EP:31 - Entrepreneur Inspiration - Charting a Path from Tradition to Disruption in Business with Alisa Sheyn

 Alisa Sheyn is the CEO who swapped boardroom battles for entrepreneurial adventures, providing a playbook on leveraging passion and value-driven networking. Her journey underscores a universal melody - success harmonizes best with generosity and perseverance. Together, we explore how kindness without expectation and Owwll's virtual networking prowess can crescendo into opportunities and financial gain.

Automation isn't just a buzzword; it's the conductor orchestrating a more efficient future for midsize businesses. In the realm of automation, we pinpoint the advantages that AI and CRM systems offer, crafting a narrative on optimizing operations and carving out niches within the technology sector. We also spotlight mentorship's pivotal role in shaping visions and strategies, harmonizing with my experiences at FAU Tech Runway. Our discussion amplifies the chorus that mentorship is as much about imparting wisdom as it is about fostering growth and confidence in tomorrow's leaders.

As the curtain falls on another year, we share anecdotes that resonate with the entrepreneurial spirit - the restaurant owner who improvised a new business model during a pandemic, the tech innovator navigating regulatory mazes, and the personal juggle of parenting and profession. We offer a morning routine to greet the new year with vigor and leave you with a heartfelt thanks for joining us on this auditory journey. Cherish the interludes of growth and tune in for the next ensemble of conversations and insights in the year to come!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everybody in the Owl community. This is another episode here on the Owl podcast. Good news we are now streaming on Instagram at Owl app, all other platforms as well, youtube at Owl app, facebook of course at Owl app and, of course, my LinkedIn. Jason R Hill. Every week, we get to interview such amazing entrepreneurs, ceos and experts all across the United States. They are flying into this studio and this is our last episode of 2023. It's been an exciting year, danielle Santilli. Can we look back at this year? We're now over 50 episodes Pretty cool.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Oh yeah, I was saying that today I was going through the list. It's pretty wild. I remember the first one back in February I think it was me, you interviewed me which I was like I feel like a celebrity. And now I'm like, ah, this old thing again. But yeah, you're like a podcast pro.

Speaker 1: 0:49

now, like you used to never think of yourself as a podcast, or you're as like I'm a musician.

Speaker 2: 0:52

Yeah, I was just like I'm a musician and now I'm like, can I add this to the resume? Check? There you go, yeah, so I'm excited. Today we have Alisa Shane here and she is a CEO of Shane Partners and we were chatting a little bit before the podcast started and I loved hearing your story how you just decided like I'm just going to change my life completely and peace out corporate life and I'm a bad ass and I'm going to start my own company. So tell us a little bit about that journey and how you got inspired to start your own company.

Speaker 3: 1:28

Well, I've spent a long time in tech, worked in just about every role and got to really learn how big companies, small companies, work, what kind of challenges they're facing, where things break down with people and processes and technology and all of that, and I was really proud of the experience I've gained, got to know a lot, got to know a lot of people and I think I got to a point where you're always learning, but I'm not sure I was learning as fast as I was really wanting to. I was heading a product for a company out of Boston. I've headed the product for a couple different teams up then, primarily out of Boston and at the same time this opportunity came along and somebody was just looking for consultancy and my first thought was not how am I going to make money off this? It was like how am I going to help people? What value can I provide? So I started working with this company Pro Bono and just started offering them advice on how to build a product where some of the common pitfalls may be. At the same time, I was working as an executive for a technology firm out of Boston and at one point they said at least. So this is awkward, but can we pay you at this point where you're showing up to all of our meetings and you're providing a lot of value? So that kind of continued at the same time as I was working in tech.

Speaker 1: 2:39

I think that's before we go into detail. I think that's so important for people to hear, because so often people are always requesting money first and they think their value's up here, and then, when it ends up happening, they miss these big opportunities. I tell that to people all the time in the outlet. I'm like you're charging $50 for your service but no one knows who you are. I'm like your schedule doesn't seem filled when I talk to them when I'm one, and they're like oh, I'm like, what's your biggest struggle in business? I just don't have enough meetings. I'm like lower your price from $50 to $10. I'm like, no, but I want to devalue myself, or even a dollar. Nothing. I'm always saying what you're talking about is do some Pro Bono work on the side that has upside potential and you see where it leads, and when I look at past people I've interviewed, I always hear stories like yours. If you're worried about what you're getting paid today, good luck in the future, but if you're just not looking at the clock and you're doing good work, the pay will come Do you agree with that 100%.

Speaker 2: 3:29

Also, if you enjoy what you do, that's a huge part of it too. If it's your passion and you enjoy helping people, then we all want to work those jobs where it doesn't really feel like work and we're getting paid, that's the bonus. But also, too, when you think about OWL and getting paid, we all go to networking events and we pay sometimes to go to those networking events, to make those connections, and OWL really is like a virtual networking event, if you want to think about it like that.

Speaker 1: 4:00

I like that analogy. We've never talked about that. It's $100 to get to an event and then people bitch about paying. On OWL I have like $5, $10 to speak to people, but you get one-on-one with those individuals.

Speaker 2: 4:11

It's a virtual networking event when you go to an event.

Speaker 1: 4:14

You end up getting sucked into a corner.

Speaker 2: 4:16

Like you did Danielle.

Speaker 1: 4:18

I know Tech Palooza, and then she gets sucked in People come over to her and she can't get away for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and you're like wait, I was at this event to network for only two hours, and then she gets sucked in in certain situations.

Speaker 2: 4:30

And that's the beauty too, our conversations. After 10 minutes you can go. Oh oh oh, we have one minute left. Our time is running out. I'm so sorry. I got to go by, boop, you don't have to stay there for hours.

Speaker 3: 4:40

So ultimately, you should be getting value from that conversation 10 minutes and if you have, and to your point, I think you should. I lead with that right Like how can I give you value? How can I be helpful? That's the number one thing I learned about people management. Yeah, start with that. How can I be helpful? Don't, don't try to follow and that's a tangerine but don't try to follow all these management. It's just how can I be helpful, be useful, and so that that's what really formed the company. Right Is how can I be helpful to other companies with what I know? How can I scale?

