Beats, Business, & The Vegas Hustle: Inside Spotlght ENT's Rise

[0:00]  all right guys welcome back to another episode of the heart and hustle podcast a special episode I got my boy Lionel Miranda with me founder and CEO of Spotlight entertainment and I want to really use today's episode as an opportunity for us to take a deep dive into his mindset but also the blocking and tackling that goes along with trying to build an entertainment business especially in somewhere as competitive as Las Vegas you're going toe-to-toe with some of the biggest names in the entertainment space so I think of Vegas in general and the fact that you're like on the your boots on the streets and literally just like holding down all of the fun experiences that we all have on a daily basis I think it's so cool and so I want to kind of give everybody an opportunity to dive a little bit deeper into your mindset and some of the stuff that you're doing to build this company let's do it yeah man so thanks so much everybody hey bro yes thank you for having me absolutely

[0:48]  so why don't we give everybody a little bit of a breakdown about about Spotlight entertainment and what it is that you guys do and then we'll kind of take it back to the place of where we got started cool um so we started off as a music Collective just a couple of DJs trying to get more gigs and share each other's networks and um resources over time we've more so turned into an agency so it's gotten a little more corporate um you know there's a lot of people that are on the roster that I'm not really as close with you know before it was like a tight-knit group yeah now it's just like um not saying we lost quality but there's more quantity um we still have it for Quality um but we've went from DJs to live bands and also managing uh media contractors as well so overall at this time we pitch

[1:35]  ourselves as a music in media agency um we do one-off gigs such as like weddings or corporate events uh but our big focus at this time as a business is to gain residencies or corporate Partnerships that are long-term all right reoccurring over time versus just one-off and we never see them again yeah it's like it's very interesting to me that you kind of took on like from my perspective back when we were younger living here in Las Vegas we would always go to these bars in these places that were super pop and there was always entertainment up there and then all of a sudden you started getting some of those gigs you started creating that Collective if you will and now you're the guy who's basically running the entire show well even back then um obviously you know I'm born and raised in Las Vegas a lot of the people who are managing the calendars at some

[2:22]  of these bars a lot of the people who um were um you know event managers at these establishments they would actually reach out to me at the time and say hey do you know a photographer that could come over for this event do you know any um DJs that are a good opener for this specific act and at the time I would just refer them to the individuals that I was connected with um and basically broker the deal and didn't ask for any compensation in return um it was just hey yeah I have a buddy let me get him some work or get her some work and I never really realized I could make that into a business later on so when did you have that realization that maybe you were stepping over dollars that were kind of laid down for you what was that like um I think during the pandemic right pre-pandemic I had a steady gig with you

[3:10]  know my previous company yep um just College pollen Etc um we are growing tremendously I was deep into that um you know as we were taking that company Global so uh I didn't even really think about the extra cash on the side it was more so let's help my friends out or help a friend out earn some extra money um for a side hustle or a small gig on the side um once the pandemic happened I realized oh there's like opportunities to you know Bishop some contracts and get a piece um it wasn't necessarily about me taking money from their pod it was more so hey if I can get them enough gigs um hopefully I can have them quit their nine to five jobs and just do what they love to do on full time yeah um so it

[3:58]  was more of like hey this is a partnership now between you and I um and the connections that I have around the city wow I mean it's just it's so cool that you kind of took the bull by the horns because we need to fill some of the gaps in the entertainment the DJ space and I would rather have the homie be the point person for all these different bars and these collectives of organizations and you can just make sure everybody's taken care of you know definitely um you know one other thing that and I feel like honestly that's kind of the role that you've always played ever since I've known you like you've always been like so the president of our fraternity you've always been like one of the best homies you're always like holding everybody down is that something that you kind of like internalized a little bit I mean I realize it's not just about me you know I probably realized at a very young age it's you know you got to help out the whole network of people I mean a lot of the

[4:45]  people I'm putting back on were people that were giving me rides to work when I had no car oh wow right or they were you know spotting me on food when I'd say oh I'll come to lunch but I'm not eating you know I didn't have enough money to eat but I'll come kick it with you you know you're already here with me let me let me spot you and it's like all right I was able to have these experiences because a lot of people around me actually like hooked me up so it just makes sense for me to pay it back now that I have a little more um in my life resources Network Etc yeah so let's talk about kind of the process of getting Spotlight entertainment spooled up okay so you were referring the homies into these entertainment spots to be DJs yeah right now you call me one day and you're like I'm gonna go all in on this music stuff and I'll always remember that day and we talked about that in the previous episode so you guys can go check that out hear more about Lionel story

[5:32]  um but how do we take the steps to like establish the business like what was the mindset of Lionel like are you like I'm gonna push all the chips in so I can really start saying this up like what are some of the growing pains in those early days yeah uh early days I would say it was June 2021 um Vegas is at 50 occupancy I knew that I was going to go to 75 then 100.

[5:52]  um I told my girlfriend that I needed to quit my office job and just focus on this full-time she's like oh maybe you should wait till you guys have a couple of gigs first or a couple contracts until you do that I was like well if I'm working 40 hours a week on my computer and then I'm not gonna and then you know having to make dinner hit the gym Etc by the time done with all that would have like three more hours so I got to go to bed do I really have to like brain capacity or or bandwidth to do all that even after I'm done with everything else um you know my days off have to be filled with grocery shopping laundry Etc so I was like hey I got to take the leap and do it now one the more I can go all in on it the faster I can get these accounts up and then two uh I knew that the window for opportunity was very small especially with pandemic

[6:41]  coming out um of what it was in the past and things starting to open up if I didn't attack that right then and there everybody else would already be on it so how do you convince your girl that this move of going all in is the one because I know a lot of people who are listening to the show or who are watching today are going to be like I have a dream yeah I want to go all into my thing but like I don't know how to start the conversation with my partner with my girlfriend boyfriend whatever that is okay yes I basically told her look um put in the two weeks gonna leave on good terms right I've got experience in sales Etc from the past you know I'll dish up my resume and just have it ready if things aren't going well I'm sure I can get a job within a few weeks um or I can just go back and try to get my old job back um so I left on good terms there you know I did have a backup plan per se but

[7:29]  I knew I wasn't going to use it I wanted to make her happy and just you know and I guess it was a peace of mind for myself and just in case yes I think that support from our partners is so important and sometimes I know a lot of people that have the entrepreneurial lifestyle are often in a relationship with somebody who doesn't have that lifestyle yeah and I think because you and Haley both came from the place of like being a part of an organization that was growing you guys took on so much responsibility do you feel like that's kind of why it was so easy to be like hey I'm going all in on this and this is the plan um no I mean those times she like made me drive Uber things weren't going as fast I did that for one day never drove again you know I got this job it's like this like beef jerky company I love beef jerky and I worked with them for like three days I ended up dumping that yeah and I just tried to tell her like look I know you're trying to tell me to get

