The Year That Was

Glenn: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Empowering Entrepreneurs. I'm Glen Harper.

Julie: [00:00:06] Julie Smith.

Glenn: [00:00:06] What's going on Julie?

Julie: [00:00:07] Hey, you know, this has been a fun year for us.

Glenn: [00:00:12] It has. It's been 12 months of doing podcasts. How many have we done?

Julie: [00:00:16] This is our 24th podcast.

Glenn: [00:00:18] That's crazy. I think our production guy told us that the average person that do podcasts, they do it for like five.

Julie: [00:00:26] Yeah, I think we started out as you know, we just wanted to have a little bit of fun and have a conversation and maybe get out of the office a little bit. And I think it turned into quite the production.

Glenn: [00:00:37] Well, I just know all our millions of listeners out there are probably, I hope, are getting some value out of this, these podcasts and our great guests that have just shared their stories on their how, their why, the revelations, their gosh, I wish I would have, could or should have didn't. And I mean, those were kind of cool revelations, I think, don't you?

Julie: [00:00:57] I think it was really cool to sit across the table or sit on a Zoom and really watch people have aha moments because as entrepreneurs, you don't necessarily have time to sit back and reflect or have awareness of where you were and where you are. And I think we've really, you know, made people kind of sit down and take a moment and reflect and be able to have those aha moments of, Wow, I really did do that.

Glenn: [00:01:21] You know, it's funny, this is probably the only time that they don't have their phone on and working when they're doing the podcast with us, which is kind of funny. So they literally did have to focus and reflect.

Julie: [00:01:31] It is. And it's hard. It's hard not to do 14 things at once and somehow we've managed to do it. I think that's probably Glen's favorite part about doing the podcast is he might have my full attention.

Glenn: [00:01:41] It's very hard to do. I get that. And for any entrepreneur, it's really hard to keep them on point. We know they're always, you know, squirrel here, squirrel there. But again, I think when they were pausing and reflecting and pondering those things, the premise or the what's the word I'm looking for, the perspective that I wanted was if you are an entrepreneur listening to this podcast, what can you take away that would help you achieve more success quicker, better on your journey? And I think that's what the goal and I think we achieve that. What do you.

Julie: [00:02:16] Think? Yeah, I do. What you know is we sit here and reflect back. What's your favorite like what's one moment in the past year that really stands out or guest or whatever that is?

Glenn: [00:02:29] Well, the thing that stood out is I had lots of premises and theories of how I think entrepreneurs are programmed. Right? And just because I've you know, we've dealt with them for gazillions of years and not.

Julie: [00:02:42] Me quadrillions just so we're clear.

Glenn: [00:02:45] True statement me Gillian's is the fact that they all, you know believe they could do it. And they just did it. They didn't like not do it. They just went for it.

Julie: [00:02:59] Well, I think they led from a place of no fear.

Glenn: [00:03:03] Well, I think they're all terrified.

Julie: [00:03:05] But they led from a place of no fear. Correct. That never came through.

Glenn: [00:03:08] Right. They were terrified. But you would never know sitting across from them. I mean, obviously on the podcast, but when you're one of their customers, you would never know they were sweating bullets.

Julie: [00:03:18] Yeah, I think that's a that's a really cool that was a really cool part, is to watch them have to unwind some of.

Glenn: [00:03:24] That was that the whole fake it till you make it type thing and they were all on board with that. I think that was one of the things. And then the other thing is that they just they don't give up. They're like terminators. They just keep going. And the takeaway that we found with all of them, literally every single one of them that have to mentality, we got to keep going. If they would have known a couple of shortcuts, they would have gotten there so much quicker. Again, the end result, the journey would have been different. Everything would have been different, but they would have gotten those results a little bit quicker. Not necessarily means it would been more rewarding, but they would have certainly got there quicker. I don't know if that's good or bad.

Julie: [00:04:06] I think a couple of things that really came through was that word pivot that we throw around. I think there's not one person that we interviewed that didn't have to pivot at one point in time in their journey. And I also think, you know, that don't quit mentality that you speak of like that just wasn't in the cards, which is, you know, it goes back to that word pivot.

Glenn: [00:04:27] Yeah. They just can't stop. And then, you know, the funny thing too is that the other thing what's not funny, it's just a real thing. And, and all the entrepreneurs listening, you are on an island, you are by yourself. Nobody cares, nobody understands. Nobody can commiserate with you. We can because we do this all day, right, with other entrepreneurs. But most people can't. All your peers and colleagues, they don't understand you. They're not wanting you to fail, but they're like expecting you to. So that makes people dig a little deeper, I think, as an entrepreneur. But it's that isolation is a real thing.

Julie: [00:05:03] I think it's that loneliness, that lonely. We called it the lone wolf kind of mentality and kind of having to claw your way and get out of it and use those people that don't necessarily believe in you to take you to a different level and to motivate you to seek that greatness that maybe those people aren't going to achieve.

Glenn: [00:05:21] Right. And then we find that, again, that was one of the positives we gleaned out of all our guests is the fact that once you recognize you're by yourself and not everybody can relate, you have to kind of change a lot of the circles of the people that you influence with you. Right? And it's not only men or gurus, but also, you know, peers that will help you. It's not your normal people that are going to help you because they can't even comprehend what you're going through.

Julie: [00:05:47] Well, and I think they all talked about building a team around them. So maybe it's not necessarily, you know, building the team of employees, but they all have come to build kind of their trusted advisors, their trusted partners around them, that they may not have known that in the beginning.

Glenn: [00:06:04] And I think that was one of the cool things that we had a revelation on is probably entrepreneurs that started in the last ten years, probably for sure, at least five know hands down, but maybe up to ten excuse me, ten years passed. They found those resources and those mentors that were willing to help where anybody passed ten years ago, you had to really, really hunt and find somebody that would want to help you. Today, there are just groups everywhere that will help you with the support. But back in the day, there was none.

Julie: [00:06:36] So I think that Internet had a big, big, big thing to do with that. And the social media and the LinkedIn and the Facebooks just providing some of those resources that not everybody had, like you said, 15 years ago.

Glenn: [00:06:48] And the fact that people are willing to share that today where before if you knew it, you went to the grave with it, you never shared it with anybody. And so if you had to figure it out, you had to go to school, you had to get lucky and you had to just figure it out on your own. Today, there's tons of shortcuts.

Julie: [00:07:02] Well, I think we learned lucky, you know, is like when preparation meets passion, Right? That's really lucky, which leads to success.

Glenn: [00:07:09] But I think to that point, though, that that the time, the preparation and whatnot, the time that it took many, you know, ten years ago to achieve it, it took a longer time just because you had to trial and error and figure it out. Today, those resources are readily available. You just got to want to go put the work in to go figure it out.

Julie: [00:07:30] Absolutely. I think another key takeaway, and we tricked a lot of people that we brought on, but what is the end game? Where does that journey end? And they all would sit here so bewildered at that question because they didn't have an answer, even though it was a trick question, we didn't expect them to have an answer.

Glenn: [00:07:45] Remember, we had two kinds of entrepreneurs. One were the owner operators where they kind of made themselves a job and they're sort of independent doing their thing and they like doing their thing and they would probably want to have an end at some point. But we had a lot of them that were like, Hey, I'm building a business. It's a lifestyle thing. It's putting together the team, doing those things where they're having so much fun, they don't ever want to stop having fun. It had nothing to do with making money. It had nothing to do with anything. They just like building things and they never wanted to end. And so that was the trick question.

Julie: [00:08:16] Well, and I think even those owner operators that you speak of, even though they may have had an end game, they wouldn't have sat still for very long in regards to maybe they were done doing this part of something, but in the end they would have they're going to start doing something else.

Glenn: [00:08:31] It's really a challenge and I think most every guest recognized that particular trait, that once you go and do this thing, you learn so much in the process that you literally, you know, too much to stop. It's a absolute waste of your brain or rest of your skill set, a waste of your mentoring ability and how you can impact so many people for the good. If you would just continue to do something, you can't just stop, you know, too much. I mean, that's the worst part about it, is that and I never think they felt guilty of, Oh, maybe I should stop. They were just so excited to keep going because they do have something to share.

Julie: [00:09:14] Right. And I think it was interesting to find that we, you know, had a few guests on who had really turned that knowledge into. They realized they had that and now they wanted to mentor and take that to a different level.

Glenn: [00:09:26] Like pay it forward. I don't again, I think that is another thing. There are probably a few entrepreneurs that want to do it just for themselves, but most often it's for the it's for something bigger than them. And once they see that, then not only are they going to build their organization or organization and empower their people and empower their clients, but now you know what? Let's share the knowledge with other people that are trying to do this and let's get make a make a change in the entire world. And that was that's cool about entrepreneurs, I think so cool.

Julie: [00:09:54] And I think we've had so many, you know, great guests over the last 23, 24 episodes as we go through them and think about them. And it is even caused us to pause and reflect on some things as we've listened to people's journeys and their takeaways. And I think we've enjoyed those conversations sometimes, you know, just as much as the guest.

Glenn: [00:10:15] Oh, absolutely. Again, some of the questions we think we knew what they were going to answer, and most of them we were. But there are other ones that were absolutely. Wow. I did not know that that happened to you, Mr. Guest or Mrs. Guest. And that was like, how did you get recover from that? And they just well, you just got to do it well.

Julie: [00:10:34] And for anyone who's going to be a guest in 2023, I didn't realize Glenn had a stalker side to him. But every time we'd have a guest, you know, I'm just over here trying to wing it and get here, you know, maybe on time. Glenn's got two pages of notes where he's stalked them on whatever social media he can find, whatever bios he can find. And of course, I'd grab it and read it and try to take a quick, you know, steal something from him. But I really that really came out in the last year.

Glenn: [00:11:02] Well, who knew what you could find in 3 minutes on the Internet and we all know everything on there was true. So it made it easy to have a conversation with the client, with the with the guest.

Julie: [00:11:13] I think we've we also realized, you know, I think Glenn came into his own as the primary host over here. He was really able to have. The conversations and hold them. And I don't think either one of us knew exactly how that was going to go. But, you know, after week one, we decided he was going to take the lead.

Glenn: [00:11:28] Well, I don't know if we've decided that, but you certainly know what you're doing on this as well. I think we have make a great tag team and I hope all of our guests that we did have were relatable to us and liked how we would harmony get back and forth and make it so that they were comfortable and they were good talking about it. And then they we could get a positive message out to anybody who might be listening for this.

Julie: [00:11:51] Yeah, I definitely think we enjoyed him and egging it. I think you just enjoyed talking a little bit more because in this setting I had to be quiet and let you talk.

Glenn: [00:11:59] Well, you will do. Just do the coffee, as you know.

Julie: [00:12:02] I know I'm getting better at it.

Glenn: [00:12:04] I was up on the roof earlier, but it's okay. But no, I think it was it was a lot of fun and it was a pleasure working with you on it. Julia. It was. And we'd like to thank our production team and Brett and Dan really helped us out because again, you can't do it by yourself again. I still don't even know how this stuff works, but apparently people do and they're on our team and we're happy to have them. So we thank you guys.

Julie: [00:12:23] So any entrepreneur out there with an idea, you can make it happen because it was a I think, a December day where I said, Hey, Glenn, I think we should start a podcast. And then it just all kind of snowballed from there. And come January we were set and ready to roll. And like I said, we built a team around us that's way smarter than us, and they've been able to really execute our vision and make our goals come true.

Glenn: [00:12:46] And now we found that a lot of the entrepreneurs that we had there, they found out they didn't know how they'd do in the front of the microphone and camera and whatever. And now, now they have another medium, another way to put their message out and they're excited about doing it. And that is really cool because again, it's just getting information out there to all the people so they can make better decisions and become more successful.

Julie: [00:13:09] So, Glenn, for 2023, what's a goal of the podcast?

Glenn: [00:13:13] A goal I would certainly like to keep our quality of guests upcoming. And I'd like to say that maybe 24 to 36 episodes would be great, and we'll see how this morphs. Maybe throw some video on it too, and who knows where this can go, But that's up to our production team. I think he keeps saying, I have a face for radio, so I'm not sure.

Julie: [00:13:37] So we just want to thank everybody who's been along the journey. I know Glen made a ton of fake email accounts so he could subscribe and make his numbers go up, but anyone else out there listening, we definitely have enjoyed our time behind the mikes and getting to know all of our guests and making sure we're taking what they can and spreading those shortcuts.

Glenn: [00:13:56] And looking forward to 2023. Julie Well done. Thanks, team and all your listeners out there. Please do not hesitate to reach out to anybody on the show that we've had and get some inspiration. Just never give.

Julie: [00:14:09] Up. Cheers there. 2023.

Glenn: [00:14:11] Take care.