Successful Entrepreneur Reveals Why 99% of Founder's Fail | Katie Wells | MMP #1

Successful Entrepreneur Reveals Why 99% of Founder's Fail | Katie Wells | MMP #1 00:00:00 I made a contract with each of my kids that before they could have a phone or a car, they had to have a profitable business for at least a year. And it didn't have to be wildly profitable, but they had to create a business plan, they had to follow through on it, they had to submit quarterly reports, and they had to show their profit. You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King. What's up, Norm? My good buddy. How you doing, man? Good to see you here. i am doing great especially since i had my first spring cigar what yeah spring sick what's a spring cigar it's where i can go outside without freezing my you know both off oh uh you had a cigar on the on the balcony overlooking the lake today is that what yes i did would you try to rub into me 00:00:54 yeah and it was an opus x by the way oh geez yes an opus x yeah and a diet coke of course a diet coke or a coke zero or coke zero all right just make it making sure yeah making sure you haven't gotten to the dark side there you know i miss those days where uh when we get together i think the last time you were at my house um a few months ago it's like 11 nights in a row i think it was like two or three cigars these were not like little chintzy cigars even like the real deal uh you know and some coke zeros and occasionally I know you don't drink, but occasionally I would have a whiskey or something with it; it's always a good time when you and I get together, and there's always these stories that come out, whether it's business uh or you'll tell me some business that you ran. 00:01:38 Oh, we used to do marketing. You won't believe this, Kevin. I got this story, I don't think I ever told you this one uh, and then I'll jump on and tell you some sort of crazy story. You know what? We should actually take some of these stories and share them, and take some of these cool people that we meet out there that are not in the Amazon space, that are marketers or entrepreneurs that have some fascinating stories and some fascinating things that you can learn from them and apply to your Amazon business or just life in general. So we decided, what the heck? Let's start a podcast. I think we went through like a huge number of names and we finally settled on one. But this describes the podcast. 00:02:15 This describes the guests that are on. They're marketing misfits. They don't go by the rules. Exactly. Neither one of us really go by the rules. I mean, you make rules with SOPs for other people, but neither one of us are going by the rules. So marketing misfits, this is not an Amazon podcast. Just to be clear, a lot of you might be listening, might know us from the Amazon world. When we sat down to do this, we made a list. And we're like, who can we get on this show? Who would be cool? And so you know a ton of freaking awesome people. I've met a lot of people that are not Amazon people that are like, they don't really fit on an Amazon podcast. We're like, these are cool people. 00:02:52 And I've always found that, you know, especially as an Amazon person, you learn a lot by listening to Amazon people and Amazon podcasts and attending Amazon events. But sometimes where I learn the most is when I go to a non-Amazon thing; I go to a Funnel Hacking Live or I go to a Super Conference or I go to an AI event like I went with Amy Weiss recently in Austin, and you hear these other marketers and what they're doing, and what they're saying. And I'm like, that's pretty freaking cool if I apply that to what my core business is-that's kind of outside the box or different way of thinking. I can blow this up so that's part of what we want to do here is bring on amazing guests like this, yeah. 00:03:32 And uh, there's there's just going to be so much to learn; you don't have it's not just a marketer; it might be an entrepreneur; it might just be this incredible, amazing person. So we're not we don't want to just follow a niche or niche. Or whatever you call it, and our first guest on this episode is someone I met at a think tank in Austin, Texas, and she blew me away with her credibility when what she said to to an advisory role so I said Norm, we got it, we got to get Katie on. He's like, 'Who's Katie I said, 'No, just wait, you just wait until Katie comes on, and you're gonna really like this.' So, what did what did you think about Katie when we when we got her on the show? 00:04:08 Uh, Norm, I was almost gonna segue when you started talking about agreements when she started talking about her kids having agreements to have to break it had to be a profitable business before they could. Get what was it a cell phone or something like that, cell phone or a car, or a car, yeah, and not just a business, a profitable business with P&L's and quarterly reports, and the average age I think she said was around 12. They they they did it faster than she expected, so she had to give out those cell phones pretty quick. I mean, this is a woman who's got six kids on the board of 30 companies; runs like 10 companies. She's she's knows like Peter Thiel, you know, and has had breakfast and spent time with him, and a whole bunch of other people. 00:05:01 She's an amazing guest. I can't wait for you guys and gals to actually hear what she has to say. This is a really cool episode. I hope you really like it. If you like this, make sure you hit that subscribe button and you follow us. Because we got a lot more cooking, a lot more coming every single week. We have a brand new episode of the Marketing Misfits for you. You're going to love this. We have a guest today that's a pretty amazing guest. I met Katie at this think tank in Austin last year. And the way it actually happened is I was. I was asking David, who was organizing this thing, David Gonzalez. He's one of the other guests on the podcast here. 00:05:47 I was like, man, I need someone to speak at my level up event. Who here would be great? He's like, oh, dude, you gotta talk to Katie. And I was like, which one is Katie? He's like, oh, it's the quiet one that, you know, during the think tank didn't say a whole lot. Then at the end, just like delivers these zingers. And I'm like, oh, okay. All right. Cool. So he started telling me about her. This girl is is like a superstar, so I was like, we have to have her on the podcast, so I'm super excited to introduce you. I know you haven't met her before, but I was at that think tank and then another think tank with her; she's amazing. I think everybody's gonna really enjoy uh our guest today, you know? 00:06:27 Kev, she's already blown me away like we were talking just before the podcast started, and wait, Just wait. I can't believe some of the things that she's already doing, like personal as well as in business. Awesome. So let's bring her on. Let's welcome Katie Wills to the Marketing Misfits. How are you doing, Katie? I'm doing wonderful. Thank you for having me and grateful to David for the introduction. I always say David has a superpower, not just at connecting people, but saying the kindest things about people behind their back. You know, some people talk bad about others behind their back. David brags on everyone, and I feel like he just creates such good connections because of his ability to always find those connections and say the best things about people. 00:07:10 So love, David, and so glad we got to meet through David. I am too. So when he invited you over for the Think Tank, so basically for those of you that are listening, what this is is David Gonzalez runs the Internet Marketing Party in Austin, and every month he does a party. He brings in like a guest speaker. I've been going to him probably for seven, eight years, not every single one, but as many as I can. And then oftentimes what he did before, the speaker would speak at like six or seven o'clock at night. He would do like a little like a think tank during the day. And he would bring someone in and say, 'hey, what's your what's your problem? 00:07:47 What do you have issues with?' Let me curate some of the people are going to be in town and we'll have like a little brainstorming mastermind session, try to help you solve your problem. And he took that to another level where he actually rented out a house. And he asked people to submit their pain point in business. And they came and they sat in a hot seat for like two hours. And then, depending on what their issue was, he curated a group of experts to come in and listen to what they're doing, ask some questions, and then give them very pointed advice. And at the end of it, a lot of times people might be, they're just sitting there like, you know, it was a big load. 00:08:22 It's like sometimes they're even crying, like, holy cow, this just was life-changing for my business. I didn't think of this this way. And these are experts that know what they're doing. It's not like, oh, well, you need to run more advertising or you need to try Facebook. It's like, no, do this. Oh, what's your sales message when people call you? Oh, you're saying this on the phone? No, you need to say these words instead. That kind of level. And Katie was one that sat in on a couple of the panels there. And she was the quiet assassin. She was like, everybody else is like asking the questions. And then at the end, she was like, all right, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I'm like, damn, girl. So Katie, what's your story? 