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BRX Pro Tip: How to Improve Faster

January 27, 2023 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: How to Improve Faster

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BRX Pro Tip: How to Improve Faster

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you today. Lee, we all want to improve. We all seek to improve. What are some ideas for improving faster?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:12] Yeah. I think that this is one of those things that’s right in front of you that people just don’t use enough. The best tip to improve faster, I think, is just find someone who is successfully doing what you want to do and ask them how they did it. People are always happy to share advice for people that are interested in what they’re up to. So, getting advice from somebody who’s already been there and done that is the single fastest way for yourself to level up, I believe.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] And you don’t have to learn these things the hard way through trial and error. It’s just with the internet today and how everybody’s connected today, you can find other people who have already done stuff that you want to do and you can ask them for help.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] And if you think that that’s weird to ask a stranger for help or to ask a stranger for advice, then pay them. I mean, there’s plenty of business coaches out there or coaches of all kinds that will happily teach you what they know. So, if you think it’s weird to ask a stranger for advice or help, then offer to pay them because there’s plenty of people that will coach you.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:28] So, I think if you want to accelerate your growth, accelerate your learning, find someone who’s already doing it, and ask them for help.

Alan Vey with Aventus

January 26, 2023 by angishields

Daring to

Alan Vey with Aventus

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Alan Vey is Founder & CEO at Aventus. Following receiving his Master’s in Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London, he completed a stint as a quantitative developer at macro hedge fund Brevan Howard, giving him exposure to the world of traditional finance.

Marrying these skillsets and his hunger to innovate, Alan founded Aventus in 2016 – an enterprise-grade blockchain with the aim of making the benefits of blockchain available to businesses. After raising over $20m in an ICO in 2017 and surviving the pandemic, we have since continued to grow and expand into new sectors (including NFTs, loyalty, ticketing, gaming and supply chain to name a few).

Alan was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 winner in 2021 for his work at Aventus, and he continues to look for ways to remain at the bleeding edge of the space.

In addition to his work at Aventus, building further blockchain businesses and supporting others with their tokenomics models, Alan focuses on extending discipline to all areas of his personal life.

Connect with Alan on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Welcome to Daring to a podcast that finds out how CEOs and entrepreneurs navigate today’s business world. The conventions they’re breaking. The challenges they faced and the decisions that they’ve made.And lastly, just what makes them different.

Rita Trehan: [00:00:19] Well, what a way for us to kick off 2023. Joining me today is Alan Vey, a serial entrepreneur, Forbes 30 under 30. He’s just traveled from the UK back to Dubai. He’s only just landed, but he’s looks as fresh as a daisy and he’s raring to go to share his knowledge, his expertise about a subject that I think is like on everybody’s radar right now. There’s like a ton of news about technology. Yeah, we know technology’s been around a long time, but you’re kind of like a really interesting character. So I’ve got some what I call wicked questions for you today that we’re going to cover. We’re going to cover. Does it make a difference? Is an entrepreneur successful because of the diverse experiences that they bring to the table? Why do I ask that question? Well, Alan was born in South Africa, but apparently he’s lived around many countries. Let’s explore. Does that make a difference to being a really successful entrepreneur? I wonder? We’ll get his thoughts on that. If you’ve heard of blockchain, I will share with you my own experience of blockchain. Very briefly, back in about 2016, 2018, I was on the board of a publicly listed company in Australia.

Rita Trehan: [00:01:31] Sitting on the board. The board were talking about black blockchain. I came out of the meeting and said, Is anybody got blockchain for dummies? Because I like, I really need to understand this and my mind is blown. But Alan is going to help us understand that in a way that’s really important. One Web two, Web three. I know. Do you know what they are? If you don’t know what Web three is, you better listen in because it’s something that we may all really want to benefit from. So, you know, I’m honored to have you on the show, Alan. I mean, you know, you are you’ve created not only successful businesses, raised $300 Million and more, but you’re continuing to be an advocate for a tech industry but making tech accessible. So let’s start. Tell me, what does gold and blockchain have in common? I ask that question because it seems like golf is quite important in your early days. And I play golf, but I can’t say I’ve connected. It’s blockchain. So tell us a little bit about yourself, please.

Alan Vey: [00:02:29] I read that. Thanks for having me up for a chat today. So maybe just starting off on that first point, right? I think I played a lot of being South African Culturally, it’s quite typical to play a lot of sports is very sort of outdoorsy lifestyle, right? Everything from water sports to different team sports. Golf and rowing were the ones that kind of resonated best with me. And I continued on playing the most, I think in any team sport, especially as you’re growing up as a kid, it’s just great and learning the discipline of training, right? A competitive nature and figuring out how to at times do it with, well, what you’re going to golf the world of etiquette or just in a competitive but not too far in the realm of that being a little bit unpleasant to others. I think a lot of those sort of good fundamental building blocks and how to deal with people in a competitive environment and work together come from the world of sports.

Rita Trehan: [00:03:24] And so what was it? I mean, like you trained like I mean, you played at a national level, but then you decided to pursue computer science. What was it about computer science that interested you? I mean, that’s not necessarily outdoors, is it? But but clearly, there was a passion, a hidden passion that you’ve had, which you’ve actually brought to, in all seriousness, to to play in a very important space right now. So tell us a little bit about that. What was the intrigue around I computer science and your time at Imperial College? Because that’s kind of where you got your like you really kind of made it come alive. Tell us a little bit about that.

Alan Vey: [00:04:05] Exactly. So I started I moved to the UK. I was living in Germany and when I was 16 my parents moved us to the UK and that’s really when I’ve been playing kind of at a national level in Germany and then the moving country that age at 16 as well, and was starting to become an adult, or at least the early phases of that. I went through, shall we say, a less motivated phase with respect to my goal of right after the move. So I was a little bit lost all over the place looking for kind of a direction like what’s next, right? And I started to become better and better at maths in school. It just seemed to be something that came to me naturally, but I like to apply it to the real world. So the applications are kind of physics or more recently computer science. And that’s where in my last year I took a gap year after I did A-levels in the UK to really figure out what I was doing. I worked. Deloitte, an entrepreneurial business, which was my first kind of commercial world experience in that seeing sort of small and medium sized enterprises and what that meant from the sort of financial professional services and consulting side. Being at Deloitte and during that year then applied to do computer science because I just thought it was a nice application of maths. Imperial was a great school. I was really, really happy when I got accepted there and I thought spending some time in London, you’ll meet amazing people there and kind of see where that takes you, right? So my undergrad was done in computer science and as I learned more and more about the space and artificial intelligence really resonated with me.

Alan Vey: [00:05:40] We did various different assignments. I remember one of them was predicting people’s emotions, so you would get sort of readings of whatever facial expressions and the like 45 action units or something on the face, an eyebrow up or down or something like that. And we’d predict to 93% accuracy what the emotion was. The person’s face was kind of showing, which is as accurate as humans can predicted. And these kind of little tests I just thought were so powerful when you extrapolate where this technology might go one day and then we had to do a sort of industrial placement. So I spent six or nine months working at macro hedge fund Brennan Howard, looking at machine learning strategies with them. So I went to my professor, also South African guy William Newton, both he had just launched the cryptocurrency Center at Imperial in 2015. This is also the Ethereum blockchain. That sort of second biggest blockchain today was launched and I went to Will and said, I’m going to predict the price of Bitcoin based on sentiment laws, machine learning, sort of techniques I learned better than anybody has so far. And he was very unenthused, as I gathered. That’s that’s, that’s old news. And why don’t you do something really interesting and look at what Ethereum has done to Bitcoin. And Ethereum obviously introduced the notion of smart contracts programable money, if you like, and that innovation really learning about that is what kind of set me off on this path.

Rita Trehan: [00:07:07] So I talk about the companies that you have, like you are a serial entrepreneur, your companies have as you progressed, they’ve actually really sort of open the field of transparency around contracts and changes and actually addressed a really critical problem, something that I’m very passionate about and which is inclusion. So in the sense of inclusion being that everybody gets the opportunity to be able to access, have ownership and get to decide where and what they do and how they how they play in a marketplace. But you just use the word I’m not sure even I’m going to say it right. Etherium Right. Which is like people like, quick, let me Google that. What does it mean? But actually it’s a really important concept. So can you talk about some of the the businesses that you’ve actually created and and how actually it’s making technology not only available, but but actually really transparent and actually inclusive, INC making it inclusive versus these big technology companies, which we loved. So let’s not get us right. We love them. We love them for what they are. But also, you know, they’ve had their share of the game, haven’t they? And it’s time now to maybe open it up a little bit. So talk a bit about that. You are a massive advocate for that, the businesses that you’ve created. I’ll let you talk about them and have done that both from a ticketing perspective, just opening up this concept of tokens and exchange. I mean, it’s a whole new world, but it’s so fascinating. So they share some of that.

Alan Vey: [00:08:45] Yeah, for sure. Let’s start with. A sort of high level overview of what was innovative about this technology, right? Because then we can understand the problems that we tried to apply it to to solve them. So there’s a lot of complicated terminology around blockchain, and it’s the nature of the technical industry. People like to be very precise, but at the end of the day, the thing we couldn’t previously do, which blockchain enables is create scarcity without a trusted intermediary. It’s pretty much that simple, right? With scarcity, you can’t actually have any genuine representation of value without scarcity. If something isn’t scarce, it has no value, right? It’s infinitely available. So that ability to represent value and to move that around is what Bitcoin really enables. No intermediaries, like you say, transparent and immutable so that nobody could tamper with it kind of creates that beautiful audit trail. And then the second generation of blockchain is what Ethereum kind of created, which is coin smart contracts. And what you layer on top of that is the ability to create rules around this value. How is this value created? What conditions have to hold for this value to be transferred? You can think of these. The reason they call it smart contracts is almost like contractual clauses. Right at the end of the month you will pay me X if you did your job properly or whatever it is. So that’s what Ethereum brought to the space in the kind of second generation of smart contracts. And when you look at the industries we got involved in, so I had done my master’s thesis with Will at Imperial at on film rights distribution and in exploring the film industry, it became clear quite quickly that music typically adopts new technology first and then formed us.

Alan Vey: [00:10:45] So we thought, okay, let’s start with the music industry and then music. There’s two major subcategories, right? There’s recorded, which is your Spotify, and you’re kind of playing it on your phone and there’s live where people attend events and whatnot and revenues and growth in recorded is decreasing because of their business models there, but in life is massively increasing. So we thought, okay, growth market in a sector where this is very applicable, we think there might be some problems there and in doing our analysis, really noticed in the ticketing market how there were certain inefficiencies in the secondary market. Now it was a bit naive at first. Our approach being very technical and background and coming into this industry and thinking, Oh, it’s just a tech problem. There are various political reasons and and sort of monopolistic behavior in the market, which is why it is the way it is. But the tech can help support that. And specifically the point you’re mentioning around transparency, right? This technology that now does not require intermediaries means essentially from an economic perspective, you can move away from this notion of economies of scale, Right. Where something needs to scale to be really big for it to be efficient With blockchain, the technology so efficient that the base layer, we can do much more sort of decentralized and put the power back in the sort of masses and individuals and just as efficiently come together as in that sort of economies of scale.

Alan Vey: [00:12:15] So when you apply that problem to you apply that those properties to these kind of problem areas and ticketing, for example, what we found is you don’t want to touch the transaction, you don’t want to be dealing with the money of the sale of the ticket because of how the industry is structured. That’s a very hard way to break in. But if you restructure what you think has as the access, right, it was originally a piece of paper moved to barcodes, Now it’s moving to these what you call NFT tickets or should we say blockchain based tickets where you can essentially lock the tickets to an identity and you can very transparently track how that ticket moves between various different identities. So maybe the identity is the identity of a phone. So you buy a phone, maybe it’s an actual individual’s identity. There’s various ways of thinking about identity and how you validate that when somebody shows up at the venue. But this infrastructure gives you the ability to much more efficiently manage this shed light on some of what’s happening in the secondary market, which ultimately allows the artist to deliver the experience to the fan as they intended, with maximum effect alongside the promoters and managers and whatnot who are involved in that value chain. So yeah.

Rita Trehan: [00:13:33] That was available when George Michael was having those debates around like who owns the music rights for his music Boy, would it maybe have created a very different place for his passion for music. And who should who should benefit from that, right? I mean, you can kind of play that back. And say actually, that you’re solving a problem that many musicians and and artists, whether it’s in the film or music industry, were saying, like, actually let the people have access to the music and exchange that in a fair, fair way. Right. So it’s kind of really addressing a very real problem that existed. I’m sure if he’s listening above is going carry on, Alan, because that’s the way forward. If you’re a George Michael fan. I am. So we’ll leave it at that. But it’s a really interesting concept. So, you know, you’ve created several businesses from this. And one thing that I because I like to kind of find that interesting facts is you say experience is not everything. I find that a really interesting and insightful comment from an entrepreneur because a lot of people that listen to this show particularly are wannabe entrepreneurs. They want to hear inspirational stories. Now, you may have this brilliant idea. They may be right now thinking, I’ve got this idea around how Web3 might play out for me or some of the technology and some of the space that you’re playing in could be a real collaboration, but I don’t know that I’ve got the experience to do it. You said earlier we came at it from a tech perspective, but actually there’s a whole lot more. Tell me why that comment experience is not everything and was so important to you? Our couple that with one with other things which is influence comes from the people that you know you talked about your professor and how you learn. I kind of put those two together and go like experience is not everything. Influence is about people like who you know and who you work with and who you trust kind of thing. Tell us a little bit about that journey for you.

Alan Vey: [00:15:34] Yeah. So. On the experience front, right? There’s there’s various different ways of looking at it. Base kind of as an individual for trying to achieve something. You kind of look at your base talent or shall we say the things you were born with. You then have your skills, the things you really worked hard on creating for yourself, and you spend the time and then experience as you kind of use your talent and skills over the years, which helps sort of further refine that. That’s the way I kind of look at the sort of base skillsets of an entrepreneur, right experience. It’s difficult sometimes when you look back on your life and you’ve done different things to say, Oh, the reason I had this success was because of this property, that property, that property. Because if you changed any one of them, you don’t know which one actually created that sort of causal link to the result that you were trying to achieve. So sometimes people who are amazing people in business have worked in business for 40 years, had great successes. They don’t necessarily know which of their characteristics are the ones that led to those successes. They know all of them together potentially lead to that result. But to say just this one thing or that one thing from my experience is so important, it’s difficult to dissect them objectively, sort of quantify. So that’s one thing. But that’s not to say experience doesn’t matter, right? Like, it’s very important to surround yourself with people who know what they’re doing.

Alan Vey: [00:16:59] And better yet, the more independent sources you can draw on. Mentors is a very important part of being an entrepreneur. Finding people that you respect who see something in you, maybe something of themselves, and they want to help sort of foster that learning from their experience and listening to everybody, always having an open mind. I think it was Continental. Somebody said strong opinions loosely held. You have your strong opinions form your point of view. Of course, be willing and ready to change that as and when you are given evidence of concrete. Right. So if you have four or five mentors or completely independent, diverse backgrounds all telling you the same thing, there’s probably something to it. They all have a different opinion on it, then maybe the experience is not so relevant to that particular element. So all of this kind of plays a role in trying to build and then ultimately everything comes down to relationships, right? The fundraising, which enabled building the products, hiring the team that was able to take these ideas to the next level and further develop the ideas come with their own ideas and ultimately sign with the clients. Every one of those aspects is about relationships with people, and if you don’t work on that and actively see that as one of the most important elements of your job as an entrepreneur, I truly think you’ll struggle to get to get anywhere.

Rita Trehan: [00:18:20] You have been very active in sort of being a voice for technology, in technology. And let’s talk about Web3 because it’s technology Web3 the new wave of of the Internet. Internet for good, as some people refer to it. And you know, you’re an advocate for that. But mentorship around that as well. So why is for all those budding entrepreneurs and actually all of those corporations that are listening to because we do get some high level CEOs, they say they don’t listen, but we know they do. We know who you are. And they are interested, too, in budding entrepreneurs. Why is Web3 so important and how can you explain it to the average person like me? Okay, but I liken it to Brexit. It’s a complex subject, but you can make it simplistic in a way that can help people. It is really important, right? It’s the internet for good. Can the internet be good? Is it a liberator or is it really an enslaver? Tell us your views on Web3.

Alan Vey: [00:19:25] Yeah. So. Let’s start with some definitions and then we’ll get to the conclusion of how people choose to use it. So. Web3. Let’s do Web one. Web two. Right. The Internet itself, obviously is just a bunch of computers that are connected and talk to each other. Web one was all about reading content. You had these big service companies that would create informational websites or whatever, and you would sit at home and you would pull this information and you would kind of read it to consume it. What went to then did this is really where social media started to explode, is read and write. So rather than pulling information from these websites like Facebook, you would start with user generated content posting YouTube videos, Facebook pictures, all of this kind of stuff, creating more of a dynamic Internet environment of reading and writing. What Web three adds to this equation is owning as well. You can actually have digital ownership and everything that comes along with that the scarcity notion that I mentioned before. So Web3 is really all about the ability. The Internet itself was not set up very well for payments for sort of value exchange. Any of that stuff is still a lot of manual processes, right Today, if you transfer banks for money between international banks, you’re waiting days in a world where we can lend each other a text in just than a second.

Rita Trehan: [00:20:52] Seconds.

Alan Vey: [00:20:52] Right there. So it’s a basic building block that’s going to help a lot of that. And the reason it’s so in the forefront of people’s minds is because of crypto, Right? It was an interesting market, like the stock market, like what Robinhood did with sort of shares and that kind of way of making investing easy for people in the stock market. Crypto is very easy and unregulated and that’s why that’s one application of blockchain that web3 technology itself will fade more and more into the background of. I think people will start using it without even knowing that they’re using it because they’re getting value from these properties. That’s more and more where they’ll go. And of course crypto and trading in the markets and financial side will stay interesting for those that are interesting and playing in that domain. But the core technology now is really starting to get used underneath things and like any technology. It’s not inherently good or evil. It’s how many? I mean, even the defense industry, you could argue some people use it for defending rather than attacking, and that’s questionable. But most technology is how people end up applying it.

Rita Trehan: [00:22:00] Right.

Alan Vey: [00:22:00] So let’s have an example in the ticketing world from when I spoke before, you could use this technology to ensure that what’s promised with the artist, let’s say Ed Sheeran, he’s big on sort of making sure he does right by his fans. Right. He could make sure that none of his tickets ever sell for above whatever price and everything is enforced properly all the way through. It’s called the supply chain of a ticket from sale to redemption when you enter the venue. Or his manager could use it to ensure that they still market works exactly the same as it currently does, but they get their fair share of all of the revenue within that market. Or somebody downstream can use it to ensure that they control that downstream. Right. So there’s various ways more right or wrong, depending on where you kind of draw the line with respect to what you’re trying to optimize towards where it could be good or bad. But ultimately, it does give us the ability to empower individual communities and move away from these models, like the tech companies storing all data and benefiting from it. Right? You can now build systems where you are paid for your data if it’s used in advertising. So I think more and more use cases is going to act like a nuclear deterrent. Big businesses in the financial world and big tech across many industries are going to be forced to innovate their business models in a more fair direction because of the pressure of competitors using this technology for good. So ultimately it is going to improve the scenario for the kind of individual every man from this technology.

Rita Trehan: [00:23:43] To what is your vision taking you? You know, you’ve raised all this money, you’ve created these platforms where whether it’s ticketing, whether it’s payment opportunities, whether it’s about opening up sources for token exchange on different aspects around payments, an opportunity for people to kind of like collectively create their own, if you like, exchange platforms. Where’s your big vision going? Where do you see not only have you done that, I should also say like you’ve done it in an ecologically sound way, right? We’re we’re in this week is Davos. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of talk is going out there at the moment but maybe they need to hear from practitioners, the people that are really making it happen about where the vision is. So where’s your vision, Alan?

Alan Vey: [00:24:34] So. I just want to for our companies, what we are trying to achieve is being a part of on building on building the world to Web3 right. The real definition, the goal is to continue to improve The infrastructure will be a part of improving the infrastructure that we have to kind of drive advancement across society. So we’re a minor part of that today. But more and more, this technology really has the ability to drastically transform ecosystems. And we’ve seen a lot of interesting stuff already happening. People are moving towards more sustainable infrastructures with the impact this has had in developing nations. Their example of of crypto games that were basically exclusively axie infinity, as an example that blew up and this is a game on Ethereum and blew up in the Philippines and such a large amount of people started playing the game because they were able to earn triple what the sort of average salary earning was that they otherwise had access to. So the ability to create fairer economic systems, people send money back to developing economies now without 20, 30, 40% fees, you can do it for a few cents. There’s so many ways that this can help better connect the world and improve our infrastructure as a whole. So might not be the sexiest kind of vision, but being a.

Rita Trehan: [00:25:57] Part, I think it’s a pretty sexy vision, right? I mean, just thinking about the UN have 21 sustainable goals that they’re trying to achieve, you know, that are empowering and saying to companies, governments, institutions, hey, we can’t do this alone with three potentially offers, opens up that platform to make some of these massive challenges and they are global challenges. We can’t move away from them anymore and say it’s a government challenge or a corporation challenge or an institution challenge. It is a collaboration and it’s making technology like at the core of how it can be a good thing. Like technology is not bad. It’s not. I’m a big believer technology is not destroying jobs, it’s creating jobs. Technology is creating interesting work. It’s actually solving societal problems, as you say, it depends on how it gets used. Right. And ultimately, that that’s the that’s the foundation that you’re proving with the companies that you have invested in and or have serially created to prove out that point. You’ve said that actually you’ve been quoted, and I wholeheartedly agree with you, that the downturn in the Bitcoin and crypto currency was probably a good thing, right? It kind of sifted out those bad players in the market or people that were perhaps more focused on like, let’s go with the hype rather than actually doing what you’re talking about, which is like, let’s invest in a sustainable infrastructure that actually works and capture on those ideas wherever they may come.

Rita Trehan: [00:27:32] So I have to come into a little bit about knowing a bit more, digging deeper. You know, I don’t have the facial tech AI that tells me like what you’re thinking right now, but I am intrigued by that. We may talk about that later on another on another webcast. But let’s let’s delve a little bit more into Alan. Right. You know, here you are, 30 under 30. Having created this, you talk about the need to be tough and ruthless, right? Like hard work, determination, but this kind of ruthless quality I like ruthless like you look like a ruthless kind of guy, But I don’t think you mean ruthless in the sense of like just in it. For me. I think you are ruthless. Is a different kind of take on that word. Tell me if I’m right or wrong and what you mean by that.

Alan Vey: [00:28:20] Yeah, I think the most important thing is to try and be objective, right? As much as possible, keeping an even temperament, not being too happy with any of the apps. So people agreeing with you, not being too depressed with any of the downs or people disagreeing with you as much as possible. Trying to be objective, trying to be rational. And people at times can say that comes across a bit cold. And those things that I’ve had to work on over the years is especially with staff internally and telling people, Yeah, great job, but they’ve done a great job or now we need to improve this or that. Because most of the time we all work really hard. We get it done and then we move on to the next thing. So I think, yeah, ruthless is not intended to mean. China doesn’t matter. The other people don’t matter. Let’s just optimize towards ourselves. I think ruthless in pursuit of the objective without distractions. Right. That’s that’s the really important part. Objective focused and not getting taken off path by things that don’t really matter to the core objective of what we are all waking up for.

