Changing the Rules

Reach Jeff Wuorio at jeffwuorio.com

TRANSCRIPT

Diane Dayton  0:03  

This is Changing the Rules. A podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:14  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster, and I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe in beautiful downtown Woodbury, New Jersey. And we're bringing you a show called Changing the Rules because we believe that the luckiest people in the world change the rules to fit the life they want to live. And one of the ways that they decide what they want in their life is by constantly exploring new things. And that's why we're bringing interesting people with interesting lives to our podcast to expose our listeners and luckiest people in the world to new ideas and new people. So good morning, Ray.

Ray Loewe  0:53  

The morning, I'm here I'm almost awake even. So anyway, this is going to be an interesting day because Jeff Wuorio, our guest today is a person who always used to interview us. All right, Jeff. Jeff, we met years ago when he was working for Money magazine. And we were talking at that time about college and how to pay for college. And so Jeff, are you there?Say Hi,

Jeff Wuorio  1:21  

I am indeed.

Ray Loewe  1:22  

Hi. Okay. Well, let you say more in a couple minutes. But, but we met Jeff, way back when Jeff was in the process of thinking about college at that time, he's since put his kids through college. And now the subject has changed. And Jeff is certainly one of these luckiest guys in the world. Okay, because he certainly has designed his own life the way he wants to design it. And he comes up with some other traits too. I think that he's committed to using his talents regardless of what his age is going to be. He has this knack for following what's fascinating and motivating to him. And he gets enlivened by talking to interesting people. And he's very definitely one of the luckiest people in the world. So Jeff, welcome to Changing the Rules.

Jeff Wuorio  2:17  

And thank you for having me

Ray Loewe  2:19  

and and Jeff, you're sitting where? today, let's make everybody jealous.

Jeff Wuorio  2:25  

Okay, I'm sitting in beautiful downtown, such as it is Buxton Maine, which is about 10 miles from the Atlantic eight miles from Portland and 15 miles or so from Sebago lake. So it's a it's a nice little part of the world.

KC Dempster  2:43  

Have you had snow yet?

Jeff Wuorio  2:46  

We are supposed to get snow Friday. Oh, my first.

KC Dempster  2:50  

Yeah, my sympathies.

Ray Loewe  2:53  

Oh, come on snow. in Maine is beautiful.

Jeff Wuorio  2:58  

Yeah. And like I say, if it knows, you're taking by surprise or upset when you move here, you really were not paying attention.

KC Dempster  3:05  

Indeed, indeed. Just snow is always beautiful for the first 24 hours. That's my opinion. And then after that I want it gone.

Ray Loewe  3:15  

So let's talk about your adventure here. Because you've been in Maine now for about how long in your life? How many years?

Jeff Wuorio  3:24  

Well, I went to school here, then moved around a fair amount when my children were in both my children who were born in Oregon when I was living out there, and we moved back here, I would say 25 some years ago, give or take a year or so. But that would be a rough estimate. So we've been, you know, at three years of college 25 years living here 28 all tolled?

Ray Loewe  3:50  

Wow. Okay, so you made a conscious decision to do this and, and you're one of the very few people that I know that actually made this decision early in life because you had a plan. Okay, so I think you were telling us earlier that you wanted your children to grow up in Maine. And so tell us a little bit about this decision that you made and how you implemented it, because I met you when you were doing Money Magazine stuff and now you got a different life and and we'll get into that different life but talk a little bit about how you consciously made the decision to move move to Maine.

Jeff Wuorio  4:28  

Well, it almost follows a script to a certain extent. When I graduated from school, I worked briefly here in Maine for a couple of years and then events did what they did, and I left Maine and of course being the wise 24 some year old but I wasn't saying I'm never coming back here. And and I was fortunate to live in a number of places I lived in Colorado lived in Oregon. But you know, as I grew older and had we had the children You really begin to think about, you know, where, where you'd really like to have them grow up and what your priorities are. And so I talked to my wife and I said, you know, just, I really have this idea that you'd be much happier back in Maine, we were living in a large city, and you know, all the pluses and cons to large city. And we just decided, you know what, let's go. So we, you know, moved, you know, I think my son was two, I think my daughter, his daughter was even one yet. So, it was a long car ride from Oregon to here, needless to say, so. But it has worked out beautifully. Because working from home, I was able to see my kids grow up. And, and they became so accustomed to, you know, dad being there sort of thing that was a wonderful, and, you know, unusual experience, given that a lot of you parents really don't see that much of their children that their careers, keep them away from the house. And a quick story about that, when we were moving back here, we stopped at a park in I think, somewhere up in upper New York State, for lunch, you know, we were eating and my son, being a three year old, immediately hooked up with another three year old boys up at the park, and they were running in good time. And all of a sudden, by Sunday, he turned to him and he said, Hey, where's your dad? And this kid looked at him like he had 10 heads. He said, what do you mean, where's my dad? Yeah, where's your dad? And he said, Well, he said, work, of course. And right, then I was struck by the fact that Nathan did not know anything else. In terms of the fact that he thought all fathers were at home. All fathers were there to make grilled cheese sandwiches upon demand kind of thing. And, and it was, it was really an epiphany for me, that I valued in that, you know, his experience was out of the ordinary, but so meaningful and so wonderful to him. And to me, that really stuck struck, it really stuck out when some other child said, You know, I have no idea what you're talking about, What do you mean, you lose your dad kind of thing in the middle of the day? So we've been here for 28 years, it's worked out beautifully. And no one knows no, we'll stay for a while longer.

KC Dempster  7:25  

I think you had to set some ground rules though when you were working from home, didn't you say?

Jeff Wuorio  7:30  

Oh, yeah. Initially, they thought it was kind of like carte blanche of Okay, that can be talking to Mr. Ray Loewe on the phone, interviewing him about scholarships, and how to search out, you know, bargains for college, and they could just march into my office. And usually, with some form of focused intent upon me to do something. And so eventually, we worked out a system where I read somewhere else, somebody had done this, and I have this great idea that, you know, I posted a notepad and a pen outside my office door. And then I sat them both down, that's it, okay. unless somebody's arm is just dangling by a thread, because they just been severed by a chainsaw, or there's a huge mushroom cloud in the distance, do not bother me, write it down, we'll cover it later. And they, and they learn and they and they adopted that, that very readily. So it all worked out very nicely. Because you know, at first it was a little rough. And I said, you know, you just can't keep coming in here and doing this, you know, the, what dad does? puts the clothes on your back, food on the table roof over your head. So kind of honor that dynamic a little bit.

Ray Loewe  8:47  

Okay, so we hear from a lot of people about the problem of they don't have enough time to spend with their kids, they're working too hard. They're there, they're working for somebody else here add their time is not their own. And here, you made a conscious decision. And I get the feeling that the decision was lifestyle first and professional second, but that didn't stop your professional career. Is that pretty young, pretty true?

Jeff Wuorio  9:16  

Fairly true. For the most part, yeah, I never lost sight of my profession or my professional goals. But there was definitely an element of you know, it's not all or nothing one way or the other. I really did not want to have that kind of out of balance kind of arrangement. So eventually, what happened was, I was doing freelance work with various publications Money, included things like that, and out of the blue. Somebody said, Have you ever ghostwritten the book? And I said, Well, no, no really ghost written a couple of books on my own, but that never ghost written a book. And they said, Well, we have this client is coming in. He's working for with john Wiley and associates in New York. And we'd like you to meet him and see if he could probably do this. And I think you know, but the heck, I'll try everything once. And we did the book, it worked out beautifully. And I began to think that more and more, I wanted to be a ghostwriter. Because for a number of reasons. First of all, I always like the book length size projects, because you can really immerse yourself in the material and really get into into some very, very significant issues. And I did is because like that kind of depth, and also to is that by ghostwriting, I've been fortunate to meet some absolutely remarkable people, some of the smartest people I've ever met some of the most talented people I've ever met some of the most provocative people I've ever met. And just just the proximity of that of capturing their voices in their books by ghostwriting has just been such an enormous experience for me, just like I say, and I really mean this, I probably learned something new every day. And I don't know many jobs where you can really honestly say that, so I became a full time ghostwriter about 25 some years ago. And right now I'm working on my 29th book, most of which is been ghostwritten. And it's been an absolute blast. If nothing else, but proximity to great minds and great thoughts. And all I have to keep saying to myself with some of these people, I remember once interviewing a Nobel Prize winner, and I kept saying Wuorio, just anything stupid. I mean, just once. And this guy, he was the sweetest guy, he wouldn't have said, you know, he's never said anything about, Oh, that's a dumb question or anything like that. But just being that close to those, those kind of minds and feel and feeling the wheels turning was just so rewarding and so uplifting, that it's been a great ride.

Ray Loewe  12:06  

Okay, so you you list on your website, you and I get a kick out of this. You have ghostwriter down there, but you have manuscript mechanic down there. That sounds ominous. Now Do you still write freelance articles for places are you pretty much all in the ghost writing business at this point?

Jeff Wuorio  12:24  

It's all it's all booked length now. You know, given the dynamics of the industry, freelancing for sure the pieces is getting tougher and tougher. And, you know, fortunately, I've gotten to that point in my career where, you know, one or two projects, and the finances take care of themselves, which is nice. So, and again, I prefer it I like the idea of really, those deep dives into topics that you know, shorter pieces don't often afford you the opportunity to do so. So it's it's pretty much book length work for the ghostwriting clients right now,

KC Dempster  13:03  

what were a couple of the more interesting topics that you've worked on.

Jeff Wuorio  13:09  

Well, there Boy, that's like saying, which one is your favorite children?

KC Dempster  13:15  

Well, whichever ones in the room is what that is.

Jeff Wuorio  13:20  

Yeah, or, or is writing on the piece of paper somewhere that it's posted outside the door? Well, I go through the book for an NFL quarterback came out just recently, which was absolutely fascinating about his upbringing and his, his development as a person as well as an athlete, which was absolutely amazing. Several years ago, I did a piece for a futurist, or rather a book for a futurist, where he teaches a very, very pragmatic empirical system for anticipating future events. Which I won't go into detail now. But if you read the book, you say, Wow, this isn't peering into the crystal ball kind of thing. There's a really a rhyme and method to, to understanding this. So I've worked with business people, I've worked with athletes, I'm now negotiating a new contract, to write a memoir for a chef who counts himself among Wolfgang Puck protegees. So that would be that'll be a lot of fun. And again, too just it's, it's wonderful to be able to take on a number of topics because basically, I consider myself sort of like the reader is sort of like this blank slate. If somebody comes to me with a book idea, or you know, let's say the chef is going to be talking about some very involved cooking things that I don't understand. It's helpful for me not to know a whole lot about that because in conveying that I tried To make it clear that, you know, you know, not everyone understands what this is. And the challenge means that if I understand it, we can convey that clarity to the reader. So. And at the end, I, oh, I learned something that I hadn't known before. And as I said, it's been the landscape changes every day. And that's fun for me. There's, there's very little routine and a lot of ways, which is nice.

Ray Loewe  15:27  

Ya know, what, what fascinates me is your thinking here, because you plan this more than most. I mean, it's, it's got to be hard for somebody to sit down and say, Well, I'm going to move to Maine, and I'm going to make my career blossom the way I wanted to do that. And yet, this is what you've largely done. Okay. Give us some of the thinking in there. What are some of the the the times when you were concerned, maybe that you made the right decision? What are some of the guidelines that you would give to other people who might want to do this? Because I think you're dealing you're living kind of an idyllic life. I mean, you're obviously one of the luckiest people in the world here. And it's because you've set the ground rules the way you want them, you didn't put up with other people's rules here, you made them work for you. So what are some of your thinking?

Jeff Wuorio  16:20  

Well, one thing that I learned, that I would urge others to do is that if there's a significant transition that they would like to make, say, either a different career or a different location, especially if it's a location where you've never lived, have a fallback, and give it a trial period, six months to be probably a year or so just to get your feet wet, because the experience versus the planning, you know, often don't come to meet at the same point. And it's really important to have that, you know, that safety valve as it were of, Okay, I can always go back to doing this, or we can always move back to where we were that kind of thing. But, you know, I guess one thing that we did was to say, okay, not only in terms of just monitoring our own personal satisfaction, happiness, all four of us to say, okay, in a year or two, you know, I'd like our income to be x, that kind of thing. And again, if that doesn't work out, we can we can tackle that then. But it was a benchmark for financial security, to to know, okay, this is our goal in terms of the finances of doing this. And the other thing that I made clear on are really emphasized was to keep the lines of communication open amongst the family, and say, Okay, how is this going? How are you? You know, how are you comfortable? Are you making friends? How's school? How's your new job Judy, my wife, that kind of thing, because I didn't want to have sort of this burning? Why did we ever leave Oregon, had a great job, a great home, I had all these friends, things like that. But I wanted to elicit you know, that kind of feedback, just to make sure that nobody was hiding, and an unpleasant reaction or feedback that they didn't want to share. But were nonetheless experiencing it. So those were basically all we really had in mind. We were fortunate in that, you know, we did move back to a place where I had a semblance of having lived here before, albeit in college, which is not exactly the real world. But you know, at least a sense of logistics of where things were, and things of that nature, which made it easier to so that might be another one too, is that you get to get to know the place a bit before you make a decision in terms of proximity to you know, the quality of schools, proximity to health care, public transportation, things like that. And as you know, as we get older, you know, my wife and I think about those things more much more so than we did, you know, 20-30 years ago, but just just the lay of the land is good to know. So you you have a sense of where things are even if you're brand new, and and be sure to I guess the other thing that we did this is a Be sure to enjoy the experience and don't expect it all to go smoothly. That was I was gonna say, Is there gonna be some bumps in the road here, you know? And per KC's comment about snow. I remember the first year that we were here when the children who are native Oregonians had never seen snow before. It was thrilling and they first come down and then by then by February, we're all doing our jack nicholson impressions

Ray Loewe  19:58  

Okay, so so You know, congratulations on achieving what many, many people would love to do, but you're not done yet. Because Where are you going? Okay. Do you see an end to this? I mean, you know, is there an end to ghostwriting? Or is this something you do for the rest of your life? With no time limit?

Jeff Wuorio  20:20  

I'm not sure yet, I guess, if it ever starts to strike me as if the spark isn't there anymore in terms of my engagement to the material and the enjoyment of meeting these people, it's not so much financial, it's more experiential in terms of is does it still feel special to do this kind of thing. And right now, it still does. And I don't foresee that changing immediately in the short term future. So and, and I'm person who needs to work, I know that for a fact, I'm my father's son in the you know, sitting on the rock sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch for me, I'll start having extended conversations with the dog pretty soon as I do

KC Dempster  21:09  

Thant might not be so bad.

Ray Loewe  21:13  

There's one other comment that you made. And and you said that there are a lot of people that have stories to tell the know it

Jeff Wuorio  21:25  

very much. So the biggest problem as it goes, but it's interesting to meet certain people, and you start to categorize them, there are people who, it's just a pure vanity project in terms of this is a story that the world has been clinging to, it's thumbs hanging from a window waiting to hear kind of vanity to you know, somebody who's more defined. And so Jeff, I think I have something to share and things like that. But the biggest problem is somebody who says, I think I have a story, but I'm not sure if it's going to be interesting or not. And inevitably, when I talk to these people, even if they don't write a book, they knew like, but yes, you have more to share and say, than perhaps give yourself credit for because it's not surprising, because when we look at ourselves, it's so insular, in terms of, you know, what we're, how self aware we are, as it were. And, you know, I think a lot of people have a lot more to saying that, you know, it might take a book, it might might take an article, it might take a short story, things like that. But I think people have a lot more to share. And I think you know, it's healthier for everyone's, the more we share,

Ray Loewe  22:44  

and and when you can't figure out how to get it done. That's when you call somebody like Jeff, and, Jeff, give us your website. We're gonna post this in our meeting notes. We're just about out of time over here. But how do people reach you?

Jeff Wuorio  22:59  

Well, they can reach me at my website is www dot Jeff Wuorio jeffwuorio.com. And there, you can send me an email. And there's a telephone number and everything like that. And I'll look forward to hearing from somebody who, if nothing else, I love to talk about people's ideas, and turn into a project and meet more interesting people.

Ray Loewe  23:26  

And Jeff, you are one of the luckiest people in the world. And thank you so much for sharing your experience with us and our, our listeners. And it's time to go so Casey, what's gonna happen next week?

KC Dempster  23:38  

Oh, we have we're going to be talking with an amazing woman who has again another fascinating story to tell. So tune in, and have a great week.

Ray Loewe  23:48  

And Thanks, Jeff, and thanks for listening to us.

Diane Dayton  23:52  

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you make your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.

Find Ashely at www.acaciainsights.com

TRANSCRIPT

Diane Dayton  0:02  

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

Ray Loewe  0:13  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster. And I'm here with Ray Loewe. And once again, we are bringing you a podcast that is intended to help you become one of the luckiest people in the world. And one of the things that we want people to do is to, to explore opportunities and and learn about things so that they can decide what they want in their personally designed life. And they can bring that in and then they can live their life to the fullest. Yeah, good morning, Ray.

Thank you. And so we have a wonderful guest today, this is a guest that I've known for quite a while, okay. And I've sat in many meetings with her over the years. And she certainly is one of the luckiest people in the world. She has transformed her life over that period of time, and gone from a corporate employee, which may have been a good thing for her at that point in time, but to an independent contractor, where she controls the way she does business and how she does business. And what she's done is some magnificent, magnificent things. For other people.

KC Dempster  1:19  

It's all about control for you, right?

Ray Loewe  1:22  

We'll get that right. So  Taylor, why don't you tell everybody where we are, and then we'll bring Ashley Allen on.

Diane Dayton  1:30  

You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

Ray Loewe  1:40  

Welcome back, everybody, I am delighted to be able to introduce to you Ashley Allen, who has an amazing career behind her and ahead of her. And as Ray mentioned earlier, she started out in the corporate world, you know, doing all the business training and management and strategic planning and so forth. Extensive domestic and international experience facilitating programs and a lot of companies. And then she ended up having a decision made for her that opened up the world of entrepreneurship to her and she started her own business. And rather than spend a lot of time on details that will probably come out during the conversation. I just want to say that for me, the most important thing on this bio that Ashley sent us is that she is learning to play the fiddle. Good morning, Ashley. Welcome.

Okay, actually, before we get into the really good stuff, okay, you got to tell us now about the fiddle. I mean, it's it's open. Right? So when did this happen? How did it happen? And why the fiddle?

Ashley Allen  2:55  

Oh, well, good. Good morning. Good morning, KC. It is just such a delight to be with both of you today and also with all your listeners. And the fiddle was actually a very practical application. For me, I'm a firm believer that the two ways to keep your brain fresh as you go through the decades is to learn a musical instrument and to learn a new language. And I've dabbled in languages. But I wanted to learn a musical instrument. And one of my brothers in law said, well, you should consider the fiddle. It's portable, and it plays the melody. Very practical, I'll go rent a fiddle. And little did I know and now five years later, just how difficult it is. But my my phrase for anyone starting a new language, a new adventure, a new instrument, is the fact that it's very counterintuitive. You can be so bad at something, but enjoy it so much. And that's true with fiddling.

Ray Loewe  4:01  

So I asked you the question of when you were going to do a bluegrass concert for me and you said no, that's not what I'm doing. So So what are you playing?

Ashley Allen  4:10  

Most of the music that I play is I do Irish a Scottish old time and as we all know, they're just they're, you know, hundreds of types of music and they can be very either country specific region specific, decades specific. But I've kind of focused on old time Irish and Scottish and holiday songs. I'm starting to practice those again now. Okay,

Ray Loewe  4:35  

so quickly. Is there a difference between a violin and a fiddle?

