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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and we are joined by an awesome entrepreneur today, someone who's so passionate about what he does.
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But what I really love is that he aims to serve more people, to make work better, to make performance better, to make leaders better in so many capacities.
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It impacts every single thing that we do in business, and I also love the fact that right in his name is People Advisors in the name of his company.
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So let me tell you all about today's entrepreneur and guest.
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His name is Elliot Epstein.
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Elliot is the founder of Luminary People Advisors, where he helps mission-driven companies build and sustain high-performance cultures to boost innovation and drive impact.
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With a background as a people leader in leading nonprofits and digital health startups, along with being we're going to talk about this in today's episode for sure a trained improviser and former educator, elliot prides himself on leveraging creativity and humor as he moves the needle with clients.
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Every single thing that our team found about Luminary People Advisors just showcases not only how much Elliot is committed to being of service to other people, but also how intentional and strategic he is about setting people up for success.
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So, no matter where you are in your business, we're all going to learn so much from him today.
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So I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with Elliot Epstein.
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So I'm not going to say anything else, let's dive straight into my interview with Elliot Epstein.
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All right, elliot, I'm so excited to have you here with us today.
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First things first.
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Welcome to the show.
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Thank you, brian, it's great to be here.
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Heck, yes, I am so excited to not only hear about the work that you're doing, but your perspective on all of these things, because it's so deeply rooted in service and setting people up for success.
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So you've got to take us beyond the bio first.
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Who's Elliot?
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How'd you start doing all these cool things?
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Yeah, so I will start at the very beginning.
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I grew up on the south side of Chicago, which is a really significant area both within the city and the country at large.
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The Obamas were around the corner.
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I actually had a friend who used to babysit for Sasha and Malia, but I digress.
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I think what's so noteworthy about it is that I saw the impact of economic and social inequality from a very young age.
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The difference between the block that I lived on and two blocks north was one of the largest socioeconomic gaps in the country, and I knew firsthand how much education and opportunity made a difference in people's lives and that also there was no difference whatsoever kind of in potential or innate ability among people who were born with more or less resources.
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So that definitely cast a long shadow in a good way.
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I did a lot of volunteer work and service learning in high school and I always had this perspective of I want to go to college and do something where I can be in service of others.
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So like any good liberal arts major.
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I took a bunch of different classes, didn't really have any clear direction At one point, thought maybe I'd be an actor.
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At one point thought maybe I'd be a therapist.
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None of those things ended up being the path for me but I did end up doing a lot of work in Providence, which is where I went to school with different communities, teaching kids HIV and AIDS prevention, working at a suicide hotline, doing a lot of work on campus as a tour guide and a resident advisor and a career counselor, and I loved that interaction and really feeling like I was making a positive impact in people's lives.
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And so after college I had a couple of things that I kind of honed in on.
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As a logical next step again for that liberal arts major who didn't totally know the five and 10 and 20 year plan In the first year I was able to do a fellowship in public policy called the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs Shout out to any Coro Fellows out there who may have seen this and be listening and it was great exposure.
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We worked in a nonprofit, in a business, in a labor union, on a political campaign and we had a lot of leadership development seminars and really got kind of honest, candid, 360 feedback about ourselves, which was the first time I had ever experienced that, and I will not lie, it was very scary and at times overwhelming and upsetting, but it became something that I'm increasingly committed to and that I see the value in, and I always say I was originally a very kind of thin-skinned person whose parents always patted me on the head and told them good job, and I have proudly become a more thick-skinned person who really sees feedback as a gift, and so after that I had been able to defer my acceptance into the Teach for America program shout out to any Teach for America core members and alumni out there and I'm really glad that they were flexible in that regard, because I ended up teaching in New York City for two years, which was like the most harrowing experience ever, particularly in the first few months, and certainly a time when I failed far more than I succeeded initially.
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But I think it really set a tone for everything that came afterwards.
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It both brought to life a lot of the issues that I had been concerned with and come to understand sort of from all of the experiences I mentioned earlier, but also kind of gave me a whole new perspective because I was on the ground with kids and families and their communities every single day, and I was so fired up by that that I decided to forego plans for law school and instead join Teach for America's national recruitment team, and it was there that I really got introduced to the world of HR and talent.
