Noris Velazquez: A Passion For Baking And An Unexpected Opportunity Inspired This Martial Arts Expert To Become The Kung Fu Baker

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is Stacy Lauren. I know our next guest from my last business. His wife Brooke worked with me for the last 18 years and we always enjoyed going to him for unbiased advice on certain things with the company. He's a Navy veteran and devoted father of three. He's known as the Kung Fu Baker. He's the owner of Sourdough Delight and is a Black Sash fifth degree at White Tiger Kung Fu. It's not a stretch to say that this guest has quite an impressive and varied resume. What made his story stand out so much to me was his sheer grit, determination, and go getter attitude. He's the type of person who won't give up when he reaches a brick wall. Instead, he'll use his Navy and martial arts background to find a way to scale over the top. I love how in this episode he talks about how watching his children's curiosity to learning has opened up his level of learning and it's really helped his business. We also dissected another piece of the formula I was having trouble verbalizing and we nailed it down in this episode, which was so cool. This guest also isn't afraid to pivot when needed. He his knack for brainstorming and problem solving astounds me. He loves raising his kids, serving his customers, and practicing kung fu. Oh, and his bread is delicious. He would sell it at my office and everyone would count down the minutes until he arrived. Please welcome Norris Velasquez to the show. Hey Norris.

Thank you. Thank you. Hi Stacy. I appreciate the invite and I think what you're doing here is awesome because so many people, regardless of what it is that they feel they want to do in life, there's always those buts. It's not the right timing, I don't have the right skill set. I mean, excuse. And that's what the mind does. It's great at creating thousands of excuses and slowing down progress. I think what you're doing is wonderful because Society just needs a whole lot more of these types of venues that people can plug into. They're washing dishes, working out, taking care of kids or what have you. And they could just log on to your podcast and things of this nature and fuel up, get those words of inspiration that they need, hear other stories of like, hey, well, if that person did it, surely I can at least try. And I think a huge part of it is people just aren't necessarily aware that this is the progression. You have an idea, then 10,000 other ideas follow it to contradict it. And if we get taught that in the very beginning, it's like, hey, failure is just part of it. Making mistakes is part of it. You're gonna do that. In fact, I in, regardless of the venture, I've learned more from my mistakes than I have from my successes. And anyone who's achieved any level of success will tell you the exact same thing. It's just part of it. So don't be scared of it. Just keep trucking along.

Yeah, and I love the frame of that because I think so many people are scared of failing that they, like you said, they just won't even try. And so once you understand the concept that you can learn from everything that you do, and actually that's kind of my new thing, I just added that into my decision making is as I'm about to do something new that might be scary, I've just added that as part of my risk assessment. I'm like, okay, well, what could I learn if I fail from this? Like, what could. What could be my learning lesson?

Wow, that's an interesting approach. I've never thought of that.

Yeah.

Good on you.

Yeah, thank you. So. Yeah, so I'm so excited to have you on. I would love it if you could just tell everybody a little bit about you and your background and your story.

Sure. Let's see. Formal education. It's in business and finance. And when I got word that we were having a baby, oh, my God, what an awesome surprise. I was kind of sticker shocked on how much healthcare costs and started to do some facts and figures on how much it was going to cost for somebody to, like, watch your baby. Now, my background was in the military. I was in the Navy for, for five years. And I remember being on the ship and they kind of have a fancy, like, PA system where the captain comes on board and starts talking to everyone. And I remember daily he would go on and congratulate new fathers, and I was like, whoa, I can't even begin to think about what sacrifice? And what is going on in the mind of those parents who are over here stuck on this ship? And at home, you've got your spouse who's having a baby. So I was like, my hat goes off to everyone that's doing this, but I don't think that that's. For me, that's not my cup of tea. So when I knew Brooke was having a baby, we were having a baby. I'm like, okay, I can always make money. I have one shot at being a dad. So I started to really look at her finances, and thankfully, she was doing great at Gostaff. So I was a stay at home dad for about three years, and when he turned three, I'm like, okay, I kind of got the hang of this. And what else now can I do to bring in some extra income and help offset that loss, right? So I looked at a couple of different things, and I love to bake. I love to cook. You know, I love. I get a joy of feeding people and being them, enjoy something that I created. And to me, that's. That's a. That's the cake and the frosting all in one. So I started baking bread, which I was doing for my family, a couple loaves a week, and I made some extras, sold it to the neighbors, and it caught on, and I'm like, okay, well, there might be something here, right? So one day I took my son to the farmer's market, and I spoke to the farmer's market manager who I had known from previous, and he's like, hey, Norris, you know, what are you up to? Well, I'm selling bread to the. To the neighbors. And he's like, really? Because I just lost my baker. Would you like to be the new farmer's market baker?

