Announcer: 0:00

The following programming is sponsored by Marc J. Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management, or Beasly Media Group. Entrepreneur, founder, author, and financial advisor Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their business into reality through his innovative work and the forward-focused form. Marc connects entrepreneurs to resources that fuel their success. Founders Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, revealing the lessons they've learned and the stories behind their success. Join Marc and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a little fun. Now let's dive in.

Marc Bernstein: 0:40

Good morning, America. How are you? Good morning, Arlo. I always say good morning to Arlo. Sometimes I shouldn't say always. It's not a sunny day in Philadelphia, so it's not always sunny in Philadelphia. That's confirmed now. But it is a nice day. It's a beautiful day. It's a lot going on in the world. There's a lot of noise, a lot of static, all kinds of crap going on. But this is a a choice to think and to go a little deeper and to hear people's views and how they've created themselves. And I consider it a unique opportunity. I consider today a unique opportunity because I have a 25-year-plus friend of mine on who we don't get to see each other as much. We were neighbors, now we're not, but we always have great conversations, so I know this is going to be another great one. And um so we I have a topic of the day, and my guest name is Malcolm, Coach Malcolm, and I'm gonna involve him in this conversation, which is something I've been thinking about. All of us have different domains that we operate in in our life. You know, there's the domain of business, which is a lot of what this show is about. There's the there's the personal domain, which could include family, your personal mental and physical health are both domains, your spirituality is a domain, your um you know, social environment and community is a domain. So there's all these different domains that we operate in. And I've been looking at this for many, many years, and when I do planning, and when I do, I look at, you know, I kind of organize it by here are my family goals and concerns, here are my um business concerns, here are my financial concerns, here are my spiritual concerns, and things I want to work on throughout the year when I build an annual plan. So what I've noticed over the years is that um doing this is like whack-a-mole because there's always something popping up that needs attention. And, you know, and it's like, okay, now we're gonna address this. The question is, and I'm and I work with a group of people and we've been discussing this issue, is when one pops up, let's say it's physical, let's say you have an illness, and you know, you you pretty much have to put all your attention on that. How do you work in a domain in that domain and at the same time have it try not to impact the others? You know, how how do you separate those in a way that you can keep operating on? You know, if you're not operating on five or six cylinders, maybe you're operating on four or five now. So, Malcolm, I know you probably have some thoughts about that.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 3:24

Uh yeah, that's uh that's a pretty deep question to just throw at a guy at uh 10 o'clock in the morning.

Marc Bernstein: 3:31

In all fairness, I did give you notice. Yeah, you did, uh, five minutes notice.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 3:35

But uh I think as you were describing it, um different domains and how do you um not allow one domain to um distract or impact in a negative way other domains at a certain time or whatever. I think the first way through it for me or or how I would look at it is that you try not to uh compartmentalize your life too much, first of all. And um in terms of domains, uh the the first thing that popped into my head when you mentioned it was well, you know, for me there's what you might call a primary domain or the playing field on which all the other domains are existing, and that primary domain is uh always impacting the other domains in a positive way. Right. So when you know an illness pops up, you know, you you're looking at that particular domain through the lens or filter of your primary domain. Um what is the primary domain? Well for me it's a spiritual domain. I know everything everything is is viewed and interpreted through, you know, my spirituality. Yep. Um so in that way, I'm always in the same place. It's just, you know, I'm focusing on different things through that same lens or whatever.

Marc Bernstein: 5:09

So you still might have the whack-a-mole, but you're looking at it all through the same lens, and you have that as a base from which to operate, which is a strength I would and to a certain extent, all those things look similar, you know, in a way.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 5:23

Because you're looking at them through the so if the lens was green, then all those individual things are are gr different green things or whatever, I guess, if that makes any sense. But that's kind of the the way that it you know immediately impacted me when you said it's like, well, you know, in my life, it the business, the the family, the the relationship, the you know, all that stuff, it either is happening or not happening through that lens, right? You know, you you and I, you know, we've been friends for a long time. I would argue, I could be totally wrong, but you know, it was always a sort of a spiritual thing, an undertone. And if that wasn't there, we wouldn't in our relationship in our relationship. Yeah, I would agree. And I would argue that if that weren't there for me at least, we would not have really been friends. Right. You know, this long. Right. You know. Because if it doesn't really if it can't rest on that foundation, then to me it really is not going to have value.

