00:00
folder called Good Fucking Ideas. If you don't like what I'm about to present to you, I'm gonna put it in this folder and I'm gonna sell it to one of your competitors next year. The whole game is being in the right circles and being around the right people.

00:11
Buff life with capital B, which means be, be, be who you are, be the best you can be. Being young in the industry and being a leader there, that's, that's a hardship. Consistency is key. My whole life is structure. And so what do you need out here to be successful? Two things, discipline and structure. To be successful or to find success or to find happiness. The most important thing is to find what you're passionate about.

00:38
You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it.

00:49
Here's your host, Ryan Alford. The marketing impressed me with you guys. I actually admired you from afar. So I was like, okay, this is a company that knows what they're doing. So talk to me about the brand. As much as I enjoy advertising, there's still nothing that I enjoy more than being able to write in a way that truly connects with people. For two and a half years and build up our own fan base, the old school way, and got it to a point to where it was big enough, but.

01:16
We couldn't get any bigger unless they brought in the right partners. It's time is such a strong, somewhat generic statement that I own, you know, in respect to where I own in trademark wise, that I don't want to abuse it. I want to build it. So it's careful marketing, careful, consistent marketing. The thing that we found more successful is what flavors are relatable to our consumers. So you think back to your childhood, you know, did you grow up?

01:43
eating cinnamon rolls or cosmic brownies, or did you love the icy flavors from the gas station? What can you pull a story from and put into a cookie? I look back on everything that I did when I was a kid, or even having a nickname like Lights Out at 16 years old and getting a tattoo on my right forearm. It was branding, it was marketing. I think that we just use the word for it now.

02:09
So, you know, though I had mentors and things I was doing this long before anybody came in the picture. I'm a very curious individual and I read everything and I want to know how they did it, why they did it, what was their mindset, what were their failures? Um, so yes, this has been, this has been baked in me for a long time. We're talking social media. We're talking to Kyle Creek, the captain. What's up, man. Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to be here. Your best work, which has made you Insta famous.

02:39
Twitter famous, whatever you want to call it, but it's obviously helped your career. Uh, helped your social media, the campaigns, the clients turned down are the ones that blow up on social media. Oh, you need client out there listening. I know some of you are past present executives. Yeah. You got to push the envelope if you want to move the needle. It's true. So I actually have a folder on my desktop to this day and this folder save and it's called good fucking ideas.

03:06
I probably, I haven't looked lately, but I've been saving ideas there since maybe 2015. And every new laptop I get, I transfer the folder over. And so there's maybe a thousand pieces of copy or scripts or different campaign ideas in there. And I used to pitch clients often when I was doing a lot of new business and I would pull up my desktop as the pitch started and I'd point to that folder.

03:29
And I'd say, see this folder called good fucking ideas. If you don't like what I'm about to present to you, I'm gonna put it in this folder and I'm gonna sell it to one of your competitors next year. I started leading my pitches that way and it helped me get a lot of ideas across because they realized I would do that. And I still, every now and then when I'm consulting, I go back and I find stuff that I wrote in 2016 that I can update and it's still a very solid campaign. It would work correctly. And so it's a folder I've had.

03:56
exactly for the reason you're saying. Whenever I tried to push the envelope for a client and they didn't want to, I just believed in it enough to know that someday it would work and I've just been saving them and collecting. It's cool to win ad awards and it's cool to get stuff like that, but there's nothing that will make me feel more fulfilled as a writer than hearing that I pulled someone out of a dark spot or I helped them laugh when there was nothing else in their life to laugh about. Where does your point of view come from? Like,

04:25
You know, the captain, you know, that instigates that writes this way has a certain style that came from somewhere. It's all his own, which is, I'm sure you're an original and you are something built your perception, your take on the world, your way of thinking. I would think there's been molding along the way. I think the way I was raised helped shape a lot of my view of the world because I was raised in Utah. I was raised LDS. I was a Mormon.

04:53
And growing up, I felt very suppressed and I felt very censored. And I felt like I had a very constricted view of the world because. Everything was viewed for this lens of the religion. And if I was going through something as a teenager that all teenagers go through and I wanted advice from my parents or advice from, you know, my, one of my leaders, I would always receive the answer in the form of

05:22
You should go look this up in the scriptures or you should pray about it. And it drove me crazy because what I wanted at that time was to have a human talk to me as another human. It made me feel very misunderstood and it made me feel alone. So for many years, my primary fuel in life was trying to prove to my family. I didn't need their religion to be successful. I didn't need their religion to be happy.

