Uncommon Advice
Business is a game you have to 'Play to Win' and it's the Uncommon Advice from Experienced Entrepreneurs that helps produce your winning playbook!
Uncommon Advice
Athlete Factory, Newsletter Monetization, and the Power of Proving Yourself Right
Today, we're pulling back the curtain on an incredible project we've been working on: Athlete Factory. Imagine a platform that helps athletes build a robust brand and business beyond their sports careers. Sounds exciting, right? Well, that's exactly what we're talking about. We're discussing the value of athletes leveraging their platforms, forging relationships, and building strong media profiles.
Ever wonder how to create a successful newsletter business model? We're breaking it down, from various monetization methods like sponsorships or low-ticket subscriptions to building trust and strong connections with your subscriber base. We're sharing tips on creating content that is not just attractive, but distinctive, something that makes you stand out from the crowd.
Lastly, we're delving into the concept of proving yourself right rather than trying to prove someone wrong. Ashton shares his story of when he found motivation in proving someone wrong by returning to college. But, we're also examining the cost of such motivation, the drain of constantly trying to prove someone wrong and how shifting that energy to proving yourself right can be far more beneficial. Discover the power of recognizing your own successes and the long-term value of building something meaningful and lasting. Tune in, and let's start building!
If you want the Uncommon Advice that it takes to build a profitable lifestyle business then subscribe to my newsletter at https://natekennedy.com
Stay connected with me for more content like this:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/natekennedymd
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/natekennedymd
Twitter: ...
today's athletes. Right, they, they, they are their brand and they are the business. If you look at them in whole right and you see a lot of uh companies and other athletes retired athletes and actually current athletes now that are leveraging their platforms, you build uh, their brand, you help them figure what they want out of life, but you know everything and come with a price right back at it. Another episode of uncommon advice there.
Speaker 1:Yes, there astin in the house. Z is out for the day. He's uh, he's not feeling too good, so he's not able to join us. I'm excited to be on here. Maybe we got some cool stuff. It's actually, you know, hope z gets better. But I'm also happy to have you on because we've been working on a really cool project internally that I think we're kind of ready to reveal and talk more about, and you're heading that up. So I'm excited and uh, yeah, man, so what's going down?
Speaker 2:uh, it's good to be back. You know I'm not the normal face that you guys are used to seeing in the studio, but I think that, um what we've been working on, we're very, very close to to knocking this thing out the park. You know um athlete factory, so diving into that nat, are they ready for athlete factory?
Speaker 1:uh, they are, I think so, I think all right, all right.
Speaker 2:So we got going on with athlete factory, right? Um, as we spoke about a while ago, um, you know, nat is big on the youth and um, giving back to community and helping people get to the next level. I am as well. And with athlete factory, right, when you think of factory, you think about building something. Um, we want to help build these.
Speaker 2:Athletes are not just on the field, right, yes, we can help with that as well. But we want to help create and build their business, right, build their brand, build, uh, that foundation for them to make money outside of football. Why they can't play football or basketball, or tennis, or volleyball, so on and so forth. They can't play that forever, right, everybody may not go d1, right, that's everybody's dream. So, they say, until they have to do the hard work. I think that's some part that they're, they're forgetting about.
Speaker 2:But uh, um, we want to be able to build their brands, you know, and and set their, their profiles up to just be able to be, uh, a better, um, what can we call it? A better product? You know, because, at the end of the day, sports is a business, right? So if you're not treating yourself like a business, how can you expect to be, uh, respected as such? You know, and if you're not thinking about yourself as a business, that may be mistake number one right there well, and I think today's athletes, right, they, they, they are their brand and they are the business.
Speaker 1:If you look at them in whole, right, and you see a lot of uh companies and other athletes retired athletes and actually current athletes now that are leveraging their platforms. You build, uh, their brand and then they're leveraging their brand to create relationships. Right, they've been doing it for a long time but now you start seeing them being very proactive in the business world and understanding that, hey, if you have your media in line and the reason I athlete factory gets your media in line and your process you know the stuff that you're building, not just going out. Now, we're not talking about just being an influencer, right, we're talking about building the media side of their business with their brand and building those relationships. So brandon marshal of I am athlete, right, so he's been doing it. You've got uh, the pivot podcast, which is kind of unique, you know. So they're leveraging media to grow a brand. Tyreek hill has his stuff now. So there's a there's a lot of people that are and athletes that are doing it and they, if you ask any of them or you go listen to some of their podcasts, they're all going to say why did they wait so long to do it?
