Episode #7 – Calling All Entrepreneurs 🚨 (Or Aspiring Entrepreneurs!): A Conversation with Jeff Sarris

welcome to the society pod a podcast for entrepreneurs marketers and leaders here’s your host Jessica yarmy hey there everybody and welcome to the society pod my guest today is a full-blown entrepreneur he is into the content game he’s into the podcast game he’s into building his own companies and probably has more domain names than than I have he is a Gary ve fan Tim Ferris fan and we’re gonna weave through all of those topics so let’s just dive in welcome to the show Jeff saris hi there thanks for having me yeah so I you know my first question is how many domain names do you own I was going to ask you that mine let’s let’s do the over under are you over or under over I am also over are you over or under over are you over or under over okay I think I think I have so how many domain names do you have so I don’t know the exact number but it’s definitely over a and not that it’s like a bragging thing it’s it feels like I’m like oh look I got domains but it’s just like for us for some clients and everything but yeah we have a lot of different projects a lot of different things that we manage so it definitely adds up over time but sometimes they’re nice you know to to direct the certain things when you want people to have easy access to it and be easy to share so people can get there quickly if you are squatting on one of the ones that I’m looking at I am going to have we’re going to have an issue okay so I could almost guarantee I’m not everything is sort of based on our brands or things I’ve wanted to start up that I just never got around to starting I want to ask what you’re looking for but you could off camera so the last time I saw you we were at vcon and you’re in this environment where the Vibes are just flowing the ideas are flowing and I’m sitting there with my co-founder Sam and we’re just talking about things like what are we going to do what do we need I think I bought four domain names like at vcon just from my phone like logging into god daddy like let’s go let’s go let’s go I think it was the energy of it like we have to build something like what’s going to be next mhm yeah so actually of those four have you used any of them yet yes yes and so I don’t know I’m constantly spinning things up I almost have too many environments now and now I’m trying to staff under the environments because between the websites and the social media pages and all of the content needs that go across all of those it’s so much and to keep it all current and to keep it all looking good and making sense and updated it just it’s a it’s a whole role in and of itself just to manage my pages and then that sounds so high maintenance but but I’m sure you talk with people like this all the time where you’re kind of building things out and you kind of need to build and staff as you build yeah so what are those environments sorry I’m flipping this on you you know I’m the question asker this is what I do whether it’s my show or just talking to someone so yeah let’s go this will be fun so I think the the last time you and I spoke I was still at kick house and so I’ve since exited kick house to Mayweather boxing and fitness and I’m working on a new Fitness Concept called Flex Society so I own flex society.com and I am looking for an investor partner but I’m hesitant to partner with the wrong person so I really want to be intentional and smart about how I build it and I don’t want to start and then run out of Runway so as I kind of hit that wall with flex Society then I started to build the marketing agency which is Sizzle society and where I started to build Sizzle Society that’s really what unlocked the podcast and thinking if I’m going to have a marketing agency I may as well have the podcast arm of the marketing agency so then we have the society pod and then my founder Sam is also working on like a web three arm of the marketing agency and I know you’re into web three land as well and so that would be under its own domain name also mhm yeah so and I was looking at Sizzle Society just a little bit because like that’s another thread that we share because like my main company is a branding agency it’s called spire and that’s like what we do is websites and Brands and strategy and all of that so I am curious sort of since it’s in sort of the early stages where are you at with that sort of how are you approaching what you’re building it’s been fascinating because where I hit a wall and was just constantly going uphill trying to find dollars for Flex Society I started the marketing agency almost out of need because I started to do Consulting work on the marketing side which is my background and the work just started to flow and so I almost had to build the agency out of necessity because I needed to staff it I needed to make it into an official thing in fact some of my current clients like original clients I’m still using I still communicate with them on my Flex Society email because I started with them before I even launched the agency so when you think of like what comes first the chicken or the egg it really just came the whole business came first and then I started to build the digital infrastructure underneath it so it all happened very very fast and very organically which I think is an interesting learning in entrepreneurship and maybe you feel the same way where you have so many ideas and it’s like how do you know which one to Chase or how do you know which one to put the most energy toward so I don’t know I gave my rundown of all the projects that I’m working on so why don’t you give your rundown of like all of the different businesses you have at this moment before I jump into that I want to ask your approach to that how do you choose cuz I have a very specific idea along the lines of