Speaker 1: 0:00

I've never been in that position 20 plus years, made it through all type of layoffs and acquisitions and everything. Until that day. That was God, oh for sure. When I first got laid off, I went to her and I said this is what I'm going to do. She immediately I support you a thousand percent. There you go, go for it. You got this. I believe in you right. So I felt that support and I know what it does to a man Like it shot me through the roof. Yeah, I'm talking.

Speaker 2: 0:23

I hit the ground running you don't need no Viagra or nothing after that. No Seattle, nothing, nothing.

Speaker 1: 0:31

To be fair, I didn't need it before. Okay, okay.

Speaker 3: 0:35

Whether you are working a nine to five, have a side hustle or a full-blown entrepreneur. This episode is for you. But before we go into that, I have a huge shout out to my recording studio, prep and Shed. That's P-R-E-P-A-N-D-S-H-E-Dcom Prep and Shed If you're a recording artist traveling in the Atlanta metro area or a resident musician, there is absolutely no better place for rehearsals. I've been recording many of my podcast episodes in their living room style podcast studio. They have amazing equipment high tech. The sound quality is unbelievable. Their professionalism, accommodations and service are second to none. So visit their website Again. That's prepandshedcom. Maybe you're looking to record your own podcast and you don't want to navigate through having to buy equipment, learning how to use it all. Just give them a call and check them out Now.

Speaker 3: 1:38

We've got a very special episode for you guys today Leon Cohen, my boy Willie Nash and myself. Your host, stefan. Welcome Rod Brinson, a marketing and branding expert. If you're stuck in your business, struggling to take that next step, struggling to scale, or you're just not sure running your own business is something you should even do, this episode is definitely for you If you want your freedom from the daily grind. Listen through the very end and share this episode with a friend and ask them to follow as well. This is one conversation that will absolutely change your life. Welcome to Manhood Matters. Let's get to. It Sounds good, all right, so we got in the house with us today. We got Leon. Welcome back to the pod brother, thank you.

Speaker 4: 2:51

You're always glad to jump on and exchange ideas with good brothers, yeah yeah, it's been a second.

Speaker 3: 2:58

It's been a second Willie. Welcome back, bro. Big Will, big chill. Hey, happy to be here, man, you awake bro.

Speaker 2: 3:03

I'm here. I am in the land of the living. Don't look like it, but I'm here.

Speaker 3: 3:08

Yeah, I know it's early man and for the first time on the pod, I want to welcome Rod Rod. Why don't you tell us your name, brother? Tell us what you do. I'm super interested in what you. I feel like you can bring a whole lot to the table, man, so yeah, first of all, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 3:35

I appreciate the invite, but my name is Rod Brinson. I'm the brand strategist. My focus is making sure people are tapped into what makes them unique in the world. You know why are they here, what makes them distinct? We are all on the same rock floating around the sun. We're not here to just work a 40-hour job a week and pay our bills. You said it on the head. Like you said, maybe, though, but I disagree. I think it's definitely.

Speaker 3: 4:00

Right, because I think about so many people that I talk to. They'll say I do want this 9 to 5. Being in business for myself is not for me, you know, just like I'm in sales, right. So I've always talked to people where I try to sell them on their own dream, pursuing their own thing, and people push back because sometimes people feel like you're shitting on their 9 to 5 just because you got something else. You're in business for yourself.

Speaker 1: 4:23

Yeah, no for sure, like. You got something else. You're in business for yourself? Yeah, no for sure, like and that's a great point is, too often people pair the two against one another. Right, my version is it doesn't matter who you are, you have a brand, whether you are living that brand out by default or by design.

Speaker 1: 4:37

So if you're working a nine to five and you're pursuing the career, you're just following what your parents told you to do. You went to college and got that degree and it's like you're not even doing anything in that field. What ends up happening is the rat race takes over. So now you have responsibilities, you have kids, you have dreams that you want to attain, and the only way to get that is just nine to five. So I look at it like three different lanes. You have the entrepreneur who just wants to do business for himself or herself. You have the person who works corporate, and they're perfectly fine with that. They want to, you know, manage people and climb the leadership ladder, no problem. But then you have that third person who's stuck in between and they don't know how to navigate and they feel unfulfilled. That's the person that I'm talking to when I say that.

Speaker 4: 5:23

Steph knows, I'm a mentor, so one of our classes that we train students in is entrepreneurship. I used to actually teach entrepreneurship at the high school level and I tell those students I said you're going to fit in one or two boxes in this world. You're either going to be working for yourself or you're going to be working for somebody. There's really no in between. I said to a lot of them. I said you just got to decide what side of the table you want to be on.

Speaker 4: 5:47

But that working for you side is a lot different, because the effort you put in when you're working for somebody else is much different than when somebody's working for you. I said so when you, if you do decide to take a job and go and work for somebody, you need to take that job and look at it and think about it. As, in effort I'm giving right now for this other person, would I give that same effort if I were working for myself? And if the answer is no, then you either need to step up your production or go and find another job, Because if you shortchanging this person that's actually giving you a check, then you would be upset if somebody was doing that to you.

Speaker 3: 6:21

I guess that's the moral view, but I have to say, most people the effort that I put in for me is going to be more than I put in for anyone else 100%.

Speaker 3: 6:30

You know what I mean and I don't even think that I'm shortchanging someone. I think that my approach is I work, I'll do what I need to do, and you know me, I'm competitive. Whatever the metrics boards, the KPIs and all that, I want to beat the next guy, but at the end of the day, I can go two or three days without sleep because I'm working on my business. I'm not doing that for you.

Speaker 4: 6:48

Okay, so I've known you in various capacities. Yes, sir, I've known you as a sales rep, known you as a manager, known you as an entrepreneur.

Speaker 4: 6:59

Yeah, so the paradigm where you moved from sales rep to sales manager was different, because now you had people that were under your command under your charge, my stewardship yeah, right, because now you have people that you're overseeing and when they were slacking off, you took it personally, because it's like, wait a minute, why are you doing this on my team, where if you did that for somebody else, you might have been okay with it, but more times than not, your work ethic would have been a little bit different from theirs. So that's the shift that I'm talking about, right, the people who go into an office and it takes them the first two hours to start working in an eight-hour day, when you really take that eight hours and you're working four, because between your break yes, you got your lunch break, your water cooler break and then your too many breaks yeah, by the time you get out of work and then when you throw the commute in there, you're really only working four hours.

Speaker 3: 7:49

Now I see what you're saying, Rod. What does it take for someone to kind of go from understanding that there is a need for them to take matters into their own hands? I've often heard the reference to when you work for someone else, it means that they are paying you to give up on your dream.

Speaker 1: 8:05

Now, that's quite accurate. But, to be fair, some people don't have a dream Right. Some people have no aspiration to do anything outside of what they're doing, and what I mean by that is like they're comfortable and content with the life that they have. But to piggyback on a subject you guys were talking about, the reality is, even if a person is given 110 percent or 60 percent, or whatever it is, to a corporation or to a manager, they're still doing it from a self-driven interest.

Speaker 2: 8:34

Sure.

Speaker 1: 8:38

And the only reason they can't do 110 percent is because their heart is not tied to it. They're just doing it to survive and to go out and party and buy a car or whatever it is they're trying to attain survive and to go out and party and buy a car or whatever it is they're trying to attain. The difference between the person who desires to be outside of that and the person who doesn't is that person should immediately do research, spend some time meditating, prayer and walking whatever you need to do to figure out what that lane is, and don't base it off of how much money you can make or what you saw somebody else do. It needs to be solely based off of what you desire. Yeah, because your desire is going to drive you past those walls of adversity and hardship when they come.

