Where are you from?
So I was born in Houston, spent my formative years in the megalopolis and
cultural center of central Texas.
Brian college station practice law in Houston for 40 years.
And a couple of years ago, I moved out to the hill country.
So other than four years of college up North, I'm a native Texan.
So you're somewhat Texan.
Yeah.
The native Texan, of course, uh, born and raised in San Antonio myself.
Um, so this is, uh, this is the place to be for all those, all you listening in.
You probably already have your bags packed to move here.
Um, we're like the fastest growing state right now.
Um, and it is, it is a never ending construction scene, um, as well at this
time, if you're on our highways.
Um, so how do you guys, how are you guys doing with the construction out there
in Kerrville?
I gotta ask, cause everywhere else, it's just constant motion.
Over the past 15 years, Kerrville has had between 0.9% and 1.1% growth.
So all of the growth you hear about in the great state of Texas has not reached
Kerrville.
Wow.
That is interesting.
Cause Kerrville is beautiful.
Kerrville is beautiful.
It has less population than it had 20 years ago, but the reason there's no
construction is the hilly nature of the hill country that the part of the hill
country you live in is relatively less hilly and out here.
Yeah.
And out here, uh, you can certainly build a house, but it's going to be almost
bespoke construction and it's very hard to build large tracks of affordable
housing, whether those be apartments or, uh, relatively inexpensive homes and by
relatively inexpensive, I mean, $250,000 for the home.
So, uh, we haven't experienced the tremendous growth that the rest of the
state has, and it's even more coupled with two things.
One is Kerrville itself.
I would not say it's progressive.
It's less right, but Kerr county is extraordinarily right.
And that may be because the demographics of our County is, let me get this right.
Let me get this right.
38% or 65 or older, and they don't want change, right?
Uh, they don't want any new businesses.
They don't want any new people.
They don't want any new stuff.
Oh, uh, it's an interesting dynamic to see the County push back on growth and
the city say we need some growth so we can sustain our, I think 22,000 population
base.
Yeah.
Uh, it's, you know, it's interesting.
You get the opportunity to build, uh, communities selectively.
It's, it's not, uh, that's, you know, neither here nor there.
And my opinion of like what's right or wrong, but it is a beautiful place.
And I will say it's one of my favorite Starbucks.
There is the, I've got a Starbucks right on the river, right on the outside there.
And being, I did a podcast out there once, uh, I'm going to just sit in right
there by the river.
They're one of my interviews and it was a peaceful, beautiful environment to be in.
So those of you tuning in, Tom Fox has the compliance podcast network.
He's an experienced podcaster, also experience in, um, in all aspects of
compliance and, um, there's some legal topics we might dive into as well.
The beautiful thing about podcasting is it's such a new industry, um, that there's
a lot of opportunity for being able to, to dive into it and get into this game
without worrying about all the red tape that exists with so many other types of
businesses.
Like if you're going to create, um, buy a pharma company, or if you're going to
create a law firm and office, you need, you need accolades for that.
You need licenses for that.
Um, in the world of podcasting, it's kind of an, it's kind of a wild, wild west
right now.
You can just get into the game yet.
There are still all sorts of challenges.
There's risks, there's threats, there's, there's weaknesses, there's opportunities
and strengths, of course, that you can lean on, but we'll be, we'll be diving
into that before we dive into that topic too much.
Um, you've been around the block, Tom, you've, you've done a few things, um, in
over the last couple of decades at least.
So, uh, I honor that and I know there's a tremendous amount of wisdom that came
from all the years of study.
What three resources would you recommend for other visionary leaders out there?
Well, number one is your colleagues and your colleagues can be people you met
meet on podcasts, just like you and I are meeting.
It doesn't mean we're homogeneous.
It means that our diversity can make us all better and your views on leadership
may be different than mine, but guess what?
Mine aren't the only views.
And so, uh, I can learn in that method too, is to have some mentors.
I, uh, I'm a lawyer by professional background and the three most difficult
people I work for in my professional career, I learned the most from.
They were hard demanding people who I wouldn't say that demanded perfection,
but they demanded my best.
And I may have had some questionable adjectives for them.
I was younger, but now I see that because they forced me to do things that I didn't
want to, that I became a much better lawyer.
For that.
And then the last thing is to be, and I am endlessly curious.
I never can stop learning.
I was a voracious reader as a child.
I continued that.
And now I consume information largely you're interviewing other people.
And I spend four to six hours a day interviewing people for podcasts.
And it's not that I can see around corners, but I'm talking to people
who can, or I'm talking to people and I can connect the dots as I'm
talking to all of them.
So, uh, endlessly curious or endless curiosity has served me as well as anything.
I love that.
Did you say you do four to six hours of interviews per day?
Yes.
That's incredible.
Um, that is truly incredible.
Those of you listening, you can start in your podcasts.
You can do one per month, you know, you can do one per week.
