Dec. 1, 2024

From Wrongful Arrest to Business Success: DJ's Inspiring Journey

Show Notes
Transcript

Send us a text

In this episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we sit down with business leader DJ Van De Venter to explore his journey from digital marketing to healthcare. DJ shares insights into his innovative healthcare platform, Fitness Blueprints Fit, which aims to provide comprehensive health programs beyond traditional workouts. He discusses overcoming personal challenges, such as a wrongful arrest, and how these experiences shaped his career. DJ also reveals strategies for building a successful TikTok following and excelling in high-ticket sales. Tune in to discover DJ's vision for the future of healthcare and his advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
www.fitnessblueprints.fit
Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600

WEBVTT

00:00:00.719 --> 00:00:09.205
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome, um, to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve, cheat.

00:00:18.905 --> 00:00:51.814
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today we're going to be talking to business leader DJ Van De Venter. DJ focuses on scaling business and healthcare access. So we're going to be talking to him about his business leader experience and also about his healthcare platform that he's launched.

00:00:52.005 --> 00:00:54.890
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So, dj, thank you so much for joining me today.

00:00:55.082 --> 00:00:56.994
> Speaker B>Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

00:00:57.155 --> 00:01:00.335
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

00:01:01.354 --> 00:01:58.724
> Speaker B>So I've definitely got a long story. I can go back as far as you would like me to, but as far as I what as what I do right now, my day to day job is running the operations of a doctor's network. So what I do there is I essentially I hired most of the doctors, got them up and running, trained them onto the online platform and they do telehealth visits for a numerous amount of other companies. And that's my day to day job. Outside of that, I'm working on a website and another business that the way I want to do it is it's called Fitness Blueprints Fit. And I want to make it to where it's health programs and online programs that aren't just workouts. You know, I want to have cognitive and mental help and therapy techniques. I want to have physical therapy, body movement. I want to take a different approach to it than your typical online workout program. And that's pretty much my day to day.

00:02:00.625 --> 00:02:08.712
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, well you faced a long, a wrongful arrest and you was able to pivot out of that.

00:02:08.769 --> 00:02:11.913
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So talk about that, that situation.

00:02:12.933 --> 00:02:18.349
> Speaker B>So, uh, that goes all the way back to when I was 18 actually.

00:02:18.461 --> 00:02:38.286
> Speaker B>And the story there, I don't talk about it a ton for obvious reasons. It's not a super common topic that I enjoy talking about necessarily. But, um, When I was 18, I was in high school, I was the lead of the musical at a show that, or I apologize, at a high school that mainly focused on drama and performance.

00:02:38.389 --> 00:02:47.145
> Speaker B>So I was fairly proud of it. And I actually met with the producer for Fox during my senior year to try to get into the acting world and jump into that.

00:02:47.525 --> 00:03:37.594
> Speaker B>And then I turned 18 in April and about two weeks later I was about to graduate high school when someone spread a rumor about me and cop showed up at my door and there went my acting career, there went my drive, ambition. And it obviously took a few months, but after enough struggling to find myself and figure out what was best for life, I was just able to shoot right back up, avoid the rock bottom, and I haven't looked back. I'm very happy with how my life is now and how everything turned out. So I have absolutely no regrets, no hard feelings. I'm just glad I was able to make it out, be here with my family and friends and live life, live the dream.

00:03:39.175 --> 00:03:44.594
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Absolutely. Talk about what led you to the transition from digital marketing to health.

00:03:45.935 --> 00:03:54.687
> Speaker B>So when I was roughly 21, I want to say is when I first got into digital marketing.

00:03:54.871 --> 00:04:08.775
> Speaker B>And the reason I jumped into that is because I knew that marketing applied to pretty much every industry and every business. Um, some kind of marketing is needed. And obviously the world we live in is becoming more and more digital every single day.

00:04:08.895 --> 00:04:19.595
> Speaker B>So I wanted to learn everything I could about digital marketing, how people get the word out there, what different ways there are to start the process of acquiring a customer.

00:04:20.855 --> 00:04:26.355
> Speaker B>So, uh, I went into it with the mindset that I could take that to any other industry.

00:04:27.454 --> 00:04:33.142
> Speaker B>And long story short, I jumped into digital marketing.

00:04:33.278 --> 00:05:31.918
> Speaker B>I got really good at finding people, but not closing deals. I couldn't find the best leads necessarily. I couldn't close easy deals. And I thought I need to acquire the skill of sales to finish, finish what I've started. And so that's what led me to high ticket sales for about a year. I did probably a hundred hours a week of just high ticket sales. It was local in my community. I just drove around doing remodeling sales and learned a, uh, ton throughout that. So because of my education in marketing and in sales, I didn't realize it at first, but I realize it now that those two have compounded into a skillset that a lot of people and a lot of companies want to have. So I was picked up by a medical company and I started selling pharmaceuticals for them. And long story short, that led me to running a doctor's network.

00:05:32.007 --> 00:05:51.055
> Speaker B>And that was about a year ago when I jumped into the health space. And it's just made me realize how much better I should be taking care of myself in a lot of ways and how much better a lot of people on planet earth should be taking care of themselves and do want to, and I want to help people do that as well as help take care of their families and their own health.

00:05:52.954 --> 00:06:01.170
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, you build a, you built a pretty nice size TikTok following within a year. So talk about the strategy that you took to be able to do that.

00:06:01.322 --> 00:06:09.855
> Speaker B>Absolutely. So, uh, that was Pretty early on in my digital marketing, actually, that was one of the first things that I tried to learn and figure out.

00:06:10.595 --> 00:06:19.014
> Speaker B>And the reason I took that approach as well is because I bought a digital marketing course that included a lot of things, a lot of different routes that I could have gone.

00:06:19.980 --> 00:06:28.976
> Speaker B>Um, I'm trying to think that was around 2020, I want to say the end of 2020. So Covid was still pretty big, but TikTok was also new.

00:06:29.161 --> 00:06:43.004
> Speaker B>And I think the combination of COVID keeping people inside, as well as TikTok being a platform, that was blowing up, that allowed a lot of growth on TikTok specifically. So that's why I decided to go that route.

00:06:43.305 --> 00:08:07.875
> Speaker B>And I don't want to sell people a course or tell them, you know, they have to go here to learn everything about the specifics for TikTok. If I'm going to give anyone my advice on how I did it and how they can do it as well, I would say save up 100 videos. It doesn't matter if they're good or not, because at the end of the day, you don't know which ones are good or not until you see them perform. You save up a hundred videos, TikTok videos, you can save them as drafts in the app. And then what I did after I hit a hundred was I post posted three a day. So I had enough for roughly a month. And then I kept creating more. And when I posted three a day for one, I got better at creating them and learning how to use the algorithm in the platform to grow my following and grow my reach. And I would say it was about two weeks into it, roughly, I was, you know, just like anyone else starting any venture, they are curious to know if they're just wasting their time. You know, I had 40 followers on after two weeks, it didn't seem to be going anywhere. And for me, myself, years ago, four or five years ago, I was definitely not an extrovert by any means. I was not one to jump in front of the camera to jump onto TikTok. That just wasn't who I was.

00:08:08.774 --> 00:08:44.254
> Speaker B>So doing that was a challenge. But like I was saying, about two weeks into it, I had 40 followers. I fell asleep on a Saturday night and I woke up Sunday with 1200 followers. And it just kept going after that. And it's really just about the consistency of sticking with it, as well as doing as much as you can to serve the person watching the video more than serving yourself, which I think is an issue to most people that are starting up a Business or a venture like that, they just want to get the best reward for themselves without giving back to the people.

00:08:47.835 --> 00:08:56.534
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, talk about the strategies that you use to make yourself a successful salesperson in several different companies, for sure.

00:08:56.995 --> 00:09:34.534
> Speaker B>So I would say a big part of my success in sales, which it's something I try not to talk a lot about on podcasts or with content. But, um, I actually volunteered as a missionary. So I went around knocking on a lot of doors and getting a lot of rejection that way, um, which rejection is just a part of sales and a part of life in general. So, um, I would say I did that shortly after my wrongful arrest. I was 19, almost 20 when I did that. And I did that for about a year and a half, a year and a few months.

