Summary

Gabriel Flores  0:00  

Hello, everyone and welcome to the shades of entrepreneurship. This is your host, Mr. Gabriel Flores. Today I am here with Jordan Curtis, who really is as a social media influencer and I follow this individuals page. Super cool, super local Portland. Very food enthusiastic. So Jordan, welcome to the show, please introduce the world who is Jordan Curtis, thank

Jordan Curtis  0:22  

you. Yeah, great to be here. You know, I gotta start off by saying I shy away from the influencer piece a lot. I work in social media and digital marketing. And so I am excited to tell the story of my food Instagram page hottie school feats. But influencers is a crazy term. You know what I'm saying? I'm not that followed. But yeah, so I guess I'll just start off at the beginning. Southwest Portland born and raised Multnomah village, went off to University of Oregon got a degree in sociology, which doesn't mean a ton, you know, I got a degree and I could I could write, I could write an essay or a paper, you know, came out of UVO, with a digital ride around when the crash happened, actually the housing crisis and the bottom of the job market, so I kind of drifted around for a little bit, worked in a lot of worked at Bridgeport Brewing Company, rural district, yeah, that's where I got into big time cooking. And that's where my love of food really started. And then that was around the time as well, when social media was really becoming a lot bigger outside of just Facebook, you know? Well, I'm part of the generation where you had to have a.edu address to get on Facebook. And so that that was around the time when Facebook opened it up to everybody, you know, my mom jumped on Facebook. And yeah, and LinkedIn became more popular and Twitter, of course, and so I got a few internships. And then I finally landed in a really big internship at Edelman PR, which is a global PR agency, one of the bigger agencies here in town, and I did about a year of traditional PR work. And then I jumped on to the digital team have been doing digital marketing ever since. And now fast forward 12 years, I guess. Now, I'm a freelance strategist. And that's really where my entrepreneurial journey began. And yeah, I've been doing that for a little over a year. I love it. I can't see myself going back to agency life or, you know, an in house job, you know, the the dream used to be to snag a job at Nike, you know, and now it's now I want to build my business. I like it. And what is your business called? So my business is called line leader media? I I'm not, you know, I'm a freelance strategist. But a lot of people would call you know, a lot of people that are freelancers start, like their own agencies, right. But I don't have any dreams unnecessarily right now of starting an agency, I have just a collection of friends and former colleagues that are in this business that I tap for help in a subcontractor kind of role. But yeah, line leader media. It's the name is based off of my my oldest daughter, when she was very young, at daycare, they used to take turns being the line leader on the way to the park, and she would come home every day, just like super happy or super upset if she was the line leader. So we had to explain to her like, hey, like, you need to be a good follower too. Yeah, you can't always be the leader, you can't always be the line leader, it's just as important to be a good follower is it to be a good leader. And so that's kind of the quick story of the name of our company. And and my wife is very, very closely involved as well. She's the bookkeeper and the kind of the business end of everything.

Gabriel Flores  3:55  

And so why, why it was the consecrated, why did you decide to, you know, say, you know, what, I'm going to go ahead and do this entrepreneurial, the kind of contractual work that you're doing, right,

Jordan Curtis  4:05  

that's a great question. I really had. I mean, I'm sure you're hearing this a lot. And I'm sure this is the same forever, a lot of people right now that have made big career changes, but it was really COVID related. I was working at a small boutique agency out of Seattle, but I was working remotely from Portal, I've been living this remote life for three years now. So the work from home thing is something that I have been loving for a long time and, and I knew that some big contracts were coming up at my agency, and some of them didn't get renewed. So I got laid off, but I had always had like side hustles like a lot of people, you know, especially in the social media business, it's pretty easy to get side hustles you can work and work and work and Yeah, and so, so my wife and I had always talked about it and you know, COVID really forced us into it, and it's been amazing. I love it. And so yeah, I guess I would say we always had an eye to do this, but COVID really kind of pushed us into it.

Gabriel Flores  5:00  

So your you mentioned, you know, you're a freelancer in the digital world, right? How do you grow your business? Yeah, that's,

Jordan Curtis  5:06  

that's, that was my main concern at the beginning. If I'm being honest with you, like, what can we, you know, to leave behind a steady paycheck, right? Yeah. And you know, and even in agency life clients are a revolving door. You know, one day you sign up a client the next day, you lose another client. And so my wife and I were very concerned like, are we going to be able to keep a steady stream? Of?

Gabriel Flores  5:30  

Yeah, especially with my family? I'm sure that Yeah, yeah, at times even more difficult. Oh, yeah.

Jordan Curtis  5:35  

Three kids, man, like, I gotta get paid, you know, so. But it has not. It has that has been just a, I don't know how to other to say just a shockingly great part of this. Like the opportunities for digital freelancers right now, especially in Portland are nuts. Like, I have more opportunity than I could ever hope to, like even work on. I get called, I have a call here in 30 minutes after I leave this podcast with a new potential new client, you know? Yeah. So they really come through referrals. And they come through LinkedIn. I got a crazy LinkedIn story we can talk about here in a little bit. But yeah, I mean that the opportunity is out there. And you know, I've been in this. I've been in this market for a while. It's certainly helps. I was born and raised here.

Gabriel Flores  6:21  

Yeah. Oh, yeah. The network. How important actually, is that being born and raised here being knowing your network? How, how important has that been to your success, everything,

Jordan Curtis  6:29  

man, everything. I got my first I got my internship at Edelman through a close family friend. She didn't give me the job. But she got me the interview. And I luckily nailed the interview. But everything that has come from that has been, I've really made it a point in my career to be someone who is like people like working with me, that that's my personal brand. Like I would rather be you love working with me than being like the best at what I do. Totally. And so my network is everything. And luckily, University of Oregon, kind of there's a big journalism school there, a lot of marketers come in and out of there. And a lot of them moved to Portland afterwards. So the network is huge. And it's been, it's been the key to my success, for sure.

Gabriel Flores  7:11  

So let's, let's hear this LinkedIn story.

Jordan Curtis  7:13  

I gotta hear it. Oh, this is the I love this. Okay, so this was right, really like maybe a month into freelancing. There's a guy who I know from you about, I don't really know him. His name's Anthony. But he was a recognizable guy around campus. And he worked at Edelman for a little bit, but he worked at Edelman, New York. So I met him at in the Portland office, a lot of people come back, that are from Portland that work in other Edelman offices. They'll come for the holidays, and work from the Portland office. So you get to meet some like hometown people. I met him once. And I he's very active on LinkedIn, like always posting like, super, super active. And I was always just liking his posts and kind of just, you know, keeping keeping tabs on him because he's a digital strategist who's worked for some really big brands, really big brands, and really big budgets, like really cool work, like a career goals, basically nice, like someone that I look up to. And yeah, and I was just chilling in bed with my wife. It was like 10pm. And I had noticed, maybe like four months, five months earlier, he got a job at HBO. And I was just I commented on the post, I was like, This is great, man. Congrats, like, sounds awesome. You know, and he just LinkedIn messaged me and he was like, Hey, man, like, how are you? I was like, good, man. How are you? I was HBO. He was like, it's great. Like, you're freelancing now. Right? Like freelancing, social media management, copywriting. I was like, yeah, he's like, I want to hire you. And like, poof, like, I, I was working for HBO the next day, and I got to work on like, just the cool, he works on a lot of titles in like, the DC Universe. So I was working on like, the Titans TV show The Justice League, nice comic book stuff, like really cool stuff. And, and, and, you know, he was very happy to pay me upfront for all my work and just cut the check and, and do the work. And it was just this beautiful relationship. And, and it's been, it's been over a year now that he just, you know, randomly, I don't have a retainer scope with him. It's more based on different TV shows, or different launches, or different just random projects that he needs. And he'll just pop into my inbox and be like, Hey, man, you want to work on Justice League or you want to work on you know, awesome. Yeah. So it was awesome energy came from LinkedIn on 10pm on a Tuesday night networking baby. It was it was it was amazing. And that's probably my shining example of just like, the the need for a good network and just being on top of things even. And I was just top of mind for him, because I like his LinkedIn posts.

Gabriel Flores  9:47  

Yeah, yeah,

Jordan Curtis  9:48  

totally just being active. Exactly. Right. So that's probably my cool story and some of the coolest work that I have done since since I've been a freelancer.

Gabriel Flores  9:56  

What what, what would you say is hard about being a freelancer?

Jordan Curtis  10:00  

What is hard? I mean, it's interesting, I think about this all the time, like, what are the pros and cons of what I'm doing. And the pros greatly outweigh the cons. But I think more than anything, and I'm sure that a lot of people are going through this right now that aren't even freelancers, but just blending work and family. You know, I saw a meme going around the other day, like I did, it was like, I didn't want to work a nine to five job. So I started my own business. And now I work 24/7.

Gabriel Flores  10:32  

Yeah, that's so true.

Jordan Curtis  10:34  

Yeah. And so I think that that's probably probably the biggest con like, I'm constantly thinking about work, the fact that I do digital marketing, which is totally on my phone, I can do almost everything that I do on my phone, nice. It's easy to go from hanging out with my daughters to checking in email, then to checking their Instagram account, you know, so the balance is a difficult thing. And like I said, the amount of opportunity that's available to me, has been unbelievable. And so I've taken on a lot of work. And so I'm, I'm blessed and stressed, I'd say,

Gabriel Flores  11:12  

and less than stress.

Jordan Curtis  11:15  

But yeah, that's the line is blurry for sure.

Gabriel Flores  11:18  

Is there anything that's been easy about it? I, you know,

Jordan Curtis  11:21  

I? That's a great question. I would say I do the same work, as I always did for somebody else. But I but I get to, I get to trust my own instincts. And I'll get to, you know, if I can do something better or more efficiently, I just get to do that I don't have to ask, I don't have to, you know, run it by someone. And so I'm trying to say, I like that part, the freedom to trust my own instincts and do the work that I think will be most beneficial to the clients. It's up to me, so I like that.

Gabriel Flores  11:53  

Yeah, in fact, you know, you kind of talked about LinkedIn and how that network started in that relationships. Are you working on Marvel? And you're working on Justice League? Yeah, in fact, our relationship started on social media as well. I fall as I mentioned, I followed your social media handle, in particular, you're one for your food. So let's talk a little bit about that. What is your social media channel? What does it do kind of what how'd you start that

Jordan Curtis  12:14  

for sure. Thank you for asking that because this is this is a story that I'm super proud of. I've always been really into food and not necessarily cooking I like to go out to eat I like I like I like going out to be real cooking. I mean I cook but I like to I'd rather go out I'd much rather yeah and and I I've always been really interested in food photography and I always you know I'm very tapped into one of my my clients often on throughout my entire career. One of my current clients is travel Portland so I'm that's one of my core clients right now. Nice. I love travel Portland and I love that organization everybody that works there the work they do. A lot of that is you know, bringing people to Portland to eat very true. So it's my job to stay on. Stay on it. And thus I was I've been following a lot of food influencers locally. With real followings dude, like I'm inching up to 4k right now.

Gabriel Flores  13:11  

I got 200 Nice Guys,

Jordan Curtis  13:13  

you'll get there, you'll get there. And so I wanted to I wanted to start a food Instagram page. I started in the pandemic because I just wanted to stay creative. It was just really just a creative endeavor. But also so the page is called Hot eats cool feats. And I've got one move on my top down food shots with my my shoes the Jays Yeah, with always like the ones always the ones. I got mostly ones I got a couple other players, but they're almost all ones. And yeah, I just wanted to do something a little bit different. I didn't want to have another just like food Instagram page. And so I thought that that would be a good way to do it. And one of the other things that was important to me was like, I didn't want to become a food influencer. But because I do a lot of influencer campaigns in my job. I wanted to see what like what would it take, you know, like, what are the ins and outs of like, if I was serious, and I wanted to become a highly followed influencer around Portland food, you know, what do I have to do to do that? And so I've learned a lot along the way of just like how do you, you know, score followers and how do you keep them engaged? And how do you you know, what, who else are your foodie friends and how do you stay connected with them? And so, yeah, so hottie school feets. It's, it's about a year and a half in and I love it. And it's something that really brings me a lot of joy in terms of just the editing process. I love just editing my photos, like taking the photo and editing it and just being like, Oh my God, this one's gonna go crazy. is really fun for me. I don't have any aspirations to like, be a paid influencer or like, you know, get 1000s and 1000s Fall I'm happy with whatever. But but I've learned a lot and it's really fun.

Gabriel Flores  14:56  

So let's for the listeners at home, give them a little bit Have nuggets of things that you have learned, you know, some maybe maybe they're interested in starting their own photo, Instagram thing. What what are some advice that you can give them? For sure, for

Jordan Curtis  15:09  

sure. I would say just like try to try to make your photos as as high quality as you can. You know, like I don't post anything. I'm very particular about what I post I don't like right now is a tough time of year because it gets so dark out. I post all like I shoot all natural light. Yeah, yeah. And so like, I don't shoot any dinner right now. I'm shooting all my lunch stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah, I would just say focus on you know, making, you know, posting the best photo you can I use three different apps to edit my photos. Oh, wow. Snapseed is a great app income. One of the things I that's a big tip for anybody who does have some knowledge. Yeah, dude, they've got this thing called the healing tool, which is what is it Photoshop is tough. Photoshop is so complex,

Gabriel Flores  15:55  

I have a love hate relationship with that, for sure.

Jordan Curtis  15:58  

I've taken classes. Gosh, it's so it's so much man. And so, but Snapseed is great, because they have the healing tools. So you can kind of edit out like little, you know, like bits here and there. And we clean clean up, especially a food plate, you know, sometimes that you know, it gets a little sloppy, but like, you can, like, you know, edit out a little sauce drop or something like that. So Snapseed is a great app. Anybody who's listening who ever wants a little tutorial of the healing tool, just hit me up, and I'd be happy to show them. Love it. Yeah, but another thing is, the most important thing is to be active is not just posting your own stuff all the time. But like I comment on other people's photos, I you know, I share a lot of photos to my own stories, my Instagram stories. And it really is just, it's not like a, you can post a photo and you'll get followers every day, you have to be active, you have to engage with everybody else. And that's how you get people to find you. That would be my my biggest tip is just don't expect that, like your the followers are going to come you have to go to them and engage with them. And hopefully what they'll do is be like, Oh, who's this guy, like commenting on my photo total. And then they go to my page and be like, Oh, this is tight. And then they follow me hopefully. And so I'm jealous how I've done it. And you know, a lot of those insights come from my, my work, you know, in my career. But I've also like I've said, I've gained a lot of knowledge, just trying it. One of the things that's crazy dude, is these things called engagement pots. And I think it's probably big in any type of niche of influencer, especially on Instagram. But basically what people do is they organize into, like DM groups. So there'll be like 20 people in a DM group, and everybody has a food page, right? So it'd be like, and they can be all around the world. You know, no one should really care too much about my, my page unless they're Portlanders. Or they like sneakers, even though my sneakers aren't even, like, Dude, I've learned so much about the sneaker culture,

Gabriel Flores  17:52  

like it's, it's a different world, a different world.

Jordan Curtis  17:55  

And so I don't mean as a sneaker head, which I'm not. I've accrued some shoes for this page. But But yeah, if they get into these pods, bless you. Thank you. And in that, what do you do is when you when you post something, you send your pic to the pod, and everybody jumps in and likes it and comments on it. And it's so in all smart,

Gabriel Flores  18:19  

very organic way to kind of get boost your brand

Jordan Curtis  18:24  

it is and it is for all and I've been kicked out of engagement pause, because I didn't go and like someone's photo, like being serious, dude. It's serious. And so Mean Girls, totally.

Gabriel Flores  18:36  

I've been kicked out to wear pink and

Jordan Curtis  18:39  

wear pink or you're out. Yeah. But yeah, so I did that for a couple months. And I was just like, I can't keep up with all these people posting all the time. And like me needing to go into their pictures and like comments like yum. Or comment like, this looks so good. When I you know, it's just it is. It's organic, but it's not. Yeah, so I don't do that anymore. Yeah, I jumped out of that. But that was a that's a big part of what foodies do. And they try to get more followers or make it look like they like have these really popular pages. Oh, but it's not

Gabriel Flores  19:11  

interesting. That's crazy. So one of the things you mentioned, too, is you primarily focus on Portland. What Why is that important?

Jordan Curtis  19:17  

Well, I mean, with the pandemic, I haven't been really going anywhere. You know, I go to Central Oregon a lot. I go to, you know, the coast. And, you know, I I'm happily you know, go to eat other places, but I guess I've got three kids. I don't travel as much as I like to, but I did just go to Kansas City, Missouri for chiefs.

Gabriel Flores  19:38  

I saw that, you know, I think we must have just missed each other. In fact, Oh, were you there? I was I was out there the week before the inlaws live out there night and my father in law actually has season tickets to the chiefs. Did you go did you go I got to watch him beat the cowboys and it was glorious, except I hate the chiefs. Oh, you do go Raiders maybe Okay, I'll go Raiders.

Jordan Curtis  20:00  

was my first NFL game man. Oh, and yeah, the food out there to me. Oh, man. Yeah, so I'm in the middle of Kansas City Barbecue week. I got about six pretty solid shots while I was there. Like I said, I'm picky. Like, I wasn't posted. I didn't grab any like hottie schools. I got one move. And if I can't get a good if I can't get a good shot because it's dark, like it's not it's gone. I go to my page. So but no, I loved it. It was super fun. That's probably I went there and then yeah, then everything else is pretty Oregon, Seattle, you know where I go for work. But yeah, it's not it's not purposely focused on Portland. But I do really love food hearts, and counter service restaurants. Nice. So I go and I typically go when my kids are napping when napping is done with the shirt off. Yeah, they don't. They're not trying to eat what I'm eating anyway. But now it's really fun, man, I love

Gabriel Flores  20:52  

it. Nice. So what advice would you have for individuals that are possibly coming up and you know, wanting to do get into the food industry or get into a foodie kind of social media handle?

Jordan Curtis  21:02  

Yeah, I mean, I like I said, I would just be like, you know, keep your eyes on your phone and engage with those people start don't be afraid to start your page, you know, have low expectations of yourself. Just start the page and try to post cool stuff. And, and, and again, like, I'm not really taking this anywhere. Like I've gotten a couple of free sandwiches, you know, but not really. And even if they someone does offer me you know, like a food cart will DM me and be like, you know, we'd love to come by, we'd love for you to come by. We'll give you a free sandwich. I'm like, I'm not going to take your free sandwich. Like I'll pay for that same toy like I'm bored. Yeah, I'm lucky that I'm able to eat out so much for this page. And so So yeah, my my advice is just have fun with it, like chat food people or love to talk about food to talk to DM someone and talk to him about food and be like, Yo, have you been here yet are you know I love chatting with people about food. That's a lot of what I do for travel Portland, actually, in my in my career is we have this thing that we used to call the Twizzler center. It's kind of like a, you know, tweet us and we'll give you some recommendations on was smart. Yeah, but it's mostly on Instagram now. And so I chat with people that are coming to Portland or visiting Portland or even locals on you know, Moe asked me, you know, what's my favorite ramen spot? And, you know, I'm the one of the official tour guides of Portland in that way, digitally speaking. And it's just it's I love that part about my job. I love talking to people about food. And so if you're looking to get into food, you know, talk to people about food, like you know, be enthusiastic about it. Yeah,

Gabriel Flores  22:30  

in fact, I'm, I'm a I'm going to ask you about some food because I think we have travel Portland here. Yeah. For the folks at home. What if let's best burgers Where's let's give us some like top five best burger spots in the Oregon spot they can go

Jordan Curtis  22:43  

that's the one of the tougher ones where I like burgers, but I don't love or I don't crave burgers.

Gabriel Flores  22:48  

What is your food?

Jordan Curtis  22:50  

I love all Asian food. Oh, it's just a ton of noodles ton of dumplings. Oh, the love street tacos. I hit as many taco trucks as I know you're

Gabriel Flores  22:59  

talking. Okay, let's first let's do tacos. Yeah.

Jordan Curtis  23:02  

So there's some and I don't think anybody can truly be an expert in Portland tacos. Yeah, they're absolutely everywhere. Yeah, but there's some great parts to the one down here right by the chevron down the street on Multnomah

Gabriel Flores  23:16  

Oh, yeah, I used to live right. So that little spot right there where they put in the mutual grace is right next to it. I used to live right in that spot. Okay, now that we'll we'll talk about right there. That Bob, you know, it's good when it opens up like at 6pm. Right. And it closes at 6am. Right.

Jordan Curtis  23:33  

There's a place like that on Canyon Boulevard right up by all the the car dealerships anyways. A lot of these places that don't really know where they are. So there's one in Beaverton called La Morita, I believe. And they just have a really good Pastore. I've hit them all ban. I love Pastore. I love carne does, I'm not a burrito guy. I do. I like I like to look to tacos. I like tacos. And I like hella onions. I like if they have all the Kado salsa.

Gabriel Flores  24:03  

I'm bet out it yet. I'm about that too. For sure. The

Jordan Curtis  24:07  

Berea, Vidya joined there's that, I guess, how long has that been around

Gabriel Flores  24:13  

for a while, but you know, it's kind of funny. My wife just made some video here at the house. Yeah. And she like, made it for the first time a couple of weeks ago. And I was like, when do we started making this? You can make it more often because this is just delicious.

Jordan Curtis  24:23  

Yeah. Love it. Yeah. I mean, I'm all I eat those wherever they have on them. There's a great place. I mean, I'm a Southwest guy. Yeah, so I hit a lot of Beaverton spots, you know, out towards the lower a ton of ton of carts, ton of taco trucks. And it's what's hot man. I love it. One place in Portland that I really think is great. That has a few different locations as tight tacos.

Gabriel Flores  24:45  

No, yeah, you know what tight tacos. I would love to get you guys on the show. I see you guys often they're, they're big on the social channels. Same with Joe Joe's. Yeah, I absolutely love JoJo social media channel. I just cannot stop laughing at some of their posts. those bats. You guys do a phenomenal job. You hit him up. I

Jordan Curtis  25:03  

bet he would come on here. They're great. I will. I will. He's got a new location opening up in the pearls.

Gabriel Flores  25:08  

Ooh, that's a good perfect time. Yeah. I've kind of get some promotion going. He's a

Jordan Curtis  25:13  

that's a great example of setting your brand apart on social media.

Gabriel Flores  25:17  

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Big time. I have like, I don't know who their social media manager is. I'm like, it's him. Oh, I'm pretty sure it's the owner. I'm like, Man, can you please come run my Yeah.

Jordan Curtis  25:27  

He's he's got a really cool strategy. Yes. of just, like, making fun of like, everything rolled and everything but then, you know, the next post you get is just insane. Six chicken sandwich that you? Yeah, yeah. I'm a huge fan of that guy. And, and, and then tie tacos. Those are true entrepreneurs. Yeah. Like they started at a at a real small truck in a write off Hawthorne, I believe, or Belmont. And now they have a couple locations. And in they have a beautiful social media feed. Yep. And they know what they're doing. Yeah. For sure.

Gabriel Flores  26:01  

That's what I love about this community. You know, it's like, every time we guys comes on, they kind of leave me with some more leads for other guests. Yeah, sweet. I love it. So so for the folks at home that are interested in learning more about you maybe following your food. Yeah. How can they do that?

Jordan Curtis  26:16  

Well, you know, my food Instagram pages hottie school feeds, I'm pretty active there. My regular just personal feed is Jordan with 11. O's. Yeah. That's my personal feet.

Gabriel Flores  26:31  

I love it. How you made sure. It's 11. Was there any meaning between for the 11? This

Jordan Curtis  26:36  

this dude in high school who was kind of like a bully? Like always like, hey, Jude. Like, I thought it was funny, but I was also like, dude. Oh, man. So I don't know. I just got off of that. So yeah, so and then I'm on LinkedIn. Man. I'm not pretty. I'm not very active on LinkedIn. I don't. LinkedIn is funny, dude. I mean, I'd love to hear your thoughts on LinkedIn. Because one of my clients the other day, he called it just an IT. LinkedIn is an orgy of congratulations.

Gabriel Flores  27:06  

Oh, wow. That's a great. Yeah. That's a great, what is it? Cinnamon trigger?

Jordan Curtis  27:10  

Tried it? Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, that's what he said. It's true. It's like you go on there. It's like, and I don't think that that's a bad thing. No, I think it's great when people go on there and flex, like, do it. Like we're, you know, that talk about your work, talk about your achievements, I love. I love it. When when my colleagues and friends I see what they're doing. And they're doing these big projects, or they're working on these cool clients, or they got a new collar job. I love that. And I love hearing about it. And so yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, I love to connect and just chat with people, you know, especially digital strategists out there, anybody who's thinking about going out on their own. I mean, I never thought I was going to do this. Like, the fact that I'm on this podcast right now. Dude is crazy to me, because I don't even it's hard for me to even think of myself as an entrepreneur. But I guess I am, you know, I am your sole proprietor, I are out there making your own business. It's crazy. And it's Yeah, and truly, you know, there is, I did see this as a path, but I never really thought it would be what it is. And I've truly been very, very a year I've been really successful. It's weird to say that, you know, it's fair to say like, I'm a successful entrepreneur, because I don't want to, like flex that. But it's true. But at the same time, it's like, I am so lucky. I'm only successful because of the people that trust me and hire me, you know, yeah, it would be real easy to, like, have to go find another, you know, in house job or another agency job. But I got people, you know, knock on my door and email me and be like, Oh, you want to work on this. And so I owe my success to my network, you truly do. And so yeah, well just talk to people about about that, to love it, and just get real honest with them about what my experiment. That's why I that's why I'm glad to be here on this podcast, to be honest with you, because I can talk about how grateful I am. And truly, you can do it. You know, I believe I believe that people can do it.

Gabriel Flores  29:02  

You know, one of the things one of the things you mentioned too, is you know, you're you're going to have those successful moments as entrepreneur and it's okay to be cheer yourself on, you know, Mary Oliver actually had this poem that called the journey. One of my old mentors actually gave it to me, and it's a great, great, you know, for those individuals that have common to success, because what sometimes happens, you know, there's that old saying is your your biggest supporter is someone you've never met. And your biggest hater is someone you've already know for sure. Right? And so and that kind of tends to happen, right? When you kind of get to a little bit of success. You see people start to kind of dig into it. They don't want you to be that successful, but it's okay to you know, it's okay to flex.

Jordan Curtis  29:43  

I mean, I don't all the time, of course. I just never also want to be I never want to be seen as an arrogant person. Yeah. It really turns me off it arrogant people really turned me off and and I never want to come off as arrogant. And also I guess, you know, it's like what do you do when like all your dreams come true? Right. Like what are you know, it's like, I guess now the I feel like and I guess if I'm being honest, this is what I'm struggling with right now is like the pressures on to maintain, you know, my family and I have enjoyed like a such great success in the last year it's like now I gotta keep this train rolling. You know, I think a lot about how do I scale and and and what do I need to do to you know make more money but not work harder, you know like, because I have it's important for me to be a father notice as much as it is to be a provider. So yeah, that's that's a lot of what I'm thinking about right now is it especially with the new year coming up is like what changes do I need to make or what you know what maybe could I let go of, so that I have better opportunities? Or who can I hire that I trust? It's a tricky thing right now man because like, My reputation is always on the line and anybody I don't see myself like hiring you know, a ton of people. Yeah, but maybe I don't know. Who knows. Yeah. So it's a lot to think about and if anybody listening that has experience of going from like something like a as a sole proprietor to like, Wow, I like I run now. I really have like, an agency or a business. Like, I'd love to hear from them. Like what that was like and because that's such a bigger step than just being like, Okay, I'm going to be Freelancer now. Yeah, yes. I thought that was a huge step. But there's more to come and I would love to hear from them about like, you know, their experience on that. Yes. So

Gabriel Flores  31:22  

folks at home you hear that? My boy Jordan Curtis over here is very much interested in networking. Jordan, thank you so much the owner of line lead media I this is awesome conversation. Awesome. So excited for you in the future. I know there's a lot more things to come. So for those at home, please visit me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and have a great night.