What to Do When You Want to Quit Your Business

In this episode of The Faces of Business, Cam Martinez, President and Founder of Kensho Craft, delves into an essential topic for business owners: What to Do When You Want to Quit Your Business.

In this episode of The Faces of Business, Cam Martinez, President and Founder of Kensho Craft, delves into an essential topic for business owners: What to Do When You Want to Quit Your Business.

Cam is a dynamic leader with experience guiding teams and organizations through pivotal growth moments. His expertise spans various industries, such as e-commerce, SaaS, and e-learning. He focuses on building systems that allow businesses to scale efficiently while preserving culture and reducing complexity.

At Kensho Craft, Cam has helped countless business owners streamline their business operations to create high-performing cultures that thrive long-term. His mission is to empower clients to run their businesses autonomously, ensuring sustained growth with minimal disruption.

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Damon is supercharged to discuss one of his best topics. In the warm-up chit–chat, Damon asks Cam about his Washington relocation, to which the latter responds that he originally hails from Colorado. He relocated to Washington after his wife moved there to support her family following the passing of her father. This Washington relocation was driven by the desire to care for her mother and family during this time.

Damon invites the guest to talk about his journey into his current role.

Cam responds that his journey started in college, where he initially pursued baseball but decided to shift his focus to business. After transferring to Colorado State University, he gradually realized that formal education wouldn’t be his path to business success. Cam left university and ventured into marketing, starting with social media management for a campus restaurant and expanding to doing freelance work for a friend. This experience led him to fall in love with marketing, ultimately launching his marketing agency.

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Later, Cam co-founded a group purchasing organization by using a Facebook community, negotiating discounts with major software companies like Zoom, Zapier, and ActiveCampaign. Through this venture, he polished his business skills like managing customer support, hiring, onboarding, and operational automation.

After parting ways with his business partner, Cam transitioned to helping other businesses where he chiefly focused on operational infrastructure and marketing.

Damon asks Cam about the part of his work he enjoys most.

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Cam says that his passions have evolved, but he primarily enjoys working closely with business leaders, CEOs, founders, and executive teams. He helps in decision-making settings, where innovation, ideation, and strategy take place.

Appreciating Cam’s diverse passions, Damon steers the show to discuss what to do when you feel like quitting your business.

Taking a moment to think, Cam discusses his experience working with a long-term client. The client had been in business for 25 years, working with major companies, such as Intuit, Starbucks, and Dell. While the business was successful and had a solid team, the said founder reached a point where they were unsure if they wanted to continue. Cam was initially brought in to hire and train an operations manager, but the relationship evolved into deeper conversations about the founder’s goals and business vision.

Over time, the client realized they no longer wanted to continue running the business, not because of business challenges like marketing or operational infrastructure, but due to changing personal priorities and a shift in their business perspective. Cam believes this experience is common—many business owners struggle with their business identity and feel burdened by their operational or fulfillment roles, which often leads to a reassessment of their business vision.

However, this realization can prompt business assessments, shifts in business scaling strategies, or even a decision to quit altogether.

Damon notes that many business owners or professionals find themselves in situations where, regardless of success, they lack business fulfillment. He asks Cam how people can recognize when they’ve reached this point.

Cam responds by sharing insights from his experience. He observes that this feeling often arises when people start questioning their personal happiness and whether they’re truly doing what they love. Common reflections include wanting to spend more time with family or pursue other passions.

Similarly, the guest reveals his approach to helping business owners improve their operations. He starts with a thorough business assessment (sometimes referred to as due diligence), which he and his wife conduct by evaluating various aspects of the business, including financial metrics, sales and marketing strategies, team culture, the customer journey, and the company’s vision, mission, and values. They normally ask a fundamental question, “What do I actually want?” Based on this assessment, they create a plan for the next 90 days to move the business toward its goals.

Cam says that often business owners need “permission” to break away from traditional approaches and explore new, creative ways to operate their businesses. By removing the perceived limitations and offering a different perspective, they can experience unlimited potential and creativity.

Damon, interested, asks Cam about the exciting and fun projects he’s currently working on, specifically mentioning messaging campaigns and what’s changing in business.

Cam shares his enthusiasm for LinkedIn, expressing his love for live video and long-form writing. He notes how live video has changed since its early days on platforms like Facebook, where he would casually share updates. Cam enjoys creating content that relates to everyday experiences and emotions. He appreciates discussing real-life challenges, from minor inconveniences to deeper thoughts. He also mentions the expanded character limit on Twitter, which lets him express his thoughts in greater depth.

Agreeing with the guest, Damon requests Cam to discuss the specific exciting developments he sees in business regarding AI.

Cam mentions a friend, Michael Matlin, who is developing a new company called Braveto. He explains that Michael is using AI technology from Claude to create an open-source platform that enables business owners, especially service providers, to articulate their ideas and receive comprehensive business plans in return.

The guest believes that AI is here to stay and says that those who don’t engage with or understand its principles risk being left behind. He points out that OpenAI and ChatGPT are leading in innovation, mentioning upcoming features like video automation that will generate high-quality videos from simple prompts. He shares his personal experience of using a custom version of ChatGPT to produce content quickly.

Damon mentions Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy—influential figures in AI innovation. He suggests that these AI agents could deliver around 80% of the insights and value that a real person would provide in a conversation.

Cam agrees and expands on the discussion by mentioning that while AI technology is evolving, society has yet to fully embrace the concept of the Metaverse or a simulated reality, similar to the one depicted in Ready Player One.

He believes that as we move forward, we will need to reconcile our experiences in the physical world with the increasingly realistic virtual environments that are on the horizon.

As the show nears its conclusion, Damon requests Cam to describe the typical business owner or company that seeks his help.

Cam discloses that business owners who seek his business advice usually fall on a spectrum. On one end are those in urgent need of change, presenting a facade of success while struggling internally with poor communication, chaotic decision-making, and disorganized project management. On the opposite end are entrepreneurs who are either just starting or have experienced success in a previous venture, like launching a popular online course.

The show ends with Damon thanking Cam for his time.

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ABOUT EXIT YOUR WAY®

Exit Your Way® provides a structured process and skilled resources to grow business value and allow business owners to leave with 2X+ more money when they are ready.

You can find more information about the Exit Your Way® process and our team on our website.

You can contact us by phone:  822-BIZ-EXIT (249-3948)   Or by Email:  info@exityourway.us

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Other websites to check out:  Cross Northwest Mergers & AcquisitionsDamon PistulkaIra BowmanService Professionals Network (SPN)Fangled TechnologiesB2B TailDenver Consulting FirmWarren ResearchStellar Insight, Now CFO, Excel Management Systems  & Project Help You Grow

• 37:48
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Washington relocation, business challenges, marketing agency, group purchasing, customer support, business operations, operational infrastructure, business scaling, business fulfillment, business assessment, business vision, business identity, business perspective, AI innovation, business advice

SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Cam Martinez

Damon Pistulka 00:07
All right, everyone, welcome once again to the faces of business. I am your host, Damon pistulka, and I am excited to speak with our guest today, because we have none other than cam, Martinez with us here today, and we’re going to be talking about a doozy of a topic, and that is what to do when you want to quit your business. Cam, thanks for being here today. Man,

Cam Martinez 00:34
amazing. Man, thanks for having me. I’m excited for this. Yeah, yeah, good

Damon Pistulka 00:38
stuff. Well. Cam, it’s, it’s very rare, first of all, that I’m talking to someone that’s actually in Washington State, which is cool, and you live in a beautiful part of the state out there on the peninsula. What? What brought you to that part of the state? This is kind of, we’re not going, we’re going off the wild side here a little bit. But what brought you to that part of the Washington State, yeah,

Cam Martinez 01:01
Norman, so I’m from Colorado originally. When I met my wife, she moved out to live with me in Colorado, and, long story short, her father passed a couple years ago, so we came back to her home state of Washington to be here for her mom and take care of her mom and family. Yeah, yeah, that’s what brought me out here,

Damon Pistulka 01:22
yeah, yeah. Well, a little bit less sun than Colorado,

Cam Martinez 01:26
yeah, a lot, a lot of it. Yeah, you

Damon Pistulka 01:29
have like, 300 plus. My sister lives in Greeley, so, but you get, but here you have a lot less temperature swing.

Cam Martinez 01:37
Yeah, it’s been beautiful so far, man, but the winter will be the real test of, yeah, of my ability to deal with Washington. So, yeah, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 01:47
that is, that is a little challenge, the first couple. That is first couple. We just got to remember, it’s just liquid sunshine coming

01:54
down girl.

Damon Pistulka 01:57
So as we get started in the show. We always like to talk about, how did you get started what you’re doing? I mean, you are a fractional coo cmo chiefs, or steep Chief of Staff, helping people really just get their businesses going, right? Really, what got you into that?

Cam Martinez 02:23
Oh, man. Well, the the path I’m on now is a little bit different than where I was originally. I can go as far back as you want me to, but really, what, the the you want me to go far back?

Damon Pistulka 02:35
Let’s hear it. I mean, because we want to understand you and kind of what, really, because this, it’s a unique thing to do what you’re doing, and it’s cool to hear the backstory.

Cam Martinez 02:44
Yeah, well, you you brought up my experiences at university and college. That was the second place I went when I first started college. I went to a junior college to play baseball. Actually tried to do that and realized that that wasn’t going to be my thing. And so I was in a meeting with my coaches at the time, and they were like, We want you to play, but just not this year. And I was like, you know, guys, this has been great, and I think I’m going to go pursue, pursue business, whatever that means. They were like, What do you mean? You have your whole life to do this? I was like, Nope, I know what I want, so I’m going to go for it. So I transferred to Colorado State University and had a bunch of fun, met a lot of cool people, and some of those people led me to being on the triathlon team, like you mentioned before the call. And then my third year university, I kind of got got serious about my studies and got serious about business, and realize that, okay, cool. This probably isn’t the route for me. This probably isn’t going to be the thing that leads me to learning more about about business, learning more about this thing that I want to learn how to do. And so I ended up leaving university. Had a really cool setup there. The year that I did triathlon, I was also a resident assistant, so I had a lot of responsibility managing people on in the hall, in my hall, and things like that. But what I was also doing was there was a restaurant on campus at the University I was attending, and they hired me to do their marketing. So I kind of got my I dip my toes in the the water of business, so to speak. But it wasn’t really anything exciting. It was just I was managing the social media profiles, and then I had a friend at the time who back home was pursuing the same thing, and he hired me to do some of his social media stuff as well. And I fell in love with marketing, and so I, when I left college, I went, went back home and started going into the city and meeting a bunch of people on networking and doing everything I could to just get in the room and in the environment full of people that were trying to do something cool in the world. So that led me to attempting to start a marketing agency. I was, I was just. Generating leads for the real estate industry back in 20, 2017, yeah, that ended up, I ended up transitioning from that. I met a guy on Facebook, actually, and him and I partnered and we created a business that was a group purchasing organization. So we we had a community on Facebook back when Facebook groups are really exciting, and in that community, we were doing interviews like this and creating some training and things for people who were either on the at the beginning stages of their business or working on, you know, getting to, you know, six, seven figures in their business. What we would do is we go to companies like zoom and Zapier and Active Campaign and Grammarly and Typeform, we would say, hey, we have, you know, 1000s of people in our community, all who are customers of your software. And so what we would do is we would negotiate spit we would negotiate individual, unique pricing for our members, and so then a membership, and then they get all these discounts to all the software platforms. So that was my first taste of like, alright, this is something like, this feels like a legit type of business. It wasn’t really. It was. It was kind of a cool thing to do on Facebook. But while, while we were working on growing that, I learned a ton about operations. Yeah, I was, you know, responsible for managing our customer support and keeping our customers happy and hiring people because the workload became a lot and yeah, so I learned how to hire and onboard and train people. I learned how to set up automations and create systems so that I wasn’t, you know, when I was meant to be present with my friends or family. I wasn’t thinking about business, because there’s this fire I got to put out that’s really bugging me. So, yeah, I learned everything I could to, like, reduce that. And then after that, that business and that relationship ended, I just started doing that for other people’s businesses. I was kind of in a transition, transitionary period where I was like, I don’t really know what I want to do. I’ve got some skill sets. I I’m hungry and I’m excited, and I want to keep learning and keep growing. And so what I would do is I would just reach out to people on on social media and see if there was any way that I could help them. And doing that a lot over time led me to some cool relationships and some cool companies. And ever since, I’ve been acting as people’s right hand or the leading the operational infrastructure of the business, or leading the marketing efforts of a business. But really, my my love for it is this is why I do what I do. I like having my thumb on the pulse of everything. You know, yeah, I don’t. I don’t like to be boxed into just operations or just HR, just marketing or just sales. I like to understand the landscape of the entire thing and find cool ways to make it all work together more more seamlessly. So to this day that that’s what I do for for myself and for other people. Yeah.

