Make the Most of Opportunities – Rob Jacomen

Rob Jacomen

[00:00:00] Miriam: All right. I am so happy guys to have with me my friend Rob Jacomen. We met just really relatively recently. We were both doing and are both doing an online course and, generally I find in those things, I don’t have opportunity to create relationships. And Rob has been so great with just offering help and you just have been a bright spot in the class, and I thought it would be fun to profile your company and just have a good conversation about helping people overcome their self-sabotage and reaching their next level.

[00:00:32] So welcome.

[00:00:33] Rob: Miriam, thank you so much. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be on your show.

[00:00:37] Miriam: So Rob, why don’t we start by you giving us just a teeny profile of your company, who you are, what you do, and then we’ll get a little history of how you got from A to B.

[00:00:47] HPX Agency

[00:00:47] Rob: I have an agency called hpx Agency. We are, basically a high performance working with high performance producers in the insurance industry.

[00:00:55] We work with agencies, producers, brokers, we work, our focus is really to transform the. And transform the way things are done in the industry to help people achieve a higher level of growth, personal development, helping them to build multimillion dollar books of business. And so that basically became my passion.

[00:01:17] I spent over 18 years of my career in the industry and, was very successful. And now just want to share my wisdom and how I built my book of business and share it with others and help others succeed. Really what I love more than anything is helping to, make a difference in someone’s life and, and really to help them transform not only their business, but also see them grow. And, and that’s such a cool thing in, in our industry.

Helping Someone Grow

[00:01:42] Miriam: Yeah, well you’re, you’re preaching to the choir here because I believe exactly the same thing.

[00:01:48] There is nothing as much fun as helping someone reach that next level of growth or insight, revenue, what, you know, whatever.

[00:01:57] When you and I were talking the other day, somehow we got off a little bit onto things like sustainability and we both love trees. And you mentioned that you were raised on an organic farm.

[00:02:08] You are the first person I have met who has been, has any experience with organic farming. So we’re gonna go way, way back and talk to me a little bit about your organic farming experience. So then we’re gonna go from there to your. Yeah, it’s such a great thing. I grew up on, I basically, I grew up on a farm, um, for most of my life.

[00:02:29] Organic Farming

[00:02:29] Rob: And, and I grew up in an area of Pennsylvania, which had, you know, Amish and, and, um, Mennonites and my uncle was a farmer, so really was in my, in my family and my blood. And I just, I just loved, you know, there’s something really cool about just being out in nature and going out in the fields and really what that experience did for me is have a true appreciation for, for nature and animals and protecting the earth.

[00:02:57] Incidentally, I ended up, you know, going to school to become a nerdy engineer, specifically an environmental engineer of all things because of my passion for nature and, uh, preserving the environment and just being a good steward, steward of the environment. And, then ended up going to graduate school, at the Uni uva University of Virginia, and had an opportunity to take some classes in the School of Architecture.

[00:03:23] And at that, Sustainability was becoming such a huge thing.

[00:03:28] I mean, we’re talking years ago.

[00:03:30] But really that was at the beginning of that, really that new awareness of sustainability and sustainable communi. And I just became fascinated with how we could integrate livable communities inside of nature.

[00:03:45] And it doesn’t have to compete with each other. It can be a symbiotic thing where there’s a respect for nature and, um, you know, and, and people were surrounded by green spaces and, you know, those things I think are just so important for, for, uh, people’s health and wellbeing. So I then ended up, you know, getting into that profession.

Protect the Earth

[00:04:05] Absolutely loving it because I could make a difference. Obviously I transitioned to something else, but I always that was always inside of my heart. My heart always was, Hey, I love the environment.

[00:04:18] I love protecting our earth. I still read and stay on top of, of new developments and green buildings, how green buildings are built and how companies can, uh, use waste minimization and recycling and all these different, technologies. You know, we’ve come a long way. So that was something that’s always interested me and I, I still keep it with me to this.

[00:04:41] Miriam: Do you have any suggestions for the listeners? I, I think it’s easy to get kind of discouraged. All of the news talks about, you know, how everything’s being destroyed and just. We’re not even, I mean, the latest thing I read was that all the plastic the United States is creating or consuming is not even being recycled anymore.

[00:05:03] And I, I think that for someone who cares about it as much as you do, as much as I do, I know this isn’t the main topic of our podcast, that I want us to talk about it because we’re integrated human beings. And it’s not all just about if you’re having success in one area but not in another, then you’re still not succeeding.

[00:05:23] Sustainability for the Planet

[00:05:23] Miriam: So what are some ways that we as individuals can make a difference in the sustainability of our planet?

[00:05:31] Rob: You know, I think, I think what I see right now going on is there’s so many different groups or different different groups who have specific interests. You know, you have the, the people over here protecting, you know, water and clean, clean water, and you have clean air.

[00:05:49] You have sustainability and sustainable communities. You have all these different groups doing. Who are all passionate about their, their certain area. But really I think what we all need to do a better job of is all coming together. And really what it boils down to, in my opinion, is education and technology.

[00:06:09] Like there are some advantages to some of the innovation that has occurred in, in the sustainability community and in terms of, of green buildings. Like we’ve come a long. But economics does not always have to compete with protecting the environment. And I think it’s not a zero sum game. It’s not like, Oh, we’re gonna sacrifice one for the other, or, you know, we don’t As, as somebody who’s concerned about the environment, I also don’t wanna put companies outta business.

[00:06:37] I want there to, to be more, Let’s all get on the same page and have a certain level of respect and stewardship for the environment. And I don’t believe that one side versus the other, like one side doesn’t wanna destroy the environment. The other side, you know, is, is only concerned about the the environment.

Don’t Become Extreme

[00:06:54] I think there’s a, I think there’s a healthy middle ground that we all can, can live and we can use innovation and use technology to our advantage. I think we can all come together as, Hey, we all have common interests and I think we all agree on the same end, and that is we want to protect the earth and we want to protect our children’s future.

[00:07:17] Not be selfish, but think about the consequences of the decisions that we make today for, for the future. And I, I think there’s a real opportunity for us to do that without getting extreme. You know, I think there’s a healthy middle ground that, that everybody can agree to. We wanna be on this planet as long as we possibly can.

[00:07:35] I think we can all agree to that.

[00:07:38] Miriam: Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate what you’re saying about not becoming extreme and also the technology technological spaces. I have a friend who is building a, new home and she’s requesting the carbon capture concrete, I guess it’s a special, unique thing and she’s having a hard time getting her developer to sign off on it, and she just keeps after ’em and keeps after ’em and says, No, this is what I want.

Have Converstations

[00:08:04] The research says it’s equally sound and I know it’s a little bit more expensive and it’s what I want.

[00:08:10] And I was showing another person who is into building houses, this glass that has this special, um, I wanna say there’s an iridescence to it that allows birds to see it so they don’t just crash into it and kill themselves on it.

[00:08:25] So I think there are ways to do it and, I appreciate what you say about coming together and having conversations.

[00:08:32] So, okay. You, you went from the farm, then you went to school, you became an engineer, and then you went into this architecture space. How did you get from there to where you are now?

[00:08:45] Take Opportunities

[00:08:45] Rob: So, so I really became, I, I’ve really been that guy who, number one, I hated working for somebody else and it just used to drive me crazy. So I always knew I had that entrepreneurial blood inside of me

[00:08:57] I encourage a young generation to do this as well. Start to experiment and get into as many different things as you can.

[00:09:04] You don’t always have to like, do something you don’t like or, or like be stuck doing one thing forever. Like I really believe that the beauty of life and the beauty of being in business is try a few different things and see what really resonates with you. See like what makes your heart sing and, and like, When you, when you can honestly say to yourself, Wow, I could, I feel like I can do this and make a difference in someone’s life.

[00:09:29] Like even as strange as this sounds, even if I didn’t like necessarily what I was doing or selling at the time, I try to say to myself, How can I make this an opportunity, right? To make a difference. Impact somebody or give, it helps somebody achieve a transformation. So that’s why even over the course of my career, I went from engineer to business owner to getting in the health and wellness industry.

Health and Wellness

[00:09:59] That was just a fascinating world. For several years I owned my own, um, health and wellness centers, so, Had two health and wellness centers that I was involved in helping to, you know, when people were at the end of the road with, uh, the allopathic model, you know, and, and really wanted it, they were just tired of the, the, the runaround with medications and being sick and, and just wanted to find some way to

[00:10:23] be healthy and and to truly heal. So we found a lot of those people, um, were attracted to our model and so we focused on custom attrition and putting people on a, what we called the healing diet and really started to see people’s lives transform. So that was a period in my life, which it was fascinating and I loved it because it was really making a difference in people’s lives.

[00:10:47] And then I migrated to getting into the insurance industry and using my science and engineering background to really get into safety and risk management and, um, helping businesses become more conscious about safety and how to better manage risk inside of their business. Not only to protect their, their employees, but also just to be more proactive about, you know, managing how they’re managing their business.

Make an Impact

[00:11:13] So that’s where I am right now. That’s where I. Where I am right now is I was very successful as a producer, so I I, I was working in the, in the insurance agency side, then decided, Hey, you know what? I don’t want to just do this for myself. I want to help other agents and producers be successful and help them grow their businesses and help them grow a multimillion dollar book of business.

[00:11:40] And that’s where I am today and the impact that I’m able to make and, and the difference I’m able to make in people’s lives today. Is again, I go back to the same theme anywhere you go or anywhere I’ve been. I’ve always thought of ways that I could really make an impact and, and change people’s lives for the better.

[00:11:59] And uh, that’s always been a common theme throughout my entire career.

[00:12:04] Miriam: I love that you’re saying that because I was just about, in my mind, I was thinking, okay, we each have these themes that run through our lives, and anybody who had had was older than two decades has a little bit of data behind them.

[00:12:19] You start seeing these commonalities, at least in the jobs that you have loved

[00:12:24] you know, I was talking to someone the other day and I said, I’ve always been a coach.

[00:12:28] First. I did it when I was in high school listening to all my friends and their boyfriend problems and their girlfriend problems, and it’s always been, Let me listen to you.

Mentoring

[00:12:37] I’ll find out where you’re stuck. I’ll help you get to that next, whatever that next level.

[00:12:43] When I was in, After I graduated from college, I spent 25 years in a mentoring program with students doing the same thing. Where are you stuck? How can I help you? And then, you know, I became a therapist. Same thing.

[00:12:58] Where are you stuck? How can I help you? And then I moved into this coaching space with businesses and it’s, it’s fascinating to see this golden thread that runs through all of it.

[00:13:09] At my core, that’s who I am. And at your core, what I heard you saying, You like to help people’s lives change and transform, but it’s a little bit different than the way I do it.

[00:13:18] I think. I love this notion of, of you like kind of pushing and excelling people forward – whenever you talk about your business, like when we’re in that, group class, You always have a lot of energy, positive energy where you’re like clearly enthused about what you’re doing.

[00:13:37] How do you help yourself or others when they get discouraged?

[00:13:42] You strike me as someone who is fundamentally optimistic, but I don’t know. Speak to that.

