Building a Life Not Just a Business

The Complete Entrepreneur – EP24

[00:00:00] 

Hello. How are you Colin? How are you, Michael? And welcome everyone to another episode of the complete entrepreneur and what a great topic, Michael. Isn’t that cool? Like you’re, you’re really going through. Yeah, I must admit this is a awesome topic. I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into it with talking about building a life, not just a business and beginning to unpack that.

And what does that actually mean? So if you’re in the audience today, we’re going to be taking a look at that, um, in depth and you’re sort of saying, Hey, I got some questions about this, or I’m wrestling with this particular, um, issue of that work, home work, work-life balance, all those sort of things, but like, how do you build what you really want in your life and your family and your business?

How do you, how does that all come together? And it’s going to be [00:01:00] fantastic. You’re listening to the complete entrepreneur where we take a look at the life of an entrepreneur, not just the business aspects of an entrepreneur. It’s a show at 5:00 PM. Every single Thursday, that’s 5:00 PM Eastern time. And it’s a part of the week that I just love.

And it’s, and the complete entrepreneur is a part of status.club. So Colin what’s going on@startup.club? Well, what’s going on is we hit 760,000 members and we are the largest club on clubhouse. Um, I will say this, we’ve been asked to attend CES alongside P and G ventures. So we’re going to be streaming a lot of shows from CES, including the pitch competition that they’re putting together.

We’re looking forward to that Michelle and I are going to see guests first week of January and.

Oh, that sounds [00:02:00] absolutely awesome. Like, um, I think that one of the things I’ve seen is that a lot of the big brands are really noticing club halves and they’re wanting to get on board as well. And it’s fantastic. You guys are actually so easy to those relationships. Like good entrepreneurs should it’s about relationships, isn’t it.

But today’s topic building alive, not just the business. Many entrepreneurs are so focused on their vision for their business. They forget to have a vision for their family. A great family is like a little slice of heaven on earth. So how do you build a great family and how does it combine the vision for your business?

And that’s today’s topic. I must admit when I began to reflect on this myself, because I wrote this, this idea of this topic a few weeks ago, and I was reflecting on that. What were the things that I personally I’ve been married for 34 years, and I feel like I have a little slice of heaven on earth, and I’m so blessed with a wonderful, [00:03:00] wonderful family.

And I’ve had different friends over the years, come up to me and say, you’re just so lucky that you’ve got a great family. And I scratched my head, said it wasn’t luck. Is that what happens is, so you have a family or you fall in love with a significant other. And what was this luck that you stayed together?

Or was there something more underlying? And that’s why I began to really, to think about, was there things that, um, is there things that you could put into your relationships, which are critical to your life and enjoyment of your life? So you can have your slice of heaven on earth, um, with those team members at work with those loved ones at home.

Um, is there things that you can build in so that you can look back 34 years later? You know what, like ano PAMA said, it’s amazing how much luckier I get, the more I practice. So it’s amazing how much luckier I am in my family [00:04:00] and the relationships with my kids and my wife and everything in my case, the more that I sow into them, it’s amazing how much luckier I am, the more I show.

So as the relationships with my team, and that’s what we’re beginning to unpack. So, Michelle, I just want to jump to you if you got a minute, what’s your thought just high level thoughts on this topic, but when you saw this topic and what do you think building a life? Not just the business what’s Michael, up to now.

So what are your thoughts on this? Just a very high level, knee jerk reaction. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, Michael. Yeah. My knee jerk reaction was like, you know, for me. My professional life is what makes me happy in my life. When I feel successful, it’s really important for me. So quite often times is hard for me to separate them.

But when I saw that, it, the first [00:05:00] thing that popped into my mind is what makes me, you know, what makes me happy. And if I’m not taking care of myself and happy and whatever it is, prospering am I am I under-serving, you know, myself and my family. That’s, that’s what came into my mind, if that makes sense at all.

But I thought about values, right? Like what, what are, what are my boundaries? And you know, what makes me happy? Um, and honestly, you know, of course everybody loves having money and what. But I, I always feel like if I’m not happy in my professional life, then I’m not happy and I bring that home. So how, how do I approach that?

How do I, you know, approach my professional life so that I come full circle. So for me, it’s really about bleeding, personal goals and the professional goals and vice versa because that’s how [00:06:00] I’m personally wired. Yeah. Well, it’s a great thoughts there, Michelle. So, and really thinking for those, uh, and sharing, like if you’re sitting in the audience right now, and this topic has resonated with you and what Michelle just said, then like, yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. And you want to share stuff. They, it could be a story. It could be like your own journey, um, that stick your hand up. We’d love to invite you to the stage and hear from you. But in the meantime, when we’re looking at, um, our personal life, you know, quite often you read all the business books and they say, you need to have a, a vision for your business.

If you’re not have a vision for your business, and it’s going nowhere, it’s all these sort of things like, and your vision has got to be big. It’s gotta be way out there and all that sort of stuff. So the, and the reason why is because if you don’t have a vision that, how do you, where do you know you’re headed?

Where do you know you’re going? Like, what direction is, and all the business business literature talks about this. [00:07:00] So the question I have then is this, do you have a vision for your family and where is your family going? Where’s your relationships with your significant, uh, um, loved ones in your life going, where do you think it’s going to go?

Like if I present is the sum of our past decisions, what decisions are we making to craft the future we want to create now? And that’s, it’s an interesting concept. And it’s something I, when I was in my twenties, I really began to reflect on, as I looked at, um, dare I say grandparents and other older people, and I saw the decisions they made.

And one of the great things is we can learn from people like that and role models like that. And you see the decisions they made, which are positive and decisions they may, which are negative and to learn from them because they are the sum of their decisions. And I said to myself, what decisions can. [00:08:00] So that I could move forward in my life.

So I have a prosperous outcome, a prosperous in the sense of not just, um, uh, business sense, but also in my family. And there’s a whole lot of things I ended up putting in place and hopefully we’ll get a chance to I’ll get a chance to share them. But so Colin, I’m going to come back to you and then we’ll jump to Jeff just on this concept of having a vision for your business.

Is it important also to have a vision for your family? Well, it’s interesting and I, and I think the word is values and I, we look to, um, in our strategic planning sessions, Jim Collins came out with some concepts around creating values and then burn Harnish, uh, perfected a lot of those concepts. But basically the idea is this for your organization.

The idea is that you [00:09:00] create these phrases, these words, but they’re not like these empty statements you see in a corporate wall. Do you know what I’m talking about? Michael? It’s not like this just it’s a poster on a wall. So the company had real meaning. They’re going to have real meaning, but they have to have something else, which is which you might not, it may not be so intuitive is they have to be memorable and they have to be like phrases and the company, uh, that really perfected and use the Rockefeller habits from burn Harnish.

And what originally Jim Collins had come up with was, um, Zappos, um, deliver wow through service, embrace and drive, change, create fun and a little weirdness, be adventurous, creative, and open-minded pursue growth and leaning, let growth and learning, build open and honest relationships with communities.

Build a positive team and family spirit do more with less, be passionate and [00:10:00] determined to be humbled. Now that’s 10. They don’t recommend 10, by the way, they recommend about five key pillars by values that your company operates by. And I have to say for the last three or four companies that we’ve done, we have had core values like doc club, our core values where this is.club and alternative.com.net.org usage is everywhere.

Only obsessed changed the world, integrity over money, recognize greatness and do crazy things. So what I did with my EO entrepreneurs, organization forums, I said, this is very cool. And this had a huge impact by the way, my company’s huge impact. One of my company, six, 600 employees. So when we had to instill values, it mattered because those are the values that people acted on and behaved with.

And understood as the operative, their, their, their, their roles in the company. And [00:11:00] the actually it made a huge difference. And I said, well, what if I had personal values? And we created a program that we set up personal bias. So Michael, I’m going to share with you right now, and you, and I hope to seeing that the theme that’s happening here from zappos.club, personal values, it’s all about phrases that really matter.

And these are core values for yourself and for your family or for your company, but are also memorable. And you can repeat them back and they become lexicons. They become verbiage within your organization. So, so here’s my six personal values first and foremost is my health integrity over money. I know Jeff hears me say that a lot Carpe diem, which is, you know, seize the day.

Like we gotta move forward. God makes something happen. Make a difference. We want to make something positive in the world, live in the future [00:12:00] and whatever you do do it really well or don’t do it at all. And those are my personal values. So I, I think what’s interesting is you sometime can apply theory in business, which Jim Collins started and a lot of businesses have used and then bring back back, back to your personal life as well and to your family.

Yeah. What, what great thoughts they call it? Yeah, the challenge is, is how do you bring those business concepts into a family sort of environment so that it becomes, there’s a personalized though versus, um, uh, versus I don’t mean this the wrong way, but more sterile in the business environment. That’s always a big challenge.

Uh, of how do you bring that and still that say in your kids, for instance, some of those values and, and do they catch onto those values? Um, and are we the [00:13:00] same in the office as we are at home? Uh, we are, we, um, uh, complete in ourselves as such as entrepreneurs. So Jeff I’ll come back to you Colin again, shortly on that, but Jeff, what is your thoughts on this topic?

Once again, a high level, even what column was sharing just then, um, on really building a life, not just.

Okay, Jeff, you must have stepped away for a second. That’s all right. But yeah, it’s one of the interesting things is, um, how do you actually bring your values, say from your business and your team and all those things, there’s that massive amount of expertise you’ve learnt calling into that family context.

And what did you do to do that? So, so I’m taking a lot. Look, I’m not the perfect example. I’ve told you I’m the anti complete entrepreneurial. Okay. But what I, what I do do is I [00:14:00] try to figure out ways to better interact with my family. And I’ve taken pieces. I just took a Jim Collins piece that went to Verne Harnish that went to my companies and I brought it into my personal life, my personal values.

And I try to find ways to do that with the family as well. So in business, we have our family meetings or sorry, we have our weekly meeting. And I brought that into my family as well. Like, I mean, who we don’t, they’re our family, do we need, we, you know, do we actually need some sites kind of formalized weekly family meeting?

I did that with my family and we had tremendous results by doing that. Um, are there other techniques that, um, I’m trying to think in the back of my head that we had brought in to help, you know, improve the family or strengthen the family? Um, I’ll have to think a little bit more, but, uh, I think Jack’s available [00:15:00] now.

Um, Jeff, any thoughts? I’m sorry. Did you call me when I saw you’re talking? There was, let’s see what, uh, yeah, what was it? Yeah, Jeff, what are your thoughts on this topic of building a life? Not just a business and some of the things that really we’re trying to wrestle with. Okay. You can learn a whole lot of things, a business about having a vision for your business and values for business and everything, but how do you bring that, that structure such into a family context?

And so you’ve got to like a vision for your family. You’ve got values and your family, and how do you instill that your kids and other significant others there are say, um, is that possible to do, like, what are some of the things that techniques that you may have developed over the years? Well, well, first of all, in my early days as an entrepreneur, I failed miserably and I don’t mean the business failed.

I mean, I failed my family miserably. I put [00:16:00] my business priorities ahead of family priorities. Um, and my relationships with my ex. There you have it. And my children at the time suffered for it. And even to this day, while things are much better now, and I’m much better now, um, as an entrepreneur and as a leader and as a person, you know, I know that even my adult children often will bring up times in their childhood when they, from their point of view, I was not available, um, to them.

Um, you know, so, so all, I answer your question by starting out by saying I failed in that regard, then I’ll say that. I don’t think, I think Colin talked about having, you know, personal values that I think, you know, everything trickles down from the top. And I think if you have strong values as a person, as a human being, um, you’re going to carry those forward hopefully into your business and they will trickle down and [00:17:00] carry forward into your family because your standard.

We’ll be the same across the board. I think when, when it becomes tricky is if someone is unscrupulous in business, you know, you can’t be unscrupulous in business and also be a wonderful person in your personal life. It’s, it’s just, it’s countered to it. So if you have strong values as a human being, as a person that should carry through to your business, if you’re, if you’re someone like Colin who puts integrity over money, that’s going to make personal decisions.

It’s going to make business decisions and it’s going to carry through to your family because they’re going to see you behave in the same way. So I think first and foremost, just like to have a healthy life as an entrepreneur, your health is very important, right? Too many entrepreneurs ignore their own physical health in favor of the business.

And eventually that catches up. So your health physically and mentally, and your values. Are going to be first and foremost, [00:18:00] to leading towards a good life as an entrepreneur and a good family life. I think that’s what I try to do now. Even if I didn’t do it when I was, yeah. Well, we’re all on a learning journey, Jeff, and appreciate you sharing so openly, um, on failures, but also what you’ve learned from that.

And I think that there’s one thing for sure. I like to be a hundred percent successful, I think is impossible. I actually do. Um, we all have, we all have failed failings, um, whether it’s in our personal lives, whether businesses, but the question is whether we learned. That’s the question. And I know some, my values that I I’ve shared on the complete entrepreneur before bad is that I quested for series of values and I wonder series of values, which were [00:19:00] simple and meant a lot to me.

And then I wanted to build not only my business around those values. I wanted to build my family around those values. And my series of values are three points of a triangle. The bottom left hand corner is truth. Like you call it, um, the better integrity ever money is. Truth is tell the truth, tell your customers the truth, tell your, um, uh, your partners, the truth, and you don’t have to hang your door, dirty laundry out when something goes wrong, but, but just be open and honest with people.

And the reason why I looked at that one was that the basis of any relationship is true. And in a family context, what I ended up doing was that, um, truth became the number one issue in, in, in my family. Like you could do something wrong. As one of my kids could do something wrong, I can smash something or whatever, but if they lied to try to get [00:20:00] out of the head of the, the, the punishment, their RSA for what they did, it was like orders of magnitude, greater punishment would then follow.

And they learned that the truth was really important to me. And why, because I wonder a strong relationship with my kids and absolutely truth. And I became quite fanatical about that. Even with my wife. But, um, but being truthful down to, um, buying a candy bar, you know, when we’re on a diet and I said, I admit it, I bought a candy bar.

I shouldn’t know we’re on a diet. I know, but, you know, I just had that candy back. It was a bit like that. And so truth was very important to me. The other one, the bottom right-hand corner of my little triangle is trust. Trust is something that takes a long time to build with people, um, that I always view it, that the old analogy of the trust account, um, like a bank account is the more you put into the trust account, [00:21:00] then the stronger your relationship will be.

Um, and if you get into an overdraft situation, your bank account, Then that’s not a good place to be. Yeah. That means you deducted from that relationship. Um, consistently. So trust is really important, particularly if you’re building a team at work, is that, um, each of the members of your team need to have a sense that they are trusted, but not only that is that, uh, coming back to something you’ve said a number of times, Colin is, uh, is that, uh, giving responsibilities, not tasks to people.

So they’re responsible for what you actually say is I trust you. That’s what you’re actually saying. I trust you. And I trust you’re going to actually, um, take this on board and make sure it’s all good. And that’s an amazing thing for people when they feel they’re trusted. 99% of people will respond in a very positive way.[00:22:00] 

So in a, in a family sense, as my kids grew older, the challenge was to expand the boundaries as such, um, as they grew older to show that I trusted them more and more and more over time. So my last, my last, um, core sort of value is learning the tip, the tip of the triangle at the top. And that tip is really important because you know what, you’re going to blow it sometimes.

But what you don’t want to do is blow it all the time. You want to learn from your experience? So learning became a core issue in my life is to be kind of constant quest in my business and in my family life of how do I actually bring these values to both of those? And how do we instill these values into both say the business and the family life.

And they ended up becoming my core values and there’s something truth, trust and learning, which I’ve had [00:23:00] since my early twenties. And it stood me in great time. On top of those, I built a whole stack of other things and everything, but they’re really the bedrock. So the question I would ask you in the audience, you may be sitting there and you’re saying, wow, this is really resonating with me.

Um, if you want to share some, please stick your hand up. We’d love to invite you to the stage, to hear from you and what your thoughts are around building a life, not just a business, you’re listening to the complete entrepreneur. Colin, do you have any thoughts on that and what I’ve just shared? Yeah, I think it’s, it’s a lot.

And, and again, if you’re in the audience, I mean, come on, raise your hand. That’s what we’re here for. This is a dialogue. It’s not a diatribe. We’re not in stuff here. And just talking about, you know, what our theories are. I think there’s so much value in everybody in the audience here. And please, please raise your hand.

Come on stage. Let’s have a dialogue. Let’s talk about this. This, you were, you were bold when you set this topic. My goal, [00:24:00] because it was something that I’d never really thought about. Um, but there is a connection between the way you operate your business. And the way that you, um, interact with your family, cause you don’t operate a family, you don’t run a family.

And we’ve talked about that before, out at five o’clock at night, I come home and I’m barking orders at the office and I come home and I’m barking orders at home. It was a very different environment and we do need to transition from work to home. But, uh, but what I liked a little bit, when you talked about was this idea, or maybe it just reminded me of it, how in entrepreneurial environments, we actually reward failure and with our children, it’s okay to fail.

It’s okay. I believe it’s okay to send that signal to each and every one of our children that it’s okay to fail. Because if we do that, then they’ll [00:25:00] understand they can stick their neck out. They can take the risk, they can be an entrepreneur. You know, the fact is. Um, 90% of companies do fail over five years, but a large percentage eventually take off and do very well without the failures of that company.

Without my failures, my early failures in a number of different ways. And trust me that there’s been some sessions on that. Uh, we have a show called lessons from the edge, which re rebuilding in January. And I’ve talked about how a company went from a billion dollars to nothing. There’ve been some monumental failures, and I’ve learned from lessons from that failure.

I’ve learned lessons from a lot of my failures and our children are going to learn lessons from their failures. So the fact of the matter is I think that’s an important concept. Like what we bring in our family is also that entrepreneurial environment, that idea that you can experiment and change and do.

That’s something that I think that, [00:26:00] uh, carries over between the company and the family. Awesome. To see everybody on sticks. No, this is great. See everyone here and we’ll, we’ll cut and jump to them in a second. Uh, I think one of the critical things in business, you need to be able to do animals and your family life is give permission for people to fail, give permission for them to fail.

That’s okay. If you fail, you fail, but look, you had, you really had to go at it. Um, in terms of learning what I needed to thank my mum, mother for that, for the constant learning. Uh, I remember I used to go to the school and AZA brings a good student. You get like 95% or a maths mathematics test. And I bring it back home.

And the thing she instilled into me was that she’d say what happened to the five. And a lot of people immediately go, what a horrible mother like, did she realize you got 95%? No. What she instilled into me was the fact that I already knew the 95%, the thing I didn’t know was the [00:27:00] 5% would go wrong. And it became a, she, she beat me over the head with a button.

It became almost like a mean between us both. And like what happened that 5%? And I’d explain where I’d made a silly mistake or something like that. She said, well, you’re going to learn from those mistakes. And it was something became instilled into me and it transferred into my entrepreneurial life as well.

So we’re talking about building a life, not just a business, Mike, it is great to have you on the stage. And can I just say thank you for coming on the state? Um, it’s quite often quite intimidating to be up here, but trust me, it’s a great family on the complete entrepreneurial. Yeah, Michael. Um, thanks for welcoming me, man.

Uh, I’ve followed this, uh, this club for, um, a little bit. I’ve been on a couple of listening in, on a couple of talks and I just, I really had to come in here and speak about this topic because I think that life is [00:28:00] very important other than business and, uh, learning and understanding those failures. Um, so my business partner is actually in the room too.

Um, but we, we, we really started to look at our life, um, As, as entrepreneurs this year. And, um, when we started our new business, next level, um, vision it’s called and, and, uh, we kind of looked at things of understanding to really build our life around our business, not build our business around our life. So for all you guys that are listening, maybe take note of that.

Um, this was something that was shared with me very recently. Um, and it has helped me tremendously to empower who I am and to really, um, you know, fill my cup before I go and fill anyone. Else’s right. So when you’re scheduling out your day, this is just a tip. So when you’re scheduling out your day, start [00:29:00] scheduling your day out as your life, right?

So what are you going to do for yourself to fill your. Okay. So for me, when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is gratitude. I write down gratitude, I do gratitude. I do my visualization. And then I go to the gym. I work out, I exercise. Um, I eat, you know, I relax, I enjoy my family in the morning.

And then I go into my work. So my, my cup is filled. Right. And I leave time in that day to, to play with my kids. Um, now that we’re here living in Mexico, we just moved here about a month ago from Canada to escape the craziness. Right. Um, we’ve understood this play, um, and, and allowing our kids to, to also, um, experience the play, um, and really understanding that, uh, they can, they can live their [00:30:00] life with play instead of like being in a classroom for eight hours a day.

Like. Um, being at home and working for an hour and an hour and a half, two hours, and then experiencing play. And we all do this together, um, as a group. Right. And it has helped our income tremendously. Um, our kids are starting to really develop this entrepreneurial mind, um, and, uh, like just, I don’t want to take too much of the stage up and I want to hear from the other speakers, but.

Honing this down to, to our kids and experiencing this. Um, my kids have picked up on this, like my son he’s eight years old now. He, he bought two dirt bikes that weren’t very cheap, right. Thousands of dollars. Um, he was able to do this just by, um, you know, just by taking bottles in and, uh, you know, collecting bottles and taking them and [00:31:00] saving them money and collecting bottles and taking them in.

Um, and he did this all on his own and it was really, really cool to see he built it. He bought his first dirt bike with it, and then he sold that dirt bike, um, continued taking bottles in and just watching this experience. Um, and just watching this in front of my eyes, it was like, wow. You know what we do actually really does.

You know, hone in and really, you know, bring this experience to our kids that are watching they’re listening, um, and everything else and being a stressful business owner is not what we want. So, so for Michael, um, Jeffrey as well, I’m calling, it was very awesome to hear you guys speak today and, uh, yeah, just start building your life around your business.

And I, sorry, I just posted a clip on LinkedIn with what you just said there around build a life. Um, don’t build a life around your business, but build a business, uh, whenever I’m getting it wrong right now, but I [00:32:00] did, don’t build, don’t build your business around your life, build your life around your business.

Okay, perfect.

There too. So what an amazing statement and this idea that we, as entrepreneurs can infuse. Entrepreneur entrepreneurial, um, you know, elements into our children, I think is great. And to be able to pass that down, and the story you talked about is, is, is amazing. And maybe that’s part and parcel of what the topics, uh, absolutely.

And I, let me tell you my, what you see at there really resonated with me. I remember the previous business, I did the normal business thing and they got a big office and this sort of syndrome, the city and stuff about that. And I spent an hour commuting there, again, commuting back and to lecture stuff, and I hated it.

I hated every second of it. I [00:33:00] got, I, I wasn’t there for my family and I wanted to be there so much. And I did that for a couple of years. That’s it. My next business, I’m doing something completely different. In the end, I made a decision that the business I was gonna do, I was gonna be able to run from my house.

And everyone else is gonna be able to run from their home as well. All the, all the different, different employees and Electra staff so that we could also be with their families. So I structured my business around my desire for my life, from my family. And it was, um, it was really an important, important decision to make.

So Mike, what you said there really resonated with me and I just want to say thank you very much for sharing that. Yeah. You’re welcome guys. And, uh, yeah, thanks for having me on stage. Oh, it’s a pleasure to have you here, Mike.[00:34:00] 

I think Michael.

Okay, Michael, we lost you there, but thank you, Mike. I agree with Colin and Michael really appreciate your sharing. It let’s go next to happy. Oh, well thanks Jeffrey, Michael Colin, Michelle, all the people onstage that just decided to jump up here. My name’s Adam happy, Zachary Weiss. And now that you’re hearing my name every time, you’re happy.

You’ll think of me. I think it’s just a cool place to be an entrepreneur. Like it’s mentally, you’re there physically. You’re there taking the wins with the losses. Like for me, I’ve been losing it all the time, [00:35:00] but as long as I reframe it, that I’m winning. It turns, it turns into a win because. If you think that it’s a loss and you just keep thinking, beating yourself up, oh, this is a loss, this is a loss.

That’s just going to keep perpetuating itself. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve reframed it to where I win and everything is here to empower me. And if I, when I stay in that mindset, which is difficult, sometimes I’m not, I’m not, it’s not the easiest thing to do, but is it because I say it’s not the easiest thing to do, is that what makes it, it’s not the easiest thing to do.

Partially. Other than that, it is tough. It’s a little, it is definitely a bit of a challenge sometimes, but it gets easier when you surround yourself with the right peer group, you give yourself the right food, you meditate, all these things that it’s not just a business, it’s a life building a business that is your life.

So you could have this play fun [00:36:00] entrepreneur work. And it’s kind of just like being in flow. And not chasing the shiny things is the way I like to look at it. Cause we can all get lost, chasing shiny things, squirrel like the movie, you know, but I don’t, I used to say, I don’t know, but I do know this is true for me.

So hopefully that resonated with somebody. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Um, um, really do appreciate them really what it is about, um, not just entrepreneurship, but um, when you’re not pro or not, it’s a bad hat. Can you make your life happy? How can you have that slice of heaven? And what what’s, what’s necessary to actually get that.

Michelle, you’ve been listening to a few guys here talking I’d love to get it from your perspective, um, as being, um, uh, dare I say, not just, I want to get your perspective as a person, [00:37:00] high, highly, highly respect as a senior manager, but also as a, as a person who has a broader view on, on life, I get a sense that you really have that you think of a lot of about these things.

Michelle, what are you thoughts on this? No, I think it’s good. You know, I love what people have said about the gentlemen. I think my crate hair, who was saying that he’s built his, you know, business or job or career or whatever it is around his life instead of vice versa. Um, yeah, I think that’s kind of always easy to do.

I feel like the goals have to match your personal goals and your business schools for you to be able to have that synergy. And that’s not always easy for people, like you said happy, but you [00:38:00] know, there’s a lot of work and a lot of steps to go there. Um, I feel like you really have to communicate and over communicate with your family and your friends, as you know, I’m sorry.

Sometimes you have to make choices too, because it’s not easy to have like a, you know, maybe a highly social life and be able to concentrate and focus on, on life. So for me, I’m always been a believer as you just have to get started and you have to move forward. And I do believe who you surround yourself with and how you spend your time makes a huge difference.

I would say, it’s not just about your, you know, your family because the family, right? Like if you’re successful, they get the benefits. If you’re not, you know, they oftentimes suffer. I feel like for me, it’s been more about who I surround myself with and what I sort of speak put out into the universe. Like that’s [00:39:00] been massively instrumental for me in terms of, of how I move forward.

So I would suggest to people, like, I think it’s really important to write down what those goals are. You know, like if you want to change careers, for example, sometimes it’s just a matter of manifesting that, like saying it out loud to your friends and your peers, people you respect, and then just, you know, just, just get going and you start down that path.

And what I see people make a lot of mistakes about. They don’t put it out there and they just don’t put the steps in place. It could be little things, it’s it doesn’t have to be like huge seismic changes, but little things are actually what get you to your goal at least that’s what have I experienced?

If you put out there these massive personal goals, you know, that that’s like, that’s hard to achieve, right? You just have to start, you [00:40:00] have to get going and you have to put out the small little things. And if you get yourself in motion, if you surround yourself with the right environment, you know what I truly believe you can get.

Um, as always Michelle, you gave such great advice. You really do. And I appreciate you sharing that. Um, your thoughts on that, it’s, it’s an interesting thing. People talk a lot about surrender themselves to the right peer group and all that sort of stuff, and I’ll own it, move it back and we’ll jump to in a second.

I, to move it right back to yourself. One of the things I discovered was that I, the biggest battle with a lot of these things is changing your thinking. And how do you change your thinking? And I use this as an example, um, where, uh, for, for quite a number of years, um, my wonderful wife would say to me, let’s go for a walk [00:41:00] somewhere.

And I would say, no, no, I’m too busy doing this. There’s always an excuse. Right. I would do anything to get out of doing any sort of exercise. And I learned that that was obviously a bad attitude because it had a sh had a, um, my longevity on this planet was going to be reduced. Yeah. So I ended up saying, okay, she sat down with me actually one time and said, Hey, you know, you really got to do some exercise and, and change your B helped a lot healthier.

And, uh, so I began to change my thinking. So every time I heard the word exercise, I would say, I love doing it. In fact, I love going for walks. I, you don’t want to feel the sun on your skin and everything and go out for a hike somewhere. Isn’t that great. And I began to just change my mindset over time, and I had an epiphany if I can change my mindset.

And by the way, I [00:42:00] love going for walks now and hikes and everything like that. Did the bill for trick a couple of years ago, New Zealand were 53 kilometers, three mountains. It was awesome, but I thought if I can change my mindset about something as simple as that, can I change my mindset with my attitudes to those around me?

So that person who is a pain in the neck, what if I just only spoke positive things? Is that going to change my mindset or habit that child who keeps on doing those silly things? What have I said, I’m not going to, I’m not going to focus on that. I’m going to go and change my mindset about that law. Is that going to actually cause me to change internally?

Cause w is that going to influence my slice of heaven on earth? And I thought one of the great things Mike you shared was you start off with gratitude. You start off with a session with gratitude, and that was just [00:43:00] awesome each day, thinking, what am I gracious for? So I just want to jump now to Toronto, Toronto.

It’s wonderful to have you on the complete entrepreneur pleasure to be here. Um, peace and greetings, Michael Collins, Jeffrey shell, Mike, Jesse, Tanya, and the language that I thought only one person understood, but I had to click on the profile to see it was. I said, okay, how you get happy from that on there?

I didn’t know until I clicked on his name. So a pleasure, the YouTube, that was a mistake I made that I went to, I found you could edit the text and make it, do something cool with your name. And then when I hit, okay, clubhouse, doesn’t let you change it back. So now my name has disappeared until I can change it back, but it was a cool mistake.

It was a learning thing. So thanks. No worries. No worries. Well, I will say that, um, uh, was a pleasure to be here. I was not going to jump up to stage, but the call to action was, uh, offered. And [00:44:00] I said to myself, well, you know, um, one of the biggest initiatives with being an entrepreneur is taking that stand, taking that step, right?

Jumping out when sometimes it’s not comfortable or you’re, you’re, you’re not the one following someone else who makes that first leap, if you will. So I think that’s one of the criteria of being a leader. One of the criteria of, uh, adding to the steps and the blocks of, of success. Uh, a couple of words I heard Michelle resonated with what she said, as well as Mike, I heard a manifestation.

One of my favorite words, gratitude is one of my most commonly used word in practice, uh, application, um, small things. Another thing that Michelle said, and actually I posted that that is the small thing and the simple things in life that sometimes have the most traction. My father [00:45:00] used to always tell me, you know, those quarters add up that stayed with me for a very long time.

Those quarters add up because a good example is you, you, you, you wake up and you go and you buy that coffee. And then when you look at your balance statement, you see how much percentage you’ve devoted to buying coffee. I know a lot of people can resonate with that. Coffee is a very. And some people tend to do it twice a day and they’ll purchase it as opposed to getting it out of a pot.

Um, I believe strongly in, uh, initiative. Um, I believe that, uh, in the, in the kiss method, I, I refer to it as keep it so simple or keep it successfully simple. Um, I also believe that the small things have great impact. I love the title, um, life of building a life, not just a business, however, I break down life.

Uh, and [00:46:00] fractionalize it. I look at it as this is a journey in life. Um, because every day that you wake up, you’re looking at that four wall movie, right? Your life is a movie, a journey, and you’re walking paths all the time, figuring out if you’re going to go left or right. And that’s the beauty of this.

And I think one of the biggest things that’s missing with. Business people or specifically entre entrepreneurs, his character. I think character is one of the biggest drivers of being successful in business because a lot of people operate, um, in entitlement and entitlement does not produce a successful business.

Just doesn’t most of these businesses that fail are based off of what I have researched entitlement, um, not having the rich experiences to know, to navigate left or right. But just thinking that you can just, because you’ve said to yourself, uh, just with map manifestation and not preparation, I think also [00:47:00] failure adds to character which adds to achieving success in business.

Um, I had more experience with my family owned business than me actually doing my own. So a lot of my entrepreneurial experience came from my parents and, um, other, uh, family members, um, And last but not least, I’m a big fan of shark tank. Now I know shark tank is not the most realistic way of doing business transactions, but I watch character.

I watch how people receive offers and how they deal with it, how they treat it, how they interact. Um, when you know that that deal is one step away from being relinquished and canceled and they still push the ball. Sometimes you just have, you have to know when, and then sometimes you have to push the bar because, you know, that’s where the prize lie because you feel it and you’ve planned it, or, you know, forecasted it, that this is going to go [00:48:00] this way because of this.

Right. And it’s this dance that you do. So you can’t really teach this. Um, because like my CIO told me, um, as we got back from Lisbon Portugal, we went to the, uh, what we were vendors at the tech conference, um, web summit, And, uh, as we were talking with one of the, uh, people, Oracle was one of the companies that were looking at partnering with, uh, it was an experience like none other.

I know we went to the collision conference once before, but this one was, uh, highly different. There was different passions of people there during this COVID timeframe, just the energy was really different. And, um, it was just a beautiful experience. So as I came back, um, it gave me this different perspective of looking at 20, 22, moving forward on how to navigate here we are.

Uh, it’s a beautiful thing. Like I said, building a business as a [00:49:00] churn. We don’t see the journey. It’s a beautiful thing to run. So they’ll tell you what, you, you share something they’re really grabbed me as the word. Character is just so, so important, um, in business, but also at home. Yeah. One of the things that, um, I love seeing love doing is, um, uh, having a really great relationship with people I do business with, and they may invite me back to their house or something like that.

And they’re exactly the same person in front of their family. And I said, myself, that’s a person of character. They’re not, they’re not putting a mask on a business and putting a different mask on at home because their kids can see that straight away. And that duplicity that if you have a mask and business and a different one, you’re a different person.

You have a different set of values of home versus at work and everything. Your kids see that. And it creates a fracturing [00:50:00] of the relationship. As I say, I don’t know who my dad really is, or I don’t know who my mother really is. And Karen. It’s about being congruent and who you are. That’s a great look.

Thank you very much for that. So I appreciate you sharing that. Their drones and Jesse, Jesse, welcome to the stage of the complete entrepreneur, where we’re talking about building a life, not just a business. Welcome to this day. Uh, thank you so much. I I’ve enjoyed this conversation here a lot. Um, since, since joining just a couple minutes ago, I’ve, I’ve taken a lot of different tips away from all of the, all of you, amazing speakers to Ron’s, uh, Michael Colin, Jeffrey, Michelle, Mike, everyone that I’ve listened to happy.

And, um, um, this is right up my alley. This is right in my wheelhouse. Mike was, uh, talking a little bit about, um, how him and I are partners, business partners and, uh, building our life around [00:51:00] our business, around our life story. And, um, th I mean, this is right where. Fit in. And there’s a couple of things that really resonated with me talking back about that character that Toronto was talking about.

Um, one of my old mentors, one of my best mentors that I’ve ever had, he always told us that, um, in, in our life we get to be the director, the, uh, the storyteller, the, the main actor and the producer, and just everything that goes into creating this. And ever since I started really just looking at my life as if it was a movie and how I get to tell the story, I get to direct the story.

I get to produce the story I get to do all of these different components that go into creating a movie. Um, my life has drastically shifted, uh, just because now I look at it from a totally different perspective through a totally new set of lenses, um, so to speak and, uh, [00:52:00] I mean, there’s been so many different things.

I, as you guys were talking, I was like, I could talk about that. I could talk about that. And, um, those are the, the, the, the ones that really stuck with me, adding character, building relationships, building your life around your business. One of the other main things that I, that really caught my attention was when you guys were talking about values, um, I don’t know who on here is listening, but if you’ve ever read the book, the values factor by Dr.

John Demartini, um, then you know how amazing it is. And if you haven’t read that book, I would highly recommend that you do, because you’ll start to learn what your core values. And once you’d know what your core values are, this is how you start to really design your life, um, and understand different aspects about your life and why you do things in a certain way.

And, uh, and also you can start to understand what other people’s core values are. This can help in, in your relationships and your business partnerships and your clients. Um, just understanding not only what your core values are, but also [00:53:00] how to read other people’s core values so that you can understand how to, how to communicate with them and how to handle them and how to deal with them.

And this will help in a lot of different areas. I’ve literally seen marriages get fixed by just reading a book like this, um, and just understanding what your core values are, what your partner’s core values are, what your friend’s core values are your clients, whoever, and just knowing how to respond and how to react is probably the most important piece of the puzzle.

Um, because. You know, everyone’s got different values. And for me, my core value, my top value is actually my business. And then after that, it goes down to my family, which is obviously, you know, definitely the top at the top. And when, when I say that a lot of people, they start to think. Well, shouldn’t your family be your top value?

Well, yes, I agree with that. And I struggled with that personally in the very beginning too, because I thought my [00:54:00] family had to be my core value. It might like my number one, but at the end of the day, if my business is thriving, that means that our financial situation is thriving, which then makes me allow, allows me to be present with my family at a higher level than I ever could be as if my business.

Further down on my values list. Um, so again, building the life around the business and the business around the life and, you know, not everyone can do that. I get that there’s certain businesses that would be a lot more difficult to do that and incorporate both of those together. But when you, when you can get those instant in synchronicity and just think about your personal core values, as well as get deep and clear on what your business is, core values are, we call it your brand pillars.

Then you start to work in synchronicity with both of those things and magical things can start to happen. Um, you know, living a life of full of purpose and full of gratitude and, [00:55:00] um, all this magic can start to happen in your life. So, um, my name is Jesse. That’s all I have on this topic for right now.

Thank you so much. Thank you Jesse, for sharing that look, I really do appreciate that. Coming back to values. Values is just so important. Isn’t it is what is the bedrock of what we stand for? What is that bedrock? And is it, this, is it something that’s the same in our business that is in our family? And how are we expressing those values, those different, different groups as well.

It’s just so important, but Tanya, Tanya is great to have you here on the complete entrepreneur. I love your picture there over the smiling face at Tanya. Welcome to the stage

you there, Tanya it’s um, uh, we’re talking about the topic of building a life, not just a business on the complete entrepreneur. Oh, hi. I didn’t take my mic off. Um, great [00:56:00] conversation. Thank you. Um, everyone for welcoming here and. It just didn’t touched on everything that I actually stand for. I just have to say, um, I do incorporate from matter of fact, let me just tell you all right now I’m standing in the middle of my Airbnb, which is actually where we moved back in so that we can finish it off.

And the thing is I do a party grandma’s service, so I’m in the happy business happy. And that goes with the smile. Um, some always happy and, um, the core values and things. I was taught as a child. My grandmother instilled those into me. Um, she’s always, she’s deceased now rest her. So, but we’ve always incorporated family and the.

Um, I [00:57:00] used to, she used to sail sewing machines for singer. If you all remember that. And I used to go with her to deliver, um, so our machines and then household, um, items furniture, she said deliver those as well. She also had her own real estate. So she instilled those values and taught us that you bring family alone when you teach the children with you.

And so as an adult and a party rental service provider, I also bring my grandson and my children, not us. Another thing now, all adults, they’re all doing their own thing. They all have great jobs, but they never wanted to come aboard and do what I was doing. My husband. Yes, he’s a part, but he’s a structural welder by trade.

But it just touched on so much good stuff [00:58:00] just for me and aligning yourself to those like-minded people. And that’s something that I had to learn and I truth in just transparency. I have many of my customers, they just, they tell me, they say, Ms. J they call me Ms. Day or Ms. Jackson. And they’d be like, we love you.

I tell them upfront, I’m a real person. I’m a real person. And I will tell you by the end of the conversation, by the time we meet, I love you. And that’s just who I am. That’s just who I am. So in essence, I do build, well, I would say my business in life goes hand in hand, so I’m in the happy business and I, I, I live, I have fun with it and.

I’m learning to align myself. And again, like I said, it skipped a generation. My children didn’t want to take a part of it, but my grandson, [00:59:00] he does, we actually, um, part of our business as well. We collect gloves, hats, and, um, pass out to the homeless. And we actually feed homeless veterans once, um, a year.

But also I would like to say, now my nephew, that this is so interesting. He and I had this conversation and he has his own clothing line. So he in tune where my children didn’t come apart and take, you know, notes or whatever, and they all want to do their own thing. He, on the other hand, he’s an entrepreneur, but he, he does have a job too, as well.

He’s an NFL player. But what struck me is that in the conversations that we have, he said, he picked up on watching, [01:00:00] um, my husband and I, as it, as him as a child watching us build and my husband helping me build up my business, you know, and not just me. Tanya, Tanya just shared so much in what you just really appreciate it.

So personal, really appreciate what you’ve shared. Um, and just the fact that we as parents or we as business owners, entrepreneurs, and everything like that, we have a whole host of people looking at us. We really do. We have their grandkids. We have our nephew. As you, as you later, we have our children watching us.

We have a team members watching us and looking at a conduct where Colin brought up earlier. Like, is it integrity? Um, over money. Yeah. There’s such an important concept. There’s a lot of things. So the question I asked for you who is in the audience [01:01:00] is, are you building a life or you just focus just on a business?

Cause let me tell you, if you really want a slice of heaven on earth, you’d actually build a little. And bill me alive, which means being complete. That’s why you’re listening to the complete entrepreneur. It’s been wonderful having you here with us today really do appreciate each and every one of you, um, you shared, um, uh, on the stage and like it’s been, been wonderful hearing from you, but Michelle, um, I’d love to hear what’s going on with start-up duck club or Colin what’s going on with startup that club.

All right, Michelle, since you’re, uh, not available, I’ll jump right in. Um, we have a lot of exciting speakers coming on, uh, earlier. Uh, I mentioned that we were going to, uh, be live at CES. That’s the consumer electronic show with P and G P and G ventures, Proctor and gamble. [01:02:00] And we are going to be interviewing a number of op entrepreneurs.

We have a pitch competition coming in there. And we’re doing something pretty cool that P and G has never done before. We’re actually streaming it live to the club and allowing people on club has to come into CES, but this is all new. We don’t know how it’s going to roll, but it’s what we do. Right. We try it out.

We’ll try to try to make it work. If it doesn’t work, we’ll change it up for the next time. But for the most part, we’re moving forward. And we have, uh, a, uh, probably one of the top authors of all time coming on to speak on, uh, the serial entrepreneur hour, every Friday at two o’clock Eastern he’s coming on.

Um, the third week of January, I don’t remember the exact date right now thinks we’re on January 16th. But if you want to be notified about these particular, um, events or speakers or away, uh, we have 750,000 plus members and we have a mailing list. We are on startup.club. It’s great to follow the club here [01:03:00] on club S but also if you go to start up that club, sign up to the email list and you can get, um, you can get a lot of really cool stuff.

And we have a big community here. That’s trying to support startups and those who work in startups. So those who invest in startups, so pretty excited about what’s happening next year. I think, you know, I think we’ll hit a million members by April 1st. That’s our goal. Wow. A million members by April 1st.

That’s that’s fantastic. There is so much happiness that.club. It really is. And there’s so much happy on the complete entrepreneur. Um, next week, next week, we’re gonna have a great time. We’re gonna be celebrating entrepreneurial success stories. That’s the topic for next week. Let’s take some time out to celebrate our successes and share some of the joy of what it means to be an entrepreneur.

Here’s some great stories, how failures becomes accesses and get newly inspired for your ventures. And that’s the topic we’ll be exploring next week. So it’s been great having you here [01:04:00] really appreciate all of you who shared so openly. Uh, the moderators, the great moderators really appreciate you. Um, you’ve been part of this and I look forward to seeing you at 5:00 PM every Thursday, Eastern time.

See you next week.