Tales of Entrepreneurship

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This episode, we share some of the favorite moments we've had with entrepreneurs on the podcast thus far. Let's get started from new money new problems. It's the new Money New Problems podcast, a show for successful professionals searching for the tools they need to navigate financial opportunities and obstacles they've never seen. Negotiating compensation. Purchasing your first investment property. Helping your family with money. The highs and lows of, uh, entrepreneurship. New money brings new problems that require new solutions. Join us as we work through them together. I'm Brenton Harrison, and this is the new Money New Problems podcast. Oh, this is Brenton Harrison of new Money new problems, and your host for the new Money New Problems podcast. Hope that you guys enjoyed the 100th episode celebration that we shared on last week. And there were some mistakes that I shared that maybe you identified with, hopefully not to the same financial extent, at least. And in this episode, I told you we're gonna go back and have some of the moments, uh, released that we have enjoyed over the first hundred episodes. And we've done this before. We've gone back to my money stories and shared some particular moments. These moments on this episode are more centered on entrepreneurship, and I wanna share, before we even, uh, replay them, that I am not someone who, like, glorifies entrepreneurship. As a matter of fact, I would say that there are more people who shouldn't be entrepreneurs. There are. That should. But over the next several months, there's always these topics that I want to, like, dive into at a particular period of time. We've talked about the fact that we waited over a year to even talk about credit on this show and entrepreneurship and the structure of businesses and how to understand how to structure those businesses. The impact of taxes on things like entrepreneurship, uh, investment properties and the like is a topic that I want to cover over the next several months. So I thought it was only right to go back through some of the my money stories that were specific to entrepreneurs and share some of the moments that we thought were impactful. And I will also, uh, make sure to mention that even if you have no intentions of being an entrepreneur, the way that people who own their own business have to think about the value of their own time in terms of just where they spend it, how they spend it, but what they charge others for it is something that I think is instructive, no matter your employment type. So I'm hoping that even if you are in the camp or your w two till the day that you retire, that you can see some of the impact and the value and the lessons that these entrepreneurs have had to learn along the way. And we're going to start with, uh, a portion of the money. Story of juice and Toya. Juice and Toya are fitness influencers. I, uh, feel like that's a derogatory term to say an influencer, but for them, it really is, uh, apropos because they have over a million subscribers on YouTube, tens of thousands of followers on Instagram and other socials, and they've done phenomenal job building a business together that started in a really tough time. So I hope you enjoy this clip where they share a little bit more about why they started their business and how they learned to grow with the needs of their customers along the way. Check it out. Well, how long after you become a couple, uh, do you decide to start making content together? [00:03:21] Speaker B: Um, we got together summer of 2016, and it was not until, I mean, we started. So we started our business one by the lance. At the end of 2017, we left the gym. We were like, you know, we don't want to be kind of limited to the ceiling. We want to really generate, uh, other opportunities and have more time for other things. So we started our business, and, um, that's when the content kind of started. We were just kind of throwing stuff at the wall season with sticks, um, and trying to really just market ourselves. And I remember asking my dad, this was might have been 2017, 2018. Yo, can I use your camera? Because I knew he used to take pictures of me in college, and I knew it was collecting dust at home. So I was like, if I can use his camera, we can have quality pictures for our website. We can do, um, videos, tutorials, whatever we need to do to get our business off the ground. And that's kind of where it started, stemmed from. And again, it was a lot of different things that kind of led us to the content that we create today. So I'll say about late 2017, early 2018, is when we really started to. [00:04:22] Speaker C: Like, experiment, really get into content. [00:04:26] Speaker A: Um, my wife and I, we're both very type a, and, uh, we both think we're right more frequently than we probably are. So, to me, like, working together is a boundary that's probably best to not cross you also. So I'll ask, how is that process of working together? But in addition to that, you're also building a business that earns money, and you bring different philosophies, different backgrounds on money to that business. How do you navigate those two topics? [00:05:00] Speaker C: I think, for sure, at the beginning, working together was tough because we're also both very type a and it was a lot of. It wasn't. You're right, I'm wrong. It was a lot of, like, well, I want to do it this way, but he wants to do it another way, but there's only one way we can do it, you know? So we got to have some common ground. So I think it took, um, and this kind of stems from, like, the separate backgrounds, leaving the gym and starting our own business that was bumping heads, because I've always had secure income for myself. Every two weeks, I'm getting paid because of my background, which was terrifying to have to do it on my own, where he had always had an entrepreneurial mind, where he was like, no. Like, all we got to do is this, this, and this. And to me, I'm like, yeah, but on the 15th, there's no paycheck. You know, like, it was just like, that separation. So I really had to, um, kind of, like, understand where he was coming from and really trust in the business that we were creating, which meant I really needed to trust him also, you know? And so that was hard at the beginning, but once you kind of. Once we started, it was a lot easier because we realized, like you said, we were creating our own content and working for yourself, it's so much fun because you're in control of everything, and so if it failed, it was because of what I was or wasn't doing, so it's all on me. And I like that pressure. So that kind of made it fun in a sense of, like, really kind of getting the business off the ground and then doing it. Like you said, we were best friend, so it was someone that I was used to working with and being around all the time anyway, so it was easy from that standpoint, but we definitely. There was some. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it made having those conversations a lot easier, because we also. We worked together, so we had experience, um, you know, just working together as a team. [00:06:55] Speaker C: So I think, again, I knew he was a hard worker, and I knew he didn't. He also didn't like failing that Texas competitiveness, you know. So I knew, like, starting the business was going to be a success. It was just that fear of, uh, leaving, I guess. Uh, the comfortability of a paycheck is really all it was. Yeah. [00:07:17] Speaker A: When you have those marital conversations that are now business conversations about what you want the end result to be, like, what do those conversations look like amongst the two of you? And then where do you see yourselves headed in, like, the progression of your business? [00:07:35] Speaker D: Um. [00:07:35] Speaker B: Um, it's been a. I'd say it's been an evolution of our, what we thought, the business, because what we did when we first started, um, or what we thought of when we first started, is not what we're currently doing now. So, of course, we have, um, aspirations of being this, but we kind of just, you know, like, especially when Covid happened, that was a real shift, not just for us, but I'm sure for, obviously for everybody. Um, so when we first started, especially our YouTube channel, it was just about tips and tricks. Um, just helping people around the gym navigate certain, uh, learning how to use certain equipment, what, uh, exercises work, what muscle groups. It was just simple stuff. [00:08:15] Speaker C: Not follow along. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Not follow along, nothing like that. Just stuff that we thought people wanted to see. And a lot of it was, um, just ideas we got from clients and just being around in the fitness space. When Covid happened, it was like, we don't have a gym. They don't have a gym. We don't have any equipment at home, because we use equipment at gyms all the time. So, like, that transitioned our whole idea of what we wanted the business to be, what we wanted our YouTube channel to be. And at first, I was against doing follow along workouts. I was like, I don't want to do these, this p 90 x stuff. Like, I want to really give people, like, but then we have. You don't have gyms. Everybody has to have a way of working out. [00:08:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:08:52] Speaker B: So we gave it a shot and we put the first one. At first, we sent it to our clients to do, just say, hey, test this out. We were thinking about putting this out. We put it out, and we started to get some traction even off the first one, the second one, because at the time, it was the most searchable thing on YouTube at the time. [00:09:08] Speaker C: No one had a gym. [00:09:09] Speaker B: No one had a gym. So, um, we realized that and we was like, we got to take advantage of this now. Let's try to do our best to put these videos together. So now our idea of what we want to be is completely different than what it was before. But we built this community of people who trust us with their bodies. And that's huge, because with a lot of other content that you see on YouTube, it's not often that you get to affect people's lives in a sense of their health. You might affect their mental health with entertainment, you might affect their, um, nutrition or whatever, but rarely do you just. We've had people say, I've canceled, um, my membership. I've lost 75 pounds with just doing your videos. It's kind of transitioned how we want to, um. [00:09:52] Speaker C: What we. [00:09:52] Speaker B: What we want to view our future as. So in the future, we, you know, we'd love to keep this up. So many people have benefited from the content that we put out. We honestly don't want to stop, because the times when we've stopped, they let us know. They're like, yo, where you been? [00:10:06] Speaker E: I haven't. [00:10:07] Speaker C: I will say, too, the reason we left the gym and started our own business, our whole goal was to, um, reach more people. So when you're at a gym, you train one person for 1 hour, and there's only so many hours in a day that you can train at the gym. Even if you trained all 24 hours, every single day of your life, that's impossible, right? So you're at a cap of how many people you can really impact and reach. And we both had bigger goals than that. So our initial goal with one body LA was more in person, more group training. We wanted to go to build a community, homes. At one point, we wanted to go to apartments and, like, host classes at apartments. Like, we just wanted to do more than just one on one and then leave the one on one for just, like, more exclusive times. Um, and then our YouTube. The reason we started that was because our Instagram at the time was only 15 2nd clips, so you couldn't post what you wanted to post on Instagram, especially in this type of field. It's like you can't really explain yourself like you want to if you're really trying to give advice. So we started the YouTube. Yeah. And, like, reached that broader audience, too. And we always said we didn't want to start the YouTube unless we can be consistent at it and make the content different. So then when Covid hit, we didn't have the time initially to post consistently like we wanted to on YouTube because we were training from 06:00 a.m. to 07:00 p.m. like, all day. We were never home together. Then when Covid hit, we were like, oh, we've got two weeks. Cause gyms are only closed for two weeks. What can we do? Let's shoot some YouTube content while we have the time. Then two weeks turned into a month and three months and a year. So, you know, it kind of forced us to. If we're going to do something over Covid, we need to, or if we're going to do something productive. Um, so thankfully, we already had that YouTube in place. It just went in a whole different direction than we intended to, but it was a blessing in disguise, because I don't think we would have ever quit training one on one. So when would we have ever had the time to consistently film, record, and post like we do? And then, like he said, our whole goal was to help other people, and now we're helping literally millions of people. And that was the goal. So we ended up doing what we wanted, just in a path that we never saw. [00:12:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:26] Speaker C: Would impact. [00:12:27] Speaker B: And in that time, our back was against the wall because, uh, our income got cut. Probably about, what, 60% for sure, you know, just not having the gym available. So we were like, we have to. [00:12:35] Speaker C: We did zoom training, but you don't charge as much. [00:12:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it was new to everybody, so everybody wasn't, you know, feeling that at the time. So, yeah, that's kind of how it transitioned. That's kind of what we want to continue in the future, is to continue to build this community. Continue to build a community of people who want to just grow together, get healthy, and spread just helpful information. That's another thing, is so much good and bad information online, we want to just kind of clear the air, um, make it simple and understandable for everybody. [00:13:04] Speaker C: Yeah. And where I see it kind of going in the future, it's like. It's like you said, we can say one thing, but I just also see, like, we didn't expect from the beginning of where we were 2018 for it to be here now. So, to me, it's also kind of cool to see with the Internet now in the world, it's like, limitless possibilities, you know? And so there might be a new platform that comes out next year that you can help even more people, you know, like, YouTube isn't available in some countries, you know, and so there are people who still aren't being impacted by the. The workout. So I feel like, for us, just what we're able to do, there really isn't, like, a limit or a ceiling to the potential that we have, you know? So, um. Yeah. [00:13:46] Speaker A: So that was a little moment from our time with juice and Toya. And next up, we have my friend Kevin Matthews II of building Bread. I met Kevin through the Fincon community, which I've referenced in past episodes. And Kevin is a person who does investor education. He has a history as a schoolteacher, he has a history as a financial advisor himself, and a few years ago, decided to go full bore into entrepreneurship, teaching education about the stock market. And I love his teaching style, which is part of the reason why I had him on the podcast to talk about how he developed that style and in this episode, which we'll link to in the show notes, he talks about his upbringing in Tulsa, the, uh, black Wall street area, how his mother and his father had different thoughts about money and different ways that they went about earning it. So in this clip, we talk very briefly about something that he observed from his father's journey into entrepreneurship and how it shaped the foray that he later went on to in his adult years. I hope you enjoy it. In the episode where we talk about my parents money story, both of my parents are, uh, entrepreneurs, and I shared that one of the things that I picked up from them was the flexibility of time, the ability to not, meaning you're not working. You know, both my parents were crazy hours when they were building their career. But just the ability to decide how you work was something that really came across to me. As you were watching your dad start all those businesses, what do you think was imparted to you? [00:15:17] Speaker F: That's a great question. I think, for me, I realized that you can kind of create your own path, was one of the things that I realized. And then I really saw that multiple streams of income that everybody talks about online, but he really had so many different areas where he could pull from