How To Tell Your Story & Pass Your Family Stories On To Future Generations with Cory Sanchez

Kathi: Hi everyone, I'm back and I am with my friend Cory Sanchez. I can't wait for you to meet him and hear what he's up to. Hi Cory, welcome to the show.

Cory: Hello Kathi. Well, I'm happy to be here. Anytime I can hang out with Kathi is always a great time.

Kathi: You know that, man. And now you're in Nazareth, I don't understand. You're far, far away and getting ready to see the Sea of Galilee. That's pretty cool.

Cory: Yeah, me and my wife, we go to a new country every month, and so this is the month of Israel. So we were in Tel Aviv, we were in Jerusalem last week, and yeah, there's just lots to explore here. Which is interesting, because the news will tell you that it's the unsafest place on earth, but so far I've had an amazing experience, have felt very safe and connected with a lot of great people, and it's just been a really amazing time to be here during Passover, to be here during Easter and experience everything. So if people get a chance, I think it's not like the news says.

Kathi: Yeah, exactly. You have to take that with a grain of salt every time. Well, I'm always impressed by you and what you and your wife are doing. Tell the people a little bit about your background and how you turned yourself into a digital nomad, world traveler, gadabout.

Cory: So I think it started when I wanted to do a study abroad when I was in college. I convinced my grandma. I was like, "Grandma, I'm going to do the study abroad and I don't have any money, so can you help me out?" And so she did. She gave me money for study abroad, and it was such a cool thing. It was a loan, so I paid it back over time, but I never went and studied abroad. So I never got to go, and for many years I was just thinking about how I'd love to actually go and travel, and I didn't until I met my wife. She's amazing, and whenever I'd tell her all the places I'd like to go, she would plan it and she'd make it happen. So it's almost like it just happened in the future just by us talking about it. It was great. And so we started this tradition where we would go to a new country for New Year's. We had this tradition for well over a decade. And so we decided one year, "Let's do this longer." We decided to try being somewhere else for two months, because we wanted to make sure we wouldn't kill each other while on the road. And it worked so well, we decided to keep going. So here we are five years later. We're in our 49th country, about to hit our 50th, and yeah, we're having lots of fun. I always thought we'd stop by now, honestly, and get tired of traveling, but it still keeps getting more fun and we keep getting better at it, so it becomes easier. So that's a little bit about how we started doing the travel thing.

Kathi: That's pretty amazing. Now, I know that you have Mojo Global and you're a LinkedIn aficionado. Talk to the gang here a little bit about LinkedIn and then your new passion project. So how did you start Mojo anyhow?

Cory: So I met my business partner. His name is Ira, and he's an amazing guy, incredibly smart and very talented. He's been a business owner at this point for over 50 years. When I met him, he was retired and just a great guy, and he was so knowledgeable about business and just very alive. We'd run on the weekends. He was training for half marathons and marathons, and I'd never run one. So I said, "Yeah, I'll run with you," just because I wanted to know what he knew. So we'd run on the weekends and he'd tell me all these stories about entrepreneurial success and all the things he's done, and I just really loved it. I'm not much of a runner. I used to do gymnastics back in the day. That was my sport of choice, and we're not really great long-distance runners. So I had to get into it, but it paved the way, because one day I'm running and I've got a big deal where I'm about to start having conversations with the largest dental company in the Southwest. At the time I was doing some marketing campaigns for different companies, and so it was a big deal, and I wanted to make sure that I did a good job with the sale opportunity, because I'm a scientist. That's my background. I come from science, and so I was not very great at sales at this point. So I asked him, "Hey, can you help me close this deal?" And he said, "Yeah, sure." And it just worked out so well, we decided, "Hey, let's see what else we can do together." And that started a really amazing relationship. We've been at it 14 years now, and it's gone by so quickly. We've been focusing on LinkedIn and LinkedIn technology and LinkedIn marketing campaigns, and we teach people the Pursuit Inversion Principle. So how to get people chasing you, how to actually get people booking themselves into your calendar. And it's gone extremely well. We've been featured in Forbes and won marketer of the year, so we've got a lot of accolades, but yeah, it's a really fun deal. And then you asked about my passion project.

Kathi: Yeah, hold on one quick second, because what I want to say is something that I learned from you, Cory, which I think is really profound. We've known each other for quite some time. You wanted to choose a business partner who had had a long-term relationship, because if they can have a long-term relationship with a loved one, particularly a spouse or a partnership, that would make a good partner. And I think that's something that's really interesting for those of you who are listening, if you're looking at investing in a partner or bringing someone into your flock, so to speak, of your company. I think that's really sage advice, to look at someone who actually knows how to sustain a long-term relationship.

Cory: Yeah, I didn't know it going into it, but it really made sense, because one of my first business partner relationships, once I decided to escape from the laboratory, essentially, in science, and become an entrepreneur, I got into real estate, and I had a business partner relationship in real estate that had a terrible falling out. And I look back at it now and it kind of makes sense now. I didn't really know that back then, but I think that was a big thing that is so important. But yeah, you're right. And Ira, he's been married to his wife for well over 50 years, same wife, so he's great at relationships, and I think that's just a really big thing. I think you're totally right.

Kathi: Absolutely. Yeah, that was something that I learned from you vicariously, I guess. I just thought it was really, really good advice. Okay, so now we're going to talk about storytelling, because you have a passion project and that's actually why we're here. I want you guys all to know about this passion project that Cory has about telling stories. So let's hear about that. What are you up to now, Cory?

Cory: So I started a project called Storly.ai and also Story Maker Club. A little bit more about it: basically, we're using AI to help people write their story, because I always think that people have stories they want to write and capture, but nobody has time to do it. It's like organizing, if you think about it. So our application allows people to write a story in under 5 minutes. It's using AI. It'll interview you, ask you questions, and then use that material to create a really awesome story. And then we also created Story Maker Club that pairs along with it, which is basically a group of people that want to create a habit of writing more. They're either people that have always wanted to write the stories of their life, pass on their legacy to their children, something like that. Or they're authors who want to write a book, or they want to write more content for their business. Or you just want to develop writing because you love journaling, something like that. And so Story Maker Club is where you write a story a day, every day, for 14 days. It's a really fun initiative, and we're having a lot of fun with it, because it first started off with the mission that stories would live forever. That's what we started with, and we didn't know anything else. In fact, we didn't have technology then. We didn't even have an idea for technology. We just knew that there are a lot of people out there with stories, and a lot of them pass away without being able to talk about them. Case in point, this is actually the genesis of the project. My dad passed away.

Cory: And it's interesting, because he worked very hard in his life. He did 12-hour shifts and then also a 3-hour commute on top of that, which is just tremendous. And I think that's one of the reasons we can travel all over the world and actually operate on California time wherever we go, because my dad early on taught me that time is irrelevant, because you can work at any time of the day. He would work night shift, he'd work day shift. But it just sparked this thing, because he always wanted to retire and write detective novels, because he was a really good writer. And so it always left me with: what kind of stories would he leave? What kind of stories would he have written? It just made me very curious about that. So I think Storly.ai and the whole project really generated out of that kind of loss. I felt a significant sense of loss by my dad not making it to retirement. He passed away at 52. It's quite young. So that ignited this whole project, and it's cool to see, because there are a lot of people out there that have a desire to pass on their family stories, pass them on to their children and the next generation, and to write about their past and even the future. And to create a community out of it, and to do it really easily, because that's the thing: we're so busy these days that we need tools to make it better. So that's really how it started, Kathi.

There are a lot of people out there that have a desire to pass on their family stories, pass them on to their children and the next generation.

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Kathi: Yeah, I didn't realize that. I know that it's been a passion for you for many, many years, and I think what's so important about that is that there are ways that we can grab those memories from our parents now using your platform. Because I know when my father was transitioning, when my mother was transitioning, I was visiting them. I was trying to grab stories from them and I was writing things down, and one was so long ago that there wasn't really computer technology. I wasn't sitting on a laptop all the time, and I was jotting things down on paper, and it would have been incredible to just take Mom's words and have them transferred into a story. My father was a great storyteller. Actually, I wonder, could you take audio of someone and feed it into your AI program and have it come back out like an audio recording?

