Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar Podcast. Very excited for this episode. We’re talking to a marketing strategist from Bolt From The Blue Copywriting, and what she does is she helps, she helps to create marketing strategies and write copy and content that helps people build relationships with their clients and audience so they can share ideas that matter and make more money.

That sounds pretty cool to me. So we are rocking out today with Rachel Allen. Hey, Rachel, you ready to rock?

Rachel Allen: I am ready

at literally at all times

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Well, let’s rock out then. We always start off here on a good note. Tell me a story of success that we

can be inspired by

Rachel Allen: Hmm. You know, I, uh, I had a couple, but I think the one I’m gonna go with is actually how I started my business and how I became a work-from-home rockstar. I’ve never actually had another job, uh, as an adult. So I graduated from college with a journalism degree, and, uh, but the problem was I graduated into the ’08 recession, and of course, nobody was hiring anybody, and especially not people from rural Tennessee.

So, um, in my 22-year-old brain, I was like, "Well, what’s the furthest away I can get [00:01:00] from Tennessee?" And turns out it’s Hong Kong. So I bought a plane ticket, and I left. But I didn’t get a work visa or, like, do anything to prepare for it, and so I landed in Hong Kong with, like, 200 bucks in my bank account, and I had to make rent.

So I’m googling, like, how to make money online, which is only marginally less ridiculous then than it is now. And I found this, uh, job called copywriting, and I was like, "Well, I don’t know what that is, but I can do writing." Um, and I took it, and they paid me, and I was absolutely hooked, and that’s what I built my business off of.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Uh, it’s awesome in retrospect, mostly terrifying during

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I bet. Uh, I’m, and I imagine

there’s probably a language barrier and all that stuff. Do you speak the language or anything, or? You probably

Rachel Allen: minor, I mean, my minor was in Mandarin, but they speak Cantonese there primarily, and so I, I know just enough to get in trouble. You know, I can order at a restaurant, go to the bathroom, that kind of thing

Tim Melanson: Okay. So wow, that, that sounds amazing. Now, along with the good note though, sometimes things [00:02:00] don’t go as planned. And so I’m wondering, uh, we do like to talk about that on this show because it, it is what keeps people out of the game in the first place, is just afraid to fail. And, uh, I’m wondering, can you share with me something that didn’t go as planned and how you recovered and how we can recover?

Rachel Allen: Yeah. Well, uh, my bad note’s kind of tied to my good note, actually. So I spent a couple years in Hong Kong and then ended up living nomadically for the next 10 years, and I moved about every six months. I didn’t really know what I was doing with the business, though, so, um, I got into this situation where I hadn’t paid taxes in three years in two separate countries, and I just kind of ignored it and, like, really hoped it would go away.

And I think as we all know, that doesn’t happen. So I eventually came to this point where I had to, like, work up my courage and call an accountant and be like, "I’ve done something very, very bad." And they had to assemble this international team of accountants to get me filed appropriately in each country.

But that led to me having to hand categorize every expense I’d had for the past three years. And if you ever wanna really [00:03:00] rethink your decision-making paradigm, that is a good way to do it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. Well, something similar happened to me too. I got, I got in trouble with taxes. Only one country though, so it was much easier. But the, the really good thing that came out of that is the same thing as you just said, I got into a really good accounting procedures of, like, accounting for everything, ’cause they need to know all that stuff, right?

And, and, uh, especially for, like, uh, business categories and making sure that everything’s in the right spot, but it worked for my personal as well. So the good silver lining, right?

Rachel Allen: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I still do this every single week now. I hand categorize my expenses just kind of out of habit. I have a bookkeeper and an accountant, but I’m like, I just wanna keep my finger kind of on the pulse of what I’m doing, and I think that that’s really saved me from a lot of the, like, little bad decisions you can get into in business.

Like, you know, the subscriptions you don’t realize you’re still paying for, or like, oh, I haven’t used that email service in a year. Why is that still there, you know?