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So it was not something that I had studied in college, it wasn't even something that I had been aware of was a viable career path, and I'm so glad that I stumbled into it, both because Teach for America had exceptional training that I still reference and draw from all these years later and because it really introduced me to the broad swath of what was out there not just attracting people to a program and talent acquisition best practices, but also learning and development, how to manage and lead teams, how to think about admissions and selection, which really translates to interviewing and hiring and lots of other contexts.
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And from there I went to a quantitative hedge fund called Two Sigma, which had some of the most brilliant people I've ever met, and at the time and I think they still do they really loved liberal arts majors who had not dabbled in finance, and I got a whole, much larger, broader swath of the world and started to really understand the drivers of a private business and what it meant to be an investor facing organization and so much of what I understand about how to work with engineers and product managers and people in a finance team or operations team came from that experience.
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And then, after leading talent for a network of charter schools in New York City called Success, which I will again shout out because they have done amazing things for kids in New York City, I did that for about three years and then got pulled into the world of startups.
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Now I would say when I first started in that space I didn't know anything really.
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I understood some inherent kind of best practices when it came to recruiting and HR and people and all that sort of stuff, but didn't know what an SVR was, didn't know what a stock option was.
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It was a pretty steep learning curve but pretty quickly I found my footing in the world of healthcare and I think for me, healthcare and education have always been two sides of the same coin and I really see them both as potentials to be equalizers in society and so if you improve on one of those things or ideally both there's a lot of potential for upward economic mobility and other kind of things that had seemed unattainable previously to people start to fall into place, and so, because health care was so behind in terms of technical adaptation and really leveraging technology to its fullest, and because there was so much opportunity, it was a really exciting space to play in, and I have since been in that digital health world and fast forward to all these years later.
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I'm now running Luminary People Advisors to reach mission-driven companies, primarily in the healthcare and nonprofit and education space, because that is what I've always cared about.
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Yeah, I really appreciate that overview, elliot, because even looking all the way back to childhood which I love that you started there it's not often that people go straight back there.
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I always go straight back to the fact that I'm the son of an immigrant mom and like it plays into the way that I see the world.
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It plays into the way that I behave and the decisions that I make and all of those things.
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So I love the fact that you started there, because it showcases that you really see, in all the things you've done, the similarities between people, the differences between people that make this world so beautiful and not monotonous.
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There's so many things to celebrate when it comes to people, and I'm not going to use the word HR with you today, elliot, because I love writing your company name People Advisors.
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I think it's so much cool to look at advising people and really getting the best out of people.
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Traditionally, of course, in the business world, we talk about HR and you alluded to so many of those ingredients of it, from hiring to managing talent, to all of those things.
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But when you look at the people advising landscape, what does that mean and how does it take shape in the business world?
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Yeah well, just as an aside I will say that one of my mentors, who I'm still very close with, wants to write an autobiography called they used to call it personnel, because I do agree that the nomenclature and the nature of the field has shifted so much in favorable ways.
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Right Like, it used to be seen as the sort of back office paper, pushing fun police kind of center within a company, and it's now so much more and, if it's done right, it's a true strategic thought partner to the business that really profoundly shapes outcomes.
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So could not agree with you more on that point.
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I think I can summarize it best by saying that I have always been a big fan of talking, right Like I did theater as a kid.
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I've always gotten energy from speaking in front of people.
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That's why I was a tour guide in college, et cetera.
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In the last 10 to 15 years I've become an even bigger fan of listening, and that may sound counterintuitive, right, because if you're trying to lead and create change, there may be some role that listening plays in it.
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But I actually think listening is the most important thing you can do.
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Important lessons I learned in teaching was that you have to meet people where they are, and you have to be sincere and authentic.
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I think so much of my failure in the early days of teaching was because I was trying to adopt a persona that I believed would be successful teaching in the South Bronx, and that persona wasn't myself, and my kids saw right through it.
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They might not have said it in that way, but they certainly responded to me in such a sort of like, hey, you're kind of full of it, and they were completely right about that.
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And so really hearing where people are and what motivates them, what they're excited about, what they're nervous about, things that may be causing them friction and their ability to be productive or their fulfillment, all of that stuff really matters.
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And it's not to say that my role, either as a consultant or back when I led people teams, was just to say they're there, you're totally right, we're totally wrong, et cetera.
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But I think it starts with listening and then it comes listening down to asking the right types of incisive questions that don't tell people how to think or feel but instead open up the kind of floodgates of reflection so that they eventually come to have a new perspective or appreciate a situation from someone else's point of view and become more intrinsically motivated to make changes that will ultimately benefit them and where they're working.