Speaker 1:And so our goal with athlete factory with helping these kids, is one is step one is you know, we want to help them live their dream right. So that's that's goal. One is help them realize their dream and that is getting them recruit ready right. So one of the big things we're going to do athlete factories help them getting recruit ready so they even have the best chance and best opportunity to be seen and get to be seen or be found and get those college offers, whether that be d1, d2, d3 right. There's a lot of money in d2 and d3.
Speaker 1:These guys don't even know about that. They can still get the free education at a great education going forward right and for themselves Absolutely. So that's step one. But if you're going to get recruit ready, you might as well be brand ready, because with the college environment and NIL and everything that's going on over there right now, you have a lot. These athletes have a lot of opportunity to generate revenue for themselves, but a lot of these guys have no clue what branding is, what business building is, what financial education really you know they don't have the financial knowledge. So if we can give them those tools and those assets. We're going to be able to help them become really. What, at the end of the day, what's going to happen is? They're going to go out, leverage that information and have a much bigger impact in their world and people around them.
Speaker 2:I think you know that, that phrase that people use, like when it comes to athletes being placed at a school. They say if you can ball, they'll find you. Right, like that statement goes more than just being an athlete, you know, like if your socials are set up where you know you're you don't have a profile picture, right, your name is hard to identify, you don't post anything on your actual your feed, but everything you share is someone else, right, how's the money going to find you, you know. So I think we can do is just pretty much provide that stability, that education, you know, not only just the financial education, which is, for sure, a big thing that, heck, our country needs to know, like economics, one on one.
Speaker 2:But these athletes, you know, we don't want to just make these guys, we don't want to help these guys make money, want to help them keep the money as well, right, but just know that knowledge of knowing how to generate that revenue or how to handle that, those opportunities that may come based on how they position themselves. Right, and I think, just again, what we're trying to do with athlete factory is going to be big, you know. I don't know, do we want to give him too much game because we, we we got some big things set up in the future, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean we'll keep you all posted as, as we develop, develop it out, more we are. We are actually looking at a launch date official on. We've been working on it for a while, right, but our official launch date is coming up here. We're super excited about it. I mean. I think it stays true to our core here. You know you.
Speaker 1:You said in the very beginning you know Nate's passionate about. You know the youth and the athletes. But it's not just me, it's people in a company, right, like it's the culture we have here, and those are the people we're always looking for, because we do know that the youth is our future and so why not have and work hard, have a positive impact on them and give back to our youth and help them realize their dreams so they can do the same thing, right? So impact is not just impact can be exponentially. If I can you're not I, but if we as a company are able to help 30 kids and then those kids then have that same mindset how can I help people, how can I have any positive impact on someone? And then they get out, they start impacting with it, just start sprawling and growing and, yeah, getting bigger, and we start. You know you change, create change, right. You create change by taking action and helping, helping people right. So this is one way that that I know here's a company that we're really driving to do.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people, like in the spaces that we're obviously do multiple things with within the company, but even outside of it like, for instance, champions football and me being a high school football coach like, I think that people you see it all time people look to attach themselves to people, as opposed to edify, uplift, you know, invest in the people. You know, like, what do you get out of just having your name attached to someone when that person elevates, do you usually elevate? Sometimes you may, sometimes you may not, but why not help this person thrive by giving them game that you may know, or just guide them, because it's nothing more satisfying than that. Hey coach. Or I had a kid yesterday practice, you know, young kid had gloves on right I was with the 12 year olds, had gloves on and I'm setting up another drill.
Speaker 2:Here's a hey coach, can you, can you? Uh? I'm like what's up? He's like can you, uh, can you tie my shoe? I got my gloves on, perfect right now, but I don't. I don't want to take him off and tie my shoe. Those little things it's like. I don't want to go off too much into a tangent, but like the, that that's an impact. He trust me to be able to even put his ego aside and ask me to tie his shoe. As a 12 year old, right about to be 13 years old, it's like all right, you know that I think those relationships are the ones that we want to build so they can continue to take that type of energy and plant those seeds throughout the world.
Speaker 1:We've all and it gives us an opportunity to be the positive influence in these kids lives now. Because here's one thing I know I've got my son and my daughter. They I can tell them something and they'll look at me like I'm crazy, but then I could say hey, coach Ash, you tell them this, make all the same thing I told him, he tells him and he's the smartest guy in the world, right. So, especially to, as we help with these youth and we get to know their parents, we understand the lessons that they're trying to kind of instill in their kids and a lot of times when it comes from the coach and it comes from someone else, the kids take on to latch on to a little bit easier than a parent telling them. So you know, there's also that piece of it.
Speaker 2:But I had. It was plenty of my mom used to tell me I'm a yeah, yeah, yeah. My older brother said I'm like, oh, yeah, we got to get this done you know I like hey clean your room, yeah, okay, yeah, brother, hey clean your room, all right, yep, got you, got here spotless.
Speaker 1:It is a story of. I was at a. I go to a men's Bible study once a week here at my church and we were having a conversation and this guy was sitting in there and he starts talking about, you know, when he was a teenager he could not believe how smart his dad was. My dad didn't really know anything. I can believe it and he goes. You know, I go off to college and I come back and have a conversation with my dad and he goes. I was shocked and how much he learned in the four years I was gone.
Speaker 1:It's, it's kind of funny but we're kind of going off here but it's, it's either way we get. We, you know, for us as a company one of the big things are our care and giving thing is helping our youth, and we've got people in here at the company that believe the same thing. So it's amazing that we're all kind of you know makes it easier to when we know we're driving to grow these brands and these companies and everything we do. We're in the finance space, we're in the sports space, we're in the political space, like handful different kind of niches, but all of that really drives back because we're all so no, like, the more that we grow these, the more we can get back, you know, and provide to our community.
Speaker 2:So Definitely, I think I would love to have kids or people that have relations, people that I have relationships with be able to have the things that I desired as a kid. You know, and being able to just give back. It means everything.
Speaker 1:Well, that's your Rubble's update, it's the Marketing Rubble's update. Stay tuned, stay tuned, we'll have more for you. Now we move into behind the marketing, behind the marketing. So, as you know, what we do here is we build brands that people trust. We build brands that people trust and we do that through building newsletters. So we own a lot of different newsletters. I mentioned that. We own newsletters in financial, sports, political, regular news, not just political news. So we own a handful. We've got a business on common advice is actually we part of this podcast? We also have a newsletter that goes out and that's for CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs. So that goes out as well. So we've got to.
Speaker 1:We build these brands, we build these newsletters, and there's different ways to do it. So one question that we get a lot when we build these million-dollar newsletters is how do you make money? How do you make money and you don't charge upfront? I can subscribe for free. How do you make money? So that's really one way. So we have, and it all comes down to kind of how you want to grow the business. So we have free newsletters, which is what we actually enjoy doing and what we spend our time on, and then we have.
Speaker 1:You have paid newsletters, so paid newsletters One that you can go out there. There's a company called Trends and Trendsco, and Trendsco is a. They're going to deep dive into different trends and things that are going on in the market and give that to you and you pay for that on a monthly basis or an annual basis, however you want to. You choose to pay for it. You've got low ticket kind of paid newsletters, so a lot of newsletters, right? So? New York Times, daily Wire two different spectrums in regards to news and content that they put out, but they both are low ticket paid newsletters, right? So you could pay 10 bucks a month for them and they give you access to more content. So there's a lot of ways that you can do it.
Speaker 1:But let's move the focus over to free, right? So for us, we build free newsletters. So SportsBreadcom you can go, opt in and get free information on our sports culture updates that we send out. Financialmaverickcom you can go there, you can subscribe and you can get all of our financial updates that we send out for that brand, right, and we do that for free. But the way that we monetize them is we have a subscriber base that's growing consistently, so we bring in new subscribers, we grow those and then companies pay us in many different ways, right?