Tim Melanson: Well, and the, I mean, this lends really [00:04:00] well to the hat, to keeping the hat full, uh, which we talk, talk about all the time about the cashflow. ‘Cause I, I mean, there’s a lot of people that just really do avoid the, you know, the day to day, and they don’t check these things. And I mean, you kind of fell into that category as well.

So I’m wondering, uh, actually, just to take a step back, why do you think people avoid it so much?

Rachel Allen: Hmm. You know, I think in my case it was shame. It was a lot of shame. Um, I had never thought that I was ever gonna run a business because, um, I’m actually dyscalculic, which is ma- math dyslexia. I don’t… I’m not good with numbers. They, like, switch on me. And so I had this idea that because I’m bad at math, I can’t be good with money, which, you know, it’s silly, but we make those weird connections in our brains.

And so I was like, "Oh, well, I can’t. I’m afraid I’m gonna break it if I touch it, so I’m just gonna kind of like hope that everything works out." And I eventually had to go through this mindset shift of like, well, this is a part of my business. I need to treat it just like any other element of it, and realize that, like, I’m not gonna, I don’t [00:05:00] know, accidentally burn my house down if I do the spreadsheet wrong.

So I had to get over that shame, and I think that’s where a lot of people come from too. They just, they don’t know what you don’t know, and I think it can be intimidating to approach an expert, um, in that area

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think there’s, I think there’s shame. I think there’s also that programming even, right? That math is hard, right? Uh, uh, ’cause you do see that quite a bit, right? Where it’s, it’s sort of like normalized and it’s like cool to be, you know, not good at math. I don’t know. You know, the cool people are not good at math and the nerds or the geeks are good at math.

And it’s just like, so you sort of have this programming in there as well that might be playing a part. I don’t know if it does or not, right?

Rachel Allen: Oh, definitely. And as you say that, I think another part of it that trips a lot of people up, or it certainly did me, was I tried to follow other people’s systems for keeping on top of my finances, and I was like, "Oh, no, I need to break this down, like, to a really basic checklist for me," because my nervous system is already so weird about it.

I need to figure out a way that works for me so I’m not trying to go in and, like, use a software that doesn’t [00:06:00] make sense to me or do a whole bunch of calculations by hand because, you know, that’s never gonna work out well. So I had to find my own way to do it

Tim Melanson: And I think that, um, I, I mean, I, I would say probably the worst thing, of course, is to do nothing like, but

Rachel Allen: Yeah, don’t do that.

Tim Melanson: but then the next worst thing, which is also could be better, could be good, is to find someone to help you with it or to find someone to do it for you.

Rachel Allen: Mm-hmm.

Tim Melanson: that, I mean, there’s a lot of horror stories of people taking a- being taken advantage of by people that are handling the money for them type thing, right?

And I mean, sure, i- if, you know, if it’s someone that you can trust or if it’s your spouse, hopefully you can trust your spouse. Yeah, I know. But I mean, it, it’s not that bad when you really, like, sit down with it. I, I think, like you say, most of the issues that we have with that are programming issues, shame issues.

They’re, they’re things that are kind of like making us [00:07:00] avoid it. But when you really do look at it, I mean, it, it, it’s, it’s really just kind of… It’s as simple as you try to make it be, I think, right?

Rachel Allen: Yeah, totally. And I mean, one thing that was a big change for me was I actually ended up working with a financial behaviorist as well as an accountant, and her whole deal is like, yeah, money is, of course it’s emotional because our decision-making is emotional. And so it’s going in and, like, kind of unpicking that programming and seeing whether you still wanna make decisions from that basis or not

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. A- and, and I think, you know what? There might be a portion of it that is sort of like self-sabotaging as well, thinking that, "Well, if I don’t look at how little money I have,

Rachel Allen: Mm-hmm

Tim Melanson: maybe then it will justify me making this terrible purchase idea that I’m about to make." Right?

