153 – Academia meets Entrepreneurship: Tom interviews Cheryl Lentz

Episode 153 – Cheryl Lentz
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody it's Tom here with episode 153 of screw the commute podcast I got Dr. Cheryl Lentz with us and she is a prolific publisher and brilliant writer who successfully put together academia and entrepreneurship and I can't wait to introduce her to you in a few minutes and I hope you didn't miss episode 152 with Frank Candy he's a speaker's bureau owner and a highly experienced business person who has great tips and a really great and colorful story and also he's the newest military first responder and law enforcement advisory board member for my internet marketing school for those of you that don't know we are approved by the Department of Defense to participate in the military spouse scholarship program and because you know not only can military spouses study from home while juggling kids and running a household they can take this skill with them whenever they're deployed and that was part of the way we got approved was because our skill is portable I mean we have a girl in South Korea right now that helps us out and you know so it's really perfect for them now I've got a big freebie for it that thank you for listening to this podcast it's my twenty seven dollar e-book how to automate your business and just one of the tips in this e-book has saved me over seven and a half million keystrokes over the years and I got another little a special surprise for you over there at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Now our podcast app's in the iTunes store you can also go to screwthecommute.com/app where we have complete instructions to show you how to use all the fancy features so you can take us with you on the road. Now the sponsor is the great internet marketing retreat and joint venture program. Oh boy it's been running since I like to say since the turn of the century it's been the longest running most successful ever program like it in the world. In this topic area you also get an immersion weekend at our retreat center here in Virginia Beach. And it's a year long program where we hold your hand through either starting an Internet business or improving your business that you have now. And it's all one on one so you're not lumped in and confused if we're talking above your head. And you're not bored if we're talking below your head. So it's really great. Check it out at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:03:17] All right. Let's get to the main event. Dr. Cheryl Lentz is a multi award winning publisher of the internationally acclaimed series the refractive thinker. It's a collaboration of doctoral scholars from around the world and it's earned 20 awards so far. Now Dr. Cheryl is known as the academic entrepreneur. You don't see those two together often. She's known globally for her writings on leadership as well as critical and Refractive thinking as an accomplished University professor speaker and consultant. She's an international best selling author as well as a top quoted publishing professional on ABC CBS NBC and Fox. Dr. Cheryl, are you ready to screw. The commute. An academic entrepreneur screw the commuter. Wow. This is the first for our show. So tell us what you've been doing lately. And then we're going to take you back to the beginning and see how you came up through your entrepreneurial journey.

[00:04:27] Absolutely. Currently I own the lentz Leadership Institute. We are a premier publishing solution with two imprints. We have the refractive thinker which is what the company started with. This is a series for doctoral scholars to share their work. But in a format that's easily digestible I'm sure your listeners are well aware that when a Doctoral Scholar conducts their research it's a very long formulaic. They're often very boring me boring and very statistically driven. And I have a graduate who is just literally finishing her doctorate at six hundred seventy six pages. Other than her chairing her committee very few people are ever gonna want to read this but this is what started my company as I understand the need to read that research. The problem is not in that format. So the refractive thinker uses a business technique of being able to use an executive summary 10 to 12 pages written with a marketing hat that tells readers and listeners in this case for your listeners here what's important. Why do we care what did you do this research. What can we learn what can we do how do we make or save money on it in a easily digestible format not like you swallow the Oxford Dictionary. It's now 19 volumes it has as you indicated 20 awards and this helps offer that visibility to scholars to get the research out. Why did they do this other than just getting the doctor titles so that I can create that. chasm. That's why I have one foot in the academic world one foot in the business world the academic entrepreneur to build that bridge to get that research out of academia because get stuck there to business owners who can actually use it but we're taught actually added the second imprint which is for all of our other business writers who want to publish the book and I retain being also and a professional editor in a lot of doctoral folks but I publish a lot of books now and they become bestsellers. And it's absolutely wonderful to be able to share these stories that often again get stuck in academia with people like your listeners who are business owners who want to know what these people found if it's going to benefit their business. So that's what we do.

[00:06:29] Yeah and. And I have a friend that she did her thesis and this is important for people to know out there. So if it got buried it would be it would be a crying shame. But she did her thesis. She's a nurse. PhD nurse I don't know what that's called. But she did it on cleanliness in navel piercings and you know that's a pretty pretty popular topic.