Cory: Yeah, so that's something that we're working on. Right now it's all text-based, but you can do voice commands. Meaning that you can actually text or speak into the microphone, and that'll translate into text, and then we'll use that text to write a story. But ultimately there's a bunch of things that we want to do with it, such as make your story even cooler by saying, "Would you like it to be in the voice of some of your favorite authors? Who are your favorite authors?" Or would you like your story in a haiku? Or a funny limerick? So there's a lot of things that we can do with stories. We're just scratching the surface with it, but the whole point is that it gives people the opportunity to write their story and get it out of their head, because that's how stories live forever, is that you first get them out of your head. And originally, the first idea we came out with was stories on the blockchain, because we're like, "Okay, if you put something on the blockchain, it's going to live forever." But we realized pretty early on that if we did that, it was pretty expensive. To post one 500-word story to the blockchain, it was going to cost about $600 US. And so we're like, "Okay, that's way too expensive." So our goal is to really figure out how we can make sure that stories do live forever, but I think the first part is getting the stories out of people's heads, so that way they have them and they can share them. And that's the big thing: you can share the stories. You can also send a link to a relative, and they can interface with the application without an account, and the story will go into your dashboard, which is pretty awesome. So it's a good way for parents that maybe aren't techy: just send them a link, and the rest will be handled just through texting or voice commands. So they can add to the story. Yeah, that's the whole purpose.

That's how stories live forever, is that you first get them out of your head.

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Kathi: That's incredible.

Cory: Isn't that cool? Because so many people have great stories, and you don't want to necessarily sit there like a scribe and write them, but you want to help them tell the story. What's the story of great-grandma, or whatever that looks like. So yeah, it's a really cool project, and our hope is that people really have fun with it and they start to write the tapestry of their lives. Because I think people are so very unique and they have so many unique stories, and once people pass away, I think they're just lost forever. So our goal is that we can really hold on to these as cherished memories, because a lot of people are still operating with that little box that they have in the closet. And I think that's cool, but how much better is it if we could also have a digital footprint of all those stories?

Kathi: Yeah, absolutely, and digital won't go away. If anything, it'll just transform into something better. I think it's a phenomenal project and I can see so many ways. I'm already excited about taking my father's words into text and checking it out, because I think it'll be really quite interesting. He's a great storyteller, and it'll just be even better. So that's fantastic. Now, I don't know if you guys caught this, but Cory lives on Pacific time no matter where he is in the world. Now how do you manage to do that? Let's talk about that, because I think it's quite a feat. And I love the fact that you said that your father said time is really irrelevant, which it really is, actually. So number one, what time of the day is it right now for you in Tel Aviv?

Cory: So in Nazareth it is 10:34 p.m. And I'll be up till usually about 4:00 a.m., maybe 5:00 a.m., and then I'll sleep. Here's the thing: most people think, how do you do that? That would just freak me out. It's actually really easy. We started doing it because I hate jet lag. It takes me like a week to get normal if I'm trying to switch schedules like that. I just couldn't do it. So we decided, let's just stay on it, because we've got businesses in the United States, and we've got customers and clients in the United States. So why not just keep that time zone? So we tried it out, and it works really well. First of all, we get great sleep. Amazing sleep. I get 7 hours of sleep, sometimes 8 hours of sleep, it just depends. So I get amazing sleep, really deep sleep as well. And I think it's very easy, but most people never give it the chance. But yeah, that's how we do it, and we do it all over the world: Tokyo, Dubai, New Zealand, Europe. I like Europe's schedule the best, I think, because we usually will stay up till 3:00 a.m., and then we'll go to bed, and then we'll wake up, get 7 hours of sleep, 8 hours of sleep, and then we have the entire afternoon to do something before we start the work day, if it's during the week. And that's great, because then we have about 6 or 7 hours. We're in Europe for the summer, that's where we're going. We're going to be in the south of France. So we've got 6 or 7 hours to go experience and have fun and play. And then we get into the work day and the sun's going down, so it's nighttime. What are we going to do anyway? So I think it's a great schedule. And if you're out there looking to run a business on the road, I think anybody can do it. Just give it a chance, and really dream big. And me and my wife, when we want to start making decisions, we get a bottle of champagne and get a little tipsy and start making decisions. That's how we buy tickets sometimes.

If you're out there looking to run a business on the road, I think anybody can do it. Just give it a chance, and really dream big.

