Chasing Financial Freedom
Ep 266: Charting the Uncharted Success Stories of Small Business Entrepreneurship
Ever been intrigued by the inner workings of a small business and the journey to success? Meet Samuel Smith, the Small Business Surgeon, a master in the art of business revitalization. His life's trajectory has been anything but linear, moving from real estate to establishment as an esteemed business consultant. His eclectic accent, a fusion of English, Texan, and a dash of Australian, is a testament to his diverse experiences and a life spent adapting and overcoming. The conversation with Samuel is a treasure trove of insights, ranging from the philosophy of his surgical approach to business to the personal trials he's navigated, all culminating in his mission to guide entrepreneurs through their own business challenges.
The pathway to business consultancy isn't paved with gold—it's built on the resilience of overcoming obstacles like industry shifts and personal setbacks. Samuel's journey exemplifies this, marking a departure from real estate into the dynamic world of video production and eventually into the heart of business consulting. The transition, fueled by the engaging nature of video content creation and the necessity to adapt to market demand changes like those sparked by COVID-19, showcases how versatility can carve out new opportunities. The discussion delves into the entrepreneurial mindset, stressing the significance of setting audacious goals, the art of targeting the ideal client, and mastering the resilience required to bounce back stronger than before.
Wrapping up our conversation, Samuel doesn't just leave us with stories of his triumphs; he extends a hand to all small business owners with a promise of support and free resources. His dedication to empowering the entrepreneurial community, underscored by a message of hope and unwavering persistence, is a beacon for those navigating the tempestuous seas of small business ownership. By sharing his conviction that success is attainable with consistent effort and adaptability, Samuel instills confidence in our listeners, encouraging them to push through adversity and chase their dreams. Join us for this inspirational episode that's as much a journey through the life of a seasoned entrepreneur as it is a master class in the craft of business.
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Ever been intrigued by the inner workings of a small business and the journey to success? Meet Samuel Smith, the Small Business Surgeon, a master in the art of business revitalization. His life's trajectory has been anything but linear, moving from real estate to establishment as an esteemed business consultant. His eclectic accent, a fusion of English, Texan, and a dash of Australian, is a testament to his diverse experiences and a life spent adapting and overcoming. The conversation with Samuel is a treasure trove of insights, ranging from the philosophy of his surgical approach to business to the personal trials he's navigated, all culminating in his mission to guide entrepreneurs through their own business challenges.
The pathway to business consultancy isn't paved with gold—it's built on the resilience of overcoming obstacles like industry shifts and personal setbacks. Samuel's journey exemplifies this, marking a departure from real estate into the dynamic world of video production and eventually into the heart of business consulting. The transition, fueled by the engaging nature of video content creation and the necessity to adapt to market demand changes like those sparked by COVID-19, showcases how versatility can carve out new opportunities. The discussion delves into the entrepreneurial mindset, stressing the significance of setting audacious goals, the art of targeting the ideal client, and mastering the resilience required to bounce back stronger than before.
Wrapping up our conversation, Samuel doesn't just leave us with stories of his triumphs; he extends a hand to all small business owners with a promise of support and free resources. His dedication to empowering the entrepreneurial community, underscored by a message of hope and unwavering persistence, is a beacon for those navigating the tempestuous seas of small business ownership. By sharing his conviction that success is attainable with consistent effort and adaptability, Samuel instills confidence in our listeners, encouraging them to push through adversity and chase their dreams. Join us for this inspirational episode that's as much a journey through the life of a seasoned entrepreneur as it is a master class in the craft of business.
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Thanks for Listening! Follow us on Tik Tok Facebook and Instagram
Hey guys, Ryan Dement from Chasing Financial Freedom podcast. I hope you guys are having a great day. Today on the podcast we have Samuel Smith. He is the small business surgeon and I know we're going to get into some great conversation. History and you guys will notice his accent is a little different than most and we're going to talk about that because he's been in Texas for 20 plus years. So, Samuel, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks, ryan, I appreciate it. Thank you, yeah, I've got the More than Sorry. I got the bastardized voice. It's a half version of English, half version of Texan, and there's probably a little bit of Australian redneck thrown in there somewhere too.
