Ep. 277 | Navigating Entrepreneurial Waters with Jodi Hume's Lifeline of On-Call Decision Support

Navigating the entrepreneurial seas can be a tumultuous journey, but fear not, Jodi Hume is here to throw you a lifeline with her on-call decision support. Her unorthodox approach to consulting, shaped by her family's entrepreneurial roots, offers a beacon of hope to founders seeking guidance amidst the storm. Please sit back and soak in Jodi's wisdom as she details the mechanics of a retainer-based, unlimited consulting model that defies traditional coaching. Her insights on recognizing business and personal triggers are an absolute game-changer, ensuring you, as an entrepreneur, have access to a nonjudgmental space to air concerns and preserve your venture's vitality.

Have you ever struggled with delegating tasks while your curiosity tempts you to micromanage? You're not alone. In our conversation with Jodi, we explore the strategic employment of fractional roles, like a fractional executive assistant, and the delicate art of maintaining focus on core business activities. Jodi also shares the secret sauce to building trust and compatibility in professional relationships, starting with a connection call. This chat is an eye-opener for any business leader balancing personal interests with the necessary delegation to keep their enterprise thriving.

Wrapping up our enlightening exchange, we emphasize the importance of community for entrepreneurs. Jodi and I muse on the challenge of creating a supportive network that fosters genuine interaction and sustenance without overwhelming its members. As listeners, you're invited to join this community-building experiment, offering your insights and energies to help shape a tribe that empowers each other. Don't miss this chance to be part of a collective journey toward growth and improvement in the entrepreneurial world.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

Hey guys, Ryan DeMint from Chasing Financial Freedom Podcast. Hope you guys are having a great day. Today on the podcast we have Jody Hume, and listen to this on-call decision support for founders and entrepreneurs. We're going a little bit deeper, guys, but I think we've had a little discussion about this. As entrepreneurs, small business owners, when we first start up, we don't have a tribe, we don't have somebody we can call on. Jody has those skills. She's also a helping entrepreneur, so we're gonna talk about that. Jodi, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:52

You're more than welcome. So before we get into what you're doing and how you're helping founders and entrepreneurs, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you got going on.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Yes, I am Jodi Hume and I've been doing this Technically. I've been doing this work my whole life. I just realized this recently. My mom was an entrepreneur, both of her parents were entrepreneurs, and I grew up in a household where we talked about those things around the table, and so I feel like I've been around, and also my family did not shy away from involving us in not like they were asking our advice, but we were part of the conversations, we asked questions, we would chime in, and so the fabric of what it takes to start and grow a business is just something I've been around forever.

Speaker 2: 1:34

I did not chart my course towards doing this work at all. I was a psychology major. Actually, first I was an engineering major, then I was a psychology major and then I, like a lot of people, I got out of college and I got a job. That was neither of those things. I was working at an architecture firm and I ended up on a path that I never could have designed for myself but was truly amazing. That firm grew from about 1 million to 10 million.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Because I was a marketing person. I was in the weekly leadership team meetings. I started facilitating those meetings before I even knew what facilitation was, and it was in those meetings that we made every single decision and course correction from past bad decisions and that team worked like. It's where I first saw the value of being able of talking things through and having different perspectives and not trying to figure it out yourself. Had any one of those people been trying to grow the firm on their own, it would not have been nearly as successful as it was as all of us together, and so I started doing this. I got some facilitation and coaching training and I started doing both facilitation and coaching while I was still COO of that firm in the early 2000s and then, in 2011, I left to do just this work.

Speaker 1: 2:48

It sounds like you found your calling, it truly, you light up and you're passionate about it. That's great, because not, I would say not a lot of people find their true passion and their calling. I'm just going to jump right into it because it's dear to my heart. Entrepreneurs, small business owners, founders we all struggle. We're type A personalities. We try to do everything. So how did you come up with the concept? And then how did you start presenting that to entrepreneurs and founders?

