Making the Leap from Employee to Consultant with Tish Baldez

In this episode, Rachel speaks with Tish Baldaz about undertaking the journey from corporate employee to self-employment as a consultant. They discuss the importance of taking risks, the mindset shifts needed when transitioning from corporate to entrepreneurial thinking, and the financial responsibilities involved in running a business. Tish shares her personal experiences and insights on building relationships, understanding the sales process, and the significance of helping clients make good buying decisions. The conversation encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to embrace their passions and take the leap into entrepreneurship.

Episode Transcript

(00:18):
Welcome to Imperfect Genius, the podcast that provides technical advice on effectivelynavigating the business development journey and offers advice on building successful
careers in the tech industry.
I'm your host, Rachel Foster, a tech professional, educator, and entrepreneur.
Today I'm chatting with Tish Baldez.
Tish is co-founder and leader of P31 Academy and P31 Consulting.
P31 Consulting is a global corporate training and management consulting firm.

(00:41):
Tish, welcome to the podcast.
So happy to be here with you and your audience.
uh
Thank you.
think the audience is really going to benefit from this conversation.
But you know, before we get started, I just want to say thank you so much for reaching outto me.
I think I mentioned to you before that I get a lot of emails about podcast guests, peopletrying to send me podcast guests.

(01:04):
And 90 % of the time, I am 100 % convinced that they are written by bots because likeliterally I'm like, all they did was they just read my episode description was like, we
love.
the insert, you know, episode description here.
And I'm like, then the person that they're presenting to me has nothing to do with thetopics that I cover on the podcast.
I'm like, this is totally written by a bot and you don't even know what my podcast isabout, but yours was so refreshing because it was genuine.

(01:30):
And I was like, Oh, she actually looks to the podcast.
Listen to the podcast.
So I think, you know, it was so funny when you told me that because I think that doeshappen a lot.
I think there are bots that are creating these emails saying, oh, it would be great if wedo this.
But when I really search for podcasts where I think, well, a couple of things.

(01:51):
I have a topic that I think the host would be interested in.
That's the first thing I don't even think about the.
Right.
I think, is this a topic that I think the host and I could really engage and have a reallygood discussion about?
It doesn't mean we agree, but we can have really good discussion about it.
And then I asked myself, well, you know, is this an audience?

(02:12):
Well, in your case, I was part of your audience.
So I was just kind of like, well, I've heard the podcast and I like the episodes and Ilike what Rachel's talking about.
So it was easy.
So it was not a bot.
So everybody knows a bot did not.
So yeah.
It was real, was genuine and I really appreciate it.

(02:32):
I was like, I absolutely have to respond to that.
Like, cause I actually, you know, I read them and I was like, Oh, I absolutely have torespond.
And I think I reached out to you on LinkedIn.
Cause I, Oh, the other thing before, cause I was convinced it was real, but I was like,let me go, let me go cyber stalker a little bit.
Let me go look her up on LinkedIn.
So not only did I go look you up on LinkedIn, but then I like followed your posts for, waslike, I didn't respond right away.
I was like, let me see what kind of stuff she's posted.

(02:53):
Just see if she really is real or if it's like a bot account on LinkedIn anyway.
So then I
finally reached out to you.
I guess I'm a little too suspicious.
I don't know.
Well, you know, you have to be careful and we're going to be talking about our businesses.
Right.
is your brand.
This is your name.
This is your reputation.
Right.
And if you, can't just have anybody having conversations with you.
I totally respect that.

(03:14):
And that kind of goes to what we're going to be talking about today too.
Right.
Yeah.
yours when we're building businesses, we have to cyber stall.
Right, right, absolutely.
You know, have, who are we going to be connecting with?
Exactly.
Well, so let's dive into that conversation.
So when we met, we were trying to decide like what kind of things will we talk about?
And the thing that you were really passionate about was talking about exiting corporateAmerica to enter self-employment as a consultant.

(03:40):
So tell me why that's a passion of yours and what is it that you wanted the audience tohear on that topic?
Well, I think it's a couple of things.
I know most of your audience are women of color.
I know you also have some women who are not of color that also you.
And my passion really is around encouraging us as a group of women of color, whatevercolor shade you are, um to recognize that we don't have to take the typical corporate path

(04:08):
in order to be successful with corporate America.
And I say with instead of in.
because we don't have to it inside.
And there's a lot of podcasts on career development, how to develop your career, how tobuild your skills, how to network, how to get promotions, how to interview inside, how to
interview outside.
It's always about how to jump into corporate, how to get into corporate, how to navigateinside corporate.

(04:33):
And I think we have been in business for over 20 years successfully.
We've been a seven figure business consistently for those years, and we're doing itoutside.
And I think there's such a huge opportunity for women of color because we are so talented.
We are so diverse.
Our life experiences enable us to bring things to diverse environments.

(04:59):
I'm using that loosely.
That other people can understand.
You know, we're always assessing the room.
We're always looking at the differences.
How do people of different color react and behave?
How do people from different cultures react and behave?
And I think because we are raised, a lot of us, most of us in the United States, at least,we are raised to pay attention to those nuances in a business environment, in every

(05:23):
environment.
And I think that gives us a huge advantage.
An external consultant, right?
Independent consultant or have our own consultancies where we're selling our servicesinside.
We have this unique ability to kind of see the environment and see it beyond the
the, I would say the explicit ask.

(05:45):
Can you come in and share with us how you would help us to see beyond those things and tosee what would be successful?
But I don't think we leverage it.
That's why I contacted you and I said advantages and the opportunities for women of coloroutside.
No, I love that.
And I'm curious because for me, moving into consulting as an entrepreneur was a naturalprogression because my first job post grad school was working for Oracle Corporation in

(06:17):
California with the largest database company in the world as a consultant.
So I was working for corporate America, but as a consultant.
you you had like Delta Airlines or Revline, whatever would hire us to come in and do theseimplementations, these technical implementations.
So
even when I was inside of corporate America, I was consulting.
So it was a natural thing for me later, much later in my career to go, you know what, Idon't wanna work for you, but I will work with you.

(06:43):
And to start my own company and then just build myself out as a third party, as acontractor back to, but still doing the same work, still doing technical implementation
consulting.
I think in the tech space, it's...
If you've ever worked as a consultant, then it's a natural progression.
But I'd like to hear more about your background and how you made the decision to make thatmove.

