Entrepreneurial Resilience: Leo Kanell’s Path of Triumph

Embark on a thrilling ride with finance wizard Leo as he shares his remarkable story of resilience and wisdom in the entrepreneurial realm. Leo's candid discussion about the rebirth of his career post-2008 recession is as gripping as it is educational, revealing the stark reality of bouncing back with integrity. Our conversation delves into the art of securing startup funding, offering an insider's perspective on overcoming the daunting challenges that new businesses often face. Leo's transformative experiences, from the dissolution of his first finance company to his triumphant return grounded in solid business values, will leave you both informed and inspired.

Prepare to shatter the myth that all debt is detrimental as Leo enlightens us on the strategic use of credit to bolster business growth. In this episode, he identifies the key differences between good and bad debt, illustrating how shrewd entrepreneurs can harness the former to scale their ventures and build lasting wealth. Success stories abound, and Leo's insights are complemented by practical advice from his educational courses, designed to arm business owners with the financial literacy necessary for informed decision-making.

This episode wraps up with an exploration of how diverse funding options can revolutionize client businesses, particularly in the shift toward digital events during the pandemic. Leo's personal setbacks are recast as invaluable learning experiences, echoing Mark Cuban's sentiment that in business, you only need to be right once. A surprising twist reveals how mentorship can emerge from unexpected avenues, further enriching our conversation. Finally, we underscore the transformative power of reading, with Leo offering recommendations on books that have profoundly impacted his journey. Listeners eager for further engagement and growth are encouraged to connect on LinkedIn, where the conversation—and the learning—continues.

Colorado’s best business coach, Baz Porter, has a new mindset strategy mentoring service to help you unlock new heights of growth, prosperity, happiness, and success. Book your first meeting with the coaching visionary at https://www.ramsbybaz.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Securing Funding for Start-Up Businesses
• 10:56 Building Credit and Funding Empowerment
• 18:50 Empowering Businesses With Financing Options
• 30:30 Building Relationships Through Reading Books

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Arise Financial's podcast and, as always, I am so blessed to have my next guest here. He is phenomenal in the world of finance and empowering entrepreneurs and businesses to really take hold of their businesses and provide them with all sorts of leverage and finance in their companies. It's a great honor to introduce Leo to the world. Leo, please say hello to everybody and tell people what you do.

Speaker 2: 0:31

How's it going, everybody? What I do is I help small business owners, entrepreneurs, successfully secure funding and financing so that they can grow and build their dream business, have the fuel they need to make that happen.

Speaker 1: 0:42

Your journey has been quite incredible. From where you've come from, what you do now, you've got so much success behind you. I see the Comma Club behind you in full display. That's a hell of an achievement. What was it like when you received that award?

Speaker 2: 0:58

It was awesome. It was actually just last year we were able to take my business partner and I were able to take a few of our staff, so the five of us went to Orlando and always a great time there at Funnel Hacking Live and presented the Two Common Club X award and we'd already earned a couple other Two Common Club awards and so it was amazing and just a great atmosphere with great entrepreneurs to learn from.

Speaker 1: 1:20

I love it when we talk about entrepreneurship and you serving them. There must have been a defining moment in your career and entrepreneurial life. Is there a defining moment that you would like to share with the audience, where it pivoted not just your mindset, but your?

Speaker 2: 1:36

whole growth. Yeah, no question, I'd say there was two pivotal moments, and the first one was when I was 25,. Two pivotal moments, and the first one was when I was 25, I started my first finance company. It was a mortgage finance company, and this was back in 2005. It got really busy, did really well for a few years, and then the recession of 08-09 hit.

Speaker 2: 1:56

Real estate went down, mortgage companies went out of business, and so it was during that very difficult time that I was losing everything and all of our investments were fail and I had to close that business down that I really realized that I had not invested in myself, I had not bought the books, I had not gone to the seminars, I had not bought training programs on sales and marketing and leadership, and I just thought I was smart enough to figure things out. And I realized, as I was losing everything, that actually I wasn't and that the quickest way to success is to work with someone who has a roadmap of success. Success leaves clues, and since then I've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into learning from people who are much more successful than I am, who have been at the game of entrepreneurship and become experts in different fields, and that was a pivotal moment, as I was having a massive failure and the repo guy was taking my cars away. And it was such a humbling experience, but one that without it, I wouldn't be where I am today, because it made me dig deeper and learn all the things that I had.

