Summary

In this episode of the Strategic Expert show, host Matthew Ashton interviews Courtney Jared Bannon, a distinguished attorney, law professor, and entrepreneur. Courtney shares her unique journey into law, sparked by a personal experience with employment rights, and how she balanced law school and motherhood. She also delves into her passion for entrepreneurship, founding her law firm, and the challenges she overcame along the way. The discussion highlights the importance of self-awareness, mindfulness, and the power of moving with purpose. Courtney’s best-selling book Ready, Set, Launch is recommended for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Matthew
Welcome today to the strategic Expert show. I’m your host, Matthew Ashton. Today our guest speaker is a distinguished attorney, law professor, author, speaker and entrepreneur with a Juris Doctor degree focused on international and comparative law and a Bachelor of Science in business and finance. She brings us a unique blend of legal and business acumen. She has over two decades of legal experience and is the driving force behind the entrepreneurs Law group. She’s also the creator of the legal app describe and the author of the bestseller Ready, set, launch, the essential Playbook for Entrepreneurs. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome in Courtney, Jared Bannon. Courtney, how are you doing today?

Courtney
I’m doing great, Matthew, thanks for a great introduction and thanks for having me on the show.

Matthew
Absolutely. I’m so happy to have you on. This has probably been the best and most exciting podcast that I’ve been looking forward to. I knew this was going to be a great one. Can you start by sharing a little bit about your background and what got you into a career in law?

Courtney
Absolutely. So that’s kind of, that goes way back, but I’ll keep it short, I promise. It’s okay. I had been working for this company and I didn’t like how they were treating me and other people. So I started looking up employment law because I wanted to make sure that I knew that I could fight for myself and that I was right. And while I was doing that, I felt it very empowering. And then when I went back to work the next day, they didn’t send all this crazy stuff to me. And I was calm because I had information. And when you have information and you come from a place of strategy, it’s very different than coming from a place of emotion. And I liked how they reacted to it. And they kind of stood up to attention and really listened to me for the first time. And I scared them. And that was empowering and I loved it. So I actually stayed at that job just a little bit longer. I had a baby, and while I was home, I decided to stay home with my baby. But he was so boring. I know that sounds terrible, but it’s a good thing to have a boring baby unless you’re an overachiever like myself. And while he slept, I studied and I did my application, wrote my personal statement, and I did everything while he napped. And when he woke up, I was very excited to play with him, take a study break, and then get right back to it. All he did was smile, sleep, and eat. He was the easiest child. He’s still like that to this day. Best disposition. So when I got into law school, I was super excited. But right before law school started, I found that I was pregnant with my second baby. And my mom said, it’s never convenient to be pregnant no matter what you’re doing, so just do it. You want to go to law school, you’re going to law school. So I started law school pregnant, had my second child in the middle of my first year, and graduated with two spectacular little kids by my side. And it was just amazing. And then trying to find a job was another story. Everybody said, you better be ready to sleep in the conference room. You’ll be working till 04:00 a.m. and I didn’t want that for myself. I wanted to see my kids. I didn’t even want to fall asleep to miss a second of their life. So I started my own law firm, and I made sure I had mentors and people right next to me in case I had questions. I only took things I knew I knew how to do. And after that, I got into the financial space, my undergrads in business and finance. So I got into the financial space, and I loved it. And everything I did just kind of led me to where I was. I worked at different firms throughout the years, and I learned how to do dissolution of marriage, insurance, defense. I did everything. Immigration. And one day I found myself knowing that I could pretty much practice in any area of law, and that was empowering. And then I decided to be an entrepreneur, and all of it just came together. It was just an amazing journey.

Matthew
It absolutely is an amazing journey. I think you’re definitely somebody that a lot of women can look up to, because you haven’t. You haven’t made a sacrifice one way or the other. You made it work both ways where you had your family. You know, there’s a lot of women who go, oh, I’m pregnant. Now’s not the time. I’m going to put law school on hold. And then it never, ever happens. You managed to do both. That’s very, very impressive.

Courtney
I did, and I prioritized family first. School was always second. But then I found I was actually able to kind of surf between the two and put 100% in one one day and 100% in the other the other day. And I gave myself grace for the times where I kind of messed up, like missing a birthday party, not my kids birthday party, but taking them to a birthday party and the big scope of things. I thought, you know what? I’m not going to be guilty about this, but I went home and I cooked dinner every night. I waited till they were asleep to do my homework and study, and I prioritized them as much as I could. And that balance wasn’t really a balance, because I think balance is crap. Like, there’s no such thing as balance. Balance is do what you can and don’t beat yourself up if you’re not. You can’t give 100% to everything. And we all do more than one thing, whether we even a stay at home mom. She still has to take care of herself, take care of the home, take care of the kids. It’s not all one thing that she does. She’s not just mom. She’s actually, like, running a business. You know, a lot of people don’t give women credit for how hard it is to run a household. So I really loved that I got that experience, and, of course, I had an amazing, supportive family. I couldn’t have done it without them. And I just don’t think we have to sacrifice. I had this job I hated, and I wanted to quit it so badly. And I was terrified of my boss, who, by the way, was ten years younger than me, single, no kids, and they were making me work these crazy hours, and I just did not like the people. They were not nice people. And when I quit, I gave the excuse of, I’m just going to stay home with my kids. And she looked at me and she said, you know, as a woman, you can have it all. You don’t have to make the choice to stay at home. And I looked at her and I said, how do you even know what that means?

Matthew
Right? She doesn’t have that experience.

Courtney
Right? Yeah. Now she follows me on Instagram.

Matthew
There you go. Turn the haters into followers. Awesome. And I 100% agree with you, and I think you tackled that in a very wise way to, you know, to manage your time. And when you were in something, you were in at 100%.

Courtney
Yes.

Matthew
That. That’s something I’ve really been kind of focusing on myself lately within my own scheduling and things like that to try to manage and not multitask as much. And I’m finding it is allowing me to get things done quicker, more efficiently. So, like, your study time is actually more effective because that’s what you’re doing and focused on, and then your family time is just that much more meaningful because you’re not sitting there going, let me study and take care of the kid and go back and forth. You kind of fail at both.

Courtney
You do. Because the truth is, if you’re really focused on something, then you can’t be focused on something else. If I’m watching the kids and playing with them and reading and studying, one of them is not going to stick in my brain. And that’s not fair to me as a student and not fair to the children. So I always made sure that I was able to do that. And then if I had to do stupid things like putting tabs in a book for an open book test, I would do that kind of stuff while they were playing on the floor or watching a movie. So I was with them, and I was doing things that didn’t require my attention. So I learned how to plan my tasks out, so I was able to do, you know, the silly things where I wasn’t taking away from anybody and I wasn’t taking away from myself. Cause I would have been sitting there stressed out. You know, nobody really wants to watch Thomas the tank engine 65 times in one week without, like, getting something done. And that really helped a lot, too.

Matthew
Sure. You’re absolutely being strategic about it, and I think that’s definitely led to other success in your life as well. Clearly, you have that style. Well, one thing that really stuck out to me as I was reading your book is kind of this overachiever attitude that you’ve had, because that’s something I’ve definitely been accused of in my life as well. I’ve burned the candle at both ends and in the middle to try to achieve the different, you know, different licenses, different things. So when I was reading that with you, I’m like, hey, this is somebody who’s very much like me. Although we’ll get into it a little bit later, there are some aspects in which you and I are polar opposites on. Let’s kind of talk about, like, how does the yoga, the business, the family, the law, like, how do you complement all of those together? Because I agree with you, there’s not work life balance. There’s work life choices.

Courtney
Oh, I love that. I wish if you had said that, I would have stolen it and put it in my book. That’s really good.

Matthew
To be fair, I stole it from somebody else. So. But I think it’s absolutely true.

