BAIL Yourself Out

The new Bail Yourself Out podcast is hosted by Kandice Whitaker, a successful entrepreneur, and specialist in navigating corporate culture. With a fresh new approach to maximizing optimal career moves - the Bail Yourself Out podcast is where the power lunch and the after-work happy hour intersect for dynamic business discussions in a relaxed atmosphere.

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BAIL Yourself Out

The Profit Playbook

February 02, 2024 • Kandice Whitaker • Season 2 • Episode 6

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Kandice Whitaker: 0:00

Hey everybody. Welcome to the happy hour lounge in the lounge Today, my guest post is the fabulous Jonathan Mentor. Welcome, welcome. Welcome.

Johnathan Mentor: 0:14

Thank you so much, Kandice. I'm so excited to

Kandice Whitaker: 0:16

I'm so excited to have you. I'm going to tell be here with you. everybody where we met. So a couple of months ago, I was a speaker at blackest Tech in Atlanta. And if you are in it, if you get the opportunity next year, you definitely should check it out. It was a wonderful conference with a lot of black and brown people from the seasoned diaspora. So you know, our people giving so much wonderful advice and information. And Jonathan is one of the people that I met, and we just clicked and I was like, Baby, I got to have you on my pod. So much information about making money, but specifically making money for small businesses. And you know, that's what we're all about. So we are all about learning new things. So what do you want our friends to know about you, Jonathan Mentor,

Johnathan Mentor: 1:05

I want them to know that I provoke economic growth and visibility for underrepresented humans, period, full stop. And I measure that in increments of $10 million in revenue, recurring revenue a year per business. Now, there's a distinction for me between a small business and a startup small businesses for me, are your hero businesses, right? Your salons, your gas station, your hardware store your boutiques, I focus on tech startups. And I specifically focus on tech startups that are b2b, although I've done a little bit of b2c. And the reason why I do that Canvas is because, again, let's underline what it is that I actually accomplished, I accomplished provoking economic growth and visibility for underrepresented humans, let's say the words Black, Latino, women, gay, otherwise underrepresented, forgotten. They don't have poverty, they don't have inclusion, there's no diversity in the fields within which they played. And for me, I figured that there's two ways to do that, right. I either become a politician and activist on that confidential, or I just make sure that these human beings get a lot of money. Because people listen to people with money, right? That money buys you influence it buys you buy in, it buys you status. And for me, the

Kandice Whitaker: 2:36

way that the same reason people who believe in Donald Trump still, you know, could be

Johnathan Mentor: 2:41

right. I believe that people listen to people with money. And always, one of the way that people make a lot of it is through technology. It's a multibillion dollar global business that transform societies, right? So if I figure if I could start at the individual community level with underrepresented founders who are starting their tech startup, they're at, you know, maybe a million dollars in revenue, a million dollars in the grand scheme really isn't a lot of money. We were taught to think it is but it's not. But you know, you got 10,000,020 $50 million in revenue, right? And then me, I'm leading a movement, provoking visibility of 10 of those founders, 20 of those founders, 50 of those founders, that's that's a lot of money. That's an ecosystem. That's, that's an economy, right? And that, for me, is what's going to drive real change. And that's what we want, and I selfishly want it for my daughter. So there we go. That is

Kandice Whitaker: 3:35

not selfish. I think as a parent, that's one of the things we all want to see our next generation do a little bit better than us. But question because one of the first things that you mentioned is you consider small businesses like salons, barber shops, gas stations, that sort of thing. Traditionally, in the underrepresented communities, the ones that we both know and love dearly, those are the businesses we usually have. And I know why, right? Because that's usually the things that we have access to be able to do. Right, right. How can a person who maybe has the skills to have a salon or cut hair or even be a plumber? How could they transition into tech,

