Check out the latest episode below. Mr.Biz Radio provides business owners with the knowledge and insights needed to drive their companies forward.

Mr. Biz Radio: Choosing a Business to Pursue

Unedited transcription of the show is included below:

(00:05):

Welcome to Mr. Biz radio, Biz. Talk for Biz owners. If you're ready to stop faking the funk and take your business onward and upward, this show is for you. And now here's Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth.

(00:19):

All Right, welcome to another episode of Mr. Biz Radio. Me, Mr. Biz Ken Wentworth. And you know, I've found o often in life that we at least myself, and I, I think a lot of people would agree with this, you learn more from challenges that you're faced with, right? You know, you have success. And of course you can learn, Hey, how is I successful? How can I replicate in that, that in the future? But I know, I can tell you from my, my vantage point the challenges that I've had and I've had to overcome, I've learned a lot more from those because they seem to have a lot more lessons in them, in those challenges, because I know at least myself, when I have some success, you know, I like to high five and celebrate a little bit. And then it's on to the next challenge.

(01:00):

When I have, where I've fallen short or had challenges, man, I'm wanna dig through all that. I want to dig through all the mess and what caused it, and how can I change this? And do I need a new skillset? Do I need to, you know, have someone help me with this, et cetera, et cetera. And that's one of the things we're gonna talk about this, this, this week with our guest. Our guest this week is none of them, Mr. Juan Williams. He's a former radio TV news journalist, turned entrepreneur. He spent 30 years as a mechanical engineer. So he is like a TV radio guy. And then he is a mechanical engineer, like super smart guy, right? He's got, you know, the glasses with the tape on him. Kidding, he doesn't. But designing residential in indu, industrial piping. His education is an engineering from the University of Hawaii. Got a lot of questions on that. Never been to Hawaii. <Laugh> an interdisciplinary business from Arizona State University. He's now retired, kind of. He calls himself retired. I wouldn't say that cuz he's a pretty active guy. He's written a book actually called "How Your Lifestyle Is Killing You". Juan, welcome to Mr. Biz Radio.

(02:00):

Hey, I was right. How we doing? Let's do this. I've got a lot of information for everyone and you know, let's get started with the first question that says what you got for me.

(02:13):

Yeah. So, I mean, I guess, I know you have such a varied background, so I'm very curious and we, we u I usually ask this of guests, but especially with you, you know, tell us about your entrepreneurial journey. You know, what got you to where you're at now?

(02:27):

Well, you know, let's start even at childhood, you know, a lot of people start with maybe a lemonade stand or something like that, but me and my brother and sisters started trying to promote entertainment. You know, we walked around with it wasn't hanging, but it was like middle of summer. We're walking around with these costumes on trying to get money from people because they just wanted to get scared by a monster. So, you know, they were giving us quarters and dimes and nickels and pennies just, just to scare 'em up. So, you know, it was things like that. But we did another thing we did as a child I lived in a place called Battle Creek, Michigan, and they had a dump nearby for the cereal. And so we would go and get the toys out of the boxes of old cereal that was dumped, and we would sell it at school and make money off the Super Bowls, the jacks, you know, whatever toys was in those boxes we made money off of.

(03:18):

So that was my first opportunity to become an entrepreneur and learn how to really promote something to an audience of people. And moving forward you know, I've been involved as an adult in things like Amway you know, real estate opportunities that, you know, floundered. I was in a travel network kind of thing going on. You know, there's a lot of different things that I tried out that failed, but a lot of those things I did while I was working as a mechanical engineer. So it was a side job, the side thing, you know, sometimes I didn't have the time nor didn't put in the necessary effort to make it work. And, and that was really the issue. So, moving forward, you know, now I have a new business, a publishing business called Wan Wisdom, LLc, that's supporting my new book, "Why Your Lifestyle Is Killing You".

(04:12):

And the important thing with that is getting the book out right now. And of course with writing a book and getting it published, et cetera, I'm having issues right now with a particular publisher right there in Ohio where you sit. So we're moving forward and we're making it happen. But you know, there's always something that, that, you know, comes up. You're trying to get things formatted, trying to get things organized, trying to make sure everything is right inside the book, getting it preferred and getting it, you know, grammar. Correct. And that's what we're working with right now.

(04:42):

Yeah, there's a, oh man, there's a, you and I could talk offline about that, I'm sure for a long time. And there's so many challenges with that. I think a lot of people when they see a book is published and, and they read the book, or they don't even realize all the work, forget the actual content piece of it, which is, you know, it can be challenging as well, but all the other administrative tasks, like you said, not just the proofreading, but the editing and oh, well, you know, just super technical things that I'm just, they're not in my wheelhouse, Juan, I gotta tell you. Like, the, the margins have to be this and what font size should you use, and then what font to use. You know, even that, I, I was amazed when I did some research on that. I self-published all three of my books and, you know, just learning about the different fonts. I'm like, who cares about the font? And I started doing research on it and they're like, no, certain fonts have a higher readability. I'm like, what the heck? There

(05:36):

It is. I mean, we're older adults. Yeah, we're older adults, so we gotta be able to read the word. You know, I, I know from experience my grandparents, they wouldn't pick up a book and read it if it, the letters were too small. They're like, I can't read that. So we gotta, you know, consider that when we're actually publishing a book.

(05:52):

Yeah. Well, and it was, it was fascinating to me. I mean, I guess it sounds obvious now, but so when I was doing that and they, you know, this particular article I was reading about readability and the fonts that had the highest readability, even forgetting the size, I took a paragraph from my book and I put it in four different fonts. Cause I'm like, these are all the same. And I started looking at 'em, I'm like, holy crap, these are not the same at all. You know, these two are way easier and it just flows so much easier with your eyes to be able to read them compared to, you know, some other fonts or whatever. So even just simple, simple things like that that, you know, if you've never written a book before, you're probably like, you don't even think about those kind of things. But so I gotta ask you, Juan, so I know you came from a lot of a family with a lot of business owners, and as I recall, I believe your, your mom had a salon. Do you think that had like a, an impact on you? Like always kind of had an entrepreneur spirit?

(06:43):

Absolutely. Because, you know, I would be in the beauty shop and, you know, I would see her have these long, long days doing heads, they call it doing heads, you know, in, in a beauty shop. They call it doing heads. Yeah. And it, it basically was a, a, you know, a a a laborous task cuz you're dealing with chemicals, you're dealing with personalities and people, you're having conversations, you know, that draws on your energy. So at the end of the day, it was, you know, pretty rough coming home and still having to cook dinner. So, you know, it, it was wonderful to see that work ethic because the family also had a, a two acre garden in the backyard. You know, it, we just basically were hustling to make sure that life was pleasant and that we were staying healthy.

(07:31):

Well, I can imagine. So my wife, Mrs. Biz, she's, she's a nurse, similar type of thing, right? She's dealing with a bunch of people all day long, you know, listening to problems, problem solving, much like you're talking about your mother did at her salon. And, you know, same thing. Mrs. Biz comes home and she's like, like from a convers I guess from a social aspect, she's fried because she's had so much, you know, you know, like you said, the mental energy that takes to do all those things just becomes, you know, for a whole day of dealing with all these people and different problems and things like that, it just becomes kind of overwhelming. So I want to, I, I want to actually we're gonna hit a break here in a minute. So I don't wanna dive into anything yet, but I want to talk with you in the next segment, Juan, about not only get into talking about the book a little bit and how that might impact us, but also talk about some of the things, the challenges you've had.

(08:25):

I know we're gonna talk in a third segment about, you know, how to pick a business. I mean, you've had all this broad based experience in a lot of different areas as you had mentioned. I know you just scratched the surface on, on some of it, but, you know, I think you can give us some really good lessons on that. And even with some of the challenges that you faced and some of those things that didn't work out, you know, as I mentioned at the outside of the show, that are, you know, really good learning lessons. I think. So again, we're talking this week with Mr. Juan Williams. You can find more at wanwizdom.com, and that's wanwizdom.com. Come back after the break on Mr. Biz Radio.

(09:00):

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(09:39):

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(10:09):

Got a question for Mr. Biz. You want answered on air, email it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Now once again, here's Mr. Biz.

(10:20):

All right, welcome back to the show. It's time for the Mr. Biz tip of the week. And this week's tip has to do with cash flow. You guys hear me talk about it all the time, and you hear how I end the show every week. Cash flow is king. This is a simple one, and this is an example of how your own efficiency might be hurting your cashflow. Let me explain that real quick. When you're paying invoices, my recommendation is to pay those invoices, set 'em up to pay electronically. Almost every bank that you deal with now, you can do obviously e-pay on your bills and you can set 'em up ahead of time. You could on the, on the second of the month, you could set up a bill to be paid on the 20th, et cetera. So you don't have to go in on the specific days and all that stuff.

(10:58):

But set your invoices to be paid either one or two days before the due date. There's no need to pay them early, especially, you know, you got an invoice from another business that's maybe a net 30 pay on day 28 or 2029. That's not going anything nefarious. You're not cheating anyone on their money. They've asked you to pay them within 30 days. You're still paying them within those 30 days if they, and if not, you could, if you could take advantage and pay earlier and get a discount, certainly take advantage of that if your cash flow can help it. But you will be amazed if you, I mentioned like your efficiency. If you're one of those people that you get an invoice and you just run off and pay it right away, sounds great. But you know that you could be losing two or three weeks of holding on that cash a little bit longer.

(11:39):

That helps you get more cash in, et cetera, and helps your cash flow position, which is what we're all about. We wanna shorten that payable receivable cycle as much as possible to help our cash flow, make sure we have money for our business. So that is the Mr. Biz tip of the week. This week. Again, we're talking with Mr. Juan Williams. I mentioned it earlier, but Juan, it's, it's, I guess I, I'll I'll pronounce it Wan Wizdom. I'm sure that's not how you pronounce it. What I, just so people understand. So it's wanwizdom.com. Go check that out. But so Juan, I guess, you know, again, I, I alluded to this a little bit. I know you told us a little bit about some of your history and you know, all the different things you've done. I guess what if, what would you say, and this might be a tough one to answer but what's like the biggest lesson you've learned in starting all these different types of businesses, side hustles, I mean, talk about grinding as a kid, going to a dump and getting, you know, toys out of a, a, an old cereal box and, and, and, you know, kind of reselling those or whatever, selling those. Amazing. But what, what would you say is like one of the biggest lessons or lessons you've learned from those?

(12:44):

Well, you know, it's, it's really just staying the course maintaining what you're doing until you reach a certain goal. And just to mention, you, you're talking about the business name Wan Wisdom, L before we get into that you know, that actually comes from the wide era network. You know, if you look on your modem, you'll see w a n it says wide area network as well as when I was in Hawaii. We haven't gotten there yet, but you know, a lot of the Asians when I told 'em my name was Juan, they spelled it w a n. So, hey, I just went with it. Yeah, <laugh>, <laugh>. But here we are, you know, we're talking about you know, just staying the course and maintaining as you move forward in any business. The failures that I've had you know, I just mentioned, you know, a few of them but there has been many.

(13:40):

But part of it is just deciding who you are and understanding yourself more fully. And I had to really realize where I came from. And part of it, you know, in my book, I cover you know, the spiritual health and the understanding of personal self. And what I finally understood about myself is that being a Virgo, then I'm a very good communicator. Of course being in radio you know, for several years, you know, I started understanding more of how I can communicate better with people through radio. And from many professionals that I met who were also on television, they told me that my voice was very, very good at influencing people. I worked at at and t for a little bit, and I was one of the best individuals at getting people to decide to buy an A N T T contract. I mean, it was unique just, you know, what I was involved with and what my voice could do if I talked the right way and said the right things. And that's the one thing you need to understand, you know, what is your talent? What is your expertise? What is you all about?

(14:51):

Very interesting. Very interesting. And I, I agree with you a hundred percent. I mean, I guess it's a good segue. You mentioned the book again, the book is called "How Your Lifestyle Is Killing You". What prompted you, Juan, to write this book?

(15:02):

Well, I had a, a health crisis five years ago where I ended up with stomach cancer. And you know, I lost a lot of weight, you know I didn't show you a picture, you know, I'm standing next to my uncle who's a retired military police officer. And you know, I, I have just down to about 165 pounds after being 225 pounds. And it was just kind of like, I couldn't stop it. But at some point, you know, I did the proper research because the doctors couldn't help me. And I had to research myself as I'm saying, you know, you have to be very personal about health, and it also has to do with everything else in your life. You have to be very personal when it comes to a crisis. So I became very personal about that issue, and I made sure that I understood how to move forward after I got down to the bottom.

(15:54):

And, and that's really what it is. In any life, once things start going down, you have to understand where you're at and how to get back to where you were. So I started eating better. I started understanding more about my personal self health-wise, and the fact that your stomach is actually the first brain. And that's one thing I mentioned also in my book, is that the understanding that this head is a brain, yes, but because you eat food and there's only one way in and one way out, that is your first brain that affects everything that you think and do. So we need to understand that more fully. Everything that you eat is very, very important. Food is medicine. It's a prescription for good life. So we need to appreciate that and make sure that we're doing that right, because in that crisis that I had five years ago, I certainly should have died because many people with stomach cancer, they do not survive it. There's maybe about 11 or 12% chance of you surviving it, and I'm very blessed to be in front of you today. That's why I'm wearing this angel hat.

(16:56):

Well, I can imagine well, first of all, hats off to you, no pun intended, but hats off to you for, for, for getting through it, staying the course, as you said. You know, sort of ironically, it, it, it ties into your, you know, one of the lessons you mentioned about with, with businesses and some of the challenges there. You know, you applied that also, obviously, to the health scare. So, so is the book more around health things? Is it psychological type stuff? Is it a combination of all of that, of your experience?

(17:24):

Well, it's, yeah, it's my life experience. I start in the book with you know, being a young man who needed a new family. Unfortunately, the family I had, my original parents just didn't know how to take care of us three kids properly. So we had to move on as teenagers. And we found a foster family that was very well adept that we had already known from our younger childhood. They were neighbors former neighbors, and, and they were able to take a sin and really start to develop us into better human beings because what we had experienced, a dysfunction just wasn't good. What we were experiencing as young children usually develops into, you know, troublesome adults. And we're seeing that now, you know, children that have gone through some dysfunction and now they become troublesome adults and, and they end up in the system, in, in our juvenile system, as well as our adult penal system. And it ends up being a real tragedy. So that's what I really are, is blessed to have been able to find a family, was able to teach me, my brother and sister, how to move forward, and the success that happens when you're able to find people that are you know, wanting to help you.

(18:37):

Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, guys, we're talking again once week, Mr. Juan Williams. You can find out more in his website Wan Wisdom, I'll say W A N and W I Z D O M. We'll put it in the show notes as well. And, and below, definitely go out and check out a lot of what he's got going on. We're gonna hit a break here. When we come back, we're gonna dive into some, some of his knowledge on how to choose a business. Maybe you're an entrepreneur and, and how to look at that based on the experiences that Juan has had.

(19:04):

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(19:34):

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(20:05):

Check out all three of Mr. Business best-selling books at mrbizbooks.com. Now, once again, here's Mr. Biz.

(20:15):

All right. All right, welcome back to the show. And I want to get right into this. We've got one segment left here. We've got a lot to cover, and I wanna make sure we get the most out of Juan and his experience and what he can share with us. So, so I guess, Juan, you know, you had mentioned, I know we talked sort of offline about this, but one of the things that it seems that you have a gift for now, based on your experience in all these different areas, et cetera, is, you know, how to choose a business, how to figure out what's good for you and et cetera, things like that. How did you, how, how did what, what kind of tips would you give

(20:46):

Us? I, I guess I'll start with that. Well first of all, you need to find out, you know what you're good at. Decide on a business that entails your natural ability and your natural skills. You know, all of us have a certain skill we do. We just need to tap that in some way and make that a business that you're going to go into. It may be similar to other businesses, but you know, you have a certain expertise that you can bring to it that will make it special for you and make it so that you are making money off of it. The second thing is to check your birth side, because in my book I talk about you know, astrological signs being connected to the body, and the fact that a lot of times we don't know that because we were born under a certain birth sign, we have certain issues within our organs that are going to probably happen during our life.

(21:43):

As an example, you know, I had back problems since I was in my thirties, and they got serious. But what I found out is that that was something that was predetermined by my birth sign. When I look at my birth sign, it says that I was going to have lower back problems eventually. And I, if I had known that, I would've been more careful with lifting and doing heavy work. You know, also stomach problems, my stomach cancer a predetermined thing based on my astrological side. I was amazed it was my wife that actually encouraged me to look into this. But she was the one that turned me on to looking at things so that I knew what may happen in my future and be careful to avoid it. So that's one of the focuses that I have for your business people, is look at what is going on with you and make sure that you can avoid the issues that are coming up.

(22:33):

Cuz a lot of my failures really had to do with not knowing what the future held. We wanna also look at you know, when you do fail you know, take a break. You know, don't push it, don't get back into something or back into the same thing and try to push it too hard. You know, take that little vacation for a few months from just doing you know, hustles and whatnot and just enjoy life because, you know, life is short as they say. And it is, you know, I've gotten to 63 years old already, and I'm shocked that I'm at 63 right now, and I'm not still at 40. Those years pass so quick. It, it, it's amazing. So take a break, relax, don't push it too far. Another thing is don't be crushed if your idea doesn't work.

(23:21):

You know, a lot of times we come up with things we think are fantastic and, and we just know it's gonna be the best thing in the world and it's gonna, you know, make the world turn around and nothing so <laugh> we gotta understand, hey, you know, not everything is gonna be there and maybe we have to give it some time. You know, don't push it too hard. You know, it, it might take a year or two and, and just give it it some time. Because if we try to rush it and we think it should be working now, and then we go back, we find out somebody who does the same thing and in two years is working for them. Oh no, we made a mistake of stopping too soon. So let, let's make sure we keep that in mind. We also have a very culturally diverse society.

(24:04):

We need to really approach that in a unique way so that when we do business, that is the first community that we do business with. And many of our communities, you know, their businesses started in that community and the success outside that community was based on the success inside the community. So that's the people we need to go to first. Our families, our friends, our cultural people a lot of times those are the people that are gonna start us out and give us that reputation. We need to be successful. Let's make sure we do that.

(24:39):

And the feedback, right? To your point, you can get feedback from those folks as well to refine your offering, refine your product not have tunnel vision, as you mentioned earlier. As you know, we come up with an idea and you're like, oh my gosh, it's the best idea ever. And then having someone who is not afraid to give you that honest, direct, you know, feedback to say, Hey, you know what, Ken, that's great, but you know what you need to do? You need to change a little bit. You need to do this or do that. Getting that feedback, I think, especially early on is, is super valuable, especially as you continue to expand, as you mentioned.

(25:12):

Well, the other thing I do is I attend seminars. You know, I try to educate myself. You know, I went back to school at 50 years old at Arizona State University and got a degree in business, interdisciplinary business just so I can understand business more readily you know, and and appreciate what it really took to make things happen. My minor was a nonprofit business. So I started recently a new nonprofit business called Peace, which is the acronym for proper education, achieved clear Excellence. And with that, it's really about teaching children about the financial world. And the fact that, you know, when I went through high school and when most of us went through high school, we didn't understand about the financial world. Once we got outta high school, we didn't know nothing about the rule of 72. We knew nothing about all the guidelines and rules of the stock market.

(26:03):

We didn't know nothing about credit. You know, I got outta high school and before I knew it, I had four or five credit cards. I thought there were money, so I just started charging stuff and I wasn't paying the bill properly. So, hey, you know, you mess up right from the beginning if you don't understand this financial world because it's not necessarily about the cash that you have, it's about the credit and your credit reputation. So, and I have a whole nother story with that. Maybe we can do that in another show. But yeah, <laugh>, I mean, more recently a lot of things been going on about that. So you know, we just have to understand more fully about what we need to do for ourselves and the important thing about us when it comes to business.

(26:45):

Well, it's interesting. I love what you said about, you know, determining what you're good at. And I agree with you a hundred percent. We all have a gift. Michael Jordan has a gift to be the greatest basketball player, right? I don't have that. He probably can't do what I do, although he is a very successful business fan as well. So I shouldn't say that. Maybe he can, but, but, but, well, I think,

(27:05):

Who Other people, no one has that. I had a guy many years ago back in my corporate career, he was the, he wanted to be in finance. That was like his life goal. And he just honestly Juan. He just didn't have the right skillset for it, and it crushed him. And I told him, you know, we were in an office and I, I was looking out the window and there was a guy running a bulldozer. And I said, look, let me put it to you this way. If I went over there and said, Hey man, I want to be a bulldozer operator and I want to, they would fire me in about eight seconds cuz I'd knock something over. I'd run someone over, I'd probably, you know, I, because that's not my skillset, I'm not good at that. That doesn't mean I'm not a good person or I'm just, you know, whatever.

(27:41):

I'm just not good at that. And I said that this is, this doesn't fit your skillset. And it was the same kind of conversation of finding what you're good at. Because by the way, Juan, everyone likes to do what they're good at, right? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, if you don't, if you don't bowl very well and you, you, your buddies are like, Hey, let's go bowl and let's, you know, bet 20 bucks a game. You're like, Hmm, I don't think so. Right? But by the way, I'm really good at, I don't know, make it up darts, let's go play darts cuz I'm good at that and I want to play that. So when you find that, man, it's that, that sweet spot, it's so rewarding.

(28:12):

Yes, I agree. And you know, speaking of darts, you know, I played darts in Hawaii with a lot of friends and associates. There was certain individuals that their focus was incredible. And, and most of we're Asian. So it does understand that, you know, with the Asian community there, there's a certain expertise to what they do that we appreciate. And when I had my stomach issue, I started easing eating a Japanese diet, and that really helped me get back to a certain level of being able to digest food. So, you know, we have to appreciate certain cultures and their expertises and the things that they do that are really important. And the fact that they could take that little dart and put it right in the bullseye. Yes. That little thing right there lets you know that these are the people you want to emulate in some way because they have some kind of expertise that maybe you don't.

(29:06):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, great stuff. Again, Juan Williams, wanwizdom.com, we'll put it in the show notes. Definitely go check that out. Check out his book, "How Your Lifestyle Is Killing You". Juan, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

(29:21):

Thank you very much. Yes, wanwizdom.com it's gonna be on sale very soon. Right now we're doing a presale, so let's get that done. Thank you.

(29:32):

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome stuff guys. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Have a great week. And as always, don't forget,,Cash Flow is King

(29:40):

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