Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Linda Kaye Business and Wealth Building Strategist

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Linda is a lifetime entrepreneur, international best-selling author, and accomplished musician. Growing up with 7 highly competitive brothers, she learned the importance of standing out by learning how to play the piano. Her early business lessons led her to become a professional musician at the age of 14, and within a few years led to her traveling around the world with multiple artists. Developing skills in promotions led to pre-selling 3,000,000 units and earning a triple platinum award for her work on Janet Jackson’s comeback album, 1814 Rhythm Nation. Linda’s success continued with independent promotion for the comeback tour of Barry White, “The Man is Back.”Linda has a keen eye for identifying opportunities and a talent for turning them into profitable ventures, founding multiple 6-figure businesses, including Open Roads, a real estate brokerage, and her signature coaching business, Money Acceleration Plan. Her leadership skills and entrepreneurial spirit have proven to be a force to be reckoned with in the business world. Linda’s ability to find a need and fill it has been the key to her success, and staying relevant. She continues to inspire others with her innovative ideas with unwavering determination. Have fun building your business. Otherwise, why work that hard?Mindset doesn’t just own your business; it also runs your life.Learn More:https://lindak360.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-linda-kaye-business-and-wealth-building-strategist

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us Linda Kay, who's a business and wealth building strategist. Linda, welcome to the program. Good morning, Mike. Thank you so much.

I'm really glad to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you because I always love to hear and learn new strategies for things. And you focus on business and wealth building. So that's amazing. I want to hear all about that. But get us started first with what's your story and what has your entrepreneurial journey been like to this point in your career? Well, thank you for asking. But I think entrepreneurialism really ran in the family.

Mom was an independent. She had a studio, a piano studio, and dad was an independent contractor. So early on we got, you know, entrepreneurs really don't take days off, do they? Nope. It's just sort of an anomaly. But growing up in a family with nine kids, seven of them, my brothers, I really felt like I had to stand out. I had to do something that would really make me be able to get attention in a more positive way than my brothers were getting. So I took a piano and that allowed me to go out and play and do things I would never have been able.

to do, but that talent and that talent got attention in a really positive way. But I wanted a, I wanted a bigger pond to swim in, and I went up to L.A. and ended up performing, getting into a band, an old girl band called the Cherries, and went off to the Orient, did a number of things. And I think that perhaps, you know, from my very early childhood on, I always knew that there was something more, something that I could have some control over. So when I performed and did, a lot of things around, I'm going to say around the world, because it did travel all over the world. I got tired of it. You know, I performed with Mac Davis, Tony Bennett, a lot of big names doing the Vegas Taco

Reno Circuit. But after about 10 years, I really wanted a, I wanted a better, I wanted a better lifestyle as opposed to living out of a suitcase. And so I took up independent contracting and promotion. and went back to L.A., and I really soared. It just really became very familiar with the first call musicians and singers and built a major career. So I think entrepreneurialism is in the blood.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. And how in the world did you make a decision from all that performing to think, maybe I need to step away and start my own business. Was there a specific moment in time where someone asked you to do something for them or where you went to a seminar and thought I could do this as well? Well, that would come later. That's a much later period of time because it doesn't occur to me that I can go out and coach and do things that I'm doing today.

Back then, it was really, you know, I need to show my talent or build my talent, but I really had a talent for seeing talent and seeing opportunity. And so when I was managing artists, I was putting them into, you know, all of the major performance shows, talk shows, the Arsenio Hall show, working in the studio with Quincy Jones and big names. And it just seemed natural. It was just something that I was able to do. So I caught the attention of a few A and art guys. Those were the artists and relationships back in the day when recording studios had that kind of staff.

And when I was able to get their attention, I was excited because then I got to work on some really big deals. Things, you know, with Janet Jackson and, you know, things went well until, well, they didn't. And guess what? Isn't that the way it works? Isn't that, you know, it's like the pop quiz here, you either win or you, and most people say you lose. And it's no, you win or you learn. Yeah. Or as I like to say, live and burn. Yeah.

Because I was looking to avoid circumstances with the business partner. And when it wasn't unusual to be in, I don't know, a restaurant up on Sunset Boulevard with runners because it got people's attention and sitting with artists having them signed contracts with. So when somebody came in and dropped something on my, on. the table that I was waiting for an artist at, I wasn't expecting. I said, what's that? He says, you've been served. That if anybody has ever experienced that you know what that feels like, the bottom drops out. Literally overnight, and I'm not kidding you, overnight, those whispers made my artist disappear as fast as those platinum and gold albums on my business wall.