Speaker 2: 3:09

And the second pivotal moment was I had built a successful business finance company, but I brought on the wrong business partners, and this was in 2018. And so I said I got to start over and do this the right way, with the right values and principles. I was in the right business. Start over and do this the right way, with the right values and principles. I was in the right business. Everything was set up the right way, just had the wrong business partners. And so I left that business, started over in my home office, brought one employee with me, had to take $100,000 in debt from the old business with me to the new one and fast forward.

Speaker 2: 3:44

Six years later, and we've been so fortunate to see so much success because we built our business on the right values and principles. Do what you say you're going to do. Be unreasonably optimistic when difficult times hit and adversity hits. Focus on solutions for the client and the customer, and so it's just been very fulfilling. And so my two takeaways is you got to read the books, you got to invest in yourself coaches, mentors and then the second thing is make sure you have the right values and principles established, and that starts at the top. If you have business partners, make sure you choose very wisely, because that can change your culture.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Yeah, I love that advice. Well, people listen to this and they're just starting up. I want to ask you a question, because this is poignant for anybody who is starting a business and they're worried about some sort of funding. How difficult is it for someone who is a starter business to obtain this funding in a normal environment? And then do a comparison to what you do.

Speaker 2: 4:48

Yeah, it's a great question. 15 years ago I was looking to start a new business and I went down the street to my local bank, where I had been banking for almost a decade, and I thought surely they'll give me a loan to start my business. I have experience, I've been at this thing a while and they said no. And then I went to another bank and they said no, and I realized that it's easier in this country to get a $100,000 student loan as an 18-year-old with no experience, having no idea what you're doing, than it was or is to get a loan for a business, especially a new business, was or is to get a loan for a business, especially a new business. And so that led me to strategize and put together, categorize all the different options and ways that you could qualify and whether it was a 0% interest card or personal term loan or getting a loan off of an old retirement account figuring out a formula where anybody could access financing to start a new business.

Speaker 2: 5:43

And for the last decade, that's what we focused on is putting together that formula, that marketplace of options where you can always get access to the funding you need to grow a business. You just need to know what you need to do to qualify, and so that's what we decided to do. That was the problem that I solved, and it's just it's so fulfilling so many new business owners maybe you're a business coach or consultant and you work with a lot of people are looking to start or grow an existing business, and if you don't know the path to being fundable, then it can be very difficult I love that you've got a completely different approach.

Speaker 1: 6:18

You actually look for solutions for the person. It's tailored for the individual. Is that that correct, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 6:25

Yes, custom funding plans is what we call them. If.

Speaker 1: 6:29

Joe Bloggs from the street wanted to come along and they're looking to get funding. How can someone qualify for 0% funding? Because there's a lot of funds out there that say they're going to give you X amount but when you look at the terms and conditions and the interest rates they're astronomical, they're like through the roof. So, for instance, you want to borrow a grand and then 12 months later you're paying back $7,000, $8,000, $9,000 over the interest period. How do they come to you and go? How would you provide, or help someone provide, a?

Speaker 2: 7:03

0% finance option. Yeah, exactly right. Let's say we take a small business owner and they've just gotten started and they're doing maybe $15,000, $20,000 a month in sales through their business bank account. They'll probably hear from different business loan brokers who will offer them a $15,000 to $20,000 loan, paid back in a year, with daily payments. They'll literally take a little payment out of your bank account and you might pay back on a $20,000 loan. You might pay $30,000 back in that 12-month period, so you're literally paying $10,000 of interest. If you calculated the rate, it'd be close to 50%. And those are a lot of the options that are available to small business owners who are in the startup phase, just getting started.

Speaker 2: 7:48

And so what we wanted to do was hey, what if I could get you three lenders that each gave you a $15,000 business credit card with a 0% interest rate up to 18 months? That would be so much more affordable than getting that short-term business loan. And so that's what we built out. And so if somebody just does a decent job of making their payments on time with their personal credit history and they keep their business bank account positive, those are the types of products that they can get. And so the monthly payment ends up being like on the same $20,000, instead of it being three or $4,000 a month, and all this interest, it ends up being a on the same $20,000, instead of it being three or $4,000 a month, and all this interest, it ends up being a payment of $400 a month and you're paying no interest for as long as 18 months.

