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Search Results for: marketing matters

John Swolfs with Advisor Circle

March 9, 2023 by angishields

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St. Louis Business Radio
John Swolfs with Advisor Circle
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John-Swolfs-headshotJohn Swolfs was born and raised in Westchester (but now considers himself a Californian after a decade in San Francisco), where he played soccer for the Somers Express as a left-winger.

He attended the University of Albany, majoring in history and education. John eventually started his career in the front office of the Port St. Lucie Mets, working in the ticket office and as the game day mascot.

After nearly 15 years in the ETF industry in various roles, John left to co-found Advisor Circle, where he spends his time building and developing programs and platforms to help today’s outspoken financial advisors share their voices and views.

When he’s not cooking or out skiing, John enjoys rooting for struggling sports franchises like the NY Jets and Tottenham Hotspurs. He currently resides in London with his wife and two children.

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This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:05] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Saint Louis, Missouri. It’s time for Saint Louis Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Phillip Hearn: [00:00:18] Hello, great listeners, and welcome to Doc’s Discussions here on Saint Louis Business RadioX. My name is Dr. Phillip Hahn and we always strive to have really fun guests who are inventive and really taking over the leadership mantle in their space. And this episode is no different. So I’ve got with me the Chief Content Officer and co-founder for Advisor Circle, John Swolfs. John, how are you today?

John Swolfs : [00:00:44] I’m doing great, thank you for for having me. Excited to to be joining you today and really looking forward to our conversation.

Phillip Hearn: [00:00:50] I am as well. I’ve been looking forward to this. So thanks for thanks for joining us. So always like to get a background. We know where you are and we’ll talk a bit more about that in the discussion. But tell me more about your background and your upbringing. How did how did we get to the john of today? What does that look like?

John Swolfs : [00:01:06] Yeah, that’s I mean, that’s a great question and probably a super long question. So there’s a couple different ways to to tackle that. You know, probably first and foremost, I grew up outside of New York City, in Westchester, stayed in New York, you know, through through college, went to SUNY Albany, where I studied history. The minor in education kind of had a thinking that that maybe I wanted to be a teacher. My mom was a teacher for 30 plus years, the New York school system. So that was sort of the direction that I had traveled. But through that, I’ve always been a huge baseball fan. Whether that was playing the game, whether that was, you know, working in and around the game. So I decided that after college I wanted to try to become a professional umpire. So I went down to a school down in Florida. The Harry Wendelstedt School of Umpiring took the six week course that they have down there. About 180 folks go down to it. They select about the top 20, 15 to 20 or so, folks. And then you go on to to another level. I unfortunately was not selected while I was down there, so I didn’t get kind of through that that first round. But my my love of baseball and wanting to be a part of the game never diminished. So so come back up from Florida and figure out how I can can work in baseball and was lucky enough to have a family connection that knew the Wilpons who at the time were the the current owners of the New York Mets and they had a minor league team out in Brooklyn.

John Swolfs : [00:02:30] They said, Hey, throw your resume into the pile with everybody else. They’re getting ready to do their seasonal hiring. I was lucky enough to get selected and work a season out in Coney Island for the Brooklyn Cyclones. And while I was there, I just sort of asked the general manager of that squad like, Hey, how do you stay involved in baseball? They said, You got to go down to the winter meetings. I went to the winter meetings and then just through, you know, general connections with the Mets and stuff, they have a their spring training facilities in Port Saint Lucie. The general manager of Brooklyn was close friends with the general manager in Port Saint Lucie. He thought I’d be a good fit for that job, went down and worked for a year for the Mets in Port Saint Lucie, doing everything literally from, you know, selling outfield signs to writing game day agendas to to wearing the mascot suit for slander of the dog driving players to the airport. So you really get this amazing exposure to how businesses run and all of the things that that goes into to trying to make an operation, you know, look like it’s running smoothly to the public when behind the scenes, you know, I forgot to hire a game day staff that day to wear the mascot suit.

John Swolfs : [00:03:39] So so now I’m wearing the mascot suit in those sort of things. So, you know, from there I then, you know, I did that for a year. Long story short, my now wife was in New Jersey. I was down in Florida. Long distance relationship just felt like it was more important for me to be back up in the tri state area. So I went back up, moved to to New Jersey and started working in Merrill Lynch’s Financial advisory Center in Pennington, New Jersey. And then from there, you know, did like a year or two in the call center and then went on to the internal wholesaling job with iShares and BGI and then BlackRock. And from there I joined Index Universe in 2012 where I started writing agendas, writing content, being involved in events. And you know, ten years later, here I am, a co-founder of Advisor Circle, one of the leading events businesses in the industry, creating, you know, awesome types of events. With Futureproof, we helped create the exchange event that ran in February of 2023, a couple of weeks ago, as well as the inaugural one in April of 2022. So long story short, yeah, I started off in baseball and now I’m, you know, creating events for financial advisors so you can see the direct line and how one would end up here.

Phillip Hearn: [00:04:54] Yeah, exactly. It’s a it’s a complete direct line, right?

John Swolfs : [00:04:57] Yeah, absolutely. I’m surprised more people aren’t on the path.

Speaker4: [00:05:00] Yeah. I mean, what are they doing? Feel like they’re being slackers? No, I’m teasing.

Phillip Hearn: [00:05:03] So I did read up about you looking to become a major league. I’m kind of geeking out. So when I was in high school in college, I was an umpire. So I’ve heard of that actual school that you talk about. Harry Wendelstedt school. What? Take me a little bit. Let’s go back a step. Take me a little bit through that experience itself. How did you know you wanted to be an I know you said you had a love for baseball, but most people, when they say they have a love for baseball, they’re going, Hey, I want to be a pitcher or a center fielder or a shortstop, not I want to be the guy behind the plate or calling at the bases. What? Take me through how you got to that particular point.

John Swolfs : [00:05:37] Yeah. So I’ll paint a picture for for your audience. So those that that are unable to see me, I’m closer to 2582262. So one the physical size there to play any and all of those positions you mentioned wasn’t there. So after about sophomore year of high school, I sort of realized like, hey, you’re probably not going to be able to to play this sport sort of professionally. And from there, I just wanted to figure out how I sort of stayed involved with the game. And through that it just kind of became like, Hey, what’s something you can do? And umpiring was something that that became of interest to me. I started doing high school games, I started doing college games. I started doing, you know, summer woodbat men’s and college games, which were really exciting. And I felt that one, I was decent at it and two, I enjoyed it and I didn’t mind being out there. Obviously it does come with a little bit of grief, as we all know. You know, you’re always making 50% of the people upset. 50% of the people are happy with you. But but once you can move on from that and not really worry about it, the more you do it, it just becomes sort of second nature and reflexive. And that’s what I really liked about it. When I got to that point of really doing more of the sophisticated, you know, college games, they’re quick. It’s well played baseball and it’s a lot of fun. And that’s sort of what kind of cemented my interest to want to continue to do it and try to do it professionally.

Speaker4: [00:07:06] That’s amazing. I love it. I love it. Yeah.

John Swolfs : [00:07:08] And you want to hear about your your stories there, You know, What made you give it up or stop. Maybe you still do it.

Speaker4: [00:07:15] No. So I gave it up right after college myself, but I enjoyed it.

Phillip Hearn: [00:07:19] It was fun. So it was one of the summer jobs that I had when I turned 14. So you could be young enough to still be an umpire and an umpire game. So I’ve umpired everything from preschool games all the way through like freshman, you know, fall ball type games. So I enjoyed the process. I was still playing even during that time in high school. But again, I’m a big sports nut. So that was that was an easy job for me. And and they paid me. So I went, oh, okay, I get paid to talk and coach, you know, and umpire baseball. Excuse me. So I was like, this is a no brainer. Let’s do it. So, yeah, but you’re right, that 50% piece is 100% correct. You’re going to make someone mad. So it’s almost like you got a full crash course on conflict resolution, Right? Because someone was upset at almost every call that you made. So, yeah, it was it was definitely interesting, to say the least. So. So what all did you learn, uh, when when you look at baseball and again, you have a natural love for it, right? So growing up in the New York area, you’re a mets fans, not a mets fan, not a Yankee fan. So did pick that up?

John Swolfs : [00:08:27] Any fan? Let that be known. I am a Yankee fan. I think that’s what made it easier to work in baseball was the Mets. And not being a fan of the team. Now I support the Mets, having worked there in that sort of stuff, and I do like the organization. But you know, certainly if they were on the field playing each other, I would be, you know, pulling for the Yankees, you know, wholeheartedly.

Phillip Hearn: [00:08:45] Okay. All right. So, see, that’s interesting because you might be one of the only folks in the tri state area that that likes the Mets but still can root for the Yankees. So with all of your experiences in baseball, how did you take what you learned and that and you talked about that experience in Port Saint Lucie, where you’ve been everything from the game day staff to the mascot, which I’m going to need pictures for that. I’m just saying we’re going to have to keep this time. I don’t know.

John Swolfs : [00:09:10] If there’s any more slide of the dog pictures. And besides, I’d be behind the mask, so you’d never know. But we’ll see if we can dig something up for you.

Phillip Hearn: [00:09:17] Yeah, just to say we knew somebody in the suit, right? Yeah. Very true. So what what did you take from all of those experiences being basically in every position, working with that that minor league team with the Mets? How did you translate that into your passions and your focuses when you talk about business?

John Swolfs : [00:09:37] Yeah, absolutely. So I think there’s a couple things that you can take away from it. One is sort of the the humbling nature of it, right? That, you know, the no matter what the job is or what the role is, if you do it and do it well, it’s helping the organization and it’s helping to advance things. So, you know, don’t think that you’re ever above any sort of job that that may be offered. I mean, some of the jobs are super fun, like, you know, getting to go and, you know, drive a player to the airport. That’s a lot of fun because you’re talking to, you know, a professional baseball player, you know, taking some of the guys to the local elementary schools and those sorts of things. That’s a lot of fun. To do those sort of things. But then, you know, having to to do some of the stuff behind the scenes where, you know, a game starts at 7:00 at night, we worked a typical 9 to 5 and then between 5 to 7 we got ready for the game. So you understand it’s a really long day. So you really hone in on your work ethic. It’s something that you like to do. So it doesn’t always feel like work, even though you’re tired and exhausted. So there was that element that I really kind of as a first job out of college, was super long hours. So it helped establish a pretty strong work ethic from that standpoint.

John Swolfs : [00:10:48] So, you know, in business, anything that you’re doing, it’s going to take time, effort and energy. So you better be committed to that grind. If you’re not, it’s going to show. So that was something that you definitely saw and you saw it even like in taking inspiration from the players that you saw coming in at, you know, 9:00 in the morning to to work out and be around and at the field knowing they didn’t have a game until until 7:00 and what they were doing to grind to try to be a professional. You see that, you know, at every level or no matter what you’re doing that you have to you have to work hard. So there’s the humility part to it. The other thing that I learned from it is like, be excited about what you’re doing as well, right? So you can be humble about it, but you know, be excited. Be be a cheerleader for your own team. Be a cheerleader and try to get folks into the stands. Try to make sure that the folks are having a great time while you’re you’re there. And then the other thing that you take away from that is like the little things matter. So if you can help a fan out that might be having a a rough moment or something didn’t go their way and you can solve their problem no matter how big or small it is. It feels like the world to them.

John Swolfs : [00:11:53] And you’d be surprised, you know, like somebody’s having a bad experience or they thought they were supposed to have tickets here and they’re not together. And you solve that, you know, you’ll see them three weeks later at the game and they’ll come up and say, Hi, how you doing? Thank you again for that and those sort of things. So you understand that, you know, customer service really matters. You understand that if you treat every person and every individual as if their problem right there is the most important thing for you. They feel that. So those were kind of the three things that I really learned in being down in baseball and working there. And the other one is that it rains every day at about 4:00 in Florida. So you better get ready to run out in the field and pull the tarp on to to the field before it floods, which is never my favorite because it had like snakes and mice and stuff all wrapped up in it. And that stuff is not for me, but that’s part of doing the roles and jobs that you may not be all that excited for, but you know, you just got to get out there and do it because that’s what the the job requires. So yeah, a lot, a lot of different things. But most of it is, you know, very core business, basic things and a lot of attitude as well.

Speaker4: [00:12:57] Absolutely. And I love.

Phillip Hearn: [00:12:58] The humility and the customer service aspects that you talk about, too. I think a lot of people, again, would just hear that you worked in baseball, but you were in all the inner workings, including and not not excluding pulling out the tarp. Right? So, yeah, yeah. I don’t know if it’s got snakes and all that stuff in there. I think I’m out too. I think it’d be cool to pull out the tarp once just to say I’ve done it. But yeah, I’m with you. If it’s, if it’s got all that in there, I’m out.

Speaker4: [00:13:23] I’m good. I’d rather not.

John Swolfs : [00:13:25] Absolutely. It does. It does teach you a lot. And what you really learn is minor league baseball is nothing like the the big leagues and that sort of stuff. Like we had a permanent staff of maybe 6 to 7 people. And then we brought in like, you know, 20 plus workers to kind of help us get through the games to like take tickets and do those sort of things and be ushers and that sort of stuff. But it really was about 6 or 7 of us that were were doing a lot of the, you know, the heavy lifting to, to make sure that everything ran the way that it was supposed to, which was, you know, at times, you know, very trying and at times an amazing experience. I guess the one other takeaway I’d have from it is, I think, you know, after doing a season in Brooklyn and then a year in Port Saint Lucie, to me, I think I realized that, hey, if I wasn’t going to be on the field, I’d rather be in the seats and watching the game and being a fan of the game. And I think that’s really important as well because you don’t want to get stuck doing things that you might not enjoy because then those little customer complaints feel like they’re a nuisance to you and you don’t want to tackle them with the same zeal, energy and smile that you would. So it’s not one of those like, Hey, hang on to your dreams type of thing and it’ll come true. To me, it was more like, Hey, I think this is this has had its run and I enjoyed this quite a bit. But you know, the woman I’m in love with is, you know, 1800 miles away up in New Jersey. And I just think, you know, this has run its course type of stuff. And I don’t know that that’s necessarily a business lesson, but it was a very good life lesson for me as well.

Speaker4: [00:15:01] Well, I think that’s important, though, too. I mean, if you’re.

Phillip Hearn: [00:15:03] Losing the zeal, the zest for something and the zeal, as you mentioned, getting out of it when you understand that, I think is an extremely important piece, one that.

Speaker4: [00:15:13] I would say a lot of.

Phillip Hearn: [00:15:14] Maybe missed that.

Speaker4: [00:15:16] That opportunity or almost that calling to move to the next thing. Right. So I think.

Phillip Hearn: [00:15:20] That’s extremely important. So I’m really glad you shared that. So you make the transition from baseball now you head more into fiscally focused jobs, right? So you talked about your time at BlackRock. You talked about your time at Inside ETF. Tell us a little bit more about that transition, what that looked like and.

Speaker4: [00:15:39] What were some of those learning processes after leaving the baseball room?

John Swolfs : [00:15:43] Yeah, absolutely. So the first job I landed was with Merrill Lynch in their financial advisory center, and that was just a huge education and sort of understanding, you know, stocks, bonds, commodities, ETFs, an asset allocation, you know, understanding we’d be taking calls from inbound clients who typically, you know, may have been, you know, with an advisor in a branch that, you know, wasn’t quite the size that the advisor should be focusing on anymore. So, one, you had to learn to kind of ask the right questions, sort of understand what their goals, their objectives were. So I think I got a bit of a crash course in sort of what it was like to to be a financial advisor without having to, you know, go out there and try and grow my own book, but certainly understand a lot of those challenges. So what I learned there again, was one that kind of core investment, you know, time horizon outside of assets, risk tolerance, all of those sort of things. And what was really interesting is that when I went over to to iShares and internal wholesaling position, you know, I was sort of able to put my shoes very much into the or put myself in the shoes of the advisor that I was talking to on the phone and understanding some of the challenges that they may have had in their, their business. And in 2007, when you’re talking to an advisor with, you know, 25 years of experience and you’re telling them sell out of your mutual funds and buy ETFs, you know, they’re laughing you off the phone saying, John, you’re probably younger than my business is old right now.

John Swolfs : [00:17:06] Put my kids through college. What are you going to tell me about investing? And, you know, here we sit 15 years later and, you know, ETFs are gathering assets at record paces every single year, outdoing mutual funds. So it was really cool to be on the innovative side of finance as well and sort of leading the charge for for what is a you know, to some extent in my opinion, my opinion and my view, just a more efficient and better way to be invested in an ETF in general. So that was really interesting. And then you just learn again like, Hey, I covered advisors in the wirehouse in New York City. Then I had an opportunity to move to San Francisco and cover RIAs and understand that those worlds are completely different. So that when I got the opportunity to sit in the seat that I am now, whether that have been, you know, back in the days at Inside ETFs or now with the advisor circle and creating the future proof event is you can really understand the types of content and the types of challenges that those advisors have. And I think that’s one of the things that really helps set advisors circle apart from other traditional events companies, is we’ve had people that have come from the industry that have sat in those seats that understand those real life challenges that advisors are facing and want to provide real solutions rather than just create content.

Speaker4: [00:18:23] Yeah, that’s that’s absolutely.

Phillip Hearn: [00:18:25] Fantastic itself too. And and your unique experience of being in a full leadership position from the from going from that that crazy stretch of 2007 all the way to now. And at that particular point, being a VP and a CEO of Inside ETFs. I mean that that’s an interesting step just because you’ve got a chance.

Speaker4: [00:18:48] To kind of.

Phillip Hearn: [00:18:49] Re-experience what you did in baseball, it sounds like, too, right, in terms of really maximizing all the different components. You understood the business from soup to nuts By the time you got to getting into advisory circle from what it sounds like to me.

John Swolfs : [00:19:03] Yeah, absolutely. Certainly, you know, you know, everything from writing content to sourcing speakers to working with vendors to to everything that that you need to do in order to to bring an event to life. I’ve had the opportunity to, you know, see all of that and experience that in numerous different ways. So it did allow me to sit and in the advisor circle hat that I have now and really have confidence in what we’re doing and what we’re trying to do. And then part of that as a leader is understanding who are the right people to go out and support you, to do those sorts of things and making sure that you have the right team, the right people in place. And I think that, you know, far and away sometimes exceeds the knowledge that might be in one person’s head because, you know, one person can only do so much, but a team can do a whole lot. And I think that’s one of the best things that we’ve been able to do at Advisor Circle is bringing people with a great set of experience, a great set of skills that know and understand our industry as well as being able to complement those folks with the different skill sets that you need, whether that be on a creative side or whether that be on a sales side. Um, or whether that be on a logistical standpoint. You know, we’ve been able to, you know, add complementary pieces across the team over the past, you know, two plus years that we’ve been around now to get to a team of 12 that is a, you know, just one of the best teams in the industry that I can think of and excited to to be working with those guys every day.

Speaker4: [00:20:34] That’s amazing. I love it. So as you then talk.

Phillip Hearn: [00:20:37] About Advisor Circle, tell our listeners a bit more about the mission and the purpose of.

Speaker4: [00:20:43] The company. I know you talked a bit about it through our conversation so far, but we really want to drill down on that and have a better understanding because it sounds like you guys are doing amazing work.

John Swolfs : [00:20:52] Yeah, I think it can be really simplified. So one, we’re a product studio that’s looking to humanize financial services. So, you know, what does that mean? It means that, you know, financial services for for far too long sort of use the the oak desk and jargon to kind of keep a distance between themselves and their clients and making sure that sometimes, whether it be advisors or whether it even be the traditional asset managers, that they kind of kept the seat of authority. And we believe that, you know, the culture around finance is changing. It’s tech driven, it’s more inclusive, it is going in a more human direction. And we just want to bring out that that human connection, whether that be in how you interact at an event, whether that be how you speak at an event, whatever it might be. We want it to feel like it’s part of your DNA, that it’s not forced and that we can help people make this human connection. So I know it probably sounds, you know, a little like pie in the sky and that sort of stuff, But but you’d be surprised how quickly you can humanize something just by being your authentic self. And that’s really what we’re trying to do. And we just want to help financial services get there a little bit quicker.

Speaker4: [00:21:57] Absolutely. That’s fantastic.

Phillip Hearn: [00:21:59] So let me ask you the direct question in your current position. So you’re a co-founder, chief content officer. What motivates you in your current position and responsibilities?

John Swolfs : [00:22:11] Yeah. So one obviously, like I said, is the team that we have, right? Obviously, you know, when you’re a leader, you feel that pressure to not want to let folks down and make sure that you’re doing the best for the business and the best for them. So so that’s that’s motivating. And then I do think that right now we’re we’re in a seat where, you know, folks have seen that we were able to innovate and do something different. So that motivation drives me to make sure that we continue to to widen that moat, if you will, and continue to be the trendsetter, the tastemaker, those that the industry is looking to, to learn from and follow. And that’s really, really motivating from where I sit is, you know, you want to continue to make sure that you you hold your spot as a as an industry leader and that that can really, really wear on you or it can really motivate you. And our team really has a way of using that to motivate ourselves and not let that be a barrier. But, but more of a motivation tool.

Speaker4: [00:23:03] That’s fantastic. That’s really cool. Again, it sounds like you guys have some great things.

Phillip Hearn: [00:23:07] Going and something that’s actually coming up is your next future proof event.

Speaker4: [00:23:11] Can you tell our listeners a bit more about it, the dates, what it all will entail?

John Swolfs : [00:23:16] Yeah, absolutely. So September 10th through the 13th, we’re in Huntington Beach, California. It’s a beautiful setting. It’s all outdoors. So we take over a half mile of a parking lot right next to the beautiful Pacific Ocean and we build all of the facilities outside. So you have this half mile boardwalk, if you will. It’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s airy. It feels like you’re at a festival, not at a B2B event. So it allows folks to be, again, their true, authentic selves. So you saw more people walking around in shorts and a golf shirt than you did in suits. You saw people wearing hats of the college that they went to, you know, or teams that they might support that helped spark some conversation. We created a very open environment that that led to people wanting to share. So, again, it’s September 10th through the 13th in Huntington Beach. You can register at Futureproof Dot Advisor circle.com, go ahead and get your ticket. But we continue to to innovate each year. So I’m currently working on, you know, the set of speakers that we’re going to have this year. We just closed our apply to Speak window.

John Swolfs : [00:24:23] We had over 350 applications come in in about a month window. So I have one the unenviable task of going through all of those. But I also have the amazing task of getting to see just how amazing our community is and just what great thought leaders that we have out there, which is really exciting, I would say. And I don’t want to do a commercial, but we do have a price break that ends on Friday. So I think between now and Friday is the the lowest price ticket you have the opportunity to purchase. So I would suggest that folks go and take care of that right away and get themselves in. Our hotel block will sell out. We take over for hotels. They all face the Pacific Ocean. So they’re they’re all fantastic venues. But we did sell out last year. We expect to sell out this year. We’ll probably have, you know, over 3200 attendees on site as well. So you’re going to want to act quick and get your your ticket and your hotel room before the they’re all gone.

Speaker4: [00:25:17] That’s awesome. No, that’s great information.

Phillip Hearn: [00:25:19] So it sounds like that block runs out or that pre ticket sale excuse me runs out on March 3rd. So here just in a few days from this recording itself, correct?

John Swolfs : [00:25:29] Absolutely. March 3rd. Yes.

Speaker4: [00:25:31] Awesome. Sounds good. Very good.

Phillip Hearn: [00:25:33] So last question for you and really thank you so much for your time. This has been a lot of fun. How do our listeners find you and connect with you? What are those ways that they can reach out and and chat with you if they’re interested in learning more about your organization and more about what you’re doing?

John Swolfs : [00:25:48] Yeah, absolutely. So there is LinkedIn. You can just, you know, John Smoltz, you can find me there. That’s Swolfs for those that that are looking for me. Same thing on Twitter. John Swolfs at Twitter, you can find me there. You can find more about Advisor circle at Advisor circle.com and you can certainly email us all from there. And then again, if you go to futureproof dot advisor circle.com, if you have any questions around the content or anything that we’re creating, there’s email addresses there where you can reach out. It comes directly to me. Like I said, we’re we’re a smaller organization, so we, we, you know, personally get involved in all of these sort of things. So that’s a couple different ways that that folks can can reach out to me. I’m happy to connect you on LinkedIn and Twitter. You know, I don’t want to say all day, every day, but but a few times a day. So won’t take long for me to get back to you.

Speaker4: [00:26:38] That’s awesome. John. It’s been a lot of fun to getting to know more about you.

Phillip Hearn: [00:26:42] And and your rise with with working at Advisor Circle. So thank you so much for your time.

Speaker4: [00:26:47] Really appreciate it.

John Swolfs : [00:26:49] Oh, appreciate it. And I guess one last thing I should mention. I might as well do a commercial while I’m here is this Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern. We’ll be doing a live Twitter spaces, sharing updates around Futureproof and just having a really great conversation and giving people an opportunity to see sort of some of the early results and sort of some of the things we’ve been working on as we get to. Of that six month out window from futureproof. So 3 p.m. Eastern. It’s a Twitter spaces hosted by futureproof.

Speaker4: [00:27:19] Absolutely. Yeah. So listeners definitely check that out. This coming Wednesday, 3 p.m. on Twitter spaces. That sounds like it’ll be a very good time. So thank you, John, for sharing.

Phillip Hearn: [00:27:29] And this has been another episode of DAX Discussions. I’m Dr. Philip Hearn and from all of us at Saint Louis Business RadioX, We appreciate it and we’ll see you next time. Thanks.

About Your Host

Phillip-HearnDr. Phillip Hearn Ed.D. is a results-driven entrepreneur, Senior Executive, Consultant, and Board Member with more than 20 years of success in business acquisition and real estate. His expertise in leveraging extensive experience with expansion, and financing, makes Phillip a valuable asset for companies, particularly in real estate, seeking guidance on growth opportunities and process improvement.

Phillip is the founder of Mid American Capital Holdings, LLC, an acquisition focused company. Current subsidiaries include Phillip Speaks, specializing in coaching, advising and public speaking engagements; Financial Center, consulting business owners on methods to implement business trade lines and credit to grow their operations, and other subsidiaries which continues to expand. Phillip also gives back via his non for profit Center for Communities and Economic Development.

Phillip has obtained an Ed.D. from Capella University and holds an Executive Masters in Health Administration (EMHA) from Saint Louis University; an MA in Marketing and a BA in Media Communication, both from Webster University, and Lean Six Sigma (Black Belt) from Villanova University. He has served as a Board Member for the National Sales Network St. Louis Chapter and Ready Readers, for which he has also served as the Governance Department Chair and President of the Board.

Phillip is a coach, advisor, key note speaker and podcast host on Business RadioX. Audiences benefit professionally and personally through his teachings of leveraging and application. His new book “Life Mottos for Success” exemplifies how positive words and thoughts can transform your life!

Connect with Phillip on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.

Tagged With: Advisor Circle, Future Proof

Ask the Expert: Jared Rhodenizer with Horse.TV and CarsonJames.com

March 6, 2023 by angishields

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Ask the Expert: Jared Rhodenizer with Horse.TV and CarsonJames.com
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Jared-Rhodenizer-bwJared 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 Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Excel Radio’s Ask the Expert brought to you by Buckshot Photography and Video. It’s your story. Make it awesome. For more information, go to buckshot.com. Now here’s your host.

Randell Beck: [00:00:32] Hello, everybody. Senors and senoritas, welcome to the program. It’s Ask the Expert with Robert Mason and Randy Beck. And today’s guest is Jared Rhodenizer.

Robert Mason: [00:00:42] Hello.

Randell Beck: [00:00:43] Hi, Jared.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:00:43] Hi.

Randell Beck: [00:00:44] How are you doing today?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:00:45] I’m doing well. How are you?

Randell Beck: [00:00:46] We have got we’re loaded for bear with questions for you. Awesome. Jared is here today to talk about digital marketing, the back end, how we make this work once we shoot our social media video or make our posts or we decide we want to run a paid ad to promote our business. Before we start, Robert. What’s your week been like?

Robert Mason: [00:01:07] It’s been a good week. My birthday was yesterday. I’m negotiating two contracts today as I. Happy birthday to you.

Randell Beck: [00:01:15] Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday from buckshot. Happy birthday to you. Yeah.

Robert Mason: [00:01:19] My wife made it special. And then the dogs ruined it by being in the bed last night when I went there. So we’ll get into that later.

Randell Beck: [00:01:25] And give us a an encapsulation. Robert Mason’s deal is.

Robert Mason: [00:01:29] Robert Mason has been a realtor for 32 years. I’m a real estate broker as well. I’ve had my own real estate company. I’ve sold my own real estate company. And you know, this radio program with you, Randy, is special because you’re a big part of my business already in the videography and all the stuff that you do for me. So I’m super pleased to be doing this with you. This is our maiden voyage.

Randell Beck: [00:01:52] Maiden voyage on Ask the Expert. That’s right. This is episode one. This is episode.

Robert Mason: [00:01:55] One. And we have a real expert with us who’s going to give us all the insight.

Randell Beck: [00:02:00] And, Jared, introduce yourself. Tell people what’s your deal?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:02:03] So my name is Jared Rhodenhizer. I am a digital marketer. I own two companies, Carson. Com LLC and horse TV. Essentially, in a nutshell, we train people how to train their horses through online media books. We have MP3 players that people can listen to while they’re training their horse. That tells them step by step what to do. We have video libraries of subscriptions and all kinds of stuff in the the horse niche. But I’ve also done other things. We did real estate marketing, a lot of horse stuff. And basically anything that you can teach someone how to do through video, I can show you how to sell it and sell a lot of it.

Randell Beck: [00:02:47] So that’s very interesting. That’s what I do. And I like that. Know your horse TV and you’ve got this this operation that’s oriented around horses. And Robert here said he’s he called us a rodeo today instead of radio. A rodeo. I like that.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:03:04] It might be a rodeo, might be a play on words before it’s.

Robert Mason: [00:03:08] All said and done right before it’s to get it out there.

Randell Beck: [00:03:12] That’s what you call the truth slipping right out. Yeah. All right. So tell us about horse TV a little bit.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:03:19] So it’s essentially Netflix for horse people. It’s the same exact platform we have, the web, the apps, you know, Apple, Roku, all that. But it’s only horse content. So it’s documentaries, movies, TV shows. We produce our own content. I have my own reality show on there. And then we also license a lot of other content as well.

Randell Beck: [00:03:40] And the methods we’re talking about about selling here that we’re talking about through the digital medium is something you use to grow this channel.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:03:48] Yes, more so the Carson James company that has more funnels and more intricate ways of getting customers. Okay, horse TV is pretty straightforward. Carson James is much more interesting as it pertains to getting customers and selling people.

Speaker5: [00:04:05] So.

Randell Beck: [00:04:07] And so Carson James does what.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:04:09] We have an online subscription at Buckaroo Guru.com and people pay $20 a month and they get access to all of our courses. So we have 12 courses in each course has anywhere between 20 to 40 videos in it and each course has a specific. Method of teaching your horse how to do a certain thing, such as groundwork, problem solving, advanced writing, fundamental writing, which is like just the basics of what everyone should know how to do to ride a horse, things like that. Okay.

Randell Beck: [00:04:39] And you’re using what kind of techniques to push this out and sell it and get people interested.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:04:45] So there’s lead magnets, tripwires, upsells, core offers and profit maximizers.

Randell Beck: [00:04:52] I think we’re going to have to define terms here.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:04:55] That’s a mouthful. It can go deep. So essentially go slow. Okay.

Randell Beck: [00:05:00] What do they say in that movie about Wall Street? Speak as if you were speaking to a golden retriever or a very young child.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:05:07] Okay, so. It’s how the funnel works is you want to start with content marketing, which is essentially giving away your best stuff for free. And a lot of people get concerned with that because they think, well, if I give away my best stuff for free, then no one’s ever going to want to buy anything. But that’s it actually. And it makes sense that people think that. But that’s actually the exact opposite. You want to put your best foot forward and that will cause people to buy things. And they people, if they like your free stuff, they’re going to like your stuff. They’re going to buy stuff from you and they’re going to be happy to pay for it. But the problem that I think a lot of people have is they say, well, I’m going to give away my kind of mediocre stuff because I don’t want to give away my best stuff. You want to give away your best stuff and then give them even better stuff, too. When they sign up. All of your stuff you produce should be your best stuff.

Randell Beck: [00:06:03] So. So nothing we’re going to say today should stop anybody from continuing to develop their content and their messaging and no, absolutely not.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:06:11] So the way the funnel works is through most of I would say 90% of everything that we do is through Facebook ads because that’s where our customers are. So you have to identify if you have a younger audience, you know, Instagram and TikTok is going to be where you want to go. But most of our people are 40 and over, and those people are mostly on Facebook. So that’s where we mostly advertise is on Facebook because that’s where our customers are at. So you start off with content marketing. You would put up we’ll put up a video or a blog post or we have a podcast as well. We’ll put up a podcast episode and we just blast that. We pay to blast that out for free. And we target people who are in the horse niche and get everyone to consume the content. And then so an.

Randell Beck: [00:06:57] Example of that content would be what?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:06:59] So a video on how to train your horse not to be buddy sour, which means he always wants to be with the other horse instead of paying attention to what you’re wanting to do. So you would have.

