June 1, 2026 – Laptop Lifestyle Lawyer Kara Vaval and Greatest Hits Joe Abraham

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. Jim Beach.

Jim Beach 0:26
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there, taking over the world, riding the roller coaster life of entrepreneurship, the ups, the downs, the twists, the turns, and all of the flips and the loops as we try to go out there and get rich and make some money this week on our minutes, you know, we have the 92nd feature that we offered radio stations, as well as this long show, they’re called minutes in their 90 seconds, figure that out. Anyway, we talk about the ways to get rich, there are only 11 of them, and we actually talk about that with some of our guests this week. It’s sort of a theme. How do you get rich? There’s only 11 ways: marry, divorce, lottery, preacher, pastor, criminal, work for 40 years, and save, inherit, of course, and entrepreneurship. I might have left one, oh, superstar sports, leisure, you know, entertainer, Taylor Swift type person. So I think those are all 11 of them. Very interestingly, people think that, of course, inheritance is going to be the number one. It is number two. It comes in at about five to 6% of people who are rich now inherited their money. 87% are first generation millionaires, which is so cool. Which means the people who are rich today got rich by themselves because of their own efforts. Got a fantastic show today. First up, we have Cara Vival. Boy, am I impressed with her. She has built an amazing career in the legal space, but also in teaching and helping other, particularly female lawyers, achieve a lifestyle that is just conducive with the amount of work that they put to get their degree, and so she’s just an amazing story. And I can’t wait for you to meet her. The coolest thing is that she started off selling Mary Kay and actually went to some of her first legal meetings in her pink Cadillac, that is just right out of a movie. And then after that we have Joe Abraham, one of the premier entrepreneurship thinkers out there, in our greatest hits. Again, we lost one of our servers, and so we are trying to get some of the episodes back up and on the air, some of the great interviews, and Joe Abraham is certainly one of those. So I’m excited to get that back up in the greatest hits. I do want to answer a couple of the emails I got about last week. Yes, our population has peaked, and we are going down now. Let me make that very clear. That means the peak baby has been born, the baby who represents the tide turning. That doesn’t mean the population won’t go up for another 20 years or so, the population will continue to go up a little bit, but then it’s just going to start going down everywhere, and I got several people arguing, well, it’s not going down in Africa. No, I’m sorry, it is. It’s going down everywhere in the world, and some countries, in particular, are really in precarious shapes with a replacement rate of close to one, you need to have a replacement rate of two, right? Two parents, two kids, that makes sense. But most countries are down around one right now. The worst are Italy, Thailand, Russia, are going to just fall off a cliff. The number I heard for Thailand is that they have about an 80 million population now by 2100 so 70 years, 75 years from now, they will be down to 8 million people. How do you have a real estate industry left? You build houses for 80 million people, and then the population goes down 90% What do you do? How does it affect everything? And that’s where we are. So, this population boom, the idea that we’re going to out eat our food is not true. We are going to have more than enough food. The problem is not where to put the people, the problem is what to do with them if they have an AI world. Great show. We’ll get started in just a second. Thanks for being with

The Real Environmentalists AD 4:51
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Jim Beach 5:22
We are back in again. Thank you so very much for being with us right now. Very excited to share an incredible story with you. Please welcome Cara Vival to the show. She is a Florida-based attorney, keynote speaker, coach, author, and is running the whole gamut, the seminars, the retreats, everything. She goes by the nickname of the laptop lifestyle lawyer. I love that, that name, that’s a great one. She was born in Haiti and had some losses early in life, but was able to overcome them. Came to the states, got a undergrad, and then her law degree, and started Vival Law, her law firm, and also the Empowerment Institute, which is an organization that offers the courses, coaching, retreats, the training, and all that, that I was telling you about. I think that’s mostly for women, and maybe lawyers only. We’ll ask her specifically about that. She has written two books, 28,000 days, Make Yours Count, and then has just released a new one called From Clearance to Priceless, Priceless. I’m sorry, which we are going to talk about. The forward in that book is by Lisa Nichols, who’s been on the show before, and also has an amazing story. Her book went to number one in three categories within 24 hours when it was released, and she also has a podcast called The Unfiltered with Tara Podcast. Tara, welcome to the show. How you doing? Damn,

Kara Vaval 6:48
oh, I’m fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. And I’m like, who is he talking about? Jeez, she’s like interesting, this chick. So I’m so happy to be here.

Jim Beach 6:59
Can I start with the most loaded, possibly racist question I can think of.

Kara Vaval 7:07
Tell me

Jim Beach 7:09
the fact that you came from Haiti, I think gave you a huge advantage. So many people in America are lazy and not trying, and you just listen to two seconds of you talking, and you can tell that you’re just going to go out there and take over the world, damn it. You have more vibe than Americans do, more gusto, more I’m going to go do this mess to you. Thoughts.