[8:16]  some extra money on the side but then I just don't love it like I need to be focusing on this and um I feel like if you're passionate about it things will follow you know who was your first big like victory that kind of put you in the place of being like this is gonna happen um I started working with Corner Bar entertainment as a solo DJ just myself I wasn't even referring other DJs to their um to their venues yet uh uh I worked at Park on Fremont just like during a dinner shift like playing background music for people eating dinner okay uh I was at first Friday and I had opened a music studio um right across the street like from where they host first Friday in the arts district and I got a call saying hey we

[9:04]  need a DJ like someone called out sick could you be here in like an hour I was like yo I'm already downtown I'll cruise over didn't have any music on me I rolled to my studio real quick uh uh found like an empty USB and I just went online and just downloaded as many songs as I could in 45 minutes wow threw them on the USB with no headphones I walked in there I just played straight up just like mixing by ear and the sound system no headphones uh and the USB I got together literally like within an hour of time for enough for me to load the USB and then drive over to the shift oh God and from there uh they basically called me back again the next week and then the next week and then

[9:49]  I think someone called out over at Commonwealth rooftop and I was like at that point I was much more prepared I had like all the music I needed I always had headphones in my car I had headphones in my backpack I had headphones in my house like no matter where I'm at I had a set now yeah right um yeah even in my pocket right now I had like three USBS on me the backup the backup and the Backup backup just in case you know won't get spilled on yeah anyways that I kind of took advantage of that opportunity and people calling out and then needing a filler um I didn't say hey give me a second to think about it was like yeah I'll be there and I'll figure out what I got to do to get it done yeah even for the Commonwealth thing cool I'll be there and I didn't even know what kind of equipment that was that was going to be in the club um for DJs out there musicians like there's certain gear that you're used to playing with or certain

[10:36]  um you know Hardware that you know where all the buttons and stuff are I'm sure you have that with your cameras and stuff here and if you just got thrown in another camera you've never touched before it might take you to Second figure out oh yeah you know I just told myself I'll figure it out on the spot no matter if there's 500 people in front of me and uh yeah it's dude you gotta risk it that sense of adaptability yeah is so fundamental success you're good um the the ability to kind of Say Yes quickly yeah I think is a superpower do you feel like you recognize that inside yourself of like here's an opportunity I'm gonna get after and I'll figure the rest out yeah kind of heading down the runway I think that adaptability is one of the main characters you have to have as an entrepreneur I was saying this with uh

[11:23]  um Sean Stewart over at the Boulevard when you came to my house it's you adapt the times you adapt to the market you adapt with you know your clients and uh even right now we're adapting to you know social media um where we're talking about hey things are on YouTube but we also need to get the reels going the tick tock's going and now it's moving from editing what is that called like landscape to like portrait mode where it's full frame I mean things change all the time and you got to be willing to move with the times I feel like yeah I mean it's it's very interesting just like the time of being an entrepreneur right now because social media is so prominent no matter what space you're in mental health health care have to be on these platforms DJ Entertainer business owner have to be on these platforms has that been something

[12:11]  that you've started to lean into a little bit um I spent the last six months of the of this year um generating a lot of content for myself um I have not put any out yet uh you'll probably start to see them trickling out um like later July okay um early August but uh the plan was let me just make a backlog full of content versus trying to make a new video every day um I could pump out one to three a week um and then for the later half of the year I pretty much do a post today every other day as much as I want to without having to think of ideas on the spot or do the editing and filming Etc yeah the plan of attack is I think super important and I feel like when people don't I'm going to use the word batch their content it becomes very

[12:58]  overwhelming to have to show up every single day and produce a new piece of content and I think that's a huge way people burn out because they're like I just can't keep up with this pace that you're excited about on day one but by the time you get to day 60 it's like dude I can't do this anymore yes I've been posting what I had to you know I I uh promoted my last release I've been promoting some shows here and there yeah and I'll do a couple still photos just because I have them in the back pocket but uh as far as like the video content goes that I've been sitting on uh more strategic about how I put it out versus what I've been trying to do the last few years of just posts when I can and do things when I'm bored it's like no let's just have a folder full of stuff yeah it makes total sense yeah so let's get back to you know Sean something that you talked about so me and Sean have been kicking it and one thing that he brought

[13:45]  into one of our conversations was you should see how detailed Lionel is he's like every single room I went into there was a whiteboard and it had goals on it and they were all checked off when did you start that and like when did you start becoming so organized about your plan of attack um Ilia I used to live with a guy named Ilya Gasol in college and um he had this white board in his room and I said a hundred thousand by 30.

[14:17]  that was the exact words dollar sign one zero zero comma zero zero zero by 30 years old basically and I was like oh what is that it's like a goal of mine I wanted to write it out and look at it every day I was probably like 19 20 21 at the time yeah and I never really thought about doing something like that back then I was just worried about girls and drinking and partying right I still had like responsibilities but I wasn't thinking about my future in that capacity especially like where I was going to be at by 30. so I was like okay I should start doing some stuff like that and uh in 2013 I went through like pretty bad depression um got kicked out of school things like that that were very near and dear to me so one thing that helped get me through that phase was hey let me watch some YouTube on like how to like change my

[15:04]  mindset let me like look up some books on how to like change my mindset from being like down and depressed potentially like getting back into my happy mode and you know the person that I always was um and the more books I'd read the more I realized that like it's about consistency over time versus just whenever you want it to be it's about you know writing these things out speaking these things out loud envisioning them and basically creating the reality around you is as cheesy as that may sound um the manifestation or whatever it is attracting these things I found to be extremely real um it worked for me and so I say all right I'm going to just continue these habits and what do you know I'm 30 now this was again like I said 19 20 21 years old so it's been 10 years I've

[15:51]  done it consistency consistently over the last 10 years pretty much all those things I just spoke about and more um and and I got myself here so yeah um will I ever doubt these like uh books and stuff I don't think there's like a get rich quick scheme but there is definitely a format um that helps with success over time yeah one of my one of my favorite books is um Atomic habits yep and it talks about lagging indicators so it's like your Fitness is a lagging indicator of all the choices that you've been making consistently over the last couple months okay your bank account is a lagging indicator of your spending habits over the last couple months so if your bank account is down you've been spending too

