Birth to Net Worth with Rachel Rofé

Join us as we unravel our deep-rooted relationship with money, from earliest memories to eureka moments and building wealth. Birth to Net Worth with me, Trystan Trenberth. Hey guys, welcome to another edition of Birth to Net Worth. Really exciting guest today, Rachel Raffaele, um, very accomplished entrepreneur, e-com queen. She's got a business which actually Fulfills e-commerce products. She's coached thousands of people to sell their own first product online and coaching way beyond. She's the real great side hustler. She's helped so many people through getting out of their day-to-day jobs and even just staying in those day-to-day jobs and creating wealth to support a profitable and prosperous future. Rachel, come on into the studio. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk more with you.

Wonderful. So, um, tell us a little bit of background. Whereabouts are you and, and, uh, what, what do you— what, what's your background?

Yeah, so I am in Pennsylvania part of the time and then The Woodlands, Texas part of the time. So I've been splitting and then just traveling. People a lot of times say, where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? With me, I just love to travel place. So that's where I'm— where I am. And then background, I mean, you covered, you've covered a good deal of it in terms of like business stuff. I've been a full-time entrepreneur since 2006. And yeah, I do a lot of kind of print-on-demand things now. So I sell my print-on-demand products, which are kind of made-to-order products on Amazon, Etsy, eBay. I teach people how to do it. And then I have a fulfillment center that ships out their orders. So it's a nice little system. And then as you touched on, I love side hustles. So I'm into a lot of those too.

Great stuff. Well, we're going to put the link to your course below, I think, in the, in the YouTube and the Apple podcast so people can sort of follow you and all your social media. So let's, let's dive in. So Rachel, tell us, what was your first memory of money and what did that mean to you in your life?

Yeah, so it's a little bit of a heavy memory, but I'll just be transparent. So my first memory of money was when I was 5. My parents were having a huge fight, and my dad said something like, I am never— I'm leaving and I'm never coming back. And so I was 5, and I ran outside, and I jumped in my dad's car, and I just tried to calm him down. And I got him calm. I said, you know, you guys just need to take a vacation, you and mom need a vacation and everything's gonna be okay. And so, and when I had left, my mom was kind of in hysterics, like calm him down. I was always the one to kind of calm him down. And so he calmed down, got him home, went to my mom, it's like, I got him calm, he's good now. I felt like I saved the day, my 5-year-old self. And my mom just said, no, what are you doing? We can't go on a vacation, we don't have money. And I went from feeling like a million bucks to feeling so much shame and like I did the wrong thing. So that was my first, yeah, money memory.

Wow. So it gave you shame and, and maybe some embarrassment to you causing something which you didn't intend because you're a huge heart. Was so well-meaning for solving a problem, and that didn't have the outcome. So what happened from there, and how did that kind of, um, progress from you trying to save the day, then your hopes were dashed, and you know what evolved from that point forward?

So, um, money was very feast or famine in my life.. And my dad had some kind of eka or some entrepreneur stuff. He had some businesses and it was always just, we were either eating all-you-can-eat shrimp or, I mean, there was a bunch of things. I think at times he hid, I know he hid groceries under my stroller and stuff because we couldn't afford. So just a lot of back and forth. And so when I was very young, I just started doing a whole bunch of side hustles to be able to create income, which I equated with freedom. I had a whole little business when I was 8 where I was going to businesses around town and I was getting flyers from the businesses and then like each one would give me their own flyer. I'd staple them together and then I would hand out little pamphlets at grocery stores. I'd say I'm advertising. I think it was like $25 for 100 flyers or 1,000 flyers or something. Just always doing stuff. Lemonade stand, dance performances, whatever I could do to bring in the dough.

Yeah, I love that because from the shame of that situation you still equated revenue with freedom and with the feast or famine. If I'm hearing you rightly, you know, when there was money, things were good. When there wasn't money, things were really tough. And your being just decided, well, I want to have money so that I have things or have the freedom to choose to do different things. So I think, you know, leading that into entrepreneurial hustle of, you know, the pamphlets, the marketing at such an early age, You know, what was, what was the stage from there that, you know, did, did you equate that with buying toys or buying more stock to be able to, you know, snowball that, that revenue into greater revenue?

I hadn't yet learned about stocks. That would have been extraordinary.

As far as buy a stock, you know, as far as, you know, your products that you could then have more Gotcha.