Kara Vaval 7:37
Yeah, well, you know what happens when you grow up in a country like Haiti, is you realize that if you ever get the opportunity to get out and go and create something for yourself in a land of opportunity like America, you take that sucker by the horn, and so that’s what happened. I mean, I grew up there, I had a very charmed life. I actually was born in New York, but then my parents relocated when I was only six months old, but I grew up there, and when my father, when I was about 14 years old, my father was actually brutally murdered back home, and he was very young, he was 42 years old, and so when I left there was a sense of I just, I’d never want to go back, right, and so when I got to the United States by way of New York, it was head down, you know. I got to do what I got to do. Graduated high school, I did my last year of high school there, went to college, double majored in political science and business management, taking 18 credits and holding down three jobs. That stuff makes something out of you. And if you know anything about New York? New York is concrete jungle, sink or swim, and I was swimming, I was not sinking. And so fast forward to law school, and all the things it was always wanting to make it out and make and never have to go back, and so that’s that’s really been what’s been driving me wanting to make my father proud, of course, and because he was just this larger-than-life guy, and he got taken out of the game so early. Hence, the book, 28,000 days, because you know, my whole thing is, you know, you only got about 28,000 days out having this human dance, and not everybody gets to have all of them. Some of us leave this earth plane earlier than others, right. And so the call is live fast, not in a bad way, but live with urgency and create a life that you know when you turn around and you look at it, you say, yeah, I’m satisfied with that.

Jim Beach 9:34
I love it. Well, I was on your website and I found a picture of you with your kids, I think, in Paris underneath the ivory top. Yeah, Luke and Leah are gorgeous children.

Kara Vaval 9:47
Oh, thank you. I mean,

Jim Beach 9:49
I mean, just drop dead gorgeous children yourself, but the children are gorgeous.

Jim Beach 9:58
Are they

Jim Beach 9:58
going to have that same. I view did, how are you going to then

Kara Vaval 10:03
let me tell you, the funny thing is, it’s great. You asked my son yesterday, just celebrated one year, the one year anniversary of his business. He’s 17 years old, and I’ve actually had to homeschool him the rest of this, his 11th grade year, because literally school was getting in the way of his business. He’s already done double six figures with his in sales with his e-commerce business, and so, yeah, you know, he’s, he actually, you know, he’s, I know we have to get him on, he’s an influencer, he’s a, he’s in the e-bike world, and so he has parts for e-bikes, tires, you name it, like shift locks, and all the things, and so he’s just a dynamite kid, and my daughter’s 12, and she also is like finding her way, you know, the kids, they watch, and I always say more is caught than taught, right, they just watch us, and so if you’re moving in a, in a way that is inspiring to them, chances are that’s what they’re going to emulate, and so, yeah,

Jim Beach 11:06
I love it. I love it. Well said. All right, tell us about the laptop laptop lifestyle lawyer.

Kara Vaval 11:15
So, let me tell you what happened, and then how that came about. So, when I came down to South Florida, went to law school. My entire focus was, get all the, get, you know, get the best grades possible, graduate, and then go find a job and make partner in a firm, and that’s the track that I had, that was the vision I had for my life, except that there were other plans that the forces that maybe actually had for me, so I sat for the Florida Bar in May of 2008 and I was waiting for the bar results to come out, except that before the bar results came out, another result of another test came out, and it was that I had passed a pregnancy test with my son, so I did not expect that. I know, crazy. I did not expect that at all. However, because I had just had this little nugget that I did not want to miss out on his milestones, I walked away from my corporate securities litigation job and started, of all things, as a licensed attorney, a Mary Kay business. If you know Mary Kay, it’s a beauty

Jim Beach 12:25
business. Great, look,

Kara Vaval 12:27
so Mary Kay, I started that business. It was 100 bucks for the starter kit. I always say I bought my freedom for $100 because that’s the business that I made my first six figures with. I drove my pink Cadillac to court, and my beauty business actually funded my law firm, which is now 17 years old. The reason why I’m telling you that is because the business model that I implemented for the law firm was the same one that direct sales business with Mary Kay. I didn’t have an office, I was virtual way before Covid made virtual sexy. I was doing that 17 years ago with just my laptop and my phone, and meeting clients at the local, you know, Panera, Starbucks, I kept my overhead super low, and so when fast forward, I was succeeding with the business, I said, you know what, there’s no course on how to monetize your law degree without going to a law firm to get a job, and so I started teaching women lawyers, and the brand Laptop Lifestyle Lawyer was born. It’s you can have a great lifestyle with it, with this career that you have, where you can be a mom and be present and do the things, but also have a lucrative business that you know you can run through your laptop. So that’s what I started doing, and then I, you know, I continue to do that today. So, yeah,

Jim Beach 13:46
I just love it. Is there any.. so there used to be that a lawyer out of his car was a bad stereotype. They even made a TV series about it, The Lincoln Lawyer.

Kara Vaval 14:00
The Lincoln lawyer, I know that I know that series. Yeah,

Jim Beach 14:03
love that series. But now, is it? Does anyone care now? In the.. no, no one cares.

Kara Vaval 14:11
And you know, the funny thing is, my clients never cared. The people who cared, even back 17 years ago, were my colleagues, my lawyer, my fellow lawyers in the community, because they would look at me, of course, they look down on me. They look down on me like you don’t look a professional, you don’t have a receptionist, you don’t have the water cooler. But I’m like, why do I need all of that when I can have a virtual assistant pick up the phone from wherever, because I have a voice over IP phone, it rings anywhere. Why? Like I was always thinking, why do I need these expenses? Just, I never needed to look good. I just wanted to be able to get the business and get the clients the results. I didn’t need to, you know. And so, even I had major impostor syndrome in the beginning because of it. However, you know, you start getting wins for your clients, they. Start referring you business, you’re like, wait a minute, I’m on to something. This is great, because I’m netting all of this, you know, all of this, these, these attorneys’ fees that I’m bringing in, because I don’t have rent for $2,500 and I don’t have, you know, an assistant on a $50,000 salary, or whatever. So, yeah, now everybody thinks that what I’m doing is super cool,

Jim Beach 15:22
and you’re saving 25% of the normal bill. I mean, I, I’ve had so many lawyers in my life, it’s disgusting. And I hired King and Spalding at one point, and went to their office on the 60th floor. They have the top three or four floors, and the atrium there is three stories tall with three story glass wall overlooking the rest of the city. I mean, it’s just gorgeous. It’s one of the prettiest spots in Atlanta, and you know they’re paying $600 billion a month in rent. You know, good grief, that’s gonna cost a lot of, well,

Kara Vaval 16:01
I mean, listen, if that’s the way you want to have it, I don’t, I’m not blaming anybody, I get fine, go for it, but as a mom, who, you know, I needed to keep all my coins because I wanted to put the kids in private school, and I wanted to be able to afford that, so I can’t pay that kind of rent and do that because I didn’t have the volume of cases that maybe these firms were pulling, and so you know, when I coached other women lawyers, that’s always what I say, it’s like, what, what’s important to you, and so we’re going to build your law firm in a way that it supports the lifestyle you want to have, you know, we’re not here trying to be the billboard person, we’re wanting to just find the clients that want to get served by our style of, you know, legal service delivery, and that’s it. And the thing is, because of that, as well, not having that stress, you’re really able to put in all your energy into maximizing your results for your clients, and so

Kara Vaval 17:00
it worked out

Jim Beach 17:01
in your pink Cadillac, that’s one of the,

Kara Vaval 17:03
well, not anymore, but yes, back then, yeah, yeah, beep beep, I was pulling into court, pink Cadillac, and all, and it was, you know, again, people thought it was cool, not the lawyers, because, you know, we’re a bit of a stuffy bunch, some of us, you know, yeah, it’s okay,

Jim Beach 17:19
but okay, so that part of the Mary Kay model is the pyramid, right? You get paid from the people underneath you. Do you get any fees from the female lawyers you’re helping? Is there an actual pyramid?

Kara Vaval 17:32
Well, no, no, there’s no. First of all, Mary, he’s a direct sales business, not there’s no pyramid, really. But yeah, you get paid the women,

Jim Beach 17:40
you get a commission from the people that you bring?

Kara Vaval 17:42
Correct, you do, but now the women.. so I don’t.. I’m not.. I haven’t been American now for like seven eight years, but the women that I coach.. no, they come through the Empowerment Institute, which is a business that I have, which

Jim Beach 17:57
is taught,

Kara Vaval 17:58
yes, correct. We.. they.. they come in, I work with them, I help them set up, and there’s courses, there’s, you know, and they actually get my courses are CLE accredited, so it’s a good thing for them, because they, you know, we do have to keep our license and get accreditations every, every three years, so they get a good chunk of that through working with me, and so, yeah,

Jim Beach 18:19
I loved those, my dad was a doctor, and he had to, you know, take those sort of classes too. The bad thing is that they were usually in Hawaii or something like that, and we would always go with him as a family, and he’d show up at 10 o’clock in the morning. Class is done for the day, Dad. Yeah, I’m all done for the day, you know. And so I love those continuing education classes,

Kara Vaval 18:41
yeah. So, but the good thing is with this, they can just take it online at their leisure, and then when they’re done, just clock their, their credits, and you know, maintain their license. So that was a good thing that I was able to add that on through the Florida Bar.

Jim Beach 18:56
Why doesn’t the law school do anything to help businesses or help their students get prepared for alternate non-traditional big downtown firm jobs, which are disappearing, by the way.

Kara Vaval 19:12
Right, honestly, I don’t know. I would think that it would be the right thing to do, but I think it’s just been, you know, sometimes things have been what they’ve been for so long that no one cares to look and, and reinvent them. You know, I think all schooling is geared towards getting people into the job market. That’s generally the agenda. So, I don’t think law school is any different in that way. It’s just that to me, you know, it’s such an expensive degree to have and to obtain that if someone is not able to get a job right away, they should be able to at least have some basics on how they can serve clients, because really, you don’t need, you know, it’s a practice, right, it’s not like you’re doing brain. Surgery, here, it’s a practice you can research and do, and we get to, we learn how to do research, and we can deliver these services, so we don’t necessarily need to start in a law firm. It’s a good thing, you know, to get the experience and to have your work, you know, monitored by a senior attorney, and all that, but it’s not needed, and so I just hope that as time goes by, that that changes, because again, you know, lawyers, they come out and they’re, they can just deliver services to, you know, people that are close to them and earn a good living without necessarily having to be in a firm that’s now holding, you know, like in my case, I do personal injury work, if I were to work with a law firm, you know, they would hold a lot of the attorneys’ fees that I earn on my cases. I don’t want to do that. I’m the one working on the case. Let me get.. let me keep my whole.. you know what I.. what I’m making, and I’m sourcing the client. So, yeah. So, I teach lawyers how to do all of that.

Jim Beach 20:56
Right? Let’s push it even further. What about starting a bank, Cara, just for lawyers, and the reason I think of this is around the corner from me, like a mile or two, there is a dentist bank, and it goes to young guys and ladies who have just gotten out of school and want to set up a practice, and it helps them buy all the chairs and everything, and it’s a great partnership, because you know how many dental practices go out of business, very few, and so it’s a great deal, and they already know the market very well, because every one of their customers is a dentist, you should do the same things for lawyers, and have the

Kara Vaval 21:42
well, that’s brilliant. Except that my model is not that. My model is work from home, work from your laptop, work, and if you do want to have an office, you can have a virtual office. And so

Jim Beach 21:54
the bank, they don’t necessarily have to borrow $100,000 from it, but they still need a bank.

