Tressa "Azarel" Smallwood, CEO of Megamind Media | How to Quit Your Job, Follow Your Passion & Build a Media Empire

Welcome to another episode of the success story podcast today. I sat down with Tresa as a rel small wood. She has built her own book publishing company. She is built her own film production company. She regularly teaches at community events, teaching young individuals, young creatives, how to grow up into entrepreneurship. She has given everything back and then some. We spoke about her life, her lessons learned. We also have three incredible sponsors for today's episode. We have gusto. It is a one stop shop for payroll solutions. We have mint mobile. They are revolutionizing the way that you use your cell phone and the cost involved as well. And then we also have BKA content. One of the best content writing services for copy SEO website social I've ever seen. So they all have incredible offers for all success story podcast listeners stick around until halfway through. You know how it goes. All right, without further ado, let's get right into another episode of the success story podcast. Okay, thanks again for joining me. Today I am sitting down with Tresa as a rel small wood. She is an award winning book publisher, movie producer, entrepreneurial coach. In 2003, after she wrote her first novel, she resigned from teaching. She used working in Maryland school system and she wanted to go into entrepreneurship, which is a lofty goal, but listen to what she's done. So you've published numerous books resulting in over 162 published titles. Some of them are being adapted into film that's insane. You are a content catalog owner. Your work has been featured in black enterprise, your web, the source, shadow and act rolling out. You're building out mega mind media. That's your award winning film company. And you recently produced the 2019 American black film festival and BET award winning film all in. That's an incredible resume. Right now mega mind is becoming the fastest is position to become the fastest growing independent film producing company for book to film adaptations in America, racial equities at the forefront of all the projects that you take on. Your company is basically building on your love for education. You're also doing some charity work with the Washington mayor, Mary and Barry and her mayor's youth program. You're teaching students techniques to be part of the creative economy through mentoring. Teresa, that's a very impressive, very extensive resume and congratulations for the work you're doing. Thank you so much, Scott. Thank you for having me here. Well, it's my pleasure and I'm very excited because I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs, but not a lot of entrepreneurs that go from education into a variety of things and then now you're building up independent film. So that's something that I'm not used to and I don't know anything about. I know a lot about tech and that that entrepreneurship, but this is a whole other stream. It's very exciting. So let's let's go back and you know, you can decide where you want to start in your life. It could be after you finish teaching or maybe before. So walk me through your story a little bit. Yeah. So one, I come from a family full of entrepreneurs. I've watched, you know, tons of people in my grandfather, for example, he has like 12 different jobs, Scott. And I was like, where are you going? What are you doing next? What's happening here? And I never understood that as a child. I just would see him zipping from one job to the next. And then fast forward, you know, I was in school, you know, for college and studying marketing at the time. And I said, I like this, but I'm just not really sure what path I really want to be on. And to be honest, I always felt like I was behind everyone else because people knew exactly what they wanted to do. And here I was in college saying I'm getting this degree, but I don't really know what I want to do. I really, I don't know. I'm not sure. I always had a love for teaching. My grandmother was a teacher. And she would always say to me, you're going to be a teacher. And I said, I'm not going to be a teacher. I'm going to be an entrepreneur. And sure enough, you know, got my undergrad degree started working in a marketing field and got married. And my husband said, okay, all of this traveling, what are you doing? You need a steady job. Would it I go do, Scott? Teaching. And so, you know, made my grandma the first job, the safest, most steady job, right? What she would say to me. And so I remember, you know, I went back and I got a master's in education. And when, you know, throughout my teaching, I remember just saying, I love teaching, but I still want to be an entrepreneur. There's something about me and just had that in my spirit. And so fast forward, 2001, I was three months pregnant with my daughter, Bailey, who's 19 now, that tells you how old I am, Scott, I don't tell anybody else. This is between them. So she, I was pregnant and went to the doctor, the doctor said, you're having some, some health challenges here with your pregnancy. And we're going to have to put you on bed rest for six months. So I couldn't even process it. It was like six months, like in the bed starting, when he's like starting now. And so that changed my life forever. I literally went on bed rest, the next day, didn't go back to work. And during that time period on bed rest, I had a family member who said, you should write a