What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Will Lucas’ New Year Reset

and Black Tech, Green Money. What we're trying to do here is give you insights knowledge on wealth creation and this is particularly for people who are either building or leveraging technology for their wealth and legacy. And so this podcast, this particular episode is going to be a little bit more about what's been going on with me in twenty twenty four and what I plan for twenty twenty five.

What we tend to do is expect unintentionally. Often I think, I don't think it's you know, something that we do just maliciously. But what we think, what we tend to do is assume that because the year has changed, that things are just different. And I had this post that I put up on I think at my threads a couple of days ago. So just because it's a new year, if you don't change the operations the way your habits

work at et cetera. Then your twenty twenty five will be actually worse than you're twenty twenty four, and that's because the landscape around you is changing. So one of the biggest lessons I learned in business was, like, there is no stasis, Like there is no flat. What we assume is flat is just because the numbers may be the same as they were last year. You know, maybe we didn't grow, we didn't grow as much as we could ever should have, or maybe we're down just slightly.

All of those things mean you're down because the market is continuing to progress, and you being flat means that everything else is changing around you and going in a positive direction while you're stuck where you were. So if you have not taken the initiative and responsibility of changing your habits and putting systems in place, changing your operations, then things will be what they were last year, and

that means that you will be increasingly behind. And so I've already started to feel and then it's a wee a weekend. I've already started to feel the pressure of twenty twenty five and the things that are in front of me, the things that are on my plate, what happened to me in twenty twenty four was by the end of the year September October was on fumes, like legit running on fumes, and it's my own fault. I will talk more about that. Like I have a few businesses,

toll Houses. One toll Houses a private social club that is designed for the city d well and creative and entrepreneurial class. And so it's in my hometown of toled Ohio. We're sitting right on the water. Water's right outside you know where I am right now because my Creatio office. Creatio is my market company. That office is right here inside Toehouse in the front of the building. So toe House is twenty five thousand square feet that we own. Here.

There's five bars, there's five lounges. There's a coffee house here. There's a jazz club. Jazz and blues is what we're doing there. There's a cigar lounge in there, there's a pub in the back. There's a coworking space with two boardrooms, two conference rooms, a work lounge, there's a private dining area. All of these different amenities that we offer to our members and somebody. These areas are open to the public, like the coffee house and the jazz club, but everything

else is for members and their guests. So that's Toll House. Then Creatio is a marketing, technology and production agency, so we do everything from video production, website development, communication, strategy design,

and more out of Creatio. And that business is a business I've been running since two thousand and seven, and so Creatio and my team is actually next door in the office next to me, and so that team is a growing team, and we are really working to, particularly for the region that we're in, is help companies and organizations reach and engage multicultural and diverse audiences. So we specifically work with not intentionally, but specifically. Our customers just

tend to be governments, nonprofits, school systems, et cetera. Because they are trying to reach and engage multicultural and diverse audiences. We do other things. Those just tend to be the people who have us on retainer. Then beyond that, there's four other four total real estate properties that we own right on the same strip. So I have this building that I'm in right now, which is the Toll House

and Creati operation. The next door is a building that we bought earlier in twenty twenty four, So that's another ten thousand square feet. Then about two blocks down on this same street water there's two more buildings that I bought, I want to say, in twenty twenty three, and in twenty twenty two we bought two other buildings. In total, there's sixty thousand square feet that we have right in this same stretch, which is the historic Vistula District in Toledo.

And so I'm committed to this area number one because I saw the most opportunity here and the most white space for getting my ideas out into the world. Like I'm not in a real estate holder from the perspective of I'm trying to lease out space. I have enough ideas of my own and I'm an operator, and so I am interested in starting my own operations out of

these properties. Now that that doesn't mean like forever, I won't lease out or rent out space, but I'm working on getting my operations going for the business ideas that are very very quickly coming into fruition. So toll House being the first physical footprinted business that mattered, I guess for square footage like Creatio, we didn't don't necessarily need a place where customers could come but we do intend to have more space for creatives to be able to produce.

And so obviously I do a podcast. I've been podcasting for almost a decade, if not a decade, and there are many people in our community who want to get into podcasting, video and or audio, and what we're doing is creating space for them to be able to have studios. And so you'll see more of that kind of thing come up if you're following along in my business journey. But the point in telling you all these things, and there's also other things, like there's boards I sit on.

