Lee Prosenjak 11:03
One of the best events ever. And I love that, that that. That nervous, anticipation, anxious, positive anxiety, really, of like, I never know what’s about to happen. But I trust that great things are about to happen, no matter what, like, this is gonna be an awesome work of art today. And I can’t wait to see what the result is.
John Corcoran 11:22
Yeah. So cool. Thanks for sharing that story. So um, you end up meeting your wife, who had already started her dance studio. How did you end up coming into that business? Because family businesses and working with spouses can be fraught with danger?
Lee Prosenjak 11:38
Yeah, and that’s the normal reaction. I met her working out of performance. And she saw me running all those production stuff and said, Hey, like, you know, like, what are you doing over there? Do you do and I was, like, I said, Yeah, she said, I’ve got a dance studio, I’ve got a dance recital coming up, can you help me out and I, I looked right at her and said, I’ll do whatever you ever want. And that’s a line that she reminds me up to this very day. And, and so I just kind of jumped right in, right, like, so that was, it was super fun. And I knew nothing about it. And that’s a good sort of entrepreneur. I figured it out as we as we went along. And at the time, she had to dance rooms, and I met her and she’s like, What do you think? Should we add a third dancer? And I’m like, I don’t know, let’s run some numbers on this. And so we sat down and talked about it. And like, I have to do this many classes with this many students and just kind of like, designed it out. And she was like, Yeah, well, I think we could do that. I’m like, Great, let’s go then. And we just kept growing it. And people used to ask me all the time, they’re like, oh, my gosh, I could never work with my spouse. What’s that? Like? Are you know, we’re kind of give those type of comments. And I, we really loved it. I mean, like, it was fantastic for us to be together every day to know what’s going on. And which was very opposite, then, you know, like, back in the Rock and Roll days where I would, I would I would call my girlfriend or whatever at the time and be like, like, how was your day? And, and she would, you know, ask the same question back. And I’m like, Oh, my gosh, like this most amazing moment just happened, right? And she wasn’t there. She wasn’t at the concert. She wasn’t at the whatever the event was. And so it just, I don’t know, it just it felt very connecting for us to be able to be there and together and and know that we had each other’s back 100%. And someone I could absolutely rely on and trust in each and every day.
John Corcoran 13:22
It’s funny, because your title on LinkedIn is the guy who does everything but teach dance. That’s right. So it sounds like you slotted into some kind of need that your girl then girlfriend now wife had for the business?
Lee Prosenjak 13:34
Yeah, you need me to answer the phones? Sure, I’ll do it. You need me to sell tattoos? Absolutely. I’ve never fit somebody for shoes before in my entire life. But this seems good, right? Just like and that ability to kind of do any and all of those things. And it was really a lot of on the job training. And especially way back in the day sort of thing. I mean, we had just barely got a computer system in 9099 sort of thing. And so to set that up and like have some sort of software to track the payments instead of like a receipt book, which is how they track the payments before I got there. I’m like, let’s try this. Let’s try the software and see what it was. And that was, it was really good. So trial and error. And I always say that I will beat my head against the wall for at least seven seconds longer than somebody else. What’s made me successful to this day.
John Corcoran 14:24
I imagine there have been some ups and downs over 20 plus years of running this business. So you were there before 911 You were there? Oh seven financial meltdown. There of course was the pandemic talk about some of those different the highs and lows over the years and what those experiences were like.
