AI Automation for Real Estate Investors: Scale Your Business & Buy Back Your Time | Kevin & Marcie Thompson

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (00:00)
So when you start making a certain amount of money after a while, the money it ain’t about the money. It’s about the time you get back to be with your friends, your family, and yourself. So we’re trying to help people because think about it. When you ever hear a pitch about a get-rich-quick scheme, they all follow the same script: to go travel the world, buy exotic cars, and take fancy vacations, and live the life of your dreams. Okay. But at the same time, how do you get to that point?

Quentin Edmonds (01:58)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast.

I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I am trying to hold my enthusiasm. Y’all know if you watch me, I say I’m excited every podcast, and it’s the truth. But I’m definitely excited about this conversation. And y’all know I get excited when I can get two for one. And listen, they started in the trenches. They’ve learned a lot from their mentors, they have a ton of experience.

And I love when we get a chance to glean experience from others. Listen, these are fellow believers. So I’m gonna say it like this. Scripture says we overcome by each other’s testimony. We overcome by the testimony, by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. This is a chance for them to share their experience so that you can actually, literally overcome some things that’s probably going on within your business world. I want to introduce you all to Kevin and Marcie Thompson.

How y’all doing today?

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (02:49)
We’re doing great. Great, that was like…

Quentin Edmonds (02:52)
But I don’t…

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (02:54)
…fire.

Quentin Edmonds (02:56)
So because we can talk like this, that’s Spirit-led. Because I was smiling. I’m like, all right, what should I say? So I can talk, I can talk to y’all like that. So absolutely.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (03:05)
Bring it.

Quentin Edmonds (03:07)
But listen, again, so glad you’re here. And because we got two for the price of one, I want to dive right in, right? So this is how I’m gonna ask this. I want you guys to tell us what’s your main focus these days.

If you don’t mind, give us a little origin story, kind of how you got settled in the space that you’re in now. And then if you don’t mind, tell them what part of the world you’re in. People love to know where people are. And so listen, y’all have the floor.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (03:29)
All right. Well, where do you want me to go first? Sure, go ahead. We’re in the fine area in Dallas, Texas. We love Dallas. And we’d like to say bigger and better down here, but there are some areas that we visited that are… We’re a Texas crowd.

Quentin Edmonds (03:41)
Yeah, absolutely.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (03:43)
Not to say that we didn’t read a ton of textbooks, because we have read some. Yeah, yeah. But from the entrepreneurship side, we did not read all of it, right? We just jumped in and did it. So we’ve been entrepreneurs now for seventeen years together. We’ve had eleven different unique businesses in all different niches. And I think for me, the cool part isn’t necessarily all the wins, but it’s been all the failures. Right. Right. Because the secret to successful entrepreneurship is in the failing. It’s in understanding what you did wrong and learning from it. And then getting up, dusting yourself off…

Quentin Edmonds (04:21)
Come on.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (04:22)
…and digging into the batter’s box, right? Get into it. We’re… First of all, we’re very grateful to be here with your group, and we thank you for this time. We really thank you for your time, and we’re grateful and humbled that you have us on your podcast. For that, thank you. And to that, yeah, the whole entrepreneurship, a lot of it is you gotta have a lot of tenacity. You really have to have self-motivation, self-discipline, and tenacity because there’s nobody… There’s not a boss standing there telling you what to do. And on the flip side, there’s no check at the end of the week waiting for you just because you’re occupying a seat and keeping it warm. So…

With that comes a whole different challenge. So we just love the whole entrepreneurship. I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life. Marcie’s been in corporate America. We’ve been together 17 years. We got married in 2010. We’ve been together since 2009. We’ve had… I started selling nail files door-to-door when I was seven years old in Southern California. Yeah.

And I didn’t have to… Back in the sixties, you didn’t have to worry about anybody taking your kids. So I could walk door-to-door. I walked blocks away. And then I started painting numbers on curbs when I was ten years old. And then I did little things, I did yard work, and I did this, and I side-hustled. I’ve always had a side hustle. So you’ve done like anything from the Amazon selling machine to real estate to private money lending to…

…up to now, right? Of Stop Losing Leads HQ and really nurturing people’s leads, not just our own, because we created the system for Stop Losing Leads HQ. Because when we were in real estate, the number one thing that you want to do is follow up with people. Right. And what people don’t do is follow up with people. They think that they need to go buy another list of leads. So therefore, that just kind of blossomed into a business on our end. And then on top of that, the feedback that we kept getting is, “Well, I want a mastermind like that.” And I was like, “Well, okay.” So we decided we would… My partner out in Phoenix with us is Jordana Parisi, who is amazing. She’s awesome. And the three of us get to speak to 80-plus entrepreneurs every week on Thursday, and we get to pour into them as much as they pour into us. And we just learn along, and then we bring all the different AI tools we’re learning each time, and you learn all the different new ways to scale a business and all the fun.

