Shownotes
In this practical episode, Geoffrey Kent is a serial entrepreneur with a wealth of experience and inspiring stories to share. He has valuable insights and highlights the power of entrepreneurship to make a positive impact on individuals and society.
Find Geoffrey Kent: www.thinkbigwithgeoffreykent.com
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Transcripts
Transcript
::Welcome to the You
::World Order Showcase Podcast today Geoffrey Kent is joining us.
::He is a serial entrepreneur.
::He's got some great stories and man we just he was going and going and going before we got the the video rolling and I just want him to share from his own experience.
::So I'm just going to turn the.
::Mic over to you, Geoffrey, go.
::Yeah, yeah, yeah.
::Well, hopefully you have a couple of questions to ask me and to get me started, but, but yeah, I'm a semi retired serial entrepreneur.
::I did. I did.
::I sold my last company a decade ago and it was a private cloud computing technology service company.
::I'm based in Philadelphia, PA.
::You know, I'm not sure what else you want to know, but get kind of at this stage of the game I'm trying to do my best to give back.
::I've had a very blessed life and I've got two beautiful daughters and, you know in their early 20s and I'm just trying to do what I can to.
::To you know.
::Use my God-given entrepreneurial talents to encourage other people to be as crazy as me and do what I've.
::Then and help them with their journey.
::So they don't, you know, they'll probably face the same obstacles I face, but hopefully I'll.
::I'll I'll give them the tools to be able to navigate above and around those obstacles easier than I did.
::And you know, you know, from my perspective, the world needs more entrepreneurs.
::I I actually think entrepreneurship can solve some of society's greatest problems like poverty, unemployment and crime, and.
::It's gonna change the world and right?
::Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
::Now the opportunity has never been greater.
::It's just.
::It's like COVID was this terrible.
::Thing it was this really great gift as well.
::Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
::And if you look at.
::It as like it was the gift it.
::Was the gift that allowed us to have open our eyes and say, hey, we can take control of how?
::The world's going to go.
::And it just starts with one person.
::You know you got your start.
::At Xerox because we were talking.
::About this a little bit.
::Before we got started and.
::And I I was.
::Telling you I was stalking you over on LinkedIn and you were telling the.
::Story about your.
::Your time with Xerox.
::Yeah, and it.
::It it's about the things that you learn when you're young.
::How they can serve you as you?
::Get older.
::But tell us that story.
::Because that's a good one.
::Yeah, yeah.
::So I wrote a blog post about my experience with Xerox and kind of the end of the blog post I asked.
::Leaders the question of if you could turn back the hands of time, what would you change in your life and then I answer, you know, for myself and I basically say that for you know for me, you know I wouldn't change anything other than, you know, my ability to comprehend what I was learning when I was learning it so that I could.
::Actually, you know, make my life a little bit easier along.
::The way you know.
::But yeah, I Xerox provides or provide at the time world class sales training.
::You know they used to send all their sales reps to Leesburg, VA, where they had their international training facility and they would teach what's called spend sales techniques.
::And it's basically solution selling and.
::I was at Xerox for two years.
::Unfortunately, you know, I learned what I needed to learn along the way.
::I didn't learn it quick enough so I ended up getting fired from Xerox because I didn't meet quota for two consecutive months.
::To tell us the.
::Badge story the badge part of the story.
::Ohh yeah.
::So but towards the end of my time there as I was learning, you know how to sell, you know, I realized that Xerox had accomplished something that, you know, successful companies do and.
::That they laser focus on dominating A niche target market so that their name precedes them, right?
::So it occurred to me somewhere along the line at Xerox that.
::The.
::The process of making a a physical copy of something is called xerography.
::And Xerox as a company was started based on that technology.
::So when I would go to visit, you know, I would I I had a geographic territory and initially it was the Northern 5 most counties in New Jersey and then they, I they switched me over to the three westernmost counties in Connecticut and I would start my day, you know 8:30 in the morning. I would hit the you know, the nearest office.
::Park and I would literally park my car and then just, you know, hit a building and just go in and knock on doors and try to try to, you know, get past the receptionist and hopefully talk to someone to talk to them about buying a machine.
::But what I realized again because the process of making copies is called neurography that people refer to their copying machine as as Xerox machine, regardless of who the manufacturer was.
::And so, you know, being an Xerox employee at Xerox badge, so I got to the point where I was like, OK, what I'll do is.
::I'd go to the receptionist.
::I would flash my.
::Match and say I'm here to fix the Xerox machine and you know no one would question that.
::They would just say, OK, fine.
::But I'll buzz you in, and I once I got in their office, I would literally just walk around to look for, you know, the biggest office, you know, in the building.
::And knock on that door.
::And because I figured, well, that's probably the CEO or, you know, at least the most senior person in this off.
::Let me knock on that door start from the top and work my way down, you know, because even if that person wouldn't talk to me, you know, if they referred me to some someone you know, I implicitly got.
::The,.
::You know, referral from someone, the big boss, right?
::Right.
::So an interestingly enough you have half the time.
::Flight endorsement.
::You know the again this is 1979 to 81 you know the business marketplace is predominated by male you know men and so most of the people I would run into were men and half of them literally half of them would just be shocked that that that.
::I would have the you know.
::You know the gravitas to.
::Yeah, to.
::To do that, you know, and then they would talk.
::For me, not all of them bought but. But you know, I I would in in at least 50% of the cases get an audience and, you know, could talk about what I was doing.
::So you know, as I said that that I didn't learn what I needed to learn fast enough to take advantage of that at Xerox, I ultimately Xerox.
::Our policy of, you know, if you miss your quota for one month, you got put placed on probation.
::If you miss it for two consecutive months, you got fired.
::So I got fired.
::But I had an experience as I was being fired of.
::You know, getting past the receptionist at an office park in Greenwich, CT and.
::I didn't realize this at the time, but there were two individuals who had tried to get past this same receptionist just before me and so when they saw me get past, they literally waited for me in the lobby.
::And then when I came out.
::The more you know.
::There was a a guy closer to.
::My age and then.
::A much more senior person, the more senior person handed me his business card and said, you know, hey, give me a call when you get, you know, get home and I, you know just.
::Being young and foolish didn't think much of it and just put his card in my pocket and went on my day.
::But when I got home and kind of went through my pockets and pulled out this business card, this was a district manager for a Computer Science Corp.
::I'm like, oh.
::OK, this is interesting.
::Maybe I should give this.
::Guy a call back and ultimately.
::That that led to.
::Me getting my second job at AT&T.
::That's a great story.
::And it just goes to show that even though something may seem like it's.
::A terrible thing in.
::The moment, because nobody likes to get fired.
::And you know, getting fired isn't really.
::A bad thing?
::Yeah, no.
::That in the 70s and 80s it didn't have a.
::Stigma attached to it.
::Was like I failed.
::Right, right.
::Because I should keep this job for.
::The rest of my life and in 20.
::Or 40 years.
::Excuse me, I'm going to retire and.
::Sit in front of my television set.
::And wait to die because.
::That was the plan in the old.
::Days now it's just like man.
::It's an opportunity.
::Yeah, thanks.
::And now?
::The door is wide open cause if.
::You hadn't been fired. You.
::Might not have followed through on something that really probably did make a difference.
::Well, I mean, as I said, it led to my second job, which was with AT&T in 1981.
::When I joined AT&T, AT&T was the largest company in the world. They had the largest workforce and they had the largest amount of sales of any company in the.
::And so I was sent to sales training for my first year and then I was given a geographic territory in the in the five boroughs in New York City and in my first full year in the field, I became AT&T's number.
::One salesperson, so you know.
::Yeah, I've got.
::What were you selling?
::Cause the.
::The telephone industry was way different back then.
::Yeah. So when I joined them, the AT&T was still a monopoly, so they were being broken.
::Up by the.
::The by the federal government. But they hadn't been broken up yet. So, so AT&T had long distance service, local service to make phone calls. There were actual telephones you were selling, and you were also.
::Selling kind of the first generation of computers as well.
::So yeah, so it's, you know, both data and voice communications, we're kind of selling.
::A little bit of everything.
