Don't Care

Don't Care

Ryan Stanley

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

10/13/2020

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The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

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don't care what anyone else thinks of you get clear on your thoughts around giving a concern about what anyone else thinks because that will create fear in your life and that will keep you small what anyone else thinks has nothing to do with you and has everything to do with them um i mean if there's someone in your life who has exactly the career path that you want and you want to go to them for guidance or advice specifically around who to be as this type of a business person that's one thing but to start up a business and like go to your friends for thoughts on it and have them all tell you that it's not a good idea or it stinks or this that or the other thing like unless they have what you want or they have experience in this area just don't even go to them and really i would disregard it [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several businesses to seven and eight figures uh big seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and today we have another great uh guest on the podcast ryan stanley and just to give you a little bit of background on ryan so ryan started uh out his career originally in multi-level marketing no dojo because of that he started it anymore started out at 19 worked for his dad at a daycare center for a while then jumped over to his brother's title company um did a few things in between started working in the music industry helping out artists got tired of working with shady club owners and musicians that were hard to work for and now he's moved over to being a certified professional coach helping a lot of people still in the music industry so welcome to the podcast and does that uh intro give you justice yeah it's definitely the gist uh i'm really really happy to be here man thanks for having me devon thank you for coming on so now i gave you the j i gave everybody the gift well let's have you dive in and tell us a little bit more about your journey sure yeah absolutely so um i've always been really in some capacity i think an entrepreneur like to your point even at 18 19 years old stepping into like some sort of owning business and on like an mlm type of a space but you know through that experience i read think and grow rich by napoleon hill i learned what it was like to kind of go through some ups and downs of even starting a you know any type of a business as a young person um after that i did own a daycare center with my father and then helped my brother a little bit uh in his own business as well but in 2008 i was working in artist management so i was managing a bunch of bands and it was my own business from an entrepreneurial standpoint and what i loved most about it was really was helping people and empowering people and inspiring people and especially working with creative musicians there's a lot of people in that space who are not only are they not supported or empowered to be successful but they're often you know belittled for wanting to be successful in an industry that could be considered difficult and or they're just not that's one very tangential question but an interesting question nonetheless at least to me any artists that we would recognize or know or what were the you're the most famous artists you worked with or what would be somebody that they should check out that you helped out with uh so i would say the most famous band was i mean it's actually kind of a b b level famous but it's uh so there's a band called fish which is i hope you're familiar with p h i s h uh vermont they're the popular gm band and they have a lyricist guy by the name of tom marshall and uh he had started a side band called amphibian and it's spelled with an f and uh he hit a guitarist in a guy named anthony cries in he was in a band called the spin doctors and so i managed them after they released their last album um another band that you may not have heard of but if you're into progressive rock there's a band called karmic juggernaut that i worked with for a long time and uh they are extremely talented really really really cool guy i also worked with a woman named cece coletti and she's kind of a classic right classic rock type of style but she's um worked with meatloaf she's a backup singer for meatloaf for a while and um so you know bits and pieces kind of kind of on the outskirts and you know a lot of other up-and-coming bands just kind of getting them into the new york scene and then there's another band called cb radio which has been on sirius xm country uh a lot of different times and so i managed them for a little bit as well so all over the gamut but um not necessarily household names to say the least fair enough hey i'm just curious and maybe some of your audience that you uh have heard of the bands and enjoyed them and uh now have even more respect when you have more authority with them but anyway so you manage the dance for a while but i think that you say you know enjoy the aspect of you know the coach them help them help them to grow help them to understand you know was within the management still like that area but then you also mentioned that you kind of adjusted or shifted from purely being kind of the band manager or doing that to more of what you're doing or professional yeah and maybe dive in a little bit as to you know how did you go or what prompted that transition how did that transition go and you know what made you decide to jump over and adjust things yeah absolutely so i mean at that point i um you know i like i said i recognized what