I think that in and of itself is just getting dirty, get in the room, have fun with it, and bring the friction. And we’re, yeah, we tell them, bring your problems, because we’re now with… Not only with the lead capture and all that, and there’s a lot of people doing that now. It’s becoming… We’re finding out how popular that is. But we found with what she created, the Business Lab—her and Jordana created Business Lab to bring entrepreneurs together to talk through challenges and masterminding. We’ve been many masterminders.

We love roundtabling, kicking ideas around, brain dump, whatever your metaphor is. We love to mastermind. We do a lot of masterminding. Business Lab is all about masterminding. And right now we’re in… Marcie and I are heavy, heavy, heavy for the last year and a half into AI automations and stuff like that. We study AI. We study language models. And I know there’s a lot of buzz going out there in social media about the end of the world with AI. We were watching something on it last night. Some think it’s gonna be the best thing ever. Some people think it’s the end of mankind.

I don’t think it’s the end of mankind, but there are guardrails that we need to put in place. I’m not gonna address that. That’s another soapbox. We come up with automations, and we just tell them. Now the teaching program she’s doing right now in Business Lab is a program called Social Media. Social media, because a part of marketing is social media. And…

…we follow some guys that are very popular. Gary Vee is a very popular guy. He’s probably one of the most forward thinkers in the country right now. He’s Gary Vaynerchuk.

He spots trends before trends are trends. The guy, he predicted TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. He’s an early adopter; he’s an early investor. And he’s saying social media… He can’t… He can’t stress enough. For all you out there, please hear me. Social media is free. He takes you down a quick road. I’m gonna go 30 seconds. He said, “You realize 20 years ago, 30 years ago, people would pay thousands, hundreds, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars. They would have to get an editor…”

“…they would have to get a production crew, they would have to get a job, they’d have to get a site to do it, they’d have to bring everybody together, they’d spend time, weeks and months sometimes, thousands of dollars to produce a piece of content. Now you can pick up your phone here and you can shoot social media, and you…”

“…it can be projected all over the world.” So it’s a tool that we leverage, and now we’re showing people how to leverage their social media and automate it to where we do auto-posting, where literally we have one client that we’re posting… We’re doing just the basic three because they weren’t posting at all. So we took their LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, and now we’re automating it for them. So now they have content over the next thirty days. So…

Yeah, yeah. But I think the main thing to always kind of like catch on, cause we can talk for hours, Quentin, so you just shut us off. I just…

Quentin Edmonds (09:47)
Let’s see.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (09:49)
…say, like, we’ll preach it over here. Yeah. I’m just saying on this side, on the side, everybody always talks about the side hustle. So for us, our side hustle, it’s like an e-commerce site. Yeah, for those of you that probably know eBay, like…

…it’s not to be underestimated. It’s a six-figure deal for us. And there’s also other things that we do that are also very lucrative. So I think it’s just a matter of understanding that you can have your cake and eat it, too. You just need to holistically look at the fact that you need to integrate. I’m an integrator. He’s a visionary. So I’m just saying if you’re a couple, you are a client and you gotta understand your pivot and who’s the power.

Quentin Edmonds (10:26)
Y’all just said so much. So much goodness. So many good nuggets. I love it. I love the conversation. I love the going back and forth and sharing. Thank you for walking us through the journey, telling us kind of what you’re doing now. Gonna love asking y’all this question. So I always make the statement: destiny has no wasted moments, right?

Like we are learning from every leg of the journey. I think you talked about it, and I always talk about how failure is fertilizer, right? We’re learning from our failures, and it’s just fertilizer. Like, and most of the time, fertilizer is just like dumb, right? It’s smelly. But when you put it, you let that thing get the seed in the fertilizer that soil dude is supposed to do, eventually something grows beautiful from it. Destiny has no wasted moments. I would love to know what has the journey…

…revealed to you two about yourself? Like, has it revealed… Has it made you humble? Has it made you more disciplined? Has it made you increase your tenacity? Like, what has the journey revealed to you about you?

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (11:22)
Pretty much everything you said…

…right there. But it has because it’s taught us tenacity. It’s humbled us because in the entrepreneurial world, we’ve always had a side hustle, Quentin. I’ve always had… I’ve always wanted… I call it another iron in the fire. Because we live in a very unstable economy. And I’ve always… I believe in it. It’s scriptural, but it’s business, it’s grounded in good business sense. We’ve made five-figure businesses, six-figure businesses, and seven-figure businesses. And we’ve had epic failures. We know what it’s like to spend hundreds of hours, hundreds of thousands…

…and six figures and lose months of your life and six figures of your money to an epic fail. So we don’t sit there and go, “Look at all our great stuff.” We know what it’s like to crash and burn and lie flat on our face. So we…

Quentin Edmonds (12:04)
Yeah.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (12:06)
…have run the gamut on that. And we’re still married. Happily married.

Quentin Edmonds (12:08)
Come on.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (12:09)
But it’s revealed to us that at the end of the day that we need people and people need us.

Quentin Edmonds (12:15)
Yeah.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (12:15)
God created us as social creatures. So we’re supposed to help each other not only in our nurturing of our kids and our family and raising them and being in good relationships with each other, but we’re supposed to… We’re put here to provide for our families.

People need help out there, and we need help. We need you like you need us. And iron sharpens iron, one man to another. So when we’re doing this iron sharpening, all ships rise in high tides. And to your point about the failure thing, I love quotes. And Darren Hardy, the author of Success magazine, for the last 20-some years, he’s been interviewing the most successful people on planet Earth. And what his catchphrase is—he says, “You want to succeed, double your rate of failure.”

Fail faster, to your point, Quentin, because failure is part of the process. Here’s the problem with entrepreneurship I see, Quentin, after being in this for, well God, over 40 years. People, they get excited. And when people go into business, of businesses that start, 80% of those fail in the first five years. And of the ones that survive in the first five years, 80% of those fail in the next five years. So what happens with young entrepreneurs? They step into it, they get an idea…

…they go do the thing, they put in the reps, they put in the grind, they put in the money and the time, and it doesn’t pan out. And they say, “That’s it, that’s not for me. I’m going back to my W-2, nine to five.” And what happens is they associate…

…the business failure to them personally being a failure. And they internalize all that. And I tell people…

…maybe your timing was off. Maybe the market wasn’t right. Maybe your financing wasn’t right. Maybe you didn’t have good capital investment. Maybe you just didn’t have the support system around you. Maybe you didn’t have the network you needed. Sometimes you just got to step back and regroup and come forward again. But do not, for the love of God, do not associate a failure of a business with a failure as you as a person, because you’re still who you are.

Just accept that and move on, because I’m telling you, there’s so much at the end of that. If you persevere through that, you will see an outcome. Yes. Well, and I think the other thing is, too, is like I think that’s what really gave way. It built a fire under us because number one, when you share with others, you organically become a stronger leader. When you think…

Quentin Edmonds (15:10)
Yeah.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (15:12)
…to yourself, “I gotta compete because I got seventeen, fifty, a hundred, fifty, two hundred people in my same…”

“…business atmosphere, and I’m competing,” then all of a sudden you’re not a leader, right? Because you’re too worried about your atmosphere. And I’m telling you, God has blessed us in so many different ways just to be a collaborator. Just, man, okay, well, how can I lift you up, and how can I help this person, and how can I spread their business? Yes. Boy, and if you’ve never been a networker or strong at it, you are missing a beat. Right. So that would be the thing that I think I have…

…not necessarily learned, Quentin, to your point, but I say you continue to refine it, you continue to master it, because that is truly what builds not just your business, but it builds you as a personal support to other people. And I would like to say something to you young real estate entrepreneurs and all those business owners. Let me give you a really solid piece of advice.

