The Alimond Show
Welcome to The Alimond Show --join us as we share our entrepreneurial guests' stories, uncover their secrets to success, and explore the unique paths they've taken to build thriving businesses in our community.
In each episode, our host, Aliyah Dastour, sits down with a diverse group of local business owners, from the corner cafe to the boutique shop, from tech startups to family-run enterprises. We peel back the curtain to reveal the trials, triumphs, and transformational moments that have shaped their entrepreneurial journey.
Discover the passion, perseverance, and innovative thinking that fuels these businesses, as well as the challenges they've overcome along the way. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur seeking inspiration or simply a curious listener interested in the stories behind your favorite local spots, The Alimond Show has something for everyone.
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The Alimond Show
Leonard Richardson - Real Estate Advisor
Ever swapped a law degree for real estate and time management coaching? That's my unexpected journey, and the adventure I'll take you on today. With a foot in two worlds, I balance a booming real estate career alongside a productivity coaching business, using ancient Greek wisdom to manage my time and drive personal fulfilment.
Fasten your seatbelts as we navigate the triad of health, wealth, and relationships, unlocking the power of time management to transform these key areas of life. Uncover the art of reverse engineering long-term goals, and hear how real estate enabled me to become geographically agnostic, building a versatile brand that transcends state lines.
Grab a pen, you'll want to take notes as we delve into the enlightening book "The Social Animal," an exploration of the human journey and life's inevitable changes. Packed with practical tips for daily improvement and insight into the compound effect's power, this episode is a springboard to achieving long-term goals, mastering time management, and carving a fulfilling life. Be ready for an inspiring journey that might just reframe the way you see your own career trajectory.
Learn how the ancient Greek philosophy of Unimonia can shape your approach to time management and personal fulfilment. Get ready for some real, raw talks about the challenges and triumphs of career transition, and how my experiences working at a law firm influenced my decision. This is an episode about discovering purpose, creating balance, and harnessing the power of time.
Sharpen your thinking about health, wealth, and relationships and how managing your time can drastically improve these areas. Reverse engineer your long-term goals and learn the role of time management in making this a reality. Our discussion also takes a turn towards being geographically agnostic and how to create a brand that can be used across multiple states.
Take a deep dive into the influential book "The Social Animal", as I share how it has profoundly explored the human journey and how life changes as time progresses. You'll gain valuable tips for daily improvement and learn about the compound effect's power in achieving long-term goals. This episode is not just a recount of my career journey, but a toolkit for better time management, a blueprint for building a life of fulfilment, and a testament to the power of embracing change.
What? Why Leesburg?
Speaker 2:Um, so I was gonna go to law school in Georgetown, okay, um, and I think I moved here around like August or so, I had a few friends that had graduated. They lived in Leesburg and they said you know, if you're gonna go to Georgetown, why not just come to Leesburg for at least like a few months? We can hang out, you can just kind of move away.
Speaker 1:Um and then you never left.
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah. So I moved down. Um, I'd already taken the LSATs, was prepared to go, and I kept looking into did I want to be an attorney? Was it the right path?
Speaker 1:I could see as an attorney.
Speaker 2:You kind of have that like said that, I mean, I take it as a compliment. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a doctor lawyer. So it's not. It is a compliment, yeah.
Speaker 2:The thing. I wouldn't even mind being a lawyer. The thing was mainly um the loans.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's so expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then part of me was like if I'd go to Georgetown I'd be able to get more loans. That's another three years at least of law school. Then I'd seen documentaries and stories about people who became lawyers, took out the loans and then they graduated and they were making about like 50, 60 K, which is good. Yeah, but if you're an attorney and you've done undergraduate school plus law school.
Speaker 1:You have lots of loan payments.
Speaker 2:You would make Exactly yeah, you have loans, then it's, it's like wait.
Speaker 1:Logistically, this isn't lining up for me, right now, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I was like, is it worth it? And then I kind of at the time when I moved here, I was looking into real estate. Yeah, because in college I'd heard about real estate investing and I went to eventually invest in real estate but knew nothing about it. So my mindset was if I at least become an agent and this was the original mindset it didn't happen nearly as easily, of course, but the mindset was if I become an agent, I can work in the industry, learn more about the industry and eventually make money to invest. Of course. And then, after you become an agent, you realize that it's not a salary based job, it's commission only.
Speaker 1:So it's like opening your own business, exactly, yeah, which is good and bad?