how do you choose what Lane you go down I’m curious yours and I’ll share mine I am mostly intuitive and it really is like what is Flowing what is moving fastest what is the path of least resistance and it has been very interesting over the last six months to see how that comes to life because there have been some things that I’m banging my head against the wall trying to do it trying to get it there you know and your entrepreneur brain is thinking like Am I Wrong is this the wrong thing to be doing and then I shift a little bit little pivot and it just like it goes and it’s been very interesting to have that realization and then to allocate my time accordingly because you know when you’re building something and you’re an entrepreneurial Lane like you so put you put so much effort in but then when you’re not seeing the results not seeing the results it can get so frustrating and so to kind of see okay this one is actually going like let me just focus there so I just kind of feel like what’s flowing fastest I put most of my energy toward them absolutely yeah and that fits exactly to sort of my viewpoint on all of it so over the years I’ve talked to a lot of entrepreneurs sort of help them grow and build their businesses and the biggest thing that I’ve run into and the reason I called my show starting now was people weren’t starting and starting being that that biggest most difficult First Step second most difficult step is to keep going but you got to pull that Band-Aid off and get started to me the way we figure out the path of where to go is always taking action first because there’s a cycle so it goes action creates experience experience always creates opportunity and opportunity necessitates more action so I feel like it’s this circle that you go on and once you sort of start down that path it’s it’s the unlock for everything that you might want to do because we don’t know really what’s going to click what will resonate with people and connect with an audience client-based Community whatever it is until we’re out there doing it and then we see what we feel about it too so I think just sort of that action experience opportunity cycle is so important it’s exactly just what you’re describing there like you have your intuition you’re doing it you’re getting the experience and you’re feeling okay where am I where is this going where could I go with it and then that’s where the opportunity is discovered so so you have your marketing agency and then you have kind of a different production side of your marketing agency give us give us the rundown of all of your companies we want all of your current domain names Jeff I’ll download export them in a CSV we’ll upload them yeah um so I probably have there’s sort of three businesses that I’m predominantly working on right now the main one is Spire that’s my company it’s a branding agency I’ve been doing that work since it’s been officially SP since that started as web design like just sort of graphic design in general and then it it evolves like everything does into much more partnership strategy like building businesses with people so it still as a core of design and even though it’s a branding agency we’ve never done marketing marketing isn’t our side of everything our side is really brand and how do we develop the business into the thing that the person needs and obviously that goes with coaching and everything too but the coaching side of things is very much just baked in to what we’re doing there so Spire is is the core where I started with everything kidney stone diet is another platform it’s a partner that we have and that’s all about reducing your risk for kidney stones there diet alone can reduce a risk by % and what we did is we met with a nurse Jill Harris she’s a kidney stone prevention nurse she’s been doing that for years now and being on the inside it was so difficult because she knows what it’s like to be a p patient she had stage for rectal cancer and she experienced the other side of the situation and she didn’t know what she didn’t know and she knew as a nurse and as a practitioner there’s only so many minutes in a day that you can devote to someone so she spun up her coaching on the side to try to help people so when we met we stepped in to help her build that into a profitable sustainable full-time career business so that’s the second side the second business of sorts I co-host the kidney snow diet podcast with her and like we do all of these things there but the big sort of the big thing that we do there is the strategy the brand the visuals just everything so she can focus on what matters to her and that’s helping patients so she doesn’t have to worry about anything else basically and that’s really what it comes down to like what we’ve always done what we’ve done with Spire what we do with kidney stone diet through spire and then through Maven so Maven is me and my girlfriend it’s her company but it’s videography for realtors so what we do is we travel all over the country and we film with people vertical shorts and reels and everything and then La form YouTube videos film in their market for a day maybe two then they get months of content and they’re just ready to go it’s easy for them they don’t have to think about anything we come prepared with all of the ideas all the prompts everything that that they would need to sort of have TurnKey content that they’re creating really they’re the source of the information the knowledge the experience the showcasing their area showcasing what they know but then we’re just making it happen so that’s sort of like what it comes down to is that sort of where we live is bringing these things to life and helping people simplify their life and there’s other there’s another thing that I’m excited about that I’m ideating not really worth sharing right now but something else