Hello, this is Leslie and I am the host of the Why Not Today podcast.
This is a podcast to celebrate people who have been courageous and said, why not today?
I started this podcast in honor of my father, Pastor Kane, who often said, why not today?
I'm based in Reston, Virginia, a planned community right outside of Washington, DC.
And thanks for joining us today.
I'm excited my guest today is Jeff Robertson.
And I always kind of like before I introduce Jeff and who he is and what he does, talk
about connections and where you meet people.
So I actually, with my Mary Kay business have because if you've listened to this much, you
know, I travel a lot and spending a lot of time at Mount Lake.
So I thought if I'm going to be at the lake all the time, I might as well grow my business
there.
So I joined the chamber and went to an event one morning and Jeff was there and shared
that he could help with businesses.
And so we connected and he works for and I'm going to get it wrong, but small business.
You can correct me.
I'm the Roanoke.
It's Roanoke Regional Small Business Development Center.
And that is a subdivision of basically Virginia's SBDC.
OK, so I told my sister about it.
She's like, well, you know, they have those here.
I'm like, yeah, but I can I'm virtually doesn't matter.
So it's great.
Jeff and I connected and he's helped me with the podcast and some different things.
So in addition to that, he's got a lot of other things going on that are courageous.
So I thought I would share his courageous stories and his knowledge today with you guys.
So, Jeff, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little about you and maybe a
fun fact people don't know.
Yeah, I am Jeff Robertson and I was a small business advisor.
I'm actually assigned to Franklin County where you're a member of the chamber.
This is a few years back during Covid as businesses were suffering through, as the county saw
a need to fund a part time dedicated position as a small business advisor.
And so they were able to connect with the SBDC office here in Virginia to get that position.
And I came on board in February of twenty twenty two.
So I've been working with SBDC for about six or six or so months now, seven months.
So what I do is I work whether you're you're starting a business, you're in business, our
office is available to help you along the way as a small business.
Just navigate all those ups and downs and make sure that when you kick your business
off, if you're starting, that you kick it off in the right way.
And if you're in business is is helping you get funding, helping you with a variety of
issues, whether it's marketing, human resources, you name it.
Our office is packed full of knowledge.
And the cool thing that what we do is it's a free service is even though I'm the Franklin
County advisor is the SBDCs are all over the nation.
And it's just a matter of anyone who's listening this podcast.
If you're in Utah, Alaska, wherever you should be able to find an SBDC office that can help.
So that's one of my main things is to just help spread the word about that.
Probably a fun fact with me is I got two kids, 10 and 10 and 12.
And one of the things I enjoy doing is teaching them how to be business owners at their age
as well.
And then I actually grew up and lived in Franklin County where I work at.
So I'm familiar with all things, Franklin County as well.
So like to travel, just like you, Leslie, I like to go and see and learn more about
what's going on around other parts of the world, too.
So great.
Well, it's been a wealth of knowledge for me.
So what was interesting, too, is you've got I know you have your own businesses and do
a lot of different things.
And we talked a minute before we started about how you kind of have to pivot like a lot of
us did for COVID.
But before we go into that, tell me what what what does courage mean to you?
What's the definition of courage?
I think for me, it's about taking that chance is in sometimes in life is you are able to
you take a chance on everybody else's dreams and goals.
But so courage sometimes is having the ability to take a chance on yourself is having the
courage to take a step toward your goal, whether it be in life, fitness, faith, finances, wherever
it's is just making that step toward your reaching what your personal goals would be.
So it takes a lot of courage because you get comfortable when you're working for someone
else or you're employed for someone else.
So it's like in gyms.
So it's easy to sit on the couch.
It's way easier to sell the couch than it is to go walk or run or what have you.
So that's courage.
And I enjoy helping people find that courage, too.
And I can tell.
Yeah.
And you do lots of different things.
So and you've been a wealth of knowledge just for my podcast from the SBD, whatever, but
also talk about your business and what you've done.
So let's talk about what you've done in your life to be courageous or the businesses you've
started and how that happened, how that changed or what you had to do to be courageous because
of COVID, because that's a big thing.
We all had to kind of shift.
Yes, I had my marketing company prior to COVID.
So I was working in that and we were launching in Virginia.
They have driver improvement classes where it's eight hour in-person classes.
And then we were starting to launch our gym on a personal note.
And let me go backwards.
