Life is Delicious- Mindset Mastery, Midlife Empowerment, Joy, Purpose, Vitality, Inspiration, Women's Health

36: COFFEE WITH BURTON-“The Power of the Left Turn: How Small Yeses Can Lead to Big Opportunities ”

• Marnie Martin- Midlife Mentor, Empowerment Coach, Happiness Expert, Best Selling Author

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What if the best parts of your life came from the moments you almost ignored? We explore the power of saying yes to odd chances, trusting your gut, and treating detours like design. With my dad, Burton, back for Coffee with Burton, we trace how tiny openings turned into decades of meaningful work and why midlife might be the perfect time to reinvent.

Burton’s journey moves from retail and insurance to commercial sign writing after he watches a painter letter a restaurant door. One $40 sign sold on a cold call replaced a week’s wages and sparked a career. He reimagined “window painting” as window advertising, turning dealership glass into illuminated billboards and using traffic counts as media metrics. That eye for opportunity led to large-scale murals—from a Chilliwack pub’s New York skyline to a Gastown ceiling blooming with roses—paired with clever marketing ideas to draw cruise-ship crowds. We talk about risk tolerance, learning on the job, and the art of letting go when a new owner paints over your masterpiece.

My path follows the same compass in different lanes: a hallway conversation and a cassette audition sent me to LA to study voice. I bootstrapped with side hustles, later pivoted out of real estate, and built a voiceover career from a DIY studio, landing the on-hold voice for the Hard Rock Hotel. Volunteering led to MC gigs; a winery shoot became a tasting room role. The throughline is clear: test quickly, market around your craft, and stack skills so each yes compounds into momentum.

If you’re crafting your next chapter, you’ll hear practical ways to spot hidden opportunities, price your value, detach from outcomes, and build courage through action. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a review—then tell us the left turn you’re ready to take.

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SPEAKER_03:

Hey beautiful friend, it's Marnie. Welcome back to the show. You know, over the last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about how many times in my life I've had things things that seemed like random coincidences or maybe complete left turns somehow morphed into something totally different and unexpected and often led me to some place that I didn't even know I needed to go. Like the time when I was in college taking advertising when my whole life all I really ever wanted to be was a singer, but I I loved advertising too. And one of my high school bandmates found me in the hallway and told me about this music school in LA that he was gonna apply to and that I should too. So I ended up singing into a ghetto blaster a cappella, recording a cassette tape audition that I was gonna send in the mail. I know, I'm dating myself so much here. And six months later I was moving to LA to study voice at Musicians Institute in downtown Hollywood, and I was only 18. So that was such a great left turn, and it's really set the foundation for my entire life as I am still working as a voiceover artist. And I don't think that was an accident. I think that was definitely something that was supposed to happen for me. Has that ever happened to you? I bet it has. And maybe you didn't even realize it at the time. So that's what we're gonna talk about today on the show. My dad is here again for another episode of Coffee with Burton, and we're gonna dig into all the strange and wonderful things that have happened in his life that led him exactly to where he needed to go as well. And yes, Burton is in the house. So stick around because you're not gonna want to miss this. Welcome to this episode of Life is Delicious. I'm Larney Martin, and I'm so glad you're here. And if this is your first time here, welcome to the Life is Delicious Family. This podcast isn't about surviving midlife, it's about crafting your next afterlife, overflowing with perfect joy and delicious possibility. Midlife doesn't have to be a great beautiful to remember who we are, to rediscover a new person. Or to completely re-invent life to reflect who we are coming. So if you're tired of being living life on a hot pilot, everyone else, you are in the right place. Each week will bring you thought-provoking ideas and practical strategies as well as inspiration to help you prioritize yourself again. It's time to take back your water feedback. So grab a notebook and pen and pop in those earbuds and let's go get it. I don't know about you, but I'm not a fan of over-the-counter pain medications of any kind. But at this stage of life, almost everyone I know is living with some sort of chronic pain, inflammation, joint distress, or injury. Not to mention the crazy symptoms that come along with menopause. The Freedom Superpatch is designed to help provide relief from minor aches and pains. It's safe, all natural, non-invasive, and 100% drug-free with no ingredients or side effects. Superpatch uses fibrotactile technology to stimulate the skin's nerve response through a unique pattern similar to a QR code that sends signals to the brain and your nervous system to generate less discomfort and stimulate better movement. You can get 25% off your first order at lifeisdelicious.superpatch.com. Give yourself the gift of drug-free pain relief with the Freedom Superpatch. That's lifeisdelicious.superpatch.com for a 25% discount. Hey Dad, welcome back to the show. You know what? This is our third coffee with Burton, and I think it's so fun that you get to come on and do this with me. I love it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, me too. It's always, yeah, I'm always anxious to participate in your program because it's always fun.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, that's great. So hey, this week I've been really thinking a lot about just all the different times in my life that I was doing, you know, something, and then an opportunity showed up, and it didn't seem to make sense at the time, but I ended up taking it saying yes and taking the opportunity on, and that it would always more often than not lead me to some place that I didn't even know I needed to go. And uh it's just kind of been this recurring theme that's come up. So I thought it'd be really fun to talk about it with you because I know you've had some awesome serendipitous moments in your life as well. So is there anything particular that comes to mind like from when you were a young man where you know maybe you got led on a path that you didn't know you were supposed to be on, but it turned out to be exactly right?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh well maybe not exactly right, but Well, yes, actually there were several times. In fact, mo most of my life that's how things went. But um it it's interesting because you don't always see the whole picture. And when you're on a on a path of some kind and you're s either doing it or struggling with it, and then all of a sudden something happens and you go, Oh, why didn't I know that before? So now you start to make it work and it leads over here and you know, one thing leads to another, and all of a sudden you're doing something else that's might be super awesome. But we didn't weren't planning on that, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, a hundred percent. And I I'm good looking back over my life because I'm kind of working on this reverse engineering the new year, and it just means a lot of looking back and going, hey, what did I get right? What have I, you know, accomplished and and how did I get there? And just sort of having a look back and seeing, and I'm finding that that's quite a big theme in my life too, and almost all of the really good experiences or the great jobs that I've had have come from, you know, taking a leap of faith and stepping out of my comfort zone and saying yes to something I had absolutely no idea how to do, but I knew I could figure it out, and so I just sort of went, let's go. And it's been kind of awesome actually.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's but that's how all the good stuff really happens. That's how we really make our life worthwhile, I think. Because most of the stuff that I have done over my lifetime in many cases aren't what I necessarily planned to do. But this led to that and that led to that, and this showed up and I met somebody over here, and all of a sudden I'm going, I didn't even know I could do that, you know, so here I am making a career or making a opportunity, and uh they just kind of show up and it's so exciting when that happens. I think it's exciting because of course I've never been the kind of person that needs structured paychecks and things like that.

SPEAKER_03:

The apple didn't fall too far from the tree, Dad.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I've always just yeah, just gone with the flow and try things and hey, some things didn't work. So then you'd have to back up up a few spaces and try it again, and all of a sudden you go, There, that's better, you know, and away it goes.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

There's been quite a few opportunities like that.

SPEAKER_03:

Can you think of a specific example? Like in my mind, thinking back on your career, like in the sign, but I mean you've done a lot of other things besides just the sign business, so like anything in your early days of career, like maybe a job that you took that you went, Well, I didn't think that was really for me, or I met somebody that offered me a you know an opportunity. Like is there anything that sticks out in your mind?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, most of the most of the time I didn't really w well, I think like most people, you come out of high school or you decide to get into the workforce and you some people are fortunate because they have studied on a on a topic and they know they learned it well and they know exactly what they're gonna do and they just do it. And there's no you know, no problem with that. But then there's some of us creative guys that have no idea what we're gonna do. So we have a look around and we look at other things and look here and look there, and all of a sudden something will just fall out of the sky. And I go, Well, I didn't even know that was it was an an opportunity. And so you try it and away you go, and it sometimes ends up being a really great opportunity.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and I think what's interesting too, because I I know you and I have both worn a lot of hats in our lives and had a lot of different careers, but um I find that sometimes even if you don't enjoy the experience of a specific job that maybe you're working on, you learn a skill set from that that you take with you into the next place. And so sometimes it's not about that being your lifelong journey. It's about you needed to go there to learn that so that the next place you go, you've got that skill in your pocket, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And that's that's that's really the truth. That's exactly how it works.

