Revolutionizing Business: Exploring Remote Talent and AI with Chris Nolte

Do you want to know the secret to Success? Welcome to rulesforsuccess.com a platform that unites the accomplished and the ambitious. This is where successful entrepreneurs reveal their winning strategies, their profound wisdom and their practical guidance. Whether you are a pioneering entrepreneur, a determined business leader, or simply someone who craves success, RulesForSuccess.com is the podcast designed for you. We're here to arm you with the invaluable knowledge of individuals who have paved their own path to success. And now let's get into the show with dynamic host Joseph Varghese. All right, welcome friends. Joseph Varghese here. Welcome to rulesforsuccess.com I'm here with my good friend Chris Nolte. Chris and I have gotten to connect over the past several months. We share some common friends, people who have invited him into our community success circles. I lead him Successor is a peer coaching, peer mentoring community that we launched 20 years ago and this is our podcast component for success circles. Rulesforsuccess.com this podcast will be transcribed, summarized the mind map and it'll be pushed across different platforms. Rulesforsuccess.com Chris, how are you today, brother?

I'm great. I'm actually, I'm super excited because, you know, I win twice here. One we get to sort of tell our story, but also the success circles people that I haven't yet met might want to meet me now. Now it'll be a little easier to sort of get that meeting. I have to get set up next Monday. So it's a little self promotion for success circles here.

A lot of our members are extraordinary entrepreneurs and you are as well. And it's opportunities to kind of share your journey, your lessons or tips. But before that, I want to give our audience due diligence about who you are as a leader, your background in entrepreneurship and much more. So I have. It's open here. Chris Nolte, Founder of Kayana Virtual Assistants, the Topaz Group and partner in several real estate ventures. His career began in finance and strategy with each roan company building on the ladder to deepen his expertise in technology, real estate and business operations. As the founder of Kyana and a partner in innovative ventures, he's been a seasoned operator. His focus has been on harnessing modern tools like AI, workflow, automation and outsourcing to unlock potential for people and business alike. Chris is a master at outsourcing and it's fantastic. I've been outsourcing for 15 plus years and seeing the way you do it, particularly with your team in The Philippines. Building relationships has been extraordinary. And I'm sure that comes from your back, and we'll talk about that soon. That's Chris's background. He's somebody I look up to. I've learned quite a bit from him in knowing him, in being actually buddied with him, in successor, because we do this brain trust partnerships where people connect for two weeks at a time. I learned tremendously modeling him. In fact, we do a daily standup with my team, and that's been a complete, complete game changer for what we do. And Chris Hampshire, you've got a ton more ideas and strategies and things you've offered to your clients with Kyana.

Sure, yeah.

Chris, how did you get involved in the world of entrepreneurship? What brought you into that journey?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think my first bout with entrepreneurship was actually in fifth grade, and I created a candy distribution operation in school where I would actually never actually touch the product. I would just be taking orders and I had people running and distributing the candy and I was accepting money and I was doing really, really well until the principal of the school found out about it.

Wow, okay.

And I had to write a thousand times, I will not sell candy at school. And, you know, so it was always there. Yes, it was always there. And gosh, the principal was silly. They should have let me keep going. I, you know, but I, I've enjoyed business from a very young age. I mean, I remember I bought my first baseball mitt on investments I made in a mutual fund. I mean, it's. It goes way back. And if I was. When I was applying to business school, and this is the late 19, late 1990s, I went part time in my consulting role. I was starting a company and applying to business schools simultaneously. And that sort of hustle, I think it's just been there all along. Now I've struggled to find the opportunity to execute on it because a part of me was drawn to the rat race. Right?

Yes.

The sort of, you know, get the, go to the good school, get the good job, climb the corporate ladder.

Yes.

But something happened after graduating from business school that allowed me to have more flexibility, more control over my time. And that was working for the Marcus family and I ran their family office.

So was that in New York?

This is actually in Wisconsin. So. And it's what kept me in Wisconsin, truthfully, because the opportunity was so great. I, you know, and so instead of coming back after business school, because I was in New York and I moved to the Midwest to go to Kellogg, Northwestern I stayed and I stayed because I was working with a great family based out of Milwaukee. I was started as their sort of C level support person at their public company. And when we sold off a leg of that company, I follow the cash out of the public company and started their private investment firm. So I was employee number one of the private investment firm, two, depending on how you look at it, a non family family office executive at the ripe old age of 32. Wow.

Got it.