Speaker 1: 5:06

Great, because too often people watch tic-tac videos or Instagram reels and they're just like oh, this is what successful people do, like Grant Cardone and Gary Vee, I'm like, but you're not them. You don't have the sales team behind the scenes setting up meetings, and too often they take it too serious and they lose out on a lot of the etiquette. Yep, right, they don't show up on time because, like, well, I'm busy, I could show up five minutes late to the zoom, like you know. No, the zoom starts at 10am. You, you're there at 10am. You can't make the zoom at 10am. You text the person or you email them that you're running behind, and I feel like etiquette is a lost art these days. It's just too often we're witnessing people on on the internet just like I'll get another meeting, no big deal. But you know, it sounds like you're not that individual. I could tell Like no, I could tell like, time is 10 o'clock, you're on that meeting, right?

Speaker 3: 5:51

Yeah, sometimes it's annoyingly so and some of my close friends will laugh at that, because I'm, like you said, 832. I'm here at 832.

Speaker 1: 5:57

And I'll start texting in a picture of the front door yeah, I mean we think about, we all have iPhones, you know so when, when people have these excuses with emails like Sarah was running behind, I, you know I was in traffic or another meeting you know happening it's like, okay, you could tell that meeting. Hey, can you just give me one moment? I have to text my 10 o'clock meeting, that I'm running 10 minutes behind schedule. Yep, and actually there's a lot of research that if you do that, actually that that person that you're doing it to, that you're running behind, will actually be very happy with you and more likely do business with you. Yep, because it's a signal Respect you, that you respect their time. Like this. And that happened to me all the time when I lived in New York, jumping into the car and heading out to Long Island or New Jersey for a meeting, and then all of a sudden, it's like you never knew what was going to happen. But you know something, I always looked on the phone. I'm like I was calling, I'm running behind schedule and and that that's so valuable today and it's a missing part of entrepreneurship and just any expertise, for that matter.

Speaker 3: 6:53

It is, and I think people that ultimately, how you treat others is how you treat yourself, and the respect that you have for others is respect that you have for yourself. And if you lead with that, how can I provide value to other people? Then the message you're conveying is I have value right and that's what people are attracted to, that's what people value, that's that's how you get clients Right.

Speaker 1: 7:12

So go into depth a little bit about your business more. Yeah, so where you started working with and then I kind of interrupted you, and then where you are today.

Speaker 3: 7:18

All good. So we I started working with just all sorts of kind of anybody who needed anything right, because I didn't have. I didn't view this as a business. It was how can I be useful? And we were just talking about this. I think there's a lot of challenges when you become a real business that you have to start to target yourself to someone, to who your ideal customers. And I knew this for my product days and, coincidentally, all of the advice that was getting pro bono into startups and at the FAU runway I wasn't taking it myself. So I went from being kind of anything tech right from a broken printer that's a joke, right, but anything to essentially building software to something a lot more targeted. So what we're doing now is we build automated processes and so we'll look at a business, we'll look at where there's an efficiency. You'd be surprised how many businesses, especially SMB, midsize businesses that are just keying in data and manually having, you know, moving things from a folder to a folder or scanning. You know we wait for Bob to scan a piece of paper and then you know Jenny over season and she keys in here, and these processes are taking up so much of people's times, they're eating up. Teams and companies are losing money and in this economy I found that that's so critical right now that that concept was. There was no other convincing I need.

Speaker 1: 8:34

So do you work with zero to five employees and so long entrepreneurs? What is your sweet spot? These?

Speaker 3: 8:39

days 50 to 200.

Speaker 1: 8:40

So a lot larger.

Speaker 3: 8:41

Yeah, because what we're looking for is redundancy and repetitiveness, right, and so if you're, as in a zero to 50 range, you're probably doing a little bit of everything, and every entrepreneur can attest to that. Right, you're wearing 10 different hats. But once you get into that kind of 50 and above, you're starting to have people who their whole job is just to refresh you know this folder, or check for this email, or do these repetitive tasks, and that's where we can come in and say, hey, this is a part of a full time employee or a full full time employee. Here's the cost of automation, here's the cost of a salary, which is the biggest expense in every company typically, and then we can automate that and then sell that as a solution and then turn the company.

Speaker 1: 9:16

It's actually fun, funny you're bringing this up. I just had a meeting with the folks over at Salesforce CRM and a couple of them are on the app right now. Yeah, of course, because I'm like you got to get into owl and like all these people on this platform typically are running a business, because last time you'll have a nine to five or right, but then they're working on a passion project and they're so the entrepreneur right, and they need to CRM right, and I'm big into CRM. I like three different ones and it's so important what you're talking about, because all the different processes. But then stuff has to get into the CRM, right, it doesn't just populate you know from the meeting you had and notes, but then you could share like stories about like hey, you know, use this tool that could take the notes from a zoom and then get it into the CRM, so you don't have to do it manually, you don't have to type it up afterwards, and there's so many tools out there and and you know, whatever amount you make on that project, you're like Look, I'm, you know I'm saving you X. You know immediately from these tools that you didn't realize existed because there's just too many tools. Yeah, right, I think you would agree. Like it's just like the pace of technologies out of control right now, with with AI solutions, ever like, oh, use this, but everyone says the same four things like chat, gbt, right, and we just had a tech conference and everyone would just say the same thing over and over again. And I just looked at the deal, it's like but how do we use these things? Like no one's really showing it to us, right? No one's sitting us down and saying, jason, this is what you should do for owl, this is going to help your team, you know, bring in more downloads and just save you so much time to focus on what you do best, which me and Danielle are good, good podcasters. Right, that's what we do best.

Speaker 3: 10:42

Yeah, and well, I'm not sure if there's a way to automate and replicate you as a human, but there might be one day. There is actually.

Speaker 1: 10:49

Yeah, I was over at the Levand Center of Innovation. They literally, you know it's like 20 grand and they could take a whole thing in the special cube thing that they have and then, and then you could start puttishing it to another AI tool to actually create videos of you.

Speaker 3: 11:01

So actually, I love that.