Speaker 3: 9:13

Yeah, I was listening to another podcast, a friend of mine, casey. He's got a pretty dope podcast. It talks about business and it's called Case Studies. So quick shout out to him. He talks about this in terms of culture and knowing your why and knowing what you want to accomplish. Let's say you're doing it, the money's coming in and you stripped that away and you got nothing left. That culture and that initial reason for doing it is all you have. Would you still do it? Then you know people ask me the same thing about this podcast. It goes you're not making any money. Would you do it? I think these conversations are absolutely necessary. I don't care how many listeners there are, they are helping somebody out For sure. So I would absolutely do it. Willie, you run an insurance agency. I remember the shift. I remember the conversations. You know you were at a crossroad at some point, or rather at a fork in the road right, where it was either stay corporate or go all in. How did you make that transition and just focus on your own business?

Speaker 2: 10:10

Well, it was really easy for me. I don't like being told what to do. Even as a kid, you know, I've always had the entrepreneurial spirit to go out and make my own money. So I always felt that the corporate world working for somebody was just a formality or something that I had to go through until I was ready to do what I wanted to do. So for me, it was relatively easy for me to just step out there and do it.

Speaker 3: 10:34

I know both of you guys, I mean all three of us, us, all four of us. Rather, we know it, we see it. People are totally risk averse. Just like I can't take a chance, I can't fall on not having a guaranteed paycheck this coming Friday.

Speaker 2: 10:47

Yeah, I was never like that, because I mean the money that I make now, if I was in the corporate I wouldn't be making that, you know, because, like y'all were just saying, they bring you in and hire you so you can't follow your dreams and your aspiration. They give just enough to be able to take care of your bills and do the normal stuff. I've always wanted to do things that was outside of the norm. I wanted the nice house, the cars, the nice bank account. I wanted to. When I look at my bank account I know that I did that for real, for real. I came out the mud with it.

Speaker 2: 11:22

I've always had that mentality to kind of go the direction that I want to go. And everybody doesn't feel that way. Like my wife, she's the corporate, she knows where she's getting paid, she likes that amount and she's okay with it. I'm not. I think I would just wrapped a little bit different and built a little bit different. She's getting paid, she likes that amount and she's okay with it. I'm not Right. I think I would just wrap it a little bit different and build it a little bit different when it comes to the money.

Speaker 3: 11:49

I want to control it If I want to come in my check, I go ahead and I make the comma. If I want a low week, I mean, I like to control it myself. Yeah, now I heard what you said. If I want a comma in my check, I thought you said if I want to come in my check. Yeah, I was like are you trying to do what to your check Brahma?

Speaker 4: 12:01

I was like what kind of I'm going to need you to listen a little bit better, hey you heard him.

Speaker 1: 12:06

He was talking about you. I heard it. You heard what I heard?

Speaker 4: 12:10

No, no, no, I heard comma.

Speaker 1: 12:12

Okay, okay.

Speaker 2: 12:13

Nah, I said I'm glad you listened a little bit If I want to come on my check. I want to be able to do that, because that's what I want to do and I can do it. You earned it, I earned it. You know I can do what I want to do it.

Speaker 4: 12:25

We're taking a dramatic turn. Yeah, let's go back.

Speaker 1: 12:29

That's an interesting point, though, and I want to make this clear. Like I was the opposite I was good with the corporate, I was good with the non-profit, I was comfortable, and your background is marketing.

Speaker 1: 12:39

So it's multifaceted. But I've always had my marketing agency, because I'm just a creative by nature and so people ask me to do stuff and it went from flyers to websites to videography, you name it, and so it was always a side hustle. It was always extra means to make sure it ends mean, but my focus was corporate. I was good with that and I was climbing a ladder doing my thing, but it just kept festering to the point where I couldn't ignore it anymore. It was starting to compete and it's part-time so I'm like, okay, if I really put myself into this, I wonder what could happen.

Speaker 1: 13:15

In the same breath, over here I'm having to deal with all the subliminal hardships and racism and people looking at me weird and treating me funny, and I have to put on. When I didn't have to do that in my business, that uncomfortableness of having to step outside of who I know myself to be was enough to make me say I don't want to do this, but I still didn't make the jump. Why say I don't want to do this, but I still didn't make the jump?

Speaker 3: 13:38

Why? Obviously, you were making money, you were comfortable, you got bills to pay, right? Did you have a family at the time? For sure, it's very difficult to make that jump man. You'll sit there and just like, put up with a lot of shit, but I had all the evidence.

Speaker 1: 13:51

It wasn't a faith journey for me. I knew what the numbers were. I could forecast three months out Like it was that position. The reason I didn't make the jump is because I was too comfortable, and that comfortability is a drug, you know. It's like they call it golden handcuffs.

Speaker 3: 14:09

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:10

It's gold, it's shiny, but I can't do nothing. I'm right here, right, right. And so I remember specifically January 2023, I basically kind of tested God. I'm right here, right, right. And so I remember specifically January 2023, I basically kind of tested God. I'm like all right, if you want me to do this, then I need to hit this number by December. Well, I didn't look at my numbers until November and it was already superseding that number and I was like dang it.

Speaker 3: 14:31

That was on the sign. That was like a clear oh no, it was very clear.

Speaker 1: 14:35

Yeah, in so many different ways, but did you work towards?

Speaker 2: 14:38

that number I did for sure.

Speaker 2: 14:40

So it was intentional. You wanted it anyway, so you was going to make it happen. There are certain things that I want and I can control the things that I want and I can get it. I'm going to work to get it. When you're working for someone, that ambition for me, it was never there, because when I come in and you tell me what time I got to be there, you tell me what time I got to take a break. You tell me what time I got to go to lunch, then you tell me what time I got to clock out. I've always had an issue with that.

Speaker 3: 15:11

I'm over here like an hiring manager. I'm like, well then, shit, say your ass.

Speaker 2: 15:15

Don't apply God damn but see, it was one of those things where you had you know, I grew up with the parents that say go to school Very traditional Get a good job, get a good job. So when I got into sales and entrepreneurship, my mom like you need to go get a job A real job.

Speaker 2: 15:30

People not buying nothing, will they? Yeah, but sales is one of the most lucrative businesses out there. You just have to make sure that you're selling the right product or solving a need. There you go. If you get into an entrepreneurship where you're servicing and the need is there, you just got to get out and market yourself and become attractive in that arena. You made that happen because that's what you wanted to do.

Speaker 1: 15:56

The thing that made me hit it was tied to the nine to five as well. So and this is one thing that I will say like I was not one of those guys who's going to show up for the meeting and pay attention and be ready to go. I was the guy you would discuss a minute ago, leon, but I always tied what I wanted to what I was doing. And what I wanted was sustainability, freedom, the ability to go on vacation and all of these other things tied to me doing what I needed to do in my 95. And so it allowed me to show up on time, clock out, clock in, eat lunch. I didn't mind stepping in line and being a soldier in that way, so long as my goal was being accomplished at the end of the day. But everybody has a line that gets crossed at a certain point where it's like, okay, now you're pushing too far. And for me it was somebody trying to steal my check.

Speaker 1: 16:46

I was being paid on commission to do some extra stuff. I did some extra stuff, worked the deal for six months. The day we're getting ready to close the deal, he tries to swoop under me behind the door and swap my name for his name, literally, and the guy who was responsible for changing the names out was like hey, bro, did you approve this? I'm like no. So I pinged the guy hey, what's this about? He basically told me well, I'm just trying to get paid on that. I said, oh, you bought enough to admit it. All right, cool. Well, yeah, let's go ahead and not do that. He was like well, I'm going to take this to my manager. I ain't even going to hold y'all the six months path to fighting that led to me being in a room with people that didn't look like me standing up for myself, when nobody was, including my manager, who told me hey, rod, since you did majority of the work, we're going to give you two-thirds of the money and we're going to give him one-third.