::I remember those days when.
::You know people.
::Most of the people probably who will be listening to this podcast won't remember modems.
::Oh yeah.
::And dialing in and that was really a huge thing.
::And in terms of the Internet, really wasn't much of anything until the 90s.
::Yeah, well, well, I you know.
::So my last company was a.
::Technology, cloud, computer, private cloud computing company.
::And you know, I was the oldest person in the company.
::Yeah, everybody I hired was in their 20s.
::And I remember one day going in, you know, coming into the office and all the tasks are in the in the conference room and they're just laughing hysterically.
::And I'm wondering what are what are these guys?
::You know what's so funny?
::So I go in the conference room and they're all staring at, you know, a computer and.
::And they're basically they have pulled up a I think it was a YouTube video that that was talking about the history of.
::So they were looking at like, you know.
::The original cell phone.
::You know which was basically a suitcase, you know?
::And and they're just laughing hysterically and right.
::As a double discs.
::Right.
::So I'm looking at this I mean.
::It was fun.
::10 megabytes.
::But then it like occurred to me.
::I'm like.
::That's my history.
::I know on the I saw that stuff.
::I used a lot of that stuff.
::So and.
::We used.
::To give fax.
::Machines with the phone people.
::Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
::Have no clue what that was all about that.
::Yeah. Well, I I well as much as you know, I've seen again my my grandfather, my dad's father.
::I actually lived until he was 110 years old, so he passed while I was in Graduate School in 1992, and I remember he was from Beckley, WV. He was a coal miner for.
::Over 50 years, but when he turned 100, my parents went to Beckley, WV and picked him up and brought him to upstate New York, where they live and so for the last 10 years his life, he lived with my parents.
::And so once they did that, every birthday he would have, once he hit 100, I was the person that would kind of coordinate his birthday parties.
::And so I would make sure he got cards from the President, Senators, Congress, people, mayors, you know, whatever.
::And cities, any city had ever lived in or state city or state.
::Never lived in and then we would have.
::You know, I would notify local media.
::So all you know, ABC, NBC, CBS and Syracuse would send a team out.
::They would actually film the party.
::We'd have hundreds of people at the parties.
::And so they film the party, the newspapers, you know.
::They have a a.
::Morning and evening newspaper, they would send teams out to interview him.
::But the first year, when he was 101 of the newspaper teams came out and this young lady put a an old cassette player.
::On the table in front of him.
::And when she turned it on, you know, I mean, I've never seen my grandfather jump that fast and that high, you know, I mean, cause he had, you know, I mean, he was just shocked at what he didn't know what it was.
::And. So it made me think of, Oh my God, he was born in 1882. What all what? All the technology.
::He's seen since he was born.
::Doing horses, horse looking bunnies card.
::I mean, when he was born, cars didn't exist.
::Radios didn't exist.
::I mean, there's just so many things that that, you know, so anyway.
::What? What, what a?
::100 year period to go through.
::Yeah, yeah.
::And just in our lifetimes, cause we're very close to the same age.
::It's like so much has changed.
::Yeah, and it.
::Was so incremental.
::But suddenly we're here and it's still wow.
::Yeah, right.
::Right.
::Right.
::Right.
::I'll always just to put things into perspective.
::Like when I think of my grandfather like, he was too old to have fought in World War One, you know?
::Like, wow.
::Yeah, that's.
::Yeah, I like.
::Yeah, yeah, that's wild.
::Very cool that he lived so long.
::You're working with alignable these days.
::Well, well.
::So what?
::I'm what I'm doing is I created something called Entrepreneur University on alignable.
::So we're beta testing.
::An education series.
::So and how this came about, probably I'm gonna say two or three months ago I had gotten a call from one of the leaders of a business group on Alignable and they were, you know, she was asking me if I would serve on a panel.
::They want to have a panel discussion with some entrepreneurial leaders.
::You know, to you know, just help entrepreneurs understand, you know, things that would help them in their businesses around entrepreneurship and.
::And so I, you know, I agreed.
::I absolutely I, you know, love to love, to speak publicly.
::So, you know, happy to serve on the panel.
::But as we started to talk.
