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Transcript:

[00:00:00] Kathi Burns: Hi there. I'm board certified professional organizer Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you, who wanna take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming.

The Organized Energized Podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at thepodcast.organizedandenergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at Organized Energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now, let's get into the show.

Hi everyone. This is Kathi with Organized and Energize, and I'm so glad that you're here because today I have a super special guest who is a very dear friend of mine, Cory Sanchez. We're going talk about how to tell your story and pass your family stories on for future generations. It's Cory's new passion project. Cory's an entrepreneur, an investor and author, and a breakfast burrito aficionado. He's a big believer in living the life you love, and he runs a very successful business while traveling the world with his wife. Featured in Forbs Magazine in 2017 for helping clients book over 1 million appointments into their sales pipelines. Corey Sanchez is the co-founder of Mojo Global and considered a top number one influencer by LinkedIn. Yeah, he's rocking it, As a founder of Storly.ai, it's an organization that lives in the promise that stories live forever. He's dedicated to helping storytellers capture their stories and hand them down to the next generation. I cannot wait for you to meet Cory, my dear friend, so let's jump into it. Hi everyone. I'm back and I am with my friend Cory Sanchez. I can't wait for you to meet him and hear what he's up to. Hi Cory. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:05] Cory Sanchez: Hello, Kathi. I'm happy to be here. Awesome. I love it. Anytime I can hang out with Kathi, it's always a great time.

[00:02:14] Kathi Burns: You know that, man. And now you're in Nazareth I'm to understand you're far away and getting ready to see the Sea Galilee. That's pretty cool.

[00:02:23] Cory Sanchez: Yeah. Me and Jesse, my wife, and we go to a new country every month. And so this is the month of Israel. So we were in Tel Aviv, we're in Jerusalem last week. And yeah, we just lots to explore here. Which is interesting because the news will tell you that it's like the unsafest place on earth, but so far I, we've had an amazing experience, have felt very safe and connected with a lot of great people, and it's just been a really amazing time to be here during Passover, to be here during Easter and experience everything. If people get a chance, I think the news, it's not like the news says is somewhat.

[00:02:56] Kathi Burns: Exactly. You have to take that with a grain of salt every time. I'm always impressed by you and what you and Jess are doing and. Tell the people like you're seeing a little bit about your crown and how you turned yourself into a digital nomad, world traveler gat about.

[00:03:12] Cory Sanchez: It's oh, so I think it started I wanted to do a study abroad when I was in college. So I convinced my grandma. I was like, mom, grandma, I'm going, I'm going to do the study abroad and I don't have any money, so can you help me out? And so she did, she gave me money for study abroad and it was such a cool thing. And it was a loan, so I paid it back over time. I never went and studied abroad. Instead I ended up getting engaged and I used that to buy a ring, which was the dumbest decision I've made that relationship fizzled and never got the ring back, by the way. So that so I never got to go. And so I think that whole time, so for many years I was just thinking about how I'd love to actually go and travel and I and I did it, and until I met Jessie my wife, and so she's she's amazing. And so whenever I tell her, it's all the places I'd like to go. She would plan it and she'd make it happen. So it was almost like it just happened in the future. Just by us talking about it. It was great. And so we started this tradition and we would go to a new country for New Years. And so we would, we had this tradition, we had this for well over a decade. And so we decided one year, like how do we let's do this longer. And so we decided to do it for two months and try being somewhere else for two months. So we tried it for two months because we wanted to make sure we wouldn't kill each other while on the road. And it worked so well we decided to keep going. So here we are five years later. We're in our 49th country, about to our 50th. And yeah, we're having lots of fun. I always thought we'd stop by now, honestly. Get tired of traveling, but it still keeps getting more fun and we keep getting better at it, I think, so it becomes easier. So that's a little bit about how we started doing the travel thing.

[00:04:48] Kathi Burns: That's pretty amazing. Now I know that you have Mojo Global and you're a LinkedIn aficionado, talk to the gang here a little bit about LinkedIn and then your new passion project. So what happened with, how do you start Mojo anyhow?

[00:05:03] Cory Sanchez: Yeah, so I, I met my business partner, his name's Ira, and he's amazing guy, very incredibly smart and very talented. He's been a business owner at this point for over 50 years, and so when I met him, like he was retired and just a great guy and he just was so knowledgeable about business and just very alive. And so we'd run on the weekends. He was training for half marathons and I'd never run one. So I said, yeah, I'll, I'll run with you just because I wanted to know what he knew. So we'd run on the weekends and we would, he'd tell me all these stories about entrepreneurial success and all the things he is done. And I just really loved it. And I'm not much of a runner, I used to do gymnastics back in the day. That was my sport of choice and we're not really great long distance runners. So I had to get into it and, but it paved the way because one day I'm we're running and I've got a big deal that I'm I'm about to start having conversations with the largest dental company in the Southwest. And at the time I was run doing some marketing campaigns for different companies. And so it was a big deal and I wanted to make sure that I did a good job with the, the sale opportunity. I'm a scientist, that's my background. I come from science and so I not very great at sales. And at this point, and Iris were like really amazing. So I asked him, Hey, can you help me close this deal? And he said, yeah, sure. And so it just worked out so well. We decided, hey, let's let's do, let's see what else we can do together. And that started a really amazing relationship we've been at 14 years now. And yeah it's it's gone by so quickly, but yeah. We've been focusing on LinkedIn and LinkedIn technology and LinkedIn marketing campaigns and we teach people the pursuit and version principles. So how to get people chasing you, how to actually get people booking themselves into your calendar and it's gone extremely well. We've been featured in Forbes and Won Marketer of the Year, so we've got a lot of accolades, but yeah it's It's a really fun deal. And then you asked about what I'm doing my passion project and so yeah.

[00:06:55] Kathi Burns: Hold on one second. Hold on one quick second, because what I wanna say is something that I learned from you Cory, which I think is really profound. We've known each other for quite some time. When you choose, you wanted to choose a business partner who had a long-term relationship. Because if they can have a long-term relationship with their spouse or we, with a loved one particularly a spouse or a partnership, that would make a good partner. And I think that's something that's really interesting for those of you who are listening. If you're looking at investing in a partner or bringing someone into your flock, so to speak of your company, I think that's really sage advice to look at someone who actually knows how to sustain a long-term relationship.

[00:07:38] Cory Sanchez: Yeah, that was, I didn't know it going into it. But it really made sense because one of my first business partner relationships, so once I got out, once I decided to escape from the laboratory essentially in science. And so being on being an entrepreneur, I got into real estate and I had a business partner relationship in real estate that had a terrible falling out. And I look at it back at it now, and it was it makes sense now because he was on his like third divorce wasn't really great relationships and I didn't really know that back then, but I think that was a big thing that is so important. But yeah, you're right. Exactly. And Ira, he's been married to his wife for well over 50 years and and same way. So basically, so he is great at relationships and I think that's just a really big thing. I think you're totally right. Absolutely.

[00:08:23] Kathi Burns: Yeah, that was something that I learned from you vicariously, I just thought it was a great really good advice. Okay, so now we're gonna talk about storytelling because you have a passion project and that's actually why we're here. I want you guys all to know about this passion project that Cory has about telling stories. So let's hear about that. What are you up to now, Cory?