Rachel Allen: Exactly. Totally.

Tim Melanson: Because I mean, if you really knew what the numbers were, you probably wouldn’t be buying that right now, right?

Rachel Allen: Oh, absolutely. And I think with entrepreneurs, we’re all, I think, prone to [00:08:00] shiny, shiny object syndrome, and it’s like, "Well, but if I buy that one more thing, then it’s gonna make me money, so really I’m saving money." And I’m like, "Maybe, or you’re just fooling yourself."

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Oh yeah, well, and we get that in the consumer world too. "Well, it’s on sale, it means

Rachel Allen: Right, right.

Tim Melanson: you know, I’m making money by buying this"

Rachel Allen: Yeah, yeah, totally.

Tim Melanson: Right? So I, I, I do th- I mean, I, I think this is a, a massive topic that I think… I think what you just said about getting a, what is, was it a financial behavior specialist?

Rachel Allen: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: th- that’s probably a good place to start rather than going directly towards an accountant, because maybe there’s some blocks there that would just… Uh, I mean, ac- accountants and b- and bookkeepers, I mean, I don’t think they’re super expensive, but they’re, they’re also not free. So, you know, maybe putting a little bit of money into why it is that you’re avoiding the numbers, because I’m not saying that every entrepreneur needs to be on top of the numbers as much as you and I are, of course.

But I think it, [00:09:00] I, I think every entrepreneur has to have at least a basic understanding of where their money is going. Uh, like, y- you know, if you think it, about it, uh, even a CEO in a massive company, I mean, they get reports on this kind of stuff. Like, it, it, of course it’s not their job. They’ve got a s- you know, a technical officer that’s handling…

Or sorry, a financial officer that’s handling that ty- type of stuff, but they get the reports. They have a basic understanding of where their money’s going. So you should too, right?

Rachel Allen: Like anything else in your business, and I mean anything I do, whether it’s, uh, what- whatever I’m outsourcing, I wanna know that I can at least do it kinda sorta a little bit myself, even though I’m not going to do it forever ’cause someone else is better at it. I need to know, though, um, enough to where I can know if they’re screwing it up

Tim Melanson: Yes, there you go. And that’s probably a, a- that, well, that’s a really good, uh, example of every part of your business. And I think that that’s why, like, like when you get started as a, as a solopreneur, like you are wearing all those hats, and I think that’s a good place to start for most people is you, you, you start small, you know, y- [00:10:00] you know, your business is small, so your problems are small, right?

And, and so you can get a basic handle of how all your pl- your things work. And then the things that aren’t your gift zone, sure, you can start to delegate those things. But at least you know, like you say, I, I know if I’m hiring somebody who knows what they’re doing or not, because I know enough to know that part, right?

Rachel Allen: Yeah, absolutely. And then that way, I mean, something I’ve done before was I would really second-guess myself of like, "Well, they’re the expert. I mean, it doesn’t seem right, but it must be, uh-uh." And like that doesn’t work out either. So much like with, I think, finding therapists or any other service provider, you might go through a couple of accountants before you find the one who really gets you and who’s right for you.

And knowing enough to know what’s going on helps shore up that intuition where you’re like, "I don’t know, seems like a bad fit

Tim Melanson: Yeah, and I mean, if they can’t explain it to you like what you just said, uh, they c- i- it’s, it’s likely that they don’t know what they’re doing either ’cause anybody who really knows their topic should be able [00:11:00] to explain something to somebody else like they’re an eighth

Rachel Allen: Yeah, yeah,

Tim Melanson: or whatever it is, right?

So I mean, just because you might not be as much of an expert as they are, they should be able to explain to you, "Oh, no, no, I do it this way because of this." And then, like you say, follow your gut. Y- y- you could probably get a good gut feeling of whether they’re doing it that way because they’re, they’re skimming stuff off or because it actually is a really good i- uh, idea and strategy, right?

