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220. Broke Built Me Better with Barry Bradham · FINE is a 4-Letter Word

0:00
Hello and welcome to Fine Is a Four Letter Word. My guest
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today is Barry Bradham. Welcome to the show, Barry.
0:07
Well, thank you, Lori. I appreciate your time and having me on your show.
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Well, I have a feeling this is gonna be an interesting conversation, so
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let's just jump right in, shall we? Let's do it. All right, Barry,
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what were the values and beliefs that you were raised with that
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contributed to who you've become? Wow, that's a great question.
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A couple key stories come to mind actually that I talk about once in a
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while. I love stories. One is integrity,
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honesty, especially when it comes to sales and
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doing business. And that happened when I was 8 years old. Actually, I had a
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friend who came upon a lot of money, I thought at the time, and
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he was in my room and he liked my toys. And I said, well, how
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about we exchange? I didn't have any money. He did. And
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I had a lot of toys and he wanted them. So he ended up with
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many of my toys and I ended up with his money and That was it.
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You know, he took them away and I had cash in my pocket, which felt
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great because I felt empowered and I felt like I can make all these
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decisions, but you know, I had control. I didn't have to ask my parents for
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money and, but I didn't spend any of it either. I just remember that feeling
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felt good. And a couple of weeks later, my parents sat me down
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and they said, so there's a situation, you're not in trouble, but
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do you remember this sale that you made with your toys? I said, yes. And
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they said, well, that was stolen money. And I said, oh, I didn't know that.
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And they said, do you still have it? I said, yeah, I have all of
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it. And they said, okay, well, we have to swap things back because he's in
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a lot of trouble. You're not. And then the parents came into that
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conversation and they, and they said, wow, you got the best salesperson ever
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right here. I'll always remember that. And maybe
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even at that age, I felt something off about him having money. I don't know.
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But, you know, I remember thinking, oh, well, this, this sucks, you know, having to
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give the money back. But on the other hand, I'm glad I didn't spend it
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so that I could to do the right thing and, and all of that. So
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I learned that even better than the power of having the money, a couple weeks
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later I learned there's also integrity in what you're selling and, and who you're
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selling to and kind of knowing a little bit about that person and, and make
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sure that a salesperson will try to sell everybody their product, but that doesn't mean
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it's the right fit. Mm-hmm. So anyway, uh, that was one of the first ones
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for me. Where did you pick up those sales skills? Like, were your parents
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in sales? How did you, where did you get the— That's a
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good question. My Stepdad worked from home. I
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don't know. And you know, I've only been around him for a couple of years
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at that point. So I don't know how much of that I got from him.
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And actually he wasn't really working at home at that point. So, so I
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don't know. I liked the fact that he worked from home though. And that ended
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up being a big role model for me growing up. My, my real
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dad's a great person too. One of the stories I tell when I speak is
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about kind of then later in life, my real dad gave me the Rich Dad
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Poor Dad book. And so much of that resonated with me. But yeah, I think
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probably that he had a good work ethic. Both of my parents did, my, both
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my fathers did. So I'm sure from there, but you know, I was 8, so
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it's hard to remember too much before that. Right, right, right. Yeah. I just didn't
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know if you had some recollection of like where you got the idea to
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sell your toys. 'Cause I don't know a lot of 8-year-olds who are like, yeah,
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I'll sell my toys and get some money. I used to just pull a table
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out of the garage and put it on the corner and go to Costco and
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buy bubblegum packets and sell them and baseball cards and sell 'em
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by the packet and random toys that I felt like I didn't play with enough.
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That was pretty common in my life back then. I think where it came from
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was not having money, you know, growing up, you know, really kind of on the,
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the lower end of the middle income bracket and not really having
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too much money. Really thrifty parents. We made it through though.