that that fits with all of that so we sort of have brand we have video and then there’s another side of things that I’m looking into pursuing but those are sort of the three major business buckets and there’s other smaller things along the way like we have a WordPress theme store called built not built Basics the clothing company they came way after we did but built that Co is where we sell WordPress themes and just various things over the years yeah you have you have the full like ecosystem happening I love it uh definitely I love what you guys are doing with Maven because I think there’s a lot of a lot of need for that where you have people who are experts who are not experts in content creation and the gap between you know what they know and how it comes across when they try to do it themselves is just too vast you know like so you want to you want to rightsize both of those things and have their level of expertise match the level of quality of content and I don’t know I feel that sometimes as I’m looking at content like sometimes I see people who are so smart and then way that they’re doing their content just comes across you know a little loose or a little sloppy and you’re just like if you would have somebody you know like you guys like Maven to like to produce it to tighten it it’s just going to all look so much more professional and then your level of expertise lines up with your actual level of expertise mhm definitely yeah and it was Ira Glass so he hosts This American Life but years ago he talked about the taste gap which I thought was always fascinating like we get into something whether it’s podcasting video design photography anything because our taste is here but our ability is way down here and it takes an entire career to close that Gap but the Gap never really closes all the way like you never get you never feel as good as your taste because your taste evolves with time that’s the one thing that I think is it’s hard to really grasp is like we never feel done we’re never like a complete piece like a like a complete experience of or not experience but a complete set of skills that we can create the thing that we want to create and part of simplifying things for other people through design and brand and websites and video is they’re experts at what they’re experts at and we’ve never felt like we should become experts in the things that we only need to do once twice a few times so like web design specifically it made sense to take that off of people’s plates because why would they learn how to design learn how to build the site that they wanted when they’re really doing it once and then they’re writing they’re publishing they’re doing all the other things so that’s sort of where the core of our like simplification like idea comes from there can be in real estate there’s great coaches and there’s there’s a whole ecosystem in real estate that we weren’t aware of until we sort of got into it and we started helping people but there’s there’s sort of U mixed advice cuz there’s so much advice just coming from everywhere but who you emulate matters so a lot of times people say oh this person is really good you should follow what they do this person is really good you should follow what they do but many times who who they’re selling to isn’t who I’m selling to so say I’m the realtor and Joe Smith phenomenal YouTuber phenomenal Instagram person but when you actually pull back the curtain a little bit you realize oh wait he’s not creating content for buyers he’s creating content for realtors because there’s other revenue streams where Realtors can sell to Realtors so noticing that and understanding sort of who you’re selling to and speaking to them directly is so important but that’s not how we’re innately wired we’re not really dissecting what this cont is that this person is creating who it’s for it’s just success okay I need to copy that emulate that I need to become that when really I’m something else trying to achieve something different yeah I like how you’re saying you know you’re kind of like the taste difference or you know the Gap in and you kind of like as you catch up your tastes are going to you know going to go to that next level and it almost reminds me of how how people talk about entrepreneurship and there is no destination necessarily it’s just enjoying the game or it’s enjoying the process and part of that process is once you hit a level you’re going to have the next level in your sights and it’s going to be this constant game of you know chasing building the next thing do you feel that about the things that you’re building it’s like next next next I mean % like I have always had this perspective I know like meaning of life is very very person to person I don’t feel like there’s any right answer but the answer for me is the meaning of life is growth like if I’m not growing I’m just dying so what is growth at the end of the day it’s change so I need to be changing all the time to actually feel like I’m getting somewhere so like along the lines with business I’m we’re never stationary we’re always moving always adjusting always seeing okay how can we better help people which in turn helps us so something else I sort of really believe in just strongly is that improving someone else’s life is always a good business decision no matter what so if we can help someone get to where they want to go even if we’re not getting paid to do it it’s going to come back around in some form and like you could think like Karma or whatever it is but just in a really practical sense like helping other people that’s what it’s all about it’s what makes me feel good it’s selfish in that regard and it’s never steered me wrong and I just I feel like that’s sort of the step to take because it also leads you down different paths that you might not go down otherwise if you’re