00:09:03 I mean, you're involved in a lot of stuff, but how long have you been an entrepreneur? About 16 years now, if you don't count the small businesses we all had in high school. And I'll say my first exposure to the think tanks was when I spoke at Internet Marketing Party, and I didn't have any context for what a think tank was. So I walked into that thinking like, 'Oh, it'll just be a great little mastermind conversation.' And it's awesome, but they tear you apart and tear the business apart and get into everything. So I went through four hours of that. And then they're like, 'Have fun speaking on stage.' And they just like throw you in an internet marketing party. 00:09:37 But my journey into entrepreneurship was a little bit of a winding one because I was the type A valedictorian-type student who thought my path was going to be college and then more college and then probably politics or law school or something. And that's how I was going to affect change in the world. And very grateful that it took a much different path than that. I actually, funny story, I didn't know college was optional until I got there. I thought it was like 13th grade. My parents were adamant that we had to go to college. I actually ended up dropping out about four hours before graduating. I needed one class to finish and I started actually questioning everything and realized my time can be better spent not in college, even without finishing this degree. 00:10:18 So on a scholarship, I walked in and said, hey, I quit. And they were like, you can't quit. And I was like, well, I quit and left and never went back. And it ended up being a good decision. Thankfully, it would be a much less fun story if it hadn't turned out so well. But at that point, I had done a lot of small entrepreneurial projects and decided after leaving college, got married, had my first son. And that was kind of the personal side of the journey. My health started having all these strange issues. And around that time, I also read that his generation would be the first in two centuries to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. And when I was in college, my focus had been journalism. 00:10:57 So I turned to my research background to try to figure out why we were seeing that problem, and also to research my own health, and went through a pretty extensive journey of. Eight years and many, many doctors before finally getting even initial answers, and then realizing like doctors didn't have any good solutions for what the title they had given me, which was Hashimoto's. So did further research and eventually completely reversed that. But in doing so realized there was this huge vacuum with all these other moms who were facing similar challenges and having it's equally difficult time finding any answers. Leaning on the journalism background, I started writing about that, trying to take the scientific data, which I loved reading, and translate it and simplify it into actionable things that anyone could do that would lead to measurable improvements in their health. 00:11:45 And I told Norm before we started recording, I didn't set out to be an entrepreneur in the health and wellness world. But once that message started getting out, I sort of built the legs on the business as it was already running because it started getting traction so quickly. And this was almost 16 years ago when it first started. When a lot of this information wasn't so mainstream. And so, I mean, I was at this point buying grass-fed meat out of the back of an Amish farmer's buggy that was probably illegal and things like that. Now we can buy it in grocery stores, but I felt like there was such a need for those answers for moms, especially. 00:12:21 And so through that, I say that was my experience of getting my real-world MBA of learning to put the business structure underneath it, to learn the SEO world of Google, and then eventually the SEO world of podcasting. And then from there, investing and advising and very specific marketing messaging, especially to moms, and being able to help other companies with that as well. So we talked earlier, and I wanted to know because I know a bunch of people that are entrepreneurs that have had challenges with their health. And it takes something to all of a sudden get back in the game. So, with this, what did it take? What strategies or was there an 'aha' moment that you just went, 'Yeah, I'm going for it'? 00:13:08 On the health side specifically, uh, just to get you into a different mindset because when you're struggling with a health challenge, you get into one mindset; and when you all of a sudden have this 'aha' or epiphany or whatever you want to call it, then you go for it. And it's almost, and I've talked to a lot of people about this that have gone through some pretty heavy health challenges that it was like, there was one moment that it just went, oh yeah, I got it. I got this. And they move forward. Yeah. I don't know if I can pinpoint an exact moment, but I can definitely pinpoint a part of the journey that that transition happened. 00:13:56 Part of it was, I think necessity is the mother of invention because I have six kids and they are all night within the span of nine years. So there were a lot of mouths to feed and very little time. So on the logistics side, I learned early kind of building on the e-myth model to systematize everything and create every role, systematize it, learn it, speak the language, and then if possible, be able to hand it off truly because I didn't have enough hours in the day to do it all. From the health side, I certainly had like from a vulnerable perspective, I had a lot of years of struggling with imposter syndrome and feeling like a fraud, because I was writing about health and wellness. 00:14:34 And I believe very strongly the things I was saying, and I still couldn't fix my own health. And so, I would say my sort of 'aha' lightning bolt moment it was when those pieces started to come together. And I, for one, was willing to be vulnerable about my own health struggles and the fact that I didn't have it all figured out. Which ironically helped me connect with the audience a lot more, and also to listen to the truth in things I was reading and seeing and hearing from commenters even, and really evaluate things with a hard look at my still what were my blind spots at the time? I think a lot of it, I talk a lot about mindset from that perspective because I was doing all the things in the physical health world that every doctor said I had been through, everybody's protocol, I had literally met with every doctor and it wasn't working. 00:15:21 And it wasn't until my mindset shift happened that all the things I was already doing physically were able to really Take hold and that’s when the Hashimoto’s went away, my energy skyrocketed. And I now had all this extra bandwidth to actually pursue growing in new areas of business. So before that, it was very much a like maintaining. And what drove me then was my passion for the mission of it. Because reading about what our kids were going to face in their lifetime, and also understanding there were so many other moms who were equally overwhelmed, equally tired and equally sick. That's what kept me going in that time until I had that sort of big inner shift. What’s this disease? What does it actually do? 00:16:00 Is it a female disease related to children? What is it? It doesn't just affect women. I always try to reframe diagnoses and symptoms as words that they give us medically because the way it's presented in the medical world is Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune condition where they tell you your body is attacking your thyroid. I also think in life, in every area, language we use is incredibly important. I think saying things like my body is attacking itself is not productive language to begin with. So I had to unlearn some of those language patterns, but basically your body's creating antibodies against your own thyroid. And so there's an autoimmune reaction happening there. And the traditional medical response to that is that it's lifelong. You can't get rid of it. 00:16:47 Diet doesn't affect it. Lifestyle doesn't affect it. And you have to take medication for the rest of your life. Which I now don't take medication. I don't have any blood markers that are out of range, and those things did help. So that's why I was like, 'to reframe the language I now call that like a word that was given to me that I no longer accept or identify with. There's a couple of real A couple of key things I think you just alluded to there that I believe in, too. You know, Dave Asbury just spoke at the Internet Marketing Party a couple of weeks ago. And a quote that I actually wrote down when he said it on the stage, I'm standing back there holding my drink. 