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Mm-hmm. I always find it interesting because my dad was
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pretty entrepreneurial. He always had like a side gig, but I
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never was the kid who was figuring out how to make extra money,
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like on the side entrepreneurially. Mm. Like, you know, I was
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getting— I had like babysitting jobs and I worked at a, a pizza
3:53
restaurant, and then I worked in a bank as a teller as in when I
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was in high school. But like that entrepreneurial spirit part of things, I'm
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always fascinated when it comes out really young. I have to think
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that that's a big part of it. You know, it's just the feeling that I
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had when I had cash, because usually we didn't. Mm-hmm. My parents,
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my mom didn't. And so she was always relying on, you know,
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other people and she's not with us anymore, so I don't feel too bad talking
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about it, but I have nothing bad to say, but It was just what it
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was. And due to that, I saw that and I was like, wow, you know,
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just save some of your money. Don't spending it all the time on crap, you
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know, just keep it and keep that power and control for yourself. Otherwise you're just
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dependent on other people all the time. She didn't like to work. So then there's
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that, you know, it's like, huh. So I think maybe that maybe on the negative
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role model side of things might've been a big part of that influence as well.
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Or maybe it was positive in showing you that it's important
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to not spend everything you bring in. And to have
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some in savings. Absolutely. I like the flip.
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So as you grew up, did you work for other people? Have you just
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been an entrepreneur the whole time? Yeah. And that actually is another
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good— pulling memories out of my head. There was a guy from the church
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when my mom was kind of between her relationships. His name was
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Dave, just a, a beautiful man, character and father and husband
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and all of that. And he took me under and he was in real estate.
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And so he was, you know, always working on properties and he gave me opportunity
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to work for him. And so a lot of times he'd be like, there's a
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way for him to gimme money. Looking back at it, I mean, that's what he
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did. He saw this kid and kind of in need and he bought me a
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suit for church and cool stuff like that. But, you know, I remember
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dragging wires underneath, crawling in Fairbanks, Alaska under
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properties and he'd be up there, you see it, bring it to me, bring it
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to the hole, you know, cobwebs and spiders all around me.
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He's like, I'm not going down there. I'll send the kid. Yeah, exactly.
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Well, I think he had a little bit of a belly. He probably would've got
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stuck. Right. It was another reason. But he was a great man. He'd take me
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fishing. So I think that's probably another good role model. And I was pretty young
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then. Other people in the church would give me opportunities to, you know,
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babysit their kids and stuff. So, you know, always was— I, I was always doing
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that from 8, 9. I just always wanted to do that.
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Mm-hmm. Way better than watching TV, playing video games. And that was the era of
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Nintendo coming up. Sure. And all of that. But I'd much rather be—
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and the people that would hire me always were smart and they, you know, they
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had good things going in their lives and they had good careers and, and I
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like to be around that. What a gift that all of these people
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fed your entrepreneurial spirit instead of just
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like, oh, here's some money or here are some clothes and just
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giving you different ways of helping. But they, what they were doing was
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helping you, but also building your character.
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Yeah, absolutely. And I did, because of, I guess, the lack of
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opportunities maybe that, that were naturally in my life. I did
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have a thirst for that, you know, I did draw that out in people and
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I still do. I still, here we are, you know, I'm with you and, and
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that's just something that I always have a thirst for information, hearing other
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people's experiences and their stories. And I'm sure that's something you and I have in
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common. Did you grow up with any siblings? I had a half sister
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when I was 6. Same mom, different dads. And that was huge.
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Having to kind of be there for her when we had instability in the household.
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Mm-hmm. And, you know, helping her with, you know, making sure she got up and
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went to school and she ate before she went to school and her hair was
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kind of done and— Yeah. You know, looked presentable and that kind of thing. Yeah.
