GET RICH & LIVE FREE WITH JOIN UP DOTS

Introducing James Mulvany Todays guest joining us on the Join Up Dots podcast is a man on a mission. To not only change the world of podcasting but also commercial radio. Coming from the UK, this is one of those classic stories as you will hear when a passion matches a need and success occurs in rather quickly compared to mist. He is the founder of Radio.co and Podcast.co, where he provides the infrastructure to broadcast your words to the world. However, this is very different from what you would be getting from a show like Join Up Dots. His software allows for multiple radio hosts scheduled around the world, going live at their regular times, building their own followings, just like you would get when you tune in your own radio and hear your favourite morning show. All from the back of the garden, or your bedroom if that suits better. How The Dots Joined Up For James As he says "I was quite a geeky, introverted kid and definitely not the most outgoing kid in the world. It was good for me going to university because that gave me a bit of a social life and got me out there in the real world. That was really useful from a personal perspective but also from a business perspective as well. There is only so much you can achieve, when you're sat behind your computer. I've never had a job, I started very young about 16 and was interested in radio and being a presenter. I was also into making websites and was teaching myself that. I decided not to pursue a career in radio but in the process of doing a bit of work experience in radio I learnt how to setup online radio and set up a stream to the internet. At the time there were a few companies offering this service and it seemed like a way to make a few quid. So in 2004 I set up a website called Wavestreaming. I didn't really know what I was doing so I got the help of a guy in Australia who helped me set up the servers and stuff. I went to university and had a nice income on the side, I think that first year we turned over about £18,000. I did Interactive Multimedia at Uni and spent a lot of that time working on the business. At this time we were still selling streaming services to radio stations. I graduated Uni and hired some staff and managed to grow the business to the point where we got a very big deal with AOL, this was about 2011. And the rest is history. So it seems like a life with no worries and dark nights of the soul, but was this actually the case? And where does he see the world of home broadcasting going in the future....more of the same, or something quite different? Well lets find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots, with the one and only James Mulvany Show Highlights During the show we discussed such weight subjects with James Mulvany such as: James shared his first dream of getting £1,000 into his bank account and when he achieved it how good it felt. We talk about the drawbacks of running a team and how it can frighten so many people from actually scaling their own business. Why fundamentally being an entrepreneur is solving problems for as many people as possible. And lastly................. Why its so important to make a difference to your customers by truly listening and talking to them as much as possible. How To Connect With James Mulvany Website Facebook Linkedin Instagram Return To The Top Of James Mulvany If you enjoyed this interview with James Mulvany why not check out other inspiring interviews like Clint Arthur, Lunden DeLeon and Jack Canfield Or of course you can check out thousands of podcast interviews in our archives here Interview Transcription For James Mulvany Interview David Ralph 0:01 Once upon a time, there was a guy with a dream a dream, which is Jobs himself online and have a kick ass life working when he wanted him where he wanted across the world. Little did he know that dream would lead him into a world of struggle, burnout and debt. Until he found the magic ingredient and knows drunk was became a thing of the past, of course, was bad person. And now My dream is to make things happen. BU Welcome to Join Up Dots. Intro 0:31 When we're young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here's your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph. Unknown Speaker 0:55 Yes. David Ralph 0:56 Good morning. Good morning to you and welcome to Join Up Dots. Thank you for giving You're is giving me a buddies and everything in between. Now today's guest joining us on the Join Up Dots podcast is a man on a mission to not only change the world of podcasting but also commercial radio. Coming from the UK This is one of those classic storeys that you hear when a passion matches a need and success, I suppose occurs in rather quickly come compared to most out there. He's the founder of radio CO and podcast CO, where he provides the infrastructure to broadcast his words to the world and for everybody out there. Now it's very different from what you will be getting from a show like Join Up Dots he software allows for multiple radio hosts or podcast is scheduled around the world going live at their regular times building their own followings, just like you would get when you tune into your own radio and hear your favourite Morning Show, all from the back of the garden or your bedroom about suits better. Now, as he says I was quite a geeky introverted kid, and definitely not the most outgoing kid in the world. It was good for me going to university Because that gave me a bit of a social life and got me out there in the real world was really useful from a personal perspective, but also from a business one as well. There's only so much you can achieve when you're sat behind your computer CKUKV listeners, I've never had a job. I started very young about 16 and was interested in radio and being a presenter, I was also into making websites and was teaching myself fat. I decided not to pursue a career in radio. But in the process of doing a bit of work experience in radio, I learned how to set up online radio and set up a stream to the internet. And at a time, there were a few companies offering this service and it seemed like a way to make a few quid Now roll on 2004 I set up a website called wage streaming. I didn't really know what I was doing. So I got the help of a guy in Australia who helped me set up the service and stuff and I went to university and had a nice income on the side. I think that first year, we turned over 18 grain, great part to start the show. So it seems like a life with no one Dark Nights of the soul. But was this actually the case? And where does he see the world of home broadcasting going in the future? More of the same or something quite different? Well, let's find out as we bring on to the show to start Join Up Dots with the one and only James Mulvany. James Mulvany 3:17 Morning, James, how are you sir? I'm, I'm brilliant. You know what an intro David, I can't believe the granularity you went to there. I feel like we actually don't need to record the podcast because you've just summarise everything I was gonna say anyway. David Ralph 3:30 Well, can I tell you why I do that? James? Should I tell you? I was on about Episode Five of Join Up Dots. And it was right in the early days and I realised that most people come with their keynote storey but I like yeah, time and time again. So I just bought like m&m. in that film. I'm going to share the storey before they get to it and then we can go in any direction we want. James Mulvany 3:54 That's a good idea, to be honest. I mean, I've got lots of I can elaborate on that storey as well. There's bits that you missed out there. So David Ralph 4:00 We can go anywhere we want. So Mr. James Mulvany, thank you so much for being here and Join Up Dots because I am a fan and I want to get straight into radio.co. First of all, because this is a platform that I have looked at numerous times, and just recently down heart FM in the United Kingdom, got rid of their breakfast show hosts and they sort of amazing sort of centralised one. And the Essex guy who has been the unplug the radio host for about 25 years, came round to the back of the garden, Join Up Dots, I sat with him for an afternoon. And to be honest, I spent most of the time trying to promote radio.co saying, Look at this, you can do this yourself. You can get all the ex hosts have been sacked by heart, create your own radio show. This is brilliant. He wasn't as excited as I was. Now. Do you find that you find that podcasters look at it and go wow, this is such an opportunity. James Mulvany 4:59 I think They are, there's obviously some crossover between podcasting and radio, a lot of radio stations will run a podcast, not every podcaster wants a radio station. And one thing I can tell you is, we have a huge chunk of customers at Radio co who are ex jocks or ex presenters or whatever you want to call them. And they've decided that they want to leave the industry and start their own business and run their own online radio station, which can sometimes be you know, super focused around a specific topic or it can be super focused on a specific genre of music. And you know, they have a great time. And the great thing about that the platform is entirely cloud based. So you don't have to have a fancy studio. And also you don't have to be located in the same place as your DJ, your other DJ. So you can have people come and broadcast on your station from anywhere in the world. And you know, do it from the comfort of their own home or some people have like a home studio like you do the back of the garden or in their bedroom or whatever. And it just, you know, it kind of encourages creativity and collaboration, I think. David Ralph 5:58 Now, I listened to Chris happens the Breakfast Show guy in the United Kingdom he stole James Mulvany 6:03 you from radio to to virgin did he did David Ralph 6:05 he did yeah I know he's and he stole me was is exactly the same show there's no difference it's just like he's old show has been moved across but he was doing it all from Portugal on a laptop and even though I the same thing I was thinking my god it people out there aren't grasping the fact that nowadays they don't have to go to an office they could set up a tree and build a business. We've never got them we've never got them Join Up Dots is a failure it me and Chris Evans haven't shown them a new way. That's excellent you James but at its core business is about creating the lifestyle with the businesses second place, James Mulvany 6:45 I think. Yeah, to begin with, you know, like back in the day when I first started out, it was me on my own. And, you know, I was the sales guy, the support guy that you know, software guy, I did everything I want many hats, a bit of jack of all trades, master of none. But what it did give me his ability to sort of understand each area. And, you know, when I started hiring staff, you know, he allowed me to, for example, talking to developers, I have a good understanding of how it all links together and, and how code works. Don't write any code anymore. But I think to begin with, and having that creativity and that freedom, and it was really like a lifestyle business back then, look, I think you mentioned in your introduction, I remember being in sixth form, start a website, I might go back then was like, Can I get my bank balance to 1000 pounds like this almost unachievable, you know, goal that was kind of and then I did it probably within the space of, I don't know, five, six months. And I remember hitting that goal and thinking this is amazing, you know, and, and as you said, I think first year 16 years old, we turned over about 18 grand, which were 16 old kids not bad. And but you know, obviously then as time progresses and things grow, you know, it becomes more of a you know, more of a commercial entity I guess, you know, the we've got about 30 of us on the team now. So, you know, things are a bit different now than then. But I kind of still always have a, you know, like kind of fond memory those early days when it was just me and I was kind of, you know, I had that sort of opportunity ahead of me thinking I can just do anything I can take over the world with this. And it really gave me a lot of excitement. Because, you know, I think as you said in the introduction, my original plan was to go into radio as a broadcaster as a DJ, and sort of did a little bit of that. And then I kind of thought, Well, you know, I'm going to go off to university and sort of I studied interactive multimedia, which is basically web design and stuff like that. And you know, that that would kind of gave me the building blocks to sort of start growing the business a bit more. David Ralph 8:45 The amount of radio hosts that I have spoken to over the last two or three years and but majority of them say it's so restrictive in radio, they spend most of these days doing maps and working out if I play a disagreement Song how long till the top of the hour and all that it's just like mass mass mass and I can't say anything. Now with Join Up Dots, I literally open my mouth and whatever comes out goes into people's ears. And I can't understand with the the growth and the explosion, why more people aren't going that way? Why do people still want to get a job when you can create your own job, James? James Mulvany 9:24 I think it's the security isn't it? And it's the fear of the unknown. If you're a DJ and you've got that talent, you've got that, you know, core communication built within you that you can kind of get people on your side, you can, you know, that can be translated to so many different areas of running a business, you know, if you're a good presenter, you can be a really good salesperson, you can be really good marketer, you know, you've got that ability to present a camera concepts and ideas, record videos, and I've really, especially in the early days, I really saw drew upon that, that talent, those skills, to launch the business and actually get kind of get one Over on the competition, because a lot of the competition were for focusing really on the technical aspects of everything, but actually, they weren't good at sales. They, they were too scared. And I still see this today, they're too scared to appear in front of a camera or too scared to actually go in front of a mic and actually start selling their products and speak to people. So I think, you know, as a creative person, if you're in broadcasting for your podcasting, you know, you can take those skills and you can easily turn it into a business because so much of being a business relies on being a good communicator, a good communicator. David Ralph 10:30 I agree with you totally. And what I really picked up on there is how so many people try to sell based around the technical aspects. Yeah, but majority of people don't give a monkey's about the technical aspect. They they just want to know the end product. It's the knowledge gap that you've got to cross it, sir. Yeah, we can show you how to live a life like this. We can show you how you sit in your underpants and create a business. We want to show you five. And these are the tools that get there. Now when I [email protected]. And obviously, we're going Talk about podcast co as well. I looked at that, and I thought to myself, this is so sexy, but I could create my own show. Once I finished, somebody else goes live. And we can broadcast to the world, we could get a load of podcasters, together, boarding. And then I looked at it and thought, No, actually, I just like doing my own thing. I don't want to be responsible for sort of other people. Is that a stumbling block as well? Do you see it where people look at and go, I love this, but actually, who's going to manage it? I don't. But the talent doesn't want to be the studio manager. James Mulvany 11:32 I mean, yeah, it's interesting. You mentioned this, and I think radio.co platform does make that process very straightforward. I've got to start off by saying the reality of managing people can sometimes be difficult. I ran a radio station here in Manchester called MCI live for two years. And unfortunately, we had to call it a day at the start of this year, mainly for commercial reasons. We were trying to pick up sponsorship. And we you know, we did, we did some small deals, but we ultimately we didn't get that big headline sponsor, but we had a lot of fun in running it and it was a good guinea pig for the business. And we had a