What Drives Ramon Ray to Turn ACTION into UNSTOPPABLE PASSION?
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Welcome to Mick Unplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game-changing conversations. Buckle up. Here's Mick.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Make Unplugged. And today's guest is a powerhouse in the world of small business success, personal branding, and entrepreneurship. Actually, he has been a virtual mentor of mine for many years and hasn't even known it. As the author of The Celebrity CEO, he has empowered entrepreneurs to become the face of their businesses and connect more deeply with their audiences.

Please join me in welcoming the energetic, the insightful, the influential, my mentor, Mr. Ramon Ray. Ramon, how are you doing today, brother?

What is it, brother? I'm blessed and fantastic. It's good to be here. And thank you for that honor. I receive it as so many have been a mentor to me from a distance. Seth Godin, I've been to so many of his events. I've read so many of his books. So I understand the feeling. He knows me, but we don't rock like every week. But yet I follow his journey. And I'm like, you know what? That's somebody I can aspire. So I'm honored to be that way. And thank you for having me here on your show. Appreciate it very much. Right.

Man, I am the honored one. And I truly mean that talking about being a virtual mentor, a mentor from afar, because the things that you talked about particular for me, personal branding changed my life, man. Like I, I, I was a person who I kept everything private, right? Like I do things and it's like, I don't need the world to know what's going on. And then I started reading books.

some of your insights, a lot of your books, following you on social. And it's like, no, Mick, it's okay to give a glimpse into what you're doing. Like your brand isn't a brand unless someone knows about it. Like essentially that's what I got from you, right? Like you can be the best person, but if no one knows, it doesn't matter. You can have the best product, but if no one knows, it doesn't matter. How did you...

Come to that realization, but more importantly, then teach that to other people, because it literally has changed my life. And I'm being completely honest and transparent about that. I'm honored. Well, I think the concept you're referring to, of course, is the celebrity CEO, this concept of and I started this in 2019. I've been doing it for many, many years.

But I started it, which is relatively recently, 2019, because people kept asking, Ramon, we see you on Fox Business. We see you on MSNBC. You were in New York Times. You're in the Wall Street Journal. You're on Inc. You're an entrepreneur. You're quote unquote all over the place. I'm not literally, but for their purview as they're getting small business education material, I show up and I said, you know what? This is being the celebrity CEO of your industry. It's not being Serena Williams or Michael Jordan, Cesar.

Celebrity like global celebrity, President Trump, Vice President Harris, President Biden, take your pick. You know, Elon Musk. Those are uber different. But that means mech Ramon in our industries, in the sphere of people we serve, we have the opportunity to be well known or not. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. And again, it was life changing for me. And it's something that literally starting in like 2020, end of 2020, beginning of 21, I started saying, okay, I have to build this brand now. Right. And a lot of people think, oh, just do some social posts and tag some people and then boom, you're there. But what you taught me is it's a lot of strategy behind everything.

everything that you do. And so I'd love for you to give the listeners and viewers some insight behind some of that strategy that you've helped me develop. Sure, sure. I mean, I think there's three core things. And again, I can talk about this for 67 hours. So you let me know how much time we have. But

The three things I think best people remember is one, the aspect of attraction. What are you doing to get people attracted to your brand or said a better way? Actually, key strategies. What are you doing to get people to have attention, to just know who you are and that you have a solution for them? Because most people just don't know there's a solution out there for them. So how can you get the attention of the right fit audience that can that you can serve? That's one.

as you get that attention, we can talk about that more, build it up, get the attention. Hey, I'm here. I can help you, help you, help you. They're not a customer, the attention. Then what can you do to start to build trust? And for me, I think trust is best defined. Mick is an education. How can I be on a program like this? Mick Unplugged. How can I be on your webinar, on your Zoom, on your email list, follow you on social? Any way I can just to build trust because trust is built over time, over and over and over and over and over. And after you build that trust,

By God's grace, people say, you know what? I trust this guy. Let me vote with my money and buy something from them. Clearly don't happen all the time, but we'd all be good trillionaires. But my point being is that you build up that attention of say 10,000 people, 100,000 people, 500 people build the trust then over time of half of them. So we're talking about 200 people, 100 people over time because the flywheel keeps going. Jim Collins book flywheel. And then

