We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bernard Gleton a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Bernard, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I have a previous background in tech for about a decade and a half now, and I started a tech company. In the midst of building my tech company and getting new clients, I was listening to a tech podcast for tech business owners and they mentioned starting a podcast as a way to market and get new clients. After being an avid podcast listener, I thought about how I would frame my podcast. Should I make it a tech podcast? What would I name the podcast? How can I market the tech business through the podcast? And of course the essential podcasting questions, how do I start a podcast?

I decided to make a business/entrepreneur podcast. I thought to myself, why make it into a tech podcast? If I make a business/entrepreneur podcast, I can invite my potential clients on the show, let them talk about their businesses, and give them a free technical assessment as a pitch to my tech business. Everything was going well until I realized I kept forgetting to hit my guest with my pitch. But I realized something more valuable to me, I thoroughly enjoyed talking to my guests about business, understanding the how’s and why’s, and secretly learning and becoming inspired by them.

After editing the first few recordings, something started becoming more apparent to me. I came up with the name of the podcast and the tagline after editing the first few episodes. What started to become more apparent to me was a phrase I used to hear when I was younger, “Success leaves clues”. By asking my guests questions, I realized that I was getting them to give me the clues to their success. That was so powerful to me because I could start implementing them into my own life and business. And from there, I was able to come up with the name of the podcast. The Genesis Project Podcast.

By no means is my podcast a religious podcast, but we all have the basic understanding that Genesis is the first book of the bible. We know that as the beginning. We all have those “aha moments”, where things become clear. Those “aha moments”, I call that the “Genesis Moment”. It’s where you come to a fork in the road of your life and you can go left, you can go right. It doesn’t have to be good or bad, but you can see what your life could look like beyond those first steps. So an example of that is me getting married, or me starting this show, or me trying out for the CFL four years removed from high school and never playing college football. I was having Genesis Moments while my guests talked about themselves and their businesses. That’s why the first part of the name of my podcast is Genesis.

I put Project in the name because I believe that we all have big audacious goals, but sometimes those goals are so big like Goliath, that it can scare us not to go after those goals. I think if we change our perspective on how we view our goals, it would be easier to digest. For example, if I wanted to paint my office or a room in my house, I know I can do it within a weekend. It’s my weekend project. The task doesn’t seem daunting anymore. I’ve changed my perspective. So if we look at those big audacious, hairy goals as a weekend project, it won’t look as big anymore.

The tagline of the show is “Business Principles for Beginners From The School of Hard Knocks.” Just about all of my guests never went to business school to learn the business principles that they exude in their business. They learned through trial and error. At the time, I was feeling like people weren’t starting their businesses and such, and was using the excuse of not having a business degree or education. My podcast disproves all of those beliefs and gives confidence, education, and steps taken to reach their level of success. Success is subjective, so the way you see success may be different from mines, but by incorporating what has worked for my guests into the listeners’ lives, they too can achieve success.

This has become the reason and the why behind me starting this podcast. After receiving feedback, emails, and comments from posted episodes, I realized that was a need for it. More specifically to those who wanted to start a business or are in the startup phase of their business. So I started catering to that specific market. I often say that I’m selfishly getting all the game for myself and unselfishly giving it away mostly for free.

That, in a nutshell, is how I came up with the idea.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am an ex-pro athlete, turned entrepreneur, podcaster, and business coach for start-up entrepreneurs and athlete-turned-entrepreneurs. My podcast, The Genesis Project Podcast, is a podcast that caters to people who are brand new to entrepreneurship and start-up entrepreneurs. We believe that Success leaves clues and the guests that come on the show are willing to give you those clues from The School of Hard Knocks.

The services we offer at Alltuit Media are marketing opportunities through advertisements and sponsorships, and business coaching to those who are in the start-up phase of their business and athlete-turned-entrepreneurs.

We’re most proud of being a platform where we can bring information to people to have the confidence and community support to start and run a successful business.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

4 years removed from high school, my college career only lasted for 2 semesters and now I’m working sucky jobs for peanuts. I hated where my life was at and I just kept having this feeling in the pit of my stomach like I’m supposed to be doing something bigger and better, but I just don’t know what it is.

