, it was a little extra punch in the gut because this person booked the appointment on, on to, on their time.

So it wasn’t, like I said, I’m gonna see you, you know, at this point and this time they did it, and it still didn’t, they still didn’t show up. So, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s par for the course when you’re in business though.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, uh, I mean, nowadays, like thank goodness for Zoom, uh, like I moved everything pretty much to zoom now. I barely ever go and meet anybody in person anymore. And you know, so this sting is much less when they don’t show up to a Zoom call as opposed to driving across the city just for a meeting, uh, you

Chris Castanes: I know it is, it is painful and, and Zoom is, is great. I’ve actually done a few more Zoom calls, especially since COVID of course, but you know, [00:05:00] I’m still old school, you know, let’s go meet for some coffee, I’ll buy you some coffee, and I give ’em some brochures and you know, that kind of thing. And it’s hard to do that when you’re over a computer, but at the same time, you know, I’m not wasting, you know, a gallon of gasoline.

Whatever else, you know. Uh, hour of my time, hour and a half driving all over the place for nothing. So there’s good and bad, but yeah, I, I get it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it does happen, eh, uh, and, you know, ’cause, uh. Mean, you had mentioned that you’ve been self-employed for a long time now, 25 years, right? Isn’t it? Something like that or

Chris Castanes: yeah, I mean, I’ve been, I’ve been in sales since I got outta college back in 1985, but I went, I went. Back to the corporate world for a little bit, um, and gotten back in back, gotten back into sales in 2000

and, um, and I’ve been self-employed ever since. And it’s, you know, it’s got a lot of ups [00:06:00] and downs.

It’s fun. You know, you have to, you have to learn how to navigate ma, manage your time wisely, um, market yourself, all those things that are. You know, customer service, once you get the sale, you still have to service the customer and you know, it,

Tim Melanson: Yeah, there’s a lot of juggling. Mm-hmm.

Chris Castanes: yeah. You gotta wear a lot of hats and, you know, I, I ha luckily I haven’t had many HR complaints on myself, so, but, but if I don’t start behaving, I, I might turn myself in for something.

Tim Melanson: Jeez, you’re, you’re lucky. You’ve got a good boss.

Chris Castanes: I know.

Tim Melanson: Well, uh, I, I do think so. I mean, talking about sales, I, you know, I, I did spend some time in, uh, in commission sales as well, mostly in the network marketing industry actually. And, uh, I, I think it’s, it’s, it’s interesting because it’s one of those things that, [00:07:00] um, when you start a business. You know, you think, oh, you know, I’m, I’m a great, you know, whatever it is, you know, a mechanic or hairdresser or web developer, whatever it happens to be, and you think I’m just gonna start my own business and cut out the middleman.

And you really realize really quickly that sales is like a lot of it, like a lot of it. And, uh, I don’t think, I don’t think a lot of people are really prepared for that. Uh, we don’t, we don’t learn sales in school, do we?

Chris Castanes: No, we don’t and, and I wish they. Hal it, uh, uh, honestly, I do, and, and I talk about that in my first book about how there you get people who get caught up in network, network, uh, sales and, and affiliate sales and things like that, and, and they’ve bought a franchise into some multi-level marketing. And, um, you know, okay, it’s just a side hustle.

You don’t have to, and they don’t realize it’s, it’s sales, you know, and, and you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta go out there and, and, and do the stuff. You gotta [00:08:00] network. You know, you can’t, what, what do we say? You can’t just put your lamp. I think it says it in the Bible somewhere. Like you can’t just put your lamp under the, the table, you gotta put it on top of the table for everybody to see it.

So you can’t just sit at home and, and hope that, you know, invite your 37 Facebook friends to your new business page and expect them to buy things. You gotta go out there and hustle and, and go to networking events and online things and LinkedIn and everything. It’s, it’s, you gotta, especially now with.

Social media, you’ve gotta really do a whole holistic approach to your, your marketing. And if you do the marketing. Efficiently and effectively that takes more of that sales workload off of your plate. The, the, the sales is a whole lot easier if the marketing is done right. So that’s always been the, you know, the thrust is like, let’s, let’s figure out how to market first, then we can set the [00:09:00] table for the sale.

Otherwise, you’re just going in and. To cold call people, and it’s brutal, you

know? So,

Tim Melanson: Yep. Oh yeah. And I’ve been there too. The cold calling and all that stuff. ’cause I, I, you know, I, I, it’s, it’s funny ’cause I mean, you know, a lot of people have a really negative opinion of, you know, multilevel marketing and all that stuff. And yeah, there’s a ton of scams and a ton of scammers, that’s for sure.

However. Uh, the, the, the other side of it is that if you were to get into it, not thinking that you’re gonna be a millionaire, ’cause come on, you’re, you’re probably not, uh, especially if you have no experience, uh, but you will learn, you will learn a lot about people, about, about communication and about sales.

And I think what the, the kind of like a bit of a distinguisher between what you just said there about the marketing and the sales, you know, part of it is you gotta figure out a way to get people to come to you in the first place. And then once they come to you, you gotta figure out a way to talk to them to try to connect you what you do to [00:10:00] what they do.

And that would be more like the sales side of it? Is that how, how you see it too?

Chris Castanes: Oh yeah, I mean, exactly. I mean, I mean take, take for something for instance, like, um, you know, hamburgers, you know McDonald’s. Does all the marketing upfront. They don’t have a sales guy just walking around town going, Hey, who wants a double cheeseburger?

You know? And, and so you walk into their business and then they still upsell you, you know, Hey, did you want fries with that or do you wanna supersize that, or whatever.

So. Even though every industry’s not the same, you know, nobody, people enjoy hamburgers, people don’t enjoy buying life insurance. And so you really have to make the marketing even better or more effective on that, in that industry. Um, because people are going, gosh, you know, if I got a choice between, I’ve got 10 bucks in my hand and I’ve got a choice between having a happy meal or having, you know, covering my family if I die. [00:11:00] They’re gonna take the.

Tim Melanson: They are gonna take the hamburger. We know that. Yeah. Well, yeah. ’cause uh, I mean, now, you know, the, the world is so different, like, because there’s, I mean, there’s two types of businesses that you might be running. You might be running a business where nobody knows what you do and nobody understands what you do, and you have to spend some time educating them on why they even need you in the first place.

But then there’s the other side of it of. Everybody knows what you do. You know, it’s something that everybody needs. But now you gotta figure out how to, how to distinguish yourself against everybody else who’s selling the same thing, right? And both of those are very challenging,

Chris Castanes: Yeah, I mean, especially if you’re, uh, you know, if you create your, uh, something totally new. If you’ve come up with some totally new product or new market that nobody even knew, knew was needed, the education part, like you said, that could, that could cost you. Thousands of of dollars just to, just to [00:12:00] get people to wrap their head around what you’re trying to explain to ’em.

Um, you know, compared to, you know, well, we sell screwdrivers. Everybody, everybody’s, everybody that’s ever had a toolbox has a screwdriver in there, but nobody’s gonna know about some new. App that measures houses or something, you know, whatever. So there’s always the education part that kind of ties in with the marketing, but it’s, it’s such a, a bear sometimes if you’re doing something that’s just people don’t understand, or, you know, what, what I tell people a lot of times is there’s, I, I’ll give them the fill in the blank, uh, scenario.

I’ll say, okay, I am saving up for blank. Just think in your head, what do people save up for? You know, they save up for a down payment on a car or a home. Uh, nobody saves up for. Long-term care insurance.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Chris Castanes: you know, so, so if, if your industry doesn’t fit in that, [00:13:00] that little blank very well, then you’re gonna have a much harder time selling that product.

And so, and that means you’re gonna have to figure out how to market it. And if you’re not good at marketing, you might want to spend the money to hire a marketing firm. You might want to go and learn how to be a marketer, but. If you’re that poor guy that went out and joined, you know, you’ve been working in the engineering field all your life and now you’ve decided that you wanna sell protein shakes on the side as part of a multi-level marketing, just as a side hustle, and you don’t know anything about sales or marketing or anything like that.

It, it can be a bear. And I, I go to networking events all the time and I see people and they’ve come from these, you know, well, by the way, I’ve also got this other product and they just look sad, you know, they just, they look like somebody just punched them in the gut. Like, nobody told me I was gonna have to come to do all this stuff.

You know, they told me people would just come to me and, and get it, you know, so it, it’s. It I, it’s one of those things where you just wish people would [00:14:00] be honest and upfront when they say, Hey, we’ve got some idea for you, a business idea or sales product. We want you to sell and tell you, here’s the batting average and here’s how many people have come through the door in the last week that didn’t do well at this.

And here’s, you know, they always wanna show you the leaderboard. You know, here’s all man. Look at these top producers. Well, those are three guys out of 10,000 that have come through in the last six months. Where are the other ones? You know, so it’s, that’s one of my big gripes has always been, just be honest with people.

If what you’re selling is difficult, let ’em know that because turnover costs money too. And when you’re hiring salespeople or you’re hiring people to come onto your on board and sell your products, that costs you a lot of money as well. Uh, time and effort and get materials and training, training and all that stuff can cost a lot of money.

So you could really nip that in the bud. By just telling people upfront, here’s the real deal. I’m not gonna give you the rose colored glasses. [00:15:00] I’m gonna let you, you know, do you think you’re up for this? That’s, that’s the way I, I position it because I also hire, I don’t wanna say hire, but I have a little downline of insurance agents and, um, and I don’t take ’em unless they’ve been in the industry at least two years.

I, I don’t want the rookies, I don’t have time for it. Um, let, there’s a whole other. 10,000 other insurance companies out there that will hire the rookies and they’ll weed ’em out. And then I’ll take those that are sticking around and I’ll say, okay, come and work with me for a little bit also. So it’s, we’ve kind of gone off topic here a little bit, but the marketing and the is just, is such a.

Big, you know, part of it and, and making sure that you know how to position your products and, and if you don’t know how to position your business, especially if it’s a, a service industry, you know, something like that, real estate or something, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta really learn that part of the business as well.

Tim Melanson: Well, I mean, yes, but also [00:16:00] there’s another thing that I noticed too, is that there. Uh, I, there are some people that tend to, it doesn’t matter what they’re selling, they’re good at it.

Chris Castanes: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: You know, like it’s just, you, you know, you have, you have some people that just, you know, especially in those, in those companies that will jump around from like protein shakes and now they’re selling insurance, and now they’re selling and they’re, they’re making boatloads of money and no matter what they sell.

So there is some sort of like, like com, like there is sort of some sort of base skill, right. Involved. Right.

Chris Castanes: There’s, there’s a mentality there, and you’re right. You know, you can get that person and they’ll say, dude, I’ve been selling cars and I’ve been really good at it, and I’m just tired of it. I want to go sell. Refrigerators

Tim Melanson: Right.

Chris Castanes: whatever. And there are, those people are always gonna be out there, but they’re the, they’re far and few between really.

Um, and, and usually when you see those veterans at some, whatever business it is, say, say it is a, a big life insurance company, that guy [00:17:00] that’s been there for. 25, 30 years, he’s that person. He or she’s that girl that can go out and go wherever she wants to go. And if you’re good at sales, that sales set, that skillset is transferrable,

Tim Melanson: Yes. Yeah.

Chris Castanes: you know, and, and, and they can sell Yellow Pages ads.

They can sell ice to the Eskimos. But the question is. There, you know, how much ice did that Eskimo really need? And are you really doing that? Uh, that person, the service that you, you say that you are, are you, you know, are your values, uh, being translated through that transaction? So it’s really a matter of making sure that you know.

You know what you’re doing, how to do it right, and, and you can learn it. You know, there’s always positive. We’ve gotta have a positive mindset and all this stuff. I know some people that have really bad mindsets and they still sell, you know,

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Chris Castanes: you know, so I, it, I’ve never, I’m not a psychologist. [00:18:00] I’m, I don’t even play one on tv, but I can tell you that I’ve worked with all sorts of people and, and the ones that usually are successful, the ones that are just.

Let me, let me talk to you like we’re just friends and have a good conversation, and I’ll tell you the, the ups and downs, I’ll give you the positives and the negatives of this product or service. And those people gain trust, they gain credibility, and they’re gonna get the referrals and they don’t have to do all that.

Stressed out. High pressure selling. You know, I, I always say don’t do high pressure selling. Do good pressure selling. Um, you know, don’t tell people you have to have this life insurance product. Just go, look, Tim, you know, you’re married, you’ve got a, a family, you’ve got a mortgage. This is something you need.

If you or my brother or sister right now, I would highly recommend this. And that’s, that’s just good pressure. You know, I’m not, I’m not gonna beat you up if you don’t buy it. We’re still friends, whatever.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Chris Castanes: And just [00:19:00] take it down a notch.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yeah. So what about, uh, what about mentorship? Like, do you, do you have mentors in your life that have gotten you to this point?

Chris Castanes: I’ve had a few mentors and, um, you know, my, my big thing on that has always been just. You’re always gonna have like a manager or a sales manager or somebody, don’t regard that as a mentor. Regard them for what they are. A good mentor won’t have any kind of financial stake in your success. And if you can find that person who, like for me, I had a older gentleman years ago who took me under his wing and he was retired and he just said, you know, I’ll just check in with you every once in a while and if you’ve got a a problem.

Call me and he showed me the ropes and, and really taught me a lot. And when I was doing well, he. He was happy, but he wasn’t making any money off of me. You know, he wasn’t going, Hey, [00:20:00] yeah, I finally got that guy making me an override commission, whatever. So, you know, and then when I was doing bad, I could pick up the phone and, you know, cry my blues to him and he would say, you know, well, let’s, let’s figure out what you’re doing wrong.

You know, so that’s, that’s a great mentor there. But a sales manager. No, not really. They’re just, they’re just trying to get you to stay in line and make sure that you’re doing, you know, they’ll, I mean, they, sometimes their intentions are good, but you have to understand that their intentions are also to keep their job and your job is to help them, you know, so.

Tim Melanson: There’s a bit of a conflict of interest. So I mean, it, it can, it can go in your favor because I mean, the conflict of interest is on a positive side. They win by you winning, so that’s good. But on the negative side, they might talk, not give you those like tough to hear truths, right?

Chris Castanes: Well, and they will, but they’ll, but then they’ll say, you know, well you need to get out there. And

you know, when somebody says, well, if you [00:21:00] just change your attitude, well, you know. Or, or like my, like my old man used to say, you know, all you need to do is go out there and get 10 pounds of confidence, you know?

And I’m like, well, you get confidence from getting little successes. And that’s, that’s how you build that confidence up. You don’t just go like, alright, I’m confident now. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a progress. So, yeah. You know, it, it, it’s good and bad both. But I just always try to find somebody that’s a little bit more detached from the situation and it can be a little bit more objective and, um, you know, they’ll, they’ll help you out.

You can always find somebody.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think that’s important too. Like, I think, I think that having a, you know, a rich circle of influence, you know, in and outta your business. I mean, because I mean, if. Is it, it’s blind spots, right? I mean, you know, if, if you’re talking to somebody who’s in the same business as you all the time, then they might not be able to see what somebody who has no idea.[00:22:00]

Like I, I remember when I, even when I was in university, um, when I was struggling with a tough. Problem. It was more helpful for me to talk to somebody who had no idea what I was doing than it was for some, for me to talk to one of my, to one of my, my classmates, because you have to explain it to them in a way that they would understand.

And then they go, oh, well I see your problem. Or they don’t even, sometimes they don’t even say anything. It’s just you work through your own problem by going, oh, that’s what I’m doing wrong, just by explaining it to somebody.

Chris Castanes: by explaining it and breaking it down into very basic pieces, you’re, you’re explaining it to yourself. You know, and, and that’s a great con. That’s a great idea. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, and I mean, hey, nowadays we can talk to chat, chat bots and stuff like that and probably flesh through some of these things without even taking someone’s time. But on the other hand, having a person is, is, is, is better, I think.

Chris Castanes: Yeah. [00:23:00] Or cat, you know, I just get my cat and talk to my cat.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, so now you mentioned like, uh, you know, confidence comes from getting little wins.

Like, do you have any practices that, you know help you to get that those little wins or

Chris Castanes: Uh, well, one of the things I do is I just keep my calendar, uh, booked. You know, I try not to have a whole lot of downtime, uh, between, we always used to say, uh, between 10 and four you should be either seeing clients or fighting to see clients and. So between 10 and four, it’s either seeing a client or I’m got it written in the calendar, you know, I’m going to do some marketing, or I’m gonna do some, make some phone calls, or I’m gonna be sending out emails or whatever I gotta do.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Chris Castanes: And just keep that, keep that everything’s got plugged in on that calendar. Uh, otherwise I’m sitting around playing, you know, candy Crush or watching TV or [00:24:00] whatever, hearing, you know, being self-employed and working from home. You can’t see it, but right over there’s a TV and you know, and then right back of me below this futon is my, my base.

And so, you know, there’s always that, you know, I just wanna like get up and go, man, I really would like to learn that, that new baseline that I didn’t learn, you know, whatever. So it, it’s fun. To be self-employed, but you have to have that discipline to go, I’ve got to stay narrowly focused, just if nothing else, between 10 and four.

And then, you know, from nine to 10 I’m still waking up, brushing my teeth and getting my head together and doing those things. And from four to five, I’m wrapping up the end of the day and getting ready for the next day. So if you just plug in that calendar, make sure everything’s. Good and make sure that you’re not wasting time.

Like when I get done with this podcast, I’ve probably got about 20 minutes and then I’ve gotta drive half hour up the road to a networking event and, [00:25:00] um, where I will be, you know, handing out brochures and trying to talk to people and doing all those things that are fighting to see clients, as we say, and fighting for referrals as much as you can.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, and, and, and that’s, that’s just it, right? I mean, when you’re self-employed, you don’t have a, a boss that’s telling you what to do. You don’t have that same sort of like pressure, but it’s like, um, if you don’t work, then you don’t eat. And it might take a few weeks for that to start to happen, right?

Chris Castanes: Right. I mean, you gotta get out there and just plant those seeds and, and, or it’s funny, a friend of mine, he always refers to planting seeds that will blossom down the road. And I go and, and my analogy is always I’m planting landmines and I’m waiting for somebody to step on ’em. You know? So you.

Either way, you know, you’re, when you’re in sales or self-employed or whatever you’re doing, you’ve gotta play the, play the long game as well. And you gotta really be understanding that if [00:26:00] you’re not gonna just, you know, turn on the computer today and money’s gonna come in, I’ve gotta go out there and do the work, set the set the landmines, and keep setting those landmines.

And sooner or later, the ones I, the 10 I drop today, one of ’em is gonna explode next week. And you know, that’s a violent kind of analogy, but it’s one I like.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, well there’s, there’s so much faith involved too in business. ’cause you, you, you, um. You know, it’s just, it’s different when you have that two week paycheck coming every time and you’re like, okay, well I know it’s coming. Whereas this right here, it’s like you plant all these seeds or you drop all these landmines and, and are they gonna, are they gonna pay off?

I don’t, like, you don’t really have that, uh, that shore thing, right. But I mean, on the other hand, you know, I, I mean, you’ve been self-employed for how long? I’ve been self-employed for 20. It always comes back. It does, right?

Chris Castanes: Yeah, I mean, it’s [00:27:00] it having a little faith in yourself. Goes a long way. And, and, and there again, it’s all about how, you know, those are, that’s marketing. That’s if, if it’s not working and your land minds are just duds and nobody’s stepping on ’em, then maybe you need to adjust your marketing a little bit and you have to be a little bit more self-aware of what’s working and, and just being honest and saying, and, and, and the, and the other trap is when you, when you set one landmine and somebody steps on it.