[00:08:43] Cory Sanchez: Yeah, so I started a project called Storly.ai and also story maker clubs. So a little bit more about it. Basically, we're using AI to help people write their story because, I always think that people have stories they want to write and capture, but just nobody has time to do it. It's kinda organizing if you think about it. So our application allows people to write a story in under five minutes. And actually it's using AI and it'll interview you, ask you questions, and then use that material to create a really awesome story. And and then we also created Story Maker Club that pairs along with it, which is basically a group of people that, want to create a habit of writing more. They're either people that have always wanted to write their stories of their life pass on their legacy to their children, something like that. They're authors they wanna write a book or they wanna write more content for their business. Or you just wanna have a developer writing because you love journaling. Something like that. And so Story Maker Club is where you tell you write a story a day, every day for 14 days. And it's a really fun initiative. And we're having a lot of fun with it because, it first started off as the mission is that stories would live forever. That's what we started with, and we didn't know anything else. In fact, we didn't have technology then. We didn't even have an idea for technology. We just knew that, there's a lot of people out there with stories and a lot of them, pass away without being able to, to talk about them. Case in point, actually, this is actually the genesis of the project. My dad, he at the age of 50 contracted cancer and he got plasma cell myeloma and it's a really aggressive type of cancer. And and so he had numerous surgeries. He went through chemo multiple times and but it got, it. Just got into it, metastasized all over his body, got into his spine. It's, it was pretty terrible. And so two years, after two year battle he passed away. And, it's interesting because he worked very hard in his life. He worked for the nuclear power plant and he did 12 hour shifts and then also a three hour commute on top of that. Which is just tremendous. And I think that's why, one of the reasons we can travel over the world and we actually we operate in California time wherever we go because I think my dad early on taught me that time is irrelevant because you can work at any time of the day. He would work night shift, he'd work day shift. But it just it just sparked this thing because he always wanted to retire and write. Write detective novels because he was a really good writer. And so it always left me with what kind of stories would he leave? What kind of stories would he have written? And it just made me very curious about that. And I think there's just a ton of that I, so I think the Storly.ai and the whole project really generating out of that kind of lost. I felt a significant sense of loss by not, by my dad not making it to retirement. He passed away at 52 is quite young. So that ignited this whole project and really it's cool to see because there's a lot of people out there that have a desire to pass on their family's stories and pass 'em on to their children and the next generation and to write about their past and even their future. And to do that and create a community out of it. And to do it really easily because that's the thing, we're so busy these days that we need tools to make it better. So that's about, that's really how it started, Kathi.

[00:12:00] Kathi Burns: Yeah. I didn't realize that. I know that it's been a passion, for you for many years. And I think what's so important about that is that there are ways that we can grab those memories from our client, from our parents now using your platform, because I know when my father was transitioning, when my mother was transitioning, I've lost with him. I was trying to grab some stories from them. And I was writing things down and it was one was so long ago that there wasn't even like really, computer technology. I wasn't sitting in a laptop all the time and I was jotting things down on paper and it would've been incredible to just take, mom's words and have, have it transferred into a story. My father was a great storyteller, and then I did actually, I wonder. Did you take audio of someone and feed it into that, into the, into your AI program and have it come back out like an audio recording?

[00:12:56] Cory Sanchez: Yeah, so that's something that we're working on. Right now it's all text space, but you can do voice command. So meaning that you can actually text and speak into the microphone, and that'll actually translate that into text. And then we'll use that text to write a story. But ultimately there's a bunch of things that we wanna do with it such as make your story even cooler by saying, would you like it to be in the voice of some of your favorite authors, like who are your favorite authors? And, or would you like your story in a haiku or a funny limerick. So there's a lot of things that we can do with stories, so we're just scratching the surface with it. But the whole point is that it gives people the opportunity to write their story, get them out of their head, because that's how stories live forever, is that you first get then out of your head and originally, The first idea we came out with was stories on the blockchain because we're like, okay, if you put something on the blockchain, it's gonna live forever. But we realized pretty early on that if we did that, it was pretty expensive to do that, to post one, like 500 word story to the blockchain. It was gonna cost about $600 US. And so we're like, okay, that's way too expensive. So our goal is to really figure out how can we make sure that stories do live forever. But I think the first part is first getting the stories out of people's heads. And so that way they have 'em and they can share that. And that's the big thing. You can share the stories. You can also send a link to a relative and they could interface with the application without an account. And the story will go into your dashboard which is pretty awesome. So it's a good way for parents that maybe aren't techy to just send them a link and the rest will be handled just through texting or just voice commands.

[00:14:37] Kathi Burns: So they can add to the story?