10%, 20% maybe buy from you and you rinse and repeat that, you got a nice size business going. You can easily build a $500,000 million business just on that. Now to get over that level, of course, as my mentor Lamar Tyler and Damon John would say, that's what the strategy is, hiring the right team and more. But for a smaller business,

You focus on attention, building trust and having that trust generate the sales. You can do that all day long by this concept of celebrity CEO. And one of the thing I want to add as well, make is that just be different. That's all the thing I want to add. I thank you for your time on that, but just all that's important, but choose how you show up in different. It doesn't mean you have to be as gregarious as Ramon and be funny and all that. No, but there's gotta be something that makes you pop and stand out. So I want to add that as well. No, I love that. And another thing that you taught me too is,

was you also have to have something that people would want to buy. It's one thing to be out there and to be silly and funny or even be serious and educational. But if you don't have something that people would want to buy or purchase, it's

then it's also not going to work in your favor. That's right. Because that goes back to the aspect of being hidden, right? The journey you went through. Yeah. You can do referrals, word of mouth, kind of on the DL. Hey, if you want to see me, just call me, just meet me in the back of the room. You can do it that way. But if you want to grow some degree, yeah,

Hey, listen, you said your pool is dirty all the time. My name is Jenny. We have some pool cleaning services you may want to check out. I'm giving any example. It doesn't have to be in the industry, you know, speaker, coach. It works for anyone. You know, you said your child is misbehaving in school. My name is Robert. And you know what? We can help your child possibly overcome that. So whatever it is, or in our case, we're speakers, coaches, consultants, thought leaders. So yeah, getting the word out. So when people are ready, because you built the attention and trust,

And when they're ready, they're going to buy from you. Love that, man. Love that. So, you know, I'll make them plug. We talk a lot about your because, right? That thing that's deeper than your why, that really is your purpose and your reason. So if we were to talk about Ramon, and I know a lot of times that changes over time, right? Like as we mature in businesses, we mature as individuals are because sometimes changes. If we were to go back to the beginning, when Ramon said, you know what?

I'm that guy and I want to help others. And I say help because I know who you are as a human. Right. It was never about Ramon. It was about let me help others. What was Ramon's early because? What was that centerpiece that said this is what I'm going to do?

Well, let me answer it in two ways. And if you don't mind, with permission, I'd love to start with the because now. Because now is different than it was at the beginning. And I think there's two sides. We all need to make a living. We all need to provide for our families. So I do want to say that part of my because, I must say, Mick, is and has been living.

I need to provide for me and my wife. I want to provide for my kids who are adults and out of the house. I want to build generational wealth. I want to build my community. I want to have others. So my why today, maybe because of maturity, I'm a bit older. I'm 52 this year. Maybe because of things like that, I'm seeing it. Yes, I need to eat. And that will always drive me.

But also as I get older, I want to help others. I want to help my aunt, my cousins. I want to give them things that they're trying to do. Not that they can't do it, but if I have more, if I have 20 pieces of fish and they have one, I can afford to give them five. So I think my because, Mick,

And that's why I have a fastidious, I think, a fire in me every time I wake up. Yes, got to take care of myself today. Whatever reason that's in me, I always will have that. I'm like a lion. I always want to hunt, you know? But really, then it goes back to, I think, really generational wealth. Really, how do I provide? How do I help my church? How do I help us build a church in Dominican Republic?

So I think that's the key of where I'm going. And go back to the beginning, really, I got fired from the United Nations. And it really was a simple aspect, not to disappoint people, but I had to survive. So that was my because there was a very simple reason I had to survive. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to go back to that. Right. So you're with the United Nations. And for those that don't know Ramon's background, like we're going to get into that, too. But I want to start with you got fired from the United Nations. Right. Mm hmm.

Which at that point was like a big deal in your life, right? Like part of that identity for you was that.

You could have given up. You could have blamed. You could have made excuses. But I know Ramon Ray, that ain't happening, right? So what was that moment and what did Ramon do at that point that says, you know what? I'm going to keep going. I'm resilient. Yeah. So to give the context, I had a job at the United Nations right out of high school, kind of before college. I don't remember the exact time frame, but maybe when I was 19 or so years old. So they've told me I was one of the youngest hires at the United Nations, in fact, at that time.

