Evan Carmichael Radio Show - Episode #22

Hello and welcome to the Evan Carmichael Show. I believe in entrepreneurs and this show is all about helping you make your business a success. It's about helping you get past that point where, you know, you might have been doing this for a while and you may be losing motivation and you're not seeing the growth anymore. You're not feeling the momentum anymore. This show is all for you. Now I also want to welcome a new producer to the show. Daniela is with us today. And hopefully we're going to have a lot of fun. So what I want to talk about today is telling your story and how important it is to help you stand out from everybody else. Okay, let's, let's get into it. Tell your story. This is one of the biggest things that can really help grow your business that a lot of entrepreneurs, they overlook. You have to remember that people want to buy from people They don't want to buy from companies. And yet, nobody really does a great job of telling their story. So few entrepreneurs do a great job of telling their story, saying why they started, why this is important to them. Because if you want me to buy from you, then I have to feel connected to you. If I feel connected to you, if I feel like I can trust you, like I feel like you are passionate about what you are doing, I feel like you are going to do good by me, I'm going to buy your product. I'm going to buy your service. But it starts with telling your story. Look at Oprah Winfrey. Oprah Winfrey, people love her. She is a multi-billionaire. People love Oprah because she tells her story so well. She is so deeply connected to everybody she is interviewing, and she is vulnerable. She is saying what she thinks. She is saying what she feels. And when she wants to cry, she cries. Right? And so that personal storytelling and me going on that journey with her, and you as an audience going on that journey with her, makes it so easy to connect with her and then buy stuff. Right? Her book club, right? She recommended a book and it immediately takes off. So I want you to figure out what your story is, because this is what is going to help you stand out against your competition, especially if you are going up against big guys, because big companies do such a terrible job of telling their personal story They are such a corporate entity. And we hate buying from the big guys, right? You look at any big company, look at their Twitter handle, they are being slammed all the time. Nobody likes buying from the big guys, but you need to do your job to stand out. So let me tell you quickly about my story, how I got into helping entrepreneurs. When I sold my business, I had a biotech software company, built it up and sold it. I was 22 years old. I didn't know what to do next. I was kind of sad. I was happy I sold my business, but also sad that this thing was now gone. I didn't know what to do next with my life. And I was invited by the YMCA to come and speak to their young group of entrepreneurs. And I thought, "Hey, great opportunity to give back. Why not?" And I spent all this time preparing my slides. I wanted to dump all of my knowledge on them, provide tons of value for them. They promoted to their audience, I promoted to my audience. It was a free event. We booked this huge room full of chairs, all excited to go. And the day comes and my heart's beating fast. It's my first time really doing speaking. My hands are a little sweaty. I get in the elevator and take a deep breath before going into the room. Like, this is it, all that work, here we go. And my heart stopped for a couple seconds because after all that work, Only 3 people showed up. I was like, wow, 3 people showed up. It was a free event and only 3 people showed up. But the show must go on and I put it on and I really helped those 3 people and it was awesome. And I said, you know what, I love this so much I have to keep doing it even if I don't know how I'm going to make money yet, I got to find a way to keep doing this. And that was 12 years ago and I kept going on helping entrepreneurs and I found my passion. And I want to know what drives you, what you are so excited about. What your story is, make them connect to you, so then they'll buy whatever product or service you have. I want to get to the calls. I have Todd on the line. Todd, where are you from and how can I help?

Uh, thanks for taking the call. I'm actually from Chicago, but I'm in the process of, uh, the next year here moving back out to Portland, Oregon to start taking care of some family. Um, but I run a business called The DIY Pro, uh, and my passion is, uh, is bridging the gap with homeowners construction and contractors. And part of the business is actually working with homeowners who want to do some of the work themselves and actually teaching them how to do it. So if you wanted to tile your bathroom floor and weren't really sure, you maybe went to one of those Home Depot classes on Saturday morning but still realize, eh, maybe this is a little bit too much for me, I'll spend time teaching you and then when you got the hang of it, I just let you go.

Do you go onsite and actually meet them in their home, or this is done online?

Yeah, this is one-on-one.

Okay, we lost Todd. So I didn't really get to fully understand what Todd's story was all about. We were losing a connection there. But Todd, if you are still on the line, I love this business model. I'm trying to figure out how you scale this up. If you are going in and visiting people in their houses and you are helping them tile their bathroom or whatever it is, how do you scale that up so that that one hour that you come and show them Is it going to be worthwhile? How do you build that name brand? But I think it's a huge— there's a huge need for it, right? The reason why Home Depot took off was because people wanted to learn how to do things themselves, right? That was the whole point of when the Home Depot founders started it was they wanted to have a place where people could feel like they could do this work themselves, not have to go and always hire a friend's contractor or plumber or whoever it is that's coming. And so you're taking it up a level. You know, you might be saying, "Hey, those home people workshops, they're not good enough. We need somebody to come into our location and help me and teach me and show me the rules of how to make it work." But again, my concern here is how do you scale this up? You know, how do you scale up to the point where you're being paid for your time to come in, the travel time, and you're not spending a lot of time with them, right? You may not spend the whole day there. Show me how to tile a bathroom in, you know, an hour or 2 hours and then, you know, I don't need your help anymore. How does that, you know, how do you get paid for that enough so you can scale this beyond yourself? You know, this might be a good one-man show, but ideally you want to build the business to the point where you can get out of this, right? You are not having to do everything where you're going in and meeting people. Ideally, as an entrepreneur, you can step out and be the CEO and have contractors working under you going out and doing these things. So that's my biggest question. How do you make that business model work? I guess especially moving into— moving to a new city in Oregon, how do you get that to work as well? You might look at an online model too. You mentioned that that's where you didn't want to go, but you might look at an online model as well. I think we have Todd back on the line. You there, Todd?

Yes, I am. Thanks. Sorry, I'm not in the best spot here right now. I'm with a client. But anyway, yes, so I work with customers to kind of help them to— whether they want to do it themselves. I also do commercial— they would call it a third-party owner representative— and just to help make sure contractors are doing the right job. So, so that's kind of what I do. But the struggle is always in the residential market is finding the best marketing strategy.

Now, are you actually going in and meeting people in their houses and you charge a service for that time? Like, you mainly going for an hour, that's what you charge, the hourly fee?

Yeah, you know, on a larger project, what we'll do is a full bid as if it was every other contractor, and then I put in an hourly, you know, what I think it's going to take me as far as time, and I just bill by an hour. And the more they do the work, the less I am on the job, and I pay credit back to them.

So how do you scale this up? That's my biggest concern, is scaling this so you can afford to hire people under you so that you're not having to go into—

Yeah, well, one of the things I've been looking at when I started to do my business plan, I was recognizing that the demographics for my employees are going to be middle-aged tradesmen experienced. And, you know, the bigger picture for me was to prove the model and maybe consider franchising it. But in the meantime, what I'm doing is—

I think we lost Todd again. Todd, you are driving in and out of some crazy reception zones, so try to get on a landline to give us a call back in. Welcome back to the Evan Carmichael Show. I believe in entrepreneurs. I want to see you have massive success with your company. And today we're talking about telling your story and how important it is to make a connection with your audience so that they will trust you, like you, and want to buy from you. The first step in that is having a picture, okay? Have a picture of yourself, a smiling picture of yourself in a professional outfit or something that relates to your work. Because people want to see the person they're buying from. It's really simple, okay? You don't have to start up with anything crazy. A simple picture of you smiling, okay? The first picture that I had of me— you don't have to worry about being professional. You don't have to worry about, you know, you looking— if you think you're ugly or whatever, don't worry about it. It doesn't have to be super high quality, right? But the first picture I used was one that a friend of mine took that was on a cruise ship. Having dinner, and, you know, I had my suit on and I had a big smile on, and I used that for 5 years in my business, and it was, it was helpful. People saw it, they saw the smile, and they connected with me. So I want to see a picture on your website. It needs to be on your marketing materials, your business card, because people will look at pictures. That's how you want to start, okay? Storytelling is crucial. People connect with people, and it starts with your picture on all your marketing materials. Okay, I want to get to the calls. I have Clara on the line. Clara, where are you from? How can I help?

Hi, I'm from Vancouver.

Hey, fellow Canadian!

I know, yeah, figured keep it, you know, keep it in the homeland.

Loving it. What's going on? How can I help?