[00:14:39] Cory Sanchez: Yeah, that's the whole purpose. Isn't that cool? Because Yeah. So many people, have great stories and you don't want to necessarily sit there as scribe and write them, but they, like you wanna just, he help them tell the story. What's the story of great grandma? Or whatever that looks like. So yeah, it's. It's a really cool project and our goal, our hope is that people really have fun with it and they start to, write the tapestry of their lives. I think people are so very unique and they have so many unique stories to them and there's, they, once people pass away, I think they're just lost forever. So our goal is that we can really hold onto these as cherished memories because a lot of people, they're still operating in that little box that they have in the closet. And I think that's cool. But I just, how much better is it if we could have also a digital footprint of all those stories?

[00:15:23] Kathi Burns: Yeah, absolutely. And digital won't go away. Anything else it'll just transform into something better. I think it's a phenomenal project and I can see so many ways I'm already excited about taking my father's words into text and checking it out. I think it'll be really quite interesting, he's a great storyteller and it'll just be even better. So That's fantastic. I know the, now this is something, I don't know if you guys caught this, but Cory lives on Pacific time no matter where he is in the world. Now, how do you manage to do that? Let's talk about that because that's quite an, I think it's quite a feat and I love the fact that you said that your father said time is really irrelevant, which it really is actually. So number one, what time of the day is it right now for you in Tel Aviv?

[00:16:09] Cory Sanchez: So in Nazare it is 10:34 PM. And it's, so it's and I'll be up till probably usually about 4:00 AM maybe 5:00 AM and then I'll sleep. But I, here's the thing, most people think it's oh, how do you do that? And that would just fritz me out. It's actually really easy. Like I did it. We started doing it because I hate jet lag. I just, it takes me like a week to get normal. If I'm trying to switch schedules like that, I just couldn't do it. We decided let's just stay on because we've got businesses in the United States and we've got customers and clients in the United States, so why not just keep that time zone? So we tried it out and it works really well. First of all, we get great sleep, amazing sleep. I get seven hours of sleep. Sometimes eight hours of sleep. Just depends. So I get amazing sleep, really deep sleep as well. And I think it's very easy, but most people never give it the chance. But yeah, that's how we do it. And we do it all over the world. So even if we're in Tokyo, we're in Dubai, New Zealand, we're in Europe. I like Europe's schedule the best, I think, because, usually we'll stay up till 3:00 AM and then we'll go to bed and then we'll wake up. Get seven hours of sleep, eight hours of sleep, and then we have the entire afternoon to do something before we start the workday if it's during the week. And that's great because then we have about six, seven hours of amazing, if you're in, we're in Europe for the summer, that's where we're going. We're gonna be in the south of France and we got six, seven hours to go experience and have fun and play. And then we get into the workday and the sun's going down. So what are, it's nighttime, what are we gonna do anyway? So I think it's great. I think it's a great schedule and if you are looking out there to run a business on the road, I think anybody can do it. I think just give it a chance and really dream big and I don't know. Me and my wife, when we want to start making decisions, we get a bottle of champagne and get a little tipsy and start making decisions. That's how we buy tickets sometimes.

[00:17:58] Kathi Burns: That's why I love you guys, but I love the way that you think out of the box, and I think people haven't really considered that you could stay on the same time zone no matter what. So I, I think that's fantastic for you to think outside of the box. And that's where I think the Storly.ai is so very important because people have always thought, oh, we need to leave a legacy, but they haven't figured out a way to do it. Using the AI technology and whatnot, it's only gonna get better and better. So folks, hold on to your receipts and make sure to check out storly.ai because it's only going get better and it's already pretty cool. I can't wait to jump into it. You just mentioned a little bit, but I'd like to ask everybody, how do you celebrate your successes? Big win. What do you do?