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Kathi: That's why I love you guys. I love the way that you think out of the box. And I think people haven't really considered that you could stay on the same time zone no matter what. So I think that's fantastic, for you to think outside of the box. And that's where I think Storly.ai is so very important, because people have always thought, "Well, we need to leave a legacy," but they haven't figured out a way to do it. So using the AI technology and whatnot, it's only going to get better and better and better. So folks, hold on to your seats and make sure to check out Storly.ai, because it's only going to get better, and it's already pretty cool. I can't wait to jump into it. So you just mentioned this a little bit, but I like to ask everybody: how do you celebrate your successes? A big win, what do you do?

Cory: So that's so interesting, because I think we're winning all the time. I think one of the things that we do that's unique is me and my wife do personal development every quarter. And that's just part of the fabric, because it's important for us to grow together, and that is such a cool thing. So we're either going through courses, sometimes it'll be books, but a lot of the time courses and curriculums, and we just pick a new subject or new thing that we want to get better at. Master classes. We'll go to events, Tony Robbins events, something like that. And that just makes it so we keep leveling up and we keep getting better and better and better, which is awesome, because I don't know about you, but I have so many goals that I want to accomplish. And at some point I got really tired of me not hitting those goals for a long time, and so I had to figure out how to actually make that happen. And one of the things that I found out is that there were certain things that made me low energy. I had lower energy, and it turned out it was because of some of the decisions I was making. For instance, I realized that I would drink almost every day. Not every day; I think it was every other day or something. I love Bacardi and Coke, so I would sit there and write copy for email and newsletters and different things like that at my local bar, and for me that was fun. But what happened is, the next morning I was so groggy, and it made it so I didn't really want to run the business. It was so hard. I was unenergetic. I was not motivated. I had brain fog all the time. And so now, if we drink, we drink on the weekends and we go have fun, because we all go have a great time. And then by the start of the week I'm very clear-headed and ready to go. I love Mondays. I crush Mondays and get a lot done. So for me, it's always figuring out. That's one of my gifts, I think: figuring out how to get everything I want out of life. And for me, the only way I could accomplish that was by actually figuring out my energy levels, so that way I was motivated and had high energy all the time. I try not to do any coffee or any tea or any caffeine at all, which, when you're trying to run a business, we get tethered to it. So for me, if you figure those things out, it really helps you generate a life that you absolutely love, and then you're always having wins, and that way you're celebrating all the time.

Kathi: I can't even imagine you not hitting your goals or not being motivated, Cory. I've never seen that in the long time that we've known each other, but you obviously are masterful at keeping going and keeping your goals and hitting those goals. I'm always totally impressed by you. So I have to ask you this, because this is an organizing and energizing podcast: what's your favorite organizing tool or tactic that you use on a daily basis?

Cory: Mine's pretty easy. We stay in Airbnb a lot as we travel. We're probably one of their best customers, and it's just cool because it never used to exist. It's one of those new technologies that makes it easy to travel, because you can just go to any country and stay in a really amazing house in the middle of the city, very walkable. But my thing is pretty easy: whenever it gets dirty or unclean in the place I'm in, I just leave.

Kathi: I don't know if that's an organizing tactic, Cory. That's like a cleaning tactic.

Cory: Well, definitely. Well, the thing about it is, me and my wife, we travel with two bags, 50-pound bags, 23 kilograms. And we've got a laptop backpack as well, and that's what we have. And so every time we pack up, we're getting organized again, and then moving to the next location. So I think that helps us, because we're constantly leaving things behind, because if we don't have enough space, well, something's got to go. So we're very selective. So it helps us with not packing too much stuff. In some ways it's a downer, because you can't buy as many things, but in some ways that's a really good thing as well. So we tend to do the lighter-weight keepsakes, which are cool. So I think that's helpful. So if you want to know how to organize your life, go to a new country every month, become a minimalist, and then you don't have a lot of things. You're just forced to not have very much stuff.

Every time we pack up, we're getting organized again.

Kathi: I absolutely love it, and I've watched you two pack, and you're total masters at packing and packing light. I think that's phenomenal advice. I absolutely love "if it's dirty, just move." Hey, I think I'm going to do that, too. I think I'll just move out of this house. Okay, one more question. If you had to tell your 18-year-old self some piece of advice, what would you tell your younger self?

