132 - Pod is Back, Where We've Been, and What's Next

Hello and welcome to the making it in Asheville podcast. This is your friendly neighborhood podcast, where each week we sit down with Asheville based business owners, entrepreneurs, artists, creatives, community leaders, and ask them what they are making and how they are making it in Asheville. And I'm your host, Tony Bertaccio. And I must say, it is good to be back. And so, this episode is a mini episode. Need to shake the dust and let you know what's been going on in my world. And so, lots and lots and lots of changes since we last heard each other, or I last put out a podcast episode, at the very least. And I think it's only fair that you get some insight into what all that was and what all happened and highs and lows, and hold on to your seatbelts. And admittedly, there might be worth saying trigger warning. I'm starting with some sad stuff. The last time I was consistent publishing the podcast, my wife and I were expecting baby number two. We made it to the second trimester, and we lost baby. And I stopped doing most everything, including this podcast. Grief is a beautiful, terrible thing. I look forward to future episodes where we can unpack some of the lessons and some of the resources that presented themselves as we started talking about our experience. But that's not this episode. And so the point is, podcast stopped, had some level of reprioritization. What is important to me? What do I care about? What am I trying to do? And my assessment was that it's time to start playing bigger. And what did that look like for me? Well, I said, well, what is the highest and most, you know, value actions that I could be taking in my life? And what it looked like was, you know, I have this business community. What's the most valuable thing I can offer these business owners? And what popped into my head was some level of service around finding homes, finding spaces, finding brick and mortar in and around Asheville. I think that there's an opportunity to create value in Asheville from the inside out by focusing on the best businesses in town and helping them not just survive. You know, every week, I feel every couple days, I hear about businesses shutting in Asheville, but thrive. And so one of the ways I thought to do that was in commercial real estate. And so I spent the first month of the year head down, getting a real estate license. I am now a licensed real estate agent and realtor in North Carolina, and I joined a really exciting, small, young brokerage called Elevate Asheville. At some point, I'll tell you all about that. And I've already worked on a couple commercial real estate deals, which gives me so much life. It is one of the ways that I see myself showing up in the future and creating massive amounts of value for not just individuals and their businesses, but the community at large. And that is directionally where I'm heading. As I began to focus on some of these bigger games, I started to take some harder swings, and I look forward to telling you all about those as well. But at the highest level, looking at with partners, buying businesses, buying commercial real estate, buying commercial properties, and orchestrating really complex and exciting deals that captivated me, that made me so excited and so inspired. And one of the values I brought to the teams that were know attempting to pull these transactions off was that, in theory, I have this community, you the listener, who at any moment, I could activate and just create demand at these businesses or in these locations, in these buildings. And so it became clear at some point in this process that I was out of alignment because the podcast wasn't happening. And I thought that there was some value that I'd add by way of creating this podcast and having an incredible Asheville based community of largely entrepreneurs, but definitely folks who love the entrepreneurs and the business owners, artists in this community. Then these big swings, we didn't really make the level of contact on the ball that you would want to make. And so another lesson showed up in this first half of the year, and that was a lesson about expected value. And I get into expected value a lot in a bunch of different episodes in the past, but expected value is at its highest level is a mathematical calculation of. Of the possible outcome multiplied by the likelihood of its outcome. And you could put some other variables in there, but that at its highest level, is the possibility of the outcome. Upside times its likelihood. And with these deals, they were equity based. They were assets. Looking at hard assets, the upside is huge. The possible value creation is huge. Expected value, you know, times it by a low likelihood. That it happens is still good. It's a great choice, it's a great time investment, if it hits. The reality was they weren't hitting. And I became needy. I became. Now I transitioned from wanting to do cool things to needing stuff to happen. And so in the first six months of the year to fund these exciting opportunities, we started pulling on investments, we started pulling on savings. And it's a hard thing watching accounts shrink. And it underlined something I already knew to be true and just needed to be reminded, I guess. And that truth is that wealth, as an experience, as an experienced feeling is a cash flow equation. It's not a matter of balance sheet. My wife and I are blessed. We are still very asset richest, but no doubt about it, the first half of this year our cash flow was all out of whack. And so with that, after the final straw of big, exciting, complex deal fell through, I got busy being who I say I am and that is someone who creates massive value for the communities that I participate in. And so I have this. If you're watching on YouTube, I have a document, it's in front of me every day. And it says I share my abundance via world class content that supports small business owners in Asheville and beyond in a style that is uniquely and authentically my own, so that my cup continues to overflow. And I wasn't living into that. And it had created enough friction that I knew something needed to change. And what changed is I'm now executing a strategy and playbook that I've helped others implement. I just hadn't done it on my own since about 15 years ago when I was in my early twenties and first fell in love with online business and online marketing and the idea of like the solopreneur info marketer. The issue then was the content I wanted to put out was about life and business and it didn't feel authentic or I had work to do on my, on my, let's say, self respect or how I thought I presented, because it didn't seem right that a 23 year old, 24 year old could talk about life. Maybe I could talk about SEO, but not how to find calm and balance in a chaotic world. Because what do I know? I'm not married, I didn't have kids, had been paying rent for five years. What could you possibly know? Punk kid, I thought to myself. And so I have some gray hairs now