Yeah, I didn't have— I'm trying to think. I didn't do anything with inventory until I was maybe— I mean, I did when I had lemonade stands and things like that, but probably inventory wasn't until 14, 15 when I would go to thrift stores. This was before it was cool, and I would print out this big list of all the high-end brands, and I would go and look at all the things in the thrift stores and see the high-end brands and then flip them on eBay. So So, um, that's what I did then. But back then, I guess I must have just saved it. I, I was also a clothes horse. I'm sure I bought a ton of clothes. Um, yeah, that was important.

Yeah, well, I can see you're very stylish and, and know where, where that, you know, helped you along there. So, um, so that took you to your mid-teens. What were you, what were you aware of in your younger days, around the 7 and 8-year-old days, to, to your teens? How did you see people at school, school friends, or other people around you? How did you see maybe scarcity or abundance or a combination of the two around you? What was your awareness of that through that time?

Yeah, I remember when I was in high school, my dad had a license plate that said Rofe. And I remember this kid that used to— he was a bully. But I remember one of the things he was so mad about, you have a vanity license plate, so you must be rich. And that was not the reality. I mean, I felt, yeah, I don't know if how I remember with other people kind of what their money stories were. I just remember a lot of heightened emotions around money. Yeah, wish I had more meat for that answer, but yeah, it was, it was just a lot of the, the give and take at the house.

Yeah, understood. You know, I think, you know, one of the things I remember growing up, you know, you see kids with other toys that maybe you're envious of, or, you know, wasn't money in the budget for those things. Or, you know, I think that we now look back as adults and see that there might have been some compensation from parents in, or overcompensation for the lack of love, to, you know, provide things, material possessions, instead of Um, it's funny how that we, we do or don't, don't notice those things along the way. So, you know, teen, teen, teenage years is kind of when, you know, our entrepreneurial ears can pick up and opportunity to see different opportunities. What was it in your teens that you sort of had as a vision, or, you know, your late teens? Because we don't think very far ahead in our very young years. You know, it's almost instantaneous, you know, presence in the moment. Cruises of the teens, where we start to see a little bit ahead of things, saving up for things, or seeing things that we'd like to do in the future. Did you have any vision and idea of what you foresaw for yourself or for your life?

No, I don't think I had any vision. I started working as a cashier at Walmart as soon as I could, and soon I turned 16. I was able to work, I did. And, and then I just kind of worked my way up pretty fast. But I didn't really have any vision. I guess I just assumed that I would do the whole go to college, get married, all that stuff, which I ended up not. I just worked my way through. I paid my way through school while working retail. And I just knew that I didn't want to be at retail for the— for all my life. There there were other managers, I'd worked my way up to assistant manager really quick. I went from Walmart to Target. And I remember talking with managers that were 10, 20 years my senior, and they would just talk about how they lived at Target or lived at Walmart and they were miserable. And so I knew I didn't want that, but I didn't necessarily have a good picture. I was also still doing some reselling on the side. At the time I had a boyfriend that hated that I was doing that. He didn't like, he was very risk averse. So yeah, I just remember not wanting a lot of what I had. Didn't work.

Yeah, I understand. So did you do college? Did you go the sort of traditional American dream route of going to college and studying something that was going to be, you know, your career?

I did go to college. I worked my way through, uh, when I was working at Target, and it wasn't I just kind of got the degree for the vanity of it. I didn't use it. I went pretty much online. And, um, yeah, I would say I haven't used it at all. Have you used yours, your degree? Do you have a degree?

I, I did hospitality management. I was talking to somebody about that the other day. I learned a lot of, you know, we went into the kitchen a lot. So I worked as a manager at a number of hotels in, in the UK and also United States. I worked in Florida for a summer, and I'd volunteer in the kitchen because I loved cooking so much. It was something that I really liked, the creativity, and also the camaraderie in the kitchen was really good as well. Um, but I did hotel management for a number of years. I then used that to leverage my move into technology, and then from technology, I was in that trade for like 20 years until I got into the real estate business. So I did use it for a little time, you know, for or 5 years, um, maybe 7 years if you include the IT side of things that I was doing. But yeah, I did a— did my college time down in Cornwall.

Oh, that's very interesting. At some point I have like a trillion questions to ask about that. Interesting.

Yeah, yeah. So, vanity degree, what was the degree?

Business Administration. It was just what I had the most credits towards, so I went with that. There was no thought about it.