Randell Beck: [00:07:10] This video on that and you would you’re putting that like on Facebook. Yes. So people can just watch it.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:07:16] There’s two ways to do it. You can upload it to your website and send people over to your website or you can upload it to Facebook and they can watch it on Facebook. The benefit of uploading the video directly to Facebook is that people are automatically pixeled who watch that video. So everybody that watches that video on Facebook, Facebook creates an audience automatically. So even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can always go back and create this audience later. They’ll create this audience and then you can go and retarget those people with other ads. So the goal is to get people to consume the content and pixel those people, cookie them through the Facebook pixel and then go back later and reach out to them and get them to buy a low ticket offer and see what a lot of people and that’s called a tripwire. A lot of people mess up because they sell their core, offer their core thing directly to Facebook, and that will work if it’s a good product in your marketing is good, But you’re not you don’t you’re you’re missing out on a lot of revenue by going straight from just your core thing, your most expensive thing. So a tripwire. So after you’ve content pixeled them through your videos or your podcast or whatever, it doesn’t matter. People get caught up on the medium too. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s good. It can be a podcast, a blog post, a video, anything PDF file, as long as it’s good.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:08:39] And then once you want to do is you want to take your core offer. So our core offers are subscription, which is $20 a month and they get all the courses. So what we do is we take a what I call a splinter of that and we take a piece of it and make that a tripwire. So we’ll take one course and sell it for something ridiculous. For instance, we have our entire problem solving course, which I believe is 42 videos right now. We sell that for $4, $4, you get 42, and they’re good videos for $4 and that sells like crazy. And then we have an order bump on the page where people can add an an option to their cart, where they can get a copy, a digital copy of our book for $10. So 50% of people take that offer for the $10. So that’s another $5. So when you take the $4 you made and then you take the 50% of people who buy the $10 book as a bump, that is an average order value of $9. And it takes about anywhere between 5 and $10 to acquire a customer through Facebook ads. So essentially you’re breaking even on your tripwires. But that’s fine because, A, you’ve got a lead, you have a new contact on your email list. B, they’ve bought something, somebody who’s bought something from you, even if it’s cheap, just like a dollar or $4 is a much better and more qualified lead than someone who just opted in for a free giveaway.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:10:06] If they’ve spent money with you, if they’ve opened their wallet to you. It’s it’s a lot better of a customer. And so then immediately after they buy the tripwire, this $4 course, we have this presentation, it’s a video presentation with a one click upsell, which is a button directly under the video where they don’t have to enter their credit card information. Again, they can just if they want to add it to their order, they can just click the button and it charges their card and puts them on a subscription. So in this video we say, Hey, the course you just got, congratulations on your order. Thank you for doing that. You’re going to love it. By the way, wanted to let you know that we have these additional 11 courses and you can get access to all of them for just $20 a month. And 30% of people on average take that. So we have broke even on the front end. We haven’t spent any money because we made all the money back from the tripwire sale for $4 and the order bump for $5. So we made our money back on our Facebook ad spend and now we’re getting members for free. We’re paying nothing to get people to subscribe for $20 a month.

Randell Beck: [00:11:14] So. So the order before we go further, the order is you put up this content. Yeah. The teaser. A good piece. Yes. They’re watching that. Yes. Then they’re they’re hit by an ad that says you can get another piece for this $4. That’s the tripwire. Yes. Okay. And then well.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:11:32] The other piece is not necessarily content. It’s a it’s an actual course. An actual course. Right.

Randell Beck: [00:11:37] So they get a piece of the course for $4. Yeah. Let’s say. Yeah. And then after they’ve done that then they get an offer for the rest.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:11:45] Yeah. So you can break down whatever product you have, no matter what, even if it’s a service industry, you can break it down into different splinters. It’s all about taking your thing and breaking it down a little bit more and a little bit more. And you start off and then you just build up. And then once they subscribe to our membership program, we pitch them what we call our profit maximizer. And that is a one time payment of $97 and that is an MP three player that they can buy and they actually wear it while they’re training their horse and it talks to them and tells them what to do step by step. And that comes with an 84 page PDF file that gives them written instructions and they also get videos to show them how to do it. And then these are additional videos to the videos they just got in the course. So it’s additional videos that go directly with the MP three player that show them demonstrations of how to do what the MP three player is going to be telling them to do while they’re training their horse.

Robert Mason: [00:12:42] How did you get started in this?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:12:45] So. I started off working for a company and we did. Ironically enough, we developed tools for real estate agents to do marketing. So I was in charge of sales and marketing there at a company, and I invented a product for them called the Facebook Lead Generator, and that was a product that taught real estate agents how to run Facebook ads and get leads through a free home value opt in form. And that blew up and went crazy out of the water. And the guy I work for, he’s still to this day, probably the smartest guy I know when it comes to sales and marketing taught me all of this. And so after working for him for two years, I was essentially running his company. And then I wanted to do something on my own. And my brother Carson has always been phenomenal with horses, but he was a nobody. I mean, no one knew who he was. I think he had $40 to his name and. I went up to him and I said, Hey, I have an idea. Can I film some videos of you? And he was like, Yeah, I don’t care. So we’ve we set out and we started and we filmed ten videos. I believe it was the first, the first time we ever filmed. We filmed ten videos and I put those videos on a DVD because this was back when DVDs were still relevant and people were buying them. And to my knowledge, we were the first people that did this. And then I sold the DVD on Facebook for 495. So the offer was it’s a free DVD. You just pay 495. And that covered the shipping and handling of the DVD. And I believe the first year we did over $1 million because it was the same and it was the same. It was the same concept. We just now, since DVDs are not really that relevant, we’ve moved to selling the digital courses. But even back then we would sell the DVD and then we would do the upsell, which was the membership site, and we have just created hundreds of thousands of videos since that day.

Robert Mason: [00:14:51] So in today’s security breaches and stuff like that, how do you keep your information secure from being stolen? Copied?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:15:01] You mean like people ripping us off? Yeah. Oh, we don’t. People every single day since I’m in that niche, I see all the ads for every everyone. I’ll put up something, and like, a week later, I went through a funnel one time where someone had copied, like, almost verbatim every single thing I had written, all the graphics and everything. It was insane. There’s nothing you can do about it. I mean, I could get into attorneys and do all that, but at the end of the day, those people aren’t as good as I am and I’m going to come out with something better and they’re never going to keep up with me. They’re never going to catch me. Right? So I don’t I just I just ignore them. I don’t care.

Randell Beck: [00:15:40] And no matter what you do, at the end of the day, they can just play it on their machine and screen, record it, and then they’ve got it no matter what. Because once it’s displayed on a screen, you can record.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:15:49] But the other the other part of it is, is that I don’t just say it because Carson’s my brother or whatever. Carson is probably one of the top horse trainers in the entire world. He is phenomenal. No one, hardly anyone, is going to be as good as he is. And he’s No. One as as personable as he is either, and as good of a teacher. So we have a really good combination where I’m really good at what I do, and he’s phenomenal at what he does. And we just have that winning combination and a lot of people aren’t going to have that. You might have a really good horse trainer, but your marketing guy sucks or you might have, you know, vice versa. So yeah.

Randell Beck: [00:16:28] So let’s talk mechanics for a minute. So now that we understand this process, so you’re going to put this first piece of content onto, let’s say Facebook. And so. Where in a group or on your own page.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:16:43] Adds on ads. So you have to have a in order to run ads on Facebook. You have to have a business page. You can’t run ads from your personal profile. So you have to have a business page and then you just go to. So you’re paying for ads. Yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah, people. And that’s the thing. We we kind of talked about it before this interview started. We briefly mentioned it. There’s a difference in people running social media and people running paid ads. A lot of people think that if they put something up on their Facebook or their insta web or whatever, that that’s how they’re going to sell and that’s how they’re going to get customers. But Facebook is very much pay to play if you don’t. I used to have a Facebook page that had 500,000 people on it, and every time I would post something, it would get a million likes. Well, Facebook didn’t like that because a lot of people were doing it. So they have completely changed their algorithm where it is. I mean, we have right now on the Carson James page, I think we have 175,000 likes or followers, but that doesn’t mean anything anymore because only like 2 to 3% of your likes are going to see it. So it doesn’t Facebook likes mean absolutely nothing. If you’re going to get your ad or your content out in front of people, you have to pay for it. You just have.

Randell Beck: [00:17:59] To. So let’s use Robert as an example. If you wanted, you said, okay, you’re putting up videos for your real estate practice and you’re getting calls from potential clients and so forth. So let’s say he wanted to broaden that right and not get a lot more reach than he’s just getting right now from putting it on his page. Yeah. So how do you do that? I mean, paid ads. Yes. But what does that mean? How do you target the person you want?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:18:23] Facebook, At least they used to. I haven’t done real estate ads in a long time, but when I used to, they used to have a category called Likely to move and that was gold. And I don’t know. Yeah, I’ve never seen that. I don’t even know how Facebook knows that. But it worked.

Randell Beck: [00:18:38] Well isn’t that their connection with like. Data mining.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:18:42] I mean, I use big data, right? Oh, of course. I just don’t know the specifics of how they got that information. But yeah, so.

Randell Beck: [00:18:49] Are there are there obviously that was like a preset a profile that you could just choose when you go.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:18:55] Yeah, when you go in Facebook and you go, there’s a thing called targeting and you just type in who you want to target age.

Robert Mason: [00:19:03] Where they’re at. Because I’ve done a lot of that as well. Not a lot of it. But yeah, you can target by age sex. What what is your do you want to be within a 50 mile radius? You can go to other cities and things like that. Yeah, it’s pretty good.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:19:19] It’s it’s interesting too, because we advertise globally all over the world, mainly in the United States, but our ads reach other places. But if you’re if you’re focused on an area, let’s just say we’re in Woodstock and you want it to be Woodstock and within 50 miles, it’s a lot cheaper to run ads because you’re only trying to reach so many people. And it’s a lot easier to get your ads out there and get more people to see them because there’s only so many people within a 50 mile radius of Facebook or I mean of Woodstock.

Robert Mason: [00:19:50] And you can also break it down by how much you’re going to want to spend. Yes. Like if you spend $100 a day or a week or whatever it is, it tells you, the algorithm tells you how many you’re going to reach.

Randell Beck: [00:20:01] So it sounds like, you know, the basic old marketing question of who’s your customer, right? You’ve got to know who it is you’re wanting to reach the person looks like.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:20:10] I think that’s one, too. But that’s who’s your daddy. Okay. Yeah. You. Before you ever start out on any of this, you have to identify who your customer is. Like, obviously, if you’re in real estate, you’re probably not going to be targeting 18 year olds, right? So age would be a big contributing factor.

Robert Mason: [00:20:27] Randy’s already talked about the 18 year olds. We’ve already covered this, right? No, no, we.

Randell Beck: [00:20:30] Haven’t even got to the 18 year olds yet. Okay. So so you have this prime customer in mind. You run these paid ads, you target it. Yes. And now. They watched this because they’re seeing it pop up. Right. It’s a paid ad, but they’re seeing it pop up for them. It’s free, Right? Okay. So they watch it and then they get at the end of it, they get this offer for the next piece. Yes. The tripwire. Right.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:20:54] Okay. That’s one way to do it. Okay. Another way to do it is webinars. Webinars work phenomenally. That’s another way we do tripwires and we do webinars like.

Robert Mason: [00:21:05] Streamyard or what are you talking about?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:21:07] So a webinar. Well, when I say webinar, it’s essentially a presentation. It’s a PowerPoint presentation that we do on Zoom. Last webinar we did, we had 4000 registrants and it cost about if you’re targeting your warm audience. So there’s warm audiences and cold audience. A warm audience would be people who are familiar with you, which would be people who are on your email list, people who have visited your website, people who’ve watched your videos. They at least know who you are, people who’ve bought from you before, and you can create all of these audiences within Facebook. And then there’s a cold audience, which I define as someone who has no idea who you are. Now, webinars are going to be a lot more expensive to get leads from your cold traffic. So once you’ve done this stuff that we’ve talked about before with the content marketing and the tripwires, you’re also, while you’re doing all this as people are going through these funnels and going through these pages on your website, they’re all getting cookied and they’re all getting into your Facebook custom audiences. So then once you’ve ran this, you can say, okay, I’m going to take all of these people who’ve interacted with all of this stuff I’m doing and I’m going to target them for another ad, and then you can run webinars. And we were getting we were getting 40 cent webinar registration leads to our warm list last week when I did this and it was crazy. So a webinar is essentially a PowerPoint presentation where it shows very good, valuable content and then at the end there’s some sort of a pitch. So the webinar we did recently was, What was it? Oh, it was on trail riding, how to have a good trail ride and solve problems or how to have a how to solve problems on the trail and have a good ride every time was the title.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:22:51] And then we have on the opt in page, we have bullet points, what we’re going to discuss, and then people can just sign up for the webinar. And on that webinar, Carson and I are on it together and it shows our faces overlaid over a PowerPoint presentation that I put together. Carson tells me what to put and I put it all together and then he goes through. And when Carson’s going through the webinar, it’s phenomenal. I mean, he’s giving away. It’s not this thing where they get on and they get just a tiny bit of information and then it’s all a big pitch. Like I said, the the thing about this digital marketing thing is adding the value. So many people do not add the value and then they’re like, Well, why don’t I get sales? Because you don’t teach anything, dude. Like, so we do. It was probably an hour worth of value and then a 15 minute offer at the end. But see an offer and that’s another thing. Now that we’re talking about offers, like I said, I could go all day on this and offer is not, hey, go buy my core product and offer is, hey, my core product is normally $20 a month, but if you buy it right here, it’s $10 a month or an offer is it’s normally $20 a month and you don’t get these bonuses. But if you sign up on this webinar, it’s still $20 a month, but you get all of these free bonuses included. If you sign up right now at this link, that’s an offer.

Randell Beck: [00:24:07] They’ll get your your your eBook and your your your decal and plastic cowboy hat and.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:24:14] Whatever, whatever. So on this one, in this specific example, probably not plastic last longer. We did a we did the membership was $20 a month, but we did a two week trial so they didn’t have to pay anything for two weeks. And we, we actually have a trail riding course and we gave them lifetime access to the trail riding course. Even if they cancel their membership, you get it free just for trying out, just for signing up for a two week trial. And then we also gave them three free bonuses, which were three free, I call them pocket guys, the little field guides that you can take with you, like while you’re on the trail and you can read and learn how to solve problems. So they got those as well. So that’s that was our offer. And it converted, I think, at 30%.

Robert Mason: [00:24:57] Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me go back there a second. You’re reading something while you’re on.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:25:02] Not while you’re on your horse, but before you go. And you can take it with you. I mean, you could take a break and be like, oh, my horse is acting up. I wonder, Oh, there is a chapter about this. Oh, okay, here’s what I need to do. Stuff like.

Randell Beck: [00:25:12] So these are value adds. Yes. And so it sounds like this is sort of a high tech way of doing what the Yes set that the sales trainer is always talking about. Get them saying yes, get them saying yes, and eventually you get the big sale.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:25:26] I guess. Yeah. I’ve never gone through any of that sales training I follow. There’s some core core guys that teach this that I follow and I just I just listen to what they say and they’re always coming out with new and improved ideas and. Another. That’s another thing. Just we were talking about staying on top. There’s so in marketing, in some ways nothing ever changes. But in other ways everything changes. So the technology changes and the platforms change and how you reach the people changes. But the way that people respond to advertising never changes. That always stays the same.

Robert Mason: [00:26:04] So social media trends are changing constantly. How do you keep up? How do you keep track of the latest social media changes?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:26:14] I download the apps and play with them. I mean, honestly. And I see how they work and I see and I mean, a lot of marketing is looking at what other people are doing and if it’s working, that’s another thing. Don’t look at people who aren’t converting, but watching other people who are doing things and it’s working and then just not copying them directly ripping them off, but saying, Oh, okay, I see what they’re doing here, and then twisting it into your your own way of doing it. But, you know, if someone has never downloaded TikTok or hasn’t ever, you know, it doesn’t use the app, they’re not going to know how to run TikTok ads or know what kind of ads convert on there. You have to you if you want to, you know, advertise on those platforms, you have to you have to be active on them and see what other people are doing and how the videos work and the videos that are successful and the ones that are not.

Robert Mason: [00:27:05] You’ve brought up TikTok now a couple of different times. Are you a proponent of TikTok? Because I get a lot of pushback from folks. Don’t download TikTok Chinese owned your spyware and stuff like that. Is there any of that true? I have no.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:27:18] Idea. Yeah. If it makes me money, I’m going to use it.

Robert Mason: [00:27:22] Yeah, my daughter says the same thing, so I get warned off on TikTok. That sounds like.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:27:27] A there’s so many. There’s so many. I don’t even know how you know what’s true anymore because everyone says this is true and this is not true. And this I mean, there’s. How do you know? You don’t know so.

Robert Mason: [00:27:38] Much disinformation out there.

Randell Beck: [00:27:39] So. Well, there’s that Abraham Lincoln quote about not trusting everything you see on the Internet.

Speaker5: [00:27:43] So did he say that? Yeah.

Robert Mason: [00:27:46] It’s attributed on a cell phone, too, right?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:27:48] I think he tweeted it.

Robert Mason: [00:27:50] Was he in a balloon flying over America at the same time?

Randell Beck: [00:27:53] So I like the philosophy there. You know, use it if it makes you money, if it’s moving you forward and achieving your goals. You know, what’s all the debate about, Right. That’s kind of that’s a philosophy right there, I think. But all right. So now. People are going through this chain of events on Facebook and you’re saying they’re being retargeted because of the cookies. Right. So once you put your ads up, everybody that’s looked at it, Facebook is ensuring that they see your next ad again. Is that how it works?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:28:18] They’re ensuring that they’re pixeled, that they’re that they have the potential to see it.

Robert Mason: [00:28:23] When you say Pixeled, I’m imagining the Brady Bunch, you know, all the faces showing up and I think.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:28:28] So.

Randell Beck: [00:28:29] You didn’t know that Brady Bunch invented Zoom, did you?

Robert Mason: [00:28:32] I didn’t know that either. Oh, that’s.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:28:34] True. Clever. So a pixel is essentially just a little a little tracking. They call it a cookie, but it’s just a line of code that they put on your phone or your computer. And it doesn’t it doesn’t get any of your personal information. It just allows you to reach those people again, to know, okay, this person’s been to my website or this person’s been to a certain step of my website. So let’s say, for example, someone bought the tripwire, but they didn’t buy the upsell, they didn’t buy the core product. You can say, okay, I want to target everyone who visited this page, which would be or the thank you page, which would be the upsell page. So the thank you page of the tripwire is also the upsell page of the core offer. So you can say, I want to target everyone who bought the tripwire but did not purchase the core offer. And then you can run ads specifically to those people to just try to get them to buy your core offer and vice versa. I want to I want to I want to target everyone who’s bought the core offer, but but did not buy the profit maximizer, which we do that as well.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:29:36] So if they bought the membership and they’re paying subscriber, but they still haven’t bought our $97 product, I want to target all those people to buy to buy this. And it really does work really well when you do it that way. Because if you’re Ryan Deiss who owns digital marketer.com, he said it really good He said a lot of people go in when it comes to marketing. And he used this analogy. He says they walk up to a woman and they ask her to marry him. He said, It doesn’t work like that. You have to ask for coffee and then you have to ask for a date. And then you have to, you know, things have to evolve. So a lot of people are just trying to sell their thousand dollar product on Facebook and these people don’t even know who you are. Take them out to coffee first. Introduce. Introduce yourself first. People are just walking up to people and marketing and saying, Hey, will you marry me? Like, no.

Robert Mason: [00:30:24] Well, isn’t that what branding is all about? I mean, when you when you talk about when we talk about branding ourselves or branding, you know what? We do it. It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to be seen time and time again. You have to build trust with your audience. That’s what you’re talking about, right?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:30:42] Essentially, yeah. It’s more about it’s more about them than it is about you, though. If a lot of people mess up in branding and I see it all the time and no offense, but real estate agents are the worst. They’ll have this huge ass sign with their picture on it and the picture takes up 75% of the sign. And it has a phone number that’s not going to convert anybody. What if you had a sign that didn’t have your picture on it that had an offer? It was like 1% commission rate. If you call this number, you know, I don’t I’m sure you can’t really do that. I’m not a real estate agent, but having an ad with an offer on it is much more enticing to customers than branding and getting your name out there, because no one, at the end of the day, no one cares about you, no one cares about what you sell, no one even cares about your product. People only care about the result. That’s all they care. They care about what they’re going to get. And if you can feed into that, then you’ll win.

Robert Mason: [00:31:41] Well, I’ll give you an example. Some of the things that I’ve used before on Facebook in particular, because I get I get a good amount of business from Facebook, just my personal page, not even my business page. And I’ve paid for ads as well. When I offer a free appraisal or a free CMA current market analysis that tends to generate. I’ll give a free photography coupon away or something like that. We’re going to talk about that to get ready. Ready. And it might be.

Randell Beck: [00:32:10] Free to your customer, but you’re not going to be free to you.

Robert Mason: [00:32:13] It’s going to cost me. But yeah, I get and it’s funny how people chase the likes of Facebook. Oh, they liked it. Yeah, they liked my picture of my food or whatever the hell it is, Right? Right. And you’re missing the boat if you’re trying to promote.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:32:28] It’s so a really good example. All real estate agents do the free market analysis, which is good. All roofers do the analysis. Yeah, the analysis. I’ll come out and get a free roof review, whatever. But since everybody’s doing that, I’ve always won by doing things that people are not doing, trying to get creative. For example, instead of running. If I was a roofer, I would not run ads that say, Hey, come out, let me free roof inspection. I would say, Buy a roof with me and get all your gutters for free. And I would partner with I would if I did the gutters myself, then I would obviously just handle it or I would partner with a gutter person and pay them a certain amount of money. But that would be an offer because that’s more appealing than let me come out and tell you your roof needs to be replaced because you know that’s what I’m going to do, because that’s what everyone does. That’s why I’m trying to get in your house. People are not stupid. And people who advertise to people and think that people are stupid are not going to win much longer because people are getting smarter and smarter and smarter. Everyone knows that when you run an ad to do a free roof inspection, what are they going to do? They’re going to come out. And if your roof was just replaced last week, they’re going to say, Looks like you need a new roof. Yeah.

Robert Mason: [00:33:45] Nope. Looks good to me. Sorry I wasted three hours.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:33:48] So the more creative you can get with your offers and that’s what people miss. And I don’t think this I see it because I study. I look at ads. Magazine ads are really bad. You look at all these magazine ads and it’s just like a person’s face and a phone number or a website that doesn’t. What incentive do people have to go visit your website? What what is the purpose of that? Put an offer on it. Give them an incentive to go to your website and to sign up or to to to buy from you. What is the what do I get out of this? And if you don’t, if you would just start if people would just start putting something that people can get when they take action on this ad, they would see a lot more success.

Randell Beck: [00:34:30] Now, apparently you’ve pixeled me because because your things keep showing up for me. And I saw this post that you did and I don’t know if you saw this and you just.

Robert Mason: [00:34:41] Bought a horse too.

Randell Beck: [00:34:42] So there’s something going on and the barn. And so I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but Jared had a post up the other day where he was talking about these offers and these ads that are going out. And you did like 20 different variations and, you know, a, a, a reemphasised with the D and cut off at the transverse roundabout or the next thing you know, you knew what was selling and what wasn’t. Right. Right. So tell me a little bit about this testing that you do.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:35:05] I split test 25 different ad headlines. So you use the same picture because you don’t want the picture to have an an influence. I’m just trying to see what headlines are going to get people to click. So I keep the picture the same. I keep everything the same. I just changed the headline, which is the bottom. If you look at a Facebook ad, it’s the bottom part that’s right above the Learn More button that’s always there, the big bold text. And I’m just testing it. I’m only spending like 25 bucks, but I’m seeing which of these which of these headlines get the most click through rate. And then I’ll take that winner and I’ll use that and I’ll spend a bunch of money on that. And then I’ll once I get the headline winner, I’ll use that headline and then I’ll split test the picture. So I’ll use four different five different pictures with that headline and see which one of those ads gets the most clicks. But the key is just not spending a lot. It doesn’t take much money to do the testing. And then pretty soon you’re going to have a winning combination of the headline, you know, the picture. And then if you want to go even further, you can split test the ad copy after you have those two winners as well.

Randell Beck: [00:36:11] And so basically, you’re just finding out what people are responding to, right?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:36:14] Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Randell Beck: [00:36:17] So and I knew I would find the tie in between digital marketing and real estate today. While he’s saying this about the testing, I’m envisioning Alec Baldwin up at the front of the room with his chalkboard and he’s like a beet. Always be testing, right?

Robert Mason: [00:36:32] Yeah, that was a good movie.

Randell Beck: [00:36:33] It was, Yeah.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:36:35] Testing. Testing is big.

Robert Mason: [00:36:37] And so do you have a group of folks that help you come up with your marketing or your materials?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:36:44] No, unfortunately, I don’t. I’m a member of I follow a lot of the the guys like Frank Kern, Ryan Dice, Russell Brunson, Russell Brunson owns Clickfunnels and I follow a lot of their stuff and try to learn from them as much as possible. And I have a few. I shouldn’t say I don’t have anybody. My the guy I used to work for, his name is Calvin. I talked to him probably once a month and we brainstormed some stuff and talk about what’s working and what’s not. So I do have a couple people.

Randell Beck: [00:37:16] Now, you know, this series that we’re doing is called XL. We’re really about business excellence, which obviously you’ve been achieving in a big way. And so following these people, was that the key to your success? Was that is that how you learned to excel was by choosing these guys? How did you pick them?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:37:35] So the guy I worked for, Calvin, he started off teaching me everything that Ryan Deiss taught, who is the CEO of digital marketer.com and his business partner, Perry Belcher are kind of the guys. They didn’t invent this, but they’re kind of like some of the the first first to go at this whole funnel strategy. And Perry Belcher speaking to him is really, really interesting. He owns a company called Survival Life. And they do they do stuff exactly like we do. So they have a tripwire offer. Have you ever seen the the little credit card knives that they they look like a credit card, but they turn into a knife. So Perry Belcher. Oh, he has one. So Perry Belcher.

Randell Beck: [00:38:20] Robert Mason survivalist.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:38:22] Yes. Perry Belcher is the one who invented that. And he owns a company called Survival Life. And yeah, he’s got it right there in his pocket. And as soon as you he sold I don’t remember how many of those he sold, but it was millions. And then as soon as you buy the credit card knife, there’s an immediate upsell to buy another knife. And he calls it the Hoffman Richter, some fancy German name. It’s a name that he made up. But you get this knife. And with the knife, you get a subscription to the Family Protection Association, which is a $20 a month subscription, and they send you once a month. You get the Lamplighter Report, which is all about homesteading, survival and anything that anyone in that niche would be interested in. They have tripwires like how to grow a garden when you only have five square feet of of of land. So that’s one of the things you can buy from them. So they’re very, very good at splintering and upselling and cross selling and everything like that.

Randell Beck: [00:39:28] Do you recall pricing on some of those things? Like what were those tripwires?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:39:31] Credit card knife, I think was 495. I think it was free plus 495 shipping. And then the Family Protection Association was $20 a month. And I haven’t looked at this in a long time, so it might have changed. But that’s that’s what it was when I was looking into it. And then you get the big knife for free. And it really is a quality. It’s a good knife.

Randell Beck: [00:39:50] And so. So you started following these guys. You studied what they were doing.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:39:53] Yeah.

Robert Mason: [00:39:54] Yeah, That’s a knife. That’s a.

Randell Beck: [00:39:56] Knife. So you followed what they were doing. You were learning from them. And how did you put this? You know, like, what made the difference for you? There’s a lot of people that try things like this, right? But you’ve succeeded really well. What made the difference?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:40:08] Well, it’s like I said in the beginning, you have to have good marketing, but you also have to have a good product. If you don’t have a good product, then you can do all the marketing in the world and you’ll sell some, but it’s not going to be great and vice versa. You have a really good product, but no one knows about it and no one’s going to buy it. People have to know about it. I don’t know, man. It was just working for those two years for Calvin really opened my eyes to the potential. And then I think before him, I worked for a guy named Brigg Hart, who was the most he is the top money earner in the world, as far as I know, for direct sales marketing. He was like the lead at Amway. And then I don’t know if you guys remember Monavie. He was like the top guy in Monavie and I worked for him for a few years and just being around, I mean, these guys had millions, drove Lamborghinis. I mean, their whole life was a party. Being around those guys really, really, really influenced me and made me like, Damn, that’s that’s what I want. This life. Yeah, big time.

Randell Beck: [00:41:12] Okay, Robert, you said you’ve done some of this. You did some marketing and advertising on Facebook, and what was that like for you? What did you do?

Robert Mason: [00:41:19] It was hit or miss? I wasn’t focused enough. I wasn’t consistent enough, which, you know, that’s part of all of our problems in life in general. Facebook has been good to me. On the free side, as in I’ve got X amount of followers in real estate. I think it’s a little bit different if people know, you know, what kind of character you have, your honesty. They maybe went to school with me or they’ve done something well.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:41:50] And there’s a difference in a Facebook profile and a Facebook page. So if you have friends on your Facebook profile, those people obviously know you. They’re there. The warmest traffic that you can have. They’re the hottest, the hottest leads in the world on your personal Facebook.

Randell Beck: [00:42:05] Even volunteering, right?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:42:06] Yeah. I mean, those are your friends. So. Absolutely.

Robert Mason: [00:42:09] And so in real estate, you know, there was a lot of cold calling and there’s a lot of training out there where, you know, it’s your sphere of influence and you got to connect with your sphere of influence. And I’ve been doing it so long and I’ve got so much just built up momentum there that, you know, that kind of it takes care of things.

Randell Beck: [00:42:24] And so you did paid ads.

Robert Mason: [00:42:26] You said did paid ads response there? No. And it was because probably I was not. Offering what you were talking about something that was why would somebody click on this? Why would somebody unless there’s a real need and somebody sees it and go, oh, yeah, I need to sell my house, Let’s call this dude. You know, I didn’t create any urgency to connect and I just did it wrong, so.

Randell Beck: [00:42:52] Okay. So we got questions here that have come in for you. Oh, really? One of them just jumping off the page at me because it involves video. It says, okay, because video comment content is becoming popular on social media every day. Oh, yeah. Leaps and bounds. How do you create effective video content that resonates with your client’s target audience and drives engagement? In other words, you can’t really split test video, right? Or can you? You can. How do you do that?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:43:18] You can set up one audience and run two different videos and see which one gets the most engagement and the cheapest price per engagement. So Facebook has cost per through play and they also have cost per engagement. So if you just look at those numbers and see which one’s cheaper and obviously people like the cheaper video better because you’re not paying as much to get it in front of people.

Randell Beck: [00:43:39] And let’s define through play and engagement.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:43:42] So through play would be they watch the videos. I think it’s for three seconds or more, which really isn’t qualified. So when you go to Cookie people on Facebook, you can you can create you can create audiences from people who’ve watched three seconds of your video, ten seconds of your video, 50%, 75% and 100%. Now, obviously, the longer they watch the video, the less people it’s going to be. I don’t generally target people who’ve watched three seconds of the video because to me that’s not really a view. Um, but that would be a through play and then a engagement rate is just how many people are actually clicking to watch. So we put it in front of this many people. This is how many people engaged with the ad click the play button commented, liked, shared it, did, did something and engagement is just doing something other than scrolling past it.

Randell Beck: [00:44:34] Then just seeing it and moving on. Right. Okay. And so if you if you run two versions like that and you split test it and you find the version that you want to use, then what is that video put out? The same way like with a paid ad and targeted.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:44:49] The same way. So I would come up with ideas and that’s the biggest thing, is it all goes back to what I started with in the beginning is don’t put out mediocre crap that people don’t really care about. That’s going to not really solve a problem for them. Put out a video that like when people watch it, they’re like, Damn, that was good. Or that’s exactly what I needed to hear. That’s when you have a winner. And so you get you can get 3 to 4 ideas of what content that could be and then make videos on each one of those things and then put them in an ad set together and run them all together at the same time. And one of them’s going to win.

Robert Mason: [00:45:26] So one of the things that Randy and I’ve been doing is we’ve been shooting videos and basically we will we will get questions from the audience whether just like just like this. Right. And then we will go shoot a video on it. And, you know, anywhere from a minute to 90 seconds. And and so because I pay him so much money for this, it needs to work. Right. And so fair statement. Fair statement. And but we hadn’t even thought about putting those on a paid page. Have we? We didn’t even talk about that.

Randell Beck: [00:46:05] So in terms of implementing your marketing program, no, but in terms of like determining what kinds of videos work, yes, I’ve done some of that already. Right. And so that’s how we arrived at the format we’re using. And and the type of thing that we’re doing right is because I know that to be effective from doing this testing in other ways.

Robert Mason: [00:46:24] So this is a very good subject for not only us. Yeah. Particularly, but for anybody who wants to.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:46:32] Well, good subject. For anyone who wants to make money.

Randell Beck: [00:46:34] All three of us know each other. We all hang out in circles of business people, and everybody’s out there marketing themselves on social media and trying to promote their business. And, you know, they’re coming in here to Business RadioX and working with Stone to do it. Stone is here today. Everybody, by the way, say hi to Stone.

Speaker6: [00:46:49] Hi. Stone.

Randell Beck: [00:46:50] And and, you know, they’re actively engaged in this process, right? So this is something that I think a lot of people need to hear from you.

Robert Mason: [00:46:58] Yeah, this is big.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:46:59] Yeah, it’s a good it’s a good topic. That’s the thing. Like anyone, especially right now, if you can if you can teach people how to do something in video, it’s a lot easier. And I’ll be honest, the real estate is is one of the hardest ones. It really is. Because, well, you’re a broker, so you kind of have a free pass. But most brokers and maybe you can help spread awareness about this are very, very against the methods I’m talking about today. They all they want it clean. They don’t. Oh, we’ve never done that before. We can’t do that or you can’t do that open. If they if brokers would open up their agents and let them do some digital marketing type stuff with tripwires and funnels and stuff like this, we would see a huge boom in the real estate, but everyone does it the exact same way.

Robert Mason: [00:47:47] Well, there’s there’s also this feeling that they’re the brokers don’t want to share the secret sauce with everybody, right? So I come from a position of abundance. I like to to be a teacher to help, you know, the the other agent number one, two, three are not my competition. An and if they are, whatever best guy wins. Right, right. But you’ll also find that in the real estate world, we are the cheapest bunch of folks on the planet as well. Right?

Randell Beck: [00:48:16] Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Robert Mason: [00:48:17] I mean, it’s just. It’s a fact. Yeah. And a lot of that has to do with we never know when we’re going to get paid. We have a salary. Right. You know, we’ve it’s just a difficult it’s a difficult gig. But yeah, this is fascinating.

Randell Beck: [00:48:29] Well, and I’m a broker, too, although I’m not in real estate anymore, but my industry is related and still, you know, open involved in real estate in some ways. And I had a friend back in Virginia Beach, his name was John, and his take was a little slightly more cynical than yours because he at the time you this is back in the days of.

Robert Mason: [00:48:50] Pagers and pagers before light.

Randell Beck: [00:48:53] And when you when you would pull up in front of one of his listings, it would say, text this number for more information. When you did, the system would send you a text with information on the house, but it also page him with your phone number. Right. And he would call this person right in front of the house and say, I see you’re at, you know, 955 Coleman Street. And you know, what can I tell you about the house? How can I help you? Would you like to go in and see it? You know, we can send somebody over, you know, all this sort of thing. And I was like, you know, John, that’s a really good system. You know, I bet you’re kind of secretive with this, right? Like, you don’t want this to get out too much. He says, No, I’ll tell anybody. He says, Nobody’s going to do anything with it most of the time anyway. And if they do, there’s enough business for both of us. There is.

Robert Mason: [00:49:37] It really is.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:49:38] That’s what I’ve I’ve, I’ve bought and sold a lot of properties. And if I had one thing that I could tell every real estate agent that would immediately just boost their sales is answer your phone.

Speaker5: [00:49:50] Right, right, right.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:49:50] Right, right.

Randell Beck: [00:49:51] That’s the hardest thing to do. It’s ringing all the time.

Robert Mason: [00:49:53] But you know what? There’s a problem with that. We get so much ads, so many people calling my phone. You know, caller ID is wonderful, but when the numbers are one eight, eight, eight, you know, or it’s out of state and nine at 99 out of 100, if you answer it, it’s going to be a spam. It’s a spam. Someone’s trying to sell you something. Right. And so you get frustrated. You don’t answer your phone How much?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:50:22] But would it be worth it for agents to invest in a call screener and pay them just to screen calls?

Robert Mason: [00:50:29] If you have a number of calls coming in, I mean, most agents sell two houses in a year.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:50:34] Yeah, well, if they’re having the problem like you’re having where they’re getting 100 calls a day, I would think buying or paying someone to screen your calls and immediately be able to transfer that call to you and only and you knew if it was from that number, it’s your call screener. So this is a good lead. That would be a really good investment.

Robert Mason: [00:50:51] Well, you know, with exp, I’m with exp. So when you look at my phone number on a listing, it’s got the exp number and it goes through a call center. It does not come straight to my cell phone. Okay? Unless I put my cell phone number in there directly, which I do because agents, people will want to text you. Yeah. And if you text a landline, you get that dumb message contest. Right?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:51:14] And I think for the younger generation, putting tech, just putting your name and saying text me to find out about this house and being really vague about it would do really, really well. The more fancier you try to get with your copywriting, generally the worse it gets.

Robert Mason: [00:51:30] Oh, that’s pretty that’s.

Speaker5: [00:51:31] Yeah.

Randell Beck: [00:51:31] Simplest is best simple. That’s why that’s why AI is making such waves in copywriting right now.

Speaker5: [00:51:37] So many people.

Randell Beck: [00:51:38] It doesn’t have to be complex, it just got to be correct.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:51:41] You go to their website and it says at so-and-so real estate or I’m going to stop picking on real estate at So-and-so Roofing, we pride ourselves on having the utmost standing. No one buys that bullshit and no one gives a shit. No one cares. Say, say, Hey, my name is so-and-so and I own this company and be real. The more real that you can get in your bio and sound, the less corporate you can sound, the more people you’re going to get to buy from you. And so everybody’s website says the same thing. We pride ourselves in blah, blah, blah. We’ve been in business since. No one gives a shit how long you’ve been in business. How much money are you going to make me? How much can I sell my house for? How much is it going to cost me to get a new roof? And are you a good person?

Robert Mason: [00:52:23] Well, that’s very it’s very interesting. It’s about being real. Being real on social media is so very important. I see so much cheesy stuff out there.

Speaker5: [00:52:33] There’s so much cheesy stuff. And social media at.

Randell Beck: [00:52:36] Best Shot, we subvert dominant communication paradigms through technologically enhanced infrastructure and.

Speaker5: [00:52:43] Industry. Best practices.

Robert Mason: [00:52:44] You lost me ten seconds ago, man. At best.

Speaker5: [00:52:46] Shot. So this is this is something they teach you at business school when you get your MBA, right? That’s how people that’s how people write their websites.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:52:53] And no one No one. And you think, oh, well, I just don’t. And people don’t put themselves in other people’s shoes like, well, I don’t relate to it. But most people know if you don’t relate to it, neither does anybody else, right? If it wouldn’t sell you or you’re not intrigued by it or you think it’s boring, guess what? So does everybody.

Speaker5: [00:53:09] Else. Well, I.

Robert Mason: [00:53:09] Misspell things on purpose. Yeah, you should. It makes me.

Speaker5: [00:53:12] Real.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:53:13] It’s brilliant. I misspelled things in our ads all the time. Because you know what? People will comment and they’ll correct me. And every time someone comments on an ad, even though you’re paying for it, the more engagement that ad gets, the less you’re going to spend to.

Speaker5: [00:53:25] Pay to.

Robert Mason: [00:53:26] Get it out. The engagement, That’s an engagement.

Speaker5: [00:53:28] It’s an.

Robert Mason: [00:53:28] Engagement. I’ve been doing this for years and people just think I’m.

Randell Beck: [00:53:31] Yeah, they think you’re illiterate.

Speaker5: [00:53:33] Yeah, they.

Robert Mason: [00:53:33] Think I went to the University of Georgia, which.

Speaker5: [00:53:35] Yeah, I did.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:53:36] People comment and correct your spelling errors. Guess what? That’s only helping driving.

Speaker5: [00:53:40] Up your engagement.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:53:41] Right? It’s only driving your engagement.

Robert Mason: [00:53:43] More school teachers on Facebook than.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:53:45] That’s smart.

Speaker5: [00:53:46] That’s good.

Randell Beck: [00:53:47] Okay. Follow up question here. Um, so let’s say that somebody is listening to this and they’re like, Oh, that is for me. Right. And so they’re like, Now I got to make this content so Jerry can put it out there and, you know, Yeah. Creating a social media strategy for for this this client. How do you do that?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:54:08] Well, you go through the steps first. I mean, if you’re wanting to have a social media strategy, you probably everyone I mean, I would think would have a core offer, which is the core offer is essentially just the main thing you sell. So you say, okay, this is the thing I sell. The next step is to figure out your splinters. Okay, how can I break off a piece of this to sell? And then how can I break off a piece of this to give away his content?

Speaker5: [00:54:32] Right.

Randell Beck: [00:54:33] And so that was what we were talking about a minute ago with the tripwire. Yeah. Okay. And so I’m thinking this question is a little bit more like, how do I make good content to do that with? Like you say, you say you want to break this up and use a piece of this. What is this?

Speaker5: [00:54:46] How do you arrive at?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:54:47] If you don’t know, ask your customers, send an email. A Facebook groups are very valuable to everyone. Should we have a Facebook group? Everyone should have a Facebook group. Now, in your Facebook group, you can actually tag everyone at the same time by typing at everyone and it sends a notification to everyone in the group to go look at your post. So that’s pretty valuable. But I would just say ask people if you have an email list already, send out an email. If you’re just getting started, ask the ask your potential customers and say, Hey, what’s the biggest question you have? What’s the biggest problem you’re trying to solve? What do you struggle with the most? And then there you have it and answer it. And that’s when it comes to not being afraid to give away your best stuff. Because if they have and you’ll find common denominators with everybody, like with the horse niche, the Buddy sour thing is the biggest problem. It’s the easiest fix, but for some reason it’s the biggest problem that everyone has and it’s what everyone wants to learn how to fix. So whenever we put out something with how to fix a buddy sour horse, it just it just goes crazy because that’s what people want. I don’t know why it’s an easy fix, but it’s what people want. And a lot of times if you get biased, you’re like, Well, this is not what they want. This is what I think they want. You’re going to mess up. You got to make sure it’s something that they actually are having a problem with and want answers to. So if you’re a roofer.

Speaker5: [00:56:13] Sorry. I didn’t mean interrupt. Go ahead. If you’re a roofer.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:56:16] An example would be put out content that says how to look at your roof and know in five minutes whether or not it needs to be replaced. And then do a video of you up on the roof and showing examples of, Hey, if you’ve got this problem, you probably, you know, this means this and this, and it’s educational. This means that you have this problem and this problem. And if this is this, this could cause a potential leak. That would be an example of really good content that you could put out. If you’re a real estate agent, you could put out content about, hey, here’s how. Here’s an example of really bad listing pictures and here’s an example of really good listing pictures.

Speaker5: [00:56:54] I’ve done that one and and.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:56:55] Showing and talking about what makes them bad and what makes them good. Here’s here’s an example of a really good staged home. Here’s an example of a home that’s not staged well at all. And yeah, and here’s why. Staging your house can get you more money and education and asking people what’s what is your top concerns about selling your house and then addressing them.

Robert Mason: [00:57:19] Well, that’s what those videos that you and I are doing. That’s exactly what we’re doing.

Randell Beck: [00:57:23] And these questions are derived that way, right?

Robert Mason: [00:57:26] I mean, the real the real questions.

Randell Beck: [00:57:27] And because because you like the ask the expert format, we’re framing it in an educational, you know, hanging your content in an educational frame. Right. Right. Because that’s good for your client and builds your expertise. Right.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:57:40] Right. If the goal if the goal is always to. Help people, just help people first and then worry about making sales. You’ll make the sales.

Randell Beck: [00:57:52] That is just such an awesome wrap up. Yeah, you know, everybody forgets that. But that’s really the rule, isn’t it?

Robert Mason: [00:58:00] The more people that you help in their journey, the better off that you’re going to be morally with integrity and the better your life is going to be. And that is a real thing.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:58:11] Well, we were talking about branding earlier and making, you know, being getting your brand out there. Oh, how how what.

Speaker5: [00:58:18] Better way can.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:58:19] You build a brand than helping people before you get paid? Yeah, that’s the way to build a brand. Sure is.

Speaker5: [00:58:27] Yeah.

Randell Beck: [00:58:29] We have covered a lot of ground. This is gold. This is gold today. I hope you’re listening out there. Okay. Before we wrap up, Jared Robertson, real estate. I’m in content creator. You know what? You’re the expert today. If you had one piece of advice for each of us, what would it be?

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:58:47] I think I’ve shared it all.

Randell Beck: [00:58:49] We got all the good stuff. Yeah. How about for.

Speaker5: [00:58:51] Stone? I don’t.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:58:52] The the the one piece of advice not to you guys specifically, but to everybody is stop looking at what everyone else is doing and and trying to copy it. Like the website example writing all corporate be, be real and just talk to people. And we even go so far as like sometimes we’ll say, Hey, on this webinar we’re going to cover a lot of content and at the end we’re going to pitch you something. Just tell people, be honest and up front.

Speaker5: [00:59:21] Why not? They know you’re going to do it.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:59:23] They know you’re going to do it anyway. And it makes you real, right? You’re like, and sometimes I’ve even seen this. I haven’t tried it yet, but in ads I’ve seen, Hey, this is an ad and I’m about to sell you something. But let me tell you why it’s okay. Or, you know, it’s up front.

Speaker5: [00:59:36] It’s real or why it matters and why it matters.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:59:38] Yeah, people appreciate the.

Speaker5: [00:59:40] Real and the and the non.

Jared Rhodenizer: [00:59:42] Corporate. I’m dealing with a person. I’m not dealing with a logo.

Robert Mason: [00:59:48] And it’s not mechanical. Right?

Randell Beck: [00:59:51] Beautiful. Beautiful. Robert, anything to add?

Robert Mason: [00:59:53] Any thoughts? God, I could go on forever and ever. And you do? Sometimes I do. Yeah. I mean, this has been fantastic. And this is our opening salvo, and. Wow, what a guest.

Randell Beck: [01:00:05] It’s only Jared advised us to only make it better each time. Yeah, it’s going to be hard to do.

Speaker5: [01:00:10] Yeah.

Robert Mason: [01:00:11] And you’re my content guy, So.

Speaker5: [01:00:13] So that’s up to you. It’s up to you. Yeah. Yeah. I thought about this. Sits on. Yeah, I’ve thought about that. Thank you.

Jared Rhodenizer: [01:00:22] Oh, yeah, no problem. I love talking about this stuff, man. Yeah, anytime.

Speaker5: [01:00:25] And as do.

Randell Beck: [01:00:26] I, but obviously not from the same perspective as you do. Yeah, but a lot to learn here, right? And. And, you know, open up the whole new world of reach and engagement. Right.

Robert Mason: [01:00:36] Well, that was a macro dive. I mean, we came in from 55,000ft on that subject matter.

Jared Rhodenizer: [01:00:41] And we could we could go a lot deeper.

Robert Mason: [01:00:43] I can get a lot. Yeah. I mean, that was a shotgun blast. I mean, you could sniper scope the stuff down and really and get into it and.

Speaker5: [01:00:51] So thank you. Oh, yeah.

Jared Rhodenizer: [01:00:52] I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.

Randell Beck: [01:00:54] Great. I enjoyed it a lot. Jared rodenhizer Horse tv and Carson James Robert Mason exp Realty. See you next time.

Tagged With: CarsonJames.com, Horse.TV, Jared Rhodenizer

Lindy Earl with TurnAbout 180, Christine McCartney with Sorrow to Strength and Charlie Derrien with Charlie’s Angels Movers

March 6, 2023 by angishields

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Charitable Georgia
Lindy Earl with TurnAbout 180, Christine McCartney with Sorrow to Strength and Charlie Derrien with Charlie's Angels Movers
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Lindy-Earl-bwLindy Earl is a Certified Chaplain, working with the nonprofit organization, TurnAbout 180. Lindy’s background includes her entrepreneurship as a Speaker, Consultant, and Author. She has written in 4 genres: Business, Christian, Relationship, and IT. Lindy holds an MBA from The College of William and Mary and a BS from Virginia Tech.

Lindy’s passion and strength is her ability to listen to people. As a Chaplain she works one-on-one with people who are dealing with angst or grief, maybe through the death of a loved one or a divorce. Lindy especially enjoys working as a Corporate Chaplain, where companies have her into the workplace on a regular basis to make herself available to employees.

Great relationships develop and the company’s retention soars while absenteeism drops. Companies develop a strong corporate culture, improved employee satisfaction, and decreased attrition.

Lindy has multiple books in publication and continues to write blogs and record videos on a weekly basis. You can learn more at www.TurnAbout180.org or contact Lindy at ChaplainLindy@gmail.com.

Christine-McCartney-bwChristine McCartney was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada and in 1993 she and her husband moved to Georgia so he could attend Life University.  Her husband, Dr. Larry, and I opened our clinic, Lake City Chiropractic in Acworth in 2000.

Unfortunately in 2015 he passed away from cancer, and after a year of running the practice, Christine sold it and took time to grieve. After some time she decided she wanted to help people who may be going through the same grief and went back to school to become a certified Grief Life Coach.   She wanted to help individuals find joy once again in their lives.

Someone who has lost a loved one can sometimes get “stuck” and they don’t know how to move forward. Grief comes in different forms, not only loss of loved one. It could be a divorce, loss of a job, an illness, death of a pet, or life as we know it after Covid. Let Christine help guide you to a new life of joy and get “Unstuck”.

Connect with Christine on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can also reach her through Sorry to Strength at Christine@sorrowtostrength.com

Charlie-Derrien-bwOnce upon a time Charlie Derrien was working 60 hours/week in unrelenting corporate America management.  In late 2012, God and Charlie made a decision together that it was time to leave the corporate world. She thought and prayed long and hard and said, “God, allow me to use all this formal training that I went to school for (she was a business major at Shorter University) to begin my entrepreneurial journey.”

Charlie prayed for an idea, a catalyst. Then the light bulb came on, and she began her grueling research of logistics as a whole, with a special interest in residential moving. Charlie had moved all across the United States throughout her childhood and young adult life, due to her father’s military background as a medic in the United States army, so the concept of this moving business was not foreign to her.

Now, one of Charlie’s passions in life is EXCELLENCE in customer service and it has been since the moment she walked into her very first job at McDonald’s. She was committed to “hot fries” and service with a smile. All these years later, Charlie still lives by the same fundamental creed. While she no longer serve french fries, she still strongly believes that regardless of the business you are in, the differentiator must be the EXCELLENCE in service that you consistently deliver and provide.

That said, what fascinated (and frustrated) her the most about this industry, is how broken it truly is. She couldn’t believe that clients like herself would call on a company for help in assisting them with this very important life change, entrusting this company around their families, children, pets, irreplaceable antiques, expensive furniture and china, only to be met with huge disappointment and heartache.

Christine read review after review from hundreds of moving companies, from small businesses to the big players in the game. She read horror stories about moving companies that didn’t show up for a clients’ scheduled move, theft of a clients’ merchandise, carelessness with the clients’ things, damages beyond repair, holding a clients’ items hostage, physical altercations on the job sites, hours late for their scheduled move start time, and the list kept going.

After months of building a core team, coaching, meetings, trainings, setting expectations and goals…it was time to launch…and BOY, did they LAUNCH! The calls starting pouring in with people just like Christine that weren’t asking for the moon and stars, they simply needed a service handled professionally, competently, at a fair price and with a smile and willingness to serve.

That’s who Charlie’s Angels Movers really is, and who we strive hard to be every single day, on every single job. Excellence in service matters here. Our clients matter here. Christine’s team takes pride in what they do and she’s honored to work with such an extraordinary group of men.

Christine asks her team at every meeting, “How do we feel about competition?” And the unanimous response is “There is none.” Simply because when you know what you bring to the table of an organization and you know you work hard to deliver on the expectation, it doesn’t matter how many other people are doing the same thing around you. When you conduct good, fair business, the clients will come.

To all of our prospective clients that made it a point to stop by here first and read Christine’s story, thank you so much.  Your time is valuable and we appreciate that. We’re EXCITED to partner with you on your upcoming move and we look forward to making your move a heavenly experience!

Follow Charlie’s Angels Movers on Facebook.

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 fund raising. For more information, go to B’s Charitable Pursuits. Dot com. That’s B’s Charitable Pursuits dot com. Now here’s your host, Brian Pruitt.

Brian Pruett: [00:00:45] Good, fabulous Friday morning to you out there in the listening world. We got three more fabulous folks. I have to apologize for my voice. First of all, the pollen is early on me this year, so it’s kind of kicking my butt at the moment. But for those of you first time tuning in, this is Charitable Georgia. It’s stories about individuals, businesses, nonprofits doing great things in the community. So welcome to Charitable Georgia. My first guest this morning is Chaplain Lindy Earle from Turnabout 180. Chaplain Earl. Thanks for being here. Good morning.

Lindy Earl: [00:01:13] Thank you for inviting me.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:15] So you and I have talked a little bit. I’ve heard some stuff that you presented on what you do and why you do it. But give us a little background. First of all, tell us about Turnabout 180 and how you got there and why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Lindy Earl: [00:01:27] Okay. Well, why I’m doing what I’m doing is it goes back to my childhood. And when I was a little girl, I was raised in a very religious home. And I wanted to grow up to be a pastor. And I was told, you can’t. And back then you couldn’t. And life went on. And so I got into the business world. I was a college professor. I was vice president of marketing. I was an entrepreneur. And then one day I got a phone call and this guy on the other side side on the other end of the line said, We’d like to hire you as a chaplain. I said, Well, that’s great, but I’m not a chaplain. I have an MBA, not a theology degree. And he said, No, we’ll train you. And I said, What does it cost? He says, We’ll pay for it. And I’m like, This is just too good to be true. And sure enough, they put me through the training and got me certified and I became a chaplain. But I worked for a nonprofit where our focus is helping other people, whether they’re dealing with childhood angst, grief, just not not waking up happy every day like we should. We’re meant to be, you know, live this life as well as we can. Life is very, very short. And so at turnabout 180, the whole goal is to take you from where you are. If you’re not in a very happy path to where you can be. And we do this through seminars, through Bible studies and through one on one. And we work both with individuals, but we love to work with business chaplains, so we love to work with companies.

Lindy Earl: [00:03:03] And so we have clients who invite us in and once or twice a month it can be as often as once a week. We go into companies and we give a Bible study or we give a presentation. Brian You were there for my presentation on communication where we talked about both. I’m sorry. We talked about. The different ways to communicate and how you accidentally communicate very often and what you don’t mean to say. And so we go in and we give these seminars to employees and then we make ourselves available for one on one interaction. People can talk about anything from their childhoods to not liking their bosses to what’s going on in the world today because we’re there for what we meet you where you are. And a lot of people are still dealing with grief. Might might have been their mother died ten years ago. Might have been. They had a break with a family member and they’ve never dealt with it. Or it could be that they need a new job. We have counseled people through I hate my job. I’m not happy here. Okay, well, rather than just quitting, why don’t we work to see work with your employer to see how we can make you happy? One of the benefits of having a chaplain in your office is that retention increases greatly. Attrition therefore drops, absenteeism drops, workplace violence drops, employee conflict drops, employee satisfaction improves, which means customer satisfaction improves. What a great benefit is that you have happier customers because you invested with the benefit of having a chaplain in house.

Brian Pruett: [00:04:51] So when you do that with the businesses is are you there particular times during the day or are you there? Does somebody bring you on for a certain amount of time during the month or how does that work?

Lindy Earl: [00:05:00] Well, normally they choose a couple times a month. They’ll say, okay, we want you here every Tuesday morning from eight to noon or we want you here on Wednesday afternoons from 1 to 5. And you can find the prices for this on turnabout 180.org and you can have us there for the entire day. Most people have us in twice a month. That’s the norm.

Brian Pruett: [00:05:27] So when you and I talked, you have some in common with myself that you were a marketing professor at KSU. I took marketing classes at KSU, but I didn’t have you. So how is this how do you see the difference from the marketing aspect, or has it helping you, having that marketing background doing this?

Lindy Earl: [00:05:43] The marketing background has definitely helped me with the social media side. I understand the importance. I’m very sad how few people understand what marketing really is. They confuse advertising with marketing, sales, with marketing, you know, true marketing is learning what the customer wants, finding a way of providing that at a price affordable to them, but profitable for the company. That’s true marketing. And when companies understand this and stop calling sales, marketing sales is a very important function. But it’s not. It’s not marketing. So that’s one of the joys when I’m talking to C levels and they want to talk about, okay, I can’t decide what to do. I have a business background, so I understand. Well, what are the ramifications and what’s your return on investment and what’s, you know, I get it all. I get the marketing, I get the the accounting, the finance operations. You know, this is going to have an effect on your personnel. What is that going to mean? So from that perspective, my business background has been very beneficial in working with clients because I can definitely understand now if I’m meeting with an engineer and they want to talk about the first derivative of, I don’t know, speed being, whatever it is, I don’t even remember what those were. No, I can’t go there because in the business world, the first derivative of total cost is marginal cost. That’s how I understand it. But it’s great to talk to people without a business background and say, Well, have you considered this? And I’m doing it from a Christian point of view because we’re business chaplains. The chaplaincy is as important as the business.

Brian Pruett: [00:07:26] So you also work with individuals, correct?

Lindy Earl: [00:07:28] Absolutely.

Brian Pruett: [00:07:29] And you’re able to do weddings as well as funerals and counseling and that kind of stuff. So I’m sure there’s a plenty of difference between working with a business and an individual. But can you walk us through that process a little bit?

Lindy Earl: [00:07:41] Yeah, I often meet people who their company does not offer this benefit, but they realize I’m not as happy as I should be or I’m having marital problems or I, like I said, don’t like my job and they just need somebody to talk to them about it. A lot of divorce situations and my goal is always to keep relationships as intact as possible. If they’re thinking, I want to quit my job, I want to leave my spouse, what can we do to, you know, see it from every point of view? So we meet, we can meet by Zoom, we can meet in person, or we can meet by phone. And a lot of people want phone. They like the anonymity and that’s fine with us, whatever works. And we can offer different genders of chaplains. We have male chaplains as well.

Brian Pruett: [00:08:31] Are you guys national or are you just here in Georgia? Whereas whereas the turnabout 180.

Lindy Earl: [00:08:37] We are located locally, but yes, we are national. We’ve had out-of-state clients many times.

Brian Pruett: [00:08:43] So I have to ask every time I see you at a networking event, you’re carrying around baskets of mints. What’s the what’s the story behind that?

Lindy Earl: [00:08:49] Okay. The story behind my candy basket is when I was first introduced as a chaplain at companies. There are 100 employees in this company. And I’m walking up and down the hall saying, Hi, I’m your new chaplain. And they were kind of like, okay. And some people were very receptive. We know you’re coming, this is great. But I just found that if I had a candy basket. I would say hi. Would you like a piece of candy? Now I’m in their office, so obviously I’m safe. And they would say sure. And as they were taking their candy, I would say, by the way, I’m Chaplain Lindy. I’m one of the benefits your company offers. And it was a great introduction to being able to talk to people because very few people want to pass up candy. And even if they do, they’ll at least still talk to you and say thank, you know? And when they go, I don’t need you know, it’s too early in the morning. I’m like, are you going to have coffee breath in half an hour? Yeah, I’ll take one for later. So that’s how it started. And so when I started attending network events, which is where Brian and I met, I just thought, you know what? If it works with the companies, it’ll work in the networking world. And it’s become a joke.

Brian Pruett: [00:09:57] And like Stone, you don’t turn down food, but I’m sure you don’t turn down candy either.

Stone Payton: [00:10:00] Absolutely. And I did learn. My dad taught me. If someone offers you a mint, take it. Yes.

Lindy Earl: [00:10:06] People ask me that all the time and they’ll ask, are you trying to tell me something? And I’m like, No, no, no. I’m just being nice.

Brian Pruett: [00:10:13] Yeah. So if somebody wanted to get a hold of you for your services, for business or individual, how can they do that?

Lindy Earl: [00:10:20] Admin at turnabout 180.org. We’ll get you directly to me. You can also go to Chaplain Lindy at gmail.com.

Brian Pruett: [00:10:28] Awesome. Well, Chaplain Lindy, I appreciate your time this morning. You mind sticking around? Listen to these next two stories. Looking forward to it. Awesome. Now we are going to move over to Ms.Christine McCartney, who has got an incredible story herself. But you’re with sorrow, strength, grief coaching. And tell us why you went. Because there’s all kinds of different coaching. There’s business coaching, there’s marketing coaching, you know, but you’ve decided to kind of take it to the next level with the grief coaching because you’ve had personal experience. But if you don’t mind, can you share your story and why you’re doing it?

Christine McCartney: [00:10:59] Absolutely. Brian. First of all, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate this. So, yeah, my story is kind of an odd story, how it goes back to my life. I was originally from Canada. My husband and I came from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and we came down to Georgia and he went to chiropractic school at Life College. He and I were together for 30 years. We started our own business. We owned Lake City Chiropractic here in town in Acworth. And in 2015, he was diagnosed with stage four esophageal cancer and passed away in five months. So now we had a business. We had two young girls. They were 16 and 12 at the time. And so I knew that whatever, whatever I had to do, I had to do for my kids. And so I ran the business for about a year and then realized this was not my dream, this was his dream. And that I. Decided I was going to sell the business, which I did. Took time off to grieve, and I did not go to one of those grief support groups. Like I never did anything like that. I just kind of convalesced at home and did everything myself and made sure my kids were okay. And as I said, I took time for myself, made sure the kids were okay. But then I decided it was a God thing because for about a month you probably don’t even know this, but for about a month, every night I was getting like a push push. I felt it and I was like, You need to start a widow’s group, a grief group. And and I am not I am not a leader per se, but I knew that God was wanting me to do something.

Christine McCartney: [00:12:50] So I went to my pastor and I said, You know me, this is not me. But I feel like God is telling me I need to start a widow’s group. But I don’t want to just do widows. I want to do widows and widowers. And he goes, Yes, we need that. So this is how sort of strength started at that point. Then I decided I wanted to go to school to become a life coach. And the incident went back to school. And, you know, everyone’s as you said, there’s different coaching. There could be health coaching, physical, you know, all business coaches and stuff. And I knew immediately what I wanted to do and that my niche was going to be grief. And I remember the professors there were saying, You have no idea how much this is needed. And I said, Well, I’m just doing this because if I could help one person go through peacefully, what I’ve gone through that is that would make my heart feel great. And so hence, that’s how I started sort of strength and and now grief. I can help people because grief is not just a loss of a loved one. It could be any kind of loss. It could be a divorce. It could be a loss of a job. As chaplain had said, it could be a pet. It could be any kind of change or any of us who have gone through COVID. Our whole lives have changed during COVID. So I can help people kind of guide them to get find joy back in their life again and how to take those steps.

Brian Pruett: [00:14:28] I like the your the name SAALT strength because it takes a lot of strength to go through what you did and then start this and help others. Because going through something personal like that, obviously being a man of faith, I don’t think there is anything coincidence wise, but God, you know, takes you through things. And it’s for that reason to help other people. As you mentioned, you know, it could be a loss of a spouse. It could be loss of a job. You know, the way you handle grief needs to be talked about because a lot of ways, a lot of people don’t handle grief the right way.

Christine McCartney: [00:14:59] Oh, a lot of people don’t even it’s taboo. It’s like it’s expected that, oh, you know, well, it happened six months ago. You should be over it. And but every individual is different. Everyone has to go through the process. There’s all these different levels of grief and that you could be stuck in one level and not know how to move forward. And that’s where I can kind of come in and let you have the steps. Now, there is a difference between counseling and coaching. So counseling, they help get the person’s mind wrapped around the tragedy and understanding and everything like that. What I do is I acknowledge that and I can tell if they are ready to move forward because you have to be ready to move forward in your life. Otherwise this won’t work. But I kind of help them move forward. Get unstuck is kind of my term that I use.

Brian Pruett: [00:15:55] I like how you talked about people. Six months, get over it. So be 23 years in June that my dad passed away of unexpectedly heart attack at my cousin’s wedding reception. Oh my goodness. And my mother was working. I won’t say where, but she was still working at a place and her boss came to her three weeks afterwards and said, you know, it’s been three weeks, get over it. And the interesting thing was a couple of weeks later we had to have our dog put down. And he was so more in tune of saying, Well, you should go be with the dog. And my mom looked at him and said, you know, Wow. Anyway, um, so do you work just in a particular area or where all can you know.

Christine McCartney: [00:16:37] I do most of my sessions either on phone or Zoom or I can meet somebody. So with that, with Zoom, I mean, I could have a client in Egypt, it doesn’t matter because it’s over the telephone. So I can have anybody that’s dealing with with loss anytime, any.

Brian Pruett: [00:16:58] Anywhere. If somebody’s listening to you right now and they are going through something, can you just give a brief nugget of what somebody might be able to do to, you know, we’ll get to how they can get in touch with you, but gives you a brief nugget of somebody who might be going through something.

Christine McCartney: [00:17:09] Yeah, absolutely. One of the things and this this is something that I tell my clients a lot is because you’re struggling, you’re struggling with. How to go forward. One of the biggest things that I want everyone to kind of do, and you don’t even have to be going through grief to do this is called It’s a joy Journal. A lot of people forget how to be happy. Every day. I want you to think about at the end of the day, what is the one thing that made you smile? Write that down. What this does is every day you do that, you start reading it and you realize that now you are starting to look around to see what makes you smile. And it could be anything silly. It could be a dog walking down the street, pooping on the sidewalk. I mean, whatever makes you smile, jot it down because then that is going to retrain your brain to find joy, happiness, laughter And then soon enough, you’re going to start seeing more things like, Oh, wow, look at those flowers today. Those are beautiful. They’re shining there, you know, Oh, look at this little boy. You know, So there’s there’s lots of things. That’s that’s one thing that I kind of tell all my clients is that’s the first step to start finding joy again.

