Rekindling the Venture: My Journey Back to the Mic

Ep3 Rekindling the Venture_ My Journey Back to the Mic

Transcript

Dalton (00:00.622) Welcome to VentureStep podcast where we listen to C -suite individuals and entrepreneurs to learn about their experiences or at least we used to. That's what the idea was years ago, but I don't know right now. I'm just trying to figure that out. So I'm back. It's been a while and I'm excited to get back into it. I'm a little bit more serious about the endeavor, not that.

there is any kind of business.

Dalton (00:35.374) thoughts about the podcast is more of a fun thought experiment and something that I enjoyed doing. I only did it a couple of times, but those times were on my mind while I was off. Probably every two weeks I thought about the podcast. Like, Oh, I can't wait to get back into it. So what do, what do I plan for the podcast? So I would like to just plan on being consistent, right? So I want to,

Attempt, I can't say I want to. I am going to upload, I would say, at least twice a month at 10 minutes minimum. So I think that's pretty reasonable. I think if I shoot for twice a month for at least 10 minutes, I think the real goal is to do once a week for 10 minutes, but I might run out of things that I think are valuable to talk about.

Dalton (01:36.526) So during this episode, I want to just go over kind of personal journey of what I've been up to the last two years, things I've done and just the general future of Interstep podcast. It kind of went over it where I want to, you know, just be consistent and maybe the things I want to talk about are my research that I will be doing to start a new product for e -commerce or

Just general things I like or find interesting. It doesn't have to be entrepreneurship only. I would like to be able to talk about more than just those things. I want it to be business related, but not necessarily only things that are related to my business or other people's businesses. Yeah. So where have I been, right? So that's a question on everyone's mind, right? I know it kept you up every night. You're like, where?

Where'd he go? Where has he been? So I used to just work and then we had a business, my partner and I, Lisa, we had a business where we were selling magnets on Amazon and it was actually pretty fun and it wasn't a complete failure, but it definitely wasn't a flying flag for sure.

Uh, it got really competitive because our shipment got delayed and then there was a lot more people in the market and you know, the ad costs increased and you know, it goes and it kind of just stampeded into the wrong direction. We sold our product, but we definitely didn't get the margins that we were anticipating. And then while I was doing that, I was admitted into USF's masters in science and business analytics program.

which was had like a focus in like data science and like computer stuff. If you're not familiar with that things, it just distinct computer stuff and like coding. If you are that's, if you are familiar with those topics and it was more related to data science and analytics. So that's what I've been doing over these last two years because I had work and then the school, which was quite time consuming.

Dalton (04:01.038) And when I had free time, I didn't feel like doing a podcast and I was quite drained for a while. So it was definitely a rewarding challenge where I got to enable.

I guess I got to enable myself into additional professional situations where I got to work on cooler research projects at work or I got to...

Dalton (04:35.342) feed my curiosity on different topics that I was curious about, like some AI topics and such as such. You know, I had an NLP class where we built something definitely not as advanced as chat GBT, but we got to play around with things like that and use generative AI that was built in Python before it was like a big deal. And it was, it was pretty cool because we got to discuss like the impact of how it would affect work place, the workplace.

and what our thoughts were and how it would progress over the next couple of years. That was something I found pretty interesting because a couple, maybe a year and a half later, chat GPT became, I don't know, a year and a half, maybe a year. Chat GPT came out and then people started using it and it started affecting the workplace and I thought it was really cool. Yeah.

to see it on the front end and they kind of just slowly overflowed into maybe a general general workplace setting. Interesting stuff. I was also remodeling my Nana's home. That was one thing that I thought was important. I lived in the city in a nice place and my Nana, which is a woman who kind of helped raise me, was otherwise my grandma. If you didn't know Nana, I call my Nana my grandma, my Nana.

And it was something that I thought was important to do because I was living in a nice place and I would come and visit her and you know, she didn't her floors were messed up and it her place was dated. And so I didn't do it all by myself, but I did majority of it. I did all the hard lifting for sure. My mom didn't do that. But my mom and I helped to remodel the place, but I

We, I knocked out the kitchen, you know, and then we paid for a remodel, but I demoed the kitchen, demoed a wall, redid the ceiling. We were at the floors. We did the baseboards. We did the doors. Uh, we did, redid the bathrooms, tile work, the vanities, everything, plumbing, toilets, all this, all these things. And, uh, we did the roof, but I didn't do that. I mean, it was a vendor and, uh, the windows we did.

Dalton (07:02.03) So we've done a lot with the house and pretty much the only thing left is closets and outlets, electrical outlets. So it's pretty close to completely finished. So that's out of the way. I feel really, really good about it because my nana has a nice home and she is comfortable, you know, having people over and, uh, she really enjoys it and blah, blah, blah. You know, just, just makes me feel good that she feels good about it.

Dalton (07:37.454) So I stopped podcasting because with all those things going on all at the same time, pretty much I was doing, I've been doing that remodel for a couple of years now because I was doing school and working. So I just kind of finished the process. The project is not completely finished, but very close.

And with all that going on, it was a bit, I would say, I wouldn't say overwhelming, because it didn't feel like I was overwhelmed, but it was definitely demanding for sure with all these personal projects and my studies and work. So.

Dalton (08:19.982) that would be definitely the reason why I stopped doing the episodes. But it was never something where I didn't think about you guys. My 151 listeners, you guys are with me forever, forever. I feel the love. If you guys listen for more than 60 seconds, that's huge. Joking aside, that's why.

So one of the reasons why I'm returning to the podcast is now that I finished school, I did some insurance exams. I did like nine of them. I did my masters in that, you know, in business analytics. I have a job as a product manager at a startup and every day I'm doing entrepreneurial like activities and it's like,

It's making me itchy. It's like the best way to describe it. Like there's just like, there's just, just, just, just itch about me that I have from doing all these things at work that I want to get back into doing entrepreneurial like activities outside of work. So like podcasting isn't really an entrepreneurial activity, but it's something that I would express my progress and such and things I learned.

while exploring being an entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is kind of an ongoing thing and you gain the experience that you need or get lucky or a little bit of both pretty much. And yeah, I want to start making episodes about things I'm working on and kind of update that journey. Because I feel like the podcasting is something that I would share while I'm on the journey.

And maybe people will find that interesting. Maybe they don't. I don't know. But it would be cool to see like a zero to hero situation where, you know, you don't have a business and trying to figure it out. And I'm not.

Dalton (10:33.614) coming back like 20 years later after I gathered all this information. I'm like, oh, you should do this or that. And I've got X, Y, Z situation and it's super easy. I have a super easy life. No, no, I'm trying to, I would like to document the journey from two failed, I wouldn't say two, I would say one failed business and one pause business. And then,

maybe reamp the pause business back up to an actual business again where we have a product and I'm selling it and things like that.

And I just want to document everything that we have and maybe once I'm consistent enough, I'll request a guest. I don't know. It's an ongoing thing that I'm trying to figure out as I'm going. So.

I don't really have a solid, solid answer, but I am here with you and we're together on this roller coaster for sure. But I don't want to take up too much of your time. So, you know, I went over, I went over, you know, where I've been, my why I stopped and.

Now that I have a more of a settled life and I have a more of a stable routine, I am able to have more energy to do things in my free time. And that's one of the reasons why I want to return to podcasting. And on top of that, with all those entrepreneurial like activities I'm doing in my day to day job, I am definitely...

Dalton (12:24.718) feeling uneasy, not really uneasy, but I was just like itchy to get started back up again. And I'm fired up, I hope you're fired up. I'm on video if you guys are listening on podcasts, but I got a new, I can't really show without, hold on. I had to show the viewers. I got these headset, I don't know, the headset, they're not really headsets, but they're headphones.

So I have them plugged into a mic now. I got a mic that is made for my room and I've got a boom arm. I mean, this is for real guys. Like this is not something that I am. Oh, I don't know. I'm doing it. I'm doing it for sure. So I'm fired up. I hope you're fired up and I hope the sound quality is good because I upgraded my mic, upgraded my setup so I could be consistent and it's easy for me and it's easy for you to listen to my voice.

Just like a bedtime story, I guess. I don't know. It was a bit odd that I said my voice, but it is fine. It's fine. We're going keep it rolling. But I definitely want to express some gratitude towards those 151 listeners. You guys are huge. I don't know. There's not much to say, but I don't know who you are, where you're from, but I'm glad that you're here and I hope you stick around. And I...

appreciate your patience away in these two years. I know I kept you up a lot of late nights and I'm sorry for that but there's we can't go back in the past. We gotta we gotta keep it moving. So.

Dalton (14:08.398) I think that you can engage with the podcast on Spotify, where, this is where I'm not sure, because it's been a long time. It says on the Spotify app that you can ask questions, like a Q &A, but I'm not really sure, honestly. So I'll have to figure that out and get back to you. I don't have a website right now. I think the domain expired.

The next topic I'll talk about is probably my current product research or some programming stuff or.

Dalton (14:54.158) or the previous product that we had, our fishing magnets product, that would be pretty interesting and talk about things that we did poorly and what I would do if I did it again. But thank you so much for listening today. Once again, this is a VentureStep podcast or VentureStep and my name is Dalton and I hope to see you next week. Bye.