← Black Entrepreneur Experience
Black Entrepreneur Experience
BEE 539 Cliff Beach: Building a Six-Figure Side Hustle After American Idol
00:42:01
Loading summary
Transcript48 lines
- [00:00]
Cliff Beach
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Podcast Announcer
Welcome to the Black Entrepreneur Experience podcast Inside the business buzz and brilliance of Black entrepreneurs. Here is your host, Dr. Francis Arlene.
- [00:23]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Quick note before we get into today's episode. If you're a small home health agency owner, you already know this. Most agencies don't fail because of census. They fail because of continuity and compliance gaps that don't show up until it's too late. I've been working directly with small agencies around continuity, planning, compliance, readiness and operational stability, especially owners who are wearing too many hats and don't have a real plan if key people, systems or processes break. This isn't coaching and it's not a course. It's hands on consulting to help you reduce risk and build something that can actually survive audits, turnover and growth. If that's you and you want to talk, you can find me@drfrancisrichards.com all right, let's get back to the show. What happens in Vegas goes all over the world on Black Entrepreneur experience, episode number 539. Thank you for joining us as we elevate the Black Entrepreneur experience by interviewing CEOs, thought leaders, innovative thinkers and black entrepreneurs across the globe. I'm your host, Dr. Frances Arlene. Our guest today is Cliff beach, award winning musician, radio host, beauty tech executive, and author of side Hustle and Flow. The Daily Grind, a must read for high achievers building big goals. Welcome, Cliff.
- [02:00]
Cliff Beach
Thank you so much. Dr. Francis Arlene, pleasure to meet you.
- [02:04]
Dr. Frances Arlene
I've given our audience such a brief bio. Why don't you fill in the gaps and share with our audience what you'd like them to know about you, your book and your business.
- [02:14]
Cliff Beach
I have such a long career, but to surmise it, I believe that whatever you subscribe to ascribe to, we are created by a creator to create again. We are created by a creator to create. One of the biggest things that I've heard when meeting people and talking to people, I meet a lot of people. Where you look at the work of Sir Ken Robinson, who's passed away, his TED Talk. He talked about our education system. He talked about how it literally chokes creativity out of almost every person. By the time you start in kindergarten, everybody's like, I want to sing, I want to dance, I want to draw. Because they're all sponges. By the time you get to 12th grade, you get less than 5% that want to stand out or be weird. But we need more weirdos. We now see with the rise of AI and technology that people get displaced and replaced because people are not creative thinkers anymore. You're taught to let something do it for you. Someone actually remarked very interestingly where they talked about AI and they said, why would you create AI to. To create the cool things. I want AI to work so I can create. So ultimately what's happening is I want people to see that they can be creative at any stage of life, in any background, socioeconomic status. It's the mindset. I've found that having a growth mindset, removing your limiting beliefs. People spend so much time doubting their beliefs and believing their doubts. It's supposed to be the opposite. Doubt your doubts, believe your beliefs. Yes, it would be impossible. Yes, it would be hard. Anything worth having will always be that way. If not everybody would be rich and everybody would be skinny. And that's not true, but it's just been a fascinating. I was on another interview recently and I. And I had this epiphany where I said, I love the life that I curated for myself. I love the life that I made happen. I happened to life. And that's not self congratulatory, that's just self actualizing that I made it happen. I did not always have a clear path and know my purpose, but it's everyone's purpose in life to figure out what that is. And if you have figured it out, then do it and take it the distance. If not, you still have time to get that done. My whole journey of writing books and side hustle and flow was figuring out what are all these things that I've learned and I want to now disseminate and give back to society, to the world, that people are created by a creator to create. Do not say that you're not creative, because once you do that, you put a cap and a ceiling on it. You won't. If you believe you're not creative, then you won't create. That's the way that it goes. If you believe you can, then you can. We live in one of the best places, countries where you can wake up any day and just decide, I want it to be that you don't need a degree, you don't need a certificate, you don't need a license for many things. You can just say, I want to be a writer, pick up a pen and start writing at any age. I want to be a painter, pick up a paintbrush at any age and start painting. I think that's a beautiful thing. And the beauty of it is I got rid of this all or nothing mentality. People were like, well, if you're not a musician, Full time, then you're not a musician. That's not true. I can do it at any point, at any time. 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes a week, that's all good. The main thing is that even if I'm not at this point doing music at this moment, still a musician, it's still a part of my DNA. It's still a part of my identity. I think musically, in any arena which allows me, like jazz, I can listen to people and adjust in any situation because I'm used to that improvisational skill. But I think music for me, in the through line of it, it allowed me to gain so much discipline. Because when you're practicing in the beginning of the kid, you don't want to, you don't love it. Those building blocks are, they're boring. The do reemies and the ABCs. But eventually when you start to make those connections and you see where it can go, it's like, wow. Even the simplest thing can be so profound. You have someone like a Mozart who wrote so many things, but one of the best things he did is he wrote Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and then a million variations for it. But it's like that's what music can do. It can be as simple as a child can understand it or can be so complex that very few understand it. And it's. It's a lifelong skill and it's a lifelong love. I think at the end of the day, what I wanted people to see, like Marie Kondo, she's like, does this spark, joy? Do you want this in your life or not? If it does, hold on to it. If it doesn't, let it go. I want people to have more joyous lives. And the system has squeezed the joy out of people and I want them to, to reclaim that, to get it back.