Then you think, oh, that’s always gonna work. And then you find out that that was just a fluke and that was, you know, not, it wasn’t the case. So sometimes we have that one little quick success that, and then we think, well, that’s a good pattern to get into and realize that it’s not. So it more of a trends kind of guy sometimes, and I say, let’s, let’s see what’s happening over the long term. And look at some numbers. Let’s see where the numbers are going. You just had that one one little pop, but you didn’t have another pop for a [00:28:00] month. Maybe there’s something wrong there and that’s why you’re eating mayonnaise, sandwiches for lunch instead of a, a real hamburger or something.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Right on. So let’s get into your solo. Tell me what’s exciting your business right now.

Chris Castanes: Uh, the most exciting thing right now is, is probably my podcast. I’ve, um, as, as I was telling you earlier, I, I do insurance, but I’ve branched that over into this other field. ’cause my, what I’ve done with my insurance agency, mostly since COVID, is I’ve just put it online and it’s, a lot of it is self service.

People can go on there and get their own. You know, dental and vision insurance and things like that. But what we’ve done, uh, also is with the two books and I’ve done some speaking engagements and, um, things like that. And so we’re, we’ve opened up this podcast. Arm of the business about six months ago, and I’ve just had a blast.

It’s, it is just fun. I’ve enjoyed it. I, um, I’m [00:29:00] comfortable in front of the computer talking to the camera and talking to people about, you know, fun subjects like sales and marketing and things like that. And, and I have my own podcast. I’m marketing that and it’s just fun. I mean, it, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s just something I enjoy doing and talking to other podcasters and being on a guest on other people’s shows.

It is just been, it is just been a hoot and, um, you know, and people are, are most, haven’t had any bad experiences. Everybody’s been very nice and I’ve only cried twice and so, you know, I’m very sensitive.

Tim Melanson: So what is it that you guys talk about then?

Chris Castanes: We, well, it’s very similar to your podcast here. We talk about, uh, things that can help, um, small business owners, solopreneurs, uh, anybody that’s self-employed. You know, ten nine, what we call 10 99 salespeople here in, in the states. Um, you know, we don’t have benefits, so we have to get our own [00:30:00] ’cause everybody else has employee benefits and we don’t.

So we have to do our own, uh, thing when it comes to that. But we do our own marketing and so I’m very active in, in like the local Chamber of commerce.

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Chris Castanes: you know, and I, and networking events and those, and what you find is that’s, that’s that world, more of those people, uh, and we’re all in the same boat.

And even though we’re not, I, a lot of times I’ll go to a networking event or, and there’ll be, uh. Competitors of mine there, and we network. And just because somebody’s your competitor doesn’t mean you can’t get along with ’em and talk to ’em. And, and I’ve actually gotten more business referrals from my competitors who don’t like doing some of the things I do.

And I don’t like doing some of the things that they’re doing. So we’re swapping referrals amongst ourselves and that’s the kind of thing we talk about on the podcast, uh, mindset, uh, skill sets. Just tips and tricks, uh, you know, [00:31:00] things that can help people. You know, one of my, one of my favorite little pieces of advice, you know, sometimes it’s like if you got a sign magnet on your car, where are you gonna park your car at the grocery store?

You know? And I always tell people are like, huh? I don’t, I’ve never even considered that. Park it next to where you, everybody pushes their shopping carts, right?

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Chris Castanes: Because that’s gonna be the highest visibility. And, and, and I’ve had people, I’ve never even thought that that would be a thing. But you know, I don’t know if that’s gonna help, but it’s not gonna do you any good to park your car in the back of the parking lot ’cause you’re afraid another car might hit you if you’ve got a sign magnet.

What was the point of getting the sign magnet? Nobody’s gonna put it, come out there and see it, you know? So you might as well make it in braille if you’re gonna do that. So I don’t know. So that’s the kind of thing we put on our show. It’s just, uh. You know, tips and tricks and helpful advice and marketing and networking and things like that.

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

Chris Castanes: Uh, well the show is called, um, you’re gonna be great at this. It’s on [00:32:00] Spotify, YouTube, apple, all those. And, um, it’s just there. You just tune in. I’d love to have. Some more listeners. Uh, we’re very, uh, as I say all the time, I have dozens of fans all over the world. So, so it’s a new podcast and I, and I’m learning it and I’m not, I’m not, you know, upset.

You know, people are like, how do I want to have 10,000 subscribers? And I’m like, dude, I’d be happy if I have like a half dozen at this point. I’m keep the bar low.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Awesome. So then, uh, this might be the hardest question. So who is your favorite rockstar?

Chris Castanes: Well, let’s see. Um, that’s a good question. I mean, I’ve always been a, a fan of, uh, Elvis just because he was just such a pioneer. But, um, my, my new favorite genre of music, let, let’s do it this way. My new favorite genre of music has been punk covers of old classic rock songs.

Tim Melanson: Wow.[00:33:00]

Chris Castanes: So, so there’s a, there’s a, uh, several bands out there that do, uh, you know, a lot of punk bands that will do covers of classic rock songs.

And then there’s some that, that’s all they exclusively do. And I really like that kind of stuff. So like, there’s a band called Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of

Tim Melanson: heard them. Yeah, I’ve heard of them.

Chris Castanes: yeah. They’ve been around for years and years. I, I mean, I love listening to that. Uh, that’s what I like playing on musically and, um.

So, yeah, that’s a, you know, it’s one of those things where it’s just fun to hear it and listen to it and, and it’s, you know, fun to play. Uh, um, you know, when you’re, when you’re in a, you know how this is when you’re in a band and somebody’s like, well, let’s play this song and it okay. But it’s really slow and. People might want to hear it, but it’s not fun to play. You know, and then there’s things that you just want to play, and it’s loud and it’s, you know, keeping you busy and making your brain go a hundred miles an hour. That’s, that’s the kind of stuff I like. So, and, and I, especially when you’re a little a [00:34:00] DD like I am, and, you know, so.

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

Chris Castanes: Well, thank you Tim, and you’re doing a great service out there too. I, I appreciate your podcast, you, you share a lot of great guests and have lots of good information to share with people, so thank thanks to you as well. I.

Tim Melanson: Oh, thank you so much. Right on. And to the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information. We’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast.

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. I’m very excited for today’s episode. We’ve got founder Mark Aylward, what he does is he helps successful men rebuild confidence after hardship. Actually, better yet, he helps capable men rebuild confidence after hardship.

I’m very excited to be rocking out today with Mark. Hey, mark, are you ready to rock?

Mark Aylward: I am Tim. Thank you for having me.

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

Mark Aylward: Yeah, so I built and sold two, uh, successful IT staffing companies. The first one was with my mentor. He basically invested in me and taught me everything about starting a contract recruiting firm. And then I went off and did it on my own with a buddy of mine years later. So I think the, you know, all of the topics that you, uh, talk about are very interesting to me because I spent my entire life.

Helping people progress professionally, [00:01:00] mostly in the forms of getting them better jobs or promotions and negotiate on, on their behalf. But the, I remember my first placement was a single father with three young boys who was about to lose his house. And uh, that’s the first time I ever heard, mark, you saved my life.

And, uh. I’ll never forget that. I remember thinking that day, this is what God wants me to do, so I should start, I should start to figure this out. And there’s all kinds of other stories around that one. But that, when you said what you said, that’s the one that popped into my head.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Well, and now unfortunately, sometimes the good notes have to come along with bad notes too. So the things that don’t go as planned. And I do like to talk about both of those things. ’cause yes, I mean, we all have great success stories, but also a lot of things that keep people out of, of making changes in their lives is the fear of failure.

And I wanna make sure that people understand that we all, we all have the bad notes from time to time, and you can recover from those. [00:02:00] So can you share one that we can, uh, learn from?

Mark Aylward: Yeah, I think even though I have a, a litany of interesting stories around a very contentious divorce and my children and I are all happy and healthy now, and, and very loving relationships. So we came out of that storm. The one that strikes me as most relevant perhaps to your audience is, you know, when I sold my second company, um, it was under duress.

Uh, and that’s related to the divorce. One of the things that we did not do, and I would advise this of anybody contemplating building a company or selling a company, is we did a great job on the due diligence with regard to the financials. Uh, we were great with the numbers. What we didn’t do is investigate the culture and the culture of where you’re going to work.

Because I went to work for these people for a two year contract post sale. What we discovered about the culture is we weren’t a good fit for the culture at all. And, [00:03:00] um, I regret not investigating that. It did impact my earnout, it impacted my satisfaction, my happiness. It was a rough couple of years. And, uh, but, but who knew?

You know, I mean, when you don’t, when you’ve never done something before, you’re usually going to miss something. And, uh, investigating the financials is great, but you also do need to investigate the culture because. Companies buy other companies for reasons they might want geographic locations, they might wanna expand in a particular direction.

From an industry standpoint, there’s a purpose behind the purchase. And without understanding the purpose behind the purpose, the purpose behind the purchase, if you will, um, you’re probably gonna get it wrong. And we did. So that was, uh, that’s a big one. There are many others, so if you wanna talk mistakes, we could stay here for a while, Tim.

Tim Melanson: Well, uh, the, the idea of culture does keep coming up quite often and more and more now than it did 10 years ago when I started the [00:04:00] podcast. And, you know, it, it is interesting because people do think about the numbers. I mean, not everybody, but, but, but you, you tend to think about, about the numbers. Okay, is this a profitable company?

Is this something that I’m gonna buy? And even when it comes to hiring, when it comes to. Finding top talent, people will focus on the talent instead of the culture. Like there’s so many, like areas of your business that, you know, you think of the obvious thing, but you don’t think of the culture as much.

And now that’s becoming more and more important because I think a lot of people are, um, gravitating towards culture and there’s so many different types of companies that you can be interested in. I’m wondering, like, is is that something that comes up in other areas of the business too? Is culture.

Mark Aylward: Yeah, I, you know, I spend a vast amount of my time on LinkedIn. It’s my source of marketing and leads, and I create a lot of content. I build my authority there. I build my credibility there. And there’s a lot of talk on LinkedIn about work. I mean, that’s what the platform started for. [00:05:00] It’s become other things as well, but.

The big thing about culture is I’ve gone into hundreds of companies over the course of about 30 years, maybe thousands, from small companies to Fortune 100 companies, and when you look at a company through the lens of how they hire people, what I’ve con my contention is that how companies hire people is how they do everything.

And the, it’s hiring, it’s onboarding, it’s training and development, and I see. An almost absence of consistent culture because I don’t think, to your point, I don’t think people pay attention to it. I think people kind of expect it to occur or it’s gonna trickle down from the top because whoever the CEO is, or the founder or the owner, who he or she might be is what the culture’s gonna look like.

I think that’s a false assumption. I think culture needs attention. And what I see on LinkedIn is one of two [00:06:00] things. People complaining about their culture and not doing anything about it, or people not talking about it for fear that they’ll be punished for talking about

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Mark Aylward: And I never understood that probably ’cause I’m an entrepreneur, I say whatever I want and that.

That’s usually helpful for everyone, but not always. Um, and I remember having a conversation with my first boss when he was yelling at me in front of people and I pulled him into his office and I said, look. I love this work. I love this job. I, I appreciate you signing my paycheck. I’m very grateful. But if you ever yell at me in front of other people, particularly people that you want me to supervise, I’m walking out that door and you’ll never see me again.

It can, it completely changed our relationship for the better. And I told, I’ve told him recently, ’cause we still talk. I don’t, were you doing that on purpose or you just being a dick? And he doesn’t even remember the incident. It was probably 25 years ago, but that was my first taste of. [00:07:00] Am I gonna do anything about this or am I gonna let myself be treated poorly?

And that’s a cultural thing for me. It’s, it comes up as toxicity on the LinkedIn platform, and I just think I, I don’t think anyone pays enough attention to it. I don’t think most companies do it well. I think it’s often just a sign on the wall that you walk by every once in a while and you’re reminded of this vision or this mission, but it doesn’t translate into the day-to-day environment.

And I think it’s a really missed opportunity for most companies.

Tim Melanson: So do you have any suggestions on how, you know, if you were just starting a new business or if you were trying to overhaul your current business? Just some, some tips on how they can create that culture. Like intentionally.

Mark Aylward: Well, I think it comes down to values. Think this is when I coach people individually, I talk a lot about alignment and then what I mean by alignment is are you doing and saying things that are in alignment with what you [00:08:00] truly believe in? And Tim, I find most people never have that discussion with themselves.

We just make assumptions about what our values are like. Everybody wants to be known as honest. Everyone wants to be known as kind. Everyone wants to be known. But I think about things like clarity. And being concise and being consistent and being personally accountable. And those are all admirable traits, but left unsaid, left, you know, alone.

They don’t just happen. Right. So I think that if I were to advise someone, which I do advise people when they’re contemplating starting companies, ’cause that’s kind of in my. Wheelhouse. Um, I would, that’s the first thing I do with everybody, whether they’re starting a company or just looking to improve their personal circumstances, is let’s talk about what’s important to you and let’s, let’s get that on the table.

And I’m not here to agree or disagree with what your values are. That’s not my judgment to make, but I do [00:09:00] think it’s helpful and it’s critical that we, if you start writing content, if you start speaking out loud, if you start visiting clients and making phone calls. What comes outta your mouth should start with, this is what we believe in, this is who we are.

And I think it’s that simple. I think it’s just give it attention, make it an exercise, and then understand like any exercise, like sit-ups, you gotta do ’em every day. You can’t just do a hundred of ’em one day and expect you’re gonna have six packs. Abs. That’s not the way stuff works. So I hope I answered your question.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, you did it. I mean, really it’s, I mean, when we choose our friends, when we choose our relationships, I mean, all those are hopefully considering values first. Right? And, and picking people that will fit that. So why not your companies? Right. I think people just, I. Assume that they gotta fill a spot with the, the best, you know, technical talent of that AR area, but they don’t necessarily think of, [00:10:00] you know, how is that person aligning with what I believe?

And if you believe the, the same things, you don’t have to convince anybody of that, right? Mm-hmm.

Mark Aylward: Yeah, it’s, it really is a, a, a heavy ball, um, the, this, not this idea of hiring people, which is my, you know, if I have an area of expertise, that’s certainly one of them, just from the, the amount of years I’ve done it is, is the. This idea that I never hired anybody because of their experience. Not once. And uh, ’cause I didn’t care what their experience was.

I wanted them to be honest. I wanted them to be hardworking. I wanted them to be personally accountable. And my favorite question in the interview process, Tim, and sometimes it was the only question I asked was, tell me about the hardest thing that’s ever happened to you in your life and how you came out the other side.

Um, and, and I get storytelling. I get creativity. I get imagination. I get personal accountability. I get everything I need. Or I don’t with that answer. And, and I think, [00:11:00] and you’re a software guy or an IT guy. I don’t know if you’re, I, I assume programming is part of that skillset. So, you know, the garbage in, garbage out thing is, is something you’re aware of.

But I, I think the other thing about hiring is people hate to do it. It’s the process itself is so cumbersome. It’s so burdensome. It takes so much time. And, uh, I’ve never met. A CIO that liked hiring? Not once. So I think what people do is they get into the hiring process and then they settle because they get sick of it.

And I think that’s way more common than most people understand.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And then what’s even more fun is firing.

Mark Aylward: Oh man, it’s the worst. Uh, it’s I’ve, I’ve never done it without allowing people to keep their dignity. I was always very sensitive to that. But also Tim, even though it’s the hardest thing to do as a business owner, in my estimation, [00:12:00] it was also always the best thing to do for both parties. And I used to tell people, look, this the way that I do this recruiting thing.

Is my way. You don’t, you don’t fit into my way. And it took us a few months to figure that out and that’s okay. So you’ll be better. Better off going, finding a way that suits you. ’cause my way is not the only way and will be better off because we will have one less frustrated person, you know, working here every day.

So let’s just agree to, to part ways, respectfully and um, that always went pretty well. It just looking, getting ready for it was always the hardest part. You know, the actual doing it was, was, wasn’t always that hard. Couple times it was.

Tim Melanson: Agreed. So I’ve got a lot of analogies in this, uh, podcast, and one of them we talk about is practice. So, I mean, in music it’s, it’s, it’s obvious, you know, you do need to practice before you go do your big show in business, I’m not sure if it’s as obvious. Do, do, do you have practices that [00:13:00] you do to make sure that you’re up on, you know, the latest in your business?

Mark Aylward: I do, I, I, and it’s a great topic. I really, I was resistant to goal setting. Um, I always have been, I always felt pressure from goal setting. And, um, I was, I worked for people that set goals for me, set goals with me. And, but when I started working for myself and even more recently, I’m, I’m a huge. Proponent of process and, and if, if the process works, if it’s something you can do relatively quickly, something you can look forward to doing consistently every day, something that it has a simplicity to it that doesn’t make it burdensome and it supports.

Whatever your goal is, and for most of us that run our own companies, that one of those goals is revenue, right? And you could take revenue, you could take profit, you know, six of one half dozen of the other profit’s [00:14:00] more accurate, but they’re both aspirational goals, right? One comes with the other usually. I get first thing in the morning. I get up and I do, uh, I have a prayer ceremony. I’m, I’m a Catholic and I went to Notre Dame and they send me an email every morning about whatever gospel’s being read at mass that day. And I read that with my girlfriend in person or on, on FaceTime. That starts me off.

That’s really cool and it’s simple. Um, then we do some breath work, Wim h breathing, if you know who Wim Hof is, and if you don’t, you should look ’em up when we’re done. Um, and that’s a 15 minute exercise that is vibrates. I get my face in the sun, I drink some water, and I, I open up my journal and my journaling is, uh, is, is the point of your question.

And that is, that’s where all of my processes and systems sit. And I could go into detail on that. At another point in time because it’s fairly detailed, but it’s very simple. The exercise of [00:15:00] filling out that page in my journal takes me about 10 minutes. And so by the time the sun rises, I’m ready to go.

You know? And, and I think all of that sits well into your concept of. The musician that, you know, you gotta play those chords over and over and over and over again. So, um, my, my repetitive tasks are pretty obvious. They’d be creating content, commenting on posts, writing posts, doing videos, guesting on podcasts, anything to get the word out there to people about who I am and what I do.

And then what comes back is people with whom that resonates, usually engage me in some capacity. That’s an oversimplification, but that’s the way that works.

Tim Melanson: Well, okay. So for me, uh, with journaling, uh, we’ll take that as a, as an example, I’ve been an off and on journaler for 20 years. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll be very, very good at it for a while and then just sort of forget about it. I don’t even understand how that [00:16:00] happens. And then I’ll be on a podcast or something like that and someone will mention journaling.

Oh yeah, geez, I haven’t done that in a while. And they’ll get back to it. I’m wondering, how do you, how do you stay consistent? How are your, or are you also off and on?

Mark Aylward: I was for a long time. Uh, and then I bumped into a guy that had a structure that resonated with me. It had a spiritual bent to it, which resonated with me. Um, it was funny, I was wrestling with myself a couple years ago, the difference between prayer and meditation, and I had this little kind of. Pagan versus Catholic argument with myself, like, if you’re meditating is, are you doing a disservice to God?

Or like, it was really interesting. I was really struggling with the conversation, so I just got rid of the meditation and stayed with the prayer. That was part of it. And so, uh, that makes me feel an obligation. ’cause God’s involved. I gotta, I gotta show up for God this morning, you know? So. That might be a large part of it, but you know, sometimes we’re just ready [00:17:00] for things that we weren’t ready for two years ago or five years ago.

Sometimes things resonate because someone says them to you differently, and one of my favorite phrases is we need to be reminded far more often than we need to be educated. You know? So most of the stuff that you tell me, I will have heard already, and most of the stuff I tell you, you will have heard already.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yep. I agree. So a structure is, is, is useful and, and I agree. I, I find, I think that the times that I’ve. Been very good at my journaling has been when maybe I’ll get like a book that has a journal component to it and you’ve got this structure that you can follow. ’cause I mean journaling, what do you write?

What, like, unless there’s something, some sort of steps that you can follow, it’s just, I, I don’t even know what to do. Right.

Mark Aylward: Well, there’s a, there’s a school of thought that says just brain dump, just free flow, right? I mean, I think getting things out of your system is cathartic no matter what it looks like. [00:18:00] So I would say to people that are contemplating this or are struggling with it, as you’ve suggested, as ’cause I did too, structure for sure is one of the solutions.

If you’re, if you’re a God person, you know, being obligated for to God for something is pretty powerful. If you’re not, of course it doesn’t make any difference, but, um, the structure of mine is there are things that I write. And then there are boxes that I check like, did you pray today? Boom. Check. You know, did you, what’s your flow anchor today?

Gratitude. Okay. Check. You know, and then I was, I don’t know if you know Andrew Huberman. The, the psychologist therapist, celebrity, um, he talks about psychological things all the time. He’s a very bright guy. Uh, interesting fellow. I heard him long, not long ago. Say, people do, I am statements. I am, you know, I’m, I’m struggling with self-doubt.

I’m struggling with imposter syndrome. If you flip that, instead of saying [00:19:00] I am, say you are. You then become a third party advocate of you. It’s not you telling yourself anything anymore. This expert is telling you this and it’s incredibly interesting. I see you nodding your head when I, I said that to my doctor the first time months ago.

She goes, dad, that makes perfect sense. I go, yeah, it’s pretty crazy, you know, so something to consider trying, you know, if you, if you want to get back into some journaling and some structure. So I make a list of things and instead of being self-doubt, I am confident. Right. Instead of being, you know, prideful, I’m humble.

You know, it, it, they’re, they’re easy to flip, right? But the, the notion of saying, and so that’s a list. There’s two or three lists. And then another thing is I pick five areas of my life that I just throw a little love and gratitude at. And could just be a five second thought. It could be a prayer, it could be a phone call.

These five things require my love and [00:20:00] attention every day. And before I did that, like my children, God, my girlfriend, my business, my health, before I did that, I would, like most people probably, I would go all in on one of them and neglect the other three or four. And that’s just human nature. So this, this reminder to give all five of these areas.

A little bit of love. It’s pretty powerful. So that, again, back to the structure of my journal.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Now another thing that I found is good for accountability is being accountable to another person, right? Like either finding like a mastermind or a coach or some sort of accountability partner because like, like you say, I mean trying to be accountable to yourself. I mean, you let yourself down all the time,

Mark Aylward: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: But as soon as you put something else, like either God or, or maybe another person in into the mix, now it’s like, oh, I’m gonna go meet with so and so. I better do what I said I was gonna do before I go meet with him.

Mark Aylward: yeah, it’s very powerful point. It’s really, I, I, um. [00:21:00] I just wrote something about accountability and, and human nature being, uh, we don’t like to be held accountable. Um, none of us do. And but even the ones of us that don’t like to be held accountable know that we need to be held accountable. And, uh, I I, I don’t practice the accountability buddy.

Uh, I just, that phrase just turns me off. Maybe I should just call it something else, but I do have a few guys. Um, and my children and my girlfriend and my dad and my, my older brother in particular who don’t let me get away with things. And I, I don’t think, I try to get away with things. I’ve, I learned a long time ago that the light shines on all of us eventually.

You know, you can hide whatever you try, whatever you want to try and hide, but they’re gonna, people are gonna figure it out eventually. But I think you’re right. I think. You know, if you’re going to the gym in the morning, not to meet anybody, you’re gonna miss some days. But if you gotta meet somebody there at [00:22:00] seven o’clock, you’re gonna probably be a lot more likely to get there because you don’t wanna let them down.

So, I agree.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And what about o other types of coaches? Like are you a type of person that hires coaches in in the past or even in the current.

Mark Aylward: I just terminated a relationship with a coach and it wasn’t for anything bad. It was just, I felt like I’ve reached. At the end of what this person can offer me. And I started to hear some redundancy in the messaging and I’m like, this is just a decision I need to make. And, um, yeah, I think that hiring, ’cause I’m a coach, right?

I, and I think that, you know, the, the classic example everyone wants to talk about is just Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, or, you know, they all have coaches. They all have multiple coaches for exactly what we’re talking about. To be held accountable to help, to help you get outta your own way. You know, we often cannot see what’s wrong with us.

Um, there’s biblical verses about [00:23:00] that all over the place. Um, you know, the, the, we can see the splinter in someone else’s eye, but we can’t see the log in our own eye. You know, that’s. That’s a parable. I think coaches are great. I think the most important part of a coach is that he or she has to resonate with you.

I don’t think the messaging is, is as nearly as important as the resonance, which would involve integrity and values and consistency and accountability and, um. I have this phrase that keeps coming up that I started using that I’m gonna keep using ’cause I like it. It’s called kind candor and, and kindness to me is telling people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Mark Aylward: That’s being nice. And I think being nice is basically kissing someone’s ass. I don’t think it’s productive at all. Uh, and candor is required because I’m not gonna gloss over something because I’m concerned about how it might make you feel. But if I’m trying to be kind while I’m being candid, then it probably will be.[00:24:00]

Accepted. It probably will be heard, it probably will resonate, but candor without kindness is ineffective. It’s old school. And kindness without candor is a waste of time. So, um, that’s, those are my thoughts about that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I, I agree. And I mean, if, if the person on the other end of it doesn’t take your kind candor, well then they’re not, they’re not in a place where they’re ready to grow anyway, and there’s really nothing you could have done to, to help them at that particular

Mark Aylward: know? Yeah. It’s, it’s so true. And I think, you know, I’ve had family and friends experience with things like addiction and, and alcoholism, and it’s almost unlikely that, that any of us don’t have some connection to that. And if you have, you’ll, you’ll know. And I’m, I’m in it right now with one of my brothers to be transparent and, um, he’s not ready for help.

And it doesn’t matter what I do, [00:25:00] it doesn’t matter how logical I am, it doesn’t matter the damage that’s being done. It doesn’t matter, uh, until someone is ready to be helped. It’s very difficult to help ’em. So I don’t push myself on people for exactly that reason. I, I want people to come to me. I want people to say, I, I read your thing over here, and it was interesting to me.

Can we talk a little further so I don’t chase people down for exactly that reason?

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, and, and uh, to flip that around too, like I, I, I have noticed that if I react poorly to something that someone else says, like, to, to that, you know, kind candor, I, I find that that’s like a. It’s like a, like a, a marker for me. I, I kind of go, okay, why am I getting upset right now? Because, you know, there’s something in our, probably in our psyche that’s just blocking us just like it is with the people in our lives that we’re trying to help, that they don’t necessarily know that they’re getting triggered for, for whatever it is.

But I do find that those triggers are, are illuminating.[00:26:00]

Mark Aylward: I agree. I think that’s a great level of self-awareness and which is a great quality to have. I, I pride myself in being self-aware. I don’t think you can be too self-aware, but maybe you can. I, I think that, you know, like yesterday I, something happened that made me angry and I don’t like to be angry. I very rarely am angry, and to your point, I, I stopped myself and I thought I was about to say something to someone else I was talking to, and it was.

It was layered in this anger that had nothing to do with them, and I paused, which is another thing that I teach people to do. When emotion comes, you don’t re, you don’t respond. You pause and regain object activity to the extent that you can. My, my dad taught me that as a fighter pilot. What’s the first thing you do when an engine catches on fire?

He says nothing. Absolutely nothing because if you react out of fear, chances are people will die. And if you don’t, if you stop yourself and regain your objectivity, all that training that’s in your head will come back to you and you’ll know what to do. [00:27:00] And I just, I, um, that’s a powerful lesson that, that I share with everybody.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Yeah, no, I, I, I agree. So, okay. I’m excited to talk about your business. So tell me what’s exciting in your business right now.

Mark Aylward: So as I, as we kind of alluded to in our pre-game discussion, I, I really had, I had to make a choice because on one hand what I do, helping people improve professionally. As well as personally, ’cause I can’t do one without the other. Um, and I think they’re closely tied. I can’t help everybody. I’ve had so many conversations with people who would not want to have a discussion with someone who is an expert in getting better work.

Right? Almost everyone is open to that discussion. Well, you can’t market to everyone. You can’t message everyone or you’ll help no one. Right. And that’s a classic marketing, uh, mistake that people make. I’m, I’m, this thing’s good for [00:28:00] everybody. Well, that, that doesn’t matter. So I had to pick, and over the last couple years I thought, I, I’m investigating this notion of how confused we are about what a man is today.

And that’s not a political statement, that’s just an observation. And there’s all kinds of historical data to support this. If you’re familiar with the Harvard study of men that goes back to the 1930s, they got 85, 90 years of data. They just interviewed men about happiness, and over the course of 80 to a hundred years, they went from just white men to all kinds of different colored men to their children, to their wives, to some of them are grandparents, some of them have passed away.

So it’s a really robust set of data and it, it. It really intrigued me that men were struggling so much and then I thought, well, I have some of this experience. I have had some hardship, I’ve had some adversity. I lost everything, and I’ve been able to recover from that. What a wonderful thing to be able to help someone else do.[00:29:00]

And to your point about how many female coaches there are out there and how few male coaches there are out there. I remember walking around in the courthouse ’cause I was in that courthouse for. 10 years off and on, like all the time. And people are wandering around and they’re scared and they’re anxious and they’re depressed and they’re frightened and they’re unclear about what to what?

Like where is this room 3 0 5 where I have to go in and lose my house and you know, my children. And I just thought to myself, there’s a lot of people that need help, so I’m just gonna grab this. The sliver of middle aged men, because that’s when life, you know, you’re running in your twenties, you’re running in your thirties, you’re starting a family.

Maybe you’re having kids every, you’re just running, right? And then at some point, probably around 40, but there’s not a number. It’s just a guess. All of a sudden, life slows down a little and you get to look around and. [00:30:00] Not all of us, like what we see when we look around and, and we recognize I haven’t had time to even breathe until now and I don’t like the way that looks.

So what do I do about that? Well talk to Mark. You know, so again, an oversimplification, but that’s it. It’s so serving other people like that and having people say things to you like. You saved me. You know, you, I’m, I feel completely different now. I’m optimistic again. I’m hopeful again, I have a plan of action that you’ve helped me define, and I’m gonna start taking these steps and I’m gonna come back to you to get refreshed periodically.

And that’s, that’s really worked out well. That’s really become my messaging is there. My coaching is there, my content is there. Everything is kinda lined up nicely and I, I feel again, like this is kind of what God wants me to do.

Tim Melanson: Why do you think it is that there are so many female coaches, but not as many male coaches?[00:31:00]

Mark Aylward: It’s a great question. I, these are just opinions.

Um, so, so not facts, but I’ve got two daughters. Both of them are entrepreneurs. Both of them are successful, they’re beautiful, they’re intelligent, they’re hardworking, they’re feminine and they’re tough. And, um, women are more open. To being coached. Women are more open to talking about things that are bothering them.

That’s gotta be one of the reasons. Um, guys, on the other hand, in my experience, you know, if I had conversations with some of my friends that I grew up with, that in a really intimate fashion, they would start to tease me. They would start to make fun of me. They would, they would say, they would call me names that I can’t repeat here on your podcast.

And that’s all fun and good. Um, I think it’s those two reasons. I think that men are not willing, at least by perception, to be coached about intimate [00:32:00] things. And that’s the only way to get past hardship is to talk about tough things and, and women are more open to it. But I also think that the culture that we live in is yelling at the world You need to help the women more.

The men are fine. And the men are not fine. That’s a misinterpretation. But I, I think it’s something that’s kind of lasted even after it stopped being fine and we just haven’t adjusted yet. I’m writing a, a book right now, Tim, and it’s, I’m in the middle of this historical transition from my, my dad knew exactly who he was.

He was a fighter pilot. He was an airline pilot. He was a father, he was a provider, he was a protector. There was never any question about that. Right when I started to grow up, that’s when things started. Feminism arrived in the seventies, maybe even arguably the sixties, and a lot of that was good. We needed a lot of those things.

Women deserved a lot of the stuff that came with that. But what we didn’t do is we didn’t [00:33:00] replace the old masculinity definition with a new one. We just said, don’t do that. We didn’t say, do this instead. So that just leaves men confused. And I, I see examples of that everywhere. So that’s, that’s a long-winded answer to why I think there are more female coaches than there are male coaches.

And then when I went to study my competition there, there isn’t any, you know. it’s crazy.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, because, because I mean, the other side of it is that there are probably less men willing to even take on that role in the first place, let alone the men that wanna take it.

Mark Aylward: I, I certainly didn’t see that path coming. It, it came for me. It didn’t come because I was trying to, to attract, I mean, who wants to attract hardship, right?

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it, I, I think, I think you’re right. I think men are sort of like supposed to be strong and have it all together, and they’re supposed to be the [00:34:00] leaders of the households and all that stuff from what we’ve been taught. But like you say, things have changed. And now a lot of those things were like, you know, I remember just being even confused if I’m supposed to hold a door open for a woman or not.

Mark Aylward: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: you know, just like, just the basics of it of going like, I, I think I, I should, isn’t that nice? Like, aren’t I being a good person by holding a door open? Why am I getting yelled at right now? Right.

Mark Aylward: yeah. No, it’s, it’s so funny that I’ve used that analogy many times. ’cause I, I opened the door for everybody

Tim Melanson: so do I.

Mark Aylward: and, and I say hi to everybody. Matter of fact, I was pulling into the grocery last night and I, I was coming around. From this angle and there was a open parking spot there and there was someone in front of me.

That was coming this way and she was there before me, but I had the, I had the space to just slide into that spot and essentially flip her the bird. And I just, I just chuckled and I, I went straight past her and pulled into [00:35:00] the left and gave her that position. And we both got out of the cars at the same time and she just said, thank you so much for doing that.

You’re a good person. And I said, that would’ve been a dick move. And we both got a laugh out of it. It was really funny. I think, I think strong women are really comfortable with masculine men. I think it’s insecure women that aren’t, and I don’t, I don’t suffer. Insecurity. Uh, I’m not judgemental about it, but I’m like, if what I say or do in kindness and good intention is offensive to you, that’s not my problem.

That’s your problem. And I’m not taking that on as my problem, whether you want me to or not. I’m sorry, not doing that. So that’s a very interesting place to be. ’cause as you seem to understand, it’s, uh, why are we confused about these things? Right?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it seems, but I mean, hey, who, who knows? Uh, however, I think I, I hope that now men are gonna be [00:36:00] more open to accepting that help. And I, I think maybe can kind of like even flipping back to what we talked about earlier about the, the, the kind candor, right. You know, if. If you’re feeling like triggered regularly by, by things and angry and, and upset and sad and all that stuff, well then maybe that’s the time to kind of look inside and go, okay, maybe I need a little bit of help with this ’cause I don’t know how to fix it right now.

Right.

Mark Aylward: Yeah, well, there’s a humility to that that’s, that’s challenging for people to call upon. I, I think it certainly was for me, I mean, a couple things that happened to me after my contentious divorce and being a single dad was I just became a much better listener. And that’s a good thing. I told you a little bit about the fact that my daughter’s, you know, I, I went through everything that a mother’s supposed to go through as a father.

I’ve had a couple people tell me, I think your experience as a single father of two girls has shaped you in a fashion that makes you somewhat unique. And I keep getting reminded of that. And I think the other interesting and kind of funny [00:37:00] part is, you can’t tell this on, on the podcast, but I’m 6 4 225 pounds.

I’m not a small man and I can be very loud and, uh, so people assume I’m masculine and I believe that I am. But when I come at them with the soft side. I see a lot of surprises. Like I’ve had people tell me before, I didn’t expect that at all, and I’m like, good. That’s good.

Tim Melanson: Good. Alright, so then how do we find out more then?

Mark Aylward: Yeah, I mean mark a word.com and it’s mark with a k and a word is A-Y-L-W-A-R-D. And everything that I do can be accessed from there. I would also suggest looking me up on LinkedIn and my name, a word mark is, is my, my, I think if you type in mark a word, I show up, my LinkedIn profile shows up as the number one choice.

’cause it’s a, it’s an obscure English name that doesn’t really. Have much, um, presence here in the States. It’s a Newfoundland, [00:38:00] Ireland, England Trail, you know, Nova Scotia and um. So, yeah, there’s a, and I think the first step for anybody that is intrigued by anything I’ve said would be just click the button that’s on that front page.

There’s like three or four of them. As you scroll down, it just says, schedule a conversation and it’s a 30 minute call. We, I do it for free and I basically just get to where I can tell you at the end of that how I can help you. If I can help you. And I’ll also, if you choose not to. Access my help at that.

I’ll give you a couple things that you can take action on that will move you forward, uh, free of charge. So it’s a, it’s a kindness gesture, but it’s also, you know, there’s a sales component to it. I just don’t get salesy on the call. ’cause as I told you earlier, I’m not interested in convincing anybody about anything.

I’m interested in people saying, that resonates with me. I want to hear more.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. You can’t help anybody who’s not ready anyway. Right. So

Mark Aylward: No, no,

Tim Melanson: right on.

Mark Aylward: no. You can’t.

Tim Melanson: One more question might be the hardest one. Who’s [00:39:00] your favorite rockstar?

Mark Aylward: Ha,

Tim Melanson: I.

Mark Aylward: that’s easy for me. He passed a couple years ago, but Tom Petty, um, I went to a Tom Petty concert when I was 15 years old at the Cape Cod Coliseum, which doesn’t exist anymore. And he was the backup band for a band called the Jay Isles Band, which is a, if you’re not from the northeast, you might not know them, but they were.

They were, they had their fame for a while and uh, they were a big deal. And then this band that the blue stage lit up and all of a sudden this song called, I Need to Know, started getting played. And I’m like, man, and I saw him three or four times and it’s, he’s always the best cons, best live show I’ve ever been to.

And, um, my daughters are fans of his now we’ve got all kinds of literature around the house, books about him. And yeah, that was an easy question for me.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Don’t get many that know it. Exactly. That’s awesome. Oh, Tom Petty is amazing. I’ve got so many, uh, I [00:40:00] know so many of his songs that I do in my cover work and it. Always gets a, a great reaction from everybody. Like men, women, everybody, everybody loves Tom Petty.

Mark Aylward: have you, have you seen, I think it’s called Wildflower, the

documentary.

Tim Melanson: I have, yeah. Very good.

Mark Aylward: Yeah, it’s a fantastic, it’s a fantastic film. Rick Rubin’s in it. I, as I recall, really interesting. I just found him to be a really interesting guy the whole time. He was a great musician. I mean, he did, he’s the one who said, these tickets are too expensive.

Don’t raise your prices. I want my fans to be able to see me. He was, uh, he had a very challenging life as well, personally. But, um, yeah, that was an, that was a, that was an easy question for me,

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

Mark Aylward: Yeah, me too. I’ve had a great time and uh, maybe we can do it again sometime.

Tim Melanson: Great. Yes. 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 Podcast.

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast. Excited for today’s episode. We are talking to the owner of Fight Club, martial Arts and Archery Training Center, incorporated. He also the Master’s method. So I’m excited to be rocking out with today with Emmanuel. Hey, he helps people to go inward and I guess figure out who they are and, uh, we’re gonna learn a lot more about that in a few minutes.

So welcome to the show, Emmanuel Manolakakis.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Man, look. You got it, man.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So, hey Emmanuel, you ready to rock?

Emmanuel Manolakakis: I am right.

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

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Oh, many, many, uh, stories of success. I mean, uh, for fight club, uh, man, it’s been, um, getting close to 25 years for, uh, martial art club, and I still remember. In the first year or some first year that I started, uh, uh, teaching. It was just the part-time thing at the time. Uh, you know, somebody came in [00:01:00] and said, uh, straight out to me, if you could imagine this set out to me.

Uh, he was looking at different packages that I had for training in martial arts and he said, uh, I’ll, I’ll take the six month one because. Most martial art clubs don’t make it to two or three years. So he goes, I don’t wanna Right to like imagine right to your face. I was still shocked and like basically said, you won’t be around so I don’t wanna commit to you.

