Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 7 - The American Dream

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Ep. 7 - The American Dream · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_03: Hey everybody, we're back again with another episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh my buddy Eric Howerton is here along with me, Mark Zweig, and we have a very special guest today.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: That indeed we do.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: And uh this is another one of my friends.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh Richard Scott.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: And uh when you're with Richard, you feel like you're with somebody special, don't you, Eric?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_05: I I do right now.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_05: I'm very humbled right now.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I'm like, why am I wearing my ball to?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: I know Richard classes up the whole plug.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: He does, yeah.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like with his presence.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_05: You can't see right now, but I'm wearing flip-flops more.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm I mean, I feel terrible right now.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I've got driving slippers and white socks on myself, so I'm not I'm not much.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_05: The driving slippers are worse than flip-flops for sure.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: But uh no, it's it's it Richard's a classy guy, and um I I'm I'm really anxious for everybody to hear his story.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: He has, I don't know, five or six businesses plus a nonprofit, and really overcame some amazing uh uh well o overcame some significant obstacles to get out of his native rural Jamaica and end up here in the United States and being as successful as he is today in a relatively short time.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Richard, you're a young guy.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: I am.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: I am fairly young.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: I had just had my 35th birthday last November in Austin.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: 35, man.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's old to be 35 again.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: If I was as smart as he is and 30 uh and as uh where he is in the business world at 35, my god.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it was probably good that you weren't.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_05: What what would have happened?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_05: I know.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_05: I I mean I'm not gonna say I'm not gonna predict what might have been happening.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: You probably wouldn't have bought Zwag White back from the letter.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: Then you and I never would have met, Eric.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: True, yeah.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's all divine.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it it all it all works out for for a good reason.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: But so Richard, though, I'd like to start out today with you just as briefly as possible, just describe the different businesses that you currently have, and then I want to step back and get into your background.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: But tell us about these various businesses.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: When are they what do they do?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks for having me, both Mark and Eric.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I've I've been in, it's interesting, I've been in Entrepreneur for, oh, I don't know, eight years.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, since 2016, 17 or so.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I started initially with my uh partner.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: We had an idea to start a back then a ancillary preventive telehealth business, procure innovations.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was kind of the the brain channel or the baby to who I am today.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh today that business can focus on chronic care management, remote patient monitoring, um, and a few other ancestry services.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we serve or navigate uh just just around 15,000 patients a month.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's crazy.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they're are they mainly urology patients?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Is that yeah, we have a fairly big footprint in urology space.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I would say just over 80% is urology.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a small percentage of those are some primary care and in some orthotics are orthopedic uh patients as well.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um that kind of led to a series of you know what I joke about being a bad case of ADD.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: We all got ADD, brother.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: We've we've talked about that before.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, when people try to go get it fixed, I'm like, don't don't do that.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's not uh it's not a bad thing.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, almost everybody I know who's successful has some ADD.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: Agree with that.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: Because you gotta be able to spin a lot of plates simultaneously.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we all do it.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you gotta be able to squirrel.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, just yeah, what's the squirrel?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a survival mounted.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: It is it really is it is actually to the to the exact to that as survival instinct.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so so anyway, ProCare kind of slingshot itself into um in in trying to acquire clients um for Procare, which was at that point pretty early on in most of kind of uh Arkansas, Oklahoma as a neighboring state, I discovered there's a lot of small independent practices that were struggling to operate as an efficient business.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and and prior to starting ProCare at my my partner, I had a a stance in in nursing home from an operational standpoint.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of learn a bit about operations in that space.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so in doing so, I realized that there's a lot of missing pieces in the primary care space.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that can lead us to starting our primary care clinic, um, AIM Hell Clinics, and that's starting Oklahoma City with the intent of focusing on the most funny population, which is geriatric, and and kind of really push the preventive medicine.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so that lended itself to another opportunity where we acquired a second clinic in Moore Oklahoma, bringing it under the umbrella of AIM Health Clinics.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: So currently we have two sites operating in that segment.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and in anything that you do, I think, just networking, meeting people from different places.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of interesting.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: We had an opportunity to to meet with um an operator of a lab back then.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was a PCR high-complexity lab before it was cool back in 2018.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they were what I felt was on the edge of something incredible with my stencing nursing home because they were using PC technology in a way such as to to in the most layman's term, it's basically taking DNA, phone in a viral or bacterial specimen, and then essentially multiply it to identify whatever strong bacterial virals are present in that in that specimen.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: So without going into a guy who has absolutely no medical education, I might add.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, anyway, go on.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Which I'll touch on that in a second.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but but I knew that I knew that from my sense in nursing home, we'll just take one of the most common um uh infection that takes place in L which is uh UTI, right?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um lots of catheters, yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: They're yeah, inactivity and things like that, I'm sure all the yeah.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Not just that.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: About 67% uh of patients today in nursing home experience UTI or have a decline in their activity and they'll they're living because of UTI.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: So UTI caused them to get more confused, result in fault, hip fracture, wow, decline, so forth, so on.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll use this as a case study, and and what we realized is that they were able to kind of revolutionize how UTI testing was done.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: They were previously they would take a culture, they'll grow that over four or five days, identify what bacteria.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, PCA technology allows them to really kind of take that specimen, multiply what's the virus or bacteria that's in there, and being able to with a pinpoint accuracy identify whatever virus or bacteria is present in that patient.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so, anyway, without going off into the weeds of that, I was helping that group market that service in nursing home across multiple states, and I realized that the lab world was really lacking customer service.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: That was the resounding feedback from just about everyone I've talked to.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so, out of frustration um with being kind of a rep, so to speak, um, for this company, we decided to say, hey, let's just go start our own lab.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we don't have to, the science is a science, right?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone, yeah, they can tell all day long that they're doing something unique, but the science is a science.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: What if we can focus exclusively on the service side of the lab business?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_05: So you saw a problem and you solved it.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_05: In customer service, I mean it's just like that's yeah, it's great.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_05: It's everything.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then become the birth of Orc Diagnostic, which is our high complexity lab that focuses on it's a diagnostic testing lab, focuses on on those can't Can I get can I hang in there for just a second?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_05: Because I think it's such a point.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_05: We talked about it in previous episodes.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_05: But I mean it's like you're not reinventing technology, you're not you're not reinventing the entirely new process of those science and all that type of stuff.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_05: Or interfering with the normal process of business.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_05: You're adding customer service to something that exists and you're monetizing that where a lot of folks keep trying to go away from customer service because it makes it easier on everybody else.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's hard to do.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_05: We have good people that have are nice and are trained and I mean and you finally solve one of the fundamental problems of the patient or the or the or or or the provider.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_05: Providers.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's like yeah, yeah.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_05: My gosh, man.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, what a genius concept, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Just provide great service and you can And in theory, to your point, you're absolutely right.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is not difficult to do that, but everyone seemed to, or a lot of people seem to be shifting to the model of your point, you've got to find right people.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, take the people you have, let the minister on the culture.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, whenever a mantra to that point is that we don't look at each specimen or test as simply just that, it's a soul.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Each of us is a soul.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it gets the employee engaged in realizing that okay, this is someone else's sister, brother, uncle, grandfirence on the other end of the specimen.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: How do we ensure that we provide the best quality service from communication?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a neat idea.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: That could have led to to the again to the birth of org diagnostics, and I think I went number three.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: So again, I keep going, man.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's more.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: There's and there's more.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to keep them in in sequential order.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um but as as Mort mentioned, I was born and raised in Jamaica.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I grew up in a rural community there, and so in going back and forth to that, my native island, um, and to my community, I realized that the school I went to really lack resources and all we can get granular about later on.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so I decided currently I've been contributing back and forth in helping my, you know, the former me, so to speak, um in as it relates to transportation to and from school, some tuition.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what if I can make this in a manner, just simply make it a formal entity where it allows those who share the same vision and willing to give to a cost that I give to, um, reap some of the tax benefit that in that exists today for that.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so with that in mind, I my wife and I kind of formed a Blue Moon project or BMP Momentum today as a nonprofit that focuses exclusively on providing resources for students um in a Blue Moon region of Jamaica where I grew up.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of uh giving back, it's nice project of mine.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's awesome.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, for sure.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: So that's number four.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's number four.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now we get into the unrelated pieces.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so kind of getting to the unrelated pieces.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: I realize that we are entering an era right now where a lot of baby boomers who were entrepreneurial in their time and still is today are looking to exit the workforce.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're looking to retire.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: They were great at what they do, very innovative for their time, but I think part of it could be just the way they were raised, part of it could be cultural, but they're not all adapting to the way business is delivered today.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_05: It's very, very hard for them.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they get stuck.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, people.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean just the amount of information and what to do and how things plug and work together and what the customers, I mean, is I'm with you.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so that led to kind of an acquisition of uh what is now T D Awnings, which is an awning company based out of Fort Smith, Arkansas.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that company has been in existence since 1907.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: It has changed the name a few times, changed it a few times.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's a long time.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: That is a long time.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: That is the longest time.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was formerly known as Tucker Duck and Awning.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, when I when that was brought to my attention, the current operator was just at a place where I think he was just frustrated with the way everything was going.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't really involved intimately.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I knew nothing about awning, but he was very transparent to say I realized that one, when I when I did kind of a some due diligence, I realized that a lot of the customers' frustration was back to the service piece of it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: They were just wasn't getting the service from one of the, I would say, probably at that point, number one awning company in the entire River Valley region.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I didn't know awning, my background has been healthcare, as you as I've noticed through this series of business.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I realized that there's an opportunity here to really serve the community, and I really enjoy creating process and inner and and efficiencies in operation.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: So with that in mind, I knew I had a GM who I trust could share the same morals and ethics as I do when it comes on to operation.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he would be someone who could be an intricate part of this if I can just help him with streamlining process along the way.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the intent behind acquiring um T back then was Tucker Duck and Awning, and if I want to change them to TD awning.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been a fun project for me, uh just being honest, because it's not the traditional healthcare space, it's really it's a business where they do everything from start to finish, from surveys to fabrication to installation to maintenance.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: They just they know what they're doing.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you make that successful and you'll have it made in the shade.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: No unintended.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: No, you were intentional about that.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: You were over there thinking about that for about five minutes.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: Shed some light on the awning business.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh not leaving anything in the door, according to whatever you need, we've got you covered.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_05: This is a marketing genius.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_05: It's like dad joke central.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_05: We change the name of this episode, the dad joke.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you go.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_05: My daughter Natalie would certainly appreciate it.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_05: All of our daughters would.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_05: We should have all the daughters in with the biggest.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_05: That'd be funny, wouldn't it?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_05: Oh my gosh.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_05: That'd be interesting.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_05: Let's do it.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_05: Let's bring the daughters together.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_05: Let's do it.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_05: I'm on board.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_05: Let's just line them all.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, because how many do you have?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_05: Just one daughter?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_05: You have one, so I got three, and you got five.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_05: Oh boy.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_05: Bring them in, they can just sit around and then they just jump in and ask questions.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_05: We'll have to get in the new studio for that.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_05: We yeah, yeah, we need more rooms, yeah, more mics.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: But uh wow, so that's interesting.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: So then I I want to come back to some of these offices, obviously.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: But but then what was the next one that you did?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the the awning company, um, we just closed our first year last December, and it was a good year one.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so along the way, I wonder what service, what business could complement awning well.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so, none other than our spraying signs, right?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Signs, yeah.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you know they're right above the awning.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, or they're predator on the awning, yeah, underneath it on the windows.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Signs everywhere, signs everywhere.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it was the same evidence.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Where business has been in kind of a family for generations, they're at that point where they want to kind of just step back and enjoy retirement.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what better way to business owners burn out.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they do.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and again, I commend them for what they've done over the span of which they've done it.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, because back then I'm sure the culture was very different when it comes on to one entrepreneurmanship, two, resource available to them, three, just those who were born in that time, I think have parents or maybe even later off that depression era, and they were really more conservative with sharing ideas and having this kind of forum, you know.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um so it's it's the sign company um is now MT Signs, formerly known as Mark Thompson and Son Sign Again, Baser River Valley.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's been around gosh since the 70s.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: They in Fort Smith.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: In Fort Smith as well.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh it was the same concept.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: The business started by dad some 30, 40 years ago.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Umperated pretty, they've done pretty well for themselves, but he was at a point where he's just ready to to enjoy his boats and being a short.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I realized that after figuring out the awning rule, I'm like, signing roll can't be so complicated, you know.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so and so anyway, um fast-forwarding to where we are today, I acquired a company and bring it in under the umbrella.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, no, we have TD awnings and MT signs, which, you know, again, full service signed company, do everything from start to finish.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of the national contracts, national vendors, with a lot of the install surveys as well as fabrication of independent businesses across our region from as far south as Hot Spring to as far north as Mela Vista.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the surrounding area.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: So again, that was that was a moatful.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um is that it for now?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: For now.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, so you got basically six different things you're doing.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: So let's go back to your youth, okay?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: I uh you know, one of the most impressive uh things about you in my mind is here you grew up in rural Jamaica and let's face it, it's it's it's extreme poverty, really.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure there are people who are worse off than you were, but nevertheless, I mean you weren't uh well off by any means.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: By any means, no.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: Single single parent.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm just welcome.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: And and yet, you know, you somehow overcame that um that background to be able to break free, get out of your country, and come to the United States and be as successful as you are today.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: So how did that happen?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: Did you go like uh were you pulled out of school and they go, wow, this guy's like smarter than the rest, or what what was like what happened?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: How did you do that?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it was quite the opposite, actually.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I grew it was definitely the smartest.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: My new opinion is I don't know, man.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Most people don't do that.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Let's face it, how did you do it?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was more about realizing what I didn't want.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Really was that.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was a that was a driving factor.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I grew up in a rural part of Jamaica, um, in the parish of Portland, and a small community up in the Blue Mountains called Charlotte Castle.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Population of community is roughly uh what 700?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a small town.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Small town, small town.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um the Jamaica system as a whole from less stock education, it's it's quite different than it is here.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: So so one, they don't have any kind of um subsidy or resource for those who are less fortunate.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was very limited.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so where I grew up, my parents, my mom um was a farmer.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, my stepdad, they they same thing.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 90% of those are committed to farm.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Coffee farming is a big factor.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a small percentage of them have their own independent small farm, and even those who do work for the bigger estate farmers, you know, just because farming in rural countries is not like it is here, it's very manual.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: A bad storm one year could impact that tremendously.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So they could roll eggs in one basket.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so anyway, I grew up there, went to Shirley Castle Primary School, which is here, that's like elementary school, so it's grade one through six.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Then from there you kind of move on to um your test into a series of high school.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, because that town was so rural, um, high school for me was quite a distance away, and there wasn't a school bus system.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: So commuting to school was quite interesting, right?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: You have these um five miles each way and uphill and driving snow or what?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well it was probably longer than five miles.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, definitely longer than five miles.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: So how so how it was, it was basically you have this about two and a half miles hike downhill in the morning, uphill after in the evening after school, to that point you get to on foot.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, definitely on foot.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this was and so from there, that was the first leg of it, right?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: From there you take a taxi, which taxi is a loose term.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's really someone who has a car who's using it as such.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as a student, your your fare is much cheaper.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: So which means that they don't want to take you because it's cheaper.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: So what you do, you ride in the trunk of that wagon.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: That that was your seat.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Was in the trunk of that wagon.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Itching a ride.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you still pay fees, of course.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: You want to get to school.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Pay ditching.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: So so we could do that one because it was rural, there wasn't, you know, they could get away with doing it.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want to get to school.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that was it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: To that was about a 20 minute ride to the next town, and from that town they could have a taxi, um, 20 minute ride to the to my school.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it was So every day you had to struggle to find a ride, basically.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, very much so, very much so.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um in between those five years of high school, I had some some support where I was able to stay with a cousin who lived fairly close to the school for for a period of time and then with an aunt and um that was that helped my attendance tremendously.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um because I could get to school in time and I could uh so that was one piece, right?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: So then so you have that that taxi fare or that bus fare to and from school.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well then you have to pay a tuition for high school.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um really for high school in Jamaica, yeah.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's a tuition.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then the next hurdle obstacle, which has pros and cons to it, it's a British colonized country, so we were uniformed to school.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to have really strict uniform code that you have to provide, you know.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to find uniform every year for school, and then there's no again, there's no subsidy program.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: So meals were, you know, it wasn't like, hey, my parents can't afford meals, so can I get a free lunch or reduced lunch today?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't the case.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: You go pay for your lunch or you don't eat.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a struggle.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Did you work when you were in school?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in the summer, I would do I would work in a coffee farm, but uh you know, the school I went to, my school, um it was a shift school.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: So what that means is that the school population has grown so much that they don't have enough infrastructure.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: So they'll split school where you go to a school in the morning one year from 7:30 to like one, and then the the next student comes in the afternoon, so they could maximize um their real estate.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: So so I I couldn't really, and because ROS was so rural, it was hard to get to and from school.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: So by time I get home sometime in the evening was so late, you know, it was just time to go, you know, take care of for livestock, which was just a few goats, a few pigs, a few chicken, whatever I had on the side.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that that was very much um my my school.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I you know, I laugh about it at times, but I tell my kids, you know, I have three kids, uh 17, um uh 10, and my youngest just turned nine a couple days ago, the 27th.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I, you know, we we banned the word I'm starving in my house.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: At this stage, like, oh, I'm starving then.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, please don't say that, you know.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I wish my kids could spend some time with you.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, I'm so tired of being poor.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: What?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, come on, okay.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: I had my middle one come up the other week and she goes, I am so busy, I'm the busiest one in this house.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, Yeah.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's funny, you say that my 17-year-old now is working um four or five hours a day at Joanne Fabric.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like, I'm not gonna do nine to five for the rest of my life.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Olive, it's five to nine in your case.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and then I take you out to dinner or uh beforehand to any restaurant you want to go to.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is, man.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: It really is.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean I mean there are times where where my you know Richard, yeah.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's so true.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: But there are times where my lunch, so I'll leave, let's say I was, you know, and morning, and it's interesting too, I don't know why I did this, but the the shift you were on would would fluctuate from a year to year.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: So once morning shift, next school year, an evening shift.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And there are times where you know my my mom could only find um the the the amount for my tax affair for that week.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, at that point, which now looking back taught me some really good life still comes on to finance management at a pretty young age.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because she would say, Here is what I have for your tax affair for the entire week.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: You can go to school four days and have lunch one, or you know, right, or you can go to school five days and not have lunch any, you know?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So so so that that was part of it.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, it's it's funny because cough drop in Jamaica we have this little it's like equivalent to cough drop here, but it's like they call it icy mint, a little more minty, probably different version of mint.