05:48
And so that would probably be where some of my harshness came from, because it came from a rebellious energy. The other side of that is I wanted other people to not feel alone because I had felt that way for so long and I wanted people to feel understood. I wanted people to feel like there was others out there like them. And so that's where I'd say that mold of the two came together to where I had that rebellious energy, but also I wanted to genuinely help people not feel the way I did.

06:15
And see it as an example to other people that listen, you can speak up and you can receive criticism and your life can go on. Jared Johnston. What's up, brother? Hey man. Thanks for having me on here, dude. Hey man. My pleasure. Holy shit. This guy's written like 12 songs that I sing in the shower that I didn't even know were his original writings. You're a bad ass man. I love it. Let's give everybody a little bit. I know we could talk for probably two hours about your story, but you know, maybe give us the.

06:44
a little bit of that background and your history and what makes you such a damn good country music writer. Man, I grew up in Nashville was born and raised, which is kind of, that's not the normal situation. You know, they, I think they kind of call us unicorns, the people that are actually born in Nashville rather than moving to Nashville and I came up, you know, went to school downtown and he and fog, my dad was a, always a drummer. Grand Ole Opry. He was a drummer, um, for a bunch of, uh, older country artists in the eighties and early nineties.

07:13
And then he started pitching songs, which means, you know, like finding songs from writers and taking them to John Michael Montgomery or whoever and trying to get them recorded. And so I saw that at a very early age and remember seeing how excited dad would get when he got a whole quote unquote, a hold, which means the artist or the manager liked it for whoever. And I was just like, kind of mesmerized by that whole thing, like the equation of sitting down, writing a song by yourself or with friends, and then two weeks later.

07:43
It's, you know, a recording by Garth Brooks or whoever, you know what I mean? So I kind of started touring when I was 18, playing drums for a bunch of bands. And then I started writing songs, man. And real serious about it, about 2005 got my first publishing deal. And from then on, it's just kind of been a crazy, you know, country Western ride. How do you classify your writing style? I mean, do you think you have a certain style? I think the reason I've had.

08:09
the success that I've had, or at least part of it, part of the whole game is being in the right circles and being around the right people. And like I said, it's also like who you surround yourself with, the people that you're writing with and the people that work your songs that are working for your publishers and stuff. But, um, yeah, I just try to go into every room with something a little different and try to do things the way that, that aren't expected. The business of country music.

08:34
You know, you've been in it for a while. I mean, oh five, like you said, maybe getting your feet really into it with the songwriting, I mean, you've seen a lot of change, right? It can be pretty brutal. An example, I started in 2005. That's when I got my first publishing deal making 30 grand a year. Had to turn in 10 songs a year, which is 10, 100% songs. Meaning like if it's a two way, it counts as half of one. You know what I mean? Or three way by so on and so forth.

09:01
And that, and it was a copup deal, which means I own half they own half. So that's a pretty good deal coming into the game. And my publisher was a really nice guy. He helped me out. So late 2010, where I had my first number one, that's five years, you know, like, and there would be a couple songs that got recorded in between there, but you're not really seeing money from that unless it's on the radio. So, um, you're living off that publishing, you know, the 30 grand a year. And you're trying to keep that deal every year too, which is.

09:31
If you're not getting a bunch of stuff going on, it's tough. Now I had the luck and the blessing of being also like what they call triple threat. So I was writing for other people. I had my own band with a record deal and Warner Brothers at the time called American Bang. I also was producing a little bit of stuff. So there's many irons on the fire there as far as business speaking. And I try to look at it still that way. I'm probably I mean, there's a lot of busy cats in Nashville, but I would say right now with the Cadillac three, all the touring.

10:00
the production work I'm producing, kit Moore's new record. I'm doing just did Sam Williams record and bunch of stuff like that. And then also the writing every day, it gets pretty, it's pretty crazy. But if one thing's not doing as well, you got something to follow on the other side, we couldn't tour Bruce buffer. What's up, Bruce. Hi, how are you? Everything good.

10:22
Everything's great, man. And I love the T-shirt. Where did its time come from? Let's just say I want to know where that came from. When I started in the UFC announcing and I've been managing my brother, Michael Buffer, you know, the legendary greatest announcer of all time. Let's get ready to rumble. We met late in life when we did. I own two companies. I had my first company when I was 19. I've been an entrepreneur ever since. I've owned a variety of companies, a couple of failures here and there. But most of all, successes, you know, I'm proud to say when I met him.