I did a stint where I was doing the four to six interviews per day.
Um, and it was an amazing experience.
Like it was, it was super eyeopening.
And I, I want to honor the fact that like that takes some tremendous
strength and power and, and it takes a lot of, um, a lot of exercising
to get the mental fortitude to get to the point where you can do that.
I also noticed that I was doing a lot of interviews.
I was doing a lot of interviews with other people and I was doing a lot of
interviews with other people, but I would say, I will never forget that.
I also noticed that my own experience, I would have these amazing discussions
and the discussion I had in the morning, I remembered it would be like the most
powerful wine I'd in the day and I would know that I had a powerful experience,
but I couldn't remember who it was.
And I would go look up the name and I couldn't remember the name.
And then I would go watch the video and I would go, Oh, I don't
know why I'm not able to dive in at that level.
So, um, it's, it is, that is amazing.
Four to six per day.
How many episodes are you up to?
Uh, I probably done 5,000 podcasts, 5,000 podcasts.
How many years since 2012?
Since I have, um, I don't know.
Probably 70 ongoing.
I can't wait to dive in more on that.
We're going to dive into that after the break.
Um, I want to, I want to make sure to honor the three resources that you
just laid out there for us.
Um, again, those of you listening in, if, if you're not aware of the power of the
elder, this can be somebody who's one year older than you, this can be somebody
who's decades ahead.
Um, it's, it's just, just so much power and digging into what they say.
We have a guide on mentors and how to find great mentors that I'll be
attaching to the show notes.
Um, I'm absolutely a huge fan of mentors.
I loved what you added to that, Tom, um, being willing and able to work with
people who want, who demand our best, who want us to show up and do well,
who are looking for excellence.
Hopefully we all are.
And then there's the colleagues aspect.
There's going to be different perspectives, but this curiosity one
really hit me strengths finder 2.0.
My number one strength personally is learner.
And as a learner, so was my first wife's.
She was also a learner hers talked about school and curriculum.
Mine did not.
It said, you were the kid who always asked why, um, that curiosity factor
is a big piece of why I do podcasts as well.
If you find that you're a curious person, this is one of the podcasts, one of the
coolest experiences to explore the minds and hearts of other people and get to
learn from their experiences.
So, um, again, I love that that's the third resource that you mentioned.
Um, anything else you'd like to add before we go to the break?
Uh, no, let's go to break and then we'll come back.
That's perfect.
Mr.
Efficient as well.
I love it.
We'll see you guys on the other side.
All right.
Welcome in to vision pros live with Jackson Callum.
I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are
building fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up everybody.
Welcome into another episode of vision pros live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Callum, founder and CEO of first class business.
And I am super excited to have Tom Fox on stage today.
We're going to be talking all things podcasts with you guys.
We're going to do our best to dive deep into certain topics, which will limit the time.
But we'll also try to explore as many things as possible to help you on your
route to maybe becoming a podcast guest or becoming a podcast host yourself right now.
There's such a great, such a great season of life and time to be launching a
podcast and getting into it.
If you've had that inkling, listen up.
We'll talk about the goods, the bads and the uglies as well.
I tend to gravitate towards the uglies.
Why?
Because there's already a bunch of people out there and on the internet trying to
convince you to go on the podcasts.
So I'd rather talk about the things that might get overlooked and hold you back as
you try to build something successful for yourself.
So before I bring Tom back on board, another great podcast to highlight is Dave
Morrow's podcast, hard to kill.
You can go to hardtokill.org and see what we're up to with Dave.
Dave's helping a hundred thousand veterans lose 2 million pounds collectively.
He's got an award winning podcast.
And the veteran space, a phenomenal leader as well.
In fact, he's opened his program up beyond helping just veterans.
He's now got a civilian community as well.
He's the first personal trainer health professional to get me to stop
being skinny fat in eight years.
I've met a lot of awesome professionals.
I don't know how he does it, but Dave's able to inspire people to look good,
feel good and go and do good.
I spent an honor to work with him for the last six months.
And again, I highly recommend checking out his podcast.
And if you're a military person, you'll for sure benefit from, from what he's
doing now, he's helping people and he always needs more warriors to help lift
the others who also need such support.
Well, one of the things that Dave stands for and stands really stands against is
the fact that the suicide rates are so high amongst veterans right now.
And a big part of that, his theory, a lot of people are saying, well,
Dave's theory, a lot of people's theories on this study show that when they get
home from their military experience, they fall out of line with the routines that
exist and they have unhealthy routines related to exercise too.
And you end up hurting your body more than helping it, which is why he's there
to help people stay on track as much as possible.
I could talk all day about Dave and what he's done for the sake of honoring Tom.
I'm going to keep moving though.
The next one is Obrador de la Hacia de Trabajo para Latinos.
That's opportunities for work for Latinos.