Kara Vaval 22:00
I mean, they can, they can go set up an account, but they really don’t need a huge amount of startup. I started my law firm with 500 bucks, and then, you know, start, yeah, so I’m not promoting for them to go in debt or any of that, you know, go buy chairs, you haven’t even set up a client yet.

Jim Beach 22:16
I’m trying to build your brand, I’m just, that’s what I’m doing, just trying to figure,

Kara Vaval 22:19
I love it, I love it, I love it.

Jim Beach 22:23
Show with three new ideas for you.

Kara Vaval 22:26
Oh no, I love it. And I, and it’s, and it’s a great idea, and it’s something that I think that you know would really help for lawyers who are starting, and they want to have the office, and they all of that, but you know, I also want to make sure that people know that there is an alternative way of doing that, where you can start making money day one.

Jim Beach 22:46
Yes, let’s talk about the book.

Kara Vaval 22:52
Yes, from clearance to priceless, my new baby. So excited to have that out in the world.

Jim Beach 22:59
A main character guide to getting off the clearance rack and reclaiming your worth, and you have also trademarked the word character, but with a K at the beginning of it, K R A,

Kara Vaval 23:13
my name,

Jim Beach 23:14
yep. Tell us about the book, please.

Kara Vaval 23:18
So, from clearance to priceless, is a. it’s as I’ve evolved, right, very

Jim Beach 23:24
similar to Nicholas, Lisa Nichols story,

Kara Vaval 23:27
right. So, so Lisa is an amazing mentor, and I’ve been on her campus, and I’ve coached with her, and I’ve been in her masterminds, and she’s phenomenal. And when I was going through a season in my life where I found myself having, you know, I checked all the boxes, I had done all the right things, but life still didn’t look like what I, you know, what I knew in my mind’s eye was possible, and so, so it’s both figurative and literal, the title, because there is the clearance rack of tolerating environments and people and treatment, and things like that, that are not necessarily honoring of you, and wanting to live a life where you know you’re fulfilled with all the things, and so not living on clearance, meaning not living lower beneath the potential that lies within you, and knowing your worth, and reclaiming that in, and reinventing yourself, if you find yourself in life, where it’s like I did all the right things, but this ain’t it, right? Because I got that, I was like, this ain’t it. And then you have the real clearance of the scarcity mindset, mind you. I grew up in the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere, and it didn’t matter how much money I made, somehow, some way, I always created not enough in my life all the time, I would find myself, you know, I’d made a lot of money, and then I’m like worried about where things are going to, how things are going to get paid, and how it’s like, what the heck, what is that, why do I consistently do that? And so I talk about that in the book, and so the whole main character is really taking ownership of your life, taking ownership of your. Life story and your life journey, not a woe, and from a woe is me, and you know, I can’t believe these things happen to me. No, things happen for you. Life has been happening for you all along. Get the information from the journey, get the information from the various things that have happened, leverage that, and then write a script for your life that actually fulfills you, because you can, you’re not a tree, you know, the fact that you inherited a, you know, a narrative for your life, or a blueprint, because that’s how your parents were, doesn’t mean that’s how you have to remain, and so that’s the call of the book, and so I have tools, I have stories, and I let people really in, I’m super vulnerable in this one, it took me a while to get it out, because there’s a lot of personal stories, but it was really to have my reader see that, you know, if I can do it, you can do it too. I’m like, just, you know, I’m just this regular chick who came from an island, who, you know, if you really look by all of the factors that were going on, you know, the odds were really stacked against me, and yet I did that, so you can do,

Jim Beach 26:02
there ain’t nothing regular about you.

Kara Vaval 26:04
Well, you know, I’m just saying,

Jim Beach 26:09
yeah. So, what are some of the steps that people need to do if they’re not quite as driven as you? So someone reads the book, what are they going to come away with in terms of some of the steps,

Kara Vaval 26:22
well, some of the steps, depending on, okay, so for example, if you find yourself where it’s like, okay, I’ve done all the right things, and yet my life is not what I wanted it to be, right? Okay, were those right things the right things according to you, or were they the right things according to society? Because how many times have we, you know, you had a conversation with someone who went to medical school or law school or did all these things, and they’re like, “I never really wanted to be a doctor, my dad wanted me to be a doctor, or “my mom wanted me to be a lawyer, and so it’s like, it’s not too late to reinvent that. If you are more art driven, or whatever, it is, there’s always time to reinvent that. So many women find themselves in relationships nowadays, and they’re just like, this, this is, I’m not happy. Okay. Well, because if you’re not happy, or you know you want something different, you can still rewrite that script. Also, in the terms of business, in terms of making money, in terms of even, you know, at your job, if you’re in an environment where you don’t feel like you’re being compensated, or you don’t feel like you know they value you, you can also rewrite that. So, all of the tools in the book is really about having you take ownership, having the reader take ownership, and look at, you know, herself or himself, and say, okay, is there, is there something in here that I can do differently, and if I start doing this differently over and over and start going in a different direction, life can land me somewhere different, because again, 28,000 days is all you got. We do a little human dance here, it’s a small dash between your date of birth and your date of, you know, passing, because we all leave out of here the same way, right? We got to go, and so during that little dash in between, what’s the life, what is it going to look like, and you know, have a say in that to pick up the pen and write it.

Jim Beach 28:18
So many Americans, I think resist accountability. I just feel pretty strongly about that. What are your thoughts?