Speaker 1:I love it, so you're going to be a comedian too. I need some laugh today. That's good.
Speaker 2:I'll do my best, I'll do my best, yeah, so before we get started.
Speaker 1:Tell the listeners about a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Wow, where to begin. I am now the small business surgeon, something that it came about through no intention whatsoever. It wasn't. It wasn't my intent to end up as a business consultant. I put together a, a small group of business owners, a few years back when I was selling real estate and, as all realtors do, they all want to drag you into a conversation and sell you something, and I've been in business a long time. I think I started out selling selling candy when I was a kid, delivering newspapers and stuff, and so when I was trying to build this, this group and having all these conversations with entrepreneurs, I suddenly realized that almost all of them were struggling, and almost all of them were struggling with problems that I'd already had and already overcome, and I started a podcast talking about it and, to cut a very long story short, three years later I'm a I'm a full-time business surgeon and a consultant. It's wonderful, like podcasting has given me the world.
Speaker 1:Why consider yourself a surgeon? What's the what's? Is there a play on words or is it how you come in and work with that entrepreneur or small business owner?
Speaker 2:It is now, in the beginning it was a play on words. Absolutely, the brand name had a lot to do with. We want to talk about business, we want to dissect things. Who's a person that can dissect stuff? Who's a person that can pull things apart and then change some things and then put them back together and make it better? And it just surgeon stuck. And then when we started going and looking at the at the website, availability and the social media handles and all that, they were all wide open. So I thought that's a really good name, let's stick with it. And but yeah, it comes from the idea that we're going to. We're not just a general practitioner, we're not just a doctor, we're not going to throw you a bunch of pills and say take these pills out, fix your business. What I like to do is cut the business open, take a look deep inside, see where the broken bits are and then repair them and then sew it back up. So surgeon just stuck.
Speaker 1:Interesting. And then you said another. I call it a word. You said you were a realtor in the past. What was going on there?
Speaker 2:Man, how deep do you want to go on this podcast? I mean, we've got 30 minutes. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:Here's, here's. The thing is and I don't know if you remember my background is we're in the real estate space, we're in the affordable housing space. You know, last, the last 12 months we've become a lender and now we're now we're going to come a brokerage so we can actually now bring everything in house. So it's just I I'm curious because I don't I never envisioned myself having to go out and get a real estate license to do what I'm doing. But now that it ties into the business, I feel like if we can bring it all under one roof and provide that customer service that no one else can, it's the best thing to do.
Speaker 2:So I'm just it's just a curiosity question.
Speaker 2:Definitely the that. That integration is something you want to do for sure. And it's certainly not hurt me having a real estate license. I don't have one anymore. My partner, nina, carries one, and so we just we onboarded it with our LLC and she handles all the real estate staff.
Speaker 2:But I got into real estate, like in my background, I was in media and marketing and I've been in marketing oh many years and I had a lot of alcohol issues and a lot of personal issues and I ended up I was retired at 36 and I was completely broke at 37. That's how bad it went. And so at 37, like you couldn't pay me to be on the internet. Now I made my money selling things on the internet. You just couldn't pay. I wouldn't go near it. You know I'd been severely burned to the tunes of many hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so I thought, well, what can I do? And I was just. I was tooling around putting out video content and a real estate office hit me up and said, hey, you make great marketing. Will you come train our agents in marketing?
Speaker 2:Then, before I ever got into the internet in my early 20s and I carried this all the way through my mid 30s as well, I was in oil and gas. I was a petroleum landman, which is a title specialist essentially, and we would go and research mineral ownership and then we do. We do a lot of title curative. So it taught me the ins and outs of solving problems in real estate, and oil and gas law is just another subset of real estate law that held us. It's mineral estate versus real estate, and so I was already really well versed in law and when I walked in the room to teach these guys marketing, I knew I knew nothing of real estate. I had flipped houses myself but like I didn't use realtors, I wasn't into that, that world, and I thought that all realtors were highly successful people that made a lot of money, that drove nice cars. I didn't know that the average realtor is the average American. There's a huge cross section of the population in real estate. You could find anyone from single moms and school teachers all the way to ranchers, to retired oil and gas guys, to guys that were selling cars, that love slinging houses. There's so many skill sets inside of real estate you still understand.
