From Probation Officer to Beauty Brand Powerhouse: Melanie Richards on Risk and Reinvention

EPISODE SUMMARY

Melanie Richards, founder of GoGlo and former probation officer, joins Jeff Dudan on the Homefront to talk about her unexpected leap from public service to entrepreneurship. This episode explores the harsh realities of domestic violence advocacy, the gritty startup story behind GoGlo’s mobile tanning business, and the raw truths of franchising from someone in the trenches. It’s an unfiltered look at leadership, resilience, and the long game of building something that matters.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The Sun Isn’t Your Friend: Melanie explains the health risks of UV tanning and why safe alternatives like GoGlo’s airbrush tans are booming in the wellness space.

Public Service Burnout Is Real: After a traumatic career in domestic violence probation, Melanie reached a breaking point that pushed her into entrepreneurship.

Spray Tans with Soul: GoGlo was built with $5K on a credit card and grew from mobile pop-ups to a fast-scaling franchise — proving grit and glow can co-exist.

Franchising Is Not for the Faint of Heart: Melanie opens up about the emotional toll of transitioning from solo founder to franchise leader and learning to let go.

Founders Need Mentors: Melanie credits her support system, including Jeff Herr and Eric Van Horn, for keeping her grounded through the “third ring of hell.”

Power Couples Win: Though GoGlo attracts mostly women, it's often husband-wife teams that are building the most successful units.

FEATURED QUOTE

"If it was just about money, I wouldn’t be doing this. This is my heart, this is my soul — I don’t share it lightly."

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Introduction:

Jeff Dudan (00:04)

Welcome to the Homefront. I'm Jeff Dudan. If you spent a decade as a probation officer specializing in domestic violence advocacy and rehabilitation and built a model that was replicated nationwide, if you recognized a need in the safe tanning market and founded GoGlo in 2010, revolutionizing the airbrush tanning industry and ultimately expanding through franchising, your name can only be Melanie Richards. Welcome.

Melanie Richards (00:38)

Thank you. That's a great intro.

Jeff Dudan (00:39)

Well, it's yours. You've earned it. You did the whole banana.

Melanie Richards (00:43)

I did. I did.

The Dangers of Traditional Tanning & The Safe Sun Movement

Jeff Dudan (00:46)

All right, Melanie, how big of a health risk is traditional tanning and what does GoGlo do to alleviate some of these risks?

Melanie Richards (00:57)

Yeah, I just recently a whole bunch of information has been coming out about not only UV and the traditional tanning beds, but also the sun. It's one in four will develop some form of a skin cancer. So there's early detection, which is fabulous. We've done a really good job on.

you know, making sure the public is aware of that. you know, if you're around my age, I've just celebrated my 50th birthday and back in my day, we were hitting the tanning beds and it was no shame in that game. Well, it's kind of coming around full circle and right now with, know, GoGos positioning on skin health and everything, ⁓ it's a good time to be ⁓ in this industry, particularly because of the attention that it's getting on the wellness side of it.

Jeff Dudan (01:45)

Are there risks from sunblock products as well as the sun? I look, we grew up, I grew up in the 70s as well, or I'm older than you, but so I grew up in the 70s. You grew up in the 80s, probably. But we ran, I mean, I have sun damage on my shoulders. I have to go get checked. It's we just ran out all day with our shirts off. And then all of a sudden this suntan lotion industry came out and then everybody

Melanie Richards (01:55)

Well.

Jeff Dudan (02:13)

is painted white and all of that. I mean, any product, anything done to excess has to have negative consequences, especially things applied to our skins. How safe are these products that people use to protect themselves from the sun versus the sun itself? And again, your solution, when you have a spray tan, and we'll get into exactly how you do it and what it is, does that act also as a sunscreen?

Melanie Richards (02:43)

you caught me on this one. Cause there's a, there's a little known fact ⁓ that in our solution, there is a, a sunscreen component to it. I would never say that you're protected because you have a go glow. ⁓ And to speak on sunscreens, I think that it is a very important conversation. I make sure that my children, if they're out for an extended amount of time, you know, they're very lily white Norwegians. And that they are protected because I do remember like you, you know, being out at the lake and

Like I don't know how many times my nose boiled from peeling in the shoulders and it was just not a thought about it. I do advocate for a safe sun. Sun, you do need vitamin D and you do want to get that sun. It's good for your body to receive that. We are not trying to completely get people out of the sun and douse yourself in all kinds of different products. What it is is just a method to where somebody like myself who's very

fair, I'm not going to get brown tan. I'm going to burn, I'm going to peel, and then I'm going to be back at pink, you know? So I am a proponent of safe sun. And there is a huge conversation around sunscreens and making sure you're looking at ingredients and what those ingredients are. There's mineral sunscreens, there's physical, there's chemical. And a lot of people are most more recently, I think it's because of there's so many different additives and foods, and we can go off on a tangent on that. But

A lot of people are getting more sensitive skin and they're getting more sensitive to different ingredients. And so I'm a huge proponent of making sure that you're spinning the bottle around and educating yourself on what ingredients you're putting on your skin.

Tanning Pills, Spray Tans & the Science of Skin Health

Jeff Dudan (04:21)

tanning pills work? I've got some friends and they take these, they say, take these pills and I say, you look, you look really tan. It's, it's winter. You know, how did you get that tan? He says, I take these tanning pills. What are, what's inside of those and do those work?

Melanie Richards (04:29)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, those are not FDA approved. They have not been by any means. So it is not something that I would advocate for by any stretch of the imagination. it is is is accelerating your body's natural ability to produce melanin and melanin really what when you see somebody with a natural sun tan, that is just your body ⁓ kicking out melanin to protect itself. a tan.

Jeff Dudan (04:37)

Okay.

Got it.

Melanie Richards (04:59)

on the beach, laying out for hours, that's sudden damage and it's your body's response to protect itself.

Life or Death: Melanie’s Years in Domestic Violence Probation

Jeff Dudan (05:07)

So today, Melanie, you're an emerging franchisor. I'm not sure exactly how many units you've got out there. I know that you're with a good group that's helping you with the business, I can only assume. And you started your business in 2010, I believe. But prior to that, you were a probation officer for 10 years. Walk us through, I'd love to hear just a little bit about how you grew up. You grew up in Minneapolis?

Melanie Richards (05:15)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

I grew up up in Duluth, so even further north, at Canadian border.

Jeff Dudan (05:37)

Okay. And then how

what what was it that attracted you to law enforcement as an early career?

Melanie Richards (05:44)

Yeah, I was raised, my mother had my sister and I before she left high school. So we are the traditional single mother and team mom, I call her like the OG team mom, before there's cameras in everyone's faces. ⁓ But you know, welfare, food stamps, the three of us, made it through. My grandfather, who helped raise me, he was a higher patrolman and he was a pilot for them. And he's just really my strong role model. And ⁓ that side of my mom's family, have

you know, uh, state troopers, have deputies. So law enforcement just kind of ran through my, my veins. Um, and it was very interested in people and, um, communities. And so when I went to, when I graduated from high school, I went up to college, went down to the cities, went back to college at UMD in Duluth. And I studied criminology, sociology and psychology. And when I graduated, my, my, uh, I don't know what they call them. Their counselor sat me down and I was like, well, you know,

Honestly, I don't know why I think about this. like, what am going to do with this? And he's like, well, you can be a police officer or, you know, there's, there's probation. And I was like, great. ⁓ And I happened to move out to San Diego and my neighbor out there was a juvenile probation officer. And he said, know, juvenile corrections is hiring in the juvenile hall here. And so I applied and I did my post training there and spent a few years in the juvenile probation or the juvenile hall in San Diego.

working with 10 to 15 year old boys and I was rocking and rolling. That place is no joke. So a girl from Minnesota ⁓ out there in the big bad world, I got thrown in pretty quickly. And then, know, Minnesotans were kind of deeply rooted. I came back home and I started working in the adult field. I was doing investigations through that. I was working on cases for domestic violence and I was seeing a lot of indicators of basically the system not responding to

the safety of women and children. It was more focused on the offender and ⁓ the victims were sort of just left behind. A lot of times we would also get women coming in who have used violence at that time, so then she gets arrested as well. ⁓ And the way the system is set up for domestic violence, is tailored to the high percentages of men against women. And so...

I developed a caseload for battered women so that we could more holistically take a look at those needs and for safety. ⁓ So along those lines, I started working. We developed a domestic abuse service center, which is replicated across the country now, but this was way back in, gosh, I wanna say.

2000 or so. And it was myself as the probation officer, I worked with a sergeant in the police department and then a prosecutor. And so what we would do is we would take a look at every single case that came through overnight in the city of Minneapolis. And if that offender had fled the scene, we would go ahead and run all the searches we could find. We would try to build the case. I would issue the warrants. And then we would try to bring the victim in.

and get her some safety and working for orders protection, all that sort of thing. So long winded.

Jeff Dudan (08:58)

this

was all domestic, in-home domestic abuse situations. Okay.

Melanie Richards (09:03)

Yes.

Yes. ⁓ and so, you know, I, I was working in, very, ⁓ every single day was life or death. ⁓ every single day was really traumatic. ⁓ you know, and so it got to be very heavy. ⁓ I had a case where I had issued a warrant and it became a situation where he was stalking her. ⁓ we're basically stalking him to try to get to him and he got to her and her family first. And, and I woke up on a Sunday morning to a headline of a triple homicide and yeah.

Jeff Dudan (09:31)

Ugh.

Melanie Richards (09:32)

and he had killed her, her mother and her grandfather. And at that moment, I knew I couldn't fight any longer in this system that really ⁓ is up against people like me who want to enact change. You're not gonna get too far, sadly.

Jeff Dudan (09:50)

I'm

interested to your perspective on this because now that you've been away from it for a number of years, there is a lot of gnashing of thought around reform right now in our governmental agencies, in our prisons, in our probation system. Everything is, it seems like everything has opened up. Everything is being looked at.

with a fresh set of eyes, AI technology certainly helps us think better, faster, do things differently. Looking back at the probation system or the areas that you operated in, if you were gonna say, this is the reform that's needed there, what would one or two things be that you think would help?

Systemic Reform & the Problem with “How It’s Always Been”

Melanie Richards (10:34)

⁓ Honestly, the entire system really needs to be from top to bottom, bottom to top. What I was up against wasn't just, I mean, honestly, the criminals, they are who they are. was truly the people sitting in the chairs. Did they actually care ⁓ or was it just their career that they're sitting in at that moment?

And so I think the recruitment around who is in that system, who are the probation officers, who are the judges, are the judges being held accountable for these decisions that they're making are truly dangerous at times. ⁓ You know, I think that was the most disheartening part of the career is ⁓ not seeing the same amount of care ⁓ for humanity.

Jeff Dudan (11:10)

Hmm.

Melanie Richards (11:28)

It sounds very huge, but at the same time the responses I would get when I knew that a woman was literally life or death getting into a situation and it was just passed off. It was sitting on somebody's desk or something like that. A lot of work has gone into domestic violence and a lot of it has been ⁓ with VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act, there's a lot of federal money ⁓ being poured into it.

⁓ And I do have a lot of hope for it. You know, there are a lot of people are so passionate in that realm, but at the same time, ⁓ I do feel concern for people who don't understand the criminal system and ⁓ by horrible chance, they become a victim and then they are thrown into something and they're like, wait a minute. I have supported, you know, that there was a criminal justice system, but

true. To be honest, the only real justice is for the criminals at this point.

Jeff Dudan (12:28)

Unfortunately, so many things come down to economics, come down to budget, and then people just get worn down. I'm thinking about the foster care system. And there's incentives in the foster care system that I...

keep kids in suboptimal situations because of how the money flows, what's available, and you get good people that get in the system and they work at the best they can, but they're kind of tied up in a web of red tape and the way it's always been done. I just wonder as a society, when we look at areas that have gotten so bureaucratic and then there's political motivations that are going

going

to keep things from being changed. Nobody wants to ⁓ stick their neck out for change. ⁓ And then inside of that, where's the education for people ⁓ early on? Where's the early intervention in domestic violence? How are the warning signals seen? And you see things happening in schools and all these situations. There's almost always, somebody saw it.

Melanie Richards (13:39)

Yes.

Jeff Dudan (13:39)

Somebody always saw it coming and it's just a matter of you know, anything left to itself will always go from bad to worse I've learned that in business. Those are that's my failed business lesson right there Anything anything ignored and left to itself will always go from bad to worse, but it's it's ⁓ marriages personal situations any relationship ⁓ and You know, it's it's you know, it's interesting to see you know how we evolve as a country. I mean, I think it's probably

Melanie Richards (13:41)

I'll see you

Jeff Dudan (14:09)

I mean, if you look at the statistics, the world's safer than it's ever been. There's less people starving than there's ever been, but there's still too much.

Melanie Richards (14:18)

Right. And I, you know, there are a lot of, you know, you hit on so many different things that are just clicking in my head because,

Jeff Dudan (14:26)

Tell me

in another way that I just asked a bad question.

Melanie Richards (14:30)

I know. I love these conversations because it literally, you open up this can and you're just like, yes, and this and this, because I have seen the foster care system, the child protection system, the pay to play, just the truly disturbing nature ⁓ of how many years this has gone by with people covering things up and ⁓ our children are caught in it.

And it is a cycle of violence. It's a cycle of drugs. It's government. It's politics, unfortunately. And so, yeah, you put a quarter on me and I got things to say.

Jeff Dudan (15:11)

I had a mentor that shared with me one time something I've never forgot is that everybody always will work to their comp plan. however somebody's getting paid, however somebody's getting incentivized, if they want to protect their salary ⁓ and it just takes following the plan and looking the other way and doing the minimum, then people will do that. And people, unfortunately, upsetting the apple cart kind of upsets the whole system. ⁓ speaking, go ahead.

Melanie Richards (15:18)

and get up.

And that speaks

to what I was saying. didn't say it as well as you did, but truly the people working in that field, you're only going to get the best of what they choose to do. And so that you hit it right on that.

Jeff Dudan (15:57)

Speaking of mentors and coaches, I read in your story that you joined something called the Aveda Institute. Can you tell us what that is?

Melanie Richards (16:05)

VEDA.

Yeah, so Aveda is ⁓ world known, I mean worldwide. It's a, a herbaic, more natural holistic, horse run rock and buck, I'm not gonna say his name right, but he founded it and he found it in Minneapolis. And so we're sort of the base of Aveda, but now Aveda is across, you know, all, and they have a school and they do hair and they do, ⁓ as theology, but it's more of a natural.

study of how to basically go through cosmetology and this study of skin and ingredients. And so I really found a good place there.

The Accidental Entrepreneur: GoGlo’s Origin Story

Jeff Dudan (16:44)

And was that fundamental to you thinking about? ⁓

natural, the, the tanning that you, that you do with go glow now. I want to get into that story of, I read a story that you, you got a spray tan, you went to Mexico and you loved it so much. And you said, I'm, you know, Hey, they can barely tell I'm from Minnesota down here. And you know, had this great tan and you said, can, and it was at that same time, you were looking to make a career change and get into something else. Talk to us about that time in your life, because I have this supposition about entrepreneurs.

Melanie Richards (17:05)

Yeah.

Jeff Dudan (17:18)

that ⁓ many entrepreneurs, first of all, your background with how you grew up is perfect for an entrepreneur, right? That's how all, we were all, we all had challenges and so our level of risk and the way we view downside, if you grow up in a safe place, you have a certain relationship with risk is that you've never really had to take any and you get fearful of it. But if you grow up,

a little less structured and a little less supported, then it's like, well, if this all blows up, I can just start over again because I've done it before. You can't get any lower than where I started. I mean, I know that if everything went away and I was broke again today, that it would take me no time at all to build it back. So when you get that fear out of it. And then I also believe many entrepreneurs are kind of screwed into existence by circumstances. There's more.

Melanie Richards (17:55)

Yes.

Jeff Dudan (18:12)

month at the end of their money. They're they can't work ⁓ in a situation so they end up starting some sort of a business. Stacey Madison, who founded Stacey's Pita Chips, was one of our early podcast guests and she had to she was in Boston and she started a food cart and she was she was doing pitas and she was just working on the corner and rented a pita cart and they had all this leftover bread. So she went home and in her oven in her apartment

made the leftover pitas into pita chips and put seasoning on them and started selling them and then people would come by and say, you have any more of those chips? And then she rented a commercial space and she just started making the pita chips and ended up being a $250 million deal for her. I mean.

Melanie Richards (18:56)

Yep. That's exactly,

yeah. I ⁓ don't know. The switch of, wasn't looking for a new career. I knew I was absolutely ⁓ burned on ⁓ the career I was in. And I honestly just wanted something completely different, right? Because I'm dealing with a whole set of... ⁓

you know, society, shall we say. And there wasn't a lot of positivity around it. There wasn't much happiness, you know, it was very tough to go. ⁓ And, you know, when I chose to go to Aveda, it was more of like, I want to be around people who are more creative. I want to be around people who ⁓ are happier, who are just in general, ⁓ more curious about things that aren't criminals and, you know, in violence and where I was currently operating in. ⁓ And so I did find, you know,

I was interested in makeup. was interested in, you know, that art form. ⁓ and the, the, to be able to go to Aveda was, great. ⁓ of course, but it didn't, it didn't lead to, ⁓ spray tanning. That was honestly me just wanting to look good. So that's what happened. You know, I got, I was celebrating my graduation from, from Aveda and I got a spray tan and you know, at the time it was, it was, it was

kind of the mystic tan blues where they can lock you in and you can't breathe. And I'm too fair to have that kind of solution fired at me. And so it like a lot of trauma around that. And that's why I just, found a makeup artist and she was, applied it by really small brush, an airbrush. But at the end of it, you know, was, I had the tinge of brown, not orange. And I was feeling good. I got into Mexico. I could wear my cute swimsuit. I could wear my, you know, dress on dresses and I didn't, you know, stand out like a glaring, you know, snow globe. And I was just like, wait a minute.

This feels too good. I know so many people that want this, know, that why wouldn't why wouldn't I give this a try? And you know at that time I maxed my credit card and my credit card max was $5,000. Let's be real. So I was like, nah, I'm going for it. I maxed out my credit card. I bought this really heavy air compressor, weighed like 70 pounds, found some solutions online and I just, you know, I trained myself and, and

my sister, my friends, it started to be this thing where it's like, Hey, Mal, I need one. I know I need one now. And so I thought to myself, well, you know, the quickest way to get to anybody is to get mobile. And so I, after work, I would just throw my machine in my truck and I'd pop up in people's homes. And I had the best conversations with people and it was just so rewarding. ⁓ and it honestly, it just, kept going and I don't know how to stop.

Jeff Dudan (21:37)

You started as a mobile service. At what

point did you move into a physical location?

From Truck to Storefront: Building a Scalable Brand

Melanie Richards (21:42)

So I started, it was about four years in, I had scaled the mobile business to four vehicles. had about eight employees and with Minnesota we have road construction, have blizzards, know, all this. So was really hard to start getting to people and maintaining that demand. And so in 2014, I went into a solar salon and at that time, know, it was hair, you know.

Jeff Dudan (21:49)

⁓

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Richards (22:07)

predominantly and, but I just thought to myself, said, well, if I can pop into people's houses, why wouldn't I be able to do this in a salon suite? And we did. And within a few months, know, solo was like, you know, this, probably isn't going to work out because our hallways are crowded. You're doing 20 minute appointments. You know, I'm just rolling chicks in and out. was so fun. But at the same time it was, ⁓ you know, we couldn't keep up with demand. so.

I, I, within the year I did my first storefront and that had three rooms. thought we're going to triple this. It'd be great. And within that year, it was six rooms. I'm blowing out walls. And so it's, it's, it really took off. want to say in 2015 or so.

Jeff Dudan (22:50)

Was it always branded GoGlo? OK. OK.

Melanie Richards (22:52)

It was glow mobile at the beginning. Yeah.

You know, I, look back and, know, honestly, I absolutely love it. The website was, um, know, WW go, go glow.co it's always been that, um, but glow mobile, you know, naming yourself glow anything in the spray tan industry is very, you're not going to stand out very far. Um, and so right on 2017, I was going to open up in river North.

in Chicago and so I went through a rebrand. was starting to make some really good money and so I started looking at my skincare line. I developed my own skincare line, my own equipment and everything and so I was like, no, we need to do a full rebrand and that's when I started to really put my mind around having a national brand.

Jeff Dudan (23:37)

What is the customer experience today when somebody walks into a location?

Melanie Richards (23:42)

Yep. So when somebody walks into a Go Glow, our salons are bright, crisp white. That's a complete opposite of what the industry has seen for the past 50 years. What you generally are going to experience in a spray tan salon, it's going to be in either a brown room, dark room, because they're hiding sort of all of the solution that's getting everywhere. We can talk about the equipment that I've got. ⁓ And so it's a bright white. And so immediately when people walk in, they're like, ⁓

Jeff Dudan (24:02)

Bye.

Melanie Richards (24:09)

because it's just a statement of clean beauty and clean everything. Everything is black and white and they meet with our spray technicians and get greeted and then we walk them back and we have a good conversation about how did they prepare for their go-glow. You know, with a spray tan you have to make sure that your skin is prepared and so we go through a lot of...

you know, what products they're using. in that time, we get a chance to educate people on different products that they're using and how it may not be actually beneficial for their skin. And then we apply the Go Glow solution and we, you know, make sure that they're powdered and dried and feeling good. And then they are good to go.

Jeff Dudan (24:39)

Hmm.

How long would something like that last typically?

Melanie Richards (24:53)

Typically it's five to seven days. it's, if you're just, you know, getting any old spray tan on and you're not going to care for it, you're not going to care for your skin. You're not going to, you know, it is something that you have to care for. Um, it's, you'll probably get five days out of it. Oh, with a go glow, we definitely push it to between seven, 10, 12 days. Yeah.

Jeff Dudan (24:55)

Okay.

I guess you have

to be let it set up for a while. Does it set up immediately or do you have to not shower for 12 hours or something like that?

Melanie Richards (25:21)

Yeah, so the active ingredient in a spray tan is ⁓ dihydroxyacetone, which is DHA, which sounds really technical and chemical, but what it is is just a molecule that's taken out of a sugar beet.

and that reacts with amino acids that are already on your skin and the proteins and that oxidizes. like, say you cut an apple and it browns, it's that same process. So it's a natural process happening on your skin. And so that, the DHA will work on your skin for up to 24 hours. So depending on the percentage of DHA, and that is where we customize for each individual skin tone of how much DHA that their skin should be able to process at.

Jeff Dudan (25:55)

Mm-hmm.

Who's a typical customer? Is this a, I don't know what the price point is, but is this available to everybody or do you have an avatar that you service more than others?

Melanie Richards (26:11)

Yeah.

mean, predominantly women because we do figure quicker than men. I'm just kidding. ⁓ Predominantly women right now, but you guys are catching up. I do like to see it. ⁓ but it's probably women. ⁓ it literally, I think that, right now our center mass of the most, ⁓

Jeff Dudan (26:14)

Sure.

Melanie Richards (26:33)

age of people would be between 25 and 50. So it ranges all across. It is ⁓ not a service that just for the wealthy or for, it's truly for everybody. mean, during prom season, are pecking the walls, and that's a very good thing to see for the young people who are very into skincare right now because of TikTok. ⁓

Jeff Dudan (26:50)

⁓ yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Richards (27:00)

I like to see it. They are taking care of their skin and they're looking at ingredients and everything. know, GoGlo is honestly, it's kind of crossing all the barriers.

Jeff Dudan (27:09)

Yeah. So I've built some businesses in fitness also in the infrared sauna space. And one thing to do that we looked at was how do we get different shares of wallet, whether that be supplements or personal training or other packages or things like that. How do you create more opportunities for your franchisees to monetize their clientele?

Melanie Richards (27:15)

Mm.

Yeah, with Go Glow, we are a service industry. we perform a service of an airbrushed hand, but we're also a skincare business. so percent of the revenue is going to come from your skincare sales. And so we have a product line that is very specific to ⁓ Go Glow and I keep very core in.

Jeff Dudan (27:39)

Okay.

Melanie Richards (27:50)

products. I don't want like a hundred skews of anything. It's not just a huge money grab. It's basically, you know, core products that we really encourage and educate our client base on so that they can not only just have a great go-go, but that their skin is healthy regardless.

Jeff Dudan (28:11)

Why don't you first start franchising?

Real Talk: Franchising Is Not Easy

Melanie Richards (28:14)

July of 2023.

Jeff Dudan (28:16)

So I have OK, so this is fresh.

Melanie Richards (28:18)

Yeah, very fresh. Yes.

Jeff Dudan (28:23)

First impressions?

Melanie Richards (28:26)

It's a...

Jeff Dudan (28:27)

honest, no one's ever gonna listen to this.

Melanie Richards (28:31)

It's, it's, is, it is, ⁓ it has, it has been difficult. I, you know, I, you take somebody who's an entrepreneur and, kind of doing their own thing in their own way and their own everything for, ⁓ you know, as many years as I have it. And then to then become basically, ⁓ you, you have to, you have to change a lot of things about yourself. I think,

I love to learn a lot of patience. ⁓ lot of, you know, really there's a lot of, franchise think attracts a lot of different people ⁓ and being able to play the same sandbox is very important. And, ⁓ you know, growing this fast, we have, I want to say 90 sold already. And so we're ripping pretty quickly, but

Jeff Dudan (28:58)

you

Now

is that units or is that owners? Okay.

Melanie Richards (29:25)

That's units. Yeah. We have,

I want to say 30. So generally they'll do like a three pack. ⁓ yeah. And so, you know, I have, it's, it, I'm, I'm not going to lie. It's been probably, you know, two of the most difficult years of my life and I've been through some stuff. ⁓

Jeff Dudan (29:29)

Okay. Yeah.

Melanie Richards (29:43)

It's hard for, I would say, a founder who is incredibly, and I think a lot of us are, right? We do this out of love and passion and to switch that into a different corporate model is very, it's taxing on your soul.

Jeff Dudan (30:01)

is. Well, I just encourage you ⁓ not to get discouraged. It's a steep learning curve in franchising. ⁓ You can never anticipate, you would never expect to have to have the conversations that you're going to have to get this deeply into franchise owners' lives, ⁓ to deal with

Melanie Richards (30:08)

Yeah.

Thank

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Dudan (30:30)

so many different levels of commitment, so many different levels of skill. And, you know, there's you can't can't you can't manufacture those things out of the process. It's just I mean, it's there's some tried and true numbers in franchising. And, you know, people just have to be up for it. And you have to be like every day. It's like, you know, it's it's there's going to be some aspect of every day that's going to be conflict.

And generally, 90 % of the people, if not 95 % of the people, are well-intentioned. They want to do well. They're looking for guidance. They have to come to terms with the fact that they can't just make this business, this go-glow business, into some variation of the career that they came from. So there's this change management. But you also can't hit them over the head with it, because they have to come to it themselves.

Melanie Richards (30:57)

Yes.

Founders, Franchisees & The Leadership Challenge

Jeff Dudan (31:25)

It's very nuanced. is a leadership level that has so many facets to it. And then if you're going fast, like you are, then it's coming at you fast. People are hitting things at different points in time. And it's a real challenge. If there's somebody that was going to start franchising in 2026, ⁓ what lessons learned? What would be some of the lessons learned that you might impart upon them? Some wisdom that you've picked up to this point.

Melanie Richards (31:55)

⁓ You have to really ⁓ have a good sense of self because ⁓ you'll be questioned, you'll be dragged, you'll be, you know, it is very difficult emotionally. It is very difficult emotionally to ⁓ share something like this with people that come from

all walks of life and they're investing a lot of money and the stakes are very high. ⁓ And you can never predict completely, you know, when people come to confirmation day and you really, you don't know at the end of the day who is going to be the one that's going to go off the rails. I mean, I wish I could. ⁓ And you don't know the ones who are, you can really, I think.

Jeff Dudan (32:37)

Right.

Melanie Richards (32:45)

I can see, I'm really starting to hone in more closely around the ones that I believe will follow the process. And when you have an emerging brand, you are ⁓ almost more susceptible to people coming in and thinking that maybe they know more than you. And because they got in at the ground, they're going to tell you how things are going to be done. And if it's not done that way, well, then we're all going to hear about it type of thing. ⁓

Jeff Dudan (32:53)

Mm.

Melanie Richards (33:12)

It's very difficult in the beginning. mean, an emerging brand is, wow, is, ⁓ it'll rip your soul out, honestly. It is, is very, very difficult. If you don't have people around you that have been in franchising for a long time, I do not recommend going at it alone. You have to have people who know the industry inside and out because there are sharks everywhere.

Jeff Dudan (33:37)

I think that is a good lesson learned right there. You know, it took me really 15 years to get my first brand to market. It took me, from the time that I hired a franchise attorney, we refranchised in 2006, seven and eight. We sold our company stores under a franchise model in three states. And then we launched in 2009. And then I sold the business January 1st, 2019. had 240.

Melanie Richards (34:06)

Mm.

Jeff Dudan (34:06)

restoration type franchise. We were in the service industry and then ⁓

Melanie Richards (34:10)

Mm.

Jeff Dudan (34:12)

We've built so many companies. I can accomplish now in 15 months what it used to take me 15 years. Just because of knowing like, you know what, and the thing is, is what you can never lose is you have to love them all. I mean, like you have to love them, like you have to find a way to show up to that conversation, even though like this person's, you're gonna have antagonists that,

Melanie Richards (34:18)

Yep.

Yes.

Jeff Dudan (34:40)

nothing's ever right, nothing's ever good enough, then you're gonna have a handful of people that no matter what you give them, they're gonna make lemonade out of it, they're gonna be your biggest cheerleaders, and then you're gonna have this huge group in the middle of people that are looking one way or the other. They're looking at the leaders, at the sled dogs, or they're looking at the antagonists and they're trying to figure out who they are. And what happens, and then over time, as you have leaders, at some point,

If you can survive it, people will stop questioning the model. It does happen. mean, you like, Catherine Monson with Fast Signs, I think is one of the greatest CEOs in our industry. She writes handwritten notes to every, they have 1,100 franchisees, every birthday, every anniversary. over nine years, she shares, she says, we stood up and we said,

We want to increase it. were about 11 % profit and they said we want to increase our profit by 15 % or 50 % and it took them nine years working together as a group of franchisees to get their profit to maybe the 18 19 % it is right now. But like it's you know, there's there's the I'm stealing this but there's the there's the top line. There's the bottom line and then there's the front line.

And one thing I do, we have about 250 franchise owners at Homefront brands. We, by the way, we had 20 in March of 23. Yeah, and I'm still alive. Look, I'm still alive somehow. So, well, but no, but I mean, I was on a call with somebody this morning that moved over from another country and started the business. And, you know, so when somebody moves from one town

Melanie Richards (36:08)

Wow, that's amazing. I know, like.

Yes.

Jeff Dudan (36:29)

to a new state they've never been in before and they start a business, what they underestimate is the fact that they don't have a network. And they don't have friends and family that are gonna try it, they don't have a church, they don't have a Lions club that they can go to and they can get the word spread out, they don't know anybody. And it's very difficult, especially if you're in the service industry, move to a new town and start a business. Well, these people moved over from Germany. And there's a language barrier. And they don't know...

Melanie Richards (36:35)

Yes.

Jeff Dudan (36:57)

You know, they may or may not really understand how business even works here. So they've had a slow start. that surprise? Should we have placed them?

I'm not sure. You know, I think we just turned somebody down that was moving, that just moved here from South Africa. Yeah. And it's just like, and they're like, we don't even know how business works here. And I'm just like, well, maybe you should come back in a year and try something else for a little bit and whatever it is. But at the end of the day, you know, getting on the, you know, it's it's as long as you show up in their life and as long as they can look you in the eyeball and talk to you like that's the that's the

Melanie Richards (37:21)

Yeah.

Jeff Dudan (37:35)

You can never abdicate the personal connection that you've got to have. now I've got five to seven calls every week, picked at random, just cycling through. And it takes me a year to get through everybody. But like at the end of the day, I never want them to say they haven't talked to me for a certain amount of time. And then there's regional meetings and there's homecoming and then there's advisory committees and all of that stuff where you show up. But it's a real game of advanced ⁓ leadership.

It's adult learning, it's influence, it's politics, keep that as low as you can, but at the end of the day, it's a real leadership challenge to build a brand, and then especially when you're growing fast like you are, and you have proof of concept, so your stores, right, I imagine your stores, you have proof of concept, but it's still, you've gotta get people that started from ground zero.

and had the kind of success that you've been able to experience. And you'll get there. It's at the end of the day. ⁓ Is there any particular things that you've learned from a leadership style or certain tactics that you've learned that work particularly well for you in connecting with your owners?

Mentorship, Mindset & Melanie’s Leadership Growth

Melanie Richards (38:49)

Yeah, think, you know, right now, because again, we are so new and building, we're literally building a structure at the same time. ⁓ So the people that come in now are so critical. And, know, I've talked to many people in franchising and, know, the, like you were speaking on, you have the top, the middle and the bottom, you have antagonists. And I...

Jeff Dudan (38:59)

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Richards (39:16)

And right now, mean, our conversation, when we have a conversation in a couple of years, it's going to be completely different of what kind of a leader I am. And, and, know, where I found my spot, I'm still growing in this as well. ⁓ and as you know, you look at any sort of, ⁓ big brand out there, they were in my position at one point too. And, know, the, lessons learned, ⁓ and the, ⁓ the battles, you know, that I thought wouldn't be here or, know, they, get, they got here real quick.

⁓ you know, so, you know, I, I am most, focused on making sure that I'm building a rockstar team that can support because there's places in this business that, ⁓ you know, just like anybody in a startup, you, you're kind of wearing all the hats, but that that's not sustainable. It's not, nobody needs Mel in that in the accounting department, you know, like nobody needs that.

⁓ But you know, so right now it's to build the team so that I can be in my lane of a founder of speaking on the things that I want to be, ⁓ you know, working on for the brand and being able to have that time with owners. Right now it's just, we're a very small team and all hands are on deck on every single topic, which is, ⁓ you know, I do live and thrive in these environments.

⁓ but at the same time, I do look forward to having a, you know, a larger structure that get, that it gives me that moment of being a founder and a visionary and more into product development and all of these things that I do find are my gifts and, working with people. made a complete career out of, you know, working with people in their lives and, transitioning and, and, and, and, know, becoming better. ⁓ but right now I'm, I'm, I'm on the grind right now. So.

Jeff Dudan (41:05)

yeah. Where do you get

your mentorship, leadership inspiration from? Do you listen to podcasts? Do you have people that you talk to? you joined any groups? What's working for you?

Melanie Richards (41:16)

Yeah, I have a really strong support team around me. Front Street Equity Partners are my strategic advisors in franchise and they're also doing the friend dove. And, know, I have Jeff Her who, who is, I don't know you've ever had a chance to meet Jeff. Yeah, he's very, ⁓ he, he is one of those people that at any time I can call and he does understand ⁓ sort of every single. ⁓

Jeff Dudan (41:23)

Mm-hmm.

I know Jeff.

Melanie Richards (41:43)

feelings and frustrations and he is my sort of ⁓ light to go to and just sort of be able to bounce things off of. He is incredibly honest and raw with me and he's like, Mel, you know, you're maybe at the third ring of hell, but we're coming out of it. You know, it's like he speaks the founder's language. And so honestly, I've been blessed in that nature with Jeff and

You know, the rest of the team with Jim and then Eric Van Horn, of course, is, is yeah. So, you know, they, they have a belief in me and I have a belief in them. And we have this very core understanding that we are all on the same boat and we all, you know, work extremely hard. I don't think that you have any other partnerships like I do in this sense, where every single day they are working with GoGlo. You know, that's just sort of a unique.

you know, partnership and franchising that I've found as far as Fran Dev, and I'm super lucky to have that. So, you know, I have a good team around me.

Jeff Dudan (42:52)

Have you met other founders through the IFA or you attend the IFA? How are you building your network inside of franchising?

Melanie Richards (43:00)

Yeah, so I have, I in the past, I want to say two to three months, you know, I have really, well, I've always been involved with Create and Cultivate and that is really a female leadership ⁓ group. And I have worked with Allie Webb and her. ⁓

Jeff Dudan (43:06)

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Richards (43:19)

what he calls mind, whatever groups. And I, I have not gotten, I've gotten to every single, you know, Fran choice and those sorts of things, but that's, more of a sales thing. And, know, I don't find too much, ⁓ you know, founders that we can connect that way. I do look forward to being able to, because I, I be a founder is, is

you know, just a different bird, you know, we've kind of been through, we're pretty war torn, but at the same time, very visionary and the growth and having goals that that are just

probably astronomical and so it's hard to sometimes have conversations with people and I really try to kind of hold myself back in that way because I ⁓ don't, you when you look at like, what do you think you're trying to do here? You know, so I've really kept to myself ⁓ and you know, I think it is just because of the phase of the business that we're in right now for franchising but I do look forward to being able to step into that role and step into being able to be in the small groups of

of people who have been through it. And I think that every single time that I talk to anyone that has walked this walk that I'm kind of in the path of, it makes me feel stronger. It makes me feel more settled and more validated in some of these things that I'm going through that I didn't see coming, but yet I'm pushing through and I think I am doing it well. However, being able to have those conversations is paramount to really...

speaking to the soul of me and how hard this really is.

Jeff Dudan (45:06)

Will you be going to French choice in July?

Melanie Richards (45:08)

I will happen to be, we are involved in Crate and Cultivate and so we're in a breakout brand and it's exact same time as brand choice. I know. So it'll be the first one that I've missed since 2023. So I'm kind of bummed out, but my team will be there.

Jeff Dudan (45:21)

Our

cup of coffee will have to wait then to some other time. I was gonna offer it. I was gonna hopefully to get a cup of coffee with you, but we'll see you at the next one. We'll see you at the next one. I'd like to explore this topic. So I was involved in Beam. It's an infrared sauna brand. We grew it in 300 locations. We got 44 open and we moved it on to Sequel.

Melanie Richards (45:24)

Yeah, thanks for that.

Yes, for sure. ⁓

Okay.

Is GoGlo a Women-Centric Brand?

Jeff Dudan (45:51)

recently a platform that just popped up. So it's one of the four or five brands over there. There was always a conversation around is this a woman-centric brand? And I look at that from a couple perspectives. The client base, I think largely was more women than men. It definitely had an elevated ⁓ look and feel.

and smell like ⁓ if you walk into a beam, it was really well put together from the perspective of like it smelled good when you walked in. It sounded good. It was clean. was everything that you described with GoGlo. It was an elevated experience. It wasn't like going into a gym with, you know, small baseboards that were dusty and commercial carpet. you know, I've been into some competitors that that's what it felt like. It felt like they

turned a classroom school into, and they just put saunas in there. And it wasn't ⁓ the same experience. And then we did have many ⁓ owners that were women. Do you position this as a women-centric type brand because of the clientele? what have you found with your cohort of franchise owners? Have there been more women interested in owning and operating a GoGlo than men?

Melanie Richards (47:13)

Interestingly, I did think that my avatar was was women, you know, I women owners. I would. And then ⁓ what we're finding more of is that the because the numbers seem to attract the men more so. you have females who are like, my gosh, I love this. I want to own one. And then the men are like, my gosh, look at those numbers, you know? And so between the two of them, we get some really power couples.

Jeff Dudan (47:32)

You're right.

Melanie Richards (47:37)

And so I've abandoned that, you know, this is just a female, it is absolutely not. And the industry itself, you know, I think that, you know, speaking on the infrared and all the wellness industry, yeah, it's driven by women right now because women are actually given permission to take care of themselves. just seem to have, society is less, ⁓ less gracious around men.

Jeff Dudan (47:55)

Mm.

⁓

we're like bears with furniture.

Melanie Richards (48:05)

Right. honestly, and what's really

Jeff Dudan (48:07)

You didn't have to

agree so quickly, but yeah.

Melanie Richards (48:11)

But honestly, know, like my very first appointment that I ever took ⁓ mobile, was, you know, just a book online and it was a husband and wife. And he was, he was, was clear he was doing it for his wife, you know, because he was being deployed as a Marine. And, ⁓ and at the end of it, we couldn't get him out of the mirror. It was fascinating. And that's how it always was. And it's like, wait, we need to start giving men permission.

to look good, feel good and to actually care for themselves. And it's a societal conversation. know, again, I go back to like my roots and my schooling, but like the study of people and societies and kind of what's been happening with men in these past 10 years of, you know, they're just getting beat over the head over like for a lot of things. And, you know, it's more of, okay, why are we not giving them permission to care for themselves?

to get this treatments and not, you know, ostracizing them or being like, you got a spray tan. Yeah, because I don't want skin cancer. What are we doing here?

Jeff Dudan (49:11)

Yeah. Well, look,

what you do makes us less white.

Melanie Richards (49:15)

And then you say that.