i loved about it i knew what i loved about it in october of 2008 probably three if not four different times during the month a conversation around coaching showed up for me like somebody somewhere said something about being a coach and whether it was a life coach or an executive coach or a business coach and i was like well that's what i do that that's what i want to do that's who i am i love coaching people to be the best versions of themselves and so i was certified as a professional coach in 2009 and for the first five or six years i coached really specifically musicians because i'm going to ask one question that's probably yeah please what is this how does it how do you get certified as a coach or what does a certified coach mean yeah that's not a dumb question at all it's a great question so there is a and in fact anybody out there who's either considering a being a coach or b hiring a coach uh there's some definitely important things to look at when you know certification is something you think of so first of all i wouldn't work with anybody who wasn't certified uh i mean unless so that's where that's my general rule of thumb because coaching a lot of people think what they're doing is coaching but it's not coaching it's often mentoring itself and consulting it's often telling people what to do based on their life experience and coaching is not that coaching is really you know search you know it's really recognizing that people have the answers within they're just blocked by their fears and they're blocked by their limiting beliefs and they're blocked by their past experiences so wherever you go if you're going to go with a coach or you want to be trained as a coach i recognize i recommend going with either someone or getting trained in an organization that is recognized as what's called an actp or an accredited coach training program and that's through the icf or the international coaching federation so the icf is a governing board they certify individuals and they also credential organizations and so um to be certified you know so they they're they ipec is the school that i was trained through the institute for professional excellence and coaching they've been around since 1999 uh they've been an actp since 2001. so basically to be certified i mean there can be people out there who have no credentialing or you know there could be training organizations that are basically just saying hey i'm a cool guy i'm a good coach i'm going to train you to be a coach and they might have their own certification but if that's not recognized by the icf i would dig a little bit deeper and find out what other qualifications really make them outstanding to you if you're looking for a coach so for me credentialing it's important to be done through the international coaching federation and then one last question on that so how do you what is a certification until or how do you get certified yeah so is it is it a one week course so that i mail i get a bill a diploma is it five years and i am as much as graduate school is it somewhere in between or how does that work yeah it's gonna depend on the the the place that you get trained you know so for me at ipec it's a nine-month program um and it's you know you're working five to ten hours a week and so you know there's a couple different certifications involved but um you know there's some places like if they're gonna say hey if you can just attend this weekend and you're a certified coach then for me that's a sign right you you do want to put in some time you do want some again i mentioned ipec is a great example they've been around for over 20 years right now so you want somebody with some sort of credibility i definitely recommend doing your research but two things one the certification that i got through ipec the cpc which is certified professional coach that is their certification right they are an actp and that is their certification so i was certified by ipex so i have a cpc if i dish i additionally want to be credentialed by the icf itself the international coding confederation i can and i can go to them and say just that like hey i just graduated ipec here's my cpc i'd like to also be credentialed by you they say awesome because you went to an actp recognized by us already you're basically eighty-five percent of the way there so they just wanna then see you have a certain amount of coaching hours they want you to take an exam by them um i think there's one other requirement they have for you so then at that point though once you show them let's say a hundred hours or something like that you can show them that you can get their credential which is called an acc or associate certified coach and that's recognized all over the world no matter which training school you go to right so the acc and then once you get 500 hours you'd be a pcc a professional certified coach and when you get 2 500 hours you'd be an mcc or master certified coach so those are kind of like across the industry recognized by you know because it's the icf but the individual organizations will have their own certifications all right fair enough and it was a tangent or a tangent or a site it's just you know a little bit kind of like when people are saying you know when you hear an attorney and well you know what does it mean to be take the bar exam or you know bar certified or those type of things sometimes it's uh terms that people hear a lot absolutely no it's a great question because there's a lot of people out there they're going to say oh no no we're we're credentialed we're credentialed by our sister company uh which is the credential you know what i mean so people are actually certifying themselves as organizations and so that's not the direction you