Billy Keels  0:00  

If you're waiting for a flawless schedule before you invest in your own creative potential, you're going to be waiting forever. In this episode, former multinational high-performing sales leader Rebecca Kunurs shares how she combined her enterprise communication skills with a vibrant passion project, and nowadays she's creating a beautiful harmony lifestyle where she's able to continue to serve her clients by choice, not by obligation. Let's dive in, and let's get you to optionality. Today's episode is sponsored by Billy Keels Advisory Services. If you want to learn more about how to make your 99 optional, just go to Make It optional.com Once again, that's Make It optional.com

Speaker 1  0:43  

Helping you build freedom without losing your edge. This is the Going Long Podcast with Billy Keels.

Billy Keels  0:55  

You absolutely never ever know where corporate life can take you or how it will inspire you, but today's guest has firsthand experience with both. You know what, she had an illustrious career in the enterprise sales for market leading companies, both on the hardware as well as software sides, and you know what, these market leading brands gave her the opportunity to actually work in at least five different countries over the last 20 years, which was amazing. And then she's taken all of that experience, plus some other stuff that I'm sure she's going to tell us about, and she's actually packaged that up today. And she is the founder of Silver Dog Recruitment, as well as the founder of Art by Rebecca Kuehner. Give me great pleasure to welcome to today's conversation of the going along podcast. Rebecca Kunur, welcome to the show.

Rebecca Knoerr  1:43  

Hello, Billy. Thank you for having me. Thank you for inviting me along. Happy to be here.

Billy Keels  1:48  

Well, thank you very much for accepting the invitation. So, this is, yeah, this is this is a really special interview, or conversation, if you will, and I'm looking forward to it, and I kind of have to start right, like jumping right in, because

Rebecca Knoerr  2:02  

go for it.

Billy Keels  2:04  

I got a, I got a post from a friend of mine, and so I want you to listen to this, because I want you to actually talk to, but maybe you can interpret this for me. All right, Why didn't I start my business at 27 It would have been damn easier, a damn sight easier. At 27 I had time, energy, functioning brain cells, absolute luxury, really. No kids shouting 'Mum' every 14 seconds, no snacks to prepare, just peace. And what was I doing with all that freedom, having fun, working my ass off for sales targets, having wonderful experiences, and living in amazing places. I always knew that I do something with my art and something independently, but I didn't know what exactly. Back then, I didn't know I had the confidence or the knowledge to be able to go out on a limb and build a business. Fast forward to now, I'm building a business while somebody cries, someone's hungry, and I've forgotten what I walked into the room for. My work day now looks like 12 minutes of productivity, 45 minutes of interruptions, one snack negotiation, three identity, three identity crises. Everything takes longer, emails interrupted, ideas forgotten, coffee cold, always cold. Yeah, so yeah, it would have been much easier at 27 no debate, but 27 year old me wasn't ready. 46 year old me is, I've got the ideas, and I've got the fire in my belly. I've always got the stacked up experience that 27 year old me had great fun collecting. Now I've got grit, life experience, a weird ability to work in chaos. So maybe it's not too late, maybe you just upgraded to expert mode. So if you're building the business in the middle of real life chaos, welcome to the club. Come along with me. Do you know who that person is? Can you maybe give us some insight to that person?

Rebecca Knoerr  4:09  

Put it be me,

Billy Keels  4:13  

possibly, possibly a

Rebecca Knoerr  4:15  

choice of post there.

Billy Keels  4:19  

So, help us understand a little bit more about your backstory. You've given us some bit there, but what got you to this point?

