One Big Idea 6 - Driving Purpose-Driven Growth: From Identity Alignment and Cellular Health to Executive Resiliency

One Big Idea 6 - Driving Purpose-Driven Growth: From Identity Alignment and Cellular Health to Executive ResiliencyIn this episode of One Big Idea, host Josh Elledge connects with Carol Pyke, Dr. Paul Barattiero, Emily Lyman, Stewart Heath, Tanny Diep, and Rachel Apfel Glass to break down the operational strategies required to build enduring brands, optimize human performance, and scale multi-faceted enterprises. Carol Pyke, Keynote Speaker & Workshop Facilitator at Words That Deliver, opens the episode by detailing why executive self-identity serves as an irreplaceable differentiator in an AI-driven economy. Dr. Paul Barattiero, CEO and Founder of LumaNova, then explores the physiological impact of molecular hydrogen on cellular energy and executive performance. Next, Branch & Bramble Founder & CEO Emily Lyman breaks down how direct-to-consumer brands can operationalize empathy to boost customer lifetime value. Stewart Heath, Chief Executive Officer of Harvard Grace Corporation, details the mechanics of syndications and tax-advantaged passive real estate investing. Sway Brows Academy & Studio Founder Tanny Diep introduces the prototyping mindset to help creators convert early action into viable business models. Finally, Gloss Lab and OFICINALE Founder Rachel Apfel Glass closes the episode by sharing the strategic advantages, emotional composure, and risk management strategies of second-time founders. Discovering Your True Identity to Become a Better Leader with Carol PykeIn an era where artificial intelligence can quickly replicate strategic frameworks, generate marketing copy, and automate routine workflows, many corporate leaders struggle to articulate their true value proposition. Personal brand strategist Carol Pyke explains that her "one big idea" addresses this exact challenge: core identity is the ultimate, non-replicable foundation of executive leadership. Drawing from her personal experience of overcoming retrograde amnesia following a stroke, Carol illustrates how professionals frequently mistake temporary external roles, job titles, and career achievements for their actual self-worth. Utilizing her "Mrs. Potato Head" analogy—where the underlying potato represents the unchangeable core and external accessories represent transient professional titles—she challenges leaders to discover who they are before deciding what to execute. To build an unshakeable executive presence that eliminates imposter syndrome, leaders must actively separate their internal identity from external metrics. Carol outlines actionable exercises, such as auditing LinkedIn profiles to remove job-title labels and reframing challenging events by separating raw facts from emotional reactions. By shifting away from short-term public validation and committing to deep self-reflection, executives can lead with absolute authenticity. In a volatile business landscape, establishing a clear, grounded identity enables leaders to make confident, value-aligned decisions that build long-term organizational trust. The Natural Antioxidant Your Body Needs for Energy and Immunity with LumaNova's Dr. Paul BarattieroSustained executive performance, mental clarity, and operational endurance depend heavily on underlying cellular health, yet chronic stress and poor lifestyle habits constantly degrade performance. Dr. Paul Barattiero explains that his "one big idea" centers on the therapeutic role of molecular hydrogen in combating systemic inflammation and oxidative stress. While a healthy colon naturally produces hydrogen gas through anaerobic bacterial activity, over 90% of individuals suffer from gut disruption caused by stress, processed diets, and antibiotics. This breakdown diminishes natural hydrogen production, leading to cellular fatigue, brain fog, and weakened immune function. To counteract these physical bottlenecks, Dr. Paul outlines how restoring molecular hydrogen levels can significantly improve cellular energy production and gut microbiome health. Infusing water with molecular hydrogen and a negative electrical potential mimics a healthy gut ecosystem, providing a selective antioxidant that neutralizes harmful free radicals without disrupting beneficial metabolic processes. For busy founders and high-performing executives, incorporating daily hydrogen therapy helps lower recovery times, sharpen cognitive focus, and protect long-term physical vitality. Building Stronger Direct-to-Consumer Brands Through Empathy and AI with Branch & Bramble's Emily LymanAs automated generative tools flood consumer inboxes and social feeds with generic marketing messages, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands face a severe crisis of consumer indifference. Marketing strategist Emily Lyman highlights that her "one big idea" redefines empathy: it is not a soft interpersonal