Action's Antidotes

Coaching can take on many forms, it's a bond, a connection and it does not end with one-on-one training, as we imagine it to be. Depending on the project, company, team, or individual, any of these coaching approaches can be beneficial and the most effective leaders will use all of these ways to confidently take on leadership roles.

Our guests, Laura Bennett and Kellie Jenkins, founders of "Her Brilliance," are both accomplished leaders. These two bring out the best in women by providing a safe space for them to connect, form deeper bonds, and gain the confidence to transform their leadership. Her Brilliance sought to apply the same coaching competencies to a group environment, so they could gather a powerhouse of women and motivate them to step into their full leadership potential.

 

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A Community for Women Leaders With Laura Bennett & Kellie Jenkins

Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Something we've talked about quite a bit on this program is coaching. When a lot of people think of coaching, they probably think of a one-on-one, an individual relationship where a coach listens to what you have to say, assigns you a bunch of exercises, and gives you advice on what to do next, or gives you questions, and hopefully, you'll come up with the answers. However, there are multiple approaches to coaching and I want to give every approach its fair due. 

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Today, our guests are Laura Bennett and Kellie Jenkins, who are the co-founders of Her Brilliance Community, a community of women leaders. Kellie, Laura, welcome to the program.

 

Thanks, Stephen, for having us.

 

Definitely. First, I always like to orient the audience. Tell us a little bit about Her Brilliance community, what your system is all about.

 

Sure. Kellie and I founded Her Brilliance a couple of years ago now. We are an organization-focus that uses a women-centered group coaching approach to accelerate the development of women leaders. We're all about helping women really access and tap into their authentic natural strength as a way to amplify their leadership impact and influence.

 

Yeah. I think I'll just add to that. The idea of community comes from this group coaching approach where it gives women an opportunity to learn in that peer-oriented community environment.

 

This group coaching approach, you describe it as a community. How does that manifest? I know a lot of people in America and probably a lot of other countries too are missing this idea of community after social media first ripped it apart and then the pandemic ripped it apart even further. What does this community look like? 

 

Yeah. It can look very different ways. Obviously, over the last couple of years, it's been mostly virtual, and has been just as effective as an in-person environment. You're really looking at a small intimate group of peers who have come together around some common theme or experience. It could be, they all belong to the same organization. It could be across industries. They're all at the same level and experiencing the same sorts of challenges. What we're doing is bringing that group together. Instead of learning through this one-on-one executive coaching, we're applying those coaching competencies into the group environment. It's not training where we've come in as experts and share our leadership knowledge.

 

It is really us bringing together a group of women to share their experiences and us facilitating exercises and dialogue to help them reflect on their own leadership and come up with their own answers.

What did the group sizes look like? You found a way to make it work virtually. Is there a certain size of the group or make-up of the group -- as you mentioned, shared experiences? Are they all from the same industry, or all in the same level of leadership, or something like that? 

 

Yeah.

It is without a doubt that we consequently spend most of our time in the virtual world. Especially at the start of the pandemic, the reality for us all has been spending hours with our personal gadgets. Video calls have become our new channel in order to stay connected. We shop with just one tap and follow other people across the globe through the use of social media platforms. Whether you use it for school, work, business, or entertainment, it's undeniable that the virtual world has been our refuge amidst all the uncertainties.

With that comes the aesthetics and appearance that all of us should maintain online. Even business owners have no excuse for this one. It's important to step up our branding by showcasing creativity and uniqueness so that we become noticeable. Today's guest is an expert on that matter. Shelly Golden from Shelly Golden Style Zoom Makeovers, will walk you through her tips and tricks on how to look your best. Shelly helps you attain better results in both your professional and social life so be sure to catch her in today’s talk.

 

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Importance of Virtual Appearance in Your Everyday Business With Shelley Golden

Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the ways that I envision a lot of you out there listening are going to get to the level you want to be at, achieve the life that you really want, is identifying a need that wasn't previously there or few people were really thinking about, identifying something new, forging a really, truly new, unique path. Identifying new needs and taking action on it is a fantastic way to really live a life that you really want to live, something that my guest today, Shelley Golden, of Shelly Golden Style Zoom Makeovers has done fairly recently. 