Speaker 2:Which is good and bad? Yeah, exactly yeah. And then I kind of figured well, maybe law school is not the right path, let me try real estate for a bit. And then I ended up joining up with a Weikert in Ashburn. And then at the same time I think about a year later or so a year and a half I was trying to do real estate and taking my sweet time to go through the 60 hours. 60 hours became two years pretty much like a year and a half, two years and then also start working at the law firm, kind of across the street from here.
Speaker 2:Funny enough.
Speaker 1:What did you like about working at the law firm? What did you learn?
Speaker 2:It showed me how I think the daily workflow of attorneys can be, if that makes sense, because I think sometimes, especially before when I was in undergraduate school, there's this idea that lawyers are kind of the way they are on TV and on shows and different dramas and from my experience a lot of what they do is phone calls, paperwork, and that's the majority of the job. Now, I'm not an attorney, so I can't say maybe an attorney will correct me and say, well, actually we do this and if you're a litigator it's not that bad, fair enough. But yeah, in general, from what I saw, it was a lot of paperwork and phone calls.
Speaker 1:That's what you don't want to do, or it's pretty much what you're doing now, right? Yeah, I mean, it's you didn't realize you were going to get right back there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a weird way it kind of ended up doing. You know it's funny. Back when I was in college, part of me wanted to do real estate investing because I didn't want to work that much. And then over the years, as I tried to get into real estate and started my own business with time management, I end up working all day which is not a bad thing.
Speaker 1:I like to work. That wasn't the intention here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like that's not the intention, but it kind of ended up being that way. Yeah, it kind of worked out in a weird way, but it's funny how life turns out.
Speaker 1:How it does that. That's right. And then tell me about this time management piece.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I just started that recently productivity and time management coaching. So one of my, I guess, core philosophies is that I think the thing people want in life is fulfillment and happiness, but I personally believe the way to get to it is through this concept called Unimonia, which is Okay, explain more.
Speaker 2:So Unimonia is kind of this old classic Greek philosophy term, sort of coined unofficially by Socrates, because Socrates never wrote anything but his disciples. His students claimed that he came up with this concept and it's basically the good life. And the good life is formed by having a certain degree of health, a certain degree of wealth and a certain degree of relationships like social interactions. So originally most of my branding and most of my content was all about helping people understand Unimonia and kind of why it's a positive framework and it's a framework I've adopted into my own life and I think it's been helpful. So it's me just kind of sharing the message initially and I used to kind of share that.
Speaker 2:But I kind of found that at the top of Unimonia the thing that people need first is time management, which I also consider self-management in a way, because if you can't manage your day, if you can't manage yourself, then there's you can't really improve your health, you can't really improve your finances, you can't really have better quality relationships, because you might just be too disorganized or your life is too chaotic or too hectic. So that's kind of where the origin of the time management coaching was, and then I kind of tried to, I tried marketing it to see if it's something people would even be interested in, and I found a fair amount of people that were like oh yeah, my life is disheveled, it's in disarray, I can't seem to manage my time, so I've been focusing on that a lot lately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love that because a lot of it is. Number one you've got to be self-aware to know that your life is chaotic and that it's fixable. Yes, and it's hard to convince somebody of that, so if they're not aware, then you probably don't want to be coaching them. But then, secondly, you don't like that whole saying everybody still has the same amount of hours and their day as Beyonce, or yeah, but it's true. It's like once you figure out that you really can achieve anything in life. However, you've got to make sure that you're allotting the right amount of time to the different tasks.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You're like I know more. How do you help people Besides say your life is chaotic and is a mess? Give me, if somebody is watching this and they're like how is this different? They're probably going to go Google the term. But if I were one of your coaching students, what's your process, your step, questions you ask.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the first thing I try to get people to do and this is a big problem I've seen is a lot of people don't have actual long-term goals. I think people kind of and I don't mean this in a bad way they kind of wing life in a sense, and I totally get how that is, but they kind of just do things because they think they should do it or they never really thought about why they're doing it. So the main thing that I've been seeing is you kind of I'll sit there and ask someone what do you want, just out of life in general, and it's funny to see people not really know the answer, which I completely understand.
Speaker 1:You're like, don't judge that, we're gonna change that.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, like I'll give an example, a client of mine. Recently I was talking to her I said you're on this coaching call and this is like her very first coaching call. The first thing we need to define is what are your goals and what do you want out of life? And she says, well, I want more money. It's like, okay, that's cool. Last people want more money, but how much money and why do you want the money? And then it's like I don't know why don't want this much money, why don't?