And so the first thing we did is we started a real estate services company. And it was something that, you know, I met a person at a, an event and it was actually a person who worked at Goodwill and the person at Goodwill said, I said, I love your store in Madison, Wisconsin. They're like, that's not our store. And that begat a conversation about that industry. And I created a company, a donation retail company. We were experts in donation retail. And so we started building buildings all around the country. And that was just one of many things that Marcus Investments, the company that I work with a family to start, did. And so in a way I found my way back to entrepreneurship. But I was doing it in a setting that was very forgiving because I wasn't, I was, I had equity in these companies but I didn't have all the equity, but I had a salary. So I managed the risk there. And I was starting a family so I was able to, you know, pay the bills and not feel the anxiety of the burn of building companies and developing operations and teams.

Were you married at this point or is this.

I was, I was. So I was married. I was married and you know, with young children and I actually, I have more children than I ever thought I would have. But when you move them in west, there's just more space. So I have four children and now these people are actually self. So self sufficient in a way. So I have a. Almost 20 year old, almost 17 year old, 15 year old and a 12 year old and they're very rambunctious and they sort of. There's a culture in and of itself now at our house. But in 2020, when Covid happened.

Yes.

You know, it causes one to think about the, the years or the years ahead. And I decided that I wanted to do what I thought I always wanted to do, which is go on my own and be an entrepreneur. And I used that opportunity to do it. So I spoke with the family. It's hard to when you're in a family office setting. This is known amongst non family executives of family offices. It's hard to leave because I was there for 17 years and you become very meshed in the business and the operations of these companies that you either started or built or. I mean, I hired everyone at all of these companies. Right. Every single person. So it's like, you know, you get really embedded from a family. From a family perspective and from a business perspective. Very much a family business.

Yes.

So that's, that was, that's a long winded way of telling you how I got to be on my own as an entrepreneur. But it was always there. Ever since the first candy sale. It was there. It's just. How do you find your way there?

Yes, I find it's very useful to have those references. Yeah, those references, those threads going back and even kind of reminding ourselves that, well, this is in there, it's my DNA and some people and being able to re. Tap into it. Whether you brought it into an organization. My parents were immigrants in this country and I. To do what they did. In a lot of ways I consider them entrepreneurs, even though they weren't. And it's like that's, it's useful to recognize that you have that DNA. It's kind of wired in you and across all the different ventures you have. I'm curious, with all the different hats you wear, finance, tech, real estate, you know, the, you know, mental health, like, what's the common thread that's guided your journey? What would you say?

I think, you know, if someone said this about me in the late 90s and I think it's kind of true, and that is I take old companies and make them new again. I take new, old ideas and make them new again. And so if you looked at any of the things that I was doing, it's not like I, you know, created, you know, a radioisotope or any of those sorts of things. Though I do actually own, have patents, which is sort of a weird. I'm an inventor technically, but I, I just reimagine old things in a new way. And I think part of that is just by, you know, kind of first principles thinking like, are things still the same? Can they be different? How can they be different? What needs to happen from them be different and then taking that leap of faith to go execute. So I think that's where my genius, quote unquote is. And that's what makes me different. Yeah, I think that would probably be it.

Fantastic. I love that we all. There's an idea called Zone of Genius. Dan Sullivan might have one who coined it many years ago. Before him this idea that we have strengths and things we're good at, we can bring forward into the operations, businesses, ventures we're involved with. And by staying in that zone as long as we can, like, we can kind of magnify that growth things and do some unique things, create more impact in the world. What brought Kayana to life? What problem were you solving when you started it?

Yeah, you know, I, I think this is one. So I think another gift of mine is when I see an opportunity, I don't wait. I run through the door like. And what I experienced with my first remote professional, and I don't like calling people VAs because I feel like it, not everyone's an assistant. I mean, I wouldn't, you know, I'm a remote professional. You're a remote professional. Everyone's a remote professional. We all are. Look, unless you're at your office right now, you're probably not and I am certainly not. And I think there's a lot of us like this, building companies from anywhere in the world. And so when I had my first experience with my first remote professional from the Philippines, I was blown away. Now, part of that's the sense of scarcity I think every entrepreneur has. When you're an entrepreneur, you have this sense of scarcity of time and resources and you have ideas bigger than the amount of time or resources you might otherwise have. But for me, that first person demonstrated what was possible, that talent is uniformly distributed and opportunity is not. I was able to hire a material scientist that would be, would never work with me. I mean, they would have had engineering things to do.

Yes.

As my executive assistant. And it was amazing.

And was this, was this executive assistant in the Philippines?

Absolutely, yes. You know how I got to that person was through an agency just a little bit like the one that we've created. Ours is a bit different now to solve the problems that I experience in that effort. But I realized that I, I little, I realized that I could have built everything I had built the last 15 years in a different way with this resource, with this, with this way of thinking. And it opened up a world of abundance where previously there was scarcity. So. And that mindset changes everything.

What are the advantages of having a remote professional overseas? Let's see, in the Philippines. And of course I have my back. My, my background of this or 15 plus years and hiring and.

Yes.

What's shifted? And what's shifted for the people.

Yeah.

Brought out to Canada to explore this idea of hiring remotely. What are the benefits of hiring a remote.

So it depends on how you approach the problem and how in your, your mindset. Okay, so let's talk about what I'll say is a more marginalized mindset.

A.

When you think of some people, think of overseas people as lesser because their experience to them historically has been a call center. Oh, those. Yeah. The, the Indians and the, the Pakistanis and the Filipinos in the call centers. Oh, I, that's just the worst experience. I can't understand them. And that, that framework, that mindset. Yes. Basically pushes you in a, to a place where you see them as administrative people doing administrative tasks that are not worth your time. Okay. That's one mindset where you look at your time and you say, I want to make big bigger and my time is worth more than X number of dollars an hour that I can pay or a va. And I'll use it, I'll use this sort of time derogatory term that I don't like. I'm going to pay this VA to do this thing that is kind of beneath me and it's not good use of my time. But I'm not expecting much because, you know, they don't speak English well and you know, you kind of get what you pay for. So it's inexpensive. And yeah, I'm not going to really manage them like I'd manage Americans that were employees of my team. I want to manage them like this sort of like on demand resource. And who cares if I don't use them efficiently? They're cheap and who cares? Right. That is one framework and frame of mind that works because if it allows you to offload certain tasks that truly are below your pay grade and you can work on those things, you have, you have your time and more importantly your energy back to do the things that you were made to do that are that keep you in your sort of zone of expertise. And the funny thing about doing that, that simple thing, is that you're now working on the things that you're passionate about, which ironically takes less energy than working on the admin tasks that you don't like doing that do take a lot of energy, right?

Yes.

So that's sort of like. That's as bad as it gets. I don't love that. I don't think that's the maximal execution of the solution and the opportunity. But that is how people typically enter this world. Yes. Okay. Because they have this idea of what's possible and what's possible isn't that much in terms of what the skills are. But I can't unsee what I saw from my first experience, which is a material scientist, being my executive assistant. When I experience that now, anything's possible. In other words, I can hire engineers right? At, call it $14 an hour. I can hire lawyers at $14 an hour.

Yeah.

I can hire CPAs at $14 an hour. I, I can hire well spoken sales development people at 14, $15 an hour. I'm, I'm giving you a range, but it's really like 13 to $15 an hour. And once you see that, you stop thinking about, well, you start evaluating people for people, not where they're sitting.

Right.

And, and at that cost. If you can't make that, if you can't make that ROI work, the problem isn't the people, it's you.

Right, exactly.

I think my son that's paid more for being a lifeguard. Right. Because our cost structure and our culture is so high, we have so much to pay and so we're all paying each other at inflated rates and there are people sitting somewhere else that don't have that ecosystem of cost and simply.

The standard of living in those countries is, is such that that revenue goes a long way. Even if like my family's from, from India. If I were to in India, it would be a fraction of what it would cost in this country for great talent.

Right. And of course, might be better, Might be better talent.

Yes. I've got to say though, I have a, I, I, I've hired people in India, Pakistan, the Philippines. I've just found the value structure in the Philippines to be the exceptional. Even, even, even exceptional because there's an element of service. This is, there's certain element of humility that's there versus when I have hired in India. Oftentimes the people I get tend to be too entrepreneurial.

They're merchants and they're trying to disintermediate you.

Right, agreed.

Yes.

Yes. Philippines has, I mean my, my team has been in the Philippines for the longest time and I've got the deepest respect for my members, people who work for me.

Right.

One of them has been through close to 10 years. My other virtual assistant, about three years now, and her husband's shattering her because she wants to get pregnant. And one thing I found you and I have in common is relationships. Yes. Relationship capital means quite a bit. Not just with my clients, also with my team, the people I bring on board. The relationships are life. And I hear that with you, especially recently, how you went to the Philippines to meet your team, to engage your team, to further train your team, to support Them and encourage them, all those things.

Let's talk about that. Yeah.

Were you always a relationship person? Did you see. And just, and you mentioned too contextually mentioned something before is I don't want to not see that. Basically you said that most people see virtual assistants or remote professionals as virtual assistants. It's a bit degrading where it's like their time is saved by having this individual do these tasks that are below me versus actually seeing this person as a person, a remote professional who is a family person, who is an engineer, who's a. Maybe a physician or a leader in their space.

Yeah.

Who now, because of the cost of living, sees value in.

Right.

The ability to be of service this way.

Yeah. I, that mindset is so much broader for me. And if you, you know, if you found your way out to other countries and live in other places and spend time in other places, you realize that we're all just people. And now with the Internet, I mean, you know, Thomas Friedman wrote the World is Flat, the book, I think 30 years ago almost. And so it's still, there's still a labor arbitrage going on. And it's. And I think you can't look away anymore. I think it's too important to think broadly and outwardly to the resources and opportunities abroad. And I think we're learning that as a country. And, and so my. I totally agree with you. I am a people person. Absolutely. I am a pleaser like I am. And it made me great in the professional services world. Right. Because I, I executed and I tried, I tried not to say no because I wanted to say yes. And. But what's interesting about Kayana and what I saw in the marketplace in the Philippines specifically is that for the most part, people commoditized the talent and it was a race the bottom on price. And the people that got hurt are the people that had the talent, but because they didn't have the opportunity, had to say yes, they're being taken advantage of. So the name Kayana actually isn't a brand facing the client, quote, unquote, at all. Kayana is a mashup of Tagalog, meaning Kaya can do na, meaning now you can do it now. A Kayana. We are a talent agency. And because I know that if I have the best talent, the clients are easy. That's the easy part. Because I have a great talent and I have the culture to support the great talent, that the clients will be everywhere. Because that is what people are hungry for. Yes. Right.

Yes.

And so when we went to market. And we started building that out. And the culture that we're supporting with that, I tell all the talent, I say, you are client number one.

Wow.

We are built around you. And we know if we take care of the people who take care of the people, we'll be fine. So that is. That is our. That is our culture. That is how we execute and the people feel it. And it's almost emotional because I welcome everyone into the company and I go into, you know, training sessions of 15, 20 people as we're onboarding people. Yes. And at the end of only two or three days, the people that are in those training sessions are telling us how much different we treat them than the rest of the industry does. And that's like, that's. It blows my mind because I feel like I'm treating them as any human and any, you know, any human would. But it just goes to show you how the. How the world has been managing remote talent for a long time.

One of my mentors, Jay Abraham, he has a training called the Strategy of Preeminence. And the basis for this training is this idea that when we connect with our clients, we step into this role of kind of being a fiduciary. The fiduciary is not necessarily somebody who manages finances. That's how we often hear the context, that word. But it's really about looking after them for the best interest, like being able to serve them, hearing what they're saying, hearing what they're not saying. My interaction when I connect with Mark, even the emails, communications that are there are. He's out to take care of me. He wants to ensure that the experience, being on the podcast with you recently, is on point. There's an element there that, that I just, I just came to appreciate that I often do don't see where they take responsibility. It's responsibility. It's taken for the brand, for Kayana, for. For being part of your team. And I find that when people hire remote professionals without that context there, something shifts in the relationship versus, like somebody has ownership in, In. In the company, in the process, in the brand. That's something I really respected when I connect with Mark and other members of your team.

Yeah, we. So the word I'm like, I'm starting to get comfortable with is this idea of an embedded team. You have someone embedded in your operation. And I want, I love that because it, it doesn't marginalize the person. It makes them critical to the business and how it runs. Yes. And I think that sort of architecture is the architecture of the future. And this is why it's so interesting to see what's going on in corporate America today where everyone's being forced back to work. Forced back to the office. Not to work, but back to the office into what is an ultimately somewhat inefficient way of sourcing talent.

Yes, yes.

Who, who is within driving distance of the office is the story. Now if you're a corporation with offices everywhere, not a problem. There's going to be, you're going to be able to have an office for someone to go to. But like for small and medium sized companies that are looking for the best talent who have maybe one office, maybe two. Why would you ever limit yourself that way? It just seems silly. And the world is so large, the working, you know, and, and we have demographics that are not helping us. So like I, I love it. I think it's just, it's like a hidden gem of an opportunity and it's gratifying.

Covid taught us a lot that we can work remotely, we can all exist and be productive. And I know there have been some situations with people maybe not, not, not liking their job where they may not have been the ideal candidates. You know, I'm talking about jobs in this country, in the United States.

Yeah.

And when they back in, they weren't necessarily as productive as they used to be because maybe, maybe they were, they didn't like their jobs. Your, your team, your like their jobs. They're there and they're able to operate, you know, really effectively.

Yeah. We are a remote first company and there's a lot of. We're not the only company to do this. I mean you might know the company Zapier, Zapier has been remote from the, from day one. Completely remote. No office. Now. It doesn't mean you don't want to come together. And you know, as you know, I was in the Philippines like three weeks ago. We had the most incredible time together. It's amazing. And you'll see it in my social media feed as sort of the weeks go on. Because it was just a wonderful time. I loved it and I can't wait to go back. I'll probably be back in the Philippines quarterly now as we continue to build our culture. I think my, my son this summer is going to be doing meetups at Airbnbs with our remote professionals. Yeah. And just doing like doing very much community building amongst our remote professionals. Because when you're working from home, yes, you, there is something lost a little bit. But it doesn't mean you can't have it. You just have it in a different way. You know, it's not at the sort of makeshift birthday parties that I can't stand. Like, hey, let's have this birthday party in the conference room for the, for the people that were born in. In April. Let's go, Joseph. Right.

So there is, there is something to that. There's something to meeting in person, like you've done with your team Connect. I mean, back in my corporate days, we have these huddles. We'd group up, we do this fun scavenger hunts, things of that sort. That was useful for bonding. So that's what's happened there. When you were there a few weeks ago.

Yeah.

You mentioned your son's gonna head out and kind of have the experience of connecting and bonding.

Well, he. I just thought it was a really good way to use his talent, but to also build the community.

Yes. Right.

And so it's not so much like I actually, he has to do work. This has to be productive. And he's going to learn a thing or two about how our culture executes, which it won't always be easy, like, because we work really hard, but we play hard. And that's the fun part.

Yes, I do. Amazing.

Yeah.

So let's talk about AI. Yeah, I know part of your process, you kind of match people using AI technologies.

Sure.

So let's talk about that. And also love to hear your take on AI and how it's advancing and how it's disrupting and look after and how to basically engage and delegate in this new world of AI that we're in.

So let me start with a confession, Joseph. I was a total dork when I was young and I started programming when I was six years old.

Wow.

Okay.

Thrilling to me.

Okay. And, and I was going to night school when I was in third grade to program. And I was programming and going to schools and camps to program. Probably should have stuck with it a little bit more, but in eighth grade, I discovered girls and I put all the computers down.

Okay.

Okay. And, and, and, and then I went to college and I saw the classes they were teaching, and I'm like, this is so basic. I don't even have any need for this. My first job out of undergrad was as a database programmer. I hadn't taken a class in six years. Seven years. Okay. I was a systems analyst. Next. For a boutique consulting firm. And I managed bank data as a programmer. Right. And then I went to business school. Okay. And then I put that. The coding world down. But when AI came out, I, I couldn't look away. It's too powerful and too amazing. And, and I was telling you about scarcity earlier. Like now I have at my fingertips a tireless, brilliant person in AI. And if I only know how to talk to it, I can, I can endlessly wander and discover and build. And I, I just, I feel like this is what I tell my kids. I'm like, if you guys aren't like doing this, you're crazy. Yeah. And so like my, my, my son who's a sophomore, going to be a junior, going to London School of Economics, he's a data scientist. He's going to data science, he's in calculus class right now and doing all this sort of infrastructure type stuff that you need to learn to understand the tech.

Yes.

Because 10 years from now, five years from now, it's changing every day. I mean that's the amazing thing about a product built on AI is the products get better without actually investing much more. The costs go down.

Yes.

As long as the pipes are right.

Yes.

The execution gets better.

Yes.

And, and we're redefining how work is done.

Yes.

You know, and that's why, you know, my personal brand that can do CEO is workflow automation. So think of zapier and integrations that are happening between other SaaS platforms. Brilliant. Like critically important to leverage best of breed SaaS platforms in an important way to AI. You know, the who and the other part of the who is remote professionals. So human in the loop. AI execution automation over SaaS platforms. You know, this is where they people talk about, you know, the ten billion dollar company with four people in it. Right. I don't know if it's going to get there. I mean I'm sure there'll be some people that pull that off. But like every company needs to be reimagined.

Yes, exactly.

And what I see as possible and I think for those people that don't stay up with it, they're going to suffer because the people that figured it out are going to be working faster and more productively and once you're behind, it's going to be hard to catch up. I know some entrepreneurs that are and business owners that are like, oh, I'll just wait for it to stop and then I'll call in the service company to come in and do the work for me. It's going to be a mess.

Exactly. Yes.

It's going to be an absolute mess.

Basically the Internet popped in back in the 90s.

Yeah. And the use case for AI are extraordinary. And one of the things we do at Kayana is we're very intentional about training everyone on AI. Like first we buy them sort of the teams based OpenAI license and say here, and here's our trainer, here's what we're going to teach you. Here are those sort of the things that we want you to learn because it's the, it's the person that's always there for you to help you sort of work through an issue.

Yes.

And your, your span of expertise expands because of it.

Exactly.

And if you think about like going back to like remote town, let's just say this is what domestic talent look like, this is what people perceive it to be and this is what the perception of remote talent is. Now I happen to think it's closer, but let's just say it's here. When you add AI to both these things, that's what happens. Yes, it's the absolute leveler exponential. Yeah, it's the absolute leveler and exposes the underbelly of the underlying costs.

Yes, yes.

Right.

Combination is extraordinary.

It's extraordinary. So you know, from a company perspective, some people use this as sort of a, you know, just typical bot.

Right.

We've integrated it using the APIs at OpenAI. And so we have integrated solutions that leverage what is effectively in the recruiting and staffing and talent space. A data problem, because the matching and execution around that is a data problem. The other way we're using AI in our system is the management of remote staff. So at the end of every day we are doing screenshots of people's screens, we're getting full updates on the tasks that were performed, the outcomes of those tasks, and then we're managing that data and giving that to the client in a way that allows them to manage the resource and also allows the remote professional be better. And then. Yep. And so those are, those are ways that you can use AI. And then there's sort of the prescriptive ideas that come out of that, which is here's what you're doing, here's how you could be better at it, here's what you should consider, here's some solutions that might be more helpful. And yes, that unlocking that I think is the thing that makes us all productive.

You hook in better. So much of what we do, the ventures we have, success circles make the day better, make each other better. But if you've got, if you have a process there where analyzes data and information, it's not about making the person just seem more productive. I mean that's one one part of it, it's just being better. Right. There are better ways of doing things, finding resolutions faster like less friction. And I, I've often found one of hired people in the Philippines before that when they're, when something, they're stuck in something because of the culture, how they're brought up and so forth. They, they wouldn't necessarily report it to me. They would not communicate and, and, and, and like despite not having a clear answer. And of course we found that with AI those bottlenecks can be eliminated by simply asking perplexity or chatgpt any of them resolution or even taking our knowledge and using a product like Delphi and duplicating cloning ourselves. And that to the team member like hey, if I'm not available you can ask this clone of me who has a repository of information. Really fascinating, really mind blowing. I'm so inspired that you use it not just for matching but you're also teaching your team how to use these tools to be more resourceful so they can be even more.

Yeah.

Effective and impactful for the clients who you're out.

We want, yeah, we want to blow clients away. And I think the sad part is it's too easy. It's too easy and we've gotten fat as a country, both figuratively and really. I mean actually. But we're just lazy and we, we need the energy and the productivity of these systems and these ways of approaching business that we've lost, we've lost sight of and, and I think that renewal is happening now and I think it's really exciting time to be a part of the economy, to be able to build and I'm glad I'm actually seasoned and I'm not like just off the truck, which there's an advantage to that too. Like you just left less responsibility, less things to worry about. But I've made enough of mistakes now and I know how to avoid them.

So what's one mistake you made in early in your career that you're grateful for that's maybe helped you kind of.

Yeah.

Optimize and be better. Make me make choices that have brought you here.

I think this is a problem that most entrepreneurs have and is that they come up with an idea as I did back in the late 90s and it was a disastrous effort probably. I'll tell you why in a second. But I had this great idea and I, I, much like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings, I, I, I, I put my hands around it and it was my precious and I Didn't want anyone to see it because I was so afraid that if I shared it with anyone, they would take it from me. And realistically we should all know that it's not about the idea, it's about the execution.

Yes.

And if we were more outward facing with our ideas that we, and we'd be less afraid to share them, we would find the people that were going to help us execute them. My idea, and I'm not kidding you, 1999 was a media platform that would allow people to create repositories of content and allow people to track them and post their own content. And, and I built out the entire business plan. I tried to fundraise around it. Remember 1999, it was super like. And, and it was the same time I was applying to school.

And this is pre YouTube, right? This YouTube.

This is, this is five years before YouTube. YouTube is 2004.

Right.

And I literally developed it. It was called eforwards.com it's bad name but. Because if you remember back then, the corporate mail servers were full of email forwards. There was all this great content, the jokes, the lists, all that stuff. And it was basically getting buried in corporate mail servers. And really it just needed a central repository so you can track the authorship of the person who created so they can get paid, so you can actually create your favorites and go back to it because you thought it was great. It was the perfect solution for that time. But I was so afraid to show and tell people about it. I didn't get the help I needed to actually have it see the light of day. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that is what I would tell entrepreneurs is to not be afraid to share their ideas. Because it's not their ideas, it's their execution that's going to win.

Exactly. Execution trumps all.

Execution trumps all. There you go. That would be my message to myself 30 years earlier.

That's incredible momentum. That's an incredible tip. This podcast, rulesforsuccess.com, we also do a secondary podcast called momentumtips.com so you can access some of the tips that Chris has provided in a shorter podcast on that site, momentumtips.com Chris, what's another Momentum tip you'd offer to our members, our clients, members of success circles and the wider audience here?

Yeah, this is going to sound very self serving, but do what I did. You don't have to start a remote professional business like I did, but certainly explore the opportunity of finding someone that you can partner with to help you be more efficient. You don't have to believe in the person more than you have to believe in yourself. You need to make big bigger and you are that big. You are the one that's going to be able to create that value. But you're not an endless ball of energy contrary to what most people believe. So you buy the time, you get someone to actually offload that administrative stuff to and then you can go kind of do the things you're meant to do. Yes, I, I've kicked, I've kicked this idea around with my oldest who is now again sophomore. He'll be graduating soon. You know, there's the corporate path that I took or there's a path of entrepreneurship. I think the first thing that any family member should do for their child is get them a remote professional. If you really think about what that represents, it's accountability, it's a resource, it's capability that they don't otherwise have so they can start building. That is the first money spent. That's the friends and family round. That's where it should go. Yes, in my opinion.

And, and it's also often useful to figure out what our strengths are. That useful. That may not be as clear in our teens or twenties. It may not be as obvious. For me, it happened when I was 27, 28, when I did my first Myers Briggs. That brought me to do disc. And when I clarified, well, these are the, this is what fuels me, right? This is what I'm doing. It became easier to kind of offload those other things too. Any thoughts about that?

I think that this is about where the abundance is and where the scarcity is. And what you described to me is the things that you were good at that came natural. That's where the abundance is, where the scarcity is. Find a way to figure that out. Learn how to delegate out of it. I did something very silly when I went to undergrad. They told me I was better at math than I was at language and I was defiant. I said forget it. That comes easy to me. I'm not going to spend much time on it. And I started doing like language and I went to France and these are all things I don't regret. But I wasn't playing into my strengths. So playing your strengths is a way of playing into your abundance. And I think that the quicker you can figure out where the abundance is and the more effective you'll be, the easier life will come and the more productive you'll be.

Chris, I know you're writing a book, so what's one big idea from upcoming book that could change how we build businesses. And you might have already said it so far in the past.

So I think the way people build teams is going to change and I think the way capital thinks about building teams is going to change. You know, when you're, when you're an entrepreneur, like the goal is to be, to be financed. I don't think that's the case. If you're an entrepreneur, the first thing you should do is try to build a self sufficient business that you bootstrap so that you don't need the money because the money just wants to go fast. I spoke to a venture capitalist yesterday and they're talking about my business Kyana and like, so Chris, like, how are you going to find distribution? How are you going to grow it? Like 100% a year, endlessly. Where are you going to find the money for that? And you can see where this is leading because they wanted a piece of the business.

Yes.

And I'm like, well I don't think I need to do that. I think I just need to be great at what I do. And I think the business through referral and growth will be perfectly fine. And the disappointment in the person's eyes was amazing. Not because I was building like a sort of lifestyle business, but because they couldn't participate. I said, well no, we can go do this thing over here and, and that sort of. Then they opened up again. But it's like, I think oftentimes entrepreneurs think that the sort of the, the brass ring is to get capitalized by venture capitalist. Um, and what they end up finding unless they thread the needle perfectly is they become employees of the company they created.

Yes, yes.

And so what they'd be better off doing potentially is basically having their personal needs handled by their business that they bootstrapped. Building up that base initially and then playing from a stronger position later, pushing the pre money pre, you know, pushing the, the capital raising round later and being able to drive pre money valuation up further so they didn't end up to sell as much of their company.

Right.

I think that's how I would be thinking if I was young and starting a company today.

Exactly, yeah. And having other investors involved, you may lose control of the direction of what's possible with the company because of that.

Right. And so then the burn rate becomes really fast. Your ROI in the first hire becomes really important and, and your ability to move quickly becomes really important. And that's when I think remote professionals are an ideal solution. AI and remote professionals, that's it.

If you have to bet on one trend that'll reshape entrepreneurship over the next five years. What would that be? What trend?

There's a couple trends I really like but if I had to choose one it would certainly be if I if I had to buy one company today it would be zapier because the automation of these really great software platforms and how people come in and out of those platforms becomes really important. How data is shared that the AI's need is Zapier. If I were to create a trend or is it going to be the consulting? The trend will be around the consulting of those integration executions because these SaaS platforms will always be best of breed in very defined verticals. Right People, you know, these large scale companies that try to do it all, never do it well. So if you are able to integrate those platforms really well, I think it'd be great. And if you could integrate AI into those integrations or those workflows, even better. I love that. That applies to every business and it allows you to grow through the change. If you pick the wrong horse in this change, you get crushed. Yep, yep, you get crushed.

So you know, ask can also ask AI in the direction we're in process integrate more AI until we do success. A pairing process and sometimes it's useful to have somebody like Chris give you ideas and help you find ways to delegate and outsource and build a remote team. It's useful and that's from getting in conversation. So this has been really, really invaluable so far. Chris, Chris, how do people connect with you?

It's super easy. On LinkedIn is the best place to find me. Christopher Nolte LinkedIn I am also on we also have a podcast called Discovering the possible and you can find us at Kyana, at YouTube and or on my my TikTok profile Kendu CEO and or hire Kayana where we talk to remote professionals about the opportunities abroad and or with clients about the opportunities for remote professionals all around the world.

I love it. Can do CEO on TikTok and hire.

Kyana and are you also@kyana.comhirekayana.com that's right.

Well make sure all these links are on the podcast on rules for success.com it'll be all linked there. A mind map summary. Final question, what's what legacy do you want to leave through your ventures and your voice?

I think I want people to find their highest and best use. You know when I was a kid, you know well my father was 6 foot 8 tall.

Wow. It's like a Basketball.

And you can, and you can imagine when the height. When the elementary school gym teacher who is the high school basketball coach saw me.

Yes.

He had me coming to school before school since I was in first grade.

Wow.

Okay. But unlike my younger brother, I got my mother's genes. She was 5 foot 2.

Got it.

And so I never grew quite the way everyone wanted me to.

But I believe, I imagine you're somewhere in the middle of five.

I'm the exact average of 6 foot 8 and 5 foot 2, 5 foot 11. Exact average. Perfect. And the long and the short of it is, is that I always imagined that there was the perfect game for me. That wasn't basketball. It was some other game. Right. I believe everyone has the perfect. There is a perfect game for everyone. And I would love for people to be able to find the perfect game where they were built for it. I feel like I've been built for what I'm doing now. It is incredibly joyful. I feel like you are built for what you're doing and I can tell the joy that you get out of that. I mean, you would not be in it for as long as you have certainly if you didn't love it. And so I would love for people to have that experience. It's like being a part of a great, a great organization. Right. And you, you know it when you're in it and you love it and it's so great to have that moment. You want that for your kids, you want that for yourself. I want that for other people too. Incredible.

There's a lot of joy in being able to tap into that and continue refining that and finding ways to even add more value. I'm sure your four children are very blessed to have you as a mentor, as a dad.

They would disagree with you, Joseph, but I appreciate you saying that for prosperity.

All our kids do. A nine year old and a six year old and yes, they discount a lot of that, but the wisdom does eventually transfer over. I found, and I found even my dad. The wisdom has landed in me after 30, 40 plus years.

That's. That's what we're playing for.

Right? This has been a privilege, Chris. I really enjoyed this for our audience. Once Again, rules for success.com access all of this, including Chris's contact. And this is. Enjoys it and we, I want to invite all our members who listen to this to tap into this idea. Dare to play bigger, bolder and better. That's, that's our, that's our tagline for the work we do at success circles and Chris is somebody who actively does that each day. What the work is up to. Check out hirekayana.com to tap into Chris's team. And to Chris, too, this has been wonderful.

Joseph, thank you so much.

My pleasure. That's it for today's episode of rulesforsuccess.com podcast. But the journey to success is far from over. Join us next week for another inspiring conversation with a successful entrepreneur. Until then, remember to be bold, be courageous and go after your dreams.