Fire Yourself From Operations To Scale Past 7 Figures In 2026 with Randa Carrabba

Business scaling destroys most founders for one reason: they are the bottleneck and not the glue holding everything together. Randa Carrabba joins Shawn Lynch to explain what it really costs to keep control of every decision yourself, and what happens to your revenue, your health, and your family the moment you finally let go.

Randa takes us from a town of 876 people to becoming one of the fastest-growing Aggie-owned businesses by age 27, then straight through the layoff, the storefront closure, and the 1.4 million dollar app build that ended with her husband, her team, and her therapist removing her from her own operations. She breaks down how full-body progressive overload training grew “Powher Fit” into a seven figure fitness brand in under 18 months, why her empowerment coaches are everyday women instead of certified trainers, and how she now helps women founders move from 20,000 dollar months to 100,000 dollar months by restructuring the business instead of stacking more onto their plate. Shawn and Randa also dig into founder burnout, lean profit over vanity revenue, and the difference between being busy and doing the work that actually moves the needle.

If your business cannot grow without you in every decision, this conversation hands you the restructure to start with. Subscribe to Official Success Formula for new episodes every week, listen to the full podcast at the link below, and follow Randa's work with women founders at her site.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

My guest today turned down grad school to start a jewelry business with just a few hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

I was like, I'm gonna like ghost it little ass at a locked lost and sell my damn strong jewelry and put my little perfect resume that we've put together on hold.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

But built it into a multimillion dollar company, then lost everything.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

She had to reinvent herself from the ground up. The first business took me 25 months to get to seven figures. You know, each one you kind of learn and you do it a little bit faster.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

She shares the one piece of business advice that almost everybody gets wrong.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

The best thing you can do is to step back or redesign it or rebuild it where it can grow without you.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

This is a conversation about building businesses, overcoming setbacks, raising a family, and what success really looks like.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Being able to lay my head down at night, knowing that I served my people the best, even if the outcome wasn't what I wanted yet.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

And you wouldn't believe what she told me about.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

I think people, it's not that their goals are too big, it's that their timeline is way too unrealistic.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

You're not gonna want to miss this episode. I've been looking forward to this one because I've seen that you built multiple successful businesses, and you've had some incredible wins, and you've gone through some really tough seasons. Yep. But I wanted before we talk about any of that, I want to go way back to where it started when you were a kid. Okay. So tell me a little bit about how you were growing up, what kind of town you grew up in. I I think I saw that you grew up in a small town like I did. Very small, which is is a very limited. It gives you a very limited mindset.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

It does. I grew up in a town of 876. A little bit smaller than mine.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yeah. Yeah. Mine was graduated with 85, so a little bit bigger.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

But in in hindsight, you know, I grew up in the agriculture world. So I feel like there was such responsibility that was taught at such a young age, right? Even though it was a more limited mindset, I don't think it hindered me. And I don't think I understood it was more of a limited, probably money mindset till I got out. But I think the the Christian values, the morals, the responsibility, those things that you can't buy, I think were instilled so great with the community that I was raised in.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I would I would agree with that. I we didn't have any of that. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't on the agriculture side, just a really small town. But I would agree that uh a lot more responsibility comes with whether you have a small farm or a ranch or or a lot of acreage or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Those animals have to be fed no matter what.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yep. And so yeah, I definitely think the responsibility thing, you know, is is definitely a huge bonus when somebody's growing up for sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

The girl that we hire to take care of, my son, like that's with them right now. I mean, she's on the rodeo team because I know she can load a trailer, put a horse in, drive across the state, go to a rodeo. She's just ha she's equipped in such a way from I just feel like ag especially ag girls, they're a very special rare breed in my mind. Did you homeschool or go to school? Um, I went to school of public school. Oh, I went to Catholic school through fourth grade. It got shut down because our town just couldn't survive a layoff at where everyone's dad worked and then to public school in fourth grade, and our school was pre-K through twelve. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

And so after you graduated, so you went to high school all the way through in your small town, graduated, and then what was the plans after that?

SPEAKER_00 3:21

So I was like the big fish in high school, if that makes sense. I was valedictorian, I was I was gonna go do all the things. I could not wait to be at an Aggie. Like I was gonna be the loudest, proudest freaking member of Texas AM, first generation Aggie, first generation college student in my family. A lot of Texas Texas people want to go to UT or AM. Right. That's like the thing. And I had uh I started working at age 14 actually as a typesetter, but I was all American softball, all American cheerleader, valedictorian, all the things of a small town, right? But I started working at age 14 and I had to coordinate my own rides to and from work, you know, like that level level of responsibility because I needed to be saving to pay for my gas, my insurance when I turned 16. And I remember my senior year of high school, I asked my family if I could cut back on some of my work hours so that I could spend that time putting together scholarships. And so I made money going to college. Like I made about $5,000 a semester back from extra scholarships that I had applied for because I knew if I put that time, I would actually make more money than my hourly rate at my job, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Makes sense. Yeah. Did you always have an entrepreneurial mindset? I said I know you said you want to go to AM. Like what was the plan?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

So when I went to AM, I could not wait to enter the ag world. I grew up in FFA and I was like a little missocialite in all of that, if that makes sense, but I was still was limited in being in a smaller town, right? And going to AM, it was like I already knew so many people from all over the state from FFA or showing cattle or rodeo stuff. Um, but I was I went in with ag economics, changed to animal science. I was on the wool judging team, the livestock judging team. Like I was little miss uh agriculture, if that makes sense. And I thought I was gonna go do pharmaceutical sales. So I went and interviewed with Pfizer up in Illinois to look at doing pharmaceutical sales because I was still looking, like, how can I actually make good money in this industry? Right. Like I went and interned with the American Angus Association of Junior Activities, and I'm like, what am I gonna make 30 grand a year? You know, it's just not worth it. But all along, while I was judging and doing all those ag things, I don't know if you know like the thick, chunky turquoise jewelry, like think of like New Mexico, kind of like jewelry. That was like really becoming real popular then. And it was, it was very expensive to buy. And I just couldn't afford it, but I wanted those things. And so I found a place down here at Houston that wholesaled the beads. They were fake, but they looked authentic. And I was handcrafting my own jewelry while I was in college. And I'm a big Christian. I do think hindsight 2020. Um, God was preparing my entrepreneurial journey before I even understood. So like I filed a DBA when I was a sophomore in college. And because literally everywhere I went with my jewelry, people, girls were buying it off of me. Like if we went to the bar partying, I would like load all my girlfriends up with necklaces and jewelry and be like, you sell all of this before we get home tonight. And so it was just like I the one thing that my husband and I were talking about last night is like when I went to college, it wasn't about the information that I got. It was all the people that I met. Cause then when I decided to pursue that little hobby of handmaking my jewelry, which turned into a huge lifestyle boutique and I was number 11, the fastest growing Aggie owned businesses in the world by age 27. Um, it was really that people everywhere knew me and trusted me and wanted that from me. But I remember thinking back, like when I was getting ready to graduate AM, fun fact, I was our top senior at in our whole College of AG. Like I was the Brown Rudder nominee. So I was like, like all the deans and everything at AM like wanted me on this like silver platter. And I was like, I'm gonna like go sit my little ass at a mall kiosk and sell my handstrung jewelry and put my little perfect resume that we've put together on hold.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Well, just hearing that story, I don't think you would have been happy working for Pfizer.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

No, no. It might have lasted a year. But I remember having pride, like thinking, if I was to stay and get my masters, right? That they were offering me at my master's on a silver platter, it's even like where I grew up and people around me. I remember after I graduated, like, what are you doing? If I would have said I was getting my masters, I felt like it was more what's the word I'm looking at, like to look up to look up to, or there was more.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Yeah. You thought people would think more of you if you were going to your school to school. How old are you?

SPEAKER_00 7:39

So I'm 39, so I graduated in 09. And think of like that economy. People were staying to get their masters to still not get a basic entry-level job because they were overqualified. And I'm like, I'm not gonna go two more years of school. Even if it's paid for, I'm still spending my time in school versus making money, right? Yeah. But I remember having a little bit of pride to not want to go start my own business because people didn't understand it. They're like, you're gonna go make jewelry for your own business.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Well, even then, so before social media, if you went and said I'm gonna be an entrepreneur, you're kind of the loser. Yeah. Well, not loser. You were you were like out. Yeah, people didn't understand it at the time, or oh, they just don't know what they want to do in life or whatever. You didn't have it figured out.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Yeah, it's like you're having a midlife crisis, but at 21.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah, I did the same thing. I I knew that I didn't want to work for anybody, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was like, so in and of course school taught me nothing. And I was like, what do I do? Okay, my mom wants me to go to college. I was making bad decisions at the time, you know, credit to her, like no offense that she's like, hey, you need to get a real job. You need to go do something. You did it because and I'm, you know, stupid drinking, fighting, partying and small town stuff. And what town are you from? Uh well, I grew up, I bounced around Galveston County. So we lived in pretty much every city. I went to school, you know, for a little while on Hitchcock. I went to R Lady R uh uh Galveston Catholic. I went like I bounced around to like every little city in that town. We had rent house to rent house. Um and so I I kind of moved out moved around, but I ended up going to Hitchcock High School, is where I which was a public school at the time, and that's where I graduated from. And when I graduated, I of course was like, I gotta get out of this town. I was like, I w I want to do something big, I just don't know what it is. And I ended up going to community college for a couple months, you know. My mom really wanted me to go. And for I was like, at least if I go for this business, they had some type of certification. I was like, at least maybe I can take more classes without taking all those basic classes. Like, I don't want to sit in here for two years just taking like English and more math and stuff. Like that doesn't that's not gonna help me make any more money. And so I ended up taking three months worth, and I'm like, man, I could be just learning on my own, and that's what happened. So it it was more of I knew I didn't want to work for somebody, and after sitting in school for three months, I was like, I know this isn't gonna get me to where I'm trying to go. And so ended up taking the entrepreneur path, which no, I couldn't ever imagine taking a different one.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

I agree.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

And after meeting you, there's no way you would have made it a Pfizer. No. Even if you went there, you'd probably quit in a year. Yeah. 100%. Did you always I mean, you're always a high performer the whole time. So did you always know that you wanted just a bigger life than your little small town?

SPEAKER_00 10:26

I did. I could not like I graduated high school on a Friday, I had my party on a Sunday, I moved to Bryan College Station on a Monday and never looked back. You were dead set on the city. I could not get out. Now, is Bryan College Station that big of a city? No, but for where I came from, it was big. Um and it still is big enough to do all that I'm doing, right? Especially now with the internet. You don't have to. I love still showcasing that I'm in Brian College Station and talking about my hometown roots because they're very close. They're only like 45 minutes apart. So I while I did get out of my hometown, it's not like I got hours or estates away, right? Um, but nowadays I actually like to really promote for the small town girls because I think a lot of them naturally will think like, Well, I'm not in Miami, I'm not in Dallas, I'm not in LA, I'm not in New York. And I'm like, you don't have to be.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

I also think it's a different time. I think there's a lot more opportunity because of the internet. Well, and now AI, but mainly because of the internet. Like before, you couldn't you didn't have any information. So if you lived in that little small town, like you only knew what those people were telling you. Like literally, like you there was no connection to the outside world unless you traveled to another town back then. And now at least you can see that there's all these other opportunities. You can connect to pretty much anybody or anything, and the information's there. So I think there's a probably it wasn't as bad, I guess, now that you people think they have to move to LA or think they have to move to New York or think they have to move to Miami. Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

And I don't know, I just look at like even living quality. I like where there's good air, I like where there's room, space. So yeah, I think those cities hold their place, but I don't think you have to live there.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Did people think you were crazy when you want to start a business and not go this whole master's route and go to work at a Python?