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And so that kind of listen but also push strategically framework is something that, to me, underscores every single element of people and talent.
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Yeah, elliot, I want to go deeper there because that last point that you made it's so powerful and important for us to talk about, about the questions that we ask.
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And I'm going to throw a little shade and add a little bit of a caveat into this conversation because and I can say this because I've hosted this podcast for over a thousand episodes, I've talked to so many business owners.
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So the shade that I'm going to throw, elliot, is that everybody claims to be mission driven.
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Everybody uses the same type of buzzwords.
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The amount of times I've seen innovative and revolutionary and transformative we throw these words around there.
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And so when I hear you talk about listening, I think it's so important because I know that part of your toolkit is that you have the ability to get people to go beyond the buzzwords.
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So I want to hear your perspective on those questions, on getting to the real meat of the topic, beyond the surface level buzzwords that we throw around way too frequently in business.
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Yeah, I mean, there's this famous quote of when people show you who they are, or, in this case, an organization shows you who it is, you should believe it.
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And so I think there is sometimes a tendency to use buzzwords, as you've said, as a replacement for real committed work and thoughtfulness and effort, and they are not a stand-in for that, if done, or I should say they should not be a stand-in for that.
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So when it comes to really understanding an organization's kind of true ethos, you have to ask yourself a couple of things.
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One how do they define success?
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In the case of healthcare, I wrote a blog post on this a few months ago If you're defining success in terms of how many codes you can build per patient or how much money you're making for a hospital system, as opposed to what is best for the patient, do they feel positively about the treatment that they sought?
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Were you able to cut back on costs and contribute to some sort of shared savings?
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That in and of itself really tells you a lot about how a company is oriented.
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Another big piece of whether or not an organization sort of walks the walk is how decisions are made around who gets hired, who gets promoted, who gets let go right, like what behaviors are truly rewarded and valued and held up as a model for others versus those that aren't.
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You know, a lot of companies may have a core value around empathy or listening actively or collaborating effectively and then reward people who don't do any of those things, and so the values come to ring as superficial and insincere for the people who are trying to do good work at that type of organization.
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That's a really unfortunate thing.
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So walking the walk means actually using core values that have been thoughtfully developed as a compass to guide all of these decisions about how do you collaborate, how do you approach disagreements, how do you make hard decisions.
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And then another piece of it is the policies.
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Right, I'm not a big policy person.
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I sort of appreciate the Netflix adage of make smart decisions that are fair to you, fair to the company and in everyone's best interest and communicate openly and that sort of takes care of it.
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But if you are professing to be a company that supports working parents and you don't have competitive parental leave or you don't have parental leave for non-birthing parents, right?
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I'm married to another man.
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We were parents through egg donation and surrogacy.
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There are companies out there that would have said to me when I had a brand new baby at home you don't get any parental leave, you can take five days, and that would not be an organization that actually cares about supporting working parents.
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And then I think, in terms of a mission, there are always going to be companies, and many in fact, that don't explicitly have a mission towards sort of correcting some form of social injustice or expanding access and opportunity for a population in some key area that has not traditionally been afforded it.
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But there are other things that they can do, going back to this question about policy, that really speak volumes as to what they value.
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So does your organization do volunteer work?
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Do they have any pro bono clients?
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Do they have a charity matching program?
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Do they support people in their outside philanthropic endeavors, like?
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All of these things really tell you a lot, and so I think, rather than taking buzzwords at face value, it's important to hold people up to a lens of scrutiny.
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Yeah, not only that, but you so beautifully articulated it there where you said the buzzwords are rooted in something that was thoughtfully curated and created, and I think it's important for us to get back to that root of why those buzzwords exist, and so that's really cool to hear your insights there, especially in a world where, I mean, we do see this all over the place, so I really appreciate those insights.
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Since we're talking about listening, I wanna throw this out there because, knowing that you're a trained improviser, the thing we all have heard about improv is, of course, the yes and approach, and a lot of people interpret that If you sit at a comedy show.
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I lived in LA for quite some time and, elliot, I was going to improv and comedy shows at least twice a week, so I've seen my fair share of it, and I always noticed the differences between the comics and the improvisers that were listening, so that they could then say what it is that they want to say, versus the ones that just had that attitude of I'm going to build on what you're saying and truly embrace that yes and thinking.