book. Because I was like, how do I pass the time? I don't want to just keep, you know, keep clicking the remote here. And so I decided to write a book not because I'd always wanted to become an author, but I knew I needed to do something. Like I just had that spirit in me that I need to keep moving. I need to accomplish something. And so I wrote this book while on bed rest, fiction, crazy to the wrong, crazy, crazy book. And that's where the name Israel comes from. Israel means a gift, God's gift. But I knew that writing fiction and being a school teacher, my, my thought process was I'm going back to work after I have my daughter. And I'm going to do a new author and my students cannot find out that I wrote this crazy book over here. And so I wrote the name, I, you know, adapted my pseudonym, Israel. And ended up publishing the book after I had my daughter. It was a huge success made 40K in the first two months self-publishing book in the country. Now get this back in 2001 with a master's degree as a teacher. I was only making $43,000 a year. I was going to say that's a hit for a first time novel. Yeah, so that was in within two months. So I said, well, I'm going to something. But again, that's the business side of me that I knew how to put this book into the marketplace, studied how to do this all this totally self taught. So of course, this was an opportunity for me to stay at home longer with my daughter. So maternity, maternity leave for me turned into forever. I never went back to work. All of my family and friends were like, what are you doing? You had summers off. And this is like the safe job. And what are you doing? I was like, you know what? I'm going to do this full time. I'm going to start my own publishing house. And I'm going to do the same thing that I did for myself for other authors. And so I did it. And so by 2005, we were already bringing in revenue of like 400K a year. And so all those people, those naysayers that was like, don't do it. Entrepreneurship is risky. I was like, no, this has been in my bones forever. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just didn't know what to do how to do it. So that was the thing, Scott, that they, that was the battery in my back. And I have not stopped since. That's an amazing story. And one thing that I love about that. And I want to understand, I want to know if you even understand where your, your fire comes from. Because if that's something you could pack up and give to somebody else, that would be incredibly valuable. Because one thing I noticed is every single point in your life where you could have just relaxed and taken it easy, you didn't. And you turned it up. And that's something that I seen a lot of entrepreneurs and people that are just very ambitious individuals, they always turn it up. Like when you went on maternity leave and you started writing a book, no one does that. Like really, no one does, like people don't do that, right? That's not a normal thing people to do for most people. And then even when you made 40K in two months, which is a, that's a success. Because a lot of people don't make anything when they first try and build something or do something. You just didn't decide to write another book. You decided to open a publishing house. And because you could have just written another book, right? And you could have just gone on written, you know, four, five, six, seven, eight, whatever more books. So do you know why? Do you know why or do you understand why that is or what drives you or I'm curious if you know. So I think again, I've watched my grandfather growing up always, he always made a way. It was never I'm going to sit and relax. It was, what's next? What are we doing? How are we, you know, how are we doing this? He took, he took me to a lot of those jobs, you know, it was, it was like, hey, I'm going over here to do this. We, you know, we, we had a pool growing up. And he was like, no, I'm not going to call the pool company. I want you to learn how to do the pH and you fix, you do the pool. And I'm like, oh, okay. So right now, if I have a need of a job, I can go and do pool, I can serve as pools. I just think that watching that definitely fueled me from the beginning. And then over the years, it's just always been in me to, I don't, I don't do mediocre in anything that I do. I'm just not in me to do mediocre. And I know, I know my children are tired of me because I'm now see me doing the same thing to them. It's like, hey, I know you're in school. Well, what else are you going to do? Hey, I know you have this. What's next? And how can you take that and, and do it better? It's just what we do. Now, you do, you do a couple things now. So I'm actually curious if you can give us a rundown on, on the stuff that you're working on. Because when I even want to go to your website, like, obviously, still the publishing house, there's film. But then you're also working with entrepreneurs. I'm not mistaken as well. So what's, what's the, you know, who, who is Tressa today? So, you know, the thing is, the, let me start with the publishing house, because I've been running that for almost 20 years now, that can run itself. The evolution of printed books, you know, is, is that, that's just a small portion of the business. It's books are mostly done online now, right? So we, you know, we have editors, we have submission reviewers. That part of the company can run itself, honestly, without me. I just kind of overseas. So I do, I spend most of my time running the film company, making my media. And I will never give up my teaching. I teach entrepreneurs and filmmakers all the time through my mentorship programs. That's the love that has stayed in me since teaching. It's never, if I teach youth, I bring youth onto my set, you know, creatives that want to be in the film and TV industry. And it's funny, because if I say, if I announce that I'm doing something with the youth, the adults are like, hey, well, how can I get in? So we'll say age gap. So, you know, I still, you know, teach, I teach the adults twice a month, because I'm like, y'all are not the focus. It's the youth. We need to train our young creatives so that they can graduate from high school and college with the skillset to be able to go out and produce movies. And to do, you know, years ago, this was unheard of. If you did not live in Hollywood, you did not have these kinds of opportunities. And so I'm bringing those opportunities to a lot of these communities so that our youth can get involved and be on set and watch movies, you know, go from a script to on the screen. So that's really important to the educational aspect. So today, I, that is still number one for me. It's where my heart lies. And of course, you know, I can produce a couple of good flicks. Hey, I just want to pause for a second and thank the sponsor of today's show Mint Mobile. 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So if you're looking into them, all plans include unlimited text, talk and high speed data. Again, competing if not better than any of the major providers that you're currently using. They have 100% money back guarantee within seven days. You can bring your own phone, use your own phone. And like I said, it's starting at 15 bucks a month. So if you want to take advantage of a special offer, they put together for listeners of the success story podcast. Go to mintmobile.com slash success story. Go to mintmobile.com slash success story. You will cut your wireless bill to $15 a month without sacrificing anything. All right, let's get back. Yeah. So let's talk about, let's talk about, so I have, I have some follow-up questions I'm going to shell for later just based on like how you're working with youth and whatnot and some, some things you teach over to them. But let's talk about, let's still go back to your career because I want to bridge that gap. So you are building up this publishing house. Where did where does film come into this? Because that's another pivot. Well, not a pivot in addition, excuse me. Yeah, it's a natural progression. So if you think about it with the books, lies content and content is came period. And so I want to say about 2014, I built an extensive catalog at that point in the book industry. And so that's attracted to people who need content, you know, so I would have independent producers, executives of networks saying, oh goodness, God, I'm so forgive me for that. No, no, no, no, it's fine. Listen, I get, I get dogs, I get kids, I get, I get, you know, phones, like it's, this is, this is the word from home life. They were about it. Yeah, hopefully, that's Oprah. If it is, you take it, right? You don't do enough for me. Yeah. So some, I would say for me, 2014, the call started coming and saying, hey, you have all these books, have you ever thought about selling the rights to some of them so that they can become books of film adaptations? They're like, you know, lots of, lots of books, you know, become movies. So I never really thought about that. So when it started happening more more, I said, let me research this a little bit more. I started attending film festivals and asking questions and researching and realized, okay, I really have something here, you know, there are, this is pretty valuable. But because I understood the success of my book company and the fact that I own the rights to all of these projects and what that residual income looks like, I was like, there's no point of me going to sell the rights to a particular book for, you know, 50 to 100,000 when I can take that project and do the movie myself. And I'll make, you know, 500K a year or so, you know, with this one and residual income. So the number is just in add up for me. However, I didn't have a background film. I knew nothing about film. So it's the educational piece in me that said start learning, start utilizing resources, meet people. That's what I do well. That's what I do. I'm going to always, if you tell me you knew something sky, I'm okay, where you live, I'm probably like sky, I'm going to get on a plane next weekend. I'm coming to take you to lunch because I want to know what it is that you know and how, you know, we can work together. So I decided, I finally took the big lead. Remember 2014 started the call, started coming and started research and spent a whole year just talking to people. 