Speaker 1:So one of those ways is through sponsorships. They come to us and say hey, we want you to add our product to your newsletter. So we got to be cautious of when you do this. Is you don't want to make sure? You want to make sure that you're not sending incongruent stuff, right? Because we work hard to, so we work hard to build trust in a relationship with the audience. So you actually run SportsBread newsletters, so why don't you dive in Like you put a lot of energy into actually putting that free newsletter together. So talk about your process of putting that together and how you're working on building the trust in the relationship with the subscribers, because you got to. Then I'll come back and talk about the sponsorship side and how you can ruin that trust really quick if you don't do the right things.
Speaker 2:So I feel like there has been different processes on how I go about it. You know, still trying to find the nothing's going to be perfect, right, you're always going to have your hiccups, but I think what I've been doing was making sure I'm creating content that I would want to see, right. So when I think of not just me, I'm now creating a target audience. You know, so we already know. You have your bleacher reports. You have so many different things, the boardroom that just give you daily sports updates, right. When you get too stuck in that niche, right there, it's like okay, I just saw this on Instagram.
Speaker 2:I saw this on TV, I saw this here, saw this there, saw it on Twitter, and now I have an email. I'm not going to open this, I got it already, right? So I have to find something that is going to, one, be eye-catching. Two, something that they're not going to see just casually scrolling somewhere, right, something that's going to hold that reader. So what I do? I pretty much go into what I love, what I enjoy.
Speaker 2:You know sports, sports culture. So that entails sneakers, cleats, custom cleats, accessories. You know what these star athletes are wearing when they're off the court, off the field, wherever their field of play is. So, staying up to date with that. Why? Because that's an audience out there, right? So if I'm, if we're focusing on sports culture, why do I want to beat them over the head on something that they're gonna see everywhere else? Right, I want to. I want to massage that interest right there.
Speaker 2:So it's been a process. I'm learning every day as I do it. Right, I've made some mistakes you know Stupid mistakes where I'm like alright, I gotta go back to day one, make sure the checklist is there. Sometimes you just got to Be consistent as well, you know. So I think once you find that niche right there. It's okay, let's, let's stay with it, because I've watched it so far quadruple and in subscribers, so we'll take it. We're gonna keep growing, keep growing and keep growing.
Speaker 2:But, uh, I think that Building that audience Is something that we haven't done yet in our space yet. So it's fun doing it and picking out people that are like hey, and then so far we got no unsubscribers. The opens are going up, you know, the numbers are going up. So it's pretty dope, you know, and I think, just being in that space, we're already thinking about possible people that would want to Do sponsorship type business with us, because, okay, you guys are in this space, it's fitting right. We wouldn't expect to have home goods on something about a pair of Kobe's that are about to drop right. So I think, just having that idea in our head of what the, what the target is and what should go where, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and some of the sponsorship stuff will work and some of it won't. But the key is we just want to be, because if you come in and and let's say, you, you promote something that's completely off-paced, right, so maybe you you come in and you I'm not gonna go there with this one, but there's some crazy stuff you can promote. But if it's, if you're constantly sending in two things, if you're constantly sending incongru and offers, so one thing to find out, we're building around sports culture for this brand specifically. Right, we didn't really, when it's kind of reader, which you said, we don't want to be another sports news channel. We wanted to be a sports culture Newsletter, not a sports news newsletter, right, and so, yeah, you're gonna, we're gonna have some news in there, right, because that's part of the culture. But it's not our lead, it's not our core focus. Our core focus is the shoes, the fashion Accessories, the gear. Right now there's those.
Speaker 1:What'll happen is those companies. So, for example, battle happens To be a brand that sells Gloves and accessories for football players. We're going into football season. Potentially they're gonna want to, they. They could ultimately be an advertiser for us, pay us to sponsors, but their product in our newsletter in front of the people that we've got right. So that's just one example. So you just want to make sure on sponsorships, because now if we set put something in there, go back to the home goods, you know.
Speaker 1:Or let's say, we got sports culture, we stick in. You know a vape pen, you know Some sort of vape product right, like that's probably not going to match the audience that we've got there right, so maybe that ruins that relationship. They're like, why are they promoting this? Right? And so, one, it can hurt the relationship with the customer. But two, these companies are investing money with us so they want to see a return on that investment.