studio which was really cool. It was actually based above a convenience store which is kind of like a hipster cool convenience store and with there we have this sort of mezzanine level we thought let's put a studio up there. So it was really good. But you know what managing day we had sort of lots of electronic music DJ presenters coming in and and organising that we probably had about 50 people at any one time. And obviously, the people came and went over the couple years, we ran it, but you know, coordinating 50 people was a big task we needed to have, you know, I had what, two three full time people working on that project. Just to kind of coordinate that. And also obviously handle things like the marketing Instagram, etc. But it was, you know, it was a big ask. David Ralph 12:50 And it was the time I used to run sales teams and insurance teams and at 10 to eight the phone rang. You realised it was somebody I can't get mean I've got flu, and baby, but the next day they were in and there was so much hassle about trying to cover cover this. What would be your response? If somebody says to you, James, do I create a company with loads of employees? Or do I just create something very, very small, but provides me with a lifestyle. I may not be a millionaire, but I earn 100 pounds more of and I need each month to pay all my bills, have lovely holidays, have pub lunches and all kinds of little luxuries. So I'm nice. What would you say? James Mulvany 13:36 I think it depends on the individual. You know, by nature, I'm very ambitious. I'm now you know, pretty successful. But to begin with, I was I was just sort of earning a good living and then it kind of went from making a good living to having staff and obviously then it gets to the point where, you know, you're making significant profit. I think that depends on what you want. You need to And also to begin with, when I was at university, I wasn't I didn't have any kind of ambition to have a company, which was turning over, you know, multiple million amounts. I wanted us to make a few quid on the side. But then obviously things change over time. And, you know, you kind of your business grows and then obviously you kind of get bit more hungry you think, well, let's, let's try and push ourselves further. So I think to start off with a lot of people, you know, who are perhaps working in a job, or they're just starting out, they just finished school or college, and they may be looking into going to sort of university or whatever, there's no harm and just running something as a lifestyle business. That's what I did for probably five or six years before things started really taking off. David Ralph 14:45 And when when did it take off to a point that you realise because no matter how we sort of frame it, there's a hassle running a business. They go serious? Yeah. When you get to that point when you actually think yourself, hang on, are we growing Fast Should I scale back? We all have those decisions in our heads where we think the flexibility that I did have when it was all fun and exciting, and we were coming in each day and everybody loved working with each other. It's lost a bit of that. Do you remember that? James Mulvany 15:14 Yeah, I mean, you know, you have just like any job, you have good days and bad days, you know, you'll have periods where you've got a But fundamentally, being an entrepreneur is about problem solving. Right? So, if I have, if I have, you know, stumbling things along the way, which Every business has, you know, your job as a, as a founder or entrepreneur is to find solutions to those problems. And yeah, of course, you have your ups and downs not every day you go in and you thinking, yeah, this is brilliant, but then there obviously there are highs or lows. It's just that's the kind of storey I think that's the journey going as an entrepreneur, but I think the more experience you get, you know, you you mentally more equipped to deal with the downfalls and the pitfalls and the problems along the way and they don't affect you as much you kind of take them on the chin a bit more to begin with, you know, I certainly found myself kind of quite erratic, you know, I had this big dear things really took off for us in about 2011 2012 struck a big deal with AOL who owned a product called outcast and that was the core sort of engine of our system. So things took off very quickly for us that was had a business good wave stream then I knew the deal wasn't going to be there forever and I knew that it will might last five years or so. So but but it but it went as quickly as it came it went so I think it lasted about two and a half years that contract and you know, it was very it was good for us. We made a lot of money as a business. But then when it when it went away, you know, that really hit me hard for a year I was sort of, you know, in my own head, struggling and thinking God What am I going to do? I've got all these staff and everything's going to come crashing down around me and everything I've worked for him you know, and kind of looking at all these extremes in my own head but actually reality was it did that didn't happen, you know, and but it what it did do is forced me to kind of get my head together and figure out what what's next? How can we do better? And how can we kind of go one over on this? David Ralph 17:05 And who supported you at that time when mentally but demons are in your head thinking, yeah, God, who was the one that you went to James Mulvany 17:12 need to speak to? You know, you speak to your friends, your family, and half the time, they're just like, Yeah, he's just whinging about this again. But, but then I think, you know, actually, ultimately, you've got to help yourself, you know, no one's going to give you a magic solution to a problem. And especially in business, when you're when you've got the reins, you know, it's down to you to actually figure out right, am I going to keep going on this path? Are we going to choose a new direction to go in and how we going to solve this problem? David Ralph 17:38 Let's play some words and then come back to James he is Oprah. Oprah Winfrey 17:42 The way through the challenge is to get still and ask yourself, what is the next right move? not think about, Oh, I got all of this stuff. What is the next right move? And then from that space, make the next right move and the next right move? Not to be overwhelmed by it because you know, your life is bigger than that one moment, you know, you're not defined by what somebody says, is a failure for you, because failure is just there to point you in a different direction. David Ralph 18:13 Now I created Join Up Dots back in 2004, based out 2014, based around the words that Steve Jobs will say later on, and it's been a mantra of mine, but I didn't really understand it until recently. And just recently, James or about couple years ago, I went through a really bad sort of health phase, big wobble, everything went skew with and tix up, as we say over here, and I really struggle. Now through that speech by Oprah and fruit, a speech from Steve Jobs and the fact that I'm still talking in the best microphone now. I've got a totally different mindset. I now think to myself, if it goes bad, I will deal with it. If it goes bad in the future, I will deal with it. If it goes I just say That everything that's thrown at me now. It just means me being quiet, looking at it and thinking, How do I get past this? And the fact that I'm now 50 years old or coming up 50 years old? And that's the time James, you say, No, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. But I'm coming up 50 years old, and I have made a billion decisions, right decisions, wrong decisions. I have led me to this point. I totally think that what's going to stop those decisions still occurring going forward, you know, until I get run over or die. Literally, I don't think that anything can go wrong. I just think that if it does go wrong, I deal with it what you think? James Mulvany 19:38 I think you're right. And I think one of the things I've learned about myself as well as you can, you can kind of go through periods where you become a bit complacent, right? If you don't make any changes, everything's going sweet. And, you know, you just sort of kind of get used to doing it and then almost go into a bit routine, which I think is fine. And you can do that for to a certain extent. Because ultimately, you know, when you're launching a business And, as I said, I've launched today, probably something like six different companies over the years, couple of them have worked out, couple of them haven't, some of them have sold on various different things. But you know, you go through each time you launch your business, you go for that intense period of hard work hard graft, not knowing if it's actually going to pay off. And, you know, sometimes it's, you know, it's really got to be, you've got to throw your life into it for a year or so. But, you know, then, you know, once you've, you've sort of started reaching a certain level of success, you can actually take a step back and enjoy it. And I don't think there's anything wrong in doing that, you know, have a couple of years, we think, actually, you know, we've got systems in place to deal with most of the stuff now, you know, my job as a founder, you know, can kind of just be to keep everything ticking over for a couple of years. Until then you decide, either start another business or, you know, in my case, sometimes it's got a right what can we do next? We got to start shaking things up now. And it's interesting because, you know, just launched podcast co so that's been, you know, radios very successful now. And, you know, we're still pushing boundaries and still innovating. But it has been in terms of development wise, what we've been doing is quite been quite quiet for the last year because it is quite a mature platform now. But now I'm starting to think, right, we've had a kind of year off radio.co, almost not not a literally a year off, but you see what I mean? In terms of mean, I'm sort of putting my mindset into it. But now I'm thinking right, I need to go back in and focus on it again, for probably like a six month period and go kind of a bit more intense on it. Because, you know, we've, we've grown the team, so we could work on two businesses, which is important, I think, you know, it's important to have, that you don't don't lose momentum in your existing business if you start a new one. But then, ultimately, is there's only so much bandwidth a thing as an entrepreneur that you've got. So, you know, sometimes you need to give it your own one projects and sort of scale that what you're thinking about on another project for a period of time, but then, you know, readjust that balance at some point. David Ralph 21:58 I now say to people Van Bashir, I've been retired. And I mean that I've been doing bad for 58. He's not bad at all. But I've been doing stuff and I've been, you know, working on things. But it hasn't been the room that I had a couple of years ago where it was all I have to get this going, I have to get this but some Oh, this is Yeah, this year has been very much about myself, looking at what I want, and I can now see what I want. And it's not what I wanted at the beginning. Have you seen that with yourself that the original dream actually was just just starting dream is not the real dream? James Mulvany 22:37 Yeah, I think things change over time. Of course they do. And, you know, and also, I think, for me, I found, you know, what was caught I'll bring this up, bring this up in a sermon, actually. But, you know, I think you, you kind of get you're aware of your abilities and you know, once you've a certain level of achievement that you kind of, you know, I don't think you should ever sort of stop you keep need to keep learning need to keep that hunger for more, I think but you can kind of think he actually, you know what, I kind of know what I'm doing a bit now. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, when I, when I was at university, I really didn't know what I was doing. I was just winging it. And I kind of was just trying all these different ideas. And, you know, some things worked and some things didn't. But you know, nowadays, I kind of got a bit of a better understanding of what my capabilities are where my sort of expertise lies, which I think is, you know, a good thing. But then I'm say, I'm not I'm not suggesting you should ever think, right, I'm done. Now, you know, because I think there's always room to move forward. There's always room to learn new skills of find out about new things. David Ralph 23:38 But isn't that key to growing a business where probably 90% of the effort is learning about what you don't know? Yeah, completely self developing and upscaling and I come back from the my wife says, you know, what you've been doing? Have you been recording podcasts? I say, No, no, I haven't been doing it. I've just been reading stuff and looking at stopping and you have to be careful and this is a question You're actually, when you realise that there are knowledge gap

So many people want to start their own podcast and have the hopes and dreams of making a huge success of their efforts. But unfortunately nowadays 85% of new podcasts fail to make the mark that they want as they dont understand the whole picture. You see when you want to start a podcast you have to understand how the podcast fits into everything else in your business. You have to understand that the podcast is nothing more than a vitally important component to the marketing funnel. What you say ?? A Marketing funnel....what's a marketing funnel? Well my young podcasting padawans, the marketing funnel is the key component that brings it all together. Without one of these then the podcast wont do anything at all. Ready to understand more?? What Is The Key To Start Your Own Podcast Ok lets look at it as a whole. A podcast is simply free content that people listen to. You cant make any money from a podcast on its own. You have to add something to the podcasts value where others will then add their own value to it and pay you. So if you get a huge audience then companies will want to sponsor your podcast and you have found that value. You have an audience of people, that someone else wants to get in front of KERCHING. That is the Start Your Own Podcast strategy that most people aim for at the beginning, but believe me this is the wrong way to go. You are giving away massive real estate and equity in your podcast. Why would you get £20 per listener, instead of finding out what those listeners really want and get £500 from each. Well we wouldn't, its a stupid route to go. Instead we want to provide products that we can sell on our own. We want to make sure that every person who hits Join Up Dots becomes a potential customer. And that leads us onto the next piece of the Start Your Own Podcast puzzle. Why Is My Podcast Not Delivering The Cash A podcast can fall between two rocks quite easily, and that is not a good thing as I will explain. A podcast can either be fall of brilliant information that people listen to and go "Yay that was great...thank you" Or it can be really entertaining that people listen and go "Yay that was fun...thank you" If you are doing either of these then you are doing something wrong, and will struggle to get the cash you deserve. In my view a podcast is about bringing the potential problems to people that they haven't thought about. You release your podcast episode and talk about how much you know about a subject, wanting them to be as good as you. Think about a chef on the tv, that is cooking some amazing meal right in front of your eyes. Do you simply watch and then run to the kitchen and make what you have seen? No of course you dont, as you saw and thought "Wow", but also thought "I'll never be able to do this on my own" So what do you do? You get onto Amazon and buy the book that the chef has out at that time that shows you the recipe they have just presented to you. They know that you cant just watch and copy, they know they will be selling a lot more books, so they show the best meal that they can to wow you. They are showing off in-front of you. They are saying to you "Look I am great at this, and you can be too.....with my help" They are making money as they have presented the problem to you, and made you realise your knowledge gap.

Today's guest first joined us on Join Up Dots back on episode 721, when he shared his steps to transformation. Not only in his own life, but in the lifes of people across the globe. As he heard on the show this is a man who overcame adversity, lost nearly 100 pounds, ran a marathon, dramatically changed his diet and created an approach to help others live a better life, every day. He called it the Do a Day method and through his book which is still flying off the shelves of Amazon and other good book stores, and his thriving online business he now shows us the steps to doing this. Changing our lives by small, doable steps, leading to overcoming the impossible, instead of tackling huge challenges head on which just wear us out. How The Dots Joined Up For Bryan The key thing to this episode is the last time he was on the show he was still working a full-time job. He was struggling the spinning of the plates that so many people find too hard and give up on. But he did things differently, and in today's show we will delve into the things he did to find the time, the energy and the passion to make it happen for himself. So was taking the leap a great thing to do, or simply has lead to him realising how little he knew about creating his dream-life? And what would he do today, if he could go back and change a few of the dots around in his past? Well lets find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr Bryan Falchuk Show Highlights During the show we discussed such weight subjects with Bryan Falchuk such as: Why we tiptoe around issues nowadays as we are too frightened to share our true views on life due to the fear of upsetting anyone. How the world is losing the ability to focus and truly listen to each other on a daily basis. How Bryan realised that building a winning path was not about the fight but actually the need to find common ground. And lastly................. Bryan shares how he transitioned from a full-time corporate guy, by first entering the world of startup. A great idea to smooth the way. Interview Transcription For Bryan Falchuk Interview David Ralph 0:01 Once upon a time, there was a guy with a dream a dream. He's Jobs for himself online and have a kick ass life working when he wanted him where he wanted across the world. Little did he know that dream would lead him into a world of struggle, burnout and debt, until he found the magic ingredient and nose struggles became a thing of the past. Of course, what's bad person? And now My dream is to make things happen. BU Welcome to Join Up Dots. Intro 0:31 When we're young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be but somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here's your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph. David Ralph 0:56 Yes, I'm still live from the back of the garden. I'm still We're in the same old place that I have been recording for over six years now. And I'm glad to have you here. I'm glad to have you here every single time. And I'm particularly glad to have today's guest. Because as you would have heard on Join Up Dots over the last year or so we've been connecting the dots again. And as I always say the show, please come back again when you have more dots to join up. Well, today's guest has got more dots to join up. And so he's back with us. Now. He was first with us on episode seven to about 1000 episodes ago, when he shared his steps to transformation not only in his own life, but in the lives of people across the globe. As we heard on the show, this is a man who overcame adversity lost nearly 100 pounds ran a marathon dramatically changed his diet and created an approach to help others live a better life every day. He called it but do a day method and through his book, which is still flying off the shelves of Amazon and other good bookstores is thriving online business batty now has started to show the way He wasn't at that point, changing our lives by small doable steps leading to overcoming the impossible instead of tackling huge challenges head on, which just wears out was his mantra. Now the key thing to this episode is the last time he was on the show, as I say, he was still working a full time job. He was struggling, the spinning of the place that so many people find too hard and give up on but he did things differently. And in today's show, were delve into the things he did to find the time the energy and the passion to make it happen for himself. So was taking the leap a great thing to do, or simply has it led him to realise how little he actually knew about creating his dream life. And what would he do today if he could go back and change a few of the dots around in his past? Well, let's find out as we bring on to the show to start Join Up Dots one more time with the one and only Mr. Bryan Falchuk. Good morning, Bryan. How are you man? Bryan Falchuk 2:56 Hey, David. I'm really well thanks for having me back on David Ralph 2:58 is great to have you on It's funny, I look back on certain shows, and there's certain shows where I don't remember much. But I, I talked about, you know, we have a lot of conversations. And the two when I was thinking about you coming back on was the fact that you was working for an insurance company that I used to work for, and that you had a mental breakdown about a donut. And I remember that storey really saw and that sort of gets people to go back to Episode 721. And what why did he add this? His breakdown about a donut? It was a strange story that one Bryan Falchuk 3:35 yeah. And so when I had you on my show, you called me out for it. And I was like, have no idea what you're talking about. And we had the same guy. It was a hot dog. Oh, was he a hot dog? David Ralph 3:44 Yeah, not. Bryan Falchuk 3:45 No, no, a donut would have made a lot more sense. It wasn't even my hot dog. I think that's what makes it even worse. It was my son's because I don't need hot dogs. But yeah, either way like it that doesn't make it a better storey or worse storey. It's still running. But yeah, I kind of had this a little bit of a public meltdown in a in a restaurant and was all worked out but yeah, not embarrassing it all works out nicely. David Ralph 4:10 But don't you look back on these things I look back at my my failings in my business the things that I've done so stupid the things that cost me so much money and I came to smile and they've become my storeys and I sit with people and I said oh, I tell you what I did this was that bloody stupid thing I did you know what at the time it was the worst thing in the world it stranger as far as you move away. Your worst times become entertainment. Bryan Falchuk 4:40 Yeah, you know, what's, what's interesting? Are we talking about I mean, the show specifically, that was one of the dots in YM back on the show. And I don't remember that storey generally you bring it back to mind. But yeah, now I see like that is a difficult human interaction, a difficult relationship. And that's ultimately what my Current focus with with my new book is about and that's, it's kind of funny, I wasn't even thinking about that example. But that's 100% on the, you know, the the idea that I'm focused on right now. So that is a David Ralph 5:12 professional and I professional and I sucked you in. So go on why you're here why you're plugging. Tell us about your new book. Bryan Falchuk 5:19 Yeah, so it's all about. So I mean, to put it in context, do a day was about your relationship with yourself. So how do you understand yourself? How do you grow from that and point that understanding towards the things you really wish you were doing in your life, the things you wish you could achieve and overcoming those barriers that we faced this next book with a slightly less catchy title, but it means something it's the 5075 100 solution, build better relationships is all about instead of our relationship with ourselves, now we're ready to work on our relationship with others. And so it's it's seeing the ownership we have in that relationship, whether it's a bad one, you know, a tough one or one that is But maybe you can still be better. I think everyone universally will agree like, we own our half even if that's hard, right? You know, it's like I can own me but I can't control you I can't influence you I don't have power over you. And that's the bit we get struck we get struck by we get stuck on and where it becomes painful and we start placing blame is said while you know, I'm fine have worked on me I, I can do better, but they're just they're terrible. They don't appreciate me they're doing all these things to me. Well, the point in this approach is to move beyond just seeing your half but understanding how you can influence the other person's half. And it starts to give you a sense of power is probably the wrong word. Because it's not about having power over them. It's about having power to influence a different mindset in them to move the whole relationship to better and that's, you know, I, I basically was forced to have a wake up call like I did with do a day and as I worked through that, I started to study started to learn and grow and I was like, you know, this is another one of these things that I have to share with other people and So that's where the book was born is interesting. David Ralph 7:03 Is it maturity where, you know, when you're younger, I was talking to a guy the other day and I said to him, I find it very difficult not to agree with people now, even if I know their room, I can, I can always find some common ground where when I was younger, it would be black and white, I'd absolutely be apt to argue that talks about anything. And it's a song called Shades of Grey by Billy Joe. And he says, you know, what the lyrics are some things were perfectly clear seen with the vision, vision of you know, doubts and nothing to fear. I claim the corner on truth. Now, these days, it's hard to say I know what I'm fighting for. My faith is falling away. I'm not sure that sure anymore. And what he means by that is, you know, everything's great nowadays, you know, that that person's got a point, even though it would have been in ETFs. Now, I was reflecting on the fact of RV idiots or If we become soft, should we be arguing more than we used to be? Is it now the case it was so frightened of upsetting people that everybody just kind of tiptoes around everything? Bryan Falchuk 8:12 That's a I think that's really interesting and astute and be I think that is not the path to making things. Okay. And that's, that's unfortunately, where I was at with tougher relationships where it was like, if I just kind of hold my tongue, then it'll be fine. I'll just, you know, I'll let them go off. I won't say anything. I won't share my opinion. That's just the way they're going to be. And if I say anything, it's just going to make it worse. So I'm just going to be quiet. That doesn't work. And even if it works in the sense of, you know, well, then we're not fighting. That's no way to live. Like eating your emotions, eating your thoughts and your feelings, invalidating your own position is not a sustainable, thriving way to go forward. It's how you burn yourself out. It's how you upset yourself. It's how you just add to this darkness that weighs you down and I think a lot of us end up doing that. So yeah, it works. It's a it's a strategy. But as you know, to the same extent that a band aid works for gunshot wound, it's a strategy. It will, you know, it'll contain some of that injury. But ultimately, you're going to have to do more for it. David Ralph 9:15 Now, there's a movement going on over here. And I'm not going to put my point of view on this because it would be wrong to express my point of view, I'm just going to say what it is. And people are deciding that they don't want to be classed as a woman or a man. And they said, there's 100 different ways, but you can actually be classed as what your agenda and a guy called Piers Morgan, who's over here, and he was in America for a while, he argued, but Okay, that's fair enough, but I want to be called a two spirited penguin. And they had a big argument and he said, Why am I supposed to accept 100 of your ideas, but you won't accept one of mine? You know, why a space and It was it was a really good argument. But it makes me wonder because Sam Smith, the singer, has said he doesn't want to be called male or female. And so the Music Awards over here have gone Oh, we can't offend anyone. We will stop having female artists and male artists and have you know, a combined it's everything's losing its identity, I struggle with understanding where this way of thinking of not being able to say to somebody you're wrong, or I don't agree with you actually is heading Bryan Falchuk 10:35 huh? Yeah. So I think that that is a really thorny subject. I agree with you. I'm not I'm not going to push my view one way or the other. And I'm not sure I've totally sorted out exactly how I feel about it or thought through what the implications are aren't for me or for someone who doesn't necessarily identify with a particular gender or number of Spirits Within a penguin I, but I think losing the debate, and the discussion is a cost we should be careful about. The problem right now is often when we have these discussions, they're really nasty. And that's the way politics is now. It's, there's nothing around what your actual views are. It's around how terrible someone else's. And if someone accuses you of you know, you did this thing, the answer is never Oh, yeah, I did. And that was a mistake. And here's how I've grown and I'm sorry for the cost of that. It's Yeah, but look at that. And they did Morse. And that's not serving us. So you know, if I killed there's a lot of like, gunshot and murder and my storeys today, but if I killed six people and you killed seven, if you call me a murderer, that doesn't mean I'm not just because you killed more. It just means we both did. You just happen to do more, but I still need to be responsible for my piece of that. And that's, I think there's a general theme and how we're going about discourse and debate. That's its kind The two extremes. It's either like, Oh, we can't offend anyone, we can't talk about it. So everyone just be quiet and accept without challenging. And on the flip side is we're going to challenge everything, but not actually challenge it just kind of rag on each other. And that's neither of those is going to move us forward. Because we're never going to come to actual understanding, we may outwardly agree in the first case. But inside people are quite divided and just not speaking about it. So we haven't actually moved anything forward. No one is any more accepting. They're just not talking about it. And in the other case, we haven't grown, we haven't corrected, we haven't gotten better. We've actually just gotten a lot worse by attacking each other as our response to any mistakes we make. David Ralph 12:38 And that's not serving us either. Is I was in a pub the other day and I was having a conversation with a guy and I actually said to him, Look, I'm never going to agree with you here. I just know we're so opposite in our viewpoints. But that's all right. You know, you tell me your viewpoint and I will listen to it. And maybe you can knock a bit off maybe at the moment. I'm 100%. And I might go down to 95%. But I still I'm not going to agree with you. And he said, Well, there's no point in discussing it. And I said, that's the point of discussing. You know, you're putting your point of view across and I'm putting my point of view across, and we listen. Now, I think one of the problems in the world today is the fact that and I imagine it ties up to your book as well, is we don't listen to the other person. We don't listen to how they're feeling. We don't listen. And it's a it's a problem in relationships. I know where so many people are sitting at home on their mobile phones picking up and down half listening, not really connecting and stuff. And we're surrounded by politicians. You know, you've got a guy in power at the moment, but if anybody says anything he doesn't agree with. It's either fake news or you're wrong, you know? Bryan Falchuk 13:50 Yeah, and you're wrong and terrible. David Ralph 13:52 Yeah, I just think why don't you just once go, Okay, I hadn't seen that point of view. Okay. Yeah, it's not my point. interview but it's a new one on me. Did you see that as well tying into your book again applying to play a plug, Brian. We need to listen better. Bryan Falchuk 14:11 Yeah, I mean completely, that the the distracted missing conversations actually just wrote a draught of a blog post last night about the Apple Watch conversations, where I'm finding this more and more and it's not meant to hit on Apple, but you're having a conversation with someone. And as if there's nothing disruptive or rude or distracting about it, they just look down and click away and notification. And, you know, you have it in actually quite intimate conversations or in business settings where, like, someone came in to sell something to us, and they were doing that and it's like, he doesn't care about being here is looking and yeah, he's just flicking it away. But still, it's like, clearly that was important enough to him. You wouldn't see someone do that, hopefully, pulling out their phone in the middle of the meeting to do that that would be far more disruptive, but for some reason me looking down and paying attention to something else mid sentence is acceptable actually saw speaker on stage do it in the middle of a talk. And and What I don't know is and this is the second piece that's really important is understanding each other. I don't know what they're going through. I don't know if they have you know, a child was just in a car accident or you know their parent is sick some major situation going on that actually. David Ralph 15:24 Yeah, but everyone does it that being being professional, even if I had a kid who is in some kind of, you know, terrible situation. I would either have cancelled that appearance, or let you can't do anything while you want to study. Yeah, you should see that. Bryan Falchuk 15:40 Fair enough. Yeah, my point just being for their situation, they may have made a priority call and and i don't know what those calls are. And it's not my priority call to make. So it's not just blindly saying oh, you know, it was a Instagram notifications. I don't I don't know what it was about. I don't know whether it was important enough. So it's not a beta It doesn't matter. David Ralph 16:01 On this situation, I think that we be perfectly in our right to cast judgement, to say that that person is in front of us on stage, no matter what their personal situation is, they have put themselves in that position. You know, I don't sit here doing a podcast episode, we're halfway through, I disappear to make myself a cup of coffee. You know, I'm here, and I could be having a really bad day, I could be having a really bad time in my life. And as we were talking about beforehand, I've had some terrible times in my life. But I still got up and I did the podcast episode, because I knew that you deserved it. My listeners deserved it. And it was my business. Bryan Falchuk 16:41 Yeah. And so I mean, that's where the article ends up going as if you're with someone, be with them. And if you can't be Don't