And I’m like, wow. That’s, that’s it. I I, and at first it upset me and then I realized, but that’s the truth. And this is the hard part of, of, of life, right? This is the truth. And I said, you know what? I’m gonna make sure that I do everything in my power to make sure that it makes it to three years.

Tim Melanson: That’s a good goal.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: it’s now it’s 25, and it was, I, every time I’m here, every time I do another year, and January’s coming around the corner now, every time I do another year.

I’m just, I’m so grateful and blessed that to be able to do this, I know there’s not many martial arts schools, uh, operating at a full-time capacity, uh, for this long. Um, so I’m quite special. I mean, it, it’s a testament [00:02:00] to a lot of the hard work, but at the same time, it’s still, um, so much of being an entrepreneur.

Being a person is a little bit of luck, right? Like, you gotta, you gotta get lucky too. You gotta be good. You gotta be lucky too. So I’ve been blessed with both. Um, so that’s a great, that’s one of my good, one of my favorite stories that it’s still around ’cause of what that person said.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Uh, I mean it’s, uh, it, it’s definitely the same in just about any business, right? I mean, there’s, most businesses don’t make it through even the first year. So,

Emmanuel Manolakakis: No they don’t. Yeah, they don’t.

Tim Melanson: yeah. So now I.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: go ahead.

Tim Melanson: Well, well, so I was gonna say like on that note, I mean there are things that don’t go as planned, which is the reason why most businesses don’t get through.

And I like to talk about these bad notes because it’s something that keeps people out a lot. You know, they think maybe that person who would’ve said that to them, maybe, maybe they might’ve went, ah, okay, maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. Right. Um, so I was wondering, can you share with us something that didn’t go as planned, something that was a [00:03:00] big mistake that you recovered from?

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Okay. Big mistakes, so. When I first started, so there’s, it’s not. I, I don’t see things as right and wrong. Uh, but you can, we can look at this for your listeners. There are things that just happen and no matter, you know, no matter how good we all are, like as an athlete, when I was a younger athlete and I played it pretty high level sports, um, you know, we practiced all week long and we had a great plan and we, we thought of it, everything that could happen.

But when the game happened, man, it all went, it all went. The shit, you know, just went crazy and you just realize the team that will really make it to a higher level. Are the ones that are adaptable, the teams that are able to be, you watch it in hockey, you watch it in baseball, the teams that play together, and that can adapt quickly because everybody’s figuring you out and you’ve gotta be adaptable.

Even as a martial artist, as a person in general, society is changing. You are changing. I mean, getting older, your, your views are changing. Your knowledge is changing. So, you know, [00:04:00] in. When it comes to martial arts, you see a lot of it’s, I, I can only speak specifically to martial arts, but it’s also to musicians.

Anybody that is in the creative realm, right? Like there’s, there’s some creativity there. Everybody begins by copying somebody, right? Like if you’re a musician, of course you’re gonna play Stairway to have it if you stay there like. For five or 10 years, you see the problem, like you’re not, there’s no authentic, and people will realize that, right?

When you’re running your own business, the biggest mistake you can make is copying all the time. Um, it’s fine to do it a little bit at the beginning only to get your bearings and then find out what’s your take on it. How did you, you know, like how did you change it? And that only comes from authenticity.

If you’re a chef, it’s you, you cook from the, the foods that you like, the things that you experienced. Or if you’re a musician, well you, you develop your voice, you develop your song, you develop the stories [00:05:00] and the, and the, the, the, the writing material to be more authentic. And then you connect. So, you know, in martial arts, there’s a tendency to think that you can make everybody happy.

Like somehow cover all the bases. But you can’t do that. That’s ridiculous. You can only, you can only connect with some people that wanna listen or agree with your perspective. That’s it. So don’t make the mistake of trying to make everybody happy. You don’t need to. You could just, you could just do what you do and find your raving fans that, that love you.

You know? So really start it small and like kindling wood and create a big fire of people that, um, like what you do and like exactly how you do it. That doesn’t mean that they hate other people, but they like how you do it and what you do. Right? Like, I like Johnny Cash for Johnny Cash. Like, I didn’t want Johnny Cash to be Bernie Spears.

I don’t want him to. I want that, that, that. That, that’s what I like. So I think a big mistake is, uh, [00:06:00] um, when people start to copy too long, and that can go for even a restaurant. Find your niche, man. Find your niche, find what you, find what you do, and do it really well. You know? And that, that, that is, is probably the the mistake.

The mistake I’ve seen that I did at the beginning too. I started to copy what other martial arts schools did and it was fine. It was a starting point, and then I’m like. That’s not me. I’m not, and I I’m not one of these guys that’s gonna scare students. Like, oh my God, someone’s gonna jump you and beat you up.

And I’m not, I can do that. I’m gonna teach you how to fight as a, as, as a, as a, a warrior poet, as a something. It’s beautiful. I’m not gonna, I want you to understand, you don’t have to fight because you’re angry. You can fight because you love what’s behind you. You don’t have to hate what’s in front of you.

You can just love what’s behind you. That’s all it really is. Like it. Those are old warriors we’re warriors in, in old societies, not that long ago, couple hundred years [00:07:00] ago, it was the most respected person. It’s the person that protected your society, you know, and he was, he was a noble person. It wasn’t like an animal or something.

What’s happened now in martial arts specifically is um, people are crisscrossing entertainment versions. And you know, so well listen, you know, I don’t wanna upset people. We need to be honest about stuff. Boxing used to be a beautiful martial art, but then, and then it was, but then it got associated with entertainment and then it got associated with Vegas and drinking and gambling.

And then so now it changed and it became entertainment. It’s not so much and people can’t, if you can’t see that, you don’t, you, you’re missing it. Right? Uh, MMA is a wonderful thing. Uh, it’s great, but it’s also entertainment. Right. So forget that when you’re protecting yourself, it’s your country, it’s your life.

It’s something really important. It’s not like to, to entertain you. It’s [00:08:00] like, remember that scene from Gladiator? Or you’re not entertained. Like, it’s like, he’s like, I’m in general man. I protected you guys, but now you want me to entertain you. He’s so, he was so frustrated with this concept. I’m a warrior.

I went to battle and protected freedoms and had liberty and noble and respect, and you want me not to dance around and entertain you? It’s like, I, I can’t do that side of martial arts. You know? I can appreciate it. Um, but I, I can’t, I can’t do that side. There’s, if you wanna entertain, you can go see a movie, play some sports and stuff like that.

But for me, martial arts is something a little bit different and I, I think that. Um, for your listeners, you have such a spectrum in music as you’re a musician, right? You have people that do it just for the love of music, right? And, and then they still make a quite a good living. They don’t, they’re not poor.

They’re, but they don’t want like a Britney Spears, they don’t want that, right? There’s a lot of people like this, you know, very impressive people, um, in, uh, [00:09:00] in, in the food industry. And there are people that wanna run a Michelin Star restaurant. What is the difference between a regular restaurant, Michelin, it’s just more detail. The bar is much higher. It’s really simple. They don’t care about more customers or more patrons. It’s like, this food represents me, it represents everything. And it’s like, whoa. And when you, who wouldn’t like me, part of a Michelin star, whoever hasn’t had an experience you gotta do at least once in your life, it’s pretty amazing, right?

It’s, and that bar is set by the entrepreneur.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: That the person running that restaurant, it’s a chef. His and he, he holds what he does at a very high standard, right? And entrepreneurs can choose that you, it’s your choice. Now. You can have a low standard, high standard, or somewhere in between. It’s up to you, right?

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, when it comes to music for sure, I mean, there’s so many things that you went through there. [00:10:00] There’s, uh, you know, even genre, right? I mean, if you’re trying to make everybody happy, you know, there are people that sort of gravitate towards one genre and if they like country and you’re playing death metal.

Probably not gonna like you very much, right?

Emmanuel Manolakakis: but I, I will tell you, I will tell you this though, there’s two, um, musicians at the Fight Club. Um. Both longtime students and one of them is a death metal guitarist. And I will tell you, I I, I’ve known him for a better part of 15 years, a wonderful man and he, um, his taste in music is all over the place.

You can go to his house and he will listen to jazz. He’ll listen to blues. He’ll, he listens to everything. This is a big misconception people have of a lot of it. At the metal guys, like people on the extreme listen to all kinds of music. You know, they’re, they don’t, they love all of it. They’re not saying, oh, it’s not, it’s not this or that.

Like a good chef, he doesn’t care. He might, he might be cooking, uh, making a [00:11:00] Japanese chef, but he can appreciate his French cooking. A, a great chefs, great people, great musicians, they totally appreciate, they love the authenticity. They see that, right. That’s, that’s a, that’s the highest to me, when you’re talking master level stuff, which is the course masters method that I teach.

It’s, it’s really just who you are. And the person that does that, uh, in, in a seamless way and who they are. It doesn’t matter if you’re a chef, a musician, a martial artist, you are showing people who you are. And that’s, I mean, I’m not sure what greater thing anybody could ask for, um, in this world than before you leave this world that people knew who you were, like most people that they don’t know that, you know.

So it really is authenticity that that’s at the core of all of this, and that doesn’t come easy.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and a lot of that, that very, very heavy, heavy metal. It’s, uh, it’s technically very, very, very difficult. Right.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Tim Melanson: kind of like at the top level, which to [00:12:00] me that kind of makes sense. I think that’s why it’s so difficult to understand for the average person, the average person.

Um, you know, we’re bombarded with all this formulaic, very, very simple, simple music. That’s the stuff that ends up on the pop charts, right? Uh, so something that’s, that technically difficult like , you know, even in the seventies when music came out, uh, in, in the eighties and even in the nineties, I think it started change in the nineties.

Remember when you had to like, listen to something a few times before you liked it. Like, like, that doesn’t happen anymore now. I mean, you, you, the music is created in such a way that you listen to the first time and you’re hooked. And that’s how it’s created. It’s, it’s not, uh, it’s not the same, you know?

And, and I think that, I think that’s the difference between music. I think a lot of people ain. Uh, I mean you say that about fighting, it’s the same in everywhere. I think that everything has become more entertainment. It’s built for the entertainment value of it, rather than [00:13:00] just for the love of it. Right.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: I love it. Yeah, and you can always tell, because listen, like I said, copying is fine at the very beginning. We all do it. We copy our teachers, it’s fine. But at some point you have to look at yourself and say, would I really do this? Like, that’s all I’m saying. Would I really do this? Because under pressure, um, real pressure, talking game pressure, the game is on the line pressure or.

For more serious matters like a military people, like your life is on the line. Like that kind of stuff, right? Like that, that’s a lot of reality for people, right? Any of the first responders, every time they go to a call, you don’t know what you’re gonna face. It can be, people may not understand that ambulance, police, firefighter, whoever gets their first.

Somebody calls 9 1 1. Whoever gets there first is responding. And if it’s violent, it’s violent. If it’s, if it looks calm, but then becomes violent like you, their, their lives are on the line, uh, in many cases. And you, when you’re that kind of a person. You are gonna be ’cause you [00:14:00] won’t care. You’re gonna be who you are.

Right. It that’s not just for old people. You know, you meet those old people that just don’t care. Right. They just tell you if they don’t like you tell you to go to. I love, that’s so funny to me because they, they realize they don’t care. They finally reach that point where this is who I am. If you like me, great.

If you don’t, I got this way somehow. You know? And if you want to care to understand how I got here. Right. So as a teacher, I try to, I try to really understand who somebody is. So I’m, I’m teaching an art of course, but I’m also trying to understand the person and seeing how we can bring them together.

Right. And if you ever watch those shows, like the Voice. It’s really amazing how these top level singers look at a person saying, I, I, I, you’re, you’re playing somebody else’s song, but I want to hear it your way. I don’t wanna hear that person. I don’t wanna hear Billy Joel. I want your version of Billy Joel.

And then what, what those professional, you know, uh, you know, [00:15:00] singers are, are, are analyzing is, is the authenticity of that voice And it’s like a, a, somebody looking at a painting, is that a Rembrandt, you know, like. Man there, a lot goes into it, right? If you got, if you are comfortable with your voice and you’re comfortable with who you are, and you can sing somebody else’s stuff in your way, that’s what I want.

That, that I think is a good life. Like you, you’re finding your way. ’cause there is no purpose that that serves Canada, the world, anybody. If you’re just copying somebody all the time, there’s just no purpose.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: It’s just you. It,

Tim Melanson: gets you,

Emmanuel Manolakakis: yeah. The old, the old.

Tim Melanson: figure out what your style is, right?

Emmanuel Manolakakis: the old, the old Greeks used to say, when you need a hero, like when you need a hero in life, you need him now.

Not you don’t have time to train him. So who is a hero? A hero is somebody who sees things differently that nobody’s prepared for. This is the whole kung fu panda. [00:16:00] This is the whole how to train a dragon. The person was absolutely different from the, from the society and, and the enemy or the, or the problem was not ready for them. And that’s how you are victorious. And, and that says so much. Like I, that’s why I I, when I see teachers, especially with young kids, because I teach kids too, and again, here’s a whole other story. I didn’t want to teach kids if we all, I didn’t wanna teach kids, but I’m so good at it. Um. Because I don’t treat them like kids.

I imagine them as an adult. I, I fast forward to the 5-year-old, 10-year-old boy and I say, or girl and say, what do you like at 21? How do I get you to 21? That’s what I do when I teach kids. I can’t teach them at that age. Because they’re just annoying. Everybody is, is lying there that what I’m trying to do at that age is not get in their way.

Don’t, don’t change them if they’re, if they’re like loud, try to get them to quiet down, but don’t take the loud from [00:17:00] them, like that’s their voice or that’s their way. Right. Kids change so much, but people always try to correct them and then they’re, they always feel they can’t be who they want to be.

Feel that, right. Don’t take that from them. That’s the, that’s their gift that was given to them. So try to teach a kid and seeing how they’ll grow and connect the dots. That’s what a teacher should be doing, not just for kids, but for adults. The same thing. Kids are big men are just big babies. Come on.

They break. They’re all the, they’re all the same. You know?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it’s funny. Yeah. You take

Emmanuel Manolakakis: for, we all are.

Tim Melanson: the adult and you take the adults and you treat ’em like the

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Yes. Yes. A hundred percent. Uh, 100%. And they love it. The, the adults are so tired of adulting. They’re so tired of it. They, they wanna play more. They’re tired of being right and wrong, and they, they just wanna play more for sure.

So,

Tim Melanson: So now you mentioned earlier that, uh, you know, when you get into, uh, you know, sports, music is the same. I mean, you, you, you get, you can practice all you want, but then you get into the, to the game or [00:18:00] whatever it is, and unexpected starts to happen, and all of a

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Oh yeah.

Tim Melanson: you know, everything you practice is not the same.

So how do you practice? How do you get ready for the unexpected?

Emmanuel Manolakakis: great, great. Absolutely, great question. So you, your training has to be like that. So I, I remember, uh, watching, so I, I did, I did quite a bit of bodyguard gigging as well, so I, I did a lot of close protection work, celebrities, musicians as well. I, I won’t say their names. I’m, I’m obligated not to, but I, I still remember one musician, uh, guitarist, great guitarist by the way.

And. Nowhere. He’s, I’m watching him, right? He’s on stage. There’s, I don’t even know how many people, I’ve never seen this many people. I couldn’t run a damn mic across that stage. It was so many, I, I mean, which I was scared to just walk across the stage. Forget about sing. This guy was in the middle. He was in a rift doing just, and I was just enrolled by the, by the music.

And all of a sudden he just stops. He turns and grabs another [00:19:00] guitar and continues away. And it was like, and then I look and he broke a string in the middle of a solo, and he just seamlessly, I, I just noticed that he turned around, which like, that’s kind of an odd time to be turning around and grabbing a new guitar.

Without a hesitation, your training has to, uh, you have to say to yourself, what can go wrong? So let’s give you a martial art example, or even in as an entrepreneur, you can pick your examples. You pick a problem. So I could be in a situation with a person, all of a sudden what appears to be one person comes to more people, all of a sudden there’s three people or two people I’m facing or more.

How do I deal with that now? What would I do now?

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Okay. Or all of a sudden, in the middle of everything, I, I hurt my hand, so now I can’t use my left hand. I can only use my right hand or. What happens if in the middle of this altercation somebody grabbed me from behind? Not even a bad person. It can just be a loved one trying to [00:20:00] pull me away from the fight, but doesn’t understand all that’s going on.

And that happens a lot. A lot of people in real situations, bodyguarding for sure, they don’t understand what’s happened because a bodyguard can see things much clearer. He is, that’s. He sees ahead of it. So most people are trying to calm things down, but the situation is escalating and we need to remove people and they don’t understand them.

So you have to look at those situations and and prepare for them. And you don’t have to freak out. You just have to say, what if? Okay, we do that. So I need to practice with one hand. I need to practice against three guys coming at me. I need to pro. What if a weapon comes out, okay, now I need to have some weapons training, and then.

You have to layer and it has to surprise you in training. Your training has to be organic like that. So if I was teaching a class, I’d be like, okay guys, um, you know, go on the ground and wrestle with each other, just one [00:21:00] person at any given moment. If somebody from another group feels like jumping onto the other group, they can. All of a sudden it’s a game. But what you’re doing is you’re preparing those people for things that will not go your way. That’s all. It’s, it’s not, I, I want all your listeners to understand this is an entrepreneur’s life. You, you have to plan everything can go wrong. Like the pandemic. Think about it. For me, the pandemic, I mean, as for martial arts, it was devastating.

Right. It was devastating, but I made it and I made it because I had really dedicated students. I got online, we trained outdoors, we figured it out right, and it was seamless for me. I didn’t hesitate at all. I, I didn’t. When things go wrong, right when they go wrong, they go wrong real quick, and you need a steady hand at that exact moment.

Right. Whether you’re a general in the military or whether you’re a [00:22:00] CEO at a business, you have to not be ready to be with cliches. You have to be ready to do the real work and, and be ready to adapt. Stay positive, but not false positive. Right. Not false positive. Right. Um, I had the luxury of training with quite a few, uh, military special forces and.

It’s, the stories they tell me are, are so funny. They’re not even scary. Like we’re talking about a unit that’s completely surrounded by the enemy and they’re pinned down. They’re waiting for help. They don’t know how long it’ll be. They’re just taking fire from all sides. Like there’s just no front.

There’s like, it’s all around. They’re completely surrounded. The only help is a helicopter that could come in and rescue them and it’s like a scene of a movie, but this was real. And they said, I go, God, what were you thinking? He goes, I don’t know. One guy started talking about how his wife is probably repainting their house.

Another one is probably saying how he’s probably trying to sell his car. Like I go, they’re just talking about normal things. Because it’s too [00:23:00] intense. We, you, you and, uh, I still remember that in my sports days we’d be talking about some of the funniest things in the middle of a quite serious game because it calms you down.

Right? And there’s a scene, there’s a scene in Saving Private Ryan, the movie where the unit was starting to fall apart towards the end of the movie. They were getting all over each other and that. And, you know, uh, Tom Hanks being the, the commander of that little unit that’s looking for, for private Ryan says, uh, to his sergeant, uh, what’s the, what’s the, the, the company had this toll, ’cause he didn’t say what job he did in his civilian.

So people started raise money to see when, if they reach him out the money, he’ll say what he does and he turns to the. To the, to the unit. And he says, uh, how much is the, the, the Tali? He

Tim Melanson: pod A.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: the pod, a couple hundred bucks. But he goes, he goes, I’m a teacher and everybody. Your teacher, like if for a moment it broke that [00:24:00] like, it, it, it normalized this thing, this craziness that is the war.

It normalized it for a second. It’s like he’s just, he’s a teacher and it brought them back to when they were civilians, they took them out of like this soldier mode of like constant pressure. So, um, a, an athlete that is at the highest level. Real high levels, not amateur levels. Amateur levels is different.

High levels, they, they don’t understand how to add pressure. They study how to remove pressure because too much pressure hurts them, much like a musician. What do they think about before they go on stage? They’re getting up, but they’re also calming down.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Right. They’re also calming down. So, um, and I, I’ve watched this, you, for all your listeners, look at those people in the Olympics.