[00:06:56] Absolutely. All the way back to Florence Nightingale who realized if you wash your hands that disease and things wouldn't transmit and they didn't even know that back then. So kudos.

[00:07:08] So any of you out there considering navel piercings want to look up her researcher. So take us back to when you were a little kid. Were you like a bookworm back then or what.

[00:07:19] A bookworm yes an entrepreneur not a clue not even a lemonade stand. But I was known for reading a matter of fact I read a series called Trixie Belden which I guess is the pre-teen version of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys way back in the day. And I my dad would travel a lot and every time he would come home I would get a new book in the series and I was like 34 books in the series. So over time I just became that book worm and now it's funny I just went to the library yesterday. I buy books all the time. I read probably five or six books a week if I can.

[00:07:50] They still have libraries I didn't know that.

[00:07:53] Believe it or not and I often forget that because most of my world is in my computer because I teach all over the world with and with all of my online libraries I sometimes forget you need to go to the people libraries because they have PhDs in library science of how to get stuff out. And so if you ever get stuck greatest story ever is. I was writing an article I knew there was a statistic out there. I spent months looking for it. I went to my local library and within 30 seconds this guy was able to find it for me and I was like Oh I'm coming back. He saved me months of heartache that I don't know how he did it but that's what he does.

[00:08:24] The people their minds were just really crazy even editors like I remember my wake them up book the editor came to me and said Hey Tom this this one sentence on page 240 really belongs on page 60. How do you figure how do you keep track of all that their minds are really sharp and different than mine. That's for sure.

[00:08:48] But it's hard to turn that off. It can be a double edged sword. Tom I know that I've read a lot of books and when they get something wrong I just had one the other day that they couldn't spell the word forward. The first part of a book right the noun FOREward. That is the verb which is FORward. Crazy so much that I actually called the author. They were very grateful to hear from me but I can't turn those eyes off it drives me crazy.

[00:09:12] No I get it. Well what used to get me crazy is before my Kindle came along. That kind of stuff I would be going on a speaking trip and then I'd have like 12 books the weighed 42 pounds trying to decide which ones to take with me because I always had multiple books going at one time.

[00:09:32] I do too and I still carry the books even though I have a Kindle reader. I like paper books I like what they feel I like the dog ear them I like to highlight them. I'm just old school.

[00:09:40] Oh yeah. I write in them so you don't think that's blasphemous right.

[00:09:45] No I think that's wonderful you're sharing your thoughts with the writer and that's the connection that I think is amazing particularly in this digital world.

[00:09:52] Yeah. Yeah. It's just that they charge you a fortune if you're overweight. So they're making money off of it. Tell us about your school years and did you work your way through school or what. When did you start making any money at all.

[00:10:06] Oh goodness I didn't have my first call or my first high school job. I didn't do the fast food thing because food in me is not something that I'm I just don't do fast food. So I started in the technology that I was you know the administrative secretary that I would do personal assistance and eventually went into college and did the sorority thing and then started planning parties and had a ball. I was a concierge for 10 years I worked at the Ritz Carlton downtown Chicago I worked at the Four Seasons in Seattle and then I started moving becoming a military wife. Shortly thereafter I moved 38 times.

[00:10:40] Oh you're a military spouse. Perfect.

[00:10:44] So it's been interesting but I've had a lot of careers as a military spouse with all the moving we've done from radio to doing interviews on on the radio. Behind the scenes in the radio I've done national security investigations so I have quite an interesting resume. And it's now all culminating to all of the things I currently do now which is very odd and very bizarre.

[00:11:07] Well it's everybody's life experience brings them to where they are. But I do have to tell a quick concierge story. One of my students was the concierge in las vegas and she wrote a book called You want what.

[00:11:22] And oh I would love to read that book because I could tell you some of that story. Absolutely because behind the scenes you're going oh I couldn't believe what they just asked me to do.

[00:11:34] Well this one guy as I mean this is the stories are just hysterical. But this one guy ask her for a Virgin Chicken and she's like Okay sir I will talk to the chef. So she's run into the chef with this fancy. I don't know what hotel was Paris or something. And they never heard of it. So she started calling all the chefs around town nobody ever heard of a virgin chicken. It's just you know it's kind of like you know embarrassing to her not to be able to come through with her request. So she finally has to admit to the guy she can't find the Virgin Chicken but he was like an Irish guy and he was asking for the Virgin Airlines check in.

