Building a Global Media Empire + Resiliency with Donnie Rust (part 1)

Dive into this electrifying episode featuring Donnie Rust, the visionary behind The Lost Executive, as he shares his jaw-dropping journey from a comfortable life in Norwich to building a thriving global business with just £15 in his pocket. Discover how Donnie turned his passion for publishing and digital media into a powerhouse, all while navigating the chaos of new parenthood. His story is a masterclass in resilience, risk-taking, and the relentless pursuit of dreams.

What You’ll Learn:

• The Bold Leap: How Donnie left behind security in 2017 to chase new horizons in Malta, and the lessons he learned along the way.
• Revolutionizing Journalism: Explore Donnie’s innovative approach to travel journalism, blending on-site reporting with cultural immersion to create unforgettable stories.
• From Blog to Empire: Witness the evolution of The Lost Executive—from a humble blog to a collaborative venture backed by industry giants like Barry Hearn.
• Entrepreneurial Grit: Donnie’s candid insights on overcoming burnout, selling timeshares in Tenerife, and the importance of adaptability in the unpredictable world of business.
• Actionable Advice: Packed with strategies for aspiring entrepreneurs, this episode is your ultimate guide to building a business with impact.

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Chapters

• 0:06 Reignite Resilience
• 7:50 Building the Lost Executive
• 17:04 Building Business Without Safety Net
• 20:42 Entrepreneurship Strategies and Global Team Integration
• 31:20 Entrepreneurial Insights With Donnie Rust

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. Resilience where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, natalie Davis and Pamela Cass.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Hello and welcome back to Reignite Resilience. I am your co-host, pam Cass, and I am joined by the lovely Miss Natalie Davis. How are you today, natalie? It sounds like you're having a second Monday.

Speaker 3: 0:53

No, I don't know what just happened. Like I, as I was preparing to record today, I swallowed wrong. All of the books on my desk decided to take a fall and I was trying to pick everything up. You know it's just one of those moments. But desk decided to take a fall and I was trying to pick everything up. You know it's just one of those moments, but I refuse to let it define the day. So far it's been good. I will take it.

Speaker 2: 1:11

It's a little chilly. I'm not. I'm kind of over the snow and we've only had one, but it is beautiful outside, so I'm excited to be inside and we have another guest joining us from across the world. And would you like to introduce our guest today?

Speaker 3: 1:28

I would love to. I would love to. So we have a guest today that's actually joining us from across the pond, joining us from Glasgow. We have the creative director and the founder of the Lost Executive, which is a business-oriented publishing firm that focuses on business travel and business interests. As soon as I saw the title Lost Executive I was like, yes, this is, these are our people, we want to hear about it. So our guest was also a digital nomad, which I think just became popular kind of trendy title for people over the last couple of years definitely since 2022, and a recent father. So joining us, none other than Mr Donnie Russ. Donnie, nice to meet you and thanks for joining us.

Speaker 4: 2:12

No, thank you so much for having me on board. I'm delighted to be here.

Speaker 3: 2:14

Yes, well, first of all, congrats. You have a two-week-old.

Speaker 4: 2:19

Yes, she'll be two weeks from tomorrow.

Speaker 3: 2:21

Yes, well, congratulations, welcome to the world of fatherhood. Everything that you knew about life is about to change, so it's going to be wonderful.

Speaker 2: 2:29

Yeah, welcome to the world of no sleep, that's it yes, yes.

Speaker 4: 2:37

It's fun.

Speaker 3: 2:38

It will be. It's a lot of fun. Yes, pam and I are both on the opposite end of it, and I just had the opportunity to spend about a week or so a little bit more than a week with both of my daughters that are now adult children. So it's a different feel when they're adult children and you just continue loving them. So, yeah, congrats to you. But I would love to hear, just as we talk about the Lost Executive, how you found yourself in this place to create this company, to speak to individuals around the world, because you have a global reach at this point. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Speaker 4: 3:11

Cool. It was pure desperation, based on a very poor decision of mine in 2017 when I decided I was going to go. Firstly, I think it was a good decision to do it, but at the time it seemed a bit of a desperate move. I got very tired and very unsettled with where I was living in Norwich, norfolk, down in England. I had a wonderful pad. It was a converted nightclub. Beautiful pad, beautiful place, lots of good friends, great job.

