Ep799: Elvi Caperonis – Why Passion Matters in Business

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers, and welcome to my worst investment ever, stories of loss. To keep you winning in our community, we know that to win in investing, you must take risk, but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lines, and I want to thank you, especially my listeners and viewers in Florida for joining the mission today, fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host, Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests, Elvie Caperonis. Elvi, are you ready to join the mission?

Elvi Caperonis 00:39
Of course, I'm all in, Andrew.

Andrew Stotz 00:44
I'm excited, you know, and I just like, I got your LinkedIn profile opened up right as we're sitting here talking, and I know we're going to be talking a lot about that, but let me introduce you to the audience. Elvi is a former Harvard University analyst and technical program manager at Amazon and LinkedIn, top voice and a career strategist who has mastered the art of storytelling to create a six figure personal brand on LinkedIn. And if you go to her LinkedIn, and I'm gonna have a link in the show notes, you're gonna see she's got 190,000 followers, and she is really rocking it. And most importantly, she's got a flipping banner that's just flipping, and I can see different messages that she's putting across. So LV, take a moment and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Elvi Caperonis 01:34
Thank you so much, Andrew, it's such a pleasure being here with you today. Um, the main value that I believe, that I deliver to this world is my positivity. I always see the light at the end of the tunnel. No matter how hard my circumstances are. I can see that great things are happening ahead of me. I believe I got that as a gift from God because I am true believer, so I can feel it.

Andrew Stotz 02:03
And I'm curious some people, some people, when they say that, some people are kind of faking it, or they're saying, just think positive, think positive, think positive. But where does this come from? In your is it in your heart? You know, from your faith? Where does it come from? I believe,

Elvi Caperonis 02:19
I believe initially came from my grandmother. She was a true believer. She raised 10 kids almost on her own because of her attitude of making things happen. I grew up seeing her trying different business, trying different ways of doing things, and with that positivity every single day, every single day, thinking that things are going to get better. And that also got transmitted to my mom, and my mom transmitted to me, seeing them as a role model has been, has been the secret source of my success.

Andrew Stotz 02:57
It's great. I mean, I think I my parents were pretty, you know, I would say they weren't, like, overly positive, but they were just, they weren't negative, okay, not in the middle, yeah. And so I ended up, you know, having a pretty positive attitude in life. And then many, many years ago, I, I listened, I came up with a way of, kind of changing myself. And this was what I called a mantra, and I wrote out the type of person that I wanted to be and I was already, you know, I was already pretty, not a bad person, but, you know, I I wanted to be. And one of the things I said is I wanted to be attractive.

Elvi Caperonis 03:41
Okay, I love that. I love hearing that you are what you tell your brain, you you are, yeah, whatever you tell yourself, that's what who you are,

Andrew Stotz 03:49
and that's and I definitely believe that. And so I wrote down attractive now for the listeners out there, you don't see my face right now, but you know, I wouldn't say I'm the most attractive guy in the world, but, you know, I'm okay. But what I meant, I had to define, what does it mean to be attractive? And I wrote out, I attract good things and good people.

Elvi Caperonis 04:11
I love this. And so that

Andrew Stotz 04:13
was my mantra. I'm attractive. I attract good things and good people. But then we have to think, okay. Then I asked myself, okay, what is the most attractive person I know? Well, my professor at University in China for my PhD, when I was 50, I went there, and students are drawn to him, and the reason why they're drawn to him is because he cares about him, and he's like, he's getting them involved. And, you know, he's, hey, why don't you come with me for this, or I'm gonna go give a speech to 100 entrepreneurs in China. You know, why don't you come with me? And he just involved people in everything. And plus, he was always positive. I never heard negative. And so I wrote down, okay, if I was an attractive person, all my words would be positive. Positive. And so my mantra is, I'm attractive. I attract good things and good people. And then I wrote down all my words are positive. And so my mini mantra there is, all my words are positive. Once I started repeating that over and over again, guess what? All my words are positive. And so reality that was 1010, years ago. And as I said, I wasn't a I was kind of a neutral, slightly positive, but I wasn't like, crazy positive. But then about that was about 15 years ago, let's say, and then a couple of years ago or something, somebody said to me, you know, I explained that what I've done. And they said, Oh, so that's the reason why I never hear you gossip about other people. Oh. That's the reason why I never hear you complaining or getting angry or something like that. It's like, Oh, yeah. So it works. So I

Elvi Caperonis 05:57
love the mantra. I love the mantra. This is going to be my mantra going forward. I'm very positive, but I'm going to be, I'm going to be meaningful about it. I'm going to aim to do it. You know, it's not like I'm just this is who I am. I feel it in my DNA, but sometimes we need to purposely say that we want to do it and we are basically we become. What we tell our friend that we want to become, who we want to become, is the story that we tell ourselves. I believe we all have a story that we tell ourselves. And whatever we tell ourselves is what we become.