How did you get from a marketing company to driver's ed to a gym?
Yeah.
So I've had a background in marketing for years.
That was kind of the mainstay.
I worked at a dealership where I was kind of the catch all do all wear all the hats.
I did marketing.
I did operations.
I think dealership like car dealership.
Yeah.
OK.
So I managed I managed all sorts of just different hats with that.
So I invested heavily on this personal development, learning more about digital presence and how
to grow that business from that digital footprint.
So you're looking at from 2007 moving forward, that's back before Facebook marketing, Instagram
marketing.
Those weren't big back then.
So we were on kind of the cutting edge of that.
So I kind of taught myself how to do it.
Hired a couple of mentors that help mentors that help me vet my knowledge because I was
unconfident that I was doing the right thing.
Turns out I was.
And they really helped me with that.
So that powering the coach is what helped me along the way there.
So as time went on, I just took those skills that I had learned over the years and I packaged
them into my own marketing digital marketing company because it was still where a lot of
folks didn't know how to do that.
And conversations like you and I have had about websites and presence and what much
money should I spend on my website?
How much money should I spend over here?
Being able to educate people, navigate through that.
So as that went on was I had said, wait out of the dealership and I was running that business
and I was still a fitness coach.
I was working inside of someone else's fitness gym and I knew that I had that passion about
just coaching people.
So it was one of those things where I wanted to segue into owning my own fitness center
at some point in time.
And that's kind of what led us into, we were trying to find a couple of different things
that we could do entrepreneurial wise.
And when you get into business, Leslie, it's about solving problems.
And we saw a need in the driver improvement space, we saw a need for week, your classes
during the week and daytime classes.
And that was our whole goal was so many people needed classes, but they work, they work night
shift or they don't want to give their weekends up.
So that was a problem we intended to solve, which is we were just going to have a better
time slot than some of the other companies did.
And along with that is we were launching our gym and just trying to be in that entrepreneurial
space is yeah, there was a lot of irons in the fire, but it wasn't as consuming as it
sounds when it's like, it's just about putting the, it's about getting the right people on
your team.
It's about getting the right people in places.
Even though you own these businesses, your job as an entrepreneur is to get people to
create jobs and to help them help find people that can help you run your business so you
can continue to grow your business.
So we were full speed ahead.
And then as everyone knows, it's going to listen to this starting, starting February,
March of 2020 things started getting really, really crazy with COVID and things were starting
to shut down and then come April is the, in Virginia, they shut gyms down altogether,
no more in person, couldn't go in or anything like that.
So that pumped the brakes on that plan.
And then the DMV basically shut down what we do as well because you couldn't meet in
person.
There was no gathering of groups.
If you remember, there was a phase where you just couldn't gather in person in groups at
all.
Yep.
So there goes two businesses.
Yeah.
So, so that's kind of the backstory.
And then, so there was a little bit of the courage is when I work with other small business
owners is that's the first part of their courage as well as taking their, that idea, that passion,
those thoughts and taking action to make that a reality.
And then, you know, sometimes when people start a business, like a lot of clients I
work with at the SBDC, they may be starting and they have these little nagging things
that impede their, their launch or impede their progress as they go.
But it's simple stuff.
Like maybe it's working with a bank, maybe a loan got delayed, maybe whatever, not a
COVID shut down your business, you can't operate.
Yeah.
So, so it took a lot of courage just to navigate that.
And then I'm not the only one.
I had friends that were in the same boat as I was.
And then as things start to come back to life, and you could only have certainly certain
people, you don't have a 10, 12.
Right.
For us, on our business side was the courage to continue to operate, to start back in operations.
We opened our gym in July 1st of 2020, as soon as the governor said we could go back
to in person.
And along these times is one of the, one of the notable things about the Royal Oak Small
Business Development Center, or SBDC is what we call it.
What's known is they took massive, I wasn't a member of the team, but I stood on the outside
and they took massive action on getting information out to clients, getting information out on
how to get the care, some of them PPP money, the new ERC money, the employee retention
credit money.
They were holding, they were meeting, holding webinars, Zoom meetings, taking massive amounts
of actions to help people be able to keep operating and do that.
So that's like the big thing that my office for the county that funds my position, they
took notice of that.
And that was one of the biggest things that the businesses in the area that we served
got to take advantage of was just the massive amount of actions that the SBDC offices took
to help small businesses continue to function.
That's awesome to say we're able to help.
I remember being in business after September 11th, when I live right outside of DC, which
kind of magnified things a little bit, but it was scary.
And it was like, okay, how am I going to exist?
And like the last thing you felt like you want to do was call somebody say, do you need
lipstick?
Do you need makeup?
Like people, but people needed to be heard and have conversations.
But there was a big sales conference that like Zig Ziglar and the big guys put on.
I remember in DC and it was totally free.
And they're like, the way to get this economy back is to keep people, the salespeople back
out there and the economy moving, which is sounds like exactly what they were doing there
is just helping.
There was a point in time when the president or one of his speeches says, get back to life.
We're going to handle this.
Go shopping, go visit a French restaurant.
Stop being scared.
It was a big deal.
That was a huge deal.
I remember that.
Yeah.
So sorry I interrupted you.
No, no, it was great.
That's a very great point is just another time when small businesses had to pivot to
keep going because that was a short time.
It wasn't as long.
You're not 11.
I don't think maybe a week to two weeks where it was a big standstill then.
But you know, COVID was months for some businesses to two similar things, but you're absolutely
right with that.
So that's probably the biggest thing.
And then watching standing on the sidelines and hand holding other clients as they try
to navigate, make their dream a reality.
And that is really neat sometimes when you when like working with yourself or some of
the folks that are in the meetings that we go to and you see that you see that you hear
the passion you can enjoy.
I can see the passion for the ones in watching them take that curse because you know, when
someone's most people are living comfortably at a job.
And when they want to segue into their own small business, they give up the security
of the regular paycheck and they give up security of vacation.
They give some security for all those things.
So there's not a small business owner out there that doesn't have tons of courage.
So you see it.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And I know, including my job to do to pursue Mary Kay full time, which was 22 years ago,
the big question people ask, and I think I've mentioned on here before is, you know, what
are you going to do for insurance?
You know, I'm going to buy insurance and, you know, working for somebody else is not
a bad thing if that's your passion.
But that is not who I be.
I'm much better working for myself.
And you know, working for somebody else, you're you don't have unlimited vacations.
Like I just got back from two and a half weeks in Florida, followed by three weeks at Swamp
Lake before that.
And I'm like trying to figure out when I'm going to leave next week.
So I have unlimited time off and can have that flexibility.
But yes, it does take courage every day, as you know, you hit it.
You hit the number one thing you're trying as entrepreneurs, you're trying to buy back
time.
Yeah.
When you're an entrepreneur, you're able to you're able to buy back time and use your
time how you want it to be used.
Right.
And that takes courage.
Yes.
Put you first and put your family first.
I know you said your kids are important.
You're teaching them the business skills and watching you.
And I know my dad, who I cast kind of honoring, he owned his own business.
And I watched him model that where, you know, a lot of times after dinner, we'd have dinner
as a family.
And then he'd he had an office at the house, he'd go work.
On weekends, he'd be doing work, but he'd be at every soccer game and was there.
And when I was a kid at 16, he actually took five weeks and we traveled cross country,
which looking back, like that's a big thing.
And we were talking about it the other day that he still worked his business as he was
traveling.
And there was no such thing as a cell phone or GPS that we would go drive where we were
going to be, find a fun campground for us kids to play.
And then he'd get on the pay phone and work with the pay phone.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
So watching that.
And you may we may have to pay phone is something that used to be on the side of stores and
you could find in random places.
You put coins in them to make calls in case there's anyone listening.
No idea what a pay phone is exactly.
I found one in San Diego a couple of years ago at the pier.
If you're walking along San Diego, there's just there's a pay phone.
So I haven't seen one in years.
Yeah, I saw one recently somewhere.
I was like, wow, what's that?
So you have tons of people that have courage in starting business, as you said.
Any fun stories of people that, you know, went against odds and had the courage and
just did amazing things, whether the business was amazing or it changed them or changed
somebody else?
I think you see that all the time.
Now, one of the things that the SBDC that we're big on is the confidentiality that we
have with our clients.
So it's harder to share the client's stories without their their permission.
So this just keep that in mind.
And that's a big deal that I like for folks to know when they're coming in to work with
us, because sometimes this is a great segue into to stuff that we do as well is is when
you and I are working together.
It's just you and I.
I'll log our notes.
I log my time, but we don't go share your information.
So it's not like you have the confidence to know that the confidentiality that we have
is a big deal.
But since I can tell you, since I have started at the SBDC, I have worked with a long line
of just various businesses.
And the one thing that stands out to me is most everybody I've worked with has everything
there.
They've got it all laid out.
It might be over here.
It might be there.
It's in various places on a piece of notebook paper.
It is this that the other.
They just need the encouragement to go right.
And sometimes it's about taking that big list of I'm going to do all these things.
And it's about me stepping in and going, OK, what are we got?
Right.
Well, look, these are the three things I feel like will move your needle the most inside
of your business.
Can we work on those?
And that's all they need was you like.
And I'm the same way.
If I take off my coaching hat and put on my business running, I have all these ideas.
I got everything running through my head.
Yeah, you know, me, though.
Yeah.
And you want somebody to say, hey, pick these three things and go do on those.
Go work on that.
And I use that from a couple of coaches that's helped me is just working on about three things
that's going to move your money.
Because you need that's what we do in business.
We have to have money.
We have to have funds coming in to be able to succeed.
And like you said, they would buy your own insurance is is you have the ability to go
out and create income for yourself.
And that's true solving problems, especially with these.
But you get into you want to work on things that are going to generate you short term
now and longer term money.
So if you can pick three things that will do that.
And I posted the other day is is before I go to bed, I try to make a note of those three
things.
What's three things?
So when you get up the next morning, you get up a purpose and you got your three things
know what you're doing.
Yeah.
Well, it's funny you say that that Mary Kay Ash, who started Mary Kay Cosmetic, was a
master of people management.
I was actually listening to something today.
She has a book on people management that is required reading for either Stanford or Hartford
Business School.
And there's some some government agency that requires people to read it, too, that she
said.
But she always taught the six most important things list, which make your six most important
things you need to do tomorrow before you go to bed at night, not the 300 things.
And do you know where that story came from?
Go ahead.
That actually, it was somebody went.
It was years ago, went to maybe Carnegie or one of the wealthiest men.
And he went and he said, I can help solve problems in your organization.
And he goes, well, how much they're going to cost me.
He goes, you know what, I will help.
And then you pay me what you think it's worth.
Yeah.
And he put into place that six most important things.
And what a difference it makes.
And I heard something the other day, too, say, focus on three things because we can
go all over the place.
So I know I'm going to totally pivot here.
I know you're in the fitness space.
And we kind of talked at the beginning about courage of working out.
I mentioned this before, because I used to teach water aerobics and told people, you
know, just get up and just, you know, how are you going to feel if you do it?
So I'm sure getting people getting back to the gym after covid was something important
to take care of themselves.
I shared with somebody the other day when covid started, my go to stress or snow when
we have a snowstorm, it's baking.
Well, when covid started, I started baking.
I'm like, OK, the snowstorm baking has got to stop soon or we're going to be in trouble.
But, you know, people getting back to the gym or just having the courage to work out
or get started a fitness because it is one step at a time.
So, you know, share with us a little bit about why you would say why not stay and get healthy
and take care of yourself.
See, one of the biggest things I saw was people just needed to be back around people.
Right.
You know, we spent so much time.
And even though I mean, for me is like the cup full of covid was I got to spend about
seven or eight months straight with my kids.
I there's that's the one people talk about time spent.
But I needed to get around adults.
And I'm real big on the influences that I let in my life.
And unfortunately, I have to go outside to find those business owners, those big thought
seekers always try to listen to the levels way above me to get better in my life.
And people just in general, as they came back into our gym, they were excited to see their
friends.
They was excited to be back in person.
They was excited just to be back in there.
But, you know, a lot of the noise that was created during covid was just about the benefits
of being healthy during that whole time.
So there was there was folks that were ready to get back in just to start working on them.
We run a group exercise program.
I help mentor and work in other personal training spaces and different things.
And it's just the mental, you know, the work moving weights and it's all good for our body.
But moving weights is just as big for our mental health and deloading stress coming
in and just getting.
So many people carry the weight of the world around and they don't know how to get it out.
And it just leads to just negative energies, negative emotions and negative health effects.
So just coming in and moving and I got to tell a lot of folks, if you don't want to
come to my gym, go put on a pair of shoes and go walk your neighborhood.
Do do something.
Just do something to help deload that day.
And then always do a little evaluation of the influences you're letting in your life
is.
And I've been taught over the years and I like spreading the word that you're going
to be a product of the five people that you let in your life.
And at our gym, we have a big rule about positivity only.
No gossip, no negativity.
And it's just a big deal that our members can come in and in gym, we can come in and
work out in a positive community and get lifted up, not pushed down.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think that's one thing COVID definitely opened my eyes to is like, who are we spending
time with?
And we were we closed our circle if we had to be careful who we were around.
And I was very selective.
And as I travel a lot and pop into in and out of town, there are people that I really
care about that lift me up and that I'm going to make sure I'm spending time with to fill
my soul and give me motivate me.
And you know, just good friends and family and spending time.
Important.
So yeah, all these things take courage.
So I know you talked about introduction, were there did you have to make choices to close
businesses because of COVID?
Not personally.
I had friends, I had to mentor and handhold some friends before I was doing anything with
SBDC.
I mentored some friends as they decided that they that was in their best interest was to
close.
And a lot of it was because they were ready to move on.
Some people some COVID help people just go on and say, you know, we've been looking to
move on.
So it was as negative as it looked in the only community center on to business close
and the owner was like, I don't have anybody wants to buy this.
I'm exiting now.
So the time for me to go.
So there was there was that there was a small bit of that.
But some folks close because they didn't want to take the time some folks close that was
launching because they didn't qualify for any of the funds that was being pushed out
by the government because they were too new of a business.
That was one of the deal situations.
But you know, yeah, we had I had a little bit of that to where people we are.
I work with a group of even in our fitness side where we the cool thing for us was we
when we saw it coming and I noticed that we were we had already started inside of our
fitness space and social distancing, cleaning your own weights.
We had we had limited our class sizes.
We had added an extra class for overflows.
And so we had did a massive pivot is what we like to call to start accommodating because
we knew we had that feeling of where it was going and it kept getting about to shut down
stuff and some of the in-person things you kind of saw was going to be a deal.
So we started really working hard for the folks I was working with them coming up with
plans just on the personal side of what we did back during covid.
But yeah, we had I had friends that exited the gym business.
I had people that closed.
I had folks that moved into other businesses, went ahead and took other opportunities.
It was it was definitely impacted.
You know, a lot of folks that I know.
So right.
Yeah.
So I know you've given us lots of tips and ideas for businesses and getting started.
So what encouragement would you have for someone to say, why not today?
Yes.
Yeah, that's always a great one.
To kind of pull it all together.
Yeah.
It flows with that.
That same thing that we started off with was if you're setting on that that business idea
and you're you know, there's a lot of folks that have great ideas and they're they're
fighting where they're at.
So their life's telling them to change or life's telling them they need to to take that
opportunity.
And I think sometimes it's if you have that, if you're looking to start a small business,
the first part of it would be is why not connect with your SPDC office today is something super
powerful.
And what we do in most every office has is we have a program called Business Smart Start.
If you have an idea, if you don't have anything set up, you can set and go through that class.
It costs you a little bit, but you get in deliverables.
We started charging a little bit for it to cover mailing and you get a book.
You get all sorts of things that help you be successful.
That's what we want out of our office.
Anyone who's not in business that comes to our office and says, hey, I want to start
a business.
They go through business smart start before they take any other steps.
And it educates them on insurances, laws, just gives them a thousand yard overview of
this is what small business looks like.
Because some people at that point say, you know what?
I'm going back over here.
I'm going to work.
I'd rather be an employee.
I would rather be an employee.
I want to do what you do.
And I get that.
Right.
So I've got lots of people that said that's me.
Like no way.
He's like, I like getting my vacations every year and this is the other.
So you have that angle on it is when you're starting is connecting with your business
advisor first is going to help you always call it that mind, feel a business is, you
know, before you go out and sign a lease that is way too high than what your business is
going to do.
That hurts a lot of people.
Sometimes you want to hire three people and they don't have the funds coming in to cover
the paper.
So we helped that initially just like, hey, these are the kind of some good do's and don'ts.
If you're in business, why not can go ahead and sign up just to be on the email list for
your local small business development center.
You can you can sign up.
And then the biggest thing that I noticed and so I'm always and I get with my folks
that I've worked with on page sign up and you don't have to work with me at all, but
get on my email list because here's what happened is I was on the SBDC office.
So the cool backstory for me was I had worked with my office on every business that I launched.
I knew all the folks I had worked with Tom Tanner, who's who's a just a wealth of information
when it comes to everything.