Rebecca Knoerr  4:28  

Very, very quickly. Yes, you're right. I was in hardware, I was in software sales. You were my manager at one point, which wonderful resort, and very. I mean, I have to say I was successful. Okay, really. Sales, sales was my thing. People are my things. I love interacting with people. I love understanding what makes people tick, etc. And I. It, I have to say, I had a career mapped out in many ways. I was going to move further into sales, more into management, but life throws curve, boys, boils, balls here and there, boils as well, probably once I settled down and had a family, I realized I couldn't quite balance the corporate life, the travel, the working way longer than nine to five, I mean, we're talking nine to eight, nine to midnight, sometimes that was not sustainable with kids and with a husband who does something similar, so I moved into recruitment. Okay, I'm trying to give you the abridged version here, otherwise I'll be here all night. But I moved into recruitment on the agency side, because the people side of sales was the thing that I liked the most, especially recruiting people, managing people, coaching people. Okay, that just gave me the energy. I loved it. So I moved into recruitment on the agency side. So that's my recruitment piece. I've moved through various agencies, always small agencies, boutique agencies, and I've now got to a point where I am a founder of a recruitment agency focusing on SaaS specifically, quite a lot of startup and scale up focus as well, because I love their energy. I'm all about energy, it's about just getting in there and doing it with these kind of guys. So that's the recruitment piece all through this journey. In the background there was art, and you, you probably didn't even know that, did you realize I was

Billy Keels  6:55  

not until many years later?

Rebecca Knoerr  6:56  

No, I did not.

Rebecca Knoerr  6:59  

So it was always there in the background. Okay, it was always a passion, but I never really knew, especially when I was younger, when I was in my 20s, early 30s. I never really knew how I could make it a business, how I could maybe make a bit more money out of

Rebecca Knoerr  7:19  

it.

Rebecca Knoerr  7:20  

So things trotted along. Three kids come along. We move from Singapore to Barcelona to Germany. We're now in Germany. We're settled, three kids, one dog, one husband, busy, busy, busy stuff. And when was it? Maybe about 18 months ago, recruitment, because of the wonderful coming of AI, got a little bit slower. Okay, I had - I won't say I had time on my hands, because that doesn't really exist, but I was thinking, what am I going to do here? Am I just going to sit here and feel depressed about the fact that my recruitment business is kind of slowing down, or am I going to use this time to actually do something with the art? Okay, so I didn't have a clue, Billy. I did not have a clue where to start or what to do, really. I had my Instagram at that point, I only had, I think, 400 followers. It was nothing to do with art. It was just a photo of a baby, a photo of a dog here and there.

Billy Keels  8:30  

Usually, it usually starts that way, by the way.

Rebecca Knoerr  8:32  

Exactly, exactly. I had a website, but it was crap, and the sales that I was doing, as you know, we're really via just me posting a picture of a picture saying, oh, here I go, painted something again, so I had to go from pretty much ground zero and build something that was going to start making me money with my passion, and it's kind of just snowballed from there with the art piece. It's I've built a website, a Shopify website on my own. That was fun. I've made my Instagram into a place where people go look at my art. It's basically an online catalog in many ways, and my latest piece of the puzzle, which, and I said this to you a while ago, I really feel, though, as though in the last two months, maybe three months, all the different parts of myself that I've always had scattered in different directions with different interests are now coming together. Okay, because I'm now starting to do some coaching of fellow artists who also don't have a clue or didn't have a clue. Okay, so I'm putting myself back into those shoes that I wore 18 months. Go, when I was just sitting there, going, what do I do? How do I build an art business? I've got no clue, putting myself back into those shoes and helping people to build their own art business. So, I've set up a community. I am literally learning everything as I go via just trial and error, really. What works, what doesn't work, and coming back to the way you started this conversation about, could I, at 27 could I have done that? Yes, I would have had more energy, more time, etc. but I don't think I'd have had a the balls to do it, and b, the support of a really good husband. I have to say, as well, he definitely plays a part. He supports the fact that I'm having 25,000 new ideas per day, and he's like, go for it, and it's, it's just everything seems to have come together at one time, and it, I see a lot more paths forward with it, a lot more with the community, with the selling of my own art, still with recruitment on the side, but yeah, it's been a fun journey,

Billy Keels  11:22  

so there's a lot of different aspects where we could take this conversation, but the thing that I come back to, and a lot of the listeners or the viewers are like, well, you had a successful corporate career,

Rebecca Knoerr  11:34  

yeah,

Billy Keels  11:35  

you were really good, and I can attest to that, in terms of being able to target attainment and overachievement, and you could still work in corporate today, and a lot of people would say, well, if you were really good at it, and you were making a lot of money at it, why would you go out and do something on your own? It's the, it's the question that has that I help clients with the most.

Rebecca Knoerr  11:59  

Yeah,

Billy Keels  12:00  

and I think it's best to like help people understand, like it's not something that's unique, like you've been through it too, and you've made a decision, but everybody's decisions and reasons are different, that's the thing that I really like for you to talk about.

