Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. I’m excited for today’s episode. We’re talking to the CEO of 10X Travel, and what he does is he teaches people to utilize credit card rewards to save money on travel. Very interested in hearing more about that. But first, hey, Travis Cormier, are you ready to rock?

Travis Cormier: Let’s rock

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

Travis Cormier: Yeah, uh, when I joined the company, I was the second full-time employee, and we were really just like many small companies trying to figure out moving from being like a solopreneur to operating as an actual company, uh, and doing it while we were fortunately going through a lot of growth. Uh, we managed to make the Inc.

5000 list of fastest growing private companies in the US, and [00:01:00] like all of these are great things, but it can cause, uh, a bit of like chaos and turmoil ’cause so much is changing, um, at the same time. But what really made me so proud throughout that was not only did we make the list of fastest growing private companies, but we also made Inc.’s list of best places to work in the US.

Uh, yeah, so like we managed to not just scale the business, but also just make it a good place to, to work. Um, you know, we, we, we did that by looking at like, what do we do? What do we value? What do we try to deliver for our audience, and how can we also deliver that for people within our company? Um, you know, one of our core values is [00:02:00] to help connect dreams with reality.

We said, "Okay, how can we connect the dreams with reality for our employees?" Beyond just like a paycheck, right? Like beyond what you just expect people

to do. Um, so one of the things that we instituted is a, a program that I love called 1K Your Way. It’s $1,000 every year to just pursue an interest. The only way it gets rejected is if it’s related to work, you know.

If you’re like, "I wanna use it to go to this conference." No, no, no. You can go to the conference, but use it for something else. Um, we’ve had people take scuba diving lessons. We’ve had employees… Actually, last year a n- one of our employees in the Philippines bought a motorcycle ’cause he always just wanted to learn how to ride a motorcycle, so he used it to, to buy a small motorcycle and then do a tour, uh, around one of the islands.

So just like really [00:03:00] cool to get to, uh, do that for our people, and also it just helps us connect more, especially over such a, such a big distance. You know, I think in the world of remote work, some of that personal touch and personal relationships can be hard to sustain sometimes.

And so when you can bring an element of Personal relations that aren’t just work-related and encourage it just helps, like, build, build a more fun, fun place to work.

You know your peop- you know everybody more, you know what their interests are, and it just gives you something to talk about that’s not just the weather or something.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, that’s exactly it. Yeah, you get to know everybody’s interests through that program as well. Hey, can they learn guitar? Is anybody learning an instrument?

Travis Cormier: I, I actually plan to use mine this year. Um, I was a, a band nerd through, through [00:04:00] high school. I played French horn. But I always wanted to learn piano, so I’m actually planning to use mine this year to get a little keyboard and take, take some lessons

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Oh, and nowadays it’s so much easier with the, the, the keyboards that you can put your headphones on as well, and you can also learn right directly from YouTube or from various other online subscriptions. It’s… A- and now’s the time to learn an instrument.

Travis Cormier: Yeah, yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m really excited for it.

Um, I think, I think it will be fun. And actually we did have one employee, uh, buy a guitar and take guitar lessons, so

I, I won’t be the first

Tim Melanson: That’s brilliant. So now along with the good note, though, sometimes things don’t go as planned. You know, there are gonna be some mistakes being made along the journey, and I like to normalize those so people can see that you still, you can still live. You can still get through it. And I’m wondering, can you share with me something that we can learn from and maybe even how you recovered from it?

Travis Cormier: Yeah. Um, one of the biggest [00:05:00] unintentional mistakes that we made, right? I think this happens a lot in small business, is you run into things that when you started them was not a mistake, but it became an issue that you needed to, to solve later. Um, what happened to us was we… We’ve- we’ve really leaned into, like, building community and building a personal sense of connection with our, with our audience, which when we were small meant our founder…

Um, I’m not the founder, I’m the, the incoming… or I’m the new CEO. Um, but when we were, we were starting, our founder put his email everywhere, and he said, "Hey, you got questions? Just email me.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Travis Cormier: email me." And that’s a great way to build that personal relationship with people. But then as your audience in this [00:06:00] consu- in a consumer-facing business starts growing, and people are still emailing your, your, this one person, like, that burden can become so large.

And I was talking to him once, um, and he said, "I don’t know how to solve this, because I’m spending 20 to 30 hours a week responding to emails. It’s one of my favorite parts of, of my job. I love this connection with people." But this j- this isn’t scalable, right? And, and that’s, that’s the, the accidental mistake when you’re, when you’re small you might have a part of your business that’s n- doesn’t scale, but you don’t

Like, the time and world where that happens might just be a pipe dream then. But if it, if it, if it happens, it, it does. So how, how do you solve this really odd [00:07:00] conundrum of we’ve built a business based off of this sense of, uh, of connection with people, particularly with, with our, uh, with our CEO, and ma- maintain that sense of personal connection but make it scalable?

That was, like, where we, we, we got pretty, pretty stuck. Um, but what we, what we … How we approached it that ended up working for us was realizing that personal access and personalization aren’t the same thing,

that what he was providing was personal access and personalization. But people are reaching out because they trust the brand and the business, um, and he just happens to be the point of contact.

So h- so we just need to solve that personalization part, um, to [00:08:00] deliver that high-touch intimate experience that people come to expect from our brand. Um, so the way that, that we did this was, you know, we built out a, a small team of people to handle these questions that, that come in. Uh, but we actually empowered them with tools like Loom.

Um, if you’re not familiar with Loom, it’s kind of like a screen recording. You can record yourself. Um, and that’s how we, we answer a lot of them. Not all of them, but a lot of them we record a Loom and send it to them. So now instead of just getting a wall of text, you get someone talking to you over email. So it keeps that sense of personalization and connection with your audience in a scalable way, um, that’s not tied just to that, to that personal aspect

Tim Melanson: That’s, that’s a great idea. Yeah, and, uh, it, it would get so overwhelming to have to answer all that. Hey, nowadays you have chat though ,

Travis Cormier: Yeah. [00:09:00]

Tim Melanson: that might save some time

Travis Cormier: In my, in my, you know, it was def- this was definitely pre- pre-AI days. Um, and it, and honestly, it’s one of the places we, we love AI, but it’s one of those places where, uh, like that’s not worth it to us. It’s not worth it to lose that, that sense of personal connection. Um, you know, if people are reaching out personally, they’re doing it for, for a reason.

If they wanted the, the, the answer from chat, like, I don’t know, they could probably just go to ChatGPT and

ask it directly

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it kind of defeats the purpose, eh? If you’re doing, if you’re supposed to, like, actually read the email and respond to it. But I mean, oh my goodness, that would be so much time, you know, especially as that grows. And for the CEO, I mean, that’s, you, you know, that’s, that’s a full-time job right there.

And what, how can they run the business now at this point, right?

Travis Cormier: Right, exactly. Like, uh, in a small business, as regardless of what seat you’re in, you’ve got multiple hats. The CEO does, anyone in the [00:10:00] organization does.

And when one of those hats is taking up 75, 80% of your time, how are you leaving enough bandwidth to, to handle everything else?

Tim Melanson: Yeah. But no, with the, uh, the whole Loom idea, that’s a great idea. And, and I mean, a, a, a benefit that you could do there is that there’s probably some times when you get the same question over and over again. So if you record that one Loom, as long as you don’t use their personal name in it then

Travis Cormier: Yeah

Tim Melanson: you might be able to be in the situation where you just send the same Loom to, you know, a bunch of people.

It’s still you talking and handling that question, right?

Travis Cormier: Exactly, yeah. And that’s exactly one of the things that we did. Um, you know, we- you don’t always get the same question, but the people that tend to be asking questions the most are your newer audience

members who are learning and trying to gather information. So a lot of times they are sending the same, the same questions. Uh, and yeah, by just not saying, "Hey Tim," [00:11:00] saying, "Hey, thanks for reaching out," like that simple removal means you can send the same one to, to multiple people and still

maintain that, that personal touch

Tim Melanson: Totally. So let’s talk a little bit about The Jam Room. Now, I see there’s a dog in the background there.

Travis Cormier: Uh-huh

Tim Melanson: So I assume that’s part of your home office, is it?

Travis Cormier: It is. Oh. She, she decided to, she decided to move. Yeah, I decided not to blur my background, you know? It’s, the theme is, is

Tim Melanson: Working from home.

Travis Cormier: from home rockstar,

so like w- let me not hide where I work from, from home,

Tim Melanson: Yep

Travis Cormier: and share it. Um, yeah, that’s, that’s, uh, one of my two at-home coworkers. The other is on the floor behind me.

You can kinda

Tim Melanson: Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, I see. I didn’t see that at first.

Travis Cormier: down there. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: That’s so awesome. And, like, I, I mean, the thing about it is that nowadays, I mean, since the last five or six [00:12:00] years, it’s been a lot more normal for people to work from home. But before that it was like people didn’t understand it at all, right? And now it’s, it seems to be a lot more normalized just because people had to go through it, you know, even in the corporate atmosphere.

And there was a lot of companies that just didn’t want to embrace it at all, right? Before they realized that, hey, maybe we can still get productive employees, you know, with, with a work-at-home model, right? And, you know, it sounds like you’ve got a remote model as well, so I’m wondering, like, how is that working for you?

Are- do you feel like you get just as much, if not more, from, from the productivity of your people

Travis Cormier: Uh, I, I think so. Um, I think people knowing that they have a little bit of that flexibility, um, means that they understand when, you know, i- if they need to run an errand during the day. Like, we’re all adults, right? Like, no one wants to have to ask for a hall pass to go out and ru- and run an errand.

It’s just [00:13:00] about understanding that, like, your, your job is to get work done.

So as l- as long as people are are completing their, their deliverables, completing their work. Like, I tell everyone, "I don’t really care if it takes you two hours or 10 hours." I mean, I, I do in a sense, but at the end of the day, you know, if it takes you two hours and your work is done for the day, be available, but I don’t expect you to be sitting there just waiting on something else to come in. Because on the flip side, there’s gonna be those weeks when there’s fires and, and extra work that has to get done where you’re gonna work a little bit more. So it’s a bit of give and take, and I think when people are working from home, it makes it a little bit more palatable than, "Oh, I’m at the office and I’m done, so now I just kinda have to sit here and wait and bide my time and not be personally productive."

[00:14:00] Whereas when working from home, like, you can be personally productive. I can go unload the dishwasher. Uh, I can go do a load of laundry if I need to. And it, at the end of the day, like, it- how is that any different from going to the break room and grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting around chatting with coworkers?

Like, and there’s, there’s definitely benefits to that. I don’t

wanna, wanna downplay that, but, um, like, it’s just about respecting people, people as adults. Um, and for, for us, w- we’ve not found productivity to be, to be an issue at all

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And I think that there are people that are more suited for an office, and then there are people that are more suited for working from home too. But I do find that a trend that I’ve, I’ve been noticing, not definitely in the, in the home business area, but even in corporate areas, is focusing a little bit more on [00:15:00] maybe productivity and deliverables rather than focusing on time sitting there, right?

And, and I think that’s an encouraging way to look at it, right? Because it really does reward the high performers. ‘Cause now, I mean, if you can get your work done, you know, in half the time, w- well, isn’t that great? Like, wh- why would you be penalized by having to sit there for the other half of the time and do nothing ’cause you’re already done your work, right?

Travis Cormier: Yeah, I mean, I, I think basing productivity on hours worked is just lazy management. It just says, "I don’t actually know how to manage deliverables and manage my team," but it’s the easiest thing to point to, to say, uh, "My team is working 100% of the time assigned." Like, cool, but how do you know that that’s actually accomplishing the, the goals and stuff?

It’s just lazy management, and it’s just an excuse for, for not [00:16:00] knowing how else to, to manage people

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And I think, I think for most businesses, productivity is gonna be the thing. The only ones that would count, you know, for how much time you’re there is maybe you’re working a storefront, and you actually have to be present for that specific time, ’cause customers are gonna come in. Um, you know, but that’s not, that’s different, and, and that’s not the same as most businesses.

Most businesses have these deliverables that they have to create, right? And i- it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to do it. You don’t have to be sitting there and waiting, right? So I, I like that. I think it’s encouraging, right?

Travis Cormier: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I, I, I agree. I mean, my former job, I used to be a chemist. I can’t bring chemicals home. I had to be there.

I

Tim Melanson: There you go

Travis Cormier: if, if they told me to bring chemicals home, I would, I would be a little weary of wherever, wherever I’m working. So you’re right, there, there certainly are some jobs and some careers where it’s necessary, but for the vast [00:17:00] majority of office jobs, uh I don’t, I don’t see it as

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, a- and even as a chemist too, like, uh, there’d probably be things you have to accomplish during the day, so even that doesn’t necessarily have to be, you know, clock in at whatever time, clock out at this time, you have to be there during that time. That would only really apply to a storefront thing or a customer support thing where you’re actually handling a shift.

Other than that, I mean, if you get your work done and you do it faster than everybody else, I, I thi- I just think it, it, it encourages you to bring on better talent, right? ‘Cause now the people that are encouraged to be faster and better, right?

Travis Cormier: Yeah. Yeah. And it also just gives you better access to talent, right? I mentioned we have some employees based in the Philippines. We couldn’t do that if we were an in-person company. Um, it– We don’t even have two employees that live in the same city. So, uh, like, when we go to [00:18:00] hire, we don’t have to limit ourselves.

You know, I’m in, I’m in Houston in Texas in the US. If we were in person, I would limit myself just to Houston, which not a– It’s a big enough city. We’ve got plenty of people here. But I can cast a nationwide or even international net to be sure that we’re, we’re getting, getting the right person. And I, I also think it helps with retention.

Like, people really enjoy the work from home, those high performers, especially if they’ve worked somewhere before that really drove them to, to burnout. Um, the, the work from home life just I think for a lot of people works better.

You know, it can be lonely at times

Tim Melanson: It can be. It can be. But, I mean, there is ways you can get around that. You could go work at a coffee shop or, uh, you know, or if your dog is right there,

Travis Cormier: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: that helps, right?

Travis Cormier: [00:19:00] Yeah. Or like, like I go to the gym at 4:30 every day, and it’s group classes, so I see the same people. I’ve got friendships. That’s my

Tim Melanson: coffee shop. Your, your, your, uh, yep, that’s your water cooler talk

Travis Cormier: Yeah, exactly. And those times when I’m like, "I don’t even wanna talk to people, I just wanna work around people," like you said, go to a coffee shop, go to a co-working place.

Um, but it gives me that flexibility to, to choose that rather than be forced into it

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I love that. Let’s, uh, you know, let’s get a little bit more into the band then and the people in your team that have success. I’m wondering, uh, you know, you- you’ve got a pretty large organization. You came on to the organization, so you, so you didn’t necessarily build it from scratch. Um, but you’re probably very focused on making sure you have the right talent and you also make sure you get rid of the wrong talent, right?

And do you have… What kinds of processes do you have to make sure that that stays true?[00:20:00]

Travis Cormier: Yeah. Uh, one of the, the big things that we do, um, that was… We, we work, we work with a business coach who helped us implement, um, our quarterly alignments, is really what we call them. You know, uh, yes, it is a bit of a review, but part of it is to be sure that we’re aligning with people on that, that personal level.

Um, so yes, we do review based off of your, your work deliverables. We also measure based off of the culture fit. Um, being a remote company, maintaining that company culture does come with some additional challenges. So we look at both. We look at work performance as well as cultural alignment to evaluate people.

And it all, for, for me, it all comes back to intentionally creating the space for that to happen. You know, we can often let [00:21:00] things start to slide, um, and if it’s not addressed, then It, it can start going too far. By doing it once a quarter, it just creates the opportu- opportunity to have those, those candid conversations with people.

Because sometimes it’s just we’re going through different phases of our, of our lives. You

know, your person who’s consistently an, uh, an A plus, a, a member of your A team, might dip down to the B team, and that doesn’t have to be a red flag. It should be a warning sign. But by have… creating the intentional time and space to talk about it means we can’t avoid it.

And a lot of times when you have those conversations, you just realize, oh, okay, you just have some stuff going on in your life. Okay, like, A, is there an opportunity for us to help you with that? B, like, even if not, it can just be about [00:22:00] getting aligned on it. You know, I experienced that myself. My mom got sick during the pandemic. Uh, she lived four hours away by herself. And so days when I wasn’t working, uh, because I was still a chemist for the first half of the pandemic, I left work, drove to my mom’s to go take care of her, stayed there, then came back, went to work, back and forth, which meant not a ton of time with my wife, not a ton of time with my dogs.

And that doesn’t mean that I’m a… Like, my, my work inherently suffered because I never really got time to decompress personally, and that doesn’t mean that I’m a bad employee or that there’s a systemic problem that, you know, needs to be addressed through performance management.

But if y- if you don’t talk about it and don’t converse about it, like, it can [00:23:00] be easy for a manager to look and say, "Your performance isn’t there, so now we’re gonna put you on a performance improvement plan."

And it can just help contextualize the lives that we’re going through. And as a remote company, creating those intentional moments, uh, for me is, is paramount to, to success because you don’t have those kind of organic water cooler type moments that you have in person. So it’s about creating that intentional space to talk with people and determine then, you know, uh, is this something temporary? Sometimes it’s not. Like, the, the truth is sometimes it’s not, and people’s performance just is not keeping up. Maybe their skills aren’t keeping up. Um, and it does need to be addressed through performance management, but it’s about having the space to determine what the right approach is rather than just kind of dismissing everything and really, like, recalibrating.[00:24:00]

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And this is one of those things that, um, when you’re thinking about starting a business, uh, uh, or when you’re thinking about what’s important in your business, a lot of people will focus more on the sales, you know, on the, the actual, the transfer of, of income and all that stuff, and these soft kinds o- kinds of things are things that kind of get pushed on the back burner, I imagine, right?

A, a lot, right? It’s just ’cause y- you’re like, "Oh, do I need to spend my time doing that right now?" But, you know, as you’ve probably already discovered, if you don’t spend that time, then it, it will, like, it- you’re just in a reactionary mode because things start to fall apart and you don’t know why. Whereas if you, like you say, have this intentional time set and you put a priority on it, you know, and there’s probably lots of other examples of things like this that you need to be intentional about, um, and spend your time on it even though it doesn’t directly relate to dollars in the bank account, right?

Travis Cormier: Right. Yeah. And [00:25:00] like it, it not only goes towards understanding your employees, but also like, like in what they’re going through, but for them to talk to you about what they’re experiencing too. Um, because if they’re feeling burnt out or they’re feeling overworked or they’ve got stuff, stuff going on, and you’re just dismissing it, not addressing it, like that’s when people start looking for

another

Tim Melanson: work, yeah

Travis Cormier: well.

And so then if they leave, well, would you rather have spent two hours once a quarter versus now they leave and it’s gonna take maybe at least two to four weeks to hire someone, a couple of weeks to get them, them trained up? And that’s even more time that’s taking away from your ability to do, to do other work.

Uh, so it, it can be hard to prioritize some of the soft work that needs to be done that [00:26:00] it’s not necessarily moving the revenue or the profitability directly, but it’s, it’s securing it more. You know? It’s, it’s helping to, to protect it, um- It’s a give and take sometimes when you’re scaling. Like, there are some stuff that you choose not to do, and you’re building up, uh, I call it, like, institutional debt.

You know, you’re building up s- up this backlog of work that you know needs to get done someday, and you’re choosing not to. And you’re, you have to accept that risk. Like, you have to accept that you can’t do all of it.

Um, someday the bill is gonna come due for that institutional debt. And, uh, like, uh, that’s okay.

Like, that’s, that’s okay. That’s the natural phases of business. You know, I mentioned we were on the Inc. 5000. Very few companies, like, go through growth and just stay like [00:27:00] this forever. Everyone would love that. I don’t know a business owner that wouldn’t love that. But the simple nature of business is it’ll probably eventually plateau, and you have to set up for the next stage of growth, and realizing that that’s when you’re gonna be able to repay some of that debt.

Um, but it’s choosing along the way which debt is okay to, to wait on and which ones you can’t. Um, and I think if you wanna build a good culture with places to work, uh, the, the work around people management is one that you can’t set aside

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, uh, I, I love this, you know, aspect because one of the things I’m trying to accomplish with even this podcast is to inspire more people to take better control of this stuff. And because I think that a lot of these very, very large m- monopolies have, have sort of [00:28:00] like created these work atmospheres that are not super good for most people.

And so I think that number one, you know, you can become self-employed and take control of that stuff and be a solopreneur and make a living that way. But also, you can create your own business as you guys are doing, and actually do it with people in mind and with culture in mind, and with, you know, a, a really clear focus on making it a good place for people to work to contrast against the many bad places for people to work, right?

And, you know, th- there’s gonna be people in all of those buckets, ’cause the bottom line is that we’ve gone through this many times on this podcast, is that not everybody is gonna be super well-suited for running a business, right? There are people that are far more comfortable with working for somebody else, and that is totally cool because there are also a lot of people [00:29:00] that wanna run a business and employ other people, right?

So they need people to work, right?

Travis Cormier: Yeah, exactly.

Tim Melanson: So we can all get a, get those dreams met, and we can create atmospheres that are really good for people to work in, and we can create this new economy that I think is being created right now

Travis Cormier: Yeah, definitely. Um, I mean, one, one of the things that I think doesn’t get talked about enough about running, running a business, owning your own business, um, like people talk about how exciting it is and how cool it is and how freeing it is, and all of those are true.