- [06:58]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Let's talk about becoming Cliff Beach. And you talked about purpose. What is that aha moment, that epiphany when you discovered your purpose? And how did that come about? Becoming?
- [07:13]
Cliff Beach
Yeah, you know, that's such a great thing. The doing influences the becoming. And I wish that I could take credit for it. I feel there was a time in my life I was working on cruise ships for Holland America Line, doing music, floating around the Caribbean and just kind of figuring out what my next move was going to be. And I had been given a book by my mom's pastor based in Orange County. His name is Rick Warren. And he wrote a very famous book, probably the biggest non fiction book of all time, Big the Purpose Driven Life. And so he had autographed this book for me and gave it to me. And I ended up reading it maybe a few years after it had been out. And it's now sold, I don't know, 60, 80 million copies. But I read this book and I think the freeing thing for me, and I come from a Christian background, I come from a family of all ministers except me and my mom, is that there are no mistakes, there are no accidents. And it freed me to be like, well, the miracle of being born, of making it through utero to birth, to survive, to thrive, from childhood to adulthood, those are all mini miracles. You know, we have a million dollar body and a million dollar smell. We really do. Our brains are supercomputers. No AI or technology could replace what the Creator has created for how vast our minds are by knowing there are no mistakes, there are no accidents, then you have to, by design, have a purpose. The seeds of greatness are planted into every person. Now, not everybody is going to cultivate that, but everyone has it if they choose to plant that seed and water it and watch it grow. And so that when I really started to think about my life, if I could wave a magic wand, what would I want? What do I want to become? And so I wanted to learn about business. And I went back to school after music school and got my MBA at Pepperdine. And then I wanted to start my own brand under my own name. And I, I had a producer, his name is Mr. Rocks, a great friend of mine. And he said, you're a great artist, but who are you? Who are you? And so my first album in 2013 is called who the Funk is Cliff Beach. Who are you? And I said, who the Funk is Flipped Beast. I made this document. I said, I'm going to make 10 projects in 10 years. Now, at that time in 2013, I didn't know how I was going to do one, but I knew if I said I'll do 10, maybe I would do five, but if I say I'll do one, then I might not get one done. And so I wanted to go big. And by doing that, by2022, I was able to do that. And it wasn't every year. But eventually I started to figure out, how can I do it better, how can I do it faster? What's the team that I need to create? And so that's why I encourage everyone in my band or people that I work with, everyone should have a project. Because when you have to do something from start to finish, when you are forced to pull an idea out of your head, in front of your face so the world can see changes you. You become something through the process. There's a metamorphosis in that phase. And what I love about metamorphosis, it's like people see caterpillars crawling on the ground. They emerge as a butterfly, right? But they. They become something else. They, in the cocoon, become a primordial soup. They just become ooze and reconstitute. And then the beauty of it. What I learned about the cocoon process is if you see a caterpillar changing to a butterfly trying to get out of that cocoon, if you see it breaking from the cocoon and you break the cocoon open, it'll just fall to the ground and die. The whole beauty of it being able to be strong enough to fly is it fights its way out and it gains the strength to be able to fly. And so that's what happened to me. I gained the strength. After the industry said, no, no, no, we don't want to. I said, I want me. I will greenlight myself. I'll create my own record label and my own publishing company and. And be my own marketing and social media and PR person. I will make this happen. And it was great because sometimes you don't take that path. There's an amazing podcast, if you ever get to check it out. It's called Dead Eyes, where there was an actor and he was hired for a role on HBO on Band of Brothers, and Tom Hanks was producing it and directing it. He had gotten this role, and then Tom Hanks fired him. He's like, he has dead eyes. And this person did not act for years. And that could have happened to me. When I was on American Idol in 2003, I moved to LA and I got a few rounds in, and they were like, america doesn't want you. I could have said, pack it up, but I said no. I got angry. I'm like, chic, waiting outside of Studio 54. I'm writing the. The Fu song that becomes freak out. But that's how I felt. I was like, nobody denies me. Shirley Chisholm said, if they don't give you a seat, the table, bring a folding chair. Believe me, I did. And I think everyone should. I. I think it's not for the faint of heart, but it made me a much stronger person. It didn't kill me. It made me fight, and it made me really want it. And you're going to have to really want it. It's a difficult industry, for sure.