Rebecca Knoerr  12:12  

I think my reasons have changed, to be honest, if you take a snapshot when I initially left corporate, that was 15 years ago. First baby came along the Singaporean maternity leave is four months. Okay, and I had Noah, and it felt like within a day they were already saying you need to come back to work, and I was just thinking, how, how can I do that? We have no family, we have no, no support. I didn't want to take in living hell, like lots of people do in Singapore. It just doesn't work with my mindset, having been around the whole time, and it just didn't work with my husband's job, he was away, I would say 65 75% of the time. How does that compute? And also, back, back then, back 15 years ago, there wasn't the option for flexible working, you know, from time to time, yes, you could work from home, but that would be very, very rare. You know, like 2% of my year I would be at home. Now it might be a slightly different story, but for me it was more about the flexibility of being able to do my own thing, work the hours that I could work. I mean, when I first started doing recruitment, I didn't really set it out very well in terms of my time management. I just wanted to do everything. I was just okay, feed baby, work at the same time as feeding baby. It was too much. It was too much. I was, I think, maybe I was still in corporate mindset. Go, go, go, go, go, you know. And the time I was just.. I was pulling myself apart, basically. It wasn't, it wasn't healthy, it wasn't good. But I learned how to segregate my time, also how to say, okay, that room is a work room, you can close the door, because that's difficult, isn't it? When you first start doing your own stuff, so that was that was my first reason, I suppose, for moving away from corporate, is the flexibility

Billy Keels  14:39  

in, in the it's important to understand, then, and I appreciate you giving the full context, because every context is what makes the difference, right? You talked about you're living in Singapore, or neither you or your husband are from Singapore, you had no direct support, at the same time you had a husband who was traveling a lot, and for your life conditions it made sense that you were. But you know that you were there, but you wanted to continue to work, so all of these things are unique and make your story unique, and the fact that you're sharing now with this is super helpful, because you know somebody may have the exact same story, or somebody might say, well, actually, you know what, I'd rather somebody live with this, okay, well, great, that's your story, but one of the things that you have talked about, there's this high performer wanting to do like things like when you were going to the corporate mindset, right, because that's what you'd done up until a certain point in your life. How was that making that adjustment from, you know, you're in a large multinational market leading enterprise company, you're a top sales executive, and you go from that corporate super structured to maybe smaller boutique, and you're having a household to run as well. Do

Rebecca Knoerr  15:51  

you know it's difficult, and I'll say it's coming back on me a little bit more now, and by that I mean at first I did find it extremely difficult, and that's what I was saying. I was working, working, working, because I felt like I had targets that weren't - they were my own targets, they weren't necessarily money targets or anything. It was just I want to prove that I can do this kind of a target, which made me work my butt off, okay, with no balance, and it took me..

Billy Keels  16:25  

you're not gonna just get off of that, you said with no, with no balance. What do you mean by that?

Rebecca Knoerr  16:36  

I, I felt like I was just working, working, and baby, baby, and it was with one baby, it was stressful. Okay, when another one came along, then that's when the switch kind of flipped a little bit more for me, to be honest, that I needed to put something in place, bit more time management, something like I said about this whole idea of you have an office, you close the door, you use your home office as an office, you say that's it, work's done, now it's family time, now it's me time, now it's whatever time, but I found that very, very difficult at the start, but that's that's also my nature. This is just how I am. I will always probably do a lot more than I need to, and I'm my own worst enemy sometimes with these kind of things, so you almost have to catch yourself doing it, and say, hang on a minute, that's just,

Billy Keels  17:46  

yeah, so

Speaker 2  17:47  

as well,

Billy Keels  17:48  

and Rebecca, when you mentioned that, like, this is one of the things that it's a, it's a pattern that I see for high achievers, the, and when you talk about balance, I mean, it's one of the things, even back in the day, when I was not long ago, it had on my LinkedIn banner, I think it said, like, you know, you're looking for harmony, not balance, because when you're a high performer by nature, you just go all in, and so it takes a while to find, okay, how do you actually say, well, I'm going to be doing this for, you know, an ungodly amount of hours, but then when I'm off of that, then I'm back here, and I'm completely switched on, and it doesn't always happen. That's what I'm appreciating about what you're saying, like you're not here saying that everything works perfectly. It's like a trial and error kind of thing, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