Like, all of those are true. But too often people don’t discuss the emotional burden that comes with it.

Um, uh, you know, when it’s your business and it’s not just, you know, if you’re a solopreneur, it’s your livelihood, and that’s a very different emotional toll than [00:30:00] working for a big company that’s generally probably gonna be pretty financially secure. Like, you’re typically not worried about your paycheck bouncing.

Um, like there’s this emotional side to it that I think many people don’t expect and aren’t prepared for.

Um, and it doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it applies if you’re a solopreneur. Then if you grow and have employees, like their livelihood depends on you, and that’s a pretty heavy burden, I think, uh, to, to carry that- Isn’t talked about probably ’cause it’s not the fun side of bu- or it’s not the side that people who are selling courses

about starting your own business,

uh, want to be, to be honest about.

But it’s the truth is that, like, people are putting their, their trust in, [00:31:00] in you and your company to be able to deliver so they can maintain their livelihoods. And, uh, that can be a very different weight that people aren’t expecting. Um, and some of the hard decisions that, that can come with that. You know, you mentioned it- it’s easy to talk about keeping good people, but when it’s about truly people who aren’t performing and aren’t delivering and letting them go, like-

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Travis Cormier: Man, that’s, that’s tough.

Now, it’s worse for them. Like, I will always admit that it is worse for the person that, that’s being let go. But when you’re in that situation, like, you just became the villain in someone’s life story.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Travis Cormier: And that’s something you have to, you have to live with, and, you know, those aren’t the, [00:32:00] the fun, sexy stories on LinkedIn that, that help get likes.

Um, but it is the honest truth of the, the emotional burden that comes, whether it’s personally or the responsibility to other people

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And I will say though that, um, I don’t know if it’s completely impossible to avoid that situation, but, but there are ways that you can improve it. And yeah, I mean, you’ve mentioned a few of them. If you have really good onboarding and really good hiring processes and, like you said, those quarterly reviews, things that will actually, you know, kinda keep

‘Cause I mean, like what you said earlier, there’s a possibility that whatever’s going on, especially if they were a good hire, now they’re not, there’s probably something going on in their personal life. And if you don’t know what that is, then you might end up in a situation where you’re letting them go and you just don’t get it.

And it really is just something that they need a little bit of grace on to get through something, and then they’ll be back, right? Um, but yeah, they … I mean, that just goes right back to what your m- main point [00:33:00] is. If you don’t spend that time doing those things, then you’re gonna be a villain, villain pretty quickly, and nobody wants that, right?

Travis Cormier: No, no,

Tim Melanson: So it’s worth it to spend the time.

Travis Cormier: It is, even, even just for your own mental health.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Travis Cormier: Yeah

Tim Melanson: Right on. So let’s get into your soul a little bit. So tell me what’s exciting your business right now?

Travis Cormier: Yeah. Um, what I am really excited about, um, is we’re going through kind of a fundamental shift in, in our business, and it’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s scary. Um- Our current revenue model, uh, pretty heavily relies on affiliate marketing. Um, so full transparency, you know, you mentioned we teach people how to use credit card rewards.

We partner with the banks, and we get a commission if someone opens a credit card through us. We don’t hide that. We’re honest with people about it. Um, and what that means, though, is [00:34:00] that we are always subject to the whims of the credit card companies. Our revenue is not… It’s not ours. Um, uh, and what I mean by that is if the banks change policies, if they decide to just not do it anymore, it really impacts our business.

Um, we saw this during the pandemic when our revenue dropped 80, 90% over the course of a, a couple of weeks. Um, so we’re really working to diversify that. Um, we have, uh, a BHAG, if you’re familiar with that term. If not, it’s a big, hairy, audacious goal. It’s, like, what’s, what’s that big goal that you’re really working towards?

Um, so our, the one we’re working towards right now is called FTB. It’s free the business. Um, and it doesn’t mean we don’t want our affiliate revenue, but it, it’s the– We know that we have accomplished it whenever we can cover 100% of our operating [00:35:00] costs from non-affiliate revenue. Um, so because then we’re not subject to, to the banks.

If they change their policies, we don’t have to inherently react to the way that we operate. And this isn’t something we’re doing as a response to anything or from the banks. It’s about, like, we have a mission to, I mentioned before, to help connect dreams with reality, to educate our audience, to empower them to travel the world and save.

And so long as our revenue is dependent on factors that are outside of our control, that mission is at risk. And so we want to try to recapture as much of that control as, as we can so we can continue providing value for people, um, even if, even if the banks decide they don’t want to, to do affiliate marketing [00:36:00] anymore. Um, if they wanna keep doing it, like it’s, it’s, it’s great, but we want to at least protect it, so that way we can be there in the long run, serving our, our community and our audience. Um, I’m really excited about it. It means we’re really having to rethink the value we provide to people. You know, we’ve always…

Our value proposition has always been- You don’t have to pay us anything. Like, if you get value, just use our links and someone else will pay us. Uh, whi- which is a really cool value proposition, right? To, to tell your audience, "You don’t have to pay us anything to get value from, from our company." Um, but the truth is, is that that means that the value we provide is going to continuously be at risk.

So we want– I really wanna be sure that if our audience is providing us directly with, with their hard-earned dollars, that they’re truly getting good [00:37:00] value, um, getting more return than what they, they are paying us, so that way it can be just a win-win relationship where they can get more value than what they’re paying, and they know that we’re gonna be around here for the long haul, uh, with their best interests in mind

Tim Melanson: Right on. So how does the program work?

Travis Cormier: Yeah. Uh, so we typically tell people to start with our course. Um, they can go to 10xtravel.com to, to find it. Um, I know that it’s a lot to ask people to start with a course, but the reason why we do it is we feel that it’s important to be ethical and responsible, uh, educators in, in this space. You know, when we’re talking about credit cards, you and I were kinda chatting before, there’s definitely some risks to be aware of.

Like, you can easily go into debt. You can easily pay a lot of money. You can mess up your credit. And we don’t take those risks lightly, and that’s why [00:38:00] we ask people to just check us out, start with our, our course. It’s free. Our c- our introductory course will always be free, um, because it, it sets that foundation to provide you with at least a little bit of baseline information to get started and to make the decision about if this is right for you.

Uh, without that, I don’t know that I would feel super comfortable telling people to just go open up credit cards. It’s let’s be sure that you’re educated about what you’re doing first and making the, the right decision for you and, and your family

Tim Melanson: Yeah, that, I love that. That sounds so responsible too, because, I mean, we were talking a little bit before this, this call, and, and credit cards are so misunderstood and just so thrown out there. Like, people will just go and open up credit cards and open up store credit cards and just, just like nothing.

And okay, might be fine, right? But, but on the other hand, you know, there, there’s a lot of like, I don’t [00:39:00] even know what I wanna call it, fine print, I guess, like, on, on how they work, and you can get yourself into trouble really quickly. And then the other aspect of it too, which just kind of goes through our society, is that we tend to not talk about money, and especially problems with money, with people around us, including our families.

A- and, and so you’ll end up, you’ll end up, you know, just struggling silently with this thing that was just pushed upon you with no education at all. And, and now, you know, you’re kind of in trouble. So i- I mean, if nothing else, I mean, if you’re offering a course on that, that’s enough I would think for anybody to just go take the course to understand a little bit more of it.

You could… I, I, I mean, do you have to… Like, is this a sort of something you could do anonymously as well? Or, like, how does that work?

Travis Cormier: Uh, so the, the online, the, like, text-based version of our course, uh, they do have to register for our software platform.

Um, but if you do wanna do it, uh, do it more anonymously, we actually have our own podcast, [00:40:00] and the first six episodes of our podcast is the course in audio version.

Tim Melanson: Oh, well, that’s great. What’s the podcast? Tell me more.

Travis Cormier: Uh, it’s called Take Off!

A Points and Miles Podcast by 10x Travel. So a lotta people kept asking us for an audiobook version of the course for years, and that just … Something just didn’t feel right about an audiobook

version. Um, and finally one day we said, "What if we tried a podcast format?" So we did. And, um, now the podcast keeps going, but it let us set that foundation, "Hey, you don’t have to register.

You don’t have to, to read it. If you wanna listen, there you go."

Tim Melanson: So is this something… Now, okay, I mean, if you don’t have a credit card yet and you’re listening to this podcast, go learn about it ’cause it, it could get out of control really, really quickly. But I’m wondering, is this something that someone could benefit from if they already have credit cards and maybe they’re already in some trouble?

Travis Cormier: Yeah, definitely. Um, you know, if, if they’re already… I- if, if you [00:41:00] already have credit cards and you’re managing it fine, you’ll learn how to optimize them to get more value from the credit cards you have or maybe change your card portfolio a bit. But also, if you’re already in trouble a little bit, some of that underlying knowledge and information just about how they work can help you better understand what you’re, what you’re dealing with, um, to work on fixing things, um, and just preparing yourself.

Um, in fact, we have an episode as well in our podcast with our, uh, social media manager and our community manager who he had to go through fully repairing his credit, um, before he, he could get started. Um, he had unfortunately, like, just gotten in a rough patch of life and his credit, um, wasn’t in a great spot.

Um, but it’s a wonderful story of how he went from rebuilding his credit, understanding it, and [00:42:00] putting himself in a better position to, to manage it going forward, so that way he then could take advantage

of, of the credit cards

Tim Melanson: That’s amazing. Yeah, because, I, I mean, that’s the, the flip side of it is that these, the point systems and, you know, all the, the cashback things and all the credit cards, they, they offer all these really good programs in a way. I mean, a lot of it is just free money. And, and that’s what kind of catches people off guard is ’cause, uh, uh…

But, but I mean, the, the way I, I always thought about it is that, okay, nothing in this world is free. S- that doesn’t make any sense. So if they’re offering you this great, you know, travel pack where you’re gonna be able to go and take all these vacations and all that stuff, somebody’s paying for that somewhere, right?

And so I mean, if you’re, you know, uh, taking Travis’s courses and learning how to use it, and now all of a sudden you’ve got a situation where you’re benefiting from these programs, then that’s fantastic, but somebody isn’t, right? [00:43:00] And, and I think that the, the, the goal really now is to not be that somebody who isn’t, right?

And, and try to get a little bit more education on that. And if it was easy, if, I mean, if it, if it was something that, oh, you know, it’s just a little mistake, well then they wouldn’t be giving free vacations away to people. Like, for… Like, it clearly is a big problem that people are getting themselves into, otherwise they wouldn’t have that kind of money to give back to people, right?

Travis Cormier: Exactly. Yeah. Um, between that and, uh, you know, if, if you have a business, you- and you take credit card payments, you know you’re paying, m- m- here in the

US maybe 2% or 3%.

every time someone swipes it. They, they’re making money there too.

Um, so it’s like if they’re taking that away from your, from your business, do whatever you can to, to get some of the pie back for

Tim Melanson: Absolutely. Well, and, and that’s the part that I think probably people are like, "Oh, but that’s where they make their money." Yes, that’s one of the places [00:44:00] where they make their money, but interest is significantly more, right?

Travis Cormier: those in- those interest rates are a lot more than 2% to 3%.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, absolutely. Right on. Okay, so we’re running out of time here. I got one more question. This might be the hardest one. Who’s your favorite rock star or band?

Travis Cormier: Ooh. Uh, you know, here’s what I’ll say. Um I’m gonna twist it a little bit because I, I have way too many come to mind. The best live show that I’ve ever been to,

if this is a fair twist, uh, proud to say Lady Gaga,

Tim Melanson: Wow

Travis Cormier: on such an incredible performance. We saw her here in Houston, and had so many flames going that you could feel the heat every time that, that it came off.

Um, really just incredible. Um, I’ll probably [00:45:00] also give a shout-out to the Foo Fighters, who I saw at Austin City Limits, I think two, maybe three years ago. Um, they’ve been doing it a long time. They know how to work a crowd. They know how to put on a great show. And part of what made it, uh, extra special was they were performing at the same time as Shania Twain, and my wife really wanted to go to Shania.

And I said, "Shania has her Vegas residency, so we can go see her in Vegas. I don’t know when we’ll get to see the Foo Fighters again." Well, Shania finished 30 minutes before the Foo Fighters and came over and got up on stage and sang Best of You with the Foo Fighters, so, uh, yeah, great. Just great being out there at, like, 9:30 at night. At least getting to see both of them, um, was, was also really, really memorable

Tim Melanson: That is so awesome. Thank you [00:46:00] so much, Travis, for rocking out with me today. This has been a lot of fun.

Travis Cormier: Thanks, Tim. I really enjoyed it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Randy Vlasic: There’s always a

Tim Melanson: of that.

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Wow

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then, you know, I just dove in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So sometimes it is that individual

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

Randy Vlasic: Yep.

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

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

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

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

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

Randy Vlasic: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, so

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

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

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

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

Randy Vlasic: It is, it is, yeah

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

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

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

Tim Melanson: That is awesome.

Randy Vlasic: yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Randy Vlasic: That’s right.

Tim Melanson: right? But

Randy Vlasic: go golfing?

Tim Melanson: go ahead

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow. That’s

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

I’m having a lot of fun with it

Tim Melanson: So how do we find out more?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Randy Vlasic: Take care

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Curtis McCullom: And just use it.

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: said this. Yeah.

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

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

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

Curtis McCullom: Right

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And

Curtis McCullom: absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

So sometimes in the beginning it’s really nice to go through some, some little heartbreaks and some setbacks because that builds that, that muscle, that builds that strength

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I don’t think everybody would agree with us on that, but, uh, but yeah, having those initial difficulties growing is better than coming out of the gate [00:22:00] real strong,

Curtis McCullom: uh, man, I’ve I’ve had both. I had both. And, and what I’ve learned is that, is that… ‘Cause I’m still gotta get the le- lessons,

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Curtis McCullom: and sometimes it’s more difficult because I’ve had so many wins. I don’t know what… I don’t even know how to, how to, how to go back to kind of reprogram it. I don’t know what…

I don’t know how to troubleshoot that. But trust me, either one, just be prepared, right? Just be prepared. It’s a, this is, this is a journey. It’s a lifelong journey, and it’s all about learning, it’s all about growing, expanding, and transforming. So yeah, just understand that, and that’s all

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Now, I’ve been working from home for a long time, and, and I mean, a lot of f- a lot of people learned how to do it in the last five years, right? Uh, b- you know, because of what, what ended up happening. But I’m wondering, like, uh, setting up a good home office and, and having a good space to work, it’s pretty important stuff.

I’m wondering, what’s your approach to it? Like, how does your, how does your office work for you?

Curtis McCullom: Ah, man, my office is everything. I mean, you know, I talk to people all over the [00:23:00] world right from this space right? Most of my coaching, 99% of all of my coaching, one-on-one coaching comes from here. And having a home office that’s right for you is so important. That’s your environment. Basically, think about your environment is this conducive area where now I can flourish.

And so even if it’s just a corner in your house, make it feel like it is an office. Make it feel like you are going somewhere to do something. Because now you’re separate… Because you’re accustomed to doing that, especially if you had a, a job job, you’re accustomed to getting up and going somewhere. Now, and this is one thing that I would suggest that people do, is that don’t put it in an area, a living space.

What I mean, like, if it’s in your bedroom, make one corner of your bedroom your office and not your whole bedroom, because you need some separation. You need a place that you now, "I’m in this area, this is for sleeping. I’m going to this corner, that’s [00:24:00] for working." So now, because one of the things that people fail to do is look at it, at it like it is a job.

And it is, and it is a job, so you have to still have a conducive environment to, to do the work that you need to do. So I always say create this space. This is your space. Knowing when you go into that space, "I’m going to get something done. I’m going to work."

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I’ve even heard people say that they’ll put on a shirt and tie even though they’re working from home, right? Why not?

Curtis McCullom: Um, r- right now. A- and that’s one thing about it. Now, what- do that work for everybody? Maybe not, you know? B- but you have to test it out and find out what works for you that’s gonna put you into that mindset of, "Now I’m at work." Because if not, you’ll get… It’ll, it’ll, it’ll get to the point where, you know, sometimes I do work inside in my house.

I have a big kitchen counter. But most of the time, I, I come out to my office, because here’s why: it’s quiet, it’s more conducive for [00:25:00] me, I can just really focus on what I’m doing, and it’s a much better environment to get things done

Tim Melanson: Okay. Are there other people in your house? Like, is it difficult to get them to understand that you’re working and, and, uh, to give you that time?

Curtis McCullom: One, that’s one of the things, you know, I, um, um, m- it’s just me and my wife. Uh, all of my kids are grown, and so it’s just me and my wife here. And so the way my house is designed, I’m fortunate, and the way my house is designed is that I have to go, literally go outside my front door and walk another 10 to 15, 20 feet to this space, right?

This space that you everybody see. So, so basically it’s private. Nobody’s here but me, and that makes it very easy for me to do. Now, back when I was first starting many, many years ago, I just had a corner. I just had one space. But being an- b- being an s- entrepreneur or this, this home business type thing practically all my life, my wife know and understand what it takes for [00:26:00] me to actually succeed, and she’s always giving me that space.

So when other people are in your space, you need to have that conversation with them to let them know when you are working so that they, they understand that, so that they’re not actually impeding your progress. If not, uh, ju- just same thing, though. Think about it. When you go into a office office, people will come to your desk.

People… When I was in the office, I didn’t get much work done because everybody keeps coming into my office, you know, bugging me and, and same thing can happen at home. You gotta set boundaries. That’s the, that’s the word I’m looking for. Have to set really clear boundaries where if you do have kids, if you do have a dog, if you do have a, a wife or a spouse or whatever it is that you have, just make sure you have clear boundaries to let them know, right this time I’m at work

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. And, uh, sometimes it can be difficult to get kids to understand, but, but they learn quickly though. C- i- you know, especially if they’re very young, they, they, they get it, [00:27:00] right? They probably learn better than some adults do, ’cause adults just don’t understand what you’re talking about. What do you mean you’re working from home?

Can’t you help me? Like, know? Right on. So, like, let’s talk a little bit about the tools that you’re using to get success in your business. I mean, hey, there’s tons of them nowadays. Like, how do you, how do you, you know, keep the shiny objects away and just use the things that you need?

Curtis McCullom: And that’s one of the thi- that’s, but that’s one of my weaknesses, uh, Jim, is like I, I, Tim, I, I love, I, I love shiny stuff. You know? So like I was telling you before, you know, like you don’t need, you don’t need… I mean, I was telling you about the camera setup I have right now, right? You know, I have two lights.

I have a light here coming down. As you can see, the background lights. What you see behind me, that is actually my office. That’s not a filtered background. That’s my office. That was a TV. So basically, do you need… For my business, part of it is being an authority, right? And so I want to make people feel when they come into my office like, hey, Curtis [00:28:00] has a feeling, or he has, uh, that his office feels like he knows what he’s talking about, ’cause I do.

But I want them to feel that. So I think whatever, if, if you’re doing something like this, you need something that’s conducive that you don’t want it… I, I’ve seen it where I’m, I’m going into other people’s rooms, and they’re in their bedroom, and the bed is not made up, and there’s clothes all over. That’s not cool.

You wanna make sure that you’re in a conducive area. So for me, I like equipment. I like toys. So y- you talking about me, like I said, I got a, what, a $3,000 camera body, a 2,000, $3,000 lens there, and all this kind of… I love that kind of stuff. I love sound. I love… So, you know, I have Adam Studio. What is that? Yeah, yeah, the, the Adam Auto, uh, audio monitors and a- all this stuff.

So y- do you need that? No. But you need something that it is that’s gonna give you what you want to make sure that you are successful

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And then you can, yeah, I mean, [00:29:00] you can upgrade that stuff as time goes on,

Curtis McCullom: Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, if– I didn’t start here now. Trust me, I didn’t start here . I didn’t start here. That’s where I am now. When I started, you know, whatever I could do. I could use the, the, the camera on the computer. That’s all I had. But wherever you are, don’t let that prevent you from starting.

Because at the end of the day, people don’t buy that stuff. They don’t. They don’t care. They don’t ca- They want– Th- they don’t care what type of camera I’m using. Only thing they care about, can I solve a problem? And that’s what people really want. They want somebody that’s authentic. So work on you being the authentic being that you can be.

Work on yourself becoming the best version of yourself, and all the other stuff will come. So you’re talking about what’s really important. What’s really important is your mindset and who you are, being authentic, a being, being an authentic being. That’s what’s the most important thing

Tim Melanson: So this is probably a per- [00:30:00] perfect time to give you the solo then. So tell me what’s exciting in your business

Curtis McCullom: Basically, look guys, this is the deal. You know, I can help you, and the best way to get in touch with me is come and visit my website. It’s at, at Bespoke Human Potential Coaching. That’s one, the long way to get there, or you can come there from curtismccullum.com. Either one. And when you get there, you’re gonna have an opportunity to either do a free 15-minute, uh, uh, clarity call with me, and then I also have a couple of things on that site that kind of…

some tools that you can utilize to see where, where you are on your journey so I can actually help you best. Maybe I can or not. It– This is the thing about it, though. If I can’t help you, I’m gonna let you know, and I’m gonna point you into the right direction. And this is the thing. I don’t work with people who are not ready to work.