[00:12:22] We need to connect because I have some stories that would best some of the things that you just shake your head and what people think. That's the human nature kind of same as you seem you think you've seen it all. There's more.

[00:12:34] Well yeah look it up it's called. You want what by Maryann Mohos. So how did the the idea for this business come about.

[00:12:44] This was really interesting when I was in doctor school I remember a professor telling me that as the 1 percent PhD scholar to be it was now my responsibility to find problems and fix them because my biggest pet peeve is the that's the way we've always done it. And my professor was who did lecture that day. I was like That's lazy people who are willing to whine and not step up to the plate and do something about it. And so when I graduated and as a academic we are required to publish particularly if you want to remain an academic and I have now I will actually be a college professor 20 years next year which I find hysterical because this was never the plan. But now that it has been it it's amazing the journey of being able to figure out how to publish. So all I kept hearing I was very disappointed. Tom when I graduated everyone kept saying this is what passes for for publishing and that's the way we've always done it. And the bells went off because my biggest concern was now let me understand this I just mean four and a half years because my my journey took me four years three months to be able to complete all this and now that I wanted to publish. It's like you're concierge but you're going to do what the whole point of publishing is when you publish in a peer review journal they own your copyright that's how they. The Journal makes money. I'm like. ok with that because I'm not I just spend hundreds of thousands dollars earning a degree. Years of my life and now I'm going to turn over the Secret Sauce to somebody else to own my copyright. I said no but no one else had ever offered a way to fix it. So when my bells went off and I met coaches such as you and others along the way that said Cheryl this is an opportunity for you to be the solution to someone else's problem. And so funny at a happy hour there were six of us who graduated together and we're thinking well y'all can do this business. We've got PhDs. We're all that a bag of chips. Now we should be able to do this in like form a cocktail napkin on happy hour to be able to offer different models for all of the things that people complained about with the that's the way we've always done it. We have a different model that fixed them and now after 20 awards 19 volumes in the series and we keep adding things to that model as digital technologies allows to fix all of the once problems that we just offer different models that solve them all and it's amazing where that has taken off from there so hard the beginning because nobody had ever done this before and now we are still a bit of a lone wolf which surprises me. But we are solving the problem that many academics have had since the beginning of publishing that dissertations I really believe that if you're going to do all this that you should own your copyright. So when people publish with me in the refractive thinker or any of the business books for example our model is we teach you how to own your copyright. We'll teach you how to apply for it. But I only ask in the contracts that you give me distribution rights so I have the right to publish your book and to put it at places but you own it as I think it should always be that way.

[00:15:43] You know that's the second great idea that came out of a bar this week. Yeah there's this other guy raised seven hundred thousand dollars for charity. He and his buddy were drinking and and talking about the same kinda stuff and smoking cigars with several hundred thousand dollars later for charity.

[00:16:01] I'm convinced business doesn't happen in the boardroom and doesn't happen the office that happens in Vegas that happens in the casino happens at the golf course. Any place but because when you get an idea you want to be in a social situation where you can start brainstorming we came up with some goofy things that happy hour. But here's the one thing that oh I don't know Mr. Tom Antion taught me is business isn't business unless you take action. I actually took action from that happy hour and I formed the company I created the LLC we did a lot of things incorrectly at first because I didn't know the first thing from starting my own business but I learned and 12 years later my business is still in business and we're still here and that's pretty cool.

[00:16:39] Where's your y'all coming from.

[00:16:41] I was married to a man from the south for a long time ago. So it still has a few of those.

[00:16:45] Oh so you picked it up off of marrying somebody.

[00:16:49] I ended up I was married for twenty three years and we parted ways a few years back. But he was a man from the south so that's where the all and I can tell you you're all yours plurals. Yeah.

[00:16:57] Oh yours pt. pl. either. Yeah. Because though I came from western Pennsylvania but I spent 13 years in Morgantown West Virginia and started picking up y'all.

[00:17:08] Well I was the damn Yankee of the family when certain terms was told that the war of Southern aggression wasn't over yet.

[00:17:15] So where do you come from.

[00:17:18] I came from Chicago actually. That's where I'm back home for the first time in 25 years as I grew up actually at a Catholic school in downtown Chicago and then my folks moved to the burbs when I was in sixth grade and they've been there for 37 years.

[00:17:31] Well I'll have to say y'all are crazy because you can have my share of the snow for the rest of my life how about that.