want to go you want to go to a place go ahead no i said that would be nice if i could do that if people know the legal hey it's my cup my law firm certified myself right all right so now keep your continuing forward so you got certified you said hey what i really like is doing kind of more of the coaching and helping people in the music industry and that is with coaching so how did you start to make that transition you get certified you know was it a smooth transition did you just the clients you had before that you're managing now you're coaching did you have to start over was your highs and lows or how did that transition go for you yeah yeah great question so i did have to i because it was a shift and i was doing something different and the bands that i was working with still needed a manager i did kind of i thought it was easier just to kind of cut things off right i kept one of my clients uh and the rest i just moved directly to new clients for for coaching um interestingly enough as i was going through the training at ipec before i even graduated they actually asked me to come work for them and so i spent some time there i helped them with marketing this was back in 2008 2009 and they didn't really not everybody was into social media just yet nobody had figured it out there wasn't as many opportunities as there are and coming from the music industry you know myspace was actually created to help fans connect with their bands and vans connect with their fans so i've been doing the social media thing for a while and so i initially came in and helped them with their social media helped out with some marketing i also did some sales for them but then i was also the internal coach for them so this is the organization that trains people to become coaches and they hired me as their internal coach so i coached their staff i coached entry level up to the ceo and so with this i was able to kind of start my own business i also have a t-shirt company which is for the music industry i um you know i had my own coaching practice but it also helped them quite a bit so when you made that kind of leap and it sounds like for the most part you you know you had to shift your clients over it was a different you know different you're offering different services what you previously had and so they were also needing a manager was that was that scary was it a good transition you know because you know a lot of times when you get into shifting you know shifting what you're doing a career why is shifting what you know how you're approaching things it can be scary to leave your previous career or people you know clients that you put a lot of time and money and effort to build a clientele and so was that you know was it scary was it a smooth transition or how did that go yeah of course no it's definitely scary at some point but i also really believe that if you're doing what you love every day and i wasn't feeling time being stressed about what i didn't love and having all these extra things that were just more of annoying than anything you know there's a piece of mind quality right there's a thing of saying okay listen i know that i'm really good at this i know that i love what i do and i know that i'll attract the right clients doesn't mean that it's easy and it happens overnight uh you know like i said i was kind of blessed to have a concurring role something offered to me at this other coach training organization as well as i built my business so it wasn't that it wasn't scary um but you know going through this training where you're learning to help others recognize fears and blocks and limiting beliefs you start recognizing the same things in yourself so while there were certainly legitimate and valid fears i was also trained at the same time to be coaching myself around how i'd rather be feeling and how i'd rather be stepping into my day and how i'd rather show up as an entrepreneur and as a business person and i think when we start to create gratitude for the outcome that we want and we start thinking about the blessings that we have and we start connecting people with the genuine intention to serve and not just to take their money right i was there to serve all each and every one of my clients um you know doors open up and people are attracted to you and the right people are attracted to you now all that being yeah all of us what to say was all that being said is like you know so about five or six years in as i was also being this internal coach for this large organization i recognized that i i had a larger skill to work with others not just musicians because i was coaching the ceo i was coaching you know people in all walks of life with the organization and so i started working with doctors i started working with authors i started working with people in marketing i've worked with people in all walks of life really once you start i you know the fact i started stepping into helping people realize that there was a better version of themselves now there was a different version it was their true self it was just covered by fears and blocks and limiting beliefs and what i do isn't necessarily people often say ryan well i know what you do your product is coaching well my product actually isn't coaching that's what i do but my product is clarity it's efficiency it's accountability it's for momentum it's joy it's freedom it's self-awareness and when you can help people bring all this out from within themselves on a daily basis um you know it's worth the fear and it's worth the overwhelm and it's uh an exciting place to be no makes makes perfect sense so now i'm gonna or continue on your journey or shift gears slightly so you have i think and i don't remember the exact timing we talked a little about you have the coaching business you do now you also have the t-shirt company and then you have the company teaching me to sell i think the training company right is there yeah absolutely so yeah were all of those you know in parallel which one did you start first and how do you juggle your time i know when i'm asking you a loaded question how did you why did you start all those how did you how do you juggle all of them totally so i'm a bit of an 80d entrepreneur in general like i mean everybody i actually honestly consider entrepreneurialism a a form of art an art form i feel like you know entrepreneurs start off with nothing like a blank canvas and they decide what they want to put on it and they're willing to put in the time and the effort and be vulnerable and creative and put these different things out there for the world to see right um and so entrepreneurship is is no different it's very similar and so i love to create different things so the t-shirt company it's called set list tease and so it's like a t-shirt company has a unique piece of art featuring the date from your favorite concert on the front and on the back of the concert they'll have a set list of what whatever they played that night and so i started that in 2010 and that um has just been it's you know right now i've kind of done it up on an automatic flow and i have an admin who works for me and she kind of runs a lot of the day-to-day stuff on there but it's a great way so to answer your question i've run it for the past 10 years alongside it just kind of on the side it was more of a hobby it was a great way for me to go to fish concerts and sell t-shirts in the parking lot and meet a lot of people um and also the fact that each shirt has its own unique set list it is its own story it is its own ticket stub it is an experience that that people like to share and talk to each other about um so that's always just been congruent the teach me to sell.com really i just started in march so as soon as the timing you know is just as soon as kova kind of kicked into gear so that's a newer company and really what it was is i recognized in working with coaches and being in the coaching industry that there's so many of us who love to serve and want to connect with people and want to empower others or you know fitness instructors or consultants or anybody who's like here to serve and then all of a sudden someone asks them how much they charge and they freak out and they get uncomfortable and they ask you know they offer it for free or too much of a discounted price because they're uncomfortable with the sales process so teach me to sell.com it's basically it's a um there's a there's an online course but there's other products we're basically we're just training people to be more to sell less and serve more get past the the challenge of sales and realize that it's not a dirty word and it doesn't have to be this slimy thing and it can be something that's fulfilling and engaging and creative and comfortable and fun to connect with and so that's been going on since uh march and so between you know authoring the book doing the podcast i had of my own as well coaching my clients the t-shirt thing kind of runs itself i kind of just check in with my admin once a week and then obviously we haven't had any live music this summer to go to but if those types of events come up i will go to those as well um but really i don't watch a ton of tv you know my spare time what i enjoy doing in my spare time is working on my business it's fun i think you know it's creative and it's a way for me to kind of be myself and that's it it's funny because i i always get the same thing you know when people ask me what my hobby is my go-to answers are like my obvious startups which is there's a lot of truth now i do have other hobbies and i like to read books a few other things but generally a lot of my my hobby is startups and small businesses and i enjoy that my wife always laughs and says hey that's not much of a hobby that's what you do all day for work anyway so right and there's some truth too but i i tend to enjoy it so as you did that you started to touch on it but you know generally multiple businesses and i get you know how do you give each how do you decide where to put your your time and effort on between the different business right in the sense you only have so much time in the day or time in the week and you know often times or the drawback can be and you know i i i do the same thing but i'm just curious how you do it is you know sometimes you have multiple businesses but some of them die in the vine so to speak because you don't give enough time attention to focus on the one that either needs your most attention or is making you the most money or that you know is the most enjoyable or any of the above and then the other ones don't so how do you how do you divide up your time or know how do you figure out how to juggle the different businesses yeah it's a great question and i'm sure a common theme for many of us who are in the add entrepreneur space um i think first things first i mean and you're just going to recognize that it's you're not going to work well i'm not going to work a 40 hour nine to five work week meaning some weeks i might work 40 hours but they're going to be who knows what time and who knows what else i've got going on right so it's going to be a weekend goes the best thing about being an entrepreneur is you gotta choose which 80 hours you work a week absolutely yes exactly so um yeah so it's going to be weekends it's going to be evenings and so making time for that and organizing your time knowing for me it like especially if i'm starting off in a new business i will designate a specific day of the week towards that business right so i say okay so tuesday's the day that i'm only going to work on setless teas monday's the day i do my coaching advertising that works well for me if i work on something new each day or whatever day it is um so scheduling it out that way so i've already determined when i start the day who what i'm going to be working on then once the weekends come around i'm more just kind of sit in front of my computer whether it be on the deck or outside or whatever then i'm kind of picking and cleaning up bits and pieces from the week like stuff that maybe emails and those could be done in a variety of different areas the other piece of advice that i would give and i don't know this is advice or not but something that has worked for me is finding people that can work with you in those areas so for teach me to sell i've got a great partner and his strengths are in actual sales training my strength is in the mindset piece um so he's got you know a decade worth of sales training experience for million dollar you know hundreds of millions of dollars in sales work in the financial industry um so knowing that i was bringing somebody in who had worked with other people who had worked in sales who worked in their own business to kind of handle some of the stuff that his strengths and then when it comes down to the mindset piece i can handle that as well and also on the days when you're not getting enough done to have somebody to bounce ideas off of and to also motivate yourself when you're feeling like okay not enough is getting done or i'm feeling stressed or i'm feeling overwhelmed to have a partner to connect with and kind of bounce ideas off of and also inspire when we're able to inspire others we you know accidentally inspire ourselves often right so so uh and as i mentioned in my t-shirt company i have somebody who's does a lot of the admin work because that's at the point where after 10 years it can kind of run on its own so i i think knowing that your day doesn't have to be like anybody else's you don't have to compare your life to a prior life if you're starting an entrepreneur decide what works best for you and don't be afraid to ask for help but don't think don't be afraid to bring in people for help and those are the two things that come to mind off the top no that makes perfect sense so now one question that we'd hit on that i'm going to ask you know aside from your journey but where you're in the coaching and other people maybe here may find it interesting so if you're if you're either looking for a coach and or you have a coach approach you and say hey i think i can help you either to find better balance in your life you can you know find more enjoyment i can help you be more efficient or whatever type you're looking for what you know aside from certification what would be the what would be maybe some tips or highlights or other things that people should look for when selecting a coach or when somebody approaches them is to determine whether or not they need a coach yeah it's a great question i i think i would come down to obviously like we said certification is a huge place and i really would make sure that i would go with someone who was in a credit was certified through an accredited coach training program i'll say that again just for importance the other piece to it i think it's like you know when you're coaching when you're working with a coach it is a pretty personal relationship you know you do want to to spend this hour or whatever it is on a weekly basis with somebody who you enjoy being with because they're going to be the people that you go to on your tougher days doesn't mean they have to be all nice and lovey-dovey all the time you know depending on the type of coach you're looking for some people need that kick in the butt you need somebody to be a little more stern but recognize clearly what you want i what you want your outcome to be right what do what why am i hiring a coach and then do some research and don't pick the first person you find i would say typically i'd reach out to multiple a minimum of three and have a complimentary session with each other one of those and see how you feel at the end of each one um i think some people are and every coach is going to be different there's a lot of coaches out there who have very they're going to listen here's our workbook and you're going to do these activities each week and at the end of this month we're going to have this done and that is awesome and works great for some people i'm the opposite i am more like hey what do you want to work on today like who are you today what happened over the past seven days a lot of time will certainly have things set up in the coming week that they'll ask them to do homework that they'll they'll agree to take on um and sometimes we obviously always reflect on the next meeting but we're not necessarily going to then spend the whole hour talking about the homework that they just did um so i would i would do research i would say yeah we ask for reach out to at least three i would say definitely get referrals as well and then i would say ask for a complimentary session and just spend at least a good hour with them and then ask yourself some important questions afterwards how did i feel at the end of this and is this somebody that i would want to spend time with in one of my favorite social surroundings that's great advice i think that certainly will be helpful as people are looking for and deciding uh if they need a coach or how to select a coach well as we start to wrap up the podcast i always ask two questions at the end of the podcast so we'll have those now so the first question i always ask is what was the worst business decision he ever made the worst business decision i ever made was this is again it's funny we already mentioned myspace uh back in the days of myspace as a young man i created a thing called rye space and it was my space which was their their uh sub their tagline was a place for friends this was rye space a place for ryan's and i went and i created like a myspace page that would only friend other ryan's and so i had like a lot of ryan's on there but i made this i'd like okay so now i'm going to start selling t-shirts as my first endeavor into t-shirts and i wanted to so i had these rye space t-shirts made up and of course they're like listen you know the more you buy the cheaper they are and so i'm like well i'm gonna sell millions of these obviously and uh so i just spent a lot of money on a lot of t-shirts that i think i sold two maybe three altogether in fact i ended up donating them to to like you know a homeless shelter so i always laugh at the idea of these homeless people walking around with rye space t-shirts on now i'm kind of excited to go find someone that has that t-shirt it just maybe i'll maybe or maybe i'll have to start going to places you know whether it's second-hand stores or somewhere where they're going to get circulated and if i ever see a rye space t-shirt i'm going to buy it and i'm going to i'm going to come back and tell you i found one of your shirts i mean literally i think there was like a thousand of them that i gave out i had like give all these giant like piles of t-shirts on the front that says rye space a place for ryan's on the back it just like there was there was this whole argument and a fun way on the rye space page about how everybody's always calling us brian and how brian's are really out to get us and uh so on the back it just said f brian spread the word the word is ryan or something like that i like the business idea i might just have to i give you kudos even if it didn't work out i think it's a fun business like this so yeah all right that was good so that was the worst business decision so now we'll jump to the second question always ask which is so you're talking to someone that's just getting the startups or small businesses what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them yeah don't care what anyone else thinks of you get clear on your thoughts around giving concern about what anyone else thinks because that will create fear in your life and that will keep you small what anyone else thinks has nothing to do with you and has everything to do with them um i mean if there's someone in your life who has exactly the career path that you want and you want to go to them for guidance or advice specifically around who to be as this type of a business person that's one thing but to start up a business and like go to your friends for thoughts on it and have them all tell you that it's not a good idea or it stinks or this that or the other thing like unless they have what you want or they have experience in this area just don't even go to them and really i would disregard it because people are going to tell you things based on their own fears and their own blocks and their own living beliefs and what their mom told them and what their dad told them and what their life is led to be uh so step into your greatness because this is your life all right well i think that that's uh that's great advice as well so i think that two good lessons learned and certainly uh things for you people to keep in perspective well as we wrap up if people want to get to know you they want to reach out they want to use you as a coach they want to get a partner buy one of your t-shirts whether it's rice face or now the online t-shirt business or they want to utilize it anything else all the above what's the best way to connect or reach out with you yeah please and thank you by the way for that opportunity i really appreciate it man uh so you can go to ryanstanley.com it's r-y-a-n-s-t-a-n-l-e-y.com i've got a book on there out there for sale as well which gives you some insight as to who i am the book is called be patient be present be joyful a first aid kit for the emotional bump scrapes and bruises of life if you buy it on the website you'll get a signed copy from me uh and then depending on my my availability you'll also get a coaching session help me with your coaching session but and on there you'll see social media buttons for twitter for instagram for facebook and so you can click on there and find me wherever you want uh quickly i'll just also say the t-shirt company it's called setlisttease.com and then if you're interested in learning more about sales if you are a service oriented solopreneur and looking just for some insight in sales you can go to teachmesel.com as well awesome well there's plenty of ways to reach out to you and certainly encourage everybody depending on what their need and how they want to reach out to certainly reach out to you so thank you again for coming on the podcast for all of you that are listeners on the podcast and if you have a great journey to tell make sure to make sure to go to inventivejourneyguest.com you're always welcome to apply to be on the podcast and if you're a listener make sure to click subscribe so you can get notification on this and all the new episodes coming out and lastly um if you ever need help with patents and trademarks feel free to reach out to us at miller ip lot we're always here to help thanks again for coming on the podcast ryan it's been a pleasure and uh look forward to seeing how you the journey continues to play out and all the people you're able to help thanks devin i love being here and uh i appreciate your time my pleasure [Music] English (auto-generated) All Recently uploaded