You know? So it’s like one of the things I, I tell people all the time, "On a scale from one to 10, how bad you wanna change this?" And you tell me a four, [00:31:00] I’m like, say, "You know what? You’re in a great place right now. I don’t work with fours." The reason I don’t work with fours is because of the fact that I don’t wanna mess my track record up.

When I come– when you come to me, you gotta come ready to get results. And if you’re ready to get results, come and visit me, get the free consultation, and let’s get– let’s do some work together

Tim Melanson: That’s great. Well, and, and that’s it, right? It’s the win-win. If you’re both winning, then

Curtis McCullom: Oh, yeah. I mean, a- and that’s the whole idea is that because it, it’s like change and wanting to have, wanting to become the best, wanting to increase your income, wanting to figure out what is it that’s stopping me, because we have a lot of talented people out there, but then there’s this fear, this something that’s driving their behavior that’s preventing them from actually breaking through.

What I do, I help you figure that out so that you don’t have that problem anymore. And this is the c- crazy thing about it, Tim, is that most of the time it’s not something that you think it is. You know, uh, sometimes people think, "Oh [00:32:00] yeah, I had a bad breakup six months ago, and I’m still suffering from the bad breakup."

Usually that’s– the subconscious mind stores information based on what we call a gestalt, feelings that are similar. So that’s not the root cause. And most coaches and most therapists, they basically go with that one incident. I don’t do that. Basically, I go back to figure out what is the root cause of this feeling or emotion, and let’s pull up the root so that we can get rid of the thing for, for good.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I, I don’t know if, if this is something you would answer, but what, what is the most common issue that you, that you come across?

Curtis McCullom: I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Curtis McCullom: That’s the biggest lies that, that, that, that people have to overcome. I mean, because that’s a big one because of the fact that… A- a- and this is the thing, because subtle things that we experienced when we were, when we were small [00:33:00] children, and, uh, it could have been an offhanded remark that a parent, a sibling, or, you know, y- your brother, sister, nephew, somebody said to you, but you took it as being true,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Curtis McCullom: and you continue to replay that.

So when, when, when you, when you come up against things, that’s still feeling I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy, and that kinda drives fear. ‘Cause I’m… The reason I’m fear because I’m feel like I’m not good enough. The reason I’m fearful because I feel like I’m not worthy. So basically those are, to me, that’s the overarching thing of most of the challenges that we have, is that, that, that feeling of, of I’m not good enough

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s crazy. Uh, you know what’s funny is that, uh, when I was first starting to play music, I learned late. I was 22 when I first started playing guitar. Yep. And, uh, about 24, so two years later, was my first gig. And, uh, if, if you can imagine that, [00:34:00] how good could I have been two years later than that? Not super good.

But I was having fun, and someone asked me to play, and so I went out and played. And then people just kept on hiring me. And I remember thinking, "I’m definitely not good enough." But, but I also remember thinking, "People keep hiring me, so I’m just gonna keep on doing it,"

Curtis McCullom: There you go. I love that. I love

Tim Melanson: you just keep on doing it.

But, but I mean, imagine if, like, uh, I, I imagine there’s a lot of people that have that thought, but they don’t get that, that opportunity of someone saying, "Well, I’m gonna pay you for that," right? And, and if they don’t, well then you’ll never know. Like it’s just luck of the draw for me for that one

Curtis McCullom: Well, it’s not, basically you still had a positive mindset. I mean, you still had something in you. That’s, that’s rare that regardless of what’s coming up. Because think about it like this. W- you, as you well know this being in the business, the best singers are not the m- [00:35:00] s- are not sometime the most successful people in the business.

Tim Melanson: I agree with that.

Curtis McCullom: I’m, I’m right. I mean, the, the best players are not the most successful. But they have a mindset of regardless of what, I’m gonna do this, hell or high water. I’m gonna invest all of my time, energy, and effort, and I see myself as being successful. And the most talented sometimes can’t see themself being successful.

They have that mindset of, "I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy." And it’s, you know, I, I’m looking, I’m like, what? You hear those people on, on, on recordings and stuff like, what the heck? Who’s paying them? How do they get a following? Because

Tim Melanson: I

Curtis McCullom: gonna like you. You just got to put yourself out there, man

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. That’s, uh, that’s amazing. All right, well, so how do we, uh, w- how do we find out more? You s- you mentioned your website earlier. C- tell me again what that was

Curtis McCullom: Basically, it’s at Bespoke Human Potential Coaching,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Curtis McCullom: or you can go, uh, [00:36:00] .com and- or you can go to curtismccullum.com. You can also reach me on, on, I’m on all the m- um, major platforms. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on, um, I have a podcast on Spotify, I have YouTube channel, Curtis McCullom, I have Instagram. So you can reach me on any of those platforms.

I got a lot of content out there that people can kinda listen to, to kinda get to know me a little bit. And, um, yeah, so they can find me out there for sure

Tim Melanson: Right on. Okay, before we go, let’s talk a little bit about music. So tell me, who’s your favorite rock star or band?

Curtis McCullom: Uh, I, I’m a old school boy, and m- my favorite probably, Earth, Wind & Fire would be p- one of my favorite kind of bands, right? I mean, because of the sound and the, the instruments and the… Oh my God, it’s just like, I like musicality, right? I like to hear every sound. And so when I, when I buy, uh, a headsets or something, I wanna hear, [00:37:00] I w- I, I wanna hear the distance between the music.

I wanna hear the symbols make the sounds and all this kind of stuff. So Earth, Wind & Fire was big with music, meaning like they had a band. They had a true band with instruments and stuff, and most of these bands these days don’t do that. Um, as far as the greatest, the best singer, um, I love ballads, and so Luther Vandross was probably one of my favorite, you know, of all time.

I went to, every time he came to Southern California, I went to his concerts. And man, man, you’re talking about, uh, music too because he had, I mean, the, the instruments and the things that he had. Live music was something powerful and the separation of the sounds and stuff. So that would be my, my two

Tim Melanson: Yeah, isn’t that amazing? So w- what do you like better, live or on, on your headphones?

Curtis McCullom: Hmm, that’s a good one. If it’s, if, if it’s, if it’s a good live show, because I did go to a live, I think, um, I went to a live show and I was in a, the, the, the, the [00:38:00] vibe wasn’t there because the crowd wasn’t there. So you know, it’s like even on, he was, it was, uh, John, John Legend. I went to a John Legend concert when he came to Ca- when he came to California, and he sang great and everything was good, but the people around me was like, "Ah."

They were just there. They were not true fans, and so you really couldn’t really get into it. So it’s a cardi, man. I mean, I like to crank up, crank up the music and just like listen to it with the headset or live, either one. I mean, I, I like both, but if it’s, like I said, when I went to Luther Vandross concert it was great.

Uh, and so yeah, I like both though

Tim Melanson: Amazing. Thank you so much, Curtis. This has been a lot of fun

Curtis McCullom: Yeah. Yeah, man, I, I, I appreciate the opportunity to come to speak to your audience. And if they need some help and support, hey, I’m here for them. Uh, and if I, if I don’t have the answer, I’ll definitely point you into the right direction. Um, that’s what it’s all about, ’cause I’m looking for… Like I told you before, I’m looking for people who are [00:39:00] looking for me.

Tim Melanson: We’re all looking

Curtis McCullom: and being authentic, right, being authentically me is more than enough. And if I’m not your guy, that’s okay. I want you to help- I wanna help you find your guy or your gal, whoever, who you ever need to actually help you move forward

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well, thank you again. This has been a lot of fun. And to the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information. And we’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar podcast

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. Today’s guest, we have the CEO of SSSE, and what he does is he specializes in using creative deal structuring to purchase cash flowing assets and to build ground up institutional grade self-storage facilities. I’m super excited to be rocking out today with Fernando Angelucci.

Hey Fernando, you ready to rock?

Fernando Angelucci: I am, Tim

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

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah. So, um, I think the, the biggest success I had was leaving the corporate life and deciding to chase my dream. Um, I read a book by Tim Ferriss called "The 4-Hour Workweek," and it had a very interesting exercise in it, which was called the fear setting exercise. You know, I was so afraid to leave my engineering job.

Um, I didn’t know what would happen. You know, what if I would fail? And basically what the book said is put basically two lines on a piece of paper, number them from zero to [00:01:00] 10. The top line is, what is the worst thing that could possibly happen? Zero is nothing changes. Uh, 10 is you die. Nine is you go to prison for life.

So there, there’s your range. Now score it. Then go to the second line, also zero to 10. This is what is the best possible thing that can happen? Zero is nothing changes. Ten is you’re living your, your absolute dream life. And so I had ended up doing the, you know, the mental gymnastics, and really the worst thing that could happen was I put it as a three.

I, I still had my degree. If it didn’t work out, I could always go back into the job market. If I was tough on cash for a little bit, I’m sure I could, you know, stay with friends or family, et cetera. But on the positive line, it was a nine. Uh, I should have put a 10 knowing what I know now, but it was a nine.

I said, "Hey, three to nine, that, that makes the most sense." So I ended up quitting, um, basically jumped out of the plane and built the parachute on the way down. I cash advanced almost $100,000 off of 12 different credit cards to [00:02:00] start the business, and then, uh, never looked back. Um, today, uh, I run a, a self-storage private equity company.

We’ve done over 55 transactions across 26 states, over $240 million. I travel nine to 10 months out of the year, uh, working from virtual offices, if you will. Um, and it’s… I’m living my dream life.

Tim Melanson: Wow. So you didn’t, uh, burn the candle at both ends and keep it, keep the job and work at the same time? You just went all in

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah. So, you know, I started just a little bit, so maybe a couple months doing that, and I r- I realized how much output that I was being able to achieve just in the nights and weekends. And I realized that the longer I keep this up, either I’m gonna get burned out from the business that I wanted to create or the job or both.

And that was not a healthy strategy. So instead of trying to keep my foot in both sides, I figured the best thing w- to do was just focus [00:03:00] 100% of my, my attention on the one thing that I wanted to do that I think would move my life forward, and that’s, that’s what I did. So I, I did some real estate on the side for a couple months and then decided to quit.

And the way I quit was a way that made sure that I’d have no way to come back to that same company ’cause I, you gotta, you know, you gotta set, you gotta set the ability to, to hold yourself accountable. And if you always know that there’s a way to go back, um, you’re not gonna really try as if it’s the last possible thing that you can do.

So I had to make sure that, um, there was no other option but success.

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s awesome. Well, I mean, that’s a really cool exercise that you got into. I, I’m wondering, uh, how did you find the book?

Fernando Angelucci: I’ve, you know, since I was a teenager, uh, I never thought I liked to read, um, but then picked up a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert [00:04:00] Kiyosaki, and then that’s when I discovered the kind of, I hate this word, but kind of self-help books. Books that are not fiction or, you know, things that you can actually apply in your life to make your life better.

Um, maybe sales psychology, personal psychology, mindset, et cetera. So I just started going down that, that rabbit hole of, you know, buying one book, reading it, finding it fantastic, and a lot of these books, they usually reference other books. The authors will reference other books in their books. So then I start buying those, and then all of a sudden in a couple years I have multiple bookshelves filled and, uh, Tim Ferriss’ was one of the ones that I had gotten early on.

I think I was 19 when I read his first book

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. Wow, that’s awesome. Yeah, I was in probably my early 20s, so just a little older than you when I started getting into the self-help stuff, and I just remember, like, people, like, thinking I was so weird, ’cause I was always reading these, like, business books instead of the fiction that they’re reading, right?

And they’re like, "Uh, when you say you like to read," they’re like, "Yeah, but [00:05:00] that doesn’t count." I’m like, "It, it counts, I think," you know?

Fernando Angelucci: I agree.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Now, okay, so, uh, along with the good notes, sometimes there’s some things that don’t go as planned when you’re, when you’re setting up your business, when you’re getting moving, and I don’t like to call them failures, ’cause, I mean, they’re all, all learning experiences, but

Fernando Angelucci: Right

Tim Melanson: they are what keep people out of the game a lot of it, a lot of times, right?

They’re just scared about that stuff happening. So I like to, I like to bring a couple of them up or one of them up that might be a bad one that might scare somebody, but you can… You’re still here, right? So can you share a, a story with me?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah. Um, you know, I think the, one of the biggest challenges people have when they go into, you know, business, working from home, being a business owner, is thinking that they should do everything themselves because they wanna keep the max amount of profit that, that, that they can. And the problem with that is as you start scaling, you start [00:06:00] burning out, and now that thing that usually made you excited to wake up in the morning, the thing that, that got you out of bed, becomes something that you don’t look forward to doing anymore.

And that’s usually because you’re overworked and you’re not using systems and processes and procedures in your business to either, you know, automate, eliminate, or delegate tasks to people that have, uh, lower per hour, uh, value on their time. So one of the, the first times I burnt out, uh, I was in the single family home space and, uh, buying, fixing and flipping, wholesaling single family assets, not, basically not building up the team like I should have, and I was working too many hours.

You know, I, I went from working a 60 hour per week corporate job to working 80 to 85 hour per week. Basically, I built a job for myself. It wasn’t– I couldn’t call it a business because I wasn’t an owner. I was basically just the, the main [00:07:00] employer, one of the main employees. And then I got burnt out, and it, it, it really made me want to quit and go back into the corporate world.

Um, but luckily did a reassessment, got, um, got some third party advisors into the business, showing us what we’re doing right, what we were doing wrong, where we can put systems and processes, procedures in place. And from that point on, we started to scale pretty heavily until we decided to finally, uh, get into the commercial real estate, um, space or self-storage spec-specifically

Tim Melanson: Hmm. When you say we, who was we at the time?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah, so when I started the business, it was just me, and every time I would get a quick win, you know, a small check here or there, 6,500, 10,000, I would take a picture of it and I would send it to my best friend that, uh, was my random, uh, randomly assigned roommate in college freshman year, uh, Steven. So eventually, you know, s- Steven was being a g- good guy about it.

He didn’t like his [00:08:00] job. He wasn’t making a lot of money, and, uh, he eventually said, "Listen, you either gotta stop sending me pictures of these checks or you gotta show me how to do this business." And I said, I, you know, "I thought you’d never ask." So finally brought him in w- and since then we’ve been, um, we’ve been 50/50 partners all the way

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay, that’s awesome. And so w- uh, if you were to do it again, like would you do it any different or did you need to get to that, to that burnout mark before you could hire?

Fernando Angelucci: No, no, I would have done it. Knowing what I know now, you know, a decade or more later, I would’ve started larger. So a lot of people think that you have to start small and then bank, you know, a l- a little bit of cash here and there to eventually get to the point where you can go to the next level, and then do the kinda the same thing.

That takes a ton of time. And when you look at, you know, our lives, people don’t realize kinda how finite it is. One of the things that I like to do is break down what your life expectancy is into weeks, [00:09:00] and then see what you’re doing on a weekly basis, and you really don’t have a lot of time. So why put the same amount of effort in going after, let’s say, a $100,000 payout when you can put the same amount of effort into going for, for a 10 million or a $20 million payout?

So what I realized in the beginning is that I should have just started adding zeros onto what my goals were and what type of deals I wanted to do, and then realized that I don’t… Again, uh, going back to the previous, the previous no- uh, point, I didn’t need to do everything, and that includes my money. I didn’t have to use only my money.

I could have s- from the beginning, started raising capital from external, you know, third parties to help build the dream, and then give them a great return along the way. And that’s how we’ve been able to scale so quickly over the last, you know, seven to eight years, is by focusing on the point that doesn’t need to be my cash equity, it doesn’t need to be my debt.

You know, someone else can, can sign on the debt for me, as long [00:10:00] as they’re properly compensated. You know, as long as I have the, the operational wherehow, the opportunities, the deal flow, um, I can put that all together much faster. So I w- I just wish f- for… You know, in the beginning, I was flipping $40,000 houses on the south side of Des Moines, Iowa, when I could have already just been building 10 million, $20 million assets from the get-go

Tim Melanson: Wow. Well, was there some people that came into your life that helped you, to help you teach this stu- or to teach you this stuff, or?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah. So this is one of the things that I always tell kinda new real estate investors is, you know, s- surround yourself with people that are successful in your field. Um, there’s, there’s a great saying, I forgot who said it, but you’re the average of the five people you spend the most amount of time with.

So, you know, if you’re spending time with a bunch of people that are making minimum wage, you’re probably going to be making minimum wage. But if you have the ability to surround yourself with people that [00:11:00] are, you know, at the next level or the next two or three levels of where you wanna get to, that will start rubbing off on you.

So easy ways to find this, there’s always local meetup groups, um There’s also, you know, paid membership groups. So if you wanna get really serious about your craft or your trade, you know, you gotta go to the places where, you know, most of the masses aren’t allowed to go because there’s some type of paywall.

Um, and in most cases, that paywall makes sense because then, you know, the, the guys that are doing 100 million a year, they’re not gonna go to the, you know, the community center free meetup on a Wednesday afternoon or Wednesday night, right? They’re gonna go to the 35, $50,000 a year paid, you know, once quarterly, once a, a week-long trip.

So these masterminds are super important. Um, I have always been parts of masterminds g- going through the business, uh, you know, life cycle. I, I learned this from, uh, Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, where he talks [00:12:00] about masterminds and how important they are. So I’ve always had a general business mastermind.

Didn’t have to necessarily be about my, my asset class or industry. Uh, and then I would also be a part of a, a, a mastermind that was specific to what I was trying to do at that time. And, you know, you don’t have to start at the $50,000 level. What I always tell people is set aside a number of top-line revenue for educational purposes.

So, you know, start with 1% or 5%. I think 5% is pretty aggressive, but if you wanna scale faster, that’s how you do it. And then that money goes into a special education account. And in the beginning, it may only be a couple hundred bucks, but a couple hundred bucks can buy you some really awesome books, right?

Then all of a sudden you maybe get 1,000 bucks or 2,000 bucks, and that’s a great three-day weekend course that you could pay for. And then very quickly that starts growing, and then all of a sudden you have 10,000 in that account or 20,000. Now you can start paying to get into those higher level rooms, those higher level groups where you [00:13:00] really…

It’s crazy how fast you can compress learning. Something that took somebody 20, 30 years to learn how to do, just by being next to them and, and going to these, these masterminds, you can compress all of that knowledge, all the, the successes and failures that they’ve had into a period of one year for you.

So now you’ve– you’re getting to catapult and almost, you know, skip over all of that pain and heartache and discovery that someone else had to go through. So I always tell people, you know, you can learn from other people’s successes, but you can also learn from other people’s failures. But to learn from people’s failures, you have to be in a room where people are willing to be vulnerable and share those true failures.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, I mean, and then that’s the next question. Like, h- uh, what do you think is in it for them to be vulnerable and share those failures and, and, and help you?

Fernando Angelucci: You know, they’re in the room for the same reason. They’re trying to grow and, and level up. Um, there’s that old adage that, you know, two heads are better than one. Sometimes all it takes is a fresh [00:14:00] perspective for somebody to see something that you have been stuck on for one, two, three years, and sometimes it comes from somebody in a different industry than yours.

Because in their industry, they do things a little bit differently. They look at problems differently the, than the way that you look at problems in your industry. That’s why I always say it’s important to not only be in a mastermind that is industry specific, but one that’s just general business, ’cause then you can learn how other industries are tackling problems.

So they’re there to, to learn as well. It’s not like these are people that aren’t getting anything out of the groups. The people that go to these groups, typically the structure is you go… It’s multiple days. They’re broken into rooms, and then each person has to present anywhere between 30 to, you know, 50-minute presentation on a give that they’re giving to the group, something that they learned, something that they think is valuable to the group.

And then at the end of that presentation, they have maybe 10 minutes for an ask. Here’s what I’m working on. Here’s what I’ve been struggling on. You know, q- Q&A. Let’s, let’s figure it out together in this room. So it’s kinda like a sounding board, [00:15:00] almost like a, a board of directors that you don’t have to pay for their insurance and healthcare, et cetera.

So it, it’s, it’s super awesome structure

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and sometimes you can learn from somebody who is even at the beginning of their journey because, uh, maybe you might have gotten away from some of the fundamentals, right? And you’re like, "Oh, geez, I used to do that, and I got success, and now I’m stuck," and maybe that might be the kind of the aha that you get from someone who’s just getting started, right?

Fernando Angelucci: 100%. 100%.

Tim Melanson: So now you do a lot of traveling. H- how do you, how do you set up your, your, your jam space, your, your home office if you keep on moving?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah. So the, the key is to have a, an office that is easy to set up and take down on, on a moment’s notice, but then also to have kind of processes and procedures in place to make sure that you’re always in a reliable space or reliable mindset. So for example, anywhere I’m traveling, I do a lot of podcasts.

I always find podcast studios to rent. So this is not in my office. This isn’t a virtual [00:16:00] screen. This is a real podcast studio that I rent on a, you know, on an hourly basis. Uh, the other thing is to kinda… For me, because I try to travel as light as possible, I travel around with just one backpack. It’s a travel backpack.

I think it’s 45 liters. Um, so my workspace has to be super refined. So laptop, phone, um, a Wi-Fi- uh, satellite Wi-Fi, uh, just in case I, I’m in an area where there isn’t reliable internet. Or like we were talking before we started recording, you know, there was a period of time where I worked from a Airbnb that I rented in the middle of the, of the, the tropical rainforest, so there was no internet connection there at all.

