Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - Hi everybody, and welcome to today's episode of the Gem series. I am pleased to welcome my guest, Bob Hunter. Bob, how are you doing? I'm wonderful. How are you doing, Blake I am doing quite well, man. You know, we were talking before we started and there's just so much that I want to cover because you've done a little bit of a little bit of everything and you're doing some really exciting things right now. Just usually the way I kind of kick it off is, would you mind just sharing a little bit about yourself for the audience, for anybody that doesn't know you yet?

Speaker 2 (00:00:32) - Yeah, sure. My name is Bob Hunter. I'm the founder of Oxford Pierpont and my business Credit Oxford started as a business development firm. So if you can imagine kind of talking to a doctor and saying like, Hey, here are all my symptoms. And the doctor says, Oh, hey, here's what's causing it. Here's your prescription. That's the approach that we've always taken at Oxford.

Speaker 2 (00:00:50) - And one of the things that we discovered mostly through the pandemic is financing is one of the biggest issues that people have is just simply having enough money for their business. So my business credit serves that purpose. We show people how to get access to the money that they need. We educate people on like, Hey, here's everything the bank is going to ask you for. Here's all the stuff you don't have, here's how to fix it, and then that's it. So that's pretty much what I do.

Speaker 1 (00:01:15) - That's amazing. And you know, I again, like I said, I have a lot that I want to cover. But I was curious, are you also are you in Georgia?

Speaker 2 (00:01:24) - I am. I'm in Atlanta, yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:01:26) - Okay, great. We should have done this in person. We'll have to meet up. I'm I'm in Atlanta as well.

Speaker 2 (00:01:30) - Oh, awesome. Yeah, I love Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (00:01:33) - Yeah, me too.

Speaker 2 (00:01:34) - Besides the traffic, you know, So we have to meet up at a time where it's not traffic time.

Speaker 2 (00:01:38) - Yes.

Speaker 1 (00:01:40) - Did you grow up in Georgia?

Speaker 2 (00:01:42) - Pretty much, yeah. I've been here since I was, like, four.

Speaker 1 (00:01:44) - Okay. Okay, great. And what was. Yeah, what was growing up like? You know, always. Not that I'm expecting everybody to have their perfect. Oh, I went to eBay and I used to go to garage sales and flip things, but yeah, it was. Was there anything, you know, what was your upbringing like and do you think any of that kind of shaped some of your decisions now to be an entrepreneur?

Speaker 2 (00:02:05) - It's interesting, kind of just with children, especially now that I have a kid, Um, you kind of. Have the same habits, at least I did throughout childhood is just as smaller, you know, little intervals. And so I say that because I'd always been selling stuff. Like, for example, a lot of the kids, you know, they were interested in being rappers and stuff like that for the school that I went to.

Speaker 2 (00:02:30) - And I mean, I'm not a rapper. I don't know how to do any rapping, but I knew how to use the microphones and recording. And so I sure enough said, Hey, we'll make the CDs and sold those at, you know, at school and just little. There were so many little times throughout my childhood where I was getting into entrepreneurship without fully realizing that's what it was. And so it's been kind of a lifelong thing for me. It's just been something that I'm always interested in. So that is what growing up was like for me, and I'm grateful now. My parents weren't so happy about that when I was a kid. But in hindsight, everything's paid off.

Speaker 1 (00:03:07) - Yeah, it's that's really neat. I, I, you know, did the same thing in high school with doing some production work and helping people out, getting into getting into, you know, logic and trying to trying to make make things for folks. That's that was a really it's interesting though you know it's whenever you're an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 (00:03:29) - And it kind of also just ties into like a need to help people to think and seeing that there's folks out there that have big dreams and hopefully, you know, you can be there to facilitate making their life a little bit easier and with their.

Speaker 2 (00:03:44) - I'd say also there's I guess there's a really big importance on understanding what you are good at. You know, people always say it's always so cliche when people say it, but, oh, you know, start a business for what you're good at. You know what you're passionate about. I like creating things. I like building websites. I like designing things. That's what I like to do. I've tried to fit into other people's boxes and it just does not work. And so for the people out there, the people who might be listening, just genuinely think about the things that you do when no one's asking you to do anything. And that's probably what you're going to be most successful at. And accepting that, as hard as it may be, even though there might not be a dollar amount attached to it right away, that's probably going to be the thing that you just find.

Speaker 2 (00:04:31) - Has the least resistance makes you most successful as a person?

Speaker 1 (00:04:34) - Absolutely. And sometimes it's interesting. I don't know if you found this, but I've found that sometimes those things. They're clear as day. But for some reason, we're kind of stubborn about actually seeing what's in front of us. Do you have any advice for people that are trying to try, you know, trying to maybe get a pulse on on what's out there?

Speaker 2 (00:04:54) - Yeah, it's a pretty there's a pretty good reason for it. Most of us have to do this thing called adulting. And so, yeah, got to pay bills. You have to, you know, pay the rent or pay the mortgage. Pay your car, pay for your kids. There's all these things that you have to pay for as an adult. And so the balance sometimes can be difficult to achieve between the things I have to do for basic survival or for comfortability and the things that I want to do, the things that I might start out as hobbies. And so my advice would be, number one, figure out what your me time is and figure out how to maximize that time.

Speaker 2 (00:05:31) - In the US, a lot of us get off somewhere around 5 or 6:00, right? Maybe you've got an hour of traffic getting home, so you're somewhere around six, 7 p.m. before you're actually home. You might go to bed somewhere around 10 p.m., right? Somewhere in there. You've got to eat, spend time with your family. So maybe you can squeeze out an hour at the most. Even if you were only going to take that one hour per day, just five of the days out of the week, that's still 20 hours per month that you're putting into something, right? Absolutely. That adds up over the course of the year. And now maybe you're not having to go to work during the day in the first place because you've invested that time into yourself, even if it was just the one hour so that you're doing the things that you want to do. And that's how you really transition out of the I'm working to survive, to I'm doing the things that I want to do and making money in the way that I feel more comfortable with and that I enjoy.

Speaker 1 (00:06:21) - So yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (00:06:22) - That's the thing.

Speaker 1 (00:06:24) - People like. It's, it's, I guess that kind of makes me think that, you know, because I've heard this before too, but a lot of the times I feel that people probably what they're looking for is motivation and what they need is just discipline and to lean into the mundanity, you know? Yeah, hey, this isn't always going to be something that's that's sexy or fun to do, but that, that consistency. Yeah. You know, it compounds it.

Speaker 2 (00:06:50) - Just that motivation part can be very dangerous because so many people focus on the motivation. But motivation is like a quick jolt of energy. It's only discipline that is really going to get you through your goals because motivation is so fleeting. You know, you can wake up and be super inspired about whatever idea you have, you know, going for yourself, but then you find out about all the little things that are not as exciting that you have to do anyway to make your vision happen.

Speaker 2 (00:07:16) - And it's only discipline that's really going to make that happen. Discipline is doing the stuff that you genuinely just needed to do, regardless of whether you want it to do it or not. So yeah, that that's a dangerous one. Yeah. Oh, you just make sure you're motivated. Yeah, I mean, be motivated, but don't rely on that.

Speaker 1 (00:07:37) - Exactly. Exactly. I'm like, Hey, motivation is a gift, but discipline is a choice, right? And right. Yeah, I totally very, very well put. I agree. Um, so tell me a little bit more about because I was looking and it's sounds like you, you know, out of high school going into like exploring your career, you had a, you had a job where you were, um, a major leader over there for, for a while. So tell me about that season of life and yeah, how are things going for you then and how are you feeling in that, in that kind of it sounds like maybe was a 9 to 5 type of scenario or.

Speaker 2 (00:08:14) - Yep. So I was the director of operations development, those literally a title I made up for myself because I will never forget it. So the guy that interviewed me is a good friend of mine now to this day. Um, I told him, I said, you know, this is the job that you're hiring for. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be good at that job, but I will be able to do these other things for you, like I'll be able to create. He puts me in the other job anyway. Sure enough, I am quickly like, Hey, this could be done better this way. We could be doing these things this way. Got into writing operating manuals and and standard operating procedures, and then that expanded to roughly every 90 days. My job was just basically to look around the place, see what could be better in the business. And I basically had 90 days to implement a solution. It was everything from creating ERP systems, making sure that we were ISO 9001 certified, making sure that we had tracking for production like all these different things.

Speaker 2 (00:09:15) - It was just such variety. Like every quarter. It was just a lot of variety. That all came in handy when it was time for me to have my own business, because as a consultant, I'm literally talking to so many different business owners and having I guess those experiences in my actual job beforehand just really opened my mind up to being able to see things as quickly as possible, like identify what the problem was, see how to help people and see the shortest way towards implementation for those solutions. So, so yeah, that's, that's how the whole work thing went. And I hadn't really worked since 2016 and it's just because I actually went blind this I and I lost my job over it. So that's basically how that happened. It was a blessing in disguise at the time. It wasn't fun, but I have Goku to thank for my ability to read because at the time I don't know if anyone watches anime, but a lot of it comes out first in Japanese, then it's the English dub.

Speaker 2 (00:10:17) - Well, at the time Dragon Ball Super was every Sunday, but it was only in Japanese tiny subtitles at the bottom in white. And so I couldn't really read at first because I was adjusting to, you know, just seeing again without without this eye. It was a big shadow right here. But I wanted to make sure every single week I saw the new episode of Dragon Ball Super, and that's kind of what sped up the process for me. So yes, shout out to Dragon Ball Z. Dragon Ball, Super Dragon Ball, not Dragon Ball GT and all the others.

Speaker 1 (00:10:52) - With you on that. Yeah, I've been actually going back through it recently, but that's, that's huge. I mean that's a, that's a life shifting event. I mean and you're, and you came out the other side I mean from what I've seen better for it but what Yeah. What were you feeling like that sounds extremely hard to navigate.

Speaker 2 (00:11:15) - It was awful at first because you don't really know what to do and you can fall very quickly into the trap.

Speaker 2 (00:11:23) - Yeah. And so again, in hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise because I was way too comfortable at that job. And you know, I had my cushy office and I really had no reason to ever grow out of that phase of my life. So I was forced out of it. And that's why I say blessing in disguise, because I've been able to accomplish so many things now that I never would have even pursued if that hadn't happened to me. So when things are happening to you, I guess what I'm saying is try to see a way that you can turn that, I guess that lemon into lemonade, as people say, you know, it's a literal thing like you just do that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:12:04) - Was there So is there anybody that when you were going through that like that gave you kind of insights on, you know. Their own experience? Or like, how did you build support for yourself when you're transitioning through something that daunting and scary and new?

Speaker 2 (00:12:24) - I didn't really have a whole lot of support.

Speaker 2 (00:12:27) - In fact, I lost a lot of support over it because my relationship ended shortly after Long Story, and it was after that that I finally just got really serious about the business thing. I tried to get another job. So to be clear, um, lose the vision. February 29th, 2016 Leap year. Of course, I lost my job by April 4th of that of that year. Oxford didn't start until October, so the six months in between, I really was trying to find, you know, another job, trying to find some way to make money and pay the bills. All I knew was what I'd been doing for the previous, you know, at that point, what, 4 or 5 years. Yeah. And so my old boss, when I mentioned earlier, he was actually the person who ended up connecting me with my first client. They were the Oxford Highland Group. They were mergers and acquisitions firm in Atlanta. So I made them website, made them like the logos, everything, uh, end up getting another client and it just kind of grew from there.

