Join us as we take on the first pillar of your business roadmap – Culture! We get personal, sharing our own traumas and why it’s important to build a strong workplace culture for when life gets messy.
Speakers:
Hillary, Valery, Jerome, Joshua, Zach, James
Before we get started, we want to give you guys a quick heads up that in today’s episode, we’ll be briefly getting into some topics of mental illness and suicide. If this is a distressing or triggering topic for you feel free to skip around. And if you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, there’s help out there. resources can be found at 988 lifeline.org. It was 2012. And Joshua was working as a videographer at a high profile celebrity golf tournament in Orlando, Florida, the most important event for his career. The day was just getting started when at 9am. He received a phone call. It was his mom’s colleague. She had just found his mom on the ground seizing paramedics were on the way. Without a second thought Joshua jumped into his car and made the two hour drive to Alcala in. Arriving at the hospital, Joshua found his mom on an emergency bed strapped down. She was still seizing.
Joshua 01:07
Joshua here, if this is your first time tuning in, stop right here and go back to listen from episode one. In this podcast, we are teaching you how to scale a side hustle or grow your existing business. Using the lessons I have learned through my journey as an entrepreneur. Today’s story is one of those pivotal moments that shaped who I became. And I believe that through these painful moments in life, we get a glimpse of our purpose.
Hillary 01:40
Joshua stands alone in the emergency ward waiting for news about his mom. She had just attempted suicide. Joshua’s whole life lay before him. He had his dream job at age 20. He was making it on his own on the cusp of starting his own business. Life was good. But now his future didn’t seem so certain. It all depended on what happens in the next few hours. So let’s rewind for just a second. How did we get here?
Valery 02:08
So now you’re in Orlando with your dad, you’re few hours away from home? Where’s your mom and all this?
Joshua 02:15
So I should probably give you some background on my mom. You know, she she was always very compassionate and a loving mother. She taught me a lot about God. And, you know, I really value how she treated other people. You know, we always had families of different cultures coming in and out of our house. You know, she was hosting dinners. And she was uh, she was goofy, you know? So we had a lot of fun together. And when I
02:40
first met Josh’s mom, she was happy, funny, loving.
Hillary 02:46
That’s Jerome, he was Joshua’s store manager at RadioShack.
Jerome 02:50
Me personally, I didn’t grow with a family. So Josh mom at the time, she gave you that impression that if you just let your mind wander, he’s like, Oh, that’s what I want my mom to be like.
Hillary 03:01
Joshua was thriving in Orlando, even though his home life had been difficult. Growing up, Joshua was finding his way at the Media Group, he would spend his days on film sets doing what he loved. He was flourishing under the mentorship of two important people in his life. Zach and James. Zach was the lead producer at the media group, and taught Joshua the ins and outs of filming and editing. James, on the other hand, was the creative director, and taught Joshua everything he needed to know about graphic and web design.
03:29
Before I knew it, Josh was knocking on the door. And he had his art with him, and came in and talked to all of us that were working there at the time, who was downstairs and knew he should be upstairs. And then at one point, I got overloaded, and somebody suggested that I give the email blast to Josh. And I just thought, there’s not a chance Jeff’s gonna do a better job than I’m doing at this. And I remember passing it to Josh, and the first week went out that he did and I think he had he gave it to me before it went out. And I was like, I absolutely do not need to be doing these. Josh is perfectly capable of doing what I was doing and more. And he took it over for me. And I don’t think there was a moment after that, that I assumed that there wasn’t something I could give Josh and he couldn’t excel at it or figure it out or any of those types of things.
Hillary 04:29
Dream job, solid mentors learning new skills every day. It was a professional paradise. Meanwhile, Joshua’s mom had moved to Cali Florida to live with her aging mother, then after moving around for a bit landed a job as a caretaker. Which brings us to that fateful day in Orlando, Florida at a celebrity golf tournament. anticipation and excitement were high. It was nine o’clock in the morning and the Florida air was just starting to grow heavy with the sun. Joshua was setting up his equipment for law One day of shooting when his phone rang
Joshua 05:11
I see her on the gurney, she is convulsing foaming at the mouth. I feel helpless. You know, I’m there all alone. I don’t know exactly what happened. I just know that I received a call from her the night before saying that, you know, she doesn’t want to live anymore. You know, I feel really bad that I didn’t do more. I didn’t know what I could do. But I’m there by myself so and figure out what’s next.