[00:18:40] Cory Sanchez: That's so interesting because I think we're winning all the time. I think one of the things that we do that's unique is me and my wife, we do personal development every quarter, and that's just part of a fabric because it's important for us to grow together and that is such a cool thing. So we're either, going through courses sometimes it'll be books, but a lot of time courses and curriculums and just pick a new subject or new thing that we want to get better at. Masterclass we'll go to events, Tony Robbins events, something like that. And that just makes it so we keep leveling up and we keep getting better and better which is awesome because I don't know about you, but there I have so many goals that I want to accomplish, and I think I, at some point, I got really tired of me not hitting those goals for a long time. And so I didn't figure out how to actually make that happen. And I found out one of the things that I found out is that, I think there were certain things that made me low energy. I had lower energy and it turned out it was because of some of the decisions I was making. For instance I realized that I would drink almost every day. Not every day. Almost, I think it was like every other day or something. I loved Bacardi and Coke. So I would do that and I would sit there and write copy for email and newsletters and different things like that at my local bar called Dukes. And for me that was fun. But what happened is like the next day, the next morning, I was so groggy and it made it, so I didn't really want to run the business. It was so hard. I was un energetic, I was not motivated. I had brain fog all the time. And so now if we drink on the weekends, then we go have fun, because we'll go have a great time. And and then I just, by the start of the week, I'm very clearheaded, ready to go. I love Mondays, Monday, like Crush Mondays. Get a lot done. And so I think for me it's just it's always figuring out that's one of my gifts, I think, is just figuring out how to get everything I want outta life. And for me the only way I could accomplish that was by actually figuring out my energy levels. So that way I was motivated, I had high energy all the time. I try not to do any coffee or any tea or any caffeine at all. And which is, when you're trying to run a business, there's, we get tethered to it. And so for me if you figure those things out it really helps you generate a life that you absolutely love. And then you're always having wins. And so that way you're celebrating all the time.

[00:21:00] Kathi Burns: I can't even imagine you not heading your goals or not being motivated. Cory, I've never seen that. It's been a long time that we've met each other, but you obviously are masterful at it, at keeping going and keeping your goals and hitting those goals. I'm always totally impressed by you. So I have to ask you this because this is an organizing and energizing, energizing podcast. What's your favorite organizing tool or tactic that you use on a daily basis?

[00:21:29] Cory Sanchez: Mine's pretty easy. When, whenever the house I'm in we stay in Airbnb a lot as we travel we're probably one of their best customers. And it's just cool because it never used to exist, right? It's just one of those new technologies that makes it easy to travel because you can just go to any country and just stay in a really amazing house in the middle of the city. Very walkable. But my thing is pretty easy. Whenever it gets dirty or un unclean in the place I'm in, I just leave.

[00:21:56] Kathi Burns: I don't know if that's an organizing tactic, Cory, that's like a cleaning tactic.

[00:22:01] Cory Sanchez: So the thing about it is me and my wife, we travel with two bags 50 pound bags, right? 23 kilograms. And we've got a laptop backpack as well. And that's what we have. And we, and so every time we pack up, we're getting organized again and then moving to the next location. So I think that helps us because we're constantly, and we're constantly like leaving things behind because if we don't have enough space, something's gotta go. And, so we were very selective, so it helps us a, with not packing too much stuff or, it, in some ways it's a downer because you can't buy as many things, but some ways that's a good thing. That's a really good thing as well. So we tend to do the lighter weight keepsakes, which are cool. So I think that's helpful. So if you want to know how to organize your life go to a new country every month, become a minimalist, and then you don't have a lot of things. You just are forced to not have very much stuff.

[00:22:55] Kathi Burns: I absolutely love it and I've watched you two pack and you're totally masters at packing and packing light. I think that's phenomenal advice. I absolutely love just if it's dirty, just move. Hey, I think I'm gonna do that too. Just move out of this house. Okay. One more question. If you had to tell your 18 year old self some piece of advice, what would you tell your younger self?

[00:23:21] Cory Sanchez: Oh man. That's a good one. 18 year old Cory was just starting to realize I was very shy growing up. In high school I was probably one of the shyest kids out of the entire high school. And and we had a graduating class, I think about 900 and something. So it was it was bad. It was like I, if somebody called on me, my heart would like skip outta my chest almost. And in college I really decided, I was like, I didn't really want to be as shy as I was anymore. So what would I tell 18 year old Cory shy self? I just tell him was like, yeah you're gonna make it. You're gonna do it. It's gonna be great. And because I think it's at that point there's so much doubt. So much doubt as you're doing things and especially in the beginning days, right? And it's am I making the right decisions? Am I doing the right things? And so I think it's just always good to have somebody that, that can lift you up. And that's what Jesse, my wife's always done. She's an angel. And so she's constantly, we're constantly building each other up and, practicing gratitude in all kinds of different ways. And I think that's a really special thing. I don't know. So what I tell my 18 year old self, it's just like you're gonna do, you're gonna do great and you're gonna make it. So just be excited for the things that you're going to learn. That's what I would tell him.

[00:24:34] Kathi Burns: And you're such a good spokesperson. I can't even imagine you being shy at one point, but you've obviously overcome that one. Okay. So you still have a valuable free resource that you want to offer up. Let's talk about that a little bit and with the download right below here in the link of the podcast.

[00:24:52] Cory Sanchez: Okay, great. So here's what we've got. We've got a free club, it's Story Maker Club. And it's for people that want to have a practice of writing more, and you wanna tell your stories. So it's for so basically we'll use AI to tell a story every day. And you get a free account of the ai, which is awesome. So go to storey.ai storey, s t o r l y.ai. And you get the link in there for Story Maker Club and also for the ai, you get a free account and yeah, come along with us. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Tell your stories, share your stories, and at least have them so that way you, you can share them with your family and that they may live forever.

[00:25:35] Kathi Burns: Yeah, I think that's fantastic and we all want our stories to live forever. So go ahead and grab that link and start writing. We all wanna write, we just don't do it. So this makes it a very easy thing for us to do for sure. So it's a great gift to the world that you're presenting to us, Cory. Actually, I really appreciate it.

[00:25:52] Cory Sanchez: Yeah, absolutely. No, we're do, it's a labor of love and we're very passionate about it. And also as you're going along, tell us how we could help you make your stories better using the technology. So that's, that. We're very interested in that. And so yeah, get into the community and share your stories and have fun with it. And let us know any ways we can improve the AI.

[00:26:10] Kathi Burns: I love it. I love it. Now, is there anything that I should have asked you that was on your mind that you wanted to talk to the crowd about here? Anything we missed out?

[00:26:21] Cory Sanchez: No, I think I think, at some level there's this interesting thing about what's, there's a lot going on in the globe right now. And a lot in the news and countries being divided more than ever. And just all over the place. I'm in Israel and so that there's ongoing challenges. So it's not just the United States, but literally the countries around the world. I think there's a great video out there that Malcolm Gladwell just put out and he talks about Kind of weak link versus strong link. And it's a great video. And so you could go to YouTube and it's basically about Gen Z. Look up Malcolm Gladwell and Gen Z, and I think he has a really astute point he makes about, weak link societies versus strong link societies. And one of the things he talks about is how do we build a society that's really geared for the future, right? And make sure that people are taken care of. It is my thought that, our first thing is that we, we wanna make sure people are educated, that they have opportunities, and that's after meeting, personal needs and go check out the video. This is just something I just saw recently that I really love and I think it'll give you some great ideas on some ways we can really improve society very quickly. Malcolm Gladwell, he's wrote the word out, wrote the book, Blink and Outliers, and many David Vers Goliath and many other great books. And I just, I think he's a fantastic author and I think he's a very sage soul as well. So anyway, that's my last thought on that.

[00:27:42] Kathi Burns: I agree. I agree. And we'll make sure to put the link down below the podcast as well for everyone so you can go straight to the YouTube video. That is after you check out Storly.ai. Anyhow, thanks Cory. It's so good to connect with you as usual. We don't see enough of each other, but next time you're back this way, of course we will see you. And meanwhile, gang, we'll see you next week. Thank you for joining us. I really appreciate you being here, and I love introducing you to my friend Cory. So have a good day, you guys, and thanks Cory.

[00:28:12] Cory Sanchez: All right. Thanks Kathi. Talk to you soon.

[00:28:14] Kathi Burns: Okay. Bye-Bye.

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you want to hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good rating from you to me. Have a stellar day.