Serial Entrepreneur Michael Peres

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon and this is going to be a good one. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Hexa PR, Her Forward, Hexa Cloud Services and so much more. Mr. Michael Peres. How are you man?

Michael Peres: Good. I’m greatstone. Thank you for having me on your show.

Stone Payton: Oh, man, I am so excited about getting into this conversation and just delighted to have you participate on the broadcast. I got a ton of questions, Mikey. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could paint a picture for for me and our listeners with all these things going on, what’s really driving you? Mission purpose, what are you really out there trying to do for folks, man?

Michael Peres: That is such a loaded question stone, because there’s like a micro and there’s a macro. I’ll start with like the well, the micro is really I’m trying to provide an all encompassing service for notable entities. So singers, actors, entrepreneurs, investors, anyone doing really high level stuff, we take care of everything. You just, like write us a check and we get down. We do the server, we do the web development, we do the SEO. We help you with the press releases. So it’s the secret here is the the, the value that we give over to others is that they don’t have to worry about the gritty day to day, and they can focus on whatever bigger picture they’re focused on. So that’s my purpose, is to really give high quality value and allow high functioning people to really do what they do best. But there’s a much bigger, um, macro perspective here. So, you know, that’s my immediate goal. My five year plan is to enter into venture capital, where I have all these tech resources available for early stage startups and individuals. And we can not only invest in tech companies. You know, given my experience in tech and the resources I have available. But we can also help them reduce their costs. So that would be my five year plan. And my ten year plan is kind of radically different, where I hope to have a good footprint in VC, and then I can focus on biology and longevity research, which is deeply what I’m passionate about. So, you know, it’s a very important to stay focused on the day to day, but it’s also important to have a bigger picture and being okay to adjust when it makes sense.

Stone Payton: I got to know the backstory, man. What is it that caused you to pursue these interests and try to serve these constituencies? I bet it wasn’t a straightforward, uh, path. There were probably a few curves along the way, huh? Yeah, there’s.

Michael Peres: Always curves along the way. But what’s interesting here is that I do have an you know, in retrospect, looking back, it’s very clear to me that there is an underlying and guiding philosophy and that in order to understand that underlying philosophy, we got to take a trip back all the way to my elementary and high school days. So I was diagnosed with the highest, I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I was given the highest dosage of Ritalin at the time. If I’m not mistaken, it was around 100mg of slow release Ritalin. I had horrible side effects. I also grew up in a very orthodox community, so I had no secular education whatsoever. I mean, I had a very, you know, meeting the minimum legal requirements of Canada, but at the very least, I mean, I wasn’t prepared to journey into the college world. And I think that almost appeared to be the worst moment in my life where I’m like, hey, listen, it’s impossible. I need special attention in math. I need special attention in English literature. I’m being thrown into algebra, and I can barely I’ve been being thrown into calculus, sorry. And I can barely do algebra. And many, you know, a lot of us can just pull the victim card and say, hey, listen, it really isn’t my fault. I do have learning disabilities and it’s not my fault that I was born, you know, into a structure that wasn’t really that didn’t focus on a secular education. But, you know, instead of seeing it that way, I kind of looked at it as the most beautiful moment in my life, because I really I learned two things about myself. I learned that when I want something, I’m willing to give up a lot to get it.

Michael Peres: And I realized how much I’m capable of learning in a short period of time. And I think everyone can make that same argument when you really want something. So what what what seemed to be the worst period in my life turned out to be the absolute best period of my life because I became addicted to that delta, that rate of change in knowledge. In a short period of time, I met up with someone who tutored me in calculus one, calculus two, calculus three, electricity and magnetism mechanics. And he understood how it all connected. And he was two years younger than me. I was 19 at the time and he was 17, and I was like, whoa, some people know so much stuff. And they’ve spent, you know, and they’re so ahead of me. I’m so, so behind. And having to do that huge catch up to fit into the secular world, um, was the most defining moment for me. And that hunger and that thirst to learn constantly really is a driving force in how I operate today. And it’s this lack of complacency. And the moment I see a patronize and a repetitive process in my day to day, there’s a sense of emptiness that I feel that I have to pull back to. Hey, I remember that time that I did so much so, you know, I have this 80 and I know it’s a bit of a long answer, but I think it’s an insightful one where I have this 80 and 20 oscillating rule of life. So I’m constantly either 80%, um, managing my client base, 20% doing R&D research and development, just inching outwards into my into my service base or and then I flip and I don’t always flip for an equal amount of time, but when I flip, I’m 80% in R&D.

Michael Peres: That’s when I kind of pack up on Red Bulls and or energy drinks, and I spend a lot of time just inching outwards and studying surrounding services. For example, I started off as just a programmer, and then I started doing web design, and then I started doing, uh, you know, uh, cloud computing and server management. And then I started stepping outwards into the world of news and publications and journalism. It’s this lack of complacency that you’re and you’re always assessing. Seeing where you are and what are your next strategic steps. And that’s the secret in life. You know, a lot of us are paid to forget about our dreams. We find a job we absolutely love, and so we find a job that pays us absolutely well. And it’s the exact antithetical point I’m making, and we tend to forget about what we truly love doing. You might love programing, for example. Doesn’t mean you want to work at Google calibrating a GPS for the rest of your life. And it’s really hard to take a step out of that when your salary is good, your benefits are good. But the truth is, when you find something you truly love, you want to kind of you got to be willing to give up a lot to get it. And when you’re in something you truly love, you really never want to get stagnant and you want to have that hunger and those goals always just out of reach.

Stone Payton: Well, I got to say, the passion, the energy, it’s inspiring. It’s invigorating. It certainly comes through over the over the air. What are you at this point finding the most rewarding about the work? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Michael Peres: Honestly, it’s a vision I have for what I want to make. So, you know, and I just mentioned that earlier how how, you know, here’s how I see it. We should always have goals that we never kind of were that like are always just out of reach. But then we want to look back at our goals that we kind of set a year or two ago and not be impressed by them. And that’s kind of how I look at it, where if I look at the goals that I had a year ago and I’m still striving to really meet those at a, at a micro sense, I kind of feel I might be able to move a little quicker, or I might need to reassess a few things. But really, my real big goal here is, is that in 10 or 15 years from now, I can do my biology research, I can focus on longevity. I can start studying the underlying mechanisms to reverse human aging as much as I can pursue that right now, I want to be able to pursue that with a great degree of comfort and a good foundation base. And who knows, maybe in ten, 15 years from now I’d have different plans. But it seems that way and I’m very excited. And that motivates me every day because I do have really good goals far ahead. And I know that there are very good, actionable steps with good progress in each step along the way.

Stone Payton: Well, let’s dive into a little bit of the work, if we can. And maybe we pick one of those domains and, I don’t know, maybe walk through the highlights of a use case or two so we can kind of get a feel for a day in the life of Mikey Perez and a day in the life of a satisfied client.

Michael Peres: Oh well, a day in the life of me can be a little chaotic, in all honesty. Um, so I have half of my team abroad. So, you know, sometimes my day starts at 9 p.m. and my day starts at 9 a.m.. Um, but, you know, it’s an illusion of choice, really. You know, it is chaotic, and sometimes it’s truly not worth it unless you’re extending your lens pretty far out. So, uh, you know, it’s an illusion of choice to think that we really do have the option. We wake up every morning for one reason or another, and we’re determined to continue what we’re doing. And there’s no reason why I don’t say, hey, I don’t just why don’t I just work out big tech, get a good 9 to 5 job and be that guy who tells you on Friday afternoon that he can only check his, you know, he’ll get back to you Monday because he doesn’t have access to his work emails. That’s simply not my life. I work workdays, I work weekends. In fact, I’m kind of coming around to like realizing, hey, there’s other things to life, uh, personal life. You know, I always have gone out, but now I’m making it more of a priority to get a balance in life. But at the same time, it’s fun. Whenever I want, I just sit down and I do work, and. And it’s really not work. I enjoy what I’m building.

Michael Peres: I look at money as a byproduct of doing something. Stellar. Clients. We got a ride. Wide range of clients. Um, and a lot of the services we offer are very closely connected, and my clients are almost like my friends. Um, I, you know, my friends are my clients. Like, those are the people I associate myself with. And, you know, it’s a very it’s a very, like, concierge on demand service. So anytime someone needs something, if their emails are not working, I’m the first person they got to reach out to. Their servers or website is down. I’m the first person they want to reach out to. If they have a question about some next steps they want to take, I’m the first person they call. So I kind of look like a little bit of a crazy person because I always got my laptop on me. But at the same time, you know, it’s a double edged. It’s it comes with the territory. So, you know, you have great flexibility. You know, you get to move around, you get to travel a lot. And you can look at my social media and it’s pretty clear that I kind of move around quite a bit. But at the same time you’re always kind of working. So, you know, and for, for this isn’t the lifestyle for everyone. It truly, truly, truly isn’t. But, you know, some people are really happy with stability 9 to 5 and they come home and they don’t have to worry about work, and they’ve got their vacation days and that, you know, and they know what they’re building towards and they’re happy.

Michael Peres: And they like just focusing on, you know, sometimes the things that that don’t matter at all are the most important things. And perhaps the joke’s on me that they understand something I don’t. But then there’s people like me who are really much focused on the long term and who so career oriented. Um, and if what I’m saying resonates with you, then, you know, you really got to start assessing how you have to get out of a job you don’t love and enter the job you do love. And the quickest piece of advice, and I know we’re going on a slight tangent here, and you have to forgive my ADHD, but the real piece of advice that I would give to someone who might necessarily be in a corporate job or structured job, and they’re hearing what I’m saying and it’s resonating with them. The one piece of advice I would give them is, is we all want success for whatever success means to us, but what are we willing to give up to get it? It’s not a meaningful question to say, do you want to be successful or do you want to, you know, make a whole bunch of money? Or do you want to do something really philanthropic or give to the world? But are you willing to give up your your eight hours of sleep? Are you willing to move back into your parents home so you can save money so you have slack to learn a new set of skills? Right? Are you willing to give up your weekends partying? Right? So if you’re willing to give that up, then the world is at your fingertips.

Michael Peres: If you want to start, you know, you have like a physical job and you want to move into the digital world of zeros and ones. You have YouTube. You can learn. You don’t even need to go to school anymore. You can learn how to program. You can develop a set. You can develop a a wide set of skills with many use cases. And something like Covid wouldn’t necessarily shock you so much. So that’s the simplest question I would let people think about is what are you willing to give up to get your dreams? And if it’s if you’re willing to give up your sleep for eight hours, and if you’re willing to take six months with the embarrassment and and the luxury of moving back home with your parents so you don’t have to pay rent, you don’t have to pay for food, and you can solely focus on developing a new set of skills. If you’re willing to give that up, then you know you’re in a pretty good place.

Stone Payton: You mentioned early in the conversation, and maybe it’s my turn to take a tangent, but this is one I’m interested in hearing a little bit more on. Um, an interest in pursuing, um, science and learning more about longevity. And I get the sense that a guy who lives a lifestyle you do now, you already must have some other disciplines in place, uh, in a health and wellness. Any speak to that a little bit, if you would?

Michael Peres: Yeah. We’ve evolved to find beauty in death. It’s how we rationalize it. And and the way we’ve evolved to, to live on is we either, you know, we pass on our genes or we exist in the minds of others. Right? We’re not necessarily talking about Albert Einstein’s neighbor, but we are talking about Albert Einstein every day because he made a huge contribution to humanity. And that’s the way he’s lived on. He hasn’t physically lived on, but he lives on in our minds and we talk about him all the time. That concept has really gripped us because up until just now, that has been how we cope with aging. But that’s no longer the case. We’re able to reverse aging in mice. We’re able to cure blindness in mice, we’re able to do basic stuff. And granted, we’re not mice, but we have the same underlying mechanisms, but we’re just a little more complex, and certain species live way longer than us. So these are questions that are very obvious, questions that are saying, hey, why isn’t this a focus for us? And it is becoming a focus on us. People are doing incredible research. David Sinclair, Audrey Debray These people are doing really interesting work in extending human life frame. I’m not just talking about eating healthier.

Michael Peres: I’m talking understanding the underlying mechanism and looking aging as as a clock, which you can reverse. You can pull back or you can stagnate. Now, how I operate in my life right now is I exercise something called hormesis, where I put my my cells and my body under a sense of stress to some extent, and that puts them in survival mode and that and that triggers longevity genes and protective mechanisms. So for example, I fast 18 hours a day. I literally, literally, literally just broke my fast three minutes before coming on air just because I kind of need a little bit of brain power here. But, but but it’s addictive. It feels so good. I fast 18 hours a day and you can still have coffee and you can still have, you know, tons of tea, but you wake up in the morning and you are alive. Um, and I’ve been regrowing hair like hair that has fallen out because of androgenetic alopecia has been starting to come back. Um, I don’t eat processed sugar as well, and that’s been incredible for my life. So it’s not the calories you get from sugar, it’s the behavior that you get from constantly feeding your your body sugar. And when your body is taking energy from your stomach rather than your your your your fat reserves, you’re costly and highs and lows, you’re always hungry, you’re always shoving food in your mouth.

Michael Peres: And the fact that I don’t have to think about food all the time. And when I eat food, it tastes so much better. And honestly, fasting sounds really hard in the beginning. Do it for two three weeks. And your body starts producing glucose on its own, you are going to realize you are a different person and there’s a certain element of stability. And people say, it’s so hard. How do you do it? My response to them is very simple. It is so much harder for me to do what you’re doing. Eating cookies and eating cake. The benefits I get from eating cookies and eating cake do not outweigh the stress I get when I when I’m gaining 15 pounds and I got to live with myself, or I just don’t feel great all the time. Or I wake up feeling foggy and moody and weird. Yeah, there’s it’s so much simpler to do this. Not only do you save money, not, you know, not whatever. Who cares about that? But not only do you save money, you’re not thinking about food. And when you eat food, you feel great.

Michael Peres: I, I can’t even gain weight anymore, even if I tried. And that sounds like a crazy story to me, because I have tried so much in my life to get control over my eating habits, and I put so much more energy in methods with so much less output. To me, it almost feels like a dream. How little and easy it is to maintain, how little energy I’m putting in this process, and how much output I’m getting out of it. So, you know, people ask me, hey, do you go to the gym? I’m working out less than I ever have. I’m starting to work out more again. But the point is, um, very basic steps. And then what? You’re in a position where your biological clock, not your physical clock, your biological clock is slowing down. Your cells are able to reproduce properly. Your the mitochondria in your cells are way healthier. And you get to age a lot more gracefully and you’re aging a little slower. But the point is, in 20, 30 years from now, when great new technologies come out, all I believe I’ll be in a much better position to be receptive to those technologies, given that I’ve taken care of myself for so much longer.

Stone Payton: I am so glad I asked, and, uh, I don’t know how short lived this will be, but I’m going to forego my planned trip to the Pi bar this afternoon. But everything you’re saying.

Michael Peres: It’s a slow I believe in progressive extremism. So, you know, taking on radical change that you can sustain for the rest of your life is making it. Part of your identity is not necessarily the best thing. I you should make a rule that, hey, you just don’t, you know, drink soda in the house. That’s a good starting point. And then you adapt that as part of your identity where it becomes really easy to maintain, and then you take aggressive, tiny, progressive steps that you are extreme about keeping. And before you know it, you know, you might even engage with something that’s a healthy lifestyle and you fail a few times, but then you develop the aptitude for it and the and the understanding of how it works. It’s all a slow process, really.

Stone Payton: All right. I’m gonna do a 90 degree turn on you here because I’m almost certain you have some opinions, if not some domain specific expertise. But I wanted to ask you about your experience, your perspective, your your thoughts on I. It’s in almost every conversation that I find myself in these days. I’m operating under the impression that it’s a part of the work that you’re involved in. Uh, yeah. What’s your take on I, man?

Michael Peres: Yeah, you’re full of great questions. So, uh, I in general, I have a little bit of a dystopian view on it, unfortunately. But, you know, um, first of all, it’s I again, micro macro. So on the day to day I is really not an existential threat whatsoever. Uh, we haven’t we haven’t really gone towards generalized intelligence whatsoever. But we have natural language processors. So something like ChatGPT, which is uncanny and and incredibly impressive. It’s not necessarily going to take people out of jobs, but it’s going to make people who do good work do even better work. And people who don’t do good work feel the threat. So look at it as AI is a collective of all the information and all. Just take the take the internet. Collect every single essay that’s ever been written on a specific topic. And when you request an information on a specific topic, you’re going to get a very solid B plus student response. You know, I can get an A student, you’re going to get a B, plus, you’re not going to get that innovative creative edge, but you’re going to get a very static, accepted, reasonable answer. Now, you know that’s GPT four, right? We’re kind of inching towards GPT five, which is not only going to be a little smarter or a lot smarter, but it’s going to have more context. So now if you want to build a website, you have to have like talk to GPT, have it spit code by code, and kind of copy paste stuff.

Michael Peres: It’s not very efficient, but if you’re ChatGPT can integrate into your server and start building your WordPress site for you automatically, that’s a real different game changer. Even assuming all other variables are the same, it’s context, and if it’s reach is different, we’re talking radically different results. And also being able to use it a little more freely. You’re very limited now with with how ChatGPT functions, but the technology is definitely very interesting. And diving into into the, the macro, uh, I think we tend to think we’re constantly more special than we might actually be. And that’s not, you know, sorry to be a little depressing here, but but human intelligence, you know, look at a calculator, for example. A calculator is way smarter than people in a very, very narrow way. So if you need to do division, long division, and you were to hire a programmer, or you were to use a person or you were to use a calculator, the calculator would probably win every time. And, uh, but it’s incredibly stupid in every other capacity, right. Look at AI as just taking that vertical and enlarging it further and further and further. And there are certain things there’s a little bit of unknown. Of course, we don’t know if there are certain hurdles that just might be insurmountable, but it doesn’t give us reason to believe there is.

Michael Peres: And. The argument that not to worry, we are going to have the master controls is really a fool, is really a fools perspective in my opinion, because, you know, it’s like we’re, you know, and let’s take a little step back here. The best way to understand our limitations is to understand how things that are less intelligent than us are limited. So think of going to ants or monkeys and trying to teach monkeys algebra, right. I you might be able to teach them like addition, subtraction, memorize stuff on the screen, but they don’t understand the underlying philosophy of algebra, how algebra can be leveraged to to advance human life. They’re just thinking about bananas, right? Bananas are awesome for them, and that’s all they care about. And if you’re going to give them a banana after they can memorize this on the screen, they’re excited to do it and you know it. And this is where it gets very interesting because. Those monkeys, they can all get together, and all they’re going to think about is how they can get more bananas and it’ll be a fool for them. And if they said, imagine we were like ten times smarter, we would have so many more bananas. Right. They’ve got a certain underlying philosophy and a certain underlying value system that is directly mapped to their level of intelligence. And here we are, you know, incrementally, you know, quite a bit smarter.

Michael Peres: And we look into the stars. We think about, you know, interplanetary systems. We think about, you know, just a technological world and sending messages in the snap of a finger and creating boxes that go across the planet in just a few hours. It’s really hard. You know, we make these assumptions of like I. But but we’re missing basic variables where it’s really hard for us to understand what are their underlying philosophy and value system would be, given that they are a little more intelligent than us. And, you know, it’s kind of the same. It’s akin to the same philosophy you get when you’re looking into the stars. And, you know, one of the questions in the Fermi Paradox, which essentially is a question, it’s a it’s a it’s almost a paradox saying, um, you know, this universe should be teeming with life, given, you know, how all this works. But and we’re looking into the universe and we’re not finding a single sign of life. How do we reconcile these two conflicting facts? And one of the one of the solutions to the Fermi paradox is this universe could be teeming with life, but they got no interest in meeting us. We’re like ants on the side of a highway. When you’re driving on the highway, you’re not going to pull over to kind of, oh, look, those are ants, right? They have no interest to you.

Michael Peres: But if they interfere with your value. So if you’re a real estate agent and you’re about to build a property and there’s a colony of ants, you’re going to kill them without a second thought, right? So, you know, it’s like we. Different priorities like these things might be. Being more intelligent than us doesn’t necessarily translate that. They’re going to be territorial and colonial, and they care about us. They don’t need us. We have no value to them. Perhaps. So the point I’m trying to make here, I’m pulling all of this back to the question of I. And do I think it’s an existential threat? Very likely it is, but it’s going to be real. We’re very limited in what we can understand of what something way smarter than us would care about. And I think human intelligence is not necessarily going to be a hurdle. That’s going to be very difficult in a broad sense for AI to pass. It’s going to pull right, push right through it. And then, you know, we’re just going to be ants thinking that we have keys towards gods in a bigger picture, perhaps, perhaps, you know, part of our function as a general species is to to pass this abstract notion of life. We only have one discrete example of life. As we look at biological life here on Earth, carbon based life. But think of it, we’re so sensitive to our environment, you put us anywhere else in the universe and we will instantly explode.

Michael Peres: Our eyes will pop out of our sockets. We need the temperature in our room to be perfect. Everything needs to be calibrated perfect some symmetry. Our room needs to be clean. Like this is not how the universe is whatsoever, right? And perhaps our function is to pass this abstract notion of what life is from biology to technology. Even if we were to go and I’ll finish off with this, but even if we were to go to our closest star system 4.5 light years away, Alpha Centauri, uh, if we have the technology, the limiting factor would be the meat. The kind of the things in our head, the brain or psychology that, you know, to cope with 40 years or 50 years of assuming we’re traveling at 10% the speed of light to these planetary systems would be the psychology of it. We’d go crazy being alone and being stuck in a confined in a small area. In fact, when we’re looking to when Elon Musk is looking to bring people to Mars, they’re not looking for necessarily in our definition of the healthiest people, they’re looking for people who might even be a little crazy, who are okay, who are reclusive, who are okay with being alone for an extended period of time. Now, what this comes to show us is.

Speaker4: Is. It’s all. It’s all a crazy, crazy, crazy.

Michael Peres: World out there. And, you know, we make assumptions with really very limited variables. And I think that we can speculate, we can postulate, we can assume, but it is very hard to kind of look at the bigger picture.

Stone Payton: Well, you have certainly considered the question that I asked you well before I ever asked it. And if I had the IQ points in the time, we’d stay on this for the whole show. Because this I find the topic and your perspective on it absolutely fascinating, I think. And it’s going to what there’s what’s that saying? May you live in interesting times. That’s going to be uh, I.

Speaker4: We do, we do.

Michael Peres: I wonder if we’re, it’s only going to get better or it’s like we’re at the very top, like, like the, the technology we’re developing and the tools we’re developing. I have like, are, are becoming exponentially more powerful. And our ability to use this technology for predictive power is fleeting. So you know, Moore’s Law. So biological evolution is is Darwinian. It’s really slow. And it’s but technological evolution is exponential. Computers are getting twice as fast. Be more specific. The amount of transistors on integrated circuit double around every two years. And where this gets funky is that is that the tools we create are having so much more potential. Even if you go back to World War two, right where we understood how to split the atom, how do we we knew how to do nuclear fission and leverage that to create a weapon to create to create a bomb. Um, one of the postulations back to the Fermi Paradox for a second is that there’s something called great filters that it could be that life explodes everywhere, every single galaxy. You can see life spawning, but there are these filters that are really hard to pass. So the question is, are we before or are we after this great filter? A great filter before might be, for example, abiogenesis, the process of bringing something that’s not alive to being alive, that first kind of the first early stage cell. How did where did it come from? It’s one of the biggest mysteries. Another example would be something like photosynthesis might be really hard for the conditions to just be right, and it’s so rare, and it’d be really good to know that we are after that filter.

Michael Peres: However, you know that we are before that filter can be a little depressing. And here’s one example of a filter that that can be ahead of us is that we always have this race of creating tools that where we can kill ourselves on a small planet, like a nuclear weapon, and the Murphy’s Law, where a nuclear catastrophe, you know, might not happen today, might not happen tomorrow, but it’s it’s over a thousand years, which is a very tiny sliver of time. It’s almost certainly going to happen one way or the other. So that could be example of a great filter that’s ahead. And we’re more we’re more than we’re more than likely to destroy ourselves before we’re capable of spreading out. And that’s something to think about. Like maybe traveling to Mars or even going to Alpha Centauri will take us a thousand years of technological advancement, right? Maybe not less so Mars. But think of something like, like our closest star system. Take us about a thousand years of technology, maybe even 500 years. But maybe it’s just so hard for us to not kill ourselves before we can do that, that maybe this happened a million times over in slightly different variations. So just another fun piece of information there just to think about.

Stone Payton: Well, it is fun and and it gives me plenty to think about. Well, beyond this conversation, I’m going to circle back to, uh, far more tactical, granular, whatever, a little closer to to Earth. But before we wrap, I was surprised to see in the list of companies, and I only rattled off a couple when we teed up the show. But one of the organizations is her forward, and I guess I was I was surprised to see that. And, uh, yeah. What’s that about? Is that specifically trying to serve the, the, the female businesses or what’s that about?

Speaker4: Yeah, yeah.

Michael Peres: For the most part, um, it kind of started with my passion for Stem. So science, technology, engineering, mathematics, there’s just a deficit of women in these industries. It’s it’s changing. It’s obviously getting better. We still have a bit of a bridge to gap. Uh, sorry, a bridge to cross, but, um.

Speaker4: You know, it’s just.

Michael Peres: There’s so much intellectual assets that we could be using and helping these industries. And I’m happy to see more women enter these industries. And her foreword specifically was kind of just a natural progression of that, where it’s a publication that helps that that that helps tell stories or cover or create news coverage for women in entrepreneurship, leadership or Stem based industries. And also a little bit of VC venture capital. So, uh, yeah, it’s a publication that we’ve been working on for the past year, and it’s doing pretty well. Uh, yeah. And, uh, it, it helps to empower women who, who are in the, in the entrepreneurship domain. So we tell their stories and we help inspire others. And it’s really the demographic is not really just women. It’s, you know, it gives value to men as well.

Stone Payton: Well, I think that is fantastic. I’ve made no secret of it. And I’ve shared on air. I actually prefer to work with women, I women. I find women smarter, more comfortable in their own skin, better with money that just on every on every front, right?

Speaker4: No.

Michael Peres: And there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging strengths and weaknesses as a statistic between, you know, genders or sexes, right? There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging those differences and saying men are better in specific capacities and women are better in specific capacities. Even more, the argument of why we should have more women in Stem based careers because they do contribute a uniqueness factor. They do have a different viewpoint to men. And when you’re dealing with engineering, it’s about being innovative and solving problems that other people haven’t solved yet. And in order to be innovative, you just generally need to think in a way that other people aren’t. So yes, getting women in these Stem based career will benefit us all.

Stone Payton: Now, I also understand that you have authored a book, and I get every sense in the world that you probably have one or more books in you coming down the road, but tell us about the one that I’m aware of. I think it’s the road less traveled if I got that right. Correct?

Speaker4: Yeah, correct. So the road.

Michael Peres: Less traveled is not necessarily. It’s a storybook of my childhood. And the goal of it is not to talk about specifically me, but it’s to provide insight to those who are dealing with similar struggles. Right. And I talk about my learning disabilities. I talk about my ADHD, and you don’t have to have learning disabilities and you don’t have to have ADHD. But if you’re feeling that there is a sense of adversity growing up and you do have certain hurdles you need to cross, that book serves an aims to help those, um, deal with their own elements of growth. So it’s a little bit of a biography of my childhood, but it’s done in the frame to help others who are dealing with adversity growing up.

Stone Payton: And am I right? Is there another book in you you think you’ll write again?

Michael Peres: Yeah, 100%. Uh, I’m still working on a few new ideas now, but, um, right now, I’m. I’m book usually comes after I kind of. I want to make a book on longevity. So first I want to kind of get a little more mastery in the domain, even though I’m, you know, I’m ten years to really where I start, really want to find a way to make money doing it. Um, but right now, I’m really I’m in the learning stage for this sort of stuff. And I think on a practical level, a lot of people can benefit from day to day stuff and they can prepare themselves. And it’s a growing industry very quickly, growing industry. In fact, I think it should be the biggest priority that our greatest asset is time. And we’ve never really asked how we make more of it. So, um, I hope in the next year or so, I’m going to have a book where I can provide actionable steps and at least use myself as a case study for how to reduce your biological aging. I’m going to start to do monitoring my data, my glucose, my my blood sugar levels. I’m going to start looking at my biological age and try to find at least some information, anecdotally, that I can help inspire others to take control of their own aging and longevity.

Stone Payton: Well, I am looking forward to that one. So you got you got one reader right here sitting in and ready. I did want to ask you. And again, maybe I’m overly fascinated with it, but I but I’ll just confess, it’s I find it intriguing that you’re able to successfully operate all of these companies. Uh, I I’ll just ask, how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a guy like you, or do you find yourself out there shaking the trees? Or have you got so many tentacles out there that that it comes into you over the transom? What what insight do you have to offer? You know, the rest of us on how to sell and market effectively.

Speaker4: That’s a really.