Hillary 05:40
The rest was a blur, followed by his mother’s premature release. After setting her up with her things and groceries at a weekly stay hotel, Joshua commuted back to Orlando, to his job with the promise of returning in a few days. And then a couple of days later,
Joshua 05:56
I hear from a friend who lives in Jacksonville four hours away, that my mom is at the hospital again, I got a text on my phone. I’ll always love you. And so I’m freaking out. Like, why is she going back to this state of mind? To to end her own life? You know, this woman that cared for me that raised me up that taught me about God that taught me about helping others, like why is she no longer desiring to live,
Hillary 06:28
alarmed, and once again, feeling helpless, Joshua jumped into action, and Googled hospitals in Jacksonville, close to where the family friend was living.
Joshua 06:36
I found the nearest psych evaluation facility next to there. And then from there, I found the nearest pharmacy. And so I called that pharmacy. And I said, Hey, I need to know if my mom is there. You know, I think she’s in the parking lot and attempting suicide. Can you tell me if somebody came in by by her name, they left they came back, they said, We found your mom unconscious in the car. The paramedics are on their way.
Hillary 07:07
They rushed her to the hospital, restored her vitals, another 72 hour hold. By this point, Joshua and his father were at a loss for solutions, it was time to step in. Even though his mother and father had been divorced for a few years, Joshua and his dad decided it was time to bring his mother to Orlando and care for her in their home. His mom had stopped eating, declaring she didn’t want to live. paramedics were called 72 hour hold. But this time, she didn’t come back home, the hospital provided a housing option for her, which was supposed to be temporary. What followed was a season of instability, role reversals child taking care of parent and Josh, we’re learning more about the broken mental health system than he ever thought possible. Where did that put you? Where are you at? Emotionally? business wise, like what happens after that event?
Joshua 08:04
So I’m filtering a lot. What where I was at emotionally was, you know, figuring out how to solve an unsolvable problem. And that added a lot of stress to, you know, my daily life. And so I was just, you know, trying to relieve that stress by partying at night.
Valery 08:30
So that was a consuming thought, like, worry. Constantly daily for you.
Joshua 08:36
Yeah, I mean, it was definitely consuming my mind of like, you know, Where’s, where’s my mom gonna be like, where, you know, she okay. And so she got a choice of halfway houses to go to. So she chose a halfway house and pinehills
Hillary 08:52
even amidst the chaos of his mother’s situation, Joshua continued to show up to work, perhaps not as laser focused as before.
09:00
You know, at that time, he kind of had a lot on his plate,
Hillary 09:04
not Zach, one of the managers at the media group who would go on to become one of Joshua’s closest mentors.
09:09
He had some, you know, some hard stuff going on with his mom and her mental health that I know was really a struggle for him. But I knew that he kind of, I think for great things, you know, a lot of people his age, just kind of sit around and play video games. But he really felt like the weight of taking care of his mother was on his shoulders. And he, he was a really good son, and that he would often go out of his way to take care of her. And she had extraordinary needs sometimes, and a lot of that were took their emotional toll. And so balancing that with work can be really tough because sometimes his mom would meet him at the same time that work with him. And that’s the be hard to manage for anyone, I think Josh did a really good job of it. And I know that it took a mental.
Joshua 10:08
So at my nine to five, my employer was upset that I had been taking off so much time to like help my mom move and, you know, giving attention to this traumatic situation. And so they approached me one day and said, I need to keep my personal problems at home, and I need to spend more time at work. And I’m not the type of person to like slack off or take advantage of the business that’s providing me my dream job. So for them to tell me that was a smack in the face, like, obviously, I’m going through something that’s bigger than my work. And I expected them to like understand that, or at least give me the benefit of the doubt. And when the human
Valery 10:54
level just show some compassion, yeah,
Joshua 10:57
while I was working there, I felt like disconnected in my mind after they had said that to me. So I was no longer engaged in pursuing a dream job at this career where the culture seemed to be non existent, it was a false culture, like the the variety in the creative work was beautiful. And that was what was fulfilling for me. But when I hit this leadership wall, where I saw a lack of compassion and a leadership level higher than my immediate, like mentors, that that’s when I was really like, I need to do something different. I need to change this for other people.
Hillary 11:39
We can look back on our lives and make sense of many things. difficult circumstances can take on new meaning years down the road, our past becomes a roadmap, we can read and understand the events that led us to where we are. And then there are those things that just never make sense. That to this day, trigger pain, fear and doubt. But all of it, the good, bad, and the ugly, make our lives the messy book it is. Pain can inspire justice, fear can lead to courage, and doubt can pave the way to new discoveries. For Joshua, there was the pain of seeing his mother being tossed around the mental health system that inspire his initiative to provide justice and support for the vulnerable living on the streets.
Joshua 12:24
A big reason that we started the nonprofit was because I felt like I had all this pent up energy toward trying to help my mom. And because I couldn’t help her, I needed to release that energy somewhere. For me, it was like redirecting it towards the situation with individuals experiencing homelessness. And, you know, there was these people that are on the streets every day that can’t fit into shelters in Orlando, and I saw a need there to help. And my mom has always been the one to help people that were down and out. And I wanted to kind of continue her legacy now that she wasn’t wanting to support herself.
Hillary 13:09
You know, how do you overcome? How do you balance these situations with continuing to work and push for like is it it was okay for you to maybe not feel motivated at the time to start advanced, you know, like that, that got put on hold, like, I’m trying to think like,
Joshua 13:27
when people are going through traumatic situations, like they don’t automatically have self awareness for that. And when I was going through this, like, I didn’t realize that it was going to have such a negative impact on my nine to five, or this business that we wanted to create. I just was trying to handle what I thought was priority. I think it’s important for the listeners to understand that whatever they’re going through that the roles that you take on in your life, they need to be in an order, they need to be clearly written. Now
Hillary 14:07
that was really impactful for me, when you shared the idea of roles, because it can seem it can seem very like well done. Like of course, like I come first, then my family or you know, but we don’t we put ourselves last Yeah, or whatever is feeling like most are reacting to the moment. But like you experienced at your job. Other people might not respect that or demand something of you, or kind of come at you saying you’re putting too much time in this area of your life and not enough time here. So how do you deal with balance that yeah, because there might be some people in that situation where maybe they need to stick with it a little longer before jumping into their business or freelance thing that they’re building. Like how do you survive in a culture like that? I
Joshua 15:00
think it’s about not recognizing money as the main currency in life, but seeing time as finite. And if time is limited, what are you doing with it? And are you doing the most valuable thing possible, where we grew up in this system of money, it, it moves society. And that’s not wrong. But we’re born into this cash society that’s teaching us to move people and to move productivity. And we get so distracted with that movement, that we forget that we’re here for a purpose. And when we identify that purpose, we can start prioritizing that even if it’s just five minutes, 15 minutes a day, like consistency will be cumulative. So what is the purpose that you’re here for?
Hillary 15:55
Do you think someone’s purpose can change? Like, do you think your purpose in that time was to be there for your mom? Or was it something deeper for you, or or Candace Owens purpose change throughout their life?
Valery 16:07
Or did you even identify having a purpose at that time as a 22 year old?
Joshua 16:11
So I think I identified my purpose as being in the creative field, and in some sort of role as an assistant producer. So yeah, I agree that it can change. But I think it’s more of an evolution. And when I had that experience with my mom, it’s where the big one of the biggest pains in my life was. So I think that every purpose, everybody has a purpose that’s attached to their pain. And if they figure out what that pain is, they can move deeper into their purpose, and they can help catalyze the evolution of their purpose.
Hillary 16:58
When all this was happening with your mom, you were still having to go to work. And I feel like culture, and how we’re treated in the workplace like has, has an effect on our well being. And it’s like people first, right? So if you’re just starting a business, and it’s just you, how would you attack culture first, because culture is the first pillar, right?
Joshua 17:20
Yeah. So I mean, you’re, you’re setting a vision for where you want to take the company. You know, I always often give this analogy, like, when you get in the car to go somewhere, you always have that end in mind, you know, you’re not just getting in the car and saying, Okay, I’m going to drive left and then right, and then end up where I ended up, like, you’re going to put something into the GPS, you’re going to have that vision. So it’s the same when you start a company, or you have this desire to become an entrepreneur, like you have this vision in mind of what you’re going to create. And then you work backwards from there to kind of like reverse engineer the process, the team that you need to create a business, if you need a team needs to follow that vision. And if you don’t need a team, you need to follow that vision. So companies that are run without vision today are seeing like hiring shortages, because there’s no reason intrinsic motivation for that employee to stay there.
18:15
So is vision interchangeable with culture?
Joshua 18:18
No, but vision is as a part of the culture brick. So as we’re building upon different aspects of culture, culture is another way of saying human resources. And if we’re looking at building an employee agreement, that would fall under the culture section, or the culture brick, but we’re we’re really looking at what’s first. And what’s first is creating vision.
Hillary 18:41
What are some of the other bricks that make up culture?
Joshua 18:45
So part of becoming a business owner where you need to manage a lot of different things like they often say that SEO stands for Chief everything officer is knowing a good time management skills. I just had a meeting with a client who has a very large marketing agency, and I said, What’s your biggest pain? And she said, time management, like she doesn’t have pains with her clients. She doesn’t have pains with her team. Like it’s not who she’s dealing with, or what processes are in place. It’s just how does she balance everything. And so I think as a CEO, we need to learn from the get go, how to build best practices for ourselves. And there are recipes for success there. There’s hundreds of books that are written on these things. But it’s important for you to like attack that as a primary thing to do is working on yourself before working on a business or working on your team.
Valery 19:42
You mentioned SEO best practices. Can you give us like one nugget or something just
Joshua 19:49
yeah, one of the most powerful ones that I use these days is just waking up with the intention to work on something that’s exciting to me. So if you set your alarm for 5am, or 455, like me, or 9pm You want to have a desire to wake up early and a desire to get things done. But oftentimes, we prioritize the wrong things in the morning. So a best practice is the night prior setting your intentions and affirming those intentions out loud, or you know, in a journal or something to change the perspective on how you wake up and think of your day like Christmas morning, because we don’t have like this desire to go back to sleep or snooze on Christmas morning or on mornings that are exciting for us. So to so you have the capacity, like every one of us has the capacity to really strategically create that Christmas morning feeling for our business. But we don’t think of it that way. We think of the boring aspects of business or managing clients or whatever our desire, therefore is then to snooze or to go back to sleep.
Valery 21:03
Yeah, on the flip side, we’re actually probably most of us are dreading having to wake up the next morning. And so we’re going in at it with the wrong intention. Yeah.
Hillary 21:14
Especially if you’re leading a team, because it’s just like receipt. I mean, this is anyone best practices, but as a CEO, you’re not only responsible for yourself and your own state of mind, but the whole team and leading the team. Yeah, so that’s a good point, like go to bed with an intention already set. So that you’re not waking up in drag, just
Valery 21:34
kind of aimless. Yeah, that’s a great, it’s a great nugget.
21:37
I like it. Okay, so what’s another brick or slab? Yeah.
Joshua 21:43
I think another one that I’d like to bring up is building teams around your energy drains. So as you’re starting to look at how to build up your team or your culture, you need to know what is draining the most energy for you as CEO, and how to put people in place and procedure alized those things to offset your energy. So energy is not equivalent to time here. Like you can spend a lot of time doing something that is super mundane, and you’re not even thinking about it. It’s not draining a lot of energy. But on the flip side, you could do something that takes a very short amount of time, like giving a presentation in front of 100 people, but it drains a ton of energy. Because you’re thinking about all of these aspects. Your palms are sweaty, like your mom’s spaghetti.
Valery 22:36
I guess what I was gonna say.
Joshua 22:42
So, yeah, I think you know, if you if you recognize energy drains, and you know how to differentiate between time and energy, you can build teams around those energy drains,
22:56
what’s one of your energy drains?
Joshua 22:59
Podcasting,
23:00
you shouldn’t say pouring gas and people are gonna think you don’t
Valery 23:01
yeah, here, say prepping?
Joshua 23:04
I mean, no, I think that’s a good conversation, like podcasting is one of my energy drains, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like to do it, it just means that it takes a lot of energy. So so I have to build a team around that. Antonio, Hillary, Valerie, to help offset some of that energy,
Valery 23:22
you know, so it doesn’t always equate to like a negative feeling. It’s just,
Joshua 23:27
it’s just high energy, high energy. For example, like you might spend a lot of time on something, does that equate to you hating that thing? No, no, long, long amounts of time is not equivalent to a negative lot large amounts of energy is not equivalent to a negative, but are you prioritizing those things that are high energy that you desire to do? Like, I really enjoy podcasting. And if I could do this full time, I would, and we will. But creating content and really thinking about what the value is for the listener is the hardest part and making sure that you’re thinking about all the components that go into editing a podcast, especially if you integrate video, like my mind is going to all of those places. So it’s very high energy for me, which is why we have to delegate those strings
Hillary 24:19
that why usually like, I fall asleep afterwards to be nuts. Yeah. And eating lunch must be a high energy drain for me, since I always want to fall asleep. That’s different.
