Episode 13: Not Your Everyday Nurse

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, hey, nurses. Welcome to the Nurse podcast, Giving nurses validation resources and hope.

One episode at a time.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, today on Nurse Dot podcast.

Vince Baiera

Asked many very successful folks if you knew all the things you knew when you were going to start, would you still have went for it? And most will say no because it's so daunting. But what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? Right? You would probably try and tackle the world because if you knew you weren't going to fail, then heck yeah, let's try.

Why wouldn't you?

Cara Lunsford

Joining us today, Vince Becerra, a seasoned nurse, a visionary innovator and a driven entrepreneur. Vince, his career journey is inspiring and diverse, reflecting his commitment to cultivating growth and progress in health care. Beyond his role as a registered nurse. Vince has been instrumental in delivering impactful solutions at Reliance, a global leader in online health care training and education.

His work there has not only enhanced service delivery, but also inspired many others in the field. I'm your host, Kara Lunsford, registered nurse and VP of community at Nurse Icon.

Oh, hi, Vince Buyer. How are you?

Vince Baiera

I'm great.

Cara Lunsford

So, Vince, I want you to tell us a little bit about you, your nursing journey, and then the different pivots you've made along the way. Because that's what I think is so fascinating, is that you have done some really incredible and cool things, and some of them have to do with nursing, and some of them don't have anything to do with nursing.

And that's what I want people to understand, is that we're not just our career, we're not just our profession, we're not just nurses. And it's really easy to identify who we are with what we do. And so tell us a little bit about yourself and just your your credentials, if you will.

Vince Baiera

Well, my story is certainly different. I grew up in northeast Ohio and went to college on a football scholarship. So I had a bunch of schools that recruited me and there was only one that had a nursing program. So my older brother was two grades ahead of me. He had started school in a business degree at Ohio State and realized, how am I going to compete with everyone else around these hundreds of other business majors?

I have no advantage. So what kind of career could I go into that would help me have a clear path after graduation and get a great job? He switched to nursing. My parents started saying, Hey, maybe you should look at this. So I did, and I decided I would do nursing. But of all the schools that recruited me, only one had a nursing program and it was a school in Pittsburgh called Robert Morris University.

I went there on a full ride football scholarship, played a couple of years until my junior year where I had to make a decision Was I going to go pro and nursing or go pro and football? And I wasn't going to go pro and football, so I only played two years. And then within more of that clinical rotation, getting a Bachelor of Science in nursing after I graduated there, I have that same brother who was working at the Cleveland Clinic in their cardiothoracic ICU, and luckily he was able through one of their job fairs to get me hooked up with the hiring manager.

And I interviewed and they liked me enough that they hired me. So I started my career at the Cleveland Clinic in their cardiothoracic or cardiovascular ICU, and it was just a great experience, very fast paced, very technical, very probably above my ability. And it really stretched me. And, you know, one of my greatest abilities as a nurse has always been time management and executing the plan, not so much knowing every single drug and every single reaction and like being the super smart nurse that so many are.

So I leaned into that. I was really strong at managing the caseload, even though you have very heavy assignments. And then after I worked there a while, I really had a plan to do travel nursing and I had some friends. I've been in the Carolinas and they said, Hey, maybe come down here live here to warm all that good stuff.

So I said, All right. Started looking around and Duke University Hospital is located there, another top ten hospital there in the in the country. So I moved down there, started working as a staff nurse in their cardiothoracic ICU and after a year said, okay, I want to do this travel nursing thing before I go into anesthesia. So I started doing travel nursing, moved around a few times, got to live in some pretty cool spots, applied to a anesthesia school, got into one, started school for that, and actually withdrew due to some personal reasons.

And I thought, well, another couple of years will go by and I'll get back into a school when I'm ready. And it just never panned out. And what happened was I was living in Vegas and had been there going on two years total and was just ready for a change. And I started working in a network marketing company and I was working with this company called USANA, which made topnotch vitamins and health products.

And I thought, Perfect. You know, I've always been like this hustler guy, right? I was the guy in college selling $5 DVDs and, you know, organizing like poker games and being the dealer in the house. And just like, I've always kind of been hustling, you know? And that's just because I grew up in a family where we didn't have a lot of money.

So, you know, I was just trying to do what I could. Long story short, I worked with you, Sana, but it really opened my eyes to the business side of maybe where my career could lead me. While I don't love network marketing for particular reasons that include just always having to prospect every single person you meet. I did really find it useful because I had a coach and somebody who poured into me and help teach me some of these basic fundamental skills how to set a meeting, how to follow up, how to just do a presentation.

Right? Not necessarily that I was bad at it or needed a ton of work, but it was still nice to have someone guiding me. Had mild success but never really sustained. Ultimately decided that wasn't perfect fit, but it really lit this fire for me around personal development. And, you know, trying to invest in myself and just started me down a path that's changed my whole life.

And so I moved to L.A., kept working as a nurse. I was going to actually get into acting. I thought, Perfect, I'll work three days. I'll go, you know, apply and audition four days a week. And it all worked out great. And I just kept working the business. I never really did the acting thing due to multiple factors, but I always had that entrepreneurial bug.

And so I had an experience where I saw my own grandparents fall getting in and out of bed, and I started looking at what was out there for folks who wanted to age in place and just realized that maybe there was a gap. And I started working to develop a product called The Step to Bed and continued on that, and we can get into that journey.

But that also fueled that entrepreneurial bug that was back in about 2015, 2016 and just started to grow that. And at the same time I was moving out of nursing. So I moved into education. I taught at a one year accelerated LPN school out of Los Angeles and had success there, grew to be their lead faculty member teaching half of the school's curriculum and improved their pass rate on their in-class tests by about 25% in just the course of about a year.

So that was neat to see. But then from there I decided, Hey, if I want to do this business thing, I really got to just go for it. And I started to look at opportunities where I thought, Hey, great, I've got the nursing degree. Surely I can get a job doing medical device sales or pharmaceutical sales, right, and make all this money.

And I couldn't. And I tried and I tried and I tried and I couldn't. And I ended up taking a job with a business development firm still around health care. But it was inside sales cold call and I was cold calling, CEOs pitching. I'm a product and it was quite the learning ground for me. So that's the really beginning part of how that nursing journey led me outside of nursing more towards the business side of health care.

And again, from there it continues to evolve. But that was how I got my start as I transitioned away from the bedside. So then as I transitioned away from nursing, I just always wanted to do business stuff and that started again with that network marketing venture that I got on. And then when I created that to bid, I tried everything I could to launch it and I ran out of money.

You know, I only had 25 or 30 grand to my name, and I spent every penny of it trying to get set to bed going. And I could tell you about all sorts of issues and different partnerships that failed, things like that. But it wasn't until a family friend came along and decided he would help fund the inventory to get started.

And he gave me a great deal and said, Look, I just believe in what you're doing. So that that got that product off the ground. And we ultimately launched the step to that product in 2018. We saw sales increase. We started getting more distribution channels. The first year I did 45,000, the next year I did 75, the next year, the 2 million.

And we just kept growing from there. We now have surpassed our five year mark for step two health, which is now expanded into a brand, and we've done over 10 million and lifetime sales. So we've expanded the product line. We work with Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Amazon, Lowe's, Wayfair, and even recently got accepted to be on QVC. So I'll be going on QVC here shortly.

And as that business continued to grow, I continued to just build a team that can run the day to day of it. But I started investing in real estate as well, and I started to invest with some guys and always made the money that I thought I would make. And so we started game planning around building a fund and they're more on the accounting and operation side, but I've got a little bit more experience with trying to build a business and bringing in revenue.

So I took a bit of a limited role with them, but we also launched a real estate investment fund where we buy homes and turn them into short term rentals like Airbnb and we just launched a $2 million fund and ultimately have raised over $1,000,000 of it so far, about a month after our launch. So we've already closed now on two homes for the fund and getting those online and starting to build revenue.

So yeah, I started as a nurse, I did some education, I traveled around, but then I grew a company and a helping grow another company. So my story is certainly unique that most nurses don't maybe make it that far, but it's just stretched me in all kinds of ways, you know, whether it's dealing with accountants or lawyers or, you know, other gurus, people that I can learn from.

And it's just been a really fun journey to say the least. Woo, woo, woo!

Cara Lunsford

That's awesome. Yeah, I love that. I love that you took just from where you started all the way through to a successful launch of a business and then taking all of that knowledge and moving in to helping another company to get off the ground as well. And both things have nothing to do with each other. One was more of a health care kind of business where you were utilizing probably more of your nursing experience and now real estate, which is amazing.

There's so much about what you said that I want to tease out and talk about one of the major takeaways for me is that you must have gotten comfortable being uncomfortable.

Vince Baiera

Oh yeah.

Cara Lunsford

The more you try new things, the more you put yourself into situations. Even the very first situation of being super comfortable with playing football and then taking that step outside of something that you were comfortable with, trying something new and learning how to get comfortable with that newness. I would say for myself, the more I try new things, the more I go outside of my comfort zone, the more comfortable I get going outside of my comfort zone.

Vince Baiera

Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Cara Lunsford

Okay, so you've run the gamut. You've done the bedside, you've done education, teaching, you've dabbled in entrepreneurship. I know that you've also had a podcast as well. Talk about that a little bit. Since we're on a podcast. Talk about the podcast you did.

Vince Baiera

So my experience with podcasting and I do a fair amount in terms of social media and posting videos and trying to do fun stuff is I actually came across a program that said, if you buy my program, I'll teach you how to build an online course that you can sell. And it was about 1500 bucks to go through this course.

But here is the kicker, and this is such a brilliant marketing spend, is if you complete my course, I'll give you a full refund. So there's really no risk if you're going to, you know, be serious and do the work. So I bought it right then and there. I'm a big believer that when you have the urge to do something, to do it and not just write it down and come back to it, right, because you'll talk yourself out of it.

And I developed an online learning program called Million Dollar Product. That's the ten step process to take your idea and turn it into a physical product. Because I had been trying to do that and nobody would teach me. People would say, Oh, it's easy. Just, you know, get manufacturing and get distribution and there you go, you're squared away.

But nobody was really breaking down those steps like what to do. So I created that program and through that I started hosting a podcast where I would invite the experts to come in and weigh in. So there's a one that's around the legal side, one with graphic designers, few others in there that we would get guests on that would come on and speak.

So yeah, I created this program and I was just getting people over the years that were saying, you know, Oh, that's cool. I have an idea, you know, like, would you mind talking to me and telling me what I should do? And so I just said, Let me just create this program. It did take me probably almost six months to complete the whole thing.

It was very time intensive, but I just learned a lot of skills through the whole thing. I think that ultimately is what continues to drive me to get outside of that comfort zone and expand. And I could tell you all sorts of stories about the things that I've learned around pattern and manufacturing offshore and, you know, logistics and running a clinical study and just like a million different things that had I just been a nurse, I would have never been forced to do.

And so continuing to try these different things, you know, now I learned how to get a podcast set up. Now I learned how to build an online program, and that's still for sale. We charge like ten or 15 bucks for folks that they want to take it. It's on Udemy and just something that is nice to be able to point people to.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, that's really cool. I probably could have used that. But this creating my company. Hey, where were you when I was trying to create my company? I needed the ten step process. I mean, I wasn't creating a physical product as much as I was creating a piece of technology. So it's a little different, but not entirely different. I'm sure there's a lot of overlap in terms of maybe I'm not trying to find a factory or someone to physically produce my product for a patent, although to some extent there is like intellectual property.

But I totally relate to everything that you're saying because I am a very curious person. I am also somebody who is not really a freak. There probably was a time when I was more afraid to take that initial leap, but going back to what we were talking about earlier, about the more leaps you take, the less scary they become because you realize that you can stick the landing.

More often than not.

Vince Baiera

Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

And that it's okay. Even if you fall, it's not the end of the world. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off. You've learned something in that process that you're going to take with you into the next thing that you do. And it will almost always benefit you in some way, shape or form. I like to say sometimes that poker poker was one of the first things that I did as a younger person where I was really uncomfortable.

I the first time that I ever sat at a table with a bunch of other people and I will say majority of them were men, older men too. So I was young, I was female. I've always looked a little young for my age, so I probably looked 12 sitting at this table. They were like, How did she get in here?

I was in Vegas. I was playing one to No Limit Texas Hold'em. I had practice with friends in smaller groups and little mini tournaments, but sitting at that table with a bunch of people who were probably in their forties to seventies and realizing, Oh my gosh, I'm so uncomfortable. But really sitting with that discomfort and then honing those skills.

I've utilized poker and poker strategy throughout my career. I've used it when I'm making deals, when I'm negotiating terms of a contract I've used, there's all kinds of things that I have pulled those strengths over, and I actually notice them in the moment. I was like, Oh, this is a total poker moment right now. This is I am there's a lot of strategy here that I'm utilizing.

And so when you have moved from one experience into another experience, how have you noticed some of the strengths that you've acquired over time, like even how football could have helped you with nursing school or something like that? What are your takeaways?

Vince Baiera

I think some of the biggest strengths through my career that continue to be the underpinning of what drives me is a bit of delayed gratification, which comes from sports, you know, when you're working out all summer, but the game is until the fall. There's no result when you've been in the lab, you know, busting your butt sweating all day.

It's like you got to believe that in three or four or five, six months, 12 months, whatever the case, that that's when you'll get that reward, right? You'll hit that shot, you'll scored the touchdown, etc.. So been a delayed gratification. I've always just been very hungry and persistent with things that I want and whether that was getting a degree or trying new things, I just I'm the person who I'm not going to stop till I get a no and when I get a no, I'm going to tell myself it's just not right now.

It doesn't mean no forever. You know, I've got a motor. You hear that expression sometimes in sports too, when a guy just he plays hard all game and you're like, This guy's just got a motor. He just doesn't stop. And I pride myself on taking a similar philosophy and approach to the way I attack problems. So all those things I think help.

I think some of the things with nursing, especially skills that sometimes nurses don't really understand that they're building, that lend themselves so well to the business environment. Is being a good listener, being a very clear communicator, right? Worrying about just doing the important stuff and not all the other minutia. Right. That yeah, it'd be nice if I could get to it.

But we got to tackle this first, right? Being empathetic to people, to the situation, you know, having some patience and realizing there's a process to follow. I think all those things we do naturally in health care every single day when we're at the bedside. But those skills are so transferable. And I found that those just continue to help.

So those would be some of the biggest things, I think, as takeaways that again, continue to underpin the work that I'm doing.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, I think that when I hear you talk about that tenacity that really resonates with me as well as somebody who is willing to go outside of maybe what I've already learned or what I've studied or my license per say. Because sometimes when you commit to something, especially if there's other people involved, like, for example, when I took on investment from other people, the weight of that also would drive me to keep going.

So I don't know exactly how I want to put that or sum that up. It's like sometimes you have to take a little bit more of a risk so that you see it through. Yeah, right. Like if you go, I took out a mortgage, we took out a second on our house so that I could afford to leave a job that was really paying the bills so that I could focus on something that I really believed in.

And by taking on a little bit of an extra risk, it forced me to stick with it. So have you had that experience where it's like, you know, that you're taking on a little bit more, but in some way you also know that it's serving you by going all in, right? It's kind of like submitted. Here we are.

We're committed. For those of you who don't know, that is a poker term part committed where you have enough in the pot that you can't just you got to really commit to the game. You either need to see it through, You either need to bluff this out or, you know, you're going to be walking away from you're going to walk away from your money and you're going to walk away from a big payday potentially.

So you're either going to play it through, play the hand through or or you know, what you're walking away from. So, yeah, I love that. You see, you know, the poker too.

Vince Baiera

I told you, I organized poker games back in the day.

Cara Lunsford

I know, I know. So you're like I committed.

Vince Baiera

Yeah. You know, I do think any time you're a steward of someone's money or you take on someone's money, it sure raises the stakes for different ventures that I'm involved in. Other people have been helping fund it, you know, where I've sold part of the company and where they're in it with me, That certainly drives me no two ways around it.

I just think as a whole, you know, there's an old Lester Brown saying where he says, it's not over until I win. And winning could mean also that you're completely down and out, right? Sometimes you got to be real enough to to understand that this is dead. I need to go focus on other things. But if you're not all the way there yet, just that tenacity and fighting and it's pride, too, for me.

I mean, if I put my name on something, I want to be able to say, yeah, we were able to have some success of it. Maybe it didn't make a million bucks or didn't ultimately propel you to the front of Forbes magazine. But like I saw it through, I gave it everything I had. And at the end of it, this is where we landed, right?

Because you don't want to get to the end and go, God dang, I should have worked harder. I could have done this to you. I wish I wish I would have just quit my job and went all in with instead of halfway, you know, because you probably wouldn't have gotten this far had you not done that and had the result that now you're so proud of.

And you can point to and say, look at this, you know, it did pay off. And again, just to be completely clear, it doesn't always mean money, because the money is I've been on the receiving end of big checks and it's great that day. But like after you've gotten a few like the next day, it's like a distant memory in the rearview, right?

But the win is that pride that you feel every single day. And it's your ability to continue to feel self fulfilled because the money will come and go. But your self approval will be that lasting feeling that ultimately keeps you fulfilled. And just knowing that, you know, you tried your best, you died trying, you did everything you could.

People can relate to that. It's when you don't. You left your so short and you said, Hey, you know, I didn't really get it. I didn't really finished and we ultimately failed at it. That's hard to tell that story over and over and over again. Right? It's a lot more fun to say We did frickin everything, man, and we still failed.

And you're allowed to fail, especially if you're taking on other people's money or you're doing something that draws you away from your family, draws you away from your style, pushes you outside of your comfort level, you want to be able to have something to show for it. And if you don't, you at least want to be able to say, I worked my butt off and I tried everything I could and yeah, it didn't work.

But you know what? And that's just part of the game. That's how I think of it. I certainly have failed much more than I succeeded. One of my favorite quotes that I actually came up with myself and this ties back to some of the other points about getting uncomfortable or being comfortable with uncomfortable situations is don't worry about anything that you haven't had the chance to solve yet.

And I'm curious to hear in your experience how if you feel like that's true or not, because what I find is so often, especially when we're doing something new, you're saying things are thrown at you that it's easy to get anxious about. Oh my gosh, how am I going to figure this out? What am I going to do?

You start to tell yourself stories. You start to get all worked up and you find that you make that one phone call and they go, Oh, no, we just needed a form filled out like, Oh, simple. Okay, just send it over. I'll fill it out. Right. But why worry about all those things until I've had a chance to solve that problem?

And I started doing that years ago because I found that I did get uncomfortable in these situations where problems occurred and I started to implement that rule. And it just served me so well over the years that even when the craziest things happened, now in my business, the $5,000, $10,000 issue that arises, it doesn't throw me at all.

It's the 50,000 or the hundred thousand dollar problem that comes in my business that I go, Oh shit, I got to figure out how to get this done. But again, I still I'm not going to worry too much about it until I've had a chance to at least solve it. And then if I can't solve it, well, I'm sure I'll get a little more worried.

So I'd love to hear if maybe that's something you've ever heard or how maybe I.

Cara Lunsford

Haven't heard it put that way. But I love it because I think that I can point to probably a hundred times where either someone wanted me to worry about something that hadn't happened yet, where maybe it was never going to happen. Case in point, a lot of times you're looking at your bank account, right? You're especially if you're raising money and you're thinking about all the ways that you're going to use that money.

And then when or if that money runs out. Yes, of course, we have to do projections. It's responsible. It's us as a responsible business owner doing projections or anticipating. It's important we have to do it. We have to try and do it. That doesn't mean that we have to fixate or we have to become obsessive about, well, what if what if my bank account gets down to $100?

What if my bank account gets down to $1,000? What am I going to do if if, if, if, when, when, when? Right. Because here's a good example of that. When I was doing Holly Blue and I was doing these rounds of funding at one point, my accountant was like, you know, Cara, there is no way. Maybe you just need to call it today, or maybe you need to go and do another round of funding, or how are you planning to pay your bills kind of thing?

At that point, I hadn't gotten to a place where I hadn't paid my bills. Okay, so all my bills were paid, but it was more of an anticipation of what are you going to do? And I had a lot of irons in the fire. So for me, I felt like I'm not going to worry about it until I have a reason to worry about it because I have something on the books with a company that I'm trying to close the deal with.

I am engaged in conversations about another round of funding. I am working a side hustle to try and self-fund. So I have this over here. So I've got some stuff that I'm doing. It's not like I'm sitting back and not doing anything. I've got irons in the fire, but I'm not going to stress or worry about something or have anxiety about something until I think that there's really a good reason to do it, because interestingly enough, you never know how things are going to shake out.

So I had those three irons in the fire, and the reason why I ended up with funding was not because of any of those three. What ended up happening was something I could not have even predicted, which was a previous patient of mine who had passed away. Her mother called me one day out of the blue when I only had about $100 left in the bank account, and at that point I was kind of like, All right, now I've really got to figure this out.

Vince Baiera

And don't worry.

Cara Lunsford

Now that the reality is setting in, maybe I'm not going to close this deal in time. Maybe I'm not going to secure a round of funding. I know how long that takes and it takes more than a day. So now I'm starting to actually get a little concerned, but all of a sudden I get this call and she says, Cara, I want to give you $50,000 towards what you're doing.

And I was like, Wait, you want to give me? I want you. So are you saying you want to invest in the company? No, I just want to give you this money because I believe in what you're doing. And there was it was like a transfer of money that day. Where do I send it? Here it goes. And boom, I had 50,000.

I went from $100 to like $50,000 in the bank account. And I think my accountant just was like, I don't know who you are. Like, What? What universe are you living in where this happens? And I think that that just goes to show you that you can't fixate, you can't obsess or or have an enormous amount of anxiety over things that may or may not ever happen until you're in that moment where you have to actually address it and then you're given an opportunity and magical things happen that come I always say the universe has an interesting sense of humor and it also delivers things that you could never have imagined.

So just stay in the moment. Right? And so that's a very long winded story to go along with what you were saying, Like, does this resonate with me? Yes, it absolutely resonates with me. You started to touch on for a second and I was thinking, you're you're probably reading my mind, which I was like, oh, this is interesting.

He's totally reading my mind and anticipating what I'm about to ask him, which was around failure. You talked a lot about it without me even having to ask. I was told once that the reason why they wanted to bring me it was actually realized why I realized wanted to bring my team along with the actual product of Holly Blue was because we knew how to fail fast and fail forward.

And so I want to ask you, like what that statement means to you to fail fast and to fail forward.

Vince Baiera

It's contrary to what you think you should be doing when you're trying things because you want to get it right. And I think that statement just says, try your best ideas, but don't belabor over each decision. Try it, test it, review it, then try something else. If it doesn't work, If it does work, do more of that right?

Pretty simple idea. I think one of the things that people have to get comfortable with is their pride and their ego as well. Because I am so confident and if anybody knows me out there or spent time around me, that confidence shines through. But I'm also incredibly humble because I know how often I fail and I know I'm going to keep failing.

But it's the person taking that action that's going to be able to say, Well, I've tried that, I've tried that, I've tried that, I've tried that, and here's something that's finally working. And I do think that you have to be eager to try to learn. They'll say you didn't win or lose, you won or you learned. And what that means is just that you kept trying, right?

You kept trying. And this work, this work, this work. So that's how I think about it. Of course, you're not trying to fail, but you're also not sitting and waiting and, you know, deliberating over a point for weeks on end. It's like, let's just do it. Let's get something out there. And you'll hear people say as well that if you're not embarrassed of your first attempt or prototype or alpha beta product, then you waited too long.

You should almost be embarrassed by what it looks like because like you're just trying to go fast, trying to figure it out. Right. And again, that's just so contrary to how typically we need to groom something, curate something, make it beautiful and perfect before we're ready to put that seal of approval on. But entrepreneurship is the opposite because the market is moving so fast that you got to just go.

And I think that also means that back to our original point is you just can't be all over the place. You got to pick those few things you're doing on and just get very pointed in your action and I think all those things go back to just being willing to fail and know that you're probably going to, because if you're trying something new, you're not going to get it right.

But again, not to be long winded, but, you know, I really got in when I made the switch mentally to that path of personal development. I really got into reading. This year. I set a goal to read 20 books. It's, you know, ten, nine months through the year. I'm almost at that goal. And when I line up against somebody competing against me and I'm going, what are you feeding your mind?

Because I'm reading 20 plus books a year, listening to podcasts, I'm pouring into myself, I'm going to outcompete you, I'm going to beat you. And you have to think like that when it comes to business a little bit. But I always said about reading that somebody will sum up their entire life's work, all the stuff that they know and believe and have failed to find out.

And they'll summarize it for you in about 2 to 300 pages and give it to you for 15 bucks if you'll just read it and as much as you want to fail fast, I can't encourage people enough that if you're trying something new to feed your mind, all of those, you know, find the top six, eight, ten books.

If I'm reading ten books a year on how to be a better marketer and you're reading zero, not only live each year one, but think about your three year four, How much further ahead I'll be. So yes, I want to fail fast, but I also need to try to bring in as much good stuff as I can because I don't want to always be failing.

I do want to learn from some people who've been there ahead of me. And if you don't have a mentor reading books and podcasts, things like that, right, just generally speaking are going to help get you there. So again, that's how I think about it, is trying to avoid that past failure. But I also recognize it's crucial to ultimately get going.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, I I'm at a point now where I am starting to realize the stuff that I want to read about in the stuff that I'm interested to read about. I'm really fascinated about sociology and anthropology and really the study of humans.

Vince Baiera

Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

That really seems to be what I'm passionate about these days. Maybe because I'm the VP of community and so I'm passionate about people and why they do what they do. I didn't do some of what you just mentioned. I kind of siloed myself a little bit because I was afraid that I wouldn't know my decision. Like, what is my decision?

What am I in stink actually feeling how much of what I want to do is based off of logic and how much of what I'm doing is instinctual. And I was always afraid that if I put too much into my brain, too much data, that I would start to make decisions that were more based out of data or logic, and that I would make less decisions based off of gut instinct.

I don't think that that has to. I if I were to go back and do do it over again, there's definitely things that I would have done differently. I would have gotten more curious about other people's failures, other people's journeys, how to do things differently. I remember watching the Thanos.

Vince Baiera

Emily, whatever.

Cara Lunsford

Crazy pants it gave me forever name. Right now all I can picture is her crazy look. But anyway, I remember watching that, and this part of me was just mortified. I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm living this right now. I'm living the world of start up. I'm living this world of trying to prove myself and prove that I have an idea.

And I started looking at her and I'm like, Oh my God, do people think I'm crazy? Do they think I'm like her? And I really got my own head it. And then I was like, okay, I'm not going to read anything. I'm not going to read. I'm gonna watch anything. I'm I going to do anything. I don't want to hear about anybody.

I got to just live my own reality. And that was from some element of fear. Like, maybe if I know too much, I'll give up. I'll know that the statistics are not in my favor.

Vince Baiera

At many very successful folks. If you knew all the things you knew when you were going to start, would you still have went for it? And most will say no because it's so daunting. And, you know, I can tell you, after launching a home medical equipment business online, direct consumer business and having, you know, what I think is a little bit of success, it's really hard.

And when I talk to people now about launching products, I almost tell them right upfront, like, just know I'm going to tell you things. It's not meant to scare you. If you really believe in this, you should go for it. But I also have what I feel like is a bit of a duty to try to point out some things that you're going to run up against so you can at least know what you're getting into.

And long story short, knowing all the things I know now, what I still do it. You know, I heard another clip of a popular saying that I think is relevant is you'll hear people say, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail. Right. You would probably try and tackle the world because if you knew you weren't going to fail, then heck yeah, we'll try.

Why wouldn't you? But I heard it said a different way that I actually think a little smarter. And it says, What would you attempt if you knew that you were going to fail? What would you still try and do if you 100% knew, this isn't going to make me any money, would you do it because you loved it?

Would you do it because of what you learned? Would you do because the way it forced you to grow, even if you knew? Deep down I will never success. And if you're still willing to do that the way you like to read about anthropology and all the other stuff, you're like, I don't know what it's going to do for me, but I still want to do it because.

It drives me. I like it, I'm passionate about it. That's what you should be doing is even when you know you're, you know, theoretically, that might not do nothing for me. And that's, I think where sometimes people get lost. They've got an idea. They want to go out and do something. They're not sure how it will work out.

But if you knew you were going to succeed, would you still try it? And if the answer is yes, then you're in the right place in terms of what will fulfill you. And sometimes that's easy to lose.

Cara Lunsford

That is a good mic drop, my friend. It's perfect because think about what you do when you think no one's looking. When it's just for you. Because sometimes it's those things that actually they can be the most successful things that you do because you're just like, you got zero assets to give. I'm just going to go for it doesn't matter to me.

I'm going to build this and it might be ugly. This thing might be so ugly, our VP of product said when she came into the business, she was looking at a product that we had created as a business, and she said to the stakeholders, she said, I'm not going to say your baby's ugly, but your baby needs to be changed.

Vince Baiera

I like that.

Cara Lunsford

And I was like, Yes, that's you know, it's like, well, what I have to say, it's ugly, but maybe it just needs to be changed. And I'm so excited to have you on because you're so interesting, you're so interested, you're interested in so many things, you're curious, you're brave, and you have this really exciting, fanciful. I think like expansive is the best term I can think of to use to explain what I think of when Think about you.

You're just expansive.

Vince Baiera

Oh, thank you.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, No, of course. And so if anyone's interested in connecting with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Vince Baiera

The easiest way to find me is probably on LinkedIn. I think there's only maybe one or two events fires on the globe. So if you take my name as you'll find it listed here in the show notes, you'll see the spelling of the last name. But if you get that right, you can connect with me there. And I'm usually pretty active in terms of posting and engaging with folks.

So that's the easiest way.

Cara Lunsford

I love that. Well, thank you for joining me for. Almost an hour of your time. I'm excited for this episode to launch and I'm excited to get feedback from the community about how this has expanded their own idea of who they are, who they could be. And I think that it's going to do a lot for this community.

Vince Baiera

Okay, Well, thanks for having me. It was fun. And until next time.

Cara Lunsford

Until next time.

Vince Baiera

Thanks, Vince. You got it.

Cara Lunsford

Bye bye.

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