Rachel Allen: Mm-hmm. And a lot of times even just the willingness. Like, I- that’s something I ask when I’m interviewing any service provider. I’m like, "How okay are you with answering my questions?" Like, I wanna be able to come to you and just say like, "Look, I, I’m not questioning you, but I need to understand why."

And if they’re like, "Oh, well, you need to trust my process," I’m like, "Okay, that’s fine. I do, and also, like, could we chat about it?"

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah. So now when it comes to, like you mentioned that you were kind of moving around a lot,

Rachel Allen: Yeah

Tim Melanson: does that work for setting up your home office?

Rachel Allen: Ugh. I had to learn, uh, really quickly how to make that work for me, because I was in this… [00:12:00] You know, I was moving every six months. I was in different countries, different Airbnbs. This was, like, mid-aughts-ish, and so the internet wasn’t as common, and, as it is now, you know? Um, so what I learned really quickly was what works for me is I need a place with a flat surface and a comfortable chair that is very quiet or that I can make quiet.

I wasn’t doing as many calls back then, so it didn’t really matter if it was, like, you know, elevated the way I have this set up now. But, um, I did so much working on my laptop on my actual lap. Or, like, um, I was living in Greece for a while, and people are like, "Work on the beach." It’s a horrible idea. Don’t buy it.

Don’t ever do it. It’s the worst thing you’ll ever do. So I’ve experimented with all these things, and I had to find that. And then the one thing, um, that I would recommend everybody do, especially if they’re moving around to a bunch of places, you need something that tells your brain, "Hey, this is the work spot."

And so I actually have, um, a little cat figurine. It’s right

up there behind me if anybody’s watching this on video.

And that tiny little [00:13:00] cat, I call it my home cat, ’cause I bought it when I was in Hong Kong, and I was like, "Well, I’m moving, but ev- wherever the home cat is, that’s where home is." And so when I set that up, I’m like, "Okay, this is, this is home.

This is office space. This is where I do stuff." So if you can find little talismans that just tell your brain, "This is where we do the thing," then it helps so much, I think, with procrastination and brain fog, ’cause your brain’s like, "Well, this is where we do the thing

Tim Melanson: That’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. I remember when I was, uh, uh, when I was starting to work from home, my, uh, my son was very young at the time, and I ge- had this idea of putting on a work hat of like,

Rachel Allen: Yeah. Yeah,

Tim Melanson: that they don’t bug you when you’re wearing your work hat. Like, and it kind of like a similar thing, ’cause it probably did work as some sort of like, like you say, talisman or some sort of like cue to your brain that, okay, well I’m working right now.

So it probably helped with productivity

Rachel Allen: Yeah, absolutely. And another thing that people, uh, don’t think about is smells. So I have, um, like a scented candle that I light every morning when I go to work, and smells are such a powerful cue to your brain. So anything that you like, whether it’s like, hey, this is the c- [00:14:00] the coffee I only have at my desk, or this is the tea I drink here, this is the perfume I wear here, or whatever, that can be a super powerful cue

Tim Melanson: Wow, that’s awesome. So smells and things that you’re looking at. Now, what, what about, like, inspiration in your… Do you have any of that?

Rachel Allen: Yeah, so actually as I look behind you right here, um, my house is literally like built up into the side of a mountain, so all it is is just green all the way up. Um, and there’s little like squirrels and chipmunks and stuff run around, but I can watch the leaves move, and I found that I just need a space where I can let my eyes like go into the middle distance.

Um, otherwise I get really distracted and I find myself like opening the same tabs over and over and over again even though like nothing is happening on LinkedIn, I don’t need to be there, but I’m like, "Hmm, let me just check." And I just need to have something to where I can kind of like gaze as I’m thinking

Tim Melanson: That’s a really good idea, and I think that that probably aligns with a lot of people as well. You- if you don’t have anything to look at that distracts you, like on purpose, then you’re gonna get distracted by something not on purpose, right?

