Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the episode today, we have Tom Maze. Tom, welcome Hey, thank you for having me here, Thomas. It is my pleasure. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do? Yeah, absolutely, so right now I’m currently focused on four businesses, primarily with the finance background co-founded Squadron Capital about three years ago, a commodity and currency trading fund in the process of building out that business. I was doing a lot of networking with family offices, venture capital firms, private equity, high net worth, ultra high net worth individuals and they would say, “Hey Tom I like what you’re doing with the commodity and currency trading fund, but right now we’re looking for real estate projects or technology” at the same time of having a hedge fund business, I would get a lot of entrepreneurs come to me and say, “Tom, would you invest in this real estate project?” And I’d say, “No, we’re primarily focused on commodity and currency, but I was just speaking with a family office who’s looking for what you have.” So I co founded another business, Artistic Capital, which is a consulting firm where we do a lot of introductions and fundraising for a variety of projects coming from the network connections I already had and experience I had.
So, then from there about a year later started another business called NXT Digital. It’s a NFT Focused business, collaborating with artists, assisting them with all of the marketing, the discord groups, the advertising, and then really exploring opportunities in the NFT Space. Fourth business is, I do a lot of coaching and mentoring for entrepreneurs, especially young entrepreneurs, getting into the space, and co-founded the global coaching association with 11 coaches, so it saw us all doing very similar work anywhere from artificial intelligence coaching to the business scalability, problem solving, relationship coaching, I’m primarily in the fundraising coaching and entrepreneurial coaching, so those are the four businesses I’m focused on at the moment. You’ve got a lot going on. Yes sir. Yes, sir, it keeps me busy. So of everything you mentioned, what would you say is your main passion or where you focus on the most? My main passion is going to be a combination of finance as well as coaching and mentorship, because I knew the true significance and fulfillment that I’m gonna get in my life is gonna be from the relationships that I build and the impact that I have, so, having those one-on-one conversations with people and having them assist them with achieving their goals or overcoming limiting beliefs, becoming the best versions of themselves, increasing their confidence, though, that is like so valuable, that’s true significance and fulfillment in my eyes. As far as business scalability, I prefer finance, because it’s extremely scalable and I think the opportunity for income in the finances is phenomenal, so I also have a passion for finding great investments and helping other people make more money, so the combination of those two.
Thank you for that, where would you say your entrepreneurship story begins? High school, even Elementary School. As young as, I believe, 10 years old was when I — actually, even before that, I would have to say in video games. When I started playing video games in like Grade 3, Grade 4, Grade 5, I played a lot of video games where you could level up your character and you could buy items and sell items. And money was a useful resource in the video game, so I would start buying other people’s stuff for cheaper and then I’d sell it for more and I started making more money so that I could level up my character and then in real life I was paying my brother to go and buy fireworks for me so that I could sell fireworks at high school and especially around Halloween, I was making 4, 5, 600 bucks around Halloween when I was in Grade 5 to Grade 12, so that’s probably the real beginning, yeah.
That is early. So, I mean, I’d really like to ask if it is, if you start off that young and you have that entrepreneurial trait. I’d like to ask where you think it comes from? Why do you think that at that age you were doing that type of activity where most people don’t. I think it came from two areas, specifically one, I’m a very curious individuals, so I’d ask my parents tons of questions about, how does the store work? And then I really understood this very simplistic concept of buying in bulk and then selling for more individual pieces, so that’s where the fireworks selling or dirt bikes or skateboards or whatever I was selling came from that, was just buy it low, sell it high and then the second one was out of, like need and desire. I, again, paid really close attention to family conversation that Thanksgiving, or family get togethers, or my parents, or aunts and uncles and there was such a concentration around money and it was, oh, I can’t buy this new roof because it’s, super stressful, my aunt can’t afford it or new repair on the car, oh my gosh, it’s $5,000.
It was always this pain point. This vacation is so expensive and it was always this massive pain point and I just thought like, wow, like I want to learn more about this, so I would ask more questions further and further and I have a couple individuals in my family who have done well financially and then I would say the mass majority are more average and I just saw like wow, like those people have more options, they have more freedom, they can go on more vacations, they can have nicer cars, they can do what they want and they still have normal stresses in their life, but when they figured out this one problem, when I was so young, quote unquote, money, it was like, I want to figure out how to solve this problem if I don’t have to have that be an additional burden or stress on my life, I would like to remove it if possible and then do what I want with who I want whenever I want, so, it became a great — and then, my parents were talking about it a lot and I was like, man, I just don’t want this to be a problem in my life, I’d like to solve this problem. But you observed your options basically decided that was the path you wanted to follow, maybe consciously, or unconsciously.