Speaker 4: 3:36

I got very bored of that, decided to up and leave and I found myself on a plane to Malta with 15 bucks in my bank account. So that's not 15 bucks in my cash or I didn't have any savings. I literally had 15 pounds in my bank and I had to get to work because I had to make some money. So it was a bit of good luck, a little bit of a desperate energy to get stuff happening and, I think, just lots of support from people who had no reason to have any faith in me. But they did and it paid off in the end.

Speaker 4: 4:05

But yeah, the Lost Executive was started in 2017 based on that. We had a website at that stage when I was on the plane, but we didn't have any kind of infrastructure behind it, so I just basically got to work. Fortunately, I do have a background in publishing and writing for magazines and setting businesses up based around magazines and publishing, digital publishing and the production of various creative medias, so I had that to fall on. But it's one thing having a plan and then having lots of money behind you. There's another thing having a plan and not having money behind you and just having to do a lot of favors and a lot of begging at the start, but it's all good now, which is happy to say.

Speaker 2: 4:39

So you walked away from your job. $15 in your bank account. Jump on a plane.

Speaker 4: 4:46

So yeah, like I said, it was poor decisions, the 15 bucks. It wasn't like I was just oh, my goodness, I'm on a plane, I got 15 bucks. It was more of a case of okay, I bought the plane ticket, I've decided to go to Malta. I'll sort something out as I'm on my way. Oh, darn it. Okay, I've had a few things come out of bank account, like phone bills and whatnot. What I thought was there wasn't there. I had a few other expenses. You know these things kind of just, you have expenses that always kind of chip away at what you think you have. And yeah, I was like, okay, I really got to pay attention to things. And yeah, I had 15 bucks.

Speaker 4: 5:16

If I remember correctly, I landed in Malta thinking I had a lot more money than I did, and then I looked at my account and I was like, ooh, I don't, and it's weird. It's one of the things I've always said If you have the audacity to do something crazy, but be committed to it, the universe tends to help you out. Looking back, I'm always like I have no idea how I managed to kind of get through those first kind of bits, because it's ask anyone, it right and it sounds like, okay, cool, you've got a really good business. And it started with 15 bucks. It's like, yeah, no, it was the first couple of issues, especially were very kind of tight and there were lots of sleepless nights and lots of worries, but I got through it and, looking back, it's always the small favors that count the most in businesses. So it's like you can thank the people yeah, the investors and the clients and the various people you're making use of the services.

Speaker 4: 6:04

But my real gratitude goes to the people who say, yeah, fine, listen, come, stay on my couch, Fine, do you need 20 bucks? 20 bucks for how about we get you a nice hot meal for 20 bucks? Do you want to stay for dinner? All those kind of people, just those little favors that they thought, okay, this is just me helping out a guy for a couple of days and he's like, yeah, those are the people I'm really grateful for because without them I would die. So, yeah, that was a bit of a turn on and has you know, it's had a lot of like all businesses has had a bit of a hiccups since then, but considering how it started, it would take a lot to kill our business for the moment so you were kind of creating the website on the plane to multiple the website was created beforehand and we had the domain name but, like I said, we had no infrastructure behind it, so it was effectively just a.

Speaker 4: 6:49

It was a colorful blog site with I think I think there was 11 posts on it. And these were posts like that I'd written on business travels that I'd done for the company I'd been working for, and they were like oh yes, we stayed in this fancy hotel and this sort of thing, no idea of what I was doing. I mean, my career is in writing, but I'm used to writing with the purpose Okay, fine, I've got to write a book or I've got an article to write. So this is just a blog site. They were just fiddling around with and, yeah, I just had to get busy.

Speaker 4: 7:16

But I've always believed that if you have the basic tools, you can basically do anything. So you needed a phone and the internet and you can make something out of it. It's as simple as that. If you don't, if you're not afraid to call people up on the phone and say, listen, I need you to, I need you to drop some dollar into this new project I'm doing you ask enough people to do that and people are like, yeah, all right, fine, whatever, even if it's just guess, listen, I'll pay you just to stop calling me, which is sometimes which was. We'll take it. Yes, yeah, at that point you'll take it. If you pay me what I'm asking, I swear I will never call you again. Yeah, okay, fine.

Speaker 3: 7:49

That's it. Well, donnie, you said that you basically had a beautiful blog site that was not necessarily robust in any way, shape or form. What was the vision that you had for the Lost Executive? Because I think it all starts with a vision, especially if you had already taken the steps to take down that domain. What did you have in mind?

Speaker 4: 8:09

Well, I need to correct one thing. You said a beautiful website. It certainly wasn't a start. It was okay, very. It was very basic. It was just basically a blog site.

Speaker 4: 8:18

But what I wanted to do is because, like I said, I've been in publishing for a long time, writing for various magazines and different levels of magazines, so I've worked on the research side, I've worked on the editorial side, the creative side, on the sales side, so that really was my domain, my comfort domain. The other magazines I'd worked with had all been very specifically business-focused, just talking on business profiles. So we'd have a range of articles to work with and it's all good. But it never struck me as being the old journalist. You know, I've always fancied myself as being that journalist. You know I love the idea of like if I was Superman, I'd spend all my time being Clark Kent, like nothing else would be done, because I'd be like, yeah, I'm a journalist. So, you know, forget about flying or anything like that. No, I'm a journalist, that's what I want to be. But I do enjoy traveling. I've often done just crazy trips and adventures and stuff like that prior to it, which has caused no end of concern for family members and coworkers, so I wanted to combine the two.

Speaker 4: 9:12

I was very fortunate that I did have some very good contacts, like if I can drop some names, I don't know if that's allowed there's the chairman of Matchroomcom, which is Barry Hearn. His son is the promoter for Anthony Joshua, the boxer, and he's a phenomenally successful man. Just one of those. He's close to retirement now, but he's just one of those phenomenally successful individuals who's always been able to kind of make things work and for some reason he likes my writing and he always gives me the time of day when I email him. So I was on the plane. I just got off on the plane I was like, okay, I need someone to talk to you about this and he's a big name. So I just called up Barry and he was like yeah, let's have a chat. I was like you're kidding me. It's like Barry is worth upshot of I think he's selling his business upshot of almost half a billion. His son and him have a Netflix special coming out this year, which is very exciting the Greatest Showman. Keep an eye out for that. And he just he said, yeah, fine, call me on this time. And we had a chat and we got him featured and he's been featured several times since then.

Speaker 4: 10:18

So it gave us a good starting point because we were able to focus on the business people who travel a lot, initially, and then their business interests as well. So the idea was to highlight not only where people are going, how people are traveling to a location and what they're finding in that location, what they're doing, but also look at what their business is like, what their business interests are, and so we were able to. From a journalistic point of view, we were able to tackle quite a few different industries, which has been lots of fun. So it's not just been on the travel side, it's been we focus on safari quite heavily. Oddly enough, glamping, which is glamorous, camping Food, has always been a big one. Then we were able to do interesting articles like the accommodation for offshore workers and deep sea miners and things like that and how they're looked after by the various hotels and just lots of other stuff. There's always extra little bits that our writers and our team of writers and journalists are able to kind of find and kind of secure.

Speaker 4: 11:12

And in terms of, I know I went on a tangent. You asked what the initial focus was, the intention behind it. I wanted to create something that was my own. I wanted to have a legacy that I could pass on to my family, even though at the time I didn't have a family. I wanted to have a legacy that I could pass on.

Speaker 4: 11:28

I wanted to build something meaningful and fun and also, even at that stage, I was noticing that journalism in general was getting the idea of the old-fashioned journalist who actually goes on site and goes traveling and goes and gets stuck in.

Speaker 4: 11:40

The idea of the old-fashioned journalist who actually goes on site and goes traveling and goes and gets stuck in, puts themselves in danger, takes risks, was getting fewer and fewer. Most writers and journalists are just keyboard jockeys. They just work on the keyboard, which there's nothing wrong with that. You can get a host of information, but especially when it comes to traveling, there's something about being in a location. I grew up in South Africa, for example, and when you're talking to someone who's never left their home country, they may find all the information they can online about a place, but they don't know the culture, they don't know what it's like to actually be immersed in that place to you know the smells and the food, how people talk, how people eat, how they play music, how they celebrate things, and that was something that we wanted to capture and kind of bring to life.

Speaker 3: 12:20

I thought that was important, beautiful. I love that. Thank you.

Speaker 3: 12:22

Yeah, that's so exciting and so as you look at what you've grown the company to become, right when we're looking at the lost executive, now you have a team of writers and a staff. You don't just happen to flip the switch with the idea make a few calls and you land at this place. Idea make a few calls and you land at this place. Kind of talk to us about this journey of building the company out as well, because, as an entrepreneur, I mean, you took a huge leap of faith in leaving a job with another established company to become an entrepreneur but now growing this fabulous business. Kind of talk to us about that piece.

