Leah and Todd Rae Getts - email linkedin-schedule

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Are you fed up with the corporate bullshit holding you back? Welcome to Invest in Yourself, the digital Entrepreneur Podcast. The ultimate launchpad for entrepreneurs ready to seize control and unleash their creative genius. Hosted by Phil Better, the podcast mogul, each week he's breaking the chains of conventional work with bold strategies, raw insights, and inspiring success stories from the entrepreneurs who took the risk and invested in themselves. This is your call to arms. Invest in yourself. Break free from someone else's rules and build the empire you deserve. Now, let's dive head first into today's explosive episode.

Welcome back to another empowering episode of Invest in Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm of course your host with the most feel better. And today we're thrilled to introduce a powerhouse duo who turned their journey from nursing and band teacher to digital trail blazers, providing that no background is a barrier when you have a vision and the right strategies. Today we have Todd and Leah Ray Getz, who are a dynamic mind behind the digital Trailblazer.com a platform that's become a lifeline for coaches, consultants and experts looking to transform their expertise into profitable online courses and coaching programs. Starting without starting without any business prior experience, Todd and Leah use their unique blend of strategic messaging, automated systems and ethical marketing to build a sustainable family first business. Their inspiring story is proof that you can design a thriving digital business without compromising the values and priorities that matter most. So get ready to be inspired and take notes as we welcome the Trailblazers themselves, Todd and Leah Ray Getz. Guys, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having us, Phil. We're excited.

I'm excited to have you guys here because you don't fit the normal mode or mold of entrepreneurs. You have a band teacher, you have others families. I want to know what made you guys decide to shoe off the nine to five and decide to become digital Trailblazers digital entrepreneurs?

Yeah, well, we definitely weren't looking for it. It kind of came upon us like probably a lot of folks may have experienced for us. We had been praying and been married for 10 years praying for children and we had really great at that time consulting jobs where we were traveling and we were living in rural Oklahoma. And finally after 10 years of prayers, our first son was born. And so we brought him home and I was now a single mom from Sunday evenings through Thursday night, Friday morning every week when Todd was traveling. And after praying and waiting for children for so long, it was not what we wanted. And you know, Todd barely saw that, saw us and we were, we were home alone. And it just wasn't what we were looking for.

And at the time we really didn't have. Todd didn't have local job options. We lived in rural Oklahoma. It was like be a farmhand, work at the local gas station or factory or nothing that could get him to the level that he was at in his corporate position. So we started exploring things we kind of fell into kind of accidentally. Like a lot of people. Network marketing was a really good like dip your toes into entrepreneurship because I grew up in definitely job security type home. The opposite of entrepreneurship, just security and a job.

That was what everything was about. And so network marketing was a really good way to they get dip our toes in, kind of get our mindset started wrapping around having a business. From there we kind of sucked at it. So we, we frankly, we really sucked at it. And we were both very good at what we did before this. And so it was really frustrating. We came online and tried to figure out how to do this stuff online. Through that we found affiliate marketing.

That's where things started to really change for us. We learned and for anybody who's not familiar with affiliate marketing, that's where you're selling other people's products. So you learn the sales and the marketing pieces of this. But you don't have to worry about delivery. Someone else is working on delivery. So it's a really good starting point for people who are trying to figure out the online space. That's for us where we took off. We, we got coaches, we got courses and we learned how to, to generate leads, how to run Facebook ads, how to write copy, how to run challenges, how to sell webinars, like all of these really awesome things.

And we started doing really well. I think it was 18 months after starting getting bit by the entrepreneur bug. We were able to retire Todd from his then six figure job. And then yeah, we really enjoyed it. But we had people asking us, well how are you generating all these leads? Like what is, what are you doing? And well, we started putting together a course to teach people how we were generating leads on social media. And that's where it really got magical for us is leaning into our expertise, what we're really good at and just sharing that. And since then, like that's where we went from lower six figures in online to our very first seven figure year. And from that we really loved that space of leading into your own expertise.

