From near death experiences to the devastation of homelessness, how and where do we find the will to overcome insurmountable odds? And when we do overcome these challenges, how do we pass that story of survival onto others? Life on the rocks is that place where these stories are heard from those who live to tell them. And now here is your host Kyle Miller.
(00:22): Welcome back to life on the rocks guys. I'm so excited to share my guest today. This guy, we actually we went to high school together, graduated the same class, but this guy is out here killing it. I love his story. I'm here to share with it with you today. And so let's just get into it. Brought us Palmer, man. What's up,
(00:41): What's up Kyle, man. I appreciate you having me here, brother. Seriously, man, dude, I've seen, I've seen your journey. Like I I've seen it. I, I I've, I've had conversations with you, man. And I've just been so like stoked to like see you just level up level up level up. And I, that, that word's gonna come in little bit later, but I I'm just stoked, bro. So tell us who, who brought us is like where he started and then like lead us into the journey of what you're doing now.
(01:09): Yeah. Yeah. So broadest Palmer, native of small town, Palmy, Virginia, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, grew up in a rural area where everyone knows everyone. Yup. And just regular teenager, I'll try to be cool. And unfortunately my friends that I wanted to hang out with didn't value the education of school. Right. So, but I did graduate, you know, and I made it out alive, but it's the, the, the skin of my teeth. Right, right. But yeah, looking at what I wanna to do in my life. I mean, it was a lot of things. So like I wanted to be a musician, you know, I was a rapper and senior. So I was putting some focus and time on doing that. Cause because that's what, you know, you couldn't tell me, that's what I wasn't going to be. You know, when I was 17 or 18, but going through the journey of being in music gave me the ability to connect with people and really focus on, I think it was building me to solve problems cuz literally I was taking songs and we were writing them based on the experiences that we collaborated with other people in our lot, whether it was fans that like our music family, the, that supported, or even our own experiences. and then moving from that, you know, I got into banking really focused on at that time it was like payday loan lending. So it wasn't actually banking. It was the finance industry. But you know, looking at what the payday loan industry did to the working class I, I wasn't typically for that movement at the time. Right.
(02:48): And what, and, and some people don't know what, what does that, what does that do? Some people, what, yeah, so you talking about predatory lending, I call it where you have, you, people will come at that time doing payday lending, you would have people borrow money and they were able to pay it back and rebar the same day. Right? So think about somebody who borrows $500 and come back and has to pay $136 the next week or the next two weeks and then have to borrow, was that money back because that was their whole paycheck. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. You talking about like a hundred and something 300, 320 9% annual percentage interest rate, right. Where, you know, they're spending for borrowing a thousand dollars. They're spending every month, almost $300 to borrow that thousand dollars so, or 500 every two weeks. But what it, I guess what it built me to do is, or built me to see is understanding, you know, the changes that needed to be made over time, where people there's so many other opportunities where people were working and they were working for little or nothing.
(03:57): And then this company comes in and say, we can help, but they weren't, weren't really helping you see what I'm saying. They was just making money and everybody's in business to make money. Right. But you, you want to help people progress. And this wasn't a level of progression that I wanted to see. Right. So moving out of that, I actually got into the banking industry. And once again, it was just molding me to solve problems for different people. So you never know who walked through the door and what type of problem they would have, or you never know who walked through the door and understand that they didn't even know they had a problem that you had to figure out and solve. Right. And through that time, it just helped me be better and better with communicating with people. Gotcha. Listening to each story, solving a problem.
(04:48): And at that time too, I was still trying to find myself as an entrepreneur. So moving from music, we were going to more clothing design because we were selling a lot of merchant music. So we was like, you know, why not move over to that to designing clothes? Because the music at the time were people, if you are a musician out here, you know, or if you want to be a musician, you gotta understand it's a business itself. Right. So if you don't have the money, you're not going to go anywhere. This the days are long gone of sending a demo in to some, to listen to at a label. And they say, we wanna sign this person. They wanna actually see if you can make money. You know? So, so try my hand at closing design. And once again, it was building my strength up with dealing with people, right?
(05:37): Figuring out all types of people, what they like, how can we market to them? Can we hit the pain points with merchandise that we had that really share a story that connected with them that made them wanna buy from us? Right. And in turn, I took that back to work to really be good at what I did in banking to connect something. Like if a person comes in with a debit card, talk to them about what's going on in their life. Now just a regular conversation. So they might say, you know, ah, I got a daughter she's about to go to college. And you know, we trying to figure out what to do. There, that's a problem that needs to be solved. Cuz now we can talk about what type of options can we offer to help that person send their, their daughter off to college?
(06:19): What type of credit options do they utilize now? Or even have they even thought about like pulling equity from their home? Yeah. To be able to have a line of credit, to send their daughter off to college, but moving from clothing. Cuz I was still trying to find my way as an entrepreneur, I got into sneaker reselling. So the sneaker industry is a huge market where, you know, we can literally buy the most sought out the sneakers okay. For retail and turn around and sell 'em for a thousand percent profit. Really? Yeah. So it was one of those things where I can literally buy a hundred dollars pair of shoes right now and it can be $1,500, five minutes after they release. And you know, that was one of the things that really struck an entrepreneur nerve where I wanted to drive a huge business.
(07:16): I, you know, I had, I was building a lot of clientele online and I had an Instagram that was, had a severe not severe, a major amount of growth with about 70,000 followers. And we were just doing great business. We had, you know, some B list celebrities, not a list, but B list celebrities that were still business with us at the time. So I wanted to focus on bringing growth and bringing an experience with the brick and mortar as well. Yeah. And we ended up putting our eggs. Well, not us. I ended up putting our eggs in one basket. We had this connection for sneakers that was getting everything we needed because they worked at a Jordan store in Chicago. So okay. That person would literally drop ships. So we would just purchase the shoe at retail. Well a little bit over retail so they could make a little bit of money.
(08:07): Right. But they would literally send the sneakers out to our customers. We didn't have the box. We didn't have the package anything until it was a two year working relationship that was scaling massively. And then one year in October, Drake had a collab with Jordan for these it's called the Jordan 12 OVO, October, very owned Jordans. And these Jordans were like the hottest thing that was hit in the market. And we sunk with those shoes and other shoes that were coming out. We sunk like 50 grand into this deal and sneakers and sneakers right. Only to have this connection, take our money and run. Oh my goodness. So you know, we talking about $50,000. I sent it into one of the most unprotected ways possible, you know, sending it through at that time it was Google pay. Right. Clients looking at where's my sneakers, where's my sneakers.
(09:13): Oh man. You know, I mean you talking so many clients, I can't even, I can't even fathom how, you know, how much money we owe. So this was one of the worst points in my life because you gotta think, man, like it was right before Christmas. So not only people who trusted in us wasn't able to get their product. We didn't have any money for them, but we didn't, I didn't have any money for my family either. You know, it's Christmas and my wife looking at me like what we gonna do. And I'm like, we don't have money for nothing. You know what I'm saying? So it took a lot out of grinding over time. It, it took me to be honest with you about six months to a year to pay most of those people back outta my pocket. And it took almost that case. They were very generous because I believe after six months it's like a statute of limitation on disputes. Right. So, you got sued. Is that no, I ain't, I didn't get sued. I tried to dispute cause I didn't get product. Right.
(10:31): So we didn't send it in a, a protected way. So what I had to do is build my story through text messages, through emails, through pictures, everything this person said, they sent my stuff, showing them the tracking where it ended up. So it took almost a year, but we ended up getting that money back. So that was like, and, and, and when I say this, y'all, don't think I'm crazy, but you talking about a person every day for six months that was on needs and a bathroom praying to God that something's going breakthrough, that we can get this money back for our people. Cause you gotta think we was in the, in the bad, you know, I was in a bad way, you know? Yeah. So I mean,, you're small business you're I mean, essentially you're small business trying to like grow sales and do it. And then just somebody took your whole bag and took the whole bag. The relationship was great for two years. So it was like, no brainer. He's gonna get everything we need 50 K bro. Let's do it. Right. You know, excited and right. It didn't come through. And we, we got out of that and I promised myself, I was like, I'm never gonna be an entrepreneur again. I'm not, I'm never gonna put myself down. So while I'm in banking, you know, I, I got a job locally here at what's called branch banking and trust BB T. Right. So looking at these two engineers used to come in and they used to, you know, come and get cash. And I started seeing like the direct deposits and, and at that time, the direct deposits was like 4,000 every two weeks. And I'm like, Hey, just curious. Cause I always interested like, Hey, what do y'all do? And it was like, yeah, we're in tech. It's like, so you got an office. He's like, no, no, no. I work on you know, at the time he was like, I work on central Plains road and I'm like, so you work on like at home he was like, yeah.
(12:23): So I'm like, what type of internet you have? He was like, yeah, we got century links. So I'm like you working on internet. Yeah. At home. In the rural area. And you making you bringing home eight K a month. Yeah. So that's when I started thinking about like tech. Cause I was like, I'm trying to see how I can do this. And one day I'm not gonna lie. So one day a customer came in and they were talking to me about their account, something that they've done, but they wanted to release that her on me. And that person was like, yeah, broadest, what you need to do is look at my account and see how much money I have. And that's the type of service I expect from you all day every day. And I'm like, I give, you know, at that point I'm like, I give people the, the top tier service regardless of what they have.
(13:13): So at that moment, my mind was like, I'm not gonna do this no more. You know, I can't, I can't do banking. There's nothing wrong with banking, but I was like, I wanted more. And my mind said, you wanna get into tech? And I was like, well, what the hell I'm gonna do in tech? Cuz I don't know nothing. So it's just long journey, not long journey long. It seemed like a long journey of thinking like what can I do and how can I do it? So talking to a thousand different people, they still took me a thousand different directions. And I was still confused about what I could do in tech and how I should do it. But one thing I did know is I stumbled across this technology called cloud computing technology. Okay. And from my research, it was like the companies that were using it didn't have enough people who understood it.
(14:07): So they were paying top tier money for people who did. And then it was a side of people who said they didn't want to adopt cloud technology at all. Right. But for me building business, using, you know, doing music and looking at how we served our people online, I knew, I said, well eventually everybody's gonna have to use some form of cloud computing in the future, regardless of how they feel about it. Like this thing. I mean, you are using it now with Facebook. We use it now with Instagram. We, you know yeah. These are applications that are built for virtual use. Right, right. When say we just mean virtual. OK. Right. Ended up looking at how I can get into the industry. And 10 months later, man, I landed just to give a little background for people. I was making about $42,000 at the bank
(15:05): And my first tech role was a six figure role period. So it literally changed my life from there man. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. So that's where, where I thought I would never be an entrepreneur again. And excuse me, Cal, if you got questions to ask me, ask, no, man, I'm just loving this. I'm loving this story because I, I didn't know a lot of this stuff. I just, I didn't know, the 50 K lost and, and like all of this happening and I just think it's so cool, man. I, I just, I just think it's, it's awesome how each role right now has been building and building to what you're doing right now. Yeah. And how you're able to like just help people. And so I, I'm just seeing this progression of how it's all working out and I think it awesome. Yeah. I believe like all the things I've been through professionally and like as an entrepreneur prepare me for what I'm doing now.
(16:01): Right. So, you know, when I get, when I got into the industry, got my first tech job, which was a cloud role. I had so many people, so wind this back while I was doing this, when I was on my journey learning, I decided I was gonna share my journey on LinkedIn. It was a platform I knew nothing about, but I knew it was a professional platform that I somehow should take advantage of by sharing my story and using it in a way that I would use Instagram or Facebook. You just like, say, I don't know anything about this, but I'm gonna do it. Yeah. So one thing I did know was my marketing tactics for like sneakers and music Worked on Facebook and Instagram. Right. So I was like, what if I bought those marketing tactics over here to help me land a job?
(16:47): Right. Build my personal brand. So build it to a point where, for me, I didn't want, wanted to continue to go to hundreds of jobs. Applying. What I wanted to do is have jobs come to me. So how could I do that? And I did that by building myself online and showing my journey, like showing what I was learning, showing what I was building and being a, a, a ambassador for people that was just like me. So I was like, it's people, even though I'm in the beginning stages, it's people that's just like me right now or behind me, that's gonna need direction. Right. So how did you not feel like need direction? How did you not feel like you were some like, not like an imposter or something like, you're just going through this beginning stages and you're sharing your journey. I'm sure there's people that have been through there or like how did, how were you able to have the confidence to share that because you were brand new.
(17:43): So that's one thing that I've always been good at, right. Where imposter syndrome is real. Let's keep that a hundred percent honest. Right. Right. But in my mind, the way it works is I'm a person that always liked to prove wrong people wrong, or even like the thoughts of fear. I'm always like I'm gonna do it regardless of how I feel. Right. Because I, one thing I did realize was I felt had nothing to do with my success. What a great, how you felt that is. It's so true. Yeah. So like, you can feel any way about yourself regardless of what you are doing. You can feel like, oh my God, if I spend this money, I'm not going to get it back, but that's just fear giving you the worst case scenario. And as you know, Cal fear kills more dreams than failure ever would.
(18:34): Absolutely. You know what I'm saying? So that was one thing that I wasn't going to let happen because something had to change from banking for me getting into this industry because I needed something that I could be, you know, have a stable, the financial future for my family. And that's all I was thinking about. You know, so moving into that, I wanted to share my journey. And as I shared it, more, more people started coming to me, especially when I got into the industry. And they seen that I did it more people started coming to me asking for help. And these were not people that were just like me. What made it crazy for me was it was people who were in the, in the tech industry already 20 years of experience as a system engineer, 15 years as a networking engineer. And I'm like, that's when the imposter syndrome started kicking in. Cuz I was like, what can I do for you? Like, you've been here for 20 years, shouldn't you be teaching me.
(19:34): Right. Right. But one thing I've realized is after looking at data, you know, kind of compiling things and looking at why these people connected with me when it came to cloud technology, it was something new in the tech field or the tech industry that people didn't adopt. So now companies want to use it. They spent 20 years doing something else. They really have to go back to square one and learn everything over again because they didn't continue learning in their job and their role.
(20:04): Wow. So when they seen that, I started helping people. I started doing stuff pro bono and it just got overwhelming where near spending eight hours a day, just helping people for free. And I was like, my time is super valuable, so right. I might have to create some type of program that's going to help people do exactly what I did. So I just took my journey and I patented it into a program and yeah. So like I took exactly what I did and created a program and called it at that time, it was a level up with broadest.
(20:40): So I got me a coach to try to figure out how to build my business from scratch and kind of automate and oh wait, wait, wait. Start to be an entrepreneur again. Yeah. So I started trying to be an entrepreneur cause I'm like, I can't, you know, I value my time and I'm like the way I can. I see, I see a problem that needs to be solved. Right. And people are coming to me for that problem. So either I'm gonna shoe 'em away and let somebody else make this cash or I'm gonna make this gas one or the other. You know? So yeah. Yeah. So I started this small program where six months of help. So let's, let's talk about this mindset after I say this. Okay. Pro six month program. I created my first customer. Right. Do you know how much I charged them?
(21:27): No. How much? $149. Six months. 49. That's it, man. I love it. So scared that nobody would pay me what I thought it was worth. Right. Would you think it was worth thousands? Right. You know, and I said $149 and my coach was like, are you kidding me? He was like, let me, at that time, he was like, let me tell you something. If you don't believe you can get it. You, you won't get it. Wow. And he was like, you have to believe first that you are worth. And he was like, you gotta understand people who say no, like your, your product is not for everybody and people who say no, or don't wanna spend that much for your product are not your customers right now. So I took that and I started to charge a little more. I started to go to like 500, you know? I mean, then I started doing a thousand, but one, one thing I started to see was how fast people were still saying yes.
(22:35): Yeah. They could see the value in it. You couldn't. Yeah. Right. So this, the thing for entrepreneurs out there, if you throwing out prices and they immediately say yes. It's great. However, you gotta think you may be charging low. Yeah. Cause if they, if they saying yes, that quick, that means they, they know it's a great deal and they gonna hop on top. So you wanna make sure, Hey, you know, am I undervalue, valuing myself in what I can do? So that's what I had to think of. And I had to think of business another way, where, where would happen if somebody large wanted to invest in level up with broadest? Or what if, what if I built this and somebody wanted to come and acquire what we are doing.
(23:19): Right. So you were already thinking this you're already. Yeah. So when I do something, I try to think of the long term, like not too long, like I don't, I'm not a 10 year planner. Right. Some people are right. But I'm like two years. Let's see, you know, what we doing? And I knew that if somebody come and say, Hey, you're doing absolutely well, your business is doing these numbers. We wanna give you a five X return on buying. You know, if my business yeah. You know, let's say my business is doing 3 million. They wanna do 15, you know? To buy me up. Then they're probably not gonna do it because it's called level up with broadest right. It's got you in the thing. You can't sell you.
(23:59): Yeah. I can't sell me. So for another thing for entrepreneurs that are out there, if your business is determined on you doing the work. Yeah. Like if you can't step away from your business and have it run. Yeah. No matter how much money you making, you may say I'm wrong. No matter how much money you making, it's absolutely worthless. Yep. You can't sell it because you can't sell it. So if somebody came and said, we wanna, we would think it about investing a hundred million in a company and we like you and they look at what you're doing in your process, your flow. And if you gotta be working in that business in order for that business to make money, they wouldn't, you wouldn't get a dime.
(24:40): So I was thinking that like, well, my name is attached to it. So literally they have to strip the name and rebrand it and nobody's gonna do that. You know, now you're not gonna spend money on a perfectly running, great looking car and strip it all the hell and just rebuild it. Yeah. What's the point of buying the car. Yeah. You know, so that's when we came up with the name level up in tech, cause we advertise it and have that, that brand from there. And one of those things, and I think in the middle of this journey I had to learn was, and I think it's gonna come a time for some entrepreneurs. When I started looking at how much I was worth, as far as the value and how much the program was worth. And I started charging what I thought didn't next month I was getting like 20 people a month. And that first month I got 20 people at that time I was charging, I think maybe $3,000 for our services.
(25:38): So think about that. Right. We are like, yo, hold on. We, we, we got the potential to do 50, 60 this month. That's like, that's too much. That's crazy. Cuz I ain't never did this before. And this is the point I believe where people fail or they grow through and be successful because some people would tell you right now, no, no, no. Let's give it. That's too many people I want to handle. Like maybe one or two or three people to get my feet wet. We see the thing is people are scared because me, I knew if I had accepted, I accept that money and have all those people sign that contract and have those 20 people start, which I did. Yeah. Then I have to deliver on what I said I was gonna deliver on.
(26:27): Period. Right. And I think scares more people than ever from being successful because now they have to make sure their delivery model is giving the experience that they told the customers that they was gonna give them. And some people are just sellers and they haven't built their business to understand how it works. So they out here selling now when you got these customers saying, yeah, I believe you. Now you got, oh. I gotta, I gotta build this thing. Oh my God. Yeah. So it's a real thing. Lot sense though.
(27:02): Yeah. Every, but a lot of people out there can sell and sell and sell, but then when it comes time to deliver, you know, it's different. So, and in the real estate world kind of like where I, I deal in a lot is that we have people are out there acquiring, acquiring, acquiring massive apartment complexes and, and properties and stuff like that. Yeah. That's, that's great. That's one aspect of the game. Now here, here comes. The hard part, the hard part is actually delivering on that stuff. Actually being an operator and getting it done and having systems and programs to get that stuff across the finish line that that's where it separates, you know? Yeah.
(27:40): Yeah. And that, and that, I think that's the most important for any entrepreneur. What is your process? From a lot of y'all got process right now that you don't even know, like I was helping a couple people last week and they were trying to build something I'm like, what is your process? They were like, I don't know. So I'm like, let's break it out. Like if I paid you right now. What is the first thing you gonna do? And they was like, well, we do this and that. I'm like, okay. So that's step one, label that as step one. And then we went down to all the way to like number six and I'm like, so you got a six step process. Yeah. Where you help people do do this or go from here to here. Right.
(28:19): Or go from outta shape to in fit. You know? So right now let's see what that delivery model looks like. And I had to start thinking that way quickly, but with the great coaches I had and you know, once I start scaling up and you know, we were doing 50, 60, and then we would start hitting a hundred K months, man. It was like, I ain't never thought I was gonna be here. You know what I'm saying? So yeah. It, it required a different level of thinking. Yeah. You know, it was, it required a different level of thinking that I didn't have the capacity to think about. So like, I didn't know, like I wanted to build a seven figure business and I, I didn't know how to consistently hit our numbers so we could do that. So it's gonna come a time where this, this is always the motto in the industry. If your coaches don't have coaches, then Yeah. What are you doing? They're not learning anything new.
(29:19): You know, I mean, so as a coach, if I'm sitting and telling people to invest their money in time and to being coached by us, I need to have a coach 24 7 all the time. Well, I think the education, whether it be from a college, whether it be from where, wherever you get the education is. Right. But education, I think a lot of people, whether they went to college or whether they went, they stopped at high school, a lot of people end at that level. So, Hey, I've go to co I'm gonna go to college. And then I'm gonna, you know, after that I got a, a job. And then I, I'm not increasing my knowledge after that people outta high school, some of them have never, well, never go and try to learn more and more and more and more and more like, I think with guys like you and guys like me and the guys that we hang out with and that we're always involved with. And we're trying to be around all the time. We sit there and ma and if you ask us, we don't know anything.
(30:12): And we're always trying to like, well, okay, I gotta learn that. I gotta learn that I gotta get better. I gotta get better. I gotta get better. And that's that constant drive in law life that we have is just saying, I gotta get better at this. I don't know everything. I need help. I need to hire somebody, show me what I need to do. And I think those are the guys that win long term, you know, the, the ones, there's a lot of people that stop and that's their choice. Right. But the, but the people that keep going and keep pushing and keep growing, those are the ones that you see at, at, you know, 40 50. And, and like, they have everything that they wanted in their life is because they just kept learning and kept learning and kept implementing kept and just, and just kept working at it. It's not an overnight thing. Nah, you know, somebody's sitting here right now, listening to you doing a hundred K a month is like what? There's some people that, that, that shocks them. I'm super like stoked. Like that's awesome. I'm like, yes, you're doing it. You know? And, but some people can't are, are can't even fathom it.
(31:13): Yeah. They can't, they can't, they don't believe it. Oh, right. They're like, how, how do you do that? Right. I was one of those people too though. So like when I started level of, I was literally just thinking of like, how can I make like a thousand dollars this month? Like maybe I can get 10 people $149 and I'll be at 1500 for a month. You feel I'm saying. Right. So, and I think to your point where you talk about people who want to continuously learn and people stop, I actually think it's three levels too. Right? So like you have those people who stop learning, you have those people who want to continuously learn and they're, they're learning right by researching and everything. But then you have those people like me and you who say, I need to invest in my learning because I want to take someone and value them who has spent me years learning. Yeah. Something that they can teach me how to do in months.
(32:11): Absolutely. I value my time. I value my time. So I wanna hit my goals and I can see, you know, how can somebody help me hit my goals? Well, I thought it could take five years, hit my goals in the next year and a half, even two. Yeah. You know, so people don't understand it. If you want to go to that level, it costs money to invest in yourself to take care. Well, There it is level, there it is. People pay, people will spend a hundred thousand dollars to go to college and they'll leave with a liberal arts degree. And I know really, you know, I, I don't even know a liberal, what does that do? Right.
(32:47): Yeah. I don't know what a liberal arts degree does, but then they can spend and, and you know, we all have mentors where spend 30 grand, 40 grand to go learn from these individuals who give us direct knowledge in the business that we're doing to make more money. Yes. That investment, it's an investment psych colleges. But that investment people think it's crazy that you would do that because it's not a norm. It's not what everybody does. Everybody's supposed to go to college. Everybody's supposed to get out and get a job. We don't think that way. Right. We invest in ourselves. And if, if we're not investing that money, we're saying that we're not really.
(33:20): Exactly. So this is the thing. So I used to put that on the application. So when they come in, fill out an application for level up in tech, it would say, yes, I'm ready to invest in myself at that level when they see the price or it says, no, I don't think I'm worth the investment. Yeah. Oh, that's, That's what you're saying. That's that's what you, that's it that's it. Yep. So Figure it out. It's funny, man. And I, I think, you know people need to understand that. And I preach this all the time. That the difference in the distance between where you are now and where you want to be is your daily activities.
(33:58): What are you doing daily? If you gotta business, how are you focusing on your business daily to hit those goals? So literally take, if you can't think that far a year, so take six months where you wanna be in six months in reverse engineer, what does it look like for you to hit that six months? And then you break it down to your daily steps, cuz your daily steps is gonna your weekly goals, your weekly goals gonna hit your monthly goals. And then monthly goal is the very important step to hit your six month goals.
(34:27): Absolutely. So, absolutely. What are you doing? Absolutely, man. You have love loving this. Yeah. I love this journey. Yeah. Yeah. It's a hard one, You know, but here we are. Everything else. Well, just like everything else in life. It's not this, it's not the Instagram life. And like some people think that the only way to make money is to be a musician. The only way to make money is to be a actor or be on big screen and stuff like that. And I'll tell you guys, there's more money being made in businesses right now. Then all of those actors put together, there's guys out there making millions and millions of dollars a year and you can't even, you don't even know who they are.
(35:11): That's what I'm saying. So like, you know, I'm, I'm pretty sure with you, we, we probably in a, a mastermind, I'm in a mastermind now, you know, coaching group where these guys talking about, you know, 10 million, million, 20 million stacked in the bank. Yeah. And even at the rate we going, it still make me feel like a peasant, but I know, I know we'll get there. Right. It's all about learning. So it's coming right now. If you are working a job, let's say you are making $15 an hour. It's nothing wrong with working and making that amount of money. But if you want more, it literally takes action. Yeah. And you don't even have to be all that smart. Just gotta take action.
(35:55): Anybody can make a hundred thousand a year. Just take action and do what you're supposed to do. Yes. Like everybody is smart enough out there to make that right. Yes. But you know, you want to get to a million dollars a year, learn more, put more time in, educate yourself. Yep. And grow. But any like a hundred grand is easy.
(36:11): Yep. So just to reiterate, just to start and you wanna build yourself up, just take the action. You're gonna learn things as you go, but it's gonna get to a point where you're gonna say, I can't do this by myself. Yeah. And this is the point where I think some people fail and some people succeed because those who don't want to invest in the continuous learning end up plateauing sales fall off or their business dwindle and the money stops coming in for those who say, you know what I know? So you gotta ask yourself if you're making $10,000 a month, what is $2,000 a month to hire a coach that can help you make $30,000 a month, right? Or $40,000 a month.
(36:55): I tell you what it is. It's that lifestyle creep that they get up to 10,000 in a month, they're spending 9,900 bucks a month. And they got that a hundred bucks because they gotta get that in the car. They gotta go out to dinner. They gotta, they gotta, you know what I mean? So I mean, people are broke, still making six figures a year because of lifestyle creep. Right. They just allow it to happen. So if you're starting out as a business or trying to get things going, man, be frugal, you know, we start making money, start making investments and start stacking cash. You don't, don't go out and spend it on the Lambo or the Mercedes or, or the BMW. Right. Just so you can look cool in front of your friends that don't have any money. That's no fun. Right.
(37:33): Right. Cause that mean you still broke. And now to add what you saying, listen to the y'all I'm I hope y'all here. What Kyle saying and listen to what I'm gonna add on top of it. If you're doing that, you only adding more stress cuz you can't even enjoy the things that you bought. Yep. Because now you gotta figure out how you're gonna continue to make money to continue paying for it. You know, dude. So stack your cash. Absolutely. Stack it. Make good investments. Yeah, Sure. You be come from aspiring musician right. To selling sneakers, which I didn't know that you, that, that was that big of margins on the sneakers. I learned something on that to working at the bank to cloud computing to now owning level up in tech. So how many, how many students right now, are you helping like completely change their life?
(38:31): Yeah. So this year already we have 50 students that started from January to February. So you had 50 students in 38 days? Yes. Wow. Yeah. Nice. how many, how many do you expect to help this year? We had a goal of about 200 to two 50. However, we are gonna see that probably in a quarter and a half maybe. A quarter in a month. So okay. The way it's going now. I mean with the new coach that I've invested myself in into, right. It's making my mind work ways that I didn't think I would be thinking, you know, scalability processes. Yeah. In simple things like how do we gain traffic from how do we get leads? How do we show people or get people interested in what we are doing and how do we take those people and have conversations with them? That's the thing, get the leads, have the conversations create sales.
(39:30): Yeah. Yes. That, so that's it. So I had to invest in appointment side of Western than closers, you know, hiring more coaches. Right. Organizing where, you know I'm training my director now to be a COO right. Handled operations and all the processes. Two head coaches that we got that we are working on training up. So because once again, my value you is building relationships like this. You know, my value is not working hands on in the business. Now I, I still take some closing calls right now until we get the second closer up and, and ready. Right. And, but you gotta do what you gotta do in the business. You're growing it. You are everything right now. Yep. Right. So it's it's okay. Right. It's okay to be working in your business, but have a plan to scale and don't be afraid to hire people and we understand people are not gonna do it. How you gonna do it. Yeah. Cause it's not their business. Yeah. But have a process in place. Yeah. Because I had a gentleman I was talking to, he owns a, a clothing store and said, look, what does your process look like from when a customer gets to in the door to where you Ching at the cash register, what is that process? And we created a four step process. So I'm like now when you hire people to be in the store, you gotta four step process. Or when a customer comes in the door, so what they gonna do until that customer Chis, if they leave without buying something, what does that process look like for them as well? Right, right.
(41:02): So hire those people show 'em the process because then you can hold them accountable. You can do KPIs and hold. 'em Accountable for doing things the way you want them to do it. Yeah. You cannot have a process and hire people and get mad if they don't know about something they're doing wrong. You didn't tell them you didn't have a process. Right. So you can't fire people and say he was no good. He didn't know you expected it like this. He can't read your mind or she can't read your mind. So don't be afraid to in people, don't be afraid to let them have ownership over something that you've had ownership over. That's the hardest part for me, the process is getting that stuff straight. That was hard for me when I'm growing. My real estate is, but the easy part for me was kind of like, I think I, I, it's kind of a fault of mine is I, I let go to soon. Right. I let go. And I, you know, I'm like, you got it let's you got it. That's not like me.
(42:00): And so like, some people are like micro, like, oh, we gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta this and let, and, and don't more hands on and don't let, 'em go, but I'm on the back end going, yeah, this is it. You got this, this got it. Figured out. You know, like that's kind of how I am. And I know a lot of people aren't like me and cause of, of the conversations that I have with individuals and it's it it's maybe I'm just unique. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what it is. So, so your birthdays in January, right? Your Capricorn. Yeah. I think we, we think different bro. Like, so what people say, like we, we, we have our mind on the go. Like we have a certain, and we have a certain life that we wanna live and we know what it takes to get there. And if we don't know what it takes to get there, we pretty much know what we need to do to learn. Right. Yeah. And, and I'm not saying a sign sign for everybody out there that's Right, right, right.
(42:56): But what I think what me and Kyle are so like is we are not afraid to go out there and get it. You can't be afraid to go out there and get it. It's gonna be conversations that you gonna have to have. That's gonna scare you shitless. But you need to have the conversations, whether it's with somebody that's doing numbers that you can never, you didn't fathom that you would do. And you're just so nervous have the conversation because then you are gonna be the person giving that knowledge to somebody that's gonna be super nervous talking to you. Yeah, absolutely. It just flows down. So absolutely. I hope this was you,
(43:36): Man. No, dude. I, I, I really enjoyed it. Thank you for coming on here and sharing like this story and this, the, the transformation of everything. And it's not so much transformation, it's transformation and, and different industries, but it's the stacking of the skills that you took from the musician to the payday lending into just wanting to help people. And, and like, it seems like you've always just wanted to do that and connect with individuals to the clothing, to the BB and T and now, now doing this and then building your company. So I feel like this is something that's just been like right up your alley from day one. And you've always, so you've, I mean, even the high school, even before high school, I mean, me and you rode the same bus together, prob you in middle school, right?
(44:18): Yep. And so just to see this, this progress, but you were always kind of like the guy that had something going on. You really? I mean, if I ever look back, you always had something going on. Right. I mean you did. I try to get, I'll try to, I was like, man, I try to be on TV. I try to do all, you know, right. It's one of those things where I'm like, whatever it takes, right? Yeah, yeah. No, I'm just, I appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us, man. I think it'll help a lot of people. So how, if somebody wanted to connect with you, how do they find you
(44:49): Level up in tech doc com on LinkedIn? Linkedin for slash IIN for level of broadest Mr. Level up in tech, on Instagram and Twitter, we have a level up in tech Facebook group. You can check it out. Facebook group, I mean facebook.com/group/level up in tech. We just here, we got a community there. We just wanna, you know, if you want to come and learn how to be successful in your own terms in tech and just take information and just give it value. I mean give value to your own self. We are here to do that. But if you looking, you know, for something that you always had an interest in tech and you want to be able to be useful and be an asset to a company in six months and land a high paying role, that's what we specialize in. We specialize in taking people with no technical background to moving them to a cloud role in six months. So check his out, man. Yeah.
(45:44): Yeah, man. Awesome. I love it. Before we leave, the one thing that you could share with somebody that like, if you were to go back and just say, Hey, you could share one key aspect of your life that you could put. What would you tell your son? I'd tell my son, this is just what I believe. Trust your gut in situations when your gut tells you something. I think that's God talking to you, right? Yeah. Business deals hanging with friends who a person is that you believe deep down inside. If I'd to trust my gut more. I think I would've been way farther ahead. As a teenager, as a young adult now don't, don't get me wrong. I believe everything. I went through led me to this point. Right? But I think my experiences could have been better if I just trusted my gut. Right? If I'd have trusted my gut, I wouldn't have lost. Right. That huge amount of money I should have just used him and used a couple other people to do the job. And I would've been successful in that. So whatever your gut tells you to do, if you've been thinking about starting that business, but your mind is giving you all this imposter syndrome and fear and it anxiety about doing it. But your gut tells you, this is a problem that I think I could solve in the community. Or this is something I really think is gonna be a value.
(47:02): Start doing it. Yeah. You don't need to have analysis paralysis to try to research and analyze every single thing before you start, just take action. Because what you don't want is you could be on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter and have somebody present a business that they just created. And that is just like yours. That you Lee, those are man. Again brought us, man. I appreciate you jumping on with us today. I thought you brought the fire and guys, if you, if you wanna level up in tech yes. Hip hip brought us up. I appreciate it. Thank you brother. Thank you, bro.
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