sort of on this set trajectory that you feel like you shouldn’t stick to yeah you and I both listen to Gary Vee and he’s big on that like I’m going to give all of this away I’m going to share everything I’ve learned along the way and you know I’m going to have my other businesses and I’m going to build things and I’m going to be a legitimate entrepreneur but his personal brand he’s not selling the courses you know he sells his books and everything like that but but he puts so much content out into the universe just to pay it forward share and I’m really I don’t know in the last like months I think I’m more attached to that goal than anything else like it’s so much less about chasing dollars or chasing titles and it’s really about chasing like what is the Legacy what is the footprint how many people are coming along this journey with me and that’s been the fun part is just to try to get you know I’m nowhere near his level but just learn from him and say like okay what is he doing that I could copy paste and put into my own little ecosystem and that’s one thing that I’m really trying to pull from him is is putting a lot out there value ad for free and pay it forward as much as possible and Legacy could sound too Grand to people they could be sort of scared like that’s a big idea but really we’re most impactful of people closest to us so it doesn’t even have to be at a grand scale like your legacy is the people around you it’s family it’s friends it’s co-workers it’s all of the people that we’re impacting on a daily basis even just a tiny little bit but if we’re impacting them in a positive way we’re leaving a little piece of us behind through other people yeah % you have done that with me because when I was on your podcast I don’t know a year ago now I was thinking of starting a podcast and you gave me all these you know little little tips and I think you sent me links to things that I needed to buy and I haven’t bought all of them yet but Tim Ferris in one of his recent podcasts he said you know use your first few podcasts to talk to people who you know could help you do your podcast so this is me like actively like channeling Tim Ferris to say like you have helped me before so much in in our first conversation and so now I’m just going to like tap into your brain more about like how to do the podcast thing how to do the the content thing like how to do the entrepreneurship thing it’s just going to be like basically you know you Consulting with me for an hour so that’s perfect because this is where I thrive like I’m not really a content creator of any sort really but helping people oneon-one find that path problem solving like this is my sport like growing up I played Sports all the time entrepreneurship is my hobby like this is what I do sun up to sundown if it’s not football season then I’m watching the Bears but other than that like this is everything I think about all day every day so I love this one-on-one sort of this is just where coaching you can call it coaching it’s it’s you coaching me I’m I’m abusing your time at this point no this is what I love because also I’m not one I’m not great at talking about myself I love diving into other people it’s just it’s my comfort zone yeah so ask but so like to give context when did you discover that this was your passion area like how long have you been playing in in your passion so is when I started doing like full-time entrepreneurship that’s sort of day one I lost my day job and weeks later I joined with a couple other people one of those people is my current business partner at Spire but I joined with them we were doing design and then we broke off and started spire on our own discovering that it’s what I wanted to do wasn’t something that I knew innately like I had no previous experience with family or friends or anyone who was entrepreneurial sort of the only view that I had was you go to school get a job it’s about it and I remember sitting at my desk one day and just sort of being resigned to the fact that like this was it the day job that I was in I had one rung above me like I had moved up a couple rungs and not that’s not to say anything I started as an intern moved up to the first run second run and then there was manager that was it there wasn’t it wasn’t a big organization or anything and I remember just thinking I’m like wow this is it like I can make a few more bucks every year but really there’s nothing more to life like it was a big question mark for me and it was when the -Hour Work Week came out from Tim Ferris that I think I bought it the week it came out and I read that and it just opened in my mind to a world that I did not know existed it was like or whatever before the internet really before you could really see people doing all this stuff so that’s like one of the major inflection points in my life is that book and it’s not the only work four hours a week or any of that it’s it was purely understanding that something else was possible so now I need to find out how to get there so I’m always like once I saw it I couldn’t unsee it which did also mean I innately was pulling back from the day job I wasn’t into it as much as I was before but I was consuming as much as I possibly could Twitter was brand new and following all these entrepreneurs really trying to learn and understand where I could go trying different I don’t like to say failed but just trying different things to see if I could make money doing something like I did art prints for a while and just different things that were just stepping stones to get to where where I was going to be but I’m grateful because what happened was I lost that job in and without them pulling the Band-Aid I don’t know if I would have like I don’t know I don’t know how long it would have taken me to change as a person to understand like I need to take the leap