Courtney
It’s a great question. So I want you to picture an egg, and the yolk is the yoga for me. So that’s the center of me, and that is where all of my decisions come from. That’s where my virtue comes from. It’s where my ethics come from. I try to always do the right thing. I try to be a good person. I’m always mindful, try to do things with intention. And when you move through purpose and intention when you do things, it’s just felt by everybody. And then, you know, the egg white is my family and everything that kind of protects that yolk. And that’s my activities that I do that I love. Like, I’m an equestrian, I ride horses. I like to do hiking and camping, and I’m very adventurous. So any given day I’m doing something crazy. I’m a little bit of a thrill seeker. So I love all of that stuff, but that’s kind of what feeds the inside of me. It keeps me really happy. Like, I love to experience things. Like, I even like to be afraid when I’m doing something scary, I’m terrified, but I’m like, yeah, on the inside. Like, I love that stuff. And that helps me balance all the other stuff and then work, all of that flows through my work because I’m very protective of my clients. I’m selective about who I work with now because I can be. And I don’t want to work with people who aren’t moving with intention and purpose and ethics and kindness. I just don’t, and I don’t have to anymore. Like, I can work with whom I choose. And when I am working with people like that, I’m very mindful of how I’m billing, how I’m treating them, how I’m communicating to them. So a regular law firm, you get a big law firm, they’re going to just sign you on as a client, take a giant retainer and bill you for everything. Bill, Bill. Three months later, you find that all they’ve done is bill you for all the emails where you’re asking for updates and nothing’s actually gotten done. I don’t do that. I don’t charge for communications unless they’re substantive. If I’m discussing a case in an email with another attorney, yes. When my client contacts me or emails me for anything, I do not charge them for that. You want an update? No problem. You want to vent? No problem. You want to cry to me because something happened at work and I’m helping you with an EEOC case, no problem. I am there for you. And I find that when I am mindful about that kind of stuff, it actually helps me remain calm about billing. I don’t have all these little tasks to do, and I give very clear expectations to my clients, so they’re not usually following up with me for updates because I have beat them to it. I’m giving you updates. I’m telling you, hey, this is the date that we’re having this. Hey, today I read this great case, and I think I’m going to use it at the hearing next week. Hey, get ready for the hearing next week. Like, I purposely get to them first, and that way they’re very even keeled through the whole case. I think when lawyers don’t communicate with their clients, that’s when the clients start to kind of get a little, you know, finicky, and then they start picking at you and everything you do. And the big firms don’t tend to be as warm and fuzzy as a smaller firm like myself. Yeah, but my whole thing is about, you know, just doing the right thing at all times. That’s it, period. End of story.

Matthew
Well, I think that’s. That’s fantastic. And I will say, you know, that is you are dealing with a problem. That is the number one complaint I’ve ever seen about attorneys. And even doing Google searching and researching that communicative aspect, following up, chasing it. That. That is huge that you do that and you take that personal of an approach with somebody, because I know that’s the number one complaint I’ve seen with law firms. So I love that you’re taking something that doesn’t seem like it would apply. The mindfulness and law and the hard rules of law versus the soft approach of mindfulness don’t seem like they go together. But I think your approach to it is actually very pragmatic.

Courtney
It is. And they really don’t go together. When I first started teaching in 2011 as an adjunct law professor, somebody called me, like, the yogi professor, the yogi attorney. And somebody said, that doesn’t go together. And I said, yeah, I know. Neither does root beer and vanilla ice cream, but, like, they’re great together.

Matthew
Like, where does the badge of honor, for sure.

Courtney
But the whole thing with mindfulness, and mindfulness requires self awareness. Self awareness requires you to look deep within yourself, look at your faults, and edit yourself, adjust things. And when you do that, then you’re moving with strategy instead of moving with emotion. And it helps you kind of not get flustered, you know, in court. I was in court last week, and this attorney was trying so hard to steamroll over me, kept trying to interrupt me, and I just kept going, I’m not finished yet. Like, I didn’t look at him, I didn’t. Couldn’t fluster me, and I. A lot of. And I don’t mean to make this a male female thing. I’m not, but it does exist. He was trying to overpower me and trying to fluster me assuming I would be emotional or get upset, and I didn’t, and he did not know what to do with me.

Matthew
That’s the hardest part. There’s a phrase, and by the way, on this podcast, you can be unpolitically correct. And you can swear, because I’m about to. The phrase that I’ve always learned with that is being unfuck withable, which I borrowed from Vishen Lakiani. I love that you’re not getting flustered with that.

Courtney
Never. And it’s funny, because my catchphrase among my family and friends only is I can do whatever the fuck I want.

Matthew
Exactly.

Courtney
When I have moments where I, like, want to run away, I’m like, you know what? I could. Because I can do whatever the fuck I want. I’m a free willed child here. I could do whatever I want. And that makes me say, well, I don’t want to leave. I don’t want them to see they got to me. And that’s when I just. And the breathing exercises. So your body gets very in tune with yoga. So when you’re feeling stress and you breathe, you actually are putting oxygen into your bloodstream, and that calms your nervous system. So yoga helps with everything. I feel like everybody should be required to do yoga every morning because I guarantee you they would have a better day. It just does so much for your physical body and your mental being, your mental well being that it’s just. I can’t imagine not doing yoga every single day.

Matthew
Yeah. And if anybody’s ever been to your instagram, they can see that you definitely do as well. And this is something. And kind of, speaking of your Instagram and a couple things you alluded to earlier about doing things that scare you, and you actually enjoy that emotion. I think your mindfulness and your I. Your adventure nature, your adventurous nature and everything, that really kind of stood out to me. Even reading your book, you were talking about how everybody you know always goes, oh, well, you’re doing all these great things, and you’re doing all this adventure stuff. And the point you made was you’re just paying attention to what’s around you. You’re looking at the bird that they probably wouldn’t be paying attention to and taking these photos that people would otherwise miss. And that’s actually where I think the adventure lies. You don’t have to go do these great, big, giant things. You can, but you can have very simple adventure.

Courtney
You just made my eyes tear up, because, first of all, you quoted something out of a book I wrote, which was like a dream. But that was my favorite part of the book because it’s so true. Like, you know, me just walking to the mailbox and seeing a cloud swirling and moving the leaves like, that is an adventure to me. Everything is, because life is so amazing. I mean, we are these. These, like, water bags hanging off a rock, floating in space. How is that not amazing? How can you not believe in magic when you think we’re literally made of, like, stardust and the universe? And I see those things happening, and I’m like, oh, is that a sign? Oh, that is so cool. The universe is telling me something. It’s just an amazing thing to live here and be here. And, you know, I don’t seek out adventure. I notice it.

Matthew
Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, the other element of doing those things that scare you, too, is is really something. I actually had an experience this last week with it where, you know, I’m here in California, and I’m out in Palos Verdes. There’s a big cliff that gets down to the waterfront. I’ve been wanting to go down there. I’ve been out here a few times, and I’ve always flown my drone out there, but I’ve never walked out there. So I decided to walk out, and it’s this really steep trail. Get down to the rocks. The waves are just crashing over the rocks, and you’re looking at it. And in my mind, I’m going, well, the safe thing to do would be to stay back here, but I really want to get out there. And I was on the phone, actually, with my mom at the time, and I was telling her, and she’s like, well, be careful. Don’t go do that. And in my head, and this is kind of a philosophy I’ve started to take as an adult. It applied to children, but it was a quote, I think, from Jordan Peterson, where he said, you should allow your kids to do dangerous things safely. And. And that’s where I kind of thought. I’m like, well, why not just the kids? Like, why, as an adult, can’t I look and go, well, this. There’s an element of danger, but let me use my common sense. If it’s too dangerous, I’m not doing it. But if it’s safe and ends up the water’s not even waist deep, like, I’m really. It’s really not that big. But when you first look at it and the waves crashing over the rocks, your. Your mind goes, well, what if I get sucked out? Or what if I get smashed into the rocks? And I. So I ended up going out on the point, and I absolutely loved it and had a great experience. I got some gorgeous photographs, all because I took a moment to go, okay, my brain’s trying to protect me and make me feel scared. Do it anyways.

Courtney
Yes. I love that. I love that. And you got to see all of those other things because you took that one step that scared you.

Matthew
Absolutely.

Courtney
You had a hundred other steps after that that were amazing. And that’s actually how I get through things. I had. I had. I’ve done a lot of scary things, but recently, I went to Ireland. I woke up a couple weeks before my birthday, and I said to my sister, I either have to wake up on the cliffs of Moher and Ireland or under the Eiffel Tower. Pick one. We’re going. So we decided on Ireland, and we decided to drive the whole country. So we rented a car. Never drove uk style in my entire life. So I’m.

Matthew
That’s a challenge.

Courtney
It was a challenge. I’m on the right side of the car, on the left side of the road, pull out of the airport, and all of a sudden I’m on this, like, six lane highway. There are all things coming at me, and I’m like, oh, my God, I’m at the left. Am I on the left? My sister? Mind the gap. Mind the gap. Like, we were just. That wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was driving to the freaking cliffs of Moher. Okay, I have a little bit of. A little squeamish with heights. I do it, but.

Matthew
Okay, so you’re 10ft away from the cliff. I do not the people who get up close. No, not me.

Courtney
So the roads are, like, this narrow, and there’s tons of people going both ways, and they’re all driving really fast. But I got to tell you, everyone in Ireland is the most courteous driver, like, most courteous drivers in the entire world. But. So I see this thing that says corkscrew ahead, and then I start cursing. So then I had a little song I made with curse words in it. I can’t sing it because it’s really bad, but the whole way up. But it was terrible words, and my sister and I just cracked up. But that’s how I got through it. And then when we got to the top and I saw the actual cliffs, I was like. Because I almost pulled over and said, I can’t do this. I just can’t do it.

Matthew
Yeah, but that’s the moment you got to go through.

Courtney
Yes. So the whole point I was trying to make is you got to have something to get you through it with either humor or whatever floats your boat. I chose humor and singing that song all the way up with cars coming at me. The roads literally are this narrow. When I dropped off the rental car, my side, my sister’s side, the left side was all, like, scratches from trying to get too close to the side of the road where the cars were in. I was terrified. It was hilarious. This could have been like, a Saturday night live skit from start to finish, but that’s how I got through. It was with humor. And singing that song all the way to the top of the mountain.