::You know really asked to you know what are what are you trying to accomplish?
::And so, you know, she got into, you know, we really want we would like to differentiate alignable as a platform from other social media platforms and that it it hope we're hoping that it can become a platform that can actually you know transform you know these entrepreneurial.
::Entrepreneurial businesses and the entrepreneurs that are running them and so when she mentioned that I said you know I don't have anything against panels I said but I'm not sure that's the best mechanism to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish.
::So I'm like.
::Can you give?
::Me a couple of days and I've been thinking about.
::How to impact the entrepreneurial community for actually quite a while, and I've got some ideas that I think might accomplish your goals a lot, a lot better and I can I can put, you know, position paper together for you if you can give me a couple of days.
::So she's absolutely and.
::And so I put together just a one page.
::Document that talked about leveraging entrepreneurship as a way to solve global poverty.
::So wow.
::And she loved it, you know.
::So. So she's like.
::OK.
::I love it.
::I've 3-3.
::Groups that I that I lead on on alignable.
::She said let's beta test this with one of my groups.
::And so, you know, basically on May 30th we did a kickoff event where I.
::Kind of told the community this is what I'm going to teach you in this six part series.
::Then we had an event on June 12th where I kind of gave my poor man's version of, you know, Martin Luther King's.
::I have a dream speech.
::It's I wanted to tell people, you know, in my mind, This is why I think entrepreneur, something like entrepreneur university is.
::So needed today.
::And just basically share my vision and then we started on June 19th, we actually had a session last night.
::So for six consecutive Mondays we've had sessions where I've taught or tried to teach entrepreneurs the six essential things that I've discovered.
::Successful entrepreneurs do to succeed, right and.
::You want to.
::So, so, you know, number one is successful.
::Entrepreneurs take the time to figure out what they're passionate about, and then they build businesses around their passion.
::You know, once they, once they do that they laser focus on identifying these target markets, they can actually dominate because again like that Xerox story, what they realize is that when you when you become the dominant provider of.
::Of a product or service to a market, regardless of how small it could literally be 1 customer.
::When you decide you want to expand outside of that target market, your name will have preceded you, which makes the sales process infinitely easier, right?
::You know, they also they focus on forming innovative strategic alliances to get away from what everyone else does, which is push selling or pushing a product or service on an unsuspecting market that doesn't know whether or not they need this.
::And what your motivation is for pushing this on them to pull selling where because you have strategic alliances who market on your behalf, they actually feed you with pre qualified leads.
::So it it's forming strategic alliances with larger companies in four specific quadrants and this comes from a book called Co-op petition written by two professors, one from Yale, one from Harvard, and they talked about this concept.
::Called the value.
::Value net where.
::Your value is enhanced when you form strategic alliances with.
::Companies that offer complementary products and services to what you offer to your, you know, forming alliances with your suppliers with your customers and with your competitors, right it, it's infusing world class customer service into what you do so that you transform customers.
::Into evangelists who sell your brand on your behalf.
::It it's focusing on the leading metrics that lead to sales, not just the lagging metrics that you of course have to report on your financial statements for, for the IRS to pay taxes and for investors who have invested in your company, want to see how you're doing.
::But it is focusing on those things that lead to sales.
::And that and that by doing that, you have a much higher probability of actually both either meeting or exceeding your sales goals on a consistent basis. And then the last thing they do is they surround themselves with an A-Team.
::Of you know whether it be Co founders, executive leaders, managers, staff, advisors and board of directors to give themselves the highest probability of achieving whatever their vision is for their venture.
::So those are those are the things that all successful entrepreneurs do, you know.
::Yep, yeah.
::Put in a nutshell.
::Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
::Alignable is an.
::Exciting platform.
::I think people are kind.
::Of stumbling onto.
::And just beginning to see the power.
::That those kinds of connections can provide.
::For people.
::Well, I I.
::And joining groups, I think is a really key component and being active in the groups.
::Right.
::Right.
::Right.
::Right.
::I mean, I, tell people, I think Lina will is what LinkedIn wanted to be right sometimes.
::And I've had this happen multiple times in my career.
::You can be too early for the market, you know, so I'm you know, I I'm not sure that.
::People were ready for what alignable is, you know, 10 or 20 years ago, you know.
::And so but now.
::They are and.
::And you know, I mean there are 7,000,000 entrepreneurs on the platform and growing so.
::Yeah, and it does keep growing.
::You know.
::It's really.
::Yeah, it's exciting.
::It's like it's not like anything else out.
::There really.
::Right, right, right, right.
::But but but.
::And I do.
::Even with that, I don't think there's any platform.
::That that is truly teaching entrepreneurs how to scale responsibly.
::Exponential business growth with their ventures and get from launch to exit, you know and that's really the.
::They do that.
::Yeah, yeah, yeah.
::That's exactly what I.
::Do it's taking the.
::Starting at the beginning but having the big picture in mind when you start.
::Right.
::You build a.
::Solid foundation.
::You know what you're doing and you follow those six principles that you just describe.
::Guide you can grow.
::You can create a business that is scalable, but if.
::You start out.
::Without a plan to scale in the end game, then you're gonna constantly be plagued with problems that come from.
::Kind of mismatching things together to try to.
::To figure out.
::OK, so now what's the next step?
::Now what's the next step?
::And you're constantly buying different things or joining different things without having a clear picture or vision.
::The Bible says without a vision, my people will perish.
::Yeah, yeah.
::That that's what.
::It's all about.
::It's it's knowing what you're trying to create.
::Having the end in mind and starting at the beginning and with what you're passionate about.
::Everybody is gifted with some unique.
::Skill, ability thing that they do to solve someone else's problems, and it's probably a bunch of other peoples problems that are suffering just like.
::They were but.
::They figured it out.
::Right.
::Yeah, yeah, I mean, I love to use analogies because it's just easier for people.
::You know, it tends to be easier for people to grasp.
::So I always you know when I talk to entrepreneurs, I normally start with, you know, one of the first things I tell them is, you know, launching successful business is.
::You, want to do this?
::The opposite way you'd read.
::The book you read a book, you start from the beginning and work your way to the end with the business.
::You start from the end and work your way back to the beginning.
::You have to know you know what the exit is.
::You know when it's going to happen, how it's going to happen.
::It may happen differently than you had anticipated.
::But you, you.
::You want to be able to articulate.
::To yourself, what your exit is going to be, because then you can reverse engineer what growth has to be year in, year out to get you to your exit, right.
::So and the other analogy I give them is.
::You know.
::In business, one or two things is going to happen.
::Either you're going to die before the business does or the business is going to die before you do so.
::With that being the reality, you know, why not plan what that exit is going to be?
::Why not orchestrate that exit?
::You know, instead of trying to let that happen because.
::You know, if you just leave it to fate, chance or it's, you know, the exit that ends up happening is not going to be the exit you.
::Desire, so yeah.
::Yeah, and.
::And there's.
::Every strategy or every exit point is perfectly fine one, nothing is static.
::Right.
::In the world.
::So no matter what you're doing, you're.
::Going to have.
::To be changing, yeah.
::About three years is the lifespan of any.
::Thing that you're trying to.
::Do right after that you're going to have.
::To adapt or you're.
::Going to get wiped out by.
::Something else that's come.
::Along we, we can see that with even the big technology companies like and they try to innovate and Facebook keeps coming up with new iterations.
::But they're not as dominant.
::As they once were.
::Right.
::So they had to come up with a.
::New thing and.
::Then they have other things that are competing with that.
::And then it's just kind of interesting to watch it on the grand scale.
::But even as individuals, so entrepreneurs, we have to think like that too.
::Mark Zuckerberg didn't start.
::The head of the seat.
::Or pet of Facebook, you know.
::Didn't wake up one morning and suddenly he's.
::This big giant.
::Right.
::Octopus tentacles everywhere started.
::Yeah, yeah.
::Out as a solo preneur somewhere along the line.
::Yeah, yeah, yeah.
::I mean, I.
::I think one of the things that entrepreneurs get caught up on when you start talking about exits is, yeah, that is, you know, I hear this constantly.
::Ohh, I don't wanna sell my business.
::I'm like, well, selling a business is 1 exit.
::That's not the only exit there, there.
::You know, I mean I could list at least 8 distinct ways to exit the company, only one of which is selling the company.
::So I said that.
::What you have to understand is that the objective should be may not be for everybody, but it should be to create an exit event somewhere in the future that allows.
::To extract some of the capital that you've successfully built in building this venture so that you can secure you and your families future, right, and create generational wealth with whatever that capital is you've extracted from the business.
::That should be your goal.
::Otherwise, I'm not really sure why you'd be doing this.
::You know, you know, you don't want to just, you know.
::Right, right.
::OK, well, I love what I'm doing, but well, that's great.
::But you can't do it forever.
::I mean, we all.
::I mean, life is, is finite, so, you know, do you want to work as hard as you're working when you launch?
::Because entrepreneurship is incredibly difficult and it's a lot of work, you know, are you going to want to be working that hard when you're 95, right. So you know.
::And when you extract capital from your successful venture and now you don't actually need to.
::Work, but you decide.
::You may still want to work.
::Work becomes a lot easier.
::You know when you don't have to do it.
::So anyway, yeah.
::Life is a lot easier when you're.
::Not desperate.
::Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good.
::Good way.
::To put it, yeah, yeah.
::Yeah, absolutely.
::Is there one thing that?
::You would like to leave the audience.
::With just a take away that hopefully they can put it into action or take to heart.
::I mean, there's a, there's, there's a lot.
::But again, I I kind of lead back to that first thing that successful entrepreneurs do.
::I mean if you know and I'm assuming everyone's that that's listening to this podcast as an entrepreneur who wants to be an entrepreneur but it, but it really revolves around, you know, do what you love, you know and figure.
::Find take the time to find out.
::You know who you are, what your strengths and weaknesses are, what your likes and dislikes are.
::And then then start to investigate businesses that allow you to leverage both the things that you're really good at and the things that you love to do because.
::You know.
::What's going to happen particularly early on, when it's just you, you have to do everything right?
::So you so you better love it because it's going to be tough.
::You're gonna run into obstacles.
::And the problem is that when you're when you don't love what you do and you run into obstacles, it's easy to just give up and say, you know, hey, I don't really like this.
::So I'm just not gonna do this anymore, you know?
::And you know, that's not the outcome you want.
::I mean, so it makes more sense to love what it whatever it is you do.
::Build a business around that you know, and then when the obstacles come, you know it's a lot easier to.
::Say you know what I.
::This is hard, but I really love what I do so you know I'm gonna.
::I'm gonna pick myself up, dust myself off and start over again, you know, and.
::And just keep going, you know, because.
::Every node just gets me closer to yes, you know.
::And don't be afraid to.
::Get help.
::Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
::There are a lot of people out there.
::That and a lot of resources for.
::Finding help with whatever the particular thing is that you're struggling with and.
::It's not.
::Again, start at the end.
::Yeah, yeah.
::Turn to the back of that.
::Book and work forward from there.
::Yeah, well, it.
::It takes a certain mental, you know, mental state to even pursue entrepreneurship.
::You know, some things that come in are, you know, you're probably a little crazy.
::You're probably a little arrogant, you know, because at the end of the day.
::It's like, you know, the way I define entrepreneurship is I said, you know, you'll know someone’s an entrepreneur.
::If you know if, if for instance, you love going for walks every day, if you can go out for you know your one hour walk and come back and you have based on what you've seen in your walk, 100 things that you think you can monetize, you're more than likely an entrepreneur that that's we view the world through monetization, right, so that that's a good sign.
::But the other things that will definitely let everyone know you're an entrepreneur is you think all all 100 of those ideas are the best idea that that mankind has ever thought of 1 and then two. And this is the harder part is.
::You're actually willing to go homeless to and to prove to the world that that any one of these 100 ideas is the best idea mankind has ever seen, you know? And so.
::I always tell entrepreneurs, you know, figure out if you possess those traits.
::If you don't, that that won't prohibit you from pursuing entrepreneurship.
::It's but an entrepreneurial venture won't be successful without someone in the business with that mindset.
