The Best Advice Ever Given For Entrepreneurs With Tracy Hazzard From The On The Shelf Podcast With Timothy Bush

Foreign.

Welcome to on the Shelf, a program that is dedicated to helping you get.

Your products into a major big box retailer.

Tim here with you and I'm excited about today's podcast and I don't know about you guys, but I have been busy, busy, busy.

The beginning of the year for me.

Is kind of like Monday on steroids. It's like every day is Monday. You know, you're just trying to get everything off the ground. It's a new year and you just really want to get it started and get it kicked off.

Right.

I'm sure that you guys are feeling the same thing, but I hope that you're having some success. I hope that things are falling into place and that you're getting on track and you're getting things down on paper and you have a good plan of action and that you're executing on it. I think that's the most important thing. I mean, I think you can have a plan. I think anybody can create a plan, right? I mean, it's not that difficult to create a plan. But where's that plan going? What's the end result of that plan? What's the goal of that plan and are you executing on it? Or do you start every single day in a fog and you know, what am I going to do today? How am I going to do it? How are things going to come together? Or do you spend some time the evening before putting down what you're going to do that day? And does what you're going to do that day tie into your overall plan? So how are you guys executing your day to day? I'd be interested to know. Please reach out to me and let me know what you guys are doing, what you're using, what kind of apps and different planners that you guys are using to execute your everyday? Me personally, I use a couple of different things. The Full Focus Planner by Michael Hyatt is one of my favorites. So I use that every single day. I also use the journal that comes from Michael Hyde. So if you guys want to go check that out, you can just type in Full Focus Planner. That's a free shout out for them.

But I'm interested to know how you.

Guys stay on track. It's a busy time and if you don't have a plan right now, the year is going to go by so fast that by the time you're finished with it, you're going to think, hey, what did I get accomplished? What really happened? Did I reach my goals and did anything that I really thought was going to happen? At the beginning of the year actually happen. I hope for you guys that it does. I hope that you guys are on track. I hope that you guys have a plan and I'd love to hear about it. I'd love to know what you guys are doing. So please reach out. Guess what, guys and gals, it's Flash Topic day and we are going to do flash topic 11. And I can't believe that we're 11 into the flash Topic series. We have a huge panel today. We have some of the regulars back. We have Jamie Robinson is back. She's a little bit late, but we're not going to say anything about that. And Tracy Hazard is back. Joe Tarnowski is back. Salah Khalaf is back. But we have a new addition to the Flash Topic panel and her name is Shannon Curtin. Now, I know that you guys know who Shannon is because she just was on the podcast the last release. And so she, she is a phenomenal addition to the Flash Topic panel and adds a lot to this particular episode. What are we talking about today? We set up a scenario based on a scene from Spy Game with Brad.

Pitt and Robert Redford.

That's all I'm really going to say. I'm going to let the podcast speak for itself. I hope that you guys really enjoy it. We had a lot of fun doing it. So there's nothing else. Let's get right into it.

All right, everybody, welcome back to flash topic 11. I can't believe this is our 11th one. So glad to have you guys all here. Appreciate your time.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

Yes. Thank you.

Yeah, so I've been thinking a lot, as always, you know, and quite honestly, I never decide on the topic until I have to because, you know, everything in my life is a crisis. So I have to wait to the very last minute to come up with what it is we're going to talk about. And today is no exception. In fact, probably it went longer or closer down to the wire than it's ever been. But before we get into that, we have somebody that's. We have a guest panelist. Her name is Shannon Curtin. Shannon, how are you?

I'm well. How are you guys?

We're all awesome and we're dying to know. Well, I know who you are because Shannon has a podcast coming out on on the Shelf. It should be out next week. So if you missed part of what she does and who she is, we have an hour long podcast coming out next week with her. But Shannon, for the purposes of Flash Topic and people that might not listen to that podcast. Why don't you just tell us all a little bit about yourself? Sure.

I have had a long history and career in beauty. My area of expertise is in the beauty industry. However, I've been a retailer. I worked at Walmart Corporate for a long time, Walgreens leading their beauty and personal care division. There's, I've been a manufacturer leading Coty Beauty North America. And most recently I am consulting, helping small and mid sized companies and some large companies find success in transformation. A lot of people want to transform, but it is, it's a process and helping people get through defining where they want to go, putting the right processes in place in order for them to be efficient and effective going forward. So that's what I'm doing now and I'm super happy to be here with you guys today.

You know, I think Shannon undersold herself because for anybody in the beauty business, she is a legend. So everybody knows who she is in the beauty business.

Well, so we're going from Shannon's description to a legend.

Maybe in the making. And a long time to go before I do that. But thank you, Joe, that's very, very kind. I'll keep working on that.

I think that the expectations for your participation just went up substantially.

No pressure. No pressure, right.

Because I don't know what I expect out of a legend, but it's pretty high, so.

It should be. Well, let's see what we're going to talk about today and then see how we can satisfy that.

All right, so has anybody seen the movie Spy Game? Yes.

The one with Brad Pitt and Brad.

Pitt and Robert Redford?

Yep.

Is there anybody that hasn't seen it?

No, I have not.

I haven't seen it.

The whole idea behind this is these guys are in the CIA back in the Cold War. And Robert Redford is Brad Pitt's mentor and he's teaching him how to become a case agent. And at one point, you know, Brad Pitt's eager to get going and so he's like, come on, man, teach me something, teach me something else. And so Robert Redford says to him, put away money so that you can retire somewhere warm. And he says, and don't touch it for anyone, ever. And that was his last piece of advice to Brad Pitt was, you know, put away money so you can retire warm. Not retire warm, but someplace warm. So that was the last piece of advice from his mentor. And so I want you guys to picture you're lecturing and you have a group of maybe wannabe entrepreneurs. And you finish your lecture and this lone person comes up to you and says, I may want to be. Or an aspiring entrepreneur. What is the one piece of advice you would give me before I jump in with both feet?

Distill it down to one thing.

Well.

Or the one thing that you would tell them or the one thing that you would say do before they jump in with both feeds so we have the opportunity that somebody's in front of us. They haven't actually taken that leap yet, but they're gonna or they want to. And as we have all taken that entrepreneurial leap, I'm wondering what you would distill it down like. Is it a warning? You know, is it a watch out for? Is it a make sure you. Is it a. I'm so happy, you know, I don't know what it is for everybody. So I'm interested to hear, because I know that a lot of people listen to this podcast, are in the process. They have ideas, they're thinking about it, they're wondering about it. The reason I know that is because I have a thing on my website where they can come in and they can ask for a document that I offer for free, and they have to tell me what stage they're in. And a lot of them are in the I have an idea or I have a product in production or I'm thinking about. So they're on the cusp of jumping in. And as we all know, not everybody is an entrepreneur. Some people want to be.

They think about being, but not everybody.

Can do it because it takes a special kind of person. So I'm interested to know, with that person shuddering in front of you after your big speech, you're going to give them that one piece of information. Who wants to go first?

I can go. This is Shannon. If I was talking to somebody, the.

Legend is going to go first, guys.

It's not really inspirational, but it's something that they need to consider for growth, which is be comfortable and get used to being uncomfortable. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Because when you're in a varied, very structured company that may have a lot of processes in place, there's current ways of working, there's current ways of doing things. That doesn't exist when you start something from scratch. And the good thing is that most entrepreneurs don't wait. They create. And in that creation, you're going to be really uncomfortable because you're going to be stretching your mind and yourself in new ways, and you're going to have to say and ask for help when you don't know what to do. And when you have enough courage to ask someone, what do I do? Because I haven't been in this particular place before, it will help that person a lot. But it's uncomfortable because you may be considered the best at what you do in a particular field. And then you're coming in and you're creating something from scratch and learning and stretching yourself. And I think like this last week when I was getting certified as a green belt, lean Six Sigma person going for black belt here in a couple of months, I was really stretching myself in a whole new way. And my teacher was really, really hard and wonderful. So that's the type of people that you surround yourself with, the ones that continue to stretch you, that take you outside your comfort zone. And that's where you're going to grow the most.

Comfortable becoming uncomfortable. What?

Joe, you know what's really funny? And you're not going to believe this, Shannon. I actually have a video from a couple of months ago that I actually have that in the title, but it wasn't aimed at entrepreneurs. I actually had that advice for people on staff when I was trying to get them to do more videos. I told them, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable because eventually you'll get used to it and you'll start embracing it. So I agree 100% with that awesome advice.