Lee Prosenjak 14:44
Yeah, we you know, as a studio, we kind of always experienced slow steady growth. We never really had like the we’re up 30% this year. It just didn’t happen like we were like solid like this is a 6% growth here. Fantastic. And so is next year in toes next year, and so as next year, so we were always slow and steady and a lot of word of mouth. And so we didn’t have to advertise a bunch. And we’re, you know, it was, and we were lucky in some of those aspects that we could, that we didn’t have to. I remember like canceling our phonebook ad for the first time, because I’m like, I don’t think people are using phone books anymore. And but that was like a huge decision. Could we cancel the ad out of the phonebook? Or just go with the the phone number listing instead of having to have a display ad? And if you’re old enough to remember any of that sort of stuff? Like, you know, hats off to you that you’re still here? Yeah, it was a huge, it was a big deal. It was our biggest expense other than people and rent was that that’s amazing how much they charge for those ads. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that people still produce those. I mean,
John Corcoran 15:52
it’s where eyeballs were back down right before the internet. So now,
Lee Prosenjak 15:57
right, yeah. I mean, those were big things, you know, we weren’t really affected by things even like, in 2008. With the financial crisis, we weren’t seeing a drop, like, in fact, that was our best year for summer camps, ever. Well, I’m sure we’ve, we’ve we’ve surpassed that. Now, I don’t remember what the numbers were then compared to now. But like, all of a sudden, I don’t think people were traveling that year. And so it ended up being a really good year for the dance studio, because like, people were like, well, we’re not going to Hawaii by dance class this summer, an extra summer workshop. And so we were we were through the roof that year. And that was the year that we that we took on to say with something that we talked about on this beach right here, you know, just six minutes away from where I’m standing right now is this beach. And we Stephanie, and I would walk and talk and we would have these great conversations and talk about life and talk about what we wanted to do and how we could get there. And all these things. And all these great ideas were coming to us while walking the beach, which was a good good time that we shut down the rest of the world. And we had plenty of time to discuss these things. And we talked about it a year before that and said we should really buy a place we should really buy a building because the space that we’re in was probably it didn’t seem like it was going to be if this might get torn down. It was when this building that we’re in would be torn down and compound that we had a landlord that took it over. That’s a developer that said, we’d like to offer you a 90 day extension on your lease. And I’m like, we cannot operate a business like that. We’re we’re trying to extend our lease for 90 days at a time. We’ve got to find we’ve got to find a building that we can purchase. And so during 2008 I go out, I go to my bank, I’m like, listen, we want to buy a building. And they said great, good idea. And I said, Let’s pre qualify for this loan. So we know how much we can spend. And we’re in Denver in Cherry Creek north, which is like, you know, for me that’s not familiar. It’s like the Rodeo Drive of Denver. You know, Aaron Mays store close to us. Like there’s all these you know, Janus funds, their world headquarters a block away, right now cheap real estate, correct? Yes, the most expensive real estate and all of Denver, including more than downtown. Great. So here we are, I go to the bank. I’m like, here’s the deal. I want to pre qualify, they said, great, you can pre qualify for a mortgage. I’m like, amazing. What do you think they came back? Let’s crunch our numbers. They’re like good news, you qualify for a mortgage of $100,000. I’m like, awesome. I think that buys me a closet. Like, we need more like I’m thinking like, you know, a couple of million dollars, then they’re like, Oh, you’re you’re nowhere close to that. And I’m like, Oh, my gosh, what a failure. This is horrible. How do I do this? Clearly, it’s the bank’s fault. I go out to another bank, same thing. They came back and they said, Well, you qualify for like 150,000, I’m like, Great, let’s go in the right direction. But it’s gonna be a long time before I get to a couple of million dollars at that point. And so it was really, it was a tough time to look for money. It was a really tough situation. I felt like I was going towards a brick wall. It just didn’t know how fast like we would be able to, you know, like when we could do this or in how to do that. And I really look to our purpose, which is to create art. And I kept talking to people and saying, like, you know, Hey, I gotta I gotta create more art. And we found this building that would be absolutely perfect for us. And I went to the CFO of the company, and I said, Hey, I need to buy this building, great mix and offer. I said, What do you want? He said $5 million. I said, Great. And he goes, Great. We got a deal. And so we inked this