135 - The Value V (Triangle)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the making it in Asheville podcast. This is your friendly neighborhood podcast, where most weeks we sit down with an Asheville based small business owner, entrepreneur, artist, community leader, and we ask them what they are making in Asheville and how they are making it in Asheville. And this week, it's just me, Tony Hubert, your host, episode 135. Because I feel like there's still just a little bit more catching up to do and a little bit more, I hope, value to be delivered in bringing you up to speed. Where are we now? What's going on with making it in Nashville, making it creative, if you've ever heard of the business behind the business, and in doing that, it's, you know, gonna, I think, reveal more about my thinking, more about what's going on right now in our world and what will be coming down the pike more and more consistently. So interviews are imminent. Please trust that it will not just be me forever. I am just trying to get everyone back up to speed, get you some clarity as to what's going on here and what value looks like, you know, from me to you. And so, in a past episode from 2024, one of the things I try to underline is just, like, how my goal is to be more valuable than ever to you and to Asheville generally. And so in sitting with that and focusing on that, I decided to take some of my own medicine. So if you'll indulge me, I'd like to quickly give you a little bit of, like, down memory lane as to where making it in Asheville came from and what all's going on today. But, like, I'm going to get you up to speed. Sparknotes version. I'll just flag if you're listening on a podcast player. Fantastic. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm going to give some visual aids, hopefully make it a little bit more compelling. But 2019, my wife, now at the time fiance, and I were moving to Asheville. We had no real clear idea as to what we were going to do to make it in Asheville. But if I have anything, it's a irrational level of optimism and positivity. And so I knew we would make it in Nashville. I knew we'd figure this thing out. And our shared histories, to me, pointed to, let's just start our own marketing thing. Sarah, at the time was, you know, leading national content marketing at this incredible italian supermarket chain, but so much more than that. Called Eataly, they have restaurants, they have all sorts of incredible stuff going on, and she was crushing it. And marketing for them. And I had a background in technology, sales and sales generally, but online business building and online coaching at a very young age. Before that, my background was sales marketing with less content focused, more conversion focused. And so we thought it. So, you know, I kind of convinced her, let's do it ourselves, and maybe we can tell the story of trying to make it in Asheville. So the very first version of the podcast was this, like, we're going to try and make it in Nashville. It quickly evolved and I think, improved into this idea of, like, let's tell the stories of people who are making it in Nashville. But what I'm visualizing now is that we had this thing which was making it in Asheville, m I I a, which acted as this, you know, top of funnel. It acted as this, hey, we exist. And then behind the podcast was like, oh, look at this. Looks like a slice of watermelon seeds. Being like, these individual conversations that we would have rarely with podcast guests, but often with friends of guests, or often because the podcast existed, we were in the mix, we were having conversations. We treated the podcast like it was our first marketing client and really kind of focused on brand building inside of making it in Asheville. And it worked. You know, we arrived just before the pandemic, and by the time, you know, the world had shut down, we were in a position where we could, like, graciously, I'd say, allow contracts to pause or cancel because there was enough abundance in our world that doing the right thing by our clients made perfect sense. The issue, if there was one, and I think that there was, was that each and every, like, individual contract that we had, and we called the thing kind of behind the thing, making it creative. So this creative agency, this marketing consulting thing that was very service focused each and every time. It was a unique deliverable. It was a unique sales process. It was a unique. Everything about it was a one of one. It was custom built for the client. And so we did things like help the chop shop transition from a website that was mostly just like a business card into the entire core of how it survived in some ways, through the pandemic, which was this not perfect online ordering system. And it was incredible. Before that, we were doing, we helped them kind of relaunch this education program and level things up and make it really beautiful, and added a bunch of effectively free revenue into their business. We helped all sorts of businesses with things like ranging from copywriting to improving websites to social media strategy and social media execution. But each and every one was unique. We worked with an international brand, an italian brand, to help them bring their business into the United States and focused on creating