Speaker 2 (00:13:32) - So I was very blessed in the way that, yeah, all this stuff happened to me. But I did have someone that I had done good work for before, and he was able to, you know, refer me to people that I might be able to start this new journey with. So I guess I did have support in that way. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:13:49) - That's no, that's incredible though. And during that six month period mean. Yeah it's interesting how life you know we sometimes whenever we get to these conclusions, these places where we've realized oh my gosh like I am I have hit a low Sometimes when you dig deep, you know and you mean you probably recognize like I've built up, I spent my life building these skill sets and they are something that can be that can be leveraged. So what was the first kind of what was the first client? What were you taking care of for them? And then what was kind of the business? Was it it was Oxford Pierpont that you had started first, right?

Speaker 2 (00:14:26) - Yep.

Speaker 2 (00:14:26) - So Oxford Pierpont still have that one, almost didn't survive the pandemic, but, you know, came out of that just fine in the end. But that's the business that's been around since 2016 because when I lost the job, that was basically what ended up coming out of it. And my goal was to basically do what I had been doing for the company that I had worked for before, just developing things I quickly learned, um, I quickly learned two things. I wanted to help small business owners. I definitely learned the hard way. It is very difficult to help small business owners because I've got to eat too. Small business owners don't often have the money that they need to hire consultants and to pay the people that they need to to be able to grow their businesses. Of course, now fast forward 2023, we have my business credit. We help people get money. Didn't know all that back in 2016. So but I started out I'm doing consulting for people. I'm building websites, designing logos, a lot of design work, copywriting.

Speaker 2 (00:15:29) - Basically, I wanted to be like a one stop shop for people again, you don't know what you don't know until later. Now I know if you're going to build a business, have a niche. Your life is so much easier if you just can focus on one market, master that market and then add somebody else. So a little bit later, it took us until about, I'd say 2018, 2019 before we added attorneys as our sole niche and mortgage came along shortly after. So we started working with like Wells Fargo home mortgages, Big One, Loan Depot, Fairway. We started getting into that, but before that I was just kind of taking business from whoever I could. I didn't really know how to price myself properly. So I'm consulting people on development stuff, having to consult myself on basics like pricing and and how to handle the whole customer service thing in a in an efficient way and just, you know, quality of service and all that stuff. So yeah, only stupid people know everything.

Speaker 1 (00:16:32) - Oh, and that's the great thing is, I mean, you don't have to you really don't have to know know everything as long as you have your, your one thing that you know you're strong at and can can double down on. And then usually then from there it's it's tricky building out a team and think heard your team spans like six countries or something like that right now is that.

Speaker 2 (00:16:51) - Yes Yeah Yeah. So there's a few reasons for that. One is that we do also have a staffing arm of Oxford, so there's Oxford Pierpont Staffing and we do have people all over for that. Um, another reason for that, and this is just something I've learned along the way, you know, sometimes you got to learn the hard way if you don't have the knowledge. You're not reinventing the wheel. In most cases, somebody knows what you need to know. So either pay that person for their knowledge or hire that person, or at least, you know, just do a consultation where you're able to to learn from them because it's better to.

Speaker 2 (00:17:31) - Get that person's already made their own set of mistakes and knows what not to do. Instead of you just trying to Google or chat your way through all these solutions, which of course there was no ChatGPT before November 30th of 2022. So it was a lot harder than it is now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:17:47) - Yeah. No, you're right. You're right, Bob. And mean that's true all the time is I'm like, hey, that's a that's probably one of the hard lessons that I learned is you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You need to go. You need to go track that person down. That's doing great. And if they come with a playbook, then that is going to just you know, it cuts so many steps out of the process. Right? Um, and I, you know, it makes me really happy to hear that you are partnering with people, with, with people in all kinds of different countries. You know, it's interesting. I've noticed that a lot of so, you know, our company, my company included and so many companies really do leverage, you know, international talent.

Speaker 1 (00:18:31) - But for some reason, it's this kind of like hidden thing. Do you think that's kind of shifting in the culture right now?

Speaker 2 (00:18:38) - Uh, to an extent. And the reason I say that is it really depends on what area of the business they're serving. Um, in my experience for back end functions. Not to say that I wouldn't hire in the US. It's just that I would look outside of the US first, of course, because you can often find people that have a lot more experience at way less of a labor cost. So that's the biggest reason there. However, the second that they are customer facing, then I'm more apprehensive when it comes to hiring outside of the US. A lot of that has to do with, you know, the decades of poor customer service that Americans have experienced when you're dealing with major companies and they've outsourced their customer service to other countries. And so, I mean, everyone knows I'm talking about especially like in the 2000 you'd call like Xfinity and about your Internet service and it'd be someone in India.

Speaker 2 (00:19:37) - But the language barrier was just huge. And so there's just that frustration and everyone still kind of feels like that too, where there's almost this sensitivity to accents. If I'm not talking to an American or dealing with an American, I now view the business as a whole in a different light. So that's why I say customer facing. I always am looking inward towards the US. If I'm developing things, if I'm just running functions on the back end, yeah, I'm going to be looking at the Philippines, I'm going to be looking at India, I'm going to be looking at Pakistan, other countries to handle those functions.

Speaker 1 (00:20:14) - Yeah. And, you know, it's it's. It's just interesting because I don't know if I've even had the experience where I don't know if the US is. There's tons of talented people out there, but for those functions, I've often found that there there's even more talented folks in like in Philippines and Vietnam and you know, all of all of these, not to put it put anybody against each other and also you can provide like not even a living wage, but like a thriving wage.