10:48
knowing that he was the announcer, he wasn't everything else. We eventually, I sold two companies, became his manager, managing his career and everything. I wanted to announce back then, we agreed I wouldn't do boxing, and I said something would come along, and boom, this is a very short version. And boom, the UFC came along, and I worked my way into the UFC, but I never wanted to be Frank Sinatra Jr. I never wanted to be, no, I respect Frank Sinatra Jr., but I wanted to create my own style. I wanted to grow with the UFC to help market the brand, being the marketing and branding person they am, first and foremost, before I do anything else.

11:18
And I told them, I said, I need to grow with you as the announcer, but I didn't think I needed a catchphrase. I'm not catchphrase driven. I was more like, it's not what I say. It's how I say it. So it wasn't till about seven years later that his time came about. Everybody always was going, let's get ready. Let's do this. They all wanted to be Michael. I just didn't want to come across like that. I can tell myself if when three years I could build my own identity, my own style. I would continue. If not, I would quit because I just didn't want to be that way. So every day I wake up.

11:46
and I was kidding before, but I'm serious. I look in the mirror and go, it's time. It's time to have the best day that I can possibly have. So I used to open the show saying, it's time to begin the ultimate fighting championship. And then Dana White and the Fertitas brought it, bought the show. Dana I met, he said, I don't want you doing that at the front anymore, top of the show. And I said, fine. But then I got down to the main event and I realized, hey, everybody's sitting here for five hours watching the show. The main event's about to start.

12:14
The fighters have been training six to eight weeks for the biggest moment in their lives. This is definitely, it's time. This is, it's time. This is when it's gonna happen. And I started incorporating it in and gradually over time it developed to the style that I do it now, whether I'm jumping or doing whatever. I never know physically what I'm gonna do till I do it, cause I never rehearse, never. I feel the energy of the crowd and I just let it fly. But when I was in Brazil and 20,000 Portuguese speaking people said, it's time with me, I knew right then it hit.

12:42
And that's when I started building it up. And then eventually over the last 15 plus years since then, I've developed into products and many things happening worldwide. And now it's time has taken on a very individual branding of itself. I plan on reaching a billion dollars in sales with its time, whether it's sales of other, not in my pocket, sales of other companies, everything, as I achieved over half a half billions dollars in sales with Let's Get Ready to Rumble. But I love my brother, but I'm a competitor.

13:10
and I'm going to come in first. The UFC has had this meteoric rise in the last 10 plus years, but like, did you see that coming? I knew from the very first day I got involved, it was going to be the biggest thing in fighting sports. You know, when you're in business, you need to be able to hopefully recognize the brand, recognize the future. I always think three steps ahead in life, like chess, I'd apply that to every aspect of business and any business I've owned or been involved in.

13:35
Because to me, all business is the same. It's just the product that's different, but you got to recognize what has the chance to be the big hit. I knew that was going to be with let's get ready to rumble. I got contacted by another company called party poker back when poker was not even as popular as today who wanted me to be part of it. One of the things I regret, I didn't grab that opportunity back then. Cause I realized online poker was going to explode and I'm a big part of poker myself in my private life, but when the UFC came on, yes, it was raw. It was a spectacle. It needed refinement, but I decided to stick with it.

14:05
make the short money back then that I made, lose money going on trips. Everything I could do, realizing that if I stuck with this, because consistency is a key in business, that I knew it would all pay off. And I have a simple theory, and that's whenever I do business of any kind, I have a three-foot theory, everybody around me be happy, healthy, and prosperous. And my goal is to help everybody around me get there, because then it all comes back to me. What you're talking about is what life is all about, these experiences. And I always tell people when I do my branding and marketing, motivational speeches or whatever,

14:34
One key thing in business is find out what you're passionate about. And if you can learn how to monetize it, you're not really working. You're living a lifestyle. And that's, and my, I call my life by design. It's just like my new company, millions.co where we're branding athletes and everything. This is my millions.co t-shirt. It's buff life with capital B, which means B it's real simple. Be, be who you are. Be the best you can be. As someone that doesn't even eat sweets really that often, if there's a damn cookie on the table, and especially.

15:03
This kind of cookie I'm getting it. It's Sawyer Hemsley, co-founder of Crumble Cookies. What's up, brother? What's up, man? Happy to be here. Thanks for the invite. Hey, man. No, it's all good. I'm glad you could join us, man. I want to get into your story. And you know, all the ice right here. No, no setup, no anything. Why do those cookies taste so damn good? A bunch of love we put in there and lots of sugar. No, I'm just kidding. Honestly, we go through a rigorous process to make these cookies awesome.

15:30
We get a lot of customer feedback and we don't put them on the menu until they're perfect. So Sawyer, talk to me. I know you weren't, we talked pre-episode. I read a lot about your story. Not originally a chef, a cookie master or whatever, but let's talk about a little bit of that professional journey and what led you to a grumble. Yeah. So honestly, crumble started out as a side hustle, never anticipated ever being a career. I was in my last year at college.

15:58
up at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, very rural community compared to the rest of the nation. Just needed something to do on the side. I was studying 15 credits, busy college student, and I was researching things that I could do, and I saw that there were bakeries and cookie concepts out there. But it was at the height of when DoorDash and Grubhub and the delivery services were coming out. So I connected with my cousin Jason.

16:27
And I said, we should totally deliver warm cookies to people's doorsteps. And that was the main focus. Like aside from culinary and knowing all about food science and all that, we just said, let's just make grandma's mom's recipe and deliver it by using technology so people could stay at home in their pajamas or for girls night or date night, whatever. The convenience was there, less mess, and you get warm cookies just as you would making them yourself.

16:56
Was it chocolate chip cookies? It has to be right? Like that's where it all starts, right? Absolutely. Family recipe. We actually mixed and blended, you know, my grandma's, some of Jason's, my cousin's family side, and we just tested. We just tried different brands of chocolate chips, of sugar, of flour, techniques, and again, we didn't know what we were doing in those early days. So we just networked and connected with other food professionals. We watched YouTube, read books.

17:24
I read cookbooks, you name it. We just were hungry to be that entrepreneur and to make something successful and then we just went for it. From the get go, the marketing impressed me with you guys. I actually admired you from afar with the marketing. Before I even tried your cookies, I was like, okay, this is a company that knows what they're doing. And then I had the cookies and I was like, holy shit, this is all coming together while they're both working so well. So talk to me about the brand. So my background is in branding.

17:54
advertising. My cousin's background is in technology and paid ads, things like that. So together, I think first of all, we have an amazing partnership where our skills helped each other. How the marketing started is it all came down to the packaging and the experience of what our product was placed in. And that was our pink boxes, which you referred to just in the short time that we've been talking.

18:21
And that's memorable. It's something that's energized. You can connect with that. It's a soft color and it attracts our target audience, which is our soccer moms, right? And so naturally they were pulled to our packaging. And from there, we just knew we had to capitalize on Instagram, because TikTok wasn't a thing back then. We were really engaged on Instagram. We would run paid ads on Facebook, and we would try our best to respond and answer every single message or comment on these two platforms.

18:51
And it just really helped to our advantage to the point where people were just tagging their friends and doing the marketing for us organically. And so that's really how the marketing started. And then now with time, as we've built out our team, we put a lot of paid ads into TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest and Twitter. But again, organic for us has been huge. It's been crazy because people love the product. And when you love a product so much, you want to organically promote that to your inner circle.

19:19
What's been the biggest pain points or learning, you know, as you've gone on this journey, you know, you're a young guy, but you've been successful. You had a great idea, great execution, but talk about, you know, that entrepreneurial journey, you know, maybe the, uh, not the dark side, but the learning side, you know, like it's everybody got to get, understand it. Is it all perfect all the time? Right? Oh, it's not like building the brand is not kicks and giggles. It's hard. You know, it's, it's lonely. I, there's a lot of days that.

19:48
you're just working your guts out and you're making it work. And you have a lot of people counting on you. You have to make it work, right? Something that's been really tricky is I've been young and so it's hard to earn respect in an industry where people are older than I am. And so it's important for me to be knowledgeable and be educated on the product. I'm not afraid to get in there and work the kitchen and know every aspect of the concept because I need to be able to speak towards that. And so just being young in the industry and being a leader there, that's...

20:18
That's a hardship. Second thing is having so many locations and, and youthful staff and employees. Consistency is key. With the ex all pro Sean Maryman. What's up, brother? What's up, my man? How you doing? It's good, man. The acronyms could go on and on. Now we got life insurance. I know we're going to get into it. We got lights out, a podcast. We got lights out apparel, fitness, and we got some damn kick-ass UFC and fighting and all that shit, man.