when he needed to. I would say the most important thing, though, that I picked up on that I'm realizing, I would say really, in the last, maybe five or six years for myself, is that he used his primary career to build other avenues for himself. So, for example, again, as a firefighter, he moved up and became fire chief at one point. But as a firefighter, you have to learn CPR. That's just the basics of the job, right? Well, he took that and started teaching CPR classes to local daycares and other businesses in the area. And that became a very big thing for him, where he was getting paid by major corporations to teach them CPR. And then he took his skills. But from, you know, teaching all these companies and teaching all these daycares, and being someone in the public eyes of firefighter, took that and made into a career in politics. And I was like, huh, huh? That's interesting, because had you not learned CPR from the fire department, had you not learned how to meet people and be out and get into all these different circles, none of that would have ever happened. So, for me, I started my career as a teacher. I taught 7th grade math, and that really translated into the way that I teach finance. I try to make things simple. I use a whiteboard from time to time. I like to use examples that everyone can understand. But the only way I got that skill was teaching seven classes a day the exact same lesson, and making sure my students got the absolute best education they could. [00:16:56] Speaker A: This is the new Money New Problems podcast, a show for successful professionals searching for the tools they need to navigate financial opportunities and obstacles they've never seen. We'll be right back. Are you wondering what new money problems you might be overlooking in your financial life? If so, we've got great news. We've crafted the new money new problems gap finder to identify potential weaknesses in your finances in areas ranging from budgeting, investments, insurance, and even the threat your extended family's finances could pose to your household. Please head to newmoneynewproblems.com gapfinder to complete it today. Again, that's newmoneynewproblems.com gapfinder. To take the assessment, you're listening to the new money new problems podcast. Subscribe now at new moneynewproblems.com. welcome back. Welcome back for the break. In this next clip, we are going to share some time with pastor Alvin Love and his wife, the multi, multi, multi Grammy award winning artist Cece winans. As a matter of fact, I'll tell you a funny story. Between the time that we recorded this episode and the time that we released it, I had this whole bio that we were going to, uh, put out on our socials about how many Grammys she had won. And between the time we recorded and the time we released it, she won two more. So I'm not going to share how many she has to date. You know, uh, her bio, if you are a child of the eighties and nineties, as I am, never had to listen to gospel music in the car. But in this clip, we talked to both of them about how they have decided on, number one, uh, which engagement she should take and not take, which is very important as you grow your career, or if you've received a number of honors in your career and you now have people asking for your time that maybe you don't have to give. But we also talk about how they price their time and the importance of understanding that even when you're generous as an entrepreneur or even if you're a w two employee and there's things where you're trying to figure out the best use of your efforts, you have to understand all of the things that have to be paid for and just the bare white and black of, uh, understanding your value in both your business, your job, and how you spend your time. So I hope you enjoy this clip, where they talk about how they decide how to spend theirs, and we'll catch up on the other side. Well, you know, I am very intrigued. I can tell you that for myself, one of the biggest challenges of entrepreneurship has been determining my worth and determining what I'm going to pay others. And it is different if you're working and there's difficulties in both. But if you're working for someone and you negotiating a salary, there's a range. You can say you're worth a million if they're only paying 100,000 for the job. We got to meet somewhere in the middle. When you are an entrepreneur, it's really a matter of you deciding what you feel you're worth. How have you navigated that? Has that been difficult? Have you played the primary role in setting your appearance fees and things of that nature, or have you used counsel? [00:20:27] Speaker G: Definitely use counsel. I mean, when you're in the industry, there is. [00:20:31] Speaker A: There. [00:20:32] Speaker G: There are ranges. You know, you have some who make a lot more than you, but for what we do, you can definitely. There are ranges. You're dealing with promoters. It changes on if it's a, uh, church or a theater or if it's tickets or if it's a love offering. It just comes different ways, you know? And a lot of times, as ministers of the gospel, even though that's my career, too, we, a lot of times we don't charge anything, you know, we go, it depends on what it is. If it's a certain benefit, you know, or nonprofit, so serving is always a part of it. But also, when it's a ticketed event or if it's a television, you know, you have arranged there. Television shows pay so much. So it's not just me saying, oh, I'm worth this, and I'm going to charge this. I've never had to do that. [00:21:26] Speaker A: It does. It does. And you talked about engagements that you do for free. I know that both of you have serious demands on your time, which is partly why I'm so grateful that you decided to join us. Even beyond money, when you discuss just time and the number of people making requests of it, have you come to an agreement on how you process what you say yes to and what you say no to? Is it gut feeling? How do you even navigate the schedules that you maintain on a daily basis? [00:21:58] Speaker G: Wow, that's a good question. [00:22:00] Speaker A: I think. [00:22:00] Speaker H: Let me say this. I don't know if this answer your question, but with Cece, if someone says, you know, I want you to come and. And I want you to just kind of greet our people and maybe say hello, sing a song. They don't realize that they're taking away a day, you know. And so I think with her, it has to be something that has to make sense for that day, because when you block off a day to do something like that, you're also eliminating a possibility of a performance coming in, you know, so a lot of times you got to navigate, do I want to lock this date in for something that's maybe gratis or something? Maybe a, uh, love offering opposed to a promoter coming in with a paying date, you know. Also, she has to factor in that she has singers and band people who are dependent upon her making money so that they can make money. Because if you don't keep those guys busy and girls busy, they're going to be with somebody else. You know what I'm saying? [00:22:57] Speaker G: So we have to factor more than just me. [00:22:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:59] Speaker H: So she's, she's a business in herself because of the number of people who are on the downstream of her income, you know. So people don't realize that when they call for CC, they're calling for 14 people. They call it for a road manager, they're calling for a sound technician. They're calling for five band members, three singers, a manager, a booking agent are all in that fee. So they said, wow, she goes for that much. Well, we got to pay a lot out of that. [00:23:29] Speaker A: Whether you are 1099 or w two, I hope you got the message in that because that was some valuable information that they shared. Next up, we have my friend DJ Alojo, uh, from the foreclosure fix. DJ is a consultant in terms of how he spent his early career, but had a passion for real estate, comes from a nigerian american background from Detroit as well. So all these special things that make DJ Djdeh. And in this episode, we spent a lot of time talking about that transition from when he decided and how he decided to go about leaving his consultancy to start his path into real estate and how he decided that it wasn't something that was worth doing all at once. There needed to be a gradual progression of, uh, going from two incomes to one income, getting some experience in real estate before he jumped into it as a full time entrepreneur. And he goes into detail about some of the lessons he learned along the way and also the value in having a dependable income while he learned on the job. Check it out. So DJ, you had gotten to the point where you realized that there was an opportunity that awaited you, uh, in real estate. What was that? Next step in seizing that opportunity. [00:24:42] Speaker E: So there was a couple things I did. One, I continued to work at Gallup for a significant amount of time because I love the people I work with. It was a great opportunity, and this was like a pet project that I worked on on the weekends and the evenings. And when I wasn't doing my full time job, because I wanted a proof of concept, I wanted to say, hey, if I'm going to step out and do this, I want it to work. And so I just built it in the background. It became what I was obsessed about when I was not working. And by doing that, it gave me the opportunity to make mistakes, not to have to, uh, put all my eggs in one basket. And it allowed me to perfect a system that could eventually scale once I had the time to do it. And that's what I did for a long time. And as a consultant. As you know, you travel a lot, so I was on boats, planes, and trains every week, going around the country working with healthcare clients, and we were about to have my first child, or our first child, I should say. And that timing lined up perfect with me saying, I don't want to be the dad who misses all those first child things, or even second child things. And so I said, now is my opportunity. And what we decided to do is we decided to live off one person's income because my wife was working full time at the time, and I was working full time. And so we said, hey, we're going to start living off my wife's income to help us. And then that way, once I decided to go full time, even if I didn't make any money or it failed, I would give myself a year to figure it out before I started to repivot. And that's what we did, and it worked out. [00:26:20] Speaker A: So you would acquire properties prior to quitting? [00:26:23] Speaker E: We acquired properties, but we weren't holding any properties at that time. We had mastered the process of buying a property, renovating it, and then selling it in order to generate income. [00:26:34] Speaker A: There's so many things that I want to unpack there, but I got to attack a few of them. The first is, I hate when people recommend that people just like, leap and a net will appear. You know, like, you got to sacrifice everything. You got to put yourself out there with no safety net. You know, that that is b's, and it is much easier to launch and sustain something when you have some reserves, you know, the second thing is, it is completely