Inspiration, Motivation, Enablement, and Empowerment Pt. 1

Welcome to twenty twenty five and the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host Ralph Owens along with Terry Baylor. In today's episode, we'll touch on topics such as introducing our first guest, Andrico Speights, learning the beginning of Andrico's journey, and how mastery is where learning truly begins. Let's go. And we are live.

Hello, world. Welcome to twenty twenty five and, a special, special podcast episode. Terry, you wanna talk about what we're do today?

Man, I'm excited. You know, I just wanna thank everybody for 24, man. We celebrated 100 episodes and that's a big, big deal. But here's the deal, we got more to come. And you know what?

We're not it's a journey, right? And the ideal about the journey is to get better and to challenge yourself. And that's what we're doing. So in 2025, we're bringing on some new things, And today's show is a big deal because we got our first guest, Mr. Andrico Spates.

We are super super duper excited to have Andrico here and what we want to do is introduce you guys to Endricko. And I'm telling you, you guys are in for a treat today.

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

I went back over my notes and, man, I'm like, I got to do better. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Challenge me too, man. For sure.

For sure. So, Andrico, Andrico, introduce yourself, man, let the people know you.

Oh, hello, hello. How's everybody doing out there? So Andrico Spates, I am a business development executive. I've spent years in IT, really helping develop businesses both organizationally and you know, from a kind of personal growth perspective, you know, organizations are made up of people, right? And so helping people develop, you help organizations develop.

The only other thing outside the people are the processes and the technology, right? So that's what I've been focused on for many, many years, you know, helping mid size small, mid size large organizations grow, helping them make more money, be more, you know, profitable as well as more efficient. You know, started my career in mental health care, so supporting, you know, mental health care services from a help desk perspective. I have a master's degree in both business administration as well as information and communication sciences. So, I really like to blend, you know, both together, right?

And as technology becomes more and more prevalent in our everyday lives, blending that tends to be a really good focus, that we all can kind of hone in on and see kind of how can we better ourselves but also leverage the tools that we have available to us to be able to do that as efficient as possible.

That's awesome. So you know what? I just heard something here right now. I just learned something here. So what I love about this is, and Draco, you say you started, I guess, a mental health care and and at at like a service desk.

What was that like? What was that role like?

I would say looking back on it, it looks a lot different than when I was going, when I was in it because I had no idea what I was doing back then. But it was interesting, just had to jump in it, you know, had to, you know, understand technology. So, you know, one of the first thing was, you know, doing trouble tickets, right? Like, you know, trouble ticket comes in, you know, you're the first line of support, ask your standard questions, is it turned on? You know, and then kind of go from there.

And then, you know, trying to travel to the different sites, right? You know, that we had, you know, just kind of get on, you know, get on the computers and the laptops, you know, get it figured out. It's a lot of malware, a lot of viruses that you had to contend with, you know, just a lot of hardware types of, you know, types of issues, but learned a lot, right? Learned a lot, you know, learned, you know, from the, you know, from the ground up, you know, the basics to really be able to jump in and support and meet people where they are in order to help them solve their problems.

So so the reason I wanted to really highlight that, right, is where you start, man, is simply where you start. It's don't be intimidated by it, don't be shamed by it because Mr. Spates right now, he's a long ways away from the service desk bro. And when I tell you he's impacting businesses, we're not talking like a $100,000. We're not talking 200 we're talking millions upon millions, like multi millions dollars worth of business.

So again, right now, what I'd love to do, and Draco, is just a little bit dig into and and, again, you can treat top it as much as you like, but I think it's important because this this our whole plight is about the journey. Right? And so when you look at where you started at the service desk and where you are now at, you know, how many people look to you for advice, right, and the kind of advice that's, like it's like changing people's lives. And and and I'm sharing this, guys, because I got an inside track because I I I'm honestly, I'm one of those guys. And I know several other of those guys and young ladies.

And so just really kind of talk about, you know, what was your driver? When did you find and we're gonna dig into this. When did you find your why? When did you find your purpose? Right?

Because ultimately, what I'm hearing is, is you have a mission, right? And technology is just the two. It's Look, it's your Lamborghini, it's your it's your Suburban, it's your brand, you know, Range Rover. It's just the thing that's allowing you to serve your mission. So Jessica, if you kind of tree top that journey a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that, Terry. I would say that it really started to come together for me when I was studying martial arts. Right?

Wow. See? You keep you keep unraveling this onion, man.

You messing Go with

ahead. I'm sorry. The

levels just keep getting deeper, man.

Yeah. Yeah. So I studied martial arts. So actually I got my daughter into it first, right? So she, you know, just wanted to do it, right?

And so I'm sitting there, I'm watching her, you know, and, you know, try to, you know, volunteer, help out a little bit. There's a lot of kids in there, you know, doing things. And I said to myself, well, why am I watching from the sidelines? Why don't I jump in, jump in and do it? And then that's that's kinda that's kinda where it all started right there.

So I studied for years, you know, becoming a black belt, you know, becoming one of the senseis, you know, in the dojo, starting to, you know, lead classes, kind of helping the head of the dojo, you know, run the classes, do things. And what I also started to do, I started to look at like, wow, this is, you know, some really good information and some good skills, right, to offer, both kids and adults. And I said, hey, why don't you let me help you grow this, right? Grow, you know, grow the dojo. Right?

And so he was like, yeah, absolutely. So from, you know, from soup to nuts, just started, you know, getting started, looking at his technology platform, looking at his marketing strategy, looking at, you know, the processes that are within the dojo, just, you know, all those things and look, you know, kind of looked at it end to end, you know, kind of consulted with them a little bit, started to implement these items, you know, for him and really grew the dojo, right? Truly expanded it. And so those were it was kind of multiple lessons, right? Within doing that.

One was on the business side, right? Helping him grow. The other side was, you don't really know something in my opinion until you can teach somebody else how to do it, right? If you can explain it to a child, then you really know, you know, what it is that you know, that you're talking about. And that's really the journey, you know, for me and so then what I looked at is that, hey, how can I apply this back into, you know, my my day job, if you will?

So I had a lot of skills that I built up over time. So that was marketing skills, that was services development, like offer development, that training skills, sales skills, right, communication skills, presentation skills, negotiating skills, all those trainings, all those things that I did, I'm like, hey, I can help others with these same things and kind of bring it bring it all together for them. And so I just wanted to kind of bring those two together because that's really really what kind of how it happened for me that that I I didn't get that moment until I was in there teaching the kids, teaching other adults, you know, and just really honing in a craft, if you will, because it takes a lifetime, right, to learn like martial arts. It's like, once you become the top, like the the top belt, black belt, if you if we're talking about karate, that's where the learning starts. It actually starts at that point.

And so it was like a a shift, a mind shift.

Wow. That is fantastic. That is incredible, man. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. We hope that you not only enjoy the content, but gain something to help you on your leadership journey.

Feel free to reach out to us on X, Instagram, and LinkedIn under the handles Leadership Sovereignty. And until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.