How to Overcome Setbacks in Business (and Life)

[0:00]  oh man I don't know if you guys are ready for this one in today's episode of the heart and hustle podcast I sit down with Steven steers the owner and founder of steers Consulting more importantly an entrepreneurial brother someone who truly understands what it takes to make something of yourself in this life in today's episode we're going to talk about the mindset that comes along with success we're going to talk about overcoming challenges how you overcome having a dumpster of oil spilled all over you on your first day on the job walking home in the cold through New York City and the eventual move to Mexico to make yourself happy but more importantly to make your parents proud we're going to dive into a lot of different conversations in today's episode let's stop wasting time let's get into it entrepreneurship is being used as a vehicle for freedom and the definition of freedom from my perspective continues to change because my first goal was all I want to do is

[0:48]  not work this 9-to-5 job and if I had control over my schedule I'd be happy and I was like okay I have control over my schedule now I'm happy but all I really want to do is accomplish growing my business to a certain amount of monthly Revenue then I accomplished that and I was like yeah this is great but what if I had the ability to pay for all of my family stuff do that now what if I had the ability to start setting some money away so I could start putting a nest egg for like the Next Generation started doing that but what about all these other people who are most successful and they have different business models like in the software space I wish I had that accomplish that it's just like it's a continuous evolving door you know what I mean yeah I think it is but I think if we if we take it back as well I think that's probably the most most beautiful part about it and what I say to anybody who's thinking about entrepreneurship or has

[1:35]  started entrepreneurship the coolest part to me is like for me is is the man it's made me become right I have to ask myself really hard questions I have to be super accountable for things like I have to get help when I don't necessarily think I want help but like you know I have to I have to be very honest with myself in a specific way because it's all on me in a lot of ways and I think it's good to hear that it's evolving because that means you've accomplish your goals uh I remember like years and years ago I remember when I saved my first $10,000 I thought I thought I was a billionaire dude like you know coming from nothing like oh I got my first 10K and I would track every penny I would spend and every penny that I would make and I saw that like the next Pace pce St it St I was going to hit 10K and then I rushed home to enter it into the spreadsheet and I was like

[2:23]  oh I got 10K and it's like I felt no different right it's and I call that kind of goal depression right like you hit your goal and then like what now and I think the journey as an entrepreneur is finding out those actual things that really fulfill you outside of the business in who you become so like it's not necessarily as attached to a number or a you know a thing which is a constant process and I'm still learning about myself for sure yeah man I've heard the saying that entrepreneurship is like the ultimate um self-discovery process it's almost like

[3:11]  a mirror you know we look at ourselves consistently every single day face to face with the mirror and we see the inefficiencies that we have but we also see all the areas in which we can grow and one of my favorite saying is um what got you here will not get you there and I constantly am reminded that in the entrepreneurship Journey the skill sets the character traits everything continues to stack gets me here but I realize that I have to continue to evolve to get to the next place um I feel like this is a really good opportunity for us to kind of like roll into the episode so everybody who's been you know listening so far I've Got My Guy Stephen steers here across from me we're gonna be talking about the power of Storytelling today Stephen is the uh president of steers Consulting Group he is currently a program facilitator and trainer at Minecraft Consulting and is previously a business adviser at legendary podcast man so thank you so much for joining this podcast welcome to the show thank you for having me Keenan

[3:59]  it's great to be with you and and I'm glad we could finally connect all the technical difficulties in the world have been trying to keep us apart but we're here on this Friday which is hey man I mean it's a it's it's a beautiful gift to be able to share the space and I would like to sh share this digital um this digital you know table together as we kind of get into this you know one of the cool Traditions that we have about the podcast is I love being able to connect you with a previous guest and the way in which we do that is by asking a question that came from our previous guests now this individual his name Jenna she um is the founder of her own capital group she also is a co-founder in a company called Savvy which is a Marketplace that is designed to create a safe space of vetted um I would say vendors for women in the financial word world because one in Four Women is the victim of a financial crime at one point

[4:46]  in their life and so they have a mission to eradicate the I would say things that are getting taken advantage of when it comes to women's finances and so it's a really cool thing but she wants to ask you a question and she says I would love to know what is the biggest challenge or darkest moment of your career that you've overcome darkest moment I could think of like two or three uh which one would be most relevant for the audience let me see so I'll give it Dealers Choice here Keenan so I could talk about one of the darkest moments in my life before I really got into entrepreneurship that just got me there I could talk about uh what made me leave New York and move to Mexico which was a very challenging time uh or I could talk about the time I almost died which got me into

[5:35]  entrepreneurship um I I want to say Let's uh I want I want to hear the origin story let's kind of talk about the beginning and then we can actually sprinkle everything else in as we kind of go through this process together sure so without uh dating myself too too much I graduated during the last recession so like around 2009 era 2010 era and I moved back to New York City that's where I'm from moved in with my parents thankfully they had a little space for me and at the house I grew up in and I was applying for jobs like a crazy person just doing everything I could not getting responses I think I probably applied to like 10 20 a day standard stuff nothing's happening so my eldest brother was like well you need a job so like why don't you just go walk around to bars and restaurants and ask if they need help and I was like all right I guess uh I remember pulling up to uh a bar in Williamsburg Brooklyn and just

[6:24]  standing outside of it and feeling so ashamed that I'd have to go in and ask for work that's how entitled I was back that at 20 like everybody 22 everybody tells you oh they're going to be knocking down your door to hire you because you went to this University a big lie uh but I remember standing out there and I was like I don't want to do this and I had this like knot in my stomach I was so nervous and upset and eventually I was like well this ain't gonna happen if you don't do anything so I went in there dropped off a resume really fast do you need somebody uh I don't know and I just dropped it and ran did that for about a week and finally got my bones of being able to ask right I think also the lesson here too any entrepreneur any person always have an ask because it shows what your thesis is for yourself you can share that with people and then they can be thinking about the things you need as well and how to potentially plug you into other

[7:11]  places it extends your reach and your your ability so anyway applied to a bunch of places and within the following week I had two offers to be a a janitor a barback and a bar which is you know whatever uh it paid cash which was nice and I was able to to get some cash to do to uh pay my student loans and you know some beer money or whatever one of the days I worked was a Sunday so I'd have to go into this bar on Williamsburg in Williamsburg called the Charleston they had a it's on North 7th in Bedford and they had a cinjun restaurant and so I would go in there Sunday at 8:00 p.m. and work till 4:00 A.M and my first job was to take out the trash and they didn't take out the trash on Friday all day Saturday or all day Sunday so I had a gang of trash a ton so