And we started helping other people to make that transition as well. So they weren't chasing, you know, all of these shiny objects of Opportunities and different things. But like, what are you already good at that? And let's put together a business around that to help you be, have the type of business and the family life and everything else that you're looking for.

I love that. Todd, I want to ask you, since Leah Ray was Cardi pretty much already retired, you know, being a single mom, taking care of the kids is, is difficult. What was it like for you when you finally were able to hand in that like two week notice and be like, I'm going to no longer work this job. I'm going to be like, stay at home, dad. I'm going to be with my family more often. What was that like going through, like what were you going through when, when you had that opportunity come to you?

Yeah, that was. Well, let me back up because part of this, you know, with the intro you mentioned, I used to be a band director, Leah used to be a nurse. And then, you know, somehow we jumped to, oh, we're, we're flying around the country as consultants. That part of this, that part of the story in itself was, was very different because what Leah mentioned about, you know, when we, both of us, when we were growing up, it was all about, you know, going to college, getting a job, finding that security, you know, and then retiring after 40 years or whatever. And what we found was that that just wasn't the case. You know, when, when I graduated college, I had a degree in music education. I got my first job. It was cut from the budget, had to find a second job.

Second job was great, but culturally just wasn't a fit for me. I was looking for kind of more growth and, and basically I wanted to teach high school band.

You're like, oh, I just want to teach kids music. That's all. That's what I got my degree in. I want to teach kids music. Why can't I teach kids music?

Yeah. And, and so I, I found another job teaching high school, which is what I wanted. And it was, it seemed like the perfect position. And first year there, year there, that one got cut as well. And it just got to a point where it was like I realized the job security that I, you know, six or seven years beforehand when I went into college thinking, okay, this is going to be a great secure career path. You know, I'm going to be able to always, you know, the teachers are always going to be in need. I'm always going to have a job. After three years of teaching, I found out that that is absolutely not the case.

Teachers are getting cut all over the place, you know, pensions. And at that time it, right around it was like 2006, 2007, right before the, the big economic, you know, crash. And even before that we saw the warning signs coming because you know, teachers pension and this was in Minnesota. Teachers pensions were, were getting cut and things like that. It was like getting the rug pulled out from under them. And there was all these issues politically and I, we just started realizing that hey, the job security, you know, the, the salary that we were sacrificing for this job security just, it didn't make sense because the job security wasn't there. And so that's when we both, or that's when I went back to school to get re educated. I got a master's degree in health information management.

And then both Leah and I went into the technology side of healthcare. And so we started making more money. We learned electronic health record systems and how to implement those. And then we started a career consulting other hospitals how to implement the software. And, and that's how we got to the point where, you know, from band director and, and consultant to the traveling consultant. And we did that for a while and you know, it turned out to be, I really see that as our first step towards entrepreneurship because now rather than, you know, getting a salary working at the same place the whole time, you had to rely on your own expertise. You had to rely on your ability to perform for a, for your, for a health care organization and do really well so that you can get your next contract. Because we work in six or 12 months contracts.

Once your contract is up, you find another contract and if you're not good, you're not going to survive. And so for us, that was the first time we really had to rely on our skills and our expertise and things like that and build a good resume and get good referrals and have to constantly do that to promote ourselves to the next contract. And so making that switch into entrepreneurship, I think that made it a lot easier because we had already learned how to rely on our own skills and really be more self, self reliant rather than, you know, oh, here's my salary job. I can just go in and just kind of phone it in and just go through the actions and get a paycheck. Right? So that day or that, yeah, I still remember that day flying out and saying, okay, yeah, when my contract is over, I'm not renewing. This is it and we're cutting the cord. And it was very different from the, from the, the last time I, I stepped foot into the Classroom as a teacher. Because, you know, when my job got cut that last time in my third year of teaching, there was nothing but fear and just, you know, uncertainty of no of, you know, can, are we going to survive? You know, is this going to work out? Where are we going? You know, I've got, all I've got is a, a degree in teaching, and I'm not going to use that anymore.