Rebecca Knoerr  18:33  

No, this is this is it. And where I've come to realize, actually, and this has only happened in maybe the last couple of years, is the way life is, it's like a what you call it, the Venn diagrams, you know, where you've got these little pie chart things, so sometimes out of that 100% maybe 75% is focused on work in that particular day, and the other percentages are everywhere else, the next day 100% is on family because of something, so that has helped me get the harmony and not beat myself

Rebecca Knoerr  19:09  

up,

Rebecca Knoerr  19:10  

because that has always been an issue with me as well. You're not working hard enough, you're not doing enough, and if I come back to this question about why leaving corporate now? It's changed a little bit. I do sometimes find myself thinking it would be easier because you have in many ways clear limitations, you have clear money, you know usually what you're going to earn. You also have a little bit more clearly defined time as well, can you unpack

Billy Keels  19:46  

that, can you unpack that for us a little bit, what you mean by that.

Rebecca Knoerr  19:49  

So it's not so bad now, but it has been bad with me, where I just try and work too much, okay? And I think everybody has that, whether they call. Corporate or not, and I think sometimes it's the grass is always greener scenario, isn't it? Sometimes I think, well, maybe it would have been easier if I'd have stayed in a corporate job. I have clear job description, I have clear targets. This is this is my playing field, go play in it, whereas now the targets are always changing, my job description is always changing, because I'm changing it. So, sometimes in those little low moments, when I'm thinking, "Oh God, where am I going with this? I do find myself thinking corporate would have been easier, but that doesn't last long,

Billy Keels  20:42  

yeah, so you know this is one of the things, because it's been, as you said, it's been like 15 years, and so you're taking us, you're taking us back a bit, but when you, when you think about where you are today in the, in the value of, you know, being able to, you know, there's there's risk and reward with everything, but what would you say is the greatest value that you have by being able to, you know, found multiple companies, and well, found multiple companies, I guess. I

Rebecca Knoerr  21:13  

suppose doing it on my own terms.

Rebecca Knoerr  21:15  

This

Rebecca Knoerr  21:16  

is one of the biggest things. I'm not fighting for other people's goals, I'm fighting for my own, I'm leading everything. Okay, and I mean, you and my manager, I maybe not have been the easiest person to manage at times. I always did a good job, but I think I was pretty like whatever with management,

Billy Keels  21:42  

that's the beauty of being once you start to understand how to lead people versus micromanage them, then

Rebecca Knoerr  21:52  

you were still good. I mean, I'm like that, full stop. That's my husband, you know? I do it my own way, but

Billy Keels  22:00  

this is also really important to recognize or understand how much of where you are today. Do you, would you say, is thanks to the level of how much you know yourself and what you demand of yourself, and and also how you want to serve others.

Rebecca Knoerr  22:18  

The majority of it is, I'd say I, I know a lot more about what my strengths are, what makes me tick, and I think this is why I've just got so much time and energy back once I realized if I could combine art and coaching, this is this is perfect for me. This is everything I love. So, art coaching people, you know, motivating people, giving people something to work on, that's all understanding people. This is the biggest one. If I put all that together, this is this

Rebecca Knoerr  23:01  

is me,

Rebecca Knoerr  23:02  

and I wouldn't have understood that when I was 27 I didn't know myself that well. It's taken, taken all this time. Obviously, the passing of time helps you know yourself a lot, but yeah, I think this is this is the key.

Billy Keels  23:20  

Yeah. Okay. Well, and I appreciate you sharing that. I do like, because where you are right now, there's this - you're in a very unique intersection. You're in the intersection of abstract art, creating community. Maybe you mentioned that a little bit more. Talk to us about what this - this new, I don't want to call it new adventure, but this next phase of what, yeah, I mean, this next phase of what you're, you're developing, but also just talk to us about art by Rebecca Kuehner, and then also, yeah, how did the community develop,

Rebecca Knoerr  23:57  

how it happened, art by me, weird, say my own name by me is well, essentially I have lots of paintings. Okay, I'm selling these paintings all the time. They're they're abstract. Okay, you can't see any, you can't look at it and go, oh, there's the tree. Okay, you look at it and go, oh, that's happiness, oh, that's energy, oh, that's that's vibrant. You get feelings basically from them. They alter the mood of your house, your space, etc. Okay, so that's one piece people are buying my original paintings when I 18 months ago, or one year ago, whenever it was, when I decided I was going to make this business a business, I also looked into printing, because I thought, if I have to paint, you know, 1000 pictures in the space of one year, that's a lot, and. And why not have a different revenue stream, so I now have the print on demand, whereby a customer can go and choose the art, choose the size, choose the framing, and it ships all over in the world. Brilliant. And this is really big XL, or even 20 by 20 campuses. Okay, I also do commissions, so people come to me and say, "Look, Rebecca, I've got a new house, we have a purple sofa, I like yellow, I like this style, go for it. Love doing those brilliant, and this, this is this is my recruitment background coming in. I absolutely love commissions, because I get to interview people and ask them what they like, what they need, what feeling do they want, etc.

Billy Keels  25:52  

And so, Rebecca, can you just, in case, because we have a lot of people that maybe they don't know about art, and when you talk about commissions, like, what do you mean by that, just so just 30,000 foot level, everybody understands

Rebecca Knoerr  26:04  

a commission is when a person, so let's say Billy comes up to me and says, Rebecca, I would really like you to paint me a picture, especially for me, okay? So it will be tailored to you, Billy, in your colors, you would pick the style that you like from my style. Obviously, I'm not going to do a Van Gogh, because, and yeah, in the size, the colors, framing options that you want,

Billy Keels  26:37  

it's sort of like custom software, right? It's like custom software,

Rebecca Knoerr  26:41  

bespoke, bespoke bill. bespoke,

Billy Keels  26:43  

sorry, yeah, there you go, there's fantastic.

Rebecca Knoerr  26:49  

So I've got my painting piece going on, and in using Instagram over the last year I realized that there's a lot of artists out there who are very similar to me, maybe they have a full-time job, maybe they're really busy with their kids, but they have the talent, they have the passion, but they don't know how to get it from passion to business, just like I didn't. Okay, and I remember the slog that I've gone through trying and testing things, and I want to help these people to build businesses out of what they love doing. Okay, so yeah.

Billy Keels  27:33  

No, I was just gonna say, and do you feel like there's a, there's a particular person that you're helping? You talk about artists who love art that are wanting to also generate or create a business, which includes generating revenue, making sure that revenue becomes profit, and then they can do more and more of that. But do you have a, is there a particular person that you find are following you or looking for more of your expertise and experience?

Rebecca Knoerr  27:58  

Yeah, I would say about 70% are people of around my age, so 4546 upwards. Okay, with with families, usually with a job as well. And I recently did a post about, well, it was the post that you were talking about this 27 year old post that resonated with so many people, and you know, sometimes social media is absolutely brilliant for building these communities and making you realize that you're not doing it alone, and when I was seeing so many people coming back and saying that what I'm doing resonated and they love what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, I'm thinking maybe I can use this somehow, and yeah, start looking into how do I build a community that takes people off of Instagram into a community of just a pure artists,

Rebecca Knoerr  28:59  

yeah,

Billy Keels  29:00  

so Rebecca, there's a lot of people that are high performers, high level, you'd say high a like to do things themselves, and I, one of the things that I suffered from is a, as a recovering perfectionist, everything I wanted, everything done, you know, my way, and want it done perfectly the first time, most of what you have been saying during this, this conversation goes completely against that, you're building, you're building while you're doing it, you don't have things figured out, and at the same time that's resonating with people because you're further ahead than the people that you're helping, can you talk to that a little bit, this whole like mindset of everything's got to be perfect the first time

Rebecca Knoerr  29:41  

to help to

Billy Keels  29:42  

help other people.

Rebecca Knoerr  29:43  

Do you know how difficult that was to get over? Oh, horrible, really horrible. But I was waiting, I mean, I would really say I was waiting for the whole 15 years since leaving corporate to do something with my art. But I just did not know what, and I was thinking of looking at other artists, they had perfect websites, they're in galleries, they're doing this and that, and I just didn't know how to get that perfect, so I didn't do it, I couldn't see where I would get the time from in order to be that perfect, so it just dawned on me, why, why do you have to be perfect immediately? Can't you fly the plane and build it at the same time? You're gonna get to the destination, might be a little bit scary and a bit of a bumpy ride, but you're gonna get there, and you end up actually really building confidence and building your motivation while you're doing it, you can't wait for it to come because you've been waiting forever.