Speaker 2: 3:24

coaching some business advising. The bigger the company I was working with, the less it was business advising and more just like personal strategist kind of stuff with some of my like really large company clients. But here's what started to bug me, and I think a lot of innovation comes. As a mentor of mine used to say, there's a grit in your oyster about something in your industry that isn't working. I don't have anything against the traditional coaching model, but I think coaching has real value when someone is at point A and they want to get to point B and they need someone to walk them along the path. It's like training or development in some way. And so two things bug me. One I didn't feel like most entrepreneurs needed that. Sometimes they do. There's absolutely like leadership. Most people have not led a large team of people or grown. A lot of startups grow really quickly and you don't have a lot of time to adjust each stage of business. There's absolutely learning that can happen, but no one knows their company better than the person who started it. They know every nook and cranny and I just found that like this concept of coaching. So the two things that would bug me was in any time someone came to the call. So what should we work on? As if I was going to tell them what the content of our call should be. I was like I don't know what's your business. Do you know me? What do you need help with? What's hot right now? And then, secondly, no matter how because I did a lot of a lot of coaches do like two sessions a month, or one session a week, or one session a month or whatever. It was Right over again, I would. I felt like we were. We were catching up in between important things happening and no matter how often I said call me in between, you have access to call me, text me, wrap me in. If something happens, call me. They never would. And so they'd come to a call and they'd be like let's see, I could talk about this or maybe we'll talk about that man last week was crazy and they'd tell me some story about something that I was like.

Speaker 2: 5:16

So, in around 2014, I started playing around with the model. I started reducing the number of scheduled sessions, trying to put the emphasis on the on-call, and what I found was, until I took away all scheduled sessions and I just made it, what you are buying is on-call support. You are buying me being available really soon, sometimes even same day, sometimes 10 minutes from now, if it's possible. That is what people need, because entrepreneurs don't have problems every second Tuesday at three o'clock or something. They need help when they need help and that is when that started to take off. That's not for everybody. Not everybody has that need Like those people are like verbal processors. Verbal processors must have someone to talk things through with or they get stuck. So I do still do some more, either just block planning sessions or just access on a more regular basis, but most of it is the on-call now.

Speaker 1: 6:08

And I think on our pre-callback it's been a while. We talked about a platform that was up and coming called Manek I think we talked about that and it's gotten bigger. I've not gone on it, I've looked at it. I see it advertised Patrick Bet-David, that's his platform, but it seems to be the same concept that you're doing. Anyhow.

Speaker 2: 6:30

I digress because I just heard that. No, I know I've seen a couple others come up recently where and it's funny because I vaguely considered doing so I even bought the URL pick this brain and I was going to pull different people that I knew who are great in those, those moments of just needing like somebody just needs a little bit of marketing guidance or a little bit of CPA guidance or a little bit of HR guidance. They don't always need months and months of support, they just need the amount of information they need to be able to get back. It's almost like pit stops in race car. It's like they need to pull over, get a tire change and then get back on the racetrack and that has such value and it's so hard to get. I think we've all felt that moment where I don't need a marketing consultant, I just need someone to answer this one question.

Speaker 1: 7:11

And that's where that Manek comes in, and I think I've talked about trying it, but I haven't got there yet. And I finally found a problem that I would like to be able to try, maybe with you or with Ed, I don't know. But my whole thing is you're right, I don't need a every Tuesday call to go over all my problems. It's when the problem arises. I'd like to be able to solve it and move on to the next problem and to say that slows things down in the business, especially as a. I say I'm a solopreneur, but I've got independent contractors, I got VAs, I manage a team, but it's not. They don't work directly for the company per se, but it slows everything down that needs to be done, that's revenue facing and revenue generating. You solve a very unique niche and problem. How can entrepreneurs and founders, small business owners, really take advantage of this and really put it to use?

Speaker 2: 8:10

You mean with me or in general, because I have answers to both those questions.

Speaker 1: 8:13

With you or in general, however you want to answer it, because I think this is something a lot bigger than I know about, because I don't know very many people doing this.

Speaker 2: 8:22

No, and it is a newer industry. It's one of the. It's one of the sort of like speed bumps I hit sometimes when I talk to people, cause they're just they can't get their brain out of, they're like they just in their mind they were thinking I'm going to get this many sessions, and so they're like, oh, I don't, because in order for it to work, I have to make that unlimited.