[8:00]  I I get there at 8 and like I'm kind of ashamed to be taking out the trash like in case somebody sees me so I do it first thing so that there's no problems and so I go into the back and it's this little Alleyway off the back of the bar and it's like six trash cans deep and they're stacked three High basically so it's like 45 minutes of moving trash so I'm taking bags out bags out bags out whatever and I get down to the last bag and if you were to walk out on the Alley you would see this uh 55g drum of old fryer oil you'd see a shelf where you would put the the old beer bottles and then you'd have this tiny Alleyway so I get down to the last bag of trash and it's not coming out it's just not it's stuck there and I'm just like what the hell man come on you like come on and so I pull pull pull nothing's happening and

[8:47]  then finally like I pull up my pants and I squat down as hard as I can and I just pull as hard as I can and it comes out and there was a handle of liquor in there which is why it was stuck and as I pulled that out the handle of liquor catches the 55 gallon drum of fry oil knocks it over onto me and into the bar oh and so like I don't know I saw it in all in slow motion and you get that like sweat when you know you just messed up and it as everything just starts to go into the bar I have like I'm covered in oil on half of my body I have a trash bag I was like yo I quit I'm going to quit like this is I'm done and then as I Dr the bag of trash to go tell the bartender I was like oh I don't have another job I don't have anywhere else

[9:36]  to go there's nothing else I can do right now I have to keep this job and I just got so depressed like right in that moment like I was just so sad that I had nothing else I could go do uh but somewhere like on the walk from the the the alleyway to the bar I was like n use this use this this is going to be an important part of your story like just just own this go do you got to do clean it up everything and uh that was the lowest point of my life hopefully that's continues to be the lowest point of my life because I had no options and I was just like yo I'm gonna make something out of this life this will be the the first brick in my wall and so that's that's probably one of the toughest things I ever went through and uh I've come a long way since there I think that's fair to say it's very interesting to me that we have these life experiences that kind of put us against a a wall if you will especially when

[10:24]  we're younger right we have that sense of entitlement which you talked about 20 years old want to to go find a job think that the world's going to come to us and then very quickly life has an interesting way of reminding us that you have to go out and get it and often that means putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations and asking for a job and that's a big scary process for a lot of people today I know that there's an interesting tone and tenor if you will kind of across the media or the world of social media where seems like there's a interesting sense of entitlement and I'm not coming from a place of judgment when I say entitlement for a younger generation but it seems like we are consistently fed images and ideas that by the time 22 23 years old you're going to be a millionaire and that is a tiny percent of individuals who often are selling a course or maybe kind of getting it done in a way that isn't the best from a long-term reputation perspective and so I love to kind of

[11:11]  hear your origin story because we've all had those stories we've all had those moments where we have the ability to say I quit but then we have a realization of I don't have any other options and you can either dive because of that or you can do exactly what you said in realizing that this is going to be one brick in my story and it's going to make such a better story at the end of the day and I kind of consistently remind myself of that in the entrepreneurial Journey that you do have to remind yourself that this is all part of your story and the stories we telling and sharing are the ones that have the ups and downs yeah I think that's what makes you human right that's that's why people want to work with you and your company and your people versus somewhere else like it's we're humans solving human problems in a business context and I think knowing where you came from and being able to show where you came from to people it's like oh man like you you did that and you're here now it's like

[11:59]  yeah I did that you can do that too and I think that's that's the connection we're all looking for uh but man social media I'm so glad I didn't come up with it I'm so glad I feel bad for these kids a lot because uh comparison is the thief of joy and social media is all about comparison and I couldn't imagine being 13 14 15 looking at other people's highlight reels all the time that's got to be tough so I feel for them it's a it's an inter perspective because we're talking about the idea of Storytelling today it seems like you know often when I think about the stories that we write they're often written in private right and then we shared them someday with other people like we're doing on the podcast right now but often it seems like today there's a need to overshare and it makes it very difficult to tell a story worth

[12:49]  telling because everything has to be a highlight re you know what I mean like nobody this is one thing I would love to start seeing on social media what if people shared their losses they shared the hard times they shared the times when they're getting [ __ ] on they tell share the times when people say no and slam doors in their face what a beautiful world we would live in because it would destigmatize taking L's because people think that L's equal not winning but L's are literally a prerequisite to you being able to win you put two Ls together you got a w hey okay I love that that's very true I think that's the there's this guy I got to remember his name I subscribed to his channel he's like everybody on social media is just talking about how nice the real estate market is and how much money they make let me tell you what I'm dealing dealing with and he's just like we're in debt on this project this person is not paying this project like i' I'm waiting for checks for the past six months but he's

[13:37]  like we continue because we're entrepreneurs I was like yo I mess with you like that's dope uh but yeah I think to your to your point here I think uh we're talking about storytelling like I think people overshare because they don't ask these really important questions there's four questions and I read about this in my book that I think people should be asking if you're going to tell any stories especially in sales and just across the board if if you share stories as a means to build an audience or get in front of people and not just for self-aggrandizement and so I think the big picture thing people need to take into account if they're sharing a story is what's at stake for the audience like why should they care like what the hell is the reason like yeah if you're talking about like food you ate like okay yeah but why is it important have a big picture thing that you want to point people back to for why they should care

[14:24]  about it think about like what happens if no actions taken who's going to win who's going to lose like paint the picture as to why someone should pay attention to you and then now we've at least got a framework for putting something out there the second question people need to think about and ask is what does your audience want to learn or achieve about that thing that's at stake so what should they avoid how should they think about this a little bit better are there steps they can take to succeed Right add value to it and show them something that they can use or put into to effect in their own lives or businesses to be more more prepared and more knowledgeable and then the third thing to think about is where storytelling really lands very well is how do you want your prospect to feel so label the emotion you're going for with the story and like I I love to couch

[15:12]  this with some statistics as well 95% of purchasing decisions are made subconsciously which means the lizard brain is the first thing that you that knocks on the door and tells you that this is a good thing or not and so if you're telling a story and you're oversharing you're you're burning out that extra piece of emotion that would get somebody to potentially take some action with you so be very clear about what you want people to feel and then how you're going to guide them into the final question which is what do you want them to do next now that they know the information now that you share this great story what are you asking them to do subscribe uh download Keenan's podcast and share it with all your friends uh book a call with our team get a demo whatever that thing is if you don't tell people what to do next now that they have this information you've just wasted time telling the story

[15:59]  and that's not a good use to anybody's time yeah I mean the intentionality of creating a call to action is something that's on the front of my mind now I uh follow an individual and I'm sure we've all heard of him if you're into business and you're into entrepreneurship you might have heard of uh Alex and Leila heroi so they're very you know blowing up right now on the entrepreneurship scene and one of the biggest things of Alex talking about his growth of his podcast was all we did was ask so what we started doing is we have a little Interruption that says hey if you found value from this episode or you're an entrepreneur or you want to grow your business go ahead and share this with one of your friends or come check out our website Bing just like that and he's like literally that was the Catalyst that helped us grow our audience because we were actually asking and telling people exactly what to do which I feel like in itself is uh pretty simple but also pretty amazing to kind of think