00:17:19 And he actually got up there and said, 'The more successful that you get, the more time you need to spend on personal health and personal development.' I think there's a lot to that. And like what you said, where you did all this research yourself. The medical, I have a concierge doctor, so I pay like 11 grand a year for a private doctor. It's not one of these like co-ops where they get 200 clients. He has like. 15 people and that's it and it's a lot of money, you know? Then I have insurance on top of that to pay for everything else, but he's always said that the medical system in the United States is good as it is and still one of the best in the world. 00:17:51 It's 11 years behind the science and everything is. Is that they tell you when you're talking to these doctors? It's all what will the insurance pay for, what can we not get sued for, or what can we say and what can we do? So going out and taking it on your own, I think is a major thing that a lot of people just don't do. They just trust doctors or they just trust the system and you shouldn't. Another important thing you said, I think that's critical that everybody needs to hear is mindset. Where you said it's when I changed my thinking, I changed my words, I changed the way, because I believe, and I've been saying this for years, that mindset is the most important thing in physical health, not how strong you are, not what medicine you're taking, not what a doctor operation a doctor does. 00:18:33 I think you can reverse a lot of things with mindset. And you just look at it. The example I always give is when an elderly couple, you know, say they're in their 90s and they've been living together, been married for 50 years, having a great time. One of them dies. Usually the other one dies shortly after, you know, a month or two. Look at the patterns there. How many people die shortly after? Or I look at my own grandmother who lived in a little town in East Texas. She got to be like 89, 90 years old. My dad's like, you got to move closer to us so we can take care of you in Dallas. We went and we moved her to a little apartment. 00:19:05 She was on her own, not a nursing home or anything like that. But that was a big radical change of her life. And she's like, I don't want to live this way. I don't want to do this anymore. Two months later, she just she passed away of natural causes, not of like. So I believe what you said. But how can you? How can you get people to do that when it's very difficult? A lot of people feel like they're a victim or they feel like they're they're trapped. So, how do you. How do you teach somebody or show somebody? How can you help somebody, like in this group, where you said it's one of your big things is is affecting change? How do you do that? Oh, great question. 00:19:40 And to touch on both of those, I'll get on my soapbox for just a minute and I promise I'll stop. When you talked about with the doctor relationship, something I say all the time on my podcast is we are each our own primary healthcare provider. And I think great results happen when we can work with educated providers. But at the end of the day, the responsibility lies entirely within us. And I 100% echo what you said. I think mindset is a much bigger piece of this, whether it comes to health or wealth or any aspect of life, than we often give it credit for. And I think from a high-level perspective, we can never affect the change directly in another person. They have to want and consent to and choose that change within themselves. 00:20:17 But I think there's tremendous power, and I see this within parenting, within the health world, when working with people, in asking better questions and helping them learn to ask better questions. And I think that is most relevant and important in our own inner dialogue and the questions we ask ourselves. Because as even just a surface-level example, when the questions I used to run as loops in my head were, 'Why can't I lose weight?' 'Why am I still sick?' 'Why is this so hard?' My subconscious did exactly what I asked and answered those questions and told me because you have thyroid disease, because you have six kids, because everything's hard postpartum. And when I learned how to. And it took a while, but how to audit and change my inner language, which took effort in the beginning, but becomes a flywheel over time. 00:20:59 And to remove should statements and remove negative questions and reframe into 'How can I heal?' How could this be fun? How could I reframe this in a way that I've never imagined to get better results than I've ever gotten? Whatever it would be, those small changes over time compound. And then eventually become automatic. And then you can rewrite your inner script to work more in your favor versus working against you. Because I think the questions we give our subconscious, it answers. And if we learn to give it better questions, we'll get better answers. How does mental health play into all this? That's obviously very multifaceted. I think there's a whole lot on the physical health side that to your point, conventional medicine is a lot of years behind because there are practitioners getting incredible results with some cutting-edge stuff that has not been accepted into the mainstream yet. 00:21:46 On the health side of that, I always go into, we've given ourselves a completely foreign nature to our human bodies in our modern environment, and then wonder why we have problems. And so to the degree that we can either get back into alignment with natural rhythms and light patterns and eating cues, or create those things in our modern environments. Things like light cues are often overlooked for their extreme power in affecting hormones and endocrine regulation and essentially every aspect of physical health. And so there's a lot of nuance there. It does get very individualized. But I think a big key of that is just returning to alignment with the way our human animal body is meant to live, and then building the nuance from there once we get the foundational things in place. 00:22:31 And I do think mindset comes into play there, of course, as well. And I think that journey does become incredibly individualized because each person has to make the choice and address whatever the individual factors are. But I think it does start with how we talk to ourselves. So what's your daily life like? What are some of the things you do? Is it yoga? Is it massage? Is it reading? Personal development? What are some of the things that you do to keep this, you said, this balance and this in tune with everything? What are some things that you personally do along those lines? So I have very few non-negotiables and I don't do anything every single day. That's one of my rules for myself is I think we're meant to be adaptable. 00:23:15 So I don't, for instance, take supplements every single day. I don't eat the same thing or even eat every single day. I vary everything. I think when it comes to balance and especially in health and wellness, self-care has gotten a lot of misconception and kind of, I think we could do ourselves a service by rethinking how we think of that because it's for women, especially we're often given things like go to the spa or take a bath or go for a walk. And I think often it's more of understanding the nervous system state that we're in and what our nervous system actually needs in those moments to recharge, which might actually be action versus inaction, especially if someone's having. 00:23:52 For instance, the fight part of a fight or flight response, you might get more nervous system benefit from doing a heavy lifting workout to let that nervous energy process than from sitting there and deep breathing, which could actually be a form of suppression. But on a day-to-day basis, what my life actually looks like is usually surprising to people, especially on the business side, because Years ago, when I read The Four Hour Work Week, I took it quite literally because I was like, that sounds great. I have six kids and not very many hours to work. So how can I get my workload down to four hours? Now, the downfall is I've done that with enough businesses that I still do have a full-time job. It's just split between 10 of them, essentially. 00:24:29 But I put the personal things that give me the most energy and things related to my kids on my calendar first. And those are the non-negotiables. Those things cannot get moved for meetings. My kids never get moved for meetings. And the things I need to do to build energy and to have creative ability and to just have peace, those things cannot get moved for business commitments. So things like the really simple things like morning sunlight, walks with my kids, family dinner, those things are always not negotiable. And then I have a lot of health practices that are specific to me that I hesitate to share too much because I think there is so much personalization in health. And people always ask like, what's your exact supplement routine? 