Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 66. From Sewing Jeans at 10 yrs old to Building a Blue Collar AI Agent with Sandra Carlisle

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66. From Sewing Jeans at 10 yrs old to Building a Blue Collar AI Agent with Sandra Carlisle · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful. It's a show where I sit down
• 0:07
  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
• 0:12
  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
• 0:17
  Consulting Firm and Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact
• 0:22
  of the day: the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, nearby our guest, holds actual preserved slices
• 0:27
  of Albert Einstein's brains. Not sure if that's scrappy or sophisticated or Just downright unnecessary,
• 0:31
  but it is pretty interesting. But that's neither here nor there. Today I'm joined by
• 0:36
  my friend Sandra Carlisle. She's the founder of Wealthy Palette. It's a business operations and
• 0:41
  brand marketing firm for founder-led businesses. It's built on her five-year authority engine, more than
• 0:46
  30 years of reading the market for a living. She wants founders to skip the
• 0:51
  six-figure marketing, get a system instead. And that system would probably be her AI agent,
• 0:56
  Vera. It answers Phone calls in real time, the answer leads in real time, amongst
• 1:00
  many, many other things. So Sandra, thank you so much for coming on. We're both
• 1:05
  Penn State fans here, at least for football. We know that you are successful, but
• 1:10
  the question we have for you today, do you think you fall more on the
• 1:15
  sophisticated side or more on the scrappy side?
• 1:18
  I am definitely scrappy. I've
• 1:21
  Yeah.
• 1:22
  been scrappy all the way. I am a pretty much lifetime entrepreneur. I have had
• 1:29
  time in corporate but didn't like it. So it wasn't for me.
• 1:37
  I yeah, no, very much the same boat. Okay, a lifetime entrepreneur. when does this
• 1:41
  start? Like let's let's jump right in. Where did you grow up and did you
• 1:46
  have any entrepreneurs in the family to kind of model it after?
• 1:50
  kind of, sort of. so I grew up in North Jersey, Bergen County, New Jersey,
• 1:55
  to be exact. ended up in Philadelphia because I went to college here. I I'm
• 2:00
  a graduate of Moore College of Art and Design. my father was a painter, you
• 2:05
  know, like in interior homes and painting and wallpapering. I think he even had a
• 2:11
  contract with Burger King at one point. So for the Burger
• 2:15
  Wow. Okay.
• 2:17
  Kings. But yeah, he he was you know, doing his own thing, had a few
• 2:24
  employees, but basically the man with the truck. I got into being an entrepreneur at
• 2:32
  age 10 when people discovered that I knew how to sew.
• 2:38
  Okay.
• 2:39
  what you may not see and know is that I'm only five foot tall. So
• 2:45
  I was sewing my own pants out, you know, for hemming and and clothing and
• 2:51
  hemming things and trying to make them better for me. So and that turned into
• 2:57
  me doing some work for other people. And then once I got that kind of
• 3:03
  under my belt and the taste of being an entrepreneur and doing something for money,
• 3:09
  that was my own. And I didn't have to answer to anyone, I was hooked.
• 3:16
  Yeah. At ten years old. What is ten? Like fifth grade? That's you're a hook
• 3:21
  better.
• 3:22
  Yeah, ten eleven is fifth grade and yeah. I I know it was young but
• 3:28
  I don't know, my family was kinda like everyone was doing their own thing anyway.
• 3:34
  So
• 3:35
  Okay.
• 3:36
  I just kinda stepped into doing my own thing.
• 3:39
  That's awesome. Buying something off of a fifth grader's gotta be pretty good time.
• 3:45
  Yeah, I I had I had one woman have me line her jeans with flannel
• 3:50
  fabric. Now that was a job.
• 3:52
  All right. Get chili.
• 3:54
  That was one I had to like put my brain to a little bit to
• 3:59
  figure out, you know, because I I had to make a pattern out of her
• 4:04
  rate her jeans and then sew the flannel inside.
• 4:08
  Wow. I don't think I could do that now in my thirties.
• 4:13
  Yeah. It was it was a project, but it was, you know, a good test
• 4:17
  and you know, I she put on, they fit, so that's all that mattered, right?
• 4:22
  She wasn't uncomfortable
• 4:23
  There you go.
• 4:24
  in them and I di I guess I did it right.
• 4:28
  Yeah. That's so satisfying. Okay. All right, we're gonna we're gonna jump back to this
• 4:31
  time frame because I wanna see what followed the sewing career, but give me thirty
• 4:35
  seconds or a minute on today. Tell me about Vera, tell me about Wealthy Palette,
• 4:39
  give me a little snippet on that, then we'll jump back in time again.
• 4:43
  Sure. So Wealthy Palette came about at the very end of twenty twenty two, beginning
• 4:48
  of twenty twenty three, when I left a a business that I was working for.
• 4:53
  It was a financial business that I was working for. And it was just because,
• 4:58
  yeah, you know, I was basically being told do this or do nothing. And you
• 5:04
  can't do that to me. And you can't do it to a scrappy person. I
• 5:09
  mean, you just you know,
• 5:11
  Yeah.
• 5:14
  you can't like put down that gauntlet and expect us to be like, okay, we're
• 5:19
  so happy you know. So,
• 5:21
  Right.
• 5:22
  so I talked to I have two kids, who are now sixteen and eighteen, but
• 5:27
  I talked to them and I said, Look, you know, I gotta I gotta do
• 5:32
  my own thing, you know. And I had been raising them on my own since
• 5:37
  they were one and three. So it wasn't as if they didn't know that sometimes
• 5:43
  things could be hard. so
• 5:45
  Right.
• 5:46
  we kind of made a family decision and and I pulled the trigger. So I
• 5:52
  have you know, Moore College of Art behind me, communications, design, painting, and so I
• 5:59
  was, you know, I just jumped into marketing. And I've been basically marketing the whole
• 6:06
  time because as a serial entrepreneur, I was always marketing something and trying to sell
• 6:14
  myself doing something. So so it wasn't that hard. And then two thousand well, in
• 6:21
  two thousand during COVID, I got into YouTube. So that kind of pushed me into
• 6:28
  different you know, the algorithms and figuring out the technology and how to be you
• 6:36
  know be seen in the the technology space. So it was easy to pick up
• 6:43
  AI.
• 6:44
  Okay.
• 6:45
  And AI just fit totally with marketing perfectly. And when, I don't know, so Wealthy
• 6:52
  Palette iterated a few times, you know, to try to see what people needed, what
• 7:00
  they were going to be okay with. I had built a whole AI platform mostly
• 7:07
  on design and imagery and posting, but people were still afraid of AI. So that
• 7:15
  didn't go over. and as I was getting
• 7:19
  Yeah.
• 7:20
  clients, I realized that you know, A lot of them didn't even have a CRM.
• 7:27
  And a lot of them which ended up being my clients, which are the trades
• 7:34
  and you know, home service trades people and that industry. And you know, when they're
• 7:41
  working they're on a roof under a sink, they can't get to a phone. So
• 7:49
  there goes Vera. Vera's an AI agent and she was born out of the need.
• 7:56
  And Vera actually stands for vision, elevation, response, authority. So you know when you have
• 8:03
  authority, you have trust. When you're answering the phone, if you could be the first
• 8:10
  one to answer, you're most likely gonna get the get the job. So Vera's duty
• 8:18
  is really to you know book the job, book the call, and Create that relationship
• 8:25
  with that client. And she does really well. I mean, she sounds more lifelike than
• 8:32
  any AI or just the answering machines. You know,
• 8:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:38
  I f I find them very annoying. So so I had to create something
• 8:40
  Yeah.
• 8:42
  that was not annoying and
• 8:45
  Yeah.
• 8:46
  that people could communicate with. And she also remembers people's phone numbers. So if you
• 8:50
  have like a regular client base, she will remember and when you call in, she
• 8:55
  can say you know, she can say hello Sandra you know, when I call
• 9:01
  Nice.
• 9:02
  in. 'cause I call and test her and t you know, ask her crazy stuff.
• 9:10
  One of the more fun parts of testing AI is doing the outlandish things that
• 9:14
  you know somebody out there is probably gonna ask.
• 9:17
  Yeah. I bring her to parties as well, 'cause then, you know, and have people
• 9:22
  call and ask her crazy stuff. You know, and it's a way to train it,
• 9:27
  you know, and to have a good response. this is kind of funny, so I'm
• 9:32
  gonna share. so I'm at this women's group, you know, we were having some drinks
• 9:37
  and whatever and all all the women own businesses. And I talked about well let's
• 9:42
  you know, let's call Vera. Let's, you know, play, play with her. And this one
• 9:47
  woman who owns a catering service says, yeah, I I'm I want to call her.
• 9:52
  So she calls her and the woman's name is Denise and Denise was talking to
• 9:57
  Vera and you know, telling her that he she has like this catering service in
• 10:02
  the area and she makes the best meatballs and her company's known for the best
• 10:07
  meatballs. And Vera's like, well that's really great. you know, what what can Sandra help
• 10:12
  you with? we need help with everything, you know, type of thing.
• 10:16
  Ha ha ha.
• 10:18
  And she's like, Well, that's really good, you know. but you know, maybe we need
• 10:22
  you need to talk to Sandra and nail that down and be more specific. And
• 10:27
  she's like, Yeah, okay. Well, do you think Sandra would be willing to take meatballs
• 10:32
  instead of payment or for payment?
• 10:34
  Ha ha ha.
• 10:36
  And Vera's answer was really good. She said, Well, you know, I know your meatballs
• 10:41
  are the best, but You you really have to ask Sandra that question 'cause I'm
• 10:47
  not sure exactly how she would respond. Would you like to book a call?
• 10:53
  Okay, that's really good. That's like getting
• 10:55
  That's pretty good.
• 10:56
  to book the call, which is the goal of that interaction. That's pretty good.
• 11:00
  Right. She gave a compliment. She was right there, got the woman right on in
• 11:05
  her team, and then she booked the call.
• 11:08
  Yeah. Okay. Wow.
• 11:10
  Yeah.
• 11:11
  All right. So this is pretty cool. All right. So this is for
• 11:13
  Yeah.
• 11:14
  kind of the the home service based businesses, a lot of that type of stuff.
• 11:18
  Because to your point, when people reach out to anything for the home, I don't
• 11:22
  wanna say everything is always like kind of on fire and needs to be done
• 11:27
  right away, but typically it's the first person that answers, as long as they have
• 11:31
  some decent reviews or whatever it is, they're gonna get the business. And so that
• 11:36
  time to actually answer and get on a call is super, super important, right? That's
• 11:40
  kind of one of the basis of helping these customers, right?
• 11:44
  Absolutely. Yeah. and what it actually does is every call that comes in gets recorded
• 11:51
  so that the business owner can hear the exact wording. So it's not just a
• 11:58
  script, it's
• 11:59
  Yeah.
• 12:00
  the actual recording and booking the appointment if they can. you can also get alerts.
• 12:07
  So I've actually programmed her. Well, first to get rid of all the spam calls
• 12:15
  that come in.
• 12:17
  Yeah.
• 12:18
  And then I programmed her to tell me if I've got calls that need to
• 12:22
  be returned at 7 30 in the morning and four PM in the afternoon. So
• 12:27
  that that way, you know, I could have my my day free. Now, you know,
• 12:32
  a contractor's going to book that differently. And but if they wanted to know if
• 12:37
  they had calls that came in you know, between 10 and 12. You know, they
• 12:42
  can get an alert on their phone or their watch. And the whole thing is
• 12:47
  is too the app's on on your phone. So you can check at any time.
• 12:52
  And
• 12:53
  Okay.
• 12:54
  they have have full you know full view and full use of everything's on there.
• 12:59
  Vera also puts everything into a CRM. So if you totally miss that and drop
• 13:05
  that ball, you know, you can send that person an email down the road or
• 13:11
  send them a Christmas card. And start developing that relationship. So you might have missed
• 13:16
  the call. You might have missed that job. But now you might be the person
• 13:22
  in their mind when they have something else by having them within a CRM. And
• 13:28
  Right. Right. And a way to reach out to
• 13:31
  right. And I found that most contractors don't even have a CRM.
• 13:36
  Yeah. Just the unfortunate truth. all right,
• 13:40
  Yeah.
• 13:41
  this is super interesting. So we're gonna build the bridge from the ten year old
• 13:44
  sewing flannel in jeans to the AI ex agent extraordinaire. you said you were entrepreneurial
• 13:49
  your whole life. Let's dive into you a little bit. You go from sewing at
• 13:54
  ten years old. What's the next entrepreneurial adventure?
• 13:57
  The next one is I I cleaned houses. So that kind of came about because
• 14:03
  I wasn't so thrilled with being a babysitter.
• 14:07
  Yeah.
• 14:08
  You know, it was a little maybe boring, I don't know, or I don't know.
• 14:12
  It wasn't my thing. It wasn't enough money either, you know. You know,
• 14:17
  There you go.
• 14:18
  I I was maybe at that time ten dollars an hour babysitting where I could
• 14:23
  make fifteen to twenty. Well I'd never so when I first started I charged by
• 14:28
  the hour and when I was there. when I was sixteen I also bought a
• 14:33
  moped. So then that freed me up on weekends and went to get place to
• 14:38
  place. Or right after school I could I could go clean more houses. And
• 14:43
  Heist.
• 14:45
  as I did it, I actually got myself because I was quick, I these were
• 14:49
  regular customers, these were people I knew. I was making about thirty an hour in
• 14:54
  Whoa.
• 14:55
  high school. So at so at like 14, 15, and through high school. And then
• 15:01
  Moore College of Art, hard time finding a job after Moore College of Art. And
• 15:07
  I ended up having a cleaning business again. And that was called Maid in Philly.
• 15:13
  So M-A-I-D in Philly. And
• 15:16
  Nice.
• 15:18
  that was pretty cool. I mean, I had employees and was moving along with it
• 15:24
  and I ended up well I ended up selling my home was my home business?
• 15:30
  Yeah, so my home no. I ended up selling the Maid in Philly business to
• 15:36
  actually one of the employees. So that
• 15:39
  Okay.
• 15:40
  was, you know, and walked away from that. And they, you know, got all the
• 15:44
  clients and you know, they knew everything I knew. So, so that worked out well.
• 15:49
  And then,
• 15:50
  Okay.
• 15:53
  After that, I I got married and moved. So it's okay, what am I gonna
• 16:00
  do next? Cause I'm not gonna sit around this house. And I actually went into
• 16:07
  the financial industry. So I have a ChFC a CAP. At the time I had
• 16:14
  started with, you know, series six, series seven, and had five different FINRA designations and
• 16:21
  worked myself up. to Like the higher principal. So I was a securities principal and
• 16:29
  a municipal principal. And I was also a chief compliance officer for Nationwide Financial. So
• 16:36
  I just kind of worked through that. I didn't absolutely hate it, but I didn't
• 16:43
  exactly, you know, totally love it either.
• 16:47
  It's a good way to describe it.
• 16:49
  There were a bunch of years before I was at nationwide where I actually had
• 16:55
  my own book of business and I was an RIA, which is a registered registered
• 17:01
  investment advisor. So that's a fee based r you know, financial advisor. And that worked
• 17:07
  well for me because it was entrepreneurial.
• 17:10
  Yeah. I was gonna say even your corporate stint is one of the most, if
• 17:14
  not the most, entrepreneurial ways to be in the corporate world.
• 17:18
  Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, when you're a chief compliance officer they give you,
• 17:22
  you know, a nice office with a window and a big desk and seat and
• 17:27
  not that many people wanted to talk to me 'cause
• 17:31
  Yeah.
• 17:34
  Because my agents, so I that I was up in North Jersey at the time,
• 17:41
  Cranford, New Jersey, and my agents had a lot of the World Trade Center widows
• 17:49
  from
• 17:50
  Okay.
• 17:51
  from September eleventh. So so they were doing their thing and taking care but you
• 17:56
  know, too, when you see the compliance officer, it's like They get worried that I'm
• 18:02
  like go bother them. But my thing was always, yeah, we're all here to do
• 18:08
  well for the clients, do our business, do it well, get paid, you know. And
• 18:13
  I was more I guess I I think I was hired 'cause I'm only five
• 18:19
  foot tall. So, you know, nobody could be really all that afraid of me.
• 18:25
  Ha ha.
• 18:26
  You know. They were like, okay. But they, yeah. They would give me a lot
• 18:30
  of compliments and I'd have to tell them, like, you know, if I got something
• 18:34
  to talk to you about, you know, it's business. It's, you know, not the compliments,
• 18:38
  but thank you. Yeah. Yeah, let's get back
• 18:41
  Right. This is out of compliance now. Let's get back to business.
• 18:46
  to it's it's good stuff. But yeah, that was that that was a little bit
• 18:50
  entrepreneurial too, in the sense, because
• 18:52
  Yeah.
• 18:53
  I I had freedom in my office. I made the rules or I told them
• 18:58
  what the rules were. And put on my own presentations and all of that as
• 19:04
  well, you know, so that everybody knew what was expected.
• 19:09
  Okay. All right. So there's there's kind of a theme coming through here with the
• 19:13
  house cleaning, the maid in Philadelphia, with the clients and the team under you. It's
• 19:18
  very people focused. And so I wanted to ask you the people side versus the
• 19:23
  process side. So what you do now is very much build the system, right? So
• 19:27
  is is Vera, is Wealthy Palette, is all of this more system or operating authority
• 19:32
  skewed to things? Is that because The people need a process to follow, like how
• 19:37
  do you how do you draw that line?
• 19:40
  Well, also because I I realize that every entrepreneurial business should be able to be
• 19:48
  sold. Right?
• 19:50
  Sure, okay.
• 19:52
  So if a business needs to be sold, there needs to be structure. And structure
• 19:58
  needs systems, you know, in order for people to follow. And then two, if you
• 20:05
  want to grow your business. you need to hire employees. So you still need a
• 20:12
  standard operating procedure at the minimum, right? And if you go put that in, then
• 20:19
  what are you standardiz standardizing? You know, like,
• 20:23
  Right.
• 20:24
  you know, what are we putting in there? So, you know, with CRMs and well
• 20:29
  with AI, everything that's happened with AI and how now you know, we can add
• 20:36
  all our social media in our CM operations, or at least in mine you can
• 20:42
  add all your social media accounts and then push create your social media and then
• 20:49
  push one button and send it all out and put it on a calendar. Right?
• 20:55
  So this makes it easier and also saves time for whether you have an admin
• 21:02
  or you're doing it yourself. or a whole team, it saves them time to do
• 21:08
  even more important things, which is still the busy work to an entrepreneur. Because the
• 21:15
  Right.
• 21:16
  entrepreneur, at least if they're anything like me, they're always thinking. It it just it
• 21:17
  it it doesn't stop. It just keeps going. I can't get
• 21:20
  There's always another angle.
• 21:25
  it to stop. And you know, like, you know, even when I'm waking up in
• 21:30
  the morning, I'm I'm thinking about something that I can make better. Or save my
• 21:36
  time doing or some other process. And kind of like the cleaning, you know, of
• 21:42
  course I didn't realize it when I was a kid, but I built a process
• 21:48
  on how I entered that house, what I cleaned first, what I cleaned last, and
• 21:54
  that whole system that made me faster. So they're go pay me X dollars for
• 22:00
  that space. And I used to price spaces out on, you know, how many bathrooms
• 22:06
  did you have? Usually people only have one kitchen. But how many bathrooms, how many
• 22:12
  bedrooms? And then one price, it didn't matter how long I was in your house.
• 22:18
  Right.
• 22:19
  I'm not I'm not playing hourly. I'm in your house this time, you know, maybe
• 22:25
  once or twice a year I would, you know, clean a clean an oven. Or
• 22:31
  wipe out a refrigerator, but that wasn't, you know, like normal housekeeping work. So I
• 22:37
  would add like little bonuses here and there, but that's how I was able to
• 22:43
  make better money was having a system.
• 22:46
  Yeah. Yeah. It's I don't want to say accidentally, but maybe unknowingly you created value
• 22:52
  based pricing and a system for yourself.
• 22:56
  Yeah, really really unknowingly, but now I know what it is 'cause now I'm you
• 23:00
  know, a a little bit more sophisticated, you know. Just because
• 23:04
  There we go. There we go. And you
• 23:06
  of but it's because of time, Jack. It's not because I tried.
• 23:11
  Right. Learned scrappiness
• 23:15
  Yeah, I
• 23:16
  turned into sophistication.
• 23:17
  Yeah, you know, like just all this stuff you learn and you know you know,
• 23:23
  working with AI, which I love because you can ask it any question. Do you
• 23:29
  have to take the answer for the answer? Well, no, you can you know, ask
• 23:36
  again, ask again, ask again until, you know, it it sounds right to you.
• 23:42
  Yeah. Yeah. so speaking of, we we stumbled upon one of the one of at
• 23:48
  least my favorite scrappy versus sophisticated questions. So as an entrepreneur, trouble turning your mind
• 23:54
  off. I'm in the same boat. I think most entrepreneurs probably are. When you wake
• 24:00
  up in the morning, what is the first time that you allow yourself to check
• 24:06
  your email?
• 24:07
  you know what, that that is a a little bit of a there's a time
• 24:10
  lag. So I have a dog. I have a dog, and the dog wants to
• 24:14
  eat. Just the first thing she wants to do
• 24:17
  Sure. Natural.
• 24:19
  is eat some food, and and then we have to go for a walk. So
• 24:24
  I do my regular system is I I do wake up, I do check my
• 24:30
  watch to see how much sleep I got. So that's that's important to me. I
• 24:35
  love to sleep. and I'm I love to measure my deep sleep. You know,
• 24:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:42
  not just, you know, I wanna make sure I got some good deep sleep. If
• 24:45
  I don't, I I I'm usually okay, but I feel really a lot better if
• 24:49
  I know I got, you know, deep sleep. So I do pick up the phone
• 24:53
  to look at that. Because the
• 24:55
  Okay.
• 24:56
  watch will tell me how many hours I slept, but it doesn't exactly show me
• 24:59
  the deep sleep. So I look at that, then I put it down and feed
• 25:03
  the dog, take the dog out for a we go out for a good half
• 25:08
  hour. I
• 25:09
  Okay. Wow.
• 25:10
  have woods near me and there's deer in there and all kinds of other good
• 25:14
  critters, but the deer are always funny as all get out. 'Cause they just stand
• 25:18
  there and like
• 25:19
  Yeah.
• 25:22
  and they don't move and they and you could talk to them and they're still
• 25:27
  like mmm
• 25:28
  Yeah. Deer in the headlights being deer in the headlight. It's perfect.
• 25:32
  Yeah, they're just yeah, they don't run. I mean they know me now and they
• 25:36
  know, you know, they don't run away when I start walking near. And sometimes they
• 25:41
  just, you know, pop up behind a tree. So and
• 25:45
  Just saying hi.
• 25:49
  you know, and when I don't do that I miss it. You know, that's really
• 25:54
  what clears my head and and I also sometimes get ideas. If if not ideas
• 25:59
  I start thinking about you know, my list for the day of
• 26:04
  Yeah.
• 26:05
  all those things that have to get done one way or the other. and, you
• 26:10
  know, and then my wants. What do I want to do?
• 26:14
  Okay. Okay, this is a pretty solid start to the day. I like it. Take
• 26:17
  me to the start of Wealthy Palette. was your ICP, your ideal client, was that
• 26:21
  right from the get-go, or did you iterate a few times on that?
• 26:25
  No. Yeah, that that got iterated. So at first I actually really thought that my
• 26:31
  clients would be financial advisors.
• 26:33
  Sure, given the past experience. Okay.
• 26:36
  Yeah, I mean and and I had the compliance side. So
• 26:40
  Yeah.
• 26:42
  you know, I can speak their language. So, you know, medical's a language, financial's the
• 26:48
  language, contracting, I don't know if there's like a specific language. but you know, there's
• 26:55
  certain professions that there's a certain language that you need to speak and finance is
• 27:02
  one. And I really thought they would be my clients. I did have a financial
• 27:09
  advisor at the beginning, and I redid his brand. You know, and I still talk
• 27:16
  to a lot of financial advisors. I've been talking to dentists, have seemed to be
• 27:23
  interested in Vera. Yeah.
• 27:25
  Okay. That makes sense in that industry too, actually, yeah.
• 27:28
  Yeah, but then I'm kinda worried about the HIPAA, you know. but I think
• 27:32
  It's tough.
• 27:33
  I can add HIPAA to you know, to the copy or to the brain. So
• 27:39
  Vera has a brain, right? And I program the brain to whatever business I'm working
• 27:46
  with. So pretty much when you go on to Vera, I'm also kind of rebranding
• 27:53
  people to be to be able to position. Because the whole operation kind of the
• 28:00
  whole so there's like five there's five gears in the operation system, which is called
• 28:07
  the authority operation. Operating system. And there's five gears. And one is response, then there's
• 28:13
  position, then there's demand, delivery, authority, and trust are together. So Vera is your response
• 28:20
  agent, and she takes care of all that and keeps people in order on the
• 28:27
  CRM and all that good stuff. The position is the branding. And you know, you
• 28:34
  don't want to be vanilla. Vanilla is boring.
• 28:38
  Yeah.
• 28:40
  Yeah, I I mean and and I'm saying this as a lover of vanilla ice
• 28:43
  cream. I love vanilla
• 28:44
  I am as well. Yep.
• 28:47
  ice cream. I can put anything on it, I can design it however I want.
• 28:50
  It's like the best ice cream in the world.
• 28:53
  It's your canvas, yeah.
• 28:55
  Right. It's a ca yeah, you gotta paint on it. And and that's the thing
• 29:01
  about branding and that position. If you don't have a position that's going to help
• 29:08
  you stand out, you know, you might get there in the long run, but it's
• 29:14
  just gonna be that much harder. So once they know your position, then there's, you
• 29:21
  know, creating that demand, which is all your social media and creating content and getting
• 29:27
  out there, meeting people. Delivery is that system that you have every day with how
• 29:34
  you meet a client, how you you know, pro propose a job, and what that
• 29:40
  structure is. And once you get to the point of having other managers within your
• 29:47
  organization, that's when the SOP, you know, taps in and you better have a solid
• 29:53
  one. Because people are going to expect that all your employees act like you.
• 30:00
  Yep. Yep. And that goes for any business.
• 30:03
  Right, and if they don't act like you then you get the phone call. What's
• 30:05
  going on? Why aren't they doing this? Why didn't they clean
• 30:08
  Right. Right.
• 30:11
  up after they lefore they left, you know?
• 30:14
  Yeah. Okay, so this I I did want to dive into this. So the marketing
• 30:18
  side and the process side all into this one overarching Vera. I I understand it
• 30:23
  now. I think let me read this back to you to make sure that I
• 30:27
  get it. So we want to have kind of like the process aligned for intaking
• 30:32
  of leads, knowing what to do with those leads, touching base to get new leads,
• 30:36
  and then also execution. Obviously Vera's not gonna go fix it fix an HVAC, but
• 30:41
  Following the SOP. So it has that full kind of customer life cycle built into
• 30:46
  it. Is that a is that a fair way to think about it?
• 30:50
  Yeah, absolutely. Because you know, you got delivery and how you act time and time
• 30:56
  and consistently over and over, that builds the trust, which builds your authority within that
• 31:03
  industry.
• 31:04
  Okay. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense.
• 31:06
  Yeah, you know, and I don't know why other people don't think about these things.
• 31:12
  I just you know, I just can't help it. It's like, you know, why why?
• 31:18
  Yeah. Do you interact with a lot of business owners that are in sort of
• 31:23
  this trades field? Like, are they using AI yet? Are they kind of just passively
• 31:28
  using it? Like what's their level of usage?
• 31:31
  So they're using AI you know to write a lot use it to write. Write
• 31:36
  an email, write letters. I I talk to a lot of people, I I say
• 31:41
  this myself. I write it to make me nicer. I use AI to make
• 31:46
  Yeah.
• 31:47
  me nicer in my writing so that I sound more polite and nicer. because well
• 31:53
  again, I'm from North Jersey. So North Jersey were kinda like straight ahead, blow the
• 32:00
  doors down,
• 32:01
  It's to the point.
• 32:03
  make it happen. And and even here in Pennsylvania, people don't understand. You know, people
• 32:10
  Yeah.
• 32:11
  people back away from that. And you know, I know when I first came and
• 32:16
  went to college here in Pennsylvania, yeah, people didn't didn't take to me. I I
• 32:22
  needed to dial
• 32:24
  Yeah.
• 32:25
  it dial it down.
• 32:28
  Man, this five foot tall girl's got a mouth on her.
• 32:30
  Yeah, i I I mean and and I don't swear. I never swear. And and
• 32:34
  Okay, okay.
• 32:36
  my boys either. You know, I you know, I I taught them shut up was
• 32:40
  a bad word. Like that's
• 32:42
  All right.
• 32:43
  just not nice. Like people don't like when you tell the so I never said
• 32:47
  anything aggressive like that, but just my manner was very aggressive. And now I'm more
• 32:52
  laid back. You know, I'm you know, I'm like, Okay. Well, let me know when
• 32:57
  you want to do something. You know, great,
• 33:00
  Yeah.
• 33:01
  we had a a one to one. y you know, you seem to like everything
• 33:06
  I said. but let me know when you're ready. And and then I just follow
• 33:11
  up on the CRM. but but yeah. Now I forgot what your real question was.
• 33:17
  Okay, whatever.
• 33:18
  who knows? We're going all over the place. I love it. I got some scrappy
• 33:21
  versus sophisticated lightning round questions for you though. Give me
• 33:24
  Yeah.
• 33:25
  give me some of the early, very scrappy days of either starting Wealthy Palette or
• 33:30
  Maid in Philadelphia. Was there was there a a consistent sort of ramen noodle esque
• 33:35
  dinner? Something cheap and quick that you were going
• 33:38
  my gosh.
• 33:39
  with?
• 33:41
  Okay, so that all started when I was in college because I had no money.
• 33:43
  I was my
• 33:44
  Okay. Yeah.
• 33:46
  my folks actually divorced when I was in college, so nobody wanted to help. So
• 33:50
  there was no
• 33:51
  Okay.
• 33:52
  help. I was stuck with it. I I was just trying to graduate. you're talking,
• 33:59
  I couldn't afford a dorm. So I found a studio apartment in so Moore College
• 34:07
  of Art is on the parkway, Ben Franklin Parkway, across from Ben the Ben Franklin
• 34:15
  Museum or Franklin Institute. and where I lived was down at the Italian market. Of
• 34:23
  all places.
• 34:25
  Nice.
• 34:26
  That's where I found a studio apartment. No phone, nothing. So if anybody wanted me
• 34:32
  And it was on a weekend, they would have to come to where I lived
• 34:39
  and yell.
• 34:40
  Ha ha.
• 34:41
  'Cause I was on the second floor and maybe I'd open the window and maybe
• 34:46
  I wouldn't. And then across the street was a little convenience store. So, you know,
• 34:51
  yeah, I had a lot of like bread, mustard, ketchup sandwiches, type crazy
• 34:56
  man.
• 34:57
  crazy stuff. in college I remembered just going on a date for ice cream, just
• 35:03
  for something. 'Cause I I
• 35:05
  Yeah.
• 35:06
  I didn't have food in college. You know, I I di I wasn't on the
• 35:11
  meal plan. I I wasn't in a dorm. I was just figuring it out. And
• 35:16
  you know, it it it wasn't good. I mean, I wish I had ramen noodles
• 35:21
  even at most.
• 35:23
  But you made it. Okay. But that is the true definition of scrappiness. Making it
• 35:30
  work when when nothing is working.
• 35:34
  You know, and and there were people that I cleaned houses for that would send
• 35:38
  me money in an envelope now and then. And that was like, you know, Christmas
• 35:43
  to me. You know,
• 35:45
  Yeah.
• 35:46
  it could only have been twenty bucks. But I also had to pay for supplies
• 35:50
  and I did I was on work study and I did have girls, you know,
• 35:56
  friends that brought me food from the cafeteria now and then. So I mean I
• 36:02
  surviv look, I'm fine, I survived.
• 36:05
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:06
  You know, it it was bad, you know, or could have been wor it could've
• 36:11
  anything anything could be worse, right?
• 36:13
  Sure, sure. But I I appreciate the tenacity. I love it. take me to Wealthy
• 36:18
  Palette. have you had to play the credit card timing game where you wait till
• 36:23
  tomorrow to charge something because that's next month's statement?
• 36:27
  Well, actually no. So
• 36:29
  Okay, alright.
• 36:31
  so when I had lived in Ocean City, New Jersey, and I had gone from
• 36:37
  banking, and well my kids were born. I had so I had my kids and
• 36:44
  then, you know, divorced their father. I had a house down there that was separate
• 36:51
  from my marriage.
• 36:53
  Okay.
• 36:54
  And put the house up for sale. I bought the house for a hundred and
• 36:58
  fifty. And then I sold it for five hundred.
• 37:01
  Nice. Wow.
• 37:03
  And and because you know I had the financial background, I invested. So part of
• 37:08
  it went into a bunch of land. I have thirty-two acres of land in Tioga
• 37:14
  County, Pennsylvania, which I plan to build on. It's actually just wooded land right now.
• 37:20
  we camp there a lot. and you know, just the investments. And just recently, so
• 37:26
  I was using my margin account and I had gotten it up to where I
• 37:32
  owed like 40,000. And that was painful. I'm like, I I don't like owing the
• 37:38
  money. So I reconfigured my account. I dumped a lot of stuff, but it was
• 37:44
  interesting. So I I made a plan on how I was going to do this
• 37:50
  because I don't want to pay taxes. I hate taxes. I hate taxes. So I
• 37:56
  figured
• 37:57
  Okay, love it.
• 38:00
  it out. to avoid capital gains and taxes, where I actually totally avoided federal and
• 38:07
  I only have to pay maybe a hundred and thirty dollars in state.
• 38:14
  Wow.
• 38:15
  And I paid back everything I owed on margin. So right now I'm
• 38:18
  Wow.
• 38:19
  clean.
• 38:20
  Nice. This I love this. This is this is from hoping for ramen noodles to
• 38:24
  now clean, easy living with a AI agent going. I love it, Sandra. This is
• 38:29
  fantastic.
• 38:30
  Yeah, I mean, you know, i he you know, I can hope that it keeps
• 38:33
  going this way. But if it doesn't, I still have brokerage account, I still have
• 38:36
  an IRA. I didn't clean clear out everything.
• 38:38
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:43
  and that's all important. So right now we we live in a kind of an
• 38:48
  expensive area here, right outside of Philadelphia. my youngest guy will be graduating high school.
• 38:53
  So then I can get to the mountain, but I'm totally virtual as a business.
• 38:59
  Nice.
• 39:00
  So the plan is going forward is to, you know, find a good manager, get
• 39:05
  her a little office somewhere, you know, rent you know, they have a lot of
• 39:11
  those sharing offices, you know, like little, you know, so get her something like that,
• 39:17
  so that she can keep it cool here and I go up there and I
• 39:23
  start again and
• 39:25
  Yeah.
• 39:26
  get people to know me and sell and build there. And build the house and
• 39:31
  but I already own the land, so it's not much. and I found tiny houses
• 39:36
  that you that you could
• 39:38
  Okay.
• 39:40
  you could buy a tiny house for $300 a month for like five years, and
• 39:46
  they, you know, deliver the house right away.
• 39:50
  Wow.
• 39:52
  So I'm like, well, I could probably buy one for each of us. Me and
• 39:55
  my two kids can all have our own house.
• 39:57
  Yeah. Yeah. It's effectively a nine hundred dollar mortgage, I suppose. Like nothing wrong with
• 40:04
  that.
• 40:05
  Yeah. Yeah, and it's not forever. It's only five years. I'm like, well that could
• 40:10
  work really nice. And even if I paid, you know, another three to five hundred
• 40:16
  a month for a office, it still it still works. But yeah.
• 40:21
  Yeah. this is great. I can I can see the entrepreneurial wheels spinning too. It's
• 40:26
  it's so fun.
• 40:27
  Mm and and my boys are both going into engineering.
• 40:35
  I mean, all right, they can build the house then. What do we do? And
• 40:36
  this is perfect.
• 40:37
  Yeah. Yeah, and they're Eagle Scouts and they can build the house and one's at
• 40:42
  Penn State right now and the other one will be at Penn State.
• 40:47
  Nice.
• 40:49
  but he's going into the military as well, so I don't have to pay for
• 40:52
  his college.
• 40:53
  Okay. Okay. This is awesome. Sandra, thank you so much for sharing. I love the
• 40:58
  story. I love the come up. I love the success. a hundred percent scrappy. A
• 41:03
  hundred percent scrappy, and I'm a big fan.
• 41:06
  Yeah, you know. I mean, how could anybody say they're not? I don't know.
• 41:11
  Exactly. Yeah. We've had a few sophisticated guests, but most often people are pretty scrappy.
• 41:15
  what do you want the folks out there no out there to know? Anything you
• 41:19
  wanna promote before we sign off here?
• 41:22
  Okay, well there's wealthypalette.com. Vera is Vera Response HQ dot com. you know, she she
• 41:29
  does pretty much everything and I'm more than willing to give demos and talk to
• 41:37
  you about it. you know, what else can I promote?
• 41:43
  Yeah, what else we got going on?
• 41:45
  You know, just you know, go what I can promote is I would hope that
• 41:51
  everyone has the opportunity in life to to do what they're made to do. You
• 41:57
  know, because God made us all in a special way. And I honestly believe that
• 42:03
  I'm now finally doing what I was always supposed to be doing.
• 42:08
  That's awesome. A very wholesome way to end. Sandra Carlisle, check out Wealthy Palette, check
• 42:12
  out Vera, give her a follow on LinkedIn. give her a follow on YouTube as
• 42:17
  well. All those links will be in the description. Sandra, thank you so much for
• 42:22
  coming on. I appreciate it.
• 42:24
  Thank you, Jack. I appreciate you as well.
• 42:27
  course. Stay data driven everybody.