What can I do? And so there's a lot of fear. And, and every time my job got cut, it was like that, you know, it. Was it that, that feeling of certainty that you're gonna make it is the, the, it feels like it's out of your control, right? Because it's up to your employer whether they keep you or not. And if they don't keep you, well, now you're, you're left on your own and you've got to find another job and there may not be other jobs who are looking for people like you in your area. So you're just kind of out there on your own now as an entrepreneur, you know, having had that success building your business, making money on your own, making more money in a month than what you used to make in an entire year, sometimes making more in a week than you used to make in an entire year. And knowing that we could do that anywhere, as long as we had Internet access, we could take the skills that we had built in copywriting and, you know, webinars list building, you know, all these skills as marketers. We could take that and build any business that we wanted. There is so much more of a sense of security and confidence that doesn't matter what, it doesn't matter who's president, doesn't matter what the economic circumstances are, doesn't matter where we're living.

We can find a way to do it. We're resilient. We've got the skills and nobody can take those skills from us. So that last time, handing in that it wasn't even a resignation, it was the end of my contract. And I just said, hey, not renewing. This is going to be my last day here. A lot of excitement, A lot of excitement because now we saw the possibilities going ahead and it was, you know, now that doesn't mean we didn't have challenges, of course. No, everything has challenges from then on.

But I will say even a bad month blows away, you know, any income that we would have made from our, from our normal jobs as a band teacher and, and a nurse.

And of course you get to be the stay at home dad too. You don't have to worry about traveling. Leah Ray isn't a single mom anymore. At least has some support to deal with the child. As much as we love children, they are. As a former child myself and still an adult child, I know how difficult we are. I would love to know when you guys were finally both on the team. Trailblazers.

You're both working full time at this gig and full time could be 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there. We know digital entrepreneurs don't keep regular hours. When you woke up the first day that you were both working in this business, was there a. Was the level of stress completely different than or, you know, the. You know, I remember when I woke up the first day I decided when I was an entrepreneur and like there was stress, but it was like good stress. Did you feel that when you guys woke up the first day where you both were in business together, like you didn't have any other external things? Did you have that, like, yay, stress is gone. But oh no, there's a. No, another bucket of stress showing up at our door that we did not know was going to be visiting.

Yeah, I think it was, it was excitement. I mean we had worked hard to get him get to where we could retire Todd. And that first day, it was, it was actually St. Patrick's Day, I remember. And we went, we like in the middle of the day, we drove an hour. We were on the country, so things were far away. Drove an hour to, to go to lunch in the middle of the day to a nice place and keep, you know, and we took all that time and it was just this excitement of we've done all of this with part time, you know, like with just half of our ha. You know, part of Todd and part of me.

And now we can all, we can be all in, like we can do this. And so there's the level of anxiety that just comes from a new project or something. But really exciting. Like it's exciting tackling something new and all of the opportunity that was really in front of us.

I love that. How do you balance running a successful business and keep the strong, strong family life? Because I know a lot of people who have the old school mentality of an entrepreneur is building a brick and mortar. You guys are doing it digitally. Like Todd said, you only need an Internet access and a laptop and you're good to go. How did you guys continue to build the strong business, keep the business, but also keep that family life really strong? Because now you're both at home, you know, you were a single mom for so long, right in, in style, like from Sunday to Friday. How did. Like, because now Todd's entering your world, Todd's entering your house. You know, this used to be my domain.

Now I got Todd here. How did it. Like, because working together is also a difficulty. Like, so how did you keep that separate? Because now you're both at home, whereas before there was like some separation. Now you're both at home working full time in the business, but also want to keep your, your family strong and not detrimental because of the business.

Yeah. I don't know, Todd, if you want to go. If I need to.