00:25:09 And I don't like to release that because I'm like, my exact supplement routine is not going to work exactly the same way for you. The foundational aspect of figuring out how I got there, I'm happy to give you because that will help you figure out how to get there. But taking exactly what I take won't translate necessarily to someone else. So, I have very defined work time blocks when I don't need to be with my kids. And that's my hyper productive business time, which is usually two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. And outside of that, I reserve time for family and whether it be personal development or like Norma and I talked about before we started recording pole vaulting with my daughter or running on the beach with my son or whatever the things are that help me connect with each of my kids. 00:25:51 Have you heard of the four burners theory, James Clear, atomic habits that he talks about where there's four burners on a stove and the four burners are family, health, work, and friends. And you can't turn all those knobs on at once and have them all like the gas coming out at once because it won't work. But you can do two of them really well and the other two are going to suffer. You can do three of them okay and then one really suffers. And it sounds like you have your priorities on family and health. But even despite that, you're like in, what is it? You own like eight or 10 businesses. You're on the board of like 6,000 others or something. 00:26:30 You're like, tell us about, I mean, you manage not only a family of six and to all this health stuff, but you're also heavily involved on the business side, right? How many boards are you on and how many businesses are you actually involved in running? I'm involved with close to 30 now. I think 29 is my current account for advisory or board positions, and then I have quite a few of my own as well including some real estate building projects that are happening right now. But I think I love the atomic habits theory and I think also as humans we will fill whatever time blocks we give ourselves. And the downfall I see for a lot of people is we let work take the dominant time block of the day. 00:27:09 And then we try to fit all three other burners into the remaining couple hours at night that we have. And then we wonder why we're so stressed. And I find from a productivity standpoint, I'm actually much more effective if I really restrain myself to those time blocks because and make sure my kids are taken care of. I'm not my mental focus is entirely on work during that time. But I'm able to get more done in two hours. Probably than if I gave myself a whole eight hour day because it's laser focused. There's no time for social media or going down rabbit holes or taking phone calls. I am in work mode and that's all that's happening at that time. 00:27:43 And so throughout that time, that'll be when I'm podcasting, when I'm taking advisory calls, when I'm writing, anything that has to happen in the work context happens in those blocks and it's not negotiable. And you're a big system. You said it earlier. You're big. Norm is a big systems guy. So it sounds like you're like a master, like organizing systems like and keeping to those. And that's one of Norm's favorite things to do is setting up systems. He does it with a business that we're working on ourselves. And that's my weakness. I'm good at like working and like getting things done and executing. But if I had to like create some SOPs or this is the rigid structure, that's just not me. What's that? Peter Gerber Academy changed my life. 00:28:29 Well, it sounds like you guys are an awesome team then because you need I feel like both of those are so valuable and so if you guys are working together, that's a great combination-yin and yang. I do have a question about mindset; if you don't mind going back to that for a second as an entrepreneur, I've seen this uh time and time again where the entrepreneur has a great mindset, but if they have VAs or people working with them, contractors, employees-how do you get to rub that mindset or the culture so everybody is oozing your mindset? That's such a good question, and when I go into Companies from the advisory side, I get that question a lot. And that seems to actually be a pretty big struggle for a lot of companies. 00:29:17 And then also getting that mindset aligned with understanding their target audience, their target customer, and how to communicate and build that culture at all levels. And I think thankfully for me, motherhood has been a great teacher of that because every day I'm running a family culture of six kids, and anybody who has kids knows you cannot actually make your kids do anything they don't want to do. Even as a two-year-old, you cannot make them sleep or make them eat. Good luck if you try. So I had to learn how to build in the culture of that. And a lot of that translates. I actually translate it both ways. I talk to moms a lot about how a lot of the things we do as CEOs can directly translate into family logistics and make your life easier. 00:29:55 Even the subtle shifts around us not being emotionally and logistically responsible for everything. But running the family as if it were a business where everybody does have clear understanding of the things they're responsible for, the goals, where things are going, the KPIs, how do we know if we're getting there? And when we build that into our family culture, and kids are aware of that, they will often amaze us at their ability to meet or exceed those things when we give them the autonomy to do so. And I build that same thing into work cultures and work with companies on that as well. From one level, a lot of companies don't even have a clearly defined culture to begin with. 00:30:33 So it's difficult to communicate that to new hires or to team members if that isn't clearly understood in a way that they can tangibly understand it and build from it to begin with. And I think there's also a tremendous piece on finding team members who have the ability to have agency and autonomy, and take on the responsibility emotionally for the role that they're doing, and then get to feel the mission and the outcome happen. And I think that will change a little bit for each company. But that's where the magic happens is when you're able to involve your employees in a substantial way in the mission of the company. So they have a vested interest in it. Because for me, Wellness Mama, it's a company that keeps me up at night because I care about the mission. 00:31:13 And so I've actually hired mostly moms across the board and built a very intentional culture. And they're all very aware of the mission that we're working toward. And they care about it too. And on that side. There's a lot of screening that comes into play. Norm, like you, I am very much a systems person and have SOPs for all of this, including from hiring to onboarding to putting someone in new roles. I find on the hiring side, I've experimented with lots of different ways of sort of testing for roles and now usually default to what's called the Colby Index, which is KOLBE, because that really gets into what drives them. Not what their personality is or not what they're going to say on a test, but what are the sort of drivers of their energy in a business capacity? 00:31:58 And I know as an entrepreneur I tend to test very high as Quick Starter and Fact Finder. So, to balance that out in a team perspective, I need people who are very high Implementers and Follow Through. For a while in the beginning, I was hiring people who were a lot like me because it felt good to be around people who were a lot like me. When I learned to find that balance, and that that this amazing thing that there are people who actually love spending time in Trello and Slack and emails and dealing with details, when I found those people, that was life-changing because that was actually what motivates them. So, and then I built systems for each of that. 00:32:32 That I can then replicate in new companies or when I work with other companies to help them pinpoint for what their roles are as well isn’t that one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make, trying to hire themselves instead of the opposite? Or the other one I see all the time is hiring people and not letting them do anything, which I was also guilty of because we think we can do it all better, except for the lesson I learned the hard way was, I might be able to do each individual thing better, but I certainly can’t do all of it better than someone else can do amazing at the things they’re doing. And when I learned to hand that off and stop being a control freak, that was also a pretty life-changing moment. 00:33:12 Yeah, I think a lot of people think, yeah, I think a lot of people think, But that same way, and I've always said that hire the best people and then get the hell out of their way or partner with the best people and then get the hell out of their way and let them do their thing. Let them have their little thing and don't try to micromanage or step on their toes or overrule them or whatever. And I think a lot of people, like you said, they have trouble. A lot of entrepreneurs have trouble letting go. And and I think that's a challenge for for for a lot of people. Absolutely. Yeah. It sounds like you learned it easier than I did. That was a tough lesson for me. Yeah. 00:33:49 And people, I mean, I'm not nowhere near, I'm not in 30 businesses like you. I think Norm might be at 72 or something now. Sometimes it feels like every time we're having cigars, it's like, oh yeah, I had this partner on this one and this one. I was like, 'Norm.' But people, I have eight sources of income, I guess you could say. Some of them are like the same business, but eight different sources of income. And people are always like, so how many employees do you have, Kevin? How many, you know, how about your staff? I was like, well, I used to have an office with like 12 offices and a warehouse and like all these people, 17, 16 people working for me, which is still a small company. 