And all of a sudden, I found that I was broke. I lost my business, lost my artist, lost my source of income, lost my house, lost my job. It's almost sounding like a country song, isn't it? Except I didn't get to play it backwards and get it all back. Right. I found myself writing checks, the only checks that were getting written to anybody to the attorneys. It's 5,000 here, 10,000 there.

And I just realized that, well, hey, if you can't beat them, join them. So I applied to law school and when I got accepted, I moved up to the Bay Area and went to law school. And I needed a job, you know, I'm going to go to school at night, Mike. I got to have some business, you know, during the day that I can go and do something. I thought, I'm just going to take a complete departure from all of this. And I'm going to, I'm going to try something that doesn't really have a lot of responsibility. And I found a real simple sales job. And, you know, I was used to, you know, selling a song or selling an artist.

But when I took an inside sales job, I wasn't prepared for how boring this product could be. Mike, I was selling magnetic backup tapes to an IT, to IT professionals. Now, I didn't know anything about an IT, let alone a professional or a magnetic backup tape. But what I did know is that if I followed a script and I read it and I followed that script, made the calls and asked a few of those questions, well, I still got paid, but as I got into it and got into the rhythm of it, because a lot of people think, well, you know, if you try something, you should be really good at it. Well, you don't get really good at something, do you?

It takes a little bit of finesse, takes a little practice. And you could take something that you've already learned about. you've already had some experience with, and now you can move that and morph that into a new business and use those same skills because they're applicable. And so I sat and made those dials. A hundred dials meant 20 to 30 conversations in a day. And I'd ask them, would you like to take this backup take? Can I send it to you?

And if they said yes, then I sent it out in a week later, I'd call them and say, well, did you put it on? and did you try it? So this went on. First month, I got nothing. The second month, I'm still getting a paycheck, but, you know, I want that bonus that says that commissioned because it's more. I was used to making money, but, you know, I was in law school and I was trying something else completely new.

So why not this career of, I couldn't even call it a career. My career was going to be in law. And the second, second month, nothing. Third month, I got, yeah, send it. And I started getting more consistent. So out of those 20 calls in a day, maybe I got 15, you know, send out tapes a week. And a couple weeks later, I made a phone call. And Mike, you're never going to believe what happened.

What's that? I call and I say, so did you put the tape on? Yep. Did you like it? Yep. Do you want to buy it? How much is it? $50,000.

Yep. send me two. Oh. I can't even begin to tell you how it was talking. Yes, thank you, Lord. Because you know, you'll do something and you go, I'm just never going to be good at this. I'm never going to get this.

And remember, this is one month, two months, three months. I didn't see any positive response to what I was doing for three months. And I think it's really easy for people when they're trying something new, whether they're trying a new business, entrepreneurial or even a relationship for goodness sakes. It's so easy to join the quit, you know, the quit side. I quit. And the only way to lose is to quit.

Yes. Wow. That is quite the journey. We probably could go deeper on all of those points and there's probably five more you left out. But let's kind of shift thinking into this. Given that journey of winning and learning when there were hard. times. You then emerged from those times from the ashes, right? Because you hit rock bottom

professionally. And you started noticing, well, here's how I did it. Here's a strategy that I put into place to succeed and win. So let me teach clients to do the same thing. So talk a little bit now about how you serve your clients as a business and wealth building strategist. So I have used my talents for the last 21, 22 years in commercial real estate. And I have taught individuals or corporations, legacy clients where they're teaching their children how to make investments, how to make that money grow and what to do with that over time. And a lot of them will send their kids to me saying, you know, my kids, they just don't listen to me. And so. Maybe they'll listen to you. Yeah, maybe they'll listen to you. And I can tell you that even

though my mom had the largest piano studio, it was hard for her to teach me because, well, you know, you can make more demands out of your kids and they will find themselves to be very resisting to you. So I took them on with certain challenges, but the joy is in their learning. The joy is in their understanding. You know, look, it would, when you know how to do something really well, Mike, it looks easy to other people, doesn't it? It looks like you made absolutely no effort. In fact, things were just handed to you. And, you know, that it's a misnomer because even though you've gotten pretty darn good at it,

it doesn't mean that you didn't have some tough times to get there to try to figure it out. Yes. Yes. I love it. So you coach your clients currently on how to build wealth through one of the avenues would be real estate? One of them would be through real estate. And, you know, I also, I spent a lot of time coaching my coaching clients that are also building their business. So many people that have already spent time in one career have decided, you know, that no longer serves me.