So I was there and I worked there for a number of years, Mick, over 10 years. And while there, I got the journey of technology, CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL. The early 90s would have been. The Netscape Mozilla browser was just being birthed and modems, you know, with the noise. And, you know, you know that, you know, was there. So give people a sense. Early 90s is where I was. It wasn't the blogging and live streaming we have today. You know, camcorders were the thing, you know.

So that was there. And then bottom line is I had permission to do some entrepreneurial, what they call side job hustles. I had permission from my boss. Due to some issues, there was an employee who was made a stink about it. He didn't like it. That permission was revoked.

But I had a bite of the apple. I had a taste of entrepreneurship and I didn't stop it. Eventually, my contract was not renewed or fired. So that's the context on how that happened and when that happened. I won't forget the day. In fact, I think I have the DHL envelope a few feet from me in my garage that said, Ramon, your contract's not renewed. It was maybe a Wednesday, as I recall, and you're going to be gone on Friday. That's it. Sayonara.

So thankfully I had some side hustles and I had a little bit of revenue in there, but my wife would tell me every month, Ramon,

5,000 less, 5,000 less. At the time, our family income, household income, 5,000 less. And so to your point, like I know you would do it, Mick, as well, I had to make it work. And that's where this journey of me ramping up my speaking, being a paid speaker, which I'm now blessed to speak all over the world, in-demand motivational keynote speaker, working with some of the largest brands in the world, Dell, Microsoft, VeriSign, AT&T. I could go on working with them on a variety of amazing campaigns.

And then building niche publications. Started smallbiztechnology.com, sold it. Started smarthustle.com, sold it. Started the Small Business Summit, sold it. And today I'm the publisher of zoneofgenius.com. And as you know, Mick's celebrity CEO. We help entrepreneurs build their personal brands. Amazing, amazing, amazing. And I know, again, through your work, you believe in the power of mentorship, right? And I look at it like...

When you get to a certain stage, a certain level, and it's time to level up, there's a mentor. There's wisdom that you seek out. And, you know, like my mentors, Les Brown, Damon John, Robert Irvine, Ramon Ray, they all taught me different things to continuously have me level up. And the power of mentorship is so strong that...

I think everyone needs four or five mentors in their life, but I would love to hear from Ramon Ray. Like what's been the power of mentorship for you personally? And then my follow-up question will be, how does that reside in you to then give that back out to others to where you now are that mentor for

I love that question, Mick. No, thank you for asking that. Mentorship is everything. A few mentors in my life, some, I mentioned one, Seth Godin. I know him. I can text him and he'll get back to me and et cetera. We're friends, you know, professional friends as it were. So he's a mentor. He'd been a mentor of mine for years. He was one of the first speakers at one of my events in 2006, 2007, something like that, way back in the day and has done it a few times for me. So that's one, Seth Godin. Number two, Steve Harvey. I've never met him.

Met his daughter, Brandy Harvey, but Steve Harvey's a mentor of mine. Just his swag, how he shows up, how he talks. He's talent and has a media company. Kevin Hart as well. Those are two of my distant mentors who I don't know. Then others I'll just shout out when I talk about mentorship is Lamar Tyler. I'm in his program. I invest in his program. I'm his client, but Lamar Tyler is a mentor of mine. I think of Brian Hess in Pittsburgh. I think of Scott Sein with it. I think of Glenn Lundy. So those are a few people who I look up to. And about mentorship.

Here's the thing about mentorship. It's different than having a client. It's different than necessarily paying for a coach or consultant because, Mick, I could pay you $5,000 a month. You could coach me and leave. We do whiteboard session in Panera or something, right? That's good. It's important. People should invest in that. But a mentor is kind of like, yo, Mick, I know it's 3 a.m. My friend told me that my business is not going to survive. It's going to fail and I should stop. What do you say, Mick?