Speaker 2:want more money, I guess, to pay bills. It's like, okay, sounds like you wanna be at least comfortable. Maybe you're not comfortable, but you wanna be more comfortable. So if you could give a specific amount of money that you'd like to make and I'm not a financial coach, but this is just us kind of reverse engineering what she wants out of life, so we can figure out how she can get there.
Speaker 1:How to get there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like, well, maybe 60K is good. It's like, okay, have you done the math on 60K? And I try to get really deep because to me, once you kind of figure out what the goal is, you can reverse, engineer the goal and then from there you're motivated to plan your day more effectively to get the things you want out of life. That's my logic, at least.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it applies to everything, even like health, for example. I know for me when I was growing up, I had bad health problems, so I was really overweight, really obese, and I had to take kind of the steroid and it really made me gain a lot of weight, but not the weight that bodybuilders want to gain. It was not good weight, for me at least. And the thing that made me at the time at least initially, and this is probably true for a lot of males was you probably want to go on dates. So that's the why you understand why you want to do something. And then you can reverse engineer okay, I want to go on dates. So now I'm motivated to go to the gym, because every time I don't go to the gym that's a bigger opportunity that this girl that I find attractive might pass me up for some other guy that did go to the gym. So that's just one example, but you can apply that same kind of logic to everything.
Speaker 1:Kind of creating a stronger. Why?
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:And then you can find that thing, that goal that they have.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So hey, let's tie that into what you do now. Tell me a little bit about what you're doing now.
Speaker 2:Just in general, or yeah, yeah. So I guess are you asking what my why is or what my long term goals are.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah. So as far as my why, I'm a very weird guy my personal why is to just kind of live a very what's a good word for it? I'm trying to give a very good word for it, I guess eclectic type life. I think that's a good word. Like one of my current goals now, my girlfriend's Brazilian. I'm trying to learn Portuguese, so I've been taking Portuguese classes. In general, I'm going to learn more languages, be in better shape, make more money, of course, but I think that's more on the. Actually, to me, on the bottom of the totem pole of goals, it's just a means to an end and have better quality relationships in general. Meet more people like yourself, network with people. This is a very weird goal that I have and it's going to sound super weird to a lot of people. One of my main long term goals is to have a big house where I can have a very big party with a lot of cool, interesting people.
Speaker 1:I love that. Where's the house going to be?
Speaker 2:though you know what. To be honest, I think Texas might be the move, Just because on Instagram I follow a lot of real estate pages and I always see the prices of houses and I think to myself you know those people you're going to get, though I've been watching it too.
Speaker 1:Have you been watching it too? Yeah, the. Albus in Texas. It's like this huge thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, northern Virginia, like. So I'm most likely going to move to Lynchburg soon, kind of south in Virginia. My girlfriend's there now and we have an apartment down there. We saw some of the houses down there and they're really nice and they're about $200,000, $300,000. And I joke with her and say $200,000, $300,000 in Northern Virginia.
Speaker 1:I don't think. I don't know if they can get you a small condo.
Speaker 2:Exactly Maybe. Maybe it's like, do they exist? I don't know. But yeah, I tell her when I see we see Texas, Texas, for now seems like it could be a good move.
Speaker 1:Do they pull? I think they're going to be like a pull in the background, like a rooftop terrace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be nice Like a nice pool so people can hang out at the pool, nice interior space, open concept. But yeah, that's, to be honest, that's my main goal and I know it sounds weird, but in my head, in order for me to get to that, step me kind of again reverse engineering and breaking down the process. To have a party, to have cool people at this party, means you have to meet cool people. In order for you to meet cool people, you have to have certain social skills or attend more events or do more podcasts or things like this. Meet cool people like yourself, I'll take it, yeah, but meet more interesting people to invite to said party in the future. And then, I don't know, that's the way I kind of justify it. I love that. No, that's good.
Speaker 1:It's good because, like I have a picture I say this anytime I want to do like a cool event I start seeing the picture and then I just have to find the, like you just said, I have to find all the pieces of the puzzle and put it together.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Right, it's not just like a like your student, I want to make more money. It's like no, no, no, Like you said, the money piece is just going to help fuel the actual why, the goal, the lifestyle, the visions, the whatever it is that each person has.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So that's fine, and so you're doing that right now through real estate. How do you do that?
