Stop Chasing Leads, Start Building Lighthouses: Heart-Centered Networking with Mike Ashabraner

Creative Entrepreneur: A Podcast For Business Growth and Trending News

In this episode, Mike Ashabraner, known as 'The Redneck Connector,' shares his journey from working in Kentucky tobacco fields to founding the

Key takeaways

• Mike Ashabraner uses his 'Redneck Connector' persona to bridge gaps between different social, political, and economic groups.
• The 'lighthouse' strategy involves creating a presence that attracts the right audience naturally rather than chasing leads through forced sales tactics.

Main topics

• Authentic personal branding
• Relationship-based networking

Notable quotes

Most good people ain't short in talent. They're just solving the wrong problem in the wrong order, standing in the daggone wrong room.

Conclusion

The episode serves as an inspiring guide for entrepreneurs looking to

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Y'all, pull up a chair and grab yourself some sweet tea, because today's guest didn't learn business in some fancy boardroom. He learned it in the Kentucky tobacco fields at the tender age of 12. And he's been connecting dots and connecting people ever since. Today, we have got Mike, the Redneck Connector Asha Brainerd, founder of the Hounds of Business, host of the Redneck Connector podcast and HOB hotline. Here today in the studio and the man who will tell it to you straight. Most good people ain't short in talent. They're just solving the wrong problem in the wrong order, standing in the daggone wrong room. Mike's been through it all. Financial services, entrepreneurship, bankruptcy, burnout, betrayal. And instead of getting bitter, he got better. He took every hard-earned lesson and built a trust. first way of doing business that helps founders, consultants, coaches, and experts quit chasing the fish and start designing the current. He ain't here to sell you another tactic. He is here to help you figure out what actually stuck and how to become the kind of person that is easy to understand, easy to trust, and easy to refer. So if you've been working yourself to the bone and you still feel like you're losing ground, buckle up because Mike's fixing to hand you the cheat code. Kentucky style. Wow. We got Mike Ashebrainer here, Dom. And I'm Speaker 2 (1:32) excited to have our first redneck in the studio, if you will. Mike, man, so pleased to have you here. Go on. What do you think about Julie's accent, first of all? Speaker 3 (1:41) Wow, man. First of all, I'm the first redneck on the show, so that should be on the fridge immediately. I'm going to hang it on my fridge. And number two, what? Bravo on the Apollo Creed style interest in the redneck tone, my friend, Julie. Wow. Yeah. Now I'm all blushy Speaker 1 (1:56) and Speaker 3 (1:56) stuff. Speaker 1 (1:57) Yeah. Speaker 3 (1:58) I'm all blushy if you can't see me, folks. So yeah, I'm a pleasure to be here. Big dog. Big Speaker 1 (2:03) dog. Dom, did he just call you big dog? My big dog. Speaker 2 (2:07) I'll take it. Speaker 1 (2:08) Wow. I love that. Speaker 2 (2:11) Me and Mike have a lot in common here. I got to get into this. So you went into the fields at 12 years old. I went into the fields of my dad's nursery at about 12 years old. And I would be out there. We called it lopping bushes. And we'd be going. It Speaker 1 (2:25) was rows and rows of plants. And on Speaker 2 (2:27) Saturday, I'd be out there with the other high school kids. Or there was a guy that was probably about 70 at the time that taught me how to chew tobacco. We chewed pipe tobacco out in the fields. And we got rednecks, Mike. So what does the redneck? mean to you? Speaker 3 (2:44) Yeah, honestly, I know it gets a bad rep, you know, and misunderstood in the world at large. But so it's a working person. It's just a regular guy, cares about his family, usually has conservative values. People who are just salt of the earth, built the country, continue the country. Manufacturer, they stick to themselves and they're just good-hearted people. They want the best for them and other people around them. You know, if that's the case in the general sense, a lot of people can identify at least with a portion of that. So it's nothing wrong. It's a term of endearment. Like I said, rednecks, we're okay with that. We wear that with a smile, baby. I Speaker 1 (3:18) love that. Oh God, you are enigmatic. You can, if you guys are watching this, he is, he has an enigmatic energy that draws you in immediately, whether you connect with the redneck or not. And by the way, before, before you jumped on here today, I was talking to Dom, your branding of the redneck connector. is brilliant because me being from Chicago, Don being from Pittsburgh, we're city folk and city folk. What do they forget about everybody else? They think it's just Chicago. They think it's just Pittsburgh. 90 % of the population is they're not city folks. So it's brilliant. Speaker 3 (3:59) And yes, it is brilliant because I didn't come up with it. Oh, you didn't? Not to go on and on. No, it was. So this is when I realized that the style that we do, that I've uncovered, that I attracted people to the hounds of business, right? The ecosystem I created by accident all started when essentially I went to Russ Hedges' show. He had a live stream. I believe in reciprocity, right? Russ Speaker 1 (4:22) Hedges? Speaker 3 (4:23) Russ Hedge. Name is just. Oh, you'll meet him soon. Trust me. Oh, Speaker 1 (4:28) yeah. Speaker 3 (4:29) I'm the connector. I cannot. That's what I do. I can't even stop if I tried. I did it today. I'm like, ooh. But this lady, so I showed up to support a friend. I want people to hear that right off the bat because there's a lot of good-hearted people out here who think they have to become something they're not, right? Be a dog. You have to learn how to meow to be successful in marketing. It's absolutely not true. So what I proved to myself, because I thought I was full of crap at the time, guys. So I popped in and I just supported my friend. And this lady, she put it, let me put it this way. I couldn't afford her services, Jillian Dom, if I sold my kidneys on the black market, y'all. Like, she is ultra high level. Luckily, she's country, as I'll get out, right? From her families with moonshiners, right? In Georgia, our ancestry. So she saw me and she said, oh my God, did that say redneck financial coach? And you have to imagine at the time, I had the crustier hat on, the tiny bubble hat. And I was all unshaven, just crusty as crust. And this lady, and I want to say that because People ask me today, Dom and Julie, where do you get the confidence? I didn't have confidence. Listen, y'all, I had courage to look like a jackass and keep going until I showed up and that lady went, you, I got beat up from here to Sunday trying to figure this thing out. So that's the law. That's it. That's the initial message. Then I realized, you know what? Instead of trying to work on my weaknesses and figure all this stuff out that A, I hate and B, don't want to do, how about I go use my talents and skills to help? somebody like her and she she was the catalyst and Speaker 2 (5:57) that has not stopped that's what we built today before we get into this you got to take me back you are not getting out of this that easy how do you get from tobacco field to yeah i joely read it it said bankruptcy how did you get into business from tobacco burnout Speaker 1 (6:14) burnout Speaker 2 (6:15) so come on take us to that probably Speaker 1 (6:17) rock bottom right You were at rock bottom. Speaker 3 (6:20) This close. So fear is a powerful motivator. Let me start at the beginning and try to summarize this. Because you know, country people can talk, just talk, talk. I grew up poor and a child of the 80s. So we didn't have internet, right? We didn't have all this access to information. I had a little library, which explains why I talk about Eastern philosophy way too much. I ran out of stuff to read, right? So here's what happened. I grew up, not the greatest childhood. Not very stable. I did have my grandparents there as a good example. Kept me from extreme poverty. My whole life, you grew up and you did what everybody around you did. That's the simple answer, right? If your parents struggled and worked at a factory, that's what you did. There was no other options, no opportunity, no resource, no YouTube. But here's the problem, and this is where I really speak to people. Because long story short, if I ever had one, I would describe it like whack-a-mole. Right. And people without that trauma in childhood can relate to this. Business people can. Right. So people will say to you, oh, you should write that book, Julie. Right. Things like that. And you go, oh, no, man, I'm not a writer. Blah, blah, blah. Right. So that's what happened. I had zero self-worth, zero confidence. And I felt like I was more grown than raised. Right. Like cabbage. Right. And so. That's what happened. I just kept doing things. I kept trying to make externals. I became a firefighter, right? Why? Because I wanted to be somebody. That was my identity. I was just a mess. And there's a lot of people out there who are running from that mess, right? In one way or the other. So that's really it. One day, I just almost hit that bottom. And I thought, do I really need to hit bottom? Like, I just got sick and tired of being sick and tired. So anybody listening to this, a lot of people think they have business problem or relationship problem. You have an internal problem. So the very first thing for me was in the hardest thing. Honestly, I pulled my head out of the sand and became self-aware. I said, listen, my life sucks and bad things