Speaker 1 (00:20:49) - And you'll save you'll save costs. You know, it's kind of incredible.

Speaker 2 (00:20:54) - It's all dollars and cents for me. I think that I would hire in the US if it was more affordable. But it's just not. Not unless you're going to significantly increase your prices to your clients or your customers. So you have to think about that. If I'm going to sell someone, let's say we're going to sell them a marketing plan, right? So we're going to do some SEO, some social media, some advertising, maybe build a website in there, do some print, print, marketing, whatever it is. All that stuff I could have gotten from people in India and the Philippines, and I could have also had a bigger team doing all those things, usually for the price of one American that may or may not even do as good of a job. And the reason I say may or may not is because you also have to factor in work. Ethics are a little bit different here than they are in other countries.

Speaker 2 (00:21:49) - And so in the US, especially now, you know, no offense to any US workers, but the pandemic really did take a toll on the employer employee relationship. Yes. And so as an employer in the US, if you hiring American workers, you have to provide a lot of shit. Excuse my language, a lot of stuff. You have to motivate people. And even then there's nothing keeping them with your company unless those benefits are just so valuable to them that it's extra work for them to now leave you and try to get the same thing elsewhere. For all of that expense, I could have gotten the same or better results outside of the US. Again, the line though, is drawn when it comes to jobs that are customer facing.

Speaker 1 (00:22:34) - Yeah. And you know, even with this, to think like an important thing for people to know and you can tell me your experience, but I feel like you can't expect just to hire somebody and then perfectly execute your vision unless you have taken the time to build out the process.

Speaker 1 (00:22:51) - And there are SOPs for damn near everything because then you just it's a crapshoot, whether it's repeatable or or scalable, you know, And it kind of goes back to hiring somebody with the, with the playbook, right? Where it's like they, they, they have people that they can bring into the fold that are going to successfully. Yeah. Execute on that.

Speaker 2 (00:23:12) - That's something I struggled with because I'm a perfectionist. Um, when I'm building my own website. So let's say that I'm building something new. I will literally spend like 2 or 3 full days obsessing over the shape and color of a button, little things like that that only I would do. However, once it's done, if it's going to be something that has to be done over and over again, now I can just simply train. So make a template train on what's to be done. But even then, I still don't expect more than 70 to 75% of what I would call perfection. So I expect at least 25% worth of mistakes.

Speaker 2 (00:23:53) - Somehow some deviation from what I said to do whatever it is. And that's just what you that's just what you get. And that's something you have to really just accept as an employer. No one's going to do things as perfectly as you are. However, as an employer, you get the benefit of other people's time and is worth it. 25% deviation from your perfection. Meaning I only have my 24 hours in a day. However, if I'm hiring people, I now get your eight hours and your eight hours and your eight hours. And now I can basically multiply myself if I can just let go of that perfection. So that is the one thing that you have to think about when you're hiring. And if you can get over that, then, yeah, you're able to scale and build a great team and put processes in place to mitigate, you know, those deviations. But overall, you're able to grow and stay on what's important.

Speaker 1 (00:24:46) - So what were some of the big adjustments that you ended up making after, you know, going through the pandemic? And how was that for you guys over there?

Speaker 2 (00:24:55) - So we almost did not survive the pandemic because remember, um, earlier I said that we learned to niche down to attorneys and mortgage.

Speaker 2 (00:25:06) - The problem with that in 2020, the courts were literally closed For a lot of businesses, marketing is one of the first things to go if money is tight, marketing is one of the. First things to go. Yes. People were not buying houses left and right in 2020 during the pandemic because there was so much uncertainty. So the mortgage brokers, they're not asking for as much traffic. They're trying to mitigate their expenses. And they're not even if we're, you know, sending people no one's taking action right now anyway because we're in the middle of this whole pandemic. And because I had put all of my, I guess, business eggs into those two baskets when the one on those baskets were no longer available, it's like, well, what do we do? So March of 2020 is when coronavirus is, you know, pretty much in the US. Yes. Late March it took me until June to pivot and figure out, okay, this isn't going anywhere. We need to do something else. That's when we started with business finance.

Speaker 2 (00:26:07) - My logic was, Well, everyone's complaining that they need money. Why don't we sell money? So that's. That's how that happened.

Speaker 1 (00:26:16) - No, that's that's incredible. And I know I love hearing yet another example of where you've turned. Just what is a difficult hand to deal with. And just, you know, even though it's not your fault, it it's still ends up being your responsibility whether you like it or not. Yeah. Um, so I, you know, that's, that's something that, you know, I apologize if you can hear that. That's okay. Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:26:46) - It's a cool ringtone. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:26:48) - Nice, Right? Um, but, you know, that's the big thing for me is whenever I hear that, it gets me excited because those are often the make or break moments that are so rare in life that determine whether or not we're going to either, you know, take off in a new direction or actually learn something. And I resist using the words when and lose, because I do think we can win and lose.

Speaker 1 (00:27:16) - But I think it's maybe a little more nuanced than that. It's want to know what's been your kind of relationship with, I don't know, the concept of failure over the years, you know, and.

Speaker 2 (00:27:28) - I think about that a lot because especially in the US, I don't know how it is for the education system in other countries, but we are taught the concept of failure from the school perspective. You know, you have a test, either you passed or you failed the test. The part that's different though, in school is some teachers stood up there and taught you everything beforehand and then tested you in real life. It's the other way around. Totally get the test and then you get the lessons should you survive that test. And so the very concept of failure becomes less of getting it right the first time and more about taking the micro lessons that you're getting along the way, applying them and then trying again. And so you've not really failed until you stop trying. As long as, of course, you're surviving all these little, you know, these little roadblocks and bumps along the way.