Kara Vaval 28:27
I agree, I agree, but accountability for me, radical acceptance and radical responsibility is the gateway to freedom, and freedom being whatever it is to you. For me, freedom is not having anything outside of me be the reason why I’m here. I take responsibility for my life. I take responsibility for, you know, what’s going on in my world, and yes, there are acts outside factors for sure that are happening, but how I respond to them and what I do with them is up to me, and so I am a very big proponent of radical responsibility. So, if you’re not the kind of person who takes responsibility, you probably won’t dig me, or you probably won’t enjoy my angle, but my angle is that, because that’s where all your power is, because anytime it’s somebody doing it to you, then you know you can’t control that somebody, then you’re at the mercy of something outside of you. I don’t believe in that. You know, if I was at the mercy of people, I mean, from when, from the my dad’s murderers down to, you know, my ex-husband, if I was always at the mercy of someone, I wouldn’t have the life that I have today. It’s okay, this is happening, and this is how I’m going to respond to that, and so that’s the invitation in the book, and that’s the, that’s what the tools help the reader do.

Jim Beach 29:49
I love it, I love it. Wrap us up. How do we find out more about you? Follow you online, listen to your show, all of the above. Come to one of you.

Jim Beach 29:57
Okay,

Kara Vaval 29:58
so yeah, I’m Cara Bava. L E S Q on all platform caravall.com is where you can find my book. The book is also on Amazon, it’s on Barnes and Nobles, it’s everywhere books are sold. And yeah, I mean, I’m all over social media, I’m on YouTube, I’m everywhere, so if you just Google my name, K A R A V A V A L, you’ll find me, and yeah, those are those are the ways you can connect, and I look forward to connecting with your audience, because I see that you, you’re doing your thing too. So, kudos to you for what you, you’ve been up

Jim Beach 30:33
to. Oh, I’m on the other end of the cycle, though, seeing how lazy I can be in finding the lazy,

Kara Vaval 30:40
yeah. No, but thank you so much for having me, and for, yeah, no, this was great, this was fun,

Jim Beach 30:46
and we will be right back,

Intro 2 31:02
you Well, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a wonderful question. Actually, oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s, that’s all, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question, and, and I don’t have a great answer. That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question, and that’s actually a really good question. School for Startups Radio.

Jim Beach 31:29
Welcome back to School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a great day. I hope difference in your life. My next guest, someone that’s absolutely critical that you listen to, learn this information, I’ve known Joe for about now, I guess our books were actually published, I think, on the same day by the same publishing company and the same team, and we got the same amount of love from them, I think, but anyway, Joe Abraham is the author of an incredible book called Entrepreneurial, and he’s going to explain that to us. It is fascinating about what type of entrepreneur be this is. Really great, and long-term friends. Joe, welcome back. Oh, I forgot, Joe was on the show, like I think you were the second guest ever, Joe. And so now you’re the guest on the 100th birthday show. Anyway, welcome back to the show, Joe.

Joe Abraham 32:25
Hey, thanks. And it is an honor to be on the 100th show. I can’t wait to

Joe Abraham 32:30
dive into this with you.

Jim Beach 32:31
Yeah, well, I’ve always loved the DNA stuff, and I don’t know if you remember, but I told you that this has made my marriage better because my wife can understand me, so dive in, tell people what the four types are, and start off with the dog analogy, because I love that, and so tell us about dogs, Joe.

Joe Abraham 32:53
Yeah, well, you know, you, if you were to picture in your mind’s eye a couple dogs, you know, down the street, your neighbor’s dog, whatever, and you know, two neighbors have two different dogs. You do have a dog, and you look at dogs, and you go, yeah, they’re dogs, right? They’re all the same. They bark, they have fur, they leave blind mines on the yard. But when you really look at them, you know, there’s a great hound standing next to a pit bull. Are they really the same? And you find yourself saying, maybe not. I mean, are they? I find myself asking, are they wired to do the same things? Are they gifted to do the same things? In other words, if there was a job interview for Scary Guard Dog, you probably wouldn’t pick the Greyhound over a pit bull, you know, you’d pick the Greyhound to go for a race around the track, because it’s naturally gifted for speed and running. That kind of sets the stage for this discussion about, are all entrepreneurs the same? Are we all supposed to run as fast and be as mean, or you know, scale businesses at the rate that Donald Trump does, or should we all be service providers? Should we all build small businesses or big businesses? That was the question I found myself asking that led to the discovery.

Jim Beach 33:57
All right, I love it. Exactly, you know, I would, for years, I thought everyone was the same. I just sort of assumed entrepreneurs were creative risk takers, or whatever, you know. I understood some small differences, but not the level that you’ve discovered. So, how did you come across this? How did you reach this discovery?

Joe Abraham 34:17
So, sitting at my desk, scribbling some notes, I was running an accelerator in the Chicago area at that time, and it happened to be kind of a low point for me. I was really, really frustrated, because even though these companies were growing and we were building business plans for them and raising money, I was totally drained. I just felt like I was pushing the round pegs into square holes, and you know, one entrepreneur who happened to be an NFL athlete, a Heisman Trophy winner, we were launching a company with him, and I couldn’t get him to sit straight and be in a meeting for more than 10 minutes, and he’s running out, closing another deal, and putting his name on another dealership, and I’m sitting here going, “Wait a minute, we just raised a million bucks to start a business for you, and you’re nowhere near it, you’re off doing the next, and it was frustrating for me to have. Happening, and at the same time working with another entrepreneur who’s just inventing amazing technology after amazing technology after amazing technology, and even picture getting that product to market, saying I’m terrible at business, I hate business, I just want to change the workload, and I don’t care, let’s give it away free, and so at my low point as an advisor, as a, as an investor, as a strategist for these companies, I had no framework, no methodology to understand what was going to happen next, so it was a bunch of trial and error, and they didn’t sense it, because to them, Joe was great. What I was getting drained on was trying to fit round pegs for a hole, so I’m sitting there scribbling out some notes, Tom and Jim are kind of like this, but Tim and Sue are kind of like that, and I still have the piece of paper here at the office where it all happened, and it was 20 minutes of scribbling notes about the 1000s of entrepreneurs I touched, going, “Oh my goodness, they’re not the same. That led to the research after it and stuff, but the original aha was 20 minutes scribbling out some notes about some people I loved,

Jim Beach 36:01
as it frequently is all right. There are four types you discovered. Let’s go through them one at a time. The B type, or Bozzy, so they’re the shorthand is Bozzy DNA, and that’s also the URL, right, Joe?

Joe Abraham 36:15
It is exactly all

Jim Beach 36:17
right. So people can go, that’s that’s important. Tell people they can go online and take this test, find out what they are. It’s fascinating to do that. So, anyway, Joe, what is it? Be entrepreneur,

Joe Abraham 36:31
a P this is stands for builder, and it’s somewhat descriptive of who these they are. They make up a very small percentage of business owners, only about 10, 15% of business owners have this as their primary DNA. They’re just pre-wired to build highly scalable businesses very, very fast. You know, if you’re driving through town and you just, you’re driving, you see a bunch of small businesses, you know, one location, one location, stripping all stuff. And then you drive by this massive manufacturing facility, and it’s like, man, there’s hundreds of cars in the parking lot, and all these employees and infrastructure. Well, usually it’s the builder DNA entrepreneur who built that company. You look at companies like Google and Facebook, all these other companies, they’ve been run and operated and grown by people with builder DNA.

Jim Beach 37:16
All right, and who is the stereotype of that in today’s society that we would point

Joe Abraham 37:22
to, I tend to pick Donald Trump in the boardrooms of The Apprentice, you know, I know that’s somewhat made up, but he’s showing a lot of the builder traits, highly controlling my way or the highway, rip people’s heads off, somewhat of a Dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde kind of personality, where one minute they’re the loving leader that everyone wants to follow, the next minute they’re ripping people’s heads off and don’t even care about it. There’s a lot of the predispositions behaviorally of builder DNA, and then certainly this capacity builds huge business.

Jim Beach 37:55
Oh,

Joe Abraham 37:58
opportunist DNA, one of my favorites. This is a picture of Richard Branson, highly successful billionaire, but very different approach to business. It’s very much about being at the right place at the right time, getting in on a money making opportunity, riding the wave all the way to the top, and hopefully cashing out just at the right time, and then maybe sitting on a beach, sip on my tie, never have to work again, and have mailbox money in. That’s kind of the, that’s what debates opportunist DNA in someone. So, if you ever, some of the listeners have ever, you know, gotten in on a stock tip or got stuck in the real estate boom, you know, buying and selling and flipping and all that, that was your opportunist DNA activating, saying, look, look, look, end on this. What if you miss out, and all your friends have a bunch of real estate, and there’s you don’t, and it’s that desire, and a lot of investors show opportunist DNA. It’s a very optimistic, anything is possible, but screw it, let’s do it kind of approach that behavioral trait of opportunity.

Jim Beach 39:01
Yes. s

Joe Abraham 39:04
specialist DNA, complete opposite of that. O’s, so if the o is the fun-loving, opportunistic, anything’s possible, swing for the fences. I don’t care if I fail person. S’s as business owners tend to be highly analytical, very risk-averse. The sky is always going to fall, and this DNA usually activates in the experts of our world. If you look at doctors, lawyers, graphic designers, computer scientists, if you drive up and down the streets of your town, and you look at these little locations in strip malls, you know, single location restaurant owners, they will show this special DNA. They just want to serve their customer, they just want to do a good job. They don’t, they hate selling, they don’t like marketing, they’re not very good at it. They just want to do a good job for their customer. We’re very analytical and risk averse compared to the other.

Jim Beach 39:54
Who is our stereotype?

Speaker 3 39:57
I use Bill Gates as the example of that, because he shows a. Out of those traits, pick one industry, stay in it for a lifetime, not really jumping from thing to thing to thing, goes deeper and deeper into his expertise, again very successful, but very much of a slow and steady wins the race. It took a Steve Ballmer-like skill coming in for Microsoft to really become the company it became that certainly wasn’t Bill Gates, driving it

Jim Beach 40:22
really? You like Balmer? I think you don’t think he’s about to get fired.

Joe Abraham 40:27
Well, he’s been there, gosh, for as long as he has, and he certainly was the builder energy, you know, behind driving the company way it grew.

Jim Beach 40:36
Okay, that’s interesting. And maybe is that why Microsoft is so Uber successful, because it had two distinct entrepreneurial personalities. Maybe you should go ahead and introduce that into the conversation. It seems a little bit early, because we haven’t done I yet. But go ahead and talk about the benefits of having complementary personalities, because I guess it came up with Balmer.

