Growing Your Business

Alex SanFilippo takes us through his successes and business start-ups where we explore growing your business, keep a work life balance, and transition from on start up to the next as seamlessly as possible.

You can listen to the audio for “Growing Your Business” here or on your favorite podcast service, The interview is also on YouTube and was featured in The Weekly Sales Leader” newsletter. Did you miss it? then please subscribe today.

Growing Your Business with Alex Sanfilippo Podcast Transcript

Tim Kubiak 0:03
Thanks for listening to Bowties and business. This is Tim Kubiak. And today’s guest is Alex. Alex is the host of creating a brand new top 20 entrepreneurialship podcast where he interviews successful leaders and experts on topics that matter to entrepreneurs and who want to grow their business both both personally and professionally, while saving time and money in the process. This isn’t a cast about entrepreneurship and a lot of other things. So stay tuned in, because one of the things is his journey as a business owner really started 12 when he saw the opportunity, so golf balls that were lost in the lake across the street from his house, to the golfers that were in the course hitting them into like, early on, he figured out the one thing he was good at his business, which is a wonderful gift in life. Alex approach his business and life from a place of service and dedication to making others more successful visit creating a brand.com to join the community and accelerate your success with that. You can also find them on social. So Alex, if you introduce yourself, tell folks where they can find you. And a little bit about your background.

Ales San Filippo 1:04
For sure. Thanks so much for the introduction. I really appreciate it. So yeah, Tim, everyone can find me at creating a brand calm, that is my main website. You can find the podcast there, you can find the online community there and anything involved in that’s kind of like my hub, even my social, my social links are on there and things like that, because I used to tell people to look up Alex sanfilippo. And I was like, How on earth do you spell that? You know, so I think everyone can spell creating a brand.com. So that’s where I always tell everyone to go and a little about me, I got into podcasting a couple years ago, and that’s why I’m here today. It’s something I enjoy. I really love adding value to people’s lives. And we’ll get into some of the story today, I’m sure but uh, I’m just excited to be here. And thank you so much for having me. It’s a fantastic podcast. I’m I’m really honored to be spend time with you today, Tim.

Tim Kubiak 1:45
But frankly, I’m stunned that you came on as a guest. So I’m really excited genuinely. So. With that, I talked about the golf ball story. So that’s literally you know, I my joke is I started selling hard candy on the school bus to kids at a markup to pay for batteries for video games. You started with golf balls. But where did it go from there for you?

Ales San Filippo 2:06
Yeah, it’s funny that you mentioned that I told one person that on a podcast one time and then he told 15 of his friends and it stuck ever since. So I’ve always had that story shared at some point. But it was it was one of those things I realized at that moment, I actually wasn’t good at video games growing up, I wasn’t good at sports, wasn’t great, a great musician or anything like that. So my brothers were really good. And I was like, I’m in an awkward place. I’m not good at any of these things that we’re so good at. But I realized when I started selling golf balls, I was actually good at business. And I liked it. And it wasn’t just the act of or it wasn’t just the money I was making, it was actually the act of making money that really enjoyed. So I kind of carried that into my teen years and into my early 20s. But it’s very subconscious, I’d say I can’t consider it to be something that you know, I wasn’t making real like decisions on my life. At that age, I would just kind of like fell into more and more business related things that made sense for me. And yes, so into my early teen years, I got involved in some some tech startups in the in the real estate business, working with realtors and things like that helping them do some some of their work on the computer because people weren’t as a, I guess, computer illiterate back then, you know, people were having some trouble with it. So I was able to help out. And into my early 20s. It served me getting into the aerospace industry as well.

Tim Kubiak 3:15
And that’s beautiful in in pretty much my view of you, as you’ve always been an entrepreneur, you’ve always pretty much worked for yourself, right?

Ales San Filippo 3:22
Yeah, I’ve had jobs of course along the way. But yes, I’ve always at least had the entrepreneurial mind in everything that I’ve done.

Tim Kubiak 3:30
And more and more people need that. That’s one of the things I’m convinced that we’re failing to teach younger people, right? Yes. You know, if you’re right, you know, develop an app, do something, launch it, you know, it’s, I spent a lot of time in so called belly. So it’s fail fast, fail forward kind of mentality. But as long as you’re learning from every little launch and not losing your shirt, I think you’re better off.

Ales San Filippo 3:50
Yeah, I agree with that. I’m actually glad you mentioned that. Cuz I think it’s very important. I think that we were in a world today that people were afraid to fail. And it really shouldn’t be that way. I think that younger kids in school, they should be taught to try something if it doesn’t turn into the next million dollar idea or anything like that. If it never really goes anywhere, the act of exercising this side of your brain that we all have is really healthy for you. It helps you think creatively and get outside of your own box. And I think that students, they are fitting too much in that little mold. And this is probably not where we want to go today. But I’m passionate about that. So I had to share that. That was I’m glad you brought that up.

Tim Kubiak 4:21
Yeah, no. And I’m happy to go wherever the conversation takes us. That’s the one thing right you go Where’s natural, so no worries.

One of the challenges for business people is work life balance, and I’ve heard you talk about this. So before we get in directly to things, that’s one of the things you seem to have a pretty good grip on. How do you balance? Being an entrepreneur running a business? You’re creating a brand and everything else you’re doing with having a life?