Andrew Stotz 06:34
Yeah, um, this is great, great for the listeners and the viewers. You know, what's the story that you want to be. It's time to shape it. And I think this conversation will definitely help us. I know on LinkedIn, you're doing a lot of storytelling, and you told me something before we went live that was, you know, so true in this world of AI, the only thing you have really your authenticity, is your story. Yourself, be yourself, your DNA, you said, your stories. So talk a little bit about more about what you're doing with LinkedIn, and you know what you've accomplished with LinkedIn?

Elvi Caperonis 07:06
Very good question. Andrew and 2020. During the pandemic, I saw a lot of people losing their jobs, and I believed seeing those messages of people just sharing that they were losing their jobs kind of broke my heart. I was working at Amazon at that time as a technical product manager, and I said to myself, there is something that probably I can share with them, because I'm very positive, and I would like to share that positivity with them, maybe to give them a word of encouragement and help them just to keep going. And I wrote a simple post saying, everything is going to be okay. You can do this is hard right now, but at the end, everything is going to work out. I think it was something in this line, but I wanted to transmit that positivity. To my surprise, that post goes zero light. Nobody, nobody connected to that message. And I got a little bit disappointed, I got a little bit sad, but I said, but I believe I can do this. I believe I can share that positivity with the world. And then I started doing it consistently. Every single day. I wrote a very little piece and I shared it. Some days, nobody engaged with my content. Others, I started getting some engagement little by little, and then it became like I was growing consistently every day. I was getting more and more people to engage in my content. And then I decided to share my stories, share my life stories, tell people all my struggles, all my pain points, share exactly who I am and where I came from and what helped me to become who I am today, and those stories that started resignating with people a lot, to the point like millions of people engaged with that content today.

Andrew Stotz 08:52
I mean, so it's just, let's go back to that for a second, because it's hard to believe. Because I tell people like, I have a lot of young finance people that I teach and train in my courses, and I tell them, Look consistently post. Now, if you're a writer, I always ask, Are you a writer? Are you a draw? You know, you like drawing, you like video, you like graphic, you know, what do you like? That's your style. Just do that right? And just do that consistently, and then, like, come on, I post it for five days and there's no response. And I Yeah, well, you haven't defined your target market properly and who you're speaking to. You know, you haven't done it enough. You gotta do it, and it may be 50 times before you really get that rhythm. But can you give some thoughts or advice to the people that really haven't done much on LinkedIn and are thinking about, how do I, you know, get started with this, and how do I have hope when I know my first 10 posts are going to get no views and nobody's going to care and I'm going to feel embarrassed, and you know, whatever you

Elvi Caperonis 09:55
need to be willing to fail your first post is not. Going to be the one that is going to probably going to make you acknowledge yourself online. The first one probably won't be good, but the more you keep doing it, the better you get at it. My biggest piece of advice that I wish somebody would have given me when I was starting my branding, building my brand in 2020 was you must engage with others people's content as well. So identify 10 to 30 people at least, that you would like to follow, follow them and also make meaningful comments in their post. Because the more value you add to the community, the more value you are going to get back to you if you engage in a meaningful way in other people content and you deliver value you sooner than later, you're going to get noticed all these 50 plus comments that you made. Some people are going to see it, and they're going to come back to your page, and they're going to see the value you are delivering also in your page, and that's the way you start building community. Some people make the mistake to not engage in other people content, just hoping that their content is going to kick off. But it's not that way. On LinkedIn, you need to be willing to give, first, deliver value to your community, and then you will get value back to you.

Andrew Stotz 11:20
Yeah, in that way, what you've just described is kind of a free ride. You don't even have to be great at posting if you're great at contributing to a thread that somebody started. And you think, Oh, that reminds me of this particular, you know, research I saw that supports that. And then you include a link and say, Okay, this, I thought, you know, was additional, you know, interest. And then you engage with other people who are commenting because, you know, they're exactly

Elvi Caperonis 11:50
and they, if you, if you engage consistently with them, they're going to come back to your page and they're going to engage with you. It's like you are giving you're going to receive back. It takes time. I recommend people to do it consistently, because it's going to take time. But if you do it consistently, it's going to pay off. And my other biggest piece of advice is be consistent and be yourself. Yeah, in a world where everybody's coping what others are doing, be yourself. Be authentic, because that's the only way you want to get noticed. You want to get noticed for you, I for your own thing, for your story. You're going to get noticed for your expertise. You want to get noticed for the value you uniquely can deliver to this world in a way that nobody else can do. We are all unique, and even some people maybe leave we are. We could be repetitive sometimes, but we all have something uniquely to add to this world. I truly believe that,

Andrew Stotz 12:46
you know, it's the first question I ask is tell us about the unique value you're bringing to this world. It's kind of funny to hear you talking about that, and you've talked about the DNA, but some people get, they get confused by that question when I ask them, you know, and they're kind of stumped, because I think people haven't thought, in some cases, like, what is the unique and and unique is unique. It's kind of a, it's a pretty strong word in the sense that only you, you know, this

Elvi Caperonis 13:16
is in the way you do it. It could be just in the way you do it. It's only you.

Andrew Stotz 13:22
Yeah, okay. So we talked about, engage, make meaningful comments, bring value, deliver value. First. Number two, be authentic. Yeah, be consistent. Number three, let's say, Be yourself. Be authentic and talk, you know, bring your unique value to the world. Okay? And so let's say that you forget about your profile. Let's just say that you have an average picture, an average LinkedIn profile, you know. And it LinkedIn like naturally puts in your job title of what you're doing, and so your marketing manager of a company and and you were just to consistently engage in comments. Well, when we talk about consistent what do we need to tell people? You know, are we talking about consistently for 10 days or 100 days or 365, days? What is consistent mean to you in the beginning,

Elvi Caperonis 14:12
in the healing? Consistency, to me, means, if you want to commit to pause from Monday through Friday or from Monday through Wednesday, whatever works for you at 9am you will do it consistently every single week. I started posting from Monday through Friday every single week at 9am and I did that consistently for the past almost five years, and I continue to do that today. So consistency. Mean, whatever you decide that works for you and your schedule, you do it every single week, and is it final day and a time that works for you and do it consistently?

Andrew Stotz 14:51
And I can understand the value as an individual setting your plan and knowing exactly what you're going to do. Is there value? To posting on a consistent day and time of day, or is that not the key? The key to this is just that it sets a schedule for you.

Elvi Caperonis 15:09
It sets a schedule for you and also for your audience. You're adding your audience. Get to know when you are going to post, and they will probably be respecting your piece of content every day which happens to me, I have an artist. They are they're looking for my content in the days that I don't post. Some of them say, oh, where is Elvis content today? Is something happening to lb, so consistency allows you to communicate in a way with your audience. They also expect that piece of content on on that given time frame, because you are consistently doing that, and

Andrew Stotz 15:41
I can hear the listeners out there and the viewers that they're saying, LV, I'm so busy. How can I do a high quality post five days a week?

Elvi Caperonis 15:53
It doesn't need to be rocket science. It could be a quote that actually my biggest ideas had come for something that happened to me at work that I was not that pleased about, and I wanted to share my thoughts. You know, sometimes there is a sense there are sensitive topics that we don't want to discuss when we still have a job, but there are ways that you can get around for instance, if you could share a story that happened to a friend of you, and you could share your perspective. You could share your friend who got laid off and you feel bad about your friend, and you believe that your friend could do A, B and C, and you are supporting your friend and help you find a job. There are many ways that you could probably rephrase the content, but it doesn't have to be a big piece of content. Every day. You can just post a quote, and those typically may do well on LinkedIn, especially if something that you're sharing knowledge. For instance, I love saying a title. Doesn't make you a leader the way you treat people, does. It's a very short phrase, and I add my name in it. This is something that came from my heart, and you can post that on LinkedIn. LinkedIn doesn't require you to have any specific length in test or image. You can actually freely post whatever you believe you want to post.

Andrew Stotz 17:14
And okay, so let's say you post where you share experience. Okay. Another is you share a quote. What are some other types of ways, or, you know, ways that you've shared or that other people could consider,

Elvi Caperonis 17:29
put yourself on a camera and a video, if you feel comfortable doing so, and tell a little bit about you tell building a business is hard. Being an entrepreneur is hard. Nobody tells you that, but I'm facing a, b and c, and I'm struggling here. Um, does anyone have any biggest any piece of advice for me in this situation? And you're probably going to hear a lot of comments, people are going to be telling you what to do if you're going to learn from their story.

Andrew Stotz 17:57
Um, is there, is there less negativity on LinkedIn because it's professional and people don't really want to go out and say all the crazy things that they say on other platforms, or is it pretty much the same? Expect negativity.

Elvi Caperonis 18:11
I think there is a mix of both, because LinkedIn has certain policies that doesn't allow certain things to go live. I believe as long as you are professional in your way of expressing things, LinkedIn will let you publish your content. But there are certain rules on LinkedIn that probably don't apply to other social medias, like Facebook or Instagram. It is a professional network. Most of the most of the most important CIOs in this world have a LinkedIn profile. They may not be on Facebook, they may not be on Instagram, they may not be on Tiktok. They will barely be on Tiktok, but they will have a LinkedIn profile because their company needs to be highlighted on LinkedIn, or somebody to see that there is a professional brand behind the company. So if you are thinking about putting yourself out there, to me, the best platform to do a professional is LinkedIn. And I love the fact that it's professional. I love the fact that most people try to do it friendly. There are also haters. There are haters everywhere. But I like to see the positive side of things. I like to flip it. I don't have time for negativity. Andrew, whenever somebody comes with a negative comments, I delete. LinkedIn gives you the option to delete and block people who are actually not adding value. If you can to me to my page to argue with me, you're going to waste your time because mine. I'm not going to waste my own negativity. You can do your own page exactly so I don't allow negativity. No, no, I do. I do my content in a positive way. Yes, of course. I. Like things that are probably not well in the workplace. Like one of my favorite quotes is leaving a toxic place is actually a blessing to me. This is something that I needed to say it, and I felt good about saying that because I went through it. And I want others to learn that this is not okay.

Andrew Stotz 20:18
Okay. So one last thing about content, and that is, should we plan in advance and say, Okay, on Monday and Wednesday and Friday, I'm going to do a quote, and on Tuesday, Thursday, I'm going to tell a story, or or, how do we build consistency?

Elvi Caperonis 20:35
That's a very good question. I will. I love that recommendation, because I do create my content strategy, and probably you could do something Monday, motivational. Motivational Monday. We all need Motivational Monday. Keep going. Whatever you're going through, remember that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. Keep going. Monday, motivation. You could be a quote, you could do a video of you sharing something, or you could share a live experience. I love sharing my stories, something that I have overcome, that I believe others can benefit from learning. Tuesdays, you can share leadership quote like, believe you can do it, or believe things are positive and have empathy for your team. Something really related to leadership. On Wednesday, probably you can share a career advice. The best, the biggest piece of career advice that I could tell somebody is do A, B and C. My biggest piece of advice for anyone looking for a job or signing an offer is, negotiate your job offer. Never take the first thing that they offer you because you're going to lose money. Yeah, I love sharing those messages. I recommend people to have to have a theme per day in that sense that they know in their audience also know what to expect. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to stick to it. If one day you believe you want to make a switch, make a change? What I do recommend people is to work in an agile way, inspect and adapt. Inspect your content, look at what people are liking, what they are not liking, and improve your content along the way. Your strategy accordingly. You

Andrew Stotz 22:16
got a perfect testing ground.

Elvi Caperonis 22:19
I've been testing a lot for the past five years, and I tried to do it in Agile way. I stopped, what? No, but nothing work. It doesn't serve me. So I stopped, and I keep doing what works.