SPEAKER_00 12:03

For the most part they did, but I'll also tell you, I still vividly, I mean, that was 20 years ago, I still very vividly remember the few people that pushed me, encouraged me to do that.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

And like that, my friend Amy, okay, she was one. I remember her being like, but you having your own business card saying you have your own business, like how does that even compare to your staying and getting your master's at AM? I don't I don't understand. And sometimes I feel like a young person is impressionable, right? Yeah. So I even feel just like one person speaking life into you or speaking the way that you're supposed to go, or opposite of the grain or outside of the norm can be huge for a young person.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

A hundred percent. Because if you're around, you know, you hear uh the saying that if you're around these five people, you're gonna end up being like those five people. It and very much true, especially when you're young. Because you're like, well, you know, uh, maybe I am crazy, maybe I am. You're sec it makes you second guess yourself if everybody told you you're absolutely crazy for doing this, and nobody said Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

It's like at least if I had one or two people that I could say were gonna hype me up, you know, when you're still finding yourself at a young age, I do think that's so important.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Who was the other person? Was it anybody in your family?

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Um, it actually was my friend James. He was another one.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

So you started making jewelry, selling it all over campus, selling it when you were going out. And then what was the first step after?

SPEAKER_00 13:23

So I made an actual website in 2007 and I made an actual Facebook page for the business in 2007, and that was like when Facebook didn't have business pages.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Just coming out, right? Just coming out.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

So I was a sophomore in college and I was like actually running e-commerce with big commerce. That was one of the very first big ones way back when. So I was selling online and I would just package and make my jewelry like late at night, you know, outside of putting myself through school with um my job and going to school and having a 4-0 and all of that. Um, so I had already built, I guess you would say, this online presence, an online store by the time I graduated. So I wasn't really starting from scratch when I graduated. I did already at least have a clientele base online, which was really cool because even now I think you can sell just on social media, but a lot of people overlook like actually building the website or actually building the e-commerce or actually building like the storefront side.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

A lot easier now than back then because you can actually just do Shopify and stuff. Back then you had to go find somebody to build you a website most of the time. Right. Or customize it or whatever you needed.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

So when I graduated, I graduated in May of 2009 and I didn't really have a plan. And um, I said, let me give myself a year. And if I'm not making good money, I'll if you'll hold on to my master's um offer that you've given me, I'll come back in a year. Just let me see if I can make it for a year. And so I didn't really know what I was doing. I would go to local shows and rodeos and like set up booths. I would do home parties, obviously the online. Um, but even back then, people were more skeptical of online because they didn't know if you ordered something, if you would get it or how long you would get it. 2015 and 2016 is when that really put it of my online took off because Amazon actually led the way or people trusted it more, right? But this was back 2009. Um, and then I ended up, I remember I was at the our local mall one day and I just saw one of the little kiosks that was like this or that. And I'd look at getting a store in town, but in college station, I mean, I didn't have an investor, I didn't have parents with money. Like no one was gonna sign off on a five-year storefront for me, right? To actually grow this thing. And I remember seeing that little mall kiosk, and I went and met with them and they said you couldn't have this month to month. So I did it September, October, November, and December after I graduated. December, I made $24,000. And I'm like, I can make serious money. Like, I don't care who's laughing at me now because people would laugh. I mean, I'm sitting on the kiosk where most people run away from kiosk people, right? Um, and that is really what showed me what this business could make. Then I was looking for storefront and the USA Today reached out to me and they wanted to do a story on small businesses utilizing social media, but they wanted two opposite ends of the spectrum. I was the young, fresh out of college girl, and then they had like a couple that was like in their 70s, almost 80, selling ribbon online all through big commerce, and they ran this feature story on me. And I feel like that was God's sign of like, keep going. I found a little storefront that was like 900 square feet outside of town, but it was zoned commercial and the owner wanted me. She allowed me to do a one-year lease at $500 a month. You know, it was, and I was like, Can I paint it pink? She's like, Yes, you can paint it pink. And so that is kind of what led to then me having enough built up to where I could then do the five-year, you know, huge lease of like a storefront and an online warehouse in like a great location in town.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

What made you want to go into a bigger location if you already had a spot that was outgrowing the spot?

SPEAKER_00 16:35

I was outgrowing the spot. I mean, it was there wasn't good parking. It was a little bit on the outskirts of town. It was almost like at first it was that good little hidden gym, you know, to go shop at, kind of like a dive bar, right? But then I was doing like $400,000 a year out of that little tiny 900 that 900 square feet. And I just didn't have room for like dressing rooms. I didn't have room to like actually stock inventory. Um, and I didn't need a much bigger space, but I needed actually like a paved parking lot for my clients, you know?

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Were you still only making jewelry at that time?

SPEAKER_00 17:03

I had expanded it into bringing on clothes and accessories and shoes, kind of like a full-on lifestyle boutique, but I was still in handmaking jewelry.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

And so you moved to the bigger location and did sales increase?

SPEAKER_00 17:15

They absolutely did. I remember. So when I first opened my little kiosk, day one, I did $800 in sales and I was like, I'm gonna be rich. And day two, I did zero dollars and was humbled. When I opened my uh big store, um, my rent was around my like my rent and bills were around $6,000 a month. And I had to sign a five-year lease, and I did over $4,500 in day one. And I was like, I'm gonna be good. And it wasn't even like a soft opening or an official grand opening, it was just day one. But I had so much more space, I could really display everything. I had more um dressing rooms, I had a beautiful parking lot. I mean, I made it like the place to go. And game day, like, because I was in Texas at where Texas AM is in College Station, game day is where I absolutely made it. There were two different things, the fringe bikini and game day. So that first summer, I went into my store and I got the keys on February 14th of 2012. And I remember posting like everyone else got their Valentine's, and I was single on like, I got keys to my new store. And we renovated it, got in in March. Well, that's when Johnny Football signed to come to AM. But that was before everyone, and we had just joined the SEC. So college station was like booming. Well, that summer I remember Pinterest, everybody pinning these fringe bikinis, and I went to all the markets, I couldn't find them. So I outsourced and found someone, it was risky as hell. I don't know. That was another god thing. I found like this Chinese person to like make me these fringe bikinis, but I had to buy in such bulk to be able to afford the shipment and the customs and everything. And I got those fringe bikinis for under $4 a pop and I sold them $42.95 out like this. Like I think that year I made $600,000 off the fringe bikini, that one product alone. Then that was the summer. Then football kicked off and like Johnny Football and SEC put our town on a whole nother thing. I'm telling you, the Fridays before game day, I would make so much money because everyone from both where we were locally as well as the SEC towns, because of social media, wanted to come shop with me. And so I would stock for not only our colors, but for the, you know, the the the other teams' colors too. And I would do tailgate parties and just made it like the place to be. It was like that was you were tailgating at my store the day before you were actually tailgating at the game.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

How much were you doing on the online side of it while you were running the store at this time?

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Um, the online store altogether never passed, I think around $800,000 on its own. But the like is the the that one product, the fringe bikini between the store and online did $600,000 that one year. Like when I just did my products. Oh, I did, but uh my time was attached if I was custom making it. That's what everybody wanted. But if I'm hand making it, that's where my most margins were because I could charge because I was at that point, people kind of wanted more of like, well, Randah actually made this because most of my stuff in my store I couldn't make if I was going to actually scale, right? Um so there were great margins, but my time was attached, so I could only make so many. Did you hire somebody to make it? I guess I could have, but um, I had one girl that would kind of make it a little bit, but I don't know. I feel like people wanted it. If I made it and then it was great, we were doing so good with all the other products that it kind of just naturally kind of fizzled itself out. What happened after that?

SPEAKER_01 20:24

I mean, it sounds like it's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Oh yeah, it was going great. Um, it was going great. I like I said, I had an annual compounded growth rate of 93% after the first two years, those five years after that. Um, so it was growing, growing, growing. Uh 2015-16 really helped online because, like I said, people were getting more accustomed to it. Um, I ended up moving my little warehouse from behind the store and taking over like the big 3,400 square foot building and doing one side just as my online store, one side just as the retail store. Um the problem was number one, game day was so big that then when we would have a bad year or a bad schedule or bad weather, like it would affect us so much. Like not only just my store, but even our town. Like if you have a a schedule where you you're playing playing a bunch of nobody teams at like 11 a.m. versus the big teams at home at 6 p.m., makes such a difference. They also took away trademark rights. Like I used to be able to print all of my custom teas and tanks and stuff for the game day stuff with Aggie sayings, I just had to pay an extra 12% for the royalty fees. They took that away. That really affected me. Um, and then I really think online kind of started to take over for a little bit. When it was newer and more exciting in 2016, it's almost like going to a store was more it was less of the experience they wanted outside of like my parties and stuff. Does that make sense? Um, and I even think just the team growing with management, I think I did a really good job growing the culture of the people that work for me. But I think I grew friends in a group against me. And there was power in numbers.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

So did sales just start decrease? Like what happened with the actual.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Yeah. So January of 2016, I was negative $30,000. Another thing I did wrong was I was starting to wholesale my custom like teas and tanks with my logo on the back. So I was going to like Dallas market, Denver market, and selling the wholesale. I think I was trying to grow too big too fast versus focusing on, like my husband says, the pipeline. I think the pipeline store and online store needed another year or two of growth or to be able to actually run and manage with other people without me. I don't think my leadership was a hundred percent where it needed to be. Um and I think I was chasing the next kind of shiny object because I had hit it big on that uh French bikini or that game day thing. And then when they shut things down, it's like, what's the next thing I can do versus like just staying the course.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Yeah. So did you just end up shutting it down? What ended up happening?

SPEAKER_00 22:50

So I in at the end of that month, I ended up having a full team meeting with full transparency saying, hey, if things don't turn around in two weeks, I'm gonna have to do a layoff. Um, not putting blame or fault on anybody, but just transparently here's where we were at. And so February 4th of 2016, I had to lay everybody off except for my office manager who then stepped in helping me do everything. It was exactly one year before I got married. And I remember that was such that's when my realized my identity was tied so much to my success when I was doing good in business. It was like I was on top of the world. But if I wasn't doing good in business, who was I? Was I valuable? Was I good at business? Um, and so there were a lot of hurt feelings. Again, there were power and numbers. The they were all about my age or a little bit younger, but again, it was easier to lash out at me or you know, act the way we act when we're hurt and we're young because they had a great fun work environment with all their friends and then it no longer existed. And so I remember I was working 16-hour days just trying to stay afloat between the two. I had a door put in the in between the store and the online. That way I could just go back and forth. If someone wasn't in the store, I'd be online. Um, that's actually I used to be almost 200 pounds, and that's actually when I did my first 50 pound weight loss, and it was not the healthy way. It was I was just working so much that my fiance at the time was like, Have you eaten today? type of thing. Because I didn't want to lose all that I had worked for.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Stress and not eating. So what what was the final?

SPEAKER_00 24:15

So the final thing was I decided to shut the store. I was gonna give it till uh football season. I thought football season would be our turnaround. It just kept going down because the problem is the storefront took up way too much. Like my overhead was just so high. My overhead was like around six hundred thousand dollars a year with the storefront, and I just couldn't do that. So I shut down and went online only at the time. Um shut down the end. Remember, I was getting married February 4th. So I got out December 31st, had someone else go into my lease so I didn't have to like pay for continuing the lease. Went on my bachelorette party for the first couple of days, and then I had exactly one month until I got married, and that's when I realized like my confidence is tied to this, and my confidence is in the hillhole. And I want to be very confident and look really good on my wedding day because I had like lost so much weight. It's almost like when people go, like now you would say Osympic or like back in the day, keto, and you lose so much weight that you age yourself and have no shape. So I finally was not working 16-hour days at the store trying to keep it afloat, kind of had this weight off of me that I viewed it as a luxury to get to go to the gym one hour a day, even though I had no idea what I was doing. I just wanted to look good for my wedding. So I had a month to like get in the gym and figure it out. So that was kind of my next step of what I did, which was ultimately God leading me that I would end up within less than two years launching Power Fit, which actually grew to seven figures in under 18 months. The first business took me 25 months to get to seven figures. So, you know, each one you kind of learn and you do it a little bit faster.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

So tell me about that one. So you started, you started going down the health route. How did you figure out a way to make money off of it?

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Okay, so I was just posting about being in the gym, you know, for my wedding and all these different things, not trying to monetize at first. I was just trying to keep my online presence. And what I learned was a lot more people related to me sharing my health and fitness journey for a couple of reasons. Number one, it wasn't tied to like a size or a style of clothing in a store. Um, so it was really for universal of all ages. Also, I think people loved me sharing it back then because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Like I wasn't this four-time overcertified trainer online, right? I was just this everyday girl trying to like figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

But I feel like that's kind of what this what makes people successful on social media is because people you're trying to build trust. Well, nowadays, like if you're on there, you are trying to build trust. But that was back then you're just sharing your journey. This is where I was, this is how much I weighed, this is what I do now. So people are like, oh, this girl's real and it's like uh I want to follow her. And so those people end up building really good businesses because people end up trusting them a lot.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Right. And so that year I was still running my Southern Jewels out of um basically my attic at the house online only. And I just realized I had lost my love for it because I felt like I was running this small little like industrial distribution versus actually getting to style women or work with women. Like I was this mini Amazon, didn't like it. And so I did have someone reach out to me online to see if I would um become like a fitness influencer for them in the fall of 2008, in the fall of 2017, after I got married. And I remember we had a big uh one-year anniversary trip and I was like, yeah, I want to like look my best and have abs and have a six pack. And so I started promoting what I was doing and brought, I mean, I think I brought her like 300 clients in the first year. I mean, in the first month, not year, first month. Um, and I realized how much women needed their own safe space in fitness. Again, I'm someone, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'll go out there and try to lift with the guys and video myself and put it on social media. And I don't have any gym intimation, any fear, anything like that, even if I look like a freaking idiot, right? But I realized that most women weren't like that. They wanted to lift in a women's room. They wanted a build a friend in their pocket where they could actually have their honest conversations without someone judging them in the gym. And so when I started realizing that, I actually just kept focusing really kind of on the servant side of it, like how can I serve these women? And so I stayed with that program for, I don't know, six to nine months, somewhere in that time. Of you being an affiliate for them. Of me being being an affiliate for them. And I followed it to a T. And I was so new into it that you don't know what you don't know. Um, and so what it was, it was six days a week strength training with two days of sprint intervals, and then the one rest day was an active rest day of go run a 5K. It was, yeah, it was carb cycling two days a week, intermittent fasting 16, eight every day, and a 24 hour fast at least once a month. So I got great results. Sustainability after six to nine months, and I'm a hard ass worker. Like it just wasn't it. And so I remember leaving, but I didn't want to like bash or say why I was leaving, but I'm like, I can't sustain this. I only promote what I actually do. Um, and then if I feel like this, other people have to feel like this. So at that time I still had Southern Jules, right? Running it out of my attic in my where in my warehouse. And it was profitable enough. Um, and if I'm being really honest, now I'll own this, but back then I wouldn't. I married a man with a lot of money and I didn't have to work anymore. But in my DNA, I needed to work and I needed to make my own money. So that was a backup, but that was going to not fulfill me. And he knew that too.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Yeah, you know, the purpose thing is a big deal, whether you marry somebody with money or you inherit a bunch of money or whatever it is. Like you have to to be happy in life, you have to have some type of purpose. You can't just like do nothing. You have to like have we wake up and might want to go do something. Maybe it's not making money, but maybe it's something else like something. You have the all the stuff, all the people that I've known or in situations like that, or heard about stories about it's like that all ends up not working out very well long term. Right. Really happy for about six months and then they just 100%.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yes, and you just you feel unfair.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Either the relationship goes about or they start doing other things to fill those, like drugs, alcohol, yeah, whatever it is. Just trying to have something every single day.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

So seeing how many people wanted to stick with me, I was actually looking for a program to promote that was more uh sustainable, if you will. And I felt like everything I kind of looked at didn't really have what I wanted at the time, but I was 31, had been married for a year, was getting ready to exit and sell Southern Jewels, which I did exit and sell that by age 31. Um, but I really wasn't at the place of wanting to build another business because I know the work it takes. I mean, and just the library we had to build on fitness videos and everything. I mean, like I remember Thanksgiving break and Christmas break, I didn't have that break. And I just came from retail where I'm like, I finally get this break and now I'm rebuilding. Um, but I'm really grateful that I did, obviously, because it turned into really, I would say, kind of like a phenomenon at the time because I remember, you know, I had I had swung both sides. I'd been almost 200 pounds, then I had gotten really lean and not sustainable. And I was almost like scared to eat high carb every day or to actually eat in the morning for breakfast versus fasting and to fuel my lifts. And you don't know what you don't know until you live it, right? And I'm like, I don't want to lose what I've worked so hard to build, where really that was the next level and season of my fitness journey.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Yeah, I was kind of the same way. I I'd been working out since I was about 18, maybe, uh, and really got into it. And of course, first when you're just super skinny as a guy, you're just trying to put on muscle. Like, whatever you can do, put on muscle. And then when I did put on enough muscle and I was just trying to stay lean as much as I could, but I didn't know anything about nutrition. I literally like, I mean, back then it was like magazines and stuff. So I you like nobody ever taught me, and I didn't learn until later in life, and it came from doing something like you did. I ran myself into the ground, I was working out seven days a week, I was doing CrossFit, I was boxing in the afternoon, and like like crazy workouts. No recovery time to actually build the message. And I'm getting older, so I'm at this time I'm 35, 36, and finally I must have just hit a wall. But I I thought I was I thought I was dying or something, I thought something was wrong with me. I was going to every doctor, I'm like, something's wrong with me. I don't know what's going on. It's just overtraining, under eating, under eating though, at the same time. Because I was eating enough for a normal person, but not for how much you were outputting. Yeah. And I didn't know anything about it. I need I just thought, oh, I'm eating so a pretty good amount of protein. Like, I think this is right for whatever reason. I'd been working out forever and I still didn't know enough about it. And then when I finally met the right nutritionist and man, changed my life.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

And what I went into really for these women, again, keeping that service mind of like, I'm burnt, I'm burnt out, I don't want to burn them out. I wasn't a mom yet, but I was, you know, maybe that would be the next step of my life, right? And a lot of the people that I was interacting with were moms. We actually went instead of six days a week split training, we went four days a week full body training. And full body training back then was not popular like it is now. It's not even still that popular. But progressive overload, full body training, especially like the first couple weeks of a program that we would write, would be for time versus sets and reps. Because if I'm getting women of all different calibers and experience, like what maybe a set of 10 to you versus a set of 10 to you are so different versus if I know time under tension and I'm saying you're lifting for this long, you're resting for this long, you're lifting for this long, you're resting for that long to really make sure that they're getting both the time under tension, the muscle mind connection with the rest. And so I remember people coming in being like, I've never lifted full body. I think split training is the only way if it comes down to weights. And what the hell is this for time versus sets and reps?

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Money, I tell our students this, and you know, of course I tell my son this. Um money only follows value anyway. So if you can learn how to create value, which it sounds like on the second business, you aren't even trying to start a business, but you create a bunch of value that you'll end up making a lot of money off of it.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

100%. And when I'm like, we can actually program this to be more efficient for your time. Every program, when you when it's full body, you can actually program them for home programs, matching gym programs.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

So was it an app? Was it a like what at the time it was a web app?

SPEAKER_00 33:56

It was a web app with like small community groups led by coaches that I called empowerment coaches. And what I've learned is they I started out with like the four-time over certified trainer and he wrote all of our programs, which we still have. But these women were intimidated by that. Yeah. And so they wanted real world women. And so I remember that trainer when I told him we're gonna do empowerment coaches that don't have to be trainers and don't have to be nutritionists. They just need to be women living this lifestyle that are a couple steps ahead or 10% ahead or have gone ahead of the new client. Yeah. For the relatability. I mean, he laughed at me and he's like, good luck with your coaches that aren't trainers and aren't nutritionists. And I'm like, but I went back to the market research of when we have these 12-week programs and weeks one and two participation is this high, and week 11 and 12 is here. And I say, What do you actually need? Like, and I'm gonna hold you accountable to your word, not just tell me fluff. What do you actually need to finish this program? And when they say, I want support of other real world women and that connection, that's what we did. So, what was the business model?

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Like, how do how do you how do you move to the app? You had community.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

So I had I had a web app. So when we started, we had one program, strength 1.0 was $49 a month. And then uh we would just make monthly off of the membership. We also would have affiliates. But back then, I was so smart about this. That was when it was becoming cool to be an influencer. But like you couldn't just be an influencer unless you were just one of the influencers, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

But I made millions of followers or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

I made I made PowerFit be you could be an influencer, which basically meant you were an affiliate, but you had to pay for a discounted yearly membership to be able to be an influencer.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

So that's how a lot of the original like product companies even.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

And they wanted that. And then I I learned not to only hold them accountable month to month because they would fall off, but for a year membership discounted. But if you promote my program and people use your code, then you get they get a discount and you get a kickback. And so I made a ton of money off of the affiliates. I also, for originally to become a coach with me, you had to invest to become a coach because I needed you to have skin in the game. I was giving you the platform, the access, the clients, the training, everything. It was like you running your own little miniature business within my business. Now, over time, I did restructure that into now I just manage the coaches all in-house underneath me rather than running their own business. Because back then, social media wasn't intimidating like it is now. Now, getting coaches to actually create content is like if they're real world women, that's too much to put on a coach now. I want them to actually be a coach. As social media started taking over, um, I wanted to really kind of have more handle on the brand from our side and the coaches just coach and not have to get the clients.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

How big did it get? Like how many customers or how many?

SPEAKER_00 36:39

We've had over 33,000, not at one time by any means, but in in almost eight years, we've had over 33,000 people go through our program.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

And then we raised prices. So I built, then was it a was it a monthly subscription? It was a monthly subscription. And it was originally $49. Then when we had the coaches, it was $89 a month for a coach. Then over time, we just now we have over 40 programs. We have a nutrition program, nutrition tracking. I mean, we just kept adding value and adding to it, building along the way. We had enough to launch basic viable product and ran with that and then kept adding. Um, and then in 2020, I decided to create an app. Custom app. Uh, and I don't know if you know this, but that it was like crazy because back then there still wasn't AI. I was just a couple years ahead. But creating a custom fitness app, I don't think people understand how big of a task that is or how expensive it is because they they're used to seeing fitness apps that cost $6.99 a month. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

I do. I've waste I've we lost a lot of money on a big software project that we did one time.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Yeah. I uh I originally got quoted $1.4 million, turned it down. Then the people, there were three that left that company, and one I had gone to college with, another had launched the first version of e-trade back in 1996, so a lot of experience. The reasons they left the company made sense because they were doing a lot of outsourcing and having uh, you know, VAs in other countries and other cultures where there was a lot of lack of communication barriers and delay and overages on projects. So it all sounded really good. I had a contract. Um, originally they had quoted me like a little over 600 grand, and I said, I have $500,000. So let's cut it to whatever it needs to fit in $500,000. I'm not trying to say build the $600 something thousand dollar for $500. We need what can fit in $500. Um, which then got turned into, well, her husband her husband has a lot of money. We can just take advantage of them. Nine months overtime, still went up to $1.4 million. Six months after it gets launched, it doesn't work and I have to rebuild.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Yes, that's so familiar. That's terrible. The software industry is terrible. The biggest industry. They just keep and you're at the mercy of them. Overpromising and underdelivering. Yes. And what I hated the most about, because I've owned businesses in a ton of different industries now. And what I hated the most about that one was no matter what they told me, I couldn't go in and verify really. It's like, hey, we have to write it this way, we have to code it this way, this is this is the CTO we need. This is the um language. Oh, there's a new language now. We need to rewrite it because we need to be, you know, up to speed with all these other things that are happening. And I can't go in there like in one of my houses, I'm like, hey, you're laying the tile wrong, the framing's wrong. And it's like or a business I can walk in and be like, hey, y'all are doing this wrong. We need to hire another manager, we need to do this process. And the software I couldn't do that, and it was really frustrating.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Like the week we were supposed to launch. And once you realize, yeah, you can't.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

They know you're in, yeah, you've already spent six hundred grand. And that's why I think I don't think it was a taking advantage of you thing. I think that they're all like that, or ninety-five percent of them.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

It's like they I think they overpromised and underdelivered. Obviously, they didn't realize how big of a task it would be. And then the week we were supposed to launch, they're just in over their head that they're like, we have to quit and back out. And I had to go find somebody else. And then six months in, I mean, I was losing trust publicly. I was losing affiliates, I was losing coaches.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

I'm so glad AI, like at least I helped speed that along where you're not gonna have to rely off all these third party people.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

But also looking back, you know, no one wants to lose that much money. I'm very grateful that I'm still in business because I had to get very strategic. Um, obviously, the price we raised it to $99 because then even Apple is a 30% fee. So it was an entry level of $99. So we're double what we had originally started. Um, and now we're one-on-one coaching. And that's my app now is $297, like no lower than that. And my one-on-one coaching is $4,000 to $7,000. And it's deep transformation instead of going really wide like the fitness apps do, because a lot of them you just they collect dust, right? But I just went deeper on transformation through it to serve people.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

So is it it's three hundred dollars a year to use the platform?

SPEAKER_00 40:48

And then it's two hundred ninety-seven dollars a month to use the platform.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Okay. And then what does the platform get you other than and then you have to pay for the coach additionally, but what's the platform doing?

SPEAKER_00 40:58

So the platform itself is access to all of our workouts, all of our nutrition, all of our recipes, all of everything that you would need to be guided through. What is great about our training that our app did a really good job of is it's hands-free. So you can literally set up your workout and it's audio cued. So you can turn off my my like voiceover coaching if you want to, but still say, remember how I was saying time, like this much work time, this much rest time. So it's you're working out this movement. There's a three-second like deet, deet, deet, and it makes this little like ding, and that's your rest time. And then when it's almost done with rest time, it again does the countdown timer because I had used like the Sweat app or other apps, and you're having to like click through while you're working out, you know, and then sometimes you're on your phone and checking so many other things that I did want it to be a hands-free experience that's still guided, like I'm guiding you through there. So you're still operating today? Yeah, still operating today. Okay. Is it how many members? How many members? Definitely less. Uh overhand, I think we've got around 200 right now. Okay, awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

And then everybody pays for one-on-one training or some people pay for it. Not everybody, some people. Okay. Yes. What decisions were you determined not to make that you made in your first jewelry business in this one?

SPEAKER_00 42:12

Oh my gosh, not to grow too fast. Now I've got less of a desire to prove anything. So that 99.5% failure rate or 76% of apps get built and never launched. I'm like, they don't know me or the way that I work or the way that I follow through. Now I'm a lot more tired and wiser and just have less to prove, and I'm all about peace. But I'll be honest, I don't want to chase it. I don't want to chase overcoming a 99.5% failure rate right now. I don't. I can, but my piece of my time, my family, the where I'm at in life, is it's not the same as when I was younger.

SPEAKER_01 42:56

I think most of the time that happens. I I still love business more than anything. But I do think and I would never retire. And I would never again it goes back to the purpose and I would hate my life. Even though I love my family. I I couldn't just retire and do nothing. Right. And yeah, I could just spend more time with them. But it's still they're like, there's no like you wake up each day and like there's no driven thing. But the one thing I don't want to do is be the CEO anymore. I don't want to answer phone calls at two o'clock in the morning. Again, it took me twenty-something years to realize that, but when I did, I actually started doing better than trying to do everything myself because then I'm hiring the right people and then I'm putting systems in place that can work without me being there. So it's actually a better company. And so, man, that was probably 100%.

SPEAKER_00 43:46

Because when that six months the app had been launched, and then they say you have to rebuild. The great thing, this was a God thing. I the company that spent four weeks trying to fix it when they had to tell me it's not fixable and it has to be rebuilt for the first time. First time they said we will put that budget that you've paid us the last four weeks into a rebuild, which I was like, okay. My husband, my team, and my therapist had a group intervention with me and they said, We will rebuild this app, but you're out, you're out of operations. And I was embarrassed, I was ashamed, I felt like I wasn't a good leader. They told me I was in therapy three times a week to heal, and I was doing daily Bible study. But how that was gonna make me more money, I had no idea. But now let me tell you what. You know what though, too?

SPEAKER_01 44:29

I don't need to be designing a software app. Like I can't do I I mean, I I I know that I can't, I can't, I I don't have no idea what operations needed to happen.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Right. And I thought I was the glue, I was the bottleneck, right? So then I had to get creative. This is still before I realized my coaches didn't need to be creating anymore yet, as social media was kind of starting to become more of an animal. So I was helping them with their creation side, and then small business owners started reaching out. And so that is honestly what ended up kind of naturally birthing Iconic Academy. Um, because that's where I'm helping women, you know, scale. And honestly, the exact transformation I went through. Women in business are so emotionally tied to it. I remember when when they kicked me out and I had basically no option. If I was gonna fight them, they were gonna bring my pastor in, and it was then you're not gonna have this business anymore, Miranda. And so I publicly owned it that I was half retired, that I stepped back. Like I chose it, but I didn't. Now I own it. Um, but I remember I lost some people who did not like no longer having access to me the way the way they used to because my boundaries were up high, right? That was beautiful, clearing that out. And as I started serving my coaches more in building their businesses and social media and then small business owners came to me, I realized I went through it. Like when I got kicked out of the operations, and I was like, my clients are gonna think I don't care about them as much. My my coaches are gonna think I don't care about them as much. And I'm like, that may be true, but it really doesn't matter. Like it really doesn't because if they think I don't care as much, then they can go. Because I think what a lot of women in business get wrong is they do not understand actually when you care so much about your business, your mission, your purpose, whatever you're doing with your business, the best thing you can do is to step back or redesign it or rebuild it where it can grow without you because you're only one person, right? And I did not truly understand scaling until that happened. And I think way too many women in business, way more than men, are their own issue, their own bottleneck, their own lack of growth.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

I feel like a lot of it happens to a lot of business owners that's it. I don't know if that's just a woman. I mean it happened to me for 20 years. Like I don't I don't know if that's a woman thing. I I mean you deal with them more women business owners than than I would have, but I mean my wife did the same thing. But I know a lot of guys that do the same thing. You just you're especially when you're the founder day one, yes, and you started by yourself, is very hard to think that all these other people or realize that maybe there is people that can do it better than me. Which when you're young and you're trying to prove something like you said, I guess maybe I felt the same way. Also, one of my first business partners was very nobody can do it better than us. He like, so I think I kind of grew up with that mindset because it's my first business partner, and so I just got used to doing everything myself, but it had gotten to the point where I was like, we can't like this is it's maxed out, like we can't do anymore. We're doing it poorly, and so you know, that was a big conflict of uh, you know, us two. We ended up somebody ended up buying them out, but I still kept that mindset for probably another, you know, three, four or five years, maybe. Um, and not, and then finally I'm like, uh, you know, I'm stressing myself out. I didn't feel stressed because I'm I I'm I for some reason I'm like, no, I like doing all this stuff. And I I just liked business. I didn't like all the things that I was doing because I was doing a lot of stuff that I wasn't really good at and I was half-assing a ton of stuff. And if I should have just brought in the right people, it would have been well.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

And then what I see when founders reach that point of like saying, Okay, I am gonna step back or I am gonna do this, they're so exhausted and burnt out that even the idea of redesigning, restructuring, rebuilding, going back to the foundation and hiring, delegating, managing, it's also overwhelming. It's almost like you're starting over again and you really are. It's almost like I know my therapist does this thing where it's like as we grow, it's like these circles versus just linear. And so as you're going to that next level, you're still gonna revert back in that circle before you reach the next level. And so it is. You do have to go back to the foundation, but you're so exhausted that you're like, I don't want to do this. I just want it to finally run and me not carry all that pressure and that on my shoulders.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

And so that led you to just helping other women now. I mean, you still run the the well. Yes, fit. You're not operating without you're not operating the fitness company. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

Which man, when that happens and I don't even do client fulfillment either, because either the app fulfills it or my coaches fulfill the one-on-one coaching. Of course. Yeah. So I don't have to do anything. And, you know, I've even people have evaluated, you know, can you really scale to that crate at the same time? And I do think there's different seasons, but I love that I have a business that is proof of concept of what a restructuring, a redesign, getting kicked out of your own operations can do because I feel like there are so many people selling as a business scaling coach online that have only sold how to be a business scaling coach online versus actually lived experience proof of concept. I have a business that actually scales without me. And that's ultimately what it's not that my clients want the business to scale without them or that they don't want to be a part of it, but they've come to a point of like understanding it can't grow anymore with the way that they are. They're the bottleneck instead of the glue. And if they want it to grow bigger, it does have to be restructured, redesigned without them in everything.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

You technically you what you said about running two businesses and trying to scale both at the same time. Yes, that's true. If you're the one running both businesses. But and that's what I used to do. I had all these businesses, I was doing real estate on the side, I was doing this, but I was doing everything myself. And if you have an operator and the company does run without you, you actually can own multiple companies. And so I do own, you know, a portfolio of companies, but I don't necessarily I'm not like the CEO of X, Y, and Z. And so we have great, great operators. And we I I don't even want to look at a business that I have to start up outside of this online world. Um I that was because a lot of it is revolved around me. But once we, you know, we have a great team now, uh, and now even a better team. And so I just kind of focus on the content now and then uh strategy. But as far as like the operation side, don't even want any part of it. And when I did that, I've just did so much better in life and I just enjoyed my life because all the things I love about business, I still do those things. Same. And then the stuff that I don't love about business, I do not do those things. And that's what made me. I think that's why people get burned out. I don't think it's it's only burned out because they're doing some things that they originally let's say they were only love marketing and they only love sales, and then they end up doing the bookkeeping and the uh, you know, operation side of the business and all this stuff, they get burned out. There's really so much city. Well, you're not technically you're not burned out. You're just doing a bunch of things that you don't like to do anymore.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

Burnout is really when you're strumming the things you don't want to do. Yeah. And and burnout is when you're not getting paid or rewarded for all the things you're doing. If you're doing 10 jobs, then you want to make 10 times the money, right? But if you're the founder and you're having to do these 10 jobs just to keep the one company afloat, it's not worth how much you're outputting getting in, you know?

SPEAKER_01 51:37

No, it makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

And now I'm looking back, I'm like, I I would love to just remove myself from operations. Like now I'd be like, get me out. But I I live that so deeply, like emotionally. And I like to think I'm not as emotional as most women. I still freaking am. You know what I mean? But it was a beautiful transformation for me to live because it is a healing process for a lot of women founders to really step out from the way they've operated their business.

SPEAKER_01 52:01

I wouldn't say unemotional, but she has very strong personality. But every, you know, a couple months, it's like not complete meltdown, but you know, she's ready to sell the business. And I was like, no, you're you're not, everything's gonna be fine. You know, a couple weeks go by. It just everything hits at one time. She's still operating. It's the circle. It's every girl. She's still operating a lot. I've been pushing her a lot, you know, to try to pull herself out of operations. And, you know, she has a lot. I mean, it's definitely better, but she's still really, really, really involved.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Now I know the more capacity that I have for myself and that I create for myself and my clients, the better that I can grow and flourish in, quite frankly, not to bring Christianity, Christianity into it, but I do believe now so deeply what I went through that business is mission work, self-development 101 with money attached and all these things that the more capacity I have, the more I can do. Like now, when you ask me to come to this podcast, I'm like, you know what? I can drive to you. I have the time. I have the freedom. I have the capacity. Let's do this in person versus only online, right?

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Hey everyone, real quick, I just want to let you know this podcast is 100% independent. No ads, no sponsors, just real. If you're finding value in whatever we're doing here, the biggest help that you can give us is hitting subscribe and sharing this with someone who you think needs to hear it or someone that it will provide value to. That's how we continue to grow. And if you did that, I would really appreciate it. You said you got married right when I guess you were starting well, right before you started the second business? Correct. Yes. How has entrepreneurship affected your marriage at all?

SPEAKER_00 53:41

Oh my gosh. Well, the app, I mean, my husband and I had to have two very strong sit-down um of where we going to continue or quit. Um, there was a season where my husband was very unhappy in marriage. He did feel like I put, you know, me trying to still white knuckle and and make it happen and force it to happen over him. He, while he owns multiple businesses across multiple industries, he is third generation. So it is very different than first generation founder. Um, but with that, I've gained a lot of wisdom from him. But we have to make sure to not have resentment towards each other on, well, you have over a hundred employees, right? You're third generation carrying on and growing. That I honestly think now we're at the place all that we have survived has made us better because I think I keep him um, you know, more grounded and and focused on uh the servant side of it. And, you know, he's gotten so good at like culture and and what he does for his employees and doing extra that you may not actually be able to see if there's going to be a return on investment, but I'm like, I know there will be, and he's seen more of those things versus just so numbers, if that makes sense. But he's also helped me being so much more logistic with making smart decisions versus only visionary or those types of things.

SPEAKER_01 55:00

That was my next question. Do you do y'all think similarly? Very differently.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

And when it comes to business, do you balance each other out? We do. So like last night I even presented him with something. I knew I presented it to two team members before I went to my husband. And they both knew I'm like, you're you're who I'm coming to first, you're who I'm coming to second. Grant is third. And they're like, good luck with Grant. And when I presented it to Grant, he was like, last night, he's like, that's brilliant. And I know if he says that's brilliant, like that's a big win. He's not giving me that that compliment because he'll call me on my stuff. Like he did not want us to build the app. And for a long time he reminded me of that. Now I remind him I signed up for this. This did not happen like I had signed up for. Life happens, we grow through it. Um, but no, it it made business business struggles made marriage rocky years ago. Now I do not tie business struggles to my identity or to my worth anymore. That now, if I go through a business struggle, or even if I have clients that are going through business struggles, because even getting into the level of being the strategist for helping other people scale their businesses, when I have clients come to me or new clients that are like, hey, I'm actually coming to you because I'm my lowest, you know, that's a lot to carry. And I don't even take that on as like, I'm not good or I'm not valuable enough or I can't figure this out. My husband is very solution focused, and now I am too, to where used to, I would take the bad month, or if a client was having a bad month as like, I'm not the good mentor. And typically those types of things when you get really strategic and just focused on solution, put your emotion aside. I think it's sometimes when the best things come about. Yeah, solution-based mindset for sure.

SPEAKER_01 56:42

I talk about that all the time because there is an emotional roller coaster with business. There is all the time. Sales, employees, markets, industry changes. It's just like it every week, if not every day, there's something different. There's something challenging. And it is hard not to just come home and be like, you know, I made a bunch of bad decisions. The more you know, you're just like you're you're always thinking that you could have done something different. The market could be changed. It just could be more competition, more whatever. And then so you're always coming home like, okay, I should have made a better decision.

SPEAKER_00 57:21

He, even though he owns multiple businesses and is an entrepreneur, he lives an eight to five lifestyle. He shuts it off at five o'clock. He does not bring it home. He said his father brought it home and talked about it there. So he went through that and did not want that. So where I struggle is I want him to be my outlet outside of my team in the evenings, and he wants no business talk, which honestly has made me better because I truly have to shut it off and I do get replenished versus overloading to him. And at first I did not like that boundary because I'm like, you have plenty of people to talk to about business outside of your team, you know, different partners in different industries, or you know, your dad or uncle, people that have been in this for generations, and I don't have that. But him having that hard boundary has really showed me like I am building this for generation two and three, to where they do get to actually live the benefits of an entrepreneurial lifestyle, but a hard boundary of 5 p.m. and weekends because a lot of first generation founders don't get to see that.

SPEAKER_01 58:19

No, and then they're they grew up thinking about it differently and seen as that, and he's like, I don't want to do that. But you also grow up and think about it like the things that we've been talking about about having to look at it to run without you. Yeah, because they've like looked at it from a different it's already existing. Okay, how how do I have this business? How do I add more value? But how do I not have it rely all off me?

SPEAKER_00 58:41

And it also goes back to that not needing to prove something, like my husband is really grown into an amazing leader of those three generations. I hands down, not just being particular because he's my husband, but I think he's the best leader that family has had yet. And um, I do like to think that iron sharpens iron and we're helping each other in those ways, right? The beautiful part is, and just speak for my husband, I mean, he could never go work another day of his life, and those companies would still grow and thrive.

SPEAKER_01 59:09

But it's actually all supposed to be. It is because those are sellable companies. It's not it's not a sellable company.

SPEAKER_00 59:14

They're all. And so, but does he choose to do that? No. Could he retire tomorrow or 10 years ago? Yes. But does he? No, he's still pouring into it, but without being exhausted, overwhelmed, carrying way too much, and also not being like, oh, this can just run without me. So I will step back. It's it can, but how can I, as a leader, still make this more efficient or make this even better, or be that thinker and that visionary? So my husband being solution focused and very efficient and lean, like he he's the one that like he's one of the, he's the, I think the biggest developer in the town that we're in, but he's not the flashiest. No one would know that about him. He doesn't build the flashiest house, he doesn't build the flashiest neighborhoods. But I would say where his profit margin is from a lean standpoint, no one even touches him. And so he taught me to let go a lot of, I made, I think being first generation founder, you're a little bit of like, naturally, I want to show that I've made it, not necessarily with just the way we live or spend, but with the business we have. Like there are sexy businesses and there are unsexy businesses. And right now, even in the world of AI, and where I know we talk education, but vocational schools in my mind are so much more important than regular educational schools because someone still has to be the plumber, those different things that aren't sexy jobs, but you can actually make a lot of money running those businesses.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:34

Yeah. I I I have a couple entrepreneur groups that I'm a part of, and you know, one's a car club, but 99% business owners. And then another one um is YPO. But almost all of them are traditional businesses. They're all HVAC guys and ventilation, commercial ventilation and manufacturing and uh fab fabrication shops. And like, I mean, there's a couple guys in there that you know internet, but not about 96% of them are just very unsexy. Yeah, you probably have no idea what they do, right? I mean, uh unless they just really broke it down for you. Right. So I yeah, I I think these are all guys my age, though, too. So uh everybody's grown up in a little bit different world when you grow up with a phone and like seeing all this stuff on social media where it seems like every 20-year-old is like an overnight millionaire. Right, right. Which is not, it's just it's like I'm sure it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

Because my husband doesn't build the big million dollar mansions or the fanciest neighborhoods that he's not as successful when really when it comes down to lean profit, I'd put him up in 2015.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

Which is all that matters. Yes. And when you're young, I fell into this trap. I was focusing on top line because I had an e-commerce company, it was one of my first companies, and we grew it to be a pretty large size. But I was no matter what, I was like, I'm gonna get this thing to 100 million. But I really stopped focusing on my bottom line, which is a terrible thing to do because number one, you have no margin to go hire good people. And there there's just so many things that hold you back. And for some reason, my head had this number. I wanted to build the biggest company in the industry. And why?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:14

Isn't it crazy how we get tied to numbers? Like in business analytics, everybody mix it up. Everybody's gonna say, What's the number?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:19

They have a number. It is 10 million dollars.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:21

And still, I still market. I'm like, I help my founders grow from $20,000, $40,000 months to $50,000 to $100,000 plus months working less. Like there's a number tied to it. When I say that without a number, it's not as powerful.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:31

It's not. And everybody that starts in business, if they're the founder, they have some number that they're tied to that they want to hit. Right. Doesn't matter what it is. It's just and it's a fictitious number that they made up.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:41

Right. They need to know they can hit it. I've lived it too. But sometimes I've realized, hey, I actually like this number better and I can make it leaner and more efficient and actually make more profit at this number versus that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:52

Well, most of the time you can make more money when it's a little smaller.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

Agreed. And my husband also taught me that. Like, I did not want to close my store, and he's like, Randah, you instantly put six hundred thousand dollars back in your pocket at the beginning of the year that you don't have to come up with. Yeah. Like, look at that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:03

Yeah, it it's tough. That's a lot of failures and overcoming failure to realize that that's an actual thing. So easier said than done.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:11

Oh, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:13

So outside of the business stuff, you're how old are your kids? I have one child and he just turned six years old. Well, you're raising kids in a completely different world than the one we grew up in.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:28

What's your biggest concern as a parent today? My biggest concern as a parent today, I I think there's there's two different avenues to this. I think there's the the concern from just the world in general that we're raising children in, but I also think there's the concern of I am raising a child who has access to a lot more money, a lot more resources than I was given growing up.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:48

It's probably my biggest fear too. I can teach them the values and like but just it's just different. And so I'm I'm super focused on it. What do you do about screen time?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:58

Uh very limited and not in the way that it's like, oh, I do know screen time. I I obviously do allow it, but I'll tell you, we don't start the day anywhere near it. It is something to work towards at the end of the day. Things that we love to watch are super book, um chosen adventures, like the David movie, the Moses movie. Um I like to keep still keep it very Christian.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:19

That's what I was gonna say. You're not letting them watch YouTube or anything. Yeah, made that big mistake. No. But for my son when he was when he was really young, he was a late talker. And so me and my wife are both busy. I didn't really understand just you know, mistake for sure. Right. Uh letting him watch just whatever iPad stuff for his first year when he wasn't talking. And I just didn't realize how much he was like soaking up, even though he wasn't saying anything. Right. So huge mistake that'll never happen with other kids. Uh change that pretty quick.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:47

But yes, whether it's me or our nanny helping, I mean, I have a day structured out for Croy every morning. I have a workout written for him. Sometimes he helps me write his workouts. Like today, we combined it. I got to do the warm-up and the and the burnout, he got to write what the circuit is, you know, and he he has a lot of like eagerness to do those things. He's got things he's got to clean and do, and chore charts and different things like that for responsibility. Now I will give him something he can earn towards the end of the day. Like today, he can go to the trampoline park with two friends while I'm driving home with his dad if he gets all the things done. But I also make sure to not make it too task-oriented. Because I do think my mom almost made mine too task-oriented that there wasn't as much enjoyable time from a motherhood standpoint. So for instance, my biggest boundary in business is I spend sweet slow mornings with my son every day. Nobody gets on my calendar before 10 a.m. If you do, you are someone special. We're not morning people. We sleep in, we cuddle our bulldogs. Like even Croy this morning, like as we're spending a morning, he's like, Can you just like call today a sweet slow morning till five? And I'm like, no, mommy still has to go to work. But I've explained to him, you know, like my mom had to be on the road every morning at 7 a.m. and I didn't get to spend mornings with her. So I put such a boundary around our morning time together, saying, like, I don't care what urgency it is. I don't care what you let fall through. I don't care what panic you have, you will not get access to me before 10 a.m. Because if I hold that boundary firm, then you as a business owner will start to hold that firm too. And that's just the thing that I can still give to my son. So I know I'm starting off our day because I do believe I am, I am such a, I'm such a fountain in this world, if I'm really honest. I am fountain to a lot of people and I am a fountain to our family. And so if I start the day with gratitude and worship and prayer time and very slow intentional time with my son, it is so different. He just got this thing for his birthday last week. Um, it's at Costco and it's like this game where you move around and jump and play. So it's like an interactive game. It's got Bluey and all the different things on there, but you're having to be active with it, right? So we were doing some moving around in one of the rooms. And so the nanny just had put it up for him to play with for a little bit in the morning. And even she, 30 minutes in, said that was a horrible idea. And she didn't think it was true screen time. She thought it was like interactive.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:57

But I think, I think my son, for instance, and I don't know about all children, but they get this little addictive personality that then that happened at the beginning of the day, and it normally doesn't. And we shut it off within, you know, 20 minutes. And then it was like, I want more, right? And so it created this energy in our day that I had to fight to set, to reset, right? Versus it wasn't a normal day with us doing some moving in a room of me being so intentional of setting that that day and that time of like being a fountain for our family.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:27

I would agree with that. My whenever I was trying to teach, whenever he was watching that and he was young, he wasn't talking yet, and I would try to teach him, he would be if he was watching that in the morning and then later I'm trying to teach him, he would always be wanting to go back to that. And it's like his attention span was so short. It's like he's already thinking about that and not focusing on what I'm trying to teach him. That's actually when I pulled it away and I was like, okay, this is like really bad where like I made a huge really bad decision. Um, I didn't know he was learning. It's just the late talking thing is what threw me for a loop. My daughter's talking fine, and she's she's two and she communicates every day. But me as a first-time parent, I'm like, oh, maybe he's not learning yet. I can't wait till he gets a little older so I can start teaching him. But he had been learning that whole time. And, you know, it did make his intention span super short. When even if you would watch it for like 10 minutes, and then, you know, even a couple hours later, I could tell that he just always they're just so much more overstimulated than us.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:26

Like I'm very big on we don't have the TV on unless we're watching it. Like, I don't like background noise. I I'm not a multitasker, I'm not an over-stimulator. Like our when I say sweet, slow mornings, I should probably call them quiet, sweet, slow mornings, because I do believe like that quiet time is so important that our kids aren't getting. There, there's not this I saw this thing the other day where it was like, you know, 20, 30 years ago, say that you would go get on a bus, right? And you're gonna sit at the bench and wait for the bus. There was this level of you didn't pull your phone out. You know, you were soaking in and listening to what was going on around you or meeting someone next to you, or the anticipation of the bus pulling up, and now it's just so this or that, that the stimulation is so much and it causes such distraction that I feel such a responsibility as a parent to remove a lot of that stimulation and to remove a lot of those things so that he has the skills to navigate to not be overstimulated or constantly distracted.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:19

Yeah, I think the US Surgeon General, I've seen him keep posting the last couple of days. I see it on the Instagram or on their Instagram about how the studies are coming out about how damaging screen time is on pretty much everything when you're young. I think you should just still developing so much. Right. And I think that that's where the issue the issue is.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:38

You get to just like check out.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:39

Yeah, and then they they they soak up so much. You just don't even realize it. And sometimes it takes a long time, and then that's why you don't notice it. Even the stuff I'm teaching him, you know, him seeing me do something, even if I'm not teaching it to him, it takes like six months, and he's like, Hey dad, I want to go work out. Hey, I want to do this. Hey, I want because he sees me every single day. And he's like, one day I came home and he's putting his head in ice, and I was like, What are you doing? He's like, Oh, I want to be strong like you. I'm putting my like ice bath, I want to take an ice bath. And he just, I guess from seeing me do it and hearing me talk about it, he just like randomly did it one time. It just takes it a but it nobody, it doesn't happen in one time. So no matter what you're doing, it doesn't seem bad because it's like one time. But if like six months later, like all these things that I've been doing, he's like, I dad I want to do this, I want to do that. And it just takes a long time for him to like see it over and over and over.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:25

And even extra time and it's almost like leadership. It's like when I set up my companies, they don't have to have a morning check-in. We we pretty much, you know, have that running and flowing. But I would say still with my son, it's like a responsibility of I'm gonna set typically uh he's watched by someone from like 10 30 to 3 30. So I still have the mornings with him and I still take off early and spend a lot of time with him. But I'm very intentional about setting what all we're gonna do that day, like with chores, with cleaning up around the house, with different things like that. But again, not so task-oriented that he feels like he's just a worker for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:56

Also, I'll say how important is the routine?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:57

Like do all the the It's not so much necessarily a full-on, it's gotta be such a rigid routine, but there does need to be some form of a cleanup or a tour task for that day. Now he's got morning and evening little ones. Like he knows he's got his little thing where he, you know, puts up his his clothes in the dirty clothes, makes up his bed, brushes his teeth. Like those are very routine for morning and evening, but it's not overwhelming. But during the day, I would say it's, you know, especially in the summer, there's some type of a workout, physical activity, there's some type of a um chore of cleaning up, taking care of things in our home. There's some type of a we're we're a really big family on like board games and card games because especially with him being an only child. I do that with him, too. Yeah, it makes them have to wait their turn, think strategically. Now, what I don't like about it is it's a lot of sit time, you know. So that's why we're still very much about the physical activity, like let's swim, let's go to the jumping park, let's play baseball outside, those types of things. But I do in the summertime believe that games are a great way for interaction in a different way.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:57

Yeah, we do it, but it's later in the night. It's kind of like not right before he goes to sleep, but it's it's definitely toward the end of the day. We'll play some, just me and him. Um what what how do you teach him about money? Or what's the what's the plan?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:11

So I just put out a podcast this past week about him because it was the day before he turned six. So I wanted his last little brain when he was five. And so I actually created a money mindset course that's only rooted in biblical abundance for ages four to seven. And so we've gone through all of I call it Tiny Tycoons, Biblical Um Truths, ages four to seven. And so he's learned all about that from the Bible side of it, from me. Now, as far as actual money, he's learned that from his dad, but we're still not yet into the true on numbers. It's more like he can tell you what revenue, profit, expenses, assets, liabilities are. So he can define them, and we talked about it all on the podcast. Um, but he also understands I actually on the way here, my editor said, Hey, I've got eight clips of Croy's podcast I want to put out. And this week I do my content in weekly themes. This week is all about investment of like delaying the investment. Because so many people think the investment is a cost, right? But I'm like, you delaying the investment you know you need to make is actually costing you more. So that's what the theme is this week. And as he sent over the eight different clips we're gonna put out of Croy, there was one where my son said, I asked him, I'm like, does money make someone special? And he's like, it doesn't make anyone more special in God's eyes, whether you have money or not. Now it doesn't mean we don't teach him. It's a great, it's a neutral tool and a resource. But hearing that little baby say, it doesn't make you more special whether you have it or not. And he's learned a lot, like he's got three jars. So it's giving, spending, and saving. Yeah. And so right now we're not at the numbers part. He'll try a little bit, like, oh, if I made $10, if I my cost basis was $10 and I sold it for $12, my profit was $2. He can do very small things like that, but we're not big into the actual numbers because I wanted a really biblical root of the way that I would say my husband and I came together. And this really came from us, everything we went through with the app. We had to get stripped down to our own money mindsets. My husband was raised in a boardroom of flow-through companies and tax savings by age five. And he knew that stuff. Like money is not a scarcity uh resource to my husband whatsoever, even if one of their companies was to say to have a big loss for the year. Well, there's seven or eight other companies they can flow it through to save on taxes, and he's very strategic like that. And he was raised in boardrooms from the age of five. Me, I was raised that money doesn't grow on trees. I don't know if you have ever heard that growing up. That's what my mom would say. And you have no idea how much just absorbing those thoughts and beliefs from other people make you have this subconscious belief of money is a limited resource. It's scarcity, or my mom was always stressed about money, or they fought about money, or if my dad bought the $5 bacon instead of the $3 bacon, it was an argument on the way home. And as a little one, you take all of that into your little wiring and you have this money mindset before you even know. And so I had done a lot of research on how scientifically ages four to seven are where our children are really gaining so many subconscious beliefs from those around them. And money's a big one of them. So I wanted to tie that in with the biblical abundance part that again, the Bible does not say money is, you know, good or bad. Obviously, the love of money is evil, but it's a neutral tool. But what God says about abundance. And so, you know, I do believe that my my son is very good at re-regurgitating that abundance means we are never gonna run out. God is going to give us enough to fulfill our mission. Now, we may have to take curves or go through hardships or not know exactly how he's gonna provide, and we may have to go through, you know, a becoming or an unbecoming, if you will, to actually get there. But he does believe that. And I do think that more little ones in this world need to think of money from a biblical sense of to whom much is given, much is required. You know, like because my son has so much. I mean, he already has a a compound of the the newest compound my husband built him has got 80-something rental homes that that rented out in the first couple of months. You know, that's a huge thing for my son being five years old to own something like that. And such responsibility for us to not raise this young entitled child of it, that I'll be honest, like hearing him say in that podcast that money doesn't make you more special in God's eyes, you know, like as a mom means the freaking world. So I would say that's what I'm really focusing on on teaching him is the foundation before the actual numbers. Because I think if if you go back to the Bible, God does call us to be childlike and he does make things pretty clear and easy to understand of I'm going to provide, right? Doesn't mean we're not going to go through hardship. But I think so many people struggle in their adult life and need to rewire their mindset beliefs from young children that I'm like, how can I create this and use my son? Not in a way that like I'm using him for content, but we do have more responsibility on us. And people do know that Croy has more money as a as a five-year-old and he's a multimillionaire as a five-year-old and those types of things. So, how can I share the way I'm teaching and educating my child's beliefs in a way that can be interactive for other families too, from this very specific age range, right? Not turning it into a school or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:07

Yeah, we're, you know, we focus on a lot of that, some of that same stuff. Uh, he definitely knows all the same stuff your kid does profit and revenue and marketing. And then I started bringing him into businesses and teaching him like what it actually is. So, like, number one, he's memorized it, but he's, you know, like hands-on tied to it. And then yeah, we're everything that he earns in his life is from a skill. So he has to be able to learn a new skill or improve on a skill. It's not tied to like doing something, like, hey, go take out the trash and I'm gonna give you $10. We don't do that. It's all like, hey, if you improve on your communication skills that we're working on, you're not saying, um, you're not saying, oh, you're not doing this, you're not repeating yourself. Like, if if you're improving on that and we track it, then you can get to go to the go-kart tracker, then you can do something. So it's not just task-oriented. No, it's all, yeah, it's all skill-based, is what I've been what I've been doing. And I'm really trying to teach them that if you uh to get something in life, like you, you have to have a skill, you have to provide value, you have to create value for somebody, or you have to have the work ethic. It's like all those things together. You can't just like doesn't just show up just because you do something. And so hopefully when he gets a little bit older, all of that will serve him well. But yeah, I'm trying to do everything I can to not keep him growing up entitled. That that would be 100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:25

So when we did like the little tiny tycoons course, it's like an eight-week interactive course. One part is about, you know, like helping a little one start a business, because really anyone can start a business. And so, really making it very kind of like a humble business where Croy had little flyers that he would take to the neighborhood, and if they would go on vacation, he would help do things around their house, you know, very mentally with Grant and I looking over it, and he would have his little calendar of when he would have time. And he took it very important that, like, if I gotta go take the trash to the curb, it is a task, right? It's a it's a task versus a skill, but I also do think there's this level of some humility to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:58

He's like doing it for somebody else, he's time management, he's like that's a lot, that's a lot different than just you saying, Hey, you need to take out the trash.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:05

Because if in your own house, like we don't pay him to do stuff. It's like you're a part of this family. Yes. You live in this house, like this is just what we do. Like we're not you're not getting ten dollars to do that. Yes, not gonna pay you for that. So that's why we lean a little bit more toward like that skill-based system that I create and and it works out well.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:21

And we even called it Croy's Mighty Crew, so he can have his friends come if it's busier or want more people on the schedule, so he can kind of help, you know, coordinate them, work as a team, different things like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:30

What do you think about traditional education right now? Do you think it's preparing kids for the real world?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:35

I think traditional education is, and I don't want to cuss or say a bad word, but I just think it's it's a hellhole right now. Yeah, it's pretty sad. Always. I think they're grooming our children. I mean, there's just so much. There, there's so much bad about it right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:49

What's what's really unfortunate is when when we grew up, it was already pretty outdated. Like you, it was already you're kind of left behind. And like you said, um, when you go to college and you it's just more of high school. It's the same thing. You're just spending more time in school, but you're not actually learning any skills to go actually do something. I think with AI now, it's in a really weird place because this gap of when people are graduating in four years is not gonna even remotely be the same as far as like job landscape or or or the white-collar jobs that are gonna be available. So I feel this generation like today that are in school right now in the next like five to ten years are gonna have have it the worst because the schools are really far behind. I think colleges are gonna have to change their business model a little bit to teach some type of skill in like whatever happens in this new world to where you can pay for that. And then when you get out, you can, you know, most likely ha be able to take care of yourself and and have a career or work in something. And so I think it'll change, it's just not gonna happen for a while. And so the people that are gonna be stuck in this weird like five-year gap is gonna be pretty interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:59

I think vocational schools still hold value. Yeah. Um, but there's also a little bit of like pride there.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:04

Yeah, you're teaching like a skill. That's what I'm saying. If you're just going to go, that's where it's gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:10

Well, it's like you think of it. When we go to school, they're teaching us information, we're consuming that information, and then we need to regurgitate that information in a test to know how smart or how good we are, but we've never applied, executed, done. And now AI has got so much out there that we don't need we don't need more information overload or being able to understand the information versus actual implementation execution, which is a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:35

Yes. When I mean, I know you're super intentional about your raising your son right now. Whenever they're grown, what do you hope they remember most about you or the way you raise them?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:45

I and I ask my son this very occasionally, just for like a little check-in. I just say, Do you believe that mommy truly like just enjoys you? Like loves you being little and loves spending time with you. And I want them to look back and go, My mommy enjoyed motherhood. Like enjoyed it, soaked it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:04

I need to ask my kid that question and see what he says. Uh I enjoy spending time with him. We have a really good time together, and now that he's a little bit older and you know can communicate really well and and I can teach him a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:14

It's it's really fun. I just think we're so busy and hectic as a society. I'm not. Like when people are like, I bet you're so busy, I'm like, I'm actually not. And that is my biggest flex, is I'm not too busy. I don't like we don't do three sports at a time and run ragged for children's events so that I'm not working out and I'm just sitting on the sideline gaining weight. And I know like moms don't like when I talk like that. They think I'm superior, but I'm like, I'm not. It's just this is not what works for me or our our household, right? And so I just don't ever want to get so caught up in the hustle and bustle that we're running that my son never realizes like mommy just like sat and enjoyed me.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:51

I I don't think it's a big deal calling it out. I mean, it is what it is. People um they don't take time for themselves a lot of times, uh, and then they say, Oh, I'm so busy, I can't do anything. I mean, I know how much working out has helped me in my life and and health, and especially as you get older people don't realize how important it is. But when you're when you're in your 30s um and you start getting into your 40s, you're like and then you also start knowing people that end up passing away or something. It starts getting really well, or you know, people that you actually really were close to or you really know, uh, you know, it changes your perspective on on busy, I guess, that you're gonna be before you're taking care of yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:30

And I call it out online and people will sometimes it's like a double-edged sword, right? Because I do believe like God's called me to serve these people, but sometimes serving them is like facing the brutal truth to actually like meet them so the transformation happens, right? So I I do think that sometimes the people I trigger and upset the most end up becoming the best clients in the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:50

Yeah, it's accountability, you know. Um and it the people around them aren't holding them accountable, and so which which is you know goes back to the people you're around influence a lot of your life. If they hold you accountable and tell you the truth, then you know that's probably a really good friend. And a lot of people don't have people like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:10

I agree.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:11

When you were in your 20s, what did success mean to you? I think I know the answer because you told me I picked up on anything.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:20

I think it was the illusion that everyone knew I was successful. Yeah, you wanted to prove something. I wanted to prove something. I think I've done that. Making Aggie 100. We were my husband and I have been dating for two weeks. And so making the Aggie 100, the way it works is they email you and let you know that you made the top 100, but you don't know what number you're at, and you don't know where anyone else is placed. So you go into this deal and they just start reading off like number 100, 99, 98, 97, you know? And I remember having my little table, you get like a table of 10. And I remember being like, hey, if I'm like number 100, we just like be so proud and happy because it's a big deal to be in here. And then when they got to number 20, and I'm like, I think they forgot me. And my husband's like, what's your an annual compounded growth rate over the last three years? And I'm like, I don't know, even know what that means because I just sell and work my little booty off. You know, I didn't know that side of finance yet or that side of numbers, because again, I wasn't like a finance major or any of those things. Um, that yeah, I wanted, I I thrived off people knowing that I was the Aggie 100 and that I was there with my husband, and people were shaking his hand, and he's like, It's actually her that did this, not me. You know, like that is what I was after in my 20s.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:29

Yeah, I I think I was too, but I don't know if I was I was trying to prove it to the people that knew me. It was like I was comparing myself to like Steve Jobs and stuff and thinking I wasn't doing enough. Really? I'm like, they're doing so much, I'm not doing enough. Like I would, I don't think it was the people. It was like more of myself telling myself I'm not doing good enough. Like I'm not doing enough. And I would, I need to work more, I need to work more hours, like all these other companies are so big, but I'm like comparing myself to some of the biggest companies. Wow. And so it wasn't necessarily the people, but it was the same thing. I was like trying to prove to myself that I could do all those same things.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:05

I think once I had made it, I was good. Like I didn't need to just keep striving. But then when I would dip down from that, that's when it went real bad. And I realized my identity was way too tied up to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:14

Is there still anything now that you feel like you have to prove?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:18

Um, no, there's really not. But I'll tell you, it it was not just like an easy switch to be like, I need my identity to not be tied to success or what I do for work, right? Um, now it's more being able to lay my head down at night, knowing that I've that I served my people the best, that I did the best I could do, even if the outcome wasn't what I wanted yet. Cause I think that's the biggest thing. I think people, it's not that their goals are too big, it's that their timeline is way too unrealistic. Like way too unrealistic. So now I would say instead of trying to focus like in my 20s, you know, you wanna, you wanna be top 30 under 30 on Forbes, right? But now I have less of this, I need to reach this by this amount. Yeah. And now I'm like, I am building for my life, my future generations, what I leave behind, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:06

I think I'm pretty good about that now, too. Whenever I got online, I was like, if we stay consistent enough, it will work out someday. And so I was like, that's all we're gonna focus on. It's being ultra consistent, and nobody's gonna be more consistent. And then I don't know how long it'll take. It might take two years, might take five, might take ten, but I think we'll get there. Yep. What's the best business decision you ever made?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:27

Marrying my husband.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:28

What about worst business decision?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:32

I would love to say building the app, but also I grew a lot from it. But from an actual just business decision, not personal growth decision.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:39

Building the app. I got I was in the same boat with the software, man, and gosh, was still I actually talked to my wife. It came up with my wife this morning, unrelated to anything. I don't know what we were talking about, but I was like, man, just all that time, those I could have still stayed so profitable with just the web app.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:59

There would have been some people. That would have been like, well, I'm not gonna join you because I want an actual app. And but I was way too more, more, more versus lean, efficient, profitable.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:08

Well, now you're helping all these women grow their businesses. What is one thing that every entrepreneur should stop doing? Oh my gosh. Only one thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:21

The main thing they should focus on? Or the main thing should they should stop doing and focus on the other thing. And they've got to stop carrying it all. I mean, these women, they are past capacity. They have no bandwidth. No bandwidth. And then they think they need to add more. And it's like, how are you gonna have another child or how are you gonna add this? They've gotta strip things off of them to have capacity to actually be themselves and actually breathe before adding on the next thing. Adding on the next thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:49

I I just think there it's a capacity thing for me of what I'm seeing with women. There's not enough capacity. They're only one person. And then I feel like they don't enjoy it. Right? Like that you get to where you don't enjoy it. Well, I think it goes back to doing too much ourselves. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:03

Just women or man.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:04

It's like it's like wearing this badge of honor of I'm so busy or I can do it all, or I, you know, it's almost like I had this thing happen last week and I did a little video about it. I was like, there was something that happened that old me could have just gone in and squashed this fire, solved it, handled it right then. And it would have taken no time. It would have taken me 10, 15 minutes to handle it. But that's not setting us up for the next month if it happens for me to ever even not even have to know about it, right? So really making decisions of like the future versus putting out the fire today. There's also survival mode.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:33

There's also took me a long time to realize too. There's a difference between being really, really busy, because I was really, really busy a lot, and then actually doing the right things, being busy with the right things that will get you to the goal or or the outcome that you're doing. Moving the needle. It's like, hey, okay, this is my outcome. Am I doing I'm busy as shit all day long. But like, am what am I doing today to get to that outcome? Am I is is 70% of my day not filled with things that are going to get me to that outcome? I don't need to do it. And again, 20 years of hindsight and just stubbornness and everything else is like you have to really be humble and be like, I'm not, I'm working on a bunch of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:11