It's our virtual assistant program where we help these, how we help Latinos,
Filipinos and Indians become virtual assistants, digital ambassadors, as we
call them, we do not believe in VA relationships.
I call that virtual abuse.
It is really sad how many entrepreneurs or solopreneurs hire somebody and never
take interest in who they are or their personal development and growth.
We take personal development growth extremely seriously.
We're looking for Latino leaders who would want to be on this podcast.
That's with my Spanish team, inspiring other Spanish speakers to take a little
bit of hope and faith and action themselves to consider that, you know what?
Maybe there are job opportunities out there.
These are people who don't know about LinkedIn.
They've never heard of it.
They don't know about Canva Upwork Fiverr.
They've never read Rich Dad Poor Dad.
They've never read Think and Grow Rich.
There's a whole, there's millions, possibly billions of people out there who could
benefit from this type of a program.
And we hope that you consider joining us on this or launching something to help
us bridge the economic gap to North America, South America, and the rest of the world.
And there's the water project.
I'm feeling a little bit thirsty right now, but the real reason why I focus on
this is because I've never truly been thirsty in my life.
I don't have any affiliation with the water project.
I just contribute to it and love what they stand for.
I see these kids getting water from sources that are three to five miles from
their house or from their school.
They have to leave school to do this.
Or parents have to leave work.
You can imagine the disruption that would cause with your own ability to try to
provide for your family.
And these kids celebrate water like my kids celebrate Christmas Day.
We have the same opportunity to give back to them by providing $5 or $20 in contributions.
What I love about what they do is they allow you to pick the community that you get
involved with and you actually get to see that project come to fruition, whether they
build what's called a borehole well or a sand dam, the transparency that the water
project has created is something that to me is second to none.
It's inspiring.
I hope that you feel inspired to at least talk about this with friends and family.
And if you know of a cause that you'd rather see us talk about and support, it's
not a competition, there's 8 billion people to help in this world.
And my hope is that you will let us know in the comments what causes you support.
I'll do some research on that as well.
We'll try to get it out there.
It's one of the privileges, great privileges of rocking this microphone is if I'm going
to be doing this for a living and I'm also going to do everything I can to help out
people who don't have the same privilege.
So join me on that if you will.
And without further ado, let's improve your lives with an interview with Tom Fox on
how to get into this whole podcasting world and have a great experience.
So Tom, welcome back to Vision Pros Live.
Thanks for joining me.
Thanks, Jackson.
Absolutely.
So I'm going to dive in quick and dirty on this 2012.
You got into the podcasting game.
What started that?
Did you see a podcast?
How did you hear about it?
Let's hear that beginning story.
So in 2010, I started my consulting firm, basically my own law practice, and I was
laid up due to an accident and I couldn't leave the house or the only time I could
leave the house was to go to physical therapy and I had no income.
And I had no income, so I decided that whatever I did to market, it had to be at
no cost to me.
And at that point in my life, I didn't know what Twitter was.
I didn't know what LinkedIn was.
I had heard of Facebook and so I started exploring social media tweets.
I tell people actually Twitter made me probably they wouldn't believe that if
they saw today's Twitter, but back then it really was a B2B network and tool.
And so I started with Twitter that led to blogging.
I'd always written a lot as a lawyer, so I started blogging and podcasting was
just a natural extension of the blogging was really the next step.
Wow.
Okay.
So, and on Twitter you have 108,000 followers.
So in fact, yeah, 108,001.
So got that, got that followed on there.
And I, I really do like Twitter.
It's one of those platforms that is underrated and often misunderstood.
I guess we should call it X now, not Twitter, but it's a platform that is so
different in terms of strategy and how to use it than all the other platforms
that exist out there.
We'll reserve that strategy for later.
I know Alex from Ozzie has some great content on how to maximize Twitter as well.
So you got into the podcasting world.
What was that like?
How did the upload process work?
What platform did you use back then?
Um, it was about as simple as straightforward as it could be.
I'm a Mac guy.
So garage band was preloaded on my podcast.
I was on WordPress to blog.
And so I simply, uh, got a Libsyn account, loaded it up, uh, put the
podcast into Libsyn published it on the traditional podcast platforms,
put it on WordPress and I was rocking and rolling in about six hours.
Six hours.
That's awesome.
And that's pretty similar to today.
The podcasting world's not that hard.
People complicate it, especially providers.
We have a challenge in that there's a quote.
You've probably heard it, Tom.
When you start selling a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Um, and so we get all these, these people out there that are promoting
podcast publication to get your studios and make sure you do it right.
And, uh, you know, that ended up making people second guess themselves.
I guess I can pick on myself there too.
I like to talk about the uglies of it as well and talk about what's,
what challenges exist.
But, um, when I launched my podcast, I just went live on Facebook
and I called it a podcast.
My team goes, that's not a podcast, Jackson.
I said, it's my podcast.
And they said, well, you have to have this and this.
I said, I don't not on my podcast.