[00:13:46] Find What Works For You

[00:13:46] Rob: Yes, very much so. It’s actually, it’s, it’s funny because even. People who know me very well, know me as like the, uh, I’m the guy that bounces outta bed in the morning, like, Right, what are we doing? Let’s do this. You know, like, let’s go, let’s, let’s make some stuff happen.

[00:14:03] Right? It also, Reflects in the things I feed myself, feed my brain, feed my spirit.

[00:14:10] I read a phenomenal book, by hell Elrod, which, you know, he talks about the miracle mourning, you know, And I started to incorporate that into my life several years ago and, and really made a huge, huge impact on how I started my day.

[00:14:27] And, you know, the question I get a lot is, And there’s so much out there online about, Hey, what’s your routine? How do you get excited for the day? How do you start your morning? Do you do meditation? Do you do this? You know, and it’s funny because I do what works for me and everybody can develop their own routine that works for them.

[00:14:47] Some people like to work out in the morning. Some people like to work out at nighttime. It all depends how you, how your body responds to things or how you function the the point. As long as you do, are doing those things that are good for your heart, good for your spirit, um, good for your overall wellness and your wellbeing to get you started, to get you motivated, to get you excited, to inspire you to, and maybe it’s tapping into other people when you’re not feeling great.

Tough Love

[00:15:18] You’re like, Hey, I’m gonna call my friend Miriam, and she’s, she’s gonna lift me up, right? Anyone who knows me, Knows that they can reach out to me anytime and if there’s something I can do to pick you up or inspire you, or you know, maybe even hold you, hold you, hold you to the fire and say, Listen, you know, you’re giving me a bunch of excuses right now.

[00:15:39] There’s a little bit of tough love there too, and, and accountability. I’m, I also love doing that because I really feel like sometimes people need that as well. I’m not gonna let you play the victim and, you know, woe is me. It’s, Hey, what do we need to do to think differently about the situation? What do we need to do differently to turn this around?

[00:15:59] How, if, if things were perfect, what would that look like? And start to talk through some of those things. And I do that for, for myself too. It’s like that self talk. I wasn’t always like that necessarily, but I always had, I’ve grown over the years, but I’ve always had that level of faith, belief, high energy.

[00:16:21] And now over time, as I got older, It just changed and, and got better. So I started reading more. Um, you know, there’s so many phenomenal books out there that just help contribute to how can I make myself better every single day? Like Atomic Habits, for example. How can you just improve 1% every day and, and focus on that?

Opportunity to Help Others

[00:16:45] That’s a positive thing, you know? And, and we went through a really tough time the last few years. It had been really tough for a lot of people, but at the end of the. We’re still here, we’re still, we still have a phenomenal opportunity to help somebody else, to make a difference in someone else’s life.

[00:17:01] And sometimes when you do something for others and you give and you serve and you have that servant mentality, sometimes that turns around your own mind trap that’s going on and can help you flip that switch. And, and that for me has always worked really well.

[00:17:18] Miriam: Yeah. Wow.

[00:17:19] Well spoken. I don’t know that there’s a whole lot that can be said after that. That’s like, okay, and now we’re gonna take a commercial break. Just kidding, .

[00:17:28] Rob: But the thing is, everybody, everybody can do that. You have Yeah. Have that power inside of you. That, that, So, so, so you’re feeling things aren’t going your way.

[00:17:40] Right? So things aren’t necessarily going your way. Okay. If you have an acknowledgement that. I’m not where I want to be, but I know where I want to go. Okay. What are the, what’s the next right step? What’s the next thing you should you, you and you in your heart or in your mind, you know, that you need to start doing that.

Opportunity Mindset

[00:18:01] I always say this, it’s, it’s funny when I talk to sales people because you know, I’m like totally into sales, totally into marketing. Totally love that whole world. And sometimes in sales you experience a lot of rejection, right? So I’m like, Listen, what’s the next thing you can do to build some momentum?

[00:18:21] And the the, the fastest and easiest solution when you’re in the dumps, especially if you’re in sales, is activity because activity breeds results eventually. Right? So you might experience a lot of rejection, a lot of rejection, a lot of rejection. You’re like, Oh man, this is so hard. Yeah, of course it’s hard, right?

[00:18:42] But if you keep on going and you keep on going, eventually you’re gonna get to the end of where you want to go. Or all the sudden these amazing things are gonna happen, especially if you have a good mindset about.

[00:18:54] I’m a big believer in the law of attraction. I, I, I really believe that there is a whole mindset, and that’s why I’m big believer in meditation.

[00:19:04] It really calms that brain and calms that mind down. When I’m experiencing stress, I sometimes will take a step back and say, You know what, I’m just gonna sit quiet for 10 minutes. And just breathe and just kind of meditate and just let all that chatter just kind of settle down and, and like relax. And that has always been a great solution to, uh, to those stressful situations in life that we all experience.

[00:19:30] So, Hopefully that might help somebody.

Stick to It

[00:19:32] Miriam: Yeah, . Yeah. I hope so too. I absolutely hope so too. And I agree with you. Do you have any stories about having to stick to something even though it was hard?

[00:19:43] Rob: You know, where I draw the most? I’ve been an athlete my entire life and I think what I’ve drawn so much from being an athlete and the lessons that I learned from setting goals to persevering through tough times to, you know what? I can do an extra rep, I can, I can run an extra mile.

[00:20:04] You know, when I wanted to quit. You know, sometimes you don’t always like to do this stuff. It’s like, do I want to get up in the morning to work out? Do I want to go for that 10 mile run? Or, you know, I’m training for a marathon. So I’ve done marathons, I’ve done Ironman races, Um, I did all those things that I call that like, BC before children

[00:20:25] So it’s like before children when I had the time it like, and now my kids are starting to get older. So it’s kind of cool to watch them grow as adults and, and, uh, like my son is now a professional, uh, he’s a professional soccer player, so, um, you know, To see him now grow and develop into that man and, and into that professional, like he’s living a dream that I always dreamed of myself when I was younger.

Sports and Business

[00:20:49] You know, I think as young men, we, we sometimes think of like if you’re an athlete, you’re always dreaming of, well maybe there’s another level there. Maybe I can be a pro or be a professional someday. And uh, now he’s living that and I’m tru, I’m so excited for him. But I think sport, the sports and athletics, Really taught me a lot about business and life and about setting goals and about just like getting through some hard times just by being, you know, persevering and through hard work.

[00:21:20] If you surround yourself with the right people and, and you work smart and you focus on the things that you are really gifted at and let other people like bring in other people to help you get to where you want to go, that maybe fill in the gaps where you’re not as strong, I think is really the secret.

[00:21:39] That’s one of the things that really learned over the years and, and grew. I went from like this workaholic. You know, grind mentality to like, wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense. I, I need to work smarter and surround myself with people who are smarter than me. And, um, I think that’s been like one of the areas where I’ve evolved.

[00:21:56] And eventually over, over time as I got smarter, I’m like, I don’t have to work so hard. I just have to be smart about it. And.

Internalized Discipline

[00:22:03] Miriam: Yeah. I wonder if sometimes that happens because as we age we get tireder and so it’s like, awesome. I gotta learn how to do me smarter about this because I don’t have the same kind of energy I had when I was in my twenties.

[00:22:16] So the question I’m curious about, I have watched an entire generation of athletes grow up being in soccer or. Little peewee football or whatever it is from the time they’re, I mean, they’re starting at like age three or four now, and I have watched generations of kids come up and what I’ve seen is that they’re incredibly, um, disciplined.

[00:22:43] When they have their coach telling them what to do, but once they graduate out of that space, like maybe they finish high school and they move into the college space, or if they’re a collegiate athlete and then they grow past that. I’ve seen an awful lot of people be kind of like a kite whose string was cut.

[00:23:02] You know how when there’s that tension in a kite and then you cut the string and the kite just kind of flails all over the place because that discipline wasn’t internalized. It was like, Yeah, I can do it because you’re telling me to do it. But it didn’t move into the center of themselves. And I was gonna ask you clearly you have an internal locus of control.

[00:23:25] What did you do that helped you know that you are the captain of your ship and the master of your fate? Obviously, you know, within reason.

[00:23:36] Take Control

[00:23:36] Rob: You bring up some really interesting questions about how, you know, I also think as generations, we, we grew up in a, in a certain generation, um, that was a little bit, I, I feel like it was a little more gritty and a little bit more like, Hey, you gotta.

[00:23:50] You gotta take the bull by the horns. And like, if you wanna make things happen, it’s up to you. Like you’ve gotta put in the hard work. You’ve gotta, if, if that’s a goal of yours, figure out how, how you need to get there. And I also think some of the new generation. And I noticed this since in, in youth sports is just a different mentality about how to interact and engage with the, the youth.

[00:24:17] Um, I personally believe like the old school approach of, of discipline and regimen, uh, is very valuable and beneficial because I really think that some of the youth, they, they need that direction. They need some guidance. So I think as we get older, as adults, We start to lose that a little bit of, of like, it’s kind of like that lifeline and it’s why I’m involved with, like, I think we all need to practice what we preach, and that is if the only way to get to where you want to go, I believe is not only surrounding yourself with the right people, but also having the right coaches, the right mentors, the people that you can latch onto in, in your life, especially early on in your career where you can say, Hey, John.

Coaches

[00:25:03] Like I remember my mentors in, in the industry that, that I started in and I’m like, I really relied on them to, Hey, I’m so determined. I wanna be successful in this business. I wanna learn it. I’m gonna approach someone who’s already been where I want to go, who’s already successful, and, and. And model their success and, and talked with them and picked their brain and say, Hey, will you mentor me?

[00:25:28] Will you, will you share with me some of the things that worked for you? And then also, like today, I, I believe that there is a reason why professional athletes have coaches. Tiger Woods has his own swing coach. My son has a goalkeeper coach that he works with, uh, who’s on the coaching staff, and they.

[00:25:51] Team meetings and they, they meet separately to talk about strategy and hey, how do, and, and also, role playing and game planning and debriefing. Like, Hey, what did I do well, What did I didn’t do? What didn’t I do well? How, how can I prove here?

[00:26:06] And I think as professionals, we all need a coach, somebody who can help guide us in the right direction and give us that.

[00:26:15] Spark of inspiration and, and, and guidance and direction and, and somebody who, who, who can help give us, Hey, let’s game plan through this. How can we get to where, where you are now? You told me, Rob, your, your goal is x. All right, let’s work together. How do we get there? And then map out a plan to get there.

Give Others Opportunities

[00:26:36] And that’s where you and I met you and I met through, through a, I think, is a phenomenal program and, and I feel extremely blessed to have met you. One of the things I’d like to do in, in our mastermind groups is I like to share my experience and also contribute because if I can help somebody else, I’ve offered to every single person.

[00:26:55] That I’ve interacted with, Hey, I’m a resource for you. Use me. I want to, I want to give back to you. I want to help you in some way. And I, I just offer it to everyone as, as like freely, There’s no strings attached. There’s no, I have no ulterior motive. I have no, like, I’m not looking for them to do business with me.

[00:27:14] My goal is to help you become successful and maybe think about things a different way that you may not have thought about yourself. And, and, and that’s really become now my mission is just to help as many people as I can openly and freely and just give and, and just serve. You know? And I think if we just focus, if we all focused on that a little bit more, I, I, I think you’d get a lot farther away, farther along in life in a business.