and do this so that was huge for me and then I had already been sort of laying the groundwork to have relationships so I just started reaching out to people made sort of deepened connections and then it was just been going from there in terms of working with people directly like the coaching and like really sort of Consulting and one-on-one stuff that again just sort of evolved with time so it Spire like our most recogn ized like partners that we’ve worked with since day one they’re called the minimalists we have a documentary with them that was on Netflix called minimalism and I met Josh and Ryan when their site was weeks old we were part of their storyline is that people saw our website in the first month well myself and Dave my business partner were two of those and they were just doing something different they were taking minimalism at a time when if anyone came to me and said I want to start a minimalism business I would have said this is Peak minimalism there’s way too many blogs about it it’s just is not at space for it to happen but they showed up and they basically brought philosophy to the space in a way that no one had everyone was doing ways to declutter your closet where they came in is came in and said What would life be like if you had less like how could you improve your life with less and it was just a completely different mind space than everyone else so we reached out to them and we were just like and we were friends already and it was just like okay we can make your site so much better you self-publish this book how about we give you like a real book cover how about we do these things to make your brand match the level of the product that you’re creating and that might have been the first time when it it really started to click in into this iteration so this was like maybe I forget exactly when but clicking into the iteration of collaboratively working with someone to develop the brand in business in a way that I know can work but I’m never going to be the one to create it I won’t be the face of it cuz I’m very rarely sort of in front of camera I’m always be behind camera and being able to work with someone and help them get to where they want to be just really strikes me as something that is so satisfying in a way I can’t even really Define I think that’s a big part of the game that I see now the game of Entrepreneurship is not just you as a solo preneur building on your own in a in a bubble the game and how you play it best is like who do I know who’s building what who can I help who can help me in return and and just collaborating with the right individuals and then all kind of growing together like one part of the project takes off all kind of take a step forward together and I don’t think that’s talked about enough early in entrepreneurship I think there’s this this sense that you have to hustle and it’s like online portrayal of Entrepreneurship is so off of what it actually is like the online portrayal right now is Click baity it’s make $in the next days it’s I write for hours and post on on medium and quit my full-time job because now I’m a copywriter like it’s all of those kind of things that are no that’s not how the game is actually played and you’re you might be successful with it but that’s not where true entrepreneurship lives and that’s not where you can really truly build something big so I don’t know I’ve been thinking about that a lot because I’m in a building mode and I’m like who do I who do I want to be building with who do I you know I also want to build with people I Vibe with and so it’s interesting that you you know you know kind of made that connection and realized like okay this is collaborating with people who I Vibe with and and I’m Gonna Shine a spotlight on what they do best because of what I do best and and just everybody’s bringing their best to the table and like bam you take a step forward together mhm yeah I like that you said who can I help like I really think at the end of the day that’s the the PIN to stick in anything that we’re doing is who can I help and in return that will somehow become profitable business something sustainable I don’t know how long it’ll take maybe I don’t really even know the path it could be something completely different but Maven for example was it it came out of trying to figure out what Amara my girlfriend could do instead of working in Academia she was an archist at the at UIC University of Illinois Chicago in a basement with six other people no windows all day every day and half hour commute and it was just it was just a lot so through my podcast actually again this is action experience opportunity I spoke with someone who was doing real estate photography and just talking to him I realized oh this is something this is a lane that Amar could just try just one of many things she was trying other things she was on Etsy she was on Tik Tok sort of earlier and all these different things to see sort of where she vibed and what she could do she reached out to someone on Instagram despite like that hesitation that we all have you know that she did not want to reach out like cold DM someone I also don’t want to call DM anyone but she was just like no I’m going to try this and see what happens so she reached out and said you’re literally the first person I’ve reached out to I’m in town like I’m nearby not in town but in the Chicago area do you need someone to do photography no response she finds someone else who seems like she would vibe with her you’re literally the second person I’ve ever reached out to do you need photography and then she responded I don’t need photography but I need video and that is what set everything in motion was that moment because Amar had been doing video she had a YouTube channel that was doing pretty well Tik Tok was doing very well she had been doing these