a ton of media for them. Right? So all of it was so freaking different that it was hard, and we added contractors and we added expenses to, like, solve for all these problems that were unique and necessarily not repeatable. And so that's what making it in Asheville and making it creative was from, like, 2019 to about 20, if it's 2024, 2023, some version of that today. Right. We still have this podcast. The podcast has evolved. So it started, and you'd have, you know, Sarah and Tony, husband and wife. And today it's just me at the podcast. Today, Sarah is running her own business. It's been interviewed on the podcast, I think, twice now, called QB, like quarterback Cucina, like the italian word for kitchen. And she's. I mean, it's absolutely incredible. She's importing italian pasta wares, kitchen tools, and I, and pasta making tools. And she has this incredible community of folks who just absolutely adore the brand and her, and love making italian food pasta specifically, doing an incredible job. Awesome. Making it in Asheville is now pretty much just me. And in the past, depending on what production looked like, we had contractors. John Dupree is now running Parkway Studios. Got to check that out. And so it's simplified and simple is good. Right. So where we are today is there's about. I'm going to go so far as to say there are four things going on. Okay. One is this podcast. We're going to go back to the bread and butter, interviewing business owners, community leaders, uncovering these, you know, powerful stories of creation here in town. But there's going to be some slight modification, some focus, say focus for moving forward. And that focus is going to be, one, people starting businesses, two, people scaling businesses, three, people shutting down businesses, people selling slash buying. I think that these are very important inflection points in the lifecycle of businesses. I think that each of them are so powerful. And so each interview is really going to focus on the start. It's going to focus on efforts to grow, refine, improve, and then maybe not, you know, definitely not every conversation, but I want to focus a little bit on this. On this, oh, no moment where, like, I just. I'm floored. It's been five years in Asheville, more than five years at these, you know, businesses that seem like, I don't want to say critical, but, like, so important to the community, seemingly, like, shut, surprisingly, and overnight. And I think that if I sat with who it is that I want to be and what value I want to create in the community is that. I would love that before a business, or at the moment a business goes, oh, no, things are bad. Like somehow or another, like I'm called. And it's not that I think I can fix anything right now, but I want to help. And so this, I want to. I want to hear more about this, this experience of shutting down a business in Asheville, making it or not making it in Asheville, because I would love to save more businesses in the future, more any businesses in the future. And then this last bit is on the idea of selling and buying businesses. I think that we're due to see a massive, I don't know, tie change or something, guard change in primarily service based businesses across the country. As demographics change and getting smarter on selling and or buying businesses, I think is going to be a net benefit for everyone who cares about small business and cares about, like, maintaining in some ways, the integrity of a small town slash big town city. So these two, you know, selling slash shutting down or buying, salvaging, saving, right. All I like to use alliterations when I can, starting scaling, salvaging, saving, that's where my mind's gonna go. And that's what making it in Asheville is gonna be about. And we're gonna continue to beat the drum as consistently as possible moving forward. So, one, we have making it in Asheville, the second thing that we have is making it creative. Making it creative still exists, is alive and well, and is stronger and better, honestly than ever. More effective, more efficient than ever. Making it creative is having well, is now making. It's simplified. It has two promises. One is biz growth, two is expansive life. Right? So there's two things that I am obsessed with. One is business, and the other is like quality of life. And so those are the two things that making it creative is focused on right now. Business growth, you can call the goal line. What quantifiable successes are we experiencing? Expansive life is soul line. Like, how core, qualified, if quantified, is business stuff, how qualified, what's the quality of our experience in the day to day? And I'm delivering on those values in two ways. One is consulting and the other is coaching. Now, what I'll flag here is that the two are best when they are done together. The biggest realization, two is better than one. So, the biggest realization that I've found over the years, and especially in the last five, in doing marketing and consulting business stuff, is that rarely is the problem just tactical, just like what to do. Almost always there's like some very real blockers in the lives, the minds, the vision of the leader that if worked on, would create far more value than just like rebranding or, you know, being more consistent on social