and I've lived it and I've felt the crunch of cash flow, not doing what you want it to, having a marriage and a wife and mortgage payments and needing, or feeling a sense of needing something to work. And so with that, I feel exceptionally confident and capable and like the time is now to share these truths that I've uncovered over the years about what it is to be a complete, a whole, a fully realized entrepreneur. And I use that term in this context very loosely. It's not how I normally use it. Entrepreneur in this context is someone who's in charge of their own earning potential and has the ability to make investments in their future. So that's artist, that's maker, that's freelancer, that is small business owner, and it's entrepreneur. Entrepreneur. I would argue the correct definition is someone who's building a business that they intend to sell, building a business with a focus on shareholder value creation. Most people that I've interviewed, most folks that exist in Asheville, that would fly a flag that says entrepreneur are probably more likely small business owners or artists. And that's absolutely beautiful. It's just, I know that words matter and defining terms matter. And so about two weeks ago, I launched a or I started speaking about a program that I will be building. And that program is called the entire entrepreneur system. It is a system that I've used at the best parts of my work and professional life. This system focuses on three main things. One is creating profitability and meaningful cash flow. The other is leveraging operating system, a structure, a repeatable approach to getting stuff done, to doing work. And finally, this critical part that is missed, almost always when listening to folks talk about business things, is the hard work that is required to improve our sense of self, our identities. And so the way that I approach those three things is with what I call the banana stand strategy, which is a playful, tongue in cheek reference to arrested development, which just says, there's always money in the banana stand. Your banana stand is not my banana stand. But the truth is, there's money in your banana stand. And so, understanding what that means and where to look is critically important in every business. And so we need to make it playful, make it fun, and capture welcome the money that is hiding in your banana sand into your life. But that requires work. What is the work? What work should we be doing? How does it look? What does it go like? I call that the entire entrepreneur operating system. And so, rather than trying to plug or tape a bunch of different disparate systems into each other, we're carrying around a phone book, we're carrying around a Rolodex, we're calling around a calendar, we're carrying around a big landlines phone. We need an OS, we need our own version of the iPhone that defines the context with which all of those things will now interact and how we show up in the world. And when we operate from an operating system, there's consistency. And the compounding benefits of consistency begin to show up in our life. And then listed last, but arguably most important, is this identity change that is required to take the next step in who we are and what we're being. And so I call that the authored identity framework. It is critically important that we do the work. It is critically important that in order to do the work, we need to be the type of person who does it. And so how does that shift come? Does it come first? Does it come second? Answer is often both. But there needs to be some sort of forcing function, some sort of activating energy that makes us take the first step. In my own world, it was, you know, watching our accounts shrink each month and having weekly, we have weekly team meetings, my wife and I, both one for finances and one we call the board meeting, where we look at the calendar, our finance meetings. We were looking the numbers, you know, square in the face, so to speak. And it wasn't, you know, a surprise. We weren't avoiding awareness of a thing we were looking at square in the eyes. And at a certain point, the reality got real enough that I said, okay, ping, I'm in action. And I think that I've done as much personal development, self work, identity work, mindfulness as most anybody who's been obsessed with personal development for a decade plus. And, you know, though I was calm, though I am wildly optimistic and believe in my capacity. We named the podcast making it in Asheville. After all, we knew we were going to make it. Um, there still was the next step that needed to be taken. I needed to level up again. I needed to change my identity. And so that's where we're at. That's the update this community, the entire entrepreneur system, is launching with a vip case study cohort. All those words mean things because words mean things. So the cohort is getting people to go through the program at the same time because no one likes to be on an empty dance floor. So I set a goal of ten folks in this first cohort felt like a stretch. I would have been cool with three to five. And at the time of recording, nine committed VIpk study cohort participants, which is exciting. We start Monday, July 15, that's next Monday. At the time of publishing, case study cohort had a very strenuous and long onboarding process and assessment process where spent about 90 minutes with each participant and folks who made it to that stage to qualify one another to see if we were going to be good fits, to see if there was alignment. And what I care most about at this stage is commitment level. I care about value creation for the participants and not value capture in my own world because with committed folks in this first cohort, I will have incredible case studies and testimonials to then use to grow this thing if it feels right. And I suspect that it will. So, cohort case study and then vip is in as per my rapid revenue roadmap and my banana stand system, I have not built anything. I've not spent months toiling away on some coursera kajabi program. I am making a compelling offer of high value and seeing if it resonates. And it has. And so this first crew, knowing that nothing, quote unquote nothing exists, is gonna get a lot more one on one coaching and support from me through this. It's a twelve week program and I'm over the moon. I'm ecstatic. I can't wait to tell you more about it and start sharing some of the stories of the folks inside it. But that's the end of this episode of the making it in Asheville podcast. Check out makingitanasheville.com. making it creative is the home to my work now and so on. Makingitcreative.com you'll see coaching consulting from me. You'll see some links on the entire entrepreneur community making it in Asheville, still the home for all things podcast. And if you have any questions, you, I hope, know how to find me. Making it inashville.com comma making it creative.com making it in asheville on Instagram, Tony Ubertaccio in the world and on LinkedIn. And with that, be well and we'll talk soon.