Andrew Stotz 22:30
You know, one of my favorite things that I always say, I don't post it on Facebook or Instagram, sorry. LinkedIn, enough. And now that I'm getting inspired by thinking about how I could do something every day, Monday to Friday. And you know, I'm pretty good on LinkedIn. You know, I'm not, I'm not bad, but I can see that I could engage more with my audience. And one of the things that I always say is, TG, I am. Thank God it's Monday. Why? Because I love my job, and I love to come to my desk and, you know, and so I sing, and, yeah, that's perfect for me, because it gets across like as I tell I was speaking to a group of young people who are just graduating from university here, and I said, All I wanted in my life was to have a job that I enjoyed and wanted to, you know, go to and do and to do it with people that I like. That's all I wanted, and I got it. So I love this. If that's what you want, go get it. And one of the benefits of that is that, and also, if I always said to myself, I really do love Mondays. I like going in on the morning on Monday and thinking about what I'm going to accomplish this week. And, you know, I just love it, and I just feel sorry for people. They're like, Oh, it's Monday, but maybe I'm not communicating that to the world yet, and I need to communicate that more clearly to help inspire people to think, Well, yeah, maybe I, maybe I could actually enjoy Monday, but maybe not here where I am. I

Elvi Caperonis 24:00
look forward to that content. I'm going to be following you closely. So

Andrew Stotz 24:03
now, last thing, I mean, I have, I'm so interested in what you've done on LinkedIn, so I'm taking a long time to talk about this before we get to your story. So we're going to get to it in just a second. But okay, so somebody engages on LinkedIn, they're consistent, they're authentic. They got different post styles that they've set up, but you've also got, you know, an attractive profile. You got a smiling picture that we can see that's pretty close up, right? Not something, you know, strange. You've got a flipping banner that's telling us, you know what you're bringing. You've got a headline that doesn't say you know marketing manager, as you know it's going to naturally come up with your whatever job title. And you say, I help teach professionals pivot to a TPM six figure. Medical

Elvi Caperonis 25:00
Program Management. Well, wait a

Andrew Stotz 25:02
minute, that seems so specific. How is general content that you're talking about, what you're inspired about then and then you're going to be really focused in down to this niche? How does that work?

Elvi Caperonis 25:18
Very good question. When I started on LinkedIn. I didn't have an idea what I want to be known for. I just wanted to share my positivity. As I have grown my account, I have realized that people also want to know about my career trajectory, and people have been coming to me for help to land their dream job. As I get more and more people who want to land their dream job, and I've been helping them. I discovered my actual niche. Oh, my eyes. I am a little sensitive about and, you know, yeah, I didn't know what I want to be known for. I just started sharing my positivity out there, and people came to me, you know, and I have helped so many people learn their dream jobs. And now it's like people come to me for help, and now I'm actually telling the world what I can help them on, because I've been helping many, many others to be successful in the way I have been doing,

Andrew Stotz 26:17
yeah. And so, you know, the point is, you know, as you are kind of wiping away the tears. This is, this is what it's about, you know. I was walking down the street in Bangkok with one of my students, who's a 39 year old guy who's very ambitious guy, and I asked him, What's your mission? And he's like, I don't know. And I said, you know, the problem is, if you don't have a mission, you're just going to work your butt off for what you know, is it for your family? Is it to bring something to the world? Is it? What is it? You've got to clarify it, and it takes time to come up with that clarification. And I had a teacher when I was young. I was 24 years old. He was 92 and I attended his seminars, and he taught incredible amount of energy. He was on a mission to help America, in particular, improve the quality of their business, to improve the quality of their management, the quality of their products. His name was Dr W Edwards Deming, and he was the father of the quality movement. And I was a 24 year old guy sitting in front of him, and about 10 years ago. So I'm also the host of the Deming Institute podcast, and we interview people all around the world who talk about what they're applying, including in the The Lean Startup applies the PDSA cycle that Dr Deming, you know, popularized. But the point was, was that about 10 years ago, I started asking myself, so what's your mission? And I hadn't really clarified it, but now I have it very clear. And, you know, I have a program called the profit boot camp where I help mid sized family businesses double profits in 12 months. I love that I'm a capitalist, and my passion is profit.

Elvi Caperonis 28:06
And you help people to make profit, yep, and

Andrew Stotz 28:10
that brings value to the whole world, because if you're making loss, you know, I had a guy said profits evil, and I said, So what's loss? Good?

Elvi Caperonis 28:20
You don't want to know what it is. It's

Andrew Stotz 28:22
suffering. It's no bonus. Can't hire the right people, and nobody's happy. It's losing customers aren't happy. You're not spreading your message of whatever your product or service is. So my passion is profit, and I can see that your passion is helping people find themselves what they want to do helping them, and so for the listeners and the viewers there, find that passion that makes that touches your heart. And when I can help somebody double the profits of their business and really get their business on a sound footing, and it's a family business that I work with that can help generations. In fact, just yesterday, I was on Instagram, and I saw an announcement of two architectural firms in America, one in Pittsburgh and one in West Virginia, merging to become one of the largest, you know, architectural firms in America, and the one from Pittsburgh was founded by my great grandfather in 1898 Wow. Our family sold it in about 819. 80 something, and the new owners have continued to grow it. The background of that company and the archives is all about my great grandfather and the legacy. And that legacy lives on, even though we're not there anymore. But he left the legacy in this world, and I love it. What? What legacy Are we leaving? You know, that's the key. So let's talk yesterday.

Elvi Caperonis 29:46
Tell me yesterday, one of one of my clients called me to say that he landed a job offer at Uber, and he made my day. He made my day because I know that this is going to be an impact for his. Family. I know this is going to transform his life. I already helped him to land a job at another big tech company, and he changed his life. He's so grateful, and I know that the impact of my work is beyond what I can see. I feel

Andrew Stotz 30:15
like I have a lot more I want to talk to you about, about LinkedIn, but we better get into the core of today because and now everybody can see the value you're bringing on LinkedIn. And I'll have the link in the show notes so people can click and go and start to follow. But yeah, it's awesome. So now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since nobody goes into their worst investment thinking it will be, tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, and then tell us your story.

Elvi Caperonis 30:44
A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to go on my own, and I wanted to do as a family. I discussed it with my husband. I told him, I want to do this. I want to be my own boss. I want to do it. I want to learn how to do it successfully. And my husband was very supportive. We decided to launch an E commerce business, but I had no idea how hard it was launching an E commerce business. I hear a lot of people saying that you can make a lot of money. I hear a lot of people saying that it is fun, it is a profitable business. However, I I thought I could do it. I thought, if others are making it, I can make it too. I took an online course, and I started learning about e commerce. I did my due diligence. I thought I was doing my work. I was learning how to do it step by step. Oh, boy, was I was wrong. I was very wrong. Um, I didn't know that to in order to start a business on something my biggest learning is that you need to have passion for that. I didn't have passion for E commerce. It was a lot of work, and it seemed like it was a it seemed like it was a nightmare at the end, because I was putting a lot of hours, a lot of hours, and I didn't find a way to make it happen. And if I could, if I could go back to that time, I will tell my myself that was trying the business. Why are we doing that? Why are you trying that business? I know you want to be your own boss, but is there anything else that you can do that you actually would love doing? And this is something that most people don't don't stop to think, yes, you want to start a business. But could we take a seat back and think I'm going to enjoy this? Is this going to tell the story that I want to live in the world I regret not doing that.

Andrew Stotz 32:58
So how would you summarize the lessons that you learned.

Elvi Caperonis 33:04
We lost about 30,000 in trying that business. That was the worst amount of money that I ever lost in my life. It hurt. It hurt a lot because we're a family business. Everything that comes in the income is for the family, and $30,000 is a lot of money for for a small for a big family of five. So my biggest lesson learns were the following. Number one, if you don't have passion for something, question yourself 1000 times before starting that business. Number two, you want to learn from people who have done it before. You want to have a mentor. You want to avoid the big mistakes that I would have saved myself $30,000 if I don't have a mentor who knew how to make that happen. Number three, if you don't have any idea about this kind of business, don't go all in, be agile and try to sell maybe a few units of a product. If you can sell them, maybe you double down and you you continue as you grow, you inspect and adapt. But don't go all in for a business without even trying your idea. Number four, if this business is not going to make you happy or make your family happy or make somebody else happy, why are you even doing it? I should have questioned myself 1000 times before going into that business, but I didn't do it. I just wanted to go for the money. And the number five lesson that I have here is that just because it's going to make you money, that doesn't mean necessarily mean that it's going to make you happy. And our goal shouldn't be making money. Our goal should be being happy, because this life is very, very short.

Andrew Stotz 34:59
Yeah. Mm. And bringing value, you know, as that makes you happy, as we saw,

Elvi Caperonis 35:03
we're only happy when we deliver value to others. Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 35:07
yeah. And I guess my big takeaway is, like, think about whenever I tell people to think about the job that they want, or let's in this case, say the business they want to do, think about the task that you love doing. Now, let's just say that you love coding websites and seeing the response of people to your coding. Well, maybe e commerce and building an E commerce site could be exactly what you you know what, what fits with you if you're and and therefore find the whatever it is your job or your business that you start, just make sure it's built around the core thing that you do naturally today, whatever that core thing. And for me, I'm more likely to be talking on a video or crunching on a spreadsheet than I am writing, you know, a chapter of something. And so I don't build my life around the thing that I'm not doing right now, and that way I build a career. So I always say every job is the same, whether it's sales, whether it's an analyst, whether it's MD, whatever it is, they're all the same because they all have the same activities. We're speaking, we're presenting, we're writing, we're analyzing. You could lay out five to 10 core tasks that we're doing. The only difference between jobs is that a salesperson is going to be speaking a lot more than an analyst that is crunching numbers, but the analyst has to speak at some point, and so therefore, think of it like a DNA code. And look at the columns, and think about each task as a column, and say, This is my code. I want to do this task 50% of the time. What job has that I can map into that? And then I find the job that I'm doing, the tasks that I love to do every day.

Elvi Caperonis 37:00
So, very good point. Very good point. Andrew, it has to be something that you have passion for, because then you can tell a story that resonates with your customers. If you cannot do that, if you cannot convince yourself that whatever you are building delivers value to the world, how you're going to convince others to get the value that you are delivering or to perceive it. So it has to be something that you can actually buy for yourself. If you don't buy this, if you don't buy that business idea yourself, it's probably not going to do well. So it has to be something that you have passion for. It has to be something that you will buy yourself. And the idea of E commerce, I didn't buy for myself. It was something that I just thought was going to make extra money for the family, and I was trying it out. But I was very wrong. I was very wrong.

Andrew Stotz 37:57
You know, 30 years ago, when I came to Thailand 32 years ago. 30 years ago, my best friend came here, and we started a coffee factory. We were roasting coffee for businesses, supplying hotels, restaurants, coffee shops. We went through a lot of ups and downs. I was an investment banker at the time, so I didn't have much time, but my best friend was running the business. The Business eventually started to rise and rise, but as it was rising in revenue, it was also rising in cost, and we weren't making that much profit, but we were working very hard, and then over the years, what I finally realized is that I need to help my business partner to increase the profits of this business. He needs help. He needs help to understand that we've got to grow revenue and hold costs down for six months and then get the benefit of that. And over time, I taught him, through my finance knowledge and my skills in business, to really focus on making sure that we're as highly profitable as we can be, still bringing great value to our customers. And you know what? It changed our lives now it's today. Is the 30th anniversary of this business. We're strongly profitable with strong growth. We have ability to pay bonuses and take care of our people, and most importantly, we're delivering more and more value to our clients. But even more importantly is that as we get older, we got to decide, what are you going to do with your business? What's the value of your business? Is this for your family? Is this, you know, is this for your retirement and now legacy? Yeah, we're prepared for that, and this is why I started the profit boot camp, because it's something that touched my heart, that almost killed us when we were in loss and struggling. But now that I've got it right, the whole world has changed. As I say, I love that, as I say to people. So the best treatment for sleep or insomnia is cash in the bank.

Elvi Caperonis 40:09
It makes you less stressful, right? Yeah.

Andrew Stotz 40:13
So, that's my story, you know? And I thought about that, you know, I don't think I tell it that well yet, but I'm working on telling it better, and I'm launching my profit boot camp, the first one online, which I'm going to launch on March 3 of this year, 2025 but as I'm doing that, part of what I'm trying to do is convey to them like I've been there and I'm going to help you double profits in your business in the next 12 months. And at the end of the 12 months, you're going to be so happy that we've done it. So I love that. There it is. Okay. Last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Elvi Caperonis 40:52
That's a very good question. The number one because I bought my priorities. The number one goal is to spend more time with my family, my kids, my husband, my mom, my sisters, my aunts, my whole family. We have a limited time in this world, and we only get with us the love that we give and the love that we receive. We don't take anything else with us. So that's my number one goal. Beautiful,

Andrew Stotz 41:22
beautiful. Well, listeners, there you have it, another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. As we conclude, LV, I want to thank you again for joining our mission. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Elvi Caperonis 41:48
I will say, even if you cannot see it now, whatever you are going through is going to be okay. Just tell that to yourself, beautiful,

Andrew Stotz 41:59
it's going to be okay, ladies and gentlemen, and that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth, fellow risk takers, let's celebrate that. Today, we added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host, Andrew Stotz, saying, I'll see you on the upside. You.