Um, and then, you know, making sure that you have a proper work hygiene. So just because you’re working from home, I mean, and this is just my opinion, so I’m sure there’s a lot of people that would disagree with this, but just ’cause you’re working from home doesn’t mean that you should be working in your pajamas, you know, rolling out of bed.

Treat it like I at least like to treat it [00:17:00] like I’m going to work. I get up, I take a shower, I brush my teeth, I eat breakfast, I put on work clothes, and then I go into my work space, wherever I set up that space to be. Typically, it’s not in the space that I’m relaxing in because that mental separation is not only good for when you’re trying to get things done on the work side, but then also when you’re on the, you know, the, the balance side, the work-life balance side.

You know, when you’re done working, when are you actually done working? F- and for me, it’s I put away all my stuff, I take off my work clothes, I put on my chill clothes, and I’m done for the day. Um, because, like I said, you want– Uh, for people that have been business owners for long enough, burnout is a real problem, and if you lose your passion for what you’re doing, all of a sudden you’re in a nightmare of your own making.

So you gotta make sure to set boundaries, just like you would set with someone else paying you. You know, you’re not gonna answer phone calls and emails on the weekend when you’re with your family. Why would you do it in your own business, [00:18:00] right? So just making sure that you have that, that proper hygiene is super important.

Tim Melanson: Wow, that’s, that’s really good. I remember actually when I was first starting to do, uh, cold calls, I, I actually did put on a suit and tie to make phone calls, and it, it actually did help. I, I was, I was more confident on the phone. It, it just was, it is what it is, right?

Fernando Angelucci: Look good, feel good. You know what I’m saying?

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Now, uh, I, I imagine that, uh, it might be a little bit weird for the people around you.

Like, what are you doing sitting in your office with your, with your suit on? But I mean, hey, if it works, it works, right?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah, exactly. There’s a ton of books on, on, uh, the psychology of this exact aspect of working from home and how do you separate work-life balance that I’ve read, and it’s– I think it’s super important. It may seem weird, it may seem cheesy, but it really does have awesome results, uh, both from stress levels and from, you know, being laser-focused when you are in work mode, and then being super relaxed when you [00:19:00] go out of work mode into, you know, chill mode or, you know, I’m at home.

You know, ’cause y-you’re in the same space usually. You’re in your home, you just move from, I don’t know, your kitchen or your office to your, to your living room, or in some cases, like when I first started, I was in a st- a studio apartment. So there was no different zones, if you will. You ha- I had to, like, make my own zone.

So that’s why I forced myself to, you know, put away all my things, put them out of sight, ’cause just even seeing my laptop would, would start making me think about th- work again when it was 9:00, 10:00 PM. It just started disrupting my sleep. That’s not healthy. So making sure that you have proper work hygiene, I think, is one of the most important things, um, for your kinda jam space if, you know

Tim Melanson: Now I don’t, uh, I don’t remember, um, I, I don’t know what’s going on in, in, uh, school systems today, but I know when I was going to school, I don’t remember a real big, um, curriculum on cash flow and, and that kind of stuff. And I, I’m wondering, like, uh, is, you know, how do you learn [00:20:00] that? How do you keep that going?

H- how do you make sure that you’re making more than you’re putting out? Like, do you keep an eye on those numbers every day? Do you have somebody

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah. So, you know, there’s obviously levels to this. So at the beginning it was, it was just me. Now I have a full, you know, bookkeeping team and an accountant to handle that stuff for me. But in from the beginning, you know, for your listeners that are thinking about taking the plunge, you always gotta focus on your profit first.

I know this sounds kinda backwards. Most people think, "Hey, here’s the revenue, pay all your expenses, and then whatever’s left over is what I’m gonna take home." But what you end up realizing is expenses start growing as the business start growing. So if you don’t take profit off the table, you have problems.

So there’s a really good book, I’m, I’m s- blanking on the author, but the name of the book is called Profit First. I really recommend people take a look. I not only use that system in that book for the business and the, the multiple businesses that we have, but then also for my personal life. I created a profit first flow that makes sure that I’m taking [00:21:00] chips off the table all the time because I…

You know, in these masterminds, I’ve met guys that, you know, that they had successful businesses for a decade, two decades, and all of a sudden they f- they file for bankruptcy. How can that be? Right? How can you be successful for multiple decades and then have nothing to show for it at the end? And it’s usually ’cause they were never taking chips off the table.

They just kept reinvesting into the business and then all of a sudden, once the business was no longer viable because either the economy changed or we had a p- global pandemic or whatever happened, they had nothing to show for 20 years of work. So I think that’s a huge mistake that a lot of people make right off the bat.

So definitely read Profit First. I think it’s Mike Michalowicz, I think is the name of the author. Super cool guy. I saw him speak in person, really animated dude. Um, so go out and ch- and check out that book. And then the second thing that I’d, I’d tell people to focus on is when you’re… You know, you gotta have clear goals.

So when you go into business [00:22:00] being extremely vague, um, you don’t really go anywhere. It’s like getting into a car without a GPS or a map, and then just driving hoping that you’re gonna get to your destination. That doesn’t work. So the other book that I tell people to read is, uh, Traction by Gino Wickman, Gino Wickman.

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman, and it basically shows you how to set up a operating system for your business with very clear and concise goals on a 10-year, three, five or three-year, one-year, 90-day, one-week, and daily level. So you know exactly where you are and ha- you have a scorecard that you can easily look at to see, am I on track or am, am I not on track, and why?

So those are two books I really recommend for as far as cash flow management goes.

Tim Melanson: I love that. What other tools do you use? I mean, you’re, y- I mean, you probably have a pretty good tech stack, right? Be- being, with doing all your traveling. What, what, what do you use?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah, now it’s been getting a lot easier, but when we first started this business over a [00:23:00] decade ago, um, the– we– you had to be very, um, nimble, and you had to be able to kind of MacGyver things together. Uh, now there’s a lot of full tech stacks that are kind of all, all-encompassing. But then what I found out is, you know, that the KISS method, keep, keep it simple, stupid, is still a really great adage to keep in mind because you can get, you know, over your skis and all of a sudden decide that this, you know, this Salesforce massive package that costs $10,000 a month that’s gonna solve all your problems will solve all your problems, and then it doesn’t.

So what I found is that, you know, e- I l- I live on Excel. I love Excel. No, no reason to migrate from that. Email, email client is great. Um, I do have a, a CRM that I use. It’s kind of… It’s called Asana, but there’s many similar to like ClickUp and Monday, and there’s a ton of them. Just kinda helps keep projects-oriented tasks, and the great [00:24:00] part about it is those tasks also have deadlines that they start pinging you via email or even text message if you allow it to, um, so you can kinda stay on track.

So, you know, as far as total tech stack goes, we have, um, Asana is where we live kinda most of the time ’cause that’s what keeps the rest of the team and the rest of the company oriented towards their specific goals for their specific departments, et cetera. But then also it flows up to the company-wide goals and what we as the owners are setting for everybody.

Um, and then, like I said, just kind of super basic stuff, keeping it simple. Excel, uh, G- we use Gmail. We use the, the corporate version of Gmail, but it’s still a Gmail account. Um, pretty, pretty basic. And then, you know, with, uh, with all the AI stuff that’s coming out nowadays, um, we, we do dabble a little bit into, you know, some of these LLMs that help reduce the amount of time it takes to produce certain deliverables like presentations [00:25:00] and, and summaries of financial data, things like that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Um, and, and that’s the thing. I mean, sometimes these all-encompassing sort of tech stacks might be kind of mediocre at everything rather than picking something that’s, like, really good at what it does type thing, right?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah, and then not only that, but then it’s also a single point of failure. So we saw recently when there was like a massive outage, I think it was the Cloudflare, C- Cloudfla-flare, something like that outage, took down something insane like 23% of the internet. So if you had everything in your business housed on one of these CRMs that was a do everything for you CRM, and now you have no access to that CI- CRM for gosh knows how long, that could be a huge problem in your business, especially if it, your business deals in kind of very tight deadlines and large money transactions, things like that

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, and you see a lot of businesses running their, you know, their whole marketing on Facebook or whatever happens to be their social media platform too, which is super [00:26:00] dangerous, right? I mean, something could happen. You could lose your profile, right?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah. Sing-single point of failure. You always want at least two to three vendors for every, every thing that you need, every vendor that, that, that you’re looking at to use, so

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I love that. Let’s get into your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business right now

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah. So, uh, up until recently, how we’ve raised money for every one our deals were what are called single asset syndications, which means that when I need money for a deal, I go out and tell people, "I need money for this one deal." And the hard part about that is before I can raise the money, I have to get everything else lined up, the financing, the deal, everything.

Which mean- meant that I usually only had couple weeks, three to, three to eight weeks to raise all the money I needed for some of these projects that were pretty large, you know, $15, $16 million build that I had to raise $3 to $5 million on. The cool thing that I’m super excited about now is we have launched our [00:27:00] first fund, and it’s actually a general partner fund which offers kinda higher returns than what a limited partner fund would offer.

So now we have kinda like this, this, you know, this track record from the single asset syndications. All these investors are coming into the GP fund, which now means that we have cash to play with before we actually need the cash, which allows us to do some very creative things. So for example, when we’re negotiating, um, a purchase on a property, we can say, "Hey, here’s the regular price.

Here’s a severely discounted price, but we’ll pay you in 10 days. We’ll give you your entire purchase price," and it could be a couple million dollars, right, in 10 days. And usually there are some people that are willing to accept that because time is money to a lot of people. So super excited about the GP fund.

It is our first fund. It’s a $25 million fund, um, and it invests alongside me and Steven as the owner on a lot of these single asset syndications that we do. So, um, super excited about that. I know it may sound a little bit like gobbledygook to some of the [00:28:00] people that are out there, but in the syndication space it’s a, it’s a huge milestone.

Tim Melanson: Hmm. Cool. Now, what is the type of person that would benefit from that?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah, so we help, um, you know, a lot of high income, um, business owners and W2 investors. So a lot of what we do is focus around tax advantageous structuring of deals. So for example, we closed on a deal in Rochester, New York, uh, at, uh, on New- uh, literally on New Year’s Eve. Um, and every investor that invested into that project, for every dollar they invested in, they got to write off 90 cents on their, uh, tax returns, uh, for any passive investments on their K1.

So that was huge, and it helped a lot of our investors out that were trying to, you know, plan taxes. They, maybe they didn’t, uh, hold tax money in a reserve account as they were working throughout the year, which I know has happened to a lot of new business owners. [00:29:00] It happened to me when I was a new business owner.

You know, because now no longer it’s being taken out of your paycheck ahead of time, you’re just getting all that money and then you forget to set things aside. So then they come scrambling to me and say, "Hey, Fernando, I have a $300,000 tax bill. I have $50,000 to pay this. What am I gonna do? Can you help me out?"

I said, "Actually, I can. I have these deals that you can invest in that will lower your tax burden." So, um, y- you know, typically high, high income W2 earners, uh, business owners, especially if you’re a business owner that you have passive gains that you need to offset, we’re very good at offsetting those

Tim Melanson: Hey, interesting. All right. And, uh, I mean, that leads to something that we could have talked about earlier, which is the tax issue, right, in, in your business and making sure that you save enough money for the taxes, right? Wow. So now how would someone f- what’s the process of someone finding out more information about this?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah, so there’s, there’s– I always tell people there’s kind of two ways to reach me. So if you’re more of a active outreach guy, you’re a cold [00:30:00] caller, you’re a sales guy, you’re, you’re listening to this right now and you’re just like, "Fernandez, just give me your number. I wanna call you right now," here is my cellphone.

My, my real cellphone number is 630-408-8090. So for all my extroverts out there, 630-408-8090. If you’re somebody that’s more of an introvert, let’s say, or a little bit slower to, uh, reach out when you have questions or, or interests, you know, I always tell those, those folks to go to our website. It’s www.ssse.com, and there you can find out all about us, what we do, uh, the 100-plus podcasts I’ve been on, um, a f- a FAQ page with video responses to every question.

I think we got like hundreds of questions on there. Uh, and then if you want to schedule a call on your own time and terms, there is a link that you can go right to my calendar, and you can schedule a time that works for you

Tim Melanson: Okay, awesome. All right, so before [00:31:00] we go, let’s talk a little bit about music. Who’s your favorite rock star?

Fernando Angelucci: It’s a tough,

Tim Melanson: Yeah

Fernando Angelucci: a tough question. Um I mean, I know we were talking about this before. I don’t know if I can pick one of the guys in the band, but my favorite band of all time is Umphrey’s McGee. It’s a jam band. They are pretty rock heavy for a jam band. So I’d say if, if you’re allow, allowing me to answer with a whole

Tim Melanson: fine. Yep.

Fernando Angelucci: Okay. Umphrey’s McGee

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Right on. And so y- you like, w- what do you, have you seen them in concert? Or like, how, how, do you follow them?

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah, I’ve, I’ve probably seen them more than 40 times live. I go to the, you know, I go to the music festivals that they headline. I, I camp out in a, in a tent. Nowadays I’m getting a little bit older, so it’s more of a, I rent an RV and then rent an RV space to g- camp out instead of just being on the ground like I used to.

But yeah, I, I follow them around all the time. I love the, I love the music [00:32:00] festival culture and the food and, uh, exploring new music that you hear just from walking from one stage to another stage. So really love that

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever played an instrument?

Fernando Angelucci: I have. So, uh, piano, guitar, I sing. Um, nowadays it’s more of a hobby than, than something I spend a lot of time on. But, you know, high school, college days, I, I was playing guitar a couple hours every day. Piano when I was at home. My parents have a piano in their house. And now, uh, like we were talking before we started recording, uh, because I travel a lot, I go to countries sometimes where I don’t speak the native language.

I found that one of the easiest ways to connect to people that don’t speak your language is to go up onto the stage and sing some karaoke, and you end up making a lot of friends for life real fast.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. That is an awesome, awesome tip for sure. Rayon, well so, thank you so much for rocking out with me today, Fernando. This has been a lot of fun

Fernando Angelucci: Yeah. It has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me on, Tim

Tim Melanson: No [00:33:00] problem. 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: Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. Very excited for this episode. We’re talking to the founder and president of Business Whit, and what he does is he helps business owners and work-at-home leaders to move from chaos to clarity by designing businesses that don’t depend on them for every decision.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

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

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

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

And isn’t that a great place to live?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: And you’re still here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

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

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

John Whitt: Yeah, you’ve got no capacity

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Okay

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

It’s okay. Let them be better

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: No. Mm-hmm

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

John Whitt: Doctor,

Tim Melanson: Doctor, man

John Whitt: right?

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Ah.

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

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

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome.

John Whitt: Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work-At-Home Rockstar Podcast. I’m excited for today’s episode. It’s gonna be really interesting. We’re talking to the president of DC Properties, and what he does is he teaches people how to buy creative real estate. Now, I’m very excited to get into that in a little bit more detail and what that means.

But first, hey, Daron, are you ready to rock?

Daron Campbell: I am so excited, Tim. Let’s rock and roll. This gonna be

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

Daron Campbell: My favorite story of success is my own journey in this real estate game. You know, my, my mom and brother and sister and I moved to California from Chicago and they fresh off of a divorce, you know, struggling in every way, single, single parent household. My mom had to go out and get a job at a dry cleaner.

She was the counter clerk of the dry cleaners while I went to high school, then to college. She worked her tail off at that dry cleaner just to keep a roof over our head. We struggled mightily. That’s a whole nother, that’s a book in and of [00:01:00] itself. But we struggled, uh, and the beautiful thing is I discovered real estate along the way, and then real estate allowed me to keep it short.

A long story short. Real estate allowed me to buy that dry cleaners 15 years later and hand her the keys and say, now this is your dry cleaners mom. So that’s my favorite success story of probably a thousand success stories. That’s the number one. And uh, there’s a whole lot that went into that and led up to that, but, but to keep it short, ’cause your time is limited. We, she, she took that job as an $8 an hour employee and 15 years later, she was the owner of that cleaners because of real estate and everything that I had learned along the way, proudest moment of my life, handing her the keys to that cleaners.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow, must… Uh, I bet you it was her proudest moment, too.

Daron Campbell: ’cause she was my biggest fan

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: And I, I

Tim Melanson: that’s

Daron Campbell: most of my success to what she taught me and instilled in me as a, as a 4-year-old.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow, that’s amazing. Well, okay, so along with those good [00:02:00] notes, though, there’s some things that don’t go as planned, right? And I do like, I do like to talk about that.

Daron Campbell: whole book.

Tim Melanson: Of course it is. Yeah, and I mean, th- that’s what keeps people out of this game in the first place. They’re scared to fail, right? However, you know, with every success, we all, we all hit these bumps in the road, right?

So you shouldn’t be scared of them. So I’m wondering, can you share with me something that didn’t go as planned and what we can learn from that?

Daron Campbell: Yeah. And you know, I love what you’re saying by opening like this, because. People would just simply learn to fail faster. They’ll get to that successful lane that much quicker. And you could be disheartened and heartbroken and you know, there’re gonna be people that are let down and, and, and people get hurt and all of those things.

But you, you interview, you interview everybody, so you interview a successful person. And ask them, have they ever failed at anything? They go, oh, how many of ’em do you wanna hear about?

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: have failed.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: is to fail faster, fail more often. I have have put together many partnerships where people invested their hard-earned money [00:03:00] into something that I

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: we buy, and things have not always worked out.

I’ve been blessed enough to say that about 90% of them have worked out famously. A few have not. And in one instance, we bought a property that we were sure we were gonna be able to split the property, build two, two houses where there used to be one. Two shiny brand new houses we expected to make. Oh my goodness.

Sometimes these numbers are silly, so I don’t wanna like make it unrealistic for people, but there was nearly a million dollars in profit to be made. Everyone got in and put their money in excitedly. I’m the team leader. I’m responsible for making this go. And then the city I’m in, Los Angeles, the city of Los Angeles changed the building code

Tim Melanson: Oh. Oh.

Daron Campbell: middle of us getting entitlement. So suddenly where we thought we could build two 4,000 square foot brand new homes, suddenly they slashed the density and we could only build 1 2500 square foot home. And so [00:04:00] everything that we had invested for the upside potential got smashed in one simple city council move that killed the, the co, the concept.

So I scrambled to get everybody back to hold and, you know, not lose money, but. Needless to say, they were disappointed. Needless to say, I look like the bad guy because I said, here’s what we can do. And then somebody else, uh, not under my control decided that they were gonna change the, the rules. And so that’s the bad example of something like that happening.

But what I do is I keep my eyes on the rules, and today there are four or five rules I’m taking advantage of right now that have changed in our favor.

Tim Melanson: Ah.

Daron Campbell: of what just happened to me, what would happen to me in that deal? The opposite’s happening right now. There’s a massive shortage of housing in the us.

Cities like Los Angeles where I am, are opening up the doors to adding an additional dwelling unit to the backyard of every house. So today, five years ago, this didn’t exist. Today, every [00:05:00] homeowner can add an additional unit. To their at least one additional unit to their property. Every apartment building owner can add two to three to four additional units if they have the the space to do it.

So it’s the opposite of what hurt me and those investors back then. It’s actually helping us right now. This is one of our best methods for adding value and helping people become wealthy, is you buy, you buy one house and you can suddenly turn it into two or three,

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Daron Campbell: piece of property. So you, you essentially get the land for free to build two additional income producing assets.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Daron Campbell: that’s how you know the laws can hurt you and then they can help you.

Tim Melanson: Well, I mean, could you have known that that law was about to change? Like, if you had known that it was g- like, did you… Was there a way for you to have known or just, it just happened?

Daron Campbell: I would’ve had to know someone on city council to know that they were gonna wake up one day and, and, and have this knot in my backyard density thing go on. It kinda, it caught us by surprise. It, there was no heads up. It was a, it was a [00:06:00] January one. This is being enacted. you later. Sorry.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Daron Campbell: at the time you weren’t automatically entitled to be able to split a lot. And double the number of homes on that, in that space. But, and, and so many neighborhoods, the more the, the more expensive the neighborhood, the more adamant the neighbors become about, no, we don’t need more cars.

Tim Melanson: Right.

Daron Campbell: more houses, we don’t need more people. It’s the, that, that NIMBY thing, not in my backyard.

That’s

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: out here. There’s all these neighborhoods that where people will go and say, no, we don’t want more density. ’cause we don’t want more cars and we don’t want more traffic. That plagued building in Los Angeles and many other big cities, Chicago, New York, uh, Dallas a long period of time.

But then we woke up yesterday and we have this massive shortage of housing. And so now all of these cities have had to reverse field and say, okay, builders, we’re gonna let you build more. not gonna worry about cars and parking nearly as much as a [00:07:00] matter of fact. Tim, it’s interesting. Cities have now said if you’re in a zone where you’re near the. Public transportation, we’re gonna let you build even more so where you might be able to build two units on a residential street. near a bus stop or a train station, they’ll let you build eight.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Daron Campbell: yeah, it’s because we have a shortage of 4 million units. We’re 4 million housing units short in this country.