Ales San Filippo 4:50
Yeah, it’s a good question. First off, I haven’t always had both. There were times in my life where I was working 70 up to 70 hours a week. It wasn’t always that but sometimes I was working that much And it wasn’t out of necessity, it was out of a drive that didn’t need to be there and unhealthy drive, if you will. And I didn’t leave time for anything else. I wasn’t leaving time for friends. I was single at that point in my life. So I didn’t have any relationships, like romantic relationships, my friendships were just kind of suffering. And I was just really focused on getting ahead, if you will. And it wasn’t so later in life that I realized that I was really passing a lot of the meaningful parts of life. By the way, I was just letting it go. Because really, life has more meaning than just the work that we do. And it’s when we have that realization, I believe that we start to create this balance. And some people say that balance is impossible. But for me, I do believe it’s possible to to have the right mindset at the very least in whatever you’re doing. So there’s actually something that Dr. Ivan Meisner says, he’s the founder of BSI. And he says be where your feet are, be where your feet are. And what that means to me is just Wherever I am, in that moment, I need to actually be there. Something I’ve been realizing more and more, Tim, is that when people are really big, really engraved in their work, they’re really onto something big they believe, and they’re hanging out with friends or family, you can look in their eyes and tell that they’re not actually there with you. They might physically be there, but they’re really not actually there. They’re looking over you. They’re looking past you. They’re looking into their mind about, okay, how am I going to do this later on when I get back on the grind of what I’m doing. And I find that the real problem with with balance is that we’re not able to be where our feet are any longer. We’re always somewhere else in our phones are partially to blame. But in the day, it’s a it’s something that each of us have to decide to do, we have to say, you know what I’m going to retake control of my life and gain that balance by putting my phone away by closing the laptop by making sure that what whoever’s around whoever’s in front of that I’m actually there with them, I’m going to be where my feet are. And when I really started to understand that, that’s when it really made a change. For me, that’s when I really started seeing my relationships, Excel and do better. And actually, my businesses started doing better as well, because I disconnected from them when it was time to do that. And so for everyone, we’re in a different place. Some people are still working that 70 Hour Work Week, some are working 40 or less, maybe within the day, wherever you are, in that moment, be there. So when you’re on work, be at work, when you’re with your family, be with your family without playing, doing something that you enjoy doing. Be there in that moment, I think that’s what’s really served me well to create balance in my life.

Tim Kubiak 7:08
Yeah, and with cybersecurity and an IT background, I’ll tell you, I, I’ve gone through, I hate to use the buzz term digital detox, but I’ve spent the last nine months. And literally one of my partners in my web people were chasing me because I didn’t answer something on Saturday, because I sit down with an old fashioned book, right near like, you haven’t answered in like four hours something did the world and that is the website down, you know, the phone didn’t ring. So, right, it’s a matter of being present. You talk about time blocking, and I’m kind of jumping around from the thing here. But is that something that you’re able to do to enable you to be more present?

Ales San Filippo 7:45
Yes, definitely. Um, so I’m married, I’ve been married for seven years, and I believe I’ve become a better and better husband every year. And one of the ways I’ve been able to do that is by when I’m when I’m with my wife, she knows that, okay, we’re together, right? Like we’re gonna hang out together and spend time together. And because of that, I’ve been able to really use my calendar and time blocks. So she knows that there’s certain hours of the day that I am focused on work, and we both work from home. So if she walks in and starts wanting to have a conversation with me, she knows, okay, it’s 1130 in the morning, you know, 1130, this is when he’s really focused on this project every single day, it’s in the calendar, I’ve blocked out time, so the conversation isn’t going to, you know, be you know, be where your feet are my feet, or at that point, really engraved in something series work related. And she knows that we’ve made that really clear by setting that expectation. So for me, time blocking is something simple like that, saying, Hey, this is what I’m doing at this time, I’ll have this time later that I’ll devote to something else. But making sure that you’re really intentional with that. So I think many of us, we just want to go with the flow, I find that we just kind of be like, Oh, well, when the work comes in, I’ll handle it. It’s much better to say this is an hour of work. This is an hour block, or here an hour window where I’m going to only focus on work. And if something you know, distraction comes in fine. But then the day what I’m doing is I’m focusing on work in this time. And then later on, say, this is what I’m going to even take a break for lunch, or this is what I’m going to just shut everything off. But making sure that you actually block out that time to do that is really important. And then it also sets for me at least it sets an expectation of Okay, I’ve got two hours to get this done. And then after that I’m going to spend some time with with my friends and with my wife. So I’ve got two hours to knock this out. I find when I give myself that deadline, I work a lot harder and hot faster, because I want it to be done. So that when I do leave, I can actually go be with those people and enjoy the time and again, not being like Oh, I didn’t get enough done today. But when you set that expectation in that time block for yourself. For me again, this has helped a lot and

Tim Kubiak 9:33
it’s nice and you talk about time for yourself. So what is your relaxation time looks like it keeps you recharged. Is it active? Is it passive? Do blending the both?

Ales San Filippo 9:43
Now a little bit of both, and I’ll explain why. Again, going back to it to me being married, my wife enjoys watching movies with me. We don’t do that a whole lot. But we watch movies every now and then. Me personally that’s not really how I’m how I’m wired. So for me my relaxation time is I love health. I love fitness. So I’d like to go out and get a good healthy meal. I work out every day in the middle of the day, and I workout outside. I mean, I’m in Jacksonville, Florida. And yes, some days, it’s 100 degrees outside, but I’m still going to go for a run every single day, I’m going to go doing a completely outdoor workout. I love that. I love spending time in the beach with people. And I’m not just a guy who laser on the beach. Actually, most people make fun of me when they see this, but I don’t take a towel, and I don’t take a chair, I just lay down straight in the sand. And I bring a couple toys. You know, like, I’ll bring a soccer box, I love soccer, I’ll bring like paddle ball, all the type of you know, the toys that probably kids like to bring, I just enjoy that stuff. And that’s how I really refresh is by doing those things. It’s how I relax. It’s just me being active. And I find that kind of bring it all back to business. I make much better business decisions when I’m actually actively pursuing my way of relaxation and refreshing myself. So I really prioritize this stuff over business at times, because I find that my decisions are much better when I’m doing these things.

Tim Kubiak 10:51
And studies show that’s true, right? You can work 70 or 100 hours a week. But if you’re not getting time away, you lose perspective, you lose the clarity. So absolutely. And I love the idea of not taking a towel, right? If I yeah, thrown up on the beach and sandals, with some things to play with and other people to find new stuff. It doesn’t sound so bad.

Ales San Filippo 11:10
It was like you’re just laying down the sand. I’m like, yeah, we’re all gonna get Sandy anyway. Right? Might as well just embrace it.

Tim Kubiak 11:15
So one less thing to launder. There you go. That’s good. Have you found your time between personal and business? socially, has collapsed in recent years at all?

Ales San Filippo 11:30
Um, yeah, I would, I would say a little bit. Actually, as I get closer and closer to what I feel is real, purposeful and meaningful work for myself, I actually find that the people that I spend time with and that are really meaningful to me, are in similar forms of business are people that I’m able to help or they’re able to help me. So I find it kind of blends together. But it all comes back to making sure that we know like when to talk shop and when not to because we’ve all got those people that they can only talk business, there’s nothing else You know, so I’m really careful how much time I surround myself with people that are more in that mode all the time. So but the people that are around Yeah, they actually I found that my personal life and my professional life, they a lot of them have really merged closer together than I’d say they ever have before.

