September 7, 2023 • 10 mins
What if you could turn a childhood hobby into a business? That’s exactly what I, Jacob K Mead, managed to do when I taught myself web development in high school. This episode of the Buy Time podcast allows you to step back with me into my past and get to know the journey that led me to become a renowned business coach and consultant. I share my humble beginnings, the challenges, the triumphs, and lessons learned in the process. You'll hear the exciting tale of how I turned a curiosity into a profitable venture in my small town and the essential role of mentors in shaping my career.
As the narrative unfolds, I'll take you through my experiences as a lifeguard and swimming instructor, a job that revealed my love for helping others. Take inspiration from the sense of accomplishment I felt when I saw the kids I taught make progress – a feeling that still get in my coaching and consulting current career. This episode is an exploration of personal growth and its transformative power. So, prepare to be inspired by a heartening journey and to understand how learning from each experience can shape your path. Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur or someone intrigued by personal growth stories, this episode is definitely worth a listen.
Until next time... Follow on Instagram @buytimepodcast
Follow Jacob K. Mead on all the socials @jacobkmead
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody, this is Jacob K Mead and this is the
Buy Time podcast, where wediscuss everything there is to
know about buying back your time.
Be sure to like and follow andshare with somebody who needs to
buy back their time.
Enjoy today's episode.
This episode is brought to youby Hello Cookie, a bite above
all the rest, located in Ankeny,iowa.
Custom-sugar cookies for yourevents, corporate events or even
(00:25):
birthdays.
Hello Cookie, ankeny, iowa.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Buy Time podcast.
I'm your host, jacob K Mead, andtoday is super exciting because
I'm going to be diving into mypast and my history and kind of
what made me want to become abusiness coach and consultant
and how did I get there, whatwere my struggles and how did I
(00:47):
overcome that.
So first let's go way back andlet's talk about my high school
days.
So in high school, I wasn'treally that kid that would party
, I would go home and I wouldstudy.
And that was me I would go homeand I would study, and at the
time, youtube was actually justgetting to launch, and so, since
YouTube was just coming out, Ifound that there's a lot of
(01:09):
information on YouTube.
You could watch a lot of videos, a lot of educational videos,
and that's what I did.
And so I would watch a lot ofeducational videos on website
and web development and I wouldwatch these videos over and over
.
And so there came a time whereI said hey, listen, I actually
want a website and I want thiswebsite to do this and I want to
have videos on there and I wantit to look really cool.
(01:31):
So I went to my dad and I saidhey, this is kind of the website
I want.
Do you think it's somethingthat we can put together?
And he goes I'm not going to doit for you.
And I was like oh man, I don'tknow how to do this.
And he goes but I will buy youthe tools so that you can do it
yourself.
And so to me I heard well, Ican't do this, and I was
(01:52):
thinking there's no way that Ican do this, but he bought the
tool for me anyway.
So he went out and boughtMicrosoft Expression Web at the
time, and then what I did nextwas I got online and I studied
everything there was to knowabout HTML and CSS at the time
and I would read up, studythrough trial and error.
I built my first website.
(02:14):
It didn't happen overnight, buteventually it happened and so
once I got that kind of all laidout, I said well, there's
opportunity here.
I think there's people in ourcommunity or small town, because
I was in Burlington Iowa soSoutheast Iowa kind of a river
city right next to theMississippi In Burlington Iowa
was a small town and I said Ibelieve there's opportunity here
(02:35):
.
There's not very many peoplewith websites.
The web was first starting totake off but there wasn't many
people that had websites andbusinesses and so I said, well,
I'm going to create a businessname, I'm going to go out, I'm
going to ask these people ifthey want me to build them a
website.
So I got on Microsoft Paint,that's what it was.
It was Microsoft Paint and Iactually made a logo.
(02:56):
Man, it's hideous now that Ilook back on it, but at the time
I was so proud of it.
I was proud of it because Istuck it on a business card, I
stuck it on a little flyer withsome pricing and I walked into a
business and so my very firstbusiness.
I can remember I rode my bikedown there with my backpack and
it was downtown Des Moines, andI walked into the business and I
(03:16):
looked around kind of seen whatthey had to offer, and then I
said, hey, do you have a website?
The first thing I said was, hey, do you have a website?
And they said no, we don't havea website.
And I said, do you want to geta website?
And the answer was yes.
And that's kind of how Iapproached it.
And so once they say yes, theysaid, well, I'm just getting
into web development, I'd loveto be able to build you a
website.
Here's kind of my pricestructure, of what I have to
(03:37):
offer and I can have you awebsite up and running an X
amount of time.
Fully expecting, like I'm inhigh school, I'm fully expecting
that they're going to say no,have no trust in me.
But they said yes.
They said yeah, absolutely, welove that.
We've been looking for someonefor a while.
We just don't know who to gowith.
And you sound very professional.
That was a confident boost.
If you think back, think back atime that you had a confident
(04:01):
boost.
That was mine, right there.
It was a confident boost that,hey, I've seen professionals.
So even when it's an ugly logo,I've seen professionals.
So I actually took on thatclient and I made a website for
him.
I went above and beyond becauseI wanted to make sure that I
wowed them.
And once I did that and I had akind of a portfolio, I started
building that portfolio out andpeople loved it and a lot of my
(04:25):
business clients loved itbecause there was someone out
there that could do what theycould do.
Now it was way undercharging.
I completely undervalued myselfand my work.
I mean I was charging $500 forthese websites.
That would sometimes take me 40hours just to complete, but at
the time in high school it wasgood money and it was money that
made me feel accomplished, thatI knew what I was doing and it
helped me kind of pave the wayto my next entrepreneurship
(04:48):
journey.
But I would say what I learnedthe most from that is, for one
you need to make sure thatyou're asking for the sales,
you're asking the client.
Hey, can I do this for you?
It doesn't hurt.
I got told no tons of times.
I can remember I got told no orgot shunned off and, pretty
sure, laughed at by a few people.
But I didn't care.
(05:09):
I really didn't care because Iknew I had something valuable to
offer.
And if they didn't want it,I'll move on to someone that
could see the value and that wasimportant.
So that was kind of my firstjourney.
And then I moved up to DesMoines, iowa, and I worked for
Radio Shack inside of TargetMobile and that's where I
learned a lot of my salestactics and sales techniques is
(05:29):
I wasn't the greatestsalesperson, I wasn't excellent
at closing deals and I wasalmost shy sometimes to talk to
people, and so I was able toovercome a lot of that through
coaching there.
And that's really what Iremember is I first time I was
there and I had to sellsomething, I was a little
nervous.
I was like what if they say no?
And then I remember back I waslike, well, people said no from
(05:51):
my websites.
I didn't care.
Why is this any difference?
And that kind of gave me thatpush.
And there was a districtmanager named Tyler Bloomer at
the time and he actually taughtme a lot.
There is a lot about sales andkind of how to overcome
objections and what objectionsare, and so he helped me a lot
with that.
And every single person that Ihave had in every single
(06:13):
business or every single jobI've always looked at who is my
mentor and everything they'vesaid.
I've always taken a heart andevery single person tell me, hey
, you need to put your ego aside.
I've had someone tell me, hey,you need to be humble.
And every single time I've beentold something, I evaluate it.
I look at myself and say, hey,is there something I could be
(06:34):
doing differently?
How can I improve as a person?
How can I improve as a leader?
I think that's one of thebiggest things that I take from
every single business and everysingle journey.
So, being in high school doingweb development, my secondary
job was being a lifeguard andteaching swimming lessons, which
(06:55):
I absolutely love because Ilove helping people.
So, being able to see theprogress from the kids and
coming into those swimminglessons and then seeing them
struggle and then not, and thenat the very end of swimming
lessons, being able to swim theentire length of the pool, that
felt accomplished.
That felt accomplishing to me.
Like I can't tell you howaccomplished I felt when I could
(07:16):
see these kids come in and theywere struggling, but then at
the end of the day or end of theswimming lessons, they were
being able to swim all the wayto the end of the pool.
It was amazing and I realizedthat I loved helping people.
That's just what I love to do.
So, moving in to Des Moines,iowa, I actually opened up my
own business called Mobile Spot,and I grew that pretty quickly,
(07:38):
with a lot of mistakes, and wetalked a lot about my mistakes
and we'll talk more about mymistakes on another episode.
But I made a lot of mistakesand I got to a point in my
business where it was runningwithout me.
I didn't have to be there allthe time and things were going
smooth and I wanted to be ableto show other business owners
(07:59):
that it is possible to trustyour team, it's possible to let
your staff handle scenarios thatmight come up and you can have
them do all of this without youhaving to be there.
And it actually helps grow youas a leader and helps grow your
company, because your team isgoing to feel more empowered,
they're going to feel more likethey can handle it and that they
(08:20):
don't need someone toconstantly watch over them.
It was never that micromanager.
I wasn't going to micromanage,so I was never that person.
But when I got to that pointagain, I made a lot of mistakes
and I learned from every singleone of my mistakes, and I
continued to make mistakes today.
I think it's part of business.
It is part of business.
(08:41):
It's part of life.
You're going to make mistakes,but the most important thing
about those mistakes is learningfrom them and overcoming them.
And so running MobileSpot hastaught me a whole lot about why
I wanted to do business coachingand consulting, and it was
because I love helping people.
My MobileSpot store we repairdevices and I love repairing
devices and helping people.
(09:01):
They bring in something broken,I can show them, I fix it and
they're like wow, this isamazing, thank you so much for
helping me out.
And I knew I loved helpingpeople.
I got to a point where I couldwalk into another business, look
around and see things thatneeded to be improved, and I
wanted to be able to help thatbusiness and help that owner
improve those little things thatwould make a big difference,
(09:23):
whether it be in the culture ofthe business or whether it be
directly related to sales.
I wanted them to be able to seethat I could help them out.
That's really what drove me towanting to be a business
consultant and a business coach.
And then, as far as thecoaching side, I wouldn't be
where I am today without abusiness coach and I didn't know
(09:45):
how important it was to haveone until I hired one.
But it really comes down tothey're there for you, for your
mindset.
They're there for you when youfeel like you can't make it.
They're there to tell you thatyou can.
They're always going to be inyour corner, rooting for you and
wanting you to succeed.
And that is just so powerfulHaving someone there that you
(10:09):
know will never let you down,that will always be encouraging
you and that will always berooting for your success.
That was so important to me.
So that's a little journey intomy background, kind of why I
became a business coach andbusiness consultant, and we'll
talk a lot about those mistakeson some upcoming episodes of the
by Time Podcast and whymistakes aren't necessarily a
(10:32):
bad thing.
Thank you so much for listeningtoday.
I really do appreciate you all.
Please make sure to follow meat JacobKMead on all the socials
and until next time.
Thanks for listening to today'sepisode.
My name is JacobKMead and untilnext time.
Hey everybody, this is Jacob K Mead and this is the
Buy Time podcast, where wediscuss everything there is to
know about buying back your time.
Be sure to like and follow andshare with somebody who needs to
buy back their time.
Enjoy today's episode.
This episode is brought to youby Hello Cookie, a bite above
all the rest, located in Ankeny,iowa.
Custom-sugar cookies for yourevents, corporate events or even
(00:25):
birthdays.
Hello Cookie, ankeny, iowa.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Buy Time podcast.
I'm your host, jacob K Mead, andtoday is super exciting because
I'm going to be diving into mypast and my history and kind of
what made me want to become abusiness coach and consultant
and how did I get there, whatwere my struggles and how did I
(00:47):
overcome that.
So first let's go way back andlet's talk about my high school
days.
So in high school, I wasn'treally that kid that would party
, I would go home and I wouldstudy.
And that was me I would go homeand I would study, and at the
time, youtube was actually justgetting to launch, and so, since
YouTube was just coming out, Ifound that there's a lot of
(01:09):
information on YouTube.
You could watch a lot of videos, a lot of educational videos,
and that's what I did.
And so I would watch a lot ofeducational videos on website
and web development and I wouldwatch these videos over and over
.
And so there came a time whereI said hey, listen, I actually
want a website and I want thiswebsite to do this and I want to
have videos on there and I wantit to look really cool.
(01:31):
So I went to my dad and I saidhey, this is kind of the website
I want.
Do you think it's somethingthat we can put together?
And he goes I'm not going to doit for you.
And I was like oh man, I don'tknow how to do this.
And he goes but I will buy youthe tools so that you can do it
yourself.
And so to me I heard well, Ican't do this, and I was
(01:52):
thinking there's no way that Ican do this, but he bought the
tool for me anyway.
So he went out and boughtMicrosoft Expression Web at the
time, and then what I did nextwas I got online and I studied
everything there was to knowabout HTML and CSS at the time
and I would read up, studythrough trial and error.
I built my first website.
(02:14):
It didn't happen overnight, buteventually it happened and so
once I got that kind of all laidout, I said well, there's
opportunity here.
I think there's people in ourcommunity or small town, because
I was in Burlington Iowa soSoutheast Iowa kind of a river
city right next to theMississippi In Burlington Iowa
was a small town and I said Ibelieve there's opportunity here
(02:35):
.
There's not very many peoplewith websites.
The web was first starting totake off but there wasn't many
people that had websites andbusinesses and so I said, well,
I'm going to create a businessname, I'm going to go out, I'm
going to ask these people ifthey want me to build them a
website.
So I got on Microsoft Paint,that's what it was.
It was Microsoft Paint and Iactually made a logo.
(02:56):
Man, it's hideous now that Ilook back on it, but at the time
I was so proud of it.
I was proud of it because Istuck it on a business card, I
stuck it on a little flyer withsome pricing and I walked into a
business and so my very firstbusiness.
I can remember I rode my bikedown there with my backpack and
it was downtown Des Moines, andI walked into the business and I
(03:16):
looked around kind of seen whatthey had to offer, and then I
said, hey, do you have a website?
The first thing I said was, hey, do you have a website?
And they said no, we don't havea website.
And I said, do you want to geta website?
And the answer was yes.
And that's kind of how Iapproached it.
And so once they say yes, theysaid, well, I'm just getting
into web development, I'd loveto be able to build you a
website.
Here's kind of my pricestructure, of what I have to
(03:37):
offer and I can have you awebsite up and running an X
amount of time.
Fully expecting, like I'm inhigh school, I'm fully expecting
that they're going to say no,have no trust in me.
But they said yes.
They said yeah, absolutely, welove that.
We've been looking for someonefor a while.
We just don't know who to gowith.
And you sound very professional.
That was a confident boost.
If you think back, think back atime that you had a confident
(04:01):
boost.
That was mine, right there.
It was a confident boost that,hey, I've seen professionals.
So even when it's an ugly logo,I've seen professionals.
So I actually took on thatclient and I made a website for
him.
I went above and beyond becauseI wanted to make sure that I
wowed them.
And once I did that and I had akind of a portfolio, I started
building that portfolio out andpeople loved it and a lot of my
(04:25):
business clients loved itbecause there was someone out
there that could do what theycould do.
Now it was way undercharging.
I completely undervalued myselfand my work.
I mean I was charging $500 forthese websites.
That would sometimes take me 40hours just to complete, but at
the time in high school it wasgood money and it was money that
made me feel accomplished, thatI knew what I was doing and it
helped me kind of pave the wayto my next entrepreneurship
(04:48):
journey.
But I would say what I learnedthe most from that is, for one
you need to make sure thatyou're asking for the sales,
you're asking the client.
Hey, can I do this for you?
It doesn't hurt.
I got told no tons of times.
I can remember I got told no orgot shunned off and, pretty
sure, laughed at by a few people.
But I didn't care.
(05:09):
I really didn't care because Iknew I had something valuable to
offer.
And if they didn't want it,I'll move on to someone that
could see the value and that wasimportant.
So that was kind of my firstjourney.
And then I moved up to DesMoines, iowa, and I worked for
Radio Shack inside of TargetMobile and that's where I
learned a lot of my salestactics and sales techniques is
(05:29):
I wasn't the greatestsalesperson, I wasn't excellent
at closing deals and I wasalmost shy sometimes to talk to
people, and so I was able toovercome a lot of that through
coaching there.
And that's really what Iremember is I first time I was
there and I had to sellsomething, I was a little
nervous.
I was like what if they say no?
And then I remember back I waslike, well, people said no from
(05:51):
my websites.
I didn't care.
Why is this any difference?
And that kind of gave me thatpush.
And there was a districtmanager named Tyler Bloomer at
the time and he actually taughtme a lot.
There is a lot about sales andkind of how to overcome
objections and what objectionsare, and so he helped me a lot
with that.
And every single person that Ihave had in every single
(06:13):
business or every single jobI've always looked at who is my
mentor and everything they'vesaid.
I've always taken a heart andevery single person tell me, hey
, you need to put your ego aside.
I've had someone tell me, hey,you need to be humble.
And every single time I've beentold something, I evaluate it.
I look at myself and say, hey,is there something I could be
(06:34):
doing differently?
How can I improve as a person?
How can I improve as a leader?
I think that's one of thebiggest things that I take from
every single business and everysingle journey.
So, being in high school doingweb development, my secondary
job was being a lifeguard andteaching swimming lessons, which
(06:55):
I absolutely love because Ilove helping people.
So, being able to see theprogress from the kids and
coming into those swimminglessons and then seeing them
struggle and then not, and thenat the very end of swimming
lessons, being able to swim theentire length of the pool, that
felt accomplished.
That felt accomplishing to me.
Like I can't tell you howaccomplished I felt when I could
(07:16):
see these kids come in and theywere struggling, but then at
the end of the day or end of theswimming lessons, they were
being able to swim all the wayto the end of the pool.
It was amazing and I realizedthat I loved helping people.
That's just what I love to do.
So, moving in to Des Moines,iowa, I actually opened up my
own business called Mobile Spot,and I grew that pretty quickly,
(07:38):
with a lot of mistakes, and wetalked a lot about my mistakes
and we'll talk more about mymistakes on another episode.
But I made a lot of mistakesand I got to a point in my
business where it was runningwithout me.
I didn't have to be there allthe time and things were going
smooth and I wanted to be ableto show other business owners
(07:59):
that it is possible to trustyour team, it's possible to let
your staff handle scenarios thatmight come up and you can have
them do all of this without youhaving to be there.
And it actually helps grow youas a leader and helps grow your
company, because your team isgoing to feel more empowered,
they're going to feel more likethey can handle it and that they
(08:20):
don't need someone toconstantly watch over them.
It was never that micromanager.
I wasn't going to micromanage,so I was never that person.
But when I got to that pointagain, I made a lot of mistakes
and I learned from every singleone of my mistakes, and I
continued to make mistakes today.
I think it's part of business.
It is part of business.
(08:41):
It's part of life.
You're going to make mistakes,but the most important thing
about those mistakes is learningfrom them and overcoming them.
And so running MobileSpot hastaught me a whole lot about why
I wanted to do business coachingand consulting, and it was
because I love helping people.
My MobileSpot store we repairdevices and I love repairing
devices and helping people.
(09:01):
They bring in something broken,I can show them, I fix it and
they're like wow, this isamazing, thank you so much for
helping me out.
And I knew I loved helpingpeople.
I got to a point where I couldwalk into another business, look
around and see things thatneeded to be improved, and I
wanted to be able to help thatbusiness and help that owner
improve those little things thatwould make a big difference,
(09:23):
whether it be in the culture ofthe business or whether it be
directly related to sales.
I wanted them to be able to seethat I could help them out.
That's really what drove me towanting to be a business
consultant and a business coach.
And then, as far as thecoaching side, I wouldn't be
where I am today without abusiness coach and I didn't know
(09:45):
how important it was to haveone until I hired one.
But it really comes down tothey're there for you, for your
mindset.
They're there for you when youfeel like you can't make it.
They're there to tell you thatyou can.
They're always going to be inyour corner, rooting for you and
wanting you to succeed.
And that is just so powerfulHaving someone there that you
(10:09):
know will never let you down,that will always be encouraging
you and that will always berooting for your success.
That was so important to me.
So that's a little journey intomy background, kind of why I
became a business coach andbusiness consultant, and we'll
talk a lot about those mistakeson some upcoming episodes of the
by Time Podcast and whymistakes aren't necessarily a
(10:32):
bad thing.
Thank you so much for listeningtoday.
I really do appreciate you all.
Please make sure to follow meat JacobKMead on all the socials
and until next time.
Thanks for listening to today'sepisode.
My name is JacobKMead and untilnext time.
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