Speaker 2:Real estate end time management coaching is the secondary thing and then with real estate as well. So currently I'm not an active agent kind of like. Most people are, where they might be local and they might show properties or have listings. I'm a referral agent currently. For anyone that's watching that's not super familiar with what a referral agent might do A referral agent pretty much, at least the way it is with Weikert where I'm with the brokerage I'm working with. So in all 50 states anyone can basically say they want to buy a house or list a house or rent, and then I connect with a realtor in that area that specializes in whatever property they want to buy or sell and we work together to help them finish the transaction.
Speaker 2:One of the main reasons why I'm doing that and not kind of the standard agent model of doing listings or showings this is another weird philosophy I have. I think one of my personal kind of business slash marketing philosophies kind of going forward in the future is I think it's helpful to kind of be what I call geographically agnostic and try to find ways to make money, but not in ways that are just bound to your local geography, if that makes sense. And I feel like with real estate you kind of get stuck in your geography, which I've. When I first actually moved to Virginia and got my license because I'm from Pennsylvania, people reached out and they said, oh, I want to buy a house. And I said, oh, I can't help you because I'm only licensed in Virginia and I didn't know much about referring people at the time, so I missed out on a good amount of deals.
Speaker 2:But as time went on, I figured if I know people say, for example and I know you guys work with brand and I think brand is extremely powerful for every business owner to have, if I have a brand and someone in California knows who I am and they want to buy a house, or if someone in New York knows who I am and they want to buy a house, or Texas or Lynch burg, virginia or Florida, why would I, I guess, leave that money on the table, or leave that opportunity on the table, so to speak?
Speaker 1:And not help them.
Speaker 2:And not help them.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And if I'm a referral agent I can more directly help them, which is why I call myself a consultant slash advisor now, because technically I'm not an actual agent the way that most people understand agents An active an active, or is that what it's called?
Speaker 1:No, no, no, because you're still an active agent. Yeah, I don't know what it's called.
Speaker 2:I'm not like an official salesperson, I guess. I guess that'd be the official way to say it yeah, so I don't know if that was a tool. How did you?
Speaker 1:think about doing like a podcast or something?
Speaker 2:I had one in the past. You did that one. I stopped doing it. Why did you stop? It was just it's podcasts for a lot of work to put together in the range.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, they have so much AI now that can help take a lot of that burden off. You can also do. You don't have to do in person, you can do online if you want. I just feel like, as you're curating all your cool people for this big party, it'd be a great way, because then, yeah, you can kind of grow that collective of people and you can invite them on and talk to them. Yeah, I think you'd be good at it, because you're a good conversationalist.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. I appreciate that because I feel like I ramblin' going like a thousand years of action.
Speaker 1:So that's what I consider a good conversationalist. It's just like you can have easy conversations about anything.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that then. Yeah, maybe in the future I might revive it.
Speaker 1:There we go. What was the name of the podcast?
Speaker 2:It used to be called Meeting Virginia.
Speaker 1:Meeting Virginia.
Speaker 2:Meeting Virginia.
Speaker 1:Meeting Virginia, meeting Virginia. Okay, and I tried to be. Because we're moving into Virginia.
Speaker 2:Because I was moving to Virginia and I tried to be clever and it's a train song that I like called Meet Virginia.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, I tried.
Speaker 2:That was me trying to be clever several years ago.
Speaker 1:Well, you could probably spin that off somehow. That's funny. Okay, so I know a little bit about what you're doing going into the future and I know where you're going to be with your big party in Texas with a whole bunch of really cool people. Hopefully I'll be there. We'll see if I make the cut. You're invited, but in terms of like, because you've been here for quite a while, what are you seeing here in Northern Virginia, ladin County that is Nice way to say it that not bothers you, but, like you, wish it could be a little bit different.
Speaker 2:I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is, honestly, home prices. That's the biggest thing that comes to mind, just because I think and of course this is because I've worked with real estate yeah, sure, yeah, I think home prices are a bit high and in my personal belief I know people in the area that watch this might get mad at me sometimes I don't think the price necessarily justifies.
Speaker 1:It doesn't.
Speaker 2:I'm not alone thinking that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Maybe it's because I'm seeing other states and other. I try to look at real estate in other countries too. You just see different things and if I see, for example, a house in Texas that's 400K or 500K and has a pool 3,000 square feet I'm making up this number but 3,000 square feet has like a big backyard. And then I see a property in, say, Leesburg that's 500K and it's a townhouse that's 1,200 square feet, barely a backyard, certainly no pool For seeing to be replaced.
Speaker 1:Appliances need to be replaced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's just.
Speaker 1:Supply and demand, though right Like it's. What it comes down to, unfortunately, is more people want to live here with all the good jobs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah of government.
Speaker 1:Exactly, but it's definitely over price.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's my belief. Something else, and this isI don't think about this that frequently, but it comes up every once and again Walkability. I like to walk. I do like to drive too, but I prefer to walk if I can and even when.
Speaker 2:I remember moving to Northern Virginia. I was so used to Penn State where you walk everywhere and then you come to Northern Virginia and you have to have a car, like when I first came here, I didn't have a car, so it was very difficult to go to the gym. If I had to go to the gym, I used to go to the gym at LA Fitness in the village you can't really walk from. I still live across from the outlet for anyone watching that's familiar with where that is. You can't really walk from the outlet to the village. Yeah, you can take the bus, but it'sthen you have to get on the bus of schedule, so it's not quite the same. Yeah, anything you need if you need groceries, it's difficult to walk because now you're walking across either a highway or several streets to get there. And it's not so much the distance, to me it's just the impracticality of.
Speaker 1:Not safe.
Speaker 2:Of being not safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly, that's probably. I know maybe those don't sound like big things for a lot of people, but I like a bit of walkability in areas that I live. I think it's better for health, but it's also just better for I don't know. I just like it.
Speaker 1:It's nice to be outside and walk and not have to be stuck sitting down, like, if people are going to be spending this much money to live in this area, it's to at least be able to walk if they want to yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:That's my belief at least. Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, that's a good point In terms of your upbringing. Who would you say is the most influential people person in creating this eclectic human being sitting in front of me?
Speaker 2:That is tough. That is tough. I would say both of my parents are pretty influential. I think I'll say they're both influential, but they're influential for different ways and differentfor different reasons. I'll say my dad was more of he was influential in more of a defensive think, long-term perspective. I think my mom was a bit more influential from the more kind of being ambitious perspective and kind of having big goals and allowing yourself to kind of dream big, if that makes sense. I don't know if I would say either of them are more or less influential, but I don't know if this really answers your question. I do think they're influential in just different ways that I guess both impact me, I guess equally, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I hadn't really thought about which one is.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. You don't want to pick a favorite either. Yeah, exactly what are a couple of books, or even just one book that you're like for the entrepreneur, business owner, someone who's trying to grow themselves?
Speaker 2:One book that I always recommend, that I rarely hear people bring up, is the Social Animal.
Speaker 1:Oh, I've never even heard of that.
Speaker 2:I can't recall who wrote it. I read this several times but I read it the first time in college. Basically, the Social Animal. It's two people, or three people, I think it's two people that the author walks you through their life from start to finish. One of them, I think, is a Mexican, Chinese girl. She has immigrant parents. Because she has immigrant parents and because they live kind of in poverty, she's super ambitious and she becomes this big business owner.
Speaker 2:The other one is this guy, I think he's like Irish or something like that. His family's pretty well off and he's born pretty high-Q, pretty athletic, but then as time goes on he ditches the athleticism and favors being a historian works at a museum. They meet up and it's a story about how people progress in life and the different problems they have, the different challenges they have and how things in life change. So as time goes on they meet each other and even though it would seem like she wouldn't be that interested in this historian that works at a museum, he's almost a balance to her and vice versa, because she's super hyper competitive and he's very mellow and he likes to kind of take in the details and it's in the string book. He kind of pairs it with biology and chemistry and how things in your brain change as time goes on. It's a super interesting book. It's hard for me to really get into the.
Speaker 1:I love psychology stuff and I love social, all that stuff, how we interact with people.
Speaker 2:It's very good. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Now it's called the social animal.
Speaker 2:The social animal.
Speaker 1:Yes, Very cool. We haven't seen it in a long time.
Speaker 2:I've never heard anyone ever recommend it. And to me it's one of the I won't say one of the greatest books. That's a bit hyping up too much, but it's a fantastic book that I think everyone should read.
Speaker 1:There we go. Very cool. Now, anything else that you want to add before we wrap up, or piece of advice, or anything on your heart that you want to share, that's a good question. It's a cool, dramatic.
Speaker 2:I guess the one thing that I always, I typically just recommend is I think everyone should try to just improve a little bit every day. I think, just I think people have heard of that idea of the compound effect and I 1000% think it's a very true thing for people to consider this compound effect. You do a little bit each day and over the course of a year you've made sort of monumental gains. But it doesn't seem like it because you're just doing a little bit at a time. So I think that's If I had to leave on a single message I think everyone should try to improve by 1% every single day.
Speaker 1:I love that advice. Thanks so much for being on the show. So glad to have you and thank you for your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me on, I appreciate it.