No, I agree too. And I think to what Shannon said. An entrepreneur has to always be able to have an open. You mentioned learning a little bit, Shannon. I think learning, they have to be able to always learn something new, always improve on and open to learning new stuff, because that's going to be a big part of their success. They can't grow if they're not able to learn every day. Even learn from failures as well. In entrepreneurship, there's gonna be failures. And if they're able to learn and fix and move on and learn from their failures as well, it's gonna be very important to your success.

So is that your salah is be comfortable learning?

Yes. Able and comfortable? Yes. Learning, absolutely.

Okay.

And I guess when you're talking about growing both as a person and as an entrepreneur, the only way you're going to grow is by kind of getting uncomfortable, whether it's learning something new. Right. Because you're uncomfortable in the beginning when you're learning something new or trying something new or just failing and learning from that, it's always. There's going to be a level of discomfort.

Well, with being an entrepreneur, there's risk. Right? You're becoming a businessman Investing money your own. Nobody's paying your paycheck, so they gotta have to be open to all these things. We've talked about learning and stuff.

Okay, so, Joe, were you trying to piggyback on that or do you have a specific piece of advice you want to offer this individual?

I do have a separate piece of advice that's a little different and related. But be honest with yourself and with the people who you deal with. Always have some integrity in everything that you do, because if you are always honest in both of those ways, that will help kind of guide you in the right direction and you just feel better about the things that you do and the challenges going through the challenges that you face.

Okay, so be honest and have integrity.

Yeah.

I'm gonna throw one more out there in lines of learning, just to put a word on. It is curious. So please read a lot on your own. Things that you don't know, things that you can be better at. So I think that you and I talked about at some point where most of the population doesn't read a book a year, let alone a book after they graduate from high school. And if you can challenge yourself to read a book a week or a book every two weeks, it continues to expand your experiences in a safe setting because you're learning through other people's experiences. Now, of course, I read business development, self development. Like, I read the stuff that's, I think, sexy, like growth and how to make money. I think that's all kind of sexy. I don't read anything else that's fictional, but whatever you get your hands on and ask people tons of questions, like, whoever you meet, have three or four questions that you want to ask, no matter who you come in contact with, because you never know if that's going to be a future client or a future prospect or a future business person. What I've learned a lot working on both sides of the business is that you never know who you're going to work for or work with. And having a connection and learning how to make connections with people is so important because the majority of your earnings potential comes from the relationships that you have. And that curiosity and being interested in that other person and sharing, like, differences. You know, this is my background. This is your background. How can we work together? How can we find value and in the work and bringing value forward in the work. So just an appetite for being curious about the world that's around you.

You know, I think it's important to also. And I love business books and books on productivity and growth. But I also think it's beneficial to include some literature in that too. Because when you're dealing in business, sure, you know, the nonfiction books give you the tools, but you also, you know, if you incorporate some fiction and literature into that, you learn about people and you're dealing with people in business. So I think they kind of go well together. If you round out, I try to do like, I'll do one fiction, then I'll do one nonfiction. I'll go back and forth, back and forth. And I think it rounds it out a little bit.

It sparks your creativity.

Oh, for sure. Whatever it is, just read something every day. Fiction, nonfiction, whatever. Just read.

And the ECRM blog.

Yeah, I was waiting for the obligatory.

ECRM plug in there.

You're gonna have to start charging them for it.

It's creative writing.

Tracy. What do you think? You got this person in front of you and they're wanting to know what your one thing is.

Yeah, I'm like tossing around too. That's why I've been a little quiet here. The thing is, is that I think the one that I get that I wish I could just like take them and go, please don't spend your money yet. Like, stop them. And that is that you really need market proof first. It is the number one reason why my clients products and my products are more successful than others. And it's just the number one thing that we do is we make sure that it's not that people like our products, that they will buy our product, our idea, our thing, whatever it might be. We're checking whether or not someone is going to plunk down money for that. So we don't always go all out in invention and do it. We check it in small ways. And we're continually saying, we, okay, well, if we added this, would this be a value to you? We added that, would this be a value to you? We give images and 3D print things and do whatever we can to not spend that money and go all in until we're really sure that there's value in it. We so often get into this world where you go, well, my mom and everyone else loves my product, loves my idea, but that doesn't matter in the scope of commerce. And if you're going to risk everything, and a lot of people do, I really want you to make sure you have market proof first. It's the thing I lecture the most on. It's my number one piece of advice. But a close second to that is please stop doing it all yourself as well. Get some real Expert help, because you're creative, because you're inventors, because you have the mindset of being able to develop something. You think that everything's negotiable, everything's inventable, everything should be able to be done by you. And the reality is there's a lot of landmines, there's a lot of insider information, and getting some experts in your corner and listening to them and being curious about what they can do, all of those things that everyone just suggested here, I think that's really, really one of the most critical items I see. Those being successful are getting input from outside of themselves.