Speaker 4: 12:54

Yeah, I'm sure I made it a lot harder than it needed to be. I won't lie.

Speaker 3: 13:53

We often do. We often do.

Speaker 4: 13:57

My part of my soon-to-be wife. She's always saying that my ideal situation would be just to write articles and flit around the world and just do that professionally. I may have founded the company, but I would love someone else to manage it for me, because I just want to travel around and eat in different countries and listen to music and write little stories, and that's all I wanted to do. And I do think I made it a lot harder than I needed it to be, because when I started it I didn't have a great credit score. Banks wouldn't loan me any money. I was too afraid to talk to investors. I felt very intimidated speaking to investors, speaking to anything to do with finance and money. I was very unsure of myself in terms of those sorts of things. I'd written about it loads, but there's a difference between research and article and writing it and actually going and doing it yourself. And even then I mean, if you don't have a credit score, it can be difficult to get finance from the banks. And I didn't want to have investors on board because I didn't want to give away my company. We had a business partner at the start and then I worked very hard to even get my shares back from them. So I made it a lot harder for myself than I needed to be and for many years it was just myself On the risk of some of my long-term clients hearing this I blagged my way through the first three years, first few years of the business.

Speaker 4: 15:07

I was just, I think on the first issue I just lied through my teeth. I was like, yeah, we're launching this magazine. It's great. I had a bit of a social media following thanks to previous projects and previous just insane activities I'd been doing. That's a whole different conversation. So I was like, yeah, we've got this huge viewership, we've got this massive thing. Why don't you get involved? Et cetera, et cetera. People were like, yeah, brilliant, brilliant. And then I was like cool, so I've got people involved now. Now I just have to make sure that they get some kind of exposure from this. So the old term of faking it, saying making it really did kind of come into play, because I just blagged my way through the first few issues until I got the steam rolling, basically lied until it became true.

Speaker 4: 15:46

Next thing I know it took a long time to get to the stage where we're able to use, able to have the resources to actually start building up our team and to do that as well. Very conveniently, because at the time, I was a digital nomad myself. We could provide work for other digital nomads. So that was basically people who are they're professionals, they have professional activities, they do professional work, but they don't have a permanent address, and this had been something I'd been very interested in for about, oh crikey, since about 2011. When I first heard it and it just kind of fit, I was right time in my life. I was like, brilliant, I'm just going to do that. So I spent three years basically Airbnb hopping through Europe. It's awesome. It's wonderful Building up this magazine, getting freelancers to work with me, building up a team still working with the same designer for the magazine that we did right from the start.

Speaker 4: 16:32

She also has recently just had her first child, working with constant writers that have been dealing with for many years, our sales team as well. We've worked with them for many years. Lots of people just they're very loyal and again, they seem to enjoy what we do and I'm like I'm sure I just put you guys under so much pressure. I have no idea why they're so loyal to the project, but they're always there for me and if anything happens, if there's ever any problems or anything takes place, they're just there to kind of support the projects, which is great. I don't deserve a team as good as them, but it seems to be what I've gotten and looking back, I've got no idea how it happened. Like you know, people say, oh, what's the key to your success? I'm like just blindly work in one direction, just keep going. Some days you just have to lean forward and let your feet not, let your face, hit the ground. You just lean forward and just keep moving forward and that's fine.

Speaker 2: 17:18

Well, you didn't really have a safety net.

Speaker 4: 17:20

No, no, not at all.

Speaker 2: 17:22

Sometimes, if you don't have the safety net, you don't have an option. It's not like you can just oh, I'll just fall back on this. No, you were sleeping on people's couches.

Speaker 4: 17:31

Yeah, very much so.

Speaker 4: 17:36

Yeah, it was an experience. But another thing I've always said is that have you ever noticed how in stories, in the most popular stories, it always happens when someone is called to an action? So someone has an ordinary life and, whatever it takes, they have an ordinary life, a stable life, a very settled life, and then either something happens to them or they're introduced to someone that makes something happen for them, and then they go on a quest, they go on an adventure and people around them don't understand it, they don't know why, but they're committed and they're just going on a quest. And they're just going on an adventure and I think that rings true for a lot of things is when you don't have that safety net. You know you're not going on a holiday, you're going on an adventure.