okay to use that w two job to supplement something that you plan to do and build it up to the point where it's easier to leave, you know? And the third thing, we've had this conversation with friends of ours who want to jump into entrepreneurship, and I try to tell them, like, it's a different life lifestyle. Uh, but, you know, you built yourself to the point where. And thankfully, you didn't have to, but you had built a career to the point where, let's say that it didn't work out, you could have jumped right back into that career. Right. You know, there's something to be said about putting yourself in a situation before you take the leap where you don't have to just say, oh, if this doesn't work out, I have nothing to go back to. I, uh, love the way that you did that. But, you know, the last thing, and this is what I'd like you to touch on even further. You know, people have no idea how hard it is to get financing for anything when you don't have a w two job. Um, can you talk about how having a salary, either for yourself or for your wife or just your wife, made it a little easier to have some entree into real estate? [00:28:02] Speaker E: It made it. It made all the difference. So there's a couple things and a couple pieces of the story that I probably didn't fully highlight, but when I was starting the real estate journey, I didn't start by myself. I actually had a business partner who had already done a couple of deals. So, like, I was using his playbook, and we were working together. Right. And so it was a situation where I was working with somebody along the way. And so it was like, I was only in the game 50% of it, and he was 50%. And so, like, we had to double coverage of, like, okay, we both mess it up, then we both have some support, right? And so that was huge there. And his expertise mixed with my expertise helped us, you know, and allowed us to do different things. But then the other part about it is that the w two was so significant, because when I started in real estate, this was during the time when the real estate market had crashed. And so it wasn't the real estate market that we know today where everybody wants to be in real estate. And you have bigger pockets. You have YouTube, you have all these things where you can get all this information. It was kind of no man's land, and people were just trying to figure out what, um, to do. People were licking their wounds who had lost a lot of money, and houses that you see now that are million dollar houses could have probably been sold for like 250 or 300. And so it wasn't the panacea that everybody, uh, envisions now. It was much more scary. And banks didn't want to lend to you unless you had income. And so for a long time, my w two, along with my wife's w two, was the thing that allowed us to get loans, the thing that allowed us banks to finance us. In addition to that, I remember one of the houses that we purchased after I went solo, um, was only in my wife's name because I didn't have any income. I had a lot of debt, um, not consumer debt, but real estate debt related to the business. And it just made sense to put in her name because she didn't have a lot of debt and she had a w two. And so they were able to do the loan with no problem. And so those things are so helpful as you think about stepping out there into the unknown. The other part that people don't talk about is not just the financings of it, but it's the ability to be able to breathe. One thing that you have to know is when you start your own business or you do something where the income is not a steady income stream, it's an inconsistent income stream, and you don't know when and if you're going to get paid, you do not have the ability to make mistakes and you are forced to make bad decisions if the income comes in later than you expect, whether it be selling something of value too soon, which I've done, uh, numerous times, or not having the ability to ride a storm or, or be grounded in a storm and let it pass through. And so that's so important that you have to have a foundation where you either have a huge reserve or you have continuous income when you start anything entrepreneurial. [00:31:08] Speaker A: Great session with and great wisdom from DJ Alojo. Uh, and for our last clip of the day, we are going to go back to a pretty recent episode, and that is going to be the money story of Garrison Hayes. Garrison, if you are on any form of social media, has probably been on your screen teaching you something you didn't know about social justice, about the history of race relations, about the political implications of things that are going on in this day and time. But what many people don't realize is Garrison actually got his start as a professional, as a pastor, a 7th day adventist minister. So in this clip, we talk about his transition from, uh, pastoral leadership into entrepreneurship, and how he also thought it worthwhile to have that transition be one that progressed at a slower pace and that he took in different increments. And I think you should get some value in this as the last clip in understanding the importance of stability. Again, this is not about glorifying entrepreneurship and the benefit of being able to say that I have some level of dependability before I just jump off the porch and go full bore into this thing that has much less dependability. So after this clip, we're going to finish up for the day. I hope you've enjoyed this look back in time with our entrepreneurs and some of the favorite moments we've shared with them. In the next few weeks, we're going to be talking about some economic things that are going on with