20:47
You got it going on, brother. Talk about the football background, and then we'll get into some business. I committed to University of Maryland as a junior. And the reason why is because I was home. You know, I didn't want to leave. You know, my mom leave my high school coaches, friends. I wanted everybody to come and watch me play. So I went to the University of Maryland, you know, had a great career there, but. Uh, ended up leaving early. You know, when I found out that I was going to go somewhere in the top 10, top 15 of the first round of draft, I was like, this is a, this, this type of shit doesn't happen.

21:16
Right? So you want to take advantage of it. And then the rest is history. You know, I got out and got that nickname lights out my sophomore year in high school. Yeah. Knocked out four, four players in, in one game in high school. And I ended up getting that nickname lights out and I kind of carried that all the way through. Getting away from the game, like the highs of that, you know, like the emotional highs and everything. How hard was that transition? Hey, that, that first year is beyond tough. Um, and I'll tell anybody that

21:46
Is about to retire and I talked to guys all the time, right? They said they got a year, two years left, maybe three. I said, whatever you want to do when you're done, start doing it now. And that way when you're done, you do it right away. Because if you have downtime, you're going to struggle. We transition, you were ready. You teed it up. You had NFL network. You've got the apparel company lights out, um, nature or nurture. Like, were you just a natural born entrepreneur waiting to come out of the bottle or like.

22:16
Did you absorb and learn from others? No, I was just, I was natural, man. I've always mean when I was a kid, I was selling, you know, five or six Nintendo games to get the one best one. Right. And I'll go out and wash cars, you know, during the summers, cut grass, shovel, snow, rake leaves, and I would take it and use all the money for what I wanted to, you know, when I wanted to go buy a new, uh, mouthpiece or football equipment or cleats, I was always hustling in a way. And.

22:46
I think that this entrepreneur word is kind of become more recent, but you look back on everything now, even to the point of branding. You did. You created the brand. I mean, you talked about for the Mohawk and the look and the feel and like you became, I mean, character, so to speak, but the persona of a brand or a machine. I mean, like you were that. So as you, as you say it, right. You had what I did on the football field as creating his character, his persona.

23:13
all these things, but in the hindsight of it, I was just kind of the launching pad to everything with the brand. I've always felt that Lights Out was bigger than anything I can do on a football field. And that's why when I bought the name and rights to trademarks I bought in 2006, I bought it for, you know, numerous things and clothing, workout stuff and equipment, marketing and advertisement, energy drinks. I bought, you know, this is something I acquired from another company at the age of 21 years old.

23:41
And so I don't even know if trademarking was even that big, then the people talked about it enough. And I just took those extra steps to know that this brand was gonna be a lot bigger than it ever could be. Because athletes are some of the most disciplined, hardworking, like, I mean, think about it. My whole life has been structured, right? Since I was 10 years old, I was told what time to eat, told what time to wake up, told what time to watch film and practice and go to what time I had to go to sleep

24:11
ready for practice the next day. My whole life is structured. And so what do you need out here to be successful? Two things, discipline and structure. If you have those, you got a good chance to be successful at anything because that's what a lot of people lack. A lot of people lack just being disciplined and having structure in their life, which is one of the only things that I know at this point. And so my goal is to get to a thousand plus agents and help people make as much money as they possibly can.

24:39
We're talking billions today, my friends, not millions, billions, billions, billions, billions upon billions with Howie P Howard Payne's, serial entrepreneur and billion dollar brand maker. What's up, brother? What's up? Hey, thanks for having me. I think your show is amazing and I appreciate you having me on. Hey, I appreciate that. Let's talk your journey, man. I know you got a great story, kind of your entrepreneurial journey, the ups, the downs, the highs, the lows. Let's start it, brother.

25:09
I came from a middle-class family. My mom was an entrepreneur. She was into clothing and fashion. So she had jewelry stores. So she was always taking me to work. And I always saw how, you know, she controlled her own destiny and how her being an entrepreneur and very motivational, she had the freedom to buy what she wanted and do what she wanted. And for me, that really, it hit me deep inside. I come from a pretty much entrepreneurial family. My grandparents came here as immigrants.

25:39
started a trucking company. I was loading tractor trailers when I was eight, nine, 10. I liked the fact of getting paid, you know? I liked that I could get that cash and do something with it. And I realized that at a very young age that financial freedom was really important. You know, I programmed myself at a young age that I really wanted to be successful. I wanted to be tough, you know, the martial arts, and I wanted to be built. And I wasn't the tallest guy, so I had to have all the other components.

26:08
My journey as a young kid, I was shoveling driveways, snow blowing business, cleaning windows, anything I could do to make an extra buck. My success really, you know, it helped me in my world because I talked to everybody in every store and every walks of life because that's, for me, that gives me life. To be able to communicate with everybody, no matter what level you are. Everyone puts so much pressure on themselves.

26:36
to be successful or to find success or to find happiness. And I think the most important thing is to find what you're passionate about. What do you love to do? And really focusing on that. Everyone's trying to do a million things and to find and seek happiness. And as I dove deeper into my experiences, I came up with the Howie method. Five easy things, everybody. This is five easy tips you could do to change your life forever.

27:06
and the cornerstone of health. Health is wealth. If you have health, you have everything. It helps your energy levels. It helps you think better. It helps you just feel better and you're feeling energized and you can perform better, do everything in your life better by having health in your life as number one. O, what is O? O is originality. I say be you, be real, be proud. Be that one person, you look in the mirror and...

27:33
Learn how to be happy with that guy because that's who you are. How can you make that the best person, the best version that you are? Because this is gonna be your most success. I was never the smartest kid, I was never the biggest kid, I was never the best looking kid. Although I look okay, never a great athlete. I was never great at anything. When I say to myself this, and I tell everybody this out there, is...

27:58
I could beat guys all day long that are smarter than me, stronger than me, tougher than me. I could beat them all day long in a howey, in my way, in the way I'm confident about myself. And I think this is the best thing that I can offer anybody is, you're so special and you're so individual that you have such talents, you just have to tap into them. So originality is so important. Be you, be real, be proud. The W is work. You've got to put the work in. So hard work, you can't hack hard work.

28:28
You can do things smarter, but time is something I put in, I put in long and hard into my, the projects that I've gone into. Most not successful, one that took me to the stratosphere. Hard work is everything. The I, innovation. It's easy to be a copycat in life, but can you innovate? Can you do something different? Can you serve the world differently, solve problems in a different way? So I, innovation, got to innovate. And the E.

28:57
E is, we were talking about your little drink, energy. Gotta energize yourself daily. You know, what energizes you? I have certain songs I listen to energize me. I have certain, you know, YouTube videos, there's some motivational ones. I picked a few that really get me amped up. And you see a lot of professional athletes, world-class Olympians, that they listen to certain things before they perform because it heightens your, you know, your level of alertness and your energy level.

29:27
to a new level. So energy is a big part. Going out there, my best foot forward every day, energized and enthusiastic. What kind of legacy are we trying to leave? Especially when I consider my son and that motivates me to want to put work out just in case something happens. At least he'll have something to look back on and be able to kind of figure out who his dad was. You like to think that it's kind of like the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, you know, or something. Use them where Tom Petty, you know.

29:55
did so much like with the band, wrote great songs for other people. Kind of like the life that people like me try to strive for, you know, on a family level and then on a professional career level, you know, those guys pretty much done everything you can do. Here's the simple thing, success breeds competition and competition breeds success. You want other people to be successful, but the USC is the rocket ship, the flames are coming and everybody's following their path.

30:24
right and I'm very lucky again to have a first class seat on that rocket ship. Don't forget where you came from and what got you there. Again, never anticipated to make this a franchise model, but a lot of friends and family wanted to be involved because they saw the early success and they saw how much energy was behind, you know, the cookies. And so my parents actually approached us and said, can we open a store? Can we be involved? And we said, sure, why don't you open your own store? And so we went through the legal paperwork, set it up as a franchise.

30:53
And then it started out as my parents, my college roommate, my sister. And then word of mouth just started to spread across Utah and the surrounding states and now the nation. And we've never actively sold a franchise. Everyone's always come to us to say, we wanna be involved when I open a store and own a business. And that's kind of how it unfolded there. At this point, my goal is to get to a thousand plus agents and help people make as much money as they possibly can. It's everything at every piece, at every level.

31:22
Because you know what, I know that you can't leave a lot in other people's hands if you really want to control your outcome of success. And I hear this too many times everybody, they think they can hire everybody to help them be successful, when in fact, it's you going to be curious and learn what other people did before, and where their failures were, and how that can help you, you know, be better, do more.

31:48
and be more successful. You know where to find me. I'm at Ryan Alford on all the platforms. Hit me up on TikTok. I'm blowing up over there. We're at theradcast.com. We'll see you next time. To listen and watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, the.rad.cast or at Ryan Alford. Stay radical.