Matthew
Absolutely. I mean, that’s necessary. And you would have had to have maintained 100% focus on what you were doing during that. You were nothing. Daydreaming and thinking of something else.

Courtney
No, we didn’t even play music the whole time we were in the car because it took focus the entire time.

Matthew
Exactly. No, I’ve definitely been there. I’ve been on some hairy roads where I. You know, at the time, my wife Kylie, was driving, like, you know what? I’m going to bed. I’m just going to sleep, because if I talk to you, I’m distracting you. You need to focus on the road. I’m just. I’m leaving you alone. But it’s. It’s definitely one of those things. Um, and, you know, it kind of makes me think I’m a bit of a Star wars nerd. And it always makes me think to one of Yoda’s lesser known quotes from Empire strikes back, and it’s a critique he’s actually having of Luke where he basically tells him, I’ve watched him for a long time. He’s always looking towards the horizon. His mind was never on where he was and what he was doing, and I found that was like, as a kid, you just kind of missed that. That isn’t one of his famous quotes, but it’s like, that’s actually. He’s telling him, like, this is what you’re supposed to be doing. Nothing. Daydreaming about everything else. You need to pay attention to what you’re doing, and. And within your book, you’ve got a great test to see how well you implement mindfulness during your day. I did not score well on this test. I probably scored better than some people. I came in at about a 40% score out of the 32, I think I got a 13.

Courtney
Oh, wow.

Matthew
So. And a lot of that is, you know, when you’re like, okay, do you take moments to breathe I’m like, well, yeah, I’m super stressed. There’s moments where I just have to take a moment to kind of calm down. But are there any good tips for integrating mindfulness a bit more into your daily routine?

Courtney
Yeah, actually there are. When you are working on something and it starts to really stress you out, you hate it and you’re like, I’m just going to finish it. Don’t take a step. Walk away. You can walk away. You’re allowed to walk away for five minutes and just do a. You can do a light meditation. That’s not meditation because I know a lot of guys are like, I’m not going to do meditation. Well, then don’t do meditation. Just, there are a lot of things that are like meditation. Even playing golf is like meditation. Anything like that. So I tell them, then make a list of all the places that you want to go to travel. Just think about that. Take a step away and list from one to ten. The place you want to go to the most and the other places that fall underneath that, that is meditation. That takes your mind away from it, and that is the best thing you can do for yourself. So that’s one good thing, taking time to breathe. So there’s a kundalini or exercise where you do this, and then you just, like with your stomach, that actually puts oxygen into your body really, really fast. So if you’re really stressed out and you do that, literally your body, your whole temperature will come down because you have rapidly put oxygen back into your bloodstream. And then the best thing I can say, and so funny, because I’m actually making a reel about this right now, it’s preparation. Preparation takes away the pain of everything. So if you find that you are really stressed out at work and you don’t like what you’re doing, put it all aside and then make a list of what you’re going to do for the next day, start preparing for tomorrow, and just forget today. And then your mind is automatically jumping into a future where things are sane and calm because it hasn’t happened yet and you’re preparing yourself for that. And then that will help you go back and then make a list of your tasks. Like, I’m a big fan of making lists and organizing things. And, I mean, here I’m going to show you. This is how I prepared for my canadian bar exam. And it looks like a crazy person. It looks like a manifesto. But what I did, I got to put it up close to the camera so you can see what I did was I made all these little subject tabs.

Matthew
Okay.

Courtney
And I color coded them. So when I’m in the exam, because it was an open book exam. So when I was in the exam and it said, like, a keyword, then I would know, oh, that’s criminal law. So that is going to be silver. And then I would be able to look for it, and then I would be able to answer the question really fast. Like, when you prepare for things like that, then things are so much easier.

Matthew
Yeah, that totally makes sense.

Courtney
Yeah. So I think preparation and mindfulness go hand in hand, because then you’re also really aware of what you have to do, how you have to execute it. And I love. You’ll see, in my book, I did, like, the startup checklist. I love checklists. And I did it in the order of how you should do it. So first, look and see if your business name is there before you file for everything, and then get your business license, because that takes six weeks. Don’t sign your lease until you get your business license, because what if you can’t? Little things like that. I think those really help everything.

Matthew
Absolutely, 100%. And we’ve kind of talked a little bit about your book, and let’s get into a little bit more. So what inspired you to write this book?

Courtney
What inspired me was the class that I was teaching as a law professor, adjunct law professor. It was teaching lawyers how to be lawyerpreneurs, how to start their own law firm, and they had a required textbook that was required by the school. And I got it, and I opened it that first semester that I ever taught, and I was like, oh, my God, this is atrocious. It was written so long ago. It doesn’t talk about social media. It doesn’t talk about all the laws and advertising and how that applies to social media marketing for attorneys. It didn’t really teach them anything about how to start a business. It was terrible. The guy basically said, you’re going to be ordering a lot of pizza. So when you pick your office space, make sure there’s a pizzeria close by. That’s what this book said. And then there was a diagram. Yeah, there was a diagram. Actually, his son is friends with me on Instagram, so I can’t say too much, but the diagram had a literally, I’m going to draw it out for you because you won’t even believe it. This is literally what it looked like.

Matthew
Wow.

Courtney
Make sure your chair faces the wall. So you have a desk that faces the door with two chairs. And then on the desk, the next page. It had like a circle. Keep your pencil cup on the right side. Have a desk blotter, and make sure you have a picture on an angle of your family that only you can see so you remember what you’re working for.

Matthew
Sounds interesting.

Courtney
So I started creating Professor Bannon’s supplement class. Supplement. So I just started writing things, and it was very well received by my students. They loved it. And then I started adding to it. And then during COVID I was like, you know what? I’m going to turn this into a book. So I turned it into a book. And as the years went by and I didn’t publish it, I just kept adding and adding. And then I’m like, you know what? People need this book. So then I really sat down, and it took me about a month to put it all together and bang it out, and then I got it published.

Matthew
It’s, and it’s a fantastic read. I just finished it this morning. I’m definitely going to go back through it again. The first few chapters are a fantastic hook. They get you drawn in. They kind of go into all this. And this is kind of one of the reasons I want to talk about mindfulness is you do talk about that a lot. And within those first few chapters, you actually ask a lot of very insightful questions about the person and individual who’s trying to be the entrepreneur. And that really stuck out to me, and that made me want to continue reading the rest of the book. The rest of the book is somewhat technical because it is a manual for setting up businesses, understanding llcs, corporations, laws, taxes, some of that stuff that some people might go, this isn’t interesting. The way you’ve structured it really draws you in at the very beginning, and it’s fantastic to read through the checklist that you’ve put in there. I love those. They make it really easy to go. Did I get everything done? So I want to kind of go through at least the first five chapters and just some insights I got out of them. Talk to you about them in chapter one. The thing that really stuck out to me was that work style chart that you have. And I love that you’re like, show me. I showed you mine, now show me yours. Good humor there. But what I really found interesting is when I took the, I took this quiz, did the comparison, you and I are polar opposites on this.

Courtney
That’s so funny.

Matthew
I am not the talker remotely. So when, when you put in, you know, you’re number six, you’re the talker. I’m like, yeah, Courtney and I are not. I think we’d pair really well together because our skill sets are opposite. But I am not the kind of guy to walk into a room and just start talking to people and get everybody excited about things that, that is not my jam.

Courtney
That’s actually really not my jam in my personal life, but it’s my jam in my professional life. And the book kind of reflects that. So the whole purpose of the book was, first, let’s talk about all the stuff that makes you who you are so we can gear you up to get ready for the rest of the book, which is really more meant to be the manual part. Like, I’m going to refer back to. I’m not going to read the tax section today because I don’t need to know about e commerce taxes. You can skip through a lot of the book, but I wanted that first part of the book to really reflect who you are as a human being because that will affect how you are as an entrepreneur.

Matthew
Absolutely. And I would definitely recommend, you know, if you’re getting this book to read it all the way first and then go back into it, because it is, you’re going to get ideas out of this. And I certainly did as I was reading through it, there’s a lot of things where I’m like, okay, you know, within the tax section, there’s a few things that I didn’t know that I’m like, I definitely want to come back to that. And so it’s one of those, for sure. Read through it, start to finish, get a bunch of ideas, and then go, okay, like, make notes as you’re going. I definitely made a lot of notes of, I need to go back and study this, you know, even how to structure your business and pick an llcs corp, C Corp. I’m like, I really need to go back and read that, like, three times because it definitely went over my head. And I’m like, that’s a problem. I need to understand that.

