Ep 278 | Hollywood Meets Business: Nelson Parks on Cultivating Success in Entrepreneurship

Unlock the secrets behind Hollywood success and entrepreneurial mastery with Nelson Parks, a titan of talent management whose three-decade career has transformed hopeful actors into household names. Since his dramatic shift from acting to coaching, Nelson has captivated audiences in "All That" and "When the Crawdads Sing." Now, he is turning his gaze to mentoring business owners through the labyrinth of growth and innovation. His 12-week master plan promises to overhaul your enterprise and re-engineer your approach to work and life itself.

Imagine having a backstage pass to the strategies that power the entertainment industry and the cutthroat business world. Nelson offers a treasure trove of wisdom, from navigating the adoption of AI in the arts to fostering a team culture that thrives on challenges and mistakes. This episode is a masterclass in the art of scaling up, addressing the woes of wearing countless hats and building systems that ensure your venture stands the test of time.

Conclude your journey with an appreciative nod to Nelson Parks's mentorship, emphasizing the transformative effect a seasoned coach can have on your professional trajectory. Whether you're a starry-eyed entrepreneur or a small business owner weathering the storm, this episode is a testament to the possibilities unfolding when you pair passion with the right guidance. Let Nelson's saga inspire the next chapter of your success story.

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 Nelson Parks. Nelson is a talent manager and entrepreneur living in Hollywood, california, so I'm sure we're gonna have some interesting conversations about Hollywood and what he does. Nelson, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Super happy to be here. You're more than welcome. So before we get into what you're doing, how about a little bit about yourself and we'll start going down some rabbit holes, as I say after that you got it.

Speaker 2: 0:51

I've been in the entertainment business now for years. I've had my talent management company now for 30 years. I grew up as a kid in the business. I worked as an actor when I first started. Then I transitioned and worked in casting. I did a lot of commercial casting sessions with four different casting directors here in Los Angeles and then from there I started teaching acting as an acting coach. I taught for years. I then started my management company and now I've had it here for 30 years and we have a lot of successful clients.

Speaker 2: 1:19

I've built people like we have a client, ari and Brooks on the series All that. Reese Cadell was also on that Nickelodeon series All that. We had two series regulars on that series Madison Curry she's an African-American little girl that was on Jordan Peele's movie Us Folly Rakota-Huanaba. He's in Kerry Washington's series that's out right now called Unprisoned. He plays the son of Kerry Washington. And then we have people like adult clients like Hunter Cloutis on the series All American.

Speaker 2: 1:47

If you went to the movies this last year and went to see the film when the Crawdads Sing, we had the main little girl, jojo Regina, on that series. And then we've had clients like Jordan Hall that was in the series the L Word. She was also in the feature film Hustle with Adam Sandler and Queen Latifah so I could do this for another half an hour and just give you names. But we've built a lot of successful clients over the years and my job as a manager is to really mentor, develop and help clients get from point A to point B their careers and continue to grow over the years.

Speaker 1: 2:18

So why did you get into space? You said you were in it since you were in Hollywood since a kid. But what got you there?

Speaker 2: 2:25

I started as a kid actor when I got my training at Second City in Chicago and toured with a youth company there as a teen, then came out to USC and was in their theater conservatory and loved the space. But I finally realized that I wanted to get on the other side of the camera. I think I was pursuing the entertainment business for the wrong reasons and so I decided to work in casting and then from there I wanted to actually help people and come up with. I worked like a life coach would with actors and really develop and mentor them to help them reach their goals and dreams.

Speaker 1: 2:58

I got to dig deeper on that one. How did you find out that you had a knack for being a life coach to help actors? Because that's pretty unique. That's a pretty big I don't want to say big, it's a very finite niche. How do you find out?

Speaker 2: 3:12

What happened is, again, as an acting coach. I taught over 10,000 kids and young adults as a coach and I created dozens of actually hundreds of helpful forms and sheets for all of my clients. But again, as a manager, we only make commission when our clients work. So during the pandemic, I just really started thinking out of the box because again the entertainment business really tanked from going from the pandemic and then going into the strike. I've always had coaches that coach me, and so I decided to build this other brand called helpandanswerscom, and so, at Help and Answers, I believe that your life is dictated by the questions you ask yourself or the questions you don't ask yourself in your life. So I took all these sheets that I had that I developed for our current actors and I thought what if I create a model for entrepreneurs and business owners? So what we do is we go through every area of a young entrepreneur's career or business. We're gonna go through all 168 hours of their week. We wanna understand what they're doing with their time. We're gonna go through their money. We're gonna break down their money into today money, future money, future future money concepts and we have a plan for their finances. We'll go through their spaces in their life. We wanna look at every space in their life, from their digital space to their home space to their car space. So it's a program that helps really clean your life up in every single area and make sure that you have a plan with what you're doing with your time and all your resources so you can actually really thrive and scale up your business to that next level.

Speaker 2: 4:41

So I work with a lot of entertainment people, but I also now I'm in other industries where other people that are just business owners that want to figure out how to scale up their business and each business owner struggles with different things.

Speaker 2: 4:54

I find a lot of business owners sometimes don't really have the art of networking down really well or don't know how to present themselves in front of the media. So since I've coached hundreds of clients and I've taken clients to the Emmys and the Oscars, we know how to position someone to really have them prepared so they can actually run their business effectively, but also they know how to be the face of their business. So I will coach entrepreneurs on how to do that and make sure they have a clear marketing plan and a clear networking plan. Networking seems to sometimes scare certain people. So we've developed a system to truly set up a network system for you where it's not scary and it's not something that you're going to feel like you can't do, and so we have a methodology on how we do that and it's just really all my years of working in the entertainment industry and I've transitioned that now more for entrepreneurs and business owners came into industry and I've transitioned that now more for entrepreneurs and business owners.

Speaker 1: 5:49

So if I'm an entrepreneur or business owner, at what stage of my business would I come seek out your assistance and guidance Really?

Speaker 2: 5:55

when you're first starting your business. So I have clients that, like they don't even know what to do to get their DBA. They don't have a business plan. My belief is that every corporation in America obviously has a business plan, but my thought is that every individual should really have a business plan. My belief is that every corporation in America obviously has a business plan, but my thought is that every individual should really have a business plan as well. So for the new entrepreneur that wants to start their business, I want to make sure there's a clear, concisive plan and again, we're going to go through every area of your life your time, your money, your every resource that you have in your life and we develop a plan from the ground up. So it's best to get coaching in the beginning when you're first starting your business. But I also find owners like I have one of my clients that he's got 20, 25 employees right now and he's really trying to figure out how to scale his company up to that next level, and so I will take a look at what's working, what's not working.

Speaker 2: 6:40

I'm like a problem solver problem solver. As a talent manager that I've done for years. I've had to solve problems for super high-end clients and I've had to go through a lot of issues with my clients. Actors' lifestyles are up and down. They have great years, they have slow years. So as a mentor and manager there, I've really learned how to work with an individual and have them be able to build a wise game plan for them, and I'm just now doing the same thing in the space of entrepreneurs and business owners.

Speaker 1: 7:12

So you've come out of Hollywood and now you're starting to help entrepreneurs and small business owners. What type of businesses do you typically? Or entrepreneurs that are wanting to start or running businesses? What do you typically go after outside of Hollywood?

Speaker 2: 7:36

have more creative types or people that are in the creative field. I feel like that's where we really thrive, but it really depends. Our service is really set up for anyone that has a business, that wants to make sure that they have a plan for their life, so that's where we start.

Speaker 1: 7:50

So I got to ask the deep question what separates you from everybody else in this space, since it's a crowded space?

Speaker 2: 7:56

I think our methodology of like how we work breaking down every area of your life because I feel like there's a lot of coaches out there that just give a lot of general advice, but we get so specific and that's why I said we truly break down all 168 hours a week I want to make sure that you're putting the time in the right areas. There's a lot of business owners that are working in their business versus on their business, and there's a distinction there. I want to make sure that you're working on your business, so we're going to look at all your time and really break it down. So I think what we do best is people that are coachable, that want the coaching, but the bottom line there are either businesses gotten out of control or they really don't know what those next steps are. We have systems and structures and like template sheets that we will sit down and we'll have. You do, Eric, we're custom putting together a master plan together for you within the 12 week program.

Speaker 1: 8:52

So is that? A typical timeframe is 12 weeks. Is that they work? Is that set or do you go beyond that? What does that look like?

Speaker 2: 8:59

Some people will want to go beyond that after we've done the 12 week program. The 12 week program is a program that's set and we go through a systemized way of every area of your life and then after that some people may want to do twice a month where we do just mentoring meetings we talk about like how do I help them get their business to that next level. I have one client that I've been on an ongoing retainer for two years and I'm always just giving the business owner ideas on how to scale, what's working, what's not working, and I will get a myriad of questions every week on. I'm stuck here. What should I do? I'm stuck there. What should we be taking a look at For what? I'm stuck there, what should we be taking a look at? What I'm really doing for these business owners is putting a mirror up to what they're up to and then making sure that they have constructed a really specific system that they can replicate on a day-to-day basis so that they can make sure that they're moving forward incrementally.

Speaker 1: 9:51

What would you say the two biggest items that you typically see when coming in to coach an entrepreneur or small business owner that they're struggling with?

Speaker 2: 10:02

They are wearing so many hats and they don't have a plan for all their systems and structures. So I think it's there's just so much going on. You're trying to run the finances, you're trying to do the marketing, you're trying to build up every part of the business, and so I find that most business owners are just stuck running the day-to-day stuff, and so what I help them do is step above it and take a look and say what do we need to do on a day-to-day basis to change one action or one habit? We're looking at those daily habits that over time, if we really start shifting those habits, it'll make an impact and make a difference for that business and that business owner's life.

Speaker 1: 10:43

I know, when I was starting up and doing this for the first time, I was strapped for cash and not saying coaching is not good, because I'm all for coaching, because I work with two coaches now, but starting up was would have been very difficult. How does an entrepreneur startup bring on a coach when we your pre-revenue, see your pre-revenue it?

Speaker 2: 11:06

depends. Some people have a. They've gotten a small business loan and they will account for a certain percentage of that to make sure that they're setting up their business the right way. I think I've always had coaches in my life for the past 30 years. So just like I coach, I also have coaches that mentor and coach me. So it's like anything else, you need to make sure that you're investing in your education If you're not investing in yourself.

Speaker 2: 11:30

We are in an age now that life is going at such a pace, like even right now with the concept of AI. Ai is growing at such a fast pace and it is. I spent at least an hour to just researching other programs, other apps, other things I could be using to be more effective. So if you're not investing in you, you're going to be left behind. Now I don't think AI will necessarily replace people, but I think it will replace people that are knowing how to integrate AI into their business.

Speaker 2: 12:01

This last year, we did an interesting give back to all our entertainment community. We started a website called the AI expertscom and what that was? We did a zoom with about 90 agents and casting directors people in the entertainment industry just to open up the dialogue of like, how ai and entertainment co could co-exist in this world, because obviously, with the sag strike, ai was one of the topics that like was definitely an issue, uh, for many people. We thought let's break down the basics for people and and I had friends that didn't even understand how to use chat gpt. So for us, we want to make sure let's educate our community, let's let people know that we're not using AI to replace our teams, but let's figure out, like one of the things I told my staff or this last year is say I said, take 10% of your time in whatever job that you're doing in my office and find a way to have AI be integrated in your job. So I'm not saying that I'm going to replace any of my staff members, but I said let's you know you find what tool best work for you that could help you be more effective and efficient within the space of AI, because if we don't do that, our jobs could or our industry could be affected.

Speaker 2: 13:12

So it's important to stay ahead of the curve. So I think now if you are not doing something to pay yourself back in education, you're really hurting yourself. Just like you have a savings account, you should have an account also that just is there to invest in your education. When I'm mentoring someone or working with someone, I want to make sure that they're saving a certain amount of money. Certain amount of money is going to their bills. A certain amount of money is for financial freedom accounts to make sure that they're saving a certain amount of money. Certain amount of money is going to their bills. A certain amount of money is for financial freedom accounts to make sure that they're saving for their future. But also you've got to make sure that you're investing in yourself to stay relevant in this fast-paced world nowadays.

Speaker 1: 13:48

I struggled with learning in college and not wanting to read and so forth, and in the last probably several years I've become a very big reader and it's been. I don't know I want to call life changing, but it has truly helped me progress as an entrepreneur and a small business owner, that I spend in the evening between an hour and two hours just reading. The evening between an hour and two hours just reading, whether it be self-help books, the Wall Street Journal, even something crazy as like a nonfiction book. It still gets your mind away from where you're at in your learning, and I think that quote by Warren Buffett says that if you read 20 pages a day, that equals out to three or 30 books a year, I think somewhere right around there. So I started there and now I'm on pace to read close to 45 books this year, somewhere right around there. So I started there and now I'm on pace to read close to 45 books this year, right around there. It's changing, but if you don't, I'm going to circle back because it's leading me to where I wanted to go is.

Speaker 1: 14:42

You're talking about how fast paced our environment is and life is, but we've lost that work ethic, and that work ethic is people think they can put out a social media post and all of a sudden it goes viral and they're going to be the next big thing. People don't realize there's a lot of time and effort behind everything you do and as an entrepreneur, you have to put time and effort and blood, sweat and tears to make things work. Otherwise the business will fail. The business will fail. Yep, 100%.

Speaker 2: 15:11

I feel like all my clients that are really coachable, that are doing the daily things that they need to be doing on a day-to-day basis, are moving forward. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes years of good habits and even shifting your habits by 1%. If each day you were shifting by 1%, just a little bit, that habit, in a year from now the collective habits that you have in your life are truly going to next level you up. So I think it's super important to focus on what action steps you're doing that day and also making it fun. Like for me, I like to make sure that this I'm just playing a game every day. So when I come to my office, I'm like I'm just putting a puzzle together and making it fun and making it a game. And obviously there's the business side of yes, the income has to come in. But if I'm not passionately loving what I'm doing, I'm also going to not necessarily be getting results. So I think you got to get out of your way, make sure that you're innovating all the time One of the projects that we took on this year and again, this is not the space I'm in, but I think during the pandemic I learned that you should just go where your business also leads you.

Speaker 2: 16:17

We have a friend of ours that's asked us to market this book. It's called conflicting loyalties and the book it's about a guy that was in the mob as a kid and when he turned 18, he became a DOJ informant and he had to bring all these political figures down. And it's a fascinating book, it's actually true, by a guy named Aidan Gabor, and one of the things we took on is like marketing this book and in doing that, again, my expertise was not book marketing but again, we are great at just like solving problems. So we said to this one client yes, of course we'll market this book, and it's opened up a slew of other opportunities for us. We got 55 different social media influencers to share the book and get it out there.

Speaker 2: 17:00

So we created a ground roots approach to getting and marketing it out there and from that it gave us ideas to start doing podcasts. And now the author again he can't be seen because he has to still conceal his identity. His name is Aidan Gabor, but all of his podcasts we just have to have an image up there that's actually not him because again he still is undercover. But that gave me the idea for myself to start getting out and doing podcasts. So my business coach said exactly what you're having your clients do, you should be doing the same. So get out there. And I think in the last month we booked my one of my assistants booked us in 23 different podcasts. So we're just. If we're going to be giving the recommendation to our clients on things, then my belief is that I have to be doing the same thing and be coachable when I have coaches that are coaching me as well.

Speaker 1: 17:48

So if I'm a small business owner, entrepreneur, and I want to work with a coach like yourself, what would be like two or three nuggets you can share to make it beneficial for the entrepreneur. Because, you said it earlier, we're wearing many hats, we're doing a lot of different things. Okay, I need somebody to help me, or somebody that can help me is huge, and being able to then take that information, digest it and then do something with it.

Speaker 2: 18:18

Yeah, I would say the first thing is you got to write down your plan, you got to make sure that you're really clear on what it is you're doing, and when you write it down, it might give you some other ideas and you may go oh, you know what? I'm actually not really committed to this. So I think the importance of physically writing it down and I don't mean just typing it there was a study years ago that showed that just by the mere fact of writing information down, we're a lot more productive in our life. I think that was a study done at Harvard University years ago and I think that's a daily thing that I do right now. I'm always writing stuff down, then analyzing it and then I'm asking questions.

Speaker 2: 18:52

And again, that's how really the concept of help and answers came about, because the premise is that your life is dictated by the questions you ask yourself or the questions you don't ask yourself in your life. So I think that with a lot of my clients, I'm always asking them to ask themselves more powerful questions each day, and I think the people that do that and keep getting deeper and deeper into the question, they start to get answers that they wouldn't have thought of had they not been doing that exercise. So I think writing it down would be thing number one and number two. It'd be like asking daily questions and starting to think out of the box so you can get out of your own way and start creating other results in your life.

Speaker 1: 19:37

But how do you get deeper? I like the questions. I want to go further on that is, how do you start, continue or how do you start asking questions one but then to go deeper on those questions? If you're relatively new as an entrepreneur, it's a struggle because you're trying to doggy paddle and keep your head above water.

Speaker 2: 19:50

You can start asking certain questions on. If you have a certain project that you're working on, you'd ask the question how do I get this project done in the next year? Then how do I get the project done in the next six months? What steps should I be taking on a daily basis to make sure that I fulfill this goal in three months from now? What elements do I need on my team to make sure that I can fulfill on that project? What sort of financial resources do I need to make sure that I've created to make sure that I can actually fulfill on the goals that I have set forth? You just need to keep asking questions. There's no stupid or silly question. Just ask a question and that question may lead to another question and that's where you'll get your aha moments.

Speaker 2: 20:31

So I would say that would be the second thing. And the third thing is the concept of this glass or this cup says always half full, and I think that it's important to make sure that in life you're leaving margin and you're leaving enough space so that you can actually continue to pour into your cup more and more, cause I find that so many people they're always living at this. If I took water and I fill this whole cup. It's just gonna overflow. But if I don't grow my cup, then I'm not gonna be able to continue to get to that next level of my life. So I wanna make sure that my cup is always at least half full so there's space for what's next. So it's important to grow yourself. If I don't make this cup bigger then I'm not gonna be able to handle all the many things that I'm trying to create.

Speaker 1: 21:14

So finding ways to grow myself on a daily basis so I can handle more and more as the weeks and the months go by, that's a third, probably golden nugget thing that I recommend everyone to take on the growing pieces is probably the most challenging, just from the standpoint of where I sat when I first started is like you said you're in the weeds, you're doing all the work, but how are you supposed to grow if you're doing everything? And then that's when you have to sit back and I love your idea of writing things down, because I think that's where the ideas come from and that's what I did. And it was a struggle because I'm in the affordable housing slash, real estate development space. We're not talking 70, 80% margins, it's half of that. So you have to be able to find a way to effectively put out a solid product but then also maximize every single dollar that comes in. And when you are not taking a salary and you have to pay others, it becomes pretty hard and you have to find creative ways to make that work.

Speaker 1: 22:14

And eight years ago I got introduced to VAs and having a virtual assistant it was a game changer and that was my aha moment. And now I've got three of them and I'm potentially looking for a fourth, because now it's I can train them. If you've got a plan and you can onboard them, you can really train them the way you want them to be, and they can be an extension of what you need to have done, and they do it very well, but you have to put the time and effort into the front end piece.

Speaker 2: 22:41

Yeah, I think that's so important, ryan, as far as like building a team, because if you do not have a team, you're not going to be able to grow. So not only do you need to grow yourself, you actually, if you're going to build a thriving business, you need to find ways to continue to build a team, whether that's going to be independent contractors, employees, vas, but you need interns that help you on things. It is important to continue to level up each month and grow your team, and I think if you're really passionate about what you're up to, then your job is. The question to ask yourself is how do I inspire my team? How do I inspire my team to take those next level results, to get that company to the next level? I can't do it myself. So what am I going to delegate? What am I going to give to other team members so that they can thrive? So, also, it's important as a business owner not to micromanage everything you got. You need to lead your team and you need to mentor them and teach them, especially if you've been at this for years and they haven't, but you also want them to fail a little bit.

Speaker 2: 23:39

So I have no problem when I have an employee and they screw up, I don't have a problem with that. I'm like great, okay, now we're going to learn from this. Okay, so what didn't work? It didn't work. And it's funny, nearly every situation that I've had where I've had a problem happen with a client normally if I really handle it effectively the problem with the client I'm actually tighter with the client in the way that I've asked the question, got deeper, really built the relationship. So I don't freak out when a problem happens. In general in my life, I think that the habit of making sure that you just figure out okay, so ask a deeper question like you have this problem Now, what are you going to do about it, what could be the positives of this problem? So anytime I have a situation that happens with an issue or a problem in my life, I'll make sure that I build a better system and structure because of that problem that happened.

Speaker 1: 24:34

So I think that's another thing that is important to do as an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1: 24:38

It is, and because I came before I was an entrepreneur, I came out of corporate America and corporate America didn't teach me how to be an entrepreneur, taught me how to be fat and happy, got a paycheck every two weeks, bonus stock options, all that stuff. And the one thing I can tell you I wish I had done before I decided to take this journey was to really understand what entrepreneurship was like. And just being able to sit down in a business it didn't matter if it was a business related to what I was doing, just seeing the ins and outs of being an entrepreneur. And if I share that with other people and it's eye, it's eye, it's eye opening, because they'll go in. They're thinking it's this is. You don't have a boss, it's all easy, it's great. And, danny, I said you know what. Go find a business that you think you potentially want to start or something similar or whatever, and ask the owner if you can shadow him or her for several days and walk through their daily routine. Eye-opening, game-changing.

Speaker 2: 25:36

Yeah, yeah. When I first started my career, I interned at five different offices and actually I created a little coupon and I sent it to a couple of casting directors and I said I will work for free for three days for you, please, cash in this coupon. And I had three or four people call me and I did it. For you, please, cash in this coupon. And I had three or four people call me and I did it for free. And then nearly every one of them hired me because they saw that I did well with what I was doing. I think you got to get out there and just come up with innovative ideas, to get yourself out there and then take steps to move the needle forward.

Speaker 1: 26:06

We're getting close to wrapping up here, but I wanted to ask a couple more questions, Since you are now exploring or going outside of Hollywood. Are you bringing on current clients that are small business owners?

Speaker 2: 26:19

and entrepreneurs 100%. And if anyone wants to check out again, our website is helpandanswerscom and you can friend me on Instagram. My Instagram handle is at Nelson Paredes Parks, so again, that's Nelson, p-a-r-e-d-e-z Parks, p-a-r-e-s, and that's the best way to probably connect with me and I would love for any entrepreneur that's out there that's struggling or just wants to have a conversation. Hit me up and send me a message to the website at healthandanswercom and I would be happy to do a 30-minute free consultation to talk about what your business is up to and how it is that we might be able to help.

Speaker 1: 26:54

I will make sure both of those links are in the show notes so people can get a hold of you there. Sir, thank you very much for coming on. Love what you're doing. I think it is an invaluable asset and tool that entrepreneurs and small business owners need. And guys for you listening, reach out to Nelson If you're looking to have a coach. I think he's going to be quite a big of an asset for you if you're looking for that type of help.

Speaker 2: 27:21

So go ahead, sorry. Thank you so much, ryan. I really appreciate it. It was great being on your show. Thank you, sir, have a good one.