Speaker 1: 17:39

I said by majority, do you mean all of the work? Because I did all of the work. Those type of little micro pieces added up, they compound to make you say who am I? Is this it? Is this what I should be doing? Because I don't feel like I should have to fight this fight. Entrepreneurship changes that. That's right Now. You don't have to deal with anything you don't want to deal with Now. It has consequences because you know your customers become your boss. That's true, you know you talk about working hard for you.

Speaker 3: 18:06

Say that again. You don't have people think I don't have a boss. Yeah, you do.

Speaker 4: 18:11

Your customers.

Speaker 3: 18:12

treat them right, Take care of them, and I've been talking about vacations.

Speaker 4: 18:15

Vacations are different because you can take better vacations. They're just not as long when you're working for yourself, because they can't be.

Speaker 1: 18:22

No, and they're not the same, because you're not truly off, you're not disconnected. Yeah, but I will say, man, I've learned how to master that being truly off. It takes a while to get there, but it only takes a while if you choose to take a while to get there. But it only takes a while. If you choose to take a while, gotcha.

Speaker 3: 18:36

And you teach that stuff? Oh for sure, let's get into that a little bit, because obviously this is something that I heard. Oh God, I can't remember his name, but he, this African, south African dude, oh Vusi. Okay, what he was saying is, if you can't walk away from the business from 30 to 60 days and it's still in business, then you are not an entrepreneur, you're self-employed. That matters, because right now, like whatever I got going on, if I walk away, I make no money and everything falls apart. So how did you get it to the point to where you can walk away, take a vacation and you come back to a business that's still standing?

Speaker 1: 19:15

The same way, I got it to a point where it was competing with my full-time job All right.

Speaker 1: 19:19

Talk to us about that First and foremost book recommendation changed my life. It's called the Miracle Morning. It's not religious-based, it's primarily just talking about how you spend your day and your hours and your time and taking advantage of it. So after reading that book, I started getting up at five o'clock in the morning every day, including the weekends, and so I would work my business. But I wouldn't work in the business, I would work on the business. So I would just strategize and come up with different ways to do things for three hours every day.

Speaker 1: 19:50

Imagine that. Imagine the compounded interest of just thinking through things. Eventually, you're going to get to a space where you know it left and right. Right, but not just knowing it, knowing how. And so after three months 90 days specifically I thought I would have some kind of master plan on how to scale and lay it all out. And I didn't. But stepping back from it and taking some time off from doing the strategy, it clicked. It's almost like trying to find some keys. You run around the house frantic, you're late, you can't find them. You sit down on the couch and they're like right there. It's like man, oh, they're in your pocket.

Speaker 3: 20:26

I didn't know these keys were here. You had it all along.

Speaker 1: 20:28

No, I'd had it all along, but I needed to do the running around to get the fatigue and the endurance necessary from a thought process to be able to think through what it takes to figure it out. So the bottom line is I figured out that in order to grow, I had to be willing to break bread. What do I mean by that? Yeah, that's what I was asking. Let's say I get a website deal. I can build a website in three, four weeks $3,000 job. Instead of me building it, pocketing all of that money, why don't I hire a web designer, pay him or her $1,500, save my time, use that time to go out and find somebody else to do a website for while that website is being built. Now I'm pocketing $2,000 or $1,500 without doing anything. You multiply it over with logos and videography. Before you know it, you have a 14-member team, you're making $150,000 a year part-time and you're wondering if you should quit your job.

Speaker 3: 21:26

You can stop wondering at that point. Shit Ain't no where in the world I'd go. So what do we call it? I'm going to call it the for lack of a better phrase the ugly duckling face. There's a segment of your journey to where it's man, you're struggling, right? So quitting the job is super hard because when you first start that journey which is why not everyone's an entrepreneur, right? Not all of us are working for ourselves and doing whatever. Because it's super hard. At the end of the day, it is sales. Doesn't matter what you right, whether it's a service or a business. You're selling a product yourself or a solution. And it's hard because they're not just banging down your door, right? It'd be great if they were, but that's not what's happening, right? So how do you survive that transition and what keeps you going?

Speaker 4: 22:13

For me, mine was not necessarily customer-based because you know I was doing the renovations part, so once I finished the house I had to have an agent come in and actually sell the house. So I wasn't in control of the customer base, I was just in control of the product.

Speaker 3: 22:29

And it's scary because you're sitting on an investment. You spent money buying it. You spent money fixing this house. You're paying a mortgage on it. It's got to sell.

Speaker 4: 22:37

Yeah. So you know, I got through the first five and had an accident, got hurt and about six or seven months I couldn't do anything to anything with the business, which forced me back into the work world because I had to feed my family, Right? Would I do things differently? No, because the first five sold very easily. But it all depends on the business, is what I would say. Based on what we did, we were more customer driven and I hated that side of it.

Speaker 3: 23:06

You and.

Speaker 1: 23:06

I work together. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 4: 23:08

I hate it to depend on someone's whim, moods and bullshit. Yeah, and it wasn't always a singular customer, it was family unit. You sold one person and somebody else comes in and pisses on the dream and then all of a sudden it's just like well, I want to do it, but my wife don't. So you know I ain't pissing her off, or my husband don't want to do it. He said no. So I got tired of that part. Yeah, I got tired of that part of it. And I got tired of managing people. Right, because managing people to me is like adult babysitting. Yeah, I don't want to babysit a child, let alone babysit an adult. So that part of it is what took me away from the management piece and which took me away from sales altogether. What I wanted to do was to be able to and that's what I was doing was to find a product, let somebody else do the sales piece of it and just manage the product, which was much easier, gotcha.

Speaker 3: 24:02

What about you guys? Ugly duckling face? How do you survive that? How do you overcome that?

Speaker 2: 24:07

Well for me— Because there's a section to where it sucked for a while. Oh yeah, oh yeah, big time. You know support, you know family support. I always have to go back to my wife. She was very instrumental getting to where I am now because early on coming to Atlanta, I'm originally from Memphis, so I've only been here in Georgia 10 years, Coming to a brand new state transferred with ADT. The market was different here so I said I have to do something. I can't survive not bringing anything in. So my wife gave me the opportunity to start the insurance business. Georgia was just so much larger than Memphis.

Speaker 3: 24:47

Listen, not just Georgia, you could just pick any old city. You know, Douglasville is larger than Memphis city. You know Douglasville.

Speaker 2: 24:57

I mean it was crazy trying to maneuver and trying to understand the mindset and the people here in Georgia. It's a different mentality. I had to get used to that. I had to get used to the traffic I had to get used to. I was already fine with going to people's houses, but the market that I'm in senior market you get to see some really horrible conditions. You're like man, how do people live like this? But I'm going into those houses Right and going back to what my wife and the support system that you have to have to start a business. That was very instrumental for me, yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:31

But once I got here and I started building relationships, I started meeting people. I started when I was going to these clients' houses. It was not just to go sell the life insurance. I'm looking for people to partner with Because once I understood this business, the company that I'm partnering with if you go out and you show somebody how to do what you do, they follow you. So I just started duplicating that going out, finding people who can do what I do Right or have the desire to do what I did, and I taught them, trained them on what to do. Now, 25, 35 agents doing what I do, yeah. So I mean it was some months, man, or some weeks. I mean literally no money, none. Sometimes I come home on a rough day I just lay my head and my wife lay up and tears come down my head.

Speaker 3: 26:21

I'm just like man, because you know you're trying, I know.

Speaker 2: 26:24

I mean I would leave 5, 6 o'clock in the morning to be on the other end of Georgia by 9 o'clock and then sometimes I would come home 12, 1 o'clock in the morning not making a sale. It was very, very hard. So when I look at where I am now and sometimes my wife had to remind me, hey, you're doing good, you know, because I'm still not where I want to be, because I know there's so much more out there for me to do, according to your own standards, by the way.