be and be upfront about it. So my position if I was going on stage, and you know, something happened, I would just be up front with people. I would cancel or if it was too late to Kenya, maybe it happened right before going on stage. If there was no way around it, I would at least share that openly with people. And I just had that in a meeting this morning where we've got a family situation going on last night, I just said, you know, hey, I may get a call during the meeting, here's why this is what's going on, I may need to step out and never want to respect that because I told them up front. But what I didn't do is sit there staring at my phone waiting for a call. David Ralph 17:18 Yeah. Because if I'm not, if I'm not going to attend to that thing that I've asked for permission to attend to, and I'm going to attend to you and give you that respect. And helps it would have been right, you're sitting in the audience. The guy comes on and says before I start, you know, yeah, I'm having this crap, this situation going on. I'm going to focus on you, but I have to let you know into the dark times. Every single person in the audience would go wow, credits. Yeah, Bryan Falchuk 17:48 yeah. And instant connection. Yeah, so can connect. I mean, there's a there's a point to all this. And actually, it goes back to that guy in the pub. And something you said earlier about just making space To understand each other and hear each other, and that's, that's where you move from just being in your half to sort of move the whole thing to better. What it takes is understanding, you know, for him, you're never going to see his point of view. So there's no point to the conversation. Well, maybe seeing his point of view isn't actually what he wants. And maybe he's not in touch with that. And maybe what both of you need to do is think about what does happiness look like? So I talked about these three principles. And the first one is happiness seeking and trying to understand our own definition of happiness and what the other person's may be. And you may have no clue in the world, you may not be able to guess it, you may just need to ask and elicit and try to get it out of them. Oftentimes, we end up arguing, because our goals are misaligned. But we're not even in touch with what those goals are. So I shared this example in the book and I did a TED talk and the idea of a book of the book last year and I showed the same example there because it's a powerful one. At that same company that we both interacted with, worked at. I had a panel who suddenly went from being a friend to confidant support, you know, in equal that we would turn to to someone trying to get me fired. And on the surface, it was just that she wanted to get me fired. And that's what I was initially reacting to internally. But what I realised is, there's something else going on here. I just seem to be in the way or I'm a threat to her she perceives need to be I don't know why or what that's about. But that's why she wants me out. It's not because she just suddenly decided like, Yeah, I don't care for him. And it's fun. Why don't I try to get him fired? Even though it may feel that way, you know, someone's yelling at us, or hurting us. It's not like they just woke up that morning said, Yeah, just for funds ease, I'm going to start being mean to him, there's something that they want, and they may not be in touch with what that is, but there's something they want, that you seem to be in the way of or represent the opposite of. and a less mature way of going about that is to just be mean and difficult and attacking, and what's beholden to us if we want that relationship to be better less of a threat more productive, more positive, whatever the, the outcome is that you ultimately want from it is to try to recognise what they're getting to or what they wish they were getting to and see if there's a way you can both have what you're looking for. So what I ended up finding out is she had screwed up pretty significantly, and was trying to cover it up because she was afraid for herself getting fired. And so anyone I didn't know this, I had sort of stumbled upon exposing it. Just in the course of my work, I had started to unearth some irregularities and problems. And as I was bringing attention to that, she went into defence mode. And her defence mode is to try to get rid of anyone who might expose her before she gets a chance to try to fix things. And you know, I didn't realise this at the time. But instead of reacting to her when she would send these scathing emails to myself and our CEO about all the terrible things about me and how wrong I am and all these facts of how I'm screwing up that by the way, are not facts. You just making them up. I'm not one for Fake News, but it was like, you know, she says Brian did three and it's like, No, I didn't, I did too. And here's the evidence of it, or you know, whatever the numbers are actions where I could just try to refute every point and do the whole thing and email and just fight with her. But actually, it's not about the fight. And that's what I started to realise is rather than responding back, she's obviously going to have some come back, or she's going to argue with me or try to you know, she's making up information right now who's to say she won't make up worse information. So that's not a winning path. Instead, what I need to do is get a meeting with all of us, the CEO myself, her we brought the CFO into get her to try to illustrate what it is she's actually looking for. Because to have her sitting here rattling off all these terrible things about me, it's not serving anyone. I need to get to what's actually driving all this because it really just seemed to come out of the blue. And so David Ralph 21:52 it just jumping into that was very interesting is I agree with everything you're saying. But Unless you're like a therapist, it's quite difficult to dig around and find the reason isn't it? I know you did it because you found an audit route of failure. But a lot of people would. That's not how I did it though. How did you do it? No. Bryan Falchuk 22:14 Yeah, no. No, no, no. So when when she saw it Friday night, of course she she sends this email out with like 12 bullet points of all these numbers of all the evidence of how bad I am. And so the the normal response I would have it First of all, fuming mad and now it's like my weekends ruined David Ralph 22:34 worse than the hot dog. Bryan Falchuk 22:36 Oh, God, yeah. Or the donut did it like either of them this I mean this because because my employments at risk now it's like how much time and energy when we have actual emergencies going on? How much time and energy Do I need to put into this nonsense? And And the thing is, I had seen her do it to a couple of our other peers. We were all in the C suite and the leadership team and I saw her do this to one in particular And, you know, I didn't know the facts on either side. Now I know why she was doing it. But she's she's a former litigator. So she's really good at doing this. And I mean, she just went after him. And I was just like, Oh, god, I'm not. This is not what I need right now. So it just, you know, weighing on me and I had all the facts, I had all the evidence. So I'm like, I'm going to punch back and I said, hang on a second. That never goes well with her. So that's not what I'm going to do. And it's going to make me look like an ass in front of the CEO. So instead, I'm going to this is, this is weird. I thanked her. I just said I have a different view on the situation. But rather than debating it, why don't we all get together and talk about it? And you know, over email, it was nice because you can see how Maroon My face was. You can see the steam coming off of me, but I sent that out and left it and I scheduled time for all of us. We got into the meeting and it was basically it starts off with her acting just like the email you know, she's rattling off All these facts and I had my evidence laid out so I had all of my counterpoints, so I could have refuted all them. But again, I was like that's not the path to success here because she's just going to yell over me. And she's a really good argument and she's brilliant and well respected and so those women are like most women are she's I don't know that I'm going to win by trying to fight you know, point for point with her. So that's not the path. And the reality is there's going to be something under the surface that actually is fair and accurate and worth fighting for that striving her and this other stuff. She's just confused about it. So I'm not going to go head to head with her about that. So I thanked her again, which is not the response she's expecting so you could see her step back. We're on video she literally like went back in her chair kind of shocked because she was ready for a fight. She had a stack of papers with her so she had like, you know, she'd prepped slides to argue with how terrible am and I just said, You know, I said this in the email. I have a very different view of the situation, I've pulled the information from the system so that you know the numbers that I'm seeing don't align to yours. But rather than us go through each one of these and figure out whose data is right or not. What I'd like to understand is what is your concern? What is it ultimately, you're trying to achieve? And again, she wasn't ready for that. So she was a little bit dumbfounded. And she was like, Well, I'm worried about this happening to the business. And it was a pretty rational thing. So I was like, Yeah, me too. And so, you know, we're all sort of like, you can't argue with that. And that was her ultimate goal. Like, she wasn't gonna say, Well, I just want to get you fired. I knew she wouldn't say that, because that would make her look pretty stupid. And if she did, then I you know, I come out the victor, because that would be like, holy crap. You know, what is this about you? That's ridiculous. You need to go Brian, you're fine. Let's see your data. But you know, it would work out well for me, but I didn't expect her to say that. But when she voiced her concern about the impact on the business, that's really feminine. rational. And with what I was

Introducing Steve D Sims Today's guest is a man who screams loud and proud "If there's no passion there's no point!" He is the visionary founder of Bluefish: the world's first luxury concierge that delivers the highest level of personalized travel, transportation, and cutting-edge entertainment services to corporate executives, celebrities, professional athletes, and other discerning individuals interested in living life to it's fullest. So what does that mean in real terms? Well.... He closed a museum in Florence for a private dinner party for 6 at the feet of Michelangelo's David and had Andrea Bocelli come in and serenade the guests He can get you to see the Titanic from a submarine. Becoming James Bond for a weekend in Monte Carlo Hanging out and jamming with celebrity recording artists, such as Guns & Roses drummer Matt Sorum and playing guitar with ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons What makes this all the more remarkable is he started a world away from rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous of the world. Born in 1966 he grew up as a bricklayer from London, before in n 1980, he started a stockbroker job in London, where he worked for about 6 months. Eventually, he was transferred to Hong Kong where he was fired in 1 days. How The Dots Joined Up For Steve After losing his stockbroking job, Steve D Sims stayed in Hong Kong where he worked as a Doorman for a Night Club in the area, where he went to parties and met their attendees, forming the network that would initially support Bluefish. As he says "It's not what you know, it's who you know" This is not your typical entrepreneur wearing flash suits and standing by the side of Lear Jets saying look at me. This is a man who does things his way, wears his own style and makes things happen by being himself As Elton John Said "Steve Sims defines what it means to be your authentic self" So was there a time that he felt you had to do what others are doing to make the life for yourself? And what would he wish for, if he became a client of Bluefish himself for a day? Well let's find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr. Steve D Sims. Show Highlights During today's show we discussed such weighty subjects with Steve D Sims Steve shares his hatred of being called authentic but instead loving being transparent. Slight difference in how we look at things, but it makes such a difference. We talk about the turmoil that most entrepreneurs that go through your life fighting to the "Ignorant to the potential of failing" has been the framework of what has made Steve who he is today. Can you say honestly that you have the same mindset? and lastly....... Steve shares how he found the truth of mentorship in his earlier life. If someone can show you the way to a better life, quicker then why wouldnt you seek out a mentor?

Introducing Dan Chan Today's guest joining us on the Join Up Dots podcast has had a very interesting story to where he is today. He grew up in San Francisco, CA, and as a young child has to go through the heartbreak of seeing his parents divorce. Times were not easy for him and he was picked on a lot while growing up. As he says "Looking back on the pictures I was a bit of a goofy looking kid. It didn't help that I was a pretty nerdy Asian kid who acted goofy as well. In Middle School I really didn't want to be known as just the nerdy little Asian kid so I started lifting weights. I was probably the most buff kid in high school. I also started dabbling around with magic and juggling for fun because no matter how hard I tried fitting in "with the crowd", my inquisitive nerdy side never quite went away." And so his interest in magic started taking shape, but how do then go from that interest / hobby to one that pays. How The Dots Joined For Dan Chan Well our guest did just that thanks to some very attractive ladies and am expert in the profession he was interested in. As he says again"Well one season there was a convention going on one weekend where there was a lot of entertainment including a magician and a lot of Playboy Bunnies. As awesome as it was to be a college student surrounded by all these really beautiful women, I was absolutely fascinated by the effects the magician was doing! I ended up following the magician around all weekend trying to pick his brain and figure out his effects. This guy had the ultimate dream job — fooling people, crashing parties, travelling, meeting girls…and getting paid to do it? Sign me up. After winter break was over, I ended up going to the magic shop and picking up a ton of stuff to practice on friends at school and found out I was pretty good. I did my first gig after college while I was working at PayPal. It was for a birthday party and I got really great feedback and people actually recommended me to other friends. When I started getting gigs pretty consistently to the point where I was calling in sick at my "real job", I started thinking…" hum, maybe I got something going on here". So that's the perfect place to start today's episode of Join Up Dots. So when something that at the beginning seems great, starts to become just a job, how do you keep the motivation going. And how do you scale, to gain the time back after performing gigs to gain your cash? Well lets find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Dan Chan Show Highlights During the show we discussed such deep weighty subjects with Dan Chan such as: Dan shares how the grand illusions of David Copperfield are as much about growing their name as they are about the trick or illusion themselves. We discuss the reasons why so many magicians rarely get laid even when they get good at magic. Why it so important to pre-qualify your clients before committing to them to ensure you get the best value from them and for yourself. and lastly…… Dan reveals how he is planning his exit strategy from his magician career. If you dont plan for things to happen sometimes they simply dont occur. How To Connect With Dan Chan Website Facebook Linkedin Twitter Return To The Top Of Dan Chan If you enjoyed this episode of Join Up Dots then why not listen to some of our favourite podcast episodes such as Dan Martell, Dan Lok or the amazing Noah Kagan Or if you prefer just pop over to our podcast archive for thousands of amazing episodes to choose from. Audio Transcription Of Dan Chan Interview Intro 0:00 When we're young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here's your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph. David Ralph 0:25 Yes, hello, a good morning to my listeners. Good morning. Thank you very much for sticking around and being here with another episode of Join Up Dots. Yes, the show that can go in literally any direction. And it normally does. Well, today's guest that's joining us on the show. He's had a very interesting storey to where he is today. He grew up in San Francisco in California. And as a young child had to go through the heartbreak of seeing his parents divorce. Now times were not easy for him. And he was picked on a lot while growing up. Now. As he says looking back on the pictures, I was a bit of a goofy looking Katie didn't help out. I was a pretty nerdy Asian kid who acted goofy as well. Now in middle school, I really didn't want to be known as just the nerdy little Asian kid. So I started lifting weights. I was probably the most bath kid in high school. I also started dabbling around with magic and juggling for fun because no matter how hard I tried fitting in with the crowd, my inquisitive nerdy side, never quite went away. So he's interested in magic started taking shape. But how do you then go from that interest hobby to one that actually pays you were our guest digitas bad thanks to some very attractive ladies and an expert in the profession he was interested in. As he says again, well, one season there was a convention going on. And it was a lot of entertainment, including a magician and a lot of Playboy bunnies. as awesome as it was to be a college student surrounded by all these really beautiful women. I was absolutely fascinated by the effects the magician was doing. I ended up following the magician around all weekend trying to pick his brain fake him out he's effects and this guy had the ultimate dream job fooling people, crashing parties, travelling meeting girls, and getting paid to do it. Sign me up, he said. Now after winter break was over, he ended up going to the magic shop and picking up a tonne of stuff to practice on friends at school. And he found out he was pretty good. And he did his first gig after college whilst he was working at PayPal. Now finally, it was for a birthday party. But he got really great feedback. And people actually started recommending him to other friends. And so when he started getting gigs pretty consistently, he started coding in sick at his real job. And he started thinking, maybe I've got something going on here. So that's the perfect place to start today's episode of Join Up Dots. So when something that at the beginning seems great starts to become just a job. How do you keep the motivation going and keep it fun and entertaining for you? And how do you scale the to gain the time back after performing games to gain your cash right at the very beginning? Well, let's find out as we bring on to the show to start Join Up Dots with the one and only Dan Chan. Good morning, guys. How are you sir? Dan Chan 3:13 Good morning, David. Ralph is 5am over here. David Ralph 3:16 Hey, okay, Dan Chan. You don't have to call me David. Ralph. You can just call me David. We're friends now. Where we're buddies. I've dragged you out of bed at 5am. And that's why you've got a slightly Whispery voice because I imagine there's people in the house asleep at the moment. Dan Chan 3:30 Yes, they are. David Ralph 3:31 Okay, well, we will whisper together because I'm starting to lose my voice first cold of the winter, little bits naughty, but we will fight for. So I gave you the big build up down because it was quite fascinating as I was reading your backstory, because so many people in school, want to have something that connects them with people. And it could be the case, but they get picked on. So they want to make them laugh. And so they become comedians. It could be case they want to sort of fit inside become a sportsman. You went with a magic? Was it really a natural fit? Or was there a lot of persistence involved? Dan Chan 4:10 There was actually a lot of persistence. I had to do a lot of research and go to lectures and conventions because started off at the bottom with a kid shows I sucked after 4000 shows. I'm pretty good. And after 5000, I started performing for the billionaires. David Ralph 4:28 Now, if we go back to the sucking stage, when you're out there and you're you're doing your card trick or you you pull a rabbit out of a hat. I was actually talking to my son about you last night I was saying that you were going to be on the show. And he said, why is it that you don't see people pulling rabbits out of hats anymore? Is that an old thing? Because as a magician, that's that's what I've got in my head. But you never see the rabbit anymore. What's that meant to the rabbit? Dan Chan 4:53 I believe it was started off by a comics and drawings. But people have done them. It's just very difficult to do. But people are fed more visually than anything. So I think that's exactly where it came from. David Ralph 5:09 So it's more a case of you put a rabbit out of a hat and you kind of feel like you've seen it already. So now you've got to put out an elephant or something bigger and bolder to keep people's attention. Dan Chan 5:20 Yeah, doves are a lot easier. Back in the day you saw a lot of doves like just because it's Channing Pollock, Lance Burton. But there were magicians in the past who did a lot of rabbits out of hats. But because of the technical setup, once you get good. Everyone ditches the doves and rabbits and things like that. I can still do doves and rabbits. But it's a lot easier to do close up magic, wherever where I believe everything is now going towards. David Ralph 5:48 Yeah, I can't pull a rabbit out of half I can pull a hair out my ear does that does that make the site Dan Chan 5:55 you're on your way to becoming a magician. And bam, David Ralph 5:58 I'm halfway there. Now, the the fascinating thing with magicians as well. And I suppose it's with everything really is, as we said, the amount of practice that it takes before you can actually do anything, you know. And most people nowadays really want to press a few buttons watch a YouTube video and they think they're so you know, David Copperfield, whatever. When was the first trick that you actually thought, wow, this isn't just good. This is really good. This is something that I can really show people Dan Chan 6:29 on the same special that David Copperfield walk through the Great Wall of China, and perform something that most magicians now do, which is called crazy man's handcuff. And that was popularised by Michael Mr. But out VHS tape on how to do it. But it was with two rubber bands penetrating through each other. And that was pretty much for a lot of people. One of the first tricks that they made their foray into magic David Ralph 6:57 because that that walking through a wall, I remember back when he walked through the Great Wall of China, that that to me, that wasn't a magic trick. That was some kind of camera angle stuff. Do you? Did you feel the same? I don't buy into his stuff. As much as I would somebody doing a card trick right in front of me. Dan Chan 7:15 Yeah, those are grand illusions. And that's how you make your media presence in your height. For me now, it's just jumping on podcast, because it has a very global reach. I've performed on Shanghai, Germany and Las Vegas. But that's how you kind of hype what you're doing. And the trick that I'm referencing was on that same special, it was two rubber bands. And that's when I started realising, hey, if that guy who doesn't mix millions of dollars, can do a trick that involves two rubber bands on TV. I can do that same trick. Maybe I can get in this. Yeah, David Ralph 7:54 but I agree with you. I agree with you. But I don't watch that. I don't remember that. But I do remember him pushing himself through the Great Wall of China. Dan Chan 8:02 Yeah. We don't have them as magicians, we don't have a budget to do what David Copperfield does. But if we could do even one thing that he can do that starts realising, hey, I'm a magician, or that guy, that guy's famous, he does that trick. And you start connecting the dots. Have you ever David Ralph 8:20 met a magician that's actually well rounded sort of emotionally? No, I was a bit surprised when I went over to your page, you've got your family involved, your son James is very much involved in and I believe your wife is now starting to be part of it. But when I look at sort of a lot of the magicians, certainly the ones that have been on TV in the United Kingdom and stuff, they all seem to be a bit of a loner, they seem to be a little bit strange, you know, headed by David Blaine, David Blaine seems to be the weird is one out of all of them. Are you sort of unusual that you've got quite a good ground, you got very good grounding and family life. Dan Chan 8:58 Yeah, that was a very good motivated effort. And that's why a lot of times when you do, you're successful in your home life, you're probably not as successful in other things. But I feel like there's a real healthy balance. And a lot of times I go to these magic conventions, and I'll be honest, a lot of them are magic geeks, they can do the magic, they can flip the cards, or they can just shoot something on Instagram, but they have a hard time connecting. So there's so many talented magicians that show up. But they don't know how to connect or work or sell or have the soft skills necessary to integrate yourself to go in and out of conversations in a cocktail hour, you can be really talented and I see a tonne of people who are so talented, I post up things on my Facebook feed for I've got a gig for $500. And people are telling me, I'd be perfect for this gig. And I would tell myself, you might be technically the perfect magician. But socially or the way you dress you just don't fit in. David Ralph 10:02 So what you're saying without magic, these guys would never be getting laid. Is that what you're saying? Dan Chan 10:07 No. Even with magic as good as they are, they would not be getting laid. David Ralph 10:14 They keep their wand firmly away from everybody. Unknown Speaker 10:19 Yep, you just don't pop that one out. David Ralph 10:21 Especially not in children's parties. There's there's rules about all that kind of stuff. Okay, so let's talk about away from the magic because I could talk about magic all the time. It really does fascinate me. Well, Brent, blending that into a business, especially a business that from the outside looks like it's great. And it's fun. It never is. There's always a lot of hard work going into it as well. The marketing side and the branding yourself is as important as your skills and growing anything online needs vo skills as much as the sort of the magician ship that you've got. How did you start learning that? How did you start getting your name out into the marketplace? You know, that's a perfect question. Dan Chan 11:04 My name is Dan, Daniel Chan. And Dan Chan. The Magic Man kind of has a catch jacket. And I have people singing my name. After my show. I when I first started, I did a lot of kid shows. And I had the kids chanting My names. I would just say say the magic words stanchion, the measurement, everyone hate that. But I even had my friend, a very famous magician in the Bay Area, when I was starting off, said my daughter chanted your name all the way home, I can a bitch slap you house like Those were his words. And I was like, I did a great job that was perfect. And then I rebranded to dance and master magician, maybe several years ago. And now I'm Dan Chan, the billionaires magician, because I've performed for quite a few billionaires in yesterday, I just met a billionaire, David Ralph 11:53 I find that a lot actually, I speak to a lot of people and they, they have to grow in competence to be at helping to change their title. And at the beginning, they very much market themselves with the surroundings. So if I are in a certain peer group, they are that peer group. Now you're working with millionaires and billionaires, does that actually make it easier to attract business? Are you in a more rarefied environment? So you don't need as much business? Because you get paid more for the actual work? Dan Chan 12:26 It is that is absolutely a case that for the right time asking the last couple of I told myself and stop kids parties, but I've been given some offers. Where I performed the 11th, employee of Twitter, I had to say yes to it, his kids seventh birthday party. He, he's a 11th, employee of Google. And now at twitter. I've also performed for Evan Williams and Biz Stone, and some of the other founders is Twitter just most recently, so they pay a lot more than what I could get anywhere else. So I'm focusing a lot less on volume. And now I have my head toward making a documentary on my son again, which we've already done in myself, we went we thought it was very interesting dynamic of what we're doing with my son juggling five balls, three flaming torches and even picking pockets. I'm just really moving towards doing less getting paid a lot more but being very, very intentional and present in the moment with my performances. David Ralph 13:30 Now, let's really delve into this because I think this is gold, as I say on the show is entrepreneurship go. Now, when you start, I think everybody scrambles around for clients, and we take rubbish clients and we take clients that will pay us $50. And I want a billion pounds worth of, of volume and an effort back. And as we move through little by little our competence grows. So we actually believe in ourselves. At that point, the world starts to believe in us back. Can you remember when you actually thought to yourself, I've stepped forward? I've moved into the next group. I'm leaving behind Bowser, rubbish clients that wanted 1000 pounds worth of stuff for $50? Dan Chan 14:17 Yeah, sometimes it's when you get screwed over. When you I've had this client, he called me and I put the storey up on Quora. He tells me I have a party in Mountain View. When I google his name, you immediately something pops up about him and this epic house where he throws parties. I'm like, why doesn't this guy throw his party's over there? Because his name's associated with it. I'm like, Dude, this doesn't make sense. The day I show up that the day before he tells me I moved the party to Los Los Altos Hills or Los Altos. I'm like, what, oh, by the way, it's at this house at the address that I was already looked up, he didn't have that sense to use a fake name. And unlike I could have charged a lot more to be honest, I wouldn't a price gouging I'm really straightforward shooter. But he thought that magicians would look up the zip code or that area of the city and then charge him to three x. And I was just like, this is going to be an epic party. I knew that the house was one of the, you know, imagine what a $45 million house looks like. And it's historic, it's beautiful. And he thought he was going to get screwed over. And I probably should have charged him a lot more to be honest with you. But you know, when you end up at houses, and they show they're driving Porsches and Mercedes Benz is and they're sitting there on a budget. Yeah, they they've committed themselves to either paying for that or being so cheap that they don't respect you as an artist. And that's when you start getting a little bit pissed off when they when they abuse that fact. And they say, you know, hey, I am on a budget. So I have strategies now to really deal with that. David Ralph 16:01 Tell us about them. Tell us Don't leave us hanging there, Dan Chan Magic Man, tell us about your strategies. Dan Chan 16:07 Well, if they truly are on a budget, I asked a lot of questions first, asking them where it's going to be the exact location. Because if it's at the SET ON OFF Sand Hill Road, you know, they're going to have a little bit of budget. So you offer them a lower end package a medium and high. But you, you can always upgrade them a little bit. I see if you want to pick pocketing, and you want the iPhone tricks, and the very high end sleight of hand, you must hire me. But if your events on a little bit of a lower budget, you can hire any one of my teammates. That means that I have the option. You know, when you have stocks, there's options to buy? Well, at a certain price point, I have the option to pass those and off. If I do not want to do the event. That means that if my kids want to go to Disneyland, I go to Disney anyone. If there's a bigger event, and a billionaire caused me last minute, I take the billionaire and I find you someone else, even if it means paying the difference. It's not like I'm going to send you up a crummy magician, I sometimes will pay the difference to send someone else, just because when I already have one in the bag, I'm going to 2.5 exit or 3.5 exit and that helps my guys on my team that helps them. When I choose them. I say hey, can you cover me on this event? This is what the clients paying. But I'm going to pay you a little bit more. David Ralph 17:32 Now. This is interesting. So so you pre qualify your clients First of all, so you don't just say yeah, I'm available Wednesday afternoon, let's do it. And it didn't come across on your website and your business but you actually are franchising out your name. For people to actually work on your behalf. You've got a team of, of wizards. You're here like, like Harry Potter, and they're all running around California doing gigs on your behalf when you can't do it. Dan Chan 18:01 Yeah, I don't try to do it too often, because I like protecting my brand. But whenever I realised there's lots of demand, I'm going to do it. I don't want to wipe out the entire market. And I just feel like people don't like you. If you're dominating. It's like Microsoft or Facebook, they feel like you're killing the competition. And sometimes people speak because I'm posting stuff on there and I'm not choosing them. They're kind of like getting resents resentful, you know, like, hey, Pick me Pick me and there's only so much out there. David Ralph 18:35 And that's always going to happen down in there. People are people are always going to resent you. You know, no matter what you do, if you put your head above the parapet, you are going to have people slagging you off being critical of you or saying that you're dominating, but it doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong. It's just their point of view on it. And in fact, I would say, sir, it's a badge of honour that people think that way. Dan Chan 18:59 Yeah. And, you know, those guys who helped me all the way up to the top, they're getting back some gigs in there, those guys are really helping, but there's some guys who are, you know, calling me and still talking to me and are like, pick me, but they've never even sent me a gig on my way up or helped me that much some of them that, you know, like, I I've been asking for, hey, pick me. And the tables are switched. But everything just comes in waves. But yeah, I picked people that fit my style. They people are always asked me, What does it take to get on your team? Dan, I get so many messages. And I, I did this as a social experiment just to blow up on Facebook, my Facebook feed to see who would react. So I just, I have this thing on Facebook that they call me a conversation starter? Because I've been thinking what would get the most amount of engagement in terms of traction, what would make my post show up and other people's feeds? So I started asking, and one of those in those social experiments was posting, I have a gig in you know, San Francisco, I have a gig in here and just putting up there, and then you just see that, that chain of replies off, off that feed really sure. David Ralph 20:10 And then do you do magic tricks on social media. So people see the trick and it kind of, because they would share it with their mates with my boy, imagine, Dan Chan 20:20 I'm like Dan Chan magic on Instagram. I'm still figuring out the social media stuff. I've my son's on there making the Statue of Liberty disappear on a card, we have some things that I've been playing around with. But I've been cleaning up my feed. We're recording on clean feed, but I am deleting what I'm putting up there. I'm just putting it out there. And then putting it away, kind of documenting it because I don't want anyone first of all doing it. So they have to be following to see all my stream because there's also something else about my Instagram that I use an Instagram based trick. So is that Instagram, the trick is pushed down in the feed. I don't archive everything. When I'm doing that trick. It actually takes a lot of time for that trick to load up. Right. So it's kind of interesting how I'm incorporating Instagram, I had a semi viral video, I got 14,000 views in about three days. BuzzFeed mini Silicon Valley's favourite magician. I still I snuck the reporter into a party as my sound guy for a high profile party. And he ended up he ended up writing a full feature article I just said, you want to see what it's like to be at Silicon Valley's epic holiday parties. And I've been to parties with live tigers in the backyard. And penguins and lemurs and leopards and alligators. And the alligator I think was either alligator or crocodile David Ralph 21:48 I think it was in a zoo. Dan Chan 21:50 I think that's where you went. You went to a zoo? No, I did not go to a zoo. They brought the zoo to the guys health well and I David Ralph 21:55 broke that they were the penguins wearing bow ties and the monkeys wearing bow ties with it little waiters. Dan Chan 22:00 No they weren't they were just like in they brought like a mini pools for them. They did not have bow ties. But I have pictures. I only posted a little bit of the pictures on my Facebook page. David Ralph 22:13 I love the fact that you are Dan Chan the magician man and you have to snuck a man into a party. Can you just like pulled him out of a hat halfway through or or just done some kind of big illusion on that? Dan Chan 22:27 Yeah, David, I can't afford my own right you can you say expensive? David Ralph 22:31 Because I I love the word snuck. I don't use the word snuck but I'm gonna up again can be smoking for the rest of the day, I'm sure. Well, let's play some words. Now we're going to come back to Adana Chen, he's Jim Carrey, Jim Carrey 22:44 my father could have been a great comedian, but he didn't believe that that was possible for him. And so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job. And our family had to do whatever we could to serve. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don't want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love. David Ralph 23:11 Now, the question with you, Dan, is Do you love it? Because after a while, as I said in in two direction, a lot of Jobs become a job, even though I look sexy from the outside. Do you still love it? Dan Chan 23:23 Yes. But I'm already planning my exit strategy. Yeah, I mean, yesterday at the event that I was TechCrunch Disrupt, which was, which is something that you might not hear where you're at. But if you know the series Silicon Valley, yeah, you probably seen them at TechCrunch Disrupt. So to be a part of TechCrunch Disrupt, I think I've been there for years. And I sent a guy that years at last year, I couldn't be there because I was performing in Germany. But I'm waiting to open up a new magic club. And I'm want to hit up these billionaires that I've performed for because one of the billionaires gave a billion dollars to a hospital or school. And they've, they've committed a billion and they've already given 100 million away. So I am trying to create a social media presence by being both here on podcasts and other places by making strategic as a multiplier effect. Because when I do get bored of it, I want customers to come to me and I've come to that traction point where I can still do some of these events. But some of them I could say pass on. When I'm done with event. I'm like, I should have spent my time working on something for TV or for my venue or in venue design. So I'm already thinking about what I'm going to do when I want to get out of performing for these epic parties and celebrities. David Ralph 24:42 And when you do that, please just climb into a box and then the box opens up and you've gone Can you an exit strategy Viva. Dan Chan 24:49 I have a thing that is absolutely amazing is my friend Carrey Pollock built this thing called that the materialisation chamber and it looks like it looks like a star trek illusion, it looks like you fade out. And that's what I'm going to bring to this venue. I'm going to try to maybe run a me funder or Kickstarter, pre sell tickets, but I'm going to be one of the few venues in the US I just found out there was another venue that got one of these. But I'm going to be the second one probably or the third one with this illusion. And it's not going to be a box. It's going to be D materialisation chamber. And when we get off the podcast, I'm going to send you a link to it and you're going to see that illusion and it looks it's in store the David Ralph 25:35 LPA it's more than that you're getting me excited. I think we just stopped the show. Now we stop the show now. And then we dive straight into it. Who cares about the listeners when we've got this kind of stuff going on? So um, when when you do magic, does he ruin you when you go and see other magicians, where when you're looking at it has the magic gun and you're just looking at it as a sort of a practical sort of examination in front of your palate done it. Dan Chan 26:01 Yeah, it's really hard to enjoy the moment because I'm always thinking of how it works. I'm a lot some of

Welcome to the Join Up Dots Podcast looking at Young Entrepreneurs Subscribe to the podcast. If you like the show, we would be so grateful if would consider leaving the show a review in iTunes as well as Stitcher Radio. A couple minutes of your time can help the show immensely! Thank YOU! Introducing Some Young Entrepreneurs In today's episode of Join Up Dots we highlight some young entrepreneurs who are really rocking and rolling in their fledgling bushiness's. Why are we bringing to the air such young folk, you maybe asking? Well, we find time and time again that the world is full of people who quite simply say "We haven't got enough experience to start anything!" This is of course a complete crock, and experience will only come after the action is taken. You might have heard of a global dominating podcast called Join Up Dots? Well before we launched this to the world we didn't have any experience of running a global hit podcast. We barely knew how to turn on a microphone and speak live to the world. You start, you make mistakes, you learn and you gain experience. So what about these young guys and gals, who are still in childhood and The following information has be collected from the CNBC website, and you can find the original article here The Youngest Of The Young Entrepreneurs - Sebastian Martinez Sebastian Martinez, CEO, Are You Kidding? Source: Are You Kidding? He's only 7, but he's already CEO of his own company and a philanthropist. Sebastian Martinez's passion for collecting bright and zany socks turned into a business when his mother suggested he design his own. The result was a company called Are You Kidding which Sebastian started at age 5. In 2014, Sebastian made $15,000 selling his specialty socks with the help of his director of sales and big brother Brandon Martinez. Since January revenue has continued to grow. "We have been able to already reach the $15,000 that we made last year and are on track to double and hopefully triple our sales this year," Rachel Martinez, the president of the company and Sebastian's mother, told CNBC. Are You Kidding teamed up with organizations like the American Cancer Society and the Live Like Bella Foundation last year to raise more than $3,000 for cancer awareness. In April, the company partnered with The Hue Studio and donated 25 percent of all proceeds from its "Eye See You" sock sales to Discovery Arts, a charitable organization that brings art programs to children with serious illnesses. EvanTube Source: YouTube What is it like to be a millionaire before you even hit puberty? Just ask 9-year-old Evan from EvanTubeHD. The face of the highly successful YouTube channel, Evan has been reviewing toys and building Lego sets online since he was 5, and it's a staggeringly big business. This pint-sized entrepreneur has three channels on the video platform and more than 2.8 million subscribers. He has amassed more than 1.9 billion views on the platform and is estimated to make $1.3 million a year. "We've already maxed out certain accounts, so I think the college education is pretty much taken care of thank goodness," Jared, Evan's father, told NBC News in December. The father has not disclosed their family name. Alina Morse Alina Morse, CEO, Zollipops Michael Bezjian | WireImage | Getty Images Nine-year-old entrepreneur Alina Morse had a pretty sweet idea in 2014: create a sugar-free lollipop that tastes good and is good for you. With a little help from her father and a lot of research, Zollipops was born. These clean teeth pops are made with sweeteners xylitol, erythritol, stevia and other natural ingredients and help to neutralize acidity in the mouth, so the bacteria that causes tooth decay cannot grow. Last year, Alina racked up $70,000 in sales and was featured on the kids' edition of "Shark Tank." She's now working to get Zollipops into dentist offices and schools across America. Moziah Bridges Moziah Bridges CNBC At 13, Moziah Bridges is well on his way to becoming a fashion mogul. This dapper CEO launched his bow-tie business, Mo's Bows at age 9 and catapulted into the spotlight after becoming the youngest entrepreneur to appear on "Shark Tank." His company made $350,000 in sales since 2011 and is expected to earn $250,000 in revenue for 2015, mother-manager Tramica Bridges told CNBC via email. Bridge's collection is sold in shops and boutiques in six states and in his online store. So What Do These Young Entrepreneurs Have In Common? Amazing stuff from these young entrepreneurs. So what do they all have in common? Well for a start they weren't frightened of failure. Being so young they had nothing to lose as they started their own businesses. They weren't scared of looking stupid like so many of us who try entrepreneurship at a later age. These young entrepreneurs had a dream and made it happen. Return To The Top Of Young Entrepreneurs If you enjoyed this episode with some young entrepreneurs, why not check out other inspirational chat with Clayton Morris, Dorie Clark, and the amazing Niall Doherty You can also check our extensive podcast archive by clicking here– enjoy Audio Transcription Of Young Entrepreneurs Podcast David Ralph 0:01 Once upon a time, there was a guy with a dream a dream, which is Jobs himself online and have a kick ass life working when he wanted him where he wanted across the world. Little did he know that dream would lead him into a world of struggle, burnout and debt. Until he found the magic ingredient and knows drunk was became a thing of the past, of course, was bad person. And now My dream is to make things happen. BU Welcome to Join Up Dots. Intro 0:31 When we're young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be but somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here's your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph. David Ralph 0:57 Yes, hello there. Good morning to you. Good morning to you. Good morning to you. Welcome to Join Up Dots. Join Up Dots. I want to start off with saying hello to a lovely lady called Kalia in Australia. Yes. Kalia Kalia. She comes from Australia. It's good to see you just stand naturally Australia, Australia, Kalia. And she dropped me an email the other day to ask me to help her with her homework. Basically, she signed up for leadership package. And she said, I recently found your podcast and have been bingeing them during my daily commute. I don't know if I ever get through them all. At the rate, you produce them. You are a sexy powerhouse, you say, get those in and you get to the top of their charts and I will respond to you. Actually, I respond to everyone I do. I try my best to respond to everyone. And so Kalia Kalia Kalia, she's from Australia. That there you go. You get your name check, you get your name check. Now what I wanted to do today. I realised recently, actually I've been a bit slack about saying thank you to people who have left ratings and reviews on Join Up Dots. And I listened to some other podcasts host and they they give name checks and I say thank you and stuff. Now it's it's a little bit boring for everybody else, but it's great for the person who's left the review. Okay? So I'm just going to do a few of these every now and again. And the first one I want to do because it's a special word is a guy called James McKay. Now, James McKay, if you're out there listening, I really want you to listen to this, okay? And I want everybody else to listen. It says given me the competence to start my own business listening to this podcast week in week out, has given me the competence to take the plunge and set up my own business. My only regret. I wish I had done it sooner. The guidance is tips and advice offered by David. It's been invaluable and I can only attribute the success I've had with my business to the valuable wisdom provided in these podcasts. So Mr. James McKay Big Big salute to you and a big round of applause and drop me a line at Join Up [email protected] because I would love to have you as a guest on the show so that we can inspire even more people to take that leap and do things the right way. So James if you'd like to be a guest on Join Up Dots, oh, if other people know who James McKay CFP from United Kingdom is poking poking with a hot stick until he agrees to become a guest on Join Up Dots and I'd love to speak to you sir. But well done given me the competence start my own business know that competence is all in you. It really is. Okay, I just do one more. This is for mad and tired from United States. This show has amazing content from some powerful folks. Great Listen, definitely recommend it. Well, when I turned on the podcast this morning, my big powerful microphone. My throat Being a microphone in front of me. I thought to myself what you're talking about today? Because, yeah, we have a lot of content to fill, and it's not easy is not easy people. So I started looking at young entrepreneurs. And I thought I'd, I'd read them out for you, and you can go and you can google them. Because most of us go, you know, I haven't got enough experience, or I have can't do this, or I can't do that, or I'm too old. But there's guys out there and as these kids, and they're doing very, very well for them. Now, some of them I agree. Some of them have got their mums and dads behind them, okay. But they're still part of the business. They're still understanding entrepreneurial venture. And so I thought I'd bring them to you. I think I bring up to you, not hundreds, but just a few. Now, this is a great idea. Sebastian Martinez. why he's only seven years old, but he's already the CEO of his own company and a philanthropist Now you might say seven, seven. What's he doing? Well, Sebastian's passion for collecting bright and zany socks turned into a business when his mother suggested he designed his own. And the result was a company called, are you kidding? Which you can of course jump over and have a look at which Sebastian started at the age of five. Now, I do say that there's certain parts of this kids that, you know, he gets he kind of dumb, he kind of dumb but he's part of the process, okay, and he will grow into it. And the earlier you can get your kids to think about how to make their own money, the better. You know, it's not just about mowing lawns. Nowadays, it's about becoming YouTube stars and becoming Instagram famous and and whatever. But your young kids can do it. They're probably a lot better at doing things quickly on these devices, by the way are now in 2014. Sebastian made 15 grain setting his speciality songs with the help of his director. And big brother, Brandon Martinez and there's a picture of two of them. Brandon actually looks younger than him. I might be giving him doing them a disservice. But anyhow, he's the big director of sales. And since January revenue has continued to grow, we've been able to already reach the 15 grand that we made last year. And on track to double and hopefully triple our sales this year, the president of the company and Sebastian's mother told CNBC. Now are you kidding teamed up with organisations like the American Cancer Society, and liberal like Bella foundation last year to raise more than three grand for Cancer Awareness EC. He's putting things back people it's not all about, you know, bringing it into your life is putting it back, which hopefully comes across in Join Up Dots. Now in April, the company partnered with the huge studio and donated 25% of all proceeds from its ICU suck sales, to discovery arts, a charitable organisation that brings up programmes to help Children with serious illness. So funky socks. So if you're out there and you're good at drawing and you can find somebody to produce these things, then why not? What about funky underpants? Yeah, with pictures and stuff. I used to have a very special pair of white silky ones. These were classy. These were classy, white silky worms with from memory, I think they would kiss marks on them. But they might be love hearts. The old memory is fading. But they had superpowers. They had superpowers. And if I was wearing them, somebody else was going to see them. Somebody else was going to see them by the end of the night. I think you know, I think you know what I mean. And they but but I met my wife and they then magically disappeared and she says you don't need them anymore. Well bloody do if you've been married for 30 years like I have. You need I need an extra pair. That's what I need. What? Second one now this guy is quite funny. He's called Evan tube. Okay, that's not his surname, but he is actually a millionaire before you even hit puberty. Now, that's not bad. nine year old Evan from Evan to HD and he's the face of a highly successful YouTube channel. And he's been reviewing toys and building LEGO sets online since he was five, and it's a staggeringly big business. Now, this pint sized entrepreneur has three channels on the video platform and more than 2.8 million subscribers just watching him review toys. And he's amassed more than 1.9 billion views on the platform and is estimated to make 1.3 million a year. We've already maxed out certain accounts so I think the college education is pretty much taken care of. Thank goodness his father says, and the father has not disclosed their family name. Gonna be quite easy to find him if he's on YouTube, I would have bought by any anyhow. Okay, so Opening box is big business nowadays, I never understand that you go to YouTube and you see somebody make an amazing documentary and they get five views and somebody opens a box and talks about it. And you know, it's 40,000 in three minutes, don't really understand it. But once again, it's something that you can do. The minimum expense is only Time, time and effort. Get your own YouTube channel just like Evan and start. Start making it happen for yourselves. Okay, I've been with the two more, do two more. Okay. And these are all new to me. I haven't read these. So there's a gal called Elena moss, and she looks like from the picture she's got something to do with lollipops. Now nine year old entrepreneur, Alina moss had a pretty sweet idea in 2014, creating a sugar free lollipop that tastes so good. And it's also good for you. With a little help from her father and a lot of research Zoe pops was born and these colours Teeth pops a major sweeteners lately very good with stevia and other natural ingredients. There's some words that are can't pronounce and help to neutralise the acidity in the mouth so the bacteria that causes tooth decay cannot grow. Last year, Alina racked up 70,000 in sales and was featured on the kids edition of shark tank. She's now working to get Zani pops into dentist offices and schools across America. How about that 70 grand just by doing lucky top pubs. Now, the storey about all these three so far is persistence. They've got to get it going. They've got to bring something slightly unique to market and they've got to enjoy it as well and put it all together like a Lena. She's obviously creating value because kids like to eat sweets and candy and so parents will be happy to buy those for them if I think they're doing good stuff. If you can put something into somebody's head But actually makes their life better, when it's even better is even bigger when you know you can really find a home and make things happen because it does take a time to start by James McKay, you will know. Should we do one more? Should we do one more? Let's find this one. Okay, let's go with this. You know, I've skipped one. I'm going to keep it in order. Moza bridges at 13. Messiah bridges is well on his way to becoming a fashion mogul. Now this kid, to be honest, looks a bit of a freak. He's He's nine years old and he's wearing a suit and a bow tie. What nine year old kid who doesn't want to get beaten up at school is going to walk around like that, but Messiah if that's your thing? you're rocking it right now. This dapper CEO launched his bow tie business. Mo's Bows at age nine. Okay. Oh, I hadn't read that bit. That's why he's wearing a bow tie. And he kept catapulted into the spotlight after becoming the youngest entrepreneur to appear on Shark Tank. He's company made 350 grand in sales since 2011. and is expected to earn 250,000 in revenue just for 2015. And doubling each year from then on. He's collection is sold in shops and boutiques in six states, and in his own online store. Brilliant. I love this. I love always I could just keep going. But, of course, you don't want to hear more about these people. You want to get out there and you want to start doing yourself. You want to start building success. And success is reasonably easy to do. As I say, I'm going to give it to you once again. You've got to look around and you've got to find value that people want and provide that value and do it the easiest way possible. So you get a life and you can scale and you can just walk away from it. And it really isn't that hard. You know, I've created what we created with six businesses. This week, no more than that knowing businesses this week with different people yet they're not to the full stage. But they've already now got their ideas and they're starting to work on it and F planning and they're finding their ideal customers. And there are billions and billions of business ideas. And when people say, I can't think of anything, I always say to them, it's because you're not thinking the right thing. Okay? Look around you and look at, you know, I'm sitting here at my desk, there's a pen, that's the business, there's an F, Russia, business, there's a mark business, everything you look at, you would have bought, so that is business, you've got clothes on your back, that's business. Every single thing can be pivoted slightly so that you become a niche expert. And in the niche, you become rich. So don't sit out there go I can't think of anything is only because you're not getting your brain working like these kids have to Find value, look at something and look at a mug and we drink coffee out a mug something, okay? If I take that mug and do something different to that mug, how can I make it more appealing to people just start getting those ideas and jot them down. And you could be the next guest on the next episode of Join Up Dots. Until next time, thank you so much for listening to us. Thank you for everybody else. I'm going to give another name check for somebody who should we have? We're gonna have fantastic energy in as inspiration from Chester 454 or 5333 from the United States, slightly different week after week, but always inspiring energy and an upbeat Listen, until next time, Look after yourselves and I will be here waiting for you. Cheers guys. See ya. Bye bye. If you're inspired to live a life on your own terms, working when you want where you want yc it sit back and make the decision of how much you want to earn today. Man, it's all totally doable and nowadays easier than ever, head over to the startup business school at Join Up dots.com and check out the video testimonials from just a few of the students that are now building their dream businesses after going through our coaching sessions and if that excites them book a time to speak to me one to one to make sure you have what it takes to become the next success of our conveyor belt that started business school at Join Up dots.com

Today's guest is a lady who has had many careers in her life, so it will be of great interest to discover if she feels what she is doing now is THE thing. She was a Wall Street Investment banker with a desire for fashion she could wear to work,to dinner,on weekends,and on world travels. She needed the perfect dress that could do it all,but couldn't find it. So, Sarah made it herself. Inspired to make the most comfortable,versatile,vibrant fashion on the market, Sarah launched Leota in 2011 on the principles of empowerment, size-inclusiveness, and optimism. What began with one perfect dress made on Sarah's home sewing machine has become a complete women's fashion collection carried in more than 500 fine retailers globally and at the company's flagship Boutique in Manhattan. Under Sarah's leadership,Leota scaled up to become one of the fastest-growing women-led companies in the U.S. How The Dots Joined Up For Sarah Sarah is a 2-time Inc.500 CEO,a Smart CEO Future 50 award winner,has been honoured in Women 2 Watch in Retail Disruption,and won Game Changer of the Year for 2 years straight. Drawing on her experience growing up a world class martial artist, 2-time national Kungfu champion and world tournament competitor,Sarah knows performance under pressure. You can do any thing in a Leota dress,and Sarah is here to prove it. She cycled a 300-mile ride in Leota to raise money to fight AIDS. She even completed a triathlon in Leota. Sarah is a muse to women in the real world. Whether it's fashion, interiors, career, or lifestyle, her taste and authenticity are celebrated. She is a sought-after speaker on entrepreneurship and the business of fashion,and hosts her monthly web show, The She Suite. Well let's find out as we bring onto the show to join up dots with the one and only Sarah Carson Show Highlights During todays show we discussed such weighty subjects with Sarah Carson: Sarah shares how she loves the idea of what men get to choose everyday due to its simplicity. We discuss the epiphany of when the business first came to the fore in her mind, and then the dip that effects all companies We reveal how entrepreneurship is one of the loneliest adventures you can enter into, with Sarah sharing how she overcame this in her life. and lastly....... Sarah shares how nothing is going to stop her from moving forward to success. She might have a few dark nights, but the next day is game on! How To Connect With Sarah Carson Website Facebook Linkedin Twitter Return To The Top Of Sarah Carson If you enjoyed this episode with Sarah Carson why not check out other inspirational chat with Clayton Morris, Dorie Clark, and the amazing Niall Doherty You can also check our extensive podcast archive by clicking here – enjoy Audio Transcription Of Sarah Carson Interview Intro 0:00 When we're young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here's your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph. David Ralph 0:25 Yes. Good morning to you. Good morning to you. And good morning. Again, welcome to another episode of at Join Up. Dots are the kind of show that just can go in any direction. And in today's show, we're whizzing across the pond like we always seem to do and we're speaking to a lady who's in New York City now. She's a lady who's had many careers in her life, so it will be a great interest to discover. If she feels what she's doing now is verifying the thing that she was born to do. She was a wall street investment banker with a desire for fashion, and the kind of fashion she could wear to work to dinner on weekends and on well travels. She needed that perfect dress. Yeah, you know what he's like fellas, we need that perfect dress that could do it all but she couldn't find it. So she made it for herself and inspired to make the most comfortable, versatile, vibrant fashion on the market. She launched liotta in 2011 or later I should have asked her on the principles of empowerment, sighs, inclusiveness and optimism. Now what began with one perfect dress made on our home sewing machine has become a complete women's fashion collection carried in more than 500 fine retailers globally and that the company's flagship boutique in Manhattan now under her leadership, she's scaled to become one of the fastest growing women led companies in BUS. She is an aide to time incorporated 500 CEO a smart CEO future 50 Award winner has been on it. She's done loads of things. But drawing on her experience growing up a world class martial artist two time national kung fu champion and World Tournament competitor she knows perform under pressure, you can do anything in one of our dresses and she's here to prove it. She cycled every hundred mile ride, to raise money to buy aids and she even completed a try Apollon in her clothes. She's a muse to women in the real world, whether it's fashion interiors, careers or lifestyle, a taste and authenticity, our celebrity celebrity celebrated, I should have said that better. She's a sought after speaker. So let's get her on the show. So is this the kind of thing that she just knew from from when she started, it was going to be her thing. And Where could she have done it better? Well, let's find out as we bring onto the show to start Join Up Dots with the one and only Sarah Carson. Good morning, Sarah, how are you? Sarah Carson 2:44 Good morning. Great to be here, David. David Ralph 2:47 It's great in it. Did you feel celebrated. It's a new word that I've just created or do you do you feel celebrated by the world outside? Sarah Carson 2:55 Oh, I think being celebrated by David Ralph is pinnacle of my career so far. David Ralph 3:02 You say you're winning me over. You're winning me over already. It's gonna be an Emmy Award winning podcast. I think this is now you're speaking to the right guy because I am a fashion driven. I know what works. I wear tricky bottoms and a white t shirt 99% of the time. I don't understand fashion at all. What am I missing? What am I missing? What makes something that's fashionable and also useful? Sarah Carson 3:29 Well, I think fashion is about expressing who you are. It's like we put on who we are every day. It's an expression of your identity, which is what's so awesome about being in the fashion business. It's like, you're part of every customers decision about how they want to project to the world each day. And so, the beautiful thing is there's no real recipe for that. But I think what matters about fashion is that it feels good that it feels comfortable that you can feel like you could be your true self and that and if that's sweatpants and a T shirt for you then you go girl. What I wanted. What I wanted to do with liotta is create something that could really work for women every day. I mean, the demands on our lives these days from work home, you know, place of worship, community volunteering, can you have a friends, your spouse? What if you had one thing that you could do everything in? That would be a huge win. So that's why I'm in this. David Ralph 4:30 Well, isn't that just Truckee bottoms in a white t shirt? Is that not the kind of thing that you can do everything in Sarah Carson 4:34 100%? Especially if you're a podcast? host? David Ralph 4:37 Yeah, absolutely. Because my wife my women are different. We know women to be different. And my wife will go out to buy a new outfit. And when she comes back, I look at it and I think it's the same as you've got in the cupboard. It looks exactly the same and she says no, it's not that one's got gold colour and not one does this and does. It's a bit of a math being a woman isn't it? And I used to work in the City of London and I used to just put on a tie a shirt and a suit and that was it. But I know that ladies, there was even a pressure to be at work but I couldn't repeat. And they you know, Christmas dues, they had to wear something different from last time. It was just a big pressure. Sarah Carson 5:18 Well that's why I find men's fashion actually really inspiring David because it's so easy for men to have a uniform. You know, when you are working in London, you can wear the same button down and tie every day and he's totally fine. You know, Steve Jobs as I know is one of your you know, someone that has been a mentor for you. If he wore the same turtleneck every day of his whole career. I love that. And I admire that a lot about men's fashion and so I wonder if there could be a uniform for women. Where there they knew there was one thing they could put on and be transformed into the best version of themselves. Does it because it is iconic As you say, the Steve Jobs Look, you know, I don't know how many years he wore that. But if I close my eyes and think of Steve Jobs, it's about outfit. If I think of like Mark Zuckerberg, he's wearing a grey t shirt, basically, you know, David Ralph 6:13 unless he's being pulled into government and being pillared before he's performance. Ben, he has to wear a suit. But generally, it's that thing about not having to think about what you're wearing. That's what I was going to do it, isn't it, it takes a decision away. Sarah Carson 6:28 Yeah. And I always say, you know, you can't change the world in uncomfortable clothes. Right. And David Ralph 6:35 is that is that your standard response to most things? Sarah Carson 6:39 Well, yeah, because you look at what women are expected to do. And then it's just like, Are you serious? Right now, I'm supposed to wear these heels and these tight clothes and these Spanx, it's like, forget about it. So you know, it's funny when I was an investment banker, there were very, they're still very few women working in the industry, but the women would be kind of like cooped up in these like Tight office ladies suits that were kind of like women's versions of the men's power suit. And it's conforming, constricting. And I just started to think like, What if there was a better way, and meanwhile, strolling down the street in New York or LA, I would see women wearing exercise clothes, walking down the street, and I was like, What if there were a fashion option for women that were as comfortable as wearing yoga pants or exercise clothes, or jeans and a T shirt, but was actually appropriate for our lifestyles today? David Ralph 7:39 I love the fact that you say strutting down New York because I've just been there for a few weeks. You don't stop more than about two inches without stopping because somebody is in your way. It's the it's the busiest place I've ever been to in my life. Sarah Carson 7:52 Yeah, it really is and actually was cool. for women's equality day a couple weeks ago, we took over time square with Is the probably the busiest corner in the world with a message of empowering women celebrating all of the progress we've made and the kind of struggle towards equality, and also getting motivated for the work that still needs to come. So that was pretty awesome to be in Times Square. And instead of seeing all of the ads to see this kind of feminist message for all our customers, oh, yeah, you can't move very much. Your tone is David Ralph 8:33 terrible. I didn't know how busy it was. I went many years ago, it was a YU breeding like rabbits over there. I think. I think that's the problem. I think we should bring in contraception and then give it out to everybody. You know, it doesn't matter. Instead of having movies, get on a bus tour things give out condoms on the street. That's what we want. Sarah Carson 8:54 Yeah, I would support that maybe for for different reasons, but yes, 100% Let's get some positive contraception women's health approach here in the States. You know, that's got to be a priority. David Ralph 9:09 Yeah. And I will be your your flagship, I will be the person forcing that through if anybody can bring in women health changes is going to be me, isn't it? Sarah Carson 9:19 Oh, thank you, David. I love this intersection between feminism and podcasting. So let's do this. David Ralph 9:25 Let's do this. Let's bring it all together. Now one of the things that we talked about on this show over time is the entrepreneur journey. That's basically you know, the whole thing. Now, I am amazed by what you created, because everything that I've spoken to across the world always starts with an idea of I save everything is created twice, once in your head and then once in real life. Now, you actually started with a sewing machine, which amazed me but anybody still has sewing machines. And you actually vain took that idea. How did you do it? So I don't teach you moving away. From condoms I'm not interested in that anymore. I mean, you and how did you do it? Sarah Carson 10:04 Well I started to see this trend in fashion where people wanted to be comfortable and I thought that was awesome but there I searched everywhere for this perfect dress that would be that would feel really cute though it feel beautiful in but I would also feel comfortable and like I could move and do the things I need to do. I can find this thing anywhere. So I decided to make it myself. And before I was an investment banker, I was an artist I loved to make things. So basically by day I was closing multibillion dollar deals for Fortune 50 companies and by night I was sewing and it was a I had a hobby, which is awesome. It's hard when you work on Wall Street. It's exactly like what you see in the movies. Hundred hour work weeks. Watching the sun come up over Park Avenue. I mean so many hours spent in tight office lady clothes, so it was this amazing way to unwind by making something that was going to feel amazing. And honestly, I got so many compliments and orders from friends and family after a while that I thought I might really be onto something bigger. So I decided to go for it. And it was super risky and kind of crazy. I mean, I'm a first born, traditional success driven person. So to like quit, one of the most coveted jobs in the world was, you know, really not in my DNA. David Ralph 11:37 And did you have people saying, Sarah, Sarah, what the hell are you doing? You have to be here for another 40 years and you can add that office on the corner can all that kind of stuff. Sarah Carson 11:47 Well, I had a lot of success at the bank that I was working at, and I could have done anything in that business. But I felt that I wanted to do something that I was really passionate about and I honestly didn't receive that much pushback. I mean, you would have thought I've involved parents, you would have thought my parents would have said, Sarah, you're crazy. What are you thinking? But I think that they ultimately wanted me to be happy to and they lied to me early on. They told me that I was supposed to be that I was going to love my career and that it was going to be like, so fun and amazing to have a career. And I got into my career in business and Wall Street, and I was like, Guys, this is not fun. This is not interesting. It's sexist. It's 100 hour weeks. It's like a little bit uninspiring. What's wrong with this picture? David Ralph 12:42 Come on, come on. Come on. I've been in bang, I'd have done thinking and I've done ensuring insurance as well. It's the most boring job, when you say is a little bit less than inspiring. sitting there looking at spreadsheets and making other people richer. It's terrible. It's the worst job ever. So I love the way that you had that venom of my parents lied to me. Sarah Carson 13:08 They lied to me. David Ralph 13:10 bonkers and look at me now look at me you know what I've done? And so I'm sure they're massively proud of you now. Unknown Speaker 13:16 Yeah, I think they are. Do not know Ben. David Ralph 13:19 Nice if you never asked him Sarah Carson 13:23 Well, I'm sure yeah, I'm sure the I'm proud of me. How do I know my parents are proud of