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Connect with Rick
https://www.agelessentrepreneurs.org/
https://ageless-startup.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickterrien/

Connect with Russ
https://russjohns.com/
https://thepiratesyndicate.com/
https://nextstepnext.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nextstepnext/

Audio digitally transcribed by Descript

[00:00:00] Introduction: Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast™, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

[00:00:10] Russ Johns: It's a good day to have a great day. And we're here on the #PirateBroadcast™ to bring you #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. And I was getting caught away caught up in the conversation was Rick this morning. Good morning, Rick. How are you doing?

[00:00:23] Rick Terrien: Good morning, Russ. I'm doing fine. Great day. Looking forward to this conversation.

[00:00:28] Russ Johns: It's funny cause we were talking before the show about all kinds of things and I was getting excited because this business of entrepreneurship and growing your own thing, it can be challenging. I'm not going to lie, I've been an entrepreneur most of my life in and out of corporate environments and having a side hustle all the time and the reality is that it's an exciting opportunity. To actually share, help other people and support communities. So I want to talk a little bit about that, Rick, and when some of the good things that you're doing with your platform and share it with the pirate community and let people know that how they can get involved and what they can do to support you. So tell us what you're up to today.

[00:01:14] Rick Terrien: Thank you, Russ. I'm finishing up wrapping up a really cool startup in Pittsburgh. But I was able to, during this pre pandemic and it, during the pandemic, I got a book published on supporting entrepreneurship in the second half. And that book is called ageless startups start a business at any age. And of course during the pandemic just blew this up. We've got a great speaking tour and book tour, and all of that as a lifelong entrepreneur, you just got to keep pivoting all of that. And there was a silver lining, actually better silver lining in the chaos that in launching that kind of a book and then some friends and I have launched a nonprofit center for ageless entrepreneurs as a platform for sharing information among this age group. And people interested in this. There was a happy ending and it is a really cool just taking the clothes off the website. It's a little touchy, but it's a minimal viable product, so we're ready.

[00:02:10] Russ Johns: Okay. I love minimal viable products. I've created many of them where I probably could have done a little more research 'cause, you have to have a minimal viable community as well. One of the things that I loved about the idea that you're working on is that it's for it's this idea planted in the more seeds. Community, there's a lot of, talk about, 20 year olds, 20 somethings, jumping into the entrepreneurial community. However, it's really statistically it's people over 45. As you mentioned before, we started that are the ones that really start up businesses and get things moving forward. So talk a little bit about.

[00:02:57] Rick Terrien: It's so I'm going to back up and just say, they're all good. Is if it's legal, it's good. And there's all just all, a whole range of entrepreneurship activities people can get in, build out in investor led businesses and raise the money. All of it's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. But on the other side of this, when I was doing the research for the book, there's a hundred million people in the United States. 45 to 60 ish, the sixties, 5% of them say that they would like to keep working and start their own ML enterprise that's twenty-five million people. And the generally in my world, they come out as one person entities. I want them to arm up and get their legal status around themselves. But just prior to the pandemic Russ, there was 32 million total businesses in the United States of those 25. Next. Over 75% or one person businesses. Now they don't generate the kind of hockey stick revenues that come out of the larger corporations. But if you're one of those people, those twenty-five million people running their own business, there's nothing small or lifestyle about it. And you're making a contribution to communities you love and markets you love. You're able to stay, continue being resilient, making contributions, find me something wrong with.

[00:04:17] Russ Johns: And there's not a dang thing wrong with that. The other thing I love about being an entrepreneur is the flexibility I want to, I won't necessarily call it the freedom. However I will call it. You have a choice about how you want to work, how you want to show up who you want to do business with all of the things that you want to support. And it's really. For me, it's very satisfying to be able to do that kind of work in your book. Have you talked about some of the elements of entrepreneurship and some of the reasons why people start up a business?