So what does, what does your audience wanna be in the next five years? Landlord. You wanna be landlord. And that’s why I’m teaching real estate. I’m screaming it from the mountaintops. Everybody needs to get into real estate because the boom for being a landlord is coming. Affordability is difficult. Very few people can afford to own. Most people are gonna be relegated to rent. And if you can put yourself in a position to be the person who rents very good housing to people, you can. You can establish your future. You can set up your retirement, you can set up generational wealth for your kids [00:08:00] and grandkids. And never look back. And just because it’s your podcast, it also happens to be the best stay at home job there is managing your real estate portfolio.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Awesome. That’s awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about, about practices. Now, I mean, it sounds to me like you had some good, uh, role models early on in life to set you up with some good practices, but tell me, tell me a little bit more about that in your life.

Daron Campbell: Well, in my life, it’s been interesting. I have learned, I learned early on that mentors and role models are the shortcut to success.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm

Daron Campbell: everywhere I’ve been, I’ve been fortunate enough to be. I was the squeaky wheel. I was the loud mouth that went to the person that said, Hey, I wanna learn what you know, can you teach me?

And the shocking thing is, Tim, the mentor figure times outta 10 is shocked that somebody asked them for the help.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: It’s crazy. So. So as a perfect example. My very first job in [00:09:00] real estate, I was a brand new licensee it was this big stuffy firm shirt and tie suit every day. Very difficult environment where I’m selling.

I’m brokering apartment buildings and shopping suits. Really big things that are owned by really rich people who really don’t have time for this 22-year-old kid who doesn’t know anything. I go straight to the number one guy in the company. I say, I’ll give you half the money I earn for the next year.

If you show me how to do what you do. Do you know he was shocked. Do you know No one had ever asked him that. Do you know no one ever even approached him like that. said, well, why are you asking me? Like everybody around here kind of doesn’t like me because I’m, you know, I go, are you the number one agent in the firm nationwide?

He says, yep. I go, that’s why. I go, he says, all right, well you, you’re gonna do everything I say. And the minute you do something, you don’t, you fail to do something I tell you to do. You’re out. I go, whatever you say, sir.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Daron Campbell: I attached my wagon to his engine and [00:10:00] learned what he did to become number one.

And three years later I was number one.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow.

Daron Campbell: that’s how that worked. So mentors. Are your shortcut to success? Everywhere I go, I go and try to find the number one person in it. Like right now, right now, I’m, I’m, I’m online is where I live, my Instagram and I, I coach now I teach, I’m a mentor.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Daron Campbell: I’m modeling the top influencers in the business who are doing the most in the realm of online coaching, et cetera, et cetera. I’m modeling this right now.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: They are my mentors, whether they know it or not, they’re my mentors. So mentors are everything. If you wanted to start something brand new today, you say, Darin, where would you start? I say, go find a mentor. Go find the number one person in that space mimic them. Model them.

And if you really wanna be bold, call ’em up and ask them, could you shadow ’em for six months? Whatever you gotta do,

Tim Melanson: Yeah, that’s brilliant. That is brilliant. And, and you’re right. I mean, hey, I mean, you even offered that mentor something. That’s crazy. [00:11:00] Like, you

Daron Campbell: Hey, I said, I’m gonna give you half of whatever I make.

Tim Melanson: that’s, that’s, that’s amazing that you did that, ’cause, uh, I mean, mentors will even help you even for free, right? I mean, it’s just, it’s surprising.

Daron Campbell: The shocking thing is they’ll do it for free. You know what?

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Daron Campbell: You are no threat to them. You’re, they, it means nothing. You know what I mean? So was I a threat to him? I’m this kid brand new, 22 years old in the real estate business, didn’t, hadn’t sold a thing. I never even sold a vacuum cleaner before. Much less a $10 million apartment building. He’s making a million bucks a year or more selling apartment buildings at the highest level. Who am I to him? Nobody. What kind of threat am I to him if he opens his playbook and shows me everything he knows how to do? Nothing. Could I take all his clients away? Never. So there was no threat to him whatsoever.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yep.

Daron Campbell: you walk up to Warren Buffet and say, Mr. Buffet, I’ll shine your shoes. I’ll bring you coffee, I’ll get you your water, whatever you want. If you just let me hang around and, and, and, and see what you do. [00:12:00] Are interested? He’d probably say, yeah, you

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: No one’s even asked me that in the last 40 years.

Come on Tim, let’s go. mentors are not intimidated by you because they are self-made. They’re comfortable in their own skin. You don’t worry them

Tim Melanson: No.

Daron Campbell: great podcast. If you go to the number one podcaster on planet Earth and I don’t know who that is, and you say, Hey, I wanna know what you do, how’d you become number one? They will tell you, I’ll bet real money that they will open the playbook and tell you how they became number one. With no inhibitions, with

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: back.

Tim Melanson: Well, there’s a, there’s a lot of books about that, too, about how people get started by doing exactly what you just said, like getting coffee for the guy, you know, in the office. I mean, I- isn’t that Think and Grow Rich is even about that, right?

Daron Campbell: That’s stinky girl, rich.

Tim Melanson: you

Daron Campbell: exactly. And then you just model what already works.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: nothing new under the sun. Well, that’s a great statement because there really isn’t everything. You know, you’re, you’re a musician. Every song, you know.

Tim Melanson: Oh, yeah. Yeah.[00:13:00]

Daron Campbell: hook. It’s riff, it’s bridge from some other song. The guy heard somewhere else.

He’s not stealing it, he is not plagiarizing it. He’s just putting his spin on something he already heard.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Oh, I agree. I agree, for sure. And, uh, and y- you know, when it, when it comes down to it, too, you actually do learn a fair bit from teaching as well. So i- there’s a benefit to the other side as well, to be the mentor, right?

Daron Campbell: Well, today I’m on stages all the time teaching people about how to grow with real estate. The funny thing is, by teaching, I get reminded of all the things that made all the difference.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: if you don’t teach, you don’t. Sometimes you don’t remember.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: you teach, you get reminded and reinforced. Say, well, yeah, that’s right.

That is how that works.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: it’s, it’s beautiful. It’s a full circle thing.

Tim Melanson: Well, and it’s interesting because a lot of success h- uh, comes from fundamentals, right? I mean, if we l- look at, you know, sports teams and even, uh, and even musicians, it’s the fundamentals. It’s the [00:14:00] little scales. It’s the little things that… And then you kind of get away from those fundamentals after a while, and you, I don’t know, guess you have better ideas.

And then when you start to teach somebody the fundamentals again, then you’re like, "Oh, geez, gotta get back to that." You

Daron Campbell: Oh yeah, I, you can apply it to music. I, I played piano and saxophone growing up and it is those scales, it’s those chords. Everything is built to these little fundamental things.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: just got through the Super Bowl. Blocking and tackling, made all the difference in the Super Bowl.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: super trick plays, no magical theories.

Blocking and tackling. And the team that did it the most or did it the best, won the game period. Fundamentals.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yep, and then when, and then, you know, when you’re finding that mentor, then they’re the ones that can show you what those fundamentals are in your industry because y- they might not be obvious, right?

Daron Campbell: It might not be obvious, and here’s an even bigger one, Tim. show you what not to do.

Tim Melanson: Mm.

Daron Campbell: made all the mistakes already. That’s why I say it’s a shortcut to success [00:15:00] because they will steer you around the potholes, around the hurdles that slow them down. And a lot of times they’re really happy to give you is I like right now, if you became my mentor, I tell the first thing I teach is the five things not to do,

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Right on. So let’s, let’s talk a little bit about some of the tools that you use to get success in your business. So, I mean, we live in a digital world, don’t we? And, uh, I’m wondering, you know, are those tools digital or do you still use paper tools?

Daron Campbell: I use paper tools. I use digital tools. I use regular stuff. This is, you know, the beautiful thing about real estate is. as advanced and as digital, and as technological as it has become, and, and as you can use those tools to create leverage and all of that, it’s still basic real estate. It’s still four walls and a roof.

It’s still what, what fundamentally makes that appealing to the person that you’re gonna try to market it, to sell it, to rent it to.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Daron Campbell: from [00:16:00] a tool standpoint, I still gotta get out there and I gotta eyeball that hat. I still gotta get out there and say, Hey, there’s dry rot there, there’s termite work there.

We need new floors, we need new windows. So that’s the hands-on kind of old school neanderthal things that I use.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: from a digital tools standpoint, the internet has flattened the entire world out. So I can shop for properties in Atlanta, sitting here in Los Angeles and make a million dollar decision from this computer.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: those, the, the, the, the leverage that the internet and soon to be AI that are creating for us, give us more reach, more span. So what, what would it used to take me, you know, four months to find the, you know, to create a half a million dollars in profit? We could probably do in two days now because now we can have, I can pull up a list.

Here’s what I’ll tell you a quick example. We buy a lot of pre foreclosures, so we buy people, people’s properties from them. When they’re in a little bit of trouble, [00:17:00] they’re behind on their mortgage, they lost their job, something like that. Well, I can now take the list of the 1700 people in Los Angeles County that were in that situation last month.

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Daron Campbell: And I can feed that list into my ai, and the AI will spit out the 15 most probable sellers. And that AI will then narrow my list of the, so instead of me and my team calling 1700 people, we call these 15 first. And

Tim Melanson: Right.

Daron Campbell: find three or four that are ready to sell, just like the AI predicted. And then now we got our next two or three deals and we short credit it with ai.

So we should be able to do or seven or 10 times the volume that we used to do.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Yeah, AI is such a, it’s such an exciting and also scary thing at the same time, right? Because, I mean, it is going to replace quite a few jobs, that’s for sure. However, on the flip side of it, I mean, I, I’ve spoken to so many of entrepreneurs that are, uh, are, that are just, their, their productivity is just going through the [00:18:00] roof because of what they can do with AI.

And to me, you know, uh, being my mission, you know, I want to inspire more people to be self-employed, small business. I, I want the small businesses to grow, the local type stuff, right? And, you know, how can these local businesses… I mean, they’ve got decimated over the last 20, 30 years by these large companies because of what the large companies and the leverage that they had.

But now it, it seems to me like maybe this AI thing is now starting to push that leverage into the small persons, right? And leveling out that f- that playing field. So it’s exciting to me that, you know, if you have a little bit of creativity, you can, uh… And, and some guts, then you can get out and do something even as just one person, right?

Daron Campbell: Yeah. So here’s the thing, what you know how to do and AI specifically will help you do better, and it will help you do it to scale. It will help you do it with leverage.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: that now with AI more than ever before, you can appear to be as big as [00:19:00] Coca-Cola.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: to be as viable as Amazon because AI will afford you the ability to, to scale, to leverage, to reach as many people as they do.

So the it, you never are excused from learning the thing and choosing the link technology will help you. Go at 10 x the speed,

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: speed and grow so much faster. Now, no one’s off the hook from learning a thing and learning it well, if you do that, AI will never replace you. If you do that, AI will put a jet engine on you on the back of your business and take you to the next level.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And I mean, all the things that, all the disadvantages of these large companies, like, you know, the, y- y- y- they’re not as personable. They, I mean, they can be highly unethical. Like, there’s a lot of, of major problems with these big, big, big companies that, you know, you’re, if, if we had more and more small [00:20:00] businesses out there with real people that have good ethics that are out there and, and just building their business with these incredible tools, then I just think it, it’s just gonna make the world a better place, in my opinion.

Daron Campbell: It is because it is gonna allow people like you and me to deliver a more personal experience. So now when someone mentees with me, they’re menteeing with me. It’s not a company. It’s not some big, invisible corporate giant. In the sky. Who, where? Who’s this nameless entity? It’s Daron. You are working with Daron and AI and technology and the internet have allowed me to scale so I could talk to a thousand people at the same time.

And they all still feel like they’re working with Daron.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: brand is Tim. The brand is daring, and now we can deliver the personal touch at scale. We couldn’t have done that 10, 12, 15 years

Tim Melanson: No.

Daron Campbell: but now we can deliver the personal touch at scale that beats the corporate giant every time.

Tim Melanson: Agree. And, uh, you know, on the other [00:21:00] side of it too, like not everybody is cut out to be an entrepreneur. That’s, that’s, that’s for sure. You know, s- some people will be better suited to be employees. However, instead of it being a few companies, right, where everybody’s trying to get into those companies, now we have so many small businesses, and we’re all gonna need a few people in, on our, on our payroll, right?

I

Daron Campbell: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: just is what it is. I mean, once you start to scale a little bit, I mean, you can do quite a bit as a solopreneur, but y- you know, we’ll be able to be the ones hiring into our small businesses. So there’ll always be jobs out there available. It’s not like we’re taking away all the jobs and everybody has to be self-employed.

They’re still gonna be there, it’ll just be instead of working for this big conglomerate where you’re just a number, now you’ll be working for Daron, right? And,

Daron Campbell: That’s right.

Tim Melanson: you know?

Daron Campbell: that’s right. And, and, and we’ve leveled out the playing field with technology so that now you know, you can, you can become valuable to an entity or an organization or a customer,

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

Daron Campbell: you don’t, you [00:22:00] don’t get outperformed by the big, the big giants

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: Technology has, has made us equals.

Now

Tim Melanson: That’s right, I agree. So let’s talk a little bit about your, your guest solo now. Let’s get into the things that you do, and tell me a little bit more about what that… what does that mean, creative real estate?

Daron Campbell: creative real estate just means. Acquiring real estate, therefore growing your financial ability, growing your ability to have legacy wealth growing, your ability to step away from that nine to five, uh, real estate, in my opinion, is the greatest tool to allow someone to do that. And I think at the core, all of us, and I say. Without hesitation, all of us know that we should own real estate at a

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: level. All of us know that real estate has generated more wealth than any asset class in the history of planet Earth. So you need to own your pieces of planet Earth because they will generate wealth. And when I’m sitting there writing, now talking to you while crypto just got [00:23:00] cut in half, and all these people that gave up on traditional assets and put all their eggs in one basket. They’re getting cooked right now and the funny thing is. That, that’s a bit of speculation over there. And the beautiful thing about real estate is it’s not so speculative. There are ways to speculate in real estate, but there are surefire ways to make real estate work for you predictably. That’s the thing.

Predictably, if I, if I come to your neighborhood right now, if I come to Canada and visit you and we go look up and down your neighborhood, we’re gonna find, we’re gonna see a property that’s been neglected. We’re gonna see an empty home that has been sitting there for a while. You’d be like there, that thing’s been empty for like seven months. There’s an owner that’s got a reason to do something. There’s an owner that might sell to me and you at a price that he might not otherwise have sold for because he’s got a special reason to sell. He lives in a different part of the country. It’s a vacant rental. He couldn’t get rented out. He’s, uh, paying a mortgage on it and it’s not bringing in any rent.

Well, that guy might just be incentivized to sell me and you that house. [00:24:00] $300,000 when two years ago it was, it was sold for 500,000 bucks. But the, the, the difference in the value and the price point doesn’t matter because all he knows is he’s spending 4,000 a month on this mortgage that he can no longer afford. So he will do the,

Tim Melanson: [00:25:00] Wow. Yeah. Well, I, I know that with [00:26:00] physical assets, they’re, you know, especially real estate, it’s something that’ll never go to zero, whereas something that’s digital could potentially go to zero. You could lose your money, but you’re never gonna lose it all. Yes, the, the market might drop, it might half and all that stuff, but, but everything’s kind of like e- everything works together.

So as these things come down, so does everything else. So, you know, uh, but, uh, but really that’s one of the things is, uh, even a, you know, a rundown house on a lot, it’s still worth something, right?

Daron Campbell: is still worth something, and even that rundown house on the lot if cleaned up is rentable.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: it’s sellable. It’s an asset that it’s hard for it to go to zero. I got a terrible example. A really good friend of mine back in the.com boom was putting every penny he had in a OL, and when it was at like 99 bucks, he was all excited.

And then the.com bubble burst

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: to 99 cents and he lost everything he had built up. And the point is. that crypto’s bad. It’s not that stocks are

Tim Melanson: [00:27:00] No.

Daron Campbell: not that commodities are bad, it’s just that they can, they fluctuate in value in price, and they theoretically could go down to a penny.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Daron Campbell: there’s a certain amount of gambling you’re doing that should be hedged. say don’t buy crypto. I say you should buy crypto with your real estate profits.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: That’s, that’s the way I look at it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I mean, the, the, the risk, the risk can, you know, give you a big reward, but it also could give you a big kick in the butt, right?

Daron Campbell: Uh, let me look. Bitcoin is at 66,000 right now. Four months ago was at 124,000.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: You, you come on, some people are getting smoked right now

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and that’s one of those things where, uh, I, I mean, if they, if they c- wanna hold it, you know, it’s probably gonna go back up again. You know, that’s great.

Daron Campbell: hopefully they can’t.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. However…

Daron Campbell: dangerous part though, Tim. A lot of people leveraged into those positions and when it hit a certain number, they get automatically liquidated.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: happen with your real estate, so [00:28:00] just gotta be careful.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point, too. So now tell me a little bit more about how, how do we, how do we learn more about you and how your business, and how do we, we learn about, you know, becoming a mentee of you?

Daron Campbell: Well, you can, you can chase me down like a lot of people do. My, you know, everything that I have is just my name Daron Campbell. So my Instagram is Daron Campbell. My Facebook is just Daron Campbell. My YouTube channel is Daron Campbell tv. You can go to Daron Campbell. Uh, Daron campbell capital.com is is the site. It’s pretty soon. Daron campbell.com will be, uh, a brand new site we’re building.

Tim Melanson: [00:29:00] Great.

Daron Campbell: property cash in your pocket immediately you could turn around and resell it at market for $500,000 immediately.

You could lease that property out at a rental number that probably exceeds what, what it costs to finance that 300 that you paid. So there are many ways to monetize if you buy the right way. I just teach people where to find them and how to buy ’em the right way.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow. Well, and

Daron Campbell: that’s what the mentorship’s all about.

Tim Melanson: what I like about this is that it, it’s, it’s another way of giving regular people an opportunity to become those landlords because- You know, [00:30:00] we’ve all heard the horror stories of landlords, right? And I mean, i- it’s because, uh, I, I mean, it tends to be that the people who know how to do all this stuff don’t tend to really give that information away very easily.

And, um, however, we do live in an information age where, th- you know, this information is out there now and we can learn how to do it. And so the more, like we said earlier about being self-employed, the more employers that we create, also the more landlords that we create that are regular people with good ethics that are fair with their rent, and they’re not slumlords, right?

Daron Campbell: Exactly, and the thing is, it’s a hedge against being stuck in a nine to five for the rest of your working career. It’s a hedge against being downsized or outsized

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Daron Campbell: It’s a, it’s a, it’s a way to predictably grow. Financially, it’s a way to create monthly cash flow if that’s what you desire.

It’s a way to flip and, and build a nest egg quick, quickly of capital

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Daron Campbell: and, uh, [00:31:00] everyone can learn it. And here’s the thing, here’s the sin of it all. Tim. They don’t teach. I have a degree in economics from UCLA. Do you think they taught me anything about cash flowing real estate while I was learning all those economic principles?

No.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Daron Campbell: think they taught me about how to finance a home? No. They’re teaching all these other things and we’re learning all these other things, but they’re not teaching us the things that will get us out of, off of the treadmill, off of the, the, the hamster wheel and out of the rat race.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: gotta be the town crier.

It’s me. I’m gonna be the one, I’m gonna pull the curtain back and I’m gonna show regular people. That’s the key. You said it. Regular people to play this game

Tim Melanson: That’s, that’s awesome. A- it’s the same everywhere. They, I mean, they don’t teach us how to be self-employed. They, you know, y- like you said, I mean, they’re not teaching us how to get off the treadmill, right? And hey,

Daron Campbell: who does it serve if we do?

Tim Melanson: yeah. Yeah, it’s the people running the treadmill that are running our schools, right? So, you know, it’s a matter of now we can, uh, and, and yeah, AI, technology, [00:32:00] all these th- things, uh, you know, the internet, they’re all ways that we can now communicate with each other.

So as we learn things, we can share those knowledges with other people, and all of a sudden now we’ve got our own school.

Daron Campbell: Exactly. Now, why do you think a billionaire like, uh, bill Gates, for instance. donate a half a million dollars to Harvard

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: he dropped outta Harvard. Right?

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Daron Campbell: but, but guess what he’s doing? He’s feeding his employee pool. He wants to keep everyone on that hamster wheel.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Daron Campbell: Working for him.

Tim Melanson: Yep.

Daron Campbell: not, they’re not teaching how to break out and start your own.

They’re teaching you how to be an employee and keep that employee mentality, and I wanna refute that. I wanna, I wanna crush that system and make more people, owners, we are not teaching our kids ownership

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: table. We should be talking about. Yeah, go ahead, get educated, get that job, but then figure out how you can own that company.

Or go start your own. That’s what we ought to be doing.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. It, it does surprise me that people think that, uh, the, the people s- seem to have this idea that these big, you know, [00:33:00] companies, people, r- very, very wealthy people are giving money as a charity to these places. Come on, they’re buying the influence, right? It’s, uh, no big company like that… Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Daron Campbell: the money and see what he is getting in return for that check. The funny, funny thing is, the first job I had right outta college was I got hired by UCLA to help identify wealthy alums whom we could ask for a big check

Tim Melanson: Oh,

Daron Campbell: a donation. And, and then I quickly, that’s how I quickly realized that the people who could write the big checks, most of them had gotten their, their huge net worth from their real estate holders. That’s kind of what aimed me right at this industry.

Tim Melanson: that’s awesome. So let’s talk about music before we end here. So who’s your favorite rock star, Daron?