skill, but a measurable, business-critical growth strategy. Because human purchasing decisions are driven primarily by emotional connection rather than feature lists, brands that rely solely on automated, spec-heavy copy fail to build lasting customer relationships. By leveraging AI strictly for data research—mining customer reviews, support tickets, and social sentiment for underlying emotional patterns—marketers can uncover what truly resonates with their audience. To operationalize empathy across multi-channel campaigns, brands must establish structured frameworks to research, score, and scale emotional resonance. Emily emphasizes that while AI can efficiently surface data trends, human strategists must interpret those findings to craft authentic, value-driven brand narratives. Reframing product messaging around customer values—such as positioning safety features around protecting family experiences rather than listing technical specifications—dramatically improves conversion rates and long-term retention. Treating empathy as a core marketing discipline enables DTC companies to cut through digital noise and build enduring brand equity. Everything You Need to Know About Syndications and Passive Investing with Harvard Grace Capital's Stewart HeathMany high-earning professionals remain trapped on the corporate treadmill because their financial growth depends entirely on active, earned income that carries heavy tax burdens. Real estate executive Stewart Heath shares his core thesis: passive real estate syndications provide a reliable, tax-advantaged path to replacing working income and building generational wealth. Commercial real estate offers built-in inflation protection, tangible asset backing, and equity multiplication through conservative leverage. Furthermore, pass-through tax benefits like accelerated depreciation allow investors to offset passive distributions, shielding their cash flow from heavy taxation. Achieving true financial independence through passive real estate requires a disciplined approach to sponsor selection and deal structuring. Stewart advises investors to thoroughly vet real estate sponsors by analyzing their historical track records, operational transparency, risk-management protocols, and alignment of interest through preferred return structures. Investors can also utilize self-directed IRAs or 401(k)s to deploy tax-deferred capital into commercial syndications across multiple property types. By focusing on steady cash-flowing assets and reinvesting refinancing proceeds, passive investors can systematically construct a resilient portfolio that delivers predictable, long-term returns. Turning Early Practice into Real Business Opportunities with Sway Brows Academy & Studio's Tanny DiepA common trap for aspiring entrepreneurs and creative professionals is falling into "analysis paralysis"—spending months over-preparing, conducting endless market research, and perfecting products behind closed doors before ever testing them with real customers. Beauty industry educator and business coach Tanny Diep introduces her "one big idea": actionable business clarity does not exist until you launch and test in the real world. Relying on theory or simulated practice creates a false sense of security, whereas immediate real-world deployment provides the critical feedback needed to refine an offering. To convert concepts into viable business opportunities, founders must adopt a lean, prototyping mindset. Tanny encourages entrepreneurs to simplify their initial offerings down to a minimum viable product (MVP), launch quickly to a target audience, and gather direct market feedback. Overcoming perfectionism requires making an offering exist first before attempting to make it perfect. By pairing immediate execution with fast, iterative refinement, business owners build operational resilience, cultivate genuine client confidence, and establish a distinct competitive edge. The Entrepreneurial Comeback That Proves Patience Pays Off with Rachel GlassLaunching a second or serial venture is a fundamentally different experience than building a first company, primarily due to the emotional composure and perspective gained from past setbacks. Serial entrepreneur Rachel Apfel Glass shares her insights as a second-time founder, presenting her "one big idea": sustainable entrepreneurial growth relies on emotional resilience and protective detachment. While first-time founders often view every vendor mistake or operational hiccup as an existential crisis, experienced founders learn to manage emotional swings, anticipate normal operational friction, and approach problems with a calm, solution-oriented mindset. Navigating second-time entrepreneurship successfully requires transforming hard-won lessons into systematic operational playbooks. Rachel highlights how managing founder anxiety involves normalizing daily business challenges and leaning heavily on an established...

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. You asked for it, so we made it happen. Every Friday, we're doing something a little different. Instead of one long conversation, we're packing in four of them, four experts, four big ideas, all in about the same time it takes to drink your morning coffee. We call it One Big Idea Friday, and the format is simple. I ask each guest one question, and they bring their single best idea for business leaders who want to grow without the noise. No fluff, no rambling, just the thing they actually want you to remember. I'm Josh Helig. Let's get into it.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  With our next One Big Idea, it's Carol Pike. Carol, you're a keynote speaker, you're a personal brand strategist, and you are found on the web at wordsthatdeliver.com. Carol, please share with us your one big idea.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Identity is everything. If tomorrow, everything that you held dear, your history, your frameworks, your accolades were stripped from you, what would you have left?

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Leaders, businesses, and brands are standing on a question that they probably haven't thought about yet. Who am I? We are living in a world that is visual, so we are always looking at the outside. So there are things that we need to develop. You know, we need to have frameworks. We need to have better communication skills. We need to develop our skill set. All of that is really important, but if you're not building it on a solid foundation, what are you actually doing? Because effective leadership is built on effective self-leadership, which is built on identity. So how can you possibly lead

• 2:00Speaker 01

  someone that you don't know? Well, actually, sometimes we lead people that we don't know, but how effective is that actually? And you're probably wondering, well, yeah, no, why does any of this matter? Well, in this age, the age of AI, when AI can do a whole host of different things, it can replicate almost everything. We talk about content, we talk about strategy, we talk about structure. But let me tell you the one thing that AI cannot replicate, that is who you are. And when I say that, I'm actually not talking about the titles and the roles you play. I brought my friend, Mrs. Potato Head, to

• 2:41Speaker 01

  show you what I mean. The whole concept of the Potato Head family is that it is a potato, and you put things on it. So if you think about the titles, the roles, your position, all of those things, those are the things that we put on ourselves, and we say that that's who we are. But in very real terms, you are actually the potato. And until you know what the potato is actually like, you're missing a trick. You're constantly going to be looking externally for the answers. And so many people are concerned about AI right now, that they will be losing their jobs, and all of these things are going to

• 3:22Speaker 01

  be taken away. I'm going to say to you that the biggest risk that you have is not about AI taking your jobs, it's about you not knowing who it is that you are. Because when you know who it is that you are, you can stand firm in any change and any challenge that comes your way. But if you don't know who it is that you are, and all of these things are going on, where do you stand? And I'm saying this from a position of certainty, because in 2019, I looked in the mirror, and I knew the features, but I didn't know the person looking back. I'd had a stroke, and I now live with retrograde amnesia. So quite literally, everything has been stripped away from me, everything before 2019. So

• 4:07Speaker 01

  I have no frameworks. I don't know who that person was, what it was I did, how it was that I did it. So I couldn't rely on the traditional anchors to make it happen. I had to make a decision about who it was that I was, based on the experiences that I was having, and what was going on on the inside. So what I've recognized is that your identity is not caught up with your memory. When that is taken away, you have to decide who it is that you are, not your situation, your circumstances, or other people. You have

• 4:44Speaker 01

  to decide. So the question is, who are you? Literally, who are you at your core? Who are you? Because I'm convinced that that is the underlying challenge across the globe. Because if I know who I am, and I know that I am powerful, that I know that I am a winner, I do not have to pull you down to prove it. I just need to show up as me. And actually, being you is the easiest gig in the world, because there are no lines to learn and nothing to remember. There is no imposter syndrome, because how can you be an imposter if you know who you are? There's a question. And you're not comparing yourself to other people,

• 5:28Speaker 01

  because you're not them, you're you. So the foundational principle is, you know who you are, not the inherited narratives that we have, that other people have told us, society has told us, mistakes and failures have told us. Who are you saying that you are? Because we move in the direction of our strongest thoughts. So if you don't think you're a winner, you're never going to win. And if elements are not in alignment, it's never going to work.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, Carol, some may, I'm just going to ask you a quick follow-up here. Some may hear what you're saying, and they say, well, easier said than done. My brain doesn't agree with my assessment. I still worry about this. I still think about this. My identity is still shaped by, you know, some kind of trauma that I had as a kid, or something like that, and I wish I could just shake it. Intellectually, I'm with you. You know, behaviorally, or, you know, kind of my shadow self, eh, it's a little bit different. So how can we work on that to change that underlying program? Because I love what you're saying. And imagine a world, you know, where everybody, you know, really

• 6:35Speaker 00

  got intimate with like, who they are, you know, who they really deserve to be as well.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Well, actually, one of the things that we have been very good at doing is that we almost believe that events come prepackaged with emotions. So that event shows up, and I feel like that, and they are together. When in very real terms, there is an event, and there is an emotion that you have chosen, for whatever reason it is that you've chosen that emotion. And so when something has happened, it's to look for what it is that you have learnt from that. What is the takeaway that you can take from that? Even if that takeaway is, I am never doing that again. I'm never going there. I'm never, never doing that again. Because there is always something for us to learn, and the opportunity

• 7:25Speaker 01

  for us to grow. The more it is that we stay in that thing, that that happened, that happened to me, that's really terrible, that's all it is that we're ever going to see, is that whole element. And what you focus on is what it is that you see. If something happens, I've worked out, you have two choices. You either give up, or you give it all you've got. And that could be a little bit, or a huge amount. But it's always looking at, okay, am I comfortable in this place? Is this working for me? No, it's not. Okay, what can I do? Or where can I get help to see it in a different way, so that I can learn and grow?

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Excellent. Carol, your website is wordsthatdeliver.com. You're a keynote speaker, you're a TEDx speaker, in fact. And so if somebody goes to visit you, what would you recommend they do?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  I would recommend that they engage with me. In fact, I want to have conversations with people, because I think that we are spending so much time in an AI-driven world, and in a computer-driven world, where we're sitting in front of screens, to actually have physical conversations with people. Because there is more to you than you have settled for, and oftentimes, is having a conversation with somebody else that's able to see something that you have missed. Here's an action that you can take right now. Go to LinkedIn, or wherever it is that you've got biographical information, and take a red pen, delete everything that is about your job title and your job role, and see

• 8:59Speaker 01

  what is left behind. You may find that that's, it's blank. There isn't anything that's left behind. But that's great. A great place to start of recognizing that how it is that you've been identifying yourself is based on what it is that you do. And where we need to get to is to be before you do. So who are you being before you do? Because that is the thing that's going to set you apart from anybody else in the entire world.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Excellent. All right. Again, wordsthatdeliver.com. Carol Pike, your keynote speaker, your founder. It's been a delight to have you. Thank you so much for joining us, Carol.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  With our next one big idea, it's Dr. Paul Barattiero. Dr. Paul, you are the founder and owner of Echo Water and Lumenova. It's great to have you. Please share with us your one big idea.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Awesome. My one big idea starts with the desire for me to help you accomplish your potential. Now, talking from a business perspective, I've had 14 companies in my life. So I understand how you can burn both ends of the candle, cut the candle and burn the other two ends that appear. We all work hard every day to build our empire, to accomplish what we want. That comes at a cost of our health many times. And so years ago, 20 years ago, my wife was sick and as a medical professional, I had to figure out how to help her.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  As a result of helping her, I created Echo Water, which is the largest and original hydrogen water company. Now, I didn't wake up one day and say, I want to start a hydrogen water company. That never happened. What I wanted to do was heal my wife. As a result of healing her, we've now helped millions of people who have issues like being tired in the afternoon, not getting proper sleep, having low immune function, ADHD, not being focused in the office like you want to be so you can accomplish everything that you need to do. Well, we have to understand that our bodies are designed to produce hydrogen gas in our colon.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  When we have gut disruption, which it's estimated 90% of the population have, we lose the ability to produce hydrogen gas naturally. And so we have to get it back into our bodies so that we have the proper mitochondrial function. So we have energy, the proper ghrelin secretions going to our brain to help us think more clearly. Every disease model comes from the combination of oxidative stress and inflammation. Hydrogen is supposed to be in the body to stop oxidation, turning into oxidative stress and inflammation becoming chronic. And so hydrogen is there to prevent you and I from having disease and sickness.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  So here it is today, 16 years later, we're providing a delivery of hydrogen back to your body through drinking water. At the same time, we can heal the gut in two weeks. Those that have gluten and dairy intolerance, don't worry about that anymore. But we currently have 2,250 studies, two, over 200 disease models that hydrogen is therapeutic with. So I invite you to try hydrogen water, get it into your body. And once you have hydrogen back in your body, everything begins to work properly, beginning with stomach acid.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  You can't even make stomach acid without free and available hydrogen gas in your body. It is really critical and important to understand why our bodies would produce hydrogen. Now, we would produce hydrogen in the colon and guess what that's going to be? Flatulence. So now you can understand that farting could be therapeutic. So understand that we want and should have hydrogen because it's a huge modulator in our body. It actually accomplishes improvement of immune function, lowering inflammation. So you don't have joint pain and other issues. For those that are weekend warriors, like a lot of us, we don't want to run out of gas or run out of energy.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Hydrogen is going to reduce fatigue and allow you to continue to do what you want to do without wearing out.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  I love it. So, so obviously at your website, you, you sell, which is essentially like if, you know, I'm holding up my big drink cup, you know, which we, we all have. And you essentially produce hydrogen water bottles and, and cups now that will hydrogenate your water. And again, that's at echo water.com. Now, in addition to that, Dr. Paul, just real briefly, what are some things that we could do on top of drinking hydrogenated water that might help us get more hydrogen in our bodies? Exercise, movement, that help or?

• 14:18Speaker 02

  No, not at all. We would have to repair the gut.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  What's critical is that our gut is functioning properly. Well, most people have no idea how to do that because the problem with the gut is electrical. You need to have anaerobic microflora and to get that, you need to have a negative 300 to a negative 400 millivolts of electrical potential in the intestinal tract. That's what Echo Water does. The water itself, like when you use this bottle right here, you would produce hydrogen in the bottle. The water property would not only have hydrogen, but it would have a negative 300 to negative 400 millivolts of electrical potential. When that gets into your colon, it creates the terrain and the biome within an hour.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  And you start having bacteria coming back. So your gut is healing from the inside out.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, very cool. Dr. Paul, your website, echo water.com. And then of course also lumina.com to a friend that's been listening to your one big idea. And by the way, thank you so much for sharing. It's a great reminder. And you're absolutely right, man. Gut health, woof, especially as you get older, man, you just like, you just start. Hopefully you're paying attention to it because it can affect a whole lot of other stuff in your life. But, but what would you recommend to our friend that's been listening to your one big idea? What do they go? What do they, what should they do next?

• 15:43Speaker 02

  So if they're eggheaded and they want to read the studies, go to hydrogen studies.com. We've got all 2,257 studies there for you to search by disease model, by organ, by whatever you want. If you have an issue yourself, you can type it in and see if hydrogen will help you. Really from, I would recommend getting this, this is our inexpensive product. This is for two types of people, skeptical people and those that travel. This is going to create the hydrogen water that you need. And I would recommend three to six of these a day and you're going to feel like a new human being. We also do have a drink mix that is wonderful apple flavor. It has three prebiotics and makes the hydrogen water.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  If you like drinks that taste good, those would be the two products that I'd recommend people start with because it's going to change their life and it's a very low cost.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. Love it. Echo water.com and Lumenova as well, which we all have linked up. Dr. Paul Barattiero, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your one big idea.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  With our next one big idea, it's Emily Lyman. Emily, you are the founder and CEO of Branch and Bramble. You're found on the web at branchandbramble.com. Emily, thank you so much for joining us and please share your one big idea.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, Josh. So empathy is not a soft skill. It is a growth strategy. In an AI accelerated world, it's the biggest competitive edge available to any brand. Alright, so AI has made content faster and cheaper to produce than ever. And almost none of it stands out. Everyone's emails open the same way. Everyone's LinkedIn posts hit the same beats. And so when everything sounds the same, nothing lands. Alright, the mainstream treats empathy as a personality trait, something you either have or you don't. It's nice to have, it's hard to measure. And the first thing that gets cut when budgets get tightened.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  So it's then that's, that's wrong on both counts, right? The neuroscience is very, very clear here. Antonio Damasio put it this way, we are not thinking machines that feel. We are feeling machines that think. Every buying decision starts with emotion and logic is what justifies it afterward. So most marketing is actually built backwards, features, specs, value props. We write about the product instead of the person. And then we wonder why conversions are low. So here's what I see that others miss, right? Empathy is not a feeling, it's a discipline. It can be researched, scored and scaled.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  And AI makes that more possible, not less. Because AI is a fabulous researcher and a terrible author. It can surface emotional patterns across 5,000 customer reviews in an hour. What it can't do is understand what a yes actually feels like for your customer. That part stays human.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  So, yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  Oh, go ahead. Keep going. Yes. I love it. Love it. Love it.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Well, let's make it real, right? We worked with Patagonia's book division. Their original post for an author event read like logistics, like join this author. He'll be signing copies of his new memoir. It was accurate, it was clear, but it was completely flat. So our research showed that this audience, consumers for Patagonia, they buy for thrill and experience. So the rewrite opened with one question, is climbing worth dying for? Same event, same author, same audience. Applying that lens across their full program produced a 59% increase in engagement and a 104% increase in clicks. And the only variable was empathy.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  So here's one thing that your audience can do today is spend 30 minutes where their audience, their consumers talk when they're not talking to the brand. Reddit threads, reviews, comment sections. Don't look for what they say they want. Write down the emotional words they use, the emotions that you're seeing come across, what they're afraid of, what they hoped for, why they were disappointed. Then hold that language up against your homepage, your marketing copy. And if the words don't match, if the sentiments don't match, you just found your growth strategy.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Emily, that is just absolutely spot on, perfect. I think that, you know, what you're sharing as well, you know, in all of my interviews that I've done with leaders over this past year, I'm hearing this more and more. I think after the initial sugar rush around AI, I think a lot of leaders are seeing the consequences in real time, not necessarily themselves, but they're seeing it, you know, an overreliance on AI caliber communication, as acceptable as the spokesperson for our brands. And I think that when, you know, when experienced leaders see this so poorly executed and other people were like, whoa,

• 21:10Speaker 00

  okay, now we know what not to do. And you're right. So, you know, because I know that you work with some larger brands. Can you maybe just share another example of how maybe a larger, you know, larger company, you know, you've worked with Random House, Paramount, Patagonia, Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, like, how are they, how are, you know, what would be another example of like, how we could convey authentic empathy? I mean, if it truly needs to be in our core value, of course, otherwise it just comes across as fake. But then, you know, there, I guess there's, you know, my thinking is like, well,

• 21:51Speaker 00

  I don't want to come across as, you know, I don't want to come across as fake. Like, I genuinely, this is like, I truly love and care for, you know, the folks I serve, et cetera, my audiences, that, that sort of thing. So I just want to hit that right note of not being performative.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Right. That's, that's a great question. Josh and a lot of brands struggle with that. And I think that the difference becomes, it's not necessarily that you are trying to tap into your audience's problems in a, in a way that doesn't align with your authenticity already. You're still talking about your brand. You're just putting your brand in a, you're formatting in a way that they are going to better understand. So for example, let's do another example, Volvo, right? Volvo talks about the safety performances of their vehicles. They're safe, they're award-winning, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so, a brand-first, product-first

• 22:49Speaker 03

  marketing comm is going to be like, five-time award winner of the most safe car on the road. But what your consumers want to hear, they value family, safety in that manner. So you're going to switch those marketing comms to keep your family safe this summer on your road trip, or spend more time with your family without having to worry about their safety as you travel, you know, to and from school, et cetera. So it is really just, you're still authentic, because you're still talking about your brand and your product. You just are looking at where to put your consumers' values first in that narrative, rather than the brand story first.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  I love it. Okay. Branch and Bramble. Emily, please share with us what you do, your website, branchandbramble.com.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. So we are a marketing agency for direct-to-consumer lifestyle brands. And our whole shtick, right, is turning off audience interest into consumer obsession. And we do that through behavioral psychology and empathetic marketing to create those marketing campaigns that are human and just work like crazy. So that's what we do in a nutshell.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. And if someone, like, if I just wanted to learn more about what you're talking about, I don't know if you have any resources, or if there's a favorite book you recommend, because I love this topic, other than, you know, obviously work with you, but if someone's maybe not quite ready for that.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  Sure. Yes. Well, we do have a free empathetic marketing ebook on our website.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  Well, there we go. We did not plan that, by the way.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  No. Branchandbramble.com/empathetic-marketing. So that will get you to our free ebook. And then I would actually check out the company called Value Graphics, which I highly, highly love and is a great starting point to really see how values drive buying motivators, what we call buying motivators, and what are those things that drive your consumers' decisions, not just demographics and psychographics. That's getting into a whole deep thing.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  I love it. Emily Lyman, founder and CEO of Branch and Bramble, found on the web at branchandbramble.com. Emily, thank you for sharing your one big idea.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  Thanks, Josh.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  With our next one big idea, it's Stuart Heath. Stuart, you are the CEO of Harvard Grace Capital. You're found on the web at harvardgracecapital.com. You are also a speaker and author and real estate entrepreneur. Well, Stuart, please share with us your one big idea.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Well, my one big idea is not original to me, but it is a big idea. And that is, you can, through careful investing, replace all of your income with passive sources of income, and pay very little taxes. If it's real estate, you can have tax-advantaged passive income, you know, that stop limit, and you can do as many of those as that you can afford to invest in. It replaces working income and can generally, ultimately, replace all of your income. So that's my big idea.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  All right. Well, how does one do that? That sounds like a great, that's a great position to be in.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. To be able to do that, take some work on the investor's side. I always say that if you're investing passively, you may not need to manage the property or anything like that, but you do need to investigate your manager, your sponsor, and do that work on the front end. We do have a guide to help you do that, questions that you should be asking your sponsor. So over a period of time, and be patient and deliberate, and learn which kinds of properties throw off the right type of cash, and are less susceptible to be susceptible to AI. You know, we have to have, we have to have a conversation and

• 27:11Speaker 04

  mention AI very early on, because it impacts everything. You want to see what kind of properties are the most stable, and you want to know the track record of the sponsor. So after you've done that kind of homework, then you can allocate your investment portfolio to multiple different properties, or even different funds that have multiple properties. And then you just start receiving the passive income. Those sponsors ought to be reporting you on a monthly basis, sometimes quarterly, but monthly is more appropriate. And so that you can keep up with how, with how they're doing. And don't hesitate to ask that sponsor

• 27:55Speaker 04

  questions along the way. Send them an email, give them a phone call, and talk about how the different investments are performing. The other advantage with doing real estate is, once you've held it for a few years, and if it's being properly managed, the, the net operating income should be increasing. So that's an opportunity for the sponsor to go in, refinance that property, pull some cash out, send that cash to the investors. That's a tax-free transaction, by the way, but it's a way for you to get your investment principal back, but still own the property and still continue to get some income. Then

• 28:35Speaker 04

  you can take that cash out and invest it into another cash flow generating property, if you like. So that is essentially our business plan and our big idea. And that's, that's how investors can get involved in it on a passive basis.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  Last quick question on this, for someone who has not invested in real estate before, they, you know, maybe they have their own home, you know, what are some of the more accessible ways that someone could get started? Like, they might just be intimidated by this, or they feel like, you know, it's going to be risky, or they might feel like they don't have access to funds to invest. And, you know, and again, I'm not suggesting that someone's not, who's not, you know, qualified to do this, you know, should be. But, you know, who would be an example of someone that might be qualified and can actually get, can actually

• 29:35Speaker 00

  get involved if they may have thought that they wouldn't, they weren't able to be?

• 29:40Speaker 04

  Well, to do most passive deals, one does need to be what the SEC calls an accredited investor. So that's a net worth requirement and/or an income requirement, which generally means that they've got the wherewithal to do that. You can also qualify for that, but all your funds are tied up in an IRA or a 401k. You can do private deals from that pool of money as well, which is a tremendous opportunity. Many sponsors will give retirement plan investors a little bit different deal because you can't use the depreciation benefits and then they can sell the depreciation to another

• 30:25Speaker 04

  investor who needs all they can get. So, but they should be a little bit intimidated if they've never done this before. There are resources out there to teach you. We have one on our website called The Anatomy of a Syndication that walks you through in a step-by-step, here's what this means, here's how this happens. You should never not be asking your sponsor questions, but generally the structure is a syndication, just a big fancy word for a group of people coming together to make an investment. So you're not the only investor.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  You'll be in there with anywhere from five to 50 others likely, and you've all got the exact same shares and rights that scale only based upon the amount. Maybe you put in 50, maybe somebody else put in 500,000. And so that's the only real difference. The sponsor will run the transaction for the benefit of the passive investors, sometimes called Class A investors. So, and generally, they can be complex or they can be simple. What that means is there should be a preferred return, which you're going to earn on your money, and you should be able to get that and all of your money back before the sponsor

• 31:48Speaker 04

  gets anything other than their fee income, which is relatively low, it should be relatively low going forward. Other than that, it's about as complex as they should get. So know that financially y'all are ahead of the sponsor and he shouldn't. Different deals come with different structures, but generally the sponsor is not going to get any kind of cash flow or participate in any of that until everybody, all the investors themselves have been paid back.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  So, but ask lots of questions about these types of transactions because your money will tend to be tied up in them until the property is sold. There is that possibility that I mentioned during the refi, you'll get some or all of your money back, but you'll still be in it. And, but you should count on your money being tied up for about five years.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. Your book is Don't Do What I Did, 10 Rules for Investing in Commercial Real Estate. That's on your website. We have about 20 seconds left. HarvardGraceCapital.com. When folks go there, what would you recommend they do?

• 33:02Speaker 04

  Go to the Resources tab or click on the book link. It's all free. We'll make you a hard copy of the book or download the resources. They can be helpful and educational as to why you should be considering passive investing. And you should compare that to stock market investments.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. Stuart Heath, again, your website is HarvardGraceCapital.com. Just hover over the Resources tab where you can get access to everything talked about. And of course, there's information too, if you ever wanted to schedule a call as well. Stuart, great conversation. Thank you for sharing your one big idea.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  Thank you, Josh, for having me.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  With our next one big idea, it's Tanny Diep. Tanny, you are the owner of Sway Browse and Sway Brands. You're found on the web at swaybrowse.com. Tanny, please share with us your one big idea.

• 34:07Speaker 05

  Thank you, Josh. Thank you for having me. My one big idea is the answers don't exist yet. And what that means is some information cannot be discovered through research, planning, or even AI. You will not have complete clarity until you take action and allow reality to respond. So we live in an age where information is everywhere. We think we have all the answers at our fingertips, but you'll never truly understand how well something works until you have the data from real world experience. So many entrepreneurs, they spend months, even years, developing skills, projects, systems, and offers, seeking perfection before figuring it out if anyone will actually buy them.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  So we're over here building monuments when what we really should be building are prototypes. Now, this has been a recurring theme throughout my own business. As a cosmetic tattoo artist, I spent months trying to master my skills on practice skin, only to have a rude awakening when I finally started working on real clients. But the more clients I worked on, the more experience I gained, and that real world experience helped me improve much faster than I ever could by taking more trainings or just continuing to practice on fake skin. And I've also spent months building a course, tinkering with it until I thought it was perfect. And perfectionism is, you know, my flaw and my curse, but I mean a blessing and a curse, but only to launch it and realize it didn't sell as quickly as I thought it would.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  And experiences like these taught me to take action, reflect, adapt, refine, and then repeat, because the faster you can move through that cycle, the greater your advantage. So now, instead of spending months perfecting an idea, I simplify it. I bring it to the market, I test the demand, I gather real world data, and once it sells, I use that evidence to refine it. So too many founders get stuck in the building phase, investing more time, more money, more resources, continuously tinkering with something that they haven't actually tested in the real world. But some answers simply don't exist until you act.

• 36:14Speaker 05

  So clarity actually comes from reflection and confidence comes from taking action. Growth comes from consistency and the willingness to repeat that process. So because we live in a world where information is infinite and change is constant, the greatest advantage is not knowing all the answers. It's how quickly you can act, learn, and evolve. So action plus adaptation equals advantage.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Well, Tanny, I love that. I almost have, feel like I want to say no notes on that because that was just so eloquently and so well put and is absolutely, listen, after, you know, nearly 2,500 interviews on this podcast, exactly what you're saying is just the reality of folks that have, you know, made it to, you know, high six, seven, eight-figure business levels. And I do want to ask you about this, however, is I'm sure that you have, and you even mentioned this like with the course, you have put things out to the market and maybe not been overly enthused with how it went.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  You're like, oh, shoot, I was really hoping that, you know, I would have had a different outcome. So you just kind of, kind of bring it back in, refine, get feedback, right? Because at the end of the day, I'm not smarter than the market, you're not smarter than the market, I dare say. And, you know, it's, but to truly get to that, that version of the product that is going to be the right fit for the market. I think what, you know, what I hear you saying, and I've heard this said, you know, did just like, you gotta just put it out in the market and let them tell you. Is that, does that resonate?

• 37:58Speaker 05

  Absolutely, because you just have to make it exist before you make it perfect. Right? I work, I also do business marketing coaching, where I help beauty entrepreneurs build their businesses. And when my business partner and I were building this marketing coaching program, you know, he, he knows my OCD kind of perfectionist traits because of the nature of what I do. And he's like, Tanny, we're not going to spend a year like making this full production blown out thing, like we're not going to spend so much time investing into it. Let's just put it together. We'll do all the videos on Zoom. We'll just put the, you know, some slides together, make sure that the context, the meat and potatoes of it is what the people want. And then if we get a reaction to it, then we can help, we can refine it, we can make it better, you know?

• 38:41Speaker 05

  So that has been a huge takeaway that I still carry through everything that I do because I'm just like, just do it, just make it exist, fix it later, polish it up, refine it, see what the data is, reflect, adapt, evolve.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  I love it. All right. Tanny, your website, swaybrowse.com. When somebody goes there, I know you have a couple of areas that you help folks with. What should they do? What do they click on?

• 39:07Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So we offer services. If you're interested in cosmetic tattoo service, permanent makeup for your eyebrows, lips, eyeliner, skin treatments, we offer services for all of those techniques. We also offer the technical skill training, so education. I teach classes on permanent makeup for eyebrows, specializing in very natural looking brows, and also cold plasma skin treatments that help brighten and tighten the skin, which we all love, a little bit more collagen in our life, right? And then we also offer coaching, mentorship for beauty entrepreneurs beyond the permanent makeup space, even hairstylists, lash artists, estheticians, who are feeling stuck in their

• 39:48Speaker 05

  business and just need someone to give them guidance, who has the real world data already implemented and can help them on their path.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  I love it. Okay. Swaybrowse.com, where you can access everything from there. Tanny Diep, thank you so much for sharing your one big idea.

• 40:06Speaker 05

  Thank you, Josh. Happy to be here.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If your goal is to grow your business, increase revenue, and build authority without gimmicks, this show is designed for you. Each episode gives you practical insight from leaders who have turned trust and credibility into real business results. If you value short, thoughtful conversations that respect your time, make sure you're subscribed. We publish daily 15-minute episodes focused on growth that actually compounds. And if you're interested in being a guest, or you want to turn podcast appearances into measurable business growth, visit Podverified.com. You can start for free with your Pod Verified score, along with free podcast guest training and a free media kit builder.

• 40:54Speaker 00

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