It’s a great event. Highest level, right? Pretty high. Pretty high level. Watch what a sprinter is doing before he is about to run or she’s about to run as fast as possible. They’re bouncing, they’re shaking out tension. They’re wiggling [00:25:00] their hands, they’re wiggling their feet, they’re trying to relax.

Nobody is saying they’re just trying to relax. And I’m the same under real pressure. I’m just trying to calm down and when I’m calm, that’s where my confidence lies. When I’m angry or tense, that’s where my fears go, and I don’t want to be in my fears. Right? There is a lot of things as a teacher that will piss you off and anger you.

Um, not just, not just the students. Lots of stuff life. Different obstacles that are put in your way as an entrepreneur, a lot of things will anger you. That is not where your best work lies. It’s not where your authentic work lies. The best a person can be is when they’re calm and relaxed. And it’s also, um, like I talked about, creative expression, right?

Creative expression is when you’re chill, man. That’s, that’s that. That’s when you come up with your song, that’s when you find a solution to this problem that is daunting, right? [00:26:00] So. I hope your listeners understand this. And so, as I was going along teaching martial arts, these threads were coming along.

Students were talking to me. You know, they were saying, oh my God, I, I’m going home showing my kids what you’re showing me. And I, I, I, I, they love it. I mean, you should start teaching kids, oh, I don’t teach kids. Oh my God, no. How, I can’t do this. I can’t do this. And then all of a sudden I sat down. What if I imagined them at 20 one’s so that I can do. Right. And then the fighting aspects of martial arts is an, is is another thing. Um, I, I can do that, but there came a point where I’m not really angry and the situations that I’m coming across don’t warrant a fight, but yet they are tough. So I realize that it’s inside your head. So we start working on, uh, mental training.

At that exact same time I was, I was doing very well in archery ’cause I was competing, I was still competing in archery competitions. And I realized how much of it is mental. And I really started to connect these dots. And I started showing a handful of [00:27:00] students this mental training that I go through.

And they loved it. It was, it was more important to them than the physical training. And I fully believe, um, that the future right now for all people. Going forward, past 2026 is gonna be a lot of, is being able to control your mind? That’s not a, is it? There’s just too much information, Tim, for all of us to be sitting here going that we can handle this.

This is like a crazy buffet. There’s no way we can eat all this food and people are trying to. And they’re just getting an upset stomach. They’re getting, they’re getting. And if people don’t believe me, just talk to any medical professional and look at the rise of A DHD drugs. Look at the, look at the rise of, of people that are going on, uh, medication for anxiety, for stress.

All of this is manageable. It’s just stop the information. Do, how much do we need? We have more information than a hundred years [00:28:00] ago. A president or prime Minister had, we have so much information. You don’t need more. You don’t. Last thing is you need more. If you wanna be happy for your listeners, you need less.

That doesn’t mean, that doesn’t mean be ignorant, doesn’t, doesn’t mean be ignorant or naive. It means you need less information and maybe more wisdom. Wisdom is the combination of I get some knowledge and then I practice, or I do that thing a lot and then I get a little bit more knowledge with a lot more action, and that becomes wisdom.

People just, they’re, this is, and this is not my opinion, this is the old Greek philosophers said this, they, they, they were the same, right?

Tim Melanson: Well, I think, I think, uh, I think you’re right. I mean, I mean this is a deep conversation that could go on forever, but, but I think that, I think that, uh, you know, back, you know, 30, 40 years ago, we really were only in contact with our bubble. And the, that bubble sort of [00:29:00] thought the same. We were sort of like similar.

And now with the social media and with the, the world becoming smaller, we’re exposed to everything all at once. And a lot of it

Emmanuel Manolakakis: In

Tim Melanson: the way we think. And people are getting triggered very, very quickly and focusing on the things they don’t like. Right.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Or they can’t control. Or they can’t

Tim Melanson: Or they can’t control. Yeah, exactly. And I think, I think that’s where it is.

I mean, when you, when you think about the people that are the happiest, it’s the people that just. Let it be, you know, whatever. I mean, they’re doing what they’re doing over there. It’s not really affecting, is it really affecting you? I think that that’s the thing is that they’re only being affected because they’re looking at it and they’re focusing on it.

Whereas before we didn’t even have the ability to see it. We might see it walking down the street, oh, I don’t like those people over there on the, you know, whatever, under the bridge, whatever it happens to be, and, and then they just kind of keep walking. But now it’s. It’s in your [00:30:00] hand, it’s on your screen, it’s everywhere, and you’re kind of going like, I hate that.

And, and people are not managing those triggers very well. So I think, I think, I think you’re, you’re into it. I think now is the time to figure out how to handle those triggers and, and, and not be triggered by it, right? Mm-hmm.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Yep. No, go ahead.

Tim Melanson: so let’s get into your solo a little bit. Let’s, let’s talk about what, uh, what’s exciting your business.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: For me now, it’s the. A shift from when I first started martial arts, a very physical thing. And, and it was great. I mean, I loved it like that as well, but I’m realizing more and more now that it’s the mental side and I’m just, I’m, I’m really digging, helping people manage that side. And they’re like, it’s, it’s so refreshing for people to understand that, um, wow.

Because let’s say to be physical, you gotta go somewhere. You might have to go to the gym, or you gotta go outside and go for a run. Or if you’re in a cycling, you gotta get on your bike. And mental training can be done anywhere. This is what’s great. Like you, you, you have 10 minutes. You can just [00:31:00] sit down and, and, and just, and focus like the, the research on visualization training, which is, you know, maybe long time ago has been, I mean, Pele was talking about that.

I mean, it’s nothing new, but it’s now it’s gone like 3D like visualization is kinda like, okay, me imagining doing a sport and positive outcomes and that being real. But now there’s just so much more to. To that kind of training people starting to understand how deep the mind is. Right. And I, even, me, I’m, I’m amazed that like, it’s not just left and right half of the brain, but it’s, it’s like.

Really maximizing, um, what we do with this thing. And I really see the connection, um, to happiness. I really see the connection to, uh, performing at your utmost best. Like I, I don’t even care about winning. At all winnings like subjective. There are some, there’s some Archer competitions I won, I didn’t deserve, and there’s some that I should have won that I didn’t.

Um, winning is, [00:32:00] is I care about performing at my best. Like when I go to teach. I don’t, the class might not have gone as good as I would’ve liked. Maybe the students didn’t understand the lesson as as good as I would’ve liked, but I know that I, I did my best. I can’t control how it will be understood and really.

Dissecting that, that there’s this idea that we have a powerful brain it, but it’s hard to walk around and just tell people, look at my beautiful brain. You know, it’s much easier to say, look at my six pack. Right? You, you know what I mean? Like, look at my big arms. The problem with inner work mind, like mind and the, and the spiritual stuff, like inside of us.

Nobody can see this, but that’s also what makes it so special. What, what makes your home so special? Nobody sees this. You invite people in and who comes into your house? Only the people that you trust, right? So the inner workings of your mind and, and your spirit. These are places that very special and we should treat them like that.

A long time [00:33:00] ago, I, I grew up in them. I’m a 69 baby, so I grew up like, you know, mostly in the eighties were my, my teen years and everybody in Scarborough and in Toronto in those days, you know, if you’re Greek, Italian, Portuguese, European, you had that nice room. This is, you only went in that room when it was like, you know, Easter, Christmas, you know, that was the good room.

You know, that was a very special place where you went to celebrate over. And, um, the mind is a very special place. It’s a place that only you go really, and, and you go there to find your authentic self, not to copy other people. So I’m really excited about the mental training. I, I think it’s, I think. As a society and as people living in Toronto, for me, my students, this is gonna be the hardest part of living in a big city.

Not the physical ability of it, it’s the mental. So helping them navigate that is, is really exciting. Me.[00:34:00]

Tim Melanson: Wow. So I, I’m d different, I, I, I know that because I talk to people and, and I have no problem being alone with myself and with my own thoughts. However, I hear that a lot of people do have a hard time with that and.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: I like how you said that. I hear,

Tim Melanson: I hear

Emmanuel Manolakakis: yeah.

Tim Melanson: so, uh, uh, I’m wondering, ’cause this might actually be scary to those people thinking, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don’t think I wanted to be doing that.

Or maybe they want might be pushing it away. What would you say?

Emmanuel Manolakakis: 10 minutes. Come on guys. 10 minutes. You can’t sit still like you. I, I hope everybody listens. Do you understand? If you can’t say, if you can’t sit still for 10 minutes, you under listen. In Scarborough, if you rode the bus back when I was, before I had my car, you’re on that bus for like 30 minutes.

There’s, there was nothing to do, guys. Okay. Like I, little did, I know I was practicing 30 minutes of mindfulness. I’m doing not, I was so progressive. Back [00:35:00] in the eighties, you had no cell phone? No. You just sat there, man. You just sat there and you guess what? You looked at everybody. You were mindful, oh, there’s a woman that’s pregnant coming up.

I got it. I should get up. Let a pregnant woman sit down. Or, oh, there’s an older person come up. I should get up. Or you, you just take 10 minutes, man, sit down and don’t look at your phone. Breathe and just observe the world. Just observe it. It it just 10 minutes. It is beautiful. It is beautiful, um, to do that.

And it starts with 10 minutes, and I don’t want anybody to do anything more. I, I did it long time ago and I, I quickly made it 20 minutes. Like you should never, like, I, even though me and you are talking to people now, we’re asked, we’re we’re telling ’em some stuff. I am not a guru. I am, I will present information.

I want everybody to test everything I say and if it’s, if it works and it’s good [00:36:00] for you, please continue it.

Tim Melanson: Love it.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Come on. Like eat some good food. I dare anybody to have a little bit of cabbage with their meal, a dinner for a week straight, just a little bit of cabbage, and watch how their gut will feel. Great. Tell me you don’t. If you don’t like that feeling, well then go back to eating whatever you’re eating. So read something past something, eat something. Try some training to anybody that doesn’t understand how beautiful it feels to go for a 15 minute walk after you have dinner. If that doesn’t feel good, don’t do it. But I will. I will guarantee you, you’ll, you’ll enjoy it. That’s a wonderful practice. Very simple. So I’m all about starting very small. Letting things grow and enjoying it. Just like you’re planting a seed. Let it grow. Don’t, you don’t have to yell at it,

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: let it, let it grow.

Tim Melanson: So how do we find out more about you then?

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Uh, for me it’s really simple. I have, well, I have a book I’ve written, so if people [00:37:00] want, you can go, you’ll find on Amazon, it’s called Eudemonia the Highest Human Good. By a manual I’ll, I’ll, I’d be happy to. Uh, so it’s on Amazon, eudemonia is the name. Um, they can also go to my website. There’s fight club.ca and there’s another website I started off just after the pandemic, which is a lot more the personal growth, personal development.

Um, it’s called Masters method ca. And I’ve kind of put all my kind of more mental training. There because it seemed like there’s a, a different group of people that not necessarily want martial arts, but do want to want that training without the punches and kicks, which I get right. It’s not for everybody, right?

Not everybody’s a martial artist in a physical sense, but we definitely need, it feels like being a martial artist, living in, living in our society these days. We’re wrestling with so many issues.

Tim Melanson: Nice.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: is, there is that side of it, right? Um, yeah, those are, those are definitely the ways of, of getting in touch with me and just, um, I, [00:38:00] I want to thank you as well for putting me on the podcast.

It’s, it’s, it’s a wonderful way and for all the entrepreneurs listening, um, be adaptable. Find some authenticity. It’s not easy. I know it’s not. You’ve gotta sit quietly. You gotta go back into your history and look at what you did. Talk to your mother if you can. What did you do as a kid? How were you? Stay close to those things, right?

If I can do it as a martial artist, if I can literally play while I’m training, even when I’m fighting, because all of a sudden I’m very authentic. I’m not doing things I regret.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Because it’s, it’s like me to do everything I do. So please find a way. If I can do it in fighting, you can find it in your, in your business and in your personal life as well.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. One more question before I go. Who’s your favorite

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Yes. Oh man, you got so many. I rockstar. I, so I grew up in the eighties, so I listened to all kinds of music back then. It’s really hard. Uh, but I did watch the Rise of Rap [00:39:00] and I’m not a big rapper, but I watched it like NWA Public Enemy and I was like. What the hell is this? Like, it’s like you had Bon Jovi, you had, you had, uh, you know, Michael Jackson, you had you this, and then there was this thing that was like so different.

And then to watch the evolution of that music. And how it’s transformed. Um, I don’t think I, ’cause I can’t say saw that with country or blues or, I, I didn’t see that, but I was, you know, I was literally, that was exactly when I was a teenager and I still remember the people blaring some of that public enemy or, and it was like, what the, we were shocked.

That was like a, a very different type of music. So I think that one is the one that really sticks in my mind. It really, it’s, it’s, it’s really to watch something from the beginning and watch it.

Tim Melanson: Expand.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Expand, like, and, and the characters, and some of them are still around, which is, you know what I mean, like [00:40:00] Jay-Z and all these guys, they’re still around.

And to watch them mature, you know, same with Mike Tyson. I, I grew up boxing and, and he was the guy. And to watch him now what a, what a change. What a changed man, what a changed person, you know? Pretty awesome.

Tim Melanson: Love that. Well, thank you so much for rocking it with me today, Emmanuel. This has been a lot of fun.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: Man, been a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Tim.

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

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast. Today I’m talking to the CEO of Catalyst Growth Advisors, and what he does is he helps leaders take the guesswork outta growth. Excited to hear more about that. So we are rocking out today with Bill Flynn. Hey, Bill, you ready to rock?

Bill Flynn: Ready to rock.

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

Bill Flynn: Yeah, well, um, we do good and, and actually your good and your bad note are in the same story. So can I, can I do that?

Tim Melanson: they often are.

Bill Flynn: Okay. So, um, the reason I do what I do today is because of this story. I, uh, so I did, uh, I’ve, I’ve done 10 startups here in the Boston area over about 25 years, all in high tech and, um. Between start of five and six, I was asked by my then wife and daughter, do I need to do another one right away? ’cause they, you know, they take a lot of time and energy and, and things and, and I had done pretty well. I was, I [00:01:00] was, uh, I think four for five at that time. Uh, and. Uh, so I said, no, I don’t. I, so I, I took time off.

I spent a lot more time with my daughter. She was, um, like seven or eight, something like that. And, um, one I, but I was still known in the area and people heard that I was now free. And so I would get calls and can you come help me and do this and do that? So one of the calls was from an old, um, um, CFO friend of mine, and he was doing a fractional gig with a, with an email hosting company.

And he said, you really gotta help this guy. You know, he’s really struggling and whatever. So I met with him. I said, uh, yeah, I’m happy to help. Uh Uh I’m expensive and I only work Monday through Thursday between 10 and two. I said,

can you do that while I’m sort of off off? Right.

Uh. Because, you know, I wanna drop my daughter off at school, then I go work out, then I go pick her up and we do stuff and whatever.

So, so, uh, that was great. I did that. Um, he [00:02:00] eventually, he said, look, I wanna sell the company. I’ve been doing this for a whole bunch of years. I’m tired. Uh, I just wanna, can you help me? Make me look as big as you possibly can so I can get as much money outta this as I possibly can. So I’m like, great. So we. You know, hired a bunch of people, put together some, some strategy and, and some frameworks and stuff. And about a year later he got bought for a good amount of money, enough for him to never have to work again. Uh, and then I was asked to take over, uh, so this was 2008 and, uh, my first official day as what would be general manager, uh, was, uh, January 4th, 2009. And I like to describe it as the best and the worst day of my professional life, which is sort of the good, the good and the bad note

together. Uh, we didn’t deliver email to anyone for about two and a half days because the entire technical infrastructure that he had built, and I had been working with him and collapsed on itself due to the volume that it wasn’t ready to handle. [00:03:00] So the company that bought us knew that the system needed to be upgraded, et cetera, but you know, they didn’t realize it needed to be done that quickly. And so they were sort of taking care of that. But I had 60 people working for me, thousands of customers. Uh, so I’m like, you know, what do I need to do? I need to fix this and sort of help all these people. And, um, I, I had a bunch of good CEOs that I had worked with in the previous years. I’ve been a big fan of business anyway, I’ve been reading. For years, decades. And so I had all sort of these ideas, so I’m like, all right, well let’s give ’em a go. And so I basically cobbled together a system. And for those of you, and you may know this, Tim, uh, there’s a system out there called EOS. And, um, I basically made my own EOS because I wasn’t smart enough to know that it was already out there. So I made my own and it worked fabulously, uh. You, you can look at, you can look at my LinkedIn and see all the wonderful stats that I have up there. You know, we doubled the size of the business in about two years and I didn’t lose any of those [00:04:00] 60 people. Um, we increased the average order size. You know, we had customer stats scores that, you know, were, started off lousy of course, and then really good. But the best part was this, I sort of, um. I had a team and then I inherited a bunch of people and you know, none of us had been through this sort of disaster before, and some of them hadn’t really been leaders of anything before. Uh, so I said to them, look, uh, we need to figure this out. We have all these people relying on us. I said, look, I don’t, I’m technically adept, but I don’t know how to run a network infrastructure. I’ve never run customer support before. I’m not a finance guy said, but. You know, so I, you know, I need you guys and I can’t really tell you what to do ’cause I don’t know what to do.

But I can tell you sort of what I would like it to look like when we’re done and would love to discuss debate and decide that with you. And then I need each of you to then say, okay, if that’s sort of our ultimate goal, what’s your piece of it? And I need you to sort of draw me the map from where we are. To where, what you need to get to, where you [00:05:00] want to be, and then we’re gonna work together to, to do that. Um, and you know, as I said, it worked fabulously well. Uh, and so about 18 months later, I left to go do the next startup, which would’ve been startup six, I guess. And two of the guys came up to me and they kind of said the same thing to me when I was always leaving was, I just want you to know, bill, that thing you made me do that roadmap, you made me create, hated it.

It was really, really hard, but I’m so glad you made me do it because now I know how to do this right? It’s sort of like sort of a teach ’em to fish kind of thing. Um, so that really sprung me into what I do now, which is I, I now do that with other leaders. I teach them. How the best businesses in the world work, because by the way, they all work kind of the same way at a certain level. And so that’s sort of what I do and I love what I do. It’s a calling. I wish I, I wish I had been doing it longer. I’ve been doing about 10 years. It’s just a blast. Um, time flies when I work with my clients, you know, I, [00:06:00] it’s, uh, it pays really well. So it’s, uh, so that’s my good note and my bad note.

Tim Melanson: So what did you learn from the bad note, I guess?

Bill Flynn: Uh, uh, what I learned is that most leaders, uh, don’t know what they’re doing. It’s not their fault. Uh, they’re being taught the wrong things.

There’s a huge gap between what science knows and what business does. Um, we make lots of mistakes. We don’t make big, huge mistakes very often, but we make. Little ones that just add

up and it makes our lives so much harder than they really need to be.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, the compound effect, right?

Bill Flynn: Yeah, exactly.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. If it was a big mistake, you’d notice it right away.

Bill Flynn: Yeah.

Yeah. You know, you, you hire that one person that, you know, they looked good and then all of a sudden, you know, nobody likes ’em and they don’t work and then, and then you don’t do anything about it. And then they start hiring people. It’s like, it just becomes an issue. That’s just one [00:07:00] of many things that we do. Uh, and because, you know, we were taught to, you know, to hire for skill and knowledge, and that’s not the way you should hire a loan, right? You said yes, that’s important, but to be honest with you, it’s less important than hiring them for belief and, and fit,

uh, values. Uh, you can teach ’em skills and knowledge, but you can’t teach ’em how to be, how out of integrity or honesty or whatever.

Tim Melanson: I can’t agree more than that. That’s, that’s actually something that has come up many times on the, on the show where people will make hires based on the, you know, picking the best of the best and it just ends up not being a very good fit. Um, but like, what about friends? Should you hire friends?

Bill Flynn: Uh, you can, but you know, it’s gonna test your friendship. Especially if they work for you. Um, so what happens is I hire people and then, then they become friends,

and then I hire ’em again. Right. But, but we know, like the dynamic, right? We know that, you know, I [00:08:00] have certain style, I do certain things and you know, my style is basically to, to set direction and then. To say, Hey, great. Do, do what you do and then tell me if you need me.

Right? I’m gonna check on you every now and again. I, you know, I’ve been calling it eyes on, hands off leadership, right? Is, is, you know, I’m gonna keep an eye on things, making sure things are going well, but I’m gonna keep my hands out of it unless something happens and I need to, but, you know, uh, so so that works. But if you don’t set that up ahead of time, you know, there’s gonna be, it could be difficult.

Tim Melanson: So then what are some of the, I guess, processes that you put in place to avoid some of those mistakes that you know led to your bad note?

Bill Flynn: Yeah. Well, how long is your show?

Tim Melanson: So that’s a

whole course then.

Bill Flynn: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So at, but at a high level, uh, the thing that I’ve learned over 30 years of, of, of research and business and really intensely in the last 10, you know, I, I might be the world expert in what I do. I don’t know, [00:09:00] uh, ’cause I’ve been studying business from multiple perspectives for about 10 years and. Uh, not only just, you know, business itself, but you know, neuroscience and behavioral and social psychology and all of these things that go along with running a great business because I found that there are three things that seem to be the, the biggest factors in whether you have not a business that survives, but a business that thrives. Uh, and there are few of them. There aren’t that many. Uh, there are outliers, but it’s doable. Uh, and it’s, and it’s been proven over and over again. So it’s, it’s not like we can’t do it, but as I said earlier, we just don’t. Um, and that is, uh, so, so there’s a, there’s a methodology called scaling Up. That I use as a foundation.

Some of your listeners may know what it is, and, and there are four decisions that they talk about, which are people, strategy, execution, and cash. And so people is the most important, but people is three different things. It’s the individual, it’s the team, and it’s the culture of those three [00:10:00] team is far more important than either of the other two

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Bill Flynn: because most people are on a team. And most people will stay in a horrible culture if they’re on a great team and actually will leave a great culture if they’re on a bad team. So the team is really the core of what you do and, and we never teach people how to be great team leaders. We put ’em in charge. But we don’t teach them how, you know, what it worked, how, how do you attract and, and dev and craft and then develop and exit people from a team. We don’t teach any of that. And that’s sort of what I do as well. So that’s one big factor is this team factor is huge. Then you have to have some sort of system, right. Um, running a business. Uh, so a business is a system, but it’s not just any kind of system. It’s what’s called a complex adaptive system like the human body or a city, uh, et cetera.

These are complex. There are so many factors that are involved that affect the system, and [00:11:00] there’s no way to just sort of say, this is it, and we’re done, because then something changes and then, you know, the system is affected. So you have to understand that, that this, you have to sort of run it like that, but you should have one. Right. You should run your business in a systematic way, which most people don’t. Um, they do the, they make the same decision over and over again. You know, they, they, they solve the problem and never say, well, what caused that problem? And we

should solve that so it

doesn’t happen. And go back to the root.

You know, there’s just so many things that we don’t do ’cause we’re busy and whatever. Um, so, so you have to have some sort of system. Uh, I, I teach a system. I call it the performance operating system. It’s to me, for me, the, I cobbled together the best parts of all the things that I’ve learned. Uh, and it seems relatively unique, but it’s really based on Drucker Deming, sche McGregor, Bennis, Porter Edmondson.

It’s, you know, all these management science people that have been around for a hundred years, really. Um, and then the last thing is, if you wanna measure how well you’re doing. [00:12:00] Revenue and profit are not your measurement. Cash is your measurement. If you wanna grow a business, cash is your primary financial metric. Why? Because it’s the only thing that won’t lie to you on your p and l or your balance sheet. You can, you know, certainly have revenue that is, you know, vanity, right? But it doesn’t mean you’re running a great business. Profit is great, but you can fool yourself on profit. You can move money around and seem profitable and whatever.

Or you can actually grow. In such a way that you grow broke, right? You’re growing and the profit’s there, but the profit, the cash is too far behind the growth. So you grow broke, uh, because you’ve grown so fast, you actually put yourself out of business, right? So those are the three things you need, team, some sort of system, and then cash.

If you focus on those three things and optimize those three things, you’re in the best possible position to have a thriving company.

Tim Melanson: Wow, that’s amazing. Wow. So much gold. So quickly. Well done. Uh, I have a question though about, ’cause you mentioned so many startups that you [00:13:00] started up and uh, you know, I know a lot of entrepreneurs kind of do a bunch of different things, but I think. Probably it’s more normal that they do a bunch of things because the fir, the, the first thing failed and then they go to something else and they go to something else.

Um, but I talk to more people more often that have that one business that they’ve been doing forever because now it works. Right. W when you go into those businesses, did you go into them initially with the intent that you were gonna be leaving at some point or. Did it just, you created these systems and then it was just easy to leave.

Like what? What was the mindset going into them?

Bill Flynn: Yeah, so, um. You know, you hear, uh, these things like what’s your superpower or your zone of genius or whatever, right? And we have all these wonderful little phrases for stuff. Um, but to me it’s really the thing that lights you up or turns you on or whatever, you know, gets your juices, whatever that thing is.

Right? And for me it’s puzzles.

I just love [00:14:00] puzzles. Uh, I have a brain that just loves puzzles, right? And, and so I do puzzles all over. I mean, I, I have the New York Times. You know, crossword and, and app and I do all, all those things. You know, a startup is just a big puzzle. You know, I love Mensa questions and stuff like that really challenged me.

I love watching detective shows and trying to figure out, you know, as I go, like, what’s, what’s gonna happen? And I love it when I don’t, right? It’s even, uh, because it’s fun. It’s like, ah, I never, that’s a cool way to do it. Um, so, so that’s what got me into it. Um. And so what happens when you’re good at puzzles and you, and you’re good at startups, uh, the people who know that want you to do the another one.

Tim Melanson: Uh,

Bill Flynn: So like, so you like, you know, you get an

IPO or you get an acquisition and they’re like, you know, great. Now do this one, right? And, and can you make us some more money? And all that kind of stuff. So that’s sort of what happens is you get sort of into this thing. I don’t necessarily go into a thing, I’m gonna leave at any particular time, but. You know, when it becomes routine, it is, it’s, there’s less puzzle there, right? It’s

your, you know, there is some puzzle, there’s always a puzzle, you know, [00:15:00] people are puzzles. I mean, we’re crazy by default and, you know, and sort of all that. And I find that fascinating. Um, but I do like the figuring out parts.

So, um, now I get to do it. I’m not doing startups, but I’m, I’m sort of going into a company and I’m helping them figure it out,

right? So it’s a new thing every time with them. Uh, so that’s sort of. That’s sort of the, the, the, the way I’ve approached it so far.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I really like that. And you know, I think, oh, oh, well that’s the thing. Once you solve a puzzle, it’s solved. It’s not fun anymore. Right. Like quote unquote. And you know, I don’t know if this is too deep or not, but maybe what you said earlier about how most entrepreneurs or most business people don’t.

Look at why the problem happened. They just keep on solving the problem as they happen. Maybe that’s why maybe they don’t wanna solve the puzzle. Maybe they don’t wanna leave. Right? They want it. They want it to keep on living in that chaos,

Bill Flynn: Could be. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you

Tim Melanson: least subconsciously.

Bill Flynn: chaos. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, there are some, they love the drama, right. And, and whatever they feed off of that. Um, most [00:16:00] entrepreneurs I know don’t,

Tim Melanson: No. No.

Bill Flynn: they would, they would rather it be, you know, a, a little less hard

because, you know, it makes your life more difficult.

And, you know, you don’t, you don’t, you don’t want to have your, your work. Be your whole life, right? Is, is, you know, we talk about work-life balance and I don’t think that’s a thing at all. There’s no balance in work and life, right? It’s, it’s, you know, sometimes one pull thing pulls you in the other and you have to integrate them, right?

So the integration is important, um, but you’ll never have balance. Uh, and, but especially if you are, if you are sucked into what I call the, sort of the tyranny of the moment, right? This is a problem that most leaders have is they get sucked into the tyranny of the moment and there are lots of them, and they feed off of that, right?

Is is that actually they like being the solver and the decider and

whatever. But then they don’t create, you know, they don’t, I have this concept, uh, that, that’s in my next book, which is [00:17:00] sort of the, the, the hero trap, right? We have this trap that we like to be the hero. And, and by the way, you know, especially in western culture, individualism and all that is, it’s part of our thing, right?

Is the hero is, is all lauded. Um. But in a business it doesn’t work. ’cause, ’cause the hero doesn’t scale. At some point you run out of hours in a day or brain cells or whatever. Right? So, uh, this concept I’ve come up with is, you know, you have to sort of, sometimes it’s good to be a hero. You have to be the hero. You have a particular skill or there’s the house is on fire or whatever. You gotta go in and just do. Right? Um, but it, but if you just do and then go onto the next thing, then. The house will catch fire a different way, and then you’ll have to go do it again. So, you know, it’s like once you do that, you should then teach and say, okay, here are the people that need to know, here’s what I did, here’s how I fixed it, you know?

And so now they’re learning at least how you do it, right? So there’s this controller, which is the hero, then there’s builder, right? So the controller is [00:18:00] iol. The builder is I teach, and then the architect, which is really what you want to scale because that is infinite in scale, is, is I build systems that make me unnecessary for the running of the business. Uh, and that is what you drive towards. So this is Reed Hastings at Netflix. Um, uh, uh, this is um, Jeff Bezos at Amazon. You know, pick your. You know, company that has grown crazy in the last 10, 15, 20 years. These are architects. They’ve built systems that don’t need them for the day to day ’cause they’re looking out into the future.

And that’s what you should be doing.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and that is a superpower and that is something that I think is missing. Misunderstood by the majority of the population. You know, thinking that these guys make way too much money or whatever it is, and maybe they do, right? Uh,

do they need that many billions? I don’t know. But on the other hand, that is a superpower.

I mean, [00:19:00] they have been able to do something that very few people are able to do. Otherwise, everybody be doing it right.

Bill Flynn: Yeah. Yeah. And so very few people are architects, right. And, and you’re not, so it’s, it’s not like you’re one or the other. Some you have to don the, the identity, depending on what you need. Right? Sometimes Jeff Bezos had to go in and. Do something right. But, but he never stopped at that. He said, okay, you know what happened here?

And, and eventually, ’cause those of you know, like there’s 14 principles in the Amazon system. And now Jassy, who’s the new CEO, he runs like six Fortune 500 companies

on his own. How can you do that? I mean, they’re all worth billions and billions of dollars each, but he runs them as he’s the, he’s the CEO of all of them,

uh, because Bezos and the team and et cetera put all that in place over, you know, years and decades.

So he can, I.

Tim Melanson: It’s fascinating to think about it that way. Really. I mean, you, you’d almost think that in a way, these people are lazy [00:20:00] because they’re trying to figure out ways to make their company work without them. If they get pulled into something, they’re like, I need to figure out a way to not be pulled into this again.

And, and, uh, it’s

just, it’s just, interesting how that works. ’cause I mean, that’s probably why he’s able to run so many different companies because he doesn’t need to be pulled in very often. He is figured out how to, how, how to replace himself, right?

Bill Flynn: Exactly. Yeah. There’s, there’s a, there’s a Prussian General, and I can’t remember his name, Vaughn something or other, and he said, you know, what kind of offices do you look for? He says, I want lazy and clever officers. Right? ’cause I want them to, to be smart enough to know, you know, that, that their job is to not. Do a lot of stuff. Right. Uh, and that’s what you’re kinda looking for, right? That’s what a, a lazy and clever leader is probably the best kind of leader you want. ’cause they’re constantly, I, I was, it’s funny I did that with, I, I said that to once to a VC person and she said, you know, tell me about, you know, what you do.

And I said, well, I’m basically lazy. And she like, she looked at me and it’s like, you know, that’s a bad thing. And it’s like, no, no. I said, here’s why I’m late. I said, I don’t, you know, my job is to create an environment where I’m not necessary.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.[00:21:00]

Bill Flynn: Because if I’m a leader of the company, my job is not the running of the company.

It is at the beginning, but it’s to figure out, like whenever I started as a VP of sales, I would, I would be the sales guy, right? And I would do, but I’m learning, right? And I’m learning, you know, how does this work? And, and so what kind of salesperson do I need to hire to replace me? Uh, and then I can teach them like how I do sales and how I think, and all the, you know, ’cause I generally had an unusual way of doing sales, um, which really worked really well. Um, that’s why I would teach them when I do that, but then I’m like, you know, go, you know, let me know if you need me.

Tim Melanson: Love

Bill Flynn: Um, and, and they were all different. Like one was really relationship oriented. One was a, technically was a perfect technical salesperson, you know, I’m like, I don’t care how you do it. I have two rules.

Be honest and responsible. As long as you follow those rules, do it any way you want, you know? So

Tim Melanson: The world is changing really quickly right

now, and especially with something like AI coming in and, uh, that comes up quite often on the [00:22:00] show. Uh, I’m wondering, you know, how do you think that changes the role of the CEO or the business owner?

Bill Flynn: Yeah. So, uh, you bring this up. It’s interesting. So, um, there’s this term, uh, that we used to be in, which was called vuca, a VUCA environment. Are you familiar with this?

Tim Melanson: Nope.

Bill Flynn: Volatile, uncertain complex, and I forget what the A is. Um, and this was sort of like, hey, this was, came outta the war college here in the United States, you know, this is how leaders had to be thinking about this.

You know, the, the rules of war have changed.

You have to understand it, be adaptive and you know, et cetera. Um, and we’re no longer in that. And actually we’re moving from that to what’s called banney, which is a brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible.

And the, the poster child example of this is Silicon Valley Bank. I dunno if you’re familiar with what happened with Silicon Valley Bank, but, but $425 [00:23:00] billion was withdrawn in 24 hours

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Bill Flynn: because the leader did what he always did. Like he, he shared with his, um, team and with the world, Hey, something’s happening. We’re fixing it. And he’d let everyone know. And then Peter Thiel didn’t like it. And so he said, I’m taking my money out and so should all of you. And because you could just get on your phone and just withdraw billions of dollars. They, you know, just, and he didn’t do anything differently than he hadn’t done for the previous 40 years. But all of a sudden, you know, people were anxious.

You know, he thought he had a system that worked, but it was brittle. And then the incomprehensible happened. You know, this one little thing, which could have been fixed in a basically two months, they would’ve fixed it sunk the bank.

Now they’re owned by some retail bank in North Carolina.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Bill Flynn: Yeah,

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Bill Flynn: crazy. And, and [00:24:00] actually, um, my partner works for Silicon Valley Bank and while we were in Mexico, all this was happening. So I got a first row seat to everything that was going on that first week. It was crazy.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Yeah, so this is probably a little alarming to to many people

that,

Bill Flynn: AI is just exacerbating it, right? AI is another factor in this. You know, like how, how can this, you know, all these things that it now can do, um, you know, how well or not is a whole other thing, but, you know, how do I incorporate it? You know, it’s just another factor. It’s just an accelerant. And so that’s why you have to build your systems and it’s not, you can’t really plan.

You can certainly plan. And have a plan, but know that your plan could change at any moment. So what you need to do is not rely on the plan, but rely on your ability to adapt quickly.

Those people will be the ones who survive, not the ones who are like, we got a plan, it’s five years, you know where we’re going and we’re just charging ahead and we’re just gonna put our blinders on, [00:25:00] and whatever. You know, that’s Blockbuster and Nokia and Kodak and you know, the dust, dust, spin of technology.

Tim Melanson: Well, and, and I, I see a lot of that right now because, I mean, as AI is making its way in, I, I don’t know what it’s gonna look like in a few years. I’m a tech guy and so I do follow this stuff, and who knows? I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of a alarming stuff. There’s a lot of exciting stuff, but whatever it is.

E Either way, it’s going to change how we do life in the next little while, just as drastically as how the internet has changed how we did life from then to, to when the internet came. Uh, however, the speed at which things change is going much, much quicker. And so I think that what I am seeing is I’m seeing this divide of people that are embracing.

And, you know, going full steam, maybe even too fast. [00:26:00] And then there is a group of people resisting. And I, I think probably the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. If, if you totally dug, dug your head in the sand, you might end up being a blockbuster. That just didn’t

see that things were changing. Right.

Uh, however, if you, if you go too quickly, you, you might end up failing for the opposite reason. Now you’re actually letting AI run your business for you, which may not do a very good job. Right. Is that how you see it too, or?

Bill Flynn: Yeah, so I would say it is sort of like, like you’re crossing the street and you see that the signs is, is. Says go. And it’s like, oh, I trust that it’s always been right, et cetera. But you know what, sometimes someone doesn’t see the light and while you’re focused on the thing, you get run over.

Right. So, you know, I think putting your head in the sand is, is dumb.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Bill Flynn: Right? It’s, you know, and, and you sort of catastrophize like it’s gonna take over and Terminator and all this kind of

stuff and, you know, is that a possibility? I guess so. [00:27:00] You know, but it’s, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s something, it’s not the reason to not do it. Right, because we, we have been in fear of so many things in the past that yes, they caused problems, you know, but we’ve, we found ways around them and we figured it out as a human, as a human being, you know, will we exterminate ourselves?

I don’t know. Right? But we haven’t so far, and so we know it, it has so many more useful ways of, of making our lives better and easier. And, you know, I gotta tell you, uh, I don’t like writing and I’m an, I’m a writer. And now I can write much better. ’cause I, I love editing.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, me

Bill Flynn: So I say, you know, here’s all my writing that I’ve done for 10 years now I wanna write a book about this, this, and whatever.

So gimme some words and then I’ll change ’em, you know, make sure they look like me. And I’ve written six books in like six months. Uh, and I get the first one’s gonna get the, the next one is gonna get published in October. Right. And I, I, I never would’ve written a book ever again. If I didn’t have Claude or chat GPT or [00:28:00] whatever, you helping me. So it has so many wonderful things. It just makes, it just takes a lot of the, the, the the harder stuff that’s unnecessary, uh, and automates it. But it also augments, right? I mean, I have great debates with, and ai, you know, I’m talking about politics and religion and, you know, and I learned something about the brain.

I’m like, Hey, doesn’t this work? I just, today I’m on the way to a client. And I’m learning about how, uh, epigenetics causes our systems to, uh, for trauma to be, um, adopted by the next generation. And it’s physically a, a change in the genome of the genes, how they’re expressed in the next generation. So. You know, maybe that’s why they’re more anxious or have these other issues. And I’m like, well, how does that work with DNA and, and you know, and, and Darwinian Rev evolution and, you know, and, and you know, it’s, I get to like just ask a quick question and it’s like, and I learned all about, oh, it’s really not the same. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s similar but it generally dies out. You know, it’s certainly an issue, but [00:29:00] it’s, it doesn’t change your code. You know, I never would’ve been able to do that before. I did it in five minutes while I’m driving.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Bill Flynn: I mean, that’s cool.

Tim Melanson: It is very cool. I, and I think that that part there, the voice activated stuff is the coolest of it all. ’cause I mean, I’m a, I’m a great researcher. I love using the internet. Uh, however. Can’t do that when you’re driving or when you’re taking on on a walk. You can’t bring your laptop with you everywhere you go.

But I mean, just to have a headset in or have it on your, on your car and just be driving around and having these conversations as though you have access to all the information ever is mind blowing to me. And

it definitely allows us to grow much, much quicker. Right.

Bill Flynn: It does, it does, you know,

but you gotta be careful, right? As I just say, I say, so I’ve got four tools that I use. I use Grok Chat, PT, uh, Claude, and, um, Gemini. And I actually use ’em against each other, right? I’m like, I heard this over here. I’m like, you know, tell me why this is wrong and uh, et cetera, you know?