Courtney
But that’s. That’s a good thing. So another purpose of those chapters weren’t really so you could be a lawyer and do all that yourself. It’s so you can have clear expectations to your attorney that you go to so you know what you’re doing. It’s kind of like when you call the plumber and they’re speaking absolute foreign words to you and they can kind of tell you that you need like a whole new copper pipe thing, and next thing you know, you’re spending 100 grand. But if you know how plumbing works, you can say, no, no, I don’t, because that conductor doesn’t take copper. When you know stuff, people can’t take advantage of you. And that’s really what this book was about, was like, you know, you’re an entrepreneur. You don’t know what you don’t know, which is my favorite saying. And this book kind of gives you a working vocabulary so you don’t get taken advantage of by anyone ever again. So you can have an honest conversation with your lawyer and say, look, I know that I want to, you know, have subsidiaries, so I want you to do a corporation and please file it as a C Corp. Let them do the work. But you make a decision.

Matthew
And that’s the part that I did want to go back and read because I was like, wait, I didn’t understand this is how this works. And with the future plans I have for my business, that might become applicable. So I was like, wait, I need to actually go back and understand this because you opened up a world to me that I hadn’t seen. So I agree with you. I don’t need all the legal parameters of it, but I do need to understand the differences, the pros and cons of each one. Is it applicable to me? So I think that’s absolutely fantastic. And, you know, and then within, you know, chapter two, you start talking about the gold setting and the mindfulness, the self awareness, and there’s one question that’s popped up, and this has been on my mind long before I read your book. This goes back to ten x and, you know, the daily goal setting. And I want to ask your opinion on this because you mentioned it, too. Writing down your goals daily. I have never gotten a full, like, clarification from somebody. Does that literally mean you’re writing the same thing every day, like an affirmation or how. How do you write your goals down daily?

Courtney
Mine are different and mine aren’t, like, my long term goals. And every person in the intention space has done this for years, long before I worked, where I worked at my last place. But I put down goals that are attainable and achievable. Like, today I am going to work out for 30 minutes. Today I am not going to have, you know, any ice cream. Like, just small things like that. Things that I want as short term goals I don’t write down, like, I want to be a millionaire and drive a Lamborghini. Like, I don’t write those things down. I’m going to take ten minutes to spend with just my grandmother today. I’m going to bake a cake. Like, whatever it is that you want to do to feel good as a person. Person. Now, I know that’s not how some of the bigger influencers want you to write your goals down. It’s all about money, success, and all that. For me, it’s all about happiness.

Matthew
I think it’s practical. I actually like that advice, and I actually can appreciate that more. And it takes me back to some buddhist teachings and things that I’ve read back in the day, that instead of trying to prepare yourself for heaven, once you’ve passed away, you try to make today good, and then try to make tomorrow good. And as long as you’re trying to hit the goal for today, the goal for tomorrow, you can essentially create a wonderful life here on earth. And I’ve always loved that mentality. So I actually like that that’s your approach. That’s why I wanted to ask. I knew you’re going to have a unique take on it.

Courtney
You know what my other take on it is? If you are picture you’re this young guy and someone’s telling you to write down your goals, and you’re writing down, I want to make $100,000. I want to buy a Lamborghini. I want to have a penthouse in Brickell. Now, after writing those goals down for three or four years and they haven’t happened, how are you going to feel?

Matthew
It really starts driving you nuts.

Courtney
Yeah, but if you’re hitting your goals every single day, because your biggest goal of the day was to hit a 30 minutes workout or to write two pages in a book, or to make a journal entry, and you did it, and you can check it off, guess what? You feel like a winner. It’s the same thing as if I made the hundred thousand dollars because I completed a goal and my body and my soul, $100,000 or a 30 minutes workout, it doesn’t matter what the thing is. I won by doing what I said I was.

Matthew
You get that reward either way.

Courtney
I kept an agreement with myself and check that. Check is all that matters. It doesn’t matter what you’re checking off.

Matthew
See, I love that. I think that’s absolutely fantastic. And a 100% unique approach that I absolutely love.

Courtney
Thank you.

Matthew
Yeah. So, you know, I love this, that you have the person first look at themselves. And even to your point about, you know what, how does a person feel if they’ve wrote this for a few years and haven’t gotten there? How that person reacts to not getting there is going to be a personality. Some people are going to beat themselves up, and I’m not good at this. I’m failing. I’m not good. Me personally, it would piss me off. I’m going to go, okay. I am sick of writing this. I’ve got to find out what I’m not doing to get there and reverse engineer it. But it is a very big personality choice in how you look at the world when you’re setting bigger goals like that. And I think, go ahead.

Courtney
No, I was going to say the bigger goals are important, too. So my daily goals and my bigger goals have nothing to do with each other. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t write down my bigger goals because they’re very fluid. One day I want one thing, the next day I want another thing. I know how I want to feel inside. So the journey is the feeling where I’m going. Writing down the goals, it’s not going to take me, it’s not a map. I just want to follow the feeling like, oh, my God, you want me to do this? I’ve never done that before. Oh, I like how many people I got to help by speaking at this event or doing this podcast. Those things I think you have to remain fluid on because the end goal is you want to be successful in your arena. You want to be successful to take care of your family. Those are all great goals, but it’s not about the money, it’s not about the end result. It’s about becoming the person who is able to achieve those things. And if that’s the focus on the journey, then you will get to that end goal. But you can’t get there on a monetary, greedy basis. It has to be putting in the work, doing the shadow work with your own demons that you have, getting rid of those things that hold you back. And a lot of people manifest, like, if you see people who make vision boards and they’re putting things like lamborghinis and penthouses and all this other stuff, you know, what, what is their goal? They just want to be rich. How are you going to get there?

Matthew
There’s a lot of ways to get there. And some of them aren’t ethical. And that’s, you know, you’re not being particularly clear about it. And I think, you know, you saying that takes me back to Jim Rohn, who’s, you know, a much older personality in that motivational space. But I think his mentor told him that he should become a millionaire not because of the million dollars, but because of who you have to become to get there. And, and I think at that point, Jim, Jim actually lost. Like, he. He made his 1st $3 million, lost it all. And that’s when he realized that it was right, because the skill sets, the personality, who he became to get that million dollars now meant he could make it back again. Like, it was. It was not the money, it was who he became in that process.

Courtney
Right? And, you know, and the funny thing is too, like, people want money for different reasons. Some people want money to impress so they look good to other people. Me, I want money because I want freedom. I want to be able to jump on a plane and go anywhere I want. And as I say, I can do whatever the fuck I want. Like, I don’t ever want to not be able to say that ever again, right? I want to wake up and take care of my family and pay for my kids. Like, I just sent my kids a bunch of money because they’re in Europe together and I sent them there. And that felt amazing to be able to do that. I want to be able to do those things. And, you know, I had an ex boyfriend who was extremely toxic in this space. He was extremely spiritual, like a beautiful person on all the important things, but he didn’t understand the relationship with money isn’t a. About the monetary stuff. So in his eyes, in order to be divine and be spiritual and soulful, you have to be broke and not make a lot of money. And I’m like, you know, sorry, you know, alms for the poor. I’m not about that. I do want to be able to go to Europe. Not because I want to go shopping, but I want to see stuff. I want to experience life. A lot of people need to change their idea of what it is to want money. Do I want money? Oh, yes, I do. I want lots of money. But I don’t want it because I want to impress anyone. I want it so I don’t have to worry about health insurance, electric bills. You know, I went through a bad divorce and was broke for a long time. And it was painful to not be able to do things and to worry and have to make choices like, am I going to pay for my kids tuition or am I going to, like, pay for.

Matthew
That’s a rough. It’s a rough place to be in. It is absolutely brilliant. I’ve always maintained that, that same thing as well. You know, that. That life philosophy, that it’s not about the money itself. And I think if you just make it about the money, that’s where you’re in trouble.

Courtney
Exactly.

Matthew
Where I look at it is, money is a tool, just as like, if I want to build a house, I need a hammer, I need a saw, I need a nail gun, I need wood, materials. Money is those things for a good life, for, you know, an opportunity to travel, to see and experience things. You know, there’s a lot to see in the world there. There really is. And, yeah, you can see it from yourself, you know, from your cell phone on a camera. It’s not the same.

Courtney
Not the same. And it’s, you know, these experiences that we have, they make us kinder, nicer people. When you travel, you really see how other people live.

Matthew
Yeah.

Courtney
Whether that’s better than you or worse than you. But I, you know, you get inspired to live a certain way or you get inspired to help people live a better way.

Matthew
Absolutely lose.

Courtney
And, you know, that feeling of driving in Ireland, and I told my sister, if we see, like, a field that’s green and it’s pretty, I’m stopping and I’m through it. And we did, like, that’s just my, I’m super nature girl, but we were just driving, and my sister saw a castle, like a. Just in the middle of nowhere. Wasn’t like an attraction. It was just literally a broke down castle. When I saw her face, when she saw that, that made my whole trip to see my sister that excited, it was just beautiful. Like, I had that family moment with my best friend and sister, and that cost money. Like that. I had. We had to pay money to go on that trip, and it was worth it. I. That’s what money is.

Matthew
I definitely agree. And it’s. And you’re seeing things that, to be honest, just don’t exist here in the US. That’s, you know, as a country, we are relatively new in the world. You know, we’ve been around for a couple hundred years versus some of these castles and things you’re seeing in Ireland have been there for hundreds, if not a thousand years. Like, they’ve been there for a long time. And it’s a different feeling. You know, I get that even going back to Chicago, New York, back to the, you know, the west coast or the east coast, because you see things that have been there since the early 18 hundreds and 17 hundreds, which you definitely don’t have, you know, out here in California and Utah and everywhere else, it’s. It’s mind blowing to sit there and look at a building and think, this thing has been here for hundreds of years.

Courtney
You know, my son and I were talking about that literally an hour ago. So he was in Valencia, Spain, and he had this Airbnb and he took a picture from his balcony, and there’s this cathedral, and he said, you won’t even believe what’s inside of this cathedral. So he said, this cathedral was built in the twelve hundreds. It was built in 1260. And they have stuff that people in the twelve hundreds extracted that they think belonged to Jesus, and now they tried to, like, excavate them and refinish them in the twelve hundreds. That’s how old this stuff is in the catacombs. And then he got to Vienna today, and he’s like, yeah, you know, this stuff is all from, like, the, you know, early 19 hundreds, and it just doesn’t feel the same as it did when I was in, like, Florence or in Valencia, where everything’s so old. Like, I feel like this is modern now. And I said, well, wait till you come back to urban sprawl with the CV’s and Broward Boulevard.

Matthew
Walmart on every corner.

Courtney
Yeah.

Matthew
Yeah, it’s. It’s a definitely a different world, for sure. So it’s. And I. And I love that, you know, kind of getting back into your book a little bit, there’s something you actually said earlier in the podcast that also reminded me specifically of chapter five and a quote that you had out of there that I absolutely like, I’m going to tattoo this somewhere. It’s amazing. But, you know, when you talked about preparation, taking away the pain of, you know, what you have to do, there was something you had said in chapter five that also had a mindfulness aspect to it. But you said, delays are inevitable, but don’t let them be your fault. And that really stuck out to me as an entrepreneur, because I’ve certainly been the bottleneck in my company on multiple occasions. You know, you kind of end up in that, especially if you are a control freak like I am, and you’re trying to control and run everything, there’s times where you end up being the bottleneck, or you weren’t prepared. And I really love that you kind of talked about that and, you know, trying to be proactive about these issues and chase them down before they become bigger.

Courtney
Yeah, I think a lot of people, they don’t know when they are the bottleneck. A lot of people, especially workers that work on a team, because it has to be. There has to be like, you gotta jive together. If you don’t jive together, it’s always gonna be like, it’s his fault, it’s her fault. Well, it’s bottlenecking for me because he didn’t do this, and that is really toxic. So I want people, and this is where self awareness and mindfulness come in. Self aware. You have to take a step back. And I always say, oh, shit, is it me? I always do that because I’ve had times where I’ve come at people and then I walk away and I’m like, yeah, that was my fault.

Matthew
Guilty with me.

Courtney
But guess what? I do. Oh, my God, I was a hundred percent wrong.

Matthew
Yeah, you own it.

Courtney
I’m sorry. It was my fault, period. No buts.

Matthew
Exactly. And I’ve had to do, I had to do that last week where I hadn’t read a couple of messages and immediately fired off, hey, why wasn’t this done? And then I go back and look and, like, literally read the messages above mine and went, they asked me for that three days ago, and I didn’t send that to them. That’s why it wasn’t, um, please ignore that message. I’m really sorry. That was my fault. Here’s what you need, you know, and I, one of the things that’s kind of been self aware for me is if I’m starting to feel overwhelmed as the entrepreneur and feel like I’m doing too much, I’m probably the bottleneck and I’m probably doing things I shouldn’t be.

Courtney
Yes. I’m actually doing that right now. I’m bottlenecking myself and I’m choking. I taken on a little bit more than I could chew for this month and, but if I get through it, it’s going to be spectacular.

Matthew
But I tell myself that, too. Yeah. If I can just get through this moment, everything will be okay.

Courtney
And guess what? It’s going to be okay whether you do or you don’t. And I thought, you know what? If I fail, I’ll do it again.

Matthew
Exactly.

Courtney
Can’t be afraid to fail.

Matthew
No, you can’t. And that’s the attitude. You have to go, okay? It’s not failure, it’s learning. Get up. Try it. Reevaluate, you know, to your point about self awareness. You have to, if you failed, take the moment and look through and figure out what actually caused it.

Courtney
I love when I fail at stuff.

Matthew
Yeah.

Courtney
So exciting. I’m like, ooh, there’s so much, like, data in my failure that I can take away from myself. Like, I love that. Like, oh, man. And I love adversity. I love when I have to really feel something painful and deep because then I’m like, oh, you know what? This is going to make the next thing seems so much easier. And, wow, I learned so much about myself. Like, I am not the same person I was ten years ago when I got divorced. I was a very different person. And my journey has made me feel so, so good about myself and so proud. And I would not be where I am right now had I not gone through that journey. I would have been the same person. And that terrifies me. Like, what if I didn’t make the jump to get divorced? What if I stayed and was still that same person living in the big cookie cutter house? And I didn’t want that for myself? And I signed up to be broken and to be a somewhat single mom. I signed up for not being able to travel and go shopping and do all the things that I had done as a wife because I had a well off husband. I chose that for myself because I wanted to change. Change is painful, and change involves failure, tears, hard work. Your muscle doesn’t build unless you tear it. You got to tear the muscle. And it’s just such a beautiful, complex, fucked up way to become a better person. It’s just, it’s incredible. I feel like I give birth to myself.

Matthew
Yeah, you are. In a sense, you are. You are creating this new person. You know, the mind, once expanded, doesn’t go back to its previous way of thinking. You just can’t. And I think that’s what creates serial entrepreneurs, is once you’ve had a little taste of that freedom, a little taste of that, like, hey, I can do this. I can do this myself. Even when it’s going really bad. I know I’ve had those moments, and I’ve had, you know, I’ve had family go, well, why don’t you just go get a job? And I’m like, I can’t. My mind has expanded into this world. I literally could not go work for somebody else right now. It’s not possible.

Courtney
Repeat after me.

Matthew
I can do whatever the fuck I want exactly 100%. And I’ve realized that even in talking with family members, you know, when you talk about, you know, the financial freedom and everything else, it’s, you know, when you have a day job, you are only getting paid x amount of money, and every year they might give you a dollar a raise or, you know, whatever, but that is the finite amount of money you can make where, you know, for me, having marketing clients and things like that, it’s, it’s legit work to go get a new client. It’s hard. It’s difficult, but I can run the numbers and the statistics, and if I go make a thousand cold phone calls and go talk to a thousand people. I will probably have a new client and have more money by the end of this month than I did at the beginning, which is not something most people in the standard job can say. And that is hugely powerful because it means my success or failure is my fault.

Courtney
That’s right. And because of that, you won’t fail. You’ll have little failures, but you won’t fail at the ultimate goal, which is having your own thing. And my first month out, I was terrified. But I never once said, I wish I didn’t quit my job. I was ready to just fly. I had this voice inside of me that I don’t even know where it came from. Just like all the growth and everything I did over because I worked there almost the whole time. Right after I got divorced, I grew there, and not because of them. I grew there because of myself. Not saying that the environment didn’t promote a lot of good stuff, because it did, but that was me. Like, that was my journey, personally. And when I left, I was terrified. I just. I was like, what am I going to do? I tapped into my savings the first month, and then in the second month, I made almost my whole annual salary.

Matthew
Holy cow.

Courtney
The second month, I made my annual salary. In my third month, I made my fucking annual salary. That’s how much money was out there for me. And I was doing things, like, on a discount and all this other stuff. I mean, I was still making that amount of money because I was out there selling myself and doing what I love to do and helping people. I think I was just very genuine with what I wanted to help people with. And they like that. They see that. They want to work with that. And I thought, why did I wait so long? Like, what was I thinking?

Matthew
Like, you know, it’s all a part of the journey. It. It is.

Courtney
But I would have failed if I had done it sooner. I would have gone right back into a job. I wouldn’t have been ready.

Matthew
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and I think the confidence. I know that first. That first month or two is scary. You at least had savings. When I tried this out, I had $5 in the bank account, so it was sink or swim, which is a little bit more intimidating. And, you know, even. Even having savings is still scary because you’ve got a finite amount of it before you’re out and you’re in a world of hurt.

Courtney
Yeah. And I didn’t have that many. I didn’t have that much savings. I wasn’t any means, but I went into, like, what they call a functional freeze where I could, like, barely move. Sometimes I’d be laying there, like, what am I going to do? Like, I know I need to be doing this, that, and the other, but maybe I’m just going to watch Netflix. But then I realized I needed to heal because, you know, working that hard for that many years, you actually have been trained to feel a certain way. And then I took myself out of that environment cold turkey, and I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know what to feel.

Matthew
You needed some recovery.

Courtney
Yeah, it was recovery time. So then when I either either that or it was an excuse I made up to continue watching my k dramas in bed. But. But I just let myself have it. I’m always about giving yourself grace. And I just let myself go. And then I was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Now I don’t stop.