[16:47]  about the impact of that type of stuff but it's so simple and when you kind of break it down like that I want to kind of reverse a little bit why is storytelling so powerful and how did you kind of get down this road recognizing that stories were an amazing way to not only attract retain but also get people to take action yeah I love the question so I've been working with I've worked with probably the neighborhood around a thousand companies from 35 or so countries mostly startups people who are trying to sell and get their Vision out into the world and have people buy the vision and one of the consistent features I see especially with sales teams which is where I work people just talk about the product they talk about the widget they talk about the coding they talk about like all the stuff it it that went into making it and that's not unimportant but if I'm your

[17:35]  prospect I don't care at least not yet like I care about the outcome that you're going to help me to get to so there's a quote I love that's I think it's Theodore levit who used to be a marketing Professor I want to say at Harvard and he's like people don't want to buy a drill they want to buy a hole so most people sell drills drills drills drills drills drills but no the right people sell the outcome that the drill is going to get you to the drill is the vehicle that gets you to the hole that you want to drill and so when I started seeing this across the board it's like yo like y'all really suck at this there's got to be a better way to explain it right like you're not talking about this the right way so I saw was it was a persistent problem that's the first and then I like that just sat in my mind a little bit and then I started

[18:23]  doing some research and it turns out 65% of information is retained when shared in the form of a story so I could talk to you ad nauseum about the the widgets that my platform does if I sell software but if I tell you a story about Crystal and how her business was in shambles when she came to us but by implementing our software she was able to Triple her Revenue in three three months probably remember that a lot faster than you would about any widget so that's the first the second thing is I I love the creativity of Storytelling it's the most human thing like uh not to talk about anybody's religions or anything else but like some of the most famous books of all time contain some of the most famous stories of all time look at the Bible look at the Quran look at the Torah look at other ancient texts they deliver facts and lessons in stories and there's

[19:11]  a reason for that it unlocks certain chemicals in in our brain and it builds trust and social proof without you having to tell me you're great you can show me you're great by what you did for somebody else and so another I'm a big quotes guy another quote I love is you need change only the story need change only the name and you are the subject of the story so if you're talking about results great things that have happened or bad things that you have happened to you and you've surmounted them I can then put myself in as the character and see and feel like I can achieve similar results and that does all the selling you need and at least creates a space to where you can then when it's time talk about the widgets that you built and how that widget is going to help with X Y and Z I mean it's so powerful um you know one of the things that we do at my company Francis is we sell a proactive

[20:00]  Mental Health Service that is based on the psychology of something called an ecological momentary intervention and what we do is we send you one daily text to positivity encouragement support throughout your day to interrupt your day in a positive way but one of the most powerful ways in which I've been able to communicate this in our sales process is by telling a story so what I talk about is where this technology and psychology came from was a guy named Jerome M he was a soldier in World War II deployed overseas like thousands of other Americans he had an anonymous p pal who wrote him letters of encouragement and positivity every single time he pulled into a new station hand out a letter blank here you go Jerome who's it from he doesn't know but it's full filled with messages of encouragement and support we just want to see you come back home safe Jerome come back home safe to us we want to see you back home anyway and then when he comes back from

[20:47]  the war he is so inspired by those little messages of positivity that he goes into the field of Psychiatry enters into an inpatient hospital to help people deal with the feelings of suicide ideation thinking about how those letters impacted him during the war he had his nurses write handwritten letters to his patients who were discharged from the hospital years later they went back and found that not a single person died by Suicide who actually received those little handwritten letters now what I could do is talk about the technology the way in which we use text messages all these other things or I could tell you a story about somebody who was impacted by a little message of encouragement and get across the point and that's one of the things I thought was so beautiful about kind of Storytelling and that was the first example in which I've actually used it in business that has helped us win that I couldn't really kind of cracked the code before and it was so interesting to me to see how people lit up when they're like wow that's an amazing story and I

[21:35]  totally get it wow that's amazing how do we do business with you guys instead of trying to force feed them the features and benefits of everything yeah I think that's again you you you've nailed it completely nailed it the services the products the software we sell are the vehicles to help people get to the outcomes they want for their lives or their businesses and once you flip that on its head you'll see obviously there's a story I should be telling about this that helps somebody see themselves as the character in the story and the outcome right entrepreneurship is a hero's journey right if you really look at it for ourselves and then also for the people we want to affect we want them to be heroes too and heroes is a it's a classic story and it it just unlocks that that thing in all of us that makes us feel attached to the outcome can we break down the hero's journey a little bit because I feel like

[22:22]  we have you in a captive moment to be able to really kind of talk about storytelling and there's some other examples that I really want want to kind of pull from the book as well and so I'd love for you to kind of you know gather your thoughts and then lead us through what the hero's journey means and kind of articulate it from the entrepreneurship perspective so our audience can kind of put themselves in you know our seat and start telling their own story if that makes sense hero's journey is something that happens in three acts it's it's by a guy named Joseph Campbell he's the one who coined it but the First Act is the departure act where the hero leaves the Ordinary World so for thinking about like entrepreneurs that moment you were like hey you know what I'm done with this ninet to-5 I want freedom the act two is the ini initiation act where the hero Ventures into the unknown that's where you start to really realize like oh this is harder than I thought right the challenge is and then you

[23:10]  eventually become reborn as a a champion because you realize you have certain abilities you didn't recognize and the third Act is the return act where the hero returns triumphant you've accomplished the goals and set out so there's 12 different steps that happen in a hero's journey and they are the following the first is the Ordinary World this is where you establish what normal life looks like so in the in the case of like a a client testimonial story it's what were they doing before they worked with you the simplest way to do it the next is the Call to Adventure when you realize it's time to try something new then there's the refusal of the call which is when you are like ah maybe I shouldn't do this you get those doubts into your head and into your mind the fourth is you meet a mentor somebody or something pops into you and it's like hey you should

[23:58]  actually try this you should do this you can do this if we think in the frame for the The Matrix this is when he meets Trinity or uh uh Lawrence fishburn's character I'm blanking what's his name morphus Morpheus thank you he meets Morpheus he gets a mentor someone's like hey you can do this the next is crossing the first threshold this is where you are actually trying out your abilities and seeing things this is when Neo kind of jumps right and like he but he's like oh there's something else out here then we go through tests allies and enemies this is where you kind of get to test those abilities you think you have you find out who your real friends are and you find out who your friends aren't and that takes a lot of failure and process then you get into the seventh step which