Jeff Dudan (49:21)

There you go. And we appreciate that. ⁓ bad. All right. You know, we don't do many edits, but that might be one. I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. You know, we don't we don't there's nothing wrong with that. We don't need to edit that out. We are where we are. ⁓ So, OK. And I did, know, to your point in our beam brand, lots of power couples. You know, the

Melanie Richards (49:22)

me.

You

I think I'm

Yeah.

Jeff Dudan (49:49)

I think maybe the woman would get interested and would see the, and then the man would be, ⁓ okay, this is a business opportunity, I'm interested. And then it would be something that they felt they could do together. And are you experiencing that in your brand?

Melanie Richards (50:06)

Very much so. those are the ones that are actually the most successful are the ones where they are like, this is my lane and this is my genius and I'm going to support side of it. And she's like, okay, great. I'm going to support this side of it. And they really work on a partnership. know, it's, it's the ones that, you know, if the couple comes in and the man's like, Oh, enjoy your new go-go. And he's just off doing his golfing. That, that is never is not going to work.

Jeff Dudan (50:07)

Yeah.

Right. You we had people in it. Vanaclin was the name of my my previous brand and we had couples that would come in and we lost deals because the the woman would say, I'm not I just don't want to go to my friend group or go to my country club and tell them that we clean up sewage losses. You know, it's just not it just you know, I see the business, I see the economics, I see the demand. It's got all the fundamentals of a business we can grow. But I just it's just not something that I want to talk about. And

Melanie Richards (50:51)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Dudan (51:02)

and that would kill it if it was a couples deal. So, well, awesome. ⁓ This has been great. ⁓ Is there anything that we haven't covered that you would like to? Because we've talked about a lot of things and we haven't really talked a ton about your brand, but that's not really the intent. We're considering rebranding this podcast to Unemployable.

a little more edgy, maybe a little bit more focused on the entrepreneur, but I don't think we'll change any of the format, but it's really more about entrepreneurship, people taking chances, what made them do it, what have they learned, and if you look across our guests, and we've had incredible, I think we're about 175 shows now, but they all had some sort of a...

some sort of a challenge, some sort of a story, and something interesting to say. You've certainly been no exception to that. Is there anything that you would care to talk about that we haven't covered around the brand or anything else?

Melanie Richards (52:00)

I mean,

yeah, no, I actually love this conversation and I do, I do appreciate it a whole lot more because a lot of times the podcasts are just about the brand and about the offering. But at the same time, there's, there's such a huge conversation and

that sometimes gets missed and franchisors and founders get villainized and you know, in the franchise industry and to really put a human voice and a human life behind ⁓ why somebody would franchise their brand and what their story is and why. I just simply wanted to share something that I'm very, I found a lot success in, right? And I wanted to share that with somebody and I want to share that with.

I want, I just wanted to share it, right? Um, and so I, th th you know, there, there is the, the hard part of franchising and it's very hard on a, franchise or who actually does, you know, give a shit and who does care about their people and who does care about the clients and the process and the brand. It, isn't a money play for me. If it was, I wouldn't be like, this isn't it, you know? So, um,

I love the conversation because I think it is so important for the narrative around, you know...

Franchise or being, you know, big bad bears and they're just here for the money. That's, know, I love to be able to speak on certain brands that like go glow and myself is this is a labor of love. This is my passion. This is my heart. This is my soul. This is everything I've poured and sacrificed for the past 15 years. And I don't share it lightly. And so yeah, when you come into go glow right now, we're, emerging, but we're a scrappy bunch. And you know, it's, it's not something where somebody that comes in in five years where that's a nationally

recognized brand, they're going have a different experience than the person coming in right now. And so to pay homage to that and to really understand, you're catching somebody who's who's like I said earlier, like I'm kind of in the pits right now of really just grinding it out and building something amazing. And I'm so happy about it. I couldn't, it's going very well. ⁓ But you know, to anyone out there thinking about doing this,

It is hard. It's gonna really rip at your life for a couple years.

Jeff Dudan (54:18)

It is hard and you have to have that North Star of franchisee empathy, franchisee care and franchisee outcomes. there's what I've learned is that there's this perfect balance in franchising. And if you look at brands that have really survived and thrived over decades, they have this balance between the right fees and

Melanie Richards (54:23)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Dudan (54:48)

the right activities, meaning who does what. What does the franchisee need to do? You can't give them a jet airplane, by the way, because many franchisees are non-entrepreneurs, right? They wrote a check, they've been able to cobble together some money, and they've been able to qualify for a loan to be able to be in there, but that doesn't make somebody an entrepreneur.

You you can't make it too difficult for them. Anything that can be centralized reasonably should be. But then again, you don't want to permanently impair the ability for the franchise or to operate because of the financial model. So there's this like real little sweet spot. And observationally, and I've seen it because there's been a lot of flags of profitability and outcomes waving in the franchise industry. So a lot of people getting into it, a lot of people building.

doing accelerated franchise development and, know, the, ignoring some of these lessons that have been learned over the last 30 or 40 or 50 years in putting their model together, whether that be, you know, not getting the fees that are gonna allow the four wall economics of the franchisee. Because at the end of the day, it's system wide revenue, it's economic.

Performance in the unit and the four walls of the unit and it's franchisee satisfaction Are they satisfied that the time energy and money or them was worth it at the end of the day if you if you want to attract

Melanie Richards (56:04)

Yes.

Jeff Dudan (56:13)

high net worth, sophisticated, reasonable people that resolve conflicts in a healthy manner and are gonna be contributors to your system, not detractors to your system, then it's gotta be worth, you have to have an offering that's worth it for them at the end of the day. so when all of those conditions are satisfied, you still have to go through it all. So I walked back into this, I've been involved in, I don't know, 20 franchise concepts over my career.

Melanie Richards (56:27)

Yes.

Jeff Dudan (56:42)

And we walked into Homefront brands. I I walked in, I knew exactly what I was signing up for. I mean, I knew exactly. And by the way, just because you have a resume, that doesn't mean that changes anything for that individual franchise owner that signed on the dotted line, put themselves out there and they're not trying to operate this business. So there's no real shortcuts to it. But I will tell you that like finding a way to leave it, you do have to find a way to leave it at the office. And then when you show up like,

You know three words. I give you three three little words that have helped me in French It's actually the three words that got my wife to agree to marry me actually same word. Yeah lower your standards No, that wasn't it. It was ⁓ no these three. Sorry these three words. ⁓ But okay rush to conflict rush to conflict

Melanie Richards (57:35)

Mm.

Jeff Dudan (57:36)

And again, it's just like I used to be very, you know, I'm a nice guy. I care about people. Maybe I'm a little bit conflict diverse, but the reality of it is, is like the moment that you recognize that an action needs to be taken.

or that a decision's been made, anything that, any time between that moment and the moment something happens is called latency. And our job as leaders is to manufacture all the latency out of our business. And the way that we can occur inside of that is,

Making sure that we're touching base to the front lines without it being a problem one thing that you're gonna you're gonna realize is you're gonna People if people complain that's when they get on the call with you. So now what have you done? You've just trained them that if they want your time that to complain, right? So you have to actually for every call you make to deal with and to help a franchise owner with an issue You got to make another call to one that's doing well and just stay in touch with them so, you know, it's it's and there's really no shortcut to it and

⁓ And then and then rushing to conflict. I mean in the service industry look we we we can see it in the numbers something's somebody's hiding revenue somebody's doing something that's they're not supposed to be doing and The first time around I would kind of let it go You know, I'd be like mmm, you know, I can't see it from my porch You know, it may it may be happening. It may not be happening. But but those types of things they

grow inside of your, they become the norm. Somebody says, well, I feel stupid paying all my royalties because they're not, they're standing at the front desk of GoGlo taking a Venmo. it's, yeah, I mean, so, and that's just one thing, and that's just an example. It's not endemic or anything, and I don't know what endemic means. ⁓ it sounded like the right word. Can we look that up?

All right, we'll look that up. you know, if you, it's just the other side of it is, anything left to itself always goes from bad to worse. I always show up with positive intention, and I show up and I'm ask assertive instead of tell assertive, then you listen. And you can take the worst, because the other side of it is, is.

Melanie Richards (59:43)

Yes.

Jeff Dudan (1:00:01)

Those owners are under the same stress that you were under when you started in that mobile business and you you were, cashed out five grand. It's still funny you did that because when I started at Vana clean, I had paid off a truck and I had a banking relationship and the buy-in to advantage clean was five grand. So I went and I mortgaged my truck. got the 5,000. I gave the truck, I gave the payment book to my younger brother and I said, here's a truck. When you pay it off, you can have it.

Melanie Richards (1:00:04)

Yes. ⁓

Bye.

Jeff Dudan (1:00:28)

and I took the five grand and I put it down on the table to start with, that was my buy-in, was, we were all putting in $5,000 to start that business back in 1994. And these owners are right back where you were. mean, they're, maybe they're not fully maxed out, but like it's more than they're comfortable having on the line. There's a timeframe that they are up against to make something happen, and they're counting on you to, that the guardrails are such that,

Melanie Richards (1:00:46)

Yes.

Jeff Dudan (1:00:58)

and are executable enough that they can make it work. And I don't think that ever changes. I guess if you get to where you've got a thousand locations open and it's just like clockwork. But at that point, you've got you know what it is. You don't have a lot of new owners. have you have successful owners opening additional units and they already know how to do it. So there you go. That's the that's the clear future for you. ⁓ You'll be there. You'll be you know, it'll be Melanie Richards, Jimmy Johns. ⁓

Melanie Richards (1:01:22)

Thank you.

you

Jeff Dudan (1:01:27)

You know just right up on the right up on the Mount Rushmore of location based franchising one day That's right, that's right. I just hope we all live long enough to do it right It's you know we we didn't we didn't lose. We just ran out of time all right I've got for you if you'll play along ⁓ I've got a curveball

Melanie Richards (1:01:30)

Yeah.

From your mouth to God's ears.

Yeah, exactly.

Yes.

Jeff Dudan (1:01:54)

and then I got a fastball, it's gonna come right down the middle of the play that's gonna be a layup for you. But before that, why don't you tell people ⁓ if they wanted to get in touch with you the best way to do it.

Melanie Richards (1:02:04)

way to get in touch with me is obviously email mel at go glow dot co our website is go glow dot co not.com and ⁓ you know slide into our dms we're always on instagram or ⁓ you know reach out

Jeff Dudan (1:02:19)

All right, outstanding. Melanie, knowing what you know about business and your view of the world and what's happening right now, gun to your head. Do you have a dog? Some, okay, that's right, you mentioned that. Okay, somebody gonna steal your dog. If you have to start a business in 30 days and it has to be something that you're not currently active in.

Melanie Richards (1:02:33)

I do, he's getting groomed right now.

Final Curveball: Where Melanie Sees the Next Big Opportunity

Jeff Dudan (1:02:48)

Where's the opportunity that you see in the market to start a business?

What would you do? Youth sports. OK, why?

Melanie Richards (1:02:53)

Youth sport.

Well, in Minnesota, we are hockey obsessed. My two boys play hockey. ⁓ And the disconnect, I believe, around...

Jeff Dudan (1:03:03)

Mm.

Melanie Richards (1:03:12)

I'll just say like youth hockey, for example, because that's what I'm most familiar with. there's, there's, there's a real disconnect and there's a lot of people pulling in different directions of, you know, where, where your kids should do this or where your kids should do that. Um, there's obviously a large, larger conversation of should you be specializing your kids, all of that. But at the same time, I think that there is a, a very large opportunity for, um,

somebody to take a look holistically at how youth are moving through sports and take a step back because I think it is hitting a level of fever with parents and we're pushing our kids a little bit too hard. But I think that there is an opportunity to have some sort of, because you've got community, you've got

private groups, there's something there that needs to gel all of that together in more of an advisory or a clinical or something like that. That's what I would say right now. I mean, it's completely, I seem to take huge hard turns in my life. So we're going from probation, beauty. I think I'm gonna hit the sports next. I don't know.

Closing Words on Leadership, Loyalty & the Long Haul

Jeff Dudan (1:04:16)

Awesome. That sounds like a great idea.

You might as

well, kids and pets, people will spend anything. Anything at all. All right, here, fastball right down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?

Melanie Richards (1:04:30)

Anything. Yep.

⁓ don't stop, make it happen and trust yourself.

Jeff Dudan (1:04:46)

Perfectly said. Thank you so much for being on today.

Melanie Richards (1:04:51)

Thank you, this was fantastic, I loved it.

Jeff Dudan (1:04:53)

Awesome. I'm Jeff Duden. We have been here with Melanie Richards, who is destined to do great things, and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.

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AI, Influence & the Future of Work | Samy Samandjeu on What’s Coming Next

