Joel's Life Story, hosted by Cal from Big Questions with Cal Fussman

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:01) Today, we're getting to know Joel. Cal Fussman, host of Big Questions with Cal Fussman, is digging deep on all of his big lessons learned in business and in life. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:20) Dude, thank you so much for doing this.

(Cal Fussman at 00:00:22) Well, Joel, you are the right man at the right time because I am thinking about difficulties, obstacles, and a way to turn them into opportunities as a bunch of stuff recently happened in my life and put me in this situation, and then I met you. And you are Mr. Opportunity Through Difficulties. And so I would like to know how you learn this philosophy. Did it come to you through a book? Did somebody tell you about it, or was it just life experience?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:08) That's a deep one. I think it's a little bit of everything. I don't think that there's a way to get through difficulty and find opportunity without just doing it. I think you just have to deal with the difficult situations because when you're in them, it's very much like a sink or swim. You can either let it pull you down into the depths of nothingness, or you can make the decision to do something about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:36) My first experience with finding ways to do something about it definitely led me to the personal development type of world. I had dismissed it many times before, but something about it this time around, my second or third time having difficult moments, I thought to myself, you know, let's just revisit everything, first principles, and anything that I've been ignoring, any solutions I haven't tried, whether I think they're stupid or not, let's give them a try. And I tried the personal development stuff, and that definitely put me on the right path.

(Cal Fussman at 00:02:09) But this happened to you when you're a kid, this started.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:12) Yeah. So I kind of figured stuff out a little bit more in my twenties, but the first big difficult situation, I guess, I got hit by a car when I was 11 years old, and then I was in a wheelchair for about a year. And about 70% of the way through my recovery, I fell and had to start over. So it ended up—

(Cal Fussman at 00:02:35) Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's slow this down. We want to see it in the movie. What happened? Where were you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:44) Yeah. It was January 20. I don't remember the exact year, but I was 11. And it was a garage sale, Saturday afternoon, around 12 or 1, and all the kids were out. Everyone was out in the streets in the garage sale and everything, and a couple of us kids in the neighborhood had those little skateboard scooter things. And we were out and about, and this lady came around the corner, maybe going 30 miles an hour or so. And she wasn't speeding, but she came around the corner, and she was looking down at her phone, and she hit me. And my left part of the body damaged her windshield, and then the right part of my body got sucked down under the tires. And then I woke up to an EMT person chalking, marking me, and my first thought was, oh my god, did I die? And they said, no. We chalk mark you because we're taking you to the ambulance before the police can get here because you need to go to the hospital. And I was like, oh, okay. And they needed to know where I was and where the car was and everything like that.

(Cal Fussman at 00:03:47) Oh, let's slow this down for you. Okay. So you are crossing the street or something?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:54) No. I'm just on the side of the street. In the street, though? Yeah. Yeah. I'm in the street.

(Cal Fussman at 00:03:59) Okay. It's not like you're on the sidewalk or anything, and she hopped the curb.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:02) No. No. I was in the street. But she came into the other lane. It's a neighborhood street, so there's not lines on the lane, but I was very clearly on the other side, and she just was coming around—you know if you take a corner too wide, you end up in the other lane? That's what happened. She came around the corner too wide, and I was in the other lane, and she hit me.

(Cal Fussman at 00:04:23) Now how many years ago did this happen? Because I'm trying to even remember when people started driving with their cell phones.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:32) Yeah. So it was definitely earlier on, right? So whatever 34 minus 11 is.

(Cal Fussman at 00:04:38) All right. Twenty-three years ago.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:40) Yeah.

(Cal Fussman at 00:04:40) Year 2000.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:44) Right around then. Yeah.

(Cal Fussman at 00:04:47) All right. So you get hit, windshield and sucked under?

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:55) Yeah. So she hit me on the driver's side, and so I ripped her mirror off, her side mirror off. The scooter went into the orange grove and landed in one of the orange trees on the other side of the fence. And then I went under, and their best guess is that the back tires ran over my right leg.

(Cal Fussman at 00:05:14) Oh. Yep. All right. So your eyes open. You see the chalk marks. You're wondering if you're dead. No. No. You're not dead. Just taking you in. Could you get up at that point?

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:26) No. My leg was completely just gone. But the interesting part of that is when I woke up, there was no pain. I didn't feel any pain at all. I definitely felt pain later, about halfway to the hospital. But when I woke up, there wasn't any pain. And then my mom came running over. She was in a bathing suit because she was suntanning outside. And we got into the back of the—they put me in the ambulance, and then they took me to the hospital. And then they needed to set the leg really quickly, so they didn't have time to give me painkillers or do anything like that. So they just had me bite down on some cotton thing or whatever, and then they just set my leg right there. And that's when I learned what maximum pain feels like. There's only so much pain that your body can—you know, your body is a sensor, right? You can sense pain. Well, there's a maximum to it, and you can't go beyond the maximum. It's just max pain. And that was definitely it.

(Cal Fussman at 00:06:24) Did they tell you you're about to experience max pain? Did they give you any clue as to what it was going to feel like?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:33) Absolutely. They did. Yeah. Like, this is going to be really painful. I said, okay.

(Cal Fussman at 00:06:38) And how long did it take? Thirty seconds. Yeah. And when the 30 seconds ended, was there, ah, okay?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:47) No. It was pain. I mean, it was very sharp pain. Somebody, one nurse, describes it as when you get a severed nerve or something like that, I believe. I have a visual in my head right now of her in the room talking to me after that. You remember stuff around your painful moments way more than other moments. But yeah. And then it was just, you know, pain. They gave me some painkillers and stuff that kicked in 20 or 30 minutes. And then I was there at the hospital for a little bit, and then they sent me home.

(Cal Fussman at 00:07:20) So you go home, and you're not going to be able to walk for how long?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:25) Well, I didn't know at the time, but it ended up being about a year to year and a half.

(Cal Fussman at 00:07:32) Were you going around ambulating on crutches or wheelchair? What?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:37) Yeah. Both. So, you know, I had hurt both legs, but the right leg got hurt significantly more than the left leg. So I was—a lot of bed rest for a while. Left leg started to get doable enough for crutches in the house, but, you know, you're talking two or three minutes at a time. And then so I'd take a wheelchair to other places, like to school and stuff. And then, eventually, I stopped going to school.

(Cal Fussman at 00:08:03) Now what town is this? What city?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:05) This would be Osprey, Florida, which is near Venice, Florida.

(Cal Fussman at 00:08:11) Okay. So you're at home now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:14) Mm-hmm.

(Cal Fussman at 00:08:14) Your life is radically different. Are you getting homeschooled? What's going on?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:19) Not a whole lot. At first, it was just all the teachers sent notes and nice things and stuff like that. And then, so they gave me a break for a while, for a couple weeks, and then I started going to school with the wheelchair. I did that for three weeks, and it was just too much because kids would bump into me during class changes and stuff, and it would just be insane amounts of pain. And so because my leg had to be actually up and extended out. It couldn't just be sitting in the wheelchair down because it was cast, you know, everywhere. And so—

(Cal Fussman at 00:08:55) Hold it. Yeah. Like, you had a cast from?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:59) The knee down.

(Cal Fussman at 00:09:01) All right. Yeah. What was the exact description of the injury? How did the doctors describe it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:07) I think it was a compound break in the tibia and fibula. I'm not a medical person, but I believe that's what it was called.

(Cal Fussman at 00:09:14) Okay. So you got this break. It's hard to go to school, and I guess at that point, it's like teachers send in homework. How are we going to figure this out? But this is—and you told me a little about your story. And this is where you discovered your big opportunity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:36) In hindsight, it was a huge opportunity, but there was definitely a lot of things going on. You know, you're asking a lot of an 11-year-old to go through the discipline that it requires to rehabilitate yourself. You know? And so, basically, they just described it. The doctor told me, he said, look, you can either have the legs of an 80-year-old woman like you have today, or you can get with this program, and you can follow it, and you can do it. And it's going to take a long time, and it's going to be really difficult, and it's going to be painful, but ultimately, you know, you'll be back to yourself. And so I just had to make the choice. Like, who did I want to be? And I was just like, well, I want to be back to myself. And that was probably just an early first decision.

(Cal Fussman at 00:10:21) All right. So you're at home. What do you decide to do to turn this disciplined time into an opportunity? Or did you not even know it? You're just following your passion.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:33) Yes. Well, I mean, I'm playing video games. I'm a kid who doesn't have to go to school. And then I get, you know, I get bored of that. And then my dad had earlier on—he was a software and hardware engineer, so he had taught me some basic programming. So then I was like, yeah, you know what? You can only play so many video games. You have to do other stuff too. And so I said, I'm going to go, you know, do some programming stuff, have fun. And I was actually programming to try to cheat at video games. So that's how I kind of got into it a little bit more. And then I found out that you can make money programming online. And so I just—they didn't care that I was, you know, 11, 12 years old sitting at home in my bed.

(Cal Fussman at 00:11:14) They wouldn't know. How would anybody know? You're just an email address.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:18) Yeah. You're just an email address, just a username. And so I started, you know, doing a project here for $100 and then $500, and then I got better at it, and then several thousand dollars, and I just kept making money.

(Cal Fussman at 00:11:33) So what were you programming?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:33) So it's odd jobs. So today, we know it as an Upwork type situation, but back then, the thing I was using was called Scriptlance. It's basically like a Fiverr Upwork type deal where you can do odd jobs. People say, I need this done for $100. I need this done. Here's the details. And then you'd bid on it, and then you have history and profile and stuff. So the better work you do, the more reputation you get, the bigger projects you can get.

(Cal Fussman at 00:11:56) And how does that quickly advance? Do your skills get better very rapidly, and all of a sudden, you're in high demand?

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:04) Yeah. Yeah. So I did that a lot, and then I ended up, you know, healing up. So, well, I had the fall. So my sisters, I think this is the first time I shared this publicly, but my sisters thought it would be funny to put baby oil on the tile so I would slip on my crutches. You know, we're 12-year-old kids. So your sense of funniness, that's why we can't vote. That's why we can't drink, right? Because you're kids. You don't have a fully developed brain. So I don't hold it against them. But they thought it'd be funny to watch me fall. So they put oil on the floor, and they called me into the room. And I come hobbling in the room, and I slip and I fall. And then I, you know, re-break part of my leg, and it just extends it farther. So I was—

(Cal Fussman at 00:12:44) You know what? I thought you were going to come up with a banana peel story there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:48) No. It's oil, baby oil or lotion or something like that. Yeah.

(Cal Fussman at 00:12:51) Were they screaming like it was urgent? Or no?

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:55) No. They just called me in the living room.

(Cal Fussman at 00:12:56) Need you to come in. Joel, come in. Come here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:57) I was like, okay.

(Cal Fussman at 00:12:58) And did they laugh when you went down?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:00) Oh, yeah. Yeah. I kind of laughed a little bit. I was just laying there on the floor. I was like, oh, I've been here before.

(Cal Fussman at 00:13:10) And then what happened? It sounded like that pushed you back.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:12) Yeah. You know, doctor's appointment. I got a doctor's appointment. I went and got checked. They did the X-rays or whatever they do, and they're like, okay, you know, it's going to extend the time. So they had a date, you know, to get your cast off, and then they just extended that projected date. And I was like, okay. Well, my exercises didn't change or anything like that.

(Cal Fussman at 00:13:33) Okay. So, and you're still programming?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:36) Yeah. And still playing video games.

(Cal Fussman at 00:13:37) Making money. Mm-hmm. So how, like, are you turning into an entrepreneur in this process, or, like, are you starting to rake in money? What's going on?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:49) Yeah. So I started doing really well. A couple things happen as far as timeline. We can piece them apart, but they're kind of blurry in my head. But a couple things happen around the same time. So I end up going back to school. I'm making money. And one day, I'm sitting in math class, the second week of 11th grade. I'm sitting in math class. This is probably about two or three years after my accident. And the math teacher was also part-time tennis coach. And he decided that that day, he was going to have us, you know, string the tennis rackets through a math problem thing. And I was like, you're just trying to get us to do your work. And he had said something like, don't talk back or something like that. And I looked at him, and I said, I make more money than you. I don't know why I'm here. And I got up, and I walked out of the classroom.

(Cal Fussman at 00:14:42) Oh, man. Then what happened?

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:45) I walked to the principal's office myself. I just got up, walked out of the classroom. The whole class was pretty much slack-jawed. Like, what did this kid just say? And, you know, and I think there was some benefit to me doing these projects and working with adults because I could kind of talk to adults in a different way because I got to work with them through the Internet and things like that, whereas, you know, my peers in 11th grade, they're just hanging out with each other.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:10) You know, so I guess I felt a strange level of comfort. Also, with all the doctors and everything like that, I'd just been around a lot of adults. And so I just walked over to the principal's office, who I happened to know because he was my principal in middle school and things like that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:24) And so he had transferred, and I said, this school isn't right for me. And he goes, "Well, explain that to me." And I said, "Well, I'm making more money online than the teachers make," because I was actually interested in becoming a cop, and then I Googled what the salaries were. And I was like, okay, well, this thing I really enjoy, programming, I'm already making that much money, so I'm just gonna stick with that.

(Cal Fussman at 00:15:43) What kind of money were you making?

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:45) I was making 60 to $80,000 a year.

(Cal Fussman at 00:15:48) Pretty good for junior in high school. And at that point, could you see this going to 100, 200, 300, or is there a ceiling to what you can do?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:03) So at the time, I was just really focused on—I was always sleeping in class. My grades, just a horrible student, because I would stay up all night and program, then I'd sleep in class. I'm like, "Why am I here? This is my sleeping time. It's really ineffective because there's bright lights. I need higher quality sleep." And because I liked doing what I was doing, I was making money, and I was like, "That's great." And so I had a friend named Caleb who was homeschooled.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:31) And he was actually in 11th grade, and he was in college because there was an early exit program for homeschool kids. And I was like, "Oh," so I found out from him that that existed. And so I told Jack, who was the assistant principal that I'm referring to, I said—

(Cal Fussman at 00:16:50) First name. Yeah. Go, Jack. Time to hit the road.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:55) Oh, yeah. Yes, I was like, "Hey, Jack, my friend Caleb did this program, and I want to do this program." And he's like, "So you wanna leave school?" And I said, "Yeah," because he was concerned about what am I gonna be doing all day, because you don't want kids getting in trouble and being out of school and stuff like that. And he goes, "Well, here's the deal. If you can go around and get three different companies to agree that they would hire you for greater than the average salary that these kids are making out of high school or whatever it may be as an engineer without a college degree—"

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:28) See, they couldn't even believe that you could get hired as an engineer without a college degree. It was so far from their minds. Today, it's ubiquitous. Everybody knows the story of the kid who can program and everything like that, but it was not that case back then. And so they just couldn't believe that you could get a job as an engineer, software engineer, without a college degree.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:46) And so I went around to three different development studios within the area, because I could drive at this point in time. And I got letters from them saying that, provided I could have the following skill set, that they would hire me without a degree. And so I presented those to him, and my parents signed off on it. And they let me out of school early, and I went full time writing code during the day and just got into a normal habit, and then hung out with friends that were in college after hours and things like that when I wasn't working.

(Cal Fussman at 00:18:15) Wait. What did your parents do for a living? I mean, it sounds like they're pretty forward thinking.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:20) So my mom and dad were married for 23 years. My dad was a software engineer and hardware engineer who got his training in the Air Force, putting GPS systems into stealth bombers. And then he came out of that and did odd jobs and freelanced. So I got to go around with him a lot and see different projects, different types of technology. It wasn't always just going to dad's office. It was always a different place. And so I got a lot of early exposure to everything from lasers to golf carts and everything in between. And yeah, so I really liked that. So he would take me, and then right before the car accident, they got divorced.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:01) And then my mom remarried immediately to a guy named Joe, and then they divorced a year later. And then I stayed with Joe till I was 18 and then went out on my own. So from 15 to 18, I was just living with Joe. And I had a great relationship with both my mom and my dad and Joe—my dad and Joe to this day.

(Cal Fussman at 00:19:28) You know what? Another example of taking something that would have seemed to most families as a could be a cataclysm. You know, the split up of the family, where the kids are gonna go. And for you, it was, "Hey, Joe. This seems pretty good. Let's just work it out."

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:48) Yeah. Yeah.

(Cal Fussman at 00:19:49) Alright. So there's obviously something going on in your mind where you're just looking around at the best possibility and not being shy to take it, because some other people might have just said, "I'm gonna go back with my mom."

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:07) Yeah. I just, I don't really think about it. You're saying kind things. I'm like, yeah, I guess that's cool in hindsight, but I just kind of—I've gotten really good with just dealing with situations as they come to me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:21) I'll give you an example. I got to talk to this guy—can't remember his name. He was one of the astronauts that was the first person to the space station on Elon Musk's rocket, the first rocket Musk had that carried humans. And he was a fantastic human being. He'd been to space three times. After he got back from the Musk mission, six months later, he came on the show. I got to interview him. He was an ER doctor, emergency room doctor. He would do the BayFlight type stuff. He'd helicopter in to war zones and horrible situations and do trauma, try to save lives and triage and all that type of stuff. And he told me, he goes, "The best way to handle trauma," he goes, "is you make your world really small. You only focus on the absolute next thing necessary, and that's it. And that's how you deal with traumatic situations. That's how you do spacewalks. That's how you do helicoptering into war zones. It's how you do all of that." And I was like, yeah, I guess that's something that I got lucky that I just happened to—I didn't sit down and choose to do it. I just kind of, through the accidents and through the early issues, I just got into this pattern of just dealing with what's exactly in front of me.

(Cal Fussman at 00:21:31) Okay. I'm seeing how all this is getting built, and business is doing great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:38) Yeah.

(Cal Fussman at 00:21:39) And do you have a high school graduation?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:43) No.

(Cal Fussman at 00:21:43) No high school graduation. You're just gone, booted upstairs.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:47) I took a test. It was an early exit program test. They gave me six workbooks. They said, "You have eight weeks to do this." I did them, and they were not hard. I'm not saying that I'm smart. They were just—a fifth grader could have done them. The bar was not high at all. And so, because I told you I wasn't a great student, but the bar was not high. And then you get the degree, and then they just mail it to you. It's a pass or fail, not graded exam, and then you pass, and they mail you the degree, and then that's it.

(Cal Fussman at 00:22:19) And what are you thinking then? Do you have an idea where you wanna go?

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:24) Well, at the time, I think I wanted to make some CMS system for magazines because I knew this person that owned a magazine, and I was gonna try to build a system to do that.

(Cal Fussman at 00:22:34) Let me back up. CMS?

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:37) Like a content management system for magazines.

(Cal Fussman at 00:22:41) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:42) Yeah. So I knew how to build these systems, and I knew magazines were going online, and I knew someone that my sister rode horses with that—and it makes it sound like we're wealthy, but we're not—but I knew someone that my sister rode horses with that owned this magazine, and I was gonna try to pitch it to them. And then while I was kind of working on that, I ended up—because Joe and my mom are both real estate agents, and while they were divorced, they still worked together at the same real estate office.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:09) And so I would kind of go there and hang out throughout the day, and I had my little computer set up in the back, and I'd do my projects and write code. And then a couple realtors had asked me, they said, "Hey, can you do something, solve this problem?" And they were complaining about it. I was like, "Yeah, I could solve that." And so I built some stuff, built some stuff, and then that went on for several months until someone approached me and wanted to buy it from me. And I didn't know a lot about business, but I had read a book or seen something where they said, if they wanna buy it from you, don't become business partners with them. Right? Don't let them buy it from you. Instead, become business partners so that instead of getting one check, you'll get a much steadier check, and it'll be real big when it sells. And so I just knew that little bit. And so I just said, "No, I'm not gonna sell it, but we can do something together." And so I got to go, and we did that. And we built teams and teams of teams of engineers and took on clients, and then that grew. And then I sold that.

(Cal Fussman at 00:24:05) So you have your own business now?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:07) Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Real estate software.

(Cal Fussman at 00:24:10) And how old are you now when this is happening?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:13) I don't get old when things are fuzzy, but it was 19, 20, around there.

(Cal Fussman at 00:24:18) Alright. So things are moving along here. And what's the next big event in this transformation?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:26) Well, one thing that kind of happened that's a separate story line is I went through this whole process of getting hit by the car—from 11 to 21, I went from normal weight up to close to 300 pounds, then back to normal weight.

(Cal Fussman at 00:24:43) What?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:43) Yeah. I got really depressed. I got really depressed with the whole of not being able to live my normal life and being in the wheelchair thing. And I was home all day. And my parents—I said the best gift that they ever gave me was how uninvolved they were in my life. I don't mean that in a sad way. They let me have a lot of autonomy in a very good way. So I'm really grateful that everything worked out there. But yeah, I got really depressed for a while.

(Cal Fussman at 00:25:08) Does this mean you're just driving over to Bojangles all the time? Or—

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:13) No, I was ordering—for some reason, I lived on the second story with the broken leg at one point. We moved around a lot too. So I have this very vivid memory of the Domino's guy walking up my stairs and bringing it to my room, because that's what he would do. We got to know each other pretty well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:33) I actually tried to start a business then too. Here's a funny story. So I tried to start a business because I was sick of eating Domino's every day, and I was getting really fat. And I was like, "I want Outback or I want Chili's or something." And at this time, I couldn't drive. I think I'm 13 or 14, probably 13. And I'm like, "Alright, here's what I'm gonna do. I just learned from somebody about the fact that you can put ads in a newspaper to hire people." I was like, "Okay." So I learned that fact, and how much that cost, like 30 or $50 or something. It's like, "Okay, cool." And then I learned that you can get a phone number. And I had been writing software, so I knew how to do a website, and I was like, "Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put an ad, and I'm gonna call the phone company, have them come install a phone line," which they did, right? So I paid them. They came and did it. "And then I'm gonna put an ad in the newspaper, and I'm gonna hire somebody to drive. And then I'm gonna pay them to go get me stuff, and then I'll put a website up, and I'll have other people—if they want food, there must be other kids at home that want food too because their parents are working during the day, and they can't get food until their parents come home or whatever. And you can only get food from places that will deliver. And I was like, I want to—let's figure this out." And the reason why that didn't go forward was because the lady wouldn't let me post the job post because I sounded prepubescent. She thought it was a prank or a joke, and she wouldn't let me make the purchase and put the ad in the newspaper.

(Cal Fussman at 00:26:53) You needed somebody to call for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:56) I know. I know. So I just—but life just does what it does. And so at that same time, I just said, "Well, I'm already making money over here, and I'll just keep doing this." And so I did, and then I started my own diet.

(Cal Fussman at 00:27:11) So what did you get yourself down to? Salads and what else?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:15) I just ate normal amounts of food and not processed food. My friend Caleb was fit. He was really fit. And I was like, "I'm gonna follow you around and eat whatever you eat." And he's like, "Okay." And so I just did, and life got a lot better.

(Cal Fussman at 00:27:32) Alright. So you figured out a way to turn the obstacle of obesity into an opportunity. What was the next transformation?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:45) The next one. So I make some money. I lose some money. You want me to talk about the financial guy, Robert, and that whole thing?

(Cal Fussman at 00:27:55) I definitely would like to hear that story. Yeah. Because when you told me, I was just smitten with that story, because it sounds like you developed an app or did something really great that put you in the stratosphere and allowed you to buy a big house and a sports car, and you're living the life. So what happened?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:17) Yeah. So it was a series of four different real estate softwares that I built back to back. Right? I got my first one, and I figured out business relationships, how they work. I started—I went to my first conference ever, and I figured out who professionals are and how businesses operate. And so I did several projects back to back that, you know, I roughly made over $1,000,000, netted. Right? So I'm sitting there, 19, 21-ish, that age range, because they sold sequentially over the course of two years. It wasn't just all at once. And then I had the house, had the car, and when I had one of my first big transactions, my parents are like—it was Fourth of July or something. They're like, "We want you to come up for Fourth of July."

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:59) And I was like, "Okay, cool." And they were on the beach, and they had their friend Robert with them. And Robert was a finance—well, he was—he sold his business, but he was a financial advisor, and he had a financial advisory practice. And he said, "Hey, you know, you just got some money. Let me tell you how to do tax strategies. Why don't you come in?" And I was, you know, arrogant and young, and I was like, "I know how to make money. I made the money, and I know how to do this. And I can always make more money, and I can always sell more projects and things like that." So I was like, "I'm good. Thanks. I don't wanna pay somebody to manage my money. I can manage my money." Uh, turns out—

(Cal Fussman at 00:29:41) Alright.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:42) Two years later, I'm broke. Maybe three years later.

(Cal Fussman at 00:29:47) That happen? Because you're on a roll. You're getting work, and you're developing. How did you all of a sudden go broke?

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:56) Well, so I got lucky the first time building those softwares because I was around the people who were having the problems. And the second time, I really screwed up because I just built something that I thought would be great.

(Cal Fussman at 00:30:08) Without knowing the true problems that...

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:12) I was like, I'll just build something that's gonna be great that I know people need, and I didn't involve people. And that's how I learned a lot about making product. I had just happened into it and got lucky on the first time, then I learned an expensive lesson the second time.

(Cal Fussman at 00:30:26) The first time, you were solving problems. The second time, you're creating content.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:31) Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Creating something that would be expensive and nonusable.

(Cal Fussman at 00:30:37) That content that you loved. But whatever. So okay. So you run through all the money that you had earned in this process?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:48) Yeah.

(Cal Fussman at 00:30:48) And as you're seeing it slip away, are you getting nervous?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:52) I'm an optimist to a fault. I've learned how to manage that a bit, but, you know, I wouldn't blame an 18-year-old whose frontal cortex isn't fully developed, who's been given a lot of money and who's had a lot of interesting opportunity come his way. You know, I see that, and I'm like, yeah, I kinda get it. You know? It's really easy to go to your head for adults who do really well. Come on. It's even easier for kids. You know?

(Cal Fussman at 00:31:24) All right. So the money's starting to slip through your fingers. You're seeing that this product you developed has no application to anybody. And how low does it go?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:40) Oh, yeah. So it goes to zero. So it was a sad fall. The last nine, ten months was pretty sad. But I was positive attitude and making it happen and trying to figure it out and, you know, slowly just cut down all the expenses that I could. I still had the house and the car, but cut down everything.

(Cal Fussman at 00:32:01) How big was the house?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:02) It wasn't crazy big. It was, like, you know, two, three thousand square feet, and it was really nice. I'd paid and built it. I didn't just buy an existing house.

(Cal Fussman at 00:32:13) Oh, so you had built your own place, customized it. And what kind of car did you buy?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:22) At the time, I was very excited. It was a 370Z, and it was a pretty awesome car at the time.

(Cal Fussman at 00:32:31) Okay. So you got your dream car, house that you built, and now you're out of cash.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:39) Mm-hmm.

(Cal Fussman at 00:32:40) And what happens next?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:42) Yeah. I refer to it as the night.

(Cal Fussman at 00:32:45) The night.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:45) The night. There was one very specific night. I'll set it up for you. I'm in the house. There is no electric because electric company shut it off because I didn't pay the bill. I am basically in foreclosure. Right? At the time, I actually was very in foreclosure. I had a foreclosure attorney and everything. And so I'm in foreclosure. Electricity goes out in the master bedroom closet on the floor with my dog, my dog, Ted. And, you know, just brought my comforter in there, and I wanted to be sort of in a smaller space because there was repo man running around banging on my windows and my doors. So that was something. But luckily, it was kinda cool because my neighbors wouldn't give them any information. I was like, that's kinda nice of them. Because I didn't even really talk to my neighbors. So it was just like I was like, oh, that's community. That was one of the first times I saw community. I was like, oh, there's community. That's kinda cool. So yeah. And so I'm sitting there. Banging on the door, and I have enough, you know, I think I had five or seven dollars or whatever of cash in my pocket. And I was watching that cash dwindle. Right? Because I knew there I'm gonna try. I'm gonna swing. I'm gonna do everything I can until the very last penny to turn it around, specifically because, you know, my parents and everybody were really proud of me. They would tell all their friends, holiday parties and events and all of that about, you know, how successful their son was.

(Cal Fussman at 00:34:11) A big problem. You couldn't admit the failure. You couldn't admit that everything you'd built had fallen apart and your image as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:23) Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know it was even an option. You know? I'm just walking through each moment, and so I'm like, you know, I wouldn't necessarily wanna ask my family for help with my business stuff anyways, you know, because...

(Cal Fussman at 00:34:36) You did this on your own. And it's like every time they didn't really meddle with your life. You just had Domino's guy who delivered a pizza on the second floor.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:44) Yeah. Yeah. I just figured things out. And so I, you know, sitting there, and I have candles lit. And so I tell people the way you know the story is true is the following. I know that if you take scented candles and light them for light and sleep, you are in big trouble because you will wake up with soot all over your face. Like, you should not do that. You should not have scented candles lit that are decorative, nice things for light and use them. And they, that black smoke that comes off of them when you start them, that's like the soot. And so I woke up in the middle of the night...

(Cal Fussman at 00:35:21) Like a coal miner.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:22) Looking like a coal miner, man. And so I was like, all right. Tomorrow's the day. So I woke up, got in my car. I was watching my gas tank. I had just enough gas to get up there to my parents' house, you know, put that seven dollars in. And I told them, I was like, hey, this is what happened. And they were pretty shocked. They were like, wow. You know? Because you can keep up appearances pretty well for a while there. Right? And so I asked them to invest in the next project I wanna do. And I never asked my parents to invest before. All right? I've actually never taken money from them ever to this day. I've never taken money from my parents. And so I said, hey, I need you to invest. And they said, no. But we'll give you all the food in our freezer, and you can take that home. And tomorrow, you can go talk to Robert, who...

(Cal Fussman at 00:36:04) The financial guy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:04) The financial guy, because he happened to be their financial advisor. He goes, you can talk to Robert. And if you have a good enough, solid enough business, because she was a doctor, my stepmom and my dad. And she's like, if you have a good enough business that Robert would invest, then we'll invest. And so I said, okay. And so I went to Robert the next day, and I said... Yeah. I met him. He was so nice, and I describe him as an angel from heaven because this guy was like, he treated me as if I had just had the exit. You know? And he knew the whole story and everything too. My parents told him. And he was just so kind, and he said, here's what I wanna do. He goes, we're not gonna invest in your project. At the time, it was some other real estate thing I wanted to do. He said, we're not gonna invest in that, and good job that we didn't. Right? And he goes, I want to build a financial software with you. I said, okay. And he goes, I want to make you cofounder and 50% partner, and I wanna pay you a nice salary. Go calculate in a spreadsheet how much money you need, and then we'll give you a little bit more than that so you can have your bills and everything paid and figure out how to, you know, get your life back in order. It was 60 to 80 thousand dollars or something like that a year. And I was like, are you kidding me? Wow. I don't know. I definitely didn't deserve that, but it happened. And I was very, very grateful. And over the course of three years, Robert and I built software together. And the idea was that we would build it and then sell it to other financial advisors. And watching Robert was easily one of the most beneficial experiences of my entire life. And because what I got to do is I got to see somebody who was incredibly bright. He was an Air Force pilot that had flown in active duty, fought in war. I think it was Desert Storm or something. Really sharp guy, very disciplined, and had his practice. And I think he had 10 or something people when I started working with him, and really good with numbers. He had a degree in mathematics and everything, and so he was really smart with numbers. And so he had the street cred, but he was also an amazing salesperson. And so I got to watch this person who had both technical capabilities in numbers and sales abilities. And I got to watch how he would present things to people, and he would try and experiment. And I got to watch him run his business for three years. So I watched him... I learned sales from Robert. We build this financial software company. And after three years, he grew from one office to four offices. His business really grew fast. And it was maybe 5% due to the software. Like, the software made it more... the software allowed him to take a position that he would have to pay 150 for a year and have one of those people instead of 10 of those people. So it just made this process that he was using at his company way more streamlined. So it was useful. And he said... I was like, we got it. We're good. You know, like, we're using it. It's great. Now's the time. It was a mature software at the point in time because we had run hundreds, millions of dollars of financial planning through it, and so it was strong. And I could tell he was dragging his feet for the last year. And I was like, I don't know why he's dragging his feet. So finally, I was like, hey, Robert. Why are we not selling this to other people now? And he's like, I don't wanna sell it to other people. He's like, it's really good. He goes, it really helps the business. He goes, I just don't want my competitors to have it.

(Cal Fussman at 00:39:45) So all the work that you put in, and you own 50% of the company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:50) Yeah. So I was like, you know, he offered to buy it from me, buy my equity out. I was really grateful, and I owe Robert everything, so much to this day. And so I was super grateful, and I said, you know, great. Thank you. How much? I just took whatever he offered me, and it was enough to go fund and start the next business, which was the podcast. And the podcast grew pretty quickly over two years, and then it became the top leadership tech podcast in the world. And then...

(Cal Fussman at 00:40:23) How did you have the idea to start a tech podcast?

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:27) Oh, yeah. So I had wanted to write a book for a while about building technology teams. Not about entrepreneurship or anything like that. Just like, hey, I made a bunch of mistakes. I hired people. I built my first teams. I made these idiotic mistakes and just don't make them. Like, here you go, people. And I had been helping some other engineers and stuff in the area, geographically close, about, you know, my experience. A lot of people would say, oh, go talk to Joel. He did something like this with growing teams of engineers. And so I just noticed I just kept saying the same stories over and over. And eventually it went from being cool to, like, all right, I just need to write this stuff down so I can give it to people when they have these questions so I don't have to have the same conversation a hundred times. So I was trying to get this book done in probably for a year, year and a half, and it just wasn't happening. I just didn't have sufficient motivation. Then my mom called. My brother's a doctorate at this point in time. So my mom called, and my brother called, and they're like, hey. You know, mom's having a weird stomachache, and so she's gonna go to the hospital. Like, can you help with A, B, or C? Right? And I was like, okay. Cool. And so I was helping out, and she was in the hospital for two weeks, and they finally figured out that it was leukemia. And they said, but it's not aggressive. You know, she'll be able to go up to the Moffitt Cancer Center, and they'll be able to treat her. And, like, she should have a pretty... they painted a pretty bright picture. I was like, cool. You know, that's exactly what I would have done. Honestly, I think that's the only disposition to have of going into a difficult situation is a bright perspective. And so, you know, six weeks later, we're in the hospital holding her hand as she takes her last breaths. And that was really, really tough. And I could tell that there was a big difference between how my brother and sister handled it and I handled it. I don't know why. I was just okay, you know, with it. And they were crying and everything, and I was sort of supporting them. I definitely cried like a little girl later. Right? But in that moment, it was just like, this role needs to be played. Like, the stable person, the strong person need... it just kinda happened. And I was like, I just didn't feel incredibly emotional at that point. It was just like, I need to... I felt more of a desire to be there for my brother. Like, I was more focused on being there for my brother and sister than I was on the fact that my mom was dying in front of us. You know? And so that happened. And then I woke up, you know, the next day, and I was just like, dude, I gotta try. I gotta really, really, really try. And also in there, there was some day where I was frustrated about not getting results that I wanted, and I heard this quote from this guy that will stick with me to the last breath I take. And he said, the most frustrating thing in the world is expecting above average results without being an above average person. And when I heard that, it was like mic drop. I was like, that's my problem. Like, I've had all these great things sort of come across, and I kind of participated in them, but I wasn't being great. I was just kinda handling each situation as it came. I wasn't intentionally trying. You know? And so I said, I'm gonna start trying. Like, life is finite. I just saw it. Like, you could tell somebody all day about how finite life is. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Watch one of your... let one of your parents go in front of you. That is just, it's a different... it's a different experience that there's no other way to experience it. And so I was just like, I have to start trying. And so I woke up the next day and, you know, I found the Tony Robbins type stuff and life type stuff and started, you know, putting posters up all over my walls and ripped my TV out. And, you know, my wife at the time was not that happy. My girlfriend, she was my girlfriend at the time. Got rid of the TV, wrote all these things on paper and scanned them and copied them and pasted them up all over the house and on my mirrors and everything. And, you know, like, don't quit and keep going and things like that. And then I just started on that book and got that book done in a couple months. And then I wanted to release that, but I didn't wanna get yelled at, you know, on Amazon.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:53) And so I said, which of course you always still get yelled at on Amazon. But I started talking to other technology leaders that had experienced what I had experienced and just sort of checked things with them that were in the book and discussed some of the topics. And these were just phone calls and basic things like that. And then ultimately, it turned into the concept of this podcast because people were doing podcasts at the time. And so I said, okay, cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:19) Let's do it as a podcast. And then, you know, day one, there's like three people listening and two of them are my iPad, my iPhone, and my wife. Right? That's like day one. It's like, alright.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:32) Cool. You know, we go for a couple months. I start going crazy with it. Right? Like, I am full on Tony Robbins type, Tim Ferriss type deal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:42) And so I'm doing six episodes a day. I'm losing my voice. All of this happened while my first kid came into our life. We bought a house down the street, the same exact house, the same exact floor plan, except for it was completely mirrored to the house that had gotten foreclosed on. It was sort of like my, you know, comeback moment, I guess.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:06) And so I was very excited about that. It was in the same neighborhood, just like a street or two down. And yeah, so I just go crazy working on it. And—

(Cal Fussman at 00:46:17) Well, it sounds like if you're doing six podcasts a day and you're putting them out in that cadence?

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:25) We're putting them out as fast. So I took some of that money that I had gotten from the financial software, and I rented an office, a very small office, like 600 square feet or something, and hired a producer who didn't know how to be a producer. And I knew that too. It was like a friend of a friend, and it was pretty cool. And he's like, I want to.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:45) And I was like, okay. Cool. And I was like, here's a test. And I gave three people a different—three people—a test, and he came back and he did the best job.

(Cal Fussman at 00:46:52) And I—

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:52) was like, this guy can learn. Once I found out he could learn, I was like, we'll be fine. If he's hungry and he can learn, then we're good. So we start—he's editing and sending them out as quickly as possible. My wife approaches me and she goes, you have to cut back the podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:07) And because keep in mind, I'm not making any money right now. I'm just burning through savings. Right? So it's like, where have I seen this before? But now I have a wife and a kid at home.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:16) Right?

(Cal Fussman at 00:47:16) Oh, wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:17) And so I, we, you know, I sort of agreed on what the floor would be as far as savings and what we're gonna be doing. And so, you know, we're going through, you know, a year. Well, so first couple months of doing several a day, five, six a day, and putting them out as quickly as possible, talking to whoever would talk to me. Right? Just sending mass email out at night, doing calls the next day, and just chaining them back to back, taking the best ones, putting them to the front of the queue, and rocking and rolling.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:44) Then about six months into that, so I ended up toning it back to like three a day, two or three a day immediately, because I was losing my voice, and I would come home, and my wife would say, look, we can't have a marriage if you can't speak to me. And I said, baby, don't worry. I'll learn sign language. No. I was drinking the punch, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:03) I was full on, you know, just grinding as hard as I could. And so I toned it back, and then six months or so go by, steady growth of podcast listeners. It's going, doing everything I could possibly do. And then I get a call, and I can't remember. I got two calls within like a week, and I can't remember exactly which ones they were.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:24) But it was something along the lines of there was the CTO of Microsoft and the CIO of T-Mobile. And one had listened to the show and wanted to come on and one, it was through a PR relationship. I get them mixed up all the time. So bottom line is these two big people were gonna come on the show. And I was like, whew.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:44) You know? I was so pumped. I was so excited. And so I did the shows, and then they aired, and then we got a huge pop. And, you know, Microsoft tweeted out through Microsoft's handle, and it's hilarious.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:57) And it was funny because I had my wife's sister come over and take photos, you know, because she's a photographer to use for the podcast and stuff. And so she had staged it and everything, and apparently, the microphone wasn't plugged in. And that's the photo that Microsoft used to promote the episode. And we just got flamed in the comments. Everybody's like, oh, there's no—that's not plugged in.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:23) That's so staged. That's fake and everything. I was like, that's just the stock photo we're using to—anyways. So that was fun. But so then it got popular.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:33) And then that sort of was the switch of me every night sending out 200 emails, just anybody who would come on to talk about topics and things like that related to tech leaders, to people starting to reach out, like, hey. Can so and so come on your show? And I was like, well, this is great. That went on for a while. We found out we could start licensing the content to leadership development training programs, and so we started doing that and we started making money.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:58) And then started making, you know, pretty good money too because we built some leadership software to help distribute the content, and then people were paying for that software. And, you know, one day, one of my past guests had talked to me. His name is Ben. He said, hey. I heard the CTO of NASA give this advice on your show.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:15) He goes, I got, you know, 50 leaders across the globe. He had like a 300-person company, and they're pretty dispersed. He said, can you take like the three-minute chunk of him giving that advice and turn it into a leadership challenge? Because, you know, the cold water challenges were popular at that time. Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:30) You know? And they're all going viral. So he's like, can you turn it into a leadership challenge, and then I'm gonna send it to all my leaders because they're all in different time zones. They're gonna do the challenge and then get back to me. I was like, well, how much will you pay for that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:40) And he goes, well, my leadership training budget every year is $50,000. I said, so if I build this for you, will you sign a contract for $50,000? He goes, yeah. I sent him a contract. He signed it. I stayed up for a weekend, like several days.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:53) Like, I was up as many moments as I could. I called my wife and I said, you won't believe this. I said, I love you, but I'm gonna disappear for like four days.

(Cal Fussman at 00:51:02) And—

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:02) I just—

(Cal Fussman at 00:51:03) This is an amazing woman because she was with you during the time of scented candles, the coal miner's days. And—

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:11) Right at that—that's when I met her.

(Cal Fussman at 00:51:12) Just for her to stick with you at that point. That's the keeper.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:17) Yeah. Yes. Well, so she didn't know. I hid that pretty well from her. She didn't know about all of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:23) So she met me right after Robert gave me the opportunity.

(Cal Fussman at 00:51:30) Oh, oh, okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:31) And then I had—so I got my power back on. So I met her shortly after Robert did that, and I kind of got up my footing a little bit. But we're talking like, we're down to like the weeks. It's like, I got my power on, and then like two weeks later, I meet her. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:46) And so, you know, she obviously, as we're dating and stuff, sees all this happen. Because I have to leave the house because my house foreclosed. You know, I ultimately didn't have enough cash to save it because they wanted, you know, a lot—a lot of back stuff. And it actually I had a positive equity in it, so I did like a short sale thing or whatever. But it all worked out, whatever the foreclosure attorney did because ultimately I got a $7,000 check.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:11) So I was like, alright. You know? Okay. Cool. So then I went and rented like a two-bedroom apartment, bought a, you know, $5,000 Ford Focus, cash.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:21) So not trying to do the debt thing again. And I basically started over. I had like a 500 credit score. I mean, today, it's 803. Like, so then—803.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:30) There we go. There we go. Yeah. And it's funny. When you get a high credit score and you do your finance right, you end up not needing credit, really.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:39) But I, uh—

(Cal Fussman at 00:52:40) There's an observation. Okay. Yeah. Well, as we kind of bring it to the present. Yeah.

(Cal Fussman at 00:52:46) Your family is growing. Your kids are gonna start to come. Yep. And then some other challenges are gonna come your way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:55) Yeah. After we got off our call, I thought about one that wasn't one big moment. It was one moment that happened several times. So I talked to my wife. We have very distinct memory of more than a handful of times of standing in our kitchen at that house, you know, the house we bought with our kid and everything like that, and discussing whether or not I'm gonna walk into work the next day and let everybody go and shut it down.

(Cal Fussman at 00:53:20) Why shut it down? Is this early on?

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:22) Sorry. This was before the—well, look. It happened a couple times before this leadership software, and it happened a couple times after the leadership software. But one thing that really helped too is when the leadership software started to grow, I got like two or three clients and, you know, got some recurring revenue going. And then I talked to—I met this guy named Mark, and he was at the largest venture cap—what is now the largest venture capital company in Florida.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:50) They were more start-uppy when I met them five years ago, but I showed him what I did. And I was like, what do I do? And he's like, well, we can just, you know, raise some money. And, ultimately, after a lot of conversations, seven or eight months or whatnot, I ended up getting $500,000. Now here's what happened.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:07) So I'm not making enough money to do the business and pay the bill. Like, it's—you know, when you run a business and you have payroll and stuff, like, things can get real—your bank fluctuates a lot. Right? And so I'm at this weird point where they've agreed to give me $500,000, but I'm gonna be broke in a week. And by the way, that ceiling we agreed to, me and my wife, yeah, we went to zero again.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:31) Yeah. Yeah. I know, man. I'm sorry. I just can't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:34) I just—I have to go—I have to go for it. Like, I mean, it was that or go back to a job, and I was like, I cannot go back to starting over. Like, I have something here. I love the podcast. I love what I'm doing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:47) We found something. We just have to get to where we're going. And so I called Robert Harwood.

(Cal Fussman at 00:54:54) Robert, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:54) I said Robert.

(Cal Fussman at 00:54:56) To the rescue.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:56) He's like, hey. You know, let's go meet up at Starbucks. We live like an hour from each other. So I went and met him at Starbucks. He's like, how are things going?

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:04) He'd been listening to the podcast. He had a radio show too. So he was pretty impressed that I went and started that podcast, and he had saw what we had done and the different big names we've had on it. And he sort of watched that grow over, you know, two years or so. And he goes—he was telling me about the new airplanes he had bought or whatever, which is so cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:25) He's like, hey. I got a new jet, and I got one for my daughter too, and she's just learning how to drive, but also fly. I was like, Robert, you're the coolest person I've ever met. And he's such a humble, sweet guy too, the way he describes everything. So I said, look.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:37) Here's the deal. I said, Florida Funders—and he knew the guys over at Florida Funders because we had mutual connections there, and so he knew I was talking to Florida Funders. Florida Funders said, we will give you the $500,000 if you can convince Robert Harwood to cover your gap between now and when we can actually close the round, which was like three months or something. So I needed $50,000. And I said, Robert—I love this guy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:07) I said, here's the situation. That Florida Funders, they're gonna do it. And he's like, yeah. And he talked to Mark on the phone and stuff, so he knew that they were gonna do it. And I said, but here's my, you know, P&L.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:20) And he goes, you need something? I said, yeah. Because he didn't even look at whatever I had with me. He goes, what do you need? How much do you need?

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:27) And I just kind of was like, I need like $50,000. And he goes, okay.

(Cal Fussman at 00:56:34) I love Robert.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:35) And I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah. He's like, I want, you know, this—you know, standard prime and, whatever, like, a standard nice interest rate plus prime or whatever it was. It was completely—it was a nice deal. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:47) And I said, okay. And he said, yeah. He said, call, you know, Tara, his person I work with. He's like, you know, call her, you know, Monday, and then she'll figure everything out. And then at the end of that week, he writes the check.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:58) I make payroll with my team, and the $500,000 comes in, and we start rocking and rolling. And we grew that business, and then COVID hits. And we lose 90% of our revenue in one week because every leadership training program in the world got cut in COVID.

(Cal Fussman at 00:57:17) Oh, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:17) Because every CEO looked at their P&L and said, what don't we need? And leadership training is the easiest thing to cross off the list. You know? And so they cut leadership training. They cut HR departments in half.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:26) They did a lot of cutting immediately because you remember those first days when we didn't know if it was actually a legit zombie virus or the flu, you know? There was a lot of fear in the marketplace, you know? And so I sat there with my team, and I was like, okay. I think we had like six people, five or six people at the time. And I was like, alright.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:45) Well, we were on the right track. I had a parade of phone calls calling my personal phone. Hey, sorry, dude. We can't pay you. I know we signed the contract.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:54) We just can't pay you. Like, hey, we need to cancel the contract. Hey, this, that. Some people ask, like, hey. Can I get my money back?

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:00) And I was like, no. I was like, if it was there, I'd gladly give you your money back, but it's not. Only one person asked for that. And actually, they were completely happy with an extra—I gave them a credit, like, an extra year of the software or whatever. But so that all happened.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:15) And I asked the six people. I said, how do we structure the business so that we're not something that gets cut in the next downturn? Oh, by the way, at this point, the podcast is super popular. We're booked up six months in advance, and it's doing great. We're not making any money off of the podcast itself because we were making money off the leadership stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:32) So we said, hey, let's just put a sponsorship package together. And luckily, all the conferences were canceled. So, you know, some people had extra budget and things like that in their marketing, and marketing is one of the last things to get cut because it directly correlates to revenue. And so I said, let's build the business around the marketing budget.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:51) And we said, okay. So we said goodbye to half the team, who was, you know, real cool about it. We had really good relationships, and I didn't even have to let them go. They're like, hey, this is really clear. I've got another opportunity over here anyways.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:06) It just kind of all flowed together. It didn't have to be a big negative sad thing because we're talking six people here, right? And we only said goodbye to three. So the other three of us are sitting there, and we're like, alright.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:18) Well, we end up selling $30,000-$40,000 of sponsorship in the first month just by talking to people who had asked to sponsor, but we had told them, no, we don't do that. Then we did about $600,000 the first year and then $1,000,000 the next year, and then three years in a row. Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:37) So it started happening for us, and then it was rolling that money back into the show. And then we end up trying to figure out how we grow past a million dollars a year because there's only so many sponsored episodes we can do. So we started calling our past sponsors, and we said, hey, what else could we do?

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:56) And they said, well, you know, the experience going on your show is just so great. We go on a lot of shows. We sponsor a lot of events and different shows and things, and yours is world class. And that's just because I don't know. I have an unreasonable standard, right? So they said, can you make us a podcast? We want to have a podcast. We've been talking about one. And when we go on yours, it's such a great experience.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:19) We want the guests we invite on our podcast to have the same experience we have paying and going on yours. I was like, okay, yeah. Let me talk to my producer. And so we're like, okay, cool. We can do that as long as we do it like we do our show. Because all of our processes—I mean, at this point, we're 400 or 500 episodes in. We know how to do a show, right? People have come and gone.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:43) The roles are really clearly defined. Everything's, you know, rinse and repeat. And so we said, well, if we do it like that and we follow that process and we just put another show through that process, then we can do it. And they said, okay, cool. And so we got our first couple contracts. And in eleven months, we went from zero to about $800,000 a year in recurring revenue.

(Cal Fussman at 01:01:03) Oh, man. I love this. I love this.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:06) Yeah. It's about to outpace—in the next month or two here, it's gonna outpace the sponsorship revenue. And I'm just continuing to wake up every day and just take thing after thing after thing. You know, just handle it. I don't really see it as a big thing that I'm doing or very special. I just—I'm like, okay. This is what's in front of me, and I have to make a decision, and then I'll make another decision, and then I'll make another. And then I'm wrong half the time, by the way. So I'm pretty comfortable with that. I tell my team all the time, please disagree with me—obviously, in a professional way. But I'm like, you know, if you see something that is a greater logical argument than the thing I am presenting, it is your job literally to raise your hand and point it out because I can't see everything. You know? So I'm pretty good about that.

(Cal Fussman at 01:01:54) Well, this has been highly uplifting for me listening to you on the adventures and just seeing how anytime there's just a car that comes around the corner and knocks you down, you just figure out a better way to live. I mean, so many people get defeated. So many people feel like victims. Your philosophy is something that as we approach the new year, I'm hoping that everybody can take a piece of, put it in their pocket, and use it when necessary because, you know, we may be headed into a recession. Who knows? It may be just the time to use everything you've just talked about, Joel. I'm very, very grateful.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:50) That's the call we had this morning. We had an all hands with our team, and I said, we are going to act today like it's a recession because best case, we're super profitable Q1. Worst case, we did all we could do from the moment we could predict it. And so I was like, we just need a mind shift of a lot of liquidity being in the market to we're gonna have to—instead of sit back and just, you know, cash and checks—we're gonna have to put some elbow grease into it and just make that mind shift. I said, there's no specific task I'm giving you. I just—you just need to in your head, just understand that that's the shift that's going to happen and make that.

(Cal Fussman at 01:03:23) Alright. I'll put a little elbow grease into my work tomorrow. I'm gonna take your advice. It's been so beautiful to get to know you and to hear about your journey because it's just inspiring for anybody who is going through ups and downs or anybody who's in the middle and kind of gets knocked off balance. This idea of seeing it through the bright side and seeing it as a possibility. It's a great way to enter 2023. So grateful for this conversation. So grateful to know you. I hope there will be many, many, many more conversations to come.

(Joel Beasley at 01:04:12) Thank you so much, Cal. Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email: [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.