Okay, so we have a couple.

I agree.

We have a couple people. So we have a good list started here. Jamie, what do you think?

Well, like, Tracy, so many times we're, like, on the same page, but I had two that I was going back and forth with. And the first one that's not maybe as strong as the second is planning. Please plan and make sure it's a good plan. And if it's not an emergency, don't jump. You know, sometimes you get in a situation where you're laid off or you're fired or whatever. If it's not an emergency, don't jump until you're ready, until you know what you're going to do. But the second one is humility. You know, the Internet has sensationalized. People just think, yeah, I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to go sit on the beach and I'm going to be a millionaire. And it's really not that simple. And I know there's a difference between, say, an entrepreneur that develops a widget, for lack of a better term, and a service entrepreneur. But be humble. Understand that it's not going to happen overnight. Even if you do plan, research, read, learn, it's still going to be a process. And just, you know, do your best to be prepared because you're going to get hit from every single angle. Sometimes we don't recognize that when we're just employees of somebody else. But when you're the boss and you're the one that's in control and you're not ready, it could be disastrous.

That's interesting that you said be humble, because I think humility can really tag on to almost everything everybody has said. And I think that entrepreneurs have to be aggressive and they have to be confident and they have to be sure of themselves. But I think humility is a big part of being able to enlist people's help. And humility is a Big part of learning humility is a big part of understanding that you don't know everything. Humility is a big part of being uncomfortable. So I like that.

I think that's very true. That kind of sums it all up.

Yeah, I kind of. Well, I don't think that you can do a lot of these other things without humility, let's put it that way.

And that was Jocko's big thing. When he spoke, it was like, be humble. Humble. That's the start.

We'll assign Jamie's plan as much as possible to Tom, even though he couldn't be here, because his big motto and the thing he tells everyone is, hope is not a plan. It's kind of our little motto here. Hope is not a plan. And you know what he usually says, which I think is really, really great? It's not that your plan is going to work out like you plan it, Right. It never, you know, the best laid plans.

Right.

You hear that again and again. But it's that when you have that plan, when you've thought these things through, you have preparation, and you're actually much more able to be flexible. You're much more able to shift and you know, when things are right and when they're not. And so that planning process is really important. So I know he would say, amen to that one, Jamie.

Nice.

Look, you got Tom's seal of approval. And Tom's not even here.

And he's not even here. That's right.

You can tell that Stacey likes her husband. That's so cool.

Well, We've been married 27 years in January, so I think I can speak for him. I think I earned that right.

You know what's funny, though, is I can hear Tom right now. If he was on here, I could hear him saying, well, Tracy, that's not exactly what I.

I could just hear him, for the sake of argument, being like, well, maybe that's a close number two.

This is probably true.

All right, so mine is, I guess, a little. I don't know if it's a little darker, but I would tell them that you need to understand ahead of time how far you're prepared to go and what you're prepared to do to get there. I have all the time people that want to get into retail, they want to dip their toe into retail. They want to think about getting into retail no matter what avenue, whether they're coming through ECRM or wherever they're coming from. What I always tell them is, listen, you can't try at getting into retail. You either want to get into retail or you don't. Because once you start to unhook and take some of these steps, you either have to go all into it or you're not going to make it. And I think that that's pretty true for whatever it is you want to do. And so I think before jumping in with both feet, important to figure out how far you're willing to take this, how much money you're willing to invest, how much time you're willing to invest, what you're willing to give up to make it happen, and, you know, the things that you're willing to do. Because honestly, I don't think that people look at those hard parts first because it's just too exciting, and nobody wants to think about the bad things. It's too exciting to think about.

You're very right, Tim, because I get a lot of people who. Who've gone way over a line because they didn't think this all the way through, and they're just like, okay, was just another investment. Oh, another $5,000 or another one of these. And the next thing you know, they've lost their home, their family, everything, because they didn't really think that through from the beginning. And they're making those decisions with the excitement of, oh, if I do this, then and I buy this inventory, then I can do that. And so. And then all of the investment they put in up to that point, weighing on them. So, I mean, I actually had people come to me and say, well, I can't quit now because I invested in the patent. And I was like, you can.