When we go into networking and we’re collaborating with somebody and we’re thinking and we’re getting to know them, in the back of our mind going, “Okay, how can I help them? How can they help me?” Okay. But at the same time, please, please, please don’t lose sight of this. Know this: A lot of times when you’re doing… And I may be dealing with you, Quentin, on a real estate deal. And maybe this… Let me say we’re working on a fix-and-flip. This is a good… This is a good fit for you, but it’s not a good fit for me. But if I help you move the ball down the field, guess what? The law of reciprocation works.

And if you remember that it does come around to you, people… If you… The more people you help, the more you will be helped. So when you get that concept right and you just don’t go, “What’s in it for me?” Get rid of the WIIFM, okay? Get into… Be a team player.

Be in there, get in the trenches. I’m telling you, and people appreciate that. And then the reciprocation is, “Man, he helped me get this deal done. Now I gotta help him get that deal done,” or her or whatever. So please don’t evaluate a relationship with, “Well, they definitely got the lion’s share of that deal.” Because if you give enough good out there, it’s a law of reciprocation that cannot be denied. It’s a universal law. And can I drop a name that’s very valuable here? Sir. There’s a guy called Myron Golden.

Golden OG. If you listen, people… I don’t know who you are and you don’t know me. Write that name down. I promise you, cash. You can cash his check at the bank. You start following Myron Golden, you’re gonna go, “My God, that bald dude really knew what he was talking about.” That Myron Golden is amazing, to put it lightly. His psychology in business and people.

I just watched an hour, almost a two-hour podcast on him earlier in the week. And he was talking about when he started selling encyclopedias, he worked 18 months before he had his first sale. He worked 14 years before he ever hit $100,000. Myron Golden makes tens of millions of dollars a year now. He worked 14 years, and he walked through the trenches and the tenacity.

And the heartache and the blood, sweat, and tears to get there, but he never ever quit. And if you never ever quit, you will get there. Well, and I think the other thing, not just the mindset of not quitting and failing faster, also the mindset that you have to continue to remind yourself of is not just the money in the chase, right? Whether it’s real estate or anything else, but it’s understanding who you will become when you reach there.

Like our trigger is always like, “What is my eight-figure self gonna look like? Well, how are they gonna talk? How are they gonna do things?” And then we have little alarms on our phones every two hours or whatever it is, and it literally makes you think. It takes you out of a scope going, “Would I be doing this at that next level?” We’re not eight-figure, but we say, “Would my eight-figure self be doing this task right now?” And if they wouldn’t, why are you doing it? Yeah.

But these are things you ask us. How can you automate it? This is part of the journey on the path. I’m sorry, Quentin, we’ve been really going off. Just shut us off. Shut us off.

Quentin Edmonds (19:05)
Why… Why would I do that and miss out on all this richness? So, so if people have followed me, they’ve heard Myron Golden’s name quite… Quite a bit. I have a whole section in my notes attributed to Myron Golden, and… Yeah, so y’all… Actually, I’ll be honest with you: When y’all talk, so many different scriptures pop in my head because how Kevin, you just talked about…

…laws and principles. They’re just Kingdom laws and principles. Put them into place, you will be successful. And what you started talking about, reciprocation—I say this quite a few times on this podcast: Proverbs 11:25.

When you refresh others, you in return will be refreshed.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (19:48)
Yeah, yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (19:53)
To me, that is serving to you. If you serve, you will be refreshed. And then Marcie, you were talking about just accountability. Always quote James 5:16. It says,

“Confess your faults one to another so that you can be healed.” You need to be in the place where you… And that’s like when you think of masterminds, that’s an accountability place for you to talk what’s wrong. And faults is just not always bad stuff. One of the definitions of faults is things that’s unfavorable. So when you talk about, “Man, why are these leads not coming in? What is going on with marketing?” These things that’s unfavorable, but when you talk into a community, the community heals itself.

Why would I stop y’all? Y’all… Y’all just… When y’all talk, y’all talking just Kingdom principles.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (20:33)
I love talking Kingdom principles, my man. Let me tell you, I didn’t know if… Yeah. I like… Me, I can talk Kingdom all day long.

Quentin Edmonds (20:40)
Y’all doing it.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (20:43)
Speaking of that, we…

Quentin Edmonds (20:45)
That’s…

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (20:47)
…we recently partnered with KBLF, right? Which is… It’s called Kingdom Business Leaders Fellowship. And it’s actually partnered with…

…My Case Ministries. So we did that within Business Lab because I think it’s important that people feel like they have an opening or a bandwidth or an aspect so that they also can share those things like we’re doing here, right, freely. And even have it so that you’re walking it in your business. Because I think sometimes people feel like, “I gotta separate. Here’s my business, here’s this, here’s church, and then here’s my family,” right? There’s no like bringing together of the three. We felt it was important.