Brian Pruett: [00:18:30] Awesome. Thanks for that. So you had something exciting happen just before the holidays, right? I did. Yeah, well.

Christine McCartney: [00:18:36] Oh, yeah. Sorry. I’m like, What was that? Yes, I got engaged. So, yeah, my husband, like I said, was gone for seven years. And. And, you know, it’s like the whole dating world was crazy. But I found a wonderful man, and we’re getting married in 2025, so we got some time. There you go.

Brian Pruett: [00:18:57] Well, congratulations on that. Thank you. So if somebody wants to get a hold of you, you learn about more about your services or schedule something. How can they do that?

Christine McCartney: [00:19:04] You can call me at or call or text at 404, 5421229. My email is Christine at zero two strength.com. My website is W WW dot soar to strength.com as well.

Brian Pruett: [00:19:22] Awesome. Well Christine thanks for coming and sharing a little bit about your story and do you mind sticking around? Absolutely. We are now moving over to Miss Charlie Derrien from Charlie’s Angels movers. Charlie, thank you for being here this morning.

Charlie Derrien: [00:19:32] Thank you, Brian. I appreciate the invite.

Brian Pruett: [00:19:35] So you do a lot within the community and we’ll talk about all that. But I have to ask, first of all, you’ve told me a little bit about your story of why you started your business. But I was a fan for many reasons for Charlie’s Angels on TV. Yes.

Charlie Derrien: [00:19:49] I get that a lot. Right.

Brian Pruett: [00:19:51] So share a little bit about your story and Charlie’s Angels movers.

Charlie Derrien: [00:19:55] So it all started ten years ago. I was looking for a moving company because I was planning a personal move out of my house. Suddenly, I couldn’t find one that I would want to do business with. So in reading reviews East Coast to West Coast, I’m like, Man, this is really broken. Like on a different level, broken. So I thought, Hmm, that’s interesting. Simultaneously, what was happening at my full time corporate job in the corporate world was I was being passed up on two promotions, six months apart. So when it happened the first time, I thought, Oh, let me do what Charlie does, which is go back to the drawing board and work harder and do better. Even though there was kind of a hush over the crowd, like everybody was like, you know, but it was her. But she was next in line. And it was just a known thing. It was a given. So when it didn’t happen, I was like, okay, very upset, but let me work harder. Six months later, they promoted her sister instead of me. And so I thought, this is this is real. This is you know, I’m being overlooked and looked over. And I went home and had a nervous breakdown for about a good week. I was very upset that it happened a second time. And I was crying and I was in my living room and I got down on my knees and I said, God, give me anything. Give me anything. Put Sorry. Sorry, I said. God. Give me anything. Put it in my head. Just give me an idea and I’ll take it from there. And I don’t know what else to say other than the whole it all came together with the combination of What about moving? I didn’t know anything about moving, right? I knew business.

Charlie Derrien: [00:21:34] I knew client service. I know customer service. I’ve been doing that for a long time. I didn’t know anything about moving other than military background. My father was a medic in the Army, so we moved a lot, but I wasn’t participating in it at that time, so I just ran with the idea. I printed, literally printed some business cards that were free with Vistaprint. If you guys remember, Vistaprint printed some business cards and they were very generic. I made a very generic website on Wix, if you remember Wix. I don’t know if Wix is still around. And I started showing up at places that might need movers like storage companies and different things. I started sending them pizza every week and just defining my presence and just showing up. I started networking and plugging into networking events. I made a t shirt because that’s what I could afford. I had $200 in the bank when this all started, right? I made a t shirt that said Charlie’s Angels Movers. I scribbled out my logo one night at 2:00 in the morning and I sent it to somebody that was much better at drawing than me, and they made it all come together my box with wings. And I left my corporate job two months later, as it were. My phone was ringing enough. I started at the right time. It was during the moving seasons, the moving industry’s peak season. So my phone was just ringing to the point where I thought if I leave the 60 hours here and devote it to this, I think I’m going to make this go.

Charlie Derrien: [00:22:56] I feel like God gave it to me and I said to God, give it to me and I’m going to take it from here. So I was committed to that. So I left my corporate job, handed them my resignation. They said, Charlie, please don’t go. Please don’t go. Now is what they said. It was a critical time. I said, Oh, I’m already gone. And and that was it. So it started there and I spent the next three years, I was the only person at the helm other than my field team of movers. So I spent the first year working on all my trucks. So if a client hired a four. Man Three Man two man team, I was one of 2 or 1 of 3 or 1 of four. So sometimes I’d show up and be met with, looks like you’re, you’re moving us. So I got that in the beginning. But then when they saw that, yes, I was very serious about it as the guys were, I could lift anything. They could lift. I was up and down three flights of stairs, just like they were on the sofas. I was doing it at the same level, but primarily because I had to learn this. I had to dig in. I felt like I needed to just really dig in and be in it. So I did that for the first year, and then after the first year I didn’t have to work on my trucks anymore.

Brian Pruett: [00:24:00] Well, it’s, you know, don’t don’t apologize for showing up because when God speaks to you and you listen and you do what you what he thinks you do, it’s amazing what he does. I mean, we all have the stories of why we’re doing what we’re doing, and it’s just really cool to learn more about stuff that you because, I mean, just recently you were gone because it was from the Super Bowl and the NBA all star game. You got some gigs for that?

Charlie Derrien: [00:24:23] Yes. Got a.

Brian Pruett: [00:24:24] Contract? Yeah. You know, so that’s that’s amazing. So you’re based in Acworth, right? But do you do all over? We do.

Charlie Derrien: [00:24:29] So we’re local, regional, national moving will facilitate anything out of state. We do like commercial now because any of our clients that we’ve moved residentially, if they have a business, they always call us and say, But Charlie, I know you don’t do commercial, but and so we always say, Of course we would thank you for choosing us again. And yeah, of course we’ll do it.

Brian Pruett: [00:24:47] But you also just opened up an office in Texas, correct? We did.

Charlie Derrien: [00:24:51] So we franchise started franchise in Houston at the top of the year. So I have one of my brilliant CFOs out there to CFOs with my company. One’s my brother that you mentioned, Stone That’s Brad. And then the other one is Corey, and he’s opening up operations out in Houston for us, moved there. His fiance was already over there, runs a very large real estate company, her and her father. So it just seemed like the perfect fit of what we’ve had going on. So we’ve been talking about it for at least the last two years and finally launched, and we’re ready to ready to move on it in a big way and hopefully just sort of explode in the Houston area as the objective marketing standpoint.

Brian Pruett: [00:25:30] Congratulations on that. So I have to ask this, too, because every time I see a picture of you, you got your little dog. Yes. Tell me about your dog.

Charlie Derrien: [00:25:39] Thanks for asking about my dog. That’s biscuit. So Biscuit is actually my child, right? He’s definitely an extension of biscuit. Everywhere I travel, I do a lot of traveling business, and otherwise biscuit goes everywhere that I travel to. He. I got him as a puppy. He’s six years old this year. He’s obviously something of a mascot has become. Right. He comes to the office with me. Everybody loves him. He doesn’t deal with everyone. That’s just but but for the people that he does deal with, he’s you know, he’s just a great little road dog and companion and my little furry love. And he was hit by a car in 2018. I don’t know if it’s such a good story. Well, it’s kind of long to tell it, but the short version is I don’t know if you guys know Toby Carmichael at the Lake City Animal Hospital.

Christine McCartney: [00:26:29] He’s my vet.

Charlie Derrien: [00:26:30] So Toby has so many levels of fantastic. But I met Toby because my dog was hit by a car. I showed up in my raggedy old at the time I had Charlie’s Angels. Charlie’s Angels charity truck, where I was doing things with homeless people. We were doing haircuts and feeding them and doing different things. So I came in my raggedy old 15 foot box charity truck that I didn’t even know was going to start. So I let my door accidentally swing open, and I heard him before I saw him, heard him. And I went out there and he was just broken. Like I could tell his back something was devastatingly wrong, back was broken. His legs were just hanging. He was limp. And I’m looking at him and knew he was dying. So I have this truck that I just pulled from storage, my charity truck, because I’m getting ready to put it back on the road and we’re doing some things and I’m like and I knew it wasn’t going to start because it hadn’t been starting. So I was waiting for the mechanic or whatever. I went out. I was frantic. I was hysterical. I was the only one home. I didn’t know what to do, panic, go outside. And I’m like, I just wasn’t in my right mind. I called two vets, Toby’s office answered and said, Come on, we’re yeah, technically, you know, we’re getting ready to leave, but come. How far away are you? Come on. So I was like, I’ll do it. I call Uber, I go out and I just start. I just turn the truck over.

Charlie Derrien: [00:27:40] I start straight away, which I was like, Thank you. I go to you know, I was thinking God about that, right? So I drive to the vet, he meets me out in the parking lot and he’s like, Are you Charlie? And I said, I am. And, you know, I’m crying. I’m trying to make my way through the tears. I’m holding him. He takes him out of my hands. He’s like, I see your I see your signs, you know, Nice to meet you. And tell me what happened. I explain. Goes back in the room. He’s gone for about 15 minutes and he comes back out and he’s like, you know, I don’t know how because he saw him, too. So I’m looking at him reading him like I know what’s bad. And he comes back out of the room 15 minutes later and he’s like, I don’t know quite how to say this, basically, but he’s fine. Like, there’s no internal and then he just brings him out and he walks over to me and I’m just like, What do you mean? Like Toby? You saw Doctor Carmichael, You saw that he wasn’t fine. Like how? Like, that’s just so many levels of. And in that moment. I needed my dog to live through that in that moment. I was going through some other critical things in my life and just a bad, bad time. So it was it just all worked for good. And I have an amazing relationship with Dr. Carmichael now. I see him everywhere, networking all over the city. And he’s just that’s my buddy.

Brian Pruett: [00:28:50] That’s amazing what God shows up when he does my little biscuit. Yes. What kind is biscuit?

Charlie Derrien: [00:28:55] Biscuit is a maltese Yorkie.

Brian Pruett: [00:28:56] Okay. Yeah. You also have some kids as well. I do.

Charlie Derrien: [00:29:00] I have I have three kids, Caden, Dane and Kennedy, 24, 16 and 13. My oldest son is was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis at three weeks old. So he deals with a lot of things physically, a lot of physical, handicapped and mental handicap. So, you know, we deal with with sort of the special needs side of things and which is why I don’t know, I know that, you know that I do a lot of things from a community standpoint. So and I’m really just following the things that speak to me, specifically the horizon, the gala tonight I’ll be attending the gala. So somebody was good enough to get me tickets after I missed my deadline and I thought I was well ahead of the curve. But but I did get a couple of tickets. I’ll be at the gala just to support and, you know, give back to that. Of course, the Acworth Community Garden is another one of my loves because I’ve learned to plant things in the last couple of years. And miraculously, they’re growing. They never grew before. But I’m just like, God, could you help me out here with this one? And, you know, and, and and everything’s just growing.

Charlie Derrien: [00:29:59] So I guess they like the energy in my place and some of the things that I’m doing. So Acworth Community Garden, I’m learning some things from there. They didn’t know that it was kind of double double edged for me. So yes, I want to come and help and do the things. But also there’s master gardeners in there that are teaching. I’m asking all these questions, so I’m getting educated. And and then I had a lunch yesterday with I don’t know if you guys know Jimmy Durham, but good friend of the mayor’s Tommy Ellegood, if you know Tommy. And it was just an amazing lunch where I learned about Kenya Connect Kenyan connections. I don’t know if you guys know this program. Mars Hill Church is plugged into it, as I understand it. But anyway, really passionate about being able to. The idea of going over and helping orphaned kids over in Africa. And so they’re planning a trip for July. So really excited about hearing more about that and seeing how me and my children can maybe go over and, you know, lend something to that from a working and helping them build.

Brian Pruett: [00:30:50] That’s awesome. We’ll circle back around to what you’re doing in the community, but I wanted to also you have one of your children was on American Idol, right? Yes, he was. We’ll share that experience.

Charlie Derrien: [00:30:58] Yeah, sure. So Dane, my middle 16 year old, he’s a brilliant in his craft. He is a performer and an all around entertainer. So he dances, he acts now and he’s doing some theater and he’s a phenomenal singer. So now I’m getting him to the point where he’s writing and encouraging that and the things that are coming out with just him writing is just brilliant. But he was on American Idol at 14 two years ago. Lionel Richie said, Yes, absolutely, yes. Luke Perry and or Luke Bryan and Katy Perry said, Come back in two years. Your voice sounds young. Come back in two years. So he may be back in two years or he may be a star by by the end of this year.

Brian Pruett: [00:31:35] He just needed that little boost. Who knows?

Charlie Derrien: [00:31:36] Yeah, but. So we’ve had many auditions since then. The next big boy band that you guys will probably all come to learn in the next year or so. So while he didn’t make that audition, it was so much fun that they flew us out to LA and he got to go through the whole experience and Fox Studios were there. Simon Cowell’s people, NBC studios like it was just a big we have we’re just he’s literally just dipping his toe in and dipping his toe has been in just some very big projects. So we’re we’re just excited and all the support that I can give him. And of course, you you presented something to me that one of the events that you have going on and I’m always one to say, hey, if you have a spot for my kid to just do a song, you know, the crowd would be pleased.

Brian Pruett: [00:32:15] Yeah, we’re still working on that too. So, um. All right. So before I get to all the community stuff, you also you’ve started another venture, right? Don’t you have something with used cars?

Charlie Derrien: [00:32:25] I do. So. So actually, a couple. So, Brian, there’s a few things that we’ve only talked, I guess to a certain point, but I do have Charlie’s Angels chariots, used car sales, so which really just stemmed from my field team when I would hire people for the moving company, 1 in 3 people wouldn’t have vehicles. So I’m just like, how do you you know, this was a thing this I’m noticing that this is a thing to the point where can I fix that? So I’m always looking at things from a can I solve this problem or can I lend something to this to make it better? Leave things better than I found it. So I thought, well, how how labor intensive is this to start a car dealership? Let me just start the process. It turns out it’s very labor intensive. It’s starting a whole nother business. Right. Took me about a year back and forth with the city and licensing things. Anyway, we were finally there. Charlie’s Angels Chariots is just a sweet number in my office. So now it turns out everybody wants a car, right? So it went from just my field team and being able to give them an option that wasn’t buy here, pay here where they were getting not a good deal.

Charlie Derrien: [00:33:26] Right. But based on their credit and their circumstance, whatever, this is just what was happening. So now if you work here, it’s an extra incentive to retain. In my people as part of it. So if you work here, I have a car program for you, a car buy program for you. But stay the course. Stay out of trouble. I deal with a lot of young men that didn’t have that just didn’t have structure growing up. You as I learned them, they didn’t have they don’t have mom and dads. They come from broken homes. So there are things not not all of my field team, but a lot of them. And so, yes, I’m the boss. Yes, I’m the CEO. Yes, I’m the owner, but I’m also a momma bear. And I also it’s important to me when they come on board and don’t have their license, driver’s license. I have young 20 year olds, 25 that don’t have their driver’s license. Well, I want to know about that. Why didn’t you ever drive? Do you know how to drive? Yes. You know how to drive. But no one’s ever they didn’t have parents that were teaching them type of thing.

Charlie Derrien: [00:34:23] So they just never it just fell to Now you’re 20, 25 and you don’t have a driver’s license. We can help you with that. I have a course right here in my parking lot. Let’s teach you how to drive. So at least two guys, you know, we’ve moved on to getting their driver’s license, and we always celebrate those kind of wins, too. Just so it’s important with my field team, with all the training that I do, what I the message that I really convey is that you can’t be in my space and not level up. You can’t be around me in my presence and not get better in some capacity. Right. Because because of your energy to me, I’m getting better. You’re giving me something too. So I have a responsibility almost to give that back to you. So. So I’m just doing that in all sorts of ways. So yeah, the car dealership also, I’m building out a venue, Heaven on Earth event venues I’ve incorporated, so that should probably be. In. People will be staying there and wanting to stop by and see what’s happening probably at the end of this year. But it’s on schedule for 2024.

Brian Pruett: [00:35:17] Well, maybe we can do some events there.

Charlie Derrien: [00:35:18] We can absolutely do some events there. We haven’t even gotten to that part yet, but I’m excited to talk to you about it.

Brian Pruett: [00:35:22] Awesome. Yeah. Well, all right. So we’re going to move into because you do a lot for the community. I mean, you’ve shared a lot already, but you and I were introduced by a mutual friend, Melissa Pearson from the Barter Company. Yes. And my favorite redhead. Yes. I love giving her a hard time. She gives it right back. But when I came into your office after you asked me to come speak with you, you were already on a thing for karaoke.

Charlie Derrien: [00:35:43] Yes. I’m the title.

Brian Pruett: [00:35:44] Sponsor. So you’re also my title sponsor for something I’m doing all year long with trivia that’s rotating 12 charities all year long. So again, thank you for that. But absolutely, you just give back so much to the community and it’s awesome to hear. I mean, again, we all have great stories and why you do what you do, but why is it important to not only be a part of the community, but give back?

Charlie Derrien: [00:36:07] You know, some things, definitely. When it comes to helping people, I have a special place in my heart for elderly people and animals. Anybody that doesn’t have a voice necessarily or can’t use their voice or doesn’t know how, like that, those are kind of the things that speak to me. Jeez, you’re pulling on my heartstrings this morning, Brian. Like, what are we doing here? It’s important to me because my childhood was very broken, very broken. And, you know, my brother, who was my CEO, we have a good story just in our childhood that we came from very little and it was a struggle. And now we’re here and we don’t struggle. We still struggle. Everybody struggles, but we struggle different. And so it’s important for me to not forget where I came from. And it just help people like it’s in my heart.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:02] Well, I appreciate that. And I know you’re fine. I mean, this is why the show is around. I mean, I can’t get inspiration from the three of you or people I’ve had in the past. Then there’s something wrong with them. I don’t know. But no, it’s just incredible the amount that you do that all of you do. So I’m going to circle back around to you in a second because I ask everybody this towards the end. But I want to go back. I’m going to kind of go back this way to Christine. You do a lot and I see you a lot in networking. You do a lot of stuff, too. Why is it important for you to be part of the community?

Christine McCartney: [00:37:37] As I said earlier, if I can help one person to find peace and go through what I did, that would make my heart feel good so that that is my goal. It’s not about money. It’s not about people knowing who I am or anything like that. It’s just it’s for my own self in peace.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:57] Chaplain Lindy, why is it important for you to be part of the community?

Lindy Earl: [00:38:00] I think that some people are definitely called to mission fields across the country, across the world. I really believe our mission fields starts as soon as we step outside our front door and we start. And you can affect somebody’s life every single day with a smile, a kind word, a compliment. I love walking past somebody and just saying cute shoes and guys really like it. They’re like, Wow, you noticed my shoes? I love guys socks. Guys wear the greatest socks and it just means something to be noticed. People need to be loved. They need to be appreciated. And we can do that on a daily basis with very little effort on our own part. Mostly we just need to be aware.

Brian Pruett: [00:38:44] Well, thank you. So. All right, Charlie, coming back to you for a second. So I guess if you ask Brad, he can tell you from the first night. I like putting stuff together and having fun. And I know Brad had a pretty good time with. He had a great time. They told me all about it.

Charlie Derrien: [00:38:57] I’m sorry I missed it.

Brian Pruett: [00:38:58] Yeah, well, hopefully you’ll be back two weeks. Yeah, Week and a half. Actually. I’m there for. This one’s for the Pettit Preserve. For those of you wanting to be part of that was going to be for the Pettit preserve this time. All right. So if somebody wants to get a hold of you for your moving for your cars, whatever, how can they do that?

Charlie Derrien: [00:39:15] They can call six, seven, 85235353. Really our primary number I do have a separate number for the car dealership as well. But you call the primary number. Everything’s out of the same office. So you can just kind of tell whoever’s answering the phone what service that you’re looking for. Also, Charlie’s Angels movers.com is our website. Charlie’s Angels movers at Gmail is our email address. And you can Google us and we’re kind of everywhere.

Brian Pruett: [00:39:39] Lots of well on the billboards, too. You can’t miss them. Yeah, the billboards all over the place. You know, I love it. Like, I just love the picture with you and biscuits. It’s awesome. So real quick, before we wrap up with the last question, can you share about karaoke? Can you tell us about that? Yes, thank.

Charlie Derrien: [00:39:52] You. Arioch is a The Fallen Heroes project. So basically anybody that needs resources still or could use some resources, their families from 9/11 and what sort of transpired from nine over 11 proceeds go to support that. So it’s something that let’s see, this is the this will be the third year for me as the title sponsor of karaoke. So we’re building on it. It gets bigger and bigger. My very good dear friend Chuck Berg, it’s his baby and his brainchild. And when he brought it to me for the first time, I said, That’s really fun. That’s a great concept to have a charity event at the airport, airport hangar, and just how we kind of tied it together and all the ideas that he had. But it’s it’s the Fallen Heroes project. The money goes for a very good cause. I like the fact that it stays local. So I like to support charities that are in either our city or in our state so that the money stays local. Doesn’t have to be that way. I do other things too, but but I do like to support that. And it’s going to be at the Strand, the on Marietta Square this year, September the we were playing with the dates but the 30th. I’m pretty sure that’s the date. I’ve been unplugged from the meetings because I’ve had this project that I’ve been working on. But I think the last that we heard that, we did confirm the 30th, but it’s going to be a great event. You guys should buy tickets. My son will sing. There’s a conflict, so he can’t actually because I’m the title sponsor, he can’t participate in the contest where there’s going to be at least a $1,500 prize winner is what it was last year. It might go up this year, but definitely buy tickets early. We’re going to sell out. It was such a fun event last year and you know, we hope to have the support.

Brian Pruett: [00:41:30] And how did you guys move from the airport to the Strand?

Charlie Derrien: [00:41:34] We kind of got kicked out. Oh, because some people sometimes you guys know this, they don’t always follow the rules, right? So if it’s an airport, if the airport says you can’t smoke cigarets outside over there next to the things that will explode and make you go boom. Oh, yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:41:49] Yeah, I can see.

Charlie Derrien: [00:41:49] That, right? You can’t do that, right? So they don’t they take that very seriously as well they should. And said because you had certain people, those rascals that weren’t following the rules. Yeah, we don’t know if we can do this again here. So we just had to be innovative and find something else. We had to pivot.

Brian Pruett: [00:42:06] There you go. All right. One last question for the three of you before we wrap this up. I always like to end the show this way. We’ll start again. Back with you, Chaplain Lindy. But I like for the three of you to share at least one nugget, one phrase, one word quote or whatever. People can live today and the rest of 20, 23 and beyond with.

Lindy Earl: [00:42:26] I would say intentionally live every day of your life.

Brian Pruett: [00:42:31] Christine.

Christine McCartney: [00:42:34] Fall into your grief. It’s okay to be sad, but you need to find a way to come out of it.

Brian Pruett: [00:42:42] Charlie.

Charlie Derrien: [00:42:44] I’m going to quote one of my brilliant mentors, Zig Ziglar, if you know who that is, if you help. He taught me 12 years ago now. And this was a pivotal moment. It changed the trajectory of my entire life. If you help enough other people get what they want by default, you always get what you want. I, I grabbed that and got my head around it and shifted all my steps. Will let me focus on Brian. And then by default, things will fall into place for me. And I promise you, that’s exactly how things have gone since.

Brian Pruett: [00:43:15] Most people will learn more that we actually use that as a motto for the Castle Business Club. So it’s great. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Well, again, guys, I really appreciate you coming and sharing your stories. Being a part of this show. Everybody out there listening, let’s remember. Let’s be positive. Let’s be charitable.

 

Tagged With: Charlie's Angels Movers, Sorrow to Strength, TurnAbout 180

Mike Cavaggioni with Average Joe Finances

March 2, 2023 by angishields

Average-Joe-Finances
St. Louis Business Radio
Mike Cavaggioni with Average Joe Finances
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Mike-CavaggioniMike Cavaggioni is a veteran and retired U.S. Navy officer having served for 20 years. Mike is a licensed REALTOR-ASSOCIATE®, and Podcast Host. Near the end of his Navy career, he shifted his focus to financial independence and entrepreneurship.

Mike started investing in real estate and working his other side-hustles to create passive income and become financially independent by age 38. He owns real estate in Hawaii, Virginia, Oregon, and Texas.

Mike is the host of the Average Joe Finances® Podcast, a top 1% internationally ranked podcast. He started the podcast to share both his own and his guest’s adventures in becoming financially independent.

Mike’s mission is to provide relevant and informative content that will help others in their own financial independence journey. Mike’s goal is to help you beat debt, build your wealth, and control your future!

Mike and Average Joe Finances Links:

  • Personal Website: https://themikecav.com
  • Average Joe Finances: https://averagejoefinances.com
  • Podcast Website: https://averagejoefinancespod.com
  • Facebook: https://facebook.com/michael.cavaggioni
  • AJF Facebook Page: https://facebook.com/averagejoefinances
  • AJF Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/averagejoefinances
  • Instagram: https://instagram.com/mikecavaggioni
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikecavaggioni/
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/avgjoe_finances
  • YouTube: https://youtube.com/averagejoefinances
  • TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@mikecavaggioni
  • Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/averagejoefinances

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Phillip Hearn: [00:00:03] Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Doc’s discussions here on Saint Louis. Business RadioX Um, I get an opportunity to talk to a lot of different people in my lines of work, and this particular guest is probably one of the most fun conversations I’ve had here in the last 12 months, maybe even going back to the last two years. Uh, really bright, energetic guy doing entrepreneurship, owning real estate. And he’s got a podcast that you might have heard of, Average Joes Finance that is now in the top 1% of internationally ranked podcasts. So we’re being treated with a with a very special guest here today. I want to welcome everybody, all of our listeners to Mike and Joni. How are you?

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:00:48] Hey, doc, I’m feeling good and I am super excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me on.

Phillip Hearn: [00:00:54] Absolutely. All right. How did I do with the pronunciation of your last name? I’ve been losing some sleep over this. Did I do okay?

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:01:00] You did fantastic. It was great.

Phillip Hearn: [00:01:02] Did I?

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:01:02] Yes.

Phillip Hearn: [00:01:03] I’m trying not to mess it up. I kept rereading it and trying to say it phonetically. So I appreciate your patience with me. So really happy to have you here. Thanks for spending some time with me today. I want to dive in. I’ve had a chance to read a bit about you, but I want to give our listeners a snapshot of how did you get to today? How do we get the mic that we know right now? Take me through your past experiences, your upbringing. You’ve got a very interesting history, so I want the listeners to be able to tap into that.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:01:32] Absolutely. So I grew up on Long Island, New York, not not in one of the best neighborhoods. Right. So for me, I pretty much didn’t have a choice. I had to join the military, which which is what I did. I joined the Navy to to kind of get out of the the situation I was in and also, you know, do something for myself. And, you know, I wanted to go to school and I wanted to figure things out and and kind of be on my own. So I was I was 17 years old and I had to have my parents sign a waiver to to let me go early. And so, yeah, I did. I joined the Navy at 17. I didn’t actually ship off to boot camp until I was 18. So that, you know, that worked out fine. But I wound up staying in for 20 years. Right? I spent a lot of time in Virginia. That’s where most of my time in the Navy was, down in Norfolk, Virginia, Virginia Beach area, that whole Tidewater area, and did a couple deployments, did some boots on the ground over in Baghdad at and just just a really well-rounded and diverse career right now. Towards the end, I wound up out here in Hawaii and liked it so much that I decided to stay. So, you know, the thing was throughout my career, you know, I bought my I’ll tell you about the real estate side of it, right? So I bought my first home when I was 22 years old, actually just turned 23.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:02:56] Actually, it was, uh, we closed I think, four days after my 23rd birthday. But anyway, we, um, we get this house and it was in an area that probably wasn’t the best for rental opportunity or even really for, you know, the actual appreciation of the market because I bought it in 2007 and we all know what happened, you know, over the next two years after that. So that kind of was very painful. So fast forward a little bit. I wound up having to short sell that property a couple years later for 93,000 less than what I paid for it, which was very painful. Absolutely. So that that definitely put a bad taste in my mouth. My wife and I were like, Uh, we’re not sure if the real estate game really is for us because we, we wound up renting that place out for a little bit and we were losing money every month because we had a high mortgage payment and we couldn’t rent for what we thought we could in that area. So it was it was kind of an eye opening experience. But we decided, you know, hey, we can’t stay out of the game forever. We can’t just keep doing this, you know? Just the Navy and let that be it. Right? So we had to figure something out. When we found out we were going to come to Hawaii, we came up with the plan to pay off all of our debt, and that was our focus, right? So we you know, obviously we were following the Dave Ramsey baby steps, but we only did steps one through three because that was to get rid of the consumer debt.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:04:25] And that’s what we focused on. So we had like a two year window. So we paid off all of our debt and we saved up $40,000 after paying off all of our debt, which we had probably about $28,000 in credit card debt. And we had a couple of personal loans probably adding up to about 40 to 45,000. So it was it was a pretty good, pretty good run over that two year period. We come out to Hawaii and we said, let’s try to buy a home again. Let’s make this happen. So we did. We bought a house out here. You know, it was probably the best investment we made because the appreciation in Hawaii is absolutely bonkers. And then, of course, you know, over the past couple of years, that kind of helped as well. But it generally always appreciates, you know, between three, five, sometimes 7% a year. Right? So we bought this property and it’s worth probably almost 400,000 more than what I paid for it, which is fantastic. And that was back in 2018. But anyway, we get out here to Hawaii and sorry, I’m long winded. I’m from New York. I can’t help it.

Phillip Hearn: [00:05:28] I love New York because that’s why I think we get along was one of my favorite places to travel to. So. No, you’re good.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:05:33] There you go. There you go. So. So we get out here and we buy this house and we’re like, Let’s start looking into possibly investing in real estate. Like. Like for real this time. Like, get all in on this. And ran into a buddy of mine who was stationed on the Theodore Roosevelt Roosevelt with back in Virginia. And he was investing in real estate, doing really well at the time. I think he had 27, 28 doors. I knew both him and his wife very well and said, hey, you know, I’m trying to get back into this and I want to, you know, learn more from you guys or show you guys like what I’m looking at. Tell me if this makes sense. And they’re like, Yeah, let’s let’s set up a lunch and and we’ll go over a couple of things. So we, we bought them lunch and then I, you know, grabbed the, the stuff that I found, the deals that I was looking at and brought it over and said, Hey, you know, here’s what I found. You know, there’s these two different duplexes that I like that really stand out to me. Here’s what the numbers look like. This is, you know, I think this could be a really good investment. And, you know, they were looking and they were like, yeah, these two are both really good. Basically, you could pick either one.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:06:41] Um, you know, and just looking at the numbers like it was going to cash flow very well. So now again, that’s just on the numbers. That’s not looking at the property, that’s not, you know, making sure that it’s in good shape or anything else. This is just going off of the MLS listings that we found. Right? Right. So anyway, we decided, hey, we’re we’re going to go for it. And we buy this duplex in Chesapeake, Virginia. Now, we we started this whole process back in November of 2019. We closed on this property in February of 2020. So think about that date. I don’t know what the heck. Really good. I don’t know what’s going on with my timing here, man. But I felt like, you know, big man upstairs was like, Hey, man, real estate is not for you, Guy. Just kind of sit down and go to your Navy thing, right? That’s what it felt like. So, um, yeah, so, you know, I wound up having my upstairs tenant not be able to pay their rent for about seven months, and I couldn’t do anything about it. My downstairs tenant was Section eight and that actually covered the mortgage and most of the expenses. So we were okay there. But any time like an emergency came up, like a toilet was broken or we had to replace a vanity cabinet or something, um, that was all coming out of pocket.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:07:55] So here I am now, at a net loss with this property, just trying to figure out, hey, how the heck am I supposed to get past this now? Um, so I wound up finding and this is the beautiful thing that, like, when you, when you find yourself in a crisis, you start searching for ways to help you get out of it, right? So doing some research, I found that the county of Chesapeake in Virginia was doing they had a rent repayment program for people that qualified for it. And I was like, Well, my tenant qualifies for it. He lost his job due to COVID, so let me see if I can get them enrolled in this. So I filled out all the paperwork and sent it to him. I said, Hey man, I just need you to sign this, bring it to the office. And they should, you know, cover your rent. And that way I don’t have to evict you and I don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. And you guys are good to go. I’m good to go. We’re all happy, right? Okay, so he signs the paperwork, sends it in, and they wind up back paying me all the rent that he owed me, plus late fees. So in the end, that that deal wound up cash flowing for $950 a month.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:08:54] So. Wow. So that that that first, uh, you know, guess, you know, I’m at bat and it was a bunt turned into an RBI. Right? You know, we brought somebody in with that. So it worked out really well. Anyway, I, I wound up selling that property and getting into multifamily real estate because I was going to these meetups, right? And of course, with COVID going on, everything was being done over Zoom. So I started going to a bunch of these and just learning as much as I could and, and multifamily real estate really got a grasp on me and I was like, this is this is something I really like and it’s a lot more passive. And I was super busy with my day job in the Navy, so I’m like, This is really appealing. So as I learned more and peeled back the onion, I said, Yeah, this is something I want to do. So I wound up getting my first multifamily deal after I sold that and wound up getting into two more over the next year. And that’s kind of where I’m at with my real estate right now. So long story short, that’s how we got there. Um, and all throughout that time, you know, serving 20 years in the Navy, winding up in Hawaii. I retired this past December and still here.