[00:27:39] Miriam: Yeah, I agree with you. I have watched you help different people in that group, and your face lights up, like you end up. It gives you joy. It’s not something that takes energy from you. It’s something that gives energy to you. And I have experienced the same thing with the various, um, business owners that I coach.

Business Insights

[00:27:58] I’m never tired when I come back from that space. It’s just a privilege to be invited into someone’s life and to be invited into a contribu. Space.

[00:28:08] So it’s also really fun when you ask the question that stops them in their tracks. I asked a young entrepreneur a question, This was about two weeks ago, and his eyes dilated.

[00:28:22] He got this look shocked look on his face, and then he and I said, What’s going on inside you? And he. Uh, Freak. I know you’re right, . And it was, it was an awesome moment because, um, it was a question I asked. I didn’t state make a statement. I asked a question and he knew inside the direction that, um, we were going.

[00:28:47] He was like, Oh my gosh. In the end it saved him about $90,000. So I felt good about that. That’s, you know, that’s a win. It’s a win, right? It’s a win. It’s a win. So, um, let’s see.

[00:29:01] What kind of insight or business process has been, you know, really impactful or insightful to you in the last, I don’t know, couple months?

[00:29:11] Rob: One of the areas that I, I found that has really brought me the most, has been the most insightful to me, and also I’m able to now help others do this, is create systems and processes inside of your business so that it creates, a systematic way of performing things over and over and over, which can produce a very specific result or outcome.

Learn Something New

[00:29:40] Right. So rather than having this hodgepodge, haphazard way of, of operating, whether it be marketing or business development, sales, um, operations, creating those systems and procedures so that everybody on the team knows exactly what their, what their role is, what their contribution needs to be, um, you have systems in place, automations, like, one thing I’ve really learned is you.

[00:30:07] I don’t need to be an expert in technology. I wanna know enough to be dangerous. So what I did is I learned how to use Premier Pro to edit videos. I learned how to use Zapier to create automations in workflows. I learned it by, you know, it’s amazing youTube is an amazing resource. , so is Google. If you ever wanna learn something, listen, all you need to do is type it in there and say, I wanna learn how to do.

[00:30:35] Well, I’ll tell you what happened as a result of doing that, rather than just delegating it to somebody else, I actually learned it myself so I could understand the process and the system and the way things worked so that I could share it with somebody else. Or if I hire somebody to help me perform that particular function or activity or, or processes in inside my company, I then have a frame of reference for how it should be done and also the time it takes to do something or a task

Take a Step Back

[00:31:10] the results and the outcome on the other side is once you set that thing up the first time on the front end, and then let it work and let it, and then maybe tweak and test results and maybe do some AB testing, but setting up the systems so that it operates for you.

[00:31:29] And that’s one of the things I learned in, in our, um, in our program that, that we’re, that we are in, is setting up those systems so that you don’t have to operate, be the operator all the time in your business, that you actually can take a step back and work on the business and not always be in the business and working on fulfillment.

[00:31:50] And, and that’s one of the takeaways I think I could share with you and, and hopefully that answers your question.

[00:31:55] The biggest thing, the biggest takeaway, what I encourage everybody is develop the processes, a unique process, and the systems inside your. business Which not only can make it function better and be more efficient, but also deliver the value to your customer, deliver a consistent result time in time, again, over and over and over, so that you’re delivering the most value that you possibly can for, for your customers.

[00:32:22] Miriam: And the only thing I would add is that I think that entrepreneurs also need to do that in their life because sometimes their businesses hum right along and they can’t ever find their keys, or they’re just, So disorganized in their actual life. And it’s like you have to have both.

[00:32:39] You have to have systems and processes for your life, and you have to have systems and processes for your business.

[00:32:46] Goal-Setting

[00:32:46] Miriam: So Rob, we’re just about to the end here. This is kind of a question out of left field, but I thought I’d ask it and just see what comes of it, uh, in the last six months, what is a hundred dollars or less purchase you’ve made that you’re like, Man, I’m so glad I did.

[00:33:03] Rob: You know, one thing does come to mind. So, So I have a very good friend, and it’s actually somebody who, I used to work with and then he, you know, I, I kind of focused on a whole different niche in the marketplace.

[00:33:17] He’s a friend who, runs a company called Three by Five Life, and they’re these, it’s actually really cool. They’re these, there are these simple note cards, right, which there’s different themes and there’s goal setting, and then, , but there’s something on here that’s really, really important that, that I’ve incorporated into my life that has been so impactful.

[00:33:41] And that is every day I pull out this card and I write down three things that I’m grateful for, and, and then I can carry this card with me and fold it up really nicely and carry it with me in my pocket. And every once in a while. I can reach out, reach into my pocket and say, You know what, what are three things I’m grateful for?

Emotional Growth

[00:34:02] And usually those things that are on there usually have to do with my family, my kids, my relationships, my, you know, my relationships with my fellow colleagues that I’m so grateful that I have. And so this, this has been one of those purchases that I made that’s been like, it’s the simplest, you know, it’s the most simple little thing, but from a mental.

[00:34:26] Emotional and just a growth standpoint. This has been the most impactful for me. I’ve been, I’ve been using these for a while now, and it’s just, it’s become a habit. Every single morning I wake up and I’m like, Okay, what am I grateful for? What are the, what are the three top tasks on my list that I, and I, I write the tasks on here, and then I write a theme.

Daily Theme

[00:34:46] What’s my theme today? Today’s theme was about courage. Because I was on my run this morning and I thought to myself, What’s my theme today? And, and I thought about it. I’m like, You know what, what came to my mind was courage. Having the courage to do things that I maybe normally would overthink or maybe not do because I, I’m held back by something, by fear or by something.

[00:35:09] But what if I was just a little bit more courageous today? What if I just had a little more courage to do something? Maybe made me feel uncomfortable. It pushed me outside of my comfort zone. So then I wrote that down like, this is what I, This is the courage I want to have today, and this is, this is the action I want to take to push me outside of my comfort zone.

[00:35:29] And sometimes it, for me, that brings me joy because I can then at the end of the day, look at this card and go, Hey, you know what? That was a win. And then there’s a column here for putting your wins, right? That was a little win. Chalk up those little wins because they add up to a lot. And even if it’s like creating micro goals, little things that you know you can accomplish throughout the day helps you build momentum, helps, helps to fuel that, that inspiration and, and to keep you moving forward.

[00:35:57] Miriam: That is great. Thank you so much for just like taking the time to share that. We’ll put that, that resource in the show notes.

[00:36:04] We’ve come to the end of our time.

[00:36:06] Find Rob

[00:36:06] Miriam: Would you just share how people can reach you if they would like to ask more questions about who you are and what you do?

[00:36:12] Rob: Yeah, the best place, honestly, I am on LinkedIn, um, and Rob Jacomen, reach out to me on LinkedIn, send me a message. You know, and by the way, I’m a big fan of personal video, so if you wanna send me a personalized video and introduce yourself, I’d love it.

[00:36:29] I’d be really impressed because it’s something that we do. Video has become such a important part of our business model because we really believe that it personalizes that connection and that relationship with somebody.

[00:36:41] Shoot me an email, shoot me a text. I respond to everything.

[00:36:45] Miriam: Very good. Okay. Well I mentioned before we started that as a thank you. We are doing a gift in a donation in your name to the Nature Conservancy. We started out talking about sustainability. We’ll end talking about sustainability.

[00:37:00] Rob, thank you so much. Just appreciate you.

[00:37:03] Rob: I’m so grateful to have met you and, and, again, it’s been an honor.

End Credits

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are found.

Full audio episode found here.

Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

All LeaveBetter Podcast episodes can be found here.

Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.

 

Define Your Own Success with Jesse Biondi and Melissa LeEllen

Melissa & Jesse

[00:00:00] Miriam: Hey guys, today it is super fun because it is my first time interviewing two people at once. I have Melissa and Jessie here today, and they are the owners and creators of Creative Global Entertainment. And there’s so much more beyond that. They also have a podcast reimagine success. We’re gonna get into the weeds with all of this, but Melissa, you’re an actress, you’re a marketing director, a producer, a comic book creator, writer, motivational speaker, podcast host.

[00:00:33] That’s a lot of hats to wear. And then Jessie, you’re a musician of all instruments, but cello guitar. . Also a podcast host, producer, teacher, motivational speakers. You guys like are the whole package . So I’m really happy to have you here. I can’t wait to see where our conversation goes.

[00:00:53] Melissa: Thank you so

[00:00:54] Jessie & Melissa: much

[00:00:54] Jesse: for that.

[00:00:54] We’re so happy to be here.

[00:00:56] Melissa: This is so much fun. We love we love what you’re doing by the way. We love everything about your podcast and we are so excited to be a part of it. Yeah.

[00:01:05] Jesse: Our goal in life is just to make the world a better place and what better place to do that than the Leave Better podcast.

[00:01:11] So thank you for having us.

[00:01:13] Defining Success

[00:01:13] Miriam: Awesome. All right. Well, I think where I’m gonna start is your podcast is called Reimagine Success, and something in some of the materials I was reading that I really appreciated is that you said success comes in many forms. Everyone wants to keep up with the Joneses, but it isn’t always what you think it is.

[00:01:33] Yeah. So if we can start there and talk about maybe some of the things you’ve seen and heard. Where people got to success, whatever that means, and it wasn’t what they thought it was gonna be. Mm-hmm. .

[00:01:45] Jesse: Yeah, absolutely. So we live our lives with that as our mentality. You know, everybody wants more money, everybody wants the bigger house, the cars and all that stuff, but honestly, that’s not how we’ve ever defined success.

[00:01:59] We. You know, both of us have strived our whole lives to live a full life. One that we are fulfilled every single day at the end of the day.

[00:02:07] And on our podcast, we’ve got the privilege of just interviewing so many people that have just outstanding stories.

[00:02:14] And what’s cool about every one of these people, Is that all of their stories are so vastly different and you never know where life is taking these people. Like it’s, it’s the chances and the risks that people take. That pay off. And when they say, You know what? I’ve had enough with this mediocre, mundane life that I’m living and I’m ready to live life fully and just with my whole heart. And that’s when we start seeing people just finding actual success.

[00:02:43] Freedom of Choice

[00:02:43] Miriam: Yeah, that makes sense to me. I think I’ve, I have had this challenge of defining success. What is a successful day? Because you’re right, so many people initially think it’s about money. And to be honest, I think it’s about something different. And one of the ideas or concepts I’m playing with is this notion of freedom that you have.

[00:03:03] You have the freedom to make decisions that are. In the best interests of your mental health or your children’s health or like for, I was working on kind of some fi like regular goals and I was thinking, well, what would it mean success to be successful financially? And I thought, Really, it comes down to never having to make a financial decision because I have too little money.

[00:03:30] It comes down to what is the right financial decision. Yes. Like for example, with a pet, you know, I’m a big animal lover and we have a bunch of rescues. I never wanna put down an animal because I don’t have the resources to take care of them. Mm-hmm. , I wanna do that decision because that’s the right decision for them.

[00:03:50] Right. So that kind of freedom. Anyway, What kind of things, as you have interviewed people or you’ve been in the variety of I mean wearing the variety of hats that you wear, what kind of things have you seen of people who they thought this road was gonna take them to success?