2015, I finally made the decision. I'm going to shoot my first independent movie from one of my books. I didn't know which one it was going to be, but I said it would be one of them. And so I ended up going to meet with a director, his name is Jamal Hill, because I knew in order for me to do this successfully, I've got to hire people who've done this before and I can, I need to see their work on screen. I don't want them just to tell me that they did it. I want to see it. That's where we go wrong out here in this entrepreneurial world. And especially with social media, we just find the first person who says, I can teach you how to do that. And you sign up and you don't even know if they can really do it. I was like, I want real credentials. So I met with Jamal Hill who directed a movie called Bradley Love for Queen Latifah's movie company. He had directed deuces with Lorenz Tade and Lance Gross, you know, some pretty reputable names. And I said, hey, I really want you to write and direct my very first movie. I told him about the book catalog. He said, pick your top five books that you think you want, you want me to direct and let me read the books. I gave him five books. He came back and said, secrets of a housewife. That's the one that we should do. And so from we started you know, we started right then at that very moment and said, he's he decided that he was going to write the script for me. He wrote the script within like a three month period. We started casting and we shot the movie December, no, I'm sorry, November 2015. And by 2016, I was at the American Black Film Festival with this finished product and it was licensed by BET. So for me, school teacher, author who knew nothing about filming to be able to have an opportunity like that to put, oh, when I didn't share a sky that the unique part about this is that I financed this movie in house with my own family. I literally, that's not normal. I don't know much about film, but I know that's not normal. Yeah, because most, most, most times and my family, they did all those girls a little bit crazy. Now she's crazy before because she's really crazy now. And they were like, you're going to do what and how I'm saying now one of the things that I do believe that always helps me is the fact that I have a proven track record. I am not one of those entrepreneurs who are just out there just doing things and not researching like I am, I go in the black. And so because of that, they were like, I'm getting with you. And so that movie was successful. It was my first movie that, you know, licensed to BET again, 2016. Here I am now 2021. I have 14 movies under my belt by continuing that same process. Hey, Scott here. We're just going to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode, Gusto. This is a one stop shop. One place you can go to take care of all the payroll issues, all the payroll stresses that you have to deal with as a business owner. Look, 2020 has been a rough year. We can all agree on that in 2021 is pretty rough too. But if there's one thing that small business owners don't need is more headache. 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And that will give you three months free to try it out for yourself. Play around with it. See if it works for your business. I'm almost positive it will. All right, let's get back to the show. That's an incredible, it's an incredible story. And I think there's a lot of, a lot of things that have come naturally to you that I think people should pick up on. And if they don't come naturally to people, they do want to be successful. They have to pick up on these clues like these hints that you dropped about building a solid foundation, aligning with mentors, but the right mentors and ignoring all the bullshit that's out there that you just have to stay away from. But also leveraging and learning from people that have done it before. These are all great, great lessons. So in summary, building an incredible book and film empire is no different than any other entrepreneurial venture, obviously. And all the things that you, it's all right. Yeah, I said, no, it's honestly the same thing because in the beginning for me, it was, I kept, you know, self-doubt will sink in when you're when you're on your journey to doing something new. There was always going to be that little person on your shoulder saying, you can't do it. You don't know how to do it. Don't, don't do it when you're wasting your time. And so it's good to know that you can. And it's good to hear from some, if I can do it, anybody out there can do it because I literally did not have a background in anything film related. Nothing. And let's, let's, let's, let's ask some, some classic entrepreneurial questions. And I want to figure out your motivations for some of the, not motivations, excuse me, your drivers. So when, how do you stay motivated when, for example, things aren't going well or you're not getting, for example, results that you're, you're, you're looking for. What's your, what's your go to? Yeah, I think for me, it's my faith, my faith is strong. I do realize that every single thing that has happened in my life, that my steps are ordered by God for sure. Because none of this is normal. I think you and I've just said over and over again, no, that's not normal. No, that's not normal. So I think the realization for me is that nothing that is happening in my world is normal. So I need to just stay the course. I spend a lot of time helping people and giving back. I do believe that that is, that is a big key to my success. I get a lot of great, I get a lot of great things come my way, you know, phone calls that come that I'm like, is that such a such calling me? Why? But I do believe it's, I'm getting back what I put out. So I do believe that people need to understand that if you're someone that you're looking for help to start your business, but other people have reached out to you to ask for your help, how did you handle that? Because you give back what you give period. Energy is everything. I love that. Okay, another, another tip. How do you find you said you found people that have done it before mentors that have really helped you? How do you separate, you know, the good versus the bad? What's your process? Yeah, so I think number one is gotta start with credentials, right? That's, that's the number one. And then once, you know, for example, IMDB Pro, if you're, if you're, this is for all my creatives, I know this is a podcast for tons of entrepreneurs, but if you're in the world of films, there's some out there for sure. Yeah. Yeah, IMDB Pro, look at somebody's credits. Right now, I, you know, my publicist could have emailed Scott and said, hey, trusted does all these movies, et cetera, you can go to the IMDB and if I only have two movies there, it's like, well, you said you did 14, but I only see two. What's going on? Ask questions, ask questions. I get tons of people who send me messages, you know, and it's never, it's not true, but I research everything. So I would start there. Number two, after credentials, let's move to just personality and who people are before you go into business with someone and ruin a situation or get yourself tied up into something that you should not be tied up. Again, research, who is this person? Sometimes you can learn a lot about a person just from our lunch. And it's like, oh, okay, I see now, you just punched the waiter because your water, you didn't get the lemon in your water. Okay, may not. Yeah, you gotta, because people are so hungry now for what I wanted. I wanted. I wanted it so bad, but you have to step back and make sure that it's right for you. You can get yourself into a lot of really bad situations if you don't study it and research the situation. And this is specifically speaking to my younger entrepreneurs out there right now. The younger folks tend to want the microwave success stories. I want it right now. I see this person on social media. They are over here in Dubai. And I'm like, no, it's a Photoshop that they were asking not in Dubai. So I always try to tell my youth, stop wondering, just stop watching what everyone else is doing. Run your own race, worry about what you're doing and do what makes you happy because all of that other stuff is short-lived. But it boils down to what is true, what is factual, so check credentials. And then that's, and then the last question I had about some of your processes was for education and for research, how do you research? How do you educate yourself both on people you work with? But also something new you want to do. All right, pause for a second. I have to thank the sponsor of today's show BKA content. What is BKA content? Well, it is a service that provides you with the best quality content, copy, written content for your website, your blog, wherever you want to put it. Listen, I'm a marketer. I built out marketing departments. I've built out teams that have built a very successful SEO campaigns. 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It's keyword optimized, SEO optimized, your month's worth of blog posts will be delivered to your inbox ready to publish. If you don't believe me, don't stress because you don't have to pay to try it out. They're giving a special offer to everybody who's listening to this to the success story podcast. You get one month of content free. So when you sign up, you get a month of content free. You can try their service. You can see the quality of their service. So go to BKAcontent.com slash success. That's BKAcontent.com slash success and claim your one month free of content and never worry about content, copy, or writing ever again. Yeah. So I can start with the people that I work with. I fact check everybody. I mean, at this point in the game, I have a lot of relationships with different network, different executives, other producers, well-known directors. So, you know, the industry, although it seems massive, it's very close, it's close net and it's small. So, you know, Sky, if you were a director in the industry and I wanted to get to you, I would literally go to your IMDB and say, oh, Scott worked with Marshall. Oh, I know Marshall. Oh, he did a movie with Oh, let me call him. And I mean, it's pretty easy now. You can really get to anybody. So I typically will ask questions. How, you know, what was it like working with them, you know, would you hire them again? Like I asked the real deal questions before you even go to the person. So that's how I typically bring people into my world, whether they are a crew for me, whether they are even for actors, you can be the best actor actress ever. And if you have a bad rep in the industry, I probably don't want to hire you for my set because what's the point? What's the point? Don't need to do it. Life's too short to work with shitty people. I'm not really interested in that. My formula seems to be working. I want to stick with it. So that's for me hiring other people. And then for me educating myself, again, I share I'm big on education. I will never stop learning. I will never stop learning. If I listen, I have been to business school. I have business degrees. You know, I share that I have masses of education, undergrad degree. I mean, I am always learning. I'm thinking about going back to film school, Scott. I just got a car at the time. And not necessarily because I want to be a director, but I just want to add another layer of knowledge so that when I'm on set and hiring certain people, I have that knowledge behind me. That's just what I love. I think I'm a professional student for sure. Yeah, and I think that's what you have to be successful. You want to be successful in your career or in building your own business. I think that's a really good attitude. I love that professional student. I really love that. That's good. And then something that you mentioned about young creatives, let's talk about the education that is a status quo versus what type of education people should be learning when they're young. What's broken in education? I'm sure you have opinions on that too. Yeah, I really do. I mean, when I think about all the things that you should know coming out of school, most of our youth, they don't know. Let's just talk about something basic like writing a check, right? You know, I remember I sent my daughter to deposit a check for me and it was a pretty big check. The money never showed up in my account. And I was like, well, it's not here. She deposited that like three days ago. So I go to her bank account. It's in her account. And if she didn't do it maliciously, she was like, well, you tell me that you need there's a certain account number for certain. And I'm like, no, but I gave you this deposit slip. So I didn't know what that. So certain thing. They don't teach you those kinds of things in school. How many how many students are in school learning that about investing? You don't learn that, right? You learn. So I just feel like in education, you're taught the basics. So for me, a child that is only learning when they're at school is your education is going to be broken. Period. If you don't learning does not continue when you get home, we have a problem. We have a problem. And what do you do to? No, I agree. I agree 100%. So how do you how do you fix that? How do how do you how do you fix that? Parents and communities have to step up and understand. That's why I teach, you know, entrepreneurship, you know, often every summer, I partner with the mayor's youth program in the Washington, these areas. And I do mentorship classes. Last year, we did them all on Zoom because we were in COVID prior to that we we had them face to face. But this was so great for the students because it's youth between the ages of like 17 and 21. And they're right at that stage where they want fancy cars, they want all these things that they see, but they don't understand the process, how to get it. They don't understand, well, you need good credit to have to get a good interest rate to get this car. And you don't understand. And when you drive that car off the park and like, it's now depreciating instantly. So so when they learn this from me, the reason why it's very relatable coming from me is because they desire to be authors. They want to be movie producers. They love the world that I live in. So they will receive it from me like, hey, yeah, I like nice cars too. I like these things. But what's important in life? And let's start there. This is what you do. This is how you make it happen. You want to own your own business? This is where you start. So by the time they leave, they have names for their businesses. They leave with an incredible amount of motivation and a lot of them follow through. You know, they they DM me on social media. And they're like, hey, I got you know, I did it. I started my blog or I did this. And so it's really inspiring for me just to know that I could have an impact on the students and not still teach in the classroom. So you know, although I'm not a teacher and no longer in the classroom, I am still doing it on a daily basis out here while still following my dreams. That's smart. And it's good. You know, I appreciate that you take the time to give back because people that have that level of success that you've achieved, they they all know it. They all know that education's broken that kids are seeing all the nice thing. And I think it's even worse now because you see all these nice things on social and you see that people live in these lives and fake or not, you know, we're exposed. Yeah, exactly. But you know, before when there was no social, like at least you weren't, like, almost like attracted to this lifestyle of luxury and nice cars, nice clothes, whatever, all these trips. Now it's in your face and you don't know how to get it. And it seems almost impossible. Yeah. And then sometimes they feel like they are failure because they don't have it. They're like, oh, my goodness. Yeah, that's even worse. Yeah, it's so terrible. So I try to touch on it all the time. I try to make sure that I'm encouraging them. I'm showing them what's important in life and how to make it happen. Yeah, no, very good. Okay. A couple rapid fire, life less than questions to finish it off. But before anything else that you wanted to bring up that you wanted to show it out, and we'll get some socials and stuff at the end, but anything else you're working on right now. Yeah. Well, this time I want everybody out there to go and watch some of my movies. I know that people have all kinds of different platforms. So definitely very first movie that I talked about because it's always good to go see a person's first movie. Secret. It is, you can watch it. If you have no cable at all or anything streaming, you can go and watch it on 2B TV, T-U-B-I TV for free. If you just Google 2B TV, secrets movie, it'll come up and you can watch it for free. It's also on B-E-T. It's on a lot of other platforms as well, but free. Free is always good, right? You can see where you started off in film. You can see where your first, you know, you said go check out the first thing. I don't know if I ever want people to see all the first podcasts I did. Pretty rough, but... I like that because if you go and see where I started, then you can go and watch some of the other projects, right? And so, you know, on another note, I have my social impact films that are coming out. Some of them are coming out in July. These are movies that will air on B-E-T. Her for their Women's Health initiatives, and this is dealing with mental health. And so, a lot of times, mental health is the topic that people go, I don't want to talk about it, you know? And so, we try to come up with a way to make it cool to talk about mental health, you know? Go see a therapist, you know? Having people say, hey, I got a therapist is cool. Like, I want to go see my therapist. It makes me have a better day. It makes you have a better day. And so, we did these films with Vivica, Fox, Mona Scott, Young, Yandy Smith, a lot of influencers so that we could attract those people, Scott, that we were talking about, who are probably sitting at home and wanting to be like certain people. So, if you see influencers, you know, in a film saying, it's cool to get help. That was the purpose. And so, those films come out in July, so we're really excited about those. Then I have a thriller coming out in the fall. I got crazy again, dear. You're all over the place with all these different genres. All these, and that's the one thing I don't want to ever put myself in a box. I want to be able to do what I feel, you know, obviously some of my films are going to have more purpose, you know, my breast cancer films or domestic violence. But yeah, I'm just really excited about the space that I'm in and the number of projects that that are coming out. And I post, and I know we'll do later, we'll do social media stuff, but I typically post all my trailers on my social media, so you can go and watch them. See which ones, float your boat. Cool. I'll check them. I'll check them. Now you have another, I'll probably go through all them and see your first. I'll see some of your thriller stuff. I'll check out the mental health stuff. That's pretty, that's good. That's very good too. Okay, so let's do a couple, let's do a couple, rapid fire. Let me see, let me see which ones would be good. Okay, so advice that you would give to somebody just starting out in their career. I would say, I would say research, study the market, soak up all the knowledge that you can. Good, good advice. What was the biggest hurdle in your career and how did you overcome it? Finances. Always trying to go to the next level, but you know, as your budget increase, you need more money. That's always a challenge. Right now, I'm raising money for a $4 million film. I only have a million, so you can imagine a couple of sleepless nights. Yeah, you know, that's fair. Okay, one thing that you would tell your, say, 20-year-old self. Keep your credit, right? Even though my parents told me. That's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah. Who has been the most influential in your life? My grandfather and my father. Good. And a resource that somebody should go check out if you have podcast, book, person. Oh, automatic millionaire book. Definitely want you to check that out because, you know, having capital is everything. And if you are saving consistently automatically, it will change your life. Good, good, but I've never had that recommendation before. So I'm going to go check that out as well. So that's a new one. So thank you. I'll put it on the bookshelf behind me. What else? What does this, this is the last question that I'll get all of your contact info. What does success mean to you? Oh, my success means having freedom. Freedom to do what you love. Freedom to do the things that will help you to leave a legacy in life. You know, I love the fact I'm able to be hands on with my children. There's no work schedule or anything that can prohibit me from being anywhere anytime they need me. That means more to me than anything. I love that. It's a beautiful answer. And then most importantly, where do people connect with you online? All your socials, your website and everything like that. Oh, wonderful. Yes, I would love for you all to connect with me. Website www.TresaTREASSAisarellazarel.com. If you go there, you can enter your email and you can actually get, they'll send you an email for my free classes. I do a lot of free classes on film, getting into the industry, how to write a script. I'm just getting people acclimated so that they can understand what it is. Also, we do a lot of cast and calls. Most of that information you can find when you follow me on my social media. Every platform, it's the same thing. CEO, Israel. So again, Israel is AZ-A-R-E-L. I love that. And I saw your social. I saw your social. I like that. I like the handles. That's a good one. Yeah, that's me. That's me. I'm there. And I respond a lot to my DMs, but definitely for people. Most times, people say, hey, I want to get with her because I know she can build businesses. She knows how, if I want to become an author, a filmmaker. And so again, the teacher, I made it easy. I'm like, twice a month, we do classes. Get on, you learn. And even when you learn, you got to execute. That's the key. You got to take the knowledge. And you got to execute. Can't sit on that couch, eat and stun a bonds and flip on a remote. That doesn't work. Okay, we got to get out there. Make it happen.