The Entrepreneurial Heart: From the bottom to an entertainment empire

[0:02]  all right guys welcome to the second episode of the heart and hustle podcast on this podcast we talk about heart but we also talk about hustle I cannot be more enthusiastic about today's guest I'm bringing somebody who is a true OG to me when I first moved to Vegas in 2012 this was the president of the fraternity that I rushed for and instantaneously I could see that he had the hearts for everything that he was doing he's one of the best friends that you could possibly ask for but more importantly since then I've seen him grow as an entrepreneur and just seriously implement the entire modality of hustling today on today's episode we've got Lionel Miranda thanks for coming Doug what's up what's up how you doing man thank you what's going on everybody oh man so you know Lionel bro you are a straight inspiration Doug ever

[0:51]  since I came across you when I was at UNLV I was like this kid just has a head for Success you know you come from humble beginnings and ever since you know I moved to Hawaii a couple years ago I've been seeing you just Ascend in your entrepreneurial Journey thank you and so I really want to kind of just give you an opportunity to kind of introduce yourself to the crowd everybody who's watching today and talk about your background as well cool idea I just want to say yeah likewise to you so I'm happy to be here and I appreciate you uh putting this together yeah and I'm glad that we kept in touch even though you moved to Hawaii and we're still in touch until today absolutely man so yeah uh dig into the background a bit yeah go ahead awesome so um again Lionel Miranda I'm born in Las Vegas Nevada uh my dad's actually from uh the Philippines Manila he moved here by himself at the age of 14. yeah uh from uh Manila to

[1:42]  um Hawaii Oahu um and they grew up in a spot called Whitmore Village are you familiar with that area yeah I was on a wall okay um so very Central of the islands a lot of projects over there now unfortunately a lot of like homeless living underneath the uh uh Bridges and freeways or yeah stuff like that so uh you know this type of area where you're just driving by some nice bushes but if you really peek in you'll see like 10 cities in there yeah yeah um so you know for for my mom to come from that background my dad had come from a really polished area um I think them coming to Vegas where I was born um and they've told me was for

[2:29]  opportunity right um my dad also introduced me to the fact that uh he was heavily involved in uh drug dealing um at the time and that there was straight up just like meth heads coming to my grandma's house where the family lived and he lived so she wanted to get him out of the island elsewhere so people stopped bugging them yeah and messing with the fam or potentially getting himself or the family in to any harm or trouble right um so with that said ended up in Vegas they first initially moved right behind MGM into a studio apartment with my brother my sister my mom and dad so literally just four people sleeping on top of each other and then uh gladly two years after that my Grandpa bought a

[3:21]  house in Las Vegas that they moved into and I'm so thankful that it was actually in Henderson Nevada where we're located right in this instance and uh you know it was cool for me um basically being the one in my family to grow up in a nice neighborhood from the get-go yeah but also learn the hardships that my parents had to go through from the start as well right so nothing was really handed to me even though a lot of the friends in my neighborhood had that opportunity yeah nothing was really given to me as far as like nice things or nice cars go even though a lot of the people in my neighborhood had that right so you're talking about uh new homeowners in Henderson in the 90s when it was like the nicest part of Las Vegas before summer leave Summerlin even sprouted yeah

[4:09]  um pretty fluent families new cars nice stuff and then my family were coming from a studio apartment into the situations I just spoke about and to this new neighborhood that my grandpa purchased the house so yeah although we lived in a nice spot we are still coming from nothing yeah tough time so um had to fuse myself into the people around me because I didn't really get them or understand them growing up or nor did I think they understood me and where I came from and was that like kind of so you know we share a lot of common backgrounds that we both come from families that have had hardship in our past right me and my dad the other day were talking about the fact that my great-grandfather was a sharecropper yeah right my grandfather grew up in the 30s in the United States was discriminated against racism all that kind of stuff yeah now my father took

[4:57]  the steps to you know start an entrepreneurial journey and a culture within my family and now I'm kind of standing on his shoulders you know one thing I've always really appreciated about you is that you know your recognition for where you came from and recognizing that hard work really kind of will put you anywhere that's when the vibe that I picked up on you since like you know the very beginning and that's something I've always appreciated about you yeah I saw your post the other day about uh appreciating your pops and your grandpa and your great grandpa and seeing you know how far each generation has come along so um I am no fool to that and I want to learn the history um October 2018 actually took my dad back to Manila no ever since he's been living in Vegas he's been working pretty what we consider low-end jobs here in the United States but for them pretty

[5:45]  good jobs right you can have a decent house a old car but it still works right still able to send a couple hundred dollars back home or something um so in my whole life I always thought to myself damn my dad's not like the VP of a company or this and that like all my other friend's parents are but then what I got to realize is like he took the liberty of leaving um where the situation he was in and coming to a whole nother country by himself at 14. yeah yeah 14 I I don't even I think I was probably still scared to fly alone yeah let alone to another country or I can barely speak the the language um so yeah definitely got to put some respect on that and uh um give credit request credit is due and um for a long time I had to stop blaming my parents for the situation I was in

[6:32]  and just understand that I can actually take control and um so when did that start happening because that's been a big part of um like my maturation journey is recognizing that I have ultimate accountability for My Success right and I think it's so easy when we're younger to kind of blame the people who we stand on top of to be like why aren't we doing these things we should have more stuff so when was that kind of realization was it early for you man no not even that early I feel like I blame them for a long time or I was mad at them for a long time right I guess a couple examples as a kid everyone in my neighborhood is playing Little League baseball I'm playing with them in the streets but never in the leaks and I always wanted to play in the leagues but my parents would say hey we can't afford it yeah you know

[7:19]  um so that's an example of me wanting something about your hand really having it because I was too I mean I didn't have a job I was young yeah when I get into high school you know a little later on in life everyone's pulling up in a new whip for the 15th and 16th birthday I didn't even get my first car until I was like 19 in college I used some of my student loan money to purchase it yeah um so I went through four years of high school without a car you know bumming your eyes off people and stuff and I'd always blame my parents like damn they didn't buy they didn't save up enough money this year to buy me a car like all my friends got for their birthday right or they didn't put me in sports the way that I wanted to so even though I enjoy them and I'm playing in high school everyone's just a little bit better than me because they had the opportunity to play for a couple years

[8:05]  in their life before they got to high school but yeah I think uh end of high school maybe or beginning of college is when I started to realize okay you know I'm old enough to get a job now um I'm not going to play sports forever uh it's up to me to now go figure out how I can get this money get my own car right it's it's not their job to get me a car I was thinking that they should give me one because everyone around me had that opportunity and everybody else had that mindset as well though yeah you know what I'm saying yeah so I I had to stop comparing myself to other people around my um neighborhood around me in my neighborhood my environment and then as an adult or early um what do you call it early adult years I realize I have to take control of the things I want and go get it myself