Speaker 2: 8:39

Like the way I do, it is, it's a retainer and it's unlimited. I'll add another layer to that. I think there's two kinds of things I'll come back to that in a second and in their brain they're like, oh, I'm just not going to need it that much, and I'm like, no, that's actually the point is, some of my clients won't use it at all in one given month, and then we'll talk like four or five times another month. It all works out. It's fine for me At, but at the moment it works out great, because there are two kinds of things that I think entrepreneurs need. One is when they are very confident, they know exactly what the problem is and they really do just need an answer. This is what it is and this is the problem. I'm sure you see this all the time, though there's a good number of times where what they think is the problem is not the problem, and so that couple of quick questions to say is that actually what the issue is, or is there some other issue going on? Is the value of working with someone like me, someone who can know you and know your business and know the kind of typical holes you fall into, whether energetically or emotionally, like with my clients. I know where they get triggered around something and then they're hung up on a particular issue that maybe shouldn't be that complicated. Or there's a sound in their voice when they're just exhausted and they're not actually unsure about a decision, they're just fried and they need to recharge in some way before their brain can actually even process the information. So having someone who knows you and these don't all have to come in one person, that's the thing.

Speaker 2: 10:09

I am not the only person my people talk to. For each of them I tend to fit a different where they didn't have someone to talk through certain things with. So you need different people for different things. For me personally, you can go to atthecorecom forward slash listener and I. What's there? I keep changing what's there. I keep adding more things. There's. There's a few free downloads there's because it is new. I give people like a 50% off just trying a single session to see if it's something that works, and I always tell people if, even at the 50% off, if at the end of the day you're like that really wasn't helpful, I even at the 50% off. If at the end of the day, you're like that really wasn't helpful, I'll give you your money back. It's just, we'll deliver my time, no big deal. I want people to try out what it feels like to have someone they can talk something through it, because Seth Godin has this quote if you have a problem you can't talk about now, you have a second problem and that is what drives me.

Speaker 2: 11:01

So many entrepreneurs think they're the only person who has some issue. They build up shame or embarrassment, or like it feels vulnerable to admit you don't know something or that you're just stuck on something that feels like you should know the answer to, and that is where we squander the time and energy that the business really needs from us. So that's like my big why. So that's me. But, like I said, yes, I am good at what I do, but there are lots of places you can get guidance and advice and from lots of different kinds of people. The thing that the hill I will die on is just do not let your questions or confessions or whatever. It is like the thing that don't find a place for all of them, because they build up and they take time and energy from your company and from you.

Speaker 1: 11:50

All of them because they build up and they take time and energy from your company and from you. So one question I have to ask, because, as a startup, you're on a shoestring budget. If entrepreneurs have challenges with budget and being able to work this in and I'm not asking to share costs but what would something like this work into their budget to get stuff done? Everything's tight when you're a startup.

Speaker 2: 12:08

That is absolutely the issue. So I do a couple of things. For one thing, I run a group, which is great for a lot of people. That's fine for them. For someone who doesn't have a super high need of either confidentiality, the group keeps things confidential, so that's that. But some people just want one-on-one time. They're just not group people. But for people who I actually think there's a lot even more value in the group, because not only are you hearing from me, but you're hearing from other people who have been there, done that, so it's really helpful. So the group is very economical. And then I actually I'm playing around with something right now that I don't even think is up on the website yet, but I am because it really does matter to me and I know how hard it can be. I'm playing around with a thing instead of having some base like discounted rate for really smaller folks who are really struggling with that and who just don't need the full on call, like the full monthly thing is.

Speaker 2: 12:58

I'm playing around with a thing that's a pay, what you can model, and I think I'm going to open up three or four sessions each week or something. I don't know. As you can tell, I am building this plane as I fly it, but I'm going to post that really soon and just see if people take me up on it, see if it's helpful. I feel the really lovely thing about this model is it does leave me some time in my week so I can play around because I'm available for my on-call clients.

Speaker 1: 13:23

So I'm really looking for ways to make that more available to people in a way that works for them as well as me, and leaves me my time for those other clients so that's like my neck and what it's trying to do is because it's you go on the app and you can do a text message, you can do a video, you can do an email or you can have a phone call and of course, his whole concept was from attorneys not billing them per minute.

