Working For A Dream

John Dragoo became a police officer because he “wanted to help people.” After nearly 20 years of service, with a severely autistic son who needed more support and attention, John retired from law enforcement and attempted to pivot paths in a direction that would see him at home more.

He got to work selling cars for a buddy until one day, he fell off a trailer and broke his right foot in half. Five surgeries and four years later, and John had spent most of his time forced to sit. Now physically disabled, he was also struggling with the PTSD he’d developed from his time in the service. In short, John needed a new plan. Around that time, he realized that his weekend habit of smoking meat for friends could be turned into a business. 

Today, as the Blue Brisket food truck owner, he feels he’s finally fulfilling his original goal of helping people — just in a slightly different way.

“Instead of putting people in jail and making them miserable, I'm making people happy now by serving them brisket, pork, sausage, and smoked Bologna,” he said.

In this episode of the Working For a Dream Podcast, Patrick and John talk about John’s path of pivoting from law enforcement to entrepreneurship and how he got his business off the ground.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why do we need to make conversations about PTSD in civilians, versus the military alone, less taboo
• How John leaped and saw his weekend meat-smoking hobby as something worth investing tens of thousands of dollars in
• His best piece of advice to anyone else interested in opening a food truck
• And much more!

Favorite Quote:

“Whenever someone says ‘Man, this is some of the best food I’ve ever had,’ if you’ve never felt that compliment before, your chest just swells up.”

— John Dragoo

How to Get Involved:

Connect with John:

Facebook

Instagram

Connect with Patrick: 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

Sometimes, dreams sneak up on you. 

Jessica Stroud — also known by the name her best-selling book and podcast are under, The Lady CEO — knows this from experience. She can remember living comfortably as a pharmaceutical sales rep, with a company car, bonuses, and no shortage of bells and whistles. And yet, she’d become too comfortable. Some hard knocks in her 20s, she realized, had led her to over-prioritize security.

“I had some failures in my late 20s, and I had a failure that stuck with me to where I said to myself, ‘You failed at something.’ And that became my identity,” she recalls. 

A decade later, Jessica knew she needed a path that brought more meaning to her life. Ultimately switching over into the insurance industry, she’s built a name for herself as a high-power generator of “referrals without asking” — which, coincidentally, is what she’s since named her academy that teaches others how to do the same. Averaging over 500 referrals a year through her work alone, reaching this consistency is something Jessica is exceptionally proud of. But she didn’t get here overnight. 

In this episode of the Working For a Dream Podcast, Patrick and Jessica talk about how to ramp up your referrals, manage social media for your business the right way, and find the confidence to pivot paths.

What You’ll Learn:

• How a health crisis led Jessica to realize she was approaching entrepreneurship unsustainably (and how she corrected that)
• Why the “80-20 rule” is critical for successful social media use as a business owner
• Where Jessica gets the majority of her referrals 
• And much more!

Favorite Quote:

“I think people have to be very careful in re-evaluating ‘the dream,’ right? Re-evaluating the dream because it's a never-ending pursuit, because the dream changes. And that's okay.”

— Jessica Stroud

How to Get Involved:

Connect with Jessica:

The Lady CEO

Instagram

Facebook

Connect with Patrick: 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

Growing up in Guatemala with wealthy parents, Pedro Meneses “had it all.” 

“That’s the reality,” he says. “I went to private school. My dad sponsored me for college and everything I've always wanted in my life… my friends were, like, politicians’ kids and people that had to have chauffeurs and security.” 

As he moved through his early 20s, Pedro realized that although his life was full of privilege, it wasn’t full of much meaning. “You start growing up in a way that you feel like the world owes you something,” he adds. “My entire life, for some reason, there was always something in me telling me that there was something that was not right.” 

He tried searching for meaning as a volunteer firefighter in Guatemala, where most of his time was spent working with poor, underresourced families. Eventually, the search for meaning would take him to the U.S., where he married and became an entrepreneur. But it wasn’t until the pandemic that he realized his struggle to find meaning could be attributed to one source, in particular: his relationship to masculinity. 

In this episode of the Working For a Dream Podcast, Patrick and Pedro talk about why COVID led Pedro to develop “a hunger to be more of a man” and how that led him to found his beard-care company and community, The Way of the Modern Beast.

What You’ll Learn:

• What made Pedro realize that so many of the men he encountered in life had “emptiness in their eyes”
• Why he believes “self-mastery” and “self-care” go hand-in-hand
• Why he founded a community where men can grow and find their strengths alongside other men
• And much more!

Favorite Quote:

“Masculinity for me is that a man should have a purpose... because then you have something that you have the battle to fight for. You have the adventure to live, and you have a companion that can help you through that battle and who you can invite to that adventure for your life.”

— Pedro Meneses

How to Get Involved:

Connect with Pedro:  

The Way of the Modern Beast

Twitter

Facebook

Connect with Patrick: 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

Nicaragua, where Patrick Bolanos was born and raised, is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, right behind Haiti. He’s lived in the U.S. for some time now, but whenever Patrick returns — as he did recently, with his 15-year-old daughter in tow — he’s reminded of the way his native country’s extreme poverty “hits you every single time.” Patrick was back in Nicaragua to meet the parents of children he supports through his Working for A Dream Baseball Academy. 

“My goal in life was to make an impact, especially in the life of Nicaraguan boys and children that play baseball,” he says. “My ultimate dream was to play baseball. So that's why I support a baseball academy, and by support, I mean economically and financially. I made it a mission to help this academy so that we can give kids the opportunity to sign with Major League Baseball.”

In this special solo episode of the Working For a Dream Podcast, Patrick talks about the impact he’s been able to help make through the academy and the importance of perspective.

What You’ll Learn:

• What Patrick’s takeaways are from his recent return to Nicaragua
• The type of support he’s been able to offer Nicaraguan families
• Why baseball gives kids a unique opportunity to access a better-resourced life
• And much more!

Favorite Quote:

“I invite everybody that's listening to find something that you're passionate about. Find something that you can do to get out there and create some perspective in your life. It helps build that gratitude muscle.”

— Patrick Bolanos

How to Get Involved:

Connect with Patrick: 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

Chelsy Cardin is the first person in her family with a college degree and the first person who wanted to take the corporate path. 

Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, she hadn’t watched anyone work a 9-to-5 schedule growing up. But she did have a lot of energy and ambition, and she needed to direct it somewhere. By 19, she’d already graduated from college, returning to school the following year for her MBA in marketing. At 23, she was running a marketing department and making a six-figure salary. 

“Looking back over what I’ve accomplished this far, I feel like every place I’ve gotten both in my personal life and my professional life has just been because I’ve taken massive action,” she says. “When I make a decision, I go all-in because I know undoubtedly that that’s the right move for me.” 

Even still, there have been some unexpected turns in her path — including when the entrepreneurial bug did eventually bite her. In this episode of the Working For a Dream Podcast, Patrick and Chelsy talk about how she went from corporate life to entrepreneur life to ultimately a mix of the two.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why Chelsy quit her cushy, six-figure job at 23, and what she did after
• When people ask her whether an MBA is “worth it,” what her response always is
• How she, in her current industry, made as much on her first commission as her entire starting salary
• And much more!

Favorite Quote:

“You can't be everything to everybody, right? So at least to start with, you have to have a niche. You have to know who you're trying to focus on. That's always the first thing. I feel like a lot of times, especially new businesses, try to market too broadly. They try to appeal to everybody, and in turn, they appeal to nobody… you have to focus on that smaller group, and take the people that are your ideal audience and make them passionate.”

— Chelsy Cardin

How to Get Involved:

Connect with Chelsy:  

LinkedIn

Instagram

Facebook

Connect with Patrick: 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

Mike Claudio had what many would consider a cushy job at Verizon Wireless, working within their corporate sales team. His clients were major international companies, from Volvo to US Airways, and he was considered a top performer, hitting 250% of his quota for three years running. But the pace was brutal. 

“It’s a rollercoaster that’s not for the faint of heart,” Mike says. “Looking back now, it ruins a lot of people. Because you’re never allowed to be satisfied — happiness will at most last 15 days. Like, ‘Hit my quota halfway through the month, I’m happy now.’ You just never, ever, ever felt like you could get ahead.”

Mike wasn’t just unhappy at work. He was also “fat, miserable and an alcoholic” in his personal life. But the pay and benefits were persuasive — until one day, a decade down the line, they weren’t anymore. 

“I’m in the same office as this guy who I’m going to be replacing… I remember looking at him and going, he’s been in that job for 17 years. He’s 400 pounds and miserable. And I went, that’s going to be me. I was making $170K a year, was 27 years old. I had the life. I had the Cadillac, I had the house, I had the wife, I had the trips. I had whatever the f*** I wanted. But I remember looking at him going, ‘I’m too young to be the next thing I’m looking forward to is retirement.’” 

In this episode of the Working For a Dream Podcast, Mike tells Patrick how he decided he was worth more and how today, as founder of WinRate Consulting, he helps clients and businesses find their “more,” too. 

What You’ll Learn:

• What happened when Mike ultimately turned his back on corporate life (and why people’s reaction counterintuitively confirmed he’d made the right move)
• The difference between empathy vs sympathy for employees and others topics he coaches companies on today
• What kind of impact he’s making through his Champion Shoes nonprofit
• And much more!

Favorite Quote:

“I don't look at the big picture. If you look at my mission statement as a person, I want to have an impact with every conversation I have... I don't think enough people focus on the now. Right? I'm focused on this conversation and being in tune and being dedicated and focused. I'm not on my phone, worried about text messages… I have big goals, big visions, and big targets I want to hit, but I play the small ball. I do the work other people won’t, I show up when other people won't, and I do the little things right that matter.”

— Mike Claudio

How to Get Involved:

Connect with Mike:  

WinRate Consulting

A Champion’s Shoes

LinkedIn

Connect with Patrick: 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

Right before hitting rock bottom, Samuel Smith was on top. Or at least, it felt like he was. 

When the oil field crashed in 2009, Samuel needed a new way of making money. So, he googled “how to make money online” — and discovered what he calls the “wonderful rabbit hole of affiliate marketing and pay-per-click marketing.” Before long, it felt like his earnings had no cap. 

“I remember my first $100 day and my first $1,000 day,” he says. “By 2011, I was spending like $5,000 a day on Facebook, which was the most you could spend on an ad account back then, and it was nothing because I would make $7,000 a day in return. I thought I’d made it. I remember telling my buddy that I found a cheat code to life.” 

But, as Samuel says, all good things have “an equal and opposite reaction.” He was making more money than he’d thought possible, but he was a bad steward of it. He wasn’t taking care of his finances, and he wasn’t taking care of himself, his diet, or his relationships. What Samuel was doing a lot of us was drinking. And when the time came that his business faced a challenge, he wasn’t prepared. 

In this episode of the Working For a Dream Podcast, Samuel tells Patrick about the “complete collapse and absolute disaster” of that first business, what it was like to hit rock bottom after believing himself already retired at age 36, and how Samuel is doing business differently — and sustainably — today.

What You’ll Learn:

• How drinking helped fuel his life’s rock bottom moment and lost him hundreds of thousands of dollars — and how he’s recovered with two seven-figure-earning businesses today
• How his life has changed for the better since he ditched the toxic masculinity instilled in him in his youth
• Why shifting his business attitude from making money to guiding people has been so impactful
• And much more!

Favorite Quote:

“What I've discovered is that most entrepreneurs have all been through the same stuff. You have a point in your story where you're sitting in the truck crying. I have a point in my story where my mom hugged me and whispered into my ear to ‘sort your f***ing life out.’ Every entrepreneur seems to have hit bottom.”

— Samuel Smith

How to Get Involved:

Connect with Samuel:  

Facebook

Instagram

The Small Business Surgeon

Connect with Patrick: 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

The idea for Cousins Maine Lobster originated over a night of drinking and a visit between two cousins, Sabin Lomac and Jim Tselikis. Jim had trekked out to visit Sabin in L.A., and a few drinks into the night, the conversation grew nostalgic as they reminisced about their shared Maine childhood. 

“We decided that we wanted to do something creative. We wanted to work together. And the more we drank, the more nostalgic we got about our childhood. And that led to lobster,” Sabin recalls. 

Opening a restaurant seemed too daunting, with long leases and big buildouts. This was 2012 in L.A., and gourmet food trucks were just beginning to arrive on the scene. The cousins figured they could buy one for around $60,000. 

“Let’s put a truck on the street. Let’s represent our home state. What we wanted really was just to recreate our childhood,” Jim adds. “We were privileged to have grown up with the best lobster in the world and we wanted to bring it to other areas… at the end of the day, it was a passion project. Something we could do together, have fun with, represent our home state of Maine, and see where it goes.” 

Ten years, one “Shark Tank” investor, 50 food trucks and a franchise later, and the cousins have created a multi-million dollar business. In this episode of the Working For a Dream Podcast, Jesse Lee tells Patrick how she made it big in network marketing after starting at zero — and how she ultimately created success on her own terms.

What You’ll Learn:

• How the question “what would make our moms happy?” led the cousins to develop such a successful business idea
• How they managed to stay cool, calm and collected in the Tank
• What it’s like to have Barbara Corcoran as an investor
• And much more!

Favorite Quote:

“That’s one of the things we were taught, is like, hey. You may not know everything. We always say we didn’t go to business school. We didn’t have any restaurant experience. But what we did have was passion. This had a lot of meaning for us, because it was about our family.”