[24:45]  is approach the inmost cave this is where you go into your head and you're just thinking about quitting and you hate it and something about you decides to persist in what you're doing and then you go through the eigh step which is the ordeal the big test this is where maybe you are feel you're out of your league in this company you're pitching and it's way more money than you've ever negotiated with for before but you're just not sure about doing it so you go through that and then the ninth step is the reward this is where you Seize The Sword and the hero realizes the biggest challenges and accomplishment they seek is Within Reach like here at the negotiating table on this deal and it's going to happen the 10th step is the road back so this is the accomplishment is close and uh but it's way further than you still

[25:33]  imagined but your spirit is booed by the start of I can do this I can really really happen it can really happen for me and then the 11th step is the resurrection and the hero Rises to the occasion and becomes all the things they thought they could be and then the final step is return with the Elixir which is where you come back Victorious with that story to share potentially the chance to become a mentor to other people who are about to start on the same Journey as you man I really want to pause here for a second because if you are an entrepreneur if you are somebody who is trying to build something for yourself you can easily find yourself in those 12 steps when we start about when we talk about that first step right when we're talking about um The Ordinary World we've all found ourselves in the moment where everybody says I'm in my 9 to-5 I'm unhappy here and I know I can do

[26:22]  something greater but what am I going to do and then we have the second step is that Call to Adventure and saying I want to start my own business and that's almost kind of like a a form of uninformed optimism if you will about I'm G to start this business I'm G to make things work I can do whatever I want to do this is going to be great I'm Gonna Be A Millionaire I'm gonna be like Bezos whatever it is I'm Gonna Be Free like I talked about a little earlier and then we go through the process of really kind of meeting a mentor somebody who's been there before being able to kind of you know be tested for the first time going within and we start finding the inform pessimism of like this is going to be a lot tougher than what I thought and then we go through these tests and we find ourselves almost Rising in as that hero of our own lives and I feel like that is such an amazing ability to break that down into those 12 steps because if you've been on this entrepreneurial Journey you've been through that yourself so Stephen where

[27:09]  do you kind of find yourself in this process right now of your own hero's journey it depends on the day bro some days I'm like I'm in the reward I'm returning with the Elixir other days I feel like I'm just starting over it's it's such a spectrum of uh emotions this business game but I'd say generally speaking I'm I probably live in the innermost cave where I'm in my head a lot the stories I tell myself are sometimes not as kind as I would like but I uh I think I'm moving towards the right direction because kind of as we talked about in the beginning of all this like there's always another goal there's always another level to things and I think I'm still working through what how to be patient as we talked about at the start and then also like

[27:57]  where's that place where I'll be fulfilled because I I I also one thing you know we're talking about social media and going back and forth I think one of the biggest lies in social media is happiness I think happiness is a complete lie and I think that because what people are really searching for is fulfillment Happiness is when you're hungry and you get that burger and you're like oh man this burger is delicious but after the Burger's gone are you not happy now happiness is this fleeting dopam mean infused social media Concept in my opinion that doesn't last fulfillment lasts and it comes through going through your own Heroes journey and going through those challenges and building your self-esteem by doing esteemable acts so I think my place in the journey varies depending on the day

[28:45]  but largely speaking I know the bigger broader context of what I'm shooting for and why I'm doing it which um enables me to continue even when it gets tough well I just want to say man I'm uh you know being a part of the entrepreneurship Brotherhood I uh understand exactly where you're at because we all find ourselves in this exact moment you know what I mean and like I I I do a lot of thinking about the idea of Happiness as an example and I heard Alex shoi one time talk about very early in his life he said [ __ ] happiness because recognizing that I'm always going to be chasing this feeling that is fleeting is a recipe for long-term disaster because every day is not going to be a good day and it's okay not to be okay and I feel like that's kind of where we can sprinkle in mental health to this conversation because in itself the entrepreneurial journey is really a kind of a test Testament of your fortitude and every day is not going to be easy

[29:32]  but great things are often not easy and that's why everybody is not great does that make sense yeah 100% agree with you man I 100% agree with you and and putting putting it back in the the Forefront of mental health as well I think that's another reason services like the one you have are super valuable because everything else is pulling people in the opposite direction all the time there's not that hey come back to normal and be like yo hey like you got this man like that's so rare uh I think I have a few very close friends I have a ton of acquaintances but like there's few people that I can like actually properly talk to and then like get that real feedback from and like when I get that encouragement from them that can erase all the bad days I've had before but so what I would say is I think what you're doing is extremely valuable it's

[30:20]  really useful and I think there needs to be more of it because people need that encouragement they they need it especially right now I mean and I really appreciate that I mean my biggest thing is um you know coming from a biracial background I realize that I have a larger responsibility to the people who came before me my great-grandfather was a sharecropper from Arkansas my grandfather was born in the 1930s discriminated against because of the color of his skin moved to Eastern Washington and raised a family there my father was born into a household that was well below the poverty line with family members who battled drug addiction alcohol abuse and everything else he was the first entrepreneur of my family to break that generational cycle and when I think about the sacrifice that he's been through being able to get us into a position where we could financially do different things I realize that the biggest unlock that we

[31:07]  still have to kind of break the shackles with is that mental framework being able to have conversations about mental health being able to have conversations about how we're truly feeling is the biggest unlock that kind of will make us free and I feel like that's something that I have a a responsibility if you will to kind of try and accomplish during my lifetime because of all the people who came before me who didn't even have a shot to do that m how do you do that outside of your your company well I mean one of the things that I've always tried to do is be a personification I had a friend one time said K you know it's so cool that you've been able to kind of monetize who you are you didn't have to try and do something different but you figured out back in 2017 this is kind of my origin story going back to storytelling 2017 I'm three years into uh to starting my business which is a tella Health business at the time so in 2014 I saw an opportunity in the marketplace where there was going to be a need for this

[31:53]  virtual connectivity with your doctor and I was like it's writing on the wall it's clear day so I started going to these Healthcare systems and saying hey we've got this video technology what if you could have doctors come in on this device and they could not have to travel from hospital to hospital but could do evaluations virtually with the nurses as their kind of extensions of their arms nobody believed in it spent years getting [ __ ] on because everybody's like there's no way somebody wants to talk to their doctor virtually it takes away from the patient experience our patients want to come into the facility they want to see us they want to sit in the waiting room for 45 minutes they want to cancel all their appointments all day they want to see the doctor for 5 minutes and then leave and be like what the [ __ ] did I just come here for and so in 2017 I was uh in a really dark time really challenged with my mental health and I started saying the only thing that I can control in this situation is how I look at the world so what I'm going to