(07:07):
Yeah.
So I grew up in the pharmaceutical industry.
So life sciences, that's where my background is.
I came right out of school, out of college, out of university, went straight in to workingfor Merck, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies.
And then I kind of stayed in there for a while and did a typical management track.
But it got to the point and I worked for a number of pharmaceutical companies.
I was with one that got acquired and I had an opportunity to take a package to leave.

(07:33):
at the time,
I had a young child, very young, was I think one year old or one and a half years old.
And I thought, what a great time for me to go home and spend some time with my youngestchild.
So that kind of moved me out.
But within a few months of leaving, I had a consultant call me a training consultant who Iused to hire in or she was hired in to help me.

(07:53):
She said, I heard you're on your own.
What do you think about working with me?
And I was like, uh I've never done that.
had never, I had hired consultants and I'd worked with them from the inside, but had neverdone it on the outside.
And I thought, I'd love to work with you.
know, so I jumped on that opportunity.
And what ended up happening was after I worked for her, with her for a couple of years,she came to me and said, I think you should go out on your own.

(08:17):
And I said, are you firing me?
She's like, I think you need to leave.
Yeah.
You think I need to leave you?
Like, what is this?
I really don't.
was like, are you firing me?
She was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
She said, I just think you have so much more to offer the industry that we're serving.
And I don't think you're going to be satisfied just doing it in training, in a trainingcapacity.

(08:42):
And I said, are you sure you're not firing me?
Well, anyway, she said she wasn't firing me.
And I ended up going out on my own that way, but I learned a lot.
I made a lot of mistakes.
don't know about for you, you came in through Oracle as a consultant.
So I'm assuming you got some training and preparation how to do that.
I didn't have any, I didn't know what it meant to work outside in.

(09:05):
We're meant to work inside out.
And it was not easy transitioning, but I was successful transitioning.
So in terms of my business continued, started to grow and continue to grow, but I mademistakes along.
Right.
Yeah, well, and that's
That's corporate inside employee mentality mindset.

(09:25):
Right.
I tried to apply it to a consulting outside and it didn't work.
Well, and that's a good segue to the next topic, which is, so I want to talk about how aperson can think about whether or not it's right for you, but also talk about leaving the
employee mindset behind.
So like, if someone is trying to assess whether not this is the right move for them tomake, what are some of the things that you think they need to think about?

(09:47):
You know what the first thing that comes to mind when you ask me that is you can't beafraid of afraid of taking risks.
And that's a very big different from being inside corporate in corporate.
We plan, we, we, we assess, we plan, we replan, we assess, we get a committee to reviewour plan and then we replan and then we get another committee to review the plan.
Then we cancel that plan because that committee didn't.

(10:08):
So, know, it can take, you, you can have a corporation could be putting a strategy intolaunch a product.
that could take a year or two before all the approvals are done and they go forward.
That's not the way entrepreneurship works.
have to be unafraid of risk.
You have to be willing to just try it and see what happens.

(10:29):
It's talk about fail fast, fail fast.
You have to be willing to take risks, take them quickly and not overthink, over plan.
We want to plan.
We want to have some idea around it.
But with entrepreneurship, I'm talking about very successful.
The most successful entrepreneurs don't over plan.
They don't overthink.
They get a general plan, general direction, and then they go for it and they see whathappens.

(10:54):
And when they learn that use that as an opportunity to learn.
think that's the first one.
No, I think that's a big one.
mean, it's a big one because and the reason I say it's a big one, I just want to, it's notexactly in the same vein, but I just remember um when I first started working remotely and
I thought it was just the greatest thing ever.
And then there was this guy, and this was before the pandemic and all that, but there wasa guy that had joined our team.

(11:18):
This was when I, again, I was consulting and I was, I was the project manager for AT &Tand there was a guy who would join our team and
He could not stand working at home alone.
that was just a thing he couldn't do.
And he only lasted for like a month and he was like, this is just not for me.
He's like, I can't do it.
So I think knowing yourself and knowing what works for you and what doesn't, if you knowthat you are not a risk taker and you're not comfortable with taking risks, then it's not

(11:43):
for you.
So I think it's important to know yourself and know what you're comfortable with.
So I think that's a good one.
Yeah.
And I think I would add onto that.
I would say know who you are now and what you're comfortable with now, but also recognizeyou are going to be growing.
Do you stay inside corporate or outside corporate?
So a lot of the things I was not comfortable with before, cause I was a planner, I wasorganized or I was structured.

(12:07):
My degree is in mathematics and statistics.
Science makes me happy, right?
Like have have a plan and you don't just wing it with that.
I got a listener, Corey McDowell, who is just like cheering for you right now.
He is just such a data geek, but anyway, go ahead.
Yeah, I mean, think it's important that we recognize also that we need to grow, we need todevelop, and we need to give ourselves permission to make the changes that we need to do.

(12:34):
Because the second thing, I think the first is risk taking.
One of the things I see when people come out of corporate, they come out, we're brilliant,we've got great ideas, we've got great services that we can take to other companies.
And we know it.
And we know how to talk about those services.
And we know how great they would be.
But what we don't know how to do is how to sell them.

(12:55):
know what we do, but we don't know how to help someone make a decision to buy them fromus.
And I think that's like the second thing is you might say, someone could say tothemselves, well, I don't really like selling.
I don't really like salespeople.
You know, I'm going to go back inside because I don't want to have to sell.
I'm raising my hand because this is me, but go ahead.

(13:17):
You're like, yeah, that's me.
I don't like it.
I think one of the things, when I'm coaching people, especially entrepreneurs andsolopreneurs, one of the things I'm coaching them on is letting that go.
In order for people to buy from you, you have to become a good buyer.
And you have to know what good buying means.
How does a really good buyer, a thoughtful, intentional buyer think?

(13:43):
How do they make decisions?
How do they treat people?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Think about when you go into a store, what's the one thing we do?
We run from the salespeople.
Right.
we run from them, I would...
We that that's being a bad buyer.
The reason we're being a bad buyer is because that salesperson knows more about theproducts that are in that store than we do.

(14:07):
They know what's in there, they know what they do, they know how they work, if they'reclose, they know what they look like on different bodies.
We never give them a chance to educate us on what they have.
And if we want to be a good buyer,
I mean, we want to be able to sell, we have to be a good buyer.
We have to model the behaviors of a good buyer.

(14:28):
And I found that that was one of the first things I had to do.
I had to not hate salespeople, salespeople, and I had to change my mindset of no, no, no,no, no.
Good buyers collect information.
They make decision based on that information and they collect as many data points as theycan.
I'm going to understand as much as I can about this from as many people as I can.