- [12:20]
Dr. Frances Arlene
I want you to have a monologue. Name this person, living or not, and they've inspired you so much. Who is that person and what are you saying to that person?
- [12:29]
Cliff Beach
Cliff, so many people that I can name, but first comes to mind is Maya Angelou. Reading her poetry, knowing her story, knowing how you can survive and then thrive from trauma, literally having no voice, to finding your voice is so inspiring to me as a vocalist, as a writer, as a person of color, that you can choose to not be a victim and become a victor, but they do not live in the same body. And just her eloquence and how she sounded and knowing. In the last couple of years, I had no idea she had made a calypso album. I didn't know she sang it all, but it was beautiful just to see her acting and just her poise, just her grace. I remember seeing an interview with her and a person said, maya, and she's like, I don't know you. You have not gained the respect, young woman to not respect me. I'm Dr. Angelou. And that's why I asked you as a doctor, what is, what are you about to know? Because I. You've earned that title. You've earned that right. And I want to make sure that I'm. I'm calling you correctly and having that high level respect. And I grew up with a lot of older people who taught me about being a man, about being a gentleman, about walking on the outside of the street and opening the doors. And I think that chivalry is not dead and that it just needs to be resurrected. And I think that true masculinity isn't toxic. I think people can be great and, and that's why I work with so many people. She's inspired me to work with young people because they are the next generation, but especially with boys and especially black men. I tell people all the time it's better to build boys than mend men. Spent a lot of time working with a lot of brokenness, healing from a lot of brokenness myself. And so she just really inspired me that if you can go through something that difficult and make it through the other side, if you're going through hell, you keep going. And just the way that she speaks, whenever I read her poetry, I'm still inspired. And I have a book of her that I keep, of her poetry to, to read. You know, I weave in and in and out of time. Just, you know, she had a. She had a musicality to her cadence for sure.
- [14:43]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Advice you wish you had followed.
- [14:46]
Cliff Beach
If you ever look into Literature about people who study, people that are dying, people in hospice. The biggest thing that people die with that's difficult is regret living a life that someone else wanted, not the life that you wanted. You look at stories like Grandma Moses. She didn't start painting until her 80s because she was told her whole life as a woman, you should get married and, and be on the farm and work. And she only started painting when she got arthritis and couldn't anymore. And she became so prolific in her later years, they said if she had started painting at 20, she would have probably been the, the most revered painter of all time. Male, female, in between. I'm glad that she still did. I'm glad that she did it at 80, because some people said, well, my time is over. I don't think that's true. I think if you're here, then the time is now. I think the best advice that I wish I had taken is don't be afraid to start and start early and you will fail and you'll fail fast and you'll fail forward, but you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to ever become great. So I think start, get that minimum viable product out there, get the feedback from people, because good enough, Trump's great. The cost of getting to 100% is so cost prohibitive and you may never get there. There is no true perfection as humans. And if 80, 85% will get you there, 50% will get you there, 30% will get you there. I say do it, you know, because when I was starting, I didn't have big budgets, I didn't have infrastructure, I didn't have the thing. Because I remember there was one time I could have the famous musician on my record for a reasonable price, and I didn't pull the trigger because people were like, well, you don't have a PR agent. You're not going to be able to promote it. By the time the record came out two, three years later, I had a PR person. I didn't have a crystal ball then, but I should have just ran with it because I could have had the story and the experience of, wow, I did that. And I let fear and I let the advice of people who hadn't done it do that. Because sometimes when you talk to friends or family, you know, they want to protect you, and sometimes they protect you from doing that impossible thing. And so now I just say no. I have to listen to the inner voice inside me that will guide me. And if I fail and I fell publicly, all good, the People who are successful have failed way more than you have. That's the only way. You have to suck before you succeed. That's how you spell the word. But it's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing to realize that. You know what? I wouldn't make that mistake again twice. I'll tell you that.