Speaker 3: 26:49

Right, I see where you are, bro. You're doing fantastic.

Speaker 2: 26:52

Man, but I just I'm not happy, I'm not satisfied with where I am, because I know that it's so much better. But it was tough, it was really tough.

Speaker 3: 27:02

That's why most people quit Brack. Not too many people are cut out to go work. Leave your house at 5 o'clock one morning, come back the next day, because you come back at 1 o'clock the next day, I mean I've slept in Walmart parking lots.

Speaker 2: 27:15

I go to hotels, not the nice hotels.

Speaker 4: 27:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:18

You know it was the ones Super 8.

Speaker 4: 27:21

Man Motel 6.

Speaker 2: 27:25

Motel 6, $30, $40 a night, you know, and you can't go to sleep because people outside playing music loud, somebody a woman, a man out there arguing and fighting. But I had to do it and make no money, and make no money. But my desire to not be told what to do was that great that I was like I'm going to tough this out. I want to have control of my money. I want to have control over my time. So if I don't work for a month, literally nothing changes for me. That money still comes in, no matter what, Now yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:55

Because I went through the ugly duckling phase of that to now sitting here. I'm making money right now sitting here talking to y'all. I was looking at my phone. One of my agents just made three sales. I get paid off of that.

Speaker 4: 28:07

Yeah Well, you said the important part too was the family support. If you don't have the family support, it's impossible.

Speaker 3: 28:15

I was going to say it's virtually impossible, I'm not going to even say yeah.

Speaker 4: 28:18

the only way that it's not impossible is that you get rid of the family, I mean for real, I mean. And there's a lot of men and women that have walked away from family because their family didn't support their dream.

Speaker 1: 28:31

I have a different opinion. Opinion on that. And it's not like completely different, because I agree to it to some degree. But family supporting you never looks how you imagine it would. But what happens when they are dipping a toe in and barely supporting? Or they start out supporting but then, when money ain't showing up, they start backing up. You have to have what you're doing tied to something bigger than your family supporting you, otherwise you're going to quit anyway.

Speaker 4: 28:57

Well, I think what me and Willie are talking about in that standpoint is a wife.

Speaker 2: 29:02

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 29:03

Right, we're not talking about like you know my cousins or uncles, or your mom and dad.

Speaker 1: 29:07

I'm still on the same page.

Speaker 4: 29:09

Because that getting into an argument with a wife about hey, we ain't got no money coming in, hey, what are you doing about? Hey, we ain't got no money coming in, hey, what are you doing? That is enough to defocus you to the point to where you're like okay, is it worth losing my family? Is it worth losing what we build? Is it worth going through a child support custody case? Is it worth all of that to prove a point, and then, if I'm wrong, on the other side of it, that it doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 29:34

And to your point, brother, I'm a thousand percent with you. That's exactly what I mean when that moment happens, because and I'm talking from experience, I've been married 16 years when that moment happens and the wife is like how are we going to do this, I don't know? She's stressing because she doesn't feel safe, she doesn't feel secure, she doesn't know how things are going to line up. But men have vision. It's on us to cast that vision. It's on us to stay strong in the midst of the storm. It's on us to say you know what? We're going to figure this out together.

Speaker 2: 30:05

Right. To add to that, I can only talk about my wife and the support that she gave. She didn't panic. We came up with a solution together. Okay, willie, I know this is what you want to do. All right, we're going to do this, we're going to do this and we're going to do this. That's the support that I'm talking about, not just all right, I'm going to pay everything, I'm going to do this and do that. You go out there and make it happen. No, we work together, right, we work together. We put a system together how we were going to weather this storm. For sure, I feel.

Speaker 3: 30:36

If the wife don't support you in that aspect, I probably would have to find another wife Because you're not willing to give up on that dream.

Speaker 2: 30:47

No, I'm not, no, for sure.

Speaker 1: 30:49

But this is why I'm taking a stand on this side and planting my flag. I think that everybody doesn't get that support and they don't know what direction to turn in. And everybody can't just change their wife. They want to keep their wife, but they also want to pursue this dream. So what do you do when you caught in that paradigm where the wife is not on your board but you still want to?

Speaker 2: 31:08

do this. If she's not on the board with me, I'm going to have to think about the relationship, right, I'm going to have to think about the relationship Right, I'm serious about it. Because, like now, she's thankful that she planted her feet with me and she rolled that ride with me, because now she's happy, she understood me, she knew me.

Speaker 2: 31:30

She knew that he's going to go out and he's going to make some happen, so she believed in me. You know a lot of times when the wives, ah yeah, you need to go do and he's going to make some happen, so she believed in me. A lot of times when the wives, yeah, you need to go do this. Sometimes they don't believe in you. You probably let them down a certain amount of times, or their fathers let their mothers down, so this is what they see. But I showed her something different. She knew the potential was there. She knew that I could make some things happen, so that's why she supported me the way that she did let me say something on that.

Speaker 4: 31:58

So that's the important part, right, which is you didn't say she believed in your dream, right? You said she believed in you, she believed in me. Yes, yeah, and and that's the part that I'm kind of really talking about is that if a woman believes in you and my wife actually helped me in my business, my wife I would go and find property, I fixed it up and she would stage it for me.

Speaker 4: 32:17

And she would stage it for me. Unbelievable, her staging probably sold most of our houses, wow, okay, she has a gift, she has a designer's eye and it wasn't a hard sell for her because the fact of what he's saying that she believed in me, even through some failures.

Speaker 2: 32:40

I've produced more and had more credibility through the successes than we've had failures and things. And another thing that I had to do in that I had to get comfortable with letting her know what was really going on on the backside, you know. So once she understood and I was open, okay, all right. Honey production is low this month. I got this this coming up. I'm going to have to go travel a little bit to go make these ends meet and make some stuff happen. That's part of support too. Yeah, you know I can't.

Speaker 3: 33:06

But you got to communicate, you got to communicate. You have to bring her in so she's not in the dark about the business, right?

Speaker 2: 33:10

I had to allow. I even allowed her into my finances because when we first got married she had her money, I had mine. Then we had an account where we put money in to pay things, but we never just really knew what the other person had. Once we opened that up, everything got better. So when I say support, I mean it's like you have to be in it together 110%, and when you have that person that would be in the trenches with you like that, it's going to elevate your business.

Speaker 1: 33:43

A team is always going to perform better than a solo person for sure. And I don't want to make this seem like I'm not on board, because I thousand percent agree. I just want to add a little color. So I've been on both sides of that track. When I first got laid off because that's what I did I didn't walk away from the job. God had to remove it from me, okay gotcha. So that November, when I hit that number the following February, I got laid off.

Speaker 3: 34:07

You still weren't going to make the jump, but someone kicked you in your back off the cliff.

Speaker 1: 34:11

Yep, at the top of the cliff. So I'm having lunch with CEOs traveling the country. I'm making the most money I've ever made in my life. Everybody in the company knows me from a positive standpoint, right Laid off, Wow.

Speaker 2: 34:24

I was like okay, that's the part about jobs that I don't like. Yeah, you take the control from me. Hey, we don't need you no more.

Speaker 1: 34:32

I've never been in that position 20 plus years made it through all type of layoffs and acquisitions and everything. Never been on the cutting block until that day. But I thought about it for two seconds. I already knew what I was going to do, so I went to my wife.

Speaker 2: 34:46

That was God.

Speaker 1: 34:47

Oh, for sure.

Speaker 2: 34:47

Which is why.

Speaker 1: 34:48

I already knew, because he had already been telling me.

Speaker 2: 34:51

Sometimes he removes things out of our life that we know that we don't need. Are you back at work? Are you doing full-time? Oh no.

Speaker 1: 34:58

I've been full-time for 18 months.

Speaker 2: 35:00

On your own yeah it was February 2024.

Speaker 4: 35:03

See there you go, don't go back.

Speaker 1: 35:05

But to that point I would never go back. And I told my wife the same thing when I first got laid off. I went to her and I said this is what.

Speaker 1: 35:11

I'm going to do she immediately. I support you a thousand percent, leaving you right. So I felt that support and I know what it does to a man like it shot me through the roof. Boy, I'm talking, I hit the ground running. You don't need no Viagra, nothing, nothing. To be fair, I didn't need it before, okay, okay, okay, just want to make that clear. Definitely didn't need it after. But fast forward four months. I go to a conference. Myron Golden in Tampa, florida, blew my mind. Three day conference from nine to five, paid a thousand dollars that's all it was a thousand bucks, that's.

Speaker 1: 35:56

That's just the ticket, that's not the flight to the hotel.

Speaker 3: 35:58

No, that's not what it cost today, cause you can't get in on Myron Golden the ticket. That's not the flight to the hotel. No, that's not what it costs today, because you can't get in on my own golden for no thousand dollars.

Speaker 1: 36:05

Yeah, no, he said that was his last time doing that.

Speaker 1: 36:06

Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure, but go on so by 12 o'clock the first day I had my money's worth and I'm not a conference kind of guy. From that day I knew being in the room matters more than anything. That's right. So I come home supercharged. I mean it's almost like I got hit by some voltage that I didn't have before, like it shifted the way I think with business, entrepreneurship, branding, marketing, the whole nine, because I'm like there's so much more if it's not tied to my time.

Speaker 1: 36:35

If I'm physically sitting there creating something for somebody, I can only do so much of that Correct, even if I scale out, hire other people, it's only so much because it's still tied to my time. How can I do something where, to your point, if I go on vacation or hiatus for three months, the business continues to go? So all of that strategy, all of that time wrestling with it, trying to figure it out, this moment, with this conference, it was like I'm pretty sure y'all around my age y'all probably seen Last Dragon when the glow started happening Whole different fighter at that point.

Speaker 3: 37:08

You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 37:10

I think the Matrix stole that at the end. I never made that connection, yeah. So that moment happened for me and I realized I've been doing this wrong the whole time. It's just like a cosmic shift, man. It's like I now know what I need to do, but I had the vision. My wife didn't have a vision. She had a vision for the marketing agency. She didn't have the vision for the brand strategy. So when I came to her with this brand new vision, I told her I wanted to pay my iron, gold and twenty seven thousand dollars to make it happen.

Speaker 3: 37:45

She was like boy, you know, lost your mind how much.

Speaker 1: 37:46

Yeah, that's what that's how much I thought it was going to be. Period, right, yeah, so that's where the shift in the support happened for me and I'm like well, no, you have to understand. But here's my point to you. I didn't fight with my wife. I made it clear to her I don't want to move. If you don't want to move, because we're in this together, I'm fighting for you, more so than I'm fighting for this dream, and so I care about my marriage right under God, and then my kids right under that, and then my business right under that, and people get that twisted and those orders are out of place. And then that's when you say you know what, since you don't support me, I'm out of here.

Speaker 2: 38:19

But I got to go. You know what, since you don't support me, I'm out of here, but I got to go.

Speaker 1: 38:26

But but, brothers, I'm going to tell you this, and anybody listening hear me clearly when you find yourself in predicaments where there's a tussle or there's a adversity, there's a blockage from you going where you want to go, look within first. What can I do better? How should I have approached this? What should I do to make sure that this person gets this sale? Because at that point my wife is my customer. How can I sell this to her? How can I make her understand the vision so that she can be on board and support me? So that journey was three, four months. So the bottom line is she absolutely supports me, a thousand percent now. But I had to understand that the vision didn't get given to her, it got given to me.

Speaker 3: 39:04

It's not the dream that she needs to believe in. It's you, it's me, right? So you might fall flat on your face for two or three of those dreams, right, and they may not work out. You might have different ventures, things that don't work out, but essentially, the thing she has to believe in is are you the type of person who's going to get up and go and do everything that you need to do, no matter what, come home 17, 18, 24 hours later with no money in your pocket and not give up and not just sit on the couch and just be like, hey, well, you know, I guess I didn't work out and, rod, so help us for people who are in that transition phase. How does your business help some of those people and how does your business help people who are in that transition phase? How does your business help some of those people and how does your business help people?

Speaker 1: 39:45

who are further along the journey. I'm going to do you one further. I'm going to talk to the person who's working corporate as well, who doesn't care to do entrepreneurship. Ok, by the way, the company that laid me off ended up hiring me to come speak to the company. It's a full circle story, brother.

Speaker 3: 39:59

Oh man, Trust me, you must've walked out with your pants unzipped. I would've walked in like yeah, y'all see me.

Speaker 1: 40:09

I worked hard and people saw me and I put myself out there and I asked for the offer and they gave it to me. So I think it just boils down to believing in yourself and putting in the work. But, to answer your question, I believe that our brand is tied to our identity, who you are, who you were born, as we all have personalities, we have souls, we have different things we desire, et cetera. But tapping into our potential is always a difficult thing. If you think about sports, right, you got a player. He's really good, naturally, but that coach can help him tap into his full potential just by tweaking little pieces and pointing them in the right direction. Well, that's what brand strategy is. The problem is most people don't understand what branding is in general. They think it's logos, color palettes, marketing. They tie the two together synonymously.

Speaker 3: 40:55

I'm one of those people. So yeah, please, because, I'll admit it, I have no clue what you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 40:59

So here's what. And I'm in business and I've been in business a long time.

Speaker 3: 41:02

You know what I mean, so it just goes to show. I'm quick to admit it. So you can kind of help me out and help us out. Because, yes, when I think branding, I think my logo, a website, something that tells people who do you think about Tesla? That's branding. You're not thinking about the T and the red color.

Speaker 1: 41:25

You might think about Elon Musk, because personal branding is a part of branding as well, but branding is how this thing makes you feel, so that you remember it anytime somebody brings something up that's close to it. Coffee.

Speaker 3: 41:39

Starbucks, Starbucks. Because I was thinking at home yeah, Starbucks, you're right you might say Folgers, you might say Dunkin'.

Speaker 1: 41:44

It depends on your personality and what you're drawn to.

Speaker 4: 41:47

Well, it's like Google it's searching on the search and then everybody say Google it Right, but Google is a, yeah, it's a, they say Google it because it has compound word brand name because you have other search engines. You got bing and you got other ones, but everybody says google right. Even if you're going to bing, yeah, google it right. So here's.

Speaker 1: 42:10

Here's the breakdown between marketing and branding. Marketing is simply making sure the thing that you have is visible to others. It doesn't mean sales. It doesn't mean anything outside of that. All you're doing is going. I'm going to magnify this so that you can see it, whether that's physically or digitally. So that's why, back in the day, it was flyers, newspaper billboards. That was the big thing. Now that we're in this digital space, it's social media, email, text message, right, but that's all marketing is. I have this thing. I want to put it in front of you in hopes that you do something with it. Branding is the person actually deciding to make that decision based off of how it makes them feel. So when you hear da-da-da-da-da, you automatically associate Happy Meal, Ronald McDonald, Red and White Sign. It pulls all of those things up because they branded it so much that you know that based off of that sound Hamburgers period.

Speaker 4: 43:15

I mean, you think about McDonald's. Mcdonald's is the first name that comes out of your mouth when you think about a hamburger even though you may not eat it.