That kind of reminds me of what we talked about a few of these back. You know, how do you know when it's time to actually stop or get out? Keep that in mind. What's your limits?

That's true.

It's really hard to see it once you're in it, and it's hard to let go of it when it's so personal. And by the way, Tracy, I'm shocked to hear you say that. Family acknowledgement of your thing is just not everything.

I'm kidding.

I know. Seriously, I say it all the time. I call them the yes and nos. Because you also get people in your family who will tell you, no, no, don't do that, sweetheart. Don't quit your job. Right, because they love you. It's only coming from a place of love, which is why it's not objective. So you need somebody to say, yeah, I'll plunk down 20 bucks for that.

Yeah. And so often yeah, we could do a whole podcast on family acknowledgment of your idea. All right, so guys, that's a good list. Have you guys all seen it? I put it up on chat.

Yep.

Yeah, I saw them. I was wondering what was. And then I kind of figured out what you were doing.

Yeah. So I want us to pick one. I want us to pick our favorite one, and then that way we can all say, if somebody came to us, the number one thing we would tell them is, as a group is this. And so is that too hard? Can we come up with one? I mean, we're still going to put all of these into the show notes of the podcast, and everybody will listen to them. And I think it's a good list. In fact, there's nine pieces of advice here. If you're wanting to jump into entrepreneurship, you know, be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Be comfortable learning. Be honest and have integrity. Read a lot. No matter what you're reading, Even if it's ECRM's blog, make sure that you read a lot. Get market proof first. Even if it's a service, understand, is it something that people are going to want to buy? Stop trying to do it all yourself. Maybe at the beginning, when you're in the weeds, you're going to be doing a lot of it yourself. But the moment that you can actually delegate something, hire somebody to do something that you're doing. In fact, if you look at any coaching company, one of the key things that they always say is, how much money do you make an hour as an entrepreneur? So let's say you make $150 an hour. How much could you hire somebody to do your accounting for? Oh, probably $20 an hour. So why are you working and doing something when you make $150 an hour? Something that you can get somebody to do, $20, now it just makes so much logical sense. So, you know, stop trying to do it all yourself. Please plan as much as possible. And that's Jamie's, and she has a thumbs up from Tom, who's not even here. And Amy also came in with be humble. And then how far are you prepared to go? Was mine. So, Salah, if you had to pick one out of there, what would you pick?

It's really hard because they're all interconnected.

Everything's hard, man. Come on.

Because when I look at everything we've done here, an entrepreneurship, an entrepreneur should be able to sell as well, right? So they're going to be selling their service, their product. They have to have that skill. So they have to be comfortable and be honest with integrity. I mean they have to learn. So I would just be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Like it was said. So. Okay, that's mine.

Yeah, I would vote on that one too. It kind of covers all the bases in some way, shape or form.

That's my vote too.

Is that you, Jamie?

Yep.

I'm gonna go with you, Tim.

You're going. How far are you prepared to go?

I just saw the Untouchables last week. So like I'm thinking, what are you prepared to go?

What are you prepared to do?

Exactly. That's like going on in my head. Because if you're prepared to be uncomfortable, if you're prepared to be curious, if you're gonna go all in. Right. How far, how deep are you prepared to do? I think that covers actually everything. You're going to have to do so many things you never imagined you were going to have to do and you're going to have to be someone you didn't know you could be. So I think it kind of covers all of that.

Okay, Shannon, are we going to go with yours? Are you going with somebody else?

Oh, I'm trying to think if I can combine the top two in some.

Way because Prepare to be uncomfortable.

Yeah, prepare to be uncomfortable is very well, like how far will you go? Also all the things that we talked about and the level of discomfort is something that you physically feel as well as mentally feel. So if we could put those two together into a user friendly term, that would be my ultimate advice. Because there's a physical and mental push that you have to go beyond what you've gone before to get to what you want. And that's really important for people to understand that. And they don't know what it's like until they do it. They don't know what it feels like until they've done it. So it's just trying to express that manifestation in a way that they can get the sense for it. So mine would be the combination of those two coming together into a new term.

We're not turning in an assignment here, guys.

So important for people to know that they're not alone when they feel they're alone. I think that's another thing.