Drop Your Ego

[00:04:12] Melissa: We actually had someone on the podcast that was growing their business and he ended up stepping down as CEO and hiring a CEO in his place. So he dropped his ego because it’s really hard for people to do that to, to come on and let someone else take charge of your business. He ended up doing that and.

[00:04:34] A matter of, of just like a year, I believe. Yeah. It was a real short, short amount of time. It was very short. He grew his business 30 million. Wow. And that’s just taking away the ego, stripping away what you feel like you should be doing and, and letting your, your company go where it needs to go. And sometimes it’s, it’s out of the box and, and you think that, that you shouldn’t be doing it that way, but, When you, when you look at the big picture of where you want and where you want your goals to go, then that’s when you can really be clear and you can see what you need as a company and as a whole and as a community.

[00:05:13] We’re an entire community that is lifting each other up, and that is always building and building each other up to be a community.

[00:05:20] To lift each other up. And that’s at the end of the day, you know what a lot of our clients are doing, They’re lifting each other up in ways that’s very unexpected.

[00:05:30] And that’s, that’s all that we’re doing here at Creative Global Entertainment is where a brand elevation marketing company.

[00:05:37] So anything to elevate your brand. That’s, that’s where, that’s where we.

[00:05:42] Elevate Your Brand

[00:05:42] Jesse: And what’s cool too is not only have we seen this in our guest lives, but we’ve seen it in our own lives. Yeah. For me, my whole life before, I’ll say BM before Melissa because we’ve, we’ve been married for a little over a year now and we dated for exactly one year before we got married.

[00:06:01] We were doing some odds and end things, but then I ended up getting another corporate job where I was making more money than I had ever made in my entire life. And I was like, I. This is great. I’m making all this money and everything’s good, except for my soul was dying.

[00:06:15] Yeah. And we are actually both working for this company at the same time. This was right before we really, really launched the new rebranding of Creative Global.

[00:06:24] And by a stroke of luck, as you would have it the company ended up downsizing and cut our entire department. And I say, luck, because most people would look at that and be like, Wow, that’s horrible.

[00:06:39] You both lost your jobs in one fail swoop. And mind you, I was making more money than I’d ever made in my life. She was making more money than me. Melissa was like, All right, we’re gonna the lake, you know, cuz this was last summer.

[00:06:52] Yeah,

Take a Breath

[00:06:52] Melissa: well, I, I had the idea, we need to stop what we’re doing. We need to take a breath, we need to take a pause, and we need to go out and do something that we enjoy, which was the lake. And we got out there and we’re on a raft and we see the mountains in the backdrop. And just the lake is just beautiful and calm.

[00:07:11] Just a calming day. The sun is shining, you know, it’s shining through the trees and it’s just a beautiful day. And we’re relaxed and we’re in a happy place and we just let it go. And then we come back into the office and then that’s when we get busy. You know, you have to take that breath. And that’s what a lot of people forget.

[00:07:31] Jesse: And it’s, it’s crazy though because you know my family. They thought, Oh, you finally got this great job. Everything’s wonderful, You’re on the right path. But that wasn’t the right path for me, the right path for me involved having freedom, having, you know, a life that I’m excited about living and not doing some corporate job that just was literally killing us both and.

Pursue Dreams

[00:07:56] So now we are happier than we’ve ever been. We’re pursuing our dreams, our goals, helping other people in real tangible ways, and it’s just been so fulfilling. And we get to do these little dances all the time because we’re, we’re doing the things that are goals, and we’re reaching those goals and we celebrate all of our victories, big or small.

[00:08:16] Miriam: Wow, so much, first of all, I, I, I just wanna say you guys are clearly newly married, . You guys are super smiley and very happy, which is just fun. It’s fun to see. Secondly unless you come from entrepreneurial parents, they all freak out when you leave the corporate job with the insurance.

[00:08:38] And I mean, parents wanna see their kids do okay, and that feels really safe to them. And entrepreneurism feels not safe at all. Yeah.

[00:08:47] Freedom For Your Soul

[00:08:47] Miriam: What were the clues that th this corporate space was killing your soul?

[00:08:54] Like, h how did it show up and how did you know even before the job disappeared that you needed to like do something? I.

[00:09:04] Melissa: I looked at my life in corporate, and you can take that into any corporate. You know, company that you would like to look at, and the owner is the one who makes the decisions. So, you know, when I was doing my marketing plan, when I was doing my campaigns, you know, I always had to get this approval from the owner and.

[00:09:26] And everything was, was approved. I opened up four businesses from rebranding phase on while I was with them, and it was an amazing learning experience. But what I realized from my soul and what my soul needs is freedom. I need the freedom to express my creativity and the ways that I need to express it.

[00:09:48] So I started my business in 2009 and I said, You know what? I’m gonna do this the way that I wanna do it. And I’ve had a lot of success. Of course, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, there’s rebranding, there’s the economy changes, there’s fluctuations.

[00:10:04] Jesse: You know, for me, I didn’t know about being an entrepreneur. I didn’t know that you could have a life with freedom. And so I took this job and, you know, beyond.

Attitude of Success

[00:10:15] That was really painful to work in that environment. Just the daily nonsense of what we were doing, just. Chipped away a little bit at a time.

[00:10:26] And you know, at first I was like, Oh, well my job’s pretty easy and I can get it done in a short amount of time, and, and that, that ma means that like, I’m getting paid a lot more. But that money didn’t. Make it better that I was doing this garbage work.

[00:10:43] Melissa: Like it doesn’t fulfill you.

[00:10:44] Jesse: Yeah. When, when you’re doing something that you truly, Yeah, just don’t enjoy you, you wake up every day with a sense of dread, like, Oh, I just don’t want to turn on my computer today.

[00:10:55] I don’t wanna put on my dress shirt today. I don’t want to sit behind that desk all day and, and talk to these people all day. And. Wake up with that feeling well the rest of your day is shot. You know, cuz you’re automatically going into something with a bad attitude and a bad mindset. And mindset is the most crucial thing ever.

[00:11:14] If you can’t walk into something with a clear mind and heart and knowing that like you’re doing something that you love, then you’re setting yourself up for failure to begin with.

[00:11:23] It takes a lot of energy and effort to be in a creative space and for us it’s more of a deep rooted passion. Mm-hmm. Without that, our lives are empty and we feel depressed.

Enjoy Your Work

[00:11:37] And so working outside of what it is that you are passionate about is the fastest way to kill yourself, honestly. Mm-hmm. .

[00:11:46] Miriam: Yeah. I forget who said this, but they said, If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.

[00:11:52] Jesse: That quote rings true with us every single day because since we left that job and are doing creative global, seriously, it never feels like work.

[00:12:01] Melissa: It’s.

[00:12:02] An amazing feeling to know that you are helping a small business, like really get their voice heard and mm-hmm and to elevate their brand. And not, not only that, but it in turn, it helps us. It, it fulfills our soul and we’re able to be creative every single day by doing it.

[00:12:21] Miriam: It’s a win. It sounds like a win.

[00:12:22] You’re in your sweet spot. Okay, so I’m gonna move away from business for a second.

[00:12:27] Since you are newlyweds- a lot of business, it’s super hard on marriages. A lot of marriages go away. And that isn’t just for business owners, it’s for anybody. Yeah. What have you learned in this process about relating to one another?

[00:12:45] Like what gives some good marriage tips? Yeah.

[00:12:49] Communication in Relationships

[00:12:49] Melissa: First of all, communication. It’s so important. So important, and you have to find. Not everyone is gonna like everything that everybody does. Like, you know, someone could love the ballet. The other person doesn’t necessarily love the ballet, but it’s all about balance in a relationship, and it’s about caring and supporting and honestly being each other’s number one fan, Number one cheerleader.

[00:13:16] Number one supporter. Like Jesse. I go to his concert and I know every word to his songs. I, you know, dance I, I support and I don’t care if no one else is dancing in the room. I am dancing because not only this is my husband, but this is, this is my favorite artist in the entire world. And when you think about that, With your partner.

[00:13:41] This is my favorite person in the world. This is my favorite writer in the world. This is my favorite business coach in the world. This is my favorite. You know, whatever you do in life, this is my favorite. And if you go that that day, every single day, and you just really support each other,

[00:13:59] We’ll always be in the honeymoon phase because we’re each other’s number one supporters and each other’s number one cheerleaders.

[00:14:05] And we always communicate with each other every single day.

[00:14:08] Jesse: Yeah. The communication thing, I don’t want to under stress that, Yeah, we spend. Hours and hours just talking to each other every day. Every day. Mm-hmm. and most relationships, you know, somebody goes or both go to work, they come home, they see each other.

Be Honest

[00:14:26] How was work? It was fine. How was your job? Fine. All right. Let’s have dinner. Oh, should we watch tv? Okay, let’s watch TV and then let’s go to sleep. And we don’t talk to people. Mm-hmm. .

[00:14:37] One of the first things I ever said to Melissa. I’m gonna be 100% honest with you about everything all the time, and she said, I will too.

[00:14:46] And we’ve, we’ve. Focused on that. And that helps us with business, that helps us with our personal relationship, that helps us with our friends relationships. Everything we do, we just approach it from a place of honesty. It’s heart driven and we talk, like I said, about everything. Even if it’s ridiculous, we talk about it.

Regular Communication

[00:15:05] And. We, we find that we hardly ever fight because we’re always communicating. Yeah. We, when it comes to business things, we generally get on the same page really quickly because we’re both discussing the, the steps in real time. You know, we’re not waiting until the end of the day and saying, Okay, so now I need to bring this to you.

[00:15:25] I have a song on my album that just came out that says, I spend every hour of every day with you, and I’d still want more.

[00:15:32] Miriam: Sorry guys. You only get 24 hours a day. I know. Yeah. Okay. So I mean, I appreciate, I’m, I’m also a therapist as well as a coach, and so I appreciate many of the things that you’re talking about.

[00:15:46] What happens when you do disagree when you can’t get on the same page, or if you’re committed to honesty, sometimes you’re gonna say something that hurts the other person’s feelings or, You are two individuals who have different opinions about certain things, even if you’re really similar, tell us how you handle some of those

[00:16:05] Melissa: spaces.

[00:16:06] Understanding Disagreements

[00:16:06] Melissa: There’s, there’s been times where we’re, we agree to disagree. It is the best phrase, you know, but we talk, talk about it. Why do you feel, why do you feel that way about this? Well, Of this way or maybe a some past trauma that you’ve gone through. And we just talk about it, like what is the “why” behind it?

[00:16:26] Jesse: Sorry to interrupt, but, or is it our ego that’s making us disagree or something in us that, that is our pride and we, we want to disagree with this because it’s, it’s a personal issue that we need to deal with, so we’re constantly challenging each other to explore those areas as

[00:16:43] Melissa: well.

[00:16:43] When we talk about something and we’re open and honest and we come from a loving place, we both know that we’re coming from a loving place. Anytime that we talk about any, it could be anything absolutely anything. A graphic Jesse design.

[00:16:56] And I’m like, Well, that’s not so great. Let’s, you know, know, Restart over with that. Okay, no worries. Let’s, let’s do it together. You know, there’s, there’s always places as, as long as you come. And, and love, and you come in love with whatever you do. You can, you can overcome your challenges that you have.

[00:17:16] Jesse: It also helps that we both have thick skin as creatives. You can look at me and I could write a song or something or make a graphic or whatever it is I’m working on. You can look at me like, Yeah, I really hate that. And I’ll be like, Oh. Okay.

It’s Your Vision

[00:17:30] What do you hate

[00:17:30] Melissa: about it? Yeah. Or, or what do you hate about it? What can I change? What can I improve on?

[00:17:35] Jesse: Whereas the majority of people would say, you hate my work. You hate what I created . I spent so much time making this and you hate it.

[00:17:44] creative processes, one of those things where like, If you, if you can’t just throw away something that you worked hours and hours and hours on, then you’re in the wrong field because there’s gonna be times like our, our motto for our company is, it’s your vision. We just bring it to life. There’s, there’s times where we miss the vision, and that’s okay because it’s not our vision.

[00:18:05] We’re working for somebody else’s vision and we have an idea. And sometimes that idea is, Sometimes that idea is trash, and if that idea is trash, throw it away as quickly as possible. Yeah. I’ve got a stack of songs like that huge that I will never see the light of day ever, but I wrote them and they helped me to grow and they made me better.

[00:18:26] Mm-hmm. and Melissa has stories and all this stuff that she’s like themes for deadly cramps in her comic book series that she’s created that will never see the light of day, and that’s ok. And people just need to know that it’s okay to, to put your heart and soul into something. And at the end of the day that it wasn’t right.

[00:18:43] Not that it wasn’t good, but it wasn’t right for what was needed. And if you can approach things with that mentality, then that alone solves a lot of issues.

[00:18:52] Small Things

[00:18:52] Miriam: Sure. So I heard you say so many things. I wanna just recap some of ’em and then you correct me if I misheard you. Mm-hmm. , I heard you say Melissa, that you guys deal with stuff while they’re little. And so if you’re, you know, I don’t know. If you’re driving somewhere and you, you’ve got your MAPS program and it’s telling you to turn right and you turn left, if you reroute within a block, it’s just not that big of a deal.

[00:19:17] Mm-hmm. , if you reroute after 25 miles, It’s a much bigger deal. Yeah. Yes. So I’m hearing you say, deal with things while they’re small. And you didn’t say this, but I’m guessing that if you’re speaking at something from a place of love, that you have some forms of respect within your communication style.

[00:19:38] Like you’re not attacking the person, you’re talking about the idea, and the other person has made a choice to not defensive. The truth or the perspective that’s coming out. Those were some of the things that I heard you say.

[00:19:53] And then Jesse, you, this is something that I think very, very many people do not have is this.

[00:20:01] It’s, I, I don’t know why, but it seems like so many people have this feeling of I should be able to do it right or perfect the first time, and if I can’t do it right or perfect the first time, I’m throwing it out and I’m quitting and I’m not have to be terrible at it. Yeah. And I, I just think that we do.

[00:20:21] Keep Trying

[00:20:21] Miriam: Somehow in our brains, and I don’t know if this has been the culture of giving everybody a little prize at the end of the exercise or recital or soccer game or whatever somewhere along the line we have not been taught. You know, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:20:44] Jesse: And we, unfortunately, we see that with our children too.

[00:20:48] So quick example of that, our daughter wanted to play violin. Mm-hmm. I was a strings teacher, so I was starting to teach her some of the basics. And at first she liked it a lot. She was really interested and then she realized that, Oh, you know, I have to spend time practicing this.

[00:21:02] Yeah. And it, it, it is hard and it’s not just gonna be something that I can just pick up once a month. Than do well. And ultimately she decided she didn’t want to play violin anymore cuz it was for whatever reason, she, in my opinion, it was too much work.

[00:21:18] It was too much work. And for, for that mindset, it’s sad because she could have had something in her life that brought her this unbelievable joy, but instead she chose the easier route of just giving it up.

[00:21:33] And as a parent, you don’t wanna. Push kids too hard into doing things, but at the same time you’re like, Come on, just give it a chance.

[00:21:40] And that’s, that’s what we see with a lot of people in business. It’s like so many people have these dreams and they’re like, I’m gonna go for this dream. And the first second, it doesn’t work out exactly the way they thought.

Try Again

[00:21:50] They just quit. It’s like, but the world needs your dream. The world needs that thing that you were going to do, but because you had a little bit of kickback, you’re just gonna throw your hands up and quit. Like that’s really sad because now the world, the entire world is missing out on what you had to offer.

[00:22:07] And we’re just all about telling people, Don’t quit on your dreams. Don’t, don’t stop because it gets hard. Take a breath and try again.

[00:22:16] Miriam: Yeah. I love that. I love that. Who or where did you learn that it’s okay to fail, that you have to try again, that it’s okay to try again or to iterate, or any of those things somewhere along the line?

[00:22:32] That was to both of you.

[00:22:35] Melissa: Hmm. I’ll give a really good example. With Deadly Crimson, I have been working on Deadly Crimson for many years. And this is your comic book, right? This is my comic book, yes. Okay. So Deadly Crimson started out and it’s gone through so many different. Phases, but I never gave up.

[00:22:55] And I, the very first kind of book that I came out is not out for the public and it’s on my computer and that’s where it’s gonna stay . And but if I would’ve said, I’m not gonna do this. I’m not, because you know, it. It’s not good enough. It’s, it’s not good. It’s, it’s then it would never be at the place where it is now.

Try Something Different

[00:23:17] And now it’s a full comic book. So now, Oh, look at that. I have a full comic book. And it’s, that’s beautiful. Completely finished.

[00:23:26] And we’re doing a 23. City, city tour next year, a comic contour, you know, so it’s, it’s growing and it’s getting bigger, but if I would’ve said, This isn’t good enough, I’m not good enough, and I would’ve gotten to that mindset of, I’m not worthy, I’m not good enough, and I would’ve backed down and not done it, then it would never be at the place that it is now and growing exponentially every single day.

[00:23:55] Yeah.

[00:23:56] Jesse: For me, it. Learning this mindset probably had a lot to do with being a musician. You know, I’ve been in professional bands since I was 16 years old, And you’re working with other people, they tell you real quick when you’re doing something that they don’t like and you, you have a choice to make you,

[00:24:13] you can curl into your little ball and feel bad for yourself that you didn’t do it right, or you can try to do something different.

[00:24:22] I guess I grew up in a house where we just didn’t take things as personally. My dad was kind of critical. At times of a lot of the things I did, and he would just tell me exactly the way it was and whether that hurt my feelings or didn’t.

Deal With Your Difficulties

[00:24:38] And I, I just learned to kind of brush it off, take the, the positive out of it that I could take and then get like not dwell on the negative.

[00:24:49] I found myself in certain areas of my life when I wasn’t as mentally strong, I wasn’t. Strong with my, my self-confidence where I let people say negative things to me and I took it really personally.

[00:25:03] And then I would go and evaluate myself later and be like, Why did I take that so hard? What is it about that person and what they said that made me take it as hard as I did?

[00:25:13] And I would have to like deal with those things. And that’s the other problem is most people don’t deal with the things inside of them.

[00:25:20] They. Oh, I’m sad. Let’s brush this under the rug real quick and forget all about it, and then we’ll come back and hope that it never happens again. You can’t do that. You have to deal with your stuff, or else you’ll go into a cycle of just a downward spiral in your life and you’ll, you’ll never get past it.

[00:25:39] Taking Constructive Criticism

[00:25:39] Miriam: Yeah, I hear what you’re saying. For sure. There was a time years ago where I took a creative writing class and I was one of those like teachers, pet kind of kids who got a’s all the time and this was in college, took this class, loved the class, wrote this. Essay. That was huge. Got it. Back First draft c plus.

[00:26:00] And I was like, What, What? And he said, No, this was a, this is really good writing. Keep, keep at it. It’s gonna be an a paper. But, and I, I was like, you gave me a c plus. I mean, I could not get over the stupid grade. Mm-hmm. . And as I worked on it and. Pointed out all sorts of stuff that could be better. It ended up being so much better.

[00:26:27] Yeah. Yeah. And in the end, I was grateful for the feedback he gave me because it took, if he had said, Hey, this is an a, a good job, first draft, you know, here are a couple little things you can tweak. I would’ve been all like, Oh, look at. I’m a writer. Yeah, .

[00:26:43] Jesse: And you would’ve given mediocre

[00:26:45] Melissa: writing and you wouldn’t know what to improve on and what, And those tips go into the next writing or the next story, and the next newsletter and the next, everything that you’re doing.

Make it Yours

[00:26:56] Miriam: Absolutely. It became something I was totally proud of. And I also am a painter, Did this painting not that long ago, Showed it to someone who is close to me and they said, Eh, it’s kind of meh. I don’t know. It needs something here. And I was, and again, I, I was gonna actually put this painting up in my office and have it be for sale.

[00:27:18] I was like, What? Just put it. But I kept thinking about it and thinking about it, and in the end, I made some changes. I like it so much better that I, this other person was like, well, are you gonna sell it? And I was like, No, I like it too much. .

[00:27:36] Melissa: That’s amazing. I love that.

[00:27:38] Jesse: I had a similar experience recently.

[00:27:40] Now I just released my record and the record’s called Power to Change while I was writing the title track for that song. And I had a chorus that I thought was pretty good and I played it for Melissa and she. Yeah, it’s not your best work. And I was. Oh, okay. Okay. So what could be better about it?

The Hard Truth

[00:27:57] She’s like, Well, that course is kind of repetitive. You, it’d be better if you like, came up with some different words for it. And I was like, Oh, cool. So now I changed the words, and again, it’s the title track of the album and I love the song and it’s got this like really cool feel and everything works now, but it would not have worked had I stuck with my original plan and not listened to the voice of reason that I invited into my life.

[00:28:20] And there’s the other thing, you have to. Bring people around you that you can trust. Mm-hmm. , especially if you’re cre a creator, bring people that you can trust that are gonna tell you the hard things and not just be yes men and mm-hmm , just pat you on the head and tell you how good of a job you always do.

[00:28:36] But bring people that will be honest and give you real feedback and that you know that they have your back. And so that way when they do give you a hard thing that you have to swallow. You know that they’re doing it because they actually mean it and they appreciate you and they want to see you do your best.

[00:28:54] Miriam: This is, you know, tremendous information for creatives, but it actually applies to anybody. It applies to a relationship, it applies to parenting, it applies to anything where you are putting out effort. And if you cannot receive feedback and hear, and adjust, then you end up in a silo of yourself, and that’s just never a good space to be.

[00:29:17] How to Find Melissa and Jesse

[00:29:17] Miriam: So Melissa and Jessie, this has been so much fun. I would love to have you guys come back at some point. Definitely. Why don’t we have you tell our audiences how they can find you and of course we’ll put all the information in the show notes.

[00:29:31] Melissa: Of course. So you can find our podcast Reimagine Success at Reimagine Success Pod on any social media platform.

[00:29:40] Jesse: And reimaginesuccesspod.com. Yeah.

[00:29:43] We have a website for our business, Creative Global. If you need any kind of brand elevation or podcast production or any number of things just head over to CreativeGlobalDot.Rocks, and we’ll get you taken care of and see what we can do for you.

[00:29:59] Miriam: Awesome. That’s so great. And as we had mentioned before we started the podcast, my listeners know that we do a donation in your name and you guys chose, chose the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.

[00:30:10] Yes. They rescue baby elephants from moms who have been poached. So we’ll get that sent to you right away and we’ll put that in your daughter’s name so she’ll get the updates about the baby elephants. Thank you again. Yeah, she’s gonna love.

[00:30:24] Jesse: Thank you. Thanks so much you, this has been great Miriam, and I really appreciate you having us on.

[00:30:28] Yeah, and for those of you that don’t know, Miriam’s actually gonna be on our podcast in the near future, so be looking out for that as well cuz she’s a great host and we wanna just say how much we appreciate her and everything she’s doing on this podcast to make this world a little bit better of a place.

[00:30:43] Aw, thank you.

End Credits

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are found.

Full audio episode found here. 

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Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.

 

Building Trust with Will Basta

Will Basta

[00:00:00] Miriam: I am excited to have with me Will Basta and we are gonna be hitting all sorts of conversations. You’re the first person I know who is doing this passive income kind of revenue stream. And it sounds like from reading some of your bios and things that you have just a diverse background.

[00:00:17] So why don’t we start with just a little bit of how did you get where you are today? I mean, you mentioned you’re in Denmark, right?

[00:00:25] Different Paths

[00:00:25] Will: Yeah. , I mean, how I, how I got here is, is, might be a little bit different to the story , but, ok. We , but I can, I can give some cliff notes on all that. First of all, thanks for having me.

[00:00:38] Yeah, I grew up in a small town in upstate New York. So I’m, I’m from the Catskills, from Woodstock. I went to school in Arizona. I actually wanted to be initially clinical in healthcare. Then I realized quickly in college that it’s not what I wanted to do, and then I just went down the path.

[00:00:56] I’ve been traveling my whole life and big on traveling. It’s just sort of in my blood. I went down the path of just learning about, you know, international governments and international studies through college, and then when I got out I wanted to marry what I was good at and then still go back into healthcare, which was communication.

[00:01:13] Working with people knew, you know, you can be in healthcare and not be a doctor. So my goal was to get into that actual industry in general. And so I got a position with DaVita, very large dialysis company. I worked on a, a startup within them, sort of a technology startup that was doing sort of innovative stuff for DaVita as a company.

[00:01:34] And I got to learn about the broken healthcare system that we have, that most people are well aware of, and a lot of things about what we’re lacking. Not just in the arena of nephrology and dialysis, but it opened my eyes to a lot of different things.

Healthcare Industry

[00:01:49] And then from there, I wanted to, you know, I liked the idea of working for startups.

[00:01:52] So for me it was very intriguing to work for companies that were doing innovative things in healthcare, that were at an early stage that I could be an integral part of their growth and make an impact somewhere in our, in our healthcare system. So. Worked for a few different companies, built out their, their, you know, you wear a lot of hats in startups.

[00:02:10] So what was intriguing about that is, which I draw a lot of lines to sort of entrepreneurialism, is you don’t know what’s around the corner. And so I think that sort of led me into to being an entrepreneur, but working in startups now, what’s coming from left field this time? What’s happening today? Your role might be this, but you’re, you’re doing a thousand things and that kept a job exciting.

[00:02:28] And the work exciting. And so, you know, I worked for some companies in mental health, et cetera, and that was actually the last company I worked for was in, in mental health mental health tech. And while I was working for them I was involving myself in different investments when I, where I had the extra money, you know, involving myself in e-commerce, trying to start different brands, having, having a lot of failures here and there, and just really trying to get out, out of the scope of just, oh, this is my one position.

Working Remote

[00:02:55] It was remote, which was great. So I always could travel still. I’ve worked remotely my entire life wasn’t just a pandemic thing. So I’ve had that freedom, which I’m very fortunate of. But during that period of time, I was able to get involved. Sort of the back end of Amazon and, and really just learn a little bit more about the digital space and how to make money online a little bit.

[00:03:16] Started a marketing agency that did okay and that kind of stuff. Digital marketing. And point is, I was just having my hand putting my hands on a lot of different random investments here and there. And that actually led to my business partner and I we actually met, cuz we were invested in a, I guess you can call them the competitor of.

[00:03:37] I wouldn’t really say that. Now, given, I’ll talk more about who we are as a company later, and we’re very different than this company, but on the surface, they run what you call an automation service for clients in e-commerce. So automation as in. Building and operating an Amazon business for people who want to get involved in Amazon and doing it all for them, and then doing a profit split.

[00:03:57] So it sounds beautiful, right? You know, they’re, that company’s incentivized to grow a business for you and you can sit back and just bring in your capital and they can grow an Amazon business for you. We got involved in that and we realized that all of these companies out there, it was really booming at the time.

Business Infrastructure

[00:04:15] Honestly, every single company we came across had so many different inefficiencies. Inefficiencies, and we’re just really not executing properly. A great business model, just poorly. And that really, you know, we just realized, hey, we can do this ourselves better. We can bring ethics into this industry, which we don’t see anywhere.

[00:04:33] We can bring a real infrastructure, which we don’t see anywhere, . Yeah. And we can bring serious experience and a real company. We can build out of this with this business model and improve upon it, refine it, Legitimize the term automation. And try to flip the switch on what people think about it in terms of, you know, what you read online.

[00:04:53] because there’s a lot of horror stories out there from companies just not doing what they say they’re gonna do for clients and just poorly executing a lot of things. I can go on and on about that, but that’s where ascend com sort of spawned, and that was about two and a half years ago. At a small scale.

[00:05:10] Let’s prove out our model first before we go big with this. And we realized we had something special. We had a lot of organic growth. We were, people resonated with the fact that we were transparent in our business practices because we were at a digital age.

E-Commerce

[00:05:23] We were bringing a digital product doesn’t mean you need to hide behind a screen the whole time. So there’s always, we’ve always had an open door policy can always come visit us. Still to this day at our warehouse, at our office in Los Angeles. So cut two, you know, I’d say two years and, and eight months later, you know, we’ve got almost 500 clients, two warehouse facilities in Dallas.

[00:05:43] An office in Venice Beach, California and you know, millions of revenue for our clients and a business that is growing pretty rapidly. But we still have head on straight and we have not all lost our mor We have not lost our moral compass, and that’s why we have became a leader in the industry, I believe.

[00:06:04] I’m pretty sure that’s, that’s why not only just the operational aspect and how we produce the business and, and how we do business operations, but really leading with a good, strong, ethical approach. In how we, we do things. And, and that’s where we are today. We build Amazon businesses for investors Walmart businesses as well.

[00:06:20] And we, we turn those into passive income opportunities and appreciate digital assets for people who wanna get involved in the industry.

[00:06:26] And right now I’m in, I’m in Denmark ,

Entrepreneur Lessons

[00:06:29] Miriam: and right now you’re in Denmark. Okay, so let me interrupt for a minute and let’s, let’s take a couple rabbit trails off to the side.

[00:06:35] I mean, you’ve given Yeah, in, in those few minutes, enough fodder that we could talk about this for a couple hours. Yeah. Oh my word. I’m trying to decide where I wanna go with this. , I wanna talk about the ethics piece, but I also wanna talk about the, the piece where you were trying so many different things and maybe they were just barely working or sort of working.

[00:06:58] It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or not. Everybody deals with this space of, Oh, I tried it. It didn’t go anywhere. And I think the entrepreneur folks do a lot better at saying, Okay, well I, I failed early. Moving on, iterating. I think a lot of the regular folks out there are like, Well, that didn’t work.

[00:07:18] Learning From Failures

[00:07:18] Miriam: I guess I’m a failure. And they, they just stop. So I think my question is how did you work? Space in you that was able to say, Hey, it’s okay. It didn’t work. I’m trying again.

[00:07:31] Will: Yeah. I’d say it’s really looking at it as I, I looked at my failures as education. you know, this is educational. Yeah. I might have invested in this like training program or something here to learn about.

[00:07:43] How to do this here and how to build this here, et cetera. And maybe it wasn’t successful, because maybe I’m not meant to do that. But now I know that system and I can put the pieces together down the line and eventually it turned into me being knowledgeable about the industry as a whole. I’m not the person who actually does the research on our client’s stores, right?

[00:08:02] We have teams that do that, but I still, I learned about it. I wouldn’t say I’d be the best person to build an Amazon store person. , personally but I cuz but I learned, I went through courses on how to do it I didn’t do well myself, but I learned the actual what’s under the hood, which is important, right? You have to look at failures as education.

Learning Moment

[00:08:24] Everything is a learning moment. You gotta take that and use that as building blocks and, and I don’t know if I’d be giving the same why advice four years ago, . It’s easier to say once I’ve gotten to where I am. Right? For sure. There was plenty of times. That mindset cuz I, I never looked at myself as an entrepreneur, ever.

[00:08:41] You know, I, I, now I know I’ve always had it sort of in me, when I look back on my history of doing things, I realized it was actually sort of always there in a little bit and I was showing signs of it throughout the last, you know, couple decades.

[00:08:54] Miriam: Yeah. During that tell tell us what some of the signs were.

[00:08:57] Don’t Give Up

[00:08:57] Miriam: What were some of the signs?

[00:08:59] Will: I think, you know, just, just that in general, you know, not, not giving up on certain things. When I was failing on certain things and also knowing that like, I don’t know, I think I had a lot of positivity in, I always knew that I was getting to a point where I was gonna be working for myself to some extent.

[00:09:18] At some point I was positive about, this is gonna work out, this is gonna work out. It’s not always easy to do it because you go, you get knocked down a bunch of times and, and I think the traveling, I think there’s a lot of parallels. And again, you can run parallels with a lot of different things, but for me, the parallels of entrepreneurial.

[00:09:34] Also run into the travel aspect of my life. Like I ever since the first dollar I made my first job in Woodstock was, I think I was working on the golf course, like raking sand traps, and then I was selling shoes at the local shoe store. All that money I always saved up and I put that towards going away on a trip.

Uncomfortable Situations

[00:09:55] First trip, honestly was 15 years old. And I don’t know how my parents, our parents let us go alone somewhere, but we went to Puerto Rico alone, 15 and 16 year olds. And then I skipped prom when I was in high school, which is a huge thing in the us right? I skipped that and backpacked Central America. Those experiences while I was away.

[00:10:13] Putting myself in extremely uncomfortable situations, whether it’s not knowing the language, whether it’s sleeping in the jungle when I’m 16, with crazy sounds that are so loud you can’t even sleep. Whether it’s just literally going through just, I’m not talking, staying at resorts, I’m talking like really going deep in Guatemala and stuff like that.

[00:10:29] And even if you are going somewhere, it could be domestic too, and it could just be a regular travel, it could be anywhere. Putting yourself in a culture in a situation you’re not used to is uncomfortable. But I always use that uncomfortable like that, that feeling of being uncomfortable as a learning experience.

[00:10:44] Be a Good Listener

[00:10:44] Will: And it became sort of addicting and it, it helped me in my business life to interact with people in a different way. To be able to be a, a listener and not only just projecting what they wanna say while the other person’s talking, just most of the time people are waiting, Okay, when am I gonna be able to say what I, what I’d say?