deal. And I put down $100,000 which was all the money that we had the time in the world and put that down as a down payment. You know, it was in escrow. Things are looking great. And my broker goes, where are you going to come up with money? I’m like, no problem. I got this SBA plan. We’re going to do an SBA loan. It’s going to be great. We’d go through the SBA process we’ve got 90 days with the with the building under contract. And I at the SBA calls me on like a week and says, We’ve pre approved you. However, we can’t find a bank to take the other half of this deal. Because it’s 2008. And it’s the worst time ever to look for money. And so we’re trying and nobody’s like, We’re chopping this deal around, we went to, I think it was I had the whole whole list, I create a spreadsheet. Let’s go down the list with every lender that does SBA lending, and like 86 out of 86 said, No, wow. And so we were like, what do we do? And I went back to the CFO of the company, and you know, on day 89, and I looked at our talking on the phone, and I said, we got a dead deal. So what do you mean, I said, I just can’t find anybody to take the loan. And I thought about it. And I went right to my purpose statement, which is to create art so that everyone can discover their own inspiration, love and greatness. And over the phone, I said to him, I said, Scott, here’s the deal. I need this building, because I need to be able to go create art, everything I do, so that I can go create art each and every day. It’s what I used to do in the rock’n’roll industry. It’s what I do today at the dance studio, I need to go create art, I need this building, because we need to do this on a bigger scale with more people, we need to inspire more lives to create that own their own dance to create their own art. And I just, I just kind of laid it out there for them. And I just left it. And I stopped talking. And he didn’t respond for like, an hour and a half. Hour. Yeah, it’s probably like a, like an hour and a half. Right? Yeah, felt like an hour and a half, it was probably three and a half seconds. And he just goes, alright, we’ll do it. And I go, What do you mean? And he said, we’ll do it. I said, No, I don’t think you understand like, I can’t find the money. I can’t find a lender to do this. And he goes, No, we will do it will be the bank for you will finance the deal. Give us the 10% down that you’re gonna give to the SBA, and we’ll do the deal.
John Corcoran 22:09
And you didn’t even think this is a possibility. Like you had a really, really wrong thing.
Lee Prosenjak 22:13
Like, right, I didn’t go to college. I don’t have I don’t have a master’s degree out of business guy. Yeah, I didn’t go to school, like none of these things. So not even thought in my mind that that the seller would carry this note. Yeah. And he goes, just give us the 500,000 that you’re going to give to the SBA. So we had 10% down, we’ll be the lender. And I said, Hey, you know, that 100 grand that we gave you? And he goes, Yeah, and I go, that’s all the money out in the world. He goes, How are we going to get it for the SBA, like in the next week? And I said, I don’t know. It just, it just works out when it’s supposed to. It goes, I can’t believe I’m just gonna say this. But all right, we’ll do it. We’ll do it. We’ll give it to you $100,000 down? How are you going to do the build out on this building? Because like, that’s just the cost of building I can do the build out for this to put in the hardwood floors to put in the mirrors. And I said, You got 100 grand that you can love me. He said no to that. I said, Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out. I’ll go through, you know, and we maxed every one of our credit cards. Within the next 90 days, we
John Corcoran 23:26
were in the midst of this financial recession, you must have had some family members who said you were nuts.
Lee Prosenjak 23:32
Everybody said we’re not the banks like that 86 banks that we talked to, like it was legit. I think Wells Fargo turned us down within three minutes. Like I don’t know. They’re like, what is this SBA deal dough, like it was an absolute No, they weren’t even looking at things. But that’s what it took. Everybody thought we were absolutely insane. And it’s the one year in our history that we actually had a huge increase. We went from six, six dancers at the time, up to nine, or maybe because of
John Corcoran 24:04
the newest, the newest base that were able to
Lee Prosenjak 24:07
level up. And our revenue just jumped with us. So we went with that was the only one and only year that we are ever up like it was like 30% that we that we gained overnight just by having more availability. And we offered way more classes and I went to all my vendors, I went to our main dancewear supplier. And I’m like, by the way, I know you give us awesome terms on all this stuff, but I’m not going to pay you in six months. I need you know, at least a year to pay you on this stuff. And they’re like, you’ve always been a good customer. You’ve always been good with communication to us. No problem. And so I used every resource to make sure that we could succeed and I had everybody rooting for us. And that was a it was a it was a good key for our success.