Um, and like, we have to have the RSS feed.
Look, look, look, look, if you want to build all that awesome.
But I'm going to go live again tomorrow and I'm going to call it a podcast.
So, um, Tom, would you, do you agree with the philosophy?
Is that wild and dangerous?
Um, how should, if you were to start today, what would you do?
Exactly what I did before.
It works.
That's no here.
Here, let me, let me check, take your phrase ugly.
There's not, in my opinion, there's nothing, nothing ugly in podcasting.
I'm often asked what lessons did you learn or what mistakes did you learn?
Make like with the exception of one mistake that every podcaster has made.
I've never made a mistake.
I've grown.
Everything that I have done has led to where I am today.
And it's been a learning opportunity.
It's been a growth opportunity.
Now that one mistake is fortunately when you do it, you'd never do it again.
And that of course is don't hit the record button.
I've made that mistake and everybody's made that mistake.
And once you make it, guess what?
You, I, one time, one time flew to Boston to interview a Harvard professor at a
hour and a half interview is fabulous.
And I looked down and I went, Oh, the red light's not on.
I can't turn it off.
So yeah, I always hit the record button.
Other than that, it's just been growth.
I mean, I cringe when I look at some of those early podcasts.
Yeah.
I cringe the way I look, I cringe the way I sounded, but it didn't matter.
People were in interested in what I had to say because the sub they were
interested in the subject matter.
I appreciate the challenge on the ugly reality.
All right.
That it may not exist from your paradigm.
I'm also going to highlight there's some naivety to that though.
And here's why I would say that one, I would never get in a Lamborghini
that doesn't have a break and I would never fly a plane that
doesn't have landing gear.
That's just me.
There are some potential ugly outcomes with that.
Billy McFarland is the latest celebrity story in relation to
doing things irresponsibly.
The irony is his bounce back story is almost proving my concept wrong at this
point, but this is the man who planned the fire festival and who went to prison
because he wasn't able to fulfill on the things that he was promising.
And that the bounce back irony right now, I'll own it.
I'll recognize it.
That's probably going to make him that much more successful now that he's
actually planning on doing fire festival again, and he's already sold out the
event yet again, somehow, because people are crazy.
But that's the rare exception to the rule.
Most of the stories of people who launch things irresponsibly end up in prison
permanently or end up dying or end up being killed.
And I think there's a, there's a real reality associated with that.
With podcasting, if you're launching a podcast for the sake of making money, or
you're launching a podcast with the end goal that it's going to make you rich and
famous again, kind of sake of making money side, you could very well end up hurting
all of your existing relationships, hurting your own life and putting
yourself in real financial jeopardy.
And it's, it's not fun as somebody who does, who's a consultant, but
to meet people who launched a book, for instance, and are $300,000 in debt in the
hole, and they've got a book where they've claimed their national bestseller
and they've got two reviews on, on Amazon.
And you're like, everybody sees that.
I mean, everybody knows that and now they have nowhere to go.
So the, the challenge of, you know, can we do this without a book?
Sure. But what would you say about some of those stories where people have been
killed or gone to prison for standing up for something or doing something without
the responsible ethics of, of compliance in place, your compliance guy?
I'm curious.
So, uh, if you start something and you do something for a fraudulent reason and you
hurt people, whether financially, emotionally, psychologically, physically,
you should, you should, you should, you should, you should, you should, you should
pay for those.
But Tom Watson, the first president of IBM said, I want to hire the guy who's failed.
Yeah.
And they're going to come back faster and better if they failed.
Right.
Let me go back to the Lamborghini.
You know, the reason there's a break in the Lamborghini, it's so you can drive fast.
Yeah.
That's why you have compliance.
So you can do business quickly and efficiently yet stay on the right side of
the law.
So no, if there's no break, you can't drive fast.
And that's what compliance is.
Huge.
I love that.
It's super important.
I'm going to go back to what you said about fraudulent.
I think the sad reality is most people don't have an intent to be fraudulent.
I believe that I don't think their goal is to hurt people.
You know, is to go into there are certainly the narcissists that are out there.
But most people go into those situations having been hooked, baited and switched
by somebody else who gets them into it.
And yeah, they got a little bit of a victim mentality, perhaps.
You know, they've got a little bit of of.
Naivety to what they're doing, but they're in to me lies the challenges.
How many times I've seen people that were good adults, pretty responsible,
understood things about life, but they end up selling the farm, you know, and
giving everything away when they're trying to when they're trying to launch
something like a podcast.
But maybe it's not ugly after all.
I don't know.
I'm just trying to have I'm having a hard time seeing how there's no ugly in
relation to it because of the negative experiences, seeing people go through.
The fraud Pentagon tells us that fraud occurs when there's pressure
rationalization and opportunity.
So if you start out somewhere, and I saw a lot of lawyers all pray to this, they
live beyond their means, they start doing something stupid like stealing clients
money, and then they rationalize.
Well, I earned it.
I deserve it.
And when you have those three things in common, then people move from.
Oh, I made a mistake to, oh, I'm now engaging in illegal conduct.
And it's sure a slippery slope, but, um, you know, hopefully the ethics, the
under ethical underpinnings that we all have will keep us from doing that.
But we have to be ever vigilant.
Which is exactly why I wouldn't, I just cannot go towards that.
There's no ugly because I don't have that hope for all people, right?
I have the hope for, I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I
just know with what I've seen that not everybody's going to align with that.
You said pressure though, rationality.
And what was the other one?
Pressure, rationalization and opportunity.
And so you mentioned the guy who founded the fire festival or fry festival.
I remember when that documentary came out, I asked my then teenage
daughter the following, do you think he intended he started out in
intentionally to create fraud or just got away from it?
He had something and, and she said, I don't know, dad, and I watch it and I don't
know, and I don't know if he just literally got away from him.
His vision was too big.
He couldn't execute on his vision.
And then it, you know, all went where it went.
And he paid his dues to society for that as we measure those in the prison sentence.
So he should be able to move forward.
It's up to me to make sure that he's not going to be able to
me or you, what are the trust that number two is going to go off?
I personally would want to see a little evidence.
He could pull it off, but there may be people who are willing to take
more risk because they see other benefits.
Absolutely.
And so those of you, how does this relate to your podcasts that are out there?
I think the, you know, some of the big components of that is what is your goal?
Why are you launching what you're launching?
Who's the audience that you're serving?
Do you feel a sense of pressure, right?
That a need to promise certain things.
And if you do, can you make sure to level that with proper expectations?
Elon Musk is the exact opposite of the scenario we're talking about.
He sold a car from stage that wouldn't exist for two to three years.
And 180,000 very smart people put a thousand dollars on that car, even though
they knew they might not ever get the car, he became one of the greatest
visionaries of all time to that experience.
So my hope is not to uninspire anybody to say, oh my gosh, I don't want to
launch podcasts, this is scary.
My friend's life is scary.
There's all sorts of things and challenges that are out there in life.
Podcasting is actually probably one of the easiest things that you can do to
create opportunity for yourself out there based on what I've seen.
Tom, have you ever seen anything easier as far as driving distribution and
marketing and advertising and growth and being able to get, get traction for a
brand?
I'm curious because I don't think there's much easier.
So when I started my consulting practice, a woman gave me two pieces of advice
that were absolutely spot on.
She said, number one, it will take a minimum of six months, but really a year.
So you need to commit to doing this for a year.
Two is, and this is going to sound specific to lawyers, but it's not.
She said, don't be like every lawyer I know who takes in every piece of work
that comes in because you're a lawyer and you can do legal stuff.
If I wanted to do anti-corruption compliance work, and that was the focus
of my consulting practice.
She said, if that's what you want to do, that's great, but that's the only work
you should take.
And she was absolutely right.
It took me six to nine months.
It took me six to nine months to get up and get going.
And I built a worldwide consulting practice literally from my house way back
before we had work from home, because like I said, I couldn't leave except to
go to physical therapy.
So, um, commit to a timeframe.
And if, you know, don't do other stuff or extraneous stuff.
And I did that in my podcast, uh, business as well, and it paid me back in spades.
Huge.
I'm going to add some valuable variables to this equation and that conversation
of the woman who has not gotten credit yet.
Are you going to give credit?
Who's who's the woman?
Francine McKenna.
Francine who McKenna M C K E N N a.
Can a thank you, Francine, phenomenal verified advice.
Obviously Tom represents a great case study for that.
So I do agree that you can do it with the six months to one year, but I also want
to point out the variables that Tom had in his favor.
Tom had already practiced the law and art of the 10,000 hour rule, right?
He was all red.
He'd already gone to school.
He had already become a lawyer.
And so there was a whole background of experience that existed.
There was a whole background of experience that exists there.
And a lot of the younger market, a lot of you think you can go and do things
without any experience whatsoever.
And you end up putting yourself in a big hole in a big pickle.
So developing your expertise in craft, I think is an important addition for most
of you and some of you unicorns will be the exception of the rule.
Congratulations.
Welcome to, uh, I guess an easy life.
I don't know.
And then go ahead.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Say about the 10,000 hour rule.
For sure.
Spot on there.
But here's why I was able to make it work.
I took an area of a law I had never practiced in or had done very little
practice, but the area was incredibly narrow.
There was one law and about five cases.
So I read the law, I read the cases and in 2010, uh, there was no formal
guidance from any regulator.
So I could say, Tom says this, and it was as equally valuable, equally
valuable as if Jackson says this.
And so I got my 10,000 hours in, but I got it in because I was focused on an
incredibly niche area that I really could master.