Yeah. So a big part of that, I think is just budgeting. Just because, you know, when you start making a lot of money, the impulse is to spend a lot of money. And if you do that, you're still just living paycheck to paycheck and you are going to be stressing out and you're not going to be able to prioritize other things in your life and you're going to find that you are, you're just constantly hustling and you're constantly going to have that, that anxiety and stress weighing down on you. And so at least at first, you know, you want to keep it to a reasonable budget where you can like take a look at your worst month and then budget for that way for the entire year. And then you know that if you want to take some time off, if you want to, you know, only spend half a day working and half a day with the kids, you can do that and you can take that hit to your, to your income and not have to worry about it. So I think just practically that's the first thing. But even aside from that, I think you just need to be very intentional about your time and how you're spending it and what you're doing.

You know, for me and Leah, we knew that. I mean the whole reason that we did this in the first place was because of the kids. We were perfectly happy just going to a job and working it and making money and coming home playing video games or doing whatever. You know, the horizon.

Todd playing the video games. Leah probably reading a lot more.

No, no, no, no, no. She was playing with. We, we, we got into, we got into some multiplayer online games and yeah, no, she, she's like a level 67 elf.

69 actually.

But yeah, yeah, she just, she upgraded overnight. You didn't know by. While she was playing.

Post kids. We haven't, I haven't been able to touch anything. But yeah, we, it was for the kiddos that, that we did all of this. Sorry, Todd, I interrupted you, but.

Oh, yeah, yeah, no, I was, I was kind of wrapping that up anyways. But yeah, just being very intentional about your time and just remembering why you did this in the first place and prioritizing that in your life and sometimes even just putting it into the schedule. Like we live off of our Google calendar. If, if, if we don't block time off on our calendar, it's going to get scheduled with a sales call. It's going to get scheduled with, you know, some other interview or something that we're doing. Those things get put on our calendar by either by one of our setters or by us or, or just by an automated system. So if we don't block it off, then it's going to get filled up. So for us, it, you know, we just, we block it off on our calendar and that's one.

And that's how we know when we're spending our time in or what we're spending our time on and when we're doing it.

Yeah, I think that's really important. And we've, you know, we've currently, we do like a hybrid model with schools. So some homeschool, some at school. That has been helpful for us because we are busy and pure homeschool was a little rough to stay on top of. And, you know, it's. There's been times in the business where I've needed to be more at the computer. I needed to sit down and be, be more focused. And there's times where it was on, taught and being able to just have that partnership where, you know, one or the other can handle the rest.

Right. Like, we can have the house, we can have the kids, all that kind of stuff. I mean, it's been a huge blessing. Our second son has never known what it's like to have a parent work outside of the home. We've always been here for him. We're. We just got our home study approved. We're hoping to adopt a third, you know, and so there's just, it's.

It's beautiful, you know, and I think about when we were kids and how much and we never saw our parents. They were off work and get home from school and you had like a note of your chores and what to have for dinner. Right. And then, you know, my mom would get home later and think about, wow, very different lifestyle and what we've been able to provide for our kids and being just so purposeful and having a goal Having a desire and then just staying focused. Because it's not easy. It might be simple, but it's not easy. And just really staying focused with why we're doing all of this, I think is so important.

Yeah. And then the other thing is, as our income has, has grown, outsourcing the small tasks or the things that take up time that really are not worth, you know, the value of us being in the business. So, for example, just hiring cleaners coming in once, once a week, maybe even twice a week, depending on how the kids are destroying the home. But, you know, the, the cost of having cleaners come in even just once a week, you know, at the end of the month, if we make just one extra sale per month, that covers the cost of a cleaner, that covers the cost of a nanny, that covers the cost of so many other things, and then we still have money, money left over if we just make one extra sale. So if, if we look at, you know, should we be doing this ourself or could we hire somebody else to do this for us and then just refocus our time on the business that allows us to be much more intentional with our time and spend it in ways that, that makes sense.

I love that and I love the fact that you, you, you prioritize your family. Like, what can we, what can I do that I'm good at? And what can I pay someone else to do that they're good at so that my. I can focus on my zone of genius instead of trying to do everything and do a zone of mediocrity across the board, Especially when it comes to cleaning. I abhor cleaning. It's probably the one thing that I try and put off the most. So knowing that you can pay someone to clean is always so much easier and again, saves you that time and gets that headache off your plate. I want to talk about when did you guys decide to launch your podcast? Because you guys are podcasters after my own heart.