Cory: Oh, man, that's a good one. So 18-year-old Cory was just starting to realize… I was very shy growing up. In high school, I was probably one of the shyest kids out of the entire high school, and we had a graduating class of, I think, about 900 something. So it was bad. If somebody called on me, my heart would almost skip out of my chest. And so in college, I really decided I didn't want to be as shy as I was anymore. So what would I tell 18-year-old, shy Cory? I'd just tell him, "Yeah, you're going to make it. You're going to do it. It's going to be great." Because I think at that point there's so much doubt as you're doing things, especially in the beginning days. It's like, "Am I making the right decisions? Am I doing the right things?" And so I think it's always good to have somebody that can lift you up. And that's what my wife has always done. She's an angel. We're constantly building each other up and practicing gratitude in all kinds of different ways, and I think that's a really special thing. So what would I tell my 18-year-old self? "You're going to do great, and you're going to make it. So just be excited for the things that you're going to learn." That's what I would tell him.

Kathi: Mhm. And you're such a good spokesperson. I can't even imagine you being shy at one point, but you've obviously overcome that one. Okay, so I know you have a valuable free resource that you want to offer up. Let's talk about that a little bit, and I'll put the download right below here in the link of the podcast.

Cory: Okay, great. So here's what we've got. We've got a free club. It's Story Maker Club, and it's for people that want to have a practice of writing more and want to tell their stories. So basically, we'll use AI to tell a story every day, and you get a free account of the AI, which is awesome. So go to storly.ai, S-T-O-R-L-Y dot AI, and you get the link in there for Story Maker Club, and also for the AI you get a free account. And yeah, come along with us. It's going to be a lot of fun. Tell your stories, share your stories, and at least have them, so that way you can share them with your family and they may live forever.

Kathi: Yeah, I think that's fantastic, and we all want our stories to live forever. So go ahead and grab that link and start writing. We all want to write, we just don't do it, so this makes it a very easy thing for us to do. It's a great gift to the world that you're presenting to us, Cory, actually. I really appreciate it.

Cory: Yeah, absolutely. It's a labor of love and we're very passionate about it. And also, as you're going along, tell us how we could help you make your stories better using the technology. We're very, very interested in that. So get into the community and share your stories and have fun with it, and let us know any ways we can improve the AI.

Kathi: I love it. I love it. Now, is there anything that I should have asked you, or that was on your mind that you wanted to talk to the crowd about here? Anything we missed?

Cory: No, I mean, I think at some level there's this interesting thing: there's a lot going on around the globe right now. A lot in the news, and countries being divided more than ever, and just all over the place. In Israel, there are ongoing challenges. So it's not just the United States, but literally countries around the world. So I think there's a great video out there that Malcolm Gladwell just put out, and he talks about weak link versus strong link. It's a great video. You can go to YouTube, and it's basically about Gen Z. Look up Malcolm Gladwell and Gen Z. And I think he has a really astute point he makes about weak link societies versus strong link societies. And one of the things he talks about is how do we build a society that's really geared for the future, and make sure that people are taken care of. It is my thought that our first thing is that we want to make sure people are educated and that they have opportunities, and that's after meeting personal needs. So go check out the video. This is just something I saw recently that I really love, and I think it'll give you some great ideas on some ways we can really improve society. Very quickly, Malcolm Gladwell wrote the books Blink and Outliers and David versus Goliath and many other great books, and I think he's a fantastic author, and I think he's a very sage soul as well. So anyway, that's my last thought on that.

Kathi: I agree. I agree, and I will make sure to put the link down below the podcast as well for everyone, so you can go straight to the YouTube video. That is, after you check out Storly.ai. Anyhow, thanks, Cory. It's so good to connect with you as usual. We don't see enough of each other, but next time you're back this way, of course, we will see you.

Cory: I'll miss you, Kathi.

Kathi: Yeah. Meanwhile, gang, we'll see you next week. Thank you for joining us. I really appreciate you being here, and I love introducing you to my friend Cory. So have a good day, you guys, and thanks, Cory.

Cory: All right, thanks, Kathi. Talk to you soon.

Kathi: Okay. Bye-bye.