Yeah, fantastic. So it's funny how so many Americans go to college, and around the world to be honest, but it's, it's a decision that people make based on expectation of others generally and societal dogma that you need to go to college after school. I mean, my two kids, they're 17 and 19 now, and I've said to them for years, I'd love you to go to college if you choose to, but try and have a couple of years out in the world first so you can find your passion in something and go and study something you're really going to benefit from studying and be passionate about. Or just go and enjoy life because there's plenty of ways to make more money and be ahead of the kids that go to college by the time they're done with college. And, you know, we look at Steve Jobs, it's, it's the college dropouts that employ the A-grade students that graduate college.

So, you know, yeah, absolutely. That's awesome that you do that for them. I mean, so many people are still enrolled in that other story. Go to college, do all the things, get the check marks.

Yep, yeah. So, so finishing college, where, where did that take you? I mean, it was pretty much straight into your side hustle, which became your main hustle at that point, if I remember our brief introduction call yesterday.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I was still, um, I was working in retail through the end of college, and then I read this book. Have you heard of T. Harv Eker?

Yeah, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.

Exactly. I read that book and it talked about in the book how you can go to his events and you can, um, hit a wooden arrow against your throat and break the wooden arrow. Yeah, I don't know, I was never in a— we talked about yesterday, I'm not really an adrenaline person, but I decided to go to this event and at the end of it when we did the wooden arrow, I was just adrenaline. And I was like, they had some upsell to his Warrior Camp, like, I've got to do this, I've gotta just change things up. And so I signed up for that. We did a whole bunch of adrenaline things there, and that kind of reoriented my life to stop doing the retail thing. I packed my car, I moved to LA, and went full-time online. Fantastic.

Yeah, yeah. So how, how, from, from starting your— and, and was it e-commerce in the beginning, your business? Or tell me about that first business that you did. Whilst you were, you know, through that Target stage into this Warrior stage that you entered? Now this is the Warrior section of your life.

So in Target, right around the same time I found out this Warrior camp, I came across affiliate marketing. Well, I started being an eBay power seller flipping the clothes at the thrift stores, but then I came across power affiliate marketing. And so I found this ebook on Craigslist. It's like, make a million dollars a minute while you're sleeping in your underwear. It's glorious, you know, those kind of books. Yeah. And this was a long time ago, and so they had the ebooks, and the whole thing was if you show other people what this model is, promote this book, then you'll get an affiliate commission. And so I promoted the heck out of that book. I spammed Craigslist. I'm not proud of this, I'm not saying to do it, but that's what I did. And I mean, it taught people about affiliate marketing, but I I, I promoted it. I was making between $500 to $800 a day every day for like weeks and months doing this. So I got really lucky really fast with that. Yeah. And then I was doing that until I got on these email lists. And even though I was making all this money here, I would see an email that would say something like, you could be making hundreds of thousands over here or over here. And so I abandoned what was working to go chase the shiny objects. And then by the time I realized that was backwards thinking, Craigslist had flagging things and all this stuff. I was waking up with the Craigslist stuff before every hour on the hour to just press to repost the ads and make— I mean, it was insanity, but that's what it was back then. Yeah, yeah. So I did all kinds of different things from then to Warrior Camp, all kinds of side hustles.

Yeah. So what sparked your interest in e-commerce? Because obviously with, with Amazon coming along, I think that was a big evolution in, in the internet and, you know, fulfillment in a very different way than the, the world was used to at that point. Um, how, how did you find your way to do what you're doing now, from the flipping on eBay through to that next stage?

Yeah, so I had been always testing lots of things. I love to dabble and try all the things. And so I had been selling textbooks on Amazon as just a side hustle. And then, uh, there was this big program a few years back called ASM. Did you hear about it?

I think so.

Yeah, yeah, Amazing Selling Machine. And so I started testing that out, and I was selling all kinds of random items like Easter cookie cutters and wooden easels and all kinds of things. Around the same time, my ex-boyfriend had a Facebook fan page for pit bulls, and it was all these pit bull lovers— the dog, not the artist. And so I threw up one of the mugs on Amazon that he was selling to his Facebook fan page, and I was making a couple hundred dollars a month, like, instantly from that mug. So that— well, what if I try other dog breeds? And then I put up some more and then I was making more money and so I just kept putting more. So that was back in 2015. And then at the same time, as I said, I've done so many different things. So I used to teach copywriting because I was a professional copywriter and I used to have an outsourcing company with like 120 different outsourcers we hired and I learned a lot about that. And so I had an audience of people that I've been teaching different things to. And so I asked them if they were interested in learning this and they were. So I created the course, and then that was kind of the timeline there.