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Talk to us about that, because it's easy to say active listening We've all heard that term, but put it into real practice for us that lifts the people up around us.
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Yeah, I mean.
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First of all, I'm glad to hear that I'm speaking with a fellow improv enthusiast.
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I really miss doing it.
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I think, covid, plus having young kids at the outsetigate on behalf of your point of view, means that you're not really listening.
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You're just trying to amplify your possession and dominate over what someone else has in terms of their wants, their needs, their point of view, etc.
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Scarier thing to do is actually to just show up with a conversation with no agenda whatsoever and to meet people where they are, as I said before, and then to ask them questions that help clarify their thinking, both for you and for them, and to solve problems together and build upon that.
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And you know, I have earlier in my career shown up in situations where someone had something on their mind maybe it was something about the way work was happening or an interpersonal relationship with their manager or colleague and I tried to kind of preempt everything that they were saying with the smartest sounding or most strategic sounding replies and it totally fell flat.
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And people you know, afterwards I had to work to earn back their trust, just sitting with people, in whatever frame of mind they're in, and hearing them and meeting them there and then helping them forge the path ahead in a way that's truly collaborative goes such a long way, and you know, the same is true, obviously, in improv.
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It may be tempting if you're like, wow, if I said this thing and built up to this joke, it would be so, so funny.
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But the point is it's actually just about discovering a new reality.
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You can't do that in a vacuum and you can't take, you know, the steering wheel of the ship and just do with it what you will.
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That's totally unfair to all of your scene partners, and instead it's just about that kind of mutual discovery and the trust that if you allow that process to happen organically, it'll be far more engaging for everyone, including the performers.
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Yes, Elliot, huge shout out to not only you but all of our guests, because our listeners know that's exactly what we're doing here on in real time on the air is that there are no replaying questions.
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It really is just follow the flow, because the good stuff comes out, and I think that's the real value is being open to spontaneity, being open to all the different possibilities, because we all have different vantage points and I'm never going to get to know yours if I just force feed you.
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You know the same eight questions that some other shows might do, but we're never going to do here.
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So I hear you.
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I appreciate your willingness to improv here on the fly with regards to business, business and you talk about collaboration and I want to go there with you.
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With regards to your clients, because one part of business that I love is always decision points.
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I always love asking other business owners like what's that decision point or the catalyst that makes someone say and you work with some awesome companies, what are some of those things that make them say you know what we want to reach out to in Elliot?
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We want to work with a company like Luminary People Advisors and we want to one I think, Elliott.
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A degree of it is probably admitting that there's a problem or an opportunity, and then two actually doing it.
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I'd love to hear what's sparking people to take that sort of action and invest in their people.
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Yeah.
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So you know, there are different moments where I think that spark can happen.
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And sometimes it's that maybe things aren't going as well as they could be and they need a fresh perspective or someone to come in and sort of look at everything and help them figure out what's the delta between where we are and where we need to be and how can we kind of put together a plan to get there and make that happen on a fast timeline.
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So that's some of the impetus.
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Some of it is also hey, we're about to scale.
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We're about to really, you know, in the case of a healthcare company, we have a new contract with a payer and we need to start taking care of far more patients, which means we need to hire physicians and front office staff and we need to think about training and onboarding and team development.
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And we haven't thought about how to do any of that at scale.
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And right now we've bubblegum and scotch taped something together that works at a subscale kind of population level but really is dependent on people kind of manually turning a crank, and we need to figure out how to operationalize and sort of create machinery in this and we need someone's help as a person who's done it before, and that's a lot of the work that I actually enjoy the most is when the sort of raw ideas are there, and it's really about drawing them out of people and helping put some structure and shape behind them so that they can scale appropriately.
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I think another piece of it is companies go through different inflection points right, depending on growth.
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It would be overkill if you're a five-person company or a 10-person company to have a very rigorous and in-depth performance management process and people management training curriculum and OKR setting across the enterprise.
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That would just be a distraction and the juice would not be worth the squeeze.
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And typically at that stage people are kind of aligned intuitively because everyone is working so closely together and there's a lot of trust that organically comes from that.
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But if these companies do well, they will eventually grow.
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Now I think headcount growth is a vanity metric, right, and I think we saw that movie play out time and again in some of the sort of high profile implosions of 2022, 2023, and even this year.
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So it's not just about headcount growth equals success.
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But at some point if you need to reach more people, develop more products etc.
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You're going to grow as a team and the structures that sort of loosely held the company together at that five or 10 person level stop working when you get to 20.
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And even the stuff that works at 20 stops working when you get to 50, and even the stuff that works at 20 stops working when you get to 50 and then 100.
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So, figuring out how can you preserve the best of what you're doing so that you don't stifle innovation and create too much bureaucracy, while at the same time putting enough structure in place so that we're able to continue being productive, that communication doesn't get lost in a swirl, that people don't get frustrated and that everyone still has a very clear North Star towards which they're working.
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And that's a phase I really enjoy, I would say.
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The other scenarios where I get approached are one if there is like a boots on the ground team, maybe with a recruiter and a people ops person, but they report up to finance or to a chief operating officer and they don't have that hands-on development from someone who's led teams before, I can come in sort of provide that for them and then make sure that the people functions, needs and interests are represented at the executive level.
00:23:33.474 --> 00:23:43.703
And then, similarly, if a team has a head of people or chief people officer that had to transition, whether they're on parental leave or they decided to pursue another opportunity.
00:23:43.703 --> 00:23:55.021
I'm very comfortable coming in and sort of keeping things moving, having one-on-ones driving organizational initiatives while at the same time learning the company very well so that I can help them find a replacement.
00:23:55.021 --> 00:24:20.310
So you know, I would say Luminary is hyper specific and targeted, with our focus on healthcare and mission driven companies, but we're also pretty versatile when it comes to the size and stage and needs that those companies might have site.
00:24:20.330 --> 00:24:29.571
you so beautifully outlined the different ways that you can serve your clients and the different gaps that you can plug, and it's so cool to think about how intentional it is, because every company does have those different needs, whether it's on a fractional basis, whether it's on a project basis.
00:24:29.893 --> 00:24:37.759
It's cool to see also agility in action, I mean, which is, of course, a business attribute that we all aspire for and that serves all of our businesses.
00:24:37.759 --> 00:24:46.681
I want to ask you this because you keep talking about a North Star and to me that's the most beautiful thing about teamwork is that we're all moving in the same direction, together for a common goal.
00:24:46.681 --> 00:24:51.221
And when I think about teams that we've all been on, of course sports is an easy analogy.
00:24:51.221 --> 00:24:52.971
All of our businesses are easy analogies.
00:24:52.971 --> 00:24:55.315
But we've also all sat in classrooms.
00:24:55.315 --> 00:25:07.699
So, elliot, I've been so excited for you to put your educator hat on, because I'm sure there are things you picked up from inside the classroom that corralling a bunch of kids to somehow move in the same direction is a very difficult task.
00:25:07.699 --> 00:25:20.217
What are some of the things you picked up inside the classroom that now in the professional world you realize, holy cow, we can apply these principles to the way we create our culture and the way we treat our people to make them flourish as well.
00:25:21.618 --> 00:25:22.941
Yeah, absolutely, man.
00:25:22.941 --> 00:25:33.544
I could talk about this for hours so I'll try to rein it in a bit here, but I would say one the part about being authentic and genuine in all of your interactions.
00:25:33.544 --> 00:25:40.640
I think kids are just more honest when they feel like you're not giving it to them straight, and adults in some cases learn how to hide that more.
00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:51.560
But kids are like the best person to teach you that lesson, and I continue being so grateful to the kids who are now grown adults and who continue to kind of shape my perspective in that way.
00:25:51.560 --> 00:26:04.398
There's also something in education called backwards planning, which means that you have either a set of state or national education standards or goals that you want students to reach by the end of the year's time.
00:26:04.398 --> 00:26:17.872
So it may be something around, for instance, understanding place value up to the 10 millions, or being able to do triple digit multiplication, or being able to write an expository essay, whatever it is, and then you know that you have to get to that goal.
00:26:17.872 --> 00:26:25.333
You know that you're going to have students who come in at vastly different levels and it's up to you to backwards plan and strategize.
00:26:25.333 --> 00:26:28.460
If I need to be at this level by the end of June.
00:26:28.460 --> 00:26:37.914
What does that mean for the students who came in at this first level by the end of September and October and the students who came in at a slightly different place by the end of September and October?
00:26:37.914 --> 00:26:50.031
And how can I create a schedule that builds accountability and that has clear objectives that keep us all moving in the same direction while, at the same time, being differentiated enough to meet every single kid where they are?
00:26:50.031 --> 00:26:51.375
So that's a big part of it.
00:26:51.756 --> 00:26:55.512
I think culture building is another piece that's so foundational.
00:26:55.512 --> 00:27:10.839
Having an environment where people can be themselves and show up, however, is most natural to them, provided that they are accountable to others, that they don't block others in their ability to be productive, and that everyone is safe and welcomed.
00:27:10.839 --> 00:27:20.651
Right, that's not to say that ideas shouldn't be challenged or that people shouldn't be held to some degree of scrutiny or pressure testing, because that's really important.
00:27:20.651 --> 00:27:24.000
But I tried to create that in my classroom and I think that they're.
00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:42.744
You know, in interviewing there's this false binary that I've talked about a lot, which is that you can either be super rigorous and, you know, hold people's feet to the fire and really test what they're made of, or you can be super friendly and welcoming and solicitous and make someone want to work for you, but you just give them a bunch of softball questions.
00:27:43.310 --> 00:27:44.718
I reject that paradigm.
00:27:44.718 --> 00:27:55.557
I think it is imperative to be both rigorous and super engaging and friendly and compelling, and I think a classroom culture and a company culture can expect the same of its people.
00:27:55.557 --> 00:28:10.012
Right Like this is a place where you're going to feel energized, where you're going to feel this sense of we're all in it together and you're going to want to work really hard and you're going to trust that you are taken care of and that hard work is rewarded and that the core values mean something.
00:28:10.012 --> 00:28:22.483
And so being able to apply that set of operating principles and values into every area of a company culture and kind of company operating system is so important.
00:28:22.630 --> 00:28:28.191
And yeah, I very much learned that teaching yeah, I love that answer, Elliot, For so many reasons.
00:28:28.191 --> 00:28:32.407
It's so cool to hear and as an uncle myself, I can tell you how much.
00:28:32.407 --> 00:28:33.471
You're absolutely spot on.
00:28:33.471 --> 00:28:34.452
We all learn from kids.
00:28:34.452 --> 00:28:38.991
You're a father and you see that as well that kids they have no filter.
00:28:38.991 --> 00:28:40.731
I mean you can't hide around kids.
00:28:40.731 --> 00:28:45.290
Whatever they see they're going to comment on, and it's a really accelerated way to learn.
00:28:45.290 --> 00:28:46.795
So I really appreciate those insights.
00:28:47.134 --> 00:28:51.155
Elliot, I will say that I knew you'd bring the value here in today's episode.
00:28:51.155 --> 00:28:59.818
You far exceeded that, because you just have such an intentional way of viewing these things, and I think that that's probably one of the words that I used when I teased this episode.
00:28:59.818 --> 00:29:02.683
At the top of today's conversation is that intentionality.
00:29:02.683 --> 00:29:06.779
So I'm really excited to ask you this last question, because it's super broad, Elliot.
00:29:06.779 --> 00:29:16.978
I have no idea which direction you're going to take it in, and that is your one takeaway, knowing that we're being listened to by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs all over the world at different stages of their growth journey.
00:29:16.978 --> 00:29:20.702
Heck, a lot of them are probably solopreneurs thinking you're talking about culture.
00:29:20.702 --> 00:29:22.266
How do I start creating culture today?
00:29:22.266 --> 00:29:25.057
There's so many questions that we all face in business.
00:29:25.057 --> 00:29:29.556
So what's that one thing that you'd like to impart on all of our listeners here today.
00:29:31.259 --> 00:29:49.836
Yeah, I think, knowing what you bring to the table and being fully confident in that offering and then, as opposed to trying to sell it really hard, make it easy for people to buy it and think about the ways in which you can make your services accessible without compromising your value.
00:29:49.916 --> 00:29:58.434
So, just to give an example, when I first started I was only quoting people at an hourly rate and I was thinking well, you know, I don't have benefits, I don't have a 401k.
00:29:58.454 --> 00:30:08.780
Right now I have to gross up the rate in order for people to you know, rather in order for me to make a living, and on the other hand, I don't want people to have sticker shock and sort of send me packing.
00:30:09.310 --> 00:30:12.560
But it feels like it's impossible to have those two things at once.
00:30:12.560 --> 00:30:21.334
I've instead learned that you can actually say to people what is your budget and let me tell you how I can support you effectively within that budget.
00:30:21.334 --> 00:30:23.238
And let me tell you how.
00:30:23.238 --> 00:30:39.035
If I offer you a retainer, for instance, of 15 or 20 or 25 hours a month, it might not seem like a lot, but because I have this experience and expertise, the quality of the work will be high and the time it takes will not be as significant, so you're actually getting a great value for your money.
00:30:39.035 --> 00:30:46.657
And to just not sort of deviate from that and remain confident and at the same time to the point I've made before really meet people where they are.
00:30:46.657 --> 00:30:55.559
So that would be my biggest learning for entrepreneurs who are on a similar journey that I've been on, and one of the fun things is that you keep on learning more and more every day.
00:30:56.430 --> 00:30:57.652
Yeah, elliot, boom.
00:30:57.652 --> 00:30:58.374
I'll tell you what.
00:30:58.374 --> 00:31:10.894
The reason why I love that advice that you just offered to our listeners is because we've not only heard the way that you think as a subject matter expert when it comes to people advising, but that also comes from the mind of you as a fellow entrepreneur.
00:31:10.894 --> 00:31:14.651
I always remind our listeners that when you come on the show, you're also one of us.
00:31:14.651 --> 00:31:16.294
You're growing your own business as well.
00:31:16.294 --> 00:31:24.505
So it's so cool to hear the way that you think, not only with all of your expertise, but also on your personal and professional growth journey as well.
00:31:24.565 --> 00:31:31.855
So it's so cool and I'm going to add this in for listeners is that, listeners, success leaves clues all this stuff that Elliot's been talking about today.
00:31:31.855 --> 00:31:41.846
You'll see he puts it all into practice on his website and the way that he lays it all out this level of intentionality that we heard from him in today's conversation, it's evident on his website.
00:31:41.846 --> 00:31:46.056
That's why we invited him on the show is because we saw how much this shows up in his work.
00:31:46.056 --> 00:31:50.313
So, because success leaves clues, I invite all of you to go visit his website.
00:31:50.313 --> 00:31:51.636
So that's your cue, elliot.
00:31:51.636 --> 00:31:52.819
Drop those links on us.
00:31:52.819 --> 00:31:54.550
Where should listeners go from here?
00:31:55.471 --> 00:32:00.794
Yes, so listeners should go to luminarypeopleadvisorscom.
00:32:00.794 --> 00:32:24.788
It is exactly how it sounds, but for the avoidance of doubt, I will spell it out for you L-U-M-I-N-A-R-Y-P-E-O-P-L-E-A-D-V-I-S-O-R-Scom, and you are also more than welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn if you're interested in chatting about anything, and particularly a potential collaboration or partnership.
00:32:25.451 --> 00:32:27.357
Yes, listeners, you already know the drill.
00:32:27.357 --> 00:32:31.441
We're making it as easy as possible for you to find Elliot's business, as well as him, online.
00:32:31.441 --> 00:32:47.199
So check the show notes down below, no matter where it is that you're tuning into today's episode, you'll find a link to luminarypeopleadvisorscom, as well as a link to Elliot's personal LinkedIn, and I'm also I'm just going to further add because, elliot, I love reading, I love writing what you're doing on your blog.
00:32:47.199 --> 00:32:51.657
You're doing so many good things on your website to just continue putting value out into the world.
00:32:51.657 --> 00:32:55.050
So, listeners, definitely check out luminarypeopleadvisorscom.
00:32:55.050 --> 00:33:00.433
Otherwise, elliot, on behalf of myself and all the listeners worldwide, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
00:33:01.234 --> 00:33:02.095
Thanks so much, Brian.
00:33:02.095 --> 00:33:03.036
This was a lot of fun.
00:33:03.036 --> 00:33:04.356
Really appreciate the time.
00:33:04.977 --> 00:33:10.559
Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
00:33:10.559 --> 00:33:14.542
If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.
00:33:14.542 --> 00:33:23.768
Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at thewantrepreneurshowcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.
00:33:23.768 --> 00:33:32.547
There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.
00:33:32.606 --> 00:33:34.592
These are not sponsored episodes.
00:33:34.592 --> 00:33:36.194
These are not infomercials.
00:33:36.194 --> 00:33:39.681
Our guests help us cover the costs of our productions.
00:33:39.681 --> 00:33:50.623
They so deeply believe in the power of getting their message out in front of you, awesome wantrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, that they contribute to help us make these productions possible.