I just actually recently turned off of the University of Toledo Board of Trustees. I was the chair to board up until a couple of months ago. And I'm currently vice chair of the Casino Control Commission for the State of Ohio, and I will turn off of that board in very short order, just a couple of months. And so what's important to me is that I'm doing things that feed the mission. And so my life's mission is to create content and opportunities that helps black people realize

entrepreneurial success beyond their wildness dreams. So everything I do is intended to do that. What happens is because I'm involved in so many things and I have a family. Because I have so many things going on, I can get bogged down with just a to do list. The to do list drives my day. My calendar and my to do list drive my day. And it's not a

great way to live. It is a way to live, but the businesses end up unintentionally driving me, or at least my intention is not for them to drive me, but they end up driving me because I'm just doing so many things. And mind you, I've been doing this with like a virtual assistant, a remote assistant somebody who used to live in Toledo no longer lives in Toledo, but helps me now remotely. She mostly manages my calendar

and my schedule and projects for the Creatio team. But I have not had an on site assistant in a long time, or assistant that I'm seeing regularly on site in a long time. And part of that's my fault because I don't I have not found what I work well with. And Sada, who's my assistant now, is fantastic, and even though she's remote, there's so much comfort there. She knows what I like, she knows what I don't like.

She knows how I like my schedule to be outlined, she knows when I don't want to take meetings whatever. So she's already aware of my proclivity. Is the things that I like set up in specific ways. But what happens is when you don't have somebody nearby or you know, within arms reach, that things just end up coming to you. And there's like no barrier between me and opportunities. There's to vet these opportunities, because not every opportunity is a

good opportunity, and not every opportunity is for you. But I am the the blessing and like the I don't want to say curse, but like the good and bad thing that I have in equal parts. I am equal part business and creative. And so that's my superpower. And so I am really good at operating and really good at creativity. And so what happens is because I have ideas, I can roll and rock out on those ideas very quickly.

And that's not always a great thing. It is good to be able to move fast, but that doesn't mean you always should move fast, because if you've heard the old adage, you know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

I am learning that and living that in real time because I've put myself in positions that require me to continue to go fast, and I'm paying for that in many ways because I've not always brought people along, and so I've had to learn as an entrepreneur and as a CEO that you know, you can't just always you can't always turn on a dime. It's great to be flexible, and it's great to be agile, but you will burn yourself out if you continue to turn on dimes at

one hundred miles an hour. And so at the end of last year again, you know, September October somewhere around there, which is gassed like even an afro Tech and even I mean actually probably not Afrotech, because I like, I was rested up for afro Tech, but globally just exhausted. And I've learned how to operate exhausted. But it's not good to operate exhausted. Like I'm not bragging. I'm not saying that, yo, this is the way to live grind time. I'm not saying that at all, cause it's not great

to live that way. But I'm coming out of the season of living that way, and that means putting in position and putting in place operations and systems that allow me to have more space in my life. And so if you don't have space, the things that would come to you can't even find an opportunity to get to you, Like, if you don't have space in your life, you will miss out on other things. And so what I found is as it's equally as important to build the operation

as it is to have great ideas. Everybody's got an idea. Everybody's got, you know, things that they believe that they will start as a business. Everybody's got great ideas, even though I'm sure you I'm sure somebody you know has ideas that will never come into being, because it's not just about having the idea. It's about also putting in together the systems and executing on those ideas inappropriate ways.

And I have not always I've always executed, but I have not always executed in appropriate ways, and therefore it's caused strain and stress in areas of my life. And I'm just like, I can't continue to live like this, and so I've been fixing those things, and I dug myself so deep into so many of these respects that it's like now it's an opportunity to come out and coming out of that hole that I've dug so long, for so long that you don't just jump out of the hole. You have to climb out of the hole.