We're adding more now.

No, it's adding new dimension of context, but yeah. So prepared to be uncomfortable.

I'm going to put that just into your uncomfortable. So we have four for uncomfortable and one for how far you prepare to go.

We can combine those and say be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And know how uncomfortable is too far.

Think I'm not going to write an entire paragraph later that includes all these in a. If I had to pick one, I'm actually going to pick Jamie. Be humble, because humility is not something that comes supernatural to me, and it's something I try to work on. And I think it's a key aspect of everything when you're an entrepreneur, because nobody knows everything that they need to know. And if you don't have a certain level of humility, you're never going to stop and read, you're never going to stop and ask. You're never going to tell yourself how far are you prepared to go? Because you never think that you're not going to get there. You're not going to plan. Because people that aren't humble, they don't need to plan. They have it all figured out. And who needs market proof when you're not humble? Because, you know, who wouldn't want to buy my product? So I think that humility kind of.

Touches all of these ideas that you guys put out.

And so. And I'm not sure that humility is something that you can just go buy at the store. I don't think it's something that you can just say, you know what, guys, tomorrow I'm gonna start being humble. I really think that it's something that you have to work on, think about, wonder about. You might even need to have some examples or some people in your life that can display humility. You may have to actually go read.

A book to figure out how to, you know what humility looks like.

But just to go with that, Tim, when you said at the beginning you think that this is something that you have to work on, I would never say that Tim does not have humility. Tim is not humble. That is the opposite of you to me.

Well, not me.

You have true friends on this call.

Tim, I was just about to say that all my work is paying off. And then Jamie had to speak.

Sorry.

I think for your listeners, I will tell them the importance of humble by saying that nothing will stall and destroy a company as much as arrogance and denial. So if whatever will scare you into believing that you start from a humble position, it's the best way to grow. Know that your company will not grow. It will fail. If you're arrogant and you're in denial of inevitable facts around you, of needing to learn and to ask questions and ask for help.

And that's the other encouraging thing about this during this process, because it won't be overnight but there's going to, hopefully, there's going to be a lot of growth. You know, the person is going to continue to grow and learn things and understand things better. And by the end of the process, they'll be glad they did.

Right. You know, you guys, everything I learned, I learned somewhere in the movies.

Instead.

Yeah, for movie quotes. But the new movie that came out with Mark Wahlberg called mile 22, if you haven't seen that, it's worth it, and it's even worth it to look it up later and find out that the unit in that movie is really a real unit. It's called something different. But Mark Wahlberg says in there, ego is not your amigo.

If I can suggest a book instead, Tim. So very early on in my career, as many of you guys know, that I worked for Herman Miller. It was early in my career. So it really informed me as to how to run a company and how to treat your employees. And I mean, just they're just such a fabulous company to work for. And Herman Miller goes on this sort of policy of servant leadership. It's almost like a mandate of servant leadership, and was set by one of the children of their founders, Max Dupree, and he wrote a book called Leadership Jazz. And it is all about being a servant leader. And when you come from a place of servant leadership that your job is to serve, that sales is an opportunity to serve, to provide somebody a solution that when you look at everything from that lens, you are in a place of humility at all times. And so that's one of the things, I think, that informed me really early on.

Nice. So you're saying that great advice is better than ego is not your amigo, Is that what you're saying?

If you just want to get. If you want to do more research.

Yeah, I got another one for you. Same kind of thing. It's called Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek, the guy who wrote Start with why? Yeah, and it's the same principle, actually. He leads off with a military example, which is where the term came from, where the officers generally class. Yeah.

And John Maxwell books are really great about servant leadership, too. I think there's lots of lessons or similar across many books. But at the core of what we do is we serve customers and can keep that center. Like you said, it's a service and a chance to be available for everyone on your team. As a servant leader is just keeping your head squarely focused on who am I here to serve. That's who pays our bills. That's who Keeps us in business.

Yeah. Early on in my business, my wife said to me, we were brainstorming on this or that about the business, and she had been reading some passages and she came up with just service first. Everything that you do, service first, service before you get paid, service before you get a raise, service before you get the client, service first. And that really kind of was, in some ways the reason I started the podcast was to give away the information to start people thinking you can do it on your own, you can get your products into retail, and so on more of a serious note rather than movie quotes. 1 One of my favorite speakers I'm sure you guys know is Jim Rohn. And he was always super perplexed by people wanting to learn how to be a millionaire or wanting to be an entrepreneur or wanting to do anything in life and not going and picking up books from people who had already done it. And so that never made a ton of sense to him that you would want to do something and you would skip the opportunity to read and learn from somebody who has already done what you're trying to do. So I agree. And that falls into, by the way, we have it right here from Shannon. Read a lot. So there you go.