I think just facing into the hard stuff, like leaning in and facing it versus sometimes I think even me, I'll I'll stay busy to avoid the thing naturally.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:21

Yeah, human nature. Um, I think that's just human nature, but you have to really step back and look at it and say, you know, I I tell our students and then um just you know, other entrepreneurs too. It's like, hey, if whatever goal you set, just don't focus on that goal every day. Like, what are the daily actions you need to get to the goal and then only wake up and think about those? Like, don't think about you trying to get to 10 million, whatever the thing is, or you know, grow to X amount, like just only like what do I need to do today? And those daily actions. And if you wake up and do that every day, you'll probably hit it sooner than you always trying to like it's just so far away, and you you start creating all this busy stuff, and you're not really doing the things you need to get there, and 70% of your day is filled with busy stuff. Yeah, stuff you probably don't need to be doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:06

And I think outside of the capacity and the burnout and all those other things, it's also just like the distraction. Distraction is the newest form of power poverty. I think the busy is it is, and I I it's I see it on both sides companies, both with my fitness and my my uh business scaling business. I I'm too busy. Show me your damn screen time. I haven't posed like, do you know how many I've done a full build-out of a 90-day content plan proven for a client? Go do this. You've got this stuff, let's get this out. I check in. I'm too busy to implement. No, you're not. No, you're not, because you don't even need to think. You just need to go do. I already did all the thought, everything for you. You need to go implement. But there's probably some other thing of, you know, an issue of why you're not implementing. But the problem is I know you're still consuming it all day long. We are so, as a society, addicted to consuming. And I do think one of my biggest traits, if I can toot my own horn here to like put this out there, my husband always calls it Randoland, but like I don't, and when it's like the work day, I am so lasered in and focused in. Even when I'm working out, like my trainer, he's like, You are locked in. I'm like, don't talk to me or ask me this question that takes my brain power off of what I'm actually doing right now. If I'm lifting heavy, no one come up and say a word to me. Like I am so focused on what I'm doing and I have such intentional time. Same with my parenting. I try to be so intentional that I think a lot of these founders are trying to stay so busy and have so many of these tabs open and scrolling and consuming. And it's like you don't even have any deep thought or deep strategy work or deep focus stuff to actually breathe and like follow through, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:41

Which creates more anxiety because you're not really getting enough done that day. And then you're like, it's like overwhelming. My wife is extremely good at doing what you said. Man, she is like so focused. She's so good at that. I'm not the greatest. And mine's not necessarily consuming. It's more always having to tell myself, like, am I doing the things that I need to today and not working on things that aren't going to really move the needle.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:09

That's what have it ends up happening to me, especially uh, you know, when you go to the office and we have different companies and different people walk in and it just it's I think also when you set to the place of being having more capacity yourself, you then give your team more capacity. I've been able to give my team more capacity. So it's not like ASAP, urgent, deadline. Occasionally those things still come up, but we're not operating off of survival mode like that in general. I don't want to burn my team out. So there is no, they get to be in their own piece of working. And there is no like, oh my gosh, I have to check Slack every hour to make sure I didn't miss a notification. If something went unread for a couple hours, it it's great. All is good. Everyone can still, it's like no one needs me answering everything to keep functioning or to keep going because there's such capacity that not only I've created for myself, but that I've given to my team. But I also am so prepared. I know my team knows how to speak like me. Like I have done all of the actual preparation work to train them appropriately, to where a lot of founders they hire and then I'm like, okay, what's our hiring SOP or training? And I'm not knocking it because I get you're so spread out, but you still have to have capacity to be a leader.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:20

They get mad at the person for not doing X, Y, and Z, but it's like, did you really train them enough to actually be able to do that?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:28

100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:29

And a lot of times it's no, you know, it's like you kind of throw them to the wolves and expect them to kind of figure it out. I mean, you tell them a little bit, but you expect them to get they're not catching on fast enough. It's like, man, did you really train them, you know, exactly what you need done every day, the the goals that you need done, the the outcomes that you need. And most of the time it's no.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:47

I know one other thing I think founders should do. It's I don't think it's as important as the whole capacity thing and all this that we were talking about, but I think you have got to have your elevator pitched down to 10 to 15 seconds no matter what. I don't care if you're online, I don't care what your business is, because even if you're at a networking event or this or that, when you can properly pitch yourself that every single word matters to make it make sense in 10 to 15 seconds, you just look way more prepared.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:12

And I think a lot of people, I can say, okay, well, what do you do? And it's like this three-minute gallivant of trying to explain it or trying to regurgitate it. And it's like, dude, we're in the the season of AI. Go figure that out, get it down to 10 to 15 seconds and repeat it and go and be like undeniable and unforgettable in that way. And I think a lot of founders forget like that first impression goes so far, whether you're online or not. And I think a lot of people cannot just communicate clearly, quickly, or confidently enough who they are, what they do, and who they serve.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:44

I think that goes back to communication. And we're not taught that. And that's the one thing I focus on my son with the most, only because that's the skill that I was the worst at. My wife was naturally a lot better than me. And I have to work at it a lot. And I'm not gonna let that happen to him. And I wish somebody would have really focused on the communication aspect of me just growing up the whole time. I think it's almost one of the number one skills that you can have, especially now with the AI and stuff. I mean, it's gonna be even more important.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:11

And with the attention spans and span shorter, you have to be able to say it in 10 to 15 seconds.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:15

Yeah, just communication in general. Hey everyone, real quick, I just want to let you know this podcast is 100% independent. No ads, no sponsors, just real. If you're finding value in whatever we're doing here, the biggest help that you can give us is hitting subscribe and sharing this with someone who you think needs to hear it or someone that it will provide value to. That's how we continue to grow. And if you did that, I would really appreciate it. For someone uh listening who is going one of the through those tough seasons like you went through a couple of times or a handful of times in your life, what would you, what advice are you giving right now?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:52

I think when you're going through the hard seasons in business, it's so easy to focus on, you know, looking at the top of the funnel, right? Versus understanding we may be in this place to actually reevaluate the bottom of not necessarily just a funnel in marketing, but the actual operations foundations of our business. Even when people come to me and say that they've come to me not at their highest of high, or you know, they're in a harder season. And it's like, let's get more leads, let's get more in, let's get more in. And I'm like, stop trying to like force this busy work when really you actually now have the capacity to go back to improve these things that if we focus on improving this, then it can skyrocket so much more, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:37:29

Yeah, it's almost like maybe just capitalize on the existing leads, making sure your product or service is exceptional. And then you can get more leads and you're gonna convert more, number one, and then you're gonna operate better and offer a better service on product.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:42

And it's all just a season. I feel like there are some people who, when it's slow, they're like they panic, right? Basier said than done. It is. Um but it allows capacity. Like it allows capacity that we can go strengthen things. Like I remember, for instance, my mom is not a business owner whatsoever. And when I had my first little retail store, anytime she would ask me what like about the day, it was how are sales today? And sales matter, but there were some days where sales were complete in the trash, but we got so much done that moved the needle of the business forward. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:13

Well, in the last 26 years in business, we, you know, when you lose revenue, because it always, you know, no year is year over year. There's always a year where you decline in revenue or something crazy happens, you lose big customers, or you know, or something happens or market changes. It does like we've looking back at all those times that we went through, you like clean everything up, you like what is all what are we wasting all this money on? You like really focus on because when you're in growth mode, you don't focus on you just like you're probably overspending on things, you're probably overhiring, you're probably doing a lot of things that you're not paying attention to. And sometimes that allows you to go fix the company, like you said. And then when you do start gaining business again, you're just such a better place uh to number one execute on the business, but just be more profitable, uh, be more efficient. And so looking back, that I mean, when you're going through it, it sucks really bad. Um, but when looking back, it's always been a benefit, you know, over time. It's just hard for people to realize when they're going through it. I agree. If you go back and tell your younger self one thing, what would you say?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:15

What does 80-year-old me say?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:18

What does 80-year-old me say? And I think this is bigger than business. I think so many people get caught up in small little things that like I always tell my husband, I imagine us being 80 years old on the porch, swinging, I'm showing all my grandkids pictures of me when I was bodybuilding or doing all these different things, right? And it's like, is whatever I'm going through or who I'm growing into or what I'm doing, does that make 80-year-old me proud, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:41

I think that's why I try to do so much too. I don't want to look back and regret, like, man, I should have did this and should have did that, and like just more and more and more. Yeah. Um I don't know why. I just I I think about that a little bit. Not necessarily 80-year-old, but just when I get older. It's like, what do I want to look back on and be proud of? I think it's probably why I'm really heavy and passionate about the education stuff. Like I would really I I would feel like I accomplish a lot if I could hopefully help not just younger men, but younger people not end up how you end up when you get out of high school. Uh you don't have any skills and you you're kind of starting over from zero. I think that that's a preventable problem. And if I can put my dent on that, I think I I would feel pretty accomplished. And so that's definitely a a huge goal. But it's looking back. It's like when I get older, you know, yeah, I have all these businesses, or yeah, we, you know, me and my wife created all this in a great family. It's like, but what else? Like what else am I looking for?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:40

And I also think, like you're saying, like, say it's me, 80-year-old me looking back, right? Did I did I live and do and build and serve and all the things I want to do with my time on earth? But also am I so at peace that I've done it all on my time on earth that I'm good to close out this chapter.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:54

That's true too. Cause I don't want to leave anything on the table either.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:56

That's right. Yeah, that's what I say. I'm like, no gift is going unmultiplied. Like I may be a lot online, but I use every single gift God has given me to multiply it. And I think there are so many out there that have gifts and talents and so many things that they haven't even uncovered, found, searched for, much less used and put out into the world, right? And more than just business.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:18

Where can people get in touch with you if they maybe women that want to absolutely want to fix their they're going through one of the maybe they're going through one of those seasons and they want to fix their business?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:28

So my personal Instagram is at Branda Caraba, and Caraba's two R's two Bs. My fitness company is at power.fit and that's P O W H E R. You know, it's very much thought about that like women will think if they lift a five pound weight, they're gonna look like Arnold, which is like not the case. So ours is a Barbie girl holding the dumbbell. And then my business scaling company is Iconic Academy. Um, I'm on my my websites are powerfit.com, randacaraba.com, and then I'm obviously on the app store from that app.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:56

Awesome. Thank you for coming on. I do think women that they still think that they're gonna lift a five-pound weight and get too bulky, yeah. If that would be a big thing, I don't want to gain too much weight. I don't want it's like I don't want to I don't want to get too bulky as a I'm like there is no such thing as building long lean muscle.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:10

You just build muscle.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:11

Yeah. They're thinking they're gonna look like a bodybuilder on day six. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:18

And I'm like, those girls are working for you. My trainer still tells me that all the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:21

I have a woman trainer, and she is like, I still get these girls that come in here and they're like, I don't, I don't want to go, I don't want to lift too many weight. I don't want to lift too many weights. And she's like, Hold on, hold on. It's like day one. We're on day one. Like, you're we're not gonna get you bulky by lifting weights.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:35

No, no, and you gotta eat a whole bunch to do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:38

Anyway, we could probably talk about fitness forever, too.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:41

But yeah, it's a it's a Barbie girl, like with the side profile with the ponytail and holding the dumbbell this way in all pink.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:46

Well, appreciate you coming on.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:47

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.