- [17:11]
Dr. Frances Arlene
I like that. You have to suck before you succeed. And you think about the metaphor of a baby. They have to suck a bottle or nurse through their mom before they grow up. So I like that. Talk about your top two influencers or mentors and Cliff, what lessons did they teach you?
- [17:35]
Cliff Beach
Oh, my gosh. I've had so many thought leaders that I've come in contact with that have been amazing. I've worked with Tony Robbins Foundation. I find him to be such a prolific and strong person to come from humble beginnings and abuse, to have such a love for people. You know, I will tell people I've never met him personally, but just working with people who have known him and different things. People make a lot of money and they feel a certain way about you. They create a judgment around that. But it's like, you know, being a billionaire. He has given over a billion meals to people who were starving. And more than that, 10 billion, whatever it is, he's worked with Feeding America and he's encouraged everyone has done his programs to work with Feeding America. And we all, a lot of us, are giving on our own besides that. And every time you sign up for something, they give a certain amount of meals. And I think that's a beautiful thing. I think it was a beautiful thing to. Because no matter where you come from, to be a billionaire. Now he knows in childhood what it's like to start. He knows what it's like to not have. And even when he was younger and didn't have a lot, he would find a way to give. See, the thing is that the secret of living is giving. If you wouldn't give a dollar from 10, you're not going to give a million from 10 million. See, that's the thing. It's a cultivation you build. If you have a clenched fist, then you can't receive anything. The universe can't give you anything until you open it up, right? If you're so afraid of losing it that you have to hold onto it so tight that. And nothing else will come. And so he was a beautiful person that helped me, you know, awaken the giant within and those books and his. Unleash the power within. When I broke my board for the first time, I put the fear that I had and overcoming on the other side and feeling my fist go through that, I was like, Daniel Son. I never did karate or anything like that. I felt. Felt like I could do anything. I was charged when I came out of upw. And then I'll look at, you know, a black leaders. Last year, I was doing in my book Shape up, the second book. I did this business Brilliance Conference. And Les Brown was one of the speakers that was on the circuit with me. And he was someone that I just grew up with. The love that he had, being adopted and being kind of remedial and having that kind of dunce cap on and becoming this amazing radio person that encouraged me to get into radio. I grew up listening to AM radio and listening to these speeches, and I was a weird kid. People were like, why are you listening to all these speakers? But I love the sound of, you know, coming from ministers. I love that preaching vibe. And so Les, he just had this earnestness to him. And in a very relatable thing. And seeing a black thought leader speak like that to a very diverse crowd, very educated crowds, it was different for me. But out of all the things I realized listening to him, he would always say, I'm Mammy Brown's baby boy. He loved that woman so much, and she loved him. Realizing, you know, looking at someone like a Kirk Franklin when you were adopted like that. My grandma was adopted, my great grandma, my adoptive family, I love them thicker than blood. Even though we had no blood relation, the love was there. And so I just have a soft spot in adoption and foster care and things like that. But it was where he came from, wanting to do right by mama, wanting to get her a house, the ups and downs and everything. At the end of the day, no matter what he said, as a powerful speech, he was like, shoot the moon, you'll hit the stars. Great. But it was the ending saying every time, I'm Mamie Brown's baby boy. That's how I feel. I say, I'm Tonya's baby boy. I do this to make you proud every day for sure.
- [21:10]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Love that. Cliff, what problem exists in the world today that you would like to solve?
