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Shine On Success
Shine on Success is a dynamic, story-driven podcast where extraordinary entrepreneurs, visionary leaders, and resilient change-makers share their journeys to success, revealing both the challenges and the strategies that led to their breakthroughs. Each episode offers a unique blend of inspiring personal stories, practical business insights, and actionable advice, allowing our guests to connect with an engaged, growth-oriented audience ready to be motivated and uplifted. By joining us, you’ll not only have the opportunity to showcase your expertise and inspire listeners but also to be part of a powerful platform that celebrates ambition, innovation, and the courage to turn dreams into reality.
Shine On Success
From Corporate Leader to Serial Entrepreneur: A Playbook for Success
What does it take to go from a corporate executive to building multiple national brands? Roger Martin, co-founder of Rockbox Fitness and Beam Light Sauna, shares his incredible journey from the boardroom to entrepreneurship. With over 30 years of experience in sales, leadership, and high-impact communication, Roger reveals his biggest lessons on business growth, partnerships, franchising, and playing the long game.
In this episode, we dive into:
✅ The defining moment that pushed Roger into entrepreneurship
✅ How he built and scaled successful franchises
✅ The mindset shifts that separate top achievers from the rest
✅ The power of masterminds and investing in personal growth
✅ Why communication is the key to business success
Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or an established business owner, this episode is packed with game-changing insights. Don't miss it!
🎧 Listen now and take your business to the next level!
Connect with Roger here:
Website: https://thrivemorebrands.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realrogermartin/
Connect with Dionne Malush
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- LinkedIN: /in/dionnemalush
- Website: www.dionnemalush.com
- Facebook: /dmalush
- LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/dionnemalush
Have you ever wondered what it takes to build not just one, but multiple successful national brands and lead teams of 500 with confidence? Today we're diving into the mind of a sales and leadership powerhouse who has done exactly that. My guest is Roger Martin, co-founder of Rockbox Fitness and Beam Light Sauna, a C-level leader with over 30 years of experience in sales, marketing and high-impact communication. He's also the host of the Thrive More with Roger Martin podcast and author of an insider's business guide to secrets from an entrepreneur's playbook. Roger knows how to turn ideas into thriving businesses and today he's here to share his wisdom with you. Get ready for some game-changing insights. So welcome Roger. I'm super excited to have you today. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well. I don't know if I should feel flattered or old after that intro, but maybe a little bit of both.
Speaker 1:I don't think I mean. I take the flattery. That's a good one, all right, fair enough. I was going to ask this question at the beginning. What is one thing you would?
Speaker 2:like people to know about you. I am striving to live my life to be known for three things a father, a husband and a leader, and I try to align my decisions and my life path to support those three main pillars.
Speaker 1:That's the perfect podcast right there. Everyone just do that and it will be good.
Speaker 2:Easier said than done right.
Speaker 1:It is not that easy and you know, life throws big things at us all the time and I'm sure you are not. You're one person that's been through a lot. I can I just know it from all the reading I've been doing about you.
