February 27, 2026 – So Worth It Kaelyn Query and Building Authority Rusty Shelton

0:04 Intro 1 : 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.

0:16 Jim Beach : 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 and becoming an incredibly successful entrepreneur. Got two great guests today. We’re going to do a greatest hits with rusty Shelton, but first off, we want to talk about being so worth it with my first guest, Kaylin query, Big Show. We’re going to go ahead and get started right now. Here we go. Very excited to introduce another great guest to the show. Please welcome Kaylin query Caldwell to the show. She is an author, a podcaster, but mainly an award winning event producer. She does, you know the big things, the big parties, the big events. You know, the bar mitzvahs, events for corporations, all of it, and also has extensive venue management, catering and restaurant management experience, and she’s been doing that for the last 21 years. She started when she was three. Podcast is called Big Ideas, small business. There you go with the book is called so worth it. Caitlin, welcome to the show. How you doing? Thanks for having me. I’m good. So what kind of events did you do? Did I get it right? The whole spectrum

1:29 Kaelyn Query : you got. You nailed it. You nailed it. Yeah, a little bit of everything, anything and everything. As long as it’s

1:33 Jim Beach : legal, we’ll do it. The expression is sort of legal and kind of moral. Exactly, yes. All right, price. What was the number one category? Was it family events or corporate events?

1:46 Kaelyn Query : So I got started in corporate events and weddings, and we kind of went from there. So the majority of the events we do are meetings, conferences, trade shows. We do a lot of incentives, trips, anything from two people to 20,000 plus, and we do it all over

2:04 Jim Beach : the US. All right, very impressive. And what’s the biggest you’ve ever done? What’s, tell me your coolest party ever?

2:14 Kaelyn Query : Ooh, that’s a good one. I’ll tell you. I was on production for a music festival in northern Michigan called Electric Forest, and I oversaw all the hospitality, so pop up restaurants and food trucks and things like that. And that was a lot of fun. It was a two week deal. A lot that goes into it, but we got to, you know, as you’re on staff, you get to go to all the shows as well. So that was probably my coolest event experience. We’ve done some stuff. Yeah, we’ve done some stuff for the owners of patron. We get to do a lot of stuff in Vegas. So there’s a lot of cool, cool things, but that’s probably the biggest,

2:46 Jim Beach : worst client or Bridezilla. Oh, gosh,

2:51 Kaelyn Query : we would need an hour to talk about that. Tales, yeah, we would need, and we would need an hour to talk about that. No, the worst Bridezilla moments are clients that have unrealistic expectations, right? You say that you have a $20,000 budget, but you’re showing me things that cost $60,000 and we had a client once we ended up firing her. Mom actually was the problem, but she was just demanding all these things, but then she kept saying she didn’t want to pay for it. And I was like, Okay, well, I would love to give you these things, and I can absolutely get you these things, but I can’t get them for free, so you have to pay for it. And she was like, well, that’s unreasonable. And I was like, okay, seems like you’re unreasonable. So we’re going to refund your money and we wish you the best of luck or not.

3:34 Jim Beach : Yes, and is it the mother who’s usually worse than the bride?

3:40 Kaelyn Query : You know, it depends on the client. Sometimes it’s the mother, sometimes it’s the bride, sometimes it’s sneaky and it’s the mother of the groom. If it’s a, you know, heterosexual couple, but it’s, you know, it’s a shame, because there we don’t have a ton of bad clients. It’s like one client a season that has someone involved that’s not the most friendly or the easiest, and you know, then, of course, that becomes the attention of our conversations, but the other 80% of the clients are great,

4:12 Jim Beach : yes, and what’s the biggest ticket or invoice for one event that you’ve sent out

4:20 Kaelyn Query : for a wedding. Largest budget we’ve ever had was 500,000 for a corporate event, the largest budget

4:28 Jim Beach : we’ve had was 8 million. Wow, what 8 million include? Yeah, it was a

4:33 Kaelyn Query : five day conference in Las Vegas for medical providers. We bought out the Bellagio, the entire event floor and one whole tower of rooms of the Bellagio, wow.

4:44 Jim Beach : Yeah, it was cool. Very impressive. How’d you started? Go back in time 20 years and tell us how you got started.

4:51 Kaelyn Query : Yeah, on accident. In high school, I had an internship with an interior

4:54 Jim Beach : then all of a sudden, exactly an event, exactly

4:58 Kaelyn Query : I wanted to be an. Peer designer, and went for an internship, and the woman was not the most friendly. I hated it. She hated me. We mutually agreed not to see each other anymore, and they moved me to a catering company I really liked it. Started doing some events on the side after that, and went back and worked for them for several years, and it just kind of kept growing organically. From there, I was managing a restaurant that decided to close, so I took the leap of faith in 2013 and here we are. It’s been downhill ever since. Been uphill. Yeah, downhill, uphill, downhill again. Then there’s a mudslide.

5:33 Jim Beach : Uphill. Sounds like continuing growth. Well,

5:36 Kaelyn Query : it’s growth either way. It just depends on how fast you’re sliding downhill,

5:40 Jim Beach : I guess, so that’s right, I don’t like going downhill. That sounds

5:44 Kaelyn Query : sometimes it’s a mudslide, right? But sometimes it’s good,

5:48 Jim Beach : all right, interesting. And so how, you know, tell me about the first event that you got. How’d you get that client? Was it someone you knew from your previous job? So it was not.

5:59 Kaelyn Query : It was a wedding, the first event I ever well. So I guess technically, the first events I did were small in home corporate events, you know, a dental firm having a holiday party for their employees. A lot of these folks were my parents friends, and I’m not so sure my dad wasn’t maybe paying them under the table to just let me do it. But I made $0 I wasn’t quite sure at the time how to charge for my time. So I would just give them the receipts for the food and the beverage and whatever. But my first client that I got on my own that wasn’t a referral from my parents, was a wedding client, and I got it while I was at the catering company. They were doing the food, and she needed a planner, and so they recommended me. I charged $500 and she is still my biggest source of referrals to this day. So the clients became friends, and it was a lot of fun. It was a big learning curve, but I was hooked. Yeah.

6:54 Jim Beach : What are you love about do you love the rush of the event or what? Yeah. So in

7:01 Kaelyn Query : our industry, we all kind of special. We have a specialty, and interestingly, and I don’t know what this says about me, but my specialty is troubleshooting and problem solving, which is great for what I do for a living, but I really like, I don’t like problems, right? I would love a seamless, stress free event, but sometimes with events, that’s not how it works. So I really thrive in the fast paced problem solving mode. But I think what I love the most is when a client describes their vision for this sales rally or a wedding, or whatever it may be, and they walk in the room and look at the event space for the first time, and they know that you have absolutely nailed it. And then some, the look on their face, that is what gets me going.

7:44 Jim Beach : Yes, so I used to do events. They’re different. We were a summer camp company. We ran 89 summer camps simultaneously, and we learned was, if we did our job in the winter, the summer was incredibly easy. You find that too, that if you prepare really well, the event goes really easily.

8:05 Kaelyn Query : Yeah, our two slowest quarters of the year are q4 and q1 you know, and it ebbs and flows from year to year. But naturally, we try to get as much work done on the admin side in those months, so that during the busy season, which for us, is April to October. We are ready to go right, because it’s hard when you’re in the thick of the event and on site to catch up on all the admin work and the meetings and all of that. So we really try to get as much of that done in the slow season as much as possible, so that during the busy season we’re good.

8:38 Jim Beach : All right, I had one party for my the company I was just mentioning, and we had the B 50 twos play. And then brought in a comedian from Las Vegas, an impersonator, guy who I was told was a big deal. I don’t remember his name. And the hardest part of that was it started it was outdoor, in a tent on concrete, slightly slanted, raining about two hours, maybe four or five hours before, and it was determined that it was just going to be a complete washout. And so in four hours, they went and built a new platform of plywood, like a foot off of the concrete or the asphalt, and the party went great. It was a lot of fun, no issues or anything, but boy, was that last minute timber. Expensive acre of plywood adds up pretty fast. Oh, yeah, so we had a mashed potato bar. So this is 2030, years ago. What’s the end trendy thing now? Mashed potato bars were huge back then.

9:53 Kaelyn Query : You know, mashed potato bars have a tried and true they are still making their rounds. We’ve seen a lot more, you know. And. This is on the quote, unquote bars, so expanded from mashed potato bars to mac and cheese bars to pasta bars, lots of carbs, it seems. But you know, we’ve got salad bars and more of a composed, dressed up salad bar than what you might see at like a pizza place. But the bars are still tried and true. And you know what I like about it is that they’re easy to accommodate dietaries and allergies. People can self regulate what they like and what they don’t like. So it does make it easy on that front, if you’re trying to feed a ton of people, and you know, you don’t want to have to deal with individual meals, they do make a great a great opportunity for that. So we still like a bar.

10:40 Jim Beach : It seems to me that this would be, and I don’t mean to be mean or anything, an easy er business to start. Then some you don’t necessarily need a bunch of startup capital. You don’t have to have $100,000 to start. You don’t have to be creative. You can go in event business. We’ve, you’re, you’ve already done it. So if someone copies it, you know they’re copying you, but you copied someone else, right? It’s not that big of a deal to come up with creativity. You just have to throw a damn good party. Exactly. What do you think about that? My little comment that it’s easier than most. Yeah.

11:15 Kaelyn Query : I mean, I would say of anyone in the event industry, being a planner or manager is the easiest. There are low barriers to entry. You know, not a lot of overhead. If you have an internet connection, you’re pretty much good. There’s a little bit to learn, obviously, in the logistics and the planning and the industry. But, you know, it doesn’t require the same equipment that a DJ or a photographer or a caterer requires, and it opens the doors to a lot of things, I would say, outside of the event industry, it’s still also probably one of the easier areas to get into, which is, you know, it makes it nice. Now, of course, with technology and everything, now, everyone’s a planner. So where we are stand apart from the others is our experience, our team and our process, which, if you’re a new planner, you likely haven’t quite figured out yet, but yeah, pretty much anyone can can come in and join at this point.

12:07 Jim Beach : Yes, and how many staff do you have now? We have five

12:11 Kaelyn Query : full time salary employees. We have two part time folks. And then during the busy season, we’ll sit between 10 and 15 contractors. We keep about three regular contractors in the slow season.

12:24 Jim Beach : Do you know DD ritzy? I don’t. Okay. She was a party planner in Kentucky, in Louisville, yeah. Oh, nice. She’s older than you by 50 years, maybe, oh, yeah, or something. All right, excellent. Well, all I can say, Kaylin is well done. Very impressive. A pluses for your entrepreneurship. You got to knock it out of the ballpark. Thank you. You’ve grown to big. So how many events do you do? Any a year now? 52, 100 Yeah, we typically

13:03 Kaelyn Query : sit between the 30 and 60 range, depending on the year. Now that includes series that we do for clients. You know, a few years ago, we used to produce between 203 100 events a year, and I just our team was burnt out, and we weren’t enjoying it anymore, and so we started really looking at what types of events we were working on, the types of clients we wanted to work with, and we changed our structure and scaled back significantly. And interestingly, we found that we actually make more money doing less events because we’re spending more time on each these clients then become repeat clients. A lot of our corporate clients were on retainer for them, and so we actually do better with less events. What a wild concept, right? It’s more about quality, not quantity. Took me a long time to figure that out, but we’re finally there.

13:50 Jim Beach : I so wish that we had kept my computer camp, the summer camp business at around 40 and when we went to 89 that’s when it stopped being fun. Yeah. And so I totally relate to that. Tell me about your book. So worth it. I love the time, yeah.

14:08 Kaelyn Query : So worth it. Was a fun project. It started as a personal journal. When I launched my first business in 2013 I didn’t have a business partner, and I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing. I was really good at my craft, but I was not good at running a business because I had never really done it before. So I didn’t really have a place to vent about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, or celebrate the successes. You know, it turns out that your friends and your family don’t want to hear the hourly roller coaster updates of starting a business, so I just started journaling, and it was never supposed to be seen by anybody else until now. So it is half part memoir, half part cuss words, half part kind of a guidebook of how not to make the same mistakes I made. Right? So the original title was, Do as I say, not as I’ve done. And my publishers, after reading it, they. Were like, you know, you say repeatedly throughout this journal, it was so worth it. And they were like, I think that’s the title. Like, it’s hard work, but it’s so worth it. This experience sucked, but it was so worth it. And I learned this big lesson out of it. So it is a very raw and real roller coaster of experiences. You know, it talks about big wins and huge events, and, you know, success of getting investors. It talks about years where I didn’t take a paycheck because I needed to make payroll, and so that meant I couldn’t pay myself. It talks about a business bankruptcy and everything in between. So it’s not the glamorous how to if you follow these steps, you’re going to be a multi millionaire success story. It’s if you follow these steps, you won’t go out of business within the first five years. You know which a lot of small startups and small businesses? It’s the reality, right? A lot of them don’t make it past year one, and if they make it past year one, a lot of them don’t make it past year three to five. So this is the real look of the ins and outs, and then there’s a lot of content that goes with it, worksheets and resources and connections a community. So it’s more than just read this and do as I say, but also read this and do the work right. These are the things I wish someone had shown me or given me or taught me when I first started my business. And for, you know, $30 you can

16:22 Jim Beach : have it too. I was actually going to ask about that price point. It’s an expensive paperback. Why so expensive?

16:30 Kaelyn Query : So it’s a very large it’s a workbook. So it’s an eight and a half by 10. It’s got wide margins and lots of space to kind of work through these exercises. And then you have all this extra content on the website, plus this kind of community forum of other business owners, so you’re kind of getting a two for one.

16:50 Jim Beach : Did you say investors? As any brought in investors to the business?

16:54 Kaelyn Query : I used to have investors for a previous company I had Yes, and I had to go through the process of finding them and but that business was the one that filed bankruptcy. So I no longer have investors, yes, and I have lots of thoughts and feelings about that. I hate

17:09 Jim Beach : investors say they’re sucky, and the bigger they are, the worst they are too. You know, they right Exactly, yep. What was the business that went bankruptcy? And by the way, we really appreciate people being honest and sharing bad things. I had a business bankruptcy, and I’ll bet you $10 my bankruptcy was bigger than yours in terms of debt. We’ll play a game. It’s the exact opposite of what you want.

17:40 Kaelyn Query : Hey, that’s fine. Yeah. So the business was called Lex effect events. It was the first events company that I opened, and it’s the same general concept that we do now, but we produce our own festivals. We had a music festival. I split it off into its own entity. It was going really well, but the short version is my business partners at the time, canceled, canceled our five year plan, took the money out of the account and said we’re not going to pay for the losses. And so they left me holding the bag. So one of our creditors from that company wanted to sue. But of course, the company’s insolvent, and when the company’s insolvent, you’re not going to waste your money on going after that. So they came after my event company, since I was the quote, unquote manager of that other entity, they said, well, that entity is insolvent. Yours is not. We’re going to sue you. And I missed the most expensive lesson I’ve ever or mistake I’ve ever made. In most contracts, there is a venue clause, which does not mean where you’re having your event, but it means the venue in which you will litigate if there is a dispute. And on five of six versions of this contract, I crossed out California and wrote Kentucky. And on the sixth version, which is the one we signed, I missed it. So when we litigated, we litigated in California. So it cost me six figures in legal fees over a two year battle to send an attorney to California to meet with my California attorney to try to dispute. We offered settlements, we offered all kinds of stuff. And, you know, my attorney told me at the beginning I should just file bankruptcy, but it was my baby, and I had spent all of my blood, sweat and tears building it, and I couldn’t imagine starting over until July one at 10am Eastern 2019 when we fossiled bankruptcy, and I was like, Well, I guess I am starting over, whether I like it or not.

19:29 Jim Beach : So, yes, well, I have been there too. There’s no place worse than a bankruptcy court.

19:35 Kaelyn Query : No, no. But you know, I didn’t die, right? And I learned a valuable, very expensive lesson, and you better believe that I’ll never make that again.

19:45 Jim Beach : Yes, and we’re both still here exactly and thriving. How much in debt were? Was that business? I had 8.2 million?

19:53 Kaelyn Query : Oh, no, nope. You win. You win. I was I was not even in the six figures of debt. We still had good. Cash flow, we just didn’t have enough. The problem was there were five vendors that didn’t get paid out. And so if we pay one, we have to pay them all, and then we open ourselves up to an even bigger lawsuit. So we, we went ahead and took the loss while it was less than 8.2 million. That is

20:17 Jim Beach : not what. Yeah, you win that one. I’m so proud.

20:24 Kaelyn Query : One trophy that you get for bankruptcy.

20:27 Jim Beach : Tell us about the podcast, big idea, small business. Yeah.

20:32 Kaelyn Query : So this was a fun project. I started it right before covid, and then covid, it kind of took a little pivot, but similar to the book, I found that there were a lot of concerns and problems that other fellow small business owners felt, cash flow, work culture, hiring, firing, training employees, etc, etc, etc, but we just weren’t talking about it. There’s this unwritten rule, I guess, that you have to seem like everything’s rainbow and sunshine. You have to appear as though you are just thriving, and that money is just seeping out of your pores, and when you’re a startup business, that just isn’t true. So none of us were talking about it. We were all keeping it to ourselves. And again, as someone who didn’t have a business partner, I was like, I really would love to talk more about this. So I started interviewing some of my small business owner friends, and realized that they also have the same concerns. So we started, I started the podcast. I say we it’s me and all my personalities. I started the podcast and started interviewing them. And so the deal is that they have to be very raw and real about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, because there is all of it, right. There are really great moments too, but there’s also a lot of ugly. So it’s very transparent. It’s almost, at this point, kind of an extension of the book. I talk very openly and candidly about all of the, you know, good, the bad and the ugly of my business ownership journey. I talk about the bankruptcy, I talk about the big wins and the big contracts. I talk about the pain in the rear clients, you know, I talk about all the things, but it’s kind of an extension of what’s being talked about in that book. So it’s a lot of fun. And then, you know, vendors come on, or small businesses come on, and like, I brought my attorney on once and told her she could talk about all of my all of my issues candidly. And so she did, and it was a lot of fun. And you know, she keeps me out of trouble, but, you know, she talked about a lot of mistakes that small businesses make from the legal side, when they’re creating their first contract or they’re creating their first invoice. We’ve had accountants come on and talk about mistakes that small businesses make when they first start related to accounting and taxes and finance. So it’s one part, you know, here’s how I got started, and one part, don’t make these mistakes. Excellent.

22:44 Jim Beach : I love it. I again, appreciate the honesty and openness there. Yeah. Back to marketing. Did you say that? Are you doing any marketing now, other than just word of mouth, you have ads in the bride magazines or stuff like that. You go to we do conferences, yeah?

23:01 Kaelyn Query : So we do, we have kind of a multi phase approach, depending on the business. So for the wedding brand, which is a separate entity, we do advertise in the wedding magazines, and, you know, we do a lot of digital ads and Google AdWords and things like that. On the corporate side, that company also does a marketing campaign, but is obviously separate. So we’re advertising for that one in more, industry and trade magazines, Chamber of Commerce, ads, things like that. A lot of networking there. We still get a lot of referrals from word of mouth, past clients, you know, things like that. But in in this day and age, you have to see you a couple of different times before it registers. And we are a very niche industry where, you know, I could probably convince somebody to buy a new phone, even if you already have one, but unless you are in need of an event planner or an event manager, it’s probably unlikely that I could convince you to hire me if you don’t have an event right? So, so we have to be very strategic and very specific. You know, we’ve done every gamut of marketing that exists, but we’ve kind of figured out and dialed in. We have a great marketing and media manager, and she does all of our social media too. And so it’s a good blend of industry tips and highlights of events and then just some fun silly stuff, of like, Hey, we’re real people too. So it’s fun. She keeps the office fun for sure, excellent.

24:25 Jim Beach : And what’s your goal? Run it until you retire to sell larger business? Yeah.

24:32 Kaelyn Query : So we’ve got a few brands that we are in the process of acquiring, and some of those we’d like to grow and franchise and sell off some of them. You know, if it becomes an employee owned company, that would be great. If it becomes big enough that someone wants to acquire it, that would be great. I’d love not to be moving tables until I’m, you know, 80 and retired, but you just never know. I also don’t know what I would do if I wasn’t doing this. I would get very bored.

24:58 Jim Beach : Yes, what’s your biggest. Catastrophe that you’ve ever had, and I’ll tell you mine first burned a building, oh no, you know the ground, and melted an ice skating rink directly above a huge computer room, and all of them from the ice skating rink rain down into the computers. Those catastrophes. No you

25:23 Kaelyn Query : again, you win. We, we did have a tent. We did have a tent catch on fire once, but not as significantly as burning down. You know a lot where we are in Kentucky, which we produce events all over but we had an event in Kentucky once, and there was a record Kentucky record flood that week. And of course, we’re down in a valley, so that was not ideal. We had an event up in Ohio once that had a huge storm roll through right before, so mostly weather related issues. But I’ve not, you know, knock on wood,

26:05 Jim Beach : our insurance claims have been minimal well, so again, you win. Yeah, congratulations on not burning. Done is put the melting ice skating rink above the building that was burning.

26:19 Kaelyn Query : Yeah, yeah. There you go, and then it melts and shuts it down.

26:25 Jim Beach : Well, Caitlin, I am very, very, very impressed you have done everything tremendously well. You should be very proud of your success. Congratulations. Thank you. How do we find out more? Follow you online, get a copy of the book, so worth it.

26:37 Kaelyn Query : Yeah, you can go to Kaylin query.com Q, U, E, R, Y, and all the businesses are there if anyone ever wants to chat, and the book is there, and the podcast and all the things. And even if you just love to send a message and say hi, the contact form comes to me and it’s to me, not a another person. So we’d love to connect. Fantastic.

26:59 Jim Beach : Thank you so much for being with us. Great stuff. Congratulations.

27:02 Kaelyn Query : And we’d love to have you back. Thank you, yes, thanks for your time today, and we will be right back.

27:20 Jim Beach : We are back and again. Thank you so much for being with us, man. We’ve got a great episode going. I absolutely love Joanne, and I’m excited for you to meet my next guest now rusty Shelton, an amazing career started off with a speaking engagement at Harvard when he was only 23 years old. Imagine being 23 and invited to speak at Harvard Business School. It’s an absolutely amazing story. Rusty. Congratulations on that. He is the founder and chairman of zelker media. We will talk about them. It’s actually one of the businesses that I interact with quite a bit. He is author of two books, he has a new one out just recently called the authority advantage building thought leadership focused on impact, not ego, and another book that he published five years ago called authority and marketing, which has 105 star reviews on that Amazon. You don’t really get more impressive than that rusty. Welcome. How you doing? UT, Austin is not going to win at all this year. I’m sorry.

28:25 Rusty Shelton : We’re getting better, Jim, I think we’re getting getting close,

28:29 Jim Beach : right? You’re talking bad.

28:32 Rusty Shelton : We’ve won directors cup the last two years. We’re going to be up for it again this year. We just need that football team to

28:39 Jim Beach : pull its weight. Well, good luck. Too many other Texas teams. I think

28:45 Rusty Shelton : there are a lot of Texas teams, and for whatever reason, we just had trouble on the gridiron these last few years. But I think Stark’s getting

28:53 Jim Beach : us there, UT, Austin, that’s the school. Am I correct in that is that the one that has its own zip code, the one school for the entire zip code, it’s 70,000 students or something. Is that the one it is stand out there, Rusty. How do you how do does a 19 year old kid differentiate themselves, have authority with 60,000 other obnoxious 19 year old.

29:21 Rusty Shelton : Well, I think it’s like anything else, you got to find your people, right? You got to find you, got to find your your group. And for me, when I was at UT College of Communication and did an internship at a book PR firm, and just found my lane really early on, a new, new from there, kind of the track that I wanted to take. But prior to that internship, I was kind of in that sea of 70,000 trying to find my way.

29:48 Jim Beach : How’d you get the internship? Well, it’s interesting.

29:50 Rusty Shelton : My mom still takes credit for it today, as she should. So you know, it’s junior year at UT. I’ve not done an internship yet. I remember a phone call where she said, Hey, Rusty. You know, junior year at this point, don’t you think it’s about time you think about an internship. Let’s see if we can figure out what you want to do. And so I sat back after that call and said, You know what she’s she’s kind of right. And so went to the career board at the College of Communication. There was a small literary PR firm here in Austin, Texas. And you know, you think back to that time Jim Olis, before Austin was was really on the map, certainly within the book publishing space. And did an internship there, and just loved the publishing industry. Loved the, you know, focus and mission that so many of the authors have of going out and making an impact. And I said, You know what? This is a kind of business that I want to have for myself someday. Why?

30:41 Jim Beach : What about it? What? What’s sexy about that? Well,

30:45 Rusty Shelton : two things. Number one, I felt like the culture in that kind of agency environment was something that I personally just love, the camaraderie among among the team, because it’s a win, wins and losses kind of thing. I mean, you put up bookings on the board, you help an author really move meaningfully forward in their career. So I love that side of it, but also just love this, this idea of helping people to make an impact with their message. You think about how many books are published every year, how many people have ideas that they want to get out there, and when you can help show somebody how to do that really well in a way that not only makes an impact for them and for their message, but also helps them to really grow their business, to build trust for their business. That was something that really excited me.

31:32 Jim Beach : All right, and how soon after school did you start your own or did you go back to that business for a period. What did it look like?

31:42 Rusty Shelton : So it’s interesting, Jim, I told the owner at that time I was still dating my high school sweetheart, and I wanted to ask her to marry me, and I didn’t want to do it until I knew for sure that I had a full time job post college, and I went to the owner of that business and said, hey, I’ll work for free my senior year, I’ll extend my internship work for free if you promise me a job when I graduate. And so, you know, that was an easy decision for him. I worked at that business the first seven years of my career, Jim and I don’t think I’d have been able to start Shelton interactive, which was my first agency in 2010 unless I had those seven years worth of relationships and experience. And in the business itself, Jim was one where instead of just doing PR, which is what we did at that first agency, I started to recognize, okay, authors, they don’t just need PR, they need social media. They need help with their brand. They need website assistance. And so we kind of brought everything that authors used to hire out to multiple different vendors under one roof. And so that was the first business, which began in 2010 and we ultimately sold in 2016

32:52 Jim Beach : so when I’m talking to Reagan Zilker, that’s not you anymore,

32:56 Rusty Shelton : that that actually is, that’s that’s my new agency. So shelter actively grew between 2010 and 2016 we were okay, yeah, so we were acquired that first agency acquired in 2016 by Forbes books, which I still do a lot of work with. And then Zilker media is our new agency here in Austin, and we do a lot of the same work that we did before, in terms of building thought leadership. But the difference Jim is, instead of focusing on authors, we focus in on businesses, on really helping leaders, think about being positioned as a thought leader with something to teach, rather than an operator with something to sell. And so long and short of it is, we took everything we learned from promoting books, and now we’re using it to help leaders and companies to grow in a faster way based on accelerating trust.

33:48 Jim Beach : You’re not sending me Enough of your clients rusty. That sounds like every single one of your clients should be on my show.

33:56 Rusty Shelton : And I think that’s probably right. There’s certainly a lot

34:00 Jim Beach : of I’m not, I’m only hearing from Reagan once a week or so. I should be getting a call from Reagan twice a day.

34:06 Rusty Shelton : Well, we’ll make sure she hears about this,

34:10 Jim Beach : talking about her behind her back. Dan will do, will do absolutely All right, so this agency, I love the niche, how? I mean, let’s go through the birthing of it, since let’s actually go back to the birthing of the first one. The Shelton didn’t cost much money, did it? It was fairly risk free to start. It was a slow rolling transition type thing that, you know, not, yeah, like oh, there wasn’t an official startup date. Was there? Wasn’t it a startup quarter?

34:46 Rusty Shelton : Yeah, it was. It was a startup quarter, that’s for sure. It was interesting. At the time Jim, I had kind of had this idea to start the agency since I was 27 so about two years before I finally did it, and at that time, we had. Had, you know, two kids in diapers. My wife was staying home. It was sort of situation where I saw with complete clarity the kind of business that that I wanted to go out and start, but I was talking myself out of it, because the situation I had was, was pretty good, right? It was a job I enjoyed. It was, you know, safety and security for my family. And I went to a Tim Ferris presentation in 2010 at South by Southwest Interactive. And I remember walking out, walking out the I remember walking out the door from that presentation, and it was like a light bulb flipped off in my in my mind. I said, You know what? I’m going to go out and do it. I’m costing so anyway, finally got off the hide and got it done.

35:49 Jim Beach : Are you hearing my music?

35:50 Rusty Shelton : Love it. I think you time that really well. Ah, i

35:56 Jim Beach : Our show has an official anti Tim position. Oh, it does, yeah, I just think the message is wrong and scary and paints a bad image, you know, the four hour work week. I would love that too, but that’s not a beginning book. You shouldn’t read that book unless you’ve already run nine successful businesses. You know, I for a starter, for a beginner, it’s the worst book they can read.

36:26 Rusty Shelton : Well, so let me, let me gently push back on that, because I completely agree with you that I didn’t see, I haven’t seen a four hour work week since then, right? It’s been, it’s been 13 years since I went to that presentation, and the reason the light bulb went off wasn’t because I felt like I was going to work two or three or four hours a week. It was because I started to see the leverage and opportunity that could come along with creating a company that that I own, or that we owned as it is, as it is today, with Zilker and the amount of opportunity that comes with setting it up the right way. So it’s more around, kind of the structure and independent side than it was. I mean, gosh, you think about getting shelter active, going back in the day, the benefit of starting a service business is it’s all, it’s all in labor, right? And it was a skill that I that I had, and so it was me doing the work and our team those first couple of years, until we were able to really grow the kind of team that could do it. So the reason I bring it up, it’s not because it’s it’s short work week. It’s because there are some ideas that I think he advances outside of that that are really helpful.

37:40 Jim Beach : I like all of those ideas, but the guy who reads it, the woman who’s reading it goes, well, I can do all of this in four hours. Anyway, let’s move on. So how long until business one Shelton was profitable and could support itself, not you itself. Yeah. So it was probably a year and a half

38:10 Rusty Shelton : until we got to that point, the first three months Jim, I made, you know, every single mistake that a inexperienced entrepreneur could make. I, you know, wrap myself up into, into every campaign. I had some early challenges with the people that I hired and not managing them well or not leading them well. And so I learned a ton at that, at that agency, but also it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I mean, the culture and the team that we built there was, was lightning in a bottle, and I’m so thankful for it so close with many of the team members and clients. In fact, many of them are back working with with us now as we’re growing Zilker media. So it was a great, great experience, but, but the shift between, you know, kind of the focus on authors to where we are today is the new book that I co wrote with Adam witty, called the authority advantage. The idea there, Jim is, let’s let’s really think about where we are today with with people who are trying to grow businesses. Most people are leading with a logo, right? They’re leading as the company. And we know from a Gallup study that came out last summer that trust in institutions and companies is at an all time low, right? Never been lower. And so we don’t trust institutions or companies, but we’re willing to trust a leader, right, if that leader is authentic, if they’re visible, if they’re mission driven. And so what I would encourage for a lot of your listeners, especially those startups, Jim, that are competing against bigger companies that have bigger marketing budgets. The way you punch above your weight class today is not to lead as a company with something to sell. Instead, it’s to lead as a thought leader with something to teach.

39:57 Jim Beach : I’m sorry, I’m slow. I’m taking notes, something. Like to teach. We will tweak that line out. Rusty, that’s a great one. I can’t wait for you to listen to Joanne earlier in the show. You know she has lupus. She’s borderline. Her sister is significantly, has lupus, and her entire brand is built around cosmetics and other skincare items or people with lupus or sensitive skin, and when she wraps herself in that authority, and then uses the authority of the lupus organizations that she is associated with and partnered with. It’s an amazing entrepreneurial story and rusty I’ll tell you this just half a second to sort of clear my mind. I my first business. I started when I was 23 we were a summer camp business, but we were located at Stanford and MIT, you know, because of, you know, the brand name, the association. So anyway, I love that. I love what you’re doing, and I also love the way you brought in your book title without me asking about it. Well done well.

41:16 Rusty Shelton : And I should say, Well done on, on the summer camp. I mean, you mentioned Stanford and MIT, that gets to something that we refer to as authority by association, but it’s exactly what you did there early in your career, associating with brands that you know. I may not know, Jim, I do have an image of my mind for MIT or Stanford, right? And so you’re along for the ride with the image of my mind for those brands. It’s a it’s a trust accelerator, and I think for businesses, and we think about, you know, your previous guests, she’s, she’s using a mission right to go out and grow and grow a business, and, more importantly, make an impact in the way that she punches above her weight classes, her own experience with it, her her drive to help people there. And I think again, for a lot of entrepreneurs, you may not have a health related business like that, but you’re on a mission too, and in the impact that you want to make. If you can sort of pivot from again operator with something to sell to thought leader with something to teach, you get further quicker, because you can earn those impressions and build trust quicker.

42:22 Jim Beach : How much can passion replace authority? If I need to be a 10 on the authority meter, but like Joanne, my passion is super strong, but she’s only 18. Do we still give her a five because her passion is so blows her up. She gets five points for her passion, not her authority, but it plays over. What do you see? Where I’m going here,

42:48 Rusty Shelton : for sure, and I would guess she’s much higher than than that, based on on her passion. And I think for her, what, what’s going to be something I think that unlocks a lot of opportunity for that business is as she’s doing more interviews like this. I mean, think about her being on school for startups, or being featured in the media if she decides to write a book someday. Those are things that really drive trust with people that don’t know her passion really matters once people have a chance to hear from you, right, once they get in the room with you once they work with you. But you know, the early authority oftentimes is built with kind of a mix of that mission, but also the credibility, or the authority by association. But I would guess she’s doing a fantastic job of going out there and really creating a lot of value for a lot of people.

43:39 Jim Beach : Rusty, I have a gizzard business. We make the best gizzards in the whole damn world. Man, our gizzards are great. You can suck on one for hours and all the grease, oh, it just feels so good down in your throat and everything you can feel the grease coagulating in your heart. It is an amazing product. We’re really proud of it. I want to take it out there and become the authority in my space. I want to hire Zilker to do it. What’s the recommendation? What’s the cost? Not your cost, but what would a generic package like that cost? I don’t want to put you on the spot, but what should I anticipate on peg? What is your recommendation on how to make me an authority? I want to outsource a lot of the work. I want to be on a lot of shows. I want to get my name out there. Put a package together for me, please.

44:26 Rusty Shelton : Well, I think there’s two things. Jim, number one is getting you out on other shows. So, so, you know, taking, taking gizzards along for really inner, you know, interesting interviews. I just think there’s a there’s a lot that could be done as you go on other people’s shows. The thing though, that I think would be most interesting is to create your own gizzard interview series on YouTube and with a podcast, and come up with some kind of a clever name to it, where you interview people that could be potential strategic partners or potential. Social you know, clients at the level that you’re looking for, and what we have found is that, hey, it’s great to go get on other people’s shows and be featured in other people’s media. All that matters a lot, but what’s actually mattering today is if you can build your own assets and create that that direct relationship with your audience. And so the right name there, Jim, I think would be, would be key, where you can get some tongue in cheek interest on social media. And then, assuming you can do your part and run some great interviews, which you know, I’m sure you can, based on this interview here, I think you get pretty far, pretty quick, all right,

45:39 Jim Beach : interesting, but I don’t want to do that. I want to be on other people’s shows. How many shows Should I do a month? How much should each interview cost? I love your advice, Rusty. But I also want to get out to the audience just the bare understanding of your of your business and your industry. What should a podcast interview package cost like? Yeah.

46:01 Rusty Shelton : I mean, I think a PR package gym that’s on the low end is going to be in the 3000 a month range, and on the higher end is going to kind of go up from there. So if you’ve got one that’s focusing podcast only, there are a lot of agencies, including ours, that have that kind of package, and we have found that micro media podcast type interview to be something that drives a lot of great results and a lot of lead flow. We also have a lot of clients that are looking to, you know, get in Forbes, or be feature in the Wall Street Journal, or other places where it’s going to take a little bit more intensity, a little bit more more time to get there. And so most, I would say, most of our package is going to be anywhere from kind of the three to eight type range. And you’ve got plenty of agencies out there, as you well know, that are much higher than that. So that’s kind of a general range that you know somebody could expect to pay at a high quality, mid sized agency,

46:55 Jim Beach : all right? And for 3000 how many hits Do you think I can get in terms of, let’s say, podcast interviews. Is that going to be four interviews, three interviews?

47:08 Rusty Shelton : Yeah, that’s going to be usually between three and five interviews a month. Okay? And you know, you can do more that are smaller ones, you can do fewer that are bigger ones. But that’s typically the range that that we’re looking at, and then I would expect most people to be targeting

47:25 Jim Beach : all right? And how do I do a good interview? Give me some advice. What would you tell your clients on how to make that time actually productive?

47:37 Rusty Shelton : Yeah, well, I think there’s a there’s a couple of different things. So number one is prep ahead of time. So I did plenty of prep. I missed somehow. You know, you’re not being a huge Farris fan, but outside of that, I had a good feel coming into the interview of the style that you have and the kinds of things you’re looking for from guests. So that would be one thing to definitely do. Storytelling always works. Works really well. And so if you can get into some specific narrative to highlight the points that you’re making, that’s another thing that I think can be really, really valuable. So those are, those are two important things. When we go through media training with people, Jim, we’re always focused in on, you know, concise answers and again, weaving in some of those stories and statistics wherever possible.

48:25 Jim Beach : All right, I love it. What’s the best way to establish authority locally? I don’t I don’t care about anywhere else. I just want to be the star in Austin.

48:39 Rusty Shelton : Yeah, well, it’s a great question. This is where most, most most people are. Most people don’t need to be household names. They need to be famous to their to their who are well known to their who. And so one of the things Jim is just really thinking about an online brand audit, so kind of starting out and put yourself in the shoes of somebody that’s been referred to you by name. So all they know is first and last name, if they go to Google, which is going to be the first impression that they get of you. Number one, can you be found if they know your name? And if not, there are a lot of people, you know, we’ll kind of coach through, okay, does it make sense to add a middle initial if you’ve got a really common name? Does it make sense to add a full middle name? So having a name that people can actually find you when they’re searching for you, is really important. And side note, anybody listening to this that doesn’t own their name, first name, last name.com, as a website address, go grab that while you’re there, get your kids names, get your grandkids names. That real estate’s valuable today. It’s only going to get more valuable in the future. I see it’s really, really important. Anybody that’s looking to build authority, if you take a significant backseat to your corporate brand. In other words, if people are looking for you, and all they can find is a bio page on your corporate website or a LinkedIn profile, you kind of look like everybody else. You look like an operator with something to sell. If, instead, when I’m looking for you by name, I can find. Find, you know, home based website for you or I can find maybe a LinkedIn newsletter or things where, again, you’re teaching me, rather than than selling. There’s a speed to trust that’s really different there. So number one would be, own your name in terms of search. Number two would be, when I land on LinkedIn or I land on the website, create an image that that positions you as that thought leader. Was something to teach so speaking pictures and and really leaning into what your mission is. I think are really, really important things, but I find so many leaders Jim that just don’t they don’t own search around their name, they can’t be found. I’ve got a pack of lunch and go 10 pages deep on Google to discover them. And if you put yourself in the shoes of somebody that’s been referred to you by name, they’re not going to stick around and try to go that deep. They’re going to move on to the next person.50:54 Jim Beach : Well, said in the book when you’re talking about authority, you introduced the idea of the master authority plan the map, and that ends up with three particular ways or types of content. Can you give us a minute or so on that for us?

51:10 Rusty Shelton : Please? Sure, absolutely. So a lot of people Jim when they are creating content, typically, the tendency is to kind of fill a newspaper with with your own stuff. So in other words, it’s the rusty Shelton show only, and two problems with that. Number one, the leader is going to get bored pretty quick if all they’re serving up is their own stuff. Number two, if, if their audience is not very big to start off with, it’s a really slow grind in terms of growth, because people don’t yet know to pay attention to that. So we recommend three categories of content. Category number one is you driven content. Why owe you? You driven? And that’s content that connects back to your story, your intellectual property, your perspective on on why you know gizzards are really healthy for people, or how to be a better leader, or whatever that might be. So that’s category one. Most people do that at 90 or 95% so we recommend limiting it to 1/3 category two is news driven content. David Meerman Scott, who was kind enough to write the foreword for our book, calls this news jacking. So this is taking what’s in the broader news cycle. What you know your target audience is anxious about, excited about what they’re paying attention to. And I don’t need you reporting the news. There’s lots of people doing that, but I need you providing analysis for your audience on that news. The third category is relationship driven content. So using a podcast, back to the gizzard idea, this is part of the reason I was leaning into that, using your own podcast or your own Spotlight series on LinkedIn as a rate as a essentially an excuse to reach out to somebody that you want to build a relationship with, because it starts with a win for that person. And so with content, really want people thinking about, how do I involve as many other people as I can? Because when you do that, you not only endear yourself, but you give them a reason to share it with their audience.

53:04 Jim Beach : Excellent, great advice. We’re out of time, I’m afraid. How do we find out more? Follow you online, get a copy of the book.

53:14 Rusty Shelton : Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, Jim. If you go to Rusty shelton.com you can learn a little bit more about the book. You can find a leadership assessment there. And also, you know, learn more about book you meet for a speaking engagement or training session, if helpful. Zilker media.com is z, I, L, K, E, R media.com is a great place. It’s just home base for our agency. And then Forbes books.com, is a place to go for people that are thinking about writing and publishing a book,

53:42 Jim Beach : fantastic, Rusty, great stuff. Really appreciated an amazing career, and we are out of time. Thanks for being with us today. Have a great day. Everyone. Take care. Bye. Now you.