Well, let's just— let me give you a little Cliff Notes version just so you understand my backstory. So I'm 26, I'm female, I'm incredibly driven, I'm very savvy, I'm smart, and I'm not delusional. I'm actually stable repeating facts that I believe are pretty true. But I'm also what you would describe, I heard on one of your other shows, as the wannabe entrepreneur currently that's working in a corporate job or whatever, hating my life. But the difference between that is I absolutely know for sure that I'm not going to be staying in that realm. There is no way, and I don't want anybody telling me when I can and can't eat my lunch. That's just not really my jam. It's absolutely out of the question. I'll stay in that. But the other thing which is putting major brakes on my progress, I guess, is that I'm incredibly over-analytical. And as they say, you know, fools are always going for it and the intelligent people are full of doubt. I mean, somewhat relate to that, but at the same time, not so much because I'm surrounded by so many successful people who are risk takers and such. And my parents have this mentality of, you know, European immigrants work hard, but don't take risks to undermine your security.

Right.

And that has put brakes on my, you know, natural enterprising personality. And so it's causing me to overanalyze myself out of every single idea that I have to the point of nonsense. And I know that I am aware of this. So my question to you is, I've been getting a lot of sensationalized advice, I would say, from a lot— from successful people, which is Basically, some of them will tell me, "Quit your job. Just literally go today, quit your job right now." That's what they tell me, okay? And while that sounds fantastic, and I absolutely have the balls to do that, at the same time, I'm having a hard time merging that with reality because I'm wondering, am I shooting myself in the foot by having bills pile up? And then what happens if you don't have something concrete to go on? Because I don't yet. So, you know—

I wouldn't say quit your job, okay? Don't quit your job yet. Okay, this is important because momentum and sustained momentum is really important. Because if you quit your job and, you know, you have 3 months of money to live off of, you know, what happens when you run out of that money in 3 months? If you go back and get another job, where it's better to spend time every day to build your business and grow it, because it may take 6 months to get this thing off the ground. And so it allows you to spend more time and you have some income coming in. What I would say is if you're looking for a job, the reason to have a job isn't just money. The reason to have a job is to teach you something. And so what I would look at is whatever business you want to get in, go find a company that has, you know, 10 employees that is doing what you want to do, that this is the company that you want to be in a couple years, and go work for them because they're going to teach you how to run that kind of business. They're going to teach you You're going to make money. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to make contacts. It's like going to university for what you want to do but being paid to do it. So instead of being stuck in some dead-end job that you don't like and you're not being treated well and, you know, you're being told when to eat your lunch and all that, now you're doing something that you're learning from. You're making contacts. So when you start your company, you are going to hit the ground running. At the same time, I still start on the side. And don't think so much about it and have it to be perfect because whatever plan you come up with, it's going to change. That's the nature of a business plan. You have a perfect business plan and as soon as you start running your business, it will change. So just start. Start something. Start small. Start talking to customers. Don't invest a lot of money into it, but put some time and see what feels right until you find what you're really passionate about. Then start on— you can try a couple different things and see where your heart is leading you, see where your energy is focusing you. So that would be my advice, is if you're going to do a job, find one that is in the industry you want to be into so you can learn, and then start now. Start on the side and spend 20, 30, 60 minutes a day trying to build your business.

I like that.

Yeah, so it does— that's much more realistic than some of the Because your advice is also real, like, a little bit more applicable to today's world where some people that I know have started their businesses, you know, back in the day where it was totally different as far as the landscape. They were— it was a little bit more informal, but this makes a lot more sense.

You know, quitting your job and going all in to start a business can absolutely work.

It can work.

It just dramatically increases the risk of failure. Because if you don't make it work, then you got to go back and get a job, and you might think, "Wow, if I had just a little bit more time to make that work, if I didn't run out of money, I could have really made that work," and you maybe live the rest of your life in regret saying, "Man, I wish I really had a chance to give that a shot." Okay, I'm so glad you're telling me this because it's in line with what I was—

exactly what I was thinking, but from the standpoint of other entrepreneurs, they see this as me being hesitant, and I said, "Well, I think I'm being a little bit smart." smart because I'm trying to not be— sound really cool on paper but then, you know, having nothing to show for it.

But so always listen to what feels right for you. That's going to be the best answer. But at the same time, make sure that you are still taking steps. So when I said start part-time, you actually have to go and do something part-time, right? You're spending 20, 30, 60 minutes a day on your business, and you might be jumping from one idea to the next. That's okay. That happens in startups. but you have to actually do something every day to get this thing off the ground.

Yeah, 100%. Can't be stagnant in all talks. Absolutely agree.

Thanks for calling in, guys. Good luck.

Thank you so much. Bye.

And for everybody listening, if you're in that same position, you want to be an entrepreneur, you know one day you want to start a company, but you haven't done it yet, you don't have to go and quit your job. Just make sure the job that you're at, you're learning something from, you're gaining connections, you're gaining experience. So that when you do go and start and you eventually leave your job, you have this wealth of knowledge to build off of. And then start part-time. Do something part-time every day to help you grow your business. Hello and welcome back to the Evan Carmichael Show. I believe in entrepreneurs, and today we're talking about how to share your story in a way people can connect with you, because people buy from people and not some company. So now I want to get into specifics. I want to talk about specific things that you should be sharing. If I go to the About page of your website, here are some of the things I'm going to see. Look at your About page right now. It's probably pretty boring. Most companies' websites on the About page is super boring. I want to feel connected to you, so you got to think about some of the things that are going to stand out, right? You should read your About page and feel something. If you don't feel anything besides, you know, this is boring, then you have to keep going. You got to tweak it up. You got to add some changes. Here are some of the things I want you to think about. Think about what your one word is. So this is a whole other discussion, but I believe every entrepreneur has one word that defines them. I want you to write down on that page what it is and what it means to you. Tell me why you started this business. There should be some passion behind it. This isn't just to make a lot of money. You're starting this business because you want to help people. Why? Tell me the story behind it. Tell me about what your fears were when you started. What were you scared to do? Tell me how you transitioned from your job into creating this business. Tell me how you found your first customer. Tell me who the founders are. Is it just you? Do you have partners? Tell me how you made your first big break. Who was that first big deal that you closed that you said, "Wow, this is impressive for us." Tell me about milestones you've reached, awards you've won, and the meetings you've been in. Tell me the goals that you have for yourself, the vision for where you want to take your business. Again, it can't be in a boring way, because you look at most About pages and you see, "Our mission is to be the world's leading provider of telecommunications services." That's boring. It has to mean something. It has to be something that you are proud that you've created this, and when you read it, you start to get emotional. Because if you get emotional with it, then your customers are. I want to feel your passion. Passion, because I don't want to hire just some guy who's going to come cut my grass or come and do my tiling or provide me telecom services. I want to work with somebody who I feel is really passionate about what they do. This is your advantage as an entrepreneur. You started this business for a reason, for a passionate reason, to help people. And if you're not sharing that story, then you're going to lose clients because you would rather work with people who love what they do and that shines through. So tell me those bits. I also want to share some personal stuff, not deeply personal stuff, but a little bit. Are you married? Do you have kids? Where did you go to school? What are your favorite hobbies? You know, what are your favorite food or music or TV shows or movies or sports? What are some of your fears? I'm afraid of heights. I love the Toronto Blue Jays. I love salsa dancing and DJing. And you may be thinking, wow, Evan, this is really This isn't really relevant to my business, but it is. It is because I get so many people who come up to me at events or email me and they feel like they know me because I share so much information on my show and on my YouTube videos and in my newsletter. And when people feel like they know you, then they're much more loyal to you. They're much more likely to buy your stuff. They're much more likely to tell their friends about you. So you have to make it personal. You have to share these things. Okay, make it exciting, make it passionate, make it emotional. You get that going, you're going to convert a lot more sales. Okay, I want to get to the calls. I have Lori on the line. Lori, where are you from and how can I help?

Hi, I'm in New York City. So I'm listening to everything you're saying. I have so many different kinds of About Me pages all over the place, and I keep reinventing myself. Um, I actually took a course. I, I went back to school because I, I have writing, a lot of writing experience, but I wanted to get more internet skills, marketing. So I went back to NYU and got a certificate in digital marketing. And so I've done a lot of different things. I wrote a book about how to start a subscription box company, and I've gotten a lot of clients from my book. So, but a lot of those people who are just starting really didn't have much money. So I've had like some consulting, but not enough. So now I'm wanting to expand it into general marketing business, um, writing and, you know, getting bigger clients.

So you want to figure out how you can be a marketing consultant?

Yeah, I got a website, nybrandstrategist.com, and, um, that's where I'm trying to do it from. Um, I, I have like another website, blogmytv.com, and I write about TV. I do celebrity interviews. I'm going on America's Got Talent and doing the red carpet. But I do, I do a lot of promotion for other people for like writing articles and You know, but I don't make money at that stuff, right?

Well, why not?

Why not? I, I don't know. I mean, I haven't— I've been looking for a job. I try to, you know, get a job at like— I mean, if I could get a job at like People or, you know, Variety or something like that, that would be great. But I was in LA, I moved back to New York. I mean, I'm just trying to do something where I can make money. I know a lot about a lot of different things. I know content marketing and, you know, brand strategy and digital marketing and mobile marketing. But mostly I tell people I'm a writer, but I also can up their rank, Google ranking, and I know SEO.

So—

So, you're kind of— listening to you, you're kind of all over the place, right? SEO and content marketing and branding. And so you either create an agency where you do this and you're a one-stop marketing shop, or you specialize in one thing and become the best in the world at that, and people know you as, "Hey, you want to get this done, you got to call Lori from New York City." If you love getting publicity for people and you do a great job of that and you do that day in, day out, no problem, You're getting results for people, you could charge for that, right? There are PR agents and that's what their role is, is to get publicity for their clients. I think it's more figuring out what are these things you love doing the most and then focusing on a specific target market. Like, of all those things, what do you, what are you most passionate about?

I'm most passionate I mean, I do get a lot of publicity for people. I started the TV site, um, because BlogMyTV, because I got tired of people telling me to throw out my TV. I'd go to see like Gary Vaynerchuk speak and, you know, he'd be like, throw out your television, you're wasting your time. And I was like the one person who likes my TV better than my computer.

So you're passionate about that? Like, so you've had some success? That was not what you're passionate about? Okay. So getting publicity for people. So why not create a business around that?

I'm usually the one on the other side of it. I don't know how to start. Like, I have done publicity for people in the subscription box arena, and I'm mostly the one who's writing about other people. I don't know how to get the clients, I guess. That's, that's the thing. I don't know how to get paid clients. I know how to write. I'm right-brained, but I don't know how to like ask for money or get people to pay me more.

Right. Well, first you have to create a package, right? So what, what do I get if I— so usually in the PR business, right, you're— is a monthly retainer. So I'm paying you $1,000, $2,000, $5,000 a month, whatever it is, to, to go out and promote me. So what do I get for my $5,000 a month? What are you going to do for me? Right? So you can write articles, you can try to line up interviews, you can interview me on your own media, so your own websites and all that stuff. But it's putting together an attractive package for me that I can say, yeah, I'm an up-and-coming celebrity, I'm a musician, I want to get out there, or I'm a speaker, and I'm, you know, you look at the various speaker Speaker Houses, you can look at any of those guys and say, "Hey, I want to help promote you to get more business, but you've got to give me a package." And you can combine all the stuff that you've been doing and say, "We're going to help you with your SEO, and we're going to help you get in the media, and we're going to write our own content about you. You're going to be on our own media properties, and I'm going to work to get you in other media and other interviews. I'm going to work to get you TV show deals." Whatever it is that you are going to work at, whatever you're good at, whatever you love doing, and put that into a package and say, "This is going to cost you $2,000 a month, $5,000 a month," whatever it is. So, that has to be clear. You make that clear, then it's easier for me to sign up. Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes sense. That is, I mean, a package is what people told me when I was doing the subscription box, you know, consulting, and people ask what I charge and I end up doing like everything, writing and fixing their website and everything.

It's got to be great for clear when I visit your site. We've got to go to the commercial break. But if you want to email me when you create your package, I'll be happy to check it out and give you some feedback. Okay, Laurie.

Okay, appreciate it. Thanks.