Speaker 2: 11:02

I love that so when you were talking about your niche and your ideal clients. Who? Who are those exactly so?

Speaker 3: 11:10

if you look at all the different industries and where innovation hasn't quite reached those segments, there's a lot of healthcare, there's a lot of manufacturing and kind of the very labor intensive type of industry. So we work a lot with manufacturing clients, healthcare, behavioral health, doctors and how did you determine that?

Speaker 4: 11:27

to me.

Speaker 3: 11:28

I think I was thinking a lot about what the economy is headed, and that was. There was a big push right and there's been a lot of instabilities the election year, there's a lot of different macro trends that are happening and at the same time and you just brought this up Gen AI has swept the world right. Everybody's talking about chat, gbt, generative AI. How can we leverage that? So there was this interesting push of advancement of technology and skill set and people who are talking about chat, gbt and all the other similar tools, and where the economy is going and what industries aren't really going to be touched or impacted. There's always going to be manufacturing. There's always going to be healthcare, right, and so I was facing the same challenge of how do I become more targeted, right? How do I stop wasting all of my efforts on marketing and outbound sales to marketing Essentially somebody had told me this once they go, so who's your client? Anybody with a computer. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. That was like a big aha moment for me is I need to figure out what's happening around me and what my skill sets are internally and then target it from why does everyone struggle with that?

Speaker 1: 12:25

you think Because so often it's so obvious. I went, goes to you know business school and like pick a niche, you know, and then eventually everyone comes out as they're like I know it, but then they always go general and when you look down at the owl app, you know we're here to help everyone on the owl app, with this answer that she's about to provide, it's like narrow it down, right, what is it? You know, if you're working with fifty two hundred type, you know, mid-sized businesses, like what types? Right, and you mentioned it right there. Like the healthcare field, because I'm never gonna have money, I was always gonna run into health situations and they always, you know, can write checks, of course, right. Same reason why some people work only with lawyers, right, because lawyers will always be able to write those checks. Obviously, that could slow down with chat GBT, but I doubt it. Right, because now what I'm seeing is like there's more issues because people are using Chat GBT to everyday businesses and these everyday business are like what is what am I getting? That happened to me recently, yep, and then all sudden it's like I know they're using chat GBT, but then you have to take it serious. So then you have to speak with an attorney, which is what I'm doing, and then the attorney has to be like oh, no, no, no, no, like this is bullshit, like, yeah, you know, don't worry about this or that, but you know, when it comes to niche, you know what do you recommend, because you went through this struggle yourself. Like in our community, a lot of people. You see this with coaching specifically. You know what would you recommend. How did you get breakthrough?

Speaker 3: 13:41

You know, I think my biggest learning and I thought about this for a long time, so I'm happy you're asking that is scarcity mindset. And if you have that scarcity mindset that you have to take every, every lead, every opportunity, every contact, yes, comes your way. You become that, you become everything to everyone and therefore you're nothing to someone, right, because you're just, you're generic, right? What's your skill set? So for me, to get down to, why am I taking and why am I spending time on Something that might not be my niche? It was about do I have the confidence? And it's back to our conversation about value. Yeah, I have confidence that I can say no to a certain opportunity and still have value. And I think, for for folks Are struggling with that, especially startups. They have limited resources and they feel that they have to go after every opportunity and then they'll be. I'm working with a company now. They're B2B and B2C at the same time. They can't even narrow down when what's the order, because they're so, they're so scared of letting go. And I think there's a lot of confidence and there's different ways to get there Right. Maybe it's expertise, maybe it's mentorship, right? Maybe it's asking others. How did you go down from 10 things to three things. To them one thing, but ultimately it's for. Are you bringing that scarcity mindset or are you bringing the, the value, and then you can really with confidence say this is my thing.

Speaker 1: 14:53

Let's talk about mentorship for a second, because you are part of the FAU tech runway. I will was part of their last class and I was assigned four mentors and they're very supportive where you get access to all these different platforms Like Microsoft or AWS, different discounts, get to be part of the pitch competition, but but the big thing is these mentors, which you are one of them. Why do you do it number one and then explain the power of being part of these type incubators that are out there?

Speaker 3: 15:21

I think one of the what so we're talking about networking earlier and the value of having those right people in your, in your circle that you can lean on, you can ask questions, and I value that greatly. Like I understand there's. There's probably an actual monetary value, but the people that can call on say, hey, have you seen this? And then when they go, before I even finished the sentence, they could already say, oh, I know exactly we're talking about. It's the you know, a versus be dilemma. Had that ten times. That is months of work that you just cut yourself with the right phone call, love it and they've seen it right, and so all about out you know, that's what we tell everyone, all the time? Yes, absolutely, and so, for me, I love giving back. Right now, I'm an FAU grab myself, I'm an owl and so I wanted to get more involved with the community. I wanted to get give back to FAU and that like this concept of how can I provide value and how can I help these people not run Into the same issue over and over again. That's really why I got involved and it's been. It's been incredibly fulfilling, it's rewarding and mentor a couple of companies per class and, ironically, the challenges that I'm describing here this genericism, if you will, or they're big on that.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Oh, it's number one, survey 25, your customers, clients, and you can't really get into the program until you've done those 25 surveys. And then, after once you're in, your mentors just beat you down on the data points and there's, like you, what is the problem that you are solving? Put in your pitch deck. Yeah, explain in one minute, can't be four minutes. You can say but, but, but. But. You know, because a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, jump around Yep, the true one-minute elevator pitch, and you know they are very, very helpful. We were interesting right now because not many people have built a mobile app that that has this type of. You know, it's an arrow that you were just saying like it. That niche is kind of like well, like who uses linked in, and my mentors are like you have to knit, you have to niche. I'm like, but then I would go back to my who goes to a networking event and you're like a lot of different type of people come networking. You're like who networks and you're like a lot of different professionals network. So it was always a struggle and and technology and apps is developing so quickly that it's hard because if you're not building a mobile app right now, it's like you know, the policies are changing so, so rapidly and it takes so much time to build and so darn expensive. So it's actually really interesting our mentors, you know, just bouncing around ideas, but it does come back to a problem solution. Yes you know, and, of course, the user experience, where, if you could get a user that just feels value, you know, the second they enter that app and then you know and we're still struggling with that today, you know, that's why we're continuously improving. We created the owl connection hub where you could post Similar to a typical job form Proposed to need, and then we could go in there and tag a person like yourself yeah, now we know each other and now I can say you, you two should speak, you guys are gonna hit a home run together and then potentially, it could be a customer for you.