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Shelly, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you. Super glad to be here.

 

Definitely. Let's start out with Zoom Makeovers. What does this entail because even though a lot of us have spent a little over two years, spending more time on Zoom than we ever imagined ourselves doing? I'm sure a lot of people are not familiar with the idea of what a Zoom makeover

 

A Zoom makeover is literally tweaking, transforming everything that you see in your Zoom box – a five-step process to really go through camera angle, sound, lighting.

Lighting is the most important factor. What color clothing works best on you in your space? Your real background -- is it a virtual background? Are you in your garage? Are you in your kitchen? Says so much about you. 

 

For those who wear makeup, this is crazy, what I call Zoom's specific makeup techniques. It's the way you put it on, which is not the same way you would put it on if you're going on the street. People are looking at you on a two-dimensional platform, but you're trying to create a three-dimensional look and work everything that you see in the box. It's almost like creating a new painting. Where does your eye go first, which of course you want to go right here to the other person's eyes, and eliminate distractions. Increase engagement, trust, and credibility, and eliminate distractions.

 

Obviously, a Zoom makeover takes on a different form than a standard makeover, where you're making over primarily what's on your body. Now, we can talk about the concept of an emotional makeover and all these other types of internal makeover. When people think of makeovers, they usually think of what they're wearing on the face, makeup, clothing, everything like that. A Zoom makeover is the overall purpose, how you present yourselves to people -- the same or is there a different purpose because of what people do on Zoom versus what people do, say when you're out in public, at a restaurant, or somewhere else, and you're going through the regular makeover process.

 

Look at what story you're telling yourself and then look for places where you could reframe the story....

Power doesn’t come from outside of ourselves, as we often thought it would. Rather, it comes from the inside, our uniqueness, our soul, and our passion to become better. In this world full of negativity, what we need is a ray of light. For us to move forward in the right direction, all of us should feel empowered. No matter where we are in our journey, it is our job to break down barriers that can hinder us from becoming stronger and more confident. Today's guest is here to help us with this subject. Jewel Ray Chaudhuri is an executive leadership and women's empowerment coach. She's on the show to give us some insights into what it takes to be empowered.

 

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The Power of Empowerment With Jewel Ray Chaudhuri

Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We talk about empowerment quite a bit on this podcast, because empowerment is part of the core reason for this podcast edition. It's part of the core motivation for this show. In order to do what we really want to do, we need to be empowered. Lack of empowerment is something that prevents a lot of people from achieving your best life, from going after what it is you really want. 

Our world is full of disempowering scenarios, disempowering talk, and disempowering messages, whether it'd be from a really old school, traditional, hierarchical work environment, whether it'd be from the media, the news, or whether it'd be from some of your well-meaning friends that have adopted a victimhood- or doomsday-disempowered mentality. We actually need to, no matter where you are on your journey, be consistently looking into what we can do to counteract a lot of those messages that we're going to find in that ambient world. 

My guest today is here to help talk about some of these subjects, Jewel Ray Chaudhuri, who is an executive leadership and women's empowerment coach.

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Jewel, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you, Stephen. It's great to be here. Really enjoying this.

 

Thank you. The first thing I want to ask you is about what I was mentioning in the introduction, which is what disempowering messages are in the ambient environment where most people are going. I don't think that many people are not subjected regularly to messages of disempowerment. I identified a few sources, but I'm just curious, from your perspective, what I may have missed, are there other places where people are hearing a lot of things that are disempowering to them? 

 

First of all, a lot of it is what we're telling ourselves. We have these – I'm going to call them – little parrots, most Laras, who sit on our shoulder. They're our inner critic, our judge, and they come up with all these messages. A lot of the message, especially for women, is around, "I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not competent enough." You fill in the blank, and that's what it is. Those judges help us to tell those disempowering stories. 

 

You mentioned being in victim mode. A lot of times, we don't even start because we're hearing the message, "No. You can't go after that job. You have no experience there", or, "Wait till you get this degree or that degree, and then you can have whatever you want."

 

Would you say that, as far as anyone who needs more empowerment, which I would say is almost everybody -- but you can correct me on that -- the number one thing is the messages we tell ourselves every single day?

 

Yes, because we're told those messages. When I was about 16 years old in high school, and I can remember what somebody said to me, I've carried that message for a very long time.

 

Sometimes, you don't even realize that the message is there. It comes from your past, but now, there are things that bring it forward.

My message was about speaking and talking. I carried that into college where my throat would tighten if I raised my hand and things...

We can't deny how we're wrapped up in a fast-paced world. With so much on our plates and little time, we often forget that there's beauty in the little things. Reading a good novel, dancing around, or playing our favourite music, are the little things we should look out for because there's much more to life than just paychecks and job rankings.  

Today's guest will surely move your hearts with his words. Singer/songwriter John Brewster is on the show today to talk to us all about how he's been able to make his passion his lifestyle. Tag along with us, and let's hear more from John.

 

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Music and All Things that Make Us Human With John Brewster

Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing I've been thinking about quite a bit for at least several years now is what makes all of us human, which is something that I feel is diminished in our modern society. When I talk about this, I talk about things like laughter, things like dancing, things like humor, and things like music -- things that don't necessarily have a specific material value in most corporate settings but provide a lot of value to our lives, a lot of value to our wellbeing. 

My guest today, John Brewster, is a Boulder resident and a singer/songwriter who has managed to make a lifestyle out of music, which I'm sure a lot of people would love the possibility of doing if they only knew how. 

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John, welcome to the program.

 

Thanks so much for having me today, Stephen. I'm really excited to be here. Thank you. 

 

Yeah, definitely. You're relatively new to Colorado, right?

 

Yes. I just moved here in August of 2021, and now, we're in March 2022 for the future nerds out there that listen to this. I've been here for a few months, just getting grounded into the mountain energy and just been loving it so far.

 

Where do you come from most recently?

 

South Carolina. I was in Charleston last. That's where I got my start in music as far as original music goes.

 

You do exclusively original music?

 

I do my own original music. It's my priority. To right now sustain my living, I play cover songs as well -- private events, weddings, knickknack things here and there, bar gigs, whatever has gotten me to this point. I've been open to those opportunities, which has helped to sustain and keep furthering my original music as well.

 

That's really neat. You said, you got your start in South Carolina, and then, you moved here to Colorado. If I recall correctly, you live on the outskirts of Boulder. What did you have to do to transfer that start, whatever you had going for you, word of mouth in South Carolina, and bring it to a new place?

 

Yeah. I started planting seeds pretty early. I played music all growing up in South Carolina. I had a pretty good network of connections and was doing it full-time. To give a little miniature backstory, I was in a band for several years in South Carolina. We played all the cover gigs and had a lot of good momentum, singing harmonies and stuff. We ended up touring all over the place in the East Coast, doing our own music. After that chapter came to a close, I decided to do my own music. 

 

About a year ago, I visited Colorado. For the first time, before I released my first album, I was feeling this calling to go somewhere new, to get some fresh perspective. It was almost literally a coin toss between going to Austin or Denver. I was looking at Airbnbs. I was just going to drive -- just leave South Carolina, just go for an experience with myself, and see if I want to move somewhere new. It ended up being Denver. I found a spot to hang out for a couple of weeks. I just immediately knew I had to come back to Colorado. 

 

Fast forward a few months later, my partner, Sarah, and I officially moved out here. That's when we started planting seeds of asking around -- who do you know who i...

“Is there any time when branding isn’t important?”

Your brand represents you and your promise to your customer. With creativity, skill, and a strategic approach, you can establish an identity with your brand. Great branding sells out to your customers because it’s what makes you unique and different.

Here today is brand specialist Kyle Asperger, and he’ll be deep diving into how branding gives “life” to your company. He would walk us through the importance of story making and overseeing creative projects to amp up your business.

 

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Branding: Knowing Yourself and Building Relationships With Kyle Asperger

Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. As you continue along your journeys and build your own things, one of the important aspects of that journey is going to be branding. Branding is something that a lot of people have some weird and interesting thoughts about which we'll cover in this episode. We all have a brand. A brand is a good way of understanding what service someone offers. You think about your favorite brands: Nike, Whole Foods, anything. There's an automatic mental image or an automatic feeling associated with that brand. 

Today, my guest is here to talk to us about the importance of branding and how we can go about visualizing and creating a good story for our particular brand. Today's guest is Kyle Asperger, the founder of Studio 301. 

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Kyle, welcome to the program.

 

Stephen, thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. I hate talking about myself, so this is nothing but just pure torture.

 

Sorry. Most of my guests tell me, "Oh, I love your questions. I love coming on and talking about my things." The first thing I want to dive right into is, a brand is a story. What do people generally think about their brands?

 

Probably the wrong way. I think that's going to be my default, just because it circles back to what we were just talking about. This is the armchair expert in me. That's the psychological "I've been through therapy. I know myself now," yada-yada, "I'm always working on myself." 

 

As we all should be. 

 

That is the crumbs of it.

Whether it's a brand revolving around the individual or a brand revolving around the product, the key is to do all of that footwork, the heavy lifting.

Go through the painful moments of the conversations that you believe [you physically ill]. It's through those struggles in life that marks/notes. Embrace the struggle. That, I think, is so true within the world of just branding. Know yourself. Know your product. Know it thoroughly. The brand will come to life as a byproduct of that.

 

With this "know yourself, know your brand, know your product", is there an order to this, or does this all happen in parallel?

 

It is a bit different. If you're talking purely product, that perhaps is a bit more easy to create and cover a brand around, as opposed to an individual, which is severely more complex. If somebody is a coach or something along that line that the individual is critical and core to whatever value they bring to the table, that versus a product -- a product is pretty self-explanatory, what the uses are for; people are just more complex beings.

 

Interesting. Do you typically work with products more or people?

 

We don't really find ourselves working within a niche as far as the services or products that are provided. What I do on a regular basis is strictly work with people. That's what I do all the time. I just go out and try to find friends. That's it. Just being here on the podcast, the part that was fun for me is just chopping it up about the psychological, social psychology course, understanding, "Okay. Where is Stephen coming from with this podcast? What are the tools that he is employing? What makes him truly Stephen?" That's the kind of stuff that makes me excited.

It’s no secret that employees spend the majority of their life working. A nine to five for five days a week is draining, and it’s unrealistic for us to expect employees to shut off their personalities when they feel like a human-machine. That’s why it’s important to establish a more people-centric strategy to empower workforce members. 

Today’s guest, Traci Chernoff, is an expert in people, strategy, and innovation. In this episode, she will share a few things about what we can do to help restore humanity in the Human Resource Department. Let’s hear some golden nuggets from this professional.

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Bringing the Human Back in Human Resources with Traci Chernoff

Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Have you ever had a job where you felt less than human, you felt like nothing more than a cog in a machine, and had trouble finding your purpose, or why you're really there? 

My guest today, Traci Chernoff, is an HR executive, really involved in a lot of initiatives around the future of work, as well as the host of the podcast, Bringing the Human Back in Human Resources.

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Traci, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. 

 

Definitely. The first thing I want to ask you -- given that I suspect that a lot of my listeners have had this experience, or maybe even currently having this experience in their place of employment. We're living in a time when a lot of people are reconsidering -- whether you call it the great resignation, the great reshuffle, whatever you want to call it -- their relationship with their work. What does the phrase "bringing the human back in human resources" mean to you?

 

It's a great question. To me, what's so interesting about this is that the human was already in human resources. It's the reason why it's the title of the department or it's the phrase that we use when it comes to this industry. When it comes to really why I always talk about bringing the human back, it's that we lost our way. For me, the way that I grew up, so to speak, in HR is that it was clear that there were some really, really strong foundations in the industry and in the practice. 

 

My takeaway was that there wasn't really enough of a focus on the people behind the problems or the people behind the solutions. One of the reasons why I started the podcast, Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources, was because I wanted to make a call to action that we had to take a look at the way that we were operating and the way that we were addressing these problems, and solve for them through a people-centric approach.

 

I always say that people are at the center of everything that we do. It's the reason why our businesses today -- there's not one business I'm aware of, at least, that can operate without a human being. That's really what it means to me. 

 

Oh man. I'm picturing some weird, dystopian, future movie with a robot business and everything's just robots.

 

There's still going to have to be someone to help that robot. There's still going to be someone fixing the robot. There's not going to be a robot fixing a robot, because then, who's going to fix that robot?

 

Yeah, exactly. There was a movie when I was younger. Will Smith was in it. It took place in the year 2030. iRobot. That was about robots building robots. 

 

Yeah, but look, you couldn't have a movie without Will Smith. See? Exactly right.

 

Or the writers, or any other people. Let's start with a little context about the history of human resources. You talk about the human always being there, but then human resources losing its way at some point. How did that whole process, for people who don't quite know what happened in the 20th century, play out?

 

Yeah. It's a good question. First of all, my understanding of HR is very modern, because I started my career when it wasn't called personnel.

Whether it’s a side hustle, a small racket, or you’re operating a wealth machine, running a business can be nerve-wracking and often stressful. In modern work culture, the term “multitasking” has been overused to the point that it’s counterproductive. Doing all things at once and not prioritizing your mental health can be detrimental to you and your future. 

Today we’re joined by an amazing woman and a hotshot entrepreneur who’s proved to support women in their thriving business, Patty Block. In 2006, Patty founded The Block Group to empower women-owned businesses and bring unique solutions, especially to the complex issues in the industry. And most importantly, her organization is on the lookout to bring in more revenue with little to no stress involved. Catch her in our talk today.

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Women’s Journey to Success: Roadblocks to Building Blocks in Business with Patty Block

Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. A lot of us on our journeys are going to be building something, building a business, or building something similar, whether it be a side hustle or your main hustle. One of the problems that a lot of people encounter, especially when your business is a side hustle and you need other forms of revenue to keep yourself afloat, is stress. We, oftentimes, have a lot on our plates. Our work, our side hustles are not the only things we have on our plates. Oftentimes, we have family. We have other social and community obligations. Those things are important as well. 

My guest today, Patty Block, is the founder of The Block Group. Her organization helps women entrepreneurs bring in more revenue without creating more stress. Yes, they don't have to go hand in hand. At least, that's what Patty has to say for you today. 

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Patty, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

 

Definitely. Thank you for joining us. One of the things I'm wondering is, your main message here is that you don't have to create more stress to create more revenue. What does that generally look like? What should the average person be thinking that that means to create more revenue in their business without creating more stress?

 

There are several pieces to that. I think everything starts with pricing. The people that I typically work with are women business owners who are experts in their fields -- a lot of accountants, attorneys, engineers, and PR and marketing professionals. The market is screaming at us to get bigger to scale. That's, of course, the jargon that everybody uses, "We have to grow and scale."

 

Yep. Everyone wants to scale, Have it be a unicorn.

 

Exactly. First of all, not everyone wants that. Secondly, there's a lot of shoulds in that, "We should get bigger. We should do these certain things," just like "We should spend a lot of money on marketing." For most of the people I know, those marketing strategies don't work. They're very expensive, so we're pouring a lot of money into that. There are things that work better, especially for women, that focus on how you can bring in more money, but not add to your stress of juggling all these different issues, and family, and business. Once you add a lot of employees to the mix and you have management responsibilities, that creates a tremendous amount of stress.

It's really finding the right balance for you as a person and you as a business owner.Share on X

 

One message I'm hearing, which I'd like to reiterate for my audience, is you don't have to scale. You don't have to become a unicorn. I'm sure there's plenty of people -- maybe their dream is to start their own business and run an operation where they employ four or five people, and have $1 million a year in revenue, and that's all they really want. One of the things you're saying, it sounds like, is that that's okay. Stop pressuring yourself to do what the Silicon-Valley-type lingo was ...

Society has set the job standards so high that it potentially becomes a toxic environment for most employees. What’s worse is that people often treat trades, seasonal, and gig economy workers poorly when in fact, these people are working noble jobs that deserve the same level of respect. 

And as a values-driven entrepreneur, our guest Jessi Burg is always on the lookout for ways to spread her advocacy of teaching companies how to grow equitably and sustainably. She launched her business called Outgrow Your Garage with the sole purpose of helping business owners find the proper resources for them to utilize. In this episode, let’s take a glimpse and hear how this industry expert has been able to amplify her voice and use it to inspire many.

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The Future of Blue-Collar Workforce: Filling in the Gap to Grow Trades and Service Businesses

Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing that often keeps a lot of people settling for less is perceptions and expectations. These could be expectations placed upon you based on your race, your gender, your family name, family history, or could be perceptions around certain specific pursuits, perceptions that will prevent you from pursuing what you really want to pursue. 

My guest today has some different ideas around some pursuits that have been placed at a lower level by some segments of society. What I'm talking about here is the traits, the people who do the home construction, the electricity, heating and air conditioning – a lot of things that require a lot of skill, a lot of knowledge, and are also very important to our lives. For some reason, we've placed them at a lower level. 

Jessi Burg is the founder of Outgrow Your Garage. Not only does she help these people form their own businesses but is an advocate for correcting these misperceptions.

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Jessi, welcome to the program.

 

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

 

All right, let's begin. Tell me a little bit about Outgrow Your Garage. You help people in the trades deal with the business side of their affairs essentially.

 

Yeah. There's a couple of things that are true about how trades businesses operate that are different from the way that a lot of other businesses operate. One is they are mobile, inherently mobile. You want your trades person to come to you and do a job onsite. Some of that actually is changing really interestingly, where you have construction that is now happening in factories, and then being carted to job sites. You still have to do that actual building onsite. Even if you have factory-produced walls, which are really interesting, you still have to install the HVAC. You still have to install the plumbing. You still have to install all of the different pieces of putting a house together. That has to happen onsite. 

 

Same thing with maintenance. You have these different maintenance pieces where the plumbing breaks in your house. You want somebody to come to your house to fix your plumbing. You do not want to watch a YouTube video on how to fix your own plumbing. Some people do, but most of us are like, "Please come fix the plumbing." You have this inherent mobility that's hard to plan on a business front. 

 

The other piece is that if you are, for example, a plumber, and you are a residential repair plumber, you're spending all of your time learning about updates to the plumbing field itself. You also need to know about every single plumbing system that has happened in your area for the last 100 or so years, whenever indoor plumbing became a thing in the place that you're living, and that timeframe varies.

Wind energy, also known as wind power, refers to how wind turbines transform the movement of wind into electricity. Humans use this wind flow for different purposes: flying kites, sailing boats, pumping water, and generating electricity. With wind turbines, you can convert the energy of the moving wind into electricity. Domestic wind resources for electric power generation are a great way to stabilize energy costs, enhance energy security, and improve our environment.

Our guest for today is Chris Moore, founder of Harmony Turbines. And he’s on the show to give out facts on how sustainable energy is an effective way to save our environment and stray away from the harmful impact that other power supplies emit. Chris is always on the lookout for sustainable ways to reduce carbon footprint and preserve the earth for future generations.

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Changing the World One Wind Turbine at a Time with Chris Moore

Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We all face challenges in life. We face individual challenges. We face someone [inside a level]. Whenever we do encounter challenges, there's a few different responses we can take. Some of them that we see a lot are unhealthy, on the extremes a little bit -- unhealthy or disempowering, I'd say. That is first, on one end, to deny that a problem really exists or deny its significance, deny the challenge. On the other end, there are people who tend to adapt a doom-and-gloom type of response to it. They're willing to accept a reduction in their quality of life or some sort of other negative consequence from it. They just hide their heads in shame. In between those extremes, or in a much more healthy way, we can actually look to these problems and empower ourselves. We can empower ourselves and say, "Okay, what can we do about it? What can I do to help? Is there some way we can innovate, some way we can use our brains?"

My guest today is someone who has taken this approach to one of our biggest challenges that we have right now, which is climate change and sustainable energy use. Today's guest is Chris Moore, the founder of Harmony Turbines.

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Chris, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you, Steve. Glad to be here.