Hello and welcome back to the Evan Carmichael Show. I believe in entrepreneurs, and this show is all about making you a success. Today we're talking about telling your story, about making a personal connection to people. If people feel like you are passionate about what you're doing and they understand why you got into this business, they're much more likely to buy from you, to want to do business with you, to want to refer people on to you. Now one of the biggest things that I get back from people when I start saying this is, you know, Evan, this isn't about me. It's not about myself. I don't have this huge ego. I don't need to be in the spotlight. It's about the customers. It's about providing them with great service. It's about offering a great product to them. And it's true. And it's not about an ego play for you. It's not about building up and saying how great of a person you are, okay, because people can see through that. If you're this big egomaniac and that's what you're just sharing all over the place, look at me, look how great I am, people can see through that and you're not going to connect with people. The key is the approach. If you're humble, if you're honest, if you're passionate, then that's the story that you want to share. I want to know why you're so excited about this business, what it means to you, because if I can feel what it means to you, why is it so important to you, then I'm much more likely to pick you over everybody else. So here's a story from when I was first starting out. I had a software company and I was in university and 19 years old. And growing up I just wanted to be a banker. You look at my high school yearbook, it's, "I want to be a banker. In 10 years I'm going to be a VP at a bank." And I got to university and I met up with 2 friends and they had started this business in software and they needed help. They had a great product but they didn't They didn't know how to sell it. And I didn't know anything about science. I didn't know anything about computers. And I joined to be the COO, and I was out there developing partnerships and getting media and trying to build this thing up. And it was really hard. I was making $300 a month from this. $300 a month. I was eating beans every day for lunch. Because I couldn't afford anything else. If we made any kind of sale, when we went to celebrate, we would go to McDonald's and get french fries. That was our celebration. So when you talk about how hard it is to run a business, I get that. I was there. And telling your story like this is an easy way for people to connect with you. My break came when, you know, I was graduating university and I had opportunities to work at McKinsey Consulting and Merrill Lynch, and only a couple years ago that would have been my ideal job. You know, like, wow, I can't— here it is. I want to be a banker. Here's my chance. $80,000 to $100,000 starting salary, traveling around the world. They flew me to New York and put me up in the Waldorf Astoria to go through the process. And something inside of me felt like, you know, I want to give I want to give my business a try. I want to, you know, it didn't make any sense. $80,000 to $100,000 starting salary and that or do my business where I was making $300 a month. How does that make any sense? It didn't. You know, my friends thought I was crazy. They would have killed for those jobs that I was going, that I got opportunities for. And you know what? I didn't want to live my life in regret. I thought, you know what, those jobs will always be there. I could take a year off instead of traveling like some of my friends were. I'll take a year and put it into my business because I don't want to look back when I'm 70, look back on my life and regret that I didn't take that shot. And so I stuck with my business. And the turning point came when I realized, you know, I was trying to come up with everything myself. And I realized, you know, I'm not the first guy to try to sell software before. And I looked at Microsoft and looked at how they closed their deals, how they went from $0 to $1 million. You know, how they make an extra million dollars now is not interesting for me, but $0 to $1 million, how did they do that? That's what I want to do. And they did it through partnerships. And after struggling and after telling my partner that I quit and crying and feeling so low on my self-worth, feeling like I should be able to get way better results than I'm getting. I'm a smart person. I'm working hard. I'm not slacking off. I'm not trying to rip people off. I'm not seeing results. What do I have to do to get results? And by looking at Microsoft and modeling their success, I closed my first partnership deal with a distribution agreement for $13,500. Now that may not seem like a lot of money to you, but to me that was huge. I'm making $300 a month. Here's a $13,500 deal. That was awesome. I was on top of the world. I went out and celebrated with more than just french fries. And then went and did it again and again and again and landed big deals with Johnson Johnson and NASA and got us into media. And within a couple years had sold the business. We got so much attention that we got acquired. And my two business partners moved to California with the deal and I stayed here and then started my new business. So that's how I got started. Those are some of my fears. I was worried that it wasn't going to work out. And I trusted in my gut that I didn't want to live with regret for the rest of my life. And it's funny that now some of my friends come back and they took those banking jobs and they say, "Evan, can we meet up for coffee?" And we go out and they're like, "Evan, I hate my job. I'm thinking of starting my own business." "How do I start?" And of course, I'm happy to help them, but it makes me feel like, "Wow, I'm so glad I did that decision instead of taking that job." So you have to tell your story. You know, when I get up in front of a room of entrepreneurs and I share that story, it makes them connect to me better because I'm not just this, you know, huge successful entrepreneur and, you know, what I think doesn't apply to you if you're just starting out. I was there. I was struggling. I was making $300 a month. I know what it's like. It wasn't that long ago. It sucks. And I cried and I told my partner I quit. And I was ready to go and get a job. But something kept me in it. And so all the advice that I share with you guys, that's where it comes from. And so I want you to learn to share your story. It makes it way more personal. It took me a decade to really learn the power of telling your story. I would be so much more further ahead if I started earlier. So I want that for you. Tell your story. Tell me why you started this. Make it important. Make it passionate. Make me connect to you, and I'm going to buy from you. I'm going to tell my friends about you. I'm going to be a loyal customer. I'm going to love you and keep coming back. That wraps up another show. I want to thank my producers. Daniela, awesome first show. Josh, as usual, you rock. I'm back in 2 weeks. In the meantime, keep believing, stay strong, and I will see you soon.