Speaker 1: 43:21

Yep, now here's how you bring it all home and make it very simple for anybody. We all guys, we got wives and stuff. We know how this dating world is. Marketing is asking a girl out hey, baby girl, how you doing. Yeah, you mind, if we you know, I want to take you to dinner. She has the opportunity to see you. Based off of what you just said and how you presented yourself, the clothes you got on the cologne, all of that is marketing. Branding is what's going to make her say, yes, it's your aura, it's your swag, it's you, it's your personality, it's how she feels, based off of how you approached her.

Speaker 3: 43:58

Wow Okay.

Speaker 1: 43:59

I hope that makes sense. It does.

Speaker 2: 44:01

Yeah, right. So when you want to get some, is that branding, that's branding, that's branding.

Speaker 1: 44:10

Marketing is you actually asking? Branding is what you did the 24 hours before you asked her. You feel me Gotcha, because guess what, if you argued with her, didn't take the trash out, whatever, as soon as you ask, it's gonna be a no. But if you did your part, she feeling good about you and you ask now say yes. So it's not just sales. Sales is like a science for sure. But if the marketing ain't right, if the branding ain't right, it's gonna be really hard to sell. And the very opposite. If the marketing is right and the branding is right, you don't even have to sell. They come into very opposite.

Speaker 3: 44:44

If the marketing is right and the branding is right, you don't even have to sell. They come into you. Going back to the original question, here you're talking to a person who's at corporate. How do you help that person? How do you help the person who's just starting out, who's just transitioning, and how do you help the person who's a little further along, like this place? Here we're in this beautiful building right Prep and Chet Studios. He's got this thing going. How do we help a business like that or like Willis business that's established versus a business like mine? I'm in talks with investors where I want to launch this thing in about a month or two.

Speaker 1: 45:10

I'll cover all three, but I'll land on the last one with the transition, where it's kind of like I'm out here but I'm trying to figure it out. Yeah, corporate branding is no different than entrepreneur branding, but it's within a space for that organization. So you're no longer marketing and branding in hopes that you get clients to come in. You're marketing and branding so that management looks at you in a certain way or that when opportunities come, they think about you. Da-da-da-da-da. You know what I mean, right? Because guess what Opportunities are going to come.

Speaker 1: 45:43

Who's the first person come to mind? This person who's been branding himself in the right way, he's showing up on time Anytime. I ask him to work extra. Those things that you don't want to do are your brand. I'm not saying you have to shuck and jive or tap dance, I'm just simply saying decide what you want and then go for it. The person who is full-time entrepreneur and this kind of goes to the person in transition too. I have this framework called brand, pun intended, the B is for belief. I believe that everything starts with your mindset. If you don't have the right mindset as an entrepreneur, like you had the mindset day one, willie.

Speaker 2: 46:22

It was just like I'm going to do this.

Speaker 1: 46:24

It's so many different.

Speaker 1: 46:25

With or without you, but I'm glad, I'm glad you're here, yeah, yeah, so that mindset is key to everything and it's it's so deep I won't even go into it now. The R is for roadmap If you don't know where you're going, where you came from, what the strategy is to get there, the goals, the forecasting, your numbers. You have to know what's going on in order to go where you're trying to get. And then the A is for appearance Highly overrated, but highly underrated. How you show up in the room matters. How you dress your hair, all of that stuff that I used to not care about I care about greatly now because I know it makes a big difference. I always wanted people to just accept me for who I am, but they have to get to know who I am and the first impression I give them is going to make them decide if they want to get to know me.

Speaker 3: 47:11

We're visual creatures. People can see your soul. When you walk in and see your integrity, they see you. So that's my point I integrity.

Speaker 1: 47:23

They see you. So that's my point. I thought it was that only, but it's everything. It's your outward and inward appearance. The N is for network. Your network is your net worth, and if you're not connected to people, if you're not just out here to serve somebody other than yourself, you're going to find yourself by yourself. So you have to connect with other people, be willing to serve them, find out how you can help them and your network will literally speak for you.

Speaker 1: 47:45

I just landed somebody yesterday to speak at my in-person event. I looked up at this lady like man, I would love to work with her one day. As soon as I connected with her, she was like oh, I heard about you. You're connected to this person because I've been networking, yeah, all right, and so I landed that deal. This person because I've been networking, yeah, all right, and so I landed that deal.

Speaker 1: 48:04

By the way, so the D is for drive. That's the last piece. If you don't have drive again as soon as that wall hits because that wall is going to come it's going to test whether or not you truly want this. Is this what you want? Because if you want it, you're going to go after it, and if you don't, you're going to quit. So I don't know if that explains it, but the bottom line is that person that's in transition or doing this thing full time, you got to go all in. There's no halfway. You can't expect to get a million dollars with a $10 marketing plan. But here's the problem. Everybody wants to get a new brand made, but nobody wants to be made brand new. That part.

Speaker 3: 48:41

Yeah, yeah, we got to rewind that a couple of times. That part yeah, everyone gets to the point to where they're seriously tested to see whether or not they have what it takes. They have the gumption to actually take it past that phase of this sucks. This is hard. I want to quit. You know they don't want to embrace the suck. They got to get past that point, so I know that it happens.

Speaker 4: 49:03

So what about? How do you help the person that wants to do both right, the person that don't want to leave their full-time job? They just want a secondary stream of income or secondary hustle. They're not all in on the business. It's something that they're good at, but it's a secondary interest and not a passion. Is that something that you could brand and help?

Speaker 1: 49:22

I mean, yeah for sure. But you know, a divided mind is a divided house, like it's only so much you can do when you're not all in. So when you said you started off, you said how do you help the person that wants to do both? Well, if they want to do both, then they're going to have to do both with the same velocity. But if they don't want to do both and they just want to make some extra money, then that's fine.

Speaker 4: 49:45

That's the person I'm talking about.

Speaker 1: 49:46

But guess what?

Speaker 1: 49:47

You can market it and brand it to death and put it in front of people and try to get it to sell, but they're going to see right through it.

Speaker 1: 49:53

I can talk to you until I'm blue in the face about building a website, but if I don't present myself properly, if I'm halfway in, you're going to feel it, You're going to sense it, You're going to be like man, this guy don't know what he's talking about. So it's hard to truly push something that you don't really want to push yourself. So my point to you is this I would challenge that person to make a decision. Either you are okay with this making whatever it makes, whenever it makes it, and you're not going to put no money time into it in terms of marketing it. Or you can say you know what I want to do both of these with the same amount of zeal and see what I can do with it. And when you make that decision, then you've got to have three jobs. You've got to have a five to eight working your business. You have to have an eight to five working your job and you have to have a five to eight working your business.

Speaker 4: 50:40

And Leon are you referring to? So I'm referring to my wife.

Speaker 3: 50:45

No, no, not a person.

Speaker 4: 50:46

He's like fine you got me Cut that part. Yeah, yeah, you got it so.

Speaker 3: 50:55

I guess the real question is this they have a side hustle, they have a regular nine to five. But if the side hustle, they have a regular nine to five. But if the side hustle started making as much or more, would they quit that nine to five? Or they really love to do both still?

Speaker 4: 51:07

No. So this is the person I'm talking about, right, the person that's comfortable and happy with the nine to five. They got to have a check, but they have a talent that they know that they can make money off of, and this extra money just gives them another stream of income, like everybody's always talking about. Oh, you need multiple streams of income. Multiple streams of income. Sure, they just want this secondary stream of income to do the other things that the other job either want to afford them to do, or it's just extra that they can go and just have vacation, fool around with. You know, maybe they got a child in college. They want to send some extra money. It's not their be all and end all, but they just want enough customers to keep them busy to make a little bit of money on the side. It's just side money.