[32:41]  do for myself is give myself a positive message every single day I'm gonna hop on Instagram and say hey it's day one here we're we're going to show up at the and control everything that we can today is going to be a good day all the way through 365 days one thing that I discovered when I got to like day 37 is I had friends who started reaching out to me and they say hey Keenan you know what I just watch your Instagram story every single day and it's actually really helped me I look forward to it when I'm done with work when I wake up in the morning I'm always looking for that story thank you for being that voice of encouragement and in that moment I realized I'm not the only person who needs a message of encouragement but it seems like everybody else does as well Flash Forward to 2021 we started the brand of Francis to leverage those emis through the story that I talked about and started utilizing these text messages to be able to be the interruption that gets you back into the moment of appreciation

[33:30]  because one thing I know about humans is we are very reactionary we are not proactive about searching for things like mental health it takes a bad experience to put us in the situation where we say okay I really need help now and if we can kind of get ahead of that by being proactive and interrupting your day with a message of encouragement and support maybe that's a way to start the conversation within our own head that could then turn into a conversation like this and that's kind of the story of what we do I love that too and the other thing is positivity adds positiv so I get a nice message I can then feel more comfortable give somebody a compliment and share that positivity and it's a virtuous cycle so definitely see the value there man I love that I really love that yeah brother it's uh it's really interesting I uh I just think that we need to have more conversations like this um because when we have

[34:18]  conversations like this and we talk about the ability for us to tell our own story to find ourselves in the story of the hero's journey if you will being able to understand understand that we are the narrator of Our Own Story yes I feel like it's something that more people need to kind of lean into because it seems like so much of life is unpredictable it's NE more negative than ever and it's very diff difficult to control I want to kind of talk about your ability to control your story so we're in New York we talked about your origin story of spilling that 55 G gallon drum of oil into the bar you realize this is all I've got but this is going to be a part of my story you then make the move to Mexico how did this happen and why did why did this happen yeah great question man so I in between that time so from oil spill I finally got a job in the construction business

[35:05]  doing infield inspections half in the office almost died I'll tell you about that a little bit then from there I was like hey I I realized I'm gonna die one day I want to if I'm gonna die I want to at least have gone towards something I want and I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and so I got a job in sales and like at the bottom of the barrel because the the entrepreneur mindset here is if can sell and you have a sales you always have a business that's kind of the mentality there so I was like this is a good skill to learn so I did that for a few years and then uh got let go from that company because they were on hard times and got started a remote job my first remote job I'd always wanted a remote job and when I got that job they'd hired a consultant to work with me uh to as I built out sales who was a super dope guy

[35:52]  still friends with him today still like a mentor to me uh and then after about seven months we were out of business because Facebook had changed the algorithm so I lost two jobs in one year and I was just kind of out on my own but I wrote a note to this consultant and I was like Hey thank you so much for your help just letting you know I got let go but you've been a huge help to me I look forward to working with you again at some point wherever I land and very kindly this guy gets back to me and he says hey maybe we should hop on a call maybe I can help you figure out what's next and I was like bet let's go we book a half an hour three hours later we we finished the call and at end he's like hey I got a job for someone like you if you want it so next thing you know that's how I got into Consulting the job was fully remote and he was super encouraging to be like hey like results are results I don't care where you are

[36:39]  go explore wherever the world the hell you want like as long as you make your calls and you're doing your thing I I don't care where you are which is the right mentality I think which I had a lot of struggles with in previous jobs so from there I just started going around the world for places I was curious about lived in Germany lived in Mexico lived in Ecuador per went over to Thailand just exploring any place I was curious about because I could people thought I was nuts you're like you're where why why would you go there how are you doing this I was like they got internet here too which is what you're doing in the office right like you're sitting in the office using the internet to talk to your colleagues on slack not in person so like I don't know I thought it was a silly concept but uh fast forward 2019 I brought my parents down here for Thanksgiving and I was like hey this is where I'm gonna move Mexico City

[37:27]  it's like I love it here I wanted to show them like it's not a crazy place my parents loved it as well and then uh we all know 2020 happened so 2020 again my story is not a a unique story and that I think everybody had some very tough times during that time period and I've always had a tough relationship with New York it's it's so fullon Non-Stop and increasingly impersonal to the point where when you're locked inside your apartment and can't go outside and there's no trees around it just starts to become this extremely heavy and uh quite depressing place and so in around July of 2020 it became very clear to me that we were just not going to be back to quote unquote normal for a very long time and

[38:14]  I started extrapolating this out uh the only thing I was able to do is ride a bike so I would just be out on my bike all day and I remember riding one time was one of those random cold days in the summer like I had to wear a jacket in July and I was like oh snap I won't be able to ride my bike when it gets cold I won't even be able to do this and I was like something's got to be different and so I I hit up one of my friends who was living in Mexico and like he's like dude you don't look great like you should come down here and I was like yeah he's like yeah come down here it's cheaper it's nicer the beach is here and you could just wait it out and if you want to go back to New York go back to New York I was like you got something here so I just blew everything up and I was very clear uh for me for a couple of reasons I hit up all the smartest people I knew and I was like hey here's where

[39:01]  I'm at I don't have any debt I paid off all my student loans I'm running my own business I don't have any kids I don't have a mortgage like what would you do and they're like I don't know I'm just waiting it out so it was very clear that it was up to me whatever I decided to do no one had any advice for me and so when I come back to this for entrepreneurs why that's relevant to you guys is most of the time you can get some good advice from some really trusted sources but at the end of the day you have to write your own story and so when I extrapolated things out I was like I'm not going to do well here in the winter I already don't I really don't like New York winter but if I can't even go outside and go do stuff it's going to be a hard day and so I blew everything up I sold everything that I could sell and I moved to Mexico where I've been for four years now I mean my hat goes off to you man for that because you know one of the

[39:49]  things that I often talk about with my girlfriend um so she's in the process right now of going through medical school and I'm not throwing shade towards anybody but she's the first graduate from college in her family she's the first graduate to go to medical school she's the first person to do all of these things and one time we were having a conversation yeah I'm sure she'll appreciate that one time we were having a conversation about taking advice from people in our close Circle it's very difficult to take advice from people about things that they've never done or never even thought were possible and I feel like that is a lot of the entrepreneurship journey is you can listen to people like you said who are trusted in your circle which is great but often you do have to be the the narrator and the writer of your own story because nobody's going where you're going and so being able to trust in yourself is a huge element did you ever have some of those waffling moments