Oh, wow.

Right? And I'm thinking I'm in, like, one of these spots where you're talking about, like, okay, opportunity. Wait. 10,000 thoughts of fear overwhelming. No way can you possibly do this. How long did it even take you to make just a couple of extra loaves? And how are you possibly going to bake dozens out of a home kitchen for a farmer's market? You got to be crazy, Norris, right? So all these things are just rushing in my head, and I'm sitting there in real time going, great, let's do it. While all this stuff is. Yeah, let's do the thing. And all this stuff is just flooding in my head. Like, no, logically, it does not make sense at that point in my life where I was there, like, just. I had no Idea, no concept of how to even begin to create a batch, a large enough bread recipe batch to fulfill dozens of loaves of bread. But there was that one little voice inside me that said, just tell them, let's do it.

So when that happened, so the voice is talking to you and saying, let's do it. And then you've got the other side of the fear and all that stuff. What did you have to go through to be able to actually become that baker for the farmer's market? What was your first step?

Well, luckily, like, you know, I do martial arts. Joel Rizzo's authentic White tiger Kung fu. I mean, we've been doing it for as long as Brooke was at Ghost app. So, like 16, 17 years. And so I have a lot of that. Courage, self discipline. Hey, let's just do it. Let's just get it done. Because in the world of martial arts, like, let's say you're practicing sparring. Let's say you don't know where the punches are going to come at you. You have no idea. Right? The only thing that you really have, which is what our instructor tells us truthfully, is the only thing that you really have control over is your attitude. That's it. And, boy, did I not like getting punched in the head in the beginning. Now, granted, in the beginning, you know, you get paired off with, like, somebody, like, a higher rank, and then you're a lower rank, and they're playing 100% defense. So that way you're not fearful of getting popped in the head. So you get to try out your strikes in a very controlled environment, versus some schools will let you just go all out brawling, and that's how people get hurt. Okay? But granted, they do it the right way. But still, you still learn that skill of like, hey, life is going to throw at me, whatever it's going to throw at me, and I just have to roll with the punch. So the first thing I had to just do is not to listen to all of the crippling thoughts that said, no way this is possible, Norris, because you know what? In truth, I don't know what's possible.

So that was your first step. And then what did you do next?

Then what I did next was got to work, started a research. Right, Research. Okay, well, how do I. I know what it took to bake two loaves. I know what it took to bake three, four, five. And that was extremely inefficient. So now it's just a brainstorming of, like, okay, well, how do I make this easier? How do I make this better? And the beauty of the mind, it's like the ultimate search engine. You punch in a question, how do I? And then all of a sudden you sit back and you start getting ideas or you ask other people like, hey, you know what? Have you ever done this? Luckily, like, we are in this beautiful information era where I can go online to pretty much almost any type of forum where people are actually doing the thing versus, like back in the day, we had to go to the library. Hopefully we know how to research and like pull the right books and maybe talk to the librarian. And the librarian hopefully knows what we're trying to achieve here. Right? It's like all that's out the window. You got real life people that can give you a real life answer, like seconds, if not minutes.

Would you say they not only gave you the answer, did they also help give you support? Like in terms of did you, did we do have one piece of the formula which is connecting with like minded people. But I'm wondering if you use them solely for education purposes or if you also connected with them deeper.

Well, I would say that that came kind of after the fact. I mean, I basically had one week, right? Because it was Friday. When I talked to the guy at the farmer's market, he's like, you want to show up next week? So I basically had a week to figure out how to bake a couple of dozen loaves of bread. And at least I had a goal in my head. I'm like, I'm not going to bake three or four or five dozen, I'm going to bring two dozen. So now you have a goal, which most people don't even have a goal, regardless of whether that goal even makes sense or not. Just something you're shooting for, right? They say aim for the moon or aim for the stars rather. And if you land on the moon, you still did something stellar. So the support and the ideas and all that stuff came afterwards when I was trying to smooth out my logistics, get better, maybe ideas on equipment in regards to like mixing containers. So all of that just kind of came with time. And I would watch like YouTube videos and I would look at the background like, oh, what are they using for that? What are they using for that? So YouTube became quite helpful in that respect. Like I was just seeing how professional bakers bake, figuring out what I can use in a home setting. And that's the beauty. It's like, if you want to be xyz, if you want to do the thing, go Find people that are doing the thing.

Yeah. So it sounds like I'm going to just repeat back kind of what you said to make sure we've got it in terms of this because I want to go through it then next and go through what happens next in this after you became the baker. But pretty much step one was you controlled your attitude. You realize your attitude's the only thing that you can control. So that was number one. Number two is not listening to the crippling thoughts. And it sounds like you shifted it by saying like, how do I. Yeah. And then that way. Yeah, I love that. And then it sounds like you were also like you had no ego with it. You were really open minded to learn. Being able to like get the education from watching YouTube and being able to do the research that you did. You sounds like you might have gone on forums and things like that and were able to get different ideas that way.