Joe Abraham 41:00
Yeah, for sure, and I think we are certainly seeing that more and more. We do a lot of work with platforms like Co Founders Lab, which is like an online co-founder matching platform, and with Founder Institute. And even at the early stage of a business, entrepreneurs find themselves saying, Should I have a business partner, and if so, who should I bring on? And we are seeing that S’s and O’s make great business partners, because when you look at the quadrant, they’re opposites of each other, and builders and innovators make great business partners. I’m, I’m an I, and my partner now, who’s our CEO, is a builder. I had to literally go find my builder, because I knew that, as an I, I couldn’t get the company to where I needed it to go. So, I’s and B’s make great business partners, sis make great partners to build our opportunist videos. So it’s the easy trick is, if you look at the Boston Quadrant, anyone Google’s Boston, you’ll find the quadrant online. Just look for whatever your results are, whatever’s on the other side of the quadrant is the best compliment in a partner.

Jim Beach 42:00
It’s four letters, and you turn it into by grids, so it’s B O on the top, and then S I on the bottom, right? And all right, we haven’t done I yet, so let’s do that. That’s what you are. Give us what? Describe yourself. And

Joe Abraham 42:19
yeah, so I should say this, still a disclaimer, as I describe I, I’m an I today, I wasn’t an I 10 years ago when I was building my last company, I was much more of an opportunistic builder in my last company, we morph, entrepreneurs morph as different chapters in our life turn, different DNAs activate, sometimes we’re highly opportunistic because we want to get in on something, and our ODNA drives a lot of our decision making, and sometimes the S kicks in. In my case, when I stumbled across the A-ha bossy, my I DNA kicked into height here, and it started to drive a lot of my decision making, from how we priced our product to how we built it, to what our strategy was hired. It all came through the lens of my eye DNA, and here’s who eyes are. They tend this DNA activates in the mad scientists of our world. People who were doing something they loved stumbled across a big aha, you know, playing with Grandma’s cookie recipe, tinkering in the garage, you know, whatever it may be. A scientist form doing research has the aha moment, the presto discovery, and it instantly drives this entrepreneur into the lab of their business, because they, they become very missional, they want to change the world with this invention, or whatever it is, and they stop caring about the business side of things, they become more about quality than profits, more about changing the world and building a business, and obviously that has a huge impact on the type of business they build and what success they have. Innovators tend to be horrible business operators because they’re going to make decisions through a very different lens than a builder does, which is why I had to go find my builder.

Jim Beach 43:55
That’s interesting. And also, you can have a primary and a secondary, right? Will you explain that? Yeah, we

Joe Abraham 44:02
all, yeah, we all do. So, any of our listeners today who end up going and taking the assessment free, by the way, you’ll end up answering 10 questions, and it’ll risk give you a primary and secondary. So, say you’re a specialist, innovator, or a builder specialist, or an opportunist. Your primary drives most of your decision making, but you’ll see, as you’re reading your report, your secondary does pop up every once in a while, impacting how you make decisions and how you run your business. So, I am today, I’m an innovator builder, my eye is very high, and I’ve got just a minute off of that builder in me from before that kind of balances a little bit.

Jim Beach 44:41
Okay. All right, I right. I really encourage all the listeners to go and take the test. I’ve done it, and as I said, I think it made my marriage better. It makes me understand myself better, and as you’ve mentioned, Joe, it’s fantastic for helping find a partner for you. You know, this whole idea, well, I’m a marketer, so I need to find. The finance guy that really looks archaic in your world, doesn’t

Joe Abraham 45:04
it? Yeah, because if the marketer and the finance that I or gal are both s’s, we’ve got a problem because we still are missing the behavioral profiles needed to scale the business and go get close deals, which is the opportunist thing to do, and create innovative product, which is what the eyes do. It’s very easy to look at functional roles, but still end up in the same quadrant together and be trouble.

Jim Beach 45:31
Tell us about your TED talk.

Joe Abraham 45:34
I had a blast. I peed in my pants almost before I went on stage, but when I was invited to go do a talk at TEDx Bend, I did a talk on this very topic of entrepreneurial DNA, and why I feel, and why our research is showing it’s such a game changer for entrepreneurs, not only entrepreneurs to see themselves through the lens of who they are and the people surrounding them, but for those of others who serve entrepreneurs, educators, business coaches, and consultants to start to see entrepreneurs through the lens, because it has a huge impact on how we interact with each other. You mentioned co-founders matching and finding a partner. We’re starting to now assess teams inside companies, realizing that if I’m a builder, the kind of team I need to surround myself with is very different than in-product specialists, and what impact does my team’s DNA have on what strategy we deploy as a company, as a small business?

Jim Beach 46:30
Can you do you find, Joe, that this can apply to a corporate situation too, like you just said, a team? Can I apply this to 50 people who all work in the same office and learn anything.

Joe Abraham 46:42
Yeah. Well, I mean, this is quite by accident. It certainly wasn’t part of our intent. Our intent was the entrepreneur, but more and more, you know, as entrepreneurs take the assessment, like, well, take, have my team take the assessment, and you know, we’re assessing teams of 2050, and 2000 finding that inside every employee some level of entrepreneurial DNA. You know, it’s kind of a God-given thing. We all have some of us use it to climb the corporate ladder, some of it uses, some of us use it to start a business, others use it to homeschool their kids. It’s that desire and that capacity to be innovative and take risks and, and be opportunistic. So, it is interesting to measure the entrepreneurial DNA of a team. I would argue that if we were to have a cross section of Microsoft employees take the Bossy assessment and a cross section of Apple employees take the assessment, we would almost certainly see one company with higher I DNA and one company with higher S DNA, and it shows them their products, it shows them their strategy, shows them how they message themselves. It comes back to how we’re wired as entrepreneurs.

Jim Beach 47:45
I really want you to write the book, Corporate DNA. Now, or are you working on that?

Joe Abraham 47:52
Well, we’re doing the research right now. I’m working, believe it or not, and this will excite you. We’re doing research all the way down to kindergarten kids, so one of the top kindergarten schools in the country had us come in and they say we think we’re seeing some entrepreneurial behavior in these kindergartners and then Illinois Math and Science Academy, which is one of the top high schools in the country, says we think we’re seeing entrepreneurial behavior in these high school students, and as we’re starting to measure it and having different versions of the assessment starting in kindergarten all the way to corporate and high net worth individuals, we’re seeing that you know there’s a trend here, and so, who knows what the next book, if at all, will be. I’d be happy never to write another book, because you and I both know books are worth the paper they’re printed on, but get the message out that there is different way to see each other, beyond just personality traits, but entrepreneurial decision making could be a game changer for small companies, as well as eventually some big ones.

Jim Beach 48:49
How is your PBS series going?

Joe Abraham 48:53
So, we shot 10 episodes of the show called The Entrepreneurs, and it’ll air very locally in Chicago, you know, and if it gets some momentum, then hopefully we’ll be able to pitch our way to a national show, but all I do is we basically brought entrepreneurs in from the local area and just told their story, you know, and these aren’t like billionaire entrepreneurs, they’re just everyday small business owners who are creating 456, jobs here, there, 1020, jobs, and just highlighting their story of how they did it, why they did it, and the ups, downs, and it’s just me hanging out with entrepreneurs, having them tell their stories.

Jim Beach 49:28
Well, congratulations on that. I hope it does get picked up. Can we watch it online somehow, or something like that?

Joe Abraham 49:36
Yeah, you know, your show has, you got your website, soon as this, the episodes go live? I’ll send them over to you, and you could share them with the audience, and it should be like late August or early September when the first episode hits.

Jim Beach 49:49
Okay. Well, I hope that works out great for you. That’s really cool. How’d you get a UP? I’m sorry, a out of range. How’d you get that thing lined

Joe Abraham 49:58
up? It’s local. Local community college here called Leblanc Community College is just really passionate about entrepreneurship, and they had this vision, they had their own studio already in, you know, on campus, and they’re like, “Look, you want to tell the story of entrepreneurs, Joe, would you come on in and help us with it? And one thing led to another, they happened to be a PBS local affiliate, and you know that kind of all that infrastructure was already in place, it was just a matter of getting the entrepreneurs and telling the story.

Jim Beach 50:24
Tell us about your incubator and your bishops. The main thing that you’re doing now,

Joe Abraham 50:31
the main thing we’re doing is we consider ourselves a second stage accelerator, so we take companies that have just broken past about a million or so in revenue, maybe two or three, and they’ve kind of hit a plateau. There’s so many of these great small businesses around the country that get to that point, 234, 5 million, 8 million, and then they just kind of stop, because there’s a huge human capital and financial capital need to get from that level to 2030, 50 million, you know, and so that’s where we come in. We feel that there’s a lot of great support for early stage companies and startups. I mean, all the amazing stuff you do, and Founder Institute, and all the accelerators, incubators, and these companies come out to shoot fast, hit about 1,000,002 three, and then they just kind of stop. That’s where we come in. We’ve got a fund that invests in those companies, and we’ll come in with a team of people and take these two and three and $5 million companies and turn them into 3050, 100 million dollar companies.

Jim Beach 51:27
Well, we have listeners who are in that category, Joe. So, where should they go to learn about this part of your life, not the Bossy DNA part?

Joe Abraham 51:37
Bossy Fast 50, so if they just go to B O S I Fast fifty.com they can learn about the accelerator and the Fast 50 program, or if that was too hard to write down while driving in the car, they can just go to Joe abraham.com my blog, and there’s connections from my Joe Abraham site to everything I

Jim Beach 51:57
do. Okay, well, you and I went to India together last January, I thought it was one of the best experiences of my life. Are you planning on going back? You and I spoke at a conference together, and so we spent some time hanging out. You’re going to go back.

Joe Abraham 52:13
Well, you know, the highlight for me was being there with you and hearing you speak, and well, just no, I’m serious, just seeing you interact with those students, and they’re crowded around you, and following you around to your room till midnight, and you’re just sitting there pouring into them. It certainly was a huge encouragement to me, knowing that you’re going is the only reason I would go, because it certainly isn’t comfortable going to flying to India and losing sleep and get lagged and all that, and you know, I usually try and pull it off in a weekend, so all that pain will be well worth it. If you’re going to be there, yeah. So, if you’re going, I’m going.

Jim Beach 52:45
Well, that’s too polite of you to say all that, Joe. You were actually describing yourself. I was the one hiding in the corner. You didn’t well know it. It was fun, and I do hope you go, because I really enjoyed the experience. If you go, let’s plan a day, we’ll go sightseeing and take some of the students, you know what, we’ll get some of the students to take us around town, that would be one of the experiences of your life.

Joe Abraham 53:09
I agree, I mean, I was born and raised in New Delhi, but Bombay is a whole different world.

Jim Beach 53:13
Yes. All right, well, we’ve just about run out of time, though. I want to thank you for coming back, especially on our 100th show, if we make it to 250 I’ll have you back then, or if your new book comes out sooner, we’ll, of course, have you out there.

Joe Abraham 53:30
Absolutely, thanks for everything you’re doing for Rocky Party about there on behalf of all of

Jim Beach 53:35
us. We are out of time, but back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, go make a million dollars. Bye now!