[40:35]  of back and forth like I don't think that this is good or what's that mindset like dude I'll get very very vulnerable with you right now I went back to my parents house thankfully you know I I have both my parents they're still married today's their anniversary shout out 44 years to my parents still still ticking talked to both of them today love Mom and Dad shout out to you guys they were super supportive of of my move they didn't like it because it was very strange times like you know they didn't know what would happen but I explained to him I was like Hey like I won't do well here I already see if this is caus me problems and so my dad dropped me off at the airport I put I put my bags on the on the Carousel and then I'm I'm waiting to get on the plane I get on the plane and then I I we start taxing and we take off and I was like holy [ __ ] I may never see anybody again like nobody knows what's happened at this

[41:23]  time I I could uh could die Anything could happen right I was just like I just started crying my face off like I covered myself with my hat and I was like man like you're really betting on yourself right now like you don't know what's going to happen here like you're going to a whole new country you don't know how long you'll be there whatever like just all that was like so so present in me like it was I CED probably CED for like 15 20 minutes just silently because I'm a man my head over my head but just you know to myself and then I was like in in some ways I think about it like it's little grave way to say it but it's like kind of in some ways I I died on the way like my old life is completely gone like I got rid of all of it I had to completely start over I had to find new apartments had to make new friends had to figure out how to navigate the world in a more digital way and I'm much more

[42:10]  of an imperson guy it was a very tough transition uh but again I think I was very fortunate first and foremost that I could do that number one like I have a I built enough of a business that I could take it somewhere with me which is a blessing huge blessing even as hard as it is and as hard as that year was second thing is I had some friends who I trusted enough to follow their advice right who was like yo you need to get out of there it's not working for you and someone who would just tell you like you're messing up you're [ __ ] up right now right that's really important to have and then thirdly I was able to heal a lot because I was like at the beach I was around less people it was like nice weather and like I could go swim in the ocean in the morning when I wasn't feeling good and like over you know six months uh a year year and a half and then eventually two years like I got myself back to some version that I recognized uh even with all the crazy

[42:58]  times we were all in but I think if I that's the best decision I ever made it was one of the hardest I took a lot of [ __ ] for it from people people thought I was crazy they talk behind my back they hated on me for it but again like at the end of the day you got to do what works for you and you're the only you got to walk your path and I think one of the things for any entrepreneur listening to you gotta be able to ask yourself those really hard questions and I didn't want to ask those questions they confronted me I I don't regret having to have answered those questions but I think the path I'm on now I would not have been able to be on had I not had to ask those questions of myself so I'd say lean into the tough stuff and on the other side of that is gold tons and tons of gold it's uh it's

[43:45]  really inspiring to hear and I almost got a little bit emotional in that process of I did get emotional and hearing you kind of talk about because in some of those scariest moments of life we almost have to kill the old version of ourselves in order to create space for the new version and I always think about this I have this analogy I talk about with my girl all the time it's like you know in order for us to become the new version of ourselves part of us has to die because we only have so much capacity inside of us right if you think you're a 50-50 split of like the old version of me and the new version of me if you want to be the new version of you that old version of you has to die and has to be pushed down and that's a scary process because a lot of our self-recognition a lot of our stories that we tell ourselves are rooted in that old version of yourself but I'll go back to the saying I said a little earlier what got you here won't get you there won't get you there there's a quote on that too one of my friends

[44:31]  shared with me he says where you are green you grow where you are ripe you rot and so in certain places you're way too ripe it's time to get it going and clip a new Branch so that you can get to the next phase of whatever that is for yourself what do you think the the biggest process of your maturation has been as an entrepreneur and as a person in whole and kind of getting away from everything because this concept is really interesting to me I listened to a story one time where Alex rosi to go back to him was talking about why don't go back home for the holidays and he was talking about you know a lot of people go back home for the holidays but what you find yourself in is a situation where people speak an old version of you upon yourself that no longer exist Stephen you know you're so emotional Stephen you drink so much Stephen you do all this kind of stuff you've always

[45:18]  been the partyer you were never good at school blah blah blah and it's like at some point in time we have to be able to kind of cut those stories off because that person doesn't exist anymore and so I want to of know your process about your maturation but also you mentioned some things that were important in that little story you were telling about you killing the old version of yourself is people talk [ __ ] people talk behind your back how was that kind of process for you as you were becoming this new version of yourself I mean it was difficult man like that that whole 2020 2021 years were just some of the hardest for me as a person for me with family and friends for me in business everything it was just such an adjustment and in some ways I'm still figuring out what happened there right like just what a strange time for all of us for for me it it actually became quite simple if

[46:05]  you were talking [ __ ] about me moving you're out you're of no use to me you didn't even bother to try to get any context so bye uh for for like my close close friends they understood and they like talked to me and and I did like a preest before completely I didn't know I was going to move but my pretest was in uh April of 2020 I was so annoyed with all of the negative energy that was happening around the pandemic stuff that I just said hey I'm turning my phone off turned my phone off and I was like I'm not going to use it for a day at the end of the day I felt better and I was like let's see how long we could go and I went for a month no phone didn't get a single text message didn't go on any social media besides LinkedIn because that's more business or it was back then anyway and I was just

[46:52]  like I'm out and dude I read like 10 books I finished all these projects I was super focused I was getting in great shape everything was working great and I didn't tell anybody I did this and what's interesting about that and I don't necessarily recommend it but I'd love to get to a place where I could just get off of the phone for a month or more because it it changes the way you move in the world the world becomes more present to you and I think that's a gift we can all give to people and to everything else but it was interesting to see people who like were like yo I text you I called you and then they would contact my brother or contact my parents be like yo is he okay where's he at those are the real people who were like yo are you all right and it was like four people out of the hundreds and hundreds of people that I would know or be texting with or checking on and I was like yeah y'all are out so I think it was a lot of purging people who were it

[47:40]  was very clear it's like yo we there's nothing here and I'm the one who's keeping this relationship up and and that's a funny thing with being someone who works in sales like that's my job I keep in touch with people I ask questions whatever but like most of these people I was talking to just they never even checked on me they never asked asked how you doing do you want to hop on a call and like the five people that did are still some of my best friends to this day so that's one piece and I think on top of that once you kind of delete a lot of like old stuff you get rid of the the Dead Leaves the dry leaves you start to open yourself up for new experiences and new people and in moving to Mexico there was another uh business group that I became a part of which has become one of the best decisions I've ever made and you start to get around people people who are of

[48:27]  Mind as you are so like right you said earlier entrepreneurship is a mirror right and when you can get around other people who have better views of themselves in the mirror the way you look at yourself in the mirror can change and so I say my biggest maturation is joining groups that have other entrepreneurs who are way further ahead of me who I can sit down with and like talk to right so as a quick example I have a a pretty close friendship with the a guy who whose business makes eight figures a year another guy who has about a billion dollars of assets under management who texts me and I know his mother I know his his daughter and his family and like he sends me referrals I would never get access to this person if I wasn't in a group because I showed up as myself and I was like hey I'm I'm not

[49:15]  the smartest person in the room but I'm here to learn and people saw that I like I'm adding value in that way and I'm not trying to take from them and uh that's been life-changing lifechanging but I'd say the biggest maturation is pay to get in front of groups that you don't feel you're qualified in because Rising tide does lift all boats and people who are way ahead of you they don't want to give you anything for free but the first investment you make is being part of their group they're going to take a chance with you because you've already crossed the first threshold of proving that you're at least willing to pay to be there and uh that's probably the biggest in my entrepreneurship Journey so far I mean that's a that's a huge element you know one of the things that I feel like from a networking perspective I see a lot of the social media current if you will kind of is willing to talk [ __ ] on others meaning we're going to talk about you know how bad you're doing and stuff like that but

[50:03]  one reminder for everybody who's in the entrepreneurship game is nobody who is ahead of you is going to waste time by trying to talk [ __ ] on you yes it's only the people who are behind you who are going to try and throw stones at you and try and pull you back towards them and that's one of my biggest things as well it's like when you get around other people who have been successful and have been where you're trying to get to they are so much more willing to be that Mentor for you stage four in our Journey meeting the mentor they are always willing to help you in those situations and so my biggest piece of advice as well as get around people who are more successful than you and if you're humble enough to say I don't know everything but I want to get like you guys you'd be amazed at the reciprocation if you will that people are willing to give you because like you said a rising tide lifts All Ships it's just an amazing little Mentor or a little metaphor if you will that is such a cheat code to

[50:51]  kind of get around people who are way ahead of you yeah I wish I knew that in my 20s man oh dude like the amount of money I just wasted on booze and like thinking I would be a millionaire versus actively getting in front of groups of people like I can't tell you how jealous I get when I'm at conferences and like there's a 22y old building a business in the same room that I'm and I'm like dude you're gonna be so successful congratulations yeah right like I always I've got a couple friends who uh are younger guys and they're like 20 21 years old and they're building businesses and I'm like they're like so what should we do to be like you when you're like we're your age I'm like guys 33 years old right now you've got 12 years of time in the game and experience that you're going to be able to have so by the time you're my stage or my age you're going to be so much further ahead of me it's just time in the game and the Reps that you get it's

[51:38]  reps it's all reps and I think that that right there Keenan that is the CH code I think you you you spark something else inside of my mind here where you're like what's the biggest maturation it's obviously what I mentioned but the second one was think in longer time Horizons so at at 20 it's like yo I Gotta Be Rich today I gotta go to the club today I got to show people today everything's right right now and or maybe a month in advance versus now like at the age I'm at and like the people I've been around it's like no think about this as at least a five-year thing if not a 10year thing and when you do it that way the tough day-to-day stuff doesn't really matter as much because it's like I'm on the way here and so like if you could think in a longer time Horizon it just becomes so much easier to do all all the hard stuff

[52:27]  because you're like yeah I'm on the way here and and I think of the statistics I read if you work on something for five years you're in the top 10% of whatever it is if you do it for 10 you're in the top 1% and like that's that's not conjecture that's factual so just like success is inevitable when you start to add longer time Horizons and again I wish I knew that at 20 but you know here we are man it's that's been one of my biggest things as well it's like I continue to think about if I think on things of longer time Horizons like the quickest way I went to a business conference the other day it was really cool because they had us do an exercise and they were like all right guys you have 10 minutes to build the tie the tallest tower out of noodles string and tape go ahead see what you got and then everybody built their Tower yada yada

[53:14]  everybody's [ __ ] fell down of Cl classic and they're like so what would you do in instead of 10 minutes if we gave you two days to build your Tower what would you do differently and everybody said well I would have built a wider base I would have made sure that my Foundation was better I would have done this typee of stuff and they say exactly so think about your business in the same way the quickest way to build a business to a million dollars is not the quickest way to build a business to a hundred million you need the foundation and you have to take your time and I thought that was a really interesting Insight because over the last years like I said I've been thinking about that longer time Horizon and it gives you the air cover to also [ __ ] up yes you know what I mean when you're thinking about if I want to be successful by 2033 then I've got a lot of time to test tinker and do different stuff here to figure it out instead of putting that pressure on ourselves and I feel like a lot of that pressure we put on ourselves is really kind of

[54:00]  self-inflicted more so than anybody else oh dude I'm so mean to myself sometimes some of the things that like my I I call her Alice right so I this is a little trick for entrepreneurs to me this may be helpful for somebody we all have that voice in our head that's telling us to not do something telling us not to go to the gym telling us that we're not good enough whatever that is I've given it a name so that it's something else that's not me and so when I get that voice in my head of Alice just telling me all the stuff first thing to acknowledge is it's trying to protect me in a way but I can be like hey thanks Alice I got this covered so I can other it and it's outside of me in some way the next thing is like I go to the gym or I'll go do something physical I get out of my head and get back into my body and and doing something I can control because right

[54:47]  right like you get an email from someone's like oh we're not going to move forward with the deal like I did yesterday it's like same okay all right uh you know I want to respond like oh what the hell like you just said you needed this and it's like nope let me go somewhere else come back with a fresh metal and then I can write a appropriate response to this thing so I think it's it's those type of tricks in like knowing your own self enough knowing your own the stories you tell yourself to be able to move away from the negativity that's invariably going to be there and then having devices and things you can do to get yourself back into a positively charged environment uh and that could make a huge difference I mean I I love that I want to kind of dive a little bit deeper into that there's a really cool book that I read read back in 2020 it was called the untethered soul and the untethered Soul gives the analogy of that internal voice being the roommate because if you can observe that

[55:34]  voice talking that means you are not that voice and I feel like it's really important to recognize at some point in time someone something some instance put that negative voice in your head and you realize that eventually you start thinking that it was yourself and the great example because everybody who's watching the podcast you have a couch behind you the analogy in the book is imagine if you sat down with that inner voice and they were your roommate they're really sitting on the couch next to you you're watching a video or a movie and as soon as it starts you go did I switch the laundry that little voice says do we make sure that we put everything on the grocery list did we send that email you would be like dude shut the [ __ ] up voice you know what I mean as that little voice and so being able to kind of create that separation if you will is super important because yes you're right that Alice voice in itself is not you it's a voice that we hear and we observe and being able to

[56:22]  control that and create that distance as the Observer I feel like is really important for people to kind of uh just really Hammer home if that makes sense yeah I completely agree with you man everything is a is a mindset when I hang out with folks who are really making like real real real real money the thing they cite most is the work they've done on their mindset that's what's helped them level up because we we create these stories about ourselves that we're maybe not worthy about certain things or we're not capable we don't know enough or we need to read another 10 books in order to get to that level of knowledge to be able to apply to things and probably you don't first and foremost and then second thing is you just don't have the right mindset about it and I think that's the constant maturation that this entrepreneurship Journey allows for and requires and I think it's it's a fun problem uh to solve and I'm