Yeah.

Someone who. I've been in it over a decade now. How long have you guys been in the podcasting space and what led to the launch of your podcast? Digital trailblazers.

So we are coming up on our one year anniversary very shortly. Yes. And honestly, we wanted to do it forever. Like it was always like, oh, we should have a podcast. But you know, it was just, we didn't really know what, how to do it. So it just kind of just stayed on the back burner for a while and years really just kept sitting there as something that we wanted to do someday. But Weren't ready to commit the time and effort into it at that point. And it was just about a year ago.

Well, I guess we were probably already actively working on it at this point. A year ago, it just hadn't published yet. And we've decided we used to do a lot more YouTube and some other things. And we decided, you know, I think we have the bandwidth to do this and it'd be just a great long term play of building an awesome audience, being able to do what we love, talk about what we love, make this really fun and create the kind of podcast that we would like to listen to. Because like, we, I don't know, we're kind of, we're marketing nerds, right? Like, we get, we nerd out on cool stuff that people are doing, cool strategies. And so for us, we've created a digital trailblazer podcast where we get to like essentially funnel hack people, live with them on the podcast. Like, what's working? What, what can we learn from this? And we just pick apart their strategies and do all this kind of cool stuff and we get to talk to so many cool people and learn all of these cool things that we would have never been able to, to have those conversations otherwise. We've really, really enjoyed it.

And we've created such a fun, fun podcast that I think a lot of fellow marketing nerds and online entrepreneurs can really appreciate. And in less than a year's time, we've gotten it to a top 3% podcast.

Let's go. Love that. As a podcasting nerd, that just like makes me so happy because I know how long it takes to get to those top percentages. So seeing you guys do it in a gear, that's freaking awesome. With the podcasting, I'm going to stick on this for just a short bit. What have you seen to be your or what you see as the hardest or the biggest challenges most people, entrepreneurs primarily face when starting a podcast or handling a podcast?

You want to talk to that, Todd?

Yeah, that's. I, you know, just, I don't know about others, but I know for us, like the biggest part was finding a good editor because for, for most of our podc, it was just me editing it, editing it, which was fine because.

Then we could hear how fine it was.

Look, it was passable. People listen to it. I was happy with it. Could have been better. Yes, 100%. But that, that was that I was the editor. I know that that voice was mine for 10 years.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and the thing is like, that gave well and like with anything else in our business, like we never decide that we're going to do a strategy and then outsource it to somebody else from the beginning for us. If you're going to be a successful entrepreneur, if you're going to be successful with something in your business, you need to learn it first. Once you've learned it, you've established the process, then you can hand it off to somebody else. You can train them in and you can, and then they're going to do it the way that you want it done. One of the biggest mistakes I think people make in their business, especially if they're, they're brand new, is that they have this idea that they're just going to focus on their quote, zone of genius and then, then they're going to outsource everything else to somebody else. Right? Like, like, I, I just want to focus on being a life coach and I'm going to outsource the marketing to somebody else. Well, if you already have established marketing plan and a system and, you know, your funnel, your email follow up and you've got all that establishment working, then sure, outsource or outsource that to somebody else, they can, they can manage it and then if they can improve it, they can improve it.

But if you outsource it to somebody else from the very beginning, number one, you're probably going to end up with somebody who's going to just waste money in your business. I, I don't know that we've ever run across anybody that's been able to do that and, and be successful with it. Typically what we see is that they're wasting tens, 20,000 or more on an agency that just does nothing for their business. So that was the first part, is just learning the process myself, figuring out how I want it done, and then coming up with a process to say, okay, here's the template we want to use. Here's the intro, here's the, you know, here's a specific sound we want to use when we transition from the intro to the, to the, you know, all that stuff, getting that all in place, and then we are able to bring in an editor who, you know, I only had to work with them for about three or four weeks of editing the podcast, and now he's doing it perfectly. He can send me the files and I upload them right away and they're good to go. But if I hadn't done that in the first place, it would have been a lot of trial and error trying to find somebody who's going to do it the way that I like it and, you know, who knows what they would have given me back, right? So that's just kind of been the way that we've run our business. No matter what strategy we're doing, whether that's, you know, putting together a lead generation funnel, doing a webinar, you know, hiring a VA to manage a social media, bringing on call centers, bringing on closers, you know, all those things in our business, we made sure that we had to learn it first so that we could establish a process that we were happy with, that we knew worked.

And then we could easily bring people on and train them up and make sure that they're going to do a good job. Otherwise you're just sending those people up to fail.

I love that. No, it's true. You got to know you have to get your hands dirty before you can, you know, pay someone else to clean that. Clean your the dirt off your hands. With the podcast, what's the one thing that you feel that you've learned so much from it? From either your guests? The doing the podcast, like doing the becoming a podcaster, if you will, producing a podcast, anything inside that the podcast world, what, what do you feel has been a, a lesson that you're like, wow, I wasn't expecting to learn that.

I know for me and Leah may have a different answer, but for me it, when we kind of first went into this, we, we kind of had the thought that, you know, entrepreneurship coaches, course creators, it's a small world, right? Like we're, we're networked with people and the people that we kind of know, you know, those are people who are successful and, and that's kind of it. Doing this podcast and doing it in an interview style and, and bringing other people on to tell their stories. We're finding out that coaches, course creators, it's huge. Like this industry is huge, full of people who are making six figures, multiple six figures, seven figures, sometimes even more people that we've never heard of, that we've never seen before. And they just keep coming in. There's so many of them and there's so many people being successful with this that we just had no idea. And so that was the first eye opening thing that we, that we figured out with our podcast because when we decided that we were going to do this, we're like, oh my goodness, how are we ever going to find guests? Are we going to find enough to fill? And they just keep coming in by dozens a week, are applying to be on the podcast. So it's I don't think we'll ever run out of guests to tell their stories and to tell their, to the, you know, show us their, their strategies and their funnels.

So that was number one. Number two is that having interviewed about 100 people at this point and looking at their businesses and what they're doing, so many people who have found success on their own without learning from each other. Right. Everybody else who has found success has had a lot of things that they've done in common. And so that's really helped us to kind of just refine what we're teaching. Help to just give us confidence that we're teaching the right thing to our clients when we can see that. Wow, there's all these commonalities, right. Everybody's building an email list.

Everybody's doing this for lead generation. A lot of people are doing this when they're in this niche. Right. So it really helps us to see what are the commonalities that these other entrepreneurs who are successful, what are they doing to have success and being able to pass it on to our audience and also to our clients?

I love that. And Leah, what have you learned or surprised you the most from starting this podcast?

Yeah, I think something that was kind of a very pleasant surprise was the connections with people. So, I mean, we've, we've been in this for, for many, many years, and we have a network of people that we know and, and talk to and kind of brainstorm with sometimes and have great conversations with. But the, the value of networking with several people a week who are doing great things in different industries and seeing what's going on and just building those relationships, and that's been, I think, very awesome. And, you know, we, I think we had kind of fallen into the rut. If we did a lot of that at the beginning, and then now we just maintained a lot of relationships versus continuing to connect with new people and broaden our, our circle.

I love that. Now we're going to get into a really hard question, because this is the hardest question of the show, really. What do you guys do to invest in yourselves as entrepreneurs, as podcasters? Like in the whole gambit? How do you make yourselves become the better version of yourselves? We're going to start with Leah because Todd answered first, last. Leah, what do you do to invest in yourself?

I am big on personal development and so, and pouring into myself. And so learning, even like part of one of our core values in our within the Digital Trailblazer organization is ongoing, is training. Right. Learning. Ongoing learning. And so Always be learning. And I have a benefit is that I get to kind of do that with every interview that we're going through with folks.

Don't give away our secrets.

Right. So, so that's a huge benefit. But you know, I definitely continue. I, I love to read. I love personal development books. I love. I manage our sales team and work with them every day, helping them to, to create a culture really within the digital trailblazer organization of personal growth and development, of continuing to learn and hone your skills. We, we even close our, our sales calls every day.

Everyone is of this, of Christian faith together. So we actually pray like for continued growth and, and learning and improving our skills and to really just creating that culture, I think within the organization as a whole has been awesome for us and created a beautiful place to flourish.

And Todd?

Yeah. You know, in the beginning, well, and even now, like the, the way that we invested in ourselves is very different from how we invest now. Like at the beginning it was what do we do to be successful? We're always looking for the next strategy or the next thing that we need to learn. And when you're in the beginning stages of entrepreneurship and building your business, that's very important. After that, it was okay, who's going to get us there, right? We know what to do. Now we're at a point where it's okay, who are the people that we can bring on, they're going to be able to take this, our plates so that we can scale our business without having to, you know, hustle so hard ourselves. And now we're kind of at a point where, you know, both Leah and I, it's okay. Now let's look at our health.

Let's look at our fitness. Let's look at, you know, let's look at our diet. And so over the last couple of years, it's really just been focused on getting healthy and refining our diets and coming up with, with a weekly exercise plan and you know, getting active in, in a sport or in some sort of physical exercise and, and just really refocusing on that because what we found was that during, during that hustle part of building your business, one of the first things that, and especially when you, when you've got kids, right. One of the first things that tend to go is, is your own personal health. You don't sleep as much, you're not eating as well. You know, you're, you're, you're, you're not exercising, right? Or if you're exercising, it's throwing a baby up and down.

Hey, you're getting those biceps curls any way you can.

So yeah, so for us, I mean, over the last couple of years, most of you know how we're spending our time trying to, to improve ourselves is just health wise and that's really helped us to, you know, perform better in our business as well. Show up better for our clients, be there for our, for our sales team whenever they need us, and then also for our kids as well. And it's, that is, is what's really taking us to the next level. Just not just in business, but in life.

I love that. Where do you guys see yourself in 10 years? You've already been in this close to. I think you're closing in on two decades now. Where do you guys see yourself in the next decade? What is something that you like? What is a goal that you have to achieve in the next decade?

Yeah, I, I'm leaning in a lot on organic content with the podcast, with the different social platforms and building, just building, getting really serious and, or continue to be serious on audience growth and development on an organic stage. We've done a lot in the past with paid traffic, which has served us really well and has allowed us to do some amazing, amazing things. But I think for the next phase, it's going to be leaning into organic and creating some more, more lower ticket, more things that we can just drive traffic to and to serve en masse a lot more people and to help a lot more people and to give us more time for, you know, baby number three whenever she comes. And to me, that's really exciting. I love creating that kind of community. I love creating that sort of environment and content and to be able to really lean in and just focus on that, I think will be, I'm excited about that.

Todd.

Oh, in 10 years, I hope to be mostly retired, if not fully retired.

You want to switch roles. You want to be the stay at home dad while Leo runs the business and is never home?

Okay, he's older than me, it's fine.

Well, I mean, it comes back to that cash flow quadrant from Robert Kiyosaki, right? If you, if you haven't heard of that concept, it's, you know, the four different ways that you can make money in life, whether it's your employee, whether you're an independent contractor, whether you're a business owner or you're investor. And for us, making that move from business owner to investor is really kind of like the next stage. It's like, okay, we're making money now, where do we invest it where that money is going to start growing by itself without us having to work for it. And so that's kind of where we want to transition to hopefully before 10 years. Ideally, I'd like to do that within the next three to five and just be able to live off the investments at some point. But you know, we'll see. However long it takes, it's going to take.

Oh, I have no doubt that you guys are going to hit it well before your marks. I'm going to jump off stage here, guys. I want you to let. Oh, wait, no. We have one more question before we do that. Wow, I'm jumping the gun. My most important question. What advice would you give to your 10 year old selves, specifically in either.