That’s just… That’s just my little shameless thought. Come…

Quentin Edmonds (21:22)
Yes.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (21:23)
…on. Yeah, and be… And be in Kingdom building. I have Republican friends, I have Democrat friends, I have atheist friends, I have Christian friends, I have agnostic friends. I have friends all over the scope.

And I’m… Men who live in glass houses need not throw stones. I throw no stones. But we love on them all. We love on them all. We love on them all. And I’m not mealymouthed. I… Well, trust me, I have convictions if you haven’t figured that out. Let me tell you, I got convictions, but I don’t sit there and voice my convictions. I love on you no matter where you’re at. Yeah. I don’t care if you believe completely different theologically or politically than me. We can find something we can agree on. Chew the meat, spit out the bones. Yeah.

Whoo!

Quentin Edmonds (22:03)
So well said. So what’s next? What’s next for you guys when it comes to business? But just… I mean, we talking, right? So of course, what… When it comes to business, what’s next? But then also whatever else comes to your heart about telling us what’s next. I just want to hear from y’all. What’s the next thing? What’s the next goal? What are you looking to solve to scale next?

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (22:22)
Well, we’re actually looking to scale Business Lab. I think that’s really our primary heart is because there is so much power in a room. Especially in a room of not just entrepreneurs of the service industry, and not just entrepreneurs of real estate, not just entrepreneurs of whatever… Whatever your niche is. There are similarities within the businesses that can all use insight…

…from different niches. And I think that’s sometimes what happens. We’ve seen it, right? You’ve got all these different real estate communities. And yes, you all are amazing. But at the same point, there are pieces of other businesses that are so valuable. They’re like mic-drop moments, and we see it in Business Lab. So I think that would be the invitation. It’s just if there are any business owners that are looking for something outside of the scope of what they’re currently in to understand the mastermind differential. Yeah. And to that…

…point, what’s next is that, but also as the oncoming of AI automation. We’re… We’re doing a deep dive in… And I… It’s almost like religion and politics, politics and religion, whatever you want to do.

I’m not going to get into whether it’s going to end the world or whatever. My best friend and I, we talk deep theological things. We talk about… We go down rabbit holes about the deep things of God. When it first came out, we’re like, “It’s a tool of the devil. It’s the Antichrist. It’s going to usher in the end of the world. The Sentinels are coming. They’re going to kill us all. Arnold’s coming back with his Terminator buddies.” Yeah. All right, that kind of thing. Well, maybe, maybe not. But I’m sorry, I have a belief that…

…God wrote the book and He has a different end to this story, okay? So you may think AI… Let me tell you folks, after you think AI is gonna end the world, that ain’t… God’s in control of all that. He ain’t gonna let that happen. But we have to be mindful, we have to be responsible, and we have to handle it. We really need some guardrails on. But we are learning what we tell people in Business Lab is bring your problems. We wanna see, we wanna hear, we wanna feel what your friction is, what’s your bottleneck in your business.

Is it your social media? Is it your billing? Is it your networking? Is it your lead capture? Is it your… Your capital? Is it your influence? What is it that is… Is it… What is it that’s bottlenecking your business that you… Here’s the thing about business owners. What they want is they want to buy back their time. Yep. Because we all can make more money, but none of us can make one second more.

Quentin Edmonds (24:40)
No.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (24:40)
So when you start making a certain amount of money, after a while, the money… It ain’t about the money. It’s about the time you get back to be with your friends, your family, and yourself. So we’re trying to help people, because think about it. When you ever hear a pitch about a get-rich-quick scheme, they all follow the same script: to go travel the world, buy exotic cars, and take fancy vacations, and live the life of your dreams. Okay. But at the same time, how do you get to that point?