Michael Peres: Really good question. So, um, I’ll answer broadly first and then I’ll talk about me specifically. So broadly, broadly speaking, um, you in order to even if you’re looking to do SEO or basic levels of marketing, it’s so important that you understand the basics so you can communicate with these teams effectively. The fail rate for jobs is really high when it comes to SEO. People tell you blindly you need to trust them 4 or 5 months, and then, you know, after 4 or 5 months, you’re left with nothing. And they’ve taken, you know, quite a bit of money, right? So when you understand the basics of SEO, how Google search engine works, how to kind of create keywords, how to how to brand yourself online, um, you don’t necessarily have to know it in depth, or you don’t necessarily have to do the labor, but you can navigate an effective conversation and you can decipher what’s BS and what’s a response or requires requires you to respect the technical process. So having those basic filters is the number one key I recommend for the general person also. And if you want to learn you can go on YouTube. You can understand the basics of whatever specific domain. And there’s a million different things to learn. And honestly, spending two three days watching videos on each subject. How Google my business works. How websites work, what websites best for you? Why? What are the benefits of using WordPress? Um, what are what are the different metrics for evaluating search engine optimization? Right? How do you get backlinks to to to to to show up on first level results? What is a knowledge panel like? These are basic things that if you’re familiar with they can pose a great advantage. Um, also identifying your uniqueness factors absolutely crucial for branding. So you know what?

Speaker4: If you were to.

Michael Peres: Criticize your own domain, you know your own industries. Where are the faults? Usually when you can recognize those faults, you probably take actions to better yourselves. And that can be an element for you to hone in on your uniqueness factor. But that’s maybe a little hard thing to do for some. But it’s so important because also when you start thinking about, hey, what is my uniqueness factor? And then you start seeing, then you start recognizing, you know, hey, oh, wow. There’s actually areas that I can improve on that I wasn’t necessarily conscious of before. So, um, it’s a gradual process, and constantly being willing to learn about the basics will allow you to make good hires, to get a great team in front of you and to have long, long lasting relationships. So that’s just a really quick piece of advice on a personal level.

Speaker4: Uh, it’s.

Michael Peres: A little niche. What I do so strangely, most of my work is strictly word of mouth. Um, strictly word of mouth. Because I work in a. So when it comes to, like, notable entities and stuff, it’s just doing good work creates good reputation, and that allows more people to come your way. So a lot of my marketing has been done. A lot of my my sales have been done with best marketing is word of mouth, as the old saying goes. So, yeah, I mean that, uh, that’s the basic answer to your question and. Oh, no. So just one more quick thing here. Leveraging social media effectively is important as well. And tools like LinkedIn is extremely important. Uh, and learning how to come off as authentic, learning how to first focus on giving value. So and probably the most important point that just came to my head, and I should have mentioned it earlier, is the best way to build relationships. And then as a result, marketing comes from it. From just doing good work is to learn how to give a value. First is to come off is to build trust.

Michael Peres: That’s the most important factor, uh, entirely. You don’t want to get just like a one time job. You want to have long term relationships with these clients, and you want to be the first person they think of anytime someone asks them for anything online. If you’re doing digital marketing, for example, uh, or, well, if you’re learning about digital marketing, but if you’re doing anything online like programing or graphic design or writing, or even if you’re doing like merchandise sales, right? So people are using your products, they’re likely to refer you if they’re confident and they’re happy with you, and if they have a personal and good relationship with you. And I told you, my friends are people I work with SBC because I, you know, since I’m first of all, I do a lot. So anytime anyone needs something, I’m usually online. I’m usually a guy they go to. But you want to be able to, to to to bridge that gap as well and have really good fruitful relationships. And to quote Gary Vaynerchuk, give, give, give then ask.

Stone Payton: Okay, man, what is the best way for our listeners to tap into your work and maybe have a substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, whatever you feel like is appropriate, but let’s give them some coordinates, some some points of contact.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Michael Peres: Yeah, sure. Um, my name is Michael Perez. Michael Michael Perez. And you can you can just type in my name or Mikey. I’m also known as Mikey Perez. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Instagram. You can find me on Facebook. Um, you can check out my website, send me an email. I’m pretty easy to find. And in fact, in fact, if you go to my website, you can find my WhatsApp and you can send me a personal message.

Stone Payton: Well, Mikey, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast today. I really appreciate your insight, your perspective. I am inspired with your enthusiasm and passion for the work and the focus on genuinely trying to serve people. Man, keep up the good work and know that we that we sure appreciate you.

Michael Peres: Thank you. Thank you. Stone, I appreciate your time.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Mikey Perez and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.