Speaker 2:Earned every one of these strands of gray hair Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'm a bottle blonde, so you can't see mine. Fair enough, Tell me this what was one defining moment that set you on the path to building successful businesses? Where did you start? Like were you? Did you have a job and then you started as an entrepreneur, or did you start as an entrepreneur? Tell me about you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I, after undergraduate school, I went to work for a company called Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company, and I was in sales and I loved that. I was in control of my own destiny. The harder I worked, the earlier I got out in the morning, the later I came home at night and the more I studied and practiced and role played and did self-improvement. You know, in my early twenties I found that, you know, I did better, I sold more, I helped more you know, physicians help more patients and I started to make more progress in my career. So I didn't become an entrepreneur until I was 46, 46, but certainly was kind of an I guess what they call an intrapreneur, where I, you know, worked to create new opportunities, started new divisions, launched products and whatnot within the corporate environment. And then I ended up working for private equity for a while running one of their companies, which still, again, wasn't my money, but I was doing entrepreneurial things. But it wasn't until 2016 that I I wrote the check and went for it.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit about both of the businesses that you have right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so several different businesses, but the two primary ones. And it's funny, by the time this podcast comes out, I think I actually say now I have, with my other two partners, sold Beamlight Sauna, so that that business has transacted into some great hands who are going to take it from the 45, some open locations we have right now. We'll have 100 by the end of the year, but they'll take it to 500 locations. They're an amazing, amazing team, so really happy that we got this brand into the right hands to take it to the next stage of growth, and I'm rooting for them. You know I have a little stake in the game still so I'm rooting for them, I'm sure. Yeah, and still so I'm rooting for him. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then Rockbox Fitness really was my first, that was my, that was my step out of the C-level suite. I was a chief operating officer at the time for a pharma company and I literally, you know, had a multi, multi, six-figure salary and all the perks and benefits and stock options you name that. On a Friday. And then I, you know, of course I had a transition plan and gave like two months notice or whatever, but on that Friday I was done and on Monday I woke up with no salary, no health insurance, no dental insurance, no 401k, nothing. That was scary.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to say if anyone is listening and they're wondering do I take the plunge? Do I go for it? If you believe in your product, more importantly, if you believe in yourself and I want to say product, product or service offering but you believe in yourself, which is more important than even believing in your product then you can go for it. Right, you should go for it. But don't kid yourself. It's not fake jets and Lambos like you see on Instagram. It's rolling up your sleeves and being scared to death that you're going to be able to make payroll, because it is not an easy journey.
Speaker 2:And I always say to everybody on that Monday I woke up, I was scared to death and I had built some financial cushion where I had plenty of runway, but still it. You know it was scary because I went from being employed to being on my own. Tuesday was just as scary. By Wednesday it was definitely less scary. And by Thursday, you know, I haven't looked back and you just find yourself. You know, you find yourself shifting this paradigm shift to where you'll, you'll, you'll start to sometimes question your business. I mean, there's probably not a week, sometimes a day that goes by that I don't think. You know what the hell am I doing. Is this worth it? Is this really worth it, cause it's hard.
Speaker 1:It's tiring.
Speaker 2:It's very, it's tiring, it's it's never, it's it's. It's a monster that always wants to eat, right. But I know I'll tell you this and I never say never, but I'm in my brain, I'm saying never up. It's not even a thought to go back into corporate America and go get a job and be a CEO or COO or whatever. I have no desire to do that. I only want to work for myself now and build other businesses. So to go back quickly in 2017, yeah, it was 17,. I was 46.
Speaker 2:And fortuitously met a gentleman who was giving my son boxing lessons and that guy, four months later, turned out to be a guy. I went into business with 50-50 partnership. I put in all the money. He brought in his expertise and he's got a great work ethic as well, and he had two boxing for fitness studios.
Speaker 2:It was called something different and the branding was different, but my background is sales and marketing and promotion and how to really build and launch a product, and so I brought that that expertise, his expertise in in in small business and and and and the fitness side of the business, and we put that together, came up with the name rock box fitness and launched our first studio. I built that first studio in 2017 and five months later we started franchising and now we have 50, some studios nationwide and have awarded you know, 150 licenses or so, and it's been a heck of a journey and you know we got them all through COVID and you know, through the whole it was it's it's been a rollercoaster ride, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Absolutely love it.
Speaker 1:I love this story so much. First of all, I love franchising. I think the franchise model, for we own one, two, three of them three different franchises yeah, actually four and I love the idea of it. It's like the business in a box, right, you learn from other people, you have experience. You said something really profound to me about partnerships, because they're difficult. I have a partner too. I get it. But what you said was important you came with the money, he came with the expertise, as you both came with the same work ethic.
Speaker 2:Very true.
Speaker 1:For all of you listening out there. Partnerships can work, but there has to be some similarity there. Right Money, one expertise, totally different, same work ethic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So the epilogue of that story is I I did end up buying him out and but we still but we still do business. He's a serial entrepreneur, but partnerships are hard and I've had other partners in different businesses I have, and after this sale of Veeam Light Sauna that we just transacted, I no longer have partners, and that's probably the way I'll keep it from going forward, and I'll tell you why this is not to scare your listeners. Partners are, I think, a healthy and almost necessary prerequisite to learn about yourself, to learn about business, to have a little bit of safety in numbers, and that's why people usually go into business together. It's not usually because they need the money to pull together or they. It's because there's that feeling of safety in numbers and you get to bounce ideas out, and we definitely were.