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But yeah, from like 2 on, they really, you know, needed me to help out
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in a lot of ways when it came to her. And that was great. Now
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she lives in Florida. Did she acquire the same entrepreneurial
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spirit that you did? Did she follow in your footsteps? Because like a lot of
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times younger siblings look up to the older sibling and they want to do do
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the same things? You know, I think she does. Yeah. I think in her own
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way she has a lot of that. She's went on the path of motherhood and
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she's one of the— probably the best mother I know. So, you know, she
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definitely learned something there on her own because we didn't have that as a role
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model. Mm-hmm. So as you grew into an adult, what path
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did you take? Did you go into real estate? Did you work for other
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people? Yeah. In college I was very involved with
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the business club. And really started getting it. We had to start a,
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a business as part of a presentation that we had to give in an
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organization called SIFE, Students in Free Enterprise. Okay. And
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so being the president of that and kind of being one of the two people
8:17
that decided to bring that to our campus at Eastern Oregon University
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is we had to formulate a group of people to start the business and to,
8:24
and what that business was gonna be. And yeah, so that led me into
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kind of probably a lot of the path where I'm at now and exploring that.
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And then, you know, after college I got into banking. And so I started,
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you know, managing banks and had multiple banks and traveled all around the
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Northwest doing that. Got a lot of great sales skills in
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that. And, you know, a lot of different extracurricular type things in high school and
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in college, you know, really are things that I was drawn to doing. I love
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building, building businesses, building teams, building things. And I think that's
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kind of what led me through college, cuz I don't know that I had a
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clear path in that. Mm-hmm. And then after college I got into banking and I
9:00
started buying real estate. And eventually after a few of those properties,
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I thought, I think I'm gonna pursue that. And I'd loved, you know, building and
9:08
developing and just building duplexes. And that was the best thing I ever did.
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It took me 15 to 20 properties to get to that conclusion,
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but that's where, you know, what I was doing at the end was the best
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thing that I possibly could have done. And that's buying land, building duplexes.
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Something you just said is kind of a key point, I think, in this
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conversation at this point is that it took you, what,
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15 to 20 properties? Mm-hmm. Like you weren't good
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at it the first thing you started. No, I suck. But you kept, kept
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doing it. Yeah. And you got better and you found your rhythm. Yeah. And you
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found like what worked and what didn't work. Yeah. And I think
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that's a key point in that because people think, and I've been
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guilty of it myself, like I just wanna be good as soon as I start.
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Mm-hmm. And so what kept you going? Was it your interest in it? Was it
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like, I have to master this 'cause I just feel compelled to get this right.
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Funny thing, the, the very first property I bought, you know, I was trying to
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remodel it and fix it up. And now looking back, I'm like, oh my God.
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Like I had no taste of what colors should be and
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textures on walls and trim. And I'm just hacking away,
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just hacking away completely on my own, managing banks by
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day, just me and my dog hacking away. And I was single at the time,
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so I had a lot of free time, trained my dog and, and remodeled this
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house. But thankfully I was in an era of low interest rates. And
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a huge real estate boom that was beginning in
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2002. That winter is when I was doing that. And so I ended up
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trying to rent that as office space and that kind of worked, kind of didn't.
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And then I sold that house, you know, and with that money that I sold
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that house, I kind of parlayed that into several more properties rather than,
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mm-hmm, woo-hoo, I'm gonna go, you know, spend a bunch of money. I leveraged that
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into more real estate and then I just, the very next one, you know, my
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eyes are open, so I'm going on tour, you know, the, the real estate tours
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and seeing model homes. And then that opened my eyes. To, oh,
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okay, well, yeah, these houses are so much more beautiful. I need to do it.
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I need to pay attention to these fixtures and finishes.
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Exactly. And I was also doing it on a shoestring, you know, sure.
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The first one too. So, so there was a lot of kind of all those
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things. Yeah. Okay. Well, the show is called Fine Is a Four
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Letter Word, and at some point your life was
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fine, but not fine. Tell us how you got there.
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Well, I mean, that, that was one of the big ones, you know, Lori.
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Yeah. And I realized I actually have two very clear seasons in my life
11:33
where I was definitely not fine, even though from the outside
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I probably looked completely fine. Sure. And each one taught me a different
11:40
lesson that shaped who I am as an entrepreneur today. Oh, good. I want to
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hear both lessons. So the first one,
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of course, is kind of what we were just talking about, and that's the journey
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that led me to California. On paper, things looked really good. I was
11:55
active, making moves, building, owning assets.