Speaker3: [00:10:03] That’s awesome.

Phillip Hearn: [00:10:04] I love stories like that because they show perseverance, Right? And truthfully, I’m also going to need you to let us know the next time you buy a property because that means something else is about to happen. So I kind of need a tip off from you of what, when you’re about to buy the next one, you know? So, um, so I’m going to start off this question with some gratitude. Dude. And I’m going to say first, thank you for your service. Tell us a little bit more about your naval experiences and how they help you today. Because, you know, we talked a little bit about it when I was lucky enough to be a guest on your show, and that seems to be a very big core of not only who you are, but how you conduct business. So if you could tell us a little bit more about that, how did that help shape who you are today?

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:10:46] Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for that and great question. So, you know, I would say that the Navy has definitely shaped me, especially in my decision making abilities. And that’s going to be mostly from the fact that when I joined the Navy, I joined the Navy as an E-1, the lowest possible rank you could be. Right? I worked really hard and was able to make it to E-6 in six and a half years. Right. The highest you can go is E-9. Right. And when I was an E-6, so it’s a petty officer first class, I decided I wanted to apply for a commission and become an officer. And, you know, I was like, hey, you know, let me just try it out and and see what happens and, you know, just go through the process. So I know because most people take at least three tries before they get picked up if they ever get picked up. Right. It’s a very competitive program. So I was like, I’m just going to apply. I’m going to go through the process and see what it’s like. So I applied for the Limited Duty Officer program, and I actually picked it up on my first try, and I was very surprised. So here I was now at my eight and a half year mark, finding out that I was getting commissioned in a year, um, very interesting time in my life.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:11:59] And because I had gone from being an E-1, you know, being the guy that has to do all the, the, you know, the not so fun jobs and always getting told what to do and, you know, doing all the things that nobody else wants to do to, you know, up to E-6 where I was running the the division, you know, and making sure all my my folks were taken care of, too. Now I’m going to be commissioned as an officer and really start moving up the the chain of command here. So I said, okay, this is this is going to be interesting. So I commissioned and, you know, got to my first ship and was put in charge of one of the biggest divisions for, for the admin side. It was the personnel division. So I went from being an E-6 where I had like three people under me to now being a ensign, A01, and I had 42 people under me. And I’m like, Oh wow. Huh? This is different, you know? So it was a pretty it was it was a really good experience, right? Transitioning that way. And I learned so much right from that period that I was on the Theodore Roosevelt because I did three different division officer jobs while I was there.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:13:08] And I got to really experience a lot of different people’s leadership styles, right? Because I wound up having three bosses while I was there that kind of came and gone. You know, I’ve learned I learned some good leadership. I’ve learned some bad leadership, and I’m appreciative of every single leader that I’ve served under because they’ve always taught me something. Whether this was a good way to lead or whether it was a bad way to lead. Right. And I always learned from those experiences that I’ve had with every single one of them, whether I like them or not. Right. So. That was a defining moment for me, I think, in my career in the Navy. So shortly after that, well, not shortly after I did three years on the Theodore Roosevelt, and then I transferred to Naval Special Warfare Group ten, where I went from being a division officer to now being a department head and a director. Now, I went there as an O to a lieutenant junior grade and they put me in an O for a lieutenant Commander Billet Right? So I went from being in a brand new division officer job to now being in a department head slash director job just like that. And again, another huge learning curve and experience for me because now it was it was a lot different.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:14:21] Now I’m in charge of so I was in charge of a directorate, but also in charge of four other commands, all of their admin programs. So I had to go and inspect them and stuff. A couple of them were in Coronado, so every quarter I would fly out to Coronado out in California and get really great Mexican food while I was there. And and go around and inspect these areas and check on all the the sailors there and make sure they’re good. And it was another really great experience where I got to learn from, you know. Not only my superiors, but also my subordinates. Right. And also my peers. Really, really great experience. So these are the things that kind of shaped my decision making process right from there. Now I’m a lieutenant and A03. I go to another zero four job, another lieutenant commander job as the staff executive officer over at US Pacific Fleet out here in Hawaii. That’s how I wound up here. And now I’m you know, as a staff XO of enlisted personnel, I was second in command, right. Um, and we had 200 a total of, if you count all the chiefs and the enlisted folks, a total of 294 people under me. Oh, wow. Okay. Very different experience again. Right. But so rewarding because getting to experience these different leadership levels as I was, you know, going through my career in the military, it really helped shaped and mold my decision making process as well.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:15:47] So now I knew when I had a sailor that got in trouble and they were coming in front of me as the executive officer, that’s usually like the step before they go to captain’s mast and getting like really big trouble where they can get punished and stuff. Um, I had a really good process now for, for asking questions and understanding like where they’re coming from with the situations that they were in. Because you know what? I was in your shoes not too long ago when I was a young enlisted sailor, right? So those experiences were fantastic, you know, and and it helped me, I believe, like in my personal life, when it comes to making very important decisions, to really sit back, analyze and make sure the decision I’m making is the right thing and the right move for me and my family. Right. Real estate for me was was almost a no brainer. And I say almost because there was definitely a lot of reservations there from both my wife and I because of our experience with that first property back in 2007. Right? Sure. So. One of the things that I really feel like the Navy helped me with is that ability to persevere, even when you’re not too sure what that outcome might be.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:16:58] Yeah. So that is one of the things that when we decided to get back into real estate, we took a look back at what happened in the past with the previous one and said, You know what? We are not going to let that define us. And even the second time it happened with COVID, we said, we’re not going to let this define us. And we persevered and pushed through. And and yeah, that’s definitely helped me with my process. I believe my my time in the Navy. It’s been fantastic. Um, even the time I served overseas, you know, on deployments and in Iraq. Right. Um, some of the best experiences I’ve ever had was on deployment, because a lot of times when you’re in certain situations and you have to make decisions and they can be life or death decisions, right? It makes it really puts a lot of things into perspective, you know, for, you know, what your decision process is, and especially when you’re under pressure and have to make a quick decision, what kind of gears are turning and what kind of thoughts are coming up as you’re making those decisions, especially when you have to make one very fast. So absolutely, definitely, definitely helped me out, I think big time.

Phillip Hearn: [00:18:09] I love it and think the the nugget that is in all of that are those transferable experiences and those transferable skill sets, right? So there’s so many times where we all have felt this as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, a little bit of that imposter syndrome, right? But you’ve technically done the work that you’re about to do in real estate. It just wasn’t called real estate. It was a boat for for goodness sake. Right. And so you’re leading those folks and you’re leading those people. Same thing in a real estate transaction and even after. Right. So you have some empathy with, hey, I know I’ve got a renter in there. Lost her job during COVID. Let’s find a way to get you what you need. So I love those those stories of perseverance, but also transferring those experiences and transferring those skill sets. That’s that’s a lot of fun. That’s really awesome.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:18:59] You know, I’m I really appreciate that. But I want to point out one thing that you said that really sticks out to me, Doc, and that is imposter syndrome, right? That is something that I have suffered with ever since I started on my journey. Right. Even while I was in the Navy. Right. Like when I first commissioned and wound up, you know, in charge of my first division to when I was in charge of my first directorate to when I was in charge of my first command as an executive officer. You know, I look at those situations and I say, who the heck am I to be the guy in charge of this? Who the heck am I to be the one doing these things? You know, just a couple of weeks ago, I was I was a E-6, you know, on my ship. Um, you know, just making sure that my my 2 or 3 sailors were good to go. Now I’m here with 42 people in front of me looking for guidance, and I’m like, wow, you know? So, yeah, imposter syndrome, I think is something that whether you want to believe it or not, every single person suffers from. And it just it just what matters is how do you take that suffering? Do you turn it into a strength or do you let it become your weakness? And I I’d like to believe that I’ve turned mine into a strength.

Phillip Hearn: [00:20:12] Absolutely. No. And I think that’s beautifully said, just because you’re so right, we all see it and in different points in our life. Right? So they always talk about when you’re younger and in school, you’re big man on campus and you go from big fish in a small pond to now a small fish in a big pond, and it just forces you to have to tap into those experiences and those skill sets like you talked about. So it’s pretty cool when you can translate the work that you’ve done to see how far you’ve gotten to today. So I love those kinds of stories. So I think that was really important. I saw on your website as well with the Average Joe podcast that you have reached financial independence by the age of 38. The most important question I have, because everybody’s got their own definition and your personal definition, what is your definition of financial independence? Tell us a little bit more about what that looks like to you and your family.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:21:06] So for me, it’s when your passive income has exceeded what your monthly expenses are right to now. Like if you don’t want to work, you don’t have to, right? And for me, it’s the freedom to do what I want to do. Right? And that is the key word is freedom. So when you look at financial independence or financial freedom, right, that is the key word is freedom. So that is the number one thing that it means to me.

Phillip Hearn: [00:21:31] I love it. I love it. And it’s interesting, too, because, you know, younger guys. How old are you now, if you don’t mind me asking? 38. Okay. Okay. So this year. All right. So we’re we’re breaking breaking ground breaking new news.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:21:45] So 38.5.

Speaker3: [00:21:46] How about that?

Phillip Hearn: [00:21:47] Okay. Yeah. There we go. Because we all used to start with the house and the three fourths and the fourths and everything else. So what? When did that goal kick into overdrive for you? Right. So everybody’s got a goal of, Hey, I want to do this. I want to make a bunch of money, I want to do all these things and and those are great. But there’s some sticktoitiveness that you talked about. So what when did that crystallize as a goal of like, okay, not only am I, we’re going to do this, but here’s how I have to do it. How long ago did that tap into where you go, I’m going to be financed. I’m going to have financial freedom and we’re going to find financial independence.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:22:21] Yeah. So it was it was when I came out here to Hawaii and decided to get back into real estate again, I was, you know, getting closer to the end of my career in the Navy. I think at the time I was at 16 or 17 years when I came out here and I said, you know, my retirement from the Navy is not going to be enough, especially if we want to stay in Hawaii. So I need to start looking at other options. And that’s when I was like, you know, I want to start looking at real estate again because real estate is to me now again, I had already been investing in index funds and other things like that, right? Etfs. I started a mutual funds account for my children. Right. That is separate just for them. They probably have more money than me right now.

Speaker3: [00:23:05] But it always works like that because that was the.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:23:08] Focus. Right? But but the thing is like, you know, I said for for me personally, real estate, I like it because it’s tangible. It’s something that will always have a need for right people. That is one of the necessities of human life is shelter. Right? So we always need a place to we always need a roof over our heads. So for me, real estate, I felt like was yes, I remember what happened back in oh eight, oh nine, because trust me, it happened to me. Right? So yes, I do remember that. I remember the pain of that. But I also remember that recovery and that bounce back, right? Real estate, no matter what, if your idea is to hold, it will always make you look like a genius, you know, years down the road. Because if you hold it, it will undoubtedly go up in value, right? And for the most part, the the stock market’s the same way, which is why I prefer index funds and ETFs, not individual stocks, because consistently you’re looking at about a 10% return per year on average. Right. So as long as you’re well diverse and you’re focused on, you know, you have that end goal in mind that, you know, financial independence is what you’re seeking or just building your wealth is what you’re seeking, right? The idea needs to always be the long run. So I always I was always looking at my life in five year increments, right? So I knew when I came out here to Hawaii, like I’m in that retirement increment now, so I need to figure this out. And at the time, I wasn’t even really thinking about this because I just got out of debt, you know, I was like, Oh, I’m debt free now. You know, I’m the man. I don’t have to worry about all these credit card bills and all this other stuff. My car’s paid off. Like you can’t tell me nothing. And it turns out, yeah, you can still tell me something in real estate was was speaking very loudly to me.

Phillip Hearn: [00:24:55] I love it. I love it. So when you talk about your real estate and I know you’ve made that transition from residential to commercial or multifamily even, right? What has what has been that experience been like? Because I know a lot of folks, for instance, when they get into real estate, they’re like, don’t talk to me about anything other than the single family property. I can see right in front of me, right? Other folks. And I’m a big proponent of what you mentioned, that multifamily piece, right? I love that opportunity for if you have a big enough property, you’ve got one property manager that needs to come to one building as opposed to 30 buildings scattered across the city. So what’s been your attack plan as you start to make some of those transitions? Not to say you’ve forgotten about residential, but getting more into that multifamily. Take us a little bit into that insight.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:25:40] Yeah, absolutely. So like I mentioned earlier, when I when I decided to get over into the multifamily space, it was because of how busy I was right with my day job in the Navy. And I realized how much time that the residential real estate that I had, that duplex that I had was taking away from me. Right. Especially with it being back in Chesapeake, Virginia. And I’m 5000 miles away in Hawaii. Right. And doing everything sight unseen through pictures and videos was very tedious and also very time consuming. Right. You know, I hear those horror stories all the time where people are getting those phone calls at 2:00 in the morning because of plumbing issues and this and that. Well, I was getting those calls at technically 7:00 in the morning on the East Coast, But it’s still 2:00 in the morning.

Speaker3: [00:26:25] 2:00 for you. Yeah. There it is. Yeah. Not fun.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:26:28] Right? And, you know, like I said, when I was going through this whole process, I was going to these different meetups and I was going on these Zoom calls and I was learning about multifamily and the, the people I did my first multifamily deal with was actually the people whose zoom calls I was going to because I got to know, like and trust them, right? And it’s because I built these relationships with them. It wasn’t just like a Oh yeah, they showed me a slide deck That looks good. The numbers look good. I’m going to get in. No, they did a there was a couple deals that I missed out on. And sometimes I look back and I. And I and I’m like, Man, I should have got in on that first deal. But I’m like, No, everything happens for a reason at the right time. Yeah. So I wound up, you know, getting in and at the right time for me that I thought it was. But I saw I got to experience and see what they, they did on these previous deals. And it even gave me a more of a warm and fuzzy that this is the right group to get involved in. Right. Right. And so for me, it was the learning piece, right? There’s there’s a whole bunch of it that when I talk to people about when you’re getting into this side of real estate or any side of real estate, I have what I call these four pillars to building wealth.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:27:33] And if you want, I can go over them with you real quick. But this is kind of part of my decision making process as well. So that first pillar, right, is very important. But it’s education, right? It’s learning the particular niche or investment that you want to get involved in. You want to learn as much as possible. So books, courses or even just learning from the source itself, right directly from them. That’s a very important piece. That’s pillar number one. And all of these are important, but you’re going to you’re going to see where I’m going with this, right? Pillar number two is mentorship and coaching, excuse me. And of course, knowing the difference between the two of those. Right. Finding yourself a good mentor, that’s going to be the person that’s going to, you know, kind of guide you and say, hey, you know, maybe maybe just keep doing what you’re doing or the person that you can go to for like sage guidance. You know, when you’re not too sure about something or you want to learn a little bit more about something, they have that experience and that that that deep knowledge base that you can kind of tap into where a coach is going to be the one that, you know, coaches are usually paid for, right? And they’re going to be the ones that kick you in the butt and say, hey, stop doing A, B, C, and D, you need to get hot on doing, you know, the rest of this stuff.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:28:45] So I like both. I like having mentors and coaches because I think it’s it’s super important to have both. But either either way at least get one right. Sorry. That’s my dog barking back there. No, it’s okay. The third one is building networks and relationships. Right? So networking and building relationships and knowing the difference between the two. Right? So building a network is one thing, right? But building relationships is something that’s completely different than just somebody that’s being in your network. Right? So what I tell people is go out to networking events, go out to conferences, meet people. Right? It’s great if you want to pass out your business card to 100 people, fine. Whatever. Most of the time those business cards get thrown in the trash or they get thrown in a filing cabinet and they’re never seen again. So what I always tell people to do is go to these events, seek out 2 to 5 people, depending on the size of the event and how long you’re going to be there and really get to know them, exchange information like put their number in your phone. They put your number in their phone. Right. Exchange information. Learn about them. You know, if if the person you’re talking to has a kid that has a that’s in a soccer tournament that’s coming up and they’re going for states or something, remember that? Call them a week after it happens.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:30:00] Be like, Hey, how’d little Timmy do on that soccer tournament? You guys go to states, What’s going on? They will remember you. And when they have a really good deal that comes up, they’re going to say, Hey, remember that Mike guy, man? He called me up. He you know, he followed up with me and asked about Timmy’s game. That’s a that’s a real dude right there. I’m going to hit him back up, Right. Um, you know, because I got this good deal and I need a partner. So those are important things. Is actually building that relationship, building rapport with people and not just exchanging information and going on your merry way. Right. Um, the fourth and the most important pillar of all. And the other three don’t even matter if you don’t do this one, but you need the other three to get to this one. Okay? Action. You have to take action, right? So you can be educated all you want. You can have a mentor and a coach telling you what to do all you want. You can build as many relationships and network all you want if you don’t take action, all of that is for naught. So yeah, those are my four pillars and that’s all a big part of like how I make my decisions as well.

Phillip Hearn: [00:31:04] And I love those four pillars mean again, you know, my background being an education. So I geek out about the research and all the work, right? So like you said, a good book sometimes kind of gets your mind going, digging into that topic whole wholeheartedly. Agree. Luckily, I’ve been able to be and also have really good mentors and coaches, right? So working as a coach, it’s kind of like even if you’re giving that advice out as a coach, you have to live that advice too. So it kind of keeps you on, on your, your, you know, your head on a swivel, if you will. Um, I love the networking concept because I agree people exchange phone numbers even now, right? So we can have a QR code. I do all of my cards through a QR code. People will take a picture and never. Yeah, see, there we go. Look at that. So a lot of people will do that. And like you said, never go back and double check or follow up with that. So I was always a big proponent. I still am of following up something as simple as a quick message of like, Hey, it’s so great to meet you.

Phillip Hearn: [00:32:02] That keeps the conversation going. But the action piece, yeah, you can you can plan and replan and plan. Again, a little bit of paralysis analysis, if you will. If you don’t actually take off and go with it. Yeah. What have you been doing? Right? So I love the four pillars and I think those are seminal messages that anybody can use, no matter what their business construct, real estate or otherwise. So that’s a beautiful thing. One last real estate question for you, and I think listeners are probably going, how does he pull this off? So you said something very important. One of your first properties in Chesapeake, Virginia. Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, excuse me. You’re sitting 5000 miles away, five time zones away in Hawaii. Who are the most important members of your team to be able to pull this off? Right. Because I believe you not only have property, of course, in Hawaii and Virginia, but a couple other places, if I was reading correctly. So how do you pull this off with being so far away?

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:32:57] So that is a great question. And, you know, on that first deal in Chesapeake that I probably didn’t have the right team in place. So I learned a lot of those hard lessons the hard way, right? Even though I knew better because I, you know, had really great mentors that said, you know, make sure you have your team set up first. Now, I had a great real estate agent out there, right. I had my property manager who was also my general contractor. And this is probably where I made the mistake. Right. Because they shouldn’t be the same person. Right. Okay. So that was one of the things I ran into because a lot of times he would be dealing with property management issues, not only for me but for other clients that he had. So when there was a contracting issue that I needed help with or a repair or something like that, sometimes the availability made it very difficult. And now I’m scrambling trying to find a plumber or something, you know, and I’m doing it from Hawaii making these phone calls. And I’m like, Yeah, sorry, I can’t meet you there because I don’t, you know, I’m 5000 miles away.

Speaker3: [00:33:57] You.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:33:57] Know, if you could meet my property manager there and then I’d have to get them synced up. So yes, that was probably one of the biggest issues I had to deal with. So having your team in place is super important, right? So you want to have a good real estate agent, you want to have a good property manager, you want to have a good general contractor. Right. And they should be different people. Right. But those are the those are the important things. Right. You know, who’s your boots on the ground in that area if you’re going to invest out of market. Now, with the other deals that I’m in as a limited partner, one of the beautiful things is I get to work with some amazing operators, right? So they have their entire team in place. Every time we get into one of these deals. And what happens is, you know, they have their boots on the ground. The entire team goes over there and looks at the property, you know, and they when they have the inspections and they’re doing all of, you know, just everything, right. So they they get somebody local to be the property manager. Right. It’s not just somebody that we kind of just sit over there and the entire process is in place before the deal, even before there’s even an offer on the deal.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:35:02] Right. They have everything in place. So that is one of the most important things is who do you have on your team? Who’s who are the important people that you’re going to trust in this? Because you cannot be there all the time, right? Actually, sometimes you can’t be there any of the time in my situation. So it’s who do you have that you trust that’s going to make sure that, you know, these assets are being taken care of and you’re not getting, you know, the short end of the stick on the back end. Right? So that’s important. So if you’re going to go into multifamily real estate, whether you want to be an operator and be a general partner or whether you want to be passive and be a limited partner. Right. The important piece is who’s on the team, right? So if you’re a general partner, what what are you bringing to the table for one? What kind of value do you add to the rest of the team? And then for two, what does everyone else on the rest of the team doing right, Making sure that everybody’s doing their own equal part? Now, if you’re a limited partner and you find a group of operators that you like and you find these general partners, you know, what are they all doing? What kind of background, you know, did you do on them and what have they done in the past, the deals that they’re looking at? Did you do your own due diligence on them yourself or did you just trust what was sent in that slide deck? I always tell people, too, if you go in as a limited partner, don’t just trust getting a slide deck.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:36:21] Do your own research on that market. Really learn about it. Don’t just say yes, because if you do that, you wind up getting yourself in a situation where somebody, you know, that team may not have done the best due diligence. And, you know, a couple months into the deal, there’s an issue. And now they need they’re going to do a capital call and they need more money from you because, you know, things went wrong because they miscalculated something or, hey, we didn’t know that, you know, it was at 40% occupancy. We thought it was at 80% occupancy because that’s what the previous owner told us, Right. So or they were on a month to month basis. And now that there’s new management here, everybody dipped out. So those are the things that are really important. So see what they’ve done in the past and really do your due diligence, not only, you know, on the team, but also on the actual investments and the assets that they’re that they’re acquiring.

Phillip Hearn: [00:37:14] Love it. And then this taps back into two of your pillars, right? So, of course, the last pillar of action, you’re going to be taking action. But that educational component and that networking component, right, making sure you’ve got folks that you can trust when you physically can’t be there at all times doing all the things. So I love that that that definitely ties back into the pillars as well. So I love a I love a good double dip when we can get them 100%. So you hit that financial freedom number this year, You know, within the half year or so you got your real estate investments, you’re starting to grow that. Plus you’ve got this fantastic podcast. Tell me how the podcast, Average Joe’s average Joe’s Finance want to make sure we keep pubbing that.

Speaker4: [00:37:57] And with you.

Phillip Hearn: [00:37:57] But tell me how that started and what made you say, I’ve got these experiences, I’m seeing them. I’m living them right as you as you describe. And now you’re on episode here, 166. I mean, how did we go from that to that? It’s like going from 0 to 100. Real quick, what does that look like?

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:38:15] Yeah. So definitely appreciate that question and appreciate the shout out for the podcast. So yeah, so Average Joe Finances podcast started off as a blog, right? So I when I first came out here to Hawaii, I was super excited about the story that I had about getting out of debt and you know, what I did to get there. So, you know, what I told you at the beginning was kind of like some of the basic stuff, but there was other pieces to it. Like we were doing the envelope method. We wound up having sinking funds accounts, which actually was one of my favorite ways to invest and save, as well as pay off our debt. So if you don’t know what sinking funds is, if you go to my YouTube channel, it’s the first video on there. Um, but yeah, so we got into this and I started a blog and I had a buddy of mine who had just started a podcast, also somebody else that was on the Theodore Roosevelt with me. He got into some trouble and, you know, got and had a couple situations in his life where things kind of took a turn for the worst. And he started a podcast talking about resilience and how he was able to bounce back in life from those situations that he was in. And he got himself up into the top 5% within his first year of doing it. And he came up to me one day, he’s like, Hey, Mike. He’s like, You know this blog that you have here, Average Joe finances. This is this is really awesome and you’re sharing your story. I think it would be really beneficial to other people if you started a podcast to not only talk about this, but bring on other people that are doing similar things and share their story.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:39:49] Because, you know, I can tell just from the way that you write your blog posts and everything else that you’re doing here, that you’re trying to impact other people. It’s not just for you to, you know, document and record what you’ve done. It’s to try to help other people. I said, Well, yeah, I am trying to help other people. Um, so I was like, But I’m not sure I can do a podcast right now while I’m still in the Navy. I just don’t feel like I have the time. And if I do it, I don’t want to just, you know, wing it and, you know, try to figure it out as I go. I want to make sure I have a good plan and make sure I can get episodes out on a regular, consistent basis. He’s like, Man, even if you just do one a month, just trust me. He’s like, Podcasting is going to be big. Get into it. Just do it. I’m like, Fine, twist my arm. So I started the podcast and of course I did exactly the opposite of what I said I was going to do. I started the podcast without a plan. Yeah, I started it without having content really recorded. I’m like, Huh, uh, how am I supposed to do this? Like my first four episodes? 4 or 5 episodes? No, I think my first first three episodes were just me. One was an intro, one was my seven Steps to Beating Debt. And I forget what the third one was so long ago.

Speaker3: [00:41:02] And then my fourth one was my first interview. And that kind of happened.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:41:07] Because I reached out and said, Hey, I started a podcast and are there any real estate investors or people investing in the stock market or anything that want to come on my show and share their story? And, you know, got got my first interview. And for whatever reason, I was like hell bent on making sure that the episodes were only like 20 minutes long.

Speaker3: [00:41:26] Right, Right. So that was that was the goal, right? Because I was like, I want somebody.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:41:30] To listen to it, you know, on their drive to work and that’s it.

Speaker3: [00:41:33] Well, people listen to podcasts.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:41:34] On their commute to and from work, right?

Speaker3: [00:41:36] Yeah.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:41:37] Anyway, I learned about this later.

Speaker3: [00:41:39] On, But yeah, I was I was so hell bent on making it 20 minutes that.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:41:43] My first interview, the guy comes.

Speaker3: [00:41:45] On.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:41:45] You know, we’re having a great dialog even though it was a little robotic because at the time I had like, you know, set questions.

Speaker3: [00:41:53] I was like, I have to ask every single one of these questions, right? Even if I have to cut the guy off and make sure.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:41:58] That I get the next.

Speaker3: [00:41:59] Question in, which is kind of what I did, which was like, I wasn’t the best interviewer when I first started this.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:42:05] And, you know, we get to about the 20 minute mark and I’m.

Speaker3: [00:42:08] Like and he’s like, Yeah, I’m ready. You know, let’s keep going.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:42:10] You know what else you want to talk about?

Speaker3: [00:42:12] And I’m like, All right, well, that was a great interview. Thanks for coming on and and close it out. Like, not.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:42:17] Even realize using.

Speaker3: [00:42:19] What I had just.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:42:20] Done. And if.

Speaker3: [00:42:21] You go listen to that episode, you’ll you’ll.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:42:22] Listen to it and be like.

Speaker3: [00:42:24] Man, you just kind of cut this guy off and everything and and it’s okay, you know? And I talked to him.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:42:30] Afterwards and said.

Speaker3: [00:42:31] Oh, you know, this is.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:42:31] So you can come back on in the future for part two.

Speaker3: [00:42:34] Right, right. Um, and yes, I mean, I truly meant that, but at the same time, I’m like, Man, what am I doing? So I did another solo episode after that, I think, and then I did another interview and I still was kind of in that same thing where it was very regimented, but it went a little bit longer this time. And I said, okay, cool. And then I was like, What am I doing? Why? Why am I sitting here like putting these, these, these borders up, you know, that I can’t go past and I’m putting limitations on my show by doing this, by saying I have to ask these specific questions. So it’s definitely evolved a lot from then. Um, I mean, you’ve been on the show, you know how I do things. I like to keep.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:43:15] It very conversational the same way you’re doing it here. I love this right?

Speaker3: [00:43:18] Because that’s when you get people’s most authentic selves, right, is when you keep it conversational.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:43:25] Keep it.

Speaker3: [00:43:25] Light and fun. So I’ve definitely evolved my show from then to now.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:43:29] The only real set questions I have is like the very.

Speaker3: [00:43:32] First question where I ask, you know, about their background, and then at the end I do this thing.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:43:36] Called the Final Round, where I ask everybody the.

Speaker3: [00:43:38] Same four questions, but all in between.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:43:41] Is specifically about the topic we’re going to talk.

Speaker3: [00:43:44] About and whatever is comfortable for the guest, because I.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:43:47] Want to make sure that we’re putting the best.

Speaker3: [00:43:49] Possible content out there while making everybody comfortable and not cringe. Right, right, right. That’s that’s the whole thing. You know, when you can laugh and smile and have a good time while you’re doing an.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:43:59] Interview, it really helps.

Speaker3: [00:44:01] With the authenticity of the guest. And also for you as a host.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:44:06] You know, really get.

Speaker3: [00:44:06] Out there and ask, you know, some of the more.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:44:08] Important questions. And I the way I like to treat my.

Speaker3: [00:44:10] Show as well. And I think it’s really helped the growth. And it’s because my because it helps my listeners is every time I bring somebody on.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:44:18] I’m like, hey, talk to me like a fifth grader, right? As if I don’t know anything.

Speaker3: [00:44:22] You know? And if you’re going to put acronyms out there or anything.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:44:25] Like that, I will ask you what those acronyms stand for, even though I know that stands for Key Performance Indicator. Right.

Speaker3: [00:44:31] I’m still going to ask you to explain that, right?

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:44:33] Because for my listeners, this might be their first episode that they’ve ever listened to.

Speaker3: [00:44:38] I don’t want them to get turned off and be like.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:44:39] Yeah, this is a little.

Speaker3: [00:44:40] Too.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:44:41] Advanced for me. That’s why it’s called Average Joe finances, right?

Speaker3: [00:44:45] That’s who I’m appealing to, somebody that wants to get in there and break free. And that’s why my tagline is Beat debt, Build your wealth.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:44:53] And control your future.

Speaker3: [00:44:55] No doubt. Mic drop.

Phillip Hearn: [00:44:57] Yeah, No. And no pun intended with the mic drop either. I mean. No, no, I don’t want to drop. It’s very expensive. Don’t drop that. That’s a nice one. Don’t do that. But I totally do. Because, you know, when I was growing up, I did communication in college and I remember one of my favorite professors go The questions you start an interview with should not actually be the questions you get to in the sense of they shouldn’t be in this order. You mentioned guardrails was a perfect visual, right? They shouldn’t be in this exact order. They should kind of be a starter. And then wherever the interview goes, you’ve kind of gotten it to that particular point. And so I’ve been lucky enough to be on your show. I think I was on episode 162 if I was paying attention correctly.

Speaker3: [00:45:40] Yeah. Came out recently.

Phillip Hearn: [00:45:41] Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, had a great time, good energy, good good vibe about it. But no, it’s been it was fun to be a part of it. And I’ve gotten a chance now to go back and even listen to more episodes and you’ve come a long way, so congrats with the success on that for sure.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:45:57] Definitely appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Phillip Hearn: [00:45:59] Absolutely. So most important question that I like to ask before wrapping up any conversation like this. And again, thank you for your time. This is a ton of fun. How do our listeners connect with you? What types of clients do you want to be connected with? What does that all look like? How do people get to Mike? What does that? Look like from their end.

Speaker3: [00:46:19] Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for that. So the easiest.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:46:22] Way is my personal website, which is the Mike.

Speaker3: [00:46:25] Tv.com.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:46:27] Or Mike cavazzoni.com.

Speaker3: [00:46:28] If you can figure.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:46:29] Out how to spell my last name.

Speaker3: [00:46:31] And then of course, my my main website.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:46:33] Which started everything is average Joe finances.com you’ll.

Speaker3: [00:46:36] Be able to find the podcast and everything.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:46:38] There but you can also find it from my personal website.

Speaker3: [00:46:40] But you’ll see you know I also offer financial coaching.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:46:44] For people that are struggling. I’m actually starting to get a little bit away from that and I actually hired some.

Speaker3: [00:46:50] Coaches that now I have other.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:46:53] Coaches that take.

Speaker3: [00:46:53] On clients as well. So you don’t necessarily have to.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:46:56] Work directly with me. There’s other coaches on my team that you can work with as well.

Speaker3: [00:47:01] And they’re all fantastic people and they all share.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:47:03] The same vision as me, right?

Speaker3: [00:47:05] So that’s, that’s the biggest thing. And of course with real estate, I’m a licensed real estate agent in Hawaii. So if you need help with that, I’m definitely here. Or if you need to find somebody in any other market. I have a huge network of real estate agents and lenders and private money lenders and all that good stuff just.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:47:23] From what I’ve built with the podcast.