July 21, 2025

In this inspiring episode of On the Homefront , Jeff Dudan sits down with Samy Samandjeu , a visionary young founder who is bridging influencers and commerce through technology. Samy shares his journey from a small village in Cameroon to launching a fintech platform in London—highlighting the power of personal branding, the lessons learned from early entrepreneurial stumbles, and the importance of following your passion. They also dive into the future of social media and AI, exploring how digital avatars and automation could upend industries and redefine the meaning of work. If you're interested in influencer marketing, entrepreneurship, or how AI will impact the next generation, this conversation is a must-listen. What You’ll Learn in This Episode How social media has leveled the playing field, allowing anyone to build an audience and a brand Why personal branding is now non-negotiable for business owners (and how traditional advertising is fading) How Samy’s upbringing in Cameroon and his mother’s hustle fueled his entrepreneurial drive The philosophy of following your “highest excitement” and turning setbacks into growth opportunities How a booming talent agency’s collapse inspired the pivot to Creative App’s fintech marketplace How AI and digital "twin" avatars are poised to disrupt influencer marketing and the future of work Featured Quote "Being an entrepreneur is being punished a hundred times a day and smiling at those punches." —Samy Samandjeu Full Transcript Jeff Dudan (00:06) Welcome to the home front, everybody. This is Jeff Duden. If you grew up in a house where there were 20 homes in your village in Cameroon, if your mom left school at age 12 to support her family working odd jobs and eventually owned her own gas station only to sell it all to move the family to France for a chance at a better and new life, if you studied economics in Spain and Switzerland and in the summer at Harvard, and went on to found companies like Creative App, a fintech startup connecting influencers to commerce. Your name can only be Sammy Samandju. Welcome, Sammy. Samy Sam (00:47) Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jeff. Happy to be here. Jeff Dudan (00:51) Yeah, it's great. Great to have you on. You're coming to us from the UK today. Samy Sam (00:55) Yes, actually today I'm in Germany but yeah my home, my base is London. Jeff Dudan (01:01) I would like to start at influencers. You started a talent business and you realized very quickly, I think the average age of a talent business owner was 72 years old and you recognized that there was an opportunity inside of the talent and modeling and representation business to do things a little differently. And then that led to this creation of this Creative App, which is a marketplace, I believe, for influencers. Can anybody be an influencer today? And what is your view of social media and influence as it relates to commerce and the opportunities therein? 01:45 – Spotting a Social Media Goldmine: Early Influencer Marketing Hustle Samy Sam (01:45) I think it's quite incredible, this power that social media has given us to freedom, to market ourselves, to tell our own story, to have a voice. And I think anybody today can be that voice, can market themselves and say, this is who I am, and we'll relate to that truth. If we step back a little bit and look at where does that come from? We have the radio, then we have the TVs, and a big corporation had the monopoly on marketing the celebrities they wanted to market, the movie stars they wanted to market. And then the iPhone came and this explosion of social media, which awakened a full new wave of creators who said, hey, us too have a story to tell, us too have a story to share, us too can build products. and sell them to people who actually need them, develop solutions. So I really believe we are just at the beginning of the wave. Back in 2014, 2015, when I started seeing that shift happening, it actually came from a friend of mine in school. He sat next to me and he said, hey, Sammy, you're thinking about finance and you're studying all these numbers all the time, but social media actually is the biggest booming market and it's just day one. So I went into building a new API during the summer school with my friends on the campus. And that API could scrape everything that has an @ in a bio. And back in the day, what I had in an Instagram bio were the email addresses of brands. So I said, hey, get everything that has an @ of brands based in Paris, France. And I would get those emails and automate a marketing mail out to those brands and I would say, hey, do you want to work with this influencer in exchange of gift? And back in the days, I could only send 198 emails per day because after 200, Google will block you. So that gave me an insanely positive answer. 2014, 15 Instagram, it was just the beginning of that thing. So all these models that I was friends with from you know, going out in Paris, they started being like, my God, you managed to get free clothes, free trips, free hotels for this model, can you do it for me? So I started to get close to them and I would go to their modeling agencies and say, how does representation work? All of them would send me their contract and nobody has mentioned social media. And I was like, wow, so you are taking ownership of the image rights and managing the image rights of these models in specific locations. But the biggest location of all, digital, you don't see it coming. How come? So what I did, I drafted a one-page contract, exclusivity only social media. You can do whatever you want for print, advertising, merchandising, but anything that you do on social media goes through me. And these agencies, because they didn't see it coming, were like, no problem. Social media is not a real thing. It's going to fall. You know, the incumbents always have to fight their position. So I understood them. But at the time, I was still actually going in the library every day using it as my office and started working from the library. I would never go to any classes. My mom just, we had a deal. I'll just pass the exams. Jeff Dudan (05:09) Ha ha. Samy Sam (05:30) And I would go and stay in the library and work. In the first year, we already made a million and it was just the beginning. But today, what is happening on the different TikTok that is available with all these streamers, so many more people have the ability to tell their stories and more importantly, so many more people can become free, financially free, take ownership back of their time and truly show who they are. as a standalone human being and not anymore lay and put their trust and their faith in the future in the hands of their corporations because I think we have entered the age of liberation for all of us. Jeff Dudan (06:15) I saw some statistics late last year. I was getting involved in a project and the market in the US, I think, was $27 billion in advertising dollars that was going to be spent on social media. And I think by 2030, it was going to be $50 billion or some incredible amount. It was going to eclipse traditional media, television, all of these types of things. and people that have been early to it like yourself and then many of these ultra celebrities, some of which weren't celebrities for anything else other than social media, have taken real estate and captured it early. My question to you is, can you even own a business now and not be on social media? 07:00 – Personal Branding Is Now a Business Essential Samy Sam (07:00) It's virtually impossible just for one reason. It's people buy from what they know. When they see your face, it's not anymore. We have passed the stage in society where we build brand names. Now we are in the age of personal branding. So you have, as you said rightfully, you need to own a real estate about who you are and what your products are and what you stand for. Because the first thing people do when they go on social media, Jeff Dudan (07:06) Mm. Samy Sam (07:30) when they want to buy a product is to look into social media. And statistically, right now, the entire marketing and influencer space globally is worth around 250 billion. According to Goldman Sachs, it's shooting to 500 billion. So what does it say? 90% of Gen Z, they don't know the TV. All the time, all their purchasing decisions come from social media platforms. Jeff Dudan (07:49) Right. Samy Sam (08:00) If you, and that's simple because they don't have this time anymore to sit in front of TV and watch a movie for three hours. If you look at your statistics into Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, it's 60 seconds, the attention span of anybody on these platforms. If your video, your content is longer than 60 seconds, nobody's watching it. Imagine TV shows. It's so hard. Jeff Dudan (08:20) Right. Samy Sam (08:28) It's so hard to captivate the attention for someone for two hours, three hours. It doesn't happen anymore. Jeff Dudan (08:35) And if you're watching a television show, when a commercial comes on that I can't fast forward through, I'm not watching it. I'm getting up, I'm using the bathroom, I'm going to go to the refrigerator. Like I'm not going to sit there and stare at the television where on social media, the ads, they're invasive and they're incredibly invasive. They're right in your face. You can't get away from them. And the amount of impressions... ⁓ Samy Sam (09:00) And they are for you. They are for you. That's the biggest difference between TV and social media. TV is built for everybody. Those programs are built for everybody and anybody. But on social media, the algorithms are so good at understanding who you are, what are your subconscious triggers, and what are your needs that every single ad that is feeding you, it's making you want to take that purchasing decision. TV is totally ending. What we are going to see Jeff Dudan (09:08) Mm. Samy Sam (09:30) coming next, the personalization. And even the streaming platforms, what they're playing around with is you being able to directly purchase all the products that you see in the shows because they understand it's all about... TV is there to market. How those TVs make money is to sell because they sell advertising space. It's all the same game. Jeff Dudan (09:51) Right. That's right. Sammy, I'd like to go back and just quickly go through how you grew up. You grew up in Cameroon, a village of 20 homes, and then you moved to Paris, I believe, when you were five years old. Is that correct? 10:09 – From Cameroon to France: A Family Legacy of Hustle Samy Sam (10:09) Yeah, that's correct. Actually, my story starts with my grandma. You know, she was a very brave woman. She was selling fruits in a store market. And when my mom was 12, she had a car accident. So she lost all her teeth. She couldn't sell her fruits anymore. And so my mom took the decision to stop going to school to support her family. And my mom started being a hairdresser, doing all these small jobs. And during those jobs, she was doing the hair of a very wealthy woman. So she was hearing, "My husband made that much money, my husband needs that much money," and she would connect people, she would become a great connector. Based on that, she made some commissions. And with those commissions, one day she sold all of them, flew to Turkey without speaking a single word of English, flew to Turkey, bought cathodic TVs, the big TVs, was charming the soldiers on the tarmac of the airport, and they would carry the TVs for her on the plane. So when she flew back to Africa, she started selling them to so many different hotels. Jeff Dudan (10:45) Mm. Samy Sam (11:08) And those hotels, she made so much money that she had an import and export business. And by 27, 28, she owned a gas station. She was just a pure hustler. Jeff Dudan (11:19) Where did she learn that skill? Samy Sam (11:24) I honestly think it's— Jeff Dudan (11:24) Was it out of necessity? I mean, sometimes entrepreneurs are just... Yeah, yeah. How many brothers and sisters did you have? Samy Sam (11:28) Pure necessity. Pure drive. I have two brothers and one sister, so we are four. But it's literally my mom, the husband, even in my family, the way we actually left the country is that she wanted to start political parties and all these things. And she realized that she cannot do that in Cameroon in the 90s. And she said, okay, I need to... to do more for my kids. The 12th of July, 1998, we flew back and I remember that day exactly because when we landed in Charles de Gaulle Airport—France won the World Cup against Brazil. So it's literally like my memories activate and I see people jumping on the tarmac celebrating and us ourselves celebrating, wow, it's a beautiful life. And literally the next day, she put us in a room with me, my two brothers, Léonel and Steve, and my sister Solange, and said, listen kids, I bought flats for... we were 17, 18, all my cousins were there. She bought flats for everybody in Paris and London. She said, we all start here from now, all the money she had ever saved. And she said, the only money I've left is for private school. Who wants to go to private school? Me and Léonel, we raised our hands. Léonel became a lawyer. Steve said, hey, I want to play soccer. He became a professional soccer player. My sister became a nanny because she was already older than us. And it was really the sheer will of my mom to want more for our family. Jeff Dudan (13:02) And how did you... what kind of student were you growing up? 13:09 – From 'Terrible Student' to Swiss University: Igniting Ambition Samy Sam (13:09) A terrible student. Because my mom told me what I knew about business. If you ever meet her, she will say that she planned my life for me because at school, I had so much energy. To this day, this energy, this flame, this fire inside of me was already there. So imagine when you tell a seven-, eight-, nine-, ten-, 15-year-old kid, you have to stay seated in a chair for seven hours, that energy is... it's just bursting out there. So I wasn't a good student, but my dad always told me, you just need to be good at math. The rest doesn't matter. History books—every single president rewrites history. You don't care about that. Economics, you'll see later. He said, math, math, math is the truth that stays. Jeff Dudan (13:49) Hahaha. Yeah, I believe that to be true. So you went to private school and then somehow you ended up in university in Switzerland or in Spain. How did that work? Samy Sam (14:09) So the last year I'm in private school—I've been in boarding school my entire life almost, because my mom was always traveling and my dad was back in Cameroon because he was working there. So the last year I realized that... I was playing football, so I was also very good at soccer. And the last year I realized that all my classmates started studying very hard and started talking about the future, what they will do. That's another proof, by the way, that you are really the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, because in private school they lock you into that circle of people who are building the future, who are envisioning what they are going to do next. Because if at that precise moment I was in public school, I would have definitely never focused on studying. But that last year everyone was doing so, so I was like, oh, nobody wants to play with me and hang out and do stupid things with me. So let me do what they are doing. Jeff Dudan (14:59) Mm. Samy Sam (15:08) I will just focus on studying and I managed to have one of the best grades in the school just because I have the same strategy always. Give me two months, my brain can absorb anything in two months even if I've never looked into it. And from there, I looked around and I went to the French CAC 40—it's the trading, it's like the Nasdaq. ⁓ And I went into the website and I looked at the 40 biggest capitalizations in France: 40 white men, 38 from the same school called Polytechnique. And I said, okay, that will never be me. So I don't click any category because I always had the aspiration to be leading companies and businesses. So I started looking around at different countries and I looked into the US, into Canada, into Switzerland, and my mom said, hey, Switzerland is very close, we can come visit you. And I applied and because of my grades, I was accepted and I was like, yes, let's go to Switzerland for the adventure. And I ended up in one of the greatest universities in Switzerland, HEC Lausanne basically (the commerce, HEC in Lausanne). Jeff Dudan (16:23) What's amazing as I continue to talk to entrepreneurs is the natural way that they look at opportunities and the way that they fail to see the risk and the downside and they fail to put self-limiting beliefs on themselves. It's... you looked at the... you came from, you know, Cameroon and you moved to an entirely new country and you make your way there and then you're like, where in the world would be the best place that I could go? And it's... I tell you, I deal with a lot of young people now and they have a hard time opening their eyes to opportunities that are outside of it. Your mom must have been an incredible influence in your life. What was one or two things that she said to you over the years that stuck with you and made you who you are today? 17:22 – Embracing the 'Chosen One' Mindset: Turning Challenges into Gold Samy Sam (17:22) It's not only something that stuck with me, it's my entire family. It started with my mom, but they called me since I'm zero, "you are the chosen one." You are the chosen one, you are the chosen one. To this day, my siblings—my nephews—they all call me "the chosen one" just because they have seen me, my life facing incredibly difficult situations and getting punched so many times and managing to alchemize those situations into incredible outcomes. And because of that, because they still didn't believe that I'm the chosen one, I'm drawn to those risks because I blindfully believe that that situation, I will turn it into something exquisite. But because they told me life is a game. You have to play the game and it's not about the cards that you get dealt, it's how you play the cards. So sometimes... we'll certainly go through it later and talk about business, but it's never about you. It's like we take things so personally, especially this generation. We take things so hard and we're like, my God, I have to deal with this. But how do you reframe this in your brain? Like, how exciting—I get to play this game. How exciting—my business is failing. How do I get out of this? How do I deal with a negative situation and turn it into a positive? In French, we have this saying that says, "give me your mud, Jeff Dudan (18:27) Mm-hmm. Samy Sam (18:49) and I will turn it into gold." And my mom always said, you are the golden generation, Sammy. You are here as a prophet to liberate us. So please go and do and be you and take the craziest risk you can take because in some ways you always make it work. So I did. Jeff Dudan (18:51) Mm. Was the first business you started the talent agency? Samy Sam (19:13) It wasn't actually my first business. My first real business was... because I've always been friends with way older people than me in high school. So my first business was in Switzerland when I was sailing. So we had these crazy exams that were super hard and the people above my grade would give me—because I would play football, soccer with them—they would give me all the past exams and I would combine them together, create a system to answer the questions super easily, and I would sell them to all the students. And when I left in the last year to go to Spain for my third year of uni, I hired some of my friends who stayed and they were selling them to younger students and that financed literally all my crazy parties in Spain. That was an amazing business, but yeah, it was kind of my first steps into business. Jeff Dudan (19:47) Yeah. And then what opportunity did you see in the talent/model agency to create that business? 20:18 – First Ventures: Study Hacks Business and Launching a Talent Agency Samy Sam (20:18) So honestly, it was purely out of... I always say something that has followed me my entire life is follow your highest excitement. That's my way to be, because people say follow your passion—your highest excitement will allow you to turn anything, any hardship that you face, into something positive. Jeff Dudan (20:28) So. Samy Sam (20:45) Being an entrepreneur is being punished a hundred times a day and smiling at those punches. But if you don't like it, if you don't naturally... you are not excited... you know, if you burn out by something, it's game over. You cannot even look at that thing. So for me, when I was at uni and all my friends were talking about all this finance and going to JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and all my friends were going in that direction, I had so many friends that loved partying. Jeff Dudan (20:51) Right. Samy Sam (21:14) I think I'm a charming person. So I've always been surrounded by all these amazing women—just as a friend, because I would be a trustworthy best friend, a trustworthy brother to them. And I would come and I would say, hey, I developed this algorithm. I saw the agencies, the modeling agencies weren't doing anything on social media. So I said, let me try. But literally I was just in the library at uni. First year we make a million dollar turnover. So it's not like I had a choice. It's like I went from being at the summer school at Harvard and going on the campus of MIT with one of my friends trying to code a little bit. And that software gave us so many clients and me answering emails for one year. While I'm still doing a master's in investment management and finance in London all this time. Already it's a huge thing. And I'm like, wow, I cannot quit anymore because now I have 50 models, I don't know what to do. I call my mentor—he was a finance guy as well—he says, hey, why don't you open a company just because now you're going to pay a lot of tax. And next thing you know, I am in Cannes, all the fashion weeks. And I have all these brands calling me back and forth and we have 300 talents in the books. It was just like life took me. Jeff Dudan (22:40) Yeah. And that business ran for a time. Then tell me about how the dots connected to create Creative App and where's the gap in the marketplace. And just for background, you know, I'm very familiar that there is a gap between creators... There's all these different levels of creators out there. And there's... you could basically categorize them by number of followers. So you've got a certain number... and as they get more followers, there gets to be fewer of them. But somebody like Ronaldo, right, will do... like if he does one post, he gets some millions and millions of dollars for every post that he'll do. You know, he might have Samy Sam (23:13) Be secure. Jeff Dudan (23:35) ...billion followers or something like that, right? And then it goes down from there. And there's all these different levels and categories of influencers out there. Maybe it's regional or maybe they have a certain specific niche or product base that they'd be a good fit for. There's really... nobody's really organized the ability to connect these different influencers to the different business opportunities. And then I also know that companies have a hard time dealing with these people because if they're not represented, then are they going to show up? Are they going to do it? Are they going to comply to the standards of the clothing or the product and all of this type of thing? So it's a very fragmented marketplace now connecting commerce and products with the right group of influencers. And there's a lot of opportunity. Is that the space that Creative App desires to fill? 24:27 – Boom, Bust, and Pivot: From Agency Failure to Creative App Samy Sam (24:27) It's exactly that. How did we connect the previous business and this business? It was fate, because COVID happened, the business expanded. When you're 24, 25, 26, you're full of life. So you're like, oh my God, making 2 million, now aggregated over the space of three, four years, your business is turning over 10 million dollars. And you're like, wow, what is going on? I need to skyrocket this so I can sell it later down the line. or ask for a merger or whatever, a transactional event. And you run and you realize that now you have to look at the bottom line. And on that front, we burned. It just truly exploded in the air. And I was like, my God, how? So you go from one manager, five managers, agents, 10... you have to open offices in Paris, London, Milan, go at every single event with a crew of 300 talent. And it's just a lot. And we exploded in the air. And from that explosion, that bankruptcy, it was so painful, man. So early in my life—26—I was going to the stars. I was flying around, I was living the life. And I didn't realize that you need a strong foundation in business, a strong system to operate and trade upon. So when that happens, I'm sitting there and I'm... Jeff, I'm the luckiest man you will Jeff Dudan (25:33) Mm. Samy Sam (25:55) ever meet. So a couple of years back—maybe 10 years back—when I arrived in London the first day, I go to a nightclub, B3, because one of my friends from Switzerland said, hey, Sami, come and get with us. And I go there and some guy comes across the room and is like, who are you? Why are all these women around you? I'm like, dude, I just arrived. I have no idea. I'm just vibing and these people are around me. I don't know anybody. And he's like, ⁓ come play soccer tomorrow with me. I go play soccer with him and it's the entire JP Morgan team—all the MDs and directors. So I'm like, okay, cool. I will keep playing with them. They were 50-plus, so I was just running fast and scoring goals. So they all liked me. And during COVID, I sit down with this guy, Marc Antonio, and I tell him about all the issues my agency had, how I started studying the market. And I write theses all the time. Another big recommendation I would give to anybody: always write theses, your thoughts, your ideas, and share them with all your friends across different topics. Because from that thesis, he loved it so much, said, hey, you know what, let's try to solve it. And we spent six to eight months discussing, meeting, in and out to discuss it. And at some point he left JP Morgan, invested $180,000 to become my co-founder and build a platform and said, hey, out of this experience, how can we take those learnings Jeff Dudan (26:57) Yes. ⁓ Samy Sam (27:21) and— you are running an agency—can you turn those systems, those processes, those ways of booking, those ways of connecting with clients into a cohesive tech solution? Because in the end, you need to own a product. You go from a service to a product. So I managed to do that transformation with his help, with the support of our network. And we realized that exactly as you said today, today there is no more like marketing and influencer management. There's no way... it's the same job at every single agency, management agency. And also they all have the same clients. So we said, hey, why don't we build a marketplace that also acts as a CRM? So from a brand's perspective, it's a marketplace where they can go and find any creators and book them. But for an agency or creator, what is important to them? An agency or creator, what they like is... I have to negotiate with you. After I've negotiated and signed a contract online with you, I have to create the content, I have to attend the event, I have to do the photoshoot. Then I have to get paid and the payment has to be processed. So that's actually a simple kind of product to build. And what we end up building, it's a fintech solution where the brands come and find you and want to book you. At the end, we also process the payments and you get paid automatically. So in one app, it works like almost a bank for creators where you can have all your jobs, just like Linktree. You send the link to your profile, the brands go, sign up and can go and book you, and you get paid automatically as soon as the job is done and you have a little card where you can then withdraw the money and use it. That's how it happens. Jeff Dudan (28:46) Right. So when the talent agency bankrupted, the one thing a bankruptcy can't take away from you is your network. I can imagine that you had a deep network of people—famous people, talented people, creative people. Was that an asset that you were able to leverage into Creative App to get your first people on there? 29:33 – Rebuilding After Bankruptcy: Cleansing Network and Starting Fresh Samy Sam (29:33) So yeah, exactly. ⁓ I'm not going to lie and say that I kept all of them. Some of them I had to lose because it's a pain, but I also saw it as a very cleansing experience, I have to say, because I took it honestly as a positive experience because it's stripping you down to all the things that you don't need. Because I had all these things and my phone was ringing Monday—like Monday to Monday—from all these celebrities, all these people, but... Jeff Dudan (29:44) Yes. Samy Sam (30:02) I have to say people love your job title. They love you for your job title, not for who you are. So it really pushed away all these people. The people who stayed—the people who stayed around me and the people who managed to call me and check up on me—those people I managed to build upon them. So now the foundations are much stronger, much more real, and I feel way more fulfilled because I think that it was a period of my life that was needed. Because without that... Jeff Dudan (30:08) Huh. Samy Sam (30:32) ⁓ I always say, ⁓ a hero don't choose his suffering. That suffering is assigned to him to reveal his power. Without going to the service business and understanding how the business works... because when you're the CEO, you have to understand finance, accounting, management, hiring—all these different departments come to you. With that experience, I managed to activate my power into tech and become a full tech guy just because that suffering was assigned to me. Without that suffering, if this business would have kept going, I would still be there and I would still run around and do all these parties. While now I have a much calmer life, fulfilled and really focused on building systems for the next generation. So I use the people that I kept, I use the knowledge that I kept, and with that, it creates a beautiful new Sammy 2.0. Jeff Dudan (31:33) All right, let's play into the future a little bit. Here's the landscape: you're operating with influencers, which is going to go to 50 billion in the U.S. and 500 billion worldwide. Okay, so big market. That's one intersection. The other area where you're operating—with your next AI company—is you're operating in AI, which again is a massive opportunity. There's going to be more change in the next 24 months than there's been in the last 24 years. Business processes, creation, coding, ⁓ all of these things are gonna be happening. So you're operating in an influencer space, which is huge and growing, and you're also operating in the next AI space. When you look at AI and you look at social media, what are some of the things that you see that other people might not at this point in time? How is it going to impact influencers? Are we looking at the last generation of models that we're ever going to have? Because they can... by the way, I talked to an AI person the other day on my screen and I couldn't tell that it wasn't a real person, other than I knew that it wasn't a real person. So when you think about, again, people that became famous as actors and people that became famous as influencers and business icons and all of this stuff, who's to say that the next great famous influencer isn't gonna be baked up on somebody's computer in a faraway country and nobody will know that they're not a real person? 33:08 – AI Revolution: Virtual Influencers and the Future of Work Samy Sam (33:08) I love this question, Jeff. Can I share something on the pod? Jeff Dudan (33:11) Yes. Is this a hot take? Is this a new release? Is this an exclusive? Sammy, what are we doing? What's going on? Samy Sam (33:13) Hello? It's not... It's an exclusive. It's an exclusive. But I want to share something cool because you are... I just came here. I totally agree with you. I think... Later. I can open the settings. Jeff Dudan (33:22) Okay, you're not real. You've never been real. You've made your— Hahaha. Samy Sam (33:41) ...because people don't realize—Windows or my [system] doesn't let me share this beautiful thing with you, unfortunately, today. Presentation screen... Yes, we can, but I might have to quit and come back. Is that a thing? No, it will destroy the pod. Jeff Dudan (33:54) I don't know how to do that. Can we share? Can we share, Jen? Can we allow him to...? Samy Sam (34:09) If I quit, it could have been exclusive, but exactly what we have built is a couple of things in what you raised. First thing: an AI twin will be a thing. Everyone will have an AI twin. We'll have an avatar of themselves that goes out there and does the job for them. So what we have managed to build is: in 80 seconds now, I can create the picture-perfect replica of you. And the second part of the solution we have built is that— Jeff Dudan (34:25) Yeah. Samy Sam (34:39) Today, what is very important in this world and what is an issue that stopped AI from going out there and cloning everything is IP rights. Your right to your face is super important. Jeff Dudan (34:48) Hmm. Yeah, if you recreate me, there are a few things I'd like you to fix. Okay, can you click—? Samy Sam (34:57) You're awesome the way you are, don't worry Jeff. Jeff Dudan (34:59) ⁓ Well, just, you know— straighten— I need a little more symmetry— but yeah. So, I mean, I already have a clone and I uploaded everything into a clone to a company. And if I ask that clone a question, it will answer the question exactly as I would, but more concise, more direct, more supported. It answers better than I would, but it answers as I would. And so— Samy Sam (35:05) You— Jeff Dudan (35:29) How long until everybody creates a twin that sits in meetings for them? Samy Sam (35:35) By the end of the year. That's how fast this will go because people don't realize ⁓ one thing: the cost. So imagine when the cost of everything that you are producing drops to zero. And what we have... I'll go this time. ⁓ I think I can show you something cool. I think I managed to do it. Okay. You might have an exclusive here, Jeff. So you have a preview of one of the new solutions. So— Jeff Dudan (35:37) Okay. Mm-hmm. Do it. Yeah, here we go. Nice. You're pretty. Samy Sam (36:04) On Creatives App, what we can do... So you have this entire ecosystem that allows you to work, to collaborate with all your different clients, to collaborate with your management agency, sign your contracts, but also you can create your AI twin. And what do you do with this AI twin? You put it to work, because tomorrow what will happen? Are you going to effectively go to shoots? No, you won't go to photo shoots. What you will say is, I want to be able to work with Jeff Dudan (36:24) Mm. Samy Sam (36:33) swimwear brands, makeup brands, all these brands. On the other side, brands won't organize photoshoots, videoshoots, movies anymore. They will use platforms that will take the different avatars and pictures and measurements of all these different people and directly organize those photoshoots, videoshoots. Brands like ASOS—big brands—80, 90% of their cost goes into production. We are going to very quickly walk into a world of free production, pre-ordering, where people will see all these images with the faces of all these different models and celebrities used for those products and at the end, directly, you will get paid. So why is it cheaper? Instead of taking six months to produce the content and organize a photoshoot, it's going to take five minutes and your avatar will be working for you because— Jeff Dudan (37:05) Right. Samy Sam (37:32) ...but it will only work for the content creators who have a strong engagement rate and branding and image. Just like we are paying a lot for movie stars for real scenes we can attract, we're not gonna pay a lot of money for the guy that doesn't have an audience. So today, it's so important to take your phone, start recording every single day because that might be now we're going to move into next AI—that might be for the next 10 to 15 to 20 years, the only way you make money. Simple fact: 70% of the world runs on service-based businesses. So 70 trillion out of 100 trillion that the world makes is out of service businesses. But guess what? What will happen to lawyers, accountants, finance, real estate guys? Jeff Dudan (38:09) Wow. Samy Sam (38:30) ...when, while they are brushing their teeth, an AI agent can do the same job as them faster? And what will happen? What will happen to schools and universities when you spend 15 years mastering any programs and, you know, becoming a doctor while you can inject in your brain in four minutes PhD-level knowledge? I have tried it. I have seen it myself with my own eyes with my friends. So what will happen to that? What will happen to democracy when intelligent systems run all the policies? The politics will become like the King of India. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the policies, they will be dictated by machines. So for you as a human, you have to ask yourself those questions and say, if you rely on the government to support you, you just have to look a couple of years back during the pandemic—how did they manage this? So how would they manage something that is that disruptive and so crazy that we really need to stop asking... all of us those questions. What's happening with the world? Where are we heading? We need vision. We need strong leadership and we need commitment to building a future that is safeguarding everybody's interest, because there won't be enough money. Money won't be a thing anymore. You need to be sovereign in how you create value in this world. Jeff Dudan (39:52) Mm. Samy Sam (39:56) ...and your image is the first sovereignty that you have. Jeff Dudan (40:03) That is frightening and I share that belief and I've been having these thoughts and having these realizations about business models that simply won't need to exist anymore at some point ⁓ or getting legal work done. There's so much human that is baked into everything that we do. But as agentic AI becomes more prevalent—and I mean, it's accelerating at an accelerating rate now—people are going to be much slower to adapt to these types of changes. Samy Sam (40:45) Jeff, you know, I don't agree with that. This is how it's going to play. This is how it's going to play. The CEO of company Y will sit there and his chairman will come and say, hey, did you see that company X fired 80% of their staff and now it's powered by AI? He'll say, oh, yes, but I need to talk to unions. So maybe next year... We'll say, OK, you have three months to do the same thing, otherwise I replace you with a co— Jeff Dudan (40:48) No? Samy Sam (41:14) CEO of company Y. Humans protect their assets naturally. We are fearful beings and we are reactive beings. The formal understanding that other companies operate 100 to 150, 200% better than yours with less headache, less humans, because you pay the fine... all of them will pay the fine, without exception. Jeff Dudan (41:25) Mm-mm. Samy Sam (41:44) Imagine the chaos in the streets. You think governments will do something? We don't understand the government that is in place now. That's why for me, when I meet all of them during private dinners and have private demos all the time, I've seen so many of those products, Jeff. And it's so scary because right now people don't realize we are in like 1989 of AI, just because AI hasn't entered the economy yet. Everyone talks about intelligence. They talk about ChatGPT, OpenAI, but they're not the people that will win the AI race. They're just creating intelligence. It's like they're creating water. Who will win? It's the people that put the water in the bottle. So look at the different verticals. Look at legal, look at real estate, look at accounting, finance. So what will— Jeff Dudan (42:35) Mm. Samy Sam (42:39) And I will give you a secret that only a few hedge fund managers are starting to understand and the FANG world is starting to slowly understand. The only way that intelligence will enter the market—do you know how? ...is through SaaS, is through AI agents. So you're going to pay every month a subscription to have access to your system of intelligence. So what will replace all these legacy businesses, all this legacy real estate agency, all this legacy real estate accounting and legal firms? It's a platform like Creatives App for legal that will come and that will put AI to service clients. So imagine Jeff Dudan (42:57) you— Samy Sam (43:25) That's what H1 (Hedge Fund 1) loves doing—these roll-ups. You can acquire today a legacy accounting firm that turns over a hundred million dollars. You start implementing a SaaS and you say, 5% of the service that we deliver—our clients just need to go into this website, our website, click a button and it will drive the account for them. Then 20%, then 50%, then 100%. ...you don't need any more accountants and you will play it exactly like that. Suddenly, and it happened—if you don't look so far as banking, you look at FinTech, you have Nubank in South America. They're going to outcompete people like JP Morgan tomorrow morning. All these legacy investment banks and big banks, what they have is a lot of assets. They're sitting on a lot of assets, but they're sitting on human capital Jeff Dudan (44:06) Mm-hmm. Samy Sam (44:21) to deliver and monitor those assets. Tomorrow... so the layer upon which they are built—humans—will never outcompete tech built up. So when superintelligence, AGI, all these things come to life, people will already have the tech stack to leverage that technology, while others will have humans that they will have to fire, and they will all look left and say, hey, we need to acquire today— I recommend to any service business on this planet: go acquire a SaaS platform today, or build your internal tech team and start building it. This is the first time in the history of humanity that we are entering at the same time a financial, societal, economical inevitability. Meaning there is a circle like this in the world. This is called the AI portal, the integration of intelligence. No matter if it's today, tomorrow, in six months, in 10 years, every single human being, service, company, anything we do, will have to integrate intelligence. The singularity point is the nearest we have ever experienced. When we enter that phase, how we deliver services, how we do things, completely changes forever. People who have not... you cannot compete against something that doesn't sleep, doesn't take workdays, doesn't love kids, doesn't— you cannot compete. As simple as that. Jeff Dudan (46:03) Where are you going to point with Next.ai? Because every industry is going to be changed permanently. So for you, where are you pointing first? Samy Sam (46:19) Well, I'm pointing towards adding value in creating revenue. So as I said, what I fear the most is people not being able to feed themselves or to create a monetary or financial value so that they can, you know, be free. Financial security for me, it's one of my main works and my main art. How do I build systems that allow people to be financially free? And today we can already build the rails to build operational systems, AI agents that will allow any companies to plug their data into, let's say, a Shopify store, connecting to one of the platforms we will build, and automatically you will communicate with all these clients, optimize the different shopping experiences and you can build already those agents. But my global vision for Next.ai is to build the ecosystems of tools that for you... imagine that you have that super app that could manage your finance for you, manage your sales, manage your comms, your posts on social media, all these things. Right now you can really build—it's all about systems. And when you apply intelligence to systems, you can really today start building tools that give back ⁓ humans the time. Because for me, we never came here to work. Work has been a product of the post-industrial society. For me—and my assessment of my human experience here—we came to create, to love, to expand, to experience, and to connect. So based on that, I want to build anything that allows that. Work hasn't been a thing... You know, we still just work in a capitalist society. So you have to play the game to earn to buy your freedom. That is the entire game that we're playing. And because of that, we are so competitive with one another. We want an order, but within the next 10 to 20 years, we are going to go to the phase of buying back that time, each of us, and the society collectively will decide that money shouldn't be a thing. We have to redefine value and value creation and protect everybody because people shouldn't have to suffer. Abundance has always been in this world. Abundance is everywhere. But we love scarcity because it makes us feel better about each other, you know. Jeff Dudan (48:57) Yeah. Sammy, when you use the word services being $70 trillion, those aren't necessarily services that are performed in a home or in a business. Those are services like accounting and just everything. I mean, Apple's service business, right? So a lot of that is that. But there are things that need to be done by humans today, such as painting a house or fixing a pipe, or we all need somewhere to live. How do you see these changes... impacting those industries and where are— well, let me ask... I have a follow-up question, but let me leave that one with you right there. In services that need a human person to deliver a product or service on site somewhere, where are the opportunities in AI ⁓ what's gonna be the impact? Samy Sam (49:51) Actually, there are three industries, ⁓ three to four industries that will skyrocket. Wellness. People are going to be so lost. Imagine the identity crisis when people realize that they're not their job title, they're not the number of people they manage, they're not even their name, but they're the soul within. Imagine the soul-searching journey so many people will go through. So many people will need more of the human... Jeff Dudan (50:18) Mm. Samy Sam (50:21) ...more of, "Jeff, can we go on a walk? Can you talk to me about the craziest experience that you went through and broke your heart? Because my heart is broken right now. And I need just to understand that you also went through that and you survived. You also went through that and you overcame." That aspirational part—finding yourself and finding meaning—is gonna be so important. Certainly the biggest industry in the next 50 years. Then the tech industry is going to go through a phase of a big high until the systems understand how to evolve themselves and monitor themselves and become better. And then it's going to drop. And then entertainment. People will have time. When people have time, they entertain themselves. Sports are going to be huge. It's just the beginning of sports. All these sports are still massively undervalued. Sports are going to be huge and monumental. Jeff Dudan (51:14) Yeah. Samy Sam (51:18) And the fourth industry, as you rightfully said, is anything that robotics wouldn't disrupt. I don't want to mention anything because I still don't know how good robotics will become and how comfortable people will become with having robots all the time around them. I believe... I'm a tech guy, so I love any robotics and tech stuff, but I still don't know how the world will... ...will take that part of service delivered by robots. Jeff Dudan (51:53) If you were ⁓ advising another young person right now who's getting ready to go to university, what would you tell them to stay away from? And then what might you tell them to focus on? 52:07 – Empowering the Next Generation: Education, Strategy, and Positive Focus Samy Sam (52:07) Honestly, I would still tell them to go to university, not because of the courses—because personally I wasn't going to any classes. I had my way of studying and my way of studying was purely to pass the exam, and university has been built kind of like that. You just have to pass exams that don't mean anything. But also it gave me a way of reasoning. As you say in your book, what I absolutely love in Discernment is that going to university gives you that logic tree. So every time I have to make a decision or any decision in my life, I go very quickly... I do the probabilistic tree in my head, but at the same time, I use my EQ to take the emotional probability tree. So I did the math probability tree and then the emotional way—how would I feel? Where would this lead me? Who would be around me at the end of the journey, whether it goes very well Jeff Dudan (52:39) Mm. Samy Sam (53:04) ...or very bad. So university gives you that and also builds you the confidence, because you know coming out at 20 years old—18, 19, 20—from school, you are still a baby, even in your reflection and in your approach to life. When you go to university, you broaden that. People are underestimating the social impact and the social benefit of schools and universities, but it's much more about the social impact. Jeff Dudan (53:18) Right. Samy Sam (53:31) That's your knowledge, because your knowledge... you're going to find out what you like, what you dislike, and you're going to go all in on what you like. So first thing, go to university—very important. And we still work in a society that is based on which university you went to, that you cannot avoid. And it's a truth we live. And second thing: anything that you do today, use strategy. That's the single most important advice. Being so—anything that you do, ask strategy first. Start interacting so well with this tool. Your teacher says no, he doesn't understand anything, but it's fine. Still listen to him for the rest. But technology—we are day minus 500. So ChatGPT every single day. You have to send a message. Stop sending weird messages as well that are misspelled. Just click correct—the prompt correct—and you add your message and you send it. Start using ChatGPT every single day and go to university, because your soul will be fulfilled, your experience will be richer and you might find the love of your life at uni just like I did. Jeff Dudan (54:39) That's true. It happens to the best of us. Samy Sam (54:41) I— ...thought I was on tour or what? Jeff Dudan (54:44) So in the future that you've laid out for us here today, I would say that your relationships and your networks have made an important impact in your life—getting around mentors, getting around people, which is something that university will definitely help you start if you use it the right way. And then the other thing is creativity, because the skills that are required... people would go for 15 years to learn how to code and it's just not required anymore. I think... I've heard great coders and great business builders say, I do it to keep my hand in it, but I don't have to do it anymore if I don't want to. And those changes are accelerating at an accelerating rate. I mean, we are just, like you said, in 1989 of the AI revolution, but it's going to be 2050 here probably by the end of '26. I saw that even ⁓ chat will exceed Google in the number of searches. So now, you know, the landscape... who would have thought that? I mean, I can't imagine what Google is thinking now, right? But they've got their own tools coming out. They're obviously ahead of the game. But there are things that... there are companies and there are business models and there are practices and there are social norms that are going to be disrupted that people just didn't expect. And it's going to happen overnight. Now, we are adaptable. Right. If you throw... you take me from a BlackBerry—which, by the way... A BlackBerry was a telephone device, Sammy. Are you familiar with a BlackBerry? Okay. ⁓ So you went from a BlackBerry... you went from a pager, right, to a BlackBerry, and then you went from a BlackBerry to an iPhone. I got it. I got it in a day. You know, they say marketing leads the way. If you want to drive a company in a certain direction, you do it through the marketing. You lead a company to new business through the leads that you drive in the marketing. Samy Sam (56:13) Of course! I'm addicted to all of them! Jeff Dudan (56:38) In technology, it's the device that leads the way. Okay, so if you take away my old way of doing it and then you put an iPhone in my hand, I'm gonna learn relatively quickly how to get done what I need to get done. And then if other people are using technology, I'm gonna stop doing things the way I used to do it. So I think to your point, we will adapt relatively quickly. The difference with AI is that it's not you having to learn how to do something new. It's you're not having to do it anymore. So what do you fill that void with? You have to... I mean, the social skills, interpersonal skills, and creatives are the ones that will rule the day. Because if you can't think, we will only be... the boundaries that we will have will only be based on the limitations of our own thinking and our own creativity. Because you don't have to do it anymore. And it's really interesting. So there are certain people that are wired certain ways like yourself. ⁓ I'm a creative... this is our time to shine. Whatever we could dream before and whatever we could build before, as long as we incorporate, can now be 10X. And for people that just want to show up and check a box and check out, I'm interested as to what the world's going to have for those types of people as many jobs get... ⁓ eliminated in favor of these technology tools. Samy Sam (58:05) And you said it so perfectly. There will be ⁓ two different lines. You will have a flat line where people—because the AI will do it for them—they will stop doing anything. They'll become lazy and just stop. And the people like us, who try, try, try, try, try and learn, learn, learn, learn, learn—it's going to become exponential. All that learning we're going to be able to apply faster and easier. And by the way, I want to come back on two things you said amazingly. Jeff Dudan (58:16) Mm. Samy Sam (58:35) First thing, interpersonal skills are so important. When you go raise money, you are pitching all day, you are learning to tell stories. It's so important to articulate yourself, to have presence in a room. If you have never done that, you have never gone to university, you have never faced a bad grade just because your presentation was terrible, how do you expect that people will vouch and believe in you? We are... ⁓ We remember stories. We are a population of people—humans are storytellers. So this is so important as well. And the second aspect: the people that you will meet. When I went from my old businesses to my new business, I lost myself $1.2 million. Cash! My bank account was like, wow. And I was 27 and I looked at this and I called 19 of my friends Jeff Dudan (59:06) ...us. Samy Sam (59:34) that I met at uni, that were in class with me. They saw me grind for 10 years. 18 invested in their business. You have... university is a gift only if you make it a gift. Anything in life is a gift—the good and the bad. Your shadows are there to reveal yourself. You have to integrate your shadows into the light, because that's the game. Never feel that it's about you. Life is not even for you. Life happens as you. The more positive you are, the more reflective you are, the more engaging you are, the world reflects back. So become engaging with all these tools, become reflective with all these tools, and keep growing. Life is a constant expansion—expansion of your being, expansion of your understanding. I thought, you know, sometimes I would be crying literally and figuratively about some exams because I had to wake up at 4 a.m. with one of my friends, and we'd go to the library at 4 a.m. and we study all these things and I'm like, never in my life I'll pass an exam. Look at me. Every two months I spend literally four days every two months taking Google exams, Microsoft exams, IBM exams, all these exams on Coursera, on all these different websites, just because, you know, the world is going too fast and you have to learn. I never coded in my life. Now I'm coding every day with this. Super easy. Just because the tool... when I'm blocked somewhere, I screenshot the page, say, where am I blocked? Where is the mistake that I made? It will create the new code. What? And you're not going to take advantage of that? Dude, go out there and make money. Like, abundance. It's the age of abundance. Scarcity is over. Take—leverage this. Jeff Dudan (1:01:13) Right. I tell people that in your businesses you'll pay some people by the hour, you'll pay some people commission, but we as business builders and business leaders get paid by the conversation. And it's the quality of the conversations that we have. And it's the caliber of these conversations. And it's who we're having these conversations with that changes the slope of our line forever. And you have to be creative. You have to be thoughtful. You have to be bringing value to these people. But... What else... what could be more exciting than that in life? What could you be more passionate about? What you started with is follow something that ignites you. I forget exactly how you said it, but like you should do what lights you up. Yeah, your highest excitement. Samy Sam (1:02:08) ...your highest excitement. Yeah, follow your— So important. And you know what? Because when you follow your highest excitement, you have those eyes, you have that smile. And recently, I just went from Necker Island with Richard Branson on his island, and I was then in Marrakesh with... you know General Magic? Back in 1989, they were the first... they were a spin-off team of the entire... Jeff Dudan (1:02:18) He— Samy Sam (1:02:36) ...of Apple, and they built the Macintosh. And some of them went on to building the iPhone and all these things. And I'm always invited to all those events. And these people are always 30 to 40 years older than me, just because I smile, I have high energy and I don't only talk about my phone and dancing around. I also have something to say. I also add and contribute to the conversation. So they're like, wow, here's someone Jeff Dudan (1:02:39) Mm. Samy Sam (1:03:05) that no matter what would contribute to the energy of the room—not only physically, not only spiritually, but also intellectually. And people love that. That's the kind of people they want to be around. If you only have... that's literally my secret. They asked me the other day, what do you... like, everyone was saying, ⁓ "I brought my journal to this trip. I brought my wife to this trip." I said, I brought my smile. We are... Jeff Dudan (1:03:14) Yes. Samy Samandjeu (Samy Sam) (1:03:14) Sammy, we're like mirrors and the— Jeff Dudan (1:03:14) —reflection that people get back from us needs to be a better image than it left them with. We go out and we have curiosity and we get the advantage to go to great places and to be with great people and to have great experiences and then to get the best books early and to get those authors on this podcast and for me to get to talk to them. But if that died with me and if I didn't have the mechanism to share that with people, then it would be meaningless. Right? Because... so I have to be a mirror of a better self, a better image of that person than before they came in contact with me. So I've got to find a way to help them, to connect them with somebody, to change their view on something, to point them in the right direction. And that's what I love to do. I mean, at the end of the day, I just... I love to be in these rooms and I love to have you on the show here with us today. ⁓ Can you tell us—? Yes. Samy Sam (1:04:34) And Jeff, I have to add something about that before you continue— to add something, because I think it's very also important for the generation to understand. Jeff's team got in touch a week ago with me to organize this podcast. He already ordered my book, read it entirely, came on, listened to my audiobook. He doesn't have to do that. He's busy. I have other things to do. He has only 24 hours, but he takes time to make sure Jeff Dudan (1:04:42) Mm. Samy Sam (1:05:02) that the conversation is rich not only for himself, but for all the participants and you also listeners. And that's so beautiful. That's someone who cares. All you have to do in life is to care deeply—is to light up and look at what engaging with someone becomes. When someone is in front of you, say, my God, you care about me. You care about the human in front of you. You care about your listeners and you can feel it in every single word. So just care. It's so beautiful as an example, as a commitment and dedication, Jeff, that you are bringing to your podcast. And it's a real honor to be part of this show today. Jeff Dudan (1:05:38) Well, and thank you for... you obviously looked through my book Discernment as well. And you know, everybody gets it, but not everybody takes a minute just to look through it. And even if it's just five minutes or 10 minutes and scanning it, you can get the gist of what the book's about. So let's talk about your book for just a minute. Positive Focus. Why did you write it? Samy Sam (1:05:42) Yeah— I was in Cape Town with some of my friends—Alex Ikonn was on the pod recently—and we were with all these mega celebrities, all these people, and they all looked at me and I would walk in the street, I would go to a shop... people would walk in front of a shop with some friends, people would stand up in the shop, start clapping for me, and I would enter the shop, everyone wanted to take pictures with me—not once but so many times. Jeff Dudan (1:06:07) Mm-hmm. Samy Sam (1:06:27) So all these people started saying, my God, Samy, you are like so different. Like, we know we are famous and stuff, but you have a very special life and you have this energy where you transcend any field that you work upon. And I started reflecting and I was like, why? And I went to Coachella two, three months later ...I still had the agency at the time and I was sitting there like, oh my God, I have really seen... I'm going through a transformation inside of me. I don't know what's happening. And during the night, everyone would party, we'd come back at 3 a.m. and I started writing. I had this period of big downloads in my life. It happened very often recently and I went back and I started writing—writing. In two weeks, I wrote the entire book and it was the first time. This is, I think, the first 32 years of my life. Jeff Dudan (1:07:07) Mm-hmm. Samy Sam (1:07:20) ...were a period of self-discovery, self-mastery, understanding myself—what kind of value I want to embody, what are the roots of those values, and how do I want to connect those values and respond to the world. And after 32 years, now I moved and transitioned my being from self-mastery to flow state. And now I understand that life is not about what I want or what I need. It's a beautiful dance. It's a tango. It's like whatever comes, I have to accept it, because no matter what you believe, what agency you believe you have, God's plan will always be greater than your wildest dream. Only when you stop living with resistance—it's the resistance that causes the pain. It's the holding that keeps you there. Jeff Dudan (1:07:48) Hmm. Samy Sam (1:08:16) It's when you release and when you understand that—do your best, wake up every single day with that smile and this understanding that life will reflect as you. You know, I literally went... but to go through that phase of understanding, go through a phase of growth, I had to go through a phase of isolation, extreme loss. I ruptured my two Achilles tendons, but it set me still. It was a beautiful season, Jeff. It set me still. I was in a hospital bed for the first time in my life for almost 18 months and I had to reflect on life and say, what do I want out of this amazing experience that was given to me? And I started growing spiritually and I reached a point of understanding that in order to reach that flow state—and I reached it—and now I... all these beautiful... you know, even what I told you about AI and all these things, literally my partner was next to me one day and I started having those downloads. I was speaking, shaking, uncontrollably. I was crying. And I went the next day, woke up at 5 a.m., went on a walk in this park, and I understood all of it. It came as a big vision, and I wrote an entire line about what will happen in this world, what's the direction of the world, and how all of this will manifest. And it gave the genesis to the golden generation and project Singularity. Jeff Dudan (1:09:40) Mmm. Samy Sam (1:09:41) ...where I explain how the world will shift. And because the universe works in the way it works, one day, two weeks ago, I go to my friend's place and he tells me, hey, I'm going to visit Richard Branson on his island next week. Do you want to come? I say yes. I go to the island and I meet one of the guys who wrote a book about exactly that change. And before I read the book—where he's been talking about this for 20 years— I wrote exactly the same words. Jeff Dudan (1:10:14) Amazing, yeah. Only if we sit in awareness with our eyes open can we calm the swirl and make sense of the clarity of what we're supposed to do with ourselves. You have to be receptive, you have to be open, you have to learn how to sit in awareness, you have to understand... Samy Sam (1:10:15) You can't explain. Jeff Dudan (1:10:39) ...what matters and what doesn't in the things that are unique to you. And you can live a great life and you can make a great impact and ⁓ that self-awareness... and then the more time that you can spend in flow state—just in your unique ability, in your unique area of brilliance, and be operating within that—you don't... it's not about the hours, it's about the production. And so many times when I give myself a break and I allow and I get away and I let the universe organize itself, it will calm the swirl and I will get clarity around what I'm supposed to do and how I'm supposed to do it. And it doesn't take long to make great strides in your life, but you have to get all of the distraction... you have to find a way to get the distractions out of the way. Samy Sam (1:11:35) I tell... another advice for the generation: stop the noise, stop having people around you. At some point you need to lock yourself in a room. I'm always alone in my office. I cannot have people around me ever, because I will just walk around, sit there on the couch, open a book, turn the book, start drawing and suddenly, stroke of inspiration, I'll write uncontrollably. I will start coding uncontrollably. It's... it has to be... aloneness. Jeff Dudan (1:11:40) Yeah. Samy Sam (1:12:04) ...is a beautiful gift because your thoughts are connecting. You don't hear the noise of anybody polluting your brain. You are one with the code. We are all part of this code. We are all the same. It's like my understanding or my assessment of what's happening in the world is that we all decided to come as souls and we all decided to play this game for one last time to cure humanity from all these traumas and all the data. What we have Jeff Dudan (1:12:12) ...us. Samy Sam (1:12:33) ...done with building the internet and the web is that we have built a web of data and information about all of us. And what's happening in the world right now—and all of us putting that data into the world—is just to cure what's going to happen with the singularity and all this transformation is that we're going to arrive to a point where I call it the golden generation, because we are the ones that liberate our kids and grandkids. Because they will never know what it's like to live in fear. They will never know what it's like to live in a world with limited resources. Because we are the ones that get to build the rails toward abundance. We are the ones that get to awaken. Right now, the entire world is asleep and we can... all of us... experience all this pain and trauma and we think that it's so personal, it is so real to us, but actually it's a common experience. It's all of us suffering. ...and we get to heal. That's what we are. The last mission of humanity is oneness. It's the Apollo moment of the world, when all nations and humans are coming together as one and say, just like the Apollo mission, wow, we have the tools that can liberate every single body from these systems of scarcity. Hey, China, go build the leg, the right leg. Hey, USA, go build the left leg. Hey, Africa, go build the soul. Hey, Europe, go to build the style. It's us, we have it. What we are missing is that oneness. What we are missing is the togetherness. People are always say, I have three or four different passports. If they call me for war, I'm fighting for humanity, buddy. Don't call me because what are we fighting for? I'm fighting for my kids. My kids will have five different nationalities. My wife is half German, half British. I'm Cameroonian, I grew up all over the world. Who do want me to fight for? That's where we are. That's where we sit. Borders, where when we were going on horses. What are we doing? And I think it would just take some time for humanity to awaken to that truth that we are here to fight for each other. We are here to love each other. If we like, we keep loving that division. It's great. And people tell me, oh, I love my difference. love my, great. Let's keep loving the competitiveness that come with all being different, all being in this capitalist society. It's going to take 50 years, but I will make sure that's why I believe that I came here to be a civilization architect and to build the railroad to what it looks like next. Because even if it takes 50 years, we just have to put the next step in front of the other. Jeff Dudan (1:14:59) Yes. Samy Sam (1:15:24) And eventually, if it's not me, it's going to be my kid. If it's not my kid, it's going to be my grandkid that realized that dream and that awakening the society of abundance because we are there. Jeff Dudan (1:15:36) is a bold and powerful vision and extremely well said. I've got two questions left. I've got a curve ball and a fast ball for you. ⁓ before we do that, would you care to share with people the best way that you would like them to get connected with you? Samy Sam (1:15:42) Thank you guys. Yes, my Instagram. I am Semisam. I-A-M-S-A-M-Y-S-A-M. Reach out, send a DM. Would love to connect with anybody. Jeff Dudan (1:16:03) Okay. Awesome. I am Sammy Sam on Instagram. All right. Here's the curve ball. If you needed to gun to your head, start a business in the next 30 days and it wasn't a business that you were currently active in, what business would that be? And this is a question that says, where is the opportunity that you see that you have not acted on yet? Samy Sam (1:16:33) building communities and wellness. Wellness is simply, you know, the... the medication to the soul. The meant any of it, all of them, is just build, just focusing your time. And also because it doesn't take long, it takes a friend. Hey, let me message that friend to see how he is. Let me organize the work. Let me organize. I have one of my friends that gave me the best line the other day. He I'm not a hustler, I'm a matcha drinker. Jeff Dudan (1:16:45) mental, physical, spiritual. Samy Sam (1:17:08) Start going around and drinking matcha with your friends and building that community of matcha drinkers. Start having those discussions because now that you're having those discussions with one, you refer another friend and all together you go on that road. Very soon, what all of us will need is to seek among the community and know that we are not alone. So many times when I was going through the hardest time in my life, The best, best thing that has happened to me is, as you said, being able to call my mentors, being able to call the elders, being able to sit with them and say, hey, I'm going through this. And they said, me too. You are not alone. And the aloneness that those tough experiences we're going toward will bring. Wow. We need a lot of people to just focus on making sure that human being stays at the center. of everything that we build around. We are here to, you we prevail, we are the best, but we need to make sure that we mentally, spiritually and physically, we remain in that position. Jeff Dudan (1:18:06) Mm. Perfect. Last question, right down the middle. If you had one sentence to offer somebody to make an impact in their life, what would that be? Samy Sam (1:18:29) When you had your lowest, lowest, I was at my weakest point, my left Achilles and my right Achilles part, I was playing football, part. What kept me alive and what kept me going is simply one step a day. The lowest part is actually the pivot point in your life and whatever come after, you know, I was just visualizing, oh my God, what's come next is the best thing in my life. And in order for you to reach the best thing in your life, do one step of the day and have faith in the universe. Have faith that God chose you to live this experience. God chose the best, best and highest version of you. So even if it is the craziest, most shameful, most painful, most incredibly bad experience that you are going through, Believe that that experience is there to teach you something about yourself and that God wants you to raise to your highest self because of that experience. Your shadows are what reveals you. So please don't give up and do one step a day. Just that, one step a day. Jeff Dudan (1:19:46) Sammy, you are a gentleman and an incredible thinker and I have enjoyed this very much. Thank you for being on the home front. Samy Sam (1:19:49) Thank you, Jay. Me too, Jack. Thank you very much for having me. Jeff Dudan (1:19:57) Absolutely. This is ⁓ Jeff Dudan with Sammy Samandjeu and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.