interest rates and the like, and also dig a little deeper into some of these entrepreneurial journeys where we feel we can add value. So you come to that crucial decision, and now money comes back into the picture, at least for me, because being an adventist minister is by no means a path to, like, wealth and riches, but it is. It is a dependable paycheck. Right? [00:32:56] Speaker D: Right. [00:32:57] Speaker A: There is at least an every two weeks element to it. Now you're deciding, I'm going to leave that relative level of comfort, and I'm going to kind of make my own path. What does that look like? Was there any fear involved in that journey? Did you have it all mapped out? Describe that thought, uh, process to me. [00:33:19] Speaker D: I can't say that I had it all mapped out, but I did have thoughts I had in my mind that it was possible, and I kind of saw a few pathways to kind of get to kind of the baseline numbers I need. Okay, what do I need to, like, cover my car note? What do I need to have a cell phone? What do I need to be able to contribute to the bills? Right? Like, how can I help to keep a roof over our head? [00:33:43] Speaker A: Right? [00:33:43] Speaker D: Like, these are thoughts, and so that's the number that I need. How can I get there? I think I saw some pathways to get there, and, well, tell me, tell. [00:33:51] Speaker A: Me some of those pathways, because to me, in entrepreneurship, one of the things that people often struggle with is the decision of, uh, do I do entrepreneurship full time, or do I keep something on the side while I'm pursuing entrepreneurship? And I regularly see a lack of planning. Right. I'm just, oh, I'll have so much more time to work on my business if I just quit. And it's like, well, I surely hope that you have, like, some contracts lined up, because if you can't figure out some way in the next 30 days to pay your rent. What are we gonna do? So tell me some m of those potential pathways. [00:34:30] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm glad you're pushing me on this. Okay, so I'll say this. I did not just, like, up and quit my job and, like, like, have nothing whatsoever. Like, I left the ministry, and I started as a, um, family engagement diversity, ah, engagement manager for a network of charter schools. You know, schools are great because they're always, um. And so I worked in that four year. In many. In many ways, that was just kind of like keeping a steady paycheck. It was also a job that, when I was off, I was off, um, going from m pastoral ministry, where you're on all the time. You could be on at, you know, 01:00 a.m. at 01:00 p.m. you're always on, like, at any moment, something could happen, and there are meetings all the time. So I didn't have m much separation between my work life, my official w two work life, and the online video creation that I was doing suddenly after leaving, and I started this job that was more or less just a job. I had separation. My bills were able to be paid from m this w two job, and then I was able to kind of do that idea of, you know, nine to five and then five to nine. That five to nine was. Was time for. For my business that I was building as. As a creator. And I was also starting a video agency. And so this is working with corporate clients and that kind of thing. And so, in many respects, like, that was my kind of initial step toward kind of full time entrepreneurship was kind of finding a little stopgap of, like, a job that I could do and do well and show up for, but would not bleed over into my evening or into my weekend or into my quote, unquote, free time. Um, and so that was a really important part of it. Um, I also had, you know, I started making videos again online in January of 2021. And so I had about. By the time I went full time, which was summer, um, it was actually November 2022. So by the time I went full time and making videos online, I had a year, almost two years, of kind of understanding what the ebbs and flow. Like, I make videos, videos around black history and politics. And. And so I know February is going to be a really big month for me. Like, I'm going to have a great month in February financially. Um, Juneteenth is now a holiday, so I know I'm going to do my thing on, you know, around in June. June is going to be a pretty good month for me. Um, how can I kind of. What, what can I do to supplement what. What does money look like in March, April, May, or in July, you know, through December? And so I had some time, two cycles, more or less, to know what my financial picture looked like for the year. Now, I wasn't relying on that income, but I was able to kind of, like, look at it and project to say, okay, I think I can make this much at this time and this much at this time. So how can I make up the rest of what I need to cover my bills in between? Do I think I can do that? Yes, I think I can do that. And here are the ways I can pursue this client, or, I already had this opportunity, you know, from before, and it pays about this much. And so, like, I think the lesson here, without continuing to ramble a bit, uh, I think the lesson is that I was able to look over a couple of years at what my financials looked like and say, I can. I can use that as projection for what things will come my way in the future. And as such, I can feel comfortable taking this leap into entrepreneurship. [00:38:32] Speaker A: From new money, new problems. This was the new money, new Problems podcast, a show for successful professionals searching for the tools they need to navigate financial opportunities and obstacles they never seen. [00:38:51] Speaker B: Let's get some.