Uh, but I describe it, it’s, you remember, it’s a [00:30:00] 14-year-old precocious boy who’s on drugs and hallucinates and lies on a regular basis.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Bill Flynn: You have to know that, and don’t just accept its first answer,

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Bill Flynn: but if you do challenge it, et cetera, it’s, you know, it, it, it has no, it has no emotion. Right? So you’re just like, you know, that’s not right.

You know? Or where did you come up with that? I’ve told that all I, I, I, I joke right regularly with it. I’m like, I, I’m, I say I’m writing a nonfiction series of books. Stop making things up, right? Because I’ll say, where’d you get that stat from? What do you mean? Like, can you, can you gimme the source? Oh, there’s no source.

I made it up. Like, no, that’s not how it works. But,

you know, this is honest. Right? It’s like I made it up. Like I said, stop doing that. Gimme, gimme some content that is not a lie. And we’ll, we’ll throw that in.

Tim Melanson: and we can’t hurt

his feelings, even though we’d like to sometimes

Bill Flynn: Oh, I’ve

sworn at it a couple times. Oh. One time I remember a clot, I was just getting totally frustrated ’cause it was coming up with the same thing.

I’m like, and it would say, I, [00:31:00] I would ask it, tell me what I need to tell you so I can get what I need and then I’ll tell it and it doesn’t do it anyway.

And then I had sworn enough times into it, it came up with a thing. Uh, it maybe we should take a break this box. I’m like, oh, hilarious. It’s like, there must be some code in there that says, okay, if they swear you three times in a row. Tell him to go get a sip cup of water and hang out for a minute.

Tim Melanson: That’s brilliant. Oh, I love it. So let’s talk a little bit about, uh, about getting fans. ’cause I mean, another part of the world has changed. I mean, social media’s taken over everything. I mean, everything is different now, and I’m, I’m actually wondering even just from your experience, how is it different getting fans now as opposed to maybe 10, 20 years ago?

Bill Flynn: So mechanically it’s different, but fundamentally it is not.

Tim Melanson: Perfect.

Bill Flynn: It’s exactly the same. So, um, [00:32:00] there’s a, uh, theory called Jobs to Be Done. Are you familiar with this?

Tim Melanson: Uh, no.

Bill Flynn: Okay. So it’s been around about 30, 35 years. You are familiar with it because you’ve seen it in action. Uh, have you seen the Snickers commercials?

Tim Melanson: I have.

Bill Flynn: That is a jobs to be done model. So, uh, one of the gentlemen who was the progenitor of jobs to be done was hired by the company who, who makes Snickers. And they said, look, you know, we’re, we’re just trying to grow the business, et cetera. And he said, okay, great, I’ll do some research. And he said, look, the, your, the people who buy Snickers the most don’t see Snickers the same as they see Milky Way. Milky Way is an indulgence to them. It’s like cups, cookies, and cupcakes and whatever. Snickers is a food substitute. That is why they buy it, for whatever reason. Right? Some irrational reason of all this. Sugar and candy, whatever is a food substitute,

but that’s how they see it. So that’s why they changed it [00:33:00] to satisfaction. Right. And they have tripled the sales of Snickers. Because they understand why someone buys the thing. Right? Um, and there’s another, there’s, uh, even more famous, uh, example. Uh, Clayton Christensen, who was a Harvard Business professor and is one of the, he’s the, the, the creator of the theory. He took the work and made it a theory.

So a theory is something that you can apply to anything

and it works, right? The Pareto principle is a theory, right? 80 20 rule, right? And you apply it to your closet, to your friends, to your food. It’s pretty much true, right? 80%. If you have a hundred friends, you see 20 of them, way more than you see the other 80.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Bill Flynn: All the things you eat, the clothes you wear in your closet, you wear the same clothes most often,

right? So, uh, so this theory, uh, was applied to McDonald’s, right? So McDonald’s was, hi hired Clayton Christensen’s, um, consulting firm and said, look, we wanna sell more milkshakes, [00:34:00] you know, can you help us? We here, you might be able to help us.

He said, sure. What? Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna observe for a day. And so they, they, they observed the whole whatever, 20 hours that this thing was open, and they said, here’s what we found out, that 80% of your milkshakes are purchased before 8:00 AM and between three and 5:00 PM. And they’re like, really?

Like, yeah. So they went the next morning and, and asked a bunch of people, what did you hire this milkshake to do for you? Right? Because that’s what we do. We hire products. And services to fulfill a job for us. And when they fulfill a job, we keep hiring them. And when they don’t, we fire ’em and hire something else.

So they found out that the ones in the morning said, I have a really long commute. It’s super boring and I’m not hungry when I wake up, but I know I’m gonna be hungry before I get to work. So I stop off, I get a milkshake and it, it’s super thick. It takes me like 20 minutes to [00:35:00] drink the whole thing. And I, by the time I get to work, I, you know, I can make it through to lunch.

Tim Melanson: Huh.

Bill Flynn: and they said, well, what else have you hired in the past to do this? They’re like, oh, you know, I hired a banana, but you know, the peel gets all over my hands and it gets, sticks on the wheel and tired. A bagel with cream cheese, but you know, it’s dangerous. And you know, the thing, crumbs go everywhere and I’m getting cream cheese in my pants, you know, and, and you know, some say like, hired a Snickers bar, you know, but I felt guilty. Because I was eating candy, you know, and I’m, and I’m thinking, you know, well, you’re eating milkshake. It’s the same thing.

Tim Melanson: Milkshake is candy too.

Bill Flynn: But, you know, again, we’re, we’re irrational as

human beings. So they said, great. Um, so they went back to this, this franchise owner and said, look, you know, when, when, when they first, they said, when you first tried to increase your sales, what did you do?

And they said, well, we talked to our clients and we asked ’em what they want. And they said they wanted a chunkier, you know, more chocolatey, you know, whatever. Um. Thicker, you know, whatever. And, and they, they made all the changes and the sales didn’t change at [00:36:00] all. So they didn’t really want that, and they didn’t value that.

What they valued was this thing. So they said, okay, so here’s what we’re gonna do. And this was a long time ago. Before, you know, um, apple Pay and all this kind of stuff. So what they did is they made a whole bunch of milkshakes in the morning and they put them out on the counter. ’cause one of the other complaints they had was they go through the drive-through, but it’s, everyone’s getting a milkshake and it’s long.

The line is really long. They said, look, you don’t have to sit in the line. We’re gonna put ’em on the counter. You don’t even have to talk to us. Just come grab your milkshake, swipe your credit card and go. And sales went up. Yeah. Now same product, three to five in the afternoon. This is now dad with his progeny, right?

And he wants to be the cool dad. And the kid says, can I get a milkshake and whatever? And they say, well, all right, what do we do? But don’t tell mom, you know? But you know, the milkshakes were in these horrible cups that, you know, kids who didn’t have motor skills yet with crushing this milkshake would go everywhere. You [00:37:00] know, it was, you know, there were all these other issues. The straw was too small, their muscles in their mouth weren’t good, so they changed how they delivered it. They made it smaller, so dad felt less guilty. They put it in a sippy cup basically with a big fat straw, and sales went up. Again.

They didn’t change the product at all.

They changed how they delivered it and how they packaged it. So that’s how people buy. We’ve been buying that way forever. But we don’t do it as, we don’t, we, we think we know what’s best, but we don’t ever really figure out what they want or what they value, really more than they want. So that’s the fundamental thing.

Now how we do it is, you know, we have social media, we have, we have, you know, events. All the things that we do have changed, but the fundamental reason why people buy is still the same.

Tim Melanson: Oh, I love that. Bill. It’s time for your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business.

Bill Flynn: Yeah, so for me it’s, you know, it’s this stuff, you know, so [00:38:00] I, I, I love, so I, I’ve been studying this for, for so many years, and I just think it’s a shame that really good ideas, really good people, and really good businesses fail or struggle for completely preventable reasons. And now that I, I can sort of write about it and, and doesn’t. You know, just to stress me that I, it would take me forever to write a

book. Now I can write them really fast. I can now put them down and, and share them because I think, you know what, uh, we’re gonna see in the next five or 10 years if I’m, if I’m right. But I think even the, the management science that we have today is still not correct for the banning environment that we’re in. Right. So, like Michael Porter is seen as the father of strategy. Um, and he’s an HB HBS professor and he’s, you got the five forces and he said that operations shouldn’t be part of your strategy. And I think he’s wrong, and we’ve proven it because when you, you can, you can operate in a unique way that actually augments your strategy.

So I’m extending his thinking [00:39:00] there,

you know, so I’m, I’m, I think I’m extending thinking in a bunch of different areas and hopefully what I’m writing will help people. So that’s what excites me.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well then how do we find out more then?

Bill Flynn: My website is catalyst growth advisors.com. Um, my current book, I dunno if this, this is video, but my current book is on there. You can actually download it for free if you want, if you wanna read a PDF or you can go to Amazon or, or um, audible or whatever to buy it. And

then my next book will be out, uh, hopefully in October. I’m actually, that was self-published. My other one, I actually have a real publisher now and I don’t know how it works. And so it’ll be, I’ll be in like airports and bookstores and whatever. Um, but mostly, uh, you can, you can find me there at Catalyst Growth Advisors, I write an article twice a month. I have a 50% plus open rate on my articles, so people seem to really like it. Um, all my stuff is there

Tim Melanson: That’s amazing. Well, right on. We’re gonna have to check that out. That book was called Further Faster, right?

Is that what

Bill Flynn: further, faster.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Right on. [00:40:00] So maybe the hardest question of the whole day, but who’s your favorite rockstar?

Bill Flynn: So it’s interesting, um, it used to be James Taylor,

but I, I’ve, and I still am because we talked about music. I play, I played acoustic guitar. I kind of sound a little like him as well. Uh, when I sing. Um, and I just love his, his fingering. I love his lyrics. I love his approach to things, but I’ve really gotten into Billy Joel these days ’cause

I watched his biopic and I just so much more appreciate his music and, and where he know, just like James Taylor.

James Taylor doesn’t read music and he, he actually, you know, learned incorrect how to. Play a guitar, but the way he plays it obviously works for him. And Billy Joel’s the same way. He’s a little tiny guy. He’s got tiny little hands, but man, he, he, he knows how to write a song. He knows how to, everything comes together.

His melody’s great. So he’s probably, right now, he’s currently my favorite. I, I listen to him, I listen to him on the way here from my, from my client thing [00:41:00] ’cause, and I’m just like screaming in the car because he’s got some great, great lyrics and

Tim Melanson: Oh, yeah. He’s such a great songwriter. I’ve got quite a few of his songs in my repertoire. Uh, but I, I did read once about him. He said he didn’t. He didn’t really wanna be a singer. He was trying to write these songs for other people, and he just kind of got thrust into it, and I find that amazing. Really.

Bill Flynn: Yeah. So yeah, if you, so have you seen the documentary?

Tim Melanson: I saw parts of it. I don’t think I saw the

Bill Flynn: Oh, I would see the whole, it, it is fascinating.

It, it. is really good. It’s, it’s like five or six hours long, but it’s so good and it goes through his whole life and. You can see how he transformed from what he was doing. So he really learned how to be a great songwriter.

You know, he, some of his early songs were okay, but he really got into it and, and he has synesthesia, so he is got an advantage over most creatives, you know, so he is, you know, my daughter is synesthesia, so that has helped him. But still, I mean, he, and he’s like, he just has a great work ethic and he, you know, he just went at it.

[00:42:00] And so, um, I would highly recommend, it’s just fascinating how he. He should have been so much better. But you know, he drank way too much and ruined all

these lives in his life. And my guess is he would still be married to Kristi Brinkley if he didn’t drink.

And who wouldn’t wanna be married to Kristi, Frank and Brinkley, even if she’s 60 years old or 70 years old, she’s still gorgeous.

Right. Um, anyway, so it’s, it’s, it’s just a fascinating human story as well, so.

Tim Melanson: Absolutely. Well, I’m gonna check that out for sure then. Thank you so much for rocking out with me today, bill. This has been a lot of fun.

Bill Flynn: Good. Yeah, me too.

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

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast. I’m talking to a career ownership coach with Entrepreneurs Source, and what she does is she helps senior corporate professionals, typically at the director level and above, to transition from corporate careers to business ownership through franchising.

Super excited to be rocking out today with Maja Taylor. Hey Maja. You ready to rock?

Maja Taylor: I am hi Tim.

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

Maja Taylor: Story of success. I will get into that after I, I first wanna say to your listeners

that, um, go support Tim. Tim and I share a passion of helping people. Uh, launched our own businesses, become business owners and entrepreneurs. I really love the great work that you’re doing, Tim. I think more people need to hear your stories and your interviews,

um, and the wonderful guests that you have on, so, so please. If you’re [00:01:00] listening right now and you haven’t done it yet, give Tim a five star rating so he can continue the great work that he’s been doing and I am thrilled to be on with you today because we share that passion. I feel the future is an entrepreneurship, so,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Maja Taylor: um, and I appreciate you having me on. So, success story, a recent success story.

There’s so many. I have the best clients, I have to say that. Um. Most people come to me at a time when they’re at a crossroads going through a transition. Um, e either they’re really feel stuck or or frustrated in their career, or they have been let go capsized, downsized, right sized, um. And through challenges in the job market or their job search?

Um, I mean, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market right now. I I hear crazy stories every day from my clients. So I was working with this one [00:02:00] gentleman, um, I think we worked together for six to eight months, and he had been looking for work for almost a year. Not quite. and and had gotten to a point where, you know, when he went through all the stages of frustration, um, and then felt pretty defeated.

So when we met, he was at a real low. Uh, I would say depressed.

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Maja Taylor: I, some, some calls that he jumped on, it felt like, you know, he was late or, you know, maybe just came outta bed. ’cause it, it was like, you know, what’s the use? Why am I even getting up? Why am I still doing this? Nobody wants, wants to hire me. And, um, he had an incredible background. He was an engineer. Um, by training. He had managed teams. Really successful mid-level. You know, career professional into, uh, going into senior level career professional and just couldn’t, couldn’t land anything. So [00:03:00] we started working together and it was really just helping him see. His his greatness and his strengths and his skills again. And, uh, trying to focus again back on what he really came here on this planet to do.

’cause I think he had lost sight of that. I’m a pretty spiritual person. I think it’s important to be really clear on what you want to do while you’re here. Um. The, the only, the only thing that we can’t get more of is time, right?

Time is precious, right here, right now counts. So we focused all the energy on, on what he really wanted to do, and I helped him craft a, a vision and some goals. What does he need from his career? To live the life that he wants to live. And he, he had several aha moments and points of clarity and we found a, a business that really helped him achieve what he wants to achieve.

He has now, uh, chosen a pet sitting. [00:04:00] Walking business,

which is very different from his background right now. This was a journey. It didn’t happen overnight. And the beautiful part is that his two kids are working it with him,

so it’s now a family business and he always wanted that to spend more time with the kids. So now his daughter and his son are working with him, um, in, in that business, they all love animals and this is not something that he was even looking at when we started talking. So. I guess what is the moral of the story? Be open to the opportunities that present to you

as you’re exploring your career, what you, you never know what might be around the next corner and just be open to learn and explore and, and, you know. You never know what might happen. So he, he’s now an entrepreneur and is done with the job market. It’s, it’s funny, he had some choice phrases for, um, the last interviews that he had, um, which I will not repeat here, but it is just [00:05:00] so great to see somebody just completely blossom and bloom from when we met, just, you know, six months prior where he thought his life was over.

Um, so anything can happen if you’re open.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So why do you think he thought his life was over? Like, what, what, what do you think got him into that position? Was it just that the identity of losing the job or whatever it was, or.

Maja Taylor: Well, I mean, identity was part of it, I’m sure. Um, but money is

what people worry about, right? If you,

if you don’t have income and you can’t afford the things that, um. You need to do, want to do. I mean, he was okay. He, he had, uh, he had prepared properly, um, which, that, that’s important in business, right? You gotta prepare properly.

Um, but, but just not being able to see a future for himself, I think that was the biggest show stopper. So I, I’m happy that I [00:06:00] was able, able to help him with that.

Tim Melanson: I think, I think it’s interesting because if he did prepare, then, I mean it’s, it’s almost like in a way that might have been one of the reasons why he couldn’t get outta bed. ’cause it’s like, if you’re in, if you’re in like, uh, you know, panic mode where you know you lost your job, you need to go get money right now, well then you’re gonna, you’re gonna be motivated.

But having that little cushion. Might have actually kind of made him go like, well, you know, I don’t have to get up right now. And then it just kind of puts you into this depression and now you’re not sure where you’re going. But it’s

so fortunate that he ended up having somebody like you that could kind of talk ’em through things.

’cause sometimes you just, it’s tough. It’s tough to think about what’s next, right. When you’ve been doing something for so long. Right.

Maja Taylor: Right. It, it is, and entrepreneurship is a team sport. So it wasn’t just me. Right. I, I, I referred him to other resources to help him. Um, but I, [00:07:00] what I’m seeing is that especially with, with men. The job, the career is tied to identity

and it’s often tougher for men to come kind of dig themselves out of the hole.

So a asking for help is hard, right?

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Maja Taylor: So.

Tim Melanson: I didn’t wanna say that because I didn’t, I didn’t wanna be like, well, men versus women, all that stuff. But you, uh, I, I agree with you. Like

Maja Taylor: I mean, women have it too, right? But yeah, it is different for men because, you know, you’re the provider, the protector, and I must, you know, for the family, I mean, he had kids still right, that, that needed his help.

So yeah,

Tim Melanson: Yep. But, uh, but yeah, so now along your journey though, I mean, sometimes things don’t go as planned. So there are some

bad

Maja Taylor: is true.

Tim Melanson: we might hit and you know what, but those, those, those failures we’ll say, you know, those

are, uh, those are some of the things that keep people out of, of, of doing something.

They, they are

scared to get [00:08:00] started, so I like to talk about them because, hey, you’re still here, right?

After all, after all those things, can you share with us something that didn’t go as planned? Maybe something that we could learn from.

Maja Taylor: Oh yeah. So failure is good. I’m gonna just say that right.

Fail. Fail fast. If you’re gonna fail often. Fail

fast, right? And, and, um. Uh, this, this has me go back. So, so I was thinking about that question, right? Um, in my current business, I have not yet experienced failure because the prior ones had lots of failure.

So I’m going to rewind. I’m gonna rewind and go back to, to my twenties. I’m not gonna tell you how old I’m right now, but it’s, it’s a bit ago. Um, where my. Naivety and failure to prepare financially really bit us. Um, so, so [00:09:00] married twenties, I had a 2-year-old. Um, we were exiting. He was leaving the army. So we were, I was the army spouse, let’s just say that we were moving back east, um, because he had promises of a job there. And getting out of the military is, is a transition for an an active military member. It is definitely a change. Um, and we did not prepare financially well because, well, we didn’t have a lot of money. And I remember the moment sitting in a brand new town where we didn’t really know anyone or anything on the main strip and some pizza joint. I don’t even remember what it was. Pizza Hut, little Caesar’s, one of those, right? And we spent our last $10 on a pizza. It was me, him, and the baby. Or, well, 2-year-old, not quite the baby. Um, and I remember it hitting me. I’m sitting, I was like, oh my gosh, we [00:10:00] don’t know where our next meal’s gonna come from.

He hadn’t started his job yet. Um, we, we had just kind of, sort of moved into to an apartment. Um. And like, what, what, what’s tomorrow? Like, what are we gonna do tomorrow? So, so we had a couple of groceries at home, but, um, you know, then having to rely on on close family who wired US money, sent us money gift cards to help us get through those initial weeks in our new town. That was very humbling and that, I just remember sitting in that restaurant then and I was like, this will never happen to me again. This will never happen to me again. So, so, so the lesson for me was, you know, that, that kind of fear of, oh my gosh, what’s happening tomorrow? How am I gonna pay for breakfast tomorrow?