Speaker 2 (00:28:21) - Pandemic being a wonderful example of that. I had a way that was working. Obviously, I don't have a crystal ball. You know, I'm not a wizard. I don't know the future. So this thing happened. I tried to make my previous, you know, the knowledge I previously acquired fit into this new situation did not work, pivoted. Still, to be clear, it did not go perfectly the first time that we got into business finance. That's why my business credit is just now launching. It's now three years later instead of right away in 2020 because we had things to learn. But you keep learning, you keep applying, you make these micro failures, you apply those lessons and then you build on that. And that's why experience is such a dramatic factor and whether or not people are successful or unsuccessful because you have to be doing it long enough to get experience in the first place. Yeah. So just keep on going. It's like poker too. I mean, you don't get to ask the dealer for the specific cards that you want.

Speaker 2 (00:29:22) - You have to take whatever the hand is that you were dealt and you play your best game and sometimes you will win and sometimes you'll lose. And if you lose, you at least know a little bit more for the next game that you play.

Speaker 1 (00:29:33) - Yeah, and I love your mindset. Bob. It's I think that there's a lot that people can can take from that because I mean, it just seems like you've, you've absolutely built up some resilience and, you know, the kind of mindset where you can you can keep pile driving through everything. Not to say that you can't feel any of your feelings or anything like that. It's just, you know, if you remove the negativity from whenever something bad does happen in terms of, you know, sitting and sulking and, you know, burning time, you'll find that, hey, right around there, there's something to learn just objectively and and apply. And it'll probably lead you to be in a much better position after, you know.

Speaker 2 (00:30:19) - Don't be fooled, though, because I don't want anyone to think that those things don't happen where I'm not, you know, like, for example, the eye thing.

Speaker 2 (00:30:26) - Yeah. Like, yeah, I was pretty bummed about that, but I eventually got over it and learned how to move on. And I guess the older and more experienced that I get, the amount of time that I'm bummed out just get shorter and shorter. But I am still bummed out about stuff. But you learn to meditate, you learn to to just respect having a portion of your day where you are able to reflect on the things that you did right, things that you did wrong so that you can make tomorrow better. And it just is build up over time. So just in the same way we were talking about experience and micro failures. Yeah, those applied to your personal life too, even outside of business, like, Hey, how can I keep on just being better than who I was yesterday? And that's what builds up. So do I get bummed out? Absolutely. But I'm much quicker about getting over it and finding a way to, I guess, turn it around.

Speaker 1 (00:31:19) - Totally.

Speaker 1 (00:31:20) - Totally. And it's kind of like your your pain threshold almost, in a sense. Kind of, yeah. And it changes as you experience these things. I feel like, you know, because I was, you know, I was talking about this with some friends last night and we were like, why are why are chill? And I don't know. I think this kind of relates in that it's like, why are children so cruel to each other? And I was like, Well, it's a bunch of unhurt people that are hurting other people, right? And until you experience hurt and experience what life deals, deals you you're oftentimes going to whenever it does come your way the first time, it's going to be a lot more jarring than, you know, 50th or 100th time that you experience.

Speaker 2 (00:32:03) - Yeah, you get used to it.

Speaker 1 (00:32:04) - Yeah. Yeah, man. And, you know, I, I can't help a mention because I read somewhere your have you listened to some like David Goggins and do you like his stuff at all.

Speaker 2 (00:32:17) - So I do know who that is. I don't really listen to a whole lot of his stuff. There's only three things that I'm usually doing when I'm when I have downtime. Usually when I'm driving, either I'm listed. Into an audiobook. I love Audible. So I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I love learning languages. Part of that is because I do have people that are all over the place. And so whenever possible, I do like to speak to them in their language. So whenever the opportunity arises, I like to speak to the people in the Philippines in Tagalog. If I'm speaking with someone in India, I like to try and speak to them in, in, in Hindi. So I always joke talking to me for them has to be like, you know, talking to a toddler. You know how we would judge a toddler's English? But I learned that a lot of people just appreciate that you even tried to learn their language, even if you're only saying some words here and there, that's still better because you're expecting their language or culture in a way that just builds that bond between you and people that you've never physically seen in front of you.

Speaker 2 (00:33:26) - But, you know, got to make that bond over the Internet.

Speaker 1 (00:33:29) - So have you learned anything about different cultural communication styles that you should take into consideration when working with somebody in a, you know, a certain country?

Speaker 2 (00:33:40) - Yeah, definitely. Like India is, is a big one. Um, a lot of what we would perceive to be like rude if you're dealing with someone, a developer, especially from India for the first time is commonplace to me now. But like I, I would have thought like, well this person's like, you know, being an ass, but they're not really. It's just use as you work with more people from certain countries, you just learn the pattern like, okay, this is what the norm is. You learn who's sensitive. I have definitely learned my people in the Philippines are definitely more sensitive than what we would, I guess, be in in the US. And I guess it's a scale because as me as an American, I perceive some things that are said by developers and people I'm working with in India maybe as rude.

Speaker 2 (00:34:33) - Well, the scale is different because someone in the Philippines might perceive what I as an American say to be rude. So you have to make those those adjustments to how people prefer to be interacted with and then that makes your relationships easier to maintain.

Speaker 1 (00:34:46) - Absolutely. And yeah, getting more of a more global experience like that, it's always yeah, it's super fascinating, but it's also just practical, I think, in everyday, everyday life. Now that's, that's, that's really, really cool to hear and want to know too, like. Post-Pandemic. When did you start feeling like, Oh my gosh, I think I've got some traction here? Or did you feel that or what? Was maybe that? Yeah. What was that time of life like?