things for a while but it wasn’t there it wasn’t in the mind space yet until that opportunity presented itself and it’s like oh I can follow that path let’s try this out and it’s just grown from there ever since and the ability to just say yes I’ll figure it out where where she wasn’t originally thinking video yes I can also do video figure it out and and just kind of that whatever it takes hustle mentality of of Entrepreneurship I think is great and I’ve found that not everyone’s wired that way which is beyond me I don’t it’s it’s not speak against anyone who isn’t but I’m wired that way so much that I don’t understand the other side like I did wedding photography for a while like it was I’m not sure somewhere around that window whenever the iPhone GS was out I would photos on my iPhone edit them post on Facebook and one of my friends was like oh I love the photos you post would you shoot our wedding and like you have that moment where I’m just like really I’m like I’ve never held a professional camera but I’m like okay so I spent the next months just diving into everything photography bought my first DSLR camera learned everything I could shot as much as I possibly could and then months later shot photos for their wedding and then did a handful of those over time it was never a path that I was going to take it was never something that I’m like this is a full-time thing but I’m like I love photos these are happy generally weddings are happy um areas so like I would like to be in that space doing something to help people to give them the documentation of it so why not give it a world so years of entrepreneurship what are your favorite things about entrepreneurship and what are the things that you’re like I could do without this H so really like I said just the sport of it I just love I love problem solving I was always into like board games and puzzles and like like not like solving puzzles not necessarily the pieces together puzzles but like okay how do I get from this point to that point and that’s really the thing that I love absolutely most like I don’t really care what the business is as much as solving the problem of getting someone from where they are to where they they want to be which I also think is an important sort of thing to note for anyone working with coaches it always gets to me when a coach will project what someone should be and I think a great coach meets the person where they are understands where they want to go and helps take them there and it’s unfortunately rare in the space I’m not a coach I just I help people but it’s like I’m just sort of talking about the coaching World in general and it’s just sort of disheartening at times because it’s easier to project where I think you should be but really what can help someone is start where they’re at and take them to where they want to go and know that that relationship if I do a good job that business relationship will end and it will end sooner rather than later which is why I don’t really love the coaching space as just pure coaching because if there isn’t anything more it’s incentivize to keep people around to continue to coach as long as possible whether we innately are withholding anything or not it’s just that industry is a tough one for me cuz I I really want to see people go and just explode and really get somewhere yeah but but yeah anyway just finding that different path by any means necessary that’s really something that speaks to me too just like you were mentioning yeah I I worked with a coach I I say I worked with a coach I spoke with a coach one time and the coach kind of talked to me about the need for me to time block my days and I have a brain that is more like a creative brain than anything else and it will zig and it will zag and what I’ve Loved about being in an entrepreneurial Lane with a whole bunch of different clients is I can move as my brain is moving and I don’t time block anything you know like I’ll time block meetings or things like that but but I’ll just have big blocks of time on my calendar that are just like do work and it’s just like hours and I find efficiency in my brain you know doing that and it’s not a typical way of doing things and it’s not a way that anyone would coach anyone to do it but it’s what works for me and so from day one of like oh you don’t like how I currently do things okay I’m I’m out because I can’t connect to you and and I’ve already I’ve spent years doing it this way and now it almost um entrepreneurship has just added fuel to that fire of jumping from place to place to place but doing so in a way that keeps my brain fresh and I don’t ever feel burnout because if I’m starting to feel burn out on one thing then I jump and I do something else and I move whenever I hit a place of frustration move to the next thing and I know it’s really been interesting because I think entrepreneurship also takes you out of a traditional to timeline and I’ll find early morning certain things flow really well and then midday I’ll check out of work for a little bit go outside do something that’s not in front of my computer and then I’ll work on things until p.m. sometimes just cuz my brain’s in a different place at that point and so I don’t know I like the fact that work is just in a way like you can kind of structure it however you want to structure it and every day day is I don’t know every day for me is a little bit different do you have more of a more of a traditional structure than I do um not at all so so like you know people um tout morning routines and this and that and people spend hours doing these things and that’s never really been me at all like I might I’ll have a cup of coffee and maybe read a little bit but beyond that it’s so open-ended day-to-day that I it doesn’t click for me like I don’t resonate with with that rigid structure and I never did