[00:04:52] Rick Terrien: Sure. And it's all across the board, of course. But to the point you were just making it's control over your time. People in the game know that's. You got to have some money. You've got to support yourself, but control over your time as among the most valuable gifts you could ever give yourself. And there's these small one person businesses don't even necessarily have to work full time, statistically, most don't. So the trick is to give yourself permission, let yourself enter this field. You don't have to know everything. You can find peers, you can find mentors. There's all kinds of businesses. Enterprise as you can start, we usually start with something, and love and industry that you grew up in a community that you love. There's all kinds of ways to make small contributions that can generate revenue.

[00:05:45] Russ Johns: It's amazing. And when you start to think that way, Opportunities. You're surrounded by opportunities and get away. You can't get away. It's it's everywhere you look. There's an opportunity. I just, for me that's the way I see things. And it's okay. And I'm a professional squirrel hunter, as I tell you. And for me it's, I really have to focus on some things that are moving the needle. And so that's really cause I'm a community builder. I like networking. I build in Ray. I love relationship building. I love connecting with people just like you. And the reality is that we have to balance all these activities. And in order to continue to grow and expand. So what are some things that you've noticed along your journey as entrepreneurship is some of the things that new entrepreneurs need to think about and consider as far as the way they think about things, the way I approach things, what are some things that you can share with the pirate community today? Okay. Sure.

[00:06:49] Rick Terrien: The overall theme is that it's not hard. It's just. Anybody could do this. And I believe that there's three, four of the target audience I'm talking to here. This is this older group. That's either just beginning as entrepreneurs or leaning into it is there's three main elements you want to make sure you hit, you want to start small. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's actually a much smarter strategy. You. Control your money control your time. You start small. That's really critical. And I think you need to start smart. And in my world, that's finding your tribe, your pirate network. We've all got them. We've all have our networks, but finding supportive business networks is really critical. That's the start smart is find your network, find your tribe. And the last thing is start writing. This is going to take longer than you expect. You could always swap money at things. It's like the story of when's the best time to plant a tree plant. A tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. I get to take a while. Get it underway, do a little bit every day on it. And a little ways out. You're getting up your own entity. You're going to be in the game and you're going to be making a country.

[00:08:00] Russ Johns: Yeah. What prompted you to write a book?

[00:08:02] Rick Terrien: During one of my startups the one I started when I was 45. So when I got a bunch of awards for this thing, it was really a great run. We had customers all over the world. It was small, but it was really exciting and got a bunch of patents for this stuff. I was installing one of these machines at a John Deere factory in Dubuque. I was thinking it is, I was black, my Nile's turn ranch oil all over. It's a big battery. I say I ought to introduce other people to the joys of this lifestyle and are not going back to my hotel. And for the longest time, And it was covered with oil and blood and from the day. And and I wrote out my first blog post and I ended up writing one of those just every Friday Workman I just made myself do it until I liked to doing it every Friday. And then I couldn't miss it every Friday. And soon enough I had enough of those. There was a big following. I let it go because I had to do another start-up, but all of that content was there. And when the time came. I was making a move. I decided, you know what? I really do need to share this to a wider audience. So I put it together. I could have self published it, but I went the traditional route. I got an agent and got a really great publisher it's entrepreneur magazine. It was a really wonderful experience. My editor made. Much better than the one I gave to her. She really tightened it up and he added to it. There's some great checklists in this thing. And I, it came out a much better book than I, I originally written. And so the process worked as well. So I learned a bunch through that Russ, and I'm glad to

[00:09:36] Russ Johns: do it. It's a journey. It's a journey. It's a, it's definitely a, something that anyone that has a thought of doing it should probably consider doing. Take the plunge, even if you self publish, it's more common now than ever, and it's easy access and with tools like Amazon putting, you're putting your message out there, sharing your gifts, sharing your experience. Because there's somebody out there starving to hear that information, they want to know what your thinking, what were you thinking? What was the process? How did you go through this? How did you survive this? There's so many elements about it. And I think we're like I was talking to Todd last night. We're living the most amazing time in humanity's history where we actually have the opportunity to capture these moments. A blog post is one. And video, like this is another way, and I just want to, I want to just want to applaud people that take the initiative to start right now. And I think it's so important. So applaud you for taking the initiative and doing that and sharing it with the world, Rick it's amazing opportunity to share your gifts.

[00:10:48] Rick Terrien: Well, in that interview with Todd, which was a really great interview he was making a good point. If the skillset that everybody is going to want and need, no matter what, if you're employed self-employed or if you are employed and looking to become self employed, or you want to move up in an organization, everybody's looking for content creators and people who can present carefully and accurately and succinctly That's it, you can't go wrong. You're investing in yourself like creating this content. And the first of them is going to be awkward and goofy, and you're going to drop stuff on the floor. And nothing's going to be perfect on this, but you just keep at it and put one foot in front of the other. And there will be audiences for it. This is a big wide world, and there's a lot of subject matter experts that can make significant contributions to people all over the world right now.

[00:11:42] Russ Johns: Oh, it's amazing. The talent that I've run into Michael Baker in from Florida. I hope you're doing well, Michael D he says, dig your well before you're thirsty. Be proactive and anticipate future needs. Absolutely. Bernard says, good morning. He's here. Thank you so much, Bernard for being here, JDS in the house. Hey, pirates. I just want to, I want to talk a little bit about the idea that we can actually do this thing called the entrepreneurship. That a lot of people are hesitant to jump in it because they have this idea that there is security in employment. And to a certain extent there's stability. I don't know that there's security. There's no promise of tomorrow, but there's also the adventure of joining this entrepreneur. Adventure and taken it to a new level because we're so preconceived about w what we've done, we kind of anchor what we're capable of by our past and not our future. So how can we think about our future and what opportunities, like to the, get to the point where you're seeing opportunities out there, what are some things you've discovered along your journey that you can actually share with the pirates here? A little bit of #inspiration.

[00:12:59] Rick Terrien: You're right. There is a draw and there's nothing wrong with employment, right? No I'm not especially good at it myself. There's nothing wrong with it and it does offer a certain bit of stability, but it, if you look at this log in. There is no real stability in any of these markets and things are subject to change overnight that are out of your control. And, that's the way the world has gone round and will continue to go round. But if you just blindly accept that's going to be the status quo for the rest of your life. That's a big damn right. That's putting a lot of your markers onto some stuff you don't control. So well, there's no bad in that. There's also significant good in setting up something on the side and getting it underway and testing the markets and building your network. Like we were just talking about it. It's going to take longer than you want. Anyway, get that stuff underway. It just does not hurt. And it doesn't have to be something that's going to land you on the cover of a magazine or generate, this isn't a really a way to pay the rent. It could be ultimately, but you have to get in slowly and just start to generate those first revenues and cash. Those first checks and send those first invoices. That's difficult if you haven't done it before, it's difficult just because you haven't done it, it's not hard. It's just new. So getting that stuff underway is to me, it's a no burner. It's, it makes you more resilient, more. More employable down the road in all sorts of circumstances. And it looks to me like we're all going to be living a lot longer. So what let's find those contributions that we can continue to make there's enough problems out there, I think.

[00:14:46] Russ Johns: Yeah. Let's not focus on those. Those are the, that's not what we're going to focus on the upside is that there's so many think back and we're in the same age. And I think back when I was growing up, there was no internet. There was no, you had to go outside and play all day until the streetlights came on. Then you could wander back home. Sometime life is a completely different opportunity now. And there's technologies that exist today that we never even thought about or considered when we were. School. And the way I look at it is this thing is unfolding. And there are people that are available, that if you take the initiative and you have a little bit, just a little bit of time, you can actually expand into something amazing. A lot of these companies that are started from an idea, nothing more than an idea and generated a lot of support and. Goodwill in the community and you don't have to, like you said, you don't have to be on the cover of magazines. To support a community and build a great product. You have the opera and it doesn't even have to be in a product. You can do coaching. You can do, consulting you, web development. I've been doing web development for years. And I just started because I wanted to do my own thing and create something on my own. See what I could do. And that's the kind of attitude you have to take is. What can I start? Who can I help? And that's really the key to the success of this journey. I think,

[00:16:26] Rick Terrien: We've been taking care of our each other and our, in our community. For 10,000 years as a culture and virtually nobody has an MK throughout that whole process. This is not a spreadsheet driven kind of solution making you can work right in communities and markets. You love Russ. One of the things that got me into this game is between gigs. I was consulting For a large trade organization. And this thing was over a hundred years old. And I was looking at the deep relationships between the principal companies and the vendors and the service providers and the bankers and the, all of it. And it built up over time into this really valuable web. And then I looked out in the hallway and there were small groups of people, men and women, older workers saying goodbye to. And they've gotten the proverbial watch and they hit some spreadsheet number of 63 60 when it was time to retire, they had to go and there and they're going out the door, right? And I want to scream. This is dumb. Get those people in here. This is the lifetime's worth of understanding for this industry. And within this center for angels entrepreneurs, we've got a research team working on what's called phased retirements is rather than the companies just cutting folks off. Is Lego gradually support the medicine, new startups within their industry, perhaps. And let those people go out and take some subset of what they really loved in that market and that industry and go out and see what they can develop our communities with it. And I think that the information that those. Startups can bring back to the mothership are invaluable. And those big companies couldn't have bought that data with a billion dollars. And here we supporting people and they can even come back and train the new entrance into their companies. It goes against. Our usual way of thinking when you let somebody go or you've usually got these non-competes I don't want to have the words for it, but I think it's something like a police compete take our industry. You'll go represent our industry, be a small business person. It doesn't have to last forever. There's ways to beat this system. It's not all Pollyanna, but I think that a structure like that has got needs to emerge and different work relationships over time, especially with our older workers. Yeah, from this, it's a big opportunity.

[00:18:46] Russ Johns: You bring up a great point. And I think Mike Rowe from dirty jobs is doing a series right now, talking about this exact issue and how there's a lot of seasoned workers that are leaving the trades, leaving the industries, which is a very healthy, I grew up in commercial concerns. I build a lot of health homes, poured a lot of concrete, did a lot of things and there's people that are leaving the industry that are unable to transfer that knowledge into younger generations. And the younger generations may or may not be in tune or at least available to think about what they need to learn in order to move forward. But some of these skillsets, I was listening to a series yesterday about the record needle industry. And they're only from Japan and there are only certain amount of people that know how to operate the equipment, to make these very sensitive devices. And I'm thinking to myself, if somebody didn't learn that. Carry that on what's going to happen to the industry. It's holy cow, it seems a huge loss, not only for the industry, but for the individual that could have learned it, there's so many examples like that. It's like how seasoned veterans that know, how to optimize and become more effective. With tools and, installing equipment or adjusting equipment and things like that. You mentioned John Deere, a lot of mechanics and things like that, work on heavy equipment all the time. And it's just, there are certain things you need to know that are maybe not taught in school or, are in a book, but. You learn it over time, you learn it over doing so this idea of craftsman teaching and mentoring, other craftsmen to bring up into the trades, I think is really important for us to start adopting immediately if it's at all possible.

[00:20:46] Rick Terrien: And you're right. And then, and it's. The greatest skill set is yes. All of that. Knowing how to adjust the equipment, knowing how to pour the concrete and all of that. But it's also knowing what doesn't work and that comes only with experience. That's why I think creating a platform for these older we're all subject matter experts in something heavy equipment, maintenance, fire, safety, suppression, AI, everybody got something and finding. Where there's a common ground and a non-threatening non profit and they necessarily environment right there where somebody is not trying to reach into your wallet every day, putting those people together as a really good idea for stirring that pot among them and building new networks within them. But having them also put their backs together and pull up our brothers and sisters who are reaching these ages and coming into this market and showing them how to. My board chair talks about our center for angel us entrepreneurs. I've worked certainly going to get sued if I keep talking like this, but she talks about it as an Angie's list for Lincoln. But both of those companies probably aren't really happy about me saying that, but for the time being it's good, it's a good way to sift and winnow and find that talent among peers and a peer to peer network is something that you really can scale and it should scale and we'll scale.

[00:22:08] Russ Johns: Oh I love it. And I'm going to introduce you to bill in Houston. Senior concierge state. So Garren Garrett is in the room. Thank you so much for joining us today. Garren. And then Michael Baker has something to say. He was going to say that we need to pass down our knowledge and experience as each one should teach one, seek to be in association with those who see as being the best and what you seek to do to learn from and contribute to.

[00:22:40] That's sage advice, Michael, because one of the things that I've always loved to do is find a mentor or someone in an industry that I'm curious about and go talk to them about the industry and what actually happens in that industry. What happens with the job? What kind of a job is it? What kind of a skill do you need and how difficult is it? And I've explored in many. Environments in done this along the way, but finding mentors and finding people that have been there, done that. And that's what I'm thinking, is really great about what you're doing. Rick, is this idea that you're gathering people together that can share this knowledge. That is this rich information that can actually share with others along their journey as well.

[00:23:32] Rick Terrien: And I don't think that this just is gonna reside wholly baked into the older generations. This mentorship can go both ways. Ultimately, we need to build the bridge between our younger people in our older people, especially there's a great group in California called encore.org. That's one of their specialties is building those bridges. When I was researching the book, I found the one. Detriments to entrepreneurship is not knowing enough entrepreneurs. It's as simple as that. And the groups that don't know enough entrepreneurs are older workers and younger workers. And so there's there's a project that. It should only take a few hundred years. Let's get out of that, Russ.

[00:24:21] Russ Johns: If we get busy, Rick, we'll get it done.

[00:24:23] Rick Terrien: What are we doing talking here?

[00:24:26] Russ Johns: We should be meeting more people, right? This has been an exciting opportunity to meet you and thank you so much for showing it up to the pirate, broadcast and sharing with the pirate community. I know that there's so many more things that we could be doing and, There's a lot of options and opportunities out there. So how do you appreciate people connecting with you and getting a hold of you?

[00:24:50] Rick Terrien: Sure. So there's two ways, but we can't forget to tell them to follow the #PirateSyndicate right?

[00:24:56] Russ Johns: Oh, no.

[00:24:57] Rick Terrien: We need to make sure we get that in the book is at the URL is ageless hyphen startup.com. That's on Amazon and all the usual places, then you're brand new center for ageless entrepreneurs. And we're just, decloaking the thing is at agelessentrepreneurs.org and then at both sites, there's a sign up where you can submit your email for a newsletter kind of a thing. We'll make sure we rope you in.

[00:25:27] Russ Johns: Fantastic. Rick all of this information is always found on RussJohns.Com. You can always go there, listen to the replays, catch up with the links, follow, like, subscribe, all of the things that are involved in that. And as you mentioned, the #PirateSyndicate, I'm absolutely pushing for my own entrepreneurial journey because the #PirateSyndicate I'm supporting livestream strategy for business owners, and I'm also teaching people livestream themselves. So it's really a community that is growing. It's continuing to grow and it like, Rick, you put some energy into something and it things magic things happen when you actually spend some time on working on it. So making those connections, making that environment and that community grow and flourish is one of my missions and I'm going to continue to pursue that. And Rick, I really appreciate you being here and talking with us today and I look forward to updates on your adventure in the future now that you're a pirate.

[00:26:33] Rick Terrien: I look forward to staying in touch and following you on the pirates circuit. Thank you very much.

[00:26:38] Russ Johns: Awesome. Thank you so much. And everyone, as always. Thank you so much for being here. All of the #gratitude in the world, because #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree and you to #enjoyyourday.

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