Rita Trehan: [00:29:33] So I think that’s a great payback moment. I always have like there’s always an aha moment happens on my podcast, me personally, and that was my aha moment. And this is the one where I say, go back and relisten, rewind listeners and just listen to that sentence again because it was all about have the focus, don’t get distracted, stay true to what you’re trying to to achieve and be really disciplined about it. I guess that’s where maybe some of that goal came in to it, but I really like that. Ruthless In your pursuit of what your goal is, I think is a very powerful message for businesses in general to stay the course and not get sidetracked and be true to following that that path. I go back and listen to that. There’s plenty of nuggets all around. But but that one, I think, just kind of hits. So I’ve got to ask as well. Right. We’ve got to like it’s really current. It’s been in the news this week. I’ve been on I’ve tried to chat TB to right. People may not know what it is, but I’ve been quite intrigued with it and it’s I it’s in the space where you have, you know, you are an expert in there’s lots in the media about Microsoft’s $10 Billion potential investment in this in this new thing where you kind of go in, you ask it a question. It’s the kind of the taking the web to to potentially a web3. It’s kind of letting you ask questions and get information back. Is A.I. designing A.I., As some people have said, this could be What’s Google doing about this? Because suddenly they’re in the space of like, hang on a minute, isn’t that what, like, I’m just going to Google this dead? And is this now playing in this space? Our favorite saying, What’s your take? What do you say to the people that are debating this right now? Because it’s a big thing into Web3, I think, is it not, or am I wrong?

Alan Vey: [00:31:27] I think it’s really exciting to see how far I has come. We had Siri and Alexa and all of these tools for a while, but that’s its really fancy way of selecting from a menu with GPP when you kind of interact with this bot. It feels very different than the kind of intelligence it shows. I mean, I don’t know to what degree you’ve played with it, but one thing I like to do is I would do these kind of meetings. Right. And I have a tool that transcribes the conversation, and then I’ll put that into chat and say, please give me the action points and the kind of summary and everything. And it’s amazing how accurately it even does that. So processing new data, drawing on other data. Once this thing gets properly let go, right now I think we have beta version three, version fours coming, which is sort of a whole nother level. So I think it’s very exciting what the best technology can do. I’ve heard I think I saw Google’s got kind of red alerts around.

Rita Trehan: [00:32:26] They say they’re now fast tracking their version of it. So.

Alan Vey: [00:32:31] Exactly. And then Microsoft, one interesting thing that I saw from the deal structure with Microsoft and Chat Group, I believe in the early years, they from any profits, they recoup their investment. But over time, it shifts to a 5050 split. And in the long term, the profits stay with church. And so despite this investment, it’s really them looking at it as whatever the timeline is, 5 to 10 years of first to market and being able to use this and ultimately giving up the revenues in the future for that advantage. So it’s not even your traditional kind of investment, which is very interesting to see sort of strategic thinking that might be happening at Microsoft that that suggests.

Rita Trehan: [00:33:14] That’s nice thing. Yeah. They all said some interesting things in the space without a doubt. Yeah. And you obviously see it as a play for all of the things and where you’ve invested and kind of what you are trying to to bring forward. I mean this is this is continuing to open up the avenues, is it not? Is it not heightening the the sort of the awareness of just the capability of what technology can do and how blockchain can play a part in this?

Alan Vey: [00:33:44] Yeah. So between sort of blockchain and especially the payments infrastructure that we’re seeing really starting to change on the financial markets, these sort of intelligent AI tools that will ultimately be able to join anything that is digital and concepts around sort of metaverse, where obviously Facebook announced this a couple of years ago now and people are more and more kind of building out those elements, but you’re starting to see a world come together of I don’t know if you’re familiar with Steven Spielberg’s ready. Player one but.

Rita Trehan: [00:34:15] Now, yeah.

Alan Vey: [00:34:16] It’s kind of live in this virtual world. You transact there and every now and then the real world is kind of not so interesting and you just get a sense of your core substance that you’ve won by playing this game in in this kind of fake world and you’re playing against real people and computer intelligence. So it’s very advanced. It’s pushing forward things significantly. And I’m really excited to see what happens with GPT. I mean, it’s really good times for the AI industry and something. I finished my master’s in AI in 2016 and couldn’t even dream of something like this when you know, you kind of reach the edge of where certain elements of research are in the world and to see what’s happened in what, five, six years. Yeah, it’s very exciting to see what might happen in the next ten. We’ve just got to be careful with how it plays out from us.

Rita Trehan: [00:35:03] Yeah, well, I hate to see you writing about it and talking about it, because I do think it does need visionaries like yourself to actually be contributing to the chat on these new technologies as they come out. So I hope to hope to be reading back your opinions on this in the future. I’m going to come back with one question that is particularly, I guess, important in my kind of my heart, I guess, which is do you think that your diverse experience, having lived and worked in different cultures and and what you’re trying to what you have shown with what you’ve done with blockchain, is it truly opening up the opportunities for inclusion? There are many people, as you’ve said, like whether it’s payments that people, you know, trying to send payments to across countries in underserved populations and underrepresented founders and massively continues to be an issue, does blockchain and web3, does it open up that And do you think your own personal experience of having that diversity is actually core to the potential success of entrepreneurs? I’m curious.

Alan Vey: [00:36:16] So to the first half of that question, is blockchain opening things up more? Yes, to a degree, especially because of the lack of regulation. Right? There was the ability for everyone and anybody to kind of get involved in this market early on. And that led to a lot of problems because, of course, the easiest way of making money is to kind of cheat. And if you have a scenario where that’s possible and not enforced, that’s why we have some of the negative sentiment from the 2017 ICO bubble and various other crypto winters we’ve had since then. But the flip side of that coin is that everybody has access, including. Various underrepresented people. People who don’t quite have the advantages, or shall we say, the access to capital, the democratization of capital is a very important one in solving this problem. Right? If you look at the sort of founders, there’s a demographic profile that emerges as a significant majority, despite merit wise, you wouldn’t necessarily expect it to be the case. So that democratization of access to capital, to debt, to financial markets that operate more efficiently, less relationship based, more merit based, because you just have the transparency of the KPIs that you can enforce on the blockchain, right? It shows transparency. So you can see how many transactions are occurring, how many users there are these kinds of things. I believe that there is the ability, if people so choose and the regulators leave room for it, for this technology to to create a big difference in sort of inclusion when it comes to experience the second half of what you’re asking there.

Alan Vey: [00:37:59] I’ve noticed it in our businesses that the best teams are those with diversity of thought. So often having different backgrounds leads to diversity of thought. If you’ve lived in various different countries, I remember when I moved to Germany, I didn’t speak German and I went into a German school, not an international school. And certain things that you just think are like universal truths in the world. As a kid, I’m just not because people laugh at you for it, or it’s just completely different cultures. And those kind of learnings. But the moving around is not the only way of getting those right, going through difficulties and overcoming difficulties, really taking challenges head on. That’s what ultimately builds sort of diversity of thought, diversity of experience and from what I’ve seen, so the better. And does that impact performance? What I’ve seen with teams is the more diversity of thought that exists people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, genders. Sexual preferences, whatever all the arbitrary classifications that we create around people, the more diverse peoples are, often the more, shall we say, friction there is between the team, the good friction, because people have different viewpoints, they don’t just agree. And that ultimately if you have the right management structure and a very emotionally intelligent manager to make sure that you keep this productive, that’s where you get the best ideas from them. So, yes, I think it I think it’s important to evaluate myself is difficult. I believe it’s helped me, but who knows?

Rita Trehan: [00:39:43] Yeah, well, you sound to me like you have a mindset that says I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room. I need to, like, have that diversity of thought around me to help me ask the questions. Why? Why not? What if? What could be? So that’s the sense I get from who you are. And certainly you’ve been an inspiration to many, many people. If anybody looks you up, they can just see how much of a thought leader you have been for the tech industry and to individuals, which is the kind of leader I call them, leaders of difference. You are the leader of difference that hopefully is going to continue to make that make that traction going forward. We need more of them. We need we need the advocates and you certainly in the businesses that you’ve done are taking them there. So I think well, I’m certainly much more educated on on web3 and blockchain, so I no longer feel like I need to refer to Blockchain for dummies, which I felt I did need back in probably 2017. I think it was when my head was hurting and I thought like, I’m never going to get this. And I would encourage people to kind of like really read about it. It is important and certainly we’re going to get on to how they can find out a bit more from you. But as much as I’d like to to chat more, I’m conscious that we are running out of time. So I do have one last question which I ask everybody, which is they’re daring to moment. So it could be something that you’re daring to do. It’s you’re daring to moment, it’s what you did or it’s a daring to just believe what you’re daring to moment that you want to share with the listeners.

Alan Vey: [00:41:23] The biggest one that sticks out to me is a personal risk I took when when starting all of this, I had just finished uni and you don’t have much money as a as a recent graduate got your uni debts to kind of deal with and I just raised my first angel round for a business. So this was late 2016. I raised £80,000 and now I wanted to spend every dollar as little as I could to get as much as I could out of it. And from a personal perspective, that meant cutting at many costs in my personal life as possible, right? Dedicating ridiculous amount of time to work. So I had maybe £1,000 in savings or something like that, and I decided to invest all of it into cryptocurrency ether. Etherium So I think it was about $10 at the time when I made the purchase and. Then when it got to about $50, my investors told me an amazing return five times in, whatever, six months or something. You should cash that out and sit on that. And I was like, No, guys, I believe in this. And anyway, I needed to go out and I’m going to be able to pay for my my noodles and whatever. And so I just left it in and it ended up going to so I ended up at 5000 at one point as it went through those phases, I was selling it off and actually paying for just my food and my eating and my whatever in London was just trying to build this business and draw any money on the company, spend that purely on marketing or third parties and whatnot to scale as much as possible. So there were a few times where I sat thinking. Am I really stupid for doing this and kind of doubting it? But looking back on it, it was for me, a big risk putting all of my money into something that was unproven. And everyone told me, What do you know about financial markets in the world? But it paid off, fortunately, and it helped me build the companies and and get to that next level.

Rita Trehan: [00:43:23] So I come back to your core experience is not everything. Believe a vision and real hard work and being ruthless in the pursuit of an idea and a passion. What counts? It sounds like that was your daring too. And boy, I mean, it’s showing its its fruit, if you like, in just how it’s helping in many, many sectors. So, Alan, it’s been a privilege to talk to you. If people do want to know more about you, about your company, about how they might even work with you and or your mentorship as well, and what’s the best way to get hold of you? What’s your website? Do you have LinkedIn, Twitter? What would they be?

Alan Vey: [00:44:07] So the best the one that I’m personally the most active on is LinkedIn. That’s just my name, Alan. But otherwise you have the companies Aventis, Aventis, today, AT&T, US Dollar, and then all of the socials are sort of at Aventis Network as well. I’m on Twitter as well at own pace. Yeah.

Rita Trehan: [00:44:26] Okay, That’s great. Okay. Well, thank you so much for being on kicking off 2023 with such a brilliant podcast on a topic that is really, really hot at the moment. So this podcast is going out ASAP because there’s lots of people that need to learn about this as fast as they can. And if anybody wants to hear and learn a bit more about and worldwide and what we’re doing, you can get us on our website. Ww Wine.com If you like this podcast, please like it, please share it. And please recognize the importance of technology in 2023. It is really important and it is a way to change the world. We’re big believers. Don’t wait for the world to change. Change the world you’re in. So do that. You can get me. And you’re here where you can get in contact with us. If you’re interested in learning more about what we do as well. So thank you very much. Alan. It’s been great having you.

Alan Vey: [00:45:18] Thanks for having me. Retranslated chatting to you.

Intro: [00:45:20] Thanks for listening. Enjoy the conversation. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss out on future episodes of Daring To. Also, check out our website AOL White dot com for some great resources around business in general leadership and how to bring about change. See you next time.

Photographer Casey Howard and Jared Rhodenizer with Horse.TV and CarsonJames.com

January 26, 2023 by angishields

Cherokee Business Radio

Photographer Casey Howard and Jared Rhodenizer with Horse.TV and CarsonJames.com

00:00 /

Today’s Episode is Brought to You By:

Casey McMinn Howard, with Casey McMinn Photography, is Atlanta’s most sought after maternity and newborn photographer, providing a high-end, luxury experience for busy moms and dads who value their time.

We are a maternity, newborn and milestone photography studio in the Atlanta area, specializing in a luxury portrait experience from start to finish, complete with professional hair and makeup, access to our inventory of studio gowns and wardrobe for family, and professionally designed artwork, hand delivered to your home.

Connect with Casey on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Jared Rhodenizer, Founder and President at Horse.TV and CarsonJames.com, is a digital marketer, copywriter, Facebook ad specialist, video editor, interior designer, and former cowboy.

Connect with Jared on LinkedIn and Facebook.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:24] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this morning. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by the business RadioX Main Street Warriors Program Defending Capitalism, promoting Small Business and Supporting Our local Community. For more information, head on over to Main Street Warriors dot org. And speaking of the Main Street Warriors program, I am delighted to announce that Diesel David Inc has stepped up to be our 2023 title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors. Thank you Diesel David Inc. Go check them out at Diesel. David Dotcom. You guys are in for such a real treat this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast. First up on Cherokee Business Radio this morning with CarsonJames.com and Horse TV, Mr. Jared Rhodenizer. How are you, man?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:01:23] I’m doing great, man. How are.

Stone Payton: [00:01:25] You? I am doing well. I have so been looking forward to having you in the studio. We see each other early on Thursday mornings. You do such a marvelous job running the young professionals of Woodstock.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:01:36] Well, thank you.

Stone Payton: [00:01:36] And just really looking forward to this conversation. I think a great place to start might be mission purpose. What are you and your team out there trying to do with these two entities? How are you trying to serve folks?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:01:49] Well, there are two kind of different entities, but essentially what we’re doing is we’re creating horse training online where people can access thousands of hours, literally of online horse training videos to fix problems, create better horses, and just create like a better world for the horses. Because if the horses are happy, the people are happy and the people are happy, the horses are happy. So it goes back and forth. So that’s really our main purpose is just helping people fix problems and get along with their horses. And then horse TV is like I describe it as the Netflix for horse people. So it also has the entertainment aspects. We have movies, documentaries, TV shows. It’s everything horses related.

Stone Payton: [00:02:30] Take me back to the beginning, man. What is the origin story? How did all this get started?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:02:34] Okay, so. So my brother Carson is my business partner. He’s always been, like, phenomenal with horses. But one of those people that, like, no one, really knew who he was. He had like, 40 bucks to his name, Nothing. And I worked for this guy for two years. I still refer to him as like, the God of marketing. He took me under his wing and like, taught me everything about marketing. We were doing real estate or tools for real estate agents. So after I learned all this stuff, I was like, Man, Carson is so talented. I wonder if we could like, take the same principles of what I learned here and apply it to, like the horse niche. So it was just an idea. So I went up to Carson. I said, Hey, can I film some videos of you? He was like, For what? I said, We’re going to we’re going to see if people like them. We’re going to see if people want to buy them. He was like, All right. So I spent a day out there and I filmed some videos, throw them on a DVD and ran that DVD on Facebook for free, plus 4.95 shipping. So the DVD is free. You just pay $5 shipping. And this was like an hour and a half long DVD. I mean, it was pretty freaking good deal. Wow. And the first year we did over $1,000,000 that completely blew up. And after they bought the DVD, we had an upsell page where people could click a one time offer where they could join our subscription for $20 a month. And in the subscription they get all the videos on the DVD, plus all the courses we had at the time. We now have 12 courses. I think we started out with two or three when we first started.

Stone Payton: [00:04:02] How did you get the traction so fast.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:04:06] Learning Facebook ads? Man Everybody’s on Facebook. Well, at least our customers are on Facebook. Yeah, just Facebook is incredible when you know how to use it. You can also waste a lot of money.

Stone Payton: [00:04:18] On.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:04:18] Facebook if you don’t know what you’re doing. I’ve been there, done that, too.

Stone Payton: [00:04:22] So what’s your favorite part at this point in your work? What are you enjoying the most?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:04:27] I love every aspect of marketing. So it’s not just the ads, it’s the copywriting, it’s the designing, the sales pages, it’s split testing. It’s finding out, okay, what’s going to convert. Oh man, that converted better than this. And one interesting test that we keep running and it keeps winning is we’ll do like a very pretty like really clean like an Apple type sales page, you know, where all the graphics are pristine and the wording is pristine and then we’ll split test it. And I always do it because it always wins and I don’t understand why, but we’ll split test it against a page that’s like ugly. It’s just a white page with a bunch of black text on it and the graphics aren’t, you know, it just it looks less, a lot less professional. And I’m telling you what, man, every single time that sales page, that ugly sales page wins over the nice one. And so, like, that’s the one thing I always tell people, like when they’re designing a new product page, you’re coming out with a new product. I’m like, Be careful not to make it too shiny. Because if it’s too shiny, a lot of times it’ll turn people away.

Stone Payton: [00:05:26] That is interesting and surprising to me. Yeah.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:05:30] Wow. Pretty wild.

Stone Payton: [00:05:33] So what is your advice, if any, to someone getting their their business off the ground and trying to to do it with the benefit of these digital platforms? Are there some major dos and don’ts?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:05:46] Yes, there are major don’ts, but I would rather talk about the major dos. And these are things some people are doing them, but very few people are doing them. And the horse neck is no different than any niche. If you have a product that you can teach people something or you just have like an e commerce product or something like that, even photography, this will work. So you want to be willing to go in the hole a tad. You try to break even, but be willing to go in the hole just a tad on the front end of your sales page on Facebook. So we like, for example, we’re running ads right now for a problem solving course where they get 42 videos and it’s only $4. And then we have an order bump where they can add it to their cart if they want to. For the digital version of our book, which is $10. 50% of people take that order bump. So we have an average order value of $9. Now, when I run ads on Facebook to that sales page, we break even. It costs about between seven and $9 to get a customer. But we have a customer and we didn’t pay for it. It was a free customer. And then immediately after they buy that, there’s an immediate upsell that says, Hey, do you want to join our membership and get all of these other courses, including kind of the same thing we started with? You know, we haven’t really changed the model that much and we get a 30% upsell rate on that. So not only are we getting free leads, building our email list for free because we’re breaking even, we’re also gaining members by doing that $20 a month subscribers, and that is recurring revenue that comes in every single month.

Stone Payton: [00:07:21] So it’s one thing to get a member it clearly another, I would think, in keeping them. So is your day to day more invested in making sure that you keep that $20 a month member?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:07:33] Well, somewhat. I oversee it. My brother Carson is the face of the company. The company is called Carson James. That’s his name. So he’s more focused on that. I mean, I oversee it and help, but my main I guess what I do would be sales and marketing and stuff like that, making sure everything works and nothing breaks.

Stone Payton: [00:07:53] And at the same time, as I understand it, you are a real cowboy. You have been a real cowboy in.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:08:01] The past and some of it’s still there probably, I reckon. But yeah, my parents grew up on a ranch or I grew up on a ranch. My parents were actual like real cowboys, like you see on Yellowstone. Like they went on the cattle drives, they lived in the tents and had the chuck wagons and everything. And so I lived in Montana till I was about, I don’t know, five or seven years old. And yeah, we lived on a ranch, I mean, just in the bunkhouse, just like you see on on TV. It was it was pretty wild.

Stone Payton: [00:08:29] Well, I wanted to ask you how authentic, because I love Yellowstone. Of course. How authentic is Yellowstone? Is that pretty? Pretty reflective?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:08:36] Some of it is. Some of it’s extremely accurate and some of it’s drama. Yeah, but Carson, you know, he went on he went beyond what you know, we grew up on the ranch, but then Carson actually got a job working for a ranch out west. He’s worked for several ranches. He worked on a million acre ranch in Oregon. And he was an actual cowboy, too, like working every day, riding horses and just like on Yellowstone. So sometimes I’ll sit and I’ll watch it with him and I’ll be like, All right, tell me, tell me how much of this is real? And he’ll be like, Oh, that’s not real. Or Oh, that’s that’s pretty. That’s pretty accurate right there. So yeah, there’s some things that are that are pretty close for sure.

Stone Payton: [00:09:13] So at the top of the show, I mentioned that you and I get to hang out on Thursday mornings at Young Professionals of Woodstock. What compelled you to not only be a part of that group, but you’re you’re like our leader now.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:09:25] Well, so the horse KKTV and Carson James is like a global company. It’s not, you know, a local business. So I don’t really get a whole lot of business benefit from coming to those networking groups. But I like the friendships and I like the relationships. And I said the other morning I was like, All my friends are here, you know, like all of my friends and the people that I’m closest to are in that group. So that’s that’s why I come and that’s why I do it.

Stone Payton: [00:09:51] Well, it’s certainly been my experience and I didn’t really know what I would find when I decided to move here to Woodstock from East Cobb and when I decided to open a studio because because our business is a little more I don’t know if it’s I guess it’s global, but it’s certainly national. The Business RadioX network. And I told Holly, we’re going to open up a studio, we’re going to do the community thing and the business community here in this Cherokee County area. It’s phenomenal. Such a supportive group, isn’t it?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:10:17] It’s wild, man. The some of the best entrepreneurs and the most creative people I’ve ever. Live right here in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s wild. I got a head shot done yesterday by a guy named Jerry King. And I’m telling you what, one of the best headshots I’ve ever had in my life. It was great. And like, we’re sitting here with this photographer. I looked at her pictures before I came on. I was blown away. I was like, Holy cow, man. We just surrounded by talent right here. It’s unbelievable.

Stone Payton: [00:10:42] It is. So Casey would horses make good subject matter, too?

Casey Howard: [00:10:46] Yes.

Casey Howard: [00:10:48] There is a newborn photographer who I first started kind of following, and she was like my guiding light. And she now photographs horses. Julia Kelleher, look her up.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:10:59] That name sounds familiar.

Casey Howard: [00:11:01] I’m sure you’ve seen her. Her horse pictures. Okay. They’re beautiful. Yeah. That’s crazy.

Stone Payton: [00:11:06] Yeah. So what’s next for you, man? You’re just going to continue to expand the Empire. You’ve got business number three lined up.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:11:12] I have some ideas. I’m not certain on anything yet. As far as another business, I do have some ideas because this. This formula that I follow with the ads and I call them tripwires, you know, getting people in on breaking even on the on the on the front end of your funnel.

Stone Payton: [00:11:27] What a cool name for that.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:11:28] Yeah. The trip wires lead magnets or when you get leads trip wires or when you make low end sales to break even to create bigger sales. But the point is the niche. It’s a very niche thing and you can take these same principles and apply them to any niche. So like if you want to teach someone to learn how to take pictures, it would work. I’ve got a guy right now that wants to do a homesteading thing where like it’s a subscription where he teaches you tips and tricks on how to homestead, how to grow your food, how to collect water and things like that. So it’s it’s kind of unlimited what you can do with this Internet marketing stuff.