Speaker 1:And so if we do a bad job at picking the products and sponsorships that we promote and that we put into our newsletter, then what's gonna end up happening is it's gonna we're gonna have to send more emails with that same product. So if it's not congruent, the customer, the subscriber, doesn't like it and the buyer, the advertiser, doesn't get the performance. We've now got two unhappy people right, and that's how the business makes money. So you just gotta be very cautious of that and make sure you're promoting the right things. And we've had conversations going in like one thing that we know will actually do well to this audience will be the DraftKings type promotions, right? So? And for us, that's not a they pay us kind of thing, that's more of hey, we'll pay you $250 for every signup that we get. So that's a monetization channel for us. As a free newsletter, we have the ability to monetize in multiple ways, versus only having that one option.
Speaker 2:In regards to paid, yeah, I feel like you never wanna get caught up relying on one thing. You see it all the time. Shout out to the people that are fortunate to be able to rely on one thing and it's been able to keep them afloat or thriving. But everybody's not that fortunate to be able to have that. So to being in this space, like you said, being congruent, you know, one hand watch the other, both watch the face type of thing, being able to have that wiggle room, to be like, okay, we can make this much here, this much there, and keep building at the same time without sacrificing relationships. You know, because when you do like you said, when you start to bend these relationships and mess these up, it costs money to fix it. Right, we speak on free newsletters, right, but on our end it costs money to fix these things sometimes. So try to avoid that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a bonus on free newsletters versus paid. So another reason is free newsletters. We know what content we're creating every day. Once you get into the paid newsletters, depending on the type of content that has to be created, you might have to have more writers on staff, more content creators, more deliver, more information and more value, because you're charging for that, right. So there is a difference there. And then for us, when you're also, if you're a paid newsletter, on the marketing side of it, you're constantly split testing what landers are working, what's monetizing, what's my ROI on this on day one, day 30, day six, day 90, right. So you're dealing with a lot of different. It adds a whole different dynamic to the business. That requires a marketing team to do that, to manage those pieces. So when we have a free newsletter, we're working with companies that have those teams. So when they buy ad space from us, we're not worried about the optimization side of it. We're working with people that have the team to do that.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of it's a whole different animal when you're running paid yourself, because there's a whole landing pages, split testing, paid ads, ROI, all that stuff you start looking into.
Speaker 2:so yeah, everything's gotta be on point. It's like that, that Kobe saying it's one of my favorite commercials. It's so random. It's like same beast, different animal. And everybody's like Kobe. What the hell does that mean? But that's the first thought I want to say yeah.
Speaker 1:So all right, man. So there you go. That is behind the marketing. A little bit about what we're doing with some of our stuff, but also free versus paid newsletters, right, and kind of how you can leverage that inside your business. We do have a group called Million Dollar Newsletters on Facebook. If you want more information on newsletters, I'm constantly dropping some information over there for you. You can check it out. It is a free group and then. So we're gonna talk about. Now get to the notes.
Speaker 1:I'm excited about the uncommented advice we got today. So it's, I used to, and this is super important. We're gonna talk about stories internally for both of us on this one. But and that a big realization so I used to do things to prove people wrong and now what I do is I'm doing things to prove myself right. There's a big difference between the two and, frankly, for me, the motivation becomes greater when I'm proving myself right than when I'm trying to prove someone wrong. So let's talk about that. Tell me about a story where you focused more on proving people wrong as opposed to proving yourself right.
Speaker 2:So before I even get into my specific story, if you think about trying to prove somebody wrong, like, yeah, it can be beneficial to a way, but in a sense it's negative energy. Right, and Negative energy can be exhausting. Think about how long holding a grudge that crap is exhausting man. And then you get to a point where you're like now you're mad at yourself for even feeling a certain way about something that someone may have did or said or whatever. But in this specific case I'll go back to my college experience, my entire college experience.
Speaker 2:I did not have the traditional route. So when you're 18, you graduate high school what most people think, hey, you got to go to college. I went. I had no idea what the hell I wanted to do. I had a slight idea At first. I wanted to be a marine biologist. Realize I'm terrified of water. So that was off the door quick. After that I went into. I wanted to be an athletic trainer, but at the same time I was trying to play football also. And I was told that you couldn't be an athletic trainer and play football at the same time. I'm like, all right, I'm scrapping that. So I go to exercise. Science was in the same room.
Speaker 2:I wasn't a good student. I was actually a horrible student. So first semester I had seven classes. I don't know how that happened, but I had seven classes, took a hit. Gpa was getting smacked up a little bit.
Speaker 2:My mom's asked me how's school going? It's going good. Second semester bombed it. Oh my god, I think I had a C minus and 3 Fs. How's school going? It's going all right. I'm on academic probation. She doesn't even know this at this point.
Speaker 2:Going to my sophomore year, I bombed it again and I'm losing all my money. You're less than yet. Nah, still bombing it, man, hey, still bombing it. And I'm losing all my financial aid, all that stuff. My mom's like what the hell happened this end of third? She's my mom, so she's still going to support me. She's pissed. We've got to figure it out. But right now that leash is very, very short. Long story short what do I do the next semester? I bomb it, foreshadow it, so I get kicked out of school.
Speaker 2:Back home, figuring it out, and I had a cousin. She said something to me, her experience. She went to college. For whatever reason she didn't finish. She said to me once you leave school, you never go back. And I'm the type of person, if you tell me I can't do something, I'm going to do it. So I go out and regular work, work, wrote a little bit in an event, but that what she said to me stuck. I'm like because I told her in that moment you're wrong, watch, I'm going to prove it. Just because you didn't finish, I'm going to do it. So I'm working, or whatever.
Speaker 2:I end up going back to school, but with two motives. One I was dating a girl who she motivated me to want more for myself. That didn't mean I had to go back to college. I was still thinking. This is like five years later. I'm still thinking seeing my cousin at church events and I'm like all right, watch, I get enrolled back in the school. I get everything appealed.
Speaker 2:So posting on Facebook still immature, I'm posting it within hopes. I didn't care who liked it, but I wanted to see if my cousin was going to comment. So I end up going back to school, paying for everything out of my pocket I had. I ended up putting myself in debt. I graduated right, but my first thought was, when I graduated, I told you Did me having that same thought, I told you that still left me with $52,000 worth of debt. It still left me with a bunch of stress, still left me with not having a job once I graduated, for me to even not be in the field that I got a degree in anymore.
Speaker 2:So I say all that to say I probably should have been proving myself that I can be successful, as opposed to I'm going to show you that I can finish, just because you said I wasn't going to finish.
Speaker 2:So after that, though, I kind of was like I don't care what anybody says, it's more so what I feel, what I think, and holding myself accountable If I feel like I had that split second of I don't think you can do it. You know those internal conversations you have. It's like nah, let's prove that you're the best, let's prove that you can make this happen. Let's prove that you can do this, because when you sit back and think about it, we've all made the impossible happen more than once without really even thinking about it, and I think we don't take enough time to sit back and be like holy crap, thank you God. That was crazy, but from now on, my mindset is more so. I, like I said, I don't really care what you say, I don't really care what you think, but it's more so. Hey, you think we can do this. Yeah, I think we can do this, or nah, I don't think we can do that. Let's stay away from that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and when you focus out of proving people wrong, what happens is sometimes you'll make decisions that are in your best interest right Because you just want to prove them wrong, and then, a lot of times when you're proving yourself right, you might at least in my case, I'm making better decisions because I have my.
Speaker 1:The result is I'm driving for it for me right, for what I'm trying to do, and I used to be this way in a business, right. So I've done a lot. Growing up as a kid, I've proved people wrong. Growing in that in business it actually worked against me because I would sit there and I focused so much on trying to build something to prove people wrong that when tough sometimes I've launched companies and I've gone with the attitude of I'm gonna prove you wrong, I'm gonna get this build because you said I couldn't do it and I've done it but it was never as big or as good as it could possibly be because I wasn't focused on, I wasn't focusing on building something that would be last long-term. I was building on. I was focused on getting something done and getting the win and ha, I won. Right, as opposed to hey, we're building something bigger. Now I think my where my attitude has shifted.