me? Oh, David, I didn't know we are going to go here and so like deep childhood, Unknown Speaker 13:38 like that's Welcome sir. Sarah Carson 13:42 Well, I think I'm the firstborn of my family. I think there's always a lot of pressure on me to have traditional success. And like I don't know where you are in your birth order. But you know, like my little sister got like all the allowance like didn't have to have a job like that sent all over the world on my parents dime, you know, like, very Different experience and for me though, like, you need to have a job and you need to, you know, make sure you have like, you know, be the valedictorian and everything which was fine by me. I mean I was very successive and as well and I actually ended up naming liotta after my great grandmother. And that's because my family has been a huge inspiration to me. And so I think by naming my company after my family has tied everybody to the success and the storey, so you could have David Ralph 14:38 you could have called it you liars. have been I would have gotten a message one night. Yeah, I'm glad you went the way you did. And the reason I asked that is I'm very aware that my parents like they never say anything nice. They never say anything and never say I love you. You know, I can say to my mom on the phone, Lucky mom. She says yet another Never going to be back. By don't hug if I don't do anything. And it was something I grew up with. So I didn't realise but my wife, my wife will hug lampposts she had anything and so she sort of says you know why why do they do that? It's just the way they are. So when they started you know, when when we had our first child for example, and we stood and we said to my mama Daddy, you can be grandparents they went well hope you know what you're doing that there was there was no sort of great congratulations or anything. And so what I've created on my side of the fence here, only a small little ripple in the in the ocean of liotta course. But um, I've got no idea if they're proud or anything, so he's just, it's a leading question to make me wonder if I'm on my own. Am I on my own? Do we all need parental praise somewhere down the line? Sarah Carson 15:50 Well, ultimately, I mean, this is probably sounds a little bit depressing. But as entrepreneurs, I think it is one of the loneliest endeavours you can do and That was something that really surprised me when I first started my company. I always had like, good relationships with my team members and everything at work. But I didn't really realise how important that was until I started my brand. And I was the only person and it was a little bit lonely. And that surprised me. And I didn't realise how much having a community around what I'm doing can really feed me. So later in life I later in my entrepreneurship journey, I really worked on that like joining groups with other entrepreneurs to kind of approximate that co founder feeling. So yeah, I think it is a profoundly alone experience. Being an entrepreneur. David Ralph 16:50 I agree with you totally. I do agree with you totally. Because on the very first episode of Join Up Dots I ever recorded, I actually said to the guy, do you ever get lonely you know, because I gone from an office environment where there was everyone to sitting on my own. He said, No, never get lonely. And I thought, brilliant, that's why I'm never gonna get lonely. And suddenly I didn't see anyone. And he got particularly lonely at like Christmas when everybody was going after Christmas parties. And I think, Well, I haven't had a single invite, but you bet you don't in this environment. You know, it is It's strange. How do you find that support, but actually is worthwhile to you? Not virtually, but the real people that you can really trust as you're ploughing through the dark times that we have in entrepreneurship, and it happens to everyone, as you find a good one so Sarah Carson 17:38 well as entrepreneurs. Well, pretty much in any entrepreneur who's listening to this will know everybody wants something from you, as soon as you have your own company. And, and I mean, it's so New York, it's so LA. It's like, Hi, how, what do you do? How can I like that? something from you. I mean, it's just it's a very transactional, which is great because that can be really efficient. But it's also kind of sad. And I constantly get requests for my time, like, come to this dinner, come to this meeting, join this virtual group. I mean, there's zillions of them now, which is amazing because I think people have realised how important community is for people that are really trying to change the world and trying to create something new. But finding the right ones is super crucial. So I joined entrepreneurs organisation A few years ago, and that was like a total game changer for me because all of a sudden, I was part of this group of founders who were going through the same thing as me, like how do we scale up our businesses? In some cases? How do we scale them down? How do we deal with suddenly being responsible for every single aspect of the company and that intersection between personal and professional needs to be addressed and groups that do that I think are super important. Because how many things you listen to where you only get the highlight reel, like you open up for so you look at the cover of entrepreneur, it's like this person's perfect journey towards success straight to the top. And, you know, it took five days to make $500 million. And me those and I'm like, Well, I suck. You know, I wasn't able to do that. My that my experience was like a lot messier than that. I mean, obviously, this person didn't have an entire container of their product, stuck on a container with someone else's endangered species pelts. They got stuck in customs for like two months. I mean, these are the sorts of things that are out of our control that like can seriously derailed business. And so it's neat to find groups and like podcasts like this, are people going to tell you the real deal? It's like, it's like What Messier, then Entrepreneur Magazine would have, I think, David Ralph 20:05 Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. I was just saying to the wife a moment ago, my business is going great. So it's wonderful. But I still feel behind the scenes away from the sexy front piece. I feel like it's a incredible jigsaw puzzle where I haven't quite got it all together. And it's, it's, you know, it's making great money, brilliant. People are listening in their files is brilliant, but it's not where I want it to be. And I'm very aware with myself as a podcaster. When I first started over six years ago, there was a phase when I'd say yeah, I'm a podcaster. And people would go and what's bad and I'd have to explain it. And then there was a bit where it seemed to open loads of doors. But now literally, every person every down and out on the street has got a microphone and they're all saying their podcast hosts and it's, it's kind of saturated, and I'm I'm looking forward to the time when all the people paga actually, a move on to something else. And I go right, I'm still here, come and come and listen to me. And I sort of ride through. But is it's messy behind the scenes, isn't it, you've always got things that you need to do. You've always got things that you're launching to the world, but isn't quite where it should be. And the vision, a vision is always harder to get than you can possibly think that's probably some words. And then we're going to delve back into this because it's very, very important is Oprah. Oprah Winfrey 21:27 The way through the challenge is to get still and ask yourself, what is the next right move? not think about, Oh, I got all of this. What is the next right move? And then from that space, make the next right move, and the next right move and not to be overwhelmed by it because you know, your life is bigger than that one moment. You know, you're not defined by what somebody says, is a failure for you because failure is just there to point you in a different direction. David Ralph 21:59 Now Bed good words for this conversation on I Sarah Carson 22:03 love you, Oprah. Yeah, totally. Now, I mean, I love that because it's like, so daunting to think of where you want to get. You can't do that in one day, can spend a lot of people into a spiral David Ralph 22:16 where you can and which gets me to where you are because from the outside looking at you, you're a natural fit. You're a glamorous lady, you're wearing bright colours, you just look like a fashion person. But of course, there was a time when you was probably wearing grey suits and black suits and sitting there. That journey, that mental journey of actually saying I'm going to do something different from everybody else. How did you overcome that? Sarah Carson 22:52 I think at a deep level, it was about becoming who I truly am and joining up the dots, wink wink between who I was on the inside and how I projected myself on the outside. And when I was an investment banker cooped up in my tight office ladies suits, trying to be one of the guys. You know, I spent my I grew up and spent my early career being led by white men in suits. And a lot of them were really nice. But it was impossible to to not start equating leadership with a certain race and gender that most of us simply can never be. And so I sort of realised within that environment as important it is as it is to make change from within that if I was going to truly be able to become a leader and embrace my femininity, then I was probably going to have to do something else. And so I think that women like me who are stepping up and taking their shot and founding their own companies are claiming kind of a transformational opportunity. Because now I mean women can look at their leadership and see themselves reflected. And I think that representation and that self expression is so important. And I'm excited to be on the forefront of that. At Liotta, the boss has frizzy hair tattoos have penchant for red lipstick and and I'm the boss are in my voice. My face has authority. And that's really different from the way I grew up in my career. Does that make sense? David Ralph 24:55 Women are taking over the world at the moment. It does it It certainly does. It PIP Women are taking over the world. It certainly, from my view, the fact that we've now got like a on a flippin level, a female doctor who now when I was growing up that would never have happened and the fact that they're saying there should be a female James Bond and there should be a female, there is definitely a movement towards ladies now it's brilliant. And I go, you know, if you can do a job as well as a man, go for it, you know, and then you shouldn't be held back. I don't want a woman James Bond. I don't. And I don't you know, I think there's certain levels but it's too far. Sarah Carson 25:38 Well, maybe it's not going to be the same thing. Maybe it's something different that can be just as exciting and powerful. Definitely just doesn't work David Ralph 25:48 that Cody James Bond. Unknown Speaker 25:50 How about Jamie? David Ralph 25:55 It's too It's too close is too close. But I do think there is a certain movement at the moment which is Which is great. And I do you know, I'd like to see it spread to all areas because there's there's nothing that can hold anyone back. Other than being a female James Bond that's not going to happen but away from every single person out there listening should be out but to go I want to do that I want to be the next Carson. I want to have frizzy hair tattoos and bright lipstick and be respected and they want to do that they can make it happen calmly. Sarah Carson 26:28 Well, yeah, and I think it's it's still feels like a little bit radical because I think our concept of leadership still looks like a certain person that students are not a Sarah Carson look and feel. But I think with every person that steps out and gives it a shot and works for a woman, start so company helps out a woman next to them. We're making those small, important steps kind of like Oprah was saying David Ralph 27:01 Now with the designs that you do, I was predicting up and down and to be honest, I didn't spend that long because I don't know what I'm looking at. It's just nice dresses. But women come in all different shapes and sizes that does your company cope for all types of women or is it very much focused on the real skinny ones? The larger ones are what is your offering? Sarah Carson 27:24 liotta is the OG size and fits a brand we've been bucking the fashion industry is systemic sizes and since day one offering sizes extra extra small through five x. Back in the early days, I actually had to fire my agent and my photographer in order to even do a campaign featuring a plus size model next to the industry's quote unquote straight models. And and then that was really radical back then because people thought well, no one's going to buy the product if it if we show somebody that's not like 18 Caucasian and and sin but I said forget that beauty comes in all shapes sizes, colours, ethnicities sexuality genders and so it's really important for me to represent that with my brand Unknown Speaker 28:18 so I think the future of fashion and when you say extra extra small David Ralph 28:22 yeah when you say extra extra small are we talking about drove drove Are we just talking very little people Sarah Carson 28:29 we're talking about some very well people David Ralph 28:31 but not drove your you're alienating too often? Sarah Carson 28:35 I would I would say I'm not sure we're supposed to say dwarfs anymore, David. But oh one little people are included in the liotta world because I think beauty doesn't have to do with size. And that's got it that's got to

Today's episode of Join Up Dots brings you two very different stories from the world of business success. One is from a guy in the United Kingdom who first connected with us at Join Up Dots back in 2015. His name is Neil C Hughes, who runs the Tech Talk Daily Podcast and just recently has hit over 1,000 episodes. The second guy is a chap who first connected with us at Join Up Dots about two years ago, and wasn't in the right position to start building his own dream. Roll on a couple of years and he has now created a million dollar business in just three weeks. Amazing stuff So where do you sit in regards to building your own dream? Ready to play the long game, or wanting to hit it out of the park as quickly as you can?

Introducing Zachary Babcock Zachary Babcock is todays guest joining us on the Join Up Dots podcast is a man who is an entrepreneur, business coaching and ex-prisoner who has turned his life around spectacularly. As the founder of Underdog Empowerment, he teaches underdog entrepreneurs to launch, grow, and monetize top shelf passive income businesses and personal brands. But it hasn't been easy and as he says "I had to learn the hard way as I began building my business. It was time to get to work when I got out of prison on October 2nd, 2014. It definitely wasn't easy. I got into entrepreneurship because I didn't have many options, plus I liked the idea of betting on myself. How The Dots Joined For Zachary However, it was a struggle, and I barely got by. I did network marketing for 2 years, made almost $2k a month within my first 6 months, but that just wasn't my thing. My business crumbled and I left after 2 years. At the very beginning of 2017, I became a 'life coach'. I didn't make a single penny or help anybody as a life coach because my messaging was a hot mess. And like everyone just starting out, I sucked. Every time I tried to collaborate with anyone, nobody took me seriously. I was just some ex-convict turned entrepreneur afterthought that nobody gave the time of day to. "Who is Zachary Babcock?" But nowadays things are looking very much different as his profile and business continues to grow month on month. So what has made this platform so successful, when the web is full of similar ideas that never got off the ground? And is this is lifetime legacy or just a stepping stone to what is in his heart and mind? Well let's find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Zachary Babcock Show Highlights During the show we discussed such deep weighty subjects with Zachary Babcock such as: Zachary shares how he struggled so much with creating a marketing strategy due to the confusion of his personal branding. Once he got clear on who he is, the business exploded. Why it is so important to really believe in your product and the value that you are able to provide. If you don't then you will never see that value come back to you. Zach shares how he is developing multiple incomes through his business, whilst never losing track of his key focus/ and lastly...... We discuss why so many people who come out of prison aren't actually ready to change their lives. In fact they need help to actually want the change to occur in the first place.

Introducing Tim Collings Tim Collings is today's guest joining us on the Join Up Dots podcast is a Brit living in in Australia. Tim started out his corporate working career as many of us do. Constrained by the boundaries of a system Tim quickly realised that the way he thought about things was different to the way the boss wanted things done. Luckily Tim had some great bosses and strong leaders that recognised that his potential for greatness resided not within a system but with servicing clients and delivering on their needs and once he was let off the leash so to speak he kicked goal after goal. However like many successful employees Tim wanted more and ultimately he wanted his own business. All the years within the corporate framework set Tim up nicely to make the transition into his own business. As he says " I spent 15 years working in global corporates both finding my way as a leader, and really feeling the difference between leaders who tried to model the business on themselves rather than those who nurtured the capability of their leadership team, fostering their talents and strengths." This insight has now lead him to have a great perspective on leadership and is highly experienced in working closely with many of Australia's top executives. Tim's ideas and thoughts around value based leadership are not just interesting, but pragmatic and highly effective. Tim is recognised as one of the top people in the field of leadership in Australia. So what makes a person a truly great leader that not only shines in their own office, but across the globe too? And where does he find the inspiration to challenge this information into his own successful business? Well let's find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Tim Collings. Show Highlights During the show we discussed such deep weighty subjects with Tim Collings such as: We shared the journey that Tim took as he leaped across the world to find a new home and live a life of adventure. Why the word selfish isn't actually a bad thing if you can then take that decision and start serving the world better. Why so many people struggle with knowing that the service that they can provide will get better in the future, although previous customers have missed out. and lastly...... Tim shares how he manages his time and his energy both at the start of the day and also at the end. This is a game changer.