Rachel Allen: Totally. [00:15:00] And for me, I think nature is such an important part of that. I’ve worked in cities as well, and I’ve had like, um, places where I would overlook like city si- skylines, and that works too. But something about having a tree moving outside my office just really helps my brain work

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, it’s nature. I mean, that’s what our, that’s what we are, right?

Rachel Allen: Right

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So now, how did you learn all this stuff? Like, where do you get all this? Is it, uh, do you hire coaches? Like, how does this all work for you?

Rachel Allen: So, uh, in the beginning I was in this, like, really strong state of denial that I was actually running a business, so I was like, "Don’t teach me anything about business. I’m not doing such a thing." But after I finally made that decision to really commit to it, uh, I did start working with coaches. So I’ve worked with several coaches over the years.

Um, I’ve also found masterminds to be a really integral part of my growth because I read, I don’t even remember where, but I read something early on of, like, make friends with people and then 20 years down the road, you know, that’s how you know all the cool people in the, like, ridiculous positions that no one ever knows how to connect with.

And so that’s been a huge part of my business, is just I like making friends [00:16:00] with people. It’s why I do podcast guesting. It’s why I love being in small groups and masterminds and, like, going to retreats and stuff. Because that’s how now, 18 years down the road, I’m like, "Oh, of course I know the CEO of blah, blah, blah.

I was there with her when she started the business," you know? And so it’s just, like, not reverse engineering or, like, having these transactional relationships, but just finding people that you think are cool and putting yourself in a room where you are not the smartest human and just being like, "Okay, just talk at me.

Like, just say stuff."

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. Uh, I, I agree with that because I, like, I have hi- hired coaches as well. However, I think I’ve gotten the most out of… Like, and for me, I don’t, um, I have been parts of, part of masterminds, but this podcast really is my mastermind. I get to meet people that are way ahead of me on their journey, and I get to people, to meet people that are just getting started on their journey, and I like that.

I like being able to talk to both, right? I like to be able to kinda, like, aspire to something, and I also like to be able to help somebody. And I think that the [00:17:00] masterminds are, are kind of, like, built for that, right? Like, other than running your own podcast or getting on podcast guests, if you’re part of a mastermind, you just get that.

And having peers that you are on the same level as with as well that don’t have anything to gain from, like, they’re not competing with you. You know what I mean?

Rachel Allen: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Tim Melanson: And they’re not making money from you, right?

Rachel Allen: Exactly, like with that spirit of generosity. Like I had, um, a period, oh gosh, several years ago now, where I was really struggling with something, and I came to the mastermind, and I actually started crying, which I don’t normally do. But I was so touched because everyone in it just went like, zhoop, like this like pit crew around me, and they’re like, "All right.

Here’s what I’m gonna fix for you. Here’s who I’m gonna introduce you to. Here’s what happens next. Here’s how we’re gonna build your confidence." And just having that network of people to be like, "Hey, I don’t care how you show up. I really like you, and I believe in you even when you don’t believe in yourself," it’s so powerful

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, and, and I, I do think that this community, like the self-employed community, is a, is a community. We all kind of have… I mean, I, I don’t know how many- I’ve done [00:18:00] so many episodes of this, and everybody is helpful for each other, right?

Rachel Allen: totally. That’s what I love about it because, like, people will ask me a lot of times, like, "What’s it like being an entrepreneur?" And I’m like, "Well, it’s, it’s problem-solving, right?" That’s the entire job. Entrepreneurship is where basically nothing is your fault, but almost everything is your problem. And so I think that’s why everyone is so helpful, ’cause we’re like, I, you know, I know I would not be able to solve all the problems by myself, but maybe I can solve yours, and then maybe later you’ll solve mine, or you know somebody who solves mine or whatever.

And there’s a real generosity of spirit that I’ve found

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I know one thing is that w- probably the most common mistake or, or, or, or issue that people have is undercharging. Like, so come on, right?

Rachel Allen: I’ve got a magnet somewhere up there, oh, in the corner, yeah, over right there, that says, "Charge more," and it’s actually from the person who leads the mastermind that I’m in. And so that’s why it’s not always the right answer, but it’s often the right answer, you know?

Tim Melanson: It is often the right answer, yeah. And, uh, but I think that’s because of [00:19:00] what you just said. We like solving problems, right? It’s, you know, if we, if we take the, the music as the example, I know that most musicians would play for free, right? And, and that’s the reason why so many people, uh, w- that’s why the, the prices have not gone up.

Like, you know, musicians today in my city make actually less than they did in the ’80s. Like, it, it’s insane. But it’s just because we love it. So, you know, we’re just like, "You know what? I just wanted to… Like, any opportunity to play and I’m, I’m there." And I think the same thing happens in a lot of businesses.

It’s your baby. It’s what you love to do. So someone says, "Well, can you do it for this?" And you’re just like, "Oh, sure." Of course, that doesn’t work long-term

Rachel Allen: It really doesn’t. I get it though. I mean, like, I was absolutely boggled that anybody would pay me to do something that I do compulsively. Like, I cannot go a day without writing. It’s going to happen whether I want to or not. And so I had to really have a lot of shifts around that [00:20:00] and think like, "Okay, well what’s the value I’m actually providing here versus, I don’t know, like just give me five bucks or whatever," you know?

Tim Melanson: Well, let’s, let’s hear a little bit more about that. It’s time for your guest solo. So what is e- exciting in your business then?

Rachel Allen: Oh, so, I mean, there’s so many things. But what I’m really excited about is, um, I know that words make worlds. Words are the technology through which ideas and influence spread, and that’s what marketing’s all about. It’s just using words in a way that makes it easy for somebody to say yes to something.

So, um, I do that in a whole bunch of ways, but the thing I’m really excited about right now is I’m actually been doing some book outlining. And, um, it might sound a little off the beaten path, but it’s all the same thing, right? Like a book is still the, the process of making it easy for someone to buy your idea, to buy something in your business, whatever.

And, um, kind of harking back to our mastermind thing, the reason I got started on it was I kinda like … I’ve been doing it for a while, I’ve been helping clients out, being the editor on 19 books now, and I … It’s just fun. I didn’t even think about like really making it into a part of my business until my mastermind was like, "Hey, yo, people [00:21:00] don’t do it like you do it.

No one helps people like you help people. You need to make this an offer." So that’s what I’ve been doing.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Well, that’s awesome. So then how does it work then?

Rachel Allen: Yeah, so, um, I meet with people for four calls, and they just show up. They have, like, the idea for their book, and, like, maybe some notes, but they’ve just never been able to kind of get it out of their brains, and so they just sort of talk at me, and then I pull all the puzzle pieces together and put it into an outline that breaks it down, like, almost kind of like a paint by numbers of your own book.

So it’s in, like, 500-word chunks, and so I’ll be like, "Okay, in chapter one you need to start out by telling me this story. Re- remember you said points A, B, and C. Now I want you to transition and tell me about this. Spend 100 words saying this, then 200 blah, blah, blah." And so I really walk you through, like, step by step by step, and it makes it very easy to drop into the outline wherever you want so you don’t have to do it, like, linearly, and you can still know that everybody’s, everything is gonna be in the right order and, like, you’re not gonna, like, drop something out

Tim Melanson: Hmm. So I, and I would guess that this kind of outline, this, this is probably the [00:22:00] block of most people, right? Why, why they’re not writing the book that they think they want to write, right?

Rachel Allen: Mm-hmm. ‘Cause you, like, you go down, like, the endless, like, research hole, or you get stuck on, like, well, does this story belong in chapter five or chapter 25? So, like, it’s all the thinking work that goes into doing a book, and if you front-load it, I mean, everybody I’ve done this with has finished their book in three months after the outline’s done, ’cause, like, all you gotta do is write.

You don’t have to think

Tim Melanson: Well, yeah, thinking’s bad, right? Just kidding. No, well, and, and I mean, a lot of the

Rachel Allen: It’s hard. Takes time.

Tim Melanson: times, yeah, you’re just unblocking yourself and allowing that, that to come out, right? ‘Cause I- that’s the thing is that you know your story. It’s just, it’s kinda difficult to put it together sometimes or to separate it, actually make it into smaller chunks,

Rachel Allen: And it’s hard to get perspective. Like, you need somebody on the outside. I, I do as well, right? When I write my own books. You have to have somebody on the outside who’s like, "Okay, here’s the through line. Here’s where that goes." Because when you’re so close to it, you can’t see it

Tim Melanson: Yeah, exactly. And how do, so how do people find out about this then?

Rachel Allen: Uh, they can find it out on my website at [00:23:00] boltfromthebluecopywriting.com or, um, just connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram. I’m happy to chat about it

Tim Melanson: Awesome. One more question now before we get into the, uh, the … And I’m not sure if you’re gonna be, what you’re gonna say about this, but what do you think about AI now with writing?

Rachel Allen: People ask me about this a lot. Um, I don’t have any, like, moral objection to it. Um, I know a lot of people get very upset at the idea of people using it, and I’m like, "Look, it’s your life. You do what you want with it." What I will say is I don’t use it in my own marketing, um, and I don’t use it for my clients because I have yet to find something that can do it, you know, as, as well or as fast as me, and there’s intellectual property risks because that…

You know, it’s changing, but right now the way the rulings are is if you create something using AI, you cannot own the intellectual property to it. So, like, I’m never gonna, like, give somebody a course that they can’t own. So that’s why I recommend that you avoid it in your creative endeavors

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think that’s, uh… And, and that actually does make sense ’cause you didn’t actually create it. You ha- [00:24:00] used AI. Now, I imagine that there might be some probably gray area. I mean, if you’ve mostly given the AI the information, and it just sort of, like, fine-tuned it for you, well then maybe that’s an editor?

I don’t know. But,

Rachel Allen: Yeah. It’s still like, I don’t know, there’s stuff working their way through the courts, but the way that I recommend people to use it is, like, I think it’s a great thought partner. I think it can be good for getting you over that, like, blank page thing. Um, it’s good for starting you off on research, though of course you need to check it.

So it’s basically, it’s like having an intern. And what I mean by that, like, it’s an intern on their first day where they’re like, "Here’s this thing. It’s the most amazing thing ever." And you’re like, "Absolutely not. Remove this from my site. Do it again."

Tim Melanson: Yes, that’s a really good analogy. And, uh, it’s like having a whole lot of those interns that w- can work really fast, and that’s, that is great because, um, I know I’ve, I use it quite a bit, and it is fantastic at helping you to talk through [00:25:00] ideas and all these other things that you’d be just wasting someone’s time with.

But you can talk to the AI and kind of like flesh out your own stuff. But as for getting it to do stuff for you and, and write your, your book for you, or even your, uh… I mean, you really have to train it pretty fine tunely, and you might as well just do it yourself,

Rachel Allen: Exactly. And like, I don’t know, the thing I tell people, or I guess the, the pitfall I see people falling into with it is they lose their confidence and they think that it knows better than them, and I’m like, "Absolutely not. It’s just a tool." Like, your instinct is right. Whatever it is, you do know better.

And like run it by a person, you know?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah. Now, uh, the, I, I think the good news, like, so right now I think we’re in a bit of a tr- transitionary period where it’s kinda like coming out like full strength right now and everybody’s using it for everything, and that’s great. But, um, it kind of gives you everybody the same stuff. So everybody’s content is starting to look kinda the same.

And so if you’re the [00:26:00] one who’s actually writing it yourself or you’re hiring someone like Rachel Dawson to write it, then your content is gonna start to stick out a little bit more, because now it’s gonna feel more real. I, I, I don’t know if that’s the right word.

Rachel Allen: Mm-hmm. Definitely.

Tim Melanson: So, so I do think that there’s a, like some silver lining.

I know that people are a little bit worried about it. Um, but I think that we’re kind of like just in that transitionary period where people are using it, and maybe it’s taking some jobs away from certain people at this particular moment, but that’s gonna flip right back, ’cause people do want that real person to work with, and they, and they know that it’s gonna sound better.

Rachel Allen: Oh, absolutely. And I mean, something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, there’s a quote from Brian Eno, bringing it back to music, and he was talking about how as soon as we learned how to make, um, like non-lossy sound on CDs and like other higher, um, type, uh, music, everybody wanted the pops and crackles from the records, right?

And so as soon as you learn how to get rid of it, it becomes a premium. It becomes something that people will pay extra for, and that’s [00:27:00] what we’re seeing right now. Anything that’s like a higher ticket offer that’s selling, it’s got a human on it. It has someone being visibly inconvenienced to sell it to you, and it’s that exact same thing.

It’s the pops on the records that people want

Tim Melanson: Ah, that’s an excellent analogy. I am stealing that one. That’s a good one.

Rachel Allen: I’ll send you the quote.

Tim Melanson: Perfect. Awesome. So then let’s go back to how we find, how we find you and, and what that process is on, on how to get started with work with… And not even just for the book. Like, you’ve g- got another business, right? Or other

Rachel Allen: I do, yeah. I, I got a couple buckets actually. Um, I mean, I write books on my own, I help people write books. I do a sort of, uh, super group offer with a bra- a branding specialist, um, where we build legacy businesses for people and we do the branding there. Um, and then I write everything at Bolt. So basically, if it’s words that make money, I do it.

Um, the easiest way is just to check me out at boltfromthebluecopywriting.com, connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram, or you can just email me like it’s the ancient times, and I will email you back with my very own fingers.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Rachel Allen: Mm-hmm.

Tim Melanson: Can actually contact you [00:28:00] personally, that’s amazing. Awesome. So now before we go, one more question. This might be the hardest one. Let’s get into music a little bit. Who is your favorite rock star or band?

Rachel Allen: Ooh. Okay. Gosh, there’s so many. Um, what I’m gonna go with is the Drive-By Truckers. Um, so they’re Southern rock, a little outlaw, um, and I’ve listened to them since forever when they were coming through the Orange Peel in Asheville where I grew up. And I, what I love about them is that they talk about really hard, kind of awful things in a way that makes you feel good about yourself and, like, about your role and your, your power to be with them.

So I love them. I think they’re great

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow, that’s awesome. Okay. Have you s- you’ve seen them in concert then?

Rachel Allen: I have. Yeah, I’ve seen them a couple times.

Tim Melanson: And how was their show?

Rachel Allen: Amazing. It was incredible. I saw one of them, um, they were o- they, it was a psychobilly concert, so they had the Reverend Horton Heat open for them, and the dude’s like, the man’s bloodstream is 90% cocaine and, you know, [00:29:00] 10% caffeine. And so he’s, like, going to town on an electric guitar.

He’s standing up on the cello or standup bass while they’re playing it, and I was just like, "This is rad." And then the Drive-By Truckers came out, and it was even better. It was so good.

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

Rachel Allen: Yeah, it’s been awesome. Thanks for having me

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

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

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

Robert Siciliano: I am. Thank you, Tim

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Siciliano: We don’t

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

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

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

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

And it’s great

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah.

Robert Siciliano: and that’s my nature.

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That, that’s a question for you

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yep

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Hmm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y- it’s one crazy

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: shop. Yep

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it is

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: No

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Free.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm. Okay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And,

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: right. That’s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Mm-hmm

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

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

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

Tim Melanson: Yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Siciliano: My pleasure. Thank you

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

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work At Home Rockstar podcast. I’m excited for today’s episode. We’re talking to the 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