Speaker 2 (00:35:17) - Um. I don't know if I've ever really looked at it that way because sometimes it's it almost feels like just intervals between fires when you're at the at the building level of things, like when you're building things, nothing's ever done. And so for me, there's like just this infinite to do list that never is ever going to be done.

Speaker 2 (00:35:44) - And as soon as I think that I'm making some progress, new things get added to it. And so I don't think I ever really have the opportunity to see that, oh, you know, where we can be calm now. It's like, nope, that fire is now done. This is the next one that we're that we're putting out is just intervals between various little stressors. But I mean, yeah, post pandemic doesn't even feel like it's been three years because it's just been nonstop, which is a good thing because I could just be doing nothing. So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:36:14) - Well, there's a lot of I think there's a lot of bliss to be found in. Yes. Setting goals, but also trying to get into sort of a flow state where you're just content with moving forward and and being in that moment a little bit more, you know, because I it goes back to the, you know, the win the win lose or kind of kind of idea just because if we're always getting arriving at these points, what we'll realize is that even if we, you know, achieve our goal perfectly, what will happen is you'll be met with a quick descent of of, you know, feelings where you're like, well, don't really know what I do next, you know, or with that.

Speaker 2 (00:37:00) - My solution, easy solution for that anyone can apply. It just simply set a goal. That's I'm not going to say unachievable, but it will take a lifetime to complete. And the reason I say that is because it's so far off that it is going to take you a while. But also having that goal that is so big helps you dictate and know what all the little steps are going to be in between and you're never going to be finished with those unless your goal was just too small. For me, it is building those skyscraper farms. I've already priced it out. Each building is going to cost about $1.3 billion and I want ten of those. Wow. So that is just coming up with that much money being able to develop the technology that I need to pull that off. I want these buildings to be entirely automated. And I've been thinking about this since before the whole AI revolution. So it's going to be even easier now that we have the technologies that are emerging now. But it is a lifetime goal of something that's going to literally take my entire life to achieve, if I'm even able to see that goal to the end.

Speaker 2 (00:38:09) - So think about just really think about if you were to die, let's say you have six months to live. I don't know. Or even if you want to give yourself, you know, six years or 60 years, whatever it is, what is the one thing that you would really want to have said? This is what I finished in my lifetime. That's the thing that you probably should be working on. And all the little steps in between are towards or towards getting to that, to that one major goal. And then that's it.

Speaker 1 (00:38:39) - There's only one problem, Bob Now think my life goal needs to be making skyscraper farms too. So now, I mean, hey, that sounds.

Speaker 2 (00:38:47) - The more the merrier. Yeah, The point is to. Well, it's feeding the kids. So if whatever whatever you feel like is the problem that you're going to be solving for society, if that's what does it, then I mean, the kids get fed either way. So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:39:04) - Pulling your leg, I really was in my heart.

Speaker 1 (00:39:07) - I was hoping that that would be what you mentioned, because I'm just totally fascinated by that. And I think it is, you know, just has so much potential to. So what? Yeah. What led you to that conclusion whenever you were, you know, like to make, you know, skyscraper farms. It's so cool I.

Speaker 2 (00:39:26) - Kid you not totally random. I know nothing about skyscrapers, nothing about farming. And you know, I don't mind kids, but I don't particularly like, Oh, wow, You know, I just want to work with kids. None of those things are boxes that are checked off for me. I was meditating in the shower, minding my own business, and I was meditating on what I should do, and that is what was given to me. I guess. I don't know how I can explain. It's like it's like getting a enormous data dump of information all at once. It was the weirdest thing I've never get. I rush out of the shower, grab my notebook and, you know, wrote all these things down because it was like so much information at once.

Speaker 2 (00:40:11) - And it's nothing that I would have ever come up with myself because again, like, you know, I like architecture, but I think in particular about Skyscraper. Birds or, you know, farms. But now that it's been a few years and I've thought more about it, it does all make sense. And I immediately knew exactly what needed to be built. I knew exactly what they were going to look like. Like I could see it clear as day, like watching a movie. And I knew how to go about getting it. So, yeah, I wish I had some story that I could tell you about. Like, Oh yeah, I was passionate about this and that, but literally didn't happen that way. It's just random.

Speaker 1 (00:40:48) - That's how, you know, that's how the creative brain operates a lot of times. Right? Which is you're just every so often you get, you know, blessed with some sort of a some sort of a jolt of of creativity or being like, think there's something there.

Speaker 1 (00:41:03) - And then you go and you explore it and see if you know there is something practical or something that it would add value. And then you you expand on that a little bit more. I think it's exciting to just because, you know, obviously skyscrapers are typically in like an, you know, a metropolitan type of area. So that has great potential to eliminate food deserts as well. And, you know, do some do some really amazing things. What so tell me a little bit about your. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 (00:41:38) - Now you're going to tell me about.

Speaker 1 (00:41:39) - What I was curious about your research phase of like, Yeah, what have you been discovering about this? And you know, with your decisions that you're making with your business now, how do you align them to your, your kind of end goal that you have in mind?

Speaker 2 (00:41:52) - The biggest thing is making sure that I have the capital. Um, I've learned enough and worked with enough people to know that the knowledge part of it isn't really that hard.

Speaker 2 (00:42:03) - Um, even the concept. I'm not reinventing the wheel here. There are plenty of, of vertical farms, plenty of them. There are even people who, you know, they will build vertical farms inside of shipping containers. And there are all these different ways that people use vertical farm technology. Um, all I'm doing is stacking it, stacking what's already there. Nothing special about that. What I do need to make sure, though that I have the ability to do is, number one, acquire the businesses who have already done the research and have already, you know, develop the track record and technologies and things like that. So I need to make sure that I know enough about business, I know enough about acquisitions, I know enough of the people in those spaces to be able to do those things intelligently. I do know that I don't want very I don't want a lot of human involvement in my buildings. I want it to be as automated as it possibly can be, uh, number one for cost production, but two for efficiency of production.

Speaker 2 (00:43:08) - So I know that I need to make sure I'm surrounding myself with people who are already involved in those types of robotics and automation technologies to be able to pull that off. The other thing that I'm acutely, acutely aware of is the need for it to be self sustaining. So I do read a lot about emerging technologies when it comes to solar, when it comes to wind, when it comes to thermal energy, even even taking algae blooms and converting that into fuel, looking at all those different things on how you can power the building, you know, without having to have just this massive cost because I am trying to make sure that it is sustainable. I've even looked at I like this a lot, atmospheric electricity. So I have an idea where it's like, okay, I wonder if you could turn the entire building itself into a giant circuit because you have your negative in the ground, you have your positive ions, you know, in the atmosphere. If you could create a circuit that is developed in the building itself, I wonder how much power you could get out of that for running the building.

Speaker 2 (00:44:20) - So little things like that is really where my focus is. But before I get to any of that, I've got to make sure I've got the money first. I need about $10 billion. So that's really where I am in my journey. It's kind of like if you were going to be driving from Atlanta to San Francisco, right? You put in your address and the GPS is what tells you what roads you need to take. And even if there are detours along the way, road gets blocked. Whatever happens, you're always able to know very quickly whether or not you're on the right path. So that's kind of how I look at the journey. I know exactly where I need to be and I'm just one turn at a time getting my way there.

Speaker 1 (00:45:00) - Well, I think that's incredibly exciting. And, you know, I also just see so much potential in that. And also just in general think it's just your philosophy is something that I think everybody should adopt, which is, you know, we are capable of.

Speaker 1 (00:45:19) - Reaching that major in destination that can make an impact or be aligned with what our mission is. And it's important to trust that your steps that you're taking are moving in that direction. So it gets me gets me really excited. You know, I'm already sure. I'm like, bet once you get that proof of concept out, I'm sure there's skyscrapers all over Atlanta. Who would be like, Hey, why don't we do a few floors of farms in this? You know, in Occupy?

Speaker 2 (00:45:46) - I really just want to start small and and acquire a few companies and just mastered the technology because scaling to me is the easy part. Actually, the thing that people don't realize about money is there is a lot of it out there. All you have to do is just convince people to give you some of their money. That's literally how it works. Doesn't matter if you're talking to investors, if you're talking to the bank, they want to give you money as long as number one, they know that they will get it back.

Speaker 2 (00:46:13) - Number two, they believe in the end result of whatever it is that you say you're doing, even the bank the bank will happily give you millions of dollars. If only you can just prove, number one, that you can handle it, which usually means that, you know, you're proving I need this money because I already have money. That's usually how the logic works. But two, that you do have a clear way of getting that money back after that. Acquiring the funds is not that hard. Elon Musk bought Twitter for, I believe, $44 billion. He didn't have to use his own money for that. He got people to buy in for that. I don't know if it was a good investment in hindsight, but the point is, is that the money was there to buy the thing that he wanted. If only you're able to prove that what you're doing is actually going to pay off. So that's how I see it.

Speaker 1 (00:47:02) - That's absolutely right. And that's, you know, an important think that's an important idea.

Speaker 1 (00:47:07) - How did you start kind of realizing these, you know, coming to these conclusions and figuring this out? Because it just is true. But I think a lot of people don't necessarily. Yeah. Understand it or realize it or anything.

Speaker 2 (00:47:24) - My good old friends, trial and error, they taught me guys, the good guy, good guys. But seriously, like, for example, with the banking thing, right? Let's say you've got, I don't know, $10,000. Okay. And later you decide that, oh, I need $10,000 because I don't know what happened to the first one. You would have been better off getting the money from the bank if you had 10,000in your account and you said, Hey, bank, I need $10,000. They look at your account there. Oh, okay. You've got ten grand. You've had it for a little bit. They will usually give you at least what you have. If you had the money and then you went to the bank and said, Hey, I just had $10,000, I need 10,000 more.

Speaker 2 (00:48:05) - Now they're like, Oh, but you don't have any money today. So now we're going to ask you 1001 questions about why we should give you this money. There's I mean, little things like that that you just don't know until someone tells you, which is why, you know, just shameless plug at my business credit. We literally have over 120 fully animated videos where we tell you all the stuff that the bank is going to ask you how to fix it, what to do about it before you ever actually talk to them. And it's 30 bucks a month. I mean, it's a lot of information. So go there, learn about little things like, Hey, if I have money, how do I put that into a certificate of deposit that I can then leverage to secure a business line of credit? Little things like that that'll teach you about money so that you're not making the mistakes unnecessarily just because you don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:48:54) - Yeah, absolutely. What a resource man mean. Because I can't tell you.

Speaker 1 (00:49:00) - Yeah. Your. Look, Bob's telling you guys right now, you know, you don't have to meet trial and error. Quiet. You will have to go through trial and error. But that sounds like my business. Credit could, could, could maybe save a lot of headache there, you know?

Speaker 2 (00:49:14) - Well, we made it because. So I told you that we transitioned into financing during the pandemic. The thing I quickly realized is you could take ten random people and say, hey, I'll give you $100,000. All you have to do is just, you know, meet these basic qualifications. One out of the ten will meet those qualifications, if that. So and it happens so often that 90% of the people were talking to genuinely need the money but don't understand why they're not going to get it. We've basically taken all that information and put it into one place. We did it out of necessity so that after we told someone they were denied, we could say, Hey, here's all the steps you need to fix it.

