Entrepreneurship with a Purpose

Jon Brandt (3s):
Probably the biggest thing I learned about being an entrepreneur is really doing it as a social purpose. I always feel that my success has always been really kind of have come off of events that have happened in my life and things that I’ve wanted to change, whether it’s about the world, whether it’s about our lives, you name it. But that seemed to be my success potion that kind of got me to where I am today.

Announcer (34s):
Welcome to Difficult Conversations lessons I learned as an ICU physician with Dr Anthony Orsini. Dr. Orsini is a practicing physician and president and CEO of the Orsi Way. As. a frequent keynote speaker and author, Dr Orsini has been training healthcare professionals and business leaders how to navigate through the most difficult dialogues Each week you will hear inspiring interviews with experts in their field who tell their story and provide practical advice on how to effectively communicate. Whether you are a doctor faced with giving a patient bad news, a business leader who wants to get the most out of his or her team members, or someone who just wants to learn to communicate better, this is the podcast for you.

Liz Poret-Christ (1m 19s):
Welcome to another episode of Difficult Conversations. Lessons I Learned as an ICU physician. This is Liz Poret-Christ Managing Director of the Orsini Way and I will be your co-host on today’s episode alongside with Dr. Orsini. Today we have the pleasure of welcoming Jon Brandt to the show. Jon’s career as a social purpose-driven entrepreneur has led to building and eventually selling four different organizations. The most recent sale is that of the Thrive Alliance Group. Thrive Alliance was formed to make mental wellness a part of the climate and culture in school districts across the country. These programs make schools stronger and transform the lives of its students.

Liz Poret-Christ (1m 59s):
New Story, a leading provider of special education, therapeutic and mental health services purchased Thrive just this month and we can’t wait to hear all about it. It is interesting that this episode comes right on the heels of a recent show where we spoke to Corey Feist of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation, which focuses on supporting and Improving the mental health of our healthcare providers. We may just post these episodes back to back because mental health seems to be one of the most important topics we’ve been discussing. Jon, welcome to the show.

Jon Brandt (2m 33s):
Hi Liz, Dr. Orsini. Thank you so much for having me on.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (2m 37s):
Great to have you. Always great to see you, Jon.

Jon Brandt (2m 39s):
Yes, thank you. Thank you.

Liz Poret-Christ (2m 41s):
So we like our guests to tell the audience a little bit about themselves before we get started. So why don’t you give us an inside peek as to how you got here and what we like to refer to as the pinnacle of your career being on our show.

Jon Brandt (2m 53s):
Yes, this is the pinnacle. Thank you. Yeah, I mean my life really being as an outsider in a lot of businesses and industries, being an entrepreneur and I went through a couple business failures before success came about and just like life learned, a lot of lessons learned, a lot of interesting things. Probably the biggest thing I learned about being an entrepreneur is really doing it as a social purpose. I always feel that my success has always been really kind of have come off of events that have happened in my life and things that I’ve wanted to change, whether it’s about the world, whether it’s about our lives, you name it.

Jon Brandt (3m 41s):
But that seemed to be my success potion that kind of got me to where I am today. So, and I really appreciate the stuff you guys do, so I’m so happy to be here.

Liz Poret-Christ (3m 51s):
Let’s work backwards because we mentioned Thrive Alliance. Could you tell us a little bit about how that came about?

Jon Brandt (3m 56s):
I’ll kind of step a little bit further back. There was a group of schools called the Sage Day Schools that I became a investor and a partner in. And these were schools for kids with mental health issues that were emotional issues that were in going through K to 12 in schools. The Sage Day schools were this group of schools that we had created in New Jersey. There were five locations working with school districts and helping kids dealing with anxiety, depression. There were so many amazing stories that came out of the success of what we did with Sage.

Jon Brandt (4m 39s):
Thrive became kind of a part of what we did and actually Thrive was the next step of that and that was actually putting therapeutic therapists and work and managing them in school districts. And we’ve done, we’ve had that in about 40 school districts throughout New Jersey. So Sage was the brick and mortar schools and Thrive became the deliverable that we did right in the school districts.