And I've been finding myself with opportunities to climb out of the hole. And so it's been a process and it is a process that I will continue to do for the rest of my life, because as you get one thing going, other things again coming to play. And there are other businesses that will be launching this year that will change the landscape once again. But the important

thing is to not make those same mistakes again. And so I'm looking forward to sharing more about this particular journey, but I want to talk about today how I'm using the things that I've learned over last year, over this past year for my twenty twenty five and so particularly as it relates to me my professional journey and toe housing creatio. So we've been leaning very heavily into AI, as you should be. If you're not, what are you

doing well? Just in some very simple ways and some very in depth ways, But the very simple stuff like we have again a jazz club here at Toehouse and Lucille's Jazz Lounge. So if you look it up onlines, just Lucille's Jazz Lounges dot com. That's my jazz club. And I was because I do podcasting and I do voice stuff, I was doing all the intros for our performers, and so what I would find is I would always be left with a batch of intros to go record,

and that's just another thing to do. So like none of the things that found their way onto my to do list were like super complex things. It was just another thing. And like big problems aren't made always of big issues, like big problems are made of small issues. It's like, you know, when I was growing up, I had learned that, you know, you don't just go from a well running vehicle to needing new rotors, like you go from a well running vehicle to brake pads that

need to be changed. And if you don't fix the brake pads, that becomes a different problem. And if you don't fix that problem, that becomes a different problem, and the problems compound, Like so what could have been a thirty dollars forty dollars fifty dollars fix now is a couple hundred dollars fix or thousands of dollars fixed, depending on what kind of car you got, because you didn't

get the small thing resolved. So the point I'm making in that is what I have found is on my to do list, there's a lot of little things that just need to get done. And that doesn't mean they need to get done by me, though, And that's always been our problem is I've known that other people could probably do this thing, but I knew I could do it faster, and I knew I need to pay somebody else due to so I can just get it done

and be over and done with. And it's not a great way to run a business that you play to grow. And so what happens to too many businesses like ours ours is that we end up having single, you know, one person on the payroll. Some of us don't even have real payroll. We just take money out the business. But for general purposes, most of our businesses don't have more than one employee, and so to house, there's twenty

two people here on staff. And so what I've had to learn how to do is not continue to dig myself in these holes that I had previously dug in other businesses, where I had painted myself in the corners because I was the only person doing things, which means I was the only person who knew how and why we did things certain ways, because all the institutional knowledge was in my head. And so what's been important for me is to allow other people, people and systems technologies

even to take over some of this stuff. So particularly again back to Lucille's. I know that was a long way back to Lucille's, but with Lucille's even I was doing all these voiceovers. So now we're using AI and I'm just typing in, Hey, here's the artists we have, here's our typical intros. Create these voiceovers. So now I use eleven Labs for this. So eleven Labs just creates all of our voiceovers for all of these shows, and so it doesn't need to be my voice that's introducing

people to these acts who perform at Lucille. So that's one way that we're using these technologies to be able to just relieve things from my play, and soon there will be somebody else who just does it and I don't even got to be involved in it anymore. But today it's just me going to the website, inputting the artists and spitting it out, and then I send the

MP three to my guy. Soon again there will be somebody else who says, Okay, there's an act coming up, make sure we have this voiceover for the intro, and I won't even be involved anymore. But again it comes as a process of working myself out of the whole that I dug myself into. How else are we using AI here at Tohouse? So another way we've been using AI here at Toll House is just working on our

events calendar. And so because we have all this member data and data for people who even just visit as guests, we've built this database of interests in, database of profiles, and database of demographics that we can then build programming around. So our two words of the year for twenty twenty five are partnership and program development here at Toll House. So partnership was also our word of the year for

twenty twenty four. And what that means was it wasn't necessarily that we built Toll House to be the sole producers of all of our program I mean, we wanted our members to take the front seat on the types of programs they wanted to see us do. So members became the faces the influencers of the programs that we developed here. For twenty twenty five, we're keeping that same sentiment alive, but we're also adding in professional development because so many of our members, if not a third close

to it, are on corporate memberships. So that means that they come here to work. They come here during the day, they come here to have meetings, they come here to you know as their hybrid or remote office, and so they're getting work done here. And so how about we lean into that and provide them professional development opportunities to where they're hearing a talk, or they're listening to a fireside chat, or they're engaging in a seminar to help

them be better at what it is that they're aiming at. So, whether they're working somewhere or whether they're starting a business, they're going to find the programming that they need here to help them be better. As a matter of fact, I'm doing a talk coming up on prompting for AI that's specific for small businesses. How to prompt AI to help get you the information that you need to grow

your small business. So that's one of the things. We also have other talks on things that are not necessarily just business related, but things about the kind of foods you eat. So there's people in our membership database who are very interested in more holistic foods. But the point is we used AI. We just dumped all this information, all the characteristic information about our members, and you know, we use that to analyze what types of programming might

be of interest to people in this population. And so I've been using a lot of chat sheept's muscle to build out our programming calendar and come up with ideas that otherwise we wouldn't have thought of if I've even done it for Lucille. It's like, one of the interesting things Seals is it's a jazz club. Jazz and blues is what we're doing there. And it's constantly like booking

an act for a show. And we have a fickle market, and so people don't always want to see the artists that you think is fire or that may work in other communities and other markets. Just because they working in the market doesn't mean they're gonna work here in Toledo.

And so I've been using chat GPT just to provide guidance on how I should think about our programming and lou seals our talent roster, and it came up with this idea going back and forth with it of alternative types of shows, and so what we're doing actually is

the show coming up. I think it's in February where we're doing an album show to where there will be an mc R host who will be on stage and members of the audience can bring an album with them, actual vinyl twelve inch vinyl with them or forty five with them of a song that means something to them. They get an opportunity to tell the story of that album or song, and the audience gets an opportunity to enjoy that song alongside them. And so that's an idea

I would not have come up with otherwise. But we were going through this analysis with chat GPT of how to think about our location and that stage differently, like what can we do other than just booking talent on that stage, And through that process came up with this really creative idea of having an album party an album show. So I'm super excited about that one because I have a very big record collection and I never really get an opportunity anymore to share those songs with other people.

And so you might have people over to your house, so you might have you know, maybe you're a DJ who still spins with wax, but just to have these old records that sit up in your grandmother's you know, attic or wherever they are, you know, having an opportunity to pull those out, dust them off, and bring them to a jazz club and blues club and play them for people, and then get an opportunity to tell the story behind why it means so much to you. I

think it's super duper special. On the creatio side, how we're using AI is you know, for number one, very surface level action is to just help us with emails. I want to respond to emails in specific ways. Just train a particular GPT on this is how I respond to emails, will just spit out a response. We use AI a lot for writing scripts, and so we get from clients this is the goal of this particular effort, whether it's a commercial, whether it's a documentary or whatever.

It's often putting together that shot list, the script and all of those things. The creative treatments we're doing a lot of that stuff with chat gpt now writing blog posts for just putting thought leadership, and so I may have ideas on particular things that are happening in the marketplace, things that are happening in our community, things that are happening globally that would be good to distribute on creatios

platforms on social media. And I don't always need to spend an hour or two hours or half an hour writing a blog post when I can put the general ideas down and just work through on Claude writing out a blog post and tailoring it for our audience. And one quick thing is like we use chat chip to do a lot of analysis, and I use Claude to do more writing. And there's a lot of people I've heard that use it the same way. And I really believe that it's more the user interface than it is

like the technical you know, offering. That's just this is my own personal hot take. Because chat GPT you can get really great content written content out of chat gpt also, but the user interface on Claude is so much more aesthetically pleasing to write on. So I think that is you know, even claud I mean, take the alternative approach like Claude you can do really deep analysis, but chatchipt

it looks like an analysis machine. It's kind of like how you know Apple and Microsoft used to be back in the day, Like Apple was for creatives and microsofte for business people. It's like, that's kind of like that, you know, way of a corporate business people, I should say corporate business people like Microsoft and creatives like Apple. But clawod tends to be more leaning because of the user interface. It's a beautiful place to write chat ept

if I'm just doing analysis. Again, it's a great place to provide analysis and insights. We also do voiceover work, you know, so getting those documentaries who need voices using eleven Labs. I use eleven Labs for that. So what am I doing, you know with these businesses pecifically the

real estate? So I talked about we have these four properties on the in the right here in the Pastrulia district, and I've been very intentional about only acquiring properties that are in this same area because I want to own this area, and we're doing a pretty good job towards that goal. We're sixty thousand square feet now and across four buildings and there is a market that we're opening this year. We're doing We're gonna move the cigar lounge out of Toll House and put it in one of

the other buildings and make it publicly accessible. There will be members only areas, but Vistula District, where my businesses are located, is on the outside of downtown, and for our purposes, we need more bodies in the area. And so what's been important for us is to create concepts that just bring more foot traffic, more drive traffic in the area. That helps the whole ecosystem grow, the whole

area grow. And so we're moving the cigar lounge out of Toll House into one of the buildings and it'll be members only area, and then another part of it will be open to the public, will have a bar and air food concept. And then the market, which just followed along on my personal stories. You'll see more about the market to come. But the market. We live in a community that has like a Fresh Time fresh market.

We don't have a whole food I think we're supposed to be geting the Trader Joe's, but there's an opportunity there for us to create more premium offerings, better options for the community. This is not necessarily like a food desert effort to help, you know, dissolve that. I believe that that is a worthwhile effort. I believe that there's people who should be tackling that effort. I am not necessarily personally making that effort to solve a food desert issue.

I am building a business to compete at the highest levels with the whole foods, the Trader Joe's, the fresh markets, the arawines like that's where we are targeted. So I want to build a premium market that is that emphasizes brand, and you'll see more of that in my conversations here on this podcast, my YouTube channel, and my social media,

so follow along for that. I'm in. There's some other concepts. Know, we've been thinking about other wine concepts, bush and shops, small businesses that feed the ecosystem, the local ecosystem where there's gaps in the marketplace. But what's important to me is that there are that I'm taking advantage of these opportunities because these opportunities won't be available forever and there

are real market opportunities. And you'll hear me talk more this year about how we're going to scale these things because as you recognize or you might have thought that these businesses don't necessarily scale, they could if I position in certain ways. But I'm trying to specifically target local opportunities. But there will be software plays that I will talk

more about on this podcast that provides scale globally. So we're building the technology because I'm very adamant on not subscribing to a whole bunch of other software to plug in to help us run our business more efficiently. We're building that software because I have an agency that builds technology. So not only at Creative do we do video production,

website development, we build software. And so we'll see more of that effort pointed in house to where will be completely vertically integrated, where you'll have this private club, this grocery store, this butcher shops and guard lounge, all premium offerings vertically integrated and underpinned by a marketing company. And that's super important to me because we can own the

whole stack and create more opportunities that way. So that's what's happening in my twenty twenty five And what I want to leave you with is kind of how we started is just because it's a new year, and just because we roll the calendar over, your year will not necessarily stay the same. Your year will not necessarily change or be better if you don't change your operations, your habits,

and your daily activities. If you do the same things you did last year, your year will potentially be worse than twenty twenty four because just as you are staying stasis, just because you're not changing, and you know, you might make the same amount of money you did in twenty twenty four that you will make in twenty twenty five, or you might be the same way in twenty twenty five that you did in twenty twenty four. You might, you know, have the same output in twenty twenty five

that you did in twenty twenty four. Well, the market around you is actually growing and getting more efficient and getting richer. So if you're staying flat, everything else is changing around you, which means you are declining. And so while it may look on its face as everything is the same, nothing is the same because the system around you is getting more efficient and richer, there's more wealth

being created, and all of these things. So I want you to spend some time if you have not done it yet mapping out your twenty twenty five Give the first couple of weeks of the year to yourself and really map out what you want this to look like. If you're great, you would have started in the end

of twenty twenty four. But it's not too late to really get a handle on what you want this year to look like for yourself, because I've already noticed there's certain things about the third things that I didn't like about my daily life in twenty twenty four are already starting to creep back into my days, and it's up to me to make sure I extinguish that number one, but get a hold and grasp of the things that need to be operationalized and standardized so that by the

end of twenty twenty five, I'm not again completely gassed out. And so just because it's a new day, just because it's a new year, does not mean that everything is changed. Change the things intentionally and be specific about what you want this year to look like. So that's my word for you. That is the first episode of Black Tech

gree Money for twenty twenty five. It's a new season of the Black Tech gream Money podcast, and so I'm glad you spent this first episode with me just to set the landscape of what we're gonna do this year. So if you enjoy this and you're looking forward to this next season of Black Tech, Green Money, I know Masking, just go ahead and share this episode with somebody, put

something into comments. I really appreciate that like this episode because that just helps the algorithm give it to more people. So if you like this, if you got some value out of it, share with somebody, comment on it, just hit like subscribe, And I appreciate everything you bring to this podcast, every single one of you guys who've been rocking with me for a five seasons so far we're going into our sixth season. From the bottom of my heart, I appreciate it. Let's get to it.