They give you the end result, but they don’t give you the formula to get there. A lot of them don’t. Some of them say they do, and some do, but most don’t. So we try to show people, okay, what is it that’s costing you time and trouble? What is… What is the one thing on your plate that is causing you a lot of headache, a lot of friction, that you wish you could get pushed off your plate, that somebody else… You could delegate it to somebody. So that’s where we’re bringing in the automation. In a short amount of time. In a short amount of time. So we’re learning how to harness… People, you don’t realize that…

…some of these tools, I mean, literally can run your whole email. It can run your whole… Your… If you have a rental portfolio. We have a friend, an old business partner out of Canada. He… He’s huge in the Airbnb space. And he is now completely re… Reinventing the way that they do billing. And when you have Airbnbs, there’s a lot of moving pieces in the money. You’re paying the person who owns the house; you’re paying the person…

…you’re getting the money from the people coming in. You’re having the billing, you have scheduling, you have maintenance, you have housekeepers, and he’s got a whole automation system. He is literally saving these people tons of time and tons of money, and they’re paying him five thousand dollars a bill and seven, eight, fifteen hundred dollars a month. But they’re saving them. This one guy just… He did a five thousand dollar bill, charged her six hundred dollars a month. And after he got done with the five thousand dollar bill, she went and fired her CEO that was getting sixty thousand dollars a year. Right.

And now for what she was paying 60,000, she’s getting done for seven. And not only that, there’s no mistakes. She was constantly on her CEO. “Why are we having this discrepancy? Why did this not get paid? What happened here?” And he took away all of that with automation. So that’s my point to that. So that’s what we find exciting. That is like the new frontier. I mean, I thought… We thought the internet was a big jump, and I built a very successful business right at the precipice of when the internet was being birthed.

But this is a whole nother…

Quentin Edmonds (27:00)
Like…

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (27:00)
…whole nother level. Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (27:02)
Whoo! Listen, I told y’all… I knew we was gonna go over the quote-unquote time that we was gonna set out. Already knew because I just got…

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (27:08)
We’re good.

Quentin Edmonds (27:11)
I love y’all talked about this. I mean, this is kind of a through line to what I’m hearing from you guys. Of course, being married, helping people within their business—the word relationship, right? Y’all been talking about it; it’s been a through line.

I want to hit the nail on the head of the nail and make sure we drive home just how important relationships are. So I just want to hear from you two. What’s your philosophy on building healthy relationships within business? What are some of the relationships that have helped you? What are some of the relationships that you help? We kind of talked about it, but again, I always like to ask this at the end because I just want to hear people’s unique perspective when it comes to relationships.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (27:49)
Sure. Absolutely. Great question. Great question. Great question. Start us off. I think relationships, they could be both personal and professional. And there’s been so many times historically where somebody you meet professionally becomes a very personal friend. Right. And I think it’s only due impact in part because you nurture it. And I think at the… At the end of the day, it’s how well you nurture that relationship.

Just like people talk about answering messages online. “Oh my gosh, it’s so painful. I don’t want to do it. Da-da-da-da-da.” But I think whether it’s online, whether it’s in person, whether it’s getting to know a business… And a lot of times businesses don’t want to share their business with you until they get to know you. Absolutely. And we are all about collaboration over competition.

Yeah. We’re all… Like I referenced earlier, how when you’re in a relation… You’re in a business relationship and going, “Okay, I’m not getting a fair exchange out of this,” but if you understand reciprocation, it doesn’t really matter. And what I said, go look at Myron Golden, and he will… He will drive this point so far home. Come on.

But the… The whole thing, relationships—we’re passionate about that. We teach marriage ministry. We coach couples in relationships weekly. I speak to men, and a lot of men out there have a lot of addictions that they’re dealing with. There’s… The home, the family is under attack. Folks, you know that. The family’s under attack. So first of all, we take care of home first. It’s almost like a plane. When the plane’s going down, the masks drop, you put it on you before your kiddo.

Okay. So take care of home base first. Once you take care of home base and get your relationship established with your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, kids, then take it out into the business world, into the community. And then we want to, like we said earlier, the words… A lot of times there’s someone in corporate America and somebody in entrepreneurship, and you got a… You got a… You got a 1099 and a W-2 competing, and they don’t understand the psychology of each other. So we try to bridge that gap.

‘Cause we’re seeing a lot of that gap right there. So that’s the… That’s the point that we try to speak into is that gap between the disconnect in the relationship, in the business relationship. And we’ve had many good mentors through the years. Many, many good mentors. Yes, both professionally and within personal relationships. But I think even just business-wise, like, I follow Fuel Investor. Like, you guys got some content out there, but it…

…also like so many others that have free content. Like if you are a person, you like to learn, share it forward. Like that is the best way. I.e., like even on this podcast, right? When you guys had advertised saying, “Hey, share this along,” well, I did it right away, right? We put it actually up in Business Lab so that people could have that opportunity. So I think it’s just… It goes back to reciprocity. It goes back to helping others as much as possible.

Quentin Edmonds (30:30)
Absolutely. So before we give people… I mean, because y’all said a lot, but I just… I’m being led. That’s how… Really being led. So before we give people how to get in contact with you, I want to kind of give you guys one last chance to maybe deliver a message that’s maybe on your heart. Maybe you came in with something specifically on your mind, and you wanted to make sure you landed it.

I kinda just want to give you space to kind of get anything that you feel like is residue is still there that you want to get out. I kinda wanna make sure we don’t leave any stone unturned. So is there any other thing that’s on your heart or your mind that you feel like the people may need to know?

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (31:05)
Thank you for that. Appreciate that. Go ahead and start yourself off. I think there’s several lead words that come to mind. Don’t be a lone wolf, right? Don’t be a martyr. And if you cannot step away from your business for a week and enjoy time with your family and friends, then you need to jump into Business Lab. We’re here to help you take back your time.

We’re all about relationships, everything from our marriage ministry to coaching people on… In hand and just talking. I tell people all the time, I’m an exhorter. I took two spiritual… Two different spiritual gifts tests, 20 years apart, and I scored off the charts in the 80-something percentile in exhortation. You can do it. I believe in you. You got this. Coach, that is my jam. I can’t get away from it. It’s just me. So what I tell people is always leave someone with more than what…

…you got. I remember I was looking… I was in a guy’s office one day, many, many years ago, and I saw a plaque on his wall, and it stuck with me. And I’ve quoted this hundreds of times. And it said, “If attitudes are contagious, is yours worth catching?” And I ask it to people all the time. Let that sink in. Let that land, because there’s… There’s a lot of meat in that right there.

And lead people… And I also do this. It’s like when I go to the gas station and I see there’s a line there, and I always look for a way to compliment people. And when I say… And I walk up the line, I go, “Man, I can’t believe how fast you’re knocking these people out. I don’t know what they pay you, but you deserve a raise.” Or a… A… A waitress, a server, going, “My gosh, we haven’t had service like this in ages. Oh my God.” Leave people with more. And I like to leave people with this:

If we could all do this… I like when I meet someone, I like to leave them with a little more than they gave me. And if we all do that… And I say, if everybody did what I do, would we all be better off? Whatever that is. And remember this, people: Integrity and character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. That is a true definition of integrity and character. And that is birthed, nurtured, and cultivated…

…through relationships, and pouring into other people is our passion. We… I’ll say this, and I’ll… And I will land it here. I remember a couple years back, I was… I do through my meditations and my readings and stuff like that, and I was just… I was meditating and contemplating. It’s like, what do you want to do with your life? If… If… We love… We’re addicted to just doing business. We love it. We’re never going to retire.

But what is your… What is your biggest passion, Kevin? If you could only do one thing for the rest of your life, what would that be? And it came down to three words for me: Talk to people. I love talking to people and pouring into their lives and seeing, “How can I help you?” How can… If we have a “How can I help you?” attitude, God, the Lord, the universe will pay you back. It is an inarguable law that you cannot deny. Yeah.

Sorry, that’s my passion. Yeah. What…

Quentin Edmonds (33:46)
We could probably…

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (33:47)
What we like to say on our end, though, Quentin, is like, okay, now that you heard all that, come pull up a chair. Get in the room. Get in the room. Let’s have a conversation. Yes. We love people. We’d love to help you anywhere we can. Just for like a real like mic-drop moment at the end here, one of the things that we learned from going back to that conversation, but also…

…aspire to get out of our own way. Do not aspire to be an operator. Aspire to be an owner. And then what does an owner look like? You gotta let go. You gotta let go. And if you’re not there, there’s a good chance you’re not. We get it. We’ve been there many times. But work, strive in your business to be, “How can I get outside of the business to work?” Owner oversees.

Operator is deep in the trenches daily, in the… They’re in the daily grind of your business. And with your outlook on your business, look for a way to take yourself out of the picture. Okay. Yeah. Okay, now be quiet. We can talk about this stuff all day long.