Kelly Resendez on Purpose, Parenting, and Power with Jeff Dudan

July 17, 2025

In this energizing conversation, Kelly Resendez shares how she transformed a driven, “Type A” life into one of purpose and joy. Jeff Dudan guides a discussion that spans Kelly’s wake-up call from personal hardship, her conscious approach to parenting, the power of finding her tribe, and hard-won lessons in scaling a business. The tone is upbeat and plainspoken throughout, with actionable insights and authentic stories of growth. Introduction Jeff Dudan (00:00) Welcome to The Homefront, I'm Jeff Dudan. If you grew up in a small town in Northern California to type A entrepreneurial parents, became obsessed with being relevant and significant until a series of life events led to a fundamental change in your life purpose and strategy, which led to a new life, focus, a career shift, and a new book called Big Voices. An invitation to women to awaken, increase joy, reduce suffering, and think differently, your name can only be Kelly Resendez. Welcome, Kelly. Kelly Resendez (01:11) Hi Jeff, what a great way to spend my morning! Jeff Dudan (01:15) Well, thank you for being on. Very excited that you're here. So here's an opening question for you. What events or circumstances lead people to make wholesale fundamental changes in their lives? Wake-Up Call Kelly Resendez (01:27) Yeah, you know, for some that are absolutely blessed, it could be that they read a book, they had a conversation, they went to an event. But for most of us, it comes through, you know, the diagnosis of a loved one or the death of a loved one, a job loss, maybe a divorce, where they, you know, just the structure of your identity starts to crumble and you feel like something's missing. And that's exactly where it happened for me was my mom was only 57, got diagnosed with dementia. My grandmother passed away right after that. And then shortly thereafter, I had my daughter. And all of those things kind of brought me to this place of what I would call a radical awakening that I'd never had a present moment in my life, Jeff. Honestly, before that, I was just so consumed with doing and really being the center of attention in so many people's lives that I didn't even know who I was. So I think it happens differently for everyone. And I hope with conversations like this and people like us out in the world that really are what I would say doing the work and sharing it with other people that it becomes easier for the next person. Jeff Dudan (02:47) You were making a living in the mortgage industry. You were a high performer. You were running 1,000 miles an hour. What was the moment in your life where you said, have to make a change? And what gave you the courage to pursue it and to execute on it? Kelly Resendez (03:05) Yeah, so the pivotal moment actually came in a bathtub. ⁓ Jeff Dudan (03:10) as it should, as it does for all of us. Kelly Resendez (03:12) And, you know, I had just read the book Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle that somebody had recommended to me. I had also just read the China study, which was really, I don't know if you've heard of the China study. It's a long-standing study on just, you know, the differences between disease in Western countries and disease in countries that don't have the same level of, I would say, animal protein, sugar, you know, processed foods, et cetera. And I was in the bathroom. Jeff Dudan (03:18) Mm-hmm. Kelly Resendez (03:42) with my daughter and she was just a few months old and we were just singing like rub-a-dub-dub I don't even remember exactly what it was but like literally I experienced the deepest level of presence that I ever had before because it wasn't about capturing a photo or telling anyone about it because I feel like that's how I lived my life before like my gosh I was the top producer let me call my mom let me do this let me do that and I never really had been in that moment before. And that was the point in which I just dedicated my life to, you know what I would say, becoming the best version of myself. And that, you know, my previous self died and you think, great, that's it. And then you realize like it's never ending. You know, the person I was last year is the person that I am today, but I wouldn't trade this adventure for anything. Jeff Dudan (04:37) just walked out of a training class for new Homefront Brands franchise owners. I do the first hours of training and what you did in your life is something that I try to create the conditions for in their lives, which is before you came to Homefront Brands, you were an executive inside of a company. You did something for a living, but generally they were not entrepreneurs. Some people were, but in this particular class this morning when I asked the question who's owned a business before, nobody raised their hands. So now I have two hours to open up their brains and to create a new awareness of who they need to be to be successful in this role. What do they need to do? How do they need to think? And I give them an add and a subtract piece of paper, simple Ben Franklin like paper with the word subtract on the left, with the word add on the right with a date and their signature on the bottom. it says, you know, as you go through this next two hours and have you go through the rest of the week, you know, there may be some awareness that there's some things you need to stop doing. There's some things that you walked into the room with that you don't need to walk out of the room with. And it is hard for us because we are wired to follow patterns. We are wired to seek our own level of comfort. And our will is an exhaustible resource. So if you really want to make some changes, you're going to be fighting with yourself. ⁓ You're everything that you've learned, all of your nature, all of your nurture to become somebody new to create a new future for yourself. And it's a challenge and many people don't have the courage to do it. They just settle. say, well, or they do it partially they don't make a wholesale change. And sometimes that's just a matter of I'm changing five or 10%, but it doesn't really give you any impact in your life. You might think that you're doing feeling better. You might think that you're doing better, but you're actually just doing a small variation on the theme that you've had for the entire pattern that you've created in your life. What really motivated you to make this wholesale change? Because as I've read your book, Big Voices, which is great. And then you've got a new book coming out, which is The Abundance Frequency, which I want to hear more about. But like what gave you the courage just to say, you know, what I've gotten me to this point is not going to get me to where I want to go. And nothing is sacred. And I'm willing to put in the work and I'm willing to take the risk and I'm willing to to change because very few people in my experience are willing to do that. All In On Growth Kelly Resendez (07:13) Yeah. So this is what I would say, Jeff. Number one, most people hear a whisper. They hear a whisper of like, there's gotta be more than this. There's, you know, like there's more to life. Like what if I were to start that business and holy moly talk about a blessed group of people that get to hear you, you know, share the wisdom that you do with them because what they're really creating is a new life for themselves. But nobody ever tells us when we're young, like, Hey, just so you know, you're going to accidentally get programmed ⁓ by everyone around you. And you actually have a choice. There's this thing called neuroplasticity that you can actually rewire a lot of these things. And so when I talk about it in the abundance frequency, I talk about it like hardware that's got malware in it, right? Like you need somebody to come in and rewire some of these things. And so for myself, the courage really came from loneliness when, you know, I think most of us when we know in psychology, we're trying to gain the approval or attention of one parent or the other. And my mom was that person and I didn't realize it. You know, I was affirmed on a daily basis. I am not the person that is complaining about how my parents raised me, but I think I got over affirmed. and it was something so simple, Jeff, like you wouldn't even realize as a parent. And then you probably realize that you're doing it yourselves over something. I was told the time that I was really little that I was the new year's baby. Well it's the new year's baby at Chico in Enloe Hospital, right? Some tiny hospital. I was born on January 3rd but something in me like created this I've got to be special and from that point going forward I couldn't just accept Jeff Dudan (09:06) Hmm. Kelly Resendez (09:10) the, you know, just normalcy. It was I have to be in the paper. I've got to be this. I've got to be that firsthand raise all these other things. And so and it was always to gain my mom's approval. And so when my mom got sick, all of a sudden, I didn't have anyone that care like nobody cares as much as your mom, right. And and I was like, Whoa, this is really an inside out job. And so my decision at that point was, number one, I'm going down the same path as her. Not sleeping at night, stressed, hyperproductive, all of these things. Whether or not that's the reason why she got sick or not, I'm going to do everything in my power. And so I really started on my physical well-being first. And let me tell you, when you make commitments to yourself, God creates amazing opportunities. Like literally, within two weeks of making that decision, like I'm going to get physically healthy because I was overweight after having my daughter. I was not the best version of myself, whatnot. I'm going to my beach house in Bodega Bay in California and my friend Bonnie is like, hey, I'm going to come. She was coming. She worked for Tony Robbins in Fiji at the point. She's like, I'm going to come and bring my boyfriend. I'm like, perfect. So who shows up but Scott Harris, the guy that runs Tony Robbins wellness program and it starts absolutely storming. I'm locked in a house with a man that is like the most wise guy on wellness for four solid days. Now given I had just been to Costco, so I bought the salami and the know the cheese and the like all of these like every imaginable unhealthy thing that you can buy in Costco the stuff that you taste because we thought we're going away for New Year's like let's have a He didn't need a single thing of it. And I made these things sorry, this is a long story, but they're called the triangles of death. It was Wonder Bread with cheese mayonnaise and onions on it then you bake it they're delicious, but we still joke about it when we see one another because I'm like he literally like educated me from top to bottom on my physical well-being and when I got my physical brain like to a point because I didn't realize how much food alcohol had really had really affected my ability to have the energy to do the work. Like that kicked me into the next gear. So it was that the courage really came from this deep knowing that like, I'm going to create the same life that my mom did, you know, work your butt off, get disease die. No, no, hey, I'm going to enjoy retirement, none of that. And we know how many people that happens to because the minute they stop like things, things shift. And so the courage mixed with the right team. and wisdom started to magically appear on my path and if I told you all of them you'd be like what like that person showed up in your life or this happened talk about divine you know guidance it was there to support me every step of the way Jeff Dudan (12:22) Wow. Part of what you did was you went deep into, and I think in the book you called it self-help. I think you used the buzzword, but my understanding of knowledge that's out there from masterminds, from groups, from people, it's deep. ⁓ I've become very ⁓ aware of my development first through something called Vistage, then from something called YPO, then from something called CEO, then strategic coach and a thing called the Genius Network. And what I've learned is you go into these rooms and you meet people that just say things that are so obvious that you can't believe that you're, you know, I'm 56 years old and I just learned this. It's like, where has this piece of wisdom that could have saved years off my life, ⁓ where has it been? When you decided, so one of my questions was where did you seek knowledge from? And this person just, basically what you did was you kidnapped somebody for four days and you trapped them in your house. other than that, if I was somebody that just woke up and I had a realization, I'm in this job, I'm gonna be in this job for the rest of my life, my cube's gonna get a little bit bigger, my kids might not know who I am. Kelly Resendez (13:30) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (13:50) I don't see the path that I've been on as the path that I want to be on. Where would you advise people to go seek knowledge? And by the way, at Homefront Brands, mean, that's a big thing for us. It's just entrepreneurial education. Doesn't matter which Homefront brand they're in. Doesn't matter what business they're in. Like, how can we pour into these people to make them the very, very best version of themselves and their entrepreneurial self that we can make them? And by the way, of course, When the student's ready, the teacher appears. And sometimes people aren't ready. They have to come to it themselves. So when you came to that realization, was it systematic in the way that you sought out knowledge? Was it happenstance? What did you do? Where did you go? And tell us about that journey. Kelly Resendez (14:36) Yeah, so the good news was I was already very indoctrinated into the goal planning world. And so when I started to approach it, because, you know, being in mortgage, I had the opportunity to like go to Zig Ziglar. There's another amazing real estate coach named Brian Baffini. And, you know, I had made a decision at that point, like my number one priority was being a more conscious parent. Jeff Dudan (14:44) Okay. Mm. Kelly Resendez (15:04) recognizing how programmed I was when I was growing up. Again, I love my parents, but you know, I think we believe our role is to give them our opinions. And and when we really think about it, it's like who do who are we really to be able to overlay this on them? And so I had I had already made a decision like I want them to have strong values. And one of those values is really authenticity. And so I wanted them to be able to, you know, kind of fit into that, into that realm. And then the other thing that I wanted to do was to really raise incredibly independent humans. so, you know, that was, I kind of looked at like, what are my top priorities? Okay. My kids, number one, how do I dedicate more time and energy to learning about parenting and then physical health? And I made massive changes in my physical health like that. It was crazy. Like I went from not sleeping very well, which is a lot of it's food when you're eating the wrong foods at night, that's what your body's trying to do. So I had to really learn a lot about it. So I used a traditional goal planning model of like, I'm gonna read one book a week and then I'm gonna start seeking out going to events. And again, these are things that are divinely orchestrated once you make the decision and you write them down. People that just think that there's not power and writing these things down. When your brain sees a map for something, it's really intelligent. And so then it was I went to a kid's birthday party and I got invited to Maria Shriver's, you know, women's event in LA and got to meet extraordinary humans that then took me down another path of a lot of other things. And, know, like the next year got to hang out with that guy, our toll laid there and people like Elizabeth Gilbert, who had wrote Eat, Pray, Love and a small intimate setting and just so many other amazing people. But what I would say is that was 21 years ago that I started. I was having to go to the bookstore. I was probably the last person to get on Amazon Prime, by the way. Like I was so resistant to it. Now I might get in books left and right from there. I had to drive to the bookstore and I had to fly to events. so talk about, there was a long time in between the things that I would really do besides reading. Today, holy moly, the number one use case for chat GPT is mental health support about all of the resources out there in the entire world to be able to give you, know, what I would tell you is that this isn't an information game. This is a combination between knowing what you really desire. And this is what my book abundance frequencies about really having that desire for the type of life in which you want to live and how you want to feel in it. That's the most important piece. And then the discipline and then putting yourself into the right environment internally and externally. And those are kind of the three pillars. But today you have access to everything, right? This comes down to one simple, one really simple decision. Start seeing your brain like the organ that it is and know that you can improve the way in which it works in your life and that you can take care of it and you can understand it and you can reprogram it because when you start to make that decision that's where boom you start to realize like man there is like this is just an energy game this is an inside out energy game the first time i met you jeff i knew exactly i'm like you're my people it's an input we know like no ego all about changing improving the lives of other people that might not have the courage to do it on their own, right? They could have gone out and started their own company or they could have just gone like, wow, I'm really great at these things. But the structure and the foundation for success that you provide these people, you know, is best in class. And so when we get to that point where we're like, man, I am going into a cubicle every day. I know something's missing. I want to have better quality with my kids. What you don't want is to go become self-employed and be a worst version of yourself. Like you want to really make that decision. Like I am going to feel joy. I'm going to feel gratitude. I'm going to release guilt. I'm going to release stress and really just start to create the life that I really want. But you got to know that you're powerful enough to do that. Parenting With Purpose Jeff Dudan (20:08) You've mentioned parenting a couple of times and you also shared in addition to your mom having dementia at 57 that you have a sister that's struggled with addiction. And so this family dynamic that you grew up in type A parents, you have a sister. you have any other siblings? Just one sister. So two sisters growing up in the same exact environment, take two different paths in life. Kelly Resendez (20:11) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (20:37) And then now you've got your children and you've made a very specific decision about them, one of which is set independent, which I've always said, my children, I want them to be capable, contributing, independent adults. That's it. Do they have capabilities that they can build value and navigate the world? Are they contributing? Do they have an external or internal locus of control? Can they really understand that they're in charge of whatever happens to them, that the circumstances don't define them, and inside of that, they can also create value for other people, and then they're independent, right? And if they can do that, then whatever it is they choose to do, musician, engineer, scientist, whatever it is, then they will generally live a fulfilled life. it's inside of that. So what is your family dynamic growing up? ⁓ What did you learn from helping your mother? What did you learn from helping your sister? And then how did that translate to the philosophies and tactics that you implemented with your children? Kelly Resendez (21:47) Yeah, what a great question, Jeff. First of all, I just wanted to tell you because I think it's hilarious, but I came home to my 20 year old on Friday night with two of his buddies at the counter and he was telling them about roof scientists because I had told him like I want you to go study this he's like because he really wants to Have a business. He's worked for good leap my main company here where we do home improvement financing but I mean I just I was just tickled because most kids on a Friday night are like talking about whatever and my son talking about like hey there's this new thing like we should really check it out because a few of them want to go into business together long term so I just thought you'd get a kick out of that so yeah yeah so I mean that is that Jeff Dudan (22:28) Interesting, fascinating. Kelly Resendez (22:34) is a product of my conscious parenting, which if anyone isn't familiar with what conscious parenting is, it is really just the ability to see like these are not ours. They are they're independent and our role is to really be present and conscious with them. And at the same time, educate them, you know, and so I really did educate my kids on lifestyle choices. Like, hey, I don't care if you want to be a doctor, attorney, a business Jeff Dudan (22:48) Hmm. Kelly Resendez (23:04) owner or any of these things, but like you need to know that when you choose a career, it's going to change the lifestyle in which you live. And my kids are, you know, accustomed to definitely a more five star lifestyle that I've that I've provided for them. And so when I grew up, you know, my parents were not conscious. And so my mom was was an immigrant from Mexico. She had something to prove. You know, I think it's very common for that to happen. And so she started in real estate at a really young age of 19, which I ended up doing my daughter ended up doing as well. And so some of those core things are great. However, like there aren't a lot of memories of her being down on the floor with me playing or being outside doing those other things, because she always had to be doing something productive. And so that was my first thing was to really, really study conscious parenting. ⁓ good friend of mine, Dr. Shefali is actually the largest conscious parenting coach in the world. And so I'm very blessed that I've had a lot of her wisdom through that. But the big difference in conscious parenting is that you make the challenges about you, not them. And so if my son was triggering me, you know, when he's 14, playing Fortnite, before he got his homework done, I made it about me being more powerful and more accepting and then understanding that I can also create something different. Like I used to take his cord with me sometimes like to work or whatever it was. So he didn't have access to it. But I think what most parents don't realize is that, you know, they normally make challenges about them. They're not doing well in school. They're not this. They're not that. Well, I had to be really radically honest with myself. Like, my God, I ordered four point five students that were going to get full ride scholarships to Stanford and you sent me two fairly average amazing human beings, you know, and and so we can struggle with those things and you see it on the soccer field where parents are living through their kids and and putting a lot of performance based expectations on them. And that's the environment that I grew up grew up in. It was performance based. My dad hadn't done any healing, you know, was abandoned as a child and so didn't know how to say I love you yet. Jeff Dudan (25:28) Mm. Kelly Resendez (25:29) I mean, I'll just be honest, I can say it here because my dad's never going to listen to this. He objectified women. And so everyone was pretty or beautiful and he noticed them all the time. And so when you're growing up in that environment, I think a lot of times you're like, well, is that what I'm supposed to be? Is that how I'm supposed to show up in the world? And so, and my mom was obsessed with what she weighed and was constantly talking about like losing weight or, you know, she just didn't whatever. So of course, Jeff Dudan (25:46) right. Kelly Resendez (25:59) my sister and I came out of it two totally different you know experiences because I also had her so as she was struggling in relationship or other things then I set stronger boundaries for myself closed myself off to some of the things that she had opened herself up to so you know I would tell you that my sister ⁓ was addicted to love that was her addiction and unfortunately you know she is in a mental institution now because Jeff Dudan (26:24) Hmm. Kelly Resendez (26:29) because she didn't take care of herself. You know, she definitely...showed me a lot of things that I didn't want to be in my life, but she also showed me how close so many people are, like one millimeter from the edge. She was a high achiever herself, college graduate, whatnot, but fell victim to living in extreme suffering for so long, both with her children and her relationship. so she just didn't take care of herself. It gives me the fuel to be the best version of me every day and to transcend the things that happen with them into helping other people. You know, and that's really what for me, it's not a need. It's more a, you know, like I get the great honor of sharing the strategies and the healing that have really got me through some of the craziest times that, you know, are imaginable. And a lot of times people look at successful people and say like, well, you, you, you know, you've had it different than me. No, I really haven't. I haven't had it different than you. I experienced it differently because I spent so much time putting myself first. Jeff Dudan (27:51) I like to say it's the vibe that builds the tribe and people sometimes are slow to come to this concept of it's the community that you put around you that will have the biggest impact in your velocity and ⁓ your development. I took some time to go to the GoBundance website and the GoBundance Women website. You're co-founder of GoBundance Women and ⁓ Kelly Resendez (28:19) Yes. Power Of Community Jeff Dudan (28:21) I would like to know from you a little bit more about the group. It appears to me to be a very comprehensive offering, everything from masterminds to a podcast to content to groups and trips and an app and coaching services, a very comprehensive offering, but it's a community. And I was trying to, like so many of us do, was trying to...put it in a hold and say, it like YPO? Is it more like coach? What is GoBundance Women? How did you come to be a co-founder of it? And tell us what the experience would be like if someone were to join today. Kelly Resendez (28:51) Yeah. Absolutely. So I will tell you that from my own experience of going on this journey alone for most of it. So from 2004 is when I would probably say is when I really had my awakening at the beginning of that year to you know, I would say 2016 you go to events you read maybe every once in a while you meet somebody that's a little bit interested in it, but you really are kind of on a solo journey, which I think is important for of it. One of the greatest, ⁓ you know, I would say recognitions over time is that when you start to curate an environment that supports it, then it gets you to the next level. And so that's really, you know, that third pillar in my, in my book Abundance Frequency, not going to be out until late this year where it started was just a conversation. Again, Jeff, my life has been so guided. Like I feel like people are always thinking clarity comes like in thinking. Clarity comes from just being curious and open and being authentic about your purpose and what your challenges were. And I was complaining, you know, and I'm going to use the word complaining. I was sharing with a friend. It was right after Big Voices came out. This was a while ago that I wish I had more women in my life that were like minded and that I was struggling with that. And he's like, well, have you ever heard of like go Bundance? And I'm like, no. And he's like, well, I'm an M one, which is another community, but go Bundance is a group of men that basically want to, you know, travel together, support one another. They do goals. They do all of these other things. And he goes, I heard they were interested in a women's division. And I'm like, send me the information. I would love it. Next thing I know, I'm like having conversations with them about it. They're like, Hey, we're probably six months out, but we'll invite you to our first potential thing. And so I ended up joining M1 at that point, which is coed and my friend Rock Thomas, I don't know if you know Rock, he's an amazing speaker and, and, and, ⁓ full of wisdom. I ended up doing that and realizing like, my gosh, my first event that I went to, I was like, ⁓ my people are here. Like we're all carrying around our journal books and talking about the things that we want to create in our life. And it was an amazing, you experience going through that. But then we had this first women's event. And then from there, you know, one of my co-founders, Kathy and I, you know, over time, we ended up building it and taking ownership of it. And now here we are many years later, and I definitely do not have a shortage of like-minded women in my life that are supportive. And, know, the men's organization, over 900 men in it, absolutely great people. And one of my favorite things about them, Jeff, is that they put such a priority on family, marriage, health, knowing that when you get those things in alignment, it takes your business and your finances and your network and ability to contribute to the next level. And so that's really the foundation in which Go Abundance is built. And so in terms of when somebody becomes a member, for the women, it's a little bit different than the men. Men have a little more challenging time connecting or women connect really quickly. So we're a little bit more about scaling your business, your authority. If you want to be an authority figure or somebody that really is building your business through creating a personal brand for yourself or your investment portfolio. So we kind of have those tracks of which you do that. And then there's a lot of different things that go along with that. do a lot of group coaching and I'm the one that's really there about the mindset, like consistently you know, making sure that people are in alignment because no one has taught us. Like, let's be honest, like nobody told us when we were five, like, hey, Jeff, you get to choose what you believe. Like, these are all choices. And, you know, there's a lot of simple things that I've recognized over the last 10 years that now I'm like, man, if I would have known that 10 years ago, just how important the language is, how important, you know, really receiving is. So that's been my greatest awakening in the last few years is a lot of us are really good at giving. Jeff Dudan (33:29) What do you mean by ⁓ receiving? Kelly Resendez (33:35) Like we show up and give and we're not so good at receiving. And so when you look at a mastermind, it is the collective wisdom, right? And you've got to be open to a lot of that. And so we really make sure that especially women who have been a little programmed to be more in their masculine kind of are. getting to that place of feeling just right in their feminine as well. And in the feminine, a lot of it is receiving, but we're really good at giving, women especially. And we give and we give and we give until we empty ourselves. And that's where people have breakdowns and don't do as well. Jeff Dudan (34:16) Have you, I reviewed the GoBundance websites and some of the people that are in the group, very accomplished people, advanced in their careers, somewhat high profile. I imagine that's the avatar for what's in that group. How can somebody who is just building their first business accomplish the same thing but without the time, without the budget because they're really just starting their first business. And the resources are gonna be dedicated to creating that business. There's probably going to be a little bit of uncertainty. they're gonna be stingy with the resources, which they need to be. Although I'm gonna encourage them to, as if you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space. So you gotta get out of, if you're an entrepreneur, it's not fatal, it's not gonna kill you. You've gotta get off center. And you've got to start moving out towards the edge of the circle where the air is, you know, all of the great things happen out near the edge where the air is thin in that rarefied air of, you know, I'm going to go for it and I'll deal with the consequences. But for these people, do you have any any thoughts about how they can start building community within their community, how they can start opening up their minds to different things? I know there's Kelly Resendez (35:23) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (35:38) BNI groups and all of that kind of stuff. But are there any online resources that you can point people towards or any suggestions about how they should think about this? Kelly Resendez (35:50) Yeah, the first thing that I would say is that I would ensure that you have a business playbook and a business playbook has got to be focused on who you need to be. And Jeff Dudan (35:57) Mm-hmm. Okay. Kelly Resendez (36:03) And I mean, there's a lot that goes into this playbook. Be open and willing to change it every single week. But what you need is you need execution, at least on a weekly basis. Sometimes you can shift after a week. Like I look at, you know, how Hayes, Matt and Jason built Goodly. And it was literally like they went all in a mortgage and spent all this money and the phones weren't ringing. And like, literally, if you heard them tell the story, it was like a whole week goes by and then another week goes by. And then finally, Matt and Hayes went to Tahoe and stayed in a, you know, stayed in the cabin until they figured out new scripting the next week they came back and it was like 200 calls, right? Like, where you've got to be in abundance is flexible and adaptable to be able to know that something's not working, but you need to have a playbook. And what when you're really a solopreneur, if you're really starting out, you know, my greatest thing that I did was I made a job of everything that I wanted and I had to be my own employee like 30 hours a week in the very beginning. I had to do stuff that I didn't really want to do but I knew on this job description as soon as I could hire an assistant I'd be able to offload those and so I had a vision for like being able to do that and then six assistants later I only had three things that I had to do you know and that's part of what I've done here at GoodLeap was just create divisions that ended up being very self-managed to the point in which I've now been able to step down and take a step back a little bit. But what I would say is that, you know, from online resources, there are so many groups on Facebook that you can be a part of that are free, that have a lot of information in them, both in home improvement and in solar or other, I mean, all sorts of different types of businesses. Go out there and do your research on the community businesses. Chat GPT is literally changing people's lives. Jeff Dudan (37:46) Mm-hmm. Kelly Resendez (38:03) They can help you, you know, basically determine what are the free resources that you have local. And there's all sorts of free events as well that are out there that you want to be in proximity to people. Nothing's