Ashley Allen  4:41  

It is the same instrument, okay. And there can be tiny little tweaks made to one part of the instrument but it is it is really the kind of music that you play. You have to have a fiddle, you have a bow, they're the same instrument. It's just how it's played. And I have such a deep respect for people who are who play well, because I certainly don't at this point.

Ray Loewe  5:05  

Well think of think of the luckiest people in the world here because this is a trait they play the fiddle, right?

Ashley Allen  5:12  

They try new things, Ray, they try new things

KC Dempster  5:14  

You don't write you don't play the fiddle.

Ray Loewe  5:16  

Well, there must be something wrong with me, I fiddle around a while. Yeah. Okay. So the other thing I found out about you when we were having a discussion is you went to college and you got this magnificent degree in English, among other things. And you came out and you're one of your first jobs was as a copywriter.

Ashley Allen  5:35  

Yes, I actually am, Ray, Ray knew this, I actually had a major that was pretty much physical anthropology and religion. So very marketable skills. And I, my first job out of college was in radio, and which was fun, because it allowed me to do what what you're doing today, but also as a copywriter. And I will say, though, that my father was not particularly pleased with this. His his comment to me was, after all that education, you're being paid to write incomplete sentences,

Ray Loewe  6:13  

as only a father would.

Okay. So this was our lead into why Ashley Allen is one of the luckiest people in the world. You know, you look at we started in anthropology, we we went and we took care of the tribune newspapers, right. We ran them for years, and years and years. And then we came off, and we crafted our own business, doing some incredibly interesting things. And today, what we want to focus on is this concept of personal branding. So tell us what personal branding is Ashely?

Ashley Allen  6:48  

Well, I think probably the best thing to do is to say that all of those things that you mentioned, whether it was the sciences, whether it was debating philosophy and religion, whether it was a my career in in media, and I really didn't run those, those business units, little tiny parts of them.

Ray Loewe  7:07  

That's what I heard.

Ashley Allen  7:10  

When you think of what is a personal brand, it really is how an individual shows up. It's what do you want to be known for? And it's that notion of how you provide value how you interact with people. And what's interesting about it is every single person has a personal brand, if you know whether it's in business, whether it's your personal life, whether you're your parent, a child, you know, think of your siblings, think of your family members, everyone has a brand. It's whether or not you are aware of what your brand is. And to add to that, is it the brand that you want to project? Is it who you want to be? Is it who you want to be known for?

Ray Loewe  7:50  

Okay, you gave me an example, when we were talking earlier about this business client of yours. And she evidently had this image that you wanted to have in the corporate world. And can you can you relate that story? Do you remember?

Ashley Allen  8:08  

Oh, exactly. And this, this is going back probably now about maybe even six or seven years ago, my as I said, my background was in marketing and copywriting. So I've, I've kind of been dealing with consumer and product branding for many, many years. And my my colleague had wanted to be known for being strategic, she wanted to be known for being a future oriented leader, a kind of a futurist, if you will, someone who really looks out onto the, into the future and helps people innovate. When she did a simple ask of people, she asked people, how am I showing up? You know, what am I known for? She got all these great words, she had collaborative team player, smart, you know, effective, great presenter, but she didn't get the words she wanted. No one said she was strategic. No one said she was future oriented. So in a very meaningful, unintentional, but also a very authentic way, she realized, I need to shift my behavior, and again, very genuinely, but instead of immediately going into things and saying, what are our deadlines tomorrow for this project? She said, you know, let's, before we get this meeting started, let's talk about where we want to be three years from now, and then kind of go into that.

Ray Loewe  9:27  

Okay, so let's recap I we're not done with this personal brand thing. I got a whole lot of questions there. But this is just a part of what you do. Is that correct? You go into companies and you help build teams, and you do some consulting I'm going to use the word Kolbe, KC's not allowed to come in on that. And, and and you help people develop a personal brand. What am I missing? What are the other things that you do for people and for companies?

Ashley Allen  9:54  

Well, you pretty much touched on them what one of the things because my background from a professional standpoint earlier in my career was in strategic planning, scenario planning, corporate communications and marketing, I realized that so many of these wonderful classic business processes can be applied to us personally. So when you think of a strategic plan for your career or a strategic plan, for, you know, how you want your life to unfold, or a brand architecture of, you know, who do you want to be known as, what do you want to be known for, they're very simple processes that can be applied to people as individuals. But I have had the pleasure of working with people all around the world, and really, you know, collaborating with them to help them transform Good to Great, and it's it certainly has just been a wonderful pleasure.

Ray Loewe  10:47  

Now, this is different than I always had this thought, going back about being able to step into a role and having a role that would really somebody else. And when I needed to be powerful in a business meeting, I would become Lucy from Charlie Brown. And when I when I wanted to back off and be subservient, I could be peanuts, or, or, or, or whatever. Okay. And that's not what you're talking about here. Because we're not talking about fictitiously, doing some things. We're talking about really going into our lives and figuring out who we are first. And then how do we modify it? So you're on comment, Miss Ashley?

Ashley Allen  11:28  

Well, I think as you said, well, and I can perfectly see you as Lucy here, to see that, when, because we all have a brand, we all have self perceptions, we we think we know how we are seen by others. But oftentimes, that's an inaccurate picture. And when you ask people, it's actually it's very humbling. It's also eye opening of the way others perceive us. And I think the best thing to do is get clarity on on who you want to be, and do kind of that wonderful exploratory process. And then get comments from a wide group of people and then start to think what minor, genuine behavior shifts Could I make to reflect the brand that I want?

Ray Loewe  12:18  

I'm gonna jump in here and just say, how, how tough is it to balance changing your behaviors and working against your Kolbe?

Ashley Allen  12:39  

KC, I'm so glad you mentioned Kolbe, I use a lot of different assessments and behavioral assessments and 360s in my practice, including Kolbe wisdom, and wisdom and the Kobe A index. All of those assessments are really wonderful lenses, they, each one is a little bit different. They measure something as part of us as human beings are. And so they're great language, they're really wonderful resources. But none of them reflect the entire person. I think, first and foremost, your brand needs to reflect your own values, your personal values, so you never want to stray from that. because quite honestly, people will know it, people will notice that immediately. And you think of it from a consumer product standpoint, it's a brand and disconnect. You know, you're saying one thing, but you're showing me something else. A brand isn't, you know, it's an emotional response, whether it's about your, you know, McDonald's french fries, or it's about your best friend. And you want that emotional response to be genuine. So you can have a wide range of emotions and still have them be very uniquely and authentically you. But it needs to be you as opposed to someone, someone else is simple.

Ray Loewe  13:56  

But it comes down to it. It's the way other people perceive you. That's what the brand is. It's not really what you want. Well, it is what you want. But it's the way it comes down to the perception is that correct?

Ashley Allen  14:08  

That's how it's gauged you. And again, I encourage both of you and everyone in your audience to really try that you know, ask a group of 10 or 15 of your colleagues or friends, how do I show up Give me three or four adjectives give me some couple of brief descriptors that describe you know who I am, and you will be amazed what you hear some of them will be things that are you know, comforting and complimentary. But you might have some real surprises that come through both in a positive way and maybe not so positive way.

Ray Loewe  14:41  

How much does this change with the audience that you have? I mean, do you do you have a brand for each audience like if I want to be perceived by my grandchildren one way and by my spouse in another way, and by my friends and other way and by my business associates another way or is this wrong? Do I do one personal brand.

Ashley Allen  15:03  

Personally, I believe you are who you are. And if you can make some minor, minor modifications, you might be a little more formal at work than you might be with your grandchildren. But and Ray I, as you said, I've known you for years, you have an incredibly strong personal brand. And if you are in whatever setting, right, I don't think that's the best way. Because think about it, if you try to be someone you're not, it just takes a whole lot of energy. And, and people recognize that and see that there's something not quite in sync or not something, you know, aligning

Ray Loewe  15:41  

So, there's hope for me being the luckiest guy in the world.

Ashley Allen  15:44  

You, you know, you reflect that. And again, I do think you have an incredibly strong brand. And not only it's not only how you reflect it Ray, and in your joy in that in your appreciation in that it's how you widen the circle. It's how you bring others in, and help them find ways to be the luckiest people in the world and appreciate their strengths and gifts. And you just bring us all in which is that is a rare gift.

Ray Loewe  16:14  

Okay, so how do you ask the question, if you're trying to assess what your brand is the way people feel about you? What's the question you ask and and who do you ask it to? Anybody? Yeah, you ask it to little kids, you ask it to adults? What do you do? Oh, I'm

Ashley Allen  16:31  

so glad you mentioned little kids, because I'm a firm believer in even if you're in a business setting, trying to understand how you are perceived at work, ask children now, perhaps not tweens or teens. But ask the six year old because that you know five or six year old will give you an honest response. Usually it's with humor. And it's just a completely different way that you are perceived. But I always say ask a wide range of people ask your fan club, you know your great champions. Ask people that might be you know, people, you've locked horns with some of your critics. Ask people who've known you for two weeks, and for 25 years, get as wide a range of observers, if you will, that you can

Ray Loewe  17:21  

Do I just go out and say, Hi, KC, what do you think of me? I don't know my answer.

KC Dempster  17:26  

You don't want to ask me that?

Unknown Speaker  17:30  

I wouldn't pay me What do you think? I would say? How would you describe me? How do I show up?

Ray Loewe  17:37  

Oh my god, I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

Ashley Allen  17:41  

I always say make sure you know, you're not looking for a testimonial. I mean, tell people I want your honest opinion, give me four adjectives give me a couple of brief phrases. And, and be honest, and realistically I prefer to ask people via you know, email or, you know, other social media, as opposed to in person, partly because people need some think time. Um, but, and then thank them for their comments whether you love them or not.

Ray Loewe  18:10  

Okay, so if we want to get into really discovering our personal brand, you are able and willing to coach us for an exorbitant amount of money, of course, right?

Ashley Allen  18:20  

an exhobitant amount of money. That's why I'm one of the luckiest people in the world. Right. Now I do work. I've worked with several executives and leaders in different industries on first of all, understanding what brand they're projecting now, as well as what is the brand that they want to project, you know, what would they want to be known for? in the future? How do they want to create value in the future and it's an interesting, it's a fun process. It's a it's it's a wonderful kind of introspective process as well. And, and it's, it's an enjoyable one.

Ray Loewe  18:55  

Okay, so we're just about out of time over here. And this is Ashley Allen from Acacia insight, LLC. And your website is www Acacia insights.com. Right. And we'll post that with our with our podcast notes so that people can remember and find that and thank you so much for being with us because this is something I didn't think about you know, you think about Coca Cola being a brand you think about Xerox you think about these, but Casey dumpster is a brand

KC Dempster  19:28  

you better believe it?

Ashley Allen  19:30  

Yes. and a very positive one

Ray Loewe  19:33  

And and i think i think it's it's wonderful insight and I really think that there are most of us walk around without understanding that we are a brand and you better understand what you're purveying and the way people perceive you if you want to enjoy life. So we're going to add this now to the criteria for being one of the luckiest people in the world. I love it. We're gonna end and we're gonna we're gonna give you credit for it. So Ashley Allen says that to be one of the luckiest people in the world, you have to have a personal brand and be with it. Right? Right.

Ashley Allen  20:07  

Good. Sounds good.

Ray Loewe  20:09  

Okay, so I, thanks so much for being with us. And I think you can see why Ashley is one of the luckiest people in the world. She, she just exudes so much interesting stuff. And I want to learn to play the fiddle and there's no hope for me.

KC Dempster  20:24  

And yeah, I feel sorry for your wife.

Ashley Allen  20:28  

My husband has noise cancelling headphones.

Ray Loewe  20:32  

Thanks again, Ashley. And, KC, what are we going to be doing next week?

Next week, we're going to have another great interview and we want people to continue to listen because we are working very hard to bring you interesting and insightful interviews.

And and people we should look at Ashley Allen, icon. Right? Yes, for the luckiest people in the world. That's right. Okay. Thanks again, everybody, and we'll see you next week. Thank you for

Diane Dayton  21:01  

listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you and your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks our next exciting topics on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.

Contact Doug Brown: [email protected], 603-595-0303

Transcript

Diane Dayton  0:02  

This is changing the rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:13  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster. And I'm here with Ray Loewe in Wildfire Podcasting Studios. And just a brief comment, we are running this podcast because we want to introduce our listeners to interesting people who are doing interesting things. And that usually means that they are the luckiest people in the world, because they have taken control of their life. They've planned it out, and they are living their lives to the fullest. Good morning, Ray.

Ray Loewe  0:46  

Yeah, that was really good. This time, you know, you're getting better and better

KC Dempster  0:50  

I should type that out. So I can memorize it.

Ray Loewe  0:52  

Well, don't. Don't do that, because it won't work. But But, you know, you're absolutely correct. You know, we have a lot of people who work on this idea of becoming one of the luckiest people in the world. And this is a journey. It's not a one time kind of thing. And you have to keep working at it. And one of the things that we found with these podcasts, and they just energize me so much, because we get to talk to some of the most interesting, intriguing people. And they're really great examples for people who are trying to either get out of limbo to continue their lives or trying to figure out how to be the luckiest people in the world. And that means personally designing their own lives and living them to the fullest.

KC Dempster  1:36  

That's correct. That's what you always say.

Ray Loewe  1:38  

Yeah, that's great. So we have a really great guest today. And we're gonna take a quick break so everybody knows who they're listening to. And then we're going to come back with Doug Brown, and I'm excited about introducing him.

Diane Dayton  1:51  

You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster. And Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  2:00  

Welcome back, everybody. And I'm anxious to have our our talk with Doug Brown, because I've not spoken with him before. So Ray, take it away.

Ray Loewe  2:09  

Yeah. Well, first of all, I met Doug on a beach. Oh, no, that's not quite right. I met him in a room full of people where he was doing his thing. And I'm going to explain what that is in a minute. But afterwards, we were down in Boca Raton, and we went out on the beach, we had this magnificent dinner and drinks. It was a wonderful experience. So if you're going to meet exciting and interesting people do it on the beach. So Doug Brown, good morning. Say Morning.

Doug Brown  2:37  

Good morning.

Ray Loewe  2:38  

Good morning,. And how's the beach in New Hampshire this morning?

Doug Brown  2:42  

It is a little bit cold and rainy. But other than that, it's beautiful.

Ray Loewe  2:47  

Yeah. Well, I think you have the right idea. I think you you you move to a state that we don't hear a lot about, you know, when it's there. And it just kind of does its thing. And I've been there, it's beautiful. And you kind of got your own little law hideaway that you live in every day. Good job, Doug.

Doug Brown  3:07  

That is true. It's hour in 10 minutes to the mountains and 30. less than eight minutes to the beach. Yeah,

KC Dempster  3:15  

I have to say, a friend of mine. And I take a vacation every year from New Jersey to North Carolina and back. And one of the things that helps us helps us pass the time is we keep track of license plates. And I have to say that it's it's our opinion that the people from New Hampshire don't leave the state very often.

Ray Loewe  3:35  

So I have to make this comment before we get serious about this conversation, Doug, because I was on your LinkedIn site. And you have a post on there. And you know what, what a way to set somebody up the post was if you could interview anyone you wished anywhere alive or dead? Who would you interview? And this was just after I booked an interview with Doug Brown.

Doug Brown  4:00  

I guess your head dog.

Ray Loewe  4:04  

You know, good things happen from New Hampshire race.

Okay, so Doug runs a company called Business Success Factors. And he specializes in business sales, business expansion and training. And I've heard of him because he's one of the most highly acclaimed sales and revenue growth experts in the country. Okay. And I know you coach a lot of high powered sales people in high powered executives. Add. Is there anything else you want to add about what you do?

Doug Brown  4:38  

Oh, you make me sound a lot more important than I I feel at times. Ah, no, I you know, I also have a training company that I'm starting at that I have started up it's called High Velocity Training, which is where I'm helping coaches, consultants, entrepreneurs, salespeople, frankly, how to sell more and how to sell more easily.

Ray Loewe  4:59  

Well, you don't Nothing in the world happens until a sale is made. Okay? I learned that a long time ago. And it's true. And you know, people rebel against that idea sometime, but but nothing happens in the world until the sales is made. And so when you do this coaching, you know, I'm sure you can give us this long approach of what you do normally with people, but what I'm really interested in is what's going to happen to what you do now going forward that we have a different paradigm than we used to have. So you're out there dealing with these high powered salespeople and business executives, and you're coaching them. And I guess you Well, I know, you used to go on, I used to meet them face to face, because that's how I met you. So what happens now, Doug?

Doug Brown  5:49  

Well, a lot of what happens before happens now, but it happens in a virtual medium. So, you know, so we met face to face, because we were both invited to that particular event, right. But that client prior to me closing them, I closed them virtually. So I hadn't met them before. Oh, wow. Okay. So this stuff has always worked. In other words, it has I mean, when I, well, geez, I'm gonna date myself back up a little bit. But when there was a man named Chet Holmes, who wrote a book called The Ultimate Sales Machine, and I ended up becoming, working my way through his ranks and becoming his independent president of training and sales. And we used to just close virtually, I mean, we were closing millions of dollars a week, virtually. I'll never mean. Yeah. So we used to do virtual presentations. You know, this is back before we had video conferencing. So everything was done over the phone, and we were doing it all over the world.

Ray Loewe  6:57  

Oh, no, I got you know, I'm sure you were able to do this without, you know, seeing the other people without getting that sense of touch. And, and, and looking at body language and things like that.

Doug Brown  7:13  

Yes. Because it's all about building rapport in a virtual setting. You know, like we're doing now, I mean, we're joking around having fun, and you know, we know each other well, KC and I, we met each other, but I feel like we already have some rapport going. Um, so the the whole thing is that a sales conversation is nothing more than communications. And the sale begins before you talk to someone. So the marketing, the prospecting, the positioning, everything that goes along is all designed to do one thing, which is to communicate with another human being, to resolve a problem, or challenge or frustration they're having that we can fulfill. And once we can do that, then it's really more of what I call a conversational conversion question, you know, question and answer session. It's just having a conversation, and basically bringing it to a mutual Win win. outcome.

Ray Loewe  8:14  

Okay, you're way ahead of me over here. All right, you know, and I, I mean, I'm, I've been a salesman all my life, you know, if I really go and look at at what I do, and yet, I miss very much today, being able to go out and shake hands with people getting able being able to look into their eyes and watch their body language and see whether they're reading me or not, how the heck do you do this, when you have only a phone, you're going down to a one dimensional kind of a thing? You really are, what what I do and what I teach people to do is to sell sell a lot, is to send a lot of follow up pieces prior to so somebody can get to know them. Right? So it's about establishing the relationship members the positioning prior to the conversation. Okay.

All right. So we have this dilemma these days, I think, you know, the one dilemma is that nobody answers the phone anymore. All right. I don't you know, I'm sure your experience, and you have a way around this, but, but I know when somebody calls me, you know, I let everything go right to voicemail unless I recognize the number. And then if they leave a message, then maybe I'll call them back. Right? So how do I as a salesperson, or any kind of person out there deal with this, this automatic wall but people can put up around them so that they don't have to deal with you.

Doug Brown  9:53  

So it's a it's not just about a one one dimension communication piece anymore.  So if you leave a voicemail, you better leave a very good voice. Right? I did, too. He can't, it's not enough to differentiate anymore, right? It's but you got to be different. Right? So, um, and I like to use a lot of humor. And you know, but I don't teach people to use a lot of humor, because not a lot of people can pull it off without, you know, lots of practice.

KC Dempster  10:22  

So you leave messages and a Donald Duck voice or something like that?

Doug Brown  10:26  

No, but we might, we might leave it in like a radio broadcast type and say, you know, this is John from calling, you know, Doug calling from, you know, Cloud Computing, you know, the business spotlight, and you know, and I might do things like that, uh huh. And then just leave them a message or it's about entertaining them. Yeah, I see. Yeah. Right. So, you know, hey, you're harder to get than my, you know, my wife's boyfriend, George Clooney, you know?