Daron Campbell: Oh my gosh. Where’s the list? Begin and end. You know, I’m kind of, I’m into Rapp and I’m into hip hop, and

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Daron Campbell: kind. I’m a big fan of j Cole, the rapper. I’m a huge fan of his. And then on the other side, I play, I [00:34:00] grew up playing the saxophone and the piano.

Tim Melanson: Okay.

Daron Campbell: I was a giant Grover, Washington junior jazz saxophone fan.

Still am. And anything jazz or, or you know, bluesy like that I’m a big fan of.

Tim Melanson: Ah.

Daron Campbell: know people, you listen to my, you look at my playlist, you’d be like, this dude’s all over the place. ’cause I am, I, I, I like it all.

Tim Melanson: Nice. Do you still play?

Daron Campbell: I tried to, I hired a coach, I hired a saxophone coach. I bought a new saxophone and hired a coach about a year and a half ago, and he dropped me ’cause I canceled so many of the

Tim Melanson: Aw.

Daron Campbell: real estate deals. But I’m going back. I’m gonna get him back ’cause uh, I wanna be good one day, Tim, but I’m just chilling and I got nothing to do. But look at all my bank balances and all my properties. I’m gonna buy a lounge. gonna own the lounge ’cause that can, that way I can guarantee that I can book myself to play

Tim Melanson: Yeah, there we go. Right on. That’d be awesome.

Daron Campbell: Yeah. I’m gonna be, the saxophone is at the, in the band at my lounge.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, that sounds great. What are you gonna [00:35:00] call it?

Daron Campbell: Ooh, man. I wrestled over that. I think it’s gonna be DC’s place.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That sounds awesome. Well, thank you so much for rocking out with me today, Daron. It’s been a lot of fun.

Daron Campbell: Thank you. I’ve had a great time. I appreciate you, Tim.

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

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. Today I’m excited for the episode. I’m talking to an author, and he is also a voiceover artist. His name is Aaron Ryan. And what he does, I mean, he does a bunch of things, but one of the things that he mentioned is that he helps his fellow authors to avoid scams.

So I’m interested to hear more, more about that a little bit later. But first, are you ready to rock Aaron?

Aaron Ryan: I’m ready to rock Tim. Yeah, let’s do it.

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

Aaron Ryan: Yeah. Well, you know, I, I, I have to say I’m predominantly an author, and so I have dual storyteller tracks right now. One is author writing books, and the other one is a storyteller as a voiceover artist, and I get to tell other people’s stories. I totally prefer telling my own, but telling other people’s is what is currently paying the bills.

So that’s the one

that we, that we have to highlight.

Tim Melanson: music, right?

Aaron Ryan: It really is. Yeah, it’s a cover song. I, uh, I love, um, being an author, [00:01:00] but voiceovers man, they used to be an exceptionally lucrative career. And, uh, I changed to voiceovers. I had been doing them since 93 informally, but I pursued them formally in, I think it was the fall of 2016.

And, uh, it was a massive change from what I used to do, which was wedding videography, which is Latin for eternal torment. Um, and I, I just, I was so glad to be able to abandon that, but, uh, voiceovers became a real artistic and lucrative career pursuit that I’ve just loved. Unfortunately, it’s on the decline, uh, because of things like AI and,

you know, low balling clients and the sag after strike and whatever. But it’s still, uh, an immensely fun pursuit. So.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Yeah. Uh, voiceovers would be tough now. Yeah. Because there are lots of tools that will just clone your voice and boom. Now, now that’s done. Right. bad.

Aaron Ryan: And it’s sad but true.

Tim Melanson: So along that path [00:02:00] though, I mean, not everything goes as planned. And you mean you’ve been self-employed for a long time now. I’m wondering is there some sort of bad note that you can share with us that we can learn from?

Aaron Ryan: A bad note. Well, um. Gosh, I, I remember when I first started out in self-employment, that would’ve been 2007, and I, I wanted it so bad I could feel it in my teeth. I mean, I dreamt about it when I was, you know, sleeping air quotes. Um, and there everything went wrong. Everything that could go wrong went wrong.

It was basically Murphy’s Law of Self-employment. So I, I got into video production, video editing, and the computer malfunctioned. It didn’t have enough memory. The chip didn’t work, not enough. You know, not fast enough, hard drives, whatever. And I almost gave up. And a client that I had done some graphic design for said, uh, shared a quote, I think it’s by Confucius, if I remember. And they said, the temptation to quit is always greatest just before your greatest success. That absolutely [00:03:00] rocked my world. Because I felt like I was right here. I was really close and I just needed to push a, a little further and get over that hump. I’m so glad I did. Uh, I love self-employment. Nobody can take it away from me.

I rise and fall on my own merits. Um, I run, run up things, you know, at the flag pole and I get to salute them. Um, it is. It’s the single greatest thing that I’ve ever experienced next to marriage and, uh, and kids. Um, I’m just, I’m so grateful that I get to do what I get to do in my office here every single day.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Yeah, I, I had a similar experience, became self-employed, you know, and it was, it was. Good and then not good, and then, and then thought I was gonna quit and then ended up having this crazy breakthrough. Like, it’s, it, it is interesting how that works out and I’ve, I’ve talked to other, uh, self-employed people that have been doing it for a long time, and it seems like most of us kind of come to that point, right?

Like, because, uh, I mean, everything [00:04:00] isn’t awesome all the time, especially since we’re not really. Taught or, or programmed

on how to work for yourself. Like you’re, you’re programmed to work for somebody else. Right? So it’s, it’s, it’s a very different mindset, right.

Aaron Ryan: Yeah, I was given some wonderful advice, uh, by, uh, in the voiceover community. There’s a, there’s a woman who is now an entrepreneur. She used to be a casting agent, but she shared this quote with me that I ended up turning into a plaque. It was so, uh, mind warping, just, you know, perspective altering. And she said, someone’s endorsement of you, or lack thereof, has very little to do with your trajectory.

And I had to stop and say. What, what was that? Say that again.

And she shared it again, but it was like, you know, I, I’ve dealt with the negative wedding videography clients that whittle down your price and then want you to still deliver this much, and then you don’t, and they go straight to Yelp, you know, and, and leave you a bad review. I’ve had the people who just don’t get the book and they’re not even sci-fi fans, so why would [00:05:00] they. they. don’t want to, so they leave a negative review. I’ve had clients that said, you know, I couldn’t repair their, uh, their old, uh, you know, rusty videotape and transfer it. So they leave a negative review and it’s like, man, you know, people are just really out for blood in the, on the client side of things.

Sometimes you have to let all that stuff roll off your back, and that’s something that you just learn intuitively as you go through the process. I’ve dealt with your kind before. You know, chalk it up to, to, uh, sour grapes or whatever, and then move on.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. It, it’s an interesting phenomenon that, uh, I, I’ve noticed as well is that the people that tend to try to, you know, get more for less, like cut the price down and all that stuff, and those, those really like low balling clients, they do end up being the worst.

Aaron Ryan: Yes.

Tim Melanson: it, and it is, it is fascinating to me because, you know, on the other end, the clients [00:06:00] that like, don’t even bark at your price and even offer to pay you more, right.

They are, They’re they’re, easy. Yeah. It, it

just, it blows my mind that like, raising your price can. Work in so many different ways and, and it,

it’s exactly opposite of what you would think, right? Not knowing anything about this. Right. You’d think I can’t raise my price’s gonna be available, afford it. I have people arguing about, about my price Right now, raising my price is gonna be worse.

Right?

Aaron Ryan: Yeah, well, it’s kinda like perspective equals reality for so many people. And uh, you know, app Apple gets a bad rap for just being overpriced,

but Steve Jobs was right. They just work. The products just work. And I, um, I did the same thing where I was raising my price and well, you know, you’re $500 higher, or you’re a thousand dollars higher than the next guy. Well, perhaps you should go to the next guy then.

Um, it really is no, no skin off my back or skin off my nose, or whatever the expression is. I you raise your price because there’s a perceived [00:07:00] value in your services. If you are low balling and people are gonna go, why are you 300? And they are all a thousand.

Um, you gotta be, you get what you pay for. And so, um, I, I’ve done the same thing and, and you’re absolutely right. The people that whittle down your prices and perceive the value of what you’re offering them as little are gonna be the most work the hardest to work with. And they’re just gonna be a pain happens every time.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I mean, I, I, I guess the other big benefit of having your prices nice and high is that, is that you get lots of margin to be able to do like the best work you can do. Right. It’s

not like, uh, you know, ’cause I, I do know, I mean, I, I kind of get it. I mean, I imagine that you’ve, you’ve priced something and all of a sudden this client, you know, it’s just not.

I, I mean, maybe it’s not even them, maybe it’s just you, you’re just like, ah, I don’t like what I’m doing Exactly. I, you know, I would love to be able to change this, but you’re out of hours. Like, I mean, you’ve already lost money on this, so are you gonna do it? On the other hand, if you’ve [00:08:00] charged a, a really good amount and you’re thinking, you know what, I’m gonna give this another go because I really want to do something good and I’ve got, I’ve got the time and the money to do it.

Like, you’re

gonna be able to deliver a much better product to the end client because you’ve got so much margin in it, right.

Aaron Ryan: Yeah, totally. It’s you’re building into the margin is the correct, is the correct word. You’re building margin into it so that you can insulate yourself against, uh, going in the red. However, there’s other factors at play too, and just you have a goodwill aspect that you’re constantly trying to put

into every project that you do, and so you want to go above and beyond because that’s just.

Your nature, you wanna please your clients. You’re trying to earn a positive review, you know, and, and reviews speak, uh, louder than words. Um, it’s, you can’t win with everybody. But overall, there’s kind of this net effect of, of an equilibrium as you continue to just do good work and then the work speaks for itself. So, um, it does take a, it does take [00:09:00] a while to kind of reach that equilibrium, though. I noticed

It took me a few years to get there.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I, I like the word you used with the goodwill because I mean, when you think about it on the other side of it, uh, you know the client that is paying you, you know more than you even asked for, they are actually. Putting goodwill towards you. Right? Like, and whereas the one that’s like cutting your, your price down and all that stuff, they’re doing the opposite.

They’re not like putting in that goodwill towards you. So that reci reciprocation is not really there. Like, I mean, if a client is treating you really well, you’re gonna treat them really well and vice versa, right?

Aaron Ryan: Yeah, and I, I think that just goes back to the perceived value is if they see your price at 1600 and that that’s your stated price, and they just, you know, they don’t balk at that, but you’ve got another client that sees the price as it should be to them for their budget.

And so it’s for their budgetary purposes, which are completely, that’s completely outside your control.

Um. They want $900, so that’s what they want to pay, but then they [00:10:00] still will expect that 1600 because it is perception equals reality. The people who are like, yeah, 1600, cool. No problem. Here’s a check, and then they just back off and let you work your wonders and you’re, you’re Scotty to Captain Kirk in the enterprise.

You’re going, you know, working miracles right and left for them because they perceive that value. You hardly even have to do the work. They already perceive the value.

Tim Melanson: Wow. You know, that reminds me of, uh, early on in my, in my journey, I had some, some sales trainers and one of them said that. The client’s objection is a reflection of your own objection. And I thought that was interesting to think about. Like, I mean, if a client is like, oh, you know, I, I, I don’t, maybe they’re like, oh, I don’t wanna buy this online.

I don’t wanna put my credit card in online, or something like that. Right. Well, the, they would al always ask, well, do you use credit cards online? And they’d say. You are like, oh, interesting. So the way that you think about things, the way that you think about the value of what you’re [00:11:00] offering is gonna be what they’re gonna argue as well.

And oftentimes you do see that playing out, right? I mean, if you’re willing, like you just said, to go lower on your price, well, they’re gonna take advantage of you, but if you just don’t go lower, if you’re like, no, no, no, this is what it’s worth, then, you know, if they don’t want it, then they’re gonna go somewhere else.

But they’re, they’re gonna, if they do want it, then they’ll pay it, right.

Aaron Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. And a recent example of that, I, I have a really old laptop. I mean, I’m a PC guy by trade. That is my primary, uh, daily driver is a pc. But we love our MAC stuff at home. We love our Apple, uh, phone, iPhones and watches and iPads and all that, and Apple tv. But. I have an old Microsoft Surface laptop, which is time that detaches, so it becomes a tablet.

And boy, when I, when I bought that, it was close to three grand. Now somebody, you know, I’ve got it down to like $800 on Craigslist and it’s just, it’s not selling, it’s still a powerhouse, which blows me away that it’s not selling. But, uh, but someone said, you know, you’re never [00:12:00] gonna get 800 for this. Uh, I see a listing right here for the same exact model for 600, and I’m gonna go. My, my response, just default response is, well go ahead and buy the $600 one. I mean, that, that’s the value that you’ve placed on it. If $200 is, and there is a difference in the tech specs between the one you’re seeing and the one that I’m, that I have always is, uh, but they don’t see that value, that the value that they placed on it is projected purely from what’s currently in their wallet.

And there’s nothing you can do about that.

Tim Melanson: Oh man. So good. So let’s talk a little bit about getting, getting fans then. So how do you, and I mean, hey, the world has changed a lot in the last 20 years, uh, but how do you, yeah, well, hey, way back 20 years ago, what did you have to do to get a client to, to get someone to, to watch her, you had to. Take out an ad somewhere.

Probably nowadays, I mean, social media is everywhere, but, uh, I think that the, the other side of that is that the audience is there, but they’re not [00:13:00] necessarily fans of you. And how, how do you, how do you make them a fan?

Aaron Ryan: Well, I think, um, one of the ways that you develop fandom, I think, and it’s such a weird word because I’m a fairly humble guy, and, and you look at the word fan and I just picture these adoring throngs of people that don’t care what you do, don’t care what you say, they just love the product that you put out.

And, and it’s almost borderline worship,

really kind of just creepy like, um. But the way that you, I think start that fandom is you work for me at least. Uh, what’s worked is you, you work, uh, or you put out good information and valuable consult and counsel and advice to your contemporaries, to your colleagues,

because no one’s gonna help a fellow author. Better than a fellow author. So I’m offering things of value to authors, like, you know, look, look out for these scams. Uh, here’s some good advice on choosing a traditional publisher or being indie self published. Uh, you know, do you wanna choose [00:14:00] Ingram Spark or do you wanna publish through KDP? Uh, do you want to use Barnes and Noble Press?

Do you publish? Why do you publish exclusive? And there’s all kinds of things. I just released a 20 minute video. Two days ago, I think, uh, or actually it was Monday. ’cause we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t dare publish it on Super Bowl Sunday, like no one would know about it. Uh, but you, you develop this fandom because there are people who will speak for you then in your circles.

Like, yes, I’m an author and I work with great authors like Aaron Ryan, he’s a great guy, and here’s his stuff. Um, on the flip side with. With readers, you’re just, it, you know it, the product really has to speak for you. Yes, I’ve got branding. Yes, I’ve focused on that and, and refined that. But people know Stephen King because of Stephen King’s books, and the books tell you about Stephen King. So. My focus is just simply writing good books, telling people about the books, and trying as hard as I can to get the books in people’s hands through a variety of [00:15:00] means, and I will explore the most, you know, nondescript, unknown, back alleyway of trying to get my book into people’s hands that I can. Because I’m a believer in possibilities and you wanna try all these new, you know, avenues of, of reaching readers, um, it’s certainly not easy. It’s certainly cost. It’s all an investment, but it’s so worth it in the end. If just one person that you happen to reach is an influencer, or one person you happen to reach has a great big circle of people that they’re gonna then tell, you know about this book or you, it’s wonderful.

And then the, the book just, uh, does all the work for you.

Tim Melanson: What I find exciting about this approach is that it’s. It’s dependent mostly on time. It is investing your time rather than necessarily all of your money. And I think that that really kind of does equal the playing field quite a bit. Now it’s not a matter of like, okay, well, you know, I come from a rich family so I can be successful in my business.

Um, you know, [00:16:00] sure, maybe you, you can, but on the other hand, you know, you can come from pretty much nothing. But if you are very good at what you do and very helpful to other people, you can, you can make a go of this, right.

Aaron Ryan: Yeah, the work will speak for itself.

Um. This isn’t to say that, you know, someone will start out and, you know, they, maybe they’re a decent writer to begin with. I have certainly improved in my writing career. I can look back at what I originally wrote and went, God, you know, uh, yeah, that was me. Uh, yeah, I wrote that, sorry. Uh, and, and approach it from an apologetic type of perspective. Uh, but it’s a season that I was in at the time.

It was with the knowledge that I had amassed at the time, uh, with the technique and skill and approach that I had amassed at the time. But boy, when you, when you master your craft and you start putting out even better stuff, you’re just going to, you’re just gonna reinforce that fandom, if you will, of people who go, God, yeah, his books are getting better and better and better.

And I’ve got [00:17:00] voracious. Uh, rabid readers who are like, dude, when’s your no next book coming out? Or Why haven’t you written a sequel to this series? Because I love this series of these characters. Uh, it’s, it’s really cool. It’s a really cool thing. And the other thing that I really love about what I do is I get to leave a legacy, uh, a trail of memories and storytelling that will sell for all time. And it just, I, I just love leaving a legacy of storytelling that way.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Well, and, and I mean, that does also, like, uh, one of the things about getting good at anything is you gotta be okay with not being good at it first. Right. And, and I mean, I think that that’s a, that’s a real big barrier, especially to adults, right. I think that like, if you start when you’re a kid, like I think that, that, my impression anyway is that that’s why.

People who have been doing something since they were a kid tend to be very, very good at it. And it tends to be that [00:18:00] people that start when they’re an adult and never, never follow through. But that’s because I think as a kid, you’re expected to not be good. You’re a kid, nobody. No. Like, you know, but, but as an adult, imagine you’re in your twenties and you decide to start writing.

I mean, hey, I mean, let me ask you that. Like, do you think someone who starts writing later in life can end up being a bestselling author?

Aaron Ryan: Well, uh, that’s certainly true of me. I, yes, I would say an emphatic yes, because that is my story. Um, I started. I started, you know, my very first story I wrote, if you wanna call it, that was in 1981, a second grade assignment with Mrs. Walker. Hi Mrs. Walker. And that was just, you know, construction paper and free hole punch, college rule paper, uh, crude stick figure drawings.

And seriously, the book was like a, a complete and blatant ripoff of Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of et

uh, I called it the electric boy. There are some parts I seriously stole. Um, so I don’t really, I mean, I counted as my first story that I wrote, but I did not [00:19:00] enter full-time authoring until really 2017. Uh, and by that time I was, uh, I can’t add, no one said there’d be math. I was in my forties.

Um, but. But that was, you know, nonfiction business books as a voiceover artist. Now I’m a full-time author. And uh, the first book in the voiceover series became a bestseller Dissonance. Volume one became a bestseller.

The end volume one became a bestseller. Uh, the Phoenix Experiment became a bestseller. Do they still reside in that number one spot? No, but they did hit it and they are still selling well. Volume one reality of, of dissonance has been adapted for the screen and it’s currently being actively pitched to streaming networks. So boy, if that gets picked up, look for the books to just skyrocket again. And I started later in life, I evolved. You do evolve. From whenever you start, I envy the people that have been writing their whole life because I danced around in a lot of [00:20:00] creative pursuits before I returned. I really envy those people that have been lifelong authors because they just grow and grow and

grow, and they’ve they’ve surpassed me. But you can put the pedal to the metal later in life and, and evolve faster yourself too.

Tim Melanson: So then looking back, uh, you, you, you know, you said that you’re a little bit I guess, about your first book, right? Uh, but at the time that you wrote it, did you, did you know that it was like, like what did you feel about it at that time?

Aaron Ryan: So we’re not talking about the electric boy in seventh, uh, second grade,

Tim Melanson: no. I mean, your first published book. Yeah.

Aaron Ryan: I have grace for that little guy. He was seven. Come

Tim Melanson: Yes, of course.

Aaron Ryan: Uh, or eight, whatever it was. Um, yeah, I think, I think that, um, ultimately I’m not embarrassed is the right word in some sense of the book, but I do reread it. I do go back and revisit it.

I have to,

uh, because at the advice of my screenwriter. Should [00:21:00] this get picked up? Should it get optioned or bought the screenplay? They’re gonna just, they’re gonna know my story inside and out, and I need to know it better than they do.

So I’m still rereading that story. Um, I, I do find parts where I just go, holy cow, that was so well written. And in some respects, there are sections in dissonance. Volume one, reality. My first, you know, return foray into fiction, that trounce. Uh, uh, talisman Nexus, which is my most recently published book. So there are nuggets in here that, you know, are higher and more perfected craft than more recent works and vice versa. Um, it’s kind of a give and take thing, and I’m okay with it.

Overall, embarrassed, eh, maybe at some respects, you know, some senses of it, but overall, I’m, I’m darn proud, uh, of

how it turned out and how it performed.

Tim Melanson: Good. Good. Yeah. ’cause, uh, I know that like, I mean, if we compare it to music, um, I know when I, because I started playing music late in life as well, actually I was in my, my twenties [00:22:00] when I even picked up a guitar for the first time. And, and at the beginning of it, I knew I wasn’t that good, but I thought, but I, but I was able to get through the songs and people seemed to be enjoying it and I was having fun, so I just kept on doing it.