00:34:22 Now it's just me. And I go, well, how are you doing this? I was like, I partner smart. I partner with people that have those employees or that have that stuff. And so I stay in my lane and do what I do best and then let them do whatever they do. And it works. They bring the audience, they bring the traffic, they have the VAs, they have whatever. And I don't have to mess with any of that. And that's been my strategy. You're talking about a strategy like when we're starting with your kids, you said you have all these SOPs. And because you're an entrepreneur, you're saying something about my kids are not allowed to have a car until they start a business or something along those lines. 00:35:00 Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So just like I build culture in all my businesses, I've been most intentional about building culture with my family. And one of the core values that is on that list that I hope to impart to my kids before they leave is entrepreneurship, because that's been so important to me. And so we do a lot of things differently. Like I invented a curriculum from the ground up because I didn't agree with the way anything was taught as far as none of them enhanced creativity and curiosity and rewarded thinking outside the box. They actually, kind of tend to like tone those things down in schools. So that was the initial first step, but to build in the entrepreneurship part, I made a contract with each of my kids that before they could have a phone or a car, they had to have a profitable business for at least a year. 00:35:43 And it didn't have to be wildly profitable, but they had to create a business plan. They had to follow through on it. They had to submit quarterly reports and they had to show their profit because I feel like there's so much in life skills that can be learned through just the hands-on trying of entrepreneurship. The interesting part, probably all of us here have had businesses that didn't turn out as well as we'd hoped. And I was actually hoping for most of them that they would have a couple like starts and fails and have to readjust because that's, I think, also an important lesson in entrepreneurship. What I didn't expect is that they would all. 00:36:15 do this by age 12 and then be wanting phones at age 12 and that it would then start snowballing which i should have expected but just like for me into multiple businesses um so that's been a really fun journey with the kids and my oldest is quite competitive he actually one of his was he launched a cookbook with a like follow-up behind like course behind it and it outsells my cookbooks which i love but he did it is a total competitive thing pitched it to publishers on his own managed the photography recipes, everything. And it now has hit the Amazon algorithm and actually sells pretty well, even with no marketing. So it's been really fun to see all the things they've come up with. 00:36:53 So what are some of the other cool businesses they come up with? So the one's a cookbook. What are some of the other interesting ones that they've done at the age of 12? I mean, most people are thinking about mowing yards or doing a lemonade stand or something, but your kids are like, I'm assuming this is mostly e-commerce or internet marketing, or is some of it more physical world stuff too? A couple have gotten into the e-commerce side and my oldest is now building a couple test ones in different areas because he's almost 18 and he's decided he wants to be able to like have the freedom to travel and buy, locate and be in two places. So he's working on several e-commerce side ones. 00:37:26 A lot of the younger ones ended up doing local businesses that they were either making products and selling or creating new services and then hiring people and selling. So it's been really fun because they didn't all just go e-commerce. I've gotten to sort of go through the ropes of all those with them, sort of mentor them, but really also let them take the reins and not get too much guidance from me unless they asked so that they could experience what worked, experience what didn't work and try again. So are these some of the boards? Are these some of the companies you're on the boards of? My kids? No, they're entirely self-run. They're autonomous and they manage their own IRAs now, the older ones and all of that. What if they're not cut out? 00:38:07 Not everybody's cut out to be an entrepreneur. I mean, entrepreneurship is not for everybody and running a business isn't for everybody. Some people are better being soldiers than they are being leaders or creative people. Does that does this help them discover themselves in a way? Like maybe this is your mom is great at this and maybe they don't want to pursue that further. They'd rather be a soldier than an entrepreneur. Or does it really implant it early? Because I agree with you, the school system in the in the West. Teach us to the test and teach us to a standard. I guess the other question I have, are they homeschooled as well? Or are they actually in the, it sounds like they maybe, maybe they are. Yeah. 00:38:45 So my hope is that it does help them discover if they want to be entrepreneurs or not. So far, they all at least have some of those tendencies, but my younger brother, for instance, is a genius at the tech stuff and can code, but he doesn't want to manage a business. And so he actually loves working in a capacity where he can just code and stay in that. And if any of my kids, decide that they don't want to be an entrepreneur, that's 100% fine with me. But I think there's value in trying the experience, especially in the capacity where they still have a safety net. They can still bounce ideas off of me. We're not talking massive scale businesses. Nobody's going bankrupt if the business doesn't work. 00:39:21 I think getting to test it in a safe capacity when they're young is a great way to analyze and figure out if they want to be entrepreneurs or not. And also to get some of those early lessons in that I know I learned in my 20s. And they're getting to figure out at age 12. On the homeschooling side, we do homeschool mainly because when my oldest was five, I started evaluating what best prepares him for whatever his future might look like and realize what I do now didn't exist when I was five years old and entering kindergarten. So there wasn't a program I could have followed to directly prepare for it. And if in an uncertain future, we hear all the conversations about tech and AI and what may or may not happen in the next 20 years. 00:40:00 There wasn't a lot of clarity to directly prepare them for whatever type of role they might end up in as an adult. But I realized there were certain qualities that all of the successful people I know and work with have. And so I started isolating those qualities and realizing they were things like creativity, critical thinking, thinking outside the box, and asking hard questions. And a lot of things that are just not encouraged in schools. I'm like, we put kids in a literal box and we tell them there's only one right answer to each question on the test. And that is so opposite from how adult life is, certainly from how entrepreneurial life is. And so when I realized that, I said, okay, if this system doesn't exist, what would a system that best prepares them for whatever an uncertain future that relies on these core tendencies, what would that look like? 00:40:46 And I started building it from the ground up and have been testing it with all my kids. And at some point I planned to release it; I had planned when they were grown, I would release it because I was like, it'll be at least that long before homeschooling really, you know, becomes more popular or virtual school is a thing. And then COVID hit and I'm like, 'and maybe I should release this sooner than I thought.' And I also sort of did a case study of polymaths throughout history and isolated a lot of their core tendencies and unique learning patterns they had, especially in early childhood. What was that? Poly-math, polymastic? Polymaths, so people who were considered geniuses in multiple disciplines, so they didn't just become master of one domain, they became master of many. 00:41:23 A cool recurring trend that I when I started really researching polymaths is in all of their autobiographies there would be a line somewhere that was like 'and isn't incredible what they accomplished despite never being in traditional school' and I was like 'why is nobody asking the question of perhaps it's because they never set foot in traditional school or had a very limited exposure to traditional school I think it was at Edison who was the big example of that, where he came home from school one day with a letter and his mom read it and started crying and he asked what it was. And she told him, oh, they said, your son is too smart. We're not fit to educate him at this school. You're going to have to teach him at home. 00:42:01 And so she homeschooled him for the rest of his life. He obviously became who we know him as. And he found the letter after she died. And it actually said essentially like your son is too stupid. We can't teach him. Don't send him back to school. And she created a genius by the way she taught him. So I just, I feel like that alone is an area that deserves some better questions and some better answers. But since they didn't exist when my kids were entering school, I sort of created it from the ground up. That's awesome. That's really cool. When you had those contracts with your kids, I think you told me before the podcast, a few achieve this by the age of 12. That's crazy. 