SPEAKER_03:

So for you, like let's let's start back, 'cause I think, you know, you got into the life insurance business and I know you were doing that for quite a long time and well the one of the big serendipitous things that came from that was you meeting my mom.

SPEAKER_01:

One of my early jobs was I was working in a department store in in Edmonton.

SPEAKER_03:

And uh it was I forgot about the department store.

SPEAKER_01:

It was in the ladies' work business, actually. And um I must say I really enjoyed that. I was good at it. Uh and but for whatever reason I needed to make a change and one of the other ladies who are stores had an opening or were looking for somebody to help them out. And I came in and kind of like a more or less like a manager, but I they would send me over to the hotel and and meet up with the guys that were selling the the wholesaling the clothing. And so I was buying clothing, believe it or not, I was buying dresses and hats and things for women from the salespeople and I was doing that for the store.

SPEAKER_03:

Wow, so merchandising basically, what was gonna be in the store for that season.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly. And and at one point a fellow uh I was just a referral for uh life insurance plan. And um the fellow came over, we had a chat, and he said, Why don't you get into business and so on and so on and I thought, well, I can uh always go have a chat with the manager. It'll do no harm. So I did. And and next week I was in the insurance business.

SPEAKER_03:

So he he saw some skill in you, obviously saw something in you that he thought he would like to have in his business.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I was gonna say that you rarely know exactly what it is that you're getting into or looking for. And if just if you keep an open mind, it's amazing what shows up in life. Anyway, so I ended up doing the insurance thing for a little while. But I realized I did not want to do that on a long term um basis. So when that I met your mom uh on a blind date actually. And we were getting together to play cards with some other people, and one thing led to another and all of a sudden uh we were getting married and I now I got a problem because I don't have a job, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Right. Well, let's back that up because the reason you actually met mom is because you were working with Bob at the insurance place and Bob was married to Mom's sister.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03:

So that was a cool, you know, serendipitous moment where you g went out on this date and it just turned out to be uh, you know, a lifelong sixty-year marriage.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's the truth. Anyway, then we got married and I so I was and one day I was sitting in a restaurant by myself, having a cup of coffee in a thinking thinking mode, right?

unknown:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

So I'm sitting there thinking about what am I gonna do now because I have to come up with some sort of thing because I'm married now and my wife's expecting and etc, etc. And I saw a fellow painting, hand painting a sign lettering it on the door of the restaurant and I watched him the whole afternoon and I said, you know, I I think I could do that and it looks like it would be something just great for me. So anyway, I followed it up and ended up going and registering at Northern Alberta uh School of Technology where they were just starting up uh commercial sign writing course and that's how I got started now. Never look back after that. I just well I that's true. I I went to work for a sign shop. And in those days we were getting paid a dollar an hour, can you imagine?

SPEAKER_03:

Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

But that's that was kind of the going minimum wage, a dollar an hour. So anyhow that meant I was working for the sign shop lettering signs and doing what needed to be done. And at the end of the week I get forty dollars. Well I this wasn't gonna work because my wife was your mom was expecting and uh with your brother and I just I couldn't we couldn't survive on a dollar an hour, it just didn't work. So I opted out and I said, Well guys, thanks, but no thanks. I'm gonna go do my own thing.

SPEAKER_00:

And I came home and didn't know what I was gonna do, but I grabbed my little ticket and a little book and away I went and I got a signed job just through selling sales.

SPEAKER_03:

So like cold calling going to knock on doors. Yeah, cool. That's not easy for a lot of people, so that takes a little bit of courage to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, yeah, especially when you don't know what the heck you're doing. Anyway, it it turned out that when I sold that sign for I got a b I got a sign job from this particular place. And I remember distinctly he said, W how much do you have to charge? You know, so I gotta get my quote. So I figured forty dollars would be pretty good. So I did that, and the next day I delivered a sign back to him, and I said, Whoopee, I made you know, forty dollars, I made a whole week's wages on this one little job.

SPEAKER_03:

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01:

That was really the start of a whole bunch of stuff.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I was gonna ask you when you knew you were an entrepreneur, but that sounds like those are those moments, right, where you sort of go, Why am I doing this for somebody else when I'm just as smart? I mean, maybe I don't know exactly how yet, but I certainly know I could do it, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think I've always been. Um I think being an entrepreneur is a it's a mindset for sure. Like I I just couldn't see myself working for somebody else. And I'm not sure exactly why I'd say I should be doing this on my own. And that's how it all got started, and that's how I became real of the realization that I was an entrepreneur, that I could just go and do it.

SPEAKER_03:

The one thing about being an entrepreneur is you have to be self-directed for one, but you also have to have a fair bit of risk tolerance to know that if if something goes sideways you can figure it out on your own or you can ask for help or you can, you know, learn about it and and you know, like you say, take a left turn if you have to.

SPEAKER_01:

No, that's right. Some days, some ways there's a bit of stress to that too, because well, for example, after I got into my other business of window advertising, get up and have breakfast at home. I always work from home. And I my wife would say, So what do you remove this week? I'd say, I don't know, I think we're unemployed, right? So I would say, Well, I'm gonna finish breakfast and then I'll go make a few phone calls and probably within half an hour I had the whole week lined up and I would be good to go, so I had another week to work. So that's kinda how that all started. I honestly never worried about where my next paycheck was gonna come from because I knew I could always make a phone call, get out or or pop in my car and go and see somebody calling. I did lots of that and it just when you when you think like that as an entrepreneur, you know the jobs are there, you know the work is there, and you just gotta go get it. It's kinda like working in your garden, you know, you go out and you know the plants have all got produce on 'em. All you have to do is pick it.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's kind of how I approached being an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's it's fascinating. I know for me, you know, I think I said this on one of my most recent podcasts. I said, I was a really good employee, but I wasn't a happy employee because I just I always I think I always saw opportunities to make things better than maybe they already were. And and then, you know, of course you've got your manager, somebody goes, No, that's protocol, we can't change that. Sorry. Even if it's broken or it's not working or it's inefficient. It sometimes is such short-sighted thinking that I just would get so frustrated by that. And I'm like, but there's a better way. And you know, but when you're not the boss, you don't get to choose. So uh I think that's probably where I had a few of those experiences in my life and then decided that, you know, I wanted to be the one to call the shots in my life.

SPEAKER_01:

So You uh as long as while you've been doing that even when you were a little girl, used to make your own path. And it was fun to watch you as you grew up to watch the things that you did. You never believed there was no such thing as this might not work or I don't know how to do that. I mean never even crossed your lips. You just made a decision to do something and you go and do it, regardless of what it took to make it happen. But that's how I was when I was in the early days too.

SPEAKER_03:

I remember when I moved to LA, remember when I was doing um well, I was making friendly plastic jewelry. Remember that? Oh yes. And then I just approached a few different real estate offices, and then all of a sudden I had all these people wanting jewelry, so I ended up, you know, having my day job and going to school and then coming home and having to make a bunch of jewelry at night. So that was one. And then I had this other gig painting shoes. That was crazy. You remember those little tennis shoes? And I just bumped into that lady by accident, and of course I was a struggling student, so I didn't have a lot of money, so any opportunity to make some extra money on the side was always welcome. And this was um little mini kids' tennis shoes, and I painted them with um, you know, just the craft paints, and and I had shoes all over my house drying because I had to deliver these painted shoes to this lady, and it was a bit crazy. But how did you, you know, I know that obviously you were doing sign work and painting on windows and doing stuff. How did you get into doing like full-blown murals? Because that must have been a big stretch from you know, doing smaller jobs, and then now, you know, you're painting the ceiling of this restaurant in Gastown, and it looks like the bloody Sistine Chapel up there. How did you ever get from one place to the other?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'll tell you, it was sometimes it was a little scary to be honest, because I was getting into areas where I mean I didn't know anything about some of that.

SPEAKER_00:

Well I always felt that doing the big murals wasn't a stretch for me other than it was bigger.

SPEAKER_01:

Because when you're doing particularly in the sign business, you're used to copying and duplicating and making stuff, you know, on on look what happened to a lot of the guys they call a graffiti, you know. Some of that graffiti artwork is just unbelievably beautiful on the on the walls. Some of them is garbage. It's really really beautiful.

SPEAKER_03:

It's like art for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Well it is art, yeah. And so you s you see that and so anyway, I was always interested in girls and big stuff. I was doing windows on one of the grocery stores and a fellow came by and I didn't even he didn't talk to me. But he was on his way from Edmonton back to Vancouver and I got this phone call and he said I've got a um a place in Chilliwack and we were it's gonna be a pub and we're getting it all right revamped. And would you be interested in coming and painting the walls so that it looks like a city in New York? And I said, Whoa, just uh yeah, I'm always interested. I never said no to anything. And so we went uh your mom and I took a drive and we went to Chilliwack had a look at that and I gave him a price and he said absolutely it's good and so I spent a week there and painting everywhere and we uh I painted New York skyline and all kinds of stuff, King Kong and and and uh you know the gal and the whole the whole bit that was just really fun and I got paid big bucks for it too, so because not everybody is willing to take a chance and not everybody is willing to put their ego at risk in case it didn't work. But there was no such thing as it didn't work because you could always fix it, do it over, make it better, you know. And anyhow once I finished that and it it went over really big this guy had a f another friend and they had bought this uh restaurant in Gaston. So lo and behold, I ended up going to have a look at that thing, and it there was a big I I mean it was a large uh ceiling that was painted all black and it whatever it wasn't painted, it was dirty, it was terrible, uh, because it had been this place and people smoked everywhere. So that was it was pretty grungy. So I took it on and I had a helper and he cleaned all that ceiling down and I painted it this the same idea of the Sistine Chapel.

SPEAKER_00:

Not I didn't copy the artwork, but it was about the the name of the the restaurant was La Bella Rosa. And so I drew all different ki kinds of roses around in an oval around the the uh room in the ceiling.

SPEAKER_01:

And of course the the the people were uh I drew people that were holding a rose handing to a lady and like that and he'd be handing her this kind of a rose and somebody else would have a white rose and this would be a red rose, and and then I took that and and put it together, you know like a it could have been a publication, just a little um little booklet uh and as to what each color of the rose meant and what so that there was a folklore about it. And after all, this restaurant was only a block and a half from where all the cruise ships come in and out. So I I said suggested to them why don't we do a little brochure, put it on the cruise ship terminal so that when people land here, the first thing I want to see is your ceiling. And I put quite a bit of energy into that, but they they never never did it. They just wanted to buy it to flip it, and some people do that.

SPEAKER_03:

So oh I know that was such a bummer. I totally and like here you are being hired to paint the ceiling, and you're coming in with like a full-on marketing plan for them, which they didn't uh capitalize on, obviously, but but so you were adding extra value even without even realizing it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Like that's that was a great idea, and it probably would have worked, but like you say, that was how long how long was the restaurant in business before somebody came in and painted it over? Because I know that was heartbreaking for you.

SPEAKER_01:

Probably a month, maybe.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh my gosh, that's crazy sauce.

SPEAKER_01:

But you know, yeah, when you when you do stuff like murals, there's so many places that I would uh, you know, in indoors and pubs and dance halls, whatever. And I would do some of the the jobs I did were were quite outstanding and they were th we were thinking right out of the box, you know, and there was always a theme. And then s they ch it they change hands and the new owner would say, Oh, I hate uh let's get rid of that, you know, and they'd paint over it.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01:

One time I drew uh I not drew I I painted the side of a building with the dolphins. There were dolphins a whole school of dolphins on on the side of this building, and he this guy had a water business like for swimming pools and so on.

SPEAKER_00:

And so I did a pretty big job of of these dolphins.

SPEAKER_01:

And after a while he sold he outgrew the space, so he moved his operations and the new and in the meantime all the tour bus uh tour buses like that had Japanese tourists and and Chinese tourists would come and they'd stop and they'd stand in front of it and get their picture taken.

unknown:

It was crazy. Everybody was taking pictures of these dolphins that I painted. Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

And but in the meantime, this new company, which was a bicycle shop, first thing they did, they moved in, they hadn't even put up the shelves yet. First thing they did was paint paint that those dolphins. They said, We don't want fish on our building. Well, either way. And so what I'm trying to say about that is you have to get your ego out of the way because not everybody loves what you do. I just did a lot of all kinds of stuff that was artistic after that. I I did that for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, and I think I think that's what's fun about being an entrepreneur is because you don't have to necessarily stay in one lane. I mean, often, you know, you still have to be a smart business person, but you have the liberty to do something else because you're, you know, you might have a bigger umbrella for the scope of the work that you do and it allows you to Scratch a different itch in your creative space, right? Because some of the work you do is physical and some of it is mental and some of it is computer work. And you know, like there's so many different ways to express whatever your business is.

SPEAKER_01:

No question about that.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I was just I was just thinking about how funny it was because I was um I was just had just kind of hung up my real estate license, and Steven and I were doing this marketing project for one of the realtors who had a new winery for listing. And I know you know this story because it's it was just such a cool thing. So we go in there and we're gonna do a marketing piece, a video for the winery to be for sale. And at that time, the owner was there and there was some other lady, and he was kind of conducting interviews and and I just remember walking onto the space and thinking, this is a it has so much good energy here. And so when I met him, I said, Oh, I said, I'm sorry, are we like interrupting? He goes, No, I'm just trying to find somebody to come in and run the tasting room because we want to open it this summer. And I just without even blinking, I just said, Well, I can do that for you. And I have no idea how that even, you know, after I said it, I was like, Oh. And he said, Awesome. He said, Come and see me tomorrow and we'll have an interview. And he hired me on the spot. So it was and that kind of leaned into a whole other new avenue of my wine work. And uh it was just such a fun experience because I and I I had to set up their POS system. I'd never done anything like that before. So I had to learn a whole bunch of tech stuff and read manuals, and it was a huge learning curve. But when I got it all done, I was like, oh, and then that's one other skill that I can kind of put in my little bag of tricks, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, yeah. That's well, that's what happens, and that's how how we learn to do things beyond where we are. Because quite often when you're an entrepreneur, you're talking you're not your your career is not static for sure. Because it's always open. It's like you're doing this thing and the window's always open so that there's another way that you can go up to something, or there's always a way out, or whatever.

SPEAKER_03:

And it's quite interesting, I find like most of the things I've done, I didn't necessarily intentionally set out to do. And yeah, I think I had offered to um volunteer for this um festival that we have here called the Filberg Festival. And I just I just needed to get out of the house, and so I was looking for something to do. And so I went in that year and I happened to know I I had sold a house to the lady who booked all the music for the festival. And so I called her and I said, Bobby, do you need any help? And she said, You know what? I don't in my department, but I know they do in other places. So she said, I'll introduce you to Susan, and we just kind of got along and I didn't I was on the sign committee or something. And that was just one thing. And then a year later, I get a call from Susan and she says, Hey, we need an MC for the main music stage. Would you be interested? And I said, Yeah. But I was scared to death because I'd never done anything of that capacity before. But you just find the courage to figure it out, and it was a whole lot of fun. And I wouldn't have probably had that experience had I not gone to volunteer, right? So you never really know where things are gonna lead you.

SPEAKER_01:

No, that's right. And and you just kind of follow follow the opportunity, and uh it leads you to some wonderfully exciting places.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. I was gonna ask you, how did you like was there any other opportunity in your life that you know you kind of just ended up somewhere like in Amway or the radio station? Um, where you ended up in some place that you didn't really see coming.

SPEAKER_01:

Well Yeah, actually, because I was doing window window advertising at that time. And I went to well uh explain that it's like like most people have seen windows being painted with Santa Claus or whatever. But I took it to a whole different level and um I said to a couple of my customers, you're gonna have a sale here in March and in April and so on. Why don't you let me put an ad you know, paint an ad for on the your windows? Because you leave the light on at night. You have a back back sign.

SPEAKER_03:

Well this was um this was actually in the car dealerships, right? Yeah, which was brilliant, really. And so you you weren't just a window painter at that point, you had an entire advertising business.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. That's what it that's what I was trying to build, and that's how it turned out. Yeah, so that I was doing uh well, I call it burden window advertising. And that's exactly what we were doing. We were advertising stuff on people's windows. And so I always had the the traffic count and I mean you couldn't buy advertising like that. You like like you couldn't do it on TV or radio, anything. But you have a window already on your building and and it's lit up at night and you got a hundred and ten thousand cars going by uh during an afternoon. I mean, that's a pretty good audience.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's like a billboard, really. Well, that's it's fascinating. Again, I actually hadn't remembered that um when I was gonna ask you this question, but I had forgotten that you sort of started out doing more just window painting and lettering boats and different things like that, and then you saw an opportunity to go, hey, wait a minute. And so I think maybe I well, without question, I learned a lot of the things that I've done in my life and to take the risks and to create my own opportunities from watching you do that because not only did you do one car dealership, but at one point you were the guy who did every car dealership.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, pretty well.

SPEAKER_03:

And then you took it one step further, and then you leaned into doing the decals for the car dealerships because you're like, I'm advertising for them anyway, and so you just, you know, leveled up and said, Here's another thing I can offer. And so what a brilliant way to create your own lane.

SPEAKER_01:

As it turned out, there were all kinds of offshoots from that. What started out to be the window business, but there was lots of offshoots from that, like those those sti stickers on the back of vehicles. So I bought a computer system and we did that, and then one thing means another, and now you got all kinds of stuff going on. There is more opportunity that meets the eye everywhere.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, what I really believe to be true is that a lot of that is a mindset of of looking for possibility rather than looking for um somebody else to give you an opportunity, but being able to see the holes where they are and be able to say, well, here's an opportunity for something that could completely be my thing that nobody's doing yet.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's true. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And then and then you have to overcome some big difficulties with products. Sometimes things you're trying to do isn't working and whatever. But you have to revamp it, redesign it, make it work anyway. You know, so you can stay in business.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. I remember um one of the things I was just talking about in my newsletter is that I remember the day distinctly when I was letting go of my real estate, you know, pretty much for sure. And I was kind of in between jobs and trying to figure out, you know, what I wanted to be when I grew up. And uh I remember distinctly sitting on hold in my car. I was in my driveway, and I could, you know, hear the operator say, Thank you for calling, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, oh my gosh, who gets to do that? Who gets to do that for a living? And that was the moment I decided I was gonna move into the voiceover work. And it was so it's just so funny when you think back to the early days of taking on something like that. Like my studio was so it wasn't a studio at all. It was a piece of core plast with a quilt over it in my desk, you know, and I had to wait for the garbage truck to go by so I could do my work, you know, and it was it was just insane. It was it was so Mickey Mouse. But if I had waited for it to be perfect or I had enough money to like buy a full professional sound booth, I probably never would have done it.

SPEAKER_01:

That's the truth.

SPEAKER_03:

And so you just kind of, you know, you go through it and you learn as you go, and it gets a little bit better and it gets a little bit better. And sometimes you do some really crappy work because you didn't know better, and then you learn from that and you fix it for next time. But it was really funny because one of my very first paying jobs, I ended up being the on-hold voice for the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. And I just went, What? Like, what? And it was so funny because I got to do a little all the the big rock shows that were coming to town because they were coming to the Hard Rock Hotel, so I had, you know, to kind of ramp everything up and it was very different from anything I'd ever done before. And then I remember thinking, I can't even hear this. So at one point I called the Hard Rock Hotel and I actually called. And the girl's like, Can I help you? And I'm like, No, could you just put me on hold for a minute? She's like, What? And I said, No, just it's okay, just put me on hold. And she, you know, really confused. But it was the only way I could kind of hear how they mixed it down with the music and stuff and sort of go, Whoa, that's cool, you know. Because I wanted to know what it actually sounded like, because it was sort of my first foray into that situation. And so, yeah, and then it's, you know, evolved from there and I've MacGyvered it all and my studio still is pretty simple, but you gotta start somewhere, right?

SPEAKER_01:

That's absolutely right.

SPEAKER_03:

And well, I'm so so happy that I uh have picked up a few of my uh lessons along the way from watching you make some mistakes but also do some pretty awesome cool things that you know I got to go along for the ride for a lot of it. So that was, you know, a great sort of front row seat into you know, seeing that not everything has to be inside the box.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's that's a fact, yeah. When I used to travel with the radio station and I would take Friday and go make sales calls in another city. I always took one of you two kids and I'd take one or the other with me. And we'd go out and make a day of it and you g I'd take you in and listen to me when I made a sales call to my customers and introduce you, you I'd introduce you to them. You were always well behaved and everything that you sit on the bench or on a chair and be nice and quiet while I was having a a sales bench over here.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think what what was really neat to me for me to see is we'd come back out and get in the car. And you would have you and your brother there would also have opinions as to how that went.

unknown:

What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_01:

Do you think we did okay with that? And you might say, No, the lady was a little she wasn't sure about that. Somebody else was a little a little afraid to attack it. This guy over here, he really loved it, you know, and and so on. So it gave an opportunity for you as a very young age. I I don't know how old you would have been, but you were what, maybe probably grade two or three, I would think. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_01:

And um but to watch you be able to pick that out and see it, I think it was an awesome opportunity as a teaching period.

SPEAKER_03:

I agree a hundred percent because and I've said this lots of times that I, you know, it's not that school isn't important, it's that, you know, having those moments and as a parent being able to say, This bit of life experience is way more valuable from a practical space of maturing and growing up and learning how to be a good human in the world rather than just, you know, being textbook smart, you know. So those experiences I felt really enriched my life. And I mean, Darren and I were really along the ride for most of it. Like we would go and do and spend hours with you in the car dealerships, and we'd wash your brushes and bring water and you know, and just hang out. And we got to kind of see the whole process unfold, and that was really cool, actually. And and it I'm sure by osmosis, there was a lot of learning moments that we didn't really even realize were learning moments at the time, but yeah, I think it totally shaped, you know, how I see things and how I relate to people.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't think there's any question about that. That that was probably the the start of you being able to it was an opportunity to show you how real life is. And I think that's really neat for a young person. You don't learn that in school.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. And we you taught us to shake hands with people at an early age, and so you know, that was something I had, you know, learned early on. So when I was in real estate and different things, I had not really much, you know, trouble approaching people and feeling confident that I could have an intelligent conversation with people.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's why you're so awesome today, Martin.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, there you go. Thanks, Dad. Well, you should take at least a little bit of credit. We could talk for hours for sure, but thank you again for coming out and just, yeah, it's so fun to be able to have this little segment called Coffee with Burton because it's yeah, it's just a really cool way for us to be able to let people into our life a little bit. Always fun talking to you, Dad.

SPEAKER_01:

Love you lots and love your show. It's very exciting. Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_03:

I hope you love today's episode. I hope it inspired you or motivated you in some way to keep going and create your very best life. If you did, would you stop and take five minutes to leave me a review on Apple Podcasts? It's the best way for me to know that you're enjoying the show, and it helps other listeners find us as well. And while you're at it, head over to lifeisdelicious.ca and sign up for email updates so you'll get notified every time a new episode drops. And I'll send you a free copy of my ebook, The Midlife Manifesto. Inspiring strategies for mastering the eight most important areas of your life. Sign up today at lifeisdelicious.ca. And if no one has told you today, there's not one person on this planet that is exactly like you. And the world is a better place because you're here. So thank you for being here. I'll be back next week, and I hope you'll join me right here on Life is Delicious.