going to stop you from starting your own board of advisors or your own board of, you know, unofficial board of directors where you choose people that are, you know, somebody that maybe has given you mentorship over the past. And you ask them like, Hey, would you help kind of hold me accountable? A little bit to this. Some of the CEOs that I've mentored, now have, you know, years later ownership in their companies because I was there for them, you know, in the very beginning when they were bootstrapping. So what I would say is number one, be open to the idea that you don't have to do this alone. Spend time and energy curating the environment that supports you the best. Some people are great, Jeff Dudan (38:53) Right. Kelly Resendez (39:01) on zoom, go abundance is primarily built on zoom. do we do events several times throughout the year, but it's not that local. Some people want to be in person. And so you might want to look at a YPO or or Vistage or one of those and then also know that what like what is your greatest area that you need to overcome. So this is what I found to be true, especially about some of the entrepreneurs. They weren't as great in school because they like to procrastinate a little bit and yet they're big thinkers and they just haven't figured out like I just got to get the right people around me. So you want to really understand your strengths and weaknesses and be aware of your weaknesses, like really truly be aware of them and say like, do I create an environment where I am going to execute on the things that I really need to like, what am I going to hold back? Do I need my partner to tell me that I don't get to go on this trip unless I do that. Setting deadlines for yourself is really effective there. And then just knowing that you can hire really smart people over time to do all of the things that you don't love to do. Like, I'm a visionary. I am not somebody that likes maintenance. Like, I am a builder. I like building stuff. And then I like handing it off. And just having that self-awareness, that emotional intelligence to know, Like over time, if I'm maintaining something, I'm just gonna get really bored. I like a lot of variety. So now I gotta go on and do something a little bit different. Just know who you are gonna be in the business and know that you can hire the right people. I mean, most of the greatest companies out there, they brought somebody in that were, they were the operator, they were the connector, they were the whatever. Just be honest with yourself. But I also, ⁓ you know, I love Cody Sanchez's environment. She's got a lot of great resources out in her community that's out there for buying businesses and scaling. know, I'm always open if you're if you really are in a position where you want some deep mentorship over six months on scaling your business quickly. That's something that I do and help somebody build a lot of the you know, whether it's funnels for more Legion or or you know, maybe you want to publish a book like you published a book which is amazing on resilience in your story. And those are things that can really help elevate your business to the next level so that you can become somebody that's kind of like a local authority figure. Jeff Dudan (41:39) You've mentioned several things that would lead me to believe that you may have met Carol Dweck who wrote the Growth Mindset book or at least you've read it because Kelly Resendez (41:50) I have not met her, but one of my favorites. Jeff Dudan (41:56) One of the things you mentioned was, one of the greatest lessons from the book is you want to praise people's efforts, but not something like their looks. You're so pretty, you're so smart, you're so this, because then, they feel like they have to live up to that standard. You said your father would call your sister pretty, so she felt like she had to be pretty. think you said something like that. As opposed to, that was a great effort. Look at how hard you tried. so people that understand that they don't have to be perfect, but it's really about the effort of doing it and not trying to live up to some standard that was put on them by somebody else as part of having that growth mindset versus that fixed mindset that says, I already am this. So even if I fall short of it, I have to create the scenario where it looks like I am. they would give tests to people that were unanswerable. And then the smart kids would basically cheat and say that they got it right and they got the answer, even though the questions weren't unanswerable or something like that. But I mean, was that book. I've read it several times. It made a huge impact on me. And it's almost like once you see something, you can't unsee it. And having a growth mindset and what that means, it takes so much pressure off because ⁓ we are a constant student. I learned something last week, I don't remember exactly what it was, but I can't believe I'm this old and I just learned this very basic philosophy or this principle or whatever it was and I'm gonna incorporate it, but now I can't unsee it. So it's a filter by which...As I navigate this life, I'm going to continue to use to make decisions about things or assess things or things like that. Are there times though, as again, going back to that first time entrepreneur, are there times that they should go alone? so look, so much of what I teach them is get in the right communities. This is how you enter the community. You're a business leader. You're gonna pay people by the hour, you're gonna pay people commission, but you get paid by the conversation. And the quality, the caliber of the conversations that you have, and if you're having them with the right people, will take your business farther than you would have ever. So you say, if you wanna go fast, go alone, if you wanna go far, go together. There was a great post I saw on social media the other day, and it was, It was all of the big business founders and what percentage they actually own of their companies like Facebook and Tesla. I mean, was, you know, 6%, 20%, 12, you know, I think Warren Buffett owns 13 % of Berkshire Hathaway. So, and the point that the post made was, look, get other, get all the right people on the bus. Get diversity of thinking, thought, skills. And the only thing you don't want diversity of is value. Kelly Resendez (44:37) you ⁓ Jeff Dudan (44:59) in your company. Other than that, you need incredible diversity and skill set capabilities, age, race, perspective, all of these things. So build a diverse company that when the Rubik's Cube is twisted, it solves itself because you have all of the requisite capabilities and lead them well. ⁓ you know, you know, when, and so it's really about going together, but are there times as an entrepreneur where you need to go fast and you need to go alone? I can think of a couple in my career, what about you? Scaling Up Kelly Resendez (45:35) ⁓ Yeah, absolutely. think there's a time and a place for it because sometimes you need to be able to model what somebody else is going to do. You know, one of my favorite sayings is like, nobody's coming. Like nobody's coming. Like nobody's coming. Meaning like you are the one that is or the creator of your own life. Sorry about that. Jeff Dudan (45:49) Nobody's coming. What does that mean? Kelly Resendez (46:00) When you think about that, some people believe they need to be rescued or they have to have this. And there's such a different experience than I'm growing a company. And these are the key roles that I really need because I've also watched early, early founders give up too much to the wrong people. So I think there are a couple of things that partnerships need values for one. Jeff Dudan (46:05) Hmm. Kelly Resendez (46:26) high emotional intelligence for two, nothing will derail your company like somebody that just is, you know, up and down all the time, which a lot of great entrepreneurs are, which sometimes you've got to insulate the founder or the idea maker by other people that have really high EQ. And so what I would say is there's definitely times that you want to do it alone. However, there will become a point in which you say, like, I no longer want to be an owner operator. I want to get to this next level of CEO visionary where I'm more inspecting and guiding and that kind of thing. It's not for everyone. There are so many situations where someone's like, I love cleaning houses, I get to go in, I do it, I'm done, I come home and I do all the other things that I love. So I don't think that there's one size fits all. But if you're trying to scale a company long term, because you think that you have a really solid business idea, you will need to build this business playbook to know what talent you need. And what I would say is that most people hire the wrong talent at the wrong time. And there is a method for how most companies really scale in the right way. And I kind of believe that too many people think that you need to build the plane on the ground. The best companies are literally building it while they're flying it. Like, Jeff Dudan (47:36) Mm-hmm. Kelly Resendez (47:55) You don't need to wait till it's perfect. Launch your product, launch your idea, keep iterating. I know that we've upgraded the way that we do things so many times. We started off as a mortgage company. We've had this, we've had that. We do multiple things today in the home improvement space. And so when you really think about it, just don't wait to be ready and perfect. Just go do it. That's definitely the way that you want to go. Jeff Dudan (48:24) Good Leap is the company that you've referred to several times. I became exposed to Good Leap as a finance company in the property service space. How did you first get involved with Good Leap and can you just give us the quick little down and dirty about what you did, how it got to where it is today, and why people might want to engage with Good Leap? Kelly Resendez (48:24) the company. for sure. Absolutely. again, divine intervention. I had been doing mortgage for so long and what I had, I had come up with a recipe that was working, but I knew that I needed to do more. So I was running my team and I was speaking. was influencing people in the real estate and mortgage space. had a lot of business leaders that would come to my stuff. And so I was already teaching the mindset and the business scaling skills that I had really learned. I really, you know, like, my superpower is being able to look at an organization or a business from a high level and be like, you don't have a really solid lead gen mechanism built in place or this is that or you need better operational excellence or hey, you know, I checked out your testimonials and like you could really, you know, do a lot better there. So I do really well with that. And I was doing that. So I was doing both things simultaneously. And then he's called me. And honestly, it's one of those things that it was a Friday night and he left me a message at five and just you know said hey you know we've known each other for a little while I know our what we do is a little bit different but I just want to know what your goals are and if there if there's anything that I can do to support you on that. Now I had been in negotiation with Wells Fargo for a while at this point they were really dragging their feet with a lot of red tape and what I was going to be doing more of with them and so I agreed to come over here and the first time that I came into his office and we our kids had gone to school together, all three founders and my and my kids went to school together and they'd always been a call center mortgage company and I was on the other side of it. I was a you know, relationship driven, like realtor focused and the reason why he made the phone call in the beginning was that I was the authority figure in mortgage. I was the person that had created a brand for myself. No one else had really done that back then. And I was speaking and hosting events on a regular basis. And that's really why he called me. And I came over here and right when I got here, his crazy mom, who I love to death, her name is grandma Deedee, was pushing an ice cream cart around wearing an umbrella on her head with streamers. And she said she was like spring, whatever, delivering ice cream to all their employees. And I was all, did you plan this? Like, is this a normal thing? Every single Thursday, she did snack attack. And so was one of those things that I knew that they cared about culture. And where Hayes and I connected was like, Hey, this is kind of a personal growth company that does mortgage and does we were doing solar sales at that point, too. And that, you know, he kind of told me he wanted to change the world. And I'm like, Do know how you're going to do it? He's like, not yet. And I'm like, but I believed in him. And that's really the decision that I made to join the executive team. And I've been here now for Jeff Dudan (51:22) You Kelly Resendez (51:47) 14 years and absolutely, you know, the reason why people want to work with Goodleaf is we're very, very strong in home improvement financing and solar financing. And it just depends on what you're doing. We're, you know, we definitely are thoughtful about the contractors that we work with, but that's because we want to be in business forever. Jeff Dudan (52:12) Working a room, speaking, leading a session, people underestimate the power of that and the impact it'll have on their career. When did you first realize that number one, you had a talent for that, number two, how important it was? Kelly Resendez (52:29) my goodness. ⁓ There was a part of my personality, I was born with it, right? I was that kid that was super attention seeking from a young age, but I also was interested in things that were more adult like. like, I mean, honestly, I remember in first grade, I was obsessed with Ronald Reagan and like the hostages being freed or I knew stuff that most kids wouldn't know and could have conversations about. And so I could tell already when I was talking to adults, or that kind of thing that I had that ability to kind of capture people. And then I started doing stuff at a young age, whether it was, you know, reading in mass or, you know, raising my hand, it was just this consistent over time leadership quality that I'd that I had. I believe it's a skill though. I think my skill got honed because I got so much feedback from my parents. Like honestly, I would do anything and they'd call the newspaper. And next thing I knew, like my pictures in the newspaper. So you kind of get used to that. However, know, influence is the key ingredient in success. And again, it's an inside out job, people can feel you, there are so many people that are ego driven, and you know that they're just out for their self, where there's other people that genuinely care. And when you speak from that part of yourself, like when I get on stages, and, you know, my my objective is transformation, like, I don't want to just go share some wisdom with you, like, you could go find that on chat GPT, like, I need to be able to unlock that next level of emotion for you to be like, that's it, I am going to do a morning routine tomorrow, or I'm going to make this decision, or it's time to go, you know, like create a plan to leave my W2, which is what you know, a lot of people that come to you are doing, right. And so when you look at influence, it should be something that everyone works on. And again, it's something that you can develop. And I've studied over a long period of time. So there's definitely a lot that you can learn about it. Jeff Dudan (54:43) It's amazing to me how many opportunities there are if you're willing to do it. You're getting ready to go on a trip to Europe for a month. It sounds like on the back of speaking opportunities. Where are you headed? Kelly Resendez (54:50) Hutter. Yes! Yeah, I am headed to well first stop is CAN and then F1 Monaco where I'll be speaking at an event there and then back to ⁓ CAN Lions later in June. Jeff Dudan (55:12) Unbelievable, right? Who would have thunk it? And you show up, you work for an hour. I don't know if you're gonna attend the event and learn and do all that kind of stuff. Kelly Resendez (55:21) Oh, yeah, one of them is on a yacht, Jeff, I'm going to be on that boat. And I'm bringing my son with me. So he'll also get to have an epic experience because of it. And honestly, like the speaking thing, talk about building authority and then getting to connect with amazing people too. mean, in every week, you know, I try not to speak more than once a week. That's about on average what I do just because it is a little taxing with travel. But what I would say is that it's like you get to meet people all over that are doing amazing things and you never know where that next big opportunity is. met you through somebody that I was talking to about a women's event that I was having and she and we just started to like go down this path. Jeff Dudan (56:01) OK. They just wanted to make sure that I didn't crash it? What was the conversation? Kelly Resendez (56:08) Yes! No! She was like, do you know Jeff? you know, do it in over at home front, like he's an amazing person in the home improvement space. And I might connect me and little did I know you and I would have so many things in common when it comes to mindset and business building. And then of course, then those connections become like, who do I know that can support you? I connected one of your guys with, you know, somebody that sells franchises so that she can put you guys out there more or I sent it to somebody else in Colorado that's trying to figure out what business she's in. And that's Jeff Dudan (56:34) right. Kelly Resendez (56:42) really where we get to this next level. Like when we're in abundance, I am seeking ways to support people like in as many ways as I that I can but a lot of those speaking opportunities are what have created the fact that I've never done a resume. I've never I've never had to ask for things that you know just end up coming into my life because I've been so clear on my vision. Jeff Dudan (57:11) My son's in the business and I'll just say this, and I've always said yes, even when I knew that I had an imposter syndrome. And I would always say yes to do a panel or to do ⁓ a talk or whatever it was. and really didn't do great, but. Kelly Resendez (57:21) Mmm. Jeff Dudan (57:30) you're getting reps. Like if you hear comedians say they have to work out all the time, like if they don't do something for a month or two, then they're not sharp, right? So if they're going to have a big gig, they'll go to the comedy stores in New York because they call it working out. It's like, if you're an athlete, you have to train. If you're a speaker, you need to stay sharp. You need to stay in the game. You need to stay near it. But my son, he works in the business and he'll get on with a franchise consultant or something. he the other day is like, you know, if I had a nickel for every time I'm on with one of these franchise consultants and they said 10 years ago, I was at a roundtable, your dad was leading and he said this, or I was in the audience of a panel that your dad was on and he said this and this is the impact. And you don't even realize, like, I don't even remember 3%. of those things that I did, but they constantly, you don't realize the impact that you're having by preparing, getting good information, delivering it in a way that people can act upon it, and then taking the chance to get out there. Every event needs speakers. Every event wants to provide ⁓ some educational value, some entertainment value, some inspiration value, whatever it is. And the question should be like, why not me? Why can't that be me doing that? And I really was, it was foist upon me because we were having success in the industry and I think people wanted to know a little bit. But then I really realized that how important it was and just, it's not fatal. You're not gonna die. If you die giving a talk in front of 400 people, it's not because you're giving the talk, it's because of other poor life choices that you've made up until that point that's killed you. So ⁓ we're gonna head towards the barn here in a minute, but. Kelly Resendez (58:48) You, Yeah. Final Thoughts Jeff Dudan (59:17) I don't want to get out of here because you've done so much work on this topic. What are some challenges that are unique to women entrepreneurs? We have many in home front brands in it's it's I mean, we have them in our temporary wall business. We have them in our design re business. We have a lot of women entrepreneurs and whether it's a spouse partner team or or a solo preneurs, whatever it is. like what are some unique challenges that women face because I know you with big voices and many of the other things that you do that you've taken so much time to invest in that particular space. Kelly Resendez (59:57) So I'm going to talk about four things that are like evidenced by data because I think, you know, for me, I look at, of course we're different. Number one, that's the first thing that I want to get across is like, let's just accept we're different. There's no such thing as equality with differences, period. Like I don't believe in equality. I believe in put the best person in the role, but ensure that they have adequate resources and access to the same networking opportunities and information that everyone else does, which is not what is fairly distributed today. And I'll get into that in a second. the four things, number one, women experience stress at a much higher level than men. And when you think about the impact of stress that affects the entire family unit, right? If mom comes home and mom's not doing well, everything in the world ends up not being okay. And so I think that women need to find a way to care differently. And it's, you know, it's not that it's not amazing that we care, but like, I can't care too much about what you think where it's going to impact me, right? I need to get really clear about that. people don't like it when I say that but I'm going to say it stress is optional find a way to do it without it period make that commitment put that on your goals who you're being again if you can be successful without stress just imagine what your life is going to look like and for the people that say you don't understand please don't tell me that like I've been in a world that has been again we're building a plane 14 years going a hundred thousand miles an hour at all times growing a multi-billion dollar company I've raised two kids I was a single mom 100% financially dependent on them. Losing my mom, my sister, and a mental institution. I just lost my niece recently. ⁓ Don't tell me that we have different worlds and I don't understand. I've done it without stress because I know the physical impact. The second thing is imposter syndrome. We experience imposter syndrome at higher levels. What I would tell you is that imposter syndrome is not bad, it's actually good. When you talked about getting outside of your comfort zone, if you don't have imposter syndrome regularly, you aren't thinking big enough. You need to get outside of it. Now this came a long way. I would have told you a year, two years ago, I don't have imposter syndrome. I was flying back from spending a couple days with John Maxwell in Florida at his home and we were recording and John gave me the most amazing gift that I've ever received in my entire life from somebody that I, you know, who I adore and I was just sitting there and I was just feeling like who am I like in his life, like that I'm the one that to help him with abundance and other things. Like I was just feeling it and then I was like, oh, this is what this feels like. And I was like, this is a good thing because I'm pushing myself to this next level of surrounding myself with with people that have amazing levels of influence in a positive way. So imposter syndrome, we must do it anyway. Like put the imposter in the driver's seat, keep moving in the direction that you want to go. So learn how to do that. Number three is guilt. We have a lot of guilt over our family, our kids. The number one rule that I always had was be present wherever I was. And I look at my priorities every morning in my morning ritual and make sure that I know like for me, it's God. am faith first. No matter what I read the Bible 365 days out of the year. I do my morning ritual with my goals. How do I want to feel I do visualization, journaling, meditation, and then if I'm working on a book, I write, but I'm really just in this position where I choose to live without guilt. Like, you know, we're gonna screw up our kids, we could be the best parents in the whole world, and we're gonna screw up our kids because we were too good a parents, right? Like, there's no, like, all we've got to be is present and show up with love and not overlay all of our ridiculous, you know, thinking we know everything belief system on them, like, let them come up with it. And the last thing is overthinking. You know, women are just super cerebral. And so when you start to have a better strategy in which that's what big voices is really around is all of the thoughts. do I really ensure that I stay in my big voice, which is my most authentic voice? Because we have a lot of voices that say, I should care too much about what you think. If you reject me, that's bad. There's a lot of things that go along with it. And so I say when we take those four things and we start to look at them differently and we start to support women on it, because where we don't have the same opportunity and I'll tell you you just really quickly, especially for the dads listening because you've probably been in business but you don't understand this. I get to have amazing relationships with the men that I work with and like I have amazing men, right? I mean, we make up less than 10 % of C-suite in most companies. So you have a lot more men than you do women. We can tell each other things, we can be in each other's lives, but when it comes down to it, I can't text you at eight o'clock at night, you can't invite me on the boat, we can't go to lunch every day because that would not be okay in your marriage, right? And so we aren't going to have the same opportunity, plain and simple. Like I've had to witness that here and it's not I don't think it's a bad thing but I think what we need to do as employers as and for men out there create networking opportunities for women where there isn't that awkwardness. So there's a lot of differences but I also know we make up 50 % of the population and diversity creates so much innovation and creativity that not having us in your boardrooms or on your executive teams or at the head of a company is just a grave mistake and a missed opportunity. Jeff Dudan (1:06:05) you do good work, Kelly. You've put the work in and you're doing great work. I've very much enjoyed having you on the home front today. Really appreciate it. Kelly Resendez (1:06:07) Yeah, absolutely. It's been such a pleasure being here. Jeff Dudan (1:06:19) All right, I've got a curveball and a fastball for you. before we do that, the curveball, before we do that, I would like you to let people know how to get in touch with you or where you would direct them if they want to learn more about you. Kelly Resendez (1:06:30) Yeah, absolutely. So you can always go to KellyRizendez.com and I'll get that over to you guys. I also have a free gift. You can go to downloadthepod.com and it's basically a three-part series on overcoming self-sabotage. And it's called Download the Pod because in GoBundance, we put you into pods of four to five people that really are the ones that kind of become your board of advisors in your life and your business and are going to be there to help you scale without sacrifice. Jeff Dudan (1:06:56) Mm. Kind of like a forum, I guess. Similar to a forum. ⁓ I like it. I like the unique language there. Okay, here's the curve ball. You're well traveled, incredibly experienced, and you have a lot of visibility into what's going on right now. And business is fast right now, especially with AI. ⁓ More change in 24 months than we probably had in the last 24 years. Kelly Resendez (1:07:02) Yeah, that's exactly... ⁓ Mm-hmm. Jeff Dudan (1:07:27) Gun to your head, something you care about deeply at risk. You have to create a brand new business in the next 30 days, and it's not something that you're currently active in. What would you do? If you had to create a business in the next 30 days, and it's not something that you're currently doing, where's the opportunity that you see? Kelly Resendez (1:07:48) Yeah, I believe where I would start a business is surrounded with matching investors with companies that need funding today. I think that there are a lot of people that would invest in amazing companies, whether it's, ⁓ you know, helping an entrepreneur kind of get to this next level, a startup or somebody that's already in late seed funding. I don't think that people are investing in companies, individual companies that the way that they should and they're Jeff Dudan (1:07:58) Mmm. Kelly Resendez (1:08:18) going and putting money in places that they have very little control. Because I believe mentorship is really the key, but I don't know that a lot of people have figured out how to do that. and where you'd be able to tell if a company was world positive or not a company that's making a positive impact in the world and with its people. Jeff Dudan (1:08:39) trend that I like in that space is things like Dan Martell and SaaS Academy, where he has a school for people to learn how to use software as a service businesses. then, you're giving them something that they could never get based on his experience. And then he has the opportunity to bring capital in addition to the intellectual capital. It can bring now human capital and then capital capital. And that's a model that I like a lot because it's like, you know, when I've lost money investing, it's like I didn't have any way to help these people. somebody's yeah, somebody's like, this is a great idea. like, it doesn't look like a great idea. They're like, I'm investing and they're like, okay, they're investing. then, but then you really, you know, I would rather again, I'd rather hedge my bets. Kelly Resendez (1:09:11) Yeah. Jeff Dudan (1:09:32) And if I can give, let's say somebody who's building a franchise or franchise organization, if I could help them be the very best version of their franchise self and get alongside of them to understand who they are, what are their values? Are they committed? Do they have resources? How do they handle stress? Are they willing to do the right thing when the right thing's hard? If I could understand all those things now, it's not just, I like the business that they're, I like the widget. Now I know who they are and I can probably make much smarter investments in that way. So I agree, but I also think there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of investing that is finance and spreadsheet based and maybe they're ignoring some of the intangibles. So I think that they could miss. Kelly Resendez (1:10:05) Absolutely. Well, I think you have to be honest. I look at a lot of pitch decks every week because I work with so many founders and a lot of times I have to be honest with them. Like I don't I don't see your market size. I don't see your story. I don't see it like sorry, like I'd rather be honest with them so they can go back to the table because what they don't realize is that the attachment to a failed business could be shortened so much like with truth, like if they actually stop mentorship because most of us have had failed opportunities or we've learned the hard way and people get so attached to some idea that you're like who's gonna buy this like seriously Jeff Dudan (1:11:06) yeah. Yeah. it's the bias we create. It's you know, everything's. ⁓ you know, I love this. I love this hammer. Now everything's a nail. And you're just I mean, I had a I had a I know he won't listen to this either, but I had a I had a tech guy. Right. And I mean, he was great. Kelly Resendez (1:11:17) Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Dudan (1:11:27) He was one of these, know, slept all day, worked all night, so that when I was building businesses, it was great because I could work all day and then I could work all night with him building technology and building platforms and all that. So it worked for me because it expanded my day when I was younger and I could work those hours. But man, once he decided on something, you couldn't get it undone. was all he did was work around his idea and he created such a hard bias. And it was like, I mean, he would almost tell you anything ⁓ without objectivity to get the solution that he had already decided on. it was, it cost me some money. Other times we had great successes, but it also cost me some money in some ways. Okay, so. Kelly Resendez (1:12:13) Just on that because I just want to add this one thing I think one of the greatest challenges for a business owner is deciding Do I invest in the technology myself and build it or do I go find and partner with other companies that have already done it? And I know for us, for you, whether it's, you know, working with the service Titans of the world or other companies that are out there, like sometimes you just have to call it and say, this isn't worth the energy right now or effort because like you said, the speed in which things are changing. Jeff Dudan (1:12:27) Yeah. Kelly Resendez (1:12:43) a year from now I might be able to talk into my phone and say please create a CRM that's going to book appointments like you never know where we're going to be and so we sink a lot of cost into things that might make more sense just going out and partnering with other really smart people that have already done it. Jeff Dudan (1:13:00) Yeah, I tend to agree, especially right now. I'm one for four in tech tech startups. you know, but hey, at least there was one. So least there was one could have been over four. All right. ⁓ Last question. This is the fastball right down Main Street. And you probably you have a lot to choose from here. I'm sure if you had one sentence. Kelly Resendez (1:13:12) Yeah. That's all. Jeff Dudan (1:13:28) to speak to somebody and make an impact in their life. What's your go-to sentence? Kelly Resendez (1:13:35) I own my joy. Jeff Dudan (1:13:38) Explain. Explain. Kelly Resendez (1:13:39) So that's my point. I own my joy. We give our joy away externally and we have since an early age, like the amount of approval that we seek from others, validation, the bank account balance, the, you know, awards on the wall or whatnot. When you start to recognize that it's an inside out job and that joy comes before. Jeff Dudan (1:13:45) Hmm. Kelly Resendez (1:14:02) Like most of us live in if only. If only I had more time. If only I had this. And like when you get to this place where you own your joy and you don't allow the external world, no matter what it is that's going on to have an impact on it, you become unstoppable. Jeff Dudan (1:14:22) perfectly said. Kelly, thank you so much for being on. Kelly Resendez (1:14:26) Thank you. This has been a great pleasure, Jeff. And I love everything that you're doing over there at Homefront Brands. And I look forward to more opportunities to connect. Jeff Dudan (1:14:36) We will do great things. This has been Kelly Resendez with Jeff Duden and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening. To hear more insights like these, subscribe to On the HomeFront wherever you get your podcasts.

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