media, whatever low hanging solution to misunderstood problem that you can fill in the blank. But like almost always, if coaching were baked in to the consulting, there would be more growth, faster growth, better growth. It wouldn't feel as effortful or need to. And so the priority really at making it creative right now is coaching. And what's been awesome is that really since planting the flag quietly earlier in 2024, you know, making it creative is feeling good. The third thing making it creative is offering to the world is these two for one, as a community. So earlier, and we've talked about it in the last couple of episodes, in July, I launched the entire entrepreneur system as a vip case study cohort and absolutely obsessed. I think that the, the wins that are showing up at, you know, the one month mark are just so exciting that this is going to be a priority for me. This is going to be like the focus, I think, moving forward. I think this has the ability to impact the most people here in Asheville and, you know, and beyond. But what this entire entrepreneur community promises is, you know, some level of adjusting who we are being. So I call it the authored identity framework. And so we do work on the leader, on the person that you are. Two, we look at what you are doing. So on a day to day, week to week, month to month, how are we prioritizing all the possible projects and all the possible work? We are looking at the actions and increasing not just productivity, but effectiveness with systems, with playbooks, and with the realization that everyone is different, so there will be no square peg shoehorning into round holes. And then the number three is, I call it earning. Having is, you know, being, doing, having. In this particular community, earning is really a focus. And so in the third area we're paying attention to, we're talking about increasing the surface area of our luck, specifically money luck, by improving where and how we are paying attention to targets and growth inside the business and codifying all of these systems, building a very clear path that touches on all of these things and lines up the metaphor like, is dominoes sequentially, such that momentum is inevitable. And it, and the momentum creates really just like a lot of forward inertia for growth and change. This community is gonna be, you know, I'm gonna say my number one, this is it. This is really the focus for me moving forward for the foreseeable future, because as I map the possibilities of effects, this is the biggest value to the most amount of people. So we have number two. So, number one, the four things that are going on is making it in Asheville. Number two is making it creative. Number three is the entire entrepreneur, is what it's called entire entrepreneur. And then number four are these two things that have really. One is brand new. So this is number four, brand new is a real estate broker license. And so my focus is going to be on commercial, commercial real estate and helping business owners find their physical home. You will not hear me pitching homes or trying to help people necessarily buy homes. But commercial real estate, I think, is this really meaningful opportunity to create value here in Asheville for so many reasons. I think that the types of folks who are almost by definition, most invested in the overall growth and sustainability of this community are going to be people who are building businesses and employing people here locally. And so I want to serve those people however possible. One of the ways to create value is in, you know, tenant management or partnering with a building owner to find a great tenant. I just, I love this. So leasing or buying commercial real estate, both are very exciting. And the other is this business that I've had kind of under cover for a while, which is one source technology brokers. And what I offer through Onesource is just matchmaking on technology solutions for businesses. And so, like, a mortgage broker will help you shop for a mortgage that fits for you. A technology broker will help you assess all of the possible tech solutions available. And so this isn't a great fit for like, a solopreneur, mostly out of the box. Tech solutions are going to be great. But like, once you're looking at commercial property, you need to start running Internet to your building or fiber. Once you need to start looking at phone systems, once you need to start looking at slightly more complex than normal technology solutions. Well, it makes sense to have someone who's in your pocket is going to help you understand the landscape, potentially audit different technologies, act as a buffer between you and that. And so one source technology brokers is this like, side thing that most people don't need to care about, but it's an option. So if we were to rebuild that triangle from before we have making it in Asheville represents this top of the funnel, most exposure, most awareness, most engagement is going to be happening there. Then there's this, you know, broker broker layer, which is real estate and tech. Then there's this entire entrepreneur coach, consultant, community, and then finally coaching. And what you might notice is that finally, after five years, there's a very, I would argue, logical progression of value that's been created inside this, making it in Asheville, making it creative ecosystem, where I can now clearly point at, if you're here, here are ways that you can receive value from me. These are all the ways that I can be of service to you. As opposed to early days where you'd arrive in making it in Asheville, you'd hear that it exists and potentially never realize that there's a marketing business behind it that could be of service to you. And then even if you did, it was, you know, this one off, one by one by one by one process. And here it's theoretically a lot more intuitive, a lot more, I'll argue, productized and a lot easier to become a customer or to capture value from me. I'll visualize it one other way. And I, you know, I'm going to call it some version or another of like, Pong, where it doesn't matter where you are, but like, before you know that we exist, you're out there. Once you realize that we exist, we have a bunch of ways now to kind of keep you in our world and be of use. One is going to be. Right. So, making it in Asheville. Right. So the library of all of the episodes that we've ever put out, our website, our content, you likely break this plane of like, before you know who we are to now you know who we are by touching some individual piece of content and realizing that there's a lot more to explore from there. There's going to be, and not yet an opportunity. Well, I'll just say live. So the first thing, lowest step to engage is going to be like these in person events. So, in person or live. Generally, mixers would be the first way to engage with us, to take a step and know who we are. This next concept is going to be like one off trainings doesn't exist yet, but the next step would be these like one off events, workshops, trainings. In the past, we've done like a podcasting workshop, but the next step would be just this one time thing. So when you are a one time participant in my world, I would call that a customer. The next level is going to be the entire entrepreneur community and above it, coaching. Right? So now there's this, like, thing where if you're in our world, one way or another, you're gonna know what the next step is and get kind of ponged between and then up here we have broker. So we have this ability that you, you don't need to go further down this making it a Nashville value proposition to participate in broker of tech or commercial real estate. And all of a sudden there's like a, I don't know, a space fighter pong thing, where once you enter into the world of making it in Asheville, it should become clearer and clearer how to capture value from us and how to transition from a, you know, fan or observer to a customer and then a client. Clients, you know, have recurring revenue. And I'll say customer, client, both are possible on the broker side, but just another way to visualize what all is going on here and making it in Asheville, making it creative. This way of building out the value in a business is part of what we do inside of the making it, inside of making it an actual product. Calling the entire entrepreneur, build out a coherent, I'll say, life cycle of a customer. And what I'll, what I'll point at, for those of you on YouTube, is that the place that you start when building out a system like this is not necessarily at the easy stuff or the free stuff, or the least expensive stuff, like hosting an event or making a one off training. The place that you start is in the high value stuff, the highest value stuff. Next week, in the entire entrepreneur community, we're going through this part of what I call the rapid revenue roadmap. This type of system, whether it's the triangle funnel, so to speak, of increasing value, is possible in every single type of business. To create. There are many ways to assess and audit how valuable you're being to your ideal customer and how clear you're making it that value exists or is available to them. And so I wanted to talk you through what the world looks like today at making it in Asheville. Talk, b r o K e r talk about the four ways that we are focusing on value creation for the community. First, through making it in Asheville and the free content and stories that we're going to share there. Second is through coaching, consulting and making it creative, which is deprioritized behind really sharing the stories, the successes, the excitement and the relative affordability. Value inside of the entire entrepreneur system and its community. And then just flagging that to anyone inside or outside of this, making it a Nashville broker, making it a Nashville value triangle, is that there's ability to add value by way of being a technology or commercial real estate broker. And it's a lot, but it's simple. I am the least busy I've been in five years. I'm creating the most value I would argue that I've created in five years and following a process like this should make things feel lighter in your business. If you have any questions, Holler Comment Dm we are making it in asheville on Instagram. Making it in asheville.com online. You can find us everywhere. Making it creative also easy to find. Making it creative or making it in Asheville. You can access me via email. Last is entire entrepreneur.com is a redirect right now, but also easy to find. Until next time, take care. I'll see you soon.