(14:51):
from the most educated people and even other people, then I make a good buying decision.
we're afraid to sell, I'm suggesting to you, is we're not good buyers.
We think the person on the other side of the table wants to run from us like we run fromthe salespeople in the store, in the department.
That's what we're assuming about them and we're not teaching them and modeling for them.

(15:15):
how they can make a good buying decision.
And that's, I'm describing that to say we have to learn how to sell.
And I don't, by the way, I don't like that term.
I never say I sell anything.
What I say is I help my clients make good buying decisions.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
No, that's good.
That's good
In our training, we don't use the word sell.
We say you're here so that we can help you learn how to help your clients make a goodbuying decision.

(15:39):
And we hope that buying decision includes you.
Right, right.
No, that's good.
I have a funny story.
the important, one of the important pieces that you said there was about changing yourmindset about selling or whatever you want to call it, making good buying decisions.
Because that was, I was fortunate in that my first business, this is my second, but myfirst business, I was a franchise.

(16:00):
So I bought a franchise.
And the reason I say fortunate is because they made me go to selling school.
Like they basically, they're like, okay, you're going to work for the, you you're going toown this franchise.
We're going to teach you how to sell.
And they followed, I don't know if you're familiar with Neil Rackham's spin sellingmethod.
So they taught us the spin selling method.
And what I decided, like again, and I was a person who hated salespeople and brand fromthem.

(16:23):
I was absolutely 100 % that person.
But in learning the spin selling method, and then they made us actually go out and sell.
Like they took us to a territory, like we were in Texas.
They took us to somebody else's territory and like let us just try out our selling in thisper hour.
I felt bad for that person.
Like we're in their territory doing cold calls, you know?
But what I decided, like I had to change my mindset to, I'm not, like you said, I'm notselling, you know?

(16:48):
Cause I think of, I thought of selling as like the smarmy, you know, used car salespersonor whatever.
Exactly.
Like there was a, okay, wait, total side note.
There was a joke we had at Oracle that we used to say, what's the difference between aused car salesperson and an Oracle salesperson?
And the answer was the used car salesperson knows when they're lying.

(17:10):
Sorry!
So that was my mindset with regard to selling.
That was my mindset, but I had to change my mindset to all I'm doing is, cause I wasselling uh computer classes to children in elementary and preschool.
So was talking to principals in elementary schools about bringing in a technology program.

(17:34):
And so I had to change my mindset to think about, actually what I'm doing is educatingthem about what is possible and what the future of their school might look like.
When I changed them, I'm like, all I'm doing is educating.
So like that helped me a lot.
And, but then the funny, this is the funniest story is I was selling to a preschool.
was talking to, well, I wasn't selling.

(17:54):
was having a conversation with a preschool administrator.
This was here in Georgia.
And I was, you know, had done this whole proposal.
We had had a pre meeting and I had done this whole proposal on pitching this program toher.
And when I finished, like I finally take a breath and I was like, what do you think?
And she goes.
Yeah, you sold me after the second sentence.
I, could have shut up after that.
She was like, you just kept.

(18:18):
I'm like surprised.
Another thing we need to learn how to do is to listen, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
She was like, you could have stopped.
She was like, have questions.
You know, she's like, I didn't need to hear all the rest of that, you know, because I waslike giving her the history of the franchise and all this other stuff.
She's like, I didn't need to hear all of that.
So I'm sorry.

(18:39):
That's really good learning though.
think because one of the things you were doing, you said, you're describing, you weregetting comfortable with the selling process and you got so comfortable with it that you
were okay talking about the product or the service that you had.
And you were perfectly comfortable and you had a lot to say about it.
I think we do have a lot, we do have to have a lot to say about it.

(19:01):
But what you said that I thought is interesting is you said your job was to educate them.
Huh?
That's very different than selling, because I grew up in selling, started in sales andMerck.
So I have a career and I was a sales leader.
So I had a career in sales.
But what I learned is selling products and selling services is not the same.

(19:22):
True.
And I had to learn how to make that shift.
And I think one of the toughest shifts in addition to risk taking is making the commitmentthat I will stay with this concept I have for my business.
I will learn how to sell it if you want to call it that.
The reason I prefer helping other people buy is because the word sell focuses on me.

(19:46):
True, that's a good point.
That's a good point, yeah.
process even in spend selling is focused on.
And so that's why I say I'd like to help my clients make a good buying decision.
And by the way, making a good buying decision might mean that I end up saying to them, Idon't think I'm the right solution.
yeah.
Yeah, you got to be willing to walk away because that's honest.

(20:08):
But what I heard you say when you're talking about educating, educating and gettingcomfortable and she was like, I was told when back when you said was one of the things
that
that I coach on is important to listen, but it's what are we listening for?
Right.
That's the thing that's unique about when we are entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and we'reselling, we don't have a big brand name behind us.

(20:31):
You know, if I worked for Accenture and I was in business development and I was sellingthat, my name is going to get me in the door.
My name is going to get me passed off through the RFP process.
Right.
My name is going to get me past some of the senior executives.
My name of my company is what I'm saying.
I will get so far in the process simply because that's on my business card.

(20:51):
That's not the case when that's another thing about being a solopreneur, entrepreneur,small business owner.
We need to understand that what gets us in the door is not going to be the same.
And when we leave corporate, we're used to those big names giving us those phone calls,giving us those up.
appointments and those meetings right and when we come out and it's not on our cardanymore We're like wait a minute.

(21:15):
I thought I had a good relationship Won't even return my phone calls you did have a goodrelationship with right but your relationship was linked to that company who has a
Reputation and we need to be willing to build our own like, you know, right?
Foster has built her brand, right?

(21:35):
We have to be willing and it takes time.
Yeah, I don't
Yes, it does.
It takes time and you have to be willing to do the work that it takes to build it becauseyou can do it.
We can do it.
We just, we need lots of shift in mindset.
That's just what you were talking about.
One mindset.
There are other ways we have to shift to, but we need to learn, learn how to sell what wehave in a way that people want to buy it.

(22:04):
You can say I did my sales pitch, but if they didn't buy it, it wasn't effective.
Right, exactly.
So it's like, get away from the sales pitch and give yourself a new goal is, my goal is,I'm going to help this person say yes to buying my services.
That's my goal.
So what do I need to do to get them there?
That's another mindset shift.

(22:24):
That's another way of thinking.
That might be, we have to learn like entrepreneurs, we're constantly, that's another thingwe need.
We're constantly, what podcasts can I listen to?
What YouTube videos will teach me how to do things?
What courses can I go take?
Physically go to.
What coaches can I hire?
I'm going to one next week.

(22:44):
What conferences can I attend?
We think about this all day, every day.
And I think that's a different shift coming out of corporate.
And corporate, 5, 6 p.m.
comes around, we're pretty much done.
Unless we're in a senior position.
And even if we're in a senior position, we still turn off.
We direct toward our family or our personal lives.

(23:08):
That doesn't happen in entrepreneurship.
I'm not saying we work 24 seven.
That's not what I'm saying.
But I'm saying our mind is constant.
You can't turn it off.
Yeah, you can't turn it off.
Another idea, oh another idea, another idea, another idea.
It's always going and it's always in the direction of us doing something we've never donebefore.
Right, right.

(23:28):
Exactly.
You know what?
Right, you know what's funny?
Like, I find that I can't watch movies and television the same anymore as an entrepreneurbecause whenever I see a business owner, I'm like analyzing, okay, now what's working in
this business and what's not working in this business and why are you know, how are theyable to like, I everything it could be it doesn't matter.

(23:50):
It doesn't have to be the same.
Like it could be like a bakery and I'm like.
I really liked the way they did that advertising.
know, like just anything.
I just can't even appreciate and just sit back and enjoy entertainment anymore becauseanytime there's a business on screen, I immediately just go into entrepreneur mode and I'm
thinking about how I can use that to apply to my business.
But you know what, when you're saying it, I see you saying it with a smile on your face.

(24:14):
I in entrepreneurship, we enjoy what we do.
Yeah.
Right.
So even though you're looking at the screen, you're like, now I'm distracted because nowI'm analyzing how they're doing this.
You're still enjoying that moment.
Yeah, know I do.
I'm still enjoying that moment.
True, true.
I'm not presenting the fact that my mind is shifting away from the movie that I'm tryingto watch.

(24:34):
Because I love what I do.
That's why
I wanted to talk to you about this.
really want to encourage, if you all have a good idea, you're listeners.
You know there's something you're excellent and there's some service that you can provideto other corporations and other businesses.
You know you're an expert.
You know you're, or you know you're really good.

(24:54):
You don't have to be the expert.
You're just good.
You encourage them, give it, try it.
Just be clear, listen to Rachel's podcast, cause Rachel goes through a lot of things youneed to do.
You got to be able to take risks.
You got to be willing to take risks.
And that doesn't mean you should assess yourself now and say, well, I'm not really a risktaker.

(25:15):
So this isn't good for me.
I would say stretch yourself a little bit.
You probably were a risk taker at one point in your life.
I know for me, getting in corporate made me corporate.
And I functioned corporate.
If I had stayed in corporate and I have friends that did their whole career in corporate,they can't understand how I think.

(25:35):
They can't understand how you.
Rachel, right?
They don't understand how, Oh, Rachel's creating training courses and raining.
has a pod.
No, Rachel decided I'm going to do seasons in my podcast.
I just think that's like, give us understand the way we would think and make a decisionand just make the decision.

(25:56):
Right.
He with the sea.
Exactly.
Because if I don't, if it doesn't work, then I'll just go back to just releasing episodeswhenever.
know, or through that process, I think we learn things.
And my guess is you'll come up with a new creative way to do it again.
Yeah, I'm still, yeah, I'm still, it's still evolving.
Exactly.
Exactly.

(26:16):
I think that's why I want to encourage your listeners that if they feel like, I tried itand it didn't work.
So I went back in corporate.
If you really have a passion and you really think you've got something good, try it.
Just line up the resources you need to support you through the process.
Right.
Join Rachel's community.

(26:36):
Give me a call if you need a business coach to help you with the selling of your services.
That's what I'm an expert in.
Some people tell me.
They're like, you can sell any service.
I've said, it's not that I can sell any service.
It's just that I know how to listen and pay attention.
And I know I'm identifying what is it that the potential client per se, what do theyperceive they need and want and desire?

(27:04):
Not what I think they should be.
Who they perceive they need, want and desire.
And how is my service going to
give them that and get them to that better place.
They're at a place where they are now.
It's okay.
Or maybe not really great.
And they don't want to be there.
They want to be here.
My job is to figure out how can my service get them there where they are feeling good andthey're excited and their business is taking off, whatever those things are.

(27:30):
And I'm simply paying attention to the things that I should be paying attention to.
It's easy for them to say yes when I have a conversation with them.
And I think your listeners can do that too.
They just need to learn.
Just like you did an episode on planning.
And it was very simple.
And I think if you're-
keep my lessons like bite sized.

(27:52):
if you give them too much and it's like, I can't, I've lost, you lost me.
I'm like, if I keep it bite sized, maybe they'll remember it.
Yes.
Yeah.
And if they need more, if they want to dive deeper, they can become part of the community.
If they want to dive deeper, you've got resources they can go to.
And I think that's the thing about being an entrepreneur.
You and I know that we have to do a lot of that digging on our own, but we don't have todo it alone.

(28:18):
Just by you and I having this conversation, we're not doing this alone.
I think it's finding the right people to bring alongside you.
And I want to go back to get you out of a corporate mindset.
The mindset will even limit how successful you are with entrepreneurship.
If you bring that in, you will have some success, you will have success, but you might notever get past the six digit company.

(28:43):
You might not get past the seven-year company.
And it's because we're applying what we learned.
And I do apply a lot what I learned in corporate.
I learned a lot about running a business.
But I don't apply the things that
our time or take a lot of time that remind me of, you know, there's a lot of processesthat have to be defined.

(29:09):
No, they don't just try it see what happens.
Right.
If it works, then document the process.
Right.
That's what we do with an entrepreneur.
It works.
If it works, we document the process so that our team can help us.
Exactly.
so that we can so that we can delegate it to someone else so that we're not doing thework.
Last night.
oh

(29:40):
Okay, so wait, I wanna recap.
So we were talking about how to decide if something is right for you.
And so we talked about making sure that um you're comfortable with taking risks, whethercurrently or in the future, or if you feel like you can get there.
We talked about um shifting from just providing a service or a product and actually beingable to, I was gonna use the word sell, I was gonna use the S word.

(30:04):
actually being able to make, you know, have your customers make good buying decisions, youknow, so being able to, sell that product or service.
And we talked about shifting away from the employee mindset.
I feel like we have to address the, the elephant in the room.
And that has to do with finances.
Cause that's that, you know, like, I feel like we could sort of like cover that under risktaking, but I think we need to explicitly talk about working, you know, being an

(30:28):
entrepreneur is not the same as working in corporate where you get a paycheck every twoweeks or twice a month or.
whatever your frequency is, or you just got something you can count on.
Like there's going to be peaks and valleys.
I feel like we just need to talk about.
I think that's really good because I'll tell you story about the biggest mistake I madethe first year out I did this when I was doing consulting.

(30:49):
I was doing well because the first year out on my own after I left the other company, Ihad a really nice contract that got me to almost six figures and that was pretty good for
first year.
Even though was less than I had been making in corporate, I was still happy with itbecause it was my first year out.
But what I didn't understand was I was supposed to pay quarterly taxes.

(31:11):
That's a big one!
uh
nothing about quarterly taxes.
In fact, I figured at the end of the year when I do my taxes, you know, I'll figure outwhat I owe.
I really didn't, I don't know why I felt thoughtless way, but I just never thought aboutit.
You don't know nobody tells you these things right?
Yeah
You don't know and that's one of those things and I didn't even know to ask So I didn'teven need to ask somebody is there anything I need to know about taxes I just figured I

(31:37):
figured out and I ended up only a lot fortunately.
I hadn't spent all that money that right?
Enough money in the account, but it was like $40,000.
It was some crazy.
Yeah
It's not a small thing.
That's the thing people think like, well, I'll just pay it like, no, no, no.
You need to know how much you're going to owe at the end of the year.
Because you may have heard, like, if you listen to the last pack, I was talking about, Ifollow the profit first methodology, like where you set aside, you set aside profit, you

(32:03):
set aside taxes, you set aside owner's comp, and then you go buy it.
You, then you go deal with your expenses.
Like, but you got it.
You got to put that tax money aside right now.
Soon as the money comes in the door, you put it in the tax bucket.
anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
No, I think that's important.
You have to put that money aside first.
have to learn.
You have to find out from a tax perspective.
Yeah.

(32:23):
Set your business up.
Right.
Yeah.
Do you have an LLC?
Do you need a corpora- S corporation or C?
You probably don't.
You probably just need an LLC, but you need to get advice from an expert on that.
Set that up.
Figure out how much to set aside.
If you use Rachel's method, right, of profit first.
It's not, won't claim it's my, I forget the guy's name.

(32:45):
Yeah, Michael, I forget the guy who named, who wrote the book.
Mike, starts, his last name starts with an M.
It's like Miklovich or something like that.
I'm totally butchering his name, but anyway, you guys can Google it.
Just Google profit first, Mike You'll find it.
Anyway, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
It's to think about those things.
One of the things is you have to pay quarterly taxes.
You can't pay them once a year.

(33:08):
Some of your listeners might be going, but I don't know how much I'm going to make.
You don't know how much you're going to make.
What you're going to have to do is just estimate it.
You're going to have to just say, hope to make this amount this year.
Based upon that, that's how much I'm going to pay taxes on quarterly.
If you overpay, you're going to get a refund, so don't worry about it.
If you underpay, then there's a problem.
You want to make sure that you're always taking care of that.

(33:30):
Also, what we make in the first few years, and even the subsequent years, it's like peaksand valleys, peaks and valleys.
Like you said, Rachel, we don't get paid every two weeks or every month.
uh For my business, most of my clients do most of their work in the end of the year.
So I actually make most of my income in December because most of them are doing their workbetween like September, October.

(33:55):
They want to get those invoices in and pay before the end of the year.
I have to also plan like you do, Rachel.
We have to plan how am going to make my bills and my home, my personal expenses throughoutthe year, knowing that I have this cycle.
You can't live month to month when you're used to living month to month.

(34:16):
You need to get some financial coaching to help you not live that way before youentrepreneurship.
Otherwise, you're going to always find yourself in debt.
Yeah, paycheck to paycheck is not a thing in entrepreneurship.
It is not.
It's not a thing and it's not something, if that's what you're used to when you'recomfortable with, this is the one thing I'll say entrepreneurship is probably not for you.

(34:39):
The other things I'll say, I think we can work beyond those.
You can develop beyond that.
With that one, that's a hard one.
If you go like for 25 years, all I've done is month to month.
I make my bills and I wait for my next check and I think this is not gonna work.
You have to plan, it comes back to another Rachel thing, you have to plan.
Right.
oh
Plan your finances and you have to be comfortable with the peaks and valleys.

(35:04):
I will tell you, my story from the past was I used to have, when my children were younger,they're all adults now, I used to have a limit.
I didn't work more than 100 days a year.
So never more than 100 days.
And the days I wasn't working, I was not working.
I was thinking about ideas for the business, but I was not working.

(35:25):
And the reason is I knew how much I needed to make each year to maintain our lifestyle.
And I knew if I had those hundred years, I knew how much I needed across the month.
So I made sure if I got, if I made nothing in January or February and made a lot in March,well then the March, didn't spend it.
It was budgeted for to cover me for the next few months or whatever it was supposed to be.

(35:46):
I think I was able to manage that because I knew
I knew how many days I needed to work to maintain my lifestyle for the year.
And that's just the way I did it.
Other people do month and quarter, I don't think that way.
I think, what do need to maintain my lifestyle?
That's my goal.
Maintain or improve.

(36:06):
Right, right, exactly, exactly, exactly.
And I think everybody has to have a plan around that and I think if you go intoentrepreneurship ask yourself that question How much do I need to make don't forget what
you made in corporate, right?
How much do I need to make to maintain or improve my lifestyle as I'm building thisbusiness?
Not willing to sacrifice but well the other thing is

(36:30):
is another place where it's important to have a financial advisor or a tax advisor to talkto you about this because you can't compare your corporate salary to your entrepreneur's
because again, the taxes that you pay, like, so for example, I'm an S-corp, so the waythat it's taxed, like I can give myself a lower salary as owner compensation and pay less

(36:53):
taxes.
which ends up like ending up in the, like based on, what am I trying to say?
When I was in corporate America and I made so much and it was like they were taking allthe taxes out based on that, that higher dollar amount, but I can still make the same, but
pay myself what seems like less, but make the same because I'm not paying as much in tax.
So like, but the way that I was able to figure that out is I have a CPA who's like, okay,here's what we can do.

(37:14):
You know, like he's like, okay, here's the strategy.
You know, it's like, I needed somebody to lay that out for me and explain to me how I'mjust hit my mic.
Sorry for the listeners.
If you just heard that or actually a Christian probably.
got rid of it.
You guys didn't hear anything.
My editor probably got rid of it.
But my point is that I met up front with my CPA and said, OK, here's what I'm thinking.