Mick knows me a bit and he may encourage me and say, brother, that's okay. They ignorant, ignorant, intensely, not ignorant, ignorant, or he may say, dude, you've had these calls with me for the last 10 years and it's not going nowhere.

maybe you should get a day. You gotta be a mentor has that feeling. They can just talk. There's nothing in it for them. So I think that's the power of mentorship. Often someone you trust and who trusts you, someone who knows you a bit personally would be great. And somebody who has a vested interest in your success, my buddy, Yakov Yurinsky, that's another name I got to shout out, Yakov Yurinsky. He would teach me and I'd crown his shoulders when I would leave the United Nations for lunch break and he'd show me how businesses were built. So that's the power of mentorship.

And then me being mentored. Absolutely, Mick. I have a number of young men who I call regularly, who they call me from time to time. My son is my number one mentee.

I don't, I wouldn't, yeah, and I wouldn't, it's not like I walk around, I'm his mentor. No, you can't, not like that. But I think of my son who we talk several times a day and we sharpen each other. I think of my boy, Josh Johnson, a tap dancer in New York City. I've known him since he was a little kid, you know? I think of George Estrada, has a construction company in east side of Long Island, you know? So these are just a few of the names and people

who I vibe with on a regular basis. So was that helpful? Or could I go too far, too long? You never can go too long, Ramon. Like you can never go too long. And one of the things I want to unpack and unplug that you said was, you know, they know you. They challenge you, right? And one of the things that one of my accountability partners, Carl Esther Crumpler, always talks about is ironing sharpening irons.

And a lot of times when people hear and talk about iron sharpening iron, what they're really wanting to hear or feel is iron polishing iron, right? Let me pat Ramon on his back and tell him all the good things that he's doing and just give him some encouragement. No, when Ramon is talking about the mentors and ironing, sharpening iron, there's friction. When you sharpen something, there's heat, right? There's sparks. And

And to me, that's what mentorship is about. And I know that that's what you do as well, too. Even when you're coaching, right? When Ramon is speaking, he's not there to just pat you on the back and tell you what's good. No, Ramon is going to get deep inside of you and challenge you. It's going to be some friction. There should be some internal friction. And that's what I probably appreciate the most out of you because that's what you did for me and you didn't even know was you challenged me. You made me look inside and really question, right? Like, hey, Mick.

You really want to go there? Is it really burning for you? Because if not, it's okay. Stay there. It's okay. You can make good money. Nobody knows who you are. You've got the word of mouth referrals. But Mick, there's this other side and this other side, right? Where there's even more money, right? Like you can feed more than just yourself and your wife or your kids, right? Like there's communities that you can get involved in. But Mick. A little friction.

And that's what, again, probably one of the things I've appreciated most is that you challenge. Yes. Yes. No, I appreciate that so much. And it's funny that me and my son argue and uplift the most of anybody in my life besides my wife, me and him. I mean, dad, you are not focused. He may not sit exactly like that, but that's what I'm hearing. And I'm like, no, I'm not. Then a few days later, son, you're right. I need to focus more. Yeah.

or him. I remember my guy, Yakov Yurinsky, with the same age, but he'd done a few different things to me and bigger things to me in life. And I remember one day, and this is more metaphorically, but like, Yakov, I did this deal, I got $120,000. And his Argentinian-Israeli accent, Ramon, curious, why didn't you make $250,000? Dude, I just

In a good way, he just challenged. So you need these people in your life to hug you and to whoop you both at the same in a good way. You know, they're definitely not whooping, but you get more so encouraging you to do the best you can do. Yes, sir. And going back to the celebrity CEO for a moment, like.

It's one of those books that literally every entrepreneur should have. So first and foremost, you need that. Whether you're a solopreneur or you're leading a Fortune 100 company, it's there for you. And I'm going to paraphrase a caption of the book. And these are the words of Mick, not Ramon, because he says it much better, much more eloquently than I could. But I'm going to break it down. One of the things that stuck with me, Ramon,

is essentially you were saying when it talks to branding and how to build, keep the simple things simple. Again, those are my words, right? I'd love for you to elaborate for, especially for the person that's just getting started or the business that maybe they're doing a makeover of their brand or their identity. Keep the simple things simple, man. Can you break that down for me? Yeah. When I look at what me and Mick are doing right now, we're having this discussion with you. I'm talking to you. You, I have a discussion with you. Now, I don't know Mick's setup.