either and I think that’s really where the creativity comes from we need that time to get somewhere worth getting and if everything is time blocked if it’s like okay this is my creative time this is my whatever time this is that I think that sort of kismet just can’t happen that moment of just something special coming about having conversations with people that you didn’t necessarily plan on maybe at a coffee shop and you just you sit down here talking to someone and you just you get something different a different input that you wouldn’t have had if that time was minutes here gone minutes here gone and yeah I just think it’s important for me anyway I know people really operate on structure but I like it open-ended like that too do you have little hacks with your brain to have super intense creative moments that’s a good question so in the past I used to always have sort of for lack of a better descriptor one man versus the world movies like on in the background so like I’ve watched the born identity thousands of times probably and like Dexter and I know I mean Dexter’s dark but it’s like the energy of like a action thriller was the thing that would get me in the zone for usually like programming and like problem solving but then if I really take a step back it’s because this is one person solving some wacky problem that should be impossible to get through and at the end they get to the other side but I didn’t really know that it was just this is what I would gravitate towards I haven’t been doing that as much since I really turned more into the working with people versus working sort of in a bubble so like programming and things like that that really worked for me because I could get so much more done but yeah now do I would I have something like that you’re hero’s journey yeah basically if if I can feel that that hero’s journey happening that’s really something that speaks to me but yeah now I don’t even I don’t know if I have something other than just conversations a lot of time with Amara we might be in the car right now because we’re traveling a lot for Maven might be on a plane in the car whatever where just things start to come together and we’re like oh what about what if we go this direction or we can add this or people really need this we need this too maybe we’re the ones to make this exist and stuff like that is really happening organically but it’s in silence like to be honest like that is the only time that I think it can really come about at least for me like really creative stuff is downtime peace silence like our house is completely silent all day every day like she’s in the other room at her desk editing with headphones on I’ll be back here wherever and yeah if anyone came in they just be like how is their no sound but we have sound we have headphones right but yeah it’s just um yeah I think that’s the thing for me is finding that downtime finding the time to sort of just see what happens but yeah no real good hack I guess I like that you have her as a sounding board too I think you know people who try to go down the solopreneurship path it’s got to be so lonely because there’s constantly things that you’re you’re thinking about chewing on that you it’s good to be able to talk through those things with people MH absolutely it’s so important I’ve never actually done anything fully solo even though it’s so it was me and Dave or is me and Dave for Spire Josh at the minimalists Jill at kidney stone diet Amar at Maven it’s always been with at least one or a couple people but basically oneon-one like the one main person and then I’ll work with them but yeah it is funny because like that’s a really good point like I don’t think I would do any of this if it was only me just completely isolated like I need that complimentary person too because I like to think that I’m good at the things I’m good at but there are many things I am just not good at at all and to have someone who can compliment and help in those areas and do their thing cuz that’s where they shine that means everything but it comes back down to finding a partner sort of like you mentioned earlier it’s hard to find the right partner there isn’t there isn’t sort of a catchall solution to that unfortunately yeah if someone’s listening to this who hasn’t dove into the content game or is maybe scared of diving into the content game like what is your what is your advice to someone who’s just getting started I think the first question is always why with anything so is it to be famous is it to sell to a client clients a thousand clients like what what are we trying to do at the end of the day because that’ll inform everything else so like I’ve always been behind the scenes never really doing much content for myself but all of our businesses are word of mouth so we don’t need to work with very many people to make it sustainable for us and to help them so that means I don’t really need to be in front of that many eyeballs it’s it’s not really a numbers game as much Maven is interesting too because we started filming with the one person then a couple others he about it because we’re filming with her we have an Instagram now a YouTube account we post to it but we’re only posting the documentation of the things that we’re doing we’re not really educating we’re not doing the things that we help other people do honestly we don’t do that for ourselves we want to do it but we almost need our a version of ourselves to help us with that yeah so it’s like a weird thing but it also it works like our model isn’t one where we need to reach a, people like we have like followers on instagramers I have no idea how many but it’s under for sure by far but that is plenty that is more than we need we have a handful of clients they’re called top bananas and like they are the entire business like people are coming in people