[8:53]  because it's not it it's truly not their fault that I didn't have those things I was just comparing myself to those around me yeah so when you have that Paradigm Shift right of recognizing that like okay this is all on my shoulders was that a scary feeling that you had back in the day or like what was that experience like yeah um when I was uh okay I'm gonna touch on two stories right now that I think will bring us full circle to what you're asking yeah um you're asking if it felt scary to take that leap or or what kind of pressure that came with it when I was 16 years old uh my parents got officially divorced um they had been split up like they split up multiple times throughout my childhood but they actually got divorced at that time in

[9:42]  because they have a background of not having a lot of money and then mix that in with a little bit of gambling addiction alcoholism and substance abuse when it came to tax season my mom was saying if your dad asks you for your um social security number don't tell him yeah my dad was saying to my mom or to me hey don't listen to your mom about anything that has to do with your social security number yeah give it to me and I'll buy you a car that was like the that was like the bribe right there yeah and as a 14 was a sophomore year so I was probably 15 years old 15 or 16. 15 years old let's say I didn't understand what the hell was going on yeah um I never thought about taxes back then I barely had my first job but when I

[10:30]  started to ask around like why are they telling me these things they don't they don't just bring these things up for no reason um people started hinting at that are older than me uh they're trying to claim you on their taxes get some extra money right so I realized that 16 was that neither of them even really wanted me at the time for me um they only wanted me for the money right um so at that point I actually left both of their houses moved into my brother's house at 16 where he had a spare bedroom and I was kind of living on my own yeah uh my brother I then moved in with my sister as I was going into 18 years old and my sister at that point ended up starting to have to take care of my dad because he was slumping they end up having a kid her and her husband at the time and then they had me

[11:17]  so they were taking care of their own kid my pops and me um so the moment I turned 18 her husband actually sat me down and said hey you're an adult now yeah I think it's time that you start working full-time taking care of yourself getting your own spot getting your own car starting to save up he basically gave me a deadline to figure my life out because he was going to kick me out and he says I'm not doing this because I don't like you yeah I love you I love having you around I do this because I like you and this is going to be the one lesson that teaches you um you know more than what you can learn ever about being an adult um he's like I did it myself and as 18.

[12:01]  and he and he's not the most successful person it's like I know that you can do it yeah right so they basically gave me a deadline I had to move out of the house around my 18th birthday and that's when I did it dude got the job went into school you sent my student loan money to buy my first car um was that was accountable for paying bills and utilities every month and I just graduated high school just a few weeks a few months before that so yeah was it scary definitely um but I did have people like that tell me like I've done this too and they're young with kids and trying to stay afloat so if I can do this too you can do it so people believed in me which was a great thing

[12:49]  um and I knew I had resources from both the job that I had at the time and um I had student loans I could pull out even though I'd have to pay them back later I still am to this day yeah um I knew that would help me figure out my situation at the time so it helped ease the nervousness I was getting myself into um when I was 18. yeah I mean that feeling of going out on your own but also recognizing that it's kind of sink or swim at such a young age yeah is pivotal and I can see as your friend kind of those early forced maturity days and how they've kind of shaped you because the one thing I've recognize is you've always been a go-getter you've always been consistently hustling and you've never really relied on anybody you know what I mean the one bone I do

[13:36]  have to pick today with a lot of kids who are out here acting like they're independent is they're not really independent you know what I mean I see Gary vaynerchuk talk about this all the time he's like we have people who are living fake Lifestyles because they're being funded by their parents okay and they also love to complain about I don't have these things I should be further but they haven't really gone into the deep end had to swam on their own yeah you know what I'm saying it's not something I've always really really appreciated about you it's just like observing you from my distance thank you what I'm saying damn never thought people did that and saw those things that that came from way back then but uh I I can personally see how those lessons affected me later on you know yeah and actually call those people back and say thank you you know um but being someone that you met me after I was 18. when I was 21. yeah so

[14:24]  the fact that you can actually see that lesson come to fruition into my later life is kind of crazy well I mean now that I'm a little bit older I can see the kind of the path behind people especially when you know we've had the honest talks and we've been hanging out before and you talk about your past and everything like that I just feel like those early days have been so pivotal and so influential on you that those kind of not only impact your past but also give you confidence or at least give me confidence in you as an operator as somebody who's going to be able to figure it out moving forward you know what I'm saying and I remember when you just started working for just college and you guys are getting off the ground that was a great example of everybody else still messing around taking money from their parents but you were out there hustling and grinding yeah you know what I'm saying that was a scary

[15:11]  that was a scary time too so um uh you know we were a startup company I think I was either 20 or 21 when I joined the company yeah um and you know I was leaving another steady paycheck to join these guys who had an idea basically yeah um they they executed some events some and said some decent Tech built into their website but um overall like they weren't paying anyone a salary right um I was on a draw commission which means they're gonna front me two thousand dollars a month yep then you go out and Hunt yeah we'll balance it again if I don't make the sales yeah I owe them money at the end of the month I have to pay them back or take it out of my next check to where at the end of the year I

[15:58]  can be in a huge default absolutely um and there was many times during that first year of working with them where um cash flow wasn't the best and the owners knowingly were not taking a salary yeah just to make sure that the staff could get paid um so uh to leave like a steady job and just say hey I'm gonna just like go do this entrepreneur thing with these other guys you know and and try to be a salesperson when I've never had a corporate sales job before in my life um was uh it was a leap for all of us right it was a leap of faith in them doing everything that they were doing it was a leap of faith for me getting involved and I'm glad that I did because when you join a small company of that nature and

[16:46]  everyone's wearing multiple hats you learn so much about how to collect money like I'm not an accountant but I was still helping the accountant whenever I had down time yeah um because if I wasn't making enough sales I had to show my worth elsewhere otherwise I can be cut yeah I mean that's that's the mentality and that's something that you know one of the reasons why I wanted to make this podcast in the first place and we were talking about this before we came on was to give honest examples of kind of the entrepreneurial Journey from both you know starting your own company and doing your own thing which we'll talk about a little bit of the places that you're at now but also being a part of the small team that is having to be nimble and flexible and figure stuff out while you're going down the runway right building the plane as you're trying to take adaptability is probably the most important characteristic of a startup company yeah everyone's got to have all