Johnathan Mentor: 4:17

the first thing that I would say is giving themselves permission, and I'm the perfect prototype for that because I'm a three time college dropout. never graduated college, from Uptown Manhattan, covered in tattoos. I identify as black, brown, gay, all of the things, no resources, no parity, no visibility, no way no role models and nothing. But I gave myself permission. That's number one. After you give yourself permission, then you have to decide if that's something that you really want to do. Just because you love cooking. Or just because you love braiding hair or just because you love music does not necessarily mean you want to dedicate your life to a hobby, right, you can have a hobby, and it can be very enjoyable. You could cook Sunday dinners, you know, but once you stop cooking Sunday dinners for your family and people that you love, and you start cooking in the kitchen, where there's orders, and you know, you have to decide because entrepreneurship, especially in Tech has been very glamorized. But according to Forbes canvas, there's only 7% of the entire worlds that have the mindset, personality and character. For true entrepreneurship. When you're an entrepreneur, particularly in tech, it doesn't matter whether you're selling bottles of water, or bread, or jumbo jets, or satellites or software, it doesn't matter. As an entrepreneur, very different from a solopreneur, or a small business owner who many times still work in the business, you have to dedicate yourself to the life of growth, and revenue, and spreadsheets and formulas and resourcing and coaching, and planning, and being confident and knowing how to manage networks and partnerships and leverage your influence. Those are the skills of an entrepreneur, particularly in sec, where in sec, you have to navigate an entire ecosystem. Now, penetrating SEC is relatively simple. If you really want to get to the grain of it, I have an idea that I don't like paying late fees for my video rentals. And so I think that if I start mailing people, video cassettes, that it's going to be a great business. But I don't know anything about the industry, I don't have the money, I don't know how to start a business. So if you're a founder, and you have access to a network, you go to your network and you say, Hey, how do I start this, when you're an underrepresented human, black, brown, Latin, whatever the thing is, you may not have that immediate access to it. So step one, give yourself permission. Step two, confirm that this is the lifestyle that you want to live in. Step three, learn where it is that you're gonna get information to start moving in the direction of your goal, and convert that from a dream, which is something that you're thinking about. And so plan, and a plan has steps, measurements and a timeline. I

Kandice Whitaker: 7:09

love that I think your approach to the answer of the question was really focused on being a tech entrepreneur. Right? And one of the biggest questions I get as a career coach all the time is people want to get into tech, and they want to know what's the easiest way? Well, certainly you can come up with something and develop something and have it go out to market, because my business is training, right and user experience. I also know that only 5% of products that are created actually make it to market.

Johnathan Mentor: 7:42

That's right. That's right. So I mean, one of the other things, I mean, it's not a step, but more of a disclaimer, with this whole, you know glamorization of, you know, the digital nomad, and I'm gonna get into tech, and it's very exciting, and the pitch competitions and the big partnerships, when you're an entrepreneur, understand that the only thing that changes is mindset, your financial responsibilities, and level of stress doesn't really go away. Because if you think about it in parallel, and this is how I learned to really fill my seat of power than entrepreneur, as an employee, right? You're constantly looking for a job, you're trying to keep your bosses happy, you're looking for a raise, you're worried if you're going to keep this job, how long am I going to keep it? What are the benefits? What am I navigating? How do I grow? How do I get a role, whatever, as an entrepreneur, same thing, you know, you're not job hunting, your client hunting, right? You're not trying to impress your bosses, you're trying to impress your clients, right? To get a raise, you have to get more clients. And to get more clients, that takes a lot of convincing. And that takes a lot of effort. And all of that is unpaid.

Kandice Whitaker: 8:49

Right? Right. And you don't have the safety of your check coming every two weeks, whether you're good at it or not. So you trade

Johnathan Mentor: 8:56

safety, for freedom. But that in that freedom, you have to have structure, you have to have discipline have to trust yourself. And you have to understand Canada's very much in the same example that you gave me that when you plant a seed, it's going to grow, you can't command to seek to grow. You know, you see lots of trees around you what a good idea. Let me plant this, but it takes years. It takes focus, maybe the tree gets sick, maybe you need more water, less water, there's a drier year and there's a hotter, you're colder, you're in a warmer, you know, you have to make sure that it's really what you want and ask yourself the question, why do you want to become an entrepreneur? Why? Because if you can accomplish the same thing, being an employee, then do that, you know what I'm saying? But to become an entrepreneur, particularly in tech, you have to know that you're walking into an unstructured environment. And if you don't learn how to self structure and self regulate, you're gonna get burnt out very, very quickly. And you have to remember when the enthusiasm and the excitement of starting something new fades. What's going to keep you going is your system that you Keep going forward. Okay, we didn't make any money today. And I know today's not a money day. But what can I do today to make money tomorrow? Next week, next month, next year? How can I get off of this hamster wheel? What can I outsource? What conversations are worth my time? What activities are worth my time? Because what I see happen particularly with with us with our community, is that you shift into this entrepreneurship. But you know, all the years of trauma and colonialism and slavery and a number of other societal normative lives that we were raised around, it forces us to shift back into a service mentality where we think we have to now work in the business and on the business, how many salon owners that we know that still operate a booth in their own salon, that's not owning a business that's buying a job? It's like, if I go buy McDonald's for that much, you know, I'm saying, but when you want to shift into tech, first of all, it's very competitive. And I'm not saying this to dissuade you. I'm saying this, so that your audience can this can arm themselves for what's coming, you're not going to come in and become over tomorrow. All right, what you see in the Uber story is you didn't see what they did from point A to point B, you know, you see, Uber came out, they were a startup boom, now they're billions of dollars, they control the world. And now they're always at the beach. Same thing with a number of other startups. The The Untold Story, is the story of the 1000s of other startups and 1000s of other founders that fail, go broke, go into financial ruin, and then end up having to re penetrate corporate anyway, with a much more humbled mentality in mind, right? Do you want to risk that, make sure that you know what you're signing up for?

Kandice Whitaker: 11:34

Whoa, that is a lot and a great place to take a break. We'll be back. Hey, everybody, we are back in the bail yourself out Happy Hour lounge with my friend Jonathan Mentor who's CEO of Successment. We have had a wonderful conversation about tech startups. And one of the things that you mentioned previously, is that entrepreneurs when they're working in their business, they have to have a system for going forward. What is your advice? Like? How do you do that?

Johnathan Mentor: 12:30

So I have an intellectual property called Rev up science. And it's composed of three tenants Process Performance and Progress process is the first thing that we unlock when we're approaching different tech startups and is trying to generate revenue. And it's called boom, it's a four step process that's broken down into begin, operate, obviate and maximize. This is literally how you set up your systems, right? So when you go in, the first step that you want to do as you need to begin begin is you need to discover what your priorities are, what your resources are, and what data and information you have, in order to move in the direction of your goal. So for a tech startup, it may be what's called a quantitative and a qualitative listening tour, you're just gonna listen, right? What data can you listen to, that's quantitative and numbers, that's going to give you insight into what you need to do to move forward. Qualitative is listening to human beings and their anecdotal experience and advice within your sector that you're trying to penetrate. Who had the best suppliers? Who were the best investors? Who are the best accelerators? Who are the best pure accountability partners who can sell really well who can market really well, you know, who can I lean on when things aren't good or bad, you know, whatever the thing is, right? And then this is going to help you shift out of, well, everything is an opportunity to everything is an opportunity, but not everything is a priority. And then you're going to prioritize your actual actions based on what's going to get me money. And this can be the long or short term, when you move into step number two operate. This is when you put Flitz as right, these are the actions that I'm going to do these are my priority things, right. So when shit hits the fan and three months in, I may or may not be making the money that I expected, or I'm having a really tough day, or life comes at me or whatever. I knew when I have time to sit and think strategically that these were the things I needed to do. I knew it wasn't going to be easy. I knew shit was gonna break before it got really good. But this is what I need to continue to do and persevere with a level of determination to make it happen. Once you understand which one of or how many of those things that you plans in operate, are yielding results in terms of revenue. Then you move on to avi Avi, it is when you're getting ready to scale. Scaling involves taking stock of the resources Then the humans and the software that you have, in order to delegate things, right, and in order to amplify things. So if you want to do something like paid ads, you don't want to run into paid ads on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter before you know the content that's going to resonate with your audience, right, that's what you're doing operate, what's gonna get me a revenue rezone. Once you know what that thing is, then you can back it with That's right, because then you know, what's converting for you, once you know that you can do business at$10,000 a month with three staff. Now you need to know how to double that. And if it's going to be the same thing. Or if you need more, right, that's when you go over the scale. Last step on the bus is the M in boom, which is maximize, maximize, keeps you agile, it's the the antithesis to to operate, because things are going to happen in market that are dynamic. And they can either be one or two things and opportunity or vulnerability. And you need to have a plan to react and capitalize on either one. So if there is a true opportunity and market, let us make sure that it does not dissuade us from our goal, because we already have our priorities, right? So we need to make sure that that opportunity that comes in, if I measure this against what I already have going on in terms of my priority action items, my priority campaigns, are they going to help me to get to revenue faster? It's a simple answer, yes or no? If the answer is no, then it's an opportunity that doesn't need to be explored. Same thing with a vulnerability, right? If Oprah were to invite you, Kandice tomorrow on her show, and she says, Kandice, I heard about you tomorrow. Are you gonna sit there and think twice about? Well, I really have to go grocery shopping. Maybe let me go. And I will figure it out on that. But this is if something happens, where your microphone breaks, and you can no longer do your podcast? Are you going to continue doing your regular Tuesday? No, no, you gotta go to Office Depot got to replace nothing, because you can do your so in boom, you want to begin operate AVI and maximize all of the processes, tasks and activities that you have going on, that are going to move you in the direction of revenue.

Kandice Whitaker: 17:03

So basically, it's like the organization system sounds That's right.

Johnathan Mentor: 17:07

It's a way for you to frame your not so much mindset, because that's really not what I do that maybe is more the domain of maybe a coach. But in terms of being an entrepreneur, that's successful, right? Because when you have a job, it's easy, you're gonna get a paycheck every 15 days, right? You do your job well, as an entrepreneur, not so much. So when things don't go unexpectedly, you have to understand and measure your span of control. And your span of control are the activities that you're doing every day in order to move you in the direction of revenue. And some of the those activities are things that you're going to measure success on the clock. And some of those activities you measure success on the calendar, right, I got a sale today I got a one on the clock, right? I have a partnership tomorrow that's a one on the calendar because now we got to do paperwork, how's this partnership going to launch how we're going to do this, you know, and the sale is not going to come tomorrow if that's what you're measuring on. So boom, really helps entrepreneurs to frame because the next phase and kind of process in rebab science as a whole is once you have boom sets you're gonna set that across an exercise called our WM WMC. I love acronyms are WMC stands for Right? Wrong, missing and confused? Based on boom? What am I doing? That's right. Meaning, what's getting me revenue? Because I'm the revenue person. I don't know about anything else, or I, you know, I do, but that's what I'm talking about. What? What am I doing? That's right, that's moving me in the direction of revenue? How can I optimize that? What am I doing wrong? That's moving the direction of revenue after me to fix that? What am I missing that needs to be in place in order for me to start generating more revenue? I need to fill those resource gaps. And what's confusing about what I'm doing? Is it confusing to me, my end audience might seem my partners, I need to make sure to clarify that. And again, when you place right wrong, missing and confused against boom, you're going to see what are the priority things you as the entrepreneur needs to be doing, versus what you need to outsource. And then the first thing for very early stage with why don't have the money to do what figure it out, right, that's your first priority. Get off the hamster wheel. So you can build a bigger hamster wheel. And when you get off of the hamster wheel by the factory that makes the hamster wheel. But if you stay so micro focused on I'm going to sail today, you're never going to grow your business, you're always going to stay small.

Kandice Whitaker: 19:35

Oh my goodness, you have given us so many amazing gems there. So with the first step, with boom with processes, it is basically we are saying okay, these are the things that we need to keep the lights on in our business, right? And then we're basically evaluating.

Johnathan Mentor: 19:53

That's right, you're evaluating if you already have a business boom as part of wrap up science and rebab scientists hola about moving in the direction of revenue, right? There are other goals that entrepreneurs might have, hey, I want my time back and I want my financial freedom. They'll talk to me about that I'm the wrong person, I understand how to how to grow businesses. From a revenue perspective, this is how I measure revenue outcomes only. I don't care about how big is your website, and how many people you know how many staff you have. And even and this is always a micro BOMA. How many sales you have. You can be a beast that sales, whatever your recurring revenue, right? If you're Nikki that bakes cookies and braids, hair and does lashes and baby sets and has a car cleaning service in a babysitting service, how am I gonna spend much money with you? You're just half the money. What are you doing? And what are you doing well, right? And if Nikki's thinking about okay, how can I move in the direction of revenue, you cannot possibly be generating revenue from all eight of your service offerings as Nikki the solopreneur, right? Because we all know what chick like that from her that she does everything under the sun, that money but you never know, what exactly am I paying you for? And you're definitely not going to sit there and spend a lot of money with her because she's almost like a band aid. That's the kind of entrepreneur that will never have recurring revenue, because they are hyper focused on sale. Sale is not growth, growth is growth. And growth comes from recurring revenue, right? So once you have that sale, you have to also as an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur, you have to think how can I make more money from that sale? How can I make that sale recur for me, right? That's how you move boom, in the direction of your goals, right? If I'm doing something right, which is getting sales, then guess what, I really don't need to perfect my sales techniques. Right? I know how to sell this, right. I'm a dog walker. I already have six dog walking clients. There's not enough hours in the day, how am I going to possibly make more money, right? I own a barber shop, I do booth rent. I have six chairs in the barber shop, they're full. How can I make more money? Now you have to step out and say what's right wrong missing coffees? Well, what's right is I have all the chairs in my shopping booth rent, what else can I do sell more? Maybe I can do event partnerships. Maybe I can start selling products. Maybe I can start doing you know, event. I don't know what those things aren't. You know, I come from tech, you know, but as an entrepreneur, these are the things that are always going to be recurring themes as you think about growing your business. Because growing your business means growing your revenue and growing your revenue means a lot more than what am I doing today? And how am I closing a sale which is how most very very small first time and early stage entrepreneurs think about their business. I

Kandice Whitaker: 22:27

love that when we come back from the break I want to talk to you about if I'm a brand new entrepreneur, right tech or otherwise, what should I begin to focus on? If I don't even have my daily Okay, here's the things that I do. Where do I get started? We'll be back So we are back y'all and happy hour lounge with my boy Jonathan Mentor who is getting us together getting our small businesses together helping us make money. Don't want to be Nikki booboo in the hood that does everything braids, hair, walks, dogs, watches cars. So what is your advice for the brand new entrepreneur who doesn't even have tasks yet? I just have this idea. I want to start this business. Maybe I was a business analyst or a trainer for a company. Now I decided I'm gonna do this for myself, I'm gonna have my own company, where should they start to maximize revenue?

Johnathan Mentor: 23:40

For me, I always start with the goal in mind. And then I work backwards. So when I started success, when I said, I want a business that's going to generate a million dollars a year, that was my original goal. We're already at almost three. When I did that, I broke that down. And I said, Okay, I need about $66,000 a month in sales. Right. And this is before I had any idea about what I wanted to do. I said, Well barbershop into one that's definitely not going to do that. I'm definitely not going to do$66,000 A month that way, what am I possibly going to do? I just really explored a lot of different options. And based on my background, I said, Hey, I'm going to do outsource growth services. That's what successful is where growth partner for startups that are at around a million dollars in revenue, they want to get to 10 2050. That's what we play under a million dollars in revenue, many will argue with me, but I still consider an ideation MVP, which is minimum viable product and product market fit phase because as a business in tech, if you cannot generate on a recurring basis, at least a million dollars in revenue, you ain't got the juice yet. And that's not my area of expertise, because growth comes in phases and waves. So when you're first starting your business, you have to ask yourself a lot of why's and a lot of questions, right? Why do I want to open up this nail salon? Right? Because I saw on Instagram that you know Sukiana has one and she's driving around in Maseratis. Right? Is that okay? Let's talk about numbers. How much does the average nail salon make a year? If I can guess, Kandice, I can guess that it's probably under$300,000 A year generating revenue, very rounds general, you know, Google type numbers. And entrepreneur wants to take about a third home of their revenue, right? in personal income, you know, that's gross before taxes. So you figure I want Sukihana's lifestyle and private jets and low batons. And I want to get all the beautiful wigs and I want to go to Micanols and I want to go to Ibiza. And I want to travel the world and all these things. And then you are routing that goal to a business that may be at the very best is going to make$300,000 a year. And you're going to make $100,000 a year. And after that $100,000 a year, and all the other things that you're paying for, right, your fixed expenses, how much money is left over to take a trip to Europe each month? Let's be serious, right? You want that kind of lifestyle? How much does it cost? If I want that kind of lifestyle, then I need to come up with a business that's going to generate them? Because that's a true entrepreneur, right? The way to do it is not? You know what, um, my mom knows how to do hair, and she has this so she can probably show me it's probably easier. You're, you're asking a different question, right? You're asking what's an easy business for me to start, if you want to start an easy business, you know, talk to Jonathan men, so you don't come to success when successful is where black, brown and Latinx billionaires come from based on their businesses, right. And I'm not focused on making the owner rich, I'm focused on making sure that the startup is generating revenue. So as a person who's just starting out, these are the questions that you want to ask, same thing I tell kids, when they're going into college, I'm going to college. Why? Because I want to get a good job doing what I want to become a nurse. Okay, so you're gonna go to college, pay for it, get a job that pays you $90,000 a year. And then you're gonna pay back three or $400,000 in university for the rest of your life, so that you can have your job so that you can live very, very average, and you're still going to be looking at Instagram and sick time and wonder why can I be on that plane with that fur coat, I think your goals first, right and be realistic about it. And not everybody's goal is gonna be to make all of this money. Some people just, I want stability, great to have stability. But don't confuse that with entrepreneurship. If you want to be an entrepreneur, these this is the way an entrepreneur thinks they don't think about, you know, I really want it you don't have friends in this industry. Somebody, I don't care about the friends in that industry. This is what I want. This is the problem I'm gonna solve. This is the invention that I have in my head, I need to build an ecosystem in order to help me execute this vision. And on a smaller scale. For smaller business owners. Think about if you haven't a small business that will never touch a million dollars a year is for you. If it is that's great, I don't have much advice for you. But if you want to build a business, that's going to be a multi million dollar business, you have to start by looking at the numbers. That's what CEOs and founders do. Right? That totally makes sense. So basically start at the end of where you want to go and then work your way back. Yep, painted done. That way. You're asking the right questions. We're black and brown people, I understand the culture, this is unspoken, these are things that we understand intimately. without them having to be discussed. I grew up in hip hop culture, in Latin culture, in upper Manhattan, right. So me, wealth is not the golf shoes. And being a member of this club and having an annuity for my parents, to me wealth was, I have a nice car, I have gold chains, I get to travel, I get to dress nice. I have a sneaker Collection. These are the songs that if I want to afford those things, how the hell is it that I'm sitting here? I'm studying to be an accountant. accountants don't live like that. Like why? No, I want these things. What can I measure? And what can I control? I need to make this amount of money to have these things. And in order to do that, these are some of the options I have. I came up with successful founders come up with tech startups. VCs invest in tech startups. You know, doctors become that again, you know, perfect example doctors and lawyers. You can't just become a doctor, a lawyer, right? If you become a doctor, lawyer, you're gonna make lots of money. Right? If that's your goal, become a doctor or a lawyer, you sacrifice 6789 10 years of your life so that you can make$500,000 a year for the rest of your life. Done. Tried and True Path. No, listen, there's no left or right about it. But if you're the kind of person who wants to make money and enjoy it, you don't need to be a doctor or a lawyer. They do really, as an entrepreneur, really think about why Do you want to become an entrepreneur and start measuring, and start painting something done? Right? Don't get caught up in the tasks. That's an employee ants mentality. If you have a queen in, right, you're giving birth to the colony and the colony works for you think about what is it that you want to build, and at the end result is that going to generate the revenue that you're seeking. And if you're a true entrepreneur, if that vision isn't big enough, that it intimidates you, you're not dreaming big enough, and you deserve to stay within your salon and, or stay working in in Publix, or stay working as a nurse or an accountant, very stable, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. But that's not the 7% of entrepreneurs that I know, that provoked economic growth and visibility within tech startups. That is amazing and so incredibly inspiring.

Kandice Whitaker: 30:51

I'm sitting here like, Okay, I gotta get my life together. You took me back talking about hip hop culture. I'm definitely sitting here with my 50th anniversary of hip hop shirt on right now. Uptown. Baby uptown. Yeah, it