Joshua 24:33
Well, as I’ve learned from valid ways that that is true, like your body is processing that in your second brain. So I’m sorry, twice your second brain. Yeah, your gut is your second brain.
Hillary 24:46
Oh, well, I’d love to unpack that more, but we need to move on. Love Tom Packard, give us give us know that can say where it is. I think we have time for one more slab. All right. I’ve rebranded it.
Joshua 25:01
So if we talk about your culture being the most important first thing to attack, then you have to look at attack, we mean address address, yeah, don’t attack your team, please give them innovation incentives, which is my next point here. Yeah, if you look at culture, value, innovation and operations as equally weighted, then your team needs to know that innovation is important in the organization. And you need to give your team permission to innovate. And those that innovate the fastest and the best with the best results should be incentivized to do so whether it’s financially or with ownership or some aspect of their personality needs to be motivated, based on the level that they innovate in, in your company.
Hillary 25:54
So just to clarify, we’re not talking about the innovation pillar we’re talking about within the culture pillar within building your team’s culture, you’re letting them know that, hey, innovation is important in this business. So like you have the freedom to come to me with new ideas, like so I guess, like feedback would be really important as part of that, right? Like,
Joshua 26:13
yeah, I mean, your your software innovation, you want to have agile feedback,
26:19
there it is. Agile feedback loops. Yeah,
Joshua 26:23
you want to have that across your organization, because it’s not only important that I’m giving my employee or my business partner feedback on how to improve, but it’s just as important that I hear their feedback to me, and how I can be a better leader and a manager. And if you’re not looking at those things, as equally weighted, you’re not looking at the business model as an ecosystem.
Hillary 26:49
Did you experience any kind of clarity after the situation with your mom like? Well, I guess it’s kind of talking about priorities, like Did it make? Did it? Did you get any kind of clarity?
Joshua 27:02
Yeah, for sure. After the experience with my mom, I remember being downtown Orlando, and seeing a lot of the homeless individuals, we call them individuals experiencing homelessness, to not identify them as homeless people. I had this revolutionary thoughts in my mind of, you know, I’ve been pursuing career and business for so long. You know, here’s what happened to my mom. And I can see in front of me all these people who have probably similar stories. Why am I going to worry about what car am I going to buy next, when there’s people who are struggling on the streets, when there’s families who are living in tents that are getting pushed back into the woods, because they’re lowering the economic value of the neighborhood, and people aren’t purchasing the houses for what they’re worth? Like? What kind of messed up system are we living in? And why am I not pursuing change for that? Instead of looking at it, a new car, for example. And that was like, something that I recognized through trauma. And I believe that when you’re going through trauma like that trauma is like, God allows that to be there so that you can experience some sort of Revelation. So I would encourage listeners to like look for the lesson and what they’re going through. And how does that help them in in their purpose?
Hillary 28:36
It sounds like you, your passion for business didn’t subside, but maybe your motivator went from money to like impact? Yeah, when I was hearing, yeah, profit mindset to impact mindset, which could still mean making a lot of money, but not for yourself. But to make an impact on the world, which is often a barrier I feel. Sometimes in business, it does feel like this, oh, I just want to be able to make a lot of money. And it feels kind of icky sometimes, and so to hear someone that’s doing that, so that you can have a greater impact. Because it is hard to have a financial impact on people when you’re like just scraping by and anyway, for me that speaks to me because I know not everyone pursuing business is just out there for the money.
Joshua 29:28
I know that a fear many entrepreneurs have branching out on their own is feeling lonely and unsupported, that same feeling I had while going through the situation with my family. That’s why part of our mission with scaling side hustles is to offer free consultations for freelancers just like you to jumpstart their businesses. That’s not the only reason. We want to welcome you into a community of other hustlers so that when obstacles come your way, you’re not dealing with them on your own. Let’s build a culture of entrepreneurs together, follow the free consultation link in our show notes or go to scaling side hustles.com To learn more
Hillary 30:00
Thanks for joining us today. Just a reminder that all the resources we mentioned today will be in our show notes. So check those out and go to 988 lifeline.org if you or anyone else you know is in a crisis.
Valery 30:11
Thanks for supporting the show. We can’t wait to share the rest of the story with you and continue building up this community of entrepreneurs. You guys rock. See you next time.