It doesn't bring me joy. It doesn't give me a sense of purpose. It doesn't make me want to get up in the morning. And that's one of the things that you have to learn. As an entrepreneur, there's got to be a. There's got to be a commitment, but that commitment without understanding the why will never make you get up. It will never make you keep going. And you will never ever have that energy to say, okay, I spent, you know, I did an eight-hour shift and I got another four hours to go.

Let me take a break and get back to it. Because that's what entrepreneurship is. When you're building your business, you need to understand your why. I can tell you that, you know, even though I had never done real estate, When I had another, you know, look, life is full of ups and downs. And it isn't how many times you get up and how many times you get down. It's how you get through that getting down and going back up. And it's your mindset.

And I teach mindset because, you know, things are tough. And being an entrepreneur can be tough. We have a lot of setbacks. And what I teach is, you know, your setbacks are lessons, lessons for you to understand where was I? What did I do? how can I improve what I just did and how do I keep going and get it better? Because if you want to just keep repeating this over and over and over again, that lesson will repeat itself over and over again. It might show up in a different form, but it'll be the same lesson. Which is the definition of insanity.

We know that. Let's make a change. And you know, here's another point about, you know, you mentioned your mom and piano. Well, I'm sure you agree with this. Practice makes perfect is a common phrase, but that's a, misnomer because it's perfect practice makes perfect because you can practice scales the wrong way and become perfectly wrong. You need to know the way and then you need to practice it right. Perfect makes practice makes habit. Yes. So if you're practicing, I'm going to sleep until 10 o'clock every morning and I'll get up and try to get motivated. Well, guess what? You are practicing. Yeah. Maybe a habit, maybe not a good habit. So really pay attention to the habits that you're developing because that's where your success is going to lie.

Yes. Well, you know, when you think about this, Linda, a business and wealth building coach and strategist, I bet there's a competitor or million. So what sets you apart?

What's your competitive advantage? If someone was talking to you and you were bringing up some of these things and they were resonating with, oh yeah, mindset and oh, yeah, keep on, keep on.

I love it, love it, love it. Why do they pick you? What is it that you bring that really deliver high value. So there are three things, three or four things that I have in common with most of my legacy clients. And it is our core values. Our core values are really critical because it isn't, you know, just your upbringing. It's what you believe. It's what you take into your business.

For me, my core values are truth and honesty. That is just really, I have to lead with that. And maybe I don't say the most popular things. If my client is making a mistake, I'm going to point out, that you can continue to do that or you can take, you know, there are ways for you to correct or if you keep on that path, you're going to have consequences that you hadn't anticipated. The unintended consequences are the things that really make an investment a disaster or success. And so that core value of honesty and integrity is there. But I also have two other things. And one is my faith and the other is my family and my commitment to my family. And those two things I lead with.

So my clients look at me and go, wow, you wrote a book with your mom and you spend time with your family. And that's important to them. It's important to me. And I seem to attract that. But for me, it's my core value. It's what I have to do. It's what I need to do because that's what feeds my soul.

And I can't have my soul hungry. Love it. You know, I think that's a huge piece that you bring up because, you know, if you really pulled back the curtains and said, oh, I help people achieve and fill in the blanks with some of those things. So does a billion other people. But when those core values align, now I'm coming at that from a heart of service. And I think that is so strong. So you mentioned faith. I want to roll that into talk about how your faith plays a role in you overcoming some of those breakdowns and challenges that you have already discussed. So maybe pick one of those challenges. You know, when

the bottom dropped out of your world and then before you decided to go to law school, how did you get through that? How did faith play a role in that? How did that mindset play a role in that and kind of go a little bit deeper there? So I like to say that, yeah, things can get tough and they can get kind of weird and especially when everything seems to be falling apart around you. And I'll be honest, there were times that I thought maybe I'd be better off out of this world than staying in this world. I think everybody has those thoughts at some point or another in their life. I don't think you just walk through this life unscathed. I think you think about, you know, my God, you know, I'd be better off,