::So if it's not you find someone who possesses that mindset.
::To work with.
::You and then launch your venture.
::But but yeah, and again.
::So when you think of someone, it's like who in the world would go homeless?
::Or an idea.
::You know you you'd have to be crazy to do that.
::Well, that's why people call entrepreneurs.
::It's crazy, you know.
::Yeah. And it's just.
::The amount of action you.
::Need to take.
::Repeatedly, no matter how many times you run up against that brick wall, no matter how many.
::Receptionists tell you.
::Know, right?
::And you just gotta get over the know.
::No, it's just an answer.
::Like, yes.
::Maybe is the?
::Worst answer you can ever get from anybody, maybe.
::Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean.
::It's just like.
::A no without taking responsibility for that decision.
::Right.
::I mean I tell stories all the time about entrepreneurs just to help other entrepreneurs understand.
::How difficult the process is and how much resilience is required and how much perseverance is required in order to succeed and he is an example of is 1.
::We'll call her name is Kathy Hughes, who owns a a business called Radio One.
::It's one of the largest.
::Well, it's the largest African American owned radio conglomerate.
::In the world.
::And you know, so she worked at, you know, Howard University's radio station when she was in her 20s, was married and, you know, had a young son and, you know, and she decided, hey, I wanna become a radio station owner. And so she was trying to get loans to to buy a radio station.
::And the stress of, you know, all of that, she lost her marriage, you know, and then here.
::So now she here's this young woman with a young son, you know.
::And, you know, she's trying and trying to get loans to, to, to buy a radio station all.
::You know, she's able to buy a station, but she was actually rejected for loans like I think it was 53 times and she got she. Yeah. Yeah, the 54 times she got. Yeah.
::That wasn't uncommon.
::Not that long ago, women who weren't married, you were.
::Second class citizens, the civil rights movement didn't just help African, African American men.
::Yeah, yeah.
::Yeah, it helped women too.
::Right, right, right, right.
::But I tell people I'm like.
::Do you?
::Do you honestly think you could hear no 53 times and still get up and come back to hear it? A 54 times, which of course, fortunately for her, she got up, dusted herself off and went back again.
::And that that's the 54th time was when she heard yes, but for for the average person, I mean, you really just have to think.
::About it is you know how many times could you hear no before you got so discouraged. You gave up, right? And for most people it, it would probably be 5 or 10, not 53.
::Yeah, that that is just an amazing story.
::I I love.
::Stories like that, it gives me goosebumps.
::And it's.
::Just like yes, yes.
::Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right.
::You can do it.
::Right, right.
::Don't stop.
::Yeah, yeah.
::Well, I was.
::You know, I, chuckle when I hear people talk about, you know, some successful entrepreneur and oh, they're an overnight success and like, there's no such.
::Thing you know, unfortunately, when you're struggling, no.
::The media doesn't find you interesting.
::They're not writing about you while you're struggling.
::So with every success, suppose it overnight success story. When you dig into the history, what you'll find is that there is probably 20-30, forty years of struggle to get to the point where everyone considers them to be an overnight success, right?
::So it's just that what they become some.
::And you don't really know.
::Non behind people.
::I mean, there are some.
::People that are like.
::Talk overnight stars.
::Right.
::But those are kind of flash in the pan things and it, you know, they're it's not, they're not creating generational wealth, they're creating a lottery.
::Right.
::So it's just.
::A windfall of income that's not really sustainable.
::Yeah, yeah.
::Because they don't have.
::An exit plan not going to go on forever.
::Right, right, right.
::Right, right, right.
::Yeah, exactly.
::So ohh well.
::Jeffrey, it has been.
::Marvelous chatting with you this afternoon.
::Yeah, yeah, it's, I've, I've.
::I've enjoyed this conversation as well.
::So thanks for joining me and I encourage people to go to think big with jeffreykent.com and join the winnable and find Geoffrey on Alignable and friend him or connect with him and go take advantage of the university.
::And that he's got out there, I think.
::Will really benefit from that.
::I appreciate that you you've just done.
::I encourage everyone to do the same.
::So yeah, thank you.