Tim Kubiak 12:10
Yeah, and one of the things I learned a few years back from a friend, actually is he retired and he had given up most of the social life outside of some of his church activities. And, you know, we were in a world where we traveled a couple hundred days a year. And when he retired, he didn’t know what to do, because all his friends were his business friends, and his customers all over, you know, the world. So he couldn’t walk out his door and go down the street and see everybody. So it was a real adjustment. Because he had never drawn that line. It just been you know, 35 years of, hey, my friends are my business.

Ales San Filippo 12:42
Yeah, yeah, that’s a realization that a lot of us we A lot of us have. And we’ll have it’s, you know, the thing is, I love that we’re talking about this, because Tim, I believe that some of the listeners, they’ll get to hear this and realize they need to invest in their own lives outside of work as well. And there’s nothing wrong with them. If you have great relationships at work, that’s fantastic. But replicate that in your personal life and your neighborhood, wherever you’re at. It’s been so meaningful for me. So I’m passionate. I’m really glad you brought that up. It’s a really good point.

Tim Kubiak 13:08
Thank you. Let’s talk a little bit about entrepreneurs and building their brands, because that’s really what you help people do love it. So one of the things I want to ask is, should every company have a blog?

Ales San Filippo 13:19
This is such a good question. And you know, years ago, I probably would have answered it differently. But I’m gonna say only if you have time to be active with it. Only if you have time to be active with it, because I find a lot of people, they just assume they have to have a blog, and they don’t have time for it. And if you’re only posting once a year, I don’t think it’s really that, that good of a thing for you to be doing instead to be better off using that one piece of content making some sort of ebook or checklist or video, something that you can use to actually help people with. And for people who don’t have time, another great thing to do is get on guest posts. If you’re like you know what I can I can, I can write a post once or twice a year, just go on guest posts find a great place to actually just share the information. And to link back to yourself, I think that’s a really great thing to be able to do. So I think that we have to have something though on our websites, that is a free educational element. So if it’s not a blog, somehow, someway, you have to have free education, the world of business is changing quite a bit. Many people, especially younger generations, they make buying decisions based off the free education they get from that company, myself included in this, I’m in my mid 30s. But for me, I’m gonna make a buying decision based off the free education that comes toward that example, I recently invested in SMS company to to use their service, but there was three of them that everyone recommended. They’re all really good. I went to the one and decided to sign up, but the one that had the most free education, where it was like their blog was really hey, here’s how you succeed. Here’s how you do this talk to our service. They’re available all the time. Here. Here’s our people on podcasts. We’re just sharing that wisdom, that knowledge. And the other two are really silent. They didn’t have a blog. They looked like they had a great product, but I couldn’t find the free educational moment. So for me, I decided to skip it. So again, I don’t think everyone needs a blog and has a long answer to your question. I don’t think everyone needs a blog, but I do think everyone needs some form of educational element to offer whatever that may be for them.

Tim Kubiak 15:02
So one of the things a lot of my clients and a lot of my listeners are salespeople, and they’re some of them own their own businesses. And just to kind of set this set the stage, some of them are a couple million dollar a year business reselling other people’s products. Some of them are a couple hundred million dollars a year. And they’re representing brands, and they’re authorized for any advice for them and finding that middle space between the brand they sell and adding that expertise out to their customer set for the people, you know, because it is it is a research, learn buying decision kind of world.

Ales San Filippo 15:35
Yeah, I think that the balance just has to be, we have to remember in the day that every business no matter what you’re selling, it’s all h to h it’s all human to human at one point, right. And I think that some of these bigger companies especially forget that we think we’re business to business, you know, like we’re selling to another company, but in the day somebody is making that decision, right? And I think that we can remember that and put ourselves in their shoes and say, Okay, if I’m new to this, whatever this product might be, then what does somebody need to know about it? Like? How do they need to be able to like, what do they need to see or know, to be able to succeed with this, I think if you can start answering those questions and kind of bridge that gap between somebody who’s just getting started with it, and somebody who can succeed with it, then you’re good. And for some products might be really simple. Like, if you’re selling, let’s just say you’re selling some sort of data service, you know, like, you’re actually going to be storing people’s data and how to do it efficiently, and then just share it with just their company. I’m thinking company like LastPass, where they’re keeping your passwords, then making you helping you share it among your different people in your company, or whatever it might be. That’s kind of complex. So you want a lot education for that. If you’re selling a lawn mower, you wanna tell people how to start it and how to cut nice lines in their yard, right? That’s a very different amount of education has to go into that, because it’s a much simpler service that you’re trying to provide to people or that you’re trying to sell to them. So really, Every company has to ask that for themselves. But they have to say, How can I help the human at the other end succeed with what I’m doing and how much education is be involved in that?

Tim Kubiak 16:57
That’s good advice. With that, you know, one of the things that can be done is education as a podcast, you do one, you have a very popular one. So why don’t you talk about that for a second?

Ales San Filippo 17:07
Yeah, sure. So I’ll talk about mine real quick. And then we’ll talk more about podcasting in general, because I love this topic. I love blogging. And that’s how I got my start actually start with a faith based blog about seven years ago now. So I started writing on my Christian faith that was really important to me, and went multi author with it. And then I found out that I really liked podcasting because I could do it a lot more regularly. And it was pretty quick, I could just talk and I love to hear myself talk. And I’ve been told I have a face for radio. So here I am. So but my podcast creating a brand, I launched it. Last year, actually, it was 2019. And it was something I really wanted to do. I put a lot of time and energy to it because I wanted to help entrepreneurs that were really struggling to make that first or next step just on those topics are really important to them. So I launched and we saw a ton of success immediately built a community around it. And it’s just been it’s been a lot of fun. It’s been very fulfilling. And just getting to hear from the people and helping is made it really worthwhile. So I’ve had a lot of fun with podcasting. It’s been great. And yes, podcasting Can I would say the podcasting is good for for a lot of people. I don’t know how deep you want to dive into that. But a 10, we can definitely dive more into that if you’d like to.

Tim Kubiak 18:14
So go a little bit deeper, right? Because the one thing you see is, you know, if you look, there’s a lot of articles out there that says podcasts, you can’t monetize a podcast. And that’s, frankly, I do this so I can talk to people like you, right, it’s a chance for me to talk to business owners and learn in you know, educate people along the way. So not everything’s about converting directly to cash. So I guess one of the things is, you know, what can a podcast be used for? How can you build your brand with it?

Ales San Filippo 18:42
Yeah, I’m glad you brought the monetization side. Because most people their very first thing is like, I want to start a podcast because I want to make money. And not saying that you won’t or can’t, you definitely can. But a lot of it, it really is top of the funnel. This is your educational piece. This is how people like to get information. I’ve seen some businesses where they just they just talk about their business is all they talk about their short episodes or 1015 minutes, and just like boom, here’s how you do this with our company. Here’s how you do that. Here’s how you do this. And that type of thing is really helpful. That’s great to have. But now if you’re trying to actually grow your brand, actually, I think that starting a podcast is one of the best things you can do right now I say one of the best because there’s one thing that I think is actually better than starting a podcast. And that’s being a guest on podcasts. I call that opap other people’s podcasts. And it’s something I’ve devoted a lot of time to so I’m I don’t know exactly where madam around 100 podcasts I’ve been on in the last this year, I suppose. And it’s it’s done really well for my business even better than my own podcast has. And it’s because if you can find the right audience to speak to one you get to add value to them. But also if they’re interested, they’re going to look you up, right. And I think that people need to consider that that may be the right answer isn’t I need to start my own. Maybe it’s I just need to find other podcasts to be a guest on because I’ve personally found that that works extremely well. And that really does help grow your brand.

Tim Kubiak 19:56
So that’s how I found you and it’s something that you were one of the CO creators out Right.

Ales San Filippo 20:01
Oh, yes, pod match.com right. match.com

Tim Kubiak 20:03
Yeah, you know, in, I will give you kudos, man, because you built a really cool app. And I want you to talk a little bit about it, how people can use it and find guests. And it’s been revolutionary, because I’ve been working my LinkedIn profile on a 25 year old, professional network to find people. And I’ll tell you, I found a half a dozen really great people, including yourself inside of the first week. So talk about

Ales San Filippo 20:26
what you did with that. That’s great. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that. I love Tom on this, because it’s my it’s my baby right now. Right? You know, I think we all feel that way. So thank you that that means a lot to me. You just called my kid cute. So I appreciate it. Very cute. No, but pod match.com. The whole idea was? Could we actually help podcast guests and hosts find each other? Could we do it in a quicker, more efficient way. And we do it through a matching service is literally the concept we took it from from dating website or from dating apps we took we looked at a hinge Tinder and a couple others where you said, How are they doing this? And why aren’t we doing this in the podcasting space. So it is the same idea. When you register an account as a guest, let’s say you’re an author of a book on productivity, it’ll find productivity podcast hosts that might be looking for a guest like you, and vice versa, it’ll flip on both sides. And it’s something that we’re offering for free right now, which we’re really excited to do. Because at the end of day, we really want to serve the podcasting industry. And the idea for this actually came from, from from just looking at what people’s problems were, we found a lot of people in the podcasting space asking for something like this. They didn’t say it directly, like I just wish I could find better guests. And I just wish I could find more. You know, hosting, I wish I could find more guests. And then more hosts like we had it, people talk on both sides. And we just offered a solution to that problem by creating pod match.com. And it’s been really cool. So our AI matching core is really fun. And we’re continuously improving it. But I appreciate you’re using I’m glad that we were actually able to make this interview happen through that. It’s really cool.

Tim Kubiak 21:49
And I’ll tell you one of the things I picked up sort of a new guy tip from somebody using the services. When people reach out look and see the words they’re using identify themselves. Because it’s I after my initial profile, I went and looked at yours and a couple other people that had reached out and realized that there were words there that I hadn’t chosen for my matches that were more commonly being used. So

Ales San Filippo 22:12
yeah, that’s smart. I hope that everyone’s like you. Honestly, Tim, that was good.

Tim Kubiak 22:16
Luck. Most people that are awkward, entrepreneurs are going to figure it out. Right. So

Ales San Filippo 22:23
thanks for the plug on pod match. I appreciate that. Oh, no,

Tim Kubiak 22:25
I’m happy to it’s great. Um, you focus on people building the brand. So where do people most often miss the mark on that?

Ales San Filippo 22:34
Yeah, I think that in today’s world,

the biggest thing that people don’t realize is, is the importance of MVP, minimal viable product, or service, whatever it is that you’re trying to do people wait for perfection. And I said, wait for perfection, because it’s impossible to gain. But so many of us, we just get stuck in this Limbo mode of, Okay, this is nice. It’s cool, but it doesn’t look like apple.com or it doesn’t look like nike.com. And their social media is huge. And my I don’t have pictures like that yet. So I really can’t get started. And I find people today we compare ourselves to these very, very established brands, which which you know, can they’ve been around for 20 plus years, some of these guys, and obviously, when you’re a multi billion dollar company and be doing a lot better than somebody with a few hundred dollar startup, right? But the problem is we compare ourselves to that we look at and say, Well, I can’t start until I look more like this. And I always tell people don’t, don’t compare your day one to someone else’s year 20. Don’t compare your day one to someone else’s year 20. Now think that somebody else want to do that we get caught in this perfectionist mindset. The truth is, whatever you have today, if you believe it adds value to people’s lives, the best thing you can do is launch it where it is, even if it’s not beautiful yet, it will get there. But the thing is, we all just have to learn. Okay, this is it’s ready. It’s not great yet. It’s not beautiful yet, but I know that it’s going to serve somebody Well, I need to go ahead and launch today. And I think that that’s one of the biggest problems I see is people just not ready to launch and they just kind of keep on a hold for far too long.

Tim Kubiak 23:58
I was you know, do you see people worried about details that are ultimately irrelevant? Oh,

Ales San Filippo 24:03
yes. Yes. Hundred percent? Yeah. I think a lot of people like sorry, cut you off there. I don’t think a lot of people we look at, we get involved in the business instead of working on the business. So we see the very small things we’re like, Well, my calendar isn’t really streamlined enough, I need to find a solution for that. When it’s such a small piece of what you do. And I’ve been guilty of this. I’m a details guy. I’m a bit administrative. And I can get caught up in the little the little things. When you step back and you say okay, what is my goal again? What am I trying to do? Okay, my calendar that how you know how well it performs, how pretty the email they get is when they when they confirm a session that they want to do coaching wise with me, that doesn’t matter as much as how many actually get a client or how I can actually connect with them. And I think that many of us yeah, we get stuck working in the business instead of on the business when you work in the business. Although it is important at times. It doesn’t help grow it that’s when you’re working on the business. It’s going to really help grow it and

Tim Kubiak 24:56
talk about working on the business and helping others that truly drives you every everything I’ve listened to that you’ve done that’s always come up as a topic, has that always been the case for you?