 

Thank you, Chris. First of all, tell us about Harmony Turbines. Tell us about what you're doing for our energy use.

 

We're trying to just basically bring a product to the market that doesn't exist there today. You'll see small wind turbines out on Amazon and eBay where people can buy a do-it-yourself kit, put it together, and hope that they get some usage for their home. There's really no kits that are good enough for the average homeowner to build, to put into use, and to actually see a return. You can then step up to the level where you have a company come in and do it, and those can range anywhere from $30,000 to $60,000 to do it. The likely payback on those has been as bad as 30 years in many cases. 

These companies will prey on the fact that, "In your area, you don't have really great wind or anything, so we're going to bump you up to the 20-kilowatt turbine. That way, when you do get some wind, you'll make up for it in those times." Steve, it's all hogwash. There's so many misconceptions. There's so much bad information out there. It's just unbelievable. 

Harmony Turbines is a small company. It's about trying to finally bring a product to market that just makes sense -- convenience, ease of use, features, and costsShare on X

Those are the four things that we're going after to try and balance for a proper product to bring to market.

 

It sounds like what you're saying is that the current wind energy technology doesn't really work for the average homeowners, especially the average urban/suburban dweller, maybe someone in a condo, and Harmony Turbines, your product, makes a feasible product where most people who own homes can utilize wind energy for...

We can’t deny the fact that digital devices are everywhere. Now that we’ve entered the technological age, we spend more time tapping on our screens and less time doing things in the real world. As we go on with our days, nonchalantly using our phones, we often receive a notification that updates us with our screen time. Admit it; this part can be quite alarming. You’ll be shocked at how much time you spend with these highly addictive devices. But you’ll even be more surprised when I tell you that there’s an app that turns your screen time into stock market investments!

Taban Yolo, is the co-founder and CEO of Shilling. He spearheaded the idea to make an app that turns your screen time into profitable investments. Let’s listen to the story of this savvy industry expert in today’s show and learn a thing or two about his useful app.

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Listen to the podcast here:

A Productive Escape: Converting Screen Time to a Stock Market Investment with Taban Yolo

Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the most interesting and curious observations we have in our time, 2022, the year recording, is the relationship that we all seem to have with our phones, our devices, our screens of all kinds. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times people have expressed, just like me, the desire to spend less time on our devices, desire to spend less time in front of our screens, less time on our phone. It's even been enough that Apple, a few years ago, developed that screen time tracking that you can see. We can actually measure how much time you're spending in front of the screen. Yet, a lot of these people, just like me, continue to basically spend just as much time in front of our phones as we have for years, and years, and years. There's a lot of talk about wanting to do less, less screen time, less phones, but still doing mostly the same thing. 

My guest today, Taban Yolo, started a company called Shilling. His idea is to take the time we spend in front of our screens and convert them into financial investments. That's an interesting concept to wrap your head around. I'm going to let Taban tell you what it's all about for himself.

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Taban, welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me, Stephen. The concept of Shilling is pretty simple. We get the time someone's spending on their phone and let them just convert that by setting parameters by how much they'll spend on their phone, how much time they think they'll spend on their phone, and then just connect that to a Shilling account that's built through a financial portfolio that they could start investing in. What that means is, if you sign up for the Shilling app, you set up your profile, you'll set your time interval. If you set it at eight hours, every eight hours of screen time that you hit, you'll be able to make automatic investment into a Shilling portfolio based off your risk tolerance.

 

Is this designed to discourage people from excessive phone use or not thinking about how much time they're spending in front of the screen?

Yes and no. Initially, when we came up with the idea and started building the company, it's solely intended to help people spend less time on their phone. We do this while, obviously, trying to create value for your screen time. As the months have gone along, and we started talking to more customers, we realized that there's this demographic that really don't care how much time they spend on their phone. They just want to get that value of the time they spend on their phone. I would say yes and no to that question.

 

It could have a couple of different purposes. When you talk about your demographics, are there certain groups of people that you're targeting with this application, or is this something that's for everybody?

Initially, when we came up with the idea, it was solely based off -- I was trying to get my girlfriend to start investing.