In entrepreneurship, podcasting, life in general? What's one piece of advice you wish you were given back when you were 10 years old? We'll go with Todd first.

Oh, wow. 10 year old. I think the biggest thing is getting over that fear of failure. If I could have taught myself how to be okay with failing and getting up and trying again and just not giving up, I think that's one of the things because going through, going through school, I was a straight A student, so was Leah. Like, we were very successful and it was to a point where it's like we didn't learn how to fail and get back from, back up from it. I remember, I think I, the first C I ever got was in my college English, my first college English class. And I saw that I was pretty disappointed in myself. But it was a tough class.

I didn't enjoy it. And so what I did is I just changed professors. But it was like, you know, rather than go back and try to master that class and learn what I was supposed to learn, I just, look, I took the easy way out and, but you know, as a, as an entrepreneur, that's such an important part of personal development and succeeding because you're not going to get it right on the first try. And so you could shorten that, that path towards success and entrepreneurship so much faster if you just get used to implementing. Don't worry about getting it perfect on the first time, just implement, learn from it and then go back and try again. You'll go so much further, so much faster doing it that way, just getting over that fear of failure. So if, and then the second thing would be don't go to college, just start a business. That would be the second thing I.

Ever thought myself very clearly. Still paying off his student loans.

I couldn't tell.

Yes. For for my 10 year old self, I would say to dream, like, think bigger. Like I think Todd and I both came from kind of lower middle class Midwest families and had, I had a very small worldview and everything was about job security and if you were smart, if you were a go getter, you can go to college and get a good job job. And I, I never had a mentor that helped me to see outside of my little sphere. And so to find a mentor I think is, is really important because I was a straight A student. I went to college in, in high school, like I was a, a rock star. And I went to school to be a registered nurse because that's what my mom was and that's what I knew. Where it's now as an adult, I'm like, that was kind of stupid.

I should have been like a surgeon. Like this is, duh, like if I want to do medical, that's silly. I should have, I could, I didn't have that mindset, I didn't have that sort of upbringing to be able to see the possibilities and to see what I could really do. And so I would definitely encourage my 10 year old self. We try to encourage our 10 year old that we have to think bigger and to go all in because there, there's so much possibility and there's so much opportunity and if you don't have a family life or a worldview that shows that to you, find a mentor that can help you see all of the possibilities out there for you as you grow up and develop.

Great piece of advice. I love that mentorship. Dream big. You know, don't go to school. All very, very important things. I'm going to jump off stage here. Todd and Leah, I want you to let my audience know where they can find you, how they can connect with you, if they're feeling that they want to become digital trailblazers themselves. So the floor is yours.

Awesome. So if you found this conversation intriguing, if you are looking for awesome fun strategies to help you build and grow your business, I would really highly encourage you to check out the Digital Trailblazer podcast. We're on all of the platforms.

Yeah. And I would say that we are just at the time of this recording, we're about to drop episode 100 in our podcast. And that episode, what we've got planned for it is we're going to look back on all the people that we've interviewed and pick out our favorite strategies. So if you're not quite sure where to start listening to the podcast, start with episode 100 and that's going to give you a good clue as to what the episodes you're going to want to go back to and listen to are.

Yeah, absolutely.

I love that. I'm definitely going to put the link, if it's released or when it's released in the show notes down below so that you guys can, the audience can listen to that. Todd, Leah, thank you so much for being here. It was a pleasure having you guys and oh, it was so fun connecting.

Thank you so much for being with us.

It's been great to my audience. Make sure you check out the show notes to connect with Todd and Leah and the Trailblazers community to become, you know, digital entrepreneurs to the next level. And as I always say, remember to invest in yourself.

Thanks for joining us on Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. The podcast mogul reminds you that your journey to freedom and success starts with one powerful move. Investing in yourself. If today's episode sparked your fire, hit that follow button on Spotify and drop us a comment. Share your wins, your challenges, and what drives you to break free from the corporate grind. Remember, you're your best investment. Always invest in yourself because your potential is limitless. Until next time, keep hustling and take control of your destiny.