Speaker 2 (00:49:54) - And it was a bit overkill to fully animate the whole thing. But it's done. And so it's because I wanted people to actually watch the videos and actually absorb the information. I personally, for whatever reason, learn better from cartoons. I don't know if it's just the kid in me, but Magic School Bus like I learned faster. So that's why I was like that.

Speaker 1 (00:50:17) - Absolutely. No, I think that's I think that's great to have some sort of a visual aid alongside it. I mean, our attention spans are increasingly becoming shorter and increasingly decreasing.

Speaker 2 (00:50:32) - Right. Exactly right. So.

Speaker 1 (00:50:35) - Well, I look forward to checking it out. Yeah. You know, and Bob, it's been such a pleasure getting to getting to talk to you and learn more about your story. I always like to kind of ask, is there any like you've given so many pieces of advice, but is there any kind of singular piece of advice that you would pass along to other folks that are wanting to start their own thing or their own entrepreneurial journey?

Speaker 2 (00:51:00) - Um, a few bits.

Speaker 2 (00:51:01) - Number one, make sure when you're starting, it's the thing that you actually want to do, because a lot of people on the Internet will glorify entrepreneurship but leave out all the bad bits. Um, and if you don't have the motivation and discipline to actually see it through to the end, you're going to give up, you know, right away or you won't give up, but you will make yourself basically a low paying job. Is the other trap that you can fall into. So make sure that it's what you really want to do. Second to that, make sure that you are not doing it all by yourself. I am just barely learning that lesson. Finally, myself, because I am a perfectionist and it is sometimes hard for me to. I guess, get the results that I want, the way that I would have done them for the things that I'm building personally. And so don't do what I did. Be a be an extrovert or go find yourself an extrovert and let them be the extrovert.

Speaker 2 (00:52:01) - But you need to make sure you're building people around you so that you're able to grow faster because it takes longer for you to go learn everything yourself. Get a mentor. I know so many things now that I did not know back in 2016 just because I did them and learned what not to do. There are so many people who already know what not to do. Likely for the thing that you're getting into and people are more helpful than you would expect them to be. You can ask someone who already has the business that you are trying to do, Hey, what would you do differently if you had to start over? What are some things that you learned or how did you do this? Or, Hey, where do you get this? People will usually tell you for a few reasons. One, they don't always see you as competition, especially when you're just starting out. Two, it's a big country, so very rarely is someone monopolizing the entire country for their industry. Exactly. Competition is just fine.

Speaker 2 (00:52:57) - So reach out to people, communicate and find out what not to do as early as you can. And next, make sure that you actually focus on the business administration part. We sometimes get obsessed with I want to develop my product or my service as quickly as possible, make it the best that I can so I can get as many customers as I can, so I can make as much money as I can. You're doing all that, which is perfectly fine, but you're not really dealing with the business stuff, making sure that your business is registered correctly, making sure you've got business bank accounts, making sure you're keeping enough money in those bank accounts and developing good banking history, building business credit, because there will come a day when you are ready to expand beyond just this small amount of money that you've made for yourself and, you know, scale your business, you're going to need someone else's money at some point. If you're going to scale like you should, the first thing that people are going to ask you for is records.

Speaker 2 (00:53:50) - As a matter if it's the bank, if it's an investor, they want to see records. They want to see that you actually have run your business on paper the way that it needs to be. So make sure you're thinking about all those things from day one so you don't have to clean it all up later and maintain your personal credit because that matters to me. So I would say keep your score above 680 at all times. It doesn't matter how you do it. Don't don't ignore that thinking, Oh, I'm just going to go and get an iron and I'm going to have great credit on my. No, that's there's so many more steps before. That's true. Just take care of your personal credit. Those would be the the bits of advice that I would give myself for anyone that's just starting out today. Yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 (00:54:35) - You know, and I got to tell you, those are all such like, practical, direct pieces of, like pieces of advice that I think everybody should take into consideration when you're diving into it.

Speaker 1 (00:54:47) - It's it's not always as simple as, you know, what I, I want to sell copy. So I'm going to push a jug of coffee around the neighborhood and sell it. There's a lot more than a lot more things into it, you know? Yeah. So I think that's, that's totally wonderful. And Bob, I know we've talked about several aspects of your business, but is there anything that you'd like to is there any way that you'd like people to interact with you or anything that you'd like to highlight, you know, at this point to just like plug it's plug in time?

Speaker 2 (00:55:22) - The easy one is my business credit. I would definitely encourage people to go there just because we've seen so many people that did not qualify for the money that they need for such basic reasons. And all of the information you could possibly want is right there. And it's $30. We actually are giving the first month free when you sign up. So you'll see there's like little, little banner. And I mean, my Netflix and streaming services costs more than that and it's valuable information.

Speaker 2 (00:55:59) - So definitely go make sure that you've got everything checked off for your business, that you've actually done everything so that you're not surprised later, if you want to engage in getting funded, if you want to talk to an investor, if you want to grow your business, there are very few problems in business that can be solved with more money. If you actually have access to the money in the first place. So my business credit. Com go there learn and and enjoy.

Speaker 1 (00:56:26) - Well thank you Bob for the amazing conversation Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:56:30) - Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (00:56:32) - Absolutely. And again, to everybody, you know, this was a this has been a great episode. Thank you for tuning in. And just remember to subscribe. I really can't do it without you guys. Just a small update. I do have some big things in. The works. I am rolling out some courses at no cost that are going to cover several of these insights that, you know, we've been learning about on the Jim series from folks like Bob that I've talked to today.

Speaker 1 (00:56:58) - So just shoot me an email if you want to learn more at Blake at rocket level. And as usual, have a beautiful day. And this has been the Gem series. Take care. Thank you.