- [21:16]
Cliff Beach
I would say right now, you know, there's a very famous clip of Elvis. They ask him something about politics, and he's like, I'm just an artist. So some artists, they're afraid to, like, step on things things. And I stay pretty neutral. I also. People will say, I might be crazy, but I don't subscribe to or really watch news. I Feel like it's just so doom and gloom. If it's important, it's not like I'm buried in the sand. I will know about it. But I don't seek out especially kind of that negativity. I like to get more objectivity. I think the biggest problem in the world. I talked about Mel Robbins and her let them theory. I think let them is a powerful thing. I think one of the most important things that people should learn. If someone has a different view from you, let them. If someone is different than you, let them. Let's say you're on a dating app, right? And you're talking to someone, you're trying to court them. They're like, well, how tall are you? It's like, what does it matter? What am I going to do physically that I can change my height, right? You don't know if I'm a good person. You know, if I'm murderer. It's like you don't care. What happened to just letting things be organic and letting people be the best that they can be? So I think let them is just across the board. If they're in a different country and they live different than you, they should. They're different. Let them. Like, it has nothing to do with you, that lifestyle. You don't love it, you're not living it. Let them. All important things. The biggest problem that I think I found, especially with self help, is we have eroded personal responsibility. I think you need to know that you are Superman. Slap the ass on your chest, the cape on your back, no one else is coming. You are the one that's going to affect change in your life and your surroundings. If you keep it external. You can always blame the government or politics or race or anything like that. There's no overcoming in that. Because you'll look to someone and always see an outlier. You will find someone who thrives in the worst situation. I tell people that good things grow from crap that flies, right? And so you, you can thrive. There were people during the pandemic. Some people went down, I chose to do projects and they all came up. There was no difference, except I knew if I keep my mind right and I focus on what I can do because a lot of times people are frustrated in life. There's this thing where they say if you're in the dark, you can either light a match or curse the darkness. What happens is that people get frustrated because they're trying to control the uncontrollables. I don't even focus on that if I know there's nothing I could do to affect change. I just compartmentalized. I'm like, I'm not going to focus on that. I want to focus on making the content and getting the stuff out there that I know I can do or learn to do. If it's something like, you know, we just had the Grammy Awards. If I see people out there and I used to be upset, why isn't it my turn this and that? I'm telling you, if that Grammy is for them, it is not for you. It is never coming to you. It's a radical acceptance. You can't have what they have. You're never going to have what they have. They are a completely different person and they, they have a completely different track, completely different path. But yes, I think the problem systemically is lack of personal self responsibility. If you affect the change and you become the captain of your own ship and the master of your own fate and everyone did that, the world will be an entirely different place.
- [24:31]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Cliff talk to a younger you. What advice would you give to a younger Cliff?
- [24:37]
Cliff Beach
Oh, my gosh. Growing up, I had a lot of illnesses. I had a lot of self doubt, I had a lot of bullying growing up. And I think it's amazing to me. So when I started in kindergarten, I was, I was so bad and behaviorally, what they quote unquote said was bad in school that my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Carter Russell, she said, I'll never have kids because you've ruined that experience for me. And so everyone felt, you know, they would say, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad. And I would tell my younger self, you're not. You're just different. You're just not in the mold that they want to force you into. If you want to color outside the lines, that's your right. If you want to paint the sky pink, that's your right. You know what? I've seen a pink sky in Ojai. It's called the pink moment. The real thing. People make you sound. If you can't hear the music, you think the dance is crazy. I wasn't crazy. You just couldn't hear the music. And so by me being that person my whole life, when I became an adult, it flipped 180. All the things as a kid that people said, you talk too much, you're doing things different, you're singing all the time. Those are the things that became what made me great. And if I listen to everybody who said you shouldn't do that, I wouldn't do any of those Things. And I would say, younger self, say yes to everything and, and figure it out later. My whole life is built around every time something came to me, I said yes. And I didn't know how to do it. I said, I want to make 10 albums. I didn't know how to make one. They said, do you want to be on tv? I said, yes. I didn't know anything about it. They said, do you want a radio show? I said, yes. I knew nothing about radio. If I said no, I wouldn't have had any opportunities. You prepare yourself and learn and take the skills. You have soft heart and, you know, at the end of the day, I grew up, I watched the first season of Project Runway and Tim Gunn, who was the opposite of Heidi Klum. Every time someone would be making this fashion, I know nothing about being a seamstress or sewing or anything, but every time someone be like, oh, I don't know about this piece, that piece, he would just say, make it work. Make it work. That's the bottom line. You know, you got the hands you were dealt. Make it work. Somebody with that hand, they wish they had that hand. Make it work.
- [26:42]
Dr. Frances Arlene
What personal value drives your decision making as a business owner, author, musician.
- [26:51]
Cliff Beach
Oh, wow. Personal values. There's so many attributes that I ascribe to, but I. I have been really good at not having decision fatigue and being able to make decisions. I think when you know definitively, like, what needs to be done, then you need to do it right. I think sometimes there can be a lack of decisiveness. Sometimes people are really trying to gather all the inputs and information, and you, you kind of have to be uncomfortable. You have to sometimes make a decision, and you. You don't have it. I think Martin Luther King really summed it up. He said, you don't have to see the whole staircase to make one step. Some people are so afraid. Like, as you start making those steps, it becomes clearer to you. But from here, the vantage point is far off. It doesn't seem clear. And all those things that are fear or scary, as you get closer to them. Sometimes when you're in the dark and you see a lampshade, you think it's something, a phantom come to get you. And then you cut the light on, you're like, oh, it's just. It's just a Neo lamp. That's how life can be sometimes. And so, yeah, I think decision fatigue, people are overthinking it. And with social media and so many things pinging you all the time, there's a high level of Distraction. So I've looked a lot into kind of like efficiency and you know, the theory of deep work versus shallow work. I think we're penalized as a workforce of becoming more efficient, right? Like if you can, if you can somehow figure out how to do your eight hours and two, I think people could do that. But I think work will. Will penalize you. They don't want to pay you the same because they think that they're paying you for the time. You're not paying for the time. You're paying for the productivity. If I become more efficient, that's better for everyone. If I have now six hours that I can give myself back, I should not be penalized for that. Now you have people. If you're at an office or working at home, there's so many gaps of time that people are talking to each other about non work things or checking their email or doing other things or just getting a lot of distraction. For me, I think the most productive people are the ones that put the blinders on. They make decisions quickly and they know how to prioritize their day. If you are a person who never looks at a calendar or it looks the night before and figures out your schedule, like it'll be very difficult to become a MOCA or multitask even. People don't actually multitask. They switch single tasks quickly. But I think being quicker at decision making, knowing definitively what you need to do with less information and when you do have that prioritizing and then getting into deep work, I think that's going to move the needle for you.
- [29:14]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Liz, how do you handle fear or a failure or imposter syndrome when it shows up?
- [29:21]
Cliff Beach
Oh my gosh. When I was working on the first book I had imposter syndrome. I actually shelved it. I started in 2014. I didn't pick it back up until the pandemic in 2020. Took a writing course by scribe media guy Tucker Max. They helped David Goggins make his book, Tiffany Haddish make their book. And they taught other people how we could write. And the first thing in nonfiction, they said, well, people get this fear and apostle syndrome. They think, but what if I don't say anything new? And they said, let me just free you. You won't. You won't. Everything has been said. Everything has been said to death, but it hasn't been said by you. We all have an X factor. We all have a snowflake. We all have a story and it's ours to tell. And if you tell that in a Very compelling way to the masses. It can be interesting. Basically, you don't have to necessarily say all the right things. It just has to land. And there's like a way to make that impactful. You never want what you want to say, get in the way of what your audience needs to hear. So you, you'll feel like an imposter because you haven't done the thing. But doing the thing makes it real. And again, the brain and fear, the way that it works is that your brain, subconsciously and consciously, it cannot distinguish reality from fiction. This is why if I watch a scary movie, my body has the responses of Jason chasing me. I know there's no Jason behind me, but I still feel it. I'm still sweating, my palms are sweating, that kind of thing. Because that's how the brain works. So you have to thank your brain, say thank you for trying to protect me. But no, I need to feel the fear and do it anyway. I just do it scared. Because ultimately when you do it and you break through, you realize that 99% of the time it didn't actually materialize. Or even if it did materialize, it was not as bad as you thought. And even if it is, and you've eaten that frog and it was the worst thing, you've got it over with and now you can move forward.
- [31:05]
Dr. Frances Arlene
What's a belief you had early in your journey that you now know was completely wrong?
- [31:12]
Cliff Beach
There's this marketing term that I always tell people, they're like self made bs. There is no self made. It's impossible humanly to ever be self made. How could you just spring forth fully grown? It's impossible. That's a myth that happens when Athena emerges on a clamshell, you or someone spraying, you know, from Zeus's head. You cannot do that as a human being. Two parents, two people have to come together and some DNA has to come out. And you're 50% of both. So that's already two people. Then you have every teacher, every mentor, every friend along that journey. Right. When you look at the wizard of Oz, it's not a story if it's just Dorothy, it's just Toto. It's all of them, how she met them on the journey. The scarecrow, the Tin man, and then the lion. And they all were overcoming some deficit. They all had a piece. And then realizing, like I told you in the beginning, we all have the seeds of greatness. And that movie, she had the slipper. She had the power to get home anytime when she was aware of it. She was able to make that happen. Yes. The myth or what I've overcome or wish as a child I knew is that you'll need help. It takes teamwork to make the dream work. And it feels like, especially as a man, it feels like, oh, I have to do this on my own. I have to fight it out. But there is no self made, you know, big dream will ever get done without a big team for sure.
- [32:34]
Dr. Frances Arlene
If you lost everything, Cliff, and you had to rebuild in 30 days, what industry and why?
- [32:42]
Cliff Beach
Oh my gosh, that's a great question. And I've seen people who do that. Oh my gosh, Grant Cardone, he does that where he's like, I have nothing and I have to start from scratch all over again. I think it's a beautiful process. I've seen people who have got completely bankrupt and they brought it back. It's like, I think of it like a, like a Harriet Tubman, right? Like you get to freedom and then you can go back and tell people and take up again because you now know the way you've done it before. And success does leave those clues. For me, I don't know if it would be. I mean, I love technology, so that's always been great for me. But even with music, I think whatever, whatever you can get off the ground that has no overhead. So any type of service industry, right, if you give enough people what they want, you'll get what you want, right? If you, if you charge them a dollar and you have a million people and you get a million dol, that's great. And I think there's many artisan things, you know, even if you just go set up a fiverr and you're doing editorial or writing or revisions for people and stuff like that, it's like, you know, if you just need a computer and you know, a laptop and just you and your brain and what you can do and you're delivering value to your customers and you can get it off the ground super easy, then I think those are things you can do. I wouldn't do anything that required a degree or a license or certificate to something that's like my know how. Even if it was something simple, I've seen people who have started amazing landscaping and lawn care things, or personal care things, or cleaning services, both industrial, corporate and in houses. Anything that you're like, look, I got a mop, I got some mop and glue. Let's get at it. I respect that. And maybe you don't make a lot in the beginning, but it's like Think of an Amway. Think about how you create, not a pyramid scheme, but you have one place, then two, then three, then you have people working under you, and then you're managing that. It's like thinking about how you scale, right, so that you can eventually have a business that's a money machine running and you're not always there. I would create things that allow people to tap into it when they need it on demand, I can weave in and out of it. I'm still at the high level looking at it, but I always think about how can it be less physically be involved? Because I want to charge the most amount of my time for my physical presence time. But then if you can watch something on demand or listen to it, then it's replicated and digitized in a way where I can make that more economical to people. But I think anything that you can get off the ground, the simplest, easiest solution, service based with little to no overhead, I think you'll be in 30 days up and running quick.
- [35:23]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Cliff, if you conducted this interview, what is the one question you would have asked yourself? I'd like you to ask the question and answer it well.
- [35:32]
Cliff Beach
On my podcast, Deeper Groove, that now became my radio show, I always ask my last question to everyone. What do you want your legacy to be? Know that we're not going to all be here forever. And I hope that we live a long time, and it doesn't mean that it won't change as we go. But I always like to fast forward and say, at the end of my life, what would I want to be remembered for the most? And for me, I did say that we're created by a creator to create. If I helped more people believe that, see that dream in themselves and start to create. There was a band, the Velvet Underground, and their first record didn't sell that many copies. They said, oh, I think they only sold like 500 copies. But everyone who bought that record started a band. That's what I would want. I want people to read my story and say, he did it. I could do it, too. I want to. I want to make music. I want to do something creative. I want to find the time to. To do the things that I love and find joy. And so that's what I would want my legacy to be, that I really champion and encourage people to do something that was actually attainable, that was actually achievable. It doesn't mean that everyone's going to do music and win a Grammy and go around the world, but it's like, even if you're just putting that up on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram or Spotify or whatever it is. I think you don't want to die with the music inside you. Too many times people die with these things that we didn't get from them. You know, we never heard that record or saw that movie because people said it was too hard or too difficult or you don't know anything about it, and you don't know until you try. And there is no in between. You either try or you didn't. And it's a choice. You either choose to do it, or by default, you've chosen not to do it. People think, oh, if I don't make a choice, and I didn't actually choose. But no, if you don't choose, you've chosen by default not to choose.
- [37:26]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Cliff, what is the biggest takeaway that you want our audience to leave with from our conversation today?
- [37:32]
Cliff Beach
I need everyone to stop what they're doing, get off the couch, and get after it. You have five seconds to do it. If you don't, five, four, three, two, one. Get up, put the running shoes on, go to the gym, whatever the thing is, send that email, send that text. You won't. Your mind will start giving you 100 reasons not to do it. And, you know, in business, and I love that you study business, we have kind of substitute gifts and marginal utility and demand and all these things. And there's a thing in business where if you don't act, you know, then someone else is going to pick up on that and run with it. You know, that kind of thing. Sometimes you're watching TV and you're like, I had that idea, you know, but having the idea alone, without action, it doesn't get you anywhere. You have to create a. Create a plan. So, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Get after the thing. And then also, what I've learned is you have to know what the immediate next step is. And then 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Right? Because if you don't know the immediate step and you don't know what to do, then you'll do nothing, right? There was this time I saw this person, and they were saying their wife wanted them to paint their room for their daughter, and it hadn't been done in months. And they're like, well, do you know what color they want to paint it? They're like, no. So they text, the wife text. The wife says, yellow. They go on Amazon. They find the paint, they get the paint, and then eventually got done. See, the whole time, it was stuck because he never asked the wife what color. If you know the color, he couldn't get the paint. When you start to ask five whys and you draw down to like, what's the next immediate step, you know exactly, okay, let me email this person, let me text this person, let me look up who this is. Let me find this information. Let me take this class. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Sign up. Do it. And then eventually you'll make more steps and you'll just learn how to make those things faster. You'll figure out, you'll figure out how you become your own block and how to get those blocks out of your way to micro shift and move it a little bit forward.
- [39:24]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Every day we've come to the part of our interview, it's called the rapid round of fun. I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like you to give me very quick answers. If there's something you desire not to answer, feel free to say pass. Are you ready for the rapid round of fun?
- [39:40]
Cliff Beach
I'm ready.
- [39:41]
Dr. Frances Arlene
What is your favorite comfort food?
- [39:45]
Cliff Beach
I'm doing a high protein thing. I love carbs. Macaroni and cheese will be my favorite.
- [39:49]
Dr. Frances Arlene
The last movie you saw, I saw the latest Avatar. You relax. Doing what?
- [39:56]
Cliff Beach
When I relax, I feel guilty so I don't relax ever. But when I do, I've been doing sauna. I love the sauna.
- [40:05]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Your favorite singer or rapper?
- [40:08]
Cliff Beach
James Brown. I just love him being the hardest working man in show business.
- [40:11]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Your favorite dance song, get up.
- [40:14]
Cliff Beach
I feel like a sex machine. James Brown.
- [40:16]
Dr. Frances Arlene
What food do you eat every week? No matter what?
- [40:20]
Cliff Beach
I have protein shakes every day.
- [40:22]
Dr. Frances Arlene
And your favorite month?
- [40:24]
Cliff Beach
February. Black History month, baby.
- [40:26]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Cliff Beach. Thank you so much for joining us on black entrepreneur experience podcast. Before we let you go, share with our audience the best way for them to connect with you and to do business with you and to purchase your book and leave all your social media handles.
- [40:43]
Cliff Beach
Amazing. Yeah, definitely go to the website sci hustleandflow.net we post five free articles a week on there. Over 250 plus articles are on there to learn everything about business, entrepreneurship, just being a better person. I will also just remind people health is wealthy. Hustle harder, healthier me losing 50 pounds reversing diabetes was a huge deal especially in the black community. So science flow.net you can email me cliffside hustleandflow.net you can DM me all social platforms at cliffbeach Music for Instagram, Twitter, Blue Sky, YouTube Everywhere at Cliff beach music. Stream all music under Cliff beach and you can find the book Fire, Hustle and Flow side Hustle and Flow, Shape up and the new one side Hustle and Flow, the Daily Grind, all on Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, and wherever refined books are sold. And I hope that whatever you do, you do you because no one can tell you that you did you wrong.
- [41:41]
Dr. Frances Arlene
Thank you, Cliff. That's a wrap.
- [41:42]
Podcast Announcer
Thank you for listening and subscribing to Black Entrepreneur Experience. We would love for you to leave a review and rating on itunes and share with your friends. Friends for show notes and more episodes go to www.beepodcast.com. join us next Wednesday. And remember, green is the new Black, so keep your bank accounts and your business in the black.