Um, but, but one of the things that you, I, I think when you look back is that if you don’t know any better, sometimes you’ll make choices that someone who knows better wouldn’t have made. Right. Like, you’re not in

that box. Right.

And, and I think that that might be, maybe that’s what you’re talking about.

Maybe some parts of your like, wow, that’s exceptionally well written. ’cause you didn’t know any better at the time. It was just you were writing something that was special at that time. Right.

Aaron Ryan: Yeah, it just all comes from inspiration, right? So if you are particularly inspired in chapter four, not so much inspired in chapter three, there will be noticeable. Uh,

strain of, of something that happens. You know, o one chapter might appear somewhat monotony. Does, is this an allegory for life too? Is like,

[00:23:00] you go through seasons of your life where it’s just kind of the grind and the hustle and you know, or the boredom, whatever.

You’re, you’re, you’re just getting a paycheck and then, you know, you jump into self-employment. And I am, I, I love, I’m just gonna share, I’m in an 880 square foot shop that used to be concrete and framing. Um, and I’m gonna, if can I, if I change my background, will you be able to

Tim Melanson: Sure.

Aaron Ryan: Okay, so let me change this really quick. Um, so I, we changed this and all you’re seeing right now is, this is my voiceover, uh, this is my office, and then behind me is my voiceover booth,

and it is top of the line. And then over there. Through this door, right over here is two thirds of the, of the shop, which is, um, exercise and rec and tv, and you know, exercise equipment, blah, blah, blah. Play area for the kids that this, this all came from a dream of souping up this whole place and making it my own. It’s a detached [00:24:00] garage and I love, love, love coming out to what we call Bubby Town Studios. We call it that. ’cause we have two kids who are our Bubbies. They’re these guys right here. And I just, I love coming out here and getting to do my thing and seeing that thing result in dollars in this checkbook,

uh, that then pays our mortgage.

It’s like, it’s such a dream and nobody can take it from me. I love that.

Tim Melanson: Uh, I love that too. I love that too. That’s why I like to, that’s why this podcast exists. I wanna inspire more people to do that because it is, it is special. It is a, a different thing that no one can take it from. Like, that’s the best part is that when I was working in a cubicle, it was just, okay, well I’m, I’m employed for the next two weeks.

I don’t know. I have no control. Over what’s going on. I mean, they could have just decided that, ah, we’re not gonna do business anymore. And off I go. Like, but this is us. Like this is, yes, it’s hard, but you’re so much more [00:25:00] appreciative, I guess, of, of what you’re accomplishing when you know that it’s you that got out of bed and created something from nothing.

Aaron Ryan: Yeah, I, I mean, I said it before, I’ll say it again. You rise and fall on your own merits. Uh, you’re not dependent on someone else’s, uh, handout. You know, and not to put a, a negative spin on it, because a paycheck is a paycheck and

it’s a blessing, and it, it pays your bills, but you’re also not fighting for their dream.

And that is the biggest kicker. I you fight for your own dream.

And this is my dream out here. I would, I would hate to lose this. I’d be so. I’d be, you know, despondent to lose this, to see my dream not work out. And we have to, you know, sell this and move. Um, so I fight and I work hard and I do my best and I explore new, uh, entrepreneurial pursuits to, you know, to supplement. Um, but overall the dominating force out here is just the sheer art of creation. And it has been music out here. I’ve produced, uh, several CDs on this very [00:26:00] tower and this very screen, um. It’s voiceovers right now back there. It’s authoring and it’s all marketing for all of them right here, but it’s all creation and I just love it.

Tim Melanson: I love that. That’s so awesome. So tell me a little bit more about your learning journey. Like how, how do you, you know, get your information? Like do you have mentors or coaches or anything like that, or.

Aaron Ryan: Yeah, so I mean, I’m a mentee of so many authors who don’t even know who I am, and that’s totally fine, but I study their works and I learn how they write, and I see what they do. I, my mind was blown by, uh, for example, Suzanne Collins Sunrise on the Reaping. I love the Hunger Games, Krilogy, the movies. Love the books, but, uh, she’s always written, first person, present tense. I have traditionally written first person thir, uh, past tense. And so, you know, I walked to the door, um, I said instead, now it’s, I walk to the door, I say,

and it’s. It’s a totally [00:27:00] different, it’s a, you know, huge shifting of gears. But she also incorporated some incredibly beautiful prose and poetry in sunrise on the reaping. I am a poet. I’ve put together a, you know, a book of poetry that has won some laurels. I love what I, what I wrote. I’ve just never incorporated it into my work. So, for the Phoenix Experiment, it was the very first, uh, book that I decided to undertake. First person present tense. And also incorporate some, some poetry. Um, so, you know, I, if I ever met her, I would say, man, you absolutely inspired me. Uh, that’s authoring in voiceovers. I still love to this day and keep in touch with a man who is a wonderful, um, voiceover coach. He is incredibly talented. He’s incredibly, uh, enthusiastic about coaching, and his name is Scott Burns. Established voiceover artist. He’s the voice of, uh, first North American voice of Bowser in Super Mario Brothers, and I knew him on a first name basis. We’d go to lunch together. Wonderful [00:28:00] guy. Uh, and I learned from the best because he’s such a giver in my love Language is giving. So Scott taught me a lot about what kind of equipment I should do, what kind of reads I should, or equipment I should get, what kind of reads I should do, um, you know, red flags to look out for, where to market, uh, what, what demos to produce, what genres to dive into for voiceovers. So. Man, I’ve learned, I’ve learned so much from so many people, but they’re all, they’re incredibly helpful. Um, coaching is indispensable in any industry. Any creative pursuit that you do Coaching is indispensable.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, I mean, all the greats have coaches, right? I

mean, that’s the way it works. Right? Do, do you find, have you found it difficult to find someone that wants to help you?

Aaron Ryan: Uh, in voiceovers, no. Uh, because, you know, I was lucky enough to know a, a local colleague who. Many years before I found out that he was in voiceovers, I reached out to him [00:29:00] and we went to school together. So, you know, he remembered me. But, uh, and I said that, you know, in my introductory email to him, do, do you remember me?

And he said, yeah, I remember you talk to Scott Burns. I was like, all he wrote. And I went, oh, okay. Uh, I don’t know Scott Burns. I wrote you, may I talk to you, please? And it was crickets. But he’s not a coach. It’s not his desire to be a coach. And so he knew in his wisdom that Scott Burns loves coaching. And so I was so grateful for that handoff, you know, referral to Scott.

I. That was lucky in voiceovers. In authoring it’s a little bit harder, but I think we have great communities intact on Facebook and the author’s Guild and Reddit that you can easily draw upon so many who have. I mean, I just published my 41st book. Um, I’m certainly a seasoned, prolific writer. I have a lot to offer.

There’s several way beyond me who have, you know, lots to offer on [00:30:00] pros and cons of the industry. Things to look out for, suggested courses of action, blah, blah, blah.

Tim Melanson: Well, I mean, they do say that you learn a lot from teaching too, right? So it, it, it can be

a benefit to you to even be the mentor, right?

Aaron Ryan: absolutely. You learn things even as you go teaching.

You a teacher should be learning, right?

Um, you kind of like, uh, I think Ray Crock from McDonald’s said when you, when you, uh, stop learning, uh, your room temperature or something like that. Um. And you have to continue to learn even as you’re teaching.

’cause otherwise you’re gonna grow stale.

Trends change. The industry changes. Look what’s happened to voiceovers in the past two, three years, even authoring in the past two, three years. And you have to stay fresh, uh, and up to date on those things.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Well let’s get into that then. So it’s time for your guest solo. Tell me what’s exciting in your business.

Aaron Ryan: What’s exciting is every single new project I undertake,

um, I reverse engineer my [00:31:00] books. So I will design the cover first, and that gives me an idea for a story because I’m very visually inspired. So that’s, that’s very bass wards from the way a lot of people approach it. They’ll get an idea for a story, they’ll write the story, and then, okay, now I need a cover to reflect the story.

Well. I keep the cover, you know, right here in front of me, uh, as I’m writing the story because I want to work towards that goal and I want to see my story reflect a great cover. Um, you can certainly go either way, but every story that I write is exciting to me. Every new, every new trilogy that is complete. And I’m approaching that point with the third installment in the Talisman series. That’s so exciting because then it means I’ve got a trilogy. Now, not just one book, not just two, it’s three. You know, it’s a set, and now I can do a box set. I can design that. Now I can do an all in one version. For example, if I can show this, [00:32:00] I have a trilogy set of my V end. Series and it’s got all three volumes in here. It’s beautiful, it’s gorgeous. I have to hold it in front of me, I guess. So there’s that one

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Aaron Ryan: and that. Then what I also did is I did a complete box, uh, you know, all in one hardcover version.

So this is basically all three of those books in one hardcover edition. And then I did an all in one paperback box set,

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s awesome.

Aaron Ryan: I love these different versions that you can end up creating because everybody’s different. That’s why you have like. 20 different iPhones, you know, each year. Um, and that’s exciting to me, is just completing a trilogy. I’m super excited about the screenplay for, uh, dissonance volume one reality being adapted and being pitched to streaming networks. I’m super excited for the screenplay for Forecast and the end, uh, winning entrance into film festivals and, and winning awards. It’s like, [00:33:00] it’s such a great time to be alive and be a writer right now.

Tim Melanson: I, I agree. I agree. Well, I mean, so I, I know we touched on a little bit of the AI type stuff throughout this. How do you see that changing things? And do you, do you see a silver lining to it for, for writers and even voiceover?

Aaron Ryan: Um, no, I don’t see a silver lining at this point. I think, uh, as a voiceover artist and I can see it from dual, dual tracks, you know, as this

dual storyteller, as a voiceover artist, it has nearly, um, it has completely. Eroded our income substantially.

Um, it has, because it’s so easy for things like, you know, speech hello, and Speech Ocean and Revoice or, and all of those different pieces of software that you can spend 49 bucks on for a lifetime membership. Plug in what you want it to say. It spits out the voice. Hey, we don’t need to hire a, a voice actor for, you know, $3,000 for a yearly national TV commercial.

I get the financial draw there, um, but it has purged me. Um, [00:34:00] unwillingly of wonderful, uh, longstanding relationships. Um, I’ve been dropped from rosters because they’re just using AI Now. The video producers I worked with have themselves been dropped because their higher ups said, we’ll just have AI make it. And so we’ve been affected. They’ve been affected. That’s hurt. Um. In authoring, it’s really affected the content and the quality of the content because of quote unquote AI slop and, uh, and people throwing things up into the marketplace that chat GPT has generated. And they, they put their name on it and they didn’t write a thing, and they go to midjourney and develop a cover. And they didn’t design that either, but they call themselves an author and it’s like people usually can detect what is. Is not produced by ai, uh, in, in many senses. So it’s hard for the dilution of the offerings, both in voiceovers and authoring. It’s, it’s hard to see that [00:35:00] dilution. So I don’t see a silver lining yet, and I don’t use AI tools other than, uh, you know, uh, maybe, um. Uh, Microsoft Word tools. I’m a dinosaur. I use Microsoft Word spell check and, and you know, AU and things like that. Um, and then what is the other one that I use? Sorry. There is one that I use called. Uh, Quill bot for if I wanna paraphrase something, uh, that I’m writing. But other than that, I, I write everything right outta here. I don’t use AI to generate any form of any of my narrative because I want it to come from me and be an accurate reflection of my soul,

not a CPU.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I think, um, I think that for voiceovers, yeah, it’s, it’s rough. I, I, I can’t imagine there being a turnaround there. But for authoring, on the other hand, and even for music, ’cause we, I mean, we, we. Come up across it with music quite a bit as well. Right. Uh, I do think that in the [00:36:00] short term for sure, the AI cannot be creative.

It, it is just taking what’s already been done and regurgitating it in, in a way. And, and, and I just, I, I mean, I, I’ve, I’ve read plenty of, of, of AI stuff and you know, the best stuff that you can read by AI and even that I can generate when I use AI is by. Teaching it how to talk like me, which means it, it’s my creative, that’s creativity that’s doing it in the first place.

So it needs like a creative engine in order to do it. And I, and I do. I hope that what’ll end up happening is that there’ll be a little bit of a turmoil and then the real creative, the real actual people that are writing, the real people that are writing real music. We’ll start, we’ll sort of just jump ahead of all that stuff.

And I, I, I do think that that’s what people want. People want to feel something and AI can’t make them feel anything. It’s just regurgitating, right.

So I, I hope.

Aaron Ryan: Yeah, and it’s, it, I mean, there’s, there’s so many [00:37:00] moral arguments to be made on either side, and one of the main things that you constantly hear is that it is done without the consent of the original creator.

So you see things like, um, granted, you could go see Alien Romulus and you can see Ian Hol as, um, I forget what his name was, but the, the, the Ash Android. With a different name. And Ian Holm has, was deceased, so he can’t possibly consent to his likeness being put into a new film. His estate did, his family did. Um, and I, you know, there, I suspect there’s a financial incentive

there, but. It’s something that he can no longer consent to. The same thing is true with, uh, authoring and voiceovers. I know a colleague whose voice was stolen from her. She had a client with the, or she had a project with Chinese Institute of Acoustics, and before she knew it, they sold her recordings to TikTok. And

so friends were saying, Hey, Bev, is this you? I mean, this is gross. That what they’re saying is this Sounds like you, Bev was like. [00:38:00] That is me. And she filed a lawsuit. They ended up settling, um, but again without her consent,

Scarlet Johansen, her voice was taken from her and made into an AI voice, and she’s litigating that. Without her consent, I can only shudder and think what of my works are making their way into ai. Software and algorithms in order to be recreated without my consent, and that’s just deeply frustrating.

So I would love to see some legislation.

It’s a wild west right now.

It’s a huge wild West. I’d love to see some legislation that just reigns in this wild west and puts it, put some guardrails around it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that, I mean, this whole AI thing, I believe, I, I, I actually, not even, I, I think it actually is an experiment. I think they’ve said that like, you know, even Chatt PD when it first got put out, they just kind of threw it out there and see what happens. And there are some major harms coming out of it.

And I, I mean, I, I think it’s crazily [00:39:00] irresponsible to, to, to unleash something like that onto the public without having any, but I mean. That’s the way the world works for the most part. They, they unleash something on us and then the laws come afterwards going like, Hey, that’s actually kind of harmful.

Let’s, let’s, let’s pull that back a little bit. But, um, so I think we are, we’re gonna have a little bit of a correction in the next few years, but I, I hope it’s gonna come out good in the end.

Aaron Ryan: I hope so too. And I think, you know, the Super Bowl commercial, the one where they had all of the stars from the, the sitcoms, uh, together, and they were, they, they de aged them.

Um, you know, a, a greater example would be Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford in the latest Indiana Jones movie, and they did a flashback scene with him.

Completely de aged, looks very credible, but you can tell it’s AI

generated. There’s just those little nuances, especially in the ice. Or like six fingers, um, melted face here and there. Uh, but discounting that, you know, there, there is an entertainment value behind it, [00:40:00] which to some extent I’m okay with as long as those people had given their consent again, which is so huge.

Um, if it was done with their consent, they were okay with it, I’m okay with it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So, one last question. Let’s get into the music a little bit. Who’s your favorite rockstar?

Aaron Ryan: I have a few and they, they span a few different genres. I really love, uh, Alana Morissette. I always have, I think she, speaking of evolution, we talked about, she’s absolutely evolved.

Um, I just, I love her song, empathy. It’s one of my favorite songs of her in Praise of the Vulnerable Man. Uh, the early stuff, you know, hand in My Pocket.

I love her. She’s enormously talented. Gavin DeGraw has always been a favorite. Um, fire, his, his, um, roller derby inspired song fire. Such a great tune. I love. Um, uh, I was gonna say five for fighting. Um. Uh, for King and Country Christian band, Christian Rock Band, um, I love their stuff, especially a song [00:41:00] called, uh, fight on Fighter. Um, an amazing tune, a little repetitive, but man, it drives the point home and so good. So those are my three that I’ll usually cite, but I, you’re talking to a guy who grew up. Almost exclusively liking Michael Jackson. Uh, and could dance like him.

I mean,

it was, I don’t quite have the form anymore, but, uh, yeah, those are my top three.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Yeah. Alanis. Wow. Uh, well she’s Canadian and uh, she actually released something, I dunno if you ever looked at it, but it’s, she re released a song called Too Hot. I don’t know if you, I don’t

Aaron Ryan: Oh yeah, I know

Tim Melanson: find it. Oh yeah, that, that was crazy stuff. Way

back

Aaron Ryan: It was her early, very early stuff.

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

that was before Jagged little Pill.

Yeah. awesome. Well, thank you so much for rocking out with me today, Aaron. This has been a lot of fun.

Aaron Ryan: Yeah, my pleasure. Seriously, thanks for having me on. I’m very grateful.

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

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast. Today I’m talking to the founding member and CPA of Bright Budget, and what he does is he helps self-employed entrepreneurs to understand the US tax code, which sounds like a big job. Really so excited to be rocking out today with George Azar.

Hey George, you ready to rock?

George Azar: I am ready. Let’s do it. Thank you for having me.

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

George Azar: Yeah, so I actually, uh, started my business with the intent of. Focusing on lower and middle class individuals. And so I, I worked at some of the big firms and was looking at internally how, you know, their practices, you know, really cater to the ultra wealthy. Um, so I was really inspired during the pandemic actually to go on my own fully and really embrace the self-employment journey, um, practice what I preach, you know, to my clients.

Um, and so ever since then, I’ve actually haven’t had to market [00:01:00] at all. I ended up. Building it up my client base from word of mouth. So it’s been, it’s been really cool when, ’cause I was able to identify what, what my mission was and what I was able to, to basically accomplish.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. Right on. So now along the path though, sometimes things don’t all go as planned, and I do like to talk about the good note and the bad note. So I’m wondering, can you share with me something that didn’t go as planned and how you recovered?

George Azar: Yeah, absolutely. So when I started going on my own, um, I, it kind of was a, I would say a knee-jerk reaction. I was really disenfranchised, especially during the pandemic and really seeing where a lot of resources were being, you know, pushed towards making, you know, the, the, the people who, you know, had a lot of.

Money to be able to invest in those resources. And so I ended up, you know, really, it, it kind of was really choppy for me because even though I know the landscape with, with employment, um, it was kind of a rude awakening for me. So, you know, being able to, to comply with local and state, you [00:02:00] know, regulatory bodies, I would say, you know, my specialty is really in taxation.

So, um, I thought I could do it on my own and, you know, come to realize that I had. Formed my entity. Um, you know, from a tax perspective it was advantageous, but from a legal perspective, it wasn’t the, the correct approach. Um, so I had to basically, you know, spend a lot more money than I intended to, to, to get it right, to correct it, and make sure that, so, you know, it, it was a real learning lesson and, you know.

Being reliant on other people that are experienced in other, um, uh, you know, uh, I guess specialties, if you will, um, than, than me specifically.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Okay. And so have you made any changes since then to, to avoid problems like that in the future?

George Azar: Absolutely. It’s, it’s funny now I, you know, if I feel uncomfortable about something, like if a client asked me for specific requests, like I actually have, there’s this potential client who had, you know, multiple state, they were living in multiple states in a given [00:03:00] tax tier. And, you know, old me prior to that probably would’ve been like, let’s take this on.

Let’s figure it out together. Um. But now it’s taught me to, to really know what my limitations are, um, and being able to rely on, you know, tax attorneys, business attorneys, um, just making sure that I’m not trying to quote unquote save the world, uh, without having that equipped, you know, being well equipped for it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, I, that’s really good. A really good point is like, part of what the niching down, you know, thing is right. When you try to figure out exactly what you do and how you help people, the more specialized you become, the, the better you are at doing that. And it also makes it a little bit easier because you know exactly who you’re searching for, right?

George Azar: Absolutely. And that’s the thing is that, you know, knowing our limitations and, and not, you know, ’cause I, I, I, you know, it could be psychological, it could be, you know, uh, expectations, anything like that. Um, but, you know, we’re better equipped to serve our clients, our, you know, our [00:04:00] friends, all of that. When we know what our limitations are as opposed to trying to take it on.

I, I’m a fiercely independent person. I’ve always been a fiercely independent person. And so it was a really humbling experience to say, actually, no, this is my limitation. Um, I’m not going to one, you know, put my client in a bad position. Two, I’m not gonna put my credentials on in jeopardy for, for having a decision that ultimately, you know, I, I wasn’t well equipped to do.

Tim Melanson: And that, that is tough. ’cause I think as, uh, many entrepreneurs probably are problem solvers and they like that challenge. Right? And so it can be very tempting to jump into something going, yeah, I don’t know how to do that yet, but I I bet you I could figure it out, right?

George Azar: Absolutely abs, there’s been multiple experiences with that, you know, and, and it actually builds goodwill with your clients when you say, look, I know my limitations, you know, they trust you more because you’re not basically, you know, stringing them along and, you know, so they, they know that [00:05:00] you, you are taking, you know, due diligence and making sure that you are taking care of them in every aspect.

Tim Melanson: Right. So now you know on the, the money side and the tax side, I’m sure you deal with cash flow and you know, all that, those kinds of conversations all the time. Can you give us some tips, some, some things that we need to know about, you know, making sure that you have a positive cash flow and keeping the hat full.