Speaker 2:We were great at bouncing ideas off each other and I wouldn't trade that. So full stop, I wouldn't trade any of it and wouldn't change any of it. But you do get to a certain point in your career and in your business ownership life where you have the capital. You've gotten much, much more confident about your decision making skills and, as importantly, you've started to surround yourself on your team with people that you can look to to get that same idea. Dissonance and challenge you and make sure and check and challenge you without having to give up half of your company. Right, you know?
Speaker 1:it's been eight years. We've had a partnership. Things are changed, we're different, we're grown differently. You know, and people always say to me you know, it's shocking that you lasted for eight years. Right, it's a long time in the partnership world, but what you said, you know, it makes sense. It all makes sense. There will be a time there's always going to be a time when things are going to shift in a different direction, and so I love that you're telling this story today, because I think everyone needs to hear all sides of it, and you're giving me, you know, so much to think about already. And just how many minutes like 10 minutes. I love that. So tell me, why did you decide to franchise? Because you started this business right. Lots of people start gyms or fitness businesses and never think about franchising. What made you decide to do that?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. And then a lot of them that do think about franchising think about it as an afterthought or they think about it as a way to make easy money. You know, I'll just sell my idea and I'll collect it and I'll just sit back and go to the mailbox. Neither of those is true. And our story is I said, look, steve was a guy's name, is the guy's name. And I said, steve, you know, I want to do this with you Cause he, he was thinking about franchising because he wanted to. He thought that may be an easier way to to. You know path to riches and, if I'm truly honest, I appreciate that and I thought about it. But I said, really, what I want to do is I want to build a national brand. Like, I want to do this with you. I want to build this to be a national brand. So if we're going to do this, if we're going to go into business together, it's not going to be me as one of your franchisees, because I know what I nationwide, international companies even and so I didn't want to do something just where I live, in Charlotte, north Carolina, you know, just in Charlotte. Of course, we'll start here, but I want to grow from there quickly and we built this brand from the ground up to be a national franchise, which means once we formed the LLC and I funded it and whatnot. First two hires we made were marketing consultants that I had worked with in previous lives to build this brand, to build the color palette, to help us build the avatar, how the website would interact with people and how the app could flow into the website all from a national perspective. And how do we keep simplifying the business model to make it easier and easier and easier to replicate? And I'll share with you if you are looking to buy a franchise and the franchisor has not, him or herself, bet their own money to build their own store, not a corporate store, that's fluff money. Their own money, their own store and their own team built it, launch it and run it for at least two years, if not longer.
Speaker 2:And I've I've had two rock boxes and I had a beam that I literally just sold as well. I had that for about three years. Then I would I would be careful that franchise or because that person he or she was the CEO or whomever really doesn't know the true pain points in the business because they've never felt or experienced them. And I can tell you, if there's a job to do in a rock box studio, I've done it a hundred times, from wiping up sweat to selling memberships, to fixing equipment, to teaching classes, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:If there's anything in a beam light sauna that needs attention, be it the floors, the saunas, something's broken. How do you sell a membership? How do you upgrade somebody from this membership to that membership? How do you promote within the community? How do you promote with partnerships Like?
Speaker 2:I've done it all and I can tell you what doesn't work, because I've tried everything and found out oh, this sucks, this doesn't work at all, and so let's not roll that out to the franchisees.
Speaker 2:Let me spend my own money, roger's money, on my own studio, try a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 2:Most of it's going to fail, but the stuff that works, we're going to put gasoline on and take it out to the whole network and I found there's so many private equity companies that own franchises that will bring in an outside expert and what's an expert?
Speaker 2:Somebody from out of town with a briefcase, and they'll bring that expert in who maybe ran a big corporate division or something, but they've never owned and been in that studio. Maybe they've worked in one to get a feel for it. But when it's your own money and something breaks at 10 o'clock on a Friday night and you don't have any desire to drive down there and fix it, but you do, you learn, hey, we need to upgrade this piece of equipment because it broke and it ruined my Friday night, and I don't want that to ruin a franchisee's Friday night. And so I'm really proud of the fact that every business partner I've had in these different businesses have taken their own money, built their own stores, hired their own team and ran that studio. And that's true for Rockbox and it's true for Be my Sonnet, and because of that I think we have better, superior models than a lot of offerings out there.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. When we bought our first franchise, we were number 104. And you think that that's a lot, but it's really not Like we were at the beginning of the franchising, because they didn't have half the things that we have today.
Speaker 1:You know, it started in 2018. And I feel like we had to make it all up anyways, you know. So we bought this franchise thinking, oh my gosh, this franchise is going to be amazing. Well, it wasn't, but it is today. Today, this franchise model is off the charts. Awesome. I love it, but it was really hard because we didn't know. We were real estate agents trying to start a you know franchise and had no idea how to make this work. So one thing I've learned that you said that you read Think and Grow Rich quite a few times, and I love that book. I'm passionate about Napoleon Hill and the principles. So, as many times as you've read it, what do you think after reading? It was the secret to success in that book.
Speaker 2:Without a doubt, it is the mastermind principle surrounding yourself with better people. And, dammit, it took me way too long to learn that. And he doesn't talk about it. And it wasn't, I don't when Napoleon wrote about this, you know, almost a hundred years ago, that wasn't monetizing, you know so right, you know, in today's world, people have monetized the mastermind principle where you know you pay 25 grand, you get access to this, or you pay 50 grand, you get access to this.
Speaker 2:And I now see the value of paying that 25 grand or that 50 grand to get and be in the room with people who are also operating at a higher level and maybe, hopefully, have done things that you haven't done, that you're trying to do, and it gosh.
Speaker 2:It took me way too long to figure that out and I will now pay for the expertise and pay to get access to that expertise and pay for somebody to teach me that, so that I can shorten my learning curve and just collapse that timeline. And I was just cheap and dumb when I was younger, about, about you know what, what I would invest in and what I wouldn't in my late forties and certainly now I'm in my this last year, 2024, we're recording this in early 2025, 2024,. I spent more money on my self personal growth in 2024 than I spent on my undergraduate and MBA in 20, you know because now, granted, I went to a state school for both, so, yeah, it's not like I had, you know, a $200,000 education, but still it's that important to me now because I've got I probably got less runway in front of me than I do behind me, so I need to get busy, getting busy, and the way to do that is to invest and spend the money to collapse your learning curve.
Speaker 1:That is such amazing advice and I agree with you 100%. I love the idea of masterminding and being the dumbest person in the room, right. Right but masterminding in the way Napoleon Hill did it with, and could you imagine masterminding with Andrew Carnegie? Oh my gosh, Like how cool could that be? So yeah, and so his stepmom, who was just unbelievable. She helped so much. But the true idea of mastermind is not having to pay for it, it's finding those people. But today, like everything costs the way it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can still do. It's just going to take you longer. And if you can I'm not already came, but if you can write the darn check and just go to the front of the line, if you can afford, write the check and go to the front of the line, if not, just work a lot harder to build that same type of mastermind. But unfortunately, what I found is that people kind of know people like them and I was no different and so I knew a ton of people that were super successful in corporate America. I have a ton of friends who are CEOs, coos, vps of this, vps of that Well, that's great. They probably still can't read a P&L and a balance sheet, right, because they don't need to. They don't need to.
Speaker 2:And that doesn't help. They don't know how to. How do you buy workers' comp insurance? They don't do any of that stuff. So I found that my friends who I love dearly to love them to death.
Speaker 1:I just can't have the same conversations with, cause it's that's not their role, which is you know in that space right now, in my, in my career in this the owning the brokerage where I need someone else, like I don't have that person right now. So you know, you just reminded me like in the years I used to I joined this mastermind in Texas years ago and I learned every time I went I came back I was so pumped up, I learned a lot. You know, being in a room with everybody was successful, but it's been a minute for me. I haven't, I haven't been doing that and I know that it's important. So thank you for sharing that and I want to ask you this question because I think it's really important.
Speaker 1:Communication is really big for you, right? And I think, with all relationships, without communication, I don't know how you can have a good one of any, because you have to communicate your wife, your husband, your kids, you know your family, your business partners, your, you know your staff, your employees, your franchise owners. There's so much communication going on your pastor, everybody. So I mean I feel like right now, like even in my own business, like communication is not as good as it should be and I'm learning from you in such a short period of time. So if I can learn from you? Can you give us one practical tip that the listeners can implement to become better communicators.
Speaker 2:That is so easy to answer and, again, I learned this too late in life, but I a reason I can answer it so fast is I just left. We have these things called L10 meetings. So if you run traction in your business entrepreneur operating system, you have these L10 meetings. So if you run traction in your business entrepreneur operating system, you have these L10 meetings. We just left one, and 30 minutes of that meeting was talking about how to interface, communicate with our franchisees, with our vendors, with each other around, asking questions. So the key to communication is asking questions and clarifying questions.
Speaker 2:Guys in the audience, you know you do this because we do it, we fix things right. So you're going to give me a problem and I'm going to tell you exactly how to fix it right now, cause that's what I do I fix things. Women can do it too. Men are just a lot worse, you know, at just trying to fix everything versus understanding and listening and coming at it from a different side. And we literally spent 30 minutes on what are the questions and, like a woman, created a whole list of questions that that we can use to pivot off of to literally understand what is the real reason? What is the real issue here? It's probably not you didn't like that marketing campaign. It's probably that you know your rent was just escalated through the lease and one employee that was critical to you quit, and now you're just unhappy and so this came up. But let's talk about how can we help you recruit for a better employee, how can we help you earn more profits so that the rent increase doesn't really isn't material? That doesn't happen if you don't ask clarifying questions.
Speaker 2:Well, tell me more about that. Well, how long have you felt that you've been negatively impacted by this? What would your suggestions be? Have you taken any action yet? What's prevented you from taking action? Why is this coming up now, and not like an interrogation, but literally a back and forth. But you're asking deeper questions. One they're going to feel heard. So there's your. There's really the answer to your question they're going to feel heard, which means they're going to feel valued, which means they're going to. It's going to lend itself to more of a collaborative discussion versus this give, take, give take, and you know, let's split the difference, which nobody likes. Splitting the difference is one of the worst things you can do. You want to come to a, a, a super win-win, where both parties leap and feel I got everything I needed and you do that. You do that through communication, not through chopping up the pie, you know not through chopping up the pie.
Speaker 1:It's, it's around communication so good. So I asked you about thinking great rich. Now I'm going to ask you about your book and insider's guide to business right Secrets from an entrepreneur's playbook. So let me ask you this what's one principle from your book that every entrepreneur needs to know?
Speaker 2:Fly your business three mistakes high, and I can't take credit for this. I learned I worked for an $8 billion. Really, it was a family office, it wasn't a private equity, it was one dude's money in Arkansas but oil and gas and whatnot. But he took it and then invested it amazingly and I had a whole team, of course, whole building full of of, uh, investors and analysts and whatnot, and so I worked for him. My one trip out there, uh, he gave me what's called the Stevens capital, gave me, uh, their, their green handbook, they call it, and in that are these short little lessons of of things they'd learned over the years, but very simple, very, very, very simple, like just Warren Buffett type advice and in fact I know he's good buddies with Warren Buffett. So one of the principles was fly your business three mistakes high, and if you think about how many businesses today are now even publicly traded companies are running and flying one mistake high.
Speaker 2:If the economy goes down, if interest rates go up, if the labor pool tightens, whatever one mistake, that business flies right into the ground and explodes when you know, flying at three mistakes high, and that's usually around cash. Have enough cash and enough access to capital and enough access to talent that when something goes wrong, okay, we just dropped a thousand feet in altitude, not good, but we're fine. Something else goes wrong, all right, we dropped another thousand feet, not fun, but we're okay. And yet again, a third thing goes wrong. The plane is still flying, the business is still viable, it's still going. I mean, this is true of American households. Right, like what is it? The average person can't handle a $400 emergency or something, because everybody's living their life. One mistake, hi, one mistake. And business is just the same because it's run by human beings and everything is so leveraged today and I get the leverage game, I get the debt game. I hate it, but I get it. But those businesses are flying one mistake, not even one mistake high, and so I write about this in the book around. You know, cash is king, queen, princess and prince right, it's all four. It's not just king, it's cash is everything. And EBITDA is not cash and net income is definitely not cash. Cash is cash and your business should be kicking off free cash and if it's not, you tighten down. But too many people are flying one mistake high. And so when I go into this book.
Speaker 2:So two things about the book I'm proud of One. It's been a lot of. You know it's 30 some years of experience put into 200 pages. I wrote it. It's not AI, it's not a ghostwriter, it's not chat GBT. It's me on my keyboard, 46,000 words pecking it out, and then I did seven full edits, cover to cover edits. I had four people help me like proofread and give me feedback and I'd change it and send it out again, kind of the old fashioned way.
Speaker 2:And I'm really incredibly proud because when I got the edits back I didn't try to expand on things. I would try to contract them to make it really, really easy, so that a CEO of a $100 million company can learn from it and also somebody starting a business, a small business, can learn. They can learn how to go from six to seven figures, how to go from seven to eight figures. Right, I've been in a business where we've taken it from eight to nine figures and I've been in a business that went from zero to a billion three. But I can't say that I was the key part of that. That was, I just happened to be in place at the right time and with a great team. But I can certainly tell people I get to six to seven and seven to eight figures, and because I've done that several times and I'm proud that it's written in a way that anybody, depending on where they're at on that, on that curve of business, will glean nuggets from it. And the second thing I'm proud of is I've never made a made a red cent off the book. Every single penny of this book has been donated. Besides, what Amazon takes has been donated to a charity called To Write Love on Her Arms, which is a charity that supports mental health and suicide prevention. And so my thing was you know I didn't write this book to make any money. I wrote this book to help entrepreneurs and help business people.
Speaker 2:Even if you're in corporate America, there's a zillion lessons in there to help them have a resource guide. You know 11 chapters that they can go back to. There's a chapter on finance. There's a chapter on finance. There's a chapter on sales and marketing. There's a chapter on the difference between branding and marketing, which people get confused yeah, all the time right. A chapter on operations and the easiest but most powerful exercise you can do with your team, no matter what you do for a living, and you will improve your operations if you implement what you learn from the exercise overnight, you will improve your operations overnight. If you implement what you learn from the exercise overnight. You will improve your operations overnight. If you implement what you learn from this 30-minute exercise.
Speaker 2:You know, and then I talk, and at the very end I talk about, you know, it's the who, not the what. It's who do you want to be, not what you want to be. Well, I want to be a CEO, okay, well, that's fine. Who do you want to be who? You know who I want to be, what I do to become. That those are tactics, that's strategy. But who are those three things? And so I'm really proud of the book, that that people can pick it up. They're going to read it. They'll read one chapter, They'll set it down and go damn, I learned something I didn't know before. Or, I think, more often than not, when we read a good book, he or she said it in a way that's a little different than I'd ever heard it before and that connected with me.
Speaker 1:You said a lot of things today that have been so powerful. I hope everyone is taking notes, like I am, so you have a podcast to thrive with Roger Martin. It's all about success and growth. So what's a big mindset shift that separates average performers from top achievers?
Speaker 2:They play the long game. The entrepreneur I've done 120, 130 episodes so far. I've interviewed, you know, people that have made a hundred million, more than a hundred million dollars, i100 million. I've interviewed people that are building their businesses in real time as we did the interview and I found two common links between successful founders slash entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:One all of us have some trauma in our background. Could be a capital T, could be a lowercase T, right, trauma is different to everybody and a lot of us wouldn't trade and we think we have it bad. Then you talk to somebody else like no, I'll keep my own, you know, you can have yours. But all of us seem to have and at least the people I've interviewed have this, this thing, in their childhood, young adulthood that that was not fun and that could take many, many different forms. You know father walked out. You know they had an abusive situation, they were bullied, there was something. But it always comes out in the interview and and it's like that chip on our shoulder is I'm going to prove somebody or the world or whatever wrong, that I am worthy, I can do this and I'm going to overachieve. I'm going to overachieve because most entrepreneurs are overachievers. I've just found that. So there's like they've weaponized their debt. They're you know what some people could look at upon as a hindrance or a fault or this trauma. They've weaponized it into becoming their superpower.
Speaker 2:And then the second thing is they all play the long game. So even though I just sold a company and we did really well, and I sold my studio and did well, and I do build businesses, that I do know I'll have an exit from someday. But I don't exit them until I know I've done with the business, what I want to do with the business, and then I can give it to somebody else to take it to the next level or just to continue to run it. But you have to play the long game. If you say I'm going to build this and then in three years I'm going to sell it, just know it's probably going to be six years, probably seven years, because it always takes twice as long and twice as much money as you think. But the successful founders I've talked to just realize I'm in this for the long haul. I don't know what that's going to be, but I'm in this for the long haul. So they weaponize their faults and they stay in it for the long run.
Speaker 1:I feel all of that, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we've talked all about business and mindsets. Tell me a little bit about what do you like to do on a personal level outside of working Cause I can see you love to work but go ahead, I do, I I've, and the joy is in the work.
Speaker 2:Right, that's what I mean. Just to put an exclamation point on the end of that last statement, like the long haul, because the joy is in the work. And once you've embraced that, that the joy is in the work, it's so much more fun. I am a musician from a kid. When I was in my teens and my 20s I played in bar bands and you know, and rock about business a lot. And then they'll see me, you know, in Italy at an ACDC concert with a hundred thousand Italians, you know. Or they'll see me at a club in Charlotte, you know, watching some cool up and coming, you know, act, it doesn't matter, I just I've, whenever I leave a live music concert that's rock box, like the lights and the music all goes together and stuff. It's because I wanted it to feel like a rock concert. Because when you leave a rock concert you don't say I wish I would have stayed home tonight. No, so, no one ever right. Yeah, so live music is my thing, it's my thing.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. My sister lives in Salisbury, North Carolina.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's just 30 minutes from here, yeah, that'd be far In the closest one is Cherry Hill, new Jersey. It's outside of Philly, so we don't have one in Pittsburgh but in Cherry Hill yeah.
Speaker 1:You never know what's going to happen after people hear this. This sounds so awesome, so it's been amazing. Thank you for the insight. Thank you for even spending time with me. I feel so fortunate to have met you. So let's talk about how can people get a hold of you, how can they find you, tell us where to go.
Speaker 2:Sure, so they can follow me at Real Roger Martin. That's just Real and then R-O-G-E-R Martin on the socials. We have a website that is Thrive More Brands. So the kind of the umbrella company that I have is called Thrive More Brands and that's where Rockbox and this new company we just launched called Thrive More Autopilot, which does literature with human beings and also with AI for brick and mortar.
Speaker 2:So if you have a brick and mortar business that you need with human beings and also with AI for brick and mortar, so if you have a brick and mortar business that you need, you know that you have to generate leads. We have a digital agency Plus. We have software that nurtures those leads so they come through your front door. Once they come to the front door, it's your job to sell them. We don't do that, but we get them to come through your front door and a lot more of them and then some other stuff that we One was a supplement company that did okay but it wasn't killing it, and if it's not killing it I don't have an interest in it. So if you go to thrivemorebrandscom you'll see kind of the different stuff we're doing. I think my book's on there in the podcast as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm definitely going to get a copy of that book as soon as we hang up. I'm going to go, I love it. You just donated to charity. That's fantastic. Don't forget to like, subscribe and share this episode, because if we can just help one person, but today I think we're going to help a lot more than one. Thank you for that. Then we're a success. So thanks for being on here with me and, roger, I hope someday I get to meet you in person, because I think you're extraordinary.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, thank you. You just made my week. I appreciate that, thank you.