[00:11:03] I became a really good listener. And I attribute that to, to traveling, because when you’re traveling, you really do have to listen to people because most people aren’t speaking the same language and you don’t know where the hell you are or what you’re doing, and it, it, it trains you to be a good listener.

[00:11:16] And all of these things sort of attribute to, to, I think being in not just business, but also. Running a company, . Yeah. You know, with hundreds of employees and doing it the right way.

[00:11:28] Miriam: Talk a little bit about the uncomfortable space. Most people back away from discomfort and somewhere along the lines you had a choice to push into your discomfort or to back away, and you made the choice to push into it and you learned something about yourself from that.

[00:11:46] Talk a little bit about that.

[00:11:48] Lean into Discomfort

[00:11:48] Will: Yeah. I mean, . There’s, there’s, there’s been a long road to get where I am right now, and there’s a long road ahead still. Right? And so in terms of me putting myself in situations that are uncomfortable in the business sense, you know, there, that’s, that’s a tough question to answer.

[00:12:05] I, I think, I think I’ve evolved, like I said before, I said this five minutes ago in terms of where I, how I would answer these questions five years ago or even a year ago, are so, Right. I’ve matured so much by running a company and not knowing what I’m doing. in the beginning, in hyper growth mode, you know, and trying to figure things out of that go, but also make sure that.

[00:12:26] Don’t Be Blinded by Success

[00:12:26] Will: You know, things are, are, you know, you’re still, you have to make sure that you’re not blinded by the success. Right, right, right. And, and I know I’m sort of going off topic slightly on that question, but it just brings up my thoughts of, of a lot of things that happen to when people are, are an entrepreneur and why I believe that some people do fail or they, they, they go off track.

[00:12:48] They may not fail necessarily, but when you become very successful, when you’re an entrepreneur, When I’m saying an entrepreneur, in terms of having employees below you and, and a lot of clients and all this kinda stuff, people can be blinded by the money that’s coming in. They can be blinded by everything that’s happening.

[00:13:02] And they also could be blinded by thinking that, Oh, it’s their baby. They have to do every single thing.

[00:13:06] Mm-hmm. , and I think both Jeremy and myself have learned a lot in being in, in terms of trusting your employees and hiring people. You’re hiring them for the, for a reason to put ’em in a position cuz you trust them in that position.

[00:13:21] So you should trust. Right, Right. You should micromanage them. You should try to do everyone’s position. I think that’s a huge issue with entrepreneurs is you try to do every single thing at once, right? And then you start busting outta the seams and then the quality control goes down and then that has a negative effect on your, on your employees.

Trust Others

[00:13:41] That trickles down to the clients. And I think overall it starts to stay in the company in general. And we’ve done a very good job at trusting the people that we hire. And when they come across issues, we’re there to support and help, but we don’t step in and take and do the job for them. Yeah. And as difficult as that might be sometimes, but I think that’s a skill that we acquired early as being people who just started a company and it’s a first time running an organization I think pretty prematurely.

[00:14:09] We realized that early on, and I think that’s helped us.

[00:14:13] Miriam: Sure. I appreciate that you say you acquired the skill because a lot of people say, Oh, I have trust issues, I have issues with trust. And it’s like, well, A, it’s a skill. And B, you don’t go into it blind.

[00:14:25] I’m gonna circle back and ask the question again because I think there’s some gold here with Yeah.

Trust Your Gut

[00:14:32] The uncomfortableness, whether it’s in traveling or whether it’s in business, there is a kind of uncomfortable that makes you grow and there’s a kind of uncomfortable that is actually foolish and puts you in harm’s way, and I think part of figuring that. Space out is having a couple trial and errors where you try Oh yeah.

[00:14:51] And you there like people always say trust your gut. And I believe, I mean I have a therapist background, so there is something to that. However, there is garbage in your background that makes your gut ping and the correct action is to move forward. Then there is like the hair on the back of your neck that is telling you you’re in danger.

[00:15:15] And the correct action is to move backwards.

[00:15:18] Wisdom

[00:15:18] Miriam: Yeah. And so where I wanna go with this question is the failure space and the learning space. How did you differentiate between wisdom means going back or wisdom means going forward?

[00:15:32] Will: Yeah, I think if I answer that question in, in terms of our organization in the last couple years, I, I.

[00:15:42] Having Jeremy and I, I think he can say the same for me, given our personalities are very similar but also very, very different. I think we’ve been able to bounce off each other in terms of energy on when, when certain things are a certain way and when to not overstep. Cuz sometimes one of us wants to do something like just like you just mentioned.

[00:16:03] And knowing that balance in between of when is the right time to step back, when is the right time to push forward.

[00:16:08] Sometimes him and I are on completely different push forward and step back. But when we have a conversation about it, I’m not saying there’s a right or wrong, but technically like there sort of is in a way, and the person who who, who sort of is in the wrong sort of realizes it and we have that conversation and then learns from that.

[00:16:26] And then when there’s a similar thing that comes up, I’m not saying it might still be the same result but my point is if I come into a situation. And I’m the one who’s saying push forward and he’s saying step back and we have a conversation about it. I understand why it’s stepped back at that point.

Understand Different Perspectives

[00:16:44] And then I, I take that in, like I said before. I use that for the next time a similar situation comes up and I approach it with that knowledge that I gain from that. And I might still step forward. I’m not saying I’m gonna be perfect moving forward from then, but it adds to my knowledge base based on the experience.

[00:17:03] And I only would’ve done that with. I think there’s a lot of yin yang with him and I, and I think he can say the same on his side. And there are times, and I think, I think that comes up again and, and we both agree on push on, on holding back on the next time around. Sure. Because we’ve learned from how he thinks about the situation because everyone thinks about something a little bit differently.

[00:17:23] They have a different approach and perspective. Yeah.

[00:17:25] But understanding diverse perspectives really widens you. And helps you really have a good balance on when to push forward, when to step back and when, when it’s the right time to do something, when it’s not. And of course, you’re never gonna be perfect in that sense no matter what, but you know, there’s only, I mean, that’s why, that’s why we’re here.

[00:17:42] It’s always to improve upon yourself and what you do and, and, and, and, you know, do a little bit better the next time around. And I think that’s, that attributes a lot to.

[00:17:51] Communication is Integral

[00:17:51] Miriam: Yeah, so I heard you say a whole bunch of stuff in that I heard you say communication is fundamental. Well, even before communication, humility to say, Hey, I don’t know everything.

[00:18:04] I might not have this entirely right. This is the way I wanna go and this is why. Communication is integral. Then even just having someone to communicate to having a business partner or a mentor or a travel partner, or having other people to get you outside of your head and to be able to process the problem and say, Okay, how do we wanna move forward?

[00:18:26] Or how do I wanna move forward with this information?

[00:18:29] I mean, all of that feels huge.

Step Out of the Box

[00:18:32] Will: Stepping out of the box, right? Yes. It’s huge. I think it’s a huge thing in, in all forms of everything. It’s just everything’s going by so fast. Right, right. You know, life day, daily routine, whatever, whatever it is. Just to be able to, whether it’s some, some people who are meditating in a, at a certain point or could just be, just have a mindset.

[00:18:51] Be like, Hey, once a while, just have a a, an aha moment. Not the day. I’m like, All right, take a deep breath, , and hold onto that for a moment. You know what I mean? You’re going a thousand miles an hour right now. It’s not doing anyone any good. Yeah. So realize what you’re doing.

[00:19:09] Just like my mom was, mother was used to telling me like, Realize you’re eating will.

[00:19:13] Stop eating so fast. Chew your food, , chew your food. Understood. Enjoy. Enjoy your meal. I know you’re really hungry, but enjoy. Realize your, be grateful. That plate in front of you, you know? Yeah. I think that’s Apple do a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. So what a good mom.

[00:19:33] Ethical Framework

[00:19:33] Miriam: So this is a perfect segue into the ethics space.

[00:19:37] Talk a little bit about maybe your ethical framework, how it was tested in business some of the spaces you struggled, like gimme, gimme some words on ethics.

[00:19:51] Will: Yeah, I mean, I, this is gonna be going on and on about this. I’m gonna start with healthcare. Yeah. The people that I worked with were great and I, I don’t need to name out the specifics of, of, of everything that I saw and, and the inefficiencies that I saw, but as a whole, when I got to learn the healthcare system and the industry in general and.

[00:20:16] Tying that into the food industry and then dialysis and all the stuff that’s sort of happening and, and, and how some physicians not painting a brush to all physicians at all, but how some physicians do their job was very, very difficult for me. When I first started working for DaVita, some of the doctors that I met were so transactional.

[00:20:36] It was just hard. Very, very difficult to like experience and have my hands be sort of tied in the situation. Yeah. Cause they were also getting, I mean, it’s also how our system’s set up- it’s like the pay per stitch model. It’s like the more you see a patient, the more you’re getting paid kind of thing. No quality incentive programs.

Ethics in Healthcare

[00:20:53] And then the doctor just has a mindset of like, that patient has a dollar sign, you know, and if you have kidney disease, there’s no cure. And then there’s the, the end of the road, you have five stages and then it’s E S R D and then unfortunately, like there’s no light at the end tunnel with that. So it’s a very.

[00:21:08] Dark disease, having kidney disease and, and, and having, you know, that that kind of part of healthcare is very tough. And then there’s also the lack of, of mental health support. You know, they have social workers in some of the centers, but they had no real emphasis on having true talk therapy for these, these, you know, these patients who are coming in four days a week.

[00:21:28] You know, three days a week, four hours a day, all that kinda stuff was very difficult to just watch. I’m just watching it happen. You know what I mean? Like it is like no one will listen to me. This is just like the rat race in healthcare and there’s not really healthcare.

[00:21:40] You know what I mean? So that, that was tough and that’s why I like to, that’s why I enjoy going into working for smaller companies. I worked for a company called Blueprint where we, we pretty much took. You know, you know, measuring based care, which has been around for a while, you’re probably familiar with, with your background.

Being Efficient

[00:21:57] You know, those like a p you know, those, essentially those assessments that you give clients when you see them, you know, GAD seven or whatever it may be. And we just digitized it so you can also, a client can do it outside of their session too. It was a very simple technology. put something that really wasn’t leveraged that much.

[00:22:17] But we worked, I worked for a small company, got to really speak to therapists about. What’s inefficient in their office and how we can improve things. And that, that was awesome to see. So the, the, that was tough being, being tied up with DaVita on that. But I found my path in healthcare where I felt like I could make a difference with smaller companies and having a larger impact on that.

[00:22:40] Cuz DaVita’s pretty corporate. So I realized I had to get out of the corporate scene to feel like I was really doing something on that side. Going into where we are in our industry, our company. Our industry is filled with a lot of organizations where people just care about the money aspect on the top.

[00:23:00] They lie, they , they say they’re gonna do this and they don’t do it. The fire happens, you know, and they don’t, they don’t, they run away from it. When it comes down to an issue with a client’s store, and that’s why these companies are falling apart, they’re not lasting.

Transparency

[00:23:15] Because they don’t, there’s not real partnerships. People invest money and they leave out the truth of what’s allowed on Amazon or not. Whether it’s like a model that is against Amazon terms of service and then their business gets shut down for the client and then they just don’t do anything about it kind of thing.

[00:23:31] Like that kind of stuff is still happening to this day. So the way that we approach, we’re not perfect. Right. When we have issues with clients, we are ex and they’re all start hiding. Like I mentioned before, they’re not transparent, can’t shake anyone’s hand. You don’t know where their office is. It’s almost like everyone’s hiding behind a screen.

[00:23:47] Mm-hmm. and they’re doing shady stuff. And so that really drove us to start our company as well and do it with a full, transparent, open door, ethically sound approach, which is highly respected by all of our. And they can accept where we are, where we do have issues because we’re honest about them. And when we do run into problems with clients’ businesses, which happens here and there, we will, We’ll, you know, we’ll face it head on and we will come to, we’ll rectify the situation, we’ll find a solution.

[00:24:20] And it’s as simple as that. It should be that difficult. Yeah. But , that’s how you should run a business. You shouldn’t beat around the bush and mess with people’s money. Right. And. We’ve ran our company like that since day one. We treat our employees really well, and that also has a trickle down effect of how they interact with their clients.

Positive Energy

[00:24:38] And I think there’s just a positive energy in our company in general. And so my point is, is, is, is we wanted to make sure that, that the stain in this industry know we can, we can do our best to, you know, at least prove that there are good organizations out there that not just are gonna bring success financially to.

[00:24:58] But you’re gonna wanna work with them in a true partnership because you actually trust them. And that’s a huge part of who we are. And that’s, I think that’s why we’ve gotten gotten to where we are too. That’s a huge part of it. Yeah.

[00:25:09] Miriam: How did you come about your ideas about trust? In terms of what, what, What do you mean?

[00:25:15] Like Idea. It’s obviously important to you. You know, it’s a deeply held value that you should be trustworthy, and it sounds like you wanna hang out with people who are also trustworthy. I think so many times, yeah. In business there’s this sense that it’s pretty slimy or that it’s all about the money.

Motivated to Make a Difference

[00:25:35] And I think for a huge percentage of people, that’s true. For some people it’s about the game. For other people, they really are motivat. To help. They wanna make a difference. You’ve used that phrase quite a few times to make a difference. Yeah. And you know, this idea of having impact. Yeah. But this notion of trust, you’ve mentioned quite a few times, so it seems to me that it’s very integral to you.

[00:26:01] And I was curious. How that came about. You know? Was there a space where you were just burned so badly and you’re like, Well, this is not okay? Or were you raised in such a way that, Your word is your word or I, Where did you come by? The ideas about trust.

[00:26:19] Relying on Trust

[00:26:19] Will: I just think it’s so important. I think without trust, whether it’s a relationship, friendship, business, transaction.

[00:26:29] Like even the person who’s bringing you up to, to go bungee jumping and, and, and just tie you in, Like what, whatever it may, may be, it could be anything. It’s, it is such, it’s the foundation of, of, of true human interaction, I think. And so I think it’s extremely important and. It needs to be, you know, put to the top of

[00:26:51] You know, in terms of what people think about when, you know, I, I, it’s something that naturally, I think, I don’t wanna say everyone should just naturally trust everyone. I don’t wanna be too much of like an optimist like that. I just sort of think it’s, I think humans are inherently good and we should trust each other, Right?

[00:27:06] And when you, But the second there’s a hint of no trust, that’s very hard to get back. The second something happens where you don’t trust something or someone. Gaining that trust again, I think is such an uphill battle. And so that’s why I think it’s such an important thing is, is trusting. It’s not just trusting people with your money, but it’s like, yeah, business.

[00:27:28] You’re right. There’s people like obviously we, we all want to make a little like money. It’s good to have money, right? But all that money means nothing if you do it in a distrustful manner. And I, you’re not bringing value to, to people, the world, the people around you. It’s just paper, right?

Putting Trust in Others

[00:27:47] I just think that it’s, it’s worthless. I mean, you think there’s history so much history of rich millionaires who’ve just done slimy things. I just think, yeah, to me it just grosses me out and it’s just not how we do things.

[00:28:00] and, yeah, I don’t even know where it comes from. I, you know, I, my, my mom is a very, very, very good person. She was always like, your word is your bond. Or anything like that. Like that’s never really been the thing that’s just inherently just sort of been part of my familial upbringing. The people that I, I was friends with when I grew up with people I surround myself with.

[00:28:21] And yeah, people, you know, you could be a very trustworthy person. Everyone makes mistakes. I’m not saying that anyone’s perfect, but it’s also a huge thing when it comes down to why people, I’ve heard this so many times, why they invest with us when they’ve been shopping. We trust you guys. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:40] Miriam: So I mean, you have the luxury of having been exposed to quite a few different kinds of corporations and quite a few different kinds of people in your travels, all sorts of cultures. What are things, give our listeners like some ideas of hints of that person or that organization shouldn’t be trustworthy beyond, you know, Of course on the internet, you know, can you, is there a real address?

[00:29:09] Looking for Red Flags

[00:29:09] Miriam: Is there a real person or whatever, But like in interactions? Yeah. What is something that tells you, Mm. Take pause. Hang on.

[00:29:19] Will: Yeah. I think, and this is something that probably is pretty obvious for a lot of people when, when companies talk about how much money you can, It’s the biggest red flag ever. And they’re selling, they’re pushing.

[00:29:33] You can make this and you can do that, da, da, da. Like, all this too good to be true. Kind of talk, all this flashy talk. It’s like the simple kind of, I use car salesman, stay away kind of thing. We never talk about unless client asks, we never talk about true. It’s like we’re talking about the partnership and what, what, being involved in e-commerce.

[00:29:55] And why it’s an important asset to add to your portfolio or to start your portfolio with, or the importance of being involved in something that’s a massive growth at it in general and why you wanna partner with a certain company that has this, this, and this. Right. We don’t talk about, Hey, by month three you’re gonna make this da da.

Business Vision

[00:30:13] Like all of that is just fluff . Yeah. Cause everyone knows you can make money online. Right? Right. Now it’s the same thing with healthcare too. Honestly. Like we, when I was working for David, We had a program that we were giving to, to physicians that could help them consolidate, taking digital notes with clients both in the dialysis center and at their private practice in the one, And that was the one benefit we had cuz we were devita, but our program was subpar in general to nephrologists, which are kidney doctors.

[00:30:44] There’s a lot better programs out there. But when I, when I was working for the sales part of that organization, I was never talking about the features of what it was. I was talking. As healthcare revolves down the line, and as your practice grows and as technology advances and as things change, who do you really want to be partnered with?

[00:31:06] Do you wanna be partnered with a company that works with cardiologists and you know, all different kinds of specialties and really doesn’t just focus on kidney care and, and or do you wanna be partnered with a company that is strictly focusing on advancing technology and kidney care down the line?

[00:31:24] Because that’s your specialty. And we work in the niche aspect of that. And I sold the vision. Really it was the vision and who you wanna partner with, not the product. Product they knew was subpar, but that gets outweighed. Down the line if you really think about the future of things and, and who you wanna be working with.

[00:31:42] Inherent Sense of Trust

[00:31:42] Miriam: Yeah. Okay. So talk about the same thing, trust or untrustworthiness, just in relationships in like when you were traveling, just in people in general. What set off your spy sense like, maybe not .

[00:31:59] Will: Oh, I think that’s sort of a tough one because a lot, I’m a good judge of character when I meet someone specifically and, and I see them mm-hmm.

[00:32:06] and so it’s hard to put into words like, Oh, I don’t trust that person. Cause I just feel something. It’s more an inherent feeling that I get when I think some someone’s a little off or something’s a little off about a situation. I think that’s more of a street sense in general. And you’re not always right.

[00:32:26] Right. There’s people I’ve judged early and they end up being like, really great trustworthy people down the line. You know what I mean? And so I don’t know necessarily how to answer that because I think a lot of it for me is just, it’s the energy that I get when I meet someone or when I’m in a certain room or what it is.

Sensing Trust

[00:32:41] It’s more of an energy feeling than like certain of like that sense to me, you know? Then they did this kinda thing. Yeah.

[00:32:47] Miriam: No, that makes sense to me because our. Deep centers in our brain are really programmed to pick up on, am I safe? Am I not safe? Yeah. And it’s a lot of subliminal stuff. It’s behavioral stuff, and most of the time people don’t know why they don’t trust someone.

[00:33:05] They just know that they don’t. Yeah. You know, so that’s, That rings true to me, .

[00:33:11] Will: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You get those feelings, you’re like, Ah, something. This doesn’t feel. That’s simple. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:33:17] Miriam: Well we’re coming to the end of our time together. This has been great and I would love to pursue you maybe for a second interview down the road.

[00:33:25] Donations

[00:33:25] Miriam: Lots of good, good topics. I had mentioned before we started that we like to gift you with a donation in your name and the, the charity you chose was Best Friend’s Animal Sanctuary. Because you said you yourself rescued a dog from the shelter. Tell me about your dog just a little bit.

[00:33:43] Will: Oh, Buster Buster’s the man I, I’ve, I was, there’s a company called Angel City Pit Bulls in Los Angeles.

[00:33:52] Mm-hmm. I was fostering for them. So I had two different foster dogs two weeks at a time. And I went, I go to Europe every summer and I spent, four years ago I went to, had two dogs and then they were great and amazing and then they got adopted and then I went to Europe and I came back and the next dog they gave me was Buster.

Buster

[00:34:10] And I was super sad cause after two weeks the volunteer picked them up to bring me to an event. And I called him right after they picked him up. I was like, I made a mistake. They’re like, We. Bring him back. Now, if he’s not adopted by three, we can bring him back, but you’ll have to adopt him. And that’s all she wrote right there.

[00:34:24] So Buster’s a bulldog pit mix and he’s the biggest sweetheart ever. Doesn’t bark. He’s about seven years old. Loves being on the beach. He was found on the streets in like east la biggest sweetheart ever. He is friends with everyone except for squirrels. Yeah. And I miss him. I haven’t seen him in like two and a half months, so I see him Saturday.

[00:34:44] Miriam: I love that. It’s a, he’s a foster fail. Good on you. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for adopting him. I’ve done a lot of fostering too, and it’s always hard when they go away.

[00:34:54] How to Find Will

[00:34:54] Miriam: So why don’t you tell our listeners how they can find you?

[00:34:58] Will: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So our website for our company is www.ascendecom.Com.

[00:35:05] On that you can find about what we do, how we do our businesses, and e-commerce. You can book a call with us, et cetera. And then we have my personal Instagram, which is at wsta Wba S t a and our business Instagram which is at ascent underscore e-com, A S C E N. Underscore E C Om, and we obviously have our YouTube channel and stuff like that, but we, we post regularly about educational stuff, about the industry in general.

[00:35:29] Probably clips of this podcast will be on, on those Instagrams as well. And.

[00:35:34] Miriam: Very good and we’ll, we’ll put, we’ll put all this information in your show notes or in my show notes and this has been really fun. Thank you. Just for your time. Absolutely. Good.

[00:35:45] It’s been awesome. I, I look forward to, to hopefully jumping on with you again in the future.

[00:35:48] We can catch up, but yeah, I appreciate you having me. I’d love to.

End Credits

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Music by Tom Sherlock.

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As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.