Speaker3: [00:47:25] So happy to help in any aspect. And if you’re thinking about starting a podcast yourself, I’d be happy.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:47:30] To talk to you about that and help you out with that as well.

Phillip Hearn: [00:47:33] Yeah, so you and I are going to definitely be staying in touch. So just we just created our real estate brokerage in Missouri, so we got some things very nice about even after the show too, so that’s perfect. Mike It has been an absolute pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. I knew I would. I was I’ve been looking forward to this one. So this is this has been a ton of a ton of fun. So thanks for coming on.

Speaker3: [00:47:55] Again, thank you so much for having me.

Mike Cavaggioni: [00:47:57] The pleasure was.

Speaker3: [00:47:58] 100%. Well, maybe not 100%. 50 over 50. All mine as well. 5050. Yeah. I had a great time. This one. Aloha.

Phillip Hearn: [00:48:06] Yes. So thanks again to our guests, Mike Faggioni. A ton of fun. Really good insight for those listeners who are listening. A ton of great pearls in this information. You’ve just joined us and and finished up another episode of Doc’s discussions. I’m Dr. Philip Hearn and thanks for hanging out with us on Saint Louis Business RadioX Take care.

 

About Your Host

Phillip-HearnDr. Phillip Hearn Ed.D. is a results-driven entrepreneur, Senior Executive, Consultant, and Board Member with more than 20 years of success in business acquisition and real estate. His expertise in leveraging extensive experience with expansion, and financing, makes Phillip a valuable asset for companies, particularly in real estate, seeking guidance on growth opportunities and process improvement.

Phillip is the founder of Mid American Capital Holdings, LLC, an acquisition focused company. Current subsidiaries include Phillip Speaks, specializing in coaching, advising and public speaking engagements; Financial Center, consulting business owners on methods to implement business trade lines and credit to grow their operations, and other subsidiaries which continues to expand. Phillip also gives back via his non for profit Center for Communities and Economic Development.

Phillip has obtained an Ed.D. from Capella University and holds an Executive Masters in Health Administration (EMHA) from Saint Louis University; an MA in Marketing and a BA in Media Communication, both from Webster University, and Lean Six Sigma (Black Belt) from Villanova University. He has served as a Board Member for the National Sales Network St. Louis Chapter and Ready Readers, for which he has also served as the Governance Department Chair and President of the Board.

Phillip is a coach, advisor, key note speaker and podcast host on Business RadioX. Audiences benefit professionally and personally through his teachings of leveraging and application. His new book “Life Mottos for Success” exemplifies how positive words and thoughts can transform your life!

Connect with Phillip on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.

Tagged With: Average Joe Finances

Mary Win King with Simplicity Home Staging & Design

March 1, 2023 by angishields

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Cherokee Business Radio
Mary Win King with Simplicity Home Staging & Design
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Sponsored by Business RadioX ® Main Street Warriors

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Mary-Win-King

Mary-Win-King-headshotbwMary Win King grew up in a small town in South Carolina and has been living in Georgia for 12 years with her husband and amazing 11 year old daughter. She is so thankful to be in the Southeast with warmer weather!

Mary and her family love living in Ball Ground on their 13 acre farm enjoying their horses, cats and dog.  She has always had a passion for interior design and home staging, so starting Simplicity Home Staging & Design 2.5 years ago, alongside a friend at the time, has been such a blessing. Simplicity-Home-Staging-and-Design-logo

Mary loves helping clients LOVE their home and turning it into a relaxing “breath of fresh air” when they come home each day.

On the home staging side, she loves being able to help potential buyers see themselves in the home by showing off the great aspects of each room and what the home has to offer.

Currently, we look forward to serving new clients with our new bundle services. The best gift is when we are able to call our clients our new friends!

Follow Simplicity Home Staging & Design on 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 our local small business initiative, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors Defending Capitalism, promoting small business and supporting our local community. For more information, go to Main Street Warriors dot org and a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David Inc. Please go check them out at Diesel David dot com. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Simplicity Home Staging and Design, Miss Mary Win King. How are you?

Mary Win King: [00:01:10] I’m great. I’m so thankful and honored to be here that you would just have me on your show and excited to just let people know what we’re about.

Stone Payton: [00:01:19] Well, we are delighted to have you in the studio this morning. I got a ton of questions. I, I know we probably won’t get to them all, but I think a good place to start might be if you could share with me in our listeners mission purpose. What are what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks?

Mary Win King: [00:01:39] Yeah. So my heart and mission for this business is to first and foremost use the gifts and talents that God has given us to literally serve our community. And my goal is to make design and home staging fun and simple for our clients that they love working with us and letting their homes be represented in who they are because so many people aren’t able to walk in their homes and feel who they are in their personality, and it’s just an honor to help them with that.

Stone Payton: [00:02:12] So what is the most fun? What’s the most rewarding for you about the work?

Mary Win King: [00:02:17] Oh, goodness. One of the most rewarding things is to be able to call our clients, our friends at the end or in the middle of our projects. Probably one of the best compliments that I’ve gotten from one of our clients was just her saying that we made her year. Her home was dark and she lived in it for six years and didn’t know that it could truly reflect her and be a place of a breath of fresh air for her and to truly have a kitchen where she can bake with her daughter and, you know, really love it and be there and let it reflect.

Stone Payton: [00:02:54] Her, that’s got to feel good. You must sleep really well at night, right?

Mary Win King: [00:02:57] I do. After working really hard, I do.

Stone Payton: [00:03:01] So from working hard and from knowing the good. The good that you’re doing.

Mary Win King: [00:03:04] Really? Yes, absolutely. And reaching our clients on a deeper level and not just design. And this is about like loving on our community that way.

Stone Payton: [00:03:15] So take me back to the beginning. How in the world did you find yourself in this line of work?

Mary Win King: [00:03:21] So I had always wanted to do interior design and home staging. I remember thinking back as a teenager, helping my mom pick out fabrics and wallpaper for our home and saying, Mom, clearly it’s it’s this choice. And she, you know, because she would struggle like many people do and just always wanting to do it. So then, you know, God opened some doors for me to work at a retail decorating store called Scottsdale Farms and Milton and get hands on experience and kind of apprentice under an interior designer. And, you know, we became best friends and got to love, love doing it and and helping people come in every day with pictures of their home and being able to say, okay, what what is your style? Let’s pick out a piece of artwork or a rug that reflects you and base the design around that.

Stone Payton: [00:04:14] I love that approach. I love that framing that you start with the person and who they are and helping them express that through the way that they they design their home. I think that is fantastic. Say more about this, this Apprentice experience, because it sounds like you have had the benefit of some fabulous, what do you call it? Mentor shifts, say more about Scottsdale forms and that whole experience.

Mary Win King: [00:04:39] Sure. So, yeah, it was it was a friend named Damon that literally he would challenge me. He would say, okay, we’re looking to make this this space a transitional space. What does that mean to you? Go grab chairs, artwork, you know, colors that that that would reflect from your design aspect. And the neat thing is, is we saw things differently and yet we were both great at our job. So that’s the fun part about design, is it can go in different directions and still reflect that person.

Stone Payton: [00:05:18] Yeah. So do you find yourself now in a position of. Mentoring other people in your space or.

Mary Win King: [00:05:26] It’s funny that you ask me that. Yeah. Actually, I’m currently trying to help someone. A lady approached me actually through the Woodstock Business Club. It was a contact of a contact, and she said that she had a friend that was looking to start an interior design business in South Carolina, which is where me and my husband are originally from. Mm hmm. And so she asked if I would help her kind of guide her through that and what the business aspect looks like. And two and a half years in, I feel like I can give her some good guidance and lessons learned and all of that. So she, you know, just asked if she could shadow and ask me a bunch of questions. And I said, of course. So I love helping people that way as well because it’s it’s different starting your own business, but it’s it’s worth it if you love what you’re doing well.

Stone Payton: [00:06:14] And there’s practicing the craft. But to your point, you’re also running a business like, for example, and I got a ton of questions around every aspect of running the business for you, but I’ll start with sales and marketing. How do you get the new clients?

Mary Win King: [00:06:29] The best way to do that is through referrals so that the clients that I have helped know how deeply I care about them. Yeah. And for them, you know say on Cherokee connect to say Mary win is awesome go go with her. And I mean, honestly, that’s the best meaningful way to help get the word out and keep it community based.

Stone Payton: [00:06:53] So don’t you just love Cherokee Connect? I do. And Josh Bagby and he must surround himself with some great people as well. But I just we’ve had Justin in the studio and he’s I mean, just what a great person. And I just love this thing he’s put together. And, you know, you’ve mentioned community. You’ve also mentioned briefly Woodstock Business Club and now Cherokee Connect. We got a lot going for us here locally, don’t we?

Mary Win King: [00:07:18] It’s amazing. And if you get to know the business owners one on one, you’re just like, wow, it’s special.

Stone Payton: [00:07:26] That’s one of the things I love about this work is that, you know, they’ll come in and today it’s just me and you. But a lot of times it’ll be two or three different businesses in here and giving them a chance to connect and talk to each other. And it just without exception in my experience and I’ve been here almost two years now, Holly and I and they they really they want to help you succeed, even if they’re in your space. I don’t know that anybody else is in my space around here, but I mean, I c I had a, I had an episode Chris Chris Creamer with Atlanta Drone Cleaning. He had two other people in a similar business like to do the pressure washing the soft washing and he was trying to help. He wasn’t even here for him. He was trying. He’s he’s a main Street warrior, you know, he’s part of our thing. But he was trying to help them. And I love that that’s all over this community.

Mary Win King: [00:08:15] It’s that way. Yeah. And the neat thing is, is there’s enough business to go around. Everybody wants to live here, which I don’t blame them. You know, like, you’ve got the best of both worlds. You have the country and the horses, and I love that. And then you have the city and the small town feel and you know all that it has to offer.

Stone Payton: [00:08:32] Yeah. All right. So let’s talk about the work a little bit. Yeah, let’s say. Well, you know, I really did. It sounds like something I’m making up, but it is the God’s honest truth. Just yesterday, you crossed my mind. I knew we were going to have the interview, but Holly and my sister in law who came into town to watch Holly act over here in the in the play, the murder on the Orient Express. So Susan was here, and so so they decided it was time to take down winter and put up Easter. So, of course, it’s my job to go to the attic and get all the tubs, you know. But that is the beginning and the end of my expertise. But watching them think through and watching Holly get Susan’s ideas on how we should set up Easter and all that. But yeah, talk about the work. Let’s say that that Holly engaged you and had to, like, walk through what that process is like and maybe some of the specific services that might have unfolded as a result of that.

Mary Win King: [00:09:25] Sure. So we have recently simplified our process for our clients to try to kind of have six different custom bundles or packages which most clients might fall under. No, I don’t want to say all but most. So what we would do is we would initially set up a design consultation that would typically be where we would come. Me and my assistant would come to your home and walk through your space that you currently have and for you to tell us, okay, I love this inherited piece, we want to work around that or I’d love to change this and really be able to measure and get a grasp of what we’re working with and what you do like and what you don’t like. So that typically lasts about an hour, hour and a half, and that design consultation is $150. So that gives us a basis to kind of get a game plan of how to move forward. So with that being said, we’ve kind of started with these packages just as a basis to start from. So like the largest tier is called the Foundational focus package, and that would include like if the client needed any remodel or construction in addition to the just.

Stone Payton: [00:10:42] A great time to bring you in, right. Like we’re going to carve out half of this wall and we’re going to put a bar here and we’re going to that’s a great time to bring you.

Mary Win King: [00:10:48] Absolutely. Just even to get the scale and proportion correct. Like, you know, we had a client that kind of took out an L-shaped Island that she had that was making her kitchen feel really small. And, you know, we’re she was like, well, how big does my new island need to be? You know, those questions that really are important to get right. So obviously helping them with that. So that would be the foundational focus is kind of the bigger like if you’re doing kind of a larger project. Now, we’ve also helped a client with a ground up home in helping the exterior design of that and now getting to help with the interior design. But that could also include if the client needs shopping and decor as well, like furniture and paint colors and, you know, decor down to the pillows, which are one of my favorite things to shop for.

Stone Payton: [00:11:36] Well, it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that you may have one client that is. Yeah, I want you to go do the shopping. Tell me what to do. Go. You go get it. You just make it happen. Here’s a check, you know? Yeah. And then others that are like, Well, no, I want to go do this. I enjoy the shopping or I want you to go with me. There’s probably that whole continuum, right?

Mary Win King: [00:11:54] It really is. And it’s really fun. Like, I love going and shopping with clients too, because you get to hear their aspect of, you know, of the design as you’re in the store looking at different elements. And then we have so the below kind of the foundational focus. We have a package called the Cherry on top, and I just love that because say you have your walls and it could include paint colors if you need to change that. But if you have everything the foundation already finished for yourself and you just are looking to kind of top. It off with your furniture and, you know, rugs that are just scale in your room and artwork and things like that, then that’s kind of where that package might laugh or someone. But to your point of different people needing different things, the the package under that is called the Jumpstart package. Now we kind of base that if a client needed a specific room, like if they were struggling with a certain space in their home, we kind of base that one around it where we could help them specifically. However, to customize it and to tailor it to this one client. The Jumpstart package actually included doing a design consultation and our last client needed online help. She didn’t. She didn’t for us to help her. The best way we could serve her was we did the consultation. She needed about 25 to 30 different decor items throughout her home, not just one room. She still kind of fell under that jumpstart, you know, package concept. But then we were able to go home and work online and send her some links to each of those elements, and then she could buy them as she pleased. So she was on her own time frame for that. So really just looking and seeing what works for each client best.

Stone Payton: [00:13:47] Yeah, well, I love the flexibility because it’s not like at my home I have a little home office because we’re kind of empty nesters now. And, you know, so if I wanted to re jigger that, you could come in and say, okay, we’ll start here. And it sounds like you could come do a consultation and they could hit the brakes there and say, okay, this has been great. You’ve given me some great ideas. You’re not necessarily coming in guns ablaze and trying to write.

Mary Win King: [00:14:13] No. And and as long as I always say clients, please just communicate with me. Communication is best because then we both know what our jobs are and everybody has a lot going on and that’s okay. So if we communicate and say, okay, Mary, when I love the consultation, I love the idea, Hey, we need to wait a month, then I will contact you in a month, you know, and that works out great too. And the last thing that we’ve kind of formed that is fun is called the Designer for the day package, where if you need just it would be us coming in for 4 hours of like impactful design help of do you want you know, where the client could say, okay, should I put curtains here? And we would be able to answer all of those specific questions. And then therefore, if they need to help pass that we can, or if the client wants to do it themselves, they can.

Stone Payton: [00:15:05] So I’m sitting here kind of wondering what would keep a person from having you come in. And the only thing I can think of and it’s it’s it’s I would put it under the banner of disbelief or a concern that doesn’t warrant concern that maybe you’re going to be judgmental, right? Yeah. Is that something that you.

Mary Win King: [00:15:25] Oh, gosh.

Stone Payton: [00:15:25] I run into.

Mary Win King: [00:15:26] I do and I feel like. So I, I want people to understand that I’m like one of the most approachable people as you as you know now.

Stone Payton: [00:15:38] Yes. Yes.

Mary Win King: [00:15:39] The the this is not a judgment. This is not a place of judgment. We all have areas that we need help in. And design might just be something that someone needs help in. And it could incorporate some organization maybe, or, you know, just rethinking things. So that is something I would love for people to take the pressure off of themselves for just no judgment.

Stone Payton: [00:16:03] The only analogy that comes to mind for me is people who are at the top of their game and professional services or sports. You know, sometimes they’ll they’ll bring in a coach, right, who is, you know, a professional basketball player might bring in a coach that is just he is the free throw guy. Right. And we’re going to help you get nail that down. And it doesn’t make you less. It makes you more. I mean, so I kind of put it in that box for me from my frame of reference is, you know, get you a design coach for a day or a half a day for this room or whatever and bring it in. But yeah, I think so you run into that occasionally or Yeah, you have to be cognizant that, that Absolutely.

Mary Win King: [00:16:41] And I just, I always tell people, don’t worry, life is life. Life happens if you have you know, so many people have animals and young children and things that they’re working around and that’s okay. Like that is that is just everybody’s life. And so we want to actually make the design practical for what your everyday life looks like, whatever that is, you know?

Stone Payton: [00:17:04] Yeah. And you’re coming in with with expertise as opposed to bias. Like maybe you in a million years would never have a splash of. I think it’s knitting needles. Gray is what we have on our walls. And maybe you in a million years in your own home, you would never put that in your own home. But you’re not doing your home. You’re doing holly home.

Mary Win King: [00:17:21] Exactly. Exactly.

Stone Payton: [00:17:22] That’s something. And then you find. If that’s what we want for the background, then let’s make that pop or not pop or whatever you want to do. So you’re not you’re not Mary, winning the place. Exactly. You’re coming in with your expertise.

Mary Win King: [00:17:38] That’s exactly right. And that is what I want for it to set us apart. Like, it doesn’t matter what my personal design style is, it really matters what makes you feel good. And that I always tell a client during the consultation, I don’t want them to hire me for them just to like their home. I want them to love their home. And so in text messages and, you know, going back and forth, if they don’t say they love it, then I know we haven’t hit the market.

Stone Payton: [00:18:06] Now, are you staying firmly niched in the established home owner, someone who’s there? Or are you also finding that that there’s a market to help? Well, like real estate agents, people are putting their their home on the market to get it to where it’s it helps them sell their home.

Mary Win King: [00:18:24] Absolutely. So on the design side, my brain can’t, but I automatically go to resale value. I will ask the homeowner. So I kind of automatically think that way. But with helping the real estate agents, the neat thing is, is that has primarily been on the home staging side. But see, that is where I love bringing the business full circle of being able to hopefully help a client with their interior design and then be able to help them stage it to get it ready to go on the market. Whether that’s in recent time or if it’s in five years, it really doesn’t matter. But when I am helping on the design side, I always say, okay, are y’all planning to stay in this home? Or if we’re doing some major, you know, money investment for resale that that’s so important to think about and not overlook for for the future?

Stone Payton: [00:19:22] All right. So let’s talk about being an entrepreneur, running a business. So it’s great that you’re doing all this. Shout out to Damon. Was it Scottsdale, Forbes? I mean, that seemed like it was a great situation for you. Talk a little bit about what it was like when you decided to to make this transition, because now you’ve got to run a business, too.

Mary Win King: [00:19:42] Yeah, well, the great thing is, is also I have some family that are entrepreneurs and just knowing that if we and also I will say some of my friends that are real estate agents have helped me on the entrepreneur side and just really kind of been some mentors for me. I would say that I’ve had to just. Know that that one, everything that you would mark off your list of starting a business was one step closer. And to encourage people that way, you know, like the like the friend that I’m helping with, you know, potentially starting one in South Carolina, like go in every day and say, I’m gonna mark one next thing off your list that you accomplish that will help you get closer to starting that business and help you get better. You know, I mean, part of my studying, I mean, I would go to libraries and rent out books. I mean, I just love it. I love there’s a local actual designer, Brian Patrick Flynn, and he is amazing. But he was self-taught. So that encouragement. Right. You know, because I went to Clemson, but I didn’t major in it. But I’ve always had a passion for it. So to me, the passion can override, you know, anything else that you just don’t necessarily know until you do it.

Stone Payton: [00:21:11] So so you study the craft, you read about that. Do you find yourself also reading blogs, books, websites, listening to shows or around how to run a business to? Do you.

Mary Win King: [00:21:22] See that? Yes. And but I will say that I my main thing is I want to do God’s will in this. And I have let him, you know, really lead me in in how we operate. And I do love studying other designers and everything, but I also. Want to make sure that I just stay true to the heart of this business and why I started it and not not veer off, you know, too much from that. And just knowing that it’s about relationships.

Stone Payton: [00:21:55] It really is. Isn’t your business in particular, I would think is just it can’t be transactional. It really does have to be grounded in in relationship. And it requires, I suspect, a level of trust. Yes. Right.

Mary Win King: [00:22:10] Yes, it does. It really does. So kind of that moment that the light bulb kind of goes off in in someone’s mind of like, okay, all right, she’s done enough to where I can trust, you know, like and she say, like one of my clients was I was measuring for mirrors the other day for her home. And I was like, well, what do you think about this idea? She was like, Marilyn, I trust you. Just go for it, you know? So like that, to get to that point is, is a great feeling and it’s important. And I want other people to feel that and to know, you know, how much I do truly care.

Stone Payton: [00:22:45] Well, and do you find let’s say again, we’ll go and play that thing out with Holly. Let’s say Holly brings you in, you do a consultation. You kind of help her think through transitioning between the different holidays because she’ll do winter. She’ll do Easter. Yeah. What is it? She skips something. And of course, Halloween, Christmas and we have tubs that are that color. Like we have orange tubs with black lids. That’s Halloween. That’s great. It pastel tilts came down. Right? Right. And so so it’s all color coded in that kind of thing. And then do you find that okay, you’ll see. You’ll see Holly again for Halloween or or summer or whatever. Yeah.

Mary Win King: [00:23:23] Yeah. I think that’s important. As long as they communicate that they need me, I will mark time off, you know, and make sure that we set that apart. Yeah. I helped a client decorate for Christmas last year, and then she was like, Now make sure you have time for me next year. And I’m like, Of course I will. So she’s a client that I’ve been working with ongoing for about actually two years. Mar will be two years. Wow. You know what an honor for that of like, you know, just being able to help them with their ongoing projects within their home.

Stone Payton: [00:23:55] Well, I think that’s marvelous. I’m not even a little bit surprised that that’s the case. So I was thinking like, we have this we have a little patio home right here on the edge of downtown Woodstock, and it has a little side screened in porch that, you know, we enjoy TV outside and we have and now I’m thinking of trying to make it more like a I’m thinking about maybe a whiskey barrel. Yeah, maybe make it a little more outdoorsy, that kind of stuff. And not just the ideas of what the space could be and all, but you also probably almost certainly know maybe a good place to go find that couch or that outdoor furniture or maybe even that whiskey barrel. Or if you don’t, you’re like, okay, I’m going to go look at where are some good place to get a whiskey barrel and I’ll get back to you, right?

Mary Win King: [00:24:40] Absolutely. It’s funny you mention a whiskey barrel because I have one of those in my half bath. That’s part of I think that’s hilarious. Oh, it’s great. I have to give credit to my husband on that one. That was his idea. But yeah, exactly. So have lots of great contacts to shop there and, you know, points of references. A lot of times, thankfully, I am able to even text some people that work at different, you know, different stores and and have relationships with them. And but I do love always finding new resources if if I don’t know exactly where I’m initially going for something, it’s probably fun. It’s so fun. It’s so fun. And and sometimes, you know, you can find some surprising deals online, but you just have to know how what you’re looking for. Right. And and that’s where it’s great when when we can come in and help because even down to the dimensions of a chandelier, like knowing what’s going to look right in a space and making sure it’s not too small or not too big, that’s important and it’s hard for others to visualize it.

Stone Payton: [00:25:46] Yeah. And you’ve done so many, you have a much better feel for that. And if you find the place to get my whiskey barrel now, that’s kind of in your file. Absolutely. So the next family that wants a whiskey barrel, you’ve got you’ve got this, you’ve got these three whiskey barrel places you’re going to go check out, right?

Mary Win King: [00:26:01] Yeah. Yeah. And in that boils down to then knowing okay or those people that I would like future clients to work with or, you know, or should we keep looking, you know, kind of thing. So but to be able to say, hey, go over and visit so-and-so at the local store, I just think it really helps once again bring it down to a fun experience. And keeping it simple.

Stone Payton: [00:26:26] Yeah, well, it’s like if somebody asked me about equipment, like maybe they’re going to do a podcast thing on their own, you know, I can save them a lot of heartache by, you know, don’t buy this kind of might get.

Mary Win King: [00:26:35] This kind of like.

Stone Payton: [00:26:35] Here’s some just because this is my.

Mary Win King: [00:26:38] World. Right right right exactly. And. And so it’s it’s so fun to be able to to help different things. And I like, I like challenges. I, I don’t I don’t want to just stay in one realm of style to help certain clients that only have, you know, say, an updated traditional style or something like that.

Stone Payton: [00:26:58] Yeah. You mentioned your husband briefly. What’s his.

Mary Win King: [00:27:00] Name? His name is Corey.

Stone Payton: [00:27:01] Corey. So but the reason I mention it is in my experience, this is at least been true for me. Having a support system has been so incredibly helpful to me in my entrepreneurial journey. And I just I got to believe and I have it, spousal support, people that are close to you, have you found that to be important for you as well?

Mary Win King: [00:27:24] Very, including our 11 year old daughter. She’s so supportive. And and it gives me an opportunity as an entrepreneur to tell her, look, if you love something, go after it. Don’t be scared, take some risks. You know, and this was the kind of one of the first times that I’ve been able to take a risk on myself in doing it, but also kind of follow your gut. And that’s something I really want and hope for, even for my clients. Like one of my goals that you and I talked about prior, but is to work with our clients so closely to where at the end of a project they can go out and even feel good about selecting something for themselves decor wise, you know? And like one of my clients said, I just keep coming back to this one piece of artwork. I’m like, Good, That’s what I want you to listen to, you know? And she loved it and it worked and totally worked. So. So just yes, our family, I’m so thankful for such a great support system. And just the neat thing is, is my husband and I have just recently finished building a ground up cabin in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. And so that was a fun experience to be able to use our design elements and like bounce ideas off of each other. And he has a good eye too. So just really pull things and make it what we really wanted to envision it being.

Stone Payton: [00:28:53] So, yeah. Okay. I’m going to shift gears on you a little bit here before we wrap. I’m interested to know and it turns out our listeners are too. We’ve got some great feedback on asking this this question outside the scope of your work. What, if anything, do you have a tendency to nerd out about and really get involved with? For me, it’s hunting and fishing.

Mary Win King: [00:29:12] Oh yeah. My other love is horses and outdoor, you know, nature and animals. And we have three cats and two horses and one dog and 13 acres in ball ground. And so, so yeah. So just spending time with them and having friends over to spend time with them and kind of get that, you know, just laid back feel of being at the barn.

Stone Payton: [00:29:39] Yeah. So you kind of live that, that country life. Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s awesome. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Tap into your work, have a conversation with with you, email, LinkedIn, whatever is appropriate, but let’s make sure they can connect with you.

Mary Win King: [00:29:55] Yeah. So the we have a website, of course, so you can contact us through our website. It’s w w w dot simplicity home staging and design with the word and actually spelled out dot com. And then if you’d like to email us, it is simplicity home interiors at gmail.com. Or you can feel free to pick up the phone and actually call me or text me, which would be great. At 6062600175. And I would love to add that we didn’t talk too much about home staging, but we love doing occupied and vacant home staging for our a lot of real estate agents, home owners that are getting their homes ready to go on the market as well. And we’ve had experience and been blessed to be able to help stage homes from anywhere from 250,000 all the way up to 3 million. So it’s it’s been a great experience to see that transformation. And in a few hours, it can make a huge difference.

Stone Payton: [00:31:03] Well, I bet it does. It it can make a real difference in the price that you get for your home. So realtors out there, yeah, you’d like to connect with them as well. Well, you know, what might be fun is have you come back sometime? Maybe with a delighted realtor client and we’ll give them a chance to talk about about their business, but. But also maybe talk about how you collaborate.

Mary Win King: [00:31:24] Absolutely.

Stone Payton: [00:31:25] I think that would be a very informative segment. So if you’re up for that woman, I love that.

Mary Win King: [00:31:30] Yeah, already. Yeah, I would love that because it just to educate people how much it can truly help. And those online pictures when when potential buyers are scanning through to let. Your home set apart and stand out to being clean and simple and really letting the flow work for them to see them in their home. You know, it just it really can be so important.

Stone Payton: [00:31:53] All right. We’re going to make that happen.

Mary Win King: [00:31:54] Awesome.

Stone Payton: [00:31:55] Well, it has been an absolute delight having you in the studio this morning. Thanks. Well, thank you for sharing your insight, your perspective and your energy. I thank you. I love your. This has been fantastic. You’re doing important work and we sure appreciate you.

Mary Win King: [00:32:11] Thank you so much.

Stone Payton: [00:32:13] My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Mary winking with simplicity, home staging and design, and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.

 

Tagged With: Simplicity Home Staging & Design

Thriving After Trauma: An Interview with Karen Nowicki, Phoenix Business RadioX® and Deep Impact Leadership Coaching & Consulting

February 23, 2023 by John Ray

Karen Nowicki
North Fulton Studio
Thriving After Trauma: An Interview with Karen Nowicki, Phoenix Business RadioX® and Deep Impact Leadership Coaching & Consulting
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Karen Nowicki

Thriving After Trauma: An Interview with Karen Nowicki, Phoenix Business RadioX® and Deep Impact Leadership Coaching & Consulting

What do you do when trauma hits you without warning? How do you recover personally? How do you hold it together for the clients you work for in your services practice? How do you get to a point where you can thrive again? Karen Nowicki, Phoenix Business RadioX® and Deep Impact Leadership Coaching & Consulting, joined host John Ray to discuss the trauma of her husband’s suicide attempt, what she did to cope with her own mental health challenges that followed, her decision to share her journey in detail, how she managed her two businesses through those difficult times, and much more.

The Price and Value Journey is presented by John Ray and produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Phoenix Business RadioX®

Since 2017, Phoenix Business RadioX® has successfully launched, promoted, and produced over 1500 podcast episodes covering topics from BioScience Careers to High Tech Lending …and just about everything in between.

Website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Karen Nowicki, Owner, iNudge LLC, Phoenix Business RadioX® and Deep Impact Leadership Coaching & Consulting

Karen Nowicki, Owner, iNudge LLC, Phoenix Business RadioX® and Deep Impact Leadership Coaching & Consulting

Karen Nowicki is the Owner of iNudge LLC, the parent company to Phoenix Business RadioX and Deep Impact Leadership Coaching & Consulting.

Executive Leaders and Business Owners hire Karen to accelerate their intrapersonal / interpersonal relationships and harness the power of a growth mindset.

Karen has spent over 30 years in corporate, small business and educational leadership roles and for the past 10 years has held an impressive private client list that includes c-suite leaders in a variety of industries, including: technology, medical, higher education, hospitality, and finance.

Karen is an impeccably trained Integration Coach with certifications in communications, facilitative leadership, mindfulness, trauma integration, tao healing, talent management, and strategic planning.

LinkedIn

TRANSCRIPT

John Ray: [00:00:04] And hello, everyone. I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. And I am delighted to welcome Karen Nowicki. Karen is with Phoenix Business RadioX and Deep Impact Leadership Coaching and Consulting. And just a way of introducing Karen, what do you do if, not only in your professional services practice but in your life, trauma comes right out of the blue and drops right in your lap? And how do you hold it together and recover? And that’s what we’re going to be talking with Karen about today.

John Ray: [00:00:40] Karen is a successful author, speaker. She has her own coaching practice, as I mentioned. The name of that practice is Deep Impact Leadership Coaching and Consulting. Karen’s been an expert guest on regional television and radio shows. She’s a regular contributor to many print and online magazines, blogs for both business and education. And where I intersect with her proudly is that she and I are colleagues in the Business RadioX Network, and Karen’s the much smarter studio partner than I am, but she runs the Phoenix Business RadioX Studio. And Karen Nowicki, it’s just a pleasure to have this time to chat.

Karen Nowicki: [00:01:29] I’m excited to spend time with you, John. It’s usually a quick text or a phone call, how are you doing this, what’s going on here, between either one of us. And we have yet to ever meet in-person, but we’ve got to change that in 2023.

John Ray: [00:01:42] I look forward to that. Yeah. I want to correct that. So, let’s put that on our list for 2023. I like that.

Karen Nowicki: [00:01:52] Did I say ’23, too, I think? I meant 2023. If I said ’22, I can’t keep up.

John Ray: [00:01:58] Well, let’s get each other the right year. I’m not sure I said the right one. But I gave a little bit of an overview of you and your work. But like me, you have two different professional services businesses, so give everyone a little bit of an overview of that work.

Karen Nowicki: [00:02:16] Sure. Again, thank you for having me be with you and your listeners today or viewers. I have been referred to, for years, as the ultimate problem solver and solution finder. For the past 24 years, I’ve acquired advanced training and certifications in executive leadership, trauma integration, Tao Healing, and then organizational and personal development.

Karen Nowicki: [00:02:40] And it just made sense that while I was running my coaching practice – which you’ve mentioned a little bit – almost six years ago to open Phoenix Business RadioX and run that alongside it. And I’ll talk about why that was so important in a moment.

Karen Nowicki: [00:02:54] My greatest strength is the ability to help people understand what they need, what they want, and how to have that come together on a consistent and daily basis. Most of the time, it’s telling people and showing them how to get out of their own way. And I know the business of business as well as the business of people. And so, let’s face it, in any business, we’re always dealing with people.

Karen Nowicki: [00:03:19] And so, it just made sense, Business RadioX was a wreath on my door and an opportunity for me to kind of elevate my exposure as a leader when it comes to personal and professional development. And I haven’t ever looked back and regretted the decision. It’s been hard to run both businesses at times, especially these last couple of years. But I’m doing it and I’ve got the right team to help me now.