Stone Payton: [00:12:03] Well, it’s interesting that you bring that up. Casey and I were talking a little bit I was talking about the Main Street Warriors program because we designed sort of this way to serve the smaller businesses where, you know, our fee structure is a little out of reach and doesn’t necessarily make sense for the most of the solopreneur, the startups, but they still want to participate in some way. I wonder if you could help us with the Main Street Warriors program to figure out how to not only just get the word out, but give these small business people a place in a way and make it low risk, high gain. I’ll bet you with the with what you’ve learned, I bet we could apply some of that methodology to something like the mainstream.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:12:38] Oh, absolutely. Local advertising locally on Facebook is so much easier and cheaper than advertising, like nationwide or even globally because you’re only trying to reach, you know, a certain group of people within a certain distance. So it’s you reach a lot more people for a lot less money.

Stone Payton: [00:12:55] Well, I hope you get this third thing going, man. I think you just picked up a new client.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:13:00] Yeah, maybe so.

Stone Payton: [00:13:01] If we can afford you. But we’d love to get your help on that, because everything I know about any of this, from SKO to the trip wires, I mean, you could stick in your eye and still see out. It would take all the help we could get on that. Absolutely.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:13:15] Sure, man.

Stone Payton: [00:13:16] All right. Going forward, what plans do you have for young professionals of Woodstock? And on the community side of things.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:13:24] Young professionals of Woodstock is exactly how I want it to be. Everyone loves it. I don’t want to change it because I people people love it. And I don’t want to. You shouldn’t change something that people love so much. So the plans are to just keep going. I mean, every now and then I’ll try like something new. I’ll kind of test it out and if people like it will stick with it. But like if it doesn’t get a whole, like a huge response, then usually I just go back to how we’ve always done it.

Stone Payton: [00:13:49] So tell the folks about the format. I could do it, but I think you’ll do a much better job. And I just it is so different from any other network kind of thing I’ve ever been a part of, and I feel like I’ve gotten to know everyone in that room far better, far faster than anything else. Saved maybe having people come on a radio show and visit with them. But I mean, tell them about the format, how.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:14:11] You do it. It’s it’s more about creating personal relationships than it is creating business connections. So what happens is everyone gets there. It starts at 730 and I have the question of the week and it’s usually like a semi personal question, like what are you afraid of the most? Or what’s the funnest thing you’ve ever done? Or I don’t have the list in front of me, but well.

Stone Payton: [00:14:32] I got to tell you, last week was one of my favorite. I’m going to start. I’m thinking I’m gonna steal a page out of your book. What do you have a tendency to nerd out about? Yes, that would a great question.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:14:41] That was probably the best question I’ve ever asked as far as the response rate. And I like, you know, I’m all geeky about the split testing and stuff, so I’m always interested to see like test my response rates on the questions. That was probably the best one for sure. Everyone loved it.

Stone Payton: [00:14:55] But yeah, in doing that, Casey, you ought to come visit sometime. It’s I mean, it’s just a.

Casey Howard: [00:14:59] Blast so crazy that you’re here right now because I’ve been thinking about going to the I’ve seen this I’ve been thinking about going to these meetings for a long time, but I’m like, Oh, I don’t know anyone. I don’t know. I just haven’t made that leap so.

Stone Payton: [00:15:13] I can make it happen for you for free plus $5 shipping. Okay. But that’s the.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:15:19] Big difference about Whipple is it’s not. Everyone trying to hand out business cards. It’s not everyone trying to, you know, get their next connection. It’s really about like making friends and creating relationships. And yes, business does come out of that. I’ve done business with I don’t know how many people in that room, but that’s not the point. The point is let’s create a relationship. Let’s get to know each other. Let’s be friends. And then if business comes from it, great. I mean, most of the people in there are business owners, and if they’re not their executives or higher ups, and then we got people who I mean, anybody’s welcome if you’re just interested in business or you just want to make friends, you know, come on, everybody is welcome.

Stone Payton: [00:15:58] And we get together early on Thursday morning. I get there about 720 people are already there. So I don’t know what the official.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:16:03] You can get there as early as seven. We start at 730 at the circuit in Woodstock.

Stone Payton: [00:16:08] And I always load up on some circle of friends coffee and it’s it’s fun, especially when you have someone you don’t recognize if they’re behind you in line. But I’m a cup of coffee. It’s it’s a blast. But you’re doing a fantastic. Thank you.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:16:20] I appreciate it.

Stone Payton: [00:16:21] Well, I have so much admiration for what you do and how you do it, both on on the business side and on the community impact side. And I got to say, man, you got so many irons in the fire at some point and you’re such an up and enthusiastic guy, you’re always looking for ways to help people. And I got to believe sometimes you must begin to run out of gas and get a little you must have to recharge. Where do you go? And I don’t necessarily mean a physical place, but where do you go to kind of recharge, get inspired and geared back up to get back out there and serve? How do you do it?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:16:53] Video games.

Stone Payton: [00:16:54] Video games, Yes. Okay.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:16:55] I have a second screen. You know, I have two screens on my computer. And when I’m not playing video games, the second screen is the second monitor to my computer. But I’m telling you what, man, my day to day, I’ll sit down and I’ll work for a few hours and I’ll be like, Oh, I’m tired of working, or I got to take a break and I’ll turn the monitor on to the Xbox and I’ll play Xbox for an hour and then I’ll get tired of that and I’ll go back to work. And so, yeah, it’s that’s, that’s what I like to do. I really enjoy gaming. It’s probably one of my biggest hobbies. I’ve tried to get into other things. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked to play golf and I like the people, but I don’t. I just cannot hit that golf ball. So it’s not something I ever want to try again. I decided last time I was like, I’m never doing this again.

Stone Payton: [00:17:36] So I like being around the golf tournaments, like the fundraisers, and I’ve done like the where you get a hit at once and then I think out of 18 holes they used my shot one time or something. Yeah, and I enjoy that. And we’ve done like the remote broadcast at the golf tournament. So I like the the ambiance hanging out with the people. But the golf for me, not, not my thing either, man.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:17:56] Yeah, Yeah, not for me.

Stone Payton: [00:17:59] Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you because I am reading a book now, that is, I’m really fired up about and I hope I don’t screw up the title. What does it costing you not to listen? Okay. And so I’m really enjoying that and think I’m thinking about sharing it with our studio partners and our new clients and that kind of thing. But I’m curious, what’s on your nightstand, man? What are you reading these days?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:18:18] Okay, so there are a few key authors if anyone’s interested in like learning about trip wires and lead magnets and this type of marketing. Dan Kennedy Any book by Dan Kennedy, Frank Kern, Ryan Dice or Russell Brunson, any books by those guys will steer you down the right path. And those are the gods in this niche.

Stone Payton: [00:18:38] I’m so glad I asked, man. I got I got a list for the next three months. That’s fantastic.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:18:43] Any book.

Stone Payton: [00:18:44] So when you go about reading a book like that for your business, do you have a a methodology? Do you just dive in? Do you do you paint it and highlight? What do you.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:18:53] Do? I just kind of dive in. I skim most of it. I’m not a I have severe ADHD, so I don’t sit down and like read a full book, but like, I’ll skim through and like if I’ve already feel like I understand something, I might skip a few pages and then I just skim through and but everything I read like I always pick up and even if it’s something that I’ve already learned or something I’ve already kind of looked into, it reignites it, and it’s like, Oh yeah, I should be doing that. And it just reminds me, Oh yeah, I’m not doing that right now. I need to be doing that. So that’s, that’s probably the most helpful thing is just being reminded of all the things that because with this marketing thing, there’s so many, there’s so many roads can go down, there’s so many paths that cross. It’s it’s, it’s impossible to do it all. But you want to find like the top five and stick with it for sure.

Stone Payton: [00:19:42] So on the other side of the coin, is there a book in you? You ever thought about writing a book?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:19:46] I thought about it, but I’m not convinced yet. We’ll see. No, I might wait a little bit longer and see what happens. It might get more interesting.

Stone Payton: [00:19:55] What’s how I got in this business. I self-published a book a long, long time ago when I had black hair. Yeah, I met my business partner, Lee Kantor, and he showed me what we were doing and we were off and running. I’ll tell you a reason to think about seriously. Consider doing it, particularly if you do decide to go down that path of your third business. I found in writing the book and it did have some success, but even if all the copies would have stayed in Mom’s garage, one of the benefits that came out of that was it. Really helped me solidify, crystallize my own thinking and be able to articulate that much more effectively what I thought I had learned about the topics that I was trying to consult.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:20:32] Yeah, that’s a great point.

Stone Payton: [00:20:33] Yeah. So, yeah, do that book, man. Okay. And if you don’t want to sit down in front of a blank page, come in here and we’ll just talk.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:20:40] It and then we’ll talk. There you go. Yeah, that’s funny. You mentioned that we do have a book. It’s called Tales of Horsemanship on Amazon that Carson is not a writer. And he he’s just and he can’t he can’t spell very well. He’s a great horseman, but Carson cannot. Grammar is not his thing. So that’s how we wrote the book. Carson transcribed all of the chapters in the book, and then we had to. We went, sent them to Rivka and had them transcribed.

Stone Payton: [00:21:05] Well, there you go.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:21:06] Yeah, But then, you know, we had to severely clean it up. But that’s how we wrote the whole book was audio transcription.

Stone Payton: [00:21:12] So does he look or at least act a little bit like RIP or one of those characters or the other stuff?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:21:17] Carson’s the most nicest, helpful guy you’ll ever meet in your life. There’s not a taste of a hole in him whatsoever.

Stone Payton: [00:21:26] And he’s out west. Yeah.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:21:27] Or he he used to go out west in the summers. He lives in Florida right now. He has a house in Florida, and that’s where he lives.

Stone Payton: [00:21:34] Very cool. Well, shout out to Carson. Thanks. Yeah.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:21:36] I’ll send it to him so he can have a listen.

Stone Payton: [00:21:39] All right, So if our listeners would like to learn more, have a conversation with you or someone on your team, learn more about either the Carson Gamescom or the horse KKTV, or maybe have a conversation with you about this other thing, What’s the best way for him to connect with you?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:21:52] Add me on facebook. It’s facebook.com. Jared jared roden iser rh modine is there. I try to add everybody on facebook. It’s like my rolodex.

Stone Payton: [00:22:03] More or less. Well, thanks for coming in and visiting with us. Man. This has been insightful, inspiring, informative. It’s it’s fun to have you in the studio, man.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:22:11] I really enjoyed it. It was a.

Stone Payton: [00:22:12] Blast. Yeah. Hey, how about hanging out with us to visit with our next guest?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:22:16] Yeah, absolutely. I want to hear all about this, actually.

Stone Payton: [00:22:18] All right, We’re ready for the headliner now. Here we go. Please join us in welcoming to the broadcast with Casey McMinn Photography, The lady herself, Ms.. Casey Howard, how are you?

Casey Howard: [00:22:30] Good morning. I’m good. How are you?

Stone Payton: [00:22:32] I’m doing well. So what’d you learn in that last segment?

Casey Howard: [00:22:35] So much? Yes. We’re going to have to keep in touch after this, because I feel like there are so many things I need to ask him about.

Stone Payton: [00:22:42] And that was an information packed 20 minutes. I’d like to hook it up to a firehose.

Casey Howard: [00:22:46] Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:22:47] God knows his stuff. And I’m serious. He’s he’s just such a great job facilitating the Whipple and probably anything else that he does. All right, so let’s talk about this business mission purpose. What’s driving you to do this kind of work?

Casey Howard: [00:23:00] Let’s see. So this all started years ago. It was my side hustle and I was working in a corporate job and it was fine. But I always knew that that’s like not where I want it to be. But at the same time, I didn’t really know how to work for myself, so I just kind of started a side hustle. I always love photography. I had been doing it for years. I worked at a studio, like a corporate studio. I worked for somebody else, basically. And that’s where it all started, where I realized this is what I really want to do. And so fast forward a little while, maybe five years or so. I started I got I had my own camera, I started doing my own thing and I started taking pictures of whatever people would hire me for. So I was doing weddings, senior pictures, babies, families, all the things, right? So that was kind of my side hustle for years and started before I had kids. And then in 2016, my first daughter was born. And so I thought like, Man, I really don’t want to go back to work after she was born. Of course we don’t want to go back. We just want to stay with them. And so I’m like, I really just want to do this for a living. But I was not busy enough at all, so I did have to go back to work and I made it my goal. I said, The next time I’m pregnant and I have a baby, I’m not going to go back. Like that’s going to be my deadline.

Stone Payton: [00:24:21] I made that decision. That was for the second.

Casey Howard: [00:24:23] Yes, that was my deadline. And so I don’t even think I told my husband that. But like secretly, secretly, I was like, I hope I get pregnant soon because I don’t want to go to work anymore. But yeah, so I just kept on hustling. It was my side hustle, if you want to call it that. But yeah, just really trying to make it happen and get enough business going. I really had no idea what I was doing business wise. I was just finding outlets through Facebook and different groups and places. I could ask questions about all these things and I made it happen. My second child, she was born in August of 2018, and I remember, so I didn’t tell my my work where I was employed until like the very end of my maternity leave when I was supposed to be going back. I remember making that call and I was like, so nervous to tell him, I’m not going to come back. But then I was so excited, you know, hang up the phone. I’m like, Yes, that was like what I was wanting to do, and I made it happen. So finally I’m working for myself. And it was kind of a struggle at the beginning. A bunch of little kids running around to under two. So I had a 20 month old and a newborn and I’m like, thought it was a bright idea to start my business and and I did.

Casey Howard: [00:25:32] But I made it work. And it took a few years to really get things going and get busy to where I was actually making good money. And I got a mentor. She Yeah, she really helped me out. So I changed my whole business plan and the whole way I do things now. And so, yeah, here I am today, when I quit my corporate job, I was just traveling around to people’s houses to take their pictures wherever. And then I decided this. This is horrible. Like packing all this stuff in my car, you know, to go take pictures of these babies or these people’s houses. It was just too much. Then I decided, I’m going to have my studio in my house. And that was really not a smart idea with two small children, because then you have to clean up your entire house before people come over to take pictures in your home studio. And then I eventually did get my own studio space about two and a half years ago. It’s over in East Cobb Johnson’s Fair and Roseville Road, so it’s a really good spot. Been a whole whirlwind, but it’s been awesome.

Stone Payton: [00:26:30] So have you found yourself during that time? Have you gravitated to a certain type of photography, a niche, a certain constituency or two that you’re trying to serve?

Casey Howard: [00:26:39] Yes. So over the past six years, you know, I first started photographing anything under the sun, and then I started gravitating towards families and babies. And then recently, the past two and a half years since I’ve had my studio space, it’s been maternity in newborns and also also one year milestone cake smashed pictures because the newborn match, I love it. The newborns that come in, they want to.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:27:04] Was it was.

Casey Howard: [00:27:05] Fun. Yeah. So the newborns come in, but then the year later, you know, the parents want to bring them back for the first birthday. So that’s kind of been like something that’s been added in. But yes, maternity newborns in first birthday.

Stone Payton: [00:27:16] When’s the best time? When do you do the maternity pictures? Early on or like when she’s about to pop or how?

Casey Howard: [00:27:22] Well, no, I tell them not to wait that long because you don’t want to be super uncomfortable. You want to be like 30 to 36 weeks when you have a nice baby bump, Right? But you’re not super, super uncomfortable and exhausted because at the end of pregnancy, I know you guys don’t know, but it’s horrible. It’s a lot. So 30, 30, when we get.

Stone Payton: [00:27:42] Our own version of horror.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:27:43] I’m vaguely familiar with it.

Casey Howard: [00:27:45] It’s rough. So 30 to 36 weeks is a good time to get your pictures taken.

Stone Payton: [00:27:51] 30, 36 weeks. All right. So how about the the baby? When do you when is it time to take?

Casey Howard: [00:27:55] I always say that babies should come in. Well, first of all, the parents are scheduling these things like well in advance. And then when the baby arrives, then they will will schedule a time for them to come in. But it’s 5 to 20 days is the good like the sweet spot to photograph the baby. So usually like two, two and one half weeks is perfect for little newborns to come in because then, you know, you’ve had the baby, you’ve had time to go home from the hospital, have a week to adjust with having a new baby and then come to the studio and we’ll take your pictures. So, yeah, 5 to 20 days.

Stone Payton: [00:28:28] I say you mentioned a mentor earlier. I’m going to go say more about that.

Casey Howard: [00:28:33] So that was probably the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. She I found her on Facebook and through a newborn photographer’s group and she.

Stone Payton: [00:28:44] Let me just stop you there. Yeah, a newborn photographer’s group. So your crowd is kind of along Jared’s ethos, a collaborative group of people. You’re not fighting in court. No peace?

Casey Howard: [00:28:56] No. We’re helping each other out.

Stone Payton: [00:28:58] Wow. Okay, go ahead.

Casey Howard: [00:28:59] Yeah. So she she was the leader of the group who created this newborn photographer’s group, and she had a mentor program that I. I thought about it for quite some time, and I kept seeing all these other people who had joined and had success. And I finally did it. And, yeah, it changed my whole business model. What I’m doing now is creating like a more high end luxury experience. We provide everything really from start to finish. You’re not having to do anything at all. So we have gowns for mom, clothing for parents, clothing for toddlers, of course, everything that the babies would need, professional hair and makeup for mom and you name it. I mean, we have even beyond like the whole picture part of it, we have a changing table diapers, wipes, lotions, bottle, warmer snacks, coffee for the parents, snacks for the kids. There’s everything there. So yes. And then beyond all that, essentially how my whole model has changed as well. The luxury part of it like that, we’re helping. We’re giving you everything that you need so you’re not having to worry or stress about anything. But we are also providing you with some very, very nice artwork that you’re going to put up in your home for the next ten, 15, 20 years. You’re going to have some really nice wall art, you know, on your walls. We offer a bunch of different products. Now.

Stone Payton: [00:30:13] Talk more about the products, the deliverables, because because the experience just sounds marvelous, you know? Thank you. And you clearly have have discovered how. To excel at serving that that niche. Right. And then on the back side of this, there’s all kinds of good stuff.

Casey Howard: [00:30:28] Yeah. So when I first started taking people’s pictures long ago, when I started my business, I was just. It’s called Shoot and Burn photographer. So like taking their pictures and handing over the digitals and that’s that. And eventually over the past few years, I introduced selling products to my clients, which has enabled me to be a lot more lucrative in my business, and it’s also just so much more fulfilling. So these clients are now, you know, they’re so excited to get their artwork and they have they can see their pictures on the walls. Whereas before, when I would just sell digital images, then what do you really do with that? Like, are you going on your computer every day and looking at that now? So this has been really fulfilling to be selling this these big pieces of artwork that are going to go in their house. I mean, I sell large pieces from like 24 by 36 to a 40 by 60 canvases acrylics, which are more like a very reflective material. Acrylics are. So there’s all different pieces of wall art that you can get. And then I also have several different very nice high end albums to choose from. So it’s just really you create whatever you the collection that you want when you come in and I’ll help you obviously determine the best pieces for you. There’s a whole lot of questions that go into it. I ask my clients, What colors are you doing in your house? What is the nursery look like? What is your decorating style? So this all helps me to help them pick out the best products for them.

Stone Payton: [00:31:55] And it’s not theoretical. You’ve got examples of all of this.

Casey Howard: [00:31:57] Oh, it’s all there. Yeah. So they’re all singing person holding it, touching it, and really figuring out what they want When they come in to take their pictures. They’re looking at all this stuff and then by the time they come back for their sales appointment, they really have a good idea of what they want.

Stone Payton: [00:32:13] And you just reminded me of something I sell to dive into in our conversation with Jared. But you got some interior design chops, don’t you?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:32:20] Yes. I also have an alternate personality, Jerod, and he is my interior designer.

Casey Howard: [00:32:28] It’s hilarious.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:32:29] And he has an accent, too. Would you like to hear it? Absolutely. So, Jerod, talk like this. Okay. Every time I get into design mode, they’re going to. Jerod It’s kind of like Urkel and or Steve and Stefon, if you ever watch Family.

Casey Howard: [00:32:42] Oh, yeah, yeah. Stephen.

Stone Payton: [00:32:43] Stefan And is it Jerod that wears the suspenders are both personalities.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:32:48] Where they both do and they can switch back and forth at any time.

Casey Howard: [00:32:52] Amazing.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:32:53] I have something. So I, I would, I would bet that when you went from selling digital to physical, your sales.

Casey Howard: [00:33:02] It’s insane. Yeah.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:33:03] Yeah. Because crazy it’s really interesting when we’re running, you know, we used to sell DVDs and now, like, no one has a DVD player anymore, but that was something physical that you put in people’s hand. Whenever you’re selling something digital, it’s always a harder sell because right now we’re selling online courses and we’re still making money, but it’s nothing like it was when we were selling physical.

Casey Howard: [00:33:25] It’s so exciting to actually have something like holding. I prefer when I go and buy a new book. I don’t want to buy the audio version on Amazon. I buy the hardback copy because I want to write all in that thing. And I, I want to keep it. And it’s like, like I read this book, you know, and I like, want to have all of them to see, you know what I’m saying? So same kind of thing.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:33:45] There’s definitely something to it.

Stone Payton: [00:33:47] Well, I’m going to take that to heart, but both from my own business, but also for this Main Street warrior statement, maybe not all digital have some even taken.

Casey Howard: [00:33:55] Even.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:33:55] Taking digital files and putting them on a USB drive and then mailing the USB drive to someone. Aha is a lot of people doing that. And that works really, really well because it’s something they get in their hand. We just.

Casey Howard: [00:34:08] Bring tangible.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:34:09] Yeah, we just released a new product where it’s an MP3 player that it tells you how to train your horse like you wear it as you’re training and it tells you step by step. And everyone said, Why didn’t you do an app? Why don’t you do an app? Why don’t you do an app? Well, for one thing, a lot of these people, when they’re training their horses, are out in the field and they don’t have cell service. Another thing is it’s not a physical product. An app has an app has a value that people are accustomed to. But if we can put something in somebody’s hand, we can charge a lot more money for it. And in my opinion, it’s a better product because you don’t have the distractions of all the things that come through your phone.

Casey Howard: [00:34:45] All right.

Stone Payton: [00:34:45] Man, I’m wearing ton here. I tell you what, if you want to learn a lot of cool stuff for free, get yourself a radio show. Yeah. Just invite smart people to get it. Talk to. All right. I’m going to switch gears on you a little bit, Casey, and ask you a question I’ve been asking my whole career or for a week at least.

Casey Howard: [00:35:05] I hope I know the answer.

Stone Payton: [00:35:06] What do you have a tendency, no doubt about?