[57:12]  enjoying it even on the days that I'm not because of what the the totality of the long-term thinking has been very useful well I mean I really believe in that man and as we kind of uh start Landing the plane here on the episode I want to touch on a couple things um one is the objective of you as an entrepreneur and the CEO of your own life is to be able to cast a vision for the future and one of the things that I love from your book was the example of Steve Jobs and how he cast a vision for what the personal computer was going to be can you kind of give us a highlevel explanation of how he cast a vision for what the personal computer would be as an example and then we can kind of talk about our personal lives and how we cast a vision for ourselves as well yeah so everybody knows Steve Jobs rest in peace founder of Apple and there's a guy I learned about this story for this one of

[57:58]  the early programmers I believe his name is escaping me now but he was going and interviewing it many different companies that were in the computer space because he saw this was going to be a big revolutionary thing and he went to the first company I think it was Gateway computers and they were like oh we're expecting our shares to rise from $1 to $2 in the next year which again that's not bad but it's not very inspiring he went to a second company and they were like oh we think we can sell a lot of these which again is cool but inspiring and then when the guy got with Steve Jobs Steve Jobs just laid it out and he was like hey this is going to change the way you educate your children this is going to change the way we do Commerce this is going to change the way the economies run do you want to be a part of that and obviously much more in depth but the way he would just continue to tell the story was like this is a huge

[58:45]  thing it's Earth changing do you want to be a part of this and so what I say to any entrepreneur having your vision properly outlaid and again this is not an easy thing so I don't want to front like you'll just have it in 10 minutes but having your vision is what enables people to come towards you the larger your vision is the more attention it's going to get and the more people are going to say hey I want to lend my skills talent and abilities to helping that Vision become something so the Steve Jobs example is a perfect way if you if you look into it the way he was able to paint the big picture the outcome that he believed this stuff would go towards helped a lot of people say you know what I'm going to work with this guy even if he is a complete narcissist and the sociopath I want to be a part of this big Vision because I see big things that can happen from it I know there was a another example that I

[59:32]  heard one time it was Jeff Bezos saying you know be solid on the vision but flexible on how you get there and I think in the entrepreneurial journey and in life itself we have to be flexible on the roads that we take the detours the twists the turns the pivots but as long as we're moving in the same direction towards that North Star we'll find ourselves being successful I want to give you an opportunity to kind of paint out the picture of what is Stephen steer's vision for himself if we could kind of just like narrate for the future so when we look back on this in let's call it 10 years we'll be able to kind of see where we've been at my vision my big my big vision is I wanna I want to own a bunch of businesses I want to build a holding company so I'm a I'm a consultant and I think the fastest path to cash flow and capital to build a war chest to invest in businesses is

[1:00:21]  consulting which is the kind of the thing something I'm good at and I enjoy doing and I to work crazy crazy too crazy hours to make make decent money and then I want to take that and buy businesses and then once I have a series of businesses that are cash flowing and breaking me off with enough cash to fund my lifestyle I intend to just write a lot more books I love writing books it's a hard process uh but I've really really enjoyed the the discipline it required for that so I'd like to do more of that and then quite frankly in between then and there like part of my mission and vision for why I do what I do right now is like I want to be the help I didn't have so when I started in sales got no training from anybody that's not a flex uh and it hindered my career for a number of years until I did get the

[1:01:08]  training and so what I'm doing now is to be that person for folks who are in positions where they're not trained and they're not maybe they're not as successful as they could be because people aren't investing in there so I'd like to put an end to Founders who hire people and don't train them that's my big big Vision how about you um I I have a very similar Vision to you man you know I'm trying to build a business um that allows for me to be able to have a wide reaching impact we first started our company back in 2014 we were a tellah health company that really focused on Hardware building hardware systems and solutions and putting them in places one thing I recognized is that we were kind of bottlenecked by the time and the ability for us to travel to go put these things in places in 2019 we started developing software that gives me kind of that Global scalability to be able to kind of provide value no matter

[1:01:56]  where we're located it's a very interesting time to kind of be an entrepreneur in this space especially in the the near years after the pandemic because we can work from anywhere and being able to have a solution that gives us the ability to reach our customers and provide value on a daily basis is something I'm super pumped for um but I'm really trying to create a legacy you know I want to do right by the people who came before me and I want to put my future lineage in a situation where they have opportunity to make good decisions when it comes to their finances but also the education that they pursue and the education is not just the things that we learn out of books around YouTube but more so how we kind of manage our internal self because if you have the validation of knowing who you truly are then nobody can really kind of break that seal for you you know there's a

[1:02:42]  saying it's like water doesn't sink ships it's the water that gets inside that sinks ships exactly and so if you can kind of create that seal for yourself to kind of you know protect yourself from all the negativity and everything else that's swirls around you I feel like you have the ability to do amazing things as we uh as we kind of wrap here Stephen I want to give you an opportunity to plug um the book so superp power storytelling sir where can people find it I'm going to put it in the description to this episode as well so people can go find it wherever it's located um but kind of tell us a little bit more about why that was important and why people should go check it out yeah uh first off before anything else man thank you very much for having me here if anybody's interested in the book you get it on my website sters.com or at Amazon if you like uh the the reason I wrote the book is because I saw this as a persistent problem in a lot of the

[1:03:29]  conversations I was having with with Founders they're selling products they're not selling outcomes and so the the whole point of the book is to give you some tactical things that you can actually put into your business immediately that will help you tell better stories and leverage better stories inside of that context and so part of my mission my vision and my general thing is sales is a four-letter word for a lot of people people hate salese I think that is a very well-earned thing right a lot of sales people are terrible uh because they push things on people and they don't ask questions and unlock and open doors for people so I wrote the book in an effort to help sales become something that people may like may even find fun and enjoy and read so I hope you enjoy it and if you

[1:04:27]  if you do read it I would appreciate a review and I would happy happy to beet you on LinkedIn or otherwise awesome man we theying you on LinkedIn Stephen steers I'm the guy with the big hair big hair will help you get bigger profits there we go man well for everybody who's been tuned in here today step steers once again thank you for being an amazing Storyteller and showing us a little bit about your story today because I know if you're an entrepreneur if you're a Founder if you're somebody who's trying to get things in life they found a lot of their story in ours and which we shared today and I just want to say once again man thanks for coming on the podcast really appreciate it thank you for having me man it's a pleasure to be here all right guys that's a wrap catch you in the next one