The Legacy of Steve Kaye and my Plan for 2021
I’m a deal maker.
I love to sell stuff. I love to grow ideas. I love to find ways where people can come together, join forces, and create something bigger than what they could each create on their own.
I’ve always loved the idea of being a communicator. When I was first getting sober, I worked for a guy named Steve Kaye. Bryan and I both worked together selling medical supplies for a company called Support Plus Medical, and Steve was our sales manager.
Steve had a great impact on me, because he was the first person who made me understand that the only way to become truly wealthy (both with finances and time) is to have skin in the game.
You need to have a piece of the action. You need to be invested in the long term success of something.
This mentality is what has enabled us to build Stodzy with such scalability. Typically speaking, agencies and firms struggle to find scale, because the more business they get, the harder the founder has to work in order to serve the clients.
But we approached Stodzy with a “product mindset” where each time the business grew, the more Bryan and I focused on how we could get out of the way.
The result is a more systematized process, less stress, a more tightknit team, and more freedom for me to find ways to apply our skillset in a way that maximizes leverage.
All of this is leading me to an idea.
The purpose of me moving my daily blog to substack (timothygrant.co) was because I wanted to save my “personal brand” (timstodz.com) for something that was more aligned with my work.
One of the most valuable assets anyone can own is a thriving personal brand. Timstodz.com is very important to me and I take it seriously.
But it’s ben a struggle to map out a long term strategy for my personal brand. After years of struggling with this, (literally it’s been years, ask my wife) I have finally come to a decision.
Let me explain…
I’m getting very into the weeds here, but the topics of my work overlap in ways that make it complicated for me to find a clear direction for TimStodz.
For example…
I could use my personal brand to talk about SEO - But why? I already do that with Stodzy. In fact, Stodzy is becoming one of the most trusted SEO resources out there, so why get in the way of that?
I could use my personal brand to talk about content marketing - Why? I already do that with Copyblogger. Why would I compete with one of the biggest content marketing brands in the world? Especially when it means competing against myself?
I could use my personal brand to write about whatever I want - This is reasonable, but I’ve been through this before. The truth is that these daily blog posts make for terrible marketing material. I treat my daily blog more like an idea box than a brand. It’s where I can share random ideas, pictures of my travels, short form brainstorms and opinioned articles without overlapping on top of my work. I’d rather save my main site for the highest quality content that will build a legitimate following.
So what wtf should I do?
Well, I’ve already determined that my podcast will be hosted on TimStodz.com. I very much enjoy the podcast and it’s a great way to meet new people and have fascinating conversations with people I wouldn’t usually have the opportunity to talk to.
But what about the brand? What about the messaging?
What is the value that I can bring to the world?
Which brings me back to Steve Kaye.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Steve was teaching me about leverage. How can I use my time, apply leverage, and create a disproportionate return?
You do that by making investments.
Steve would always remind me that the sales I make today, are what creates compounding returns in the future.
For example, if I make one sale a day, what I’m really doing is creating a portfolio of recurring sales that stack up month over month. So if I make 1 sale a day and each sale generates a return of $20 a month, in the first month I only made $600. But if I keep doing that over the course of a year, all of the sudden I’m making $7200 a month.
Most importantly, I’m not working any harder or increasing my stress. The compounding rate of return is what creates the scale.
This is why people who make investments in the present that create returns in the future, always get ahead.
Most people are not wiling to make this sacrifice. Most people want the immediate return of cash in hand, which is why most people work jobs.
All work is noble, I’m not by any means trying to discourage people from getting a job.
But my mentality is always to create scale, and to do that requires investing in your future self.
Which brings me to the grand finale…
I’m going to make TimStodz.com a personal investment firm. I’m going to create weekly (ish) reports that analyze certain markets and give insight into emerging markets and uses my brand to find new deals and new opportunities that I want to invest in.
I’m going to speak to the young, up and coming entrepreneur who is realizing that going to college and going $80k in debt just to start off at a $32k a year salary is a huge fucking scam and an absolute waste of time.
The best thing about this is that there’s no rush on it. I don’t need to find any deals. I don’t need to make any money. I can do this on my own time and I can use my writing as a way to learn about new markets and find new opportunities.
If anything comes from it, great… if not, it will still be worth it because I will continue to build my following and I will educate myself by deep diving into markets.
I’m a blue collar guy. I come from a blue collar family. I never would have been introduced to these ideas if it weren’t for Steve Kaye, and if I didn’t have the extra insight from Bryan.
I think of all the regular working class high school kids right now that are about to enter an economy that isn’t looking out for their best interest. I want to teach these kids how to make investments, so that they can learn how to make their money work them them instead of working for their money.
That’s the plan.