Speaker 1: 13:49

They bill them per hour and then they basically run the bill up, so they basically do it on a per minute basis. So, however much time it takes for this expert to respond back to you for this problem is what they're charging that could come in on demand with that one problem or that one question that truly needs to be answered and is not going to get billed for a month's worth of usage. It's just for your time for that period.

Speaker 2: 14:16

This is why I keep playing around with the model. It's really interesting. Now you're seeing my mad sign. I will pull out my spreadsheets and show you. But I play around with all these different ways because one interesting thing about it is every time I played around with doing anything that is hourly or per session, never try to per minute. That's an interesting one. Hourly or per session it does kick people back into that buying decision oh, is this worth it? Is this a good enough thing to? And they'll tend to not not go ahead and do it Like it's so interesting. Yeah, again, I'm not working with sample sizes, sizes like hundreds and hundreds. So this is not.

Speaker 1: 14:48

I thought it would be. I thought it'd be sorry to be opposite, because you're trying something out and you don't have to continue to, you know, pay for it on a monthly basis. I don't know, maybe that's my mindset.

Speaker 2: 14:59

Here's the really funny thing is, a lot of times here's where it's really a problem. Again, I think, if they have a crystal clear picture of what the problem is and they're pretty confident that's what the problem is. Sometimes, yes, they do it, but a lot of times they're not even sure exactly what the problem is, and that is such a high insecurity for entrepreneurs where they're like I just know that I'm, like I'm just, I'm not right. And my one client says you know how, with a print what's it called the inkjet printers you know how they start printing with lines, yeah, and then you have to clean the printheads. He goes when my brain feels like it's printing lines, that's when I call you, because that's how I know I need to like clear out the printheads and get back into my own grounded, centered, whatever. Clear out the clutter. There's a lot of different ways the metaphor works, but it is that kind of thing. So when they're not sure which is such a bummer, because that's what I love about the unlimited, because then they'll call for whatever, it doesn't matter that's when I can be most helpful.

Speaker 2: 15:56

In fact, I just did a video for social media in response to someone who booked a session with me and then an hour later canceled it. And so I reached out to him. I was like, hey, did you mean to cancel it? No problems if so. But what happened? And he said, yeah, I got to organize all my thoughts and get all my thoughts together first, and I was like, please don't and this was the video I made Please don't organize your thoughts. Because when someone organizes their thoughts into especially like outline form, it's like it sanitizes all the actual valuable information out of it, because when they bounce around, those things might seem unconnected, but to them they're connected. That's why their brain bounced over there and that's where all the good stuff is. I was like, please don't organize your thoughts, just call. But to your point about text messages, I'm glad you mentioned that I've actually thought about having this teeny tiny service that is just for text messages and also teeny tiny calls like 10, 15 minute calls.

Speaker 2: 16:53

And because a lot of times and this sounds so silly, almost, but what my clients who've been with me for years have actually said that at times they've gotten the most value out of is just those quick texts where they're either like sulking about something or venting about something or, frankly, bragging about something. It's like both those ends of what's really real have the fewest places. You're not allowed to be just bummed out about a thing. You're supposed to just pick up and keep going and there are fewer people that you can brag to a lot of the time and a lot of CEOs do not get positive feedback. Nobody's telling them they're doing a good job and they don't want to admit they need that.

Speaker 2: 17:30

But having somebody just to be like, oh my God, you pulled it off who actually gets it Like my one client she's like I could tell my. There's no one at the company I can tell because it was a super confidential thing. I could tell my mom, but she doesn't really understand. Or a friend, but they don't really understand what I just pulled off the way you do, and all the people who would understand can't tell and it's like business confessional kind of service.

Speaker 1: 17:55

That is a problem. I think that's a huge problem. The thing I want to go back to that really, that I don't want to use trigger, but it got me to where I needed to be is when you have that problem that you're trying to solve or you just need some help to push it over the top. We have nowhere to go today. I truly don't. I have a group that I belong to that are other entrepreneurs that we meet once a week and I can bring those problems, but it's not on demand like what you're talking about, and I'll give you an example. We have a nonprofit.

Speaker 1: 18:27

It took two years to get it up and going. I have no clue about a nonprofit Zero, zilch, nada, guess what I got to learn, but there's not enough resources and time in the day for me to do all that homework. So could I? I don't want to say the word comes to my mind is shortcut, but I want to be able to. Best way to say it is I want to utilize my time more effectively to learn. I need an executive director. I need somebody that can put the nonprofit now from where it's at on the shelf and move it to an operating nonprofit.

Speaker 2: 19:04

Yeah, so you are reminding me of a really important distinction, I think. So we're going off the on-call thing a little bit here, but I think one of the most important skills an entrepreneur can have is discerning what they should be doing and what they shouldn't. And someone said to me somewhere along the path when I was trying to get my first VA actually under into the team, and she said where you are right now. She said the right who comes with a how. And it's that distinction of whether you can get everything in order and then hire like a lower level person to just implement, or whether you actually need someone who knows more than you do about the thing so that they can run with it.

Speaker 2: 19:47

And I try to be incredibly judicious. I actually love researching and learning new things. I will jump in that swimming pool any day. Oh, I'll figure it out. That's fun for me and it's part of how I succeeded so well at the architecture firm was that I just kept taking over more and more parts of the business. That skill serves me less well now and I have to remind myself of that because even though it's fun, whatever it is, usually I'm like no, I'm going to let my VA figure this out and I actually intentionally do not learn it because otherwise I'll jump in to try and do it. So I stay dumb on certain things so that I'm not tempted to jump in. But yeah, those kinds of like nonprofits are tricky. I know enough about nonprofits and board governance and all those things to know that I will dabble around the edges of those conversations. But yeah, there are people who are experts in that.

Speaker 1: 20:45

So that's a problem. So I have to start somewhere and just layer it up. I know I'm not going to solve it overnight. It is what it is. Every day I take a chunk of it and we keep on moving forward.

Speaker 2: 20:54

I'm guessing at the size that I'm imagining that is like someone for whom that is their expertise. It would also take them a fraction of the time it would use. So it may just be this tiny little thing for them, Whereas for you it would take like 20% of your week away.

Speaker 1: 21:20

I had no idea. I've heard of everything fractional but I didn't know there was fractional executive director.

Speaker 2: 21:25

So I think everything is has a fractional option. Now I think so many people are like playing around with the different kinds of availability, especially because having a job is hardly the most secure thing anymore, and so I think people are looking at ways to diversify their risk in that way too and to have more autonomy and all those things. But interesting.

Speaker 1: 21:49

I'll have to look that up and see if I can do some homework on that. So we digress. So let's get back into this on-call, on-man thing. How can entrepreneur and founders effectively use your services? And I'm just being pointed to because you've got a service and I think it needs to get out there. So how can we effectively use it?

Speaker 2: 22:11

Yeah, so do you mean what's the most effective way, or how do you actually work with me?

Speaker 1: 22:17

I would both the most effective way to use it, but then also working with you, because you have a skill set that others do not have or are not utilizing.

Speaker 2: 22:27

So the first thing that I have everyone do is just book a connection call with me, which is just a free 45 minute call. It is not even a sales call, I will tell you, and I really mean that when I say that, because in fact the guy who started up with me about four months ago he was like you make it hard to hire you. No, it's not that, it's just, it really has to be a good fit and I really look forward to there being a lot more people who do what I do, because the fit really is important. And so just getting that connection, am I someone that you, when you talk to me, you feel like you can tell me things? Because if not, then it's not going to work. And I usually can create rapport with people very quickly, I can get up to speed on what their business is doing very quickly. But sometimes you know it's not to make it weird, but it's a little bit like dating almost If there's just not that vibe, then there's not a vibe and I will be the first person to say I don't think this is a good fit, I don't, it's just I don't. It doesn't feel like you're feeling it or like something's off here.

Speaker 2: 23:27

There are also occasionally industries where I just I don't think I'm your best person. I don't have to do the work that I do. I'm actually much more clued into the person and their energy, because that's one of the things. I am not an expert in everything. I am not an on-call answerer of questions, like there are things I have expertise in and I am happy to share that, but there are many things I do not have expertise in and I will be very clear about that's outside of my expertise. So if someone is thinking that I am like the person who can answer all their questions about something, then we can rule that out very quickly.

Speaker 2: 24:00

So that connection call is free. It's also just a chance to try out a little question. We can't solve all the problems of the world in 45 minutes, but just see if that feels helpful and then I can tell them about. I have a couple spaces left for the retainer on call people, but then if it's not a good fit or that is filled up, I am really willing to play around with that. That's the part that I am noodling on right now. The retainer on call works extremely well, not messing with that. I would love to make this more readily accessible to way more people in the easiest way possible, and that's the part that I'm experimenting with now, to figure out what the shape and size of that is. That people will use it and it works with. You know that they'll actually use it, so I'm super flexible with that right now.

Speaker 1: 24:45

That's cool. You'll have to give us an update. We'll also share your website, so we'll get to see that too.

Speaker 2: 24:50

Yeah, I feel more strongly about getting the concept out there, like the more people who just haven't. They're like oh, I can ask someone else, even if they're not hired, like I can take my question to someone else and they can help me. It's okay, because I do think it's a real issue in business. Is there's, it feels like to many people, anything other than everything's great and I'm killing. It feels like taboo a lot of time to a lot of people, like they're never allowed to, or you'll hear people's everything with bad stories, but it's always and then it all went great and everything's fantastic, and sometimes people will talk to friends, but it's just. I think it's a real issue when there are things that people don't have a place to go. So that's the part that I feel really passionate.

Speaker 1: 25:34

And that's hard. As an entrepreneur, I know that feeling. You have nowhere to go and you feel like you're on an island.

Speaker 2: 25:41

I actually made a whole crazy mind map of all the reasons that people have said that they couldn't take a particular topic to someone else. And it's so broad Because when I say they don't have someone to topic to someone else, and it's so broad Because when I say they don't have someone to talk to, everyone just assumes it's like purely a confidentiality thing. I'm like, oh no, that is one of about 97 reasons that things start to feel like you can't tell someone else about.

Speaker 1: 26:06

Yeah, yeah, it's tough. I'm visually, I can live it, I can feel it, I know it. It's tough, it really is.

Speaker 2: 26:16

But even, but do you still like? You see, I know you feel that and it still feels hard, right, like your brain is going. This makes perfect sense, and then something in you is still.

Speaker 1: 26:29

The but is if I could go back in time, like everyone says, and have those additional thought processes and skill set. Because prior to being an entrepreneur, I lived in corporate America. I was running call center collection agencies and financial instruments. I led 2,000, 3,000 people at a time. My day was consisting of managing that bottom 20% out of my business that took up 80% of my time, didn't teach me how to be an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1: 26:57

Didn't teach me how to fish. Didn't teach me to be a creative thinker. I was an operator, so I thought oh natural, transition from being an operator to an entrepreneur doesn't always work that way.

Speaker 2: 27:08

And I add another layer to that doesn't always work that way, and I add another layer to that it's not even so. Yes, on the teach you how, but part of the teach you how is actually letting go of the perception that there is a how. This, if you are creating anything even remotely different from what's already out there. So, like the person who probably doesn't apply to is, if you have a franchise that's been sorted out, they tell you exactly what to do, step by step. But if you're doing something even remotely new in the world, there is no map Like you need. What you need is orienting skills, because you're not going to find there'll be a few best practices for some things and follow those if they fit. But you actually have to be wary about that too. Maybe your thing doesn't work with that best practice because your thing is new and it's made differently than what that applied to.

Speaker 2: 27:57

So it's great to get other people's advice. It's why I steer clear of advice, unless I'm pretty. There are times I give advice, obviously, especially with a leadership thing, but otherwise you need to figure it out for your business. And yes, it's a skill to teach, but it's almost like a skill in not surrender, but like discernment, I think, is the word that comes up a lot, because you are going to get a lot of things wrong, but that's the only way to figure it out. And, like a friend of mine says who teaches design, he says it's almost never about the right font or the best font. You just have to make sure you don't have the wrong font, and I feel like that's what business decisions most of the time are. If what you're looking for is what's the right decision, you're going to stay stuck a lot, and so you want to get as close to right as possible, but mainly you just need to make sure it's not a really bad decision.

Speaker 1: 28:53

I can relate to that Now, thinking about everything we've gone through because we're in the affordable housing space. We got into a space that predominantly was dominated by nonprofits and were for profit and, believe me, that was a lot of pain initially. That was a lot of pain initially and to be able to work out the construction timeframes, the rehab timeframes, the acquisition, just it didn't work. When it came to costs, it was just very cost prohibitive and we were upside down. So it took six.

Speaker 2: 29:25

Especially with rehab. You never know what's going to happen until you bust open a wall and you're like, oh, who knew that would go there.

Speaker 1: 29:31

After 12 rehabs, I finally learned that I love to be Picasso and have a clean canvas. Give me an infilled lot and let me build a house, because now I know what to do. Smart me.

Speaker 2: 29:44

Yeah, but that's the only way you could know. I made the leap from my job to this business because I got a very juicy six-figure contract with a publicly traded company and I was like this is it? I'm hitting the big leagues. I very quickly discerned that I do not like doing work with giant corporations. I would never take another contract like that ever again, and I was really pleased that it ended. They got acquired and it just didn't make sense to finish it, and so I was like I would. The only way you can find some things out is to get them and then be like oops, nope, not that Now I know.

Speaker 1: 30:21

But the oops not that also cost money, that was that was probably the biggest challenge and being able to say that we could get scale and I hate the word scale, but that's just what comes out of my head, because everyone seems to use it synonymously today in business, and it's truly not that.

Speaker 2: 30:37

Right.

Speaker 1: 30:38

But the piece was we were providing a better quality product than any of the nonprofits in the space. We just had to find a way to make it profitable.

Speaker 2: 30:50

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:50

Twelve houses later, we did, and here we are to make it profitable. Yeah, 12 houses later, we did, and here we are. And now all we do is build. I won't even touch a. I won't even touch a rehab if my life depended on it. Yeah, it just that's, and that's the whole reason for the nonprofit. Get the executive director and start raising funds, start doing some grants. Then we can start doing some of that on the side. But it's more of a financial literacy and coaching, because many people that come to us they're stuck in renting habits and really don't know what bank accounts are. It's sad, but that's just where we're at.

Speaker 2: 31:20

No, it makes. There's an organization here in town that I just I so respect, because they looked at a really complex social problem and they've identified these four markers, and I'm not going to remember exactly what they are, but one of them is housing, one of them is access to food, because, especially here in Baltimore, food deserts is a major issue. So access to food.

Speaker 2: 31:40

One is, I believe, is like financial literacy, and there's these four pillars that they're like we're never going to work with just one thing with someone, because you can solve that problem, but then, if they don't have these other things in place, it's all going to topple with the tiniest little thing, and so it makes so much sense. I love that you're doing that. That's great.

Speaker 1: 31:57

Yeah, it's pretty cool as we wrap up. Before we get to that end, best place people can reach out to you, and first are you accepting clients?

Speaker 2: 32:06

Yes, yeah, yeah, I have a few. I have a few openings. The best and worst thing is that many of my clients at least the startup founders I don't only work with startup founders, I work with a lot of traditional businesses as well but my startup founders, when they're doing really well, they get acquired and then they go away, and it's very sad. I just had one of my biggest clients, my longest client, sold her company and her spot is sitting open at the moment. But then, like I said, puzzle I'm working on right now is how to make it more broadly accessible for people who don't need that like constant support. So happy to have takers to play around with some different, and all I ask for that is tell me what you think would work for you and then we'll test it out for a few months and then see if it works for me, if it works for you, if you end up using it Sometimes people think they'll if it's a good fit.

Speaker 1: 33:06

People can pick where they need to go. But thank you very much for coming on. Love the conversation, love what you're doing. Better yet, you're creating a tribe for entrepreneurs and founders that.

Speaker 2: 33:18

That is my next project, ryan. I am working on a community right now, trying to figure out the best again that they'll actually. I could easily put up a group somewhere, but will they actually use it? What is the? Yeah that's what I'm like. Will they act, whether it's a Slack channel or here, like how will and how can people connect so they can support each other as well?

Speaker 1: 33:37

It's hard, but you can do it and it works, because once you get in and you start communicating with these other entrepreneurs or founders, life starts changing and it gets a lot better. Yeah, love it. Thank you for coming on.