Darrah Brustein is a four-time founder, author, coach, and co-host of a podcast with Deepak Chopra. She’s also a contributor for Forbes and Entrepreneur, and she has interviewed remarkable people like Shaquille O’Neal, Seth Godin, Bobby Brown, Jillian Michaels, Adam Grant, and Deepak Chopra himself.
Darrah founded a credit card processing company that grew to 38 states, and she has also created a networking events company that currently has over 30,000 people.
In this episode, John gets to ask Darrah about allowing things to fall into place by following your intuition, doing a podcast with Deepak Chopra, why she’s so passionate about connecting people, and the importance of giving value to the people that you connect with through the course of your career.
In this episode, we also talk about:
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- Why Darrah started podcasting with Deepak Chopra
- What inspired Darrah to start the networking group, ‘Network Under 40’
- Why Darrah keeps organizing networking events and how the business has grown
- What makes her networking group different and what sets it apart from others?
- How Darrah’s background prepared her for all the things that she has and are currently doing
- Darrah talks about what propelled her to create a credit card payment processing business
- How Darrah began writing for Forbes and Entrepreneur, and eventually to writing her own book
- Darrah talks about how her relationship with Deepak started
- Why it’s important to put value and time into the connections that you create with people
- How the challenges that are laid out in front of you are actually opportunities for growth
- How Darrah became a coach, why she loves it, and what programs she offers
- Why Darrah is thankful for the people who pulled the rug from under her
- Where to learn more about Darrah and how to get in touch with her
Resources Mentioned:
- Darrah Brustein’s website
- Darrah’s Free Resources
- Mind Your Business Accelerator Program by Darrah Brustein
- Diving Deep with Deepak and Darrah
- Darrah Brustein on LinkedIn
- Darrah Brustein on Instagram
Sponsor: Rise25
Today’s episode is sponsored by Rise25 Media, where our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. We do this through our done for you business podcast solution and content marketing.
Along with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz, we have over 18 years of experience with B2B podcasting, which is one of the best things you can do for your business and you personally.
If you do it right, a podcast is like a “Swiss Army Knife” – it is a tool that accomplishes many things at once. It can and will lead to great ROI, great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, and more. It is networking and business development; and it is personal and professional development which doubles as content marketing.
A podcast is the highest and best use of your time and will save you time by connecting you to higher caliber people to uplevel your network.
To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
To learn more, book a call with us here.
Check out Rise25 to learn more about our done-for-you lead generation and done-for-you podcast services.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran 0:40
Alright, welcome everyone. My guest on this show is Darrah Brustein and this is John Corcoran here. I’m the host of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast where I talk with CEOs founders, entrepreneurs, you know, founders of companies and organizations like YPO, EO, Activation, Blizzard, which is the world’s largest video gaming company, lending tree, Open Table x offer Many, many more. I’m also the co founder of Rise25, where we help connect b2b business owners to their ideal prospects. And I’m very excited today because my guest is Tara Brustein. She’s a four times founder, author, and coach, she also hosts co hosts a podcast with Deepak Chopra who maybe heard of before, she spent 10 years really working very, very hard and burned out while building credit card processing company into 38 states and also a networking events company which going to talk about for 30,000 people. She learned some good roles, some good advice along the way, which she’s going to share. She’s also a contributor for Forbes and entrepreneur, and she’s interviewed a few famous people you may have heard of before, like Shaquille O’Neal, Seth Godin, Bobby Brown, Jillian Michaels, Adam Grant, you name it, lots of people. So we’re going to get into that in a moment. But first before we get into that this podcast is brought to you by Rise25 Media which I co founded with my business partner, Dr. Jeremy Weiss, and our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners and customers. And we do that through our done for you podcast solution, I believe if you have a business This, you should have a podcast period is one of the best things I’ve ever done hands down since I founded my business really like a Swiss Army knife. It’s a it’s like a tool that can accomplish so much at once. And there are you’ve done podcasting, obviously, with your rather famous partner. I’ll just turn it to you. What have you gotten out of it? Why do you do it?
Darrah Brustein 2:19
Well, thank you. Also, if I may, I think you should consider being an auctioneer
in your life, you very quick, very sharp. Very good. Thank you. So yeah, with depok it was super different reasons than why maybe and what I think you get out of the podcasting, which is probably that you get to meet a lot of people and network with them and build the relationships and some cases bring your prospects to you. with deep pocket was about following a stream of events that happened that was so far fetched from anything I ever would have asked for or dreamed of, to the point where we kind of CO created this concept in a matter of minutes via email and then two weeks later, it was live in the universe. And I’d say the reasons for that was one just following my intuition and following the path that was dominoes falling out before me, because it felt right. And I think sometimes that’s the best reason to do something is to do what your intuition is telling you is appropriate or correct, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense logically at the time, but then secondly, to be toe to toe and face to face with one of your biggest intellectual heroes, day in and day out and lose and gain like the wisdom that is oozing out of him was an is exceptional that basically you can ask someone any questions you want, and then share those answers and those resources with the world. So for me who’s a lifetime learner and someone who is deeply curious to be able to sit and ask tremendous amounts of deep questions and even on deep ones because our series is called diving deep with Deepak and Dara and we make the deep relatable and translatable typically in five minutes or less. And, you know, Deepak says he’s super esoteric and I’m sort of that translator bridge between what is super spiritual and of the heavens that he talks about and where the rest of us live down here. So it’s it’s a lot of fun.
John Corcoran 4:09
And I love that idea of just kind of falling, what opportunities come towards you, you know, it’s a little bit happenstance. But it’s also putting yourself in the right position because you chose to reach out to him you chose to feature the other people that you had on your podcast, you chose to write for Forbes and entrepreneur and some of the other publications you’ve written for, which have been a platform that allowed you to then connect with some amazing people who you’re fulfilled by. So I want to I want to get into that whole conversation first, before we do, I think it’s so funny because, you know, one day around 2011 or so I can picture this deira wakes up one day and she’s like, you know, what, know what the world needs, the world needs another networking group, and you just decided, I’m going to go ahead and create another networking group. It’s called network under 40. What inspired that and also How did you decide that you’re going to make this be different from everything else that’s out there already?
Darrah Brustein 5:06
Well, you know, john, it’s who doesn’t love redundancy?
Just like with credit card processing, no, I’m totally joking. I I had no interest in starting a another networking event, a searing at all. I didn’t want to go to any more networking events. I was so deeply entrenched in them myself running my credit card processing business out of Atlanta. However, I had a friend move back to Atlanta, where I’m based where we both went to undergrad, she had graduated from law school, we were in our mid 20s. And she said to me, where can I go to make friends after college? Everywhere I go, I’m either getting hit on sold to everyone’s my parents age or in my industry. And I laughed, and I thought, I can’t think of a single place that isn’t at least one of those things. And so I said, Well, my favorite thing to do much like you and your business partner, Jeremy is to connect people. So I said, why don’t I just start something for you? Again, zero interest in starting an ongoing perpetual thing but just saying let me help solve your need because I’m able to Do that. And this was March of 2011, as you said, and 94 people showed up to this event, the entire premise was, if you’re under the age of 40, and you want to make pure based relationships that are friendship first and business second, where it’s about caring more about who someone is then what they do, then this is the place to come and have those 94 people, 90 were people I knew the energy was electric. And people said to me, can you please do this again? I thought, okay, it didn’t take that much work. And so I did it again. And then the next month, they said, Can you do it again. And so lo and behold, almost nine years later, they continue to not only continued in Atlanta and continue to grow to four or five 600 people each event, but grew into Nashville, grew into Baltimore, grew into a number of places and ways and all again, kind of just following the path as it unfolded.
John Corcoran 6:54
And what has kept you doing it all this time? Is it The love of it as it become a profitable business in its own right, maybe a little bit of both.
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