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If you look from the outside, you'd probably say, well, he's doing great. But
12:02
internally, I was under a ton of pressure. And what I didn't realize at the
12:05
time was that I was making big financial and life decisions completely
12:09
alone. I didn't have strong advisors. I didn't have people around me who had
12:13
already been through what I was dealing with. Mm-hmm. Finance, tax,
12:17
strategy, long-term planning. You know, all those things. Mm-hmm. And I wasn't
12:20
failing because I wasn't capable. I was struggling because I
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didn't have enough perspective. And that's a dangerous place to be in as an
12:28
entrepreneur. Mm-hmm. So hard work doesn't protect you. The right
12:32
counsel does. Would you have been open to that counsel if it had
12:35
been available at that time? Because a lot of times entrepreneurs are like, nah, I
12:39
got it. I'm smarter than you. Yeah. I've always had that thirst
12:43
for give me information, you know, at that point in time,
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and I look back and I realize this now, that all entrepreneurs were
12:50
going through something major because they were— all of us were in real estate. And
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I had two friends that killed themselves. One guy hung himself from the rafters of
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a commercial building in Bend, Oregon that he was building. Hmm. And everybody
13:02
was running for cover. But the people that weren't running for cover, the
13:05
stable, the high-level CPAs, accountants, attorneys,
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those types of people weren't in my circle. And I didn't know how to
13:13
get connected with them quick enough. And so kind of
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escaped from the situation and I, I guess ran, you know, I was kind of
13:20
like a country music song backwards. I lost my houses, I lost my business, I
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lost my fiancée, I lost my dog, I lost my house that I lived in.
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And it was a 14-month period and I recognized it probably
13:30
before most of the world did. I remember seeing the graphs and just looking up
13:34
and going, looking at my fiancée, I said, ah, I'm in trouble. This isn't
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going well. I can't sell these homes that I've had on the market
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and cash is dwindling. And a couple of big homes that I was building
13:46
at first, and this is Oregon, so the real estate market's different there. And this
13:49
is also 17 years ago, but I was trying to sell some of these homes
13:53
for $469,000, which would've been a great per foot, square
13:57
footage price back then. And I had a lot of interest, but that was when
14:00
the market really started to, to collapse. So I started dropping the price to
14:04
$369,000 to $299,000. To 69, didn't matter.
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And then now the houses were done. They needed to be sold. Meanwhile,
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I'm building the duplexes and my whole plan was those duplexes were going to be
14:15
paid off free and clear. And the house I lived in paid off free
14:19
and clear, keep a vacation home by my family in Washington on the golf
14:22
course. And that was going to be my life. And that would've been probably a
14:26
great life, but I would've been married to the wrong person. I would've never came
14:29
to California. I wouldn't be all over China like I have been now and doing
14:32
all the things now. Now I have a whole different perspective and, and it
14:36
took a while. That was a lot of pain that I went through. Not sure
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if I got off track or if I answered your question clearly. No, I think
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again, the points that you brought up are that even when things
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are going terribly, you don't know what that's
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leading you to. Yeah. And so people have heard me say this
14:53
before, but it's like, can you find the gratitude within the situation?
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Even when it looks terrible, it's not perhaps your preferred
15:01
circumstances, Yeah. But can you find a shred of gratitude in
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it? And if not at that moment, obviously now looking back
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you can find it. Yeah. And so if you can find it now, you probably
15:12
could have found it then, but you just needed to shift perspective. Yeah. But
15:16
it sounds like you saw the rock coming down the hill,
15:19
but you couldn't get ahead of it. Absolutely. Did— yeah. And
15:23
the other thing was, is immediately I bought a franchise trying to
15:27
get a business going quick enough to cover me. And it did. It, it was
15:30
actually pretty successful right off the gate. The problem is it was a
15:34
beautified cement business, which is acrylic cement, and you have
15:38
to pour it on the ground. Well, in Bend, Oregon, it drops below 42 degrees
15:41
and you can't do that business outside when it's below 42 degrees. So
15:45
that actually carried me through 2006. And then I went on an
15:49
exploratory mission down to California to be like, well, maybe I can start this company
15:53
down there. Mm-hmm. Doing, you know, the same marketing strategy and tactics I
15:57
did to make that successful. And that took a long time. That
16:00
took a long time to do. There's a lot of distractions also with
16:04
what I felt like I wanted to do versus am I even
16:08
now in the place to do that? You know, maybe that's not really who I
16:11
am and what I need to be doing. And, you know, the snow was coming
16:14
into Oregon and I was like, I'm just going to drive, drive south and I'm
16:18
just going to go down for a sabbatical, clear my head and enjoy the sun
16:22
and take a week, two weeks, three weeks, maybe the whole month. I don't know.
16:25
But I ended up down there renting a room and starting over. What
16:29
were the tools or techniques or strategies that you used? You said you took
16:32
a sabbatical, but were you just sitting on the beach for
16:36
a month or were you like reading books
16:40
or going to counseling or practicing
16:43
meditation? What were you doing that helped you clear your mind and get
16:47
clarity on what to do next? Well, I talked to my stepmom a
16:51
lot. I talked to my sisters a lot. And my dad and yeah,
16:55
just working through those drives, walking on the beach, thinking about talking
16:59
out loud, you know, and that many entrepreneurs do that. We need people who we
17:02
can talk to and hear ourselves think. We're not necessarily going to get answers
17:06
or need answers. We're just needing to kind of work it out. Yeah. It's the
17:10
way you process. Yeah. And then I think I used a lot of them and
17:13
I always have as therapists in my life and they know that they're not dumb,
17:17
you know? So, so they try to make time. They're like, oh, Barry's calling. He
17:20
probably needs just to talk, work something out. He's going through
17:24
something, developing something or going through something. But yeah, so I, I ended up
17:28
renting a room and realized that what I liked best was the
17:31
marketing in these businesses. I mean, I love real estate. I love designing that,
17:35
but there was no going back to that yet. You know, it was still a
17:38
bad economy where banks were still failing. I mean, everybody was still—
17:42
and I had bad credit at that point too, and, and not a lot of
17:45
cash or capital. And I was, really
17:48
traumatized by real estate. Mm-hmm. So it took me some time
17:52
to, you know, do something else. So I explored marketing and taught myself graphic
17:55
design and I was curious, you know, I loved being an artist, so I was
17:59
curious about how, you know, how do they get that to a computer? So that
18:02
was all new to me. Because I had done banking and all this, you know,
18:05
it got me away from probably a, a direction I could have went. Mm-hmm. So
18:08
I taught myself graphic design. I bought all the Adobe, you know, Master Suite
18:12
CDs, the CD series, and, and did all of that. So no, I wasn't just
18:16
chilling on the beach. I was teaching myself graphic design. In
18:19
Photoshop and Illustrator and Dreamweaver and websites and, and knowing
18:23
that that's the future and knowing that, you know, I kind of was on a
18:26
slow path on that because the— now the dot-com bubble burst and
18:30
that was behind us and I didn't really get into it during all those years.
18:33
So I wanted to get back into that, not get back into it, but I
18:36
wanted to go into that direction of technology and, and the internet. Well, maybe it's
18:40
just as well that you weren't in part of the boom because then you would've
18:44
been potentially part of the bust, and which you were in the ri— you know.
18:48
Yeah. Either, either way it was gonna catch up to you. Yeah. Right.
18:53
Yeah. But you, you had told me when we talked in the pre-show
18:57
conversation that at some point you were sleeping in your
19:00
office. Yeah. I had my Mercedes
19:04
luckily paid off and was able to, you know, as
19:08
I was really putting all my cards into what I was trying to do, my
19:11
development and the new company. You know, I still like helping businesses and I
19:15
still, in my conversations I had with business owners, knew
19:19
that they needed something. They were drawn to me as I was drawn to
19:23
them. And so how do I do that? So I was doing, you know, free
19:25
graphic design services. If you buy business cards and flyers, but at that time
19:29
these online print stores were coming up selling business cards for $30 for a
19:33
box. And they're like, well, why are yours $100? I'm like, cause I'm giving you
19:37
free graphic design. They're like, well then the graphic design isn't free. I'm like, yeah,
19:40
but your business card's front and back and taking me 2 days to design it.
19:44
And so I realized that that was kind of maybe not the right business model.
19:48
Right. There were some successes and some failures, and to kind of stay
19:52
afloat, I ended up selling my car and I really went all in with
19:56
a, an office. 'Cause I had peaks of good times and then peaks of
19:59
bad times. You know, when the peaks of bad times, you're out selling, marketing yourself,
20:03
getting more clients, and then you're busy handling that client work. And then when you're
20:07
done with that client work, well then now you don't have the next client. So
20:09
that's a lot of, you know, solopreneurs get into that kind of
20:13
rollercoaster ride. And then that's where I found myself. And so I gave up my
20:17
apartment and I gave up my car and just, yeah, I
20:21
had to sleep on the floor of my office, downtown Manhattan Beach for,
20:24
I don't know, a few weeks. A few weeks. So I got some
20:28
customers and made some relationships and kind of crawled out of that.
20:32
In any of those experiences that you've had where you
20:36
saw success and then you saw the other side of
20:39
it where it wasn't so much successful. What did you
20:43
learn from those experiences? Humility.
20:47
Okay. Really? What did I learn from it? Well, first of all,
20:51
yeah, humility. And, and also back to the lesson at 8, keep some
20:55
money. You have to— you can't get to that position. Although it was a,
20:58
a very difficult one to control, you know, had, had I walked away from real
21:02
estate and had the right advisors, they would've said, quit paying everything.
21:06
We're gonna put you through a BK. We can put money here, put money there.
21:10
You can save these properties. And I did, because I didn't have that and
21:13
I didn't know that was even a possibility. Mm-hmm. Instead, I just paid
21:17
until I couldn't because my integrity's there and I felt like that was what I
21:20
needed to do. Yeah. Which made me feel good at the time, but ultimately
21:24
I ended up not being able to pay anyway. So what would've been the difference?
21:27
Well, I can see where coming from not having the knowledge that—
21:31
the knowledge that you had, the belief that you had was I,
21:35
in order to maintain my integrity, I need to pay off these bills. That makes
21:38
sense. Yeah. So it's easy to see why you would go that direction.
21:42
Yeah. Yeah. Did anybody else know that you were going through this? I think
21:46
I did a pretty good job covering it up, you know, and just being
21:49
positive. You know, I don't wanna drag anybody down and I wanna, I'm, I
21:53
know I'm gonna get through it somehow, but the deeper you get
21:57
into it, then you get sick cuz you're stressed. Mm-hmm. And then I
22:00
remember there was a point. Before everything turned around and I, and I had
22:04
to take a bus and I was sick and it was raining and it was
22:07
cold and which rarely happens in Manhattan Beach and it was in April
22:11
and I called my sister Jennifer and I said, remember that movie Pursuit
22:14
of Happiness? She's like, yeah. I said, I feel like that
22:18
right now. Like, like that's it. This is me on my pursuit of
22:22
happiness and just everything has been going wrong, but I'm going into this meeting
22:26
right now and I've gotta nail it.. And,
22:29
and that's, you know, kind of what happened. And you did? Yeah. It was just
22:33
like the movie, except you weren't changing a baby's diaper in the— Yeah.
22:36
Car garage, right? Wasn't that— No. He was like somewhere like that. Thank goodness. Yeah.