Matthew
Yeah, and I think that’s the overachiever. After enough of those k dramas and everything else, the overachiever. And he goes, okay, that’s enough. Get, like, you got to do something. You said you’re doing this. You can’t just sit there. I’ve certainly had that where it’s like, okay, procrastinate, procrastinate. Now I can’t do it. I can’t procrastinate. 1 second more. I have to do this.

Courtney
Yeah. So I still have moments where I do that. Sometimes I do my best work on the fly or at last minute, and if something is, like, stressing me out, I just won’t do it at all until the last possible second. And that’s when I do my most brilliant work. But I have to remind myself of that through the whole journey because I’m beating myself up and nervous and scared that I’m not going to get it done. So I have to say, nope, not only you’re going to get it done, it’s going to be spectacular. And that’s just the process.

Matthew
I think there’s a psychological element to that, to be honest. Like, and I’ve certainly experienced that when you really get into a complex problem and you’re thinking about it and trying to figure it out and trying to figure out, and you can’t, sometimes that disengagement is actually what you need because you’re so wrapped up in the weeds, it’s kind of that you can’t see the forest for the trees. Yep. And by disengaging for a minute when you come back, oh, this wasn’t as big of a problem as I thought it was. Here’s the solution. That’s actually simple. And you alluded to this in your book about the need to take action, and I believe that was also chapter five, which I love, because that is what makes somebody like yourself successful. That’s what makes an entrepreneur work. There’s plenty of people who have ideas. You talked about the idea in chapter four, how to find an idea, how to evaluate an idea, which I thought was beautiful. There’s just so many people that are, and I’ve seen this where people are like, I’ve had this really good idea, but nobody’s buying my product. Nobody’s buying this. I’m like, then it’s not really that good of an idea. You know, the market will tell you, but the action element is what really makes it, whether you’re successful or not, 100%. Yeah, there’s a great quote. I think it’s Les Brown. And I don’t know, he probably stole it from somebody else, but he heard this quote, that the graveyard is the richest place on earth because it’s where all the dreams of everybody who never went out and did anything about their dreams, existential.

Courtney
So true. So sad, but so true.

Matthew
Right. And I thought about that because you also talked about this in chapter four, about your ideas, that you should never throw them out and you should keep them somewhere. Yeah. Can you talk about that a little bit more? Like, why do that? How do we do it? And you’re a legal professional as well, so there’s an element to this that’s necessary to protect your ideas.

Courtney
Yeah, there’s a lot of reasons. And, you know, I actually still have ideas that I came up with in, like, 1998 that I mailed to myself, and I haven’t opened the envelope, just in case. I’ll give you a really good example of where I really fucked up with a great idea. So I’m also a little bit of like an inventor, okay. With all kinds of ideas all the time. I came up with an idea in, I want to say it was as early as 2008 or 2009. I said, you know, these microchip things are really cool. What if they could read skus and bars on products? And what if I went into target, and then the company who does the SKU also had the weight of the product? And then all you have to do is throw everything into the cart, and then you push it through, and it scans everything, and automatically you just, like, you have your payment stored, you have to make an account, and then it just automatically charges you. So you push your cart, you walk around the cart comes to you and you just go to your car instead of sitting there and you have to unload it, then reload it. It’s a pain in the butt. And I call smart cart. Wouldn’t you know, you know, just like 20 something years later and now people have the self checkout, which was kind of my idea that didn’t exist yet. Had I written that idea down and maybe actually still had thought about it before all that stuff hit, I might have been able to say, hey, you know what? I actually had this idea back then, but I didn’t have any way to prove that it was actually mine and work with somebody. And that’s just really sad.

Matthew
Yeah, there’s a lot of those that happen. And actually Walmart plus does that now you can literally use your cell phone to scan, to check out without having to go through the self checkout for the most part. And it’s crazy that we’re living in that world, so.

Courtney
And when I came up with that idea, there wasn’t even a smartphone yet. This was before the first palm pilot, which is, but also the other reason to keep those ideas is because they actually help you create. When you are looking through your idea book, sometimes two of those ideas put together might actually make a better idea and it’s just good for creative purposes as well.

Matthew
I think so. And, you know, to your point, you’re going to find things that maybe don’t work 100% correctly, but when you come back and look at them, you may go, oh, this doesn’t work. Here’s why. But I could tweak it here. There’s a great explanation I’ve had, I came across a couple months back that basically said, we’ve talked about money a little bit, that you should pay attention to how money is taken from you because money is never created. It’s taken. You’re taking it from somebody else in exchange for a product, in exchange for whatever. But if youre sitting there going, I want to be an entrepreneur and I dont have ideas, one of the way to get ideas is start paying attention to how moneys taken from you, whether its going and getting a Starbucks and start paying attention to what could they have done better? Like, okay, you bought Starbucks. Why? Was it close to your home? Was it on the way to work? Did you want a coffee or did you just, you saw it and pulled in, start paying attention to some of that. Did you buy, did you buy a muffin? Why not? You know, did they not look good? Was there, you know, all this stuff? And then you can start writing those ideas down and start figuring it out. And by the end of it, you may have a whole thing on how to launch a coffee shop that might be better than the Starbucks, and that could be your entrepreneurial idea. Just by paying attention to how other people are taking money from you and going, how could I do it better?

Courtney
Absolutely. And even, you know, some of the things that I do when I see businesses operating a certain way and it’s not working for me, I write down, okay, so if I did it this way, like, even finding a solution to somebody else’s, you know, crappy execution of their idea, guess what? That’s a whole new idea. So those.

Matthew
That’s what I do for a living. Exactly as I, you know, as a marketer, that’s what you do is people come in and, hey, we’re trying to make sales. We’re not making money. Let me show you how to do it better.

Courtney
Exactly.

Matthew
That’s 100% my business plan.

Courtney
And it’s exciting. And, you know, again, it’s just all about spitballing ideas with somebody and having these ideas, and, you know, what if they stink and you started executing and you don’t like it, you can do whatever the fuck you want.

Matthew
Start over well, and realize that it’s not. It’s not good. You don’t have to be married to it. Kill it. Try something different.

Courtney
Yep. Oh, I’m all about the, you know, kill it, pivot, move on. You know, I. I have this friend, and this is so funny. I have this friend, and we do the spartan races together. Yeah, well, I haven’t done them with her in years, actually. She’s. She’s an ex friend, but she was the one that no matter what the task was that we had to do on the spartan run, you have to stop and do all these things. I have to do it until I complete it. And I said, no, you don’t do your burpees. Let’s go.

Matthew
I was going to say, yeah, you can get around. There’s no obligation.

Courtney
No, I have to climb the rope. I’m like, but you can’t climb the rope. Well, I’m going to stay here until I do. I said, okay, but we’re on a team, and you have 100 people behind you that are waiting for their turn. Well, I have to do it. It’s a promise I made to myself. And I said, well, this is why we aren’t friends. I said, well, that’s a really selfish point of view. Do your burpees and gone, or we’re all going to just leave without you. And we did. But that attitude that she had is what people feel like to me in certain jobs. Like, they have a self awareness of, well, I want to do it this way. Okay, well, what about the 30 people behind you that are waiting for their turn? I don’t care. How do you not care? Like, it’s not. First of all, it’s not efficient. You’re a bottlenecker. You suck as a human because you don’t care what other people think or feel. And you’re willing to let the rest of the team suffer with a bad number because you have to do something for yourself. Best thing you can do for yourself is move. Like, come on, let’s go. And that is the attitude you need to have as an entrepreneur.

Matthew
Yeah.

Courtney
Can’t climb the rope, do the burpees, and move along. Like, just. That’s it. You just gotta pivot.

Matthew
Exactly. Good enough is good enough sometimes. And figuring out. Figuring out an opportunity to pivot and move is 100% what it is, because sometimes things aren’t going to work. You’re going to bump into the wall, and you got to find another way around it.

Courtney
Yeah, 100%. I’ve had clients who, like, wanted a particular name for their company, and they, like, they want to fight.

Matthew
That gets expensive.

Courtney
Yeah. And I’m, like, picking a name. Come on. No, that’s the name I dreamed about. So dream about another one. Just pick one. The company is the goal here, not the name. The name. Well, the name is important to me. I’m like. And then they were focused on minutiae, and a lot of people get tripped up in the minutiae, and that’s a really important trait. And honestly, most entrepreneurs don’t have that. We’re disruptors. I don’t care. They know what they want to achieve, and they just go for it, and they will disrupt until they get there. And that’s why I really focused on the mindset in the beginning. And did the mindset reset so people will understand the small things don’t matter. They don’t have the blue paint. Get the green paint and move along, because your goal is to build a house, not a blue house. And if your goal was to build a blue house, that is no longer an option. Get it out of your head and just move on. And I’ve always been a very decisive person in general, but, like, even more so now. And when I’m dealing with people who aren’t decisive, it’s really, really hard to watch them fall into these little traps, because they are so tiny. Like, you’re going to let one little thing, like a paint color or a name stop you from. From this big, huge, amazing idea that you have that’s just plain stupid. So I want people to, like, get out of that mindset. Like, oh, everything’s going wrong. No, everything’s going right. But something’s different. Things are going differently. And that’s okay. It’s okay.

Matthew
Absolutely. And, and you have to be able to take that action to move quicker on it. I was watching a TikTok the other day from Alex Hormozi where he was explaining that he’d met these college students who had this great business idea, and he followed up with them six months later, like, oh, we’re still trying to get the LLC set up. What are you talking about? Like, that should have been done less than a week after I talked to you. This should have been fast. Which could have been them just hiding the fact that they hadn’t take action. But, you know, it’s, people get stuck in that and stuck in that name, and I’ve certainly seen this as a marketer. You go on GoDaddy and you look for your specific name. You want to name your URL. It may cost you a couple grand to get that specific one because it might be a really good name, but it’s. It’s going to cost you an arm and a leg to get that name.

Courtney
Certain things like that. I mean, I get, like, if you want a particular URL, not because, you know, you dreamed about it or it was your father’s middle name, but because it’s good for marketing, it’s identifiable, it’s something that’s good for the product, that’s entirely different, and that I understand, but when you can’t get it.

Matthew
Yeah.

Courtney
And it’s funny because my mom. My mom is the most indecisive person in the world. So she found this rug that she loved, and they didn’t have it in the color she wanted. And we were in the rug store. I was a kid, we were in the rug store for probably 4 hours, and I finally said to her, mom, staring at the rug isn’t going to change the color. Why are we still here? I just keep thinking that I’ll find something in the color that looks just like this. I’m like, we’ve been through every rug ten times.

Matthew
It ain’t happening.

Courtney
Go. Let’s go to another store and see if they have it. And if not, pick another color. Pick another style. No, I want that rug in gray. I’m like, it doesn’t exist. Like, I could have weaved one for.

Matthew
You, by the way. There’s an idea in that, though. Hey, if there doesn’t exist in gray, there’s. There’s the entrepreneurial idea out of it.

Courtney
I was, I was an entrepreneur as a kid. Like, I did nothing without getting paid for it. Nothing. I even had, like, people had lemonade stands, I had perfume stands. I was, like, picking herbs and flowers and drying them and making mixed oils. And I was, like, seven and eight years old, and I was, like, a little capitalist. My mom would tell me to vacuum, and I said, well, I already vacuumed as part of my chores, so this is extra. So if you vacuum again, then you have to pay me extra. Like, I was all about, like, money, money, money.

Matthew
That’s the way to be, though. That’s. And I think we should instill that in our kids more often.

Courtney
Yes, I did with my kids when they were really little, I took a picture of myself, and I, like, put it on top of money, and I made photocopies of it, and I would give them mommy money. So if they wanted something special, they would have to give me back the mommy money, and I would give them, like, a dollar for this, a dollar for that, and then they would earn video time, fruit bucks. Yeah. And they turned into little scavenger entrepreneurs, too. They were, like, industrialists. They were amazing.

Matthew
It’s amazing how, how many people and how many even animals can start to understand and grasp that. I was actually watching this morning the study where they taught monkeys the meaning of money, and the monkeys, like, start figuring out how to exchange it and do the various things with it. I was like, it’s not just a human invention. Like, it’s. It’s an understood thing that, well, if I give you this, you give me that, and it’s. It’s an inherent benefit. You know, money is just something we invented to stand in place for the things we normally would have traded back in the day.

Courtney
Exactly. It’s all a barter system, and it’s really all part of human nature. Like, I have this, you have that. This is worth ten of those. Let’s do an exchange. Like, that’s just, that’s our relationship with, with life. It’s a life force, really. People absolutely like that? Yeah, they do.

Matthew
So what advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are just starting out?

Courtney
My best advice to anyone just starting out is to educate yourself. If you want to go into a certain industry, let’s say you want to do healthcare supplements. Look at all the places that you need to go in order to get to an open business, which would be regulatory compliance. Your llc, make a list of the things you find online that you need to do. You know, even just Google. I mean, I’m not a fan of like Google lawyering at all by any means, but educate yourself. So when you do go to a lawyer, you know what to ask for. A lot of people get into these regulatory schemes and they don’t even know that they are regulated by anything. I just have with a client and I’m like, well, did you know to have you called any SEC lawyers to get your funds started? Well, why do I need a fund?

Matthew
I even got a little bit of that education from your book. As a marketer, reading through the telecom laws and some of the social media and what you can and can’t do, I was like, there’s a few things in here that I probably need to change the processes on now that you’ve educated me on them.

Courtney
Yeah, exactly. Like people starting these, like, these call centers. Well, some states require you to actually register as a telemarketer. Like make sure that you know all of this stuff because you’re going to get into a heap of trouble if you don’t.

Matthew
Yeah, two party consent laws for recording calls. Even if you’re like, oh, it’s recorded for quality assurance. Like, there’s still, you know, stuff that you have to do with that. And actually, the one that really stuck out to me was how long after somebody’s contacted your company for information, you can call them back. I had no idea that was a rule of law until I read your book. I was like, oh, did not know that was a thing. But that’s really good to know.

Courtney
Yeah. And you can only ask them about the product or service that they purchased. You can’t call them up and say, hey, we have a new product you met because guess what? You just violated the TCPA.

Matthew
Yeah. And that’s, that was really eye opening for me to even just read that. And that’s why I say, these chapters, you all need to read them because you’re going to find something in them. And you didn’t do the plug for your book, but I’m going to do it for you. The advice I have for new entrepreneurs is to read your book. It lays all this out. It lays picking out an idea. It lays out how to, you know, go find out those next steps. Go find out, you know, okay, well, if I want to do this, and to your point, I’ve had this experience about six months ago, there was somebody who was trying to hire me on to work for them, and they were doing, ironically, like, a pharmaceutical health supplement. Come to find out, as I’m talking to this guy, he’s never had it formulated. He doesn’t have it ready to go. And here he’s trying to, like, interview a marketer. I’m like, dude, you’re not even at that place yet. You were so far gone. Like, there’s nothing I can help you with right now. We could try to create a brand, but right now, I don’t know what’s in your product. I don’t know what it’s used for, who it’s targeted to. You just have an idea, like, you’re not at that stage. But he was thinking, oh, I’ve got this company. I’m doing this and that. I’m like, you got a lot more work to do before we can talk.

Courtney
Yeah, I’ve seen that a lot. And I’ve also seen people who think they can pre sell things. Oh, I’m going to pre sell this. I’m going to pre sell that. You know, you got to be careful.

Matthew
Because I’ve had ethical concerns around that, too. I actually. It’s one of those videos. I saw Andrew Tate recommend this for somebody, that somebody wanted to get an investment to do a makeup line with an influencer that this guy knew. He’s like, well, I need, like, a quarter of a million dollars to do it so I can get the stock, get the warehouse, get this and that. And the advice he got from these two guys, and it’s one of the ones I disagree with is, well, why don’t you do $2,000, set up the website, take in all these orders, send everybody an email out saying, hey, we’re having some shipping issues. We’ll give you a free lip gloss, but there’ll be a little bit of a shipping delay, and then take the money they spent and use it to buy the product. And I’m sitting there going, that’s really dangerous on a lot of levels. I don’t recommend that.

Courtney
Fraudulent misrepresentation, pure, straight up fraud, and that’s a Ponzi scheme.

Matthew
And you pray you get the product. So if you don’t get it now, you’re refunding everybody. I’m like, not good. Don’t do that.

Courtney
When you take investors money and you use it to actually make something, to make more investors money, that’s. That’s a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, that’s not a traditional one, like, you know, but that’s technically.

Matthew
Exactly. And as a marketer, I’ve steered clear of certain. Certain groups that, you know, I’ve been offered to work with mlms and things like that. And while there are legal mlms, I know the legal parameters around that. If you step across that line, you are now a pyramid scheme. And I’m like, I don’t want to do business because I don’t want to have to ever get into that position where all of a sudden, you know, I get a call from the SEC or the FTC or anybody, like, I was working with you on marketing, but I don’t need that association between something you’re doing and me. So there’s business practices I stay away from because of those legal loopholes, and I don’t know if they’ve gone through every single loophole or not. You know, that’s. They’re not telling me everything about their business, so, and I’m not an attorney. I can’t tell if they legally did it or not. So it’s like.

Courtney
And a lot of people, like the guy who suggested that probably doesn’t even know that it’s wrong. Like, a lot of people just don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t understand, hey, you know what? You’re taking money based on a lie. You can’t. You can’t do that. They probably thought, hell, this is, like, the best way to get started because.

Matthew
Oh, yeah, you can start for two grand instead of. For a quarter of a million dollars.

Courtney
Yeah. No, it’s sad, and I find that a lot, especially with the younger generation. There’s this whole mindset, and I don’t disagree with it. I want to say that first, because what I’m going to say sounds like I do, but this whole thing where you don’t need an education to make a lot of money, you don’t know, but you need to educate yourself.

Matthew
Correct.