(37:35):
Here's what we're looking like.
The revenue number is going to look like.
How much do you think I'm going to put aside for taxes?
And how much, you know, what percentage am I going to pay myself?
Like, I just sort of like.
work that out with him upfront.
So it's important to have somebody, if you're not the financial, if you're not a financialexpert and you already know how to do this, then fine.
But if you're not the financial expert, then this is when you need to find that expert totalk to, you know, to give you the advice that you need to in order to make that plan.

(37:59):
I think that goes to another thing you and I have talked about in the past is don't dothis alone.
You can be an entrepreneur, you can be the primary employee in your business, but don'tever do it alone.
Always bring in alongside you the resources that you need.
You don't need to be an expert in everything.

(38:19):
You just need to know where to go find the experts.
I'm not a CPA, I'm not going to try to be a CPA and I'm not going to do my books.
So I need to find someone.
who's an expert in that, who they know what questions to ask me to understand my businessto get it right.
Like you were saying, a financial advisor, a CPA, someone who understands, should I havean S-Corp, should I have an LLC?

(38:40):
How should I structure my business?
It's not expensive, and I don't want to scare your listeners.
It's not expensive to hire those people to do that initial assessment for you and to getback to you and say, here's what my recommendation is, and here's how you should do it.
It is so worth it.
to just bring those people alongside so that financially, because I think Rachel, a lot ofpeople abandon their dream for being on their own because they're not closing deals,

(39:08):
they're not getting the appointments, they're not uh making money, and they're like, well,this is not for me, I'm going to leave.
I would say it's probably because you just never learned how to do it.
And we don't know how to do anything until we learn how to do it.
So you get the help you need to learn how to do those things.
And then you take off.

(39:30):
know, it's not going to be, I don't think entrepreneurship is a slow gradual hill.
I think if we had to map it, for most of us, it's kind of flat down here for a while.
Then we have a little blip, then we little blip, then we shoot up.
When you say, why do you think it's a shoot up?
Because I see that with a lot of entrepreneurs.

(39:51):
why do I think it's a shoot up?
think those little blips you learn each time.
And I think there's a multiplication effect as well.
So like you learn something and you learn something, but then it's like, oh, now I got it.
And then you just take off and you're like, I figured out where all the mistakes are.
again, also having those experts to help you, point you in the right direction, justlittle things like, you're like, I'll give an example.

(40:13):
um And it's a thing that I knew and it's...
Okay, first of all, I'm gonna back up for a second.
And when I was talking to Ryan Fortman a couple of episodes ago, we were talking aboutbusiness development, but anyway, there was a book he mentioned called Think Again.
And I think the author was Adam Scott.
And he was given the example, or the example that Ryan got, I haven't read the book yet,I've got it, I'm gonna read it.
He gave the example of the guy who ran Blackberry.

(40:37):
Basically, like why they went out of business, because the guy would not give up theQWERTY keyboard.
Like he could not fathom a smartphone.
So he just couldn't let go of the keyboard.
And that's why Blackberry is not competing in the smart phone space right now.
So it's like being able to let go of an idea.
And so my real life example is I have always hated certifications.

(40:58):
And the reason that I've always hated certifications is because when I worked at Oracle,like I had worked at Oracle for like three years before they decided to introduce
certificate.
And I was, think I was leaving Oracle at the time that they decided to introducecertifications.
And I was like,
First of all, I work for Oracle.
I don't need a certification.
then secondly, I'm like, I've done this for like three years already.
I don't need a piece of paper or whatever to say that I know how to do this.

(41:21):
And so like, and this was like years, we're talking like 20 years ago.
We were talking a long time ago, like more than 20 years ago.
So like this one started before certifications were big like they are now, right?
But that was like my original idea and I wouldn't let it go like for, and so for years andyears and I'm like, I don't need a cert, like I fought against certifications.
So are you familiar with Score?

(41:41):
I am.
I long story short, I've had score mentors in the past, whatever.
So I was needing to talk to someone and I need to call you.
We'll talk later, but I was needing to talk somebody about lead qualification and leadconversion.
So I was like, I'm going talk to this score mentor and he didn't, we won't even get intothe lead qualification and lead conversion conversation, but he was like, why don't you

(42:02):
have certification badges all over your website?
And I was like, cause I hate certifications.
He's like,
But I won't even get into the whole conversation that we had, but he finally, was like,can imagine.
And I'm like, but finally I was like, yeah, you're right.
I was like, yeah, you're right.
You're right.
I need to do that.

(42:22):
And it's like, and these are certifications.
These are things that I know.
It's like a 20 question test.
It'll take me nothing.
It costs me nothing to get these certifications.
I was just battling this original idea of how much I hated certifications.
Cause they didn't actually mean, cause my thing is
They don't mean the person actually knows anything.
know, I've met, I've worked with people who were certified in things and they don't knowthe thing, you know?

(42:43):
So I'm like, it means, so in my mind it was like, it means nothing, but I'm like, okay,yeah, it makes it.
So I don't even know the point we were made.
We were talking about, the experts and people like, we're talking about how you go fromthe blip blip to the just taking off.
It's like, you finally start taking in all of that information from the other people thatyou're working with, from, you know, you're networking from all of your failures.
And then you go.

(43:03):
Okay, I got it now.
You know, you just, that's, that's why it just takes off.
You know, that's when it takes off.
And that's my opinion.
We'll see.
I think it could take a couple of years.
I don't think it should take many years, but it can take a little bit of time.
But I think the payoff is so worth it.
Because when you are running your own business, when you have your own thing and you haveyour own team, because as an entrepreneur, you start bringing members of your team,

(43:31):
whether they're 1099 contract employees, they're still part of your team, or whether youhire somebody as an employee to be a part of your team, you start building that team out.
um to do even greater things and it frees us up to do the things that we love becausethat's another thing in the beginning you and I know we're going to be doing everything.
Yeah, we are being low the CFO the CHRO the CAIO

(43:57):
We are everything in the beginning.
do everything in the beginning, unless we're fortunate enough to have enough funds tobring in people to do that.
But the that you don't, um you have to give yourself some grace that you're not going todo everything with excellence.
You just need to be able to do it good enough to move your business forward until you canhire someone to take over those roles.

(44:21):
I did the books for our companies for many years.
I have no accounting background and quite frankly, Rachel, I hate it.
I do not like accounting.
I did not like doing the books, but nobody else wanted to do them.
And I had a part, we brought in another partner and they didn't want to do them.
So I ended up having to do them.
I didn't like it at all, but got done.
Some years I made mistakes, but then we implemented that someone always double checks atthe end of the year before we, with our taxes.

(44:47):
I made errors.
I wasn't doing anything illegal.
I just made accounting errors.
And I think we know that it's okay.
to be everything in the business, but just know, don't run away from the business saying,I don't like this because I don't like doing everything.
You won't always have to do everything.
It's only in the beginning when you're getting things started.
And it's so important to be familiar, not be expert, but be familiar with all the movingparts that support the business administration, right?

(45:17):
So that when you're ready to kind of offload that and say, I'm going to hire a bookkeeperor I'm going to hire a CPA.
When you're ready to offload that, at least you know you're familiar with what has beendone and what needs to be done.
Now you can depend on an expert to make it even better.
Like your CPA was like, let's get this together here.
Right, right, right.
Right.

(45:37):
Exactly.
Exactly.
Well, and then speaking about, so another thing on experts and then I, like, I got acouple of things and then I feel like, cause we're gonna, we're gonna have to do a second
episode.
Like there's just so many other things to talk about.
We're definitely gonna have to do a second episode.
The other thing that I was gonna say with regard to experts and knowing what you don'tknow and, and,

(45:58):
just sort of being able to rely on someone.
So my listeners know this, because I've talked about my trademark journey over and overagain.
So I have a trademark, another expert that I rely on, I have a trademark attorney.
And I am currently battling, I won't say the name, because I don't want to get sued, butI'm currently battling a really big fruit named tech company right now, because they think
they own the word genius.

(46:20):
And so I am having a huge battle right now.
it's like, and back to your point about just people
saying, okay, well, I tried and it didn't work.
Like if I were trying to do this on my own, honestly, cause when I got the, the letterfrom this company, if I didn't have a lawyer, you know, a trademark attorney working for

(46:41):
me, when I got that letter, I would have been like, all right, that's it.
I guess I'm done.
Cause they're going to crush me.
You know what I was like?
No, I'm going to fight.
Absolutely not.
I'm going to fight.
I mean, I-
I'm probably still going to lose because I don't have the money to fight.
Cause this is, we're talking of, you know, multi-billion dollar company.

(47:03):
Like I don't have the money to fight them, but I'm trying, you know, like, I'm like, let'sjust see, I'm going to make them work for it.
You know, like I'm going to make them work for it.
know?
So anyway, so I would just want to say that on the, you know, when you hit a, when you hita wall or you hit an obstacle, don't just tuck your tail, you know, turn tail and go home.

(47:24):
An obstacle doesn't kill anything.
That's what an obstacle is.
um I was doing a course where I teach people, I teach entrepreneurs how to sell theirservices.
I remember I was going through this thing and while I was teaching during that week, itwas a week long course, and while I was teaching it, I actually had received an email from

(47:44):
someone who had said,
that they weren't accepting our proposal, right?
And so I came back to the thing, because I'm always like, we have 100 % win rate, almost100%.
So I came back and I told the class, said, guess what?
And I said like this, I got this email today, I submitted this proposal, I told you allabout it, but they came back and they said no.
And they said they wouldn't be moving forward with it.

(48:04):
And they were like, why are you so excited?
said, because I'm looking forward to the next conversation with them.
And they said, but they said no.
I said, no, no, no, no, no, That's what...
I said, I read the email to them at the time and I said, if you read that email and youheard no, we need to work on your perception and your mindset.

(48:26):
And I said, I read the email and I heard that there were some things that we didn't hit onthat they needed.
I need to go back to them and have another conversation and we're going to figure out whatwas missing because I need to know why they said no.
I think we got what they were asking for.
And then they were like,
You're really not discouraged.

(48:46):
I said, there's nothing to be discouraged about.
A no is an opening for further conversation.
And the more conversation I with them, the more I know about them, the more I know aboutthem, the more I understand them, the better I understand them, the better conversations
we have.
The more conversations we have, the more opportunity I have to bring more value in what Isay and how I say it.
And to show them how my service is going to fit.

(49:11):
fits into those gaps they thought they saw.
And I said, it could be me.
Maybe we didn't write our proposal in a way that clearly articulated the connections theyneeded to see.
And it turned out that's what it was.
So they ended up sending it back and we ended up rewriting it and sending it back to them.
And so it's one of those things where, like you said, it depends on how we view it.

(49:33):
I view an obstacle as something that you go over.
And the Olympics,
Everybody can jump a hurdle.
Ones who've practiced and been trained can get over many hurdles very quickly.
It's because they've been practicing and they've been trained how to do it.
know, there's this physical muscle memory.

(49:58):
With ours, it's our business acumen, our business understanding, our communication skills.
And we need to get those to a level that when the obstacles come, like you said, it'snot...
So they think they own the word genius?
No, they don't.
Right.
Isn't the dictionary?
uh
Let's go, let's go.
We can this thing.
And you're saying I'll do it as much as I can afford to do it.

(50:20):
But sometimes it's the journey and think about how much you're learning about trademarklaw and trademark infringement and trademark ownership that you never knew before.
And who knows what God is going to use that with you, right?
To Rachel for something in the future that you will never have to go back to trademarkattorney because you already learned the lesson.

(50:43):
I think the story is a great one.
I think it's a great one.
Well, I think that we could go on for hours.
Like I say, I think we definitely need to record uh another episode.
There's a couple other topics that I want to talk about with you with regard to this,think would be good for the listeners.
So I say that we do a part two.
You game for doing a part two?

(51:05):
game for part two, I would love to talk more about it.
It's a good discussion.
I'm learning as we're talking and I hope your listeners are too.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, wish I had been, luckily we're recording this so I can go back and watch thevideo.
like, I wish I had been taking notes, because there's lots of things that I've beenlearning throughout this conversation.
So this is great.
This is why I love having these kinds of conversations.

(51:27):
I love learning new things.
I just love learning new things and things that can help me to improve.
And I'm like, oh yeah, that's a good point.
Oh yeah, yeah.
And you think about that, so this is great.
hopefully the listeners have gotten some good takeaways.
But before I let you go,
tell people how they can find you online or in person.
You said you're going to a conference next week.
Can people find you at the conference?

(51:48):
Like just tell people how to find you.
I don't know when this is going to, your episode is going to be airing, but there is aconference in Miami called the Business Show Miami.
is a global, it's a company called the Business Show that does global conferences.
In the United States, they only do Vegas in Miami and they do once a year in eachlocation.

(52:09):
It's basically for small business owners and entrepreneurs.
It's all the resources you need, like all the things we're talking about.
Right, right.
There are master classes, are plenary sessions, there's an exhibitor floor.
It's one of those, there's over 10,000 people that typically go to the Miami show.
So it's a really big show.
So I'm going to be there.

(52:30):
Our company, P31 Consulting, is one of only two companies that are offering masterclasses.
We were invited to classes.
So we're doing the name of our master classes, sell your value, not your time.
I love that.
OK, wait, when is this conference?
Because I might need to see if I can be there.
This is uh next week in Miami.

(52:51):
think it's Wednesday, Thursday.
It's called the business show Miami.
They have a website.
I think if you Google the business show Miami or the business show, it'll take you to thewebsite that shows Singapore and Miami.
It's a great, but we're doing that because part of, and maybe we can talk about this thenext time we meet.
Part of what we have discovered is a lot of people end up pricing

(53:18):
their services based on their time and what they think they should earn per hour.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
We don't believe that's appropriate way for people to price services.
People should be paying for the value they give.
And I'll give you a quick example.
We have a person that we were coaching who has a seven figure business.
She works alone.
She only brings in people when she needs them.

(53:38):
She has a company for which she was saving them tens of millions of dollars through herservices, but was only charging them like $300,000.
I said, you save them.
millions, yeah, tens of millions.
And she said she didn't know she always priced it by how much time would it take me to getthe work done?

(54:01):
And I said that's not value-based pricing Don't you think you saving them 20 milliondollars is worth more than their $300,000 investment?
So that's why we came up with this topic because we think small business owners need tothink beyond their time Don't do a time exchange
but sell your value.
And we include this in a course that we offer for entrepreneurs.

(54:24):
It's a two day program called WinBig.
We offer it about once a quarter in Orlando, Florida.
So it's an in-person course.
And in that course, we talk a lot about this, about how to determine what the value is,not what your services are, but the perceived value.
And I'm not talking about a value proposition.

(54:44):
That's not what I'm
Right.
how you can craft something that the client perceives the value and they can clearly seeit versus you taking a spreadsheet out and saying it will take me 42 hours to do this.
I'm going to do it at $120 an hour.
This is what I'm going to charge them.
That's not value-based pricing.

(55:05):
We offer services to corporations and other companies and other businesses.
We should be doing it from a value perspective.
That's why that's the topic we're doing for the masterclass.
not your time.
So how can they reach me?
Wait, wait, wait.
was going to say, was going say, you're going to answer that.
But what I was about to say is for people who can't make it to the conference, how likeyou mentioned, WinBig is a course that you do quarterly.

(55:28):
How can they find that course?
And then also how can they reach you?
So how can they find WinBig if they can't make it to the conference?
And then how can they reach you?
You know, they can, they can reach me and find out about the course kind of in the samepath.
So they can email me at Tish, T I S H at P three one dash consulting.com.

(55:50):
So hyphen P three one hyphen consulting.com.
They can, they can email coy C O I at P 31 hyphen consulting.com and coy can help withwind big about the programs that are coming up.
will be able to answer their questions about that.
But I would love for your listeners, if they reach out to me, if you reach out to me andput the subject line, I heard you on the Imperfect Genius podcast, I'll make sure that I

(56:15):
personally respond.
will hear from my team member who checks my email for me.
I will personally respond and we can have a phone call.
What we do with with my coaching of entrepreneurs, it really is focused on, it's notgetting the leads.
It's once you've got the opportunity.
What I can do and my team can do is we can teach you how to sell it.

(56:39):
Tell it so that they say yes to you and not know to you and not maybe to you.
And we can give you the skills that you need in the coaching and give you other resources,much like you do with your community.
What are the other resources you need to sell and maintain?
Keep, get those clients and keep those clients.

(57:02):
So we have another program that's called the Get More, Keep More Corporate ClientsChallenge.
We can answer questions about that too.
I love it.
love it.
Well to my listeners, I hope that you found something valuable, some valuable takeawaysfrom this conversation.
If you didn't, you weren't listening.
You need to go back and rewind.
You need to listen again.

(57:22):
Rachel was listening to me.
I mean, and as always, I wanna say thank you for listening.
You can follow me uh on social media at Ask Imperfect Genius.
You can leave me a voicemail with your questions.
I'm begging you all for questions.
Like I keep trying to answer questions.

(57:43):
I'm begging for questions.
People ask me questions privately, but they never wanna put them on the podcast.
Anyway, so I'm begging you all for questions.
So you can call or text at 404-425-9862.
You know what?
I am going to, I don't know if I want to make this promise.
I hate to make a promise and not deliver, but we had so much information in this episode.
I feel like I definitely need to do a newsletter about this one with some of the keyinformation, some of the key points to take.

(58:08):
So I'm going to say subscribe to our newsletter.
I'm forcing myself to have to do the newsletter.
Subscribe.
need, I need to hire a copy editor.
It's a whole nother conversation.
But so subscribe to our newsletter at subscribe.imperfectgenius.com and I will do shownotes for this episode.
I'm promising it.
Somebody's gonna, I'm saying that to me, hold myself accountable.
I'm promising it.
um If you're interested in joining a vibrant and supportive community of Black and Brownwomen who are on the same path and head over to community.impervirginians.com, I was just

(58:37):
telling Tish right before we started recording that the platform that people have told,they know I'm on Mighty Networks, I love Mighty Networks.
The platform that I'm on just released a whole bunch of new features that I wanna try toincorporate in the community.
So I'm gonna be doing a little bit of rebuilding over there.
You can still join and I...
you can still participate in it, but just know that I'm gonna be shifting some thingsaround over there.

(58:57):
So just be patient, pardon our dust.
Cause I like to think of our community like a physical center, like a community building.
And I'm like, oh, you can go in the executive suite or you can go in this suite or lastone, know, or you can go, we've got like a, know, the, can't even think of all of it.
We got through, you know, the water cooler, you you can hang out the water cooler and chitchat.
And we've got all these different things, all these different spaces.
So I'm going to just imagine that you're in this building and you're to see the part inour dust signs all over because I'm going to be reorganizing some things.

(59:23):
So anyway, that's again, that's at community.imperfectgenius.com.
And until next time, this is Rachel Foster reminding you that while your journey may notbe flawless, it can be phenomenal.