you know, to everybody else around me. And that's the part that you stay in that pity. Oh, woe is me. I'm pitiful. And you got, you can have that pity party, but you got to get out of the pity party. You got to get, you know, got to get up and keep moving. And you need to understand that tough times don't last forever and when you understand that that little tiny spark of hope for me that was hope was there's a better tomorrow there's something more and and one door closed but another one's going to open and my belief in my faith is that I'm going to be led to that I look at life as a conveyor belt a convey like a people mover and their doors opening and closing windows opening closing different speeds kind of like a weird movie or

you know, a fun house, right? But you jump through or walk through some of these things and those are called opportunities in your life. And you need to act on them. Because if you don't act on them, guess what? Because you're in this certain vibration, it's going to go to somebody else that's also in that same vibration. So you don't take that opportunity. You don't have that, you, you don't act on that great thought or that invention or whatever it is. It didn't just come to you. I don't remember who the person was that said there was nothing new under the sun. I think it might have been Thomas Jefferson. It may explain the thousands of inventions that he had, but if you don't act on it, somebody else will. And when you understand that you're this gift, you're a vehicle for which

this information is coming through to be able to express it in this world. And it's not for your game. And when you come from that perspective, you come through it with the heart of a servant. And I will tell you that that is what has served me. I serve my host. I serve my guest. I serve my clients. And in doing that, I get joy in that. But the reward that I get is internal. Yeah, of course, I get, you know, financial rewards. But I don't charge and I don't get paid for everything that I do. And when I, when you understand that you're doing it to help others, and that pay it forward, it comes back. In other ways, it just simply comes back. Don't look for it in the way that you gave it. Give it with your whole heart. You know, I've read Napoleon Hill's book, Think and Grow Rich over and over. And a lot of times some of those teachings, one of the kernels of truth, and that is in the midst of a trial and tribulation, there's the seed of an opportunity. So I think that when you're looking through some of those failures and breakdowns that you have described and your faith pulled you.

you through, motivated you through. How did that situation lead you to even more success? I can remember one other setback and it was maybe 25 years ago. And listen, if you think you're not going to be done with problems and you're not going to have any more problems as you get older, think again. Just add aging in there. Now you got a few other complications and health. but there will always be challenges for you in your entire life. And I will tell you that during that particular setback, I mean, it was major. It was a major, major setback. And I remember crying.

And I'm not a big cryer. I just am not. You know, I never was. But there are times that they just relieved some pressure. And I had, it was an end of a marriage and then the end of dear brother's life all within 30 days of each other. And I was devastated. And this is during a time when we have a major recession going on and I don't have a job. I'm broke.

How am I going to keep my daughter in school? I'm broke. How am I going to keep the nanny? I'm broke. How am I going to keep the lifestyle I had in Malibu? I'm broke. I'm not only broke, but I'm broken. And so in those moments, yeah, I would schedule grief.

And I would put my daughter on the bus to go off to school to kindergarten. And I had a couple hours that I just had time to be alone and be alone with those thoughts and that disappointment, those setbacks going, how am I going to get forward? And my last cry would be in the shower. And then I remembered, I was a legend in my own shower. I could sing. And I started singing, you pick. to find time to leave me, you heal. And so you find humor.

And then you find that part of you that goes, I've got that resilience. I've got that piece of this. And as I did that, I had no idea what I was going to do. I just knew from the experience that I had in selling that magnetic tape to the most boring job that I'd ever had, what I had learned was that I had the capacity to sell. And even though I had been superstar on stage, I had now moved my life into superstar in sales. What could I sell? What was the most expensive thing I could sell?

I had absolutely no experience whatsoever in real estate. And I looked around and said, well, and houses weren't the value that they are today. What is more expensive than that? And I thought, well, what do I know a lot about? I don't know, retail. I knew how to shop. So I started right at the top and said, I'm going to learn how to sell shopping centers. And that became a specialty for me.