Billy Keels  30:50  

Yeah, it's, it's like, it's, yeah, it's, it's like it is perfectly undone or imperfectly progress towards being done

Rebecca Knoerr  31:08  

something like that.

Billy Keels  31:12  

I tried it on the fly, I guess. You know what? You know what I mean. I don't know. It doesn't matter. The going long family, they're not going to hold it against us, but I know that they, they understand what we're doing, but I guess the whole point is, and what I want to go along, family, what I want you to hear, what we're, what Rebecca's saying is, yes, I know you're a high a yes, I know that you're used to doing things perfectly, because that's who I am, that's who Rebecca is, and at the same time, if you're going to serve other people, if you're going to help them, you've got to get out of your head, and you've got to recognize that it's about getting started. You've got to take imperfect action, and then you adjust along the way, like that's how you help other people.

Rebecca Knoerr  31:52  

Yeah, yeah. And it's this: feel the fear and do it anyway. That's my, that's my favorite motto. Always has been all the way through corporate moving countries, etc. There's always a feeling of trepidation. What am I doing here? Is this the right thing? But you don't really know if it's the right thing until you do it. And what's the worst that can happen?

Billy Keels  32:16  

You just go back to doing what you were before you doing before, normally, because there's so many people that are high achievers, like when you, like, I've got a buddy of mine, just recently, like, he left the company that he was working for, because he, I guess, he wanted to go to a new opportunity, like, he went corporate to corporate, but he got to the new place, it sucked, and he went back to get his old job, so it's like, hey, look, if you do your job really well, you try something new, you leave on the right with the like in the right way.

Rebecca Knoerr  32:46  

Yeah,

Billy Keels  32:46  

what's the worst thing gonna happen? You just go back to what you're doing, what you're doing before.

Rebecca Knoerr  32:49  

Always have your back if you, if you do a good job, if you

Billy Keels  32:53  

do it right. Yeah, and so I have one other thing, because you know, I love podcasting, and I feel very, very blessed that you decided to join me, but it sounds like from what one of our pre-conversations that maybe podcasting could be in your near future. Yes, that's another idea I had. Is there anything you want to give us like a little heads up on, potentially?

Rebecca Knoerr  33:16  

Yeah, I'm currently with another artist. Actually, we are, we're starting to record some podcasts. We started last week, but technical things went wrong, so there we go. There you go. There's another example of just do it. I mean, no idea what we were doing. You just gotta do it, and we'll start recording again this week, and all being well, the podcast will be out in a couple of weeks, and this is all about what I'm talking about, the journey from taking art to a little hobby that you're kind of scared to talk about to a business that's profitable, that you know, gives you some money in return.

Billy Keels  34:03  

There you go. All right, perfect. I want to keep talking to you forever. I know I can talk to you when the microphones off and stuff like that, but before we wrap up, I do have a question just for you, and it's more about life, because you've been really gracious, you've shared with us, like, look, not everything goes perfectly. This is one of the things it took me a while to understand that, like, life happened for me. I thought it was happening to me, but it happened for me. And so, what I realized is that Rebecca, when things are going well, we tend not to really think about it, because it's everything, you know, you're riding the wave, it's everything's going really, really well. But when things are not, yeah, yeah, but when things are not going well, like you're at the bottom of the valley. It seems like, oh my gosh, this is never gonna end. This is like dreadful. This is, uh, and there was a certain point in my life that that was happening, and I realized, like, I didn't really let, because I was, you know, I didn't like people came to me with their problems, I didn't go to other people, and so when, but it's more about the lesson, and the lesson was all of. These people that I allowed to pour into me to help me to be able to give me perspective, those things were really cool, but like I never moved away from the trough until I actually said something to myself. It was like me in the mirror having that conversation, and so you and I both know that things are not going to go according to plan, as you, as you think about, you know, what you have going on at Silver Dog Recruitment, or what you have at Art by Rebecca, which you don't want to say by Rebecca, because that's you, but you know, if we, if we say, look, let's look three years ahead, right, just kind of like a visualization exercise, and you know you're going to look back three years from now, and there's going to be these moments where we're low moments, and you know that there's something that you had to say to yourself. What is that one thing that you know you're gonna have to say to yourself? So you get out of that low moment, get back on to doing all the awesomeness that you were supposed to do, and something that you will let us hear, because this is a way for us to learn from you as well. What's that one thing you need to tell yourself? I