Indeed. And in fact, like, having little children remind me of how their attitude is towards learning. They are just like a complete open sponge. They have zero judgment on anything until they learn it. They're like, oh, well, how's that work? And all focus is on that one thing. And they just not necessarily obsess over it. They're just so focused that nothing else matters. And I think we kind of lose that as a society in adulthood because, I don't know, we just maybe stop learning. Stop learning how to learn.

Yeah, I love that. It's almost like your experience now as a dad had helped you got to see how to learn again, which then helped you start this business.

Indeed, that. And like just the awesome advice from my kung fu instructor, Joel Rizzo. I mean he's that, that style of art, I mean, you and your family did it for a little while. Yeah, it really is way more than just kicking and punching. I mean it is a traditional art where you learn about the sciences, nutrition. I mean, I've learned homesteading, investments, finance, business. I learned more through my instructor at kung fu than my degree, my formal degree in business. Going to the farmer's market, going to his certified instructor, training once a week. We would do it on Sundays. And I just learned way more applicable. And he said it, he's like, look, I don't care what business you're going to be in. There's certain foundations that all businesses share. So if you can figure that out, then you can pretty much do whatever you want to do. And it's true.

That's great advice. And then it sounds like the next thing, what you did you got a goal, which was the 2 dozen goal in mind. The goal, the why, which was wanting to be home and then the extra daycare cost and wanting to figure that out. And then. Are we missing anything on that in terms of this decision?

No, that's it. But one thing to keep in mind is luckily that day for that batch of bread, I didn't burn anything.

That's great.

Now. Now I have burned plenty of bread in the past or stuff just doesn't come out right. But it's funny because I've seen pictures of what my old batches of bread look like and what they look like today, and it really is a night and day shift. I mean, it's. What I'm trying to get across is things may not look perfect done today. Just give it some time, give it the practice. Just like a kid learning to write or color. It's like, whoa, okay, at first it's just a scribble and then it slowly becomes a nicer scribble. And maybe we can contain that scribble within lines. Right. Little coloring books and stuff. And then next thing you know, they're painting freehand. Now they're selling artwork. So just remember that there is a process of learning and becoming better. And I think too many people nowadays like just are so hard on themselves because it's not quote unquote perfect the first time or the second time or you know, the 10,000th time, like in the Edison when he was trying to invent the light bulb. 10,000 experiments until he finally got it right. That's some serious fortitude or perseverance.

Yeah. And just for the listeners, so just so you guys know, where I would see Norris with the bread was he would come to our office and everyone was like, when they knew Norris was coming with the bread, that they could basically buy bread from him. It was like the whole day was like excited, you know, where everyone was just so excited. And then after they got it, it was like a whole thing where everyone's talking about it and just you could just feel the energy of the office. So it's, it's really special being able to like provide something that's something that people don't get to experience that often from that home baked and the smell and the sourdough and all that deliciousness that comes with that.

Thank you. Yeah, it's a huge underlining. Emotion or goal is all about health. All about health and joy. Because when you're healthy, it's so much easier to be happy and positive and such. And even in martial arts, it's a huge part health. Like if you're not healthy, you basically can't work out. If you're not healthy, then it becomes way more challenge to take care of yourself, take care of your family, take care of your business. It's all linked. And health is my underlining motive when I do things. Whether it's like what am I going to buy this week for my ingredients? Well, I could buy this cheaper flour and make more of a profit margin, but that cheaper flower is cheaper for a reason and I'm looking for health. And the better flowers are just better for you. They're not as chemically enriched. So a cleaner product. Right. It's more mindfully packaged or harvested or tastes better. I mean there's just so many positives when you're looking for health as a major goal. Because I mean, I'm eating it too. It's not like I'm mass producing something and going, oh yeah, don't eat that. Because you should see the ingredient list on that. Which it's scary because as a side note, the FDA allows something like 30 plus ingredients in bread and most of them aren't on the label.

And I think that's probably part of too. It's exciting when you know you're eating something and then it's also good for you. There's a, it's a win, win. Well, a little bit more about. So how, how are. So since that happened where then you did that baking job and I've seen, you know, like I said, I've seen you at the office and then selling there, like how, how have you been getting clients and what's all that been like for you?

Okay, well the biggest draw was farmers markets. After all, that's where like minded people who are looking for something better go. Okay, so that was an easy, easy win until Covid hit and my farmer's markets closed. My main one because it was on the premise of a winery and the winery closed. Most farmers markets kind of stayed open because they were outdoor when you went.

To the farmer's market. I want to go into the closing too, but I wanted to ask you first. So when you go to a farmer's market, what does that look like? And you have bread. What are you doing with that? And how did you know what to do?

Well, first and foremost, bread doesn't sell itself. Nothing does. You know, you could spend hours on a product or a service or what have you, but unless somebody buys it. So there now I'm reaching into my skill set of Salesmanship. And for a long time, I fought this. This was a. I'm talking about the instructor courses that I learned at Kung Fu. And I remember going through a whole bunch of sales modules through his program. And I remember having just like this negative connotation about sales. I always thought like, it was manipulative, dirty, and people just lie. And one day I just realized it's like, well, yeah, that does go on because they're bad salespeople. But the good. The good salesmen and women. Right. They are there to communicate value for a product or a service in hopes to enrich that person's life.

Yeah, I love that you're saying this. I actually had another friend of mine on like a week ago, and he's in my mastermind and actually do the Thing was originally going to be a sales book. And I decided to just because I think there's. Over my time at my company, there were so many people that were amazing and really good, and I thought they would do great, but they just couldn't make the move into a sales position. And so that's what I thought I wanted to do. But then I realized it was more than just sales. It was more about just doing anything that you want to set your mind to. But I think it's amazing that you went and so anyway, so that guy, what he was saying was sales is the greatest customer service job in the world, basically. So I like how you're repeating a lot of the concepts that he mentioned, because that's what I want people to understand. Because to me, once you can break through that barrier of being able to sell, you know what I like say, you can do sales then and get rid of that preconceived notion. Everything then, Everything. You know, like, even when you look on Shark Tank and they have the most amazing product in the world, they can't sell it. Like you said, like, yeah, you got.

To pitch it successful.

Yeah.

And you see the people who have taken the time to understand their product, to understand the customer, their needs, and how to properly present it. Because in essence, it's like, well, you're doing public speaking. And that terrorizes people with all the insecurities of where they're going to think about me, blah, blah, you know, it's like, who cares? In essence, if you focus on. It's like, hey, how do I properly communicate? Because that's what it boils down to. Especially now in our tech area where I don't even have to speak. I could just text all day long and. Right.

Yeah. So okay, so you go to the farmer's market, you reframe your mind around sales, and then what does that look like?

Well, the beauty is my position at the farmer's market. It really doesn't matter where you're at. But it just so happened that I was at the. Basically at the entrance of the farmer's market. So people would park in the parking lot, and then they would walk down, and I would just greet them. I'd be like, the Walmart greeter. Hey, welcome to the farmer's market. And people would look at me and see that it's just a genuine greeting. I'm not trying to sell them push. I'm not trying to be pushy. And there's. There's a big difference there between somebody who's trying to push something on you and someone that is looking to start a conversation. And there's a big difference because I've got walked through a farmer's market, and you're like, whoa, back off, bro. Right. Let's just tone it down here a bit. Stop shoving your product down my throat. Yeah, way too pushy. Versus, like, the beauty is you have some sort of marketing signage. Right. There's a huge banner behind me. That's picture of a bread. I'm sitting there in a chef's coat. I've got samples right in front of me. So if somebody were to take three seconds to look at me, they would probably figure out I'm selling bread. So all those things have to come into play, because I've seen farmers market vendors who are, like, behind their table, sitting down, reading a book, totally disengaged from your potential customers that are walking by.

Yeah.

And that's not a way to start a conversation, because you're not even in a conversation. You're, like, avoiding the conversation. And you can't do that either. Right. So I would stand and I would be in front of my booth greeting people. And if I saw that they looked at what I was doing, because sometimes they were in the middle of a conversation. You're not going to be rude and be like, hey, hey, you want a sample bread? Right. But there's a timing to a conversation. So they're walking by. You got to learn how to greet people. You got to learn how to start a conversation. And that's kind of a lost start.

How many. I was just wondering how many people would walk by versus how many people would buy. Like, do you have an idea?

Well, I never really counted, but my goal was to always sell out by noon. The market closed. At 1. So I was just all about results. Market ends at 1. I want to be sold out by noon because worst case, I have an hour of power left to get this bread in somebody's hands because nobody can enjoy it that's sitting on my table, and I want to take it home, right? I mean, I'll eat it and I'll pop them in the freezer if I've got a couple left over. But the goal was to be sold out by noon because it's a consumable product. I mean, there is no shelf life to my bread, either selling or not. Versus, like, when I sold tea at the farmer's market, they're packaged, okay. I don't sell it this week. Okay, no big deal. You put it back in your. Your container storage, and then next week it pops out totally different.

Yeah. And I love that. Like, it's like you almost gave yourself a deadline where it had to be, you know? Thanks. I'm sure that helps.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, these are all, like, little tricks that I learned from kung fu. You got to make it a game. And one thing that as soon as people understand that they're selling themselves first, just like, hey, you got an opportunity to come to farmer's market and sell some bread. I don't know. I mean, you could have the person talking to you across the table going, hey, would you like a loaf of bread? Well, I don't know. You know, it's all the same game. So if you can sell yourself, if you can practice on yourself, like, oh, you know, I really should do the thing, right? And all of a sudden you're trying to talk yourself out of it. It's no different than you have a customer who's trying to give you a reason or excuse or whatever you want to call it, on why they don't want to move forward with your product or service.

Yeah. Can you talk more about that game? So I have a piece of my formula for me, personally, has been keeping things fun. And I do think I do convert things into games. That's how I am able to. To do whatever I'm do. Even when I. My daughter was selling girl scout cookies, we, you know, I, like, showed her some ways to make it fun, and it actually was, you know, fun, you know, where I would be like, let's just hope that 80 people say no to us, knowing that if 80 people say no, we're going to get at least 20 sales, you know?

Yeah.

And so I was just wondering, and I haven't. I've only Had a couple people on that have mentioned the fun piece and I was just wondering if we can talk more about that. Have you, have you noticed? Is that part of you doing the thing?

Oh, most definitely. In fact, sometimes I have to consciously go, okay, well, let's make this fun. It's no different than when I tell my son, hey, it's time to stop playing and put away your toys. But dad, you know, and I have to remind him, sometimes it's like, well, what happened to your fun song? Like, your fun tidying up song? Like, one day he just started to bust out this cool, like, this is how I clean the room or something. Like, you know, and he got it done with an awesome attitude. I go, that's it, son. You just, you just figured it out because you can control your attitude. That's 90% of the game right there.

Oh, dude, that's awesome, Norris. I love it. So the controlling attitude is part of the. Okay, I know I didn't connect this together, but that's keeping it fun. That's what it is.

Yeah. Okay, so like you've been, you've been, regardless of your business, regardless of your job, whether you're a stay at home parent, I mean, there's work involved in life. Even if it's the I really don't want to get out of bed today. Right. There's still an opportunity there to manage the attitude.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. So I, the one guy that I talked to about keeping it fun, it was actually the attorney that helped me exit at my company and I had him on because he travels the world and he's like talking about that he went and he traveled actually right after the Cold war ended. So like a while, you know, like he's. He went through a whole. And he went through a whole awesome thing. Anyway, he was talking about hitchhiking and as he's hitchhiking, he's like singing a song, you know, and I was like, oh. I asked him if that was him keeping it fun. And in his mind it was passing the time. But you're right, it is great. I love that you're the one that's helped me get this piece of the formula that it is attitude, it's control. And I didn't just. I know I said controlling your attitude earlier, but I didn't realize it's the same thing as keeping it fun. Whether it's passing the time, keeping it fun, I'm really excited. This is cool.

Awesome. Yeah. Because it's like sometimes, okay, when Baby was born that through. So at this point that's baby three, right? So now I've got a seven year old, actually just turned eight, a three year old and a three month old baby. So that changed my logistics of how I bake. And for a while there I wasn't able to bake my normal schedule. So I had to start the process after everyone went to sleep because I can't necessarily stop in the middle of it to go change a diaper or feed a baby or put a baby to nap, right? Once you start the baking process, you have to finish it because just of how my logistics work. I'm shaping while stuff is going in the oven, every 10 minutes I'm shaping a new tray of bread which then gets pulled out of the oven from one deck, like let's say the bottom. And then I pull it out, rotate the tray. Now it goes in the middle shelf, pull it out, rotate again, it goes to the top shelf, right? So it's like if I stop that train, it becomes a train wreck, right? And the whole thing just kind of caves in on itself. So I've stayed up all day cleaning, watching babies, right? Making meals. And I'll tell you what, if you make home cooked meals, God bless you because I felt like all of a sudden my meal prep went from like three meals a day to about like 10 with snacks. Oh daddy, can I have a. Oh daddy, can I have a. Right, so I'm either washing something or prepping something to be washed or cooking something and it felt like I was just in the kitchen all day long on my feet, right? So one thing you do is you get really comfortable shoes and you get yourself a subscription to like Audible and you get your earpiece on and you just start cramming in. Awesome books, self help, make it a college course. You know, you can learn all sorts of stuff, learn to speak a different language, get some motivational books, self improvement books or just books for fun and enjoyment. And that's how you deal with the I'm standing here all day long, woe is me bullshit. Because something is going to give victim mode, is going to turn on at some point when you've felt like you've gone past your threshold, right? So now evening time comes, everyone's asleep, I'm tired. And now it's time to clock in, in job number two and bake bread until like 2, 3, 4 o' clock in the morning to wake up at seven to make sure that breakfast, lunch, etc. Is made for the kids that are starting Their day, too. So that starts to just get on your mind, wear on your mind. It starts to, like, jumping into victim mode, going like, oh, you can't keep this up, Norris. You surely need more rest than that. Oh, you're tired, blah, blah. And here comes, like, all of the BS advice that the mind wants to give you on how you're living your life. So regardless of your job, I know this stuff happens. You just have to be ready for it. So when negative Nancy is talking in your head, just let it talk. Let it be like that person next to you who you really don't value their opinion. You still hear it. You still hear it. You can't run away from it. Don't try to, like, you know, clear your mind and Zen all out on it, because it's still going to be in your face. Just don't empower it. And if you find yourself starting to entertain it, oh, yeah, you're right. Right. You're jumping into that. That wagon with it. Be aware that that's what's happening. All right? People let you know. They're like, hey, what's wrong with you, dude? Right? Are you crabby? What's going on? Hopefully you've got people around you that will just, like, show you the bullshit flag and go, hey, man, what's wrong? Not placate you. Oh, yeah, you're right, man. That's crazy. You should just, like, you know, do something else because there's plenty of those people out there that will be more than happy to help you write off your dreams.

Plenty of those people out there that.

Will be any of those people to.

Write off staying there.

Right. They're happy to give you all the advice in their world and how they could tell you how it can't be done, why can't be done yet they've never done anything, right. The advice of, like, oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, you're giving me financial advice, but you have no money. You have no investments. You're giving me business advice, but you've never had a business. Right. It's just stuff that they've either read in a magazine or heard or just thought up of, but more than happy to give you that advice for free.

Yeah. And I actually. It's funny you bring this up. I had this kind of similar concept the other day to come up with another interview, and I love it when I see concepts coming up because it shows part of that formula, right? It's. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for the patterns. And the other thing Is a lot of times people have the right intentions, but their own fears are coming up and they're speaking from their fears. So it's not like they're intentionally meaning to misguide you. Not saying everyone's like that, but there's some people on that route. So that's something.

Just society programming.

Yeah. So I would love to go back to you were saying too, with the farmers markets. So now you're selling out by noon, which is great. And then you mentioned Covid.

Yeah.

Sort of change things. Can we, can we walk me through that a little bit?

Yes. And here, here you go back to sales. Right. The relationship that you have with your customer. And luckily, I developed really awesome relationships. I had a customer list. People would write down their name, their phone number, and I would follow up with them. Hey, how was the bread? It's like, who does that? I don't even have people following me up when I buy a car. Thousands of dollars, no follow up question. Hey, man, how's that right. Doing. Right. But you got some guy at a farmer's market calling you up. Just see how you're doing with your bread. Yeah, that's what it's about.

Yeah. So that's how you were able to keep things going during COVID.

I had people's contact information.

Yeah. That's great.

I could just imagine when the farmer's market closed and I had customers who I would text and they would text or call. Right. And they're like, hey, Norris, so are you going to be baking? And I'm like, well, that's a great question, because the farmer's market's closed. Sure, I'll make a batch and I'll just call up my, my customers and see if they want some bread. So it caught on and I'm like, well, I'll offer curbside. Right. And this is like at the height of COVID where nobody wanted to touch anything. I don't want to touch your credit card. I don't want to touch a pen. I don't want to even be in this like 30ft close to you kind of deal. So what I did was I already had a website, but it was just more of a splash page for information. What I did was I, I put my menu on there so then customers could order pre order, which actually ended up being awesome because now they wouldn't roll up to the farmer's market and go, oh, you're sold out. Oh, I knew I should have been here earlier or called you or I just wasn't sure if I was Going to be able to make it, you know, and bummer. So now they took time out of their schedule. They parked, walked down the farmer's market and I'm sold out. And I used to feel so bummed for those people, you know, and now online, pre order, they can order as many as they want. I changed up my bags at first. They used to be perforated with a little air hole so that it would breathe, which is super important if you're out in a farmer's market, because the sun, any sort of sunlight hitting that loaf of bread, it's going to completely fog it up. Unless you have little holes in it, perforations. So what? But in a Covid environment where people are buying four, five, six loaves and freezing them, now I switched over to like thicker bags without holes so that they can just take the whole loaf directly and pop it in the freezer.

It's amazing how you able. Instead of. Yeah, like going through that whole like poor me thing, you were able to basically shift your entire business to almost being like an e commerce business now.

Exactly. I became a straight up e commerce business like overnight almost. It seemed like, I think it took like two weeks for me to get my menu on. And. And then I was just email blasting people. I mean, again, beautiful. We're in an air in an era where there's so much technology that helps support you. Yeah, I love it with things like constant contact or whatever CRM you're using. It's like, boom. I just send an email to 150 people and they can click on my menu and see what's new for the week, order their breads. They're happy. I get a message. I know exactly how much I'm baking. I'm baking what they want in their quantity. And they don't have to. They could just pencil me in their day running errands, text me when they've shown up. I go out there with my chef's coat and my basket of bread and I give them their order. I get to chat with them for a little while. They're happy. They don't even have to leave their car. They don't have to take the time to park or any of that jazz. So that's how it evolved from being at the farmer's market to curbside pickup, which really helped, especially with baby, because I'm not away for like six hours to run a farmer's market along with needing childcare. And even though grandparents are awesome, taking care of a baby is a whole other ball of wax. Man, yeah, but you're right, it goes from like, oh, no, the farmer's market closed. Who. You know, victim role. It's so easy to jump into that. And you just gotta think, okay, now what? How do I sell bread under these conditions? How do I do the thing under these conditions? Because the mind is super creative. It will show you at least a path that you can initially take. Like, you know, they say the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. And that's all you really need to make that mental shift of your attitude to go, okay, well, I know there's something I could do towards this thing. And that's all it really takes. That's the momentum that you need in order to push that big boulder down the hill.

So what do you think has been the hardest thing for you in regards to doing the thing?

Let's see, the hardest thing. I guess it all boils down to belief that the thing is even possible. Because when you're in a path of growth, like, let's say, like, okay, so how do I improve my business now? Like, everything's going great for you, right? And all of a sudden you ask your the question, okay, so how do I get it to the next level? What's that going to take? It's like there was no Covid, there was no external force that's forcing you to change. This is what highly successful people do. They look at what they're doing and ask themselves, great, it's a new year, new month, new quarter, new week, new moment. How do I improve in this? How do I get better at this? They're constantly learning.

And then what do you think would be your number one piece of advice for people in regards to doing the thing?

That they have more value than they really even understand. You don't know what's possible for Stacy. Like, if you look 10 years back and you told yourself, hey, you're going to be this, this, have achieved that, that, right? They'd be like, oh, I don't even know that that's even possible. Like, we short sell ourselves so much as a society, it almost becomes the shooting for like bare minimum versus, like, if somebody told me, hey, Norris, why are you looking at your income, thinking you want to hit 6, 6 digits when you can hit 12? What is that even possible? What? So that's what I mean by like, know that there's just so much more in you that you even can begin to believe. Going back to the whole shoot for the stars. If you land on the moon, you still did something Stellar.

Yeah. That is so good. I was actually just talking about that this morning where, you know, the four minute Mile, once that became a thing.

Yeah.

All of a sudden people started doing it and I was kind of. We were actually talking about how, how lucky people are, like, we all are, you know, to have podcasts and like you said audibles to basically. And I'm thinking podcast specifically because I'm like the ones that I listen to, like how I built this or CEO coaching and all the different ones and actually maybe even this podcast. But you're able to literally like get a formula for how people are successful, you know, how people start their business, what mistakes they've made, how to overcome those mistakes. And I just think there's so much to that, you know, from what you're saying that is like, it's game changing time now, you know?

Yeah, yeah. And the whole like, shoot for. There's a really cool concept that we're doing at Kung Fu, which is basically like, it's a multiplier of 10. So if you think that you can make an additional 10 phone calls, right. For your job, well, multiply that by 10. So now you're at 100. So imagine if you did a hundred calls. So now that's the new goal, right? That's like the whoa goal. Right. Because 10 was still like, oh, you know, I think that's doable, right? You know, if I really push myself. But that's actually more like, that's mediocre doable. Like what's really gonna like, excite you? Like, whoa. Okay. Like, I wanted to take a trip to, to go see Mount Rushmore. Now my new goal is to go see Mount Fuji. Hello. Right. So it's the goal setting that if the goal is not large enough, it's not exciting.

Yeah.

And if something isn't exciting, then it's really easy to pick something else to do instead of the work needed to get that goal done. Because one thing I found for true that. That's. That's very true. It's easy to do the things that you want to that are going to help you achieve your goal. And it's really easy not to do them too. And it's really easy to talk yourself out of it unless you just get on yourself and go, okay, well, you know what? Yesterday I failed Today, last week, 15 days consecutively, I still have not done the thing. So what? That just means that you need more practice or maybe the goal isn't cool enough. Let's up the ante.

Yeah. And actually this this makes me think this would be a good thing to, well, almost end on. But the, the thing from Kung Fu. I know because we did it in the 1% thing. Do you mind sharing that for them? Because I haven't talked about that concept yet, that Kaiser.

Yeah. So we had a concept of 1% growth. If you did something to improve your life, 1% every day at the end of the year, you got 360 plus percentages of growth. So what that means is. Okay, on the physical side, let's say I really want a stronger upper body so I can today do five push ups. Like solid pushes. Not like, oh, you know, I'm gonna use my body momentum or not go as low and basically cheat because your mind knows you're cheating. So you might as well just like do your best. If you, if you can only really do three push ups, then guess what, that's where you're at. So what? Right? That's why you're working on it. Yeah. So then you do one more push up or half a pushup, it really doesn't matter. It's just that incremental. Like at the end of the day, you know that you gave a little bit more effort towards the thing and ultimately that's probably enough to make yourself feel good about you, to start building that self confidence. Because we're all busy, right? I mean this is a very fast paced society. There's plenty of things to do. And if you set aside the one minute or however long it takes you to do something simple. And that's why it goes back to the hey, it just has to be doable. It has to be something that you can do. Like for a long time. I'm like, okay, I need to carve out an hour to do this one exercise. Not like physical exercise, but just like a work thing. Right? It's like, okay, I really need to practice studying this material. Okay, well, didn't do it yesterday, didn't do it the day before that. Why it did it like maybe one day because I just so happen to have more time that one day in the week than I do every other day. And with three kids it just kind of. Sometimes my. And baking. My schedule just varies. It's not like a 9 to 5 thing. Like I just have to be able to be very liquid in my planning. So now I just chunk it. It's like, okay, within this next three hour chunk, I'm shooting to get this one thing done. Now granted I'll end up doing like 10 or 15 things, but it's the one thing that I really, really, really wanted to get done, and that thing might take five minutes or 10 minutes or longer, it doesn't really matter. So you just kind of go. You got to go through the process and figure out what works for you and what works for your schedule and. But it's got to be doable, because if it's not doable, it's not going to get done.

Yeah. It's just giving yourself permission to do those little increments to get the growth that you want.

That's it.

Yeah. I love it. Well, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you wish I asked you?

Nothing really comes to mind, you know, except for where can you buy your awesome bread? Norris? You could always do it through a link. My company name is Sourdough Delight. I'm Norris the kung fu baker. And a lot of people ask me, well, how does kung fu and bread tie? And for that I refer to a gentleman. I believe he's a Japanese descent, Masuru Emoto, who wrote a really awesome book called the Hidden Messages in Water. And it basically was water experiments and the power of us illustrated in like, physical, tangible examples. Like, you fill up a mason jar with water and you put a little piece of tape on it and you just write love. He takes a sample of that water, freezes it, and analyzes the water crystal. He does the same thing with another jar, but instead of love, he wrote hate, same experiment. He took a water sample that was frozen, analyzes the crystal. The two are night and day. One looks beautiful and symmetrical. Love. And the other one, you don't even. Can't even begin to understand what it is. It's so deformed.

Wow.

And he did that. Yeah. And he did that with audible, like, people praying or music. Hard rock versus classical. I mean, and it just illustrated over and over and over the power of energy when it gets transmitted into something like water. And it just basically solidifies Einstein's theory that. I love this quote. He basically said everything is energy and that's all there is to it. And this guy was just giving examples of it through his experiments of water crystals. And when you think about, we are mostly made out of water. So the power of positive thinking per se, or just your positive attitude, how that changes you, molecularly speaking, how I interact with a big ball of dough. Right. You were talking about how coworkers at your job were like, oh, my God, yay, it's bread day. Because they're not just eating flour and water that was mixed and baked they're eating energy. And that energy is kung fu energy.

I love that concept. Can you share your website again so everyone gets it?

Sure. Sourdough delight.com and tiger kung fu.com for the authentic white tiger Kung fu. I'll send you links.

Oh, yeah, I'll put it in the show notes. And thank you so much for coming on. I love this conversation and I'm grateful for. I mean, over the years, you've been just such a huge part of just everything that we've been doing. And so I'm. I mean, it's. It's the. The way that you're able. Because I know I used to hear it even through Brooke, where I would hear, like, things that you would say to her. And it's just the way that you look at things. And your insight has always been really, really awesome.

Oh, well, thank you, Stacey. I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show and. And to be a positive impact on your listeners. Thank you.

Yay.

Yay. I wish you all the success because heavens knows, we definitely need more positive soldiers out there spreading positivity and giving people guiding light to overcome whatever challenges that they may be going through to create a lifestyle that they want. So kudos to you.

Thank you.

You're welcome. All right, until the next time we meet you. Take care.

You too.

Thank you. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the thing. Do you have a burning question on doing the thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at dothothing callcast. Co or email us at hello at dothingpodcast. Com.