So, you know, it is the thing that kept me focused was my why. Yep. She was only five years old. And my why was the reason, listen, when you have your why, you'll figure out the how. Yes. Oh, yeah, that's huge. And to bank off of that, when you have that why, that motivates you to push toward your how, not you feeling pushed and prodded, you're motivated and drawn and pulled. Absolutely. That's the one that makes you get your feet on the ground, you know, and start moving. And for me, it was like, you know, okay, we had a lifestyle that I needed to figure out how to keep and afford. And the community that I wanted her to grow up. in and I never wanted her to experience that sense of lack or scarcity. And it came to me, literally, I had no idea how to even sell a house or sell a shopping center or sell an apartment

building, but you can learn. And you know, it took me three months to get my first deal and it took me six months to get the next deal. But those deals were big. You know, you're talking, you know, in my instance, I was talking, you know, a good mid five figures on my first transaction. And that, you know, for many people is their entire annual income. So life has been very good to me in that regard. Knowing your why is the most important, though. A hundred percent. And life has been good to you because you look at it from the 30,000 foot view, but a lot of times people only stay stuck in the weeds. So looking back, over some of those issues and roadblocks in the weeds, would you do anything differently if you were

given the chance? You know, I thought about that when I heard somebody talking about something like this recently, and I thought to myself, my setbacks, and I heard somebody else talk about this in a podcast, your setbacks are setups for comebacks. Yeah. I've heard that too. And I think, you know, would I want to do it, do, could I avoid the pain? The only thing I wish I could do would be to bring my brother back.

That would be the only thing. But then, you know, there was nothing in that act that he did that I could have prevented. So technically it has nothing to do with me. I feel the outcome of it, of course. But in terms of my own setbacks, I don't think I would change anything. Yeah. I really don't. Love it.

I love it. So you coach a lot of people, you have a lot of clients. What are some of the key attributes that they need to understand and manage so they can overcome those issues and roadblocks in their personal and professional life? You've talked about several like mindset and having a why, but what are some more of those key attributes? So some of that also includes you got to have a plan. If you don't have a plan, you'll be part of somebody else's.

Yeah. So, and you need to understand that there will be setbacks, but don't go about your plans with a plan B in mind. Plan it like you're going to burn the ship when you get the ship to shore so that you have to make it, you have to make it work. So often, too many people give up too soon. You hear stories like the miners were just, you know, an inch away from the wall where they would have been able to breathe and they gave up and died. You know, you hear lots and lots of stories. I was this close. I could have kept going, but I didn't.

And you just need to fortify yourself and also have something that I call the sacred time. You've got to have sacred time, whether it's at the end of your day or it's the beginning of your day. And I like it at the beginning of my day. It's that first 20 minutes, 30 minutes where you sit in spirit. You sit and you are quiet and you listen to that voice within you. And trust me, it's not, you know, the chatter and the rattle. You've got to call the chatter and the rattle and then listen for the still small voice because it will guide you.

100%. Love it, love it, love it. You know, you've also mentioned a couple times your why. So you looking back over your past with your successes and lessons learned, what is your purpose? And what is your why? Thank you for asking that. That is such a great question. Most people go through life thinking, I have one purpose, and this is my only purpose.

But let me just tell you, looking at the life of my mom, who's now 92 years old, she had a purpose of raising nine kids. She had a purpose of taking care of her husband, which changed because when he got sick, he got very sick, she took care of him in a way that her purpose changed. And I think what everybody, everybody listening to this, please listen with one, one, one open mind and an open heart. Purpose changes. Your purpose changes over time. For me, you know, my purpose that when my daughter was five was to get her and stay in the same community and raise her and get her through college. Well, she's through college. She's, you know, she's married and she's, you know, she's got a career.

So I had, you know, sort of an existential crisis. Now what? So, you know, literally walking through the house, the walls are talking to you, the picture of this and when I was over there and now what? And when you ask that now what, get back to that spirit, to that peace, that quiet solitude and ask for guidance. Ask for what is my next step? For me, the next step was to be that servant, to serve others and to be able to teach others the same gift that I was given of learning how. to put deals together, learning how to make a transaction work, and the why of why you want to do it. There are so many parts of why a deal works. But when you come with the gift of being the heart of a servant,

you get so much more out of this. For me, that's the gift for me. That's my new why. I love it. I love it, love it, love it. That is just amazing. I've loved hearing your story, your entrepreneurial journey, how you serve your clients, a couple hiccups in the road, how you persevered through your why that drew you through to success. Well, Linda, this has just been inspirational. Thank you so much for coming on the program. What's the best way that someone can learn more and reach out and connect with you? Thank you for asking that. Linda K-360.com. That's L-I-N-D-A-K-360.com. Let me come talk to your group. Linda, thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure. Thanks, Mike.

been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.com.