— Jim Tselikis

How to Get Involved:

Connect with Sabin and Jim: 

Facebook

Instagram

Cousins Maine Lobster

Connect with Patrick: 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

Jesse Lee Ward’s childhood set her up for later success as an entrepreneur — though not in the way you might think. 

“I grew up with nothing. I was the kid that got made fun of for not having the right clothes, not having the right food at lunch — if there even was food at lunch,” she said. “I was the kid that couldn't go on field trips. Like, it sucked. And I'm really grateful for that. Because it made me not so much know what my ‘why’ was — a lot of people in personal development are like, ‘What’s your deep-rooted why?’ And I’m like, I don’t know! But I can tell you very clearly what I don’t want, because I lived it for so long.” 

After college, Jesse Lee found that she was still struggling. She was sick of the “glorification of the 9-to-5,” as well as the “glorification of going broke every two weeks.” She knew she could work hard, but not if it meant giving her everything to a job that was paying her $35,000 a year. She’d already been fired once and needed a way of making rent, fast. So, she decided to go out on a limb. 

“I just googled ‘at-home businesses that make the most money,’” she said. “I went to trainings. I showed up. I started personal developing because I was a hot mess express. And at 26, I made my first million that year, and it’s been crazy ever since.”

In this episode of the Working For a Dream Podcast, Jesse Lee tells Patrick how she made it big in network marketing after starting at zero — and how she ultimately created success on her own terms.

What You’ll Learn:

• How being told no her “whole childhood” made Jesse Lee resilient against the rejection of early entrepreneurship 
• How she turned the things that make her “not a great employee” into (profitable) strengths
• What helped her to overcome her scarcity issues
• And much more!

Favorite Quote:

“When was the last time you wrote down, pen to paper, where you want to be in five years? In 10 years? This year?... When is the last time you said out loud that you have, not even that you’re going to, but that you have multiple streams of income that flow abundantly to you? You’re gonna feel like a strange, little witch. That’s fine. But the crazy thing is when you start to see yourself as a different version of yourself, your brain literally reverse-engineers the steps necessary to get there.”

— Jesse Lee Ward

How to Get Involved:

Connect with Jesse Lee: 

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

Podcast

Connect with Patrick: 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

I grew up with nothing. I was the kid that you know, got made fun of for not having the right clothes, not having the right. You know, food at lunch. If there was even food at lunch, I was a kid that couldn't go on field trips. Like it sucked. And I'm really grateful for that. Because that made me not so much know what my y was, you know, a lot of people in personal development are like, what's your Why? What's your deep rooted? Why? And I'm like, I don't know. But I can very clearly tell you what I don't want very clearly because I lived it for so long. And I never wanted to go back to that.

When Carlos Wallace was laid off during the pandemic, the timing was serendipitous. 

Two months prior, Carlos, who’d already been barbequing for eight years, decided to turn his love for smoked meats into a proper side hustle. He opened Seven Seeds Texas Barbeque, named for his seven children, and started to serve up everything from briskets, BBQ and ribs to dishes inspired by his wife’s Trinidadian heritage. Once he’d been laid off, as a dad to seven kids aged 22 through 3 months, he needed a new plan, fast. So Carlos put everything into Seven Seeds, and he hasn’t looked back since. 

“Layoffs rip the band-aid off,” he says. “They forced my hand and caused me to have to come up with a solution, which I did.” 

New to the role of entrepreneur, Carlos spent years working on oil fields — a job that saw him away from home between 250 and 300 days a year — before moving into a corporate role. He knew he needed to make a change and be present more for his kids. Corporate life was stressful, though, not to mention not as well paid compared to his time on the fields. 

Today, as the owner of his own Seven Seeds Texas Barbeque food truck, he’s still working long hours, but he’s also with his kids more; his oldest child and wife often work with him. It’s become a family labor of love, one they’re determined to see through. 

In this episode of the Working For a Dream Podcast — the first to be recorded onsite at Trailer King Builders’ Houston headquarters — Patrick and Drew talk about going all in as an entrepreneur and running a business for, and with, your family.

What You’ll Learn:

• What a typical day, as a small business owner and father to seven kids, looks like for Carlos
• What’s helping him transition from an employee to entrepreneur mindset
• How he stays motivated
• And much more!

Favorite Quote:

“I can only afford to pay my employees right now. I'm not even paying myself yet… but even not paying myself, I'm still happier than I was when I was working in the corporate office making money for somebody else.”

— Carlos Wallace

How to Get Involved:

Connect with Carlos: 

Seven Seeds Texas BBQ

Facebook

Instagram

Connect with Patrick: 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram