Building a Values-Focused Business with Jonathan Rivera, Part 1

In this episode, Dan chats with Jonathan Rivera from the Podcast Factory, a friend he's known for ages. Jonathan talks about his journey from the ups and downs in real estate to finding his groove in the podcast scene. 

He opens up about how losing his father-in-law made him rethink what's important in life, shifting his focus from just making money to cherishing family and choosing the right people to work with. 

This conversation is packed with real insights on building a life that means something beyond just the numbers. It might just get you thinking differently about your own path.

Show Highlights:

• Discover the keys to creating a life and career you love [01:28]
• How does the death of a loved one impact you? [03:02]
• Learn about Jonathan’s compelling story of resilience [06:48]
• How has the podcast landscape changed over the years? [10:01]
• This is how your relationship with your business evolves [12:39]
• Are you chasing numbers or satisfaction? [15:05]
• The importance of having a purposeful business [16:15]
• Discover how Jonathan is optimizing peace in life [21:22]

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To learn more about Jonathan Rivera, check out the websites below: https://thepodcastfactory.com/

Transcript:

0:10  All right, what's up? This is Daniel Barrett here from the Dan Barrett show, the podcast where I talk to super cool people about all the best stuff that they know and do. And this week, I was so excited to get to sit down with Jonathan Rivera. Now this is an interesting conversation with me, because I have known Jonathan for I mean, man, it must be over a decade now, and I have been a client of his for a whole big chunk of that time, and we've known each other through the kind of beginning of our businesses, all through their kind of growth stages, back through this kind of later period where we're both sort of looking over what we've done and, you know, re thinking what's important to us. And through that time, I have known Jonathan to be an incredibly thoughtful and ambitious, but most of all, family oriented guy. This is someone who knows what's important to him, knows what matters, and has built a business that serves him in that capacity. And you'll hear we talk about how you build a business that's really focused on what you want to get out of life, not just making money for money's sake. This was such a fun interview for me, and I got a ton out of it, and I know you will too. So let's get into my conversation with Jonathan Rivera from the podcast factory.com All right, what's up? Everybody? Daniel Baird here, and I have with me today. Jonathan Rivera from the podcast, factory.com, Jonathan, welcome to the show. No, do you actually, do you prefer Jr to Jonathan? I don't think I've ever asked you this. I've

1:56  

been doing this for years, and it drives my wife crazy. I change what I like every couple years and then. So, you know how long I've had this friend, right? When I start changing my name, whatever they're calling me, you know what time frame that friend, right? It's like, carbon dating, right? There's like, oh yeah. It was like, uh, Pedro. Pedro, who's fifth grade, yeah, that was my name in fifth, fifth grade Spanish. Well, well, Dude, I'm so happy to have you here. We were just saying we've known each other for a very long time through business and having business relationship, and you have done 1,000,001 things that we could ask about. I did want to start we were talking before we started recording about your father in law. I know you said that he passed recently. So let's start with your father in law. It sounds like you had really strong relationship with him. He had a lot of influence on you. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

2:49  Yeah, I'm thinking of how best to put this man, but I think that if you haven't experienced death of someone close to you then, then it might be hard to get, yeah, but if you have then you know that that feeling of longing, that that feeling of regret, that that feeling, if they're young, and wondering why they left. Now, my father in law was 81 he just turned 81 and we were expecting it. So it was a different, a different look at life and and our purpose and our legacy and what we're leaving behind, and that's really where I've been, man, the last last week or two. It happened about a month ago, the last week or two, going through that introspection where I'm trying to figure out what this means and what I'm going to do differently. And it's funny that we're talking at this time. I guess it's meant to be. I'm looking at the business again, and I'm saying, is this business providing me with the life that I want? And I started looking at certain things and certain clients and certain expectations, and I realized, and this has been the most minor one, because other times I've just torn apart the business completely from the bottom up and rebuilt. But this one was just a minor one, and where I'm going to be a little bit choosier, I'm going to be a little bit pickier about the people I work with, because I don't know how much time I have here on Earth, and I want to spend it with the people I want to be with, like you, like my family, like the people close to me, and less with people demanding things for me. So I'm doing a small shift into business where if I see anybody has anything that's outside of our core framework, I'm just going to be like, no, no, I can't do it. I wish I could help you, but this is our core competency, which doesn't require me. And if you don't want that, then, then maybe you need somebody else.

4:42  Yeah, it's, uh, the whole idea of someone dying, passing away, right? What that? Obviously, there's all the feelings about that person being gone, that's there, right? But it also casts your light in a very different way, right? Right? And, like, I lost my grandmother a year and a half ago now, maybe, and she was 97 or something, you know what I mean? Like she, she did great. Like she was a me, you know, she was with it. And, you know, like, is the like, the ideal possible scenario, short of just living to 150 or something, right, like, she, she did it and, and, like, just drank black coffee and ate her, like, go to breakfast. Was like toast, and she would put, like, canned, like frosting, like cupcake frosting, to eat that every single morning. You know? I mean, like, Yeah, she did it her way, and it worked out great. But it does. It casts your light in a different way, because it's a reminder of this thing that we've it's so easy to forget, which is, it's not forever, right? And it's not I'm like, that was like, the best possible case scenario, which means the average is probably way less than that. So it's like, maybe I have, you know, let's do the actuarial table thing. And maybe I got, like, 25 years. So it's like, you know, that's kids are also great for that too. So we were we, you know, for people who are unfamiliar with the Podcast, Factory, which is the business that you were talking about, right? You've had this business for quite a while. So walk, walk me back to the beginning of the Podcast Factory, because I don't actually know this story. Like, how did you start this business? What was the idea behind it originally? And then we can contrast that to kind of where you are now. Yeah.

6:33  So originally, wow, this was back in at least 10 years ago. Maybe it's probably been longer than 10 years I was in real estate, and I had a lot of real estate and a lot of leverage, and I lost everything, and I realized I had all my eggs in a real estate basket. So I rebuilt my my real estate business, and began looking at how I could have a diversify my income, let's say multiple streams of income, whatever you want to call that. I wanted some other money coming in that was not directly from real estate, so that that would never happen to me again. And so I went online and did many different things, sold info, products, books, the whole nine yard, all of that. Had that dream that pay per click, living the four hour work week. Type of dream, you know, I was going to have that man in India doing everything, and I just wanted to create something, to have some security. And it went through many different iterations. But the one thing was consistent was I was doing audio when nobody else was doing it, and it was only because I couldn't write. I was like, I barely could write. I barely graduated a high school man, and so I had the audio thing down before anybody else. And you and I met in the mastermind, right? I've been going to masterminds for years, and always meeting cool people. And this one mastermind I was in, everybody's like, Hey, you're doing a podcast with this guy, Hey, you're doing a podcast with that guy. Hey, can you help me with a podcast? And me? I was like, Oh yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Fortunately, I have a good partner, my wife, cupcake, right? She She says, hey, if all these people are asking you about this casting and you know how to do it, why aren't you selling that, right? Oh yeah. Okay, why am I not? Boom, right? There. Just started closing clients, right and charging way too little for the service, but learning so so much in that time, and I'm grateful to everybody I started with. But the thing about it is the reason why that business still exists today, and it's been all these years, 1014, years. I don't know how long it's been. It's been all these years. It is because there's something bigger behind it. And this is, this is another tie back to when you lose someone, you start looking at what's important to you. And so what was important to me was to create a income, a structure, some kind of security for for my my family, and then from that iterations, right? Fine, we got that settled. Now what's next? Well, you know what? What is this Podcast Factory? What's the Podcast Factory doing for the world? And I think about it in the terms of the right words from the right person at the right time can change a life. And so now my business is full of purpose in that, yeah, in the beginning it was about making some money. Who's going to deny that? I mean, we're in capitalist America, right? But now today, and the reason the business keeps going is because we're doing work with people who are doing, saying, sharing important things and changing the lives of the listeners, and we do our small part to make that more effective.

9:47  Yeah, and it's, it's such an interesting I mean, so it's so 10 years ago ish, so we're talking 2014 2015 something like that. It's wild to think like how different. Different the podcast landscape is. And I was thinking about you because I was at a conference out in California sort of before Thanksgiving. It was like a week. It's like 1500 business owners there. And I kept being like, I kept meeting people to be like, Oh, well, you I was like, this was such a cool conversation. Would you like to come on my podcast? And people were like, Yeah, would you like to come on my podcast? And so I was just, it was like, everyone I met had a podcast, so we're all the swapping podcasts. It's like, it's such a it's such a more common thing now for people to think, like, oh, I can have a podcast. I think when you got started, even though podcasts were becoming much of a thing that was a bigger ask or a bigger kind of leap for a lot of people, I imagine. So do you remember, like, those kind of earlier days? Was there more like selling people on here's why you should have a podcast in the first place, or was everybody already sold on that idea? So you got to

10:58  think about that. And in fact, that's, it's actually a little bit more than 10 years. So when I got started, was in 2008 and people were like, pod, what do? What you have to go on Apple, and what you need, you need a device to and you plug it into your computer and all that. Yeah, it was, it was a whole different thing. Now I will tell you this about that time, the listeners, I believe, were much higher quality. They were it was concentrated, because you really had to want it, right? You really had to get that podcast. And then when you found a podcast you liked, you had to be making space on your drive for it on your iPod. That's what the pod it's an iPod, right? Yeah, yeah. I didn't think about that making space like space for the new one. Yeah, that's I gotta, I gotta delete this old one to make space for the new one. That was the old troubles. But today, it's a whole different game. And where, I mean, you get a podcast on your TV, you get it in your car, you get it everywhere you go, it travels with you, so it's a whole different ball game. And so I'm excited about it. I'm excited about how far it's come, and I'm excited about taking the principles that we use to make our podcast effective tools for our clients and obviously resources for our listeners. Yeah.

12:22  So we were talking before we we kind of hit record, which is where all the gold is. So it's right before you hit record, not ceasing. But we were talking before we got started, about how when you have a business for a long time, your relationship to the business changes, and kind of what you want from it changes. It is very much like being in a relationship. I just kind of realizing this where it's like you change over time, and so your sort of needs from that relationship change over time, and you kind of grow together or or not, as is the case sometimes. So have looking back on that. Now let's say you could. You could go back in time and pull aside Jr, in like 2014 that version of you that's starting that business. I'm curious like, what advice you would give that version of yourself, knowing what you know now about how the business works, what clients benefit from it, how you feel about it now, what advice would you give your younger self? I

13:25  wasn't. I wasn't prepared for this question. But for some reason, the 1980s popped into my head, and it's just say no. Just say no to that business drug that you're chasing with higher, higher ROAs or higher top, top dollar, top line revenue, that that higher number that I was chasing for so many years, and I met you in a mastermind where that was all they were talking about, was that higher number, and I did that for so Many years. And Dan, I was so so so dissatisfied. I was so unhappy. It didn't matter what number I hit, it didn't matter what watch I got, it didn't matter what prize i i got myself for hitting that number. It was never enough. And I felt so, so empty. And I thought something was wrong with me when you look around at the grind culture and the bros that that the 10 comma club Bros and all that stuff, I thought that was who I was supposed to be. And if I could go back to talk to Jr, I would have a serious talk with him about who he wants to be and how he wants to get there. So when you think back to that, that process that you're talking about now, of sort of being obsessed with the number, and I think for anybody who's listening this, that's like a goal oriented, ambitious type of person, right? Can relate to that, right? That's a that's a very common kind of. Thing that we fall into, we sort of mistake the number for the thing that the number represents. And so thinking about that process that you went through of kind of, you know, becoming obsessed with the number and ultimately becoming dissatisfied. Why do you think that happened? Because I think for people who haven't had that experience, they're like, Well, you wanted to make money, now you're making more money. Is it that you worked with the wrong types of clients? Was it that you were you were working in the business? Like, what was it that sort of burns you out on that process that ultimately led to that dissatisfaction?

15:37  I think it's asking the wrong questions, like thinking that, what ad can I run? What ROI do I need? What one little trick can I learn in this mastermind that will get me to my next six figures? Right? I don't know why I was chasing those things. I guess that's what I thought I had to do. And it wasn't through, you know? It was the same thing. And so this is going to be a recurring theme throughout this talk, a friend dies, and I start questioning, what am I doing here? What's my purpose? Why does this, this matter? And this has happened time and and time again in my life. And it's really, I mean, dude, before when somebody would ask me, like, what's your goal? And I'd give them some number that I came up with because I went to a seminar, did a spreadsheet, and this is the number I should shoot for right now, if you ask me what my goal is, it's to die well, to die well. And in order to die well, what I'm called to do as a Christian man is, is live, well, live, right? Be a servant, take care of people. And I find that one bazillion, one bazillion commas, percent better than chasing the goals. You know what? I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's it. It sounds like, I mean, Kirk, Can I correct me if I'm wrong? I guess I don't want to put finger put fingers in your mouth. Put words in your mouth, the saying I was looking for. But hey, put fingers in your mouth is an even grosser version of that saying. So there you go. But it sounds like what you're really talking about is, like your focus shifted from like, inside to outside. Like you started folk folk. You took the focus away from like, what you thought you wanted, put it more on the people around you is that,

17:27  yeah, there's, there's. So I have some tenets to living my life, and one of them is to remember that I'm here not to be served, but to serve. And so in this conversation, for instance, I want to bear my heart. And number one, have fun talking to you. Number two, serve our listeners. If something resonates with them, then I've done my job. I'm here to give and so yeah, now that you put it that way, I was like, Yeah, that's right, and that's exactly it, because we get caught up in that, me, me, me, hit my goal, hit my goal, hit my goal. But how much more satisfying is it to help other people hit their goals and then somehow, like Zig Ziglar says, you help enough people get what they want. You get what you want, right? Somehow your bottom line is better. Somehow your life is better. Somehow your results are better. You're working with better clients. Man, that's what it's all about. So your business now, I know you're you're really even now, like, you're going through this kind of revision process, or, like, how you relate to it, how you relate to clients, who you take, who you don't, right? How do you think about the types of clients that you take on now? And I'm also curious, if you think the way you do it now you could have done in the beginning. Because I think a lot of people listening this might say like, well, that's one thing. You know, you already have money you can afford to but, and I've been doing some coaching. And I've been doing coaching like agency owners are very early, and I hear all the time like this, this client isn't a good fit. But if I could just get this revenue in then, and I'm like, there is no, then I give you something like, there's no, it's there's no, there's no, you know what I mean. So I'm curious, what would you say to someone who says, first of all, like, I'm curious how you think about taking on clients now and then? Two, do you think you could have done that in the beginning?

19:19  Yeah. And such a perfect example of this was going into my father in law passing, he had taken a fall, and it happened very quickly, within within a few weeks, but I had been working on this deal with this person who wanted to work with us, and who would have given me a lot of street cred in a certain industry, like really, really cache kind of thing. And also it was a lucrative deal, because he wanted to do something a little bit outside of our framework. So when you start customizing, you start charging a little bit more. And I'm going into that, and I. This is how weird. This all comes together, man, right before my father in law falls, I have a call with this guy, like the week before, and something hit me. Something struck me, and it was because he had these certain things that he wanted us to do to change our agreement that just had my spider senses tingling. And I woke up one morning and I said to cupcake, cupcake. I know this is we've been working on this deal for a while, for several months. It could be quite lucrative, but I don't want to take the deal. And she looks at me like, what she she's my chief financial officer, so she's like, what we need revenue? Yeah. I'm like, Listen, I don't know what it is. I can't explain it, but this guy is going to break our system, and then all of us are going to be miserable, because we've been down this road so many times before, and we've done debriefs and we've talked about it. So I'm, I'm pulling the boss card here, and we're not taking this client. And right after that, my dad, or, you know, my dad in law, falls, and he's in the hospital, and we have to all this time. I call last month, the lost month, because we were not here. We were gone the entire month. And if I had taken that client, he would have cost me my peace for that little bit of money. Peace, P, E, A, C, E, because yeah, I think, like, right now, I'm optimizing for peace in my life.

21:22  Yeah, man, I think it's a very powerful lesson. And it's also funny that you It went like that, because this is such a thing. I know I've done this exact same thing where you're like, you have that one client, it goes terribly, and you're like, never again, and then, like, a year goes by and, like, we literally, I'll tell you the story we had this client. Won't name him because he's a still around, but And look, God bless him, man. I hope I wish nothing but the best for this guy, but easily, far and away, my worst client of all time, of all time, like not even close. It's not even a distant second. It's this guy with a bullet, and it's just our worst client. He was all over us. He delayed on payments. He's constantly complaining he didn't do his part. Was just every it was contentious, it was stressful. I was getting texts about him, like, in the you know what I mean? Like, just the worst, yeah. And so he left, and I was like, like, I was like, just refund him. It's not worth it. Like, just get him out. Get him out. And, you know, and he was and he left. He was like, I hate you. I hate your team. Like, you're the worst. You're scammers. You stole my money, like, and I refunded him. But he's like, I stole my money, so I'm like, All right. So then, like this, I think it was this year I see his name pop up. There's like, a little notification that he's come in for a strategy call what? And I like, text Lou, our sales guy. And I was like, Lou, you are. I was like, You are not allowed to take this person as a client like this. And he's like, let me just talk to him. Let me just talk to him. And like, and I'm like, Lou, I swear to I was like, I was like, but you know what? Okay? I was like, You are head of sales. I was like, you remember how this went? I'm gonna make a prediction. This is not if you take him as a client, it's not gonna end one and he's like, all right. He's like, Look. He's like, I put all these safe, you know, safeguards in place. You never have to talk to him like, and like, I think, like, two months later, end up refunding him and he's on his way again. I was like, it's like, you just it's like the lure of the money is so strong, and you can always fool yourself into being like, this time is different, always, right? So I love your story of the it's always the late night insights that happen.

23:41  Hey guys, hope you enjoyed part one of this episode. It's just too good to limit to one show. Join us next week to hear the rest you.