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um something, I'm sure something maybe in China, you know, but anyway.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: But that that cough drop or the equivalent of a cough drop, I call it icy mint, or there's a mint there.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And top water was my lunch most days.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll, you know, I'll have that in the morning, um, or I'll have it in my pocket in the morning, have some tea before I leave, make the way to school, and um coming back in the evening at all day at school, I'll have you know, top water and that that mint, put it in my mouth and drink some water, keep on going, and keep on going, you know.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: So but if I didn't feel anyway because a lot more kids were experiencing the same, that's recorded even worse.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we all you know, um I get that.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: So so how did you get out of that?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: What happened after after your your primary and uh school secondary school education?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: What did you do that?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so I graduate, you know, I have a November birthday and I started school a bit early because of that.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so what birthday were you?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: 16?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was 16 when I got at high school.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so college wasn't an option.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I couldn't afford it to no parents couldn't.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was one thing that I at that point I felt Jamaica did well.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: A big part of the GP GDP is from tourism.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh hospitality.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so they had a what I would consider today to be a you know a subsidy program where you could go to this institution um called HART, H-E-A-R-T, um, and you could learn essentially a hospitality skill, and that would make you employable in the workforce.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like trade school industry.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: So at that point, most Jamaicans who I knew from my rural community, those who migrate, was through a some kind of work program or a cruise ship.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: They got a cruise ship from a few months ago, work in a galley, etc.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I knew of a program that was um uh another toneover from where my school was.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: I could go there and uh and I could go along with these skills.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: So at that point, I had to go test into this program because I want to make sure I have at least some level of competency to feel what program match into.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: At that point, my interest was culinary.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be a chef, not sure why, really, you know, but it was.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe because you were living off cough drops and water.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, maybe that adds something.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it was better.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what nine better three minutes.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's gotta be something better.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so and so I I went there and I, you know, test, you know, went to his test, you know, late in my life for this document.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a boarding school, a boarding institution that was, you know, in the tourist resort era town called Sen Anne's or Otarias, which probably they're popular known here where most tourists go on vacation.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's Ochous.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I completed the test, I says, Well, yeah, you great news you got in the program.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: However, the next chef program doesn't start for another, I don't know, six months or something.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: But we have a food and beverage program, which is more off the front of the house section of that, so it's more dining room services, bartending, and everything is very formal.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you go and learn all these formal serving styles, formal, what wine pairs will what kind of you know, sure dish, so forth, so on.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I jumped on it.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm saying, hey, look, I don't want to wait six months and miss the opportunity.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I get I think part of it is when you grow up where I grew up, you realize that opportunities were so limited.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: When you get one, you go all in.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you just you're just you're all in until you until it can't go further.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And even then you're like, wait, but I gotta be out of the way.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh great attitude as an entrepreneur, though.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, think about that.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_05: It's all about opportunity, dive in.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and not giving up.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, literally not giving up.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Just and so anyway, I got into institution, and that was a very, very interesting.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was a fairly mature kid.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think my parents could argue today, um, or even my parents could, um, where I was the oldest of seven kids.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I I I was pretty independent at a pretty young age, and and you know, I had a sense of community around me where everyone kind of support each other pretty well.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they kind of had to, right?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's this limited resource.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's sure all those siblings you had to tell take care of them, I'm sure.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that was it was normal, you know.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't it wasn't just the bird, it was this part of being an older child.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, you know, it was like my mom or my stepdad was off, you know, in the clubs, they were they were working, they were literally in the farm doing everything that they could do to make sure that we have as best quality life as I could provide with the resource they have, you know.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: So so anyway, fast-forwarding to me moving on to this this school, it was pretty interesting.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: So this was a a boarding school almost, um, where you have these, it's a six-month program.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: You'd go to school in the daytime, you live on this dorm, um, 16 people to a room, eight bunk beds, four on each side, and then the room in uh probably, I don't know, 16 by gosh, maybe 12 room size, you know.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, yeah.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was it was a it was a tight space, it was a tight space.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you get to know those guys very, very well.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: But all of us who were there had a mission, we wanted to be there.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: No one forced us in there, yeah.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Some punishment because we're an unruly kid.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're just like, we all come from you know different backgrounds and realize that there's opportunity and hospitality, so let's go pursue this.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so I got there pretty quickly.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: We have at that point, maybe 300, 300 or something of us who were uh in the program at that time, and I realized pretty quickly says, gosh, that's that's tough.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's I mean, to compete at any level with 300 plus people, I've got to do something differently.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so the the requirements were you go to school in the day, you have this curriculum you do, and then there's a hotel that was attached um to this uh campus called Heart Hotel, uh Runaway Bay, a Cardiffall Hotel, and it was just basically where we could go do our hands-on training.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you'd go to school in a day, and uh maybe two evenings per week, you you have mandatory have to go and do this kind of hands-on formal training of okay, you learn this in class, now go apply it.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was pretty interactive because you get to meet some guests and you'll let they'll disclose at that point.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: The traders would disclose to the guests, the guests volunteer, you know, um, to allow us to be, you know, essentially a trainee in their service experience.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I realized pretty quickly that for me to compete at this level, I have to do something different.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, what I do, I volunteer every night.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I serve a two-mandatory night at this institution.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'd go to school every day, and every night I'll go to volunteer.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: One, because I know that the food in the cafeteria suck.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Not sure I could say that, but we can say that.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's fun.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so, you know, growing up in rural, I eat a lot of produce, a lot of yams, and you know, and the cafeteria food was just not good.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was like, well, two things.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: One, I get, you know, a food, a meal when I volunteer.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I volunteer at the hotel, and I get more experience, I can compete.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I did that for the entire six months.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: There may be a few evenings that I choose not to.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I realized in the art rotations you have like the service aspect we learn in the dining room and in the bartending piece of it.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I realized that the bar is where all the fun was because that guy can tip a lot.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started learning to flip bottles, you know.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I used to flip bottles.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Tom Cruise.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Cruise, bro.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's a good man, you know?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, and so yeah.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: So so I graded a program and I got a job instantly, of course.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was in, you know, I'd say in the most humble way, in their top 10 students, um, in terms of my knowledge of different um classes of service.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I got a job working for Beach's Boscabel, which um Beach is a sister resort of Sandals.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Sandals probably largest all inclusive, at least one of the best.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Seen their uh ever been to one.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: Best marketed one for sure.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um so Beach is their sister resort.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Sandals is couples, Beaches is family.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I got a job here to to bartend and and be a server, and and I did that for about at that point, I was probably 17 and change.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was pretty young.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was still fairly young.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and the school institution have this program, essentially an internship.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: So what they'd do, they'd call back the highest performers from the previous year to come be kind of uh the next level of that, no, be a trainer of the former younger me, right?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so life was a little bit better.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: We got a uh, you know, three of us to a room with a cottage, we didn't have strict light out times, you know, we had a little more freedom and flexibility in that.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I was selected uh um to become a can be an intern and now train, like I said, the younger me on those same services.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I worked at Bosquel for a bit, came back to do till normal employee.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was getting a uh paycheck.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now keep in mind during the that that ear that year one, you know, of that experience, that training, there wasn't there was a small stipend.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: You really weren't getting paid.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: You were just your dedication was free to train.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Free labor.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think we'll call it that.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but but you know, uh but nevertheless, I was grateful for it again.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Where I was coming from to our opportunity to be in a coastal city, learning all this stuff.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was I mean living was good.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Living was good.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, living was good.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um hotel meals.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, living was good.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't complain.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I took the opportunity to come back um at this this community, this facility.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and now because I know as an employee of the hotel, I have some courses I had to do to essentially you know advise what I've learned the previous six months, and also my role was to help facilitate and train those, you know, year one, so to speak, students.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and I enjoy that.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: During that time, I had a with the Freedom Flexibility, me and a couple of other guys there were doing some odds and then catering job on our weekends.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll go do banquets, you know what I mean.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny now, looking back because I'm not sure at that point I even knew what the word entrepreneur means.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I just knew that it was, you know, it was the hustle, it was the grind, right?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so in that experience, we met tons of dignitaries and business owners from different countries who would just say, hey, you know what, they're on vacation having the best time, and they would always talk to you about what they do back, whether it's in the UK or here, stateside.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think they saw something in me.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what it was, but they said, Hey, you know, if you want to come and you know, I'd love to have you work for me in the US or in England or in Canada.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you hear it over and over, you never think that it'll ever come to fruition.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you knew that one day the goal is to finish this level two piece of it and move on to the next big thing, go be a you know, a butler for a five diamond hotel or something, which you know it's it's ironic now looking back that the pinnacle at that you know at that point for me was being a butler for a five diamond resort where you know when Jay-Z and Beyoncé go to Jamaica, they don't mingle with guests, they have someone who concierge everything for them.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so anyway, I met this British Indian guy.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um live in the US, um, Tampa, Florida, and uh was born in India, grew up in England, uh, moved to the US, um, and he had some success.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: He was, I think that now looking back, he probably saw some of the same attributes in myself that he had, whereas just someone who take a bunch of sees all the moments they had, worked pretty hard, and so he operated Subway restaurants um in Florida.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um he had a small amount of real estate as well, but Subway was kind of his baby.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I naively had no idea what Subway was.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, think about the trains in New York, you know.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it was Hey, it looks good in their commercials, yeah.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm not sure in real life it's uh good, but yeah.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I knew it was a mean to a next chapter.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: I I knew, I mean, no, guys, at this point I was in Jamaica, I was at in some banquets wearing a full suit, tucks, and white cloth gloves to serve dignitary.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I was, you know, really fine seven course and six-course a meal with banquets that you have to sign non-disclosure that you can't disclose the topics that are being discussed.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was it was that level of service that I was part of.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so now you're going to subway.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: No, I'm going to subway.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: So this guy said, hey, look, get through the gap.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Next, next what is you know, I knew that this was the opportunity to get to the US, and I knew that Subway wouldn't be the end all be all.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was just a step to the next thing.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, when I met this guy, he came back to the island after his vacation to meet and have kind of a formal discussion about say, hey, you know, if you're serious in this, I can go down the channels of getting that visa for you to migrate and work here legally.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm like, okay, you know, I've heard this before, but this guy is serious.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: He came back to have this meeting.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe he's on vacation again, I'm not sure, but he made a time to have his meeting.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was kind of the catalyst of me coming to the US.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, he says, you know, you get eight months initially on this visa, you can, you know, come to Tampa, um, run, you know, work for me in subway.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: The goal is that you can take over operations off these subways for me.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was interesting because, you know, while I was there at this institution, um, now when being an employee, I was making some income.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, again, going back to my roots, my appearance, you know, I was still kind of helped my siblings' appearance a bit just with life.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't have the healthiest saving accountant, let's put it that way.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when efforting to come to migrate to the US, I had to pay all of the legal pieces in Jamaica to get the visa and interviews, embassies, so forth, so on.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then when it came down to travel time, I had, you know, I couldn't afford a plane fare to Miami.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, to Tampa.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I flew into Miami and took a greyhound bus out to Tampa.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this was uh six days after my 18th birthday.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: All alone, too.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I was pretty young.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was pretty young.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I had probably, I don't know, 300 and something bucks to my name in my pocket, you know.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that was me.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there were people in Jamaica that lived on 300 bucks a year.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: At that point, absolutely.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, you'd already made a step up.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, certainly get out.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I flew into Miami.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: This guy picked me up.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm sorry, I took a grand bus to Tampa.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: This guy picked me up and said, hey, look, um, and we had the arrangement.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: He had some houses where you I realized that he had a brilliant model where he took essentially students from all the country um from South America, some in Europe um and some in Southeast Asia, and then come to the US.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Same kind of same concept, work for a few months, travel, go back, you get more.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was I I moved into this house um in South Tampa, which now looking back was a really, really nice area, um, with us didn't know.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we'd have roommates from for six months roommate from Bulgaria, six months roommate from Brazil, six months roommate from Thailand, and these guys and gals, and it was interesting.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: It really helped me assimilate to the culture because we're all learning the culture together.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think I had an advantage because I worked at Felton Jamaica, so I was amongst the the culture of Americans very much.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there are some guys from Bulgaria who speak very little English, yeah, yeah.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: And in Bulgaria, they say yes, shaking their head left to right as a no.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so just imagine that, right?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: You spend, you know, whatever, 20 years of your life saying yes like this, shaking your head left to right, and then saying no like this.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, trying to convert that.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, he'd like duh.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, he's like yes, and I'm like, no, no, me sa, no.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, it was it was it was really interesting.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Experience for me.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was really, really interesting.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Got into Subway, got my apron, my little hat, you know, and uh, you know, I remember just figuring out what am I doing?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is crazy.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but nevertheless, I mean I dig in.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: I dig in.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I I work in Subway for a bit, and then pretty quickly realize that I want to do something else.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very transparent with my you know employer, landlord, sponsor uh at that, you know what I mean?
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and he knew that, right?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: So he says, yeah, if you could just you know help me, you know, with scheduling, manage a store, do inventory, you know, shrink your schedule, you know.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I found a restaurant in Tampa which was more of what I was used to, was uh uh it's called Jackson's Beastro.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh you know, back then it was a fairly high end restaurant on the Bay of downtown Tampa.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's where the big boys go to play.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's where you know a young kid listening to attorneys, um, entrepreneurs and attorneys having lunch meetings, referencing millions and tens of millions.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're talking about you know, water bottles and caps.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like this guy is referencing eight million and ten million.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: investment like it's you know it's nothing so anyway it was really really interesting for me but it was fun I mean I got to meet some really cool people I met my wife along the way during that in that you know my no wife you know encounter um and uh I work for Jackson's bistro as a server and bartender while I moonlighted you know for Subway doing late night inventories and store organizations and all that for for quite some time um so as I mentioned I met my wife then in Tampa um and at that point she were both fairly young she was in school it was right during that 2008 collapse of the housing market where things were getting really really tough and so um her dad operated nursing home in Arkansas why don't you guys just move here for a bit you know I can get your job in nursing home move move where move to Arkansas oh okay yeah sorry so so this is how you see because of me leaving for the old folks home is uh a retirement home rather is in Arkansas in our future uh that's yeah yeah my wife started was was at that point an operator in that space and so you know he says move for a couple of years see if you like it you know can I help you get a job you can you you know yes you'll still go to school while work you know um and that's kind of how I I got to Arkansas um it was very very interesting I moved to Fort Smith Arkansas and being someone who went from Jamaica where it was a bit more liberal in terms of having access to information and things such as alcohol sale for example as I mentioned at that point I was serving alcohol before I was 18 years 80s here um to moving to what I learned then was a dry county I was blown away to the Bob Bell rather no clue what it was blue laws no Sunday alcohol man gotta be in the club pay three bucks to join the club remember how that was oh yeah yeah there were lots of places like that membership bro yeah that's interesting for like software subscription models that was yeah that's great the membership gotta have membership so wait but think you could get one right there yeah like 350 or something yeah all you had to do is pay yeah sign your name yeah interesting not hard to get into interesting for sure yeah so but for me the way I grew up it was just I mean I don't think I could encounter anything that I couldn't take on I mean I was like it's better than the last thing I had I mean it's just you know so I just dig in an environment you just learn to adapt and move on so I quickly realized that you know I made Arkansas home I enjoy it adjust to it and everyone was genuinely nice started with some really cool people um and I got plugged into a group of at that point was a lot of most of physicians and there were um it was like an African Caribbean community in the River Valley and there were really cool guys and gals um that just they were all foreigners to the area um most of them were in healthcare um at high level um from physician all the way down to different um operators of of independent clinics and uh when I started hearing their story about because I thought it was like man these guys are are doctors I mean they must come from rich parents and you know and I started to hear their stories and they were they were really nice and and vulnerable in sharing kind of their upbringing and how they become who they are today.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I started to realize that wait a second these I'm I'm no different than these guys.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I mean you know some of them arguably had more hurdlers than I had so I mean this is I have no room to complain or say you know because of or that there's one low ceiling against you right exactly exactly that's awesome.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: I quickly realized that um and so I was making the ranges in nursing home um all the way up to to being an administrator and operating a nursing home um and uh at that point I met my no business partner in several of a project um and he came from a health system where he was working in healthcare before in a background um in in the hospital um and and and primary care clinic settings and so he was sort of venting about the experience you have had with a particular project they were working on and you know me being me says hey what if we just go go do this you know if they won't take this on as a big system what if we go just build a platform where we can facilitate the service on their behalf and just charge a fee for service for doing it and it must have been I don't know four or five months of me you know convincing that we should go do this for him to finally believe that we can go do it.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was it was a wild day over um I think we're having like a Mexican food in a restaurant who says hey he says I think he says okay if we go do this what will it take?
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea was at that point was that this could be something we could do on this side we'll all keep her day nursing home job and we could do this and create a bit of income for our family on the side you know um and um we we knew someone we realized that we need a few key components to make it work we'd have to be able to do it efficiently which was pro care innovations uh we have to be able to have some kind of software system where we can you know document and track we have to be able to provide some kind of report to give some value add to the providers anyway we we kind of brainstorm of how we could do this in a manner that could serve you know we could go sell it as a service um to primary care um and health system across at that point the neighboring states you know Arkansas Cloma and Texas um and so we had my gosh I don't know some really really long nights we knew a guy who had a full time job like herself knew a bit of coding and so we're saying hey we have no money but we have this crazy idea would you you know crazy enough to to take to join us on this journey and so we rent this I mean crappy building space sublet of space for I don't know 200 bucks a month or something in Fort Smith and it was you know we we grind it I mean we would work all day and in the evening we'll leave our day job go there at night and in this you know this uh deplorable space I rate 200 bucks a month for my first office oh man and but I was above Russ's lunch in Kennedy Massachusetts it was pretty nice this this was other than you smelled like a burger I would take that I mean you remember yeah the the smoke alarm was so close to the heat vent so in the winter the you know the heat kicks on and the fire alarm goes off you know and your nights where man we couldn't we I think we our first whiteboard was like a shower walled because we couldn't you know whiteboards were expensive right so there's a while I love you know and in a sense looking back it's pretty innovative you have to go buy a level piece you know I don't know if it was like 60 bucks or something maybe less piece of eight by four almost like a plywood what is like you know those plastic melamine yeah yeah yeah turn it's a Home Depot four by eight strips man yep yep yep and your mobile hub hey that was your whiteboard okay so I'm thinking easy man what would you gotta do man I mean then you you use it for a bit and you wipe it off and it starts turning like reddish or blue or come off and you have to like really scrub that thing to get it off and so or go get you a new way.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah you know 11 12 bucks it was easy that's right more cheaper than a whiteboard um so yeah that was that was kind of burt um I know that's off kind of again uh in in a summary Hawaii become that's a I mean isn't that an amazing man so it's fantastic.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_03: Let me just go back to these businesses and I and and I don't know whether you you and I didn't talk about this you've told me some things before but I don't know whether you'd share this with the with the public here but just like what kind of volume are these businesses that you have doing like these healthcare businesses are these hundreds of thousands a year millions of dollars what what are they in revenue?
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: In millions uh yeah in millions um uh so on uh I'll start with kind of Prokear as a as a our telehealth platform um you know that's a business that we kind of we we we bootstrap I mean it was really really aren't getting getting it off the ground and we kind of just really stick to our our values of just service.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just figure out how to provide good service.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: So when we started a business initially our focus was just kind of helping providers with a a once a year kind of a preventive screening that ensure realize that most patients cannot go in to their doctor when they have an acute event.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so if they can create just one visit per year where they can focus on the patient overall health and kind of create a plan to essentially resolve or or or address any kind of potential head needs that could occur over that column of year they could have some success.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so it it was formally called an annual wellness visit.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's really geared more towards seniors geriatrics um and we had some success in in in doing so we're able to get some providers to believe that this you know young guy these young guys have what it takes to were you the guy out selling?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yes it was me and my business partner were tag teaming it don't you love don't doctors just love seeing people trying to sell them stuff?
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy I tell you what's how it's been my it was you know for the longer it was when I started grabbier really because I was bald bolder and bald face and look like a nine year old you know and these doctors are like yeah you know they're in their 60s and as we're gonna practice in the Uber yeah I was like who are you telling me how you can help me create a gesture man gray gray beard die or whatever it's awesome.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah so so so without going too far off in the weeds we started with Wellness Visit and then insurers Medicare realized that okay this is working we're seeing that patients who are getting these once a year preventive screening and assessment and plan of cure develop are actually going in to get their mammograms and identifying items before they become it reduces costs and improves health that's the idea.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah so it with that in mind the launch another service called chronic care management and that was kind of our catalyst for success really because the it had an opportunity to really offer that service it allows us to do it it was more telephonic so with the wellness visit we're really getting having contractors and nurses going into these offices and logistically it was just a lot of barriers to that with chronic care management or CCM for short we were able to know you love the initials I swear TD.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's like every TD is not some kind of yeah I know I know it's uh it's like a strange and beautiful language.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think healthcare in itself they have so much apologies and you know and so and and so yeah wow so we we got into chronic care management pretty heavily um we were serving thousands of patients per month and tens of thousands of patients per month um and this we basically have these clinical call centers of clinical team members and would contract with a provider anywhere nationwide from you know Albany Georgia to you know Chicago um and and we would essentially essentially obtain a list of dear patients who meet these criteria and we'll kind of our software just kind of walk this clinical team through a pathway of how to best identify gaps in care and then kind of I don't know navigate those patients back to the appropriate level of care.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we become kind of a quarterback between the patients and their providers and it works.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: The patients love it.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: Patient satisfaction goes up because the patient's like wow my provider actually cares about my care not just I mean for acute event but but when you know in between those those acute events and then we're able to drive reduce overall cost so we could actually show where patients who are enrolled in the program have fewer and fewer hospital events, ED visits because we're having these touch points and kind of navigating care.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: So with that said there's a long way of kind of answer a question around the revenue side of things but we're able to get up to pretty healthy revenue in the millions.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_05: So anybody Wow so I'm I'm not wanting words in your mouth but you you talk about food service and I mean like that's where your roots were right that's what you got trained in and I really appreciate that because I used to work banquets I was a server all through high school college bartending cottontail service holiday in Mallor Club yeah baby hey man charity ball events dressed up in my tucks oh yeah it's good training for carrying trays of like 18 plates I mean man only a you know 17 18 year old person can do that without breaking down but I mean running you know running and sweating man eating pecan pies off the trays for a little snickety snack we wouldn't talk about that taking other people's food right we wouldn't talk about but what I loved about it what it showed me and and there's a thread that runs through your business and definitely mine and I think we might take it for granted service like because when you're in the food service business it's about greeting getting to the table fast taking your order on time making sure the order's not messed up yelling at the chefs and the bus people get this done right pre-bussing like and then giving the card or or the check running the check quickly saying thank you have a great day to come back.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_05: You're absolutely right to great lesson and it is absolutely the whole time you're sweating and it's about turning you know but it's also about patience.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah there's so much to it that I think is running through the thread the mantra of your business is today and which I think runs through mine.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's really funny you say that I was just thinking all three of my oldest girls have all worked in food service got to and they're all successful in their own way and you know it's you learn to talk to people you do you really you learn to look in the eye and then the other thing I loved about it is is like if you messed up you busted.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah you're accountable for your mistakes and it's not on anybody else.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely yeah and then if it is on somebody else the bartender's not getting you're coming back I apologize massaging the scenario have nine times.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely absolutely it's a good point to brought up but honestly I've never looked at that way I I've I I've always known that I have an interest in ensuring that the service is there but I never really correlated to your early years.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_05: But I yeah absolutely you're absolutely right just when you got that guest in it's like I all eyes on that guest and the experience you have to give them I mean everything all these little things have to come together to work and you're like you mentioned quarterback.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah you're quarterback in that whole experience yeah you know I never worked in food service but I I did work we see that that problem I'm sure you know I worked in bike I worked in bike shops my whole um during my whole youth but my boss would send me it would get upset with me because people would bring a tire in to get the uh get a flat fixed and I could fix it in like a minute or a minute and a half because Mark they're not gonna pay us a dollar when they see it takes you only a minute or a minute and a half he goes you got to tell them this is going to be an hour go to the IGA and get a cup of coffee and come back and then they'll feel like it's worth it with the money they spent.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_05: Anyway it was a dysfunctional uh model for it's a very interesting model I'd rather just do it fast and and be done but no that that's a that's an amazing story Richard and unfortunately we're running out of time we are but I got one more point I want to make it okay please do because I think it's so important the re the listeners right yeah so you got service but then the other thing that you talked about was there's two things one was opportunity in which we kind of discussed that earlier jumping on it but then there's the one that is often missed and especially in today's time work.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_05: Okay work yeah you talked about double shifts all the way up man until a few years ago moonlighting just I still do and you do I know yeah I do I well we also relentless yeah yeah work it's a differentiator in my opinion it honestly is I know it is it is a differentiator between a success and those who are not you have to will in to put in the work.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah it just there's no if ends or but it's not yeah it's labor man yeah I just getting people to understand how critical it is to be super responsive to a problem.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah like you see these businesses where somebody gripes on Facebook or something about them and then watch how long it takes the company to weigh in.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_03: If that was my business bro you'd be all no it's gonna be no more than five to fifteen minutes before somebody is going to be jumping in to solve the problem or deal with the complaint.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_03: But they'll go hours or days.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah it's like that's not the way to be successful today.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_05: And you know that to your you in the very beginning you brought up well we actually we were talking before the show about just theories and books and education I mean we get into this point where people will believe that you just need to be smart and well educated and learned.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yes and then they don't work like I mean in in the cultures today like in businesses and which they kind of have to because like in in technology space like you know unlimited PTO and all this which is I don't I'm not arguing against that.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah but you can't come in and you're looking to like just have the half day off on Friday and you in like checkbox done that's all I need to do.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_05: You're not you you might be able to be employed but you're not going to excel because I can tell you the executives and all the senior leadership are working.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah exactly yeah yeah they're you're you're right I mean it it's just this whole idea well I I've had to deal with this online one of the the mantras of a lot of the management experts today is work on your business not in your business.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's another one I think is total bullshit.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_03: It is because if you don't work in your business you don't see these problems.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_03: You don't know who's good and who isn't you don't know how long it takes to do things.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_03: You're absolutely right you've got to remain involved sure we all rather would just not do anything and collect your checks right now sit back and eat pizza and ice cream and stay skinny with a suit ain't gonna work like that you know but i i if you if you're passionate about your business and you're really trying to do something good and you want to build then you got to put the work in.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah you're right.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it lends a frame of mind and wealth in creating culture.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: When they're when again of course as organizations grow and change that that evolves but when when employees see that you're here putting in that grind the European example of a foundation for them help building that culture I think it goes a long way.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_03: But everything I'm glad you brought that up though because we've all been in this boat I'm gonna bring up now that is we've got multiple things we're doing.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_03: True yes yeah lot on the fire.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_03: So your sign company I'm just throwing this out you might think oh shit you know we only see Richard like once a week he rolls in here in his fancy car and you know that guy doesn't work that hard they don't realize all the other stuff you're doing.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_03: How do you deal with that?
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because I yeah I felt like in the past I felt like I can't get everybody yeah I may be working 60 hours or 80 hours a week or 70 or whatever it is in total but they don't all see it.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_03: They only see me here for 20 hours a week.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_03: They might think I'm lazy.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah how do you deal with that?
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: Acknowledge what I see.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I literally have a place my calendar for acknowledgement where I you know I make notes that I go to this even location and just out of the blue somewhere I'll say hey even on Thursday I'll send a just send a quick ping to an employee who I noticed that was doing something unique say hey hey I just want to say I noticed you were doing this last hour is a job well done really appreciate what you're doing.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah just acknowledging even that one where I'm at signed company for a week taking the time to let that you know observing maybe not in the moment it's a very good point.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let him know say hey I noticed I heard from GM that you guys did a fantastic job with this project and I just want to take your time to say hey thank you for going the extra mile.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yes that does that that actually kills a lot of birds with one stone.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_05: Because not only are you building culture continue to influence that vision you have but then it's demonstrating your presence yeah yes to your point.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah yes in a and all that's positive versus being negative of where you're like you feel like this pressure to to just dive in.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah it's good and I'm super intentional And the next piece is giving them ownership.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm just a guy who happened to make transaction happen.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: But this this is you guys' baby.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_01: So put yourself in the customer's shoes and it usually resonates well.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_03: See, I think a lot of business owners will say that, but then how do they what do they do?
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_03: In reality, they share no financial information with anybody.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_03: They don't pay anybody anything, they don't absolutely have to.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so it becomes empty.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, um they say it's your business, but really it's not.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_03: You don't treat treat me like it's my business.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and that's another thing, obviously you have to do or you wouldn't be in business.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_03: You'd lose your people.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you hear all these people complaining about their inability to hire people today.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I know you got a hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty employees at your primary business.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's not gonna happen if you really don't back that up.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know?
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_03: True.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_03: So there's real opportunities, real information, real real delegation or abdication sometimes.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_05: Before you close this out, I do want and then after I ask this question, if you if he closes out, that's great.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_05: Uh but I want to know what would Richard tell the young Richard back at at and but I did I steal your thunder?
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_05: No, I think it's a great question.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I think that the audience may be going, Hey, we need a new host for this podcast.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_05: Can you move Mark to call Yeah?
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_05: But what would what would you say today to the young Richard that's going to school, it takes an hour to commute and go back?
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_05: Like, what is the key to success?
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, how do you keep motivated at?
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's yeah.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: No, I um I'll try to keep my hands as brief as possible.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I have a a Montreal household um for our kids, and uh part of my one thing I try to do as much as I can is bring them to school in the morning.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we have this motto we say every morning is do your best and be nice to others.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they have to repeat back on you know, there are times where they're like, Okay, dad, the door is open, won't say it, be nice to you know parents say um but what I you know what they take from that and I hope they do and why we do it is because I know that not every part of your day, everything of what you do is gonna go according to plan.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're intentional about just doing your best, literally just doing your best every day, and and then just be kind to people around you, that goes a long way.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: But but a good mantra, yeah, yeah, and like the kids sex it, they've been saying it for a while now, and so at times they're probably like, oh gosh, website is you're so embarrassing to them.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, that jokes are the worst, but but the younger Richard really, I think just regardless of the obstacle, just don't give up, just realize that it could be worse.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's but if you're willing to have the right attitude and to keep going, I I have no doubt that it's possible.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: And next piece, just be vulnerable about where you are.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that as entrepreneurs, sometime it's so easy for us to feel like it's you know unusual or uncommon to share we're alone, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of where you are.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes just being vulnerable and you know, with like-minded folks and know where you're struggling.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think that you can oftentimes get someone who's willing to dedicate a time through get through whatever that may be.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a long I said I was gonna be brief to the answer.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's a long answer to your question, so I'm hoping that.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that that's it for sure.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_03: The the young Richard did okay.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_03: The young Richard means a lot of advice.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_03: Champion, man.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yes.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_03: Love it.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_03: Love young Richard.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_03: I wish I had some young Richard.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Where are all the young young?
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the young Richard was was he knew what he didn't want.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure if he knew what he wanted.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: But he knew that when you look at the life of farming, you know, and leaving high school and that was it, and realizing that you want something hungry enough or not want something bad enough, you'll work hard enough towards whatever that is on that pendulum swing, right?
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: You'll work hard enough to make sure that this is not your outcome.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_03: Knowing what you don't want, I think is really essential as an entrepreneur.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because every time you move away from things you don't want or don't want to do, new opportunities, multiple opportunities come your way.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_03: So just being able to say no and that's not what I want.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think that's valuable.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_03: And in business strategy, sometimes knowing how the other guys do things and saying we're gonna be the opposite of them, yep, is a can be a good strategy.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_03: You look at the lava for success there.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_03: Do what they don't do.
• 1:11:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_03: But uh anyway, it's been another really fun, really fun talk here with you, Richard.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so glad you were able to share with our audience.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having me.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm glad you're a friend of mine, you're an inspiration, and uh I always come away from meeting with Richard feeling better than I did beforehand and hopeful.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm humbled by that.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_01: So again, it's it's absolutely that's that's certainly appreciated, and it's the feeling is mutual.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, great.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_05: And it's really cool that you're here when the last time that Mark was the official host of this podcast.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I mean, like this is kind of a topic.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm already being moved out.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_01: The old guy just gets pushed aside.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_01: We'll need to give him a few months as a server in a service industry.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, this wouldn't need to happen.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_05: I agree.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, this shape.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_05: You should probably go to, you know, I think I think you'd be good at Burger King.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_05: Do you?
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_03: I don't like their fries, honestly.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_03: But uh anyway, well, thanks everybody.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_03: This has been another episode of Big Talk Talk about Small Business Business.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_03: Business.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_03: Business.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well, thanks everybody, and we look forward to seeing you again next episode.
• 1:12:15
  unknown: Awesome.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_02: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_02: Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_02: And be sure to head over to our website to read articles, route episodes, and ask questions about upcoming shows.