Speaker 3: 51:46

I want to jump in real quick and say this, and please just keep in mind what you're about to say. So, for example, for me, right, multiple streams of income means something a little bit different, in the sense that I may have a site gig where I still kind of do alarm and solar sales. I'm not chasing it. But if it comes my way I'm happy to go do it right, but I'm not chasing it. It's not a passion for me. The business that I'm going to be starting here soon, that I already have a plan for that I'm talking to investors about, that's a passion for me. I'm not quitting my nine to five yet. You know I'm managing a sales team, et cetera. I guarantee you the half second second that my business matches my income. I'm so fucking gone bro. It's not even funny, because then I can take all of that effort because I'm still not doing it half-ass.

Speaker 3: 52:28

People are under my stewardship. I'm responsible for them, so I'm giving them a lot of my time. I'm taking text messages, I'm working. Tomorrow it's Labor Day, but I'm going to be out in the field with reps because they need my help. I don't want to be doing that. I just don't want to put my family at risk, and if I was single it would be different. So I could jump into this business that I know will not show me any revenue for the first six months. So because of that, I'm being sensible about things and I'm going to approach it a certain way. But the second that revenue starts to come in, and I clockwork because I believe in it 100%, it's just one of those businesses that I can't believe doesn't exist yet. And if it does, it's not being done right. So I'm just like, yeah, no, we're going all in here.

Speaker 1: 53:07

So you guys answered the question in your response. You can lie with your words, but your energy is going to tell the truth every time, right when you said, yeah, I got this thing this side, you know I might make you know. Your energy was in that in the same way. You care about it, correct, and as soon as you start talking about your business.

Speaker 3: 53:26

Man, I can start crying.

Speaker 1: 53:27

Your eyes pucked up. You were like yo, this is it. And it's the same thing with your wife, right? If it's a? Oh, I just need to make some extra money. You know, da, da, da da, that energy is gonna be in the business as well, and so it doesn't matter if you throw a million dollars at marketing, she's not gonna be able to live up to that level because she doesn't care about it. On that level, the level you care about a thing is the level in which you can grow it.

Speaker 4: 53:53

So what I'll say about it is that she likes doing that better than she would like her normal job, but her brain doesn't.

Speaker 1: 54:05

I might be paraphrasing, but you said something like she needs a check, and even if this made X amount of dollars, she would still want to work this job. That will not allow the other thing to grow past her job and she's fine with it Ever. She's fine with it. Even if a millionaire just came and was like I love what you did, I'm going to drop this on you right now. She would be overwhelmed. She would take the money, but she would not quit her job. Nope. And so that's my point to you, and that's what it would take for her to deliver that level it would take.

Speaker 3: 54:32

You need to quit your job so you can focus 100% on this, and so then the work suffers a little bit.

Speaker 1: 54:37

No, it's backwards. You need to focus 100% on this so you can quit your job, and so, because she won't do that, that'll never happen.

Speaker 4: 54:45

Yeah, I think if she saw her business take off she would consider it, but at the end of the day she still wants to have. Okay, I want to make sure this is secure for retirement.

Speaker 3: 54:54

She needs a safety net.

Speaker 2: 54:55

Yes 100% because safety net is the first.

Speaker 1: 54:58

But here's why the B in my brand framework is belief.

Speaker 3: 55:02

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 55:02

Because your mindset determines everything Correct. And I'm not saying everybody has to have an entrepreneur mindset, but everybody has to have an entrepreneur mindset.

Speaker 4: 55:11

But there's people out there that will never leave the safety net, even if they didn't leave it.

Speaker 1: 55:15

They still need to have it. Here's why because what happens when it leaves them? It's stats right now that 300,000 black women have lost their job this year. What are they doing? Most of them are trying to get back in the workforce, which is not accepting them. So what are you doing? And, when it comes down to it, how are you going to feed your kids? You can't just be out here hustling 24 hours a day to feed them. You have to figure out a way to format a business that is solidified enough that you don't have to go work for nobody else. I'm passionate about it yeah.

Speaker 3: 55:45

I can hear it Like you said, right the way your eyes burnt up and just your voice changed.

Speaker 1: 55:50

This is coming from a guy that wanted the safety net and didn't care about this whole world Never did so. I'm speaking from a place of both sides. I'm a chameleon. I've had every inch of this skin on me to understand every lane. When it comes to the full spectrum of, I want to work for the boss. I want to be the boss.

Speaker 3: 56:10

I like being the boss. Willie just sat on the Be the boss.

Speaker 2: 56:13

You ain't going to tell me what to do man I mean 12 years old getting my dad his lawnmower going out to cut grass in the neighborhood? I always want to make my own, yeah.

Speaker 4: 56:24

I like being my boss. There's a difference between being the boss and being my boss. I'm more of a self-employed guy than an entrepreneur, because I detest managing people.

Speaker 3: 56:35

Well, you just don't like people, period. Leon.

Speaker 4: 56:37

It's not managing.

Speaker 2: 56:38

You don't like fucking people to begin with.

Speaker 3: 56:41

Listen, he's tolerating us in this room. I can sense it.

Speaker 4: 56:46

It's his energy. You know what?

Speaker 3: 56:47

I'm saying it's one wrong thing.

Speaker 4: 56:49

It's energy. You know what I'm saying. It's not one wrong thing. I mean, it's over. No, I have evolved still.

Speaker 3: 56:54

Leon, you are by nature an introvert and he could get in front of a room and public speak and do all of that. He's mentoring other people. Obviously you've got the skill. But the bottom line is like look, I'm going to tell you once, I'm going to tell you once, I'm going to train you, and then leave me alone. You know what?

Speaker 2: 57:10

I mean Only call me if you really need me, why are you calling me?

Speaker 3: 57:14

You know why are you talking to me? Why haven't you done what I told?

Speaker 4: 57:16

you and asked you to do?

Speaker 3: 57:18

I'm going to train you.

Speaker 3: 57:19

well, but then if you don't do it the problem is so where he and I differ in management style is that I will hold your hand a little longer. I will repeat myself. I will go out and show you again where Leon's like. I've shown you right, like you understood. I asked you if you had any questions and you said no. So what's the problem? Why aren't you delivering a hundred percent? So when you say I detest managing people, I mean obviously I'm. I'm, I'm making fun of you, I'm just saying you don't like people in general. That's not the case, because you're very, very giving and you're very selfless. But overall I know what you mean. So you'd rather be in business for yourself, self-employed, and not be an entrepreneur, because you're right, if you have employees and you have other people, you have to rely on them to deliver.

Speaker 4: 58:01

Like what you're going through tomorrow, tomorrow's Labor Day you should be chilling withoring. Yeah, having a drink, but instead you have to handhold somebody that's going out for a sale.

Speaker 1: 58:11

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 58:11

I no longer desire to do that. My family time has to be my family time. I don't give a damn what you got going on. You better start feeling and learning how to sell between holidays, because you're not going to call me on the holidays and take my time up on a might be.

Speaker 4: 58:32

Well, I think I got this sale. No, you are you. Are you wrapping up the sale? Are they cutting us a check because other than that, this can wait till tuesday? Yeah, you know, I mean for real. I mean I understand you got to get it. So if you got to get it that bad, you need to go get it on your own and just let me kind of help you on tuesday.

Speaker 4: 58:45

Close that deal you know, I mean for real because my daughter put everything in perspective for me when I had her right. You only get so many family days before everybody is going off their own way right Now. I told you this on another podcast. From the time I was born until I was 16 years old, my dad traveled four days a week out of town, so we were together part of Friday, all of Saturday.

Speaker 4: 59:11

I'm back home on Sunday. He back on the road, 18 years old. I'm packing up my car, getting ready to come to college, and he's like where are you going? I said I leave for college this week. He was like what you mean? It's not September yet. I was like remember, I'm going to the early college deal and I'm not coming back. And he said these exact words. He said damn, I missed it, which meant that I missed your entire childhood, your entire childhood.

Speaker 4: 59:35

I looked up one day. You was a little boy and I thought that was going to be years and years and years. And now I blinked and you a man. I promised myself that I would not do that with my daughter, and I have not.

Speaker 1: 59:45

Nice.

Speaker 4: 59:46

This time next year she'll be a freshman in college. Don't know where she's going to be, but it probably will be outside of Georgia.

Speaker 1: 59:53

And you won't have that, you won't have to say that I won't. That's a lot of stuff.

Speaker 4: 59:56

Leon, I won't have to say that, and a lot of that is because I got out of sales and management Having to carry people or drag them to a place, like you said, where they don't know where the destination is to begin with. Like you said, where they don't know where the destination is to begin with, they just out here trying something.

Speaker 1: 1:00:09

That's what's important for a lot of people. They just don't know what to do. So that's why I implore everybody to have the entrepreneur mindset, because you never know when you're going to have to pull on it, and it's better to start from level 11 than level 1. That's where you come in Period.

Speaker 3: 1:00:24

Yeah, so leave us with three golden nuggets. We can't give away the strategies for free, right? For that, they need to go to your website, they need to go to follow you on Instagram and we'll get the socials here in a second. And people have to pay to be in the room. I think that's where a lot of people are missing out, because they don't really understand what that means, and there's so many fake Googlers out there. You know, hey, send me $1,000, and I'll teach you how to do this. And all you did was spend $1,000 to kind of hear some regurgitated cliches. You know you got to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning. You got to do this because you know, every time I sit to do it. Well, do you even understand what's going on, right? But I know you can't give away all the sauce right now. But what three things can you leave us with?

Speaker 1: 1:01:03

Okay, on the spot, I got you. No, I got you. First and foremost, I want to address the scammers and the fake coaches and all of these things out here. It goes back to what I said, but the problem is people get galvanized by what they're saying and then they lean on their energy. Don't lean on your own energy in that moment, lean on their energy. So what I mean by that? Look past the sales, look past the marketing, look past the shiny stuff and try to find out who this person is and who they've helped.

Speaker 1: 1:01:34

If you can start to tap into some of that, then you have to be willing to go out on faith and say, all right, I've done my research, I trust that this person is going to do what they said.

Speaker 1: 1:01:41

Now let me invest and get all I can from it instead of looking at it from a skeptical eye. Yeah, that's number one. So many people are missing out on that. And let me just say this and I'm still on point one the whole purpose of a true coach or a strategist or advisor whoever you want to label yourself as consultant, that's charging this money to talk to them and get that information is that they can condense what they've learned over the last 5, 10, 20 years into an hour and they can pack it to you. That's going to speed you up 10,000 times more than ChatGPT and YouTube, because it's only so much you can get from AI, all right. So don't be afraid to invest into that. You just need to do your research. So that's number one. The number two thing I would say find out what you really want to do. So many people don't know.

Speaker 4: 1:02:27

Like for me.

Speaker 1: 1:02:28

I would be a movie director if money was not an object, if my house was paid off and everything was done, I would literally go shoot a film tomorrow. That's my passion, that's my heart, right. But guess what? I'm directing brands right now. I'm not waiting. You see what I'm saying. So I know what I want and I'm doing it one way or another. Right, it may not line up where I'm in Hollywood, but I'm still directing brands.

Speaker 1: 1:02:55

You can literally see stuff on my social media where I'm behind the camera and I'm telling people what to do and I'm writing stuff. So find out what you want to do and pursue it. I wasn't waiting until I made enough money or until I graduated. People wait until they die and they're in the grave to my dang. I wish I would have. Yeah, I don't regret losing money or failing. I regret not trying stuff. That's right, all right, so that's number two. And then finally, I would say with number three, work on your brand. You have a brand, learn what it is, develop it. It's going to be the most important thing in this AI world. Everything is artificial.

Speaker 3: 1:03:30

Make thing in this AI world. Everything is artificial. Make your art official. Ooh man, that's a Manhood Matters exclusive right there, damn, you understand what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 1:03:36

Yes, yeah, that was great Life imitates art, but art imitates life as well. So you need to make yourself so profound, being the highest version of you. I know people talk about frequency and vibration and all Psychedelical hillbilly stuff. It's real who you are determines everything, and if you believe you can't do it, you won't be able to do it. That's right. The man who believes he can and the man who believes he can't are both correct. That's right. My favorite quote is tied into the brand thing. To wrap this all up, Abraham Lincoln said if I had seven hours to chop down a tree, I would spend six hours sharpening my axe.

Speaker 3: 1:04:19

Love it. Get prepared, because it's coming.

Speaker 1: 1:04:21

That is powerful stuff.

Speaker 3: 1:04:23

So before we ask you where we can find you Big Will or Big Chill, tell us where we can find your agency brother all right.

Speaker 2: 1:04:29

Yeah, I'm, um, I'm on social media nash group insurance. I'm gonna tell you something funny. I went to facebook and I changed my name, just I planned with it or whatever, and, um, so it says nash lee. I saw that, yeah, and now I gotta wait 60 days or whatever to change it back.

Speaker 3: 1:04:48

So, to be honest with you, I don't know what, so what about? Just tell us about Instagram? Yeah, you didn't fuck that up, did you?

Speaker 2: 1:04:55

Yeah, it's all together. Facebook and Instagram are the same company. Yeah, so it's Nash Lee on Facebook.

Speaker 1: 1:05:05

What's it?

Speaker 4: 1:05:05

going to be in 60 days. We're going to work on that.

Speaker 2: 1:05:09

Yeah, we're going to work on that, yeah we're going to work on that. I mean because, honestly, I'm listening to you and talking. I do need your help.

Speaker 3: 1:05:14

It's next level, bro.

Speaker 2: 1:05:15

Yeah, yeah yeah, I do need your help, hi Rod.

Speaker 3: 1:05:21

Rod, where can we find you, bro? People are looking for you. Where can we find you?

Speaker 1: 1:05:24

RodBrentsoncom R R-O-D-B-R-I-N-S-O-Ncom. Everything about me is there.

Speaker 3: 1:05:29

All right. Social media, all of that, leon, you got anything you're promoting.

Speaker 4: 1:05:33

Yeah, If you're looking for a place to stay, you can go to Chameleon Homes LLC. Gmailcom is my email and it's just Chameleon Homes LLCcom is the website Dope.

Speaker 3: 1:05:44

All right. So at the end of each show we flip a coin and someone has to read the outro notes.

Speaker 1: 1:05:51

How about just send it to me? Don't even flip the coin, man boom.

Speaker 3: 1:05:54

Look, rod says he's going to do it. Willie, you're off the hook.

Speaker 2: 1:05:57

Thank, God, because last time I did it I was horrible.

Speaker 3: 1:06:00

Who were you last time I was?

Speaker 2: 1:06:01

Glorilla. That was good. Yeah, I had to do it in my Memphis voice.

Speaker 3: 1:06:07

Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right, that's funny. So, rod, who are you going to be? Because you have to do it, you can't just read it, you have to do an impression.

Speaker 1: 1:06:15

Can I be anybody? You can be anybody. Add your flavor to it. Okay, I'm about to do the most worst impression ever.

Speaker 3: 1:06:27

I'm going to just do it, let's go Huh.

Speaker 1: 1:06:31

What. You got this on me, you got this on. Okay, first of all, please support us by following the show. If you don't follow this show, if you don't really follow this show, I'm going to have to be King Kong around here.

Speaker 4: 1:06:45

Okay, that's it From training.

Speaker 1: 1:06:47

Leave Denzel, okay that's it from training. Leave us a five star review on Apple Podcast. Okay, thank you so much for listening. We'll catch you next week. We share conversations and we surround ourselves with other guys just like this. Okay, let's go.

Speaker 2: 1:07:00

Manhood matters, we out, let's go alright, denzel, I got to tell you.