Speaker 4: 18:12

You don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. So you learn how to make sure that what you're doing today counts for tomorrow. And I think, yeah, like you say, there's no safety net and we've had to pivot, we've had to change, we have to shift things around and move, and sometimes you do just like starting a business like that is the best way to find a religion, if that's kind of your thing, because you're like it would be wonderful to be able to pray to someone and just have someone else take the reins, sometimes Just like I have no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow, but there's ways around that as well.

Speaker 2: 18:40

What was your inspiration like? Because you said sometimes you'd like to like hand the reins over to somebody else to do it and tell you what to do. How did you know?

Speaker 4: 18:47

Was it just I think something my dad taught me actually is that if you're going to build a business, it's kind of like building a house If you don't lay the bricks on your house, you're never going to get to the roof, you're never going to put the roof up, but some days you'll have the energy to build the walls, lay the floors, put the roof up. I don't build a house so I don't know how the correct order goes into it. But there's a lot that goes into building a house and if you do it yourself about this, know what the bare minimum is, what the bare standard is, what is the lowest standard that you need to do to get stuff done to make tomorrow better than today? I've worded that very poorly, but if you know that, for example, and if you're doing sales, you need an X number of leads to sell, just to pitch, even if it's just sending out emails and then following up on them to get conversations going, if you know that's what you need, you can work out how many calls you need to make a day, and then you can reverse engineer to work out how many leads you need in a day or a week, and then you sit down and you find the easiest way to do that? What is the easiest way to make sure that is consistent and done, even if that is the only thing you do in the day? So if you wake up one day and you have no energy let's say you have a migraine, let's say you're sick, let's say you're hungover, let's say you're injured yourself or you're just not having a good day what is the lowest thing that you can do to make sure that you're at least consistent? If you can be consistent on that, you can build your house. If you know that you're laying X number of bricks a day, fine, this is what it's going to take for me to build a house.

Speaker 4: 20:14

The trick is to know what needs to be done, and I always, at the time, in terms of inspiration for it and this was a 2000, late 2016, early 2017, a lot of the like the motivations you got there was very, very like broscape. It was like you know, get up early and work hard and overcome this. Do that Run, oh, manly. Yeah, you think I'm so tired. It's like I'm so tired. I don't want to do this. I just don't want to do this. You need a nap. I just need a nap.

Speaker 4: 20:43

I remember I was sitting. I was in Denia, spain, I was sitting on a beach. It was October, it was still very hot and I I was, in all fairness, I was very hungover. You know, I was very hungover. I'd done a bit of traveling, had a few issues, but I basically just burned myself out completely, just burned myself out, and I was like I'm so I don't know if I can keep this going. And so I sat down and I just looked. I made a list of everything that needed to be done for me to launch an issue. So I was like, okay, so that immediately makes me. The future to me became I only have to worry about the end of the month because that's when I'm going to launch my magazine. So what do I need to do to launch that magazine and what are the time periods? What did I need to do and accomplish?

Speaker 4: 21:21

Then I just broke it up into small bits and then I worked out what the average was that I had to do every day, that I could get away with the lowest. It's not the most motivating thing to say, but find what the lowest level is and just do that, because once you've done that, if you do that, let's say, you spend an hour a day. I think at one stage I got down to if I worked an hour every single day. I actually was able to get an issue out. This was just myself. This was when I was just doing it by myself. I was like, okay, so on my worst day, for whatever reason, from sickness to just having a bad day I worked for an hour and you find that's cool, I can put that away. I've done that. Other days I had a lot more energy. I'd work for 15 hours a day, 16 hour days, 17 hour days easy done.

Speaker 4: 22:03

But things aren't always constant. You go up and down. There's always an up and down. It's like the ocean is always going up and down. When you load, you need to know exactly what you're doing, and when you're high, you just take advantage of everything, all the energy, and that's basically how we got through. And then, eventually, we had enough cash that we could grow our team. And then, in 2020, we had a team of about eight, nine people working with us and we're doing very well. I remember at the start of 2020, I got all my team around me. I said brilliant, this has been a fantastic journey, 2020 is going to be our year, and that had just been when I'd arrived in Scotland after kind of like free-ligging it around Europe, and then COVID hit and I didn't leave the country for four years. Yes, yeah, covid stung, covid hurt big time.