So for your audience, the entrepreneur, I'm a firm believer that whether you say
the riches are in the niches or go niche to go big, if you, if you focus on a
narrow area, you can hit exactly what you said is a key metric in my opinion,
10,000 hours and that you can become the expert in that area.
This is one of my absolute favorite conversations to debate because there
are, there are brilliant paths on both sides of this.
And if you want to champion that even further, Gary Kelly wrote a wonderful
book called the one thing, right?
Where he talks about focusing on that one thing.
And it's like the championship level book for those who are, who are
drinking the niche down Kool-Aid.
And I say that with respect because there's the opposite side.
There's the people who bring, who drink the opposite Kool-Aid, the, the go wide.
Right?
There's the Jack of all trades is master than none, but the rest of the quote is,
but oftentimes better than he who only does one.
Right.
So there's that, there's that side of it, but let's look at it from another perspective.
I like the niche down concept.
I like the, the one thing I understand the value of that yet as everybody kept
recommending to me to do that, I had in my mind, once, once upon a time, a PR
professional, a journalist told LeBron James, why don't you just shut up and
dribble LeBron?
She was sick of him getting involved in politics.
She was sick of him putting his, his using his public space to do
thing beyond dribble a ball.
And it was probably one of the most racist and prejudice and narrow
perspectives that one could possibly provide.
And here's a man who owns hundreds of companies and has hundreds of endorsements.
And then there's Richard Branson, who also owns several hundred companies.
And so I look at those two and I came up with a new quote.
I will eat, have my cake.
I will eat it too.
And I will have a conveyor belt of cakes.
Thank you, Richard Branson.
So the niche down concept and the process, it's absolutely one that all of you should
consider, you know, and I'm not saying that there's not a value to it, but it is
only one avenue on life.
And if you look at Google and you look at Amazon and you look at Pandora and you
look at Spotify and Instagram and Snapchat and beyond, these are all
multi-billion dollar companies that, and Disney do not niche down.
They do understand the value of clarity and focus and precision.
But it's, it's again, there's two different options there for you.
What I think is best for all of you as listeners, what my hope is take what you
hear from any leaders that you listen to out there and apply your own beliefs.
And I think that's the best option for you.
I think that's the best option for you.
So I think that you can take that option out there and apply your own vision and
intuition to, to making the best choice for you, knowing that if Jackson said
writing a book on a napkin is a stupid idea from a strategy standpoint, it's
probably kind of accurate, but then J.K.
Rowling went and turned that into a billion dollar enterprise.
So if you're going to get advice from somebody, you know, if you're going to
get advice from somebody who is doing a lot of amazing things right.
So I'll probably come back to you at some point, Tom, and also dive in the,
Hey, I'm ready to niche on this and see what you have there.
In terms of those you serve, you've got a, you got this compliance podcast network.
You've got your legal practice as well, potentially maybe retired from that, but
who do you serve and how do you help them?
And how does this network benefit?
Because I, I do believe in it.
And, and all the things that you're doing.
So I have two metrics and two metrics only for a successful podcast.
Number one, how much did I learn?
Number two, how much fun did I have?
That's it.
And that has made me as successful as I've become.
The reason is twofold.
Number one, I am truly a subject matter expert in this field.
I've written a, my humble opinion, single best one author volume on compliance,
the call to compliance handbook.
And so if I learned something, my audience is going to learn something.
And guess what?
I always learn something.
But number two is equally important.
The fun part, they say people stay, they come for the guests and stay for the
host and I believe that wholeheartedly because when I'm having fun, people
can tell it in my voice and when I'm engaged, they could tell that.
And I don't want to say we laugh and cut up because I'm a professional
and I'm a stodgy old guy, but I can still be passionate about talking
about compliance or anything else.
And so if I'm having fun, my audience is having fun and that's it.
I don't take polls to see what people want to hear about.
I talk about what I want to talk about.
And that makes in my mind or an engaging podcast.
And it gives me the ability.
At some point, you're probably going to say, how do you keep being this driven?
It's because I absolutely love what I do.
And I get to talk to people like you all day long.
Sometimes it's on this side of the mic.
Usually it's on your side of the mic, but this is what I absolutely love.
So I'm up very, very, very, very early in the morning and I work very,
very, very late at night.
Part of it is driven.
Part of it is I'm an entrepreneur finally.
And part of it is I absolutely love doing this.
So, um, it all kind of comes together for me.
I love that.
And I think that's one of the big keys is when you, when you love what you do,
there's that saying that I actually not a big fan of the same, the one that says
when you love what you do, you won't work a single day.
And you love what you do, you won't work a single day in your life.
And, and I get that you can do that, but I love what I do.
So I work at it.
Right.
And I just learned to value the virtue of work for what it is.
Um, but your, your path, you just taught me something super golden.
Those of you who are experienced in the podcast world, um, most of us are failing
to, to where we're in our first attempt in learning, right?
Use that fail word to pull yourself forward.
Um, I think that's a positive opportunity to continue to grow.
Um, Tom, you said come, they come for the guest, the audience comes for the
guest and they stay for the host.
And I know that as I heard that I was like, I can't wait to talk to my team
about making sure that we're doing everything we can to honor the promotion
of the guests who comes on our show.
Um, you know, we, we do a good job of it.
We work hard to do that, but there's just something about the way that you, you
said that that hit me at a new level and made me realize I want to spend, you
know, in the next couple of hours of my life optimizing how do we honor these
guests?
Um, so thank you for, for being willing to share that the driven and the
entrepreneur stuff.
I mean, it, it's funny.
People come, you know, people don't understand why we love to do what we do.
Um, right. And they have a hard time fathering that cause they're, they're, they're existing life.
But honestly, visionaries, most of my days feel like when I wake up and engage in my
team, it feels like my birthday almost every day that I get involved with my team.
And even though they're virtual and I can't give them a hug and Monday in fact,
we're talking, I was like, guys, I've never said this and y'all don't know this
cause you've never been with me.
But if we had a real like physical office, when I walked in, I would give
everybody a massive hug.
Um, like, like every single day when we kick off, because that's just kind of
like my personality and who I am.
It is awesome to have team members that support that.
It's awesome to have guests who bring that type of vibe to you.
It makes it very easy to want to get up in the mornings and to have the drive to
go and do good.
So your, your network, I love to hear more about it.
What, what is the compliance podcast network and how do we get involved?
Sure.
So the compliance podcast network is legal and regulatory compliance.
When I had the idea to start it, there was no networking compliance and there's
still no network and compliance.
And so I was the first mover.
Uh, what happened was it blew up during the pandemic because prior to the
pandemic, almost all marketing in compliance was done in person.
Traceos conferences, breakfast round tables, that sort of stuff.
And that all went away.
And in 2020, people needed an outlet and they had money.
So my little network blew up and I've been riding that wave since then, but, um,
it's really about what I want to explore.
So star wars and compliance, Star Trek and compliance, Shakespeare and compliance,
Sherlock Holmes and compliance, Winnie the Pooh and compliance, James
Joyce, Ulysses and compliance, um, sports and compliance, women and compliance.
Sports and compliance, women and compliance, compliance, round tables,
daily compliance, weekly compliance, uh, books about compliance.
All of those things are a part of the network because they're things I love.
And right now I'm going through the entire A Conan Doyle,
oeuvre of 56 short stories.
Got the novels and then I'm probably going to do the movies.
Um, and it's an excuse to reread everything.
Every summer I do Star Trek, the original series, leadership lessons
from Star Trek, which I call trekking through compliance.
And as my wife said, this is really just an excuse to rewatch every episode.
Isn't it?
I'm like, yeah, really.
So, you know, uh, and people love that.
It's just storytelling.
You know, what are the lessons from the MCU and compliance?
I've, I've done that.
Um, what are the lessons from Oscar winning movies?
I'm doing a presidential leadership, uh, series for the business executive.
Uh, and it's just ways to shake and bake and slice and dice compliance
that, uh, are interesting and interest people.
And most importantly, they interest me.
Oh, I love that.
That's Gary V a long time ago.
I heard him talk about how if somebody wants to have success within like 120 days,
I remember what, what I think he said a hundred days, um, go out.
If you live in New York, go to first street and interview the
three people, um, I get it.
They're just walking by just doing it.
And then the next day go to second street and do the same thing and go to third.
Just work your way up.
Uh, I was like, you'd have an incredibly successful show and podcast and
opportunities coming at you from every which direction.
If you just stick to it and be consistent with that.
And so the underlying theme that Tom's talking about, I'm alluding to, and
that Gary also hit straight on the head is if you just, if you just go for it,
you know what you have in your life, what you, what you love.
I love that.
I love that you centered around fun as well.
That's obviously a big value and virtue for you.
Um, and those of you listening in, maybe you're not into fun that much.
Um, you know, it's like, well, who could, I, I'm a fun guy, kind of,
but I'm a healer.
That's what I do.
That's, that's what I gravitate towards is healing.
I tend to be more reverent.
And so there's people who've got a lot of fun.
Some of them combine faith and fun.
Some of them combine faith and like meditation.
And so whatever makes you feel good, right?
Whatever helps you maximize how much you value life.
Lean into that as a core piece of, of why you would get into podcasting.
And that will likely inspire you to head new directions.
I love how you broke down compliance and all those different categories
related to things that you're doing.
I just don't, I don't think we hear about enough.
And so then we don't get, give ourselves permission to do that.
Um, and you kind of, you, you, you create that inspiration for us, Tom.
So again, I really appreciate the wisdom on it.
We're going to dive into my favorite question of all time.
Um, and that is if this was the very last chance you had to speak today,
at all ever, what powerful life would you have?
What would you have?
Like at all ever what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
Just do it.
Whatever it is, whatever you want to do, just do it.
If you want to study insects because that's your passion, just do that.
Um, I was a lawyer for a long time doing a lot of things I didn't enjoy.
And, um, I finally found a passion around being a lawyer in the world of
anti-corruption and anti-bribery.
And that's a worldwide scourge.
$3 trillion is lost to the world's income annually from theft
through bribery and corruption.
I am a part of that fight.
I'm not on the front lines.
I'm not a lawyer or excuse me.
I'm not a legislator passing a bill.
I'm not a prosecutor prosecuting people who've engaged in illegal acts, but every
day, everything I do pushes the ball forward just a little bit.
And I get to revel in that.
And one of the nicknames I have is the compliance evangelist because I see
compliance as the good news for corporations to fight bribery and corruption.
And I do it through the podcast format.
Like I said earlier on, we're only limited by our collective imaginations.
If you can imagine it, you can do it.
So just do it.
That's amazing.
Well, you heard it from Tom Fox founder of the plants, the compliance podcast
network.
Um, and Tom, do you have a, um, do you have a guest application form for people
who may want to be a guest on your shows or how do you feel about managing your
guests?
Sure.
So, uh, just reach out to me on the compliance podcast network.
You can leave me a voicemail on an app called speak pipe, or you can
send me a, there's a form if you want to be a guest, I just fill it out and that
will get to my team as well.
And we'd love to have you if you want to talk about compliance, who you're looking
for, um, as far as guests for your show, anybody, if you have an interest in
compliance, I'm interested in talking to you.
That's really neat.
That's and that's, that's like Albert Einstein stuff right there.
Um, right.
Just being able and willing to explore what's there and see, and, and
getting, uh, again, I'm going to go back to this mentorship thing that you talked
about in this colleagues reality, right?
It's once you, once you dive in with somebody, there's just no telling the
direction of how deep it's going to go or what you might learn from their
perspective.
Um, so it'll be curious and hungry and ready to appreciate all people.
Like that's, that's beautiful, man.
Go ahead.
You got, you got a burning thought.
I could see it.
I knew, um, this just happened.
Um, in 2018, two women came up to me at a conference and said, we don't think
there's enough diversity in your network.
And I looked at him.
I said, you're right.
When are you starting your podcast?
And they said, no, no, no, that's not what we meant.
I said, that's what I mean.
So they literally didn't know how to hit record button.
I showed them how to do that.
And they started a podcast and they called it great women in compliance.
And they started a LinkedIn group called great women in compliance.
Well, that LinkedIn group, they started a podcast called great women in
compliance, and it was a podcast that led to a whole group led to an entire.
Community.
And at that point in time, there were no, uh, support groups for women in compliance.
They built a support group from that.
They wrote a book about their experiences post pandemic, uh, compliance
conference gave them a session about women in compliance.
Um, it was so successful.
On women in compliance the next year, they gave them a two day conference
called women in compliance.
And they, I just, uh, I gave out my first awards this year.
I call it the Agora awards for excellence in podcasting.
And I gave it to these two women, Lisa fine and Mary Shirley.
And I tell people, they changed the world.
They created a support group for women professionals in compliance when there
was none and there still is not.
That's the power of podcasting and that's the power of one idea.
And I don't know how many drinks they had before they worked up the courage
to come up to say that to me, but they did.
And I just said, you're right.
Let's go.
I love that.
Oh, that is, that is so awesome.
And all of you are one, just do it away from, from doing just that
going out and having fun.
This was, this is such a blast.
Uh, Tom, like I learned so much in this, uh, in this particular episode.
I'm excited to stay in touch.
The, the, the virtue that comes to mind.
It's not one that I've met very many people, um, that I would, I would say,
Hey, you kind of represent this for me.
And I'm, I'm watching you for the sake of developing this myself.
I would say quiet dignity.
That is, that is one of those virtues that, um, man, you just, you just
gush it, um, of the way you show up as a leader.
And I really, really, really appreciate that.
Those of you listening, and if you want to get more involved with Tom Fox,
of course you can Google him.
Of course, you know, we'll have the links below, um, the episode.
And there's the action steps.
My challenge to you is to be like the women that came and approached Tom.
They were just willing to bring up whatever topic and never
hesitate to reach out to great leaders.
Great leaders love to lead.
Um, that's, that's, that's what they do.
That's what we do.
And we'll also have the resources down below, including an, um, AI generated
guide on how to find a great mentor.
Um, I'll likely be creating one today regarding curiosity and how to
dive into your own curiosity.
Um, thanks to, uh, to Tom inspiring that.
And then lastly, in the top right corner of the screen, you're going to see
a big old button that says, be our guest.
If you want to come on our show, be our guests, share your vision.
Don't hesitate to do so.
And we'll see you guys all on the next episode of vision pros life.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned into vision pros live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us
your time and attention, have an excellent time building out your
vision and becoming a big.