But I don't think he's an NBC Fox business with a thousand different cameras. But we look pretty darn good, people. He looks like a chocolate perfection right there. That lighting in his shirt and all this. Me, I got my little lights going on. I could show them to you, but then I'll mess up. So my point is, it's simple. And just the little I can imagine what he's doing right now. I doubt I'm wrong, Mick, but let me know if I am. Simple things what? We got to have good audio, got to have good lighting.

Gotta show up proper. You know, gotta clean up a little bit. That's it. Go for it. Some people, Mick, they're not doing it because, oh, it's not right. It don't look like Jimmy Kimmel. It don't look like Tyler Perry's studio. People...

So that's the aspect of simple or or your first podcast. Maybe a dog bark back there. You're going to delete the whole thing. Maybe your baby cried. We all been babies. So that's just some I could go on. But that's just some concepts of as Seth Godin even says, stop waiting for perfection. It's never going to come.

Come. Amen. Stop waiting. Amen. Amen. And then again, this is how Mick paraphrases Ramone. He says it much eloquently than I do. Another thing, and I'm going to say it my way, don't major in minors. And you almost just hit it with the, if you wait for perfection, it's never going to happen. But don't major in minors. And Ramone, the biggest thing that I had to step away from

literally was that because you told me in the book, Mick, you're a CEO, act like it. Don't major in minors, bro. That's right. And people do that. I mean, again, you want, you don't, it's like the airlines. As long, you know, the brakes got to work and we got to have oxygen tanks and whatever else in the plane. But, you know,

know, let's let the plane fly. So some people can spend all day long trying to perfect the blue color of hue. This ain't Louis Vuitton, people. You know, especially at a certain level. Make the sale. You can apologize instead of asking for permission your whole life. Because if you wait and ask for permission every step you go, Mick, you're never going to move. You're going to be on step one and I'll be on step seven and you'll think I'm all that in a bag of chips. Well, we are, Mick. You and I are. But still, you get the point. You just didn't take a step.

That's great. So you give a lot of insights, right? What are some insights that you've received? And for those that are watching or listening, Ramones interviewed all of the sharks, right? Like everybody on shark tanks, interview them all. Interview presidents have been interviewed by presidents, interviewed a lot of big leaders have been interviewed by a lot of big leaders. What are some insights that Ramones received during this process?

Yeah, I think some we've just said one is definitely the aspect of don't wait for perfection. That's why it's the biggest one. Don't wait for protection, perfection, rather. It's never going to come. I think number two, what do you really want to do? And I've suffered with that lack of confusion over who I am, what I want to do. Is it do I love kids?

Therefore, I should work at a child daycare or do I want to be an entrepreneur, a business owner and run a daycare center? And I say that because I just had my friend Brandy Wood. She has an amazing event called Child Care Millionaires. So those who are looking for Child Care Millionaire Academy, I think Association rather CMA Child Care Millionaire Association. Point being is that what do you really love to do? Is it that you just love being in nature chopping wood all day?

Or do you want to be a business owner of the forest society of America? I'm making stuff up, Mick, just to let people know this works in everything. So I think that's number two. What do you really want to do? What's your real passion? I think the number three, the best advice is understand that we only live once, Mick.

We only live once. One of my buddies, Scott Simons, had a segment where he said it must be nice. And in the segment, it must be nice. He was saying, don't throw stones at me because I've decided in this season to work hard. I may miss a few games. I may miss a few. This is my family. But I'm building towards. And so when you look at me and all the nice things I have, don't throw rocks at me in the same way.

I won't throw rocks at you because every single one of your children's games you're at, you have date night every Thursday from four to midnight without stop. You're there to visit your grandmama every day. That's great for you. I'm not going to throw stones on you because you're doing that and I can't or I decided not to. See what I mean? So-

Don't don't. So I could go on with those tips, but I think don't throw stones at other people. Everybody has their own life. There are some things, Mick, that I think are bad. You know, if Mick saw me doing something nefarious, cheating on my tax or something, something wicked, there's no call me out. But most things in life, me and Mick can make a dollar a thousand different ways. He wants to have a franchise. I don't. I want to, you know, scale to 10 locations. Mick wants to have a donut shop in a truck.

God bless America. Take your pick, people. Right. Right. Love it. So earlier you talked about, you know, for the entrepreneur and how to, you know, build your email list, potentially build communities. I want to go to the community building aspect of it because I think this is a big miss for a lot of people. Again, I don't care if you're just starting out, if you're a solopreneur or you have a big brand, big company.

Building communities of like-minded people or people that are aspiring to be like this like-minded community is critically important, and you've nailed that. So what's some advice that you have for people about, number one, the power community, but then how to get started?

Yeah, I think decide now what kind of community you want, because thank you, Mick, for that. I do have a community, but it's in very different ways. The community could just be a LinkedIn group. So if that's the kind of community you want to build community and build your brand in it to be able to see how you can serve them, as my friend Shea Brown says, sales is service. And that's part of that service is you can be compensated for that. People will pay you for the service. That's one.

Part of the brand building could be like my friend Lamar Tyler has, where he has a paid community of people. Thousands pay him every month to be in his community. Both are communities, but you can build community different ways. But I think the best way when I think of community, again, quoting from my mentor, right? We quote our mentors, Seth Godin. It's about knowing that people like us do things like this. It's about raising the flag. Seth Godin says that raising the flag, saying, I'm here. I like to have almonds and cashews with raisins.

I don't know. And broccoli sticks. All who like that, come on down. You get what I'm getting at there is that it's deciding I do this. I show up this way. I'm willing to take the first step towards leadership, towards taking action. Those who want to join me, the door's open. Come on and get on the bus.

So I think that's what that aspect of community is like. And again, to underline that community can go different ways to different people, their tools and apps for community school and Facebook and mighty networks and so many more, or community can just be the people at your church. You and a group of guys just vacuum after church on Sundays. That's community right there. Yeah, that's amazing, brother. So I'm going to do something for the viewers and listeners here.

The first 10 people, and I don't care the platform, I've got counters on all of them. The first 10 people that messaged me, the celebrity CEO, I'm gifting them a book. Wow. Gifting them the book. Thank you, Mick. And I'll show you all this which you'll receive. You'll receive this from Mick. Exactly. You're going to get that because it literally changed my life. For those that are listening and watching, the biggest reason that I'm here is because of that book.

The biggest reason that I'm here and I'm saying this on the record, so you can't hear me say something else because it is on the record right now. The biggest reason that I'm here is because of the celebrity CEO. I don't care where you're listening or watching. If this is a clip, the reason I'm here.

is the celebrity CEO. And I want to give that to someone. So the first 10 people, you're getting it. I promise you that's my, my 2025 gift to you. And here's the deal. And Ramona is going to tell you it's a playbook, but you got to put the action behind it, right? If you don't implement, it's just words on the paper, but I promise you those words are so powerful and you've got the blueprint. And if you take action,

This is what you get. Mick, what an honor to be part of your life. I am humbled and I've never heard such a kudos. I'll just receive it. I'll receive this gift quite like I have today.

And thank you, Mick, for that. And thank you for being a light to so many others, Mick, that I bet you don't know who you're serving. And isn't it the power of being humans in the world? When life goes around beautifully, there's a few knuckleheads who muck up the gears, but if people like me and Mick and others don't,

Can make the world a better place, Mick? Thank you. And if you receive that book, Celebrity Seal from Mick, make sure you tell Mick thank you. Tell people to check out Mick Unplugged and make sure you tag him on your socials and tag me too and we'll all uplift Mick on Mick Unplugged. I love that. And speaking of your socials, where can people find and follow? I'm going to say the good doctor, Dr. Ramal Ray. I'll take that.

Yeah. Two places I recommend people can go to RamonRay.com, RamonRay.com, R-A-M-O-N-R-A-Y, and or check me out at ZoneOfGenius.com, ZoneOfGenius.com. Ladies and gentlemen, he has been Ramon Ray, as he always is. Ramon, brother, again, from the bottom of my soul, thank you for everything that you mean to me and to millions of other people out there. This has truly been an honor, brother.

Mick, I received that. Thank you. You got it. And to all the viewers and listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it. Thank you for tuning in to Mick Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness. Until next time, stay unstoppable.