So I had worked with them.
I was on the email list.
So as soon as the shutdown struck coming, I started getting emails from the SBDC office
joined this zoom call.
We're going to be covering this.
We're going to show we're going to work on this strategy.
And they just started putting out tons of information.
So why not go ahead, get signed up at your local SBDC office, get on that mailing list.
So you're in their system and you don't have to do anything.
And then who knows?
We have another downturn.
We have another COVID event.
Who knows how what's coming down the pipe?
Like you mentioned, 9-11, 20 some years ago.
And then there we were in 2020.
Again, with with COVID is if you're already in that system, it's one step that you don't
have to take.
You guys have great resources and yeah, well, some knowledge and help for me.
Like even I know we are texting back and forth about t-shirts and t-shirt presses and we're
to get you know, but I will and help each other.
Yeah.
And if I don't have the answers, but the cool thing is to is when you do that, you get access
and when you're signed up, you get access to our resource library.
And most of the programs that we do, we record and post there and all the trainings that
we do, whether it may be a QuickBooks, financial things, human resources.
If we have a speaker come in and talk about intellectual property rights or whatever,
generally that's recorded and placed inside of our resource libraries.
All your trades and email and I guarantee you the value you're going to get from the
SBDC offices will overwhelm the inbox time it takes to go through it and leave it off
or sign up.
I have not jumped on any of those.
They keep going.
I have a bad habit of working a lot in my business on my business.
So I need to take some time to work on some of these things.
So this has been a wealth of help for me just to get me a little more accountable.
I'm listening to your podcast, Leslie.
If there's something in there that I need to refresh on, I'll flip it on.
Listen to it in the car.
May not watch it, but I'll listen to it in the car while I'm traveling.
And it gets me gets my thoughts where it needs to be.
That's that's why I love being in the car.
It gets your brain going and thinking.
So I always kind of try to connect back to my dad.
And obviously, you never met my dad and kind of a stretch.
But I think the things and just that you shared that were connection my dad is first of all
your kids and being being able to be there for them and teaching them business, which
I think my dad was a master and didn't really realize what he was doing.
Interesting.
He always preached like, get involved, help get involved in your community.
We're all like, yeah, right.
But it's interesting to see that I'm very much like him and have done that and got involved.
And you're just there helping businesses.
And I love that you're willing to help people.
My dad actually started the local chamber here where I live in Reston.
And I didn't really realize what it was and what it did.
He started when I was just finishing high school and found out later that he didn't
even have business locally to start a chamber.
He started a chamber because he was raising six kids in a community.
And I didn't realize really what how much connection he had until he had had a stroke.
And I'd be walking down the street and people are like, how's your dad?
And I'm like, first of all, who are you?
And how do you know my dad?
But he touched a lot of lives just helping people.
And I see you doing that.
Just I still remember I think I'd come in later once out for second one.
Everybody did their introductions at that event.
And I remember you saying sitting in the back saying, if you need help, I've got free resource.
I'm like, OK, who is this guy?
I need to meet him.
And I'm so glad I did.
So any closing thoughts?
You're what you said earlier about that we may have been while we were just chatting up
about your dad cross country.
You guys.
I get to travel.
I travel a little bit with SBDC to whatever.
It's nothing over the top.
But I travel a lot with inside my business because I belong to certain like I am in a
mastermind group and we meet a couple of times a year and we try to meet in different areas.
And it's just it's worth the investment for the personal development I get out.
I made a rule the other week I had to go to San Diego and I made a rule when I left when
I was getting out of the car.
Kids were there.
I was the night before.
I had an early flight and I was like, guys, I am not doing this so I can travel by myself.
Next time I have to go somewhere, either everyone goes or I'm not going because I get when you
go if it's a meeting that I have to be in or whatever.
But when I'm out there, I don't want to go.
I may be in San Diego or Orlando or wherever.
And I'm like, I just go to the class and I go back to the room and they'll call me like,
what are you doing?
Yeah, I'm fun.
Like, no, I don't want to do this.
I don't want to go do anything.
You guys are in here.
So that's a lot of similarities with your dad and investment that his businesses is
is drive and everything allowed him to invest back in you guys.
Yeah.
And that's just our cross.
Country trip, but there are many occasions where he yanked us out of school.
He was going on a trip for work and we went with them.
And it was invaluable.
And I remember my niece, her senior year in high school, I was going actually to North
Carolina for a Mary Kay meeting.
And we're going to go stop at Snowstown Lake, which she loves.
So she wanted to go with me.
And it was in the middle of the week.
And I'm like, can I go?
I'm like, well, you have to miss school.
You have to ask your mom.
And she said it was her last.
It was June of her senior year.
And she went with me and sat in the back of a Mary Kay meeting all day.
And we stopped and did all kinds of things.
She learned much more than she would ever in a classroom.
Just business and life and, you know, and we were able to bond and have that fun.
So yeah, you're doing it right.
I think it's super, super powerful.
And when the entrepreneurs that are listening to this is just that's that's huge.
If you're in the parent space or you think about getting a parent spaces, we are creating
those those moments in time.
And we only have that that so much.
And what did I tell my members the other day?
So you're not fighting life.
You fight in time.
And that's true.
You keep that all in mind.
You know, so yeah.
Yeah.
And I went the opposite way when I was just went to Florida.
I went with my 81 year old mother and my youngest sister.
And yeah, we drove and it was a long trip.
But we were and I was gone for two and a half weeks.
But I did that because, you know, we're not promised tomorrow and I want to be able to
spend time.
And that's important to me.
So are you doing the things have encouraged to do the things that are important for you
and saying, so, Jeff, how do people find you?
I'm going to share this with the podcast.
But people want to find I was going to tell you is for everyone is if you're in Virginia,
I would follow Virginia SBDC's Instagram account, their Facebook page.
That way you can they will help you find you can find your local offices.
But if you it ain't about connecting with me, it's about connecting with that local
SBDC office.
So if you're near Roanoke, we cover Roanoke, Franklin, New River Valley, Battetot.
It's it's with our SBDC, the Roanoke Regional Small Business Development Center.
But everyone else in the world is going to be listening to this obviously is just a quick
Google search about the nearest SBDC office near me.
And I feel like you'll be able to get into that.
Now me personally, one of the easiest ways to connect with me is going to run up small
business dot org and you'll see you get matched with an advisor and you can scroll down and
find me now.
I service this area here.
But if you are struggling with finding an SBDC office and you've got a quick question,
shoot me a message.
I go by country coach on Instagram.
If you're trying to find an office and you can't get connected in, it's a country underscore
underscore coach.
I will direct you to the nearest SBDC office or I'll find you someone in word ever would
carry your ever.
So for someone in Denver, I worked with some guys in Denver at a conference I was at.
There's offices there.
They're always looking for folks to come in.
So keep that in mind.
So don't just think that I'm just representing the bigger picture of what's out there for
every state has this available to them.
And it's a free resource for folks need to take advantage of.
Right.
And also we might, you know, I know a lot of people at the lake and Roanoke and people
might be interested in going to your gym.
So what's the gym name?
It's I'm over in Daleville.
It's Daleville Fit Body Boot Camp.
But yeah, you don't you don't just get no.
That's great.
I appreciate that.
Shout out.
So yeah, we're you do virtual classes?
No, we're all in.
I'm not coming to Roanoke to work out.
Sorry.
That's right.
You don't have to come to my gym.
If you're near there and you need help, I will help you.
OK, if you're looking, just just Google Fit Body Boot Camp or gym near me.
But the biggest thing is if you will if you'll go get you a nice pair of shoes and commit
to walking 30 minutes a day, you'll feel better.
Just do something.
We don't have to be about coming, coming to work with me personally.
If you will just commit to taking a little action and spending 30 to 40 minutes a day
doing something for you, because as I tell my members and people that work with me, if
you'll invest in you, you're going to feel better.
Everyone else around you is going to feel it too.
So true.
And this morning I usually walk every single day and this morning I really didn't feel
like it.
But I knew as soon as I would walk out this cold, fresh air and I live on a little lake,
walk around the lake that I'd be happy I did and feel better all day long.
So well, thank you so much.
Great information.
And we will share information on the podcast.
Of course, you can find the podcast on iTunes and Spotify.
And I think I added to Google.
So wherever you can find podcasts, got Instagram and Facebook and we do have Why Not Today
gear.
We've got t shirts and cups and vinyls.
So if you want some Why Not Today gear, let me know.
Because we all need to say why not to get Why Not Today.
So this is Leslie and Jeff and thanks for joining us today.
Have a great day.