At this particular time, I was a pizza delivery guy at a pizzeria down the street from my house. I’m at a friend’s house and was explaining this feeling to him and just trying to figure it out. It wasn’t much he could say because he was pretty much in the same position I was in. My friend, not really having any answers to give, was flipping channels on the tv and came across a live football game. It was around the month of May. It had me baffled because the draft just happened and summer camp haven’t started yet. That’s when I learned it was the CFL (Canadian Football League). It was at that moment, I knew that I was going to try out.

I stalked the CFL website for months to find out if there were open tryouts. Once tryouts were posted, I made plans to go. Tryouts were going to be in Dallas, Texas and I worked out and trained to prepare for it. My older brother has a son down in Dallas, so it only made sense to invite him to go. I had to pay for him to go, but he was able to save me money on car rental and a hotel by getting us to stay with the mother of his son, and her allowing us to use her car. At this point, tryouts were 6 months away and at the Thanksgiving table, I told my family my plans.

They laughed at me and told me to stay working at the bar-b-que job that I was working at. Befuddled with utter amazement and disbelief, I was disheartened by their words. I realized I had to do this on my own without their help. So I did just about everything I could think of to get the amount needed for the trip. I needed airfare for 2, money for food for a couple of days, money for gas, and money for tryouts. On days that I wasn’t working, I was training. On days I wasn’t training, I was working. I even found ways to train while I was at work.

3 weeks before tryouts while working at the bar-b-que job, it was closing time and I took out the trash to the dumpster that was in the far corner of the parking lot. 2 guys walked towards me with intentions on robbing the resturant. They pulled out their guns and ordered me into the resturant. A new girl that we hired about a week prior was the first one to see the guys behind me with their guns on me from the corner of prep area. My manager, puzzeled with what going on, was directly in front of me. He finally saw the guys behind me and ran out of the front door. It seemed like a good idea, but by the time I’ve reached the edge of the table where I could have a straight shot to the door, the other guy had his gun on me.

One of the guys gave chase after my manager while I just put my face on the ground. As he pressed the barrel of his gun into my head to make a statement, he yelled to his partner “Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill!” It seemed like that was pretty much going to be my fate. My manager made out of the resturant and was running down the busy street that we sat on. The robber just turned around and ran out the way him and his partner came in. The robber who had his gun on me, turned the gun around and attempted to knock me out by hitting me with the butt of the gun, and he ran out behind his partner.

Not sure if I was shot or not, I started moving parts of my body to see if I was ok. I got up, dusted myself off, ran to lock the back door and proceed to the front to lock that door. The new girl was on my hip and was still terrified about what just happened. While going to the front door, I saw my manager streak by and that terrifed the new girl, so she ran to the back. Recognizing it was my manager, I let him in, lock the door and called 911. As you can imagine, I had PTSD from that experience and I was on the fence about going to tryouts. My PTSD was so servere that I almost drove through a red light because I seen a guy at the bus stop with a ski mask on while sitting at the intersection. I would start getting upset for no reason and lashing out in anger at people.

2 weeks before tryouts, a cousin whom I was pretty close with, passed away. I was still pretty much on the fence about going to tryouts, but now my family is telling me things like “she [my cousin] wouldn’t want me to go” and “you should stay here with your family”. Because of those comments, I was now leaning towards going to the tryouts.

1 week to tryouts, my grandmother wanted a bag of rubberbands so I went to the store to grab them. While in the aisle trying to decide which bag of rubberbands to get, I see people rushing to the back of the store out the corner of my eyes. Then I heard this voice, I can’t tell you what he said, but he was robbing the store and he meant business. I stuffed the rubberbands in pocket and ran out of the emergency exit to a CVS just down the street from the store. The police came, the guy was gone, and I didn’t see anything so I went home as well. When I told my grandmother what happened, her response was, “Yeah, that’s nice. Did you get the rubberbands I told you to get??” In that moment, it was like she didn’t care that I was just in a robbery. I reached into my pockets and realized I stole the rubberbands. Before I was still on the fence about going, but after taking in everything that happened, I needed to go. It felt like everything was trying to keep me from going, but I didn’t have anything in my life that was worth throwing this opportunity away for. I hated my life and where it was going. I hated waking up with the feeling like I’m destined to be doing something bigger and better, and not doing it. This can’t be life and I didn’t want this to be my life. If I stayed amongst everything that has happened and that was going on, I might be the one taking a oneway trip to meet my maker and it wouldn’t be by my own hands.

The day I was to jump on a plane to Dallas for tryouts was the day of the body viewing of my cousin. I showed up to the funeral home with my bags packed. That sent my family into a frenzy. My family forbade me to go and made me promise not to go. They held me hostage until I told them and reassured them that I wasn’t going. I was going despite what they said, so I caught everyone with their head down praying and walked out to my older brother’s car waiting on me. The moment that door closed behind me, I turned off my phone, threw my bags in the car and said let’s GTFOH. My brother was excited, I was angry and focused.

When I landed in Dallas, I got all types of voicemails about, “How could I?” None of that really mattered honestly. After a day of being there, I realized that I didn’t have enough money to tryout. An uncle of mines on the other side of the family was more than happy to give me the money plus more, and gave me great inspirational words to motivate me to keep going. Excited, anxious, and nervous the night before tryouts, I didn’t much sleep. Talking to my father helped me to keep things in perspective, but I still didn’t get any sleep.

As my brother and I pulled up to tryouts, he was excited and talking, but I wasn’t paying any attention. I was replaying everything that happened for me to get here. The hell that I had to endure. The PTSD and how I shoved it to the side to focus on this moment instead of getting help for it. I was hyperfocused on what needed to be done and anyone or anything that stood in the way of that was going to be DEMOLISHED. I signed up and paid the fee to tryout, walked into the rented high school stadium and felt like this was my time. The talent pool is much different now from where I came from. Everyone is good. Everyone is fast. Everyone is strong. Everyone, except me, came from a college program or another pro camp. I was excited to see where I ranked them.

The 1st half of tryouts was being timed in various drills like the 40yard dash and the 3-cone drill. Though I was pretty fast in high school running the 40 yard dash in 4.5 seconds, I was slow running 4.7 seconds. Not the greatest feeling in the world knowing that I’m faster, but can’t really show it. My 3-cone drill time horrible as well. Of course, this is where the Imposter Syndrome started kicking in. We broke for lunch and during time of eating, I reporgramed myself. I got myself back in the fight and was ready to hit field for the second half of tryouts and really scorch the field. And scorched the field I did. Trying out at quarterback, I’ve threw about 300-400 balls and 2 or 3 interceptions. My arm wasn’t as strong as it used to be, but I got the job done.

After tryouts, many of the guys was inquiring what college I came from, where was I from, and when I told them that the last time I played was 4 years prior in high school with no college experience, they were amazed. The coaches gave a deadline date as to when they would be making calls and if you didn’t get a call, keep working hard. They had film of the tryouts and passed it around to other teams. When I got home, I was the black sheep of the family. They all just knew it wasn’t going to work out and I had no business going down there. I could care less about their thoughts. The deadline came and gone, and I’m back to being a bum now with no job or direction. 2 weeks after the deadline, I was offered a position on the practice team with a team in the CFL. Often times when you say you want something, the universe will consipire to give it to you, but it will also test you to see how bad you want it. Do you want it as bad as you say do? Or do you kinda want it? Only you can answer that question.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson that I had to unlearn is about education. You don’t always need school to get the education you’re looking for. Self-education is just as important. The whole reason why I started the podcast was to dispel the myth of having to have a formal education to achieve things. Of course, there are some things where you do need that formal education, but self-education is just as important. Self-education can come from books, YouTube videos, mentors, and coaches. Don’t be afraid to go after the self-education that you need.

I’ve gained so much knowledge from the guests that have been on my show that I have a front-row seat to a masterclass on various topics. It has been some of the BEST education I’ve ever received in my life.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.GenesisProjectPodcast.com
• Instagram: @genesisprojectpodcast
• Facebook: @genesisprojectpodcast
• Linkedin: @AlltuitMedia
• Twitter: @podcastgenesis
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAzcMSM7X4oWAxbqIzdzfrg

Image Credits
Bernard Gleton Genesis Project Podcast Alltuit Media Bernard Gleton Bernard Gleton Genesis Project Podcast Genesis Project Podcast Genesis Project Podcast