[16:37]  much money if your bank account is up you've been saving right and when I think about the idea of manifestation people think it's so like Fufu and soft that they don't believe in it but they don't recognize it's the consistency that you talked about there that gives us the results that we look for but they don't show up today it's like that delayed gratification yeah and again yeah nothing happens overnight the dream house you have might have the pool might have the ping pong table the you know the five dogs that you've always wanted but like you don't just buy the house and those things come with it it's like the house first the dog second and the pool gets built a few years later your backyard's probably empty before that I don't know you know these things are a vision that you have and you just kind of slowly

[17:23]  chop away at it what was that first Vision that like really started to become real for you that you put on the board and you were like whoa this actually works uh I think it was behind my house yeah yeah I bought a house at 26 years old my family never owned a house um I mean thinking about just like a friend group I'm probably one of the youngest for sure um and really just kind of saying oh like uh reading books this is a good investment prop or like investment um especially at the time when I bought in 2018 yeah uh five years ago here in Las Vegas Market you know at the time people were telling me Oh it's a bad time to buy but then when I realized about the market things go up things go down and things always

[18:10]  end up going back up so I said all right I'm not going to time this thing out when I got the money I'm just gonna run it empty my whole savings account and just put a gamble uh that alone is like a is a risk a lot of people aren't willing to say hey man I just saved up twenty Thirty forty thousand dollars and then just put it down on something but if you're not willing to do that then you're never going to see the results out of it um the fact of the matter is I saved that up over a couple years and I knew if I lost it all for some odd reason I can do it again yeah because you built that skill set yeah I mean like the confidence that comes from recognizing that we can make more money I think is a superpower you know I mean the inconsistency of the world the up and down of the market right being able to have the skill set that helps you win consistently through time I think is something that is so undervalued that more people need to really think about

[18:56]  it's not what we have but it's the skill set that got us there that's so valuable you know what I'm saying I take that yeah we talked about that a lot in the last one yeah exactly so here's my question for you how do you start building your team so it's Lionel hooking up the homies right but like how do you start putting some infrastructure underneath you about like how you're going to be the CEO and leader of this team because you can't do it all right I think the first thing I did um was sit down with a lawyer and figure out like what these agreements would look like partnership agreements with um Partners who are helping me provide things such as um sound systems speakers subwoofers Etc um those are things that we need for

[19:44]  live entertainment right if the venue doesn't already have that inside um in a client's contacting us to do a pop-up live bin in their backyard for a wedding I need to be able to provide those kind of things in order to get the band to play because the band might not own it themselves right right so all right let me find a partner that provides these things let me schedule a meeting with this individual and have a partnership agreement already dished up um who do I have to pay to you know go over these details and check the verbiage to make sure it'll hold up in court and how did you identify that those things were important uh that's so funny I had this Epiphany the other day that my mom would always say this to me growing up and into my brother and my sister too is put it in writing and she would have

[20:32]  these like mini contracts with us when we say hey these are your chores for this month or your duties for this month around the house and I remember my mom like making us like write it down and sign a piece of paper and I always thought like oh yeah real contract but then I realized actually that does hold up just straight up like written agreement on a piece of paper with two signatures actually holds up um even like verbal stuff can hold up obviously easier if you have something in writing yeah email chains can hold up basically what I've talked when I talked to a lawyer I went into the seminar once and I was listening to this lawyer then I also did like a one-on-one Consulting um basically any like exchange of services or goods for a promised dollar amount or service or trade in return is an exchange of services or product that

[21:22]  can be a contract act so yeah I sat down with the one-on-one with the consultant looked at partnership agreements for other partners I looked at agreements for having contractors and that would in my sense would be DJs bands photographers videographers right that was kind of like the initial yeah I mean other businesses it might be a cleaning business and your contractors might be Maids yeah um or it could be you know someone fixing your AC that guy may work for the company yeah that allows him to be a contractor of that company yeah it's like establishing like clear expectations yeah what I'm going to give what I'm gonna get yeah I'm Gonna Get You business and this is what our splits are

[22:10]  um you know things of that nature uh I think that was like the pivotal thing that I did right up front and then as I started to get into actual staff um that I needed to run the business operations assistance social media marketing team uh you know I started to build out those type of contracts um and I think it just helped every even if it's a friend working with me for example even my girlfriend I made my girlfriend sign a contract yeah um you know down the road if we're fighting or something I don't I want things to be very clear of what the expectations and the outline was of what we agreed upon back then um versus getting in a fight about

[22:59]  something that was unclear or just spoken word before yeah makes a lot of sense I mean like from a headaches perspective like you're obviously like reducing risk in the future by having clear expectations of what everybody's expected to do and then the things that they're supposed to execute yeah on their behalf that's interesting so what let's talk about the process of hiring new team members so what type of qualities are you looking for in people who you hire and who you work with um first and foremost shout out to the team obviously I wouldn't be here without them um I ran the company by myself for you I was wearing all the hats and I burnt myself out I had to take a full month off of Just delegating all of my gigs and basically not doing anything just because I was so burnt out so shout out to the team

[23:47]  uh what I look for in individuals is um availability uh track record of their characteristics right if I've known someone for a long time you know are they known to get things done are they fit for that specific role right so I'm working with someone right now in a marketing position um and like this for as long as I've ever known her she's always been really good at like making her Instagram look fancy great at editing her videos and her photos to make them look catchy and different and unique than what other people are posting um uh she has worked in companies in the past where you don't need to be

[24:35]  micromanaged you don't need to work in an office she I can just give her a list of things and it'll be done by the end of the week um because she had the things that I It matched with what I needed in my company right some other people might need people on the ground boots on the ground um but that's not me I needed someone that I knew had experience basically working remote and holding themselves accountable check I needed someone that was creative for this specific role um check so everything differs from Roll to roll but uh I have kind of like a vision of what I would want to be if I was that role and I made sure that person kind of fulfills majority of those and even if it's not all um either I can coach on those additional things or potentially refer some books and or I'm even happy to fund that out of pocket if there was like a

[25:23]  local trainer in the area that can teach them that aspect of things that I don't know myself yeah so let's let's reverse because you said something that was very interesting to me I did not know that you had to take a full month off because you're wearing all the hats okay that experience in itself has to be kind of humbling because it's like naturally as an entrepreneur right I think I can work all hours of the day I can do all the jobs but at the end of the day we end up getting very burnt out because we're not meant to handle all of the tasks right so when you started kind of getting into that place of burnout and like feeling I guess fatigued and sluggish about what you were doing you decided to take the time off but how did you start trusting other people to execute on your vision because me personally it's I have sometimes a tough time letting other people people do work that I don't think they're going to be able to execute on

[26:10]  and like being able to trust people to get stuff done is very difficult so like how did you build that so I do want to rewind actually because I think we're on a different page here when I took the month off yeah I wasn't posting on Instagram I didn't send out an email blast that month I delegated every single gig that was like people reached out to me to DJ oh hey I'm not available that date gosh it wasn't available the whole month I told myself not working this month delegated to all the contractors that I work with and then I realized that uh um oh crap like I can't just let the business not operate for a whole month so it was the following month is when I started hiring okay yeah um so yeah that year went by me doing everything myself um then I took the month off realized I

[26:59]  can't necessarily just do that I made no money this month yeah I made it just enough off the referral business like uh like lead commissions and stuff like that to pay my bills yeah um but then I realized okay nope I can't continue this way because I'll burn myself out again this next year I need to change something up so basically started recruiting a team around me at that very point and uh how do I get how do I trust them too yeah it's like because my thing is like when everybody thinks about building a team right naturally we recognize everybody's got to play different roles yeah but like where do we find these people and then how do you put yourself in the mindset of like I'm gonna relinquish this task yeah it's your responsibility now how do you kind of build that trust with that person uh I think I start small and then work my way up hey I have a list of like 20 things I need taken off my plate let me like put

[27:48]  this onto a whiteboard like Sean was talking about or a piece of paper organize them by like what's the easiest to learn versus wildly what's going to be more difficult okay as I'm training this individual of like tasks that need to come off my plate let's start with this week's to-do's are like three these three things I'll go over with you in person the next time you'll do it yourself and if anything was done on computer it's recorded via Zoom with video and usual uh video audio and visual and then that recording is put into a folder on Google Drive yeah so that person hears it from me they do it themselves and they have the ability to go back and watch it um uh from there once they're doing those

[28:36]  three things very well okay let's add on these next three things these next three things and before you know it whatever was on that contract or agreement for the uh roll outline um all those 20 things are taught to the individual and they have the capability of doing all um over time versus just you toss them everything at once yeah I think is when I do stuff it's methodic and and there's execution plan in place yes and this is the thing I think a lot of people can learn from you know often we kind of have the expectation that things need to come off our plate and we give them to other people but often we're not the best leaders in being able to teach people what the plan of attack is yeah and it sounds like you're very methodical on how you kind of put your plan of attack together and then how you

[29:24]  hold people accountable as well yeah I think it's amazing the reason why I had an epiphany there and I kind of laughed out loud is in my opinion I actually went to school to be a teacher originally okay it's teach um let them do like they need the muscle memory and stuff but then you have to like I mentioned the thing that I thought was funny was I'm recording these things on zoom and then dropping them into a uh uh Google drive folder yep and it's called trainings training material um that's I feel like one piece that a lot of people may be missing is if you don't have somewhere for them to look back at yep um then they're gonna call you and you have to waste not waste but you have to distribute more of your time and energy

[30:12]  to re-teach that thing that they learned two weeks ago versus them just going back and watching the video that you pre-recorded um and the beautiful thing about Zoom is like it's free to download um even the premium does the screen recordings you just gotta make sure that I've done this many times actually that you are sharing screen and recording the desktop because otherwise I'm clicking record and it only picked up the audio Yeah but didn't pick up any of the visual that I was trying to show go down on my software or tools that I'm using lessons so yep I've done that twice now yeah yeah that's very interesting um you know one of the things that I think about which is a superpower is a sense of accountability and one of my guys that I look up to in business name is Alex or MOSI he says naftan our team members

[30:59]  don't need to be taught but they need to be remembered or reminded and I think that's really important but how do you balance when you've got a team member who's not performing as well as you expect them to how do you kind of come in as that coach if you will in that one-on-one session and kind of hold them accountable to what your expectations are um I have this project management tool called Monday yep Monday allows you to set tasks set deadlines set status updates from in progress to complete it basically not started in progress completed yep there's actually starting to become this like uh second row of things that aren't necessarily tasks they're just reminders yeah reminder I always need to put the

[31:46]  hashtags on that social media post because I saw that even though we talked about it over a one-on-one meeting yeah there were three posts this last week that didn't have it on there so let's put the reminder in Monday again I'm not set by any means um let's put the reminders in here so you see it often and then over time we'll just delete it and and it becomes a habit to them and then we can forget about it and it's not me scolding them it's like hey we'll put it here just to remember more even for me I write everything down the Brand's only can take in so much information remember it so uh let's do our due diligence to write everything down have everything live in here for the things that are checklist we'll check it off over time for the things that are just reminders we'll have that reminder there until it is a

[32:33]  habit and then the habit and then and then we'll delete it in general naturally people from my experience have a tough time with things like documenting and I would say the micro effort of like managing tasks did you have any type of pushback from your team at any point in time about like why this stuff is important um no because I always explain why we're doing it first hey this is the reason why we're doing these hashtags um and I'll find shortcuts for example like on your phone you can go to text replacement in your settings okay and if you wanted to have 20 hashtags on each post you can put tag one and as you spell that on your phone it'll suggest on your phone instead of doing a autocorrect it'll suggest text replacement and you can click one click and put 20 hashtags at one time and like

[33:23]  in two seconds I don't know is this triggering no it is because like this is one of the biggest things I mean I think about the content that we put out there normally we strategize and think about like the hashtags we're going to put out but often it's one of the things that gets forgotten yeah because we don't think about it so like the ones I have is like mine says like tag one which is like media tags tag two which is like music tags tag three which is like I don't know things pertaining to Chris uh Christmas or the holidays and uh basically yes this is why we're doing it for more Outreach who knows if it will work it will not work right but let's just give it a shot anyway because with this shortcut you don't even have to think about it uh one other thing that's been like heavy for me and the team is like all

[34:10]  right everyone needs to file their receipts if I get audited by the IRS I need to know what got spent where I need paper trail of everything so it's like as simple as if you were to order something with the company card and it sends you an email not a physical thing that email needs to go into a folder on your email saying receipts and invoices from 2023 yeah 2022 2021 um I need to be able to click in there and like if the IRS asks where something lives for this charge can I find it immediately and that's something living in people's Monday project management board right now is file the receipts right and get that section of routine right when you see the confirmation receipt come in you just basically drop in the folder right I'm not trying to micromanage it but let me see the receipt folder all right

[34:57]  everything got done this week if that happened two three weeks no right we could just delete that yeah that part of the training for you is over I think like that because I'm the owner but I explain to them the reason why I need that why do I need this done yeah right and I'll explain look if you ever were to start your own business down the road um you're learning things from me that you can also Implement into your business in the future if you ever find something you're passionate about and you want to venture off and go do your own thing these are things you probably want to know as well yeah so what happens when have you ever had team members who just like don't want to fall in line with the things that you're telling them and why they're important um I mean I've had a two guys that I've worked with not end up panning out I

[35:44]  don't think it's necessarily like they weren't listening to what I wanted to do or lead on I think is more so just like it wasn't their passion got it um but I feel like the people I work with right now like they're really into Arts they're really into creativity they're really into music and uh um just like me like they don't mind putting in the work um because even for me some of this doesn't even feel like work right I think you're trying to take someone from uh you know another realm of expertise or another passion and you put them into like the music or oral Arts scene um just like me when I worked at you know my old jobs I just kind of showed up and went through the motions I don't think I was like totally passionate about doing everything yeah I gotcha because it's like you know one of the

[36:31]  things that I've dealt with just in time in general is like how accountable do we hold people especially as the owner of a company to do the things that you want to do because like you mentioned a couple seconds ago in like a jokey manner like I'm not micromanaging but I think you do a really good job of communicating why somebody needs to do something and what the bigger picture really represents yeah definitely and uh even from the get-go like when I had my initial first team meeting hey this is what my goal is for the company and I'll say it I guess I'll just say it now yeah right um let's try to grow this thing and infiltrate the market and will disrupt the community and it's either we become the leaders in the community and we acquire the other businesses who are competing with us or

[37:18]  we get to we're valuable enough to where we can sell the business to them and we're all part owners of it and you guys will get a piece too um so what is it what is that ownership stake look like if you don't you can just like just break down just like percentages in general because one of the things that I find is like people are much more vested when they have a bigger upside yeah so Spotlight entertainment actually owns a few businesses now um or as the umbrella overarching company uh music studio a photo booth company a record label and uh and then we have ourselves yeah um but everything has different uh ownerships per se yeah um so for example like the photo booth is through a partnership um I think I have slightly more

[38:06]  ownership um just because I I'm funding the website the insurances the permits the licenses Etc makes sense um so it was only fair that I had slightly more ownership than the other two partners than that but yeah I mean let's just say five years from now that photo booth company was the biggest one in Las Vegas we were taking market share from our competitor who was was previously the biggest one at that point they're gonna either be wanting to merge you know this is what happens in in the business world yeah when companies start to get really big is they merge or they try to acquire the other company that's competing with them so they don't have that competition anymore or you could potentially sell your company to them um

[38:53]  my long-term goal is to make music and go on tours and uh uh you know tour with photographers videographers to our music it's two of my message uh and perform whether that be a DJ or a vocalist so uh I do want to sell the businesses right I don't want I mean I could do this for the rest of my life or if I get to the point where I'm touring I can hire even more people to manage businesses that I'm operating right now um um but uh yeah yeah I just want to get in position to where everything's organized to sell all of our data is properly stored or um email subscription list is massive um

[39:40]  right I can teach another I can sell the company to someone and easily teach them in a matter of like two months how to operate everything from the ground up because there was a solid system in place absolutely that's where my mind is five ten years from now yeah and this is an opportunity because I want to bring up a book that I read a couple years ago it's called built to sell and the biggest issue that businesses have today when they try and sell their company is they cannot run without them because often it's founder-led they're the talent they're the person who's going to be executing on the vision or creating the content or doing the whatever right and so when they go to sell a business there's no framework in place that allows for them to actually hand it over to somebody because the only reason you're going to buy a business is if you can benefit from this yeah continue to make money off yeah exactly you know if you crashes to the ground it's not worth

[40:27]  anything yeah exactly exactly well it's not probably that person's fault crash to the ground the people who sold in business probably didn't have a system in place yeah and that's a big thing and like that's been a big part of my I would say level up processes and entrepreneurs recognizing that my job from the top of the company is to make sure that there are the systems in place that this thing can run on its own yeah and that was a big realization because you have to you can't be the what is it the Baker and the Candlestick maker and everything else at the same time like you really do have to start thinking about from a position of CEO and ownership yeah how I can start building the team underneath me to execute on this stuff the first exercise I did when I was starting to build the business one of the very first exercises was to make a org chart okay so I put myself as a top a CEO I said what positions would I actually need to operate this company all right accounting Marketing sales and

[41:17]  I have this umbrella uh if I were to hire marketing what would it be I'd probably need someone doing design probably need someone running social media that's like it's full in person at this time the person I had in marketing is doing all of that yeah hopefully three years from now there's a couple other people under but I looked at it as a org chart right just type in business org chart on Google and say okay these are the things that I need I'm doing all these things myself and how fast can I start plugging in more people into these things so I'm not doing them anymore uh that alone helps with organization and bringing a system um and then um when you're bringing on like director level people um I'm even having them think about hey if you were to hire someone under you

[42:06]  when you're building your system to stay organized I'm not going to tell you how to do your job right you're an expert at that build out your you know folders or your Google spreadsheets or whatever softwares you need and um make sure you know how to teach someone else what you're doing yeah because one is we're going to hire someone under you eventually and that person's gonna take some work off your plate um you need to be able to to train them and two down the road if we were to sell the company could we tell this other company how to operate this department um quickly right the faster we can get those things done probably the faster the acquisition or the or the deal happens do you think a lot of this I guess intuitive knowledge came from the place of you working with just college and seeing the team blow up oh 100 uh I am very blessed to have gone through

[42:55]  several sale like come uh been a part of many starter companies that have sold yeah um or got acquired so I'm watching all these things go down from afar when I'm in my 20s I'm basically just picking up all this knowledge yeah and so when I start my own company I'm not thinking of what we're going to be doing tomorrow how we're gonna be paying bills next month I'm thinking how are we going to sell this business 10 years from now how do you get into that mindset I mean it's a real question because I know a lot of people even including myself you know in my earlier years like I was so focused on just like how in the am I going to get from here to there and often it doesn't give you the ability to kind of step out of the weed so I got a couple things I want to talk about but I don't hear that I guess the first thing I thought about was okay if I wanted to be a millionaire overnight I mean not overnight I guess it would take several

[43:42]  years of pushing and building and then yeah I could sell the business for a million dollars cool now I'm officially a millionaire probably selling a million cash or however the distribution was made over time right yeah that'd be awesome but uh how can I do that if I don't have a system or a business that's profitable that I can easily pitch to someone to pick up from me um that alone was like the driving factor of me thinking long term yeah um now like I mentioned it could go the other way five ten years from now I might acquire competitors right and um end up just hiring more people to help operate this bigger grand scheme of things and I've got an intuition because this is going to end up

[44:30]  happening here in the next couple years is you're going to start thinking about that bigger vision and how you can start kind of gobbling up the marketplace yeah I mean look if one of my songs blow up and I start touring I'm gonna have to just like kind of uh have people manage my businesses or sell yeah right um you know I believe in myself but things don't always go your way so I am prepared to potentially hey this might be the way that I'm in the industry as an agent as a label owner um as a artist manager that might have been that might become my long-term role yes I want to be the artist but if I'm 42 and things aren't hitting like I do have to start thinking about my family and my future yeah um so either way I know I'm going to be

[45:17]  in a part of the music business um forever um and I'm very confident that I'm making I'll make an impact on the Vegas scene right that is in that's in its infancy right now yeah um you know long term if there was a documentary about music in Vegas the music scene in Vegas um I'm hoping my name get dropped gets dropped at some point maybe somebody maybe somebody needs to make that documentary uh but uh we're nowhere close to as big as we could be I feel like there's no real prominent artist coming out of Vegas right now yeah um so if I can just be a contributor to that versus being the artist that comes out of Vegas as the next big thing I'm totally fine with that yeah but I have all my Avenues ready to go yeah makes sense yeah and it seems like you're building out a really solid team underneath you you know your approach to

[46:05]  saying like I'm not going to micromanage you but this is kind of how I believe you should execute like talk about your mentality as a leader of an organization you've got a new key role underneath you let's call it marketing okay you don't have expertise in that space but you do have an idea of how things should look how do you communicate to them what your expectations are and what happens if they're not executing at the level you expect yeah um references maybe hey this is an account that I want to be like all right this is how often they're posting this kind of content that they're posting okay um let's try to replicate that yeah um and like I mentioned many times over the last couple of minutes just compete with them yeah um it's not gonna you're not going to be competing with them overnight but over time we can have you

[46:53]  know relevant following or posting the same amount of uh relevant content yeah and what happens if they're not taking the initiative to kind of execute at the level that you expect and it sounds like you haven't really dealt with this but I know a lot of people are like I'm already thinking about this yeah as a business owner uh it's a tough conversation to have yeah um even for like I hired a friend in sales and I said hey look we're friends first yeah we're business Associates second no matter where this goes a few months from now if it doesn't pan out to where we want it to be um we're not going to let the business come between us we're always just going to be friends you call me anytime you want to give up on this you know or or whatever and that's fine we're still homies as far as like marketing stuff goes let's say I need to hire someone new yeah I personally don't think I have the

[47:41]  budget to pay them enough to give them the expectations that I want currently um so one thing I'm dealing with right now was like should I find an investor um and when I'm pitching to them a part of that money that I'm getting from the investors would be to hire better Talent um to help with expansion publicity and so on which in theory hopefully helps with sales yeah and Revenue um but I know that I don't have the budget to pay the quality of employees that I want to not that my employees aren't quality right now don't get me wrong they're great for where they're at in their lifetime yeah right some of them are younger um but if I wanted to snag someone from who knows a company like Spotify or Twitter right that needs 100 000 plus

[48:30]  per year I couldn't do that without the funding at this current time um so it's a thing that I'm battling right now is okay should I start to go get funding for an expansion wait now I got to give these people a percentage of our earnings when I'm actually when we're doing fine without them right now um it's a very hard line for me to balance of what I want to do next and I do know if I want to expand the team into more experienced individuals that I will have to go out and find some funding pretty soon yeah yeah and this is kind of the dichotomy where I find myself as well it's like you know I hear from an example of somebody like Alex hermosi who's like you know the biggest

[49:17]  way for you to grow is to bring other a players in yeah and you have to figure out how to do that because it's like you can force a b player forward but like an a player is 20 times more effective as a b player you know what I mean and so it's like how do I get these people on my team how do I build the business up by not also cannibalizing the business at the same time do you know what I'm saying because like we're doing fine like you said do I give this person a ton of cash and then a part of all the revenue that comes in from there right you know I mean it's like how do I balance that as a leader and one thing I'm having troubles right now is people are saying why don't you just ask for money there's people out invest in this idea you can show them the books everything's going well whatever but I'm like at the end of every month we're sitting fine yeah staff is paid my bills are paid there's some to pay off the company

[50:04]  cards and then there's a little extra to contribute to my 401k or whatever yeah um you know the house is shot up in value um you know whatever my cars are paid off Etc so like am I needing to bring someone on I'm fine the way I'm living now yeah if someone doesn't investment then a portion of our monthly quarterly yearly profits are gone to this individual but did we grow yeah it's not something I can answer that are we gonna grow year one or are we going to lose money because we hire these people and if and and from what I've seen in the past after you take these big Investments you do actually in the way that you go about spending if you're doing talent wise trying to hire Talent you do end up losing money for the next couple of years yes

[50:52]  um so you end up having to actually come to an agreement on what you want your personal salary to be as an owner now that there's investors involved but that caps amount of money I can make Now versus what I'm doing now we have unlimited roof yeah uh dude I think about this stuff all all the time and this is kind of where you and I are in the same mindset I know a lot of people kind of get stuck because it's like I'm good now like everything's great we're in the podcast Studio this is awesome but I also have higher Ambitions for myself and sometimes it's very difficult for me to kind of balance the need for more while recognizing I have everything that I have right now and I think kind of it's like I have this internal expectation for myself that is so much greater than I think anybody can experience yeah and I don't I really

[51:40]  it's like me and you friend a friend it's like I have a tough time balancing that yeah of like how do I go get more but do I need more you know what I'm saying dude you got a nice spot right here working car in the driveway right like we are fine yeah um you know it's prepared to like a minimalist he's probably also looking happy like we're doing really well um and we have a lot of cool things but I don't know why I just think there's room for growth and uh I guess that's just been like a numbers person for me I love watching like the numbers grow yeah I love watching the team grow a benefit with for our our business is that we'd be able to employ more people um we'd be able to employ more bands DJs Etc

[52:26]  um and like I mentioned the one of the biggest goals for myself when I started was could I get enough business to where some of these people can quit their nine to five and just work as a musician yeah full-time and I've seen that happen with a couple of contractors already who are not working another job um and I do think that Spotlight events um has helped get them enough uh they're probably getting their own events too yeah maybe doing like lessons on the side and whatnot but I do know that some of our events that we gave given them per week per month are helping them contribute to being able to comfortably not have to go back to you know working or wherever they were at before behind desks or at the store or at the mall Etc I mean you're creating that sense of Freedom yeah not a sense of Freedom you're creating true Freedom that's allowing people to get out of the nine

[53:13]  to five and the grind and letting them do what they need to do which I think is so powerful so the thing that you're good so the thing that you know I naturally go to is where do you want to be at do you know what I'm saying like now that everybody knows how tactical you are about the things that you put in front of you from a vision board and from a whiteboard perspective and establishing goals what does the next six months look like for Lionel oh man uh I don't have the whiteboard in front of me um but uh these next six months are going to be split between quarter three and quarter four uh quarter three gonna slow down a little bit uh got a couple of weddings to attend uh we're saving up for a Maui trip at the end of the year to be able to treat ourselves it's been a long six months

[54:00]  already yeah um not only do I want to go myself I want to be able to uh take the team with me that's helped build the past year whether it's gonna you know California or whatever Disneyland I I want to not only treat myself at the end of the year I want to be able to save enough money for them to come with me yeah um basically get back to the team um so the next three months there's a couple things that I'm saving for um to happen by the end of the year whether it's personal Endeavors like weddings and stuff that I need to attend and or the company Retreat that I want to host yeah um the last three months is going to be purely dedicated to the holiday season um you know starting in October we have Halloween tons of events around that holiday

[54:47]  um November you're basically gearing up for all the Christmas and parties and stuff that are going on up and down the strip last year we work with Caesar's entertainment um huge did their company party um we you know we're working with some pretty big names now yeah um circus soleil we're doing their event for HP um Hewlett Packard we just didn't event for these people call us back for their you know corporate Christmas parties whether they want to ban the play or a DJ set we want to be able to provide that service and last year during December uh we didn't basically take a minute off we were working 12 hours a day 30 days straight fulfill all these events that were going on December wow and leading up to even New Year's Eve and parties that we were helped provide in entertainment for up and down the

[55:35]  strip in downtown anyways so the next six months is going to be half dedicated to saving for um you know personal Ventures and Company event Adventures yeah and then I'm just really prepping for the holiday season which is Q4 which is the busiest time for for our business yeah you guys are getting ready for the Sprint real talk so where does the balance of like work life balance come for you uh well that's why I already know like I'm already planning the trip to Maui in November I already want to do a team outing in December um the dates already blocked off I'm thinking about these things in advance yeah um but they're not free yeah right so I need to just buckle down the next three months start spending a lot on the business um knowing that I'm going to be spending a lot on those things um yeah I plan personal and uh personal

[56:23]  outings and stuff like far in advance is this the thing I'm thinking about these days it's like I want to be better at practicing what I preach when it comes to work life balance yeah you know what I mean I feel like I'm in the season of my life right now where it's like I just want to be so deep into working and trying to figure stuff out and testing and pushing stuff forward but I also recognize that I very quickly sometimes approach that sense of you're needing to take a month off and just like delegate you know what I mean it's like that work-life balance is really tough sometimes here's something I did before January one of this year okay I looked at everything that I had to do for this year I knew that my buddy Ryan's wedding was this date I knew Ben Green's wedding was a state I knew that my girlfriend's Best Friend's Wedding was this day I knew we wanted to take a trip

[57:10]  during this day I knew we wanted to go to this music festival so I mapped all these things out that we really needed to get done from the weddings to music festivals to the vacations um what month were we planning these things right so basically like every 30 days there was like something going on and how I'm thinking of visiting it I'll just I will personally bust my butt for 25 days straight just to go on a five-day vacation at the end of the end of that month yeah um yes I'm putting in time for walking my dogs and going to the gym getting eight hours of rest so I don't burn out um but I always I'm seeing this like light at the end of the tunnel every month or every quarter where there's like this big trip planned for myself and it's not usually like the weekend outings anymore for me it's like these like mini vacations at a reward after

[58:00]  after putting in the work for 20 25 days straight and I think this is where I can take a note from you it's like dude the planning do you know what I'm saying months in advance gives you something to look forward to so it makes the work today not as stressful yeah if we knew we were going to Disneyland at the end of the end of July you know hey we're going to be taking five days off to go to California then hit two days at the beach two days at Disneyland and uh California Adventure yeah we're gonna Splurge we're gonna sleep at the hotel we want to we're gonna eat what we want to and I have to think about it but in order for us to be able to do that we need to put in all the work we possibly can over the next 25 days yeah you don't have a tough time having people to buy into that message either uh I mean

[58:48]  and the reason I asked that question is because sometimes in my life I have seen differences in what we are expected to accomplish so Lionel definitely has a different chip on his shoulder and what he wants to accomplish compared to one of your employees yeah so how do you balance your mindset as the person who's pushing this entire sled forward with strategy and you can kind of articulate the big Vision to some in the difference between somebody else who's kind of like in the trenches every single day and just like doing the work um I I'm doing my best I'm not saying I'm the best at it to one just paint the picture of even when we started working with sweet heat records and the team that we hired under that sub brand of

[59:35]  the company um I let them know like hey you know I was a part of we the beat for a while we the B is not controlling an entire stage at Life is Beautiful um I started working with them at 2016. um until this day they have that stage there right um I work with a group called flash gang who have DJ for the last six years in an art car at Electric Daisy Carnival ran by boots and cats records and as I was explaining to the team is that the harder we work at this the faster we grow um we can be the people at these festivals Outside Lands running an art car Life is Beautiful running one of the stages and it's a big stage too I think it's 850 capacity technically but

[1:00:23]  I've seen a thousand people yeah absolutely so it's like um these I've seen it done before I've worked with teams I've got done before now our team needs to go get it done and we can make it a reality for ourselves so our friends can play there we can play there we could say that we are part of putting this thing together we were part of booking that headliner for this stage or whatever it may be again like all the people are involved in the business right now are music lovers yeah the people I feel like that weren't necessarily pure music lovers or art lovers like kind of fell off um not in a bad way again it's just not their passion um I think they're gonna find something they love one day and realize wow this is what work could be like um but to paint that Vision to people around me and I think they do see the

[1:01:11]  bigger picture because I can tell real life stories of things I've been affiliated with in the past that have gone this way with hard work and they've seen the results themselves and now it's just our turn to go and do it and replicate again yeah I love that as I'm thinking about kind of like all the sub brands that you have right you've got Spotlight which also has which companies underneath it or which sub Brands again they had sweet heat records a record label uh Sounds by Leto Leo which is just a music studio that I run um and then it's LV disco Booth this is a photo booth company okay yeah so how do you keep all three of those sub Brands marching in the same direction do you have like a Cadence of meetings that you guys have is it like a weekly do you touch base with everybody on a daily basis it's kind of like different teams running each actually

[1:01:57]  um before I was thinking hey why don't I have this girl work across all brands and then I finally realized nah I think she should just be the expert at this one um me and Haley the director of operations internal operations uh we both work across all of them yeah um but the other people that we're working with are just like dedicated to a specific thing gotcha yeah so Haley is somebody who also keeps everybody in line and makes sure they're marching yeah based on your guys's Vision mm-hmm yeah the only reason I asked that question is because I know that you know so many people have lots of stuff going on yeah right but it's also very difficult to keep all those things in line unless you have like a structure and a system to get that stuff done yeah um it was a lot to get done when I was

[1:02:45]  first thinking of all these Concepts everything was living in their own roof I think we may have talked about this before um I got you know I don't know if it was a criticism the other day um what's going on with all your Brands Lionel I can't do businesses well yeah they're like why do you have so many accounts why are you promoting so many different things well if everything lived on one website and there was 50 different offers you'd get highly confused when you got on there yeah um that's why um uh you know car brands they own like seven different car brands one's the luxury yep one's the mid grade one's the entry level for people coming out of high school getting their first car it's not just like all these cars on one big lie it's like focused on specific Market

[1:03:32]  yeah of people um you know what I want to explain to my friends watching this is not yes thank you for following all my accounts and seeing all the different Endeavors I'm taking part of um but the end consumer is not necessarily my friends um so it might be confusing to them but other people might not even know I'm affiliated with all these things and that's fine because that specific thing is only dealing with this Market of people right right um the photo booth company in particular I have a question I don't think should be mixed in with the record label yeah I have a question about that though so when you started these different sub Brands were you just recognizing like areas of opportunity that you guys could take advantage of just being in the

[1:04:19]  entertainment space in general you're like hey like we need a studio we need a record label we need the DJs we did like you've created an ecosystem of businesses that seem to feed into each other um they definitely do feed into each other for example like we're doing a show July 8th um Chingy downtown oh no way yeah um a lot of spotlights DJs are opening up for Changi in partnership with we the beat um we've reached out saying the sponsor is looking for a photo booth ended up getting them in touch with LV disco Booth yeah who is now providing the photo booth for the event so now our LV disco Booth team is there and so is the spotlight team um and again it's an ecosystem of network um but uh nonetheless a lot of this stuff was all on one website when I first started right and then I realized it

[1:05:06]  should be separate websites yeah the compartmentalization creates value in itself you even for having my music service offerings recording rehearsal space mix and Masters yeah it has to do somewhat with like bands and music and DJs but um the people that are coming there to shop for that are gonna be like artists and singers who are looking to record songs the people are coming to Spotlight entertainment are corporate GMS and event planners that need entertainment yeah um so the target market is different which means I believe that the Instagram needs to be different the um email needs to be different and the um website needs to be different right The Branding needs to be different

[1:05:52]  different business cards if I had a business card with all my services from everything the business card wouldn't even say my name it would just be a whole list of services yeah and then people be like what the hell am I looking at right they're probably like a three by five or whatever yeah so uh something I got better at over time and I realized a lot of corporate conglomerates do yeah um when you look at you know Coca-Cola they have their energy drink section they have their water section which is Dasani um they have their um soda selections they probably are in some stuff that I don't even know yeah um but everything is for a different type of people and uh different type of uh and consumer yeah well it's super important I think that individualized

[1:06:40]  focus is something that like clears up the buyer's Journey as well you know I mean not as much confusion not so many things to pick from I'd rather go to you'll sell more than Jack the Box yeah you know what I'm saying um so my last question for you today is if you had to give advice to someone who finds themselves passionate about starting their own business and doesn't know where to get started what is your piece of advice to them okay I've been thinking about this a lot um because I was thinking of content ideas for my Instagram and Tick Tock uh so I would say this just get a sheet of paper or whiteboard write all of your ideas down of what you want to do there's going to be some things that are cut because they don't make sense right

[1:07:28]  or again you have to split it up into its own thing right um but if you wanted to start just on something easy if you add ideas and had to do with sports Circle everything that has to do with sports figure out what your products and services are are we selling merch are we selling hats are we selling posters right that's the products on the services ends are we doing trainings are we doing sports Consulting Etc sports betting who knows what it is what are the products what are the services everything that you know you're an expert at or you can sell and Market that you would be passionate about selling and marketing put in a spreadsheet list the pricing of everything go ahead and grab an LLC or business license it's probably preferred that you take that license once it's done go to a

[1:08:18]  bank who will offer you try to negotiate with the bank to offer you a year of zero percent interest on a credit card use that credit card to now go launch the website with all your ideas right get the website the business cards start a yell start a Google business page et cetera et cetera et cetera all happening right the domain costs money the website costs money the business cards cost money all that's coming off the business card with zero percent interest you're basically funding yourself at that point and not getting hit with interest rates every month and then you gotta sell right operations is important marketing designs and stuff is important but at the end of the day it comes down to sales bringing in Revenue what am I doing with my time that's bringing in money bringing the money pay off that credit

[1:09:05]  card as soon as possible as possible and get to profiting profiting as soon as possible I mean that's a bang-up game plan yeah and you know what I mean but one thing that I really thought was good is uh you got to limit the exposure that you have in the very beginning so I love the I would say advice about going out and getting a zero interest credit card right because one of the mistakes that I fall fell trapped to in the very beginning was funding all of the business activities through my own personal credit okay and that in itself was a mistake because that weighs heavy right you've got interest rates at like 20 or 19 or 24 depends on where you're at yeah and taking on that stress was something that was very I would say corrosive to just like the ability to keep going because they've got all that pressure that shows up every single month you know what I'm saying 100 yeah and and another part to that is at the

[1:09:53]  end of the year when you're doing your taxes are you going to be able to file through and sift through which was business charges versus which is personal if everything's just on the business card everything lives on one place yeah done deal yeah I mean that's a that's a real power move man I'm gonna leave us there today I just want to say thank you again for coming in just giving us more detail about kind of what the vision is for spotlight the other brands that you've created as well and then kind of what the mentality is is from a leadership perspective as well that's been something that's super valuable to me and I even took down notes and you and I both use monday.com as our CRM yeah that's our that's our full CRM and project management yeah um I want to leave with this uh you know what I've said today can apply to not just um arts or creative Industries Um this can be applied to literally anything I think right

[1:10:41]  um and just because I said something today doesn't mean it's 100 true there's things that I do that you might not do right give it a shot if it's not your style tweak it a little bit and and uh you know figure out what's your systems and how you want to get organized that's how I would start a business that's not the only way to start the business but give it a shot you'll have trial and error you'll see what works and doesn't work for you and um again it's not a one size fits-all recommendation things that I've said today I just want people to know that I'm not a dictator by any means like you'll learn as you go and what works for your specific industry yeah and I think a big part of that is just getting started right because you're never going to know what you don't know until you actually get there and you start going so I appreciate you Doug thanks so much today bro you're the man thanks bro guys it's been another episode of the heart and hustle podcast

[1:11:28]  thanks again to Our Guest Lionel for coming today peace really appreciate you Doug thanks so much catch you in the next one foreign