Casey Howard: [00:35:08] Okay. I was thinking about that answer when you when we were talking about the earlier. But. Well, I really nerd out about the show, friends pivot. Yeah. I mean, it’s a classic and it’s. I go to. So yeah, I love the show friends, but I also get really excited about buying a new business book. It’s so silly because growing up and going to school as a kid, I did not like reading. I, I want to read a book. I don’t even know if I read through a whole book, to be honest with you, when I was in school. But I found out that if it’s something that I’m really interested in, which is business, like, it just I can’t ever stop thinking about it. I get really excited to get those books in the mail. I just got three new ones and I can’t stop myself. I have a stack on my nightstand of three or four that I haven’t touched yet, and I’m like, okay, I need to stop read these and then I’ll keep ordering.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:36:00] As soon as friends is over, I’m going to read it.

Casey Howard: [00:36:03] Yeah, I binged. I binged friends recently, maybe last year. I mean, I had seen it obviously growing up, but I’m like, I’m going to watch it from start to finish. And that was three months of it was really fun. But I’m like, Man, three months has gone by like, I need to get back to my regular programing of like focusing.

Stone Payton: [00:36:21] Does a Chandler have a book or more or one or two out?

Casey Howard: [00:36:23] Oh no, he does. A new one just came out. Yeah, I thought.

Stone Payton: [00:36:26] I saw that.

Casey Howard: [00:36:27] I don’t have.

Stone Payton: [00:36:27] To go or.

Casey Howard: [00:36:28] I to get.

Stone Payton: [00:36:28] It. Yeah. All right, So what do you have on your nightstand or what’s one that’s standing out for you right now?

Casey Howard: [00:36:33] The one that I’m reading right now. I’ve been getting up really early every morning, making it a habit, and I first thing I do is read. And so the book that I have now is I don’t I don’t want to get the title wrong, but I think it’s Seven Habits of a Millionaire. Have you heard of that one?

Stone Payton: [00:36:49] So is it part of that Seven Habits family of books that came out from Covey or I think.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:36:54] I’m familiar with? Yes, but I’m not 100%.

Casey Howard: [00:36:55] Sure that’s the one. So it’s really good.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:36:59] Seven successful habits of highly something people. Is that what you’re talking about?

Stone Payton: [00:37:04] Well, I think that’s that was a core book and I think maybe this was a derivative. I don’t know. Yeah.

Casey Howard: [00:37:09] Okay. Yeah. All right. I should look it up.

Stone Payton: [00:37:12] But if you did get the title right, I can send them an invoice.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:37:15] So there you go.

Casey Howard: [00:37:18] Seven Habits of a Millionaire, I think is what it’s called, but I might be missing something.

Stone Payton: [00:37:22] It’s good. So what’s on the horizon? Where are you going to be investing your energy in the next nine, 18 months? Are you going to. You’re going to grow this thing, blow it out, build more studios? What are you going to do?

Casey Howard: [00:37:32] I have so many thoughts on that. And I write down my my goals every morning. A lot of them have to do with having well, having a lot bigger studio with all the bells and whistles. I’m not going to bore you with all the the vision that I see. Yeah, but a bigger, a lot bigger space and a lot more employees, a whole team. Another thing besides the studio part of it that I would like to kind of branch off of in photography, which is wonderful that you hear today because I’m going to get in touch with you, is I want to do something where I I’ve been thinking of maybe doing like a podcast subscription or I write some ebooks, I have some ideas for that, things that I can sell on my website that are just going to, you know, constantly be making me money. You write at one time and then you sell it, right?

Stone Payton: [00:38:23] I call that pillow money. I want money. Why do you.

Casey Howard: [00:38:25] Need pillow money? Because I don’t I haven’t done any of that yet. So that’s what I’m working on this year, is creating all that content, which seems like a lot right now. But at the end of this year, I’ll be really excited about it.

Stone Payton: [00:38:37] Yeah, you’re right. We got to get right guy in the room.

Casey Howard: [00:38:39] Help.

Stone Payton: [00:38:39] It’s weird going down the right path.

Casey Howard: [00:38:41] Yeah, these things work out, so.

Stone Payton: [00:38:43] All right, what’s the best way for our listeners to get in touch with? You have a conversation, book, some session, whatever, whatever you think is appropriate. Website, LinkedIn.

Casey Howard: [00:38:51] I kind of like my website. Casey McMinn photography dot com and then my Instagram everything is that Casey McMinn photography on Instagram, Facebook, you name it, I’m on LinkedIn, but I kind of forget about it sometimes, so probably don’t go there. My website.

Stone Payton: [00:39:08] Well, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show. Thanks for coming in and visiting.

Casey Howard: [00:39:13] Thanks for having.

Stone Payton: [00:39:14] Me, stranger. Yeah, come on back. It might be fun sometime to have you. And maybe the same with Jared. I know his businesses are more global at the moment, but it might be fun to have a delighted client or someone you’re teaming up with. Or maybe a favorite cause. Okay, come in here and we’ll spotlight their calls or business, but also talk about the collaboration.

Casey Howard: [00:39:32] That sounds good to me.

Stone Payton: [00:39:33] They work together. Yeah. You up for that?

Casey Howard: [00:39:35] For sure. Yeah. All right, we’ll make it happen.

Stone Payton: [00:39:37] Well, thank you. Thank you both. This has been a marvelous way to invest in this morning. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. All right, Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Jared Rodan, Iser and Casey Howard, and everyone here at the business radio x family saying we’ll see you next time on Cherokee Business radio.

BRX Pro Tip: How to Stop Delaying Decisions

January 26, 2023 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: How to Stop Delaying Decisions

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BRX Pro Tip: How to Stop Delaying Decisions

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, decisions are the lifeblood of virtually any business. And I don’t know, sometimes we fall into a pattern of delaying critical decisions. Speak to that a little bit, if you would.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:20] Sure. We as individuals delay decisions a lot because of some sort of fear, whether it’s the fear of making the wrong decision or the fear of embarrassment because I made the wrong decision. A lot of times we are hesitating because of some sort of fear. And it’s not only us, individually, for our day to day work, it’s also your prospective clients as well or your sales prospects.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] So, a lot of times what you want to do is when you’re framing this decision is try to remove some of the risk in the offering if you can. And remember that, for people, it’s not always the risk of losing money. There’s people out there who also are afraid of the risk of wasting time. And so, it’s not changing the price or thinking about things in terms of money is not always the right frame for every person.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:16] So, there’s a bunch of people who care more about wasting time than they do wasting money. And in life, sometimes you have more time than money, and sometimes you have more money than time. And you’ll find that as your clients become larger and they have more money, they’re going to value the time over the money. So, you might be able to reframe your offering instead of a price savings, reframe it as a time saver, and that might attract a different type of client that might be happy to spend more money to save more time.

BRX Pro Tip: Try the New Chat GPT

January 24, 2023 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Try the New Chat GPT

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BRX Pro Tip: Try the New Chat GPT

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, you’ve come across something recently and suggest that we take a look at it and we try this new ChatGPT.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:13] Yeah. This is a new technology that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning. It looks on the outside to be just a typical chatbot or one of those boxes you’ve seen on lots of websites that say, How can we help you? But this is going to be really disruptive in the search engine world and it could at some point even replace, or definitely it’s going to augment, what search engines like Google or Bing or the large players are doing.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:42] But I highly recommend that everybody go and play around with this just to see what’s out there and how it could possibly be used by you. If you Google Chat, C-H-A-T, and the letters G-P-T, you’ll find this open source chatbot. And once you sign into there, you can ask questions and it will generate answers for you.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:06] So, this is where it’s different than the search engine. A search engine sends you to websites that might have the answer. This is going to give you a specific answer to whatever question you ask it. And where this becomes really interesting, and a simple way to kind of use it immediately, is to help you in your writing process. So, if you are looking to write a blog post, say, on best business development tips or best sales tips and you type it in there, it will write five to ten tips in human language, sounds good.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:45] And some people right now are even using that as content on their websites, just as is, especially people in other countries. But what you can use them as is as thought starters for brainstorming or you can just start kind of tweaking their answers to, you know, fit your language so it sounds like it’s coming from you rather than this machine.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:09] But this technology is pretty new and, really, it demonstrates how we are just scratching the surface with artificial intelligence and machine learning. I really think it’s in your best interest to play around with it, see what it can do. You can ask it questions about anything. It can be about business. It can be about your life. It could be about cooking. It could be about exercise, whatever. It’s going to scour the Internet for what it thinks is the best answer to your question and it will put it out there. And it sounds like a human. It’s like you’re asking a human for this information. So, it’s really cool. Check it out, ChatGPT.

Helping Clients Build Deeper Relationships

January 24, 2023 by angishields

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Mitchel Black with STRONGSIDE

January 23, 2023 by angishields

Cherokee Business Radio

Mitchel Black with STRONGSIDE

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Mitchel Black attended the National Personal Training Institute and studied exercise physiology and nutrition. While in school, Mitchel hosted a talk radio show on health and fitness called “Talking Smack with Mitchel Black” where he talked about the correct foods to eat and how to implement them into your diet.

After graduation Mitchel went on a fitness rampage to learn everything he could about fitness, nutrition, and everything related. Mitchel acquired five personal training certifications along with three advanced certifications from the highest ranked certifications to date. Along with education Mitchel has an undying and burning passion to help people, and he truly cares about each and every member.

He prides himself in greeting everyone by name at the door; STRONGSIDE members aren’t just a number. His love for coaching members shows in his personality during every class as he makes sure each member has the best hours of their day at Strongside. Mitchel spent seven years working for the big “globo gyms” as a trainer and program manager. Mitchel worked at many clubs throughout the country as well as corporate offices training clients, training and educating trainers, and managing the business side of the fitness industry as well.

After five years of managing clubs Mitchel became very successful at doing it and received many awards from his company for doing so, but something was missing. Mitchel wanted to deal with people and truly help them, not just train other trainers and help the company have a healthy bottom line. Mitchel then stepped down from all managerial rolls to focus purely on helping individual clients reach their goals and truly make a lifelong impact on people. “It’s the best decision I have ever made and I am the happiest I have ever been in my life. Coaching people to reach their health and fitness goals is what I live for,” said Coach Mitchel Black.

In 2013 the opportunity to open Strongside came about and Mitchel could not neglect this opportunity. It was everything he had ever dreamed of and he knew he could help so many people by doing this. Along with all of his success in the fitness industry, Mitchel is also a nationally recognized personal trainer through NASM, NSCA, and NPTI. Mitchel is also a USA Olympic Weightlifting Coach and a CrossFit L2 trainer.

Mitchel has an athletic career of competing in the Ironman triathlon; he regularly competes in CrossFit competitions both individually and on a team. Above all, Mitchel wakes up every single day loving what he does and his life is completely devoted to Strongside and its members. He works nonstop to make sure every member receives excellent service, they are happy with their training, and that they are getting results. “STRONGSIDE is a results based business and not getting results is not an option,” says Coach Mitchel when asked about the philosophy of STRONGSIDE.

Follow STRONGSIDE on Facebook.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:08] Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio in Woodstock, Georgia. This is fearless formula with Sharon Cline.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:18] And welcome to a fearless formula on Business RadioX Fearless Formula. Friday is what I like to call it. This is where we talk about the ups and downs in the business world and offer words of wisdom for business success. I’m your host, Sharon Klein, and we are lucky to have the founder of a functional fitness based gym, several of them for four of them. Is that right? Four of them here in the area called Strongside, as well as a health and wellness coach, a mentor. Welcome to the show, Mitchel Black. Hi.

Mitchel Black: [00:00:48] Hey, thanks for having me, Sharon. I’m so excited to be here.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:51] Yeah, me too. I’m excited to talk to you about how you were able to open up four gyms in five months. How did you do this? So daunting when you think about it.

Mitchel Black: [00:01:00] Yeah, it was I mean, well, it was four gyms in five months, but that was after being one gym for eight years.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:08] Wow. Okay. What was your first gym? Where was.

Mitchel Black: [00:01:11] It? So it was strong side, but it was we were on 92 and Woodstock, and we were right by exit seven on 575. And we started as six, 900 square feet and 24 members. And then we got kicked out of that place because we outgrew it. And then we moved to our second place and then we moved to our third place where we’re at now. And then COVID happened and now we have four. But it’s been, you know, I started folding towels and cleaning toilets. So it’s it’s been a work to get here.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:40] So you started it’s your gym? Yes, your official. So you’re the you’re the owner.

Mitchel Black: [00:01:45] Owner, founder, whole deal.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:47] Coach. So you although you have a history of being a personal trainer and running different gyms. Right. I read on your website that you had you called it like the global Gym, Global Globo Gyms. Yeah. And I was trying to remember. But are you talking about a place like Gold’s Gym or like One Life, which is what I belong to?

Mitchel Black: [00:02:06] Yeah, really similar. I started at Lifetime Fitness and I started an operations and I started folding towels and cleaning toilets from 11:00 pm to 7 a.m..

Sharon Cline: [00:02:16] The night.

Mitchel Black: [00:02:16] Shift? Yeah. And then I’d go to school all day and I’d work all night. And I just, you know, it was a way to get my foot in the door like I had nothing. And I was like, well, I mean, I’m going to be a trainer, so just go there and then throw out folding towels and cleaning toilets. As soon as I got closer to graduating, I was like, Well, people got to see my face. So I started begging for a job at the front desk and they gave me a job at the front desk so I could see everybody’s face. And then I started begging for a job as a personal trainer, and nobody wanted to do anything with me because I had really long hair and earrings and I’m this punk kid and like, whatever. And but it was just a dog fight. And then I was like, Just give me a minute, just give me a minute. And they did. And I worked my way up and I was able to start as a trainer and then grow the training business and then get into group training and then grow that. And then I was able to go to corporate and do some stuff up there, and then I didn’t ever want to open my own gym ever.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:08] Why?

Mitchel Black: [00:03:09] It didn’t intrigue me. I mean, I was I was the number one trainer in the company. I was making good money. I was doing what I wanted to do. You know, you have you have everything. You have health insurance, you have a41k, you got a lot of security. And, you know, I didn’t want to go, but I felt really capped out. And I started hearing know a lot and I started getting kind of suffocated with, you know, hey, hey, buddy, sit down. And I’m like, no, no, I think we can do this. Nah, we’re not going to do that. And after a while I was like, Oh, okay. But I got to go then.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:46] Well, you clearly have a propensity to grow because if you started, you know, doing the night shift and then got to the front desk and then continue to progress so quickly, I mean, you’re in the right place, you know, that you want to have upward mobility. So someone was telling, you know, I, I imagine that’s very frustrating.

Mitchel Black: [00:04:04] Yeah. It’s not necessarily the telling me. No, the the only thing that scares me is complacency. And I cannot sit still and I can’t not grow and I can’t, you know, at least try to spread my wings. So it’s not like you’re telling me no thing. It’s like a if I ever feel as if we’re not able to move forward, that’s when I start panicking.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:25] So let’s go back a little bit to your for your history. You studied exercise, physiology and nutrition at the National Personal Training Institute. Where is that?

Mitchel Black: [00:04:34] It’s super cool. So they have a bunch of satellite campuses and I equated a lot to like deep fry. You know, like you go there, you get a degree just in in computer science. Yes. But if you decide halfway through, hey, I like art. Well, sorry, buddy, you got to start over. Right? So it’s really similar thing. And I did Accelerated Program through there and loved it. I mean, I graduated high school with a 1.75 GPA and was not supposed to do anything with my life. And I graduated third in my class from there. I mean, I love.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:05] Was it always something you just. Loved.

Mitchel Black: [00:05:07] No. Oh, yeah. Did you.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:09] Get it? I assumed you were going to say yes. No. No. How did you get into it?

Mitchel Black: [00:05:13] So I weigh less now than when I was 13. When I was 13, I was five, five. I was £200. I was miserable, hated everything about myself. And I just again, maybe I felt like so suffocated back then, didn’t like exercise, didn’t like eating right. My favorite thing was you take chocolate donuts and you put them in the microwave for 5 seconds and heat them up with Saturday morning cartoons and stuff. I mean, that was that was my life.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:35] It’s like you’re at my house.

Mitchel Black: [00:05:36] And and I just got fed up, man.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:39] And something clicked in your brain.

Mitchel Black: [00:05:41] Yeah. I was getting made fun of and bullied at school, like, terribly. I was sent home from school three days in a row crying. And really what happened is this this dude that wound up becoming a really good friend of mine, but at the time he was making fun of me every day. And the first day I went home from school crying and my mom was like, you know, hey, that’s terrible. You know, kids are bad, whatever. And then the second day she was like. You know. Och, all right. And then the third day, she was kind of like, All right, here’s a deal, buddy. You can be as big as you want to be and you can love life and crush it, or you’re just going to come home crying every day or we’re going to do something about it. And I was like, Yeah, you’re right. We joined Weight Watchers and I just needed something. I didn’t know where to start from.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:26] Your mom like that?

Mitchel Black: [00:06:27] Yeah, super big supporter the whole way through. But when I looked back at why I wanted to start, you know, there’s a whole list of things that I didn’t have when I was getting started. And a lot of things that people don’t have today, like where to get education, where to get support, where to get a community, where to get direction. You know, you’re limited by so much. And I made the commitment at 19 years old when I started being a trainer that I was going to dedicate the rest of my life to making sure nobody ever had to feel like I did at 13 and feel trapped and feel suffocated. And that’s our mission.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:57] And you continue to do that every day.

Mitchel Black: [00:06:59] Every day.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:59] That’s it. You were saying right before you came here, what were you doing?

Mitchel Black: [00:07:02] You were we had a webinar today.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:05] Okay. So who do you talk to on these webinars?

Mitchel Black: [00:07:06] Anybody?

Sharon Cline: [00:07:07] So anyone can join your webinar and kind of get information about the gym or.

Mitchel Black: [00:07:11] Yeah, whether you’re in our gyms or whether you’re in our corporate wellness side of our business or whether you’re just a regular person out there, you can sign up for the webinars. And then some of them have like today was just a specific topic, but then some of them are in line with, let’s say, challenges that we might be doing. It’s such an easy way to guide a large group of people, but like today’s webinar was called Discover Your Body Type, and I walked you through the three different body types that you might be how to identify that body type, and then how to make changes on dietary supplementation and exercise guidelines to reach your goals. And everybody had a follow along packet. It’s all interactive. There’s Q&A at the end and it’s really detailed. You leave with like an actual plan.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:53] So when you had your your job at One Life and you decided that you needed to spread your wings, what how did you make that happen?

Mitchel Black: [00:08:02] So as lifetime now, not that matters. I’m saying sorry. Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:08:05] Lifetime. Did it have the word life in it? Lifetime. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, that’s why I said that.

Mitchel Black: [00:08:09] But. So yeah, so basically I had my classes were getting really, really big and they were filling up the gymnasiums and so I had so back up. So I was down here in Georgia. I worked all the gyms down here. They moved me up to corporate, which is in Minnesota, and I worked there for two years doing like all the research and development for group training and stuff. And and that was cool. But I was like 20 and everybody there was like 45, you know, like it wasn’t like a great environment. Learned a lot, but I was like two years. I was like, I’m out. So I moved back down here to this Woodstock gym, which at the time was the worst performing club in the company. And I was like, I want that one. That’s the one I want. Give it to me. I’m going to flip it, because that’s what I did, is I would go into the underperforming clubs and flip them. I was like, I just want I want that project. I want that title. I want that on my resume. Let’s go. And they moved me there and I was able to do it. But I start getting into all this like class stuff and the classes start getting bigger and bigger and bigger to the point where you couldn’t even work out. At the time, my class was because we would take all the equipment. It was just crazy. And I had four people come to me and start offering me money and they were like, I’m going to invest in your gym. You need to get out. You need to do your thing. And I’m still in that phase of what I said.

Mitchel Black: [00:09:23] Like, I don’t want that. Like because in my head I’m thinking gym. I’m thinking these lifetimes are $42 a pop. They’re, you know, there’s no way I can compete with this. I wasn’t thinking what we do now, which is boutique functional fitness, and we’ll get there. But you know, what they were doing is all these people were offering money and it was a normal business transaction. I will give you this many dollars for this much percentage. And I’m like, Well, dude, I’ve never had anything in my whole life and I’m really not about to give up something that doesn’t exist yet for X percentage. It maybe it’s a great deal for other people. It’s not a great deal for me. I don’t want to do that. So I kind of brush it off, brush it off. And then this couple came to me and they were clients of mine for a while and they said, Here’s the deal. We don’t want any of your business. You are crushing it. We just want to give you money. You need to be doing this on your own. We’re going to do this as an angel investor. We’re going to give you a little bit more interest in a bank. I mean, it was high. It was like 12% interest, but I didn’t have to go to a bank or whatever. We’re going to do a five year deal. And then I’m still kind of interested. I wasn’t sold yet. And then they said, Here’s the deal. Our only requirement is that later in life you have to do this for somebody else.

Sharon Cline: [00:10:32] Interesting.

Mitchel Black: [00:10:33] And I was like, Those are the people I want to be in business with. Pay it forward. Yeah. And and that’s what they did. And it was I was like, okay, we went to a Starbucks, they wrote me a check and I was like, I never seen that much money before in my life. And so they wrote me a check. I start the gym. We need 36 members just to pay rent. No other bills just to pay rent, 36 members, 62 people said they were going to come with me and join. But that never happens, right? 24 people signed up. Oh, wow. I needed. 36 to pay rent. Lifetime wound up suing me because I was I was a third of their revenue. So when a third of the revenue, there’s 26 trainers and Mitchell Black’s doing a third of the revenue. I walked out. So we get in this lawsuit, I have no money because I put it all into strong side. So I went back to my investors. I borrowed another $5,000 to hire this lawyer, go into debt even more. Right. We wound up winning the lawsuit, whatever. But so there’s that. But I basically had like three months. So on top of that, it was open in December. In April, I was going to be out of business and I had to figure out a way to get more members with no money.

Sharon Cline: [00:11:45] So because I’m advertising no nothing.

Mitchel Black: [00:11:47] Yeah. And the only solution that I could come up with was the people. The only solution. I was like, All right, well, I got 24 people, so I can’t do anything. But what I can do is I can train these people better than they’ve ever been trained in their entire life and give them the best service, the best quality, bleed into them and make 24, 25 and make 2526. And that’s what we did.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:09] So did Lifetime not want you to take their members? Is that what the issue was?

Mitchel Black: [00:12:12] Yeah. So they accused me of doing two things. They accused me of tracking all these sessions and like basically for time that hadn’t been serviced yet. And I mean, it was it was bogus. It was just a way to come after me. But because I was a manager, I had a manager code and I could go in and I could track multiple sessions in a day. And the way that their systems rung up, you know, I would I would service a couple of hundred people a day because I would teach these classes. They would be in there and I would track the sessions and it would look like, I guess on paper it would look like. You weren’t in the gym that day, but I tracked your session because I physically couldn’t log all the sessions in a day, but I had to log them to get paid. And so there was that. And then they tried to get me for solicitation because what I did is I said, Hey, this is just what I’m going to do. End of story. If you choose to interpret that as you would like to come follow me. I can’t control.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:07] That. So it came down to almost like semantics.

Mitchel Black: [00:13:09] Yeah. So we had all 24 founding members signed sworn affidavits that they would that they would contest to Lifetime was trying to, like pull them into their offices and offer them free memberships and tell them that strong stuff was going out of business and all that kind of stuff. And so my lawyer was able to gather all that information. They were able to go back to him and they tried to do it with another guy who opened a gym over on Sugarloaf. So me and him partnered together and we did a class action lawsuit and and and we were able to win really quick because George is a right to work state. So if we sued first, which we did, then it fell under Georgia law, which is way easier to get it done.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:49] How did that feel to have them coming after you like that? Right as you were getting started. Amazing that they were coming after you.

Mitchel Black: [00:13:56] Yeah. Dude, you got a $2 billion company looking at little. All strong side. Good. I mean, I don’t I don’t get up in the morning and think about you, but I’m glad you’re getting up in the morning and thinking about me.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:07] I suppose it’s the best attitude to have when you’ve got someone coming after you.

Mitchel Black: [00:14:11] Like what? What are you not doing? To focus on me.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:15] That they’re so threatened by you.

Mitchel Black: [00:14:16] Because I’m playing offense so cool.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:20] And then. And then it slowly grew then. Or actually rather quickly. You said because you had, what, from December to April to be able to. To grow your numbers.

Mitchel Black: [00:14:30] Yeah. Well, it kind of grew and I only grew it to what I could grow it based on my mentality at the time because I went through a phase. Where. And I think a lot of business owners get in this, You think way too small. I walked in to 6500 square feet to squat racks, and I literally remember this putting my hands on my hips, looking around and going, This is all we’re ever going to need. And I was and then, you know, all of a sudden there’s like 20 people in every class and, like, just it’s freaking crazy and and it just blew up a lot. But then then it got real stagnant. So it went from 24 to like 80, and then it held there for two years. And then I met my wife and she my wife’s a powerhouse. My wife doesn’t work for the business or anything like that. But you want to talk about the best partner, the best pusher. Snap my mentality. I owe her everything and she got me to think so much bigger and so much of like, You can do this. And then it was like 80 became 180, and then it became 280. And then it became like, I don’t even know these people’s names, like, And that’s a whole nother I mean, I know everybody’s name now, but like, I mean, it got like, you know, just crazy like what’s possible. And now it’s now it’s 250 classes a week. Now it’s like, you know. Hundreds of members at this gym and hundreds of members at that gym. And like, that’s not bragging. I’m just saying, like, you think bigger, your think has to change.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:01] I was thinking on your Facebook page, you have thousands of of likes. You know what I mean? People follow you. Well, I think also how important it is to have the right people around you. We talk about this on the show all the time, about how important it is to have a support system, but specifically your partner being so supportive of you. It’s such a testament to having the right energy to kind of move you forward.

Mitchel Black: [00:16:21] Yeah, you get trapped around the wrong people. I mean, I yeah, don’t ever be the smartest person in the room. Get, get out, find a different room like. And I like hanging out. I don’t know how you feel about this, but like, because you’re in the radio business, like, I don’t want people in my I don’t like hanging out with people that are in my business. I want people that think like Jim has an I in it.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:43] Oh, interesting.

Mitchel Black: [00:16:44] Because they look at it with such a clear sense. Like when I hang around most other gym owners, I’m not talking to every gym or most of the gym owners. They want to talk to me about the same negative Nancy’s that. Are all your gyms the same? Oh, don’t you don’t you hate it when so-and-so. Yeah, I sure do. But but what I really want to focus on is like, can you give me some advice from a non biased opinion on how to do this better?

Sharon Cline: [00:17:10] Well, I wanted to talk to you about what makes your gym so special. You you use the word boutique, but I don’t understand what that means.

Mitchel Black: [00:17:16] Yeah. So. So when you when most people think gym, what they what they think is I wish I wish I made up the term term Globo gym. That’s from the movie Dodgeball. Oh, back in the day, I mean, I heard it. I beat it to death like it’s mine. But but you know, that’s the big mega gyms and that’s what people think. Basically, when you think gym, what you think is I’m going to go rent fitness equipment and that’s fine if that’s what you want to do. But those are your big box gyms. I’m going to pay 30 bucks a month. I’m going to go in there. Nobody’s ever going to call me if I don’t show up and I want to use this stuff and whatever. And what I realized, like I did the math when I worked for Lifetime, I was like, okay, this gym has 13,000 members. It has 200 pieces of cardio equipment. It has 5500 towels, six washers and 12 dryers. It has four lanes of a pool. I said, if if people use this thing, they’re it’s going to go out of business.

Mitchel Black: [00:18:13] Like it’s not made to support the people that it has. And then you have somebody like Planet Fitness. The planet fitness business model is so smart because here’s what they did is they said it’s ten bucks a month. You need to get in whatever. We’re going to offer it to a whole bunch of people. And then they said, okay, we’ll make it really hard to cancel and make it really low. It’s easy to get in. But then they took it a step further and they said, if the people who use the gym, what do they do? The people who use the gym, they use chalk, they use barbells, they use kettlebells, they do squats, they great. So what we’ll do is we say, you can’t do that. Any of that here, no squats, no deadlifts, no grunting, no chalk, no nothing, no kettlebells. You cannot do that here. So they take because so what the real metrics are that less than 12% of people actually use their gym membership. So you have 88% of people that will buy the gym membership and then not use it.

Sharon Cline: [00:19:04] It’s kind of depressing statistic.

Mitchel Black: [00:19:05] And then if you take the other 12% that are interested and you take away their equipment, then you have like 100% of the people that aren’t ever going to come to the gym. So so that’s just like that’s just how the model works. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t think they set up in their corporate offices and hope nobody comes to the gym. I’m just saying that’s how the model works. Those are the real numbers, whatever. And then you have on the other end, you have like like studios, like one on one training and stuff like that. And that’s that’s super private if that’s what you want. You know, a trainer rents a space, they do whatever and you sign up for that. It’s a couple hundred bucks a month. You get your sessions, whatever strong side is, definitely right there in the middle is we build these boutique esque studios and these gyms, these boutique spaces. They’re are 4 to 5000 square feet. Everybody who joins the gym gets a subscription, and that subscription allows them to come to as many classes as they want at any location. They want it any time they want. We offer three main classes, our 60 minute class, 45 minute class and our yoga class, and they’re all different offerings, right? And then that member can come to the gym and utilize those classes any way they want. However, what makes us different is our, our, our focus on community. So we focus I give you those stats before 12% of people maybe use the gym. Our goal is that 40% of our members use the gym every single day. Wow. If you go longer than one week on our software is a red freakin circle around your name that pops up for that gym’s manager to reach out to you.

Mitchel Black: [00:20:37] And at the two week mark of not using our gym, you should have been followed up with. We’re going to do monthly community outings. You’re going to start meeting people and friends. Each gym has their own Facebook, each gym has their own email group. You’re going to be as a new member, you’re going to meet with the club manager in a non. Sales meeting to get you to use our platform. Our take on the business is, is you buy a subscription. And what we want to do is get you to use that subscription. So rather than saying here’s the subscription and here’s all these up up tick up fees that you need to pay for other stuff, we just want you to use our product for longer. So we say, okay, can you do this? Can you do this? Okay, What if we gave them this and we offer everything that we can like ten, 11 classes a day? Clinics are included, nutrition challenges and stuff. Now we have things that you can pay extra for, like nutrition coaching and stuff like that. But we take a boutique approach usually ten, 12 to 14 people per class. We want 40% of the people coming in every day. The average member is with us for 18 months or longer and it’s 100% focused on general population. There’s no crazy athletes. It’s all people that have never worked out before. It is all people. It’s it’s normal people that work really hard. And and that’s what it is. And it’s good fun stuff.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:56] This model that you have, this boutique approach, did you have that initially when you started the first gym?

Mitchel Black: [00:22:02] No. I always say be stubborn in the vision and flexible in the details. So I’ve always had a vision of what I said earlier. I want to dedicate my life to making sure that nobody ever has to feel the way that I the way that I feel. And I can break it down to three things. I’m like, boom, boom, boom. Okay, well, when you’re thinking too small, you start at one little 1600 square foot place. And then it was like, okay, we’re going to be the mega center of Woodstock, Georgia. And then you start realizing all the things that you would have to do to do that. They aren’t really, like, scalable, you know, like we’re in a pretty not not we’re in a weird market. Not that many people like to work out. It’s actually a stupid business model when you think about it. Nobody likes to work out. Nobody likes to work out frequently. Hey, you know what we should do? We should open gyms that nobody wants to go to. Like it’s so you’re in a niche, right? So the only way to scale is to open more of them. So now we’ve we’ve just in the last two years or so really honed in on what that is. And what we really are is we’re the intersection of CrossFit and Orangetheory. That’s, that’s really who we are because like we’re all CrossFit coaches, I’m a CrossFit level two coach, all of our coach. But we also have been doing this 15 years. We have degrees. We’re not just going to Google and we make and curate everything that we do. So you have two spectrums, right? You have the the people that go to Orange theory F 45, burn whatever, and they have a client boredom rate.

Mitchel Black: [00:23:22] And that client boredom rate is usually somewhere between 6 to 12 months. And this is not a hate on the this is just the business. I’m not saying they’re dumb program. So what I’m saying is those programs are the same every day. It’s 12 minutes of rowing, 12 minutes of treads, 12 minutes of resistance training every time you’re in orange theory F 45 is 45 seconds on, 45 seconds off, whatever, same thing. So and that’s cool, but they get bored, but they’re never going to do CrossFit because the customer is told that CrossFit hurts people. It’s dangerous, is too challenging, it’s too hard. I don’t believe that. But I’m not here to argue with the customer. So what do they learn? They learn that it Orangetheory theory 45 burn whatever. What they want is they want an app, they want towels, they want air conditioning, they want showers, they want it clean. I agree with you, but they want more variety. They want teaching and education and they want cool exercises like CrossFit does. Crossfit is one of the best people in the world to educating people. How do we make that middle? How do we make a strong side? Clean air conditioning, shower, shampoo? You walk in, somebody giving you water like, Yeah, I’m with you. But we’re also going to do more than just these three things every day and we’re going to teach you and we’re going to educate you and we’re going to give you real certified trainers that go through ridiculous training that are full time employees that are dedicated to get to know you. And that’s what we do.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:41] If you’re just joining us, we’re speaking with Mitchell Black of Strong Side. Would you say that that is your biggest mistake? Is that you thought too small from the beginning?

Mitchel Black: [00:24:50] Everything? Yeah, 100%. 100% too small.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:53] That’s your biggest mistake you feel like in reflecting on your business model?

Mitchel Black: [00:24:58] Yeah, because it goes to everything like that.

Sharon Cline: [00:25:00] Trickles down, you mean?

Mitchel Black: [00:25:01] Yeah, I mean, like. You name it, because that affects how much. Now, you can’t think unreasonably like I’m not saying go borrow $10. What I’m saying is, like, I would confine myself in. To, you know, I’m going to build the gym this way because this is all we’ll ever need. Not looking at potential growth. So you spend so much money on new equipment. You spend so much money not realizing what could be in the future. And then you lose money on I don’t need this email list plan or, you know, like what? What could you get out of it? Is. I’ll give you an example. Like marketing. My team thinks I’m crazy when it comes to marketing because I always say that the cost of being unknown is way more expensive than any cost of advertising. And they’re like, Oh, well, you know, this cost money or this. And I’m like, What can you do with it? Tell me what you can do with it and how we could leverage it. And then I’ll tell you if it’s expensive.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:01] Interesting. I mean, we talk about marketing on the show all the time. So I’m wondering, do you what are your main methods as at Facebook? Most people use Facebook.

Mitchel Black: [00:26:10] It depends. So we view podcast is what the radio used to be. Facebook is what the news used to be. Instagram is what commercials used to be. And we play each one different and we do. We have five main streams of content and then we slice up those main streams of content to get. Our goal is to work 1000 hours a day and have 100 pieces of content every week.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:34] Wow, that’s a big goal.

Mitchel Black: [00:26:37] Yeah. So but the only way you can do that is multiply. So how can you take how do you get 1000 hours lots, 100 people working 10 hours a day? Okay. Well, how do you get 100 pieces of content? You probably need ten really good pieces of content. Like how much can you slice up a podcast? Well, if I record it and I talk, that’s two and then I can get snippets. Okay, now I’m up to six, you know, like I just how do I get to 100?

Sharon Cline: [00:26:58] It’s so analytical. Do you know what I mean? It’s not. It’s something I haven’t thought about that way in terms of having analytics and metrics, you know, to make A plus B, we’ll see if that makes sense.

Mitchel Black: [00:27:08] I mean, yeah, that’s what we do. So, I mean, I’m sure somebody out there has something like crazy plan that works better, but that’s what we do and it works for us.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:14] Now, I was going to say your track record is proven right.

Mitchel Black: [00:27:17] I mean, I feel like I feel like we’re get we got a good understanding of who we’re trying to talk to. I’m happy with what we’re doing with marketing.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:25] What do you think’s the biggest misconception is in the fitness industry.

Mitchel Black: [00:27:30] That you’re either going to get hurt doing it or that you need to get in shape first?

Sharon Cline: [00:27:34] Get in shape before you join the fitness industry.

Mitchel Black: [00:27:37] Which is I mean, that makes no sense. I mean, I used to I’ve been and that’s not new. I remember starting as a trainer, people like, well, let me get in shape first and then I’ll sign up with you. And I’m like, you know, that’s my job. That is literally 100% my job.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:55] So how do you assure people that they don’t have to be in the best shape or that they’re they’re not going to get hurt?

Mitchel Black: [00:28:01] The hurt thing is really hard. And if you ever get hurts people attached to your name, you’re going out of business and you have to be real delicate with it. And what we’ve done is really change our language. You know, we used to if you walked into Strong side 2013, 2014, it was not clean, unedited rap music. It was shirts off. It was I mean, you just go nuts, dude. And it was fun. It’s fine. I had a blast doing it. But there’s the the customer fears things that they don’t understand. And what you’re trying to do is neutralize their anxiety by elevating their levels of certainty. So when you do things like describe an exercise in a way that is using terms that they don’t understand or it’s not visually appealing because they’re looking at an ad or a video of something that they can’t do, or you’re putting people in these ads that you know, you’re as the gym over gym owner trying to show off like you’re really attractive clients that yet anybody want to see that like it’s who’s the most relatable and how are you talking to people so. It’s you can’t go to people and say you’re not going to get hurt doing this. You have to really, really just embed the story. You’ve got to be kind. You have to be assuring you. I mean, I remember being young and saying, Oh, what are you talking about? Look at look at all these people over here. They’re not hurt. They know how it works. Like, you really have to just kind of hold their hand and guide them.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:34] It’s you have to be a people person number one, right?

Mitchel Black: [00:29:36] Oh, my goodness. Yeah. That is the job is just talking to people. And then the second part of your question, get in shape first. I find that comes from insecurity. So you’re just trying to like meet people where they’re at. And, you know, I truly mean it. It strong side. Everyone’s welcome and everyone’s equal. The first person that has an ego can leave like get at you will hurt our business more than you will grow it because the people that are out of shape are the people that build our business. So we’re our competition is the couch. It’s not another gym. So we’re always competing with laziness, we’re competing with Instagram, and it’s not about how can we make you throw up, it’s how can I just make you want to come back tomorrow? I don’t care what you do today. I just need you to come back tomorrow.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:18] Have you ever had to ask someone? Leave?

Mitchel Black: [00:30:20] Yeah. No.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:22] Yeah. How does that.

Mitchel Black: [00:30:23] Go? Not fun. I’ve had to do it three times. Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:29] But you know what? You’re protective of your business, so I can imagine you get to fire people too, you know, that are. That are paying.

Mitchel Black: [00:30:35] It’s so dumb. It’s like the whole. I don’t even know. Like, it’s it’s dumb. So I’ve done it. I’ve done it. I’ve done it three times. I did it once the wrong way. And we have a great relationship today and I really appreciate her and I know she’s listening to this and I appreciate it. That was the wrong way and and to the right way. And what I mean, the right way was truly toxic to the culture and. It’s just You’re not happy. I’m not happy. You know, my coaches aren’t happy. The members aren’t happy. It’s it’s really dumb and unfortunate that it has to get there. And I don’t, like, walk around and be like, Who’s next?

Sharon Cline: [00:31:21] Like, scaring everyone.

Mitchel Black: [00:31:23] Yeah, it’s. Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:31:25] All right, Well, talk to me a little bit about the talk show that you have.

Mitchel Black: [00:31:28] Talking smack with Mitchell Black. Yeah. So I. So I’ve written one book, but I swear to you, my second book is going to be called Making Something from Nothing. Because that’s because that’s just all I’ve ever done. And I had So I was in school and, you know, I never really was comfortable talking to people. And my cousin at the time happened to manage this radio show and he was like, you know, I know you need to like, talk to people. I’m sure being a trainer, you got to get out there like I had. It was really helpful because I had to curate information. But he said, I’ll give you a spot. And obviously it wasn’t very big radio show, but he said, I’ll give you a shot. And he let people call in and ask questions. And it was I got an hour once a week talking smack with Mitchell Black on Radio Jefferson.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:18] Did you love it?

Mitchel Black: [00:32:19] I really did. Yeah. I mean, and it taught me a lot of how to communicate in a flowing way because my first session doing it, I mean, I typed everything out. I typed everything out and I and I could there’d be a recording and I would go back to recording and listen to it. And it was just me reading a book. I’m like, Why am I doing this? And and then as the weeks went by, I started getting more flow with it. And that really helped me learn how to talk to people because especially in the fitness space and it’s true for most other spaces too, like the person doesn’t really care about what I’m saying, they care about how I’m saying it.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:57] How you’re making them feel.

Mitchel Black: [00:32:58] Yeah. And it’s not they’re not shopping. Trainer’s being like, which one is going to have me go through the best mezzo cycle of training to like that’s on you as the trainer to make sure you know what you’re doing and give integrity in your job to make people feel comfortable is extremely hard. And that’s so that’s what I learned of that. And when people call in and ask you some crazy question, how are you supposed to answer that?

Sharon Cline: [00:33:23] Do you wish you were doing it now? I mean, I know you have a podcast. You talked about what’s your podcast?

Mitchel Black: [00:33:28] So our podcast called The Live Well Podcast, and I’m a guest on it. I don’t run it, but so like I try to be a guest in there like one or two times a month, but it’s a really interesting take. As of now, we’re closing in on 100 episodes. As of now, we’ve never had a non member on the podcast. So our theme is like cool story within the community and like, I don’t think we’re going to take the podcast and be like all over America. It’s kind of just a neat way for our community to hone in with each other.

Sharon Cline: [00:33:55] Yeah, but don’t think small now.

Mitchel Black: [00:33:57] See, there I go again. There I go. No, I would. I would love to. I really love this stuff. Like just talking to people, hanging out with people.

Sharon Cline: [00:34:06] Just to make their lives better. Yeah, there’s something very noble about that.

Mitchel Black: [00:34:10] It’s all for other people. It has to be done in a very selfless way.

Sharon Cline: [00:34:13] Well, how did you survive the pandemic? How did it affect you?

Mitchel Black: [00:34:16] Oh, dude, that was rough. I’m just so the positive is never let a good crisis go to waste. So I so the the long answer to a short question is that in 2000 so I started as a trainer in May of 2008 and the economy crashed in September. Right. And I remember being at Lifetime and I was so so this will answer your question. But at the time I had I had 22 clients. They were paying $85 a session. They were training 3 to 4 times a week. So on the average, client ticket rate was like $100 a month. I’m 18 years old making 108,000 a year. I came from growing up on like food stamps, literally, and having my phone turned off and like, nothing, right? So I’m bawling beyond my wildest dreams for four months. And then the economy crashed and it was phone call after phone call after phone call of just, oh my God, I can’t do this, you know, because they’re all in the banking industry and all this kind of stuff. I mean, like I’ve never seen more black Amex in my life and but all those people. But yeah, but all these people were getting affected, right? So the the day the economy crashed, I’m looking up like, at all the TVs in lifetime and everybody should stay in there. I’m 18. I don’t even know what an economy was. I just knew that nobody was on those treadmills. Everybody’s looking at the TV and his phone call after your phone call.

Mitchel Black: [00:35:39] And I said, Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What’s going on here? Nobody’s saying they don’t want to do it anymore. They’re just saying they can’t afford it. So I said, okay, instead of making a lot of money on a few amount of people, 22 clients, I’m just going to make a little bit of money on a whole bunch of people. So how about I charge all of you and your friends 150 bucks a month and we start doing boot camps and I get you with like seven or eight of your friends. I don’t lose any money. Cost you a lot less. 150 compared to 100 is a lot better. Let’s just do that. All right. So I and then that was a weather storm, you know, like, whatever. When I saw 2020, if you were able to take the virus out of it, so you just strip any emotion, ties to it and look at it as just the business. It taught me two things. And the first thing was I looked right back at 2008 and I said, Dude, a lot of people came out of their billionaires. And I remember watching that happen and I said, Whenever that happens again, I want my piece. And when I saw that happen, I said, The market is going to constrict so hard, everybody’s going to pull in, Everybody’s going to be scared when this happens. Mitchell Whenever this is, I knew that in 2020 something was going to happen for 18 months. I was saying the market’s going to consolidate, markets are going to consolidate.

Mitchel Black: [00:36:55] You can’t have this many people. Nobody likes working out. You can’t have all these gyms with not anybody that likes exercise. It’s not made to survive. You’re all floating on fake cash right now. So I was like, it’s going to constrict now. I didn’t know it was going to be a virus, but that happened. Everybody pulls in and I pulled our team in and I said, Look, here’s the deal. If this doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for you if you need to leave, totally cool. I got it. But we’re going to lean in harder than we’ve ever leaned. And this is going to be the biggest opportunity of our lifetime. They shut us down, and my wife is like, What does this mean for us? And I said, It means you’re not going to see me much for the next six months. I’m going to go into a hole harder than I’ve ever gone into a hole, and we’re going to figure this thing out. I don’t know what it looks like, but I do know this. We will make it through. The question is, what are you going to look like on the other side? So we just started saying, okay, what’s going on? Take the virus out of it. What are the facts? People are scared. How do you make them less scared? You neutralize anxiety by increasing certainty. What is fear? It’s unknowing of the future. How far of a future can I predict for these people and what certainty can I give them? So what we did is we said, All right, here are gyms closed.

Mitchel Black: [00:38:06] All right, cool. We’re going to give you two options. Option one, we’re going to put together equipment packages if you want to take an equipment package home. They had like three different options they could pick from. Then you’re agreeing to keep 100% of your membership, But we’re going to get you a gym at home if you don’t take any equipment, we’re going to give you 40% off. So you pay 60%. However, we’re going to offer five workout classes streamed per day. I didn’t know anything about Zoom. Nothing. And I’m just YouTubing everything, ordering everything. And I told our team I was like, Look, this gym is now a 5000 square foot media production facility. You need to imagine that it never reopens. We are running five classes a day. We’re doing a we were the first that I ever knew of to do a virtual five K. We sent people race packets, we sent them t shirts, We developed a hashtag. The fitness never stops. My hand was like broken. I wrote hand-written cards to every single member and we just mailed them just boom, boom, boom. And I was like, Connect, connect, connect. We had a we viewed strong side as a news network, and we said, if you tune into this news network, what shows would you get? And we put it was like Power Players where I had a guest on every Wednesday, I had a monday, Wednesday, Friday show.

