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Please, Alex, tell me about your vision.

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My vision is to create a massive community, global community of entrepreneurs, solopreneurs,

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people running and operating their own business.

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We're all collaborating together to expand what we're doing.

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I think as entrepreneurs, we feel like we have to do everything alone, but that's not

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true.

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There's now software and systems that really facilitate, manage, and monetize large group

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collaboration across businesses, organizations, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, small business

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owners globally.

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That's what I'm out there doing.

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I'm building a really large community.

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I'm a big networker.

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For me, it's all about building a big network and having a big impact.

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Got you.

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Whenever you first originally had this idea, how did you create this idea of creating a

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global network?

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Where was the start of it?

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Where did it come from?

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I was an international award-winning hotel manager, and I love to meet people.

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I've always worked in a service-based industry where you meet a lot of people.

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I worked at a movie theater, in restaurants, and at DSW, and hotels.

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I ended up working in hotels.

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At a hotel, you meet 200 new people every day.

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I loved it.

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I loved meeting new people and talking to new people.

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Who are you?

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Where are you from?

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What do you do?

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How can I help?

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Then the pandemic happened.

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I got laid off from my hotel job.

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My hotel career completely went away, and I became an entrepreneur.

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I still needed my fix.

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I still needed to meet new people every day.

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I got online, and I started to go to these online networking groups.

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I just attended them because honestly, I liked it.

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Then I started hosting my own groups and suffering from a lot of the similar problems that other

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entrepreneurs were suffering with.

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Isolation, having to do everything all alone, having to have all the answers, wanting to

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collaborate with people.

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How do you do that?

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Because we all have our own businesses.

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We have to promote our own stuff.

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We can't promote somebody else at the detriment of ourselves.

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Over the last literally three years, I've not only been building the community, but

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finding the tools, finding the software, creating the system to go out there and do what I set

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out to do, which is everybody, I think, not everybody, but people want to run their own

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business, like I said.

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There's a lot of positives of that, but there's also a lot of negatives of that.

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So let's talk about your why.

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What keeps you going?

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What gets you up in the morning and keeps you pushing forward?

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What's your why behind you getting up and going?

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When I was in Hawaii, I got laid off on my very first day at my brand new hotel job.

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I didn't qualify for unemployment.

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I moved to Hawaii on a well-made ticket with my girlfriend, got laid off on my very first

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day, and didn't qualify for unemployment.

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Had to figure everything out myself, so I started flipping furniture on Facebook.

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I started driving food delivery.

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I started just doing everything.

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You can imagine to make a buck.

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At one point, I was on my bed.

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I had $500 in my bank account.

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Rent, which was $2,000, was due in a week.

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I just looked at my girlfriend and I said, if we ever get out of this, we're going to

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go out there and we're going to help other people because we really need help right now.

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Luckily, we got help on that month and rent was paid and everything was fine.

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I remember that viscerally.

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Hey, we got to help other people.

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People get into a really hard place and not through a lot of fault of their own.

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Yeah, we made some maybe wrong decisions and stuff, but nothing too bad.

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Me and my girlfriend, we were at the height of the hospitality industry.

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Number one in the industry for 2019.

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Then life happens and things didn't go as planned.

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Nobody was there to help us.

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Not many people are in there.

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There wasn't really a path.

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I said, wow, I can really empathize with other people who have maybe gone through a similar

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experience, done the right things in life, but then things go wrong and who do you reach

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out to, who can help you?

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There's not a lot of options out there.

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I really want to help people and specifically in the financial area of things.

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Now I have the experience of going from a hotel manager who you work all the time as

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a hotel manager.

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The fire alarm goes off at 2 a.m.

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You go in.

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Now I'm on the other side of it.

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I'm an entrepreneur.

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I have total time freedom, total location freedom, in some ways financial freedom at

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this point too.

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And it's a completely different life.

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And it's a lot.

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I mean, there's a lot of advantages to it.

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You know, it's a lot.

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I enjoyed a lot more than working at a hotel.

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I still like working at hotels, but I don't know if I do it full time or really do it

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as a career anymore.

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Thank you for being here today.

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I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.

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I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.

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This is going to get more and more fun.

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We'll have more and more engagement as well.

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We'll invite people to participate in the show.

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And thank you for giving us your time and attention.

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Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.