John Ray: [00:03:45] Yeah. That’s terrific. I’m curious for you – and we’ve talked a little bit about this, but for our listeners – why later on Business RadioX specifically, and that work among all the other things you could have done next to your coaching practice?

Karen Nowicki: [00:04:03] It’s a great question. I think it’s an important one for you and I when we encourage people to take on podcasting or B2B radio in their businesses, because not everybody understands why at Business RadioX we do the things that we do it or the way we do it.

Karen Nowicki: [00:04:18] So, six years ago I had sold a business, and it gave me the leverage to hire a coach and think about how do I want the next layer of my career to be. And, also at the same time, gave me the leverage to open an auto mechanic shop for my then husband. So, I went to my coach and I said I continue to work with professionals. These were attorneys, doctors, successful entrepreneurs and business owners, typically highly visible in their industries and was coaching them at a very soulful, personal, and professional level. And yet they weren’t referring me like other people were, the general laypeople.

Karen Nowicki: [00:04:58] And I knew that I was making a huge difference in their lives because I was always the one they were texting saying, “Thank you. I finally solved that problem at work. I finally hired the right teammate. My husband or my wife and I are getting along better. I had you sit on my shoulder when I had those conversations.” Like, all that acknowledgement told me that they were stepping into their life and leadership in an incredible way and I got to be the catalyst and the help to kind of either nudge or shove them into that depending on what they needed. And yet they weren’t referring to me.

Karen Nowicki: [00:05:32] And so, my coach said, “Well, go ask them. These are people that you’ve gotten to know and they really care about you. And clearly, you’re making a difference.” Their feedback to me, John, was, “Well, why would I tell anybody you’re my best kept secret. Like, you’re my secret weapon.” And they weren’t interested in telling me.

Karen Nowicki: [00:05:47] And that was difficult for me to hear because at that time my coaching practice was referral only, which is a mistake, but it’s how I built it. I didn’t understand marketing and advertising nor did I want to do it. And I really have never liked the sales part of things.

Karen Nowicki: [00:06:06] And so, my coach challenged me to maybe consider a podcast. And at first I thought that was an awful idea. I quickly, within two hours of research, came across Business RadioX. And I could just tell that they were or we are doing things differently. It’s about the story and shine the spotlight on someone else. So, I thought, I can do that.

Karen Nowicki: [00:06:28] And within a week, was in Atlanta visiting with Stone and Lee, following them around and paying attention to what they’re doing. And by the time I flew home about four days later, I had made the decision to open Phoenix Business RadioX so that I could show up among our leaders in the Metro Phoenix area, have conversations about what’s important to them, their industries, their verticals, their decisions, their initiatives. And in exchange, have an opportunity to get to know them at a really deep level. And then, in turn, be able to say, “Here’s what I do outside of Business RadioX. If you know anybody who’s struggling with personal growth or professional development or leadership or finances, whatever it is, have them have a conversation with me.”

John Ray: [00:07:13] You know, it’s amazing what you can do with a mic, isn’t it? I mean, that’s terrific. Well, I want to get right into your story, Karen, or the reason we’re doing this show in terms of the trauma that hit you and your now former husband, Mike. I want you to share whatever piece of that you want to share and how you want to share that story.

Karen Nowicki: [00:07:38] Yeah. It’s not an easy conversation to share and it’s also not very easy for people to listen to. Back in 2019, my then husband attempted suicide and survived gunshot wound through his head. It was a total surprise to me. We closed his auto shop and we unraveled the mystery of how did this all happened while he was lying in the trauma intensive care unit for the first month of his recovery. I came to see that there was addiction and gambling and just really a lot of mental health challenges that weren’t as evident as they were. We had been together for 15 years, the love of my life.

Karen Nowicki: [00:08:27] And I struggled to get up everyday. I struggled to help our then 12 year old kind of make his way through it. I have two older kids as well who very much loved and cared for Mike and they were trying to make sense out of it. They were living out of the house, already adults.

Karen Nowicki: [00:08:45] And being so visible in our community already because I have had Business RadioX up and running for then almost two-and-a-half years, and the way in which I show up in social media even before this, is kind of I’m visible, here are the situations, the struggles, the challenges that I go through, I decided that I was going to tell the story while it was happening.

Karen Nowicki: [00:09:10] That was, I’ll say, a divine download. I woke up one morning and what was on my heart and in my head was you will tell this story as it’s happening. And I thought, “Oh. You can’t ask me to do that.” I was in trauma. I was in crisis. I wanted to just pull the sheets over my head and just disappear. And yet the next thought that I heard was, “I’ve prepared you your whole life for this.” And I thought, “Well, that’s a crappy way. Why would that ever be part of my story?” Because I pride myself on knowing people so well, and helping people, and getting really clear about soulful self-reliance and deep impact leadership, how could I end up with a partner who went to bed with me every night, that was the love of my life, end up wanting to take his own life?

Karen Nowicki: [00:09:59] So, long story short, Mike and I are no longer together. He wasn’t willing to or wasn’t capable of, I think is more more appropriate to say, to do the work it required to be a healthy whole unit between he and I and then, of course, our son. And it just made more sense safety-wise, mentally, physically, emotionally for Ivan and I to be on our own. I do know that he is now with his family in a different state. They’ve chosen not to have anything to do with us, which is heartbreaking. And at the same time, I continue to recover from that, all the while keeping both businesses open and being very vocal about my own mental health journey throughout this chaos and trauma and that of my sons.

John Ray: [00:10:46] Wow. A lot there. Let’s talk about the processing, the idea that all this was going on with your life partner and you had no idea. I mean, in terms of just the mental health struggles and then the financial issues and other issues that you talked about that were going on, how did you process just getting hit by this out of the blue?

Karen Nowicki: [00:11:16] I would like to say people will tell me that I processed it really well. And my first reaction is, “No. No. I didn’t.” When we fall into trauma or chaos, we go into the fight, flight, or freeze, or fawn mode and we’re now using a different part of our brain just for survival. So, a lot of it really, John, is a blur. Even though I was writing daily on our CaringBridge page and then, of course, on social media, it was really a therapeutic opportunity for me to try to make sense out of everything.

Karen Nowicki: [00:11:47] Mike and I were both building our businesses at the same time. Phoenix Business RadioX was brand new, so is his auto shop. And one business alone for a family is difficult in those early startup days, you and I both know that, let alone two. So, while I felt like we were grounded and corrected – excuse me – grounded and connected, he had his set of challenges and expenses and I had mine. And so, I knew he wasn’t feeling well physically. I was oblivious to – because he wasn’t willing to share it – what was going on mentally.

Karen Nowicki: [00:12:21] And I think that’s the most important call out here for our listeners and our viewers. Not everybody, one, knows when they’re struggling mental health-wise. And even if they do, there’s so much stigma and so much fear about saying to somebody I am not well, I am not doing well and I need help. Like, for Suicide Prevention Month and even just mental health awareness, we always say I’m there for you, be on the lookout for clues and that sort of stuff.

Karen Nowicki: [00:12:53] And I will tell you, I think we are very good at hiding that stuff, which is part of why I’ve told my story so vocally and so visibly, because my story is no longer Mike’s story, nor was it even when it was happening. I had to deal with my own mental health. And so, I just got really good about asking for help and being very candid, “I feel like crap right now” or “I don’t even know which way is up.”

Karen Nowicki: [00:13:20] And always continue to have faith. I said to you earlier today before we got on the interview that the universe always has my back. And I believe that for all of us. If we can hold on to hope, we can get through anything. And I always knew that at some point beyond that threshold of chaos and craziness and be, fortunately, where I am today, even though the fog has just finally lifted the last couple of months.

John Ray: [00:13:44] Well, I want to dive into that a little more, the universe has my back. What are the beliefs that underlie that statement that you have?

Karen Nowicki: [00:13:55] For me, it’s faith-based. I don’t attend a church any longer. I grew up Catholic and have always been a very soulful, spiritual person, very led by a belief in a higher power. And even though life has proven to give me challenge after challenge, business and career, and marriages, and even challenges with kids, and health, and all that stuff, I continue to give that over to a higher power. And when I say the universe has got my back, I don’t know that it matters what faith we have or if we have any faith as long as we believe that there is something better on the other side of a challenge.

Karen Nowicki: [00:14:37] And so, every time I have a challenge, small, medium, or large, I just know where’s the growth, where can I learn more about me, learn more about me and how I show up in the world that I can take into this next iteration of where I’m going after, this stuff is behind me.

John Ray: [00:14:56] So, when all this happened with Mike, you decided pretty quickly that your response needed to be journaling, sharing what you had. And we’re not talking about private journaling. I mean, we’re talking, really, about online journaling. You can explain more about what I mean by that. But what was the genesis of that decision for you?

Karen Nowicki: [00:15:21] Again, I will tell you that it wasn’t my decision. I know that might sound crazy. But in my meditation practice and the way in which I just am very soulfully self-reliant, I listen very deeply to what my soul needs and how I’m supposed to show up in the world. So, I know that gets a little bit woo, but there you go. So, very early on within three or four days, again, I woke up and I just knew that I was being called from a higher place to journal and share publicly what was going on for me. And it was a survival mode.

Karen Nowicki: [00:16:04] My son said it recently that it was a way for me to survive and thrive versus a way for me to story tell and get attention. It doesn’t fit with everybody’s narrative. You know, there’s a handful of people, my family included, thinks I did it for attention and did it just to further my career. If that were that, I literally would have kept the sheet over my head, put a padlock on the door, and said, “I’m done. I’m out.”

Karen Nowicki: [00:16:30] And so, I asked three friends to read every entry that I wrote for CaringBridge – that, again, was repeated on social media – so that they could look at it through three layers. One, am I taking care of myself in this? Are you reading it to where you can hear that this really is me trying to find my way through the chaos and make understanding of what’s happening to the degree that I can?

Karen Nowicki: [00:16:53] Two, is it being respectful of Mike and his family and his journey? Because at the time, while I wanted us to be together forever, that was the plan, I never would have guessed that it would not have turned out that way. And yet I knew that at some point he would likely be in a position to be aware that I told the story as it was happening. So, was I respectful to him and his family and his journey? And then, the third piece was, if there could be a nugget for other people who are watching and listening and reading, is that opportunity there for someone to have a takeaway?

Karen Nowicki: [00:17:21] So, all, but I think one journal over the course of probably nine months journal entries, was there ever a sentence that came back? And my very best friend, Julie, came back and said, “This is the only sentence that I’m not sure where you’re coming from on this. It sounds more like ego than anything else. Can you reword it or pull it out?” And with that, I did. That was the only time. The rest of the time it was, “Oh, my gosh. Karen, this is what I’m getting from it and I know this is going to make a difference. And I can hear you getting better and healing as you go through this.”

Karen Nowicki: [00:17:49] So, less of a decision, John, and more of a calling. Which, I think, again, our viewers and our listeners for this particular show, if they’re entrepreneurs and business owners, even solopreneurs, we don’t come into our businesses lightly. We come into it, I think, oftentimes, because we have a calling to do something that’s bigger than us.

John Ray: [00:18:12] Right. Yeah, for sure. Now, this is the part of the story that I’m not sure that I’ve heard before, that you had three trusted friends that knew you quite well, that they sound checked it, I guess maybe is the word, right? They sound checked to make sure that the Karen they knew was speaking.

Karen Nowicki: [00:18:37] Yeah. And this was well before any of the immediate family started attacking and wanting to manage what I was saying and would rather have me be quiet. I just knew that I was fairly visible in our community anyway already. I’d already talked about post-partum depression when my kids were younger, and changing careers, and what is it like to be fairly visible and that sort of stuff, getting older, those kinds of things, even body image and those choices, and how I can grow to love myself more.

Karen Nowicki: [00:19:18] So, knowing that I had already been through all that and sharing in that way, I knew I needed to have people, not fact check, but just sound check and make sure that I was doing it from a place of, first, caring for myself; second, being respectful of Mike and his journey, wherever that would take him; and third, can people hear it from a place of what’s in it for me.

Karen Nowicki: [00:19:39] And it’s proven to be one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done. I hear, still, from people three years later how much I’ve changed their life or the lives of their loved ones. I would say, and I think only firefighters and medical professionals get to say this, I know there are at least eight people whose lives I’ve helped save because they either read or someone read to them the accounting of what I was going through as a dear casualty of somebody who wanted to leave this earth before their time.

John Ray: [00:20:15] I would love it, Karen, if you would share one of those as an example. You know, obviously, we’re not going to mention names or anything like that, any identifiers. But if you could just share an example of one of those stories.

Karen Nowicki: [00:20:30] I can. So, we’re here in Arizona. I had a high school friend reach out through Facebook and mentioned that she was going to be in town – this has been, oh, probably a-year-and-a-half ago – and would I be open to coffee. And we don’t know each other well. We see each other at reunions and, of course, on social media, thumbs up, or a little like this, like that. And I said, I’d love that. And so, I waited at the coffee shop for her to arrive maybe three or four minutes early. And as she’s walking from the parking lot, we smiled at each other.

Karen Nowicki: [00:21:00] And as she’s getting closer, I watch her face change and she starts to get teary eyed. And I was not prepared for that. We gave each other a big hug and she said, “I’m so grateful that you’re sitting down and meeting with me. I need to tell you how much you’ve impacted my life and the life of my fiancé.”

Karen Nowicki: [00:21:18] Now, we’re not spring chickens. We’re celebrating our 40th high school reunion this year, so we’re in our late 50s. And so, this is somebody that I knew as a young girl and have seen at reunions. And she’s in a relationship now. I believe they’re engaged, maybe even married now, a couple of years after we met over coffee.

Karen Nowicki: [00:21:39] And she said that her then partner was struggling with mental health, depression, suicidal ideation. And as she read what I was sharing, being his beloved partner, it was ripping her apart that that could be her and she didn’t know how to handle it. He was unwilling at the time to get professional help. And so, she started reading these entries to him aloud. And I don’t know how soon, but I think within four or five entries, he ended up agreeing to go get professional help by himself and also couples counseling for the two of them.

Karen Nowicki: [00:22:16] And she said I just knew that the anguish and the difficulty that I was sitting in, not having a clue what happened, not having known how to help, and having a partner who refused to get help until it was too late, and even now not getting the help, she just knew that she had to share that. So, I hope that’s kind of the example that you’re looking for.

John Ray: [00:22:43] Wow. That’s tremendous. And there’s no telling what has happened without you even knowing about it. And this is just what you know about in terms of the people that you have impacted by sharing your story so truly authentically.

Karen Nowicki: [00:23:03] Yes. There was no other choice. And now it’s interesting, again, I’m beyond it. We have not been married for over a-year-and-a-half now. And I want to continue to be a beacon of light for people, and it has to be authentic. So, I’m just kind of looking for what’s happening in my life that I can continue sharing.

Karen Nowicki: [00:23:26] You alluded to this, there was catastrophic financial loss that I was not even aware of had already taken place. And so, even though I’m 58 years old, it’s like I’m 23 years old, starting over again and keeping both businesses afloat. I’m so grateful for the community providing some financial support when we were in the midst of the chaos. I have a very dear friend who recently invested in my business so that I could get to the next level with teammates and that sort of thing.

Karen Nowicki: [00:23:55] And, yeah, I feel very grateful that I’ve been willing to get out of my own way and also share that part of the story to help other business owners and individuals who, again, sometimes we think that we’re the only person. I always say, people think that they’re terminally unique. And we’re not. We’re all looking for validation that we’re okay, and that we’re enough, and that we can contribute in some way. We’re all designed fairly similarly, whether we’re an introvert or an extrovert or anywhere in between, we just want to know that we’re here for a reason.

John Ray: [00:24:31] Since you brought up introvert and extrovert, we were talking about this before we came on, you know, the typical listener of this series is a solo and small professional services practitioner, most of whom are introverts as a general proposition. And I can hear the introverts saying, “I can’t believe that Karen shared what she shared.” What do you say to somebody that is thinking that and thinking I’m a private person and there’s no way I could do what you’ve done, Karen?

Karen Nowicki: [00:25:12] Well, stay private. I realized that that is one of my unique – I don’t know what it is – call it a curse or a blessing. One of the unique gifts that I bring to this world is the ability to tell people how I’m feeling as it’s happening. And not everybody can do that publicly.

Karen Nowicki: [00:25:32] However, it’s important to share your story with someone. And when people are fortunate to be in relationships, marriages, or long term friendships where they can really show up authentically as who they are and let someone know when they’re struggling and challenged and they’ve got the right support structure, that’s great.

John Ray: [00:26:16] And I don’t want to make this into something that’s a little crass like personal brand, but I think people hear that and they hear authenticity and showing up. But there’s showing up as – I’ll call it – the made up you. They’re showing up as the Real you. And I mean the capital R, Real you. That’s what you did.

Karen Nowicki: [00:26:58] Yeah. And there’s a way to do that, no matter who you are. This is not about airing your dirty laundry, just to do that, right? Just speaking authentically from a place of some of the challenges, whether it be business, or raising children, or moving to a new location, or the next level in your business, whether you’re introvert or extrovert, I don’t think that matters. As leaders, we’re called to show up authentically and everyone has their own pace and cadence for that.

Karen Nowicki: [00:27:30] That’s one of the neatest things that you and I can offer with Business RadioX, our story matters. And people want to hear what we’ve been through, what challenges do we have, what hurdles did we have to overcome, when did you think you’re going to quit and give up, and what got you through that to to be where you are today, what’s the next challenge that you’re faced with right now going into 2023. Those answers can be from the cuff and they can be from the heart.

Karen Nowicki: [00:27:57] And I think that’s one of the greatest things that Business RadioX has to offer people and with the work that you do, John, with your clients. People need to get out of their own way, myself included. So, I have coaches and guides. When it comes to sales, when it comes to marketing and advertising – I mentioned that early on – those are areas that I’m not well-equipped at and good at. And yet I show up because I’m listening and I’m learning and I’m paying attention to the people who do it better than I can. And they’re helping me learn how to do it for me in a way that it feels real and authentic to me.

John Ray: [00:28:33] So, let’s talk briefly, if we can, just the whole idea of you obviously had to hold yourself together, your relationships together, your children as they navigated this trauma that came out of the blue for them as well. But let’s talk about your businesses and just how you held it together. Because you’ve got to show up for clients and you’re a coach and you’ve got to bring something for that client that’s sitting in front of you with their own issues that may have nothing to do with what you’re dealing with. How did you do that?

Karen Nowicki: [00:29:23] I’m grateful that I had a couple different income streams. So, I think that’s important when we look at it from that perspective of we’re relying only on one avenue of income and it’s solely dependent on us, we’re in trouble. I was fortunate that I could very quickly hire someone to run the studio for me. And with very little direction, she took it over for me. So, that part of my business was handled.

Karen Nowicki: [00:29:49] I did step away from the intimate coaching for a little bit of time because I was no good for anybody, so being able to admit when I needed to step away. And, again, grateful that I had this other business running so that there was still the income.

Karen Nowicki: [00:30:07] As far as working with clients, both here at Business RadioX and in my coaching practice, I had already built enough strong enough relationships just in caring for people deeply and giving them permission to care for me back. That when I was ready to come back into the field full force, I could simply make those calls and send an email and say, “Hey, listen, I’m ready. Here’s the kind of clients that I enjoy working with. If you’re ready to come back and work with me, I’d love that. If not, if you’ll be a referral source for me.”

Karen Nowicki: [00:30:36] So, I think the theme for both of my businesses is when we care deeply for people and we allow people to care deeply for us, the universe works on our behalf. Things will come our way when we know that we are really a force for good.

John Ray: [00:30:53] You know, it strikes me as I’m listening to you talk, Karen, and again, I’m getting back to just what you decided to share. I mean, you did that as your own personal source of healing. It strikes me how generous that is, because you could have kept all that to yourself. You could have written what you wrote, pass it along to your three close friends, let them look at it, and just deep sixed it and kept it private. But there was a mission to what you were doing, and it was an act of pure generosity, it seems like to me, because you were willing to take whatever came your way in terms of the consequences of doing that, which, for you, were severe.

Karen Nowicki: [00:31:49] That’s very sweet of you to say. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody refer to it as generous, so thank you. It makes me a little overwhelmed.

Karen Nowicki: [00:32:00] It was a survival mechanism. It’s not something I wanted to do. I wanted to be like the rest of the world on social media and who’s visible and just the highlight reel. And, unfortunately, I didn’t get to share that. So, it was a survival technique. It was the only one that I had available to me. And I just listened.

Karen Nowicki: [00:32:26] And I think when we’re being called to do anything in our life, business or personally, and we have that – I’ll call it – nagging voice in the back of our head – mine sometimes sounds like a nag, a nag or a nudge – I’ve just learned in my life that it’s that voice and that nudge or that nag that’s constantly humming in the background that I’ve got to pay attention to. And, again, I have to just trust that I’m going to find my way through why it is that we do the things that we’re called to do.

Karen Nowicki: [00:32:57] And I love that you’ve shared that it felt generous. It makes me feel very hopeful and appreciative that you’re paying attention.

John Ray: [00:33:06] Well, thank you. Well, see, there’s a difference, to me, between help and trying to help people. Because sometimes help has strengths, right? I mean, it can come back in ways that maybe we don’t acknowledge, but it comes back in ways to benefit us. But when you’re doing what you were doing, knowing that you likely would suffer in some way from it, and you did, then that really gets beyond help into generosity, and that’s why I say that.

Karen Nowicki: [00:33:39] And my Business RadioX family or our Business RadioX family was there for me every step of the way, all of you. And we were fairly new in relationship. I’d only had the studio, I want to say, for – what? – a-year-and-a-half, maybe two years, and, again, at a great distance. I’m way over here in the Southwest and you guys are all in the Atlanta area. We’ve grown a lot since then as a team. And I never felt like there was a time that I couldn’t pick up the phone or text or email and say I need some help. And I didn’t have to rely on that very often. But when I did, everybody rose to the occasion.

Karen Nowicki: [00:34:16] Which, again, for our listeners, for this particular group of people who might be interested in a conversation like this, even though you are a solopreneur and you are at the helm, bring people in your life, invite people in your life, the coach, the guide, the mentor, possibly a partner, certainly your clients and your customers – find the win-win-win for everybody – all the stakeholders. So that, again, it’s a richer and more viable experience and it will have legs.

John Ray: [00:34:48] Yeah, for sure. And, really, one aspect of what you’re talking about is digging the well before you’re thirsty. I mean, you had that support structure before this happened. And when it happened, you were ready, you had prepared.

Karen Nowicki: [00:35:06] I have a friend who just had a 20 pound tumor removed from her stomach. We’re hoping that it’s not cancer. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be. And I just went and visited her on Sunday. Also, a business owner, a longtime solopreneur. And now she has a team of 20 people on her team, which is amazing. And she said just that, John, “I had no idea how the community and people in my life would respond when I needed help and I was laid up. And I’m so grateful that I built a business that didn’t rely just on me. That I got smart a couple of years ago and started building it so that more stakeholders could benefit in profit and we could help more people.”

Karen Nowicki: [00:35:46] And very different situation for me, but she said the exact same thing, “I am so overwhelmed by the amount of love and support and outpouring for people just being a champion of me. I can’t help but wonder why.” And we both laughed at each other and said, “Well, it’s because you show up that way for other people and that’s truly who you are.” So, yes, I love the way that you put that.

John Ray: [00:36:08] Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Shoutout to her and her healing, for sure. So, one of the things that has stood out to me recently, speaking of things we post on social media, is you’ve been using this hashtag I want to know about, so it’s #traumainformedworkplace. Now, what do you mean by that? What does that term mean? And is that looking ahead toward trauma that might occur? Is it looking backward? What are we talking about there, Karen?

Karen Nowicki: [00:36:43] So, it’s not my term. I didn’t make it up. A lot of people use it, especially now that COVID has been something that’s really knocked us all off of our A-game. And I come at trauma informed workplaces a little bit different. A lot of folks will go into companies, enterprises, medium size, small businesses, public education, wherever, and they will have hour long talks, sometimes half-day seminars, even three or four days, certification programs around how to be aware of where trauma might be impacting the way we show up in our life and businesses. That’s all well and fine. I would say that’s layer one. Let’s be aware that trauma is part of what’s happening in the background all the time.

Karen Nowicki: [00:37:34] So, the angry executive or the pissed off client or the employee who doesn’t show up for work day after day or they’re there but they’re not really high functioning, it’s likely that something traumatic has happened either recently or from the past that they haven’t dealt with. And in the work that I do with clients, I help people get the shock out of their body in a variety of different ways. But the body keeps score, and if we don’t clear the shock out of our body, it will inform our decisions. And we’re still in fight, flight, or freeze, or fawn mode. And fawn is maybe a new word for a lot of people. Fawn is an over caregiver and I’m taking care of everything but myself – that would be fawning – and kind of grappling for the attention and needing the visibility.

Karen Nowicki: [00:38:23] So, layer one is let’s just be aware of what trauma is, how it impacts our brain, and how it shows up in conflict. And let’s make sure that as a trauma informed workplace, we have a way to handle that and deal with that culture-wise and team-wise. That’s all well and fine.

Karen Nowicki: [00:38:39] And then, this next layer that I work with, with individuals and business owners that come to my practice and work with me, it’s let’s have you heal your trauma and re-integrate it so that your decisions, the way you show up in your marriage, your friendships, your business, your leadership, the way in which you work with your stakeholders, you’re standing in the present moment with all your faculties about you. You’re aware that you have a past, some of it may have been kind of sucky, some of it may have been great. But the decisions you’re making today are in alignment with who you are today. And you’re not having to look over your shoulder out of reaction or response.

Karen Nowicki: [00:39:16] Now, it’s a long winded answer, but there’s a lot to trauma, and I think we’re finally starting to have conversations about it so that we can be there at a higher level for each other, and most importantly for ourselves.

John Ray: [00:39:30] Yeah. And that shows up differently, as you said, for each of us. And the question is having conversation and being open about that and creating an environment where people can be open.

Karen Nowicki: [00:39:43] Safe, right? And we’re talking about trials. There’s personal trauma. There’s also historical trauma. There’s legacy trauma, familial, family trauma. And we all carry a little bit of that with us without even knowing it. So, we’ve got to come to better understand how does that come and show up in our communication or our lack of communication, and how can we have compassion, respect, and autonomy with each other.

John Ray: [00:40:11] So, Karen, you’ve been really generous with your time, and you’re busy, you got a lot going on.

Karen Nowicki: [00:40:18] My producer just walked by the window and was going to come in and get ready for our show, and he’s like, “Whoops. I can’t go in there yet.”

John Ray: [00:40:24] He’s like, “Hey, we got other things to do here.” But before we let you go, though, I would love it if maybe you could share one final takeaway. You know, as listeners absorb your story, what should they hold on to from your story that could help them in their personal lives and in their business lives?

Karen Nowicki: [00:40:49] So, we heard a couple of times that phrase, a couple of times, and you just said it to me as you’re kind of handing this for my final word, everybody’s story matters. Therefore, your story — like you’re lacking or you deficit, those are just stories that you tell yourself that you can change your story. Our stories and our past matter, and they don’t have to fully define us. So, take care of yourself, mental health, physical health, self-care, all of that is not underrated.

Karen Nowicki: [00:41:22] And it’s not just going to a spa once a month or getting your manicure, pedicure, or going to see your chiropractor, once a year checkup. It is daily practices that help you become the best version of you, so that when you look in the mirror everyday, you like the person that you see looking back at you. And that filters into every aspect of your life, most particularly those of us who are solopreneurs and entrepreneurs and business owners, we’ve got to get that together or we’re going to find ourselves struggling when it comes to financial wellbeing and the success of our businesses.

John Ray: [00:41:57] And, folks, if you need help with that, I know a coach that can help you. So, that gets us to the most important question, maybe, which is how folks can get in touch with you, Karen, that would like to know more maybe about your coaching practice, but just maybe they’ve got to download their own trauma around suicide.

Karen Nowicki: [00:42:20] Absolutely. I would love to help even if just a conversation. If we’re not a right fit for each other, I can refer you to other people. I do see people here in-person in the Metro Phoenix area. And I also have just as many clients – actually, maybe even more – that we do FaceTime or Zoom from the comfort of their office or their home. So, happy to be of support.

Karen Nowicki: [00:42:39] I am on LinkedIn, Karen Nowicki or Phoenix Business RadioX. I am just now finally working on a website for Deep Impact Leadership. So, the best way to reach out to me right now is through LinkedIn. Or my email address is karennowicki2007@gmail.com if you want to reach out personally. Or reach out to John and he’ll direct you to me, and we’ll have a conversation, just a discovery and see where I can best support you if I am the right person for that.

John Ray: [00:43:08] Terrific. Karen Nowicki, wow, I’m just honored to have you as a friend. And thank you so much for your great work and how you are helping people in such a generous way. Thank you.

Karen Nowicki: [00:43:23] You’re welcome, John. Thank you for letting me share this time with you.

John Ray: [00:43:26] Absolutely. Hey, folks, just a quick reminder as we wrap up here, pricevaluejourney.com is where you can find out more on this series, you can find the link to the show archive. And you can also sign up to get more information on my upcoming book coming out this summer called The Price and Value Journey – ironically enough – Raising Your Confidence, Your Value, and Your Pricing Using The Generosity Mindset Method. So, if you want to know more about that, you can sign up for updates on when that’s coming. And with that, thanks again to Karen Nowicki for joining us. I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey.

 

 

About The Price and Value Journey

The title of this show describes the journey all professional services providers are on:  building a services practice by seeking to convince the world of the value we offer, helping clients achieve the outcomes they desire, and trying to do all that at pricing which reflects the value we deliver.

If you feel like you’re working too hard for too little money in your solo or small firm practice, this show is for you. Even if you’re reasonably happy with your practice, you’ll hear ways to improve both your bottom line as well as the mindset you bring to your business.

The show is produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® and can be found on all the major podcast apps. The complete show archive is here.

John Ray, Host of The Price and Value Journey

John Ray The Price and Value Journey
John Ray, Host of “The Price and Value Journey”

John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey.

John owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneur and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their “grey matter,” such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.

In his other business, John is a Studio Owner, Producer, and Show Host with Business RadioX®, and works with business owners who want to do their own podcast. As a veteran B2B services provider, John’s special sauce is coaching B2B professionals to use a podcast to build relationships in a non-salesy way which translate into revenue.

John is the host of North Fulton Business Radio, Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Radio, Alpharetta Tech Talk, and Business Leaders Radio. house shows which feature a wide range of business leaders and companies. John has hosted and/or produced over 1,700 podcast episodes.

Coming in 2023:  A New Book!

John’s working on a book that will be released in 2023:  The Price and Value Journey: Raise Your Confidence, Your Value, and Your Prices Using The Generosity Mindset. The book covers topics like value and adopting a mindset of value, pricing your services more effectively, proposals, and essential elements of growing your business. For more information or to sign up to receive updates on the book release, go to pricevaluejourney.com.

Connect with John Ray:

Website | LinkedIn | Twitter

Business RadioX®:  LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Tagged With: coach, Deep Impact Leadership Coaching & Consulting, executive coach, iNudge LLC, John Ray, Karen Nowicki, Phoenix Business RadioX, Price and Value Journey, pricing, professional services, professional services providers, solopreneurs, Suicide, suicide awareness, surviving trauma, thriving after trauma, trauma, value, value pricing

Tara Heaton, En Pointe Communications

February 21, 2023 by John Ray

Tara Heaton, En Pointe Communications
North Fulton Business Radio
Tara Heaton, En Pointe Communications
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Tara Heaton, En Pointe Communications

Tara Heaton, En Pointe Communications (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 610)

On this edition of North Fulton Business Radio, Tara Heaton, Founder of En Pointe Communications, joined host John Ray to discuss how her daughter’s traumatic brain injury led to her current work. Tara discussed how neuroscience can guide us in more effective communication, the power of stories and telling better stories, how to engage listeners in the stories we tell, success stories from her work, and much more.

North Fulton Business Radio is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Live from the Business RadioX Studio inside Renasant Bank, the bank that specializes in understanding you, it’s time for North Fulton Business Radio.

John Ray: [00:00:19] And hello again, everyone. Welcome to another edition of North Fulton Business Radio. I’m John Ray. And we are broadcasting from inside Renasant Bank in beautiful Alpharetta.

John Ray: [00:00:30] And if you are looking for a bank that is so highly rated by their customers that they have won multiple awards from national organizations, like Time Magazine’s money.com and Forbes, well, I’m sitting in that bank, Renasant Bank. They’ve won Best Bank in Georgia, Best Bank in the Southeast, Best Bank in the United States, actually even, in the surveys. And so, if you want to know why they’ve made such a difference in the lives of their customers – I’ve certainly found it out myself – go to renasantbank.com and find one of their local offices and give them a call. And I think you’ll be glad you did. Renasant Bank. Understanding you. Member FDIC.

John Ray: [00:01:17] And now, I want to welcome Tara Heaton. Tara is with En Pointe Communication. Tara, welcome.

Tara Heaton: [00:01:22] Thanks so much for having me, John.

John Ray: [00:01:23] It’s great to have you. So, let’s talk about you and how you’re serving folks out there. How are you serving folks at En Pointe Communication?

Tara Heaton: [00:01:31] Well, it’s just exactly as it sounds, En Pointe Communication helps people to communicate more effectively. And I have a platform called Talk to the Brain, and everything that I teach and coach is founded in neuroscience, which I’ve been studying now for over 18 years. So, I share a little bit of the science and then we go deep into story. So, I’m helping speakers, leaders, sales people, teens to communicate more authentically and to understand how to communicate so that their message lands more compelling, more memorable, and helps them to get the results they desire.

John Ray: [00:02:08] Wow. So, what is it that we’re missing in? I know this is a big question and we could go on a long time on your answer. But what are we missing with communication that neuroscience helps us solve, that knowledge of neuroscience helps us solve?

Tara Heaton: [00:02:29] Oh, wow. That’s a great question. And there’s, I think, several components to that. But I think I will switch it around and think how I’m helping people and why the science proves that. And I’ll start with stories. Because everybody knows that there’s so much power, and most people know, that stories, there’s scientific proof about why they help us to remember and how they touch us.

Tara Heaton: [00:02:53] People don’t see that a story is a moment in time. It’s a transformational moment in time. It is different than a journey. So, you and I, John, our life is decorated with hundreds of stories. And when we learn to tell those in a compelling way, it shoots up dopamine in the minds of the listeners. And, today, we are more addicted to dopamine than ever before. When we learn to tell a compelling story, it shoots up that dopamine which pleasures the brain.

Tara Heaton: [00:03:23] Also, when we use a vulnerable story that shares a relatable emotion, it fires up our serotonin and oxytocin in the mind of the listener that builds trust, that builds connection. And when people learn this and they experience examples of it, it automatically improves their confidence and their ability to communicate more effectively.

John Ray: [00:03:46] Oh, wow. There’s a lot to that I want to get to. But before we dive deeper there, let’s talk about your journey. Because you’ve got some specific aspects to your journey that led you into this interest in neuroscience and how it affects communications.

Tara Heaton: [00:04:05] Absolutely. And I would be remiss if I didn’t share this part of my story because I forever will. I’ve always been an analytical minded person. I’ll sit out, I will analyze our conversation – I can assure you – and ask myself how I could have done better, what went right, what could have been improved. And I’ve always been that way.

Tara Heaton: [00:04:26] I was a sales leader. I was running a sales team. I had a very successful business. I’d had built success really from pretty much nothing, and, so to speak, three healthy children, a beautiful marriage. As they say, living the dream.

Tara Heaton: [00:04:40] And my middle daughter was 12 at the time that everything changed for us. She contracted a virus that is still documented, interestingly, as a virus of unknown etiology. The virus traveled to her brain, caused her to have something called encephalitis, which is simply inflammation of the brain. She went into a coma. And when she came out of the coma, she couldn’t hold a hairbrush, she didn’t know who we were, she couldn’t walk. But interesting, I mean, it was considered a traumatic brain injury, she could talk.

Tara Heaton: [00:05:13] So, through much, much, much therapy, she’d relearn to do pretty much everything and most of her memory came back. And we thought the worst is behind us. You know, our prayers have been answered and Caroline’s going to be okay.

Tara Heaton: [00:05:27] But the encephalitis left her with epilepsy. And so, I became, as you might imagine, as any mother would, her warrior. And I started searching for ways to stop these seizures. Most people with epilepsy, their seizures are controlled with medication. But the medication has terrible side effects.

Tara Heaton: [00:05:45] So, about a year into this journey, I sat with her neurologist and I was at Emory Clinic – I’ll never forget this – and I said, “Dr. Weissman, look at my little girl.” And she looked over at Caroline and she was looking down, shoulders slumped, looking down at her untied little converse tennis shoe. And I said, “She was energetic, she was social, she was athletic. This is our Caroline today. Can we please just take her off these drugs and try to manage the seizures?” And Dr. Weissman said, “No. Because Caroline’s seizures travel right through her hippocampus, and with every seizure, her brain is being damaged.”

Tara Heaton: [00:06:22] And that day, John, sent me on a journey of just being obsessed with understanding the brain, what was going on with her mind, how I could help her. And I continued to, literally, travel the country over looking for answers. And I’m sorry to say that the seizures have never, ever stopped. And today, Caroline is very, very cognitively challenged due to just years and years of seizures.

Tara Heaton: [00:06:48] But the study just started to inform my work. And as I was running across the country, learning, investigating, trying any type of therapy, natural or not, I continued to learn about specifically neurotransmitters, how we remember, what sparks our attention, our imagination. And it started to inform my work as a sales leader and as a speaker and as someone who provided a lot of workshops.

John Ray: [00:07:15] Yeah. Wow. So, you really took what you learned there and applied it in a sales context because that was your legacy, business, right?

Tara Heaton: [00:07:29] That’s right. That’s right.

John Ray: [00:07:29] But you’ve really expanded it beyond just its application to sales teams.

Tara Heaton: [00:07:36] Oh, yes. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I do help and coach sales people, but the work is so very much focused on building an authentic voice. And what that means is I help people to make better connections, and that might be from a stage as a speaker. But it really helps teams to better connect and better tell stories that relate to their specific business. They get to experience the thrill of sharing vulnerable stories, how to do that, and how it builds trust and connection, which helps teams.

John Ray: [00:08:12] Yeah, for sure. Tara Heaton is with us, folks. She is with En Pointe Communication, her own firm. Tara, you mentioned storytelling. You mentioned that that’s pretty well-known, the power of stories, and I couldn’t agree more. So, maybe we can walk past that to some of the other principles that really became solid beliefs for you in terms of what you take to your clients today out of all this study that you did.

Tara Heaton: [00:08:49] Well, I will say, the reason I continue to focus on stories is because that seems to be the most popular of the workshops. People continue to come to me and say, “You know, I want to teach my team to tell better stories.” And these aren’t sales teams. These are folks who are in negotiations. These are folks who just simply are communicating with customers, customer service, on the phone. We overthink story. And so, that’s why it’s become such, I think, a really popular workshop. But I also help speakers —

John Ray: [00:09:20] Well, let’s stop there just a second, if you don’t mind, because that’s very interesting what you just said, we overthink story. Say more on that.

Tara Heaton: [00:09:27] Oh, yes.

John Ray: [00:09:27] Okay.

Tara Heaton: [00:09:28] Yes. Thank you.

John Ray: [00:09:31] Okay. See, I was going to walk right past storytelling, but now you’ve made me want to dig into it, so let’s do that.

Tara Heaton: [00:09:36] Absolutely. So, I’ll tell you a story to explain it.

John Ray: [00:09:39] Okay. Appropriately enough.

Tara Heaton: [00:09:41] Absolutely. I had a client who came to me and she was looking for a new job. And she’s quite successful and really, really strong in her field. But she said, “I hear you’re a great storyteller, and I understand that telling powerful stories in an interview could really help me.” And here’s what so many people say to me, she said, “I don’t think I really have any stories.”

Tara Heaton: [00:10:10] And after about an hour long – what I’ll call – a discovery session with her, we uncovered unbelievable beauty that decorated her life, some challenges, some trials, some successes, some wins. And each one of those are little, small individual stories that make a point that cause people to remember the point that we’re trying to make.

Tara Heaton: [00:10:34] So, people tend to think my personal story, what I’ve been through with my children and my family is quite tragic. And when people hear it, they think, “Wow. I don’t have a story.” We all have stories. And as natural storytellers, we start to become very sensitive to the fact that we are creating new stories everyday through every experience. And so, when we can share our experiences, things that we’ve been through or things that we’ve witnessed, so that it matters to the listener, so that it makes the listener the hero of that story and not ourselves, it helps us to get better results.

John Ray: [00:11:11] Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that right there at the end, because sometimes we hear stories that seem like they’re more about – I’ll call them – therapy in public, where people are really kind of working out their own issue as opposed to telling a story for the purpose of reaching other people. Does that make sense?

Tara Heaton: [00:11:34] Oh, yes. So much. As a matter of fact, somebody asked me recently when I was referencing, I said, “Who is the hero of your story?” And she said, “Well, I am.” And I said, “If you’re telling it to anyone, they are the hero. They relate to what you’re sharing. You share relatable emotions that people can relate to that inspires them through your vulnerable story.” So, if we just share a winning moment in our lives without sharing the strife and the struggle and the insecurity that we faced, it will not be nearly as memorable as if we share the vulnerable side of it, because that’s where people relate and they think, “Wow. If he or she could overcome that, I too can do the same.”

John Ray: [00:12:18] Wow. So, how do we tell stories and get out of our own way, I guess this might be the way to put it. How do we know that we’re really putting the listener in the middle? Because this is a human thing, right? We’re all self-absorbed. We all operate from our own perspectives. And so, how do we communicate in such a way that brings the listener into the story we tell?

Tara Heaton: [00:12:52] Well, a lot of the answer to that is timing. So, when is it appropriate to tell a story? And what exactly defines a story? So, I have a framework for stories that I share with my clients we go through. And a lot of times that’s better applied when you’re really preparing for a speech or a very important sales presentation. But to become a natural storyteller, I’ll give you a recent example of just sharing stories when the timing is right, and that’s when the last thing I would want people to do is to have practiced and scripted a story.

Tara Heaton: [00:13:28] I had a gentleman that works closely with me. He came to me recently and he said, “I’m supposed to be at this conference on Monday. I think I need to go to leadership and tell them I can’t go.” And I said, “Why is that?” And he said, “I’ve been gone all week. You know, we have three children. My wife’s pulling her hair out. I mean, dad hadn’t been here. And I want to go to them and just say can you send somebody else to this conference, but I’m really stressed about it. What do you think? What do you think I ought to do?”

Tara Heaton: [00:13:59] And I said, “Mark, may I share something with you?” And he said, “Absolutely.” And I said, “Years ago, I remember coming home late one evening and going upstairs to kiss my daughter, Caroline, goodnight.” She was about seven years old. I walked up the stairs, kissed her goodnight, and she sat up in her bed. She was a dainty little girl and sat up in her little pink pajamas, and she said, “Oh, mom, tomorrow night I want you to help me fix my hair and I want you to help me with my costume because Friday’s the play.”

Tara Heaton: [00:14:31] And I said, “Oh, Caroline, I’m not going to be here tomorrow night. I have to work again.” And I was working for a company at the time called Herff Jones. And she sat up and she pulled her little tiny fist back and she punched her pillow. And she said, “I hate Herff Jones. I hate it.” And she punched her pillow again. And every time I think about that story, I feel a punch in my gut.

Tara Heaton: [00:14:56] I didn’t give Mark any advice. I didn’t tell him what I thought he ought to do. I just shared something painful from my past, something that I regret. And he had his answer. That’s the power of story. We also built some trust that day, as you might imagine.

John Ray: [00:15:11] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wow. So, you teach in your workshops. You mentioned the kind of story you tell. But when you tell a story, talk about the timing angle there.

Tara Heaton: [00:15:33] Well, one of my favorite examples of when to share a story is when someone asks you for advice. It’s so easy to say, “Here’s what I think you should do.” But if you share with them a time when you faced a similar struggle, it’s unforgettable. The power of that is so, so, so very different.

Tara Heaton: [00:15:52] Also, many times I’m helping people with stories when they’re in negotiations or small presentations within a company, like our team has to share their idea. And it’s so easy to get bogged down in the data. And we need data. We need statistics. But we need a story that brings that to life. So, that’s helping people to imagine not a journey, not a long this happened and then this happened, not that. There was a transformational moment in time, kind of that tipping point that helps to bring our data to life. I call it story with stats. So, there’s a way to gain the results that you’re after by using data and bringing it to life with story.

John Ray: [00:16:36] Wow. Great words from Tara Heaton, folks, with En Pointe Communication. So, Tara, you mentioned storytelling, we’ve talked about that. What are some of the other aspects of communication that this journey through neuroscience has led you to?

Tara Heaton: [00:16:56] Well, wow, I don’t even know where to begin. But, you know, I mentioned dopamine. And our society today is more addicted to dopamine than ever before. So, I’ll give a quick tip on dopamine. Because we know that our listeners are addicted to dopamine, what that means is people are going to become more distracted than they used to be. People can’t follow us. So, we’ve got to lead our conversations, our speeches with something that’s highly unpredictable and unusual because that grabs people.

Tara Heaton: [00:17:29] The other thing a lot of people don’t really know about dopamine is it’s not pure just pleasure. Dopamine is that feeling of anticipation. It’s like it’s why we’re addicted to video games and social media and things that make us want more and more. So, if we know that our listeners are searching for something, they’re in anticipation at the beginning of a speech, what we need to do is kind of dangle a carrot. Tell folks, “At the end I’m going to share –” boom, this big gold nugget that keeps people attentive.

Tara Heaton: [00:18:00] I’ll give one other neuroscience tip, and then I won’t continue on with all of them. But I’ll give another fun one that it really helps people in their communication, and it is the understanding of serotonin. And serotonin is the feeling we get when we feel confident and proud, and we feel seen, and we feel validated. So, this especially applies in speaking to audiences and in sales presentations. We need to make sure that our audience feels understood and seen.

Tara Heaton: [00:18:29] Well, how do we do that? In a conversation, we can certainly ask those questions. But there are also always assumed objections. And people tend to hide from assumed objections. Whereas, I say, we need to uncover them and say to people, “I know how you might feel.” You must be thinking that and then fill in the blank. And that always, always helps me. I can visually see an audience lean in when I tell them I find a way to say to them I understand.

Tara Heaton: [00:19:00] And someone asked me once, they said, “Well, if we’re in a sales setting, why would I want to agree with what someone is thinking if I’m trying to sell them something?” And I believe, John, in being always honest and authentic. And the answer to that is this, we may not agree. Agreeing and validating someone’s perspective are two completely different things. We need to seek to understand people with a curious mind, look for wonder, understand why they think the way that they do.

Tara Heaton: [00:19:33] If we could take this into our political conversations in this country, can you imagine how much softer and safer and what might come out of those if we weren’t looking to be right. We were looking to understand the other person. That builds serotonin, which builds connection and makes people want more of us.

John Ray: [00:19:50] Yeah. Absolutely. Because we tend to flatten people out and take that three or four dimensional person, I’ll say that, and turn them into one dimension. They’re a cartoon character.

Tara Heaton: [00:20:09] So true.

John Ray: [00:20:09] Yeah. That then, therefore, we can project our own feelings onto that caricature we’ve drawn.

Tara Heaton: [00:20:19] Absolutely.

John Ray: [00:20:20] So, Tara, I love that point. It makes a lot of sense. But, you know, when you bring in the political, I’m thinking everybody gets that. But we tend to do that to people that are close to us, I mean, in our lives, and in the business world, in our families, that kind of thing. And that may be the unrecognized part of what we often do, right?

Tara Heaton: [00:20:50] Yes, very much so. And I talk about this a lot on the Daily Huddle where I’m a Wednesday host. We talk a lot about relationships and how much we want to strive to be right, and to be heard, and to get our way. And for me, when I find myself communicating in that manner, I know what’s driving it. It’s ego, which causes us to lead with – no. It’s insecurity which causes us to lead with ego.

Tara Heaton: [00:21:18] When someone touches a nerve, we find ourselves in a space where we might feel insecure about any number of topics. We all have insecurities. And when we allow ourselves to lean into those and go into that imposter syndrome state, that’s when we forget to listen, to remain in a sense of wonder, and all, and curiosity. And we want people to hear us.

John Ray: [00:21:41] Yeah. For sure. So, I want to switch gears and talk about how you work with people now. So, you talked about your previous work with sales teams, you still do some of that work. But you just mentioned relationships, that’s an entirely different matter. So, talk about some of the types of clients that you work with. Do you work with groups, one-on-one?

Tara Heaton: [00:22:12] So, I provide workshops where I have people from different industries to come. But, really, probably my sweet spot right now is working with small to medium-sized businesses who are growing fast and they want to nurture their team. They want to help them to grow their confidence and their ability to find their voice, tell their own stories, and really build on an authentic voice that makes them feel empowered and comfortable. So, that helps culture, which is relationships, right? What defines culture in any company? It’s the relationships. It is the environment. So, I work with small teams to elevate that.

Tara Heaton: [00:22:49] And then, I love still working with speakers. Most recently, I helped a pretty well-known speaker with a talk she was giving. And we worked so hard on her stories. We crafted every word. She rehearsed it and rehearsed it. And as a matter of fact, she said, “You know what? I think I might read this. I just don’t want to miss a word.” And she she knew it quite well, so she wasn’t staring down, but she chose to read the speech. And she called me and she said, “First standing ovation of my life.” So, that’s great joy for me to help speakers.

John Ray: [00:23:27] Oh, wow. Yeah.

Tara Heaton: [00:23:27] So, I do speakers and sales people, small teams, the woman I just mentioned, anyone who’s trying to communicate more effectively. But teamwork, building relationships, helping folks to tell better stories, and find a confident voice, that’s the sweet spot right now.

John Ray: [00:23:46] I’m just curious about the bottom line of all this. Let’s talk about the value that comes out of doing the work that you lead people through and what they get out of that, that maybe they don’t recognize when they hear you talk about what you’re able to do.

Tara Heaton: [00:24:09] Thank you for asking that. It actually makes me light up. Because you could take neuroscience, John, and all that I’ve learned about the brain, and you could use it to manipulate in a sales setting. And the purpose of my work is the opposite of that. The purpose of my work is so that if I understand your mind, that gives me the ability to honor you, to get to know you, to connect with you. And when we make deeper connections with people, for me, I think that’s the greatest gift that we have at our disposal.

Tara Heaton: [00:24:44] So, the bottom line, the truest value of my work is that it helps people to grow their confidence in building relationships. Absolutely, that applies to business. But it goes home, it goes into friendships, it goes into family. So, when we feel more confident in being able to articulate our heart and our experiences, that’s the bottom line value of my work.

John Ray: [00:25:08] Yeah. That’s terrific. So, Tara, you’ve talked about how this journey that you’ve been on with your daughter, all the research you’ve done, all the reading and insights that you’ve had over time, the clients you’ve worked with has really saved your spirit.

Tara Heaton: [00:25:34] Yes. And I didn’t realize it probably until maybe just several years into the work. It was always focused on communication. But, you know, my family went through a lot of trauma. It started with Caroline’s illness, but it absolutely did not stop there. I have three children who have all suffered as a result of a family just living in what felt like constant trauma, watching someone’s brain deteriorate, watching her be bullied, watch her to continue to crash down, her mom falling apart in tears. It was not a safe space, our home, for a long, long time.

Tara Heaton: [00:26:14] And I look back and I’ve learned more than just using what I’ve studied to apply to communication. It applies to our habits and our self-talk. And when I understand why my body might be low on serotonin or dopamine or need oxytocin, I know what to do about it. I know that I don’t have to go to find some sort of addictive habit that’s not healthy to help me. And so, I’ve really taken the science and I’ve applied it to life habits, and to how I spend my time, how I communicate with people, which truly, truly has saved my soul.

Tara Heaton: [00:26:54] Because here’s what I know, the way our brain functions and all of the things that it is able to synthesize, a lot of it’s starting, interestingly, from our gut, all of that is energy. And that energy, we have the ability to repurpose and take it out into the world in any way that we want to.

Tara Heaton: [00:27:16] The last two days before I came here with you today, I’ve been sitting in the hospital with two people in my family who are ill. And maybe without my study, I would have called you and said, “I don’t have it in me today.” But I tell you what I know, that I could take all of that struggle, all the pain that I’ve faced over the past two days, and I can repurpose that into love and I can share it out in such a way that touches other people. And I’ve continued to do that over and over again throughout my life. And that’s because of my study and my sweet Caroline.

John Ray: [00:27:53] Wow. What a beautiful story. Thank you for all that. Thank you for sharing that. What great work. Tara Heaton with En Pointe Communication.

John Ray: [00:28:05] Tara, I’d be remiss, I think, at this point if I didn’t ask, you’ve talked about your own story, your own journey, but maybe you could share a success story of someone you’ve worked with. You mentioned a couple around storytelling, but maybe share one more. Someone who’s had real transformation in their lives, in their work because of your intervention.

Tara Heaton: [00:28:29] Well, let’s see. One comes to mind. A very simple one is that I helped someone to craft a TED Talk proposal, and it was accepted. So, that was very exciting.

John Ray: [00:28:39] That’s a good one.

Tara Heaton: [00:28:39] Several speaker stories, I mean, that’s beautiful work. I also write for people. I write for some artists and help people to tell their story on their About page. And that is just so rewarding that people realize that we all have beautiful stories to tell.

Tara Heaton: [00:28:58] And then, I worked with a small business recently. And as a matter of fact, I just heard from their manager recently and she’s like, “You cannot believe how my team is transformed.” And that’s so touching. She said, “I knew that we needed to build trust and connection and I was trying to force it. Now, they’re going after it and I just sit back and I’m a part of it.” And you know what that says to me, John? That people are enjoying their work more because of my work and nothing can make me more happy.

John Ray: [00:29:29] That’s wonderful. So, Tara, I know you also do – I want to get this in – some public speaking keynotes. Talk about the kind of groups that would benefit from having you in to speak.

Tara Heaton: [00:29:43] Oh, thank you. Yes. As a matter of fact, I’m really trying to elevate this aspect of my work because each time I provide a keynote, I’ll have people to call me weeks and months later and tell me that they’re still referencing the talk. So, I just have finally said to myself, “You know what, Tara, you better get out there and do more of this.”

Tara Heaton: [00:30:03] So, I really have two tracks when it comes to speaking. And one is very inspirational. One is, I go a lot deeper into the story of our family, which does not stop with just Caroline. It also goes into my son who was highly addicted to dopamine and adrenaline, and what that has caused in his life, and how he’s come out of it. So, there’s certainly an inspirational talk that I give. And that is to any team or any organization that says we want to hear a story about suffering and triumph. And I’m pretty raw and open about it.

Tara Heaton: [00:30:36] And then, also, I give mini-talk to the brain talks. And those are to help people to communicate more clearly with better strategy and absolutely more authentically helping them to get better results within relationships, within sales, and within speaking.

John Ray: [00:30:52] Wow. Terrific work. Tara Heaton, folks, with En Pointe Communication. This has been terrific, Tara. I wish we could keep going, but we got to let you get back to your work and what you do for others. But before we let you go, let’s give directions on how folks can find you.

Tara Heaton: [00:31:12] Oh, thank you very much. I’m kind of weak on social media, I will say. But the best place to find me is just to go to my website. And the easiest way to do that is to go to talktothebrain.net, and that will roll over into En Pointe Global. So, again, I’m on Facebook, Tara Caldwell Heaton. I’m certainly on LinkedIn, Tara Heaton. But easiest way talktothebrain.net, and a little pop up box will come and we can be in touch.

John Ray: [00:31:39] That’s terrific. Tara Heaton, folks, with En Pointe Communication. Tara, thank you so much for coming in.

Tara Heaton: [00:31:45] It’s been a joy, John. Thank you.

John Ray: [00:31:46] Thank you so much.

John Ray: [00:31:49] Hey, folks, just a quick thought for you. If you’ve got an administrative task or bookkeeping or other marketing issues, maybe presentations that need to be done that are weighing you down and you’re not able to spend time with your clients and with your prospective clients, I’ve got a suggestion for you. Office Angels. Essie Escobedo has a whole team of angels that do fantastic work. I know this myself because I use their services. They fly in, get the job done, and then they fly out. And they do it on an ongoing or as needed basis, depending on your project and your need.

John Ray: [00:32:30] So, give Essie a call, 770-442-9246. Tell her I sent you. Or go to officeangels.us to learn more. But I think you’ll be glad you did. And Essie has been around since 2000 with this business, so she’s well-established and does great work. And, again, I use her services. So, you’ll be glad that you entrusted your business to her.

John Ray: [00:32:59] And, folks, just a quick reminder, North Fulton Business Radio, we’re coming up on our seventh year anniversary. We’ve been around for seven years and we’re excited about that. And we’ve gotten over 600 shows. And the reason we’ve been around this long is because of your support. We are grateful for you because what you have done is continue to share the show with others that you think might be interested in particular guests. I can’t imagine you haven’t heard some reason to share this show with someone else who needs to hear the message that Tara has given. But you’ve done that on all our shows and we’re excited about that. And we are excited about your support and you make us keep going as the voice of business in North Fulton. So, thank you. Thank you, thank you for that support. We are grateful.

John Ray: [00:33:53] So, for my guest, Tara Heaton, I’m John Ray. Join us next time here on North Fulton Business Radio.

En Pointe Communications

En Pointe Communications collaborates with you to build custom strategies, employing unique assets and abilities. Whether your audience is a single prospect or a thousand fans, we focus on your core purpose to ignite momentum, empowering you to grow your business and impact lives.

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Tara Heaton, Founder, En Pointe Communications

Tara Heaton, Founder, En Pointe Communications

Tara helps leaders, speakers, and salespeople craft and deliver messages that move people. She empowers businesses to define their distinction and turn networking and prospecting into revenue.

With years of neuroscience research and success in competitive sales as a foundation, En Pointe Communications has discovered how to employ science, art and sport to close sales, open minds and generate action.

They work with individuals in a remote coaching setting that delivers results!

LinkedIn

 

North Fulton Business Radio is hosted by John Ray and broadcast and produced from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn, and others.

RenasantBank

 

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Since 2000, Office Angels® has been restoring joy to the life of small business owners, enabling them to focus on what they do best. At the same time, we honor and support at-home experts who wish to continue working on an as-needed basis. Not a temp firm or a placement service, Office Angels matches a business owner’s support needs with Angels who have the talent and experience necessary to handle work that is essential to creating and maintaining a successful small business. Need help with administrative tasks, bookkeeping, marketing, presentations, workshops, speaking engagements, and more? Visit us at https://officeangels.us/.

 

Tagged With: communications, En Point Communications, John Ray, neuroscience, North Fulton Business Radio X, Office Angels, renasant bank, stories, story, story-telling, Tara Heaton, trauma

Jesse Morton, Stout

February 21, 2023 by John Ray

Jesse Morton, Stout
North Fulton Business Radio
Jesse Morton, Stout
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Jesse Morton, Stout (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 609)

On this episode of North Fulton Business Radio, Jesse Morton, Managing Director & Atlanta Office Leader of Stout, joined host John Ray to discuss the Employee Retention Tax Credit. Jesse shared what small business should consider when exploring the Employee Retention Tax Credit, misinformation related to the ERC, what a proper claim for ERC contains, and much more.

North Fulton Business Radio is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Stout

Stout is a global investment bank and advisory firm specializing in corporate finance, transaction advisory, valuation, financial disputes, claims, and investigations. We serve a range of clients, from public corporations to privately held companies in numerous industries. Our clients and their advisors rely on our premier expertise, deep industry knowledge, and unparalleled responsiveness on complex matters.

Website | LinkedIn | Twitter

Jesse Morton, Managing Director & Atlanta Office Leader, Stout

Jesse Morton, Managing Director & Atlanta Office Leader, Stout

Jesse Morton is a Managing Director and Stout’s Atlanta & Miami Offices Leader. He has professional experience as a consultant, lawyer, accountant, investigator, and auditor since 2002.

Jesse specializes in working with businesses of all types and sizes on government program-related economic assistance including the CARES Act and other pandemic-related relief including, but not limited to, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Employee Retention Tax Credits (ERCs).

Specifically, he works directly with businesses and their advisors (i.e., CPAs, attorneys, bankers, etc.) with compliance and fraud prevention, detection, response, and remediation related services, including litigation support and expert witness services.

LinkedIn

 

Questions and Topics in this Interview:

  • What is the Employee Retention Tax Credit, and why is it something that small businesses should learn more about and explore?
  • What should small businesses consider when exploring the Employee Retention Tax Credit?
  • Can you explain some of the ERC related misinformation that’s out there, and how it relates to the recent IRS news release?
  • What does a proper claim for ERCs consider and contain?
  • What are some red flags of an improper ERC claim?
  • What can companies that have already claimed the credit do if they’re concerned about filing an improper claim?
  • Is there anything else that you want to mention related to ERCs that small businesses should consider?

North Fulton Business Radio is hosted by John Ray and broadcast and produced from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn, and others.

RenasantBank

 

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Since 2000, Office Angels® has been restoring joy to the life of small business owners, enabling them to focus on what they do best. At the same time, we honor and support at-home experts who wish to continue working on an as-needed basis. Not a temp firm or a placement service, Office Angels matches a business owner’s support needs with Angels who have the talent and experience necessary to handle work that is essential to creating and maintaining a successful small business. Need help with administrative tasks, bookkeeping, marketing, presentations, workshops, speaking engagements, and more? Visit us at https://officeangels.us/.

Tagged With: advisory firm, banking, Employee Retention Credit, ERTC, ERTC Credit, global investment bank, investments, Jesse Morton, John Ray, North Fulton Business Radio X, Office Angels, renasant bank, Stout

Helping Others Helps The Community E41

February 20, 2023 by Karen

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Phoenix Business Radio
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Helping Others Helps The Community E41

Community, company culture, covid stories, entrepreneurship, personal development, social impact, and more were talked about in this Collaborative Connections Radio Show and Podcast episode.

Kalani Fo, Business Development Manager at Bitwise Industries, Jeff Toppel, Partner at Farhang & Medcoff, and Cameron Harman, Co-owner of Workhorse Digital Solutions were on-air with host, Kelly Lorenzen.

If you want to hear great anecdotes, positive stories, tips, and advice from entrepreneurs, a scaling business that cares about its social impact, and an attorney, then check out this outstanding episode.

Workhorse-Digital-Solutions-logo

Workhorse Digital Solutions is a digital marketing firm based out of Mesa, Arizona that specializes in lead generation through Google Ads and only Google Ads. Working specifically with service based industries and working on the local level, they form working partnerships with their clients and help them not only with lead generation, but setting up systems, providing trainings, and helping their clients optimize their sales processes.

Workhorse Digital Solutions started in 2021 and just celebrated their second year in business and look forward to many many more.

Cameron-Harman-Phoenix-Business-RadioXCameron Harman was born and raised here in Arizona and started his entrepreneurial journey in 2020 after spending the last 10 years as a software developer.

After working at larger companies like Boeing and Republic Services, he made the switch to developing software and working on servers for smaller local companies before finally starting a Digital Marketing agency with his business partner.

Cameron spends his free time running trails, reading, trying different kinds of food, coaching volleyball, and hanging out with his wife and four daughters.

Bitwise-Industries-logo

Bitwise Industries is dedicated to building tech economies in underestimated cities across America, providing meaningful tech opportunities, and transforming lives through modernized technology.

Our team of experts can create custom applications and websites tailored to your business and maximize daily workflows, resulting in increased ROI and improved client engagement.

Kalani-Fo-Phoenix-Business-RadioXKalani Fo is a powerful business driver whose entrepreneurial instincts and clarity of vision have helped multiple organizations achieve rapid and continuous growth. Kalani is distinguished by his passion for business, focus on collaborative team-building, and commitment to meeting customer and market demands.

Outside work, Kalani is an environmentalist, surfer, snowboarder, and trail runner. As much as he loves his Mother Earth, the most important women in his life are his wife and daughter.

Follow Bitwise Industries on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Farhang-and-Medcoff-logo

Farhang & Medcoff is an Arizona law firm with offices in Tucson and Scottsdale. F&M is a minority-owned law firm that is focused on finding cost efficient and creative solutions for its clients in a number of practice areas.

F&M delivers impactful results to its clients across a range of practice areas, including probate litigation, corporate law, real estate transactions, labor and employment law, and mergers and acquisitions.

Jeffrey-Toppel-Phoenix-Business-RadioXJeffrey Toppel represents employers and high-level executives in a wide range of employment-related disputes, including wrongful termination and discrimination claims before various state and federal governmental agencies, as well as the entire spectrum of NLRB, general labor relations and employee relations matters.

His preference is providing proactive advice to prevent his clients from finding themselves in litigation.

Jeffrey has served as a member of the Arizona Society of Human Resources Professional’s State Council as its Director of Government Affairs and has testified before the Arizona Senate’s Rules Committee on a proposed labor reform statute.

Follow Farhang & Medcoff on LinkedIn.

About Collaborative Connections

Kelly Lorenzen started the “Collaborative Connections” show to bring her clients and favorite charities together to meet each other, connect and collaborate in life and business.collaborative-connections-Radio-Show-Podcast-logo1

She hopes to build a stronger community one show at a time.

About Our Sponsor

KLM is a one-stop support shop for small business owners who are starting, growing, or trying to sustain. Our purpose is to foster the growth and prosperity of small businesses in our community.

Entrepreneurs & small business owners come to KLM for support in all areas of business. KLM clients think of us as a concierge, business snuggy, another arm, or duplicate for the business owner; They call us when they need us. Business owners can continue to do what they love while having the support they need when they need it.klm-logo-small

About Your Host

Kelly-Lorenzen-on-Phoenix-Business-RadioXKelly Lorenzen, CEO of KLM, is an award-winning entrepreneur with over 15 years of business-ownership experience. She is also a certified project management professional.

Kelly’s expertise is in business development, customer service, marketing, and sales.

Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn, and follow KLM Consulting on Facebook.

Tagged With: Build smart website, custom software development, Help with my Google Ads, Mobile application development, Salesforce implementation, Tech staff augmentation

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