Marc Bernstein: 6:31

Listen, I love that answer, and we could talk about this for two hours either. But but we're not going to. So let's continue later in the day or later in the week. But um great answer, and I love that. And I and I it gives me food for thought in terms of how I'm actually it is something I've been thinking a lot about from in that regard. So it's great. Um so now let me introduce you to Coach Malcolm, whose name is Coach Malcolm Hairston, and he is CEO of Raku Products LLC and inventor of the Hip setter, which is really something different than everyone's different on this show, which is great, but it's really something different that we'll have an opportunity to talk about soon. And he is a lifetime entrepreneur, having owned several successful businesses. As a matter of fact, I met him on the corner, I'll never forget, of the block where we lived, um, waiting at the bus stop and finding out about his two current entrepreneurial activities. I'm like, oh, this is an interesting guy. But these include property inspections for large insurance carriers, which I think he was kind of just getting into at that time, custom cabinetry, granite and marble, and I knew him through those um generations, a music production, which is really what got us talking, and he was sort of coming out of that at the time, and athletic coaching at the age group, high school, and college levels, which he's had a lot of success in, and we could have a whole show probably just on that. So, very interesting, what I call renaissance man um individual. And uh welcome, Malcolm. So happy to have you here today. Glad to be here, Marc. So let's talk about um how you started as an entrepreneur, your first endeavor. And then I'm also interested in finding out like what what is it in your bones that makes you an entrepreneur.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 8:30

But let's start with where you started. I guess for me, um I really only ever worked for someone um immediately out of college for a very short period of time.

Marc Bernstein: 8:42

And what was that? Because I'm not even aware that.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 8:44

That was that was out of college as a football player in, you know, Kansas City.

Marc Bernstein: 8:49

Oh, I did I should have added he played in the NFL. That's all I'm saying.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 8:53

For a minute. For a minute, right. But uh that was really the only that where I can say, you know, I was, you know, drawing a check from, you know, you were employed.

Marc Bernstein: 9:01

Yep.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 9:02

Immediately after that, um, you know, I I was a musician and I, you know, went to work in a band, a full-time musician.

Marc Bernstein: 9:12

And after that it was And you still are a musician, just not your profession.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 9:18

And then after that it was music production, and then after that it was, you know, it just one thing after another, after another, after another. So for me it's always been an entrepreneurial, you know, endeavor with my life.

Marc Bernstein: 9:31

I might add that Malcolm had a successful career in that. When I met him, uh he had recently produced um for Patty LaBelle as an example and other people, but um he had had uh a a nice level of success in that.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 9:44

So yeah, I tend to get into things and um you know throw myself into it 100%, throw my creativity into it 100%. And uh you know, some things work really well, some things, you know, don't work at all, and you know, uh but for me it's all just an expression of creativity. Um music is an expression of creativity, coaching hurdles is an expression of my creativity, um you know, inventing hip setters an expression of my creativity. It's all the same thing to me. And again, I think that goes back to that field that I exist on and all my different, you know, compartmentalized things are are resting on. So to me, it just all feels like the same thing. It would be hard for somebody to say for for somebody to maybe understand that literally for me to make a piece of furniture feels like making a song or feel to feels like um coaching an athlete to, you know, run over a hurdle better. It's it's all a creative endeavor resting on the same thing, you know.

Marc Bernstein: 10:52

I agree. I was thinking about that. Someone from the outside, I completely understand it because I know you, and I'm built somewhat that way myself. We it's a joke because if you saw us side by side, you'd never believe it. But we used to say we're twin sons of different mothers. Both left-handed bass players, I have to imagine, too, that learn to play backwards and all that. So we we have a lot in common that way. But uh yeah, it would be hard for other people to understand that, and I get that. Um so you went when I was when when we met, you were transitioning from the music business to the inspection business, and I know you had kind of a different experience with that, so let's talk about that. And I it was successful. I know it was financially successful.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 11:34

It was very successful. Uh to date, my most successful venture, me and my wife, you know, um, as I was as I was in the middle of really starting to have some of my best success as a music producer, um I always I've always been the type type person that sort of like had like a second thing going on just in case kind of thing. And so I was always sort of like doing this little inspections work for another person. And um at a certain point he wanted to get out of it and wanted to sell the business. And you know, my wife and I said, Hey, you know, that's something to, you know, maybe buy or whatever. It wasn't gonna require any of my time, you know, really. And so we bought it and really, you know, I was working at it, you know, somewhat, but you know, she was my primarily the one that was sort of like managing it. And then as I was transitioning out of music, then you know, I threw myself into that. And we grew it into the real a really successful business over a you know 20-year period.

Marc Bernstein: 12:34

Yeah, that was pretty much like the span of our our being neighbors in that 20-year period pretty much. So and what I didn't realize till or sort of pre-interview, I knew Kim was involved in the business and I knew she did the stuff you didn't like to do, like the management administration.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 12:53

But uh when we were talking before, it was really like because she was more kind of driven and passionate about it in a way than you were, from what you Yeah, because for me it it was an ex it was an expression and it was a way to make money, but it wasn't like the best way to be creative. You know, I mean, um not really, you know, because it was, you know, it was doing work for, you know, insurance companies.

Marc Bernstein: 13:18

That's those aren't the most wasn't inspiring.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 13:21

You know, and those aren't the organizations that really, you know, would value the type of creativity that, you know, I need in my life.

Marc Bernstein: 13:29

You know, I need to be making so you just explained that puzzle to me, because I always wondered about that. Because that was that what it seemed like that wasn't consistent with the way you are on all the other endeavors that I was familiar with.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 13:41

Yeah, that that was a way to make money. Right. And you know, um Which is important, which is absolutely important. And um, you know, she was m way more passionate about it always than me. Um but um, you know, I played my role in it because there was, you know, I was I had the expertise in that field, right? You know, because I had been doing it for many, many years before we bought the business.

Marc Bernstein: 14:06

Um but you know, in terms of kind of like if you weren't married and she wanted to start a business, she would hire a guy like you that had the expertise and you know, you'd be like the key person, but it's her business kind of.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 14:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty much, yeah. Um, you know, when when solutions needed to be when solutions needed to be found or addressed or whatever, that's creative. So, you know, for me that would I would find that to be interesting. But, you know, it wasn't that really wasn't my cup of tea.

Marc Bernstein: 14:38

Um this is actually a great place to take a break, have a quick commercial. We're gonna hear about your latest business, and I want to talk to you a little bit about me your challenges as an entrepreneur that you might have had and the strengths that you developed, and then we're gonna move into the new business and talk about that.

Announcer: 14:53

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Marc Bernstein: 15:21

We are back on Founders Forum with our guest today, Coach Malcolm and my good friend, and delightful to have him here today with me. And I'm gonna introduce the new business. Before that, I want to ask you about one of the things we talk about on the show is that being an entrepreneur is always a smooth ride, right? You start and it's just You're right. I knew you were gonna say that. So we'll talk about the kind of challenge. Let's use that because you're 20 years in the in the in the inspection business, insurance inspections. What what kind of challenges did you and Kim and the business have, and how did you meet those challenges and what kind of strengths did you develop in your entrepreneurialism through that through the learning there?

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 16:05

I think m my honest answer is it wasn't very challenging, you know, at least from my point of view. I I would I would say if we look if you know if we look back on it, Kim and I now, it wasn't really that challenging. You know, you just had to go out and do a job that they needed done, right?

Marc Bernstein: 16:25

Um But I'll bet but you didn't do all the inspections yourself, you had employees as inspected.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 16:29

Yeah, we had we had lots of employees. We we spanned from Virginia all the way up to Maine, you know, and literally doing, you know, thousands of inspections for these large companies. I won't mention their names, but um, you know, thousands of them a month. Um so you know, dealing with people and managing managing people who all were pretty much remote, except for the staff in our office or whatever, that was challenging more so near the end for a long period of time. That wasn't really a challenge because the bottom line is if you found a certain type of person that they would pretty much run themselves, and so it wasn't really a lot of managing to be done or anything like that. Um it it only really got challenging as the companies that we worked for made the job harder.