[00:17:37] Yeah I even have a Siberian husky or and during January's polar vortex she didn't want to go outside. My folks are seventy five and Dad just turned 80 a few weeks ago so it was time to kind of come home and transition to that next phase. But yeah you're right. I don't do the snow thing and I lived in Vegas for twelve years. Vegas was too hot. Chicago is a little too cold for me actually a lot too cold and so I'm on the hunt for just right now where move thirty nine might be.

[00:18:08] Well I know that Virginia Beach is perfect because it's this area's north. Oh although Virginia Beach is better than North Carolina. We love North Carolina because it sticks out into the ocean and the hurricanes hit that part that sticks out and then miss us. So we really love North Carolina but they take a lot of brunt from us and others live nice. The weather is really nice here. You don't get too cold you don't get too hot. Tell everybody what you could do for non-PhDs. How do you help people that are just you know want to be business authors.

[00:18:48] We have a second imprint so the company owns several things. Think of a company owning things like here's the business line. Here's the Harlequin Romance line here's the science fiction line my other imprint is called Pensiero Press. It really means is critical thinking in Italian.

[00:19:19] So what that will mean is that somebody will come to me and will ask what kind of a what they want the book to do in this time a little bit unusual and here's times my professor hat again I start at the end and I work backwards too many publishers online in my opinion we'll be able to just sell and sell you a one size fits all package. And so whether it's ten thousand dollars five thousand dollars you get everything whether you need it or not. I by contrast will have some appointments with a would be author and we talk about what they need and how they're going to use the book because in that it defines what kind of book you need. Do you need an e-book. Do you need an audio book. Do you need a print book. Do you want the best selling campaign. Do you want the media influencer. I mean there's so many tools in the toolbox particularly with digital technology now that one size doesn't fit all and you only need to pay for what you need. So I spend a lot of time really personalizing but I need to know when they're what they're going to do with it. For example you have a wonderful Internet marketing company. You give us away your free e-book which is fabulous about the Internet. Tips and Tricks and best practices in there and some people will do that as a way. Call the law of reciprocity want to give something to someone to be able to have them give you their email address. You can market to them. That's one way of using a book or a publication. Others are on the speaking circuit. They want the book in the back of the book sales. Others want to have that credibility piece so they want that. Amazon best selling status. Others want to be quoted in major media because they want to be able to give that trust factor because there's lots of people that are on the Internet. If you know this because I was using old information I used to use 300000 books published every year. Oh no I was correct in the last seminar I gave a few months ago. It's over a million books. That's the M word as of 2015. Amazon publishes every year a million books. So the idea is if you build it they won't come why they won't know what's there. So part of what we have learned is that a publisher's responsibility is to make the book happen. But we add a bit of a source for some of our packages. A four month promotional marketing opportunity so that you can get a head up of being able to tell the world that your book is there in a variety of ways. So again we start at the end called an outcome based approach. We figure out where you need to be and then I look in my bag of tricks to find out what's the most appropriate books or combination of books or types of books or you know you can get even a hard cover book if you're going to do book signings so there's just an awful lot of details out there and I think a lot of the publishers could do a much better better job of being able to connect the right tool to the right outcomes so that those who want to publish a book know the right way to go about doing it. That's going to make the most sense for them in their search.

[00:21:50] I think most of the big players are doing what you said before this was the way we've always done it. That's why they're dying like crazy I guess.

[00:21:59] Does it mean that you need to continue to do that maybe you do. I mean there's no reason if you throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak but there's lots of new different tools and I like to use to think like a carpenter use the most effective tool for the most effective outcome as opposed to just doing the way we've always doing which is one size fits all and hope for the best. That's my role.

[00:22:20] Yeah. And you know you can advertise on Amazon now. They're the third biggest behind Facebook and Google now for paid advertising.

[00:22:29] So you're going to be the one that's gonna tell us to have that personalized advertising. You know what. Everybody remember your books about dress you people were interested in or play tennis. You don't want everyone so why waste your money on everyone when you can have that targeted way of marketing which is only to play tennis if that's what the book's about.

[00:22:46] There we go. So what do you like best about working for yourself and what's the worst part.