Damon Pistulka 08:13
So what do you enjoy about the most? It’s

Cam Martinez 08:18
interesting. It’s evolved over time. I I’d say there’s multiple things that I enjoy an equal amount, but I would say a high amount. One is working with, like the leaders of the business, or the, you know, the CEO, the founder, or the executive teams of a company. And I like being in decision making conversations and just on the calls or in the rooms where innovations happening or ideations happening or strategies happening, and then beyond that, I love working with people to create an outcome, whether That’s publishing a project or creating new ways to create a project more effectively or efficiently. I’d say my I just took an assessment recently. A friend of mine led me through one of the assessments he uses in his business, and what came out of that were my strengths, there’s three different tiers, but my strengths came out to be discernment and tenacity. So really, what that meant, according to the assessment, is I like making sound decisions and then getting done. Essentially, yeah, making action. So if I’m in a place to do those two things, I think that I it’s a fulfilling place for me to be, and it’s where I provide the most value, I’d say, Yeah,

Damon Pistulka 09:43
that’s awesome. Yeah, yeah, because that’s that. I mean, that’s when you when you talk with businesses, you know you’ve, you can read it and like traction or something, where they’re talking about the visionary or rocket fuel, they’re talking about the visionary and the. And the integrator, or whatever you want to call it, you know that that operational mind that does like to make decisions and get things done is oftentimes what limits businesses their growth they get, you know, because visionaries are very good at seeing value in a marketplace and starting to capture that value and starting to make money at it. But when it comes into the point that you have to make that switch and either get somebody to do the stuff that keeps the business growing and scaling, because your systems, you know, can’t be just three of us in the room that you do this, you do that, you do that, and go off and do it, and you really have to get other people to help you. More people get involved with it. If you don’t have someone like yourself, it really makes it challenging. So, yeah,

Cam Martinez 10:50
yeah, that’s I think that my, oh, was it Seth Godin that wrote the book? Lynchpin. I was obsessed with that for a while. Like being never, like being in a place where I’m so valuable that I will always have a place, somewhere that was the top of my mind for a long time, yeah. But my thing, I think, is being like the calm, calm energy with a person, yeah, a visionary. He’s got tons of ideas, and they want to, like, they want to charge ahead. And I’m, I think I’m great at like, Okay, I’m the anything’s possible kind of guy, and let’s be reasonable and realistic with not everybody is that way. And so I think I do a great job of mediating the two and being kind of the the transition or the or the the orchestrator from visionary to everyone else, like transit to everyone else, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 11:45
yeah, yeah. Well, and it’s it’s good because of the topic we’re talking about today. You know what to do when you want to quit your business. Because I honestly don’t think if a visionary or someone that has founded a business hasn’t just sat up and said, What the hell am I doing? Do I really want to do this anymore? Yeah, they probably really haven’t started a business, right? But you know, you, one of the things that when we talked and I read about it, that you talk about, is what to do when you want to quit your business. And I think it’s so interesting because of that, that just that pure frustration that people go get into sometimes when they start a business, but the realization over time that that’s kind of natural once in a while. Yeah, so let’s talk a little bit about that. And you know what? First of all, very few people write that down. Yeah, what to do when you, when you want to quit your business? What got you thinking about that?

Cam Martinez 12:55
Yeah, I when you, when you ask for, for potential topics that we could talk about. Yeah, I was I gave it some thought, and I was like, Well, what do I actually like? What have I experienced before? What have I actually what kind of value could actually add to the show that might not have been talked about? And I thought about one of my longest standing clients. We started working together. We worked on and off from 2020 to 2021 and then we really started working together from late 2021 on. And the relationship started with them hiring me and bringing me into I’ll preface by saying this specific client was in business for 25 years. They didn’t really have much reason to change what they were doing. What they were doing was working and working well. They’re working, working with big clients like Intuit and Starbucks and Dell, HP and Whirlpool, like they they were doing well, and they had the people that were on their team. They had a team of of six people who’d been there for 14 years. So there wasn’t really anything wrong with the business, like it didn’t really need much from me, at least. But they brought me in and I they wanted to hire their right hand, an operations manager, director of operations, whatever you want to call it labels and titles, right? Yeah, and so that was my first initiative with them. Was cool. Let’s get this person into your business, which we did. From there, I will do my part and training them and getting them up to speed with what it is that you are looking for and what it is that you want, which didn’t take long, because they were fantastic hire, and they had all the acumen that he wanted and the experience and the skill set that he wanted. So once that was done, and once that part of our agreement was over, we continued working together because of the conversations that we were having, and so we spent a lot of time in. Uh, having one on one conversations about really everything going on in their life, right? It was, it was business, and it was making decisions for the future that he wanted to create. But order to do that, then they needed to know where it is that they wanted to go. What do you actually want out of this? And of course, you know, it was going back and forth between, well, maybe I want to scale this to multiple millions or eight figures, or, you know, bring on more people and switch my value proposition, or switch the people that I’m working with, or just change the company and pivot completely in a couple years throughout that, throughout our time together, there came a day where I was like, do you even want this business anymore? Do you even want to do what you’re doing? Do you want to put in the effort and the time and the energy it might take to get where you think you want to go? And they ended up deciding that, you know what I’ve been I’ve been doing this long enough I’ve gone back and forth. Am I thinking about what I want and what I don’t want? Long enough, what they realize is what they actually wanted was to shut down the business. They went through the whole like, potentially sell it, or handle it, or, you know, all that, and they decided that they didn’t want to do it anymore. It wasn’t because there was anything wrong with it. They just had different priorities at the stage in their life. They were in, you know, they they had kids, they’re in a marriage. They have different goals and aspirations, which I think happens for a lot of us, right as we grow and expand, we want different things, and we want to move in different directions. So that’s how that relationship evolved, is they, you know, it’s, it’s interesting, because I was there to help them scale their business, and they didn’t have a business anymore, so there wasn’t really much for any of us to do. And they they kind of took a step back completely. But I experience that with people all the time, where they’ve got this thing, and I’m kind of, I think, just from experience when, when people or business owners come to me, it’s either their last resort, and they’re like, I gotta figure this thing out, because I’m so burdened by the thing that I gotta do something different, to feel different about my business, or to feel different about my role or my life within the business, right? It’s a part of my identity, but it’s a part that I don’t like. And so they either wanna get rid of the feeling that they have that their business is causing or creating, which usually looks like they think it’s a marketing issue or a team issue or an operations issue or a sales issue, or if this thing were different, then I would feel better. What’s usually underneath that, though, is they don’t feel good. They don’t feel good about themselves or their business, or the direction they’re headed, either because they built their business on somebody else’s idea of success or somebody else’s idea of what’s working or not working. So with that being said, I mean, we can talk about where to go from there. If someone’s in that position where they’re thinking, Okay, well I might want to do this, but

Damon Pistulka 18:21
yeah, because it is, I mean, you, you make a great point, because you can go an awful long time and be very successful running a business or working a career that doesn’t have the fulfillment that you really want it to have, yeah, or none, quite honestly, but and I, and there are a lot of business people, professionals working for others, or business owners themselves that find themselves in that situation. So what are some of the things that you really see that when you’re working with people make it that they can recognize how can they recognize this?

Cam Martinez 19:09
It usually, and I am not them, right? So I’ll speak just from my observation, and, yeah, my experience with people, it’s they’re usually in a place where the the cliche, I want to spend more time with my kids, or I want to be more present in my my marriage, or I want to put this away and focus on this other thing I’m passionate about. But it usually starts with with questioning things like, Man, am I actually doing what I want to do? Am I happy? Am I having fun? Am I waking up every day like, yeah, I get to do this thing. This is, this is a fantastic usually, people don’t get there until they’ve tried everything so that they can step back and go, Okay, I did everything that I could. And. Still feeling this way, yeah, usually asking those types of questions. They’ve usually spent time hiring consultants or implementing EOS or getting clearer on their vision and their mission and their values, going to conferences, going to masterminds, talking to people who are, you know, more seasoned than they are, so to speak, about what do I do? Like I’m having trouble with my business, meaning it’s either a cash flow issue, or the people on their team aren’t getting done what they want to get done, or I implemented all these systems and nobody’s using them, or whatever that looks like for them. It’s usually a throwing their hat in the ring and going, alright, this is my kind of this is my last ditch effort to change the way that I feel about this. So that’s usually what I think people are experiencing when they’re asking the question we’re talking about, what to do when I want to quit.

Damon Pistulka 20:58
Yeah, yeah. It is. It is such a, it is such a. Well, it’s a gut wrenching thing. Yeah,

Cam Martinez 21:08
identity check for a lot of people, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 21:10
yeah. So when, when people are doing this, what are some of the how do you really break this down? I mean, because there’s a lot of things to unpack when you’re looking at that.

Cam Martinez 21:24
Yeah, well, usually in where I would start with someone who is coming to me to help them figure out what’s wrong in my business. Yeah, even if it’s not a personal issue, even if it’s not, I feel good about this thing. I just want to make it more effective and efficient? Yeah, what I would do is I would, some people call it due diligence. We call it an assessment. My wife and I go in and take a look at their business and take a look at everything that they’ve got going on, from their their financial metrics to their sales and marketing strategies to interviewing their team, to see what the culture is like, to their vision, mission, values like we’ll look at all those things. We’ll look at their customer experience and their customer journey and the products they’re creating, right? It just depends on the type of business, and usually what comes out of that is cool. Here’s, you know, the next steps for the next 90 days, so to speak, to move in a direction that will get you to a place that you want to go. So that, on the tactical side, is what we would do for a business owner from a more like holistic perspective, I guess, yeah, how to approach that is to ask a simple question. That’s, what do I want? What do I actually want? Yeah, you ask somebody that question, and I’ll spend 20 minutes telling you what they don’t want, right? Well, I know I don’t I don’t want to do that thing, or I know I don’t want to feel that way, or I don’t want to experience that thing. Okay, what do you want? What do you want your business to look like? What do you want your team to look like? What do you want the how do you want your customers to experience your business? Right? How do you want to feel about this thing? It’s asking those specific questions, which then, you know, gets people thinking, what do I actually want? Because I think a lot of people are blindly, just walking the path they thought was the thing that’s going to get them to wherever they want to go. For some people, that works out great. And there’s, you know, people that work with me usually are asking that question and not arriving at a place that they feel good about, or they don’t even know to ask that question.

Damon Pistulka 23:37
Yeah, yeah, it’s something that’s something, because you said, like, you said, it’s, it is really, if you ask somebody where they want to go, you’re going to hear a lot of the places they don’t want to go, but not where they want to go, because they probably haven’t taken the time to think about that. Yeah,

Cam Martinez 23:55
because they don’t have the time, they don’t have the energy, it’s, yeah, they’re bogged down by all these other things, which is fine. I mean, business is tough, yeah, business. Business is complex and complicated, and often built on a on a shaky foundation. So it’s it’s understandable, yeah.

Damon Pistulka 24:12
So as you’re helping people through this, what are some of the things that when, when you’re working with them and they’re starting to see there are some things we can do to make these changes. What are some things that you hear coming from them? They’re, you know, focused demeanor. What? What begins to change as as you’re like, Okay, I’m coming out of I’m not at that place anymore. I’m starting to fall back in love with my business.

Cam Martinez 24:42
Yeah, they’re they’re usually excited about, usually, how it turns out. And this is a recent experience with a new client. We are working together on some of their their email automation stuff, and creating some new sales. And marketing copy and strategies and things, and we, we launched a test to see how it would go. And they’re, they’re in a different part of the world, so it’s, it’s late at night, where I’m at while they’re messaging me, and seven new messages come in, and they’re like, I can’t sleep. I’ve got all these ideas. I’m so excited about where this is going. Yeah, usually how it goes is, I think sometimes people just need permission to do something differently. I think a lot of us are so caught up, and there’s like, a specific way we got to do something, or there’s a way that we should be thinking about things, and when all of that’s removed, and there’s no barrier to creativity or exploration for somebody, then it just, it’s just limitless for them, right? It’s just, there’s unlimited potential, unlimited ideas, because they’ve been shown a different way. So I pride myself on kind of bringing that a new way of maybe experiencing their life and their business and showing them and helping them understand that this can be anything that you want it to be. There are no rules here. I’m not the kind of guy that’s going to come into your business and go, you got to do this, and you got to do that, and you got to do that. There are principles of business, right? There’s things that work that every business ought to know and ought to implement. But beyond that, it’s really like, if someone who owns a business is going about it in a way that is going to create a sense of, you know, happiness for them, they’re doing something that that is their own way of going about it. That’s there, right? Like, Steve Jobs wasn’t doing what HP or Intel was doing. He was doing his own thing. He was doing his own way. Yeah. And regardless of anybody’s opinion about the guy, he stuck to his guns. He was like, I’m doing it the way that I want to do it. You know, there’s no ifs ands or buts about it. And, yeah, now, now, like Apple, and

Damon Pistulka 27:02
that’s that way with any business. I mean, you can have a plumbing business down the street and it can be completely different from any other plumbing business in the area or the world.

Cam Martinez 27:11
Yeah, imagine you’re a plumbing business that has a presence online. You’re gonna win. Yeah, most people aren’t going about it that way, yeah, especially in that type of blue collar industry, yeah, you have a presence online, and you have a way for people to book an appointment through Google or through your website. Yeah, the experience automatically elevates just because of that thing, right? So I agree, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 27:36
those are the kind of things that that really can make a difference. And two, like you said, it’s bringing that different perspective. I think what you’re what you’re doing, is helping people with perspective in some of those situations, because they, you know, we all get locked into it. We all get locked into it with our perspective. And sometimes we’re so focused on this, because we’re so busy, we’re so jammed, we just keep doing what we’ve been doing, and that perspective, and that shift of perspective allows us to see a new way that will will completely change things 100%

Cam Martinez 28:08
Yep, yeah.

Damon Pistulka 28:10
So as you’re seeing this going, what are some of the, what are some of the fun things you’ve been working on? You talked about some messaging campaigns, some other things like that, what’s what’s fun and exciting in business that you see that’s really changing things?

Cam Martinez 28:27
Oh, well, for me, personally, I love LinkedIn. I love that you’re doing live videos on LinkedIn. I it’s such a it feels so like old to me these days, not in like a it’s aged. It just isn’t as popular as it used to be. And I love live video. I remember Facebook when it launched its live video platform, that was the thing I would just like walk down the sidewalk and do a live video and talk about what I was doing. So I love live video. I love LinkedIn. I love long form writing, the way that I create content. Is really just speaking to all the things we’ve been talking about today, being, you know, writing from things that that I’ve experienced and the everyday emotions that we feel in everyday, you know, challenges or things to rethink about or overcome. I like writing about that stuff because it’s real, and it’s regardless of how successful you are in your business or how seasoned you are, how you know whatever your status is in the world, we all deal with the same things, right? We got a neighbor that isn’t as kind as we’d like them to be, or our car battery dies, and we’re, we gotta get to a meeting, or, yeah, the roof’s gotta leak. Like, those are all things we all deal with that. I’m not sure if people don’t like to talk about that stuff. I just, I like talking about real deep, deep thoughts that I have. I’m a deep guy. I’m a deep thinker. I like, I like going that route. So that’s that’s really fun for me, is, um, especially on Twitter. Now that Elon allows it to be beyond 240 characters, I can write paragraph, paragraphs. So it’s quite

Damon Pistulka 30:12
a change. That is for sure. That is for sure. So exciting things you see happening in business, though, what are some of the things that are? I mean, everybody’s talking about AI. There’s some things that are hidden in that that you go, this is, there’s some what specifically, because everybody says AI, what specifically an AI is, is making you excited right now?

Cam Martinez 30:36
Well, I have a, I have a good friend, Michael matalin. I’ll, I’ll shout him out. He is creating a new company of his called braveto. I posted about it last week or the week before. When I spoke to him, he was showing me the back end of his company, and he’s using claude’s One of the popular AI platforms, and he’s going behind the scenes of it and playing with all the settings and all the things that you can do with their open source platform, and what he’s doing, and what open AI made popular is, is their AI agents? Yeah, I don’t mean to go through the whole, you know, matrix agent thing, yeah, that’s just the way that they talked about it’s what they named it. But what it what it’s going to allow business owners to do right especially service providers. What his his business specifically, right now in its current iteration, will allow business owners to do is dump out their ideas about what it is that they wish they could do in their business and their the AI agent he’s creating will give them an entire business plan, what to do on marketing platforms, what to do, like, how to write your sales copy. It’s a full fledged, like, your own personal business advisor, essentially. And I don’t mean to butcher what his thing is, but yeah, AI, to me, is exciting. I think that it’s here to stay. I think if you’re not using it or learning about it, or understanding the principles of it, you’re going to fall through the cracks. Unfortunately, I think open AI and chat GPT will be the the leader of all the newest innovation. I could be wrong, though. They’re kind of leading the charge on all these things, right? They want to launch their their video automations. They were going to be able to type in a prompt and a 4k or OLED video will pop out of it. So I’m super excited for what it’s capable of doing beyond that, for writers like me, I have mold in my own personal chat GPT to write just like me and speak just like me and sound just like me. So I will just put my ideas into it and edit it a little bit, and then out comes, you know how I would say something that might take me weeks or months to actually, like, create in Yeah, in seconds. So, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 32:55
yeah, it is really interesting how that part of it’s changed. And I was talking to someone a few months ago, was talking about the agents, and actually in in terms of being able to take someone like Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, whoever you want to talk about it, and impart that knowledge into an agent that would be able to then deliver 80% of what that person could standing in the room talking to someone with that agent and and, you know, not 100% but it could get 80% because that is what most people need, is that 80% they don’t need the extra 20. And how far that would really take us using an AI agent to help totally, you know, just solve problems that way. It’s pretty great.

Cam Martinez 33:46
I think the where we’re headed, actually, and this was a popular conversation a few years ago, it’s kind of died off since, at least from my perspective, or maybe I’m just not up to, up to speed with it. We still haven’t entered into the metaverse. We still haven’t entered into the online avatar world, like the Ready Player One type experience that’s coming, that’s gonna happen, we’re gonna have to, like, Come back to center to realize that that we’re still experiencing this real, physical world when the simulated virtual world is almost as real, if not as real, as what we perceive to be, that’s coming. That’s going to happen, so

Damon Pistulka 34:32
hopefully a little bit slower, so we have a time to adjust, because that means, I

Cam Martinez 34:36
don’t know man Elon’s launching robots that can serve you alcohol and cook food for you and things, yes,

Damon Pistulka 34:43
yes. After seeing them, catch that, catch that booster that there’s a lot they can do that’s that was absolutely insane. Man, no, it’s coming. Yeah, good stuff. Well, when, when you’re helping people. Cam, you know? So talk about the typical company person that usually is coming to you?

Cam Martinez 35:07
Yeah, usually, way I describe it there, if there’s a spectrum of business owner, there’s usually two sides of the spectrum that that come to work with us, and there’s in between. Obviously, it’s either the the people that we talked about at the beginning of this call that are in dire need of something to change. Something’s got to be different, because this just isn’t working. We look good on the outside, we’re presenting well to our customers, but on the inside, we’re just a mess, right? Communications a mess. Decision making doesn’t exist. Project management is all over the place, usually those types of people, and then on the other side, it’s the people who are either just entering business, or they’ve, they’ve had a client that that worked in the design industry for for decades, launched a course. The course was super successful, that turned into a community, and they wanted to their vision was to create the Juilliard of design, of online design. So it was like, big dream, big vision. And they came into the conversation with the whole business plan and their org chart that they wanted to create, and all the systems they wanted to build. And I had to go, Well, hang on, we don’t really know what this is going to be yet. Like, we don’t really know what it’s going to take to get to where you want to go. It’s great you have that vision. But let’s go from step one to step two instead of step one to step 77 Yes, it’s usually those two sides of the spectrum, and then everyone in between, depending on what they’re dealing with. Yeah, awesome, awesome.

Damon Pistulka 36:39
Well, it’s cool what you’re doing, man, and helping people, you know, get the you know, like we said today, get their get themselves straight to figure out what do you want to do when you want to quit your business? That’s a that’s a big help for for a lot of founders, that’s for sure. So if people want to get a hold of you, Cam, what’s the best way to get a hold of you?

Cam Martinez 36:59
LinkedIn is great. I read and respond to every DM. You can go to kenshocraft.com you can book a call on there, open everywhere else, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 37:12
all right. Well, thanks for being here again. We had cam Martinez here from Ken. Ken show craft, we were talking about what to do when you want to quit your business, I want to just say, thanks everyone for being here today. If you listen to this, got in late, go back to the beginning. Start over again, because he was dropping a lot of great stuff. Cam, thanks for being here today. Thanks

Cam Martinez 37:35
for having me, man, it was fun. All right. Well, we’ll

Damon Pistulka 37:38
finish up online. I gotta say, we’re going to say bye now to everyone that’s listening, we will be back again next week. You.

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