Marc Bernstein: 17:23

You know, they they you know, because for whatever reasons they would, you know, bring about new changes and I was gonna lead you there if you didn't bring that up because I knew that because we talked about it. Yeah. Dealing with big insurance companies can and alone can be a challenge.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 17:38

Yeah, yeah.

Marc Bernstein: 17:39

Contracts and changing the deal and all that kind of thing.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 17:42

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, being being you know, what I would call unscrupulous, you know, and I I I I exist on a spiritual foundation where you shouldn't be unscrupulous. So you know, so once I realize that I'm in with an entity that is like that. Yeah, right, right. You know, but again, you like like I said, if if you and I hadn't had some seed of spiritual connection, we wouldn't have been friends this long. Well, in that environment, there it it was a period of time where the people that that you know I primarily you know worked with at the insurance companies, there was a connection there. And there was there was there was a a uh mind melt or whatever you want to call it, where we were on the same page and we thought we were headed for the same direction. But you know, as time went on, they got pushed out and new people came in with different mindsets.

Marc Bernstein: 18:36

The corporate culture of your of your uh contractors really, they were changes and that's the thing.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 18:42

Major majorly, majorly. And um, you know, as it became more and more as they became less really less interested in um having um someone working for them that provided value other than a lower price, then you know it it just became more and more and more challenging. That's all they really cared about. And again, you know, I was just always, you know, my time is valuable to me. And if it's not valuable to you, then you know, the only thing uh the only thing I'm getting out of this is money, and that's not enough for me. You know.

Marc Bernstein: 19:25

So I I I on some level I knew that. So the question is, how did you how did you meet that challenge? Because you obviously didn't continue it the day it's you didn't stop the day it started. So how did you deal with that and what was the ultimate it's a good talk place to talk about when you reached the end of it and decided to to uh get you know to exit the business?

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 19:49

I don't know that I ever met that challenge well. It it just started to just deteriorate me because you know I am who I am. You know, and it was what it was. And you know, there was a period where in in my head I I knew this has a shelf life now, you know. And you know the other thing about me, the reason all these things that I've been doing, you know, I always say everything kind of has a shelf life. You know, I'm I'm gonna be into it, and then at some point I'm gonna get interested in something else and less interested in this thing, and my creativity is gonna shift over to this other thing. And um, with that, even with the business, it was a a five years before, you know it had to end. I knew that it was going to end.

Marc Bernstein: 20:39

So I would suspect I'm gonna offer up an answer that and you'll tell me if I'm right or not, that your strength during that five-year period was your wife, was Kim, who kind of kept it going. Yeah, because I was I was I was dying. Right. You were mentally and or spiritually out of it at that point. Right. So that was your strength, though. You had the right partner. There you go. There you go. Which sometimes is the key to business. Amen. That's the key to my business today is having the right partners. Yeah. So which took me many, many years to figure out. But you know, so so there's a that's a strength, you know.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 21:12

Absolutely. I mean, I I'm I'm a creative person. And so, you know, that's great at a certain level, but you know, nuts and bolts and business, even you know, uh businesses now, you know, um she's more the I know she's more than like the nuts and bolts, the financial, the administrative of all that, right? And I'm out there just creating songs and creating.

Marc Bernstein: 21:36

You were a great you're a great pair, you're a great uh partners. You know, so that besides being married, obviously. Yeah, absolutely. That's great. All right, so let's get to hip hip center. I'm gonna give everyone a little bit of background so we can save some time on that, because this was this was from our meeting. But Malcolm invented the hip center device to address posture issues and injuries with a focus on rehabilitation after hip replacement surgery. So I I full disclosure, I've had hip replacement surgery and I was one of his um pilots, I guess, you know, pilot cases. Uh the product development involved several years of refinement, learning biomechanics, and understanding different user needs. This shows you the the um Renaissance man that he is. He saw the need and he digs into it and he learns and became an expert on something that he probably didn't have that much um you didn't have that much knowledge about. Zero. Well, yet a little bit from being an athlete, intuitively, I think, but maybe not. Um but you really had never studied it or anything.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 22:38