[00:22:51] The best part is I love to control my hours. I would have the ability to if I want to go to Virginia Beach I pick up my computer and I go to Virginia Beach most of my schedule is in my computer so as long as I make arrangements for my dog Gracie that I can go I have. that that freedom that choice even though I still have to work for a living I'm not yet retired but I can rearrange that and I don't have to ask permission for anyone that is the thing that used to drive me crazy to feel like a second grader that would have to go to my boss and say hey I want the weekend off because it's someone's birthday or just because I want to go kayaking. That's my new thing. And so that drove me crazy. So I love having that ability that I don't ask anybody as long as I can make it work and I fulfill all of my promises and expectations. I can essentially do what I want when I want it until I can officially retire. So I'm getting to that direction as well.

[00:23:41] How would you put Retire from what you're just going to read more books.

[00:23:48] Oh I want to be on the beach. I want to go kayaking more often. I want to travel more often I still have a few more obligations for again I'm still teaching as a college prof. That's my other half I do half of my time as a business owner. The other half I still although it's not quite a half anymore it's more like a third that I'm still a college prof and I still do a lot of things but I do things because I want to do them Tom not because I have to do that somebody oh that brilliant Tom Antion told me don't chase money let money chase you. I like that.

[00:24:17] Yeah they do that for a lot of years. Except I don't have to be here talking to you or anybody else but I just love it so much you know. So I keep going and helping people and making money and this is great.

[00:24:30] Exactly. You know the old adage you do what you love you never work a day in your life. Well I work a little days in my life because I don't love everything that I do. But the worst part about I think being your own thing business owner so to speak and managing is the fact that I like two heads are better than one sometimes five heads are better than one. And right now I'm the owner and sole operator of the business and sometimes it's a little pressure particularly in the beginning when I was so ignorant and I was so inexperienced and all this fancy education and I still had to go and hire business coaches because my PhD stuff didn't quite have what I needed and so I still react to that pressure of being the only one would love to find a business partner. I do have a board of directors or board of advisors actually that when I need to bounce things off them they will always tell you what I need to hear and not always what I want to hear. That's a challenge so I hate being the only game in town when good bad or ugly I'm the decision maker and I have to live with it.

[00:25:24] Yeah I'm actually coming up with an episode of Monday one of my Monday trainings on advisory boards because there's for those who don't know there's a big difference between the board of directors and an advisory board a board of directors has a fiduciary relationship to you. It's a legal thing but the advisory board doesn't. So it's a little easier to put together. So I'm putting it like I mentioned. Mr. Candy is going to be on my advisory board for my school where we're going to pursue the scholarships and stuff for first responders and law enforcement and then we're in the Department of Defense thing. But I had no ability to reach military spouses. I mean the ones that I talked to on podcasts are like Who are you. You're not one of us you know.

[00:26:10] And yet I'm sure you didn't even know I was a military spouse.

[00:26:12] I had no idea no idea that you were a military spouse.

[00:26:15] Go Air Force. The thing that I learned about the board of advisors that I did this wrong in the beginning when I first started my company I had all of the people who are my friends who were supporting me. But guess what. They thought like I did. So they weren't as much help of being able to tell me what I needed to hear. And so eventually I had to make sure I got an odd number so that there was a qualifying vote so I didn't always have to be the tiebreaker. I had to lose my ego and realize that these people were intentionally put on my board for their strategic expertise and I had to defer that yeah. Most of the time the reason they were there is a different definitely knew more than me and that was the point. You don't want to be the smartest person in the room. You want to have smarter people than you on your board. So it took me a little while to find the right people and so what you need to do is find people who are ahead of you in the process who are have proven that they are going to go where you want to go and they have done it so that you can have them on your boards you have proof and then they will just teach you where you need to go. It's so much easier to follow in their footsteps and try and reinvent the wheel and we reinvent the wheel way too much.

[00:27:17] Well that's what we all do. That's what I do. Helping people with internet stuff you do with the most I imagine most PhD students are just totally clueless of the entrepreneurial thing.

[00:27:29] Oh my gosh that is the one thing and I wrote a book years ago about the entrepreneur. It's because it was a big hot button of mine I'm now getting comfortable that I'm willing to push back in academia. And it was really annoying because academia was having me why I entrepreneurial programs were failing because they were being taught by ivory tower academics. I knew. that. ivory tower academic is one who doesn't own a business and who isn't an entrepreneur. And my point is what do they have any business teaching an entrepreneurial class. I'm all about that's where the academic entrepreneur title or moniker comes from is that experience because my experience as a business owner shapes my conversations with my students very differently because the research is only a part of the equation. It doesn't always happen that way and a lot of students who are in a lot of faculty have never owned a business don't get that so you've got to be that immersion what you do in your your marketing you put people in for the weekend and teach them through doing and sometimes you have to jump in the deep end of the pool. It's not a pleasant place to be. But it's the most effective place for learning and that's a hard time with ivory tower academics and so I have a hard time with academics don't teach what you don't know.

[00:28:38] I get it. So how do where do people find your stuff. What's your Web site.

[00:28:43] There's a couple of places you can find me the easiest places DrCherylLentz.com that will often have most of the things that I do for radio shows to consulting to my books to philanthropy that we do etc. Each of the imprints has their own website. Refractivethinker.com thepensieropress.com.

[00:29:04] We'll have all this in the show notes so they can just click on it.

[00:29:09] Just type Dr. Cheryl Lentz in Google you'll see about twelve different websites come up and I have quite a presence on the Internet that you'll find me somewhere. But DrCherylLentz@gmail.com that's an email address that I've had for more than 12 years.

[00:29:24] All right we've got to take a brief sponsor break and when we come back we're going to ask Cheryl what's a typical day look like for her and how she stays motivated.

[00:29:33] So folks back in the day people like me at my level were charging like 50 or 100 thousand dollars upfront to teach what they knew to kind of clueless business people who refuse to learn it on their own. And I'm a small business advocate and I knew many small businesses could never afford that kind of upfront money. So. So I made all the gurus mad and and I charged a relatively small entry fee to my program that also got a percentage of profits that was capped so you're not stuck with me forever. So for me to get my big money you have to make way bigger money plus you know I'm not going to disappear on you because I won't get my money right. So so I even took it a step further and I bought a big estate home where people come in for an immersion weekend. It's the only facility of its kind in the world where you actually live in here for an immersion weekend to learn internet marketing techniques and also you get a scholarship to my internet marketing school which is the only licensed independent internet marketing school in the country probably the world. And so that also goes along with it. So I triple dog dare anybody to come up with a program that's got as much value as mine does. So check it out at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and of course that will be in the show notes.

[00:30:59] All right. Let's get back to the main event. Dr. Cheryl Lentz is here and Cheryl tell us what a typical day looks like for you when you get up. What do you have. What happens you get up early late you work out see what happens.

[00:31:12] am a very early riser because of my Siberian Husky Gracie. My dog is up and this morning for example she got me up at 3:00 a.m. and I had to let her outside so I go downstairs I put in the doggy door. She goes outside. She does her business is there for maybe 10 minutes and we both go back to sleep for several hours but I live in a place that I live across here like now. And we have coyotes and unfortunately Gracie is a critter killer. She has 20 kills to her credit. And I can't leave her out at night for fear of. So she has to get me up early so once we get up early then we do our breakfast and I start work some anywhere from six to seven o'clock in the morning and I'm on the Internet. I mean I am an international professor so I have several universities I teach for so because it's international and online I have the ability to have task oriented not time oriented it means that I have lots of things to do all the time so it doesn't matter when I do them whether it's 5:00 in the morning or 5:00 at night. So here's the cool part another advantage of why work at home. I get up I go maybe 10 steps down the hallway to my office and bam I'm at work. No commute.

[00:32:16] That was a 10 step commute.

[00:32:18] Usually when we've had lousy weather lately with some really horrible down shifts of thunderstorms etc. I don't have to worry as long as I keep them home stocked with food. Gracie and I just kind of hang out and it's wonderful that I don't even have to. Matter of fact I could teach in my jammies so my students wouldn't know but it's not a substitute that many people think for the real world the real world here it's just in my house. I have conference calls all day long. I will have radio shows I'm guests regular guests on several radio shows. I have a very detailed schedule that I keep as sometimes calls go longer. I have publishing books edited so I'm putting in anywhere from ten to twelve hours and that's. the hard part about sometimes working in your home is that you don't always know when to stop. And I don't always have a good social calendar because I have to actually schedule fun Tom. Is that not just ridiculous. I don't schedule fun or I don't schedule kayaking it doesn't happen so I have to figure out a way to make it happen in my day. Because when you're at home boundaries get blurred very easily.

[00:33:18] Well I've lived that for 42 years. I can totally relate to the old saying is is that entrepreneurial work 18 hours a day for themselves to get out of working eight hours a day for somebody else.