Yeah, definitely a combination of both, unconsciously, because it was a big game to me, making more money, because I thought selling stuff was fun, and then, yeah, the need and desire, as it grew, as I got older. Any more lessons that you picked up from starting that early? Starting out early is — I like to say, I’ve got a PhD in the school of hard knocks, I’ve really been self taught, I guess, I’ve really seeked out, in a form of self taught of like trying and failing, trying and failing, but I’ve had a tremendous amount of coaches and mentors in my life that have just been so amazing for my growth, so it would be — just don’t be afraid to fail. I mean, just fail, fall, move forward, learn from it, move forward. I mean there’s been so many times where I’ve bought the wrong things, or partnered with the wrong partners and it didn’t work out.
But it’s just never stopped me from, what’s the next thing that I can work on? What’s the next thing that I’m gonna be able to move forward — You have a massive injury and you took a big fall now it’s what’s the next steps forward, so always keep moving forward. And what would you say is your, was your first actual kind of proper business? Yeah, totally. What you’re telling me selling fireworks is not a proper business in high school. Well technically, it’s revenue expenses, so I’m sure tax man would say it’s a real business, but they knew of you. Yeah, for sure, real business was more of the affiliate marketing space coming out of high school, got involved with a couple of affiliate marketing companies and built a couple of teams of people for selling different products and services and that’s where I really started to gain a lot of mentorship and coaching as well. But I would say, I was actually in the trades industry coming out of high school.
I wanted to make money immediately and start a business and have a fallback plan, because I knew I was going to go into business if I ever had a fallback plan, I could go back into the trades, specifically electrical. So I was in the affiliate marketing space, then I started my own electrical contracting business for a while and then it was quite short-term and then I transitioned into finance. So how did you start with the affiliate model and what kind of stuff are you promoting? I got started with it through a couple of referrals of friends, because they just saw that I was networking a lot, selling cars, dirt bikes, whatever it was and they’d say, “Tom, you should just do affiliate marketing, you’re pretty much doing that anyways and then you could build a team of people.” So that concept really made sense to me, dove right into that and I sold pretty much anything, I mean, like everything from different vitamin options to, travel plans and packages to, forex trading systems and algorithms and that’s actually what transitioned me into the world of finance; I was very interested with these different algorithms and trading systems and education systems that you could use.
So I built different sales teams for that. We had about 35 reps selling trading algorithms in Canada and the US and then that gave me a lot of opportunities in the finance space, through the networking. So did you build a team whilst you were still an affiliate? That’s correct, yeah. So it must have been going quite well then in order to do that, you must have been generating quite amount of revenue to build a team. Yeah, and we were all like, commission based, right? So it wasn’t like I was paying overhead for a lot of these affiliates and reps that I brought onboard. It was, you get a commission of your sale and I get a commission of your commission for your being within my team, within my company, so yeah. Resourceful, very resourceful there. What would you say the main thing that you learned from that business was?
The two huge, well three, would be the importance of communication and confidence and presentation skills, and then two, would be networking the value of simply saying, “Hi” to somebody at a grocery store or extending a sales conversation with somebody just to see if there’s a potential relationship, and I mentioned those two, because I actually met a really good friend of mine, Keenan Pillar, at a save on foods grocery store in Kamloops just buying some food and we’ve been buddies for like seven years now, we’ve done a bunch of business together, it’s been amazing and I commented on his shoes and I said, “Hey man, nice shoes” and that’s how it started. And then another guy, Landon Whizhart, he was doing a sales call trying to sell me a car and then we came buddies over the phone and then we ended up doing a whole bunch of business together and he came representative for me and affiliate with me and just the power of networking, I mean, you never know where you’re gonna meet somebody that will become a really good friend, a really good business partner, you’ll learn from, is incredible and then the third one is coaching and mentorship, because there was a lot of coaching and mentorship available within the affiliate marketing companies that I built as far as people that had done a lot more than I have, so learning from them, those are the three main points.
Well regarding mentoring, I mean, I think that there are people, a lot of people, maybe a majority of people, don’t have a mentor. So what’s your take on that? Yeah, I also think that in society right now the word “coach” and “mentor” can sometimes not be the most positive, because there’s so many coaches out there that are not super ethical or they’re just trying to sell a super quick course, cookie cutter program, and maybe they don’t even know what they’re really talking about and they’re just trying to sell something. So, being aware of that for sure. I believe there’s two aspects of a coach and mentor. I believe a mentor is more around your whole life and your life goals and your values, your morals, your ethics, what you want to accomplish with your life, taking into every business that you have, every idea that you have, every relationship that you have and then a coach is more specific to like skill set development. So you have a life mentor, like your uncle or something and then you have a coach who’s helping you build your marketing business, right, and then that’s a marketing guru, they’re so good at what they do, they’ve built many marketing businesses, now they can teach you the day-to-day, the week-to-week, the month-to-month goal setting around that business.
So I would differentiate them that way and I also think, finding a professional coach and mentor is extremely valuable, somebody like yourself for building a marketing agency would be amazing, but if you don’t have maybe the resources to do that, you can find a mentor in your uncle, or in your pastor, or a really good friend, or a family friend, or a business contact that you have and you don’t have a quote-unquote, like setup relationship where hey, you’re my mentor, but you go to them for advice. You go to them for insight and same thing with coaching. If you know, Thomas, you and I were good buddies and I said, “Hey, Thomas, I’m at this point in my business right now, how can I progress from here?” and I’ve got so many business contacts and friends of mine that we do that all the time.
“Hey, Tom. I need a little bit of finance help over here.” and then I go to my buddy, Landon, he’s amazing at sales. “Hey, I was doing this to the sales process that seemed a little bit rigid, how can we adjust that and we collaborate and work together?” So if you can’t afford that quote-unquote culture mentor relationship that’s super professional, then you can find it in different aspects. Well that would be where the good networking comes in, so if you’ve got a, let’s say, a big network of people that can potentially, or are willing to give you advice and that would be highly beneficial, but from your description it would make it sound as though you’d be crazy not to do that, so why do you think more people don’t? That’s a great question. I would say the first hurdle would probably be um communication skills and maybe lack of self confidence to just have those conversations. So first developing your self-confidence and your communication skills to build those relationships, and I have to say it’s one of my strongest skills, but I did not start there.
Like I was so nervous to talk to people all of the time. Like going into a grocery store and talking to somebody was like my worst nightmare, or going into a coffee shop to have a sales meeting with someone was like, my worst nightmare. I would go into a meeting with my affiliate marketing company, I’d show up in the parking lot like 30 minutes early at a coffee shop and I called my like coach and I’d be like sweating and like a cold sweat and I’m like so stressed out about this meeting and he’s like, “Don’t worry, Tom, you’ve got this, you got this” and I was horrible. I was so horrible for the first 10, 20, 30 meetings and the same thing with in-person encounters at a mall or at a grocery store, at a coffee shop, whatever it was, it’s just like, it’s something that you have to build, it’s a muscle, it’s like going to the gym, you have to you have to suck at it. Whatever you’re doing new, you’re gonna suck, you’re going to do garbage and then you slowly, slowly get better and build that self-confidence. So I would say, one, build the confidence in the communication skills, because that’s gonna be a skill that’s so valuable to you for the rest of your life.
Especially as technology develops like, more and more jobs are going to be human interacting opposed to other things that are going to get taken over by technology, and then the second one, would be — yeah, just communication, the self self discipline. I did have a second point, it’ll probably come back to me in a minute here. But okay, just from what you said about communication, I spoke to someone who coaches CEOs exclusively and I asked him what the main, shall we say, the most beneficial skill to have as a CEO and he said communication and I was surprised at the answer, but the description of that is that they’re not doing any of the day to day work, right, so they have to communicate and delegate to the various different people and so basically all they do is communicate to people and that’s, if you’re a great communicator, that’s highly beneficial for a CEO and obviously we’re all kind of CEOs of our own company, right?