00:42:45 So they have profitable businesses by the age of 12. And then you skipped over P&Ls and quarterly reports, Norm. This is not, this is balance sheets, P&Ls and quarterly reports. And policies, lots of policies. But the other thing you skimmed over, and I want to go back to it. You just said, oh yeah, me and my daughter pole vault. Okay. How many people, how many mom and daughters go out pole vaulting? That's crazy. And your daughter's in a, well, she's either Olympic caliber, isn't she? She's aiming for the 20, the Los Angeles Olympics. She's young still. So I'm not encouraging this one, but yeah, she's in heavy training and elite level. She's to be clear, much, much better at pole vaulting than I am. Give me a two-foot pole. 00:43:42 I'll jump over it. I'll be a pole vaulter. You and me, Kev. That's what we'll do. Yeah, that's what we should do. We should have a pole vaulting. Next time we're going to have a pole vaulting competition and see who can pole vault over the bar. Perfect. I can bring some of the elite ones to help. We might need a really strong pole, Norm. Yeah, very. It doesn't bend too much because it might snap. Yeah, it's called a tree. Well, Katie, I heard something else, too. I heard this thing. I think it was a little guy whispered in my ear about a story about Peter Thiel. And I heard that Peter Thiel, so those of you who don't know who Peter Thiel is, he's one of the top VCs in the world right now. 00:44:28 He's one of the co-founders of, was it PayPal? A whole bunch of other stuff. And I was told he has like a personal, one of his assistants is paid a crazy amount of money, a six-figure salary, a mid-six-figure salary to go out and find interesting people to actually invite to lunch. And so this person will go out, find someone interesting. He'll fly them out to California, San Francisco, wherever it is, and you have lunch. And he just likes to, you know, just talk to interesting people just to expand his mind, you know. And most people end up having lunch one time with Peter, and that's it. But I heard you did this. You were one of those, and you were invited back many times. 00:45:11 So can you tell us anything or tell us a little story around that? I'll make sure I don't butcher any confidences. Peter's an incredible guy. And I first met him actually at an investing event through a syndicate that I was working with at the time and through a dear friend. And we were sitting at a table for dinner. And it's a relatively personal topic, so I won't say what the topic was. But a topic came up that I was like. Recognized immediately was controversial, and I was purposely not contributing. Then my friend called me out, and was like, 'Oh Katie actually has a fascinating theory about this, why don't you tell him?' And 00:45:45 I was like, 'Oh shit, now I'm on the spot, and I have to say this thing.' So I did, and after dinner, his um, the guy who was with him, his assistant or someone who worked for him came up to me and said Peter wants to have breakfast with you.' Um, so that was how I initially really got to have a conversation with him. And I'm absolutely like astounded by him, an incredible conversationalist who asks incredible questions. If I um ever reach his level or close to it, I think having someone on staff to find interesting people to have breakfast with is an incredible thing to do. But yeah, I'm absolutely blown away by him, and don't want to say anything about what those conversations were but very grateful to have had them That's awesome. 00:46:29 I mean, to be able to just sit and talk with someone at that level, it's like talking to the Einstein of our day or something like you were saying that just to be able to sit and no matter what the conversation is, whether it's personal business, whatever, those to sit with some of the most brilliant minds of the time when they're alive, you know, now with chat GPT, you can talk to Einstein supposedly or whatever, you know, character . ai and all this kind of crazy stuff. But to actually sit there face to face and have that human reaction. Who are some of the people in business that you really look up to or you admire out there? Who are some of your role models or someone that you really follow, you read all their books? 00:47:08 Because people always say you shouldn't. Like what you're talking about earlier, the experts say self-help books are a waste of time. Read biographies. What you said where you read all these poly, whatever the word was, polymaths, yeah. Those guys, you read their biographies and you saw this trend. And they say, if you want to get ahead in business, in marketing, business or whatever, don't read self-help. Read biographies of really successful, powerful business people. So who are some of the ones that you really look up to? And what are a couple of things that maybe you've taken your biggest lessons from a couple of those? Well, Peter would certainly make that list for me. I think he is a modern polymath and truly a genius of our time. He's an incredible first principle seeker. 00:47:50 And he actually at one point sent all of my kids a copy of his book, Zero to One. And to give you an idea of how brilliant he is, he asked in passing at breakfast, what are all your kids' names? And I rattled them off rapid fire. And then they each get a copy addressed to them with their name in the mail after the fact. So, his like attention to detail is absolutely insane. And he's not just great at business. He's also a chess master and excels in all these other areas as well. I love his book, Zero to One, even though it's not a biography. But researching him, he was on my list when I originally researched polymaths as well. I also really enjoy, as a modern voice, Naval Ravikant. 00:48:30 I don't know, he'd be an incredible guest for you guys as well. He's also a very first principles thinker. And I think he has a very unique ability to ask really thought-provoking questions and then break down sort of a Socratic answer. In a really easy-to-understand way, and he has a great um book called The Volman Act, and it's sort of his like method for wealth, so he's another one that I really enjoy following. Then Sarah Blakely, I follow on Instagram, and she's been really fun because she's such a... I don't know if you guys are familiar with her, she's the founder of Spanx, and to watch her business story, and then also how she shares a lot about her personal life and her family and her kids, and how she's able to balance all of that as well. 00:49:10 I just enjoy hearing what she has to say in that realm. But to echo what you said, I think the most impactful books I have read have been more biographies for sure. And then some of the more obscure health-related books, just because they relate to my job. And then I think there are some incredible mindset books out there, but I agree for the most part, especially the recent self-help books. And Naval would say the same, like read the classics. Don't read, like read classics and biographies. Don't read the modern self-help. Yeah, Naval, I remember; I'm not familiar with him personally. If you can introduce us, that would be great. We'd love to have him. But when Clubhouse was the hot thing during the pandemic, he was on several Clubhouse rooms. 00:49:53 He would lead them. I think he might have even been an investor or something in Clubhouse at one point. He said this publicly. And I was following him. I was like, dude, this guy is like brilliant. He's like a philosopher slash business person slash marketing person. I'm familiar with the 50 principles or whatever you said. I've read the summary. I haven't read the whole book. I've read that. But yeah, he's someone. But even on Sarah Blakely, that's interesting you say that because this podcast is called Marketing Misfits. So if you take a look at what Sarah Blakely did when she started Spanx, she realized there's this problem with basically pantyhose. And with stuff showing through, you know, the dress and the lines and whatever. 00:50:38 And so she created this interesting product, if you don't know the story, and then nobody would take it. She tried to sell it, you know, nobody would take it. So she took it upon herself. And I remember, I think there's a story about her getting into Nordstrom's where she actually went into Nordstrom's and convinced the buyer to actually go into the bathroom and try them on or something like that. And the buyer ended up trying them on and like, these are freaking awesome. The buyer who had said no before. These are freaking awesome. I can’t believe my dress looks perfect or whatever. And then they gave her like a one-store test to say, ‘All right, you can put it in this.’ Maybe it’s three-store. 