could leave we haven’t had very many leave but there’s a lot of inbound requests because they see that this person that I respect is getting a great product and they’re sharing how easy it is and how are they getting that because most people have had just nightmares with videographers which is hard for us to understand because I guess it just sort of comes back to why like why people are doing it again like what we’re doing is having fun with people and at the end of the day there’s a product the videos that they can use and I think people forget get that like personal side of things like this is a person business which I think almost every business is especially service based ones if you’re not having a great time in the moment I don’t care how great those videos are those are not going to be really happy clients if they’re stressed out if they’re if they experience something where they’re telling other people how horrible it was you’re not going to stick around where we end up spending afternoons going out to dinner hanging out with people sometimes we stay at their houses when we go to like actually film with because they’ve invited us like we’ve never we would never asked like that’s so not what we’re doing but we just click and we basically just work with our best friends is what it came down to at the end of the day and I think that’s important to realize because we also pick who we work with we’re not just taking anyone on because we all need to have a good time if we’re not having a good time it’s hard to make a great product out of it I think that’s the other great thing about entrepreneurship is being able to work with people you you really like and work with people you Vibe with and if it’s somebody that you don’t Vibe with then you just make the decision I’m not going to work with this person and you just don’t have that ability when you’re not behind the wheel so I totally I’m so on board with with that selection level of like pick your clients um I know you said you’re kind of jamming on something super secret right now anyone who’s out there who’s listening what kind of help do you need or if you had to like wave a magic wand and like you got someone reached out to you that could help with XYZ like is there anything that you need help with right now so this is funny because I never sort of take on anyone else so this is the one thing is our business has always been take everything off of your plate the only times we ever tried to Outsource things we would end up redoing it and it was only design just a couple times and we never went back to it but part of what I’m looking at now is actually working with more people so trying to find the right people who can achieve very narrow tasks I guess M that can then help Realtors specifically and that is what I’m thinking about so it’s funny that you ask that I don’t know that I have like an archetype of a person in mind currently but I do appreciate that question they need to know social media they need to know design they need to be able to post you know or or distribute content is that kind of the Genesis potentially so that’s the tough part I’m such a systems person that I basically someone who wants to get a job done and get it done right every time that’s more what matters than any skills for me so like we can teach the things that we need done and create those systems one final question before I let you go because I have a lot of people who follow my page who are in the fitness industry of course they’re going to want to know like what’s your go-to workout at this moment and how do you feel like Fitness has impacted your entrepreneurial Journey so that was a big part of what I was doing for a while we had a platform called paleo porn so it was food porn not porn porn but we did a lot in the Paleo space in the early days so I’ve been like gluten-free sort of basically following a Paleo lifestyle since it’s been a huge part of who I am not paleo specifically but health and wellness but I think that’s so important that we can’t be we can’t actually show up completely if we don’t feel well so to me that’s so just vitally important when it comes to diet and sleep and exercise I do have to say that um fitness-wise I have fallen off of where I used to to be pretty dramatically but I’m very simple when it comes to that stuff just I mean literally if you see right this is my squat rack like this is my office SL gym so so like I do squats I do like trap bar deadlifts and push-ups and pull-ups and really basic stuff but having access to it all the time is really nice it’s just a really simple setup but yeah usually I would try to be fasted in the morning when I wake up just do a small workout I used to work out much more intense lift heavy and that’s sort of Fallen by the wayside with everything else that I’m doing all right well somebody up in Chicago’s got to connect with Jeff we got to get him back on this Fitness grind we got to bring that A+ effort to to get A+ results is is there anything else that you want to comment on that we haven’t talked about any advice you want to share generally I feel like I haven’t helped you enough I actually ended up talking you got me to talk about myself which that worked so I but yeah I’d be happy to help with anything that you would need too even just as a sounding board for anything you’re thinking I appreciate you so much and we’ll connect at vcon and then maybe we do like a round two you know we’ll come back to all of the things once I have a few more podcast episodes under my belt and know a little bit more about what I’m doing then I’ll come back with some more educated questions for you no it’s all good thank you so much for coming on to the society pod Jeff we really appreciate it and I hope everybody enjoyed this episode we hope you enjoyed this episode of the society pod