Speaker 3: 18:09

Yeah, and these are very important in business, of course yeah, and it's not one-sided like I have a list of people that are my mentors in my personal life. There are mentors as a parent, there are mentors as an athlete and I think there's the late, and I've said this to her. There's true value to that and a lot of the, the mentee companies, the venture companies. Occasionally they don't know what to ask a mentor and it becomes this like teacher, like dynamic of what is it that you're expecting of us? And I think everybody. That first of all, I believe anybody can benefit from mentorship always, but know what you're looking for, know what to ask the mentor, have your questions ready, because as a mentor, we get value and fulfillment and joy from helping people. So there's there's really nothing worse than kind of not knowing what you know, we don't know, but sure don't be afraid to ask the questions right, because they, they, they're there to help you right? We're not paid I mean at the FAT Tech runway, we're volunteers but in any mentorship capacity you really benefit from that and we started mentorship Mondays for these reasons.

Speaker 1: 19:07

Really cool Initiative we were on the news about six months ago and Cindy Metzler I got to give her a lot of credit Give us this idea. She's like why don't you do a mentorship Day, like mentioned Mondays? So 9 o'clock to 12 pm Eastern Standard Time. Any expert that wants to participate, you could just select that as your expertise and then you just lower your price. So if you usually charge $10, lower to $1, just give back, let people call you and see where it goes, and it's our best day of the week because people just you know, then we just removed that whole like money piece to it. It's a dollar you could afford to call five people at $5, speak for 50 minutes, with no problem. I meet five new people and the people accepting the calls they're just in shock. They're like you know, I came in thinking this about mentorship, but then it just leads to so many different opportunities Podcasting or meeting up for coffee, and you see that through the tech runway it's not about the money, it's just like the network and then the ability to know these people that you've been in touch with when you have a need to Rise. All human, we all go through health situations. You know family situations. You know just Fiat situation, like I don't know what food eats some days, you know, and you just call somebody and you're like what do you think about this? It just, it's, it's never ending. Yes, people think, oh well, I don't need this for that reason. Like I hear that without, I'm like what do you mean? It gives a million different reasons why you might need to call an expert. I'm like that just doesn't practically make sense to me. They're just stubborn, they're not let there, they're not willing to to learn something new.

Speaker 3: 20:32

Of course, at times, true, or they're not valuing their own time enough and they think that spending those hundred hours is somehow worth less than, let's say, it's a hundred dollars. Let's say it's a thousand dollars. Look at that. Is your time worth more than ten bucks an hour? Probably right, so I would pay any money for that advice. That's gonna save me time, because that's the one thing, that that you don't get back that is true, that is true.

Speaker 1: 20:52

It's a scarce resource and and folks like Danielle she's juggling so much. She works with the owl brand. She's out of our brand ambassador department, so definitely reach out to Danielle if you want to become a brand ambassador. But I witness her just like writing music, teaching music, you know. Then she does gigs down here in South Florida and it's it's really cool because I see her use the owl app so much and she's like there's no brainer. I've got him and share with somebody stories. It's important for listeners here, like getting gigs with like Ron Sanders, right when he came on the shrimp tank podcast and then you saw him go live and then just tell those stories about what, what have come Out, just calling people in the car, literally.

Speaker 2: 21:30

Mm-hmm. No, I mean I have like stories about my industry and also not even related like I mean the Ron Saunders thing, like he was on the shrimp tank. Jason said, oh, he does this event Every year at his house with Nashville songwriters. I knew that I wanted to spend a long period of time in Nashville and I thought this would be a great opportunity to meet. You know, some of these people are Grammy nominated songwriters. Make the right connection. So I called him. He ended up having one more spot left in this show. This Nashville songwriter is round and he was having at his house and he was like sure you can do it works. Yeah, yeah, one more spot. And Then it led me to like a few months later Then I was in Nashville for the whole month of September writing with some of these people. So that was amazing. But even just like I was one day Sick and I like got on the owl up, I didn't realize that I had COVID and I was like I'm feeling really bad, I don't know what's going on. And like I called this naturopath on the owl app and she was like telling me all these natural concoctions to take, and you know, I actually was going to Burning man, like a week later. So I was like I better get, I need to get better, like ASAP. So I was like sick, you know, for four days. I was like religious about all the things she told me to do and then took the test and I was negative four days later. So you know, like it could be anything from like your career or not, like medical advice or therapy there we have I was just looking at our list of people live like we have a Divorce coach on here, relationship coach, like personal or professional. I know we talked about having a niche, but something like this. You know, I guess we could say we have mostly entrepreneurs on here who are giving the advice, but you really can go on here for, for anything. So, yeah, I mean I've, I've obviously like I think, any entrepreneur, you have to be a networker and you have to understand the benefit of Networking and building relationships and having Like just the value of having one-on-one conversations. It's so rare these days, you know, as opposed to just sending an informal DM which people get flooded with all the time. That's generic, you know, just having that conversation, hearing someone's voice, getting to know each other we have on the profiles here, not just professionally what you do, but we there's a reason we have hobbies as well, like, so you can find common interests with people and say oh my god, you love horseback riding too. Wow, you know, just get that conversation started.

Speaker 1: 24:22

You know common interests or because often we're a networking event and there's no icebreaker. We just got to figure out with our.

Speaker 2: 24:28

You could just see these you can like stalk someone ahead of time and be like, oh my god, we're in, we went to the same college or whatever it is.

Speaker 3: 24:34

That's a lost. Our to has been knowing how to approach someone and, and I'll really breaks that down right, it breaks that barrier. So it's like here you go, here's a, here's a connection point, here's a starter, and go go learn something, go be useful, or two, or for yourself or others.

Speaker 1: 24:47

And everyone has so much time in a day. Whenever you're in the car and you have a commute, everyone's picking up, you know, a meal here or there. And I always say, like you could do this while you're picking up a meal and just meet someone new and make it a habit, because often people you know love to have excuses like, oh, my business is failing because x, y or z, because more often that's the issue is, they just don't have enough conversations throughout the month and they don't get that ripple effect that Danielle was speaking about. And often it's just like that. One time you got lucky, she called Ron and he had a spot, yeah, but then all sudden, it's like that luck turned into that meeting someone when she went to Nashville, you know, and just it just continues, continues, everyone just always like well, they're lucky because of x. Right, I just got the green light, you know to run. No one knows this. I'll say it live right now. But with my other co's, with the shrimp tank, you know a podcast with 40 students, we're gonna take a classroom and put it during the podcast time in a new theater that we got the opportunity to take over at FAU, their College of Business, and it only took 275 shows. You know, it's proof to them that we were worthy of doing this. Yeah, but now we have this opportunity of a lifetime. There's no such studio that I'm aware of in the world that does that with a college. And how cool is this? Be that these students are gonna get you know to ask these entrepreneurs live questions, like we are doing right now. Imagine 40 students being that's amazing right here doing the show and then, during the show, they're asking questions. But it took that that first call to FAU to say would you want to do a podcast with me? And walk through those doors and just ask, yeah, right, and I will enables you to ask which we're about to do. We're gonna call some people. So if you're listening live, go live on the owl out. If you're not an owl, download it head out. App source 2w2l. And every week we call people live, bring right into the show, and that's the beauty of it. It's like everyone's like oh, but I don't know about that person. I don't know if I'd have anything come. It's like they're all human. Just call them and see where it goes. And the Neville East people are Givers. They're gonna want to support you, like oh, you know who you should speak to. You know this individual on the app. They would be a perfect fit because they're not the fit, but they've talked into the bar that, and that's what the connection Hub is gonna be all about so, yamila, can you hear me?

Speaker 2: 27:03

Hello, yes, I can. How are you doing? Good, so you are actually live on the owl podcast right now, oh wow.

Speaker 1: 27:13

This is Jason Hill, with you as well. How's everything going? Oh good, all good.

Speaker 2: 27:20

I decided to call you Mila because I we were talking about niches earlier and I think that what she's doing is great and she just became a brand ambassador with us, which is exciting. But I checked out her profile and I saw that she's a Spanish translator, which I feel like is especially being in South Florida, like, where there's such a big population like. She's already told me that she's gotten gigs helping people translate things on the app, translate courses, courses, etc. So you, mila, just tell us a little bit about your experience with owl.

Speaker 4: 27:58

Absolutely. I've only been on owl for about three weeks, three and a half weeks. I get about at least three to four phone calls a day. I definitely got a project off of owl. This is a surentay. We connected me with an author of a book, a brief book, and I translated it from English to Spanish. I have also been talking to miss Connie on translating the child safety kits that she has worked on To translate those into Spanish. Oh, she should be getting back to me with that. I'll be getting at the years sometime and Talk to Darryl. I'm teaching him Spanish on here.

Speaker 2: 28:41

Quite a few people call me on a regular basis, so I just kind of just reminding you my New Year's resolution, which I failed at, was to get better at Spanish. So now maybe I need to. I mean, I have like a few weeks left, but I never did.

Speaker 3: 28:58

I was gonna.

Speaker 2: 28:58

Yeah, I was gonna download duolingo and I like I just never did it.

Speaker 4: 29:03

But now I know you're here and I can call you yeah definitely, I was looking into all these different like apps just to teach Spanish and I'm like they don't teach to be getting Fundamental.

Speaker 2: 29:14

yeah, I'm always like I'm always a proponent of working with a human. I don't care what they say about AI. I just I and you like YouTube how-to videos. I'm like, no, no, no, I just want to talk to a person. I want to be able to ask my questions like on the spot. It's so much easier that way. Do you have any questions? Oh, you're. Our guest today is Alisa. She's the CEO of a company that does let's see if I get this right, because I'm not techie, but I guess she's a consultant for technology Product processes. Sure, yeah, again, not my industry, but do you, I guess, do either of you have questions for each other? We'll put it that way.

Speaker 3: 29:58

Well, I want to build on what you had just said. In living in South Florida, spanish is common. How do you distinguish yourself, and has it been? Do you narrow down to a specific type of content? Or how do you, how does narrowing down help you stand out?

Speaker 4: 30:15

Well, I think, narrowing down, like basically, like okay, spanish has multiple dialects, like you have different types of Spanish, we have Spaniard, you have Columbia, you have Venezuelan, you have Cuban, puerto Rican, dominican, etc. What I do is I teach the fundamentals of the regular, normal Spanish that we can all translate and we can all relate to. You can go to a different area you can definitely understand. You know the basics. That's basically how I stand out in the nutshell.

Speaker 2: 30:47

Sorry, I got distracted, no see this is perfect advertisement of like you can be home with your children and Still be making money and using owl and working at the same time. It's great. I don't know if there is a certain technology that she could use you might have to know more about her business but like something that she could implement. I don't know if it's something with automation or I don't know there certainly is.

Speaker 3: 31:14

I mean, I think the biggest strength of tools like chat, gpt and other generative AI is content. So if you're working with content, the one note is you know, supervise the AI, supermise AI. So we were just talking about that.

Speaker 4: 31:29

When People think that AI can be unsupervised and it replaces their job, for them, there's still some supervision that's required, but you certainly absolutely, when I translate this book I kind of use the AI a little bit, but you know I still had to correct the grammar and and certain you know I'm curious. By the regular person. Most of those words were definitely, you know, high-level words, so I would have to convert it into something that is more useful and more understanding for the population.

Speaker 2: 32:03

Yeah, I used to use like back in the day Sorry teachers, but we're all I'm admitting now, we all cheated and we used to use Spanish English translator for our Spanish class, which I would like literally verbatim, just like type my paper in English and then put it in the translator and it was like very Obviously like, these words don't go together. This doesn't make any sense. So I don't know how much better the AI has gotten now with translations, but I imagine there are still some. Okay.

Speaker 4: 32:32

Yeah, yes, it's okay. It still means a lot of Updating to do, especially when it comes to grammar you know.

Speaker 3: 32:39

What's interesting is how much AI and chat GPT has penetrated every single industry Like I don't know a single person at every single one, everyone right.

Speaker 2: 32:49

Who doesn't use it? I?

Speaker 3: 32:50

have people that respond to my texts with chat GPT, like if I'm having a bad day. They're like how can chat GPT help you?

Speaker 1: 32:55

It's kind of getting a little silly, though, because you're like this person's not that smart. You're like, you know, you're like the words that they're using in the sentence. I'm like, I'm like this looks phenomenal. I know it's not you, yeah, right it, but it's. It's just, it's getting a little weird, right? You just want to talk to people normally the technology is moving fast exactly was on social media.

Speaker 2: 33:14

You can tell you're not, you're supposed to look like this, and now it's like what these big words are in there and they try to like make it sound cooler with the big words and just like even when you Get the DM like it's so obvious to me when I'm talking to a human versus like they're automated DM back like take my course, you know whatever, click this link, yeah, or whatever it is like.

Speaker 4: 33:34

Someone's website. Yeah, the other day that said they were teaching Spanish and I click on it and they literally had an AI robot talking and telling Spanish and I'm like, are you kidding me? Right now you can't even understand what AI is saying, like a funny to clear spanish, like why would you do that?

Speaker 2: 33:54

That's why I well again just bringing it back. You know what you're getting additional when you. You know it's a difference when, when someone is Typing something out, but when you're having a one-on-one conversation with someone, you can tell right away if they are bullshit.

Speaker 1: 34:09

That's all. The social platforms are favoring all the lives, like Instagram. I just announced that you could stream a podcast live for the first time, so you're seeing everyone you know. Push the left right when you look at the stories, the lives. Those are mostly podcasts these days and then LinkedIn. When you go live, either their audio rooms with those events or You're streaming and you can only stream through a podcast through LinkedIn. Right now they're favoring it. Tiktok's favoring it, so it's just like we're seeing it because it's it's the reality that all the social posts are more fake today, but the rawness is coming back.

Speaker 3: 34:42

Isn't that funny how I'm full circle.

Speaker 1: 34:44

Yeah, now people want raw videos.

Speaker 2: 34:45

They don't want all the yes, we could all even like the curated pages on Instagram, how it was like you must use these color schemes and have like Every other block and everything. Now it's just like whatever in the moment. Hey guys, you know which I like? It's a time saver and less curation, I think, is where you get the best content. Thank you for chatting with us. We'll thank you, guys for calling. Yeah, we will talk to you later.

Speaker 4: 35:15

I'm just we on here. Like every time my time runs out, I would start it over.

Speaker 3: 35:21

That's great.

Speaker 2: 35:22

See you later. See you later. Oh of course, at the end of the call you can rate somebody and Comments.

Speaker 1: 35:30

We're gonna give her five stars and then take those reviews of people, write about you, all right and post them on social media. People love testimonials and essentially I don't see enough people doing that and there and what they're doing is going back to, you know, typical posts that 99% of people are doing and then you know. They wonder why they get poor results, because it's the same stuff we all see. You know, but most people haven't seen. Like what is this form that says you know 10 calls in the last 10 days and what people Five stars.

Speaker 2: 35:58

five stars, yeah, or fake reviews, but this is.

Speaker 3: 36:01

You know, you heard it. This is a real conversation and we can all go back. And, by the way, I think the I I'm impressed by her ability to handle the kid going mommy, I need your help. And she just kept at it. That was like, well, that's the connection point where I'm a parent, right, and I'm like, oh, I could totally relate. That's what I'm going to remember. It's the humanity of that conversation, yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:20

And we've all been there for some reason. You know, I have a nine and seven year old.

Speaker 2: 36:23

We have an all been there. We have an all been there.

Speaker 1: 36:25

We have an all been there. But that situation and some of us where, like you, just jump on the phone, they're calm, and then all of a sudden they just love it, there's a rule as soon as you're unavailable, they want you to need you.

Speaker 3: 36:38

Things are on fire. It's always like that.

Speaker 1: 36:42

It is so, it is so true.

Speaker 3: 36:44

Well, you know what you were talking about mentorship and asking questions and I was thinking about this is that there is no area of my life personally where I'm like got it nailed it Parenting, being an entrepreneur, being a student yeah, anything right, You're always learning. So I was thinking about that, and same thing with parenting, Like, how do you handle that? How do you talk to me about mentorship? So it all comes back to that. I think it's interesting that entrepreneurs have that same mindset as a student.

Speaker 1: 37:09

No, it's true because a lot of times people think they know it all and then they don't need to take calls, they don't need to take certain meetings. And it's interesting, simon Sinek I watch a lot, I'm TikTok and other stuff and pretty much when you hear him talk about businesses that you work with 50 to 200, and the leaders of those businesses, he says it all the time it's like you are consistently learning. There is no playbook for this shit. You could read all you want, but when someone walks through that front door and has a shitty day and they drop something on your platter, you've got to run with it. And lots of times you think you could read a book and you've experienced it. But you just know and experienced COVID before. What are you going to do if you're a restaurant? Well, my friend that runs Ocean 234 started grocery store. There's no playbook for starting a grocery store. You're in COVID, like that. She just winged and she went with it. And there's no playbook for Owl app. When Apple says you need these features to block people and be able to delete data based on the ruling in California, and then you're like crap, I got to build this, it's going to take three months, you just got to run with it. We're now chat GBT with the uptick of what I mentioned earlier people using it against the businesses to try to bleed them for more money Like I'm going to sue you, so that's causing an uptick of problems. And then you just got to run with that, of course, and just have better practices behind the scenes for your business setup. But I just think we're learning as entrepreneurs, like there is just endless learning to occur.

Speaker 3: 38:34

The best things about being entrepreneur are also the worst. Right Is that you're always learning something. You're always talking to somebody figuring something out, which that's the exciting part, but that's also where you're like oh crap, I've never done this before. I got to figure out. It's true, save yourself a lot of time by calling the right people.

Speaker 1: 38:49

Yes, and that's all about Owl. Just get in there, Follow all these new people. We put all the new people at the tap this week, Sometimes put on the second or third row. But very simple, they're in there, they're$1 until they get to 10 calls. So you get to chat with a lot of our podcasts for $1, because we do it for everybody and it's an experience. So that way they learn the platform when they're new and they really learn that it's about the relationships, not about the money received. Too often people counter up and hear money and then they're like oh, I want to charge a lot of money, but then they then get so stuck on that. And Danielle actually pinpointed earlier it's like you don't go to a networking event and say I'm not talking to you unless you pay me $10. You say you go to the networking, you pay, then you pay to get into the event Hundreds of dollars often. And lots of people love the ones that are more expensive because that means it's better quality people Received value, Right. So on OWL, if you call someone that's $50 or $100, and they got 500 reviews, probably there's some opportunity there. And don't be penny foolish all the time and always be like well, they're too much. I don't know if I'll get enough value out of it. You get what you pay for. I like do you believe that?

Speaker 3: 39:56

I do, of course, and some of those people they might be charging $1,000, $2,000 an hour for it. I mean, some of the best coaches in the world charge way more than that and you're taking advantage of the fact that they have five minutes or 10 minutes and they could just jump on a quick call with you. If somebody asks me to book an hour, I'm like, oh, let me look my calendar, I've got a spot next Thursday. If somebody says, hey, I need three minutes or any 10 minutes of your time, I can make that today. I make it on the way home driving from here, and so that fractional availability. I think there's a lot of value to that because you can get that insight and most of the time you probably learn a lot for the first 10 minutes of the conversation with that person. So much, so 100%. You get what you pay for in mentors. They're invaluable.

Speaker 1: 40:35

OK so.

Speaker 2: 40:36

All right, this is wait. This is the fun part of the show.

Speaker 1: 40:39

Don't forget.

Speaker 2: 40:40

This is my favorite part the bet.

Speaker 1: 40:42

The bet, the famous bet, we just started this four weeks ago we just started.

Speaker 2: 40:46

That's why he forgot.

Speaker 1: 40:46

And now we're like 50-50,. Who has won the bet and who has lost the bet? Right?

Speaker 2: 40:50

No, I think we won every time. So I hope you seem like a go-getter and you seem like someone who follows through and you're on top of your shit. So I'm just going to say so I don't know how much time you have. I know it's the holidays right now, so maybe we make this for the new year. But typically we do these bets, so usually we challenge our guests to make 10 calls on owl in a week. So you have a week to make 10 calls. If you make the 10 calls, then we owe you something.

Speaker 1: 41:25

So make, not receive, very important.

Speaker 2: 41:27

Yeah, make you have to get in there and call outbound yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:30

It sounds easy, but often then people are like, eh, do I want to put myself in an uncontrollable position?

Speaker 2: 41:36

Yeah, because so far like that they don't know. Four out of four have failed.

Speaker 1: 41:39

I'm going to struggle with that, four out of four have failed Four out of four have failed so far.

Speaker 3: 41:42

No no, no, I'm really upping the ante and I'm a challenge.

Speaker 2: 41:45

So yeah. I can tell I'm like ooh, yeah, yeah, so maybe you'll be the one winner out of everyone, but so we can offer you. So I already have an idea of what I want you to give. I know the offer.

Speaker 1: 41:59

I know the offer.

Speaker 2: 41:59

I know the offer, Fine you go.

Speaker 1: 42:01

I'm going to put a pretty good offer out there. I just announced the show that our new studio is at FAU Right and I'm sure you want to get on our other podcast, shrimp Fang, with 40 students Also. You're an FAU alumni and also your mentor, so getting on that show is quite cool. I will offer that show as a guest.

Speaker 3: 42:20

Okay. You're an entrepreneur, ceo, so you make calls on the way home, yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:25

I think we got to up it then Because you were going to be an offer too, maybe 15.

Speaker 1: 42:29

You were going to.

Speaker 2: 42:29

You were going to up something too. Wait a minute, wait a minute. No, I already said 10.

Speaker 1: 42:32

What was your? What was your thing? Because we had two things.

Speaker 2: 42:34

No, we do a double. No well, actually my thing was going to be literally also your own podcast show, but either here or at FAU. But then my other thought and offer up at FAUs. Even though I was like going to be like FAU and see if you said yes, but then like what we want is, I was more thinking what we want is like for you to come in and do a consultation with us and see how like we can incorporate. Ooh, I like this Technology to make our more efficient, maybe get more downloads, like where we have holes.

Speaker 3: 43:04

That seems like a win-win. Yeah Well, I mean, I took 10 people learned something, or you know be on a podcast, or I think she wants to win and lose simultaneously.

Speaker 1: 43:13

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:13

Yeah, and then you can help us too.

Speaker 1: 43:15

Yeah, competing against myself, but yeah, so if you lose, Well, we're getting it for free, because often you would charge thousands of dollars to do that type of conversation.

Speaker 3: 43:22

Yeah, so when we started the conversation with how can I?

Speaker 2: 43:23

provide value, right, yeah, so if you lose, we get that free consultation from you, but if we, sorry, I can't think right now.

Speaker 1: 43:32

If you win. If you win, then you get. I think the hurdle's got to be higher 10 is quite easy. It's a dollar a call. There's so many people live on the app. Fine, what do?

Speaker 2: 43:39

you want it to be. That's not really fair, though I said 10.

Speaker 1: 43:43

Bigger, bigger, bigger reward. Okay, I say that it's got to be 10 calls, but then she has to publicly post about, you know, one of these calls. What are the one of the stories that led to something bigger? That she didn't see happening.

Speaker 2: 43:57

So you have to give a testimonial.

Speaker 1: 43:59

We need a pure testimonial. What I want what happened from the results? I want a results right. Too often, yeah, no, but too often we see 10 calls happening and like a story like today, I'm like she got business, I didn't. Why doesn't the world know that you, you know, had this opportunity, like, don't keep us a secret, right, we need more people to be exposed. But these stories, I want a true testimonial. What happened from those 10 calls? Deal, deal, Right. Did you get on one podcast? Did you end up getting a customer? Did you meet for coffee? Did you? You know, we had people that dated on this app, literally like we met, and now we're together, like I've seen that stuff, yeah, right. But I just want to really hear, like, the truth behind those 10 calls.

Speaker 3: 44:36

Yeah, I love that and I'm as you probably can imagine, I'm very organized, so I do have, for every Walk it out, every networking, so let's do it.

Speaker 1: 44:44

But too often people don't. And then seven days goes around like I missed it.

Speaker 2: 44:47

Well, it's the holidays, so I feel like a little bit unfair.

Speaker 1: 44:49

No, it's not because they're live Right now. You get in there and call one person on your way out. It was one call a day. Well, the other cool thing, it's one week, no holidays and one day's holiday, yeah. But there's a lot of people that don't celebrate. They're live. There's people online at one in the morning, two in the morning, this is true. You'd be surprised, like today, I woke up and Lawrence Cartel, literally famous artist, was live at like seven in the morning and I saw his light red up, lit up red. I got out of the night pool this morning after swimming and I was like nice and I saw on call. I was like, ah, lawrence is on a call, so it's natural because they're available. I love that. It's actually hard to fail because it's not scheduling meetings, because they're right there. Yeah, I mean, obviously people don't always pick up, you know, but that's because they.

Speaker 3: 45:29

That doesn't count against my tentality.

Speaker 1: 45:31

No, no, the people don't pick up, for very simple reasons. We have this thing called office hours, where they set up a schedule and they're available those specific times and then they forget to shut them off. So what happens is you call them and they just they don't even know they're live, right, and then you just go to the next person, right?

Speaker 2: 45:47

And the cool thing which I didn't show you yet is so, if you want to, we were talking about niche and targeting, so like, rather than just like going through the millions of people on here, you can choose an expertise so you could go let me see everyone in the healthcare industry. That's, those are my clients, right, boom, done, apply, yeah, and then it shows you everyone on the app who's in healthcare, and then you can. These people are live right now, so you could call them now, or you could just like go down and be like all right, boop boop, let me check out her LinkedIn. What does her bio say? Does she look like a client? No, she looks like she's more part time. You know, oh, this person works for a big company. Maybe I could get them as a client. Let me just give them a call, and it's as simple as hey. Like I just found you an Owl app. I want to hear more about what you do, bam. That's a really useful feature of just navigating through the app is narrowing down that search, and you can narrow it down even further if you want local clients to South Florida, anywhere in the US. We have a little bit of Canada in there, I think we do.

Speaker 1: 46:51

We don't have a search in Canada.

Speaker 2: 46:52

We don't have a search in Canada, but yeah. That's exciting what we kind of.

Speaker 1: 46:56

Do you just search at the top Canada, and we'll come up actually Type in a keyword? Yeah, we can. At the way, top of Owl, it's just a blank search bar and that just screens your entire profile.

Speaker 3: 47:04

Type in triathlons and then just find.

Speaker 1: 47:05

Actually Joy McAdams Definitely type it in or, even better, just put a post. I'm really interested in speaking with someone who's done a triathlon and then ready. I know Joy McAdams is big LinkedIn. Yeah, that's her, and she loves Owl. She doesn't get on there enough and if I tag her, she probably will and boom, you're on a call. Yeah, yeah, let's make it happen.

Speaker 2: 47:22

You do triathlons, I do. Wow, that's impressive.

Speaker 3: 47:27

It's one of my other, you know, passion areas. Wow, I love it. Good for you, that's a big thing.

Speaker 2: 47:32

What about pickleball? I have more pickleball people, so Not coordinating.

Speaker 3: 47:37

That's why I do sports. They're like running the straight line right, the bike and the straight line. Okay, there's a lot of like not, I played this morning actually.

Speaker 2: 47:44

That's why I'm going to get in later. That's exciting.

Speaker 1: 47:48

That's okay, it's a fun open assistant, yeah, I needed my fitness before my coffee. So Brain energy.

Speaker 3: 47:53

Yeah, exactly that's what they say about the 30, 30, 30. Have you heard about that? No 30 minutes of low heart rate exercise, so you're essentially a slow jog or a fast walk 30 minutes within waking up for 30 minutes. Oh okay, interesting. So it apparently has all these incredible health benefits and it stimulates your metabolism and there's even some anti-inflammatory.

Speaker 2: 48:16

Oh, I know they say like, do it. We had an expert on here who does. What's the low carb diet, keto?

Speaker 1: 48:23

Yeah, keto and like, and then it's out.

Speaker 2: 48:25

Yeah, I always go on his lives and ask him questions because he's super knowledgeable.

Speaker 1: 48:28

That's awesome.

Speaker 2: 48:29

And he was saying like also, just doing it on an empty stomach, like when you wake up, is also great for inflammation, lowering inflammation and all that stuff. So yeah, certainly.

Speaker 1: 48:38

Fun facts and new study in if you call someone right after the 30 minutes is also great for your health and business.

Speaker 2: 48:44

There you go, yeah, and you're all in You're endorphins, you're amped up.

Speaker 1: 48:47

You're spreading.

Speaker 2: 48:48

Lower your nerves.

Speaker 3: 48:49

Costumately while you were doing the exercise. It was a column when you were on the mic.

Speaker 2: 48:51

Yeah, a column when you were on the mic. We just gave you guys a morning routine. Wow For the new year. New year, new you, okay, I like this idea. Yeah so.

Speaker 1: 48:59

Challenges in the new year. I see there, this is Eddie.

Speaker 2: 49:01

Ooh, All right guys. I think that's it for today.

Speaker 1: 49:04

Yes, well, thank you all for listening in. This is our last episode of the year. Catch up with us in 2024 again on Facebook Live, instagram Live and my LinkedIn, jason R Hill. Take care everybody.