00:51:13 I don’t get I may have the facts a little bit wrong, but it was a very small test market. And so she went in there and they set up. They bought some. She set up the little display, but she went in there and like, secretly managed or something, like rearranged the stuff or rearranged the sign or made sure everything was organized in the right way that the store wasn’t doing. And then she had a bunch of her friends like go buy this stuff, you know, that just go in there and buy it. And she like just grew that thing. And now she's a billionaire. And it's a really fascinating story from a marketing point of view. 00:51:43 What are some of the big things that you took from her or that you use in your business now or some of the lessons that you might have learned from her? For certainly her tenacity, like you just touched on, and also how much she was able to bootstrap for so long, because we've seen a lot of examples of modern billionaires. We have not seen very many, of course, that are female, but also that have maintained so much of their company for so long and bootstrapped it for so long. And I think that's what it really speaks to her ingenuity and how she was thinking so outside the box and also how she didn't take no for an answer. 00:52:15 And I've seen that recur as well, whether it be with her getting no's for so long, 20 something, 30 something times before she got a yes. We saw that with Tim Ferriss. He got turned down by, I think, 20 something publishers before he ever got his book published. Even my first investment was Thrive Market and they had been turned down by, I think, 27 VCs before I met with them. And I was their first investor and they were my first investment. And that was where I learned investing, and then I've now gotten to repeat that with a lot of other companies. But perhaps there's something magic to getting turned down 20-something times. Perhaps we should screen for this. 00:52:48 So it sounds like you, from a marketing, from a business point of view, a lot of people go into business for themselves because they want to make money. And they're like, I want a different lifestyle. I want to be able to have a nice house, take nice vacations, have a nice car, whatever. It sounds like you. Kind of stumbled into it in a way, in the beginning, based on what you said earlier, and now your mission is making money. This is the byproduct, I'm sure you're doing well and you're happy, uh, hopefully with what you're doing. But more important than that, a lot of people who make a lot of money, they're not happy; they're not fulfilled. A lot of business people, some of the most richest people in the world are some of the most miserable people in the world. 00:53:27 And the people that don't have, don't understand that. But based on what you're doing, I think it's the right way where you're doing the business because you have a mission. You're actually trying to affect change in the world and trying to actually impact people's lives, which is a huge difference and a huge mindset back to mindset shift than what the normal entrepreneur does. And when you do that, money comes naturally. And not every time. Sometimes you're robbing Peter to pay Paul to keep this thing going for a while. But it's like Sarah Blakely, the tenacity to keep it going. And you stick with something long enough where you're actually affecting people's lives, whether it's your kids or whether it's these other moms or whether it's other businesses that you're on the boards of. 00:54:06 You're making a huge impact. And that's got to feel very fulfilling and rewarding to you to do that. I love the way that you explain that. And one of my business principles and that I work with my kids on is income follows outcome. And that doesn't necessarily mean outcome and affecting worldwide change, but income follows outcome and helping solve some problem or helping some number of people in some kind of way. And I'm incredibly grateful that also there's so much to appreciate about compounding. And, you know, we hear the concept of flywheels in business. I've learned that we can almost like compound flywheels. And so. With the idea of income following outcome, as like the first business started to make a lot of cash, I realized I don't need to throw this cash back into this business. 00:54:47 It's cash-heavy right now; where could I put this? Where could I diversify this into other areas that could also affect good outcomes and started building. That's how the investing part started, that's how real estate started for me, that's how other like-side businesses have started, that have now turned into substantial businesses. And my goal with all of them is to sort of build that flywheel concept from day one where they each become self-sustaining silos that are diversified income streams. Because as you guys know, the online world is so volatile; so when I was only like really concentrated in the digital Online world that's something that could change or could in theory go away at any time. And so I started diversifying into other areas and letting myself sustain. 00:55:24 So if it's real estate, it then feeds into more real estate and keeps going. And as long as I don't need that cash, that keeps growing without effort. Same thing with investing and then being able to snowball that into more investments. And so, I work with my kids on this a lot, like, how do you create self-sustaining flywheels in multiple, diversified areas that both are a point of passion for you and creating some kind of positive change, and also self-sustaining on cashflow. Very good. Very interesting. What do you see is the biggest changes for entrepreneurs and business people out there that's coming on the horizon? Is it AI? Is it Web3? Is it the quantum computing? Is it unrest in the world? 00:56:07 And what do you see, that entrepreneurs and business people need to wake up and start really paying attention to, and figure out how they're going to navigate for themselves or for their children. I do think all of those will, of course, create huge and substantial changes. I also don't take the point of view that they're going to necessarily be negative. I think there's a whole lot of negativity, especially around the AI space and its potential to become sentient and all of that could come with that. I actually have a very optimistic view of all that. And I think as entrepreneurs, if we can find ways to partner with AIs within our existing teams, it actually gives us more leverage and more agility into being able to innovate more quickly. 00:56:49 And the business of entrepreneurship is always one of agility and being able to pivot as needed. And at least for me, especially in the content world for the last 16 years, it's extremely volatile and it could be very much at the mercy of Google. And I learned the SEO game and then that changed. So I learned it again and then it changed again and I learned it again. And then I learned it in podcasting or social media. I think that's actually one of the amazing parts of being an entrepreneur is we get that constant growth and constant challenge. So my encouragement with the companies I'm working with right now is to not view those things in an adversarial way, but to figure out how we can implement them within existing systems to leverage our existing team's time better, remove the stuff they don't want to do anyway, but maintain the human elements. 00:57:32 Because I think if anything, it's going to highlight the beautiful parts of entrepreneurship and the human connection side, which I think we're all somewhat starved for after COVID. And so I think it actually is going to give us a lot of bandwidth back if we can learn to use it correctly from the beginning. So what's more valuable in business content, inventory, or a list of customers? Oh, that would certainly depend on who you ask. I would say from a monetary perspective, the list has been for me the most over time. But I have quite a library of content as well and have enjoyed creating that. So I would be sad if that part went away. Because with content, you can pivot. Like you said, you had to change the way you're doing the SEO, but that doesn't change. 00:58:16 It might change the way the content is presented in some way, but the backbone of the content stays the same. If you look at. You look at the music industry, you know, when Spotify came out, they fought that tooth and nail. But the people that have the content are the ones that are adept. Look at the movie industry. First, it was go to the theater. Then it was TV licensing. Then it was sell $89 VHS tapes that could be rented at Blockbuster for five bucks. And then it became streaming online. But it's that content. When you have content, you can adapt to different technology and different things and evolve. Like you said earlier with Naval, go back and read the classics. The basics of human nature and of psychology don't change. 00:58:56 The technology changes. The procedures might change. But it always gets me when some of the younger people in their 20s are always like, oh, there's this new cool thing. It's the new silver thing that everybody's going after. I look at it and I'm like, we were doing that 40 years ago. There's nothing new about this at all. It's just now it's on the internet instead of through direct mail or whatever. The psychology, human psychology doesn't change. So, the right content is super, super valuable. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. Okay. So one of the questions I have, and this is for the listeners, and this is sort of lessons from the edge. And I think that's a book. So watch out for those lawyers. 00:59:42 But lessons from the edge, can you give us about five lessons that takeaways from your entrepreneurial journey that you could pass on to the listeners? Yeah, I would say for the first one, I would actually make a health corollary here just because that's so much of my world and that is that whether it's business failures or health symptoms, those things are almost always great messages if we learn how to hear them versus being something that can be framed in a negative way. And in both my health, any symptom that at the time I thought was horrible and cataclysmic actually ended up being a great message that led to positive change. Same as in business, anytime there was what seemed like an insurmountable roadblock or failure, it opened the door for something to become even more beautiful in the future. 01:00:26 And so I think our mindset around failure and our vulnerability and accepting of failure is really helpful there. I think it was Buddha who said it first and everyone said it since then, but it's not change that's painful. It's resistance to change that's painful. So as entrepreneurs, I think if we can embrace the change and realize that as a constant partner of entrepreneurship, we'll have a lot less pain along the way. I will touch on the system side because it sounds like that's something that's near and dear to your heart as well. I think to the degree that we can systematize and automate, not to reduce the workload, but to reduce the mental load related to those things. 01:00:59 If we can take any of the guesswork or having to keep loops in our head out of the equation, that allows for more bandwidth and creative time, which as entrepreneurs is one thing that I fiercely protect is the time in which I'm able to be creative and to work on new ideas as well. I think, Kevin, to your point, the people we partner with, that will be one of the most important decisions we make as entrepreneurs and in life. I learned that also the hard way. In relationship situations, I think the partners we choose is a tremendously important decision and truly can be make or break for businesses. So spending the time to evaluate partnerships is incredibly important. 01:01:36 And then I would say as the last couple of points, two of the things that are not able to be tangibly measured, but that I think have been tremendously helpful to me in business are to. stay in a state of constant learning and also constant challenge because there's really unique things that happen to our brain when we're in those states; so some guidelines that I've set for myself is every one to three months, I have to take on a new challenge of something that's entirely out of my comfort zone that terrifies me and that I haven't done before. And that could be something small like learning to solve a Rubik's Cube. It could be something like pole vaulting. That's actually how that started. 01:02:10 Or taking voice lessons, which at the time was the scariest thing I could possibly imagine doing. Whatever it may be, there's something from a neuroplasticity perspective that happens to our brains when we challenge ourselves, whether it be with a new skill or getting something very out of our comfort zone. And I think as an entrepreneur, you can't quantify that. It's not going to fit on your to-do list in the same way, but it will pay dividends in business. And the same with reserving time for learning. We talked about things like reading the classics or reading whatever books you're passionate about. But I think if we reserve time for learning, if we train ourselves to become good at pattern recognition, we can take something from anything we read, anything we're exposed to, anything we learn. 01:02:49 And I find that the more you do that, the more those things show up in the moments you need them in entrepreneurship and you can apply them in a new way into whatever current problem you're facing. See, I told you, Norm, those two hours every night that you want to talk to me about something. I said, no, I got to go read 42 different newsletters a day. I told you, I told you, you know, this is actually going to pay off. And just listen to Katie. Just listen to Katie. And I just say, read my policy. You know, here's my SOP on that. Well, I don't know about you, Norm, but I think Katie's pretty freaking awesome. Definitely awesome. This has been fantastic. 01:03:30 As soon as you started to say that you were pole vaulting with your daughter and the contracts that you had with your kids and everything else. Yeah. Absolutely awesome. I'm so glad that you were able to become our first guest on the Marketing Misfits. And Kev, I was talking to Katie just beforehand. And at the end of every podcast, we always ask our guests, do they know a marketing misfit? I think that's my SOP. Katie, do you know a marketing misfit that would be great for this show? Yeah, you can recommend to us or introduce us to. If Naval works out, I think he would be incredible. But actually, one who I think could be really, really good or perhaps even better, you might have met as well, Kevin. 01:04:18 Mike Feldstein founded a company called Jasper Air. And I got to sit in on a think tank with him, which I can't divulge details from. But I was blown away at the way he thinks outside the box in marketing. His story is incredible. He cut his chops helping with wildfires and mold recovery after natural disasters. And then, use that knowledge to create arguably the best air filter on the market. But I loved his marketing standpoint and how people would be pushing for really intense business goals and targets, like building this thing to hundreds of millions of dollars. And he would re-center it on mission, and it's paying off for him in an incredible way. And I think the work he's doing is incredible, but even more so his ethos and his philosophy and the way he thinks about business is fascinating. 01:05:01 Awesome. Sounds like two great candidates. That's fantastic. Yeah, introduction two. Thank you for that, Katie. I appreciate it. We really appreciate it. Norm and I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing this with us. This has been awesome. As usual, you always over-deliver and are amazing. So thanks for doing this for us. If people wanted to reach out or find out more about your mission or your companies or you or anything, what would you like to share with them? The easiest starting point is just wellnessmama. com, which was the first business. And a lot of the peripheral ones still live there, the podcast and the CPG company that we didn't even talk about. But I have a CPG company that does natural products for oral care and hair care. 01:05:41 And a lot of that's housed on wellnessmama. com. Or people can always just reach out to me, especially via social media. And I do respond to all of those. And I would love to hear from anybody. Awesome. Well, thanks, Katie. Really appreciate it. Thank you guys so much for having me. This has been so much fun. All right, Katie, thank you. Wow, Katie was awesome, Norm. That was really cool. I'm really glad we got her on the show as one of our first guests. The first guest. I think it's a perfect first guest. Yeah, she's incredible. I mean, to have 30 businesses, six kids on the board, not only would she say 10 businesses. She's on the board of 30 or something like that. And six kids, and they'll be doing all this amazing stuff. 01:06:27 And just the way she systemized it all. It's just she's an incredible lady. Awesome, awesome person. And what I like today is we talked about a ton of different things. You know, one of the things that you and her got into was mindset. I liked her lessons from the edge. Those five tips she gave. Oh, those are brilliant. Those are brilliant. Those are awesome, so you know I can't wait, uh, this is only the beginning of the nuggets (I hate the word nuggets, but it's the beginning of all this great education and knowledge that we'll be providing) and we've got uh, Norm, you and I've talked about a bunch of stuff we got a lot of cool stuff uh planned for the Marketing Misfits, maybe uh, maybe Katie can refer us to a couple of these other people that she mentioned, but regardless of that, we have a ton of awesome guests lined up. 01:07:16 If you want to see what we're doing, go to marketingmisfits. co. So not . com, no M, just . co. Marketingmisfits. co. If you know somebody that you want to suggest to the show, you can suggest somebody there if you know a cool guest that we should have on the show. Or you want to just see what we're doing and we're open to it. Marketingmisfits. Co., Oh, and don't forget about the other project, Kev. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you want to tell them about that, Norm? Sure. The other site you've got to check out, it's called collectivemindsociety. com. And just go there, check it out, and hopefully you'll love it. Yeah, collectivemindsociety. com, marketingmisfits. co. Hit that subscribe button here on whatever platform you're listening to this on. Or if you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss a single episode. Norman and I will be back again next week with another amazing guest. We'll see you then.