00:09:35.754 --> 00:10:06.634
> Speaker B>And Covid is what sent me home. So I had about a year of digital marketing experience, maybe two years before jumping into sales for the first time. And I think my experience in digital marketing that I learned as well as my experience as a missionary trying to spread the word. Both of those compounded to make me not get discouraged by all the rejections that sales offers and also realize that you have to learn the product.

00:10:07.615 --> 00:10:53.235
> Speaker B>And the other thing I would say is, um, something that I try to apply is the rule of 100 where you don't know if you're good or bad until you do it at least 100 times. You know, so I can do two or three sales calls and do a terrible job and say, okay, this isn't for me, but after you do 10, 20, you know, up to 100, you're probably going to be pretty good. And because I did so many, did so many appointments, trying to improve my sales skills, my people skills, trying to learn the products, trying to learn how to help people the best way, I think that is what led me to not only become the top rep at one company, but a couple different companies doing sales.

00:10:55.495 --> 00:11:00.674
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Talk about some of the challenges that you face growing your business and how you addressed them.

00:11:02.095 --> 00:11:40.571
> Speaker B>So when it comes to that, um, I could approach that a few different ways because I have the digital marketing business that I started a few years ago that I don't really do now. And I have Dr. Telex, which I work for, which I've helped grow as well. And then I have the brand new company that I haven't grown quite yet because it's not even up and ready, but I am actively trying to grow it for when we do launch and start launching some programs. So as far as the skills that I've Used to scale Those businesses for Dr.

00:11:40.602 --> 00:11:49.495
> Speaker B>Telex, the doctor's company I work for, learning how to run ad campaigns, running how to do email outreach, cold calls.

00:11:49.955 --> 00:11:52.695
> Speaker B>All of that combines into.

00:11:55.115 --> 00:13:09.293
> Speaker B>Some people call it business development, some people call it running operations. You know, there's a number of different ways you can approach it, but I would say having the knowledge to not just do a shotgun fire and throw, you know, a few minutes at LinkedIn, a few minutes at emails, a few minutes at social media, rather to hone in on one of those for a few days, maybe a week, until you really hone in on your emails, on your LinkedIn messaging, your outreach, connecting with people, every single route you can go. I would say if you do it that way. For example, with digital marketing, I have over 10,000 followers on TikTok, but I made way more money from digital marketing on Facebook, where I only had 1500 friends or 1500 followers. So it's one of those things where people see 10,000 followers on TikTok and they just assume that's where the success is. But you have to get down to the nitty gritty and see, oh, all of your sales are coming from Facebook, which is, you know, only 1500 people that you're reaching out to instead of 10,000.

00:13:09.428 --> 00:13:25.985
> Speaker B>And I think that's a big part of business is people assume all of the customers come from one spot, when really you have to test out the different platforms and do it strategically so that you can find out which one of those works best for your specific business.

00:13:28.684 --> 00:13:33.105
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>What excites you most about the future of, uh, the healthcare as an industry?

00:13:35.684 --> 00:14:08.995
> Speaker B>Well, like I was saying earlier, the world is just becoming more and more digital, which is why I jumped into digital marketing in the first place. But as far as the future of healthcare goes, something that I'm currently working on for the Doctors Network is we want to. We're still doing some research, but we want to offer primary care through telehealth at least as much as we can. Um, because urgent care is available through telehealth, but primary care is a little bit of a different story.

00:14:09.335 --> 00:14:12.254
> Speaker B>And the reason for that is because there's.

00:14:12.294 --> 00:14:34.880
> Speaker B>Well, there's two reasons, I would say, and one of those is we know a ton of people, at least in our area, and I know a lot of friends and family around the country, that their primary care providers just dropped them or, you know, have retired, have closed their practice, whatever the reason is. Um, and I think a lot of that is because they're transitioning to telehealth.

