Welcome to invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. Join the podcast mogul Phil Better as he interviews successful entrepreneurs that make their living in the digital world. Now let's join your host Phil Benner as your special guest today on Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast.

Welcome back, inspired entrepreneurs, to another episode of Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. I am, of course, your host with the most feel better. I am truly excited to have Sylvania Harrod here. Thank you so much for being here, sir. It's a pleasure to be here, my friend. Did I mess up your last your your name at all? Because I did

It's all of it. It's it's Sylvania Harrod but I I've been called Harad. I've been called worse. The worst. Okay. Unique thing that happens when you have a unique name like mine is, back in the day, there was telemarketers that would call. Wow. And so I always could identify a telemarketer because they would because it ends in an a, they think you're a female.

So they're like, hi. Is is is missus is missus Sylvania here? I was like, no. She died, like, 10 minutes ago. We're trying to do figure out what we need to do with the body. Please don't call back anymore. And we we do that post. Oh my god.

Jesus. And so you would hear

the pause, Like, nope. She's dead. She had a heart attack. And so I thought this was I thought this was was, like, a callback to figure out what we do at this current moment. So, we're up a little occupied. I gotta go. I would do it all the time and, shit. To my friends who didn't know they were always shot the first they're like, who was that that just called? Just us telemarketer.

Don't worry.

Yeah. I can just imagine family dinner. You know? No one's heard it before, and then it's like nice. Oh, yeah. No. She she just had a heart attack. Yeah. Do you know what to do with an 86 year old body? No? Okay.

Thanks. Bye. Yeah. Everybody's just, like, stunned.

But the unique thing is they're they they you gotta know who this who the like, who's sending the message. So they know it's me, and they know I like to joke around and do things. So they're just like, please tell me the rest of the story. So wow. Unless you're brand new and you're at your your in law's house and they realize that on the first call, it's like, wow, what's happening?

So this person is special. It's, the I love that. Oh my god. That's that's I I love how it just a mess up got this great story about before we even started. Like, there's a I I love this episode already. But yes. Let's see. Why did you become an entrepreneur? Just jump into it.

What was it about the world of entrepreneurship that brought you into it?

If I had to label it down to one word, I would say freedom. So there was always this allure of, so let's back it up a little bit. So like when I was a kid, I it was always interesting because I was always a tinkerer. I would always I was always a square peg in a round hole. So, like, I remember, like, being in grade school and teachers would ask certain questions, and I'm like, no, that's and I would be willing to challenge teachers because that was just kind of the the mentality. And so since I was a young kid, my parents used to say, like, my mom worked as a legal secretary growing up, so I would go in law firms, and I would just walk into these attorney's offices, like, big law firms in New York, on Wall Street, and you have this 7 year old kid who just walks into your office. If your door is open that means I can come in. So it's like I would sit there and be like what is it that you do? They're like oh I'm I'm I'm an attorney Obviously.

What kind of attorney are you?

You're in this big office. I'm pretty sure you're an attorney or a lawyer. It would always catch them off guard because they're like, did

the 7 year old kid just say, well, obviously. Like, what kind of lawyer are you? And then before you know it, my mom would be like, where'd my son go? And she'd walk around and I've been in their conference room questioning them for an hour like getting questions being curious asking them in different moments and so there was nothing there's nothing greater as as a as a person who pretends to be an adult working in an office building and seeing a young kid coming in and is interested in what you're doing, and has the ability to hold a conversation and build it be able to do things. So for me I always love that element. I always love the I've naturally been a creative. So it was like creating your own things, having your own stuff, and then I was able to see this little small analogy of like we went to so on the the summer houses and the summer activities, we would go to some of the the partner's office, like homes, like beach houses, and And so they had the big homes and the big things, and I'm like, well, what do they do that's different because this is what my house looks like. So this is not the neighborhood that I'm in. And so what are they doing that I'm not doing today? And it's and and I've always had this, like, mentality of, like, reverse engineering your desires. So as a kid, I remember being at the bus stop and me and my buddies joke about this all the time.