[00:33:33] Absolutely. And that is that I think things I don't want to consider this a rant or a whine. It's simply an observation of it. It changes for whom you work for but when your the game in town you still have integrity you still have expectations you still have job descriptions it's not like I can just give myself the day off because then I'll have to pay the piper tomorrow. So I have a flexible schedule but I still have a lot of demands on my schedule and I still have to keep up on that and that's why I am where I am today because I have meticulous time management that I can get better at having fun.

[00:34:03] So how do you stay motivated.

[00:34:07] Well that's an interesting one. I have an inner circle matter of fact I called them this morning because I was having an issue that arose yesterday and it was I needed some. Well what do I do and what should I have done and what might I do to help run a process that because that is the one thing that I I do miss about being at home is I'm isolated. I have a lot of meetings. I mean last week I was very cosmopolitan I have a student in Johannesburg I have an author in Brazil. I mean wherever these you know I am linked to them by Zoom or Skype so I'm talking to people all over the world but they're in my little box. Very seldom do I have face to face meetings because they're really not necessary while it's efficient and it's darn wonderful from a timing standpoint. You can get a little isolating and lonely so I have to motivate myself by sometimes having to get up and call my inner circle and make sure that I have appointments that I just don't sleep till noon if I'm not feeling about it you have to be a guard of your schedule and a guard of your emotions. And I have secrets when things don't go well that I have to keep my motivation up because it's it's more emotional than I ever thought. Tom I guess this is something that is a real surprise to me up about business. Best advice I ever had is someone told me it doesn't matter what you do in business it matters who you do it with. I've learned to choose carefully those who I do business with and those who I am in business with. And that makes all the difference for my motivation.

[00:35:29] That's for sure. The people who listen as we call them screwballs. So what. What parting thoughts would you have for people either thinking about starting their own business or improving the one they have.

[00:35:39] Part of it is action. I have so many of my authors who have been trying to write that book for the last 10 years. Tom you always had stories about that as well. And the only book that is a book is the one that's written. I've written 40 books or 40 publications is probably most accurate right now and everyone's like very impressed by that number. I didn't write them all in one year. I did two or three things a year and it was one foot in front of the other and so you have to learn to crawl. You have to learn before you work. Matter of fact one of the guys who's running writing the foreword for next book Brian Smith is the founder of Ugg boots the billion dollar brand brand and I love his comedy. You don't give birth to adults and that's true. You have to learn that you have to learn by doing and most people are so afraid of failing. They won't start at all. And I do a lot of keynote speaking on fail faster succeed sooner. You've got to make friends with failure. You've got to avoid being stopped by it and you've got to take action. I mean there are how many people do that. What did you say when your stories I remember the late night for nineteen ninety five and you get all these things everybody will have oh man. I had that idea. Yeah but you didn't act on it. Business is business when you take action you might not always do it right but you're still in the game and in order to score you've got to take the shot. And a lot of people are too afraid. So my advice is just get it done get in. Get in the fight start your business learn from people and start going forward. Business is about psychology and perseverance more than the what. But you can't score if you don't shoot to take the shot.

[00:37:10] LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT AND I LOVE THAT THING ABOUT YOU DON'T birth an adult but a lot of adults are big babies.

[00:37:19] Because they have the same thing. I mean you know a temper tantrum as a two year old is quite spectacular when a forty year old it's not any different. It's just a matter of reacting to your environment. Learn those skills and I think a business owner as an entrepreneur has to be more gifted in those areas than some.

[00:37:36] Well Cheryl thanks so much for taking time to talk to us then. You taught me something that libraries still exist.

[00:37:42] So this is such an honor after all these years to come back and to be actually focused on your show. What an honor for you. I compliment so thank you Tom. Anything I can do for your listeners. Have them get in touch with me I love talking with entrepreneurs and helping them because it only helps me as well. So let's you only go around this world once. Right. Let's make it a good time there.

[00:38:01] Sounds good. So check out all of Cheryl's links in the show notes and it's Dr. Cheryl Lentz and she's got a prolific presence on the Internet. She can help you whether you're a PhD student or not. So thanks Cheryl and catch everybody on the next episode. See ya later.

Join my distance learning school: https://www.IMTCVA.org
OR
Join the mentor program PLUS get a FREE Scholarship to the School: https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com