Speaker 2: 8:33

And that's how somebody can qualify for 0% interest. And it really just starts with having at least a 650 FICO credit score. You're paying things on time, you've got at least a $3,000 credit card limit on a card that you've had for a year and maybe have a little bit of loan history, and if you're in that position, you've got a chance to qualify for some 0% interest funding. And it's amazing, like in this country, that that's actually a possibility. And that's what we do is we have creative funding solutions with rates as low as 0% interest for someone to grow and build a business.

Speaker 1: 9:08

And I think that's imperative in this day and age for people starting up who find it so difficult sometimes to come along and go. I've got nothing. I've got a bit of sales, but I have all this history behind me and I'm not in that position because I'm an immigrant and I'm just building all of that. So it's a little bit different for someone who's come across the country and starting from zero, basically. But when it comes to funding, is there a formula that you've found that's really been successful for entrepreneurs, and not just for your business? But the people you've guided into that have gone on to scale beyond seven figures.

Speaker 2: 9:50

Yeah, no question, there is a formula, and one of the examples I'd love to share is the example of Phil Knight. So Phil Knight's the founder of Nike and obviously Nike is the top sports apparel brand in the world and Phil is a multibillionaire. But long before he had an IPO in the 80s for Nike, he was bootstrapping this thing. He was building relationships up with lenders locally and across the country, building up business credit where he would take out small loans, pay them back, get a small line of credit, pay it down to zero, and through that effort of building those relationships he was able to continue to progress to bigger loans, bigger lines of credit. And one of my friends actually is an executive with one of the lenders in our marketplace who gave him and also Kevin Plank of Under Armour, who followed a similar path, gave him these creative loans to help them build the business and then eventually they were able to get the IPO and now they've got plenty of cash and they're in great shape. But the formula really is building up personal credit, building up business credit and then, once you have that relationship, if you take good care of it, it will lead to more relationships and more options. So let me give you another example.

Speaker 2: 11:10

I opened a business credit card up for my business three years ago and just a small $10,000 limit for that business credit card and I would use it and I would pay it down to zero. And I did that month after month and all of a sudden my, my credit limit went, without me even having to ask it, went from $10,000 to $10,000 with just one account. And that account makes me about $10,000 a year in free cashback bonuses that I actually use, that my wife and I use to go to Disney World. We take our five kids and those cashback rewards paid for that. And so that's the formula.

Speaker 2: 11:47

It's how can I build up my personal credit, my business credit and build relationships with the right lenders that, without me even having to ask them, they boost that credit limit up. And now it gives me great flexibility. If I need to pay a $50,000 sponsorship or join a mastermind, or I've got an innovative marketing campaign or I need to hire somebody, I can tap a line of credit. I can tap that $115,000 card, pay for those things without having to always drain my cash and give myself time to earn a return on the investment in my business. And so the formula is to build the credit and build those relationships, and then you continuously qualify for better funding as you go up the funding ladder, and that's what we teach our clients to do.

Speaker 1: 12:35

I love that model and it's accessible for everybody. This model you come, you teach, you do courses. I remember you do courses around this, don't you?

Speaker 2: 12:48

We do, and the question I always love to ask everybody is hey, did you and I've asked this to hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, coast to coast and virtual and live events to say, hey, did you learn a lot about credit and money and funding in high school or college?

Speaker 2: 13:03

And I don't care where you're from, what country you're from the answer is inevitably no. No one taught me that, and so everybody that even just applies for funding with our company, we give them free access to our credit college course that unpacks hey, here's how your credit score is calculated, here's what the creditors and the credit bureaus want to see for you to get a higher score, and if you go through that course, it'll literally save you hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest over your lifetime, and that's something we give away for free to anybody that that's looking for financing options, regardless of whether they work with us, because we want. We're on a mission to eradicate disinformation related to credit, because no one teaches us these things. So part of our mission is yes, let's get you the money, the best money possible, but let's educate and empower you so that you can make the right decisions and qualify for better options in the future.

Speaker 1: 13:56

I love that when we look at wisdom in specific areas and you're the expert funding and the piece of advice or couple pieces of advice you can give the listeners that is somewhat unconventional and out there but actually is on point.

Speaker 2: 14:29

One of the unconventional ideas out there is that debt is bad and you need to avoid debt at all costs, and that's what was taught by a lot of the financial so-called experts out there. A lot of people think Dave Ramsey has been telling them to get out of debt and he is telling most people, but he was on a podcast recently. Most people don't know this and they ask him what about business? What if you have a proof of concept, as Damon John from Shark Tank says, and you can get a loan to invest in marketing or a piece of equipment? Does that make sense? Is that bad debt in a business sense? And he admitted no, that's not. If you're investing in assets and using financing for a business and you've got a proof of concept, then that is something that makes sense. And that's one of the things where financial advisors say oh, never take. In fact, mark Cuban actually said never take a loan out to start a business. And yet Kevin Plank did. Phil Knight of Nike did. I took $65,000 out in credit cards to start seven figures funding. It's now an eight figure business. Russell Brunson did the same thing, building ClickFunnels.

Speaker 2: 15:35

Alex Hormozy, who has gone viral everywhere across the internet. He literally says in his book $100 million leads that he would have gone bankrupt and failed a business if he didn't know how to market and bring in leads, create awesome offers and have a really good business credit card, which he had $100,000 business credit card. If he didn't have those things, he wouldn't have succeeded. And so that's how important this can be, and that conventional wisdom is oh, don't ever go into debt. But actually wealthy people are always.

Speaker 2: 16:08

In fact, robert Kiyosaki I saw in an episode the other day. He is in debt $1.4 billion, but what he's not telling you is he has assets worth several billion dollars that are bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in cash flow income, and so there's a difference between good debt and bad debt. Good debt makes you money, builds your empire. Bad debt is like when you go on vacation with debt. Right, or you get debt to buy a really expensive car that doesn't necessarily make you money, or you go get those expensive clothes or house furnishings and you go into debt for that. That's the bad debt, and so that's one of those unconventional truths that we share with people.

Speaker 1: 16:47

No, I love that and it's good advice because people can be nice. I know I was. When I started this up, I didn't know what good debt was, bad debt, funding, where to get it from. There's all sorts of things that I learned along the way. If you're a business coach or a consultant and any sort of entrepreneur, really, how can adding funding increase the sales in your business? I know this is a diverse topic, but how would you advise somebody to do this?

Speaker 2: 17:15

Yeah, it's a great question and I remember I was reading one of Grant Cardone's books and he talked about it. If you haven't found a way to add financing options to the product or the service that you sell, then you're leaving significant amounts of money, profits and success on the table, because everybody's in different positions and, whether they have the cash or not, if there's an opportunity for them to be able to finance your product or service, then you're going to be able to serve more clients and more people. And especially I know there's a lot of listening right now that work with and teach people how to start businesses and you help maybe someone in e-commerce or real estate or digital marketing or whatever your space is that you're an expert at. And if you have offers that are $5,000, $10,000, I know there's a lot of marketing agencies where your clients might need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to market and grow their business, and if they can't spend that with you, then you don't get to work with that customer, client or business owner. And so if you work with business owners, if you work with clients where you have high-ticket offers and you're not offering funding options to them, then you are reducing your sales, sometimes by 30, 40. And so what happens is anybody who is in that situation. It's interesting During 2020, we used to do all these live events and so we would be in person and we'd help people get financing and help these business coaches with high ticket offers.

Speaker 2: 18:50

And then, when COVID hit, we had to pivot completely to virtual events and everybody wanted visibility, so we had to invest tens of thousands of dollars into a partner tracking portal. So now we've got literally. We actually have over 10,000 business coaches, consultants, marketing agencies that use our funding portal to be able to send their clients in to get financing for their programs, and some of them one of the first groups we started working with was just this amazing couple that taught people how to build an e-commerce business on Amazon, and we have provided, I think, over $10 million in funding for their clients, which has led to millions and millions of dollars in sales that they would not have had without our funding programs being introduced to their prospects who want to work with them. And that's how powerful this can be. It can literally take a seven-figure business to an eight-figure business and beyond, or a six-figure business to a seven-figure business, when you offer funding to your client.

Speaker 1: 19:52

And that's a distinction between a sale sometimes and then completely abandoning it to the next level and they'll go somewhere else. You mentioned earlier, leo, about bouncing back from your car repo and all the rest of it. What was that experience actually like looking back on it now? Was it a blessing or was it? Oh my God, you're still going. You don't even want to look at it these days.

Speaker 2: 20:17

No, I always. It makes for such a great story when I can tell people that my home was in foreclosure and the repo, we would tell my kids don't open the door, the repo bear is coming to take our car. It was tough on my two oldest. My three youngest of course they've lived a much different life than my two oldest are a little bit they always talk about it maybe a little bit scarred, but honestly, we wouldn't be where we are without that situation. I remember going through it. Probably the worst part about going through it was I just took so long to bounce back right. I took so long.

Speaker 2: 20:52

How fortunate are we to live in a country where you literally can start over and if it didn't work out the first time, you can start over and go start another business. And you look at so many successful entrepreneurs have done that, where they had a failure but they were able to start over. And one of the cool things I love about what Mark Cuban says is you actually only have to be right in business once. And so there's so many great lessons. All the lessons we learn most of the time come from failure. Success doesn't teach us near as much as failure does, and so I'm incredibly grateful. There's no question that we would not be where we are now. We wouldn't be able to help so many people and provide dozens of jobs to amazing people across the country with our companies, and failure is a necessary ingredient. At least it was for me. Now, hopefully, a lot of you listening can learn from my failures, and everyone else's, and avoid those. But failure is a great teacher.

Speaker 1: 21:49

I know I agree completely. When we look at mentors and you mentioned mentors earlier has there been any unlikely mentors in your life that have just come from left field and you're like, wow, where did that come from?

Speaker 2: 22:03

But they've taught you so a valuable lesson that's always stuck with you yeah, no, no question and coming out of left field. What's funny is I've always I've tried to coach each of my kids in sports and my daughter was always dance, so I never got the chance to coach her up in sports because she was dance from age three. But each of my boys I've been able to coach them in football and there's just so many great lessons that you learn in football and the first tackle football team I ever coached was with my oldest son and this was years ago. This was back in. This was like 11 years ago and I was right in the middle of starting to build back up and I was getting into business funding and I was very new to everything and one of the assistant coaches he I had no idea who he was, his name was Bob and Bob, it turned out, owned a big finance company here in Utah, and so I learned so many interesting things from Bob about how he led and how he led people and how he would lead by asking questions and getting everybody in the group involved to make a good decision, and we had a really great year that year coaching those kids and made it to the semifinals. Just a great team, a lot of fun, and I just learned so much about leadership. And Bob is still a mentor today that I'll meet with. He just sold his company for tens of millions of dollars and is an incredible entrepreneur himself. But yeah, that was unexpected, and so that's what's interesting, right, you can learn from people and connect with mentors in all these different areas, and sometimes you just get out. Yesterday, one of my other partners he loves horses and so he does all these rodeo events and he brought in this gentleman who's the owner of Valiant CEO Magazine, which just had Grant Cardone on the cover, and Kathy Ireland all these amazing entrepreneurs and so it's interesting. You can connect with mentors in person when you just get out and you do different things that you're passionate about. You coach your kids up in sports, you join a horse club where everybody loves to ride horses, and so I definitely encourage those things.

Speaker 2: 24:20

The other thing I'll say that's unique in 2024 compared to maybe previous decades you don't have to have a mentor. That's in person, right? People can listen to your podcast and change their lives. They can engage in your programs and your blogs and everything that you do on social media and get to know you and how you think and learn so much from your podcast and everything that you do as an entrepreneur, roz, and so that's the other thing.

Speaker 2: 24:49

You can have these online entrepreneurs that are mentors, that are coaches, and then eventually you get to meet them, and that's a really awesome experience. One of my big mentors is Patrick Bet-David, and a couple of years ago I had the chance to speak at an event and sponsor right before he did as the keynote speaker, and then I got to hang out with him, ask him questions. He did a video for me, but he was my online mentor for four years before I ever met him in person, and so that's what's amazing about the technology that we live in today you can engage with somebody online as a mentor and learn so much from their books, programs and so forth, and that's an amazing story.

Speaker 1: 25:32

What you've done is capsulate the technology aspect and the future pacing of where the industry is going, not just with the finance industry, but with the entrepreneurial industry. In your experience. When you've got a vast wealth experience here, why is it so important that business owners have to find other ways now to offer finance to their clients?

Speaker 2: 25:55

It's just important to have different options right, because there are different finance companies out there and some of them are very expensive.

Speaker 2: 26:03

With our programs, I always thought they're a partner with us.

Speaker 2: 26:07

They shouldn't have to pay us anything to offer our financing programs, and so that's what our belief has always been that we're partners with these business coaches, consultants, digital marketing agencies, and it's a relationship that we value, and so we try to make it as easy as possible.

Speaker 2: 26:27

And so, whenever you're offering financing to a group, a community, and you've got high ticket offers and masterminds, what we found to be really important is educating and empowering them, because they didn't get this education in school and college, and so we've created a 30-minute workshop where anybody who has clients that need access to funding but they just want to know how it works a little bit more and how credit and money work in general, we'll do an educational workshop for 20 minutes, answer questions, show them all the different options that are available, and then that opens the door up to where now they feel so much more comfortable, and now they feel like they know you and you were able to answer some questions for them, and so that's where it's really important, I think, with finance programs. How many times do you go somewhere and they're like, oh, just apply here, and they don't really give you much information. So the more you can educate and empower people about finances within your business, that can open up a lot of doors of success.

Speaker 1: 27:30

I love that and it's. You mentioned two things for me that were key there, and it's empowering people and education. And I think what you do is so unique and actually so rare because people don't do that. People, just as you said here's a link, go and apply. It damages your credit. You've got to do other things and then they come back to you with all these options. Nothing makes sense and it's all here called a pig. You have a very concise funnel where you go in. This is what you do Educate them, connect, educate them more and streamline the process. You've obviously come up to a pinnacle of your career. What's next?

Speaker 2: 28:11

for you? Great question. So for years, as we've helped business owners to acquire financing sometimes it's loans, lines of credit, 0% interest, business credit cards, whatever the best option is they qualify for and for years we would follow them and try and help them and with other aspects of their business, and what we realized over the last several years is people are tired of having to log into so many different accounts to manage their finances. Isn't there a platform where I could do it? Once?

Speaker 2: 28:43

We got asked that for the last several years and then we realized that one of the biggest struggles that business owners small business owners have and there's more than 30 million of them across our country is they struggle with cashflow, like having money left over. They might even bring millions of dollars into their business each year, but after they make payroll and they pay rent and marketing costs and whatever else they've got, there isn't always a lot of money left over, and they're oftentimes confused to why that is. And so we said, well, there's gotta be a good cashflow forecasting tool out there to help business owners make these decisions. And so we did the research, we went and we tested all these different software platforms and there wasn't a cash flow forecasting software out there for business owners where you can manage all your accounts and know that you're profitable in your business and that you can afford to pay yourself. You can look forward and know that you're profitable in your business and that you can afford to pay yourself. You can look forward and know that you can hire somebody and sometimes it means you get a loan, a line of credit, but there isn't a tool for all that, and so we said, well, let's build it.

Speaker 2: 29:48

And so for the last couple of years, we've been busy building myfigurescom, which is a cashflow forecasting platform for business owners to be able to make the right decision and know that they can hire someone, know that they can afford to do this or make the decision. Actually, that product or service I was going to offer at this price actually isn't going to work. I need to adjust it, I need to make it more valuable, I need to drop my costs. So there's just these things that business owners are missing because there isn't a software solution for it, and so we're super excited to be launching that in the next couple of months.

Speaker 1: 30:27

Oh, we're going to look forward to that Before we wrap up today. Leo, is there anything that you'd like to share with the audience, whether it be if you could start a movement today for the future of your company and the people you serve, what would that movement actually be?

Speaker 2: 30:45

It would be reading books In my 20s as an entrepreneur and everything I was doing. I bet I read a total of two books.

Speaker 2: 30:55

And they were entertainment books. They weren't books that were teaching me anything. Fast forward the last several years and I've read hundreds and hundreds of books.

Speaker 2: 31:03

The most important thing for me in my house is to make sure my kids are learning to love to read, and there's an old quote from Will Smith where he said, if you have any problem in the world, it's probably not a new one, and there's probably a book that somebody wrote who overcame that problem. And so any movement I would love to start would be hey, if you're in the entrepreneurial space, if you're a business owner, if you're trying to build something, then we should all be sharing the best books with each other and learning from them, because that's how you can learn so many new skills and things, and these things are not generally not taught in school. I would also say that you need to be investing in yourself, right, you need to be working with experts and learning from mentors, and that needs to be something that you're not doing just once in a while, but you're doing it every single day. I love that.

Speaker 1: 31:59

I'm going to ask you something that you're not doing just once in a while, but you're doing it every single day. I love that. I'm going to ask you something because you're a book freak, and I love that. What's your favorite book?

Speaker 2: 32:06

Oh, there's so many, so many different books. I can't say that there's one that's my favorite above and beyond others. I'll share some of my favorite books that have made a really big impact on me. The 10X Rule was a big one by Grant Cardone. How to Win Friends and Influence People in Terms of Building Relationships by Dale Carnegie is another super important book for me. Choose your Enemies Wisely and your Next Five Moves by Patrick Bette David, both amazing books.

Speaker 2: 32:36

Choose your Enemies Wisely is actually a book about building a business plan, and so if you've never actually built a really good business plan, I highly recommend that book because it will help you think differently about building a business plan and the problem with business plans we usually build it and then we don't even look at it. Like I've got it down, summarized into one page, I literally pull that thing up on my computer, on my phone. I've got it on my whiteboard in the office and at home and I look at it every day. And if you can look at that business plan every day and make sure is what I'm doing actually moving me closer to achieving that business plan, then you're on the right path. And then there are days where what am I doing?

Speaker 2: 33:19

I that business plan, then you're on the right path, and then there are days where what am I doing? I'm not even working on stuff that matters. I need to delegate this out and work on the things that matter, and so I guess that would be the book that I would say that you should look at is Choose your Enemies Wisely by Patrick Bedeba, and then he's got a business plan template that you can actually follow just in that book, and it doesn't matter whether it's the end of the year that you're listening to this or the middle of the year, the beginning of the year. You can start right now and build that business plan.

Speaker 1: 33:44

I love that advice and it's I know. Not personally, I don't know him, I haven't had the privilege of meeting him like you, but I know of him, I know what he does. It's incredible, and for you met him and to even be mentored by him is remarkable. So thank you really for sharing your story and inspiring others. If everything, all the links are going to be in the description below. The blogs will be out the articles. So if you're listening to this press, pause, go back and listen to some of these tips. Is there anything you'd like to leave us with today, leo, that's going to give some inspiration, call to action. What do you want to give to the audience for them to get in touch with you, other than the links below, obviously?

Speaker 2: 34:29

Yeah, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I try to put out as much free valuable content and lessons learned. So it's Leo K-A-N-E-L-L right there on LinkedIn and shoot me a message, shoot me a connection request. I try to respond to all the messages that come in and connect with everybody that asks to connect. But yeah, that is it. It's make the connections. The most valuable parts of my business are the relationships that we've built with people, and sometimes that started with just a message on LinkedIn. So my last word would be to do meaningful work and build meaningful relationships. Ray Dalio says that's his purpose and I think it's a beautiful message to build relationships. Business is a team sport and it can be very lonely as an entrepreneur and business owner and I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn and build those relationships with you.

Speaker 1: 35:30

Awesome, leo. I want to thank you for your time. Have an amazing day on purpose, always For myself. Please download it, share it with a friend. It will change somebody's life. Connect with Leo if you're looking for funding advice and you're ready to scale your business. I highly recommend him For myself. I'm Baz. It's a privilege, it's an honor. Remember, live with purpose and always inspire with legacy. Talk to you soon.