Fantastic. How long did it take you to sort of put the course together for these people to follow? Because it's years worth of experience, and not just specific to that niche, it's all of those eBay flipping to the adverts, the affiliates, everything else that built into your knowledge to be able to put that into practice yourself. And then You know, I find sometimes it's difficult to distinguish what's— what was from one particular thing to then put into the recipe to bake the cake. You know, the ingredients are very different things coming from different places, but putting them together in that right recipe for the right temperature and the right bake time, so to speak, that's the challenge.

It is the challenge. I mean, I got lucky because part of the side hustles— I mean, I used to have courses about all kinds of random things, baby shower favors, just on and on and on. But the way that I launched the course, I don't know, maybe it took me a couple of weeks. I outlined it out, I made videos. We had a Facebook group as people wanted more information. I would just keep updating. We've been doing like lifetime updates since I launched it, which is I think end of 2015 or 2016. So that's kind of how I like to do it is path of least resistance. I mean, I gave everything that I thought that people would want, I think it was pretty comprehensive, but I tend not to be an overcomplicator with those kinds of things.

Well, that's the opposite of me. I'm very much looking at a lot of details and often putting things in there that aren't relevant. And, but, you know, it's a gift to be able to decipher through that very quickly and easily.

Thank you. I tried to do it where it was lots of— I did it the way that I like to consume courses, which is just very, very short videos videos with transcripts. So exactly what I want, in and out, keep it moving. Yeah.

So yeah, yeah. So how many of these courses do you have now? Is it just primarily that one niche that you're coaching other— or having the evergreen content to coach other people where they just sort of buy into, to the course and then they maybe have access to other things that you do?

So the flagship course is the one that I keep doing. I have been doing for years, but I'll put out other courses. We sell a lot of different products, so sometimes we'll do, let's say, a boot camp for teddy bears— have been a big seller lately, I was telling you yesterday— or candles or whatever. So I'll, I'll put together little courses about that, and then I have a print-on-demand kind of membership. But the main one has been my focus since 2016, and it's just teaching people how they can create their own made-to-order products.

Yeah. So let's, let's look at the, the, the upside, if you like, of the experience and, and the traction in these things. Obviously you've scaled to a degree where instead of just using outsourced resources to be able to do these things, now you've actually built your own structure so that you can actually manage your own verticals in certain areas. Tell us about how you scaled from just doing this all of yourself and now having a bit of freedom to tie, you know, of time and travel, and knowing that things are happening in the background to, you know, change that clock behind you to show that more things are happening.

So that— I need to get a bigger sign. So the fulfillment center is customhappy.com. We have orders coming in from lots of different sources, but this is the Shopify orders for customhappy.com. So every time it goes up, it means we've gotten another order. So that's fun. So I guess there's really 3 different businesses that helps me free up. So the Amazon, Etsy, eBay one, I got some incredible people that I hired on Upwork to help me with that and just some spreadsheets and phenomenal people. With the course, it was awesome because we would start to have some big success stories from people who did the course. And so then I use them to coach other people. So you're asking before, do I do coaching? I don't do any coaching, but I've used the success stories and they're happy to coach. They love it. Yeah. So that was really nice. And for the fulfillment center, I mean, because I mentioned before I had an outsourcing company and so then I learned a lot. We had so many employees. I had to learn how to outsource, how to delegate, how to let other people do things. So I mean, that was a crazy mess, but I did learn a lot in the process. So, um, so yeah, so, so I use that with my fulfillment center. I have a production manager. We do, uh, weekly meetings from Traction. Have you read Traction, that book?

I've not read Traction, but I've read Rocket Fuel, and Traction's in the near future, I believe.

Yeah, it's extraordinary. And that really helps with kind of— we have big rocks every quarter that we want to hit, it helps us reach those a lot faster, and it helps me have to not be in the business as much.

Yeah. So do you implement the whole EOS system, or is it just aspects of it that suit your business that you feel are appropriate to employ?

Um, I wouldn't say we're 100%, but we do the EOS meetings every week, we do the rocks, we do the scorecards and things. So we, we do a lot of it, and I find it to be extraordinary.

Yeah, yeah. So employee-wise versus contractors, how do you have anybody full-time that works for you, or are they all sort of 1099s or, you know, outsourced?

Yeah, so my online staff, which is my e-commerce stores and then my, um, my course, is— those are all 1099. And then my fulfillment center, we have all as employees.

Right. You bought an actual building or leased a building with a company that you bought or created that has the manufacturing?

Yeah, I think you broke up just a little bit, but you're saying, do I have a fulfillment, like a physical place in Pennsylvania? Yeah, we have a big space in Pennsylvania that has anywhere from 20 to 120 employees there too, depending on the time of year. Yeah, and that has been insane as well, having a physical— yeah, yeah, it's experience a lot easier to run digital companies, but yeah.

Well, that's incredible. I, I know that some people get to the point where they get much more wholesale-friendly rates because they got the high volume, but you've just actually taken it a step further and actually bought the facility. So tell me about how you decided that it was time to go from Printify or a similar print-on-demand that you used to creating your own business that did exactly that and now provides for other clients, I'm sure.

Yeah, so at the time, my ex who had the Pitbull Facebook page, he was also creating a print-on-demand platform. And so I have a bad habit of trying to be a martyr and help a lot of people, which could be fine sometimes, but sometimes it's the bane of my existence. This was one of those times. And so he So my ex was dealing with another kind of print-on-demand provider that was not doing such an extraordinary job. At the same time, my sister was doing some stuff on Etsy, and she was saying that she really enjoyed the creative stuff. And I thought, how hard could it be? Let me help both of them. Let me help my ex get shipped faster and my sister have more kind of income doing creative things. So I told him, my ex, that we would take the mug orders. For him. And in our very first month, we went from nothing to 10 employees because we just had so many sales coming in. It was bananas. And it just exploded like crazy. And it was wild there. As I was saying, having a physical location is a lot different than having digital. I've had to just see all kinds of crazy things. We've had all kinds of employees that are just so different. So I wouldn't recommend making a decision out of being a martyr, but that is the one that I chose.

Well, I very much relate to the martyr situation more than you know. Yeah, you know, giving benefits to others at, you know, cost to ourselves. Um, absolutely relate to that very, very much. But, uh, yeah, I think it's wonderful how you've, you know, progressed and evolved your life and your business. Um, scaling is one of those things that I think does challenge a lot of people stuck in the you know, the, uh, what is it, uh, Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrant, the, you know, the self-employed that you got to do it yourself and nobody else is going to be good enough. I think that is a great, great step to, you know, transcend as soon as possible and, you know, have those employees that can, can outsource or delegate those, those tasks too.

So yeah, absolutely.

So where do you see, um, you know, the next 6 months to 5 years? I mean, we're in a very, very quickly changing area of technology, consumer demand. The economy is very volatile as it is. It's, it's accelerated very quickly. Now it's slowing down. You know, where do you see yourself, um, being nimble enough to be able to maintain what you have and grow what you have, but also be flexible to adjust with? Maybe there are some things you see coming. Maybe there are things that you have, uh, have developed yourself that may be not in the marketplace yet that you feel might be, um, the value to, to provide, or at least leave your business flexible to do in the coming few months or years.

I mean, it's hard. I was talking to someone maybe a couple months ago, and he was saying that it used to be that I think it's something like every 50 years or something, it would be that it would be hard for people to recognize the world. Like if they were coming in 50 years later or something, things would change. Maybe it was even more than that. But the speed now happens so fast at how different the world is and how much technology. So I can't really say with any degree of integrity because I don't know what's coming. But I have an amazing team and we like to explore experiment with things a lot. And so that's— I feel like one of the big things that are— that's really helpful. We, we test a lot. We, you know, doing the AI and GPT and Claude and all the different things, we definitely spend time playing and experimenting. That really helps. We don't get too stuck in anything. And with the print-on-demand stuff, I know people say whatever about the economy. I feel like with the print-on-demand stuff specifically, it's actually putting us in an advantage because the products are cheaper for people. And so they can get kind of thoughtful gifts. And also we do personalized stuff, which I think a lot of things are going more to personalized, more very specific. So that helps a lot too for that. So I'm glad with print-on-demand for that.

Yeah, I think this, this type of product, I think it is very personal. You know, it's not a high-ticket item, so it's those things that, you know, people can have a great selection of choice from designs and, um, you know, styles of things and types of gifts. I think it makes it very, very attractive because in your store, if you've got 100 options or 50 options within one category of those 100 options, and then narrowing it down to what can I put my name on, what's the style of the person involved, and, you know, they've got some input. It's a unique thing in some ways that they can have that creative flair and think that it's not just an off-the-shelf product that says, you know, the keychain at the gas station that says Trystan, or it was never spelled correctly for my name, but, you know, or Rachel or Bob, do you know what I mean? But they've got something that's not just a there's a million other things out there, but it's something that's powerful for them and meaningful in that sense.