All right, guys, I think super great ideas. And we're going to put these, like.

I said, in the show notes. And as always, when we bring the panel together, what is the end result of it is for the listeners and the big boxers on that will be listening to this podcast. Just a tremendous amount of knowledge from people that have been there, have done it, are successful at it. And I can't tell you how thankful, grateful I am that you guys are willing to take time out so that the listeners of this podcast can learn from the things that you're currently doing. And so I just want to say one more time, so you got to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You got to be comfortable learning, have honesty and integrity. You need to read a lot. You need to get market proof first. You got to stop trying to do it all yourself. Please, please, please plan as much as possible. You need to be humble and you need to figure out how far you're prepared to go. So I don't think any one person could have thrown that all together. So again, my many thanks, everybody for weighing in on the spare of the moment. Right, because you didn't know what we were going to talk about. Any final thoughts from anybody?

It may be fun for your listeners to get our top picks. So maybe we can all send you our top three to five to ten books that we read this year, whatever the number is. But what our top picks are. So they already have people who've gone through and said these are really great books and help narrow down the selection for your listeners.

Yeah, in fact, why don't we instead of that, which I think is an awesome idea, but why don't we make that our next flash topic and everybody, it won't be such a flash topic only in that we won't know what books we're going to bring. But why doesn't everybody bring their top one to three books that they read in 2018 and we will create a complete book reading list for the big box listeners out of the next Flash topic. What do you guys think about that?

I like that idea.

Yeah, I like it.

Awesome. Guys and gals, I just want to say I hope you all have a tremendous, wonderful holiday season with your family. Take a chance to reflect and relax and enjoy some well deserved time off. We've had a tremendous year with Flash Topic and I appreciate each and every one of you. So thank you so much and enjoy the holiday and we will see you again in the new year.

Hey, big boxers. Flash Topic 11 is in the books and it was a good one.

Right?

I wasn't kidding.

There was a lot of great information.

In there and I know a lot of you are on the cusp of jumping in to entrepreneurship. You're thinking about it, you're wondering about it, you're thinking about making a product or you have a product in the works and you're wondering, man, what's it going to be like to be my own boss? Well, I think that the panel was able to give all of you some key advice.

Right.

That was some really great. You can't pay for advice like that. Big boxers. It was amazing and I was really excited to hear what everybody had to say and I thought it was all super relevant. There wasn't anything in there that I said that's, that doesn't really fit or that doesn't really count or matter. No. Everything in there was really terrific nuggets of information from people that are successful at doing what you guys are wanting to do right now. These are people that are being successful entrepreneurs and they're willing to give some of that success how they got there, what they did over to you. That's what the panel is for. That's what makes Flash Topic awesome, is that you don't just have to take my word for it. You can actually listen to 3, 4, 5 different opinions on the same topic and are able to, I think, get key information from all of those. All right, so I'm glad you enjoyed.

It and we'll look forward to hearing.

And seeing your comments on Flash topic. If you want to support the podcast right now, it's really easy. There's a couple of different things that you can do. One, I would recommend that you go right now to on the Shelf Now Facebook group and hit Join so that you can join that conversation. Then you can go to on the Shelf Now Facebook page and hit like or Follow so that you can be in on that. You can go to Twitter and look up on the Shelf now and follow us on Twitter. And then last but not least, you can go to Stitcher, you can go to itunes, you can go to Shopify. Not Shopify. What am I talking about? Spotify.

There you go.

And actually subscribe to the podcast. If you don't know how to do that, there's going to be some instructions. When the podcast actually comes out on on the shelf now.com and you go click on the blog post, there'll be instructions in there on exactly how to follow us, exactly how to go and leave a comment and give us a rating. All these things are ways that you can support the podcast if you're enjoying it. We're not asking for money, people. We just want to know what you think. We just want you to like the podcast, follow it, subscribe to it, and hit us up on our social media accounts. All right, so great to speak to all of you. Look forward to the next time. Until then, I look forward to seeing your products on the Shelf.