John Corcoran 24:52
So we’ve been through some other crises and pandemics since then what’s our takeaway from Are you going through that experience?
Lee Prosenjak 25:02
Yeah, talk to everybody communicate with absolutely everybody at every given moment. And in the case of the pandemic, you know, we went from boy was I so wrong and had so much egg on my face. Because on Friday, the 13th of March, three years ago, I was sitting there saying, like, this is not a thing. We’re not closing, they can’t make us close. Really, that would never happen to on Sunday, having a sit down with the entire team to say, not only was I wrong 48 hours ago, but like really wrong. And I don’t know when we’re going to have classes again, I don’t know what we’re going to do. And on Monday, we had been early users of zoom. And so on Sunday night, we hatched a plan to have a few classes on zoom on Monday, Tuesday as well. Like Tuesday, we had our full schedule on Zoom. Like we’re on Tuesday. Yeah, but everyone ends in their in their home. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so I started a campaign with our general manager with everybody else. Like, we I, we called every one of our customers. By that Friday of that week, we call down the list. And I just called people and I said, How are you? What’s going on for you? Tell us what you need, or what’s your situation? And how can we help? And, like, I, I think my our handyman that we always kind of have around Allah Hondo. He’s an amazing person. I think I sent him to probably like 100 different people’s homes, to help them install a desk or to do something someone’s like, Do you have a dry cleaner that still open? I’m like, Yeah, we have a parent that has a dry cleaning business. I’ll have him come by your house and pick up your dry cleaning. I don’t know where you’re gonna wear it. But we’ll pick it up and deliver it for you. And it was just connecting that community together and saying, what else can we do for you? And people were calling back and saying, okay, so what can we do for you, I’m like, I just need your support. So you’ve already paid March tuition, but April’s coming in another week. And I need you to pay April tuition, whether you can get online or not. And we have people that like, my kid won’t do it. Right? Don’t Don’t do it. And they would still pay tuition. We had some people that were like, I lost my job this week. And I was like, fantastic. Stop paying us. But please keep coming to dance class, because it’s important for you. And so we everybody got an immediate free pass anyway, that said, I can’t afford it. We’re like, don’t do it. But keep coming. But don’t pay us. And when you feel it’s okay to pay again. You’ll pay us and when you when you, you know if that day never comes? That’s actually it’s worse for you than it is for us. Yeah. So how else can we help in that situation? And we went through and talked to every single customer. And we kept doing it. We kept calling to make sure that everybody all of our people were okay. And we weren’t we’re pulling every string that we possibly could to help them.
John Corcoran 28:14
You didn’t have a roadmap for this? I mean, you’ve been through hard times previously. But I mean, what was it like for you personally going through it? And by the way, I should also mention this was three years ago, and I think you said that it was five to seven years ago that you kind of pulled out of the business. So this was pulling you back in?
Lee Prosenjak 28:34
Correct. And it was, it was super scary. Yeah, I basically was, was not as much in the day to day from like, seven years ago on at six, seven years ago, something like that. And, and so I really wasn’t around the day to day as much anymore. And it’s something that I truly missed was the interaction with all of our customers and all of our people I was I mean, it, it was a it was a big deal. So I absolutely well, all my other consulting work and things like that was instantly dried up too. And so, like you had time at time. I did call all my my normal sort of consulting clients and we were talking about the same thing and I was I was getting people together and sharing resources and and just, you know, sort of like that, that typical format like what else can we do house cleaning bond? We had we had workgroups on the PPP application, for example, of people getting together to work on the PPP all on its own just on Zoom. Alright, what do you put in this box? Yeah, we’re like, find that number. Okay, hold on a second. I got to figure out where that number comes from for me. And it was it was an amazing thing to be on a workgroup. And those are things that I’d like, it was just from my friends. Like, they’re like, I don’t know how to do this either. I’m like Me neither. But help me. Help me help you. Let’s get together. And who else can we invite? Who else needs this? Yeah.
John Corcoran 29:52
Let’s Yeah. Yeah. It’s wonderful to see a lot of that stuff coming together. And when I think back on that period of time, you know, Oh, it was scary in the moment. And it was sad in the moment to see it all happening, people dying. You know, there are some, there’s some fondness that we have, I think, you know, thinking about those positive elements of people coming together. You had another interesting experience. So you had been friends with Simon Sinek, the author, speaker, how have you gotten to know him? And then you, you’ve known him for a number of years. And then during the pandemic, you actually came in and helped him with his business, which hadn’t didn’t have as much of an online course, on online components.
Lee Prosenjak 30:35
Yeah, nothing we met in 2007. Or, like, 2007, that’s after, after hearing him the first time we became friends, because I heard him speak at a conference with like, 40 other people in the room like, that was it was super small and turned out to be like a second big speech ever. And, and so like, I know that my life changed that day, because we started talking about my why purpose, right. And I had a call with Stephanie, from that room, after I scribbled out a whole bunch of notes, with with him his session called stuff, I’m like, we’re doing this all wrong. And that’s where like, he and I sat at my kitchen counter until like, four in the morning, when they talking about her talking about dance, when he would happen to be in town, you know, a few months later, having to be in Denver. And so we sat at my kitchen counter till four in the morning, and we drink bottle of wine, and we created my my wife statement. And it’s like, that’s what sort of set me on that path. And when I was talking to the CFO of that company, and saying, like, I gotta create art, it’s because I, like I have to live my why. And so it was his voice that was echoing in my head at that moment to say, like, use your why. Okay, I’m going to use it to create art so that everyone can discover their own inspiration, love and greatness. And I have that all over the place. I was just digging for my, my, my my journal right here, right? So my why statement on the journal, I’ve got reminders of that all over the place all over my desk all the way around, so that I never forget about that, to work towards that purpose each and every day. And so I heard Simon’s voice in my head there, I heard it, you know, throughout and he and I stayed connected. I often brought him in to speak in events for EO for, you know, for lots of different things. And we just, we just kept deepening our relationship. And so right before pandemic, I called his chief of staff as CEO to say, like, hey, I need Simon for this event. She said no way. And, and we kept talking, because for years, she and I had been trying to meet up and she lived in New York, and we and I kept trying to, like, meet up with her. Because like, you’re you’re like, how do we not know each other after all these years sort of thing. And finally, one day, I called I said, Listen, I’m coming to New York. I’m, your my main point is to come and see you. So you tell me where you’re going to be for this, like five day stretch, and I will be there and she goes, fantastic. I can’t wait to meet you in person, finally. But it can’t be in New York and moved to Denver a month ago. I’m like, Are you kidding me? And so our first it took us like another three months to get a date on our calendar. And we got together. And it was like the biggest hug because it was like, we had been friends forever and just never knew it. Right? Like, so a huge hug. And she we sat down and talked and over one dinner, she’s like, You have to come and deliver the message. Because everything that you’ve talked about and everything you’ve done, the dance studio has been a representation of silence work, right, like you put your wine to place, your living, breathing proof that this worked. I’m like, great. So I got hired to do Simon’s content to speak for Simon, you know, to go out and do a do a speech. And before I could even do it, well, we did one event, and after that, anaemic it, and all sudden it was we don’t the event business model, which was to go out and speak to people in front of a roomful of people now. Yeah, yeah. By the way, all of our businesses that I had with a consulting company with the dance studio was about getting groups of people together in person and having a live event. Yeah. So as varied as I thought I was,
John Corcoran 34:16
it wasn’t as not as diverse. So I mean, you weren’t the only one there. Lots of people that didn’t realize or they were more diversified than they realized. But in odd ways that were unexpected. Yeah.
Lee Prosenjak 34:27
So we took the dance classes online, by day two, right? Like we were basically online and ready to go and had, you know, I took TVs off the wall and set it up so that instructors could see the classes in big format. And Simon came to the group of us and said, We need to create our programming we need to go online. And we got obsessed with this one question that came from a good friend Jen. And she said, what what can we create that that would be amazing as a virtual experience compared to what would be But what’s worked in the past? And we became as a team, we became obsessed with that question. And I took it into, what can we create as a virtual thing, so great that it would suck if it were in person, because we don’t want to just take what we had, and do it online. Because it might not work, or it might not be the best thing. And so with the people that so so not only did we do that with Simon’s team and took his work and, you know, created it, and things that that they did as a half day workshop, for example, we’re now trying or a full day workshop, we’re trying to cut into two hour segments so that we could keep people’s attention online, not have to give a bathroom break in the middle of this program, right? Like it was that we’re talking about it in that much minutia sort of thing. What’s the maximum time we think people can sit at their computer screen to do something and not have to go pee. And we did that with the dance studio, it changed our classes, it changed our class structure changed the way that people pay, it changed the way that we interacted with our customers and things too. And that was a great thing with all the CEOs that I coach, that again, I used to, like fly around or go work with a leadership team, you know, in person somewhere in the world. And now I can’t do that. So what can we do now for that leadership team? That isn’t the same as being in the room, we got to create something that’s different and better and amazing experience virtually, rather than the other way,
John Corcoran 36:28
right? It’s a great way of thinking about it. And I do want to ask you, I know I’m mindful of the clock. We’re almost out of time. Last question. I took two quick questions. One,
Lee Prosenjak 36:38
I’ll talk all day. Let’s go for another episode.
John Corcoran 36:41
We might have to do that. I didn’t get the chance to ask you about this idea of going to the Bahamas. I mean, everyone’s gonna want to know that I mean that I’m sure you can answer it in 30 seconds. But I mean, like, what are the steps? If I’m watching this, I’m thinking, Oh, that sounds amazing. I mean, here you’ve got to you’ve got one business as a physical business that requires your for Stephanie’s physical presence. So that not an easy one. So how did you accomplish that?
Lee Prosenjak 37:07
It you know, you heard my timeline, right? Like it’s tails all the time. A rock designer who then became a dance studio natural progression. Oh, it’s makes total sense. Yeah. You own a hotel and Marina then next, right? Like, yeah, you’ve heard you have a nickel for every time you’ve heard that story. The we’ve we had a we fell in love with the beach here on harbor Island in the Bahamas 23 years ago. And we’ve we’ve just been coming ever since as a guest as a guest Right? Like and constantly and more and more. And about 10 years ago, Stephanie looked at me, we’re planning out our vacations for the year. She said, I think we should take four vacations this year. I said, Great. And she said, I think all four of them should be in harbor Island. And I went great. Let’s go. And so we were renting places, we go to hotels, we rented a house a couple of times, like so we had a we had a little bit of a pattern going. And at that time, this, this hotel project that we have now is a condo hotel. And so we we figured out about eight years ago that we could buy one of these condos. And we did. And we started spending more and more time there, here. And that was a it just became everything that we would do would be to say like, does this get us closer to harbor Island or not? And on days that like, I need a pep talk, Stephanie would just text me harbor harbor harbor. Right? So we’re like driving towards this all the time, that, you know, should we make this decision? Should we buy a new car or not? So that get us closer to harbor Island or not? And it was a constant sense of discipline for us to how do we do this? What can we do? You know, how can we go about this? Because we want to spend more time here than anywhere else in the world. And so that that’s that’s how we got here so much physically, I can tell you all another story about the about the mechanics of this deal, which has been like, absolutely insane. And that’s a whole another podcast and it might include.
John Corcoran 39:10
I do. But I do love the filter of you know, making sure that every decision is driving towards that. Alright, the last question is my gratitude question. I’m a big fan of gratitude, especially expressing gratitude to those who’ve helped you along the way. You know, a lot of times people will mention their family or friends which is natural, but really what I’m getting at is peers, contemporaries, you know, those you mentioned, your your best friend growing up, you know, someone like that is really kind of helped you and supported you.
Lee Prosenjak 39:38
Yeah. In thinking about this question for the podcast, or the story that came to mind immediately, without even thinking about it was about my boss, my first mentor really in my life, a guy called Charles MacLeod, who was at the Denver Center Theatre Company. He was the lighting director for the company. And I, as a high school intern started working for him, you know, under him. And he was just amazing, numerous guy, we had a ton of fun. I really enjoyed working with him and got to you know, every morning he came in, he talked to me, I had a little office, and he would talk to me every morning, kind of how are you? How’s the day? Alright, let’s lay out the priorities for the day. And we would talk about him. And then he’s like, you know, sometimes I got to spend the day with him. Other times, he’s like, I’ll see you later. And he would most days, he would come back to my office around five o’clock, or quarter five, and find each other and reconnect and say, how was it what happened until it was really good, sort of gave me a sense of almost like a bookshelf on that to, you know, be able to close, you know, opening close a day with him. And I got this call one day from this guy. And he said, Hey, I want to, I want you to interview for a job with me. And it was at this lighting rental company, that was a supplier to us. And I said, Gosh, I know who you are. But you know, like, I have a job like, I’m good. And he said, Yeah, I know, your boss, Charles told me to call you. And I said, Okay. And he said, You should interview for this job. And so I’m like, Alright, that sounds weird. But okay. And he said, once come by today, on your way after work, and I said, Alright, I went over to the shop. And I looked at him, and we sat there and talked. And by the end of this, he said, Great, alright, so you’re hired, when can you start? And I went, like, I don’t know, I have to go talk to Charles about this, like, This doesn’t feel right. To do. Like, you know, I gotta go talk to Charles. And so I drove back downtown, and I went to the theater, and I found Charles and I said, Hey, can I talk to you? And he goes, Yeah, of course, and sat down at his desk. And I said, and the guy had already told me like Charles told me to call you, Charles said that you’d be perfect for this job. Like, Charles said this. And I’m like, so I go back to Charles. I’m like, Do you not like me anymore?
John Corcoran 42:07
Next Next message. Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Prosenjak 42:10
And he’s like, What are you talking about? And I said, I don’t know, I get this call from Tom. And he said, You got to interview for this job. And Charles said to and now he’s like, he wants to hire me. And like, I don’t know. What do I do? Like, do you not like me? Am I not doing a good enough job? And he goes, No, he goes, I love you. You’re doing an amazing job. And I’ve taught you everything I can right now. And you need to take this job because you need to go experience the world. It’s time for you to go fly for a little bit. And I can’t do that for you right now. You have to go experience the world for yourself. So yeah, you should take this job. And I was, like, devastated. Like crying, getting emotional already thinking about it right to just like to leave that I felt like I was leaving Charles and letting him down. And like, and I went to work at the first day over there. And it was, it was fine. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t like it was under Charles. And I didn’t realize how much of a gift he gave me that day. Because Charles knew me. He knew that I would probably stay there forever. Maybe just you know, continue to work with him. And he thought that this was better. You could see more in me than I couldn’t myself.
John Corcoran 43:25
Yeah, what a generous act. Lee, this has been such great. You know, conversation. Thank you so much for your time, where can people go to learn more about you? And we haven’t even gotten to talking about the work that you do through hesp partners? I know that’s one of the different things you do. So where can people go connect with you?
Lee Prosenjak 43:42
On LinkedIn is great. You can find me there. My last name, I’m sure it’s in the title. Pretty unique, you know, so find me on LinkedIn, you can
me Lee at hesi partners.com HSSE partners partners.com. You know, find some work there. Or really come find me on the beach here. Come to Valentine’s resort. And in Marina down in harbor Island. Let’s have these conversations on the beach because I think that’s where a bunch of my great, great conversations and the Great thinking happens.
John Corcoran 44:13
That sounds amazing. Alright, Lee, thanks so much. Pleasure.
Outro 44:17
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.