Listen to stories from The Chirp of everyday people trying to navigate the complex world of dealing with money within their relationships. Dive into the positive, the negative, and all the stories in between that we all hold near and dear to our hearts when it comes to finances and our loved ones.

The Chirp Podcast | Pigeon Loans

Story 9: My Uncle Doesn’t Owe You Sh*t

Welcome back to another episode of The Chirp. For our last episode, we started off the new year strong by having a great conversation with the founder of City Innovation Labs, Josh Barker. In spending time with Josh, he walked us through the realities of life and reminded us all that it's okay to struggle because life isn't always easy. Whether it be financial, relationally, mentally, or physically we all go through life facing ups and downs, thus why Story 8: Life Isn't All Sunshine And Rainbows was such a special one for us.

Out of all the conversations we've had thus far, this is certainly our wildest one yet. As you might have guessed from the title, this episode is full of explosive commentary. In talking with professional musician, Liam O'Brien we got a look into his world and how sometimes the music industry can cause more pain for artists than good.

Chasing your dreams is not all it's cracked up to be, especially if you can't put food on the table. Artists, actors, and musicians are no strangers to this reality, so going through the growing pains of trying to make it big can harden even the most resilient dreamers. In this episode, we talked to a resilient dreamer and LA musician Liam O'Brien. Littered with stories of financial expectations, commitments to following his passions, and so much more, this look into the unspoken world of the music industry is a brutally honest tale. 

Note: Listener discretion advised; explicit content.

You'll find this episode of The Chirp on:

Have a story to tell and want to be on our podcast? Let us know by sending an email to claird@pigeonloans.io.

The Chirp Story 9: My Uncle Doesn't Owe You Sh*t

Audio Transcript of Story 9: My Uncle Doesn't Owe You Sh*t

Welcome back everybody! Cameron here. Episode 9 on the Chirp. You are almost welcome. Cool episode for you today, I got a chance to talk to a professional musician by the name of Liam O’Brien this week. I was very keen to chat to Liam having made a go of being a musician myself up until quite recently and I understand how stressful it can be and how broke one can be if they are doing it full time. Family and friends play a huge role in supporting you financially and emotionally and Liam's level-headedness about his music career was very interesting and he's definitely doing it the right way.

I chat to Liam about intellectual property being stolen, how he’s kept himself financially afloat all through his musical career, and finding that balance as well between money and passion. Now as ever, we appreciate your support and I hope you enjoy this interview. Let's go. 

Listen, thank you so much for joining me today. We had a couple of technical difficulties, but we got there in the end. It's a pleasure to have you on.

No, no problem. And I was researching you and doing a bit of digging on your music. And I was very impressed with what I heard. So it's great to have a musician on The Chirp for the first time. One that's most impressive. But I suppose where did you get started? I'd love to know when you started singing, what has your journey been like? And it might be a bit of a weighted question, but where did it all begin? Let's start there. 

It all began when I was about three years old, I guess when I was learning to talk, I started learning to sing at the same time, my dad's singing around the house. He was a big, big singer. He likes...loves singing. He was in bands throughout his entire life. He basically prepped me for life like that.

And so I won't lie. Growing up I was a little bit of an outcast. My school district wasn't the most artistic, but I still thought singing all the time was normal because my dad did it. So I would just continue to sing. Wherever, whenever, anytime I wanted. I love singing and I love performing and I love being the center of attention a little bit. I won't lie. Not afraid to say it. 

Yeah, right? Otherwise what are we doing here? So yeah, I went and I got my first show when I was three years old. I got on the streets of Quebec and just started singing for people. And I don't know why. I just remember being applauded and I had a whole crowd.

It was exciting. And then it took off from there. I wanted to be in the school plays every year, just looking for any opportunity to be on stage and to perform. So that was where it all got going, and then I started writing my own music when I was 14. I was always creating different little things here and there, but my first actual full song wasn't completed until I was 14. I performed it.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go and how my life was going to pan out. College coming up, my parents are getting a little bit, like, “Hey, start, start thinking about where the f*ck you want to go. What do you want to do? You’re good at math. You're good at singing. You're good at writing. Let's figure out what you want to do.” 

So of course with that comes, “All right, well we still want you to get a good education.” They honestly were super supportive throughout all of this, but like, they didn't want to send me to Berkeley college because, no sh*t on Berkeley, but their dropout rate is super high. If you go to Berkeley college, you're going to be a musician. That's just what it is. And that isn't why I went to college if that makes sense. I didn't go to college to be a musician. I went to college to get a degree and be able to make money aside from music, which is making me in my life a lot f*cking happier.

And when I was 15, there was a little dinner theater show. It was one of my first times performing live for my high school. And, like I said, not really the biggest artistic place, so I didn't really think people wanted to hear me. I think people thought people were going to be like, oh, who's this weirdo singing, playing the piano?

And then I got up there, performed my original song, and got a standing ovation. And I was just in awe of the fact that people actually cared and wanted to hear what I had to write, wanted to hear what I had to sing. That they thought I had true talent. And that's what changed my mind going forward.

I actually took it and ran with it. I went to college for music. I studied music business. I studied songwriting. So I got a little bit of both worlds. I got the business aspect, I got a marketing minor and everything. So I had the things that I needed, the tools that I needed to get a job and to have ammo in an industry other than music.

And I'm so happy I did because I found out that working in the music industry, and I found out via an internship, I had a great internship with a PR company and the music industry, and it was a great internship, great experience. But I realized it wasn't for me because as long as I was working in music and in a space that wasn't creative, It made me not want to work in it in the creative space. And so it was killing...

Exactly. It made music really not fun for me. And I guess that along with doing weddings, doing private events, doing bar gigs, they pay well, they pay great, don't get me wrong. That's how a lot of people make their living in the music industry. They do weddings. They do these gigs. They go on cruise ships and all this sh*t. And that was another thing that was making me hate music. It made me not want to come home and write, it made me not want to go out so I was tired of it.

I need a lot of balance in my life, and that was definitely really obvious for me when I was in college and graduating from college, I just realized that the music industry wasn't a place that I wanted to work. So yeah, very happy that I got the degree I did. I ended up going into home building, but I worked for a video team. 

Yeah, right? I worked for a video team within the home builder, so it's creative still, but it's very much corporate. '

Your experience of the music industry as well. I'd love to hear some stories, if you have any, of payments that may not have gone through, or have you any good stories or bad stories where relationships within the industry have been affected by money or money that was promised. 

So the good news is I don't have any bad stories in the music industry. I have them in most other industries. I had a wild job. And I was like 17, 18, whatever the f*ck, I was coming back from college and working. I don't remember. It was over summer. I was working at a grill and didn't sign any W-4s and logged all my hours on my own. And just worked with the manager to make sure that was happening.

I got ripped off about $500 there. He stole a lot of money from a lot more people than just me. So that was like the biggest scam that I think I've ever been a part of. Luckily music just hasn't been! I've worked with good people. And then when I work with good people, I haven't had any absolute d*cks come along yet.

That's where I was going with this. Maybe it's the fact that I just haven't encountered that yet. It's a fact that, maybe with growth comes demand, comes a lot more attention. So with more attention, the careless things that I do occasionally, like, put out a feeler for the next EP, right? Like maybe just put something out into the world. That's like, oh, just an idea, puts it on an Instagram story. It's not labeled as anything. It's not copyrighted. Someone takes that, someone steals it and uses it as their own. 

I worked with a duo in Miami that they said, we were taking stories of one of the songs we had just finished. And one of the guys was like, “Yo, you can't put that anywhere”. I was like, oh sh*t. All right, cool. No problem. I asked why, and he was like, “We've had people steal our sh*t. They steal hooks, they steal sh*t.”

They know we're good. They know we're a little careless sometimes. And I mean, all artists are careless. It's not, not just them. Every artist is living in the space where… first off, it's a hard world to collaborate in, like when you're mixing social media and being an artist, the two they're supposed to go well together, right? 

Sometimes they really don't. It's not as easy. Not everybody's good at both, and it's not easy to be in this carefree world of being an artist of like, yo, I just want to put my emotions out into the world. Like people getting drunk in the studio, getting high as sh*t, whatever the f*ck. It's such an industry where drugs and alcohol are so prevalent and, and a carefree attitude is so important.

We were looking for a saxophonist for this big session that we were doing. We call a sax player and he goes, “I'm down, but can we have splits figured out before that?” 

Yep, he wanted that in writing before. And here's the problem with that? The artist's world, it might f*ck you over and you should be careful and you should want your split sheets and you should be doing what he did. People don't want to work with you if you do that. People don't want to work with you if your attitude is, “Yo, but what about the money? Yo, but how about business?”

It sounds greedy. It kills the vibe too. It's like, yeah, we don't even know if we're going to come out with anything. Just trust us, just trust the process If something goes out that you were on and you didn't get your sh*t, then that's where this conversation will come. Like if I'm part of a session where that song goes out and I didn't get my pay and I didn't get my cut and I didn't get my royalty, and there is no split sheet, then yeah I'd be on this call with you telling you all about it and being like, yeah, I got f*cked and I don't really know how else to say it. But unfortunately, it's hard to get in rooms with people. If you're going to be at a tight a**. 

And where do you stand on that personally? Because I think it's completely fair to ask for splits or, I think we call it points in Ireland and it's definitely coming from a place of fairness.

Do you think maybe he handled it wrong? Maybe his wording was a bit too forward and there was just a lack of trust there? How would you have handled this if you were said saxophonist? 

So if I were him like I said, this is the opportunity, you haven't done anything yet, they don't even know how you play yet. Like, they don't even know if you're good. There are so many musicians in this world. You are almost always replaceable. If you are a big-name artist, you're not replaceable, that's different. And you can ask for whatever the f*ck you want.

That's why working with artists is tough and that's why they have teams. That's why they have demands. That's why they have entertainment lawyers. It's all of that. And so when it comes to me, I'm not big enough to be asking for splits at the beginning of a session. That's not where I can go with it.

This saxophonist, he's not… I don't even know a famous saxophonist. I can't even name you one, but he's not that guy. He's not the guy that you're like, this is him, we need him. You can't get anybody else now. Now we also didn't need a saxophonist. It was just a shot in the dark. Yeah. Let's just see if he's around. See what's up. You got to know the situation. If you're walking into a situation where it's all laid out, Hey, we're doing a song with Rihanna. Rihanna is gonna use this for her album. This is going to be, this is going to be an album.

Chasing your dreams is not all it's cracked up to be if you can't put food on the table. Artists, Chasing your dreams is not all it's cracked up to be, especially if you can't put food on the table. Artists, actors, and musicians are no strangers to this reality, so going through the growing pains of trying to make it big can harden even the most resilient dreamers. In this episode, we talked to a resilient dreamer and LA musician Liam O'Brien. Littered with stories of financial expectations, commitments to following his passions, and so much more, this look into the unspoken world of the music industry is a brutally honest tale. Note: Listener discretion advised; explicit content.

Story 9: My Uncle Doesn't Owe You Sh*t

Story 8: Life Isn’t All Sunshine And Rainbows

Happy new year and welcome to the first episode of The Chirp in 2022! Just a couple weeks ago, we ended the year by bringing to you a special episode that was very opportune for the season of giving. A popular podcast host himself, Joe Casabona, joined us for a lovely conversation that you should certainly listen to entitled Story 7: Treat People The Way You Want To Be Treated.

To start off the year, we are coming to you with an amazing episode this week. Filled with stories of struggle, triumph, and an important lesson on the value of strong family bonds, Josh Barker joined us to take about his early days in Silicon Valley and how that time ultimately led him to take a risk and start City Innovation Labs.

Struggling is a reality we rarely talk about openly. People love a good success story. A man walking across the moon or an athlete breaking a new record - we gawk and awe at the success of others, but never really take the time to think about all of the struggles that lead up to those culminating moments. You may not be Neil Armstrong, but you are someone with your own achievements, your own accomplishments, and your own successes. Take a moment to think, however, have you ever stopped to reflect on the struggles you overcame to get to that point? In our conversation with Josh Barker, thought leader behind City Innovation Labs, we did just that. Building a successful technology company takes more than just ingenuity and grit, sometimes it requires a bit of humility and in this case a brother sticking his neck out for his family financially when Josh had no options left to turn to.

The Chirp Story 8: Life Isn't All Sunshine And Rainbows

Audio Transcript of Story 8: Life Isn't All Sunshine And Rainbows

Hello and welcome back to The Chirp: A Podcast by Pigeon Loans. Cameron Laird here with our first episode of 2022. I’m excited for this year, partly to see the world open up again but mainly to bring you more episodes and guests and more interesting stories to make those awkward tales of loans between loved ones a little more accessible and a little less taboo.

Had a great conversation with a fascinating gentleman, called Josh Barker, who runs City Innovation Labs, a tech company that builds custom software for other companies. Josh had some great stories about his own experience with personal loans, how it has always seemed to run smoothly for him based on his great family and their strong values, and how those values have transferred into his own working family in his company, City Innovation Labs. 

Josh talks about the aspects of a big move to a big city and a career change that can have financial implications, some positive some negative, but gives an honest, refreshing take on his journey up until this point. Hope you all enjoy and let's dive in.

Cool. Listen, Josh, thank you so much for joining me on The Chirp! And you are our first episode of 2022 which is most prestigious! No I joke, but it's great to have you on. I know you're obviously flat out before year-end. But yeah, I'd love to get to know your story. I was checking out your LinkedIn and I was very impressed with your previous roles and all that you've done in the past, leading up to City Innovation Labs. So would you mind taking it away and giving us a little bit of a brief rundown of your journey up until this moment?

Yeah, sure. So my background is mostly in engineering, so I was a software engineer, classically trained, and I started programming when I was 14 on my parents' Atari. So creating larger size asteroids and smaller size asteroids and all sorts of those things, for those that know asteroids. But yeah, as an engineer, I grew up in that space, so I can speak the development lingo and eventually where that brought me was at a company called KPMG. So I worked there as a Director of Innovation. And so my buddy had called me up out of the blue. I was there for about three or four years (he had moved to Silicon Valley the year prior) and he called me up and said, "Hey, Josh Barker I was out to breakfast with this accredited investor. I had no idea he had money, and I just pitched him on this idea and he just wrote me a $150,000 check!"

And he's like, "Whoa, I would love for you to leave your job and come with me." And I was like, "Well I know that sounds like a lot of money. It's not actually a lot of money, but I will help you learn how to use it in the best way possible". And so in the next couple of months I helped him figure out how to use it. And then he called me back up. I thought we were just going to talk about the project and it was about three months in. And so he's like, "I just raised over a million in seed funding, is that enough?" And I was like, okay, now we can actually talk about me leaving my stable job at KPMG and moving over to the startup.

So that's what I did. I moved over to Silicon Valley for about three years. Telecommuted over there, flew out there for a week or two at a time, would fly back and learned a lot out there. So I'd been, as I had mentioned, an engineer. I've been classically trained. The way I like to describe it is how to build the right thing. So you pop open the hood and you can make it run really, really fast. But out in Silicon Valley, I was taught not how to build the right thing, but how to build the thing right. And that's a huge difference, right? One is you pop open the hood and you can make it run quick and efficient. And the other one is, well, who cares if you make it run quick and efficient if no one wants to buy it! So that's where my career took a shift of learning about a lean startup. How do you find the right product-market fit? How do you build things that people actually care about?

And so for us, the next three years, I was out in the valley and, out of the three years, learning, working with people from Google Ventures and people working from Y Combinator, learning from all these really smart people, it eventually led into starting a firm called City Innovations.

And so what we do is we help people build the right thing. That's what I like to say because there's a difference between building the thing right and building the right thing. So how can we help organizations build the right thing? We work with entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs on how to build that right thing.

And it's much harder than you think, because if you take just Airbnb as an example, a lot of custom software development firms will just build it. And they'll say, “Here's the keys, go run with it!” And if you go and build Airbnb.com. Then, if it's a two-sided marketplace like Airbnb, you could build it, but what's the value in it? If there's no properties, like why would you use it, right? So there's something missing and that's what we help companies do is find that missing something. 

So you're really doing a deep dive on the story of a company and a product, because you can't leave any stones unturned. Would that be a fair assessment?

Yeah. I mean, if you, if you simplify it to that level, yeah. I mean, we help companies go through a lot of… - Airbnb started with spreadsheets and they rented out their own apartment and that's the part no one sees, right? They started out very scrappy and they grinded to get where they're at.

And so what people don't realize is, months into starting Airbnb, they were running the whole company off of spreadsheets and renting out other people's apartments on Craigslist. They had no Airbnb.com. And so that's the part that people miss. They just don't understand the origin stories of ‘how did they get to where they're at?’

And that's what we call that space: “zero to one”. And so we focus on that zero to one space of before, there's a story of, “have you visited airbnb.com?”

We help fill in the blank company. We help the pre-story. The background story, so to speak.

So yeah cool. Very interesting. And what was it like moving to Silicon Valley initially? Was it a big change for you? Was it very exciting? What were your initial impressions? 

It was a huge change. Yeah, exactly. So in moving out of the Midwest, which is traditionally very conservative, and so moving to Silicon Valley was a big difference.

I mean, there's huge differences between the two areas with risk appetite, right? In the Midwest, going out to breakfast and having someone write a $150,000 check, that just doesn't happen! So people just don't invest that early on. So going out to the valley and having that, those kinds of people that are willing to take a risk on a really good idea, there's a lot more of that appetite, a lot more innovation and that's what it fuels, right? 

Taking more risks is equivalent to… - the outcome of that is usually more innovation. So yeah, I mean, that's probably one of the biggest key differences. I mean, there's a lot of others, the differences of people and that come out of that, but that's probably the underlying key difference that we see that I saw.

Migrating there and starting your new life, any tales where you thought working relationships, or even you with your friends, were somewhat affected by money and lending? I imagine you were in a financially stable position from your nice job at KPMG. So what was it like going out there? Any stories where things were affected?

Oh yeah. Yeah. I can tell you all sorts of… It's a great assumption to say that I was very financially stable and I had no money problems. 

No, no, you're good! I mean, I think that's the whole purpose of this though, right? The whole purpose of Pigeon Loans is breaking down a lot of those barriers of people being open and honest. I can be real with how things happen because the origin story of how City Innovations started is not something I talk about a lot. I don't think entrepreneurs do! I don't think enough focus is put on it.

The analogy I give is like, you've seen those motivational posters where you're like, I don't know, “Perseverance!”, and it's a guy climbing a mountain or something like that. Well, one of them is like that and one that I really resonate with is “Failure!” And it's a picture of this iceberg. And underneath the water is the rest of the iceberg. And all people see is the top of the iceberg, right? So it's like the tip. So that's the thing is like, you looked at my resume and you started out with like, “Oh, it's a really impressive resume.”

But there were tons of failures to get to that point. And so going back to your question of like, what is that, what was that process and what did it look like? I remember when I left KPMG and one of the things that I looked at, I had a very cushy job and I said, “I know I'm going to have to make sacrifices.”

And as I moved over, one of the things I looked to do is to see if I could maintain the same lifestyle. And that's impossible when you're going from a very cushy large company to a startup. A lot of sacrifices had to be made. And so my wife and I made big… we took a big pay cut, right? Took over a 50% pay cut.

You need to go work at a startup. But I mean, obviously there's risk and there's rewards. So we looked at the reward and we're like, okay, the outcome could be a good thing, I remember distinctly there was a season of Winter we were going through. Middle of winter in Michigan, mind you, which is freezing!

If you don't know Michigan weather, it's freezing and so, and I remember my first. And in that moment, my furnace broke. I looked at the bank account because we made cuts and all these areas, you have to also make lifestyle cuts. Right. And so it was about a couple of years in, and we had been putting things on credit cards because we couldn't make it with just the salary cuts and all that stuff.

So we were trying to keep reducing. And so I looked at that and I was like, my furnace broke. I've got these credit cards and I have no way of paying for this furnace that broke. I don't have the savings we put into the business, and so I'm sitting here over-leveraged as an entrepreneur, and this is a story that people don't tell with entrepreneurs, right? And so you look at it and you go, what am I going to do? And I literally was on my knees, like praying. I'm like sitting here going, I don't know what I'm going to do. 

And so the next day my brother took me out to breakfast and he's like, “What do you need?” And I was like, “Honestly, man, I don't know what I need. I just need you to pray for me!” And he's like, “How about I just give a five grand loan to you?” And so this is where Pigeon Loans comes in because those early stories of entrepreneurs like myself, who you look at and you go, you could say I'm successful. You could say, mediocre. You could say whatever you say or however it appears. I am like, it's really different. The different story underneath for almost anyone that's true. Right? So, that's where I think tearing down those walls with Pigeon Loans and being able to have those stories be more normalized and having it be like, “Hey, this happens all across the world!”

These loans from your brother or your father… No, even rewind previous to that. I remember when my mom, we were in a situation where my parents were very financially strapped and my brother and I had jobs and we were living at home and we had really no financial obligations.

We did the same thing with my parents, right? It’s being able to loan them money as they needed it. And so the thing that I love about Pigeon Loans and that as a concept, because I get to work with you guys on a few different things, is I love the fact that I had to create my own mechanism for keeping track of my loans. My dad really wanted to make it a loan, right?

And so did I! When my brother is like, we're really wanting to make it a loan, we want to pay it back, right? And so for us, it's like, how do we keep track of the amount of money that we're loaning and the terms and all of those different things. And so we had a very janky spreadsheet mechanism. I'd have to remember, and I have to remind, and so it was both with my brother and my dad and me receiving money and having to pay my brother back and be with my father where he'd pay me back. 

So it just ended up being a mess, right? So it just was very difficult to keep track of. So. I admire a lot of what you guys are doing at Pigeon Loans because it's so needed in the area of all of that is happening behind the scenes, but bringing it to the forefront and saying, “Hey, we want to invest some time and energy into helping these people.”

Absolutely, great stories. There are a couple of questions on that, I suppose having that conversation with your brother, it's not the first positive story that we've heard on this show about family members giving dig-outs, or siblings looking after each other. Definitely, brotherly love has featured on The Chirp before. That, to me, is a good sign of a good family that has good financial values as well.

Obviously not just you and your bro, but you're your parents as well. Why do you think that's the case? Why do you think, for other people, it wouldn't be the case? Any examples of how you were raised and why that ethos exists within your family personally?

Yeah. It's a good question. And for us, I mean, it really boils down to priorities, right? Someone told me that if you look at someone's resources. And so resources, if you break that down, time is money, right? If you look at their resources and you go, If you've created a pie chart, where is the majority or where is the majority of that time going?

And if you were to break that apart, the biggest, I think, influence my father had on me and my family was, hey, when that happens and we do a breakdown, really, those should be bucketized. For us, we are a very faith-driven family as God. But family, to answer your question is like, that was a huge part of that pie chart and your family should be a big part of that pie chart of investing into your family.

And that means time and that means money. And so you should be able to look at someone. Bank account and put it into a pie chart and create categories and say, what does this person care about? And that tells a lot about a person, right? And so for me, I think that was super influential in that process to know that caring about other people and caring about my family and caring about even friends, right.

What does my pie chart look like? And I think for me, that's the thing that I look at as I go, how are my resources being, if someone took an insight into my calendar or someone in Pigeon Loan's case, took a look at my pocketbook and took a look at my bank account. Am I being what, what I would call a good steward of that money?

Am I putting that to good use? And so for me, I think, having more of those conversations. And I think it really starts with family values. I think what you were implying is like, for me, it really started there of having that instilled from a really young age of, these are really important things! Family really is really an important bond here. 

Awesome. And it's quite evident as I was reading an article or a blog post you'd put up on City Innovation Labs, explaining the COVID situation and how you were asking your staff to work remotely. It's quite evident that these family values that you're talking about have transferred as well into your company. Can you talk a little bit about that? Is that a fair assessment? 

Yeah, absolutely. So that's one of the things that we really want to instill and support our people in doing is giving. So I think that's a big thing. Like we just got off of a team week, a couple of weeks ago. There's an organization here in town called Alpha Ministries. So they were originally just a women's ministry, but they moved into men where those people are really in rough straights, right? And they’re maybe a single mom, a single dad, and they're really having a hard time financially, keeping up. And so they support those people through those hard times.

And so we give back our time, right? We gave back time. We volunteered and we helped clean. We helped really go around the facility and do whatever they needed us to do as hands. And then we followed that up. One of the cool things that we have on our team, a couple of team members put together a walking challenge, which is really neat.

And traditionally you have these walking challenges. I don't know if you're familiar with employee walking challenges where everyone gets in their steps. And so, a lot of times, you'll give the winner a gift card or whatever it is. And for us, the whole team decided unanimously, “Hey, at 100,000 steps, we want the winner to give Alpha Ministries a donation!” And so we actually made it, donation-based where it was like, Hey, we're going to add certain steps. We're going to add them all up and we're going to actually give this out to Alpha. And so it was pretty neat to see, to be a part of that. And to have me almost take a step back and just be a participant.

And it was neat to see our own people self-organize around their desire to do that. 

Story 8: Life Isn't All Sunshine And Rainbows

Story 7: Treat People The Way You Want To Be Treated

Welcome to another episode of The Chirp. In our previous story, we got a chance to talk with Daniel Narciso - practically a human encyclopedia. If you didn't get a chance to check out our episode with Daniel, definitely give it a listen because we promise you'll learn something new - Story 6: Be Loyal To Those Who Loan You Money.

This week we flipped the script a little bit and brought in a podcast host (a little podcast-inception) as a special guest on our show. Joe Casabona, host of the popular podcast series How I Built It, stopped by to give us his insights on how he views work in the content world and how he dedicates time in his life to giving back to those that he can - financially and professionally.

We are all trying to do our best in this race we call life. Some people live an audacious life dreaming of one day becoming an astronaut or physicist, while others, unfortunately, have to desperately fight and worry each night about how to put food on the table for their families. Life and all of its ups and downs are full of many mysteries, but one thing is clear to us all, we're all human and we should all be treated as such. This week we got a reminder of exactly that - a motto & sentiment Joe Casabona lives by. A web developer, author, teacher, content creator, and podcaster, Joe takes us through the journey of his life and teaches us how important it is to give back and invest in those around you along the way.

Audio Transcript of Story 7: Treat People The Way You Want To Be Treated

What's going on everyone? Hello to everyone joining me for our last episode of 2021. The holidays are approaching, we live in anticipation for 2022 to be a better year than the last one. Maybe the one before that as well. 

But listen, let’s not focus on the past. Life goes on, as does The Chirp! I was able to grab a conversation with the genius that is Joe Casabona this week. 

Joe is a podcaster, a content creator, a teacher, he does live streams with his fans building websites with WordPress - which he is excellent at. He has a Youtube channel that is specific to podcasters getting started, so I was keen to pick his brain about that - he has a plethora of knowledge about everything content creation. And he also helps content creators build their business and brand and he has kindly given listeners of The Chirp some special offers which I will talk about at the end of the episode.

But I’ll let Joe do the talking now. He is a maestro on the microphone, it was great to chat to him and learn about his journey, hear his wisdom about content creation, and also a take on a scenario about relationships and money that I found very unique. So I will let you all listen.

Well, thank you so much for coming on The Chirp. It's a pleasure to have you, I’m a huge fan of your content. I know you're an educator, podcaster content creator, father of two, soon to be the father of three, as I heard from your live stream! So a big future ahead of you. So congratulations. I would love to know how you got started, where it all began, how you became able to do what you love so much, and the plans for the future?

Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much. I really appreciate that. So I got my start in high school. People who listen to my podcast will have heard this story probably many times before, but luckily I was always kind of into computers. And then my church came to me and they asked me if I could make them a website.

They're like, “Joe, you're good with computers. Can you make a website?” This is like 2001. 

And I don't know how to make a website. And they said, “We'll pay you”. And I was like, yeah, I can make a website. You'll pay me. Great. So they paid me 200 bucks. And it was. The first website I ever made, and I really liked doing that.

And so I decided then I want a career in computers. So that was when I was 14. I feel very fortunate that from an early age, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I went to the University of Scranton. I got a degree in computers. I got a master's in software engineering.

And while I was getting that master's I also taught as part of a teaching assistantship. And I loved that too. So computers, I really liked, teaching I really liked, and something I didn't include was I did drama club! So I was in like school plays and stuff from like second grade, all through high school.

And so I'm, I'm a very performative type of person as well. And so after writing code, mostly with WordPress and PHP for about 10 years or so I decided that I wanted to get into something that was a little bit more in front of people. I could teach people and be more performative. And so in 2016, I started my current podcast and I launched my own online courses, and that kind of allowed me to combine all of my skills into one business. And so I've been self-employed full-time since 2017 with all of that. 

Fantastic. So you've only been at this for about, you know, five years in total, this amalgamation of all of your skills. It’s a relatively new thing in your life. 

Yeah. Especially with real stakes, right? Because like, yes, I freelanced in high school, but like I was living with my parents and had no real expenses and yes, I freelanced in college, but essentially what that meant was I had more money than the average college student.

And then as soon as I got out of school, I freelanced a little bit for full-time, but I was still living with my parents and I could still be on their health insurance. And then when I couldn't be on their health insurance anymore, I got a real, a real job, quote-unquote. So now I have a family. You mentioned that our third is on the way as we record this. And so I have kids, I have a mortgage, I have car payments. And so actually when I went off on my own full time, my daughter was three months old. My wife was still on maternity leave. And so I was the only income of the family when I first went out on my own full time.

And so like not the best time to start a business, but it definitely lights a fire under you to make sure you really know what you're doing. 

Which has probably, and what you needed. If you're going to go out and do your own thing. 

Yeah, for sure. I thought, I thought I made all the right moves. Part of the reason I went out on my own was because our company at the time was having trouble making payroll. And I was still bringing in enough money on my side gig to support the family. And so, full of hubris, I thought I could just do that. And it turned out that I still was getting that income.

And so I was. I was able to fully replace the income I was getting from my full-time job relatively quickly, which is good. Because usually, that takes about three years for most business owners. 

But I hadn't really honed in my messaging or my niche which is something I feel like I've done a lot better over the last two years.

Fantastic. And I suppose looking at all of your channels and your YouTube, podcasting, social media, all this big cohesive branding of yourself and your talents, how do you find the time to do it all? Obviously, this is a full-time gig for you in its entirety, but are you extremely organized? Do you have everything down to a tee? Is your day laid out from the night before?

I try really hard to do that, but, you know, as they say, “the best laid plans of mice and men”, right? In general, yes. I try to plan out my weeks on Sunday evenings, usually, in front of the TV, my wife and I'll watch TV after the kid goes and I'll write down all the things I want to get done. I'll look at the week ahead and see what is on my calendar and what I have to get done. And then each day I sit down with this fantastic little card that's part of the analog system. And so I write down everything I have to do.

I kind of color-coded, right? So the tasks are one color and the appointments are another color.

And so my tasks are kind of right in front of me. Now. I also will call a lot of audibles throughout the day. Like if I'm not feeling a particular thing, right, or if I'm supposed to make a video, but I'm not really feeling it. I'll, I'll do something else. But when it comes to creating a lot of content, the most important thing for me and for a lot of content creators, the thing I try to teach my students and my members is batching content.

So my podcast comes out every week. It's like clockwork because I've got four to six episodes edited and scheduled. And for a while, I was doing the same thing with my YouTube channel. And so my YouTube channel is changing a little bit. But once I get the cadence down, I will have probably a month to two months worth of content scheduled and ready to go so that I don't feel that pressure.

Yeah, fantastic, brilliant, good to be so organized. And obviously in the theme of the show, During, yeah. Especially going out on your own as a self-employed content creator. Any examples of relationships that you've seen where, you know, they've been strained by money or lending either to yourself or to those around you? Any, any tales of woe, as I like to ask?

Tales of woe, umm, you know I try to be - you know it's interesting, actually, I was working on a piece of content today, before we got on the microphone. And I was talking about Cura Personalis. I went to a Jesuit University, and so we learned all about St. Ignatius and, and his philosophy of Cura Personalis or care of the whole person. And part of that is that to be able to take care of other people, you have to take care of yourself first. And so, as we've been able to take care of ourselves, I've, I've tried to help others. I like to donate to St Jude's Children's Hospital and things like that. When I first started, and I was very nervous about money. My dad made a thousand-dollar investment in the business. He said I don't have to pay it back to him until I make my first million. So you know, hopefully in 2022, I'll be able to pay him back! 

And then, kind of from the other side, especially you know, we’re recording this around the holidays - throughout the pandemic, my wife's a nurse, an ICU nurse. And so we had kids at home and she still had to go to work. And so I'm not going to say it was like being a single parent, but I feel like I got glimpses of what it would be like.

Because my wife would leave at 6:00 AM and get home around 8:00 AM. And so taking care of the kids was all up to me for those days. For a bevy of reasons, our support system right now or during that time wasn't as good as it could be. Plus, we weren't really seeing anybody. And so, yeah, especially around this time, I try to look for opportunities to help actual single parents.

And so you know, there's a website called Little Big Donations or something like that. Or you just hear stories of recently single parents with kids who were just trying to get you know, gifts for their kids for Christmas and stuff like that. And I have been fortunate enough and maybe fortunate enough to have an education in financial stability. I won't say responsibility because sometimes that's outside of everybody's control, but you know, I've had good savings for a long time and I've tried to maintain that. So I have not had strong financial hardships because of that and my support system, but I've tried to help people who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own because another thing that is - I see the GoFundme's get set up because of irresponsibility. 

Those are not something…I want to help. People who have legitimately fallen on hard times, I guess is the best way to put it. 

Story 6: Be Loyal To Those Who Loan You Money

Welcome to another episode of The Chirp. Last episode we got to talk to a superstar entrepreneur who you'll recognize from her latest feature in People magazine - Rahama Wright. If you missed our conversation with Rahama, definitely go check out - Story 5: In Order To Be Successful, You Have To Work Together.

This week we got a chance to talk about pretty much every topic under the sun. From cryptocurrencies to divorced couples being forced to live with one another, to a group of people trying to buy the constitution of the United States, and even, an analysis on the state of legal tech in the world of creatives - Daniel Narciso came on our show ready to tell some fascinating & entertaining stories. Take some time to listen to Daniel as he guides us through his world; hopefully, you can keep up along the way.

The world of money movement between friends, family, colleagues, business partners, and everything in between is changing every single day. As we become more interconnected we are finding new ways to share value, work towards common goals, and even rewrite the way we think about interpersonal relations. In this episode, we got a chance to talk to Daniel Narciso, a savant in the litigation finance space by day and an encyclopedia of knowledge leading a startup called 1Haus by night. From stories in which long-time lovers are forced to live together even after a shared financial meltdown and subsequent separation to tales of influencers in the creative space being cheated out of their just pay, no matter the adventure, this episode is sure to teach you something new and exciting!

Audio Transcript of Story 6: Be Loyal To Those Who Loan You Money

Hey everyone, welcome back. Hope all of our American listeners had a lovely Thanksgiving, and all of our European listeners are just doing their best to just stay out of the cold. 

Back at it again with another super duper episode. I was blessed with sterling conversation this week as I chatted with Daniel Narciso, Dan is a native of Miami, Florida where he currently has two jobs. One is as a senior associate in litigation, while the other sees him as the co-founder of a company called 1Haus Collective, which is a platform that looks after the legal side of creativity for creators so that they can focus on their art. 

One of our more varied conversations this week on the Chirp, topics wise. You know, let it be known, I edit these episodes down as our conversations usually run over the allotted time of 30 mins that you're all so used to hearing, sorry to burst the bubble of illusion, but we managed to chat about you know -many things,  his work-life balance, his passions, his unique take on how best to market creatives and find the right work for them and how one of his jobs only got started because he was looking after his little brother's best interests. 

So great to see Daniel have so many things going for him and having fun while doing them - we appreciate that. As usual, I had a lot of fun chatting to him and I hope the fun is transferred to you!

So, let’s dive right in, I hope you enjoy. And here is story #6!

Dan, it was great to great to hear about you coming on the show. Obviously given a bit of research, you wear a couple of hats. Can you talk me through about what you have going on at the moment in your life? 

Yeah, so I worked at a private equity group specifically within a kind of a niche nascent sector of finance called litigation finance where we invest in anything related to litigation. So if there's a good case - we can invest in that. If there's a good loss from that, we can invest in that. If there's any secondaries on that market, we can invest in that. So it's up and coming. It's been around maybe 10 years in the United States. So you really find yourself trying to pull from a lot of different areas, which kind of gives you more exposure to different areas of finance, which is a lot of fun, you know, so I enjoy it a lot. 

Fantastic. And you are also the co-founder of 1Haus collective as well.  What takes up more of your time or what kind of has more of your focus at this stage?

So right now for 1Haus Collective, we're going through a whole rebrand and revamp. So the way that I started is my brother and his partner started this creative studio about six years back. And while I was in law school, I had to help them through all the paperwork, the filings and then got started working with all the contracts and stuff like that.

So it really got me connected to the creative world. 

Which then kind of spiraled into this creative network where I got to know a lot of creatives. We got up to 150 creatives underneath our umbrella. 

But then realize we weren't really providing as much value as you wanted because the value that everyone wanted was jobs!

Everyone wanted to get money, get paid, get gigs. 

And we hadn't built the network nor the infrastructure to be able to provide those on a regular basis. So that's why we kind of shut down a little bit. And now we're in the middle of our process of kind of redoing the entire brand in order to scale up and move forward.

So that one is taking not so much time now, but it's kind of a new developer since I am no code whatsoever. I have no skills in that at all. You know, so right now me and my work is investing on all fronts, right. Making sure we fill our funds, making sure we get good investments servicing our clients at the end of the day.

And no matter what business you're in, you're always in the customer service business. Yeah. So if you're not dealing with your clients in a respectful, respectful, fast, appropriate way, then you're just a product. So there's that, that's kind of my focus. 

And do you think in your, in your line of work and what you do, is it more common in your personal life or in your working life where you know, relationships can, can go you know - north or south when it comes to, you know, financial transactions or, or money in general?  

I think it goes back to making yourself, not taking yourself too seriously. Right. I think a lot of people let their relationships slide. Because they're so focused on a kind of a singular goal or aspect of their life.

And I only want to find somebody that's more vicious or works harder than me or any of the above. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to ruin everyone else's lives just to become who I want to be. Right. If I can't bring anybody else with me then what's really the point? And if you're not loyal to the people that are loyal to you when it's hard to be loyal to you, then there's not really any real point to it.

Have you any kind of tales of woe or tales of success when it comes to this? Wherewith friends or family? 

Yeah. I mean, I've seen divorces come to it, you know? One funny story, is...this doesn't really go off the work-life balance thing - but someone just kind of being dumb with their money.

I had a buddy of mine, he owned his own house. Got engaged. And then he ended up putting the property - while he owned the property. He put the title in her name as well. And then they went five or six years through the engagement and then she got sick of it and kind of ended that engagement, but she was still entitled to the deed.

Yeah. So they were living together while they were broken up. And he ended up losing half the house after two years because of that mistake, you know? And so he's fine now, but he still lost half his house just because he decided to just put his house in someone else's name for...

Why do you think that is? Obviously, if they had gotten married, would there have been worse implications? Obviously, there would be alimony and things like that, but do you think that he just simply jumped the gun as in, he essentially put his girlfriend on the lease of the house instead of what he thought was his future wife? Wasn't practical?

It wasn't practical, no. I don't think he ever wanted to get married. He got engaged because she kind of said, “Hey, we’ve been dating for 13 years, now we need to get engaged”. And he was like, okay. And then she was living there. So he put her on the deed of the house, but it's one of those things where he bought it beforehand.

So it technically is not marital property once you get married. So he could have technically kept the apartment to himself, even if he got married. 

But the fact that he went another five years without getting married and then got separated, and then she was living in the house and bringing guys over through the house because she said, “This is our house!” They were just like roommates. 

Story 5: In Order To Be Successful, You Have To Work Together

We're back with another amazing episode of The Chirp. If you missed our last episode, you missed an entertaining one - we dialed up the humor level to an 11, and enjoyed a behind-the-scenes look at what happens at your local auto repair shop when finances become a hot topic of discussion. If you didn't get a chance to check out our previous episode, listen to JoAnn Shilling's tale here - Story 4: I Know I Owe You Money, But I'm On A Secret Mission. 

In this episode, we got a chance to speak with Rahama Wright. A voice you may recognize from your TV airwaves. Rahama is the CEO of Shea Yeleen and power-user of Pigeon Loans. She stopped by our studio to tell us about the fascinating world of the African shea butter industry and the financial realities that come into play with running a business in her line of work.

Community and doing things for one another is an ethos many of us can identify with. From book clubs, to sports teams, to villages in Africa - people coming together to achieve a common goal and advance one another is one of the purest forms of humanity we experience. In this episode, we got a chance to talk with Rahama, creator of Shea Yeleen, to hear about the financial underpinnings of what powers the shea butter industry. From stories about brilliant businesswomen building together to the shared sense of financial responsibility instilled in many African communities, listen to Rahama Wright as she walks us through her journey with Shea Yeleen - a game-changing beauty brand dedicated to producing social good for women.

The Chirp Story 5: In Order To Be Successful, You Have To Work Together

Audio Transcript of Story 5: In Order To Be Successful, You Have To Work Together

Welcome, everyone. The Chirp is coming to you from Ireland this week as I am back home, visiting family. Will that stop us chatting to amazing guests and getting you your new story? Absolutely not! 

I really enjoyed this interview that you're about to listen to. Every guest we have on The Chirp has experienced a lot of success in their life but this next guest's interview, she's an entrepreneur, she's a humanitarian, she's the CEO of her own company - and she's also a really, really, really nice person. 

Rahama Wright is the founder of Shea Yeleen, which is a company that produces shea products. Rahama's business practices and approach differentiate from so many other companies that you know, offer similar products, and I won't ruin the story, but it was a very captivating listen on my end, and I'm sure you will all feel the same way.

We finally found time to talk, as we are approaching the holiday season, which is Rahama's busiest time of year, especially this year. And so it's great to have a chat with her and get to know her story, her journey, and you know, we barely even scratched the surface as well. 

There's so much more that we could have discussed. This story is compelling. It's educational, it's heartwarming, and you know, even on her travels in Africa, Rahama experienced money affecting relationships in different ways and in different cultures. 

So give it a listen. Hope you like it and enjoy!

Rahama. Thank you so much for joining me today. I know that you are absolutely flat out at the moment with um - I think you have two pop-ups at the moment with Shae Yeleen don't you?

Yes, we do have two pop-ups. The holiday season is always our busiest. I'm not complaining. It's great to be busy, but I really appreciate the invitation to participate in the podcast. Thanks for inviting me.

No, it's a pleasure to have you. And when researching you and Shea Yeleen and you know, all of the amazing things you've done in your professional career I was very keen to chat to you, I suppose, you know Shea Yeleen - I'd love you to kind of explain that to me first, as far as what it is like to me, it kind of a culmination of this long journey that you've had in your life.

So can you tell us at first, a bit about Shea Yeleen and then how did you get up to this point where, you know, you get to have really busy Christmases, which is great. 

Yeah, no, absolutely. So Shea Yeleen is a DC-based social impact beauty brand. I started after serving in the Peace Corps and we have a very simple mission.

We help women in cooperatives in West Africa, Ghana create Shea Butter products. So a natural product that grows in their communities. And then we connect those products to the US marketplace by creating a line of cleansers and moisturizers using Shea Butter. And by doing that, we increase women's income five times their country has minimum wage, giving them a living wage for the very first time. 

And so our whole mission and model is really looking at strengthening and creating ethical supply chains that incorporate fairly the labor of African women and giving them the ability to overcome systemic poverty that has been in their communities for decades.

Do you kind of receive backlash against you know, local government in terms of, you know, empowering these women, some more charges to have your full support, or do you have their full support rather? 

No, I've never received backlash. And I think that everyone wants their communities to be successful.

Everyone wants to be able to send their kids to school and have access to food, medicine. I don't think that is a desire that is only for particular groups. It's a human desire. And so I've, I've actually had the opportunity to see women in our communities that we partner with and work with, be able to engage their local leaders, to support them, and help them.

And so it's been a positive experience for me and also the women that we work with - we've had the opportunity for women, for example - to come to theUS and visit whole food stores that are carrying our products, then get an opportunity to see the market side of the supply chain, which is something that they typically don't have access to and share their stories to our customers and experience the ability to use their voices in a larger platform. 

Imagine, you know, never traveling to the capital of your country, but now you're in New York City or Boston or Washington DC, and you're in front of an audience and sharing why this product is so important to your livelihood and the lives of your children. And so - to answer your question, I've never received any backlash. Sometimes people also ask me if the men, you know, their husbands get upset and I know it actually reduces tension in the home because now the man doesn't have the full burden, the full financial burden of caring for their family. And it lessens the load in the, in the household.

And so it's been, it's been a positive experience, not a negative one. 

Fantastic. And kind of what brought you to this moment? I know you, you, you spend time in the Peace Corps and you know, you, you saw so many things going on in such an illustrious career, but what, what kind of led you to this moment and to, to begin Shea Yeleen.

Yeah, in order to understand my entrepreneurial journey, you first have to get some insight into my upbringing. So I grew up in upstate New York in a very small town outside of Syracuse. And that's where my dad's family was from. And my mom's family is West African from Ghana. And so I grew up in a household where we talked about international issues and international relations. We talked about African affairs and African issues. I was able to see firsthand the differences, in my mom's upbringing and the differences in my dad. So for example, my dad had a master's degree. My mom had a sixth-grade education because she wasn't allowed to go to school and she had a lot of issues and challenges growing up as a girl child in a very conservative family that wanted her to marry young and just have kids and not necessarily have a career or work for example.

So seeing that and recognizing very, very early on that the life that I had was incredibly different and full of opportunity in comparison to my mom's life and my mom's experience always made me interested in African issues. And so I knew that I wanted to do something in Africa when I grew up, I just didn't know what. And initially, I was going to work at the state department. I wanted to become a foreign service officer.

And so that's what I studied in college. I studied international affairs, political science. I interned at the state department. I interned at the American embassy in Burkina Faso. And so I was on the path. I was eventually just gonna, you know, take the foreign service exam and then get a post somewhere in the world.

But when I did the Peace Corps, it really changed my trajectory because for the very first time I'm living in a community in a rural community and seeing firsthand and experiencing similar things that my mom shared. Her, what her growing up experience was like and being, and seeing so many women in my community, really not having access to just basic necessities.

I worked at a community health center and women would come into my health center and they often could not pay for medicine. They couldn't pay for the medical services and it just really struck me that there are so many limitations and it's all-around financial capability. And so I started researching income-generating activities, and I learned about Shea Butter.

I knew about Shea Butter, but I really didn't know that it really touched the lives so deeply of so many women in Sub-Saharan Africa. It's a product that grows in a tree. So it's a natural resource and is found in roughly 21 countries and approximately 16 million women across those countries in Africa are affected by the supply chain.

And so as I started seeing how women made it, you know, I've lived in it, lived in the community. I watched them make it, I watched them use it and everything from putting it on babies, to using it as a cooking oil, to putting it on cuts and bruises and you know, pretty much it was an all-purpose product you use it for everything. 

And I saw that what they were making was very different from what I experienced in the US. When I would purchase a product from that had Shea in it, it wasn't the same. 

Yeah, it wasn't the same product and they weren't making money from it. And it just shocked me, honestly. I was like, why? When I can buy Shea Butter in the US for like $30, $20.

Why are these women unable to afford 25 cents, afford something that costs a dollar? And so that just kind of took me down this path of wanting to learn what more, right. Because it was shocking. And as I started to learn more, talk to more women, and just kind of connect the dots between the challenges they were having locally and how that translated into, you know, the global Shea Butter supply chain.

I saw so many disconnects. I saw so many issues around training capacity, building around access to processing centers and production equipment, quality, and really training them on quality metrics. And also to access to capital - how are they going to take these amazing raw materials and transform them into a value-added product?