Liz Poret-Christ (5m 4s):
Was it difficult to turn that baby over to somebody else?

Jon Brandt (5m 8s):
Yeah, it’s always difficult to give something you’ve created, whether it’s a piece of art or whether it’s a piece of your life. Yes, for sure. You know, and I, getting back Thrive, why Thrive existed and why I got involved in it is because of a mental health issue that my brother had unfortunately I lost brother years ago to suicide and this became,

Liz Poret-Christ (5m 31s):
I’m so sorry Jon.

Jon Brandt (5m 32s):
Thank you for going back to the world. Those seem to be the things that motivated me to want to change and to be able to do what we did and respect and honor. I’m the business end of building Thrive and Sage, but my partners who were therapists and the hundreds of therapists that worked underneath us were just amazing giving people and the stuff we’ve been able to do, literally save lives and, and that is incredible. I give myself a little credit just for the concept of being able to build this out, but really without those people, without the team, we would be nowhere. So,

Dr. Anthony Orsini (6m 10s):
And Jon, how far reaching was Thrive? How many schools and how

Jon Brandt (6m 13s):
Thrive was in 40 school districts in New Jersey and then of course Sage. We had our five little brick and mortar schools. So we had about 70 therapists that worked underneath us in the Thrive program. And with Sage we had about another 40. So we a little over a hundred. So

Dr. Anthony Orsini (6m 33s):
Liz and I have done a, a lot of stuff with mental health in the healthcare industry, But, we have had a few guests talking about mental health in children and we really stressed about how social media and mental health and I think it’s even harder for a kid to grow up today than many years ago. Just like to hear your thoughts about that.

Jon Brandt (6m 51s):
Yeah, I think the awareness is there more now. So we know a lot more about mental health issues, but absolutely social media just kinda is cherry on the cake when it comes to, you know, in the old days, even if we did deal with anxiety, depression and being bullied and whatever, you at least you’d go home and you’d have some kind of solace being home and being able to watch television and be with your family. The connection of social media being with us 24 7 certainly has really kind of made that into a 24 7 problem and issue for kids and for adults. All the easiest part of social media is just looking at social media and going, oh, people have these charmed lives.

Jon Brandt (7m 36s):
Look at all this great stuff all these people are doing. We know it’s not true, but it, that’s the appeal. And then you got the bullying and just the kids feeling left out and it just, yeah, tenfold mental health problems. I’ve been in mental health business about 15 years and I’d say it’s quadrupled over that period of time,

Dr. Anthony Orsini (7m 57s):
Especially in children. That’s why Thrive is so important.

Jon Brandt (7m 59s):
Yep. With children mostly. Yeah.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (8m 2s):
Yeah. You see it in children, in in, when we were kids, bullying was, you know, I’m gonna take you out in the, especially with the boys, right? Right. I’m gonna take you out in the playground, I’m gonna beat you up. Yeah. And so you go home with a black guy and right man, it was over and it was over and your mom gave you a hug and your dad got mad and whatever, and maybe your dad taught you how to fight. So next time you get a black guy. But nowadays, like you said, it’s 24 7, the kids can’t stay off of their phone anymore, even though the dad and mom might say, Hey, just stay off your phone. They just can’t do it. And so that’s why I really respect what you’ve done with Thrive and it’s hopefully it’ll be in in more and more school districts. And it sounds like now that you’ve handed it over, it sounds like that’s the goal, right?

Jon Brandt (8m 40s):
That’s the goal, yeah. The goal is to be able to put it, as you said, Liz you my baby. Right. But giving our baby to someone who could nourish it and grow it. And, you talked about news story in the beginning, that the group that acquired us, they also acquired our Sage schools three years prior. Yeah. They have the, the process of being able to grow this across different states. We were kind of more New Jersey based and they’re growing it everywhere and that’s really the goal. But yes, a much, much needed business that didn’t exist maybe 10 years ago, didn’t even exist going into schools and doing this.

Liz Poret-Christ (9m 18s):
Well, I think if you think about it, all these kids are having such a high incidence of mental health struggles. Yeah. And then there’s nobody in the school districts that is trained or prepared to walk them through or the teachers through how to help them. So I think it’s so incredibly important because this isn’t going away anytime soon. No. When we were all young, you didn’t know you missed the party till you got to school on Monday. Now you missed the party while the party’s going on. Right. And it’s,

Jon Brandt (9m 46s):
You’re literally watching what you missed. Yeah, yeah. That’s sure. As you’re watching videos. Yes, so true. But it’s, yeah, and it even gets deeper. It gets to the point where it’s not even your friends that are causing the anxiety. It’s people living different lives that, that appear to be living this great amazing life and why can’t we, why can’t I do this? So there’s a lot that goes on with the kids and getting them away from that understanding that giving them tools to work with to get themselves to know when they feel anxious or when they feel this or to when they see this going on, it’s not exactly the way it, it appears.

Liz Poret-Christ (10m 22s):
So I already see a reoccurring theme with you, Jon. So you had once, we’re gonna go back and talk about some of your other businesses and I heard you tell a story about an experience you had with your beloved grandmother in a hospital that really kind of stuck with me. And it probably was early enough to start this trajectory of I don’t like what I see. Let me figure out how to make it better. If you could tell us a little bit about that story.

Jon Brandt (10m 48s):
Yeah. It’s kind of weird like I’ve been this outsider, outsider in the healthcare industry as well. And visiting my grandmother in a hospital in south Florida in late eighties, I had discovered she had this big black and blue mark on her arm and just asked the nurse, I said, I had an affection. It felt, I remember touching it, it felt warm her arm. And she was complaining she couldn’t move her arm. And she was in her, well in her eighties. And the nurse said, ah, somebody called the phlebotomist, they drew her blood, they kind of missed the vein. She’s fine, don’t worry about it. And I got in the elevator and another nurse kinda just outta nowhere came up to me.

Jon Brandt (11m 31s):
And as the elevator closed, she said, I’m so angry because that woman that drew your grandmother’s blood last night, we didn’t have anyone on the floor to draw. And we taught this woman, she worked in the cafeteria the night before and we taught her how to draw blood. And I just couldn’t believe what I was listening. First of all, I thought, what is a phlebotomist? So I went into this like research. Back then we didn’t have the internet. So I was in the library.

Liz Poret-Christ (11m 58s):
I remember those days.

Jon Brandt (11m 60s):
Yeah, remember that. And I did my research and looking into it and realized there were no really formalized training programs. There were some nurses were learning how to do it nursing school, but the majority of nurses were really even at that time becoming a lot more managerial right? Stepping back from doing those things. So they had to get support staff and the only way to get support staff was to train them, but they didn’t have the time to train them. And that’s when I took the bull by the horns in that one and got together with a foreign doctor that I had met a couple years prior and asked him about phlebotomy and how to draw blood. And he happened to be an expert at it. And him and I together in the early days, created training programs around it and developed career education schools.

Jon Brandt (12m 46s):
I built two schools, one in New Jersey and one in Massachusetts that were training them. And then as we started doing that, we’re getting a lot of accolades ’cause hospitals were going, wow, we got these people trained now the company. And we learned to train others like EKG technicians and medical assistants. And then I kind had another concept and idea was why not create an exam that they can take that can prove that they can actually do the job and they have the efficiency to be able to at least be able to draw blood the right way and use the right tubes and so forth. And from there, even though we created the third party endorsement, it ended up becoming a large, and it is the largest in the world now, allied certifying agency in the healthcare space called National Health Career Association.

Jon Brandt (13m 36s):
The. So I went from the schools to creating the certification process in that healthcare field and we ended up working with medical billers and coders, but always based around patient care. Right. It was, can we give people the right kind of patient care? Remember as you guys know, back in the days and still there were a number of diseases, even healthcare workers were catching from hepatitis to HIV and so forth just because the process of drawing blood was convoluted at least. And nobody did it the same way everywhere.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (14m 12s):
What’s the time span, Jon, from the time you had that idea to the time you made it a success and and completed it?

Jon Brandt (14m 19s):
Well it’s probably about 89. When I made that visit to the hospital, I just went all transparency, I’d just come off of business failure and feeling depressed myself and going what am I gonna do next? And so it was kind of divine intervention that this nurse kind of came to me in the elevator. And so that was 89 and then around 92 started the schools and then in around 96 started the certification process. I knew there was a bigger, and I ended up selling the schools and going out to schools all over the country and actually giving them curriculum and saying, we’d love for you guys to teach these programs. We’ll give it to you for free.

Jon Brandt (14m 60s):
Just use us as your third party endorsement for the final exam. And that’s how we created the certification. So they sold the NHA in 2009 and the LA, my two schools, one was sold in 1999, the other was 2006. So I was doing multiple things.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (15m 19s):
It often does take as Liz and I know that you’re in the healthcare industry, sometimes it takes somebody who’s from the outside to come around and say, well wait a second, have you thought about doing it this way? I think sometimes in healthcare we’re the doctors and the nurses and everyone else. We’re so focused on patient care that it takes somebody from the outside world that doesn’t really make any sense. Like, why don’t we do it this way? And that’s why people like you are really it’s important that we constantly ask as Liz and I always say, constantly ask why. And we try to do that at the Orsini Way when we teach patient experience and teach doctors and to enjoy themselves, to enjoy work.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (16m 0s):
And it’s a perfect team. I think Liz and I, ’cause I’m on the inside and Liz is from the outside. She’s not in healthcare. She’s taking it from the patient point of view. So I think it’s really interesting that some guy who never went to nursing school or medical school ended up doing this phlebotomy thing that probably you were like saying that doesn’t make any sense. A cafeteria workers drawing blood.

Jon Brandt (16m 21s):
Yeah. It was kind of interesting. It was definitely a aha moment of going, this is an industry that’s existed for forever in one way, shape or form. And I was the outsider. But again, it is true. I mean people could look at what I do and and from the outside I’m in the middle of the woods, right? I’m in the jungle working and being able to look from a different point of view at something I think is interesting. And I think in the beginning we had a battle to get credibility. It took us a a long time. We had a lot of, early on we had hospitals go, what? Well I certify them, they’re fine. And then when we started market, I went after where the organizations that were training them and saying, guys, utilize this even if certification isn’t important.

Jon Brandt (17m 5s):
’cause at the time nobody really even knew about certification. Even it was important if they took a test from a third party rather than just the test you’re giving them, we’re offering this exam, wouldn’t that make them a little more valuable for even get hired in a job? Again, that was also a motivation was to be able to help a lot of people be able to get, create careers for themselves. And we were able to do that as well. So yeah.

Liz Poret-Christ (17m 29s):
And I speak for everybody with terrible veins like me that I’m thanking you because that universal kind of method of which people go about being trained, it’s so important. And I guess it would make you feel a lot better about your job if you always left feeling like you knew what to do and your methodology was good. Right. So I think that’s probably more helpful than you know and don’t know anyone that hasn’t had that kind of experience. So are there any other businesses that you’ve been part of that are so universal like that?

Jon Brandt (18m 1s):
Again, I looked at what I did with NHA as kind of a multi-pronged patient care. So really working with patients, making sure they’re safe, making sure the healthcare worker is safe and literally being able to help people get jobs that work. People that were going through some of these schools looking for careers as medical assistants or medical billers and coders. So that business was kind of a three-pronged approach. What I loved about the business too, ’cause I had schools going on at the same time, we hired a majority of the people from our schools to work for us. So this was like this ecosystem that we had going on, which was exciting. And then obviously getting into behavioral health.

Jon Brandt (18m 42s):
So those were the two main ones for me. but I, I have some other things up my sleeve working on now hopefully would be revealed in the near future. Not in the healthcare field, but just really supporting people.

Liz Poret-Christ (18m 52s):
Yeah. That doesn’t surprise me at all. Did you have a mentor along the way that helped drive you? Or is it just your own inner entrepreneur that takes these dreams and puts them into action?

Jon Brandt (19m 3s):
I wouldn’t say mentor, but I will point to things change my life. One was don don’t know if you know the book, but it’s a book I’ve been reading every year for 30 years called The Road Less Traveled, which is M Scott Peck. And there was something about that book that got me to look at my life in a different way and really, I guess the easiest way to describe the road less travel. ’cause I didn’t know it until more recently ’cause I’ve become, I read a lot of stoic philosophy things and M Scott Peck, the concept of road less travel was, life is difficult. Dealing with life’s issues head on, not buring her head, not deviating or getting away.

Jon Brandt (19m 47s):
What I’ve probably learned, I probably say my mentors have been my mistakes that I’ve made in my life. I was just talking about this the other day. I said a successful business, I’ve probably made a thousand really bad mistakes and maybe made three good ones. And that’s what made the company go to the next level. So for me it was learning that I loved my parents dearly. My dad was a guy who made a lot of mistakes and in a lot of ways during those days I was angry at him and saw that there was a lot of teaching not to go down that same path and not doing the same thing.

Liz Poret-Christ (20m 22s):
I was gonna ask if, is there a methodology when you come up with these amazing ideas, and I’m sure a lot of people come to you with a lot of amazing ideas. Is there a methodology that you use to kind of sort through them?

Jon Brandt (20m 33s):
Yeah, well I’m a partner in a venture capital fund right now capital. And we see a lot of companies that come and and pitch us on their ideas if there’s not a social purpose to it or a drive for them. And again, it doesn’t have to be a social purpose that they wanna change the world. Even if there’s a social purpose of what you wanna do with your employees, you wanna make, you wanna help them grow, those are the type of things that I get excited over. Don’t get excited in investing in businesses that don’t really have some type of mission. So that’s kind of the way I roll.

Liz Poret-Christ (21m 4s):
I completely understand that because when I left fashion to go work with the Orsini way, my husband says, wait your degree, your whole background, your 20 years of your career has all been fashion. Why are we doing this? And that was my answer. We’re changing the world. Of course. That’s why he’s like, okay, go change the world.

Jon Brandt (21m 25s):
You guys are. And what you’re doing is amazing by the way.

Liz Poret-Christ (21m 28s):
Thank you. Totally respect all the stuff that you guys do.

Jon Brandt (21m 31s):
That’s, thank you.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (21m 33s):
You know, it’s interesting Jon, that you were talking about all your failures. ’cause we’ve certainly had many in ours and the old joke is, doctors make the worst businessmen. They don’t have any, this is why they needed you to come up with the obvious idea of of accrediting phlebotomist. But yeah, find that successful pattern I guess, or combination of a business person and a healthcare person is what really works. Like you had said you had happened to have a doctor friend who knew a lot about this, but I think it’s a very fine balance between that healthcare needs the business people. And one of the issues we’re having right now in healthcare is that sometimes the business people forget about the healthcare part of it and the healthcare people forget about the business part of it.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (22m 17s):
And we’re having a big issue right now where doctors are having issues with burnout and patients aren’t happy with their experience because the business side of it, which is so important, has just overshadowed the healthcare side. And then if the healthcare side doesn’t ask for the business help, it’s like a marriage. It’s give and take. And if that marriage is more giving on one side, it fails.

Jon Brandt (22m 42s):
Right?

Dr. Anthony Orsini (22m 42s):
So we struggle with the business part too and but you know, we have the social way, which I think is the social, we really wanna help Liz and I have a, a message that we wanna screen from the mountaintop we always say. And so that’s the basis. And I think that’s what keeps us going.

Jon Brandt (22m 58s):
Absolutely. Absolutely know that feeling, getting on the mountaintop and going Or is

Liz Poret-Christ (23m 4s):
Anyone listening to me?

Jon Brandt (23m 5s):
Yeah, I mean even when we were dealing with schools, school districts, they go, ah, we don’t have the funds to bring you guys in or whatever. And I’m like, you can’t afford not to have us there. It’s not about afford

Dr. Anthony Orsini (23m 15s):
We’ve, we’ve had that conversation before. Yeah,

Liz Poret-Christ (23m 17s):
We have that conversation a lot.

Jon Brandt (23m 18s):
I’m sure. Sure. I’m preaching to the choir here does get to that point and we know, first of all, we know that these school districts can find the funding. They do it. The ones that could figure it out, do it. But it’s just, you know, it’s decisions that they make that kind of make me wonder sometimes. But always gonna fight the good fight

Liz Poret-Christ (23m 39s):
We always say it’s only gonna take one lawsuit for you to figure out how to come up with that funding to train that doctor on how to have a difficult conversation. Yes. And speaking of Difficult Conversations that we ask every guest this question and I did remember to remind you or to let you know what that prompt would be. So is there a specific difficult conversation that you feel you’ve learned to overcome or one that really kind of tweaks you that you’d rather do anything than have

Jon Brandt (24m 8s):
Delivering bad news is probably one of the worst conversations I have. And I’m sure Dr. Orsini go through that, that I got

Liz Poret-Christ (24m 15s):
We’ve got a guy for that….

Dr. Anthony Orsini (24m 16s):
We got a guy

Jon Brandt (24m 16s):
Yeah, you got a guy. But it’s again, kind of goes back to dealing with issues and breaking through those things are al were always uncomfortable for me. Whether it was just confronting someone with something or conflicts. Oh boy, yeah, relationship things, giving feedback and criticism. There’s a lot of those. But you know, probably delivering a bad news whether it’s letting an employee go, I used to dread but they weren’t doing what they were set out to do. It was their reason why they were gonna be let go. but I never liked to do that. And it did change a lot when it came to that because I was able to overcome that by talking about, hey, you know what, relationships do end, it’s both parties.

Jon Brandt (24m 57s):
It’s not always, this employee did a horrible job and they’re, you know, we have to accept that we didn’t connect some way. And so for me, that difficult conversation became easier because I learned that I have a stake in this failure. If this person didn’t do well in the company, I did something wrong not to help them grow. So, but taking responsibility for me was a way I was able to get through those Difficult Conversations and delivering bad news.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (25m 26s):
That’s very insightful, Jon. I equate it to the, I think you are a football fan, but I equated to the the coaching quarterback partnership. They’re quarterbacks that are total failures with one team and then go to a different team with a different coach and all of a sudden they’re thriving. I think that’s very insightful. The same thing happens in business and we talk about that it’s not that you’re not worth it as an employee, it’s not that you’re not good or you’re a total failure, it’s just that this coach quarterback thing is just for some reason and I take some culpability for that for some reason it’s just not working. And I think that’s a great way to put that. Yeah, that’s, that’s really good. I, I just had a conversation with a friend of mine who’s pretty high up on a bank yesterday and we were talking about Difficult Conversations and I mentioned the Harvard Review Business review, that study that said 73% of business executives do have anxiety about giving Difficult Conversations.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (26m 22s):
And 54% of them deal with toxic situations by not dealing with them at all. And I said that to him and he goes, that’s me. And he’s a pretty high executive and he said, this is an issue. So it’s everybody. Nobody wants to give bad news. No, but sometimes you have no choice.

Jon Brandt (26m 37s):
Right, right. And if, again, if you, like you said, dive into it, go into it, even though it’s not comfortable, but you dive into it and it’s not just to make that person feel better. I think it, the reason I, if I was letting someone go, I really felt like I didn’t do my job to make sure that person was successful or, or maybe I didn’t even do my job in hiring the right person, which put them in a bad position. So

Dr. Anthony Orsini (27m 2s):
Different offensive scheme and a different coach. Absolutely. You might Thrive. Yeah,

Jon Brandt (27m 7s):
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (27m 7s):
We give a lot of sports analogies.

Liz Poret-Christ (27m 9s):
We do.

Jon Brandt (27m 10s):
Hey, I’m a former fullback so I know the deal.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (27m 14s):
Defensive back, Hey, you couldn’t tell by looking at me that I used to be fast but I, I used to be.

Liz Poret-Christ (27m 18s):
Jon, because you’ve been involved in so many successful companies and even in in some companies maybe that didn’t turn out to be as successful as you liked. What advice would you have for someone who feels like they have a great idea but doesn’t have the confidence to take it to the next level?

Jon Brandt (27m 33s):
I think that someone really has, again, going back to the concept of an idea and do they want to be entrepreneurial or is this something they’re doing within the company? They have to be able to sit down with someone and discuss it and find a mentor, find someone that could be a benefit to them to talk to. I’m always open to talk to, to young entrepreneurs or I even talk to people who are in their fifties and sixties who are starting businesses now. So you know, recommendation is if you feel you got a great idea, let it out. Some people feel like they gotta hide it. And, you gotta sign an NDA and all these other things and everything’s so secretive.

Jon Brandt (28m 14s):
But talk about it a little bit. Get yourself understanding what you want to offer and put together a small business plan, even if it’s a one pager, to let somebody look at it and help direct them. I think again, entrepreneurs are, I always say they’re not born, they’re made. I learned a lot starting my own business and failing. I always joke and say nobody would hire me. That’s the reason I’m an entrepreneur. I was, was not the, I didn’t finish college. I wasn’t the greatest student. I had an inner drive though I was on the football field. I was an overachiever as well. I was not the fastest guy in the team. but I pushed hard. And I think, you know, see that within yourself, a young person that’s looking to be an entrepreneur, they see that in them theirselves that, hey, I know I don’t have the money, I know I don’t have all this, but I really wanna create something.

Jon Brandt (29m 4s):
That’s when you gotta get out there and start talking to people. And there’s a lot of people out there from angel investors to venture capital people to people like myself who I just love talking about starting businesses and helping them try to figure it out.

Liz Poret-Christ (29m 19s):
That’s awesome. I know you kind of hinted that there’s some new businesses on the horizon. Any more detail you can give us about that?

Jon Brandt (29m 25s):
Oh right, you got it outta me now. Well, yeah. You working with a former employee of mine actually worked for me 15 years ago and we’re putting together an entrepreneurial programs, education programs for people that wanna become entrepreneurs. And a, a lot of it’s from Stoic Wisdom. It’s like the Road Less Traveled, the book The Road Less Traveled has in my Bible, but it’s really a psychology book. It was by a psychiatrist, had nothing to do with business, but I took that as my business book. So it’s gonna be a lot of philosophy, a lot of some hard nosed discussions about dealing with issues and problems and getting through it. Don’t be afraid to get up there and get in front of people and pitch your business.

Jon Brandt (30m 9s):
So we’re putting the pieces together, we’re actually starting with podcasts and so we’re kind of excited where that’s going and the direction it’s starting to take, but still in the infancy stage.

Liz Poret-Christ (30m 21s):
Can’t wait to hear more.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (30m 22s):
Jon, this has been amazing and we’re gonna put your contact information. I’m sure there’s a bunch of entrepreneurs out there. Sure. but I really just love the way, it’s not just making a business, it’s making a difference. And you’re able to put those two things together. That’s what we’re all about. So we really relate to you. I think that’s why Liz and and I call you a friend and we’re just so happy that you took the time outta your schedule to talk with us and to our audience. So thank you so much.

Jon Brandt (30m 47s):
Thank you guys, and keep doing what you guys are doing. It’s amazing.

Dr. Anthony Orsini (30m 51s):
Thank you. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go ahead and hit subscribe and go down. And we have almost a hundred podcasts now for you to go and download. If you’d like to get in touch with me or Liz, you can reach us at the Orsini Way,com and we will put all of Jon’s contact information in the show notes so in case you’re driving, you don’t need to stop. So thank you John. Appreciate everything and thank you everyone for joining us.

Liz Poret-Christ (31m 17s):
Thanks everybody.

Announcer (31m 17s):
If you enjoyed this podcast, please hit the subscribe button and leave a comment and review. To contact Dr. Orsini and his team or to suggest guests for future podcasts, visit us @theoriway.com. The comments and opinions of the Interviewer and guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of their present and past employers or institutions.