Absolutely. The cool thing is AI helps so much with that too. You can come up with all kinds of amazing sayings and phrases and ways to make it extra special for people. I've been embracing it and I've been loving it and it's doing so much heavy lifting.

Yeah. Well, that's amazing. As far as You know, your course, it seems to be that something just evolves whenever something changes in the business. You're just updating, sharing more of those success stories. And it's great that you can leverage your winners per se, you know, from your successes to be able to delegate that coaching to and have them have themselves promoted through that process as well, because that helps them become a greater name or a more familiar name in your community, and it raises them in their community, um, and creates more opportunities for others to follow. That it's not just Rachel that did this and everyone else is trying to copy, but no one else is quite getting there. It gives that freedom that this is possible, this is, is definitely within my ability to do so, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. I used to say all the time, like, I want my coaches to out-earn me. I think that's, that's fantastic. That's the goal, right?

Yeah. Absolutely. So let's, let's, um, let's lead to wrap. Let's, let's talk to a couple of points where, you know, give me, give me 3 things that have been most key to you in your success.

Um, I think as I was saying earlier, in terms of I started chasing a bunch of shiny objects even though I was really making money doing one thing. So I used to say a lot after I learned my lessons that if you chase 2 rabbits, both will escape. And so focusing is really helpful. I would say another thing that's been really awesome is— I don't know if you've read the book Slight Edge, but that was huge for me. That was an amazing book. And it basically talks about how the power of compounding, just doing a little bit a day, is really great versus wanting to have crazy overnight success. Yeah, so I love that book. I thought that was magnificent. It really did a big kind of mind shift mindset shift for me. And then what's another cornerstone? Another extraordinary book is "The 12-Week Year." And the premise of that is that we often make these yearly goals and then in December, we're rushing to kind of make the goals happen. So he does 12-week goals where instead of 12 months, it's 12 weeks. And so what you might get done in the year, you actually get done in a quarter with this strategy. And so the whole, because like you score every week and all this stuff and I find it to be incredible. That's been really helpful too at moving kind of goals and stuff along. And also just making it fun for a bonus tip, making it fun. I think business doesn't have to be stuffy. And I like to, I used to have a hashtag, #FollowThePleasure, and it was just do what brings joy.

Fantastic. I have a slight edge on Michelle. I did read 12 Week Year, and I thought that was great because it, like you said, it shortens the horizon. A lot can change in a year, and the goal you set for 12 months out that you're working towards may not actually be a goal that you want to be following after 12 months. But 12 weeks, you can actually pivot and change to something else, or you get to complete it on time and early. Earlier than a year, and that way you can actually more powerfully use it because it's done quicker. You've got the, the checking and the, you know, the, um, quality control done much quicker rather than pushing it through to a year and then finding out you missed the boat.

It's so true, and you get faster data, faster data points, like you were saying. If you don't want to do something— have you used it yet?

I, I've not effectively— no, I, I've not really tried. I've— I, I had the concept and I've read so many books that I haven't kind of integrated a lot of them into my business. I find that I can share that with other people that I see that, oh hey, Compound Effect would be great for you, or Who Not How, or whichever of the books it is. Um, but you know, a lot of those things I haven't unfortunately added into my businesses yet. Um, but I just— when, when they resonate, I, I can get them in there. But it's good to have the flexibility and the knowledge to to, to know that's, that's a tool that I can reach in to go back to the book, reread it, and now start looking at that. Because I've had many books that I've read, they're always at the perfect time, but they're not always the perfect time to implement. So if I read How, then I went back 6 months to the book again, I was ready to now, you know, execute on that for my business because I was ready for it, but I had it in my mind and it drew me towards that. And then I was able to work towards those goals with, with that concept in mind.

Yeah, that makes total sense. What are some of your favorite business books?

Um, I love the— I love Who Not How. I'm a great super connector. I love relationships. That's, that's huge for me, is, you know, building the relationships and putting people in touch that need to be connected. And, you know, not in the martyr role, but in a mutually beneficial situation is just creating revenue for everybody involved. You know, buying in, you know, it's almost a consulting for equities type situation where you can make the connection in a deal where two other people wouldn't have otherwise necessarily made the connection themselves. But by enabling something, you can get equity in a property or a deal or a situation, and it makes money for everybody. Another great book was Super Connector. That was a really good book that I enjoyed. I was disappointed in the penultimate chapter when it said this book is not going to tell you how to make money from connecting people. And it's like, oh, that was the reason I was reading this. The other big, the other big game changer for me was a book called Quiet Mind, Epic Life by Matthew Ferry. May not cross it. His dad, Mike Ferry, is a huge real estate trainer for agents. And, um, his dad was coached by Earl Nightingale, who was coached by Napoleon Hill. So there's a great lineage of, you know, growth and personal development through there. He's a friend of T. Harv Eker as well. Um, but it talks about living the good life without the grind, all about peace, purpose, and prosperity, being, being the peaceful millionaire, not the grinder and the hustler that's giving sacrifice or get, you know, sacrificing so much in life towards a goal that yes, they're going to get to, but they can't really enjoy the essence of what it is that they're looking for. You know, freedom of time, travel, money, all of those things. Somebody can't afford to travel to Asia, well, take a road trip to Salomon for the day and turn off your phone. It's not the— it's not Bali, it's not Malaysia, but it can give you the essence of what you're looking for, and it can inspire you then to, you know, put more effective work in in a peaceful, prosperous, targeted way. And also take it— it's all about the perspective of what you're doing as well. It's not about grinding. If you feel it's grinding, you might have to do the same prospecting, but if you can put a different perspective on it, that you're creating the conditions for those KPIs to be met, that 100 calls in, you know, 5 appointments to 1 sale— if you could be more intentional about it, and even using intuition as is so important as well. Not a lot of people are very aware of that, but I got a friend who made a wrong dial. He got wrong— hold of the wrong people, but he ended up getting 15 listings from the call by dialing the wrong— had he not made the call, he wouldn't have got those 15 listings from the call and a long-term relationship. So, you know, it's putting these things into perspective and You know, you're either bored by, um, prospecting, or you're inspired to find, well, how can I disqualify this next one and allow them to qualify themselves? So you're not trying to create a sale on the phone, you're trying to eliminate the person as quickly as possible in a respectful way that allows you then to get to the next person. And you can gamify it as well, you know, whether it's somebody that's in a completely unrelated industry that they might be doing the same calls for, you know, solar or glass or whatever it is that they're doing. But you can just put that into a fun context of, hey, how many have you got done today? What are your goals? And you can kind of use that accountability. I'm not doing, you know, calls such as that, but it's, it's anything that seems like a grind, that sounds, seems boring, and just lean into something that gives you more grace and more more pleasure, you know, like you said, follow the pleasure.

Yeah, I like that. That's a really fun reframe. You get this— I have a friend actually who follows the, the father's Mike Ferry.

Mike Ferry.

Yeah, yeah, she's been coaching with him for a long time, so I know all about— she does her X amount of contacts per day and all this, and there are ways to make it fun. Like, she tells herself, I get to connect with people, I get to see how people are doing, this is enjoy— there's— it's fun to rewrite it like that.

Yeah. And you know, Mike is a very grindy type style of person, but then Matthew, he worked for his dad for many years, but he went off on a very much more spiritual path, wrote the book, released the book in about 2016. And I've been in his mastermind, this will be my 4th year in the mastermind now, and it's an incredible place to be. It's not a real estate mastermind at all, it's, it's just, you know, higher conscious people, go-getters, being in a community of supportive, you know, mutually, you know, mutually beneficial relationships. And it's really a prosperity network, and it's a great bunch of people to be.

That's interesting. I've heard really great things. My friend that, um, coaches with the Father actually told me about— he had an event, right, or coming up, or recently, I think.

Yeah. But that's a very different event than Matthew's event.

Okay, well, I'm sure we'll see each other at one of those events.

No doubt, no doubt. So, so what else can we, um, you know, give to the viewers? Um, you know, your top 3 things were there, the book. Um, you know, what were the, what were the top 3 tips for scaling? What would you say the things that changed the game in scaling your business from you to many doing those things and becoming an operator instead of— or business owner instead of the operator of the business?

Yeah, so, um, 3 big things that helped: having incredible people is obviously very helpful. So being very intentional with the hiring process from the beginning to the job ads. I used to, um, have things inside the job listings For example, I would say somewhere in a long job listing, respond with the words purple cow at the top of your job listing. So I know you've read this thoroughly and just reading out, making sure that we got the most detail-oriented people and getting milestone work and all this really helped us have amazing high-quality people to work with. And with people, people help you scale. So that's definitely a big thing. I love having checklists, spreadsheets. I love me some spreadsheets. Nobody thinks that about me, but I love them. I love being able to just kind of see what's going on. And it just keeps everyone organized and clean. What else about scaling? EOS, like we talked about, that traction thing is really helpful. I also have, I had an amazing mentor who had us do these 5/15s every week.. And it was 5 questions, 15 minutes every week. You would answer kind of what are, what are your, your goals this quarter? What did you do towards them? What are 3 lessons you learned, 3 victories? And doing that and then having my team do that, I find to be extremely helpful. One of the questions is what's your morale? It gives me a really good pulse. And while I can't necessarily be looking at everything, I do have project managers, but seeing the 5/15s is really awesome for just getting a good kind of sense of what's going on. One of the questions is, what idea do you have to improve our business? What obstacles or challenges do you see with that? So we can kind of think things through. That's been pretty helpful too. And also, I just don't want to be tied to a computer. And so then the— whenever I'm thinking about anything, the question is, how can I make this— how can I maximize things to make it as easy as possible. So how can we make this— how can we do this in the easiest way possible? That's— oh, because, you know, your, your outcomes are dependent upon the questions you ask yourself. So yeah, yeah, that's a big one.

I love it. It sounds almost a little bit like this one, um, a book called Illuminate.

Oh, I haven't read it. Talk about it.

You have read it?

No.

So it's harnessing the power of negative thinking. So it's, it's looking in you know, basically a few steps to, instead of hiding the problems, to talk about them. And like you said, you're asking about morale, you're asking about these different things here. Um, it's looking to illuminate what the challenges are, um, to then offer people the opportunity to give their own opinion of what solutions should be, not just have a manager decide what the pro— what the solution should be from an external perspective where they may not have the the on-the-ground experience to be able to do it. Being a manager from maybe some other background that's now working in this vertical, it empowers people to have the knowledge and experience. Oh, we should try this. Like the example they gave in here was nurses with their break room. It was right next to the nurses' station. So the nurses that were going to sit down for a break were always being bothered by the doctors or other people, the orderlies, by 'Oh nurse, by the way, what should I do with this? What should I do with that?' So they were never getting a break. So moving the break room away from the nurse's station, making it more comfortable in a place that they could actually turn off for a few minutes and relax, was a different perspective from a manager just said, 'Oh, put some nicer chairs in there and a better microwave,' or whatever it was. Might be the simple solution, but actually illuminating the problem actually created a different outcome. But a much better, more effective solution for the situation. That's right. Otherwise, you're looking at toxic positivity where everyone's just saying, oh, everything's good, it's fine, it works, you know. But it's having the objectivity to identify it, have some ideas objectively about how to resolve them, and then actually looking at fixing the problem and making sure that that fix is, is in place and it stays good. But there might other be— there might be problems where secondary problems that result from one solution then causes another domino to fall, which may not be terrible, but it could be catastrophic problem. Not in the sense necessary in a nurse's station, but we've got to be also aware that by fixing one issue, we've got to be aware and look for other issues that come up and not detach the potential of those being related.

Yeah, that's a really good point. This isn't exactly what you're saying, but it makes me think I had a mentor who told me that he used to come up with these ideas that he would get really into, and then he would get himself in the right state of mind, and then he would invite the lawyers and the accountants that he knew to lunch, and he would say, okay, poke holes in this idea for me, because they're trained to think of all the problems, and that would really help him. It was not pleasant, but it helped him tremendously.

I love it. That's fantastic. So how can people reach you? How— what's the best way for people to either follow you, or where do you most— where do you have your greatest presence on, on the socials and online?

Yeah, I am @RachelRofe on everything, um, just @R-A-C-H-E-L-R-O-F-E. I have a blog, rachelrofe.com. LowHangingSystem.com is my course, and then customhappy.com if they want any Made to Order Fun Stuff. That's the fulfillment center. Thank you for having me.

It's my absolute pleasure. Well, thank you for joining us. Um, people will reach out to you, I'm sure, through the socials. We'll put your, your bio and the kind of connects underneath, and we will look forward to, uh, seeing the next edition and, and some of these shorts on Instagram. Thank you so much, Rachel.

Thank you.

A great conversation with Rachel today. Follow Rachel's links below, check out social media, and take a look at her course to see if you can make a few dollars or a few hundred bucks here and there in regular income from selling on Amazon, sourcing products, reselling them, and arbitraging the difference. Let us know what you thought of the conversation today in the comments below. See you on the next edition of Birth to Net Worth.