Johnathan Mentor: 31:05

was so serious. Because another big part, like one of the reasons like if you asked me, one of the other reasons why I became an entrepreneur Kandice is because I said, I'm dying to be myself. I really want to be who I am. I don't want to have to put on some motherfucking suit and be all sweaty sitting up a young mother fucking meeting using big ass words. I don't want to I don't want to walk into a meeting and everybody there is doesn't look like me. And they're in casual conversation, and they're talking about how they're going to order a nice wha salad and go, you know, fishing off the coast of Nantucket. That is not me. You have all upset. I'm like, no, like, I want to go to my concerts. I want to dress in everything that you know, I want to be who I am and Arriva swam, like, you know, hashtag fuck the coast Swish, you know. So I said, the only way that I'm going to really be able to do that is by becoming an entrepreneur. And in the early stages, I still at that time when I was starting, I didn't give myself that permission yet. But once I started generating results, and building communities, and getting the receipts, and the endorsements, and the referrals and the partnerships, and I'm like, Baby, I'm gonna walk in with all of my chair, if I want to wear motherfucking Bermuda shorts, no more. And I want to have a shirt buttoned down on my belly button with 38 chains on like Mr. T. Right? My resume spoke about me before I walked in that room. So you have a decision to make. You can either sit there backup and let me do my thing because you know, I can deliver what it is that you need, or go with, you know, what is it? Jake from State Farm, he's like clean cut white boy, nice buttoned up shirt. And he's got absolutely nothing for you. But me, one of the big things for me being an entrepreneur was I'm going to be myself, period.

Kandice Whitaker: 32:52

Honestly, for me, as an entrepreneur, I think that was the most important thing. I wanted to be able to be myself and I wanted freedom. Money was good, too. But it was the be myself. And freedom for me. That's right. That's

Johnathan Mentor: 33:07

right. That is what it is for a lot of people. What I want to challenge people that are listening to this conversation is how do you define those things? What does that freedom mean to you? Is it financial freedom is a freedom of time, you know, what is it like what matters the most you I know people, for example, my mother, as an adult, I have a different relationship with my mother. And she's been in the same industry in the same firm for 30 plus years, I always looked at her and I was like, Yo, you could have started your own firm by now you could have moved to a bigger firm and made three times the money. And she was just like, You know what, that really wasn't a priority. For me. My priority is in the corporate culture of the 1980s and 90s. If I wanted to come to work and sneakers because I was tired, I could and you know what this company allowed me to, if I wanted to take off four days a month to go to my kids place. And so pick him up from school and to meet his teachers. And I was able to do that flexibility and stability of the paycheck. That was my priority. Not you, Jonathan, your priority, Jonathan is to make a lot of money and to leave an impact and a footprint behind on the world. I just wanted to leave an impact for my son. And that was a significant mindset shift because that changed things a man entrepreneurs that they are booboo from the hood, and they set you remember that everybody's associate a trunk, their rent is paying. They got enough for two or three Coronas on the weekend. They're fine. They don't want to. They don't want to get the Mercedes. They just want to know, I don't have to clock in. I don't have a name tag. I'm making up money to pay my bills. And when I'm hungry, I can buy something I have a that's freedom to me. What does freedom mean to you? Because as an entrepreneur, there are a lot of ways to structure what that looks like and how you pursue that.

Kandice Whitaker: 34:55

Oh my gosh, you have given us so many amazing gems. I hope Hope everybody listening, you guys have learned as much as I have. But unfortunately, we got to stop it right here. So my love Jonathan, how can people stay connected with you on socials?

Johnathan Mentor: 35:12

I mean, you could Google me baby, Jonathan Shay Mentor, I am the most responsive on LinkedIn, although I'm trying to grow my Twitter. So if you follow me on Twitter and startup Conversations, I'm gonna pay extra attention to you because I'm behind. Or also, if you check out the successment at website at successment dot CO, not successment.com You can contact me there, there are lots of free resources for entrepreneurs. And when I say free, it's not only free and cost, but free of email addresses and shit. Because one of the things I hate is I also want to educate but I don't go to the library to sit there for the library to email me every week and say, Hey, do you want to buy something from the library? No, no, I'm just gonna let it learn. If you go to the successment.co website, and you go to the snacks section, all of the frameworks and more that I discussed today are there for free and templatized form. And I'm not going to ask any you'll never hear from me, you'll download it go make a million dollars. But what I do ask for you to do is if you listen to me, and if you use some of the tools that I provide, and you go out and you make a lot of money, and you happen to buy a boat, invite me to the boat party. That's all that's all I ask. I'm not going to ask for your business unless you are ready to come and do business with us.

Kandice Whitaker: 36:25

Oh my gosh, thank you so much. And I know I'm definitely gonna go back to your website and check it out. See what I can download and whatnot. To everybody else. Thank you so much. You know, I love you for listening. We out

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