What am I gonna feed my kid? Um. Really helped me just prepare better financially when I transitioned into business. So [00:11:00] I don’t necessarily tell this story to my clients, but Well now they’ll know it’s on the podcast, but it’s, but it’s, um. If you have the desire to go into business for yourself, which I applaud you, go do that.

It’s

amazing. Um, but it’s not easy. If it was easy, everybody would do it.

Most businesses fail because of lack of money, right? So set yourself up for success. So, so I, I, there’s lots of recommendations out there. In, in my case, I, I preplanned when I left my job, job, corporate job, I preplanned to be good for a year in my personal budget and the business budget.

If I don’t make any money for a year, I, I knew I was gonna be okay because when you’re focused on. The worry or afraid that you don’t know how to pay the bills for the next month for you, either personally or the business bills, then you’re not [00:12:00] focused on the right things. You’re not focused on growth, you’re not focused on, you know, getting out into the world, the great service that you do, or the product that you have for people that’s gonna help them, right?

You’re doing others a disservice. By not showing up and giving you a gift, and therefore you can’t get paid, right? I want you to be out there thinking and planning and doing the thing that you’re good at and get it out into the world. And when there’s lack of money, you can’t do that. So prepare financially, please.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Maja Taylor: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: You, you act different too when you don’t have money, right? Like

isn’t your sales process just a little bit kind of wonky a little bit,

Maja Taylor: Desperate. Don’t be desperate. No. People can smell that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it’s not that you, the irony is that it’s not that you’re bad at what you do. You probably are very, very good at what you do, but if

you sound desperate, they’re not gonna wanna hire you for some reason.

It’s

just they can feel it on you. Right.

It, it, it gives it kind of like a red flag right

Maja Taylor: Mm-hmm. It does

Tim Melanson: now, [00:13:00] uh, a year in advance. That’s pretty, that’s pretty, pretty good.

Maja Taylor: So I am very conservative.

I know there’s some people who say, oh, you know, have three months cash

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Maja Taylor: six months cash flow. I just, for me, that wasn’t comfortable enough because of that experience that I, I share with you, right? I never wanted to be in that position again. So I’m like, double, triple, safe.

Tim Melanson: That’s good. Well, and cashflow is a good thing to talk about too, because, I mean, that’s the thing is that you, uh, it’s difficult. I mean, there’s a lot of this up and down, right? I mean, uh, you know, if you think about it from a business perspective, from the, you know, the, the CEO of a company like.

If they’re, if they’re running of this big business, somebody is thinking, well, there’s clients dropping, there’s clients coming in, somebody is thinking, I don’t know where the next, where the next payroll is coming from.

Somebody’s

thinking it. Now, as an employee, you might think, oh, well I have a secure job, and so I’m fine, but. When you start to run the business, you [00:14:00] now all of a sudden are wearing this hat of like, now you know that things are going up and down. So how do you, how do you deal with that? You know, of course you, you now keep a, uh, you, you keep a, a stash, right?

Of, of, you know, a year’s worth of expenses. But how did you even get that in the first place? Or what if that starts to dwindle? How do you make sure that you keep making more than you’re spending?

Maja Taylor: Great question. So budgeting, I’m going to quote my fantastic financial advisor who taught me how to properly budget, um, just, just personally. And then, and then I applied those same kind of rules to my business budget. But just know what your expenses are, know what you need to. To run the business and stay afloat, I would say for a minimum of six months.

Right. You, you don’t wanna go overkill. ’cause if you have a lot of cash sitting around, that’s not working for you, that’s not good either. Make your money work for you,

right? Have enough reserve. It’s, it’s that balancing game. So it depends on the business a lot, right? I, I don’t know. Um. [00:15:00] W what businesses your, your listeners go into.

But some of ’em, uh, might be high ticket that happen at various times throughout the year, but there’ll be lull periods or you need to make sure you’re prepared for those lull periods. That’s how my business works, right? I mi I might have a couple of, you know, placements and clients. Then there may be six months where there’s nothing I need to be okay for those six months.

Right. Um, maybe you have clients who have more regular, smaller or, or even bigger increments that come in monthly because they have, you know, memberships or things like that. Then you can budget differently. Know and understand your cash flow and what’s coming in and know your responsibilities of that.

You have to keep paying out to keep your business running. And yes, payroll, payroll is one of the bigger expenses in most cases, especially for, you know, remote type of businesses. You don’t have a ton of overhead, you don’t have real estate, ideally, right? [00:16:00] Um, that’s why a lot of people like working remotely and the flexibility. But, um, payroll is one of the biggest one. Prepare for that.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and know your numbers. I mean, that’s one of those things, right? You, you, um, I think, actually, let me ask you a question. Why do you think any business owner would not know their numbers?

Maja Taylor: That’s a good question. I don’t know that I can answer that question. Maybe,

um, maybe they’re just not good at keeping track of it, or there’s, there’s too many other things they’re focused on. Um, maybe they don’t, they don’t know. Then I would say ask for help and hire yourself an accountant who can keep your books straight for you.

Right. I mean, I, I have someone who does that for me, because that’s an area I don’t wanna worry about every day.

I, I do the, you know. The high level planning, but the nitty gritty I give to someone else in that department [00:17:00] because it just makes sense. I don’t wanna spend my time in accounting.

That’s not my strength, right?

Uh, my strength is in coaching people and talking to people and helping them be better, but, um, I guess know what you’re good at maybe and, and, and work in the strength zone rather than, um, in an area where, you know, you can’t keep track of it. Well ask for help. I know we, we have that topic already. It’s maybe tough to do, but

Tim Melanson: I think that that’s, I think that’s right. I think that, I think that’s the way, because I don’t know if everybody is a numbers person. I

think, I think most people are probably not numbers people. I, I don’t, I’m a

numbers person. I like it. I mean, I, I like it. I, I look at my numbers every day more than once a day.

I love it, but that’s not.

That’s not everybody. And I know it’s not everybody. And I’ve, uh, you know, even my, my wife doesn’t want to look at the numbers like that. She lets me do it. She want, it stresses her out. And so I [00:18:00] think that when, when that comes to to play, I think that a lot of people are just like, well, whatever.

It’ll just work itself out. And it, it absolutely does not work itself out. The budget doesn’t balance itself. Right. It’s one of

those things where. You do

need somebody. And like you said, if you have somebody that’s working for you, all they have to do is just give you the high level stuff, right?

Because they can handle the nitty gritty of it all and making sure all and, and then they can also start to give you advice.

And now you have informed decisions. Can you afford this upgrade to your computer? Ask your guy. Right? Like there’s a lot of things that will come, and then there’s a lot of. Uh, great salespeople as well that will, you know, come and try to sell you this new whatever it is. And, you know, if you’re not asking the right questions, you know, and you don’t have somebody that’s, that’s gonna ask the right questions, then that can, that can be messy.

Like you can end up in these financial compromising situations [00:19:00] where it seems like it’s a good deal, but is it a good deal? Right.

Maja Taylor: Yeah, I, I, I would say as long as your overall strategy is aligned with, with, with where you wanna go, I think that you need to make sure. Is right and not, and, and matches. I don’t think you have to look at your numbers every day like you, Tim.

Tim Melanson: Nope, you don’t.

Maja Taylor: Um, unless you actually really enjoy it.

Tim Melanson: I love it.

Maja Taylor: I, I don’t, I don’t, I feel it’s a distraction if I do, but maybe check in monthly, check in quarterly, whatever makes sense for your plan, like how, how, does your business flow?

Is it more long term? Is the client journey, um, a pretty long cycle, or do you have a shorter cycle? If

you have a shorter cycle on how you work with your clients, maybe then you need to look at it more often to make sure things are actually right.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, well, well, you do have to look at it at least monthly, and I, I, I’ll give you one reason why is because if [00:20:00] something, if there were to be some fraudulent activity on your credit

card. You need to notify them within a month. Otherwise, otherwise you could end up paying for it. So

at at least once a month, you need to look at that and make sure that you’re paying things that you’re actually buying.

And nothing weird is going on in your account. And sometimes it might even be fraud. It just be, could be subscriptions that you don’t need anymore that keep on popping up. So there are, there are certain things that need to be looked at. So if it’s not you, then somebody in your team needs to be looking at it at least once a month.

But I think, I mean, I am definitely overkill. I like I say, I like it. It’s fun. I like numbers. So for me,

that’s why I do it right. But I don’t recommend it for everybody else. It stresses them out. Let’s talk a little bit about, um, about, you know, coaches and, and mentors and all that stuff, because I mean, you, you are a coach.

You, you, you teach people, but do you have a coach?

Maja Taylor: Of course

every [00:21:00] good coach has a coach. Um. I’m a learner. It’s one of my top five strengths and I’m also a teacher. It’s always an exchange,

just like you and I are have. We’re learning from each other,

right? You’re teaching me things. Um, I think having a coach is critical. Most, if you look at the successful people, they all had a coach at some point.

The best teams have great coaches and that’s how they win Super Bowls or. World Cups. Right.

Um, so, so I think it’s critical. And for, for me, I got here because I had really great mentors and coaches. I didn’t do this by myself. Right. And it’s, I think it’s perfectly fine to admit that. So, so do you learn from the best? Maybe. But people are brought into your life for a reason, right? You, it’s. [00:22:00] It’s an, it’s an attraction. Teachers show up when the students are ready. And I know I had some really great, I had some great bosses in the past who I learned a lot from in my, in my, you know, corporate career. Um, I’ve had some that were not so great, but they still taught me things. Right. They teach you what not to do.

That’s also, that’s also, that’s also important. Um. Then seeking, seeking out people who are good at the thing that you are struggling with. Like, like me and marketing, oh, that doesn’t mix so well. It’s an area that intimidates me. It’s an area that, um, I feel weird about, like, how do I even talk about myself?

It’s just a challenge. Right? And um, I’m sure once I hear the recording of this podcast or see it, I’m like, oh my gosh, this is what I sound like. This is what I look like. I can’t see. Stand it. I, I wonder if everybody thinks that, [00:23:00] but for me it’s especially bad. It’s better not for me to look at it, but I’ll just go and you and I have a conversation.

It’s better that way. But getting some coaching around the areas where you are not quite feel at home, and I think that’s really important to keep stretching yourself out of the comfort zone. That’s what a coach, a good coach is supposed to do. Right? Kind of question your existing thinking and stretch you out, and it’ll feel uncomfortable. It should, it should feel uncomfortable because if you do what you always did, don’t be surprised if you don’t see anything different in your

life, right? If you want to grow to higher levels, if you want to launch a business, if you want to learn a new skill, you’re gonna have to be prepared to get a little uncomfortable.

So I’m a huge fan of that, uh, because that’s how you grow. And yeah, there’ll be some failures, quote unquote, in there. So you stumble and you fall. Uh, none of the star football players or you know, Olympic athletes got there overnight. It takes a lot of practice [00:24:00] takes, it takes a lot of, you know, sweat equity too.

It’s the same with business, right? So surround yourself with people who have done it and been there

and can share their stories with you

so you don’t make those.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And it’s great to have that, even just to have the self-awareness to, to recognize that you’re not going to be good at everything. You, you, you can’t, like, I mean, even if we look at sports, I mean, take anybody who’s a pro football player and put them in. I don’t know, tennis, are they gonna be pro tennis?

Maybe if they put the same amount of work into it. Right. I mean, it, it’s just, it’s one of those things where you’re good at something, which means you spent a lot of time on it, uh, and energy on it, which means you didn’t spend a lot of time and energy on something else. And having that awareness of going like, okay, well I’m good at this.

I’m not good at this. I need to find somebody that’s gonna help me with this, that, that is huge. Right. Um, and I, I think that that does hold a lot of, [00:25:00] definitely some, a lot of entrepreneurs back is they had this thought that, well, I’m, you know, it’s my business. I need to be doing everything. I need to know everything.

Uh, you know, but you don’t, you can, you can delegate some things, right? You, you can have other people help you, right.

Maja Taylor: For sure, for sure. And, and that’s what, uh, coaching really does. I, I will sit there with you and will peel back the layers about what are your strengths, really become aware of them. I, I think most people don’t spend enough time take just taking a step back. And really, I, I provide that time and space, that thinking space to, to really understand, here’s what I’m good at and here’s what I’m not.

Here’s what I wanna do and here’s what I will not, it’s, it’s hard to really clearly to find that when you’re just stuck in your own heads. I think a, a coach or a mentor, if you, if you’re part of a mastermind, if you’re not yet, go find one. Right? Those are people who, who ask the [00:26:00] right questions that make you. Hmm. I’ve never thought about it this way, or I really ought to look at that. Maybe I do need some help in that area. And then working with a coach will help you get clarity. That’s, that’s my role, right?

My goal is to help you get to a point of clarity, because when you have clarity, Ooh, it makes my hair stand up right now, it gives me goosebumps. That’s when you know what the right step is. The right next step is, and that. You’re not gonna wander around in confusion or make the wrong choices, you’re gonna make the right choice if you have clarity. So that’s really a coach’s role. And I, I do that with, with some assessments. We do disc, we do career questionnaires and some other entrepreneurial, uh, questionnaires that will help you get clarity on what’s the right choice for you. So I think coaches are almost mandatory in my life. I’ve, I’ve always said, uh, in my heart of hearts, I’m a coach, but having one will allow you to, to, to rise to [00:27:00] higher levels.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. Uh, some sort of coach or mentor or somebody who’s got your blind spots, right,

because I.

you know, the, we all have the blind spots. It just is what it is, right?

Maja Taylor: Yep. And if you talk to the, if you, if you listen to any other podcasts at all, and if you listen to like the, you know, the people who have made it to the top, that’s what they all say they have in common. They found themselves good mentors and coaches.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Maja Taylor: So that can be the, you can go to school and you can get degrees and you can certainly practice makes perfect right doula, but you can get there quicker if you have good coaches and mentors.

Tim Melanson: And, and hey li like listening to podcasts and, and taking courses. All that is learning from somebody else too. Uh, but I guess there’s a big difference, um, between. You know, listening to something prerecorded or, or, or going to a, you know, a, a structured class versus somebody actually asking [00:28:00] you those questions and working with you on one-on-one.

There’s a very big difference between those two things. Right.

Maja Taylor: Yeah, there’s a huge difference.

Tim Melanson: What do you think would hold people back from, from, from getting coaching help or some sort of mentorship? Mm.

Maja Taylor: Oh gosh, lots of things. Um, people think they can’t afford it. You have to ask yourself the question, why, why, why would it, wouldn’t you? What are you giving up by saying that? Um, maybe lack of awareness, lack of time, uh, not really knowing what they’re good at. I run into that a lot actually. PE people often don’t realize all the skill sets that they already have right now, right now, and they think they’re not good enough.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Maja Taylor: That, that is actually probably the biggest one. I should have started with that one. Um, I hate using the word imposter syndrome. It’s kind of floating around social media quite a bit. Um, I’m not really sure what [00:29:00] that means, but the whole thing of, we have those internal voices

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Maja Taylor: that usually tell us that things are a lot worse than they actually are, you know?

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Maja Taylor: How, how not good we are. How stupid this is. You’re not fast enough, you’re not pretty enough, you’re not, those voices can at times get really loud and the, the hard stuff is easy to believe, especially if someone externally tells you, whether it’s a parent, whether it’s a boss, whether it’s a friend who makes some comment, all of a sudden you own that comment in your head and it’s not even true. Right? I, I often see my clients surprise themselves. On when they realized that, wow, I, I did that. Yeah. Those are my accomplishments. I did all these things and these are my strengths. Own. Own that stuff. Own it.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yep. And I, I think that what, what we do find out over time is that, like you say, the people that have had the success [00:30:00] tend to have some help from somebody else, and there’s no shame in asking for help.

Right.

Maja Taylor: Yeah. There is no shame.

Tim Melanson: Yep. So let’s get into that a little bit into your solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business.

Maja Taylor: Oh gosh. Um, my business is coaching

and I am excited to offer something really great to your listeners. Es especially, especially, um, if you reach out to me either on my website. Maja taylor.com. That’s M-A-J-A-T-A-Y-L-O r.com or on social media. Most of the time I hang out on LinkedIn. Uh, do some Facebook and Instagram too, but mostly LinkedIn. Um, and you reach out to me, you book a call, I will give you a free disc assessment, so

that’s, that’s an assessment that helps you understand.

Tim Melanson: Who, you are?

Maja Taylor: Yeah. Who, yeah.

A a little bit of how you like to work, how, how you prefer to [00:31:00] communicate. What are some of your motivators and drivers. That’s pretty important to understand when you’re looking for the right fit for yourself.

Right. And I will give you a debrief. Um, it’s about a $200 value. I’ll give you that for free if you reach out.

Um, I’m really excited about learning and teaching and often that starts with self-awareness, right? That’s when growth happens, when you become more aware. So. I offer a complimentary learning journey for you to first help you craft your career and your life vision.

What is it that you need from your career so you can live the life that you wanna live, right? And maybe it’s business ownership, maybe it’s not. Um, but then we’ll explore options and possibilities to help you get there, to meet those goals and vision, right? Everybody’s journey and needs are different. I meet you where you are. That’s the most exciting thing for me.

And I love seeing those aha moments and people when they see, oh, I can do this, that, um, that’s my high. that’s.

Tim Melanson: [00:32:00] Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s an incredibly good gift. ’cause I, I know that those disc assessments are expensive, first of all. Uh, but also they’re so useful. It is so nice to, it, it’s so great to know where your strengths and weaknesses are. Right. And it, it’ll actually open up some ideas of what you could possibly do next.

So who would be like, let’s just say, uh, yeah. Who would be the best person or the most. Um, the person that would get the most outta working with you?

Maja Taylor: The person who would get the most out of working with me is

the person that keeps an open mind.

So it doesn’t matter where you are in your career, in your life, as long as you can keep a learning mindset. You and I are a great fit. Um, people who can’t, can’t commit to that learning journey ’cause it is a journey. We’re not gonna uncover, you know, the world in a half hour conversation. That just doesn’t happen. So, so, so being willing [00:33:00] to. Go on the learning journey and commit the time. Um, when you work with me, there’s always gonna be some homework because in coaching, the growth actually happens in between the sessions.

So be prepared for that too. And, and then we’ll see if, if you have the entrepreneurial itch, hopefully we can find you a venture that you can be successful in and thrive. I’m willing to bet that there is one. And if, if you don’t, then. We’ll go in a different direction.

Tim Melanson: I love that. I love that. Yeah. ’cause I mean, if you’ve got this learning, uh, mindset and now you go find out what your strengths and weaknesses are and you are open to finding out, you know, doing the homework and all that stuff, then there’s definitely something for you. Because I mean, that’s just the type of personality that’s going to see some success.

Right.

Maja Taylor: Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. So how do we find out more then?

Maja Taylor: You find out more by going on my website, Maja taylor.com,

or look me up on LinkedIn, um, [00:34:00] and let’s have a chat and see if it makes sense to work together.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Last question. This might be the hardest one.

Maja Taylor: Okay?

Tim Melanson: Are you a music fan? Who’s your favorite rock star?

Maja Taylor: oh boy, that is hard. Who’s my favorite rock star? I’m gonna date myself now. Um. I don’t know if you consider them a

rock star, but Depeche Mo is

probably my favorite band. Um, they were my first English speaking band, um, that I listened to in Frankfurt, Germany. I am from Germany, so, so that was a big, big event and I was it last year they came to Philly, um, and I saw them their life again and they were just as amazing as back then.

That

was a good, good concert.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Depeche mode. That’s awesome. We done and I’m so happy you got to see them. That’s

Maja Taylor: Me too. I’m glad they’re still singing. It was, it was phenomenal actually.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Maja, [00:35:00] for rocking out with me today. This has been a lot of fun.

Maja Taylor: Thank you Tim for having me. You are a lot of fun. And um, well keep up the great conversations. I really love listening to you.

Tim Melanson: Great. Tell 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.