Ray Loewe  10:53  

Okay, that's, that's putting yourself out on the line. Right. Okay, so So what do you do you have a you have a sales campaign. And basically, what you're teaching people to do is the campaign starts with social media contact, enter an email contact, what is that? Is that generally what we're dealing with?

Doug Brown  11:13  

Yeah, he all of the above, because you don't know what they're going to respond to. And so, you know, I teach people to use text, I teach him to use postcards, handwritten letters, email, LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, whatever, whenever they can get an impression upon. Because a gentleman, his name was Jay Conrad Levinson. And he wrote a series of books called the Guerilla Marketing Series. And I was talking to Jay one day, and he told me this factoid. Now, I don't even know if it's true, but I actually do believe it is. He told me it takes nine, nine impressions upon the brain for somebody to actually get to recognize somebody's name or brand. And, and I said, Well, that's not bad. He goes, Yeah, but it takes three views per impression to actually get the impression. So you have to contact somebody 27 times, according to him.

Um, and, you know, he's, he's the guy who did the Marlboro Man commercials and things like that years ago. But he, he left that impression upon me. So when I was with Chet, Chet used to say it's between five and 12, five and 12 contacts, you know, on a cold lead. And so I would test these things out, because I'm just a curious guy who likes to optimize everything. So sometimes it was five to 12. But sometimes it was 17, depending on the industry, depending on the title we're going after. But getting a hold of people isn't as hard as most people think it is, as long as they're creative. Right? We in so I teach people how to do that creatively, whether that's using what's you know, called lumpy mail, you know, in the old days, right, you'd send something that had a kind of a lumpy package. And, you know, they'd open it up, and it'd be something that would be relevant to what we were going to want to talk to them about. I mean, there's different ways of doing it. But it can't be just the one thing that we all relied upon, you know, years ago, including myself. And you know, the 70s 80s was just hitting the phone, right? And this, this is constantly changing.

Ray Loewe  13:25  

And I would guess, now that when people are stuck at home, and it's easy to take a nap during the middle of the day, right? Yeah, I mean, you have to be even more creative. So give me a couple of ideas of things that you do that are really creative, that we can steal from you.

Doug Brown  13:44  

So the first, the first. First thing out is always something that's very short, needs to be short. So right, you may have heard something like this, I didn't make this up. But if you're gonna leave a phone call, there's different ways of doing it, you can do it, you know, hey, this is me from ABC Company, you know, and so one of the things that I teach people to do is mix it up. So it would be something like this. Hi, Ray. This is Doug from business success factors. My phone number is 603-595-0303. And the reason I called you today was to...and I leave it like that.

KC Dempster  14:22  

Oh, he goes little sneak.

Ray Loewe  14:25  

Okay, so So now now I I'm curious. Right? Right. All right, give us a couple of other examples of some creative things here. We're gonna go through your whole repertoire, we're gonna do the Doug brown course to success. You know, in our 16 minute thing, I know we can't do that.

So, for example, on LinkedIn, or even email, right, you want to you want to have a very short, pithy and nice something, but you Here's the key, it's got to be relevant to them. The problem, the challenge with most people, is they're not selling, sending relevant information. So Ray, for example, if I was doing something on the financial services business, I might come up with a factoid that I found. And I might say, Hi, Ray, this, you know, I'm Doug, via LinkedIn, you know, I'm connecting with you. And I noticed you're in the financial services business. And I support people in the financial services business doing XYZ. I don't know, if you're experiencing either one of these three frustrations, like most of the people that I talked to, and I'll list the three frustrations, you know, is it worth a five minute phone call for us to discuss to see, you know, if there's anything that we can do, just something simple like that, people are complicating the heck out of it? And then on the next thing that I would send, I would send a picture. So I send riddles. You know, hum. How many? How many times does nine appear from zero to 100? in sequence? You know, how many times so if you went 9 19 29, you know, or three, I pick a number. And then I hit him after that with a short blurb about, Hey, I'm here to prove everything that I said I would. So for example, right? In this case, if I sent that and said, How many times does nine appear? You know, in sequence in, you know, from zero to 100, then I'd say the answer might surprise you. It's about the same amount of people who say no to a financial services offer.

Doug Brown  16:42  

Right? Creating, you know, if you're curious about the answer, it's down below my signature. And so what I want you to do is go down below my signature, because then I'm going to put a PS re, is it worth five minutes for us to talk? Okay? Okay, so this is this is what you do for people, you you sit down with a good executive, Salesforce or something like that, and you train them to look for these things.

Ray Loewe  17:08  

Now, do you actually write this material for them too? Or is that something that somebody else does?

Doug Brown  17:12  

Depends on how much they want to pay me but yes. Okay.

KC Dempster  17:18  

Well, you know, one of the things though, is that when you're using written communication, you have to be careful because sometimes your tone doesn't come through and it might sound abrupt or terse, or Curt or even insulting.

Ray Loewe  17:33  

Yeah, you know, you when we were talking earlier, you gave me this story about this contractor. Mm hmm. Okay, tell that because that was so, so much true about dot txt and things can convey a misleading tone if we're not careful.

Doug Brown  17:49  

Absolutely. So I had a contractor that I, you know, I've been trying to, it's hard to get contractors to come to do anything. Right. And then they're, you know, the challenge in that world is, they're not communicative. And, you know, so I've been trying to get this door, put on the back of my house, a sliding door that leads out to the deck for months, and I've had people say, I'm going to show up, they don't show up, they give me the price. I go, it's fine. You know, they don't you know, and so then they'll, they'll do it last minute, etc, etc, etc. So anyways, I found this guy, his name's Joe. He's awesome. Right? He did a nice guy came by we did it, boom, he put the door in, etc, etc, etc. And I had about five or six other things in the house I wanted done Joe's like, Hey, I'll come back. So weeks go by and I'm texting him. I'm saying, Hey, Joe, when are you going to be able to show up? He's not answering me. So I send him a you know, a couple of voicemails didn't answer me. I'm like, Oh my gosh, did he you know, catch COVID-19 to me what happened? Right? So then I sent him a text and I said, Hey, Joe, the doors in because I wanted another door on the side. I know you're busy guy. Would you like to have me have Lowe's where I bought the door from? Have them install it to kind of save some time? Or do you you know, do you want to set a time that you can come by and do this and the rest of the stuff? And he typed back, It's up to you?

I mean, I was I was like, wow, this is you know, I'm gonna pay this guy. I don't know, you know, four or $5,000 to do the work right around. And I'm like, man, are they making that kind of money that they can do this, but then when I talk to people like that, they're always complaining like, I don't have enough cash. I don't have this. I don't have that. Right. Yeah. So yeah. So Gary atone.

Ray Loewe  19:47  

Okay, so this has been an interesting conversation. And unfortunately, we're near the end of our conversation already. It just flies. But you know, what I got out of this is that you've been doing this On non direct kind of sales work for years and years and years, it's not something new. But what is new is that you have to be much more creative. And between you and me, I think you were always creative with this, right? And you have to worry about the tones that you set and things like that. And that's why people hire Doug Brown to coach them in sales. Right.

Doug Brown  20:22  

Yes, that and other reasons, but, you know, generally they're looking to increase their sales revenues, or to improve their efficiencies, and, you know, process, whether it be, you know, super large companies, or, you know, midsize or whatever, smaller companies.

Ray Loewe  20:38  

But yeah, I mean, the game has changed, right, as you and I talked about before, and I don't think the game is coming back and force, the way it used to be.

Doug Brown  20:47  

I think people are getting used to working virtually now, and communicating virtually now. I do believe that in person meetings will come back to a certain degree, but you know, I mean, a lot of people now are not even going into an office, they're working from home, including big companies, you know, I just called GoDaddy the other day, everybody's working from home, you know, I called other large companies, General Electric, people are working from home. So I'm not sure that they're going to want to spend that kind of floorspace, you know, per square foot, per square meter, you know, on rent anymore. And so it's gonna be it's gonna be an interesting world going forward. But I mean, the reality is that it's not that hard to communicate with people, when you determined, and you have multi modality to get to them, because they will respond to one thing and rate. Can I say one last thing?

Ray Loewe  21:37  

You certainly can

Doug Brown  21:39  

I get asked this question all the time. How much follow up is, is too much? And the answer to that question is, until they tell, you know, until they say it's too much, it's not too much, because what a lot of people feel is, oh, well, I'm going to be now you don't want to hit them every, you know, five times a day, with with with a piece of follow up. But the reality is that when you're connecting with somebody, it's one of those views that Jay was telling me. So the more views you have, the more it will pull somebody toward you. Some people, sometimes people think it will push people away if they're communicating too much. And the reality is, most of the time, it does the exact opposite, because your competitors are not doing it, if at all, very often. So, again, you don't want to differentiate, you want to be different.

Ray Loewe  22:32  

Wow. Well, thank you so much for imparting your wisdom. And, you know, I can see, you know, Doug is one of the luckiest people in the world. I you know, he he has taken control of his life. He's got his own business, he does what he wants to do, he does it largely his way. And he has these creative spins that he you know, puts on everything. So, Doug, thank you so much for being with us. And we will put your website and phone number on our podcast notes so that people can find you. Okay, thank you. And it's been a pleasure, and I hope we're gonna have an opportunity to talk again, and I'm revamping my whole way of communication right now. So let's take a quick break Taylor, and then we're gonna come back and sum up.

Diane Dayton  23:19  

You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster. And Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  23:28  

Welcome back, everybody. And the exciting information is this is the end of the podcast. And we will be back next week with a very interesting young woman and keep coming back because we've got really great people that we talk to.

Ray Loewe  23:43  

Yeah. And again, another thanks to Doug brown for being with us today. Yeah, it was most interesting to me. And I think if you're in the business world at all, you'll learn a heck of a lot. See you next week, everybody.

Diane Dayton  23:55  

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

www.janepollak.com

TRANSCRIPT

Diane Dayton  0:02  

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:11  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster. And I'm here with Ray Loewe. And we have a great, great podcast ahead for you. Changing the Rules is about just what our announcer said in the beginning, it's about designing your own life, and then living it to the fullest. And oftentimes, the luckiest people in the world recognize that, in order to design their own life the way they want it, they do have to change rules. And so we like to bring you, our listeners, interesting guests who have changed the rules, and they are now living their best lives, and they're living it to the fullest. So keep coming back. Because it's really, really interesting.

Ray Loewe  0:59  

Yeah, you know, every week we try and interview one of the luckiest people in the world. And we do that for several reasons. First of all, I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of just talking to lively, interesting people and and I'm so motivated, by the time the show's over. And these are the kind of people that I like to hang out with. But I also find that other people who are the luckiest people in the world, you know, life changes all the time. And we need new motivation all the time, and to be able to listen to people like Jane, who we're gonna bring on in a couple minutes. And listen to the way she has restructured her life and the things that she's doing. It's just exciting, and it gives us new ideas, and I want more of that, too. Okay.

So so we're gonna take a quick break, and then we're gonna bring back Jane Pollak, one of the luckiest people in the world, and you will understand why by the time we're done so Taylor,

Diane Dayton  1:56  

You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster. And Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  2:06  

Welcome back, everybody. And we're gonna dive right into our interview segment of the podcast, and I'm gonna let Ray introduce Jane.

Ray Loewe  2:17  

Okay, thank you for the opportunity. So Jane, first of all, is an author. She is a certified coach. She's a speaker, she's given TEDx talks, okay. And she also describes herself as a lifestyle, lifestyle entrepreneur. And, Jane, if you would put up with me, I'd like to start there. Because what is a lifestyle entrepreneur? And how did you get there?

Jane Pollak  2:43  

Great question. And delighted to be on with the two of you. I was I, I wanted to have balance in my life. And I had started as an art teacher, my husband and I, now ex husband and I met at Columbia Teachers College, university, teachers college, and I was teaching art. And then I started my family many, many, many decades ago. And I wanted to continue to produce art, but I also wanted to stay home. So I had this wonderful craft called pysanky, which is Ukrainian easter eggs. And I decided to make a business out of that, which is not something people encourage you, to do make a business out of decorating eggs, but I was very successful at it. And I said that, rather than me working for my business, my business would work for me. So I had an at home business, it was income for the family, it wasn't the primary income. But it allowed me to do what I wanted to do what I love to raise my kids and to make a contribution to the family. So I did that for 30 years, and then from like, 1973 to 2003. And then I stopped and, you know, went into something else. But it was it was a business for me for all those years while I got to have the balance in my life of being home with my kids.

Ray Loewe  3:57  

Okay, I think that go, ahead KC.

KC Dempster  3:59  

Well, I was just gonna say, you know, the concept of making a business out of decorating eggs is absolutely fascinating to me. And how how ornate were they I mean, cuz I'm, I'm imagining Faberge eggs, which of course had gold and jewels and all that kind of stuff. So what Tell me about a Ukrainian easter egg.

Jane Pollak  4:20  

So it's basically a raw egg with wax and dye, I wrote a book called, Decorating Eggs, Exquisite Designs with Wax and Dye. And it really goes back to advice my father gave us when we were young. He said just you know, if you can be the best at something, you'll own the market. Well, I chose a very small market, you know. However, I exploited it, to the extent like you know, gave a TEDx talk about it. I had eggs in the White House. I wrote a book about it. I created. I was on catalog covers, I I did workshops. I made it work for me and it was a successful business. I you know, was Near six figures for, you know, several years of that, doing many, many different things. I'm very entrepreneurial. And to me an entrepreneur is someone who finds the opportunity. So I just kept finding opportunities of ways to convey it. And one of them became telling my story, if I can make a business out of this, you can make a business out of anything. And, you know, it was a motivational keynote speech, and I became a keynote speaker, and tell people because the remember that book, "Everything I Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten?" yes, I needed to know about business, I learned decorating eggs. And so my second book was sole proprietor, "Sole Proprietor: 101 Lessons from a Lifestyle Entrepreneur" because I learned so much about you know, how to market how to set goals, how to set your pricing, how to I had legal issues, at one point, somebody was imitating my designs. And so, you know, I learned everything any business owner learns, and I conveyed that. So, you know, it was, you know, as a 30 year fabulous career and people it was very memorable.

Ray Loewe  6:00  

Yeah, and, you know, this is just a perfect example of what you can do if you get excited about something, and you have a skillset that you can use. And my understanding, although I didn't ever see one of your eggs, Jane, do I have to go to the White House to see one?

Jane Pollak  6:15  

Haha, they're in the Smithsonian? So they're there a couple in the Ronald Reagan collection in Simi Valley? I think it is. So you might find it there. But you can you can find my book on Amazon. It's called Decorating Eggs, Exquisite Designs with Wax and Dye. And there, it's a type of thing Ray and KC, that you'll laugh when I say this, but you know, I would go to a not a cocktail party, but just meet people, because I didn't really get invited to many of those. But they say what do you do? And I'd say I decorate eggs, and they would go look for the next available person.

What I learned to do was bring a picture of my eggs and they'll say, Wow, how do you do that? Haha, they are. They're extraordinary. And I would encourage people to you know, look me up. It's Jane Pollak without a C, P-O-L-L-A-K, And on the artist page, there's, you know, their pictures. I was on the flax catalog cover, I was on HGTV I was on the Today Show. They were museum quality works.

Ray Loewe  7:15  

And you know, you created a book on this and you sold 30,000 copies or something

Jane Pollak  7:20  

thirty thousand copies. And that was my first book. And actually, it's in reprint now somebody else bought, I own the rights. And somebody else actually scanned and printed the entire book. So it's available again.

Ray Loewe  7:31  

Wow. Okay, we may come back and talk about eggs more over. But but there's so much about you, that intrigues me because because you're the perfect example of one of the luckiest people in the world, you first of all, you you sat down and you said, you know, I'm gonna stay home and take care of my kids. But I don't want to do nothing. And I'm an artist. So how do I make this work? And how do I tailor something. And now you've kind of moved on, I don't know whether you got tired of eggs or eggs got tired of you? Or, or maybe you know,

Jane Pollak  8:03  

Ray, my line is I said everything in eggs I needed to say

Ray Loewe  8:07  

which is perfect. Because Because this is a pivot point which says, Okay, it's time to move on. I've gotten everything out of this. And you can do this as one of the luckiest people in the world. And, and you've moved on to this whole concept of lifestyle entrepreneur. But before we get there, I have to I have to talk about something, It's called study hall. Now, I don't know if you ever go ahead. Tell us about study.

Jane Pollak  8:35  

I'll explain it. But I know where you're going. And I saw my acupuncturist yesterday. And I said something about it's the Jewish New Year just started, or Yeah, and I said I wished her happy new year she she's not Jewish, but it's just like that time of year. So I said, it'll be nice when 2020 is over. And she said, why it has been very good to you, you found this new craft that you're doing and also your family has gotten much closer. And you know, because of the pandemic, we're doing weekly zoom calls together with my ex husband and our grown children and grandchildren. So that never would have happened. So I have so much to be appreciative of. And the art form is called Penny rugs. It's another one you have to look at pictures because it doesn't say what it is. But I started I took a class right before we were all quarantined, and fell in love with this craft. And, you know, with anything that you'd love to do, you often don't make time to do it for yourself. And so I created something called a an online creative study hall, where people will join and do whatever project they want to do for and that's how we met was through a woman who wanted to create a operations manual for her business. And so she did 30 hours with me online where we both had our cameras on through zoom. And we work for three, two or three hour chunks, you know, three times a week. So most people don't allow them themselves that that really delight

or That structured a time period. But when you do, you go really deep. And somebody was on I started a new one last week and women said she had taken a webinar on writing a book. And the woman, the woman who was leading it said, what everybody needs is a time enforcer. And what my study hall is really a time enforcer or somebody else called it a forcing mechanism. People are paying me to work with me, and I get paid to do the work that I love. So I'll be working for two and a half hours this afternoon sewing while somebody else's. She's downloading a. She's transcribing. I her journals. And that's what she wants to do. But she needs that committed time. And we'll do

KC Dempster  10:43  

that's so true. You know, when I moved into my current abode, 13 years ago, I had boxes and boxes of photographs. And I my plan was I was going to get them all organized. And there's still a mess.

Jane Pollak  10:56  

KC there's room in my group.

Ray Loewe  10:59  

When you know i i'm absolutely fascinated by this. So so you know, this is a quick aside, when are you going to do recess?

Jane Pollak  11:07  

Well, in between at the top of every hour, we do a little stretch, we do a little shimmy, shake and take a few deep breaths. And that's recess because people really want to make the time count. And there's something very particular when you work for three hours straight, that you go really, really deep in something. Because most of us when it gets the going gets tough. We go to the refrigerator, we make a phone call, we look at our phones, you know, we do something to distract ourselves. But when you're you've committed and do it, you work through those difficulties. Usually your Gremlins come up. An example I gave was when I have a very large egg commission, I was doing an ostrich egg for something. And I was looking for it was for burn survivors. And I was trying to find the phoenix rising from the ashes as the main symbol. And I had committed to this was years ago. Brian Tracy calls it single handling. You know, I'm calling it an online study hall, but to doing two hours on the design, and I couldn't find the image and I couldn't find the image and the voices were saying you might have to give back that deposit. Jane, what Who did you think you were taking this on? But I stayed I stayed with it. And then you know, I was googling images and I found the exact right image and I thought I should charge more for this. This is beautiful.

It's really working through that. That gets us to the point of you know, of passing something rather than giving up and distracting ourselves. So I'm actually giving people a real benefit to that. You know that a butt in the chair concept that writers talk about? That's really what it takes.

Ray Loewe  12:37  

Oh, yeah, it seems it seems dumb that we would need something like that. But we all need an accountability coach. And, and I find I've found different ways of getting mine but without an accountability coach, I don't get my stuff done. So Jane to be commended.

Jane Pollak  12:52  

Yeah, yeah, no, I do that I do it you know, as well for clients who want to work with me one on one. And, you know, the accountability is I have a client calling this afternoon and she had a phone call to make she had a letter to respond to, you know, she had very specific action steps that she needed to take for this afternoon to report in, because she's paying me She wants to get the value from it. And and people do need that forcing mechanism. So I'm I'm good at motivating myself and I'm really good at helping other people stay motivated.

Ray Loewe  13:21  

Yeah, so so what's going on in your head here? You know, it's got to be an amazing brain because you started as an artist, okay? You were extremely creative in a way to do an egg by Jane. Okay. You know, you got a book, you got easter eggs out there. And you've you've morphed you've taken your system and you're sharing it with other people now as kind of a lifestyle coach. Mm hmm. Am I right?

Jane Pollak  13:47  

Absolutely. Absolutely. I what I do in my coaching and I'm certified to coach so it wasn't something I made up I you know, I had a coach and I thought I want to do that. But I'm an artist, how can I do that? Because it transformed my business when I worked with a coach. And then I started taking classes and and learning and then I took on several practice clients. And then I got really good at it got certified, took a leadership training course through the same Institute. And you know, I've been coaching since 2002, which is a long time. A lot of people start and stop and can't find clientele. But I've been fortunate and you know, very lucky person in the world. And I love doing it. I love listening to the intimacy that coaching creates is something that I love having in my business. Right

KC Dempster  14:33  

now. Do you get frustrated when you're coaching somebody and you're giving them very sound, Very positive leadership, and they just aren't buying it? Yes. So what do you do when that happens?

Jane Pollak  14:48  

You know, I just heard somebody speaking in another context, and he had really good questions that I'm going to incorporate now. And I think the main question is, what's the cost of you're not doing this? Okay, yeah, like you're getting out of resisting this. What's the you know, what's the benefit to you? Because, you know, whether it's staying in a dead end marriage, and I don't I don't do marriage counseling, but sometimes the writing is just on the wall and people stay because they do. What, you know, what are you gaining from this? So we don't ask why we ask powerful questions like, what, what's in it for you? Right? There's always something, you know, there's always something.

Ray Loewe  15:29  

Okay, so we have just been through an incredible change. And I think going forward, life is going to continue to be an incredible change. So as we move beyond this COVID thing, what do you see happening with your clients, your life, you know, the, the universe in general. So so when we move into normal 2.0, over here, 2.7, or whatever it's gonna be, I don't think we're going back where we were. And so what's gonna happen with the way you do things and the way you're coaching,

Jane Pollak  16:04  

I, I feel like I've been onto something for a very long time. And that's, you know, the old do what you love, and the money will follow. I am so happy in my days, I wake up joyfully, I love what I'm doing. I love my coaching, I love my sewing, I love being creative. I love the people, and, and I'm staying home, you know, 90% of the time, you know, I'm in my pool, just reopened at my health club. So I'm basically home and go out for an hour walk. We're I don't, I know that those chains will be loosened. But I think it's really being happy within yourself is the key. And if you can find what makes you happy. And coaching is really a you know, a beneficial tool towards that. I can help people find that it's like what lights you up? You know, that's a prime question. Or talk about a peak experience. When do you remember being really happy in your life? And what was that? And I think people realize, well, I could, you know, I could never do that I could never, you know, not, you know, I can't pay the mortgage. But in fact, people are managing now somehow, where everything has been taken away, or, you know, so much of what we rely on our foundational beliefs have been taken away. I think it starts inside, and our can our connection to ourselves and to other people is what makes me happy. And I believe what makes other people happy. We just throw so many layers on top of that, that we didn't even we don't even realize that that's what we have.

Ray Loewe  17:24  

Well, you know, unfortunately, Jane, we're at the end of our time, you know, it goes so fast. And you know, we'll have to talk more and maybe get you back on here again. But But I think the the comment I want to make is you very definitely are one of the luckiest people in the world.  you exude confidence, you found your way to do things. And I think as a leader of other people, I you know, I love to kind of hang out with you when I get a chance to do that. Because you're inspiring and motivating. And I really want to do an Easter egg and I can't do Easter eggs...

Jane Pollak  18:04  

very, very, very good instruction. I think you'll you'll enjoy it. But it's you know, it was republished so you can find it now.

Ray Loewe  18:11  

Well, and study hall I can do and what a great idea. And you know, thanks for bringing that up. And, and people can reach you through your website. It's very simple, Jane pollak.com. Right.

Jane Pollak  18:23  

Right. And there's no C and my last name, a lot of people insert a C so it's POLLAK.

Ray Loewe  18:27  

Yeah. And we're gonna post this with our podcast notes so that people will be able to see it and find you. And, you know, thanks so much for being with us. And Taylor, let's talk to both of you. Let's, let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back and close up.

Diane Dayton  18:43  

You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster. And Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  18:53  

Welcome back, everybody. That was really great talking with Jane. She's so positive and upbeat. And I'm noticing, I believe that there's a trend in the people that we talk to that they are very optimistic, positive, upbeat people.

Ray Loewe  19:09  

Yeah, and I'm excited from this thing. I mean, you sit there and you to say, Okay, I can't get something done because I just never can get to it and, and the concept of study hall just came out of Jane, you know, and and it's just exciting the way people are doing things. And I think she's absolutely right. You do what you love, and you figure out a way to make it work. And sometimes it's a little difficult, but there's always a way. And that's what the luckiest people in the world do. So we'll see you in a week.

Diane Dayton  19:41  

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topics on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

Delegate Solutions: www.delegate solutions.com

TRANSCRIPT

Diane Dayton  0:01  

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:11  

Good Morning, everybody, welcome to Changing the Rules. This is KC Dempster. And as our announcer, told you at the very beginning, this is a podcast about changing the rules and designing the life you want to live. And we like to talk about changing the rules, because we have discovered that when people decide to take control of their lives, and to design it to be the way that they want and need it to be, oftentimes, they do have to change rules. So some people need permission, for some reason to do that. So that's what we're here to do, we're here to introduce you to people who have given themselves permission to change rules. And as a result, they're living exciting and interesting lives.

Ray Loewe  0:55  

Yeah, and we need to capitalize on these people, you know, being one of the luckiest people in the world is, is, it's, it's a special person, because these are people who first of all, take control of their lives and design them. And that's not an easy thing to do. And in fact, it's an ongoing kind of a thing to do. And one of the things that we hope you're going to get out of our podcast, is by get being exposed to many of the luckiest people in the world, one every week, we hope you're going to get excited and motivated. And you're going to get new ideas about how you can go with the flow. And one of the things that we're going to talk about today is one of the special things. You know, we talk to you about the luckiest people in the world designing their own lives. But we're also going to talk to you today about one of the luckiest people in the world, knowing where they're going. But being prepared to pivot. So we're going to take a short station break just to let you know where you are. And we're coming back with Emily Morgan.

Diane Dayton  2:03  

You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  2:13  

Welcome back, everybody. And I am delighted this morning to introduce our guest, Emily Morgan, who is the founder of a company called Delegate Solutions. And we got to know Emily because Ray is availing himself of what Delegate Solutions provides.

Ray Loewe  2:34  

Yes, they are running my life for me as a matter of fact. So Emily say hello, first of all, no, nothing more, just say hello,

Emily Morgan  2:42  

morning. Hello,

Ray Loewe  2:43  

you had to make it different Didn't you change the rules on us over here, which is exactly what we expected you. So long ago, and oh, so far away. Because I've been a customer of Emily's for a while I needed help, I needed to figure out how to get some strategic strategic assistance. But I no longer had an office, I no longer had a place to put employees and I no longer, you know, had the need for full time person. So  Emily was recommended to me out of a coaching program, and we had a chance to meet because she is a South Jersey, Greater Philadelphia, native local person, local person. And what she does through a company called Delegate Solutions is to provide premium virtual assistant support. And that's what I'm availing myself off. And there's also some delegation coaching that goes into the process. And she is one of the remote workforce thought leaders in the country in the whole country. And she's had several accolades. There was a time when she was one of the Forbes fastest growing 50 companies in the whole country. And even now, with all this stuff going, she just got another accolade of being one of the top fastest growing companies in the Philadelphia area. So ah Emily, welcome, welcome, and welcome. And tell us a little bit about the strategy behind Delegate Solutions.

Emily Morgan  4:20  

Thanks, guys, very excited to be here. So the strategy behind our business is really to create help people create freedom to do what they love. So a lot of what you're talking about Ray is changing the rules. We're all all about creating freedom, so that you have time to do different things that you like in your life, whether it's growing your business, or spending more time with family or pursuing some kind of hobby. It's all about finding ways to strategically clear your plate to make room for extra time. So the way that we tackle that is really through delegation. And part of the one of the things that makes us different is that we're not only here to for you to delegate We help our clients figure out what to delegate and how to delegate processes together to make sure that successful

Ray Loewe  5:07  

No, and you do all the hiring and screening of people too, don't you and talk for a minute about I know you took a lot of time to match my need. And, and, and me personally personal instinctive way I do business with the assistants and I was going to work with. So want to talk a little bit about that if you will.

Emily Morgan 5:29  

Yeah, part of what we do is, is an art and it's also a science. You know, when we're looking at pairing our clients with team members, it's really about understanding, you know, what your specific needs are? What times of day do you work? how responsive Do you need someone to be? What type of skill set are you looking for? What type of personality Do you work really well with or have had challenges with, we use a tool that I know Ray you're familiar with called the Kolbe test. And we use that to validate our team's ability to do the work. And then we also use it to inform how we go about supporting our clients based on their Kolbe scores,

Ray Loewe  6:10  

I have to come in on this, excuse me, because it's an entirely different world of working. So I have a strategic assistant who happens to live, you know, a couple hundred miles away. And I have had other people that I've worked with from time to time from across the country, and I've never personally met them. And yet, we have meetings and we'll sit down and all of a sudden, my video monitor in front of me opens up and I get this great smiling face every week. And the smiling face or the body behind the smiling face, solves all my problems and makes my life simpler. So it's, it's a little different. But it's it's wonderful. It works. And you use teams now too, don't you? You just you just don't help a person with one strategic assistant, you actually have background teams. And I know there's a lot of support that goes on in the background. So take a minute and talk about that please.

Emily Morgan  7:12  

Yeah, I mean, the administrative world in general, I think it's a pretty high turnover industry. And that can be really painful, when you've handed something off to someone and things are moving along really well. And they quit or they don't, they don't come to work that day. So we've taken the steps and made our team our employees. So we, we take all the responsibility for managing them, hiring them, vetting them, all that type of stuff. But for us, it's about creating, creating a team approach for clients so that they always have somebody, you know, present and active and aware of what's going on in their world. And we pull on the strengths of two different types of people. So one person is really there to be the project manager to do the delegation strategy. And then the other is there to handle all the execution on the task level, to create a level of redundancy for fines,

Ray Loewe  8:12  

and then there's a lot of backup beyond that, because when I know I as an entrepreneur needs some special skills, and maybe my, the person I'm working with doesn't have them all. There's a whole background team that you bring into force. And it's a lot easier than me having to do that research and going out in the marketplace and finding support people. So thank you for that. Of course. Okay. So so there's a story behind this. And I know, I guess 12-13 years ago, something like that, that you started Delegate Solutions. Yeah. And you started it. You were a student at Penn. Is that correct? Or were you beyond that when you start a delegate?

Emily Morgan  9:02  

I was beyond that. But I when I worked at Penn, I was able to go to school there for free. So I graduated from UPenn with my bachelor's, basically for free.

KC Dempster  9:14  

Yeah, but boy, that's the way to do it.

Ray Loewe  9:16  

Yeah, that's, that's a couple hundred thousand dollar tab they're going on right now. Okay. Okay, so, so where did this idea come from? And how did it evolve? And how did you put it together?

Emily Morgan  9:28  

Yeah, I think, um, I worked at University of Penn, like I shared. So one of my first clients when I started the business was my old boss at Penn. So they were a client from the very beginning. But I started the company when I was I just had had my son and I was not interested in commuting in and out of the city and trying to have a baby at the same time. So I knew I had the administrative skill set to do admin work. I recently learned that you could do this remotely, what I didn't know was anything about business. So I am a self taught entrepreneur, I never went to school, my degree is in English, not in business. So, you know, basically how to figure out how to start and grow company, which that was 13 years ago.

KC Dempster  10:18  

And I think that that leads us to something that it's important for our listeners to understand is that your remote assistants are all working from their homes. So you're providing an opportunity for an entire workforce, to be able to stay home, get their work done, and still balance family and work and all of those stressors that that we find in our lives, especially during the past six to seven months.

Emily Morgan  10:45  

Yeah, I think I shared in the beginning that our mission is to create freedom for people to do what they love. And that's not just for our clients, that's for our team members as well. So, you know, we really have created an opportunity where people can do work that's professional and fulfilling, but more on their own terms.

Ray Loewe  11:02  

Yeah, and, and you were working remotely from the beginning here and look at how important that is today. I mean, so all of your people are fully engaged, and they're working. Okay, where other people that were coming to work may or may not have been working.

Emily Morgan  11:19  

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I feel like for 13 years, I fought this battle around remote work, why it works, how it works. And overnight, you know, the world had a reckoning around, we need to figure this out. Um, like, for us, where the challenge came into play is that so many of our team members are mothers. And mothers were significantly impacted by this in ways that other demographics were not. So we've, we've had to deal with that as we navigated this, like, we all knew how to work remotely, there was no change for us there. It was really just about now, these women are trying to do this with kids not in school, or homeschooling on top of work.

KC Dempster  12:01  

Right. Right.

Ray Loewe  12:02  

Yeah. And I know you did some really unique things for your your team, because talk a minute about the invention of daycare camp, or whatever, you know, I'm not gonna get the words, right. But tell us about it.

Emily Morgan  12:16  

Yeah, we did something called Virtual kids camp. So you know, things were going crazy. Everybody's kids were home. So we said, You know what, it takes a village and we put on a virtual kids camp where we basically created like a Google spreadsheet. Everybody would volunteer for different time slots across the day. And we invited our clients, children, our children, some of our clients, like volunteered to teach some of the sessions. But we did it for like, probably five weeks, where we were just running camp for kids. And we would, you know, I was teaching, we would make cards for first responders. My mother was teaching hula, one of our clients was teaching Mandarin.

Ray Loewe  13:00  

Want to be invited to see mom to hula? So So, you know, I want to think this through a little bit, because I think there's some really unique stuff here. So your business model was not only great for the entrepreneur, your ultimate client, because I know I was disrupted a lot less than probably many of my counterparts. I didn't have to worry about people not coming to the office, I didn't have to worry about putting in this emergency remote system. I didn't have to worry about my staff taking off time to babysit and take care of kids.

KC Dempster  13:41  

It's because your staff is old

Ray Loewe  13:43  

well, you know, agent has some value to you know, but but but i think i think the whole business model really is interesting. And from the point of view of entrepreneurs, I think that it's something worthwhile putting into their system. Talk a little bit about your solo entrepreneur program, because I think there are a lot of people out there that would be interested in this and that and you have it and you have it. You have it down pat.

mily Morgan  14:13  

Well, we're always working to make it better. For sure. Um, so our program basically we sell time for money. So clients come in and they purchase blocks of hours that they can use across the month and the team builds out a delegate strategy that brings the most return on investment for those hours sold. And that looks different for everybody, a lot of that is personal stuff, so we're working on not just the professional side of life, but also on the personal side. So those hours can be used for anything you need to better leverage your time.

Ray Loewe  14:54  

Yeah, and and i think people that are going into retirement, you know, even if you're not working you know, to to all of us sudden have a staff that you use to do a whole lot of things. And all of a sudden that's gone. Mm hmm. So you're saying that this, the staff kind of thing can be used for personal use as well as business use. And that just expands what people can do with this.

Emily Morgan  15:15  

Yeah, and our entry point is about an hour a day of support. So it's 20 hours, 20, excuse me, 25 hours, a month, an hour a day of help.

Ray Loewe  15:24  

Yeah, cool. And I know, that fits me pretty well. And I also know that I have the ability to expand my hours when I need it for special projects. So your system works great. And now I want to get into something a little different, because one of the traits of the luckiest people in the world is knowing where you're going. And when we had kind of our pre interview, you added something to this, that I'm stealing By the way, so it's no longer yours. It's mine. Okay. And that's knowing where you're going, but being prepared to pivot. So talk a little bit about some of the things that happened during this virus thing to you, and and why this why it's important to know where you're going, but also why the pivot comes into play.

Emily Morgan  16:13  

Yeah, so we follow a program called EOS, the entrepreneurs operating system. And as part of that program, we have a 10 year vision, a five year plan, a three year plan, a one year plan, and quarterly plan. So we have a vision or where we're going and what we're going to be doing each year to get there what it looks like, you know, three years from now what does the company look like, but nowhere in that plan is there COVID, or the impact of that on my business, which was, you know, not just work the mothers that I employ being affected. But our clients are small business owners, so they were deeply impacted, freaked out, we weren't, we lost about 25 to 30% of revenue in a matter of a couple of weeks, which I know is not a significant, as my friends experienced, but it was still really scary and terrifying for us to go through that. And so we we had just going into COVID, we had just had our quarterly planning session for q2. So we had just said our plans and like, right is all happenings. So we really had to change a lot of our priorities for the quarter to be able to address the energy that had to be put in to deal with everything that was happening in the world, as it impacted the business.

Ray Loewe  17:36  

So So what do you think's gonna happen going forward? So why, you know, I hate the word new normal. So we've adopted this thing called normal 2.0, which is where we're going and and maybe we'll even get to normal 3.0 and 4.0 and 8.0, or whatever. But But, you know, you've learned a lot from this experience of pivoting. Okay. And and where do you see changes in the way you do business going forward? And the way some of the people that you work with do business?

Emily Morgan  18:11  

Yeah, I mean, overall, once you get past the shock and awe of what happened in March and April, and May and June, um, it's been very, it's, we're very busy right now. So we're selling more than we ever have. Because now I'm not fighting that battle of trying to educate people why remote work, like remote works, because it needs to. So we're growing very quickly, because of that. So we're pretty much back to where we were pre COVID revenue wise. But one of the ways that we're impacting you negatively is one of my value propositions and hiring was, it was a remote admin job. But now, most jobs that are administrative are going to be remote. So I'm going to be feeling it on the talent side, trying to find what makes us different from other employers and be able to express that to, you know, ideal 15 members.

Ray Loewe  19:08  

I don't think so, Emily, you have kids day camp.

KC Dempster  19:14  

You know, I was just good. I've been thinking while we've been talking and about 14-15 years ago, I was working with Ray but I did not come into the office every day because I lived in the city and did not have a car. So I worked several days from home. And at that time, it was a bit having people work from home was a big problem to a lot of managers, because they were afraid that the their employees weren't really putting in the time or that they were, you know, doing their home chores, and you know, maybe not even sitting behind the desk. And so I think for a lot of people, this was a very rapid indoctrination, not only for the employees who had to learn how to be Little bit self disciplined, but also for management to accept the fact that people are going to work from home and they're going to do the job.

Emily Morgan  20:07  

Right. I think it's worth noting, like, none of us were doing this with kids home.

KC Dempster  20:13  

Right, right.

Ray Loewe  20:14  

Yeah.

Emily Morgan  20:16  

It's different. And so this isn't like normal remote work. This is like crisis remote work. So there is a difference between what you know, before we went into this till now, on our side?

Ray Loewe  20:28  

Well, you know, unfortunately, Emily, our time is up already Time flies when you're having fun, but but in in a closing comment over here with you. You know, one of the things that I've found is, I didn't have to worry about this. Okay. And that was the beauty of not trying to do the remote stuff myself, but to have an experienced team behind me, who was going to worry about all these problems for me, who had many of them solved before, and, and figured out how to do it and my life just kind of went on the way it did you know I, I wrote your check every month, and I bought so many hours, and my system showed up with a bright, shiny face, you know, one on zoom and, and all of a sudden things were done. And, you know, thank you for making my life consistent, and continuous and happy.

Emily Morgan  21:26  

Ray, We love working with you.

Ray Loewe  21:27  

So Emily Morgan delegate solutions. Emily, give us your website if people want to reach you, and we'll post it on our on our podcast notes, too.

Emily Morgan  21:38  

Yeah, it's www dot delegate. solutions.com.

KC Dempster  21:43  

Easy peasy.

Ray Loewe  21:44  

Easy enough. So Emily Morgan, thanks for being with us. And you are one of the luckiest people in the world. You exude all of the things that the luckiest people do. And it's been a pleasure to be associated with you. And if this COVID stuff goes on, maybe we can actually go out and have a drink again, or something like that. Right. So So I have a great day. And let's take a quick break and come back and kind of close up.

Diane Dayton  22:11  

You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  22:20  

Welcome back again. And thank everybody for listening. This this whole thing that Emily is doing with Delegate Solutions is it's I think it's cutting edge. And I hope that the listeners got some really good information and might even be availing themselves of her services.

Ray Loewe  22:41  

Yes. And we will be back next week with another guest another one of the luckiest people in the world. And we hope you continue to listen. And we hope you continue to look at these luckiest people and figure out why and how you can steal things from them and make your life luckier and luckier and luckier. So see you next week, everybody.

Diane Dayton  23:04  

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you imagine your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.

Joyce's weekly newsletter: The Herman Trend Alert 

https://www.hermangroup.com/trend_alert_main.html

TRANSCRIPT

Diane Dayton  0:02  

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:12  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. This is KC Dempster. And I'm here in the studio with Ray Loewe. And we have a very interesting guest with us today. And in the interest of not running out of time, I'm going to abbreviate my opening remarks just by saying that we talk about changing the rules, because sometimes the rules that we were given as children don't work for us anymore. And if we're the luckiest people in the world, we have figured that out, and we've learned how to tweak the rules and make them work for us.

Ray Loewe  0:44  

Yes, and the luckiest people in the world are really good at changing rules. And one of the things that we try and do every week is to feature one of the luckiest people in the world on our show and and when we start with our guest, and let me just introduce her quickly and then we're going to take time for a quick break, KC so you get your break in. How's that? Thank you. So So we start with a wonderful name of Joyce Gioia Now, is there a lot of joy in that name...

KC Dempster  1:16  

Absolutely, I love it

Ray Loewe  1:18  

Okay, so before we introduce Joyce, let's take a quick break. And we have a couple sponsors. We have to acknowledge

Diane Dayton  1:25  

You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  1:34  

Welcome back, everybody. And before we jump into our interview with Joyce, I would like to take a minute to thank our sponsors for our Virtual Friends Connection Conference that we had. The first one was Springpoint Choice and their generosity of supporting the conference allowed us to have our participants participants be able to participate for free.  Springpoint Choice is a membership based program for adults aged 55 and older, that offers the option to continue living in their own home protecting income and assets against future long term care costs, and having the additional assurance of quality care when it's needed. So for more information, contact Springpoint Choice at 866-778-3255. Thank you Springpoint Choice. Our second sponsor was Passero's Coffee Roasters, and again, their generosity enabled us to bring our conference to our participants at no cost to them. Passero's Coffee Roasters has three locations in the Philadelphia area. And it's a family run business and has been serving the Philadelphia region for more than 30 years. And in addition to their person to person locations, they roast and sell their own organic coffee beans through an online site. passeroscoffee.com. That's p a s s e r o s coffee.com. Thank you Passero's coffee,

Ray Loewe  3:07  

and blackdog coffee. That's all it needs to be said. Okay, if you haven't ever had black coffee, you're missing an experience in life.

KC Dempster  3:17  

I will attest to that. It was the best coffee I've had.

Ray Loewe  3:19  

Okay, so we're ready now to bring joy to our podcast right? Indeed. Okay, I hope you don't mind my playing on your name, but it's just such a wonderful name. You know,

Joyce Gioia  3:32  

not at all. Not at all. I chose that name. Not only did I choose it in in choosing my, my husband at the time, but then when he was no longer appropriate to be in my life. I kept the name.

Ray Loewe  3:51  

Oh, wow. Okay. So, Joyce is a futurist and KC just share with us a little bit of her background. We'll bring most of it out when we talk to her

KC Dempster  4:07  

right well, Joyce started her first business so she's an entrepreneur at the tender age of 14 when she founded Jack and Jill Parties for children. She went on to be a magazine publisher. She is a strategic business futurist and certified management consultant and has been named one of the top 50 women futurists in the world by Forbes magazine. This word futurist keeps coming up and I can't wait to to expand on that. Joyce has written three best selling books. She has given TED talks and you know I could go on and on there's a very extensive intro but I'd rather get started talking with

Ray Loewe  4:49  

Yeah, so take it away. So So Joyce what is a futurist

Joyce Gioia  4:55  

a futurist is a person and and people ask me that all the time. And I work with organizations and individuals so that they can make better decisions by and be able to reduce risk and therefore and innovate, and therefore drive more bottom line profit. In other words, I help people and organizations to be more successful

KC Dempster  5:22  

by predicting the future

Joyce Gioia  5:25  

forecasts.

Ray Loewe  5:28  

So, so

Joyce Gioia  5:29  

We do not use the world predict,,,future. I joke that it doesn't give us enough wiggle room. That's true. In forecasting, we, we typically offer a range of futures and multiple futures to our clients, not just one.

Ray Loewe  5:49  

Well, you know, it's really interesting because you, you really work off of business, and you just have to have a pulse for what's going on. It's not a crystal ball, but it's unless you consider data, a crystal ball wrapped up in a nice way of some kind.

Joyce Gioia  6:05  

Very good point Ray. Very good point, most people don't realize that.

Ray Loewe  6:10  

But, but you know, you did something for me right? After we had kind of a pre interview, we talked for a few minutes, you and I were talking about how much we like to travel and and how much travel has been dumped upon these days. Okay. And one of the first things that you shot me after that was an email. And the email was about this surface coating that the airlines, I think was American, yeah. And they talk for a minute about that, because that's very typical of the kind of data that you search for, in order to help pull the trends together of what's going to happen.

Joyce Gioia  6:45  

Yes, it is, I, I do what we call scan, probably 80 or so different publications every week. And I have, you know, there are some of the the services that I sign up for as well, which do look at multiple, multiple different publications and distributions, hard to know what whether you call an easy publication, right, because there's no ink on paper, but, but I scan a lot I look at, I look at a lot of different things that are on the World Wide Web, in order to, to then bring together I do what I call connecting the dots. And I'll see something going on over there and something going on over here. And something going on way out there, which is what we call a weak signal. And I'll bring it together. And I'll say, okay, from what I can see the world is going in that direction. And in that article was very interesting, in terms of the pandemic fostering innovations that we didn't have before, right, so there's software and there's new there, there are new, there's new hardware, there are new things that make our lives safer. And this will continue to happen because Sadly, this pandemic is only the beginning. We are in for and this is in my coming new normal thing, I believe, a series of epidemics and pandemics, the question is, will we respond very quickly. And it's that responding quickly, that keeps the diseases from getting out of control. And that's what did not happen here in the US sadly, in regards to COVID-19

Ray Loewe  9:04  

you know, we need a wake up call every once in a while and and I think one of the things that you see all the time, is that in every adverse adversarial situation, good stuff comes out, you know, we have to put up with the bad stuff. But we learn and we grow and new things come out. And so it's it's both an exciting and a sad time to live. I think.

Joyce Gioia  9:32  

I couldn't agree with you more. It's exciting. It's and it's challenging for many of us who are like Well, I'm speaking personally because I'm accustomed to being on airplanes a lot of the time as USA Today's first and only Road Warrior of the year. I travel a lot and I'm accustomed to seeing new cultures and interacting with new people who speak different languages and learning a little bit of their language so that I can communicate with them on their level and build relationships easily. And I'm really missing that. And so I may be actually in October, getting getting on an airplane and traveling to Armenia. Oh, so, yes, it's, I would be representing the Institute of Management Consultants for the United States as their ambassador to something called the Constantinos Awards. And they are awards for the most significant consulting work in the world, huh. Pretty impressive.

Ray Loewe  11:00  

Yeah. Well, you you have a trail of those. I think you started out with your Jack and Jill Parties, you know, at age 14, so you are an entrepreneurs, entrepreneur. You you were one of the youngest magazine publishers ever Okay,

Joyce Gioia  11:19  

I doubled advertising revenues five years in a row. Yeah.

Ray Loewe  11:21  

So So how does one take all of this and decide to become a futurist?

Joyce Gioia  11:28  

Well, that actually started back when I was the publisher of the magazine. And I was reading Kiplinger and other publications, and sharing some of that Intel, with my clients who were the US presidents of Japanese companies. And they were just blown away. And that's, in part how I was able to be so successful. But I also did it by helping them to help their clients, which was not unknown, but it was pretty innovative at that time. So in other words, I would show up at their, at their booths at the Consumer Electronics Show. And I would have with me a stack of pre publication reprints, which then would help them to sell those production models of their equipment into the dealers. And I learned that if we can help our clients and our customers to sell their clients and customers, boy that makes us irresistible.

Ray Loewe  12:52  

Yeah, wow. So tell me a minute about you, you know, write a weekly publication, and it goes on to a whole lot of people. And it's called the Herman, Trend Alert, right?

Unknown Speaker  13:02  

It is The Herman Trend Alert goes out to about 29,000 people in 90 countries. I think we're up to 91 now in three languages.

Ray Loewe  13:13  

And what this shows is, this is a compendium of your thinking, based on the information that you've seen as to where we're going is that well,

Joyce Gioia  13:23  

I used to cover one trend, every week, one trend 350 words, and then COVID hit. And what I felt like was that people needed a trusted source for really solid information about COVID. And so I started writing about testing and the differences between the tests and the value that the tests really had. I started writing about vaccination, and contact tracing and all of the things that I felt people needed, I believe that people needed to know in order to feel secure and hopeful. Well, this this week, and it'll be coming out tomorrow is about Normal. 2.0. And I say Normal 2.0 not the New normal.

Ray Loewe  14:18  

Thank you. I don't believe

Joyce Gioia  14:21  

that we're going back to anything, right. We're going forward to something new. It's a new version of the normal and that's why I call it Normal. 2.0

KC Dempster  14:33  

right. You know, it's interesting this morning, when I was driving down to the studio, I I turned on the radio and came in on the end of a commercial and I don't even know necessarily what the product was, but the tagline was, don't bounce back. Bounce forward. Great. Yes. So you can use that.

Joyce Gioia  14:53  

And I'm gonna use I probably will,

Ray Loewe  14:55  

and I'm gonna use Normal 2.0 because I'm so tired of this new normal. I think you're right. Things are gonna change. And they have changed already. And well, they always change in a way. Right on. So

Joyce Gioia  15:09  

it was Descartes who said the only thing constant is change?

Ray Loewe  15:13  

That's true. Yeah. And and you have, you have some insight, and maybe you can take a few minutes and talk a little bit about it. So we got hit with this pandemic, and all of a sudden, everything shut down. And well, maybe it's not all shut down, because we have these pockets of people emerging. And I don't know about you, but I have this, this great urge to burst out of my house, and I'm over Zoom. I've been on so many Zoom meetings. And, and, but, you know, prudence comes into play, you know, you got to not do stupid things. So what do you?

Joyce Gioia  15:49  

Oh, yes, most definitely very true.

Ray Loewe  15:52  

What do you think is happening and give us some sense of as individuals particularly, what are some of the things we ought to be looking for, and maybe some of the things that we had to pull into our lives to make sure that it's going to make us safer and more comfortable, and, and allow us to explore life?

Joyce Gioia  16:10  

Well, I'm going to start with me if I may, with something personal. And that is that I chose to call this, this pandemic and opportunity. And instead of the COVID, 20, I've actually reduced my weight at this point by 18 pounds. From the time that I got back from this, I was the clinical professor for leadership and innovation. So I was on a four month voyage last fall, teaching college students aboard Semester at Sea. It was one of the probably one of the highlights of my life, including side trips to go camel riding in the desert and, and I went snorkeling in the Galapagos. And it was just it was, it was an incredible experience. But anyway, I came back with not surprising, an extra amount of weight, it wasn't 18 pounds, but I came back with an extra amount of weight. And so I started with an exercise regimen. And then I discovered that one of the people who works for my cardiologist is a is an exercise, physiologist, technician. And so he helped me to learn that I would get rid of more weight, if I aimed to keep my exercise and I wear an Apple Watch. That was at my fat burning weight. So 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the evening, I work on and it's always more than that. But I work to keep everything within the fat burning range. And I've also stopped eating dairy. I've reduced the oil in my life. And I've, for the most part, become vegetarian with a little bit vegan with a little bit of pescatarian thrown in.

KC Dempster  18:29  

Okay.

Ray Loewe  18:30  

Okay. But But the point is

Joyce Gioia  18:33  

that that makes Imagine if you picked up a sack of flour, or sand or something that weighed 18 pounds, right? And you tried to carry that around, you wouldn't be able to carry it around very long, I don't think without getting tired. So imagine not having that extra weight. And how much more energy that gives us? So, I would urge people to and by the way, what I used is the most remarkable, I used a free app on my cell phone called 30 days to fitness.

Ray Loewe  19:16  

So So what you're telling us is that attitude has a lot to do with how we face the future here. And and I think pick out Don't waste the time, right? No, this is one of the things I'm worried about most I'm 78 years old, you know, and, and I feel healthy. And I'm looking I'm not thinking about a terminal end over here. I'm thinking about what I can do in the next 40 years of my life. But what I'm missing, but I'm missing a year here, okay? Unless I do something like you're suggesting. And if we're going to be facing a pandemic kind of thing if we're going to have this in our future. You know, how do we turn it into positives and I think that's your message for us. Isn't it?

Joyce Gioia  20:00  

It is it is exactly. And, and sadly, I, my husband is one of those people with underlying conditions. And with and, and I just won't let him do the grocery shopping, which he loved to do. And I let him go and get gas for me.

Ray Loewe  20:24  

But he's got to walk down to get it right.

Joyce Gioia  20:28  

Oh, and he's gotten on a regimen as well. He's walking a mile a day every morning. So, you know, the truth is that we have to do what works for us. Right? For some people, it's dancing and Zumba. For some people, it's what I do on my rest days is I work out with classical stretch with Amanda Esmund White. Because I'm a former dancer. In my in my youth, I was a ballet dancer.

Ray Loewe  20:59  

Oh, wow. Well, you know, unfortunately, we're at the end of our time. And yeah, we're gonna have to have you come back again and, and feed us some trends in it, because it's a fascinating discussion. And I can certainly see why you are one of the luckiest people in the world.

Joyce Gioia  21:18  

Ray. And when I you know, when I saw that you were that you had characterized yourself as the luckiest man in the world. I said, Well, I'm certainly the luckiest woman in the world because I do feel blessed. I feel like I am divinely guided. I feel like if as long as I open my, my heart and my mind and listen, that I get great information about what's right for me and where I need to go next.

Ray Loewe  21:49  

Well, and thank you so much for your insights. And we'll we'll get you back on here in the future. So, KC, what do we got coming up?

KC Dempster  21:59  

Well, I know that you've got a list of podcast guests that goes out into the next month so I can't wait for the surprise of that because I don't always know

Ray Loewe  22:08  

and they're exciting okay. And and and they're all like Joyce Gioia over here. You know, with great inspiration and, and great thinking, and this is what's great about my job here. I get to interview people like you and I get excited. I'm not gonna calm down for about two hours now.

KC Dempster  22:27  

Better than coffee.

Ray Loewe  22:28  

So So again, thanks. Thanks for being with us. Joyce, Julia, and we'll have your information along with our podcast description so people can find you and

Joyce Gioia  22:39  

sign up for the Herman trend alert.

Ray Loewe  22:41  

Yeah, right. And thanks so much for being you and we'll see everybody next week.

Diane Dayton  22:47  

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.

Website for Bill Hortz: www.innovationdevelopment.org

Transcript:

Diane Dayton  0:02  

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:13  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster. And I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe. And it is we've we've had a little hint of the upcoming fall season this morning. had to put a jacket on when we left the house.

Ray Loewe  0:28  

Yeah, so it's wonderful outside.

KC Dempster  0:30  

So just briefly reminding our listeners that Changing the Rules is a podcast about how people handle change in their lives and how they handle rules. And we're given rules from the day we're born. And most of the time they are intended to keep us safe and help us learn how to live successfully in society. But over time, as we get to be adults, many, many of the rules are not relevant to us anymore. And in fact, they can actually inhibit what we want to do. need to do in order to be successful. So we have what we call the luckiest people in the world. And one of the things that the luckiest people in the world do successfully, is they change the rules to fit what they need to do so that they can achieve the successes that they do.

Ray Loewe  1:16  

You just enjoy expounding on that, don't you?

KC Dempster  1:19  

Just pushed that button.

Ray Loewe  1:20  

Well, you know, I think what it is, is you were raised as a little Catholic girl and you're good and you never broke rules. And now all of a sudden you get to break rules. And and you know why the people that break the rules tend to be some of the luckiest people in the world. And I've been following luckiest people in the world now for 45 years, trying to figure out how I can hang out with more and more of these people because they're fun people and the luckiest people in the world have one big characteristic and a whole lot of little ones. But the big one is that they personally designed their own lives. And once they've designed them, they step into them and they live it to the fullest, and we have a guest today, we're gonna take a break first. So don't panic over that KC, you get your break. But But when we come back and talk about our guest, our guest has done several things. I think he certainly handles rules really well. And he came out of one industry that was fraught with rules and into a new business where the rules can be bent and broken and all kinds of things are based on innovation. And that's what we're going to talk about. The other thing that Bill, our guest yhat's his name bill is does is he tends to follow things that are fascinating and motivating. And that's always been one of the things that I've admired about him. He doesn't get bogged down into details, he goes where the action is, and we'll find out about that in a couple minutes. So, Taylor, we need a short break.

Diane Dayton  2:56  

You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster. and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  3:06  

Welcome back, everybody. And before we get into our interview, I wanted to take a quick moment to thank our sponsors for our virtual Friends Connection conference happening  tomorrow. And our first sponsor is an organization called Springpoint Choice, and their generosity is allowing us to bring the conference to our participants at no no cost. Springpoint Choice is a membership based program for adults aged 55 and older, which offers the option to continue to live in their own home, protect their income and assets against future long term care costs, and have the added assurance of quality care when needed. If you want more information you can call Springpoint Choice at 866-778-3255. That's Springpoint Choice and we're so glad to have them as part of our Friends Connection family. Our second sponsor is to Passero'ss Coffee Roasters, and we want to thank them again for their generosity which is helping us in supporting our event tomorrow. And Passero's Coffee Roasters has three locations in the Philadelphia region. It's not only a family run business, but it's been serving the Philadelphia region for more than 30 years. And they also roast and sell their own organic coffee beans online. So I will attest personally that I have tasted one of their coffees. It's called Black Dog, and I have to say it is the best coffee I've ever had. So again, thank you to Passero's Coffee Roasters. You can find them at passeroscoffee.com. That's p a s s e r o s coffee.com.

Ray Loewe  4:53  

Okay, we get to go on, right. Okay, well, we certainly are thankful to our sponsors and without them, we wouldn't Be able to continue to do all these things at no cost. But today we have a great guest. And it's a gentleman that I've known for a good number of years. In fact, I've spent quite a bit of time traveling and giving presentations with him throughout the financial law planning and financial advisory services business. And Bill Hortz when I met him was a regional sales manager or national sales manager for Oppenheimer mutual funds. And the next time I met him, he was running an outfit called the Institute for Innovation Development. And his title was dean

KC Dempster  5:44  

not president but

Ray Loewe  5:45  

not not president, not CEO, Dean and Bill Hortz Say hi to everybody.

Bill Hortz  5:51  

Hello, everybody. And as to the dean title, I just couldn't help it, but wanted to be the Dean Wormer...I just had the opportunity and I took it.

Ray Loewe  6:08  

Oh I think it's a wonderful title, and it's a sign of your creativity and the way you think outside the box which is one of the reasons why I know you're one of the luckiest people in the world. The first question I want to ask you here, is you left the world of financial planning, financial advising a very structured world, and you developed this Institute for Innovation, what caused yo to do this and what happened here because it's a big change in your life.

Bill Hortz  6:42  

But in very good stead in starting up this, this new Institute to be able to work across businesses and partner strategic partnerships and, and the like, but when I was at Oppenheimer funds, you know, a major industry, a major player in a major industry, there was set ways of doing things, you know, very, very set ways of doing things. And we were always trying to push the boundaries to see how we could do it a little better, more interesting. And I started going to global cross industry, Business Innovation conferences, and very interesting organizations that just lit a fire under under me when I was talking to them. And so in your industry, how do you do what you do? What do you mean you did that? You know? What do you mean you didn't talk to the CEO in the development of this innovation initially What do you you know, it just started bringing out that one, there is a very different dynamic that's business dynamic that's starting globally cross industry. And the fact that there are new tools and ways to deal with this new dynamic, and that's what really led me to really explore this more fully. And, and the key thing I determined is the biggest challenge in financial services and these financial services industry, as well as every other industry is that there is this new dynamic of an accelerating rate of change. There are other challenges. There are plenty of them. But nothing is so fundamental. This is the ground by which on which businesses are standing On is going through this tectonic change. It's a new dynamic. It's, it's, we always had to deal with change. But it used to be generational, you know, in two, three years, right? A whole industry can go mammoth, mammoth change. So that was the first thing when I started the Institute, it was for it to be a a platform or a magnet, right? a central place where I could start curating what what are the what is to deal with this type of acceleration? There's coolbox called innovation. So let's really try to curate and find out exactly what is innovation. And how are other industries doing it and let's try to share these ideas, these these these ideas with you You know, with with others in the financial services industry, which is where I focus now, but this is true of any industry, these tools can help any industry. But I did focus in continuing financial services by focusing this institute in business innovation.

Ray Loewe  10:19  

You know, one of the things that you hit me with at first when I started talking to you, since you took over this institute or created this institute, is when I went to business school, the Wharton School used to tell us well, you're going to go into business, you got to have a 25 year plan. Right? Well, 25 years so many things happen anymore. And and then I talked to you and you're working with businesses that have a three month plan, maybe right or a six month plan. So yeah, the world is not the same and and we have to we have to move with it or is gonna leave us behind.

Bill Hortz  10:56  

Well, you know, the, the thing that the institution The good news. I mean, the challenge the institute is is trying to be strategic strategic is you got to focus on what what is the biggest, major challenge for businesses today. And that's the accelerating rate of change. And if accelerating rate of change, other things follow from that, you know, you need tools to address that new dynamic. And that's where I'm focusing on business innovation, tools, approaches, ways of thinking that are different, which help you how do you how do you compete, how do you operate in an environment that is changing so quickly? And like you mentioned, a business plan, you know, there's a there's an old saying that says a business plan after months of delivery of formulating it, getting the hundred pages and all that and putting in binding it and all that kind of stuff, you know, doesn't you know, doesn't exist beyond the first you know, the very first contact wth the client. It's building from your head but then you're going into the real world, and all of a sudden so you have to build from the client, not from your head. And  that's why new companies are using a new tool which is called the business model canvas, and it's a great tool because if you're running any kind of company, it doesn't matter, size, scope, industry, one page, nine blocks, it forces you to look at your business strategically, who exactly are your key clients, what exactly is the value proposition you're giving them, what are the tools you're using to deliver that value proposition, what are the costs, what are you charging and it's visual and you can collaborate with other people in your firm, and it teaches you how to pivot, which is a big word today, if, if the environment is going to keep changing, you can't come out with one idea you're done, you know, and focus on competitive advantage in this one space. It's going to keep changing. So you need to know how to keep pivoting or changing or experimenting. And there's these great tools like a business model canvas that makes being more innovative in how you run your company, and much more easy to do than even using the traditional tools. You know, doing one year, your strategic plan or you know, business.

Ray Loewe  13:46  

Now, you know, that's particularly evident in the last year because those people that had the 30 or 100 page business plans have major renovations to do in their plan.

KC Dempster  13:57  

They're probably using it as a door stop

Ray Loewe  13:59  

Yeah. I think the whole idea is it got torn up and thrown away and, and so here's the perfect example of we all know the world is going to change. You know, we we all look not only at the virus thing we look at the forest fires, the climate issues that are going on the the hurricane that's about to hit your house next week Bill, and, and all of those things that we have to pivot with I love that word pivot. So take a minute if you can, and give us a couple of insights of some of the things that you think are going to change just because the world has changed so much for us in the last several months.

Bill Hortz  14:40  

You know, the, the nature of what's gonna change is the problem. We don't know, right? How do We know, you know if there's a dynamic who changed though, and that's what you focus on. So the institute is really trying to focus on this dynamic Which means that have to, the most important thing you have to do is build your business plan your model your way of, of doing business, from your clients, not from your head, not from your corner, not from your experience. See, in the old days, experience and expertise was Hey, this worked before this will work again, this is a different dynamic, okay, things are changing so, so quickly that you have to keep very close to your clients. That means talking to them that surveys that but deep dive, I mean really talking to them, you know, what are your fears? What are your goals, what, what types of things could you ask for us, you know, have advisory boards of your clients, I mean, so the most important thing to address what's going to change is stay very, very, very close and your clients in Build and innovate, you know from them. Now, let me give you a working definition of innovation of what this process is, you know, when when you say innovation, the way we've defined it as a working definition, right? innovation is the ongoing execution of new ideas that create client value. We break that up, okay? ongoing, if we're in if we're in an environment of ongoing change in accelerating change, that's not stopping. It will not stop. It'll keep, you know, building on itself. So. So innovation is a mindset or a commitment to ongoing consistency. Not you came up with one great idea, you're done. No. All right. What's your next step? You have to have an ongoing nature, plus to execution, ongoing execution. You have to try things you got to put it into the world. You have to you know, Take that idea, you know, and use it and see if clients really are responding to it. So it's the ongoing execution of new ideas. And it's not just ideas, it's new ideas that create client value. So you're going to innovate. When people start saying, boy, I like that idea that's different, or I like it's easier to work with you. Or, boy, you're really talking my language and explaining things different ways. So it's when you really create the value for the client that you're going to get innovation. So to deal with change. That's the way you should have a mindset of having this ongoing execution of new ideas that create value and this way, you're on top of change no matter where it's going. Because you're you're you're you're working in lockstep with it. Or at least you're executing your resources as a business owner, to be more of an entrepreneur. Moving with that change.

Ray Loewe  18:03  

Yeah, you know, that's a great definition. And that really helps clarify things. Everything is client centric. Everything is based on flux. You got to pivot with what's going on in the world. And, and, you know, I want to thank you for your time, unfortunately, our time is over already. It just flies on this time period. And, and evidently, we didn't pivot fast enough.

KC Dempster  18:31  

But one of the things that I just want to emphasize is communication. And I know Bill mentioned it, but communication is probably at the root of most problems that we face today. And, and I think that, as business owners, they didn't use to communicate with their customers as much because they felt like Well, I have the product that they need. But now it's not. It's not that easy. You have to, as you say, bring value and help them To understand why they need your product,

Ray Loewe  19:02  

yeah, and what are you doing today when you can't go out and have lunch with them? You know what what are the things are going on in the background and you know, Bill's got a host of great ideas on he's well published and we can't give you the list on the on the air. It's just not going to work. But we will put in our notes about the podcast, how you can reach bill how you can find down about this whole concept of innovation that that he's putting in in a different way through being the dean. I, you know, I'll never get over that Bill. But, you know, I want to take a minute and thank you for being with us. And you know, we'll have to have you back again, as we come out of this cya environment that we're in and see what the new innovations are as we go. But thanks for being with us. And I think everybody that's listening to this interview, can see where Bill is certainly one of the luckiest people in the world. He pivots well Let's take a quick break and come back and close up.

Diane Dayton  20:06  

You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  20:16  

Welcome back, everybody. And I have to say that I really enjoyed our interview today with Bill Hortz. And just want to remind everybody that we are having our Virtual Friends Connection conference tomorrow, September 16, at 12 noon, and if you want to join at the last minute, we might have a couple of seats still open, go to our website, theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com and click on the button to register.

Ray Loewe  20:44  

Yeah, and sign up. We're gonna have an exciting person to talk to us a little bit, and then we're going to close up with our mixologists coming in and inventing for us a luckiest people in the world cocktail. So why See you guys next week. Everybody have a safe time.

Diane Dayton  21:02  

Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.

Diane Dayton  0:02  

This is Changing the Rules. A podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.

KC Dempster  0:14  

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster, and I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe at  Wildfire Podcast Studios in Woodbury, New Jersey, and we're enjoying a beautiful morning. We love to share our podcast with you because we believe that rules are imposed on all of our lives from the day we're born. And most of the time, they're meant to be helpful. But as we get older, sometimes they are more restrictive. So, the luckiest people in the world, learn how to examine the rules and decide which ones work for them and which ones don't, which ones can be tweaked and which ones can be totally eliminated. And that allows them To live the life they want to live, and they they do that. So good morning, Ray.

Ray Loewe  1:05  

Good morning, KC and you're breaking the rules because KC is not in the studio with us. She is beaming herself in from home because she self quarantining after, after being allowed to take a vacation, is that right?

KC Dempster  1:19  

That's correct. I was in what New Jersey considers one of those hot states. So I'm self quarantining.

Ray Loewe  1:26  

Well, we miss you. So anyway, we're here about changing the rules. And we're we're here to showcase one of the luckiest people in the world today. the luckiest people in the world, by our definition is one of the people who actually personally plan their own lives, and then design them to their specs and then step into them and live them the way they want to. And they don't let rules get in their way. Or if they are going to let roles get in their way they figure out how to make them work for That. So we're here today with a Ajit George. Okay, Ajit has some incredible. He's got an incredible story to tell him now I met him actually through his wife Sarah Brown. And when we were talking about him one day he wasn't here. I asked Sarah Well, what does he do? And her comment was that he goes and locks himself into a room for hours. And then he comes out with amazing ideas. So you want to comment on that as well.

Ajit George  2:36  

I suspect that she was referring to the fact that I spent three years before September 4 of 2019. Working seven days a week out of my wine cellar in Wilmington, Delaware, with a friend of mine who was working with me, called Evan Bartel and we were for the better part of those three years we're working on an idea to create Second Chances Farm which was just an idea three years prior to that. And the wine cellar was important because we were sort of exiled because Sarah didn't want us in the dining room and my office was too small to have two people in the house. And so in the wine cellar, which she didn't visit, because she doesn't drink wine, we were hidden it was And plus, we had no clocks and no windows. So we had no idea what time it is like being in a casino. So we could put 18 hours a day and work on the computer and actually get a lot done. But we compress probably five years of work in two and a half years and to come up with this idea which has now been come to fruition.

Ray Loewe  3:37  

So we now know why you're one of the luckiest people in the world before we even started on the project. Okay, so so I met you. And I got an invitation that absolutely fascinated to me. This was before this pandemic started, and I got a chance to go to an experimental place that you designed and developed, it was called Second Chances Farm. And you can fill me in on all the details of what it is and how it is but but the invitation was to go and release 10,000 ladybugs into this old building in Wilmington. So that's your lead and you think,

Ajit George  4:17  

well, I'm so glad you came. I'm glad you accepted. There were many people invited thought I was kidding or couldn't believe that I would do it. The Ladybug happens to be Delaware State official bug. So just so you know, states can have official bugs and flowers. ladybugs are one of the friendliest thing that you can have in an indoor vertical farm, or any farm for that matter because they eat pests. They don't eat plants or flowers, they eat pests. So we had moved in on September 4 of 2019 into this 47,500 square foot building, which was a warehouse and we had no idea it was 60 years old, what kind of pests might be there and we were setting up A prototype farm at that point to get started. And you know, there are people who do groundbreaking with beautiful silver or gold shovels, there are people who take cameras and knock on drywall. There are all kinds of ceremony more traditional ceremonies, ribbon cutting, and I thought to dedicate this old building I would invite the governor and various other dignitaries as well as friends like you to come help release 10,000 lady bugs, which was my team. So first I had to find 10,000 lady bugs, which I did which and they had be live because if they're dead, they have been released. And among the many things I learned is you can get ladybugs from many sources but Amazon was the best buy and and they deliver them with a promise that they are alive which is pretty amazing. And then we got the lady bugs and we had to sort them out into 300 little beautiful gold tassel bags in the morning of it from their habitat. You serve honey and other things. To them for the two days that they had arrived before. So they're happy because they obviously have no pests to eat. And then we hand transplanted them into these lovely orange bags. And as 300 plus guests came, including you Ray, we gave each of you a little bag with a ribbon on it. And when the moment was right, and when the governor After all, the ceremony went up a ladder to go up to the top of an eight storey module. To release the first set of ladybugs, everybody in the audience came up and depending on whether they liked heights or not, they stood next to the module or they went up the ladder and release ladybugs, it was much more a chance for people to first of all see what an indoor vertical farm looks like because we had an idea as to module that was full of plants. But it was also to communicate the fact that we are we because we're indoors. We can be pesticide free and herbicide free because we don't need to deal with bugs as a general rule. And the lady bugs was just My messaging way of sending a message that we are pesticide free and herbicide free

Ray Loewe  7:05  

Well it was a magnificent message. Now we baited everybody so far with two stories. We talked about you while locking yourself in a wine cellar. And then we talked about lady's bug, but I think what we ought to do is talk a little bit about the concept of Second Chances Farm, how it developed, what it is where it's going. So short take it away. So

Ajit George  7:25  

let me start by talking about the three words that are in our name. I'll start with the farm because that's the first one that's the smallest one. The farm is an indoor hydroponic vertical farm located in Wilmington, Delaware in an opportunity zone which is especially economically distressed area. We as I mentioned some large building 47,500 square feet. We divided the farm into three zones. We have finished farm one, we are working on farm two, and we have eight levels of indoor growing so it is pretty Amazing and we have working on farm two. We can grow almost anything but we primarily grow right now leafy greens and Herbes and we grow them. With four things are needed in indoor vertical farm, you need light because we don't have natural light. It's all state of the art LED lights which are cool and mimic the sun which is incredible how the lights have evolved over the last four years to essentially mimic the sun and without creating heat because if there was heat then we have to have more age, air conditioning. Number two What you need is water very important. Third, we have to add nutrients to the water and the reason for the water is we have no soil we are soilless which is hard for people to imagine you can grow plants when it but you add nutrients to the exact amount that you need. And the fourth thing which people are shocked to know is we have to provide the plants with carbon dioxide. Plants consume an unbelievable amount of carbon dioxide so they can create oxygen. photosynthesis. I never thought when I was in grade school Wherever I learned about photo photosynthesis, that I would end up having to create a  I have to bring in carbon dioxide to supply it for the plant. So those are the four things we need for the plants. So that's what an indoor vertical farm is. And that's what we are we are Delaware's first indoor vertical farm. We plan to be throughout the Mid Atlantic area. But I would never have gotten into farming except for the fact that I was trying to solve a larger problem which is recidivism. And recidivism is what I would say is a tendency for people who have been released from incarceration, to be re arrested and go back to prison. In the United States. We have 2,500,000 or 300,000 people in prison on any given day. That represents 25% of the world's prison population, even though there are much more notorious countries like Iran and North Korea and and other places. We have and we are only 5% of the world's population. We have 25% of the people who are in prison. And 95% or 90% of those people will come out and are serving life sentences. And 65 to 70% of those people after they're released within three years to five years, are re arrested and put back in prison. in Delaware in 2019, it cost over $53,000. for somebody to be in prison, which is, in my mind, a lot of money. I approached this and not as a bleeding heart liberal I approach this as a compassionate capitalist, I think to spend 53,000 plus dollars to keep somebody in a prison after they've been in prison already. This is I'm only talking that recidivism stuff seemed to be a misuse of capital. So I approached this from a unique voice of how can we reuse capital. And so it seemed to me that I could not I didn't have the capacity to solve the school to prison pipeline are the largest societal problems but perhaps I thought I could interrupt the recidivism cycle. And the way I was going to do that is on my 63rd birthday, which was three years ago, I invited 63 friends and I declared as a public witness, Moses, mostly for people called hold me accountable, that my legacy at age 70 by age70, would be that I would create 70, compassionate capitalists, all of them being returning citizens, which is our term for formerly incarcerated persons. And, and I would do this by creating one or two indoor vertical farms. And by doing that I was putting myself to be held accountable because I think it's important for people to people have lots of ideas, but they're afraid to share it. I share it so that people can say what happened to that crazy idea. We're going to do it. Why 70 I was going to be 70 in seven years, so that seems like a reasonable number. Also from a biblical point if you are biblically inclined it just threescore and 10. And because I don't have children, and I have a Red Standard Poodle that will not probably outlive me. I've wanted to think about what was a legacy leave behind, and I thought, if I could impact 70 family 70 returning citizens, their families, their children, their sisters or brothers, I have essentially left a legacy larger than any family that I could naturally have created. And in also in the process, I could create compassion capitalists, because I believe for all of us since capitalism is of our better answers than socialism, and in my opinion, by making a pie larger, rather than cutting smaller, smaller slices of an existing pie. I believe capitalism for me is the creation of a larger pie. And to do that you got to show give people a helping hand and the returning citizens have a scarlet letter behind them when they leave prison, especially if they have a felony record, which prevents them from getting meaningful jobs and because they can't get jobs, they go hungry, they can't get accommodation, say all kinds of issues and if you and I could not eat or have home We probably would commit a crime to do it because in good doing that I would get three meals a day. And all health insurance and accommodations is the irony of ironies, we reward people for on it. So we only hire returning citizens so we discriminate against people if you haven't been to prison. So we're like, we're unlike everybody else, you have to go to prison, or you have to be convicted to come to us so and that is deliberate because we are trying to create a community of people who have shared experience who act as a peer group to help each other because they understand the experience The only exceptions to this is leadership team including myself which is a small group, but otherwise our primary group is returning citizens and you got to meet some of them Yeah, when they were introduced for the first time to the world on our stage

Ray Loewe  13:44  

so I can't get a job there.

Ajit George  13:46  

You can't get a job unless you get unless you do something silly get convicted or go to prison for

Ray Loewe  13:51  

okay shall show this

Ajit George  13:53  

We are discriminatory.

Ray Loewe  13:55  

It started in the wine cellar.