Rebecca Knoerr  36:00  

think it's what I already said, this feel the fear and do it anyway, because I've - it's always in the back of my mind, even when I'm about to do this community, for instance, I press the button on Sunday night, okay, open, and before then I was back and forth. Is everything in? Does it look right? Does it? Is it the colors right? Is everything good? Do you know? I just thought you're going to be doing this for three more weeks. Just press the bloody button, woman. So I did, and. and then okay, those all translated

Billy Keels  36:46  

into incoming currency, incoming currency units. There you go. That means all of the hard work. So, I'll just translate that for everybody. That was the community open, and people started paying to come in, which is, which is fantastic. And so I like, you and I could talk for another five hours, but we don't have time to do that, and so what I realized is that the time flies by, and before I realized we're sitting here, and we're talking about, like, life throwing you curve balls, you're performing and over performing in your different sales and sales leadership roles, you are then realizing, like, as life happened for you and the family that you were creating, you realize, you know what, these four months is just kind of like not enough, and so you got to figure out, all right, well, there's something else that you wanted to be able to do. You recognize that it wasn't going back to the big large multinational, but it was something that was going to give you more flexibility over your time, so you really adapted in a new place where you didn't know you didn't have your family around you, your husband didn't have family, you were creating your own family unit, and you realize, you know what, it's time to do something else, and all this time that you kept the secret from many, many people is you got this like budding artist in you, and so you've been able to since create not just in terms of recruiting but also been able to bring to life this art not just for yourself but now you're also combining the leadership, you're combining the love of art and also this love that you have for people and connecting people and you're bringing it all together in your new community, you're even thinking about a podcast, and so listen, everybody wants to know Rebecca, and they're just telling me, Billy, just be quiet and ask her, How can we get in touch with you? How can we find out more about what you've got going on at Silver Dog Recruitment? What you've got going on at Art by Rebecca Kinner, help us out.

Rebecca Knoerr  38:37  

Okay, so firstly, my Instagram is at Art by Rebecca Knut. There we go. My website, just put in Art by Rebecca, and you'll find it. Okay, everything's there. The best thing is to follow me on Instagram. Okay, and there's links to the community, there's links to all of the things that I'm, I'm doing now. The podcast will be there, for instance, etc. I'm also on LinkedIn. Okay, that's more of a recruitment thing. Okay, but that again, it's Rebecca. Okay, and get in touch if there's anybody out there who has a little thought in the back of their mind, how can I make a creative business? Get in

Rebecca Knoerr  39:28  

touch,

Rebecca Knoerr  39:29  

please. Do same for the recruitment. You want me to recruit for you? There you go,

Billy Keels  39:37  

there you go. You things will work well for you when Rebecca is on your team, trust me. So, here's the thing, everyone. When you.. so there's a couple things, because one, in case you were running or swimming or doing whatever, don't worry, we're going to include all of the ways to get in touch with Rebecca in the easiest fashion possible, like literally just have to click the link. In the show notes, so go there first. You'll be able to find out everything she's doing there when you reach out to her on LinkedIn specifically, or Instagram, because she's extremely active over there on the art side of things. Just send a message, send a personalized invitation, let Rebecca know that you've already had, you know, you've already invested time learning more about her story, understanding why you wanted to reach out and make it a personalized invitation, it's going to help the two of you to have a better conversation. You're going to be able to talk about things you already have something in common, and so, yeah, so listen, Rebecca, like I said in the beginning, I've really, really appreciated the conversation. I want to say, thank you for deciding to invest your time with me, with the entire going along family, and I will say from the bottom of my heart, really appreciate you being here and sharing your story. Thank you,

Rebecca Knoerr  40:46  

thank you, thank you, everybody, for listening.

Billy Keels  40:48  

All right, fantastic. All right, yes, going long family. We'll see you soon. I'll be here preparing the next conversation, so go out and make it a great day. Thank you very much.

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