Yeah, yeah. It was something that I I saw as a coach. I as a as a coach, I was at Cornell at the time, and I saw that our athletes would come in for practice, and they always were in a bad body position. And with with sprinting and tracking hurdles, you know, postures, everything, you know. Um and so I was always we were always struggling with, you know, why do you know, we can get them into a good place, but then tomorrow they come in, they're in a bad place again. And so I started just looking at posture in that way, but I was looking at it in a very mechanical way, like, okay, we want the pelvis to be here and it's never here, so how can what can I do to create something that'll get it there really fast so we can get on with our lives and practice or whatever. Uh in doing that, now that that was probably a a couple years of trying stuff that didn't work, you know. Uh but eventually um I had an idea that, you know, once I put together a prototype and and tried it on myself, it literally like made me understand that I wasn't even pursuing like the right question. Right. Um and you know, it just it went from there. It went from I I invented it for, you know, high-level athletes. I quickly realized the problem isn't really athletes, the problem is like our our gait in general, and this affects everybody. So then the audience broadened. And you know, from there I've just worked with um zeroing in on the phone.

Marc Bernstein: 24:08

And by the way, it's not just hips either, because the hip bones connected to the you know everything is connected to everything.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 24:13

Everything is connected to the pelvis. But the pelvis is the center of everything. And it's it where it's located in space affects everything, you know. And that's really what it amounts. You look at the skeleton, it's like the keystone almost of the now most conventional um uh biomechanics or whatever, they're looking at the pelvis and saying, okay, the sacrum is the keystone. And what I realized was that, you know, it was actually on the opposite side of the body. So that was one of the challenges when I first invented the product, is that, you know, it's it's fixing your posture. That's one of the things it's doing. But it's actually doing a lot more than that. But it's it's fixing your posture so that you can have a better gait. Um but if I say, if I say, hey, you know, I got this posture device, then 99.9% of people are gonna think, yeah, I'll put it on my back and it m brings my shoulders back and that's uh it makes me stand up straight or blah, blah, blah.

Marc Bernstein: 25:11

Or a lot of people think, Oh, I have good posture, I don't need to be a little bit more.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 25:13

Or they think they got good posture. But you know, the device itself, when you see it, it's it's completely not that, right? So that was our um probably my biggest initial struggle was just people already believing that they understood what posture was. Right. They either thought they had it or or that, you know, they knew how to get it, or what something should look like that gave it to them.

Marc Bernstein: 25:36

Now, believe it or not, we we only have like two minutes left, which is the time flies on the show. Um I know your that was your original challenge. Now your challenge has become, because we talked about it is marketing, like getting the word out.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 25:47

Yeah.

Marc Bernstein: 25:48

Um so talk about that for a minute.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 25:50

Yeah, so um marketing to different constituencies. As as as I realize, okay, who really can get the most out of this? There's, you know, runners. That's where I started. And then there's just everybody that walks. Which is everybody else. But now what I'm really real realizing is that, you know, in terms of recovery, there's a whole market of people that are going through different knee surgery, hip surgery, or, you know, things that out of that they need to to they would be benefited by learning to walk better than they were before. And so that's where my focus is now and will be for the you know, the foreseeable future is really like getting uh getting the word out. Getting the word out and and and talking to that constituency.

Marc Bernstein: 26:43

Um the like five things I want to ask you, and we have very little time. But um So I know you're working on that, and I know you're thinking about you know you look at rehab centers and physical therapists and maybe orthopedic surgeons and stuff like that. Um What is your I'll just ask you this real quickly. If you if I asked you your vision for three years from now, this is uh now September of 2028, and you and I are talking, what would have to happen over that three-year period for you to feel like that was a successful period in your business? We have like 20 seconds.

Malcolm Allison Hairston: 27:16

So the end result is that I want the hipsetter to be institutionalized as part of the recovery process for anybody that needs to learn how to walk.

Marc Bernstein: 27:27

That's wonderful. And you can find the hip setter for people listening at what the what's the website, real quick? Uh learn.hipsetterwpc.com. Wonderful. Malcolm, thanks for being here today. Thank all of you for listening. See you next week on Founders Forum and have a great day. Awesome.

Announcer: 27:46

We hope you enjoyed your time with Founders Forum and that you found value to take with you throughout your day. Join us again next week for another episode of Founders Forum on WXKB 1039HD2.