Ajit George  13:57  

Where did this well this started well before so he's really started. From my experience I held a TED license from the TED organization, which on gratis Ted conferences from 2011 to 2018. And I organized TEDx Wilmington under that license in that period. I did 32 events which had 469 speakers. And in 2016 1615, I ended up doing an event and annual conference in Wilmington. I'm sorry, it's 2016 when I did it, that particular year, there were two speakers who gave TEDx talks, both of whom I'd invited and I knew what they were going to talk because I'd coached them, but sitting in the audience listening to them in the same day, along with 30 other speakers, it occurred to me the solution to recidivism because one was talking about recidivism and second chances and redemption. And the other one was talking about this brand new idea, at least to me of indoor vertical farming in urban areas. And I thought, what if I could connect the two because I Do something that could give a pathway to entrepreneurship, which is what they get compassionate capitalist. And they people could be in charge of their own destiny, we could produce locally grown food 365 days, reduce carbon footprint, eliminate pesticides and herbicides, and give at the same time provide meaningful experiences. So we, and it's that out of that I wanted to create green collar jobs. So it was TEDx stocks that inspired me. I had done an event the year before, inside a prison, a TEDx event inside prison under the theme, second chance and redemption. And I got invited because of that to go to tech to the first inaugural TEDx San Quentin and San Quentin Prison and met some of the most interesting people. And so for me, this approach was really how what is the best way to use capital? And is there a better way to do it? So I approach it very differently from my good friends who are liberal, who believe either they shouldn't be No, no, prisons are all bad people have sometimes people make mistakes, and they have to go to prison. So that's part of the consequences. But I think just like once you serve your time, in prison, it's no different from paying a mortgage off. If you have a 30 year mortgage, and you paid it off, you don't expect the bank after you paid it off to come back and collect on it or to say that you have a lien on your self. We believe somebody who has served their term, they have repaid their debt to society, and they are entitled to a clean slate.

Ray Loewe  16:28  

Okay, so from a great idea to begin with. You're actually doing this

Ajit George  16:34  

Yes, we are

Ray Loewe  16:34  

okay. And I've been there. I've seen it. So you took an old building that probably had no use before, right,

Ajit George  16:42  

which was used until earlier in the year but if we hadn't used it, I'm not sure it would probably be still empty, and which would have been a blight on the neighborhood. Now it's an asset to the neighborhood. +

Ray Loewe  16:51  

Okay, so you have this 47,000 square foot building, and how many of these tiers of plants do you have? Now,

Ajit George  17:00  

so we finished our farm one. Since you've been there, farm one has 50 modules, each of them six levels, so 300 levels, and we are getting ready to finish. And by first last week in February we expect to have farm two done, which will be 350 modules or eight levels 700% growth between farm one and two, we will have over 350,000 plants growing in any given day harvesting over 80,000 plants in any given week. And which translates to 4,400,000 plants in a year in a footprint of land if you can just imagine the building not be there. And we just put and just for that land alone is a is 17,000 square feet, which is a little more than a third of an acre. Nowhere in the world can you grow 4,400,000 plants in a in a little more than a third of an acre not even in this Garden State of New Jersey where we are and that's partly because that's a small piece of land. And number two is because we can grow year round. So there's multiple crops. And we control everything which is why this is technology is called controlled environment agriculture. We control everything

Ray Loewe  18:11  

cool. Okay, now I have two more basic questions in here. One is okay, so you're growing all this stuff. Where's the market for it?

Ajit George  18:20  

Well, unfortunately, we had assumed that primary market would be restaurants from farm one in farm to we would expand to restaurants and grocery stores because obviously grocery stores buy produce every week from and typically places in California or Mexico or Arizona. So we thought we could if we sold them at the same price they got from those folks, they would have a reason to buy local food that's fresher. But of course, best laid plans go to go completely awry. We planted hundreds of thousands of seeds in February after the farm was set. Our first harvest was scheduled for March 16. As we were harvesting I Got notified that the governor of Delaware had declared a state of emergency and had closed all the restaurants that evening at eight o'clock. So we couldn't get to deliver one produce as we were harvesting. And so as a startup, I knew that if we closed the wait for COVID to be over, and at that point, we thought it'd be shorter two weeks or four weeks. We had no idea at this point how the COVID would affect us. I still felt that we probably wouldn't make it back because life would intervene startups pretty hard once you close to reopen. So in 24 hours, I reimagined a solution. We had crops that were perishable, and we designed that farm to table home delivery program, which for which we didn't have a delivery mechanism. We didn't have packaging. We didn't have a place to take orders, but we scramble in 24 hours. We had a lot of friends on I have a large following personally and on Second Chances Farm. So in the evening of the 17th, we posted this idea called farm to table Got for $99 and 95 cents we were delivered to home without a delivery fee, a package of six freshly grown producing Herbes and had no idea how we would get it to them. But we figured if somebody bought it, we would do it. People start thinking, gee, this is a good idea. And over the course of four weeks, we had over 250 people do it. So we sold everything that we produced. So we ended up finding a whole new marketplace that we had no intention of selling retail or going public. It saved us. But more importantly, what it did is gave us a pivoting story for We're known now nationally for having pivoted and stayed alive. Because it and the word pivot is not something was part of my vocabulary, but almost every single day, people said How did you pivot? And when I share this story, and what kept us alive, is that and what it did is gave confidence to potential investors who were who were planning to invest in March but said let's wait to see the world and by the time We survived through June and July, people said, Ah, I think maybe you are real. And we started to attract the capital that we needed to keep farm two. And now we are attracting national and national and sometimes even international attention. And we're hoping if everything goes well next year to have a farm in Philadelphia, and we are in getting inquiries from all over, but first we need to focus on our expanding our farm into farm two in Wilmington.

Ray Loewe  21:25  

Yeah. Now two more quick things, and we're almost out of time. But But the issue is, so you had a prison population that you offer jobs to

Ajit George  21:34  

formerly incarcerated people.

Ray Loewe  21:36  

So So what's happening to these people, right, so

Ajit George  21:38  

this so we hired the first 10 people in January 6, and the second group of roughly 15 people we hired on April 27. And I'm privileged to say that the next Monday, next Tuesday, September 8, we will have 20 new returning citizens join us When that all of that our hope is that because some people come in and don't work out for variety of reasons our hope is by February 28 2021, when we have second, that two farms fully operational, we hope to have 30 full time returning citizens work out of that group, then each of them will make $31,200 a year plus medical benefits.

Ray Loewe  22:24  

So they can eat they can take care of families and

Ajit George  22:27  

and they are not on welfare and because that 31,200 was just the amount needed, that they couldn't be eligible for Medicaid. So my goal was to wean, the dependency on the state because I believe in individualism and capitalism.

Ray Loewe  22:41  

Cool. Okay, last comment. You were in the White House not too long.

Ajit George  22:45  

I was in the White House last Monday, Monday, August 24. I was we second chances farm got listed as an example one of the best practices in a report science and by Secretary Bennett. Carson from HUD to the President. And in this report, we were listed out of 8760 plus opportunity zones as best practices. And we got attention in the White House because of it. And I was invited to come to the White House to with to meet Secretary Carson and to meet with the executive director of the opportunity zones to share our story with three other communities in the United States out of 1700 communities about how second chances farm is making a difference.

Ray Loewe  23:30  

Okay, absolutely incredible story. And we're gonna have to have you back for a follow up and to hear more about what's going on. But this is why Ajit, you are one of the luckiest people in the world. There's no question about this. Anybody who can take a problem or series of problems like this and turn it into a working model and actually have product on the streets, deserves an awful lot of credit. And, you know, I appreciate the opportunity to have met you and to know you And to be a friend of yours, and I want to hear more, we're gonna have to do it on another day. Before

KC Dempster  24:05  

we go. I wanted to remind people that being one of the luckiest people in the world, it's not a one shot decision. You have to choose to do things every day that will keep you in the direction that you want to go. And we have ways of as through the luckiest guy in the world to help people to do that. And we have we have our website, www.theluckiest peopleintheworld.com where they can find out about all the ways that we can help so Ray?

Ray Loewe  24:37  

Oh, next week, we'll see and Ajit, thanks so much for being here.

Ajit George  24:41  

My pleasure. Thank you for listening

Diane Dayton  24:43  

to changing the rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topics on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.

www.languageuniv.com

TRANSCRIPT

Diane Dayton  0:02  

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by Casey Dempster and Ray Loewe, the Luckiest Guy in the World.

KC Dempster  0:14  

Good morning, everybody. This is KC Dempster, and I'd like to welcome you to Changing the Rules. I am your host, and with me is also our co host Ray Loewe. And Changing the Rules is our answer to the concept that there are Luckiest People in the World. And the reason that they're lucky is that they've learned how to make rules work for them. You know, when we're born people are setting up rules for us. And most of the time they're intended to keep us safe and teach us how to live in society. But as we get older, sometimes they're not relevant anymore and the luckiest people in the world recognize that they choose which rules work for them. They create their own rules and they end designing our own lives and living it to the fullest. So good morning, Ray.

Ray Loewe  1:04  

Good morning, KC and I noticed KC decided to be safe this morning. She was in those wild and wooly countryside of North Carolina. And so she is self quarantining and behaving and following the rules, but I don't know we're gonna let you back on the show after this.

KC Dempster  1:22  

Well, it was rules that I made for myself.

Ray Loewe  1:24  

Okay, you're forgiven that. So anyway, we have a wonderful guest today. But before we get into the guest specifically, one of the things that we triy to do is to highlight one of the luckiest people in the world on our show every week. And Lia, you're going to find out is certainly one of those luckiest people. She deals well with changing the rules and in fact, she's crafting her own rules. She knows what she wants, and she's going after it. And number three is this was kind of a new one but it's one that I find fascinating and and important is that she's following what's fascinating and motivating to her. And she's trying real hard not to let anybody get too much in the way of that. So, Lia, welcome to changing the rules.

Lia Andrews  2:13  

Thank you so much for having me.

Ray Loewe  2:15  

Okay, so let's start out with a little bit of background. Because in college, you started out and you majored in languages. So tell us a little bit about what you were trying to do and what what you thought you were going to do with it at that time?

Lia Andrews  2:31  

Well, um, I actually really didn't like when people asked me about what I was majoring in, because I told them I was majoring in straight English, straight French, no teacher certification and a minor in Spanish. And they were like, "What are you planning to do with that?" And I was like, "I don't know." But I love them and I will figure it out. Just let it be. So it wasn't until I studied abroad that I really realized what I could possibly do and how I could, you know, change the course of my life. As well as others. And so when I got back in 2010, I was like all the more determined to graduate and get started and figure out exactly what my plan was and how I was going to go about it.

Ray Loewe  3:10  

So tell us a little bit about the study abroad. I mean, first of all, it fascinates me that people can do that. And you've obviously done it, and you're making something really critical, critically good out of it. So you're on?

Lia Andrews  3:26  

Yeah, thank you. Um, well, yes, it took place in 2010 in Cannes, France, which is on the French Riviera. And, um, yeah, when I was done studying abroad, and my cousins and my sister, you know, had come with me and we were going through Western Europe and galavanting and eating and just having so much fun. I was realizing when I was looking at the people that like, met, like, from country to country, they are speaking one another's language, they're intermingling. There is a lot of multiculturalism. And I was so much so that it was like I would I'd find myself like stopping and staring because I was like, wow, these people are so integrated in one another's lives. So I just found that to be really special. And it meant a lot to me too, because languages, I didn't see them until sixth grade. And I missed out on an opportunity as a child to, you know, learn a language and have it be a part of my identity. So it was really becoming quickly very important to incorporate that opportunity into what I was planning and what I wanted for the future.

Ray Loewe  4:28  

Yeah, anybody can learn a language if they put their mind to it, but kids learn languages faster, and especially if they're involved in it. So So obviously, this all kind of got woven into a concept. Tell me a little bit about what was on your mind as you went through this and I understand that to a large extent you didn't know you were kind of feeling your way. But But what was the next step what happened?

Lia Andrews  4:55  

So after study abroad, I came back graduated and was a server I was like trying to piece together how I was going to be able to teach children all through something engaging the entire time. Like I didn't want them to feel like they were going to be in their seats. I didn't want them to feel like you know, music and crafts couldn't be a big part of things. So I slowly kind of created this program where every couple minutes we're doing something different so that children are considering learning a second language as something extremely fun versus something that is putting pressure or stress in their lives.

Ray Loewe  5:30  

Yeah, now you said your server I know my one of my experiences. I had French when I was in elementary school and through the seventh grade, and then it kind of ended. And I never followed up but I we took a trip to Paris and I made the mistake of sitting down and trying to order in French. And it was not a very pleasant experience to say the least. Okay, and KC get in on this a little bit because KC decided to learn French pretty much As an adult, right?

KC Dempster  6:01  

Yes, I did, in fact, well to just go back a little bit when I was in high school, I got excellent grades in French. And so I decided that when I went to college, I was going to major in French. And I wasn't going to teach it. I was going to be a simultaneous translator because that was back in the days where that's what they did at the UN. And so I went to college, and several weeks into my first semester, I realized how unprepared I was. Unfortunately, in my school, while they taught us grammar and vocabulary, they never really did conversation. And so I was way way behind my classmates and ended up dropping it. But then later in life, I decided that I was going to give it another shot and I started taking classes and one of the opportunities that arose was another classmate had discovered a woman in Quebec. Who would invite you to live in her home with her and her husband and son for a week and she would teach you French. But largely it was an immersion thing they did not speak English to me at all. And and we would have a class for two hours in the morning and then she would take me someplace in the afternoon and leave me in old Quebec, which, you know, if people who know Quebec is a is the French speaking province in Canada, and I was supposed to use my skills, and I admit I cheated a little bit because for some reason, when people look at me, they automatically speak English. But it but I did find that by the end of the week, I was starting to think in French without trying real hard, but I was so tired that I back slid and so I've lost it, but I really have always wanted to have a second language and i i appreciate parents Who if they have a second language that they teach their children, both of them.

Ray Loewe  8:05  

So it's not too late to be a kid again and get and get in this Lia over here to teach you how to learn and do this stuff. So let's, let's talk a little bit about technique because you light up when we talk about this, you get this big smile on your face. And you were on one of our coffee hours, and you had this fantastic background of color and, and characters and things like that on there. So I can just imagine what you do with kids. So first of all, tell us your favorite person to teach to, and then give us some idea of what goes on in the process of doing it.

Lia Andrews  8:45  

Well, I guess, um, my favorite, gosh, that is hard. I love the preschool age. And I'm specifically going to get into I just did a blog about teaching a second language to two year old so I Love that age group because when I'm teaching them, people, outsiders will look in and be like, she's bombing they are not singing along, they're not really enjoying, they just kind of stare. And within like the first two or three classes, all of a sudden, there's like a switch where the communication, you know, comes into play, they're singing in a second language, they love to use their shaker shakers, and, you know, Mandarin or Spanish is actually becoming a part of their identity and they're enjoying themselves. So I think that's a really special age to start engaging them in a second language. Specifically,

Ray Loewe  9:38  

I gotta go back and become a two year old, otherwise, I'm going to fail, right? I can do this, by the way, I can act like a two year old really easily. So

KC Dempster  9:46  

I was gonna say that if you didn't,

Ray Loewe  9:48  

yeah, so, so. Okay, so how are you going to do this? I mean, you know, why are you gonna put this program in schools with older ages? Are you doing it in home? In a class, what what? Which the way you think you're gonna deliver this?

Lia Andrews  10:04  

So we do, what we do is we specialize with younger children. So you know, will there be a day where adults could sit around and we could do language University language? I'm sure. I mean, I'm always and we can sing songs. Yes, we can sing songs know have a glass of wine, do some French Yeah, as long as you're not stressed, you're going to learn and you're going to want to continue on. So the biggest thing like stopping anybody is like that confidence or that, you know, you have to be humble when you're learning a second language. So going back to your question, I like working with that age group and getting into schools themselves. Just because that age group is so confident in themselves they're excited to learn. So how we're going to be doing this is right now we're doing Zoom classes with families and pods and educational groups as something fun as an extracurricular and then we are also offering a digital program within the schools themselves. where they can have weekly videos and music videos and crafts and things sent directly to them, or they can get those off of our Google Classroom hub. So there's a lot of different ways to actually, you know, introduce a second language now to your children.

Ray Loewe  11:17  

If I'm a stressed parent trying to work at home with kids that are not going to school yet, you can come in and rescue us, right?

Lia Andrews  11:26  

Absolutely.

Ray Loewe  11:27  

How do you do that? What do you just have a contract with somebody and you go in on Zoom and, and we try and get our two year old to sit in front of the iPad, and how does that work?

Lia Andrews  11:37  

So you or school could do it for you. Families can do it on their own as well. But the great thing is, is when we started going digital, I was freaking out because I was like, our whole thing is making a connection with children. How are we supposed to make a connection with them over the computer, and you know what, every single class they came with smiles they came to sing, they came to play games. They came to laugh with us and You know, they learn and parents tell us like they're using the vocabulary. They're so excited for next class. And that is the truly the way to their hearts into their minds is, you know, introducing getting to them young so that they're excited to continue on with the language as they grow.

Ray Loewe  12:15  

So grandparents can buy this should stress children.

Lia Andrews  12:22  

You know what, that is an amazing idea. Yes, absolutely they can,

Ray Loewe  12:25  

and how would they do that?

Lia Andrews  12:27  

So we have subscription services, and those are monthly, and that would arrive to the grandparents house or the child's house. And then they would, you know, open up that package or open up their email and all of that stuff is available. There's going to be a different video with a different theme every month and we'd never ever require our families or our teachers to have a background in that language We are the teachers were taking it on. We don't want you to be stressed, you're stressed about enough. So we are here to take care of it for you. We're here to have them have fun.

Ray Loewe  12:58  

So our kids will teach us songs.

Lia Andrews  13:00  

Exactly.

Ray Loewe  13:01  

And then we'll learn a language to maybe. Yeah. Okay. All right,

KC Dempster  13:05  

Leah, what let Why don't you give us the website address where they can do this?

Lia Andrews  13:10  

Sure. Yeah. So our website is www.languageuniv.com.

Ray Loewe  13:19  

And we'll post that along with the notes on our, on our subscription page, right. So people will actually be able to remember that and find that. Okay, so you have this thing now you're the founder of Language University. All right. So what happened with us? Well, you know, you went here from this kind of, I'm trying to think that you wanted to break rules from when you were in college, right? You didn't want to become a teacher with a teacher certified. You wanted to teach kids your way, right. You went in and out into the hinterland and explore one on one with real people Speaking these languages, and then you come back and you're trying to organize this into language University, so, so tell us a little bit about that and how it occurred and what's happening.

Lia Andrews  14:09  

Sure. So like I said, it was a thought in the back of my mind that I was slowly working on and on a whim, my fiance boyfriend at the time was talking to somebody he had been working with. And he, this guy, Paul Calvarese, who is my now business partner, was about to take a flight to China and live there, like indefinitely. And we had one meeting together completely on a whim. And by the end of that, you know, two hour conversation, he was like, I'm going to help you do this, like I'm the language expert. I'm the music expert, you are great with people you love the program. You know, you love the children. Let's see what we can do. So very quickly went from like an idea and a couple of written down like program ideas to a full blown curriculum that we were implementing within that year.

Ray Loewe  15:00  

So how many languages do you speak?

Lia Andrews  15:03  

I speak French. I speak in the present tense of Spanish.

I dabble in Mandarin. I really, mainly I'm trying to make the language assessable to the little ones. So that's primarily when I'm using my language. So French, you know, I'm good to have a conversation with but the other two, you know if we're gonna have a conversation about our likes, dislikes, sing songs, I'm there for you.

Ray Loewe  15:36  

Okay, so so what do we expect if we have a two year old three year old five year old or, in my case? 78 year old. Okay, and we have sessions with you and what do we expect to be able to do at the end of some period of time here?

Lia Andrews  15:54  

Um definitely like I said, expresses likes and dislikes. Talk about you. You know, foods, and it's mainly more vocabulary based. But what's even more important than the language itself? Is that confidence, I believe, because every parent when you tell them that you have a foreign language program, they're like, Ugh, remember when I had it in high school, like you always get that story. And I'm not saying like, I'm not empathetic or sympathetic to their experience. That's exactly why I'm here. And I'm trying to change that I want the first introduction to a foreign language be like, wow, I want more of this. And I want to meet people and I want to travel and I want to, you know, have these opportunities for my family and my children. And instead of like that intimidation factor, we want it all stress free. So that's really what language university does.

Ray Loewe  16:44  

Outstanding. Okay. So I asked you a question when we were prepping and I don't remember what the question was, but you came back in your response and you said if I'm allowed to dream, so if you're allowed to dream Which going to happen with all of this?

Lia Andrews  17:02  

If I'm allowed to dream Oh, I love that if I'm allowed to dream every single household in the entire world will be will have a Spanish through fun or a language through fun program completely 100% acssessable affordable to them and that we will break these boundaries and these cultural gaps and we can get back to being, you know, a happy human culture that, you know, says Go team.

Ray Loewe  17:31  

Okay, so we are unfortunately at the end of our time already. But with a dream like that. That is why you are one of the luckiest people in the world. There's no question. I think when you look at what happened to you, you did it your way. You're not afraid to change the rules. You're not afraid to think outside the box. And you had this amazing dream of how to how to conquer this language barrier and I have to agree. I mean I never dealt with language because I never dealt with it and now it is it problematic thing for me and most of it, I think you're right is a confidence. So, you know, welcome to our luckiest people in the world tro you know. We'll need to talk more about this and find out how this progresses as we go. And Taylor we're going to take a short break and KC is going to come back and talk for a minute about our friends connection coming up.

Diane Dayton  18:29  

You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  18:40  

Welcome back, everybody. And glad that Ray gave me that lead in I wanted to remind everybody that we are going to offer our virtual Friends Connection conference in about two weeks. If you recall, we did an annual conference last year and we had another one scheduled for this year. And it was cancelled due to the covid virus. So we're trying to keep things going by doing them virtually. And we have a great program on September 16. It is free to everyone because we have some great sponsors for it. And the sponsors are Passeros Coffee, and also Springpoint Choice. You can register and find out more by going to our website, www.theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com. And we hope to see you on September 16. In the meantime, have a great week.

Ray Loewe  19:38  

Yeah, one last comment. I'm sitting here with Lia and she is singing and dancing. While she's sitting here. She did this through the entire program. So I can't imagine what she does with two year olds. I'm gonna have to disguise myself as a two year old. I'm wearing the shirt right now that says "don't grow up. It's a trap." Okay, and I want to revert and learn to speak of foreign language. So, again, Lia, thank you so much for being with us and we look forward to talking with you more in the future. Have a great day everybody.

Diane Dayton  20:08  

Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a podcast designed to help you in your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.

Transcript:

Diane Dayton  0:04  

This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the Luckiest Guy in the World.

KC Dempster  0:14  

Good morning, everybody. This is KC Dempster. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe, the self proclaimed luckiest guy in the world. And he's shaking his head. But that's who he is. And we like to bring you this podcast to introduce you to some very interesting people who have found that they needed to change the rules in order to make their lives the way they want them to be. We have rules that are imposed on us from the time we're born. And most of the time they are meant to keep us safe to teach us how to live successfully in society. But as we become adults, they're not necessarily always the best for us. And sometimes we need to tweak them. Sometimes we need to change them completely. And Sometimes we have to accept them. So today we're going to talk all about changing rules,

Ray Loewe  1:05  

And a few other things, too. So this whole concept of changing the rules is really important. Because if you're following somebody else's rules, you can't be free to be you. And we found that the people who are the luckiest people in the world actually have figured out how to set up their own ruleset. What they've done is they've filtered through the past rules, and they've said, these are good. These are mine, you know, kind of like this social distancing rule we have right now. I think that's a good rule for most people to accept. And then they've they've looked at tradition, and they looked at other things, and they've said, You know, I need to change this because it's going to get in my way. And I've been following this group of the, what I call the luckiest people in the world now for quite a while and they're just a fascinating, fascinating group of people. They're basically people who have personally designed their own lives. they've stepped in, And they've said, This is what I want to do. And I'm not going to let too many people get in my way. And this is what I'm going to do. And once they've designed their life, they go live it to the fullest. And they tend to be happy people, they tend to be interesting people. They're the people I want to hang around with. They're the people I want to be if I can. And I think one of the things that we have been building is this community of the luckiest people in the world community. And we have several events. And usually we have an annual event that is called our Friends Connection. And I just look forward to it. Because what it gets chance to do is hang out with a whole bunch of people that are really interesting, because they truly are some of the luckiest people in the world. And we have one with us today. And we're going to introduce Bill Atkins. Actually, we're gonna let Bill Atkins talk in a little while but for the moment we're not. Bill has a lot of the mindset of the luckiest people in the world. He certainly has dealt with change. He sold a business that he had built from scratch and suffered through and made grow Then he stepped in this thing called retirement and he didn't stop. He had a mission to do certain kinds of things. And he realized that he had given a whole bunch of talents in his life, and he wanted to still use them. He just wanted to use them the way he wanted to use them for change. So we're gonna take a short break, and we're going to come back with Bill Atkins.

Diane Dayton  3:34  

You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

Ray Loewe  3:44  

Good. So KC and I are sitting here fighting about who gets to start. That's always an interesting thing to do. And and she wins most of the time, but this time, she's not gonna win. So so we have Bill Atkins with us today and and Bill, sold a limo business.

Bill Atkins  4:02  

Yes,

Ray Loewe  4:03  

how long ago,

Bill Atkins  4:04  

four and a half years, four and a half years ago.

Ray Loewe  4:06  

And he moved into this thing called retirement. Really bad word. Isn't it

Bill Atkins  4:12  

moved forward into retirement?

Ray Loewe  4:14  

Well, I think you move forward into another because because after he after he, quote, unquote, retired, he wrote a book. And it's called Dare to be Different. And take a couple minutes and tell us a little bit about this book and what you're doing. But

Bill Atkins  4:29  

sure, so I get opportunities to do a lot of speaking. And one of the things that I think, for people to be successful, they truly have to do something different. And one of the when I'm speaking, I often use the example of Steve Jobs selling a 1200 dollar laptop from Apple. And everybody buys it at full price and we today before to get your hands on it, where you could go to Best Buy and buy 299 laptop, they're both laptops, but what did he do different? And once you find out what the person at the other end really wants, you could do that and it becomes quite easy. And that's helped me to be successful enough to retire early. retiring early wasn't something that was the end. For me. It was just, I loved what I did for my 30 years in business. But I wasn't ready to just do nothing. I'm lucky enough to travel out with my wife, which is what we love to do. Our goal is to visit all 50 states but stay two nights in each state for to count. So we're up to 27. But we're getting there. This COVID has put a little bit of a hiccup there. But we still get to travel, maybe some driving times.

KC Dempster  5:28  

I think that that's a key point. Because Ray has said that he wants to visit all 50 states and he counted a bust rest a bus rest stop as a visit to a state and I told him it didn't count.

Ray Loewe  5:42  

Yeah, so we were we were touring the national parks A while ago and we had taken a bus trip just to be with a group of people. And everybody on the bus conned the bus driver into taking a a probably about a 42 second detour into Montana so we could all count Montana as a state that we visited but I've been back and I've stayed overnight in Montana. So now counts.

KC Dempster  6:04  

Okay,

Bill Atkins  6:05  

what sounds like a beautiful place, you can always go back and enjoy it again.

Ray Loewe  6:07  

Oh, you know if there's time, you know, and and the problem is it's a big, big world out there. So one of the things that you're doing right now is you're giving back to the community too, because you're involved in something called SCORE.

Bill Atkins  6:21  

Yes. And score is mostly people who are business leaders, or former business owners, and they have the time and talent to give back. So what I love about SCORE is our mission is to help people start businesses or grow businesses. And 30 years ago, when I was first starting, a lot of things I did, I just winged it, I made it up as I went along and see saw what worked and what didn't work. But with SCORE my chapter, we have about 35 experienced people we go out, we help people. And the cool thing is, we never ever charge anything for it. It's always free. Everything that we do is free. There's no hidden agenda that we're going to introduce is something And then sell you something our core values are we never sell anything. And it's really amazing that the people really get something. I'm a big believer in reciprocation. And if you give first you're going to get an example, I was used as if you were to go to a department store like Macy's right now, and they have a double set of doors, and you are walking up there and you hold that door open, and the person behind you comes in, you hold the door open, as grumpy a person that is as miserable as they might think they're day is, they're gonna open the door for you. It's just the way we're wired, right? So if you always give first, maybe you don't always get something in return, but more often you will. And that's we really everybody should be living living their lives, I think, right?

KC Dempster  7:35  

What goes around comes around.

Ray Loewe  7:37  

So tell us a little bit about how you got involved in score and then what you actually do what, you know, what are the steps involved?

Bill Atkins  7:45  

Sure. So for score, we're all volunteers. I happen to be the chapter chair and what my role is pretty much keeping in touch with the 30 mentors that we have, and I love marketing. I love ways to figure out how to make things better. So we're doing a lot of things now. You know, we have to pivot in life. So a year ago, if I would have went to our chapter and said, hey, let's start doing webinars, I would have had a lot of pushback. Some of these are older guys, and they don't like change. But then COVID comes, we used to do seminars, no more seminars, and I was amazed how quickly people pivoted to be accepting of webinars. And last year, one of our months in let's see, in May of last year, we had two seminars, we checked in total 29 people this year in May, with webinars, we attracted 540 people. Yeah, yeah. So the thing is, you no longer have geographic limitations. People don't have to drive to a place take a couple hours out of the day. So it's really aligned itself well with people and they can pick and choose whatever seminars or whatever webinars relate best to them.

Ray Loewe  8:46  

You know, there's no substitute in my opinion for face to face meetings and stuff like that. But you know, when you think about all the driving time now, maybe I shouldn't say this to a former limo owner, But But you know, you think of all the time I spent and I used to spend in a car ad you can be just as effective, much more efficient, you know, sitting at your desk and talking to people over video screen. So you know what's going to happen as we move forward to these small businesses? How many of them are going to change because of technology? Are we really going to go back to where we were, or

Bill Atkins  9:24  

I think it's going to be a combination of both, like, for instance, this company that that nobody really heard of Zoom. One for being a little company to everybody's using Zoom overnight. And the cool thing is, as you see businesses being able to figure out how to make things work, you know, luckily, we're in the summer now in LA, the restaurants can have indoor seating, and they're able to have outdoor seating, a lot of restaurants are offering outdoor seating that I would have never thought of it. And once a summer it's outside, it's actually a better thing, better experience as a customer. And I think that's a holding. If you're in business or just in life, you have to always be thinking okay, what's next? So if something happens, I can either complain about it and whine about inquire about it and find all the faults. I could say, okay, that happened, what's next? And you keep that attitude of what can I do to make the best of this? you'll generally have good results.

Ray Loewe  10:09  

Cool. You know, so many people that I know have a book in mind and they never write it. You actually wrote yours, right? And we can buy it on Amazon.

Bill Atkins  10:18  

Correct. This book has been a long time in the coming. I always meant to write a book because the other thing when you're a speaker, I speak I'm lucky enough I speak a lot of places once you have a published book, especially published book that people have paid for. They look at you entirely differently. So I was thinking, and it's almost like when I'm speaking, the title of what you're talking about is probably the most difficult thing to come up with. But once you find out the title, then then it's easy. So I thought dare to be different, was a good way that would be a little bit intriguing for people. And I've used a lot of specific examples in there because I didn't want it to just be some higher level kind of theory kind of thing. I'd rather have it where it was applicable to people that they can use that example in their own lives, and maybe had better results.

Ray Loewe  11:04  

Yeah, and your subheading under it is grow your business in any economy. Boy, is that timely or is that timely?

Bill Atkins  11:10  

Well, I in the little business, I went to two major things I went through 9/11 Oh, and most of our travelers were Wall Street guys. And that devastated our business. We lost 65% of our business in one month. Wow. And then we went through 2007 and 2008. Again, what happened? This, the economy tanked. We have our Wall Street guys. And unfortunately, a lot of my friends walls and limousine business. They went under, they just, they didn't know what to do. They didn't try anything different. And they went under, when maybe have to think of things like okay, now what are we going to do? How are we going to do this? Because my, my responsibility was I had drivers. And if they're not, if they're not getting paid, that's awful. So I have to make sure that to keep the business not only for myself, but for my drivers because they're counting on me. They're depending on me to give them an income. So it was really important for me not just for my own business, but for the people that counted on it.

Ray Loewe  11:59  

So what are some The things that a limo guy implement when 9/11 occurs.

Bill Atkins  12:03  

Well, for one of the things that we one of the things that we did well 9/11 was kind of a difficult thing because of just the tragedy of it. Yeah, let's skip ahead to the 2000-2008 when that happened in the economy tanked a lot of our travelers lost their jobs right? They've been working for many the Wall Street firms and they cut back the back 25-30% and jobs being shut all over. For us. What happened is two things. One is the executive assistants were told by their finance people find cheaper airfare find cheaper limo find cheaper hotels find cheap because we want to cut cost. And for us, what happened is people started calling in the assistants and saying, What's your way to go to New York City? What's your rate? And what we would do is we'd have a conversation rather than just barking out a rate. And we'd explain we said, Listen, you have a big responsibility here, your executive he or she needs to get where they want to go without any hiccups. So I want you to come with us but even if you don't be careful of that cheap ones out there. Because if that executive doesn't get picked up, he or she is going to remember you, but not in a good way, where we know that if everything works, our cars are on time, we're friendly, we know what we're doing, we're safe, your executives going to have a good experience. And then he's also going to remember you. So it's your choice, the executive probably won't notice a difference of $10 from going from really good to being cheap. But he will notice in the quality of the service, so we both have it on the same line. And by going with us, it'll just work. And that seems to resonate rather well.

Ray Loewe  13:30  

So you found the solution. And then you implemented it add to what did that teach you when you went on? I guess you've gone out of the limo business before the next crisis occurred. Okay. But But where did this kind of thought come from? Because obviously, your competitors didn't do it, and they're not here.

Bill Atkins  13:50  

Well, earlier on in life. I was once had my own business since I was a little guy. So what do I do? I go to school for computer science. It was something that was intriguing to me come out of college. And I really didn't want to sit in the back of a desk and just do computer science all the time. And I've always worked in retail and I really loved it. I love the thing of talking to people. And as I advance going to managers, I love the thing of talking to my employees and getting just encouraging them to do the best that they can. The way I came into the limo business is, I had a friend whose dad owned a funeral home, and whenever he needed a funeral to be covered with hearses and limousines, he would call upon a competing funeral home. Now, that was his competition, right? So they wouldn't send out the nice car, they'd send out the junky one, they wouldn't send out the nice driver, they'd send out the junk one after all it's his competition, right. So what he did is he started calling limo companies and since that was their only business, everything worked. So I thought, I know what I need to do  I need to start a limousine business. And the next day I saw a used stretch limousine for sale, and I bought it and there wasn't a family member or friend who thought it was a good idea. Whatever you do, businesses fail. It's nothing but headaches. But I tried it. And before that happened when I was in retail, if I didn't like what I was doing, I'd quit. And I go try something else. Because nobody wants to spend your life doing something that you hate. So if I didn't like it, I'd quit. And people say, Well, why do you keep switching jobs and say, Well, I didn't like it. And then when I finally hit upon my business, which is what I wanted to do, since I was a little guy that lasted for 30 years, and I loved it, too, I was fortunate, I still talk to my customers now. And I still talk to my drivers now, four and a half years later, because it was all relationship based.

Ray Loewe  15:21  

And you made it work.

Bill Atkins  15:22  

Yeah, we were very powerful. We. So when I called my customers, and I wanted to know, why do they travel with me? Why did they do business with me? Because that's a question that most business owners have. And they do a bad job of it, they send you a survey for 20 minutes, we had to fill out these bullet points. And they don't really get any information. And the person says, I'm not going to give you 20 minutes of my time because I bought something on Amazon. But what if you did it differently? What if you said, Ray you've been one of my best customers for the last 1012 years? Can you help me What's one or two reasons that you do business with us and I wrote it down and then went on to the next one because in 2007-2008, we didn't have a whole lot of business. going on. So I spent all my time talking to my customers. And an interesting thing happened. I found out what why they do business with us. And the three reasons were they like that they be picked up on time. They liked that they were friendly, local driver, and they like to to get there safe. So that became our mantra when we're marketing we do that. But the interesting thing that happened is, two weeks later, after putting the call into Ray, I get a call from Ray to say, you know what, Bill, actually, I'm going to the airport next week, or, you know, my neighbor travels a lot. Because again, reciprocation is an amazing thing. And if we give first without expecting anything in return, you always get more back. So really, it was a unintended consequence, but it really helped us a lot.

KC Dempster  16:38  

You know, a lot of the things that you're saying are, you know, somebody listening will go well, Well, yeah, but the fact of the matter is, we all know this, but we don't all do it.

Bill Atkins  16:47  

Yeah, well, people are afraid to change, right as a speaker. I'm also involved in Toastmasters. Toastmasters helps people to become a confident speaker and leader. And I love the first time that somebody is up in front of the room and people are told at a young age. You have to give a speech in front of the room, and people are gonna be looking at you they aren't you afraid, and you put this bad bad in a child's head that they're going to fail. And guess what they do what they think they're going to do, right? So Toastmasters helps people to go from being that shy person actually shivering while they're giving their speech. And we tell the people in the first time there, they said, this is a place that you could fail. Because even if you do miserable, we're going to clap. We're going to like it. And we're going to ask you to come back again. And the transformation from somebody being fearful of public speaking to being better at public speaking isn't your speaking it's confidence. And confidence is really important. Not arrogance, but confidence. Now, my people are confident things just work better. Right?

Ray Loewe  17:40  

So where are you going from here? So we know you're going to live to be hundred years old, right? Hopefully? Well, you know, that's a fastest growing segment of the population right now. And you know, what, if you live to be 100 you know, I, you're this you're not retired. You're so far from being retired. It's ridiculous, right?

Bill Atkins  17:57  

Well, I tend to be very obsessive, so even Score sometimes my wife will go, Hey, man, didn't you retire. But the thing is, I'm doing this because I like to. And that's always a good thing to do. So when I worked, I like doing it. And now that I'm not working, I like doing it. And when you like doing it, it's really not work. It's something you enjoy. I mean, people have different hobbies, why not do something that you enjoy, right? And if you do get to retire, don't give up. Don't be Don't retreat. Don't just do nothing. That's a shame. Try different things. And if you don't like it, try something different. You don't know what it is until you hit that. Whatever that is. That is your unique.

Ray Loewe  18:30  

Okay, so now everybody can see why Bill Atkins is one of the luckiest people in the world. There's no question about this. He has designed his own life around what he loves to do. He's He's taken all of these skills that he built during his life. He's still using them. And I don't see any end. I you know, I think this is just going to go on except that you're going to see more states as soon as the economy as soon as this COVID stuff opens up, right?

Bill Atkins  18:58  

I hope so. And I don't want to see the end either

Ray Loewe  19:02  

none of us do and, and join us one of the things we do, by the way is we have a Friends Connection trip as part of our group. And we'll see you on that as soon as the world opens up, and we'll get you out of this local stuff and into the rest of the world too. So, let's do a quick break and then KC's gonna come back and sum up for us because unfortunately, we're out of time again.

Diane Dayton  19:27  

You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.

KC Dempster  19:36  

Welcome back, everybody. And boy, that time did fly. I want to remind everybody that you can learn more information about the luckiest people in the world about our podcast, and a lot of the other things that we do to help people to become the Luckiest People in the World at our web on our website. theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com you can add the www if You think you need to, and we do these podcasts every week. So come back next week and listen for another exciting show.

Ray Loewe  20:08  

And when you're on the website it check our virtual conferences coming up. There's a magic button right on the front page. And if you click it, it will take you to a wondrous world of lucky people.

Diane Dayton  20:21  

Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the Luckiest Guy in the World.