Speaker 1:So I had a. I was sitting in a mastermind group back in 2000, I wanna say 10 it was and I had this. I was sitting there discussing my project that I was working on. It was called real estate money matrix. It was a lending tree for real estate investors. It was gonna be the next big thing. And I had this real like boisterous guy in the mastermind group. It was his first time there, I didn't know the heck he was, but he's like when you get in these mastermind groups with a bunch of alpha sometime, you know like they everyone's got a peacock and and raise their voice a little bit, you know, to prove that they're King Dingaling in the room. So this guy was doing that and and I, and he starts telling me well, you can't do this, you can't do that, you're not gonna be able to do this, you're gonna be and you're gonna be out of the business in a year, blah, blah. Fine, look down, I go. Who are you? He didn't like that question, right, cause everybody knows this guy and so at least that was his attitude. And so, and what I ended up doing to prove him wrong is I went and I built the business, I launched it anyways. We did over a million dollars sale, a million dollars in sales inside of two months, and then we ended up selling the company for a million bucks. Now that's a win in turn when you look at that on the front end, right yeah, and. But at the same time, by so focused, I proved him wrong. I also was so fat, trying to do it so fast, that I sold it. I built it, we made money, I sold it and then I wasn't focused on.
Speaker 1:If it was for me like trying to prove myself, like with building these newsletters, it was like I'm not building these to prove someone wrong, I'm building these newsletter to prove myself right, that this is the business model that we're going to crush and grow. And our focus now is building these newsletters and creating an environment that we can ultimately exit one day. And so I'm building long-term right. So when I was building to prove someone wrong, it was all short-term minded get the win, prove them wrong and move on.
Speaker 1:Now I'm more towards like, how do we build something bigger? How do we build something that's of massive value long-term that we can potentially exit? And if we don't exit, it's because we love it and we're enjoying it and we're just growing and growing and growing right. So, and then looking at it going all right, great, we've got these businesses that we're building, and how do we now take that to have a bigger impact inside a community? So for me, the mindset shift from going proving people wrong to prove myself right came down to proving people wrong. I was only focused on me and winning. Now that I'm trying to prove myself right, my focus comes on how do we grow, become bigger and create impact.
Speaker 2:Does that make sense? It makes sense because it's very similar to, like where I was. It was like a lot of, and then what. You know, like I got to that point and then what though you know, I wasn't thinking long-term, I got the degree, you made the business, and then what? So I think that we don't. We never want to put blinders on ourselves and make things so short-sighted, because it's just that. And then what? Situation can be good in certain scenarios, but like when you don't, when you're not thinking clearly or thinking things through, you're not realizing that the damage that you could possibly be doing to yourself in any way, shape or form. It's like being in a relationship right, you and your woman are arguing, and then sometimes you find yourself arguing just to be right.
Speaker 1:Racing to the bottom. I call that racing to the bottom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like, okay, say I win this argument, and then what is confetti gonna fall? No, now there's a weird tension in the room. You know, we got to figure out. We're gonna have to revisit this conversation just to make sure everything's smooth before there's a waste of time. Now it's like is this conversation, is this situation, is this beneficial, right? So I think that how you look at things and is it for you, you know, like why am I doing this? You know, everybody talks about their, why it doesn't always have to be grand scheme, but, like in that moment, why am I doing this? Why am I disputing this? Why am I pursuing this? You know, I think we need to stop and think a little bit. You know, sometimes stuff isn't even worth it. Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So right there you know, if you're operating right now or you're building and you're focused on something or ask yourself am I trying to do this, am I doing this to prove somebody wrong or am I doing this to prove myself right? And I think if you make that mindset shift over to proving yourself right, you're gonna find yourself in the business, building the things that you love, enjoy and wanna do.
Speaker 2:So I think, at the end of the day, that's all we really want. Do what you wanna do, you know.
Speaker 1:I'm trying. Yeah, there we go. So that is the end of Uncommon Advice today. Hope you enjoyed it. Do us a favor, bro code, do give us a like. Shoot on over to YouTube Like our channel. Go ahead and set Nate Kennedy MD how my channel over there. Subscribe to the podcast to get the recent updates. So absolutely, man. Thank you so much. See you guys later.
Speaker 2:Hope you enjoyed it.