00:14:34.952 --> 00:14:55.455
> Speaker B>And Covid just made their jobs a little bit inconvenient, I would say, and they kind of had to transition to a, uh, different route for their income. So what I've noticed for sure is I want to provide as much health care as I can.

00:14:55.914 --> 00:15:53.568
> Speaker B>And I'm not saying me specifically because I'm not a doctor, but I want to help providers and practitioners of different kinds provide health care to anyone, anywhere in not just the country, but in the world. Um, we're looking into a project right now to help a nonprofit organization in South Africa potentially, um, because everyone in the world needs healthcare. And going back to my website, fitnessblueprints Fit, I think there's a lot of people out there that they don't work out and they don't jog or, you know, exercise, anything like that, because they have lower back pain or maybe there's something on their mind that they can't get past. And I want to help those people through the Internet and through digital marketing and a website to overcome those obstacles, whether it be lower back pain or whether it be they just need to clear up some things in their head, anything in between.

00:15:53.736 --> 00:16:02.804
> Speaker B>I think the Internet is a way to help people become better and become healthier. And that's the world we're, we're heading into as well.

00:16:04.634 --> 00:16:10.495
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>What advice would you give someone looking to enter into high ticket sales?

00:16:13.330 --> 00:16:16.695
> Speaker B>Hm. Advice I would give.

00:16:19.595 --> 00:16:39.784
> Speaker B>So as far as sales goes, the biggest thing I would say if you are brand new or a beginner in sales, is silence is power.

00:16:42.044 --> 00:16:53.825
> Speaker B>A lot of people that are new to sales, they think they have to talk their way out of every problem or into the sale or they just talk away because they're nervous and it's new to them.

00:16:54.384 --> 00:17:24.555
> Speaker B>Whereas I think the reason I've done so well in sales is because no matter what type of sales it is, whether it's, you know, something affordable, a $20 program or a$100,000 job on their home, I provide all the value that I can help them, um, drop the cost right in front of them and do not say a single word until they do.

00:17:24.634 --> 00:17:35.855
> Speaker B>Because when it comes to negotiating after the price is dropped, the first person who speaks is typically the one who loses the negotiation.

00:17:37.555 --> 00:18:18.891
> Speaker B>And if you can drop a price, especially for high ticket sales, if you can drop the cost of the product or the service and not say a single word and just wait for your prospect or your lead or whatever you want to call them to think about their decision and think about why they do need the product or the service and think about everything that's going through their head before they realize they're going to convince themselves they do need this. And obviously if someone can't afford it, they can't afford it. There's nothing you can do about that.

00:18:18.962 --> 00:18:43.785
> Speaker B>But when it comes to sales, something I want to mention as well, I have a theory that the reason sales is such a huge industry that a lot of people want to get into is because it's one of the few things that you can do where you see the result immediately or you have a glimpse of the result immediately.

00:18:44.125 --> 00:18:52.144
> Speaker B>So when you work out, if you go to the gym and work out, you put in 30 minutes to an hour of resistance training.

00:18:54.605 --> 00:19:08.755
> Speaker B>The way that your muscles feel and the way you look afterwards, you get a glimpse of what you could look like and feel like when you wake up in the morning and you haven't worked out at all.

00:19:09.380 --> 00:19:31.755
> Speaker B>Um, I think the same idea applies to sales specifically, because when you're doing a sales job or a sales call, the closer you get to closing the deal, the more you get the glimpse in your head of, I'm going to make this much commission, I'm going to help this, this client, this potential lead.

00:19:33.565 --> 00:19:59.595
> Speaker B>You see, it's in your eye, the finished product, you know, whatever it is, whether you're providing a service or a product to the customer. And you also see the money going into your pocket. So it's almost a win win when you're doing sales. And I think that's, that's my, my rant on why sales, um, is such a huge industry, I think, and why it is something that's good to go into. If, if you want to learn.

00:20:01.454 --> 00:20:06.355
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that the listeners need to be aware of.