Courtney
I think a lot of people are taking that the wrong way and they’re jumping into stuff, but there’s a lot to be said for going to college. If you’re going to be in a certain industry, you learn things like, oh, that’s fraudulent misrepresentation. They haven’t learned that stuff because they didn’t take the time to compensate for not going to college. And neither of my parents went to college, and they were very successful, but they educated themselves because they wanted to make sure that they were doing things right. And I need to see more of that from the people who are professing to people that you don’t need to go to college because you don’t. But that doesn’t mean that you get a hall pass on educating yourself. And I’d like to see them tell people, hey, instead of going to college, I did this. And this is what helped me, me get to this level. I’d like to see more of that from influencers because it’s the wrong messaging.

Matthew
And I certainly came across that. I actually, so my start in marketing came from Tai Lopez bit way back in, you know, the early two thousand ten s, twenty fourteen when he did his whole here in my garage thing. I bought the program, but I sat on it for a few years because I had that problem with it of like, okay, I really don’t understand this. I don’t know how to do it. It felt like everybody was doing an agency get rich quick scheme. Not my stick. And so, you know, I worked and did a bunch of things and then, you know, I went back and started off and actually went as a marketer for a while. Bumpy road. But I educated myself through it. And in fact, at this point I went to put somebody else. I was like, hey, you know, let me put you through the program I went through as a good round off so you can kind of understand marketing to start off with. And as I went back through the program, I was like, wow, there’s a lot of really bad advice in here. And so I had to tell them, actually, I’m going to have to teach you how to do this because if you try to follow what his program actually was, you’re not going to understand how the company works because I’ve educated myself to understand that wix isn’t really a good place to start your website, weebly is not really a good place to start your website because you’re going to lose SEO, because you’re going to lose all these other factions. It’s tribal knowledge that I’ve gained over the years of studying that. Now I look back on that and go, wow, that was a good starting place, but it definitely was not. You can’t run an agency just based on that. You can’t just go, this is the oracle of information and I’m never going to learn anything ever again. The algorithms change daily. The algorithms change all the time. So even the trick you learn that you think is a great hack in six months might be completely worthless.

Courtney
Yeah. And it most likely will be. And that’s so true of, like, really anything these days. Life is moving so much quicker for all of us. That it did, even five years ago. Yeah, it’s just a frenzy these days. And, you know, the population is growing of the earth, and things are getting bigger, and we’re getting watered down in a lot of areas. And I think. I feel like a lot of things are slipping through the cracks as far as just humanity understanding what certain industries are doing to the whole entire world. And we’re spoiling, in my opinion, a whole generation by telling them that they can just make money really fast on Instagram, which you can make some money on Instagram. You know, influencers are making money, but they’re missing out on an opportunity to educate themselves on other things. And I feel like, just suggest some books for them to read. If you’re in a person of power, you’re an influencer, and you’re just, oh, you don’t need to go to college or make money. No, you don’t. But tell them what they do have to do to make.

Matthew
You have to pick up the books. Whether you’re picking up the one your professor asked you to or the one you pick up at Barnes and Noble, you got to pick up the book.

Courtney
You do. And you know what? Even going through college, I don’t really think I learned anything important. I didn’t. But not. I mean, educationally. I learned other stuff. I learned how to deal with professors, which is networking. Networking and selling. When I did something wrong, I learned focus and studying and scheduling and all these other things. I learned so much as a person. That’s where I grew up. That’s where I matured, and that was really, really important. And people who just decide to go straight into being, like, an influence keep saying influencer. But that’s my frame of reference right now. Like, just go right from high school to influencer. They’re missing out on a chance to hone their skills as a person, as a salesperson. And again, the scariest part is that they are in such a bubble that they don’t understand that the rest of the world has a completely different perspective than they do. And they see things through their point of view, and they think everyone sees them, like, through their point of view, not realizing, like, dude, I spotted all of your issues the minute you walked through the door. Like, the language you chose, how you’re holding yourself, how you dropped your car off to the valley and tossed the keys. Like, I can tell you every problem you have with yourself and every childhood trauma you’ve ever been through. Because I know things.

Matthew
Exactly. No, it’s. And it is a thing with these influencers and stuff. It’s like, oh, I’m gonna go be an influencer. How many influencers make a good living versus how many people are on Instagram? How many people are on Facebook? Like, there’s a billion people out there, and you’re looking at the two or three who made it, you know, like.

Courtney
And predominantly the ones that are making it on Instagram are making it in their industry, and then, you know, it’s.

Matthew
Just, yeah, they were successful in something else, and that’s what they’re, they’re creating. And I’ve noticed this, you know, people who follow the trends, they don’t take off. You know, it’s like, oh, I’m just gonna. Everybody’s doing this dance, so I’m gonna do it. You might get lucky and get views, or you may end up only getting the standard 300 views that TikTok gives everybody. And just cause you did, you know, because of that, versus if you go out and put out something that’s actually you. So you, for example, all this stuff you have is a great thing to put out in the world when you’re actually doing that. Or, you know, Alex Formosi’s putting out all the business success he’s had with gym launch and running these multi million dollar companies. People love that stuff. But that’s because, like you said, he was successful in something else, and then he’s teaching how to do it on the platform.

Courtney
Exactly. And then that’s authenticity. Authenticity. You can’t. It’s not trendy, it’s not influencer y. It’s just authentic. And people are getting to see who you are and decide, like, hey, I really like what she said about this, or, I love how he put this, and then you follow them for that, not because of, you know, a stupid dance or what I think. I mean, I I sometimes make those TikTok videos with my daughter. We just never post them, but we do them like, you know, the. The mother daughter ones or the stupid dances. But they’re fun.

Matthew
But, well, even if you. Even if you post on your post going, because you two are having a mother daughter moment, not because you’re trying to, you know, oh, I want to hit this trend and hit a million views. It’s. It’s a very different reason for why you guys are doing it.

Courtney
Yeah, exactly. We would never. I would have. I would kill her and she would kill me. That’s, like, our deal. My daughter is exactly like me, actually. So is my son. They’re both, like, identical in personality and everything. So there’s never a conversation about that kind of stuff.

Matthew
It’s just like, we know nobody’s putting it out there.

Courtney
Understood.

Matthew
The mexican standoff. You all have content on each other, so don’t release it, because I’ve got videos you don’t want going out.

Courtney
My son doesn’t even have social media.

Matthew
That’s. That’s impressive.

Courtney
He’s such an impressive human being. He’s like this deeply, deeply intellectual, amazing guy. And he’s. He’s just like, I could brag about him all day, and I kind of. I respect him for not having it, but at the same time, like, I have to send him reels by taking screenshots of them, and I do this on purpose. I’ll send him like, 50 screenshots so he can see all the different words and it drives him crazy. But I’m like, you know what? This is actually really interesting, and I really want to share this with you.

Matthew
But there you go. Yeah, but he’s probably healthier for not having it, so. And then he only gets the good stuff from you versus getting all the other crap that’s mixed in.

Courtney
So, yeah, he’s a reader. He reads. He reads voraciously more than I do. And as you can see, that’s healthy. I have books everywhere.

Matthew
Yeah, books are. Books are definitely key. Courtney, do you have any, any final thoughts or advice for our listeners, especially, you know, kind of focusing on your legal expertise, entrepreneurial ventures?

Courtney
Yeah, I want everyone to always start with self awareness, and I think that’s important because if you’re going to become an entrepreneur, you’re going to have to sell your ideas, sell yourself, whether you want to realize it or not, people have to like you in a certain way. So whenever you’re finding that you’re having any adverse with someone else, take a step back, take a deep breath, and ask yourself, am I the problem? That’s really important. And if you are the problem, make it right. Then make sure you have the right mindset to go into becoming an entrepreneur, because it takes everything you have. And if you aren’t doing it with all of the passion and love in your heart. I said this on a podcast last week. If you aren’t doing something that makes you feel okay being home on a Friday night or not going out on a boat on a Saturday, then don’t do it. You’ve got to move with purpose and move with joy in what you’re doing. And always, always educate yourself in your industry, on your product. Make sure you don’t need disclosures, disclaimers, licenses, regulatory certificates. And if you have questions, start looking for answers from the people that you know first. And then always consult your attorney.

Matthew
Absolutely. Courtney, thank you so much for being on. It’s been absolutely wonderful. I, this was just as good as I thought it was going to be, if not better. It’s been a pleasure having you on. Anybody listening to this? Please, please buy Courtney’s book. It’s called ready, set, launch. It is available on Amazon. It might be available in your barnes and noble. I know when I went, every barnes and noble in Utah was sold out of it, which is very impressive. But it’s definitely available on Amazon. I was actually able to get it within 12 hours of ordering it. So it’s very readily available.

Courtney
Barsand noble.com also.

Matthew
Yeah, barnesandnoble.com will ship it to you. Amazon will ship it to you. And then, you know, go find Courtney on social media. She has a fantastic social media that’s positive and uplifting and worth watching. I want to thank everybody for tuning in today, and we will see you all next time.