Adrian Starks of Connect Now Business Network Finding Your Purpose

Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose and today on Spotlight, we are talking to Adrian Starks of Connect Now Business Network. And today he is going to be talking to us about his business. And Adrian is a keynote speaker, best selling author and chief communications officer of Connect Now Business Network. His mission is to help entrepreneurs, students and organizations and teens who are feeling stuck, uninspired or unfulfilled to become their own Change makers. And he gives them tools, some tips and strategies to get out of the rut they are in and will empower them and these individuals to find opportunities within the challenges, no matter how stressful their environment maybe. Adrian lives by his supportive Changemaker philosophy that began with the desire to help others see that they can courageously make their own changes and become their own champion. Thank you, Adrian, for coming on today. And I would like to ask you before you say hello, because you can say it at the same time, how you got into your business that you're in, how you found your purpose. Oh, well, thank you so much, Jane, and thank you for the wonderful introduction, I was like is she talking about me? That's wonderful. So, yes, let's talk about how I got into my business. Oh, for a long time, even I was a little kid, I got the name Motormouth because I had the ability to speak and to capture everyone's attention. So I did quite well with that later on in the years, as we can see now. I started out speaking as a professional in public in Seattle, Washington, where I used to live, and I started doing some spoken word poetry because I was fascinated with the idea of words and wordplay and how do I inspire audiences. And that just led me into finding more things out about special orators like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Winston Churchill. And I started thinking to myself, wow, I really want to start speaking more in front of people. How do I do that? Well, life caught up with me and I found myself working in a call center for eight years, a medical call center. But here's the interesting thing, Jane. That call center was a calling to the center of my life, which was speaking those eight years that I was there, I wasn't very happy because it wasn't the place I wanted to be. I didn't find myself purposeful there in my own way. But what I learned was the power of communication. And I took those skills and I started going to workshops here in British Columbia on psychology and personal development. I started watching other speakers and I said to myself, I'm going to leave this call center job and I'm going to go out here in the world and I'm going to inspire people through my poetry, through my self development, through my inspiration. And what I did was I created my own purpose and that put me onto the path that I'm on now, where I work strategically with entrepreneurs and business owners and helping them create their own opportunities within their challenges. Wow. Wow. I didn't realize, who knew, that being in a call center is actually good for speaking, that it's just amazing. I mean, I can see how it would. You'd be willing to want to change your life quickly, but did you find calling people and everything really helped you understand people more and your business and at least you learn something from being there? I certainly did, Jane. What it taught me was, the best communicators are the ones who say the fewest words and they listen. So in the center, I learned very fast about I learned very fast about empathy, listening to the other person, getting the information down and then finding a way to provide assistance and to do it in a strategic way that allows me to to be on their side. So there is an interesting thing here, jane. I worked for a children's medical call center, so imagine getting parents calling in about their children. No parent really wants to bring their child to the hospital at all. So I'm getting