00:20:06.775 --> 00:21:37.164
> Speaker B>Absolutely. So fitness blueprints fit. What I'm working on right now is I partnered up with someone who has years of personal training experience and has physical therapy experience. So we want to make a workout program, but it's more of a body movement program. It helps people recover from lower back pain, from shoulder pain, from soreness, anything like that, in order to get, uh, to the gym and work out afterwards. So we're going to offer workouts as well with that, but we want to mainly focus on the recovery and the body movement and something else, like I've been saying, is something more on the mental health side of it where, um, since I do run Doctors Network, I know quite a few doctors all around the world and I'm thinking about reaching out to Some of the psychologists and having the second program that we launch be more of a cognitive behavioral therapy or maybe just, uh, clearing your head program, something very simple like that, so that people can focus on their focus, they can improve their life, improve their family relationships, as well as feel better throughout their body. That's really what I'm focused on right now. And once those two are done, who knows where Fitness Blueprints will go after that.

00:21:38.664 --> 00:21:43.489
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, throw out that website once more so people can keep up with everything that you're up to.

00:21:43.656 --> 00:22:13.075
> Speaker B>Absolutely. So it's fitnessblueprints fit and I actually have to double check. I do have an IT guy that is helping me get everything set up there. So there might be something on the website, but it might also just be pending and coming soon type of thing. We're hoping to get everything launched around the beginning of the year in 2025. So it's fitness blueprints fits. But if you don't go there, you can always find me on LinkedIn or Twitter to keep up to date with everything as well.

00:22:14.375 --> 00:22:21.914
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

00:22:29.654 --> 00:22:43.696
> Speaker B>I would say something that's been on my mind a lot lately is I've been thinking a lot about how I've gotten to this point in my life for good and bad reasons or just experiences in general.

00:22:43.800 --> 00:24:24.689
> Speaker B>And something I think would be beneficial to your audience is I think, a huge part of why I've grown in the last few years so much and grown my success is because we live in a world where, um, it's almost like a stereotype for two or three year old kids to always ask why? Or always say what does that mean? And I think because sometimes two and three year old kids can be annoying, we just naturally convince them to stop asking and eventually they do. I think the world would be a very different place if everyone kept asking why? And kept asking what does that mean? I think communication would be different among everyone in our environments and our societies. And I think everyone would be more knowledgeable and more educated because we'd all be on the same page if that was the case. Um, and just kind of like an example of that. This has actually caused me some trouble in relationships. Um, just because there's a lot of sayings that people say because they're implying something but really meaning another and something that I've heard in really all my relationships. And probably a lot of people have heard in relationships is I just don't want us to waste each other's time. And I've heard that a handful of times, you know, being said to me, and I always respond with, what does that mean? Um, which normally makes them upset. So maybe I should correct how I approach that.

00:24:24.737 --> 00:24:35.893
> Speaker B>But the reason I say that is because they say I don't want us to waste each other's time, which really means I want this to work out is typically what it what that boils down to.

00:24:35.949 --> 00:25:23.855
> Speaker B>But the world today, we have a lot of sayings that don't necessarily explain what we are trying to communicate to the opposite party. And I think if we just tried to understand what someone is trying to communicate to us rather than immediately assuming what they're saying and run with it, I think the world would be a very different place and people would be happier in their lives and people would have more money in their pockets. And I think that's just one of the few ways that, you know, we can make a little change to really change our life and improve the outcome of it.

00:25:26.384 --> 00:25:59.285
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, ladies and gentlemen, Fitness Blueprints fit. Please be sure to check out the website and everything that DJs up to follow Rate Review Share this episode to as many people as possible. Jump on your favorite podcast app. Follow us Leave us a review Share the show if you have any guest or suggestion topics, Curtis Jackson 1978@att.net is the place to send them. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Dj, thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining us.

00:25:59.744 --> 00:26:02.444
> Speaker B>Absolutely. It was a pleasure to be here.

00:26:03.105 --> 00:26:11.128
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on the Living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

00:26:11.297 --> 00:26:15.681
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>until next time, stay focused on Living the Dream.

00:26:15.752 --> 00:26:15.984
> Speaker B>Dream.