Man, you are a great interviewer, my friend. You are a great interviewer. You bring some great questions. You bring… And not only that, you bring some serious energy to the room.

Quentin Edmonds (34:52)
Mm.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (34:53)
Man, I told you I’m an exhorter, but I… But here’s another thing. I don’t embellish where I don’t see it. Because if I don’t see it, I won’t say it. But once I see it, I have to say it. You bring a lot of energy to the room, my friend. Your enthusiasm is very infectious. I knew that from the very beginning of the interview. Thank you for that.

Quentin Edmonds (35:09)
I appreciate that. So y’all familiar with The 5 Love Languages, right? Yeah, yeah.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (35:13)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (35:15)
So my words of affirmation, that’s the way I feel loved. I appreciate you saying that. That makes me, in a sense, feel loved, feel… Feel seen. I always tell people thank you. I’m glad, because I received what you said. I try to tell people all the time, I believe God has uniquely wired me. Whoever I’m talking to…

…I want to make sure that they’re seen, known, and heard. I mean…

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (35:36)
Yes.

Quentin Edmonds (35:38)
…I may not agree with everything that you say. Everything you say may not be my jam. It may not be my conviction. But one thing for sure, I want to make sure that you are seen, known, and heard.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (35:48)
That is so good. That is gold right there.

Quentin Edmonds (35:51)
And I just believe that… Yeah, I can go… Let me stop, because see, I’m about to go off-table. I’m kind of forgetting I’m shooting the podcast and feel like I’m just talking to friends. So I’m about to talk… We’re talking… We’re friends, we’re talking. It’s all good.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (36:05)
Fireside chat. Fireside chat. We call it a fireside chat.

Quentin Edmonds (36:10)
Yeah. But as y’all know, we try to steward very well what God is placing in our hand, right? I have a responsibility to everything that’s going on here. But I thank you. I thank y’all so much. I want to say three things to you both sincerely. Well, before I say that…

Let me… Let me tell… Tell them how people can get in contact with you. If someone wanted to reach out to y’all, connect with y’all, collaborate with y’all, learn more about Business Lab and different other things, how can they get in contact with you?

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (36:35)
Well, the easiest way to do it—if anybody’s heard of the Skool communities that are out there alive and well, S-K-O-O-L, on the search feature, just simply put in “Business Lab,” and you will see it pop up. You will find us. Absolutely.

Quentin Edmonds (36:49)
Okay.

So now let me give you my send-off since… Still three things. First, thank you for your time. I mean, y’all talked about it. We getting… We want to get our time back. So that you would grace us with your time, for me, that’s super, super valuable. I know how the podcast works, but still, you gave us some of your time. So thank you. I find it very, very valuable. Secondly, absolutely. Secondly, thank you for the gift of your authenticity, the gift…

…of your integrity, the gift I would even say of your vulnerability. I believe our stories, they plant seeds. I’ll say it this way: Jesus taught in parables, and so stories are so profound. I think as you were telling your story, I see it as a parable, as an allegory, may have so many different meanings, and we don’t know how your story is gonna hit…

…everybody. It’s gonna hit them differently, but you planted some real seeds. I just thank you for coming on and doing that. Yeah. And lastly, y’all, for your mindset, for the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform, I greatly appreciate you two coming on today.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (37:51)
Thank you. We receive that, and we really appreciate that. That… Like you, my love language is words of affirmation. And that right there, you couldn’t… You couldn’t pay me a bigger compliment than that. And about… Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thanks for having us. That is so awesome. We’re just super grateful. This is reciprocation, folks. This is all about right here. This is what it’s all about. We…

Quentin Edmonds (38:15)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (38:17)
…get a little animated over here.

Quentin Edmonds (38:19)
Listen, I’m right with you.

So listen, y’all heard my friends Kevin and Marcie. Please get in contact with them. Their information is in the show notes. Links are in the show notes. Please get in contact with them. But definitely make sure you are subscribed here, because I promise you they’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Kevin and Marcie. I appreciate y’all so much. Thank y’all for coming on.

Kevin and Marcie Thompson (38:45)
Thank you.

Quentin Edmonds (38:46)
Absolutely. And everyone else, yeah… No, the honor was all mine.

Listen, everyone else, y’all have a fantastic day.