22:40
Yeah. He had his little boy. Mm-hmm. Okay. What advice would
22:44
you give somebody who's listening if they were going through something
22:48
similar? Never give up on yourself. Maybe lower your
22:51
hand, expose your hand a little bit more. But know what your
22:55
skills are. So you can't let somebody take advantage of you, but you have to
22:59
know what your skills are and like how you can really help. And it's okay
23:03
to be a little bit vulnerable, you know, let them know, hey, I, I really
23:06
am looking for something. I need something. I know I can help you, you
23:09
know, something along those lines. Cause I really just kept the
23:13
cold front up and the wall up. Like everything was great right up until
23:17
the end. That's a tendency that I have. And you know, that fake it
23:21
till you make it, I carry that maybe a little too far. Back then. And
23:24
so, and, and now it's like, hey, I'd really like to do business with you
23:27
and this is what I bring to the table and, and this is how I
23:29
can help you. And I wanna know more about you and, you know, how to
23:32
relieve that stress in your life and help you with automation and help you with
23:36
a community of people to really put that around you. And that's why I
23:39
do comewinwithme.com is to— so people can connect with other
23:43
entrepreneurs. That community piece, I was on as a guest on a
23:47
podcast last night, and also I recently watched this movie,
23:51
this film called Join or Die, and it's about the importance
23:55
of joining clubs and being around other people. That
23:59
this idea that we are built to do things
24:02
alone is so misdirected or misguided
24:06
or misunderstood. Like, especially Americans, right? We're all
24:10
about individuality and— right— I can do it. And as humans, we're
24:13
not wired that way. I think a lot of that is taught in school. Your
24:17
tests are just you. Your— yes, you know, your work is just you.
24:20
The assignment's just you. The better ones, in my opinion, and I think there are
24:24
a lot like that now. I've been out of school for a long time, but
24:27
it's the groupthink type things. Okay, well, build your team. You know,
24:31
you don't have to take this test all by yourself. You can utilize everybody. Yeah,
24:34
we have to build our aptitude and I understand that, but yeah, at some point
24:37
it needs to transition into, you know, leveraging other
24:41
people. Right. That's a really interesting point. I haven't been in school in a long
24:45
time either, but the idea of teaching kids how to
24:48
build teams and build and collaborate.
24:52
Yeah. Which, especially in this age of, obviously during pandemic,
24:56
kids weren't in school, so there wasn't that face-to-face interactions.
25:00
But yeah, learning how to have
25:02
those interactive skills, which I think is
25:06
missing. Band members are really good at it. Yeah. They're like, uh,
25:10
I wanna start a band. Well, I need to have a drummer. I need a
25:13
lead singer, guitar, you know, all those things. So band members are always good at
25:16
that. And, and I'll talk about that sometimes as well. You know, when building a
25:19
team as an entrepreneur, you have to think, do I really want to be a
25:22
solo entrepreneur or do I need to build my band that has all the strengths
25:26
around me? Yeah. You know, as I go through this and, you know, all businesses
25:30
need 3 people. You, you have to have the visionary, you have to have the
25:34
operations person, and you have to have the rainmaker. Those 3 things are
25:37
critical. So when you build your band or your team, you gotta be looking for,
25:41
you know, and usually the entrepreneur is the visionary in the beginning. A lot of
25:45
times they have to do all 3 of those. Mm-hmm. To scale, to get out
25:47
of that. You have to have that team. That's such a great
25:51
analogy of that band thing. And then as you were saying that, I was thinking
25:54
of like jazz specifically. They like, they're
25:57
very improvisational. Yeah. That's what it's like starting up a business.
26:01
It's all improv. Yeah, absolutely. And you look at the,
26:05
the better ones, you know, that, that I admire and that I follow, like Jeff
26:08
Bezos and Steve Jobs and, you know, they know that somehow they get that
26:12
early on. And that's taken me longer to get also. You know, it's, it's like
26:16
you really need to look for people that are gonna help you in whatever
26:19
that vision is that you have and, and find people that are passionate about it
26:23
and learn how to speak to them, you know, to motivate them, inspire them, and
26:26
to believe in, in what that vision is. And then also to be incented
26:30
appropriately so they wanna be part of it and they see themselves long-term. Right,
26:33
right. Getting buy-in to the vision, and that's part of building
26:37
corporate culture. Yeah. I talk about that all the time about getting
26:41
people to want to be part of the mission. And
26:44
that doesn't come from necessarily being like, I'm the leader,
26:48
you follow me and do what I say because I'm the leader. It comes
26:52
from being somebody that people want to follow or want to
26:55
support. Yeah. That's huge. Yeah,
26:58
absolutely. Barry, what is the song that you listen to when you
27:02
need an extra boost of energy? Maybe when you are like in one of
27:06
those points where you're like, I don't know how I'm gonna get out of this
27:08
right now. Huh. You know, I always have music on in
27:12
the background and I listen to channels that pretty much all
27:16
those songs are that way for me. Uh-huh. Because they're nostalgic
27:19
about great times in my life around certain people or whatever. So
27:23
I'm thinking of something like extraordinary that like really makes me wanna
27:27
dance and feel good. But Everywhere came to mind with Fleetwood Mac. I
27:30
just, I think it's called Everywhere, but I just, when that song comes on, I
27:33
don't know what it is. I just makes me really happy and, and makes me
27:36
feel good. Okay. And there's a lot of songs like that. But Blurred Lines by
27:39
Robin Thicke, I just, I just love that. It's kind of bluesy, kind
27:42
of jazzy. Is Robin Thicke? Yeah, Robin Thicke, the son
27:46
of— I think his name was Alan Thicke. He was on one of the
27:50
'80s sitcom shows. Yes, I know who you're talking about. Anyway,
27:53
his son's Robin Thicke, and he's, you know, he's, he's a little edgy when it
27:57
comes to some of his performances and things like that. But I, but I do
28:00
like that song. Yes, there has been some controversy around that song. Disgoming, what is
28:04
it? Right. But you can't sit still when you hear it. I heard it
28:08
the— it came on my playlist. Like, I just have a random station on whatever
28:11
when I'm at the gym, and that came on actually recently, and you, you
28:15
just can't sit still to that. Right. And that's a newer one because most of
28:18
the songs are '70s, '80s classics, you know, that I listen to. And that one's,
28:22
uh, it's not newer anymore. It's probably one of the old— yeah. When my life
28:26
got good again, maybe 15, 14 years ago, I think is
28:29
kind of when it came out. So that was a good time of my life
28:32
when I turned things around for myself and money was flowing,
28:36
customers were happy, and we were building and my business was, you know, blowing up
28:39
and I was seeing $100,000 months, which in real estate I didn't really ever dream
28:43
of cuz that's not what I was going towards. Mm-hmm. So that was
28:46
a really the, the first good time of my life in California. I
28:50
mean, I had great time in California the, the whole time, even when I
28:54
was going through it, except for that one time when I was on the office
28:57
floor. Yeah. Well, that was, that was a good time and that might be part
29:00
of it, you know, the friends that I had around me and our lifestyle and
29:04
I was working really hard then too. I was gonna say, so
29:07
that song reminds you, like, it brings back those
29:11
memories of that great time when you are finally— like, songs do that.
29:15
Music is— has that great power to do that. Yeah. Incredible.
29:19
Yeah. If someone wants to continue the conversation with you, where's the
29:22
best place for them to reach you? Appreciate you asking that. I've set
29:26
up a comewinwithme.com page where you just put in
29:30
your information. You'll see a little bit about what I do now and get some
29:33
free tools on how to connect and how to connect in my
29:37
community if you'd like to. To as well, and you'll get exposure and, and I'll
29:40
get to know who you are more. If you've got a great story that you
29:43
think I'd like to listen to or just wanna be connected with me, I'd love
29:46
it. ComeWinWithMe.com. Follow me on Instagram, Barry
29:49
Branham Entrepreneur, or connect with me on LinkedIn. That sounds great. I will
29:53
put links to all of that in the show notes. Barry, thank you so much
29:56
for joining me today on Fine Is a Four-Letter Word. Very
30:00
good, Lori. It was such a pleasure and you triggered a lot of deep memories
30:04
that I've had. So, and it's a very pleasant way. Cool.
30:07
All right.