George Azar: Absolutely this one I get all the time, especially for new entrepreneurs, you know, that are trying to figure it out. One of the biggest misconceptions that people have is that. Having multiple bank accounts hurts your credit score. That’s actually not true at all. Um, you know, credit is, is basically from borrowing, you know, whether it’s a loan or it’s a credit card or anything like that.

So what I started to do, and this is before I went on my own, I would open up multiple business accounts and I would fund those accounts. So I would say, okay, my Chase account is for my rent, and so I would make sure that there was enough money. You know, it’s, it’s kind of it, it forces you into budgeting without looking at a [00:06:00] spreadsheet.

Um. My Charles Schwab account is for my utilities. My, you know, Wells Fargo account is for my fund. So you’re basically like, you know, taking whatever you have and putting that into those bank accounts and making sure that you know that they’re fully, they’re funded in order to cover those expenses. So I, I think that’s my number one go-to is, is having multiple bank accounts to help me budget better.

Tim Melanson: Wow, that’s cool. Uh, so I do that as well, but I do it with virtual accounts within the same bank. But, uh, but what you’re saying is you get an extra benefit by opening up different BA bank accounts in different banks, right? Is that what you’re saying?

George Azar: Yeah, I see that. I love that approach too because it makes it easier. Like if you needed to do a transfer, it’s instantly like I have my business account and one of my rent account with Chase. Um, and I do love that ’cause like it allows you to like funnel that it, it’s an instant deposit. The different bank mentality is, you know, it’s kind of a, a, a leave it and forget it mentality.

So [00:07:00] like if I know that like that money isn’t there, I’m not going to use it for other things. So like, if, if you have a problem with like, you know, seeing, you know, $2,000 in a bank account, okay, I want to spend that as, you know, as quickly as possible, going to different institutions helps you say, okay, I’m throwing that money in there, I’m gonna forget about it.

Um, and so it, it essentially like, you know, prevents you from, from using that money for other things.

Tim Melanson: That’s funny. So I, uh, just a, something that I’ve discovered about myself, so I tend to work harder when my bank account is lower, so, so I actually use that exact same strategy that you just said, like I’ll move money out of it immediately into other accounts, as long as that one main account is low. Then I’m hustling because I did notice once it starts to balloon right up and I’ve got a whole bunch of money in there, I’m like, ah, I’ll take a day off, whatever.

George Azar: Yeah,

Tim Melanson: So, so it’s funny.

George Azar: re

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

George Azar: I resonate with that ’cause I’m the same way too. Like if it goes below a certain amount, I’m like, okay, you’re right. Like,[00:08:00]

Tim Melanson: I gotta get to

George Azar: can I find work? Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and using those virtual accounts is enough. I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re moving it out. It’s, it’s, it’s out, it’s in some other account and it’s not the initial one that you see when you open up your bank app. Right. And it’s, it’s just the way it works. Mm-hmm. That’s

George Azar: No, that’s.

Tim Melanson: That’s a really good, that’s a really good advice. And, and uh, and I think, um, I mean also for the budgeting reason, I think that’s a great idea as well. I mean, you have all these different accounts that have different purposes for your budget, right? So you know how much play money you have left, you know, you know how much, uh, money you, you need for your, you know, utilities and all that stuff.

I like it. It’s a great idea.

George Azar: Yeah. I would say another thing too, and this is where a lot of self-employed people, especially if you’re just starting out, you know, having an account for taxes, like my general rule is, you know, depending on whether you have state income taxes or. Like that put aside 25 to 30% of your gross income. So like, you know, you get an invoice for $10,000, like instantly put, you know, [00:09:00] 2,500 to, you know, $3,000 inside of a, a separate account for taxes.

Because the biggest thing is, you know, income taxes are what we call a progressive taxes system. It incrementally increases as your income, so. As a CPA, I’m not as concerned about the income tax. What I am concerned about is that self-employment tax, which is the Social Security Medicare, 15.3% across the board on that income.

So that’s a big one, is that, you know, I would say that should be a a, a, a separate bank account in and of itself.

Tim Melanson: Agreed. And overfunded too. Yeah. ’cause I, I’ve gotten into tax trouble. I’m in Canada actually, so our, our rules are different, but probably very similar. And, um, and, and yeah, I mean, uh, it’s just that whole thing about taxes is just something that. Doesn’t get taught. Right. And you become self-employed. All of a sudden you start making this money and you don’t really understand how much, uh, you know you’re gonna need to pay.

Because, I mean, I don’t, I mean, you’re saying you’re helping people understand tax code. [00:10:00] Man, I’ve been doing this for, you know, almost 20 years now, and I still don’t understand them Exactly. I know what I need to put aside and, and that has, you know, come from trial and error. But I, I do like that idea of just.

Just put 30%, you know, or even 35% in another account, it’s gone. And then you can treat it as a tax return. Like when you were, when you were employed, I mean, they were, they were putting money away and then you’d get a tax return at the end of the year. Why not do it the same way and then at least it sits in your account and gains a little bit of interest while it’s sitting there.

Right? Eight.

George Azar: Exactly. Exactly. And that’s the thing, like, you know, non-traditional, you know, brick and mortar banks, like, you know. Not, you know, I’m not sponsored by any of ’em, but like Goldman Sachs, American Express, they have higher interest rates because they don’t have the overhead. So, you know, you could accrue three to four, 5% on that money just sitting there in that account.

So, yeah, exactly. You’re earning, you’re earning money on that money that’s eventually going to go to the government.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Exactly. Yep. Uh, absolutely. Uh, another one [00:11:00] that I, that I did, and I’m not sure if you recommended this, but I, I, like, I have my, uh, my credit card has lots of great points on it and I like to use it, but you can get in trouble using a credit card. So I just have another virtual account where every time I spend money, my credit card, it goes directly into that virtual account.

So there’s always a, an equal number in that account, ready to pay the, the credit card off.

George Azar: I, I love that. And that’s exactly it. You know, the, the credit card points only work if you’re paying off that credit card every single month. You know, the minute. If there’s a balance that carries over to the next month, you’re accruing interest. And so essentially, you know, in most credit cards you’re getting, you know, one point for $1.

So it’s, it’s 1%. But if you’re, you have an a PY of, you know, 26%, you’ve already eaten that up in that next month. So that’s very smart, is, you know, essentially having that bank account solely for credit card and put that credit card on auto payment. So, you know, essentially it’s, it’s taken care of so you don’t forget about it.

Tim Melanson: Because it’s even worse if you like miss that [00:12:00] minimum payment even like, come on, right now you’re in real trouble. Right. And it hurts your credit score and all that other stuff, right?

George Azar: exactly, exactly. That’s where people get in trouble. You know, utilization ratio, your ability to pay like credit cards are, are the number one reason why people have dings against their credit score. So absolutely.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So tell me a little bit about working from home. Your, your jam room, your, your space, like how do you have that set up for you?

George Azar: Yeah, it’s evolved over the years. It’s funny, um, during the, the, the pandemic, I ended up, you know, having my, my room or, or sorry, my desk in my living room, and I, it, it’s interesting, I was actually reading some studies on this, you know, they said. Don’t put your office inside of your bedroom because you want to have that, you know, that bifurcation of, you know, work and personal and, and rest and all of that.

Um, so I actually ended up reorganizing my office to having, there’s a, there’s this, you know, this awkward wall that I [00:13:00] have that, you know, I had a bookcase there and I ended up moving my desk there and it’s really nice ’cause my back is to my living room. All I see is this wall. And so I decorated the wall with, you know, inspirational stuff.

I left up some, you know, Christmas lights, you know, just make it really like homey and really fun to be at. Um, and then, you know, essentially having a, a space in your home that is separated, you’re not looking at your personal. So when you do leave that desk, you feel like you’re actually leaving work like you would at, at a W2 job.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s important as well, and having some sort of inspiration and being excited to be there and all that stuff. Right.

George Azar: Absolutely. Like I have my credentials up. I have some artwork. Um, I’m really into astronomy, not astrology, astronomy. So I have, uh, the, the, uh, Corona, um, uh, supernova up on my wall. I have, you know, different sci-fi stuff that I love to, to, to watch. So yeah, having that inspiration really does help you get through [00:14:00] the day.

Tim Melanson: Nice man. I’m fascinated by both astronomy and astrology. I find they both are fascinating to me, but, uh, but tell me, so now, uh, let’s talk a little bit about practicing and, and you know, I mean, for you, I mean, it must be so difficult to keep up on all the changing rules as things go on. Like how do you stay sharp at what you.

George Azar: Yeah, great question. So, as A-C-P-A-I am required to do minimum educational requirements to keep my certification in good, in good standing. So that, you know, is, is kind of a barrier for me. Um, I. Uh, join a couple organizations to, they’ll send me like newsletters every time, you know, a tax code changes or something along those lines.

Um, and then essentially, you know, I’ll, I’ll dive into that. Um, you know, the other thing is software or, uh, uh, practice management software. So I have a CRM tool that really helps me, keeps, you know, I, I’ll set a deadline and it’ll notify me when that deadline’s approaching, making sure that [00:15:00] you know, my clients when they upload files that I’m getting a notification for that.

So. Having a strong CRM tool has saved me. I used to use Google Drive and I used to do a go, you know, uh, an Excel tracker, and it really didn’t motivate me like it does with like a, having a professional service, paying that extra, you know, $20 a month to, to, it’s almost like a virtual assistant of sorts because it, it allows my clients to have a portal.

It looks a lot more professional. They could pay their, I could create invoices and submit invoices in there. I can, you know, upload their tax returns, share files, and obviously, you know, I’m sharing sensitive information, so I need to make sure that it’s protected, you know, and so making sure that you’re, you’re signing up for those systems that set you up to succeed and, and make those deadlines, uh, as opposed to having your, your work scattered everywhere.

So like. It’s reduced a lot more of my efficient, you know, are giving me more time for efficiency, for analyzing and preparing tax returns by just knowing that I have a system that keeps me accountable.[00:16:00]

Tim Melanson: Right on. So which one do you use and how did you find it?

George Azar: Yeah, so I actually tested out, uh, five different ones. I was actually, there’s a lot of like, you know, there’s like Asana, there’s Monday, there’s all these, you know, general ones like, but I have a, a, a tax specific one. It’s called. Canopy and, and there’s a, there’s a couple others out there that are specifically for tax practitioners.

So, you know, signed up for the demos. I did all of the demos. I, you know, I watched it, I was able to play in the system and it really comes down to your process. And what are, what are the most. Important aspects of those, you know, those features that they provide. ’cause like, you know, Asana has really good features, but they were limited as far as like, you know, especially being a tax practitioner.

They’re, you know, sharing information, all of that. So really testing out. Those CRM options and seeing what specifically helps you. And if you have, if you’re in an industry where there is a practice management tool that is specifically catered to your industry, I would say prioritize those over, uh, the [00:17:00] others.

Um, and, and just test them out. Go through their demos and it costs nothing to do that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, a lot of these, uh, tools do have free trials and all that stuff, and I mean, what, what I find cool about using some of these tools. Is that okay, fine. You might have a process that you’re trying to follow and all that stuff, but you also get ideas, right? Because you start to see how it’s set up and you’re like, oh, okay, so that’s how everybody else is doing it.

And you might have, you know, some good nuggets there, right?

George Azar: Exactly like there’s templates in there and you know, specifically as a tax practitioner, we have specific steps that we have to take in order, you know, we, uh, send out the engagement so they have an engagement. You know, uh, template, you know, you could modify that and it gives you that flexibility to be able to modify it specifically to your practice.

Um, and then there’s, you know, also with task management, like they have other templates in there. They’re specifically for, you know, specific types of tax returns. And so it allows you, you could do automation. So once. You know, the, the engagement is signed, it sends out an [00:18:00] email saying, Hey, here are the next steps.

Um, and it allows the client to go in there and check off their, you know, their, their steps and all of that. Like, I don’t utilize all of those services, but knowing that they’re there is awesome. Knowing that it has, it’s like a buffer for me to not let something slip through the cracks.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about, I’m wondering do you like outside of your, your, your business practices, do you have any like personal practices, like any routines that keep you motivated or anything like that?

George Azar: Yeah. To be honest, I haven’t been great with that. Um, one of the things I’ve been, yeah, it’s, uh, I’m starting to get back into it, like, you know, stretching in the morning. Grabbing my cup of coffee, taking my dog out, you know, for a walk, um, leaving my phone behind. Um, you know, one of the things in the last several months I’ve been, you know, uh, I guess, you know, chronically on social media, and so, you know, I.

I, I go to therapy and, you know, talk to my therapist about best practices and, you know, so I’ll leave my [00:19:00] phone behind. I’ll spend the first hour, or at least try to spend the first hour, you know, waking up and being present and just making sure that, you know, I’m mentally preparing for the day as opposed to where I used to just come, you know, wake up, walk my dog, come in, sit at my desk, and then start answering emails like it just.

It, my energy levels were starting to dip. So having that hour to really take care of yourself, that’s the beauty of being self-employed is that, you know, our calendar is, is we could, we could do that for ourselves. So I block off two hours during the lunchtime to do a workout, I’ll workout from home. And so just making sure that you’re taking care of yourself.

’cause it is hard, especially when you’re self-employed, you know, you’re not reporting to anyone. But your clients. And so having those boundaries and having, you know, making sure that, like, I won’t answer an email unless I’m in busy season after 6:00 PM uh, because it sets a precedent for my clients that if I respond at nine o’clock at night, that they [00:20:00] expect me every time that I’m gonna respond to that time.

So just making sure that you have, you know, those, those boundaries in place that you’re taking care of your personal life, um, so you can dedicate that time to your, your work life.

Tim Melanson: I love that. And now. Just outta curiosity now, how, how do you feel that the clients respond to those types of boundaries? Do you think they’re upset or do you think that they, like what? What do you think?

George Azar: Yeah, initially, ’cause I, when I first started, I would be responding all the time. And so what I did was actually, I. I bought another line on my, my cell phone plan and bought another phone and dedicated it only to business. And so, you know, and then I would update my hours and I would put in my, my signature line that look, these, you know, this is my time that I respond and all of that.

And at first, you know, because I had set that precedent that, you know, I’m available 24 7. There were a couple clients that were annoyed by it. Uh, but as I started to like. Really enforce that [00:21:00] and, and protect my boundaries. People started to really, you know, adapt to adapt to that. Because that’s the thing, like, we set the tone.

If, if we’re, you know, constantly doing that, you know, they, they do expect us to respond. Um, but you know, there’s, you know, there’s a handful of clients, I have monthly clients that I have, you know, that I’ll respond to more, you know, outside of those boundaries. That’s only reserved for those monthly clients.

And so yeah, it’s really, you set the tone and the client eventually will, and, and that’s the thing too. Look, if you’re gonna lose a client that is, is not respecting your boundaries, that probably is a client that you don’t need to work with.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. And I mean, uh, you know, now, especially if it’s, if it’s by email, I mean, you can always set the email to be sent in the morning. Like, because, I mean, there are times maybe you just are feeling inspired to work at 7:00 PM or whatever. It is, and you, like you say, you don’t wanna send that email out right then, because now they’re gonna expect it [00:22:00] every, every time.

But you could just set it to send it the morning at 8:00 AM or whatever it is, and go to bed, right?

George Azar: exactly, exactly. Like in my signature line, especially during the busy season, I put a, I put a note, as I say, I say, you know, please note that during busy season, I don’t respond as quickly as I normally do. Thank you. You know? Thank you for your understanding. Not like, you know, giving permission, but saying this is what, what the boundary is.

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

George Azar: Yeah, it’s, it’s really interesting. I’ve, the, the more so I started off my practice in, in doing tax preparation and over the years I’ve been getting more into education. Um, I started teaching part-time temporary at a local university. And really, like, I, I’ve. Over the last five, six years, I’ve discovered that like my passion is really in education.

So I ended up, uh, starting Bright Budget a couple years ago. I actually wrote the script for the [00:23:00] self-employment 1 0 1 course back during COVID. Um, and thankfully because of my practice, I was able to have the resources to be able to build this course out. Um, but yeah, what’s really exciting right now is that I’ve gotten to a point where I, again, I don’t.

Advertise I, it’s all word of mouth. I’ve had to turn down people. So I’m in a position now where that I could really like pivot myself away from the stuff that I don’t necessarily find much passion in and pursue my passion of teaching and guiding people and giving them the tools to be able to do that.

So that, I would say in the last couple of years that’s really been exciting for me is that I’m diving into these educational opportunities.

Tim Melanson: Right on. Cool. So then how do people find you?

George Azar: Yeah, so my website is bright budget.com. I’m on, uh, Instagram and TikTok. Uh, my TikTok candle is Bright Budget on Instagram, it’s Bright Budget Media. Um, and then, yeah, I have opportunities where people can book, uh, a 15 minute free [00:24:00] consultation to see if we’re good to, you know, work together. Again, like I’m not taking on tax preparation.

I’m take it on more consulting and educational, uh, side of things.

Tim Melanson: So what type of person would get the most outta working with you then?

George Azar: I would say anybody who is considers themselves self-employed, that includes freelancers, contractors, um, whether they’ve been in the game for, you know, several decades or they’re just starting out, um, you know, it, it really is anybody who, who’s in the United States that considers themselves a self-employed individual, that that’s really my niche.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Right on. And I do recommend that people do reach up to somebody who’s got a little bit of a experience if you’re first getting started. ’cause I mean. The tax bills, especially if you’re making a lot of money. I think that’s the, that’s the, the issue I came into was on the years that I had exceptionally well, especially early on, didn’t know how much I was gonna need to pay tax.

Right. And that’s, I mean, it’s an odd problem, right. [00:25:00] But my best years were my worst ones when it came to not being prepared properly. And that might be surprising to people I think. Right.

George Azar: Absolutely. And a lot of times, you know, uh, people get information just from social media and, you know, there’s con there’s a lot of information and, you know, it’s, it’s important to realize that, you know, people who are creating content on social media do have a monetary, uh, incentive. And so, you know, I often get.

You know, tiktoks or Instagram reels from clients that say, Hey, can we do this with our taxes? And then I have to explain it, you know, like, no, yes and no. Like, these are very specific. So there’s a lot of information out there, but it’s, it’s a whole other thing to get good information. And it’s specifically for your situation.

That’s the thing. It’s it taxes is not a one size fits all. Where like one person may benefit from an S corporation, another person might because of how their businesses are structured.

Tim Melanson: Yes. And that’s, and that’s what you hear a lot of too, is that every situation is [00:26:00] somewhat different. And so, yeah, you’re right. I mean, you, when you, when you see a, a TikTok and go, oh yeah, that this looks awesome. You try to implement in your business, it’s not gonna work. Uh, and sometimes it will. I, but, but I mean, that’s, that’s the benefit of having someone like you, that you can fire off that TikTok and see what happens, right?

George Azar: Absolutely. Like, and that’s the thing like, you know, SCORP, I became an SCORP specialist because of people who got information from TikTok, either to create an S corporation or not to do one. So it’s like, you know, exactly like, it, it’s always good to have a professional, like look at your specific situation, um, and not just, you know, one size fit takes a, take a one size fits all approach.

Tim Melanson: Right on. Okay, last question. Let’s get into the music a little bit. So tell me who’s your favorite rock star?

George Azar: Oh my gosh. It’s, it’s vacillated, so I, it used to be Taylor Swift. Now it’s, um, I, I, I love, um, Sabrina Carpenter. I’m, I’m more of a pop person. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Right on. That’s awesome. [00:27:00] Yeah, my, my band, we, we’ve got two new, uh, Taylor Swift songs that we’re adding for this weekend’s gig. We is quite excited about it.

George Azar: Oh, nice.

Tim Melanson: yeah, just from her, from her new album. We’re gonna do, we’re gonna do, uh, uh, the Fable, Ophelia, and Alite.

George Azar: Oh my gosh. Those are so good.

Oh my gosh. I wanna hear,

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

George Azar: are you record them?

Tim Melanson: I don’t know. Uh, well, I won’t be recording it myself ’cause I’ll be on stage, but, uh, I’ll, I’ll see what happens. Maybe someone will record it for us. But,

George Azar: I would love to hear ’em.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I’m excited for those ones. Uh, we’ve got a really great singer in, in the band, and, uh, so we, we just played those on Monday at the practice and they went so well, so I’m

George Azar: I love that.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, we try to do like the newest, the new stuff too, so, and sometimes the, it can be quite difficult to do, like the production is different now than it was in the sixties. Right. But, um, but, but some of them translate pretty good. Yeah.

George Azar: Covers are amazing. I love covers. I love an artist. Just like take other artists stuff [00:28:00] and reimagine it or you know, different genre, different vibe. It’s, it’s amazing.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Right on. Well, thank you so much, George for Rocking Help me today. This has been a lot of fun.

George Azar: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been amazing.

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

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast. I’m talking to the founder of Salt and Light Advisors, and what she does is she works with small to mid-size businesses, to help their employees to understand their roles and expectations. So I’m excited to be rocking out today with Kerri Roberts.

Hey, Kerri, you ready to rock?

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

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

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

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

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

Kerri Roberts: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kerri Roberts: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kerri Roberts: I’m totally fine talking

Tim Melanson: okay.

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Oh, definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, and luckily for

Tim Melanson: you be charging?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m like, this is just

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: of them.

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

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

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

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Tim Melanson: Great. And to the listeners, make

sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for

more information and we’ll see you next time on the Work At Home Rockstar Podcast. I.