[17:33]  hands on deck right so what were some of the key lessons that you learned early on working for that company that you kind of observed you know being young being malleable at 20 21 years old yeah looking at these people who are starting up their company did you ever have the moment of realizing I think I can do this I did yeah and I actually proposed my own business idea so I can have it out um and I was even saying hey let's partner on this or hey let's um you know I think I'm gonna put in my my notice now this is my new Venture that I'm starting up and I was Brave by telling this to the CEO um I thought I might get funding or something yeah but uh um I never end up pursuing the idea at the time but as I started okay let me get back to this because I kind

[18:21]  of want to explain to the viewers what the company was yeah okay so just College in its infancy was a um an event and tour operator so the two types of events that they did at the time that I joined was um just straight up like college parties um at various campuses where you would take shuttles from the dorms to the club the club you get free access plus a drink ticket and then a ride home back to your dorm in the shuttle and that you know what would it cost you typically uh 150 a night they were selling for 89 yeah right and you get everything included you don't have to plan anything you don't have to worry about what line to go in when you get to the club et cetera yeah

[19:08]  um beyond that they also coordinated shuttles and larger charter buses to music festivals um which they later were able to become a reseller of the Music Festival ticket then they also included hotel packages um so the hotel packages they would just do a large wholesale purchase on hotels at a discounted rate reselling for slightly less than the market rate at the time so uh they're creating basically these tour packages um it started off with just clubs then festivals then we decided hey we can actually produce our own festivals out of this and create our own programs yeah um so the biggest one that we were most famous for was the Cabo spring break trip uh man essentially what we would do

[19:57]  is bulk buy flights airport transportation shuttles and hotels either um you know like 75 hotel or the entire Hotel bought out yeah um and then we would function our own events where we'd basically pop up a stage on the beach hire DJs and Hip-Hop acts to come perform and for these International trips you can charge 14.99 to 19.99 yeah right um you might be able to buy the whole trip on your own at equivalent price or if you waited to later definitely a higher price yeah but the benefit of booking with us was that you'd either say you'd save money and most importantly you save time and stress and the idea is establishing everything yeah exactly doing you don't got to think of

[20:45]  anything we take everything care of everything for you and you're basically going on like a five-day vacation with entertainment and travel all planned out yeah um on a payment plan and for a college student you know what I'm saying like that is the move yeah keep my mind to one person they show me where to show up what time my slide is I drive I do everything there that's awesome so that's the company I wanted to explain that before we get into um me actually like identifying like if I can do this on my own yeah um the plan that I had was to do like college tours with acts and uh essentially like when I started thinking if I you know when you hang out on entrepreneurs all the time and you are one yourself in in um in the heart you start to think of what could I be dishing up yeah so I

[21:33]  proposed this whole plan that I had and the idea was hey I told the CEO you started I think don't quote me on these numbers you started your company uh 19 or whatever you're 25 now yeah and this is how big your company is these guys are young leaders then yeah he dropped out he dropped out of school to pursue this because he realized how much money he was making yeah so I told the owner Andrew Sartorius shout out um looked them up on LinkedIn stuff he's a great guy I think you started this at 19 you're 25 now look how good you're doing I'm 21. so if I don't start my own thing right now I'm not going to be as successful as you until I'm 27 right so I'm sorry I gotta leave you yeah this is my business idea um if you want to become an investor you

[22:20]  can yeah oh my gosh his reaction was I already have all the permits insurances for that kind of business why don't you just uh have that as a branch of the business or already operating and uh you can basically spearhead it we'll work out some sort of deal on the back end I'm like [ __ ] yeah got me kind of gave you like the intrapreneur right be the entrepreneur but inside of the structure of something yeah established so I ended up never even actually pulling the trigger on that whole idea um I just stuck with what we had like everything at that time when I approached him on this idea was booming yeah and I was like you know what I just stick to what I know right now I'll worry about my own Venture later yeah because like this is where I start making a ton of money yeah I was already

[23:07]  a couple years in the sales I had all my client base everything I had recurring accounts I had a name for myself a reputation around the campuses of like I'm the guy for this type of thing right so if I had already start from if I were to start from scratch the deal on my end would still be good probably negotiate something decent but not as good as how much money I would have made that year yeah it makes sense um yeah so that that did happen to me and did when you so my imagination is when you have an opportunity and you're passionate about pursuing your own version of what you're already doing right you kind of have to do the cost benefit analysis of like I could go out on my own and do this and I know I could be successful because I have the relationship I've already been to the Reps yeah but now I've got the compound doing behavior and everything I've been doing for the last 12 16 months that's

[23:55]  going to compound for me and so did you kind of look at the money as being The Equalizer at that point money was always the factor for me at that point yeah yeah I was like early 20s still I don't even think I was 25 at the time yeah um so yeah money was always the factor and I'm trying to get out of debt yeah I was irresponsible when I was younger trying to pay off all kinds of stuff makes sense I still don't even think at that time owned my first car yeah or I had like a like a like a car I bought for a thousand bucks off of uh um Craigslist yeah and then I was using the company car for a while because I was traveling a bunch and I basically used that as my personal yeah and then when that lease was up I had to get my own first car so I'm like all right if I'm barely making power moves buying my own like actual car that's going to run

[24:42]  longer than a year yeah that has my name on it right um I don't think I'm in position to like start making these power moves yet unless I had like heavy investors an incredible idea yeah which my idea was like decent it would have made money but it was nothing like that was a game changer that's never been seen before yeah and now that we kind of have hindsight of 2020 right I mean of hindsight is 2020 but then I bring in 2020 as well when the world shut down yes you know my goodness in this business that was booming at a point in time kind of now falls on itself because we can't go anywhere and so it must have been somewhat rewarding at that point in time to still recognize you had the skill set you had banked all the cash from working there you have all the experience and now you kind of use this maybe as a pivot to start thinking about pursuing your own thing or what was that yeah yeah so that I think the pandemic

[25:30]  had a big is a big reason why I chose to Pivot um I was almost forced I lost my job during the time yeah they cut a bunch of the company so in 2018 um all right 2014 is when I joined just College wow yes um Kyle Ross and I were hosting a bunch of parties at UNLV and if I don't know if you were there at any of these might have been before you got to UNLV we were hosting events with like Asher Roth it was like one of the headlines 2012. so I remember all of the events that you were doing okay yeah T Mills was on the headliners very small hip-hop acts yeah but you were still pulling names though yeah well I guess it was funding the names who the owner of just College oh wow yes so when he moved his office from

[26:19]  San Francisco to Vegas to save money on taxes his business taxes and have all of his employees be able to afford life yeah if right San Francisco was in the best place for that no um that's where they started because they all lived there yeah when they moved to Vegas he basically said hey why don't you guys just drop the other company join our team Okay cool so that's 2014. 2018 actually we got acquired by another International promoter called pollen um so we joined that team our 35 45 person team ended up growing getting into and growing into this other company that was about 350 employees yeah internationally yeah so let me let's let's pause on this for a second so you guys for years now kind of have your nucleus of your company right now you

[27:08]  guys are being told that you're going to be acquired or is leadership back then telling you guys Hey listen we're thinking about rolling this up into something larger so get ready for what's coming what was that like um that is a great question and I want to talk about this now before I talk about the pivot because I don't want to mess up the timeline so we will get back to the pivot on how I started my own business but um in 2017 I started bringing these other guys in from London yeah and slowly introducing them to us and you know I don't know what the exact decision was at the time but it's like we either have to get acquired or we have to get a major investor um or we have to IPO we're far from IPO yeah

[27:55]  um I think a lot of uh investors potentially might have been scared about the business model we were dealing with thousands of college kids going a party for um months at a time right it was only like a week Sprint per school but the whole thing would last like six weeks over time um because different regions had different spring break times so I'm assuming that there's a lot of insurance questions that come up in your pitch [ __ ] um but these guys were saying hey we just want to build our data um we want your your exact that you're targeting your exact demographic and we have an app that can help your business model at the time what we were doing is we're using student ambassadors

[28:42]  yeah fraternity sorority presidents social chairs recruitment chairs student government leaders cheer team dance team football team basketball team captains to go sell our trips to their friends with already within their organization yep and then we would compensate them with the free trip themselves yeah once they got to once they got to 10 or 15 to 20 sales yeah the guys from London were doing the similar similar thing but they were building Ambassador programs for music festivals they were a street team uh uh co-promoter essentially yeah and they would use this business model of ambassadors and uh to sell tickets for the festivals music festivals and they

[29:30]  had everything in an app yeah so we were tracking everything in spreadsheets anytime someone said hey am I almost at my 10 sales I'd have to go in the back end pull a report organize a spreadsheet by school by name yeah screenshot this thing and then send it to this person and so they had a better attack like Tech stack if you will yeah exactly so their pitch to us was like yeah let us roll out the uh for the technology to where these guys can come in as an ambassador within our within our platform and every time they make a sale they'll be able to see the points add into their bucket and then eventually they can just cash out those points for whatever they wanted free trip backstage passes comp dinners limo service Etc right everything's done through the technology and you don't have to do

[30:17]  anything physical anymore you're just onboarding the person yeah and helping train them on sale selling makes sense yeah so uh it made sense at the time for us to get to to pair with them um gladly in 2018 when the cell happened they basically acquired us kept all of our staff um so that was a wild ride um and uh bringing us to 2020. all right so 2014 I we dumped our other company that Kyle Ross was leading and I was helping him out with that school to join just College 2014 to 2018 just College Grew From I'd say 12 people when I was there to around 30 or 40 people yeah and then in 2018 we joined the other company and now became Global at around 300 people

[31:04]  geez all right so that was a two year Sprint basically until the pandemic happened um so looking back I did start my own company in 2017 I probably would have went bankrupt three years later yeah um gladly I was involved in the cell um got to get rid of my shares okay um have some backup cash put a bunch of money towards the down payment on the house and um and again coming from nothing this was like all amazing for me absolutely um first person in my family to buy a house and I'm the youngest not only am I like I'm the youngest of uh my parents and obviously my brother my sister um so when the when the pandemic happened uh we were on spring break March of 2020

[31:55]  was when everything got got announced on the news yeah so I remember my girlfriend and I me being one of the leaders on the sales team and and having years worth of operational knowledge and her being the actual director of operations for the program yeah we were out there and we had to buy flights home for all the students and just bite the bill and then all of this like production I'm talking about thousands of dollars worth of stage equipment yeah trusting lighting DJ equipment speaker Stacks all just there yeah um and uh we're dealing with all right we got to get rid of all the production we can't just like leave this out here with the world while the world's shutting down we

[32:41]  got to get all the kids home we got to get the staff home yeah especially like the volunteer staff or the part-time staff that weren't like literally on salary with us yeah and then we can get ourselves some man so I thought we were going to be stuck there for a while yeah and then um coming home I didn't even really think about the repercussions of me um crazy to think that I would get cut I was like there's no way I'm getting cut right when you said that a little bit earlier you like the company started like laying people off I'm like damn bro you were there from the very beginning yes one of the people exactly so I'm there for almost 10 years um I'm part of basically two different Acquisitions I've had knowledge for days um but then I'm I think I was a part of the first round yeah of uh of cuts and so I'm starting to think back on it like

[33:29]  why would this happen to me I don't know if this is me just trying to be um defense mechanism make myself feel better or this could be the reality is at the point I was not necessarily selling anymore I wasn't the one going in the field I was managing nationally a bunch of people who were doing that right I was involved in training them and helping send them out yeah um so they kept a lot of the people who were on the ground right that could still actually help sell directly yeah and then they had lower salaries as well I mean from my perspective looking at the business I would be like okay so who's rev who's generating revenue for us right now we need to keep those people everybody who's above them and or underneath them from an infrastructure perspective can we get away with get letting them go maybe yeah you know what

[34:17]  I mean so that's got to be really tough what was like kind of that has to be an emotional experience I think a lot of people are going through this right now especially when they get laid off from a job yeah you know Zoom as an example a company that I'm close to laid off 1300 people I met them when they were a team of 64. so seeing in 2023 that now they lay off 1300 and it's been people who have been there before I even met the small team that was like dude that has to feel a certain way do you know what I mean like do you feel like trade do you feel kind of like um I did for a day you know but then I try not to dwindle on those type of things and like keep that bad energy in my mind over myself yeah um so that's why I easily came to conclusion if I was within 24 hours I started thinking to myself I was them would I cut someone

[35:06]  with one of the highest salaries on the staff yeah that's actually not in the field Reynolds right and in my head I said yes it makes sense I keep someone who's making half or even less than that yeah on salary wise so they have can keep their costs low but also still potentially generate money yeah was I willing to go back in the field yes 100 well I don't know if I was but it would have been willing to take a 50 decrease on salary yeah um so I came to conclusion on that really quick my girlfriend again works for the company as well um she was let go for a few days actually yeah um she got brought back in really quickly as someone's personal assistant okay and executive assistant yeah um because they're like oh rather than

[35:53]  getting ready I'd rather have her join my team so she came back pretty quickly I never got that call back yeah um at the time so I was already pondering what's my next step yeah um gladly little do you know I had already been thinking about my businesses since 2017. so for three years I had been putting a ton of money aside yeah I had already figured out what license is and city permits and insurances and stuff I needed to get I already figured out how to make a website and all that so actually the next day like I literally wasted no time I got over the fact put it into perspective and I thought to myself literally like the next day all right the government's

[36:39]  gonna pay me a thousand dollars a week to chill at home yeah they're gonna pay me a thousand dollars a week to pay my bills make music and help me build my business I'm literally launching the next day not launching the next day but prepping two lunch that next day and I think that that's the biggest difference that I recognize like when the pandemic was occurring everybody started getting this extra cash from the government yeah and to be very Frank they blew it on a whole bunch of stupid stuff buying new TVs doing stuff going on vacations or saving up money to go on vacations buying new cars they helped the economy though it helped the economy I completely agree with that but you know I feel like either you have a decision to make in that moment is like okay am I gonna go all in on myself and use the government money to actually kind of seed my round

[37:26]  to get up and moving yeah or am I going to sit back and kind of just wait for the storm to pass yeah I mean because reality is like with roommates at my house um I'm not paying the whole mortgage as I'm saying like a large majority of the mortgage is covered yeah all of it for sure some utilities split between at the time was like four or five people yeah a smaller car payment and so like if I can get away with spending only two thousand dollars on my expenses I'm basically profiting two thousand dollars free of charge by not actually working working on what I want to do and just getting to invest that money two thousand dollars can literally cover so many Flyers business cards website domain like it's everything that you need to get your idea moving done yeah exactly so I actually had the license in 2019

[38:15]  um I was super busy with works I didn't do much with it yeah I was taking some side gigs with the license um I don't even think enough date of the year to actually even like enough track to be in a year actually even have to file for taxes on it yeah um so yeah it was such a quick pivot all right boom website's launching pretty soon after the pandemic or like I'm laid off yeah um all the marketing materials already starting to get in design like right away I'm I'm pumping out music I'm building a portfolio yeah so yeah that that all happened um and the reason why I'm kind of grateful for the pandemic is I had 100 match 401K yep full dental and health coverage and vision

[39:04]  I was making close to six figures if not more yeah after commissions and um unlike what I had to do before to get close to that I wasn't traveling at all right I had a daily routine where I can wake up go to the gym hit the office from nine to five go make dinner work on for an hour on prep work for the next day and then be able to have some time for myself whether I want to go for a walk in the park watch a movie and that was so comfortable yeah being able to know that I can eat three meals a day hit the gym get work done and still have me time at the end of the day because routines are uh were easy at the time it was hard to get a routine when I was on the road as a salesperson six months out of the Year absolutely um so to have the money have the benefits have the 401K have the routine

[39:52]  that I wanted I don't know if I would have ever left it if it wasn't for me being basically forced to try out my new thing yeah something that's outside of your control yeah right and so I want to use this as a transition to talk about the business and businesses that you've started since then okay so I remember to this day like it was yesterday I'm on the phone with you trying to catch up hearing about what's going on during this you're in Hawaii at this time and you go I really think I'm gonna go all in on this music thing and I remember this conversation of you being like yeah man I really think I'm going to start like doing it and I was like okay and it was one of those moments where I listened to the conviction in your voice and I was like this kid has the experience and has gone through enough hardship and trial by fire to be successful I can't wait to see where

[40:39]  this is gonna go so click and this will give everybody kind of an idea of what was going on there and before I start I just want to say the reason why I feel comfortable telling someone like Keenan this is because not a lot of people in my circle already had businesses but he did right so there's certain things I talk to about certain people I'm not going to blob to somebody about business stuff they have no idea what I'm talking about or they get bored by the topic you're the type of person I can talk to you about this forever hence why we're here on camera and for those listening hopefully you're taking a lot of these things and applying it to your own lives but uh when I decided to go all in um the company at the time was called Spotlight entertainment LLC spt lght all capital letters it was something that was not found online yet right but it's

[41:28]  easy to identify Spotlight um and I thought it was like cool I had some flavor gave it some uniqueness Spotlight at the time was a music and media agency so basically you can purchase DJ Services off of us you can purchase sound rentals off of us you can also do media the media is all over the place you can do uh Business Media for your merchandise you we can come shoot your real estate in your new houses that you're trying to sell yeah we also did event Recaps um today we've shifted to a purely focused on events yeah it's music services for events right DJs cover bands Sound and Lighting yeah and in the media is just literally recap videos of events yeah or photography albums of the

[42:18]  events um at the time I was just trying to be all over the place but I realized I needed to quickly focus on a niche like um service and why did you have that moment of realization so I know when people start their entrepreneurial Journey like a lot of people are like I need to do all of this stuff so did you kind of have a recognition of if I have 100 of my energy 10 is going this way 10 is going that way 15 20 and then if I focus on one area I can be more effective that's exactly it okay yeah and it's area that I knew the best right so if I'm talking to someone about a real estate shoot and I'm not in the business I'm just kind of like bsing what I know about media but not really speaking the language on the real estate end yeah um from merchandise shoots like I've never started a merchandise brand before so like I can talk media but I didn't

[43:04]  really talk their language on the merch makes sense side um anything that came in with music or events the industry I just left for 10 years literally traveling Migos Steve Aoki Wiz Khalifa um I have those things that I can say hey I've operated events of ten thousand you know I've helped operate events 10 000 people with these large acts this is why you should use us right you know I've gone through the motions I've seen it at this intimate level of events and I've seen that very large events so anything you throw at me I'm confident we can handle absolutely so it made me better as a salesperson and make our it made our services on the website more focused yeah so let me ask you that I want to use this for a second so you know one of the things that people talk about a lot in sales is the right sales

[43:53]  pitch the right words to use right yeah and often people get hung up on what am I saying what is the script but you know a lot of people say and one person I look up to says there is no better replacement for your ability to sell than conviction yeah when you know that you've done these things in the past and you have the experience that you can speak to them be like yo listen like I'm not trying to BS you here this is what I've done yeah they could read that too 100 yeah so when you're saying that story they can tell if you're faking it up right people read energies absolutely so if you are saying this story which is a real story they can go back on your Instagram or your LinkedIn and see photos in the past it almost is even easier to close it because like if they did the research and then saw that what sounded to be real to them they did research and saw oh this actually happened before yeah all right done I'm

[44:40]  buying from this guy he's not faking us out he does have the experience even if it costs a thousand dollars more to use you than the other person right I feel more comfortable using you absolutely right it's like that transference of like trust almost and be like I'm gonna take care of this you know yeah that's really cool because I often hear you know a lot of younger people you see like on Instagram and stuff like that who are like in order to sell you have to do these type of manipulation techniques right yeah but it's like when you have a track record of success you don't have to do any of that yeah you know you're selling yourself you're still selling history yeah exactly and like that's just so powerful so there's a couple other brands under Spotlight entertainment now that's the overarching brand and then we have a couple of sub Brands and people always ask them why do you have all these sub Brands so hard to keep up with all your businesses well I'm not trying to do this for my friend and my friend's not

[45:27]  the end consumer yeah there's people out there that are searching these services or these things they are the end consumer and I don't again I don't want to confuse them right if I put everything on my website you can't just have 25 tabs at the top and then you're just trying to like purchase all these things who knows what right so I always thought of this example like when you go to um something like uh McDonald's you're like looking at this whole menu and trying to figure out what you want this time around yeah when you got in and out you walk in before you even walk in you already know what you're getting oh man so the cell happens faster exactly and you're pumping out these you see the lines in and out yeah and the same goes with Chick-fil-A right when they talk about like there's a rule which is the 80 20 rule okay where 80 of your revenue for example as a business comes from 20

[46:13]  percent uh yes customers the same thing talk about when you have a business model like Chick-fil-A or an Out Burger we have 80 of our Revenue which comes from 20 of our items which is chicken sandwiches do you know what I mean yeah and so I feel like there are so many lessons to be learned for people who are younger entrepreneurs that want to start their own stuff it's like you have to focus and really become really good at this if you're going to be successful can I bring it back for just a second yeah jesscollege.com when they first started was everything Collegiate yeah you can buy textbooks you can buy food deliveries to dorm rooms yeah you can buy T-shirts in merch of your University you can buy the Event Services what they realize is that what they realized what they were good at and where the most money was being made was in The Event Services

[47:00]  after taking an audit and almost going bankrupt they had to say okay let's ditch all the other items that are taking away our energy but make middle metal profit and focus on the events the college focused events and that's why they were able to scale until multi-million dollar business go into some of the biggest venues and party locations in the world right so I took that same thing a lot of the things that I'm doing right now are basically things that I learned at my old job yeah and just replicating lessons that they failed at before and then basically counting them before they happen to my own business and this is a this is a really good lesson that I feel like younger entrepreneurs can learn it's when we're early in our careers I think so many people get confused with the idea that I want to earn rather than learn okay so you have the ability to be

[47:49]  an entrepreneur like we talked about a little bit earlier and you can learn underneath another business and get experience and really be obser like observing the things that people are doing wrong but what also they're doing well do you know what I'm saying you can use that time to get paid build up your bankroll create that security so yes time to go out you've got the lessons learned the experience and the bank role to be able to kind of survive 100 you know what I'm saying not everyone listening to this is going to actually want to be an entrepreneur on their own business that's fine for the people that are right whatever entry level job you get out of college or whatever literally stick around the office and hang around other departments to kind of just study what they're doing yes right you may not be in marketing but understand what is the brand what fonts are you using on your on your website what color schemes are you using on all your Flyers

[48:36]  business cards website you name it commercials these are things I I never took a branding class I'm learning this from watching other departments right I'm sitting in in the accounting department listening to how they're collecting money for people that owe us money in a nice way for what's not causing any friction yeah right um and uh I'm voluntarily asking to do other jobs if I'm not super stacked up that week um and then when I left I'm studying what do these contracts look like if I can't afford my own lawyer I can just replicate the exact contract that this business was to do and they obviously doing it right they're dealing with some of the largest acts in the business absolutely right the production is costing million dollars so um they've definitely got this ran by

[49:24]  legal team yeah why am I when I leave here I'm going to take that exact template of what they were doing in this situation in that situation and and then it replicate it and implement it into my own thing later absolutely um so I'm not gonna lie there are some decks out there like pitch Decks that we were using for sales I was a sales guy I saved them to my computer before I got logged out of my email yeah I'm not ripping off of the whole pitch deck but I am using the basis of that word framework yeah it worked and why I create the why create the recreate the wheel when I already have the document from another company before that was successful yeah yeah I mean there's a great example that I want to say Russell Brunson talks about and he's the guy who created click funnels if you're familiar with it yeah I know Russell okay awesome sweet so Russell talks about he had an

[50:11]  early experience with um who's the inspirational speaker named Tony Tony Robbins yes Tony Robbins was like you often make mistakes of thinking that you have to invent something new why wouldn't you just go out into the marketplace and model what is already successful and then put your own twist on it to make it your own gotcha you know what I'm saying like the same thing example if you know a system works if you know contracts work if you know contracts are Frameworks if you know agreements or Frameworks a certain way yeah you'll need to go out there and do that kind of stuff yourself you can just model what else is going on do you know what I'm saying like there's so much output in the world that modeling things that are already out there is not a bad thing so Spotlight entertainment as a business model there's two other competitors in Las Vegas yeah who are pretty much doing the exact same thing right um they are larger than me at this time I would I technically say even though I

[50:59]  had the license in 2019 I was barely using it yeah 2020 pandemic 2021 pandemic I would say we only actually truly been operating since the later half of 2021 yeah right so going on a year and some change um I have aspiration to be as big as them yeah I want to get into their eyes um and either emerge with them and be able to take our expertise to the next level because we have two great teams yeah or potentially finding out on my end and sell to them my book of business to them yeah um and you know the company's valued at one two four five million dollars that can be you know what funds the next thing

[51:47]  that I want to partake in absolutely um so it's definitely not a bad thing too um do something that's already been done you have Sprite yeah seven up right so um yeah so many examples of that part of that mentality that I like to think about as well is there's so much abundance in the world that we are never taking away from somebody else's by also winning you know what I'm saying like there's too much money literally out here for your business to be competing with other people and thinking that because Lionel's winning that these other two companies can't win as well you know what I mean but it also gives us an opportunity to kind of reframe what success looks like to an entrepreneur because I think you know one of the biggest problems that I see with younger entrepreneurs today is Everybody Wants To Be A Millionaire

[52:34]  everybody also wants to have a billion dollar company everybody wants to do these gigantic things that social media and other platforms have made seem normal but they're really not do you know what I mean like the average income in the United States if you want to be a top one percenter you need to make 400 Grand a year that is not a million bucks do you know what I'm saying so like there is a large Arbitrage between the people who have the very very tip top and everybody else who can be successful and still be in that one percent does that make sense yeah no I totally get it because I'm trying to think about as I build a business as I've gone a little bit older I think about what is a business that's successful actually represent to me for me it's freedom for me it's the ability to do the things that I want to do it's the to wake up every single day and be passionate about what I'm doing be able to operate a business with my family do

[53:20]  you know what I mean yeah I don't need to have the stresses of a 100 a 200 or 400 or 500 billion dollar company yeah there's a lot that comes with that there's a lot and a lot of people aren't made for that you know what I'm saying yeah so what is business success represent to you are you there right now um no I am not there um we did a hundred and seventy thousand dollars in Revenue last year okay um at about a 40 margin yeah so a good healthy business and uh what I would want it to be the next goal is 350 000.

[53:55]  yeah the following year is 500 000. the next year I'd like it to be a million dollar brand um and if we can stay at that 40 margin that's a really good thing on our hands yeah um uh I want my my goal is one million dollars in Revenue uh at a 30 to 40 margin um I just want to see on that paper at the end of the year that I was able to bring in one million dollars with sales yes um I've done it with other companies in the past yes I want to do it for my own right and uh I don't know why I just want to be able to say that right I've always wanted to say making over a hundred thousand dollars yes um Ilya one of our good friends from college in his room on his whiteboard he had this thing

[54:42]  that said one hundred thousand by Thirty and I always ask them oh what is that what is that oh that's the goal that I want to achieve by the time I'm 30. yeah okay and he would say um uh he would say if you write it down it might it has more of a chance to becoming a reality yeah and I was young at the time I didn't realize there was different tactics you can use to help I don't know whether it's a manifestation or just your pure confidence or just literally you are creating these energies that are becoming a real reality later whatever it may be you know I don't know if there's any scientific proof I said I I need to write that down yeah I want to make a hundred thousand dollars by the time I'm 30. so it did

[55:31]  happen at like 31 yeah um I was at like 90 something by the time I was 30 which I was still happy about yeah I was close to the goal now I mean I'm not really worried about I'm just setting the number because I want to have that goal and I think that next number for me is 1 million yeah yeah no I think I want to be a million dollar business I I completely agree but like what I would say is going to have a huge determinant on your success is the work that you're already putting in do you know what I mean the one thing that I think about that I've really started to focus on as I get a little bit older is kind of my habits in how my habits are the things that create the lagging indicators of success so if I have a habit of going to the gym every single day okay the lagging indicator is me being in shape because I'm putting in the work and building The Habit on the front end and it's almost leading in this invisible trail of energy and the

[56:19]  lagging indicator behind it is my physical shape okay the same thing happens if you're putting in the work every single day if you establish a habit of putting in the work consistently the success is a lagging indicator behind it and so one thing that I think you need to do a better job of in general as younger people is recognizing that things take time yes do you know what I mean and you have to put in work for a minute in order for the result to actually like manifest itself don't you I I totally get that it's huge for me bringing me back to the just College days the first year I actually lost money again I was on a draw commission yeah I got 24 000 at the end of that year I didn't make twenty four thousand dollars in sales yeah I actually owed them money because I picked up so much slack around the office and I was just a genuine nice person they ended up waving it for me yeah I think the next year I ended up making like 28 000 so I profited like

[57:07]  four grand on top of the money that they fronted me yeah um then the third year I got put into salary plus commission I was making like 60 then I was like in a 65 then I was in the close 90s so like it took me five years to get from 24 000 to less than twenty four thousand yeah owing the money right yeah twenty thousand dollars at the end of the year in my sales journey to be able to make commissions that and and pay that added up to 90 000 right but uh yeah five six years in the making of hard work learning trial and error much failure on many things I thought would work out but didn't it

[57:54]  um in order to get into the position where I set up set myself up to almost achieve that goal of 100K yeah um so I'm I'm looking at this as a Five-Year Plan can I can I get to that one million within five years and I know if I just keep putting in that work it'll happen eventually yeah yeah one of the big thing that I've been thinking about a lot over the last year is the philosophy of trying to give myself a longer time Horizon so the longer time Horizon is kind of the analogy of like the bigger the plane the bigger the runway okay right if you're trying to do things that are larger you need to give yourself more time to get there and when you give yourself a longer time Horizon to accomplish things you make different types of decisions if I had to tell you that you had to lose 10 pounds in three

[58:42]  days what type of things would you be doing cutting eating eating crash diet working out during that stuff but if I told you you had to lose 10 pounds in a year you would make different decisions that would make sure you were successful long term yeah do you know what I mean but like the approach to those situations would be completely different okay I look at the same thing as being true in business okay I want to be successful how do we reverse engineer our success long term so it's like if I told you in order to make a million bucks you had to put in work every single day and by the 10-year point you would be guaranteed to make that money then you wouldn't really be tripping because you're like okay this is going to take time yeah I'm trying to just like change my mindset when it comes to accomplishing things and give myself more time okay because I start to realize that time goes by so quickly that the things that seem like they're really far out there really are not that

[59:29]  far like could you imagine that we would be plus 30 years old when you think about how long ago we met like at UNLV in 2012 yeah but like how quickly did that time go about yeah over a decade already yeah yeah that's what I'm saying but if we're consistent in trying to just Implement and be consistent at showing up every single day and mastering that skill of doing the work are you saying that'll just come along yeah it comes along with the ride you know what I mean it's like a byproduct of just doing the work every single day so the reason why I do The Five-Year Plan um one is just a standard practice that you find online people talk about it often I've just applied it to my life in so many different occasions I know that's how long it takes for me to master something okay um and so uh thinking about high school four-year program yeah when I came in I

[1:00:18]  was at smuck yeah failing grades Bailey coming got myself into shape by the time I graduated I was uh a straight A student yeah I had an advanced diploma um I had to bust my ass to make up for all the failed classes earlier on yeah when I joined the fraternity um and in college uh when I came in I didn't even know what a fraternity was right I had no idea how to run a business never managed to budget in my life um and then within five years I was President our organization was nationally known the top 25 percentile of over 150 chapter chapters across all the states and so um graduated right so

[1:01:07]  I just always know myself it takes me five years to really like really learn what I want to do yeah how I want to do it and then go perform at the highest level I possibly can um so yes I wouldn't be upset with myself if it didn't happen by 2028 or whatever 2027 my business goals but I know from past life experiences you put me somewhere for four or five years I'm gonna learn everything I need to know yeah I'm gonna fail the I'm gonna get the failures away as quick as possible and within four or five years I will be executing at the one of the highest levels of anyone that may want to compete with me at that one particular thing yeah I mean that sense of self-awareness that sense of confidence I think is profound you know and you might laugh because you're like oh

[1:01:53]  that's kind of funny like that's me but like that in itself that self-awareness is a superpower you know what I'm saying one thing that you said there that really stuck with me was I get the failures out of the way as quick as possible what does that mean to you um the things that I don't know how to do um I don't wait to hire somebody I'm not waiting for a volunteer or an intern to come across my lab if I need to get a website launched and I don't have the money to do it I just go in I start clicking every single button learning what it does yeah if I go click publish on the website and it crashes because I did something wrong um I gotta click around figure out what the mistake was yeah um the website's not that good but I have it up and running right

[1:02:40]  that's exactly an exact example of what I did I didn't have a capital all the time so I just did it myself had a consultant come in and say oh dude you need to spice up your SEO you need to have all these keywords you need to rename your images from image123 to Las Vegas DJ provider right that images also provide value to your SEO the image names uh obviously you're probably aware of this saying that for the for the consumer yeah but uh you know a year or two later I'm learning that I made that mistake so now not only do I know how to make a website myself um I went through a second version where when I went in did the SES bicep I actually rebranded it and made it look nicer because now I knew what I was doing now I can pump out a website in 48 hours where it looks nice has all the

[1:03:28]  appropriate things needed to be searched properly yeah and um I don't got to pay nobody yeah uh but yeah it's just more so just taking action right away versus like thinking someone's gonna get it done for you yeah uh so Alex ramosie a guy who I follow online he talks about we can become proficient at 20 hours of work in pretty much anything that we do okay but it takes most people years to start that first hour and the reason why I wanted to kind of key in on the I get the failures out of the way is because I feel like one of the biggest hindrances that people have to success is that fear of failure I'm not sure if that comes from the structure and the infrastructure of going through school and realizing that every single time we failed we got slapped on the hand it was embarrassing yeah but it's like when you're an entrepreneur you get paid to test and fail and the quicker you fail

[1:04:16]  the more successful you will be um let's bring us back to these examples then okay is there a moment in your life when you were a kid where you decided to do something that you may have not been that totally good at but you ended up failing at it whether you embarrass yourself or not you got that out of the way which made you more confident to the next the next attempt so when I was younger in Middle School um I got the award of seventh and eighth grade of trendsetter okay and so I'm not sure if this was just part of my mentality back then but I was never afraid to be the first person to do something okay because I had the I don't know if it was like the self-confidence that my parents gave me but it was like I wasn't afraid for people to be like aha because one thing I realized the first time I did it people laughed and then the second time less people laughed

[1:05:04]  the third time do you know what I'm saying yeah and so I started to learn that like you can go out on your own and you can kind of fail first and if you're willing to stand up in front of the crowd and take an L then you're almost viewed as like a superhero cool you know what I mean but like a lot of people today and I even still deal with this like as an insecurity I don't want to publicly fail because of the infrastructure of everything that surrounds us Instagram all the other kind of stuff I feel like we get looked at negatively because we live in a PR world where everything is everybody's successes do you know what I mean so like the mentality of saying I get the failures out quickly is something that I feel like a lot of people need to lean into because it has a direct correspondent with your ability to be successful and this is not even business this is like everyday life yeah the moment I bring myself back to is elementary school there was two things that I did around like fourth or fifth

[1:05:51]  grade was um I ran for student council president yeah and how to make a speech in front of the whole school the other thing was I joined this like uh reading program where you had to memorize the book yeah and then re-say it to the school wow um not a long book yeah right but you're basically um like a play like a solo play or a monologue type of thing um I had this thing where I grew up where the waiter would come to the table and ask me what I wanted and my parents would make me order it myself versus me pointing but I had a hard time speaking to the waiter because I was nervous or I don't know she was a stranger he was a stranger yeah so I was supported my sister and have her order for me yeah right or I'd get to the counter and I'd feel confident like I wanted to say my

[1:06:38]  order if they weren't coming to the table I'd go to the counter and then right before I was about to speak at the counter of what I wanted at Taco Bell when I'm with my family I would freeze up yeah um so I knew from such an early age like literally I'm like what is the first second grade seven eight years old I knew in third and fourth grade I need to work on these things yeah and so I put myself in a position to do it in front of as many people as possible that I kind of knew and they knew me yeah so that way when I went on to the world and I was facing a stranger or someone I was intimidated by I wouldn't have that issue anymore right but this is not someone telling me to do this yeah it was I voluntarily went and did that speaking program and then did the speech to become student council

[1:07:26]  president yeah and because I was able to identify that really early on and face those fears by the time I even got to middle school I mean dude I was already leap years ahead of where I wanted to be yeah but I want people to know like I was literally that guy that didn't want to see himself in a video camera or hear his voice or couldn't barely order uh from a server at a restaurant because I was dead afraid to look them in their eyes or make an interaction with them yeah so that has nothing to do with business but I think it wraps I guess it does because it kind of wraps into my sales confidence today yeah I'm willing to get on the phone call I'm willing to go into a meeting with the high level executive and have that confidence but that did not start yesterday that started in elementary school yeah so the student there again the sooner you can

[1:08:15]  start facing these kind of fears or failures the faster you'll get to where you want to be absolutely I mean it's just a that's a great lesson to kind of wrap on today because I know we got to get out of here but you know just hearing your perspective and you know you sharing your stories about personal growth the experiences you had going through just college and then you know you starting on your own entrepreneurial Journey we definitely have to do this again because there's so much more we could talk about yeah I didn't even talk about the other three brands under the spotlight entertainment but it's fine um definitely don't want to ramble I appreciate you even having me today yeah man and uh yeah I appreciate you allowing me to share a couple stories I hope um there's some people that watch this video and it kind of resonates with them and uh there's just so many people that I meet that think that I will I'm

[1:09:02]  successful right away um got nice clothes on I'm DJing the largest clubs in the city right my business is doing well um without ever actually knowing where I've come from nor do they ask ask so if people watching this video can actually hear that I came from the same depths and hardships and trial and errors as as you all hopefully it'll inspire you to also keep trying as well yeah I mean like you're a perfect example of the grind man the heart and the hustle of what it takes to be successful and that's why I want to bring you on and share you with the audience because you know your story is valid your story is something that I think we can all see a little bit of ourselves in as well those moments of coming across hardship leaning into ourselves taking leaps of faith and then being able to rally on that success is

[1:09:50]  just super powerful problem yep oh it's got to do it if you think it's a good idea you just gotta do it yeah well I appreciate you Doug thanks so much man thanks for coming seriously appreciate you and we'll just cut it right there peace foreign