Mitchel Black: [00:39:20] Then we had five workouts a day. We had yoga that you could tune into. We partnered with the city. Where would they would do this? Amped in the park thing. We did it digitally and I’m just like going, I mean, just going, going nuts as hard as we could. And we tried to get as much online as we could, but we couldn’t lean too far because I knew that when we reopened, I mean, all that happened within like six weeks. Like it was crazy. Wow. But I knew that when we that when we reopened, I said human nature is not going to change 100%. I’m not saying that digital is not going to be the way of the future. I’m just saying that just because COVID happened six weeks later, you can’t say that 100% of your clients are going to work out online for the rest of their life. So I saw everybody I saw everybody pivoting into like digital only platforms and 50,000 on an app. And I was like, way too early. The market’s not even primed to to be comfortable working out online. That’s what happened to Peloton. A whole nother story there. But so anyway, so we reopen and our plan of reopening and this is pivoting in. The second thing that I learned, our plan reopening was we were going to do Monday, Wednesday, Friday, online and Tuesday, Thursday in gym, because that’s what the quote world was telling me to do.

Mitchel Black: [00:40:38] And we said, Hey, if you want to keep your equipment, you can keep it. If you want to bring it back, bring it back. 100% of people brought it back. Interesting. And I was like, holy crap, Plan B, we can’t support this. They don’t even want to work at home. So reopened. We did it in a normal way. I’m not saying it was like, you know, chest slaps and sweat everywhere. We did it like in a normal, appropriate way, but we brought everybody back in the gym, which had me realized thing number two. And the second thing I learned is how dangerous being small is. So when COVID shut everybody down, is that so? Well, before I get there to close out number one, because I even tell you what I learned in number one is that when we reopened, like it just went like straight up and it was never let a good opportunity go to waste. And it was like an L-shaped recovery. We grew 36% in revenue in 2020, and it really taught us how to increase people’s level of certainty. You know, fast forward into 2023. What we’re what we’re learning is it’s all about making the customer feel certain, make them feel comfortable over and over and over again. We learned that in a very accelerated level in 2020, and now we get to carry that into 2023 because most of our clientele who’s really overweight and really unhappy is uncertain, is scared, doesn’t even know where to start. They probably wanted to lose weight £40 ago.

Mitchel Black: [00:42:01] They’re just like, I don’t even know what to do. And that was a gift. And we got to learn six years of stuff in six weeks. Then the danger of being small. So when everything was shut down, LA Fitness does not own a single one of their locations. They’re all build to suits. La Fitness sent a letter to every landlord and said, This is an act of God. We are not going to pay you rent. You can sue us if you want to, but we’re a really large company and we’re going to fight you. Lifetime owns all of their locations and they sent a letter to their bank and they said, We’re going to refinance all of our mortgages, which means we’re going to have 30 days of no payment, and then we’re going to go ahead and do another 30 days, too. So it’s going to give us 60 days to figure this whole thing out and we’re going to refinance at a lower interest rate. Done little ol strong side over here calls their landlord and said, Hey, the world just shut down. What are we doing? Landlord says nothing. And by the way, I didn’t get a loan, so the first loan was taken up. I got a little bit of money after. So they did two rounds. The first round I got nothing because all like the they classified a small business under 500 people and like all the Marriotts and all this kind of stuff that are under 500.

Mitchel Black: [00:43:16] They took all them, whatever. So who cares? I don’t really care. I want to write my own check. I didn’t want any money anyways, but I just tried to get it. And then they did a second round. I got a little bit way after we were open, so I’m like, I’ll tell you that I got it a little bit, but I didn’t get it when I needed it. So they shut us down. I call the landlord, Hey, we’re not doing anything. You know, rent’s due on the first. The best we can do is you don’t pay for three months, but then you have to pay it back. I sound like bull crap, right? And I was like, Dude, if this ever happens again, I need to be huge because let me tell you how much. If I owed somebody $100 million, they would call me and they would be like, Hi. Hi, Mr. Black. I just want to make Are you okay? I want to make sure that everything’s cool with you. I know covid’s hard. Is there anything that we could do to take care of you? And I was like, I’m too small, I’m too small. I don’t know. I don’t owe anybody money. I don’t I don’t have enough liability. They don’t care. So I was like, we we have to go. And that’s how you get to that story of opening four more gyms in five months, opening a corporate wellness side of our business and just being like, and we’re still not done.

Sharon Cline: [00:44:23] But where do you want to be in like five years, ten years? Do you have a projection like that?

Mitchel Black: [00:44:27] No. Yeah. So so we were going to we were going to do 22 clubs by 2026. That’s what we were going to do. But we learned so much. And by we, I definitely mean me. I mean, I know the rest of the team learned a lot too, but I hope that I mean, my goodness, I learned a lot in 2022. And it’s. The market’s going to get really interesting in 2023. And I’m not talking about the stock market. What I’m saying is that you cannot have 5500 orange theories, 100 f 40 fives. You can’t have Peloton. Think of any other service. You have iPhone, you have Android, you have like four streaming services and people want streaming services. There’s like there’s what? There’s three phones and two phone providers. There’s Apple and Android and then there’s Google Phone. But your Android owns Google Phone and every more people have phones than bank accounts. And you’re telling me that you can have all these gyms, you can’t do that. So this thing is going to contract. And when I thought in 2022 that we were going to expand, what I’m seeing more of in 2023 is what we’re going to consolidate. I’m thinking now we’re in 2023, we’re not open. Another one. What we’re really focused on is building our infrastructure and our blueprint, and we want to be more of an infrastructure management company, more so than a gym company where we’re able to give you the blueprint to go open your gym if you need to, or absorb your current location. Because what works for us is there’s all these gyms around our gyms and they’re just they’re just kind of done. And we want to do business with these gym owners that have been trying for eight, ten years to build their business but just haven’t been able to. Or maybe they’re tired now or now they have kids and they’re looking for some type of support. You know, they’re tired of paying 20,000 a month in rent and they don’t want to deal with employees and like, you know, whatever. Cool, Come on our ship and let’s just rock and roll.

Sharon Cline: [00:46:30] So it’s like franchising kind of.

Mitchel Black: [00:46:33] Well, I don’t want to do a franchise because, like, I don’t do it. I don’t even know where to start. I mean.

Sharon Cline: [00:46:39] You figure it out, though, I will say.

Mitchel Black: [00:46:41] Yeah, that’s something I don’t know. And maybe somebody listen, I’ll have advice because of what we do. So this is just my $0.02. I don’t have any answer for it because I get asked to franchise all the time. We don’t have a cookie cutter teach this today. We literally are coaches like go through so much training and it’s so great and it’s so humanistic. How do you scale that? Like me personally, I’m just like, that is the question.

Sharon Cline: [00:47:06] You can’t replicate yourself. So you’d have to find people that have the same sort of mentality that you do, I guess.

Mitchel Black: [00:47:12] So we’ve done that. I don’t coach at all. Yeah, so we’ve done that within our four, but I’m like, Dude, if we had strong at Texas, like, and maybe I just need to figure it out, maybe I just need to just shut up and figure it out.

Sharon Cline: [00:47:22] Well, here’s my final question for you. So, you know, the show is called Fearless Formula. What are the things that you’re not afraid of anymore having gone through the recession in 2008 and obviously the pandemic, are there things that you’re not afraid of anymore that you think generally people can be change?

Mitchel Black: [00:47:41] Like, not even. Anything you want to change Right now, we can change. And it freaks people out. But change does it. So the first thing you have to do is define who you are, what your culture is, what you stand for. That can never change. But the idea that the way you do things today has to be done that way in the future. I mean, all the way down to like you walk in our gym right now, each gym has like 23 barbells, 20 to 23 barbells. If an article came out tomorrow that said barbells cause cancer and we had to sell the barbells, our business would live. It’s not built around a thing. So it’s we change and we fluctuate all the time. And as long as you can have change with reason and vision and, you know, there’s I get I’m explaining guardrails. You can’t be, you know, delirious and just change this and change that and nothing actually gets done. What I’m saying is reading the market, making changes that are in line with the market of what your prediction is going to be, but never being adverse to change, just change all the time, just in line with your values.

Sharon Cline: [00:48:47] I guess that’s important, though, because the notion of change, if you don’t really know who you are, change could mean everything could be too broad.

Mitchel Black: [00:48:55] Yeah. If you don’t know who you are and like, I mean, that’s one thing we did a couple of years ago that was extremely important. We we developed 24 fundamentals. We took those fundamentals and we put them in four different categories for people to identify with. And we just pushed out. I mean, you’ll hear me say the same story over and over again. I was five five, I was £200. I was 13 years old. This is why I started making this change strong. So started here at 24 members. They need to resonate with that and they have to understand that, you know, from the top down, bottom up, however you want to describe it, it is we are here to make people better.

Sharon Cline: [00:49:24] Your fundamentals are consistent.

Mitchel Black: [00:49:27] Yes. It never, ever changes. It just looks like, you know, if you talk, you’ll meet members over the past five years. I remember when you used to do that. Remember when you see that? I’m like, Yeah, I remember when people used to like that. Now they like this. Like, it’s okay.

Sharon Cline: [00:49:40] Well, if anyone wanted to get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Mitchel Black: [00:49:44] We’re all over Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. I mean, Google, just Google strong side and it’ll bring you up. But then on any of the platforms, it’s either strong side or train strong side. And we’ll get back to you immediately. We don’t have any bots in our system, which is something that I’m really, really I don’t know if we’re gonna live there forever, but I’m really happy with it right now and we will contact you faster than a bot.

Sharon Cline: [00:50:06] Well, Mitchell Black, thank you so much for coming by. Cherokee Business Radio X, I really appreciate the time and it’s very inspiring to hear someone so passionate about their their work and aligning themselves, kind of being congruent with themselves and their business models. It’s inspiring.

Mitchel Black: [00:50:21] Hey, I appreciate you. Thanks for having me. I know you’ve had some of our members, actually Josh Bagby, on the show, and that’s how I got hooked up with you guys. And you guys do such a great thing. I was doing some research on you too, and it’s super, super cool. I didn’t I didn’t know it was live. So everyone that I’ve listened to, I didn’t know they were actually live. So that’s cool.

Sharon Cline: [00:50:39] Did it make you nervous? You you were good.

Mitchel Black: [00:50:41] No, it’s just like, ah, okay, we’re doing. We’re going.

Sharon Cline: [00:50:45] Yeah. That’s how we roll here at Business RadioX.

Mitchel Black: [00:50:48] Oh, love.

Sharon Cline: [00:50:48] It. Thank you all for listening to Fearless Formula on Business RadioX. And again, this is Sharon Cline reminding you that with knowledge and understanding, we can all have our own fearless formula. Have a great day.

Charitable Georgia Trivia Night: Khristie Staines with Footprints On The Heart

January 23, 2023 by angishields

Charitable Georgia

Charitable Georgia Trivia Night: Khristie Staines with Footprints On The Heart

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Khristie Staines is a native of Bartow County (Georgia), a graduate of Cass High School as well as Shorter University. She has been married to her husband Michael for 15 years and is the mother to Trevor, stepmother to Allison, and grandmother to Maddox and Natalie (in Heaven).

She is the co-founder of Footprints on the Heart. Natalie was delivered stillborn in 2011 and God laid on her heart that night to create a resource for bereaved families. After discussing this with her cousin, Lori Dowdy (who had suffered a miscarriage 5 years prior), Footprints on the Heart was created.

They offer free in-person services (Remembrance Photography • Memory Making • H.OP.E. Boxes • Assistance with Funeral Planning • Ongoing Peer Support) to families facing pregnancy and infant loss (up to age 2) in Bartow County (GA) and its surrounding counties.

They also host/participate in various Community Outreach/Events throughout the year. Footprints on the Heart is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization and they can be reached at info@footprintsontheheart.org. Find them online at footprintsontheheart.org or www.Facebook.com/footprintsontheheart.ga

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta. It’s time for Charitable Georgia, brought to you by B’s Charitable Pursuits and Resources. We put the fun in fundraising. For more information, go to B’s Charitable Pursuits dot com. That’s b e. S charitable pursuits dot com. Now here’s your host, Brian Prewitt.

Stone Payton: [00:00:45] All right. We’re going to do a little bit of a head fake because I am not Brian Pruett. This is Stone Payton with Business RadioX. Welcome to this very special edition of Charitable Georgia. We are actually on site at one of those fund raising events. Stone Payton here again with you and I am with Khristie Staines with Footprints on the Heart. Welcome back to the business radio microphone. What a delight to have you. What brings you here tonight?

Khristie Staines: [00:01:12] First of all, thanks so much, Stone, for being here and broadcasting live with us. We’re super excited for this first charity trivia giveback. Not that Brian and his team have put together. We’re so grateful for all of the sponsors for making tonight happen. It’s already a little busy out there. The buffet looks great. I’m not sure I’m going to know the trivia answers, but I’m definitely going to eat. Good.

Stone Payton: [00:01:36] Hey, it’s crazy out there. I’m surprised I was able to pull you away from the buffet line. I’m going to hear it here in a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your expectations, what you’re hoping to achieve by being here and hanging out with. What I can only characterize, I guess, is like minded people. These are these are folks who genuinely want to serve and are very serious and committed to these various causes that we’re trying to help out.

Khristie Staines: [00:02:00] Yes. I’m so thankful once again to all the sponsors, very thankful to the Carnival Business Club. I go each week and network with those and and they’ve really turned out and supported this event just like they did back with our Christmas project for the nurses. And honestly, every event doesn’t matter if it raises a dollar or $1,000. It’s just raising awareness, raising education to remind people that infant loss does occur. It’s occurring in all of our communities. It’s just such a taboo topic that people don’t discuss it, and we just want to let people know who we are and what we offer the communities we serve.

Stone Payton: [00:02:37] Yeah, so say a little bit more about the work, but before you do, I’ll share something with you that I did not share with you when you were in our studio. My wife Holly and I, about 32 years ago, had a baby boy that lived for about a day. And so although I chose not to share during that particular episode, I was more my role was more producer. I do have a little bit of a feeling for what people go through and just God bless you and your work.

Khristie Staines: [00:03:08] Thank you. And and I don’t know what memories you might have had that were made. And what was your son’s name? Jesse. Jesse, I don’t know. 32 years ago, people didn’t do probably what we do today. And so, you know, you and your wife may have had lots of memories, tangible memories with your baby boy. You might have had none, you know, depending on what gestation you were, what gestation. So full term.

Stone Payton: [00:03:31] Full term. And that was very early in the technology of the echo machine. It did not do the trick. And, you know, we told ourselves that he was in a better place. And we were told not long after that that a that an experience like that often will either break a couple apart or really bring them together. And we’re so blessed and so fortunate. I really do think it made us stronger and brought us closer together. And that’s not to suggest for one moment that it wasn’t difficult. One of the challenges that we experienced and then we’ll quit talking about me, we processed and I suppose we still would our grief very differently, and learning to navigate that.

Khristie Staines: [00:04:14] Was definitely processed differently. And going back to like finding out his age because that determines what tangible memories might have been made. So you might have got hand or footprints or ink prints. And then again, 32 years ago, you know, it’s not been that long ago. Mamas didn’t even get to see their babies. Oftentimes when a loss occurred or if you go back a little bit further, the dads would take care of all the arrangements before mom ever left the hospital. And mom didn’t even get to go to the funeral a lot of times. So for us, we just try to slow that process down, help them get past the fear of the unknown, because the outside world is, I refer to. It may think everything we do is crazy, but when you’re in that moment and those tangible memories are what you have to last forever because you know, you’re 32 years into that journey. I’m a bereaved grandmother. 11 years into that journey, there’s things I’ll never forget and there’s things I can’t remember no matter what. From that experience. Natalie Her birthday would be coming up on February the ninth. And so, you know, I tell couples, just like you said, it’ll pull you together. You know, it’ll bring you together or tear you apart. And there is no middle ground for that, it seems, from from walking alongside families. And that’s why we encourage families to grieve together, because men and women definitely one dad explained it to me that men did not like chaos in their brain. So they want to process and get done and they’re going to throw themselves into work and being busy and those things where a woman sometimes is going to. Think about it. Talk about it and work through it in that way.

Khristie Staines: [00:05:46] So then, you know, I’m faith based, so we know the devil is going to step in and make the mom think the dad doesn’t care and make the dad think the mom is studying on it too much or, you know, grieving too long. I don’t know that too long is the right word because, you know, half your heart’s missing forever. There’s no such thing as too long. But I think the devil will use that to get in and tear those families apart. Because, you know, his. His thing is to kill still and destroy. And he stops at nothing for that sometimes. So we you know, we recently found a book that we love that talks exactly about that based on the five love languages book and theory. I’ve heard of that book, and it’s a book that specific written for families who lose a baby. And so for them to have that book, to help them navigate and see, just like you were talking about, where women and men do grieve so differently, it helps them know that what they’re experiencing and feeling may be normal because their friends and family and loved ones may mean well. But if they’ve not been in those shoes, they may not know what it’s really like. I don’t know if y’all had a close support system. Some of our families have an amazing support system. Some of our families walk the journey alone with no family friend type support system. And obviously we’re there to provide peer support. But, you know, we’ve we’ve had some heartbreaking situations that we’ve served in, and you just want to love them up and wrap them up in your family because they don’t have what you have.

Stone Payton: [00:07:14] So the work, I’m sure it must be absolutely fraught with challenges and it’s got to be emotionally draining. And at the same time, I got to believe there are aspects of it that you find very rewarding.

Khristie Staines: [00:07:27] Yeah, I tell people all the time, you know, it’s sacred ground to stand in that hospital room or, you know, maybe we didn’t find out about their loss when they were at the hospital. Maybe we’re serving in the funeral home capacity. Maybe we’re serving 32 years down the road when we meet them and talk to them on a day like today, I tell people, if you step back and look, even amidst the most tragic of situations, if you look, you might not can look on day one. But if you look back, you can see that even though God may not have answered your your prayer for a healing for Jesse or any other family, he entered in an ultimate healing way. It just might not have been the way we believe that he should have answered. But we have to believe that even despite that, there’s a lot of really good things that he may have put into place. Maybe he put the perfect nurse in your room. Maybe he put the funeral home like we are so, so blessed to have funeral homes that donate their services for our families. I think last year we served 62 families roughly in person, and I think around 40 of those families at least, and possibly more receive their funeral services for their babies at no cost to them.

Khristie Staines: [00:08:33] Wow. That’s like 25, 30,000 probably in donated services. So maybe it’s just them putting that funeral home in their community that’s willing to do that. Maybe it’s a ministry like ours. Maybe it’s their friends and loved ones. You know, we had a family we served. It’s going to be a year ago coming up that literally we helped them set up a meal train and we did it for for grass cutting and for groceries and for accepted monetary gift cards. That family, I think, did not have to worry about cooking a meal for almost a month straight. They didn’t have to worry about what was for breakfast, lunch or dinner because somebody signed up to make sure that every couple of days they were taken care of and they didn’t know that dad didn’t have to cut his grass, all the whole grass cutting season almost, because his friends stepped in because, you know, with with men it’s different. And I tell people, don’t be afraid to let others love on you because they don’t know how to fix it and make it better. So let them just be like your mama and let them love on you, because really that community is what gets you through.

Stone Payton: [00:09:36] So how are you funded and what can we and by we, I mean the community and Bartow, Cherokee, Cobb County, surrounding communities and the business community. What can we do to help?

Khristie Staines: [00:09:49] So right now, our ministry, you know, just being real and honest, we’re probably 95% funded by Facebook donations, those five and $10 donations. Wow. $20 donations really make a huge impact. We’ve been blessed in the past to receive the Cartersville service Lake Grant, which is local to Bartow County. They are a nonprofit that fundraises all year long and then turns around and give gives that money back to the Bartow County community nonprofits. We’ve been blessed for that. Last year we were blessed to be the recipient of a grounds for hope, grant opportunity, and hopefully we’ll get to apply for that again this year as well. So, you know, we don’t get government funding, we don’t get county funding, we don’t get hospital funding. Truly, it’s the families we served, our friends, our loved ones, strangers. You know, on Facebook, we had someone from London that found us in little old Kingston, Cartersville, Georgia. Yeah. And did a fundraiser. So a lot of times it’s people that really don’t even know who we are and what we do other than what they see shared on social media, which really isn’t even a drop in the bucket of what we do because we are very private in a lot of that. The families know what we do, the nurses know, but the outside world, because you know, it is their most sacred. You’ve been there. It’s a very intimate time. And so we try to make sure to respect that. Yes, we have to share who we are and what we do. And it’s a hard balance for sharing images of what we do and and protecting the family’s privacy. Some families, we have permission to share anything picture wise we may have taken. But even still, that doesn’t mean that we’re just out there sharing it away either. Because, you know, I know being a grandmother, how sacred those images that are in that true, raw moment of grief can be.

Stone Payton: [00:11:37] Oh, yeah. So you mentioned a moment ago the Cartersville Business Club. I’ve heard such wonderful things about this group. Can you speak to that a little bit before we wrap?

Khristie Staines: [00:11:47] Yes, We meet each week on Wednesday here in Cartersville, Georgia, and it really is a great time of networking with one another. I just can’t say enough. It’s definitely not my wheelhouse because I’m a little nervous. Each week, Brian tells me, you know, I’m like, Dory, just keep on swimming. I think it is. Dorie Maybe so I just keep coming and trying and they’ve been really great to embrace us in what we do and other businesses and nonprofits too, as well. I’ll never forget, you know, when you stand up and tell like, you know, what’s a perfect referral? And I’m like, in the beginning I was like, well, a perfect referral. Like, we only get called when there’s a trauma. So I didn’t even think about, oh, a perfect referral is a photographer that wants to lend their time. It’s a business that might want to sponsor us. It’s a person like Brian that might want to do a fundraiser. So it opened my eyes to what I needed to be thinking of instead of, in my mind, thinking, Oh, we don’t want anybody to really need us because that means a sad tragedy took place.

Stone Payton: [00:12:46] Yeah. All right. Where can people get in touch with you if they just want to learn more about this, how they might support you or if, you know, if they need the help and they find themselves in this situation or intimately connected to a similar situation, what’s the best way to to connect with you and learn more?

Khristie Staines: [00:13:05] So we have a website Footprints on the Heart dot org, but we are probably most active on our Facebook page. Messages come straight to me. We don’t have an outside group that that does all the admin stuff. It’s pretty much it comes straight to me. So if you message the page, I’m going to have that message pretty quick and try to reply back. There’s stories and different things on our Facebook. Our events are there. We have an annual candle lighting in October every year. That’s one of our most special and sacred nights of the year because we sometimes see the families for the first time after being in that sacred ground.

Stone Payton: [00:13:41] Well, Kristy, thank you so much for what you and your team are doing. Please keep up the good work. Please keep us informed and let us know what we can be doing to support you. What you’re doing is such important work, and as I shared, it means a lot to me personally. And we really appreciate you being here and sharing your story here on the network.

Khristie Staines: [00:13:59] Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing about your precious son, because no doubt today is a part of his lasting legacy of love, just like every baby we serve.

Stone Payton: [00:14:08] All right. We will be back in a few with the Giving Back trivia nights and silent auction.

Toni Kirkland with The Hidden Bookshelf, Travel Agent Jo’El Lapp and Kelly Nagel with Nagel’s Bagels

January 23, 2023 by angishields

Charitable Georgia

Toni Kirkland with The Hidden Bookshelf, Travel Agent Jo'El Lapp and Kelly Nagel with Nagel's Bagels

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Toni Kirkland is the owner of The Hidden Bookshelf and Beacon Marketing. She’s also the Marketing Director for Aurora 360, and also the creator and main cheerleader for I am here to stay which is a community for survivors of abuse and trauma. You can say that she wears a lot of hats along with being an author, al-anon wife, CoDa member, and currently single mom to a very bright and busy 23-month-old.

With 20+ years of Graphic and Web Design experience, 17+ years of Customer Service experience, 5+ years of Management experience, and being a published author of multiple books available on Amazon under M.A. Grace, Toni has lived a very interesting life.

Her main goal in life, along with being an excellent mom, is to help build communities wherever they are and provide support and encouragement to those chasing their dreams.

Connect with Toni on LinkedIn.

Jo’El Lapp is a graduate of Canisius College and earned a Bachelors in Political Science with a minor in Criminal Justice. She went on to work for several years as a Customs and Immigration Agent on the Canadian Border.

She retired when she was pregnant with her eldest daughter, Madelynn Rose. Soon after, she started Blossom Hill Farm, a farm-to-table livestock operation while raising two daughters as a single mother. After leaving the farm, divorcing the life there, she met the love of her life, Jon Lapp.

Jo’El has had several businesses from working for Pampered Chef to being a Sales Agent for Rome Radio. Currently, she is stretched very thin running a travel agency as well as being a full-time foster mom for high-risk dogs.

She is also the State Director for Convention of States, a grassroots organization which is working towards change in the federal government. Between working to make major changes in policy, and saving foster dogs that have been within hours of being put down, she has continued being a mother and making the world a better place.

Connect with Jo’El on LinkedIn.

Kelly Nagel and her husband Rich have been married for 23 years and started Nagel’s Bagels in 2019 after they both had long careers in the corporate world.

Kelly specializes in marketing, business development and facilitating connections within the community.

She has a Bachelor of Science from Florida State University, is a native of North Georgia and loves sports, mostly football (some say a little too much). Rich and Kelly have two teenage girls.

Connect with Kellyl on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta. It’s time for Charitable Georgia, brought to you by Bee’s Charitable Pursuits and Resources. We put the fun in fundraising. For more information, go to Bee’s Charitable Pursuits dot com. That’s B.S. Charitable pursuits dot com. Now here’s your host, Brian Prewitt.

Brian Pruett: [00:00:45] Good, fabulous Friday morning. Everybody out there in the listing world, it’s another fabulous Friday and Stone, first and foremost, Happy National DJ Day. Did you know it was National DJ Day?

Stone Payton: [00:00:54] I did not know that. So what a marvelous opportunity.

Brian Pruett: [00:00:58] So we should have had some bagels for National DJ Day.

Kelly Nagel: [00:01:00] Can we have and we should have had some actual disks, you know. Exactly. Vinyl.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:05] So. Stone I’m also excited. I don’t know if you are looking around the room, but three fabulous young ladies in the room. And then there’s us.

Stone Payton: [00:01:14] Yes.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:14] Yeah, right.

Kelly Nagel: [00:01:15] So that’s so sweet.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:01:17] So sweet.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:18] Now we got another great show for you. So our first guest this morning is Toni Kirkland. So, Toni, there’s a lot of stuff that you do. Probably the best thing is tell us what you don’t do. But first of all, welcome and thanks for coming this morning.

Toni Kirkland: [00:01:31] Thank you. Yes, it’s a smaller list, if I tell you what, I don’t write right.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:36] So I know you have the hidden bookshelf. You have Beacon marketing, Aurora, you have an hour on the show getting ready to start as well. But the reason I wanted you to come on this show again, for those who don’t know or maybe the first time listening, this is a show about positive things happen in the community and that can be from sharing great things to doing great things to just being vulnerable. And that’s what you’ve been able to do and you’ve shared it on Facebook, a lot of stuff. So you have a story of perseverance in not giving up. So I’d like for you to share that, if you don’t mind.

Toni Kirkland: [00:02:05] Sure. My 2022 was very crazy, so best way to put that. Over summer, my husband let his addiction take over his life, and in the process of that, he took his family down to rock bottom with him. So in August, he got arrested and that left me with no money and a lot of unpaid bills. August and September. I spent a lot of time being unaware of what I was going to do. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it, but I kept getting up because of our toddler, and every day was just another step. I didn’t know what direction it was going, but it was another step. And then in October one morning, I just woke up and I was like, This has to stop. I have to be able to provide for my son. I have to build the life that I want for us and the life that I want to live. And at that point is when I started pouring more of my attention into the Hidden Bookshelf Club and really putting focus on which direction I was going. I managed to get a remote marketing job for Aurora, and that mostly pays my bills.

Toni Kirkland: [00:03:39] I sometimes have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul, but for the most part it pays my bills and also the community. I would not have been able to get through all of this without the community. The people I have met at Canton Business Club at Roswell Business Club at Ball Ground, Business Club. They would bring me food. They helped me with fixing, trying to help fix a car that he had totaled. Ultimately, my mom had to help me get another car and another cell phone. But yeah, the community just really stepped up, and all the friends I’ve made in Cherokee County and surrounding counties have really stepped up and helped me get through that and continue today to support me. And when I’m having rough days, which is getting smaller amounts of time, but it still happens, they remind me of how strong I am and how much I inspire them. And I’ve had people come up and tell me that by me being vulnerable and talking about my story has helped them in their silence of their struggles. So I continue to do it.

Brian Pruett: [00:04:50] I think it’s awesome that you’re able to be that vulnerable and even putting it out there on social media because again, like like people have told you, people are reading that they’re going through something similar, you know, and that just helps those people to know that they’re not alone. But there’s also people out there sharing that they can feel like they can share. We’ve talked the last couple of weeks about the power of networking, and she just shared Stone and other positively awesome thing about networking where she mentioned three business clubs and they’ve helped her with food and just inspiration and just helping her along the way. So that’s just another great example of networking.

Stone Payton: [00:05:23] Well, it certainly is. And everybody in this community just loves them some. Toni Kirkland for one thing. But we have such a marvelous support system here in this community. I just I love everything about it. And every day I see tangible examples of us all kind of living into that mission of wanting to support each other and our growth. Yeah, I love it.

Brian Pruett: [00:05:44] These other two guests that we’ll be talking to, we’re all part of another group together too, so it is definitely a community. So Toni, share with us, first of all about Aurora, share what they do and then how people might be able to benefit from them.

Toni Kirkland: [00:05:57] So Aurora 360, is a renovation and handyman company, and they also use global cabinet central for their cabinetry, putting in cabinets and all that stuff. So if anybody needs a handyman to do things to help property maintenance, they do that and they do kitchen and bathroom remodels. So it gives you the time back because some of that stuff can be very time consuming. And it’s surprising how long it actually takes to replace a ceiling fan. So yeah, there’s no no project too small and no project too big. They will come in and they will tackle it for you.

Brian Pruett: [00:06:38] Do they work all over metro Atlanta or just certain areas?

Toni Kirkland: [00:06:41] Do they work all over Metro L.A.? So everything they try to stay in Atlanta or north of Atlanta. But yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:06:50] How about Beacon marketing share? What do you do with Beacon?

Toni Kirkland: [00:06:53] Beacon Marketing is a small local marketing. So I work with the local community and the local businesses in those communities to help bring them together. So I work online and offline marketing to let your community know that you are there and for them to find ways to support you and come visit you so that you are part of the community and the community is in return supporting you.

Brian Pruett: [00:07:21] The coolest thing I think you’re doing is the Hidden Bookshelf Club. So share what that is.

Toni Kirkland: [00:07:26] The Hidden Bookshelf Club is connecting the literary world one book at a time. I do that through a blog podcast, literary magazine. In online, offline events, in book clubs. I work with everybody and anybody that is connected to the book world. So I have things for readers all the way up to authors, including publishers, editors for matters, graphic designers, you name it.

Brian Pruett: [00:07:54] You’ve written books yourself.

Toni Kirkland: [00:07:55] I have. I have written a young adult action adventure story called The Blazing Charm Series, which is available on Amazon. And my pen name is Emma Grace, and it is about high school kids who are into street racing and take on the Mafia.

Brian Pruett: [00:08:14] Nice. So your show, I guess, is going to be part of the Hidden Bookshelf Club or is that separate?

Toni Kirkland: [00:08:21] Yes, The podcast is also called the Hidden Bookshelf Club, and I bring on the people in the literary world. So I have authors, editors. I even bring on book bloggers and we talk about books, and then we also talk about the person so that we can connect with the people behind the websites that we or the books that we love.

Brian Pruett: [00:08:42] That’s really cool. So if somebody was just listening and listening to your story and going through something similar or, you know, having just a bad day or whatever. Can you share a little bit of inspiration for somebody? And just obviously, like I said, your stories of perseverance and not giving up, but can you just give them some advice for maybe some of our listeners?

Toni Kirkland: [00:09:03] So my my advice that I live by is that I focus on one day at a time. I can only deal with so much at a time. So whatever that day brings me, and then I remind myself every night that I’m worthy of being here. And my motto last year and it’s also part of my motto is this year, is that I’m doing it all scared that I don’t know how it’s going to end, but I’ll never know if I don’t do it.

Brian Pruett: [00:09:39] You know, definitely has some some strong words there. Great words, too. So if somebody wants to get a hold of you for any of the things that you’re doing, what’s the best way for people to get a hold of you?

Toni Kirkland: [00:09:52] They can find me on Facebook and on LinkedIn under Toni Kirkland.

Brian Pruett: [00:09:57] Awesome. Toni, thank you for again being here. Do you mind sticking around and listening to these next young ladies?

Toni Kirkland: [00:10:02] I am excited to listen to these next ladies.

Brian Pruett: [00:10:05] All right. Well, we’re going to move over to Ms. Jo’El Lapp from travel, John and Jo’El. So, Jo’El, thanks for being here.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:10:14] Thank you for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:10:15] Jo’El is another one who’s got an incredible story. So what I know about and I’m sure we’ll hear more, but she is a former federal agent, so then she went from that to being a farmer to doing things in like sales and radio and fostering puppies and now a travel agent. So you also are a state director for convention of states. So just I mean, that’s a lot of stuff. How did you give us give us a little bit of background.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:10:45] Oh boy, how much time we got?

Brian Pruett: [00:10:48] As long as someone wants us to let this go.

Stone Payton: [00:10:50] That’s right. I got all day, man.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:10:55] Well, yeah. In like, the very beginnings of Joel after college, I got into the federal law enforcement right out of college. I was basically an intern, a paid intern with US immigration. And then I switched over. I went to the dark side because we were wearing dark blue from white. So we called it the dark Side. And I went over to customs. So basically you’re just trading at the port of entry, trading from inspecting people to items. And then I had a really good fall off my horse and followed by the birth of my first daughter. And I just couldn’t physically do that job anymore. So I kind of went from there. We went my husband, my ex husband and I bought some land out in the country because I’ve always loved horses. And then that kind of morphed into, you know, we bought a couple of cows because I was we were doing this game called Team Penning where horses chase cows into pens, and my horse hated cows, so I had to buy some cows so that she could get used to them. So I mean, I got disqualified once because she bit a cow on the butt.

Kelly Nagel: [00:12:07] So I’m sorry. That is hilarious.

Brian Pruett: [00:12:10] I love.That visual.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:12:12] Right. So I had to get some cows and that’s how it just started. It’s like, yeah, I’ll just make I’ll make her like cows. So then people started, Well, you know, if you have if you have beef, I’ll buy beef off you. And then, well, why don’t you get some pigs? Because, you know, if you raise in beef, you might as well raise pigs. Well, what about chickens? What about sheep? And then it just kind of morphed and then sell into friends and family. And I’m like, you know, I could make some money doing this. So I just started selling at a farmer’s market in downtown Buffalo, New York. And from there, I just I started knocking on doors of restaurants and just talking to them. And before you knew it, I was selling to some of the top restaurants in Buffalo, and I created some really cool programs that other farmers were actually coming to me. As far as marketing goes, you know, I say one of the silliest things I did and it worked like a charm was adopt a chicken. And people would come at the beginning of the season and they would adopt a chicken and they’d pay way ahead in advance for like a year’s worth of eggs, and they’d get a picture of a chicken and they’d hang it on their refrigerator and they’d name it. They didn’t know what chicken they had. But the the you know, it was great. The kids loved it. You know, they’d come and be like, Oh, how’s Percy? Oh, Percy’s doing great. And and then I started selling veal to restaurants, which was a big deal because I won’t eat veal because it’s, it’s ridiculously inhumane. So we started buying calves and putting them with mama cows, and they were pasture raised. So they lived a great, you know, life. Obviously, they’re butchered when they’re young, but they’re still living a very good life before butchering. And the restaurants loved it. They loved that humane aspect. Like anybody could come to my farm and the animals were in very good conditions, not factory farming at all.

Brian Pruett: [00:14:06] So you should do the chicken thing now, especially with the price of eggs.

Kelly Nagel: [00:14:10] Absolutely. I would adopt. Can I name the chicken that I adopt because I would name her Diana Ross just so you.

Brian Pruett: [00:14:17] Yes. Yes. So. Well, first of all, Stone, a pretty cool I mean, I know I’ve known Jo’El for a while and but her daughter, I wanted her to be on the show. So you have a daughter. Very proud of you, Mandy Rose, Shout out to Mandy.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:14:30] Thank you. You know. Yeah. That’s so funny, because she’s the type of kid where teachers will come up to me and be like, Oh My God, your.Daughter is amazing. She is such a nice kid. And I’m like, Are we talking about the same kid? Because it’s always the mom doesn’t see that side all the time, you know?

Brian Pruett: [00:14:47] So I’m curious to the convention of states that you’re the state director of. Sure, sure. What that is.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:14:53] All right. Convention of States is a national organization that is centered around Article five of the Constitution. So Article five of the Constitution allows the states to make proposals to amend the Constitution because you know how Congress can do it, where they make proposals. Then it comes back to the states and then 38 states need to approve it and then it becomes an amendment. Well, the states can do that, too. So the states can actually bypass Congress completely. And that’s if you’ve been paying attention. Congress isn’t going to regulate themselves. So convention of states has three main issues term limits, fiscal responsibility, and limit government overreach. So I can’t see any of them voting for term limits. Sure as heck can’t see any of them reducing their fiscal spending. And I sure as heck can’t see them reducing the amount of how they get into your business at home. I mean, they’re they’re regulating everything from what light bulb you can have in your house to what kind of toilet you can have. So we really want to push back on some of that and maybe get rid of some of those ABC agencies and, you know, save some money because why do we need to duplicate the Department of Education and Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation? We have all that and in every state has that. So why do we need to duplicate it? So I think the biggest two questions and answers is who should make the decisions and where should the decisions be made? You know, it should be made here.

Brian Pruett: [00:16:21] So if you had a lot of stuff coming up lately with that supposed outlawing of gas stoves.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:16:29] You know, it’s the ridiculousness of it. The. Legislators can throw anything out that they want. And if you look at some of the stuff that doesn’t get media attention, it’s all just ridiculous, the stuff that they come up with. So, I mean, it’s not going to happen. They can say all they want and they like the publicity. They like standing up and making a name for themselves. I mean, that’s how they get reelected. But yeah, it’s it’s not going to happen.

Brian Pruett: [00:16:55] That’s good to know, because I like a good gas stove.

Stone Payton: [00:16:59] So do I. It’s so much easier to cook on. And I do a lot of cooking.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:17:02] It is it’s much easier to regulate the heat. And I like a gas stove.

Brian Pruett: [00:17:05] Although you don’t want me cooking because I might burn down the place. You have a passion, obviously, for. For change, for people, but also for animals as you share with your farm. But you do a lot of stuff for at risk dogs. Yes, sure. Well, first of all, what is it that at risk dog.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:17:23] A dog that is dropped off at an animal shelter? Pretty much the animal shelters in Georgia are to the max. Those there’s oh, my gosh, hundreds of dogs being euthanized. And it’s just really irresponsible ownership. The dogs that are in the animal shelters are not there for the most part because they’re bad dogs. They’re there because humans pretty much suck. I mean, I really don’t have another way to say it. You know, when people drop off their dog because they’re getting a puppy for Christmas, how do you even wrap your head around that? And it happens all the time. As soon as they start advertising puppies around Christmas time, the animal shelters just get so full because people just, Oh, I want a puppy now. And these dogs come into the shelters and they’re I mean, they’re just they’re heartbroken because you’ve taken them away from their family, you know, So they’ve been removed from their family. Now they’re in this really obnoxious, horrible. If you’ve never been in an animal shelter, it is the most stressful environment you can’t even imagine. All the dogs are barking. All the dogs are terrified.

Kelly Nagel: [00:18:29] As some of.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:18:30] Them show aggression because they’re so scared. Just so scared. So what fostering does is it pulls the animal out, gives it a chance to unwind. You get to see what the dog is like. Do they like kids? Do they like other dogs? Do they like cats? Do they chase just all the little nuances? And right now I have actually I’ve got two foster dogs at home and one of them she came to me. She’s a bully, a Grabe, She’s a great pit bull and she’s a year old and she is the biggest knucklehead you’d ever want to meet in your life. But she’s she came to me at only about £40, and she should be about £60. So she was literally a walking skeleton. But she’s had no no socialization, no training, no nothing. So she is like literally the Tasmanian devil. She’s just she’s got so much energy. She just wants to go, go, go, go, go. So she’s actually the rescue is helping me raise money for her to send her for training. So she has a chance because she’s the sweetest girl you’d ever want to meet. But you know, she she’s a sled dog on a leash. And, you know, she’ll jump four feet in the air to get the bowl of food out of your hand and just little things like that. So she’s going for boot camp for three weeks. And and the rescues do all that for you. So people complain about spending money, you know, three or $400 on a rescue dog. But the amount of you’re getting a dog that’s been through all the paces, it’s usually house trained and leash trained. And just all those kinks are worked out and you don’t have to housebreak it and, you know, do all the stuff with the puppy.

Brian Pruett: [00:20:14] So a couple of months ago, am I correct that you actually drove some dogs to Virginia yourself?

Jo’El Lapp: [00:20:18] No, I didn’t drive them. I rescued them from a bad situation. It was a mom and four puppies. They were two weeks old. Actually. The the woman who owned them, she just she dropped off the dog. Her name was Jasmine and her for two week old puppies and just said, I’m sick of her having puppies. Well, hello and get her fixed. But she just dropped her off and the dog had obviously had many litters and she was gray around the muzzle. And here she is with her puppies just being dropped off at Bartow Animal Shelter. I mean, it was it was a horrible situation. So the mama was having a hard time lactating because of the stress and everything. So I just they called me and I went and I got her and I brought her back to the house and I. Put her up at that point. It was over Thanksgiving. And besides my three dogs, it wound up being 11 dogs in my house over Thanksgiving. It was lucky I’m still married.

Brian Pruett: [00:21:16] Or there’s got any food left.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:21:18] But yeah, they I just kept her for a week. And that’s a lot. A lot of times what it is, you just keep them for a couple of weeks until they can transport them out of Georgia because there’s a massive push to get dogs out of the south, because in other states there’s just a different mentality, you know, about getting your dogs fixed and proper, taking care of them and not chaining them outside. And they’re just treated better in other states or just the South in general, just has has a hard time with how they treat animals.

Brian Pruett: [00:21:49] So how hard is it to foster and find new homes? And I’m sure you get attached to them. So how hard is that?

Jo’El Lapp: [00:21:54] It’s hard, but you have to look at it. You have to just weigh it. You know, you’re saving their life. And when you get them into a new house and I am not fully responsible for getting them into a new house. The rescue does most of the heavy lifting. But, you know, you get pictures and you find out how they’re doing like that. Mom I just told you about, she just got adopted and it was just oh, my gosh. I mean, in her later years that she’s found a she’s with an older couple and she just looks so happy and it’s like, okay, that’s it’s worth it.

Brian Pruett: [00:22:25] Well, you also have a passion for helping people. And you guys are doing that with your business of travel by John and Joel. So share a little bit about your travel agency.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:22:34] Well, my husband and I have always just loved to travel and I’m like really OCD with doing our travel. You know, just everything’s very detailed. I mean, we would go around Disney and I had an itinerary at Disney so that we got into the rides at the perfect times and we just just really, really detailed. And so we started traveling by John and Joel and we put together trips that are customized. It’s kind of funny that you said that we’re talking about this because I just got an email from somebody that we know from Cartersville Business Club and she’s like, Well, I know you guys do packages and sales. Like, I never said that, but we don’t. I mean, we if you if we know what you’re looking for and it happens to come up as a special or a package, obviously we’ll, we’ll put you in that direction. But like right now, I’m planning a two week trip to Italy for somebody as a honeymoon. So and it’s it’s morphed from, you know, a couple cities to being out in a villa in the country and just having a rental car. So we just take whatever the client wants and just make it as special as possible.

Brian Pruett: [00:23:40] What’s the biggest myth about travel agents.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:23:44] That you’re going to be paying more to hire a travel agent? I mean, most before COVID, most travel agents did not charge a planning fee, But then after COVID, most are because when COVID happened, if you had say, let’s just say you had 30 trips planned for people, you now had to plan and cancel all of those trips. So you put all the work into planning them. Now you’re putting all the work in on planning when you didn’t get paid for anything. So it was it was a real hit to the industry. So I think now it’s like 70% of agents are traveling, know, doing a planning fee. But that planning fee, we sell insurance with all of our trips. So I’m now if you have to cancel, I’m now getting your money back for you. So it extends way beyond the trip. I’m getting that money back, lost luggage, switched airlines, whatever. I mean, I’ve had people message me in other countries and want to change their plans. Well, they they decided they want to do something else or go somewhere. And we’re changing that for them in real time so that their their vacation continues without a hitch.

Brian Pruett: [00:24:59] Does that fee vary, I guess, with the different travel agents, or is it kind of.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:25:02] Across the board to say, no, It does vary. I mean, some are a little they’re very proud of their planning fees, but it just depends.

Brian Pruett: [00:25:14] I had a question. I just kind of left me. Oh, I know what it was. If somebody is looking to travel and can you give any tips? I mean, I know people think about, you know, what can you do? Is there still people worried about COVID or any just any tips you can give somebody about the travel route now?

Jo’El Lapp: [00:25:29] Travel right now is tough. The airlines are overbooking. See, what happens is there’s so many different suppliers that sell travel. So you’ve got your Expedia’s your Travelocity’s you know just go online and search airlines and everybody selling airline tickets, everybody selling hotels and they overbook. So traveling with air right now is really difficult. So if you’re going somewhere, you know, well, there’s two things. You know, try, try, try to get a direct flight because they will lose your luggage, I guarantee you. And secondly, if you’re if you’re flying, just, you know, do like a Google flight search and try to find the you know, the if you do Google flights, you’ll see all the flights that come up and you want to be on. The earliest flight possible so that if your flight is canceled or you’re bumped, you can try to get on later flights. Otherwise, you’re going to be you know, if you try to get like a 10:00 flight, you’re going to be staying somewhere overnight, you know, until that flight goes out the next morning. So try to get on the earliest flight as possible because you just might have a long day at the airport.

Brian Pruett: [00:26:41] If somebody wants to get a hold of you for travel, how can they do that?

Jo’El Lapp: [00:26:45] They can go to jlapp travels dot com. So it’s Jlapptravels.Com and we’re on Facebook and Instagram at at jlapp travels.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:01] On the convention of states. Can people also get a hold of you in case they are concerned about any of that stuff.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:27:06] Yeah. Yeah. They can go to convention estates dot com and there’s a petition there. We ask that you sign the petition and what that’ll do is that’ll go to your legislator, your state legislator and let them know, hey you know, I really believe in all of this. So let’s make sure that Georgia supports it. Georgia’s was the first state to pass the convention of states resolution, and we have 19 states right now. We need 34. We’ve got nine on the docket this year. So we were we were involved in 450 elections last year or not last year, but this past year, in order to get more friendly legislators to pass the states that we’re holding out. So I think it’s going to happen pretty soon.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:47] Wow. You know, STONE Every time I listen to a show, I keep saying one word over and over, and that’s awesome. But I know what else to say when the when you hear these stories.

Stone Payton: [00:27:55] It sounds like a perfectly descriptive word to me. It is awesome. I think it’s incredible what these ladies are doing. What a pleasure to get a chance to visit with them and have them share their story.

Brian Pruett: [00:28:05] Yeah. So, Jo’El, thanks for again for coming. Do you mind sticking around for this next young lady?

Jo’El Lapp: [00:28:11] Absolutely not.

Brian Pruett: [00:28:12] All right. All right. We now have missed Kelly Nagel from Nagel’s Bagels to the show. She is I like what she says, Stone. She’s the carb dealer. And you can tell that I like carbs.

Kelly Nagel: [00:28:23] So don’t we all.

Brian Pruett: [00:28:25] Yes. Kelly, thanks. Thanks for taking your time to be in here as well this morning.

Kelly Nagel: [00:28:29] Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:28:31] So I know you have a giving heart. You do a lot of stuff. So first of all, just share. I know you have a marketing background, but share how Nagel’s Bagels got started.

Kelly Nagel: [00:28:40] All right. Well, yes, I was in the business development marketing world very diversely. I did fundraising for nonprofits for a long time. I worked and actually produced content as well as did marketing for a thread and stabilizer company. I do. I am a seamstress. I do so as well. So that was there. I did it for a credit union for a little while and then I was working for a credit union when COVID and this whole thing hit. And and I got laid off because, you know, if your job is to go out and network and talk to people, you know, you can’t do that anymore during that time, allegedly. And so. Parallelly is that a word.

Brian Pruett: [00:29:32] Now.

Kelly Nagel: [00:29:33] That it communicated right? So at the same time, so my husband has had a long and amazing career with pharmaceutical companies. He is a subject matter expert in how your data is supposed to look when it gets submitted to the FDA for a clinical trial. So he has worked directly with pharmaceutical companies or has been a consultant and worked for Oracle. You know, just making that data look the way it’s supposed to look. And as you could probably guess, that was a lot in front of the computer. And Rich really just wanted something that was completely different as a hobby. It was supposed to just be his hobby. I just want to say that very clearly that this was supposed to be a hobby surprise. And and he was always obviously our last name is Nagel. He was always kidded with, you know, Oh, Nagel bagel. It was a little chubbier in middle school. And and then we had always said, Oh, wouldn’t that be fun? We could have a bagel. You know, Nagel bagel is a bagel company. Never took it seriously. I actually hate to bake. I’ve been fired from the bakery several times. And but he was like, I’m going to see if I can make a bagel. And he researched. He’s good at that and did watch some YouTube videos. And then he made the worst bagels in the entire world. I mean, oh, my gosh, they some of them couldn’t have even been a bagel. It was like a boat anchor and.

Brian Pruett: [00:31:07] Sell.

Kelly Nagel: [00:31:07] Them. Yeah, right. And so but he kept that was actually a really good thing to happen because he was like, well, this isn’t going to beat me. I’m going to figure this out. And so he kept trying. Kept trying. And then. They he started getting good and we were giving them to friends and things like that. And one of those friends that tried happen to be the person that runs the Cartersville Farmer’s Market. And so she called us and said, By the way, you have a booth at the farmer’s market. We had no idea what that meant. Like, we didn’t know, Is that good? Is that bad? But we figure we should bake. So we took 6 hours and baked 12 dozen bagels and we sold out in less than an hour. And at this point, this was 2019. At this point, I’m still thinking we’re this is just a good hobby. Like this is going to pay for some vacations that we can use John and Joel to help us plan, buy some more books, because that’s like my fantastic hobby is I and we should probably talk like, you know, but and, and then it just kind of started snowballing. And we kept at people kept wanting more bagels and and cafes and restaurants were wanting to sell our bagels and coffee shops. And so, so now we’re back at 2020 and I got laid off and our a friend and CPA said, if anybody can make this happen, y’all can just go for it 100% and make it happen. And that’s what we did. And we opened our new bakery and cafe in June in Cartersville, 125 West Main Street. And it’s so now we have a actual cafe, we have a full bakery that we can do both wholesale catering and support the restaurant. And, and this is what we do full time, both of us, which is awesome and scary and all those things.

Brian Pruett: [00:33:14] Have you seen a bagel that’s become the popular bagel?

Kelly Nagel: [00:33:18] Well, the looking at the stats, you know, our is the most sold bagel is the everything bagel in the plain bagel. And those are the most common. Most people know those. And so those are probably as far as actual sales. But I would say we do some unique things because we’re not Yankees. I say that term lovingly and we’re also not Jewish. So we don’t have like we don’t have to hold to this ancient recipe that great grandfather told us, and this is how you make bagels, because this is just the way it’s done. So we do some things that are different, a lot of things actually. And so we have a Asiago Jalapeno bagel that’s very popular.

Brian Pruett: [00:34:04] It’s very good, too.

Kelly Nagel: [00:34:05] Yes. And our maple bacon, which our youngest daughter actually came up with, was the maple bacon bagel. That’s probably the other one. That’s our unique that’s popular.

Brian Pruett: [00:34:14] So it’s not just flavors in cream cheese. You guys can make bagels, sandwiches and stuff as well.

Kelly Nagel: [00:34:19] Absolutely. And that’s part of what we do differently with our bagels is we have everything is natural. We don’t have a single preservative or anything artificial in the entire place. I could go off on my soapbox on that, but I won’t. We use the best flour. We use local honey, that is, you know, we use raw organic sugar, we use special oil, everything. So it’s actually good for you. But we also have Millie, who is our sourdough yeast starter. And Millie is what is the yeast? It’s in every bagel. And that actually that process and the proofing process we use makes them softer. And so they’re easier to make into sandwiches and to use, you know, in other ways than just like your regular bagel with just cream cheese. Although we do have that.

Brian Pruett: [00:35:12] Yes, you can get that because that’s one of my favorites is the blueberry that you have. Yes. So another cool thing that they’ve got in stone is they have a bagel bus, which, if I’m not mistaken, you got got you actually got that and brought up from another country.

Kelly Nagel: [00:35:24] Yes. So my husband is from Southern California and grew up in the bad part of Los Angeles.

Stone Payton: [00:35:30] That is another country, right?

Kelly Nagel: [00:35:31] Yes, that is actually completely different culture. He was it was very funny to when he moved here. And even though it’s been like 15 years that we’ve I grew up here, but we I brought him back after we lived in California. I still can use the excuse when he does something wrong. Well, you know, he’s from California and people are like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. But yeah, so we he’s always loved vintage VW busses and bugs and you know and we’re both car people anyway And so he actually commissioned a 19 6823 window VW Microbus and we had it restored in Brazil and brought over and got that in August I believe and it’s a. Bryant because it was fully restored, and yet he is in the garage every day doing something. And every day Amazon sends something and it’s for the bus. And I was like, Huh? Just thought it was fully restored.

Brian Pruett: [00:36:36] Which his baby. He’s got to take.

Kelly Nagel: [00:36:37] Care of it. Absolutely. Absolutely. We do love it, though. It’s a great, great thing.

Brian Pruett: [00:36:41] It’s a conversation piece as well.

Kelly Nagel: [00:36:43] It is. It’s a great marketing piece, quite frankly. I mean, people come in and they’re like, hey, I saw the bus. And so I decided to come and try a bagel.

Brian Pruett: [00:36:52] You guys actually sponsored our breakfast at the golf tournament That helped in September for Aces Youth Homeward Experiences Foundation. And if I’m not mistaken, that might have been the first event you brought the bus out to.

Kelly Nagel: [00:37:01] It was it was the first event. He was a little nervous driving it that far and everything, so but it went great. He and of course, got a great reception.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:10] Yeah, the golfers loved it. They couldn’t they just kept wanting to talk about they didn’t care about the bagels. Well, they did, but after they wanted to talk about the bus.

Kelly Nagel: [00:37:16] It’s true. It’s true. We get that a lot.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:18] So I know you have a big heart for giving as well. And you shared a few months ago at a luncheon about a nonprofit or program you want to do eventually with the bagels. Can you share share that?

Kelly Nagel: [00:37:31] Absolutely. As part of our vision statement, actually having, you know, having a marketing background, of course, we wrote, you know, a marketing plan, a vision statement, mission statement for needless bagels. And part of that is that we want to end hunger in every community where we are, have a presence, and we get that. That’s a big goal. We’re okay with that. With why? Why dream if you don’t dream big, right? And so as a part of that, we support organizations that feed people. So currently the big ones we do are a good neighbor, homeless shelter. We support backpack buddies and we support Live 2540, which is the love shirts that you’ve seen all around. And those are organizations that feed people. And eventually we would are. One part of that vision is to have our own nonprofit or arm, you know, of our business and it be called Bagel on the Hook because in Eastern Europe, every bakery, they buy their bread every day over there and you go in and you can buy a loaf of bread and then you could buy another loaf for the hook. And then when somebody else comes in to the bakery, if they don’t have any money, they just ask the proprietor, Do you have any bread on the hook? And if they do, no questions asked, they grab that bread off the hook and give it to the person. And so it just feeds people. And I don’t know, I just can’t make the basic sustenance of life, which is bread, and then not be giving that bread to people who are hungry. It’s ridiculous that we live in this country and there are still people that go home and don’t know where they’re going to eat their next meal. And that is, quite frankly, our irresponsibility as humans. And so we to we want to rectify that, not to make people feel bad, but just I just think people if people see more people doing it and if they see how easy it is, then they want to follow suit. And so that’s that’s how that’s how we do it.

Brian Pruett: [00:39:37] So you just mentioned the good neighbors, homeless shelter and backpack buddies, and you and Rich are taking part and the dances with Dancing with the Stars. Share what that is and how can people support you?

Kelly Nagel: [00:39:48] Yes. So I. Kondracke into dancing with me for the Cartersville Dances with the Stars. So we will be dancing as a couple. The event is actually March 4th, but up until then, every couple that’s dancing has to raise money. And Brian, you won’t be this doesn’t surprise you how competitive Rich and I are. So we’re like, oh, we want to raise the most money. And so we are doing several fundraisers and things as well as dancing several hours a week. Practice, y’all. I don’t even have to go exercise anymore. Just that in and of itself is so much exercise and quite frankly, so much fun to be able to do and do together. It solves a lot of arguments in our house that, you know, we can you know, you can’t be mad at somebody after you’ve danced with them for that long. And so that’s fun. But but yeah. So we they. The event goes to good neighbor homeless shelter and backpack buddies in Cartersville, Georgia. And if you don’t know what those do. So good neighbor homeless shelter has a an emergency shelter as well as transitional housing. They also help straight. They do a street program out of there. And it is the epitome of teaching someone to fish instead of giving them a fish. Guests come in that are you know, in situations like what Tony was in, they had no idea that they would be. I mean, so many people have no idea that they are one incident away from devastation and they can walk into this place that is a home and they are a guest and they are given education and they’re giving the resources on how to get back on their feet and they’re able to stay there for up to 10 to 12 weeks.

Kelly Nagel: [00:41:50] And there they get a job and they’re helped with how to do all those things. And I mean, there’s so many roadblocks to people if they don’t have a driver’s license or lost their driver’s license or Social Security card and, you know, just having help to get all that is awesome. And then to the point that then there’s transitional housing to help them get back on their feet that way. And and and it’s just there’s so many success stories. I met a guy a few years ago who was at the shelter, came in destitute. He had been living on the street for a long time, and he left the shelter as a manager of a fast food restaurant. And he was actually moving to, I think, South Georgia because they had transferred him to take over another store within this thing. And that that story is common with Good neighbor. So they’re not you know, they’re feeding people, obviously, and all of our leftover bagels for the day go to them. And but they’re also helping people get back on their feet and backpack buddies. A backpack goes home with children who don’t have any food. The only meals they get are at school and a backpack full of nonperishable food goes home with them on Fridays to feed them and most likely their family over the weekend. And it’s very discreet program. People, you know, other kids don’t know it’s happening. And that way they’re able to eat and still have some dignity and they do feed them over the summer as well.

Brian Pruett: [00:43:28] So, you know, let’s see, Wednesday night I started the first charity trivia giving back event and Good neighbor homeless shelter is going to be February’s. Yes. So make sure you put February 22nd, come to Saint Angelo’s, enjoy a great buffet, a great organization, and I’ll be doing backpack parties later in the year. So.

Kelly Nagel: [00:43:49] Yeah. And so rich and I’ll be there to to cheat so we can win.

Brian Pruett: [00:43:53] Yeah, we the trivia. I’ll make sure that all the phones get taken next time. So.

Kelly Nagel: [00:43:58] Yeah, that’s a good idea. That’s a good idea. So can I do a shameless plug for people to give money to our.

Brian Pruett: [00:44:04] Sure, go.

Kelly Nagel: [00:44:05] Ahead. All right. So if you text 4144, four, if you text the word Nagel in AGL to 41444, it will send you a link that you can donate to us so that we can raise the most money.

Brian Pruett: [00:44:19] There you go.

Kelly Nagel: [00:44:20] We’ll get a trophy for that. So.

Brian Pruett: [00:44:22] Well, there’s I mean, you’re doing a lot anyway, but you also have a heart for helping other small businesses. And you are the new president for the Growth Business Association for this year. So first of all, congratulations on that.

Kelly Nagel: [00:44:35] Thank you. That gave me a tiara. It’s the only reason I did it.

Brian Pruett: [00:44:38] There you go. Share a little bit about the ABA and how people can get involved with that.

Kelly Nagel: [00:44:43] Absolutely. So, yeah, the Acworth Business Association was integral in helping get Nagel’s Bagels started. I had been involved when I had worked for the credit union and met a lot of just amazing people. And I and so when I got laid off and said, Hey, this is what we’re going to do, we’re going to make it work, that organization was like the people, you know, that are members. They were like, What can we do? How can we help? And they really helped get us off the ground and continue to support us, which is amazing. And so my theme for this year, our goal with Acworth Business Association, is facilitating connections. We want to connect people with other people. One of that is that we have lost connection with humans because we had we do have that silly phone and we think that we’re really connecting people when we’re not. And so I want people to get face to face with other people and get vulnerable and, you know, really get real connection. But also I adhere to the business philosophy that Zig Ziglar says, and he says, if you can have anything you want. As long as you help enough other people get what they want. And so that’s what we do and that’s what we push for people to do, is, you know, you’ve been in business for a long time, Brian, so somebody who’s just starting out, you give them an hour of your time and hey, this is this is some mistakes I made. These are some right things I did. Here’s some connections. You’re amazing at connections and, you know, here’s some connections. I have to help you get started. I mean, those things are invaluable. And I mean in that what we’re supposed to do just as humans helping other humans.

Brian Pruett: [00:46:24] Absolutely. I mean, that’s I think I share this, but obviously my passions are are fundraising and sports, but connecting others is my other passion. And it’s just you get it high when you can see those connections and they work with other people.

Kelly Nagel: [00:46:36] Absolutely. Absolutely. Speaking of sports, I do feel like we need to ask Joel if she is in the Buffalo Bills Mafia. Oh, okay. Think. I mean, they kind of forced us all to be in it because of, you know, DeMar Hamlin, which I love and I’m glad he’s doing well. But isn’t it like the Mafia to, like, force us to be seafaring today? So I know I knew you were a Bengals fan. That’s why I was, like, making sure you didn’t bring the enemy into this room.

Brian Pruett: [00:47:03] Well, you can be frenemies.

Kelly Nagel: [00:47:04] Okay.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:47:05] All right. Yeah. My parents had season tickets for, like, 33 years for the Bills Games? And when you’re a Bills fan, you’re a fan because you’re going, you know, they’re shoveling off snow right before you sit down.

Kelly Nagel: [00:47:18] It’s ridiculous. I mean, they know they live in Buffalo, right? Like they know it snows there.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:47:25] And they go to season. Yeah.

Kelly Nagel: [00:47:26] I mean, we have a dome and we’re in Georgia. I’m pretty sure Tampa’s is a dome, isn’t it? No, not anymore. No.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:47:33] Once in a great while, my dad would take me to a game and we would have to pack, like, tons of newspaper to have, like, sit. I mean, it was like it was an endeavor to get ready for the game. It was. It’s very hardcore. So I spent my whole life like, my my whole my entire childhood was organized around home games.

Kelly Nagel: [00:47:52] Well, that I mean, that makes sense.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:47:54] Go on vacation. No, you can’t go to a friend’s house. There’s a game on. So I’m not really a very big Bills fan. My husband still watches the Bills, guys, but I’m just on my phone, you know, on Facebook.

Kelly Nagel: [00:48:05] All right. Well, yeah, I got married. They did. We chose the date of our wedding because it was a bye week for Florida State. So I get it.

Brian Pruett: [00:48:14] So nothing more cool or cooler? Is that a word? It is. You put food in, but nothing more cooler than women in sports, right? So, absolutely.

Kelly Nagel: [00:48:22] I unfortunately know more about sports than most humans should. So we won’t unless you want to do a whole hour on sports. We’ll have.

Brian Pruett: [00:48:28] Another show on.

Kelly Nagel: [00:48:29] That. All right.

Brian Pruett: [00:48:29] Sounds good. So somebody wants to get a hold of you for some catering or you also do a program, which is pretty cool with the bagels that have a company wants to send a thank you to their customers. You will do that as well. Sure. About that real.

Kelly Nagel: [00:48:43] Quick. Yes, absolutely. We do great bagel boxes. And it could be just bagels. It could be bagels and cream cheese. It could be like a bagel charcuterie box. And yeah, if you want to send thank you gifts to clients or whatever, we can do that. We can deliver them, packaged them, use your specific label, help design a label, all those things. And we have different price points for that, you know, depending on how much you want to thank them, you know, are you $10 happy with them or $75 happy?

Brian Pruett: [00:49:10] I think somebody gave the idea for the label, didn’t they?

Kelly Nagel: [00:49:12] So, yes, Brian was very integral in helping me figure out what how to do labels and personalize them for everyone. So I do thank you for that. Sure. Yes. But yes, we also do catering. We can come to your event. We can put a bagel bagel, breakfast board or charcuterie board in your, you know, your bridesmaids and bride room, if you want that before wedding or for Super Bowl Super Bowl party, you need a grazing table. I got you, though. Yes, we do that as well as have you know, we have specials every day at the shop. It’s today’s Friday, right? So it’s a brisket. We use Jonny Mitchell. He’s a award winning smoker and he provides us our brisket every Friday and Saturday. We have brisket bagels and they are addictive.

Brian Pruett: [00:50:02] Are you hungry now, Stone?

Stone Payton: [00:50:03] I am starving, absolutely. I love brisket and so does my bride. Yes.

Brian Pruett: [00:50:08] So again, if somebody wants to talk to you about catering, how can they do that? Or if somebody wants to talk to you about the Acworth Business Association, how can they do that?

Kelly Nagel: [00:50:16] Yeah, So anybody can go to our website. We it’s Nagel’s Bagels, Dot Co or Nagel’s bagels and brews because we do have beer and wine. So nagel’s bagels and brews. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, all those as well as just you can just email me Kelly K l.y at Nagel Unlimited dot com.

Brian Pruett: [00:50:44] So the last couple of shows started the new Year. I think I’m going to do this all year long, though, is I want to ask you guys to share. You’ve already shared a little bit, but share either one word or something positive for this new year all year long that people should should do or live by. Tony let you start?

Toni Kirkland: [00:51:02] I would say that my words directly are worth and respect. You should respect yourself and know your worth and know that whatever room you walk into, you are worthy of being there and everybody starts somewhere. So don’t ever look down at yourself by comparing yourself to other people.

Jo’El Lapp: [00:51:25] Joel I would say be true, but be kind so you can absolutely stand up for what you believe in. You don’t have to cave, but just do it in a kind way.

Kelly Nagel: [00:51:34] Kelly Oh, that one’s good, both of them. So I always do pick a word every year. And my word for this year is not surprising. It’s connection. And I am all about connecting real with people, being vulnerable. All that, all of that. But I also I have I have ADHD, so I have trouble getting things done sometimes. And so I developed a thing called the Rule of three, and I write my list of all the things I think I have to do. And some, you know, sometimes it’s, you know, solve world peace or hunger or whatever. And then I pick three that I can do today, and I turn that piece of paper over. I write those three on there. And as long as I get those three done for that day, I don’t have to do anything else. And if you do the role of three Monday through Friday for a month, you get done 60 things, you check 60 things off your list. And quite frankly, if I can check 60 things off my list every month, I’m doing better than I am without that. So that’s kind of my my advice for this.

Brian Pruett: [00:52:36] Year, you know, doing this show. First of all, Stone, you and I have talked about this before, but it’s a great platform to get all these stories out there. Again, there’s so much negative in mainstream media. It’s great to get all this positive stuff out there. I’ve maybe I’ve had a long week and be tired and exhausted, but come Friday morning, man, I know I’ve got the shows coming up that are just incredible and being able to share these these stories. So everybody out there listening, remember, let’s be positive and be charitable.