Build With Rob

Rob uses it to get organized, be more productive, feel more balanced, and make more money. He started by waking up an hour earlier at 5am every day and understood he got essentially an entire extra work day every week. That equates to 48 extra (7-hour) work days per year. Then he realized that if he got up 2 hours earlier every day, that additional time doubled. That's almost 3 months of additional productivity per year. A full quarter! Imagine how much you could get done with that much extra time on your hands. Now set your alarm.

First up is Sean Boisson, founder of Bella Snow soft ale, a delicious low-alcohol beer alternative for people with low tolerances, or who just don't want the calories or the spins. Based in beautiful Sonoma, CA, Sean and his team are trying to figure out how to identify and fill gaps in knowledge as they work to grow and expand their product line.

IG: @drinkbellasnow

Stephanie Foster and her husband Scott created Tiki Liquid Enhancers, travel sized bottles to squirt into your water and provide additional benefits. Their current line-up of products are designed to help you sleep better, give you energy, or give your immune system a boost. Stephanie is trying to find the balance between marketing and maintaining inventory while also wondering how to think about what happens after success.

IG: @tikibev

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When we make a big decision, we typically contemplate how the outcome will affect everything else in our life. But it's the small decisions we don't put as much emphasis on that end up having an outsized effect. This is due to the compounding nature of small decisions on your health, mindset, emotional state, and energy. One small decision influences the next small decision, rippling out over time and contributing either positively or negatively to your life.

In this episode, Bryan Guadagno, the founder of It's Skinny pasta has created a way for people to enjoy a bowl of pasta in 2 minutes with only 9 calories per bag. The secret is Konjac, a plant that has been historically used in Asian cuisine but hasn't caught the attention of the mass market in the U.S. He knows his product is great, but he wants advice on how to continue to stand out both on the shelf and online.

​​IG: @itsskinnypasta

Then, life and business partners Shaun Oshman and Jess Candelaria have built Helmet Flair, which allows anyone wearing a helmet for any reason to spice it up with their own personality. They attach flush magnets to the helmet itself and offer a wide range of horns, cat ears and other such delights to snap on and off based on the customer's mood. The company is growing well, but they want to know if they should continue on their organic trajectory or take on investment for a high growth model.

IG: @helmetflair

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True manifestation is not sitting around thinking about the things that you want in life and wishing or hoping they come true. It is figuring out in as much detail as possible not only what the things are, but what they look like and feel like. Focusing on those details and allowing your mind and body to be transported forward to a time when these fantasies are reality. According to Rob, who practices an extreme version of manifestation, your body cannot tell the difference between that which you imagine in great detail and that which is actually happening. So, the more you practice detailed manifestation over and over, while doing the things necessary to achieve them, the universe will begin to listen.

Our first guests, Phil and Krista Franks, comprise Owl & Key, a platform they designed to help individuals and groups to recognize what they want out of life and set a path to achieve it. Their book, Strategic Planning for Life, is a step-by-step guide to designing a life with intention. They're looking to Rob for answers on consciously scaling their company through business and individual customer acquisition, as well as how to navigate business as a couple.

IG: @owl_and_key

Jovanna Schlossenberg is our next guest, and she's brought her friend (and arguably Kansas City's top trainer) Luther Glover along for the ride. Jovanna is launching her "tri-level reading" book series Jojo Knows, which customizes each story for 3 different age groups. Jovanna is looking for ways to open additional reading centers while keeping her business and personal relationships strong. Luther is looking to give himself more bandwidth for networking and servicing his big clients (like Kansas City Chiefs star wideout Tyreek Hill).

IG: @jojoknowslearningcenter

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Rob's formula for achieving perpetual success: systematically fusing art, science and magic. A great tagline, yes, but what does it really mean? Well, think of art as starting with you, the creator. The creator of your life, the creator of your business, the creator of every moment of your day. Science is then the ways in which you organize your creations, building systems of living and systems of operating professionally. Finally, the magic comes when art and science are working in harmony. Unseen universal forces that conspire on your behalf to push you in the direction you want to go. Applying these concepts over and over in everything you do, constantly improving and optimizing, a better life is all but inevitable.

On this episode, we've got the founders of Muvez, Eric and Ryan Cruz, who first burst onto the national radar on an episode of Shark Tank. The primary Muvez product is a shoe with a detachable outsole, which then becomes a slipper, transitioning between inside and outside without ever having to take it off. They've found quite a bit of success, but now they're looking to raise money to scale the business, and Rob has some solid advice for them about the benefits and challenges of taking on venture capital.

Blair Bryngelson is a serial entrepreneur and inventor whose latest product combats the "dead arm" that often results from cuddling one's partner in bed. It's called the Spoonie Pillow, and is essentially a pillow that slides onto your arm. He launched a Kickstarter campaign and sold 3,000 units out of the gate. The customers even found more use cases for it than originally intended. Now he's looking to ramp up as a direct-to-consumer business, but supply chain issues are presenting a challenge. Rob encourages Blair to plug into an existing home goods infrastructure so he can continue to do what he does best and be a great inventor instead of an inexperienced operator.

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The most precious resource on earth is time. It is fleeting, nonrenewable, and depleting at an ever accelerating rate. You have two choices: One, hold on tight and go where it leads you, or two, master it. Take control of it. Increase your time efficacy within every hour of your day. Work to truly understand it, and how much you can actually accomplish. Look at time not as a whole, but in smaller, manageable blocks. Then work within each of those blocks to continuously improve your output. It sounds hard, impossible even, but once you actually start, you'll be amazed at the results.

Our first guest is Kelly Radnitzer, whose company HD Labs stands for Hard work and Dedication. An athletic apparel brand that's looking to make the jump into supplements in a very crowded market, Kelly wants to know how to get the attention of major retailers without a huge marketing budget.

IG: @hd_labsunlimited

Travis Fussell has his hands in multiple businesses, from golf putters to his newest creation, a fully customizable ball cap. All this while maintaining his full time job. He's got his sights set high on scaling the Rad Mod hat and moving into sports and other licensing, but Rob cautions him on spreading too thin too fast.

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Don't strive for perfection. Strive for continued optimization over time. Anything in work or life falls into the category of things that can be made continually better. The first step is doing enough reps at something that it becomes almost second nature. Then finding ways to automate that thing where it takes less effort. Only then can you look for ways to make it more efficient, more optimized, so it takes even less time and effort. If you repeat this process over and over with every element of your life and business, incredible results will emerge.

Our first guest, Benj Miller, is the founder of System and Soul, who, like Rob, hails originally from Ohio. His vision is to transform 25k small businesses this decade through a unique brand of coaching that focuses on both business fundamentals, as well as what they refer to as the "Soul" side. To him, that means the identity, story and culture of an organization, including how they treat their employees. Benj has a lot of things going in the right direction, but needs some help looking at how his business model will evolve.

Corey Pulido lives on a large property in North Carolina where he and his wife foster hound dogs. He is a teacher. He has multiple properties that he manages. And he has a ton of other ideas he wants to pursue. Rob helps him focus on building sustainability so he can spend his time focusing on his nonprofit and pursuing his other ideas without sacrificing his passions.

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No matter what your experiences are in business and in life, there are lessons to be learned. From pain and failure, learnings can arise and inform future actions and thinking. From positive outcomes, learnings can be identified and applied to other parts of your existence. So, no matter your type of experience, positive, negative or neutral, reflecting on the reasons for each particular outcome will lead you to evolve over time. And with evolution, becoming a better and better version of yourself, comes success and, more importantly, happiness.

In this episode, Jared Gold sent Rob a cold email asking him to take part in a book that he's writing about the habits of successful people. So, of course, Rob invited him onto the show to talk about it, where he gave Jared some advice on how to better approach people like himself for the project. He also gave Jared to come back with a brand new pitch and left the door open to not only take part in the project, but help him get others as well. Not only all that, but Rob helped Jared remain true to his vision of what the book should ultimately be.

IG: @jgold242

Follow Jared's book progress: https://jaredgold.com/book

Devin Dwyer has a number of talents. He's a rapper, director, videographer, editor, and drone operator. He's been doing video work for free in order to make connections and build his reel, but now it's time to turn his talents into a real business. Rob provides some advice to help him take the next step into real entrepreneurship, as well as helping him reframe how he thinks about balancing work with spending time with his young son.

IG: @soundssickproductions

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Your ideal life vision should be in lockstep with your business vision. They should be designed together, integrated, and grown together until you are successful on all fronts simultaneously, not just at work. As an entrepreneur, the path is clear: create a product that doesn't exist (vision), put together a plan, and execute the plan to grow the business. Most people don't necessarily think of their life this way, with happiness, fulfillment and balance being products of a well thought out plan. But Rob suggests if you can just evolve your thinking, you can have it all.

Build With Rob's first return guest! Jacob Mclaughlin appeared on Episode 22, talking about an idea he had for a real estate app that allowed realtors to bid on listings. It was called Zollu at the time, which Rob suggested was way too close to Zillow. Rob also made suggestions on how the business model could be improved by focusing more on providing value to the sellers. Well, Jacob took Rob's advice and is back on the show with SMIRC, the latest incarnation of his idea with Rob's suggested tagline: "Never give away your listing again."

Watch Jacob and Rob's first conversation: https://youtu.be/N8fHuG6McTA?t=513

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JacobMcLaughlinREALTOR/

Then, Majfred Memetaj wants to create a community around freestyle soccer with his platform, Flowstil. He wants to expand adoption of the sport while providing resources and skill sharing to help interested parties increase their abilities and meet like minded individuals. Rob sees an opportunity for him to piggyback on traditional soccer through competitions, as well as creating products specifically for the freestyle soccer market.

IG: @flowstilfreestyle

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From tragedy can come opportunity. When Devin's father passed from a stress induced heart attack, she found herself anxiety ridden and unable to sleep properly for years. In coping with her loss, she began experimenting with adaptogens to calm her own body and mind. Creating body butters and teas from home, she discovered a new approach to beauty from the inside out.

Frustrated that Black customers seem to be an afterthought in the beauty market, she set out to create Deon Libra, a brand that caters to the naturally higher stress levels of people in her own community. With her co-founder and COO, Brit Kirkland, Devin found a home for her nascent brand at Dyrdek Machine.

Recorded in December of 2021, this episode was recorded shortly after Rob and the Deon Libra founders met in person for the first time.

Website: https://deonlibra.com/

IG: @deonlibrabody

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In business or in life, when you step out of your comfort zone to try something new, it is always harder in the beginning. You lack practice, you lack clarity, you lack experience. As time goes on, with dedication to creating a process and evolving it over time, you will get better and better at that thing until it's easy. Rob shares his experience in creating his MTV show Ridiculousness, which was difficult and time consuming at first. He details how he committed to making it easier, faster and better over and over until he could shoot six episodes in a day with less effort than one episode required in the beginning.

Our first guest is Avi Rubin, who created a natural soap to treat a skin condition and slowly grew it into the boutique brand of Iron Lion. He has a solid and loyal customer base, but is now looking to grow, not necessarily scale, while finding a way to spend more time with his family. Rob offers advice about ways to create more recurring revenue, as well as establish the balance he needs to be the father he wants to be.

IG: @ironlionsoap

Then we have Cody Hankins, who wants to bring the novelty and nostalgia of wax candy bottles (they were called Nik-L-Nips if you can believe it) to the alcohol space. He's already handmade prototypes and shared them with his friends to great enjoyment, and he thinks they can be a better solution for the environment. However, Cody has no experience in the alcohol space, which Rob knows all too well is littered with landmines. But Rob has a great solution to get Cody started on the right path.

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