Speaker 2:And so I came out and I thought I could either sit here and teach these guys marketing or I could apply the marketing things I know are ready to real estate, and so I just did that. It took me just a few weeks to get licensed and then I had about four months of buildup where I just went around, I recorded every single subdivision in town. I made 55 different subdivision videos, get to know town, and then I started interviewing people from around town and posting that and boom my first year in real estate I did 241,000 GCI as a rookie and so I loved it. I love real estate. I actually like internet more and I like systems and processes more and I like building digital infrastructures more, and I felt with the utmost respect for the real estate industry. I felt like I had got everything I needed to get from that industry and I thought it was a good time to go back to where I was more comfortable, which is honestly behind spreadsheets and computer programs and just poking around on the internet with things.
Speaker 1:So how just. I'm not trying to go back, but how did that? How did you do that transition from OK I'm full time Were you full time realtor?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm guessing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, full time.
Speaker 1:And then you said, OK, where was that point of, OK, I'm cutting off and now I'm going to go after what I'm really passionate about?
Speaker 2:So there wasn't really a point of cutting off Again. I love real estate and will. Nina and I between us all will probably do eight or 10 transactions this year. They'll all be her clients, but I'll put the marketing together and all that stuff for it. But no, what happened was, in order to keep up with the videos that I was making, which is what I was feeding my real estate funnel with I hired a couple of videographers and then they had other interests that they wanted to do and, hey, how about we make a video of this? How about we make a video of that? And we ended up Put together a media company and a media team and we would go out and shoot things all over the country. I had immense amounts of fun with it and again, it's that's as the podcast started to grow as well. The brand small business and people are getting to know me for that. I joined some business network in a group groups and we ended up making amazing content video content for companies all over the country and the real estate thing.
Speaker 2:Just, you can shoot a house and it's fun, right, but when a client flies across the country to shoot, shoot a bunch of guns for three or four days and do Rolling shots going down the highway and slow motion shots in the firing range and you like maybe this is more fun than houses. And then Another client flies across the country and you're shooting that. You're shooting a commercial where there's a kidnap in scene and a guy getting thrown out of a van and you're like, yeah, this is more fun than selling houses. So it wasn't, I didn't like selling houses, it was just like that. I liked how fun when I'm doing stuff and you probably aware that there's only so much fun you can extract out of doing open houses every other weekend and sitting there talking to.
Speaker 2:Look at the face. You want to do an open house or you want to go to Chicago and film for a gun company.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I'm with you because the whole thing is, I don't want to be a. I guess the best way to describe it is I'm doing it to get the license so we can actually then create a team around it and I can have a production team, because I am not going to be the guy that sits at open houses. In our focus isn't going to be that. It has another nuance to it, but I'm with you. It's like I'm out here in Arizona and I live in a subdivision that's still building new houses, so I go out and I'll meet the new home developers and then their agents and they're like you should be, you should come over and work for us, and I'm like dude, I cannot sit in a model home eight hours a day, six days a week or whatever you guys do Exactly. Yeah, my mind would go to mush and I said there's so much more to do. Let's get off of that piece, because I think there's more to be had here and I want to dig under the hood. You can go wherever you want pal.
Speaker 1:No, I think this surgeon thing is cool, because we have entrepreneurs and small business owners that are struggling, and I want to learn too, because there's every single day. Man, if we're not learning, we're not thriving, we're not moving forward. Yeah, of course, but so you get into this piece and you're starting to work this side of the, the road type of thing. Where is it? What's the next step? What does it look like? Where do you go from shooting videos to now you are behind the scenes doing spreadsheets and so forth. I love spreadsheets.
Speaker 2:I'm a little bit strange like that. That was definitely I wanted to do that, but when, when COVID happened, it changed the face of the video industry completely sure, it put the kind of tools and resources that we would use. We have full professional editing suites. It would take hours and hours to put stuff together and in a very short space of time. So in under 18 months, beginning from March 2020 when the lockdown started, in under 18 months, most people were consuming content on their phones vertically. Most people were able to figure out Turning the camera on themselves and clicking record. A lot of people were able to figure out the cap cut type apps, the captions apps all that kind of stuff, and it essentially took away a large amount of demand that we had for a skill set.
Speaker 2:Because, if you imagine right, when we put a package together, we're coming into shoot some kind of commercial and then we're coming into shoot maybe a little Business documentary, maybe a five or ten minute reel on the business, and then we pull out 15 second, 30 second, 90 second clips for these guys and they end up with a video package Twenty five to thirty five thousand dollars to keep us on site for a week and go through everything. And One of the things I would notice a lot of is we make outstanding videos for people and they get very little distribution, very little engagement. And so Now I've got two problems to solve. I've got people buying videos from me on social media that I'm not getting reach, not getting engagement. So I can make you the best video in the world, but if nobody sees it, then it's a bad investment for the business owner, right? They don't get an ROI, they don't come back to me, don't matter how good the video is, it's got to be profitable. And so the second thing is that the skillset isn't. It's not something you need to go to school for anymore. It's not something you need to spend five years holding a craft. This is something that we can put together relatively quickly, and so what ended up happening where I found success was going into companies and making the video for them. But instead of staying for two days, we extend that shoot to five days and we have intense training sessions with the company staff. Whichever I say, you got to get two employees we're gonna have, and they would either hire new guys and bring them in or they would peel guys off that would do another things. They would make them the media guys, but then we shoot the commercials so they get all the high quality video that they would have had. But we were training their staff, training their teams, to do.
Speaker 2:Nobody SEOs their videos. Nobody. Nobody takes care of that. Nobody thinks about the eyeballs behind the video. They just see a click and it's not a click.
Speaker 2:We've got to have engage in entertaining or educational content, preferably a blend of all three, and so I started just carrying these businesses through my processes of creating videos and training their staff in where to put them and where to list them and everything else, which then took me deeper into the businesses and when you realize that a lot of businesses, if they have a CRM at all, they don't know how to use it, they're not implemented, they don't have everything hooked up right. They see a website as a website. It's a website. Most websites are just static business cards, absolute trash, right.
Speaker 2:So you want your website to draw the client through an experience and have them have a call to action at the end of it. You want a website explaining clearly what you do and giving validation for who you are as a company and asking for people's information and collecting data, and most businesses don't have any of that, and so it was purely a shift in the marketplace that led to me saying you know what? Let me go teach these guys how to produce content and then see an inside of companies. Just what a mess the majority of companies were. And there was no, there was no. This is so strange because I manifest everything and yet I never once manifested. I'm going to be the small business surgeon. I was manifesting what I wanted to do and it just. I wanted to help and I wanted to make videos and I wanted to have impact, and this, just all this was what the universe gave me is the right. Go run with this.
Speaker 1:You've hit on so many topics there and being able to go through that. Let's dissect it from an entrepreneur's. An entrepreneur is sure, because as an entrepreneur, I am still focused on the business and I need to get out of the day to day and get into the 30,000 foot and work on the business, and that's slowly but surely happening. But that is a struggle that we as entrepreneurs have. When you come in as a surgeon, I know you're ripping things open, you're looking at it, but what are some of the things that we can do as entrepreneurs to prepare for that? But also better ourselves to where we're now focused on the overall business and not just in the day to day?
Speaker 2:weeds Matt it's funny because Most of the time before I can fix a company, I have to fix the entrepreneur. I'm building a course right now and it's taking me a lot longer than I wanted because I can put together a course on business fundamentals and business practices and best practices for marketing and client engagement and everything else. When you give it to an entrepreneur and you say let's go, I started finding that after about day 12, I would just have this drop-off rate, like my clients were falling off a cliff. I'm like what's the deal here? What's going on? Why can't they execute? It comes back down to them not knowing who they are, not knowing who their ideal version of themselves is, not knowing where they want to carry themselves, which then spills over into where they want to carry the business. I don't know if you remember when you started out as an entrepreneur, but when I started as an entrepreneur, all I wanted was I don't want to work for myself and I want to be able to pay my bills Pretty much.
Speaker 2:Well guess what I got? I worked for myself and I paid my bills. I never got any further than that, because every time I had enough money to pay my bills I'd be like, oh, we're good, this week I'd go spend that money. I'd go down the pub, I'd go take the wife out to do something, I'd go hang out with my friends, I'd go shoot, pool or whatever it was, because I'd done my work and I'd made the amount of money that I set as my goal and my target.
Speaker 2:Most entrepreneurs, when they begin, they say I just want to cover my bills, I just want to do this for a living, I just want to do this. I don't want a job anymore, this is all I want. They go in with that mindset of I need to cover my bills. They get their bills covered and immediately foot's off, the gas bills are covered, we can breathe this month and then boom next month. They got to be right back where they started, right back at the beginning, fixing the entrepreneur and fixing their mindset and having them understand that this business is a vessel. You're creating a vessel to deliver whatever it is you want. You've got to work hard to generate sales when you come in and this is a classic example, and realtors do this especially.
Speaker 2:Who is your ideal client? Anyone that wants to buy or sell a house. Anyone that wants to buy or sell life insurance. Anyone that wants to buy or sell what it is that I'm selling. And it's not because there's a whole lot of people want to buy a house. That can't buy a house If I've got 10 leads and I'm following up with 10 leads and none of them can buy a house. And then there's people that I don't really align with, there's people I don't really like and there's a flavor for everybody. Now, I know disrespect and I've been called out for saying it before, but I'll continue to say it's what I believe.
Speaker 2:In general, women buy real estate based on emotional decisions, whether they like the house or whether they like the neighborhood, whether the whole thing clicks for them. In general, men buy real estate based on analysis, on spreadsheets, on numbers, on data. I always enjoyed the spreadsheet side of deals. It wasn't that I didn't take female clients, I just found them very difficult to work with because I couldn't relate over an emotional buying experience. I'm like, but the numbers say this is good, this is no, I don't like this, I couldn't relate to that Without a hint of sexism. Females weren't my ideal client because I couldn't relate to the way they were trying to buy.
Speaker 2:I pivoted and instead of taking every client I could get and every referer I could put my hands on, I said you know what, who's my real client? Who's my customer? At that point I thought I want to be somebody a bit like me, somebody that owns a business and maybe enjoys some whiskey or maybe enjoys a cigar, or maybe plays a little bit of golf, or he probably drives a truck, but he's almost certainly got a sports car locked in the garage for weekends. I started to build this profile of guys that I wanted to work with. Then, all of a sudden, I know what the best version of me looks like. I know what the goals are for me. I know what the best version of my company looks like and how much revenue I'm trying to make and what I want to build and what I want to scale to. I know what my ideal client looks like.
Speaker 2:I've gone from just running around in circles taking every little real estate deal I can, and well, I've got some money this week. I can go to the pub to all right. Here's who I am, here's my goal and here are the people that I'm going to impact to get to that goal. Dude, that's the first thing in business surgery. That's the first thing we go in and straighten out, because a small business, especially, is really just an extension of the man or woman that is running it. That said, if you can fix that, you're halfway done.
Speaker 1:So mindset? I'm going to ask you to drop some nuggets there, because entrepreneurs, us human beings, however you want to say we all struggle with mindset. We think we're going to put out that video and it's going to go viral and we're going to be millionaires. It doesn't work that way, by all means. I'm at that point and I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:I've struggled with my own mindset, so I've been getting my ass kicked on YouTube for many years. I've put over a thousand videos out on YouTube and can't make heads or tail out of it until I found a program called vidIQ which helps me write the descriptions works on the STO, like you're talking about. And now, all of a sudden, in the last probably six weeks, we've gone from 500 followers to almost 2,000 followers and we're starting to gain traction. And all of a sudden, everybody's come out of the woodworks, all these guys that are overseas that want to be my STO expert, to grow the channel, to monetize it, whatever.
Speaker 1:If I would have given up and I'm not saying we're nowhere near where we need to be, but what I'm saying is the mindset piece of giving up I would have given up five years ago and I really didn't. But how do we get to that point? Because there's plenty of times I got knocked down on my knees and I didn't know if I was going to get back up. When you're in there as the surgeon and I keep on saying surgeon because I like how you're precise, you truly are, because you're going right after that mindset, what are some nuggets that the entrepreneurs that are listening here can take away to get some help because they're struggling out there? I talk to some entrepreneurs that are really struggling with mindset.
Speaker 2:Number one all of life's hard, I don't care, it's all hard, nobody cares. So you have to get up and make it through today. And whether you're fat now to shape, because being fat is hard, people get you different, but being in shape is harder. You want to be in shape? That's really hard. You want to be a great husband? That's hard. But living by yourself and opening a can of beans for dinner, that's hard too.
Speaker 2:So you've got to understand that there's no end to this race. It's always going to be hard. So you've got to look at the outcome you want and the goals you're setting and say I want that goal more than I want this easy. And that's another really important reason why we sit down and we define the goals and we define the ideal person and I build my people on I am statements. So I have a full page that I write out repeatedly because it wears out. So I carry it around in my pocket and I read it out every single day, every day, sometimes twice a day. You can see it up there. It's all handwritten. You see how worn it is.
Speaker 2:I have an I am statement. It defines who I am and it helps me to remember that. There's all many lines in it, but one of them is I'm an amazing father dedicated to spending engaged, quality time with my children, and so when I'm sitting with my kids and one of them is on his computer and the other one's on his computer and I'm on my phone and I'm like there's that I am statement, it pings the back of your head and it says hey, get up, let's go. I also have I mean, I'm in the best shape of my life, exercising daily with the body of the men respect. Do I have that right now? No, so guess what I do? I go out and I exercise daily and I don't put any junk in my mouth and I keep track of things and it's happening. I'm getting to the best shape I've ever been in and it's. I don't see it stopping because of the statement.
Speaker 2:And I wanted to touch on the fact that it feels like you're not talking to anybody when you start putting out content like this and yeah, I think I put out my first podcast in 2016. So it's all about eight years ago now you feel old, but when you start making contact like this, content like this, and 10 people watch and 20 people watch, and you put out a video and I think my most watched videos got about 200,000 views, but my average video gets anywhere from 250 to 1500 views. But you might want to beat yourself up, especially when you're starting out, because it took me about nine months to feel like I wasn't just shouting into a canyon filled with fog. It took quite a while, but the way I was told this really hit home for me.
Speaker 2:So let's say, ryan, that 56 people watch this podcast, okay, and you look, and Jake Paul, and he's got 7 million people watching his show and that's just a little old me, right, but 56 people listen to you. You impacted 56 lives that day. Maybe you changed 56 conversations at dinner. Maybe you made 56 people smile. Maybe you made them think just a little bit. Now take all 56 of those people and put them in an airplane and crush it in the ground a kilomole and tell me that you're not having an impact and that your content's worthless. You can't do it, can you? No, you can't, that's the mindset dude.
Speaker 1:I know that I get you because you brought me back to day one of this podcast, because we just turned six years old. I had two, probably the first seven to ten episodes, two or three people consistently, and then I got to 10, I got to 15, I got to 20.
Speaker 2:And then you're like Mom, stop clicking it, I'm okay.
Speaker 1:I was all joking aside. I was out asking people to listen to the podcast and I get it, and to this day, I think there's plenty more to do. And we're at that point. My goal board is on the other side of my camera and one of the things is I am manifesting, asking however, you want to do it. I want to find a producer, because we're at that point to where I can't grow this anymore because it's a side hustle. My full-time job is real estate. So if someone can come in and help me move it to the next level whether it's monetization, whatever, I don't know, I don't have that answer yet that's the person I need to start talking to and interacting with. And that's just thinking bigger and globally. And I think at times, as an entrepreneur, we think so narrow-minded and we think down this path of, like you said, pay our bills and make sure that we're taking care of and you've got to expand it, and we don't do it enough, we don't flex the muscle up on top of our head enough.
Speaker 2:And what are you taught to do as a child?
Speaker 1:In school. Oh, memorize and follow the rules. Show up in year. It's this, it's just straight for me.
Speaker 2:Get a job, go to work, pay your bills, relax on the weekends Yep, no, for you not to have that in your brain and to run your own path. You can't blame yourself. Most of us don't discover this to win to well into our thirties. Oh shit, maybe having a real job and Doing the degree thing isn't the best use of my time, because now I'm capped at 75, 85, $100,000 a year, and this is all I know, this is all I can do, they just. But we are taught as children to be good little monkeys, good little producers, eat bananas and shut up, and so don't blame, don't blame the entrepreneur for not figuring it out, and that's why I do. What I do is why I do these shows, it's why I do my show, it's to let people know that, hey, there's a whole other way to do this.
Speaker 2:The world and I sound like a hippie when I say this and growing up, very blue collar, we were blue collar, working class and outright poor growing up and the hippie stuff was just, if you'll excuse the French, it was just bullshit, like hippie bullshit. But it turns out the hippies were right and I can't say this like clearly enough. You can have whatever you demand from the universe, if you write a list and if you say this is what we're doing, this is where we're going, and if you work at it and if you don't quit, that's it. It's like we're in this. Yeah, people think I'm a little strange now and want to get into this. But imagine, this is just Minecraft, but we're in Minecraft.
Speaker 2:If whatever you want to build in Minecraft, you just you go and run around, you find the bits and pieces, you bring them back to the house and eventually you build it. But same in real life does no constraints. If you want to be in shape, you have to go to the gym server and you have to spend time playing the gym level. If you want to be rich, you have to go to the education Servers and play the education games. If you want a pretty girl, then you have to go to the gym level and the education level and the money level before you can get the pretty girl level. It's. It's all just just levels to life and and that there are known outputs, like for known inputs and Like I, just you never see it as a kid, you never see it in school but it's.
Speaker 1:We could go so far down a rabbit hole in this one, because it's even more than that. Even though technology is a great thing, it's a double, it's Excuse me, a double-edged sword, and at times it's like catching a falling knife, because damned if you do, damned if you don't. But man, every time someone puts out a Single video, they think they're gonna go viral. And it's no, you're not. You've got to put time and effort in and understand Exactly what you're up against to actually make it all work and that's the struggle that I've had with all of this journey is just saying I Know I've got to do more, and when I get knocked down to my knees, I've got to get back up and, believe me, I have my pity parties, believe in all means. It happens, but if you don't have goals and you don't have something bigger than you that you're gonna go after, you're just gonna be that person that goes to school, checks the box and goes home in Netflix on the weekends.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agreed, agreed, it's just just. Could you recap that point one more time Do? I lost audio for you, so I just had to agree, but I didn't quite catch.
Speaker 1:So what I was saying was that if you don't have that perseverance in the ability to yes, yes, you'd back up when you get knocked down. You're gonna be that person that's just gonna be on the. You're gonna be at home on the weekends watching Netflix on the couch, yeah, and expecting your life to change with no action. I think the point you made dude about.
Speaker 2:About going viral. I'm gonna touch on that for a minute. Far too much of us worry about going viral. I'm not viral. I got probably nine, ten thousand followers across all the platforms that I mess with now and there's probably some crossover between those. But instead of worrying about going viral, let's go back to those 56 followers that you've got I.
Speaker 2:What I want your listeners to worry about that are just starting out doing this is not going viral is how much impact can I have on my 56 followers today? Because if you have the right amount of impact on 56 followers, I guarantee in a week you'll have 60 followers. And then you ask yourself what impact can I have on those 60 followers? Don't get caught up in. Oh, I don't have a 200,000 view video. I don't have this. I don't have that.
Speaker 2:It's nice yeah, it's nice and it feels good and you puff your chest out and all that other stuff, but at the end of the day, you make money doing this by having an impact and giving value and helping the people that are looking for help, and that's not something you need to do at a million dollar.
Speaker 2:Sorry, a million viewer scale. It's not you can do that with if 10 people watch, if you do like I did and the small business surgeon, the first 10 episodes, all I did was interview local business owners that they already knew from my group, and 10 people watched, 20 people watched, 50 people watched, and all of a sudden we had 50, 60, 70 people showing up for group functions and for networking events. And now, yeah, only 60 people watched your video. Yeah, but a ton of people showed up at a networking event and I got to help all those people. And so it's not about can I get 6 million views, it's about can I impact 10 families today. And that's what stops me going crazy. It's knowing that I'm making a little bit of a difference.
Speaker 1:And that's really what kept me going. But I also added another layer in. There is putting the quality out. Once you niche down and you can understand who your avatar is or your ideal customer, then you can start making videos that make sense for him or her and then be able to put that out. And that was probably one of my top three struggles I had, because I was like anybody else, throwing spaghetti on the wall, wanting to see what actually worked.
Speaker 1:And until I actually sat down and really thought about who I want to truly help first time home buyers, somebody that has a credit score that is worthy, that is not in financial ruin. They understand the difference between renting and owning. There's a bunch of nuances, but that's. But until that happened, all I was getting was crap. But now it's starting to come consistently to where, probably three to four times a week, I get anywhere between six to 12 people reach out to me and say hey, can you talk to me about being a first time home buyer, or can I? We just got our nonprofit up last year, so could I be part of the nonprofit? I love to be able to help. That's music to my ears, because having more people like that around is going to be game changing for our nonprofit.
Speaker 2:But if you didn't have the vision and you didn't have the goal, you wouldn't have the nonprofit, you wouldn't have the podcast. And it all starts with sitting down and knowing exactly here's what I'm going to do and here's what I'm going to execute on, and here's where I'm going to be 90 days from now. And whether you make it or not, even if you don't make it, if you miss, you're still closer than you were and you just reset and you go again. There's no end to this game. Like you play and play and play and then one day you're just not here anymore and all your chips get pushed back into the middle and somebody else plays with them. So I really do the fire If I want the best lunch possible. Then I got to go play the grocery store and the cooking levels. That's just it. That's how it is, like you get out what you put in.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's, that is that's like a great place to end and wrap it up. Can you repeat that again one more time, because I want everybody here what you just said.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you get out of life what you put in, and I game if I life. So it's all the levels and I'll go back to the being in shape. Right, if you want to be in shape, you've got to play the diet level for a considerable amount of time and you've got to play the gym level every day, cruise on to the gym server, log into the gym and put this avatar that you're driving through its paces. That's it. If you want the money, you got to play the education levels and then you got to play the work levels, that one where you drive your avatar to work and you force your avatar to do things all day. And then, if you want the girl, you got to play the fitness level and the diet level and the money level. Then you get to play the girl level and it's just a game of fire life.
Speaker 1:Man.
Speaker 2:I see everything as a challenge. With a boss and anything can be accomplished.
Speaker 1:That is awesome, but before we wrap up, you taking on clients currently today, no sir.
Speaker 2:No, maybe in the future. I am right, I'm blessed. I'm absolutely blessed. I manifested my existence. I have a select group of clients that are private investors, private equity guys and no. Like I'm living my dream.
Speaker 2:The stuff I'm getting to work on is the stuff that I've gone to school for. I recently got a postgrad in artificial intelligence and machine learning and business applications and I'm putting that Don't believe what they say in the syllabus when they're selling you the course. It was a lot harder than they made out. If they had told me at the beginning I would not have signed up for it, but I'm so glad I did it. But no, I'm blessed, I am taking on listeners, I'm taking on audience members. If anybody wanted to run over to follow Samlive, that is my link tree where I've put all my stuff. And I do have a Facebook group where I talk about stuff and it's all free, because my job now, as I'm working with these investors and these private equity groups, my job really on a small business surgeon now is to go and give back to the guys that are listening and struggling. So right now, no, I'm not working with anybody.
Speaker 1:Repeat the website where you want people to go to connect with you.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, it's a link tree page that I set up. It's at followsamlive, and then, if you're curious about anything else, you can just go to smallbusinesssurgeoncom and it's all up on there.
Speaker 1:I will put both links in the show notes. Thank you, sam. Sir, you're welcome. Thank you for coming on, love the conversation, love what you're doing, but you also give entrepreneurs and small business owners vision, but also that we know there's somebody out there that potentially could help us and get us to a better place.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and there is hope. Guys, just don't quit. Just don't quit. If you keep doing the same thing over and as the results come back, you focus on those results and you make those adjustments, you'll get where you're going. You just got to stay consistent.
Speaker 1:Amen, consistency is going to win the day. Yes, sir, yep. Thank you, sir, for coming on.
Speaker 2:Ryan, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:You're welcome.