Ales San Filippo 25:06
No, it hasn’t actually, in my early 20s, I was getting getting into some real estate. So I did a tech startup years ago with with real estate. So you might remember this there was, they’re all over the place now. But those 365 degree tours, you’re looking at a home, you can kind of like drag on the screen, you can like look at the roof, you can flip over the behind you. So I helped develop the original tech that was actually used to create that. And so we were posting these things on the MLS, we I remember, at one point, I was a 17 year old kid with three photographers and three editors working with me or something along those lines. But I had a full team, we’re working on it. And then you know, I just became passionate real estate. So I saw it at 17. Like, as soon as I turned 18, I’m getting rental properties. And thankfully, I had the money to do it. So I started doing that. And then I saw a magazine, I can’t recall what magazine it was, but it had like a most successful under 30 lists like 30, under 30 or something, I’m I’m in Forbes, but basically showing like here are the guys and the ladies that are just crushing it in the world. And I saw that and I was like that is going to be me, like Alex sanfl goes name will be on that list, guaranteed. And so I had this whole mindset of I have to be successful, I have to make money, half make money, I have to succeed. And I became a very lonely person, a lot of what I’m sharing with you now is me on the other side of a mindset that it used to have. So I was well on my way. And then you might remember this as well. But 2006 2007, the economy really crashed. And a guy who thought he knew about real estate turns out, I knew nothing about it, because I could not see that coming. And I had, I went from being very well off to being extremely in debt with a lot of really bad investments. And at that point, I kind of hit rock bottom, if you will. And it was in that time where I found new friends, people will be around that were actually not just caring about money, they’re actually caring about people that I decided that you know what I need to shift something, it’s when I started saying this, this this line that use with everything, I seek to be a person of value, not a person of profit. So when you think Alec sanfilippo, I want you to think a person of value, not a person of profit. And ever since I’m one of those people around me started modeling that that’s who I want to become and ever since then I’ve really decided helping others is it my primary focus and the profit I believe will follow that when I’m helping somebody else succeed. And that’s what I’ve devoted my entire life to.

Tim Kubiak 27:15
I think it’s such a positive thing. But it’s also a way that your network when you do that expands because people come to you when they truly have a need. And but they come back when they know that you can deliver because you’ve connected them in the right places. It’s a brilliant approach.

Ales San Filippo 27:32
Yeah, recommended to everybody. I just I found to be so powerful. And it’s very fulfilling to like you’re helping somebody and ends up helping you as well. I mean, that’s a win win for me.

Tim Kubiak 27:40
Yeah, definitely. So you’ve built your own companies, you’ve done some startups, you’re building brands, now you’re helping other people build brands. How do you help people define a culture? Or how do you live your culture inside your brand? If you’re the business owner?

Ales San Filippo 27:55
Yeah, the first thing that everything begins with in my mind is purpose. So the why behind the what, you know, there’s something that we are going to do, and that’s the what, but why are you doing it is so important. I believe that all culture goes back to that question, really establishing why you’re doing something, the reason for it, and then you have to model you have to look at that every day. So for me, the only way I can keep myself off, like, off my craft and getting too involved is by remembering, okay, Alex, you’re doing this because you’re a person of value. And so my personal goal over the next 10 years is to help 4000 entrepreneurs create successful businesses, they want to see 4000 people profiting because I mean, if you do the math, let’s just say I’m 30 I’m 32 right now, but let’s just say I’m 30, that’s more than 365 a year, which means there’s more than one a day, which means I have to get really creative at some point to figure this out, right? But that’s one of my goals. And when I can sit back and actually remember that, instead of just remembering, okay, like, here’s what I got to do, here’s this, here’s this, it really develops the right culture and mindset within myself. And then thankfully, everyone I work with it kind of just moves into them, because I remind them of the bigger vision. And it’s really important. So I think the verbiage that you use has to follow that Why? example with pod match. We’re starting this and my partner and he was calling the people users that are on there, which they’re technically users, yes. But I started calling them members. And if they sign up for an affiliate link there partners, and that is the verbiage I use. And they’re like their members. They’re in this with us. They’re part of the team. They are members of the team. And if they say they want to be an affiliate, which is part of the system, then then they are partners with us. There are people that are working with us. And just simple things like this using verbiage more like that, that really connects back to your why is helped me so much keep the right culture and mindset and everything that I do.

Tim Kubiak 29:34
That’s a really nuanced answer to really engaging people. And one of the things is, I’ve heard you talk in the past about social media platforms and not being productive on them and your approach and creating a brand and I get the feeling it’s the same in pod match. Right is, you know, creating value every time somebody logs on. Can you talk about about the importance of that.

Ales San Filippo 30:02
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, like, if somebody’s trusting with their time, whether it’s through your social media through logging into your website, whatever it might be, if somebody’s trusting with their time, it needs to add value. I mean, people are looking for something that’s going to help them today. And not this is the reason that you want to do this. But people will leave really quick, if you’re not helping him, right? People will unsubscribe, people will not log back in, you want to make sure you’re adding that value right away. And a good way to do this, you know, you talked about social media from it’s all mentioned this. This is another mistake that many entrepreneurs make, we assume we have to be all places. So you know, we talked about a blog, you have to have a blog, you have to have a podcast, you have to have a YouTube channel, you have to be on every social media platform, you know, all these different things that we all assume we need to do just aren’t true. What you need to do is find where your tribe is the people that are going to really work with you, they’re interested in you, and do your best to impact them and add value every chance you get. So an example is I was spreading myself too thin for a while, I assumed I need to be on every social platform, I spent a lot of time on all of them. And the main one being at this point, it was like a year ago. I know tic tocs kind of taking over but about a year ago, more people come on Instagram. So I was like, Okay, I got to really be on Instagram. But I found out that they weren’t interested when I offered. So it wasn’t valuable to them. So I was like, Well, why am I doing this, where people are really interested in what we’re doing, or they’re on LinkedIn. So let me go add value on LinkedIn, because they’re actually receiving it well, and saying this is helpful. And instead of me doing anything on on Instagram, and you know, a lot of people would meet, we’re like, Alex, what are you doing, you need to post more on Instagram is really growing fast. But my tribe wasn’t there, the people that I was actually adding value to helping weren’t there. So I didn’t need to be there either. And I think a lot of us assume we have to be everywhere or wherever is trending at that time, which just isn’t true. I do recommend, give them all a shot, but find the ones where your people are that you’re adding value to, and just continue to pour into them, press into them and do everything that you can to help without spreading yourself thin along the way. And that’s when something’s been really helpful for me to really just add that value to people’s lives is by knowing where I need to be.

Tim Kubiak 31:54
So how does somebody find where their tribe is? especially online?

Ales San Filippo 31:58
Yeah, a lot of it, you know, online, thankfully, analytics are are becoming a thing that are you can use anywhere now, right? I mean, if you log, we talked about Twitter, or sorry, we talked about Instagram, I get all mixed up. But basically, there’s a spot that you can see all your analytics, and then you can also go to your website. So something very simple. If you use WordPress, you can use Google Analytics, which scares some people. But if that scares you, then use the built in one of jetpack. It’s called jetpack jetpack. Yeah, yeah. But with WordPress, it’s fine. Honestly, for this, this type of data that I’m talking about that is more than enough, you can go on there and see who’s showing up where they’re coming from. If they’re coming from social media, you can see which platform they’re coming from. And that can tell you something. So if you realize that you’re posting 15 times a day on, on, let’s just say Twitter, or 20 times a day on Twitter, and you don’t get a single referral, no one clicks on anything, it’s probably pretty low value at that point, like you need to know that. But if you’re posting in a Facebook group, and you’ve got 100 people visiting every day, because of that, stop Twitter, just leave it on autopilot somehow, you know, find where those services, I use buffer that automatically postings for me, so I’m still posting there, but I’m not gonna look at it. But that Facebook group, I’m going to go spend intentional time there, because it’s actually helping those people. So you can drive into analytics just about anywhere, again, jetpack with with WordPress for using that for using the social media platforms, most of them now have very easy ways to see the analytics of who’s who’s watching who’s listening. And then when you know, your people like, Tim, you’re great about knowing who’s listening to this podcast, and I really admire that, because not enough people do that they assume, oh, my podcast is this. I’m like, Well, how do you know that? Well, you know, that’s what I’m talking to you. I’m like, Well, are you like you need to go look. And then you need to actually talk to those people, not somebody else. Because I found a lot of people, they don’t succeed, because they’re not talking to their actual audience that they’ve earned. And we’re always gonna have to adjust. I mean, initially, I started creating a brand, I thought my audience would be different than they are today. But I responded to who my audience is, and who continues to build and the more I find that and hone that in, the better, I’ve been able to been able to do with it.

Tim Kubiak 33:50
So you’re detail guy, you’re obviously good at analytics. One of the things is, you know, what advice do you have on finding the right metrics, whether it’s on your website, whether it’s in your sales data? And the second part is how do you not get paralyzed by all the information that is available?

Ales San Filippo 34:09
That’s, that’s a good question. Right there. I think that, um, data overload is a real thing, right? Yeah, I think a lot of us can get stuck over there, like really easily. But um, you know, I think that that the best thing that I can remember to, to do when it comes to data analytics is to have a balance, we can get addicted to checking that stuff every day. And I’ve definitely been guilty of that, like, you know, you’re looking at your bank every day, because it’s coming in real time. If you’re using something like stripe, you can literally hit swipe up and hit refresh and see more dollars rolling in some sometimes not all the time. But

Tim Kubiak 34:39
you know, good days, you can know,

Ales San Filippo 34:42
on good days, you can but it’s not healthy to look at because if it goes back to your why your big picture, why you’re doing something if it’s not specifically and it shouldn’t be to make that dollar continue to increase. If you’re looking at that more than you’re helping somebody or doing something to add value, then you’re doing yourself a disservice. You’re taking time that you can be using. And honestly, you know, it’s like, it’s like I say this, when you go to a gym, there’s always like that guy who’s just looking himself in the mirror, you’re not getting any stronger by looking at yourself in the mirror. And I think that if we just continuously look at our analytics just to look at them, then we’re not doing ourselves any service, what we need to do is maybe even set a time. And I’ve had to do that. Like once a week, I used to have a reminder saying go check the analytics and everything, I would dive in deep for about 3045 minutes. And then I would write down what my action are based off of that. So I’m not like addicted to it or continuously look at I actually know, okay, here’s what they’re telling me, here’s what I need to do. I’ll go look at it again a week later. And And honestly, by stepping away, like that, you can actually see results happening. But if you’re too glued to it, it doesn’t, it’s not really beneficial. We have to be willing to step away from that a little bit, and just go after what we know we’re supposed to be doing. And

Tim Kubiak 35:48
how do you use those analytics when you do take the time to look at them? To determine content planning direction strategy?

Ales San Filippo 35:56
Yeah, it’s a great question. A lot of it just comes down to engagement overall. So did people engage with it? And did I hear anybody say anything about it? So some some things people really comment on not just on social media, people will email in people be in the community really start talking about it will create a lot of buzz, and it goes back to some reflection sit back. I’ve got whiteboards behind right now I’ve got three of them, and the ones empty right now. It makes me so excited because I got a mastermind session coming up, you know, like a gala, brainstorm something. But I’m all right down, be like, Okay, everyone really liked the question. What are you struggling with? In business right now? That was a recent one I posted simple, I didn’t think much of it. But I asked the question, What do you struggling with in business right now? And I had more responses I’ve had to anything in months. I was like, Whoa, okay. Why were people talking about that? Okay, let me look at who was talking about it. Okay, how can I build more content around this? And I’ll try simple things like, okay, it was, you know, I posted that it three o’clock on a Tuesday. So let me try posting something else at three o’clock on a Tuesday and see if it gets the same engagement on a different topic. I’ll just try that. And it’s like, okay, no, that didn’t work. But they really liked the question, what are they struggling with? So how can I be able to create more content like that? And of course, I was trying to spend everything positively. So the next week when I tried to do or two weeks later, I tried. What’s really working well for you in business right now. And it engaged really well. And people like the questions that had to do exactly what their business and that’s just again, my tribe, you might find something totally different. You post that question might get crickets right. At the end of day, it’s again goes back to do you know, who’s listening, and what they’re looking for. So for me, that’s what I do with all that, that data, that analytics, I really sit down and think, Okay, why did this do so? Well? Was it the timing? Was it actually what the content was about? Was it the way that it was very engaging? Was it the right kind of question to pose, you have to really sit down and think about these things? And, for me, a lot of that’s come back to not my own expertise. But I’ve had to go back and actually read about that, you know, I’ll look for content online, you can google anything these days, right, obviously, okay, like, Why do people like this question or other people asking this question? Where did this come from, and look for, for other like related topics to talk about. And doing that has been really beneficial. And that’s what I do with with my data is I just try those different things.

Tim Kubiak 37:57
Nice, until I’ll admit, I cheat. I have two other people, one of which is a data scientist that I’ll go, Hey, Alan, I’m thinking of doing this. And he’s like, no, Tim, you’re an idiot. This is the metric that matters.

Ales San Filippo 38:11
You know, I’m not I’m not the best at this data, stuff. Like I am decent at it. But I do the same thing. I seek wise counsel with everything I do. I’m like, hey, can someone help me with what this means? So like, sometimes it’s Google sometimes actually, people, I’m like, Can you explain what I should be doing with this? So it’s actually good that you do that. Um, I hope he’s a little nicer to you sometimes. But you

Tim Kubiak 38:27
know, he’s generally a good, good guy. He kept me out of more fires, and I care to admit over the years, so that’s

Unknown Speaker 38:33
good. I love that.

Tim Kubiak 38:37
You talk about what people were struggling with in business, how’s the pandemic and everything going on? change what you do in your business, and what your clients are going through?

Ales San Filippo 38:47
Yeah, I mean, it’s been different for every industry, right? I mean, it’s been crazy. I’ve had some people that it was really bad for hurt their business really bad. I have many friends that lost jobs throughout this, but a lot of them some mean the ones that have lost jobs, I had one in particular be like, this was the push, I really needed to finally press go on this business. I’ve been pushing off for so long, like just been scared to do. I’ve been so comfortable. I just couldn’t do it. They lost their job. Now they’re launching something. I had one guy in particular, just talking to you last week about it. He is so excited about what he’s doing now. Like he’s already making money. It’s just been a couple months, and his own business he’s been thinking about for years, but he just was always like, I was just too comfortable. Like, I never felt like I could pull the trigger. And now I was forced to do it. So in some ways, it’s been really beneficial for people. What I’ve noticed from a market standpoint, in general, is that people needed more free community style content during this time, they needed to like they’re all sitting at home, right? So we need a way to feel part of something really important for us to feel like okay, we’re part of a tribe or part of a community. And then they’re also looking for free educational element, like again, go into the free education. People are looking for a way to learn what they need to wait to implement, they want to do or to try new business. They want to do it for free because they’re everyone’s working on a more tight budget, if you will. And so I made some adjustments the creating a brand community used to not be free. It used to be you pay to get in and everything inside of it was free. But now we switch that we flipped it. So we said, Okay, you know what like this was the first week is having like the whole thing is going to a free model. And then everything inside that we previously had for free will now be paid. And we flip that switch and actually did really well. We had a lot of people really appreciating it, some great feedback from doing that. But that was one of those, those pivots that we just knew we had to make from day one. And we had to change a little bit of content, the way people were consuming content, the topics we’re talking about, like, it was funny, in the beginning of April, I had a really big episode coming out about public speaking, it’s not the right time to talk about something public speaking wise, I still haven’t published it, and we’ll come out for another three months is when it’ll actually be coming out. I had another one about actually going out networking, huge interview one of my biggest I’ve ever had, we pushed off for two more months. And we talked about more things like how you can build a business inside how you can pivot your business, how you can set yourself up for success. We had to make those adjustments and transitions if we really wanted to be able to do well. And so that’s for me, that’s what I’ve seen have has happened. It also freed up a lot of my time. So we launched pod match.com. We started on March 10 2019. And we launched into beta. June 15 2019. I mean three months in five days. It was we did good. We were I was excited about it.

Tim Kubiak 41:14
That’s incredibly fast for development of a new site of a new app.

Ales San Filippo 41:19
Yeah, I mean, it was a lean, you know, lean SAS startup, me and my partner, he’s a genius. He can do a lot of the work. We started off on these whiteboards and just went for it man, like we worked hard. But it’s one of those things that this time. I think we all say someday, right? I think COVID-19 is everyone someday. So we just knew we had to take action.

Tim Kubiak 41:37
What’s better than just sitting there and being paralyzed by fear, though?

Ales San Filippo 41:40
Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. Yeah.

Tim Kubiak 41:42
You’re a big fan of Feedly. Right. Yeah, reading service. So what’s three things that you read on Feedly? Not the fact that you use it, but three things that are must reads for you.

Ales San Filippo 41:54
Yeah. So three, three places I subscribed to that are really good for me. Search Engine Journal, is a really cool, really cool site, they post a lot of great stuff. And I love blogging, I love SEO, that’s always going to be like a deep passion of mine. So just getting to learn something new is always really interesting to me, that’s one that I like, I’ll flip it to get something totally different. Now, there’s a website that I also subscribed to through Feedly called uncrate. calm. And it’s like, I think they used to call it gear for guys. They changed what it what it was basically, just like all the coolest stuff you could ever like the coolest houses you’ve ever seen. The coolest boats, the coolest cars, anything amazing. Like they post on there, like one or two things a day. And always like, Oh, I just want to see what that looks like, you know, like, so I like that one. That’s another one. That’s really fun. And then the last one is as a lot of my podcasts are on there. So I like to not not mine personally, podcasts I subscribe to. So they will just like to quickly see the topics that I like, which are always something different. But I’ve been really getting into, especially during this time, like how I can kind of up my health game a little bit like eating habits, nutrition habits, exercise, and different things like that, and more from a natural standpoint. So no, that’s not actually like a certain website, but those type of things I’m looking for that come up in that feed that are important to me right

Tim Kubiak 43:05
now. But you follow in trends and topics. So that makes a lot of sense, right?

Unknown Speaker 43:09
Yeah, exactly. Yep.

Tim Kubiak 43:11
Cool. Um, you run a business? So the question, I’m always wrestling with business owners with this, is it better to be smaller and more profitable? Or to really reach for the brass ring and go for that hyper scale? And hope it pays off? Any thoughts on that one?

Ales San Filippo 43:27
Yeah, I mean, that’s a fine line right there. That’s a difference between a millionaire and a billionaire right there. And unfortunately, a lot of it has to do with luck. And a lot of it has to do with timing, it’s a matter of you really understand what you’re doing. So for me, Listen, small and profitable is a fantastic place to be. And I think that more people just need to be okay with that we don’t need to look at these big billionaires and people that are making just gobs of money, like crazy amounts of money, and compare ourselves to them. If you are living in a place that’s really comfortable. It’s enabling you to do what you feel like you are wanting to do with your life and your time. That’s fantastic. Don’t compare yourself to someone else and be like, Oh, I need my business be this big. Because I think many entrepreneurs, we kind of think it’s got to be huge, because I won’t be on the map, like all these different mindsets that go through our head about this type of thing. But really, if you’ve got a small profitable business, and it’s it’s working well, it’s helping you it’s helping your client. That’s okay. Now if you think you have something that you say, you know what this this could be more it could help more people, it could serve more people, it could serve my family better. And you really believe that in the timing is right, then yes, I say go for it. I’m always careful to go around getting too many loans and things like that. But if we look at the the Amazon model, Amazon didn’t make money, it for the first 10 or 12 years or something like that. I mean, they were millions and millions of dollars in debt and just driving themselves into that hole. And then one day, it flipped, and that’s what they always said would happen. But that was a really crummy one. It was lucky and the timing was absolutely could not have been better for them with the way that technology just took off while that business was growing. But if you believe you have one of those, you’ve got to be willing to Take the risk. But again, don’t don’t do it because you feel like you have to do it if you know that you have something that’s really going to serve the world well, and you just know, there’s more to be done with it.

Tim Kubiak 45:10
So you just recently did an episode on your podcast, and I forget the gentleman’s name, who wrote the book on Bezos and the shareholder letters that tie into, you know, a, can you complete the sentence for me? And B, can you tie that in to that philosophy? Yeah, so

Ales San Filippo 45:29
you have the basis letter. Um, that was Steve Anderson, a great episode really good. I mean, that book was like, I’m gonna, when I picked it up, I was just in shock. I’m like, I’ve always dreamed of like, just meeting with Jeff Bay. So Sam, in conversation with him, this book was probably just as good as that, you know, like, it was really a fascinating read. Steve did a great job on it. So yeah, a lot of this came from that because I wanted to dive more into what they’ve been able to do. At the end of the day, his Jeff Bezos mindset is not what’s build the biggest company in the world. His mindset is a customer obsession, he is obsessed with his customers. And everything they do, is devoted to making customers have the best possible experience that they can. A great example is people don’t realize, when you buy something from Amazon, and it shows up, you open the box, whatever is in that box is easy to open. You don’t need scissors. Normally, you don’t need to unwrap anything like you know, you buy something from a store and you’re like, Oh, my gosh, I need scissors. I need to unwrap this, I don’t even how to get this plastic off this thing. their ideas? No, we want the customer to be instantly satisfied when they get it. And then having that mindset has been what drove them to be a bigger company. It wasn’t we’re gonna build the biggest company in the world. He said, No, we’re gonna actually, we’re gonna serve our customer the best way we can and see if that will scale. And it has another thing that that he talks about in his letter to shareholders every year. He talks about failure, which is something that we don’t talk about enough. It was two years ago, I was reading his letter before I even read this book. And he said in it, if we don’t make multiple, multi billion dollar mistakes, we will stop growing. If that’s a letter that people that are writing my paycheck and keeping me employed, and I’m telling him, I’m going to make multiple multi billion dollar mistakes. I’m like, why would he say this to these people, but because he understands that in order to succeed, he has to fail along the way to test things, to try new things to be able to actually expand and grow the way they want to. And so um, yeah, Jeff Bezos, and Amazon fascinating. We can all learn a lot from it, whether we like Amazon or not, they’ve done a fantastic job from a business perspective, they have and they’ve raised the level of expectations, not just in the consumer space, but I’ve seen it in the business to business space over the last 20 years. I remember sitting in my desk as a kid signing up for Amazon, you know, for the first time, and then now, you know, global telecom companies are expected to deliver on that same standard, it’s changed everything it really has. I mean, if you’re not delivering something for free in two days, people were like, wait, I gotta wait four days for this and have to pay for it. Right?

Tim Kubiak 47:46
Yeah, exactly. What do you mean, I have to pay freight.

Ales San Filippo 47:51
You know, a little secret on Amazon, you’re paying for freight, but they just roll it into the cost of what you’re paying for. But people love it. It’s fine. Like, I don’t mind paying a couple of bucks or dollars in here in two days and have to pay for shipping. Right? I’m doing air quotes there. But it’s the truth of the matter. It is. So

Tim Kubiak 48:05
I really appreciate the time, tell everybody again, you know, what can they expect to find at you know, creating a brand? And why should they go there? And then talk about pod match one more time? If you would do?

Ales San Filippo 48:16
Yeah, sure. Thank you. Thank you again. Um, so first off, creating a brand comm that’s my hub. That’s where I do everything. So you can find me, you can find the podcast, all that stuff there. If you want a quick way to get there, you can just text the word Connect. So 1904299899 to So again, it’s 1-904-299-8992. And if you text the word Connect there, it’ll actually just automatically connect you to the community there which is completely free. I just if you’re interested in talking to another entrepreneur, not just me, but other people in the community. We’re all there to help each other out and collaborate together to help each other succeed. So and then there’s the podcast creating a brand podcast, you can find all that at creating a brand calm, and then pod match. If you’re if you have a podcast or you want to be a guest on podcast, check it out pod match.com completely free AI will automatically connect you with the right people. So you can start having great conversations like Tim and I are having today. So but yeah, that’s it. That’s that’s everything about me. And I really appreciate time. This was awesome to be part of.

Tim Kubiak 49:11
It was really good to having you and I learned a ton which is

Alex, it’s such a great comment there. At the end, podcasting is like free coaching. Every day we work with high performance sales people and people that are aspiring to become top salespeople within their companies. If you’re interested in learning more about that visit Tim kubiak.com. There’s an offer to sign up for a first free high performance sales coaching session. It’s a 60 minute session. Pure sales coaching for your must win game changer opportunity. Thanks for listening. If you haven’t already done so. Please subscribe to the podcast using your favorite service. Don’t get the weekly sales letter newsletter. Go to Tim kubiak.com sign up and get sales tips guidance advice to help you accelerate you win, compete harder and extra time wasting opportunities. talk to y’all next week.