About | RJon Robins

TAYE ASTUYA!

It’s 2006. I've developed a pretty good regional reputation helping small business owners who have become trapped by their business, to get un-trapped and then scale - but my wife’s sudden illness has blindsided me.

I can’t function. I’m falling apart. All because inexplicably, immaturely, and quite stupidly I failed to follow my own (excellent) advice about building a business that works for you.

My wife is in severe pain and can’t get out of bed.

We’re broke and about to lose our home. The stress is
unbearable.

Growing up was turbulent. My father made his fortune from real estate and white-collar crime. Yes, you read that correctly.

One night I awoke to the sound of bullets hitting our house. A business associate had sent someone to kill my father. Although he escaped, he later lost his fortune, remade it, and lost it again. And then the law caught up with him. This is why I can tell you exactly what it’s like to visit your father in jail.

This is why I have zero tolerance for shenanigans in business!

Also, just for fun I got to have a ringside seat as my mother
and stepfather built and lost a fortune in a business that was
at least legal; but then saw them fight off creditors for
many agonizing years.

This is why I am so committed to helping the entrepreneurs my company’s help to build SUSTAINABLE companies that keep going & growing even when the owner(s) are away.

In case you’re keeping score, all of this happened before the age of 25 by which time I’d lived at no less than 15 different home addresses.

Maybe it was the business my father was in or the way he
lived his life. Or maybe it was the way my mother and
stepfather lived theirs. Or maybe it was all the moving
around. Either way, I can’t remember a time in my life
when I didn’t feel like an outsider looking in.

I think this is why I’ve always taken such a unique approach to business and never felt compelled to follow the herd.

One thing I can tell you for certain, I leaned pretty heavily on my superpower to survive all those turbulent years.

My superpower is

clarification.

I’ve been doing this my whole life without even realizing what it would someday do for me in my business career.

As a kid, I’d sit at the dining table listening to my parents’ conversations and try to help them avoid an argument when “he” stopped meaning him, and “she” stopped meaning her and pretty soon my parents were having two totally disconnected conversations.

Sometimes when I’d interrupt to point this out they’d laugh and give me a compliment for catching the misunderstanding. Other times I’d be told, “mind your own business.” I still remember how helpless it felt having to swallow my words while the train wreck slowly unfolded in front of me – I learned to hide my superpower.

This is why today I no longer try to hide my superpower and why my companies empower entrepreneurial “outsiders” to harness their own superpowers and turn their greatest perceived weaknesses, oftentimes into their most unique and greatest strengths in business.

2006

2006. That’s the year I married my wife.

It’s also the year she got sick. One minute life was great. So great.

The next minute, Ale got so sick she lost 25% of her body weight over 18 agonizing months.

Despite preaching and teaching the virtues of building a sustainable business that works for you even when you’re not working, I’d stupidly failed to follow my own (excellent) advice.

I know, it was really, really stupid of me. How many THOUSANDS of small businesses had I helped to install sustainable processes & procedures that kept all 7 Main Parts of the business going & growing even when the owner(s) had to step-away for good reasons, or bad.

Meanwhile, back in 2006 my so-called business was still just me working from the dining room table. I was making a lot of money, but there were no systems. No procedures. No scale.

And so, within weeks of stepping away to begin nursing Ale back to health, quite-predictably, everything fell apart.

We quickly burned through our savings and then went the credit. Despite selling everything of value, we lost our
home to foreclosure. It was humiliating.

2007

By the end of 2007 I was broke! I mean really broke. As in four flat tires filled with fix-a-flat, scrambling to find grocery money, lost the house to foreclosure broke.

But at least Ale’s health improved. Which was a double blessing because she was able to begin painting again and believe it or not that’s how we survived for the next several years, by selling her paintings.

But by 2011, we’d sold all the paintings and Ale couldn’t keep up with demand.

Because it turns out the same marketing & sales strategies I’d been using to help law firm owner build million and multimillion-dollar law firms worked well for selling paintings, too.

And my first successful business was finally gaining some momentum. So that’s when Ale made a tough decision I’ll always be grateful for, to postpone her art career and join me in the business. But she had one SERIOUS condition: “Yes or Yes. You’re going to find a way to make this happen.”

2011

2012

That was in 2012. That year I allowed myself NO excuses and gross revenues shot up to one million dollars.

We celebrated by shopping for new furniture, and at the store, my wife scribbled me a note:

Take all your

excuses,

and shove them

up your ass

-TAYE ASTUYA!

That became our rallying cry.

2015

That also became the name of our son who was born in 2015.

2016

Today I own two separate 8 figure businesses that pretty much manage themselves.

And several 7 figure businesses which also manage themselves most of the time. Which afford me the time & resources to keep starting new businesses in my “free time”.

And all because I stopped making excuses.

I know this is probably one of the longest bio’s you’ve ever read. And I thank you for making it to the end. That tells me you’re probably more likely than most people about saying “YES” to the question that was put to me all those years back:

Are you willing to live for a few years the way most people aren’t, so you can know what it’s like to live the rest of your life the way most people can’t?

So let me offer you one piece of advice here at the end of my bio
(in case you need it):

If you want it badly enough (whatever “it” is) you can make it happen.

You just have to be ready to take all your excuse, and shove them up your ass.

If you’re that sort of entrepreneur – regardless of what stage of growth your business is at – farther ahead than any of mine or still learning some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way – I hope this bio gives you some insight into who I am & what I’m all about enough to want to know more.

To learn more please consider following this link to read my Statement of Business Values which I finally sat down to write every single word of it myself (no ghost writers) sometime back in 2012: