Meet Avidon Respes

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Avidon Respes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Avidon below.

Avidon, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

My Purpose?

Not to be confused with having a meaning for life, I had to learn that purpose is tied to a distinct reason for doing something, which then translates into something meaningful.

Before things can have true meaning though, they must have a purpose.

I wish I could tell you that finding my purpose was simple, as if it just fell into my lap, but that would be an incredible lie.

For this to make more sense, you should know that I grew up living a mostly Jewish life. I say mostly because I played sports on the sabbath, drove, and did other things that aren’t deemed “proper” religious behavior… Nevertheless, my mother really strove for my sister and me to have core experiences outside of just religion.

You could say that this had a major impression on me growing up as a kid. I had to reframe and balance a new ideology, one being that even though I wasn’t fully observant in the whole and true orthodox way, my mom said that having the enjoyment of weekend activities would be pleasing to God as well.

Let’s be honest, it’s impossible to be the “perfect” jew, or person for that matter, so if you’re doing the things that you feel are bringing light, inspiration, and positivity in the world without harming anyone else… What’s the problem?

See, a lot of these beliefs that my mother developed us with made sense to me. I wanted to play sports, I loved playing soccer, and I didn’t particularly care that we were breaking the “rules”. I basically had the best of both worlds in my eyes.

I can look back and say that the foundation I was brought up on has a lot to do with my destiny and my meeting with purpose.

Surely you want me to share how exactly I found my purpose…

It wasn’t playing soccer, although I thought it might be.
It wasn’t in the military, although I had a lot of potential.
It wasn’t in automotive, although I got my technical certification.

My purpose was actually combined in all of these.

Let me explain:

Despite doing all of these “dead end” jobs at the time, to me, they were opportunities that were connected with what I had in my heart.

My goals, my dreams, my passions.

For some reason, my mother always told me to follow my goals and dreams… She would also say that if I’m going to do something, then I need to do it all the way, with my whole heart, or that I should not do it at all.

Those words have forever stuck with me and I have taken them very seriously throughout my life.

I guess that’s why I’ve been able to go from soccer player, to soldier, to foreign exchange account manager, barbed-wire manufacturer, store manager, automotive technician, call center agent, junkyard part puller, and so many more titles/positions. (not in order)

Yes, I know I’ve hopped around a lot in my career, because I’ve been searching for what not only brings me meaning, but for what brings me purpose.

Some of my mentors broke it down to me like this:

When you’re searching for meaning, you start to ask questions like: “why do I exist?”, “who am I?” or “what’s important to me?”… The shift to purpose happens the moment you start asking:

“What should I do from here?”, “where should I be to thrive?”, and “what results do I want to achieve?”

Seeking for purpose often helps you discover meaning. When you’re actively pursuing these kinds of objectives you naturally are faced with new experiences and insights that help you better understand yourself and find deeper meaning in your life.

Living in all of those realities, I learned so much about myself… The most important thing I’ve learned is: what is and what isn’t for me… To cut my losses and move on without wasting time.

A major key to working through the wins and losses for me while finding purpose, has been reflection… Reflecting on the wins, when my ego might get too big, and also the losses, when I felt deeply frustrated and upset.

No matter what, things will not always be perfect, that’s just life… If you can see that it’s all aligning with your core intentions of living out your purpose, you will see the bridge to meaning along the way.

Aligning opportunities with my purpose is much like having a “north star”. It has helped me a lot with identifying my “non-negotiables” and staying true to my values.

For years I was simply following instructions, I was just doing what I was told all my life: follow your goals, follow your dreams, follow your passions.

Sitting in a business seminar, things made the most sense they ever did.

I learned about this concept called the “45 Year Career Plan”, which is the fundamental, national pipeline to go from being new in the workforce to retirement… It’s supposed to start at 20 years old and last until the age of 65… Hence the 45 year plan…

These 45 years were meant to be a safe pathway for employees to work within a company and retire comfortably off of what they’ve paid into all those years. Companies would take portions of their income and have a nice retirement plan waiting for them; this plan crashed and burned.

Why?

The math didn’t make sense anymore for the companies, and while the presenter was sharing the COLD HARD FACTS… I had to be honest with myself right then and there.

Either I would listen to this new type of advice or be stuck in a cognitive loop forever.

I didn’t want the 45 year plan.

This new advice showed me a new type of information that I’ve never seen or experienced before.

The core teaching was centered around what they called “leadership development”. I can agree that the philosophies they shared were valuable… It actually motivated me to learn more, and do more for myself.

I became motivated to read personal development books and leadership books, and you know what?

They were saying some of the same things my mother was saying to me.

Follow your goals, follow your dreams, follow your passions, make mistakes and learn from them… Don’t give up.

I took my glasses off, looked in the mirror as a tear dripped down my face… Could this be what I had been searching for all along?

If purpose needs me to evolve in order for it to evolve, then maybe all of these experiences were for the simple PURPOSE of developing me into the person I needed to be, in order to live out the proper meaning of what it is for me “TO BE” in the first place…

Maybe all of these experiences were to prove the fact that purpose is a never-ending thing, and that your ultimate purpose is just to feel, and to be alive.

Purpose isn’t what you work for, it’s what makes you grow.

That’s why as cliche as it may sound, it’s absolutely true that you need to follow your goals and dreams or at least get as close to them as you possibly can.

I’ve never felt more alive, human, and connected to life than when I contemplate my real purpose in life.

Happiness and hardship are both equally part of the human experience… You simply can’t understand one without the other.

Hardship makes you rethink what matters to you, while happiness reinforces what matters.

While there is no single answer or method for finding your purpose, try to reflect on your values, determine what you care about and what principles you want to guide your life.

Consider the potential impact you have, and think about the changes you want to make in your own life before you consider the whole world.. Then, think of who you want to help with those gifts.

Work on setting meaningful goals: Break down your values and ambitions into specific goals that are achievable.

Take time to experiment and explore through having new experiences, learning new skills, or volunteering to discover what energizes you.

In one word my purpose is: Success.

It is my purpose to do my best to make what is inside of me manifest into this outer world while I’m living. As many things as I can imagine, if I can do it effectively, then it must be done.

Everything else will just make sense along the way.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

My story is very long so I’ll stick to the key parts… Even though the brunt of my experience would happen in my later years, my life-long dreams had been planted well before I even knew the importance of them.

As a youth I was given the freedom to think and imagine about the endless possibilities for my life, but as I got older I quickly understood the reality of it all.

Many things have happened in my personal life that have triggered me to make certain decisions which were advantageous to my professional career. Much like knowing that I was going to have a family one day, similar future possibilities made me think of business as a resource rather than an issue.

Fame and fortune have also always been on my mind… Who wants to be poor by choice?

Aside from soccer, I didn’t really know what would get me the things I wanted. I was young and inexperienced, fortunately my father was involved with this network marketing company, which at first, I was reluctant to join.

For years my father would attend meetings, conferences, and be completely loyal spending much of his income on their training tools and products. My sister went on to join him when she felt it made sense, and they both worked on building the business together, whereas my mother and I refrained from being involved.

This network marketing company was much different from the rest due to the principles that they were teaching, and they offered leadership development training in a very systematic way.

It’s really interesting how things align in your life.

While they were working on growing their business, I was attending college at Rutgers University, Camden, playing on the soccer team, and failing in most of my classes.

The school officials along with the soccer management gave me and a few others an ultimatum… Either get your rear in gear and improve these school grades or suffer the consequences of removal from the soccer team preceding a complete rejection from the university.

Back then I had a friend that was on the soccer team with me, also facing dilemmas. We shared similar interests in soccer and cars, so when they met with us concerning our status, we both made the decision to leave Rutgers and pursue an automotive career.

We went to Lincoln Technical Institute, where we received our automotive technician certifications, and then went on the job hunt.

I was able to find a job in Northern New Jersey at a BMW location where I wanted to start my career. My goal was to work my way up the ranks to one day be a fully certified technician.

At BMW, they made me start by washing cars and moving them around the lot whenever necessary. I really wanted to actually WORK on the cars, but if this was how I had to get my foot in the door, I was with it.

The day I got fired was a major mistake on my end, but it taught me one of my most important lessons in life; never lie to the people that are actually trying to help you and benefit you.

I strongly disappointed my manager, who had a very high impression of me, that feeling was something I didn’t want to ever purposely recreate again.

My life tumbled as I felt like a failure.

Soccer didn’t work for me, since I wasn’t able to play in the university anymore.
Cars didn’t work for me, since I needed experience before I could truly be a technician.

What else could I do?

In my mind my options ran completely dry, my only choice was to go back home and start all over from scratch.

After about a month of job searching and wasting time, my father and my sister offered to pay for my startup costs to join them in the network marketing business… They gave me no choice, as it was a mandatory sentence.

Little did I know that I would learn so much about business from working in a network marketing company that would benefit me substantially once I opened my own business.

The network marketing company taught us a lot about leadership development and I knew that this was something that was lacking in the overall market. I believed that I could also deliver this type of service after working hard, developing myself, and learning everything I could from them.

They always made it a habit of telling us that they weren’t any smarter than us, they were just able to create a system that generated them massive results. Ah ha! – I thought to myself… If I create a system, then one day I can be successful too.

The light bulb was twinkling.

Not only was I reading more than ever, I was also taking elaborate notes on every bit of information that I could consume. These are just two of the many, many principles that they taught us about leadership success.

Another part of the information being shared in their leadership development training was about risk taking for your goals and dreams. Following months of being involved in the network marketing business, I was excited to test their strategies in a more “real life” scenario. I was ready to take a huge risk to challenge what I had learned from them, thus I could gauge exactly how applicable it all was without the training wheels.

There’s a unique opportunity offered to any and every Jewish person, that if they want to return back to the homeland and immigrate to Israel, it can be done via a very streamlined process with just 1 significant condition… I would have to enlist into the Israel Defense Force given the national requirement of enlistment at 18 years of age.

Making this decision at 21 years old would put me at an enlistment age of 22, where luckily the service requirement was cut from 3 years to only 2 years. I would spend my first year learning about the country, the culture, and integrate into society, immediately after, I would enlist into the army, having the required timeframe of 2 years army service.

My army profession wouldn’t be disclosed until about 2 weeks before my enlistment date, in preparation, I tried my best not to stress about it while subsequently maintaining the reality of it. I organized my life for that day, I tried to earn as much money as I could and minimize my expenses without getting myself into binding contracts like cars or apartments and such.

My service in the IDF (Israel Defense Force) was specialized in the Military Police, in a Prison Unit, as a Solitary Confinement Commander. Interestingly enough, all of the leadership development training from the network marketing company paid off in a lot of the situations I found myself in.

A few of my close military comrades noticed how I handled things, they also watched how I lived and saw that I did things a bit differently than most people. One of them would listen to the public speaker Les Brown, and he suggested that I consider the path of public speaking and possibly life coaching.

I definitely reflected on the idea sufficiently enough that I would commit to starting my first company based on life coaching and success development once I returned to the United States.

What I didn’t know back then was that nobody really cared about my insights or what I had to say, because I wasn’t yet an actual success to them.

Even though I had accomplished a variety of things that most people would never, it wasn’t easily conveyable to them in a valuable way. Despite what I thought was enough to attract clients to help and build a business off of, I was drastically wrong. My first company was called BRIO Developmental Specialists, where I would encourage people and guide them on their journey to success. Yes, the overall concept made sense, and the vision I had for it was OKAY, it just wasn’t THAT THING.

This was around 2014 before the life coaching and mental health movement really took off. Emotional intelligence and knowing when to ask for help were still new concepts to most people, plus my experience wasn’t relatable enough for people to grasp, nor did I know how to properly communicate it effectively.

Even though I was back in America, and had gained some more experience from working for a few small businesses along with attending a variety of business events, my true quest was only beginning.

I didn’t make any “real” money with that first business, mostly due to the fact that I didn’t obtain any reasonable clientele to substantiate the business model.

I didn’t give up though, I actually started researching more ways to find clients in addition to applying new strategies to help reach my developing target audience.

That’s when I started paying more attention to those digital marketing ads and wondered if maybe that could be a way that could help me earn more money. I decided to take a few of those “guru” courses, and still didn’t receive any of the results I was looking for.

Doing this gave me a new idea though: maybe I could also create my own course that was packaged with everything I wanted to share instead of searching for direct 1 on 1 clients.

My course was designed to help recharge and reboot your life within the next 8 days using an extremely strategic set of principles.

This journey in making my first course not only revamped my perspective, it also opened the door for how I would later launch my next business that would truly be a success.

Frankly when I started, I didn’t have the funds. I had to figure out the process of creating my own course from scratch all by myself. I spent hours watching “how-to” videos on course making, then I had to also watch videos on videography along with video editing since I would be the one filming and editing my content.

After finishing my course I recognized a few things that were very different from all of those “guru” style videos:
1. My videos were NOT clear.
2. My audio was NOT the best.
3. My descriptive visuals did NOT connect with the vocals.
4. My physical presence NEEDED WORK.

A long list of things needed to improve if this course was going to be a success and achieve my desired results… Rather than focus on improving the course, I sought to improve myself.

Business is not easy. There are innumerable amounts of skills and information you must know if you plan on dominating and making it to the top. As they say, you have to commit to being a life-long learner in order to truly succeed.

Although I didn’t pursue more course making, I did however give a go at content creation.

Creating content was much more direct and simple. I could connect with my target audience using a variety of channels, leveraging some of the most popular social media platforms that host billions of monthly users. I could do live videos, pre-planned content, I could post photos and share my story with the world at the click of a button… Suddenly my viewpoint about social media was changing.

What if I started using social media for my business, instead of just updating my friends about stuff they didn’t care about anyway?

I took the same type of content that I presented in my course and started sharing it more on my social media profiles. A lot of people thought I was crazy at first, they unfollowed me quickly and I didn’t really care. I finally felt like I was moving in the right direction for once.

Although nobody watched when I went live in the beginning, I just kept doing it.

Over a little bit of time I started to gain some popularity across these very small, tight-knit communities of micro influencers. My social media friend’s list on Facebook went from like 1,000 something to about 4,000 over about a year from 2017 to 2018.

The live videos I was doing were getting hundreds of views, and I thought that the support I was obtaining was genuine. Until a few scammers went through my whole friend’s list spamming everyone with this ridiculous digital art scheme.

It ruined my network.

Hundreds of people DM’d me asking who the scammers were and it was a major headache to deal with. I had connected with a lot of those people on personal relationship terms, when this took place it ruffled a lot of feathers which pushed my business further off the brink.

Again I was left clueless with what I should do.

Upon my newfound research, I came across some car videos that I really enjoyed. The way they shot them really captured the cars in a way that was unique and expressive. How did they shoot these videos I asked myself?

Since I was now a beginner videographer, I started to think about ways that I could shoot some new type of content other than just “self-help” material. I remembered when I was younger, I used to go to car meet ups and do things like that, perhaps there could be an opportunity available in this.

I didn’t have any connections, I didn’t have any money, and I didn’t have anything that people would be looking for as far as a fair trade value.

My mind was racing and my heart was pounding; I knew I was on to something, but I didn’t know what. I kept searching and sourcing information from every avenue on ways to improve my craft, I was becoming more and more invested into the visual production process as a whole.

After taking many detours and diving deeper into my entrepreneurial journey, my mind was developing from doing so much research and trying so many new things.

Videography became my way in, and I knew it immediately, nevertheless, even with getting results and seeing things happening I wasn’t yet completely sold…

It wasn’t until I came across another video that changed my mind forever. The video I was watching showed a cinema style camera worth upwards of $100,000 dollars being retrofitted to a $250,000 dollar plus… Lamborghini Huracan.

Why?

Car commercials.

The majority of premium brands can pay big money for commercials and advertising, which is still considered a form of content creation.

I was confident that I had the potential to make some decent money if I could close on some big gigs. I knew it was possible because even though I had no idea who those people were from the video I watched, I saw that they had an expensive camera strapped to an even more expensive car and I wanted in!

I was seeing a much bigger picture in the mix, and with that being said, I saw that a business was forming from the ashes of the one currently crumbling. BRIO Developmental Specialists, my very first business, was turning into what is now, BRIODS Corporation Of America (Bree-Odds), a much larger and powerful pursuit.

December 2018, BRIODS Corporation Of America was born, and I set my sights on this fresh new pathway.

Through BRIODS I would serve the market by producing high quality visual content using a particular form of dynamic visual production, I would also help with idea generation, planning, and execution of content strategies to help reach more people on social media.

Additionally, I would offer more advanced level business strategy sessions for those that wanted to take things up a notch with their brands.

How it works is that most of these influencers, artists, and entrepreneurs are not able to produce high quality visual content for themselves; whether that be due to time or resource constraints, that’s where BRIODS serve as the conduit for creating what they need. BRIODS is also able to provide design services for them in various avenues like merchandise, digital graphics, cover arts, social media posts, and much more.

Looking at my journey with a wide lens, I can say that I’m proud of a lot of what I’ve accomplished, and what I haven’t.

My current launches are my book “The 25 Ways To Make Your Goals and Dreams Come True”, the book can be found on Amazon, but I would much rather you show support directly through our website: www.briods.com

Both the e-book and physical copy can be bought entirely from our site store… Use discount code: Quarter Back – [25% off]

I have other projects in motion, but any support shown by ordering a copy of my newest book would be greatly appreciated… In fact, your support will help me gear up to launch my next book, which will be a “from nothing to something” business guideline to help clarify things for you about entrepreneurship even more.

Great Success!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

When I look back and reflect on what brought me the most success, I would love to share 1 quality, 1 skill, and 1 area of knowledge from my past experiences that I believe could help someone searching for better results.

The #1 quality that has gotten me the most success is being “adaptable” to everything that happens along the journey toward success in life. There are countless amounts of variables and obstacles that come about at any given time, almost to the point that you’ll never be prepared for everything.. But, you’ll ALWAYS have the choice to adapt, and then proceed accordingly.

Being adaptable can be incredibly loaded. You must be willing to adjust to new situations, be open to alternative ways of thinking/execution, you may also have to act in a certain way that isn’t in your norm thus creating a more optimal result… Adaptability for me has been a life-line that I constantly tap into, especially as a parent and business owner.

The #1 skill that I’ve learned which brought me the best results in life is “cognition”. Having the ability to learn how to understand complex concepts and break them down into simple, actionable ideas is incredibly crucial to success. When you get around mentors and other successful people that are on higher levels, you’ll need to be able to think quickly and problem solve without prompts.

Cognition is also a very wide spectrum of mental skills that when applied properly, yield the greatest fruits of success that can be obtained.

The #1 area of knowledge that has always made the most impact on my journey is quite specifically, entrepreneurship. After all these years, it is my strongest belief that gaining the proper knowledge from entrepreneurship puts most things into perspective.

Not only do you learn economics, of course, but you also learn about management, networking, team building, negotiations, logistics, sales & marketing, product development, and the list goes on… For me also, entrepreneurship has taught those soft skills like active listening, communication, problem solving, intuition, creativity, focused attention, and many more useful tools.

The best advice I can give you or anybody else, regardless of where they are on their journey, is to be open-minded about life and learn how to detach from people, ideas, and things so that you can receive even better possible results.

Often you will find yourself outgrowing certain people, ideas, and things as you learn more and have a broader range of experiences. I won’t tell you or guarantee you that what worked for me will work for you, but what I can promise is that once you start, whatever you may need will naturally come to you.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

Before you do anything, you’re going to need to know what you’re even good at.

It helps a lot to make a two-column list: on one side you’ll list all of the things you like to do, the things you’re good at, what you’re naturally gifted in, and things that you’ve done that people have given you positive feedback about… On the other side, you’re going to list all of the opposites; areas you struggle in, areas you might need some extra help in, and the things that people have criticized harshly.

Once you have these things written down on opposing sides, your strengths and your weaknesses, you can truly see what materials you have to work with. When you’re just starting out, you’re going to want to go all in on your strengths.

Your weaknesses will only add to the challenges you’re already going to experience. Your strengths are going to take you to the places you need to go, and that’s when you’ll naturally have to develop some of your weaknesses.

Let’s think about it like this: if you were to focus on your weaknesses first, yes you will see development, and you will accomplish a variety of things, the catch is that you’ll be pulled in directions opposite of your prime objectives because of your weaknesses.

I’ll give you an example from my own life…

I had two choices to make on my entrepreneurial journey, I could’ve focused more on my course and worked harder on trying to make my first business succeed. The weaknesses were mainly in my marketing, my business concept, and my sales approach, which definitely could’ve been improved.

Those things naturally improved for me though when I focused on my main strength which was ultimately being an entrepreneur in my own sense. Digging out of the trenches, and succeeding following a very distinct path would certainly be reasons for at least a small number of people to want to learn from me, how they could replicate the results in their lives too.

Focusing on being an entrepreneur pushed me to become better at marketing, better at conceptualizing my business ideas, and way better at selling without needing to be pushy.

Listen, if you struggle with organization, doing things that you’re strong in will lead you to success which will put you in the position to either become organized or become a victim to someone else who can organize better and CHARGE YOU for that service.

The moment you make money with your strengths, you will begin needing people that can handle your weaknesses so that you can remain at the top of your game. These people, if they’re good at what they do, since your weaknesses are their strengths, you’ll end up paying them relative to the value/convenience they add to your life.

Don’t be scared, ask the majority of people you interact with about money, and I could confidently bet that most of them don’t really understand how money works. They won’t tell you how banks move trillions of dollars a day through these money markets that you and I are not privy to… The buy-ins are just too high.

Money is made at smaller levels that we can play in of course, but moving billions within a milli-second trade, is astronomical.

I had the money weakness too, but overtime, I was forced to learn how to manage my money better or be victim to losing it quicker than it came.

You’re always entitled to do what you want and figure it out, my mentors told me the same thing, yet they expressed the undoubtable truth that they too followed the guidance of people ahead of them, and made decisions leading to their ultimate success rather than the decisions that seemed right for their ego.

They rationalized that everything would work out anyway for them, so they locked in on what was the best option and made it all happen.

My final suggestion would be to focus and go all in on your strengths while giving room for your weaknesses to naturally develop. You’ll be presented with opportunities for you to lean into your weakness at times due to the success of your strengths… Embrace the challenge so that you can grow fully into who you need to be.

Your destiny is hidden in whatever craft you decide to master whether it be by your weaknesses or by your strengths.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.briods.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/avi.rps
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/avrespes
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avidonmrespes
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@avi_rps
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits

BRIODS Corporation Of America