Absolutely, and that’s where leadership comes in as well. If you can’t lead a team of 500 people, 1000 people as a CEO, then you’re not doing your job effectively, so I totally agree with that and the other point came to me, is the the value in networking. I don’t think a lot of people think of the value, where they’re like, oh, just like talking with somebody at a coffee shop or talking with a new friend or asking for a referral for no reason. “Hey, I heard that guy’s successful. Do you think you’d be able to introduce me to him? I’d love to have a conversation with him.” They don’t even think that that conversation could be potentially valuable. Where I’ve had so many of these conversations where I walk away from a 30 minute call and I’m like, whoa, like that was that was powerful, that was amazing, that totally changed my mindset as to what I was gonna do, that saved me thousands and thousands of dollars, or tons and tons of time, or, I met this guy at a coffee shop now he’s my best friend and I just love hanging out with him. Like I really see the value in it, so I don’t think, because people maybe haven’t done it, they don’t see the value, so then they don’t push themselves to do it. I’d say that’s the other other aspect.
Great answer. So how do you go from being an affiliate to having your own finance company? What does that look like? Great question. I’m really a man of, I say entrepreneur of say “yes” and learn it along the way. So I loved investing and trading from when I was 16. I did that a lot with my father, he gave me some of the beginning, kind of points of how to get into it and then I read a lot of books on it and I was obsessed with it, because again, it was money working for me instead of me working for money, which I loved that concept. Again, it’s kind of like buying something low, selling it high. Same concept, but just in the stock market. And so I had done a lot of that from when I was like 16 to about 21 or 22 and then when I was in the process of selling the algorithm and building a team of affiliates with that, I was doing a lot of trading and a lot of it was really in that industry.
A lot of us were we’re trading and using these algorithms and collaborating and working together and I was doing a presentation for one of my affiliates. He said, “Hey Tom, you got to come and meet a couple individuals downtown Vancouver, I think they’d be a great fit. They’re already traders” and I was chatting with with an individual and did the presentation. He ended up calling me about a week later and said, “Hey, what are your thoughts on building a finance company together? I’m a really great trader. You’re really great with people, you’re a really great networker. You could really do a lot of the investor relations side of things, business scalability, team building.” and I was like, “Yeah, I’ve honestly been looking at a finance company for the long-term, because I think it’s a wonderful scalable business and I just love the industry as a whole, so that really gave me a great opportunity to jump into it a lot more full time. So we collaborated for about six months, built a really great relationship and then looked at launching the company and then going from there.
I love that answer, because the only reason that opportunity came up is as a result of your affiliate stuff and like you say, the communication and, are you still in the affiliate business now or is that, have you stopped that activity? I still have about a couple of teams of people right now. They’re smaller, but I really don’t put time and effort into growing them. I just kind of maintain them very, very casually. They’ve decreased in size substantially since when I was more engaged in it, so yeah. But coming in from what I said was essentially that you never would have known that would have led to that opportunity in advance, there’s no way of knowing that, but because you did take the action and got better at it and that opportunity arose and reminds me of the definition of luck. So it’s when preparedness meets opportunity and that’s kind of where we were.
Totally agree, and that’s again, where I see the value in networking and communication skills, because there’s been, like, my network is amazing. I’ve got entrepreneurs that have built companies to $100 million, $300 million valuations, and the only way I met them was through networking random conversations or referrals and this first leap into building squadron capital. It was specifically through networking, communication skills and just like you said, with luck, if I wasn’t having the confidence in that meeting, if I didn’t have good communication skills, if I didn’t network, I never would have been able to have that individual want to say, “Hey Tom, let’s start a business together.” If I did a really crappy presentation and poor communication skills, the opportunity never would have been there, right. So is that two of your four businesses so far?
This would be, I actually didn’t include the affiliate marketing business, so technically there would be like five businesses. If you really want to get technical about it, there’s probably seven, but if they’re like, there’s like three that I don’t really consider businesses, because I put so little time into them, they’re kind of in the background, and yeah, just the main force. So right now we’ve covered the first one out of the four, which would be Squadron Capital. What would be the main challenges that you had from your first business, what would you say that is? The main challenges would be a very steep learning curve, for sure. I had to learn a lot in a very, very short time period, so I just went beast mode, like full on studying all day, 12, 14 hours, 15, 16 hours a day. Some days, 20 hours a day, sleeping for four hours and, it’s working with the Securities Commission, British Columbia Securities Commission. Learning all of their rules, what to do, what you can do, what you can’t do, how to do it, how to say it, what you can say, what you can’t say and building relationships with the Securities Commission. I’ve got 3 contacts there now, and talking with securities lawyers, learning what they say, what they don’t say, learning different trading strategies that are scalable, how to build the internal workings of a company with different systems and processes and google sheets and then onboarding associates for that business and putting in training systems for them to learn. Luckily a lot of that skill set came from the affiliate marketing space. I had some materials that I could bring over, but it was really more focused, and then I was trading as well. I got into a lot more manual trading in the FX market and commodity markets, so learning a lot more about that.
Again, reading more more and more books about trading, psychology. My responsibility was not mainly on the trading side, so I didn’t do a huge amount about that, but it’s still really important to know, of course, so I dove a lot into that, but I’d say a really, really steep learning curve. Just learning as much as possible in the shortest time period possible. Having a great amount of responsibility as well, having other people’s money as a responsibility is a great, a huge amount of pressure. So bearing that and learning how to deal with that and work with that and yeah, that would be it. I like the answer, because you used the phrase “beast mode” and then you also described what beast mode is, so for anyone who wants to know, you gave a description. Yeah, totally. When does your second business come along and what does that look like?
So about two and a half years after starting the first one, so that was doing a lot of networking, like I mentioned for the investment fund, building relationships and seeing that I was leaving money on the table really. They’re looking for a real estate project or they’re leaving money, you’re looking for technology project to invest into and I always like to be able to refer somebody to somebody that can help and I was like, “Well I met another entrepreneur who specifically does deal making and structuring and introductions and consulting work in that manner”, and I said, “Hey, I’m doing this for free” and she’s like, what, you’re doing this for free and you’re not making any money, like making these introductions, and it’s like, that’s so valuable, it’s like my full time business, I was just being nice. I was referring people to each other, investors to entrepreneurs and she’s like, okay, well we’ve got to like dial this in, we’ve got to make this a business. So then we launched that business as well, and then yeah. So that would have been about a year, year and a half year, about a year ago.
And how’s that going? It’s going well, it’s going well. Again, another aggressive learning curve for sure in the first six months. Again, my communication and presentation skills have really been foundational for that business as well, but it’s more learning the technicalities of that business and that business is going really well. We just closed a deal last week for about a $2 million investment, which was phenomenal, into a technology company I’m an advisor for in the US, so that’s fantastic, and yeah, no, it’s a lot of fun. I love to network and meet new people and I really love that business and there’s huge potential on the upside as well. So correct me if I’m wrong, first business is sort of making money on people’s behalf. So, they give you your money, you get them better return, is that correct? Correct. And second business, it’s your real estate projects and also other types of investments maybe. So, how would you differentiate that from the first one in terms of the description I used.
Totally, so with the first one, with Squadron Capital, it’s an investment fund. So we’re trading in the commodity in the currency markets. I do want to look at opening up new funds in the future with, real estate fund, technology fund, those kind of options, but right now it’s just commodity and currency, that’s it. So when a family office or high net worth individual says, “Tom, I don’t want to have a fund, I want a technology project that could 5x in the next two years or 10x in the next three years. Then we don’t offer that with the company, with the investment fund. We’re strictly going for 10 to 25 whatever different percentages per year, and so then I would go and need to find a technology or real estate project for that individual and I’ve got a lot of people that are starting different tech projects or different real estate projects.
So I get a lot of proposals and then I go through and I say, “Hey, this is a solid team here. These guys are doing great with this technology project. I’ll introduce them to a couple of my investors.” Okay, and the third business. That would be NXT Digital, it’s the NFT business. It’s a new industry. Right? So, what does that look like and how did you, well, why did you decide to get into that business? Totally, so this would be the newest business. I’ve definitely been doing my coaching for longer. So with NXT Digital, started it about seven months ago with about seven individuals and I have watched a lot of, I wouldn’t say a lot, because I’m quite young, but there’s always amazing opportunity in new marketplaces and it’s learning how to identify those opportunities. It’s kind of like, stay dangerous per se, because new markets move so fast and there’s a lot of volatility and a lot of vulnerability.
You look at the dot-com era. People were just saying internet three times and they were raising money and then a lot of the companies failed, 95% of them failed and then the strong survive. You look Bitcoin and the Cryptocurrency world, everybody is launching their own coin. I think it’s very similar to the dot-com era. So many are going to die, which one is going to be the strong that survived and I think the NFT space is very similar with the twist of utility, so more relevant to the dot-com era, it’s not just simply buying and selling artwork. It’s kind of a very simplistic understanding of it in the beginning, but I truly believe there’s going to be so much more utility as the industry progresses. As far as like the metaverse goes, digital art frames goes. There’s events being hosted in the metaverse in different areas, gamification of NFTs, more collectibles and real artwork becomes an NFT.
I think the opportunity is still very new and I don’t think we’ll see the true opportunity for another year or two, because the industry is so new. So I want to get into it, I want to be involved in something that is brand new. I want the volatility, I want the the extreme scenarios. I want to see how we can adapt to the situation and be nimble enough that we can change as we go, because if we go in now and say hey we’re doing x, y, z and that’s all we plan on doing pretty much in six months or a year, year and a half. I believe that x, y, z is going to be irrelevant, unless you’re able to adapt as the market changes. So that’s our goal. We currently have two business verticals, three business verticals with another plan of another two or three within the business. So we’re just focusing on the main two for now, but I just love the experience of building in something that’s very new. As technology grows over the next 10, 20, 30 years, it’s going to be like this over and over and over again.
There’s gonna be a new wave of technology and it’s extremely vulnerable, extremely volatile. Where’s the opportunity in that new technology. So I really want the practice of this, because it’s going to be never ending for for the rest of my life. So in terms of what that looks like, your business looks like, in terms of activities, where’s the money exchange hands in terms of, are you like a marketplace? Not quite a, not a marketplace. So right now, the business is very new. It’s only seven months old, I would say, it’s been a lot of putting partnerships together. We’re launching a virtual art gallery here. We just signed the contracts for that this last week, and so that’d be great. We can showcase a whole bunch of different artists artwork in our virtual art gallery, but primarily where the main business vertical is that we’re working on now and we want to expand into the others is just simply collaborating with artists who want to get into the NFT space.
They want to enjoy what they’re good at. They just want to make their artwork, whether it’s digital or physical and then we deal with all of the technicalities of listing it, marketing it, advertising it, and we do a profit sharing model with the artists. So, and then that’s the primary business vertical. The other two are, we do internal NFT Trading and within the company. And then the 3rd option is, we’re looking at releasing our own artwork in the future and our own NFTs with more utility, but that will be further in the future, so just focused on partnering with artists at the moment. Well, it’s impressive stuff in terms of what you what you apply yourself to. I’ve got a couple of more questions, but in terms of just touching on the NFT space for a moment, what do you say to people who are dismissive of the space, maybe a bit reductive about what it actually is, so like calling it jpeg or something like that. What do you say to those people? Yeah, I mean, I think there is validity to what a lot of, some of those critics say in the short-term, you can just screenshot it.
You can also just go and find a digital image of the Mona Lisa, you can go take a photo of it, but it’s not the original. But, again, I think those people are just focused on the art aspect of the NFT space. If you’re just focused on the art aspect of the NFT space, I think it’s very small. Honestly if that’s all I thought the NFT space was gonna be, was just art, I would not build a business in the space, but I believe that the NFT space, and with our team and the different projects that we have and different ideas where we think the NFT space is gonna go, that’s where I see the opportunity. Not last year, not this year, not next year, but where is it going to be in five years from now? Where is it going to be in 6, 7 years from now? And I believe more and more utility is going to come to the NFT space and the real opportunity like I said has not really shown it to us, until another year or two down the road. So this could be like your affiliate business to start with, which gives you the opportunity for the bigger business.
Exactly and I look at when Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency came out. The people that said, oh, it’s never gonna be anything, it’ll never be anything, Bitcoin is never going to be worth anything. If they’ve just taken the time to really understand what is a Bitcoin, how does the technology work, what is the Ethereum Blockchain, how does it work, what is the concept behind all of this, where is it really going to go over the next 10, 20 years. Then they would have said differently from just saying, hey, it’s never gonna be anything. Maybe they would have said, maybe it could be something, I should learn about this, maybe I should buy a couple, maybe I should put 200 bucks in at it, 10 cents of Bitcoin and just see where it goes, right, so the NFT spaces, let’s see where it’s gonna go. Start learning about it, see where the possibilities are, it’s still very new. You don’t have to hit a home run in the next six months in the NFT space. You can hit a home run over the next 10 years in the NFT space.
So I think changing the mentality to being closed-minded and just making a quick judgment call and saying it’s not worth the time, opposed to being open minded about it and saying I’ll put in the time and the effort to learn about it and then make a make a decision from there. So going back over your businesses and your beginning. I didn’t ask you like a great amount of detail, but it is like a summary of your career. How do you feel about it and what are your thoughts? As a whole? That’s a good question. It’s been a very interesting journey, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs and people that are driven or high achievers. It can be a really driven out of a place of, you want to accomplish more and you want to do more and there’s always the next thing and you can always be better, and I’ll have a lot of conversations with people and they’re like, hey, you’ve done a lot, wow, this is interesting where for me, I need to give myself that reminder, where it’s like, I’m not even a quarter of where I want to be. I’m comparing myself to Richard Branson with 450 companies, Elon musk is doing incredible things, Bill Gates and Tony Robbins with over 100 companies and it’s just like, I’m a peanut, like I’ve done nothing. I just want to do so much more and accomplish so much more and help so many more people and build so many more relationships and have so many more fun adventures.
So it’s a realization of like, hey, be grateful and happy with where you are now and joyful and my favorite saying is pursue a worth — this is my definition of success — is pursue a worthwhile destination with great company on the most enjoyable journey possible, right, because the destination is not guaranteed. I don’t know if I’m gonna make it there for sure, but if I’m built going on that journey with people that I enjoy and it’s a fun journey then it doesn’t matter if I don’t make it to my destination. So, that’s truly what I focus on as much as possible, is enjoying the process, the journey, the company, the relationships and pursuing worthwhile goals and destinations. You’re just getting started then, yeah? Yeah, just getting started. I’m not a quarter, yeah, like so far away from where I want to be, but I’m grateful for where I am, I have to tell myself that every day.
In terms of work ethic, have you got anything to share there? Yeah, definitely. I would say there’s different seasons in your life. A lot of entrepreneurs, they say, wake up, have a cold shower, do this, that and the other thing, read a book every day and I’ve done all of that. I’ve worked 18, 20 hour days, and cold shower, super rigid systems and processes in place for my day to optimize it, which is great for different seasons when you’re building the discipline, you’re building the different patterns and then there are different seasons where maybe you need to slow down a little bit, have a little bit more creativity, give yourself a little bit more grace, focus on your health, focus on your mental health, your physical well being, your relationships with your family and your friends and there isn’t a huge amount of balance, but trying to organize that as far as the goals are for your life and keeping that in mind, so there might be a couple of years where you do nothing but work and then maybe you take a couple of months to slow down and really realize where you are and where you’re headed.
So work ethic can fluctuate, just make sure that you’re progressing at a rate that you’re happy with and keep pursuing. Thank you for that, is there anything I should have asked you about today? Oh, nothing that comes to mind immediately. Any closing thoughts for us? Any closing thoughts would be, I think I said it, I pursue a worthwhile destination with great company on the most enjoyable journey that you can. If you keep those three things in mind, I think you’ll have an enjoyable life and you’ll be happy with what you’re pursuing, It’s not based around a certain dollar figure, it’s based around values, morals and ethics, and think about when you get to the end of your life and you look back on it, if you accomplished what you wanted to accomplish or you didn’t accomplish what you wanted to accomplish, are you still going to be happy with the life that you lived and the interactions that you have and are you significant or do you feel significant, do you feel fulfilled in your life? And keeping those long term values in mind.
Tom, thank you for sharing everything today. I think listening to your story, I think that there’s a great amount of, shall we say, inspiration or motivation that people can pull from that and I do think there are some lessons from our conversation today. If people want to connect with you, where do they go? You can go to tommaze.com, that has links to to the four businesses on there. The Global Coaching Association will be launched soon. That will just be the globalcoachingassociation.com. If you’re looking for coaching or mentorship, we have amazing coaches that are all qualified on that platform. I’m on all social media’s, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and yeah. Tom Maze, thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me on the show, Thomas. You ask amazing questions and really enjoyed my time, greatly appreciate it.