Speaker 2: 22:44

Everybody. Yeah, absolutely. I love what you said, though, is you had this big goal, but then you chunked it down into small little actions and then gave yourself that thing that okay, if I have a day where I don't feel like doing anything, as long as I do the minimum that one hour, I'm good, Because then you're just continuing that momentum, it's not like it's just nothing. And you gave yourself permission to do that Like one hour. As long as I do that I'm good, because we're moving forward.

Speaker 4: 23:09

There's that all over YouTube. Jordan Peterson said something very interesting which I liked. He said you always should make sure that you're aiming low enough. I have found that in my life because I have started other businesses and not all of them have been phenomenal successes. Some of them have just been absolute insanity.

Speaker 4: 23:27

People have been like at the start they've been like, why are you doing that? And then, when it hasn't worked, they're like, okay, cool, why did you do that? No, I told you so. Just like okay, cool, why did you do that? No, no, I told you so. Just like okay, we're just interested to see what is going to happen, cause that was a crazy idea, donnie. You know, it's like I'm one of those people when I go in and say I have this idea and someone says, listen, under no circumstances should you do that. I'm like I'm going to do it, and it hasn't always turned out well, but often it because of what was happening at the start, of the lost executive, when we were building it up. We didn't have a chance to do it. We didn't have a choice to do that.

Speaker 4: 24:00

It was literally what are you going to do tomorrow to make the next day better? What can you do today to make tomorrow better Not hugely better, just a little bit better. You know, sometimes just in case of, okay, what are you going to do today? Just to make sure that you can buy yourself some bread? Oh yeah, it was just churning. And that wonderful movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, I think it's called Catch Me If you Can. I don't know if you've seen it. It's based on a con artist. I've forgotten his name, but there's a wonderful line in there that Christopher Walken says that two mice fall into a pail of cream and the first mouse drowns almost immediately but the second mouse struggles so much in the cream that he turns that cream into butter and he walks out. And I always liked that, because everything I've got I've always had to kind of work for it and climb my way up. So I'm kind of used to the struggle. God forbid I ever become phenomenally successful because I won't know what to do with myself.

Speaker 2: 24:50

You'll start another business Exactly Thanks.

Speaker 4: 24:53

All right. I have to say my wife was really spot on when she described me, because I have been in positions where I was in my early 20s I was about 24 and I got talked into selling timeshare in Tenerife, spain, which is in the Canary Islands, and I remember making a lot of money on that and by the end of it it was six months. The whole thing kind of fell through. A lot of us ended up like kind of not having any, not being paid and not. It was a very dodgy kind of scheme thing that we're doing. It's not my proudest moment and nor can I remember most of it, because I was also exploring other entertainment options on the island which I don't know should be mentioned on here.

Speaker 4: 25:29

But um I remember a lot of money was made and a lot of money was spent and I came out of there thinking, yeah, I need someone else to kind of look after the money because I just want to write stories. I want to write stories and travel and talk to people.

Speaker 3: 25:39

And travel.

Speaker 4: 25:39

yes, you know, I'm the hi. Let's talk, yeah, brilliant, fantastic, let's do something together. And they're like, okay, cool. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, by the way, let's talk dollar. Yeah, yeah, that's the delegation. Delegation is definitely important. I don't know how some people can claim that they know absolutely everything about every part of their business. I'm like I know a person who's doing with that. I think it's knowing who your team are, knowing who you can trust and building up a friendship with people Like your crew. You're sailing the seas of uncertainty and you have to make sure that you can rely on the person who's working with you.

Speaker 2: 26:19

Yeah, and so is your team.

Speaker 4: 26:20

It's all virtual, your team, that you have yeah, my team is spread all over the world. I've got a couple of people in south africa, which has proved to be very for very, very good, because south africa's got a wonderful combination of hard-working people, great education, and I think they have a very bare my. I've never been to America, but I do think they have a very similar mindset to America in terms of if you want something to be done, you've got to go and do it yourself. You know, it's got the kind of free market kind of idea. They can't rely on corporations or government to support them. So they're like fine, I want to do this myself, let's just jump at the opportunity and work something out, and I can see the cat behind you that you forewarned us.

Speaker 4: 26:57

I was going to say I was like that's a huge cat.

Speaker 2: 27:02

That's a big ass cat. I would be in trouble if I had to judge.

Speaker 3: 27:06

He was like well, she says it's a cat, let's just go.

Speaker 4: 27:11

Just just just confident. But we see something like take you out of the chairs Like wow, okay, yeah.

Speaker 4: 27:18

But yeah, south Africans Africans are great, so they're willing to knuckle down, which is handy, because I mean, I've been South African myself. I've got that similar kind of mindset. Our designers in Britain, we've got a few researchers spotted all over the space who do like editorial research for us. We're starting to look very heavily into podcasts and we've got a few people who are focused on that and they're based in Canada and USA. That's where they are at the moment. Some of them move around quite a bit. They travel more than I do at the moment, so from one moment to the next I never know where they are. I know one of them is buggered off to Australia. Beautiful, meant to be. No, he's meant to be working with us. I I was like where are you, dude? He was oh, I'm on my way to Australia. I was like why? Why are you doing that? I just wanted to just, you know, get away and experience some stuff. I was like you do know, we have an issue coming out like in two days.

Speaker 3: 28:06

We have deadlines.

Speaker 4: 28:07

Yes, yeah, he's like oh, I forgot about that I was like, yeah, he forgot he was on the Christmas always a bit of a train smash because no one works in December, that's right, yeah, no one works in December. And he was like I think he was just running on the idea of just being like a free agent, but that was a bit of a yeah, I'd love to say that's all. That's the other thing about business that I've realized, at least like on my side. Maybe it's just my level, but there's always a bit of a controlled chaos. It's like trying to manage a storm. You're always juggling. One thing you can never just assume that everything's going to run smoothly, because the moment you do that, the train's going to come off the rails and it's going to take out everyone at the train station because it's just rolling down sideways. How do you guys find the podcast? You've been doing this for quite a while. How have you found building this brand up?

Speaker 3: 28:55

We actually spoke about this with our guest yesterday that we had on. We, yeah, so we actually spoke about this with our guests yesterday that we had on. We just were determined that we were going to do it, and then we committed to doing it, and then we figured out the how after right. So we knew what we wanted to do, and building a community for individuals that are facing adversity was really our focus, right Like making sure that we had this community that people could come to, and so along the way, we have, I think, met the most amazing people. We've heard phenomenal stories that have been shared on the show from all over the world.

Speaker 3: 29:25

That was not on my radar when we started to think about a podcast. We were just thinking about, you know, the impact and the result that we wanted to have on other people's lives, and so I've felt the transformation in my own life being a co-host on the podcast, in addition to being able to provide that to our listeners. So it's been wonderful. We had no idea what we were doing, though Sometimes it's fun when you don't.

Speaker 2: 29:48

I kind of laugh because I think back to when we first started and we were just doing it, the two of us getting on and talking. We're like maybe it's just a guest. And then we've done an episode just the two of us now in over a year, because we have 180 on our waiting list to be a guest on our podcast.

Speaker 3: 30:05

That want to appear on the show. Yeah, yeah, it's taken quite a turn. Yes, totally changed. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 30:11

What is the craziest? Do you have any all-time favorites, or is that a bigger list?

Speaker 2: 30:17

I think I do and then we get a new guest. I'm like holy cow, that that was an amazing one. I love going back and looking at the people that we've had over the last couple of years because like, oh my gosh, I forgot about that person, right.

Speaker 3: 30:31

Yeah, I mean, and we've had individuals that have come on and shared, you know, if they've gone through like abuse or if they've experienced substance abuse or any type of health ailments, that they've gone through their journey in entrepreneurship and you know the professional adversities that we overcome. And then we also have individuals that come on and they share their tools that they've created. So we've had humorists that have been on, we've had hypnotherapists on, so like we get to see both ends of the or, I guess, all the pieces of the pie as it comes together. I don't know if I can say that I have one all-time favorite. There are quite a few that would make up a list. I don't have one all-time favorite, I would agree, yeah.

Speaker 4: 31:12

I mean, it's one of those things that you are quite right when your profession is talking to people, there's always someone else. That's going to surprise you.

Speaker 3: 31:18

Yes, yes, every time. Yes, we hope that you've enjoyed part one of our two-part conversation with Donnie Rust. What a phenomenal story. He truly took a gamble on himself and it looks like it's paid off. Make sure that you come back and join us for part two. We're going to continue our conversation with Donnie and hear more about the tips and advice that he has for entrepreneurs. We'll see you all soon.

Speaker 1: 31:44

Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real life ideas. To fuel the flames of passion, please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes and, of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience.